If there was one upside to our recent reno troubles (more on that below), it was that I had some extra time to work on my painting projects.  Since I’m not so handy in the household sense, I could put my head down (some say in attempt hide from the troubles) and crank these out:

Trollkin War Wagon

From Warmachine

From Warmachine

From Warmachine

Malifaux Guild Peacekeeper

From Malifaux

Malifaux Arcanist Joss

From Malifaux

Malifaux Outcast Convict Gunslinger

From Malifaux

That leaves Herne and Jonne as the final 2 models I need to complete for this month.  Today’s totally free, so I should be able to crank them out in short order.

Next month I’ll be doing Rocinante and Damiano for certain.  It was tricky getting Rocky’s chains the right length and to harden them prior to priming but he’s ready to go.

Warning, RL Real Talk Ahead!

Every spring, in honour of Mels’ birthday, I take a week off.  A week prior, we discovered that there was a water damage issue with our upstairs bathroom and decided that since our tax return was incoming and my brother in law was free to do some contracting work, we should tackle it with a full reno.  I estimated, wrongly, that the entire process would take 4 days, leaving the bulk of my vacation free to persue whatever I wanted.  We are now a week in, and only the insulation and subfloor has been completed.  Luckily, we have a small downstairs bathroom, but it’s a tight fit for the whole family.

This situation is not the fault of my BIL.  His work is excellent and he knows what needs to be done and in what sequence.  The fault lies with a nasty surprise we discovered during the teardown.  Not to go into too much detail (as there may be legal proceedings ahead) but when electrical work was done sometime in the 80s, it appears that the electrician purposefully concealed incomplete work.  I’m shocked that the house hasn’t burned down because of it.

What makes me angry is not so much the waste of a week’s vacation or the fact that the problem exists (this can be fixed for the better with just time and money), but that someone, with no consideration as to what might happen to the inhabitants, would do this on purpose.  The lazy fucker is probably dead by now, but if there were other parties that knew about this and hid it from us…

It might be an interesting year.

Oh, and in the end, we’ll have a really nice bathroom.

Yes, we’re having to reno our upstairs bathroom much sooner than expected due to water damage behind the shower wall, but since I won’t be the one actually doing much of the work (since in this area I’m an utter incompetent) I’ll hopefully be able to accomplish the following:

SW:TOR

The 1.2 game update hit this week, and in a rather obvious move to reinvigorate interest in the game, EA / Bioware decided to reward long time players with a free month of gameplay and a little pet Tauntaun.. thing.  However, to qualify for the former, you have to have either a 50th level character, or have reached legacy level 6 by the 22nd.  This is a tad vexing since I’ve been playing since the pre-release period and have achieved nether of these feats due to, y’know, life and such.  There’s a chance that I may be able to hit LL 6, but with my other tasks it’ll be a close thing.  Good thing I can sleep in.

It’s not that bad if I don’t make it, as I still do enjoy the game.  I haven’t sampled all of the new stuff, but I’ll get there eventually I’m sure.  Had I rushed to 50, I’d probably be tired of the game already.

Mass Effect 3

Again, the timeframe’s kind of open on this one, unless you consider the May 15th releases of Max Payne 3 and Diablo III to be a kind of looming threat.  I’d like to finish it before then, and to get the best ending possible.  From what I gather, I need to play more of the multi-player to up my military galactic readiness percentage of something so that the Reapers don’t just steamroll the galaxy.  I’m playing this one in dribs and drabs, so, I’ll get there eventually.  I just don’t  want to get stuck in a leveling grind.

The Free-to-Play Crack

I discovered both Tribes: Ascend and World of Tanks at the same time.  It’s a good thing that I’m terrible at both that they haven’t completely eaten my life.  The “get XP and buy more pew pew” is terribly addictive.  Each can be played in small snippets, however, these tiny little slices of time can swiftly add up to an entire afternoon…

Painting Pile

Wow.  Joining 2 oath threads on SA has been a challenge, especially since there’s one giant piece involved.  This time, however, the Battle Engine isn’t sapping my will to live like the last one did.  I have no doubt that my Malifaux ohs will be done, but the Warmachine stuff will be very close:

• Joss (Malifaux) – awaiting dip
• Convict Gunslinger (Malifaux) – dip-ready
• Peacekepper (Malifaux) – dippity-do
• War Wagon (Hordes) – carriage and tuffalos base-coated and awaiting shading.  Crew not even touched yet.
• Herne and Jonne (Warmachine) – still basecoating, but on to metallics.

Man Swarm?

Yep, Man Swarm.  Flooding the field with troops in Warmahordes is still the most viable tactic in the game these days.  My winning percentage has spiked significantly of late, largely on the shoulders of units (or the warcaster / warlock) delivering the final blow.  At least on the Warmachine side of things, ‘jacks are swiftly becoming relegated to utility piece status.

Another peaceful Saturday.  Even the kids are very well behaved (I think they’re plotting something) so they get to play some Lego Batman.  This leaves me time to work on the next batch of models for Project Two-for-One: these being the fruits of a successful first couple of rounds.

First up, the easy ones: Jarl and a Feralgeist.

From Warmachine

The Feral’s got a miscast right hand, but I can explain that away easily enough by the fact he’s a ghost or something. His upper and lower halves don’t line up very well, so there’ll be some liguid green stuff in his future.   Jarl is a surprisingly bulky 2-piece model (how rare that is these days).

Next up is the War Wagon.  All the components are assembled individually and ready for individual priming and painting.  This one may go a bit faster than the Storm Strider, but also required magnetization in order to fit in my Battle Engine foam.  I stripped the larger disk magnets off of my Cygnar omni-jack (which will be redone properly down the road) to ensure a tight hold.

From Warmachine

Here’s the main body fit together.

From Warmachine

Lastly, Damiano’s best buddy Rocinante.  I think out of all the character ‘jacks in Wrath he’s arguably the best outside of Hypnos or Erebus.  I used an old school metal Nomad chassis instead of the newer (and inferior) plastic kit and I think I got him into a nice dynamic pose here.  I’m debating whether or not to add jeweler’s chains to the gun, or leave it as it is.

From Warmachine

April may be busier with painting projects than I had originally expected.  There’s another oath thread on Something Awful’s forums that’s open to all game lines and includes some amazing prizes.  There’s a debate around whether or not the Warmahordes oath thread should be folded into it.  If not, I’ll probably take the opportunity to get back on track with my small Infinity force.

Since the SA oath thread has been resurrected, I decided to pledge pMagnus, a Manlger and Renegade.  Using the above methods, I got them done in only 8 days.  This is a record for me.

pMags

From Warmachine

Mangler

From Warmachine

Renegade

From Warmachine

The following Rhulic ‘jacks took me roughly 2-3 weeks to complete, with the final basing done along with the above models.

Driller

From Warmachine

Rockram

From Warmachine

Basher

From Warmachine

So, what’s next.  Well, it is tax refund season, and in the time-homered tradition of counting eggs before they’re hatched, I’ll be making a trip on Tuesday to cash in on all the points I’ve earned.  One piece in particular will command most of my time, with an end of April completion deadline: it’s big, has a giant cannon, and is pulled by two bison.  And it’ll probably TRAMPLE my sanity into the muddy ground.

See what I did there?

<rant>

I don’t usually do this.  I’m a pretty tolerant person when it comes to online gaming.  Trolls and cheaters don’t affect me in the slightest as I can simply shift servers and communities at the click of a mouse.  But when a gaming company, in this case, EA, somehow decides to alienate gamers who have stuck by a particular franchise through thick and thin for more than a decade, I actually get a little angry.  Particularly so if I’m one of those gamers.

Battlefield 3 came out last October to great fanfare across all platforms, yet there was an obvious divide between what longstanding BF fans wanted and what EA’s objective was with regards to consoles.  To capture some of the market share dominated by Activision’s CoD franchise, I truly believe that EA demanded DICE shoehorn in lackluster co-op and singleplayer modes into what was primarily a PC-based mutliplayer game.  Patching the game has to happen simultaneously across all platforms to ensure no one feels “left out” (except for that 7-10 day exclusivity deal with Sony);  grindy maps like Sienne Crossing and Operation Metro that are not truly designed for 64 players; a TDMmode that doesn’t suit the feel of the game at all; etc. etc. etc.

Months after Back to Karkand was released in December we finally get a hint of what the future holds, and it simply fails to impress.  According to EA’s own announcement, the first of three planned DLC expansions comes out in June(!) and features, I’m guessing, based on the 2-16 player talking point, solely deathmatch style gameplay.  Wow.  If I wanted to play a differently skinned CoD, I would just play CoD.  Who the hell cares.

Sure, they’ve also stated that there will be a vehicle-centric expansion coming sometime this year, but leading with a console friendly DLC first highlights EA’s true motivation: sacrifice the core BF community (and yes, by that I mean the “PC Gaming Master Race”), in favour of the Xbox and PS3 DLC market.  It also smacks of the fast turnover of sequels, just like CoD.  The final DLC of the year will be called Endgame.  We have no idea what it might contain, but the name is pretty disheartening.  Is that it for BF3?  Will 2013 bring back the Bad Company style of BF games?  Will we get a 2142 sequel (I actually hope this happens)?

I’m lucky, I suppose, that this is sum of my first world problems.  However, I’ve invested years and untold hours of my life to playing proper BF style games.  I can say that it’s my favourite gaming “style” since I started playing vidjagames with Space Invaders and that I actually give a shit about the direction of the franchise.  I’ll be thoroughly distracted enough by SW: TOR (now there’s a well maintained franchise), Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3 and Diablo 3 to last me through the fall until the proper DLC is released, but gaddamn if EA’s fumbling hasn’t pissed he right off.

</rant>

Perhaps a night of Gut Bucket squading is in order before I let Battlelog go dormant for most of the year.

A quick glance into my Picasa album reveals an unsettling fact: I hadn’t actually painted anything since the Storm Strider last September.  It kind of burned me out, and with the arrival of Old Republic and BF3, I haven’t had the drive or motivation to get back to modelling.  Well, since Privateer felt it absolutely necessary to start releasing these things this year I have to do something to justify the purchase of 3 Colossals.  Thus was born Project Two-for-One.

Since my painting backlog is so huge, I have to do something to cut it down while simultaneously reducing the number of models that enter my house.  To that end, I have pledged to myself that I will purchase no more models until I have painted twice point value of the thing I want to buy.  This goes for every game I play.  So, for example, if the Stormwall costs 20 points, I’ll have to paint 40 points worth of models to justify it.  This is quite the undertaking, but by getting an early start and using streamlined painting techniques, I should be able to achieve it.

The results so far: these 14 points of models have bank 7 points in credit. Now I need to stay focused and not squander the points on the newest shiny stuff.

From Warmachine

From Warmachine

From Warmachine

Buying more shit is also easy.  It’s like I’ve been bellied up to an all-you-can-eat pewter and resin buffet for the better part of 3 years and only now is the final chocolate wafer threatening to end me.  The colossals are my figurative chocolate wafer of doom.

It would appear that I’ll have 3 of these things to buy after July while still planning on getting the Trollkin Battle Wagon this month.  Looking at the sagging  Shame Shelf ™, I’ve realized I need an intervention.

Last year at this time I was very productive, cranking out finished Troll models with the combined motivators of the slow grow league and SA oaths.  This year I have no such motivation, so I have to invent a new one with the overall goals of first reducing my backlog and then slowing the rate of acquisition.  It was pretty simple:

For every point value in models (and this works across all of my games) that I wish to purchase, I will need to complete twice that many points in painted models.  So, if I really want a Wagon, I’ll need to paint 18 points worth of backlogged stuff.  Based on the information on Colossals, I’ll have to paint upwards of 40 points of models to justify purchasing one.  So, with all of those 120 mm based models I want, my total completion requirement will be ~140 points.

I start tonight.

DICE is running an official Only in Battlefield video contest, collecting pure, distilled BF nuttiness.  After a couple of games on Sunday, I started to wonder if I shouldn’t start capturing some of my matches…

• On Caspian Border, RU side, I flew my Flanker a little too close to the US spawn and got lit up by the LAV-AA.  Bailing out of my burning plane, I just happened to be right above the antenna point, currently controlled by the US.  I hoped to land on one of the higher platforms, but missed, instead drifting to one about mid way up the tower.  To my surprise, I landed right behind an enemy recon and his spawn beacon.  Taking them both out, I proceeded to clear rocky area around the point with my M16 RDS (hard to do at that range), and then parachuted down to capture the point.
• On Wake Island, RU side, I found myself defending the Beach point first as an Engineer and then as Assault.  The point was hotly contested, a slightly damaged Viper raining down death.  As it pulled away and flew low along the coast to break locks, I blind-fired an RPG at it’s retreating tail.  The Viper slewed back into the rocket’s trajectory at the last second, killing pilot and gunner.
• In the same match, at the same point, a competent Venom pilot was circling the Beach, shredding people on the ground and dropping troops to capture.  On the first pass I pumped an M320 round into the cabin, killing a gunner, and as soon as I reloaded, fired another into it’s guts, netting a triple kill.  The Venom flipped into the water and one lone survivor swam from the wreck.  I made sure he didn’t make it to shore.
• Again, same match (!), a daring F-35 pilot hovered over the RU landing field, tearing stuff up with his guns.  Unbelievably, I was able to pump a grenade into his cockpit, killing him and destroying the jet.

After a while, all Battlefield matches begin to feel predictable.  However, it’s moments like these that remind me why I’ve loved this series for close to a decade.

I’d say that 2011 was a good year.  Everyone in the Gow clan is healthy and (generally) happy, I got a new job with a substantial pay increase, and our overall financial situation improved drastically after adjusting our lifestyle.  But, of course, this blog isn’t about all that real life stuff.  No, no, no: there’s nerding to talk about.

Things with 3 in the Title

The bloom is most certainly not off the rose for 2011′s BF3, but my approach to the game has changed.  Other than a couple of the BoK assignments that I need to complete, I’ve unlocked pretty much everything and can swap around my class role and strategy at will.  So, I’m focusing on achieving the 5 service star (500 kills) mastery tags for each weapon in the game.  Yes, it will take a while, but it’s fun to run with a new gun and learn it inside and out before I retire it.  BF3 is having to learn to share time with The Old Republic (which doesn’t have 3 in the title, but can technically be considered KoToR 3).  More on that in a future post.

The coming March are two additional, very important #3s: Max Payne 3 and Mass Effect 3.  The former is one of my favourite bullet opera style game series ever and the latter caps my favourite “rpg” of the last few years.  As long as MP3 captures the same mood and pacing of the originals, and ME3 concludes the trilogy in an appropriately epic manner, I’ll be more than satisfied.

But, but… the Little Mens!  What of Them?

I closed out 2011 by wining the year-ending league, finally getting a 2nd coin for my cabinet after too long an interval.  The credit scored me Boomhowler and Co., who I’m learning to make good use of.

I’ve decided that 2012 will be the year of the underdog, the downtrodden and the greedy.  Cygnar’s going to be shelved for a while in favour of Mercenaries and Trollbloods.  The reasons are many (which I’ll probably explain in a future State of Warmahordes post), but generally, they haven’t seen as much time on the table as the Swans.  Don’t get me wrong, I still love the blue and gold, but until the Wrath ‘jacks come out there’s something… lacking with them.

Over the holiday break, I was able to glut myself on vidja games, but it’s time to return to the painting table.  I’ve got so much primed, it shouldn’t be too hard to find something to work on, even if my pace can’t match the output I achieved in 2011 with the slow grow league and oathing.  A solo here, a ‘jack there; eventually my cabinet will start to fill up again.

The Dueling Grounds scene has gotten a shot in the arm with a bunch of new (and returning) players bolstering our Thursday nights.  Consequently, our meta has changed significantly with new perspectives and tactics showing up.  It’s very similar to last year’s slow grow league when we topped out (very temporarily, sadly) at 22 players.  We’re not at those levels yet, but if the first 2012 Shattered Grounds league is well advertised (hint, hint Pressganger Brian) we could achieve a solid player base to carry through the year.

The Fate of the Tabletop

Our little group of aging nerds has been playing D&D 4E since near the release of this edition.  I gave up DMing due to a lack of time and handed it over to Stu.  He’s doing a great job and I imagine it’s difficult to maintain the thread of the plot when we play so infrequently.  However, upon hearing that Wizards (Hasbro) is about to take 4E (or, more specifically, the Essentials version of 4E) back behind the shed and kill it off in favour of a pseudo-crowdsourced 5th edition only four years into it’s life, I’ma  little disillusioned as to whether the franchise can be saved.

I get the impression that this is beyond mere beta-testing and more akin to focus-gouping.  Any sane mind knows that this doesn’t work too well if you want quality in the TV or movie realm, and I can’t imagine this being too successful with the inherent divisiveness of RPGers to begin with.  I, for instance, was disappointed with the underwhelming nature of DnD’s web tools, yet I acknowledge that they’re critical for any future PnP game’s success.  I paid absolutely no attention to the Essentials revisions of 4E, and was disappointed that they abandoned support for their niche worlds (Eberron and Dark Sun) in favour of returning time and time again to the (IMHO) tired Forgetten Realms setting.  If the publisher isn’t interested in developing and evolving their worlds via narrative, I tend to lose interest quickly.  Forward momentum is important to me becasue I have more time to read the game fluff than to actually play.

So, what’s the alternative?  There’s always Pathfinder, the D20 “3.75″ ruleset which, rumour has it, is now outselling DnD, but I’d rather get in on the ground floor of a setting I’m already familiar with.  The new Iron Kingdom RPG, set in the same world as Warmahordes with proprietary system, looks like a good candidate.  I’m thinking a mercenary based game with focus on the Khadoran occupation of Llael…

SW:TOR has it’s hooks in me.

Disclaimer: this review only covers my experience playing one character to 16th level during the early access period.

Graphics and Presentation

I’ll preface this section by mentioning that I just built a gaming-spec PC 2 months ago, so things run very smoothly.  This is, of course, aided by the fact that the game’s streamlined (I’m resisting the term “cartoony”) style isn’t very demanding.  On High settings, I’m pleased with the relative lack of texture pop-in, long draw distances and shadowing.  Areas are cohesive in their design and vastly impressive when they need to be.  The approach to the massive  Dark Temple on Dromund Kass, for example, is awe-inspiring due to it’s looming bulk, backlit by the world’s ever-present lightning storms.

Character designs, either PCs or NPCs, are generally distinguishable from one another even though there aren’t very many different body types to choose from. Skin colouration and often ridiculous facial hair choices (muttonchops are everywhere) easily differentiate characters.  As I’ve gotten beyond the starting worlds now, the diversity of outfits is getting really interesting.  I haven’t seen anyone with quite the same look as my guy.  I just need to get a picture of his new, dumb looking helmet…

The greatest improvement I’ve seen is the fact that every quest, every major plot point and multi-player instance is voice-acted.  Add in the standard 2-3 available response wheel like in every Bioware game, and you have an very immerse experience.

UI

No complaints here.  Perhaps it just needs a little more freedom to customize.  I also feel limited in my available ability quickslots, but perhaps I don’t really need all of them all the time.  Anyone who’s spent anytime in an MMO will adapt to the scheme pretty well I think.  I think I’ll prefer using something like Skype to co-ordinate group play instead of the chat.  Just showing my age.

Story and Background

1.  Metaplot

The Old Republic is set 300 years after the events in Bioware’s now-classic Knights of the Old Republic.  The galaxy is (once again) in turmoil thanks to the usual enmity between the Sith and the Republic.  A treaty has created an uneasy detente between the two factions not unlike the Cold War: all out war has ceased (for now) and the sides have retreated (somewhat) to plan their next move.  Conflict exists on a smaller scale, but the stakes are still very high.

2.  Theme

Bioware has done an excellent job of adapting TOR to the overall plot of the Old Republic era.  I’ve always preferred this timeframe to the “modern” setting.  It seems to take all the good world-building stuff that Lucas did and leave out his terrible, terrible writing.  There’s even callbacks to KOTOR: one notable set of quests on Dromund Kass involves a Revanite cult.  A certain important piece of KOTOR lore turns up here as well…

Again, like in KOTOR, the game plays around with the dark/light dichotomy.  Even within the Sith there are different schools of philosophy fighting for dominance during a time of great instability.  This makes for a variety of quest types that never start to feel old.

3.  Character

Ultimately, TOR is about YOUR character.  Sure, everyone choosing the same class gets the same story, but with 8 classes and slots to fill up, it still feels like it was made just for you.  My Mercenary, Acheron, is going dark side, and has already done some horrible things in the name of credits, while at the same time maintaining a good relationship with his companion, Mako.  She’s not the cold-blooded murderer Acheron is, but I envision he’s simply paying lip service to her becasue she’s useful, not becasue he actually has any sympathy for her or her dead mentor.

Gameplay

Over the years, MMOs have gotten away from the useless timesinks of their early days: harsh death penalties, repetitive crafting, slow travel and excessive recovery downtime.  I swear, 75% of the time I spent with my EQ monk was spent sitting and meditating, recovering from my most recent (read: every) near death encounter.  Downtime happens in TOR, but certain game mechanics make it far less arduous.

1.  Combat

Fighting is smooth and engaging.  I’m not playing the most complex character and have little experience grouping, but combat flows well and deaths happen rarely unless you’re not paying attention to what the game is telling you (yes, there is a difference between elite and non-elite enemies of the same level – found that out the hard way).

2.  Companions

They do the crafting and (most) of the resource gathering for you.  Everyone can craft now without spending time “out of the world” (as it were) staring at a crafting screen.  They can be outfitted like PCs and carry their weight in combat.  They have personalities and plotlines.  There is no downside to them that I can see so far.

3.  Grouping

Again, I’ve only done this once, but the Black Talon flashpoint is great intro to group dynamics.  The instances feel like special “episodes” of content outside of group quest lines, little nuggets of metaplot intruding on your “single-player” experience.  The grouping interface is intuitive and speedy, again reducing downtime.  Mind you, this is probably better done with people you know, like everything else in life.

Is SW:TOR worth it?  I’d say, at this point, yes.  I’ve yet to experience much in the way of space combat, more flashpoints, PvP or raiding, but if the game is able to maintain the same quality as the first chapter of my character’s experience, I’ll b e in for the long haul.