40K these days...

The state of the game…  Yeah, sounds pretentious J…  Now, this is all just my opinion as always, and mostly just based on my experiences and the armies I play.  I am getting the feeling that the game is becoming less and less balanced.  I’d be a bit hesitant to say that certain codices are “broken” or bad for the game, but Grey Knights would be one that I’d say brings it REALLY close.  An entire army loaded out with Power Weapons, Str 8 vs Str 7 for Autocannons and their Psycannons everywhere…  Before the GK’s, the Blood Angels have Rhino Hulls that are just better than everyone else’s…  It seems more and more like an engine that is getting itself further and further out of balance as it runs longer.  I think that there really are “first tier”, “second tier” and “others”… 

First tier I have as: Wolves, BA, GK, and IG…  Of course, only certain “builds” are really the powerful ones, even these armies have subpar units…  It’s kind of annoying on some levels as those are 4 of the armies I play, and I’m REALLY trying hard not to play the “Uber” lists…  Not sure if I could come up with anything other than “I think this is true” to back up my opinion of course.  Well, that and of course I have an excellent record with the above armies.  It is difficult to come up with better lists than some of the “hard” lists I CAN field with a first tier army…  Especially if the army on the other side of the table is not itself a first tier army…  Can still be beaten of course, but the odds are stacked against it…

I enjoy playing Eldar, but with so few viable options, it is an exercise in futility against a well-built “modern” army.  The stuff in IA2 does bring good things to the army, and it is looking like the new IA book (http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/IMPERIAL-ARMOUR-VOLUME-ELEVEN-THE-DOOM-OF-MYMEARA.html) seems like it does bring a LOT of things that could do a lot to bring the Eldar up to more modern standards…

So, Eldar and Dark Angels (Deathwing or Dual Wing) are my “second tier” armies…  Extremely limited builds, very narrow focus, and not viable outside of that…

Outside of the ones I actually play, I can’t really say where a lot of armies end up…  Tau were hard to beat prior to BA and to an extent Wolves, and now I think they simply cannot compete with the GK or Necron lists…  Orks have their swarms and walkers which are also a bit of a swarm…  They can compete in a somewhat limited fashion against all but the GK I think…  DE are good if built right, but not sure if they are first tier…  Sisters are “eh” these days…

Looking forward to 6^th edition and I am hoping the IA stuff livens up the scene a bit…

IA/next army...

So, what army next J…  I guess I’ll keep painting my Wolves for the moment because I am moving along quite nicely there and honestly I’m actually enjoying it at the moment.  Back to conversion work I guess as my Wolf Guard need their Combi-weapons…  Thankfully it looks like the stuff I picked up at the Gopher will allow me to make a few here and there with Green stuff…  And then I’ll have to magnetize Terminators…

So, I guess I’ll be bringing it up for the local gaming group…  Wanting to include IA (Imperial Armour) rules in our 40K games…  The new editions have been rewritten and split up to indicate if they are 40K or not…  And the IA 2 book does seem to indicate that they are completely legal for GW events, so we’ll have to be sure everyone actually knows what the rules and options ARE…  There are some pretty neat things in the books, and honestly I am looking forward to some new things hitting the tables…

Post Christmas fun...

Picked up the Imperial Armour Apocalypse Second Edition this evening…  Sometimes the Gopher gets in some really interesting things on consignment.  Read over it, guessing I already knew most of the things there but I do think that they are doing it right these days…  Now, they do print that the things labeled “40K” are legal to play in “official” 40K events, and it does look like they’ve fixed all of the more obvious broken things…  Like for instance the Lucius class Drop Pod is NOT legal for Blood Angel Marines J…  Have to admit that was one I WAS planning on putting into a team tournament force… 

Cranked up the bike today, didn’t take her out, but it was REALLY nice turning the engine over.  Maybe this week I’ll still be able to get in a ride or two before I really have to put her up for the year.

Christmas was pretty fun, had Matt and Kaitlyn up from Ft Cambpell along with the wee girls.  Pretty mellow…  Wound up making a normal lasagna for Christmas eve and then a seafood lasagna for Christmas… 

Mkay, pretty much done for the night J  Off to Peoria tomorrow for Christmas with my parents…  At least the girls will probably have fun…

Now what?

Mkay, so where to go from here…  Pretty sure I have the Wolves all worked out.  I can min max the hell out of them and throw a BUNCH of heavy weapons out on the table…  The army then is not nearly so much fun to play though in my opinion.  Also, if the dice themselves are against you as they were for me last week J…  Normally it would have at least been a slugfest, and to an extent it was, but Dawn of War and SO MANY 1’s and 2’s on the dice were rolled for me J…  Honestly I just had to laugh it off, and that in and of itself made the game a LOT more enjoyable for me, just seeing how unlucky I could possible get…  Sadly, even with the luck factor and the DoW silliness weighing against me, I still nearly pulled out a tie, so I feel the Wolves are a few more powerful army than I had originally given them credit for.  If you build them “right” I guess.  Next week I break out a “fun” force with Logan leading out his lads…  I think I’ve run out of opponents though, so guessing it’ll just be against whoever happens to be around.  Kind of scary actually, and if Dave and I build our “Team” armies “right” next tournament we wander off to, I can see us doing fairly well…

Not sure I’ll be able to play New Year’s Eve tournament with some friends of my wife’s coming into town…  We’ll see, I’d like to get away and play a bit, but who knows really…  And given the choice of playing for the day and annoying the wife J…  Well, I’ll just play the next week I guess…

Other than that, just Christmas preparations going on…  More cleaning out some ancient boxes and the like from the basement of doom, found some more interesting ancient toys, both gaming and firearm type…  Now to clean them off J… I think I want to lay out my armies to get pics of the “whole lot”…  Just to see how many exactly I really have here…  Interesting to see, and a “real” reason involving insurance since I’d really have no clue what was lost should the house disappear today…

Looking forward to 6th ed...

If for no other reason than perhaps the "Dawn of War" mission can just go away...  Not sure how best to say just how fucking much I hate that mission...  :-)  Yes, subtle I know...  But what the fuck were they thinking making such a stupidly unbalanced mission that gets played 1/3 of the time... Of course, it could be just my bitterness about the fact it really screws over almost all of the armies I play.  HtH hordes just dominate because they start half way across the field, and the other side has a "very limited" set of deployment options...  And of course the game starts off completely screwing any Infantry based force...  Mech, not AS much, but even then, turn one is almost always a wash...

Back to power munching ibuprofen here...  Don't think I broke my tailbone, but it is a possibility I guess...  At least I can say "My broke ass" :-)  Yeah, tomorrow looks like a LONG day...

Nothing fun here this weekend...

Pretty sure I’m going to get myself killed in some random and what should have been completely harmless fashion…  Last night I wound up stepping through the stair in the garage headed into the house with groceries, etc…  Wound up on the ground, fortunately all those years getting thrown around in Aikido/Ju Jitsu seem to have stuck with me as nothing TOO bad seems to have happened.  Of course, while I was laying on the concrete I couldn’t help but think that this would be how I wind up getting killed after all of the amazingly stupid stuff I’ve done over the years…  Been shot a few times, stabbed, hit with cars, dropped out of various aircraft and none of that did me in J…  But watch out for those broken stairs…  Ibuprofen is my friend, mostly because I lost my ass all those years ago playing poker and lack some important padding J…

Not sure what is going on with the kids from the local High School…  I spent a few years in a line combat unit, and we didn’t take losses at anything like the level these kids are.  Lost another one Thursday out here, and he was a friend of the family…  Good kid, damn shame.  Not really looking forward to the wake, his sister was really close with Maggie and the kids (classmates with Kaitlyn) and she was over here all the time during their HS years…  I cannot even begin to imagine what she is going through as she was quite close to her older brother.A lot of my friends from way back when are dead, but by and large doing what we were doing, not really a surprise I think…  Different situation altogether here, and completely outside of my area of experience…

Bye week I guess...

Well, I took the bye with the odd number of players last week.  So, maybe an 1850 game or a 1500 against a mellower opponent…  I’ll probably have a “fun” list with Logan, his Guard and the Land Raider (Spartan Class) I made all those years ago…  The “serious” list will be loads of heavy weapon spam backed up by a decent HtH and my Scouts running a flank or two…

Getting a bit more serious about painting, getting more and more of the lads painted up…  So, I’ll actually have a fully painted Wolf force again after all of these years…  Waiting a bit on 6^th Edition I think, there are so many things in the Wolf codex specifically that really make no sense whatever, or are massively overcosted.  No clue of course what changes will come in, but guessing I have a LOT of choices given the sheer number of things in the basement.

Cleaning and fixing some ancient firearms here, might be getting rid of some J…  Also trying to get myself back onto the workout routine… 

It's looking like Maggie will have friends in for New Years, still hoping to escape for the 40K tournament, but we'll see I guess...