Wednesday 30 April 2014

Alright sexy people, David here to apologise to Guillaume for neglecting my share of the blog work. I've had a good excuse (studying for a course that put my into a degree program I've had my eyes on) but none the less, the good man is doing me a favor, and I thought I'd pay him back by by making a post for his blog!

7th edition Warhammer is right around the corner! People were skeptical when I told them that I believed the rumours months ago, and then halfway between then and now they changed from sceptical, to insisting that it was going to be 6.5 and not 7th. Finally the talk is finally just about what it could bring.



Rumours are hot right now about potential changes, but the hugest potential for shakeup is assault buffs (consolidation into another combat, wounds from overwatch after movement etc) but I think the hugest potential game changer for the new edition is missions. Any amount of shift that favours assault will bring a much needed buff to armies like Orks, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, CSM, Black Templar; but its important to be careful, because any buff to assault will invariably tilt the scales towards demons who arguably don't need more means by which to pull power from their codex.

From 5th to 6th, the hugest shakeup was moving away from killpoint heavy games, to objective heavy games. In a single sweep, armies went from favouring invincible death stars, to favouring fast scoring (albeit death stars have made a bit of a comeback since). Deciding what sort of mission is very difficult, but not impossible. Many tournaments have started to develop alternative mission objectives, many of them lauded by the community. However, the GW design team seems to be uninterested in competitively minded game balance.

Another huge change, is a nerf to re rolls and roll modification. As it stands, twink linked attacks, and rerolled saves have created monstrous army design. Screamer stars re rolling saves, Broadsides and buffmanders re rolling missiles, Wave serpents negating pens, re rolling overwatch, Marker lights. All these things take any semblance of opportunity cost, and throw them out the window. How can anyone expect to design a balanced game, when every new addition to the game changes the validity of points cost designed into previous iterations of the game?

Changes to those two elements would shift the game massively.

Another huge issue to talk about, are the new GW products. They recently released a binder.... Yes, straight up office supplies. Not only is it just a binder, but its 20 dollars. Not only is it 20$, but its direct order only; so with minimum shipping, that cost goes up to 50'ish dollars. That's a 1800% increase in cost compared to just walking to a staples and buying one.

Second up, are the hobby tools. Now, the less said about the quality of these tools the better; since I'm a bit of a knife guy I don't want to start arguments about the design of them. What I will say about their quality though, is that I am 100% confident that these tools are not of equal quality to scientific and surgical tools. They are however, costed similarly to those tools. If you don't believe me, take a look http://www.surgical123.com/  http://www.finescience.ca/ . Another alarming point is that GW decided to market these products as high quality, and then didn't even bother to use metric measurements for them. Rather than give a gauge or size measurement for the drill bits, they've named them for the size of a weapon you can drill out with them. Absolutely disgusting to tag something with such an absurd luxury tax, then claim the cost increase is a measure of quality, AND THEN not even bother to try and use some tangible measurement/specifications that allow for comparison to alternate market goods.

For me, the biggest potential to turn warhammer into a game that's slowly getting sicker and sicker, isn't to hustle at the design studio and release more products that plug up the holes. What GW needs to do to get our love back is to open the design studio, and offer the community a tour. They then need to objectively listen to what the community says in response. They need an open door policy for criticism, and someone who can let vitriol roll off their back at the HQ whose job it is JUST to interact with clients/players. We need official active forums, live documents for FAQ/Game-balance and Dev-blogs about the game design aspect, rather than the shopping aspect of the hobby.

Or at the very least, if they can't do any of those things, they can take the 'Games' out of their name.

Wednesday 16 April 2014

Dust Tactics Starter Review: The Allies

Welcome Soldier, some of you have volunteered and some of you didn't but all of you will eventually realize what 's at stakes after seeing our enemies.
Thankfully, we'll vanquish the vermin SSU trying to take a hold in California and Alaska while liberating Europe from the Axis tyranny as it is only a matter of time before they fall before the strength of the Allied Warmachine!

Now grab your boots and your rifle, because we're going to review your entrypoint into the meatgrinder that WWII has become: The Allied Taskforce.

Thursday 3 April 2014

Android Netrunner: ''Gabriel Santiago - Infowar - deck''

In modern warfare, information is one of the most precious resource: the more you know about your enemy the greater your edge in the battles against him.
Android Netrunner doesn't escape this and here's a deck to play on the concept.

There are cards that when spoiled I go ''oh this is very nice, I could see myself play with that in the future'' (roughly 93% of Netrunner cards printed) and then there are cards like ''Blackguard''...


Blackguard is one of those cards (roughly 6% of Netrunner cards printed) where I go ''WOW! I NEED TO BUILD A DECK AROUND THIS!!''