I've played Guild Ball!!
Probably most people wouldn't see that as a major step, but to me it was, and for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the fact that I was getting tired of war gaming again and this completely resolved the issue and gave me a new thing to aim at, play more and enjoy.
Secondly, because I had to get out of the house. Again, might not sound like much, but as someone who has quite bad depression, and is going through a rough time (Not going to put it on here, people who are on my Facebook friends list know, there are a few I've talked to in person, bit its not going on here). I went down to Thetford, home of The Battlehammer, and joined in with their Northern Invasion.
Can I just say, on the record right now, Parker and Straw are two of the nicest guys I have ever met. Right from the start it was as if they had known me for ages and just wanted to chat, have a laugh and find out what was going on.. and it was ace, just amazing to be there.
Anyway, I got to play Guild Ball, 4 games over the course of the day. I played against Engineers (Chris), another Alchemist Team (Parker), Fish (Grant) and Morticians (Straw). Every game was fun, every player made me laugh and everything was cinematic and I can really see why the guys at The Battlehammer love this game so much. I get 2 Wins, 1 Draw and 1 Loss out of the day, which I would say is pretty good, considering they were my first games.. of Guild Ball.
And that is kind of the thing that I didn't get away with. Fairly early on people realised this wasn't my first run at a tactical skirmish game, and that I was probably someone who did tournamenting somewhere else. Now, I'll say right now, I wasn't trying to get away with that. It honestly didn't twig to me when I said I'd never played Guild Ball before to mention I'd get into the top 100 Malifaux players last year (I got my numbers wrong on the day, but looking back I hit 87th in the UK very briefly before rapidly dropping back down). In the first GB Game I played I more or less didn't know what I was doing, but I picked it up pretty quickly in my opinion, and I kind of hope no one was taking it easy on me after that. I'm very much looking forward to finding my level in GB.
My overall thoughts on Guild Ball are pretty simple, its a really well constructed, easy to learn, complex to master Skirmish War Game. The limited player pool really helps it feel portable and great to play on the fly. 8 Models don't take up a lot of carry space after all. It certainly has enough to it to make it good in a tournament setting, and other than the fact I need to speed up some of my play (Midas takes a lot of attention) putting the game on the clock didn't make me panic or worry as I wasn't burning massive amounts of time with each "turn" like you do with Warmahordes. In fact it almost made the game feel more pacey and to an extent "better".
I highly recommend this game, in fact I would massively recommend it.
Also go watch The Battlehammer on youTube.com.. seriously go watch them!
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