Once A Railroad, Now It’s Done

There’s been a lot going on, recently.

The Dark Ages Vampire game continues its triumphant lurch back into life, with our three unfortunate protagonists travelling to Alexandria in hot pursuit of Mary the Black. One’s developing a worrying taste for diablerie and a worrying burden of ancient secrets; one’s skirting closer and closer to the Beast even as he’s enthralled by the Followers of Set; and one’s bound and called by the very Methuselah they’re supposedly hunting. There are Assamites and Hierophants to either side of Alexandria’s Prince, and the Muslim mortals rally round a man who may well have that most elusive of qualities in the World of Darkness; True Faith. It’s good times.

There’s some Magic being Gathered. While I was away playing the 40K game detailed in the previous post, I played a few games against Simon’s Gatecrash decks, and developed something of a taste for the expansion; it has mechanics which dovetail beautifully with cards I own and decks I’ve run in M13, and it’s lured me into acquiring first a new deck (the Orzhov pre-made) and then a fat-pack to build up two or three others out of the spares box. It helps that Gatecrash’s lands are beautiful and that I want to own many of them; it also helps that the fat pack dropped a Deathpact Angel, two more Treasury Thrulls, two Orzhov Keyrunes, two Orzhov Gates, and a whole mess of creatures with Extort. Guess I’m playing black/white for a while, then?

The 40K continues nicely – details are being detailed over at the House of Paincakes, and are likely to remain so until I run out of 40K to play. Unlikely, given that Necron progress has halted at a comfortable 4000 points, and there’s the first 600 of Iron Warriors allies sitting next to my laptop, awaiting the final glues and primer before they begin their deadly work.

I’m sniffing around Warmahordes again, too. I had the itch to return to Cryx for a while, maybe get my old stuff back, but Ben (fount of much wisdom that he is) pointed out that I’d just be burdening myself with all the poor decisions and legacy choices that made me drop them in the first place, and that if I’m going to go back to the game, I might as well go back with something where I’m free and easy. For the moment, that means keeping a weather eye on the Mercenaries, considering the addition of Ashlynn and a batch of Highborne-friendly solos to the ranks; I’m more into ‘jacks and character solos or two-man units anyway and Mercs offer me the opportunity to do that. In the longer run, I’m cautiously sniffing around the Retribution; they’re unlike anything I’ve played before, I think they’d look good in the turquoise paint I’ve had sitting around for a while, and I’ll be honest and admit that I have a bit of a thing for angry elves at the moment.

It’s the World of Warcraft, you see. The roleplay in my roleplay guild has gone from strength to strength; my main character’s tried and failed to be a big damn hero, gotten burned and battered for her trouble, and now she’s setting out from scratch, learning what she can from the Pandaren while she’s there, working her way back up to being something useful again. Also, she’s in love, or at least deeply fascinated by another PC who hasn’t immediately wished she was a man or nearly had a heart attack at the thought that someone might find them attractive. That’s a first, for Nivi. Her track record is not spectacular.

Each of these things could be a blog post in its own right, and in another time and place it would have been. Thing is, I started this blog when I was underemployed, and it took off when I was unemployed, and then self-employed. I am currently fully employed (well, four days a week and earning five days’ salary, goddess bless that Master’s degree which is finally paying for itself) and I’d rather spend what time I have…

… not blogging about games. At least, not exclusively. . I started out commenting on other people’s thoughts, making conversation, and I think I’d rather be spending my time doing that, reconnecting with other people’s comment threads (to which I haven’t paid anything like as much attention as I used to or as I’d like to).

Also, I do have thoughts on other topics, sometimes. The state of socialism in England. Union politics and professional identities. Experiments in poetry and charcoal sketches. The sci-fi genre, and how China Mieville is winning Hugo Awards by following some of the most basic advice a writer is ever given. Social justice bingo and arguments in the echo chamber. Rejected PhD topics that are unlikely to see the light of day. It’s all Big Stuff, bigger than a blog about games is supposed to be, probably more worth doing than obliging myself to talk about games the whole damn time. So I’m not going to. This is it. 301 posts, plus a few by guest authors; four and a half years of blogging. That’s enough, I think.

Transmissions will continue over at the House of Paincakes, of course. I want to be paying attention to that, actually involved in the network, with the time I have available to spend on the Interwebs. I still have odds and sods I’d like to say and I think that’s a better platform for saying them than this. I may also have some thoughts on other topics and it may behove me, in time, to find some means of transmitting them to your quivering and anticipatory eye-holes.

As for all this, it’s been fun, but now it’s…

I’ll see you around.

 

[40K Battle Report] – The Perfect Storm

First things first:

THANKS FOR READING ALL THESE POSTS! YOUR REASONS FOR DOING SO BAFFLE ME, BUT IT IS NONETHELESS AN HONOUR FOR ME TO GIBBER AND CAPER FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT. AS A REWARD FOR YOUR LOYALTY, HAVE THIS FIVE AND A HALF THOUSAND WORD BATTLE REPORT, AND DON’T SAY I NEVER GIVE YOU ANYTHING.

The Black Planet, 4182013.M41
External Planetary Monitor Derv was concerned – not a state of mind to which he was accustomed, in all honesty. The job of External Planetary Monitor was not, in general, one that required a great deal of concern, or indeed concentration; by and large, the job did itself, the ancient computers ticking off incoming and outgoing vessels against flight plans and manifests, and displaying alerts on the Monitors’ monitors on the rare occasions when something didn’t tally. Derv would dutifully forward these alerts to the Navy Yeomanry Planetary Defenders, the Black Planet League of Merchant Venturers, and His Imperial Majesty’s Galactic Internal Taxation Subdivision – unread, of course, since the penalty for tampering with taxation records was too fearsome to contemplate – and then go back to occupying his time in some other fashion.

Nevertheless, he was concerned, and said so.

“Moon’s gone a funny colour.”

Derv’s immediate colleague, Torq, emitted a vaguely interested, vaguely dismissive, vaguely responsive grunt, and returned his attention to the screen in front of him.

“You’re not going to look, then?”

Another grunt. This one managed to convey irritation, a mild personal contempt for Derv himself, and a deep-seated wish that Derv would clear off and leave him, Torq, to his vitally important duties.

“Stop playing Dark Millennium and look, you slag.”

Having exhausted the possibilities of grunting, or expended his expressive capabilities in the medium too soon – a peril confronting all early-blooming geniuses – Torq thumped the monitor, called it a brainless son of a fragbunny, did the same to his controls, and then finally turned to look at Derv.

“Well, I’m dead now, and we’ve lost Armageddon. I hope you’re happy. That’s three weeks of dedicated grinding down the tube, thanks to you.”

“Shut up and look at the moon, Torq.”

“Which one? Coalfield?”

“No, the little one.”

“What, Solidhull?”

“No, the really little one.”

“That’s not a moon, is it? That’s spacejunk. Has to be.”

“Torq, spacejunk is small. Wulfruna is far away. We’ve been through this.”

“Why’s it green?”

Derv sighed, and gently laid his face in his palm. “It isn’t. Usually.”

“Think we should report it?”

“That’s what I was asking!”

“Well, take some initiative and do it and don’t bother me when I’m in the middle of a twenty thousand player kill-fest again, all right? You’ve got no sense of what’s important, that’s your trouble.”

Derv reflected on this as he typed up a brief report, enclosed a series of grainy, poor-quality images, and punched in the commands that would send his message not down the usual sub-aether channels, but directly to Naval Astrotelepathic Regional Command. Torq had said the same thing when they’d been raided by eldar pirates the year before, of course. Not that he’d noticed. He’d been too busy fighting the Battle of Ichar IV on his monitor to notice the war going on outside his window. Not for the first time, Derv contemplated an intervention, before deciding – as usual – that it probably wasn’t worth the months of complaining that were bound to result.

Over the next six months, Derv’s barely-literate description of events, along with some of the worst examples of stellar photography the Imperium had ever seen, was passed like an unwanted takeway through NARC, back to NYPD as a strictly internal matter of no interplanetary interest, briefly through the dark and foetid halls of GITS where it had been sequestered as a cover for tax evasion, back to NYPD to be stamped as clean, back to NARC for transmission as a matter for the Explorator fleets rather than planetary defence, and finally, reluctantly, hurled into the galaxy at large for any passing explorer to wrap their grubby mitts around it.

The Explorator vessel which did eventually pick up the message and make a brief stop above Wulfruna spent a grand total of thirty-two seconds in low orbit before being struck by what its final transmission described as a hissing column of pure black oblivion, attended by an all-frequencies broadcast of indecipherable machine code which the Explorators had initially mistaken for the latest release by the ‘popular’ ‘experimental’ ‘technical noise producers’ Standard Template Deconstruction, and naturally switched off.

A further three months passed as the transmission was assessed, examined, standardised, verified, appended to a heavily-annotated copy of Derv’s report, and finally released to the galactic aether at large as the most bureaucratically correct distress call in recent history. It was at that point that the Hawk Lords Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes got hold of it, and decided to do something useful.

[40K] Allies fur Alles – Tell Me A Story

There is, of course, a flip side to every coin. While it’s perfectly legitimate to select one’s Allies purely on the basis of strategic and tactical advantage, there’s also the Narrative and the Forging thereof, to which 40K.6 is as committed as a jeweller who sells wedding rings to stalkers.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re a Chaos player, but more than just a Chaos player; you’re a Chaos player interested in representing the gradual rise of a planet from the drudgesome mundanity of the everyday Imperium to the glorious heights only offered by the very Darkest of Gods. Yours is not the Traitor Legion or even Renegade Chapter army embodied by the conventional Chaos book, though those Legionnaires are involved for sure. However, they’re involved as instigators, as advisors, as demagogues and as living icons to the lesser worshippers of the Great Powers. Your army needs to look like an Imperial army with a few Chaos Space Marine ‘advisors’; primarily, this will be an Imperial Guard army, albeit one with limited elements of the command structure maintained. As I mentioned long ago when blathering on about how counts-as was the best way to do Chaos under a boring, limited Chaos book, the Traitor Guard army is probably going to be light on Commissars, perhaps quite heavy on Priests (of Chaos, yo) and Psykers, and could legitimately squish in a few Ogryns as big spitty mutants if you were that way inclined. The posh stuff like Storm Troopers and Deathstrike Missiles would probably have remained loyal, but that leaves plenty of room for Veterans and Hydras and other, well, more orthodox Guard stuff.  The Chaos allies for such a Traitor Guard force would probably comprise a couple of small Marine squads, or even Cultists (civilian members of the Chaos conspiracy, distinguished from the Guard by their poorer equipment), with maybe some Chosen or Cult Marines in Elites as the Traitor Legion masterminds of the affair. The Allied HQ seems to cry out for a Dark Apostle – the conspiracy’s demagogue and grand architect – and it’d be tempting to take Chaos Spawn and a low-key Heavy Support like a Vindicator or something. Possibly a Defiler, depending on how far gone the conspiracy is.

[40K] Allies fur Alles – Stratological Approaches

I know some of you don’t like Yes The Truth Hurts, but I’ve found Stelek’s postings on Allies to be quite restrained and helpful. In particular, there’s this one on the importance of mixing and matching different statlines across your detachments, with a suggestion for how many troops, vehicles and flyers of varying types it might be advisable to take.

As I’ve said a few times now, I don’t tend to take Stelek’s suggestions wholly on trust for actual gameplay, not least because he plays for big e-cred stakes while I play for peanuts and bellybutton fluff. That said, the way he thinks about army lists and the advice he gives on what’s needed at different points levels can be good for blowing away the cobwebs and thinking about things differently, like it was for my Cryx way back when. It’s certainly helpful for collection planning, as you start to ask yourself “right, so how many dudes who can shrug off autocannons and heavy bolters do I have? how many cheap dudes who I don’t really care about? how much mobile cover can I throw out? how far can I get up the board in one turn?” I also think I agree with his assertion that Allies are for 1750 points and up, unless you have a very cheap, very focused Allied contingent that’s just there to plug a hole in your army’s tactical capabilities and cost not lots.

As for what actual stuff to take in those slots, Mr. Stelek’s general approach would seem to be ‘stuff you couldn’t normally get, in sufficient quantities to force choices‘. The list he’s showcasing uses its Allies to provide cheap and flexible long ranged firepower, with the Tau capacity to point, click and delete a couple of vehicles per turn supplementing the antipersonnel firepower and melee threats of the Chaos force. Like the man says, the list in itself probably isn’t viable, but the idea is that you look for something that your Allies do better and then take enough stuff to do that well. That’s why I look at the Necrons and think “cheap blobby Troops that can sit at the back and not waste perfectly good gauss shots”, “guns with decent ranges”, “stuff with decent Initiative and Attacks scores” and “psychic powers”.Maybe Skyfire too, since Night Scythes are indeed the bomb but I don’t own any yet and £70 for two is a bit steep for the pocket at present.

Perhaps some inexpensive proxies…

[40K Battle Report] Doktor Shiny and the Cheeseburger of Shame

The learned Dr. Shiny is among my longest-serving opponents. Our respective armies – Skaven and Vampire Counts, Eldar and Chaos Space Marines, or Khador and Cryx – have been battering each other with startling ineptitude for something like fifteen years now. In all that time I’ve heard nothing but complaining out of him; his troops are inept, his dice hate him, his rules are outdated and his tactics are largely based on the certainty that everyone’s going to die. However, his ceaseless whinging is at least entertaining, and so I have allowed him to live thus far.

He hasn’t played any sixth edition 40K yet, having been distracted by Bretonnians, and since I was at his end of the country for the New Year festivities I thought it might be high time to rectify the situation. It was going to be a spot of WFB, but play was rained off due to my lack of time or, to be honest, enthusiasm for repainting and restoring a Vampire Counts army I’m not even sure I want to play games with.

We settled on 1200 points – this would give us a game which even we could finish in a few hours, despite the inevitable banter, confusion, rule-checking and general shenanigans. This would also give us a game in which every model was fully painted, and you can’t say fairer than that of a Sunday afternoon. It helps, of course, that we were throwing down in the cavernous and well-equipped gaming paradise of The Giant’s Lair in Plymouth, a superlative venue with a decent shop, quality boards, lots of space and a neat line in fried foodstuffs courtesy of host and legend Swabs. Photographic services were provided by Hark’s shiny new phone, hence the marked improvement in the image quality and the capacity of the photographer to surprise Shiny and actually get him in shot for once.

I didn’t think this was cool when White Dwarf did it. I don’t think it’s cool when we do it. Nevertheless, it is done.