Competitive Gaming Thoughts

One of the things that has always drawn me into gaming is my competitive nature. I have always gravitated to games that have had a vibrant tournament scene. This goes way back to my early college days with Magic the Gathering and then after college with the advent of Mage Knight and Mechwarrior: DarkAge. Back then the fun for me was to play the game in an organized fashion with people from all over, I even ran events for Wizkids Games as an Envoy back then. Shortly after the death of MageKnight I found my way into Confrontation 3 and got into the big competitive scene for that game. At one point I was driving up to four hours one way to play in a tournament. It was a blast back then and I have made some lasting friendships with those players. Like all things however Confrontation eventually came to an end and so did competitive gaming for me. I have tried to get into various games within the last couple of years I have been playing Warmachine and having a lot of fun with that but even that seems to be coming to an end with the latest releases for the game and the shift to larger models and what I feel eventually larger games which is disappointing. The game seems to be passing me by as I cannot increase my investment into the game in an effort to keep up. 

On a brighter note it looks like Confrontation may be coming back with a new edition of the rules that have cleaned up a lot of issues with the previous rules. With the new rules will hopefully come a reinvigorated tournament scene that will at the very least bring us a national tournament at Gencon.

In the long run competitive was always going to slowly end for me as I grow older and my interests shift. I am starting to see that I am interested in a variety or games not just one exclusive one. I am to the point now where I am looking to own enough stuff for some of the second tier games just to be able to put the game on the table every now and again. I will end on that thought as I am working on an idea for a monthly game that will give people a chance to see these great games they have have normally missed because the local environment is focuses on a single game.

I am currently reading the Dark Age Apocalypse core book and will post up my thought on it once I have a change to get a few games in with my Dragyri.
I have my Dragyri army on my Work Bench along with some sci-fi terrain from JR Miniatures. I will post up some images of these models as work progresses.

Gencon,WoW and FoW

Another week has passed and its been a little slow around here. I have been working on my various projects primarily working on getting my Gencon Terrain together I also finally registered for Gencon so now I can actually run the events I am already signed up for. Also last Saturday I participated in a FoW tournament in West Lafayette coming in second after having a solid day. I believe that I lost by 1 point and my final round didn't help I had to play a "hold the line" like scenario leaving me with little on the table and I didn't receive reserves until the 4th turn by then it was all over. Special Thanks go out the the guys of The Sages Shoppe they put on a great tournament in a really nice store.

In other news, I finally got my latest character in WoW up to level 40 and I have decided to take a bit of time off mainly to work on my other projects but much like it has before WoW is slowly becoming a job so in place of WoW I decided to cash in my three free months of City of Heroes I received after NcSoft closed down Tabula Rasa. CoH is a nice light hearted game that is a little less intensive than WoW and doesn't take itself very seriously it did take a bit of tweaking just to get it up and running but it seems to be work it. CoH actually reminds me of Anarchy Online which is a game that I loved at the time but seriously shows its age now even though it is free.

That's its for now not much is going to change in the next few weeks I have a lot of terrain to finish up for Gencon that will take up most of my time. I also have a Confrontation Throw Back day at my house in a week that should be a blast for the local group.

And on a final note I don't usually offer non gaming opinions on this blog but, I got to see the new Transformers movie matter of fact I have seen it twice and I will say that while its not going to win any awards it is a typical summer movie that is more of a exhibition in effects and explosions but its worth the price of admission. I am not sure what the deal is with the critics but it is not anywhere near as bad as they make it out to be.

Gencon,Alkemy,Rackham,AO?

Well Gencon has come and gone and with it a lot of good time and money spent. Fortunately this year I was prepared and showed up to the Con packing cash and saved myself for the bank shock the following week. Overall the show was great I got to see a lot of old friends from the old rackham days as well as see a lot of people in the industry that know. The big thing this year for me has to be Alkemy.

Go figure another french game has snagged me in its grasp so much so that I bought 2 entire armies for the game. Thats right folks I am pretty much all in with Kraken Editions game. The great thing is they seem to have their priorities straight and everything that was a negative for that other french company they have turned around and made positive. For starters there are only 4 armies at the moment and they will be updated in waves. Yes, every army gets something in every wave. The game itself is top notch with a very cool system of dice and actions. This game is everything one could want in a skirmish game and the models are top notch as well. Even the designer was a very cool guy. Oh and did I mention the demo team was my old buddies form Rackham. Glad to seem them working with a solid company again.

And that brings us to Rackham..what can I say after their total lack of support for CAOR and the Legends line now only available from their main French site I am now officially done with them. I am no longer going to be supporting them in anyway and I have put away my books and the miniatures are now RPG minis only. Its also doesn't help that the last Confrontation tournament which was meant to be a fun tournament was completely ruined by a couple of Dirz players that did not understand that intent of the tournament. These gentlemen playing these armies may be ok individuals but they missed the boat with army construction and landed solidly in powergamer land I hope they had fun playing each other in the final round. There is something to be said from a tournament that started with 16 players then after 2 rounds only had 6 or so left to participate and many players walking away in disgust. This was my only low light of the entire show.

With that said I would like to thank the Table Top Gamers crew for putting on a solid list of events and providing a place for all of us to just hang out from time to time. I hope to participate in more of their events in the future maybe even help out if need be.

Last but certainly not least I have starting playing Anarchy Online again. I know what you are thinking...that game is still around..yes it is. It is also free to play at least the base game and the 1st booster expansion and if you like it you can upgrade to the 1st full expansion for only 5 bucks a month. I was in on this game from day one and it has only gotten better with age. So for anyone that is into Sci-Fi and interested in playing an MMO that is of a bit more slowed pace check it you can find it here. If anyone wants to find my in AO(Anarchy Online) please leave a comment and I do my best to meet up with you ingame.

Painting,Confrontation,Gencon

Don't everyone die of shock and amazement but this is and update less that a week from the last one. Surprisingly there is not much to share another week of painting,assembling and gaming not much in the way of news though. I was able to get in a test game of Confrontation 3 using my Griffons and they did pretty well against a Lion army played by one of the local C3 players. I am still not sure if its going to be the final list or really even if its the final faction choice as I do have a lot of painted Sessairs ready to go.

As for painting my Trollbloods are starting to look a little less barren. I was able to finish up a minimum unit of Pyg Bushwhackers which may or may not see a lot of table time once I get stuff I really want and they were a nice unit to experiment on for my Trollblood skin tones. I was also able to get the skin on my war beasts painted and I started on the Champions. I am still a little perplexed at how I am going to paint and albino Madrak but he will be the last to see any painting time. If I can get my hands on the camera I will see about getting some images up loaded soon.

The Gencon 08 countdown continues and now we are down to 4 weeks! At now that I actually have my badges in hand excitement is starting to build sad thing is I have a lot of work to do between now and then.

Side Note: I was able to see Hellboy 2 this past weekend and I must say it was a excellent movie its to bad Dark Knight is getting so much hype because this latest Hellboy 2 is one of the best movies I have seen in a while a must see for fans of the 1st movie or just good movies in general

Warlord,Hordes,C3 and Gencon

Its been almost a month since my last update and to be honest it has actually been pretty quite on the gaming front around here. The local gaming group continues to play Warlord but we are branching out people are starting to play Games Workshop games again specially with the release of 40k 5th edition coming soon. We are also talking about Confrontation again which is always a good thing. I personally am gearing up for the big(possibly last) C3 tournament that is being held at Gencon this year. The goal at the moment it to get a couple of games in between now and August so I can have the best list possible ready to go which also means a fully painted army.

With all the fun being had with Warlord,C3 and Warhammer I have also decided to finish up my Trollbloods for Hordes. I know what some of you are thinking, "But you hate Privateer Press", not true I am not a fan of Warmachine, Hordes to me has better game mechanics and just plays better. Its also a newer game so its a bit easier to jump into. Currently I have about 500 points and am building up to 750 in anticipation for the fall league.

Gencon, what else is there to say its that time and year and Gencon is only 5 weeks away. 5 weeks until a much needed vacation and the nice thing is this year I pretty much am going obligation free, not demos to do, no major gaming group presence its all about basking in gaming goodness and seeing what is out there. With that said I am going to do my best to post to the blog nightly and have pictures if I can get my hands on a camera.

In other minor news, I have finished the 4th book in the Dresden Files series in the last couple of days. I have also been playing EVE online, again after it most resent update I got an additional 14 days of trial period to try out the new PVP features unfortunately I don't have any characters that qualify for the features in game yet so I have been doing as much as I can to at least see PVP stuff before the trial runs out. PVP was one of the things I was most interested in but EVE is kinda of a long tedious game and it was going to take way to long for me to get to the point where I could get into the main PVP part of the game the new features seem to fix this.

Thats it for now hopefully I will have another update prior to Gencon but I make no promises as life always seems to find a way to distract me. Oh almost forgot I added a new link to the navigation on the site you Circle City Gamers a forum of gamers in Central Indiana to meet up,discuss all types of gaming.

Warhammer,Warlord and others

Well its been a while since I have posted and to be honest not much has happened. I have been working on my Warhammer army so my High Elves are coming along. I have a unit of Sea Guard finished and I also have my bolt throwers and crew painted as well. Just need to finish up my Battle Standard Bearer and I will be ready to pick up some more stuff.

Recently I have been on a fantasy skirmish kick so I got out my Confrontation 3 stuff to get it prepped for the Gencon Tournament so I will be getting some C3 games in but I also picked up a new game Warlord by Reaper. I actually got to play Warlord last night and I can honestly say I love the system so much in fact that I wish I would have found the game 4 years ago and not had to deal with the headache of Confrontation for so long. Don't get me wrong Confrontation is a great game it just dealing with the bad translation,poor management and a company that only really half supported it was a bit tedious. Warlord on the other hand is well supported it get updated yearly and the figs although not all of the them meet Rackham level of detail are very cool in their own right. The game is also way cheaper with figures being about half of what Confrontation figs are.

Now some of you out there may claim that I have gamer ADD and in some instances you may be right I do seem to be hopping for game to game at the moment but I myself have come to the realization that I am getting more into the Hobby aspect of gaming where I like to paint cool models and use them in their respective games or use them in any game I choose. With that said I haven't seen any other games out there that I am really interested in so I think I am sticking with Warhammer,Warlord, C3 and Infinity for a while that may change I also have an eye on some Anima Tactics figs but that game is in need of a rule book for me to get into they do have some cool models though.

rFactor,Confrontation,Painting

Wow, its been a week since my last post that either means I have been really busy or its been so boring lately that there isn't much to talk about...anyone care to guess? Actually things have been a bit hectic since last thursday so much in fact that I didn't realize that I hadn't made a post in a week.

So whats been going on? Well having to work on Saturday night kinda put a cramp in my weekend there is also that pesky rFactor racing sim that has been sucking up a lot of my time. I have also had some painting to work on as well as a Spycraft game to run on Sunday. The rest of the week has been a bit of a blur with lack of sleep causing all kinds of havoc.

For those of you who may be reading this that aren't into racing sim rFactor is pretty much the end all be all sim that covers just about every aspect of motor racing expect for motorcycle racing. I love this game but on my old system it wouldn't run properly so I never really got to play it like it was intended on the new system however I can run it will all the bells and whistles turned on and no hiccups or slow downs. So being the sim type person I am I have been running in that "sort of" career mode where you start out with little expierience and work your way up through the lower series to the top tier series. I have been running in the open wheel rTrainer Advanced and just started my second series in the division hopefully I can score some descent points and be able to afford to break into the next series up. That brings me to a problem I have with rFactor. All of the different series are treated as separate entities so experience and money do not carry over from one to the next something that I think would be awesome. So with that said I have been working on a career rFm file that will unify all of the series under one entity so that money and experience can carry over. I hope to cover all forms of racing and allowing for entry level series to feed into all other series. At this point I have integrated all of the series that come with rFactor I just need to test the setup to make sure that everything works then I hope to post it to this site so that others may use it if they like. If anyone has any question about this mini-mod for rFactor please leave a comment.

The whole rFactor thing has been sucking up a lot of my time lately so I haven't had much time to play and Guild Wars or Tabula Rasa I have played a bit of Supreme Commander which I picked up recently that game is impressive and very difficult. In a more real work setting I have been working on some Confrontation lists and hope to get a game in next week. Hopefully this goes well as I need to get onto painting up my figures for the Gencon tournament.

On a side not I did get to see a the last half of the Indy Car race in St.Petersburg on Sunday and I have to say I am impressed the former ChampCar team have pulled through should make for an excellent 500 this year as well as a good series.

Well thats it hopefully I can think clear enough to post another entry in less than a weeks time. I also have more images I need to put into the gallery.

Gencon,Dragons,Indy Car Racing,C3,Shadowforce

Well its about that time of year again, the time when the master event lists are available for Gencon. Its weird though because this year I am not helping run an event and Confrontation is not high on my to do list(I do have an event planned we will talk about that later) so this year my Gencon is pretty much wide open. Hopefully I can find some new game to check out and maybe get in on some old favorites. We will have to wait and see as the event lists are due out any day now.

The Dragon has left the building! Well not quite I need to get him sealed and the humidity has been up the last couple of days preventing me from getting him sealed. It is however based and ready to go. In other painting new I recently got my last batch of Infinity figures primes and started work on them. One of the things I love about the Infinity models is they are clear and concise when it comes to detail so its really easy to paint them up quickly. I expect to have these models ready for Thursday gaming.

Finally the Indy Car Series began it season with 2 races at Homestead Miami. Although I thought the race was great to listen to its still going to take a bit of time for the ex-ChampCar guys to come around. In honor of the new series and the release of an outstanding rFactor mod I am going to attempt to run my own offline racing championship using the mod and rFactor. I hope to have the 1st of many race videos uploaded within the next couple weeks.

Confrontation 3? Yea thats right it looks like they have ironed out the rules for an independent Confrontation 3 tournament for Gencon this year and since its being run by vets from the old tournament scene I figured I should throw in my hat for what I hope is going to be a great tournament for a solid game. I have yet to decide what army to play at this point, hopefully I can convince some of the old local players to jump in and have a go.

Last but certainly not least I have decided to do a revamp on the fledgling spycraft campaign that I started a little over a month ago. We have decided to go into Shadowforce Archer as our setting and I am going to be throwing in stuff from all over. Hopefully I can make a more balanced campaign for our reduced numbers. It should be interesting a Shadowforce has a lot of interesting things going for it already before I start to tinker around with things.