Saturday, March 18, 2017

Crucible Doubles Partner

So originally the only real thing I wanted to do at Crucible was play in the Narrative events on Saturday and Sunday.  But with a full 3 day ticket, I figured it would be neat if I could do something on Friday instead.  Sure enough, there was a doubles tournament happening on Friday.  3 rounds.  1850 points.  No formations/LoW/Gargantuans/Super Heavies.  925 points/person and 310 of those points had to be dedicated to Troops.  Sounded interesting!

I had originally pegged one of my buddies to play with me but life's gotten pretty hectic for him and it left me without a partner.  This past week the event organizers were asking people to register for what they wanted to play and while I mentioned I was a go for the Narrative, I didn't have a partner for the doubles event.

They managed to match me up with a guy named Michael.  We've actually been sending each other ideas for lists.  It started with Imperials with both of us fielding a form of Space Marines.  While trying to iron out the details of those lists we started talking about Chaos Space Marines and dual Deathguard Lists.  Unfortunately, those lists always seemed to be really points intensive and really limited how many bodies we'd put on the board.  Normally we'd fall back on something like summoning but with only 3-4 Warp dice to rely on, we opted to probably table that idea.

Then we started talking about Nids and voila, instantly I was sold.  The list should be pretty tough and it brings answers to a of other potential problems.  The main vulnerability of the list (as always) are the Tau.  I fully intend to see at least a few Riptides in some lists so I'm not sure how we'll tackle them.  But for now...Hive Fleet Malygos will see the table again!

It's been a while since I last played Tyranids.  Probably a good year and a half to two years.  But I'm up for the challenge!

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Busy Week, Hobby Time, A Primarch

This past week seemed to fly by.  Ironically it was a full week of work but I could never seem to catch up on sleep.  One night I think I must've gotten nearly 10 hours of sleep and yet still I went to work feeling like a zombie.  Hopefully changing my routine will help things.  But I foresee a week full of cleaning and chores ahead of me.

That said, I was still able to put in a wee bit of hobby time.  With me narrowing down my lists for Crucible, I dropped what should be the last of the models I'm stripping into the Simple Green vat.  Though I should only need about 2 or 3 Destroyer models, I opted to drop as many as I could fit (in this case, 9).  I hope to brush them clean of their old paint job on Monday or Tuesday and prime them on Wednesday or Thursday night.

I did wash some of my HQ units with black as well as my second Canoptek Spyder.  But I really need to work on getting some of my Scarabs ready.  I figure that getting roughly 7-9 ready should suffice for any Scarab Farm shenanigans...however an opponent might ignore them, leaving me with plenty of options moving forward.  They are fast little buggers and can rapidly outpace the Spyders.

Though I did argue with myself about potentially losing the snow theme, for now I'm moving forward with the idea.  It is funny because I always thought that the white color scheme with a black wash and then details picked out would be easy; however the consensus seems to be it is a tough scheme to execute due to the difficulty of painting white models.  In hindsight I should've probably stuck with Lead Belcher and then picked out the blue details.  Oh well!

Bag o Dice

One thing I did pick up this week from Amazon was Chessex's popular "Bag o Dice".  In this case I bought the 1 [lbf] bag with only D6's in there.  I probably could've used an assortment of D8, D10, D12, and D20's but I also wanted options if I decide to move forward with another idea...

YouTube Batreps


....namely, YouTube battle reports (or Batreps for short).  This is something I'd toyed with in the past and while I would like to record some of my games with my friends and such, I'm not sure I'm willing to put in the work/money to do it right.  From what I've gathered, beyond the things like having a good personality and being able to banter, there are a few basics to take on.  Namely, I need to have a good camera, good sound, and good lighting.  I think that a lot of the paint jobs I'd do would be good enough for table top and thus good enough to post.  But had to do a bit more investigating on what to get.

 

As for as I can tell, a Canon Vixia HF R700 would work great.  It has a pretty good quality (can record in 720-1080P) and has a microphone jack as well.  For a moment I thought I might be able to snag one off of Best Buy for $199.99, but it seems to be long gone.  I have found various "bundurus" on Amazon that would provide a tripod, memory card, and in some cases even some lighting.

Suffice to say, there are enough after market components that I can get a good microphone and even a couple of LED lights to help me with lighting.

But even having satisfied the quality requirements for audio and video, I still need to figure out how I'd process said videos.  I need to think about things a bit more as this isn't a random investment.  Plus at the moment, it isn't like I have a ton of time to do much either.

Rise of a Primarch


Of course the big news this week has been the release of rules and fluff for the return of Roboute Gulliman.  Unlike most, I harbor no ill will towards the Ultramarines and find him to be a very interesting albeit "goodie two shoes" style hero.  Given how "grim-dark" the setting can be at times, it is a bit refreshing to see a character like Roboute re-introduced.

All fluff aside, his rules are what has caught my eye.  He seems to be a beast in close combat and while his shooting isn't ultra powerful, he will be hitting most anything he needs/wants.   He does seem to be a great force multiplier but the only issues I've had thus far with him is the fact that he is a Monstrous Creature and as a result does not have the Independent Character special rule.

As it stands, the game is slowly creeping more and more in favor of "death star" type units being the best.  Him having the IC rule would instantly make him that much more surviveable.  There are ways to insure that he stays on the board much longer (Invisibility in particular), but it is far from being a guarantee.

I will be interested to learn of the formations provided by the last of the Gathering Storm books.  Perhaps one will allow him to form a super unit with Cypher and the GK Librarian.

For the moment, I'm content that the story is moving forward.  Killing off the Emperor would be a huge step for the lore.  Something that has pretty much not changed in decades.  As a fan of the setting, I'm definitely waiting on pins and needles to see where things go!