My latest discovery: Talespire
Lately I'm a bit bored of just playing games, I miss a bit doing something more creative. I also miss my miniatures. So when I learned about a new game, Talespire, that allowed you to setup and play "boardgame" scenarios as if you had real painted miniatures (with amazing graphics), I wanted to give it a try.
I learned about the game by a blog post, once it was already available at Steam (it's in Early Access), but researching for this post I found that it comes from a successful Kickstarter. Both sources are a good starting point, but check the Steam early access trailer to see why I fell in love with it:
You easily add tiles, walls, props (furniture, decoration) and entities (human-controllable miniatures, NPCs and monsters), save it (everything works online), and then can play, alone or with friends (no AI, though), in a turn-based fashion. It struck me both as how simple it appeared, and really is, you decide how far you want to go adding detail. But the visuals are incredible, it really looks as if you had real high-quality painted miniatures. The die roll realistically, music and sound effects help immerse, and special effects and "atmospheric controls" (time of day, weather, and other visual and lighting conditions) allow to create the perfect setting no matter if you are exploring dark sewers, a dungeon or a mountain on a sunny day.
I encourage anyone interested to read the terminology guide and the player's guide to properly understand what you can (and can't) do. For example, the combat system is as good as many normal computer RPGs, with 4 stats, combat resolution, initiative-based turns and other tweaks, but it is not Dungeons & Dragons. I find it a great balance between a not-totally-freeform game engine (like Vassal) and Baldur's Gate.
Oh, and remember what I mentioned before about the Kickstarter campaign? You should check it out as it hints of things to come later, like character editing (at minimum changing the colors), or a Cyberpunk/sci-fi setting which looks as amazing as the main medieval one (and exactly what I thought, "I'd love to have a Cyberpunk 2020 equivalent!").
This is an example screenshot I took exploring an amazing castle uphill I downloaded from the community:
This was my first experiment, a small tavern made in a few minutes just after finishing the (in-game) tutorials:
And my last screenshot is a work in progress of a bigger experiment, a HeroQuest board. Need to learn to play with tile sizes to see if I can keep corridors same size as the original, while having cool walls and room dispositions, but still I think end up quite similar:
Of course the game is meant to be played with other people, but for now, to me it is a great way to relax assembling maps. I can pick any map from an adventure, or even cool randomly generated maps. Having your friends purchase the game to be able to play the campaigns can be a handicap, but the game is cheap, way less than any boardgame these days.
Before I finish, I wanted to also share a few great resources for inspiration and maps:
- Tales Tavern: Official website, acting both as a hub of player-created content, news, and tutorials (see next point)
- Tales Tavern Training Grounds: An official list of resources
- TaleSpire reddit: All things related with the game, from news to newest creations by people.
Tags: Boardgames RPG Tools Videogames
Status Update: July 2019
I haven't forgotten the blog, but some relevant things have happened in real life that make harder to write content for here:
- Our role-playing group is mostly dissolved. Part of if no longer lives in Spain, and of those who live, it became so hard to be able to meet that even playing some boardgames became almost impossible.
- I am spending some days most weeks out of home, so I have way less available time to paint miniatures.
- I am in general dedicating less time to play videogames, so I try to rotate between genres, but RPGs usually require lots of commitment.
- I am reading, quite a lot more in fact, but I had a long stack of pending articles to read before being able to spend more time with books, and again, I have to leverage between books that could be reviewed here and from other areas (mainly technical, but not limited only to those).
That said, I have played quite a lot of Diablo III on my Nintendo Switch (I've got 5 level 70 characters, around 400 paragon levels, and one of the characters is already doing the set armour special quests). I also finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (awesome game, I'll replay it sometime in the future), and I am onto some Final Fantasy: I am playing FF-X HD on PC (finished it on PS2 on its day, but as I loved it wanted to play it again), I have installed and started playing FF VII on my laptop (but oh boy, the random battles do get annoying at first), and I tried really hard to finish FF XII HD... but despite nice graphics and the awesome gambit AI system (basically you can spend more time fine-tuning the combat behaviour of the characters than actually battling) the story is so dull and the voice acting so rough that I gave up. I have the savegame for the future but it felt so boring I am not sure when I'll continue. Not having the gaming PC with me all the time also doesn't helps, although enables me to divide by platforms. I am for example finally going through my PS3 exclusives.
About miniature painting I would love to spend more time, but in the short term I only foresee moving more old miniatures to my mother's countryside house after taking some photos.
About reading, I have started another Horus Heresy book and the 2nd volume of The Dark Tower so is a matter of time only.
And in general, my life is quite busy right now so no boardgaming or role-playing, we'll see if later this year that changes.
Tags: Boardgames Offtopic Painting Videogames
Risk Legacy Battle #10
10th Battle of Risk Legacy happened this weekend. After months of inactivity due to miscellaneous real life issues, finally we've retaken our monthly boardgames & RPG sessions, and we started by playing this strategy game (I'm so eager to finish the 15 battles to finish "customizing" it) and see how it ends up.
You can check the log at the Risk Legacy battles page, but as usual careful as it has heavy spoilers of some secret packages that we've already opened.
Tags: Boardgames Risk Legacy
Assassinorum: Execution Force
People were asking for new boxed games, GW answered... although not exactly as we expected.
Assassinorum Execution Force is a very especifically themed game in which 1 to 4 players command a squad of four assassins that infiltrate a cultist base to kill a chaos sorcerer before it finishes a dark ritual.
The boardgame pieces are really good, both strong (really thick cardboard) and high quality (think latest Space Hulk pieces). There are no doors but some additional room tiles, event cards, markers and dice. Not impressive, and definetly not equal in quantity to Space Hulk, but still ahead regarding quality compared to for example Deadzone or Sedition Wars board pieces and tokens. Expensive or not, but GW's general high bar of control in boardgames is there.
The instructions are small but effective, although I haven't yet read them. The minis are 4 new plastic assassins, one of each specialty (Vindicare, Eversor, Culexus and Callidus), 15 chaos cultists, 3 chaos space marines and a chaos sorcerer with a small familiar demon (that acts as turn counter). One interesting bit is that as they are reusing existing plastic sprues for all foes, the chaos sorcerer is actually the full Chaos Lord double sprue, so you can make the Lord, the Sorcerer or a Terminator Lord. Only four new, but all are nice and good looking. Of course the new assassins are just incredible and very dynamic.
For those seeking the price/value ratio, some quick maths of the prices as of May 2015 of the individual miniatures:
3x Chaos SM: 8.30€
15x Chaos Cultists: 8.30€ x 3 = 24.90€
1x Chaos Sorcerer/Chaos Lord/Terminator Chaos Lord: 19.50€
4 Assassins: 21€? x 4 = 84€ (not yet released standalone)
Total: 52.70 + 84 = 136.70€ retail cost
At Games Workshop's website the game is 100€ but you can easily get it around 20% cheaper (at Wayland for example costs around 82€ at current exchange, with free shipping).
All this means that even without discounts, you will get at least around 36€ of miniatures "free". But truth be said, at the original price it is an expensive game: Most miniatures reused, limited variety of gameplay and scenarios, not too complex rules... Also for advanced Chaos Warhamer 40,000 players (people already with non-basic CSM armies) most minis won't add much value to their collection.
Discounted, for me is a good buy: Reviews say in general the game is fun and engaging (and not easy), for a collector (like me) just the assassins will cost more than 20€ each once sold separately in the future (I did wanted them), and as Dark Vengeance made me start a small Chaos Space Marines force, the minis of this game are a really nice addon to grow that army.
So... make your choice, but definetly hunt online, it does make a big difference and I got no problems finding my copy.
THE ELDER DIARY: #20140517
I'm slowly progressing with the Imperial Knight. Everything except the arms has the basecoat, head is fully painted, parts of the hull metallized and I'm working on the shoulders and upper caparace.
Apart from the lack of free time, my main problem is that (at least my paint tin) painting gold is really tiresome. It needs around 4 or 5 layers to be fully opaque. Still, I'm happy with how is looking and I prefer to go slow but leave it as I please.
I finally put to play today most of my X-Wing boardgame ships collection. We did a 3 vs 2, 100 points battle and I loved the rules, especially how you must guess enemy movements and plan accordingly your paths. I like the painted miniatures a lot, but using them also has felt so good.
I also got as a gift from my friend Vicente the awesome Battletech Introductory Box Set :_) Combined with the minis from the 90s version that I have, quite a good mech force to play games!
I've been also reading a few comics so more reviews will come soon.
Tags: Boardgames Miniatures Painting
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