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 :)

Permission to Land

Hello people,

Shock, horror yet more X-Wing on Sunday  but this time with something of a twist.

Event supremos Gaurdians of Tyr ran the inaugural UK Team Championship. Enfield Gamers entered a team amongst a field of thirty two teams.

The format was as follows;
- each team consists of three players each flying one of Rebel, Imperial and Scum
- each team submits lists prior to the event, pre published
- each list is upto 100 points forming a team total points cost
- each round is drawn team vs team via standard Swiss rules
- individual match ups are picked by team initiative i.e. the team with initiative picks first match up
- best of two wins the round with MoV scored as standard across the whole team.

The event sold out incredibly quickly with team tactics from builds, initiative bids and match ups being hotly debated. Some teams went to great lengths with spreadsheets of preferred match-ups and full on strategy sessions.

Not so Enfield Gamers Splinter Squadron. As experienced tournament players we were aware of the meta lists and looked to cover the options with flexible lists we each new well. For us that was Scum TLTs, Soontir swarm and BBXX with T-70s.

I was a bit bothered that the event was going to be hyper competitive but the team element had quite the opposite effect with a very chilled, fly casual feel about the day. The Gaurdians of Tyr boys also did an excellent job of running such a large event and expect to double the field next year.

Another concern was that my dice had been so hot Thursday night that they had almost set the table alight. As such I had the commen superstition that my dice would argue with me on Sunday......and so it proved! Personally I had four of my five games decided within 10 points for two wins, a draw and two losses. I'm happy that I flew well but my evade dice especially were poor all day. More to the point I had five good games.

Thankfully my team mates did better for Enfield Gamers' Splinter Squadron to place 4th of 32, just 20 MoV from 3rd. A good day out by anyone's measure. Another concern had been my recent feelings of burnout. It's been a commen conversation between a few of us recently. As such Soontir's Interceptor will be parked in the hanger for a refurb while I Fly Casual for a while.....

Taking out the Trash

Yes, been a little while,

Yada yada, real life busy, X-Wing etc ;)

Getting back to Geek-life I recently built and painted what turned to be the pack of two dumpsters from Warsenal. A couple of transfers and plenty of weathering has turned them out rather nicely for another  couple of Painting Points

For what you'd imagine to be fairly simple pieces there was actually quite a bit of construction involved. I'd expected them to be solid lumps of foam, or similar, but actually came as laser cut MDF. Both pro and con as I was expecting one rather than two quickly followed by discovering that there were no hard copy instructions. Instead Warsenal have construction videos on thier website.

I appreciate that just about everybody has the internet these days but it does feel like an oversight especially when those videos are brief and entirely devoid of text or commentary. It was literally various pieces laid out explosion style, plenty of PVA and a pair of hands. I found myself watching the whole thing through to get the gist and then stop-starting my way along.

PVA is a major requirement as very few of the pieces interlock. For a set this simple that's not too much of an issue but for anything building sized you might end up needing a third or fourth hand. You may also end up with drip marks and / or air gaps which for a dumpster is fine........

By comparison the Micro Art pieces come with clear well laid out instructions. All of the pieces are designed to interlock, some better than others, with PVA being optional rather than a necessity. All of my buildings went together without any PVA followed by the odd dab of superglue here and there as necessary. All in all a very nicely designed snug fit was easily achieved.

I would however recommended a spray sealant, even just hairspray, to provide a final bond and also to prevent the MDF soaking up huge quantities of primer.

In honesty the dumpsters went together fine and I'm very happy with them but I'd honestly be a bit wary of picking up any of Warsenal's bigger kits without having got a decent amount of feedback from people with more experience of them. Just saying!

On a vaguely related note I've realised that the extra pages on the blog haven't been updated in quite sometime to the point where they're no longer representative of what I'm upto these days. As such they will come down to be completely updated in the near future.

Watch this space!

M-Athlete

Hello people.

 

Fair warning this is a musings type post. Might be best to source a beverage :)

 

Last Saturday I attended yet another X-Wing event. This one was an inter-club challenge representing the 186. It was a good day out up at Wargames Workshop in Milton Keynes. Including five 75 minute games, travel and breaks it was a 14 hour day. By game 5 I was flagging, same as everyone else, and was triumphantly exhausted during prize giving. No complaints though, quite the opposite :)

 

As a regular tourney player it's something that I'm used to and have learned a few survival techniques. I'm also very familiar with the inside of a gym and run a couple of 10Ks a week. The parallels are all there to be drawn.

 

For a tourney I'll make sure I get in a decent breakfast, often scrambled egg and bacon on toast. I've learned to snack small between games, peanut butter roll or fruit, and try to drink a bottle of water per game, especially as rooms full of gamers warm up rather quickly. I limit my lunch as I used to play poorly first game back otherwise, Circadian rhythem has an effect apparently. So hydration and regular snacking (non sugar to avoid rush and crash), the parralels begin to form.

 

Then, as I was contemplating this post I found this article on the Beeb about the physical effect of sustained mental effort. The article specifically looks at bridge, poker and chess but the same principles applying to any competitive gaming. The important word there is competive because primarily we all play games for fun and escapsim from real life. Competitive gaming offers a different edge to things, something I've rambled on about before an exacts a different toll.

 

With physical training repitition is key to build skill, endurance and stamina. Mental training, in the form of competitive gaming, follows the same mantra. I was interested in the article's claims that chess grand masters can burn 5000+ calories. The stereotypical gamer is either in need of feeding up or a pathalogical salad dodger, though I don't think the stereotype holds these days.

 

Another parrallel is the need for rest days / periods. With a decent number of events and competitions recently I'm beginning to feel the burn. As a release Thursday nights at Dark Sphere I've been playing much more casually. In a couple of weeks there's the Gaurdians of Tyr Team Touranament and I know a lot of people have been getting in plenty of table time for it. It's going to be an excellent day out but afterward I'm going to notch things back a touch. Tomorrow its Warboar in Bromley which many of us are using as an extended practice day.

 

With competitive X-Wing, there's more than one kind of STRESS but at the end of the day its all about the Pew-Pew ;)

Enter the THUNDERDOME!!

As previously threatened I took a bunch of shots last night as myself and Jon got in our first game of Infinity for a few weeks prior to the club's upcoming campaign.

I could take dozens of close up shots but I've been much more bothered by the overall feel rather than individual pieces. Keeping the District 5 buildings fairly bland has worked nicely against the busier AT-43 tiles and card pieces. Similarly I'm pleased that the construction vehicles have done the same but with a co-ordinating splash of JCB orange.

So, 36 Painting Points on the board but more pleasing is a major project completed. The occasional extra piece may be added but I need to concentrate on figures for the forseeable.

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.......