Eight Fragmented Opinions

Righty folks. All being well, when this post goes up, I should be enjoying day three of Auto Assembly. Or, more likely, still asleep having stayed up till 3AM in the hotel bar. But in the run up to the convention, I tried to write some opinion pieces, to provide additional blog content. I found at first it was difficult often running about of bile and enthusiasm before finishing. But then I was reminded by a friend that opinion pieces are not necessarily solid bile, so I had a rethink. A new approach was called for, and I've spent a couple of weeks trying to stockpile articles, so maybe I'm over-doing it Just to ease myself into non-review writing, he's a few fragmented opinions which may yet form the basis of a future article if I can be bothered.

(Image sourced from here, original creator unknown.)

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

This has been an endless storm of nerd rage pretty much from day zero, and its hard to argue with some of the haters. Games Workshop hasn't produced a points system for the game, or any equivalent system, which is necessary if you want to have a game with any appearance of fair and balanced mechanics. You can argue for days the extent to which GW games have ever been fair and balanced, short answer: not really, but they've abdicated their responsibilities here. I personally don't consider narrative and scenario play to be substitutes, I like structure. This is a crying shame, as having free rules and war scrolls were a big step in the right direction.

The Fantastic 4 Film

No, I haven't seen it. Not gonna see it. Neither will anyone else now. What exactly went wrong will be argued for a few years to come, and clearly studio politics hurt the project, but I'd point the finger at applying a grimdark, “realistic”, approach to a property where the lead character is a rubberman called Mr Fantastic. We just had Guardians of the Galaxy last year, a film with a heavily armed raccoon, and a tree with a three word vocabulary. There is no requirement for Superhero films to be serious any more, and nothing so daft it won't work on screen.

Terminator Genesys

No, I haven't seen it either. Not gonna see it. But apparently, it isn't as terrible as the above. I've not liked the look of it since that trailer spoiled the main plot twist, and apparently it doesn't get any better from there.

Dr Who

I'm not looking forward to the new season. While it wasn't Peter Capaldi's fault, the last series was painfully inconsistent, and don't get me started on the Moon episode. Things can always pick up, but some new writers would be a plus. And I don't like Clara any more.

Combiner Wars Remoulds

Okay, Combiner Wars has yet to produce a combiner component whom is actually bad. I'd go so far as to say half of them are worth buying twice. I just wish we didn't have to. And we had a few more Decepticons.

Takara's Unite Warriors Line

Full marks chaps for giving us a deluxe Groove, an improved Devastator, and hopefully Blast Off. Loose 20 points for ignoring play features to get more G1 combiner teams though. Powerglide, Blackjack and tiny Groove were designed to interact with respective teams, and you are selling them short by shuffling them into Transformers Adventure line. I'm not hugely impressed with you ignoring Alpha Bravo and Off Road either, as it means you have doubled up on moulds for the Superion and Menasor boxsets. Which kind of leads me on to the next point.

The Generation 1 Cartoon As Gospel

Guys, I know you love the cartoon. I love the cartoon. But it was thirty years ago, and it wasn't that well-made in the day. So can we all stop giving Hasbro and IDW grief for doing stuff that deviates from that template?

Fun Publications

Nice to see you getting some use out of the Armada Starscream mould. Now, be a dear and take those Arms Microns you have out the back, and do us an Armada boxset. Just for a change? Also, maybe stay away from IDW concepts? Not to disrespect your fiction, but you aren't in the same weight class, and people (wrongly) assume you are somehow preventing a mass market release.

Next week: more reviews.