Monday, September 29, 2014

Cleaning up... Staw, WarmaHordes and the Basement of Doom (tm)

So, looking around…  Seems that the STAW group is dying off locally.  Darn shame, the game is overall quite good.  Yes, there are some stupidly overpowered units (ships and cards) and some combos that just break the game in silly ways…  The “Collective” OP events were certainly not helpful as they were clearly NOT play tested in anything like a realistic fashion.  But at a local level at least I think we’ve gotten around a lot of this by tending to play in a more “faction pure” fashion (not EVERY ship needs to be Captained by Jean Luc Picard).  The most recent one we played out last night.  No one actually beat the scenario.  The sheer stupidity of a 12 dice attack with re-rolls meant that the only ship to actually survive was one with a broken and silly combo on it (Weyoun/Varel to “discard Varel to cancel an attack, but Weyoun can disable to prevent the discard, re-enable and repeat as necessary”).  They still failed to actually kill the bloody Borg.  Last Month’s was actually a decent one, if a bit uninspiring…  Do as much damage with your Fleet before time runs out or you all die.  Not a whole lot of incentive to mess with each other, and the games were actually kind of interesting seeing just how much damage your Fleet COULD throw out if you build with only that in mind.  Yes J  I did a LOT better on that one…  But back on target, hoping to get in touch with some of the folks who have quit the game for various reasons and see if a few others might be interested in playing…  Scheduling is of course an issue as this is really a small (and currently dying) fringe game J…  But it really does not take up all that much space in the grand scheme…  So, I guess I start posting on the Facebook groups to see if interest and players cannot be drummed up…

Getting a lot more into Warmachine, and I have to say it is a much more interesting game for me at the moment than 40K.  Perhaps it is the perspective of taking several years off and coming back, but I honestly think that the system is far more balanced and the company producing it is FAR more responsive to issues of unbalance or questions/FAQ’s.  For the most part the local group is very low key and quite relaxed…  Always a few power gamers in just about every competitive group of course, and this is no exception.  But overall, WAY more fun, even when being smacked off the table by say, a Skorne build that was built for maximum efficiency…  Dusted off my Cygnar, but to be honest I am FAR more interested in the Rhulic (Dwarven) forces.  Traded them off when last I left the game…  Ironically for 40K stuff and Confrontation IIRC….  So now trading Confrontation stuff and Magic cards for the rebuilding efforts.  Surprisingly already a good part of the way there now.  Several “new” things since last I had this army, but overall a fairly small force, being Dwarves and all J…   Probably have to proxy some of the things like the Ogrun Assault Corps before dropping the $70 on what looks like it could very well be a mediocre unit at best for instance.  The Hammerhold Forge Guard (think plate armored Dwarves with two handed hammers), and will probably be on my “eventually” purchase list unless I can arrange a favorable trade, and the Colossal looks “neat”…  Saying that though, I am quite hesitant to drop that kind of money on a big “centerpiece” unit if it is not going to get played a whole lot.  I HAVE several of those already for 40K with the Imperial Knight being the only one that I suspect will ever really be one to see a LOT of play time.  The Spartan and Warhound class Titan are both VERY niche pieces that look nice, but really how often would I use them?  Yeah, almost never.  So, should anyone make a serious offer on the Spartan at least I would be VERY tempted to sell/trade it off since it is currently completely bare resin and unassembled.  Brun and Lug are headed my way thanks to some Confrontation Kelts, and I think that I have the basics for a pretty decent force after everything gets here…  Well, a fun force at least as I suspect that I will have some trouble dealing with some of the stuff out there.  But per my usual style, at the very least they’ll know they were in a fight as the Dwarves tend to die hard…


Basement cleaning continues, albeit slowly…  Still finding strange and sometimes interesting things down there.  Trying to get things organized and actually throw out some of the old and useless things these days.  Someday I actually hope to finish at least a big part of the basement as the workout room is pretty much just framed in, and laying down some sort of carpet type flooring and insulating/putting up a celling.  Been a LONG time since I worked in the “construction” area, and frankly I was never particularly good at it…  Built cabinets for a while and then houses between College and finding a real job thanks to one of my house mates (Steve) being a Foreman at a local construction company…  Pay was not great, work conditions were also “not great”, but WAY better (in both areas) than my time in the Army with the added bonus of fewer people actively trying to kill you.  But it kept me paying rent and you know, eating when times were pretty tough.  Took me some time to get some things figured out and frankly decompress into a VERY different reality being a civilian after…  Not really something I talk about, but it was such a stark and massive difference that I had a pretty hard time adjusting back to life here in Champaign/Urbana…  Probably took a LOT longer than it should have because I made a number of really poor choices, but made for some interesting stories I think J…  Just really needed a kick to get myself out of Joe’s (local bar where I worked), and back to “real life”.  J  And now things are so very different….  Amazing wife, kids and am moving into IT Management with a career that has lasted for 15 years here at the University alone…  Never would have thought it possible back then… :-)  All in all, things are going quite well...

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