Author: Necroscourge

Depths of Gaming Episode 1

by Necroscourge

Depths of Gaming is a 1-2 hour weekly show that recounts gaming news, developments, and enables arguing about whether or not lopping off an orc’s man-pouch is Lawful Good.

Note: Necroscourge’s microphone cuts out frequently throughout this episode, because I have the silence detection thing on and it might be the culprit; next episode shouldn’t have this issue.

In this weeks show we discuss:

  • The upcoming Utopia expansion for Stellaris
  • The controversial ban of a League of Legends player
  • Whether or not mutilating a corpse is Lawful Good

 

Warning: We use moderate to strong language

 

Stellaris: Space Politics Patch Incoming

by Necroscourge

Paradox’s grand space opera RTS Stellaris recently saw a patch along with the Leviathans DLC that added plenty of amazing things like spess dwagons and merchant stations; but Paradox made it clear that they were already hard at work revamping their breakout hit with the upcoming 1.5 “Banks” Patch. So far this patch has been teased with two forum articles detailing both expansion and free features, as their current strategy is to release the major content as an expansion and the balancing stuff that makes the expansion work is free for all users.

Last week it was teased that there will be a large series of Ascension and Tradition trees that unlock specialized perks for specializing your empire. These appear to gigantic bonuses like the accompanying image boasting a 33% increase to damage against the intensely strong Fallen Empires that lurk in the galaxy; and there are supposed to be a lot of these types of bonuses. These all work towards either Psionic, Cybernetic, or Biogenetic transcendence for the species. This all allows a player to specialize their empire into an even more distinct playstyle. The post also teases the possibility of special buildings and stations becoming available through these perks.

But the juicy post released today is almost entirely about politics. Currently you have the single species you start with as your “Founder” species and you can later include others but the game only differentiates between that species and “everybody else”. The Alien Rights system allows you to specify the political rights of every species in your empire and opens up a whole new spectrum of galactic atrocities. The free half of this feature covers the ability to denote who is/isn’t sponsored by the state and whether or not your core worlds accept refugees from other empires; while the paid half is what is going to be creating those refugees. Part of the expansion includes being able to choose what type of slavery and purge policy to enact for each species. You can now automatically set your planets to enslave miners, toggle a species as livestock, chemically neuter whole populations, and more. Generic slavery and genocide was available before, but now different scales of messed up methods will be offered. Oh, and population uses a varying amount of minerals as upkeep, but meh.

Sick of getting puddle-stomped by FE’s?

The December 5 “Kennedy” update was a gigantic leap in the right direction because it fixed a few of the serious problems with the vanilla game including nerfing the ever-loving bejeezus out of torpedoes and removing colonization technology. It also made Pacifists playable by removing the flat damage penalty they used to get. In general it also made playing Hyperlane empires much easier because it wrangled the NPC monsters to specific systems instead of randomly scattering them around and making them move about. Because civilian ships are typically always put on evade it just lead to having to constantly reset your science ship command lists because they would forget all of their orders at the first sight of an enemy. And it does not help that the “Auto explore” feature is a technology unlocked at late game.

My issue with the Leviathans/Horizon story pack accompanying “Kennedy” is it’s trying to force the player to pay attention to their narrative instead of the player forming their own narrative; it’s entirely about learning about the big monsters you can kill in the game world. And they have huge skulls next to their power ratings so you don’t really know when you can even attack them. Meanwhile I am playing something wacky like a race of cactus pacifist hippies, this is the legend of my damned empire! So a DLC entirely around space racism and politics seems right at home here. These changes are going to make identifying empires much more fun, as you’ll be able to encounter a broader range of interesting characters past the Nice/Mean dichotomy right now.

I am absolutely loving what we’re hearing about the new “Banks” patch coming in the next few months. Emigration only happens right now in Stellaris when you have a migration treaty with another empire that has a planet your species would be interested in. The AI loves to use slavery, and probably purges too. This is a feature you are going to run into very often, and I imagine that in larger games having an open refugee policy will be integral to rapid expansion. The kiddy gloves are off,  and I’m hoping that a further blog post comes out next week detailing some sort of space UN or federation feature that lets you control the rampant atrocities that will be happening in a post-Banks galaxy.

You can get Stellaris now on Steam along with the recent Leviathans DLC; and the “Bank” patch and DLC are coming within the next few months.

Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 Triple Funded

by Necroscourge

Returning with a vengeance and on it’s last month of funding is the new Kingdom Death Monster Kickstarter Campaign sitting pretty at 7.3 million in funding and three times it’s original backers. The project revolves around a 1.5 edition of the core game being printed along with an ever-growing list of secondary and tertiary expansion content; with an update kit tier for those that already own the core game. I keep calling it a new “edition” but my understanding is that it’s a reprint with a new expansion tucked inside it that lengthens the core game with an even more final boss. And announced during the campaign is the new Screaming God expansion that adds further final bossness. Because hey, game was too easy amirite?

In addition to the core game the campaign presents the Gamblers Chest, otherwise known as “The Gigantic Box Of Expansions”. Every day or two Adam Poot’s rolls 2D10 and updates the boxes contents accordingly. Inside is everything from advanced game rules, “Narrative Character” mini-expansions, topless men with solid iron nipple-rings, and more! It’s basically for people like me that must have every single bit of game content or I feel dead inside.

I’ve been watching this campaign extremely closely because I feel like it’s a landmark for the tabletop hobby as a whole. Adam Poots is using Kickstarter exactly for what most people argue it should be for: Pushing through a complex labor of love project no sane corporation would touch. This lack of executive meddling is part of what makes the game so organic in presentation.With less than a month to go and plenty of content to reveal it’s too early to wrap up exactly what your pledge will get you besides many, many miniatures; even now there are monsters in the darkness that have yet to make themselves fully known to us.

I keep calling the game complex, why? Having watched a lot now I know that the table setup is pretty manageable compared to other big box games. There’s less than ten miniatures on the table at any time, all of the decks are placed in specific places in a neat row during play, and you assemble miniatures as they are needed session by session. Those are major selling points, but I call it complex because of how extremely intimidating the game can be for the uninitiated. Looking at any individual part of the game, the kick-starter campaign, or really anything KDM related without the entire product as context can be absolutely maddening like an eldritch artifact. You really do have to watch a full session of the game being played before your brain clicks and you get it, just reading a rulebook won’t do. And that’s also a selling point.

Kingdom Death Monster is currently on it’s last month of it’s Kickstarter Campaign. To sum up what’s what: Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 is the core game, the Gamblers Chest is a big box of extra game content, and the other expansions are large chunks of extra game content.

Tabletop Tales: The Art of Fightyness

by Necroscourge

So you got invited, sat down at the table, you have your character. What now? Depending on your GamesMaster and fellow players every table has a different attitude on roleplaying, and I can’t pretend there is a right way to do things when that is concerned. But what will inevitably happen is the GM will shout “Initiative!” and everybody will scramble to find and roll their dice. Combat has begun.

First we need to look down at our handy dandy character sheet to figure out what our purpose in combat is. If you are playing Dungeons and Dragons or it’s twin brother Pathfinder you have a character class that typically spells out what you do; but for now let’s just assume we don’t know the difference. You’re looking for your weapon and any numbers that have to do with using it, ask your GM. Alternatively you might have magical spells with strange names, ask your GM to help you look them up; but a merciful GM has summarized the spell in parenthesis next to the name on your sheet.

Maps have a grid that represents five foot areas for characters to move in.

The roles I am accustomed with are as follows: The “Tank” is heavily armored, and typically heavily armed. Their job is to run into the breach, sword swinging. “Supports” are combatants that can fight near the front, but also wield healing or beneficial spells/abilities. Your “Squishies” are lightly armored heavy damage dealers that have low survivability but can do intense damage in a few turns. Rogues and War Magicians are what I think of as Squishies. You can go into a lot more detail in defining these roles but recognizing these three will help a great deal in helping you figure out what to do.

Eventually it will be your turn. In most RPG systems you have two actions (A movement and combat action), but there are many different styles. One game called Poison’d does not have a typical combat system at all but a threat escalation system where situations gradually becomes more violent. Assuming we’re in a two action system, you will want to move up along with your allies and attempt to always get your actions worth. Avoid passing your turn or holding your action if possible, because you’re potentially wasting an opportunity to help your team.

 

If you moved up you will get attacked. How this tends to work is they will roll dice, and if they rolled high/low enough then you are dealt damage. Sometimes you get an armor or saving roll but in most systems you just get hurt. Fall back and heal yourself if you have to, but also consider finishing the enemy off and healing afterwards. In dungeon based RPGs you can rest to regain hit points, so don’t waste your healing potions if you don’t have to. And remember: Victory is not so much a success as it is an absence of total and complete failure.

Should you be reduced to zero hit points, you will normally be knocked unconscious so an ally can revive you; granted you will probably be bleeding out and expire soon if they don’t. The exception is in games with guns in them, where the written rules make it easy to get shot in the head and go down in a turn. The other week in Shadowrun I tried participating in a fight wearing light armor and got shot once, nearly killing me.

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A basic fight situation in closed quarters


For most tables it’s as easy as that. You’ll probably get some experience points from the fight and you’ll continue on role playing and exploring. Your first three or so fights will be again fairly trivial things, but you’ll find the more you play the harder it gets; the GM is feeling you all out to see how to behave in fights.

Good luck and happy hunting.

Early Access Preview: Smash + Grab

by Necroscourge

Sleeping Dogs developer United Front Games has finally revealed it’s new take on the MOBA genre with action brawler Smash + Grab. Instead of either having lane minions or none at all; S+G allows you to fully customize four extra characters that join you in game, each with varied play styles and personalities allowing you to define a play-style that works for you.

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The story is rather simple: Due to extensive abuse of trickle down economics America has turned into a series of dystopian megacities fueled by corporate interests. The resulting economic crash has given way to an underground blood-sport blandly called “The Competition” where competing groups of gang members fight to the death while hitting local stores for cash. First to Fifty grand wins!

What I like the most is the insane cell shaded realism mixed with hardcore dystopian imagery and subtle references to everything vaguely related to the concept. Characters wear masks similar to Payday and The Purge, soldier around like The Warriors, plays like a grown up State of Emergency, and unites it all with modern multiplayer principles. The result is the game is not only fun to play but it’s insanely fun to watch players maneuver around trying to balance murder and personal gain.

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Unlike your typical MOBA the game is designed to inspire teamwork instead of just asserting teamwork is involved. Replacing gold and levels in-game each character has access to a basic weapon and as new stores open better weapon options, each with two craft-able modifiers from the materials you’ve stolen. As later levels of stores become available you gain access to better and more interesting weapons and modifications to apply to them. You want to hit every weapon store you can though, as your gang has at-least one guy for each weapon type. 

The clock is constantly counting down to zero, each time it does another series of stores opens including another tier of each weapon; and the final tier includes two gigantic stores filled with cash intended to finish out the game. The downside to this is with more experience players the stores vanish off the map quickly, which can leave two to three minutes where there is nothing to do but fight the enemy for no reason but to hope you will win the fight (Therefore risking the ability to get the stores when they come up!) and it just seems like almost anything could be thrown in to make this downtime enjoyable.

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There are currently seven different characters (with two more coming soon)  as well as a cavalcade of secondary lieutenant characters for each in game faction. Every character also has an unlock-able soldier type that opens up more specialized play-styles. Besides the normal play styles there are Raiders that specialize in breaking open stores and getting extra or faster loot; serving a crucial role in the games strategy as players weigh their targets. 

And man is it a blast to play! The basic Ransack game mode map is a tried and true three zone map coated in power-up dispensers, urging players to experiment surging forward to ignore closer storefronts in favor of ones closer to your enemy. It’s fast paced, blood pumping action at it’s finest dotted with strategy. 

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The biggest problems that Smash + Grab is facing in it’s Early Access is a series of optimization issues; tons of players including myself are experiencing horrible frame rate losses when combat starts, black screens, outright freezes, and other problems that seem to plague CPU’s not made this week. Because players can buy the game, boot it up, experience a glitch, and immediately refund it now on Steam it’s been hitting the active user base hard. I’m usually waiting three to five minutes for a match. Thankfully the developers have been on top of it and the game plays a little better every patch. 

 

You can get it now on Steam Early Access; and for a limited time a giveaway contest is in place showering players with alienware and S+G gear ending October 8th!

The Grognardies: Kingdom Monster Death

by Necroscourge

The Grognardies is a series where we highlight the nerdiest and most intense games of imagination and thought; ones that take so much effort to master and play that to call them a hobby is an understatement. Titles that portray Imagination, Design, and Commitment to the hobby in top form. Such tabletop games are worthy of an award of it’s own class: A Grognardy.

Imagination is the titles ability to not only transport the players to a different place but a place that makes so little sense it makes a sense all of it’s own. Good Design principles weave this imaginative fabric into an experience worth celebrating. A title that rewards not only the physical Commitment put into assembling and playing it, but demonstrates the hobby as a whole as it is played.

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Kingdom Death: Monster is an indie project that was kickstarted back in 2012 by Adam Poots resulting in over two million dollars worth of funding, far surpassing his $35k goal. Part of this is due to the $400 MSRP of the core game buying you seven different monsters (varying from beginner to expert level hobby kit complexity), around thirty two survivors worth of parts, as well as all of the gameplay materials. Thankfully the pieces you need are on a sprue marked Prologue and should be what you assemble first, giving you four naked people and an evil lion beast. Everything else can be assembled later, this is already far more generous than comparative games. From there you need to grab one to three other people and then gather around the table with the promises of pizza and lion killing. 

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…And the expansions add another half-box to this

From the very start of the game session the players are steeped in Imagination as a player reads out the plight of the first four survivors, plunging the party into a tutorial battle. The prologue chapter then walks the players through the first session with the full intent of them reading the book together right after setup, filled with colorful art and diagrams to help them confront the giant lion threatening to eat them. The Prologue acts as a fantastic grounding place in the setting, immediately guiding players into how to go about fighting what will be the only easy fight of the campaign. This is an opportunity to teach people that loudly complain about not knowing how to play tabletop games how to do so.

The setting forces you to fill in many of the blanks by showing you images and describing cultural norms of the setting alongside putting you through their fight for survival. This is a setting that grabs hold of you and changes you forever. Kind of like the first time you watch Animal House or date a girl that likes pegging. You very quickly start scanning the rules for loopholes and ways to make your life easier, but this game has been rigorously play-tested to be as Nintendo hard as possible.

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Only real men fight lions with just a sharp rock and cloth wrapped around them

A play session after the Prologue consists of a Hunting Phase where the survivors track down a monster and fight it in the Showdown Phase; where they can hopefully slay it and bring it back to town for resources to use in the Settlement Phase. Once the settlement has allocated it’s labor and prepared the next hunting party a lantern is removed to mark the end of a Lantern Year and the days session. Each Lantern Year takes two to four hours to complete, after which you are encouraged to put the game away and breath. Many tabletop games take three hours minimum to complete and only get longer, since the game has no internal mechanism to pace the players.

The risk and reward in fighting monsters is immense. Not only do you have a growing list of monsters your settlement may hunt but you may fight any enemy in game at a power level from one to three, with the third level monsters having the toughest mixtures of AI cards and a bunch of passive cards that they just start with. The cool thing is because the monsters AI deck is dismantled through wounding it; the monster gets a little more predictable as you fight it. Even if you hunt the same monster a few times to complete a set, you can fight drastically differently versions of them for different levels of reward(including a fourth Legendary version that’s EVEN HARDER). Wimping out and only fighting weaker monsters will just lead to the end boss waking up on the twenty-fifth Lantern Year and decimating you; assuming your bare bones playstyle has not gotten you killed by then.

At first you're crudely equipped
At first you’re crudely equipped

The brilliance in KD:M’s Design is it all follows a central survival horror theme, gives players a base of operations and most importantly guides the players through the first session to explicitly avoid players becoming too confused. The Prologue chapter does it’s job of introducing the combat and settlement system, being kind of easy but make no mistake: The gloves come off the very next Lantern Year. The rules are written with the purest intention of introducing and killing off characters from week to week, so in what must be an act of divine pity the majority of equipment is salvaged off dead survivors; the players represent the will of the settlement to live more than anything else.

What tends to hurt the replayability of other games is that you start off the same way every time and do the same thing the same way every time. The core of KD:M‘s campaign can be approached in many ways, several of the choices made in the first few sessions effect events far down the line. Expansions in the form of new monsters not only add onto the core campaign but like the Dragon King and Sunstalker add whole new campaign starts that tweak the rules of the core campaign but plays in the regular Lantern Year format; and later expansions promise to lengthen the core campaign with more final bosses. As a reminder, you can fight every monster at levels 1-3, progressively becoming even harder to kill and ontop of all that: a more difficult 5-6 hunting party variant exists for those that hate life and want it to stop.

As you fight more monsters you get the chance to craft better equipment
As you fight more monsters you get the chance to craft better equipment

Everything about KD:M bleeds not just the Commitment that Mr. Poots put into organizing the release but into improving the hobby as a whole. While the art direction of several monsters and characters is questionable at least, but it kind of has this “Frank Frazetta, Mark Bode, and Pablo Picasso collaborating on an artbook taking LSD” appeal to it that starts to grow on you. These influences blend together so nicely you just fall right into the world and accept it.

Something I do need to bring up is the controversy surrounding the influences above. Pretty much any style of super high fantasy/horror inevitably works in human sexuality somewhere; KD:M cranks this up to 11. The rulebook has art pieces on every other page loaded with high octane fetish fuel not for the faint of heart, the writing instills a tone of certain doom, and the internal magic of this realm seems to inflate every woman’s chest to triple-E proportions both off and on the table. The worst examples are expansion and promotional boxes while the core games armor sets and monsters are still pretty damn questionable but nowhere near as bad. If you even vaguely think the art and models are too much for you then I assure you they are. And if you don’t like the idea of monsters with human mouths on them eating people whole then just… walk away. 

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The sexualized pinup line is usually what catches fire from critics. They are single miniatures that are allegedly non-canon and depict females in bikini’s made of various materials. And then there legitimate expansions like Fade, whose titular character is matronly proportioned and a strong breeze can rob her of modesty.  The game itself is quite respectful of the subject and is far more interested in detailing body horror than body proportions. In fact sometimes you wish they would talk dirty to distract you from the horrible things going on.

If I ever had to make a game that enshrines everything that embodies fantasy horror and weds it with modern gaming theory, it would probably end up looking pretty close to Kingdom Death: Monster. Everything a long time nerd wants is in there: Base building, monster hunting, crafting, immersion, and a game that fights back. At it’s mechanical core this is a really, really messed up tabletop campaign that is influenced a little bit by everything doused in nightmare fuel. It’s best marketed as a cooperative hobby tabletop experience, something everybody can chip in on and enjoy. 

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At this point you may be thinking that this is all well and good but how would you get your own copy? An issue with the quality of the core set is that it has to be printed in limited runs right now and it’s totally sold out. I would guesstimate only 7000~ copies exist. But the good news a reprinting campaign is rumored to start by the end of the year. 

Hearthfall: EA Reveals The ‘Titanfall Frontline’ Card Game!

by Necroscourge

With the breakthrough appeal of Hearthstone a few years back it was only a matter of time until a cavalcade of online trading card games to repopulate the internet. Steam alone has seen several new online TCG’s this year including Duelyst, with untold pretenders lurking on cellphones worldwide. Hearthstones revival of the genre has made pretty much every high note developer devote their efforts to reinventing the wheel. 

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Titanfall: Frontline is a joint effort between Particle City, Respawn (TF Dev), and Nexon games to bring a new breed of strategy game to iphones and android devices. The whisper on the street is that they are experimenting with creating a hybrid online game that will have elements of real time and turn based play. It will be released for free on the app store, presumably around when Titanfall 2 drops down.

So I opened this article up with Hearthstone, basically because even just a slight look at the images that have surrounded this title scream generic card game. Cards have an attack and defense stat, the keywords are Titanfall versions of time honored card abilities, and it’s pretty obviously a hit-point reduction duel between two players. Features mentioned by the dev includes hundreds of cards, strategies, and the aforementioned hybrid play style. Whether or not Frontlines has anything that will redeem itself awaits to be seen; but I’m preparing myself to be hearing nothing but titanfall slang this Christmas-time on the bus as the kids drop mecha on each-other. 

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If you are looking for a new, interesting take on card games then TF: Frontlines may not be what you are looking for. Pretty much everything I have seen about it just remind me of other more established games that do effectively the same thing; but it’s still a month away and anything could happen. 

Titanfall 2 and it’s peripherals should be loading out this fall. Keep an eye out for Frontlines on the iOS and Android app stores!

Early Access: ‘Man ‘O War’ Introduces Magic, Beards, and Birds!

by Necroscourge

Within the last year it seems every single specialty Warhammer game has been licensed to become some sort of videogame. Space Hulk has been and will continue to be spun into various strategy and action titles, Blood Bowl received a sequel last year, and Man ‘O War: Corsair was just patched this morning. Among the patch notes are the inclusion of the Skaven and Dwarves, flying units, and magic. All of which are critical to the setting, and so it’s good they made it in.

MoW: Corsair is an adaptation to the titular specialty tabletop wargame that of course dealt with naval engagements between the early Warhammer fantasy races, and like the other specialty titles was cut rather quickly. Players built their fleet around singular ships (Powerful Man of War class ships or other singles) and Ships of the Line deployed in three’s. Among your fleet was a magician and of course your leader.

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Right now in build .4 the game can be thought of as a Warhammer themed pirate game, with a lot of inspiration coming from Assassins Creed: Black Flag. You sail from port to port, must keep the ever shifting winds in mind, must now keep in mind the ever flowing winds of magic as well, and organize broadside and boarding attacks against enemies. You are also able to switch between characters like the Sharpshooter and now the Wizard; right now there is no automation but the developers have assured users that they are considering some degree of automation.

New Skaven and Dwarven ships have been itnroduced to the game world. The Skaven Ratmen relies on superior numbers and dark plague magics to overwhelm their foes. The ironclad Dwarf fleet packs rows of high caliber assault cannons and arms it’s crews with powerful firearms. Both pose new and exciting threats to aspiring captains.

A major thing about MoW is that it was written before some of the major races were introduced like the Ogre Kingdoms and the Lizardmen, and I couldn’t quite coax an answer out of the devs as to whether these factions will be in Corsair. The result of the sources age is that the game itself looks and plays like a ten year old game, and with most people being obsessed with graphics over game-play than this might not float for everybody. For instance, unless you are standing directly in-front of the megalodon (Big Damn Shark) then it looks like a gigantic shiny bathtub toy gnawing on your ship. Ork ships similarly look like they are built out of Lincoln Logs; this is partly due to their tabletop appearance, but it feels like more could of been done to make the ships and sharks more appealing.

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“Squeak Squeak, RAWWWWR”

If you ever found yourself thinking “I really like pirate games, but I want a game where I can really attack anything I want” then you will find a safe port in Corsair; it almost immediately reminds you that the rule of law is absent and if they can’t catch you, they can’t hang you. This is a title that is worth keeping an eye on.

Preview: Ghost in the Shell First Assault

by Necroscourge

When you’re booting up a new free to play shooting game; you need to be prepared with the knowledge that if you have ever played a different free shooter, you have played the one you are about to boot up. This is simply because of archaic notion of film genres has been applied to video games as if they were the same thing, and most gamers get quite verbally violent if you try to dissuade them from this cover-based assumption.

Take the RPG genre for example. In the early 90’s, an RPG placed the player in a fictional world, made them figure out puzzles, explore, etc while they built up their character. Nowadays if you have progressing stats and an inventory; you are an RPG no questions asked. This focus on what players see is why the requirements of video games on our computers goes up every year, but the relative complexity of the game isn’t that much more intense than their older counterparts.

And then you have shooting games, the easiest to craft video game genre of the age. This is because all you have to literally do is take the stock Unity engine assets, lay down some walls and floors, and you have your prototype in an hour or two. Most commercial engines were designed primarily for a first person shooting game, so it should not come to much surprise that most companies churn them out yearly. And it does not help that the videogames industry acts a lot like a war; whatever works best ends up getting adopted by everybody else as the new standard.

I’m venting about this because I end up picking up new free to play shooters pretending like I am going to experience something amazingly new that will make me happy to call myself a hardcore gamer keeping up on his trends. Instead…. I got Ghost in the Shell First Assault; a by the numbers online shooter with skins and art based on the Ghost in the Shell anime franchise.

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You’d all be dead by now if this happened ingame

The main characters of Ghost in the Shell are cyborg ex-military special detectives belonging to Section 9, a counter-terrorist strike unit that doubles as government detectives. The show deals mostly with sociological philosophy. The first GITS movie asks us what is a man, the TV series Stand Alone Complex (Both seasons) is disturbingly relevant to today’s politics. In addition to it’s (mostly) full body cyborg team, they have access to miniaturized AI battle tanks for high threat situations. The game First Assault is what happens when you get hired to make a video game, ignore all the story, and focus on the “Tanks and Cyborgs” part in development.

You pick a character with a shooter game inspired ability (With the exception of the Major, whose camouflage ability made it in game), and compete in team deathmatch, control point, and bombing run missions like common infantry. Your team always appears like the characters they are playing, while the enemy appears as generic bad guys in red. Now, I would normally consider this to be clever but considering how besides their abilities every character behaves the same, it just makes you feel like there’s not much point in picking a character at all.

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Get used to this guy; all your enemies look like him.

The guns are standard modern military stuff like AK47’s and such, but can be outfitted with several customizations to minorly affect the weapons handling. Anything recognizable from the show besides handguns simply aren’t present. The other thing that bugs me is the absence of ammunition types when they are so crucial to the setting. Then again, that would require the dev’s to have heard of a strange alien concept called “armor”.

The main character “Major” Kusanagi is a full body cyborg with a titanium chassis; which the game seems to be assuming absolutely everybody is (No blood here, people just break into robot parts). Entire episodes of the TV show are based around the fact that small arms fire is extremely ineffective against full bodied cyborgs, with the exception of “High Velocity” armor piercing rounds. Nobody short of the military has routine access to anti-cyborg weaponry; and Section 9 usually has to call in favors to borrow such toys. In First Assault, you die in three shots or one headshot; and most quizzically you can die by getting shot in the body.

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Where did he get that seeker drone from? Probably another game.

So we’ve got a game that mimics the standard match types, borrows the appeal of GITS while doing little to replicate it, and seems to be perfectly fine with that. The attitude of the dev’s is pretty obvious from their development posts; one of which where they lament the artist produced a Think-Tank design with a gun on it’s tail, and this would grant them a third weapon so it’s out of the question…. Despite such a design starring in one of the first episodes of the show. 

But what must bother me most is how this get’s a free pass from it’s audience where other games like the infamous Shadowrun PC/Xbox game that reduces the license to a match based shooter modeled after counter-strike; yet I don’t see anywhere near the kind of flak that Shadowrun got despite doing the same thing yet worse. I ended up having fun at first because I got kills, then comes the realization that either camping or superior reflexes is the sole factor. This ended up losing it’s fun factor quite quickly, making me just want to watch the anime rather than this game.

There is a slight chance this game can clean up it’s act given time. If you are trying to come into this game expecting a Ghost in the Shell experience then you have been baited and switched like I was. First Assault is just another match based shooter glorifying sniper rifles as a weapon used in close quarters engagements. You might have some fun at first, but you can get that same thrill in any other free shooter. The whole draw of this game is that it’s like every other game, and that bothers me. 

Try it if you dare

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SDCC 2016: ‘Overlords of Infamy’ Tabletop Preview!

by Necroscourge

I hit the gaming floor at San Diego Comic-Con pretty hard, and the great thing about the free gaming area is that there is almost always an interesting demo going on. This year my highlight was the freshly kickstarted Overlords of Infamy, where the players are evil overlords competing for dominance surrounding a capital city. Players will pull off progressively more evil acts of infamy to prove your the most evil of evil overlords! 

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The rules were fairly easy to understand. Each turn you get three action points and a list of actions. You use actions to place and gather workers, and most importantly place tiles that represent your domain and give you more places to put workers. It’s a balancing act, since you need various types of resources to complete various acts of evil, but you also need to develop your part of the board. On top of all that, you can use a spare worker to launch an espionage mission on an adjacent player each turn in its own phase. This mix of design concepts is packaged neatly, fairly easy to explain, and plays well!

Each Overlord has a resource they gather faster and a special ability. I was lucky enough to sit down as the stretch goal Overlord Tyranny, who must have one of the best special actions in the game since he can move an adjoining player’s worker and collect the rewards. What slightly bothered me is Tyrannos art style is fresh and cartoony so it fit more with the board than the original characters; whom all suffer from scrunched serious face syndrome.

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But the real highlight of the game is the three stacks of evil cards marked Knavery, Villainy, and Domination. These are objective cards that are completed by having the required resources in your stockpile. Each completed card rises your Infamy track (which allows you to draw better cards and use better espionage actions) and the better types of cards have an special outcome ability. But the best reward for the card is being able to loudly read the text on the card, supplemented with an evil cackle. While the quotes on these kinds of cards are always hit or miss with me, I found the titles were written fantastically. Each one evokes this fantastic imagery that forces you to say “Woah, that’s evil.”

What annoys me about a boardgame sometimes is you just stare at the board and see no options. Where the board of Overlords of Infamy is constantly shifting, morphing, and offering a great deal of information. The central part of the board houses a Hero, who will destroy workers and tiles to bring home, aching to be stolen by a daring player. If your tiles don’t stretch out to meet the city, you can’t interact with it. Same with espionage and other players, you can purposefully cut yourself short to avoid getting hit by your frenemies.

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If there was one thing that actually bugged me about the game while I played it was how easy it was to both exploit and not understand the hero mechanic. When evil things happen, a tracker increases and at certain points the next player gets to roll and move the hero, which means before your turn starts you can move the hero out of the center and steal the treasure. It was not made too clear to me what rose the tracker (the devs moved it for me, when they weren’t talking amongst themselves) and I got it once or twice; but because of how it works only certain tiles and workers are actually in any sort of risk, and some tiles have walls that block him entirely. Now that’s not to say that the hero can’t mess your day up, but if you are warned at the start not to build that way, you can just build that way and ignore that mechanic entirely. I found myself wanting to slap down a Tyranno meeple and move him about more than anything.

I really don’t know how this gem of a strategy game snuck past my radar. It was fun to play, no one aspect of the game’s design felt too overpowering. While I have my gripes with a few things, it’s small stuff. Overall the game was fun and I found myself wanting to play more of it. Overlords of Infamy is available for Pre-Order now, go get you one!

10 Hour Challenge: ‘Affected Zone Tactics’

by Necroscourge

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When you are shopping around for a new online game, you often have to experience it for yourself if you want to know if you will really like it. Especially considering this new era of bait and switch gaming, where the game suddenly changes in tone and format because of your arbitrary rank level overflowing. My (not) favorite part of the game is when I reach level 2 and all of my enemies get free bullet proof shields to show me just how awesome buying anti armor bullets in the cash shop would be. For this I devised the Ten Hour Challenge, where I play a game for ten hours straight (like in one sitting), which is typically enough to give anybody the idea of whether they like or hate the game.

I love strategy games! Some of my first memories are playing Age of Empires 2, Sid Miers Alpha Centauri, Populous the Beginning, and The Tone Rebellion. The original X-COM was released for free by PCGamer back in ye olden times when thine magazine came with a disk full of content; I spent weeks playing what many consider to be the best rogue-like strategy game ever. So turn based titles have a special place in my heart, which sucks because the “Show me pretty graphics in boring team deathmatchs with flags” crowd has dominated the industry perverting all other genres in the process. These days if a good strategy titles comes out it’s going to be from Europe.

Russian MMO Affected Zone Tactics talks a big, poorly translated game. It urges you to travel through a magical portal to the land of Tesla, which is an fallout-like world of mercenaries and bandits where you will lead forces in point based combat. You start by creating a main character of the Assault class, picking any of the three sub-types. You can later re-class your soldier in any of the four classes, which will let you pick any of those three spec’s. The issue starts when you realize the decision is literally “Shooty, Snipey, or Other”, grenade launchers are abundant and act like sniper rifles with arcs and splash.

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Each character also suffers from “I got one gun-itis”. Every class type has exactly one option of primary and secondary each, and it very quickly bothered me. Shooty guys have some variety of automatic, Snipey’s have single shot ranged grenades (Besides the Commando, who actually gets a sniper rifle) and Other with a variety of rockets and mines. This crippling overspecialization makes combat feel so generic and repetitive.

The game-play is the tried and true two action point formula popularized by the Firaxis version of X-Com. Unlike X-Com, you have a variety of firing modes, a special “sneak” movement type, no verticality, and ALL THE GRENADES. Players are shuffled into an order and turns are taken (enemy character goes, ally goes, etc), so the game moves fast. Even if you bring multiple characters the game ends up flowing nicely.

The Early Hours

I was overjoyed by how quickly I got into a match. The objective of the game is to capture the points, which will give you victory points. Reach the max and you win, kill them all and you win. Simple. Matches last about fives minutes and 5 game rounds, and the focus is all on those flags. The fighting is slight and it’s rare that a guy goes down. The game is teaching me that the flags are what matter in this game. Cool.

My allies began to drive me nuts. I was confused when I noticed all of my fellow players hiding back on their side of the map rather than moving forwards.  In a few instances I lost a battle because they would option to stand by and shoot instead of capturing a flag.

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After each battle it gives me experience. The game was nice enough to even give me 24 free hours of Premium time, claiming I get 200% more experience. Well that’s fantastic I thought, I should be higher level in no time! I noticed that in games where I only focused on getting flags I got little to no experience, while allies that I noticed going in and shooting received far more experience. As I said, these matches are super short and not very lethal right now. My objective is to capture flags, but my account only progresses if I ignore the flags and shoot people. Interesting.

After about three games I notice a new type of unit on the field, guys running around in mechanized armor. At first I was afraid of them, noticing that they barely did any damage and were fairly easy to hurt. I didn’t even think too much of them. For some reason most of them even have grenade launchers, which kind of blows my mind. What is the purpose of decking a guy out in heavy armor and giving him a grenade launcher?

One of the few messages I saw in chat revealed the fiasco about four hours in. Every player besides ones with a star besides their names is a bot, not a real player. They all have fairly convincing names, and at this point are equipped only in Premium items. These items are bought with real money, are better than the free stuff, and is generally considered to be a bad thing. Honestly, since all of the bots have premium equipment you end up realizing what they have is not much better than what you have; unless it is a grenade or medkit.

The Later Hours

I’m getting near the end of my play time and I’m only just at Rank 3 out of 14. All the bots now have armor so good they can shrug off some rounds, and now Heavies are actually worth playing! They can shrug off multiple grenade impacts! These matches are starting to last 20+ minutes partly because of the armor they have on and just how high the goal post has been moved. Even though you gain points every players turn, it’s such a low amount at this point of the game that it becomes two matches every hour instead of ten an hour.

I point out the armor because the AI players only play as Assault or Heavy classed characters; so at this point in the game they get from being annoying to being serious tanks. Even the Assaults have decent armor! When you are behind on this grind, the game jumps in difficulty so much that you get a little bit of whipslash

What disenchanted me quickly was the presence of an Commando on the enemy team, sitting back and picking off my NPC allies until he came for me. That was my last game and my time was up. So I can come to my final thoughts about this title.

The Good:

  • It’s a tactical strategy game that you can get lost in.
  • It uses an easy to learn two action system
  • Turns go by quickly

The Bad:

  • There are almost no real players on the servers; it’s a lonely experience.
  • Matches get harder and longer with no warning
  • Every class behaves so similar and requires so much time to develop its hard to choose one

How And Why: Miniatures Wargames

by Necroscourge

The number one thing I get asked about besides how to play Dungeons and Dragons is my miniatures hobby; usually assuming that I play Warhammer (down that road lay madness). It’s somewhat understandable since the popularity of cell phones has let everybody comprehend computers a bit more. I still like plenty of tabletop and miniatures wargames, and play them often.

Miniatures wargames are a time honored hobby, inspired by the movement of pieces by generals and used now to simulate pretty much everything. Gary Gygax’s original RPG, Chainmail and the first few DnD editions were more or less wargames, a lot of focus was on the combat abilities of the character improving over time and fighting on a grid or table. Steve Jacksons OGRE can be bought in a travel version that is some maps, the booklet, and a bunch of cutout tokens to move around the map; that style persists today in many space-ship combat sim games.

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There’s a miniatures line for everybody

There are two popular styles of Miniatures Wargame. A war simulation, and a role playing wargame with the difference being how much focus is put on character development. Necromunda and Gorka-Morka are two Games Workshop specialist games where you have your own party of characters you outfit, customize, upgrade, and level up. Their most popular game line Warhammer has no such aspect, forces are made from a point buy system with customization but no persistent aspects. It’s worth noting that both types of game benefit from organized campaign play that adds enough persistence to keep people interested.

To some extent both styles require you to put together a force of models that represents your army, and the other players do the same according to an accepted point value (almost all games use one, and it just tends to work.) and then take turns adding terrain to the table until you have a battleground. Initiative is rolled, game begins.

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Gorka-Morka, which can be summed up as Mad Max with Orks

Warhammer 40K uses both a point buy and a squad choice system. You have to have minimal types of squads before your army is table legal. The game I play, Dystopian Wars, is the same way: A table legal force contains at least one large/massive, one medium, and one small sized squad, with a commander placed on one of your large/massive squads. Because you can only bring so many of your models to the table, you have to be clever about how you build and play your force.

The Empire of Man in Warhammer Fantasy has huge groups of regimental infantry they can creep forward with, supported by cannon and arquebus fire. The Orks on the other hand outnumber everybody and fling wave after wave at the enemy until they win, being absolute rubbish at range. The Ogres string together charge attack after charge attack, smashing into lines of smaller units. Every army plays a bit differently for every game; which can be damning if you find out you don’t like the style of the army you bought.

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Alternatively there are paper miniatures for cheapskates!

Individual models have ratings and qualities that set it apart from others. Empire infantry aren’t tough like Orks, but are more disciplined. Federated States tanks are loaded with sharpshooters while the Republique uses many status effect inducing weapons. It can be maddening at first with some games trying to understand what does what, i’m still struggling to be better!

What game you pick also tells you what to expect out of combat. Warhammer Fantasy does not let you shoot into melee fights, Dystopian Wars has three different size classes of units for any environment, and Infinity channels the complexity of cyberpunk firefights. Those three games have different rhythms because they simulate different kinds of engagements. Infinity is all about cover, terrain is a core part of the experience; while in the game I play I have not even bothered trying to dabble with terrain yet. Let’s win a game first before I try that.

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Part of a Warhammer Fantasy army

What still makes wargamers a rare breed is how much time, money, and effort that the hobby demands. I chose DW specifically because it was cheap and I still have put down a lot for it; an amount that would of hardly bought me a full Warhammer army. Then comes painting and assembly, depending on what game you chose that can take days. A decent Ork army numbers 150+ models! With 3D printers coming out swinging, these models now have even more detail than they used to, that adds time too. And then play is 3 hours minimum for a wargame, less if both people know what they are doing. You don’t do this unless you want to.

I just finished priming a massive Republique of France army, a 2000 point list using all of my favorite tricks: Floating naval cruisers, screens of fighter aircraft, heat lance tanks, and more. The next step for them is painting. The great thing about the game I chose is they are more or less all vaguely round or square shaped tanks with a low profile; perfect for beginners. The major marketing strategy behind the new Age of Sigmar line on the other hand was larger, more detailed models intended for enthusiasts. Painting Galleries aren’t complete if there isn’t a well painted Space Marine army on there somewhere.  

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Mandatory Space Marines

A game typically ends when one side is hopelessly outfought. Some games like Dystopian Wars gives you a random win condition, meaning you have to fight the enemy a specific way if you want to win. You usually have to blow up all of a certain size class in addition to a percentage of the enemies points. Other times you have to capture specifics positions, it varies by game. Campaign based games usually have you retreating if you are losing, not by force but the alternative is losing all your good units; a rule in Necromunda is if a character dies you lose its gear (Some street kid runs out and grabs his stuff before the fight ends) and in Gorka-Morka don’t expect to drive a car the next match if it’s been blown up. 

What I like about Miniatures Wargames is that they are a social experience mixed with arts and hobbies. There is a certain calm that comes from painting up an army, and a certain freedom you feel when priming your first army. It’s something I suggest for those that want to try it out.

Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Stellaris’

by Necroscourge

When you distill all of the science fiction greats into a single strategic title, you end up with a fantastic science fantasy romp full of wonder and depth. Using their in-house engine the masters of history simulations (Paradox Interactive) have turned their eyes to the stars, crafting a deep, re-playable experience.

You create and control your very own space faring empire at its inception. You have a brave science ship and captain ready to survey the system and a fleet of corvettes to defend your home-world. From there the game feels open ended, forcing you to map the nearby cosmos for survival. You will quickly find alien species, some hostile, some not. And they may begin talking to you in a variety of ways, including shooting on sight.

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The UI is full of lists and explainations

Leaders are named characters such as Scientists and Admirals that take up the important task of heading your fleets, research, armies, and planets. Over time they gain experience and die of old age and must be replaced. Given research, you can even have genetically superior leaders that are more expensive, but kind of worth it.

Planets are composed of tiles, some of which have blockers that you can remove with technology and resources. Population units eat food, spread, have their own political opinions, and are probably the most versatile use of population I’ve seen in a 4X title. Rather than being simply a statistic grown by food, they are entities that must subscribe to your empire wide policies.

Expansionist players will find the AI hating them on almost every difficulty however, the Federation and Alliance mechanics are designed as defensive measures between empires that don’t want to get smashed by said big expansionist player. Large empires over time suffer from ethical drift, unhappiness, and political factions causing mischief.

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Discover interesting new races… like humans?

Every population unit has a political standing that initially is the state’s, but over time population units will adopt different stances. With the right technologies you can even build population units of simplistic robots, droids, and even self aware Synthetic beings given enough time. The farther away from your capital worlds, the more their ethics diverge from the state’s, which can eventually lead to factions of unhappy citizens demanding independence from your tyranny.

Despite the level of depth the exploration and early game portion of the game provides, the mid game tends to turn into a stagnant tech rush or made rush of expansion. There are several mechanics in place that limit this, such as a scaling tech malus for the amount of population units you have representing the difficulty of rolling tech out to the entire populace. Smaller empires have less scientific output, but as a consequence requires less of it as well.

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Races are quickly created but full of deep possibilities

Technology is a card based system where there are three branches you research simultaneously. Cards have weight determined by your state ethics and your researchers traits; with awesome purple cards being the techs that really set your empire apart from the competition. After researching debris of fallen enemy ships you get the choice to research that tech out of order, allowing smaller empires to catch up through salvage.

Combat is based on fleets consisting of ships designed by the player; Corvettes, Destroyers, Cruisers, and Battleships are the four sizes, using increasingly larger amounts of logistics size in return for more space to load it with components. The ship design portion of the game is extremely important but is easy to use, the UI is clearly marked for players new to the genre. Despite each ships and ergo fleet being summed up by combat rating points, you can’t only look at the numbers. Many weapons excel against specific types of defenses and every weapon has range limitations. .

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Early game fights consist of ramming the enemy with guns blazing

Speaking of range, let us now discuss stagnant but powerful Fallen Empires, whom have a single strict ethos and unique AI personality. They are more or less just going to sit there around their ring worlds until something pisses them off, such as a public insult. They will then go to war with you for the sole purpose of disgracing you in front of the universe. Their ships are highly advanced using a suite of tier 5 components, including larged sized Tachyon Lances that outrange practically every weapon of lesser quality allowing them to blast apart incoming fleets before they can be hit too hard themselves; it’s almost worth losing your entire fleet against them just to get the research topics if you can afford it!

Diplomacy as mentioned is an important game-play aspect, even though the AI is suspiciously timid on normal difficulty but fairly cranky on the higher difficulties. Alliances and their upgrade of Federations are typically sought by the AI as a defensive measure due to a mechanic called Threat. It’s essentially a way of the game telling you that if you continually absorb other empires, the rest of the universe will hate you. This leads to more militaristic players having to go on the initiative if they want war to be commonplace in their playthroughs.

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What’s with advanced alien races and ring worlds?

So having hyped the good and the interesting let’s discuss the bad. The User Interface is huge, jam packed with buttons and statistics, and can look absolutely terrifying at first; you’re almost required to watch somebody else play it first. I found myself constantly bumbling through the menus looking for what I wanted to do, each tab has sub tabs and places you can scroll. It’s easy to not even know you can scroll in the tech windows, or even change your government (the button for it is cleverly disguised).

On larger galaxies (800-1000 stars) the game will very quickly become laggy and nigh unplayable on the fast and fastest speeds on computers that have a little age to them. The autosaving mechanic helps with this by saving at the latest every in game year (which speeds by regularly on fastest) adding to the lag. It’s advised you start with less AI opponents if you have a weaker computer, that’s what bogs your CPU down. 

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Discovering new races add their colored blob to the map

The game itself has a few bugs but nowhere near as many as you might expect of a new title. Slavery is effectively broken, the resulting unhappy slave faction cannot revolt at the moment and the Fallen Empire that hates Slavery currently does nothing about it. Exploration also needs some balance, as your science ships just sort of lose all purpose after a while. There are exploration quests but they only seem to occur once you are forced to fight other empires just so you can send a ship to it.

Stellaris is a quite stellar game with some issues, but many things it does fantastically. For one, multiplayer supports at least 32 players and since the game is real time you don’t really have to wait on anybody, which already makes it the best multiplayer mode any 4X has in my book. The game does a lot of interesting new things very well, including giving you the ability to play a strategy game without being obsessed about score and victory. You can zone out for quite some time without even realizing there are victory conditions, even though the two conditions are not really that interesting (both are essentially brute force conquer the universe goals).

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I found the game quite fun and, would heavily recommend it to Strategy or Science Fiction fans!

Massively Multicomplainer: Player Rage and Team Size

by Necroscourge

You boot up your game, and see “Oh, I just need to play a few more matches” for one reason or another. You start playing, and you see that some of your teammates are not doing well (but it’s ok). Then the end of the game comes and you get called out; called one thing or another, or your game statistics aren’t nice enough to look at.

I was surprised that this behavior has been around in Heroes of the Storm ever since K/D/A was introduced, but it dawned on me that I rarely get hassled for my kill numbers, but actually for the “Hero Damage” statistics that have always existed in the game. Those who play other games will recognize most of their community behaves this way, and always has. I quickly stopped playing League of Legends and its re-skins for the same reason. Where the Kills/Deaths/Assists hurts is when you factor in characters like Lt. Morales that is supposed to be healing and not focusing on kills. Kills in general are not worth focusing on in a game with a clear objective like a MOBA.

Gamers very rarely see themselves as the problem, which is obvious in the way they word their insults. Terms like “Toxic” and “Troll” imply that the person using the name is some kind of gamer elite capable of passing damning judgement on others. For instance say your team decides to just leave you alone and ignore you the whole game; suddenly you are a noob/troll/whatever for going around alone when it’s their fault for not supporting you. I personally blame the double football-field sized arena that these games occur in with only a part of the team size such a sport typically has. There is always some strange claim that “it just enables mobbing” when that’s the basic strategy to win in MOBAs; just gather in a big wave and strike them down. 

The thought occurs to simply remove all statistics one could use to statshame people, but the underlying assholiness (it’s a word) will still be there. Seeking help on the forums just leaves you prey to the forumites that will swear up and down you are wrong, black is white, and water is grey just to get some personal gratification. In my experience suggesting anything on the forum just leads to somebody telling you in longhand that trying to make changes is wrong, and if you do things a specific way you can do it “right”. I wholeheartedly disagree with that premise.

When I am given a choice in the game, each choice should be worth looking at. Sadly there tends to be an obvious choice when in comes to many of the special abilities I find in recent multiplayer games. Plus the tendency for them to get copied over from other games makes it increasingly difficult to figure out what everybody telepathically demands you choose.

Would cranking up the amount of team-mates help? By itself no, because then the tendency is to crank up the map size to the extent where players are still prone to isolating themselves now with the added problems of players that do understand teamwork. There needs to be a dedicated effort to rewarding team play behavior, or there is simply no reason if solo hunting works so well. I have been doing testing work for some mysterious beta games, and have noticed that even 10v10 leads to rampant lone wolfing. There is simply no mechanical benefit besides winning fights to teamwork; in fact there is potential to lose points with team killing.

I honestly think the main issue is the long list of unwritten rules every forumite will cram down your throat of traits games that they like must have or they are not hardcore enough. I frequently bring up that new multiplayer games are trying their best to only have player characters in play, with no AI present at all. Not only is this easier to code, but the devs save thousands of hours of coding and balancing by only building “half a game”, that is to say only using player input and minimal environmental effects such as instant death pits. The common rebuttal is that killing AI is no fun. (Let’s put it this way, if you derive any fun whatsoever from playing any single player game, you know that’s BS) Blindly turning away the tactical and strategic possibilities.

Planetside 2 is “half a game” in that it only utilizes player soldiers and player operated vehicles with almost no automated systems. There are no legions of AI infantry running from base to base. Since ALL soldiers are players, the standard player methods are used to organize them: Clans and Squads. It should come to no surprise then that the forumites will tell you the only way to play with teamwork all the time is to join a clan and offer no alternative for those that want a real war experience. Never-mind that any “real” intergalactic army would likely have better ways to organize their troops, or care at all about spreading their armies logically.

Playing Planetside 2 usually results in the same process of leaving a base, getting sniped, leaving base, getting strafed, leaving base, getting shot because our 2 inch thick armor is made out of goddamn paper, logging off. The instant action button just puts you in a place that is being contended. Snipers are most viable when there are few important targets, which is what happens when there are only 10-20 enemies to kill. If there are a hundred soldiers swarming the base, the sniper may have a lot of targets but he can’t kill them all. This issue is going to sound familiar if you play a lot of shooters, since the new trend is for a small 5 versus 5 team size on maps as big as an air carrier.

There is a slight reason to this. The more players you have involved makes the server demand greater and the lag harder to deal with. What players unfortunately don’t understand is that AI don’t have this problem because the information that drives them is client based. Everybody’s game plays them out, and then all ask the server if this is correct changing accordingly; where if the games and server don’t agree then severe lag can occur such as “rubber banding”. It’s only when we have to track thousands of separate open AI questions does this start to tax players. This is why many shooter guns “hitscan” rather than act as a fully scripted bullet with speed and trajectory; It’s easier for the server to just be asked “Do I hit?” than track hundreds of bullets flying around.

There was one MOBA I tested that started out initially as Victory Command, then shifted names a few hundred times until it re-re-re-re-released on Steam as Battle Battalions while changing NOTHING. It’s a 5v5 elimination match where each player has a squad of units that do not respawn. Because the game size is so small most of the game is spent just going from point to point avoiding conflict unless you have allies nearby to fight with you. Such is the fate of essentially every MOBA strategy game I have come across. The designers are so focused on making everything die so easily that having a lot of something makes no real difference if everything has splash damage.

My overall point is that the time of small “competitive” multiplayer games is going to fall out of style sooner rather than later if there is no innovation within it. Heroes of the Storm is fantastic in that there are unique and interesting characters; but failed in balancing these characters to be worth using over the traditional, boring heavy hitter splash damage characters. I remember in All Points Bulletin the AK47 weapon used to be very good, until of course it was nerfed beyond belief so that sniper rifles were better on average. There is a clear design bias against novel, interesting methods that instead favors the same four or five combat roles Gygax invented in the 70’s.

We’re going to see a new wave of larger and more team friendly games with a bigger emphasis on team functionality than kill boards. As fun as it is to eliminate enemies there needs to be a little more to the game than that.

Tabletop Tales: ‘Out Of The Abyss’

by Necroscourge

Warnings adventurer; spoilers ahead!

Wizards of the Coast’s strategy with the D&D Fifth Edition book has been seasonal story arcs that are a series of themed adventures meant to run characters from beginning to end. Out of the Abyss marks the start of the ‘Rage of Demons’ storyline, and is for a group of first level characters and ends with them all at fifteenth level. While the previous storylines were more suited for novice players; this book is far from introductory. While the other storylines also support levels one to fifteen they are more focused on dungeons rather than exploring an entire underground region. 

Out of the Abyss is based in ‘The Underdark’, the underworld beneath the surface consisting of caves and tunnels. The party has been captured and brought to a small slave encampment south of Darklake, hidden amidst the webs of the Dark Elves favorite pets. Failure to escape timely will mean getting carted off to the Drow Capital as slaves. The leading jailers are detailed in personality, but the most amazing thing is the sheer amount of characters you meet in just the cells you’re thrown into. This list includes a monster that proclaims he is an transformed Elf, another is a gamblo-holic Deep Gnome, an Orc bully, and a fish-person monk that proclaims he has found the true way. Despite starting with so many characters you only get more and more throughout the story. 

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Slave Camp sweet Slave camp

As quirky as they seem, these initial allies almost seem barely noted when introduced. This is because Wizards of the Coast uses an organization method that assumes the reader is familiar with the trinity (Players Handbook,  Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual) as any text in bold is a reference to that exact word in one of them, typically obvious by the context. This results in a lot of cross-referencing book by book, and the difficulty of some encounters isn’t immediately obvious until you look up the creature’s statistics. This works both against and in your favor; especially as the book randomly declares earth elementals are helping you fight; or when you meet Glabbagool the friendly Gelatinous Cube. 

The Underdark is detailed so well in this book it doubles as a general setting book. From the parties escape they can go in any direction, and pretty much anywhere. Well, sort of. There is a town very close by in one direction and a enourmous sentient fungus cave network in the other. From the town the more obvious path is to traverse the Darklake to Gracklestugh. Assuming the grey dwarves don’t enslave you or feed you to their red dragon; there is a more ideal path to the dwarvern city of Gauntlegrym. Much of the book assumes the players want to go to the surface yet the storyline actually picks up in a dwarven city at the middle-ish layer of the Underdark. While this is obviously the ideal route; the Underdark is never a place of straight paths. When the players get lost all sorts of things might appear in their way, such as the long lost crypt of an ancient sorcerer or the Temple of Ooze. 

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The best and only image that explains where anything is in the Underdark

Every single location, no matter how minor it may be, is detailed with a set of general features that are always in effect while the players are there. Usually this builds on the basic “It’s dark down here” description of lighting, adding hazards like slender crevices, pollution, spider webs, and other environmental hazards. Chief among them is the unique type of wild magic field that permeates the Underdark: Faerzress. Not only will spells act a little wonky in areas where this mysterious energy flows but staying in them too is hazardous to your mental health. Sanity, and it’s sudden demise down below is a central theme to the adventure. Every race and monster is experiencing sudden lapses of insanity and strange behavior. Several of the party members may come down with bouts or permanent madness conditions; writing additional flaws and personality traits on the characters sheet. Some of these are harmless, some comedic, others entertainingly dangerous. Gazing upon a demon lord is the surest way to go crazy, each has their own personal madness table that generates the conditions players suffer.

Each location has several things going on. Power struggles, assaults, dangers, and all manner of side-quests for the players. The party is often a deniable asset that the local leaders can fling at whatever issue has come up. While it’s not immediately obvious, the book is written in a way that leaves a lot to the GM’s discretion. The most important story quest of the game: gathering ingredients for the final ritual, is a list that can be added to and taken away from in a way that goads players to go to specific places. Many of the initial NPC’s have general things they try to do listed, rather than any specific dialogue. This aspect of the book severely limits its use to inexperienced players; as it takes a creative mind that knows how to put this all together in a way players can process.

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Prince Derendil: Slave, Ally, Nutjob.

Every aspect of ecology and society is investigated within the book. Many monsters have “Roleplaying as” sidebars that encapsulate how you would roleplay those creatures. The actual monster manual entries lack such information, while this book ties together a lot that is alluded to in other books. The recently released Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide barely mentions the Underdark, as this pretty much is the Underdark book. Creatures that otherwise are listed as just “monsters” in one book come to life when explained in this one. It’s written in a factual tone unlike the SCAG which is written from the tone of a dwarf adventurer. So while the SCAG is cryptic and alludes to all sorts of weird things, those things are addressed in this book in full. 

The major new content comes in the form of stats for several demon lords (two of which only barely mentioned in the Monster Manual.) pose as the end bosses of the adventure. They have the tendency to just pop up every now and then, each is hiding out somewhere in the Underdark. In Dungeons and Dragons cosmology if you kill a demon on its home plane it’s dead for good, and if you kill it while it’s summoned to another it just reforms on their home plane. The adventures whole point is essentially to clean up a mess the Dark Elves made.

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Each Demon Lord as they appear in Out of the Abyss.

Something that always bothers me about the end of “End of the world” story arcs in video games is the story suddenly gets very rushed at the end as we suddenly go “Alright let’s do this!” and the setup often overshadows the actual deed. The climax reads this way. The final acts of the story are collecting a series of ingredients for calling all of the rampant demon lords together so that you can fight the survivor; as written it’s always Demogorgon (Rightmost above). A variant rule exists letting players control a demon lord in a minigame fight but the end result should still be the same: A boss fight against a weakened demon lord. Still difficult, but with the players all at level 15 and given serious bonus it’s not the hardest fight in the book. 

Don’t get me wrong. Assuming you had to fight Demogorgan he still most certainly will hit you, and his attacks drain your maximum hit point total; being reduced to zero means instant death. While other Demon Lords do significantly less damage and lack any such effect. The book was clearly written to make him seem powerful, despite this book being the triumphant return of Zuggtmoy the Lady of Rot and Decay. She get’s far more potential face time than he does! She can be talked to in her lair, and a whole chapter revolves around going to the World Fungus to stop her from marrying it. Yes. Really.

If you are gathering books to play Fifth Edition then I would highly recommend this book be part of your collection. It’s well written with support from Green Ronin Publishing; one of my favorite companies. If you have some Dungeon Mastering experience and want one book to last you for a few months than you will find Out of the Abyss is a book that just keeps on giving. 

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For me, this book summons Five out of Five Demon Lords

Tabletop Tales: ‘Dystopian Wars’: ALL The Tanks!

by Necroscourge

As any long time wargamer will tell you, it all started with minimal forces and a struggling concept of the game’s rules. My British friends have been congratulating me on my newfound addiction, while also advising me that crack is cheaper. It’s generally a sign of acceptance when you are buying as much paint and models as I am! 

The quarterly order I put in just before Halloween is going to finish up my demand of Grench models for the time being, as well as equip me with enough paint to begin that process. I’ll be starting with a base grey primer coat and build from that, limiting how much detailing I have to do on weapons and armor. Neighbors models will have a green coat to tell them apart on the table. Don’t expect anything master class out of me, but I have read enough on the topic to do a decent enough job.

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My neighbor exclusively plays FSA, and will be painting his own fleet.

I’m at the point where I’m planning for a table, which I’m going to paint specially to make it clear where the No-Man’s Land is; the neutral zone between the two territories. It’ll be 5’x4’; reluctantly accepting the reality of having to store it. It won’t be a dull board either, I’m going to mark it up a little for “basic” scenery such as trenches and roads. The theory being that by having them there I’d be able to field extra infantry and put them in a safe spot. Infantry aren’t really a big focus point anyway, the idea is that by making them extremely hard to hit I’m forcing the attention on other units while they move forward.

It has become clear that it takes a handful of times playing, re-reading the rules, and then playing again before you start playing what can be considered a fair, proper game. Having tasted the old land movement rules and embraced the new ones I can say they greatly streamline the ability to use land units; at the same time making land based large units a nightmare in some circumstances. I still have a difficult time lining up the forward guns of the Mauselle up, while he has easier and easier times maneuvering his landship into firing position. In general the FSA has strong broadsides, being able to maneuver their broadside tanks is an immediate buff for them. Now If I could just find a way to order the dang things.

This week’s reading of the manual has helped a great deal in fixing a lot of my mistakes and the forum communities been helping me with whatever questions I have. It does not help that the rules are written in long delicate sentences that complicate the point trying to be made, while unofficial cards with the stats and rules can easily sum up any of those rules in a blurb. Don’t try to learn this game if you flunked English 2. There are a lot of rules mentioned somewhere separately inthan where it applies; All FSA Capital’s (‘Cept robots) have snipers on them that get a special non-attack-attack against models to pick off some troops. No reminders exist on relevant units entries hence why we always forget to use it.

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Covenant of Antarctica flying battlegroup, fear the skyships!

My opponent is still hiding behind his damn bunker complex. In general the American land units have strange firing arcs that are ambiguous at best; contrasted by fairly clear firing arcs on most other factions. The way he makes up for this is having disastrously good artillery and powerful boarding squads. He has not played them this way yet, but he is capable of mounting his own tank offensive to uproot me. Well sort of, the issue with the Americans is that their models are old designs that operate in old whacky ways. Both of their frontline tanks lack a forward turret but have things like broadside guns, or for the Trenton four diagonal facing fixed guns. Then glance over to my table, you’ll have a hard time finding a French model without some kind of front aiming gun (Unless you immediately point at the Arbalete, but that’s cheating)

I, of course have a plan for dealing with his puny army. I’m ordering my skimmers, floating naval ships capable of turning with minimal effort. They will be able to zoom deep into the enemy’s front lines like cavalry to harass him long enough to set up shots with my angrier tanks. I considered the HQ skimmer but it’s expensive to field and I’d rather use the points fielding chasseur squads (Floaty Cruiser + Floaty Frigate x2). There is a lot of joy to be had in units that can move half speed, fire, then move the rest of their speed; all while being capable of making turns naval ships typically can’t make. Despite being mounted on flying bases, they are not really fliers but instead are more or less surface units incapable of being anti-aired.
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Something I am hoping to do is get more people interested in wargaming; It’s just too hard to find anything other than Warhammer players locally. Miniature Market has about 200 Dystopian Wars items on clearance still. All you really need for two players is one armies 2.0 starter box (it comes with materials the old ones don’t) and from there get a landship or two, four squads worth of mediums, and a box of smalls of another nation (I’d also argue get a pack of fighter tokens for each nation too!). Combined that with tape measure, some dice, and a table, and you have a game. That’s more or less what I did and I have been doing fine. I think it’s a good game for teenagers too, as itforces them to do a lot of quick mental math.

As to those wondering “What happened to DnD? Did he stop playing?” and the answer is hell no. In fact, I preordered the new Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide and plan on doing a write up of that combined with the Rage of Demons storyline book “Out of the Abyss” in a week or two when they arrive. I also have a ton of recorded audio of my weekly game I plan on doing a few mega-cut’s for. I promise to get that out before the next rapture happens.