Monsters: Deva

Angels, Celestials, Assimons are just other names for the creatures called Devas.

If demons and devils are the ultra-bad then the Deva are the ultra-good.

I hate the ultra-good! They are just so boring.

Devas are angels. Let me just toss that out there for the remainder of this post.

They have wings. They can be male or female. They are strikingly beautiful/ handsome. They were togas, loincloths or something sparse in the clothing related department. They are messengers for the higher powers of good. They have various orders they which they belong. They are also warriors for the higher powers of good too. There is nothing super shocking about the D&D version of angels that doesn’t match what we all learned in Sunday school, from movies, books etc.

Why no Devas?

X-Wing 2nd Edition is a happening sometime soon...

When this game dropped we instantly became fans.

It is really easy to learn.

The ships look good and the pre-paint job is pretty descent. I would never have painted these ships if they came unpainted.

The replay ability is fantastic.

You can get a good game in within an hour.

There is minimal set-up and tear down.

There is a ton of fanboy stuff here as all the known Star Wars ships and pilots are available to play.

It is big with the tournament crowd too.

Now they have announced a 2nd edition of X-Wing......and I couldn't care less.

Why?

Well I am not in the mood or market to buy the upgrade cards or whatever they use to make all my ships playable with 2nd edition. I have a lot of ships and multiple of Tie- Fighters and X-Wings. I can imagine the cost for converting will be stupid and you'll probably get one of each shop per box meaning I'll have to buy multiples to get all the cards I need for the ships I have. The thought of that and trying to put it to words just hurts my brain, let alone actually spending the money to do it.

They are adding Force powers to the game now?! No thank you. I prefer my Jedi with force powers on land with laser swords. Having Force power pilots just screams potential for unbalance cheese.

I can see this as not only a marketing ploy. Every ship in the movie, t.v. and book universe (old and new) is available. They need to pull in new players or force older players to buy new ships. Better make a new edition then. The old standard of if you're not growing you're dying in the business world.

This also feels like a fix to the tournament scene too. After looking at X-Wing at Adepticon the last two years and at GenCon, it seems there are a handful of very popular ships  and upgrades. This leaves a lot of plastic ships not being used/ bought. A new edition shakes all this up and forces new purchases at best and at worst at least new list building for those power combo ships/upgrades.

Monsters: Owlbear

This monster has appeared in every D&D edition. There is no definitive answer their history. They are a great threat for many levels. They are the single best amalgam monster that exists in the fantasy role playing world. Their name invokes head scratching in normal people and fear in lower level characters. We all know them. I love them.

Well the original design wasn't spectacular.....

Owlbears!

Why are they so awesome?


First they are a big brute critter. They can be a threat for quite some time. They can run as a single creature encounter. They can appear in a pair to be more of a threat. They aren’t too difficult for characters to hit, and at the same time they have a good hit point pool.

They are super easy to run. An owlbear appears and applies claws and beak to party. Rinse and repeat until it or they are dead. There aren’t any real tactics to use. Their motivations are simple: food, intruder, threat to nest and…that is about it.


They have a great look. I mean how silly and at the same time cool is a giant bear with an owl head? Very! Plus they reproduce by laying eggs. Another bit of silliness but at the same time fun. I mean intact owlbear eggs can be worth quite a bit of gold to the right person.

They have an unknown history. They were magically created, on purpose, by the wizard Thessalar. They are feywild creatures that have always been around. They were an accidental magical creation. Who knows how they popped into existence or where they come from.


They are a multi-game and pop culture monster. You know they are cool and iconic when many RPGs and video games have their own version of owlbears.

Avengers: Infinity War

After the 10 year build up to get Thanos and his shiny gauntlet on the big screen was it worth the wait?

Yes!

By the gods yes it was!

I don’t want to say too much about the film since there is some definite spoiler territory for the comic book uninformed.

Plot

Thanos and his Black Order, Cull Obsidian, Children of, are coming for the Infinity Stones. He knows there are two stones on Earth, one on Xandar, one with the Collector and one on Asgard. All he has to do is gather them up by destroying everything and one in his path to do it. It is up to the Avengers both the original team and the people who split off from them, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange to stop Thanos and the potential universal destruction he could cause with a fully loaded Infinity Gauntlet.

The various little team-ups played off each other so well

Action

Way too much to expound upon without ruining the film. The last hour of the film is all action and it is amazing! Some of the best stuff they have done in the franchise to date!

Comedy

There are comedy hits like we all expect and they are needed in this movie. Without a subtle in-joke, word play like we have in all Marvel movies this would have just been way to dark, heavy and would have really been hard to watch. You know like most DC universe films as of late.

A Thor, Rocket and Groot movie would be amazing!

Ten years has lead to this...Assemble!

"Fun isn't something one considers when balancing the universe. 

But this... ... does put a smile on my face."

I spent this week doing the required homework for Infinity War.

I have to say that none of these are super amazing tales. 

Now that being said there are some great moments in all of them.

Still I now have a better understanding of the Cull Obsidian/Black Order/ Children of Thanos.

I have put my faith in the marvel films and the Russo Bros. do great work.

I have stayed clear of the interweb to avoid any news of the movie.

It begins in half an hour....

Avengers:  Infinity War 

Quick book reports

I busted through a couple of Horus Heresy novels the first Garro, which is a retelling of the audiobooks which I have stayed away from and the second was The Crimson King. A follow up to 2010 the A Thousand Sons novel.

Garro    

Captain Nathaniel Garro, one time loyal Death Guard has seen a bunch of stuff happen; his primarch and legion turn from the good to bad, the corruption of the chaos on his brethren and the whole Eisenstein escape bit and having to deal with the loyal Astartes when coming from a traitor legion.

He is now in service to Malcador the Sigilite, Regent of Terra. He has been tasked to gather like-minded or similar background Space Marines picked by Malcador for a mission.

Along the way you discover the fate of one Gavriel Loken, and Euphrati Keeler the rembrancer turned prophet, saint or whatever she is. This is leading to the foundation of the Imperial Cult which we all know about in the 40K history. The whole God Emperor bit and all that. You also get a bit of the build to Horus approaching Terra (because why not drag that out for several more books) how the Imperium is dealing with this fact. The idea that the Imperium of Man is on the verge of collapse or at best go through a radical change. You also get a look at a secret army and organization being built/founded by Malcador. They aren’t saying these are the Grey Knights and Inquisition, but they are not not saying it either.

Garro wasn’t a terrible read, but it wasn’t great either. Another filler novel to make the wait of the Horus vs. Emperor story drag out longer.

Monsters: Slimes, Molds, Goops, Gleeps and Yuck

A group of monsters that I never really take advantage of: the oozes, slimes, jellies, goops, globs and the like.

I always liked this concept of slime monsters from World o' Warcraft.
Why not transfer this to D&D?



Every edition has these gloopy monsters and I think ,many of them, they are as iconic as goblins and orcs. I mean green slime, yellow mold and gelatinous cubes have been there forever. Yet I really don’t bother with using them, well unless you count one occurrence with a grey ooze, a cleric of Bane and a 1^st edition module………….



So why no love from me?

Well they aren’t really cool or fun. They just gloop and glop around the game. They are pretty boring as a monster. I mean they can be easily avoided. Well unless you force the party to have to deal with it in a blind hallway/locked room type scenario, but that is kind of a dick move to use against your party just to shoehorn in a slime creature.

They are usually lone gunman encounters too. I mean it isn’t like you can have the party face a horde of slimes, molds or jellies. That would be stupid. So, they are easy to ignore and avoid. This is common when I have thrown them out for the party to face. Sure, I almost caught our dragonborn rouge with a gelatinous cube full of shiny objects, but the rest of the party pulled him back to safety and then avoided it. Yeah, avoidance of these evil puddles is too easy, so they make for a drek random encounter.

These amorphous blobs of goop confuse my players too. They never know if they eat metal, eat flesh or both. They have no idea about their strengths and weaknesses either. They are kind of an enigma. I think that is a problem for most player groups. They just generally scare and confuse the party and this just leads to them once again being avoided.

It is hard to base a game around a big pile of pudding. I mean you can work a game or campaign with a ton of monsters as the threat. How do you make an entire game about a threat from yellow mold or ochre jelly? Even if you did how do you make it fun? I have never come up with a scenario that wouldn’t end with the party just leaving to do something else instead.