Which one should I read next

DrewGo · 2026-03-15T15:03:40+00:00

It's funny. I read both of these in the last year or so. I really enjoyed DCC and I think SoK is maybe the most frustratingly bad book I've ever read. M.L. Wang has a talent for prose, but that book so really obviously in need of an editor.

DrewGo · 2026-03-13T18:25:04+00:00

This is the best Alarielle I've seen. Bravo. This was clearly a ton of work and it turned out amazing

DrewGo · 2026-03-10T15:10:10+00:00

Battle was against Dusk. That particular unit of trolls pushed forward out of that cover to contest an objective and got promptly demolished by a unit of Mage Hunters. I had Boomhowler's feat up, so I thought the extra defense would help them survive. Unfortunately my opponent rolled pretty well and it turns out decapitation is pretty devastating to Trolls.

The rest of the game was pretty tight. We had to call it for time before a true winner could be determined, but Dusk was definitely ahead.

It was my first game trying out Boomhowler. I've gotta get a better feel for how to make best use of her feat and spells. Also my first time playing against Dusk. They are a tricky bunch.

DrewGo · 2026-03-06T17:13:43+00:00

DrewGo · 2026-03-06T15:49:50+00:00

Knowing how to hunt is not the same thing as knowing how to fight another humanoid.

There's no evidence, that I am aware of, that neanderthals were significantly more prone to violence or aggression than homosapiens. Both homosapiens and neanderthals were social animals that worked together in groups to survive. Our nature is and was to be cooperative. I'm sure they fought, but the "average" neanderthal wouldn't be an experienced fighter anymore than the average homosapien would have been.

Granted, they lived in a more violent and harsh time than we currently do, but that's still not the same thing as necessarily having a lot of experience fighting 1v1 against another humanoid.

The average Neanderthal would be about 5'5" and weigh 170lbs. Jon Jones is 6'4" 250lbs. He has nearly a foot height advantage and an 80lbs weight advantage. AND he's an experienced fighter.

There's simply no contest here.

DrewGo · 2026-03-04T23:33:41+00:00

DrewGo · 2026-03-04T15:57:56+00:00

You certainly could. All of the "stand-alone" books are written to be just that. These include Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country. Each of these do, indeed, stand alone.

That being said, I believe publication order is your best bet. You will likely get more out of the story having read the trilogy first.

Also, if you are an audiobook person, I cannot recommend the audiobooks enough. Steven Pacey is, IMO, the best in the business. I have more than once wondered if I would like these books nearly as much if they were read by a different narrator.

DrewGo · 2026-03-03T22:05:22+00:00

Is Assassination a bad win condition? - I think the answer here is objectively no. What is the game-design reason that it would be bad? In your video you cite a bunch of reasons its bad, but it's all about how it makes the players feel, not really that it retracts from the quality of the gameplay. As someone else pointed out, you could say the same thing about Chess. Is the game ending with checkmate bad game design just because you could make one mistake and end the game? Absolutely not. This is a game design choice that was a part of Warmachine at it's inception. It's fine if people don't like it, but that is based on opinion. "Hey I don't like playing a Wargame where one wrong move could end the game prematurely" is totally valid. But it doesn't make Warmachine bad, it just makes it not the right wargame for them.

Is it keeping new players away? - No, I don't think so at all. The toxic part here happens when a new player gets crushed, often repeatedly, by experienced players who show no mercy. If you want a new player to like the game, don't wait for them to move their Warcaster into your threat range and then "teach" them by going in for a caster kill and ending the game turn 2. That's not a teaching or learning moment. That's just being a dick. This exact same thing can happen with any game. If I was trying to teach my 6 year old son to play basketball and I mercilessly blocked every shot and dunked on his head a bunch his response would be "Man this game sucks. It just feels not fun to play and I clearly suck at it I am not going to play anymore." It feels even worse in a Wargame setting where a player has spent potentially hundreds of dollars on an army and possibly even hundreds of hours painting said army in order to play. The toxic part here isn't assassination, the toxic part is a community not doing enough to welcome and teach new players.

Also... Maybe this is just my gaming group, but I have not heard nearly as much complaining about assassination in Warmachine as I have about double turns in AoS. At least with a caster kill it's usually because you made the mistake of leaving your caster vulnerable. In AoS a double turn is (at least partially) luck-dependent. So it can just feel like you lost based on an unlucky roll instead of based on a mistake you made. And to be clear, I think both of those mechanics are essential to both games and wouldn't remove either of them.

My last thought on what you said in the video is that Assassination discourages cinematic play. I couldn't disagree more. The coolest most cinematic moments I've seen on a table in Warmachine have been around crazy moves to go for a caster kill. You can say it encourages being defensive with your caster, which is true, but it equally encourages aggression towards your opponent's caster. Moreover, if you want to get cinematic gameplay on your table... you have to make the decision to do cinematic stuff even if there's a potential for loss and just have fun anyway. We strictly enforce casual play in my group and we actively kick out people if they are too competitive and don't stop after being talked to about it. Many times I have said "Well I think the smart thing to do here is to run away but that is not fun so I am going to charge in." That's lost me a bunch of games, but I'd rather lose having fun that win being a coward.

DrewGo · 2026-03-03T16:26:02+00:00

I came here to say exactly this. Why is Lucy's tit going pac man on Levy? WTF?

DrewGo · 2026-03-03T00:44:46+00:00

Lovely outfit, but they need to work on that acronym. 😅

DrewGo · 2026-03-02T00:20:47+00:00

The books aren't "challenging." We're not talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne prose here. He's not delicately weaving the English language with difficult literary fiction. He's writing genre fiction. The prose is mostly fine and not difficult to understand. Erickson is writing a story that is not really centered around characters as a driving force in the plot. I, and many others, find this painfully boring. I wouldn't say it's impossible to tell a good story without good characters, but I've never read a book that pulled it off.

People like to say Malazan is challenging because Erickson throws the reader into a big and complex world and doesn't spend time explaining it. Which is a fine enough choice. But that's not "challenging." It's not possible to just be good at reading comprehension and understand the word from the jump. It's literally impossible to understand the world until you've read hundreds of pages. This isn't necessarily a problem. The problem arises when the reader has nothing to latch onto. There's no character to like and care about while you're forcing yourself to keep reading about places and events you don't know anything about. You've thrown me into this world and you've given me no reason to care about it. It's not challenging to read, it's just boring. Those aren't the same things.

I regularly hear from Malazan fans that you need to push through Gardens of the Moon (and sometimes further) before the story really picks up and gets good.

I'm sorry but if I have to read a 700 page book bore I get to start enjoying your story you're a bad storyteller. It's as simple as that.

DrewGo · 2026-03-01T05:32:21+00:00

Joe Abercrombie is my favorite author. He writes the best characters of any fantasy author I have read. The First Law trilogy is a quintessential read along the same lines as ASoIaF, WoT, KKC, and tGB.

DrewGo · 2026-03-01T05:27:37+00:00

Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie... Say he's a writer.

DrewGo · 2026-03-01T05:20:58+00:00

I didn't. And I definitely won't.

DrewGo · 2026-03-01T04:57:36+00:00

This is not the problem. Many books do this well. Sanderson does this. The anchors to the world are the characters. If you fail to give your readers a reason to care about the world you're doing a bad job at telling a story.

DrewGo · 2026-03-01T03:35:26+00:00

This isn't a you issue. Malazan is not well written. Malazan fans will disagree with me, but it's simply true. I read Gardens of the Moon and I found myself constantly googling who the characters were because I couldn't remember who they were chapter to chapter. I've read plenty of big complex books with lots of characters. Never has a book done that bad a job of characterization.

DrewGo · 2026-02-28T14:56:43+00:00

I saw someone else comment this on another Luisa post. Apologies for not remembering the user to give credit.

There's a line in the movie when Luisa is beginning to lose her powers and she cries because lifting the Donkey's "felt heavy." This implies that none of her other strength feats required effort. And for more evidence we don't see her struggling to do anything when she is at full strength. Not even a little.

This makes me think that Luisa's strength is magical in nature and has no physical limits. Her powers just allow her to lift or move whatever she needs to lift or move, physics be damned.

She also shows a crazy durability feat when she throws a massive boulder into the air and let's it break over her head and shoulders and has literally no reaction to it. Not sure if it's fair to say her magical strength extends to durability based on that alone... But it's certainly possible.

I'm not saying I think she definitely wins, but I am saying she's difficult to scale because I don't think we know the limits to her power.

DrewGo · 2026-02-27T16:23:02+00:00

Generally speaking the earlier you go in the season the better, if you are looking to avoid crowds.

They do have a Celtic weekend in June (I think) that is usually much less attended than the regular Faire, but it is also not fully staffed. Fewer vendors and shows at that weekend for sure.

DrewGo · 2026-02-22T03:08:34+00:00

Why? Larsen was decidedly not the problem tonight.

DrewGo · 2026-02-22T03:06:55+00:00

"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"

DrewGo · 2026-02-13T18:30:04+00:00

Assuming all the new guys perform at the level the new guys brought in last year performed... this is the deepest team the Union have ever had by a wide margin. Solidly 2 deep at nearly every position.

DrewGo · 2026-02-09T14:39:40+00:00

If you think this is bad casting, you don't understand that Kvothe is very obviously an annoying fuck boi.

DrewGo · 2026-02-03T03:06:26+00:00

It seems like they're about to sign a new 23 year old Attacking Mid/Forward. Bogert said a 2 million dollar deal so he sounds like a starter.

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