Filthy, Filthy

Hello people,

So once again real life has got in the way but last weekend that was all brushed aside as I spent both day playing Netrunner,aka Filthy Cards,  and thoroughly enjoying myself whilst I did it :)

Saturday was Dark Sphere's Regional with a trip up to Northampton on Sunday to catch up with Gaurdians of Tyr's 2016 Grand Tournament.

In total I played 10 games across the two days, didn't win too many, came away with an impressive haul of swag, including a wooden spoon, and as with Birmingham a reinvigorated Mojo. All good :)

To be honest that was pretty much my goal for the weekend as I'd realised that by not playing much recently I had slipped down the learning curve somewhat. Netrunner's curve is pretty steep so it was more a case of how far.

As such I took older decks, which have done decently for me previously. Other than a mild issue with Influence, oops, the only issue was going to me. I made a lot of mistakes over the weekend, I got swept repeatedly, three in a row at Northampton, but relearnt a lot from it.

I've been keeping up online and with something of a Eureka moment can see the benefit of more varied Runner decks, mine being more mono-themed and as such having less choices to make.

I also recently came across an interesting article about running Jank on Netrunners.co.uk which resonated pretty strongly with me and seems like a good, fun way to delve into the wider card pool.

First off , put into practice the relearnt lessons of how to play a bit better which means rocking up for Secret Weapon in Stratford on a Wednesday night on a more regular basis.

Oh, and stop running 4th click so much ;)

Life on the NET # 11

Hello people,

So, back down to Warboar yesterday for my third Store Championship and the best day of competition Netrunner that I've had to date. Running tweaked NBN Sparks and Criminal Ken I scored 7 Prestige across five rounds, only blanking in the final round.

As much as that's my best performance to date it was more that I felt far more comfortable in the environment and enjoyed all of my games, taking something from each of them, against some good opponents, both as people and players.

As a side note I've noticed that Netrunner players, probably card gamers as a whole, are a slightly different different breed of geek / need.  Having had this discussion with a couple of gaming buddies we think it's because of the inherent game mechanic being very maths based. Unlike any dice based game the only true variable is card draw, which itself can be manipulated / tutored. There's a strong theme of resource management and a strong theme of "efficiency" to all aspects of gameplay.

I also read an excellent article on Netrunners.co.uk by Iain Reid in the week about induction, making the best possible conclusion from observable facts. For Netrunner the ID of opponent, game state, plays made etc. Very obvious once pointed out to me but isn't that alway the way. Not only did it make me more of my opponent's play it also made me think about what mine says. As such a set of Data Ravens went into Sparks. I know I'm not trying to kill, but you don't ;)

And this is what I really enjoyed about the day, the feeling that I'm making the transition from Unconcious Incompetence to Concious Incompetence and the improvement in my gameplay that's come from that. I've had a few post game compliments about my play recently which have, naturally, been very pleasing. Not the reason I play but motivational nonetheless.

As to the actual games I split a lot winning my first two Corp then drawing an winning as Runner. Ken was definitely more consistent with all but my last game being very close. Sparks either did what it needed to or flooded my hand with Agendas and Upgrades, TWICE, to hamstring me horribly.

Both will be going to Dark Sphere next Sunday with a few more tweaks. After that I want to try Wayland-Argus and maybe something Jinteki at which point NBN will be given a rest as I haven't played any other Corp. Ken will definitely stay for the forseeable, I really enjoy him, but I want to give Anarch a go.

Definitely want to have two Corp and two Runner decks in circulation as it seems that I rather enjoy this game :)

Filthy, Filthy??

Hello people,


Last Saturday I spent the day down at Paradice Cafe / Warboar in Bromley. Now this is nothing new, in almost any respect, as I'm something of a dedicated regular to the X-Wing and Netrunner tournament scene. It's also an excellent geek venue and Nigel was playing in thier Armada store championship.


What was different was that I was meeting an old mate to catch up with each other. We're old gaming buddies from many, many years back having worked at GW together a previous lifetime.


We spent all day playing Netrunner, aka Filthy Cards, trying out decks for a set of upcoming events but it was more the setting to the day rather than the day itself. It was a good reminder of the social side of the hobby that can sometimes get overrun in the rush for the top tables at any given event.
It is after a major part of why I play the games I play, the community and the individuals within it. As I'm sure I've mentioned before I'm pretty anti WAAC whilst still wanting to play good, challenging games against good, challenging opponents. To my mind there's a fine line involved as much as it's each to their own.


The problem is that people often don't leave each to their own and WAAC but it's nature can easily stomp over good old fashioned fun as its louder due to its general insecurities. Having said that I can't resist an internal fist pump when WAAC comes a cropper and find's itself having a bad day of things ;)


In short it was a very good day out and doubly nice not to be keeping score of wins. That will come tomorrow as myself and Alex head up to Northampton for Gaurdian's Netrunner Store Champs. A 25% win ratio remains the target :)

Life on the NET # 7

So it was the Gaurdians of Tyr Netrunner team championship on Saturday which was once again something of a step into the unknown and a huge learning experience.

 

As a headline I went 4-4 with two wins as Corp, both by killing the Runner, and two as Runner, one of which was timed, as in I was ahead when the round finished. I learnt plenty on both sides of the fence and was far happier playing a more focused Kitt Runner rather than a scattergun Criminal.

 

Once again my lessons were split between timing issues, what to do when for maximum effect, as well as facing new IDs and deck builds. A few times with Kitt I installed key programs to be used next turn only to realise that I'd just given my strategy away and my opponent a turn to prepare.

 

All but one of my opponents were helpful enough to answer my questions and explain what they were doing along the way. My final opponent had been to World's this year and continued to play in that vein. Fair enough, a lesson in itself as he crushed my Run, but all the more satisfying when I Scorched him into the floor 

 

As with the X-Wing championship the team format gave the day a less full on feel, at least at our end of the tables, and was just as fun as any other Gaurdians event. So another alternate art card, a few more possible deck tweaks and a bunch more games under my belt. Happy days :)

 

The day also brought my tourney / event to a close for the year. It'll be nice to play casual for a while, on all fronts, though I've already got plenty booked in for the new year!

Life on the NET # 6

So, Saturday is the Gaurdians of Tyr Netrunner team championship.

 

Deck lists are in. I've gone with a super-scorch NBN Making News and as a last minute change a Shaper Kitt-Paintbrush runner that I've played six games with so far.

 

As I'm just realising the true depths of my ignorance, especially as a Runner, the event should be an "intensive learning experience". Hopefully the bruising won't be too bad ;)

 

A lot of this is down to the fact that I'm currently seeing the game very laterally. I've been struggling for economy on both fronts recently so I've trimmed some non core strategy cards for more one off payouts. What I've played against a few times in the last couple of weeks are decks that generate economy off the back of their core Modus Operandi. These are often resources that trigger from other installs.

 

Even I can work out that this is far more efficient but due to lack of knowledge and experience don't know what works with what best and how.....if that makes sense?

 

For now I'm going to dumb down a touch while I learn better decision making. Kitt is already doing better for me as I have one core strategy that I've done my best to enhance rather than my Criminal decks that have had a lot of run options which have simply ended up confusing my thinking.

 

KISS to the MAX ;)

Life on the NET # 5

Hola!

So, myself Rich and Alex headed over to Leisure Games on Sunday for our next step up in Netrunner tournament play. LG have a monthly tourney capped at 20 players so we were expecting something of an increase but still a pretty laid back event......except they were the first in London to pick up a Winter prize kit which stretched the field to 26 and brought out the virtual knives!

As such people were wheeling out the Big-Bad decks and running thier A games with four rounds ratcheting upto five.

In honesty the vast majority of my opponents were very cool and more than happy to explain things to me as and when I asked. More than once I was also let off a minor timing gaff or two which was greatly appreciated.

Having read through some deck analysis of Worlds I was aware that my chosen IDs, NBN Making News and Criminal Silhouette, were entirely unrepresented and caused some comment on the day. Over four rounds I went 3-5, having gone into the 4th round 3-3, somehow I was 2-0 after round 1, which I was feeling very proud of. The field followed the current meta with lots of Kate, Anarch Virus decks, heavy HB and fast breeder NBN.

Up until round four I'd felt pretty much up with the pace, most of the time, though it was a fair bit of effort. In that I played a couple of anarch Virus decks which were a new experience for me but I could work out what they were doing. Running mainly against Haas-Bioroid I made a few mistakes a couple of times over but the main struggle was putting together a cognet strategy. Just slowing myself down and talking myself throyugh the board state really helped.

Round Four I came pretty unstuck against Pre-Paid Kate and then NBN Near Earth Hub. My opponent obviously had a lot of experience and knew what he was doing. I really didn't have a clue what he was doing! He played along at a good pace and I just got lost. He probably could have helped me out a bit more but then he didn't have to, not that it was too likely to change the result!

Against Kate it took a long time for the Agendas to come out and by then he was so well set, and had even reset his deck, he could run me with relative impunity.  All day my NBN deck fought me with a consistently lumpy draw, rarely giving me what I wanted as I needed it but those are the breaks. Against Near Earth Hub he set up his many, many servers and then blasted out the Agendas with frightening ease. 3-3 to 3-5 in 55 minutes!

In retrospect I let myself get blinded by science a bit. I should have slowed down and asked a lot more questions. I felt like I got the bums rush a bit and as such didn't really learn a lot from the game which was disappointing and slightly soured an otherwise enjoyable day.

Clinging onto the lower places and having made plans elsewhere we took our leave before the final round. I really felt the mental effort I'd exerted throughout the day which was a big learn all by itself.

The main lesson for the day was that I just need to play more games outside of my local meta. It's all well and good reading about current meta decks but seeing them in play is very different. That probably means taking a bit of a kicking for a while but as long as I take the time to learn what's going on, asking questions, and work through what I can do about it it's all good. The team championship in a fortnight will be a massive "opportunity".

While I'm doing that I'm going to continue to concentrate on my main IDs and decks, tweaking them as I go. To that end I'd like to concentrate them a touch more, maximise thier strengths and see how that goes. As such a second core set will be a necessity........ A NECESSITY ;]

Crossing the Streams

Hello people,

Just a quick one. After a long week at work I made the ,as minute decision to head up to Lost Ark today with Alex for some casual Pew Pew action. A dozen of us turned out for four rounds. Other than one TLT spam and a Hilbots everyone was playing nicely and I took the opportunity to run something a bit different in 3 Khiraz, 2 Mangler Skyc aka 20 Second Squadron.

I've run it a couple of times and wanted to try the tactic of hugging a board edge to draw in my opponent before turning in on them to choose engagement. I also wanted to keep them all together as much as possible to maximise firepower and use their 5 K-Turns.

In short it, and I, performed better than I expected taking four strong wins to place second. The loss was against Super Poe Swarm which went undefeated when my otherwise hot dice went cold and I made the mistake of chasing Poe. Otherwise I flew well, especially against the TLT spam which was rather pleasing.

For my prize I chose a Netrunner Data Pack, The Universe of Tomorrow, as I'm pretty happy with the list. The Khiraz, not sure of the plural, have been undercoated and promoted to the head of the painting queue.

Result 😊

Life on the NET # 4

Evening all,

Myself, Rich and Alex took our first step into the Netrunner tournament scene with an 11 man event down at Wayland Games yesterday. Unfortunately we all played each other and Alex caught a bye which limited our exposure to other players and decks somewhat.

For myself I had no expectations over getting in a decent block of games to assess my play and current decks. I'm fairly happy with my NBN Corp but far less so as a Runner wirth Gabe. Overall I impressed myself winning half my games, three with NBN and one with Gabe. Taking into account Strength of Schedule I ended up playing 7th overall with Rich 8th and Alex 6th.

Prize wise I came away with an alternate art Pop Up Window, participation prize, and a Criminal art box, as the TO had plenty of spares ;) More importantly I felt like I'd been competitive throughout with a bit of confidence in my NBN and a list of tweets for Gabe which have since been made. I also have a much better understanding of competition play. In my second round I first played as Runner against Jinteki Replicating Perfection. It was a challenge but I made a game of it, so much so that it ate up 60 of the 70 minute round which made the return set a totally different game which I was unlucky to loose. Big lesson on tourney technique!

All in all an excellent day out with a good relaxed atmosphere soon to be repeated :)

Life on the NET # 3

Hello people,

Following some rather shady corporate refinancing I've somehow picked up some more cards. Not the most unexpected newsflash I admit!

One of my Luke Skywalker promo cards went on eBay just as the Honour and Profit deluxe expansion went on sale just about everywhere so that was self financing. I also did some research on Netrunner DB based on some popular NBN decks and worked out the most useful expansions for the lists I was looking to emulate. Knowledge is power so they say though with next month's budget already at a deficit I going to need some serious spin to stay on message. Just as well I've picked NBN as my primary Corp deck for the forseeable :)

I think the point here is that though you CAN play straight from the Core Set you're really going to want to expand past that point pretty quickly. So far I've "invested" £55 on cards, £15 on a mat and about another £30 on art sleeves. So that's £100 as a "realistic" entry point which gives me plenty to be going on (3 Runner and 4 Corp decks of various flavour) with and is still favourably comparable to many other games / systems.

At the end of it I have an NBN deck with a few variants to play with. I've also slapped together a Gabe criminal deck which is gut rather than research but I'll find out soon enough.  Myself and Rich have a beginners tourney at the beginning of October which gives a nice aiming point. There's also a team tournament run by Gaurdians of Tyr at the end of October which will need some cannon fodder.

I really just need to play some games and will be getting more involved at Dark Sphere on a Thursday night once the current X-Wing glut recedes a touch.

Meanwhile Thunderdome is now entirely completed, bar the dumpster which turned up at the weekend and proved to be laser cut MDF, and will be hitting the table at Enfield Gamers tonight. Plenty of photos shall be taken of the 36, sorely needed, Painting Points worth of lovely, lovely scenery. Now I just need to get back to the figures.......

Life on the NET # 2

Hello people,

Another 5 games of X-Wing yesterday going 3 and 0 only to get whitewashed in the last two. I was running a bomber based list, it needs work.

Tonight I headed over to Rich's for a few more games of Netrunner. We tried out a few new pre-built decks, much different to previous incarnations. Interesting to work through some different strategies. During the week I picked up a playmat and 300 card sleeves, which was barely enough. As such I've already broken my monthly budget by £8. Rich also had a couple of spare expansions including the incredibly useful Opening Moves which with a bit of creative accounting will be credited against next month's allowance....which is now already spent.....though I now need some more sleeves.

Next step is to put together a couple of decks myself. Definitely going NBN for the Rupert Murdoch effect and probably a Criminal Runner deck to attempt to broaden my horizons. It may be a bumpy ride :]

Life on the NET # I

So as threatened this is part one of the Netrunner series and uncharacteristically for me it's an unboxing. I don't normally go in for these as they rarely seem to say much of actual use but it's a very logical starting point. Hopefully I shall not disappoint, myself as much as any of you!

The first thing you come across, other than the push board of tokens, is the rulebook. I say book rather than pamphlet as it's A4 and almost thirty six pages of high end gloss finish. I've had the bonus of being lead through a few games by others. This procedure comes highly recommended. It's not a difficult game, more technical if that makes sense?

In honesty I'm not going to try to give a detailed description of gameplay, I doubt I can with any clarity. In summary Corporations attempt to complete Agendas whilst defending them from the Runners with ICE programs (firewalls), or simply killing the runner. Runners attack the Corporations to steal the Agendas using hacking Programs whilst avoiding being traced and hunted down.
In a full game each player brings a deck for each side and takes a turn at each role.

As mentioned previously it's a very claustrophobic, atmospheric game of skullduggery, bluff and nefariousness. Very, very good fun but fairly brutal with it.

Stealing a quote;
'Getting your head around Netrunner is like trying to grab a fish in a river. It slips always just out of your reach, lets you seize it only for a moment. And just when you think you’ve really got it, brand-new cards are released, making new mechanics possible. It is not about the climb to dominance. It is not about getting better and better until you’re impervious. It’s not about winning, but about growing, laterally, like you’re sketching a map of a world that will never be finished being born.

I fell in love with this game because becoming good at it, and having fun at it, and making it mine, meant that winning stopped mattering at all.'

Onto the cards; On the corporation side you get four Corp specific starter sets (Haas-Bioroid, Jinteki, NBN and Weyland) along with a set of Neutral cards, mainly the all important Agendas. With the Runners you get three stater sets (Anarch, Criminal and Shaper) with a similar set of Neutral cards.

Each faction is neatly themed, as are their faction cards. Haas-Bioroid and Jinteki specialise in biotech and clones respectively while NBN runs world media and Weyalnd runs the numbers. The runner factions are self explanatory with Shapers out to build a better world for everyone.

In short, you get plenty in the core set to dip a toe or two, play a bunch of games and see where you want to go with the game. For £30 that's a very good deal. So far I've only played as Weyland, Jinteki and Shapers. I'll get plenty more games out of the set before NEEDING to pick anything else up. Wanting is different.....obviously!

Having played a bunch more games down at Enfield Gamers last night I understand the principles and tactics of the game far better. For the moment I want to try out each of the factions in the core set and what tactics suit them best. Also, having read around the net a bit this seems to be general advice i.e. try before you buy. There's quite a few cycles out there now so it makes sense to go into things forearmed.

Rich has also pointed me towards Netrunners.co.uk which has formed today's lunchtime reading, specifically this and this beginner article as well as a browse of a recommended deck builder.

Hopefully some of that was useful, for you as well as me ;)

Reasons to be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3!

Hello people,

One of the reasons we all engage in our hobby, and many others besides, is to find some escapism from the occasional harshness of real life. I often find that when life bites a bit harder than usual I often splurge on my various interests.

As such, behold!

I rarely get out of my pit early on a weekend but yesterday the lure of a Hound's Tooth and buddies did the job. Three Khiraz join the party along with two monstrous TIE Punishers to join Thrawn's Splinter Squadron. As such I spent an enjoyable morning popping card tokens and reshuffling my card folder (GEEK!!) whilst comtemplating the Slaver repaint.  Now that will be a labour of, geeky, love!

The Infinity pile has already been discussed. The second week of September has been booked as leave and I'm looking at a couple of ITS tourneys at Wayland in October. Always useful to have an aiming point!

So that just leaves Netrunner. I have a starter set and that's it so far. I can myself making a big investment over time and to help myself out I'm going to go all Tale of the Net with a series of posts charting my introduction. True Tale of style I'm going to set myself a monthly budget of £30 and do my utmost to stick to it. As much as anything it should be a nice change of pace from X-Wing and Infinity posts ;)
Meanwhile here's a Netrunner site I found that will form my lunchtime reading for a while.

Happy days ;)

Embrace the Chaos

Nothing that dramatic in honesty but whilst attempting to simplify and progress my current projects I've actually managed, as many of us do, to increase the mountain whilst simultaneously finding other shiny things to run after.......

Firstly I've finally spent my birthday Element Games voucher on this lot;

I went for the Aguacile specialists the Tunguska Inventnors (the pandas are SO cool) and a couple of Zonds to round out the selection. The rest went on completing the scenery set with a three storey apartment, some holo ads, consoles and a dumpster which is to follow.

Additionally I've dug out another couple of AT-43 vehicles to add to the scenery set and also picked up a Moran Massai as I've realised just how good they could be. While I'm at a pair of Geckos have also made thier way onto the WANT list. Meanwhile I'll be picking up about £100 of X-Wing Wave 7 on Saturday as well as renewing the car tax........sigh!

I was already looking at taking a weeks leave in early September which is now likely to become scenery week. I'll also paint a few of Rob's bits to alleviate the mild guilt.

Moving swiftly on, Rich introduced me to Kaos Ball and the Netrunner LCG over the weekend.

Kaos Ball looked pretty much like another Blood Bowl / Dreadball clone when the Kickstarter came round so I didn't really take a look. Apparently it's aimed at novice / non gamers and it certainly comes across that way with simple, primary coloured graphics / print.

However, despite deceptively simple gameplay there is a lot more depth to the game than I expected. Card driven there's a decent element of resource management and bluff. There are various cheat / power up cards with some drastic penalties if you get it wrong. Most impressively there's multiple methods to score points, which ramp up as you play through the quarters which in themselves are timed by how many cards you've played.

As such there are quite a few variables knocking about that you have to pay attention to. All of a  sudden it wasn't nearly as basic a game as I first thought. Probably still not a replacement for DB, if and when I get round to playing it again, but I'd happily play a few more games of it :)

Which brings us to Netrunner, which has already been registering on the fringe of my radar for a little while now. In honesty it was already hitting a lot of buttons for me. The background, imagery, concept and the fact that as a card game it's straight out of the pack with little room required are all big wins. the only downside is its LCG nature and the potential need to catch up with the pack.

I'll admit that I wanted this game to be good and I was HUGELY impressed. Learning as we went with pre-built decks meant we surely never got all the bells and whistles going but they weren't necessary. There's a great tech feel, and thrill, to the game.

You alternatively play as the Runner and the Corporation and both feel significantly different to play. As with many LCGs there are strong resource management elements but the big thing here is the feeling of paranoia and pressure that comes with it.

As I'm sure you've already guessed I forsee a fair bit of Netrunner in my near future :]

Wargamers Anonymous

My name's Steve and I'm a wargamer....or am I?

Saturday afternoon Ian was good enough to host one of our irregular nerd-fests. Pushing through a mound of spicy pulled pork rolls and nibbles we played our way through the first four Zombiecide missions for a total of five games (one wipeout).

We refer to these as fun games and regularly feature Zombies!!, various flavours of Munchkin, War on Terrpr and other multi-player offerings.


Over the past couple of years I and we have made a steady shift towards skirmish gaming for various reasons, mainly level of investment required based on time to table as much as anything. It seems like board, card and a couple of dice games have become more prevalent.

We get to have fun so are happy enough but have lines started to blur? Do or should we care? New 40k was dabbled with and maintains a presence but Dreadball is club flavour of the last couple of months. Pre 40K it was Mordhiem and Necromunda, Blood Bowl has been usurped.

Kickstarter is full of new shinies competing oh so effectively for our hobby cash. How many of these are full "proper" wargames? Plenty of skirmish and boardgames from what I've noticed but precious little else.

Gates of Antares was one such offering asking for a mere £300,000, as compared to Zombiecide's seven figure status, but didn't make it due at least partly to lack of tangible product. Is a "proper" wargame on KS just too much to produce?

So what is a "proper" wargame? One that needs a minimum of a 6'x4'? One with figures that are intended to be painted (AT-43)? Something at least platoon sized?

I'm not sure that I play "proper" wargames at the moment, for a variety of reasons. I'm sure I'd like to, Muskets & Tomahawks and SAGA would fit for me, but I don't seem to mind too much right now.

Should I though? Should you??

It's a habit......

.....winning that is or so they say.

Wasps finally picked up an ugly win on Saturday and I was there to bellow them on. ANY win after nine straight league losses is mana from sporting heaven :)

I jubilantly returned home to my recently ordered Warhammer Invasion expansion March of the Damned turned up and so I spent some of last night sleeving cards and seeing what I'd got.

I've suffered something of a reverse of fortune recently and have been receiving something of a pummelling to all comers. My Dwarf deck in particular is still waiting for its first win despite coming agonisingly close on a number of occasions.

Much as with any strategy based game now that I've got the mechanics into my head its time to work on the army lists, so to speak, a little more. The Dwarf deck is a bit slow starting without enough decent combos and too many "Battlefield Only" bruisers. MotD has given me a few extra Slayers that fit the bill so they'll find their way in and I'll theme the deck to suit.

I'm still definitely looking to theme decks rather than going all killer but I definitely want to get a bit more competitive. With my main all conquering Chaos deck I'd actually like to get a bit more of a corruption theme in there, maybe got a bit more beast orientated and IF I'm feeling really brave take the insanely nasty Blood Dragon Knights out :/ Even the Orcs could do with some tweek.

Admittedly I'd be taking them out to put them in an Undead deck, possibly with some Dark Elf stuff as I haven't touched them at all yet. I've also been very impressed by the Lizardmen and their savage ability, which Stewart has harnessed to disgusting effect alongside the poncy High Elves. Not wishing to copy, or touch a high elf with something other than an axe, I'll have to find another option.

So as always boring prep is the key, just need to sit down and do it :)

Flights of Fantasy

Continuing my, unpaid and unofficial, promotional drive for Fantasy Flight games I ran Shaun and a couple of the boys through Warhammer Invasion at the club Tuesday night.

In response Shaun then ran us through a four way game of Blood Bowl Team Manager. Generally speaking it was good fun and learning as we went quickly ate a couple of entertaining hours. Given the game time length I did at one point find myself wondering why we weren't just playing a four-way game of Blood Bowl but that was missing the point!

Basically, we played five rounds of upto five games. Within each game you only play the Highlights, one-on-one with a variety of different spoils and resources available to the winner of each game. As such you resource manage to build your team, both players, coaching and support staff, in the chase for as much Fan Factor as possible, which decides who wins.

So what I didn't cotton onto immediately is that you're playing through a five round league in an evening, rather than a single game! Probably best that I don't take anymore bangs to the head then :)

I think I still prefer Warhammer Invasion as it replaces a game that I don't want to play anymore with one that I do. I still WANT to play Blood Bowl, not that I dislike or wouldn't play BBTM again.

What it has made me think it that you could play your classic Warhammer Fantasy Campaign, be it league, map, Mighty Empires or whatever you fancy, just replacing the tabletop battles with Warhammer Invasion. Maybe best of three hands to win the battle? Something I could see me and people / gamers like me (the disenchanted whinger ones) going for. Just a thought??

Meanwhile I am struggling not to let Skyrim dominate my hobby time. Currently running two characters, a Khajit Rogue (a transfer of my D&D Halfling) and an Orc Warrior (another Warhammer replacement) I'm just enjoying myself far too much.

The plan was to try and limit myself to every other hobby evening. I managed an early finish yesterday and needed to get various domestics done so ear-marked it as a Skyrim night. I made the mistake of turning the X-Box on first and suddenly it was bedtime before I'd done a stroke of flat-work. Domestics tonight then which means I'm unlikely to get more than an hour or two with the brushes.......

I'll just play a bit more Skyrim then, especially as I'm halfway through clearing out a Vampiric keep! Friday night for brushes whilst I watch the rugby :)

As I've never been more than a casual gamer I can't really manage to feel too guilty for the distraction, especially as I'm running anything for the foreseeable, .......at least not for a while yet anyway. To keep me honest I'll keep my previous monthly Painting Point target of 20 and see where I get to!

January.........15 PPs to find :)

Horde of Things

So as threatened / promised I've picked up my first tranche of Warhammer Invasion cards, being the Core, Legends and Iron Rock sets, along with the necessary sleeves, deck boxes and storage.

Working through the cards placing them in sleeves and sorting them by race / type was useful, rather than just necessary, as I ended up reading through them all as I was doing so and made note of a few that caught my interest.

Running across the top l-r: Orcs, Elves, Empire, Dwarves, Dark Elves and Chaos, the main 6 races in the game. I've got more Orcs than anything else, by design, along with plenty of Empire, Dwarf and Chaos. Orcs will be my primary deck for a while, Empire secondary and Chaos sometime later.

Second row l-r: Buildings (neutral), Skaven, Undead, Lizardmen, Wood Elves and Bretonnian (Neutral) as the support races. Lovely way of including more of the races and expanding the options, especially as you start out.

Bottom row: some neutral tactic cards and Alliance resource / loyalty cards.

Stewart did me the favour of turning me onto the Deckbox website which allows you to set up an online inventory and decklists. I've also had a browse around the forums to find my feet a little. As mentioned, this is my initial tranche, I'm very sure that I'll be picking up a few extra packs with each pay-day, or maybe even a bit more regularly than that!

So a good solid start that we'll keep me plenty entertained for some time to come and all for less the the average GW Battalion! Deal me in :)

Back-Seat Gaming

Yesterday a few of the boys dropped round for an afternoon and evening of general nerdiness.

Big Rob and Mr Christian were first through the door and after various bits of chatter we found ourselves playing through a bit of Skyrim, an x-mas present to myself!

What eventually....er...evolved was me playing under their advice Rob having played previous editions of The Elder Scrolls, unlike myself, and both of my compatriots seasoned WoWers, unlike myself once again.

Slightly Big Bang style Mr C was browsing the net for forum and wiki advice to fuel our three way voyage of discovery. The depths of my ignorance were quickly plumbed, they are deep!

Throughout there were many cries of "Heal! Heal!" and various other such advices that I'm sure that the majority of us have received and proffered at various times during our gaming.....erm...careers.

This set me to thinking that back-seat gaming comes in many forms but tends to only ever be either genuine advice or one-up-manship especially in the virtual forum....and forums! Unfortunately the latter seems to be more prevalent than the former.

Roleplaying, as a group activity, is an obvious breeding ground, as such, given that even the best groups will plan things on the fly out of character and remind each other of various required actions, especially as each group will have its natural leader and pecking order.

Once Stewart rolled in we cracked out War On Terror followed by a bit of Munchkin Impossible. Stewart hadn't played either and it was only WOT's 4th ever outing so it was Learn With Mother for a turn or three. Another example?

Back at WOT, Mr C went aggressive as early as possible, nuking Stewart on turn 2, and as such setting himself up as Target 1. With the other 3 of us playing nicely we actually got our first proper win out of WOT on Liberation Points. I came close building up through the lower, more minor, continents only to be hauled down allowing Rob to steal in by controlling Asia, always difficult in RISK, and maxing out on cities.

Lots of group feedback and game strategy chat as we played through as we all learnt together, finding out a good few things that we had previously been doing wrong along the way.

Back-seat gaming?

Swords to Ploughshares??

Stuart dropped round Friday night and before you knew it we'd played through 3 or so hours of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer Invasion. The phrase I kept on using was "Just one more game"!

I've blogged about how much I've enjoyed playing this game previously. My second proper session just drove home the subtlety of the varied strategies and tactics within the game, each faction and even each deck. I'm sold!

As such I've re-found my motivation to paint-up and sell-off the last of my WH Orcs and Gobs.......to reinvest in WI Orcs and Gobs....Chaos...Empire....and a game the I WILL actually play and WILL enjoy. I'll likely have some change as well :)

Merry Chrimble!

This lot shall be painted and sold....

....to purchase a fair old lump of this!

Zom-Heim 1.1

Stuart dropped round on Tuesday night for another run out for Zom-Heim and a few games of Fantasy Flight's Living Card Game Warhammer Invasion.

This time with Z-H we used a deck of cards for activation / initiative, mainly as I'd remembered to find a deck. It worked just as well as we remembered, though in honesty not really better than a D6, and added the little touch of tension that I was looking for to give the feel of the horror genre.

I ran out the Undead zombie horde again, though this time limited to a LEGAL 15 figures, of a vampire, necromancer, dreg and a dozen shamblers to check the balance.

Running out against them was a Witch Hunter list representing the local nobility and their tenants consisting of maxed out heroes, inc priest, all toting sword and braces of pistols plus 7 zealots with bows and hammers as yokels with worn out muskets and staves.

Two games and one win a piece, playing both sides I lost twice (as gracious host obviously). Between games I had a blinding idea to balance costs as continuing at 600 GC as the Undead were under pointed. Basically, spend the extra cash on stat upgrades for the heroes. We gave this a go for the second game and it wasn't overpowered.

Now I just need to work through some more lists and look at national characteristics. 1.2 shouldn't be too far away :)

We also ran through four games of Warhammer Invasion which were games 2 to 5 for me. I played Magic many years ago and had a quick look again a few months ago but didn't for a number of reasons. Hardly an objective review but I LIKE WI.

Nice bit of resource management and plenty of different strategies sat on top of a deceptively simple mechanic. You also get your junkie hit of GW lustrous imagery and background without having to invest a small fortune and hundreds of brush hours only to be let down by the actual game and a number of its players. Just my tuppence you understand ;)

Another possible distraction!

We got a great big Zom-voy!

Child labour? Witch Hunter vs Dreg

The Battle for the Bacon

Diving charge gone horribly, horribly wrong!

Welcome to St Peytersburg

The town welcome commitee turn out....

....only to become a light snack!