Necrons; are they overpowered?

When I said to Robb that I was going to collect Necrons next he moaned about how overpowered they were. He complained that they were self resurrecting space marines with an unkillable tank. This seems to be the way that most people view necrons and it is, in essence, true. However The incredible stat line and special rules come at a price.

Half of this price is the points cost and lack of choice. In a 500 points force you get two squads of basic necron warriors and a lord with 40 points worth of toys. With each troops choice rolling in at a hefty 180 points minimum and the new rules regarding capturing objectives in 5th edition you're going to need at least two or three of these units per 1000 -1500 point games. This leaves you with severely reduced amounts of spare points to pretty up that lord or bulk out that destroyer squad.

The second half of the price is the hefty disadvantage of the "Phase Out" special rule. If a Necron army is reduced to 25% or less of its starting size it will just piss off to lick its wounds. This gives the enemy an automatic victory regardless of objectives and slaps a big "Fuck you" square in the face of the Necron player. Now a 500 points list is 21 models in size as we've established so if you lost 16 models you would loose.

Despite both of these major setbacks Necrons are still a good race to play as because of the stat line you get and so I would say that they are a well balanced army, just like most of the races in warhammer 40,000.

Greg out!

Hmm...

I wish I was at Gencon.

World of warcraft: What's the best gathering skill?

Every time I meet a new player they all ask me the same question at some point or other: What's the best gathering skill?

I always have to give the same answer. "It depends on what you're looking for. Money, usefulness or ease."

The three gathering skills are mining, skinning and herbalism. I am going to do a quick summary of how they do in the three categories of Money, Usefulness and Ease one category at a time.

Money: Mining brings in very good money consistently as you progress through the levels due to high numbers of people aspiring to reach 450 blacksmithing with minimal effort --- Herbs are in high demand since WotLK was released and so prices have soared. The herbs are expensive from level 1 to 450 --- Skinning is one of the less used gathering skills, however there seems to be a high demand for endgame leather and so the prices are usualy good --- I would give the Money award to herbalism personaly due to the high price per herb.

Usefulness: Ores and gems from Mining are used in Blacksmithing, Engineering, Leatherworking, Enchanting and Jewelcrafting --- Herbs from Herbalism are used in Alchemy, Enchanting and Inscription --- Skins and hides from skinning are used in Leatherworking, Blacksmithing and Engineering --- I have to give the Usefulness award to Mining purely due to the number of proffesions it is used in!

Ease: This is a factor that is critical to most players. How quickly and easily they can aqquire materials --- Mining: Mining nodes are few and far between. Nodes are restricted to rocky areas and are normaly sought out by others who want them too. --- Herbalism: The bushes of herbs are also relatively rare. More often than not they also have restrictions on the types of area they appear in, stranglekelp only appears in water for example, however they can occupy a wider spectrum of areas than ores --- Skinning: Skinning is by far the most accesible gathering skill. Anywhere there are beasts there is skin to be taken. Beasts respawn quickly and places like Un Goro and Scholzar Basin are almost exclusively populated by beasts --- I would give the Ease award to Skinning because of the abundance of places to get hides from.

I'll leave it to you to make your own decision using this review of the gathering skills but I hope it can be some help.

Greg

GURPS - a thirty second review.

Content, WHAT?!

Okay, GURPS. Generic Universal Role-Playing System. It pretty much does what it says on the tin, and I never thought I'd be glad of using the word "generic". You want your PCs to command a Panzer Tank through an odd WWII offshoot in which the Germans invaded America? No problem. Set of monsters attacking a city? No problem. A battle royale of all super villains ever? No problem.

In short, GURPS allows you to do whatever you want with just one system, a great boon when you have a gaming group who don't take keenly to learning a whole new ruleset every month. The 3d6 core system around which it is based is VERY intuitive, and as a Warhammer 40,000 player, we never have a shortage of dice!

Anyway, this is Robb signing out, it's 03:36 in the UK, apologies if I missed anything glaringly obvious.