Last night in LoL

I don't really have anyone to swap LoL stories with at the moment, so I guess I should put them here for posterity and because they amuse me. They might also amuse someone else, who knows.

Anyway, as all stories need to begin somewhere I might as well start at the start.

The other day I was playing a game and...

Minds wandering

I know, I know, I've had no time for the blog lately. Good thing no one actually reads it eh?

Anyway, since my last post I have been working, very slowly, on an alpha legion force. Although that's pretty nominally alpha legion, it's pretty much just a paint scheme. I'm kind of disappointed that the book doesn't have some sort of legion rules. Mostly because 'Veterans of the Long War' is perfect for a Space Marines 'Chapter Tactics' style treatment. Still at least it has cultists. And an IG detachment featuring marbo and vets might fit nicely with some of the stuff chaos can field.

Overall I like the book though. It does seem to have a bit of a lack of imagination in it, and I fear it will turn out to be another 'nid codex, overshadowed by the codices that follow and never quite on par with what came just before it, but I like the art and a lot of the stuff you can do with it, zombie hordes, Dark mechanicus, cannon fodder backed uip by elites, hordes of power armour, tiny elite forces. There's a lot of room for theming in the book. Which makes the lack of legion themes sting just a little more. Also I like the background, it's moving back towards the bitter anti-hero style which I've always been a fan of. The stuff about the younger renegades in particular seems to make it clear that they turned to chaos mostly out of desperation, in a universe where no one else would help them. I like that kind of motivation for my villains. Villains who believe they are right are just that bit more believable.

The army I've been putting together so far consists of chaos bits from 2 dark vengeance sets, a helldrake, a squad of chaos marines, a landraider, a sorceror lord and some terminators are the basis of it. I'm working my way through painting and assembling those bits, but it's slow going because the light in my apartment is crap for painting in and I haven't been home before dark since sometime last summer.

I have a few 1850 lists I'd like to toy with out of the new book, but with little time for hobby comes even less time for games. Coupled with being a general nerd, I also get distracted by other things.

Prominent at the moment in my list of distractions is League of Legends. So far I'm enjoying it far more than I initially thought I would and have gotten quite hooked on it. I'm surprised because I never really played MOBA's before, aside from a small handful of dota matches at lan parties, most of which I sat out to go play sins of a solar empire instead, I've never even been massively exposed to the genre.

I'm thinking shorter more stream of consciousness posts like this might be a good way forward for me specifically because they do not take long. Although my grammar and spelling probably suffer. I think I'd rather just keep an output going though.

Robot Wars

Many wargamers will have fond memories of either epic 40k, one of it's variants, or Battletech. Games which extensively featured what I affectionately term 'Giant Stompy Robots', although technically none of them are robots. So they may be as excited as I was to discover mechwarrior online. A first person 'Giant Stompy Robot Wars' game. Where do I sign?

I got into the beta and have been occasionally running around it since. I find it very fun, although I am terrible at it and often make major mistakes. It's not very newbie friendly because it's match making doesn't seem to discriminate between random newbies and organised veterans, but the weight classes seem pretty well balanced and one on one matches usually feel like skill is the deciding factor. Players willing to spend money on the game get a number of advantages, but I'm not sure any of them can be described as 'pay to win' yet, as the major advantage seems to be being able to buy equipment and mechs to specialise your role without having to grind in-game currency for ages first. There's nothing inaccessible except a single centurion chassis, of which the main unique attributes seem to be a slightly modified head and a custom paint job. Making ~100k per win however, grinding for a 9.5 Million C-bill Atlas will take patience even I don't have, which is why I opted for my first non-trial mech to be a Jenner.

This is the story of my last match with it.

6th ed. First Impressions

So I picked up the sixth ed. rulebook. I haven't finished reading it yet, but I have to say I am very impressed with it so far. The thing is huge. The artwork is very impressive, the amount of background info looks to be pretty significant, and what I've read so far puts me in mind of the 2nd ed. Codex Imperialis. The rules themselves seem pretty clear. A pretty radical overhaul still based around the basic structures introduced with third edition. Vehicles have received a lot of attention, they seem to integrate better with the rest of the book. A lot is being made about how powerful flyers are going to be, but I'm not actually too concerned by it. I think it will shake out ok, although they will certainly be popular.

I'm going to do a more detailed review once I've formed a final opinion of the thing. It may not be for some time though as the thing is a bit of a beast.

It doesn't look to have helped the 'nids as much as I feel they need to be truly competitive, but I'm not going to miss what I never had too much, and reserve final judgement to seeing how the game actually plays out. The lack of allies for them is a bit saddening, as I would have liked to do a few genestealer cult conversions. However my longterm plans have always been to have Imperial guard and daemons detachments to add to my chaos space marine force so now I can start work on them without having the 'I'm starting a new army' discussion with my better half.

Which is nice. :-D

Care and feeding of genestealers

I love genestealers. I think they are amazing. Now the tyranid codex has some serious problems, and genestealers suffer from many of them, but they remain the second best there are at what they do. And what they do is not very nice.

My favoured set up most recently has been large squads, usually of 20, with less upgrades in order to keep them affordable. There is very little in the game that a squad of 20 genestealers can not kill, they don’t often need the bonus’.

Let’s do some maths:

Writing your own background: Rule One

Well it’s over a year since I wrote it, but it’s been (just about) my most popular post (not that I get a lot of traffic here. I don’t like selling myself much. Should I change that? Maybe I will.) so I figure it’s time I continued the series. I’ve tried to write it a few times, but always found it difficult to write anything that wasn’t just repeating the importance of Rule Zero.

Once more I’m going to reiterate two things: Thing the first is that I’m an enthusiast, I read and write this stuff willingly and often, though I share little. In part because I often delete it, in part because I often keep it fairly bare-bones unless I actually move the project into the miniatures side of things and in part because of thing the second. Which is that I am not an authority on the subject. My own scribblings are often dire in the extreme and I know it. I know it because I am aware of these rules and often use them when commenting or thinking about a piece, be it my own or someone else's.

Anyway, Rule One is simple: Question your idea.

Void Stalker quick review

Void stalker finishes off Aaron Dembski-Bowdens Night Lords trilogy. I've gushed about Mr. Dembski-Bowden before and doubt anyone wants me to rehash his praises so I'll stick to the book. The book is (again) fantastic. It is everything the books beforehand have been and more. The action is swift, brutal and unrelenting. Each and every night lord is in his own way the tragic hero of hundreds of years of war and betrayal. They are monsters clad in the images of men, but they are also, weirdly, men clad in the images of monsters. An entire cast of Frankenstein's monsters, damned by the flaws of their creation as much as by the flaws of their character. This is especially true for Talos. The writing is suberb. If you like gothic horror and know what a space marine is, this series is the best thing the black library have put out. I don't know if there's much else I can say without spoiling anything, but it's one of the first books in a longtime to leave me wanting more despite a fairly definitive and cathartic ending.