Painful Mistakes and the Absent Blogger.

Seeing Mick getting back on the scene (and pumping out the Blog content) got my typing fingers twitching but I’m just not inspired to write anything about 40K right now, fear not I’ll be attending two large tournaments in the next 3 months so I’ll have something to write about in the near future. This being said I hope you’ll forgive me a digression.

I was a World of Warcraft player for many years. I rolled a Tauren Shaman a few short weeks after release and then signed up with a guild called The Suffering almost as soon as I spawned in Mulgore. I pretty much embedded myself there for the best part of 5 years as I worked my way up to being on the Guild Council as a Raid Leader. With the relentless quest for loot, raiding: from the first tentative steps into 40-man raiding in Molten Core to confidently having Illidan “on farm” and even the occasional Guild meet up (in the real world), this was the most fun I’d ever had simply playing a computer game.

Inevitably however real life began to invade my wonderful little fantasy world and I managed to extract myself from the game some time in 2010. I still pop back in on occasion to dust off my Shaman and a few of my other alts but without the Raiding side of the game, it just doesn’t hold my attention like it used to.

There’s still a lot that I love about World of Warcraft (WoW), the lore, the design, the mechanics and the multiplayer nature of it, and therein lies the crux of it. I’ve always been a fan of playing games with other people, it’s one of the key reasons why I like 40K, whether competitive or co-operative (or both), that’s what really scratches my gaming itch. As is so often the way though, as I get older, the time I can dedicate to these gaming pursuits becomes less and less, so with WoW taking up 4 hours per night 3 times a week I just wasn’t going to be able to keep it up, particularly with a young family. Even 40K with its, perhaps, 3 hours per night 1 night per week demands, can be a bit tricky for me.

Enter Hearthstone.

I heard about this game via some friends who I still keep in touch with from my Guild so I thought I’d check it out. I’d never played a card game, like Magic or Pokemon, before but the theme was something I was all too familiar with so it felt very comfortable and non-threatening. The Hearthstone Heroes all reflected the aspects of their WoW Avatars, so I had somewhat of a head-start on understanding the abilities. The design is fantastic, both graphic and game design, it looks beautiful and plays simply but with a huge amount of depth. The final taste was the fact that it is (at the time almost exclusively) a player vs player gaming model. I was hooked!

As I dug a bit deeper into the game I started to relate deck building in Hearthstone to list building in 40K. As you may already know from the blog, list construction is one of my favourite aspects of 40K, theory-hammering out a list for a tournament and then playing it out to see if your expectations were met is something that really hooks me into the game.

Also the simplicity of the game makes it easier to play the odds in line with an overall strategy, something which is key to the success of many top 40K players. For example, if you know you want to control the board in Hearthstone and you know what cards you have in your deck, you can make intelligent choices with the cards you have in your hand to either flood the board with your cards, to trade advantageously or to simply bide you time knowing that you can clear you opponent’s board in a few short turns.

The game (or more accurately – your opponent) will also punish even small mistakes. One particularly fresh example of this happened to me only this past weekend. I was playing some Arena and I’d drafted a particularly mediocre Shaman deck. Arena is a game mode where you build a deck of cards from scratch by choosing the best card 30 cards from a pool of 90 shown to you 3 at a time of which you may only pick 1. Anyway, I was on 3 wins and was up against a Warrior who came out of the gates flying with a very aggressive deck and who was clearly not interested in trading with me. Every card he had just went straight for my face and before I knew it I was on 1 health and facing an opponent with 30 health and 2 additional armour. Queue the Rocky theme tune …

His aggression and my card trading had actually left me with a relatively strong presence on the board and I had a hand which I could use to protect my single point of health. Also to my advantage was the fact that it seemed that his deck had run out of steam. Over the next few turns I got just the card draws I needed and I took him down to 14 health, during the same period he’d been frantically working to get back some semblance of board presence and I was acutely aware of the fact that my single point of health wasn’t going to last much longer. Then all my defence was gone and I was staring down a board which I could not weaken enough to survive the following turn. However, I knew I had a card in the nine that were left in my deck which would give me the turn I needed to finish him off and I had a way to draw an additional card so I took the 1 in 9 chance …

Needless to say I was unsuccessful, but almost as soon as I spent the action to draw the card I realised that if I’d used that action to hit my opponent I would have had a lethal amount of damage which I could have dealt to him that turn and won! Oh the pain of blundering away a 32 point come-back (the heroes start with 30 points of health) simply because I was so focussed on board control at that point and I simply missed the fact that I had lethal if I’d only noticed it staring me in the face. It felt a lot like stretching a unit out to just barely get a single model into scoring range only to have you opponent charge them from the other side and pull them off just as the game ends.

Anyway, the lesson I learnt was to always calculate the damage available to me and compare it to my opponent’s health before making any actions. Even if you’re playing board control, you still want to win the game right?! I guess the broader lesson here is to not focus so much on a particular strategy that you forget about the overarching goal.

Lastly there's a final lesson here, and that it to never give up. Staring down a 30-1 deficit is pretty intimidating and I could well have thrown in the towel but there was a glimmer of hope in the cards I had in my hand so I played them to the best of my ability, and but for a stupid mistake, I could have won that game. To link this back to 40K, keep your focus in the mission, your opponent may be handing you your ass but there's more to winning the game than tabling someone. If you have the troops left you can still win it so keep your head in the game and stay focussed on you goals.

I hope that was at least somewhat interesting  and if Claws and Fists deems it worthy, perhaps I’ll post a few more Hearthstone stories in the future. Otherwise stay tuned for more 40K content in the coming weeks.

The Week That Was ...

I'm in a glass case of emotion!

26^th October – 1^st November

Chaos Win

Looks like I may have done well to avoid playing Mick’s Chaos list last week because I was roundly spanked by Gav’s Chaos Marines/Daemons list this Thursday. In fairness the list is something we’re working on together for the Battle Brothers tournament in January so Gav cannot be held wholly responsible for the giant slice of gorgonzola that he served up to me and, but for some poor dice and poor decision-making, I could have done a lot better. Before I spout off about the game here’s an overview of the lists:

1500pts - Purge the Alien/Vanguard

Marines/Daemons:

Huron

Great Unclean One of Nurgle

Flamers of Tzeentch (5)

2x Chaos Space Marine Squad (14) 2x Plasma, 1 Sgt w. Lightning Claw

Pink Horrors (5) w. The Changeling

Helldrake w. Baelflamer

Screamers of Tzeentch (5)

Obliterators (2) MoN

Tyranids

Prime w. 2x Boneswords & Deathspitter

2x Hive Guard (3)

2x Termagant (10)

2x Tervigon Crushing Claws, Cluster Spines, Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, three 6^th ed Powers

Raveners (5) Rending Claws

Carnifex Brood (2) 2x TL Devourers each

I went second but due to Huron’s Trait I was basically deploying blind as Gav rolled a 3 for his number of units able to infiltrate. I set up a fairly balanced front but with the ‘fex/Prime unit  on my left flank in cover but within reach of his Oblits, and the Raveners dead centre. I also held both units of Termagants in reserve. Gav infiltrated his two large Marine Squads in cover to my right with Huron’s unit more towards the centre.

The first turn began with Gav getting his preferred wave so down came the Screamers, right in front of my Raveners, and the Flamers, right between my Carnifexes and a unit of Hive Guard. The Screamers turbo-boosted over my Raveners causing about 3 wounds and the Flamers took two wounds off the Prime and one off a Carnifex. Could have been worse! In my first turn I poured the Carnifexes into the flamers reducing them to two models and the two Cluster Spines and Hive Guard into the Screamers, reducing them to two models as well.

Poor decision #1 I did not spawn any ‘gants because this is a VP scenario and I did not want to contribute more VPs to the pool. However if I’d had the units available I’d have been able to mop up the remaining models in each unit giving me 2 VPs for the kills and an extra one for first blood. The ‘gants would have been in a relatively safe position and able to react to the next wave of Daemons to drop.

Poor decision #2 I charged the remaining Flamers with my ‘fex/Prime unit. The overwatch fire caused 3 wounds killing off the wounded Carnifex and the resulting combat only succeeded in killing 2 of the remaining 3 Flamers. This was largely caused by my decision not to shoot the remaining Flamers with the nearest unit of Hive Guard though as they could probably have finished them off!

Poor decision #3 Charging Huron’s unit with my Raveners, through cover, at a distance of 9”. Obviously this was unsuccessful and the overwatch fire took the unit down to 3 models. Not good!

Sure enough Gav got the Great Unclean One and the Horrors next, blocking the progress of my ‘fex/Prime unit with the big fella and putting the Horrors in my backfield to give me another reason to think twice before advancing on his juicy units of Marines. His shooting was effective, finishing off the Raveners in the middle and taking a wound off the Tervigon on the extreme right flank. My shooting phase, however, was much more productive ... for Gav! I chose to spawn two units of ‘gants this time and one of the units in reserve came on, from here on in I think the rest of the turn can be summed up as follows:

Poor decision #4 I chose to shoot at the Pink Horrors! Sure enough the unit of Termagants failed their leadership and shot at the recently spawned unit of ‘gants killing a couple of models. Then (less stupidly – but no less unsuccessfully) my Tervigon failed his leadership test and plonked his pie-plate on top of the depleted ‘gant unit finishing them off.

Poor decision #5 After charging the Great Unclean One (who was Enfeebled I might add) with a bunch of poisoned ‘gants I also piled in my Carnifex and Prime. If I’d rolled better this would have been fine but as it was I got stuck in combat for another 2 player turns eventually losing the Prime to a challenge and everything else along the way. Only taking the Great Unclean One with me thanks to a Warp Speed buffed Tervigon charging in a turn later.

The rest of the game was rather academic since I lost all three secondary conditions and was behind on VPs even without those. I definitely could have played it better but at least I’m seeing what I’ve done wrong and hopefully I can correct this in the future.

I’m not putting it all down to my mistakes either, Gav played a blinder (clearly still sore about Space Hulk the previous week), but I think that if I’d kept my wits about be and not been quite such a knuckle-head I could have given him a bit more of a game!

If I could do it all again I would have spawned ‘gants in turn 1 and not allowed the Daemons in my back-field slow my advance. Also I should have just tar-pitted the Great Unclean One with poisoned ‘gants, they would have killed him eventually and I think my Monstrous Creatures would have had a good chance at wiping the Marine squads if they’d been able to get there!

I think that playing Tyranids, more than any army I’ve used before, requires you to have a rock solid plan going into a game and a number of factors (some of which may be out of your control) can quickly wreck that plan making recovering anything from the game very hard work. Not to mention that if you plan poorly or make silly mistakes during the game, any chance of being competitive can very quickly go out of the window. This is undoubtedly a lesson that applies to all armies and it’s a testament to my lack of success at tournaments that I have not been able to learn this lesson to date. Perhaps my experiences with Tyranids will make a better player out of me!

And in other news

Overpowered units. When 6^th was brand spanking new, everyone was asking, “How are you going to deal with Flyers?”. I think that in most situations (even though this question still pops up more often than not) my answer is, “I’m just going to ignore them”. Admittedly it’s going to be very hard to ignore multiple Vendettas when playing a Monstrous Creature-heavy list, but in that case I will try to force them to Hover to make the most out of their Lascannons and at that point I need to be in position to jump on them with something killy! Perhaps this is a naive position but I’m going to drop shooting capability from my next test list and see how it goes.

Now the overpowered unit label seems to have been applied to those troublesome Screamers and Flamers from the Chaos Daemons Codex and I have to say that they certainly do worry me, particularly as I’m probably not going to be carrying any significant shooting in the next few test lists. However if you play a list with a suitable amount of shooting in it, and as this is 6^th ed you really ought to be able to shoot, I can’t see these units being unmanageable. If you put fire-power into them they will crumble and then what has the list got? Probably some very poor scoring units with low survivability and a Monstrous Creature or two, this should be manageable. If a game is balanced you should not be able to win easily, it should be tough, it should be a challenge. And I really don’t qualify 27 Screamers and 27 Flamers as an “I Win Button”.

Let’s hear your thoughts, I’m sure you all have some!

The week that was ...

I don't know how to say this, but I'm kind of a big deal!

19th -25th October 2012

Chaos fail

My first taste of the new Chaos Marine 'dex was postponed this week because, quite frankly, Mick had bigger fish to fry. I'd put together a not completely hopeless 500pt Tyranid list to face him though so I hope we can reprise our game this week.

In the absence of a game against them, I took a closer look at the codex and decided that actually the "Typhus/Plague Zombies/anything else you like really", list does look good, does look like something I want to play and does look very reasonable cost-wise thanks to Mantic's release of the Corporation Zombies deal. Not so good for Battle Brothers but very good for the wallet!

Rumors abound

For those of you that don't follow Faeit 212, and why the hell don't you - do it NOW, there have been lots of leaks surrounding the pre-christmas release schedule. Most notable, in my 40K biased opinion, are the Wall of Martyrs, The Space Marine and Necron Mega Forces. In the past the Mega Forces have been pretty damn good deals so keep an eye on them because if they are for armies you like/collect this is probably going to be a good investment.

In other news, the on-again/off-again, maestro of SEO - Adam from The Space Wolves Blog appears to be back on the scene again and is threatening to unite all the Blogs disgruntled with BoLS's treatment of the common Blogger and to pick up where FtW's blog roll left off but with even more pazzaz! Colour me apathetic but I'll leave you to make what you will of it (Ed - Andy's opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of Claws and Fists)

In other media

Some of you may know I'm a big fan of Podcasts. I'm currently listening to The Independent Characters and the 11th Company (never missed an episode of either) and I've picked up again with The D6 Generation (not a 40K podcast but an excellent general gaming one).

Over the last two episodes the Independent Characters have been reviewing the first Book in the Horus Heresy series from Forgeworld, "Betrayal". If you are in any way on-the-fence about this book, I strongly urge you to listen to the last two episodes as they are a really superb, in-depth review of the content, both fluff and rules, by a couple of guys who have a great understanding and enthusiasm for the project. In addition to this the Podcast is very entertaining no matter what aspect of 40K they are talking about so why not subscribe while you are at it.

The 11th Company are still doing what they have been doing sublimely for the last 138 episodes most recently they have delivered some very interesting insights into the world of Tournament Organisers in the US and some early (typically cynical) opinions on the Chaos Marines Codex. Though credit where it's due Neil "he's not going to lie to you" Gilstrap has managed to maintain a cautiously optimistic take on the new codex. I think it's important to remember that when you listen to these guys they are coming from a position of playing for wins in a highly competitive setting but if you're not that type of player this really shouldn't put you off listening to the podcast, it consistently provides fantastic tactical insights into play-styles and list building that I have not found anywhere else on the internet ...

... at least not since 40KUK went AWOL, just a little note here that I miss you guys and I hope that you get a new episode out soon; and please, for the love of god, sort out your sound quality. The content is epically good but I found the last one almost impossible to listen to!

And finally

I'm a pretty keen computer gamer as well as doing the 40K stuff, and recently X-Com has had me poised over the "add to cart" button on Steam. I keep telling myself I can wait until the Winter sale, where it's bound to be 25% off, but I'm not sure I have the self restraint to follow through. Fortunately my buddy Tee has been keeping me distracted with games of Dawn of War 2, Orc Must Die 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 (I'm all about sequels). These games are all excellent, particularly in the co-op multiplayer stakes but I'm not sure how long the distraction will continue to be effective. And really, why am I punishing myself about this ;)

Anyone else out there a keen PC gamer? What have you been playing recently?

If it looks broke, maybe it 'aint.

There’s a lot of moaning about underpowered codices at the moment and, to be honest, for as long as I can remember there always has been. A couple of blogs have been posting articles recently on fixing certain armies, but I’ve just got to pipe-up and say “Stop it!”.

You’re not a game designer despite what-ever delusions of grandeur you may be under and, even if you decide to post your own “improved codex”, no-one is going to use it. In fact, while giving everyone a level playing field may sound like a good idea, I don’t really think that it is.

I’m going to use my recent experience of Blood Bowl as an example here (and before you all mumble “here he goes again”, bear with me, this is going somewhere). In Blood Bowl there are clearly established tiers of teams; Wood Elves, Norse, Undead and Chaos are among the top tier, meaning that they are easier to play with and have reliable strategies for scoring points and winning games. There is a mid-tier consisting of teams like Khemri and Nurgle, these are teams who have defined strategies for winning but they are difficult to implement and tend to require much more careful play. Then there are the bottom tier teams such as Goblins, Halflings and Ogres who really only have one way to win games and are very difficult to play by all but the most experienced coaches. As this is a dice game, luck is also a factor and the tiers reflect how much the luck of the dice comes into play. With top tier teams being able to cope best with poor dice while the bottom tier teams are very reliant on good dice.

I expect that by now you can see where I’m going with this!

In 40K we seem to have a similar system of tiers in the various armies with Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Dark Eldar and Imperial Guard occupying the top slots and Nids, Vanilla Marines and Sisters pretty well entrenched on the bottom rung. Now I do appreciate the fact that the cost of entry to 40K is significantly steeper than that of Blood Bowl (probably in the region of 10x more). So if you happen to play Nids, for example, and GW updates your codex which drops you down a tier or two it’s not necessarily practical to go out any buy a new army. But this is a commodity hobby, you didn’t need those toys in the first place, suck it up and find a way to enjoy your chosen army. Or, go out and start to collect a new army, you managed to do it once, if you love it enough you’ll do it again!

Rather than railing against this “tier” arrangement why not embrace it? It’s very easy for a top level player to spray some marines grey/blue and go off to a tournament and do very well with them.

Big whoop! Hey! Everyone’s very impressed.

Instead, why not say, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this game, let’s try taking a more challenging army to the next tournament and see how I do!”? Being successful with a lower tier army has got to be more satisfying to the player and will surely garner more kudos from the community, if that’s what matters to you.

Given the level of competitiveness in the tournament scene at the moment I don’t really expect to see many people do this but I do not think that equalising all of the codices is the answer. Surely there are top players out there who want a challenge and I think the game would become rather stagnant and boring if everything became equal.

A couple of cases in point for your consideration, I believe that Nic Nanavati is having some success with Nids in the States and over here Gaz Jones has always been a proponent of Xenos codices which have not fared too well (power level-wise) under 5th edition. Also in the UK, James Ramsey was (when last I heard) defending the honour of the Sisters of Battle.

So, what do you all think? Does the variety in the power level of the codices need fixing or is it there to provide a variety of game-play experience? Or am I just talking bollocks because I’ve been playing too much Blood Bowl? I’ll turn it over to you.

All I ask is that it's AWESOME!

Codex reviews/unit reviews; I love them. I love to read them on people's blogs and I love to listen to them on people's podcasts. All of them inspire me to try out new units in armies I already play and many of them flip that little internal switch that triggers my “that's going to be my next army” gene. Often the reviewers come up with ways to use units that I hadn't previously considered and again that just makes me wish I played more often than once a week, and recently I've been struggling to manage even that!

Something which crops up consistently though, which is beginning to grate on me a bit, is reviewers suggesting ways to “correct” the “flaws” in a particular unit. For example “Those Grey Knight Terminators are OK but if they could take Storm Shields and assault on the turn they deep strike in they would be awesome!” or “Well, Coteaz is a solid HQ choice but for his stat line I feel he is rather over-costed.” … OK those are not real examples but it's not a million miles off some of the stuff I have read/listened to recently and to both of those and comments like them I say “Poppycock!”.

You heard me. People do still say that, look it up in the Urban Dictionary. No you don't get a link, it's your language, use it or lose it.

I'm not going to start stating the obvious stuff about how units compliment each other and compensating for a unit's weakness elsewhere in your list is one of the ways to build effective armies. I'm not going to go into this because the guys who do unit reviews usually put this in the paragraph after they wish-list how to make the unit perfect and,more importantly, because I'm not really any good at it. Have you ever read one of my lists? I'm not shy about posting them!

Now this is not meant to be a criticism of the guys who review Codices. I love your work, keep it up, it inspires me even though you are pushing me closer to bankruptcy on a daily basis. But please lets just consider how boring the game would be if every unit in every Codex was tuned to perform it's job to absolute perfection. Assault units would all rock power weapons, have 3++ saves and access to re-rolls across the board. Anti-infantry fire support units wouldn't get out of bed for anything less than a 24”, assault 2 S6 rending weapon that ignores cover.

I think we can all agree that would be pretty boring.

However with all that said there are still units out there which are widely recognised as being so devoid of use that they NEVER see the light of day. In the spirit of this article, have you ever found an effective use for one of these units? For example have you managed to come up with a use for the Pyrovore beyond being an unattractive paperweight? Or have you employed Mandrakes and never once wished that GW had just given Dark Eldar Genestealers? Please leave comments below.

Art and 40k, the musings of a tired mind!

Being something of an insomniac I am given to surfing the internet until silly hours of the morning (even on a week night!) and then mulling over a seemingly endless list of things that seem to pop into my head for no apparent rhyme or reason.

On one such late-night internet trawling session I managed to end up watching the music video to a song by Deftones called “Bored”. This is one of the pivotal (to me anyway) songs of my late teen years and listening to it again brought back all the feelings I loved about listening to metal when I was a bit younger J. I’d always wondered what Chino was singing about so I googled the lyrics and up they came. More interestingly though, on the site I’d clicked through to there was a discussion thread talking about what the song was about. One guy in particular had gone into great detail about how the song was conveying the day-to-day frustration of being an infant and unable to communicate. In fact he had gone as far as to break the song down, line-by-line, to explain why he thought this. Of course this elicited the usual net-rage, in this case about how Chino wouldn’t write songs about being a baby and that it was obviously all about coming off drugs. To me it was just about the frustration of being a hormonal teenager, not being a great thinker I’d just seized on the chorus and run with it!

This guy and his deconstruction of the song lyrics got me thinking about art and how different people get wildly different things out of it. Who knows what Chino was trying to convey (at a deeper level other than simply being bored) when he wrote the song, that’s personal to him and I’ve never seen him talk about it anywhere. Clearly the guy with the “baby theory” had some well reasoned arguments to support his theory taken from the full lyrics of the song, but if you know the song it’s far from conclusive. So all we can say about that is that his interpretation is what he got out of the song and that meaning that he had derived probably says as much about him as it does the composer, likewise the guy who related it to coming off drugs, or me who was a frustrated teenager at the time I heard it so it’s not hard to make the connection there.

So what’s all this got to do with 40k? Well, after I went to bed I continued to ponder the nature of art, how it is presented by artists and how we interpret and appreciate it, when the sort of tangential leap that can only come to a person who is truly tired and not working on all his cylinders, and I began to think about how Army Lists could be seen as a form of art. People post them on the internet and people criticise them. The writer of the list may or may not be forthcoming in thinking behind their construction of the list, their motivation. If he is not then we are left to draw our own conclusions on how the list is designed to work, if at all!

With lists that fit certain “cookie-cutter” types it’s easier to see the tactics required to make the list work, for example MSU or Horde, in the same way that everyone can appreciate a picture of a nice sunset or a beautiful model. But it is all too easy to dismiss a list that does not fit an accepted stereotype as being ill-conceived, particularly when you do not understand the thinking behind it. Perhaps the writer is a hack, or just doesn’t optimise his lists for competitive play, but just maybe, you have not properly understood the master-stroke of tactical genius locked within the list and, like Van-Gough’s art, the genius of it will only be truly appreciated long after it was created, if at all!