Mince Pie Fest 2022: Sainsbury's

This is my brother's favourite mince pie. He is often wrong.

The most striking thing about this pie is that it’s not striking at all. It gives new meaning to the term “bland”. It is the Rob Thomas of pies. Honestly, it tastes of nothing, and has nothing interesting going on with the texture either.

The sort of mince pie you’d give someone who doesn’t like mince pies. 2 out of 5.

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Mince Pie Fest 2022: Asda Extra Special Luxury

SPOILERS: This is a good pie.

The crust is a little thin and lacking in taste, but does have a nice firmness that avoids tipping over into the dreaded “crunchy”. The filling is packed with fruity flavour, heavy on the orange, and has a lovely cognac-ey splash. If the crust was better this would be perfect, but then I do like orange. And booze, apparently. A strong and surprisingly early 4 out of 5.

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Mince Pie Fest 2022: Tesco

And we’re off!

For those of you that are new, I’m going to “try” -- by which I mean “eat a whole box of” -- mince pies from the major shops, plus a selection of local Brighton bakeries, then tell you which ones are best. In 2021 I proclaimed the COOP to be the best, and they promptly sold out across the country, so you can see that my word is law.

Or something.

Anyway.

The Tesco pastry tends toward the bland, and is a tiny bit chalky and dry, but better dry than soggy, I say. The filling has a touch of flavour, but it’s gone in a flash. Not bad, not great. These are the sort of pies you’d get out for a visit by a “friend” you are somewhat ambivalent towards. You know the one. 3 out of 5.

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I'm doing this because I love mince pies and people seem to enjoy my reviews. I will be buying and eating the mince pies anyway, that's important to understand. That said, if there is anyone out there who is not being crushed by the cost of living crisis and wants to bung me a couple of quid to buy mince pies, then you can do so with the widget below:

Star Gravin' Across the Universe

Those readers with long memories will remember that, before the Plague Years, Stuart and I attempted a a Mordheim Frostgrave campaign. Since then, Mordheim Frostgrave has spawned a second edition, as well as a science fiction spinoff that I would love to call Notromunda because it keeps the joke going, but is in fact entitled Stargrave. Stuart and I decided to give the latter a try.

I don't have nearly as many painted scifi miniatures as I do fantasy models, but Stuart and I are in theory building up forces to fight a series of battles running through each edition of Warhammer 40,000 so I do have some Eldar ready to go, and so it was that the followers of Fateweaver Duu'ey ventured out into wild space to teach the Mon'keigh a lesson!

We have played a couple of games so far; you can read Stuart's summary of the first battle here. Notrumunda is an interesting change from Mordheim Frostgrave; although a great deal of the text is lifted from the second edition of the fantasy game -- to the extent that I do have some reservations over whether there were better ways to package and sell the two -- there are some key differences in play. Notrumunda captains are less powerful and flashy than Mordheim Frostgrave wizards, and almost everyone gets a ranged weapon in the dark future in which there is only war (probably) so the balance of play is quite different. There are two different types of treasure in space, and while one is easier to steal transport both need to be unlocked before they can be claimed, which also forces some interesting decision-making.

All of which meant that my usual Mordheim Frostgrave tactic of sitting back and shooting Stuart's people wouldn't work this time. I needed to be more clever, which can be a bit of a struggle for me.

I think it's fair to say that we have come out of the two games so far at a roughly equal footing. The skirmishes have been brutal, with lots of casualties, more so than I remember from Mordheim Frostgrave, but this adds to the fun. In the first battle, one of my robots made a daring building to building leap, then kicked Stuart's first mate off a high edge, but alas not to his death.

The second battle saw my robots destroying Stuart's crew for most of the skirmish, until his space rat -- one of the cheapest, weakest troop types in the game -- somehow developed a raging bloodlust and chewed through my space elves like they were space cheese.

Meanwhile, I have discovered the joy -- although I'm not sure Stuart would call it that -- of grenade launchers.

We have been playing at our local Dice Saloon, which has an excellent terrain library, as you can see from the photographs. Stuart has been providing the miniatures for the random encounters, which means that we've sort of accidentally created an ongoing side narrative with a pair of familiar-looking bounty hunters shadowing both crews for some mysterious reason...

Notrumunda has been great fun so far and I'm keen to play some more as soon as Stuart's schedule aligns with mine. More soon, I hope!

Magic Finger(print)s

In some editions of Shadowrun -- maybe all; I haven't played since the third edition -- you can trace a magical effect back to the spellcaster that created it. This idea is inspired by that, because I've been looking at Shadowrun again of late, for... reasons.

In addition to the usual effects of Detect Magic, the caster also sees the mystical "fingerprint" of the entity that created whatever is being examined. How this manifests is up to you, but I favour a sort of multi-coloured ribbon of light. Spellcasters somehow -- probably because they are weird -- remember this pattern and can recognise it if they see it again.

Easy Mode: By concentrating, a spellcaster can see the auras of other magicians, including their "fingerprint".

Not-So-Easy Mode: Casting Detect Magic on a magician reveals their "fingerprint".

I would probably rule that hiding behind an illusion would also hide a magician's "fingerprint", at least up until the illusion itself is recognised, at which point the "fingerprint" becomes obvious. I don't think shapechanging conceals the "fingerprint", unless an illusion effect is also applied. Why? Magic!

I also like the idea of spells leaving a sort of residue behind, even if they are instant effects like Fireball. In these cases, the residue contains the spellcaster's "fingerprint" so a clever wizard can find out who Magic Missiled the chief of the city guards.

All of this does make Detect Magic do a lot of heavy lifitng, and I would consider making it a cantrip or innate ability, but perhaps that is making things too easy.

As ever, if you try this out, let me know!

The Eyes Have It

 

Munch Bunch

Coming soon, maybe in time for lunch.

(Mis)adventures in Space and Time

Humble Bundle is doing a, um, bundle of the Doctor Who role-playing game from Cubicle 7! As ever with these Humble deals, what you get is a bargain, and it helps a good cause too!

I don't think I've said it on here, but Doctor Who is my favourite television programme. I'm also quite fond of rpgs, which I think I have mentioned now and then. I've heard good things about the C7 Who rpg. You'd think I'd be all over this.

And yet.

AND YET.

I've always been a bit put off trying it. I find the idea of playing a Doctor Who game a bit weird, for a few reasons:

• Playing the Doctor seems weird. From a practical perspective you could have one person play the Doctor and everyone else play their companions, and then switch that around for the next adventure, sort of like Ars Magica with spaceships. But playing a character as well-defined as the Doctor seems a bit limiting, even with 15+ incarnations from which to choose. It seems odd to go into a role-playing game and playing such a specific character; it feels more like acting than a game at that point.
• Playing another, non-Doctor, Time Lord is also a bit weird. Why is this Time Lord solving problems instead of the Doctor? Where is the Doctor? One of the unique things about the Doctor is that they care about the "little people" of the universe in a way that the Time Lords in general do not. If you have other Time Lords running about saving the day then you're upending the entire premise to a certain extent.
• Playing without Time Lords at all also seems a bit weird. If you play as a bunch of "normals" then how do they get around? Do they have a TARDIS? You've got the same questions as the Time Lord Campaign above, except you've also got to work out what the Time Lords are doing, if they even exist at all.

None are insurmountable problems, but they all niggle at my mind as a sort of drifting from the central premise and then I begin to question whether it's worth playing a specific Doctor Who rpg at all.

Still, if I put those reservations aside, I can think of a few fun ideas for campaigns in a Whoish setting. Perhaps an alternate universe where the Doctor doesn't exist, or has been eliminated, and other Time Lords take up their mission. Maybe we play with a hypothetical 15th Doctor -- or one of the "minus" Doctors -- and sidestep the whole problem of playing a pre-defined character, letting the players define them as they do the Ars Magica shuffle. Or perhaps the premise of the campaign is that the Doctor is missing, the players have their TARDIS, and the goal is to find the renegade Time Lord before some cataclysm occurs. Or maybe you would just play a ground-level campaign with the players as some sort of UNIT, Torchwood, or Paternoster Gang equivalent. Or perhaps the Doctor's most recent regeneration went wrong and they split into multiple beings, a sort of meta-meta-crisis.

Hang on, I quite like that last one...

Eager Watcher of Birds

I have started streaming on Twitch. It's just for fun; I have no illusions about being a Big Time Streamer™ but if I'm going to play the games anyway, I may as well stream while doing so. That way everyone can see how terrible I am at computer games!

I don't have a firm schedule at the moment as my life is about to get a bit... erratic in the latter half of 2022, but if you follow me on there, you will get an alert when I'm, as they say in the business, "live". I am thinking about other things to do on there besides being terrible at computer games. Perhaps I'll do some drawing, if I can work out the logistics.

I don't speak on-stream, in part because I don't have a headset or microphone and in part because I hate the sound of my own voice. In the unlikely event that a community does spring up around me, I may have to reconsider and try to be more gregarious.

You can find my Twitch page here. I'm also uploading the videos to YouTube, because Twitch deletes them after a few days. Here's my most recent stream, part of a -- very slow! -- playthrough of Borderlands 3 on the PS4:



If you do decide to follow me on there, thank you, and I hope I can entertain you!

Votann Boys, Roll Out!

The squats are back in Warhammer 40,000! Although we're not calling them squats any more.

Now they are the LEAGUES OF VOTANN:

Hang on, that sigil looks familiar...

I still quite like the new squats anyway.