John Zeitler

I kind of have my work cut out for me. I have a few battles tonight for the 40K Escalation Campaign, and tomorrow is GASP Games Day. I’d be spending nearly 24 straight hours at Legions, if I didn’t have to get my driver’s license renewed tomorrow morning.

In game terms, I’m ready for the campaign, and I’ve been looking forward to returning to GASP for a while (I hated having to miss March and April). I haven’t yet got the 500-point set of Imperial Guard painted up properly, but they’re close; only some detailing and cleanup work really needs to be done for the infantry, and the tank is completely base-coated. I won’t be able to play next week, so I’ll have two weeks to get them done and get a head start on the next 500 points– which, let’s be honest, are just gonna be a couple more tanks. Possibly also some Chimeras to give my troops a bit more cover.

My name is John, and… I’m addicted to explosions.

It started off simple… I was playing as the Orks and getting a few kills here and there, but other people were able to throw lots of wounds at me, and I wasn’t able to save against them. It always starts that way– the first few shells of ordnance are always free. If I’d only known what it would lead to…

Now it seems like I can’t even take my movement phase at the beginning of the turn without wanting a sweet, sweet, awesome explosion to happen instead. I’ll sit there as the Imperial Guard for the entire game, not moving, just raining fire down on everyone around me, simply blowing %$#% up for the hell of it. My entire tactical manual is a book on tape, and it’s just ten hours straight of maniacal laughter punctuated by thunderous KABOOMs.

I’m so glad I have a place where I can go to… wait, what the hell am I saying?! Explosions fix everything! Screw rehab, I’ma go get me more tanks!

Had a long day out tonight, folks, due to hearing that the power had gone out– there was simply no need for me to rush home to darkness. Before that, though, I picked up two vehicle models for the ol’ 40K. I just now discovered that, when the guys at the shop suggested painting it before assembly, they weren’t quite suggesting it so much as telling me that that’s pretty much what I’d have to do. Which means it’s time for me to start priming up some guys and settling on a color scheme for the Imperial Guard army.

This weekend is going to be… interesting.

Just getting out of my first play of the Imperial Guard army. I did remarkably well. Details will have to wait for a bit, probably tomorrow.

I lied, yesterday, when I said I’d have FF13 thoughts. Today was busy, and apparently I hadn’t quite beaten all of the whatever-pestilence-Grandfather-Nurgle-’blessed’-me-with, which means that in about an hour I’m going to take some NyQuil and time-travel to tomorrow morning. But I can talk a little bit about the game I played last night… a pretty basic 1400-point Space Marine on Space Marine battle. Nothing particularly interesting in and of itself; we played a scenario from the Battle Missions book (which I did wind up picking up last night, too– more on that in a bit). Of course, I lost, but I learned a lot more about the metagame and how other things work. I tried to analyze what I did wrong beyond “rolling poorly” and in the end I was pretty much able to identify my mistakes almost as soon as I made them. Didn’t help me all that much in the immediate, but I now have a far better understanding of what sorts of mechanics work in my favor and what don’t.

I then spent today, in between errands, putting together the last of the infantry for my highly-mechanized Imperial Guard army, which will play radically different from the Marines. At the very least my vehicles should last longer than the first turn.

Spent the evening putting together more for the Imperial Guard army, including the second Leman Russ tank. I’ve been doing a little bit of rethinking on my build plan, though, and while I’m proud of how the custom-hacked-together Exterminator turret came out, I’m probably going to just get two more of the Demolisher kits so as to switch out the projected second Exterminator for a Punisher. Something about being able to sling out twenty shots in a single turn really appeals to me. On the other hand, while the Exterminator only deals four shots a turn, they’re twin-linked, meaning I can reroll any failures on the first try, and they’re higher-powered. Having one of each really helps open up my options when building an army list.

My next building project is finishing up the 10-15 infantry models and the 2 Sentinels, which will give me a sparse but fieldable army. I’m thinking that if I do not lazy out with lazy laziness, I can get those together in time for next Friday’s open gaming night and start getting a feel for where I need to proceed with the build plan. Now that the weather’s warming up again, too, I can take a weekend at some point and get the Orks and Guard primed; since I’m planning on a very off-white and grey color scheme for the Guard, I’ll need to prime those a flat white rather than the black I’d used for the Space Marines and the Orks.

That’s all in the future, though. I’m off to bed now so that, in the morning, I may go and get red bean paste buns.

Last night was the first time I’d played WH40K in a non-competitive setting. It sounds backwards to think that I went straight for a tournament as my first time (back in November); but that tournament was explicitly for new players, was at an opportunity when I wanted to get further into it, and I hadn’t had time to properly prepare a full army between then and last weekend’s tournament. Once I got through that, though, I realized that I didn’t have to go to such lengths to get a feel for the game; the Friday night groups at Legions are far more relaxed than I thought they’d be.

The end result is that I think I made a good impression on the other players (instead of “here’s some jackass who’ll drop by once with some half-assembled pile of crap, get frustrated, and then never come back again”, I hope I managed at least “here’s a guy who’s new to the hobby but is pretty committed to it, and he’s willing to learn”), and I have a new destination for Friday nights (usually). Oh, and I started seriously putting together the third army after realizing the value of vehicles (in my defense, my first exposure to them was an Ork Trukk which is not exactly known for reliability or even usability). Gonna be a while before that one’s ready (spent today putting together half of what I had bought previously) but it’s going to be a riot.

Catch you folks tomorrow, when maybe I’ll get back to FF13; that’s not a knock on the game, I just felt more motivated to do figure work today.

For anyone interested, there’re photos of the Warhammer 40K event I participated in over here. Surprisingly all three of my matches are documented there, early on, at any rate. You can tell they’re early on because I still have pieces on the board…

The concept of a Warhammer tournament is a little different from what’s usually thought of by the word. Unlike, say, a poker tournament or a basketball tournament, every participant in these events plays the full complement of games (usually three). Matches are made at each stage of the tournament, usually by rankings, so that everyone stays competitive at any point– a player who gets blown away in his first match could get decisive victories in the next two and come away with an overall win.

Furthermore, since each player has a distinctly different set of figures, and mission objectives change with each stage, there’s almost no predicting what you’ll face. For example, in my Round 2, I wound up taking the attacker’s role against a set of Chaos Space Marines… who were defending by not defending. My opponent chose to keep all of his forces in reserve, let me blunder in and wonder what happened– which also negated the orbital bombardment that I was entitled to at the beginning of the match, because there was nothing there to hit– and subsequently wiped the floor with me.

Overall, though, the $5 or so you pay as an entry fee is really more of a token gesture to the shop hosting the event. That five bucks guarantees you about six to eight hours of wargaming in a competitive and friendly environment. Some shops or clubs will even provide pizza or drinks. Really, it’s best not to go in thinking you’ll win, because unless you’ve got a decent amount of experience behind you, you probably won’t. Instead, focus on the game itself and enjoying the play, rather than obsessing over the results.

Oh, and incidentally: I learned the importance of vehicles. I’d been thinking they were just big targets, but they might just be worth having a couple around… which is why my Imperial Guard army is going to be fitted up with four tanks and four assault carriers.

As mentioned, I’m not terribly fond of the Space Marine faction to begin with, but this trailer does show da Orkz in fine form. Odd, then, that the SMs are my first full army…