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.