Blazing Ahead (January 2024 newsletter) (Patreon)

Despite the title and the header image, this won't be about Fury Road Vendetta. But I did play it recently and just can't get enough of this character. The game is great too. Just the dumbest of fun.

Anyway, I'm all done with the Beyond the Sun videos (the expansion/solo mode early access is also up for backers, and the strategy guide will be coming soon too) and I'm ready for the next big challenge. Y'all have voted and the next game I'll be teaching is Hegemony, the asymmetric simulator of class struggles. I happened to play it last month and really dug it.

I'm looking forward to making the tutorial too, but before that I'll be working on a commissioned piece. I'm actually revisiting the first game that was ever commissioned: Middara. A slightly ridiculous anime-styled rpg in a box that has an updated ruleset, so they're having me make an updated video. I'm hoping that this'll be easier to script since I've basically already done it once, but we'll see. 

Before I get to the games I've played this month, I want to talk about the other poll I put up at the start of the year. I asked you fine folks what you'd like to see from RTFM in the future, and there were two clear winners. One being the return of my How to Teach series. Like I said, I've got a few more ideas for that, so I'll try to put a few videos together when I have the chance. I'm aiming to make one every 2-3 months or so.

The other thing was just to improve the quality of the tutorials. If that option had won, I'd be focusing all my efforts on it rather than anything else. Since it got second place, it's still something I'll be working on, but at a slower pace than I would otherwise. I've still got a few things in mind, and have already started on one of them, but those will be slowly introduced over the course of the year. Hopefully by this time in 2025 they'll all be in place and I'll be thinking of all new ways to improve. 

This month I got to play a few games that have been out for a while and that I've always wanted to try, but just hadn't gotten around to. Rising Sun was the first and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Don't know how much I'd want to revisit it, but put some great looking minis on a board and I'll be happy at least once.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum was Arboretum, a whipsmart card game about lining up trees in just the right order. I'd heard this game was great and mean, but I wasn't prepared for exactly how it was either. It's great because it forces you to plan out not just how you add trees to your tableau, but also which trees you keep in your hand. And it's mean because it forces you to constantly give away trees when you'd much rather just hold on to them. Highly recommend this if you haven't tried it. 

I played a few other games this month, but in classic Shea fashion I forgot to take pictures of them 🙄. Anyway, there's lots of great stuff ahead, so I'm going to get back to it. As always, thank you so much for supporting the channel! See you next time!