Neko Galaxy – Henry – Just About the Right Amount of Cyberpunk

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions for Henry. It definitely helped me think about where Henry was and where I wanted him to be. I’m happy to report that I’m unstuck on him and made quite a lot of improvement this week. It was truthfully sink or swim time on this project as I’d applied a lot of layers of paint to the teal side and if I kept going much more, he’s have a swollen cheek which would not do. Incidentally, I goofed up glazing on his cheek this week almost exactly like I did on Rashida and I was able to fix it after quite a bit of work so that demonstrates exactly what I was talking about. Anyway, enough jibber-jabber, let’s take a look at Henry. I’ll include last week’s photo so you can see the changes, hopefully anyway.

The blue is brighter now and compliments the purple better or at least I hope so. I also think the blue looks more like “cyberpunk lighting” which was important to get right. There are some further adjustments that are needed as I think the blue light on his forehead is not right. It extends too far to the right and I think maybe it should gradually fade into the skin color but I’m not sure. Its something I’m still pondering. There is other stuff like the coloring in the hair that isn’t done yet too. I was running out of Lahmian Medium later this week and so I had to take a break from that task. I got some more today so it won’t be long until I get back to it.

In less exciting news, I made some progress on my next piece of Fallout terrain. This is not a good picture at all and I may brighten up the colors a bit more before I move on but I’ll let you puzzle over what I might be working on here. Its something that will take a while since the project is mostly on the backburner for now.

Lastly, I thought I’d check in with how Astro Knights is going. In short, not great. I lost the three games I played this week on Expert difficulty and two of those I lost handily. The game has three difficulty settings, Normal, Expert, and Nightmare. As I mentioned, Normal seemed too easy so I switched to Expert and it seems too tough for me. It also highlights that Astro Knights isn’t exactly the game I was looking for to me.

Astro Knights is a deckbuilder game which means its card based but instead of bringing a deck that you constructed (either on your own or by copying a list online), you start with a preset deck that is small and weak. Each turn of the game, you have the opportunity to either power up your character and use one of their special abilities or you can buy better cards for your deck. This is a very popular type of card game in the board gaming world because it takes less prep work to get to the table. However, Astro Knights seems like a pretty thinky and math-oriented game to me. To do well, especially at higher difficulties, you need to optimize your deck as quickly as possible to have a chance at winning. Even though I’ve seen some good tips online about how to do this, I can’t seem to pull it off very well. In fact, I wasn’t even that close to winning the games I lost which is disheartening. To be honest, it kind of makes me feel dumb which is not a great feeling. The reality is that I don’t really like math and doing some math and calculating what do I need my deck to do to be able to do enough damage to the boss to win the game and how many turns really goes a long way in Astro Knights.

I’ve talked about this before, though it was quite a while ago, while Astro Knights has some luck in what cards are available to buy in the market and what order you draw cards off the boss deck (these almost always cause a negative effect to you and will result in you losing the game eventually), ultimately, making smart purchases and knowing when to attack the boss and when to attack its minions is what wins you the game, more than being lucky. In board games, there are Euro-style games which have low luck and employing the best strategy will generally help you win and then there are American-style games where luck plays a bigger role whether it be card draws or rolling dice. American-style games tend to have a stronger narrative and theme though Euro games are catching up in that regard. Ironically, Games Workshop games and even miniature Wargames have more in common with American-style games than Euro board games.

Having said all of this, Astro Knights is a bit more of a Euro style game where luck isn’t nearly as important as executing an effective strategy. I would prefer a bit more luck and definitely more theme and narrative in a game. Arkham Horror: The Card Game really nails this. Unfortunately Astro Knight’s and its predecessor are basically the main competitor to Fantasy Flight Games’ LCG system so there isn’t a card game out there which is going to scratch the itch. If anything, playing Astro Knights reminds me how good Arkham Horror is and that I wish it wasn’t a campaign-based game which is why I ultimately got rid of it.

After realizing that Astro Knights ultimately isn’t a game that I like well enough to commit to playing much more, I’ve been doing more research on board games I might like to play that will appeal to my tastes and I’ll talk more about those next week as I’ve rambled on long enough at this point. I may paint something up that is a bit of a surprise for next week too…