So, AAR for the STAW game for the OP3 in the Collective… Playing a completely cooperative game, we were
able to easily defeat the Borg. Now
saying that, we communicated our intent with the Borg and minimized the
Attacks. None of our ships died and we
killed the Cube and Sphere easily.
Saying easily, we wound up throwing enough dice at it to get through the
insane Defense the Borg got in that scenario.
So, we beat it and since I had already won the “big prize” I was more
than willing to just kill Borg. Much
more fun game. I actually brought a
fairly odd build that allowed me to play Romulan Faction Pure and still have
the ability to cancel out more than enough attacks to simply outlast anything
else if it came to that… It did not, so
I wasted a lot of points to cancel out 12 dice attacks that did not ever happen. Still, I had a fair number of attack dice
between my Valdore and Gal Gath’Throng…
Oh, and the blind buy Dominion Attack ship… Eh, wasn’t as good as the Vorta Vor, but not
a horrible ship. Now that we will more
or less be required to field 3+ ships (2+blind if that is the scenario),
getting some good small ships that can actually DO something is quite nice. Tempted to pick up a few more ships, and
probably will to fill out the last few fleets, but it does seem that the game
is on hiatus at least locally.
Tempted to pick up some X-Wing to round out my Rebel fleet
there, but almost none on the shelf locally.
Tells me either wildly popular or FFG cannot keep up with
supply/demand. Frankly, not so sure I
will not get bored quickly with the MUCH more limited builds. Could just be my perception of the game
though. STAW has a LOT more “deck
building” with so many cards, combinations, and factions… 2.5 Factions in X-Wing (OK, “3”), and much
more uniform. So, the complete unavailability
of the game locally has at least kept me out of purchasing it J… LOADS of Lambda class Shuttles and one of the
new TIE type fighters on the shelf.
Rebels get E Wings and… I guess
there was a HWK ship as well… No X or Y
Wings or even the Falcon, so not a lot I am interested in. Shame, I would like to get in a few games but
with only a few B-Wings (nice ships, but…) and the Starter X-Wing somewhat
limited… So, CAN play a 100 point game
easily enough I guess even if it is not going to go well for me J… That and the pace for releases from WK is
REALLY fast compared to the X-Wing stuff…
Good and bad from that, I find I want fewer of the releases, and while I
think they are finally taking steps to rein in the Borg silliness and stupidly
powerful card combos… Hoping it is not
too late…
Chatting with one of the new guys playing 40K at the Gopher… Apparently a lot of folks in IT play the
various games offered out there, who knew J
? He played back in the old days… 4th edition for him, but he sold
off his Eldar. Picked up Orks from the
Starter(s) that folks were buying up. He
enjoys playing, but goes in knowing full well he has nothing to deal with AV 14
or the big MCs that are dominating the game at this point really. Yes, he has a few things that might be able
to theoretically do the job, but really?
No. Any plan relying on “roll
lots of 6’s” seems like it will be a bad one.
So, looking like the BA and Tyranids get the next big box set of
doom. Meh. I play a BA successor chapter, so the BA
specific stuff will not be useful or frankly needed as I have a fairly large
Fleshtearers force already. Yes, my wife
does get extra points for putting up with all of my “hobby hording” and the
sheer numbers of the little toy soldiers in the basement. But it yet another Marine based force that I
can field. Dozens of Vehicles, probably
close to the “actual” number of FT that are still functional at this point in
the storyline. I have well over 100 of
the lads, not sure exact numbers. So,
reinforced Company at the least and last I heard, that was a significant portion
of their fighting force. Shame that is
only one of my “big” armies. And still
not really seeing any reason to come back from my self-imposed exile from the
game. Tyranids might well become
playable, so that is a good thing in and of itself I suppose.
REALLY one of the things that needs to happen is that the dichotomy
between the Monstrous Creatures and Vehicle rules for things like Dreadnaughts
needs to just go away. The Marine DN is
complete crap compared to the equivalent MCs…
Not even getting to the big ones like the Eldar Wraith Knight, the
Wraith Lord is pretty amazing these days.
And frankly, I would put the WL on the very low end of the MC
spectrum. Flying Psychic MCs that are
all but immune to the overwhelming bulk of the basic weapons in the game? Yeah, sure, no problem… What could go wrong? Oh, it can guarantee casting Invisibility on
yet another MC so it too can be immune, even in HtH? Sure, why not two? So, Vehicles ARE better in this edition, but
still lag FAR behind MC. I think they
need to scrap one or the other and be consistent across the board. The Grey Knights are an army that has BOTH in
the same slot. With the death of the Str
8 (for 5 points) TL AC arms, I do not think many people have been fielding their
DNs in favor of the Dread Knights which do almost everything (Not the enhanced
Aegis suit, but really, who is bothering to cast things ON Grey Knights? EA does not help deal with Blessings, etc….)
the DNs do, and FAR better… And cleaning
my basement I have… Well, a LOT of DNs J… Inheriting several armies and those days when
the house on Green Street was briefly a GW store (and when we had a LOT more
spare money for hobby toys) left me with a whole bunch of the things.
So, back to painting my Warmachine Dwarves…
