I have been doing a little musing on the subject of in game economies - and while I’m not prepared to publish a white paper or anything like that on this topic, I did have some observations that leapt out at me when I juxtaposed the World of Warcraft auction house vs. the EVE Online market.
Unfortunately, any discussion of this type will necessarily be colored by the fact that the auction house in WoW is entirely closed - there is no information you can reliably glean regarding volume of sales, average prices, etc - unless you spend the time to obtain a 3rd party add-on, and then manually scan the AH perhaps once an hour for a month - that would give you a semblance of the amount of information necessary to track average prices and so forth. EVE on the other hand features a running 3 month window of average price, daily median price, and quantity sold for every item in the game - with one caveat:
Unlike WoW, there are actually several distinct markets with “auction houses”. Each region of space (and I don’t know how many there are, other than “several”. Based on the map I just downloaded, it would look to be on the order of 50). Thus there are 50 distinct markets, as opposed to the two you find on a WoW server (one horde, one alliance). Thus, unless you get jiggy with various online databases and player side modifications, you cannot know a priori what the market value of a given item is in one of the other regions.
Similar to WoW, there’s a sort of “auction house linking”. In Warcraft you can hit the ‘house in Elf lands, Dwarf lands, whatever - and the item on sale that someone put up for sale in one place will be purchasable in another - and when you buy it goes straight to your mailbox, which you can run over to and snag as it’s usually all of 20 feet from the auction house.
But in EVE, it’s not your mailbox it goes into - it goes into your hangar - at the station it was put up for sale at. There is no “magical transport”.
Thus, if you are sitting in Todaki and see a nice ship you’d like to buy but it’s over in Karakela, well, you can buy it - but then you’ve got to fly over to Karakela to pick it up.
So the buying of goods carries with it an inherent opportunity cost, and sometimes a practical cost. Opportunity cost stems from the time you have to spend to get from Point A to Point B to collect whatever it was that caught your fancy, and a practical cost that comes from two vectors: a) you may get shot at and blown up, which costs money, and b) if you are buying a ship, you either have to be prepared to leave your current ship at the destination or you have to buy a shuttle so you can leave the shuttle there.
Shuttles, fortunately, are ass cheap. I recently realized I would need to start just buying shuttles particularly when it comes to new ship acquisition - but I can earn enough money for two or three shuttles in about 5-10 minutes, so it’s not that big of a deal.
The market itself has a different set of forces that act on it as well:
Warcraft:
1) Completely player driven. If nobody sells anything, there’s nothing to buy.
2) Commodities market: the lower level commodities (linen, wool, copper, strange dust, etc) are “worthless” in game terms - the market for these items only exists because players are either rolling a new character or swapping professions and are power leveling up the new profession.
3) There are no “mandatory costs”, at all. You never have to fly on a griffon, you don’t have to buy a mount, and you can wear only dropped armor. Your overall game efficiency will drop, but you can still complete most quests and be a part of the world (although your ability to contribute to a dungeon run is reduced of course). You don’t even have to repair your armor, just let it break and replace it with some other low quality stuff you find somewhere.
4) Some items are “soul bound”, such that once they are picked up or put on, they cannot ever be given or sold to anyone else in the game, including your own alts. They can be destroyed for raw materials for one of the professions, or sold for chump change to a vendor. Once ‘outgrown’ as it were, the item is pretty much worthless trash.
5) Death is largely free. The most you lose is about 5 to 10 minutes running back to your corpse, and a trivial amount of money to repair your armor (while higher quality armor costs more to repair - if you’re playing cheaply then you have crap gear on which is very cheap to repair). Thus, other than annoyance, there is no financial disincentive to perishing - at worst case, you lose 7 minutes of mining opportunity.
6) The only way to gain experience and thus add to your character’s skill set (“advance your character”) is to physically sit at the keyboard and kill things, or do quests.
EVE:
1) Mostly player driven. There are NPC sellers and buyers as well. I am not clear on how the buyers work. I have seen the sellers though - generally NPC corporations or related selling, among other things, skill books so that you can learn new skills. These are not common, but they do exist - albeit with limited stock of very specific items only.
2) Commodities: never become worthless. The lowest quality ore is refined into a mineral called Tritanium. Tritanium, in turn, is used in building almost EVERYTHING - including the big huge multi-billion isk (equivalent of “gold piece”) capital ships - which require millions of pieces of tritanium to construct. Even with the fact that asteroids “respawn” almost daily, there is still enough demand out there to keep the price of the raw ore high enough to make it worth mining for a good while. While I suspect that after a longer career in the game the amount of money made mining this low ore is trivial - the ore itself still serves a function beyond someone power leveling blacksmithing. Furthermore since the ore itself is useful folks always need it to build new ships, replacement ships, etc.
3) There exist certain mandatory costs which put the player in the mode of actually needing money to function in the game. While it is absolutely free to travel, you must have a ship. The starter ship is crap, of course, but at least it’s free. However, as soon as you buy a ship, you really ought to insure it - if you do not, and it gets blown up, you’ll be back in the free starter ship until such time as you earn enough money to a) replace the ship you lost and b) replace all the weapons and modules on it you lost. If you don’t do this, and ever let your money get to zero - you are completely stuck, and someone will have to loan you some cash so you can buy a mining laser so you can go mine again.
Of course every ship needs a pilot - you. If you die, and you didn’t buy yourself a clone, you are immediately reverted to the lowest possible level of clone. Which will mean loss of skills that have to be re-learned. And clones cost money.
Running out of money is a very bad thing.
4) Nothing is soul bound. If you are done with something, you can box it up and sell it on the market, give it to a friend, or one of your alts. Or just leave it - one other aside is the phrase “unlimited bank slots”.
5) As you might expect from #3, death is far from free. You lose:
a) the difference in cost between your insurance policy and the replacement cost of the ship + all modifications and weapons
b) the cost of your clone - since you will want to buy another one
c) the time spent repurchasing a comparable ship and equipping it
‘b’ only applies if you are actually fully killed by a player or NPC mob, but if your ship blows up you’ve got ‘a’ and ‘c’ to deal with. In either case you’ve still got time spent on getting to whatever station you want to get to besides. And if you were dumb, and didn’t have the right size clone, you are going to lose skill points too.
6) Advancing your character (gaining new skills, or improving old ones) does not require you to be present, at all. In fact, generally, if you’re at keys you’re either off PVPing, making money, or doing missions (which not only make you money and give you stuff, but raise your standing/faction with various NPC corporations, which in turn gives you access to various upgrades and potentially access to research - which is how you create new recipes/blueprints for things from nearly thin air). The only thing you do have to worry about, if you wish to be efficient, is keep track of when skills will be “complete” (skills are learned in the background, whether or not you are online) so you can bounce in and start the next skill training. This takes approximately 1 minute. While I have managed to annoy my wife with this sort of thing, from a gameplay perspective it sure is nice. My character gets better and all I have to do is hop in for a minute or two once or twice a day - eventually less, since as you grow skills start taking days to complete.
The only reason to play is to make money, really. That you do have to be online for - at least until you run some massively powerful corporation that has a player owned station - once set up they also make money for you, whether or not you’re online.
While I apologize for bias that crept in there from time to time, in general I just wanted to keep this to market discussions, at least in the above set of paragraphs.
Now for the bias hardcore: I prefer the style of this MMORPG to Warcraft. In warcraft, to be competitive in the PVP arena or to participate in high end raids, you MUST play. You must farm money, you must buy consumables, you must gain reputation with factions, you must harvest gear from dungeons that you must do over and over and over again - just so that you can have the “fun” a couple days a week - and after that, you can only reach the higher end stuff if you have a sufficient amount of friends. A loner in WoW will never get a nice set of top end gear - it’s largely impossible, really.
In EVE, I have to make enough money to make ends meet. That’s it. Once that’s out of the way (thus far, this takes me approximately 20 minutes a week at most), all that’s left is the fun. Running missions, following story lines, PVPing. Granted, group work is nice too - but I’ve not gotten a chance at that as yet. But since everything, and I do mean everything, is available on the open market, if you have enough money you can buy whatever you want. You don’t have to do shit outside of the cash factor - which, while huge, is sufficiently easy to do that you can watch TV or read a book while you do it. Not having to farm for experience points is a huge benefit - all your game time can be directed at things that interest you more than grinding out the next level.
Now, what is still out there for me to determine: are the “must” parts of EVE more or less tedious than the “must” parts of WoW, and are the “fun” parts of EVE more fun than the “fun” parts of WoW. Just because they have a lower cost in terms of time and tedium does not necessarily mean they are “more fun”, after all.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
First Day (night, really) in EVE
I say “Night” because I have to play on my daughter’s computer since she has the only Intel Mac in the house - so in order to not take away her things while she’s conscious, I’m in the 9pm-bedtime timeframe for exploration ;) So, I was up till 4 . ..
I've played about 7 hours thus far:
My initial thoughts are cautiously positive - the basic game play is still boiling down to "go do the same thing a bunch, then profit", but the community is radically different, and there are a tremendous amount of variables to worry about. Nevertheless, in some ways the game has already been "solved", at least presently, due to the existence of skill planning applications and suggested training paths to maximize your character potential - or at least minimize the time it takes you to reach that maximum.
On the other hand, there is no 'class role'. Everyone can learn everything - but doing so takes a tremendously long amount of time (which, even though you can still learn your skills while not logged in, we're looking at years worth of real time to learn it all) so you still end up picking a set of things that interest you, broken down into the axes of corporate control (setting up trades, alliances, contracts, etc), business (playing the auction house equivalent with the added complexity of moving between place to place without getting your ass shot off from under you), or industry (either harvesting raw materials and refining them, or producing blue prints and/or the products made thereby).
Combat is not twitch based, but does require you to swap targets as you fight and adjust your orbit radius to increase weapon efficiency. Thus, there at least initially appears some set of real time tactics that will need to be employed, although likely it will end up being pretty bare bones. There are various minmaxing paths ahead of me with respect to ship energy management, damage control, and damage output, as well as mining and refining efficiency.
The look and feel of the game is fantastic - highly detailed, gorgeous graphics, and a vast wealth of information available via an ingame web browser that links to all the help files online.
From what I understand, you can reach the point of creating your own space station, which satisfies the Brian "gee, what can I DO that will last forever (or at least until someone blows it up)" question - but doing so apparently takes a crapton of time and friends.
Things are not as immediately obvious as they are in Wow - I was confused quite a bit off and on while trying to figure out how to find asteroids that can be mined for a specific mineral, for example, and I still don't know how to set up a custom filter list for the map - so that delta is still a little daunting. There's just so much I don't know how to do as yet, but I expect things will clear up as I keep fiddling. There is also built in voice chat, which I haven't actually bothered to look at yet. In game chat is a windowed IM-client like affair, similar to what Wow provides, but with much greater control on private channel access. Overall seems a very polished product with an appropriately sci-fi look and feel.
I'm currently about 3/4 of the way done with a "storyline" quest sequence that has featured a combination of running around, mining, shooting, refining, and building - basically a raw summary of the sorts of things you can do in the game. For my first character I went "less aggressive", choosing the path of a scientist/engineer type, because the thought of researching blueprints and making things appealed to me.
On that note - and this is based off of very high level understanding at this point - while you can make things like ships and weapons and ship upgrades, there are two limitations: 1) the blueprints you make them from can only be used a set number of times before you have to create a new blueprint, and 2) you cannot "create" anything new - the list of possible blueprints you can research or find is deterministic. So I see that as a negative.
I haven't delved into the forums much yet, nor explored the reaches of the online community built up around the game. I am immediately impressed however with some technology they've incorporated - there's a published API protocol for application developers to write programs that directly access your characters. For example I have a widget on my dashboard now that provides a running clock of when my currently training skill will be done. Authentication is handled by a pseudorandom user id/API key pair (I do not have the details as yet on what level of security their algorithm provides) and the player has a choice of just choosing a "limited access" key that allows access to the wallet and currently training skills, or a "full access" key that lets you see everything. You can regenerate a new UID/Key pair whenever you like, for the paranoid.
One nice enhancement I'd like to see added is the ability to train skills without having to even log in - but I suppose that would sort of defeat the purpose of it being a MMORPG at that point.
I've played about 7 hours thus far:
My initial thoughts are cautiously positive - the basic game play is still boiling down to "go do the same thing a bunch, then profit", but the community is radically different, and there are a tremendous amount of variables to worry about. Nevertheless, in some ways the game has already been "solved", at least presently, due to the existence of skill planning applications and suggested training paths to maximize your character potential - or at least minimize the time it takes you to reach that maximum.
On the other hand, there is no 'class role'. Everyone can learn everything - but doing so takes a tremendously long amount of time (which, even though you can still learn your skills while not logged in, we're looking at years worth of real time to learn it all) so you still end up picking a set of things that interest you, broken down into the axes of corporate control (setting up trades, alliances, contracts, etc), business (playing the auction house equivalent with the added complexity of moving between place to place without getting your ass shot off from under you), or industry (either harvesting raw materials and refining them, or producing blue prints and/or the products made thereby).
Combat is not twitch based, but does require you to swap targets as you fight and adjust your orbit radius to increase weapon efficiency. Thus, there at least initially appears some set of real time tactics that will need to be employed, although likely it will end up being pretty bare bones. There are various minmaxing paths ahead of me with respect to ship energy management, damage control, and damage output, as well as mining and refining efficiency.
The look and feel of the game is fantastic - highly detailed, gorgeous graphics, and a vast wealth of information available via an ingame web browser that links to all the help files online.
From what I understand, you can reach the point of creating your own space station, which satisfies the Brian "gee, what can I DO that will last forever (or at least until someone blows it up)" question - but doing so apparently takes a crapton of time and friends.
Things are not as immediately obvious as they are in Wow - I was confused quite a bit off and on while trying to figure out how to find asteroids that can be mined for a specific mineral, for example, and I still don't know how to set up a custom filter list for the map - so that delta is still a little daunting. There's just so much I don't know how to do as yet, but I expect things will clear up as I keep fiddling. There is also built in voice chat, which I haven't actually bothered to look at yet. In game chat is a windowed IM-client like affair, similar to what Wow provides, but with much greater control on private channel access. Overall seems a very polished product with an appropriately sci-fi look and feel.
I'm currently about 3/4 of the way done with a "storyline" quest sequence that has featured a combination of running around, mining, shooting, refining, and building - basically a raw summary of the sorts of things you can do in the game. For my first character I went "less aggressive", choosing the path of a scientist/engineer type, because the thought of researching blueprints and making things appealed to me.
On that note - and this is based off of very high level understanding at this point - while you can make things like ships and weapons and ship upgrades, there are two limitations: 1) the blueprints you make them from can only be used a set number of times before you have to create a new blueprint, and 2) you cannot "create" anything new - the list of possible blueprints you can research or find is deterministic. So I see that as a negative.
I haven't delved into the forums much yet, nor explored the reaches of the online community built up around the game. I am immediately impressed however with some technology they've incorporated - there's a published API protocol for application developers to write programs that directly access your characters. For example I have a widget on my dashboard now that provides a running clock of when my currently training skill will be done. Authentication is handled by a pseudorandom user id/API key pair (I do not have the details as yet on what level of security their algorithm provides) and the player has a choice of just choosing a "limited access" key that allows access to the wallet and currently training skills, or a "full access" key that lets you see everything. You can regenerate a new UID/Key pair whenever you like, for the paranoid.
One nice enhancement I'd like to see added is the ability to train skills without having to even log in - but I suppose that would sort of defeat the purpose of it being a MMORPG at that point.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Various Bits
Video Games:
Well I have completed Metroid Prime 3 (a week or two ago). This was a title, being a fan of Metroid and all, that I was quite eagerly awaiting to get ahold of, and in a fit of overwhelming generosity my wife gave me (along with Endless Ocean) for Father’s Day.
I’ve been a fan of Metroid ever since I first played one of the titles - tho to be fair I got my Metroid wings a little late - I didn’t start until Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. At this point I’ve completed that title, along with the two Metroid titles for the GBA, did most of Metroid Prime 2 (that one got shelved because I got sucked into World of Warcraft - and 3 years later I don’t have the motivation to go back and figure out where I left off), and have dabbled in some of the earlier releases. Overall a fantastic series - and the control setup on the Wii is top notch. Finally a more intuitive and sensitive way to shoot things than a tiny joystick :) Parts of the game were frustratingly “hard” - and by hard I mean “random shit you have no control over fucking up your plans”, but these areas (only one comes to mind, really) were refreshingly rare. I played through on Normal difficultly - and having done so I feel like I sort of cheated myself. The game was astonishingly easy, either because of my FPS experience in general or past Metroid titles in particular I don’t know.
On the flip side I can replay the game again on the hardest difficulty now - and I think all my scans remain associated with my save file, so I don’t have to run around with the scan visor on constantly and can instead enjoy the visuals :)
However I have three other titles sitting in front of me - Halo 2 (yes it’s old - but I didn’t get an XBox until very recently), Metal Gear Solid 4 (never played any of the others, but I’m told the plot is easy to catch up on, and the game itself is more a bunch of movies than anything), and Fallout 3, which I pre-orderd sight unseen because the first two were so awesome. Also I still debate constantly between buying GRID now and Gran Turismo 5 later, or just waiting for GT5 (no interest here in forking out $40 for a glorified demo via GT5 Prologue. I mean puhLEEZE.) Meanwhile Guitar Hero IV looms on the horizon.
Plus I want several other titles. So many games, so little time :) More recently I snagged Blast Factor via PS3 download just to have a nice shooter hanging around. Pure mindless entertainment. It’s important to have such things :) It was a toss up between that and Super Stardust HD, but Blast Factor looks a little better on my currently non-HD TV. Once we get the new TV I’ll probably end up with both of these games.
AND FINALLY: Much happiness ensued: STAR CONTROL 2. This game is bloody ancient - but man, it was fucking awesome back in the day. This game and its predecessor was a huge deal when I was a freshman - I recall walking down the hall one day and no less than seven dorm rooms had this thing going at the same time. This is old school beat the crap out of your buddy stuff - both folks playing ON THE SAME KEYBOARD, yessir, this is back before that fancy schmancy internet crap, might have even pre-dated the granddaddy of PC gaming networking, IPX. You could smell the sweat of your opponent as you crushed his fragile ego (hell, I remember doing exactly that - I was regarded as one of the better to best players on the floor at one point, and this upstart guy was touted as a contender. We went 3 games in a row with a huge audience, him dripping with confidence, me just looking for a challenge. I schooled the fuck out of him. Not only did I win all three games, I believe in the third one he was so frustrated he made stupid choices and I think I didn’t even lose a ship. Ah, the halcyon days of me being good at something). Well, now it’s been released in open source, there’s a Mac version, and I’m just a little happy retro gamer guy at the moment. They even added network support.
I miss Star Control 3 as well, but that one apparently is regarded as a bastard step child. Eh.
Hordes/Warmachine:
Between a 2 week family vacation and a shit pile of overtime at the office, I have managed to miss every single play night at the LGS for going on 6 weeks now, so I hope to hell I can make it this week.
I may have found some more opponents tho, which is good :) First, my daughter expressed interest in learning, and while it’s hard to judge as yet if she just wanted more Father/Daughter time or if she actually enjoys this particular hobby, she has been painting up my old miniatures like mad (I used to just paint, but not play, and I’ve had a pile of metal laying around for going on 12 years now) and said she really wanted to play the actual game.
So in the interest of testing that desire without blowing another $50 on a starter box, I bought some bases of various sizes and we played a game where she proxied a starter and we had at. She surprised me - retained focus for over half of the 3 hour game and even had a base strategy she was going for - run me to the edge of the table and then throw me off. I was rather impressed - she’s only 11, after all. So at this point we’ve played once, and we’re on again today to try again. If she maintains interest, while we can’t exactly afford to cover TWO of us playing this expensive hobby, we’ll look at getting her some initial pieces. On the convenient as all fuck front, she’s also interested in Circle Orboros - which means we can trade minis back and forth ad nauseum since that’s all I’m collecting for now.
Now that I have bases, I may also get another friend of mine lured in at least to try it - he doesn’t have the cash to buy his own models right now, but we can proxy him in with bases and copies of my cards, at least. As I pointed out, once PP releases a deck of Horde’s cards he could conceivably just proxy a whole frickin army on cheap ass bases. And then a bud down in San Antonio, I discovered, also plays! Has a huge retired Cygnar army to boot - he played for several years until the game became unfun when one of their group went crazy and bought everything - so that any game turned into which counter he was going to bring to the table instead of playing something comparable.
On the army front - last purchase was a copy of Hordes Evolution and a Blackclad Wayfarer. Plus a metal base to mount him to since he’s so blasted top heavy. He will be the first mini I assemble AFTER painting, since his huge staff thing will be a bit of an issue to paint behind, so that should serve as some useful experience. Next month comes the Woldwarden and then I’ll have my scrappy 500pt army.
After some 15+ hours I’m finally happy with my Shifting Stones paint job, so now they just need a coat of protective finish and I will have my first Hordes models completed. I had some trouble in places with these, but I learned some good things so I made the right choice as to first mini’s - with such an overall simple construction I could focus on technique more than coordination, in a sense, and hey, they’re just rocks so if they aren’t spot on awesome that’s ok. I tried to get fancy with the coloration of the glowing bits in the middle - one yellow, one orange, one red - and that ended up being a fine idea but difficult to implement consistently. I also was pleased to discover that I do actually have the coordination to paint AROUND the tiny little glowing runes, so my thoughts of having to dry brush in those flat parts and dealing with the time and luck of that turned out to be unnecessary. I watered down the paint a bit to paint the runes themselves, and did that first in the lighter color (of the “glow”), so that any smudges around the outside could just be covered up with the darker color. Creating a “glow” effect I sort of failed at, even with looking at the sample ones online, but hey, live and learn. I’m still pretty pleased with how they turned out - I even went back over the raised carvings on the surface of the stones with metallic silver, which created a nice subtle effect since it mostly blends in with the gray until you look at it from certain angles, when BAM the carvings just pop out at you.
If I get a chance this evening I think I’ll do the Argus’ next. I’m still debating painting them the same color, or different. I’m also going to try my hand at some shading on the musculature. We’ll see how that goes :)
Well I have completed Metroid Prime 3 (a week or two ago). This was a title, being a fan of Metroid and all, that I was quite eagerly awaiting to get ahold of, and in a fit of overwhelming generosity my wife gave me (along with Endless Ocean) for Father’s Day.
I’ve been a fan of Metroid ever since I first played one of the titles - tho to be fair I got my Metroid wings a little late - I didn’t start until Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. At this point I’ve completed that title, along with the two Metroid titles for the GBA, did most of Metroid Prime 2 (that one got shelved because I got sucked into World of Warcraft - and 3 years later I don’t have the motivation to go back and figure out where I left off), and have dabbled in some of the earlier releases. Overall a fantastic series - and the control setup on the Wii is top notch. Finally a more intuitive and sensitive way to shoot things than a tiny joystick :) Parts of the game were frustratingly “hard” - and by hard I mean “random shit you have no control over fucking up your plans”, but these areas (only one comes to mind, really) were refreshingly rare. I played through on Normal difficultly - and having done so I feel like I sort of cheated myself. The game was astonishingly easy, either because of my FPS experience in general or past Metroid titles in particular I don’t know.
On the flip side I can replay the game again on the hardest difficulty now - and I think all my scans remain associated with my save file, so I don’t have to run around with the scan visor on constantly and can instead enjoy the visuals :)
However I have three other titles sitting in front of me - Halo 2 (yes it’s old - but I didn’t get an XBox until very recently), Metal Gear Solid 4 (never played any of the others, but I’m told the plot is easy to catch up on, and the game itself is more a bunch of movies than anything), and Fallout 3, which I pre-orderd sight unseen because the first two were so awesome. Also I still debate constantly between buying GRID now and Gran Turismo 5 later, or just waiting for GT5 (no interest here in forking out $40 for a glorified demo via GT5 Prologue. I mean puhLEEZE.) Meanwhile Guitar Hero IV looms on the horizon.
Plus I want several other titles. So many games, so little time :) More recently I snagged Blast Factor via PS3 download just to have a nice shooter hanging around. Pure mindless entertainment. It’s important to have such things :) It was a toss up between that and Super Stardust HD, but Blast Factor looks a little better on my currently non-HD TV. Once we get the new TV I’ll probably end up with both of these games.
AND FINALLY: Much happiness ensued: STAR CONTROL 2. This game is bloody ancient - but man, it was fucking awesome back in the day. This game and its predecessor was a huge deal when I was a freshman - I recall walking down the hall one day and no less than seven dorm rooms had this thing going at the same time. This is old school beat the crap out of your buddy stuff - both folks playing ON THE SAME KEYBOARD, yessir, this is back before that fancy schmancy internet crap, might have even pre-dated the granddaddy of PC gaming networking, IPX. You could smell the sweat of your opponent as you crushed his fragile ego (hell, I remember doing exactly that - I was regarded as one of the better to best players on the floor at one point, and this upstart guy was touted as a contender. We went 3 games in a row with a huge audience, him dripping with confidence, me just looking for a challenge. I schooled the fuck out of him. Not only did I win all three games, I believe in the third one he was so frustrated he made stupid choices and I think I didn’t even lose a ship. Ah, the halcyon days of me being good at something). Well, now it’s been released in open source, there’s a Mac version, and I’m just a little happy retro gamer guy at the moment. They even added network support.
I miss Star Control 3 as well, but that one apparently is regarded as a bastard step child. Eh.
Hordes/Warmachine:
Between a 2 week family vacation and a shit pile of overtime at the office, I have managed to miss every single play night at the LGS for going on 6 weeks now, so I hope to hell I can make it this week.
I may have found some more opponents tho, which is good :) First, my daughter expressed interest in learning, and while it’s hard to judge as yet if she just wanted more Father/Daughter time or if she actually enjoys this particular hobby, she has been painting up my old miniatures like mad (I used to just paint, but not play, and I’ve had a pile of metal laying around for going on 12 years now) and said she really wanted to play the actual game.
So in the interest of testing that desire without blowing another $50 on a starter box, I bought some bases of various sizes and we played a game where she proxied a starter and we had at. She surprised me - retained focus for over half of the 3 hour game and even had a base strategy she was going for - run me to the edge of the table and then throw me off. I was rather impressed - she’s only 11, after all. So at this point we’ve played once, and we’re on again today to try again. If she maintains interest, while we can’t exactly afford to cover TWO of us playing this expensive hobby, we’ll look at getting her some initial pieces. On the convenient as all fuck front, she’s also interested in Circle Orboros - which means we can trade minis back and forth ad nauseum since that’s all I’m collecting for now.
Now that I have bases, I may also get another friend of mine lured in at least to try it - he doesn’t have the cash to buy his own models right now, but we can proxy him in with bases and copies of my cards, at least. As I pointed out, once PP releases a deck of Horde’s cards he could conceivably just proxy a whole frickin army on cheap ass bases. And then a bud down in San Antonio, I discovered, also plays! Has a huge retired Cygnar army to boot - he played for several years until the game became unfun when one of their group went crazy and bought everything - so that any game turned into which counter he was going to bring to the table instead of playing something comparable.
On the army front - last purchase was a copy of Hordes Evolution and a Blackclad Wayfarer. Plus a metal base to mount him to since he’s so blasted top heavy. He will be the first mini I assemble AFTER painting, since his huge staff thing will be a bit of an issue to paint behind, so that should serve as some useful experience. Next month comes the Woldwarden and then I’ll have my scrappy 500pt army.
After some 15+ hours I’m finally happy with my Shifting Stones paint job, so now they just need a coat of protective finish and I will have my first Hordes models completed. I had some trouble in places with these, but I learned some good things so I made the right choice as to first mini’s - with such an overall simple construction I could focus on technique more than coordination, in a sense, and hey, they’re just rocks so if they aren’t spot on awesome that’s ok. I tried to get fancy with the coloration of the glowing bits in the middle - one yellow, one orange, one red - and that ended up being a fine idea but difficult to implement consistently. I also was pleased to discover that I do actually have the coordination to paint AROUND the tiny little glowing runes, so my thoughts of having to dry brush in those flat parts and dealing with the time and luck of that turned out to be unnecessary. I watered down the paint a bit to paint the runes themselves, and did that first in the lighter color (of the “glow”), so that any smudges around the outside could just be covered up with the darker color. Creating a “glow” effect I sort of failed at, even with looking at the sample ones online, but hey, live and learn. I’m still pretty pleased with how they turned out - I even went back over the raised carvings on the surface of the stones with metallic silver, which created a nice subtle effect since it mostly blends in with the gray until you look at it from certain angles, when BAM the carvings just pop out at you.
If I get a chance this evening I think I’ll do the Argus’ next. I’m still debating painting them the same color, or different. I’m also going to try my hand at some shading on the musculature. We’ll see how that goes :)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Brief Respite coming
I’m about to skip out of town for a two week vacation, so Hordes excitement will not be happening for a bit. I hit up the local last night to look for a game - as it turns out they were so limited on players I had barely entered the room before one of the regulars said “here, you’re playing this guy”. “But I only have a 350 pt army” “no problem, he’ll either cut down or we’ll loan you stuff”.
So last night was my first ever 500 pt game. My opponent was playing Warmachine, and he’s quite the old salt at things, but he’s also very patient and willing to teach, so I figured I was guaranteed to get something out of it.
My army consisted of the Circle Warbox, plus my shiny new Woldwyrd and shifting stones - and a loaner of two models that are next on my purchase list, a Blackclad Wayfarer and a Woldwarden. He deployed a Warmachine mercenary force, I forget the caster’s name but she had a nasty pistol and a feat that gave him the ability to roll 2 extra dice on every attack that turn and ignore the worst two rolls - and make me do the same on my turn except he got to pick which dice to ignore. Along with her there was a piper solo that buffed his unit of . . something or others, nasty little melee unit, full 10 models with UA/standard bearer, and kneel, and fearless. On top of that were 2 warjacks that had a spear/axe thing, a shield - and a gun in the shield. Finally were 3 solos, 2 of which could have a “client” so while within 6“ of the client they were substantially buffed, plus another gentleman who had to be killed twice, effectively. On his first death he comes back but with berzerk.
So I was staring down a massive pile of melee units, plus 3 of whom had range, and here I was with some stones and 7 models. I had never played with the blackclad or the woldwarden before, so that ate up some brain cycles figuring out how to integrate them in. It was pretty clear to me that I was either going to have to set up an assassination run or die. However my execution was a bit lacking. I did do some fun things tho, largely to try out the rules and see how they interacted - he did an early charge of two of his solos at my warpwolf and my woldwarden - whereupon I used those two models to two-handed throw them into the infantry, and managed over the course of two turns to knock them all over at least once. Infantry bowling, as it were. Unfortunately, the ARM on those little bastards was VERY high, and I killed precisely zero from collateral damage on either toss.
On top of that I completely forgot about the Wayfarers spray attack - which would have been devastating to knocked down models had I had him properly placed to take advantage. Or at least - in theory, devastating. The dice were rolling absolute shit all night. I will not blame them however, as my strategy was lacking. I’m not too fussed, since I’m still learning, after all.
So suffice to say he cleaned the board with me. My last turn (I had even tried to resign, but he said ”Wait! You might be able to do blah blah“ ... ) featured a Kaya with 2 health left, and a woldwyrd. Meanwhile he had lost two of his unit and one solo. However, I was able to get the woldwyrd just close enough to try to do some whomping on his caster - but not QUITE far enough to get behind her. On top of that, I forgot to get in a spirit fang to reduce the target’s DEF, so another fuckup there. 6 attacks (and 6 misses) later (having only one beast on the table hampered Kaya’s feat considerably) game over.
All in all a great game, and I gained some valuable experience. In the latter 3rd of it when the tide was pretty clear (more like tsunami) I did lose a little mental focus - then again due to my inexperience we were at table for close to 3 hours and it was pushing 11pm, which is my usual bedtime. However, I had a blast, and got some good advice from 3 of resident regulars, including one fellow who has 2K+ circle models himself.
Out of the followup discussion I got a list of models to acquire next, to build up a supply of folks for a 500pt army that has some flexibility for swapping in and out a few different things.
In purchase order, they shall be:
1) Woldwarden
2) Blackclad Wayfarer
3) Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew
4) Totem Hunter
5) Start fiddling with other casters
3 and 4 will neatly replace an Argus. Once I hit 5 I can try out utterly different play modes with the other casters, and after that comes time to start in on some units (price is a factor, which drives the lack of units before this point). First up will likely be the bloodtrackers, known for obliterating one important model somewhere on the board almost immediately before they themselves are wiped out.
This strikes me as a nice set up of relatively cheap models (minus the woldwarden) that I can run a variety of 500pt games with for several months before I begin the climb to 750 and those tasty yet pricey Wolfriders I so desperately want.
My interest in this game has only grown, particularly since it’s now a full on challenge to improve my gameplay, as well as a good painting opportunity :)
So last night was my first ever 500 pt game. My opponent was playing Warmachine, and he’s quite the old salt at things, but he’s also very patient and willing to teach, so I figured I was guaranteed to get something out of it.
My army consisted of the Circle Warbox, plus my shiny new Woldwyrd and shifting stones - and a loaner of two models that are next on my purchase list, a Blackclad Wayfarer and a Woldwarden. He deployed a Warmachine mercenary force, I forget the caster’s name but she had a nasty pistol and a feat that gave him the ability to roll 2 extra dice on every attack that turn and ignore the worst two rolls - and make me do the same on my turn except he got to pick which dice to ignore. Along with her there was a piper solo that buffed his unit of . . something or others, nasty little melee unit, full 10 models with UA/standard bearer, and kneel, and fearless. On top of that were 2 warjacks that had a spear/axe thing, a shield - and a gun in the shield. Finally were 3 solos, 2 of which could have a “client” so while within 6“ of the client they were substantially buffed, plus another gentleman who had to be killed twice, effectively. On his first death he comes back but with berzerk.
So I was staring down a massive pile of melee units, plus 3 of whom had range, and here I was with some stones and 7 models. I had never played with the blackclad or the woldwarden before, so that ate up some brain cycles figuring out how to integrate them in. It was pretty clear to me that I was either going to have to set up an assassination run or die. However my execution was a bit lacking. I did do some fun things tho, largely to try out the rules and see how they interacted - he did an early charge of two of his solos at my warpwolf and my woldwarden - whereupon I used those two models to two-handed throw them into the infantry, and managed over the course of two turns to knock them all over at least once. Infantry bowling, as it were. Unfortunately, the ARM on those little bastards was VERY high, and I killed precisely zero from collateral damage on either toss.
On top of that I completely forgot about the Wayfarers spray attack - which would have been devastating to knocked down models had I had him properly placed to take advantage. Or at least - in theory, devastating. The dice were rolling absolute shit all night. I will not blame them however, as my strategy was lacking. I’m not too fussed, since I’m still learning, after all.
So suffice to say he cleaned the board with me. My last turn (I had even tried to resign, but he said ”Wait! You might be able to do blah blah“ ... ) featured a Kaya with 2 health left, and a woldwyrd. Meanwhile he had lost two of his unit and one solo. However, I was able to get the woldwyrd just close enough to try to do some whomping on his caster - but not QUITE far enough to get behind her. On top of that, I forgot to get in a spirit fang to reduce the target’s DEF, so another fuckup there. 6 attacks (and 6 misses) later (having only one beast on the table hampered Kaya’s feat considerably) game over.
All in all a great game, and I gained some valuable experience. In the latter 3rd of it when the tide was pretty clear (more like tsunami) I did lose a little mental focus - then again due to my inexperience we were at table for close to 3 hours and it was pushing 11pm, which is my usual bedtime. However, I had a blast, and got some good advice from 3 of resident regulars, including one fellow who has 2K+ circle models himself.
Out of the followup discussion I got a list of models to acquire next, to build up a supply of folks for a 500pt army that has some flexibility for swapping in and out a few different things.
In purchase order, they shall be:
1) Woldwarden
2) Blackclad Wayfarer
3) Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew
4) Totem Hunter
5) Start fiddling with other casters
3 and 4 will neatly replace an Argus. Once I hit 5 I can try out utterly different play modes with the other casters, and after that comes time to start in on some units (price is a factor, which drives the lack of units before this point). First up will likely be the bloodtrackers, known for obliterating one important model somewhere on the board almost immediately before they themselves are wiped out.
This strikes me as a nice set up of relatively cheap models (minus the woldwarden) that I can run a variety of 500pt games with for several months before I begin the climb to 750 and those tasty yet pricey Wolfriders I so desperately want.
My interest in this game has only grown, particularly since it’s now a full on challenge to improve my gameplay, as well as a good painting opportunity :)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Model updates
Somewhat small one, as I’m at work and terribly, terribly behind :)
First off Thank You to Tengu - I’d done some musing around Brusthralls before but hadn’t actually located the Orboros box link as yet. I have to say, I will be well outside of that level of quality for some time :)
Assembly finished well - I think I did a reasonably acceptable job at it, even without pinning anything. We’ll see how they hold up under use :)
I’m doing a bit of experimenting between black and white primers - both Argus, the Warpwolf, and Kaya are in black, while my recent acquisitions (Shifting Stones and a Woldwyrd) are in white. I ran into a spot of difficulty with the black - either I just “did it wrong” or it was too hot that day (highly likely, being Texas and July and all) - the primer was really, really flaky. After 24 hours it was possible to gently rub on the mini and come away with a fingerfull of black. While perhaps more drunk than I should have, I took a toothbrush to them, yielding a set of four models that are very heavily black in some areas and somewhat lightly black (but not quite bare metal) in others. I hesitate to reprime them for fear of overdoing it, and at this point the entire process has become one large experiment :) given that these are the first mini’s I’ve painted in several years, I’m not too fussed, and if they turn out horrible I can always strip them down later when I’m better and redo them.
Meanwhile the white ones came out just fine some days later (and primed in the very early part of the day when it was cooler). Along the way I re-located two other miniatures that I am painting as a “warm up” - primed one white, the other black. So far I’ve put a basecoat on the white one, and attempted a wash of heavily watered down black paint - sadly, so watered down that while it looked great wet, as it dried there was insignificant pigment and/or only enough to just get wicked right back out of the holes and crevices that I now have a model with, ironically, highlighted pits instead of darkened holes, as it were.
So I hit up the local yesterday and snagged a true black wash to try out - never done much in the way of inking before so it will be a worthy new thing, at least. We’ll see how it goes. While out I snagged several new brushes and a real palette (to replace the textured cutting board I’d been using) for mixing, so I’m hopeful I’ll get in some quality time this weekend with the paints. My first bit of painting the other night was quite fun - altho I’m looking forward to getting our planned work desks in. Hunching over the kitchen table in low light conditions having to take off my glasses to see fine detail is not something I can do for more than a couple hours at a time :)
First off Thank You to Tengu - I’d done some musing around Brusthralls before but hadn’t actually located the Orboros box link as yet. I have to say, I will be well outside of that level of quality for some time :)
Assembly finished well - I think I did a reasonably acceptable job at it, even without pinning anything. We’ll see how they hold up under use :)
I’m doing a bit of experimenting between black and white primers - both Argus, the Warpwolf, and Kaya are in black, while my recent acquisitions (Shifting Stones and a Woldwyrd) are in white. I ran into a spot of difficulty with the black - either I just “did it wrong” or it was too hot that day (highly likely, being Texas and July and all) - the primer was really, really flaky. After 24 hours it was possible to gently rub on the mini and come away with a fingerfull of black. While perhaps more drunk than I should have, I took a toothbrush to them, yielding a set of four models that are very heavily black in some areas and somewhat lightly black (but not quite bare metal) in others. I hesitate to reprime them for fear of overdoing it, and at this point the entire process has become one large experiment :) given that these are the first mini’s I’ve painted in several years, I’m not too fussed, and if they turn out horrible I can always strip them down later when I’m better and redo them.
Meanwhile the white ones came out just fine some days later (and primed in the very early part of the day when it was cooler). Along the way I re-located two other miniatures that I am painting as a “warm up” - primed one white, the other black. So far I’ve put a basecoat on the white one, and attempted a wash of heavily watered down black paint - sadly, so watered down that while it looked great wet, as it dried there was insignificant pigment and/or only enough to just get wicked right back out of the holes and crevices that I now have a model with, ironically, highlighted pits instead of darkened holes, as it were.
So I hit up the local yesterday and snagged a true black wash to try out - never done much in the way of inking before so it will be a worthy new thing, at least. We’ll see how it goes. While out I snagged several new brushes and a real palette (to replace the textured cutting board I’d been using) for mixing, so I’m hopeful I’ll get in some quality time this weekend with the paints. My first bit of painting the other night was quite fun - altho I’m looking forward to getting our planned work desks in. Hunching over the kitchen table in low light conditions having to take off my glasses to see fine detail is not something I can do for more than a couple hours at a time :)
Monday, June 30, 2008
First crack at model work
So this past weekend I got the miniatures cracked out and did a bit of filing and cutting on them to make sure the pieces and parts fit together relatively well, trimmed off the sprue fragments and venting spikes, and so forth. Didn’t do much in the way of sanding, and I was planning on cleaning the mini’s AFTER assembly, not before. Further reading indicates that was probably backwards - since now I have a little bit of talc paste mixed in with my super glue.
Last night was the crack at assembly. I got both Argus' put together - they came in five pieces - two body halves, two heads, and the tail. Tail was easy, body will take some work (need to fill in the more obvious cracks with green stuff) and the heads, well, they were just smooth metal on metal. As an experiment I let one set up for a few minutes and then tried to snap it back off - it came off pretty easily, and I was afraid I’d be learning pinning faster than I had originally intended. However, I let another head set for over an hour . . and I couldn’t break it off. It was stuck hard enough I would have had to really risk breaking off two heads at once or actually bring in some tools/floor drops to get it to budge, so this was of some comfort, obviously.
The Warpwolf comes in five pieces also (two arms, torso, legs, tail), PLUS no less than 12 tiny spikes, six of which go along the spine and 3 on each shoulder. I didn’t get around to the spikes last night - most of the challenge was that torso to pelvis join that, in the long run, I should probably pin, but last night I just held it together for a good five minutes to get the glue to set. Seemed pretty stable this morning, we’ll see how it holds up once I start playing with it.
Kaya on the other hand - egads, what a bitch. Only three pieces - but her left arm requires a join at that tiny elbow - was a little tiny nub and a little tiny dent for it to fit into. Absolutely zero structural integrity at all, and I could not get just the right amount of glue nor hold it just perfectly still enough to ever set firm. Similarly for her right arm - even though I was able to get it into place the glue wasn’t cooperating. I suspect I had just gotten too much there - when the nozzle of the glue bottle is BIGGER than the small area of metal you want to join, well. One huge mess after another. Fortunately, I was wearing gloves. This particular joint is so small, I’m not even sure it could be pinned. The diameter of the arm is, at MOST, 1/16“. That means a 1/32” drill bit. Ooof.
So I ended up trying the green stuff out as a pure adhesive. I’m not sure if I mixed it right or not, but we’ll see how it goes. It was still pliable this morning, so I may still yet have some work on those joints to do.
Green stuff is pretty neat shit, actually. Works like play-doh. I figured out all on my own it’s much easier to work if you keep it wet - doesn’t stick so much to my gloved fingers. I read today it’s overall stickiness is gone in about 5 minutes or so, making it much easier to work with after.
Assuming I can get the assembly wrapped up I will be giving these guys a nice bath with a bit of water and a toothbrush. I learned today that talcum powder is used to get the metal out of the molds, and I wouldn’t expect that stuff to do a real good job of keeping the primer attached to the model. I just hope the glue holds relatively well :)
Since this is my first time out I fully expect to have things break and come apart and so forth as I go - that’s the whole point really. Need to have some experience in this.
In the bad news front - ALL of my fucking paints dried out. Granted, they’d been left in a box in the garage for going on 3 years - but damn, what a thing to discover. Some $60 worth of paint now in little cubes in the garbage can. So that will be a bit of a bear to replace. I will probably do what my friend Roy did, and just snag the starter box of 6 colors used by the Circle and perhaps augment with a bottle or two of metals. Before I paint any of the game pieces I’ll probably do one or two “practice” models from the vast supply of miniatures I bought but never painted. Might as well get some new brushes while I’m at it as well. However, I’m hopeful I’ll have at least an assembled force to field this Wednesday. I’ve made my first pass through the rules, now I need to write up my own summary to increase my understanding :) There are definitely some subtleties in them, though nothing too bad. Just little niggling details that are nonetheless important.
Last night was the crack at assembly. I got both Argus' put together - they came in five pieces - two body halves, two heads, and the tail. Tail was easy, body will take some work (need to fill in the more obvious cracks with green stuff) and the heads, well, they were just smooth metal on metal. As an experiment I let one set up for a few minutes and then tried to snap it back off - it came off pretty easily, and I was afraid I’d be learning pinning faster than I had originally intended. However, I let another head set for over an hour . . and I couldn’t break it off. It was stuck hard enough I would have had to really risk breaking off two heads at once or actually bring in some tools/floor drops to get it to budge, so this was of some comfort, obviously.
The Warpwolf comes in five pieces also (two arms, torso, legs, tail), PLUS no less than 12 tiny spikes, six of which go along the spine and 3 on each shoulder. I didn’t get around to the spikes last night - most of the challenge was that torso to pelvis join that, in the long run, I should probably pin, but last night I just held it together for a good five minutes to get the glue to set. Seemed pretty stable this morning, we’ll see how it holds up once I start playing with it.
Kaya on the other hand - egads, what a bitch. Only three pieces - but her left arm requires a join at that tiny elbow - was a little tiny nub and a little tiny dent for it to fit into. Absolutely zero structural integrity at all, and I could not get just the right amount of glue nor hold it just perfectly still enough to ever set firm. Similarly for her right arm - even though I was able to get it into place the glue wasn’t cooperating. I suspect I had just gotten too much there - when the nozzle of the glue bottle is BIGGER than the small area of metal you want to join, well. One huge mess after another. Fortunately, I was wearing gloves. This particular joint is so small, I’m not even sure it could be pinned. The diameter of the arm is, at MOST, 1/16“. That means a 1/32” drill bit. Ooof.
So I ended up trying the green stuff out as a pure adhesive. I’m not sure if I mixed it right or not, but we’ll see how it goes. It was still pliable this morning, so I may still yet have some work on those joints to do.
Green stuff is pretty neat shit, actually. Works like play-doh. I figured out all on my own it’s much easier to work if you keep it wet - doesn’t stick so much to my gloved fingers. I read today it’s overall stickiness is gone in about 5 minutes or so, making it much easier to work with after.
Assuming I can get the assembly wrapped up I will be giving these guys a nice bath with a bit of water and a toothbrush. I learned today that talcum powder is used to get the metal out of the molds, and I wouldn’t expect that stuff to do a real good job of keeping the primer attached to the model. I just hope the glue holds relatively well :)
Since this is my first time out I fully expect to have things break and come apart and so forth as I go - that’s the whole point really. Need to have some experience in this.
In the bad news front - ALL of my fucking paints dried out. Granted, they’d been left in a box in the garage for going on 3 years - but damn, what a thing to discover. Some $60 worth of paint now in little cubes in the garbage can. So that will be a bit of a bear to replace. I will probably do what my friend Roy did, and just snag the starter box of 6 colors used by the Circle and perhaps augment with a bottle or two of metals. Before I paint any of the game pieces I’ll probably do one or two “practice” models from the vast supply of miniatures I bought but never painted. Might as well get some new brushes while I’m at it as well. However, I’m hopeful I’ll have at least an assembled force to field this Wednesday. I’ve made my first pass through the rules, now I need to write up my own summary to increase my understanding :) There are definitely some subtleties in them, though nothing too bad. Just little niggling details that are nonetheless important.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Hordes!
Now for a real update :)
I’ve made the call - and went with Hordes as my chosen side on the WarMachine vs. Hordes discussion trail. My first starter box is the Circle Orobos, which features Kaya as the Warlock, two Argus’s (two headed wolves), and a Warpwolf. Should be a hoot :) going to be some new challenges for me in the way of assembly - particularly since most of the assembly points will not stand on their own, so I need to figure out some way to hold little pieces of metal together while glue dries. Thus far to support this part of the hobby I’ve snagged a set of small hobby files and a set of clay shaping tools to handle the green stuff manipulation. I’m hoping to find some time this week to try my hand at some hard core assembly action. Otherwise I’m slowly working my way through the rule book. I had Tony and Ross out to try the game - Ross is unsure, I think, but Tony wasn’t too keen on the prospect of painting little bits of metal and then moving them around a fake playscape :)
Father’s day was a great success - in addition to a great steak dinner my wife bought me BOTH Metroid Prime 3 AND Endless Ocean. I’m holding off on starting on Metroid just now (as I’m wrapping up the first installment of the Halo series - sorry, while I may play them I refuse to link to Micro$oft’s products because I’m an opinionated bastard), I did have some downtime this weekend (due to a sprained ankle) to get in some serious Ocean time. And that game is just blasted awesome - if swimming around doing literally nothing but looking at stuff is awesome to you :) I like it, anyway. There is zero rush or pressure to do shit, and you basically have this vast aquarium to amble around in. There are just two things to worry about: not swimming too far from the boat (which leads to you forcibly returning to it), and running out of air (which, also, leads to you forcibly returning to it). That’s it. I’ve interacted with some 6-8 different sharks, one of which is known to attack humans - with no issues. I swam around a humpback whale without getting clobbered by his tail flukes. I’ve handled puffer fish without getting poked. Etc :) Even cave diving is übersafe: If you get lost, just hit the “return to boat” option and try again. The game is pure genius, and a collector’s wet dream. Each creature (and there are hundreds) have 3 pages of information to unlock (all trivial stuff that can be found on wikipedia, of course), plus there are small salvage items to find (sparklies on the ocean floor) and pseudo-minigames (take a picture of this, lead this other diver to that) to do - but all optional. The entire measure of “progress” really is just how many different fish you find, some new clothing options, and getting all the necessary special diving equipment to go night diving and deep diving. To top it off you can connect with a buddy and go on partner dives. The controls are butt-simple, requiring only the wiimote. I file this under the “must have” category if for no other reason than how well they did the game.
One likely-to-be-acquired title for the PS3 - Burnout: Paradise City. This is just a fun little game that I’ve played the demo of and then recently watched a bit over at a friend’s place. Basically the concept is you are a car (well, “in” a car perhaps, but there are no pedestrians and no visible drivers - so you are basically just a car) living in a city. Nearly every intersection has some kind of “event” - a pure race, or a “marked man” event where you have to outrun folks trying to wreck you, or another event type in which you are trying to wreck as many other cars as possible, etc, supports online multiplayer racing, and generally just kicks ass in the fun department. As both I and my daughter find this sort of thing fun, it’s a likely contender for the “to buy after Rockband” portion of the gaming budget.
I’ve made the call - and went with Hordes as my chosen side on the WarMachine vs. Hordes discussion trail. My first starter box is the Circle Orobos, which features Kaya as the Warlock, two Argus’s (two headed wolves), and a Warpwolf. Should be a hoot :) going to be some new challenges for me in the way of assembly - particularly since most of the assembly points will not stand on their own, so I need to figure out some way to hold little pieces of metal together while glue dries. Thus far to support this part of the hobby I’ve snagged a set of small hobby files and a set of clay shaping tools to handle the green stuff manipulation. I’m hoping to find some time this week to try my hand at some hard core assembly action. Otherwise I’m slowly working my way through the rule book. I had Tony and Ross out to try the game - Ross is unsure, I think, but Tony wasn’t too keen on the prospect of painting little bits of metal and then moving them around a fake playscape :)
Father’s day was a great success - in addition to a great steak dinner my wife bought me BOTH Metroid Prime 3 AND Endless Ocean. I’m holding off on starting on Metroid just now (as I’m wrapping up the first installment of the Halo series - sorry, while I may play them I refuse to link to Micro$oft’s products because I’m an opinionated bastard), I did have some downtime this weekend (due to a sprained ankle) to get in some serious Ocean time. And that game is just blasted awesome - if swimming around doing literally nothing but looking at stuff is awesome to you :) I like it, anyway. There is zero rush or pressure to do shit, and you basically have this vast aquarium to amble around in. There are just two things to worry about: not swimming too far from the boat (which leads to you forcibly returning to it), and running out of air (which, also, leads to you forcibly returning to it). That’s it. I’ve interacted with some 6-8 different sharks, one of which is known to attack humans - with no issues. I swam around a humpback whale without getting clobbered by his tail flukes. I’ve handled puffer fish without getting poked. Etc :) Even cave diving is übersafe: If you get lost, just hit the “return to boat” option and try again. The game is pure genius, and a collector’s wet dream. Each creature (and there are hundreds) have 3 pages of information to unlock (all trivial stuff that can be found on wikipedia, of course), plus there are small salvage items to find (sparklies on the ocean floor) and pseudo-minigames (take a picture of this, lead this other diver to that) to do - but all optional. The entire measure of “progress” really is just how many different fish you find, some new clothing options, and getting all the necessary special diving equipment to go night diving and deep diving. To top it off you can connect with a buddy and go on partner dives. The controls are butt-simple, requiring only the wiimote. I file this under the “must have” category if for no other reason than how well they did the game.
One likely-to-be-acquired title for the PS3 - Burnout: Paradise City. This is just a fun little game that I’ve played the demo of and then recently watched a bit over at a friend’s place. Basically the concept is you are a car (well, “in” a car perhaps, but there are no pedestrians and no visible drivers - so you are basically just a car) living in a city. Nearly every intersection has some kind of “event” - a pure race, or a “marked man” event where you have to outrun folks trying to wreck you, or another event type in which you are trying to wreck as many other cars as possible, etc, supports online multiplayer racing, and generally just kicks ass in the fun department. As both I and my daughter find this sort of thing fun, it’s a likely contender for the “to buy after Rockband” portion of the gaming budget.
MacJournal Test
Today I’m attempting to see if I can use a new tool, MacJournal 5, to upload blogs to blogger. Required a bit of manual setup, and I have no clue if I did it right or not :)
And now to see if I can re-enable adult settings . . . .
And now to see if I can re-enable adult settings . . . .
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Hordes/Warmachine HO
So last night I managed to rope two buddies into another trip to Dragon's Lair to check out WarMachines. I played Hordes last time I was there, time to try the other side :) Tony was not terribly interested in the game, Ross is a little higher on the maybe scale but didn't say much one way or the other. Tony and I played a nearly full game under the able tutelage of Will, the fellow who played me last time I was there. We ran a Cryx vs. Menoth starter box game. I had a good time :) The first move is always the scariest - plus WarMachine features something called an "arcnode", whereby most of your 'jacks can actually serve as the origin point for spells from the warcaster. All that verbiage basically means most of your models can function to dramatically extend the range of your caster.
I had a moment of minor success when I used a spell on my warcaster to put myself safely behind a wall on the turn right before Will was going to coach Tony to charge her. She was just looking too vulnerable to me so I hit upon the idea of sticking her in a cave, basically. Great success!
The flavor of Hordes and Warmachines are different - at my first glance, there is a lot more pre-planning and a lot less seat of the pants action in Warmachines than Hordes. As I rather like a bit of seat of the pants stress, I've opted to begin this hobby in earnest as a Hordes player. I chose The Circle of Orobos as my first faction to explore - they are headed up by druids, and have a very nature-based theme, with most of their warbeasts being some flavor of wolf, or a wood and stone construct.
$108 later I'm the happy owner of some Green Stuff (epoxy putty), super glue equivalent, a rule book, and a starter box. Not too shabby :) next stop: assembly!
I had a moment of minor success when I used a spell on my warcaster to put myself safely behind a wall on the turn right before Will was going to coach Tony to charge her. She was just looking too vulnerable to me so I hit upon the idea of sticking her in a cave, basically. Great success!
The flavor of Hordes and Warmachines are different - at my first glance, there is a lot more pre-planning and a lot less seat of the pants action in Warmachines than Hordes. As I rather like a bit of seat of the pants stress, I've opted to begin this hobby in earnest as a Hordes player. I chose The Circle of Orobos as my first faction to explore - they are headed up by druids, and have a very nature-based theme, with most of their warbeasts being some flavor of wolf, or a wood and stone construct.
$108 later I'm the happy owner of some Green Stuff (epoxy putty), super glue equivalent, a rule book, and a starter box. Not too shabby :) next stop: assembly!
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Email Test/Magic Online/PS3
Shooting this blog entry from an email address to see if that feature works.
A friend of mine made me a very generous offer recently: a huge pile of cards to start playing Magic: Online with. Sadly, last I checked Wizards of the Coast has not bothered to make a Macintosh-compatible client, thus, I've been SOL to even try to play this game. However, some new things have happened of late: I have come into possession of an Intel based Apple laptop that I might just test this out on.
Today I took another step into Consumer Whoredom™ and applied for the Sony Credit Card. A credit card branded to a specific COMPANY of all things. This is our future. In any event, I did this because there is a running special that will credit your card $100 if you make a $299+ purchase in the first 45 days. As it turns out, I am eagerly awaiting June 12, so that I can acquire a PS3 system that actually has some I/O on it (the old 40GB PS3's have no flash/memory card access ports, and only 2 USB ports - which makes it a real pain in the butt to get Rockband working). Plus this reprise of the 80GB model means, of course, a little more disk space. Sony does have a nice product line here, but they do seem to botch up pretty badly making things accessible.
I am looking forward to the creation of my PS3 gamer account as well - while the XBox360 has support for this kind of persistent on-line gamer persona as well, they charge you money to actually PLAY any games online so I've not even bothered to get the WiFi connector for the XBox.
I feel very excited these days, having gotten away from World of Warcraft - so much extra time means more games to try and more time to play them :)
A friend of mine made me a very generous offer recently: a huge pile of cards to start playing Magic: Online with. Sadly, last I checked Wizards of the Coast has not bothered to make a Macintosh-compatible client, thus, I've been SOL to even try to play this game. However, some new things have happened of late: I have come into possession of an Intel based Apple laptop that I might just test this out on.
Today I took another step into Consumer Whoredom™ and applied for the Sony Credit Card. A credit card branded to a specific COMPANY of all things. This is our future. In any event, I did this because there is a running special that will credit your card $100 if you make a $299+ purchase in the first 45 days. As it turns out, I am eagerly awaiting June 12, so that I can acquire a PS3 system that actually has some I/O on it (the old 40GB PS3's have no flash/memory card access ports, and only 2 USB ports - which makes it a real pain in the butt to get Rockband working). Plus this reprise of the 80GB model means, of course, a little more disk space. Sony does have a nice product line here, but they do seem to botch up pretty badly making things accessible.
I am looking forward to the creation of my PS3 gamer account as well - while the XBox360 has support for this kind of persistent on-line gamer persona as well, they charge you money to actually PLAY any games online so I've not even bothered to get the WiFi connector for the XBox.
I feel very excited these days, having gotten away from World of Warcraft - so much extra time means more games to try and more time to play them :)
All post counts start at 0.
And then become "1" once the first one is up :) Might as well get started, eh?
This blog is a "companion" blog of sorts to my normal personal blog, and will be dedicated SOLELY to gaming. I created the Moriarty personality some years ago, and the name origin stems from a character I'm a fan of from my days of reading Doyle's works about Sherlock Holmes. He was evil and calculating - and while I'm not all that evil in real life the thought of being some sort of mastermind villian appealed to me, particularly when it comes to gaming. After all, most games on the market are designed to be "won" or otherwise dealt with in a selfish manner, and I do like to think of myself as intelligent. Plus "Moriarty" just has a nice ring to it.
Unfortunately, there are a LOT of Moriarty's out there. As such, it became necessary to somehow "uniquify" this name so that I stood a high likelihood of being able to use it as a forum name, online character name, email address, now a blog name, etc. I chose to use the "leet" style of formatting, popularized I think sometime in the 90's by hackers and the like and involves number or symbol substitution for similar shaped letters. While I expect this to become rather trite in the near future (if it hasn't already), it still appeals to me from that whole cyberpunk perspective and sort of fits the persona of my gamer side.
So there's the origins posts, for what it's worth. This will also serve as a test of BlogSpot to see if this might become my new blogging home in general. Having a separate topical blog will also (hopefully) allow friends and others to have a bit of a filter - I have lots of interests but gaming in general is the sort of thing I spend a lot of time doing and thinking about, and can dwarf in my texts all other considerations depending on what else is going on. This way I can keep my musings and experiences of this major hobby of mine separate from all the randomness of my other blog, and will also support the on-going creation of my "internet gaming" persona of Moriarty.
Finally, I enabled the "mature content warning" because I tend to use words and concepts that might be offensive to some, and I have no real interest in making this blog "nice and flowery". I may say "fuck", sometimes. I might even say "fuck that shit", or, if I am particularly grumpy, something like "this game is a complete stoogefucking assrape ball of pigeon shit served with a curried cock surprise basted in the pussy juice from a dead marmot and toe fungus compote".
I mean you just never know.
This blog is a "companion" blog of sorts to my normal personal blog, and will be dedicated SOLELY to gaming. I created the Moriarty personality some years ago, and the name origin stems from a character I'm a fan of from my days of reading Doyle's works about Sherlock Holmes. He was evil and calculating - and while I'm not all that evil in real life the thought of being some sort of mastermind villian appealed to me, particularly when it comes to gaming. After all, most games on the market are designed to be "won" or otherwise dealt with in a selfish manner, and I do like to think of myself as intelligent. Plus "Moriarty" just has a nice ring to it.
Unfortunately, there are a LOT of Moriarty's out there. As such, it became necessary to somehow "uniquify" this name so that I stood a high likelihood of being able to use it as a forum name, online character name, email address, now a blog name, etc. I chose to use the "leet" style of formatting, popularized I think sometime in the 90's by hackers and the like and involves number or symbol substitution for similar shaped letters. While I expect this to become rather trite in the near future (if it hasn't already), it still appeals to me from that whole cyberpunk perspective and sort of fits the persona of my gamer side.
So there's the origins posts, for what it's worth. This will also serve as a test of BlogSpot to see if this might become my new blogging home in general. Having a separate topical blog will also (hopefully) allow friends and others to have a bit of a filter - I have lots of interests but gaming in general is the sort of thing I spend a lot of time doing and thinking about, and can dwarf in my texts all other considerations depending on what else is going on. This way I can keep my musings and experiences of this major hobby of mine separate from all the randomness of my other blog, and will also support the on-going creation of my "internet gaming" persona of Moriarty.
Finally, I enabled the "mature content warning" because I tend to use words and concepts that might be offensive to some, and I have no real interest in making this blog "nice and flowery". I may say "fuck", sometimes. I might even say "fuck that shit", or, if I am particularly grumpy, something like "this game is a complete stoogefucking assrape ball of pigeon shit served with a curried cock surprise basted in the pussy juice from a dead marmot and toe fungus compote".
I mean you just never know.
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