I really am not a fan of politics– as a history buff, it gets all too cyclical for me at times. However, I took a listen to Dan Carlin’s Common Sense this afternoon for the first time and it deals quite a bit with the attack on public sector unions, teachers and the like by Wisconsin’s corporatist-cunt-in-residence-governor, but more importantly, America’s failure to manage it’s decline properly (a theme Dan Carlin has focused on in a couple of his history podcasts in the last year). Good stuff and worth a listen certainly, especially since it’s explicitly centrist. I for one think Wisconsin deserves what it gets for how it’s people voted last year. Though, how can you stop a group from collectively bargaining? They can strike or have sit ins or marches– you can’t stop it no matter how you legislate it. What are you going to do? Put all the teachers in the state in jail? Can they be replaced by Chinese workers making $.50 per hour?
Author: littlemute
10 BEASTS
As of 1:10 PM today, I made my quota for miniatures painted for the month. 4 Ungor, 6 Gor AHW for a total of 68 points added to the 1000 or so painted I have. That means In 5 months if I can keep pace I’ll have an additional 340 points for the beastmen army. That’s it? Ouch….
These were from a set off ebay that I picked up pre-built and pre-primed, so there are some mold line problems on some of them. Recipes– I hate it when people post pics of their stuff and don’t post recipes. Flesh is over a black undercoat, Dark Flesh, Vermin Brown and then Vermin brown with a slight amount of bronzed flesh for the final. I use the dynamic layering method so no washes, and only drybrushing where it really makes sense. The axes turned out pretty well as I overbrushed the blades and then cleaned up the head of the axe with a wash of black to just lightly cover the dry brush. Again, these are core troops, so if hold one to your eye you will see the impressionist style that layering methods create (as opposed to blending). and each color only at most, four layers (In contrast to 10+ for a blended model).
This batch of models includes the first time in history that I enjoyed painting shields. The plastic shields GW is putting out are just exquisite.
Now I just have to keep momentum and get more on the table to drive the horn in some more Night Goblin ass. Next up is 5 more Gor AHW.
The Big Man Now?
Wisconsin state championship in Shadowfist this coming weekend at Plattcon. I’m either going to play my Dragon ‘A List’ deck or the Hand/Dragon big Bruiser cycler. Neither deck has done great at the Gen Con tournaments, but I’ve just missed getting to the final by a few points with both. I’m thinking of stripping out the legendary Iron Monkey from the aforementioned Big Bruiser cycler as he really is just has a giant target on his chest any time he hits the table and what I’ve found over the years is that he just doesn’t take sites all that often. I only got one box of Empire of Evil so far but there are some juicy tidbits in there to throw in to each deck– it’s just deciding which NOT to put in that is the challenge. One thing I love about the Shadowfist tournaments is that they are friendly and fun AND hardcore competitive. It’s a very tough blend to hit for a game, and a game community as getting walloped is usually never fun in a game–and Shadowfist has a lot of walloping all round.
New Awful Green Things from Outer Space!
Looks like AGTFOS is getting a new printing from Steve Jackson games with an actual real board and thick counters. I’ve gotten about 10 games of this since I picked it up for 3$ on clearance at Kay Bee toys when I was 12 or so and it’s solid 2 player fun and one of Tom Wham’s best. Now if we could get The Great Khan game printed on a real board with real cards and a few tweaks to speed up combat that would be pure dwarven gold.
Beasts we are lest beef we become
Over the summer I fell into obsession with old west miniature gaming, well, painting them that is as I only got to play once so far. I had a goal to get through that involved painting 8 miniatures and completing two full gangs for Warhammer Historicals Legends of the Old West–gangs that I have been ‘working’ on since 2005. Over the Xmas break, I was able to finish all but two, and knocked the remainder out over the worst weeks of January.
Now after my first play of Warhammer 8th edition, I took a long view over my painting table and backlog in order to get to 2000 points painted. 50 beastmen, 1 chariot, a chaos spawn, a hound of scathatch, a giant and 5 harpies. 59 miniatures all told, with two of those being big models that will take weeks to complete. At my rate– about 5 miniatures per year that will take me until my kids are deep into high school. The bottom line is, I’ve never tried to paint an entire army before– sure Necromunda gangs, blood bowl teams, etc. but nothing equaling over 100 models– it seems totally insane. So to keep it reasonable, but to have a goal, I’m going to try to paint 10 miniatures per month, not including the big shit–the Giant will take me more than a month probably. At that rate I should be able to spend a few hours here and there on week nights and then one big chunk of time on either weekend day.
The motivational part is that my 1000 points painted hit the table this weekend, and though it was chaotic game where we absolutely did not get the rules right, my stuff just looked totally awesome on the table, even painted as mediocre as it is. Of course, the game itself was just great fun, 4 hours went by in a snap (and I stood for the whole game, forgetting to get a chair!).
The game was against Night Goblins, with their whirling fanatics, a doom diver and a stone thrower. All three did horrific damage during the initial turns of the game, but not enough to save the hapless goblins once the beastmen closed in for the kill. The beastmen themselves aren’t that great, just tough, but when you take into account that most of the time they can reroll misses on any round of combat with a slight chance of Frenzy happening, they get a ton of hits in combat with the potential, however slight, of just going totally fucking apeshit. Though the beasts smashed most of the Goblin army it was actually a very close run thing and a lot of luck in the pinch.
What I loved was the huge combats– just too fun, but also the insane terrain on the board. We randomly rolled and just about every roll had some crazy magical mystery terrain. The forest on my left was a fungus forest that caused Stupidity in my army, but helped the goblins! In the center was some sort of Necrosphinx who granted wishes or ate characters who tried to solve her riddle, and on the right flank was a Tower of Blood overlooking a dismal fen. The tower of blood shot the dicepools into the stratosphere– causing units within 6″ to have Frenzy (double attacks) and Hatred (Reroll misses). Never in my wargaming career have I rolled so many dice.
Giant
I’ve got a medium-size collection of gaming books, old D&D, some of the older White Wolf stuff dealing with the effete, paederast blood-suckers, loads of the obligatory Warhammer Fantasy/Battle/40K books, almost everything published for Exalted (of course) and quit a few random books here and there bunged from musty used bookstores I couldn’t pass up at the time. Many of these books are impressive in their binding and artwork and design, some are pretty hefty collections of paper, especially the 2nd Edition Exalted books– however, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer size and gleaming glory of the Warhammer 8th edition hardcover. I’d even seen it and handled it in stores before, but you forget you see, you forget just how huge it is. Clocking in at over 500 pages literally packed with full-color images throughout–it can easily be deemed the Armageddon of miniature war-game books. I contrast it to my first miniature wargame rule set from the late 70’s: Swords and Spells and it’s staggering reminder of how far we’ve come in the hobby– that a company that sells toy soldiers and some books to a tiny portion of the planet’s population could pull together the cash to write, design and publish something so massive it cannot even be used as crapper reading without a crapper reading stand– it’s just that friggin’ huge.
And so officially begins my descent yet another miniature gaming obsession that will produce probably less than 20 painted miniatures and 2-3 actual games in the next year. Sad but probably true.
New Dwarf Fortress Release
I have made statments to the effect that while Minecraft owns the limelight at the moment, Dwarf Fortress will eventually be the game you’ll want to be playing long term as Minecraft is really just a timewaster that runs out of steam pretty quickly. Given that Dwarf Fortress is probably a decade away from a release most people would want to play, Minecraft has a long long time to be the darling of procedurally generated mining games–however, if you can brave the incomplete-ness, there is a new Dwarf Fortress release. Clay, Caravans, Bees, Sheep shearing– tons of stuff in this build– but I wonder if you can still build a ton of fishing infrastructure only to find that fishing hasn’t been implemented…
Awesome Neo Geo tribute video
First Game with Cosmic Conflict!
I got in on a 4 man, 4 planet game with the new expansion and it was great, though I got my ass kicked all across the galaxy during this particular game. Fantasy Flight continues to prove that they are making the ultimate version of Cosmic Encounter with no let up in sight. The new expansion is mostly about the new set of 20 aliens, but the 7th player cards and ships helps (black looks much better than I thought it would).
As for new rules and stuff in the box, the Hazard deck was entertaining in our first game, but it definitely made the game more crazy. One of the Hazard cards shuffles all the cards in the hands of the player and redistributes them (same number of cards, just random ones) and this was a game changer as the landscape of Flare cards was instantly different. A second hazard card is proof that the fantasy flight version of Cosmic Encounter will never have the Reverse Cone as one of the new Hazard cards did just that (Defensive allies get a base, offensive allies get cards). Really thinking about the Reverse cone and the hassles surrounding it (it comes up too often in the Mayfair version) I don’t think I will miss it in the FF version.
Though others may dig it, the alien power I played in this first game did I was not a huge fan of: Warhawk. Essentially, the Warhawk never negotiates and gets either a free Morph or a negotiate card converts to a 00 attack card. I am a wheeler and dealer and not having the option of negotiating with other aliens is tough to swallow tactically, and also means you are always going to have to fight for your bases. With so many better combat powers out there, Warhawk is going to have a tough time competing when he can only fight it out all the time.
All in all, art, components and new rules in Cosmic Conflict are top notch and if we needed even more excuse to just play Cosmic Encounter over all other games, here it is.
Empire: Total War commentaries on completion
Finally, I was able to press END TURN enough to get the short, generic VICTORY movie at the end of the grand campaign in Empire: Total War (I had completed the victory conditions 30 turns before the end of the game). It was a long, long slough as Sweden, moving through Russia, south through the Caucases into Kashmir and then shooting west through Pomerania, Bavaria and onto France. Empire is a giant game, encompassing the biggest map of the world so far in a Total War game (I actually got to fight a battle near my house in the midwest!). The idea of conquering all of it by the time alloted is pretty daunting, but once you get on a roll, entirely possible. I had little trouble with any of the enemy nations with the exception of Spain and England. England managed to keep my Swedish ships out of the water for decades at a time, and against Spain, I actually lost some major land battles before they finally succumbed to a three prong attack from France, Portugal and up from the Mediterranean.
Overall, Empire: Total War was a big step up from the graphically excellent, but rather mediocre Midieaval Total War 2, with major refinements to the campaign mode, the removal of the management of families and lineage, reduction of the importance of religion and missions from the pope or some governing body (I’m my own governing body dammit!). In the Grand Campaign, I felt a lot more free to hack through whatever part of the planet piqued my interest at the time, regardless of race, creed or religion. I love the fact that each of the nations speak in their own language— a really wonderful touch that I didn’t realize until I couldn’t understand anything my Swedish troops were saying on turn 1.
As for the real time battles, I found the engine to be more fun and more intense than anything in MTW2 as well, handling musket and pistol just as well as arrows and swords. The typical AI quirks fans of the series have learned to love after all these years are still around, making flanking and harrasment your best tools against an easily flustered AI. Sieges are still not very fun, and I would have to say they are worse than their Rome/Midieaval TW counterparts because they don’t follow what was going on during the period at all. Sieges during this time rarely went into initial assault, instead the attackers would build, over time, a massive mine and trench system around fortifications. Eventually, if left unmolested, the attackers would get bombards close enough to fire over the walls at which time the defenders would either surrender or prepare to receive 3 assaults through breaches, after which they could surrender with their colors. None of this is represented in TW: Empires and I feel that’s a grevious lack of attention to detail as well as simply not being very fun to play out.
We did finally get sea battles in this version and it’s something I am really looking forward to as Creative Assembly continues to revisit the series (Shogun next!). The sea battles are slow and tactical, but the first time you see an enemy’s magazine blow up all the build up is worth it. That said, most of the time I let the auto-fight figure out who won unless it was a major throw down.
As for the special people: Spies, Gentleman and Priests, I really didn’t do much with two of the three. Priests are necessary if you want the people that you just conquered to be happy by being converted to your religion, but they just sort of stand around. Gentleman give bonuses to research and production and can duel other Gentleman, but I really didn’t pay much attention to them other than using them as semi-spies here and there. Spies I used a great deal and were a key to success in most of the campaign, nothing new here from the early days of the series.
To conclude, Rome Total War is still my top dog in the 4X genre. Sure the graphics are no where near TW: Empires and the campaign game is certainly not as mature, but Rome just something about it that resonates with me. Possibly that the scale seems more appropriate, or the period is one I find entirely more compelling. Next on my list is Napoleon Total War, but that will have to wait until I upgrade my tired socket 939.