Musing on Cities of Death

So hello all, after an enforced break due to log related incidents, Greg and myself came once again to play a game of Warhammer 40,000; I was playing the Traitor Guard (More on that in future posts) and Greg played his Necrons. Now to be honest we didn't really read the rules and we were in a bit of a rush, so we chose a bunch of stratagems, deployed terrain and went at it with a Dawn of war Seize ground scenario and I would very much like to say that it was another memorable game for both of us; from Heavy Destroyers Chasing sweet sentinel ass around the board to me waiting eagerly with my finger on the trigger to use my Demolition Stratagem to Greg shouting "I GOT THIS!" while charging my Stormtroopers with a single scarab swarm it was a game full of special moments and little quirks, made all the more memorable by the buildings and the flavour they gave and the stratagems and the frustrating hilarity of a 12 strong Necron Warrior unit with a 3+ Armour save, 4+ Feel No Pain and then a 4+ We'll be back save.

As a side note, Greg's past post about the virtues of scarab swarms was not wrong, a unit with 30 wounds running at that 6 man Imperial Guard squad is enough to make any emperor serving warrior darken his combat fatigues.

In Conclusion, I'd very much recommend cities of death to anyone, although it takes a little more effort to set up it is entirely worth it in the end; this is Robb, over and 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!

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.