Light hobby week again...

So, another light hobby week…  No gaming last week and with Thanksgiving this week, it is looking very much like the same.  Understandable, most folks have better things to do during the holidays J…   And with my guard cat being as demanding as he has been recently, not a lot of painting done.  I did get base coats on some of my  Rhulic stuff.  Specifically, both Heavy Jacks have a base coat and are fully assembled.  The Arcanist Corps are assembled with most of their paint actually on…  Need to come up with something for the tabard though.  They are an expensive unit in game terms, but they are really quite horrifyingly effective.  The ability to simply set everything nearby on fire alone would make them a serious contender for “auto include” status.  Combined with decent damage, a ranged AOE and immunity to fire?  Mkay…  Downsides being: Slow (a fairly common Dwarven thing), 4 points for 3 models that frankly are not THAT hard to kill and…  Well, I haven’t seen much else.  High Shields riflemen are almost done as are the Artillery team…  Forge Guard is stuck at zero though.  Not having any luck coming up with a paint scheme that I am going to be happy with.  The “uniform” look of painting them exactly like the rest would be “ok”, but

Looking at the game itself, I have a really good 35 point list and can pretty easily field 50 points.  15 and 25 points are “eh” as my lists tend to be a lot more one dimensional and the matchup pretty much determines how well I do.  At the 35+ point level at least I have options and feel like I can at the very least compete against almost anything.  Frankly, not a lot of “tricks” in my list, it is pretty straightforward and pragmatic.  I feel that fits the Dwarves quite well and their army list reflects that.  Not to say that some of the stuff does not have the potential for use in a combo or a trick, but in general it is pretty straight forward.  Not to say simple or easy to play by any means.  This army does not have any of the obvious “easy buttons” that a lot of other armies do.  Eventually I’ll probably get the Rhulic Colossal and the Ogryn Assault Corps…  I can field 50 points without difficulty, with those probably 100 points if I have that kind of time to play…

Looking to get back to STAW again soon…  The OP events AFTER the Borg silliness look like they’ll be fun, and one is based on one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Cmdr Riker being assigned to a Klingon Bird of Prey…  Probably my favorite ST ships overall, so happy to see more of them…

Gearing up for the D&D Attack Wing too…  So far have the 4 Dragons for the family to use.  Need to get them out and play a few games, and hoping that the OP event gets scheduled soon at the Gopher…  Seen a few of the blind buy figures, looking forward to the Paladin and the Ranger the most I think, but that’s more to do with my preferences than game play potential…  Like I said, not having played the game, I have no real basis for comparison.  Thinking the Dragons are going to be pretty darn powerful, and I’m not even sure the point level we’ll play at locally… 

So, made it to the other side... Look miniatures!

So, craptastic last week...  Not a whole lot moving on my hobby front.  I DID pick up Chang's Bird of Prey for STAW, it is a really good little ship with some insane potential for movement tricks under cloak.  Machts Nichts against a Borg with their 360 arc and high attacks, but against pretty much everything else...  Looking like we'll go to bigger games and looking beyond the Borg centered OP events.  I think we will be able to bring back the game with a few changes, but we'll see.  And as Wizkids has posted a whole raft of rules changes and clarifications it looks REALLY good for STAW, assuming we can get the local group back together or grow it in other ways.  Cautiously optimistic...  But for my purposes, it looks like this game is finally back to worth playing...  Well, once the Borg OP events are done :-)  Still not a fan of those...

Warmachine...  Some painting and assembly of Dwarves (Rhulic Mercenaries).  Got in several more games, and the Arcanist Corps is pretty darn powerful.  Think Fire Benders for Avatar fans.  Immune to Fire which HAS come up, but more importantly, they can threaten a huge area and just set everything close on fire...  I honestly think they have done almost as much damage by simply catching things on fire through their various spells and just hitting in HtH as they have by hitting lower (level/value/toughness?  Not sure what really makes sense here...)So, yes, the Arcanists are kind of my answer to being swarmed by hordes of cheap crappy troops…  Well, that and the fact that I can (and DO) bring loads of Artillery support.  Learned my lesson about trusting direct fire to do everything.  Warmachine really needs you to have a much more balanced approach to not get sucker punched by a hard counter.  And this game HAS hard counters to just about everything I’ve seen so far.  Just not always obvious.  The Bear (Brun and Lug) is my big HtH threat at the moment, though I have the Wroughthammer Rockham fully assembled and mostly painted in preparation to fielding.  Traded for it and was really happy to see the previous owner had modified the figure to make it less “unwieldy”.  The figure as shipped is running, so one foot on the ground is not perhaps the most stable setup for such a top heavy piece.  This one is essentially kneeling with one knee down assuming a good firing position…  FAR more stable.  But in any case a second big nasty HtH threat.  The Bear has actually gotten 3 caster kills in my last four games.  For 9 points I think it is insanely undercosted with the “Flank” rule and a good charge in…  But it IS RAW/RAI I think.  Certainly NOT out of line with a lot of other stuff out there.  Just REALLY good for what I can fit into a Rhulic list.  Nothing subtle, Brun charges, then Lug to finish it off.  Whatever “it” is.  I HAVE failed to kill off a Heavy Jack (Tom’s Convergence one), but that was mostly a series of horribly low Damage rolls.  Even on average, it tears most things up.  OTOH, it will also die to its equivalent in similar situations, so…  With those being my ONLY models with Pathfinder naturally and with General Ossum’s ability helping the Dwarf at least move through my own troopers…  It makes the Bear an excellent counterpunch unit as the enemy rushes forward to prevent me from simply using Artillery/Ranged Attacks to hit them from across the field.

Used the General for several games, I think I have that one figured out.  Watched enough games with Joe’s Gorton list to have a pretty good grasp as to what that entails.  No one locally has used Durgen as far as I can tell, so perhaps that will be my next one…  His tiered list is not something I think I’ll bother with.  Nothing really all that useful there for me at least.  The General gets to start the game with ALL of his upkeep spells in force, etc….  So REALLY useful.  Getting -1 point on the Avalancher and the ability to field more Artillery is “neat”, but certainly not worth the limitations.  And Durgen himself seems like a pretty much one man wrecking crew...  I'd call him a "lone wolf" type as he seems like he does not have any particular synergy with anything else in the Rhulic list...  The General is the exact opposite.  He has great synergy with almost everything Rhulic.  But he is sorely lacking standing on his own I think.  I HAVE done a bit of damage with his standard 12" range Dam 12 pistol, but really NOT what he is there for.  Durgen on the other hand has AP or Carpet Bomb in addition to Reach and a good Str weapon.  Immunity to Blast is pretty big, and "Primed" cast say, on some of the Forge Guard makes for an interesting if somewhat risky and high casualty damage to the enemy...  VERY Dwarven though...  We may fall, but those bastards are coming with us...  So, perhaps not overly competitive, but VERY much my play style.  We'll see.  Durgen is assembled a bit differently for me with the hammer resting against the base for stability...

Not a lot for me going on with 30/40K at the moment...  Gathered up my resin FW Spartan, will probably post it for trade and see what interest it gets...  Frankly, regretting purchasing it at this point, but I could just shelf it and dig it up in a few months/years when I rotate back to 40K...  At this point I am separating and shelving my various armies and cleaning up the basement a bit at a time.  Not really getting far on that if I'm honest...  My giant cat has decided that I need to snuggle with him, so not a lot of uninterrupted hobby time :-)  The giant (Maine Coon mix) cat decides you will pay attention, you probably should...

So, hobbies... I might have too many of them...

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…  4^th 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…

STAW Collective OP 3 at the Armored Gopher Tomorrow...

So, I have a few choices...  I can bring my standard Federation Dreadnought based on the Enterprise E or I can bring a Romulan "fun, but sneaky" build...

The Romulan build is as follows:

Romulan OP 3 1

Resource: Fleet Captain Independent (Dominion) (5)

I.R.W. Valdore (30)
Alidar Jarok (4)
FleetCaptain (0)
Counter Attack (3)
Direct Command (2)
Varel (10)
Centurion (4)
Interphase Generator (2)
Advanced Cloaking (3)
Ship SP: 58

IRW Gal Gath'Thong (18)
Donatra (4)
Plasma Torpedoes (4)
Ship SP: 26

Total Build SP: 89

Generated by STAW Builder
http://www.dracossoftware.com/STAWHome.html

The Valore can cloak, stay cloaked and continue to use Green maneuvers to get the +1 Attack.  Between Varel and the Centurion I have two attack negations and the CPT can discard an Elite Talent to negate a third (actually worse, I can force it to NOT attack my ship, so may have to attack the other player's) and Interphase Generator to drop damage to 1 from another attack...  So, I think I can survive for a while at least...  Have a potential 9-10 dice Attack for a round at least...  So, might just be the ships to bring.  Can swap the Gal Gath'Thong's Plasma Torpedoes for the 5 point version to get the 90 points exactly if needed...  

Standard Klingon "We're just here to shoot things" list of course is a possibility:

Klingon Borg 90 2

Resource: Flagship Independent (Klingon) (10)

Vor'cha Class (26)

Gowron (4)

Ship SP: 30

I.K.S. ChTang (22)

Martok (6)

Flagship (0)

Ship SP: 28

K'T'Inga Class (22)

Ship SP: 22

Total Build SP: 90

Generated by STAW Builder

http://www.dracossoftware.com/STAWHome.html

With the generic K'Tinga getting a 7-8 dice attack from Range 2-3 with re-rolls?  It throws out a LOT of damage.  Just cannot survive long.  So, I would HAVE to kill the Cube by the third or fourth turn to stand any chance with this list...  And depending on how cooperative the opponent is, well...  

Fed list is:

List Name

Resource: Flagship Independent (Fed) (10)

Sovereign Class (30)

Jean-Luc Picard - Crew (5)

Flagship (0)

Cheat Death (5)

Cheat Death (5)

Adm. James T. Kirk (5)

William T. Riker (5)

Montgomery Scott (5)

Elizabeth Shelby (2)

Hikaru Sulu (3)

Dorsal Phaser Array (6)

Tactical Station (4)

Multi-Adaptive Shields (5)

Ship SP: 80

Total Build SP: 90

Generated by STAW Builder

http://www.dracossoftware.com/STAWHome.html

Not nearly so survivable and lacking the Transphasic Torpedoes of the Voyager I am not so sure this will be able to throw out that damage that is needed to overwhelm the Borg quickly.  Good ship though, an the conservative build for me...  I am leaning toward the Romulan or Klingon though.  Romulan just because common wisdom dictates that the Romulans are simply not playable in a Faction Pure environment.  I disagree...

Seaforge marching, STAW restarting perhaps and 30/40K stuff in the distance...

So...  Looks like I have my Sea Forge force force assembled...  Well, en route or here in various stages of painting/assembly.  Now I just need to get in some more games with the lads.  Next actual league starts up In a few weeks.  The Journeyman League was good for me getting back into the game.  Learning the ins and outs of several armies, losing close to half of my games, but in general having fun.  One or two games were not, but in one case it was the limits of my Journeyman force.  All shooting vs immune to shooting will always end badly for my shooters...  The other standout bad game was just a bad match and my unfamiliarity with Hordes combined with an army built in a more "power gamer" fashion.  Fun force vs hard competitive will almost always be a bad one for the fun force. 

So, have to pick up some more light Jack frames for the Dwarves...  Got a few heavy frames inbound with some more Confrontation outbound...  Have the ability to run a Heavy Warbeast in Sea Forge, and it should be interesting...  A little light on Infantry, but I should be able to field a good force...

On to STAW...  One last event Wednesday for the Collective series...  I am actually in the lead for that one and with one of the other players dropping out think that as long as I get in my three games I will win the overall event.  So, a Galaxy Class ship, pretty good.  I already have the Stargazer, so will get that to someone else.  I have to say I dislike the rules for this event, but will give it a shot.   Probably play my Enterprise E force, or perhaps something Dominion or even Romulan...  Just have to survive longer than the opponent :-)...  Ideally kill the Borg, but...

WizKids has released some suggested rules updates for the tournaments the link is here: http://wizkidsgames.com/blog/2014/10/24/star-trek-attack-wing-updated-suggested-tournament-format/ ...  Essentially, 50 points max for ships, 3 ship minimum, etc...  So essentially the recent move to Borg win everything with repeatable attack immunity has finally been noticed and looks like there is actually a move to correct this.  Guess we will see if it is too little too late.  I hope not, good game but as long as some legal (currently) forces still exist, it will be problematic.  We went to "ship pure" or "faction pure" locally and it does kind of negate some of the silly combos but there are simply some Factions like the Federation and Borg that are better than the rest in that format.  Point caps and forcing larger numbers of ships will if nothing else at least make a FAR greater number of the Factions/Ships actually playable.  They are concluding their first Regional events and it has been EXTREMELY disappointing for a lot of us looking at the same builds being the only ones that do well.  Totally legal, so no complaints on the gamers actually playing what is almost a no brainer winning force.  I do not mean "no brainer" in that it wins in the deck building phase, or that it does NOT take skill to win it, just that NOT taking these sorts of forces just reach out and smack you upside the head with how silly you are being by NOT using them.  Or watching players get tabled with ease by experts using the uber lists...  After looking over the restrictions in place and thinking of what would actually win given those limits...  Well, any desire I had to go and play in that environment quickly fled.  Shame, I think it would have been fun, but still remember some of the competitive CCGs I played in back in the ancient times and how many times I very nearly lost my temper there...  Best perhaps not to risk it.

Kind of where I am with 40K...  Reading over some of the excellent 30K stuff and frankly looking at my Wolves (VI Legion) force.  Yes, I CAN build a tailored "Eldar Killer" force to deal with the current top tier list.  But then it is pretty boring to play even against the Eldar it is built to kill.  With the 30K Land Raiders and Spartan hulls getting immunity to Melta (for a price), I CAN simply mount up and drive into them with the Twin Linked Las Cannons blazing away and splashing Wave Serpents left and right.  Once they are dismounted, then the Storm Bolters can open up and kill their Infantry pretty easily.  Wraith Lords lack Inv saves, so the sheer number of Las Cannon I field is a problem.  The Wraith Knight is an issue, but being completely immune to Str 6-7 I really CAN simply take a turn or two and fire everything into the Knight to kill it.  Kind of the : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX-qK4qG2EY

"Bring me EVERYONE" response.  Having only faced one with this particular army, have to say that after two turns of 8 x TLLC fire (plus a few random Meltas/missiles), it simply evaporated.  I do not think that was an anomalous result.  And at the end of the day I have a bunch of Terminators on the field.  Troops, yes, but no "Objective Secured" with the changeover from Sixth to Seventh not being complete for the 30K world...  So, a skilled player would be able to bog me down and grind my force into dust...  Or at the VERY least prevent me from contesting objectives for the easy win...  So, slowly painting the lads and we'll seen them again in a long while I suspect.  Shame, the Cataphract Class Terminator armor is REALLY quite nice...

Waiting for answers, so... Gaming stuff :-)

So, cleaning up the basement and getting in some painting…  Not finding a color scheme for my Forge Guard that I particularly like.  I think that the Grey-Green with Copper trim would look boring on them, albeit uniform with the rest of my force.  The half Grey-Green and white looks pretty terrible, an I’m just not sure what else would work.  The Metallic Green I use for my Circle Armor might be OK(ish) and I might test one out…  A Forrest Green perhaps?  Not sure…   But have the Bear base coated, all of my Warcasters are assembled and getting some paint on them.  Slowly coming together.  Only thing I am lacking to field it as a proper army would be more War Jacks.  I have only the 2 Lights which are good for what they are, but…

Have to admit the Colossal looks interesting to me, and since I am seeing more and more of them at the Gopher…  We had a pretty long chat about them and the 40K equivalents with the Knights and Titans at the store this week, and it is pretty obvious that I am not alone on my “wait and see” to see what happens to 40K.  The MCs in general being just better than Vehicles and 40K being perceived as completely broken as long as the Eldar are unchanged and the Tau are still right up there with them.  The Colossals are big and powerful but really do not seem overly difficult to deal with.  Contrasting to the Eldar Wraith Knight which IS hard to deal with.  The Eldar has speed, HtH ability, great shooting attacks and can be easily healed.  I guess the Colossal CAN be healed, but not as easily as it is damaged.  The Rhulic Colossal is 18 points, and while I can see this being half of my Army (coming in at 11-13 points) it will be a pretty good one I think…  Not game breaking good, but a huge target and it fits the “Dwarf” mentality of being slow to move, but resilient and difficult to move OFF of the ground they choose to fight on.  Some good synergy with a lot of my Rhulic Infantry allowing firing without obscuring the target.  So, I can screen my big War Jack with my Infantry an still shoot.  Keep one of the War Casters up there to protect my lads from random blast damage, especially with my own 4” blasts going out only 10”, so chances are good I’ll be firing “Danger Close” to my own lads.  But in any case I guess I can trade off some MtG for more Rhulic stuff… 

Cygnar is coming along for me.  Mostly I look at the old casters as “OK”, with the newer ones seeming to have a much easier time dealing with the current environment.  CPT Kraye and Constance Blaize are two I think that are my “top tier” ones.  Blaize leads out my Paladins, an becomes essentially a guided missile killing off War Casters or whatever she needs to.  Effectively MAT 9, Weapon Master with a POW 13 Spear giving her 2” Reach…  And she can boost of course.  Just have to have something else “Morrowan” in there with her.  Thus the Paladins and the Solo in every list for her.  Kraye is just all about Cavalry.  Light Jacks with the Light Cav rules?  Yes Please!  So, I have moved from “Cygnar Shoots Things” to a more reliable assassination run sort of game with the Paladins of all people providing the ability to simply walk over and kill the War Caster…  Not what I expected, but very effective.

One more STAW event on the calendar in a few weeks.  It is the OP 3 for the Collective stuff, so fighting against the Borg again…  Faction Pure, so I’ll probably load up the Enterprise E, Sovereign  Class ship and see what I can do.  I STRONGLY suspect it will be a very short game as the Borg cube itself is simply too stupidly powerful, and not a lot of folks will be playing in any case.  Some of the lads are looking to get a “Space Day” together at the Gopher and looking forward to that I think…  Would love to get in more casual games I think.  The hyper competitive ones that the prize ships with their potential game breaking power and rarity are I think causing the game to die out quickly here.  A shame, kill off a few of the stupid combos and perhaps there should be an adjustment of some of the ships point costs.  Borg mostly, perhaps Voyager an Enterprise D…   Basically, the 360 fire arc is simply too good, and the Federation one is fairly limited.  I think the problem is corrected and there is a really good, fair point value assigned to that with the card shipping with the Enterprise E.  So, really just a few tweaks, but WizKids appears to have left this game on autopilot as they prepare for the Dragon game hitting this Month.  So, hoping they get it together soon as this has the potential to be a really good, long term game rather than just a “2 year run” game that it is looking like WK has budgeted for…

So, let’s see…  40K shelved, 30K some further assembly coming along…  STAW dying, hope to revive…  X-Wing looks good, but have limited ships and REALLY not thrilled to be buying into yet another game.  Warmachine/Hordes continuing to grow and be fun to play.

So, when DOES 8th Edition hit?

So, been reading a few of the gaming blogs that I normally read and there has been a trend I noticed…  There have been a lot of folks noticing the GENERAL power level and balance of the Codices is actually quite good…  As long as you completely ignore the giant elephants in the room of the Eldar and to a lesser extent the Tau books.  Now, a number of the writers are approaching this from the “competitive” perspective where taking anything but the All Star/best of breed/most stupidly under costed units is just silly.  Money on the table and all making this a “less friendly” game and all.  Not like high stakes poker money mind, but the principle is exactly the same.

I don’t really have any answers or anything of course, but given the current situation where there is one particular Army with one HUGE glaring UC unit and a bunch of things that are simply better than the baseline for the game in the standard Marine…  The game is just not really much worth playing at this time.  Yes, you can still play and even have fun, so I am NOT saying drop it like it is cursed or anything…  Just that as soon as one side breaks out the tier one list, the game is pretty much over (“What if they held a war and only one side showed up” a quote attributed to Lucifer from Robert Asprin’s Myth series) for the other side if they do not also have such a list.  So long as there is an understanding and NO ONE brings the uber lists, you can have a fun game and both sides might well be competitive.  Then it comes to dice and skill, and I think overall WK has done an excellent job.  Overall, but until they send Vinnie and Guido with a Nerf Bat to have a little chat with the two armies in particular and there is a complete rebalancing of those forces…  Well, the game itself is broken and I know I am not alone in the “let’s see what happens in the longer term, until then let’s play ‘X’”…  So, excellent articles here (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/10/40k-editorial-are-terminators-done.html) here (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/10/goatboys-monday-thoughts-new-release.html) and (http://www.houseofpaincakes.com/2014/10/terrible-armies-id-love-to-build.html)...  Common theme there for me being several of the armies I’d actually LIKE to play and how I kind of feel “Why Bother” breaking them out, packing them up and heading to the Gopher to get stomped into dust by pretty much anything I’d face.  Mind, I might do well against some.  There is a young lady playing a very colorful Chaos Demon force that could easily go either way, though I would consider myself the underdog as she can minimize the random silliness and just make me roll armor saves with each casualty being bad and grind me out of existence.  Sadly that is about the only army I can think of offhand that I would not be immediately outclassed with.  Painfully and obviously.  IG (or whatever they are called, IA in the older days) has the tanks and special weapons to wipe me in a few turns.  Marines have Grav weapons and bikes to move wherever…  Wolves have…  Well, no one locally playing them anymore except me and that is why J…  Eldar and Tau?  Beaucoup shots, too many of which are able to simply ignore my 2+ save…  And even without that, having so many shots and given the game mechanic of 1/6 fails whatever you are attempting means that weight of fire (“Quantity has a Quality all its own” one I’ve heard attributed to Stalin) will simply win every time.  So, Terminator based forces, even 30K ones are mostly dead at this time.  30K, I CAN bring them in Land Raiders or Spartans that ignore Melta, attach Medics, etc. making them ALMOST viable.  Assuming that the TO is OK mixing 30K and 40K armies in a League/Event…  Still die to the Xenos avalanche of dice though, so it is not even the answer in the longer run, just something that might work once or twice…

So, basically I shelved my DA (Consecrators) force long ago.  Not long after the new Codex hit honestly.  I played it in a League or two, but with some stupid scenarios (NONE of which were the fault of the local organizer, this is all GW) highlighting just how stupidly under powered or over costed the DA really were, especially with the Vanilla Marines book hitting soon after and getting everything the DA could do, but better and cheaper.  Being hit with IG forces that could come on from any table edge (table was a narrow platform) with rending las guns and squads that could respawn when I finally killed them all to come back the next turn with full squads again…  Not even a little fun.  The Ravenwing player getting wiped by the swarm of Heldrakes pretty well drove him from the game as well…  Yeah, the $50 book still irks me there.  Vanilla Marines are a good book, and I enjoyed playing them.  Until it became painfully obvious that the Marine as a baseline for the game was surpassed by the Tau and Eldar in every way.  Now, the Marines CAN in some lists compete in a fairly limited fashion against a well build tier one list, but overall?  My Crimson Fists are playable, but still a HUGE long shot against most.  White Scars bikers are decent, and until you hit the Chaos player who brought a Heldrake or two you will likely do well.  Against them?  No.

But looking at the GK and DE, things have been brought more in line…  And omitting the problem armies?  7^th edition has the potential to be an extremely well balanced and fun game.  If it survives.  Not really sure what to hope for myself, an eventual rebalancing when the NEXT edition of the T&E books come out, or the whole thing to crash and a complete rebuild?  First one I think, but when will that happen?  Last two Armies with soft cover books are due in the next few Months…  Are the priorities at GW the same as mine?  Um, no…  But I would hope they recognize that this IS an issue and should be corrected for the long term viability of the game…  J  Yes, I doubt it too, but just typing between meetings here so why not shoot for the moon?

Does bring me to Warmachine…  Again.  First time I got into the game it was back when WM started up, and I was still getting over the silliness of 40K third edition and being involved with some of the hyper competitive tournaments back then.  WM was NOT balanced by any means, but it had potential.  And eventually it did become a fun and balanced game.  So, back playing that game now and seeing how nice it is.  Haven’t actually seen the Ghordson Earthbreaker, but will probably end up with one…  Even if I have to trade off some FW stuff or MtG J…  Finding I have a LOT more of that than I remembered.  Guessing that quitting drinking a few years back has been quite helpful in that (among other) respect…  But, need to trade for or pick up some of the Warjacks and the Earthbreaker looks like it will be one to have on the shelf at least. 

Guess this is a long rambling way of asking: “So, when’s 8^th Edition hitting” or at least “When are the new Tau and Eldar books due?”