Gamer GIFs Volume 2

Volume 1

My First Warmachine Win

I was introduced to a fantasy/steampunk game with swords and magic

Then introduced to Legion of Everblight... 

I borrowed some armies to see what I liked, but nothing seemed to fit.

Until I found Khador and their glorious warjacks.

And their silly hats.

We were going to start a slow-grow league, so I spent a lot of time reading the rulebook...

And reading every Khador guide I could find.

I'll admit, I was a bit nervous for my first real game...

But after spending a week or two learning about my army, all I could say was "Bring it on."

And somehow, everything worked together perfectly.

Every strategy I'd read coalesced as I went for an assassination.

And after weeks of getting pummeled while using other people's armies, and countless hours spent studying and preparing .. I won my first battlebox game.

And it felt darn good.

Countdown to Cyriss - Week 9

Today DC gave us a look at an absolutely ridiculous warcaster from Convergence of Cyriss - Iron Mother Directrix. Listing each spoiler and discussing it worked well enough last time, so let's see if we can recreate success.

• Focus 8. Wow, a 16" control area is huge by any standards, but this will really let her spread out the warjacks. Not only that, but being FOC 8 plays perfectly well with her feat...
• Mathematical Perfection. This feat makes her Mat/Rat equal to her FOC for one turn. And remember that Cyriss warjacks share her Mat/Rat... so you're working with a field full of 8/8 warjacks spread across 16", creating a huge range of threats that, quite simply, won't be missing their attacks. This has the potential to be one of the most brutal feats I've ever seen. Yes it requires a bit of luck on several dice rolls, but with all the synergy, support models, and 8 FOC spread across all your jacks (plus the one they can all share), you are going to rip apart anything you want.
• She's a Warcaster unit, starting the game with 2 Exponent Servitors and popping one out each turn she has less than 2. These things have a 10" beam that gives you +2 damage to all damage rolls made against the target. Creating one every turn means you can leave one out in front to block charge lanes.
• She's a construct, which means she can be repaired. They hint that she has "quite a few damage boxes," so chewing through her health is going to take some work from your opponent.
• Field Marshal [Arc Node] gives all her warjacks the Arc Node advantage, meaning she can threaten any scenario area, or just harass your opponent with some of her amazing spells.
• Backlash is a debuff upkeep spell that targets warjacks. When that warjack suffers damage, its controller takes 1 damage point. Stick this on a colossal and get to work!
• Domination takes control of a non-character warjack with a functioning cortex. Use this to create an opening to your opponent's warcaster.
• She also has some adequate infantry-clearing attacks. Her melee is a POW 11 with reach and thresher, and her ranged attack shoots 11" and hits with a POW 15 AOE 4 attack. 

Her fear turn is going to decimate the unprepared opponent. If you can sweep your opponent's armor cracking off the board, your warjacks are free to control the board unmolested. You can also clear out a scenario zone, soften up several heavies, or clear a bunch of infantry with any jack that has an AOE. Directrix takes Cyriss's synergy, turns it up 10 notches and then rips the knob off. Assuming her Mat/Rat aren't pitiful outside her feat turn, I think a smart player will be able to create a situation that the opponent just can't come back from.

And that's saying nothing about the amazing concept art. I mean where else can you see a sword cloak?

I'm so excited about this army's release. I don't know that they'll become a main army for me unless they get clockwork Shifting Stones, but I'm planning to sell my budding Cygnar army to fund the initial Cyriss releases. They're just too fun not to try!

See you tomorrow!

IKRPG GM Toolkit Review

Today I finally got my hands on the GM screen for IKRPG and wanted to share my initial thoughts.

First of all, it has Privateer Press's usual quality. The panels are durable, the artwork is gorgeous, and the inside stat panels are glued evenly and securely (a factor that I find important). PP put a lot of care in to making this and it really shows.



The screen itself is a great height. Older GM screens were more like 3-paneled folders, making it nearly impossible to see your players. Instead the panels are slightly larger than 4 pieces of printer paper set end to end, allowing you to see your players without them getting a peak at all your secrets. The 4 panels can be a bit cumbersome, but allows more flexible positioning depending on what you have behind the screen.

The kit also comes with some handy paper supplies. In addition to a stack of character sheets and a health tracker for players and warjacks, it comes with two nifty tools for GMs - encounter sheets and initiative trackers.



The initiative tracker will suit some GMs perfectly, while other can re-purpose it or ignore it altogether. Although it's a glorified index card, I plan on writing down the stats of several models I find myself using often (humans, thralls, etc) that don't use life spirals. This way I can have their stats in front of me at all times, and I can write any special rules on the blank backside.

The encounter sheet is something I'm sure I won't make full use of, but I can see it being a life saver for some GMs. I do, however, plan on putting 1 in a plastic sleeve so I can easily track several models that use life spirals. After using a model with a spiral for the first time, I can't wait to see how much this will smooth out damage tracking!

Finally, the most important part of a GM screen - the charts and stats inside. In the past, I've always used charts + paperclipped notes to quickly reference important things. It's not the fault of the screens - there's limited real estate for so many complex rules, so the makers have to decide what they think will be most useful and the GMs have to come up with the rest.

There are a few items in here that I don't find all too useful. One panel has a deviation graphic - something that really isn't helpful except as a guideline if you don't have a template. Then there is a rule for Fear which seems rather random compared to any other rules they could have put in. Fortunately that only takes up about 1/4 of a single panel. The rest of the stuff is solid gold.

There's a quick breakdown of Injuries (minus the table, thankfully) and temporary effects like stealth or crippled aspects. The rest of the panels are crammed with charts for combat, skills, and player actions. The best thing about this is that almost every rule has a page number beside it, allowing you to reference something if you need more specific wording. I love these charts because it answers every basic question that can come up during a game. It can't (and shouldn't) answer everything, but it will shave off a lot of wasted time spent digging through the dense rulebook.

Now then, it wouldn't be a review without some negatives. My biggest complaint, which seems to be shared by many, is that the screen's price is increased because of the mandatory additions. While they can be useful, it's really just a prettier version of anything that could have been pulled from PP's download section or created by hand. While $28 MSRP is great for what you get, if you're only using the screen then you're probably wasting $8-10. D&D had similar products and sold them separately - naturally the paper products weren't terribly popular, so this may be PP's way of making the products available without having a bunch of character sheets gathering dust in warehouses and shore shelves. However, I really wish there was an option to buy them separately, even if it only saved me a few bucks. Fortunately I shop at Miniature Market and DiscountGamesInc, so the cost of wasted paper was offset by the 25% discount.

Secondly, they didn't include anything about encounter creation. This is more of a personal gripe than anything because I never know how many players I'll have until I come to the game, or I'll want to increase an encounter's difficulty on the fly without going too extreme. But really, even a chart for encounter points and player leveling would have been great. However, I see their reasoning for not since everything on the screen is for what's happening during the game, not before and after.

I'm sure as time goes I'll find some things I'll have to write notes for. Overall, they used their given space very efficiently and included almost anything you would need to reference during a skill or combat encounter. The game is still a bit bare-bones when it comes to general NPC interactions, but I almost prefer that because it allows the player's creativity to dictate a conversation, not a set of rolls.

So if you're GMing a game of IKRPG, I highly recommend this. If you play once a week or once a month, it will make your games smooth and enjoyable, practically eliminating all the time wasted digging through rulebooks to figure out climbing or attack modifiers.

See you tomorrow! And if you're new around here, be sure to like my page on Facebook where I post daily blog content and monthly giveaways.

Producer vs. Product

My wife is just super. We're going to be getting a sizable chunk of money, and while I was planning what bills to pay, she flat out told me that I have to buy a colossal and a good foam bag. Sweet, right? I worked my way through which colossal I'll be getting (I shall call him Big Red), but now I'm left trying to figure out which bag to get.

I've always wanted to get KR Multicase foam simply for the price. I recently got a basic set of foam, and while I wasn't thrilled with the look of the foam (rough cuts, bottoms glued unevenly), the functionality was exactly what I expected. I'm tempted to get a big metal case of theirs and never again worry about army storage, but I've always wanted to try Battlefoam. I always used the excuse that it is overcosted (which I think it is), but now that I can actually buy one without hesitation, I'm still not sure.

Here's my problem with Battlefoam - they're a bit of a bully. From a business standpoint they don't do anything that hasn't been done by big companies already. The problem is that they're a big business in a small market. Foam trays and carrying bags is very niche, and anything done by a company will be magnified simply because we're a much more interconnected customer base.

Case and point, Battlefoam is very fond of lawsuits. For a writeup on their past dealings, see a slanted article written by Blood of Kittens. It basically boils down to Romeo, the owner of Battlefoam, trying to muscle out his competition. There's nothing wrong with that - any major brand on our store shelves likely has at least one such lawsuit in their history. But as I said, they aren't Nike or General Mills. They sell a non-mandatory product to a small group of people. The existing options are limited as it is, and them trying to squash their competition is a bit... well, douchey.

However, I'm willing to shrug that off because if I were to refuse business to any company that operated with a bit of moral ambiguity, I'd die. But right now they're tangled up in an incredibly frivolous lawsuit with the owner of Blood of Kittens, a blog that has been very vocal about his displeasure with Battlefoam and its owner. And that's what sets me off.

The difference between this lawsuits and previous ones is based entirely on what's being done. When suing another foam company you're trying to protect your intellectual property or (and I don't approve of this) bending the law to muscle out your competition. It's often not a popular decision, and I'd never defend a baseless lawsuit, but that's the up and down of free enterprise. But BoK isn't a competing company - it's one guy with an opinion that Romeo doesn't like. Is it hurting business? Probably, but that's also the up and down of free speech.

I can't fathom why Romeo thinks this is a good idea. In our world of wargaming, this is very much a big business attacking the "little guy." It's not just bully tactics, it's downright idiotic. While BoK will obviously win this case, the fact that the owner of Battlefoam got his feelings hurt and cried "I'm telling Mom!" is utterly baffling.

But that's my emotional reaction. The more pragmatic side of me realizes that Romeo isn't Battlefoam. The bags and trays aren't somehow immoral because of the company owner's own underdeveloped level of maturity.The product is good; expensive, but unquestionably top-of-the-line. I would buy the bag if I'd heard nothing of Romeo's ruthless business tactics. Does a silly lawsuit make someone more unethical than a company who uses child labor?

What do you guys think? Is a business's practices a deciding factor in whether you buy from them? Is it fair to refuse business just because their negatives are more public than another company? How far does a company have to go before you'll say "I'll never give them my business!" and mean it?

I thought I could easily answer this, but between my examinations of GW and Battlefoam, I have to concede that crappy, ethical business decisions may not be cause enough to swear off a product.

See you tomorrow!

My First Time

Everyone one of us had that moment where we fully entered wonderful world of geekdom. Maybe it was Star Wars back in the day, or a certain comic book that fully drew you in. Although I'd collected comics for as long as I can remember, it was a new copy of Prima's Pokemon guide that really set the hook.

I still remember how it happened. I was a gangly 7th grader with big glasses and a Brett Favre jersey (the jersey is a safe bet since I had 6 in my clothing rotation). I got to band class early and my friends had made a haphazard circle with their chairs. They were talking excitedly and thumbing through a large magazine. Being perpetually shy, I stood on the fringes of the group and didn't ask what all this random vocabulary meant until later in the day.

My friend Justin, the owner of the Pokemon guide, chatted my ear off all day about this new game he was playing. I'd heard of the game before - we'd hosted a pair of Japanese students a year ago and they'd let me fumble my way through their Japanese copy. But I had no idea that the game I'd played then could sound so amazing.

A few days later my friend let me borrow his guide, and I spent hours reading through the thing. I had no idea what anything meant, but it was like reading some sacred text that held the secret to immortality. I was reading about weaknesses and resistances, gym leaders, and the Elite 4. There was a turtle that started cute and then turned somehow ended up with cannons coming out of his back! I was engrossed in it, and I hadn't even played the game.

With a piddly allowance and no money saved, it was going to be awhile before I could buy a Gameboy and Pokemon. I'd pushed it off for awhile, content to listening to my friends talk about a new Pokemon they caught or watching them trade Graveler for a Kadabra and watching them both evolve into awesome new forms. Then one day, the Fates decided I should get sick.

I wasn't sick with the Pokerus (something only hardcore Pokemaniacs will get). Instead I had a nasty flu that put me down for most of a week. That first day I rested on the couch in a daze. It seemed to be fate, then, that the very week I'd be sick is when a cable station decided to have a Pokemon marathon, starting with episode one and ending... sometime (I had to go back to school Thursday or Friday). But as I watched that first episode, and Ash got his Pikachu... I was helpless to resist.

I soon struck some deal with my mom to get a Gameboy and a copy of Pokemon, and I spent much of my free time battling through gyms and sighing as another wild Zubat appeared. I was finally able to join my friends' conversations, and I began absorbing any piece of information I could. Of course this is before I learned the magic of the internet, so it took me awhile to discover an entire community of fellow geeks.

As the years have progressed I've kept an eye on Pokemon. It's nearly impossible to play a game now, both because of the time required and because the new Pokemon totally suck. But I still enjoy a funny Pokemon pic, and I get excited when IGN writes up a story. Pokemon was my first love; my inception in to the brotherhood of geeks. I'll always be a trainer at heart, no matter how old I get.

Looking back, it's interesting to see how so much of my life has been shaped by that silly little Prima book. What about you? I'd love to hear what hooked everyone into a lifelong commitment of enjoying awesome things alongside awesome people!

See you tomorrow!

Getting in on the Ground Floor

I'm not a trend-setter. I will spend hours researching something before I commit to it. Because of that I'm always hesitant to jump in to something that hasn't been established. So when I received an email from Wyrd Miniatures a few days ago, I was hit with a mixture of excitement and hesitation.

Anyone I've talked miniatures with likely knows that I really want to try Malifaux. The miniatures are beautifully creepy, and the diceless mechanic is very intriguing. Unfortunately it's not something that has taken root in my group, nor even in my area. Wyrd has a program called Henchmen that is for Malifaux enthusiasts who are willing to take on the burden of teaching and promoting Malifaux in their area. In a very weird twist, my fairly large city (by Iowa standards) is far removed from any local Henchmen. Thus it's always been left up to me to learn and teach the rules, and I've just shrugged my shoulders and said "Oh well" up to this point.

But Malifaux is going to be released with a 2.0 version which seems to streamline rules and add some new features that Malifaux players are giving the thumbs-up to. I have no idea what most of it means, but I do know that rules reboots can be a very good thing. I started Warmachine long after the Mk II rules were released, and based on the horror stories I've heard about Mk I I'm glad I did. I have access to a few old rulebooks and things then seemed a bit wonky.

After seeing what did and didn't work, PP then went back to the drawing board and released Mk II rules, and that's the set of rules that made me fall in love with this hobby. Things aren't radically different, but enough of a change was made that playing the updated rules is smoother, more understandable, and overall much more fun. And now Malifaux is going to give me the opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

Despite my usual hesitation to get something at release, I really think this is the perfect time to get in to the game. I can buy and paint some starters, and by the time the rules release I'll (hopefully) be ready to get the game started in my group. Granted I could do that now, but I want my first experience to be the best. Had I played the original Warmachine I may not be as enthusiastic about the game. With Malifaux, I want my first experience to be the best.

And I'm not going to lie, the thought of starting a game where no one has it all figured out is a bit exciting. With Warmachine I spent so much time on the forums that I walked away with a whole bunch of preconceptions because people I was talking to were established in the game. If I can get in on Malifaux 2.0, I'll be figuring out the game alongside everyone else. My need to study and research a faction will be limited because everything out there will be relatively untested theory, not years of experience.

Is anyone else looking forward to the next set of Malifaux rules? Am I completely insane to wait until the next set of rules to try a game I've always wanted to play? Let me know in the comments below!

See you tomorrow!

Next Giveaway - Readers' Choice

As sad as it may be, coming up with daily blog content isn't the hardest part of this year-long blogging adventure. Instead, I find that I'm constantly stumped on monthly prizes to give away as a "thank you" to you guys for sticking with me through this. So once again I'm turning to you guys to let me know what you'd prefer. I'll be doing a Facebook poll for this, so if you didn't see this on Facebook then scroll down to the entry for May 3rd.

Without further ado, here are my 3 choices for this months' prize giveaway:

• Dice. I did these last month and they seemed to be my most popular giveaway yet. My buddy Fritz originally told me to do this because "everybody loves dice." I thought he was nuts, but that's what I get for still being a wargaming greenhorn. Rather than do dice for a specific game system I thought about letting you choose dice up to a certain dollar amount from Miniature Market. 
• Gift Card. Boring but popular. I think my last gift card giveaway would have gone better had I advertised it better. I'm a big fan of Miniature Market, so that's probably going to be my go-to unless someone can suggest some awesome company with a good $10-15 item.
• Custom Terrain. I'm long overdue on making some terrain. The winner wouldn't get anything spectacular, but everyone likes to get a new piece of terrain right? I'm going to be investing in a foam cutter soon, so I'm sure the terrain bug will bite me soon. If all else fails I know a guy who makes some really nice molds of walls and Warmachine objective markers, so I could buy and paint some of those.

So that's what I'm thinking so far. What do you guys think would be the most exciting for you?

Also, now that we've hit 50+ likes on Facebook I'm ready to get greedy and shoot for 100. To that end, the giveaway prize for hitting 100 likes will be a fully painted starter box of the winner's choice (price limit to be determined later). So tell your gaming buddies to come like my page - I appreciate every single thumbs-up, and they really motivate me to throw more money at you guys!

See you tomorrow!