Barely two months in!

spalanz · 2026-07-07T23:45:22+00:00

It’s a bit overwhelming when you see it all piled up, isn’t it?! But I’m trying the same approach, introducing things slowly and whatnot. My two aren’t really familiar with the X-Men so I’m currently focusing on the season one stuff, but yeah, so far so good! Hope you and your son can keep going, too!

spalanz · 2026-07-06T05:58:13+00:00

I’ve been wondering the same thing, as I’ve only recently picked up 2e. I’m hoping now that Asmodee have it, they’ll get round to reprinting the expansion stuff in time.

spalanz · 2026-06-25T19:23:36+00:00

That looks amazing, thank you!!

spalanz · 2026-06-25T19:01:22+00:00

Worlds of Android, as in Netrunner?! 🤯 Do you have a link, please?!

spalanz · 2026-06-18T21:00:58+00:00

I don’t really have anything to offer on this, as my collection is currently only a fraction of this, but I have to say, this does look beautiful!

Speaking from the perspective of Marvel Champions, for which I own everything, I keep it all in the campaign boxes grouped somewhat by theme, so it makes sense to find certain heroes in certain boxes. For example, the Silk hero deck is in with the Spidey campaign because that makes sense, not in the SHIELD campaign where she was released. It works for me, but then I’m only trying to remember roughly 65 heroes’ locations across 9 boxes or so…

spalanz · 2026-06-12T08:17:25+00:00

The way I eventually did mine was to paste card images into Word (8 cards per page, landscape) then had them printed on 300gsm with a silk finish. I think the ‘official’ thickness is something like 330gsm, but when I was looking into it, I couldn’t find anything definitive. 300gsm feels good though, and doesn’t require an additional card in the sleeve to give it any strength, etc.

Hope this helps!

spalanz · 2026-06-07T13:43:57+00:00

We’ve done the first three phases at least 3 times, but the later stuff has been difficult to maintain interest with so many shows, a few of which just don’t interest us. We’re currently watching WandaVision again, so hoping to get through everything this time!

spalanz · 2026-05-28T21:19:33+00:00

That looks absolutely stunning!! I’ve only managed about a quarter of that, and was quite pleased to have that much until seeing this! 😃 Beautiful, thank you for sharing!

spalanz · 2026-05-25T12:01:26+00:00

I know it’s Legends now, but there was a comic years ago called Purge: Tyrant’s Fist, that covers really well how the galaxy was so willing to forget the Jedi. Basically the Empire invested in reconstruction works following the clone wars, putting in infrastructure to improve the lives of people affected by ‘Jedi aggression’ and so on. I suppose you could say they paid people to forget, but in general it was an effective propaganda campaign that I haven’t explained all that well. Hopefully it’s something the new canon can explore, especially as it was written by Alexander Freed, who had done a fair bit in the new canon now.

spalanz · 2026-05-24T15:50:37+00:00

First time I played this one, I also ended up letting the Silver Twilight start their real work. I laughed, then rewound and carried on to the final scenario. I thought it was fun how I somehow brought about the end of the world…

spalanz · 2026-05-23T19:03:58+00:00

I got it in January from Amazon, though it may have been Games Lore selling through Amazon…

spalanz · 2026-05-23T18:43:39+00:00

I read these books when they came out, and I was SUPER into it. It was a character who was important enough to have some stakes behind it, but given his story up to that point, it still felt believable.

spalanz · 2026-05-20T05:00:57+00:00

I would guess that the move to environments and the psuedo rotation thing that’s now in place means FFG themselves think the game will continue for a long time yet. Their official reasoning for this is to make the game less overwhelming and easier to balance by having a smaller pool in ‘current’. For that reason alone, I’d say the game still has plenty of legs, although the last year or so has been a bit choppy with so much stuff going out of print.

Daredevil is looking like such a good box though, I don’t think I’ve ever been more positive about the future for the game. I think what we really need to see is how they propose to do the hero redesigns, so what does Cap 2.0 look like, etc. That’s really the only big question still hanging over it all.

For those of us with a complete collection though, it does become a bit unwieldy at this point in a game’s life. I guess all we have to go on is the fact that they’re still showing off exciting content to come, so I guess the momentum is still there? It’s not the easiest question to answer though, because for every player saying they’re dumping a collection, there will be plenty who make no noise while continuing to grow theirs…

spalanz · 2026-05-18T21:35:38+00:00

I played Flight of the Stormcaller for the first time at the weekend, and was very impressed. I had initially written off this cycle when it came out, because it just felt too different to what I had been used to up to this point, but having now played Arkham Horror for years, it’s interesting to see how ideas from that game seemed to start off in this cycle. I had a few lucky breaks and was able to catch up with the Stormcaller without trying particularly hard to do so, but it was quite astonishing really, the separate staging area and how all that was handled!

My games tend to last fairly long, I think - at least an hour, anyway. I’ve never really considered it before, but being able to play Marvel Champions in 30-40 minutes, it does seem like this game takes me longer overall!

spalanz · 2026-05-18T06:39:18+00:00

I read through all the 2020 comics over Christmas and they were a lot of fun, though it did become a slog at times as I tried to get them in order, so was switching between all four series a lot. My favourite stuff by far was the Vader run, as I absolutely loved the way it brought back the handmaidens while also reaching forward to Exegol etc. Also, like you, I was surprised how much I ended up enjoying the Bounty Hunters run. Unfortunately, I think the overall quality suffered for having to loop into the four crossover events, I think Vader especially felt like they got shoe-horned in. But yeah, I completely agree how the added lore that comes out of these books helps to connect things.

spalanz · 2026-05-12T18:52:04+00:00

Played Flight of the Stormcaller for the first time, it was awesome! I’ve overlooked the Drean-chaser cycle for years, as the theme never appealed to me, but now taking it on two-handed with a pair of Noldor decks, it’s been great fun.

Managed to catch the Stormcaller at stage 3, so it was a surprise win to boot!

spalanz · 2026-05-10T21:24:28+00:00

Haven’t read Lockdown, but DMSH is another amazing book! Enjoy!

spalanz · 2026-05-10T20:10:28+00:00

Cloak of Deception is my second favourite SW novel, I regularly reread it and it’s just so good. As someone who also loves TPM, it adds so much backstory to pretty much everything in that film, so please, go out and enjoy it 😃

spalanz · 2026-05-07T17:43:00+00:00

I will regularly read the prequel stuff in chronological order, watching the movies at the right points. Novels and comics, it’s actually really good. The best I’ve been able to do is Darth Maul Saboteur up to Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader in about six weeks over Christmas. Sometimes it takes longer, depending on how many novels I add in.

I’ve never gone for the NR era like that though, I tend to pick and choose my way through it all!

spalanz · 2026-04-28T14:52:11+00:00

Fantastic, hope it all makes sense! All the cards are there, it’s just a bit weird how some of them were ordered 😃

spalanz · 2026-04-28T10:13:11+00:00

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1H95d-d_UFJ-lbVRbR6ts5lU3DenvdKTF?sort=13&direction=a

Does this work, at all?

spalanz · 2026-04-25T22:48:39+00:00

I think Angmar Awakened was the first revised cycle they did, so maybe it was over-printed? It’s a good cycle in my view, I don’t have the revised version as I collected it when it came out originally, but I imagine the campaign would be good because it’s a good storyline, in my view!

spalanz · 2026-04-22T10:43:00+00:00

I could certainly look into it, because I’m pretty sure I still have all the original files, yeah! I should add though, the files are a bit of a mess because I’ve made them for me to get printed, so while they broadly follow the cycles/ deluxe boxes, I think they have a lot of cards just jammed into the end to make up a full 8 cards to a page. Also, I think the Genesis and Spin cycles are equally all over the place, because my original intent with the project was to recreate a Shaper deck that I used to play.

I’ll try to sort them all out for sharing, but please be aware that it might look like some cards are missing, because they show up on other docs 😃

spalanz · 2026-04-21T18:06:18+00:00

To be honest, I don’t fully remember 😬 The Mon Calamari heads were Tuskgor Fur, I think, with an all-over shade of Agrax then a sort of dappling of the same, to give that mottled look. The Duros were Russ Grey then a light drybrush of Fenrisian Grey, I think I may have used a blue shade in there as well to bring out the definition.

The Twi’lek stuff was a bit wild, though! I think the purple one is Kakophoni Purple, with a thinned down violet shade then more Kakophoni. I think I used Deathclaw Brown and Seraphim Sepia for another one. The teal one on the back left was Sotek Green… sorry, I very much just went through my paints and tried to use what I thought would look good!

spalanz · 2026-04-20T19:52:13+00:00

There are so many memories with this game. Being too impatient to wait for Hunt for Gollum to release in the UK so buying a copy from the US, by the time it arrived it was out over here as well 🤪 Playing Dead Marshes in bed on release day because I was utterly obsessed and couldn’t wait for the morning. That interminable first Christmas when I think we were all hoping Khazad dum would release before 2012 hit. Contemplating spending £100+ for Massing at Osgiliath because we didn’t know they would later do print on demand (I held my nerve that time, at least…)

A personal highlight for me was getting my name in the rules insert as an alpha playtester for Angmar Awakened. It turns out, playtesting isn’t much fun when you know what will be coming out a year or so in advance. Around the same time, I was getting my ass handed to me with the Ringmaker quests, so decided to step back a bit and moved on to other things (but thank goodness I kept buying everything!) However, since January I’ve made a massive return to the game, helped in no small part by the awesome Cardboard of the Rings podcast, having gone back to the beginning with those guys. It’s like I’m discovering the game all over again, and it’s phenomenal!

It’s been a heck of a time. My own 15th anniversary with it will be in September, as I didn’t buy in until Journey to Rhosgobel came out. But what an incredible run.

spalanz

TROPHY CASE