Just this guy, you know?

I bought a Fire TV Stick. Despite the adverts featuring one Jeremy Clarkson (if Amazon could stop marketing towards centrist dads that’d be amazing).

Why though? Well we’ve been using the Xbox One as the media center/hub/platform for ages now. I bought the Xbone with my first real pay cheque back in 2015 but I’ve not played games on it for months! I don’t have the time to play games on it and any time I do have would be better spent painting Warhammer[0].

I guess I’m being contrarian this year by picking the latest incarnation of 40K to be my Game of the Year. Especially as the only people who seem to take GOTY seriously are video games people.

2017 has been a big year for 40K. The game has changed a lot. 6th edition was probably the upper limit for complexity that I was willing to bother with. By many accounts 7th was more faff that it’s worth. 8th has really simplified things to a point where I think I actually understand the game I’m playing. Even if charging and the fight phase remain a big foggy[0].

Well at least for me[0].

February 2014 to September 2015 was maybe the best time I’ve had with board games. I’d picked up the Netrunner core set in July 2013 but bounced off it. My pals and I just couldn’t grasp the rules like we did with Magic. Over Christmas 2013 I finally grokked it and as a house we got into Netrunner big time.

We played a lot of Netrunner. Netrunner in the kitchen, the game store, and the pub. We forged our own meta as we explored new Datapacks. I read the novels, listened to the podcasts, and wrote words about it here[1]. I posted my decklists on GitHub. We went to tournaments and we taught it to everyone who’d listen.

It’s coming to the end of the year and I’m reflecting on some predictions I made on GNR episode 30. We’ll do a wrap up of it later but I thought I’d write a little bit about my failed experiment 2017x52.

I was aiming to post at least one photo on Flickr every week this year. One photo that I liked and was taken that week (roughly).

I failed monumentally. In fact I only made it a few weeks into 2017.

I post about two things here, games and Google products. I bought a Pixel 2 (non XL 64GB) and it arrived yesterday. My oh my is this a lovely device.

No weird issues with keyboards like the Pixel C. Just a beautiful device with rock solid software (so far).

We’ll see how it goes from here.

x1101 sent a question to the podcast a few weeks back about what we’re listening to these days. At this moment I’ve got 29 feeds in my podcatcher (I still use Pocket Casts, recently it got SONOS support). I wont bore you with the full list but I’ll go through some of the choice cuts.

All Units is Sean McTiernan’s two year project to dissect the Thriller movie. I don’t know anything about films and I learn stuff from this. I also really dig Sean’s humour.

It’s not EVE. It’s not Netrunner.

“You’re not on brand” I hear you scream.

The canonical best game of 2016 is Stardew Valley.

We’re back for episode 4! We chat about Ben crashing his car, going to Black Library Live, Blood Bowl, Netrunner, and field some questions from our most excellent listeners.

Ben’s post is here with the feed available here.

It’s been almost ten months since I got the Pixel C so I think it’s about time I got around to writing more about it. I think I promised I would “finalise” my thoughts on it on an episode of GNR.

If you’re looking for a mid review turn around you aren’t going to find it. This little thing has been a joy to use! Things only got better once android Nougat turned up and we got the split screen features. I can type this and have watch YouTube at the same time! THE FUTURE. Or at least feature parity with a laptop.

Fab used the remote kill switch he installed in my PC to prevent me recording episode 3 of Not as Grumpy they Look a few weeks back.

We managed to sneak a recording in without Fab noticing and here it is!

We chat a lot about LCGs and party games. Then we fawn over some bits of plastic.