I have barley played World of Warcraft at all for the last six months, so I finally canceled my subscription today! It’s not that it is a terrible game; I’m just board with it (you can only run errands or kill boars so many times). It doesn’t help that Warhammer Online will be released soon, I’ll eventually have to pay for the D&D insider content, and I have been playing a lot of Dawn of War online lately. Hopefully my son won’t be too upset but I don’t think he’s been playing the game much lately either.
According to rumors, the interface of Warhammer Online will be very similar to WoW. Some people would consider that a bad thing, for me it just means I’ll be able to jump right in and play the new game. It will also have a PvP system slightly similar to WoW PvP servers. The big difference is that in Warhammer online the factions can actually conquer territories, thus taking control of them away from other factions. I’m looking forward to playing a online game in the fantasy world of Warhammer.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
D&D forth edition demo
I ran my first demo of forth edition Dungeons and Dragons at the local gaming store today. It was a small turn-out so, I ended up running the game for only three people. I wanted to get the players into combat as soon as possible so we went a bit light on role-playing and I threw the small party right into combat. This way the new players could get a better grasp of the new game mechanics. I figured role-playing is role-playing whatever rules set you use so the main purpose of a demo should be to demonstrate how the rules work. After defeating a hoard of Kobolds, Everyone decided that they liked the new system and wanted to try playing with more players. I committed to running a few more games if the owner of the shop can get the party up to 4 or 5 people.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
2008 A Call to Arms: Broken Coast Raids, Week Four
Apparently Privateer Press, the makers of Hordes and Warmachine, creates four league seasons a year that any local store or club can sponsor. In these eight week leagues, Privateer Press releases new scenarios, maps, and rules that change on a weekly bases, while players compete for one of four awards over the coarse of the season. This has been my first Privateer Press league and I’ve been very impressed. We are in week 4 (One week behind most leagues) and all ten participants are still in the hunt for at least one of the four medals.
My loosing streak continues. After winning my first four games in the local Warmachine league, I have gone on what seems like a very long loosing streak. My Protectorate army is starting to fall so far behind in league points that I’m now trying to win the “Eliminator” award (goes to the player who scores the most points for killing light jacks and light war-beast). Tonight, my butt kicking came courtesy of the local Trollbloods player, but at least I got a light war-beast kill.
One of the leagues new players, Chris, won his first game tonight. His Cryx army won a major victory against Ricky’s Khador force. Over all, it was a bad night for Vlad led Khador forces as our other Khador player also lost by a major victory. Maybe next week I should play a Khador player, even though they don’t have light jacks.
My loosing streak continues. After winning my first four games in the local Warmachine league, I have gone on what seems like a very long loosing streak. My Protectorate army is starting to fall so far behind in league points that I’m now trying to win the “Eliminator” award (goes to the player who scores the most points for killing light jacks and light war-beast). Tonight, my butt kicking came courtesy of the local Trollbloods player, but at least I got a light war-beast kill.
One of the leagues new players, Chris, won his first game tonight. His Cryx army won a major victory against Ricky’s Khador force. Over all, it was a bad night for Vlad led Khador forces as our other Khador player also lost by a major victory. Maybe next week I should play a Khador player, even though they don’t have light jacks.
I’m officially drinking the 4th Edition D&D Kool-Aid
Like many members of Dungeons and Dragon’s “old guard” (people that started playing the game in 1st and 2nd edition), I was furious when Wizards of the Coast announced that they were releasing 4th Edition D&D in 2008. I was sitting in front of my computer browsing the web when I found out and actually yelled at my computer (using a lot of language that cannot be repeated here). How could they do this? D&D 3.5 was only released about four or five years ago! It appeared that I was destined to become one of those gamers that refuses to upgrade to the latest version of my beloved Role-playing game (you know one of those old grouchy guys, sitting in the back of your local game shop and telling anyone who’d listen about how great Advanced Dungeon and Dragons is). Then I began to see previews for this new version of the granddaddy of all RPGs and, surprisingly, I actually found myself liking what I saw.
After talking my D&D group into giving the new version of the game a try, we discovered that we love the new version of this classic game. We have been playing D&D more frequently than we have for years and everyone is having a wonderful time. All of my players have bought the player’s handbook and it looks like the group will be playing forth edition exclusively from now on. Here are a few observations that our group has made:
· This game has to be played with miniatures. If your not going to use miniatures stay with 3rd edition. I personally prefer not to use the D&D miniature line. The modals are just too small and in a weird scale that no other line uses. I suggest the following lines, they’re all pretty close to scale and look fine next to each other on the table:
o Classic Ral Partha (if you can find them)
o Reaver (great for Player Character models and affordable)
o Heroscape models (already painted)
o Mageknight (Very cheap on ebay but you may have to do some rebasing)
o Fantasy warhamer (expensive but great models)
o War-machine/Hoards (expensive but some great monster models to round out your collection)
· Get a good battle-mat. Make sure that it has a grid system already on it and that you can write on it with erasable marker. The “Dungeon Tile” sets put out by Wizards of the Coast are also worth looking into (not to mention great values)
· This new system concentrates on strategic combat. However, you can still role-play any situation in 4th that you could in 3rd. Don’t let someone tell you otherwise
· First level characters actually have a tendency to live, not one to die. Players still die but it is usually because the players did something foolish or the party members are not working together and filling the roles assigned to each class.
· Initially, people look at these new characters and go, “My God, these guys are powerful! Nothing should be able to kill these guys”. The monsters are just as powerful as the characters. Everything just got a boost so that a lucky hit or two doesn’t kill low level players and monsters anymore.
· Teamwork among party members is more important in this edition of D&D than it ever has been before.
I would be willing to still play 3rd edition but I’ll never DM it again (forth edition is just so much easier to run). Oh well, looks like Wizards of the Coast will be getting even more of my money than before.
After talking my D&D group into giving the new version of the game a try, we discovered that we love the new version of this classic game. We have been playing D&D more frequently than we have for years and everyone is having a wonderful time. All of my players have bought the player’s handbook and it looks like the group will be playing forth edition exclusively from now on. Here are a few observations that our group has made:
· This game has to be played with miniatures. If your not going to use miniatures stay with 3rd edition. I personally prefer not to use the D&D miniature line. The modals are just too small and in a weird scale that no other line uses. I suggest the following lines, they’re all pretty close to scale and look fine next to each other on the table:
o Classic Ral Partha (if you can find them)
o Reaver (great for Player Character models and affordable)
o Heroscape models (already painted)
o Mageknight (Very cheap on ebay but you may have to do some rebasing)
o Fantasy warhamer (expensive but great models)
o War-machine/Hoards (expensive but some great monster models to round out your collection)
· Get a good battle-mat. Make sure that it has a grid system already on it and that you can write on it with erasable marker. The “Dungeon Tile” sets put out by Wizards of the Coast are also worth looking into (not to mention great values)
· This new system concentrates on strategic combat. However, you can still role-play any situation in 4th that you could in 3rd. Don’t let someone tell you otherwise
· First level characters actually have a tendency to live, not one to die. Players still die but it is usually because the players did something foolish or the party members are not working together and filling the roles assigned to each class.
· Initially, people look at these new characters and go, “My God, these guys are powerful! Nothing should be able to kill these guys”. The monsters are just as powerful as the characters. Everything just got a boost so that a lucky hit or two doesn’t kill low level players and monsters anymore.
· Teamwork among party members is more important in this edition of D&D than it ever has been before.
I would be willing to still play 3rd edition but I’ll never DM it again (forth edition is just so much easier to run). Oh well, looks like Wizards of the Coast will be getting even more of my money than before.
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