Vampifans Views 114 - Monthly Musings 84

Welcome to my final Monthly Musings of 2018 and I have a lot to cover. I've just noticed that this will be my 100th post of 2018. Yay me! First up is another illustration of my beloved Vampirella by Spanish artist Sanjulian. It's not a bad portrait but he has done better. The bat behind her is really naff!

2018 seems to have flown over. It started very badly for me with my mother dying in January. She is sorely missed. But life goes on and despite this being the first Christmas I have ever spent on my own I was determined to make the best of it and to enjoy it as much as I could, which I did. In my first post of 2019 I'll show you what my brother bought for me for Christmas present and the items I added to it. It is impressive!

These past couple of weeks have been incredible for me as a gamer. I am a big fan of Kickstarters. I know some people hate them but for the most part I have had very positive experiences with them and I continue to back them. By nature, I am a very patient person, so a one year wait (or however long it takes) to receive my order is not a problem. I understand that games need time to be developed and that the manufacturing process can take quite some time. The reason I mention this is that I received two Kickstarter games I'd backed a good while ago these past two weeks.

First to arrive was the wave 1 delivery of Nemesis, a sci-fi horror game set on a space ship that has become infested with Alien-like creatures. This game grabbed my attention as soon as I saw it being announced. As soon as I received my copy I painted all of the figures that came with it - 6 humans and 20 Intruders. It can be played by 1 to 5 players and I played it for the first time on Christmas Day and I have to say it was one of the most tense gaming experiences of my life. Since then I have played it many more times. This game is just superb and easily one of the best board-games I've ever played! Mind you, it is not an easy game to win but that is a good thing in my opinion - I like a challenge. If you're a fan of the Aliens franchise, as I am, you'll love this game. I plan on showcasing the figures very early in 2019.

On the Saturday before Christmas, I received two big parcels. One was for the Here's Negan board-game, a stand alone supplement to Mantic Games' The Walking Dead games. This was not a Kickstarter, it was my main Christmas present that I bought for myself. Thanks to this year's Zomtober and Zomvember painting challenges I'm really back into The Walking Dead games and this was a perfect complement to what I already own. I primarily wanted this game for the six survivor miniatures, including a new version of Negan, shown in the photo above. The zombie figures are all duplicate poses of ones from the boxed starter set of The Walking Dead: All Out War, which was slightly disappointing but not the end of the world. I was uncertain what the game play would be like but I have played it once and found the game very challenging and a lot of fun. I'm now looking forward to playing the campaign mode of linked scenarios. Thankfully, this is another game that allows for solo players.

The second parcel I received that day was massive and very heavy. It contained all of the items I'd backed for the Resident Evil 2 Kickstarter board-game, and I think I ordered one of everything that was on offer. There were 11 separate boxes in the parcel! That is a heck of a lot of content. As a huge fan of zombie films and games there was no way that I wasn't going to buy this game. Although I am not a computer player and thus have not played any of the Resident Evil computer games, I do own all of the films and novels for this franchise and I'm a big fan of them all. I have only just finished reading the rulebook and I plan on trying it out this afternoon. Initial impressions are highly favourable and the figures look really great, with some of them being truly frightening - Birkin stage 5 and the giant alligator, for example. I can't wait to get them painted.

So, as you can imagine, I have had a great time playing games that I love, which is something I don't do enough of. I seem to spend far more time painting figures than in gaming with them. This Christmas, however, has been the opposite, with gaming taking precedence over painting. This doesn't mean that painting has stopped all together - it has just slowed down. Currently on my painting table are some more Strontium Dog figures by Warlord Games and some new Rumbleslam figures by TT Combat, as well as some really old Citadel sci-fi figures that I'm repainting for my The Ace of Spades Campaign on my WOIN blog.

2019 promises to be a good year for me. What I am most looking forward to the New Year is celebrating Vampirella's 50th anniversary. She first appeared in comics in 1969 and has been going strong ever since. I'm sure there are big plans to celebrate this milestone anniversary. What I would love to see but is unlikely to happen, is a big budget movie or a TV series for her.

I have more Kickstarters that I'm waiting for, the first of which should be the hard-backed rulebook of Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD plus some extras by EN Publishing. That is due sometime in January and will receive a lot of coverage on my WOIN blog. February will hopefully see the release of Core Space, a sci-fi skirmish game with miniatures and awesome scenery by Battle Systems Ltd. This is their first foray into gaming and it all looks to be a smash hit for them. There are at least five others that I'm waiting for but in the short term, these two that I've mentioned are the two I'm most excited about.

I want to do more batreps for both of my blogs. I really enjoy doing them but they are very time consuming to produce. I started 2018 well with the 12 part scenario, Alien Base, for my The Ace of Spades Campaign, which appeared on my WOIN blog, but there were very few further batreps after that. My two Six Gun Sound scenarios that I ran on this blog were a lot of fun and I very much want to post more Wild West and Weird West batreps. In August I ran an introductory scenario for the Strontium Dog skirmish game by Warlord Games. Again, I hope to run more of them in 2019. I can say that I do have plans to run a short St. Trinian's scenario using the N.O.W. rules on my WOIN blog very soon, once I finish showcasing the cast. Hopefully, it'll be the start of a long running campaign. After that I plan on returning to Kimberley and the crew of The Ace of Spades as they visit a pleasure planet and Kimberley enters a high stakes gambling contest. Actually, my WOIN blog should be filled with batreps because once I get the Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD rulebook I'm going to want to start a new campaign based on it. Honestly, I have so many plans for stuff I want to do, it's just hard to find the time to do them all. Thank God, I'm retired and have so much free time to devote to this wonderful hobby.

I am looking forward to 2019 and I hope it lives up to my expectations. I am content with my life and that is a good thing to be able to say. I'd just like to end by first of all thanking all of you who follow my blog and who take the time out to comment on my posts. Your continued support spurs me on and encourages me to continue blogging for as long as I can. Secondly, I wish every one of you a peaceful and prosperous New Year filled with love and happiness. God bless you all!