Long Time, No Post!

Hello my lovely friends!

I realise that I have been extraordinarily absent for the last few weeks!

In a nut-shell, work roster changes and medical problems coming out of the wazoo changed my routines somewhat and haven’t had a lot of change for posting.

Onto Updates in the land of Gaming!! (But just to warn you, this is mostly PC gaming to follow!)

So I got accepted into the Hearthstone BETA and this game is RIGHT UP MY ALLY.
A deck building card came with fancy digital effects? YES THANKS, I’LL TAKE TWO.

I have actually entered an Australia store-chain run tournament for this, and am currently sitting 18th out of 60 players in the tourney. This is going to win me NOTHING, but it’s good fun none-the-less.

So far, my focus has been on Druid. But I’m starting to branch out a little to the other classes and am thoroughly enjoying Hunter.

Why don’t you love me anymore? You’re leaving me for HIM!? A HUNTER?
DOES HE EVEN LIFT?

In addition, I also got accepted into the Dawngate BETA.

Needless to say, it’s a lot like playing a less enjoyable version of LoL. Like, don’t get me wrong, I know it’s BETA and I know it’s a MOBA but – naaaah.

At least their character art is pretty?

OH! OH OH OH! I finally got around to playing a bit of the new Tomb Raider game! The reviews were absolutely correct.
I must say, best handling Tomb Raider I’ve ever played (and I’ve loved nearly all of them).
The UI is smart, the controls are organic, the cut scenes are amazing and the game play is involving and challenging without bordering on “Repeat this as many times are required to luck out actually getting it” as the Tomb Raider games sometimes had a tendency to do.

Welcome to my home. Hope you enjoy the lovely decor.

I have to admit, thoroughly impressed with the graphics.
As much as I think Lara Croft’s “face” is not quite the Lara Croft I have come to know at love (and let’s face it, unless she looks like a young Angelinda Jolie, I’m probably not sold), the faces are damned impressive.

The above snip, is GAME PLAY. Like….WHAT? That’s awesome.

Welp, I might leave it there for the moment – and blog a little bit more later in today if I have a chance.

Love you all my friends!!

~ as always,
A Highly Caffeinated Ellie

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Battle for Sophia Oct 2013

Ok everyone! I would like to begin this post by advising that I am not connected to this event in anyway – merely that I have been reading about it and thought it deserved a spot on my blog.

So, the Battle for Sophia is an Oxfordshire-based wargaming club are set to play the popular tabletop game; Warhammer Fantasy, in an endurance marathon for 48 hours in a bid to raise donations for Sophia – a young Witney resident with Spastic Diplegia, a form of Cerebral Palsy, who is in need of a crucial operation and months of post op physio.

The event, dubbed ‘The Battle for Sophia’ will take place Friday 25 to Sunday 27 October, at the club’s headquarters in Carterton.

Sophia having her photo taken for the local news paper

The tabletop game will play continuously for 48 hours with players taking shifts, and will be broadcast live over the web for supporters to see the action progressing. The game will be played on a massive 12’ by 4’ table, will use more than 50 terrain pieces and over 2000 miniatures, many of which have been beautifully hand-painted.

And here are some links to further information:

http://innsmouthgamingclub.wordpress.com/

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?380215-48-hour-Warhammer-Game-Battle-for-Sophia

http://www.sophiassteppingstones.co.uk/

Todays Adventures: Painting Sage gets a Blog!

Well, as it appears all of my waffling on about the awesome WordPress miniatures community has rubbed off on my Painting Sage and he’s made himself a blog!!

http://thewurmwood.wordpress.com <—click here for good times.

As much as I wanted him to entitle it ‘The Ramblings of a Painting Sage’ it appears he instead went with The Wurmwood. Haha.

In my most recent escapades….I continued painting Lylyth from Warmachine. Got a lot of practice painting shading on cloaks.

Look at the beautiful sway of my cloak. It flaps! Like a candle in the wiiiiinddd…ehem

Still need to learn a lot about blending. *sigh*
I keep huffing and becoming frustrated that they don’t come out as nice as they look in the pictures on the website. I wish patience was less of a virtue and more of ‘buy it now’ on ebay.

Painting Sage and I also purchased army’s for the miniatures table top game Infinity!

(Mine are the ALEPH on the left)

I absolutely COULD NOT believe how little these were when I opened the box.

Hello my dear. I hear you’re going to be painting me? Take care with my stilletos, they’re small enough to clip the wings of a fairy dancing on the head of a pin.

AAAAARG.
Putting these together was not only an exercise in patience, but also a grand learning experience in the art of ‘pinning’. Painting Sage had to step in a few times to assist me as I was flailing all over the place losing pieces of robots that could only be found with a metal detector.

But, eventually, I had a set of robots and little Aleph people.

Well, I might leave it there for today!
Oh one other piece of news, was my painting friend found these awesome free printable terrain maps and cargo containers! I don’t have a ‘great’ photo of it yet – but how cool does this look??

Ooooooh, cannot wait to play on this with my ultra tiny part people.

Love you all! Sincerely,
Ellie

Dark skin is too hard to paint

While I have been painting my Malifaux crew, I’ve been painting them to match how they look in the images on the cards or art.
Now, Marcus (head of the crew) is quite dark skinned – which I have never attempted before but figured, oh you know if lighter toned skin wasn’t too bad this should be similar.

It was actually awful. I’m currently in two minds between stripping him and making him lighter skinned or leaving him as he is and not being entirely happy with him.

What do you mean I’m ugly? I have lovely white eyebrows.

I don’t know, maybe when his clothes are done I can touch it up/fix it some how. Uuuugh, this miniatures painting business is so stressful – WHO KNEW.

Oh! Good news however, I got these little cuties in the mail today!

They are so little you have no idea. Like, less than a CM for the Tiny Kittens and Jackalope is barely over a CM big. I’m worried I’m going to damage his little antlers trying to put them on! (Both of these, also by Wyrd for the Arcanists of Malifaux)

Aaaannnd, my very generous Painting Sage gave me 2 boxes of paints. Most of them are half used, but plenty enough for a newbie like me to keep me busy for a while to come.
So excited to have more than a few colours to try to practice painting at home!

Yayayayayay.

Well my lovelies,
time for sleep.

Sincerely,
El

Mirrors Edge? or Dull reflections?

I have to admit, I love Mirror’s Edge‘s graphics. They are slick, realistic, and I get excited when there are flashes of sections of faces and a tattoo gun.
But overall, is it just me, or is this trailer really really boring? It DOES NOT make me want to rush out and purchase the game in anyway.

PS2 + PS3 = PS4

Sooooo, who else thinks this bad boy looks like they merged the PS2 and the PS3 designs?

I don’t mind it, but it’s a little…er..dull, in my opinion.

What does everyone else think of the design for the Playstation 4?

Dream out, with your Steam out

So, I have discovered that one of the easiest ways to distract me from study is to queue up and old faithful TV show and check out Steam sales.
I think the Steam people ACTUALLY know when I have my university exams, and put on all their good sales at that moment.

Even though I am swearing to not play even a minute of Neverwinter, Dragon Age or ANYTHING ELSE while exams are right around the corner (4 days = I hate life), I saw that Anna (A game I have been curious about for a while) was on sale so nabbed it up.

In addition to now wanting to download it immediately and try it out, I’m holding myself back under some kind of pretext that I can still read study notes while rocking out the story lines that were Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Dem special eeeffects

Despite this, I do thoroughly enjoy my Trek, and it’s made all the more amusing when you see Wil Wheaton in his younger years on TNG and know that he grows up to be an awesomely respected super nerd. Good going, bro.

Although…I would have reconsidered that jumper….

Dragon Age: Origins – Part II

**BEWARE OF DOGS** …also spoilers.

Onto my recent adventures in Dragon Age!!

So, after I defeated the big monster at the end of my last post, we ended up having a cut scene basically about everyone having their shit ruined – and they had even less chance than usual because for some reason, one of the leaders retreated his entire army at the last minute, abandoning everyone – WHAAAAT A PUSSY.

Morrigan, the daughter of the wild witch of the forest, has joined my team and although a loved member of the group – is a big rolling ball of negativity and complaining. UGH, just what I wanted.

Shut up Morrigan, not body cares about your opinions

I’ve also been discovering some of the extra options around my war dog. I just found that I can actually pat and play with him, and surprise surprise, Morrigan hates him. It’s actually fairly amusing to listen to her or Alister’s banter with the dog. Neither of them like him, but both are terrified of him.

Who’s mummy good little boooooooy?

I think someone wants a belly scratch

I’m unsure if this quest was put there to see if I was an arse-hole, or if I was just REALLY compassionate – but, I play the game the same way I would if I were adventuring in real life. Very polite, help the innocent.
Now, up until now, the good vs bad choice has been fairly obvious except for this dude.

So, the town has caged him to act as a type of ‘bait’ for blight/enemies. Morrigan comments that this is an awful way to treat such a noble and brave creature (apparently she’s a fan of this particular race) and suggests we let him go.
He’s fairly polite to speak to, but then drops a bombshell in the middle of conversation like ‘I killed a bunch of people….oh, and their kids’….remiiiiiind me why I wanted to help you again??
I actually ended up abandoning the quest half way through because I didn’t want to continue on the path of letting him go, hahaha.

I’m also enjoying the side quests.

Red = Part of active quest. Green = Side quest board

Just give me a little XP and a small break from the big cut scene filled main story line (Man, does this game have a LOT of cut scenes). The only thing is that I wish the side-quests were mostly geographically located in the area you got it in, I hate all the moving between cities and camps – is annoying.

Kill a bunch of wild rampaging GIANT SPIDERS. Shit.

Now someone commented on my blog here that they enjoy reading female gamers reviews of games as they often differ from that of males.
This is probably just me, and I don’t presume to speak on behalf of female gamers (or females for that matter) but I think this is why.

I become emotionally involved in my characters. When I had the option to switch Morrigan, Alister or my war dog for a different character – I emotionally didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind? This might happen for everyone, but I tend to find more of my female gamer friends feel a real connection to TV or game characters – more so than most of the males I know.

So Alister hears me having a nightmare and explains that this happens to the wardens. That they all see a dragon in their dreams who is the Archdemon, and that I shouldn’t worry – I will learn to push the dreams away in time.

Why tell me scary stories around a camp fire, right after a nightmare? That’s just mean!

Later we find out that he is actually the illegitimate heir to the throne. Cut scenes like there, where he talks about ‘being close enough to tell me this thing he’s never told anyone before’ etc, is what invests me. Morrigan’s playful hatred of Alister while we walk around, invests me. My dog wagging it’s tail, invests me.
It’s interesting how that works.
Oh, and Alisters winning dialogue.

“That’s what im here for, to deliver unpleasant news and witty one liners”

Anyhow, last save point, I was speaking to the leader of Redcliffe when a woman runs to him and says that a demon in the castle is holding her Son/Husband hostage and demands she brings back only him. I want to get into the castle too, so before following her to his likely demise, he gives me his ring that acts as a key to a secret passage.

Hopefully I’m going to find this guy inside that is a friend of Alister’s and cure the mans illness – but who knows.
Well, talk to you all again soon! I’ll leave you with a few random screen shots and captions, and see you all next time.

Sincerely,
El

Inventory! Not particularly interesting, but grabbed a shot in case anyone wanted to see what it looked like.

Stoic posing. Because I’m a boss.

Why do I flash on occasion? Also, the boobs need some severe work in this game. They seem, not attached to my characters torso somehow.

“Take this oh so sacred *scratch scratch* blessing from the *scratch scratch scratch* make of all *scratch scratch* – STOP IT DOG, SHOW SOME RESPECT”

LoL LoL LoL ROFL

I always though creating a game with the acronym ‘LoL’ was quite clever, because the thousands of people googling the letters to ensure that their niece didn’t just say something lewd at the end of her text message will likely become exposed to this game.

I actually stayed away from League of Legends for a while because I thought it was some kind of glorified Real Time Strategy or war-game kind of thing. Low and behold, I’m listening to two friends talking at work and one goes
One: “Oh, I started playing that tower defense game the other day”
Two: “Which one?”
One: “You know, LoL”

My ears actually pricked up (yes, this is something my ears do when I’m trying to hear) – tower defense? Yes pleeeeease!

So, here is the basic overview: Green arrow is my skills bar, Yellow is the chat window – and it let’s you know when a party member purchased an important item, Blue arrow to the left are the members in my party and the Red arrow is myself, some other players in my team and le minions.

So basically, you scuttle around in this map, trying to take out the opposite teams towers and eventually their base (is it called a base??).

Excuse me minions, coming through!

When you destroy bigger towers close to the base you get super minions.
I like these minions because I like playing the more supportive characters (Like Morgana) so they’re good to hide behind.

Spaaaaawn my lovelies. Come unto me, your leader!

And then once you finally destroy the big hub…

DOOOOOF

VICTORY MOTHER LICKER. I AM A BEAST.

Well, not so much beastly exactly as low HP and cowardly, but I like to talk big with the best of them.Talk next time folks!!
Sincerely,
El