Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Gaming Momentum

What makes a player stick with a game? And I'm not just talking about playing, as the context here contains the collection and hobby aspect of the various wargames I play. What keeps a player interested in a game/hobby where they continue to expend time and energy into it?

As you may have guessed, I'm currently having another crisis of hobby focus. The last few months I have been trying to stay focused and enthused about Planetfall. I've even invested a good chunk of change into the game again. That being said, my movement recently has completely stalled. I've got this great Relthoza army all assembled. I have a good portion of it primed and ready for painting. And yet the motivation to continue that painting has faded away.

In fact, what is currently on my kitchen table is a flames of war army that I've had for years. I have the 78th Sturmdivision army that battlefront released eons ago. Its a great infantry company that has stugs and armored rocket trucks, infantry guns, and paks. Plus, I bought extra stuff for it way back when as well. So once I finish the army, I'll be able to immediately expand it.

And yet, I have to ask myself, why am I dropping away from Planetfall, and suddenly switching gears to Flames of War? I mean, the model count is pretty close. The scale is similar. Planetfall is already built and some of it primed. But what I'm looking at is assembling a whole army, and then what? Will it get primed, and then left behind for another project?

Is it painting that is my kryptonite? I can get an army all set and ready for painting...and then the floor falls out?

I will admit, that tournaments were the main factor for me painting any of my models. I painted undead for tournaments....and my dwarfs....and my necrons....and my Germans and Italians...all to get them ready for tournaments. In fact, all of my painted armies have been for tournaments. My wood elves were my first army and they were done for a Seattle GT back in the day. The vampire counts were done because I was trying to win a local Rogue Trader event. The dwarfs and necrons were for the OFCC. And my Germans and Italians were for local events and the grand WCP FoW tournaments.

I don't play tournaments anymore. I get too stressed. I'm far too competitive for my own good. The last ones I've played in were for the OFCC, which really isn't a tournament, but pretty darn close.

Now I apparently need to find a new reason to paint. A new form of motivation. Otherwise, I'm going to end up with an entire office filled with assembled minis. :)


Friday, June 17, 2016

Warpstorms block all forms of communication....

Well obviously there were Warpstorms, otherwise, there would have been more updates. :D

I have been gaming. Just not a whole lot of miniature gaming. I've been playing quite a bit of Dungeons and Dragons Online with some college friends and our kids. The game is solid. It is free, and it is the best computer representation of D&D that I have seen. It has true 3D movement (although they have kept true flight from the game). There are super cool traps and such that can be avoided or disarmed. And it has a great class and race selection so that everyone can find something they like. It has just been fun. The built in voice over IP is a must have. It is amazing how 20 years have gone by, and yet my friends and I are still on the same wavelength. If you have never given the game a try, I whole heartily recommend it.

I've also been playing MechWarriorOnline. Battletech was my first table top wargame. I was playing it back when I was a teenager. MWO is a fairly decent sim version of the game. Plus, you can typically get in, and play a match in under 15 minutes. That may not seem important, but when you have a family, finding 15 minutes can be hard, let alone more time. So this is a great way for me to "blow stuff up" as the wife likes to call it and still be there when needed.

My 21" monitor died the other day, and the wonderful wife unit gave me the go ahead to replace it. Having Father's Day just around the corner didn't hurt. So I was able to snag a beautiful 27" ASUS monitor for a very fair price. It is lovely:

Oh this is a thing of beauty. I highly recommend one if you are into PC gaming.

As to mini gaming, I'm still on the path for doing more Planetfall. My gamer ADD though is starting to kick in. Lately thoughts of Bolt Action and Flames of War.....and lets not forget Kings of War, have been bouncing around my head. Oh what a problem to have, so many cool games! There just isn't enough time.

So what should I do next week? Perhaps some painting? I really do need to do a test model for my relthozans. Also, Warlord was nice enough to send me a 20% off coupon for June. So I may have to pick up some British weapon teams for my Bolt Action force. My Germans are fairly well covered.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Way late recap of Planetfall game

Hello Gentle Readers,

Been a crazy couple of weeks (EDIT: holy crap..its been a month!), and lets see if I can remember where we left off. So I was hip deep in Relthoza minis for Planetfall and had a game setup. Well as it played out, we did a 2 on 1 game so that my friend Robert could join in. The game basically was a Relthoza core plus a Directorate core (both only half), vs a multi helix Terran force.

I wish I had taken pics...I believe I had even mentioned in my last post that I should take pics...but as the night was a little off the hip...well I had other things on my mind. The game was a little wonky. I thought it would have been easy to simply stick to the normal Planetfall rules of turn order for this game. However, in light that Robert was a newbie, our opponent Tim suggested something off the cuff and play it more like a three player game. That had some pretty major impact to the gameplay because our side got two activations to his one, but it also meant that at the end of the turn, he got to run rampant. So pros and cons for doing it like that. But as it was really just a learning game...all was good.

All in all, things went smoothly. We didn't use the cards and didn't really play with specific terrain rules. Buildings and the like were in play, but movement restrictions and such were all pretty basic.

It has been too long for me to give a round by round recap, so I'll just try to hit upon the highlights. For me, the main highlight was my spires. For some reason Tim decided not to try to shoot them after they landed. I got pretty good rolls for my scatter and each spire hit a good spot. By not shooting the spire with his next activation, it disgorged my troops and cost him a heavy tank, and then put some serious damage to a battle tank squadron (2nd spire group).

Robert's highlight was probably his Trojan tanks doing some serious disruption with the cyber attacks. Very nice to discount shields with those and just muss things up for poor Tim. They were destroyed in the end, but saved high priority targets with their sacrifice.

There were two rules disputes and unfortunately this is going to happen when you have a 1.5 version on the web, and a 1.0 version in physical form. The first and most hotly contested rules dispute was concerning Forlorn Hope. By my reading, as soon as a unit gets enough disorder markers to mean that they will be removed in the end phase, that unit then earns Forlorn Hope, and all the benefits. However, they are still removed in the end phase. Tim seemed to think that the unit gets the Forlorn Hope in the end phase, and then sticks around for another whole turn. The wording between the two versions was significantly changed, but also still not crystal clear.

The second issue was the process of boarding a building. Tim seemed to think it has to be assaulted, even if there were no enemy in it. The rules seem pretty clear that an empty building can simply be moved into by infantry during the move phase. This was an odd one to have come up. Tim has been playing a while and both Robert and I are newbies. However, I am a huge rule nazi. Therefore, I do my best to know the rules as well as I can. So you had Tim's experience vs my rules nazi-ism. Seems like this one should have been easy to resolve, but it wasn't. I'm going to read the rules again and simply make sure of how it is supposed to be.

By the way, Spartan has done some bad practices in rules disputes on their forum. They will actually change the rules as written in a forum post, but then not publish it in an offical FAQ or update. I hate that. FAQs should never change rules to begin with...they are for clarification only. If you are going to make a rules change, then you need to update the actual rules. Hiding them in forum posts is super bad.

All in all though, it was a fun night, the forces of the Zenian League won the day.

Since then, I have primed a core helix for my relthozans. Also, Robert has agreed to purchase the Directorate core helix from me. So full steam ahead with the bugs. I will hopefully get some painting done this upcoming weekend and will post pics of the progress. I'm going with a brown/bronze color scheme so hopefully it will all turn out well.