GenCon '11: Event Reg

Event registration for GenCon '11 has come and gone. Now, the real planning begins.

What to say about registration? It could have gone better - but it wasn't a complete waste. GenCon LLC has instituted a new "wishlist" system which I am still on the fence about. basically, you go through all the various events, rank them, and then when reg begins, you submit your list and hope that you beat out all comers. There were three of us that I know from my group that submitted our wish lists within half a second of event registration opening and we all ended up with more than 1,000 people "in line" before us. Really? 1/2 a second and I'm 1322? My buddy, Brad, was right behind me at 1350 and Eric, my other buddy in Europe was 990-something.

On one hand, this new system makes it a lot less stressful and allows for some planning ahead of time. In this case, my buddies and I worked on getting one of the TerrorWerks live action games thinking it would be great fun to do as a group. Alas, it was not to be. We had two of us working in coordination (across Skype) and still couldn't come up with an opportunity to get us all in the same slot. Within two minutes almost all of the blocks for TerrorWerks were sold out. Dammit.

Worse yet, even one of the seminars was sold out. I've never, ever seen a seminar sold out on the first day... much less the first five minutes. I've been to seminars by the same group and while they are popular - they have never been that popular. The only real change is the new wishlist system, so I blame it for me losing out on a bunch of events.

In the past, when registration opened, you logged on and we all raced to get each event one-at-a-time. maybe because I had better success with that system is the reason I like it better. This new wishlist system left me incapable of prioritizing on the fly. It got even more complicated when I was trying to buy tickets for multiple people - if even one had a conflicting event then you couldn't get tickets for all of them. Suck. So, all those extra events I signed up for because they simply looked interesting made it so the few opportunities I had to nab the TerrorWerks events. Boo!

In the past, if you had a a buddy with a conflicting event, it took a couple seconds (as long as a page reload) to drop that particular event and look for another or drop your buddy from the event. Now? With the new system you had to put it into your wishlist, reload, and wait in line for the computer to tell you that one of your buddies had a conflicting event - and in the mean time someone else grabbed the last good spot.

I dislike this new system for a couple reasons:

1) The guy that gets lucky and has his wishlist in first gets ALL of his games. In the other format, that (fictional) guy and me were competing at the same time, so he got some and I got some. In this case, because I was milliseconds late I got left in the cold.

2) Its nigh impossible to buy tickets for a group due to the mutual block-outs that occur due to scheduling conflicts. The added wait time of the wish-list aggravates an already existing problem.

3) I really dislike picking an event after registration has opened just to have to wait a minute or more for the computer to tell me there is a conflict. Event registration is a competitive environment, and having to sit on my hands sucks.

***

So, this year it looks like I am foregoing gaming in official events and focusing on the auction, loot room, seminars, and gaming with my buddies. Honestly, thats the way it usually ends up... so its not a total loss.

92 days to go (or so the countdown times on the GenCon page tells me).

The Rifles Win the Cup!

Its a Statistical Fact: I rule!

Long story short - I won my fantasy Hockey League for the first time since I joined the league four years ago. Go me. This reunites the regular season trophy and the overall championship trophy under my sage stewardship. I'm really quite please with this result - not only for the trophies - but because I really like the guys that play in this league and consider them good opponents.

A little piece of advice for you budding fantasy players out there. Dont sweat the draft. If your team looks exactly the same coming out of the regular season as it did going in, you did something wrong. No matter what fantasy sport you play, its all about the Waiver Wire. Play your hunches on the waiver wire, not the draft, and you should do just fine.

Did I mention, "Go me?" Yeah, Go Me!

Now, if the Stars could win out and actually make the playoffs...

Terrible Gas

Let me just tell you, I hate farts. I used to love 'em. I have yet to meet a fart joke I dont think is at least chuckle-worthy, and possibly downright hilarious. However, once you become a parent, farting is suddenly deadly serious. You see, farts are the harbingers of bad things with babies. They may herald the coming of a heavy diaper. They may simply just smell like, well, like a fart. Or, in the worst scenario, they wake your baby up. Thats the kicker for me. I dont mind diapers. I dont even really mind dirty diapers. What I do hate is when my daughter is sleeping soundly, and then at 3am has to pass gas... and because she is a baby it doesnt come naturally. So, flailing commences. Legs are kicked. Grunts start. And, horrifyingly, she wakes up as her cute little intestines work the gas through her system. To a baby, even minor discomfort is usually a crying matter.

There have been nights, where I hear her little cry, knowing that she isnt fully awake. She begins to roll back and forth, kicking her legs. I know she has a fart coming. I dread it. I stay deathly still, hoping that if I am perfectly still that it will somehow make the fart pass and my daughter fall back asleep. Eyes wide open, breathing slowed, I pray that things (ahem) work themselves out. Sometimes they do, sometimes they dont and I have to get up and help put her back to sleep.

Waking at 3am hearing that your baby has a fart coming is a special sort of dread I never knew about until a few months ago. Its terrifying and demoralizing at the same time.

Farts. They wake my daughter up at night. For that, they hold my eternal enmity.

Fantasy Hockey; The Finals! Finally.

So Begins My Mighty Tale of Woe and Victory!

I shall be the Pope of Hockeytown! All kneel before your master!

Okay, so I finally made it to the finals in my fantasy hockey league. The league, called "Diplomatic Immunity Hockey League (DIHL)" has been a part of my fantasy sports life for the better part of four years now. The players/managers are all associated with the State Dept. in one way or the other and have served overseas as Foreign Service Officers (again, at some point or another). Its a good league, with a couple very knowledgeable and active managers. There are a couple homers in the league too - of which I am one (go Stars!).

In DIHL I routinely make it to the postseason in our league, and (frustratingly) routinely get bounced in the first round. Looking at my record, since joining the league, I have placed 7th three years in a row as a result of getting eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Its like clockwork. Last year was especially disappointing. I led my squad to a near-victory in the regular season standing (which wins a trophy). I missed winning the regular season by one point. Yup, one point. I was cruising for the better part of the 2nd half of the season then went on holiday/medical leave to S. Africa for a week. There, I didnt have access to the Internet and, stupidly, felt confident my team could do their thing on autopilot for one measly week. Yeah, right. I get back, to see me lose in a heartbreaker. Then I get to the post-season ranked 2nd, and get creamed by 7th place. That, naturally, left me in my traditional 7th overall hole. Great. My choke is going down in DIHL lore as the greatest (worst) stumble of all time. Great. Worse, we draft the following year based on regular season standings, so while I finished 7th overall due to my crap-ass performance in the postseason, I finished 2nd in the regular season and drafted 2nd to last. Great.

Great.

My post-season perfomance in DIHL is the fantasy equivilent of this.

This year has been different. I dominated, again, in the regular season, with 30+ points between me and 2nd place (who, by the by, is the guy that beat me our for #1 last year). Fearing the worst, I prepared to get pwned in the first round of the playoffs. Miraculously, I did not. In the 2nd round, it was amazingly tight, but I won by a razor-thin score of 7-6.

Let me talk a bit about the 2nd round of the playoffs. I faced a team that plays a lot like I do. Together we probably accounted for 75% of the waiver wire moves for the entire league. We both have no compunctions about dropping slackers and picking up the most obscure hot-hands. So, we go into this past Sunday (the final day for the matchup) basically neck-and-neck (him 6 points, me 5 [which means he leads in 6 categories, I lead in 5 categories, and the others were tied]).

Sunday had him starting a goalie and probably taking the lead on a number of the goalie stats since I didnt have a goalie on my roster with a start that day. It sucked, but I figured I could make up those points because I had a couple extra offensive players starting on that day. I wake up on Sunday, check the score, and see my opponent craftily dropped a bunch of scrubs and picked up some hot-hands that specifically played that Sunday. I suddenly went to having a slight advantage in starting players, to a major disadvantage.

As luck would have it, my daughter woke up early on Sunday so I had a little time to see what was going on. With literally 15 minutes left before any additions would not be applied for the games on Sunday, I did some mad-crazy research, grabbed my own offensive ringers to play... and then divine providence encouraged me to also pick up Chris Mason, the backup goalie in Atlanta. Every place I checked said Mason was unlikely to start, but I desperately needed a goalie to start on Sunday and he was the only option on the waiver wire with even a prayer to start.

I got lucky. Mason started. Not only did he start, he won his game. Up 4-2 he gave up two painfully late goals and the teams went into overtime. Then they went to a shootout. It came down to a single goal... and my DIHL opponent had the guy facing Mason on the other end of the ice. I get the win, get an extra point in the hockey league - and that made all the difference.

Picking up Mason was the fantasy hockey equivalent of pulling my goalie with 5 minutes left. It was a desperation play - born of necessity and trading my possible future performance in the finals for a short-term gain to actually make it to the finals.

So, here I am. My team is gutted due to the need to pick up a bunch of ringers and I am facing the guy who took 2nd in the regular season (in other words, he didnt get lucky and got to the finals on the back of a very good team). However, I did what I had to in order to make it to the finals. No crappy 7th place for me this year!

Pithy Analysis: In Defense of the Destroyer

The Destroyer is Your Bestest Friend (after me, that is)

Glorious!

With this blog I am going to try something new - analysis of some Warmachine units/minis. I like to think I have a bit of a different perspective than other Warmachine players (dont we all?). I enjoy taking minis and units that are normally poo-poo'd by the greater Warmachine community and see if I can find the context to make those models useful. I enjoy this doubly so when I have a theme I am working on and slavishly keep a model in the list despite its supposed ineffectiveness. Naturally, the Destroyer, which kicked so much butt in 1e and is now considered obsolete in 2e by many Warmachine players, is the 'Jack I field most often and have the best results with. I think I am going to call this series of Blogs "Pithy Analysis."

Pithy Analysis: The Destroyer

Even now, they cannot escape the shadow of "the Big guy."

The Destroyer gets unfairly maligned by pretty much every Khador player because it isnt the Behemoth. The Destroyer is nine points, gets you good ARM, a great ranged weapon (the bombard), and a solid (if unexciting) melee weapon. The Behemoth is 13 points, gets you two bombards, has great melee, has an extra point of armor, and looks sweet. So, for a measly four points more you get a lot more return on your investment, right? Right? Wrong. The reality is that the Destroyer continues to fill a useful role in Khador's arsenal - and is not supplanted in all instances by the Behemoth. Its All About the Gun.

Business end of the bombard.

Lets get the basics of the bombard out of the way-- long range; great POW (for a gun); 3'' AOE (to force good placement by your opponent and to still hit even when you miss); arcing fire (to ignore annoying screens); and because of that AOE, the ability to hit stealthed solos (I'm looking at you Eiyrss). Thats quite a set of abilities.

Fool'd ya! Its actually all About the Mission.

Two of my three beloved Destroyers 073 and 063 (named after Aircraft Carriers I worked on while in Tokyo)

What the Destroyer does is give a Khador player a mobile and amazingly survivable gun platform that can also defend itself in melee -- for 9 points. That's the key right there, when you have a role to fill, you should fill it as efficiently as possible. Yeah, yeah, the Behemoth is better in many ways, but its also four more points. If you dont have to spend four more points to get the job done - then dont. Simply upgrading to the Behemoth in all cases is wasting a large percentage of your available army list.

To put it another way, if you are trying to save money, and you can buy a nice Mazda for $20,000 to get to work or you can buy a nice BMW for $70,000 - which should you buy? Yes, the Mazda isnt as sexy as the BMW, but for utility, it does the same thing. Drawing the analogy out, you can do the same for making lists. You can choose fluff over substance (which is totally okay by me, heck, I encourage it), or you can choose to streamline your list. Since we are talking about relative utility of the Destroyer and I am (vainly) trying to convince you, dear reader, that the Behemoth isnt always the better choice, lets just put aside fluff and aesthetics for the time being. Phew.

The Behemoth, Focus, and You!

One! Two! Two bombards! Ah, ha, ha!

Amazingly enough, there is something that the Destroyer does better than the Behemoth - focus management with the gun. The Destroyer only has one gun and it can take a full allocation of focus. Thus, there is no issue boosting both to-hit and damage, maximizing the utility of the bombard. Because the Behemoth has two bombards (yay!) but can only have three focus allocated to both those bombards (boo!) you cant put two focus on each shot (boost hit/boost damage). The result is that you are paying for two bombards, but only one of which cant be used optimally (this is, of course, excepting 'jack bond characters - we will just ignore them). Because both the Destroyer and Behemoth have crappy RATs, getting two focus on each shot is a big deal. ...and lets be honest, you are buying the Behemoth and Destroyer for their guns. The other stuff they bring to the table is gravy, but its the guns that make these guys useful.

Ask yourself, whens the last time you took the Behemoth for its melee ability? Right. Never. Khador has better, more points-efficient options for beat-down. So, if the role of the Behemoth in your list is to be the ranged threat not only are you not getting maximum focus use, you are also wasting four precious points on AP fists you dont intend to use. Blech. (Note, if the role you have for the Behemoth is to be your utility jack and do both ranged and melee shenanigans, then yeah, its probably a better choice than the Destroyer - its all about knowing what role you want your jack to play).

In the Destroyer you got a very versatile weapon, and for a modest amount of focus, you can devastate just about any target -- at what amounts to extreme range (in Warmachine, at least). Thats really good. Better yet, if the Destroyer's target survives the hit, its going to have a hard time eliminating the Destroyer in response - since the 'jack is (naturally) heavily armored and mobile (not "fast" - "mobile"). Thats a nasty combo. There is nothing else in our lists that has the hitting power, focus efficiency, mobility and sheer survivability that the Destroyer brings to the table. Even heavily armored targets and warcasters have to steer clear of a Destroyer because of its hitting power and arcing fire. Lots of other models do one or maybe two of those things... but not all of them (mortar moves like crap, Widowmakers can have problems with multi-wound models, most other Khadorian jack guns are much shorter range). The exception to this rule, and one other jack that can do everything the Destroyer does, is the Behemoth -- but it has its own pitfalls as I note above. Indeed, if played correctly, the Destroyer should strike fear in your opponent so much so that they leave a nice big halo of empty space around your jack out of the fear or well-placed bombard shots.

I Love me Some Axe.

One unexciting melee weapon, coming right up!

Lets talk about the axe a little bit. No one loves the axe. Its solid, but unimpressive in a faction known for having so very impressive melee options. However, I love the axe. Lurv. It. Why? because its crappy, and you dont pay a premium for crappy melee weapons. Every stat, ability or advantage in Warmachine comes with a cost in points. Its the reason great options cost more points. When I build an army a lot of my selection process is based around paying the least amount of points for the stats/abilities I want to use. Everybody does this even if they dont think about it - why pay for Croe's Cutthroats (and all their special abilities) if all you want is a cheap tarpit unit? So, being happy with a crappy axe is due to using the Destroyer for the right role - a mobile gun platform. I dont want to have to pay for great melee in the Destroyer simply because I dont ever plan for it to be my primary melee jack. If the Destroyer were designed with a kick butt axe, its points cost would go up. I dont want that. I dont want to pay a premium on an ability or item I dont plan on using.

I have the same problem paying for solos that modify other units like the Marksman or Fenris... if I take one of those solos without the unit it modifies, I better have a very good reason. I hate choosing units with abilities I dont plan on using. What I do want out of that axe is reasonable hitting power, nothing more. The crit is nice, but nothing spectacular and is of such middling utility didnt drive up the cost of the Destroyer appreciably. So, I get what I want. A melee weapon that i can use and buff with focus if I really need to, but that doesnt waste points forcing up the price on the jack to add abilities or crit effects that aren't going to be used.

Take it! Its Yours!

Waitasec! I used this pic already. Boo.

Dont overlook the fact that the Destroyer is arguably our best model for taking and holding objectives. If you play games as something other than run-run-melee (which many Khador players seem to think is the only option - more power to them I guess), then the Destroyer is extremely valuable. It can advance to a spot, and with its armor absorbing hit after hit, hold that point for a couple rounds (at least). Better yet, since its bombard has great range and amazing hitting power, the Destroyer can camp that spot and still participate in the battle -- hitting challengers and severely weakening them before they ever get close to the objective point. When/if your opponent gets something to the point to try to push the Destroyer off, it has that handy axe for defending itself. There are other ways to take and hold an objective, but none so menacing and hard for your opponent to deal with than the (wrongfully-maligned) Destroyer. ...oh, and the Destroyer can hit stealthed targets at range. I've seen my opponent bring Eiryss to the table, just to see her wiped off the map by a nicely deviated bombard shot -- and then the Destroyer (in subsequent turns) deals ranged death to my opponent's most valuable models. Great armor + strong gun + great range = ideal unit to take and hold objectives.

Destroyers! Magetize and attack!

Pithy Analysis Conclusion: Use the Destroyer when you need:

1) A powerful shooty unit in your army (one of the best Khador has to offer).

2) To hold an objective (the best Khador has to offer).

3) When the Behemoth is too expensive.

Drago and Karchev

Nothing Fancy...

Just two of my favorite minis from my army:

Axe(s) to face(s)!

Red Khador is for wussies.

Recommendation: Comics (March '11)

Funny Pages that Arent Funny...

I read a reasonable amount of comics in TPB or Graphic Novel format. Usually, these are easy and quick reads, perfect for long days when I am sitting in bed getting sleepy. I like to think I am pretty discerning when it comes to comics -- I'm an adult and want good plots supported by interesting characters. So, with that said, I wholeheartedly suggest...

Locke and Key:

Its really, really good. The art is amazing and the plot is genuinely creepy and suspenseful. Its the story of a family, ripped apart by tragedy, and beset by all sorts of (inter-related) supernatural events. This is very much an adult comic with blood, violence and adult themes laced throughout the panels.

Whats really nice about Locke and Key is the art nicely supports the complex story-telling. If havent seen attention to detail in the art like this since the old Image series The Maxx. Many panels have little hints and foreshadowing buried in the crisp art, encouraging you to linger on each panel for a couple seconds to make sure you catch everything. Good stuff...

My other hotness lately is Powers:

Powers is not new (there are, like, 13 collections out already -- with more to come), and a lot of great reviews already exist (so i am not the only one crowing about its quality). Its a little like the Wire meets Heroes. Powers is the, hands-down, best super heroes comic I have ever read. Its also the best crime drama/noir comic I have ever read. Funny how it can be both... but thats what good writing will get 'ya. Again, adult situations and themes carry these books, so they are not for the wee ones.

There you go. Go buy 'em!