Well, another Gen Con over and done… Was a LOT better than last year for me with
us actually going and staying Thursday-Sunday.
Might want to go Wednesday to Sunday next year, but this was great
really… Played in a few tournaments Friday
in the Star Trek Attack Wing system…
Went quite well overall, but the last game I played on the top table in
the finals really highlighted why the game very nearly died in our area, and
the number of things that are really wrong with the game overall. Played against a completely legal, but definitely
broken build containing all of the things to skirt limitations that were put in
place, and using some of the REALLY poorly written cards for the game. “Pocket Dreadnaughts” with a shuttle docking
to bring over more Captains, cards, etc. to bring the main ship up over the 50
point limits put in place… Completely
legal of course, but a REALLY horrible idea from WizKids to even put out such a
piece not long after acknowledging the issues in the game and correcting it
with their tournament format. The main
damage piece was the Pegasus deploying a Borg mine that exploded and damaged
everything within range 1-3 when it gets his…
The Pegasus as deployed here was completely immune to the mines
(Cardassian CPT, 2x Fed specialized shields for a -4 dice)… It killed the only 2 things of mine to die
with it being “an attack, but out of the turn sequence”, so almost all of the
normal defenses are ignored due to yet another…
Let’s call it “poorly written” card and its interaction with the game
itself… The game was the least fun I had
there easily. The player was fine, not
obnoxious at all, just playing a very different game than I was with me playing
a “fun” faction pure fleet and him playing a cut throat all-stars fleet using
as many of the loopholes as possible. Mind, there WAS money on the line with the
prizes retailing at least for $90+ in total if you took the top spot… So, I should have expected it at some point J… So, ended up doing well, he was frankly
surprised I actually nearly killed his uber DN with my “inferior” fleet focusing
fire into it… The mines with no defense
possible were simply too much to deal with for my support ships that were built
to trade fire in a conventional action and do well…
But I contrast this with the Star Wars “X-Wing” game… Almost identical game really, just that FFG
has a MUCH better grip on their game overall and have shown a willingness to
actually errata and update their stuff in reaction to what happens when they
release something that has an unexpected effect later on… Waves are also VERY different with X-Wing
just coming up on wave 7 and STAW hitting 18 soon? Not even including their prize only ships,
there are simply so many things out there and with WizKids… Let’s call it “lax” approach to testing and
reaction to broken things… Well, it is a
very stark contrast. I wound up winning
one of the new ships for X-Wing, and look forward to playing it or pieces from
the pack Sunday in the last of the Summer tournaments for X-Wing at Titan… Guessing that there will be a very different
look and feel to some of the builds with new things finally hitting… Different things, but nothing really broken I
think… The game is extremely well
balanced with no one build being unbeatable or even really all that hard for
certain other things to deal with… And
with the Gen Con announcement of what is in Wave 8, a LOT more excitement. If you’ve seen the recent “Star Wars: Rebels”
series, the ships are I think mostly from that…
The “Ghost” for Rebels, Inquisitor’s TIE, etc… Should be interesting, but… FFG has their stuff coming ni via ship, and
Wave 7 was supposed to be out months ago but for the port issues… Wave 8 is set for “late 2015”, so some time
in 2016 perhaps? And their “Armada” game
is actually picking up steam and I may have to look at picking that up… Maybe when I sell off some of my ancient
stuff…
So, make the Magna a “parts bike” and sell it as is without
title? Or do I get a lawyer and have him
hunt down the previous owner? So, either
a potentially expensive and possibly futile effort to get the title or junk it? The Silverwing is working, but need to get a
slightly larger (1000-1200cc) larger bike in a Goldwing likely… Older 81-86 probably, so essentially I can
trade my 2 current ones for this one and likely have some left over to pay down
bills… More importantly getting rid of 2
bikes for 1 in the garage… Firearms,
will probably sell down some of those as well…
We’ll see…