Christmas games!

I didn't get a lot for Christmas, and I'm glad a lot of it was useful stuff. However, my kids got a few board games I'm really excited about. Particularly we've been enjoying "Settlers of Catan"! I've been enjoying it with my 4 year old and 5 year old. They seem to get the grasp of it fairly well, though higher level strategy is still beyond them at this point.

Still playing DDO with friends and climbing the Starcraft 2 league rankings. Starcraft 2 is getting tougher as it seems the more casual players are quitting or getting better. So come on newbs, join in and let us win some!

My Sinuses have been flocked

I've spent the last week sick and feeling a bit like the recent CAD comic like about making terrain:

Finally, J-I-T (Just in Time)

So, this morning I was having another horrible, awful day that is typical of my days at work now. Called into my Boss' office so he could yell at me, someone had called him and yelled at him accusing me of something and he wasn't interested in hearing anything about it from me. I don't want to go into details of all the petty politicing, rumormongering, lies, and backstabbing which go on at this place. It has the worst office politics by far of all the places I've worked at.

I was fed up and hit the "I don't give a care anymore" breaking point because I knew my superiors didn't care about my performance so much as just trying to forge paperwork to pass an audit next week... which they're almost certain to fail... again.

Well to make this quick after all this and being in a foul mood all through the afternoon I called home this evening. A recruiter had contacted me in my email and was trying to reach me to make me a job offer at a place I'd really like to work at. So this hell job is over and my whole family can go back to living a less stressful and more normal life.

I've been smiling all evening ^_^

Do you read CAD?

Ctrl-Alt-Del, I love it

Playing a little

So what I've been up to... not much in the ways of miniatures games lately unfortunately unless you count a couple games of Descent. I've taken up playing 'Vanilla' Descent with my daughters who love the game. Donations to the VOR kickstarter is one of the top two items on my Christmas wishlist this year (the other not being gaming related).

Got in another game of Arkham Horror with a new board game group. Might get some more games worth writing about in the next month, but we'll see. If I succeed in replacing the lame job I have now, then I should be able to play board games a lot more.

I've been playing a little bit of the free-to-play DDO and LOTRO with friends and family. I love that these games are free now and they've certainly breathed new life into them.

But mostly what I've been playing when I have the chance is Starcraft 2. The number of cheaters in the game is annoying (like people who are obviously working together in a FFA). It is still a lot of fun however and it reminds me a ton of my old college days playing original Starcraft and Brood War when they came out. Ah, for the misspent days of my college youth!

But the sad thing is, there is nothing coming out this christmas season that I look forward to. Is there anything that you are looking forward to?

VOR Kickstarter???

From Mike Nielsen


VOR 2.0 Kickstarter project

Say What??? EA's empty bluster

If you're a MMO fan and enjoy closely following the industry like I do, then you had to get a laugh out of this one:

"Speaking at London Games Conference earlier in the week Cousins (EA-Easy executive) said that the company's rivals are "resting on their laurels" when it comes to investing in the future of video games."

Really? Other companies are resting on their laurels compared to EA? Because as what I see whenever I go to a store selling PC games is that most of the market is MMOs, and pretty much none of that thriving market is EA. If by "resting on their laurels" he means not buying up successful and productive software shops to turn them into unproductive rubbish bins I'd have to agree. But with what EA has done to the Sims Online, Origins Studios, Earth & Beyond, and most recently the disaster which is Mythic Entertainment....

EA is talking a hilarious amount of smack. It is like the nerdy preppy kid in college telling the all-star athletes that he is going to single-handedly kick all their butts at basketball.

I mean sure, maybe Bioware I can understand because they have a good track record. But when you tell me EA is making a Star Wars MMO I expect it to turn out like this:

Because if any game company knows how to rest on its imperial laurels while its little game studios struggle and die, it has to be EA (Sorry to Mythic Entertainment)

Starcraft 2 finally

So a quick note on my earlier blog about Starcraft 2. I finally broke down and got it, and I'm very glad that I did. First and foremost because it finally has a good ending to the story from Starcraft: Brood War which just wasn't quite the story ender I wanted. Now I'm sure the next expansion will be something of a cliff-hanger, but the ending point for the campaign in Starcraft 2 was very satisfactory.

If you're an old Starcraft fan you should get it for no other reason than that. The gameplay feels like old fashioned Starcraft with some new gimmicks. Not a lot to say there, but it is still worthwhile.

Home from a long day of work

and look what I got in the mail!

Your daily dose of Drama

Need to read some really dramatic flare ups about EA, Mythic, WAR, or simply just want to see verbal sparks fly and flames erupt? Here you go, go read "EALouse"!

The Replacement... Stuff

It is frustrating being a poor Gamer Dad in a bad recession. My 1 and a half year old son has recently wrecked two dining chairs and my gaming mouse. In addition I've had to put all my painting supplies and models up high as well as my Wii gear. I've had my car throw a bolt and a light socket burnt out at our house. This is just in the last week too so it seems like a lot of stuff is getting wrecked and I don't have much funds for replacing it. My gaming mouse got slightly downgraded with a replacement. Still haven't found dining chairs cheap enough to replace the ones we lost.

Plus with all that I still can't get out of my mind all the Geek Chic furniture at PAX... a Gamers' dream house is made of it!



I sincerely hope by the time my kids are teenagers the job situation has improved and they've stopped wrecking enough stuff that I can just afford these things as upgrades. Or at least have the funds stashed away that when they do wreck stuff I can replace it with something better than what I had!

Samael Tactics evolved

I thought I would update my earlier writing on My Samael Tactics, since they have adapated and evolved since then. Most Samael teams need Janiel to handle stealthed units and so they never get to take Aoi who is one of the best supporting characters in the game because it leaves them open to ambushes from Stealthed prowlers. I've not played it against a full Azur prowler team, but they're very rare and I've found Momiji alone is enough of a prowler assassin to force other prowlers to be on the defensive or be exposed.

Acquisitions, Inc. at PAX Prime 2010

The single best event I attended at PAX was easily the Acquisitions Inc, Live event. This was a live D&D event with the guys of Penny Arcade, Scott Kurtz of PvP, and Wil Wheaton of, well... all his writing and acting credits.

This was the equivalent of the super bowl for D&D geeks.


Other great events were the Geek 2.0 panel on Saturday, the Geek Chic booth, Nvidia and Alienware's many booths. Famous people highlights were meeting and talking to Scott Kurtz of PvP Online and one of my favorite webcomic artists Aline Pete of Weregeek. If you haven't started reading Weregeek then you should, it is one of my top three favorites along with CAD and Penny Arcade.

PAX has begun

PAX has begun! This year's PAX is a blast and I think that soon 3 days isn't going to be enough for it. There is so much to do there and more than I will have time for. Yesterday, Friday was pretty much just a reconnaissance and preview day with so much stuff to do. So much new stuff like "Super Dungeon Explore" from Sodapop miniatures (pictured to the right), the new Tron game, new Fallout game. Plus lots of prizes and goodies to win from old well known companies like NVIDIA, Intel, Warner Brothers, etc. Today I've got 3 or 4 panels to attend as well plus a PAX tournament game of Anima Tactics!



It might take me a long while to blog and catch up with all the stuff I've seen and done!

Listening to beta testers is .... "Elemental"

Stardock did a wonderful job with Galactic Civilizations, and those of you who follow my blog know that I've been very eager for their new game "Elemental: War of Magic" for a long time. That is until it showed during beta that their egos were getting in the way of listening to customers and beta testers. I won't rehash the old parts, but the behavior continued and despite people like me posting game crashing bugs... the game went gold before it should have and the game you buy in the box is completely unstable. Tonight as I write this I think I'm downloading the 6th post-release patch already adding stabilization and making other basic mechanics work.

So if you're not buying a game and expecting to connect to the internet and patch it right off... don't buy this game. In fact, sadly as someone who already sunk their money into it you are probably better off waiting several months before the game is to the state where it should have been at release. Luckily, with Stardock one can still trust that they will do that and not just drop the title so I do feel that Elemental will eventually be a market ready game.

I painted something

and just recently go around to finishing a video of the pictures so others can see it.

The Starcraft 2 dilemma

So should I get Starcraft 2? I was a major fan of the original Starcraft and played it a lot in college when it originally came out as all my old college roommates can attest.

But this doesn't mean that Starcraft 2 will live up to that. Already I can tell that it seems they're with all the money they're raking in they're trying to be even more greedy by giving fans less for more. No editor like the original game, no LAN play which was and is a ton of fun with original starcraft, and most annoyingly of all you have to log online to "authenticate" your game to start playing it and then once a month there after. Furthermore despite buying the game in a store, once you start playing they'll inform you through an EULA that you don't own the game and owe them royalties for using videos of playing the game. Furthermore the new Battlenet is going to have a store for "premium" content.

But I've not actually played it, is the actual game going to be worth buying it 3 times for the full campaign game?

Summer vacation

Well things didn't happen like I'd hoped and we've been busy at home with people coming and going, including ourselves. Summer vacation is upon us and I expect it to last for at least two weeks more. Meanwhile all you VOR fans should be aware of the Ironwind Metals painting contest! Getting something VOR painted and send it in.

In August I will return with new videos and in eager preperation for PAX!

Tis' da Suck!

New crazy work schedule and insane work politics is keeping me away from my blog. I've got a 3-day holiday weekend with the 4th of July coming up though and I hope to finally get back to properly posting again and finish a video I've had mostly done for ages.

Hopefully this weekend will bring less whining and more gaming. But it will probably just bring more of both.

In a Funk

So yeah, I've not done much in the way of blog posts and videos for a few weeks. Sorry for that but I've been in a bit of a funk. Adjusting to the crazy new work schedule and the havoc it wreaks on life. Also, had a few events hit me that were more important and worrying.

Speaking of which, if you know Korina Marshall from Omaha, Nebraska (and numerous other locations) then let her know she has people who care about her. I knew her from the Oregon foster care system and was saddened when a relative checked up on her to find her on the missing person's registry. If you've run across her or think maybe you've seen her anywhere in the U.S. please do something about it.

Meanwhile if you've made it this far, don't worry too much because I'm certain new gaming related blog posts will continue soon.

Hang in there Natakue!

I was going to try and do a lot of things tonight after coming home from work but it just didn't happen after being ambushed at the door with kids and a 12 hour work day. But I did get news that Natakue was admitted to the hospital today for reasons I'll leave private until such a time he decides to announce. I'm hoping he pulls in there and makes a full recovery but I don't expect to see a lot of videos from him in the near future.

Natakue has been a major pillar of the wargaming community on youtube and is one of the admins who put Warmongergameday together. So to Natakue and family, thank you for sharing all your work on the hobby and helping everyone not just to enjoy our hobby more but to do so while coming together as a community!

Get well soon and G-d Bless!

Better late than never?

I intended to get this game and the battle report in last week for Anima Tactics week... oops. Life happened. But you can still enjoy it now at least!

More from Anima Tactics week

With my crazy work schedule last week I didn't get to repost as much as I wanted to. Like the review of the Black Sun ruleset I did for Warmonger, or the interview I did with Cipher Dave.

Most importantly if you like painting contests where you can win Anima Tactics stuff as prizes... then you need to enter this one:

The Insanity of it all!

Wow, time has flown. Two weeks ago yesterday I was told I didn't need to come back the rest of the week for my job due to a lack of production. Then I was let go on that wednesday and the same day got an interview for a new job. I had expected to be let go soon and have some unemployment but I got whirlwinded a week ago on monday into a new job. The new job surprised me by having me work 5 back to back days of 12 hour shifts. It is also now a 40 minute commute instead of my old 5 minute commute. So I was expecting to have a ton of time for Anima Tactics week but instead had next to none.

It also just in general sapped me of energy as I'm spending most of my working time on my feet. But the hard part has to be coming home to kids just screaming all the time. Just at the drop of a hat my 3 year old can't do something and decides to act like a 2 year old screaming at the top of her lungs and thrashing on the floor. It feels like I'm a character in the game Arkham Horror failing their sanity check against a Wailing Byakhee and going insane about ready to be committed to the asylum. Now I can understand more what H.P. Lovecraft was writing about with gibbering monsters and bad dreams taking the sanity away from grown men.

Too bad about the employment thing, my sanity could use a vacation I'm not going to be allowed to take.

Battle Report

Samael team shooty continues a losing streak. But I think it is still one of my best Battle Reports yet!

My Samael Tactics

While I'm primarily a Church player, sometimes I just want to try something different or try new tactics to beat difficult opponents for my Church forces. For this reason I use my wife's Samael force for playing a lot. Working with this I've found a group almost as effective as my main Church force (and for a long time was more effective till it taught me a different way of playing Church). I like to call this team and the tactics I use with it “Samael Toolbox”.

Statistically there are two unifiers to Samael forces. First they all have ranged attacks, but the ranged attacks largely aren't as powerful as the ones that groups like Wissenschaft get so it can be very hard to compete with Ranged. If you're watching my Battle Reports this week you'll see my “Samael Shooty” team losing to Wissenschaft. Second, they get average stats with no exceptional weaknesses or strengths. It doesn't seem like much does it? But it is enough that in the European Anima Tactics tournaments recently held in Spain 4 of the top 5 teams were all Samael teams.

Super Natural!

My Samael overview is finally here in time for Anima Tactics week!

Natakue's AT reviews

I wasn't going to include other people's content on my blog, but Natakue did a great job reviewing Anima Tactics in general and his special review of the Type-005 blister.





If you enjoy the videos, please give them a "Thumbs-up" at Youtube or leave a comment for him!

Black Sunrise

Black Sun unboxing! This is an awesome new faction, of course you'll have to stay tuned to Warmonger Gameday this week for more on them like a review of how the new rules for them work.

IT HAS BEGUN

Anima Tactics week begins. All be posting all of my videos here, some of them before they get to the Warmonger channel. But for complete coverage you should be headed to the Warmonger Gameday blog, or join in on the forum discussions there.



I'll be posting my Black Sun starter unboxing in the morning and you can look forward to a review of their rulebook later in the week. Then we've got what I think is a real nice surprise to announce at the end of the week!

It isn't THAT time yet

Anima Tactics week at Warmonger Gameday is almost here. I will be posting all my blog entries on both blogs, but you'll see more over there as there will be other bloggers going on about Anima Tactics.

You can look forward to Battle Reports, faction reviews (I'll be doing an Overview of Samael and Black Sun), product reviews, sneak peeks and A LOT more! I've got a little tease here just to wet your appetite for next week:

To Create or to Steal my Questions

So this week I'm going to be conducting an interview with one of the guys at Cipher Studios for Warmongergameday's Anima Tactics week. But I want to be lazy and not have to think up a ton of questions on my own. So I started a thread on Warmonger's forums asking for interview questions. Feel free to either make a post there or leave a comment here with interesting questions you'd like to see answered and I'll consider using them.

But you have to be quick, by this Friday it will most likely be too late.

I want to see more "Intensity"

Okay, I had a total "Office Space" moment with my manager at work today. But first some background on the situation is required to understand it:

I perform my main function very well, am very punctual and in general try to be professional as I always do. The main issue they really have with me is my speed at my secondary tasks, where speed is really all they value. Now I've been a Quality Assurance guy for many years now, I'm professionally certified and excel at those positions. I started at this company as a QA Tech and when I was the #2 pick for the permanent position I got to train my replacement and production decided to take me for my current position. So like anyone else you might know in a QA department I take pride in making my work as flawless as possible... but not as speedy. I've been this way for years and in my next permanent position I'm certain it will be an asset. But when I'm doing secondary tasks rather than my primary function it is clearly a liability and I understand this. I'm also making more as a temp (because my one requirement for agreeing to transfer over was that I keep my pay rate) that most of the permanent workers doing these jobs.

If they let me go yesterday I won't have worried one bit, I rather would have celebrated because the stress level is ridiculous. So when my Manager pulls me aside today I expect some rather legitimate talk either about needing to speed up or him having to let me go or whatever.

Instead I get his talk about how I'm not "Intense" enough about my work as he watches me and how he wants to see more "Intensity" from me. He explains to me that in his long time there he used to invent games out of doing his work to make it more exciting and create new challenges. I think my only puzzled response was "... Intensity???" He went on to talk about it like the job should be some kind of extreme sport (which is Ironic considering he is a GOLF fanatic... how unextreme can you get?)

I realized quickly I wasn't suited for this job after I started it. I'm used to working in casual business attire, button-up shirts and slacks and I'm now working with a crew of T-shirts and slacks. I usually am sitting either in a cubicle or in a lab doing analytical work and now I'm standing all day mostly doing work of a the manual dexterity sort which I just don't have. I've got short, thick fingers that don't play guitar well and aren't good for speedy manual assembly (but I guess I impressed my coworkers by twisting cables with my fingers that I guess everybody has to use pliers for) I'm a "Professional Perfectionist" as my online resume says trying to work in an area where "Blitz speed" should be their motto. I don't think even my Manager has a college degree, let alone anyone else in my department and I've got a Bachelor's in a scientific field. I'm the guy who this morning when one of the computers in our area wouldn't boot up I fixed it before they could even finish finding the phone number to call IT.

So, yeah I'm not exactly a good fit. I'm going to give it my professional best however and try to meet their goals because professional (Not "Intense") is what I consider myself. Furthermore, I couldn't quit if I wanted to because I'd make myself ineligible for my unemployment (from a previous employeer and not them).

So hopefully they'll realize they need to let me go soon and I'll write more blogs about gaming rather than complaining about work. Because if I can't take getting much more "Office Space'd" and keep my sanity.

Anima forums are down, long live the Anima forums!

The most popular Anima Tactics forums by Edge Entertainment are once again down. A second major crash in two consecutive weeks. Doubtless some of the increased blog traffic I'm seeing right now is a result of it.

So I'd like to remind everyone that there are two other official Anima Tactics forums. The Cipher Studios forums and the Fantasy Flight Games forums.

In addition I would recommend stopping by the Warmonger gameday Anima Tactics forums as a lot more is going on there.

In other news to compete with the news below my post, my 1 year old son got a hold of our (my wife's and mine) work in progress tray for miniatures and shook it out all over the dining room floor. All but one miniature I had assembled was broken (Jerome was saved). Even pinned joints came flying apart. Several models already in various states of being painted (Claude Valmore, Arkeid) came apart. But even at the worst at least there are no infectious diseases involved.

Maybe if I'm lucky enough to get laid off this month I'll have time to get caught back up :(

Such a scary little thing

I can't believe a little mouse can be such a scary thing. We found a nest of a mouse in our garage and we have no idea how old. However, my wife being a hypochondriac and me knowing a guy in college who died due to hanta virus from deer mice it has the household all upset. We're going to be afraid to step into the garage for the next week. All because of a tiny little mouse that is harmless except for the diseases it may or may not be carrying.

But Hanta Virus is scary, very scary. It acts fast and the fatality rate for it is 30% to 50%. In a house with 3 small children you just don't want to take that risk.

I Descend!

Got a new game to play with sometime soon!



In other news... work sucks again. I didn't get the permanent position where I was working and was replaced. Luckily or unluckily I was requested for transfer to production where I work. I spend half my time as a Tester, and the other half doing odds and ends no-skill tasks for a lot more than minimum wage. So I spend half the time being appreciated and the other half being constantly too slow and overpaid. So I hate half my job but there isn't much I can do about it right now. The economy isn't picking up THAT much yet that I can tell. I think for sanity's sake I'm going to be trying really hard to find a new job anyways.

Sodapop miniatures announces Ryu Beat!

Sodapop miniatures just announced a couple new releases. Calico Kate and Ryu Beat were awesome figures I got to see at Sakuracon, but I was asked to keep a lid on Ryu Beat.

Now for those of you prepping miniatures I want to share this handy link of test results for different Primers wargamers are likely to use. The results confirmed what I already knew but couldn't prove, stay away from Citadel primers due to weaker adhesion and stay clear of craft store primers because they're more prone to bubbling. Oh, and don't use really ancient primers (Ral Partha in his case) because the chemicals degrade.

The test is missing two things due to no fault of the author. One is thickness, which is difficult to measure without the proper tools because they all go on thin. You can guess this from trial and error due to overspray and thinness of the coloring agent. The second is environmental conditions. Some primers due better in cold temperatures, warmer temperatures, or higher humidity (if you've got really high humidity though I recommend a brush on primer).

Now if this guide helps you out please drop me a comment or better yet shoot me some pictures of your work!

AT Week is coming at Warmonger!

So over at the other blog site, Warmongergameday we have a special Anima Tactics week coming up. There is sooooo much special material coming up for that week that I'm really excited to be a part of it. In the meanwhile things unfortunately are going a little slow on my solo blog.

We'll be reviewing models, faction overviews, product reviews, battle reports, and some extre-special stuff still under wraps. But meanwhile I did manage to get a video for AT week prepared to show you some of the models I'll be showing off for the upcoming Anima Tactics week:

U.S. government report on piracy... not as bad as it is made out to be!

Government Accountability Office (GAO) study says "Study: U.S. Piracy and Counterfeiting Data is Unsubstantiated"

Yep, that's right. They've looked into it and industry is making up data just to justify their claims (who'd have thought of it! /sarcasm) Not only industry either, the FBI was caught in fabricating that industry loses up to $250 billion a year due to copyright piracy... but when questioned had absolutely no data or way to veryify the claim.

In fact the long and short of it was that every government office and private industry group they contacted was making up claims of losses. Which comes back to a long understand issue: How many internet pirates are actually would-be customers if they didn't pirate? And how many pirates instead turn into actual customers as a result of trying a product?

Maybe IP piracy is less of a problem than just making a poor product and treating your customers badly. But I'm sure that is a lot harder to explain to shareholders than the convenient scapegoat of "there are people copying our stuff for freeeeeee!!!!! they made me lose your money".

I'm not sympathetic pirates, but I'm becoming even less sympathetic and intrusions into my private life, poor customer service, and denial of owner's rights in the excuse of combating piracy. When I BUY something from you, I own it... I'm not renting it from you because you have to fight piracy. I don't mind paying for subscription service games... if I get into it KNOWING it is a subscription service game. Big Business and Big Government are colluding to use it as an excuse to invade people's private lives and take away privacy that would never be allowed any other way. I mean seriously if the government or corporations sent people in person to such through all the private files in your house "just because you COULD do something bad" would people accept it?

In fact here in the U.S. we already had an American Revolution due in part to exactly that.

Disappointed with Stardock

If you've been a long time reader of mine then you know I'm a fan of Stardock. I haven't written about Elemental in quite a while. I'm wondering if they're also getting so big that they don't care about customer feedback. What I mean is tossing aside intense lengthy discussions they invite with customers, in favor of using a 1 dozen post low visiblity thread as an excuse to throw out the most recent economic model in favor of something with far less consensus (and I use that phrase to give them the benefit of the doubt). The forums over there are quite civil so I don't know why they'd ignore it.

Are they playing too much Starcraft over there and thinking that the economy of a real-time strategy game will import smoothly into a turn-based strategy game?

I don't know, but right now I'm hoping the game is worth my pre-order.

Sodapop miniatures

So something I haven't spoken of enough yet is Sodapop miniatures who was sharing a booth with Cipher Studios at Sakuracon. Their miniatures are cast by Cipher Studios but they have a seperate online store from them at their website and at coolminiornot. Their sculpts in my opinion are top notch and on par with Anima Tactics, though their style is a lot more comical. I'll be keeping an eye on sodapop miniatures in the future.

Also, to all you gamers out there: They do have a game in the works which is aiming for a 2011 release. Right now they're just building the miniatures line for collectors. Keep coming back to this blog because I got a photo of a nice new painted miniature that hasn't been released to the public yet. I was asked to hold off on showing it for a couple weeks, so come back again to get a sneak peek of one of their awesome new figures that is coming up!

Anima Eclipsed... Black Sun Rising

"AGAIN? Blogging again?" Yes, despite my wife's protests I'm back due to the email messages I keep getting. It appears people don't want me to wait till the end of the week to talk about Black Sun again. So based off the first 3 undead units and the first two mystics here is my initial proposed strategy for Black Sun:

(Pictured at left is the alternate body for the Type-005 which will be sold individually in blister)

How I got to Sakuracon!

So some people have wondered, why did you get to go to Sakuracon and see all this fun stuff and get all these spoilers? The answer is simple and comes in two parts. First I'm in Seattle at the right time (I live there, eh?) and second I'm part of Cipher Studios Free Agent program.

I really have to strongly recommend this program (or others like it for other games). If you really like a game then you want more people to play against or with. But people aren't like to try a game they haven't seen or played before. This is where demo-ers come in. It is easy to get people playing a game if they see it and enjoy it.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from Sakuracon! Cosplay Jesus says "Go to Church" (or he'll flip you the bird)



Have some family fun.


or hang out with some friends:


but be sure to hold someone you love!

Black Ol' Sun, Won't you come...

So I got the chance to pull Dave Freeman, a.k.a Cipher Dave aside and shoot a video where he could present the new Anima Tactics organization "Black Sun" to us.



In addition I got to take pictures of models from the example starter set and of the cards for the first several new Black Sun releases.

I guess it worked out after all

So a week ago I got sick and was busy "puking my brains out" right after my two daughters did. So I didn't do a demo of Anima Tactics or make any youtube videos like I had planned on. One of those videos I had planned was to do an overview of Summons in Anima Tactics because I had all 4 of them and I figured the next two weren't coming out for a while.



Well I guess I was wrong. I know own one of the two new summons for Anima Tactics.


My wife has fallen in love with this new model as well. It is simply gorgeous and neither of us can wait to start painting it. I'm going to paint her 4 crystal spheres and I agreed to let her paint the girl. If you follow me on youtube then you can expect I'll be updating people on my status of painting her as I go on!

Finally I didn't see Al-Djinn but I did see his stat card:

This guy is going to make things interesting. Seems tricky to use right with only 1 bind point, but he has to be devestating. I think using a Greater version in a Samael team with Genma and Dinah could be potentially very devestating. Deny your opponent Gnosis while using plenty of it on your own ranged attacks. Plus you could use disposable agents to hold your opponent at bay. But I doubt I've yet to see the full potential of this model by a long shot.

Sakauracon 2010

I just got back from my first day at Sakuracon where I volunteered at the Cipher Studios exhibit booth.



Sakuracon is just non-serious fun. People in costumes everywhere. All the controversial Japanese pop culture I grew up with is everywhere. Anime, Manga, music, women in Kimonos chasing after guys with Samurai Swords. Fun! Even the Cipher Studios booth I was at had its own Booth Babe to show off the new exciting line of Sodapop collectible miniatures. Miniatures gaming is always nice to look at!



But for this first day I'm not just roaming around. I'm focused on introducing more people to the Anima Tactics game. But as a bonus, I get to see a number of sneak peeks of things that have never been seen before!

I love this dynamic looking model. Her abilities fit with it too. Her innate ability Mjolnir causes her opponent to be thrown and lose an action point whenever she scores a critical hit against them. She also has a 3 action point ability "Ka-Boom" which causes ALL enemies in her control zone to lose 1 action point at an effect of 15. That is one powerful hammer girl!

I got to see a bunch of new minis which I will write about soon.

March miniatures painted

This is what I did with my free time this month! Two painting projects which required entirely different techniques. One an Angel of Light the other a Lord of Shadow.



Coming soon I intend to use them in an Overview of Summons in Anima Tactics, but for now please enjoy this video showing off the paintjobs:

Blog forecast: Increasingly posty

Well, the bad news is in. I didn't get the permanent position at the place where I've been temping for several months. Despite having my entire department and the leads of several other departments trying to pressure my manager into hiring me he went with someone else. I don't know why, and I'm not going to sweat over it. I'm disappointed, but I'll survive on unemployment if it comes to it. So if I am indeed back on unemployment next month you can expect a lot more posts and videos from me. I've spent the last couple nights hunting for my lost Anima: Beyond Fantasy RPG book when I'd rather have been making a video. With the prospect of unemployment I can't afford to replace it and losing stuff like that is driving me crazy.

Either way I expect to get my review of Arkham Horror and showing off the two models I painted this month up on youtube.

Natakue on Anima Tactics

Natakue who is a fellow blogger at Warmonger Gameday did what I thought was a really nice video about the Empire Agent, his painting contest and Anima Tactics in general. It is worth watching, and please rate it and leave a comment if you liked the video!

Runebound Review

Rishkith reviews Runebound Second Edition:

Iota Tau

I can't help but notice a lot of visitors coming from Spain and Honduras to my blog. More impressive that so few of you are using translation web tools! So to all of you, welcome!

Since 100% of you appear to be here for wargaming with either Anima Tactics or VOR I wanted to make sure and share the Iota Tau blog which gives great coverage of Anima Tactics. If you're linguistic skills don't extend to a robust knowledge of Spanish as mine don't then handily Google Translator can translate the whole website and give you the latest and greatest news and rumors on Anima Tactics!

Furthermore I've gotten permission to translate their upcoming interview with the people at Anima Studios and repost it to my blog. So look for an english translation coming here soon!


No puedo dejar de notar una gran cantidad de visitantes procedentes de España y Honduras a mi blog. Más impresionante que tan pocos de ustedes están utilizando herramientas de traducción! Así que para todos ustedes, bienvenidos!

Desde el 100% de ustedes parecen estar aquí para juegos de guerra con cualquiera de Anima Tactics o VOR quería asegurarse y compartir la Iota-Tau blog que ofrece una gran cobertura de Anima Tactics. Si estás habilidades lingüísticas no se extienden a un conocimiento sólido del español como el mío no se cómodamente Google Translator puede traducir todo el sitio y darle la mejor y más noticias y rumores sobre Anima Tactics!

Además he conseguido el permiso para traducir su próxima entrevista con la gente en Anima Studios y publicar de nuevo a mi blog. Así que busque una traducción al Inglés de venir aquí pronto!

Wissneschaft

I'm not the most knowledgable person about Wissenschaft. But I gave reviewing the Anima Tactics organization a fair shot in my latest video about them:

New Music Video

My latest Anima Tactics video project is complete:



Also, Anima Tactics gave me my first "Kitsune" model to paint. This was a major "leveling up" project of mine where I learned to use Sakura Micropigment art pens to do detail work. Actually I first learned to use them on the Church agent I submitted for the Cipher Studios agent contest, but I did better work with the pens on this model. I'll probably do more videos on how I painted her in the future.

St...Ubidsoft

Didn't realize two days ago I was going to be writing about the next big webcomic topic.

I have to strongly disagree with CAD and "But I think that the crucifying of these companies for even trying to combat pirates needs to stop."

What needs to stop is the companies crucifying their own customers in the name of "stopping piracy". Which it obviously doesn't. In fact there is an inverse relationship in most games. Pick any game with drastic DRM measures and you'll generally find it is one of the most pirated games.

Seriously, read the interview Ubisoft gave with PCGamer and tell me if that sounds like a company which cares as its customers anything more than a tap to the money supply.

Do Ubisoft understand that we don't want to be permanently online?
They've spotted the outcry, yes. "We know that requiring a permanent online connection is not a happy point for a lot of PC gamers, but it is necessary for the system to work.

So yeah, we know our paying customers hate it. But we haven't to stick it to our customers because they're people and people are also pirates... or some kind of logic like that I haven't figured out.

Personally I hope someone sues them for false advertising. They're still claiming to sell you a game, but you own nothing. All you're doing is paying to rent restricted access to their servers. As soon as they decide it isn't making enough money they'll pull the plug and you'll being holding exactly nothing.

Ubisoft... Uber soft in the head?

Ubisoft is following in EA's footsteps now with stupid Draconian DRM to punish you for being a paying customer and rewarding you for just pirating their games instead. I don't support piracy, but it seems some people at Ubisoft want to reward those pirateers for their work.

Looks like I may only be buying PC games from Stardock and its partners for the foreseeable future.

This just in... The Empire

Another Anima Tactics video. The Empire Strikes Back!

An additional blog

Because evidently this blog isn't enough for me to keep up on these days, I agreed to contribute articles specifically about wargaming at the Warmonger Gameday blog. If you're only interest is miniatures and not other types of games you might prefer to follow me there rather than here.

Oh, and a new Battle Report from my youtube channel:

Family Gaming

Things have mostly been pretty good and we've been getting in more gaming as a family. The Wii game "Pirates Vs Ninjas Dodgeball" has been a huge hit in my house. Also, the Wii game DDR 2 has added a second dance pad and now dancing has become a huge family activity. Having games that one can enjoy with your children really helps bring the family together. The Wii has seen a surge of activity and my body is feeling better for the extra exercise. My Shoulders have even been quite sore a few nights from boxing. Plus I can feel my heart getting stronger again from all the vigorous dancing as Dance Dance Revolution puts me through the paces. Meanwhile seeing my kids get more into gaming as they get old enough to enjoy it has me very excited for the future.

I look forward to when my kids are old enough to introduce to roleplaying games. It is still years off, but the linked article makes me look forward to playing Shadowrun 3rd edition or Anima: Beyond Fantasy with new generation of gamers. Sooner than that we might get into the minaitures board game "Descent" if my kids are interested in it.

On my birthday I finally got to try out my copy of Runebound: Frozen Wastes expansion. It was a good expansion. I'm not sure if I like it more than the base game, but it was a lot of fun to mix it up and do something different. The Frozen Wastes expansion makes movement much, much more important. The game is also more competitive as you actually feel driven to keep up with others so the weather doesn't kill you and they don't beat you to winning the game or getting the good treasure. If you're a Runebound player it is definitely worth getting to get some more life out of your Runebound game.

For those of you interested in a good debate about gaming you can go have a debate about Violence in Video games. Worth checking out though both sides of the debate are getting very stale to me in my opinion.Honestly, this isn't new territory. Video games just seem to be a new emerging media to target.

Spammers be gone

Okay, I've disabled anonymous posting because I'm tired of filtering spam. Not that anyone ever had anything worthwhile to say while anonymous.

Play nice!

My Anima Tactics

So I've noticed people coming to my blog for Anima Tactics stuff and me not having any recent Anima Tactics articles. You won't find a lot of places with strategies and tactics for winning games, so here is my current tactic for winning with Church forces.

Two things are pivotal to the strategy. You must take the Church Leader High Saint Elienai and the Church organization advantage Divine Meditation. Besides Elienai you should take a full sweep of Inquisitor Warriors, you shouldn't need much healing if done right.

Just having a character in Elienai's large control zone of 12 inches allows you to use Gnosis rolls after you've seen the result. This is a HUGE advantage because you don't waste the few Gnosis points you have but only spend them when you need them. In addition Elienai can deny an opponent's use of Gnosis so they don't get the extra die roll to achieve desired results. You can also as an alternative action grant every warrior in range of her an extra die for Dodges and Attacks. Potentially you can roll 3 dice with Gnosis. But it doesn't there, the organization advantage of Divine Meditation allows you to reroll once per turn. So if that attack is really pivotal... you can roll 6 dice. In Anima Tactics you're normally only rolling one die, so potentially getting 6 dice to roll and choosing the favored result is a MASSIVE advantage.

With those expert dodges you won't be healing your soldiers as often. Also, Elienai can use "Door to the Beyond" to bring them back to life at a sacrifice of some of her own. The disadvantage is that rolling too high can kill her. But with economical Gnosis use and the reroll ability you can make the odds against this pretty good. I always take the advantage card "Dragon Blood" which gives you a chance of bringing a character back to life. Again, rerolling increases your odds of not only being successful but having better success. So the odds of losing Elienai when she is at full health are quite low. Though using warriors like Nero or Xavier who can self-heal helps a bit to save the need to use Door to the Beyond.

Another trick I can use for health on one of my characters is the card Aberration power. Normally few people take this card because a bad roll on activation can have your character removed from the game! But with this Church force you're the master of rerolling, simply use Gnosis if you need it... and even a reroll if you're desperate. I'm still getting the timing of when its best to use the card, but my last game saw it used to great effect. In playing against Empire and Samael the thing to watch out for is your opponent's critical attacks and getting sniped. Do your best to control both and you should be able to win with this strategy!

Vor the Maelstrom review

Youtube need a bit more VOR the Maelstrom



Expect much, much more this next month.

Israelis committing more "Atrocities"

So I was rather astounded the other night. After my youtube video asking people to help out with Haiti if they could someone gave me a 3 star right away (Many others have given me 5 star ratings, but still why you watch and rate down a call to help people who are dying?). I know there are people out there who are completely selfish and it shouldn't suprise. Still, after seeing it personally I'm astounded.

Anyways in their "honor" I dedicated these series of videos where the Israeli Defense Forces "IDF" commites more "Atrocities" as they're frequently accused of in Haiti.






Israel does so much to make the entire world a better place. Also, have you EVER heard of a Muslim country sending relief and rescue forces to some un-allied country like this? Please watch these videos and think of them next time you hear about how "horrible" a country Israel and its military is.

Also, if you think the situation in Haiti isn't serious and there isn't a need for people all over to pitch in then I hope you reconsider after seeing some of the damage and devestation done there. If it ever happened to your home, who would help you in return?

Helping Haiti

The Folks at Joe User had an excellent idea I've decided to pass along and publicize.

Donations:

• You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti. The donation will be added to your phone bill.
  
• Donate to the Red Cross Disaster Fund
  
• Follow the American Red Cross on Twitter for updates

If the Red Cross isn't your style consider some of these others:

Salvation Army
World Vision
American Jewish World Service



If the only thing you do to help is to send a text message, try to do something to help today.

It has been a Looonng week.

It has been a busy work week. I was hoping to do youtube videos or more blogging this week, but work has been kicking my butt. At least right now I only live 5 minutes away from work! I'm hoping to get a video this weekend of our new and improved art space.

There are no updates to Elemental till February, blah. So no updates there. No updates that I know of with VOR since the Masher update.

I rented Avatar for the Wii and found it a fun game and I liked how it made use of the balance board. I'll be adding that one to my wish list as being a Dad and settling into our house didn't give me enough time to really get through it.

Not making any progress on any terrain right now. I've got 4 figures I'm working on painting between now and the end of February, all for Anima Tactics. They are:

Church Agent (for a contest from Cipher Studios)
Kairos (Last time I assemble this model EVER!!!)
Momiji (Greatly looking forward to this one)
Samael Agent

I'll try to get some in progress photos of something up on the blog before too long. I'll try to be interesting again soon when the work week is over!

Teaching your kids

Are you a parent who wonders if playing games around kids is okay? are you a kid who's parents are worried about you playing games?

Then you might want to read some news. Scientific Research has shown that games can improve Kids' reasoning and and processing abilities. Not only that but the type of game you play will improve different types of skills and learning abilities, duh! Whether you're playing an action game or strategy game for instance makes a difference in developing a Kid's reaction speed and problem solving abilities. I'm not advocating that you should just let your kids playing anything, but you should let them play. Kids who can play video games learn better communication skills and hand eye skills. Myself, as a kid I was inspired to learn to read mostly so I could play Scott Adams' Adventure games. These text adventure games were a lot of fun as a kid and inspired my imagination and storytelling. Fond memories those are, the kids these days just don't have any appreciation for the classics right? (For that matter neither do the adults, we enjoy our fancy graphics!)

For parents stressed out at their kids educational-recreational activities, maybe they need to play some games of their own to de-stress? Then sit down and play some games with your family. My kids and myself have recently been rediscovering the Wii again and they're very enthusiastic about playing with Daddy right now. That family that plays together, stays together I say!

P.S. - This blog entry written while my 9 month old son fell asleep on top of me.

Just me playing games

Here is a video report of me playing a game of Anima Tactics at my Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS).

Time for a product review

I've posted a product review of the Anima Tactics rulebook on youtube



Should I do more product reviews?

Decyphering Cipher Studios

Cipher Studios is the manufacturer for miniature game lines Anima Tactics, Hell Dorado, and AE WW2. They really are a Cypher as first of all I thought they were still in the Seattle area but found they had relocated down to the Oregon/Washington border. Luckily I was invited to come tour the facilities by Cipher President Kai picture to the right. Otherwise, nobody would ever find the place as their facilities are completely hidden and unadvertised. Rabid stalker fans and Ninjas have their work totally cut out for themselves.

The Quality Proces Analyst in me liked the small, isolated seclusion of the facility. They clearly get a lot of work (and play) done without wasting space. Small warehouses mean that they're moving product rather than wasting rent storing product. Nice workspaces organized by process rather than "territory". Lean, but could use a little more 5S. :D

Okay, sorry for the distraction. You wanted to read something more about games right? I got a few spoilers including sneak peeks at the rule book which is now out and I snuck a look at some of the miniatures in process. Looks like Samael is getting a certain "Amazon" Jayan combat monster. Wissenschaft also has a nice combat monster they'll be seeing before too long as well.
Also, I got to see all the terrain pictured in the new rulebook. I hope their upcoming battle report was played on it because it looks totally awesome and was a big center of attention for our traveling party visiting the company. What is pictured is only one piece of a full tables worth of large terrain tiles that can be mixed and matched to make a fun table to play on. Hopefully one of these days at convention or if I'm lucky on another visit I'll get the opportunity to play a challenge game against them on it. Maybe if we're lucky Cipher will do some battle report games on their terrain as well.

Anyways to all at Cipher Studios thanks for the Christmas visit as all of us had a great time. Keep up the great work!