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Hiya, I'm back.

A mixture of a real world seaside break and me taking a hobby break means I haven't updated here. In case you are wondering the picture is not of the Med or Barbados, it's actually Sunny Hunny, taken from beside the donut stand.

My hobby break was due to my rediscovering Medieval Total War 2.

I wonder how many people like me would love GW to commit commercial suicide by getting into bed with Creative and producing a Warhammer version of the franchise?

Let's face it most computer games versions of GW products are pants. They either lack playability or are unplayable to begin with. Which leads me to get into bed with the GW conspiracy theorists by believing that GW deliberately licences substandard games (Warhammer Online anyone?) as an entry point into the hobby, in order not to detract from the core of their business: selling figures.

Ok maybe not all the games are sub-standard. Dawn of War is pretty good, and I rather liked the Curse of the Horned Rat - or whatever that game in the 90's was called - but they do seem to not noticed the issue of scalability - and that the end of a campaign is not automatically a chance ot fight the big Boss.

Which is pretty much why I like - nay love - Total War.

Ok I should clarify that a little, because Shogun Total War was crap. The mathematics behind the enemy seemed to share much in common with an old Spectrum game called Lords of Midnight (I think) which meant basically that unless you attacked the enemy each and every turn and everywhere - and won - that it became impossible to win the game because the enemy simply multiplied like Sauron's horde, in a way that bore no relation to the economics of the provinces.

Oh and Empire Total War is a bit silly, in that seemingly everytime you share a border with someone they will attack you.

But my point being - if I ever have a point - is that the reason I like Total War is that there is not fighting to defeat the Big Boss, that you are free to largely pursue the game you want in a non-linear fashion, and it just looks gorgeous on the screen.

But the main reason being that you get to fight small battles that in a miniature game simply would not get played.

Oh and on another topic I am underwhelmed by the release of Island of Blood.

I bought my copy of White Dwarf wanting to be impressed, wanting that somehow the figures for my two least favourite armies would spark a modicum of interest - please GW take my money.... please... please... please.... but...... no.

However I was rather impressed by the Standard Bearer column, and Jervis giving his thoughts about tournaments. Now you can say what you like about Jervis - and most people do - but I am rather pleased that he is getting his imput into the tournaments. I have heard people carping about the new format Grand Tournie but I have to say that Jervis does make far more sense that the people complaining about him and the state of the game in general.

I was particularly impressed with his idea that the winner of the tournament should be the player who performs the highest above the average for their army.

peace:)