This is what a video battle report should look like.



Slightly hard to follow as it goes pretty fast. But damn good. Immersive. This is the essence of what 40K is to me - the not-so-competitive player - I want that story, the emotional investment in your little dudes and what happens. If you don't care - then what's the point? Winning? Congratulations, all that time spent for a very fleeting feeling of smug superiority. I'd rather have a narrative, but maybe that's just the original Drakar & Demoner RPGer in me speaking (very old GURPS-style, iirc, Swedish-language RPG I played a lot back in 1988ish).

So how, la?

Tripod. Or steadicam. Some basic editing. Some sound effects. And a bunch of planning ahead of time. It's really the planning that shines in this video.

Best Battlefleet Gothic battle report video I've seen.



Good voiceovers, awesome immersive table top setup (could have lost the papers, pens and dice but meh), well painted models. Slightly lacking in easily overviewed tactics, but if you know BFG you can probably tell what's up. I've never played it (would love to) and so had some difficulty following, but cool nonetheless, and it's not like good BFG video battle reports are all over youtube, really.

Give the guy some love and subscribe imo. http://www.youtube.com/user/Fixer40000

Finding players and Tragedy of the Commons.

Just discovered http://www.tabletoptournaments.net/ today. Great site. Started in Germany (lol I just love reading English written by Germans, in a good way) in 2004-2005, then spread South to other German-speaking countries, then France, the UK and now the US as well. It's well populated in Europe but there's precious little in the US part of the database. But it's a start if you're looking for things that you can't just walk into a local gaming store and get a pick-up game with on a Saturday afternoon.

http://www.tabletoptournaments.net/ 


So what's the problem here?

The problem is we have a bunch of specialist websites and forums. And we have Games Workshop shutting down their forums (for good reasons, imho). And we have a bunch of local gaming stores. All of whom want traffic to *their* website. Advertising revenue, building a customer base, building reputation and exposure. You have lists of players of X, Y and Z games on each website.

All of this results in a bunch of different actors taking a chunk of the players and gamers out there, depleting a common resource (hang with me here, I know it's a bit of a stretch, but you get the point) - people's time, effort and energy in regards to joining and registering on a website and posting what they're looking for, where and when and whatnot.

Not directly relevant.
Hell, we even had a new one launch just a few months ago. What the heck was he thinking, making one more website for gamers to find gamers - that will take how many months or years to get fully populated and actually useful? He was thinking - "I have a good idea and I'm gonna make it happen!"

More power to him. It's good thing that he's giving the other, stagnant but established systems/websites/resources a run for their money. But the community of geeks and gamers have yet to fully embrace anything other than their local group, and Facebook and Twitter (?) and Youtube - the latter three of which are pervasive due to their ubiquitousness outside of the subculture of gaming and geekery. In a few years some of these websites will establish dominancy. Til then we're kind of stuck in a rut. But check them all out and register on a few or all, especially if you're crazy enough to want to play some weird, unsupported Specialist Game like Dark Future - then you'll have your work cut out for you.

SIMPLE SOLUTION(tm) - Spread the word. Research. Register on what you find worthwhile. Tell your friends. Help expand the sites to make them more useful. Write a small blog post about it. BAM - you just made things easier for the next guy. Check back in a few months, maybe things will be useful.

Best battle report I've seen.



This comes up if you google "40K cool" images.
Creative as all hell. Tons of work went into it. After effects. Planning. Semi-professional camerawork with a tripod. No wonder that the latter stages of the battle haven't been completed, as this is a crapton of work.

That said - a few hopefully constructive criticisms. I'm not a fan of green playing surfaces. They end up contrasting a lot with bases and buildings and whatnot. Straight black usually works better, even given that many model's bases are black sides and some sort of "terrain-coloured" top of the base - or even worse, "special," with some sort of converted terrain piece addition like crystals or a piece of a ruin that makes the individual unit look great alone but doesn't blend at all with the actual table top gaming terrain environment. Black, grey, olive drab gaming surface and same with the model bases. Anything else just ends up looking very contrasting - but I suppose it's just a game after all and many people care more about how their models look alone or in the privacy of your own collection, or just not "boring."

#2 - individual units moving one by one looks a bit weird.

#3 - individual units in a crowd firing one by one looks a bit weird. A tactical squad all firing at once would have been very cool.

Both the above I'm inclined not to care too much about since this is a battle report, not an immersive simulation. The video is damn good, just a few things *I* would do different. Or try to. Mad respect to the people who did this. I'd try something similar, but on a smaller scale with fewer units. I have plenty of experience editing CGI gaming videos, but never messed with actual effects like these.

#4 - the buildings alternately look nice and just weirdly paper-y. Meh.

Starting to think that how people deal with this hobby is more and more a reflection of whether they want a game or a narrative, immersive story.

In other news dealing with the US health insurance/dental insurance system is a p.i.t.a. and complex as all hell.

P.S. I'm gonna try to get a "Flowchart Friday" fun series up and running. Sort of like http://forthebubbles.wordpress.com/tag/flowchart-friday/ First up will be some sort of take on "I want to play 40K..."

How to find players

NEW: http://www.tabletoptournaments.net/ - seems populated database, checking now.

Finding players is a huge issue for some of us.

Well-supported, popular games and you don't care who you play or what terrain or format or how things are done or the WAAC meta? Congratulations, you're all set. But for Man O' War, BFG, Aeronautica Imperialis, Epic 40K, Necromunda, Mordheim, Dark Future and whatnot you're a bit S.O.L.

I've been working on solutions. Best I can find is these:
  • Google gaming stores. Use the Games Workshop store locator. Google "" and all the games you're interested in. Keep in mind that people who play a well-spread game like Epic 40K might be open to BFG or AI. 40K players might be interested in Necromunda or its fan-made variants that they don't have to buy stuff for. Fantasy players will be interested in Mordheim etc.
  • http://www.meetup.com/ - Good for lots of popular things, not so good for trying to find people to play old board games/wargames with. If you want something not just for wargaming, this is it.
  • http://needgamers.com/ - New startup that looks great. But not so great once you realize the guy who's operating it is just doubling up on the work already done by people on the three above websites.
  • boardgamegeek.com is a great website, but sadly not much in the way of finding players. They really should have put a map up and let people network.

I recently purchased an awesome vintage 1980s GW game called "Dark Future" - but finding people to play with is going to be a...

San Diego specific stuff I've found (might be in DC soon enough):

Lord Inquisitor trailer. Fan made CGI feature film.

http://youtu.be/N7glPda2Lcc

http://www.thelordinquisitor.com/
Not the greatest voice-over, but very good quality CGI and some good flow. I'd pay $10 to see something like this for an hour or so, assuming they got the voiceovers right.

I'm still very slowly working on a similar CGI movie script for Eisenhorn. Look for it in 2022.

In other news, FTW blog network. New job as of 5 days ago, so a bit busy. Real-life inquisitorial investigations happening right now.

Cool 40K Assassin models

I'm a tad underwhelmed by the 40K Vindicare and Culexus models. There are some alternatives out there - various Scout models for the Vindicare, mainly - though the Culexus is a bit set in stone as the head piece is rather visually distinctive. Too big and unwieldy-looking and a bit whack for me, but to each their own.

A Vindicare standing up to shoot is just a bit weird to me as a former platoon designated shooter myself, but I suppose. Gotta have uniform height for models for LOS gaming purposes and all that. Plus no-one wants a model that's lying down and covered in a ghillie suit. Callidus is fine, but for the paintjobs that people put on them imho - white skulls and emblems on a sneaky assassin? Sure, after the Polymorphine and all that, I suppose... Eversor - well, all bets are off there. Go crazy, maybe convert with an Arco-flagellant or something, though the base model looks swell enough.

But there's also older models to consider. Like, way old.

Some still available via Ebay at http://goo.gl/LEqqD (SFW, Ebay link).

1981 Spacefarers Citadel Miniatures
"Cyborg Assassin" model.
Unreleased Culexus model.
Rogue Trader Assassin,
make the gun longer and there's your Vindicare.
Dark Elf Assassin counts as 40K DCA to me.
Incidentally, some Dark Elf fantasy dual-wielding models can look pretty nice. Unlike the official 40K Death Cult Assassin females in bikinis and high heels - lol what? So unless you're playing with jerks, I'd just substitute the dual-wielding Dark Elf.
Dark Elf Assassin counts as 40K DCA to me.

Shadowblade, Dark Elf Assassin counts as 40K DCA to me.
Really, any mostly un-armoured model dual-wielding swords will do as far as I'm concerned. Slightly more reasonable and immersive than a girl in a bikini, high heels and two power swords. Your call, most people don't really care for things like reasonable realism in a fictional universe filled with magic and psykers and power armour and whatnot. But I do. RP, lore, fluff, immersion and all that. Less of a game and more of a story, to me, though I understand most people don't see it that way. Maybe I should stick to things like Mordheim and Necromunda, esp. due to the overwhelming fan-base focus on competitive WH 40K play. People doing "dice rolling technique" and nudging models forward to get in range, nit-picking template placements and rules and Win-At-All-Cost attitudes and all that. Plus I guess it's reasonable to get upset if you spend $1300 to field an army, get it all painted up and then get your butt kicked by some overgrown rules lawyer with poor or non-existent social skills. I'd rather not be in that environment.

But yeah, assassin models. Cool.
EDIT: Just toured a few gaming stores in San Diego. Turns out there's tons of ninja-looking appropriate-scale miniatures with dual-wielding daggers/swords from various manufacturers. Have a look around.