A Kovnik's Kommuniqué

Greetings Tovarishch,

This is an old blog of mine that was loosely associated with gaming in the first place. But now, I'm re-purposing it. After months without updates, I am going to start using this as a place to post battle reports for Khador. Many of these will be from Steamroller events that I attend. I'm hoping I'll remember to take pictures of them all, but if not, I'll try to verbalize them if possible.

They won't all be winning battle reports. In the games I lose, I'll try to report on the things I did right and wrong. Not just what got me killed, but the mistakes that I made that led up to that point.

Now, without further Ado, let's start it off with a win for the Motherland!

Kommunique No. 1: Forward Kommandor Sorcha Kratikov vs. Hoarluk Doomshaper & The Runes of War

Steamroller 2014 Scenario #6: Two Fronts

Trollbloods:

Hoarluk Doomshaper (*7pts)
* Troll Axer (6pts)
* Dire Troll Mauler (9pts)
* Earthborn Dire Troll (10pts)
* Mulg the Ancient (12pts)
Krielstone Bearer and 5 Stone Scribes (4pts)
* Krielstone Stone Scribe Elder (1pts)
Trollkin Runeshapers (Leader and 2 Crew) (3pts)
Trollkin Runeshapers (Leader and 2 Crew) (3pts)
Trollkin Runeshapers (Leader and 2 Crew) (3pts)
Trollkin Runeshapers (Leader and 2 Crew) (3pts)
Janissa Stonetide (3pts)

(During Deployment, my opponent places the two wall templates shown in the picture below thanks to his tier benefits).

Deployment:

Khador:

Forward Kommander Sorscha (*6pts)
* Conquest (19pts)
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker (2pts)
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (Cylena and 9 Grunts) (10pts)
Great Bears of Gallowswood (5pts)
Greygore Boomhowler & Co. (Boomhowler and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (4pts) Added from Specialists; Swapped for Widowmakers
Winter Guard Field Gun Crew (Leader and 2 Grunts) (2pts) Added from Specialists; Swapped for Koldun Kapitan Valachev
Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire (4pts)
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator (1pts)

Deployment:

(Thanks to Forward Kommander for the easy to copy and paste lists!)

I won the roll and elected to go first. My opponent chose the side of the table he was already on because my he was trapped in a corner and didn't feel like moving (the terrain was rather balanced with obstacles on both sides so it really didn't matter which side I deployed on).

Khador Turn 1:

Control Phase: Sorcha Allocates 1 focus to Conquest.

Boomhowlers Run. Nyss Hunters Run. Conquest Runs. Aiyana & Holt Advance and get stealth. The Field Gun Runs to take cover behind a small house. Alexia Runs to support the Boomhowlers. Sorcha advances, to a central location, puts Iron Flesh on the Boomhowlers, and sits on the rest of her focus. Great Bears sprint up the right board edge and start yelling nasty things about Hoarluk's mother.

Trolls Turn 1:

Most everything on his side runs to take cover under the walls he's placed. The EBDT tosses out it's animus on Doomie, and charges. Doomie puts Fortune on Mulg, and Banishing Ward on himself (My opponent explains that he's afraid of eSorcha's threat range with Freezing Grip) then charges the Conquest to make it within an inch of the wall.

At the end of round one the battle lines are beginning to take shape. (I forgot to take a photo at this point. The next visual aid will come at the end of my next turn).

Khador Turn 2:

Control: Sorcha upkeeps Iron Flesh (for free), and puts 4 focus on the Bonded conquest keeping two for herself.

Boomhowlers move into position and begin shooting at the Runeshapers that are trying to take ground. eAlexia casts hellfire hoping to terrorize one of the units. The Field gun takes a shot at something. Overall, minimal casualties are suffered. on this side of the field, but Alexia does claim two souls for her trouble.

Conquest unloads on the runshapers upfield but fails to crit for the devastation like I'd wanted. Nyss hunters advance and take a few shots. Not much gets done on this side of the field either. This is starting to look like it will be a drag out attrition battle!

The sneaky Great Bears wander up behind a house to take cover from any Runeshaper spells, and still threaten a charge on the following turn.

Trolls 2:

Attrition it is. Runeshapers fight a losing battle with my Iron Fleshed trolls, but manage to contest the zone on the left. Runeshapers on the right fail to remove many of the Nyss Hunters. My opponent brings in mulg to chow down on some Nyss Hunters. He lines up a Wall in front of Mulg with Janessa in order to try protecting him from another Conquest Critical, but he leaves the back door open to a few great bears. His only protection in the form of a few Runeshapers that are giving the bears funny looks. and blocking charge lanes.

Khador 3:

Control: I consider my options on an assassination run, but decide I'm winning the attrition war and there's no reason I should risk it all on a half baked attempt to kill a well guarded troll. Sorcha loads up conquest again, and upkeeps for free. I decide that it's time these Trolls felt Winter's Chill. It's feat turn for me!

Sorcha activates early in the turn, pushing forward, popping her feat, and using Cyclone to get the heck out of dodge. She ends her activation somewhere behind the objective on my side of the board.

Boomhowlers, Alexia, and the Field Gun clean up on the left, also putting some damage on the objective. Unfortunately, the few Runeshapers on the left that were outside my feat prove difficult to kill, and I can't control the zone.

A&H Advance, Kiss Mulg, and take a few shots, but overall don't accomplish much. Conquest unloads, but fails to crit once more. Nyss hunters decide it's time to jam. They charge ahead to take advantage of weaponmaster on my feat turn, also because there's so few of them left their foot print on the board won't last much longer and I want to cause as much of a nuisance as possible. Hilariously, one of the Nyss hunters cracks the objective open for a controll point, and a second one half shots the EBDT!!! I manage to sneak two of them in next to the wall and Doomshaper and put a few points on him too. Great work, guys! The Great Bears decide they've waited long enough. Two charge Mulg (the Runeshapers that were in the way were removed by my previous activations). Thanks to double 1's on one of the charges, and some of the worst damage rolls I've ever seen them make overall, Mulg Survives. The one that ran ends up behind the obstacle near the back edge of his board. It's potentially threatening some of his important models in the coming turns.

I realize that with his increased speed from taking damage, Mulg has a possible charge on Conquest. He's lacking at least one spiral, but that's nothing Doomie can't help with. If he can disengage the great bears, I'm potentially looking at a dead colossal! I clog his charge lane with Reinholdt! Hilarious!

Score: Khador 1; Trolls 0

Trolls Turn 3:

It's a short turn for him since he's running out of models. Doomshaper upkeeps and cowers behind the wall.

Janissa decides to push the Great Bears away from Mulg. This is an ability that I didn't know she had and didn't see coming! Mulg decides to go for it. But with Reinholdt and a Nyss in the way, his only option is to trample. Despite Fortune, he can't land enough hits on Aiyana, Holt, or Reinholdt to make his way via Doomshaper's Goad to Conquest. He finally gets there on the last of his Fury, but is out of attacks.

He manages to pick of the rest of my troublesome Nyss Hunters, but can't sneak any additional models into the left zone. He's more worried about clogging up the great bears in the backfield with his Krielstone Bearers.

Khador Turn 4:

Control: Conquest gets another load of focus. 

Conquest moves to the left, in front of my Objective to make sure my opponent can't blow it up. Conquest spends the turn using it to destroy the stationary Mulg. I'd hedged my bets, so I ended up wasting two of the four focus I'd allocated to him to get it done. Still, you can never be too sure with Mulg. I wanted that tree swinging beat stick dead dead dead.

Great Bears spend the turn chopping through trolls in the back, not getting much done. A few good swings brings down Janessa, though.

Trolls and Alexia finally manage to clean up on the left and control the zone. Alexia even has some time to conjure up some thralls to harass the EBDT. But it turns out that's not going to matter. With our deathclocks getting low, I decide to cyclone Sorcha into the left zone and start really racking up points. A Domination this round brings us to... 

Score: Khador 2, Trolls 0.

Trolls 4:

Another pillowfisted turn, ending with only 16 seconds remaining on my opponent's clock. Doomie is still behind a wall, but can't dominate because Conquest has his toes in the zone. Leaving the left zone empty allows Sorcha to dominate again, bringing the score to...

Khador 3; Trolls 0

Khador Turn 5:

I've got about two and a half minutes to play. Time to apply some pressure and force my opponent's clock. Sorcha drops all upkeeps. Loads up Conquest with 3 (I'm rushing, and forget bonding allows an extra). She casts boundless charge from where she is thanks to Sylys extending the range of her spells. She sends conquest in, and he starts beating on Doomshaper. A few solid hits (all of which are transferred), I end my turn with only 16 seconds to spare on my own clock. Sorcha dominates again.

Khador 4; Trolls 0

At this point, my opponent decides to throw in the towel. Technically, it's a win by assassination as he lets his deathclock run out. As soon as that triggers, we check for control points again. Sorcha is still dominating bringing home a control point shut out for the Queen.

Decision: Khador

Score: Khador 5; Trollbloods 0

Please feel free to comment. I prefer constructive criticism, of course. Any input you have on the game, or on the report is welcome. Other than my obvious need to take more pictures, of course!

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Until next time, Komerade.

The Butcher of Khardov

So, a while ago I promised myself that if we ever did another Journeyman league for Warmachine, I'd slow-grow the eButcher Tier list.

Here's a couple shots of my painted eButcher model (compliments of Waffle):

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Here we go again.  I'm a hater I know but you're here, so you must want to hear what I have to say about LoZ:SS.

So I beat Skyward Sword last night.  I think that it would probably be one of my favorite Zelda games of all time.  I would throw it right up there with Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening.  It's not quite Ocarina quality, but then... What is?  You'll notice the key words in those sentences: "would".  Unfortunately, Skyward Sword gets neither of these commendations in my book.  Why? The controls.  They sucked so bad it brought the entire experience of the game crumbling down.

Somewhere near the middle of the ending, Link places the Master Sword in a pedestal (a la Ocarina).  All I could think the entire time this was about to happen: "Please oh please don't make me do the stupid thing with the Wii Remote just to get him to thrust the sword into the ground like I had to through the game."  This really saddens me, because the game was having what I would refer to as 'a moment'.  But all I could think of was how much I hated the controls.

Hero Mode? Yea, fuck that noise!

Want me to break it down further? Sure.

Equipment:
Bug Net - Should never have been one of the game's major equipment items. But alas.  Anyway, you swing it like the sword.  When ever other equipment can be quickly put away by swinging the Remote to draw your sword and this cannot. It caused more than one hiccup in the game.
Beetle - It would have been cool to see link walking around with the medieval equivalent of the Nikita.  But it was so uncontrollable at times, I would go out of my way to not have to use it.
Clawshots - Worse than the Twilight princess version.  After that awesome item, how can you expect me to go back, Nintendo?
Bombs - A staple of Terrorist Link's item bag since day one.  However, they suffer from having to use the crappy Wii Remote controls of throwing and rolling. Terrible! Take a lap!

You know what? No. Forget it. I can't even go through the rest of the items. I'm too pissed. If you really wanna hear me hate some more on your own time, email me. Or maybe I'll come back to this after the Remlit wounds aren't so fresh...

The only way I'll ever play THAT....

Ever tell yourself that the only way you would sit down to play a certain video game is because of some unforeseen yet tragic catastrophe that leaves you either bedridden, or bored as hell?

Me too.

Coincidentally, I was in fact recently board as hell.  I cracked open my roomate's copy of Crackdown 2 that had recently been shipped from Gamefly.

It was awful.

I played it for a few hours, and kept telling myself that it would get better.  Maybe the controls would get easier as I played, or at least I might get used to them.  I kept telling myself that maybe the incredibly annoying narrator/central command agent that was constantly telling me what to do, where to go, and even what not to do would shut the hell up!

He didn't.

And I was so, SO upset because of this.

Crackdown 2 is klunky.  Even the main character is badly designed.  I say this for two reasons, which directly relate to what you're character is supposed to be (but isn't).  Your character wears a suit of power armor.  It is supposed to enhance his durability and athleticism.  I found that they hit the nail on the head in the durability factor.  It's so incredibly hard to kill, it takes much of the adrenaline out of playing an action game in which you cannot lose.  Even when you do get killed, there is little to no penalty for doing so.  You just re-spawn nearby, AND get restocked with ammo, weapons, and vehicles as you see fit. With those kinds of 'penalties' why wouldn't you want to die when you run out of ammo? The enemies don't respawn, and you can just drive back up with a fresh car and some fresh gear. Bad game designers.  Bad!

Okay, sure you can jump like fifteen feet in the air, and you can leap from the tallest buildings without fear of death, and you can scale buildings left and right.  But if your character is that athletic, and enhanced by power armor, then why does he move like he's walking around inside a giant fat kid? I don't think I need to say anymore on the subject.

Let's talk about the collectibles and advancement in the game.  You're character's skills increase by getting kills with either weapons, explosives, driving, or your fists.  Fine. I can see that.  When you 'level up' one of your skills, you gain access to the next tier items, which you can just have air dropped nearby for you.  Sure.  You're better at shooting? You can now handle a better gun.  I accept.  Unlike other games, you actually have to level up your ability to platform (your athleticism, if you can call it that) by picking up these glowing green orbs.  Leveling this ability allows you to run faster and jump higher.  But the orbs you get, barely contribute much if anything to leveling it.  The increases are not significant, and yet are essentially the most important skill you can level up.  So why make it so slow in progression?  Oh, and lets not forget your reward for being a power armored super soldier: You have the option to collect a different type of athletics orb which gives you an even higher boost (not really) to you score.  The catch - it runs away from you.  The game designers thought it was a good idea to make these orbs so incredibly hard to capture that ... oh, there aren't words for the frustration I had to endure.  I spent no less than thirty minutes chasing ONE orb.  It had the bad habit of following the same path over the same four rooftops.  When you get near, it speeds up.  When you're far, it stops.  So you can't even chase it from a different direction.  I once tried to head it off at the pass by leaping between the two corner buildings and grabbing it while it was in the void between the skyscrapers.  It stopped in mid air rather than continuing on it's path and through my character. It's like they want me to hate playing this game.  My only reward for trying to grab the orb through an unorthodox method was a swift fall back to street level from where I had to spend five minutes climbing again.  I have to move on, because I think I'm going to vomit if I cover this section much longer.

Goals.  Yea, this game has'em.  Yea, they suck too.  The game gives you the location of your objectives.  But never really tells you how to get there.  Except for the first time you encounter that type of objective when it has you "follow the white line".  After that, you're stuck guessing as to which building it might be on, and where you can climb.  You can't even look at your map, because It's just a black square with white lines, and there's no way you can tell the difference between roads and buildings.  And once you locate the building you've got to climb, good luck doing so.  It turns out that the only possible way to ascend that building is by jumping from an adjacent one, and so on, until you find the only building you CAN climb, about five blocks away.

I really can't convey how irate I am at this game with words.  They just don't do me justice.  This game sucked.  Pure and simple.  I'm just glad I had a few beers that night to take the edge off the pain it caused me.

I'm tempted to not even grant this game a rating, but if you have to know, I'd give it...

1 pulsating mutated virus infected freak...out of 5. No. 10. It was that bad.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Gamma World

This article is about my initial reactions to Wizards of the Coast new reprint of the old gem Gamma World.  An in depth review of the game may come later.

GAMMA WORLD

I recently heard about this game for the first time from Penny Arcade.  Admittedly, this is probably not the BEST source of information about tabletop gaming, but it usually does present things in a light that I am receptive to: It puts forward the best, worst, and quirkiest parts of a game.

Their strip on Gamma World did much to intrigue me, to say the least.

Over the weekend, I participated in a tournament for Malifaux in Waynesboro, PA. I ended up tying for first with the friend I'd brought with me.  We split the prizes evenly, and I put my share of the store credit towards completing my Malifaux collection, and a starter box of Gamma World.  I initially saw it as an impulse buy, and since I was getting about half off the merchandise, all totaled, why not?

I took the box home, read the introduction, and instantly fell in love.  So far, the game presents itself as a simplified version of D&D4e with the addition of a card drawing mechanic.  From what I've seen of the setting, it has wide flexibility as far as genre and play style opportunities go.  Perk: The non sequitur is brilliant.  While I have yet to actually play it, I expect great things.  It is my sincere hope that this game will at least do SOMETHING to restore some of my lost faith in Dungeons and Dragons, and Wizards of the Coast in general.

Everybody Loves Junk Food

This is going to be a short update.  I just felt that I should put this up here because I feel like I've been neglecting this lately.

This is just another reason why I love America and the Internet: http://www.chocomize.com/

Make your own chocolate bar, including your choice of topping.  Both Bacon and Beef Jerky, as well as Potato Chips are all available as toppings.  Wow!

Also, I recently discovered that the Wendy's Tripple Baconator is officially the deadliest fast food in America.  I guess it's true what my friends and I have been saying.  It DOES take ten years off your life.  For a full list of the top 40 deadliest fast foods, check this website.

Regards from my desk where I continue to sit and get fat!