Crimson Sundown

Maybe we can bring back the light

“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away” – Douglas MacArthur

During my Warhammer 40k career, I have never really moved out of my comfort zone all too much.  I started with the Orks and that was a solid choice for me.  It gave me the great close combat I needed, and a huge horde army that allowed me to lose guys in mass and keep on ticking.

All of this was in high school though, and my thoughts on tactics were nothing more than “If I have more guys, I will win”.  As I have gotten older and moved into 4th and 5th editions of Warhammer 40k, I have most certainly changed my strategic output quite a bit and am now open to different approaches.  I tried to go with Chaos Space Marines when I came back and it just didn’t really resonate with me, so I immediately started to buy up my Orks and Tyranids like I had wanted to.  The main purpose and reason for why I wanted to try out the Space Marines, was because it was completely unlike anything I had tried before.  I wasn’t ready to play an army with so few models, nor did Chaos ultimately spark my desire to have a fluffy army.

That is all about to change on August 21, 2010 at Games Day.  There, I will be picking up my new Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought from Forge World.

The confidence and experience that I gained while playing in Paul’s Basement League have really helped me think about how to play different armies and play something that is not necessarily immediately in my comfort zone.  So with this new found ability to think outside of “I need to outnumber my opponent” and my desire to have a very fluffy idea for an army, I am going to compiling a Space Wolves force.

The biggest thing that attracted me to the Space Wolves was the new found ability that they have to field an all Terminator army, or WolfWing as people have been deeming it.  The idea of going from two horde armies, to an army that is min/max was kind of enticing.  Not to mention that it is going to be a cheap army to compile.

As I looked around though, there are a lot of Space Wolves players now, so I had to think of a way to distinguish them, something that WolfWing by itself wouldn’t accomplish.  So I did what I always do and started to look over the army list and circle the unit types that I like.  After I was done and started to read their fluff, I realized that the kind of force I was building was one filled with Space Wolves veterans.

• Logan Grimnar
• Njal Stormcaller
• Bjorn The Fell-Handed
• Arjac Rockfist
• Wolf Guard w/ Terminator Armor
• Dreadnoughts
• Lone Wolf
• Thunderwolf Cavalry
• Long Fangs Pack

The main bulk of the force is going to be filled with Terminators, the best marines that the Space Wolves have to offer given the honor of wearing tactical dreadnought armor.  This will be possible by using Logan Grimnar which makes Terminators into Troops.  While this means I won’t have a lot of models, the models I do have will be uber, especially considering that Logan makes his attached squad infinitely better.

Beyond that, my love of Dreadnoughts is pretty well documented.  I mean, how can you not love them?!  I wanted to make sure I had a Forge World Dreadnought so that I could give the unit a really unique and special look when it’s put on the field.

From there, I really liked the idea of Thunderwolf Cavalry.  Older marines who have spent years taming the native Thunderwolves to the point where they could be rode.  Expensive in the game, but add such a menacing look, feel and fluff to the army that I am starting to build.  It was also the first departure I am having from a true WolfWing force, and moving closer towards an old geezer army.

I finished up the idea in my head with packs of Long Fangs and Lone Wolves.  I really liked the idea of marines that have survived far longer than they ever should, long after their original Blood Claw squads have been defeated.  For the the Lone Wolves, they fight on hoping to regain their honor.  For the Long Fangs, they have seen so much war and fighting, that they can do the most damage in the back picking out multiple targets.

So what is the fluff that I have moving around this specific force?  I originally thought about working out a story of a 13th Company force.  I made slight changes to it in my head because of the heavily influenced idea that the 13th Company is filled with Wulfen.  I like the idea of Wulfen but it’s something that I just didn’t want to deal with.

A story that interested though was a comment that the story writers have had Bjorn say on multiple occasions.  That was a quote along the lines of “I am waiting for Russ to come back”.  I picture this as a small force led by Bjorn and Logan who sniff out rumors of possible 13th Company locations, that goes out and tries to find out where they are and if they find survivors in the Warp, bring them back into the fold and try and curb the Wulfen curse.  Following each lead bolsters their small numbers of old, wise, elite marines, and it also gets them one step closer to reuniting with Leman Russ.

Anyway, that’s what I’m working on next.  I think it will be a really fun experiment, especially since I will be using them for the upcoming PBL Escalation League.  It will be fun making a 200 all Terminator Kill Team.  Going to be so much fun.  =)

I have a lot going on right now.  Anyone who knows me personally or follows my Twitter account, knows this to be true.  After the epic Convention month of March as I have been running around like a crazy man, I have most certainly earned a break from the madness.  So how will I relax?  By setting up a LAN Party.

Thanks to the awesomeness that is Steam Dan we have started preparations to start up a LAN / Hamachi gaming group.  Translation, all of the friends in our group are going to get together and play a crap load of video games.  Honestly, nothing could be bad about this prospect.

In response to this idea and while trying to figure out what our first event would be, I have composed a Co-Op competition that I believe would be a crap load of fun.  What follows below is the structure that I have setup.  The basis of this idea, is my attempt to get some Co-Op gaming in, along with some multiplayer team fun.  I also want something that will take up most of the night / weekend and has stats.  It is with all of that in mind, that I have decided to go with a L4D marathon.

Here is the setup in my head, along with the requirements.

Requirements

• An absolute number of 8 people.
• Each of these 8 people must have Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 (combined total of $70 on Steam)
• Each person must have, or be provided a computer that can play said games.
• Each person must never grow tired of killing zombies

The Marathon

1. Of the 8 Players we have, for fun purposes we pull names out of a hat.  First person picked, gets to pick their survivor of choice.  Then second person from the hat chooses from the remaining survivors, and so on until all 8 players have a survivor.

   This will be their survivor for the rest of the marathon, until the Grand Finale.  Players should note that once they pick that survivor, it will determine whether they are playing L4D or L4D2 for the rest of the day.  Choose wisely!

2. Once we have our two groups of 4 survivors, those teams will split up and boot up their game of choice.
3. From there, each group will go through the process of playing through every single Campaign that is available in L4D / L4D2 from the beginning until the end.  Every single map will be played (difficulty being determined), and if the group dies at some point, they will restart that map until they finish it.
4. Stats are tracked at the end of each campaign segment and we will be using that information to dole out points to exceptional survivors.  A full list of stats and point values are still being determined but this information is available after a campaign is completed so it will be readily available.
5. At the end of each survivor group finishing their game, all the point values will be tallied up and the top two survivors from L4D and the top two from L4D2 will be selected as the winners of their campaigns.

The Showdown

1. The 2 L4D winners and 2 L4D2 winners will now combine and play an assortment of L4D and L4D2 multiplayer modes.  When possible, the winners will use their survivors.  If their survivors are not available because we switch games, they will flip a coin for the other two available survivors.
2. The other 4 players will be playing as infected and their goal will be to get the most points and survivor kills possible.  While you are out of the running for top survivor, you can now get top infected!
3. Stats will once again be compiled (point system pending), and at the end of a still to be determined amount of multiplayer games, a winner will be announced for both Survivors and Infected.

That’s my idea and plan.  What does everyone thing?!

Anyone who has followed my online career knows that I have periods of ludicrous updates and activity, and then I go away for a long time.  This situation, is somewhat of a middle ground as it really hasn’t been so long, but still long enough for people to question what the hell I have (or more appropriately haven’t) been doing.

It has been little over a month since my update on the RPG campaign, and I suppose I will start there because it requires the least amount of effort.  Things are going well in the adventure right now, as we are hitting a balance of extremely difficult encounters, but the characters are just on par to make it through.  For me, this is what I wanted.  The threat of death is real (we’ve had at least 2-3 close calls for PC’s), and the group is doing some really epic shit.  Kudos to them, it only gets better / worse from here on out … depending on your outlook of course.  =)

The first annual Diablo 2 Marathon weekend took place on the 13th and 14th and to say that it was a success would be an understatement.  Games started Friday night at about 9 PM with Josh, Corey, Luke, Dan, Katie and myself all going up against the minions of Diablo.  Friday night ended at 2:30 AM, with us half way through Act II.  We picked up right where we left off at about 11 AM on Saturday, minus Katie, and we kept going until 10:30 PM that night.  In that time we finished up all the acts, killed Diablo, dropped Luke off in Boonton, killed Baal, had a drinking game, took a shot at the end of each act, and did the Secret Cow Level.  Suffice to say, I still don’t think I’ve recovered after all of these days.  I have a feeling that this is not the last time we do a Diablo 2 fest, not to mention what we are going to do once Diablo 3 comes out.

Final gaming note, is that as you can see on the right, my Death Knight is doing fairly well for herself.  =)

With the geekiness out of the way, it is starting to finally hit Katie and I that the wedding is coming.  We are about 4 months away, and really there’s a lot that still needs to be taken care of and of course I feel like it could never get done in time.  I haven’t been hit by a wave of nerves or jitters yet, only a profound desire to just have the wedding already.  It’s shaping up to be one hell of a party, and really I just want to have it already.  Excitement is really starting to work it’s magic over me, and I’m fully embracing the big life change that I’m in store for.  Katie shares my sentiment.  If we could have the wedding in all of it’s glory tomorrow, we would do it.  But alas, we have some more things to finalize, and a more days to sit through, but in the end it will be worth it.

Other than that, things are quiet on this front.  I will promise you further updates to come, and in a more timely fashion.  I also promise you that there will be a lull.  Hopefully not immediately after I post this, but one can never be so sure.  Until that day then …

Over the past few weeks, I have settled into a relatively nice gaming routine.  With no MMO taking up the majority of my time as of late, and my desire to play Team Fortress 2 in a rut, I have settled with my Xbox 360.  Thankfully for me, Swaptree trading and a few games borrowed from friends have been good to me, and as a result I have been able to play Fable II and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Now both games are ones in which there is a pleathora of things for the gamer to do.  Fable II focuses back in on the choice between Good and Evil, and how your choices shape the world.  In the original Fable, the developers over promises and under delivered by a significant margin.  The talk of doing anything and everything was pretty much given way to either killing everyone in the world and becoming evil, or not killing everyone in the world and being a saint.

In addition the gameplay left much to be desired.  You had the option of favoring melee, ranged or magic combat, but really there was only one option to be had.  You had to get a good melee weapon and just smash shit, because ranged combat just didn’t hurt as much, and magic spells felt worthless and took too much time to cycle between them.  So in the end everyone was decked out with mauls and warhammers and you just clicked on the attack button until everyone died.  Plus they had this ridiculous system of you would take on a mission and be required to bet on how well you would perform it, and depending on whether you lived up to it or not, you got better gear.  Overall, it was fun for a few hours but I ultimatley put the game down.

So what made Fable II so fantastic in my opinon?  Tough to say but I really felt like I had a hand in the world and that I could do a ton of shit.  Just for a small list of things that I loved?

• Being able to marry any girl (or guy) in the game with clear indication of what they liked in a person and what they disliked.
• Buy ANY house or business in the game, taking any of them for my house or renting them out.
• Giving money to businessmen, and watch them turn a shit pile of a town, into a thriving city.
• Combat that is a perfect blend of melee, ranged and magic, making each of them worthwhile.
• Following around and playing with my dog, who turned out to truly be my best friend.
• Being able to have a son with my wife, and watch him grow up and taking him to go see the world.

Overall, while the main plotline was very short, Fable II was super fun.  Whenever I was put into a situation where they wanted me to do evil, and I worked against them and did good, I lost Experience as punishment.  You felt the choices you made had definite consequences and I appreciate the effort that went into the programming.  Granted a lot of the jobs you did in the game were very much casual gamer type of stuff, but that didn’t bother me as much.

Now on the other hand, Grand Theft Auto IV just pissed me off to no end.  It was like Fable in that it’s a huge world where you can do anything, but I think it suffers most from having put out so many iterations of itself.  There was #3, then Vice City, San Andreas, etc.  So many versions of the game that despite how great GTAIV looks, I was just bored instantly.  I’ve done all this before, and there’s no consequences to what I do.  I can just slam into a police car and they won’t care.  I run over people in the streets, nothing happens.  It’s all bullshit and boring.  I will be swaptreeing it away.

Now though I’ve started up with Fallout 3 and it plays like Morrowind and Fable.  So big expansive world that you can explore, along with a morality system.  Right now based on what I’ve played, I think this will be good.

So what have I learned?  Lots of games are moving towards the idea that they want you to feel the freedom of doing whatever you want.  That’s all well and good but give me some damn consequences.  Without that, I’ll just get bored and throw your game away.

DPS Brothers rockin the house. Everyone has to love a 14g Badge of Justice! We’re so leet we kite fishes outside of the zone and evade bug them there. /flex

So we go into the Heroic Underbog tonight. Pedro went ahead and disconnected every 5 seconds. Chris came and tanked and then died twice.

Hold on pulling …

MZ died again, but we survived. We are so OP.