Been long break.

I have been lately kind of lazy due schoolwork I had to made before holiday. Also I got job for my summer holiday which have taken almost every bit of time, so playing FaBa or VTES have been kind of low or even none. :<
Our local VTES community bought Vampire cards maybe worth of thousands of euros from swedish player who were quitting the game completely. Put myself in paying effort and got plenty of cards in return, mainly Group 3-5 Giovanni vampires and some Harbringers of Skulls cards (\o/). These cards allows to rework my decks completely because now I've two cards of Unre, the Keeper of Golgotha, and actual cards to make Giovanni Dom/Potence deck.
Also APB is for me turned unplayable after UI rework, it takes way too much memory for my PC to handle it so gameplay experience will remain very poor all the time, maybe meanwhile the Fallen Earth can fill my gaming satisfaction, before I get new rig under my legs, don't know but I hope it coming soon.

Vampire Cards!

Got today finally my Vampire: the Eternal Struggle cards I ordered in last week. :)
I had idea about making Giovanni Bruise/Bleed deck, besides having a Potence and Dominate disciplines I felt many Necromancy cards would allow them to become very versatile deck. So far I've had Harbinger of Skulls Shambling Hordes/Toolbox deck and Followers of Set Stealth Bleed with awesome twists with corruption counters, so I feel excited to try my hands on combat where Giovanni vampires can hit hard and bleed harder.

But here's the deck:

Deck Name: Giovanni Potence/Dominate
Author: Salsa
Description:
Using KoT Brujah, LotN Giovanni and 2x 3rd ed. Tremere Antritibu Starter decks for following deck. And few rather common necromancy cards

Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=3 max=10 avg=6.17)
================================================
 2x  Francis Milliner     6  pre vic NEC POT      Giovanni:4
 2x  Guillaume Giovanni   9  obt CEL DOM NEC POT  Giovanni:4
 2x  Lady Constancia     10  AUS DOM FOR NEC POT  Giovanni:4
 2x  Margaret Milliner    5  dom for nec pot pre  Giovanni:4
 2x  Nunzio Giovanni      3  nec pot              Giovanni:4
 2x  Primo Giovanni       4  dom nec pot          Giovanni:4

Library (90 cards)
==================
Master (14)
 1x Dominate
 1x Giant's Blood
 1x Golconda: Inner Peace
 1x KRCG News Radio
 1x Morgue Hunting Ground
 1x Necromancy
 2x Path of Bone, The
 2x Proxy Kissed
 4x Vessel

Action (16)
 1x Chill of Oblivion
 8x Govern the Unaligned
 2x Graverobbing
 5x Harass

Equipment (3)
 2x Bundi
 1x Sengir Dagger

Action Modifier (11)
 3x Bonding
 5x Call of the Hungry Dead
 3x Conditioning

Reaction (12)
 6x On the Qui Vive
 6x Redirection

Combat (30)
 6x Brute Force
 5x Immortal Grapple
 3x Relentless Pursuit
 6x Slam
 5x Taste of Vitae
 5x Torn Signpost

Combo (4)
 4x Spectral Divination

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4a. (May 17, 2013 19:31:53)

If you familiar with the game you can always tell and mention what you think from this deck, so far my problem is lacking amount of Group 4 and/or Group 5 Giovanni vampires which could allow better combat modules.

Salsa

My thoughts: Neverwinter

It's been about 2 weeks from the Neverwinter's official open beta release, and I missed a week due my London exploring. I had to take day more so I get my mind back on the game and get ideas worth of writing.

Neverwinter is MMORPG using Dungeon & Dragon's Forgotten Realm setting. At the start I would've been imagining a gameplay quite similar to Neverwinter Nights which is about using dice roll and original's PnP RP's rules, but no. Game literally says "screw it" and brings a combat which is about aiming, reacting and moving. This is something that might scare people out from even without trying the game, so far I've been enjoying fast combat speed with Guardian Fighter class: charge in, make few swings to kill smaller mobs, stun big one from doing strong blow, block it's next attempt and re position yourself to finish it.
You're always doing something in combat and that's great! In normal MMOs I kept avoiding a combat because I felt it boring and dull to use tab-key to target, press certain buttons at certain order and finish a mob.

Game has quite good variety content to offer at basics, but game is mostly about questing and dungeon-crawling, you'll do most of your quests during leveling in solo-instances which are very easy at the start but turns to be much more difficult as your progress, so saving any early gotten potion will help you in your future battles. :)

Besides that you can also level up yourself by doing skirmishes which are short 5 man instances with some sort of loot in the end and doesn't offer too much mind to find way till the end. Dungeons in other hard are about hour lasting dungeons with really difficult bosses inside, at lvl ~35 there was a dungeon which was nearly impossible to after several attempts and good coordination, in other hands, loot is pretty good in those instances. 

For Player vs. Player action there's Domination matches which requires your group to control 3 objectives and reach to the point cap before the enemy and this is the place where in my opinion game's combat mechanics shines. Running, aiming, managing a good movement to keep yourself in better place than enemy offers truly amazing combat and fun. And even in PvP you're offered with loot after end of the round which makes playing PvP rewarding alongside the normal special currency non-sense. 

Lastly there's a Foundry, every player after lvl 15 have access to create their own quests to the game and create nearly any quest they want. From short solo dungeons to epic and long quest-storyline what takes multiple players to win. That's up to us, players who are creating all that content available to other players. Foundry itself is really powerful tool even tough being easy to use, I'm still trying my hands and trying to create quest by my own so I'll see if I ever get anything done.

Foundry isn't so easily exploitable, quests doesn't offer extra exp after completion and only lootable chest you can drop is special quest completion reward chest which offers a loot. but decided by Cryptic. Players who can enjoy a storylines of others get's most out from Foundry however.

Game is still in open beta and I wish to see more from end-game content soon as I get there myself, but so far game seems to be promising, expect literally overpriced Zen store, some goodies would be fun to have but not necessary at all. So I'll see how game ends up to be in much later. I recommend if you're not afraid from whole different combat but you can also enjoy from Forgotten Realms in world what's much more than just dice rolling. :)

Salsa

Back from London

I was in London from Monday to Friday. It was a trip organized by school where I am studying right now and it was awesome (plus cheap) opportunity to get to London and see what that city had to offer. Five days went really quickly and I didn't found myself shopping too much really. Only things I grabbed with me was Munchkin and Warrior Priest miniature from Games Workshop store. :<
Anyways, I'm working on Neverwinter topic and hopefully get it out soon, it have been really exciting to play it so far. Content made by users and action combat instead of tab-targeting have been way much more fun. :)
Back to work!

Salsa

Papers, Please

I just recently came across a weird, but at the same time exciting indie-game called "Papers, Please". In the game your immigration inspector in a fictional communist nation called Arstotzka. In the game you need to inspect all the people's passports, who're trying to cross the border and come in your country. As the game progress, you'll get more more rules and papers to be checked, meanwhile you should keep your family warm and not let them be hungry so you'll also need kind of swiftness on what you do.

It's only a stamp that decides fate of that person... and you can decide from it. Quick and sharp eyes will help in this game to success, because too many penalties will mean lower salary and you might not have even a money for your own rent.

 After a each day you'll see on the newspaper a news what're related to people you've allowed to cross a border. You can always choose not to obey rules you're given and chance life of the people. :)

Border is filled by people, and I should keep them waiting you say? o_o

Game is in Steam Greenlight waiting for approval, but meanwhile you can test it for free from here: http://dukope.com/

Check it out since it all free and lot of fun despite being short because of beta. :)

Salsa

Ostium is over

Ostium, Warhammer Fantasy Battle Tournament played here in Finland in Joensuu is over. I however did not win any rewards. Mostly due my three draws, one 0-10 loss and 7-3 win. If I could have realized to grab on from few chances and make wins, but I did not. Tournament had kill points so I list amount of killpoints after each choice in list

My list was basically lame gunline

Dwarf Lord, Great Weapon, Shieldbearers, Ro Stone, Ro Presevation, Ro Resistance, MRo Spite: 3 Killpoints

Thane, BSB, Great Weapon, Crossbow (comps allowed all armies bsbs' carry other than hand weapons), MRo Gromril, Ro Resistance, Ro Furnace: 2 Killpoints

Runesmith, Mro Balance, Ro Spellbreaking: 0 Killpoints

16 Quarrelles, Full Command, Great Weapons: 2 Killpoints

16 Quarrelles, Full Command, Great Weapons: 2 Killpoints

28 Longbeard Rangers, Great Weapons, Throwing Axes, Full Command: 2 Killpoints

25 Hammerers: Shields, Full Command, MRo Grugni: 2 Killpoints

Grudge Thrower, Engineer, 2x Rune of Penetrating, Rune of Accuracy: 1 Killpoints

Grudge Thrower, Engineer, Ro Penetrating, Ro Accuracy: 0 Killpoints

Cannon, Engineer, Ro Forging, Ro Burning: 0 Killpoints

6 Miners: 0 Killpoints

6 Miners: 0 Killpoints

Organ: 0 Killpoints

First game was against a beautiful Daemons of Chaos army in Battleline, mostly around quick Slaanesh units. I made a typical corner deployment and tightly so flyers would've hard time to go across me.

Unfortunately my small amounts of units did not allow me to have start and daemons went first, many M10 units brought me very close to enemy and I failed horribly to shoot fast daemons enough to take charges. Daemons came on my warmachines soon as on turn 2 and I noted my deployment was too tight. My own melee units couldn't react or more to better positions to help warmachines and if I would help, I would take heavy damage to bigger melee units.

Third round and my warmachines luckily wins combats, I again fail at shooting and Daemons weak Keeper of Secret wouldn't go down at any means, this points I knew that I've very little chances to win this game so I had to throw all in and brought my General against it.

Again my luck was awful: 4th round and Keeper of Secret miscasts with result 3 and blows my entire Hammerer unit and left my own General alone to hold 3 hordes of Daemonettes.

Game was clearly over at that points. 0-10 to me.

Second game were against the Beastmens, Dawn Attack. We succeeds to deploy our armies to entirely other sides of the table and Beastmens had long long way to get on my units. I had only things to shoot from enemy's army was few spawns and minotaurs, minotaurs flee after few turns of shooting and on turn 5 Beastmens reach to my Quarrelles. In turn 6 we didn't manage to break anything in combat or via shooting, so we both got only 2 killpoints. Game was draw.

Third game was against the Empire army, Meeting Engagement with two objectives on both sides' deployment zones. In this game Empire player were ready to take control of my another objectives with help of knights, Griffon General and Steam Tank. My Grudges began to throw rocks for real, succeeding to make 9 wounds to steam tank by indirect shots cleaning the Empire's plans. After that we only looked at each other since either side wanted to take risks and lose the game. At 6th turn tough Empire player nearly scared me when he started to throw his dice for Wind Blast from Lore of Heavens during his last magic phase. Luckily I had Spellbreaking against it and spell did nothing since he didn't got Irresistible Force.

Night went by being drunk and playing card games at night.

Sunday was whole different: Watchtower with 3 objectives and against a dwarfs.

Enemy dwarf army had Anvil, unlike me and also ton of bigger melee units, but less shooting so game was going to be extremely violent for both of us, both rushed straight a way to objectives. For my luck his anvil did explode during the game and gave free victory points for me. But for bad luck combats didn't go perfectly so I got my lead from objectives very late and didn't manage to more victory points than my enemy. Draw.

Last game against Chaos Warrios.

Battleline, I love this scenario against that army. Chaos will lose enough models before combat and then we take hell tight combats from fact, who's the toughest fighters. For my luck I deployed my rangers far away from main units and enemy's Daemon Prince went after rangers. Rangers held it 3 rounds which was enough to pin down knights and leave his general alone. Also my Quarrelles began to rock and managed to bring 8-10 wounds per turn to Marauder Horde, killing it before it even reaches to combat. Hammerers and generals charges to Warriors to flee from Chaos Lord and his Steed of Slaanesh. Manages it but didn't manage to chase warriors far enough so Lord managed to charge later in game behind my Hammerers. Luckily Lord had to duel with me and I win combat later with static combat resolution and Lord doesn't get back on his feet after 2 rally tests.

I win game 7-3.

Funny games, lot of different meta than in ETC which is great difference from static lists in ETC. I love objective based scenarios because of brutality of combat what it typically happens to be. :)

I'll look pictures if anything comes, but before that you can check results here (discussion is finnish).

Salsa

And before the change of the week, there will be spilled blood by armies of our enemies!

Just quick heads up: in the weekend 13-14th of April I'll be playing in the Ostium. It's a local warhammer fantasy battle tournament which focuses more on the well painted armies with great background, trying to give feeling of a real fantasy armies fighting against each other. Point limit of the armies is 2600 points and has some rather minor comps for FaBa tournament, but instead will be focusing on killing large units and flags and multiple-objectives scenarios which changes the played meta here a lot. I'm bringing my Firebeard clan's dwarfs out from defending their recently re-taken hold of Karak Ungor.

Found picture from my army from last time: 

Overview of my army

Basically it contained Dwarf Lord with great Weapon and shieldbearers, Battle Standard Bearer with great weapons and crossbow (comps allowed equipment to all BSBs), Runesmith, two units of 16 Quarrelles with full command and great weapons, 28 Longbeard Rangers with full command, throwing axes and great weapons, 25 Hammerers with shields and full command, 15 Miners with full command, two Grudge Throwers, Cannon, Organ Gun and nearly forgot a Gyrocopter.

I'll be probably bringing something similar for next weekend, don't know, but I wanna have just fun. :)

Salsa

Created a blog.

Hey lads and welcome to my new blog. This will be filled in the future with my thoughts and opinions from different games I play. Games varies from videogames to miniature games, what's played on tabletop. My particular interests are right now Vampire: The Eternal Struggle - trading card game, Warhammer Fantasy Battles - miniature game and many video games. APB Reloaded just to name few.
I'll try share my opinions, thoughts and suggestions about the games I post here. For videogames, I've personal goal to try the game for least 25 hours before making any rants to here and even then trying to be constructive as honest Finn could be. :)

That's all for now.
Salsa