Thought I’d share these cards I just finished up.

I dunno about you, but I like cards. The book is incorrect the moment it’s printed, and printouts are nice buuuut annoying to flip through pages. Cards are nice.

First, the lovely person running Print-AOS over on Ko-fi super nicely formatted the various scrolls for a 4x6 format and put em for free download. Snagged the squads I have, then went to google for a suitable cardback. I really liked the image of the battletome with AOS banner over it, but it was weirdly hard to find for some armies. There isn’t some repository of them, just randomly used on articles. Snagged jpgs of those, then over the Snapfish (any photo printing service or your own printer is fine, I’m not sponsored I swear). $5 and had all the photos shipped to me. Slide em into some 4x6 toploaders and done.

Reeeeaaally enjoyed the 3 games of spearhead I got to play, hopefully having these will make it easier to get people I have over to try it out. Books and printouts are a bit daunting for folks, cards are love. If anyone has an even easier solution please share

I'm not sure how else I could describe what I'm seeking other than what I've put in the title. I love board games, and I love video games. My favorites are the ones that burn my brain and scratch it real good. Nothing relaxes my ADHD brain like being fully consumed and hyperfocused on some ridiculous puzzle.

Lately, I've been seeking games that fit the criteria of the title. And just to be clear, I am NOT talking about digital adaptations of board games. The game needs to be a video game above all. If it could work 'as is' in another format, it does not meet the criteria. The computer should add something to the experience.

That out of the way, some of my favorites, please share yours as well!

Deckbuilders/Card Games

Slay the Spire

• The GOAT, and now also the new hotness in board game format with simplified numbers and effects. I have probably 2000+ hours combined on desktop and mobile. Won't explain this one, enough people have talked about it. I don't play it as much as I used to, but always enjoy returning for a few runs.

Wildfrost

• A solid deckbuilder when it released in 2023, now a GREAT one after the 1.2 patch earlier this year. It follows the typical roguelike deckbuilding formula: choose a path, complete encounters, collect upgrades, etc etc. The spice is the Charm system. Individual, unique upgrades put directly on cards themselves. They can get pretty wacky and lead to really fun runs. The production value is also excellent, several tiers above the competition. Highly recommend for fans of STS.

Tainted Grail

• Also a board game (that I have not played), but oh man the sheer amount of variety in this one is nuts. Many ways to victory, many ways to lose. So many characters to play, so many cards. It's kinda janky and I do have many gripes, but I still think this is well worth the time of anyone who enjoys the genre.

Balatro

• One of my favorites of the year. Play poker hands for points, get money, buy power ups (called Jokers) that grant bonuses based on various criteria. Insane combos can be made: the opening hands you'll be happy to crack 300-600 points and by the end you'll be pushing ridiculous exponents. I don't even like poker, but I easily got a few hundred hours out of this.

I could keep going on about card games since they're the most abundant option, so I'll list a few other notable ones before moving on: Monster Train, Gordian Quest, Vault of the Void, Inscryption (more of a narrative/puzzle game than a deckbuilder really but it's really good in it's own right)

Tile Placement Games I don't really know how else to quantify these so feel free to give a better genre.

Reus 2

• The reason I made this post, and woefully underrated. Imagine if Reiner Knizia made a tile placement roguelike. You pick 3 'gods' that dictate the tiles that will be available to you, then place tiles to achieve various score requirements to complete objectives and in the end get the highest score possible and unlock more stuff. I haven't played Reus 1, all I know is Reus 2 should be a hit among board gamers. Do thing to get more resources to do more things to get points and the game ends right before you have everything you want. That's so board games.

Mini Motorways

• Could also arguably be called a puzzle rather than any kind of tile placement game. You place roads to connect colored buildings to other buildings of the same color. Similar to games like Railroad Ink. Your resources of what you can place are limited, and eventually the scale gets so absurd you will eventually lose track and everything crumbles around you. Many different maps with different challenges available as well.

Frostpunk

• Ok maybe not a tile placement game, the emphasis is more on worker placement and resource management, but I can't spend all day splitting genre hairs. I've also called this an efficiency puzzle. Haven't played the board game of this one either. The core of each of the scenarios is to build and upgrade your settlement, allocate workers and move them around smartly, and deal with a variety of disasters to eventually overcome the final disaster. It's tense, thinky, and one of my favorites of all time.

Engine Builders All the factory games. I'll just list the big ones and move on:

• Factorio
• Satisfactory
• Final Factory
• others probably

4X Alright so I'm not well versed here at all. Civ has been my game since I was a kid, and unlike with deckbuilders, deviating from ol reliable never seems to interest me. My favorite is always whichever one is the newest, and I'm sure once the first xpac for 7 comes out it'll supplant 6 for me, as 6 did 5, as 5 did 4, and 4 did 3.

I've tried Crusader Kings 3, but it didn't grab me as I'd hoped. Own Stellaris, but haven't tried it yet.

TTRPGs I'm not well versed here either, and I'm not a fan anyway. I put a few hours into Gloomhaven and just did not care one bit. Also have played ~10 hours of Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, and a few other's I'm forgetting. Simply not a genre for me, but perhaps folks will have recommendations for those who enjoy.

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I could list some puzzle games and such as well, but then we'd be here all day.

Please contribute to my ridiculous steam wishlist by dropping recommendations below~

Looking at it, I feel like it kinda looks like I just slapped on random bits and milliput. I did, but I want it to look more purposeful/part of the piece.

I watched Midwinter Mini’s video for the nurgle land raider and used much of that for inspo. I really wanted the PVA+Superglue trick to work but it did not come out as nice for me. I thought about adding more and just not painting it, but a bit worried about slapping that on miiiight be too much?

If anyone has any advice to make it look more like a flesh change or parts erupting from the metal (or any other advice to elevate this) I would greatly appreciate the guidance.

3d printed the skeleton and glued it to some mdf board. Primed with wraithbone, and hit em with Agrax Earthshade.

Covered it in a layer of Vallejo earth texture, then mud technical paint patches in a few places. Spattered Elmer’s glue about, then looooots of army painter grass.

While that dried, I ordered mode train terrain trees, plants, and army painter underbrush. Glued that around, then hit the bones and rocks with Vallejo lichen randomly.

Thought it might be cool to hang vines and stuff from the ribs, but want to move on to the next project~

Did these in like 30 minutes each, super fun and soooo easy for painting noobs like me

Guess which ones were the impulse buys

Got into 40K last month and jumped right into Horus Heresy series using that handy reading order chart, wanted to get to Thousand Sons as fast as possible so I could learn about my army and read about the nothing Magnus allegedly did wrong.

Loken’s books were all a solid good time. A bit rushed feeling, book 2 stood out as a drop in quality. Horus felt less like a centuries old wizened war god amongst men and more like big dingus to make the plot happen, as if it couldn’t happen with a character who uses his brain. Book 3 and Eisenstein came back to the fun time.

Thousand Sons though is painfully bad. I’ve powered 60% through, normally I put down a book at 25% if I’m not feeling it and I reeeeaaaally wasn’t feeling it. Have to get through it for the dudes though. I don’t know the nothing he did wrong yet, but I’ll say he and his sons are definitely guilty of being the dumbest and most annoying self proclaimed “geniuses” in the galaxy. Not expecting Hugo Award level quality from this series, but a little effort would be nice.

So the question: which series among the heresy are the best and which are to avoid? Should I bother continuing 1K sons in hopes it improves, or switch to some other dudes?

Just got into 40K last month, trying to get a Mutalith Vortex Beast. Was gonna get one after my current batch was built and painted (and it is!) but in that time 10th dropped and made MVB meta, so there they all went.

Should I hold out and hopefully there will be a resupply online soon? Or move on to something else? None of my local shops have em either.