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?