Being Away from Hobbies and Returning

 

It’s been a long time since I updated this blog and for many reasons I have been to long away from the Hobby of gaming. Looking back on my time away I realized the difficulties that I had getting back into it and my experiences along the way.

There can be many reasons you get pulled away from your hobby gaming or otherwise. I could probably fill up a few pages with both positive and negative reasons one might be pulled away. Though eventually hopefully you find yourself back in a position where you want to get back into it but you don’t know where to start.

In the past year I joined the Military and moved across the country for both school and my new duty post. I didn’t know anyone interested in gaming, and I had no idea where I could play just that I really wanted to do something.

The first thing I did was take an entire weekend to explore every gaming store I could find in the area through Google Maps. This may be easier or more difficult for people but it helped immensely knowing what places had what games and gave me a nice fun weekend out of my house. Every place I also wrote a little personal review about what they offered how they were set up and what I would go there to play. I met so many people and learned about so much going on in the area outside of my hobby as well. Stores, Bars, Restaurants, and much more were discussed and it allowed me to become much more familiar with my city and the surrounding areas.

Engage in your hobby at work if you can. This honestly is one of the best things I feel you can do if you want to get back into it or get to meet more people. For me it started off talking with someone about Star Wars and then someone else peaked interest and next thing I knew we were talking about playing X-Wing Miniatures on the weekend. Because we talked about it as well people felt more comfortable coming over and asking questions and showing interest. For Warhammer 40k I was sitting at a table building a Tyranid Trygon Model which had a bunch of people suddenly talking to me about how they play and how cool it would be to play games while we were underway on a patrol.

Be involved with online communities or your old groups if you had to move away from them. In this day and age you don’t have to be face to face to communicate. Sure maybe to play but if you can still keep in touch and talk gaming you will find yourself motivated to keep up with the hobby until you can actively play again.

This is a rather short blog post. But one I kind of wanted to talk about briefly before I start going on about progress and other topics I hope to put on this blog again. If you happen to read this and have some feedback or your own suggestions for people to get back into their hobbies. Leave a comment or send a message. Hopefully this is helpful to some of you.

Until next time keep gaming.

A Brief Codex Review: Space Marines

So I have had the Space Marine Codex for about 3 days. After Reading it quite a few times I am just going to give a quick breakdown of my thoughts on the Codex and touching in depth on the New Rules and Units in this post. What I will not talk about is Black Templar since I believe they deserve a post of their own even without their own Codex.

To begin with I really think they went in the right direction with this codex. Rules are very concise and clear which is a first in a long time for Games-Workshop. Some quick things they cleared up were Drop Pods losing Hull Points, Stormtalons Escort Craft Ability, and Special Ammunition concerning Overwatch. A majority of the units have gone down in point value and given more flexibility in list building. We have a mix of new units some good and some bad. Chapter Tactics bring flavor and diversity to the armies without you having to rely on Special Characters and this is a good thing in my opinion. Previously in a 1000 Point game you were playing Ultramarines with a different color scheme. Now that same 1000 point army has a diversity not just in composition but strategy and tactics.
While we are on the Topic of Chapter Tactics lets go a little more in depth with them. I probably am in the minority on this but I feel every Chapter Tactic is in essence a good one to take. People will differ in opinion with me and I encourage it as this isn’t a particularly tournament geared thought process. Each one does something entirely different than the rest. Looking at a Chapter Tactic and choosing one starts as the basis for list building with this Codex. You look and choose White Scars and you are going to want lots of Bikes and probably as troops. This means you probably going to take a Captain on a bike, a Chapter Master on a bike, or Khan on Moondrakkan but you won’t take a Librarian or Chaplain as your first HQ. Where as if you pick Iron Hands you may go towards a Master of the Forge and grab some extra Dreadnoughts, Techmarines, and Vehicles since they can stay alive a lot longer. Hopefully you get the picture. I will go a little more depth with Each Chapter Tactics special rule in a seperate post.

Now onto new units and I have to say I am slightly disappointed with some of them and surprised with others. Lets start with Centurions. It is hard to say this but I feel they are lackluster. Assault Centurions are just abysmal in my head. They don’t have any good Assault weapons, they are incredibly slow, and the only tranport they can take is a Land Raider. They can use a Stormraven as well but you are spending about 400 points to try and get these guys across the board into assault. While the Devastator Centurions are slightly better they don’t have an invulnerable save and the base gear is only useful against weak infantry at a very short range. Once you give them some long range Capability against Vehicles with lascannons and Missile launchers the price jumps up to 280 points. The same deal if you give them Gravcannons which is 24″ range so you still need to move them up if your opponent is using something like Riptides that they have sitting way back. I do feel something can still be done with the Devastator Centurion Squads but it means taking allies and even then I feel it may not work.

The two new Anti-Air Tanks the Hunter and Stalker. They are point Efficient for doing what they do. 70 points for the Hunter and 75 points for the Stalker is inexpensive since they are very good at taking out flyers. But that is all they do they really don’t have anything else going for them. They also take up a Heavy Support Slot which I wish I had more of already. I would take a Stalker over a Hunter if I were to take one. The Stalker has 4 shots at str 7 ap4 that are Twin-linked with a Secondary fire mode letting you fire at 2 different targets at BS2. With the Twin-linking you can still fire at Ground Targets and have a better chance to hit than the one shot Hunter. It would free up your Devastator squad from taking all Missile Launchers and let them take Las or Plasma Cannons giving you a little more flexibility and Specialty if you need it. In all honesty though for 30 points more you can take an Aegis with a Quad Cannon that can fire at ground units and get a cover save for a lot of infantry.
The last thing I would like to talk about is Grav Weapons. They are GW’s answer to Monstrous Creatures and Elite Infantry for Space Marines. Plasma has the danger of getting hot and we don’t get a lot of it. Melta and Las don’t have the Rate of Fire we need and are better against Vehicles. That left Sternguard with Poison weapons that were saved on a 2+ or 3+ save. They are AP 2 with Salvo shots. I like them I wish Grav-Cannons were available to anyone besides Devastator Centurions. People may say they are so exclusive since they don’t work as well against Infantry. They aren’t supposed to most likely they will have something you want to use them against and that is what you will shoot at with them. If that thing is dead and you have nothing else to shoot at they did their job.

The Bottom line for me is that the Codex is a great upgrade to the Space Marines from the last book. The codex has made a lot of units cheaper and more point efficient. The rules are very concise having resolved rulings not only for this book but Dark Angels, Blood Angels, and Space Wolves. We got some new units and rules both good and bad to play with. The book has more diversity and flavor than just Vanilla allowing you to play 8 different ways no matter what point value. I will definitely do a post soon more in depth on Chapter Tactics. Stay tuned in.

Tournament Meta

Hey guys a quick post talking about my thoughts of the Meta in 40k with 6th edition. This is an observational and opinionated post based on what I have read recently concerning Nova, Local Tournaments, and my Experience. This post is being made right after the Space Marine Codex release so we have seen Tau,Eldar, Dark Angels, Chaos Daemons, and Chaos Space Marines released as well as the Ivanden and Farsight Supplements.
I feel the Meta as of right now exists in that it really doesn’t exist. Now that may sound confusing so let me break it into a wider perspective. With new Codexes coming out about every 2 months we see a fluctuation in what is good and what people are playing Rapidly. I think the best way to play the Meta is be prepared to fight the next big thing. CSM had Heldrakes, Tau have Riptides, and Eldar have Wraithknights and Wave Serpents. If you are ready to fight these now what will Space Marines bring that you have to deal with. Have a good idea what automatically feels would be good in the next codex since that is what people will be using. Unpredictability in your list will bring something that people won’t be ready for. A local Blood Angels player uses all drop pods and Dreadnoughts with Frag Cannons which people did not see as viable so they don’t prepare for it and have a really difficult time fighting against it.

In a quick summary what I feel the meta is breaks down to this. Be ready to fight what people are already using, be ready to fight what the next big thing is, and don’t be caught in the two previous categories is how I feel the meta is right now.

Speculations about Space Marine 6th Edition Codex

With rumors floating around about a break before Eldar come out and that possible being filled in by Space Marines has me excited. I have played Space Marines forever specifically the most down to Earth marines the Salamanders. So hearing that the codex is getting an update in the near future has my Blood boiling in the name of Vul’kan.

I want to share my thoughts though on what I think is going to happen in the Space Marine codex before all the rumors hit and get my hopes up. This is speculation brought about by reading articles not from any inside source like other sites. I will be looking at these articles as well as the codexes already been released for 6^th edition and the 4^th and 5^th edition versions of the Space Marine Codex to justify my guesses. Take what I am saying with a grain of salt as this is pure theoretical speculation and make your own judgments. I will include links to all my online sources at the end of this post.

To begin with I think that all the named HQ Characters will remain with the addition of at least Three more. These three I believe will be the Chapter Master Tu’shan of the Salamanders, Severus Agemman, Regent of Ultramar, and Iron Father Malthuun of the Iron Hands. The reason for this is that a while ago a Release list was leaked with them being released starting June 2013. This list has supposedly been Confirmed to have been a list of Serial Numbers that go on the UPCs of Boxes and Blisters and that this confirmed they were coming out but no clue when they would be released. Now I know if you have gone and looked at that list you would have seen one other name Helveticus the Ancient, Bearer of Honour. Yes, he is an Ultramarine but current Lore states he has died after leading a force at the Battle of Macragge and the term/title Ancient is used in the 4^th edition codex as a title given to the one who has the honor to bear the Company banner into battle. I Believe if anything he will be an Honour Guard Upgrade. I will go into detail a little bit more about HQs and the Different Chapters later in the post.

As for new Units besides named characters I believe we will be getting a new Flyer, a new Land Raider variant, and a new Thunderfire Cannon variant. Yes, we have two flyers already the Storm Raven and the Storm Talon. The latest Issue of white dwarf on the last page has a weird picture of an ultramarine painted flyer next to a Storm Talon no one has seen before. I believe this will be the Land Avenger mentioned in the release list. It will have multiple versions just like the Land Raider and will be an Assault Vehicle with different carrying capacities. The new Land Raider and Thunderfire Variants will most likely be Anti-Air variants of the Current versions we see. Faeit 212 has had a Source say he can confirm the Playtest names for these Models were AA Land Raider and AA Thunderfire. The only other model I can think of mentioning is the Praetor Warmachine but I have no ideas on what this could be at this moment.

They will have their own Warlord Trait Table. I think this is a common thing for every codex being released, and I do not think this will change. They will not have their own Psychic Tables. Just like Dark Angels released before them I believe that Space Marines will only be able to use out of the Basic Rule Book Psychic powers unless you are a named Psyker like Tigurius. This makes sense from a Fluff perspective as the Imperium is very strict with Psykers. Chapter Traits will exist as Special rules and not Warlord Traits. With this Codex we will have Ultramarines, Iron Hands, Crimson Fists, Imperial Fists, Raven Guard, Salamanders, and the White Scars. Outside of the Crimson Fists these are six of the First Founding Chapters. The other three canon first founding chapters are Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves which each have their own Codex. I believe they will somehow give them Special rules to make each version play differently from the others. Warlord Traits and Wargear will not make them play differently enough to include all these Chapters in the codex so somehow they will incorporate Chapter Tactics back into the fold to give each chapter their own feel.

Everything else I can post is mostly wishful thinking and thoughts about points and wargear that I have no justified sources or criteria for. So I leave you guys to think about it. Leave a comment about something I overlooked or your own speculations towards the 6^th Edition Space Marine Codex.

Sources:
http://blog.spikeybits.com/2013/03/plastic-thunderhawk-you-be-judge.html

http://blog.spikeybits.com/2013/03/is-space-marine-codex-next-on-deck.html

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-leaked-release-list-is-real.html

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2012/08/games-workshop-release-plan-in-2013.html

http://natfka.blogspot.ca/2012/08/leaked-release-schedule-is-it-real-new.html

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Helveticus#.UWHq0JOmiaR

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ancient#.UWHrpJOmiaQ

Until Next Time Keep Gaming with your Hat on your head. 

My Tournament Play Attitude

Everyone loves the satisfaction of a well deserved win. You fought your hardest. Climbed up the dangerous terrain reaching the summit and as you look down upon your achievement you can say I deserve this feeling of greatness. Now winning isn’t everything and I have had very few times where I placed first in a Gaming Related tournament. But usually I can take from those tournaments a feeling of a good challenge and fun games had by both me and my opponents.

It is easy though to ruin that mood for your opponent and maybe his opponents from your game. I know the feeling on both sides of being completely outclassed. When your being utterly defeated and you feel like nothing you can do to win. On the other side when your opponent is put into a situation where you seem to be the only one doing anything meaningful. What can you do in these extremes to still have fun?

There is no simple answer and it all depends on the person. For me when I am being outclassed I set a small short time goal for a moral victory. I only have 2 Squads of Space Marine left and I am facing the onslaught of a Chaos Daemon invasion with Bloodletters, Bloodcrushers, and the Mighty Skarbrand coming down upon me. I set the goal of taking out one of those forces. I put all my focus into it and say this is where I make my stand. The enthusiasm you get from that is contagious and can bring a smile to you and your opponents face.

If you are the one outclassing your opponent there is not much you can do. Give them a pep talk some helpful advice after the match. It all depends on how they take it and the attitude you give them while playing.

To sum it up even losing can be fun as long as you try your hardest and have a positive attitude towards your game. If your opponent wants to argue rules with you the whole game just smile and pick up the rule book since if you are wrong you now know better. If you are being utterly defeated set yourself a small term goal. The thing you should take from every game is a sense of accomplishment no matter how small.