Miscellany - or how computers and cardboard slow the painting...

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Not too much to report from TML towers these last few weeks, as I'll admit to being caught up in a couple of more ancillary interests to the blog, Card Games and Computer Games, and the conflux twixt the two.

In the last Year or so I've got very much back into playing Magic: The Gathering, and I think the odd image has popped up on here to reflect that:

Definitive 'kitchen table' Magic

Many, many years ago I used to play, but fell out with the game at the time, as it was purely a financial game.  The lack of information, the lack of ways to buy single cards, and the limited ways of playing meant that in the mid 90's he who had the most money, and hence the most cards, invariably won.  When I worked in a games store customers would regularly spend hundreds of pounds on boxes of cards, I could get a couple of packs a week.

Nowadays the game has blossomed with the internet age, and the formats out there mean that friendly, and even economic ways to play exist.  It's still not a cheap game compared to some, but you can probably get a couple of competitive decks together for less than a GW start collecting army.

Also there are a couple of online versions of the game, the most recent of these being the 'Free-to-Play' Magic: Arena.

Arena

Now unlike some other games, see below, you really can choose to download Arena and play it for free.  F2P games generally rely on in game micro purchases to make money, and keep you coming back, but Arena seems to offer a decent balance of play so that even if only played casually, you can get involved and win games without spending a penny.  Plus it is an excellent tool for learning the basics of the game.

Previously my videogame of choice for a couple of years had been War Thunder, another F2P game, but this time an Air, Sea and Land combat sim; in the mould of World of Tanks, but far more detailed:

It's not my actual gameplay, as the T34 is not on fire in the start zone.

The downside being, it really was not balanced for free play, as good as everything is in the game - 1000's of accurate vehicles, realistic physics, beautiful graphics, 16 on 16 team games by default - you are simply grinding away to little or no success unless you spend money.  I paid for premium access and bought a few downloadable vehicles to improve my win rates, before eventually concluding I didn't have the time or patience to progress further.  The fun of flying you favourite fighter into battle would so often be punctured by a blast of gunfire from an opponent you never even saw.  War Thunder is an exercise in frustration that Arena happily replaced.

Well, until Civilisation VI appeared.

Now at this stage, I've only had Civ VI for a week, but I am loving it.  My PS4 spends a lot more time as a YouTube and Netflix portal than it ever does as a games console, but Civ is really my jam, and for the time being at least it is changing that.

Bronze Age India expands

Back in the day I used to play Civ II on my PS2, Civ VI shows all the core of the game is still there, but the details are greatly improved, and the games' graphics are a stellar improvement in every respect.  It's simply a case of finding time to play when I can, as I try to guide the Indian Empire in its ongoing negotiations with Persia and America, and the seemingly endless war with Arabia.

And so in essence, this is why the painting output is what it is at the minute, and not like the huge volumes I used to have a few years ago.

Well, there's other reasons too, but these are some of them!

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