White Scars Terminators vs Adeptus Mechanicus Kill Team 125 Pts.

This was a fairly quick game of Kill Team at the Ordo Fanaticus club in Portland. We opted to play at Elites level, which is commonly accepted to be 125 points, rather than standard (non-elites) at 100 or Commanders at 200. It seems not many people play Commanders at all, and why limit yourself to non-elites choices? 

I didn't! Below is my Kill Team of White Scars Terminators, four models coming up to 125 points exactly. It's what you see is what you get, but for counting the Cyclone Missile Launcher as a "Comms Array". I forgot to paint the sergeant's dangly scrolls. For shame. From the Sergeant, clockwise, are the Leader, Zealot, Combat, and Comms specialists.

The opposition was Adeptus Mechanicus. I think those are Skitarii? The Kastelan robot is counting as UR-025 the Man of Iron robot from Blackstone Fortress.

This is how deployment went. In this mission, you have to control the middle point, and then if you do, you get one victory point for every other point you control in addition to it, at the end of each battle round. This made that middle point absolutely crucial, and we were fighting over it for nearly the whole game. 

I took it on the first turn with my combat specialist, which was critical and the only reason I won--I wound up with a single victory point at the end of the first round, the only one scored by either of us in the whole game.

The Robot moved up to challenge me in the second round, along with one of the other troopers. I was able to kill the little guy, though, to prevent the AdMech from taking control of the point. My Zealot charged a guy who had been hiding around the corner. He retreated, extending my charge needed to 10", but I got it! My Leader and Comms specialist readied and shot that round.

One round, he brought in a couple of guys from reserves, who appeared to the lower right, and ended up charging my Zealot while he was in combat with the first guy he'd charged. They would end up killing him, and the big robot would end up killing my combat specialist. Twice, actually, since I used the tactic Death Denied to turn a knockout into a mere flesh wound. 

In the final rounds, my remaining two Terminators would continue to try to fight the big robot, mostly missing, or having him roll double sixes and other ridiculous saves. In the end though, the game ended 1-0 in my favor. Just in time, too. The way things were going my Terminators would have whiffed until they were smashed.

Four models is cutting it close in a game about controlling objectives. I might try a more mixed kill team next time around.

Witness the Turn

I'm at a pivot point.


I finally finished Knights of the Old Republic, as a Jedi Revan. I even managed to win Bastila back to the light side after she had been turned by Darth Malak while in his hands. Malak was killed, undone by his own hubris and the weaknesses of the dark side in the end. Isn't that always the way? It felt good to finally conclude the business between myself and this game after such a long time. I'm really looking forward to the Obsidian Studios-developed sequel which I'll play at some point.


For backlog diligence this week, I tried out Rage, the id Software shooter from 2011. Megatextures. It's got a great look, technically, and if it weren't for Borderlands already doing something similar, and more recently Mad Max itself entering gaming, Rage would also have a niche, artistically. Which would be nice, because mechanically there is nothing special about this game from the first couple of hours. It's by id, so the shooting is solid. There's also ATV and buggy driving, which seems fine, and faux-open world trappings and light RPG systems. I had a decent time in the first few missions, but I see no reason to play more, what with all the other potentially and actually better games at my fingertips.


A while back I played through Warhammer 40:000 Kill Team on PS3. It was not great by any means, but the PC version was very cheap recently so I picked it up on Steam for another go at greater fidelity. It's a very stupid game, and roughly made, like a bad old arcade game or something from the PS1 or N64 generation. I wanted to kill a few moments with it, though, so there you have it.


I'm keeping at The Witness, as well. I've activated two lasers, for what that's worth. One was in and under the desert, and the other the colored glass greenhouse elevator area. I wish I had some idea of what I'm supposed to do at the vaguely Asian temple area, with the diamond shaped puzzles on the garden wall, or the glass puzzle near the harbor with the twin lines. I did the apples-in-the-trees puzzle set last night, and I guess I'll roam the island for some more low hanging fruit when next I load up the game.


And I'm still leaning toward some Dawn of War II: Retribution soon.

Waaaauuuugh!

I've been killing a lot of orks lately. Yeah, it's spelled with a K in the 40K universe. Since my last entry, I've finished both Kill Team and Space Marine, both melee and shooting based action games set in the grim, dark future. Kill Team was really just a diversion--a cheaply done couch co-op only blast and bash fest 5 stages long. Nothing serious. Space Marine was a much bigger fish to fry. It's a full on retail release, and as such, has to compete with the best in field, and being as it's on the fence between two fields, it's got to measure up to two titans of gaming: Gears of War and God of War. Even for a future where there is only war, that is a tall order.

Space Marine won't wow you like either of those titles, either in terms of spectacle or overall quality, but it does a pretty good job, considering the competition. As Ultramarine captain Titus,  you lead the charge in fending off an invasion of orks on a valuable world that houses the factories that build Titans, the giant death robots of the Warhammer 40K universe. You will shoot/slice thousands of greenskins--and later minions of Chaos--on your way to the game's finale. It's good fun. Space Marine combines the gunplay of Gears with the simple combos of God of War, but does away with the stop 'n' pop of the former and the ponderous puzzles of the latter. It's a very lean concept, so it's probably best that the game isn't too long, coming in at about 8 hours or so, by my estimate. My favorite sections of the game were the jump-pack sections where Titus is armed with a giant power hammer and rocket jump ability. You know where this is going, right? Ground pound. It's too bad that those sections are few and far between.

Space Marine also has a multiplayer mode, but I haven't gotten around to checking that out just yet. Going off of Relic's (the developer) track record, we should see some good post-release support for the game, so I'm looking forward to trying the multiplayer and whatever else they might add to the game. I'm also down for an eventual sequel, supposing they are able to make one. The story didn't leave it hanging exactly, but our character was bound for something interesting in the epilogue. Check out Space Marine if you're into action games or Warhammer 40,000, especially.

I've played a bunch of other little things, too, including Dead Nation from PSN (twin stick zombie apocalypse score mechanic/upgrade system shooter), Track Mania (PC stunt race/time trial/mini-golf esque racing game), and Shining Force (Genesis proto-SRPG).

Also, there's a whole other post's worth of writing I need to do about Jamestown, Sengoku, Warhammer 40K: Squad Command, and Tactics Ogre, but if that is ever written, it won't be tonight. Sleep for the Sleep God!

Few And Far Between

That is how my gaming sessions feel these days. Even with with great expanses of time between these entries, I don't have a lot to write about having played.

I made some progress through Bioshock 2 a couple of weeks back. It's a pretty good game, like the first. It lacks the punch of the first, though, and so ended up being kind of maligned and overlooked upon its release. It's very much the sequel that no one asked for. I remember 2K making noises like they would be able to mine Bioshock well past 5 games; I'm not so sure that's the case, anymore. Perhaps they will, if they count Infinite and the series re-invention it looks to be.

I also played a short bit of Fallout 2, which is nominally the RPG I'm playing right now. I need to get back and finish this one up so that I can finally start Fallout 3 sometime in the next 12 months (maybe). I actually also have been playing a little bit of Dragon Quest IX, which I picked up out of boredom and curiosity. It's a Dragon Quest game, which is pretty much 'nuff said. I enjoyed those two and a half hours or so, so maybe I'll pick it up again soon. We'll see.

The game I've played the most of over the last couple of weeks is a multiplayer shooter called Section 8: Prejudice. I'm playing the PC version, though it is available on the PS3 and 360. I wouldn't advise playing those versions, though; there's barely anyone playing on PC--I shudder to think how empty the game would be on the consoles. It's very good, though. It plays kind of like a cross between Battlefield and Halo, and it looks a hell of a lot like the later. Sure, it's kind of generic in a lot of ways, but I really like it. Its one unique aspect is how you drop from orbit into battle, meaning that you can choose just about anywhere on the battlefield to spawn into, as long as there are no AA guns to kill you on your way down. It looks like you can even land on guys to kill them, but I haven't been able to pull that off, myself. Check the game out, if you don't mind playing in games where about half the players are bots. I got it for $6 on Direct2Drive (again, I can't say I'd recommend the $15 console price, as I'd imagine it's pretty dead over there).

Last, and probably also least, Warhammer 40K: Kill Team. I picked this up on PSN last night because it was only $10 and I like 40K stuff, and I'm excited for Space Marine. It should have been a $5 game, I think. It's pretty mediocre. I don't dislike it, especially, but it's pretty mediocre. I got stuck at a hard part in the first mission, too, and couldn't power through it before I got tired and wanted to go to bed. This is parenthood, I suppose.