Rome Total War 2 initial feelings

I contemplated staying up until midnight to give it a start through but failed due to retinal burn on Saints Row 4 mostly.  I should have worked on my Netrunner decks or played a solo game of ASL or something instead of hitting the computer and burning at the eyes.   Rome is going to be quite a time suck so I best get started right away though right?

I’ve gotten a couple hours in entirely with the tutorial (which is actually a really cool mini-campaign against the Samnites) and the feel of the game already is better than Shogun, and by feel I mean the combat between units– it is amazing.  I don’t know if it’s just the way the Roman units fight (in this campaign it is very early Rome) but it is so much more visceral than the other versions of the game it’s shocking– units press together in a horrific mob and the slaughter commences.  It’s a gorgeous thing to behold.

Dense
Dense

I’ve just scratched the surface region–what am I looking forward to over all?  The last really good Total War game was Empire which was literally world spanning and had some fantastic combat.  Moving from a period of time when pikemen and cavalry charges were still viable forms of attack to the era of artillery domination was amazing to see.   While I liked Shogun 2– there was something about it that I just couldn’t get into.  Possibly it’s the whole Samurai thing that feels tired to me– all these dudes in their ornate lamellar armor fighting each other just seems so clean and controlled compared to the rest of the games (which is very Japanese in a way)–in Rome, there are a few bastions of civilization surrounded entire by teeming hordes of hunter gatherer tribes and barbarian nations, wherein Shogun, everyone is dressed…so nicely.  Also in Shogun, the battles seemed to go too fast– when two units hit one would rout extremely quickly compared to other games in the series.  This gave you little time to react: I found myself pausing a lot more than any other Total War game.   I was barely able to finish a campaign and only played multiplayer once.  Since Rome 2 is heir to the greatest strategy game ever made–what am I looking forward too?

  • Better graphics / animations  — this goes without saying and it’s already there
  • Bigger map /different stuff around — Shogun suffered because one clan was the next clan was the next clan– it all seemed the same.  After seeing some of the phalanx fighting in Rome 2, this seems absolutely impossible in the new game that things will be too small or samey.
  • Better AI in the campaign – this was my biggest gripe in Rome 1 and Barbarian Invasion.  The AI just wasn’t too smart and you could win the campaign really easily (especially as an island nation).  This has been getting vastly better in the newer games but always seems to need work
  • No skill trees for characters — these were lame in Shogun. We’ll see what happens in Rome 2.
  • Putting cities to the sword – due to the xenophobic nature of the period, the different societies weren’t too friendly to each other when conquering.  One thing I loved in Rome was the ability to put cities to the sword to gain max value and reduce population (since extra population is usually very unhappy with everything).  This allows control of revolutions as well as providing much needed cash.  While this may not be realistic (Caesar did this all the time in Gaul).
  • Better multiplayer — I’ve had issues connecting with my two friends that play the game for years now and it would be awesome if that were ameliorated forever anon.

Reviews so far have been positive, reviews of Total War players on reddit and the like have been extremely positive (knowing the burrs and all that naturally come with a Total War game) so here’s to 6 months of playing a single game on the computer!

Harley Fuck Fest

motorcycleI work near one of the busiest intersections in the city and there are Harley’s everywhere.  I’m in an open office so I get to hear people complaining and saying things like “fuck my life” and “I come back and there’s all this fucking noise outside” or “I should have stayed home to work with all the kids there — it would have been quieter.”  The worst thing about it is not the constant 1930’s technology bikes driving around with no mufflers, it’s the COP and ambulance sirens that blare out when some bullshit is happening— and it’s gone off twice and it’s only 10AM.

In terms of actual danger or getting beat up wandering around (which my mom seemed to think would happen)– there’s just no way as these people are fucking OLD.  I’d say that off their bikes, they wouldn’t be able to catch anyone running at all– or even be able to chase after someone.  Granted there are some big people that could punch you through a school, but pushing mid sixties as an average there’s not going to be a lot of sprinting after people to beat them from this crowd– though they are probably.

Saints Row IV initial thoughts

It is one of the greatest games ever made. At first it seems like more of the same from SR3 but shortly it proves to be something wholly different, terrible and awesome. I’ve been waiting for a game like this for MANY years (a fun open world superhero game) but had no idea it would come in this form of total insanity.

There will be some awful Co-op gameplay videos posted soon by maurice!bastard.

Gencon 2013 blatherings

Holy shit was it crowded. I’ve been there many years in a row (I think close to 20) and I have never, ever seen Gencon that crowded before.  All the parking lots were full, the entire con area was packed with people.  Normally you’ll see the same people around, the same security guards, the same cos-play nerds or larpers or insideout jelly doughnuts, but this year it was such a WAVE of humanity you’d never see the same people twice unless you went to the same type of regions in the gaming hall.

As this was Matt and Steve’s first time to the Con since it was in Milwaukee, I had some things to prove since I had been talking up Indy since it moved there– that it was and is far better than Milwaukee as a location for this large of a convention.  Milwaukee’s downtown is pretty but let’s face it, it’s got shitty hotels and it’s dangerous at night right in the area of the new convention center. What’s more, though I didn’t remember this much, Matt said that Milwaukee never welcomed Gencon as a city much, only tolerated it.

Indy is different for sure, the bars nearby all go into full fucking nerd mode when the con starts with odd menus and drinks. There seems to be a Warmachine bar and a Pathfinder bar–likely some others.  The people on the streets and in the attached mall (which is an actual mall, unlike the one in Milwaukee that is about as dead as you can get without being closed down) are confused by the gencon nerds, but not alarmed– they know there is a big ass nerd convention going on in the city and welcome it.  There are random gaming posters in shops, taxi’s hang dice from their rear view mirrors and so on.  All worshiping the nerd dollar descendant upon the town.

What’s more because the hotels are all connected (and quite nice) there is a massive and I mean massive party scene.  Remember the White Wolf parties circa 1996/97 at the Hilton with the kickboxing and tons of beers and drinks and chicks?  That’s going on every night of Gencon full on everywhere.

So what were we up to?  I got in late Thursday night and headed into the con messing around the crowded ass retailer hall until the 4PM Shadowfist tournament, which had a great turnout with 20 people.  I didn’t make the finals this year– but I played a REALLY crap deck and still pulled out a very lucky win in a game.   My other two Swiss games did not go well, but were fun.  I got to see what seems to be the trend after the endless big bruisers returning from the smoked pile of years hence:  endless big bruisers unturning and attacking over and over again.   Otherwise there was a TON of Ascended on the table this year compared to last. I counted four decks including mine.  After a poor showing in the last couple years for the transformed animals, that was great to see.  Mouth got to the final with his Bonechill deck but came in second.  We need to tune that fucker to win next year.  Matt’s deck was just not up to par and Steve’s relied on Infernal Army– while a big scary site-taker, is still basically a thug and got targeted for events or taken over more often than not.  Matt cornered some of the design team for Fist for awhile and gave them a probably undeserved earful about some of the issues with the game.  I guess I’d be happy if the Architects were back in the game and they didn’t have so many fucking NERD cards!!  Just slapping a nerd head on a previously created painting to fulfill a Kickstarter reward is not anyone’s idea of a card they want to look at.  Fuckn’ A.  What’s more, we encountered TWO decks where the player had centered their deck around a card with their picture on it.  This was terrible.  Otherwise, time will tell whether the new cards make a good effect on the game or if they are overpowered.  It certainly LOOKS like the dragons got a big boost.

Other than Shadowfist, we got in a few games of Seasons– which is excellent!  It’s in the Glory to Rome/Race  for the Galaxy vein, but the dice/action mechanic put it into the fun zone. While I wouldn’t say it’s better than Glory to Rome, I would play it over Race for the Galaxy and 7 Wonders any day (though both of those are excellent games as well).  Also we got in a horrible game of Eclipse where no one was attacking until the very end.  While I love the game, we’ve played so much I need a break from that one for awhile.

Shit that I saw.  My Little Ponies was fucking everywhere at the con.  For good reason, it’s a good show, but I think next year it will fucking EXPLODE even more.  There’s a CCG coming out that will likely be a Pokemon rip off (which is fine) that I’ll have to buy for my kids and I saw some odd mission based game. It’s certainly a franchise worth gaming up and while we look very much down upon the bronies from a high level and urinate– it IS a really good show for kids (and adults forced to watch it).  Even though it’s about female multihued ponies, the plotlines are excellent and much better than sitting through a five episode fight in Naruto…

A line at Fantasy Flight.  Yeah.. was this necessary?  They have some popular games for sure but a line? I think they are doing good work with the Star Wars license but… I am so fucking sick of the Star Wars license….let it go away again for a few years so we can like it again– it’s just been beaten to death.

King of Tokyo– I think the game is finally getting it’s due after a cult release as I saw it everywhere in the con and there was both a massive playset (with child sized monster stand ups) and a massive tournament going on.  This is a great game for beer and pretzels in the BANG vein and really good with the kids– even if they cannot read.

D&D Next? Where was it? Matt got the new book (which is chock full of art from the old sets) but I didn’t see anything special– especially compared to something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess–which is awful special (module called Fuck for Satan for instance).  I don’t know where WOTC are going to go with this next– but it’s nice to see all the Basic D&D and AD&D books reprinted beautifully after all these years.  Too bad AD&D fucking sucked.

Bolt Action.  I tried this out last year and I think it’s starting to get some traction.  There were five table setups this year for demos and the game looks great.  I splurged and filled out my 1000 point brits with a Cromwell and another infantry unit. I feel it’s a mash up of EPIC 40K and AT-43 and that’s a good thing.  So many tanks….

Here is my hoard of loots from the con.

genconscore13

New Cosmic Encounter expansion was probably the biggest score.  I picked up another box of On the Edge (10$) and the On the Edge survival book which from what I’ve heard is EXCELLENT shitter-reading materials.  Fist was cheap at the con this year.  I scored a box of Empire of Evil and a box of Critical shift for 60$ total.  If we are going to go Zman only for playing going forward, I needed these— and I still needed them.   I was looking for some Blood Wars but it was nowhere to be found.  Also, Dreamblade was in just a few nooks and crannies…if you were ever thinking of picking that shit up at all, the end is nigh and I bet in the next 4-5 years the prices for stuff starts climbing and climbing…

I did pick up some random stuff for Epic 40K– Razorbacks and Ork dreadnoughts.  I’m itching to get that played again.

It was a great con, much better than last year when I had that coughing crud people had for a couple months at a stretch and hadn’t slept for weeks.  It was all still a blur but that was due to self-imposed sleep deprivation and the demon drink.  I hope Matt, Steve and mouth can come along next year as we could all get into some Roleplaying games in addition to the other crap, which was sorely missed.  Even with 3 days at the con– it was not enough gaming!

Now we’re looking DIRECTLY down the barrels of Saints Row 4 and

Gencon 2013 prep

Gencon, a whirlwind of a day and a half (usually) of everything gaming– you really feel like you are at the center of the gaming world for a weekend and in a lot of ways, you are.  We’re going to have D&D NEXT on display, lots of stuff from Fantasy Flight, Ascension tournaments, a Shadowfist expansion around (for kickstarter people and lord knows whatever else is there for exposition and purchase.

This year I’m heading down Friday to hit the “Classic” Shadowfist tournament and there will be a ton of Wisconsin folks in there (by ton, I mean 6 or 7) expats and current residents of the horrible Walker “please international business, rape my state” regime.

Fist aside, I’d like to get in some games of Seasons, try out some miniature gaming (likely hit the AWESOME Bolt Action tables they had last year) and with Mouth, Matt and Fryburger all being at the con, this should be fairly legendary.

One thing about Gencon is that it’s very much what you make it.  You could walk around and around the vendor hall the whole weekend and feel lonely and fat and just overwhelmed with all the shit there for sale and all the fucking people talking, but the real deal is getting in and playing games you’ve never tried before, playing with friends you see only once a year and talking shit about various nerds and their hobbies.  Oh and drinking and ripping on star wars and getting fat.

List of stuff I’m looking for and going to play:

Various Dark Elf warhammer bits

Another box or two of On the Edge core

Lamentations of the Flame Princes modules (Fuck for Satan, the God that Crawls and Better than Any Man especially)

Visit Bully Pulpit and tell them Carolina Death Crawl is an awesome game.

Exalted – pester them about 3rd edition and then stand around and talk to my players about the 2nd edition campaign we haven’t touched for years but all jones for (except the combat)

Play some Cortex or FATE (to make sure we are doing it right)

Play some Lamentations of the Flame Princess (i.e. OD&D)

Ascension – a percentage break down

SabeeI’ve long been a proponent that Ascension is simply an exercise in random card drawing with a random outcome for the winners. We play this a lot on the iphone/ipad and while I could never imagine putting up with the complete mess of cards that this one likely generates (in comparison with the excellent iphone app that cleans all that shit up for you) but, I now have over 210 multiplayer games under my belt and I can say with 100% pseudo-statistical confidence: Ascension is a random game. Your percentage chance of winning any game of Ascension equals 1 (you) divided by the number of players.  3-man games you will win 33% of the time, 4-man games, 25%, etc. I am not a good player, but I’m not a terrible player either, I know what cards are good and will win you the game if grabbed early or grabbed late, but I don’t use any tactics, I don’t watch what other players play and I don’t really pay much attention except to execute a singular deck combo I’ve started at the beginning of a game (like draw lots of cards or kill tons of stuff).I’ve seen a lot of combos, but there are some I certainly have not seen. The fact is, regardless of 100% knowledge of combos, you don’t know if you will have access to those cards that you feel you need to win. That said, let’s look at my stats:

2 player: 42 wins, 44 losses. This is statistically 50%.

3 player: 16 wins, 47 losses: 26% wins.  this should be near 33%  where 1 out of every 3 games, I win! (yay!).

4 player:  13 wins 59 losses.  So here we have it being statistically low at 18% of wins, it should be 25%.  I’m thinking if we had a bigger data set (for me) it would even out.

So what I’m going to do in the next few months is try to get good at Ascension– if that’s even possible.   Playing with all the cards in the game (on iphone) and actually paying attention to what I’m grabbing, what other people are doing to actually use some tactics.

I’d like to see all stats for all players that have ever played– I think that would be just as telling as the percentages likely match those above.   So here we go, I will actively be trying to kick your ass at this point to try to disprove that this is just like a game of War– totally random winning.