Sunday 21 October 2012

So... What'd I miss?

Good Sunday all!

It's been a while since my last post, and quite a lot has happened!

Where to start? Well I suppose I should start off with an explanation:

This past week I've been on leave from work, my last extended amount of time off from work was of course back in May and that was for the recovery of my operation.

So I decided to spend this week kicking back and relaxing, which is exactly what I did.

So on Tuesday after dropping the kid off to nursery I went online and did some Warcraft dailies, something that I was very happy to do now I'm level 90. I then proceeded to put a film on and fall asleep in front of the TV. This was before waking up around 1600 in time to do a little house work.

Then came Wednesday, more dailies followed by another film and another sleep.

Then we were on Thursday, and from here on my wife and I were on joint leave, so we started the day with a McDonald's breakfast, some relaxing at home and then a nice pub lunch at our local.

It was shortly after that a friend of my wife's arrived (more on this in a bit) and we ordered Pizza before watching Prometheus.

- now I'll be writing a post on this separately in a few days, but please expect spoilers.

Friday, all three of us went to a local diner where we had a fried breakfast, and things started to go down hill from there. I originally thought it was a combination of the fat content in all the food I had eaten, and the lack of my gall bladder, but 3 days on and the discomfort is still present, and so instead something tells me I've had a mild form of food poisoning.

So yeah, the last few days have been fun. That said, Saturday my wife and her friend were going to a convention, and no way was I going to let something as annoying as regular toilet trips get in the way of that - I once couldn't go to a musical for her birthday because of V&D and she to this day hasn't forgiven me.

But one thing I believe I have neglected to tell you is about the joys of teething. You see ever since a week Friday, the Moo has been teething between 2-3 teeth at a time, this has resulted in very late night time interrupts, rubbish sleep and general feelings of crap.

This is why I lived being able to nap during the day so much, I can't even begin to stress how much this helped.

It was also over the past few days that a realisation hit me: my tournament, set for 4th November? Not going to happen!

Because of uptake, if it was going to happen, we'd be looking at £20 a head entrance fees just to cover the rent!

No instead I've had to cancel this event and will reschedule in January. The good news is that I've already had a rough 4 additional people who are interested in it for January.

...

They say there are no mistakes in life, only lessons. It's when you don't learn from these lessons that they become mistakes.

Well there's one thing that I've learned, no matter how suitable a date is for your theme, if there is already a big event going on at the same time, you're going to get squashed, and no matter how much of a plucky underdog you may be, you're going to fail.

So I'll take this lesson, and I'll learn from it. And cons January I'll be hosting the best and most bad-ass Tourny that North London has ever seen!

Boo-Ya!

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Monday 15 October 2012

Something Wicked: Finale

Good Monday all,

So to get the ball rolling this week, it's time to reveal my completed Baby Kade.

Now before I show case this model, which I'm sure many of you have already seen thanks to Twitter I'd like to explain how the process went. In fact I might as well take this opportunity to walk you through the process from stage 1.

So Baby Kade arrived, as was previously discussed I dumped a load of Greenstuff on his head which was shaped into a rough sphere before segmenting into 1/8ths and then once done sliced eyes and a mouth into the 'head'.

This allowed me to create the model you all saw in the last post:


You will notice the milliputted ground and the tombstone complete with Birdy.

The second stage was to undercoat the whole thing white followed by a brown wash. This allows me to bring out detail instantly and aids to my shading. It's a technique I've only been using recently (my Hooded Rider was the first model I ever tried it on).

I then painted up the mud on the base, applied static grass and got started with the tombstone.


As you can see from the above picture, it's starting to come together, but I was not happy with my free hand detail on the tombstone, as you can see with the following picture:


Frankly the whole thing looked amateur, so using a particularly old and thick pot of red paint, I layered it up, applied a black wash and then repainted the red.

The effect this had you can see shortly.

Next was to paint the little man himself.

I won't bore you with a step by step guide of how this was done, I'm sure you can all guess and if you really do want to know, let me know and I'll tell you personally.


I was then left with the above model. Teddy was unpainted, and I was unsure which direction to go with the grass. I had some ideas, but one thing I didn't want to do was leave everything too 'brown'.

Thanks to some advice and inspiration from the Twittersphere I painted up Teddy as a standard teddy bear, making him brown with white patches, and in contrast to this, made the grass green.

- For those of you who don't use any sort of grass, but have been thinking of doing so, I really recommend the Dead Grass by GW. The yellow colouring is great by itself, but also lends itself well for inking and painting, allowing you to make it any colour you want! Now that's good economics!

This left me with the following:


As you can see, most of his colouring is quite dark, but this was done on purpose the encourage the orange of the pumpkin to 'pop'!





And these two shots show the finalised detailing on the tombstone.

And there we have it, what I can only describe as my entry into my Halloween Painting/Modelling contest for my tournament.

With hindsight, I really enjoyed this model. It was a fun learning experience for me, and I'm really happy with the end result.

And on that note, I'm going to leave you all and enjoy what is left of my bath.

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Friday 12 October 2012

Something Wicked: Part 2

Good Friday everyone!

Just a small post today, but if you read my post from last night you'll know that I made a start on my Halloween themed miniature.

It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to: Baby Karver!


As you can see the pumpkin head sculpting went well.

Come to think of it, I think it went too well, this was my first attempt, and my sculpting usually takes about 5-8 attempts to get the look I was going for.

The pumpkin head itself was made using Kyote's guide off the Wyrd boards, with a few modifications, such as sculpting it on Kade's head, and adding the face and top-cut.

The base is awaiting base coats, and will then have static grass applied and with hope I can create a nice 'graveyard' feel to it.

I'm also looking to add a little twist to the gravestone, but that will have to wait.

Hope you like! I'll be doing a little bit more tonight, and will update you all accordingly!

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Thursday 11 October 2012

Something Wicked...

Good Thursday all!

So today my Baby Kade arrived in the mail, and that means it's soon to be hobby time again! Yay!

And on the same day I found this on Wyrd's website;


Yes it appears that someone at Wyrd has had the same idea as me but in a deconstructed manner.

But first let me go back a step:

So as you should all hopefully know, I'm preparing for my first tournament: At the Mountains of Malifaux.

One of the events at this tournament is a Wyrd "Best Mini" in a Halloween theme, allowing for good paint jobs, modelling jobs, etc.

I decided a while ago that I needed to enter myself. I probably don't stand a chance in winning, but who was I to set a challenge, if I wasn't going to take part in it?

So from there my mind got racing. I needed to decide on a model, something I could paint/convert, but also something that I could also use in games (no point otherwise).

From that brain splurge came Karving Kade, a hybrid concept of Baby Kade with a pumpkin head (or in Malifaux terms, The Carver).

And so with this fresh in my mind, tonight I am giving my WoW levelling a pause (I'm half a level away from 90) and starting on the model.

For a quick idea, I'm looking to make a graveyard scenic base, accompanied by Kade himself with a modelled Greenstuff Pumpkin Head.

Wish me luck, and I'll see you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Why do cats stare? And other random thoughts

Good Tuesday everyone!

So, three posts in as many days! Maybe I'm getting back in my rhythm! Maybe in a few days time I'll be posting a satirical deconstruct of the post modern wargame (I won't).

Well, things are getting underway for my first ever Tournament. Have a few people who are interested in coming, and a few who are not, and I have a plethora of tasks to do between then and now, including studying for my first of my accounting exams - yes I know it's unrelated, but I need to keep it at the forefront of my mind, and not allow it to get swept up in a Malidaze!

For me, this will be the test. I need to take exams (spaced out, as while I can claim the admin fees back from my work for my first attempt, £50 a paper is still a hit, even if I am able to get it back a few weeks later) and at the same time keep up the rest, that's organising my tournament, running demos, being a good husband and father, and really should try to be a good friend as well.

I'm not sure how well it will go, but I guess the combined fun of the tournament, with the exam results will be the judge of that.

*************
Do you know why Anthony Hopkins was so 'creepy' in Silence of the Lambs?

Blinking.

He trained himself to slow down the amount he blinked, creating the illusion of staring without actually staring. This suggests that the character sees everything, knows what you're going to say before you say it, and is always one step ahead.

It's interesting that cats do the same. They rarely blink, and in doing so create an illusion of staring.

So when a cat appears to stare, it's not staring, it's looking normally.

In fact, cats probably wonder why us humans blink so much...

*************

I'll leave you now with a mini announcement.

Roughly this time last year, my wife, our friend and myself were level 85 on WoW and we were able to 3-man the first boss of the Sunwell raid.

This was an achievement for us.

Last night, while our friend was 90 and my wife and I were 88, we shoved Kil'Jaeden back into the Sunwell, before killing Sarth with 3 drakes up, finally finishing Naxx and going toe to toe with Malygos!

All of this with just the three of us.

I love outlevelling raids :D

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Monday 8 October 2012

Weekend Recap

Good Monday all!

I don't know where in the world you are reading this, or what time it is, but here, this morning it was dark...

The kind of dark that shuts off your alarm for a snoozing 30 more minutes, pulls the duvet over your head and says "Eff off! I'm going back to sleep!"

Anyway, I promised a recap on my weekend demo day:

So I ran two demos on Saturday, one full game against a store regular and his Raspy crew, and a advanced-basic demo against a repeat new player. By that I mean he came to my last demo but didn't buy into the game at the time. Apparently he went away and had it playing on his mind, so came back on Saturday and had another game with the same models but full rules.

Now in order to explain this I need to take a step back and explain how I play my demos:

You see, virtually all my demos are played as "Gunslingers vs Nephilim". That's Niño and Francisco Ortega vs 2 Terror Tots and 1 Mature Nephilim. On top of this I also remove triggers and a lot of the spells/abilities.

So the Nephilim retain Black Blood, the Tots keep Grow, and the Young keeps Melee Expert.

Niño keeps In My Sights and Francisco keeps Flurry while they both retain Companion.

This is based around understanding the Fate card mechanics, and in a lot of cases, how the models are moved around the table, and how Actions and Interacts are played out.

The game is played without Schemes and a modified version of Shared Treasure Hunt. Rather than a (2) Interact to pick up the counter, it's only (1) and at the end of every turn whichever side has the counter gets 1VP, the side at the end with the most VP wins.

In this guy's case, he had already played that and went away, come back and was looking for more.

So out came the same models, but this time full Stat Card rules including Triggers (he loved Flay on the Nephs).

As the game was a pure demo game, I further modified the rules. The Young's Mature was replaced with Grow (so it only took 1 blood to grow into a Mature) and we allowed all models to use Soul Stones - with a strict explanation that under normal circumstances only Masters and those with Use Soulstones can do so.

He played it and loved it, I think that having understood how the mechanics worked from last time, these added rules allowed to fill the gaps rather than blow his mind.

After this we had our usual 'post game discussion' where we discuss the game, it's theme and setting and what sort of factions and crews there are.

He said to me that he was really into the Showgirls, but had been told they were hard to learn with and asked for a recommendation on a starter crew.

I asked what he liked for game play and style, and he said that more than anything he likes board manipulation, moving his models around in unusual ways and having sneaky tricks, rather than smacking the opponent with a sword or similar.

I told him how I started, that i really wanted to play The Dreamer because I loved the fluff but because he was supposed to be hard to learn with I went for Book1 Masters instead. I went on to explain that while I enjoyed those games, I spent my time wishing I was playing the Dreamer and what model conversions I would try for the crew.

With this in mind, what he wanted from a crew was provided with the Showgirls. He can get another crew if he wants, but he'll spend his time wishing he invested his money where he wanted with his girls.

And I don't care who you are, when you first look at how the Girls play, you feel your head implode. So really he should just get that over and done with.

After this we had the game vs Raspy. This guy wanted to play against my Dark Debts crew, and I encountered something that I'm still not 100% sure is a legal move:

So to set the scene: Lynch is just out of Melee with his Ice Golem (about 3.5") it's Raspy's turn to activate, she can't see Lynch but can see her Golem.

She casts December's Curse 3 times, each time on the Golem, cheating her cast up and his resist down, giving her a positive cheat able damage flip. Regardless of the result if its not Severe damage he cheats it up making it 5 damage with 2 blasts.

This means that the blast hits Lynch, each time for 4 damage a go (12 in total) that can not be resisted and because of unlucky stone flips, only took it down to 9, so still killed Lynch with absolutely nothing I could do about it.

At the same time, the Golem with Armour 3 knocks the damage down to 2 a time, so he only takes a total of 6 damage and still has 3 wounds left.

Please I need to know, is that a legal move? It seems incredibly powerful to me and with no way to resist other than throwing Stones at it (If the target was a minion, he wouldn't be able to do that) made the game extremely 'un fun' for me.

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Anyway, time for me to get moving!

See you all Breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Sunday 7 October 2012

Holiday Planning

Good Sunday all!

So before I begin I would like to send a massive thank you to the Malifools of The Malifools Broadcasting Network. Now for those who know me, I listen to these guys as my pretty much exclusive podcast.

Now I knew that this week's episode had a discussion that was inspired by a blog post from last week, but never did I expect the great words these guys said about my blog.

So my thanks go out to you guys. Hearing that made me geek out!

*Insert Japanese school girl squeal here*

Anyway, excuse me while I regain my composure.

So this morning I awoke and had a wonderful realisation, the week after this (is that next week?) I have booked off from work. That's 5 whole days away from the office.

It's promising to be an interesting time, my work is scheduled to be covered by my assistant (a more than competent woman, who has been a fantastic addition to the team) and my wife has the week booked off as well.

So you're probably expecting me to have some trip somewhere planned? Maybe the three of us are jetting off to Isla Nublar or maybe hoping to get a ticket to the maiden voyage of the Event Horizon? Perhaps I've pooled all my funds and taking the family to see better worlds being built at Hadley's Hope or letting the Moo spend the week with the brilliant minds at Racoon City Daycare?

Well no!

Instead we're staying put!

After all, even if the Moo doesn't go to day care, we still have to pay for it, so from Tuesday to Friday, she is still going, and during those hours we're claiming some 'quiet' time.

Maybe we'll go to a restaurant, maybe we'll watch some films. I can't say, and I honestly don't care, what I do care is that we'll both be away from work being able to relax, in time to pick the Moo up in the evening and spend some quality time with her before her bed time.

Anyway, on that note I'm gonna have to call it. My bath water is cooling, the night is progressing and Pandaria calls!

Tomorrow; stay tuned for a weekend recap on my demo day at Leisure Games.

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Saturday 6 October 2012

GEEK IS

Good Saturday all!

Today I am en route to my latest demo at Leisure Games and thought I would share a little video I found.

Now before I show you this video I want to share with you a truth.

Before I saw this (live via a digital stream from the US) I was a lot more cagey about being 'out'.

You see, I was aware before of how my interests would be seen by the supposed masses, and the one thing I did not want to do was make myself a pariah or a martyr.

So before hand I would keep quiet and only reveal the 'real me' to those who I trusted implicitly.

I am of course talking about being a Geek. If there are comparisons in the above comments with something else, then that is deliberate and says a lot about how I saw my hobbies.

Then I saw this presentation, Chris Metzen at Blizzcon 2010's Geek Is speech.

It moved me, it showed me that we as a group have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed by our pass times.

The funny thing is, I owe Chris Metzen for giving me the Geek-Confidence (Geekfidence?) to apply and start being a Henchman for Wyrd, if it had not been for this video, and the message behind it, I would not be who I am now. (Something I am sure my wife resents that every day) :p

Anyway, on that note I'll leave you the video: Chris Metzen: Geek Is

Thank you,

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Thursday 4 October 2012

Lessons Learned

Good Thursday all!

So it's been an interesting couple of weeks, but let's get to the point:

Last Sunday I ran a 3 person demo at a friend's home. It was complicated and something I am NEVER doing again (at least not like that).

You see I was under the impression, because of my own assumptions, (however we all know what it means to ass-u-me) that at least two of the three had read and understood the rules, turns out I was completely wrong to assume this, and so planning a doubles brawl was a VERY bad idea.

I think that fun was had by all. We had a laugh, a joke and a game, however there were also a lot of head aches and confusions around Cheating Fate and Soul Stones.

It was then on my way home I read of another style of multi player game designed around those who are used to RPG games: the Solo Mini - Team game.

As soon as I read about this, I knew this was the game I should have played!

The strategy of this game is to have the GM (me) play with a full crew sans master. The other players then take one miniature each, the combined SS cost equalising my total and they have to work together to bring down my crew.

This seems like a game idea I could really get behind, and I'm kicking myself because I KNOW if I had played this it would have gone down so much better.

But I guess it's like they say, you win some, and you loose some.

-----

Anywho, this Saturday is my next Demo Day at Leisure Games, and for the second time, I have no Pre planned games.

It's going to be interesting, I've tried putting out the news to the regular store goers, but no takers yet.

I don't know if they are deliberately avoiding replying or not, but best not to dwell on it I say.

Well, I should get going, my train is nearly at my station and I've got a brisk walk to work to keep me going!

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Lessons Learned

Good Thursday all!

So it's been an interesting couple of weeks, but let's get to the point:

Last Sunday I ran a 3 person demo at a friend's home. It was complicated and something I am NEVER doing again (at least not like that).

You see I was under the impression, because of my own assumptions, (however we all know what it means to ass-u-me) that at least two of the three had read and understood the rules, turns out I was completely wrong to assume this, and so planning a doubles brawl was a VERY bad idea.

I think that fun was had by all. We had a laugh, a joke and a game, however there were also a lot of head aches and confusions around Cheating Fate and Soul Stones.

It was then on my way home I read of another style of multi player game designed around those who are used to RPG games: the Solo Mini - Team game.

As soon as I read about this, I knew this was the game I should have played!

The strategy of this game is to have the GM (me) play with a full crew sans master. The other players then take one miniature each, the combined SS cost equalising my total and they have to work together to bring down my crew.

This seems like a game idea I could really get behind, and I'm kicking myself because I KNOW if I had played this it would have gone down so much better.

But I guess it's like they say, you win some, and you loose some.

-----

Anywho, this Saturday is my next Demo Day at Leisure Games, and for the second time, I have no Pre planned games.

It's going to be interesting, I've tried putting out the news to the regular store goers, but no takers yet.

I don't know if they are deliberately avoiding replying or not, but best not to dwell on it I say.

Well, I should get going, my train is nearly at my station and I've got a brisk walk to work to keep me going!

See you all breachside!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Monday 1 October 2012

World of Warcraft: Where is it now?

Good Monday everyone!

Along with a good 9+ million other players I spent a lot of my free time last week playing the new WoW expansion: Mists of Pandaria.

After reading two articles on Kotaku and Wired I thought I'd give my own opinions on the state of the Warcraft world all these years on.

First, for reference, the articles in question:
Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5946168/with-mists-of-pandaria-world-of-warcrafts-age-is-starting-to-show
Wired: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/09/mists-of-pandaria/

Now I'll let you draw your own conclusions about these articles, but if I could tell you about how I see the world (of Warcraft)...

I got into the game back when The Burning Crusade (TBC) launched. I remember levelling from 1 to 60 in the un nerfed 'old world'. Then hitting Outland and scraping myself to 70. After that I then spent days and days grinding dailies to earn the cash for Turbo flying followed by even more grinding to earn my Netherwing rep.

With hindsight? It was horrible! Sure we had some fun doing it, but it could have been so much better!

Then Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) launched and things started looking up. The levelling experience was more enjoyable, the dungeons became more thematic, and for the first time ever my guild and I were able to dabble in raids. Not because we had recruited enough to do so, but because the entry was scaled so that we could do so.

Now don't get me wrong, we weren't running around of Invincible (The Lich King's mount drop) holding his head high for all to see. In fact come the end of the expansion, it was only the entry level raids we could partake in, but that was better than TBC where the best we could hope for was Heroic Dungeons, and even they were hard!

It was at this time that WoW hit it's peak for players, 12 million I think was the figure?

Now as with every game, there's always someone who feels 'but hurt' and apparently having 'casuals' such as myself taking down Naxx while wearing T10 was an insult to those who were killing the Lich King (or something to that effect).

Enter Cataclysm, an expansion where Blizzard listened to the vocal minority of their community. They streamed the levelling content making it boring, they ramped up the difficulty in their dungeons meaning they were HARD (these were later reduced in difficulty, but personally the damage was already done).

For the first time subscription figures were dropping.

This was something I found very interesting. So WotLK supposedly the most 'casual friendly' expansion has record high players, but then Cataclysm, the expansion designed to provide more of a challenge to players, has record low players! Could that be a co-incidence? Well, yes it could. But I don't think it is.

Bring on Blizzcon 2011.

The WoW annual pass is announced, 100,000 players subscribe and get locked into the game for a further 12 months, at the same time earning a flying mount and a free digital copy of Diablo 3 when it was due to launch later in 2012.

Was this a ploy to hold onto players who were leaving? Of course it was! But was I going to turn down a mount and £40 game when I was going to be paying my monthly subscription anyway? He'll no!

It was at the same Blizzcon that the next expansion Mists of Pandaria was announced.

This was of course met with mixed reactions. I remember one guy at the Q&A saying "I love the game, but come on... Pandas??" And Chris Metzen (less than three) being obviously insulted by the tone of voice this basement dweller used.

This expansion promised a new race that could be taken by either the Horde or the Alliance, a new continent we can run around in, limited flying until max level, dungeons and raids going back to WotLK difficulty, while new Challenge Modes are introduced purely to give 'h4rdc0re' players their challenges.

At the same time, Strategies were to be introduced, allowing any 3 man team to play through a mini encounter for Justice Point rewards and of course, WoW: Pokemon, or Pet Battles as they called it.

Essentially they were saying: Hardcore or Casual, we want to give you something to do that you will enjoy!

Bring on the Summer of 2012, subscriptions hit an all time low at 9 million. The game is quiet compared to previous months, and the Pre expansion slump feels more obvious for some reason.

Fast forward to last week. Mists launches, THOUSANDS of Pandaran Monks are created and a mass of players swarmed to Pandaria.

Meer hours later, reports are coming in of log in queues up to eight hours long just to get onto the servers! There's a lot of players all trying to get on at once, and let me tell you. I can understand why!

You see, with virtually every expansion prior, once I've spent about a day or two in one zone I'm bored of it. I want to move onto the next one ASAP.

Currently I'm running around the Jade Forrest (the first zone) and I'm loving every minute. Every moment is a pleasure, with beautiful vistas, amazing music and fun interesting quests.

With every expansion Blizzard have pushed the boat out in regards to their graphic engine. Yes it is the same engine that was introduced roughly 7-8 years ago, but it still does the job. The characters are cartoony and fun looking, the spell effects are bright and vivid and the environments are atmospheric.

Sure the game doesn't look realistic, but if you pull up any game that aims for a realistic graphic engine, then look at it in a few years time and you can see the problems with it. What was top of the line graphics then is now no yesteryears rubbish. Just look at The Secret World. Don't get me wrong, I'm still really enjoying this game, but only a few months into its release, and the graphics are already starting to fade.

But Warcraft never tried to be realistic, from day 1 it went for a stylised cartoon effect.

I suppose the best way to look at WoW's graphics is to compare it to the multiple choice adventure computer games of the early 90s. Games like SNATCHER on the Mega CD (or Sega CD if your American).

Now these games were supposed to look like comic books or at least illustrated novels. They were never realistic, because they were never meant to be.

Load up one of these games now and you won't be disappointed, they look EXACTLY as you remember them, because even at the time their graphics were a bit crummy.

And that's WoW for you. It doesn't have realistic graphics, it might be agony a little thanks to its old engine, but in 10 years time it'll still look the way it was originally intended.

So ultimately we come to the question: Should you play MoP?

I'm afraid I can't answer that for you. I can only tell you of my tales of excitement and heroism and see if that inspires.

In the meantime I'm going back to my Undead Mad Scientist. He can hold his breath under water for a long time... A REAL long time...

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley