Friday, June 29, 2012

Game of Thrones LCG: Stark vs Targaryen rematch

This time with the proper rules for the most part.

We expected lots of death and treachery and we got it. In the end House Stark made a huge comeback from being down 11-4 to win the game 15-13 by the use of Jon Snow and Eddard Stark to win challenges and claim power.

Some interesting things happened in this game that I did to really make the Queen of Dragons angry.

Early in the game I was getting killed when the Targaryen player managed to get all three dragons out and on my case early on. I was getting hammered.

The dragons three

I was desperate at this point so I let my opponent build up and I quietly quit playing anymore strong characters. What I was about to do was a last ditch effort to wipe the slate clean. On my next turn I revealed the nastiest Plot Card in my deck.


Everyone died, and the Dragons were out of play for now. I quickly rebuilt my forces and managed to start to crawl back into the game. I manged to get Jon Snow and Eddard Stark out and then I was claiming more and more power each turn. The Targaryens, now weakened with no Dragons to do the nasty Stealth Keyword business, started getting drained.

Using my military might I won challenge after challenge and claimed a power each time I did. He was soon joined by his father and after that things were looking pretty grim for my opponent.



All in all a great game. Finally getting the rules right with challenges and deaths made a huge difference. It still took a while and I am sure we could play faster but the game requires a ton of thought due to the complexity of how the cards work together. We were using cards worked in with expansions decks so that we went from a deck size of 45 to 57.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Even if your not playing it right...play it: Game of Thrones

So I sat down for another Game of Thrones Living Card Game matchup last night playing this time House Baratheon. The Baratheon deck I have learned features a LOT of RENOWN abilities. If you win a challenge of ANY type with a RENOWN character you get a power point. As you may or may not know, 15 power points wins the game.

Robert Baratheon alone has a DOUBLE RENOWN ability so the fat soon to be King is rather nasty if he wins a challenge. (Take not that is not his KING card, that is PRE King)


Still trying to get all the rules down we actually finished this game this time around and I lost horribly. While most the rules were done right we ended up with a whole slew of characters on the playing table that should have, if played properly, been killed or at least removed from the game.

The major rule we did wrong was thinking that if you chose not to defend a Military Challenge, you simply gave up a power point and no one got killed. This is entirely wrong and I quote from the book (pay attention to the fine details)

"Unopposed Challenges: During the “Resolve” step of any challenge, if the attacker wins the challenge, and the defender had a total STR of 0 (or no defending characters), then the attacker claims 1 bonus power for his or her House from the power pool. This bonus power is in addition to all other effects of winning a challenge." So, if the attacker wins the challenge (which is virtually guaranteed if the defender does not declare defenders), the defender has to resolve the claim effects. You cannot "side step" the claim effect (killing characters for a military challenge) by not declaring defenders.

Oops. So yeah, throw up a token defense or do something. Otherwise you will give your opponent free power point AND still lose someone.

I played against a House Targaryen deck and the stealth function is brutal. Basically every turn the stealth feature on a card lets that player pick one of my defenders and claim them illegible for defense. Thusly the House Targ player bypassed me each turn and slowly sucked my Power Points from me. Game ended rather swiftly. Now I know though that a Military Deck CAN be quite nasty as SOMEONE is always going to die at least. Maybe even more depending on the CLAIM value on the Plot Card.

This game has endless possibilities and is really one of the deeper card games I have played. Maybe since the Decipher Star Wars game.






Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Infinity June Releases: Yu Jing Shaolin Warrior Monks

Pretty awesome collection for the month of June in the new Infinity releases:



Summoner Wars heads to the App Store

 And it looks DAMN good.

"Friday afternoon Playdek announced that Summoner Wars has been submitted to the app store. That means we could very well see the app this week."

via http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/11491/ios-news-flash-summoner-wars-submitted-to-the-app

Trailer below:


Monday, June 25, 2012

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion mega game and loss

I started in on the latest edition to Sins of a Solar Empire yesterday after playing more Warhammer Invasion LCG with Crabby Gamer and 4 hours later I had nothing but a demolished empire and a loss to show for it.

I played the TEC Rebel faction and was literally jumping in without knowing what the hell I was doing. By the end of the game I had a total grasp of the Black Market, the interface and more as the tutorial really did not do much for me. For example logistic points, starbases, waypoints all that fun stuff was really glossed over in a less than stellar tutorial. The best way to learn is to jump in.

My game started off well as I built colony ships and quickly expanded. I stretched to almost every planet in the random small system I had the game generate.

This is when my problems started however. I neglected my fleet and things became way too expensive. I spent too much money increasing and improving every planet and just clicking everything in research. My computer AI opponent was set to easy and not too aggressive so I had a lot of time to expand and learn the game. I even got a Titan built.

Around the third hour...yes 3 hours...I ran into a Pirate base asteroid. I warped in with my Titan and saw this:


Holy shit. I stayed as long as I could but my lack of understanding the technology tree had me with weak Titan armor. My shields went down and I got my ass out of there.

I had been playing the entire game with one battle cruiser (now level 5) and one Titan, just warping around killing small neutral ships. I guess that time was over.

I quickly set about building more Cruisers and ignoring Frigates altogether. A colossal waste of money that would haunt me later.

I came back and warped in and decimated the Pirate fleet then took over his base. After that I explored the systems star and warped to the planet after that. At that point I found the Computer AI. Sitting tight and hunkered down in his own system. Not expanding and acting dumb like more RTS AI's do. I had set him for that after all so that was my fault. Upon warping in I discovered his entire fleet and his Titan. I lost 3 cruisers and my Titan was almost again destroyed. I had awakened the beast.

Licking my wounds I sold my overabundance of minerals and crystals on the black market, crashing it for a bit. I enhanced my research toward all military and then built an engagement fleet. I lined up to warp into the computers home system again:


It was not enough and even though I took out his Titan, I was soundly defeated and limped off. By then it was too late and the computer AI was awake and pissed. He immediately warped out his entire fleet and we had a huge climatic battle around the sun. I lost everything and quickly built another Titan with the last of my economic reserves. In the meantime the computer player was warping from system to system seizing my planets and making my life hell.

After one final stand where I could not take out his cruisers my last Titan blew up and I had to resign. 4 hours...and I lost in the end. But it was one hell of a ride. On the upside I did get 5 Steam Achievements. One of them was mining over 10,000 mineral resources.





Sunday, June 24, 2012

Hillarious typical MMO gamer thinking

On this post here:

http://www.levelcapped.com/2012/06/23/ive-got-a-secret/

Summary:

"I have 30 days to waste why not throw a company that is releasing a shitty game some money because I am bored."

And so the trend continues. Sheeple like MMO bloggers tossing away free money to MMO companies that release garbage like the Secret World will further reinforce the notion that it is ok to do this.

Here is a hint: you are not cool if you post about playing every MMO on the market. It makes you look like a bandwagon jumper and no one will take you seriously. Just like 99% of the MMO bloggers out there shouldn't be.

Here are some ideas:

Spend your time level capping in any of the 5 games you probably quit at level 20 because you hated grouping and then proceeded to write some stupid post about not being able to solo every MMO all the time and how it was unfair.

Play some boardgames

Go see a movie

Better yet if you want throw your 49.99 at me and I can go get some strippers. The memories will last longer than any 10 minutes spent in The Secret World.

Secret World thoughts here: http://1angrygamer.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-secret-world-mmo-sucks.html

Empire of the Blazing Sun paint scheme test

Finally got around to painting the first few ships of my Dystopian Wars fleet. Decided to go with an Army Painter green primer and then pick out the details with red, black, silver, snakebite leather and some brass. After that I simply applied a liberal wash with one of the 6 bottles of Devlan Mud I saved before the Games Workshop paint switch over. What came out I can accept. I want my fleet to not be too flashy and a little less elegant than some people paint theres. Below are pics

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Dystopian Wars and 5 pounds of Steampunk goodness

The shipment came in and I managed to display some of the goodies:





It's not a satchel...its a fanny pack!

40k Collector's Edition brings out the fashionista in Space Marine players. You know Space Marines. The same army but with a different color that GW uses as an excuse to charge you 41 dollars for a new Codex?

Yeah THOSE Space Marines.

But why spend your hard earned money on GW's over priced Finecast with Bubbles when you can do it looking very fashionable with this uber gay Satchel around your shoulder. Wear it with pride 40K players...you just dropped $123 on something THAT stupid:


Friday, June 22, 2012

More Warhammer Invasion Card Game, Dystopian tokens

Played another 2 hour slugfest of Warhammer Invasion the LCG from Fantasy Flight Games last night. How is it that the card game is more fun to play than the miniatures game? While a standard miniatures game of Warhammer Fantasy usually consists of: line up across board, march to middle and collide, I find the Warhammer Invasion nuances and tactics very fulfilling. Other than getting walloped by Dwarves our games have been very close and last nights was no exception. I played a allied deck with High Elves and Lizardmen and my opponent went straight out Dark Elves.

 Crabby Old Gamer thinks that Dark Elves may suck: http://chicagolandwargamer.blogspot.com/2012/06/dark-elves-suck.html

As the game ramped up I got a few breaks and had so many resources out that he finally just could not stop me. He conceded with 6 damage on 2 of his 3 walls and the end was near.

Also in the mail I got my Dystopian Wars templates and tokens from Laser Dream Works, a small company that makes some really nice steampunk counters for the game. Pics below

http://www.laserdreamworks.com/Steampunkgames.html

I have ordered the Lord of the Rings Co Op LCG and Game of Thrones LCG also. Fantasy Flight is making a killing off me this month.

A Descent 2.0 teaser trailer has been posted as well. I am throwing so much information at you that the average reader may not be able to comprehend the awesomeness of what is about to transpire.

Warhammer Invasion Pics






Dystopian Wars Templates and tokens

Descent 2.0 trailer:

Combat Mission: Fortress Italy

I am a huge Combat Mission fan and they are taking this lastest version to Italy for the first time ever. Battlefront has released a teaser trailer for it

http://youtu.be/YZ4XalhgOn0

Fortress Italy is a new "family" of Combat Mission games covering the Allied struggle to knock Italy out of the Second World War. This initial release deals explicitly with the battle for Sicily and sets the groundwork for future additions to simulate the hard fighting in the rugged terrain of "Europe's underbelly" up until the war's end in 1945.



Thursday, June 21, 2012

Chicago area Infinity Tournament 7/28/2012

Being put on by some friends of mine this will be held at Games Plus in Mount Prospect IL, U S AND A.


Here are the details and a link to the official boards:

http://www.infinitythegame.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=11182&highlight=tournament
  • 250 point ITS Tournament
  • Date: July 28th 2012
  • Place: Games Plus
  • 101 West Prospect Avenue
  • Mount Prospect, IL
  • Time: Sign in starts at 10:30 AM with first round starting at 11AM
  • Format: Two 250 point lists and three rounds. You must bring a copy of each of your lists for the judges. Any scenarios and scoring will be revealed at the event. All standard ITS rules apply.
  • Entry fee: $10.00


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Why the Secret World MMO sucks

More of the same I am afraid. But only worse due to Funcom's rushing it out the door. People will never learn. They just jump from one MMO to another and spend money like idiots. Of course you will always have so called "MMO Bloggers" that think every game is awesome but what can you do but ignore their lack of experience on such matters. Most bloggers just praise every game to get in good with the industry. Dont want to hurt people's feelings now do we? What a joke.



Lets encapsulate everything right here:

Overall, the combat is really, really boring. The combat mechanics are either put five pips on a target and then do a finisher or put five pips on yourself and do a finisher.
 
While playing it hardlocked my system, upon reboot I was bluescreening on boot. That was fun fixing... 

Creating a new character crashed every time before I could finish it. Cutscenes suddenly didn't have any dialogue. None of these issues existed the first beta, so typical Funcom lack of polish and total ineptitude regarding patching exists in Secret World.

They also showed a sample of the cash shop, yes, a cash shop in a game you're paying $15/mo for. The majority of it is all clothing items, which you might think hey that's fine, it's just cosmetic right? Well if you want a leather jacket you're either going to be farming a couple MILLION of the in-game Secret World bucks or shelling out real cash, so it seems like they're trying to strong-arm people into buying their clothes on the cash shop... in a pay to play game.
 
The investigation missions had you hunting down clues, some of them needing real life research (unless assholes in chat spoiled it for you, or you were lazy and googled the walkthrough) The thing is... there were 3 of them in the first beta area and they were completely disabled in the last beta. The MAJORITY of quests are kill/fetch quests
 
Save your money. It will be Free2Play eventually. I firmly believe the people buying the game and these "lifetime" subscriptions are merely subsidizing the game development costs with the overall goal to go free2play.

They break things each patch, fix it and break something else.

It has some good ideas, and some of it's even interesting. But the UI, laginess, repeat broken/fixed/broken bugs, and general quirkiness of the game gets really old really fast.

I wouldn't buy the game because Funcom has a history of bug filled releases and this game looks to be no different, especially with the release being only weeks away and it being as glitchy as it is.

Plus they keep nerfing or locking things due to PVP, and that stuff absolutely drives most MMO players insane. I expect it to keep happening as more and more people use exploitative combos and even more people complain. Lots of people spoke about basically one-shotting people in PVP... harken back to Age of Conan decapitation insta-kills.

I am wondering what it will take for Funcom to change their ways at this point....third MMO is much like the others (deficient at release compared to other MMOs released by similarly well known devs...it'd be an awesome FIRST MMO for a new company but a poor third offering from a company with a history of problematic MMOs). Could be good, but it'll take another year post-release probably to get it somewhat stable (not so much crashing as more "fixed" and working properly game wise).

Dystopian Wars faction breakdowns

Everyone around the web has their own two cents to throw in about Dystopian Wars faction types and how they play. I culled the best from forums around the globe and condensed them into a single posting on my dual Infinity/Dystopian Wars forums so that people can easily read what the factions offer.

I am looking at picking up the French next after I fully paint and get my Empire of the Blazing Sun built. After all the French have battleships that can TAKE TO THE AIR.

http://thewarrealm.org/infinity/index.php?topic=38.0




Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Warhammer 40k and the joke that is 6th edition pricing

Hilarious

75 bucks for a poorly written rulebook. There is more however. Other editions range upwards to 130 dollars. Game ships June 30th and I could care less. The trend of GW sucking money from the players of their less than mediocre games and then giving little in return to loyal (albeit some stupid sheep like) purchasers continues as they ramp up the ass fucking wallet pounding machine for this version of 40k. We can expect another round of poorly updated FAQ's, long delays in codexes and more price increases as well as predictable gameplay.

A version I am sure to be dominated with ridiculous flyers and artillery pieces on a 6x4 board and totally out of scale. GW fanboys will gobble this up though. That is just what they do.

More prices here: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/06/breaking-6th-edition-prices-and-items.html


Product Name    IncludesDatePriceMaterial
Warhammer 40k: Rulebook440pp  Hardback Book   30-Jun   $74.25   Book









Monday, June 18, 2012

Close up view of Empire of the Blazing Sun models

Some close up views of the Bunker, Squid and Fighter Bombers mentioned in the previous post.

Each model comes with a stat card as well. Very good quality of models.





Dystopian Wars

Well I finally decided to commit to Dystopian Wars after a year of going back and forth and trying to figure out what system I wanted to replace Warhammer with. Along with Infinity I have now collected both my favorite miniature games and will start playing them in earnest. Dystopian Wars features fluff, rules and tactics I like in a concise system with great looking models. The start of my Empire of the Blazing Sun army came in today and it consisted of the mechanical squid, a blister of bombers and a island based bunker complex which is HUGE. The game encompasses land sea and air combat during a Steampunk Victorian era setting.

The morale of the story is this kids: don't pick a game you don't like just because a lot of people play it. I hear this time and time again on podcasts where people settle for a miniatures game because it is popular where they LIVE. Fuck that. Start your own groups. Get to know people. Get out there and organize things. Don't settle for Games Workshop garbage just because they provide stores to play their overpriced DRECK in. If your current club doesn't branch out and is stale or won't think outside the box then move to a new box.

On another side note no Tannhauser this weekend instead we opted to play Warhammer Invasion Card Game. I lost with Empire against Orcs and I then lost quickly to the Dwarves with Chaos.



 

Friday, June 8, 2012

Tannhauser

Going to be playing this next weekend...FINALLY. Been a long time in the making but I have wanted to get into this game big time for a while.

I have the Operation Novgorod expansion, the Core Set and the Equipment Cards.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Diablo 3 close combat wizard

So while my blog has been decidedly Diablo 3 oriented lately I have tried in vain to play SOME miniature games but failed. Traffic yesterday kept me from Infinity Wednesday so I turned around and went home and drank whiskey. My other favorite pastime.

So my Wizard in Diablo 3, while still a young one, has been using what I like to call a suicide bomb build. I use chain lightening (or as they call it Electrocute but we all know what the fuck it really is) and I run into packs of mobs, activate diamond skin (with rune) and then wave of force blast them all over the screen. On the way back I slam Electrocute or Ray of Frost mercilessly until all monsters are dead.

So far this has worked very well but make sure you stack up on a little vitality. The experience point bonuses for mass kills and carnage are through the roof and look quite gory at the same time.


Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Diablo 3 new drop rates in patch 1.0.3

As you can see, players who would rather murder monsters 4x as fast in Inferno Act I can do so knowing they have a chance at amazing items, and players who want a challenge can kill in Acts III and IV in Inferno and be rewarded with a higher drop rate.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Wednesday Infinity

Things are underway to get some Infinity in on Wednesday night. I refuse to play only Games Workshop games anymore due to their science fiction game sucking (40k) and the fact that their prices have just driven me out of their titles. I have my lizardmen army for Fantasy but that is all I will be collecting. There are just too many other good games out there to play to keep throwing money at a company that cannot even update FAQ's.

So Wednesday I have a 200 point battle I will be using Combined Army forces for the most part. My friend has already started painting up terrain and getting ready. I have a lot of work to do since Diablo 3 has taken all my miniature time lately.

A good battle report on the NOVA Open is posted over on Remote Presence:

http://remotepresence.blogspot.com/2012/06/nova-open-infinity-game-day.html


Friday, June 1, 2012

Coming to grips with the Witch Doctor

So most of my alts in Diablo III are onto Act 2 except for my demon hunter EmoStar. I am finally getting my Witch Doctor up to speed and he is coming into his own at level 15. The main tactic I take is throw as much shit as you can at the enemy and hide behind a wall or around the corner in dungeons.

I use no snare spell but instead go for maximum summons. My hotbar is as follows:


Since that screenshot I have also added Zombie Charger in spot 3. So thats 3 dogs, toads and a stream of zombies at the enemy. Add to that jars of jumping spiders and it is quite a bit for the enemy to handle. Using this lineup I breezed through the end of Act 1.

I had a slight issue with the Butcher and had to swap in for grasping dead with an eel rune on it to kill him due to how much he moved around and forced me to stay at range. The Zombie Charger is cool but the range sucks. I tried to keep the butcher off screen and just chuck spiders at him. I hardly ever use my blowdart to be honest.


The Witch Doctor is starting to grow on me but I want him to summon cooler things. I miss the Necromancer lets be honest. A demon would be nice.