IT'S... ALIVE!

We're back folks and we're going to be blogging with a vengeance! Since the blog died a death a few months back we've been talking about kicking it up again for a while and so here we are. Regular posting will ensue from me Phil AND Robb this time and this time we're going to be reviewing movies too!

So expect the same amount of nerdy goodness and please take the time to comment on our pretty new banner, tirelessly worked on by none other than our very own Robb.

So untill next time
Greg out.

Well that didn't go so well...

Contrary to what I thought would happen, going back to school unsettled the frequency with which I post even more! I've had a lot of homework to do and little time to do it in but now I seem to be on top of things so expect more from me. For those of you who are wondering I managed to finish off the one thousand point army of necrons and yesterday I went out and bought a monolith and a couple of destroyers. Building your first monolith seems to be something that has to be done with much reverance and respect and I'm suprised at how well it went! Normally when I glue together a large model I allways make one mistake which I need to fix in a frenzy of panic before the glue dries but with the monolith it all went swimmingly! My next post will allmost certainly be a tactica for monoliths which will be followed shortly by an article on using falcons in the tactic "Hammer and anvil".

Untill next time
Greg out.

I'm a lazy bastard aren't I?

Well It's been a while since I last posted because a lot of shit's been going on but here I am! First and foremost: Sorry. I didn't meet my self set target of giving you updates on my crons but, truth be told, it's not all that intresting. All that was left to assemble since I last posted were my 28 warriors and most of them were slapped together the night before I went to Robbs' because I thought "Shit, I need them." I promise to post a picture of my crons when they're all assembed. Next step has to be the monolith!

I was also hacked on world of warcraft since I last posted. The hacker obviously wanted to use my account as his own and he began leveling my death knight and he also farmed some saronite. By the time Blizzard got me my account back I had maximum mining skill and 200 saronite bars. I got my items back that he had sold and got to keep the 200g he'd made from selling them. All in all I'd say that it turned out pretty well!

Anyway now that stuff's calmed down I should be posting a lot more. Untill next time;
Greg out.

Forth the impetuous scarab swarms!

Scarabs are one of the most underestimated necron units. They come free with a box of warriors, they cost 12 points and they take up those precious fast attack slots that can be used for destroyers or wraiths. Despite all of those points which would lead one to believe that scarabs are just cannon fodder I believe that used correctly scarabs are lethal.

Because scarabs move like jetbikes they can turbo boost 24 inches in the first turn, which gives them a 4+ invulnerable save against those nasty heavy weapons and it also sets them up for a turn two charge. Then there's the fact that they're cheap and expendable. With the 4+ invulnerable save granted they should be able to absorb lots of fire that would otherwise be pumped into your other troops. Not only that but they don't count towards your phase out limit, which means their deaths are of little importance.

The sheer number of attacks that a sizeable swarm of scarabs can churn out is easily enough to kill your enemy's biggest, shootiest unit or at least tie them up for a few turns. Another absolutely key feature that scarabs have is disruption fields. These allow the scarabs to score glancing hits if they roll a 6 on the armour penetration roll. With 40 attacks on a stationary vehicle about 6 or 7 glancing hits will be scored, easily enough to cripple or destroy a vehicle. In this way a 160 point scarab swarm could do the nasty with a land raider, battlewagon or even an enemy monolith (should you ever find yourself in that position) and bag double their points worth of tank. Then they'd attract a large amount of firepower away from your warriors and such, buying you more time to execute your plan.

Greg out.

My bad...

Hay guys. Sorry I didn't post an update on the whole Necron scene yesterday, my Internet was busy screwing me over. I've not had much time to do a lot with my Necrons so I think it would be better to do it week by week. This would allow me to actually plan what I need to do rather than sit down and think "FUCKFUCKFUCKNEEDTOPAINT!". So far I have only managed to assemble the unit of warriors and the lord from a few days ago and today I assembled 3 destroyers and a heavy destroyer. One thing I have to whine about is how fucking ANNOYING gluing a frigging huge metal gun onto one side of the heavy destroyer was. It made the body start to tilt so I had to support it with a box. Another thing I hate about GW's models are the instructions you get with them. A lot of the time they'll be very vague which leads to panic and rage while you try and glue the model together. Anyway I'll be posting another update on how it's going in 4 days.

Until then: Greg out.

Flame leviathan; what's the point?

When my guild organised an Ulduar 10 man run yesterday I had never done it before. They let me tag along because they allready had an awesome group and there were'nt any hunters and they said "It's ok if your gear isn't great, we're doing flame leviathan." I thought that flame leviathan sounded pretty badass and because it's in uludar it'd be pretty hard to do but I didn't question lest I be kicked from the group. So I summoned them all with some help from my guild leader and we all went in. Brann Bronzebeard lowered the shield and we all jumped into our respective tanks. So we trundle down and find the flame leviathan. 300k health with the tower up. The tower I speak of increases his health by 100k and if you kill him with it up better items can drop but we were looking for an easy ride so we toppled it. After a long hard slug against him we finaly brought the massive tank down and he dropped Ironsoul and a chestpeice for elemental or restoration shamans. I think it was called firestrider chestguard. Anyway that left me wondering what the point in gathering a group with awesome gear to down him was. All you do is hop in a tank and play the part designed for that tank. Ah well, I can't complain can I? The flame leviathan is still a realy hard boss and you realy have to earn those drops!

Greg

Necron army, day by day for a week.

As I mentioned in one of my previous articles I am starting a Necron army. I plan on giving you a day by day update on how things are going and I'll be sure to upload a few pictures to show you how it's coming along. Hopefuly by the end of the week I'll have a 500pts force finished and ready to game so that I can test it against Robb when he gets back from his holiday to Scotland.

So far today I've assembled a squad of warriors, a pair of scarab swarms and my necron lord, basecoated them all and fully paint and base one warrior. I'm using a colour scheme that makes them look similar to skeletons and I'm basing them with sand that has been drybrushed with bleached bone. I'll put up a picture and you can send any tips or suggestions you have to weliketron@gmail.com ! Please contact me because any feedback helps. I am more gaming orientatedbut that's because I tend to lack a steady hand.

I appologise now for the bad camera!

Greg.

RP servers

On World of Warcraft there are varying types of servers. One of these types is roleplaying (shortened to RP) in which the players act as their characters would. This is a feature that some players enjoy and it is quite harmless to the people around them. I like to RP with my friends sometimes and so we used to wander round orgrimmar chatting in character. Then some random person will ride over on the largest mount they can find, park their ass right in one of our face and bellow "RPin's sad LOL!" and "EAT RHINO ASS LOL!!1". When I ask them what in the name of the earthmother they are doing they usualy reply with something along the lines of "RP is for fags lol".


People like this make me wonder, why? I play on a RPPVP realm so I expect to be able to RP and PVP in relative peace. I don't expect the randomer in Commmon and Uncommon gear with one Rare to take part at all, all I want him to do is remove his mounts genitals from my face before I beat him down.

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!

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

Meet The Team: Greg

Howdy, I'm Greg, the third member of this tribe of geeks. I'm Robb's wargaming partner so a lot of the battles you hear about will be about us two and our long running battle for supremacy. I'm also the local World of Warcraft nut although Robb does play it too (if you can call it playing!). As both Robb and Phil have mentioned we all like a bit of D&D now and then and me and Robb tend to switch the DMing between us. Another person we might mention is Tom. He tends to tag along for D&D most of the time and he plays World of Warcraft and a bit of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. Anyway, here's to a (hopefully) successful blog!