Milton Keynes: A Star Wars Story

Yes, its another UK System Open Post!

Last Weekend was, as any good X-Winger will know, the UK System Open in Milton Keynes, with 560+ players fighting it out over two days. A event of cut-throat, do-or-die competitiveness, with no holds barred, where only the strong survive and weak perish. No, wait, the other thing. 

FUNS?!

Decisions, Decisions,,,

So following on from my hopes and dreams for Hyperspace, I was going to follow up with some thoughts on my experiences on actually playing the format. But then FFG dropped a bunch of changes and everyone seemed to get cross again, so I've left it a few more days before venturing some opinions about the future. I mean, other than calm down folks, but I think we all know that. Lets have at it, after the cat. 

Hype-ing for Hope-erspace

Yes, its another opinion on Hyperspace. No Wait! Come Back!

Undoubtably one of the biggest changes to X-Wing 2.0 was the formalisation of variant formats, and the idea of the "Hyperspace" ship/upgrade rotation for major events. It's caused....debate. But it's now properly upon us, and Club Night is full of U-Wings, for goodness sake, so it's clearly having an impact. We've got our first event this time next week over a Element Games in Stockport, so naturally thats what we've been talking about pretty solidly.

It's my blog, I can talk about what I want to!

Where's Your Head At?

So welcome again to another episode of "Things I talk about in the car with the Teenager", or "Parenting Hormonal Monsters for X-Wing Players". OK, so that's a little mean, but it has been an interesting couple of weeks on the gaming front and we've ended up talking a lot about psychology, and mental processing, of all things. So let's get into it, after the cat. 

Who's the Casual Now?! (Spoiler Alert: It Me)

Hello, and welcome back to another blog on "Conversations I have with The Teenager in the Car". It's a thing now, clearly. This weekend was a big one for us on the X-Wing front, as we hit not one but two tournements with new shiny lists we didn't know how to fly. It went about as well as you'd expect (more on that in a moment) but it also brought up an interesting conversation. You see, back when we started out playing somewhere other than the kitchen table, one of the things were told about was "Serious Players". Oddly, Element Games' Sith Takers were held up as "Serious Players", a dark place beyond the Pennines "Serious Games" were played with "Serious Lists". But there is an assumption behind this, if you think about it, about the old Casual/Serious split, and so that's really what I'm thinking about now.

Todays List Building Challenge is How to Get the List From the Cat

2018: The Year in Tiny Spaceships

* Blows Dust off The Thing* 

Hello? 

So reading around the X-Wing Community, there are a lot of fun, thoughtful and helpful blogs around, and so I thought to myself "hey, didn't you used to have one of them?". Indeed I did, and appropriately, with one exception, the last post on it was me talking about the IQ Games Regional of November 2016, which means I've been playing competitive X-Wing for just over two years. Gosh. You'd think I'd be better at it by now. But one feature of this year that has been fun is the email exchanges with a friend detailing tournament experiences, and so I guess that helped scratch the blogging itch, but maybe...just maybe...it's time to go public. 

So without further ado, here is a quick summary of my 2018 X-Wing experience by way of my favorite lists. 

Event: IQ Gaming X-Wing Regional Tournament

Gosh it has been a while since I got anything down here, but life, as they say, barrels onwards towards the existential horror of the Heat Death of the Universe, or something like that. We've been busy, and one of the things I wanted to get down on (virtual) paper was mine and Ewan's experience at our first competitive gaming tournament, an X-Wing Miniatures Game Regional held at IQ Gaming in Huddersfield last weekend. Neither of us have done anything like this before, so it was with some trepidation we found ourselves in a 3-storey building full of gaming tables and about 130 competitors. So here's how I got on.

TV Review: Agent Carter, Series 2 and Star Wars Rebels, Series 2

Quick catch-up time for two shows that finished their second series in the last week or so. I'm afraid it's heading into that time of year where season finales start to snowball up, and even keeping up is getting difficult. At least Star Wars Rebels is on a Saturday morning, and we watch it with the kids, so it doesn't come out of "grown up TV time". It's interesting to see both seasons change and build on their respective firsts, and whilst I'm a lot more confident of seeing more Rebels than seeing more Agent Carter (dammit) they both build solid foundations to go forward with. So lets start with the LA adventures of Peggy Carter, shall we?

Movie Review: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

I was sitting waiting for The Force Awakens to start, and in that moment of semi-darkness before the adverts roll, I found myself worried about my own reaction to a film I hadn't yet seen. The thing is that I wanted The Force Awakens to be good, I'd been told it was good, the trailer had pre-sold me on the notion that it would be good, and yet I'd spent a long time trying to hold back that hope for fear of dissapointment. I'm not someone who hates the prequels - I'm rather fond of Revenge of the Sith, for a start - but they are flawed and dissapointing, only sporadically capturing what is so attractive about the Original Trilogy. So my fear was simply that if The Force Awakens showed even a pretty basic level of competance, some sort of dam would break in my head, and any critical thought would be washed away in gleeful enjoyment.

And yeah, thats pretty much what happened. A couple of days on I think I'm capable of a more balanced appraisal, but beware, all the spoilers await below.

TV Review: Round Up!

So, we reach the final entry in our short "Round Up!" series, where I turn by somewhat behind gaze on the TV we've been watching in the last few months, yet not got around to writing up. It's a bit of a mixed bag, both in quality and content, but I guess it's pretty reflective of our TV habits these days. There is, in fairness, a huge amount of shows we are simply letting pass us by, as you just can't keep up with everthing, meaning I can feel guilty about the more popcorn stuff, but at the same time comfort blanket TV is as valid as any other form, and ultimately I make no apology for watching it.

Star Wars: The Curse You Can Never Be Free Of.

I don't know if anyone noticed but they snuck out a new trailer for the next Star Wars movie last night. 

 The general response to it has been pretty positive, which is odd in a lot of ways given we were all very excited to see the similarly well put together trailer for The Phantom Menace way back in the 1990s. OK, so this has the Millenium Falcon in it, so it's all going to be OK, right? 

Here's the thought, and it's longer than 140 characters so it's here not on Twitter. My reaction to the trailer is hugely positive - I mean, that opening shot is immense and lovely, and John Williams score pretty much exists to make you feel something whether you want to or not - but there is not weight to it, deliberately so, because they're so keen to give nothing away. But I reacted, deep down, with proper, choked up emotion. 

So what I realise is this - I will never, ever, be free of Star Wars. It's not the best film I've seen, its not the Greatest Film ever made - sorry, it's just not,and neither is The Empire Strike Back - but so much of my childhood has it embedded in it, I can never shake it. It's the first film I ever loved, and the imagery and music that is distinctly Star Wars taps into that so much. I can never escape it, because the scream of a TIE Fighter, or the buzz of a Lightsaber will always take me back there. 

As a final comment, I think that's why the prequels attract so much hate, disproportionate to their crimes. They're only movies, and they shouldn't mean that much to people, but they do. Its not rational. I'm not rational about it.

So I'm going to watch this again, and feed my inner 8-year-old.

First Impressions: Star Wars Rebels

It feels strange to admit that I have a large affection for the now defunct Clone Wars TV series. Strange because when it came out it really looked unlikely to ever be the sort of show I could care about, and make an effort to watch. Set between two of the Star Wars prequels - which I've never hated, but certainly never felt more than "sort of liked, with some pretty decent sections" - and featuring whiny Anakin Skywalker and his never-even-hinted-at bratty Apprentice, it doesn't sound promising and its pilot "movie" wasn't that great either. But Clone Wars really grew on me - it handled its characters fantasically, expanded it's horizons, and in the end was a better prequel to the Classic Trilogy than the official Prequel Movies. Oh, and Ahsoka became possibly the best female lead on kids TV that wasn't called Korra. And then it was cancelled, a victim of the Disney buy-out of Lucasfilm, and instead we got Star Wars Rebels. How's that working out?

Games Review: X-Wing, X-Panded

Its been a long time since I reviewed the X-Wing Miniatures Game, and since then we've played it quite a bit. Actually, a lot. We've also bought a lot of new fighters for it, expanding both the Rebel and Imperial Fleets to allow for larger battles, or just a lot of variety in smaller battles. Also, a collection of tiny model spaceships which may be a victory in it's own right. Ewan has almost permanently claimed the Imperial side, which is slightly worrying, but not as worrying as the number of times he is beating me these days. So what I thought I'd do is a quick run down of some of the expansions released so far, and how we've found them on the table-top.

Games Review: X-Wing Miniatures

One of the nice things about having kids is that as they get old you can attempt to inflict your interests on them, and sometimes they stick. Other times they don't, because to them you are old and stuffy and don't really know anything, but thankfully one of things that Ewan (10, going on 15) does enjoy is board- and war-gaming. Its one of the reasons I can justify buying miniatures to paint. It also meant that for Christmas he got the X-Wing Miniatures Games and we've played a good few times since.

Thinking: Star Wars: The Empire Consolidates its Investments

So, Disney have bought LucasFilm, and everything contained within it except George Lucas himself. The internet has resounded to the sound of knees jerking, especially with the news that a new movie is planned for 2015, and so on every few years after. But what does it mean? Will Star Wars now become a soul-less, over-commercialized merchandising platform, with beloved characters hawked out to sell Washing Machines and Mobile Phone contracts?

Oh, wait.

So Farewell Then, Star Wars: The Old Republic

So, over the weekend I cancelled my subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic. My poor Jedi Knight will now be consigned to live out her days in a freezing cave on Hoth, wondering why no-one had the decency to port her back to the Republic Fleet where at least they have a bar and hot running water. She'll never get through your romance options with Doc and his cheesy dialogue and cheesier facial hair. She'll never get to the end of whatever your personal plot line turns out to be. I almost feel sorry for her. But in the end I just found myself not caring anymore, and not feeling the urge to login and play, and so it is no-more. From reading the gaming press, I am not alone.

So what went wrong? I mean, when we started playing SW:TOR I was really impressed with it, and only a few months later, I'm grabbed by ennui. What gives?

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Tatooine and Alderaan

In between everything else thats going on, me and Z are still ploughing our way through Star Wars: The Old Republic, albeit at a less frantic pace than before. As you approach the mid-to-late levels of any MMO, and SWTOR is no exception, it's always felt like an awkward stage, and where I've fallen out of quite a few over the years. The problem is simple enough, really - the "newness" of the mechanics, gimmicks and general world-building has faded, to be replaced with familiarity, and (expected) great opening up of "the endgame" has yet to emerge. For a story-driven game like SWTOR aspires to be, it at least has something to hang on to, to try and ease you past those bumps. But SWTOR has another trick up it's sleeve too; it can send you to some of the really famous locations available to it from it's license. 

I was waiting for a mission to pick up Power Converters but it never arrived! 

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Taris and Nar Shadda

So, once we got through with cleaning up the murky underpants of the Republic capital, we were offered a choice of worlds to go to next. Well not a choice, really, more that we have to do both but can do them in any order. Even though one is flagged as lower level than the other. So a choice, yes, but one which you're pretty pointed at the "right" answer. That said, it did get me thinking about how there seems to be different ways to approach The Old Republic; each world so far as a mix of solo "open" content, your class-specific content, and then 2- and 4-man mini-dungeons you can run. Through Coruscant we'd done all of it, and approached the next worlds slightly over levelled, something that became more even apparent when we'd finished Taris to the same degree.

But I think really what you're presented with is a real choice - if a world leaves you cold for whatever reason you can nip in, ignore everything but your class-quest arc, and then nip out again, and there is enough "spare" exp lying around from other sources to compensate. Personally I'm finding TOR as a game about "the journey", and the stories are generally pretty good, so my inclination to skip is limited, but i do appreciate that the option is there. Anyway, onto the worlds themselves!

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Coruscant

Slowly but surely, me and the missus are still playing through The Old Republic. This means that we are officially "subscribers" now, having paid for our second month, and I've not seen much about the overall performance of the game now that initial month has passed. Anecdotally, most of the people I know that bought the game are still playing, but what that means in the bigger picture I'm not so sure. I hope it's doing well though, the MMO space could do with a bit more competition surviving in the more premium end, especially as most of the (still anecdotal) stories I'm getting out of World of Warcraft paint a picture of a game sucking up huge large subscriber numbers but now just coasting lazily along.

Anyway, the next world in TOR after the introductory planet has taken us a while to get through, but it's pretty indicative, I think, of the leveling game as a whole.

Coruscant! Coruscant! Coruscant! (it's only a levelling zone)

Star Wars: The Old Republic: The First 10 Levels

One of the things I've said a couple of times over the new year period was that quitting World of Warcraft was a great decision, as it freed up a lot of time that we then spent consuming games and TV that otherwise we would have missed out on. So naturally, signing up for another MMO sounds like an act of madness, right? Well perhaps. But the one thing that kept up playing WoW long beyond we would otherwise have got bored of it was it was a game we shared - a game we not only played together but a game we played with a wide array other people. And we're both big Star Wars nerds, and big fans of Bioware games, so Star Wars: The Old Republic was like a big gaming lighthouse, calling us in.