Strike Three

First thing's first - while digging through my own archives for links, I discovered a number of times where I was flat wrong and one time where I was mostly wrong.  So, in no particular order - Warmachine MkII turned out to be fine, percentages made there way into Warhammer Fantasy and GW did switch to resin.  Though it was this special kind of hybrid and everything I said about them needing new molds was correct. 

Gotta keep that ego in check.

Now - the real reason I'm writing today. 

Eve since GW stated there "What's New Today" post on the main site, I've been in love with it.  It's an example of GW understanding the appeal of the blogging thing from an audience viewpoint as well as a frequent source of inspiration.  Frankly, it's a masterpiece of the marketing arts - a sales pitch that people actually go out of there way to get into contact with.

But as time has passed, there's also an added bit of hilarity that has been subtly running through the updates in the form of a number of articles that directly contradict what the FAAC crowd and the fluff purists have been telling the world is the right way to play Warhams.

There's this army list that not only takes an MSU approach to army building but is also heavy mech and 'spams' units.  Who would have figured that all it would take for an army Stelek might have designed to get onto the GW mother ship was a good paint job?

Then there was this bit on special characters in JJ's own words.  A personal favorite, I might add - and one that works well with the blurb about disparate chapters in the Smurf codex.  Turns out that special characters are awesome and that if GW made rules for a model, they intend for you to take it in games.

And now we have a definitive answer on whether or not GW gives two shits about count's as Space Marines.  The answer is that GW do indeed give two shits about the subject.  You see, GW would very much like you to spend money on their products in whatever way you see fit.  

All three of these post were written by GW about GW employees.  There is exactly no room for interpretation. GW say: enjoy your hobby your way - we certainly do.

Which has always been there line.  It just boggles the mind that a frustratingly large group of the 40k population have lived, eaten and breathed Games Workshop's mantra of 'do what you want and have fun' and come to the conclusion that there is ONE way to enjoy the hobby.

Miscellanea - Pt. 2

I went through my mental checklists and found some additional odds n' ends that may be of interest.

1) Privateer Press... Again.  While I was reading all the great comments I got from the last bit on PP (thanks everyone!), a few more similarities were pointed out to me - and a few more came to me on their own.  So, added to the last list: PP has its own house brand paints and hobby supplies, attempted to sell it's own branded terrain, brought a high quality line of licensed gaming material in-house and made it suck, barely supports an old range of its product line, has a tournament system with massive flaws and, AND runs a bunch of self congratulatory bullshit posts on their own website.

At this point, all we're waiting for is the inevitable cancelling of the bits service.


2) Infinity:  The one positive side effect of everyone idly threatening to abandon the 40k armies they've spent a grand on is that in the quest to find the next new game they can love to hate, a ton of really, really cool looking games got some blog time.  Which is great for my rulebook collection.  Using some ebay monies, I picked up the Infinity rule books from Corvis Belli.  I plan on reviewing this a bit later.  For now, lets just say that I wish I had not spent the money.  It would have saved me a lot time being bummed out that I can't find a regular gaming group locally to prod into the game. I dunno whether this is a 'le sigh' or an 'el oh el' moment.

3) The Metagame:  Whether or not it exists is a pointless debate I'll leave up to the sort of people who truly care about it.  But what I can't get over is the fact that even if a national metagame is a real thing , the people for which its existence is the most important have an extremely limited grasp of how a metgame actually works. 

Here's the thing, the reason top builds/methods/paths to winning exist in a meta game is not because of dumb luck, ease of use or by shear virtue of being commonly available.  They exist because they are successful and good - and have been proven to be so.  Simply doing something different - 'going against the meta' - does not give you a leg up unless what you've brought to the table is actually any good. Further, your super secret weapon has to be good against more than one other build.  Sadly, knowing all this and implementing it successfully requires more than the pat on the back you just gave yourself for confusing cognitive dissonance with cleverness. 

4) There is no #4.  I dearly hoped  I would think of one.  Sadly, I didn't.

Miscellanea

"Jesus, has it really been over two weeks since I last posted!"
                                                                   - Me. Just a second ago, 2011

Life has been busy.  Luckily, I took notes.  Here are a few of them:

1) Grey Knights Week.
Was a total bust.  Tuned out that I just didn't care enough.  Not a lot of you did either, if my stats are to be believed.  Though I will sum up:

I think its a fine addition to the 40k line.  The plastic kits in particular are genius seeing as how you can build almost every GK model out of two kits.  The army design is good too, if I'm honest (and I pretend that I don't own a Daemon army).  There's this whole 'three armies, one book' thing going on that gives you a ton of options for list construction without kicking over the sandcastles of the people who were still struggling under the old book.  Plus, the internal balance is great - none of the force org charts are invalidated by one overly good unit.  A good codex, though one I'm not entirely sure is for me.  But then again, terminator spam....  But then again, everything is silver...

2) Writing for 3++
Kirby dragged me kicking and screaming into the 3++ fold.  I've gotten two posts on some theory (which people hate) and the response has been good.  Though it looks like home base may suffer even more now that I've added responsibilities on top of the HoP workload.  Though I do have some ideas for doing 'supplemental' stuff for the Kirby posts here.  Which could be a great way to funnel people into my personal e-space to stroke my own e-peen in a more... intimate venue.