What am I playing Part 1: DTP history and Board Games

The Dead Tau Project blog started out in 2008 as a place I was going to track my Eldar army for Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K. I was primarily playing 40K at the time, with a smidge of Warhammer Fantasy Battles tossed in. I had recently rolled off a long running Dungeons and Dragons role playing game and was shifting my focus to tabletop miniature war games.

I have not looked back since moving into miniature war games, nor returned to role playing. I've had some chances here and there but they have not worked out. Schedules, location, preference for long term campaigns, and dedication to work out a long-running story have stymied the drive to head back to role playing. On the other hand, I have been blessed with a number of very good friends and solid gaming groups in my local area. This contributes to playing miniature war games, board games, and card games in both a competitive and casual setting.

Over time my interests in war gaming broadened and around June of 2010 I started a new adventure. I discovered Malifaux around that time and began seeing a shift in my painting along with my playing. Soon Malifaux became my primary game and I left the GW fold, departing from 40K and WHFB. Over the next 3 years (until July 2013) the Dead Tau Project was very heavily centered on my adventures in Malifaux. I dabbled a little in Warmachine/Hordes, specifically in Hordes playing the Legion of Everblight and their dragons. The game is an excellent game but for a variety of reasons it has not grabbed me as a primary game.

Through the end of 2013 and throughout 2014 the Dead Tau Project has followed my adventures with Wild West Exodus (WWX). WWX was a game which I kickstarted and received a number of armies for. I had the chance to play several games and really dig into the game system overall. I tracked much of this with battle reports posted to the blog and pictures of painted models. Toward the end of 2014 I began posting some limited information about Guild Ball.

That's a short trip through 7 years of the DTP history and the games I was playing up to January 2015. Then everything went quiet over the past 6 months, and now the question is what the hell have I been doing? I have been playing games.

Since my departure from Malifaux I have been on the search for a primary game which I enjoy. Additionally, I'm looking for a game that will pull me in similar to the way I was engrossed in WHFB, 40K, and Malifaux. This has been a tough search and I  feel I am finally getting close to identifying that game.

I have also been playing a load of other games I have discovered through Kickstarter and through expanding my view into board games. On the strict board game front I have picked up a bunch of games that I enjoy with both family and friends.

Takenoko

I learned of this game via Wil Wheatons Table Top and my family and I have fallen in love with it. It's a fairly lightweight board game with a panda who wanders around the board eating bamboo. Each player has some objectives they need to accomplish in order to win the game.

Lords of Waterdeep

My family has not realized this is a game based on Dungeons and Dragons, or they are not admitting it if they have. This is a really fun worker placement game that I had heard about for years and not picked up until recently.  Players play one of the secret lords of Waterdeep and hire adventures to complete quests to achieve victory points. The adventurers are resource cubes and the players each compete through each turn of the game to deploy agents to recruit those resources to their side in order to complete the quests.

Machi Koro

My friend Adam from NH turned me onto this game. This is one where my wife and I played at his house last summer and my wife fell in love with the game. We have since picked up the expansion, although we find we prefer the base game more than the expansion. Really fun card based game that also uses a dice in combination with the cards in an innovative way.

Firefly 

I love this game from Gale Force 9 and grabbed it as soon as it was available after Gencon 2014. I have been so excited to play but the amount of set-up, physical space required, and length of play has killed off any groups who would play with me. It's a game I am looking to get on the table more often so I can justify grabbing more expansions, but find it tough considering I primarily play board games at the local store or with my family.

Xia: Legends of the Drift System

Xia is a fantastic 4x spaceship game that Adam from Nh also introduced me to. This game was on kickstarter and I missed the campaign. Subsequently it sold out of all copies and has already run to a second printing which is anxiously awaited by the board gaming community. I'll have a review of this coming in future posts, stay tuned.

Xenoshyft

Xenoshyft was a kickstarted card game produced by Cool Mini or Not. This is a cooperative 2-4 player game where your fighting off waves of aliens who are trying to murder you. It's a lot of fun and I'll be reviewing it in an upcoming post.


Those are he bulk of the strict board game's I've been playing. I did get involved in a new gaming group who meets every couple months. That group is fairly heavily invested in historical games, which introduced me to an afternoon session of Republic of Rome. This was a cool political maneuvering game which I enjoyed a lot but am not sure I could get my normal gaming groups to play.

I'll be returning tomorrow with an overview of more games I've been playing over the past 18 months, focusing mostly on the last 6. Tomorrow I'll be going through those games which cross the line between Miniature games and Board games. I'll also move onto the miniature games I am currently playing.