RPG rant

Some facts of life to begin with;
1) an average person with belly, wife, kids and mortgage would be scared to death in the middle of firefight. 
2) Hollywood logic ignores reality for the sake of giving viewer a false sense of superiority.
3) D&D is a curse, as it is designed to give player aforementioned cocky superiority.
4) Real life conflicts rarely solved by games logic. 

So what are you talking about, man? I'm talking about fun of role playing games, what kind of feeling they are designed or intended to give player and game master. It not a secret that over-educated, under-sexed and less than well adjusted to rules of life people need something (including me). 

They need a feeling of importance, of success, of belonging to a group with similar interest and ideal and most of all - achievement. RPG's have provided all of it long before arrival of computers and social networks, by pen, paper and bunch of friends sharing same vision. Chemically speaking our brain does not distinguish between fear of imagined monster and sudden fear of drunk driver coming at you. So naturally, when you apply you imagination with a help of friends and GM to the scene of defeating a horrible world-eating monster level of you bravado goes up on a chemical level. 

It works. RPG takes off the boredom of mundane life and makes it easier to muddle through job, ridiculous bosses, kids, winging women, irritating classmates, lack of cash, long ques, traffic jams and so on. You remember that you are a monster slayer, THE Savior of the Universe or whoever who is really cool. Painful realisation that its only an imagination is taken into account, but who cares? 

That is where Hollywood logic takes over. "If truth stands in a way of a good story - publish a lie", as someone famous and American said. And here we go:  one bloke standing in the spotlight under fire and giving a porcelain smile while fencing off bullets and ugly villains. But we spent our cash and lifetime on that. Then, as culture and business repeats and multiples both heroes and villains we getting use to the same fake image. On some point, going against this trend becomes even refreshing and new. (Yes, I am talking about Deadpool.)  

But where is D&D here? 

An average street fight or pub fight last from 6 seconds to 4 minutes according to police estimation. Modern platoon size firefight with similar sized opponent may last from 10 minutes to an hour depending on terrain and other factors. In order for party of D&D heroes to get from one room to another and exchange couple of blows with an enemy they have to make a bunch of rolls, identify and use skills and spend approximately 30 minutes. 

But when you finally managed to hit something the process is even more painful. There are people who are much more agile in calculating the amount of damage, soak, resistance, extra special rule than me, I openly admit. But they probably spend good chunk if life doing just that.However on the final result player's ego is overblown by the math. You just made a gazillion damage to million hit points enemy! Monster is roaring in anger and falls to your noble feet asking for forgiveness. The hit like that would take out a battle tank, and you did it with a sword or a fist. But player grins in the manner of the Universe Savior and crawl to the next boss fight. Cool? Awesome! 

But after a while it becomes a habit, as you casually chop, talk, sing and roll your way through just another "mystery" with grotesque idiot trying to conquer the world. What is more scary player lose the ability to see relevance to what they do and impact on the fantasy world they are saving. Their role is assigned as Savior's, but do they care for mukes? No. They are here to provide fun and hit points.

Psychologically speaking, this creates an "comfort zone", where you easily guess what to expect and well aware of what you are capable of. Something not so common in the real life. As you progress with a character this comfort zone gets bigger and more comfortable, even GM are forced to make an adventure where every role would have a time to shine. So adventure becomes a grid of talking, stealing, fighting and casting spells. But does it provide a challenge or achievement? In the terms of game, yes. There are always bigger bosses and more hit points. 

In terms of thinking out of the box? Doubt that. The "comfort zone" of Savior is sturdy. That's where GM's talent really shines, if he or she manages to overcome the rules which are bigger than Bible. 

How to make players care for the team? How to give motivation other than prescribed adventure for money? How to keep them unsure of what happens next? How to make a right balance between heroic action and story? How to keep players focused on the game rather than socialisation? How to reward or punish players who just managed to blow the whole plot into oblivion? And most important, how give a feeling of achievement not by lucky roll but by taking decisions and making them happen?   

I'm not giving the answers, but just asking the right questions is helpful.

Sincerely yours,       

Mark.
     



         

Ada Wong

..still has not got a clue what going on.
Hmmm. So cute to watch.
Ada Wong.
Resident Evil 6.

 

Reflect and rewind: Lessons learned from this blog

So I have left my blog for sometime in order to rethink and analyse what have been done, achieved and what mistakes I've made during this journey so far.

First and obvious success is that this blog allowed me to show other people my Elysian Drop troops codex. The biggest difficulty at the moment is get a feedback on it. I consider a full scale column dedicated to brave Drop troopers of the Imperium. It might be an interesting project but it might take me away from other priorities.

Second odd achievement is unexpected popularity if femme fatales. It started simply as a joke and mean to relax after writing a "profound" article or two, but visitations show that Cortana and Sarah Kerrigan are more popular than half a page of text mumbled out by your truly. Perhaps this shows that my blog does not have a certain audience in mind, plan, product if you like. Yes. This blog is truly is an experiment and attempt to find out how it works. Setting a goal, working out search engine optimisation and spreading my "incredible" creations is not currently a priority or a plan for world dominance. Perhaps it should?

Third biggest realisation is that blogging is simpler than it looks. Blogging in order to get into the top 10 - is not. Its business wich demands a lot of effort, time, skill and investment. After all, you sell to people meaning of life, answer to their needs and generally take their lifetime by creating something out of words, cultural and psychological tricks.

Well whats next?

Rethinking of what this blog is going to be.
Learning on how to make this blog useful in one or another way.
Making it work.

In the meantime I will post some more girls from the games :)
 
    

Naomi.

Naomi Hunter.
You must complete your destiny... 

In the land of gun-totting, ass kicking, hard boiled heroines with a face of fashion model, Naomi is a surprisingly gentle and vulnerable. What else do player could want from a damsel on distress scientist?

     

Revelation of the Day: Corporate culture matters

It happened again! After a prolonged internal work i spit out a short article about game designers way to glory and riches and then couple of hours later I find that it all been know before and even published. Sad face, but at least i understand that my search has its reasons and meaningful answers. I found an incredible article about birth, growth and fall of Wizards of the Coast written by John Tynes. If you my reader, knew who is it, you knew more than i did.

The article itself is here : http://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
and its second part here http://www.salon.com/2001/03/26/wizards_part2/  

John Tynes however is described by wikipedia in following article:

John Tynes (born 1971) is a writer best known for his work on role-playing games such as Unknown Armies, Delta Green, Puppetland, and for his company Tynes Cowan Corporation. Under its imprint Pagan Publishing, Tynes Cowan Corp. produces third-party books for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game under license from Chaosium as well as fiction and non-fiction books under its imprint Armitage House.

Following the end of Unknown Armies in 2003,^[1] Tynes withdrew from the tabletop gaming industry in order to pursue other interests, particularly film^[2] and videogames.^[3] He was the producer of Pirates of the Burning Sea, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Flying Lab Software and published in 2008 by Sony Online Entertainment. After the launch of PotBS, he joinedMicrosoft Game Studios to work on various Xbox Live Arcade titles including South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!,^[4] Toy Soldiers,^[5] and Full House Poker^[6] as a producer and game designer. 

But my God, his style of write up is brilliant! That's the no-nosense, objective truth in your face without the corporate politeness and glamour. Geeks are geeks, and money making is money making. The hard reality is there and you can actually see how different approaches to same business clash and create another evil Mega-Corporation from a very different idea.

We were young, overeducated and underemployed. Wizards was my first job in the real world — if you can call it that — and I was hardly alone.Above all, we were equals. Peter Adkison told us so. He had left Boeing with a sacrament of buzzwords and platitudes that he transmuted into full-bore Utopian evangelicalism. We would work in organic cross-departmental teams, study the esoteric principles of “Continuous Quality Improvement,” and always strive toward the paramount goal of consensus, the magical process that somehow replaced old-school hierarchical decision making. 

I guess today is my day of revelation.

Yours,
Mark-Paul Severn
An Enlightened Megalomaniac with Corporate ambitions.
(muhahaha)

Path to glory of Game Designer

I have a confession to make. I believed that becoming game designer is similar to becoming a pop star. Not because you automatically become rich, famous and can pull any Blondie with your picture in latest gaming magazine. But because you have a chance to become one of the few whose job is to do something they love.

I've been following Jake Thorton's blog  for some time now, as well as pushing my research of game rules and game designers. He wrote quite brilliant descriptions on game design ABC as well as some hidden psychological obstacles in this creative process. Perhaps Murder Your Darlings  is one my favorites. 

However more I look at the industry the more down-to-earth my point of view becomes. There are loads of gifted people, there are hundreds of already tested and played game systems. Those few giants who manged to build their name thanks to GW or Boardgame geek website are few, and they are hardly rich and famous of this world. The amount of rules, both fan-made and pro-made is demonstrated here: http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/. 

Number of companies that started their journey to success in gaming industry is growing day by day, as well as number of gonners from this business. In short, its a highly competitive area, with quite limited demand and unpredictable return of time and money investment. So where do the game designer finds his employment and becomes one of those geeky icons? What paths takes those people to the cave full of glory and riches? How does one makes it from humble dreamer of fan of certain game to next Father-of-all-gaming? 

1. Servant of Evil Mega-Corporation. 

Yes, my friends. You have to get a job in the Mega-Corporation which has been on this market before you were born. You have to sell your creative soul for their dirty money, crawl through the rank of other puny mortals, get to design studio and then do their marketing department bidding. Then you can quit, tell the whole world about unjust and greedy MegaCorp and how you fought for your creative freedom. Now you have some street-cred, as well as backing of well respected experience in the business. If you are lucky enough to save some of your creative soul you may even start freelancing and blogging. Thus you ultimately become the Master of Rules and Dice for all those puny mortals who did not get the job or were born too late.   

2. Street Fighter.

Those chaps like the thrill of one-shot assignments. The started somewhere in the shed of their house, torturing their pets, friends and family members with their incredible inventions. They don't really care about money, they love the thrill of pulling off next big thing, making this idea work in someones plan. Street Fighters are always waiting  to be carried away by next Big Idea or paycheck from next employment. There is many of them, few want fame, but most hunger for achievement. When occasionally their Idea takes over the world they become the Masters of Rules and their blog so far visited by robots and occasional friend rival major news channel. In the end, your portfolio is stained with blood of your Achievements, which makes any Servant of MegaCorps shiver from envy. But forget about safe pension if you take this path. 

3. Empire Builder. 

As game designers they are not exactly in the same league as most. Empire Builders take theirs or someone else idea and make it profitable. If they are lucky enough, their Empire will grow into Mega Corporation, if not they at least make enough money to break even. With the arrival of Kickstarter and Lulu there will be more and more of them, less adventurous but practical, calculating and dream-driven at the same time. The Universes and Galaxies they spawn will hardly be totally new and incredible, but they will sell. Then with addition of zombies, superheros, starfleets, comic books and growing fan base they will make someone rich. Empire Builder may not have the creative energy, but they will have the Endurance. Few of the Servants and Street Fighters would  understand this path, for it takes the game out of pocket reality into the real world around us.     

4. Universal Soldier.  

The choice made those who took this path was simple: career. Universal Soldier studies his craft in University, makes first games or programs as part of group assignment, graduates (or not in some cases), but his skill is good enough for immediate employment. As they progress, Universal Soldiers pick up extra programming languages, side skills, and connections within industry. One company is not different from another but pay is better and free pool is there. You have seen them on numerous promotional videos as part of highly creative group of people who are so happy to do their job and bring you the next big thing. Sometimes Universal Soldiers appear next to the Masters of Rules providing necessary fire support on topics of technical issues and patches. The most ambitious ones even take the role of Leading Game Designer and thanks to marketing bombardment are counted as Masters of Rules. 

5. Prophet of Game.

There are people who don't create game - they give birth to entire Universes. Prophets usually are great writers, directors and thinkers. Their reflection on the world around us are melted into the text and then into the game. Those creation are then visited by countless day dreamers and they make it grow and evolve. Prophets may not be great on writing the rules but those rules make sense thanks to meaning put into them and narrative supporting it.  But as soon as money rolls in every Prophet faces a great challenge: the sale must go on. If that would be a Daniela Steel, this question would not be even asked, if that would be Andzei Sapkowski or Frank Herbert I'd struggle to define the answer. Unlike anyone else in this business, Prophet of Game does not create the game itself, he catches the essence of our desires and gives it a form which could be translated  into game by others. How to become one? Just be one and let the Universe decide whether you are Prophet of Regret or Prophet of Truth.         

Yours,
Mark-Paul Severn.

1000 views of my blog. Ironic achievement

Today 01 May 2013 my blog statistic told me that it has been seen for 1000 times.
Hurraay! Yuppi! Or whatever you say on such great occasion. To celebrate it, I'm going to put here a speech:

Thank you! Thank you all! Thanks to all of my unknown visitors for popping in and having a quick look at what is posted here. I do understand that thanks to excessive amount of letters and broken English i use to express my thoughts it is a strange source to read from. Thank you all for looking at my harem of femme fatales, I do hope their real equivalents are at least as stunning as pictures. Thank you all for downloading my Elysian Drop Troopers Codex. It might not be a big achievement but it is important for me. Thank you for NOT posting any feedback on Elysian Codex, that means its either absolute crap or I'm genius (insane megalomaniac laughter) and my ideas will conquer the world to make me its ruler, owner and pimp. Muhahaha! (insane megalomaniac laughter even louder). 

Well and since 1000 vies is such a great occasion We are going to open a can of Fosters to celebrate it. May be even two... or three. Cheers!

The delicate magic of Halo

-Sir! I think we lost Master Chief!
-"no you didn't..."

From the day my friend told me the story about Halo: Combat Evolved until its recent incarnation at number "4" I loved this game. How original, huh? I'm definitely not the only one. Today however, after a long time I decided to take a look at what components actually made Halo series a cultural phenomena rather than just good game. Perhaps, to make my journey and your reading a bit shorter and easier I'll state them in short order:

1. Rhythm of game play
2. Well defined characters 
3. Balanced  weapon line-up
4. Varied opposition 
5. Enveloping story

1. Rhythm of game play.

Probably the most difficult to achieve in any FPS is balance of adrenaline rush, interesting story and what RPG players call "rail-roading". Second to that comes the question of how to avoid player being distracted by surrounding world of game from fighting. How Bungie and now 343 Industries approached it?

They created a perfect illusion of huge world around player but actually kept the player most of the time in confined space. In its core Halo is a corridor shooter, where we are confined by surroundings and forced to shoot our way through waves of enemies. This makes our heart beat rate goes up, adrenaline rush in, and we desperately dashing for cover. All of this is enough to make us forget to enjoy the big world around us. Not to mention that while we fight through locations, Bungie delivers a graceful views of planets, stars, huge spaceships and sunny horizon in a very delicate matter: enough to give us an impression of freedom, but not enough distract player from combat.

This line is really thin, give too much combat, and player starts to complain about "repetitive process", give too much of free world and player starts yawning because "nothing is happening" or "these huge open spaces are boring". Even when we are fighting in the open air maps, with a lot of opposition Halo manages to pass between those extremes (most of the times) by either rushing us towards objectives on limited time, so we must avoid excessive fighting, or by cutting opposition into manageable portions. A a result keeping us busy and poised for next portion of baddies.

2. Well defined characters

Here we have the classic archetypes: quiet and confident Warrior, smart, caring and emotional Girl, all-knowing Mother Halsey, animals aliens under religious leadership (big boo from out secular society), monstrous Hive mind, disgusting parasites (even bigger boo from cleaning-concerned housewives), and ever-loyal and heroic Soldiers of Democracy with cigar smoking Sergeant. Add a cyber-enhanced Forerunners with glowing light, which as we all know is a sign of superior technology.

We have seen all that in different variations from Hollywood trash to Medal of Honor. Where is the BIG difference is that in Halo all of them are forced to "make" choices as world's picture changes during the game. What is also important: they have position towards player, and we respond to that. Most complex character of entire series IMHO was Shipmaster Rtas 'Vadum, who in a matter of one campaign went through loyalist in need for redemption to human ally and major actor in Covenant's fate. Well established and played characters are believable and understandable, even if their motifs are world domination.

3. Balanced weapon layout

Less is more, and each weapon has it niche and drawbacks. Most importantly we are still restricted to our 3 weapon slots. Simple and elegant solution which denies some pleasure of hoarding loads of guns. At the same time forcing players to think and try all possible load outs even with the useless Needler. High speed of most firefights also overshadows the secondary weapons like under-slung grenade launcher or dual wielding pistols.  It does exist in real world and in Crysis but absent in the whole Halo universe. Simply put: one gun - one trigger. No time and place for fancy show-off tricks or customization. Is it comfortable? Sometimes. Is it playable? Of coarse! Is it fun? Yes.  

4. Varied opposition. 

FPS games are obviously all about killing the enemies. However, anyone will get tired of shooting the very same baddie even if given loads of different weapons and scenarios. In FPS games simulating modern conflicts this is solved by changing the scenery and mumbling about importance of the mission against the baddies. Sometimes we get to customize out gun as a game in itself. Halo is free from our politically correct world and allows us to kill anything that is bigger and does not speak our language. However the curve of difficulty is constantly  growing up: more Elites, Knights or Brutes as well increased number of hit points and resilience will make a game challenging and interesting even after first play through. Here is one of the main advantages of background work of Halo: all characters are incredibly believable and have unique "natural" behavior. Elites roar, Brutes charge in, Grunts love plasma grenades and chatter, Knights express anger by glowing orange and Flood is simply desperate for a hug.

5. Enveloping story.

Simply put from the very first game to latest one - we save the world. There is not much choice for player, except to aim and shoot those who desperately want to destroy it. The brilliant trick of Halo  is that world we are saving is not a distant propagandistic picture, on every turn of the game  this world has both personal touch and grand design properties. What is more important, those are interconnected on both logical and emotional levels. In addition every major objective takes us further on  the curve of storyline.  Let me elaborate on that. 

In Combat Evolved we started in desperate situation, where Cortana needed to be rescued. Even if she would only be an witty half-naked girl, that would be enough for male gamers to have fun. But as story progresses, saving Cortana and Earth from Covenenant invasion becomes a minor job. Now we are in charge of saving the Universe, because someone, sometime, somewhere have left a doomsday devices. Typical story of hero's job? Yes. But there is still room for saving the Captain, escape the trap filled with Flood, finding common language with AI of Halo and shooting lots of bullets. And every step of the way, there is gorgeous girl helping us. 

As series progressed stakes are even higher, the very heart and soul and reason for our heroics is trapped by Gravemind. This makes even invasion of Earth a minor problem, now player must save Universe in order to get to the girl. This is where Halo storyline get very close to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, one of the greatest pieces of literature describing similar subject. Luckily we have a secondary points of view, a Covenant and ODST. This lets us see a bit more of the Universe and its internal struggles, without stopping for a lunch break in combat.  Following the internal logic of any conflict the main baddie must be defeated in the last sequence. Victory is hard fought, but rewarded with kiss from a damsel on distress, reunion with Cortana. Who manages to save our hero from exploding Halo thanks to her AI abilities.

Halo Reach, was an interesting side step: it revolved around what will happen with Master-Chief and Cortana and gave insight into military aspects, political unrest of UNSC, gave refreshment to old Human-Covenant conflict and generally stepped aside from formula of 3-side conflict, which fueled the previous games. It retained the formulas of speed engagements and weapon balance, but added the teamwork as main factor to the gameplay and storyline. Kat, may not be Cortana, but she is still a smart girl, who's death will be avenged many times over.   

   

Finally, Halo 4 brought us back into the boots of Savior in power armour. For more than decade Halo refined its success formulas and they all are here: 3-way conflict between Humans, Covenant and Forerunners, dramatic crashes and escapes from one conflict into another, silent and strong hero with emotional and vulnerable girl, team of super-soldiers on a mission, internal intrigues which release our hero from military routine, weird and varied aliens, doomsday weapon which was unleashed and mighty Mr. Evil who took away Cortana. In the end of all that, Master-Chief takes off his helmet and armour leaving us sad for his personal loss and defiant glory. Every high and low point of series was reinserted into the 4-th Halo and it still works pretty well. 

Halo 4 leaves us with a lot of question as well as new ways of answering them. Will the Forerunners help us or be utterly defeated? What will happen with remains of Covenant? How humanity re-take legacy of the Forerunners? Is Flood completely eradicated?  How Spartans will evolve humankind? Will Master-Chief meet Cortana again? 

The Reclaimer Saga is the answer.    

Yours,
Mark-Paul Severn @2013

Liliana.

...you did promised to give up everything for a night with me, didn't you?
 So try to enjoy it as much as you can...
Liliana Veiss. 

Star Citizen

There it is, Star Citizen, the game that has a legend of Chris Roberts, author of Privateer, Starlancer, Wing Commander and Freelancer written on the side of it. It made it through Kickstarter with over $7mil in hands. Will it be better that EVE? 

Elysium: new movie from Neill Blomkamp

My hero, Neill Blomkamp is making a new movie! Matt Damon is the star. Trailer of Elysium looks like social unrest  and rich-poor division what was a strong background in District 9 remains. Bring on the revolution! 

thanks to http://futurewarstories.blogspot.co.uk/ for update on this

Boarding Marines: rules overview

Boarding Marines of Imperial Fists

Boarding Marines have been around ever since Forgeworld conceived Badab War books. Their primary mission would be to board and assault enemy ships in void space. As a player of Black Templar's successor it would be a perfect unit for my style of play. I was tempted to either buy one of the books or just buy upgrade kit from Forgeworld. Both temptations were successfully resisted thanks to the price £90 for the book, content most of which was not interesting to me. You would not pay such amount for 2 pages of really useful stuff, would you? In case you would, you will need a Badab War part I book from Forgeworld. Second reason was lack of open references to the boarding marines equipment. The site states: 

Detailed resin conversion kit consisting of two lascutters, a graviton gun, and sufficient boarding shields, weapon arms and heads to build five Boarding Space Marines, as well as additional components to build a Boarding Sergeant.       

Forgeworld loves to invent old-new weapons and leave their profile buried in books and useless pictures. What type of lascutter? Is it a graviton gun from old codexes or similar to Blood Angels graviton grapple? What is the difference between boarding and combat shield? £90 is an answer. I would assume that if you live outside UK its even more expensive. So a scrapped the idea. 

However, the Emperor has answered to my prayers and gave me a chance to have a look inside of one these blessed books. I saw the pictures. I saw the rules. I saw the points. Then I closed the book and congratulated myself on saving some money. Let me explain why.

1. Profile. Boarding Marines are absolutely no different from any other codex Space Marine stats. Same stats as any Tactical squad. No bonuses, no extra skills, nothing. Extra 50 points. 
2. Really "unfluffy". Forgeworld authors describe that becoming Boarding Marine is more of death sentence from the Chapter. WTFK? These guys should have done a research on Black Templars, who fight most of their battles in space and zero gravity. Not to mention that this kind of operations would require at least some skill and training. No, in their mind Boarding Marines are just over pimped cannon fodder.
3. Questionable Equipment. With boarding shield marine gets 5+ invulnerable save. Wonderful, isn't it? But Space Marine with power armour in zero gravity CANNOT RUN WITH IT! Yes, super soldiers need to visit the gym more often. On top of that, even if Boarding Marines will assault anything they never gain bonus for extra weapon. Why???! To represent that shield is so heavy and its so difficult to fire bolter while carrying it? Or to limit us to using them as move and fire unit? Then why Captain, Veterans or even Sergeants may take storm shield with power armour? 
4. Strange lascutter. Imperial Armour 2: Project Aphelion featured lascutter in Elysian Drop troopers inventory. Range: base contact, S:10, AP:? auto hit on immobile targets except infantry; ideal for breaking doors and cooking big bugs in assault. Boarding Marines get a lascutter which adds +1 to our Initiative in assault but we lose any bonuses for charging. Auto hit in assault with S:9, AP:1, ignores armour. Why lose Strength? Why repeat that it ignores armour if in most cases it is a case of Instant Death? Poor Guardsman can charge in an wipe the 'nids face with it, and super soldier can not? Mind you, I'm paying £90 for this.

So is there a bright side for Boarding Marines? Well, yes there is. 2 models per unit may take either support weapons like multi-melta. Unit may accompanied by 2 types of Drones: Fire Wasp and Devastation drone: one with flamer other with demolition charge of 5" blast, (again, why not use normal Blast?). Graviton Gun is actually a cool weapon with Range 18" AP3 and nasty surprise to anything which will come under a blast area. But despite everything, if you really like Forgeworld resin you will enjoy the quality of the kit, don't mind the rules. Unless of coarse you would take a risk and make a conversion.

     
Sincerely yours
Mark-Paul.

New Tau Codex: biggest changes

Tau Pathfinders. Source: http://eastern-empire.com/gallery/urban-tau-cadre/

New Tau is finally here! The shiny hard-cover codex book is written by Jeremy Wetlock, who runs the column in White Dwarf and apparently been with GW for a long time. Codex itself is full-colored 100 or so pages book with easy navigation, plenty of images and background on each old and new units, heroes as well as new influx of background information on Tau Empire itself, their Septs and Heroes. Book is priced at £30 in Uk, and well worth buying just to have it on the shelf or battlefield.

So what are the biggest changes from the old codex:

1. Hammerhead and Sky Ray are BS 4.
2. Fire Warriors and Pathfinders are Initiative 2 
3. Drones may mix and match between Shield, Markerlight and Heavy Guns in one unit.
4. Drones are Initiative 4. 
5. Snipers are BS 5 and may have up 6 Marksmen with up 3 Sniper Drones each. Oh, Their weapon is a Rapid fire AP5. Did i mentioned the markerlight and Support fire?
6. Vespid are Initiative 6 and will ignore difficult or dangerous terrain. 
7.  Support Fire special rule allows you to fire Overwatch from friendly unit in 6" as well as from unit being assaulted. With certain abilities or Heroes Support fire may be fired by vehicles!  
8. Markerlight will grant one of the following: +1 to BS, Ignore Cover saves, fire a Seeker missile without reducing the amount of weapons vehicle can use, add +1 bonus for each markerlight to Overwatch BS.
9. Kroot finally got an armor. 6+ armor is a Kroot dream come true :) 
10. Most Battlesuits pack twink-linked weapons, but majority is still BS 3. 
11. Fire Blades are nasty! Veterans of Fire Caste they almost rival Space Marine Captains. They are 50+ points upgrade for Fire Warrior and allows extra shots or re-roll 1 to hit. 3 Wounds. 
12. Rippertide Battlesuit is a Mounstrous Creature with Toughness 6 and loads of weapon choices. Main bonus Nova Reactor: allows you either extra shots with twin-linked weapons, 4d6 evasion maneuver, overload with big "kaboom", or improved AP.
13. Flyers are here. Bomber and Fighter both at BS 3, 2 HP and ability to take 4+ invulnerable save against incoming fire. 
14. Heroes: as well as Farsight, Shadowsun and Aun'Va (last one is even more useful than ever), there is a master Pathfinder, super tankman at BS 5, Tank hunter, Support fire and Overwatch, and Ethereal with WS:5, I:5 A:4. He either goes Rending or chopping, especially against the Orks. 
15. Last but not least: Warlord Traits. 6 unique Traits, with 3 out of them may be used once per battle. They demand and intelligent play and understanding of your army. Traits may give your units Skyfire rule, extra shots, extra move or morale bonus.                           

In conclusion: most of the units remained as they were, or even less hard, but the difference is army cohesion, support and firepower. Tau will demand intelligent play, careful positioning and support from each other. Only then they will be victorious.  
   

Shadowsun.

Shadowsun.Did you called me hentai character??! 

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Represented and used on this blog images, marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations, units, illustrations, quoted texts  and other materials does not seek to challenge Intellectual property of their respective owners. Unless stated otherwise materials are used without permission. Aforementioned materials and TM, are property of their owners and their affiliates. All Rights Reserved to their respective owners. 

Sort-of-official:
Texts and  ideas posted on this blog are Copyright of Mark-Paul Severn. Should anybody use them without my permission for money making, I will not hesitate to use my mutant powers to steal your liver and cook it on gas while you asleep.

So beware! It's better to mention me or my blog in your sources than lose a liver. :-))

Arwen.

I'm 2700 years old, (thanks to Tolkien, should you ask), and i'm married. But I was quite a wild thing in my youth.  

Lucas Arts is dead. R.I.P.

The mighty Jedi has been eaten by Mickey Mouse as Disney acquired Lucas Film and Lucas Arts during the fall 2012. Now Lucas Films, and Lucas Arts have been shut down. Half a year ago while most observers were following media hype and promises of bright new future (as well as Star Wars: Episode 7 and other shiny stuff) somethings should have warned us of inevitable:

1. It's Disney. One of the main competitors of George Lucas and his approach to entertainment, art and life. Lucas was brave enough to borrow from Buddhist philosophy and put that into a working concept for mass media. Can you imagine Lion King or Mickey Mouse thinking and relating to matters of strategy, belief  and philosophy? I can't.

2. Death of master L. George Lucas, as a result of the deal would not be directing, but being a "creative consultant". Artist is a main driver of any film or game production. When artist stops being heart of it, the magic of our connection to the movie, story and characters slowly dies as  more of "same-crap-as-before-cause-it-sells" stuff encroaches  The fact that Lucas was not actively involved in creation of last 3 films of Star Wars actually shows that. Movies became more about lightsabre-action and less about meaning. 

3. Different market priority.  Disney, despite all the promises had a strong idea where the "new" LucasArts will go. This is a quote from Disney's announcement I took from kotaku.com: 

In a conference call this afternoon, Disney's Bob Iger said they will be focusing on social and mobile games and will likely license their IPs for console gaming-meaning you'll see other studios making Star Wars games .

Well, most of the games that made Lucas Arts were traditional PC and console games with rich narrative and established background. They obviously did not fit into Zynga's backyard of casual games and Facebook time-killers.  That's not the product players would expect from such studio.  

So now to the final question on why would Disney buy Lucas Films and shut them down? It's not just about the money. With Lucas Arts gone, but their intellectual property under their control, Disney will become unsinkable giant of entertainment industry. That would improve their position greatly in the face of current financial difficulties and hard-hit entertainment sector. Current cancellation of new project's serves this goal: spend as less as you can, gain as much as you can. Welcome to capitalism, Jedi.
   

April.

Ms. April
Saving the gamers from low blood pressure