Satellite Reign (Syndicate, basically) Incoming

Here is another Kickstarter project that I have my eye on. It's by the creator of Syndicate Wars, which I never got around to, but it looks just like the original which I played religiously.

Space Hulk Pre-orders on Steam

Seems I was actually ahead of the curve on something. Seems a lot of people are finding out about the Space Hulk game only now that it is up for pre-order on Steam. There's no question as to whether or not I will buy it. The only question is whether I buy it for iOS or for Steam. I intend (finally) to get an iPad when the next one releases and I'd rather have this for that and my iPhone. Especially if it supports iCloud saves the way Warhammer Quest does. Being able to pick up where I left off on either device would be a really attractive feature. I also would like to be able to play during my break at work.

I am still enthralled by Warhammer Quest on iOS. I have by now beaten the basic content and bought all the extras. I had to start a new campaign because the Skaven content begins at level 2 and I didn't want to just blow through it with a maxed-out party. I hope Space Hulk follows up with more excellent UI design and fun gameplay. I feel like this is a very good time to be a gamer/hobbyist.

Full Control will release Space Hulk on August 16th, 2013.

A New Age of VR: Omni and Occulus Rift

So my brother was kind enough to tip me off to this kickstarter project for the Omni, a VR movement apparatus. It can be used with the Occulus Rift to create a very realistically engaging game experience. I have almost no interest in playing Skyrim after I sank hours of my life into Oblivion (funny how that phrase works out so perfectly), but I would actually play it with this if for nothing other than the exercise. The Skyrim world is unbelievably big and navigating it on foot would be a blast compared to running a treadmill. And while you're at it you might as well rob a whole town, run from the cops and slay a dragon. Crazy excited to see this become a widely supported consumer product.

Spam: A Heads Up for Other Bloggers

I expect most people check their traffic information to keep an eye on what kinds of articles are interesting to the readerbase. Well, while doing just that I noticed several that didn't have domain names that seemed to directly relate to wargaming and I assumed they must be spam of some kind. Or at the worst, phishing sites. Well, I just got extra curious and googled the name for one of them and this post here confirmed my suspicions. Thought I'd share, just in case you might have wondered yourself.

Rumors: Future Eldar Supplements - Biel-Tan and Saim-Hann (2013.07.25)

Here is some more cool rumor news from Natfka. Sounds like in addition to Tau Mercenaries, the Black Legion and White Scars, there are whispers of Biel-Tan and Saim-Hann supplements in the works. I saw elsewhere that the Biel-Tan supplement would be the first to feature a model wave as well. That would be really exciting to me because I saw the lack of aspect warrior updates as a missed opportunity in the initial launch (you know, not taking into account the Iyanden supplement launch strategy). There are a few of them that really need new versions  (hey there Hawks and Spiders).

via Stickmonkey on Faeit 212 

I'd heard Biel-Tan was being worked on after Iyaden, and Saim-Hann was later. But from what I've heard lately it seems the supplements are pure labors of love, and not necessarily slotting into releases like we've traditionally thought. That they are following a "when it's done" release scheme, and not strict deadlines. Multiple digital supplements in a month would also not be unheard of.  

There is a lot going on. I've heard scattered rumors of 2014 seeing many new models introduce to codexes with rules in box, but I haven't confirmed this.

More Classics Ported to iOS: Chainsaw Warrior

Wow that's really convenient. Yesterday I got curious about upcoming GW games was thinking to post what I found of this on DakkaDakka yesterday. Turns out I don't have to say much because Natfka has already covered it very well over at Faeit 212.

Very briefly, it's a single player game where you race against the clock to save NYC from an extra-dimensional horde of zombies and mutants. I love that they're trying specifically to maintain the bodaciously radical 80s feel. And the fact that they're embracing the camp that comes with a title like Chainsaw Warrior. That's refreshing in an age of games where many seem to be taking themselves all too serioiusly.

Chainsaw Warrior is developed by Auroch Digital and is scheduled to release later this year.

Rumors: Inquisition Skirmish Game in August?

I read somewhere on Natfka's blog that Inquisition is going to be the surprise release that was scheduled for August of this year. And here I was thinking I might have to wait a year or more!

From TastyTaste on Blood of Kittens 

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2013/07/inquisition-gws-entry-into-skirmish.html

GW is about to enter the skirmish scene with the release of Warhammer 40k: Inquisition Inquisition is designed for 2-4 players and each side will use custom cards and dice. Army sizes consist of about 5-10 models per side. A whole new set of models drawn from Blanche artwork will accompany. The game should be flexible as you can make and design your own Inquisitorial retinue. As for rules complexity that is anyone's guess, but the general marketing goal for Inquisition is a gateway game into the greater Warhammer 40k universe. 

Beyond that GW, seems to be taking cues from Kickstarter projects like Sedition Wars and home-brewed rules like Inq28 for Inquisitor. This also might not end up as a limited edition run, but that all depends on sales, and if any support is continued will be done through digital expansions and updates. 

Review: Warhammer Quest for iOS (and my 100th post! Woo!)

Warhammer Quest is f%&#ing awesome. I'll keep going, but really I could stop there. I bought it just to review it for 2d6D, but I am hopelessly addicted at this point. It's worth the five bucks I paid for sure and I think that's saying a lot because I consider anything over 1-2 pricey for iOS games. Unfortunately WHQ was one of those games I always saw people playing at the LGS, but could never afford myself. As a result I'll be looking at this purely from the stand point of video games. Feel free to chime in if there are things that should be said about the board game original and where the devs were coming from with this iteration.

You start out with four classes unlocked: the Grey Wizard, the Marauder, the Dwarf Ironbreaker and the Wood Elf Wayfarer. They're exactly what you might expect from fantasy game classes. The basic game play is tactical turn-based combat. You cannot move after attacking, so positioning gets satisfyingly complex. It's really easy to get yourself into a situation where warriors you need combating certain enemies simply can't get there and your team gets picked apart one-by-one.

Each of the different characters has a number of special abilities and character-specific equipment types. I actually feel that the classes are sufficiently differentiated. That is something that really matters to me in dungeon crawlers as it is something that is rarely done right. The Grey Wizard, for example, is very flexible and can attack, support and move in a number of useful ways, but doesn't do the raw damage that a Marauder does. The Marauder on the other hand can put out ridiculous volume of attacks but doesn't take hits like a Dwarf Ironbreaker. And the Wayfarer is nigh useless in melee, but once he has a good number of ranged attacks, he can kill distant enemies very well. The interplay between these classes makes for a fascinating, strategic game with lots of opportunities for tactical optimization.

The game does fall short in a few areas. First is the downloadable content. It is pretty expensive to unlock everything for the game. It already starts off at 5 bucks. Then the three unlockable characters are 2.50 each and the unlockable area with new monsters is another 5. So to have all of the content you're looking at a game that is really 17.50, much more than I'd pay up front if that were the base price to get all the content. Then there are also in-game pay-to-win options like buying gold, but luckily the game design isn't skewed toward driving you at their store the way Diablo 3 was. So far I have unlocked the Archmage and he's pretty fun to use. I was worried at first that he would end up being way too good (as a way of getting more buyers) and that he'd unbalance my party, but that hasn't been the case at all. If anything, I think the Ironbreaker may be more useful.

Second, the story is terribly dull and has no bearing on the player's experience. I never see my characters outside of the dungeons and my choices seem to have little in the way of meaningful consequences. Characters that you meet are likewise text-box entities and the text does little to give me an idea of these throw-away characters' personalities. As a result, I have no interest in what is happening or why. The background and story are there if you want to read them, but it doesn't build a believable world for me to get lost in the way good story-based games should. The fluff is a sauce for me to pour on a steak that doesn't exist. You might say "It's not really that kind of game, so why not let it go? The writer isn't trying to be the R.R. Martin of the iPhone." That is true and totally fair. I honestly can't tell if I'd rather they left all this out so I don't have to skip it. Knowing it is there is probably satisfying at some base level, maybe simply because I have been skipping bad story in games for many years (what? They can't all be as great as FF6 or Bioshock =P).

Thirdly, there are a LOT of random rolls made in the game. There are tons in combat, but that's where it matters least to me. Sometimes when traveling and ending turns in dungeons, random events occur that do nothing more than debuff you for no reason. It interrupts gameplay and has almost no noticeable bearing on the game. Generating a random number of magic points to use for casters can be irritating too. This gets especially bad when you are randomly ambushed in dungeons and have are given no magic at all. When that happens a few turns in a row you quickly run out of reserve power (that doesn't regenerate in dungeons) and find yourself dead due to no particular fault of your own. I'm not playing on Hardcore mode yet where your characters die permanently, but I can tell I will be very frustrated to lose a whole save due to some silly bad luck.

In closing, I want to remind you that I was sort of stretching to find some flaws in the game. The in-app purchases aren't necessary for the game to be a very good time. The story is so minimal and meaningless that skipping it doesn't get in the way of having fun in the slightest. The randomness probably comes from the board game, so if you played that you might be nostalgic for it in the first place. Losing a save would stink, but really without that most of the fights are so easy that there wouldn't be enough challenge without it. I've had a great time with the game so far and I expect to keep playing it for some time to come. I don't know whether or not I can recommend the additional content, but the base product is more than worth the few dollars it costs.

Edit: Something I forgot to mention before is that there is no multi-player. Where I was really disappointed in Talisman HD for that, I really don't think it takes anything away from the WHQ experience. Having more than one person playing might make the game cumbersome and slow. Playing a whole party is fun and works very well, just as it does in other RPG dungeon crawlers.

Given the game a try? What did you think? Got a favorite class?

Rumors: Sisters of Battle, Black Templars and Inquisitor Skimishes

Man, what a treat when I opened up my browser and saw so much good news! I mean, Apoc is nice news and all, but I favor medium-sized games and didn't really follow the rumors for it at all. These, however, I am very interested in. The Inquisition is easily my favorite faction in 40k after the Eldar. I could easily see myself playing a skirmish game based on Inquisitors instead of hive gangs. Something about Necromunda always seemed so despondently arbitrary considering the scale of the Imperium. I suppose that's part of the point, but it just didn't catch my interest. Persecuting cultists and witches on the other hand--sign me up!

Links to Natfka's Rumors Posts:

• Black Templars - Initial Rumors
• Black Templars - Initiates and Neophytes
• Black Templars - Initiates and Neophytes Part 2
• Sisters of Battle
• Inquisition

It still seems really early on a lot of this stuff and so I'm not really buying into the specifics yet. All I care about is that armies aren't being dropped and that hopefully there will be a skirmish alternative to Necromunda (sorry those figures are hideous). The Sisters are neat and I could see myself getting into collecting some to go with my GK/Inquisition forces. Hopefully they'll be even better integrated the next time around. Good lord I would love expanded Inquisition options.

On Black Templars, I don't have so much to say, I suppose. I hope they really do lose that rule where they run forward when they get shot. That's tactically too dumb for me to believe their chapter would survive very long at all. It must also be very hard for BT players to hold objectives right now hehe. Being able to attach Initiates and Neophytes to existing BT units would be awesome too and would provide some very cool flexibility.

And just because, the last rumored release schedule I saw looked something like this:

August: Lizardmen
September: Bloodbowl
October: Space Marines
November: Dwarves?
December: Hobbit
January: Tyranids
Later in 2014: IG

Spotlight: Skeeve (who taught me more than he probably realizes)

Yay! I finally have internet again! Wow that was a long two days...*ahem* anyway...

There are basically two moments in all my time hobbying where I saw immediate, profound improvement in my work. The first was when I opened White Dwarf 316 and became absolutely obsessed with Nurgle. The tutorial in that issue taught me more about painting than I had learned up to that point and changed the way I painted and modeled for years. The second time was when I saw Skeeve's Blight Drone tutorial and decided I had to learn more about blending and layering thin coats. I contacted him through the 40k Online forums and was astounded that this brilliant painter had the time to reply to lowly I. Well, I feel a great debt of gratitude for it, because I learned so much through his guidance that again, everything I do has been affected by it. And it gave me the confidence to try new, bolder things. Here are a number of his models that I gathered up to show off. Enjoy.

Resources on Self-publishing Novels

I just read this interesting article from Salon about self-publishing novels. Wargamers are a creative bunch and I expect there are many with their own ambitions, so I thought I'd share resources like this as I come across them. Here's another from CNET that I read the other day which covers many different ways to approach self-publishing ebooks specifically.

What I take away from these (and the excellent comments on the Salon article) is a couple of interesting key points:

• When self-publishing, you retain the rights to your work. You can publish the traditional way any time afterward.
• Books never go off shelves if published as ebooks. There is no need for them to be successful right away. They can earn you money for a long period of time.
• If you pursue traditional publishing later on, already profiting from your work can help in negotiations.
• It's still hard to be the success story that people focus too much on, but with hard work it more possible than ever to supplement your income with the hobby you love.
• You don't have to spend a fortune promoting. Find free and cheap avenues of promotion and be patient while working on the next book.

It's nice to see something encouraging on the very daunting business side of writing. There is a lot more to it than making the product. Even with good work finished in your hands, much more needs to be done to get any readers, not to mention getting some compensation for the effort. As I come across any other good articles like these, I'll share them. 

I'd love to see any that you have seen if you have some to share. Heck, feel free to plug your work and share your experiences if you have a self-published title yourself.

No Internet is No Goodness

Strange, I just went to post up some neat-o pictures and my internet is down. I'll try to get back online and posting ASAP. I'd post from my phone, but the Blogger app is pretty awful for anything of any substance. 

Anyway, keep an eye out.

Repost: Link to 6th Ed. Eldar Battlescribe Data File

A couple posters recently informed me that the link to the Eldar data file was broken. I edited the original post, but I'm reposting the link again now for anyone who had the same issue before.

Wargamers in Japan: Stuff and Things In the Works

Got some awesome plans in the works with Wargamers in Japan (join the FB group if you haven't yet)! Basically we're looking at putting together events with the intent to draw together some of the localized groups across the country. Big events quarterly and small gatherings more often than that.

The first big one will be August and will feature lots of different games. Board games, demos and 40k battles for sure! I'm really excited about all this. Looks like we have a lot of very fun gaming ahead of us!

I'll be posting about events regularly, so bear with me if you don't live around. Or better yet, help me spread the word =) Especially if you have a friend in Japan who just doesn't realize there are people to play with.

Links to the Eternal Crusade AMA Videos

Just in case you missed them here are the twitch streams of the Eternal Crusade AMA. There are two. Here is the first and here is the second. Enjoy!

Reexamining the Seer Council (Part 5): Divination

While I see Telepathy as a much deadlier discipline than I used to, many Divination powers provide the means to manipulate the statistics in our favor, something I think is invaluable in a game of dice. Some powers are much more desirable than others, but with a very good primaris and ways to use each result, on the whole rolling here is a very good idea.

Primaris: Prescience
Rerolling hits is fantastic for any combat unit. Since the best you can hope for is a 3+ to hit, it is common for many CC units' damage to bottleneck at the to-hit roll. Prescience also helps with throwing spears, shooting witchfire and buffing support fire, just like Guide. The range is shorter, but since the Council is likely to be in combat and benefits so much from this spell I take one in every game. The Council doesn't have enough attacks and can't afford to let potential hits go to waste. It works incredibly well when used with other reroll, buff and debuff abilities such as Enhance, Doom, Jinx and Misfortune. Example: 8 Warlocks charge with Enhance for WS5 and Prescience against Jinxed (-1Sv), Doomed, Misfortuned Terminators. 24 attacks, 20.2 hits, 19.6 wounds, 10.8 failed saves. Okay, okay so we probably won't have all those powers, but it's fun to consider what rerolling everything can do to a unit. And having even one or two of those rerolls makes a big difference.

Foreboding
If I were to roll on Divination this is not exactly what I would be looking to get, but I would be far from disappointed to land it. One of the best things an assault-oriented unit could hope to do against the Council is assault it and deny it the bonus attack for charging. Warlocks and Farseers have very few attacks, so each and every one counts. Getting assaulted this way could tie up the squad or get more Warlocks killed than we can afford to lose. The units that would be looking to assault you would be tough units and horde ones. Boyz, Tyranid swarms, Zombies, Terminators, MCs and the like all come to mind. With TL ShuCats we actually have some decent overwatch potential, but shooting at full BS could really put a stop to an enemy assault, or simply deter them from attempting in the first place. A full round of shooting would really hurt with all those pseudo-rending shots and even if the assault succeeds, the charging unit may be significantly weakened.

Forewarning
I can only think of two uses for this on a Council. The first would be to throw it up on supporting units nearby. DE allies, Warp Spiders, a Crimson Hunter, anything that can keep up with the Council and needs every bit of defense it can get. The other use would be to put it up when you use the artifact Spiritstone to reduce your Farseer's warp charge costs. He could get a different 4++ this way and then enter combat with guys who might hurt him with AP2/3. Pretty situational and most likely unnecessary, but I'm just stretching here to come up with a way to use a second 4++ on a unit that already has one. Depending on my support situation, I might be looking to swap this for Prescience.

Misfortune
Before the codex dropped this was by far my favorite power in Divination. I suppose it is still my favorite, but I feel that many damage sources that benefitted from this before are effective without it because of pseudo-rending. The Council, however, needs it as much as ever. In combat they still need every advantage they can get against units with good armor. Jinx and the Remnants of Glory can help, but in the event I don't land Jinx, I might be hoping to get Misfortune to help with heavy armor. The Remnants are nice and reliable if you want to spend the points, but they do cost a lot and Farseers without Death Mission don't have enough attacks. Misfortune ups the damage of the whole unit and anyone supporting. As I said for Prescience, I think it works best with any other powers that improve our statistical chances to kill the enemy. It works well against anything that will receive a save, including vehicles taking cover. On another note, the range on Misfortune makes it easy to use to help support units instead of just the Council. In my last game it was instrumental to my Dire Avengers and Jetbikers taking out some Screamers that would have otherwise been hard to remove. This allowed my Council to move on and collapse a flank of IG, giving me access to the Colossi that threatened my scoring troops.

As an aside, this is another benefit of slinging out a lot of different maledictions--no limitations on targets with regards to shooting and assault. It allows a deathstar unit to influence a lot of the board all at once, where most deathstars' greatest weakness is their inability to fight in more than one place at a time.

Perfect Timing
In my opinion, Ignores Cover has become one of the most important, most powerful special rules in the game. With 6th Ed. we are seeing a lot of units with stealth and/or shrouded. There are also a lot of Aegis Defence Lines in use. Pounding through 4+ saves with dakka is one thing, but firing on 2+ saves is just beyond pointless. Reveal can go a long way to helping against the stealth/shrouded units, but nothing beats simply bypassing the cover all together. I think this power works incredibly well in combination with Jinx because it becomes possible to reduce MEQs to sliced salami using the Jetbikes' shuriken catapults. Stacking Jinx on the enemy and ignoring their cover can have simply devastating results and it doesn't take much luck to pull this combo off. Depending on your army make up you could even split the Farseer with this off to a nearby squad of Fire Dragons or Wraithguard that has disembarked. Have fun surviving 10 Fusion Guns with Ignores Cover! On the whole I think Perfect Timing is great as long as you have units that the Farseer can actually join who can benefit from it. It improves the value of Jinx and our pseudo-rending a lot and provides versatility in lists that are packing units with heavy-hitting guns.

Precognition
This mini-Fortune is a little better for our Farseers than it used to be. Now that Farseers have access to decent weapons, it might be worth it to reroll with them. Another less obvious use would be to tank hits using a Farseer with this power. In the event that he fails his saves, heal him up with Renewer. If he gets hit with ID weapons, roll your Look out Sir and pray. But in that event you need to roll three ones in a row and have a good chance to survive. If I get Fortune first (and I tend to roll for it twice before going to Divination), I will probably swap this, but the protection it can provide may be worthwhile if I don't have rerolls on the whole unit.

Scrier's Gaze
In order to use this power, the Farseer needs to be on the board. So if anything benefits from it, it will likely be a part of the army that is not the Farseer's unit. Due to the cost involved in using a Seer Council, the rest of the army is typically small and fragile as a matter of course. As a result, if I put anything in reserves it is likely to be objective snatching WRJs. I want those things off the board just about as long as possible. Sometimes if they come on, I use them for a little backfield support when the enemy has few other units to harm them from range. Usually though, I am happy to have anything that will help me try to keep them in reserves. Scrier's Gaze might be able to do that. But so does the number four result on the strategy warlord traits (I've rolled that three games in a row. Weird). This is a power that in many cases I would probably drop for Prescience. But if I am really depending on my reserves coming in late against an army with say, 3 Colossi (as in my last game), I'll be glad to be able to keep them off the board.

Divination is probably the most reliably useful of all three available disciplines. The Primaris is amazing, as are most of the chart results. I recommend always making sure to take at least one roll on Divination just to get Prescience as it is just too helpful in combat when unbuffed Warlocks have pretty unimpressive WS for their cost and number of attacks. I'd be likely to spend more rolls in this discipline in two instances. First, if I get Fortune then I will want something good that definitely costs only one warp charge. Divination has no powers that cost two, whereas Telepathy and Runes of Fate have a few each. Second, if I fight against an army like Space Marines or Chaos Daemons then Terrify doesn't enable me to perform sweeping advances. It doesn't do anything at all to Chaos Daemons. Against Marines, they might run off the board if they are close to it, but ATSKNF really hinder's the best uses of Terrify and some of the other Telepathy results don't compare as well to Misfortune, Perfect Timing, Prescience, or Forboding. Judging what you need based on your army, your opponent and what your Warlocks get is key (did I say always roll them first? Do. They only have one option and it's very helpful when deciding with the Farseers to know what the Warlocks have). Perhaps even more so than other lists, it is important to consider these variable factors when rolling because the Council is much harder to use without Fortune. In the case that you don't get soon, you have to consider the possibility you won't have it at all and plan accordingly to bolster your defenses and the efficiency of your offense accordingly.

Happy 5th Anniversary, App Store! Thanks for the free games!

Apparently there are a number of free games available on the App Store. Here is the Kotaku link I found out about this through. They may not have a full, comprehensive list of what's free, but I did manage to pick up some games I've been wanting for a while.

In other news, Limbo is apparently on iOS now. If you never played it on the console, it is an action/platformer/puzzle/horror game with a delightfully eery aesthetic. I strongly recommend it.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Independence Day!

There aren't many Americans near me so I'm going to be heading to Tokyo to see some friends and eat BBQ at the Bashamichi Tap Room. I think there are five of those Tap Rooms and each one is different. I've only been to two, but really I only care about the one that serves American southern style barbeque. The guy that cooks it all is a big jolly guy and obviously loves everything about making and serving delicious food to people. The beer there is fantastic too.

In the day I'll be getting some gaming on. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be running though. Eldar, of course, but there is just so much great stuff in our codex that I'm torn any time I write a new list. I've got 30 Rangers these days and something I've been trying to figure out is a list that works well with that many static units. At 600 points I think I've got it, but any higher than that and I'm not so sure. You start to need heavy weapons and mobility a lot more. I'll keep mulling it over. I think there must be a way to do it well.

Anyway, I hope everyone celebrating has a safe and happy weekend!

What will Eternal Crusade be like?

I thought I'd just look around and see what kind of actual information I could find on Eternal Crusade. It seemed from the Reddit AMA that a lot of people already know plenty about the game and what it will be like. So what will it be like?

Here is an article on it from mmorpg.com. In it there are some interesting bits of information, but the key points as I see them:

• Free-to play. Ork Boyz represent the free element of their faction and other armies and their progression paths appear to unlock through payment. 5 free Ork Boyz are equal to about one paid Space Marine in terms of power.
• 3 month wars with clear winners. When they end, a war for a new planet begins.
• Destructible environments must be rebuilt using resources gained from winning battle and taking resources.
• Procedurally generated dungeons for PvE. Focus on PvP, however.
• Large-scale battles
• 3rd-person action blending shooting and close-combat

I'll be honest, I'm likely to try this game almost no matter what. 3rd-person, 1st-person, RPG or FPS, I'd still want to see what it's like. The problem here for me and probably for many other is the F2P aspect. I hate F2P games. They are invariably pay-to-win games. I'm going to want to play my beloved Eldar and it will be irritating if it costs a lot to play the way I want. I'd honestly rather buy the game or even pay a subscription fee than be charged individually for options and character classes. I always feel like I'm being swindled when making those transactions. I suppose that setup works for some people, but I resent it and always quit playing before I fork my money over.

On the other hand, my brother made a great point about how Ultima Online could have kept its player base up without turning its back on the in-game thieves and murderers who loved the game. His idea was to only charge the hard-core crowd and make the game free-to-play for people who aren't allow to initiate fights with other players. This would give a huge herd of noob sheep for the hardcore wolves to prey on. The game was already playing out that way in the first place, with noobs hiding and retreating from player-killers anyway, so this would just ensure that they were more likely to put up with getting shanked and robbed from time to time.

I really don't know if it will work in Eternal Crusade. Assuming the game turns out to be fun in the first place, I really hope the F2P elements work out because MMOs are only as fun as the population they boast. There's nothing sadder in one of those games than ghost towns and empty dungeons.

The 'Ol Switcharoo: Follow-up on Apoc Set Pricing

Yesterday I posted about GW removing the kits from their online store that could save customers money when buying Apoc sets individually rather than with the one-click option. Well, in follow-up to that I have the following two stories. The first one is directly related and the second one is tangentially related.

So the Vyper kits that were creating the disparity in price that this whole issue is based on were removed from the store. Well, one of my closest friends ordered some of them a few weeks ago, well before this price thing had gotten anyone's attention. Then the other day he got an email which he paid no mind until he saw GW's reponse to this on Natfka's blog. Here's the email he got:

Scott,
Thank you for writing into us! When your order was getting picked in our warehouse unfortunately the stock for the Eldar Vyper was incorrect and there were not enough Eldar Vypers to complete this part of your order. Because the rest of your order was already picked when they went to pick the Vypers and were out they had to ship out the rest of the to your address. Because this item was not shipped out you were refunded to your paypal account that was used to pay for this order. I have just check the stock of the Vypers and we do have them back in stock so if you were still wanting to order this than right now I believe we should be able to get this shipped from our warehouse. Should you have any other questions please give us a call at 1-800-394-4263 and we will work to get you helped out.
Thanks,
Games Workshop
North America Customer Services
Please do not delete previous email threads as this will help us serve you better!

Before he knew about the price issue it seemed like an honest stocking mistake. But now it seems a little too convenient that he got this email just as GW removed the cheaper option from the store. I'm far too cynical to see that as a coincidence. They made a mistake in pricing the new set and their solution to the small amount of potential profit (not actual lost profit, mind you--just more that they could make if they paid enough attention to price models the same across the board) they might have lost is to cancel that part of people's order and then to lie to them about why they've done so. The terms "bait and switch" and "the 'ol switcharoo" come to mind, which brings me to...

Screamers and Flamers updated through White Dwarf and subsequently nerfed, not quite into the ground, but only about a meter above it. Those units might be decent still, but they were made into the two most broken units in the entirety of 40k with that White Dwarf update. What Chaos Daemons player wouldn't/didn't buy at least a box or two of each? And how many competitive players bought huge allotments of both? My friend (the same guy) did that and while I did make fun of him for it, I feel bad for him because those units should never have been made so good they were absolute auto-includes. Cheesy as Screamers were, no one deserves for models to get updated to be very attractive units at a time when there are no prospects of them getting a new codex only to see them nerfed hard a few months later. And not only that, the Sisters of Battle had already been updated through White Dwarf and were showing no signs of getting a proper book. There was already precedent set for one to expect Daemons to be set for a while with the WD rules.

If you haven't noticed, I complain a lot about prices in our hobby. But at least there are ways to justify high prices at least. It costs a lot to run a multi-national corporation. My own company has to sell a lot of touch sensors just to break even. It's not easy when operating costs are high. But the two instances I just discussed reek of scam, in my opinion. And I actually don't even remember the Screamers and Flamers nerf getting talked much about in terms of what it suggested of GW's business practices. Seriously, in both of these cases, shame on you, Games Workshop. Very disappointed.

Raging Heroes: The Toughest Girls of the Galaxy

This is something else I found over at Faeit212. The Kickstarter campaign can be found here. I don't play Sisters of Battle but I suppose these could be used for decent proxies. I'm definitely seeing a lot of potential for Inquisitional Henchchicks though. What they've posted so far looks great. I hope they do well with this project because their work looks incredible.

Dolla Dolla Bill, Ya'll: Solving the Discrepancy in the Apoc Bundle Prices

Just saw this post on Faeit 212 that explains GW's solution to the pricing discrepancy. Basically instead of adjusting prices, their idea was to stop offering the individual kits where you could save a little money.

I think one of the commenters said it best, "Keep it classy, GW."