I realise that television is rarely a fount of originality. I'm not saying the new shows coming out in the US in the autumn will be bad - I'll be quite interested to see how they go, and at least one of them is around one of my favourite characters. But they are derivative in the extreme.

Revolution is set in a world 15 years after all the electricity goes out, and features a pretty girl with a crossbow, along with some other medieval weaponry, guns, and the breakup of the US into micro-states. You're thinking of The Hunger Games, and you're not wrong. It looks interesting, and they've done some nice-looking things with the visuals in the same line as The World Without Us, but man, that is a pretty blatant rip-off of Suzanne Collins.

Elementary is a rip-off of Sherlock. It features a female Watson, and it's set in the USA. The lead even acts like Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes. Is Sherlock Holmes sf? It seems to have been adopted, anyway.

Beauty and the Beast seems to be yet another retelling of the Barbot de Villeneuve story, with a good strong Twilight element in there. Incidentally starring Kristin Kreuk, last seen as Lana Lang in Smallville, and looking exactly as she did there.

And speaking of Smallville, the last offender in the derivative parade is Arrow - all about Green Arrow, the side character from Smallville and DC Comics before that. Played by a different actor, more's the pity, and almost certainly in a different continuity.

Why couldn't they do Blue Beetle? Too obscure? There was a version of him in Smallville!

The io9 article I pulled these from lists a few more, some of which are possibly more original. But the number of even those described as "It's like show X with element Y changed, by the guy who did show Z" is impressive.

Obviously, none of these shows are taking chances. They're taking something that clearly worked well, and copying the elements they think appealed. The idea that originality might have its own appeal seems to be lost.

Maybe I'm just getting grumpy, but games and books seem to have some more originality.

+1 Mailbag: Have you ever seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick? Well, it doesn't matter, 'cause that's not what we're talking about. Liam, humbug and ice-cream have a chat about blurbs for convention games.

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The college term is over, and I have enough spare brain to write some blog entries again. The only game I've been playing for the past couple of months has been Wurm Online, mostly because it works very well as a background game. I click a few times to set some activity going, I do something else for a few minutes, and then I click things again. If I'm on my deed, it's a very rare thing to need to react to anything.

Indeed, in this case, where I remain on or near my deed most of the time, all the action in Wurm happens in my head, and often in the future as well. It's a game that rewards long-term thinking, and I've been working gradually toward a few goals.

First, I've been terraforming my deed. Mostly this consists of flattening it, and laying in some paths. I've also started to work down the hill to the west a bit, in terraces (well, so far, terrace). There's a deed south and west of me that will likely disband soon, and when it does, I'll expand my deed down the hill to the coast, and those terraces will then become part of the deed rather than the perimeter. At the same time, geometry of other deeds permitting, I might extend it back a bit, to lay claim to an area of woodland that lies to the east, and which would do very nicely for ongoing wood production.

I've also gained a few animals, though the generosity of neighbours. I have three horses, and four cattle. Domestic animals can be bred, and I've started that with the cattle. Two of the horses are too young still, so that will need to wait. In the meantime, all the beasts get groomed daily, and I make sure that the pens they're in have sufficient food. I'm developing the food production skills at the same slow and steady pace, and considering which crafts I'll take up in the long run.

I do like the terraforming, but taking it up as a long term skill requires a good bit of marketing in the game, and a lot of being away from my own deed. The option, of course, is to spend time developing good, solid deeds, with farmland, trees, and so on, and then sell them, and that's a tempting way to go.

The more conventional crafts of smithing and boatbuilding are also possibilities, and carpentry as well. I'm inclined in those areas to choose one that can have its products sold via merchants, rather than things where I need to negotiate the sale myself in person. Having carpentry and masonry at high levels would also be useful for when the fabled second-story houses come in. And it does occur to me that if a second story can be coded, there's no reason a third or more could not also be managed; someone with high carpentry or masonry might become a specialised builder of towers. I did mention the long-term thing.

I also want to do some exploration, after I make or buy myself some better armour. As it is, my only real option with most aggressive creatures is to flee as quickly as possible. I'm aware of some interesting looking areas up toward the mountains, though, where it looks as though there were once deeds, and no longer are. Those areas often contain treasure - that is, stuff left behind by previous players - or areas in which nice new deeds could easily be placed. Indeed, I'd like to travel to the Independence server as well, because I hear tales of large areas of unoccupied land, treasure left, right and centre, and more abandoned deeds than you can shake a stick at. A huge cotton-growing operation on an alt, say, could be very profitable.

It's a big game, and there's more to it all the time - reeds to make papyrus to write stuff down on have only recently been added, for example, and given the amount of material already in the game, I don't think I can go fast enough to try everything.

Per: There are loads of gaming related events coming up, conventions and otherwise. Listen in and don't miss out. Episode provided me with the reason to book q-con early and I had a breakfast roll for dinner. How was your day?

• Hobocon
• GPO
• White Christmas
• Q-Con
• BroCon
• Last Summer Weekend
• Arkham Spring Slaughter
• SkibbCon
• Dark Heresy Larp
• Midway

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Mailbag: While not a comprehensive look at every generic game ever, we waffle away for our usual while on the subject. Last episode with Shane of the couple we recorded when he came back for a visit from the mainland.

• GURPS
• d20 System
• Fate
• Universalis
• Strands of Fate
• Savage Worlds

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+1 Con: Everyone who didn't go to Conpulsion should listen to this and decide to attend next year.

• Conpulsion
• Edinburgh Castle
• Fort Eben-Emael
• The Laundry
• Dead of Night
• pass IT on
• The One Ring
• GURPS Discworld
• Feng Shui
• Rouge Trader
• Wrath of the Volcano God

Discuss this episode on irishgaming.com

+1 Exp: A review of Innsmouth Escape. Liam provides it with a number. I'm trying to remember if I won my first game of this game - something that I've found to lead to liking a game more - 'cause I think it's kind of good. Shane swans back to provide a mainland point of view.

• Innsmouth Escape
• Zombies
• Dark Corners of the Earth

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Dave Renyolds writes to tell me:

New Gaming Shop in Dun Laoghaire - Opening Early June
http://www.facebook.com/dunlaoghairehobbyshop

Con: Report on Vaticon from last week. Feeling poorly, no links or stuff.

Exp: Eclipse, a board game about space ships and exploration and other words with the letter 'x' in them scores some pretty good stats. Available from Finland or the internet. Don't those Star Trek/crossover fan made movies come from Finland? From now on the Finlandians are my #1 fans of space combat.

• Eclipse
• Eminent Domain
• Master of Orion II
• Swedish Bank
• Space Empires
• Country where I quite like to be
• Fantasy Flight Games

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I am getting enormous enjoyment out of Wurm Online at the moment. I've established myself on a nice spot on the West Coast of Deliverance, and I'm slowly building toward having a solid deed there.

There have, of course, been problems. The main problem in Wurm tends to be that if you want to do thing X, then you need to back up and do things A, B, C, and so forth before you can get back to X. And I made some mistakes as well.

The first mistake, oddly enough, was fencing. I didn't realise that you can't properly terraform a tile that has fencing at the edge. So the uneven surface of my deed (now slightly extended beyond the fence) is stuck there until I pull down the fences. But in the meantime, it did increase my carpentry skills by a considerable amount.

The second mistake was not looking for iron before I laid down the deed. That may yet be a longer term problem, but I'm not yet certain.

For nearly all the basic things that can be made in Wurm, you need wood and iron. Wood is not a problem for me; there's a "back lot" which is nothing but standing timber, and every now and then I go on a sprout-picking expedition to make sure it stays that way. This also gets me a fair number of fruit trees, which are planted around the deed.

It's the iron that's a problem. There are two mines reasonably near me which have iron in them, and which are not locked or gated. "Reasonably near", however, is a relative term. One of them has a convenient forge, in which I could smelt down ore into lumps, the pure form of iron, and those are lighter and easier to bring home. But that one is further away, and while that's alright in terms of travel time - it's not that far - it means I'm away from the protection of my deed guard. So if something attacks me, I have to run all the way back to my own deed - I'm just about able to take on a wildcat or a lion at this stage, but not a bear, and spiders are death on eight legs. And they seem to love mines.

The other mine has no forge, and is down a steep hill with no road. That makes it a very slow journey back with ore, which is 20 times heavier than the iron lumps. And in both cases, I feel a bit guilty about pilfering someone else's iron.

So really, I need to find an iron vein near my own deed. Ideally, under it, so that the guard will protect me right there. But my deed rests on deep soil. About forty units of depth, actually, before you hit rock. And if you want to find where there's iron easily, you need to uncover rock. Basically, this means digging through a minimum of 160 actions, all of which produces blocks of dirt, which need to be moved somewhere. I do not fancy doing that all over the deed.

Instead, I dug down to rock on six tiles - a little off the edge of the deed, in fact, where someone had dug a starting hole before I arrived - opened a tunnel, and mined back under the deed, essentially brute-forcing the finding of iron. Except that, thus far, I haven't found any. I've carefully calculated the amount of mining I need to do, and I'm halfway through, with no sign of any iron. In one spot, I've broken through into another mine, but that's via a long, long drop shaft that you can't get back up. That mine connects to two others, as well - one of which is the iron-containing one at the bottom of the steep hill. But that doesn't improve my logistics. Poking around the rest of the opened areas through that drop-shaft, I'm seeing a lot of copper and zinc - but not much iron.

My next thinking is that I'll finish out mining under my own deed, and then, if I haven't found anything, mine out toward the coast. That way, any beasts that arrive into the mine will have to pass through the deed, unless of course they spawn in tunnels - and even then, I'll have a straight run back to my own deed and safety.

Once I find a useful source of iron, I can get on with my other intentions - tearing down fences, levelling land, and putting in some walls. And then I'm intending to start to farm crops properly, and begin a road that runs down the hill to the coast. I'm not sure if that should go straight, or if it should zig-zag down; recent changes have made steep slopes a lot more navigable by horses, so straight down might be alright - it's certainly ok on foot as it is.

Chronicles of Skin got nominated for the Griffies!

Amazing. Thanks to all the crew in Edinburgh and good luck to all the other amazing entrants!

The Role-Playing Game Griffie Nominees are as follows.

Chronicles of Skin (CobWeb Games)
Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland (Cubicle 7)
Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein (Cubicle 7)
The Agency (Realms Publishing)
The One Ring (Cubicle 7)

The Board Game Griffie Nominees are as follows.

Crooks (White Goblin Games)
Last Will (Czech Games Edition, Rio Grande Games)
Ora et Labora (Z-Man Games)
Proud Monster Deluxe (Compass Games)
Ristorante Italia (ElfinWerks, Red Glove)

I’ll be there next weekend, demoing Chronicles of Skin, so if you’d like to see what all the fuss is about, come and see me at the convention (Conpulsion, Edinburgh).

Very, very recently, the Hickeys got interviewed on the Jennisodes.

Sebastian talks about his game, Jason offers witticisms and wisdom, and Jenn asks lovely questions. It’s a charming conversation.

Check it out.

A guest post from quozI, of infinity tournament fame (read also remorseless pestering)

We’re all familiar with the classic Wargaming mechanism of I go, you Go (IGoUGo). That’s where one player moves, shoots etc. with all their miniatures and then the other player gets to do the same with theirs. As an approach for handling player turns it definitely has its advantages – it’s familiar so it makes a new game more instantly accessible, it’s tried and tested and it’s the only approach that many members of our wargaming community have ever experienced.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40,000, Warmahordes, even down to classic board-games such as Bloodbowl. I get my turn, you wait, then you get your turn and I wait.

So what’s the problem, or is there even one?

I was a massive Warmahordes fans for years – I still think it’s a great game and it uses the IGoUGo approach. I came to Warmahordes from another IGoUGo game – 40K. All was OK with my relationship with 40K until I was badgered (thanks Paul) into trying a game of Warmachine and realised that there was a game out there that for my personal tastes far surpassed 40K. From then on 40K was dead to me.

Now this has happened to me for a second time but this time it’s IgoUGo that’s dead to me.

I discovered Infinity the skirmish game and Force on Force/Tomorrow’s War. Both games built on a reaction system where there still is an active player but where the other player gets to react to their actions.

So what’s different without IGoUGo?

You no longer have to sit and watch your opponent play the game.

I’ve had opponents turns in Warmachine take anything from 7 minutes steam-roller time up to 1 hour (timed with a clock and all!). I would guess that the average turn is about 15 to 20 minutes. That’s 15 to 20 minutes in which you’re not doing anything. You can be sitting there strategizing about what you’ll do in your own turn but I seldom bother as the opportunities that will be available to you only reveal themselves or close themselves off as your opponent plays out his turn.

So you sit. You watch and you wait. If you’re like me then you smack talk a bit but wouldn’t you rather be smack talking AND doing in-game stuff?

In Infinity if a model performs an action (walk, shoot, climb, hack, whatever) in your line of sight then you get to react to it. You may decide to shoot them, dodge out of sight, hack them to immobilise them, drop prone behind a wall and plenty of other options. So while the active player determines the match-ups and the flow of his turn through maneuver, you get to react to it all, making valuable decisions and possibly stymying his dastardly plans.

If your reaction could stop your opponents action from occurring – for example if you try and dodge his gun-fire, or shoot him first – then you both roll dice and the winner gets to perform their action. So you may successfully duck around the corner before he can hose you down with his heavy machine gun, or you may find it’s your bullet ridden corpse that lurches around that corner!

As Infinity is a skirmish game and one where terrain is important, this doesn’t slow the game down like you might expect it to. Active players will attempt to minimise the number of automatic reaction orders (ARO) – as they’re known – by avoiding LOS, moving from cover to cover, or best of all, manoeuvering to attack from behind. A good size game of Infinity can be finished in an hour against quick players and anything up to 2 1/2 hours against the analysis-paralysis types… you know who you are!

Unlike in alternating activation (AA) games – another possible system where players take turns activating usually a single model, such as Malifaux – in Infinity a player gets to activate their whole force in their turn allowing them to put a larger plan into action rather than – to me anyway – the more seat-of-the-pants tactics that alternating activations encourages. I’m not dissing AA, I just prefer the Infinity style reaction system. I am dissing IGoUGo though!

Apart from the greater fun (IMO), perhaps where the difference is most noticeable is if you’re playing a reaction based game system is in your legs! I spend the entire time standing for Infinity and Force on Force because you’re constantly involved in the action, making decisions and thus surveying the board and model positions. In 40K or Warmachine, I found myself sitting down for most of my opponent’s turn. Waiting. There’s that word again – waiting! Waiting’s dull.

Force on Force (FoF) is a critically acclaimed Modern-era (post WWII) wargame from Ambush Alley games, published by Osprey Publishing. This year they added a Sci-Fi brother, Tomorrow’s War. Both use the same core system with additional Sci-Fi esque rules added to Tomorrow’s War to allow you to represent tech disparities between forces, bipedal armoured walkers, hover tanks, aliens, all the Sci-Fi staples that you know and love. As an aside it’s also scale neutral and perfectly suited for use with all your 40K minis.

Typical game size is around a platoon, with the individual units being 3 to 5 man fire-teams or special weapons teams rather than the individuals in Infinity. Each side has anything from 2 to 10 fire-teams – or significantly more for big games if you wanted. Plus vehicles ranging from pickup trucks with flat-bed mounted machine guns to main battle tanks – or grav-tanks in Tomorrow’s War.

In Force on Force each turn game mechanics decide which player is going to be the active player and who is going to be the re-active player. Think of the active player as the side currently with the initiative in the fight – maybe the side putting more lead into the air and better suppressing their opposition, or maybe just the side that is currently better co-ordinated and is implementing their plan.

If it’s two regular trained forces fighting each other then who is active this turn will depend on the scenario, or dice rolls modified by various factors.

If it’s Regulars versus Irregulars – think militia or un-trained insurgents – then the regular player always retains initiative. That’s right, if it’s you against rag-tag mobs of human civies or animalistic alien hordes then it’s always your turn and never theirs. That sounds like it’d be boring for the irregulars, doesn’t it? Well, trust me, it isn’t. I love playing the irregulars

The player with initiative gets to activate each of their units. Moving, running, shooting, assaulting or various combinations of these. Or the active player can sacrifice a units activation to place them into over-watch, but more about that later.

Any unit on the reactive player’s side who sees an active player’s unit do something gets to react. Just like in Infinity, and again just like in Infinity the reacting player’s action can oppose and possibly prevent the active player’s action. That is if they’re quick enough and lucky enough! Again you may duck out of sight so your opponent can’t shoot you or alternatively you may suck it up and try and shoot them first hoping to do so much damage to them render return fire ineffectual.

Regular units can react to multiple actions in a single turn, however they lose one dice of fire-power or an inch of movement for every subsequent reaction that turn. Eventually they just can’t react any more. In FoF – unlike in Infinity – units can even react to reacting units! So an active unit may advance, a reactive unit may declare a shooting reaction at them and then another active unit that has not yet activated or that is in overwatch can itself choose to react to that reactive unit. This sounds complicated but it’s quite easy to keep track of who is doing what just by placing dice beside the units that are reacting or already have done so.

This multiple reaction system also speeds up, not slows down the game. You’ll also find that few insurgents will react to an advancing unit if there’s multiple units in over-watch looking at them and few active units will blindly run out in front of multiple reactive units. This is part of the joy of this system, so well does it represent classical bounding over-watch that the Australian army use it train NCOs. Despite all that, it’s great fun and fast and vicious. Just how I like my games!

When the active player finishes their turn any units belonging to the reactive player that haven’t reacted this turn can then perform an activation of their own. Only needing to fear those over-watch units we previously mentioned.

So where does this leave me?

Addicted. I can’t go back. I can’t sit and passively watch my opponent play for 10, 15 or more minutes without getting to make any meaningful decisions myself. I also don’t want to go back to my opponent watching me play – I want them trying to shaft me in my own turn. That’s fun and now my smack talk can be laced with actions and not just toothless banter!

And you?

I heartily recommend trying out some games with activation approaches other than IGoUGo. If it’s the only thing you know – as was the case with me – then you really can’t know if it’s your preferred approach without trying the alternatives out. I wasn’t even really aware I didn’t like IGoUGo until I saw the alternatives. I thought the waiting was something you had to accept with wargames. It isn’t, and I urge you to try out some of the alternatives yourself. I want to see IGoUGo consigned to the gaming history bin.

Infinity the skirmish game:

Free rules and army lists available. Links on http://www.infinity-ireland.org

Force on Force:

Ambush Alley Games http://ambushalleygames.com/

20 euro delivered from http://www.bookdepository.co.uk

Scale and miniatures neutral. Use your 40K models or a cool 15mm army for 40 quid.

+1 Con: Wow. I speak really fast when talking enthusiastically about GURPS. Guess it's never come up before. We talk about Itzacon. Plenty good.

• GURPS
• Dragon Warriors
• Innsmouth Escape
• Drinking Quest
• The Great Dalmuti
• Paranoia
• Murder Born
• Ars Magica
• Halo
• Ooh-Ah

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Con & +1 Int: We sucked in our attendance of Leprecon, but Eoin is able to hold the fort. Vaticon is shaping up. Figured that an earlier mention with less blurbs was better than a later mention with more.

• L5R Kotei and Map
• Leper
• 4e
• L5R Guy
• Iron Kingdoms
• Dune
• New Dune
• Vaticon XVIII
• Fate
• Agents of S.W.I.N.G.
• Archer
• Marvel Heroic Roleplay
• Ubiquity
• Shadowrun

Discuss this episode on irishgaming.com

Exp: We have an honest-to-goodness theme linking our reviews this week. Suspicion or suspense or not knowing who the ninja or lobster is. There's a bit of bag rustling near the start, and a conspicuously loud gulp of tea. And Eoin says something about a clacker.

• Panic Station
• Ninja
• The Thing
• Unabomber

IRISH MASTERS 2012

G’day, Warmachine (and Hordes) fans!  Here I present, for your delectation, an exhaustive report of my experience at the 2^nd Irish Masters, hosted by Leprecon 2012.  I was more excited about this tournament than a grown man ought to be, and that was in no small part due to the imminent appearance of Jason Soles – one of the original Warmachine designers.  He was bringing the trophies over from Seattle for us, and I was determined he wouldn’t take any back with him!  The format for the event was three 35pt lists (with 7pts reinforcements); but every list had to be played at least once, and no list more than twice over the five games across the weekend.  Here are the lists I took…

List one: (No Quarter Theme list – tier 3)

Dawnlord Vyros                                     (+6 points)
Hydra                                              (8* points)
Manticore                                    (7* points)
10 Dawnguard Sentinels                            (9 points)
+UA                                     (2 points)
+Marshalled Griffon                   (4 points)
10 Houseguard Halberdiers                  (7 points)
+UA                                     (2 points)

2x Arcanists                                     (2 points)
Reinforcements:
Manticore                                     (7* points)

A pared-down version of the 50pt list I took to Gamers World in February, but which didn’t do so well in my 35pt play-testing.  The extra 15pts gave me double Covering-Fire and a whole lotta Focus-efficiency (ie with the Tier 4 bonus), whereas I found just two Warjacks got destroyed too easily.  Anyway, this was a still my attrition-based, *anti-Stealth * list.

List two: (Theme list – tier 3)
Adeptis Rahn                                     (+6 points)
2xPhoenix                                     (20 points)
Arcanist                                     (0* points)
10 Houseguard Halberdiers                  (7 points)
+UA                                    (2 points)
6 Battle Mages                                     (5 points)
+ Soulless Escort                  (1 point)
3* Battle Magister Solos                            (6 points)

Reinforcements:
Arcanist                                             (1 point)
6 Battle Mages                                    (5 points)
+ Soulless Escort                  (1 point)

Except for a slight shuffle to include reinforcements (wouldn’t normally include Soulless Escorts), this has been my default Rahn-list for 35pts for a very long time.  He just dominates control-based scenarios, and can stay well back with his mighty Control Range and double Arc-Node… But has the most hard-counters of my three lists: Protectorate of Menoth and Circle Orboros can completely shut down his spells (as will any Stealth-heavy army), and the conspicuous lack of Pathfinder means Rough Terrain is a big problem too.  For all these reasons and more, my third list is:

List three (“Snipe, Feat, Go!”)

Ravyn, Eternal Light                            (+6 points)
Phoenix                                             (10 points)
Aiyana & Holt                                    (4 points)
10 MHSF                                     (8 points)
+UA                                     (2 points)
6 Dawnguard Invictors                            (6 points)
+UA                                     (2 points)
4 Stormfall Archers                            (5 points)

Epic Eiryss                                     (3 points)

Arcanist                                             (1 point)

Reinforcements:
Destor Thane                                     (4 points)
Narn                                              (3 points)

Models with Pathfinder to deal with terrain; Aiyana & Holt to hand out Magical Weapons (handy for Incorporeal models as much as Menite Warjacks); dirty Assassination potential to *hopefully* discourage my opponents from taking the nastier Control-Warcasters (looking at you, Harbinger and Major Haley!).  My rough kinda plan was to use each list once on the Saturday, and leave myself with full choice for the Sunday – but to let the Scenario and opponent of each game to take precedence in my choice.  So… How’d I do?

Game one – Anthony (Cryx)“Gauntlet” (#2)

Warwitch Deneghra                     (+5 points)

2x Deathrippers                            (8 points)

Skarlock                                       (2 points)

6 Bane Thralls                               (5 points)

+UA                                     (3 points)

6 Bile Thralls                                 (5 points)

10 Satyxis Blood Witches                 (6 points)

+UA                                       (2 points)

Bane Lord Tartarus                           (4 points)

Pistol Wraith                                    (3 points)

Warwitch Siren                                    (2 points)

Anto’s other lists were led by Skarre1 and Skarre2, both with juicy targets for Ravyn… but I didn’t want to risk the possibility of a Stealthy Warcaster (and $%&@ Bane Thralls) so took Adeptis Rahn.  Turned out I’d made the right decision for the scenario as well – only problem was the Killbox Artifice meant he couldn’t hang back as far as I’d like; but with a wall of Halberdiers between himself and the filthy undead horde, I figured he’d be Okay.

This was an extremely bloody fight for both sides: highlights being my left-flank Phoenix getting wiped out by just two charging Bane Thralls (with a little help from Parasite), and my Battle Mages thumping the Incorporeal Blood Witches into a panic with their Magical boxing-gloves (which I never previously knew they had!).  On my Feat turn I was able to clear my scoring zone and run a Battle Magister Solo in for my first Control point.

My screen of Halberdiers had almost evaporated by this point, and my remaining Phoenix couldn’t run/charge/do anything much except walk 4” and be Channelled through…  Luckily though, the zone was still pretty much uninhabited (did I mention it was a bloody game?!), and after the last two Halberdiers killed the Blood Hag with a single Combined Melee Attack, Adeptis Rahn was able to use his spells to Push/Slam the last guys out of the zone for the second Control Point and the win.  Good job really, or he would have died HORRIBLY the following turn!

Picture: Force Blast FTW!

WIN – 2 Control Points to 0

Game two – Ian (Minions)“Restoration” (#15)

Picture: Ian

Dr Arkadius                            (+6 points)

4x Warhogs                                    (28 points)

4 Bone Grinders                                    (2 points)

6 Farrow Brigands                           (5 points)

6 Slaughter-housers                           (6 points)

Ian had brought all three Farrow Warlocks to the tournament, and had painted his mass of Pig-flesh very well.  I’ve used Dr. Arkadius and Lord Carver myself before, but had yet to see what Sturm and Drang were capable of.  I decided to take Ravyn for the Scenario, as I figured her guys would shoot the Objective to rubble in one turn.  However, when Ian selected Dr. Arkadius and elected to go first, I changed my plan…

At DEF 15 and ARM 14, Dr. Arkadius is *theoretically* an ideal target for “Snipe, Feat, Go”; so long as he ends his turn within 22” of the Mage Hunter Strike Force.  He did; and I actually apologised to Ian before I even rolled any dice!  Guess what though…

After my failed assassination attempt, Dr. Arkadius Feated, and all of a sudden four hopped-up Warhogs were in my face – one in fact B2B with Ravyn after having Trampled over my useless Mage Hunters (luckily by then it was out of Forcing range so was unable to buy more attacks that turn).  I had another turn of un-boosted shooting to try and salvage the situation, but in the end only brought the deviant scientist down to two hit-boxes.  Ravyn then got splatted.

Picture: Warhog to the face…

I ended the game with only 1 army point, from killing half a unit of Bone Grinders!  For all that my dice failed me, I didn’t deserve to do any better because I’d ignored the scenario, and gone for the Assassination without any sort of contingency plan.  Well done Ian!

LOSS – 0 Control Points to 0

Game three – Adam (Skorne)“Envelopment” (#12)

Picture: Adam

Archdomina Makeda                           (+5 points)

Cyclops Brute                                    (5 points)

Molik Karn                                    (11 points)

Titan Gladiator                                    (8 points)

4 Beast Handlers                           (2 points)

10 Praetorian Swordsmen                           (6 points)

Agonizer                                    (2 points)

2x Ancestral Guardians                           (6 points)

Reinforcements:
Rhinodon                                             (7 points)

If I wanted to keep all my options open for the Sunday, then I had to take Vyros this round… but I took a risk and selected Rahn for the second time, figuring that whereas he doesn’t mind fighting Skorne, he HATES fighting Menoth and Circle, and I could end up fighting one or t’other the next day.  Besides, this was another scenario which Rahn ought to dominate.

I’ll not dwell on this battle; suffice to say that it was my best game of the weekend.  Adam, who is an incredibly nice guy (even though he kept trying to distract me with his dodgy dancing), was actually a Trollbloods player, but had to borrow his mate’s Skorne because his latest order hadn’t come in on time.  He told me he hadn’t played against Warmachine armies much, and I got the impression he didn’t know the Retribution at all…  One day I’d like a rematch against your Trollz Adam, so if you’re reading this, please contact me!

Picture: Rahn DOES love scenarios…

So Saturday was done, and although I was disappointed with Game two, I was reasonably happy with my overall performance.  I was out of the running for the awesome trophy (unless some very weird stuff happened on Sunday…), but figured I was still in the running for a podium-finish.  BRING IT ON!

WIN – 3 Control Points to 0

Game four – Gerry (Legion of Everblight)“Diversion” (#17)

Picture: Gerry

Lylyth, Shadow of Everblight                (+5 points)

Nephilim Bolt Thrower                           (6 points)

2x Ravagore                                    (20 points)

6 Blighted Nyss Striders                           (6 points)

+UA                                    (0* points)

6 Blighted Nyss Striders                           (6 points)

Strider Deathstalker                           (2 points)

Gerry straight-up told me who he was taking this round before I even had a chance to look at his lists (Kallus and I believe Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight were his other options), *probably* because I’d been telling him for weeks just how much Epic Lylyth makes the Retribution cry!  Certainly, had I taken Ravyn it would have been a very one-sided match, so I took Vyros and hoped he’d be able to tough it out.

I immediately screwed up my deployment by putting the Sentinels on the WRONG SIDE of a house from the Flag they needed to defend; but luckily they had enough SPD to get there by turn two, and enough ARM to survive the Striders’ bows.  Vengeance helped me out a lot here, and for the first time I can remember, the Offcier survived all game!  It was at about this point that we realised we hadn’t deployed properly…  Whoops!

Picture: “radial deployment, you say?”

On the other side of the table, Lylyth and her Battle-group were having uncharacteristic trouble mowing down my guys.  Even the three Halberdiers that were on fire managed to beat out the flames!  I managed to sneak in a Control Point by running my soon-to-be-dead Manticore up to the flag under Mobility the same turn a single, solitary Sentinel (say THAT ten times fast) put a toe into the Zone.  I tried to engineer a second point, but “Dice Down” was called.  I won on first tie-breaker, and now feel like I‘ve *sharked* Gerry with all my talk of how broken eLylyth is – honestly, I was expecting to get wiped out!

WIN 1 Control Point to 0

Game five – Harry (Cygnar)“Incursion” (#7)

Picture: Harry

Commander Adept Nemo                         (+6 points)

Charger                                             (4 points)

Lancer                                             (6 points)

Stormclad                                    (10 points)

Squire                                             (2 points)

6 Arcane Tempest Gun Mages                  (6 points)

+UA                                    (2 points)

Aiyana & Holt                                    (4 points)

Arlan Strangewayes                           (2 points)

Gorman di Wulfe                                    (2 points)

Journeyman Warcaster                           (3 points)

Ooh, I LIKE this scenario!  Partly because I have my own cool little flags made from spare Myrmidon parts.  I decided to take Ravyn because I reckoned I could out-shoot any of Harry’s own gunlines (he also had General Adept Nemo and Siege I think, though I don’t remember which list he’d already used twice).  Harry chose table-side.

Picture: Gunline vs. Gunline

…Turns out I was right!  On my Feat Turn I turned the Lancer and Stormclad into wreck-markers, and the following turn I wasted the Charger, the Journeyman Warcaster, the *fake* Aiyana & Holt (because mine were the real ones…) and Gorman Di Wulfe.  By the time the smoke cleared there was no way for Cygnar to contest my last Control Point in the third turn (I also got lucky with that – the one on the left disappeared which was ideal), so I won my last game of the weekend.

Thanks for the game Harry – I’m worried I didn’t shake your hand afterwards, and have been worried about it ever since!  See you at Itzacon, Maybe?

WIN – 3 Control Points to 0

Results and stuff…

With nine Control Points over the weekend, I JUST edged out Jason Soles for 3^rd Place, as he also had four wins over the tournament (he’d played five additional games over the weekend just for the Craic – beating me both times we faced off…).  I won a nifty Steamroller certificate and commemorative coin, and a hardback Prime Rulebook signed by the development team.  I also won the randomly-assigned fully-painted army prize, which was a cool poster of Kommander Strakhov that I bullied Jason into signing for me!

Picture: Me & Jason

All in all, a fabulous weekend!  Well done Stu for organising the event, and thanks to everyone who took part.  I hope to see y’all around on the forums and the next few tournaments.  I’m taking Garryth and Kaelyssa to Itzacon this weekend – who’s up for a beat-down?

Parenthetically yours, (Neil)

Apologies for the long break in posting; I've been away on holiday. However, before I went, I was inspired by Stargrace, posting about Wurm Online, to log in and have a look around again. I liked what I saw - there's been a graphics upgrade, new servers, and other improvements.

Last time I was playing, I joined the village of Stonehaven. It worked well, but it wasn't quite fitting my vision of Wurm - developing my own deed, building it from the ground up (or considering Wurm's landscape, building the ground first and then the deed...) and making an impact on the world. Instead I was joining a well-established village, and contributing only very little because my skills weren't all that high. To boot, even had I wandered off, that server was so thoroughly jammed with people as to be impossible to settle with a low-skilled character.

This time, I created a new character, and headed for the new server where I knew some people. I was able to make it across from the spawn point to where they live, poke around a bit, and find a spot where I could set up a small deed of my own. It's up on a hill, not an unreasonable distance from water, and the neighbours are nice folk. There have been previous deeds in the area, so the spot I've claimed - all of 11 tiles square - already contains a forge, some storage, and a cobbled area. That's immensely useful, and still leaves me plenty to do. So the first thing I'm doing is puting a fence around the deed - a simple wooden one - and the second thing I'm going to do is more-or-less level it, and establish some fields and orchards.

As with everything in Wurm, the fencing is a long process - three or four nights of work have about 60% of the work done, and I'm still debating exactly how much to fence. I could, of course, just fence the whole thing, but that actually cuts me off from a useful resource. The guard that lives on the domain (well, I say lives - she's a ghost templar) kills hostile beasts that come onto my territory. If I butcher and skin those, I get meat, pelts, teeth, and so on - all useful things. But if I fence all around, they can't come on to the deed. The fence, though, marks out the borders for me - otherwise I'll have to keep on clicking on the ground to see whether that-tile-there is mine or not - and will keep animals, when I get some, on the deed. So I might end up fencing three sides, or three and a half, and leaving some open space for beasties to wander in and become dinner.

The deed down the hill from me is for sale - it's a nice patch of coastal territory, and the owner wants 12 silver for it. You can buy game currency directly - which is about as much use as it is in EVE - so if I wanted to drop €12 on it, I could get a second deed. I don't think I do, though; I've enough going on with the current deed for now, and there is a fair chance that the owner will just disband it and move elsewhere if it doesn't sell. If that happens, I could expand into that area, or I could create an alt, and establish a new deed where his was. I think that for now, I'll sit tight, and see what happens.

Wurm is going to be my MMO of choice for at least the next few months - it doesn't demand all that much time, it won't block me from getting in if I let my paid access lapse, and I can dip in and out as I want. That means it'll line up well with the spring, when I have college and then exams, and then the summer, when I'll have, in theory, some free time. It's also as sandboxy as I could reasonably want.