As a war gamer, and one time member of a gaming club, I have come into contact with Magic the Gathering on a number of occasions. I have mostly watched it from afar and have only once or twice played it in the very dim and distant past of the late 90s.
This changed towards the end of July this year. One of my friends convinced my gaming group to give this a try. We played Magic 2015 on the xbox first to get the general feel of the game. It was enough to get me interested.
After this taster, I did what I always seem to do, which is jump in with feet and wallet first into buying up a bunch of cards, sleeves, a gaming mat and some deck boxes. No real thought at this stage but to develop a collection.
I played my first few games and I had already a preconceived idea that I wanted to play mono red. It was the colour that I had dabbled with in the past and for some reason I don't really remember it was the one I had the most interest in.
I am sure anyone reading this with a basic grasp of magic will already know this, but each colour does different things. I am fairly new still, only having being playing for two months, but my understanding of the colours is roughly this.
White: Good small creatures, big flying angels, lots of removal spells.
Red: Good small creatures, powerful direct damage spells, dragons.
Green: Good creatures across the board, lots of means of boosting your own creatures (ramp)
Blue: Counter magic so you play more in the opponents turn, lots of flyer's, weaker ground creatures than red, green and white on average IMO.
Black: Can resurrect dead creatures, creatures usually poor quality but have strong synergy.
Initially I considered Green fairly basic and boring, and was interested in Blue. Having played a lot of games in the last couple of months, I really struggle with blue. You have to remember to keep mana back, remember to counter at the right time and generally you are playing to spoil the other persons fun. On the computer, playing as blue is relatively easy as you get prompts to cast counters. In real life however, I tend to forget!
Showing posts with label First Impressions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Impressions. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 September 2016
Wednesday, 29 April 2015
7th Edition Eldar - First Impressions - The internet panics
7th Edition Eldar - First impressions
Before I start, I will admit I play eldar. I have for twenty years, so I have seen quite few codexes come and go.
I have seen a lot of panic on the internet about how broken things are in this new book. But this essentially boils down to two things. Spamming list entries and tourney play. I do neither, so I personally don't like to be tarred with that brush.
Games Workshop has said MANY times that their game is not designed with competitive play in mind. It is beer and pretzels type gaming. You may disagree with this all you like, but that is the fact.
There are, as far as I can tell only a small number of issues which people have with the eldar book.
Number 1. Scatter bikers. Every single jetbike can now take either a shuricannon or a scatter laser. I have to admit, this seems a no brainer. There is a lot of fear about people spamming these, but it is fairly expensive to do, with the specialised FOC chart in the new book. In casual play, taking a squad or two and limiting heavy weapons is more than fine. You probably want some ablative wounds anyway, as if ap3 ignore cover weapons come your way, then the squads going to lose a lot of models. New good rules for new models, has been a thing for quite a while now.
Number 2. Wraithknight. Hes now a jump gargantuan creature armed with two D guns. He is also pretty cheap in terms of points.
Number 3. Ranged D guns on pretty much all wraith units. I don't personally see the big deal here, most of these were s10 before, and never seemed all that great with them being a single shot, short ranged and no blast. The D-flamers got a buff, but they can't instant death and suffer a penalty on the D chart.
Apart from that, there have been debuffs. Serpents shields been nerfed quite heavily, although I think we all expected that. Exarchs lost a lot of customisation options, as did the Avatar.
I dont think the Autarch is any better. Certainly I wont be taking one.
Guardians are a bit naff still. And unless you spam scatter bikers, you are taking some.
Free flak missiles as well as two wounds on the exarchs are welcome.
Before I start, I will admit I play eldar. I have for twenty years, so I have seen quite few codexes come and go.
I have seen a lot of panic on the internet about how broken things are in this new book. But this essentially boils down to two things. Spamming list entries and tourney play. I do neither, so I personally don't like to be tarred with that brush.
Games Workshop has said MANY times that their game is not designed with competitive play in mind. It is beer and pretzels type gaming. You may disagree with this all you like, but that is the fact.
There are, as far as I can tell only a small number of issues which people have with the eldar book.
Number 1. Scatter bikers. Every single jetbike can now take either a shuricannon or a scatter laser. I have to admit, this seems a no brainer. There is a lot of fear about people spamming these, but it is fairly expensive to do, with the specialised FOC chart in the new book. In casual play, taking a squad or two and limiting heavy weapons is more than fine. You probably want some ablative wounds anyway, as if ap3 ignore cover weapons come your way, then the squads going to lose a lot of models. New good rules for new models, has been a thing for quite a while now.
Number 2. Wraithknight. Hes now a jump gargantuan creature armed with two D guns. He is also pretty cheap in terms of points.
Number 3. Ranged D guns on pretty much all wraith units. I don't personally see the big deal here, most of these were s10 before, and never seemed all that great with them being a single shot, short ranged and no blast. The D-flamers got a buff, but they can't instant death and suffer a penalty on the D chart.
Apart from that, there have been debuffs. Serpents shields been nerfed quite heavily, although I think we all expected that. Exarchs lost a lot of customisation options, as did the Avatar.
I dont think the Autarch is any better. Certainly I wont be taking one.
Guardians are a bit naff still. And unless you spam scatter bikers, you are taking some.
Free flak missiles as well as two wounds on the exarchs are welcome.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
7th Edition. Is it really 6.5?
So after a fairly long hiatus, I have finally got around to looking at the 7th edition rules.
I have to say, I am not really impressed. For a rough estimate, I would suggest around 95% of the core rules and around 99% of special and weapon rules have stayed the same. For the price of the books I expected more.
Which brings me to the books. There is a big rule book, a background book and a sort of painting book.
The painting book has mostly big photos of models with no real explanation on how they were painted. There is a heavy emphasis on Ultramarines and not much on other factions and something that may possibly be classed as tactics, but it really doesn't come across that way in reading it. I could quite happily have never seen this book, never mind paid actual money for it. If it had shown a few more gamers armies, or shown how to do some of the painted models, or painting methods, then I would have been much more impressed.
The background book is a rehash of what has been said in previous publications. I couldn't actually see anything new in this whole book. While I am sure it is of some value to new gamers, to someone who has been playing for near twenty years, its not very much use to me. The specific sections on different factions is covered in much better details in their own codexes.
Now those books have been dealt with, back to the rules. The rules are really just 6th edition with a couple of changes. This isn't a bad thing as 6th was a solid set of rules.
Big changes, as far as I can tell are as follows;
Psychic phase. It looks like initially a small nerf in the volume of powers cast, although certain armies will see a boost I think. Its quite similar to the old fashioned dice pools for casting from fantasy. Its early to say for sure, but focused witchfires actually look usable now, which is a nice change. There doesn't appear to be an upper limit on how many dice you use to cast either. This means you can throw all your dice at a spell you really want. I also like how you get the primaris power for free if you pick all your powers from the same deck. Overall this is an improvement.
Shooting phase. There has been a fairly interesting change. You now roll all the weapons of one type, then resolve the effects before rolling the next set. This will slow games down, but provides a tactical choice to the game in trying to stack melta hits on characters when the fodder is hosed down in front of him with lesser weapons. I like this.
Charge ranges: Has stayed the same, but with small changes. Now difficult terrain reduces the charge by a set distance. Makes it a bit more predictable. I think this is good too.
Vehicle damage: It is now no longer possible to blow up a vehicle in one hit with an Ap3 or worse weapon. This makes vehicles across the board tougher and thus more desirable. Except oddly landraiders, and other 14 all round vehicles, which were virtually impervious to these lower damage weapons in the first place. I am unsure how much of an effect this will have, except armour 10 vehicles become considerably tougher.
Lords of war are now included in the Force Organisation Chart.
New missions are far more dynamic, allowing armies built around speed and reaction to do well, where as static armies may struggle.
Overall my impressions are that 7th is a positive step forwards. I can't think of any changes that have been for the worse, but it does strike me as more 6.5 than a new version of the rules.
I have to say, I am not really impressed. For a rough estimate, I would suggest around 95% of the core rules and around 99% of special and weapon rules have stayed the same. For the price of the books I expected more.
Which brings me to the books. There is a big rule book, a background book and a sort of painting book.
The painting book has mostly big photos of models with no real explanation on how they were painted. There is a heavy emphasis on Ultramarines and not much on other factions and something that may possibly be classed as tactics, but it really doesn't come across that way in reading it. I could quite happily have never seen this book, never mind paid actual money for it. If it had shown a few more gamers armies, or shown how to do some of the painted models, or painting methods, then I would have been much more impressed.
The background book is a rehash of what has been said in previous publications. I couldn't actually see anything new in this whole book. While I am sure it is of some value to new gamers, to someone who has been playing for near twenty years, its not very much use to me. The specific sections on different factions is covered in much better details in their own codexes.
Now those books have been dealt with, back to the rules. The rules are really just 6th edition with a couple of changes. This isn't a bad thing as 6th was a solid set of rules.
Big changes, as far as I can tell are as follows;
Psychic phase. It looks like initially a small nerf in the volume of powers cast, although certain armies will see a boost I think. Its quite similar to the old fashioned dice pools for casting from fantasy. Its early to say for sure, but focused witchfires actually look usable now, which is a nice change. There doesn't appear to be an upper limit on how many dice you use to cast either. This means you can throw all your dice at a spell you really want. I also like how you get the primaris power for free if you pick all your powers from the same deck. Overall this is an improvement.
Shooting phase. There has been a fairly interesting change. You now roll all the weapons of one type, then resolve the effects before rolling the next set. This will slow games down, but provides a tactical choice to the game in trying to stack melta hits on characters when the fodder is hosed down in front of him with lesser weapons. I like this.
Charge ranges: Has stayed the same, but with small changes. Now difficult terrain reduces the charge by a set distance. Makes it a bit more predictable. I think this is good too.
Vehicle damage: It is now no longer possible to blow up a vehicle in one hit with an Ap3 or worse weapon. This makes vehicles across the board tougher and thus more desirable. Except oddly landraiders, and other 14 all round vehicles, which were virtually impervious to these lower damage weapons in the first place. I am unsure how much of an effect this will have, except armour 10 vehicles become considerably tougher.
Lords of war are now included in the Force Organisation Chart.
New missions are far more dynamic, allowing armies built around speed and reaction to do well, where as static armies may struggle.
Overall my impressions are that 7th is a positive step forwards. I can't think of any changes that have been for the worse, but it does strike me as more 6.5 than a new version of the rules.
Friday, 14 June 2013
X-Wing Miniatures game - First Impressions
This week I seem to be on a bit of a roll actually posting articles for a change. I thought I would take this opportunity to speak about a game which has recently been taking up a lot of my time.
X-Wing is a game system based on Episodes 4,5 and 6 of Star Wars. No sign, as of yet, of any of the Prequel films getting any releases.
As a game system it is relatively straight forwards to learn, but by the looks of things, very complicated to master. I have played something between 5 and 10 games, mostly as Imperials and it has been generally very good fun.
The models come pre-painted, but there is nothing to stop you repainting the ones you get. The actual detail on the models is a lot better than is actually painted in a lot of cases. There is also not a great deal of consistency in the paint jobs on the same models.
A typical list is around 100 points. This will be something between 2 and 5 ships for rebels and between 3 and 8 for imperials. I don't think it is possible to field more than that amount of ships in a standard game. So although the prices are quite high for individual models [£12 for the smaller ones and about £22 for Falcon and Slave 1] the overall cost of playing is quite low.
The starter comes with all the bits you need to use the three ships you get. Which are two Ties and an Xwing. You get about half the special character cards for these two units in this box, so you will still need to purchase another xwing and another tie fighter to have them all. Each seperate ship pack comes with all the tokens it needs and the other upgrade cards seem to be distributed between the packs.
I have not as of yet found anywhere that actually lists which cards come in which packs. Which is annoying.
As a general rule, Imperial ships, up to now at least, tend to be faster and cheaper, but weaker, and rebel ships tend to be tougher with better offense and more upgrade options, but pricier. Reflecting the films.
So far they have released the following ships;
Rebels:
X wing
Y wing
A wing
Millenium Falcon
B wing [wave 3 Autumn]
Mouldy Crow [wave 3 Autumn]
Imperials:
Tie Fighter
Tie Advanced
Tie Interceptor
Slave 1
Tie Bomber [wave 3 Autumn]
Lambda Shuttle [wave 3 Autumn]
There are confirmations that more ships are on the horizon. The inclusion of the Mouldy Crow, which is by all accounts from an Expanded Universe computer game lets me hope for the inclusion of Tie Defenders.
I will try and get some photos up, especially as I am going to attempt to repaint the squad markings. One disadvantage of pre-painted models is that everyones will look the same. I want to make mine more personal.
X-Wing is a game system based on Episodes 4,5 and 6 of Star Wars. No sign, as of yet, of any of the Prequel films getting any releases.
As a game system it is relatively straight forwards to learn, but by the looks of things, very complicated to master. I have played something between 5 and 10 games, mostly as Imperials and it has been generally very good fun.
The models come pre-painted, but there is nothing to stop you repainting the ones you get. The actual detail on the models is a lot better than is actually painted in a lot of cases. There is also not a great deal of consistency in the paint jobs on the same models.
A typical list is around 100 points. This will be something between 2 and 5 ships for rebels and between 3 and 8 for imperials. I don't think it is possible to field more than that amount of ships in a standard game. So although the prices are quite high for individual models [£12 for the smaller ones and about £22 for Falcon and Slave 1] the overall cost of playing is quite low.
The starter comes with all the bits you need to use the three ships you get. Which are two Ties and an Xwing. You get about half the special character cards for these two units in this box, so you will still need to purchase another xwing and another tie fighter to have them all. Each seperate ship pack comes with all the tokens it needs and the other upgrade cards seem to be distributed between the packs.
I have not as of yet found anywhere that actually lists which cards come in which packs. Which is annoying.
As a general rule, Imperial ships, up to now at least, tend to be faster and cheaper, but weaker, and rebel ships tend to be tougher with better offense and more upgrade options, but pricier. Reflecting the films.
So far they have released the following ships;
Rebels:
X wing
Y wing
A wing
Millenium Falcon
B wing [wave 3 Autumn]
Mouldy Crow [wave 3 Autumn]
Imperials:
Tie Fighter
Tie Advanced
Tie Interceptor
Slave 1
Tie Bomber [wave 3 Autumn]
Lambda Shuttle [wave 3 Autumn]
There are confirmations that more ships are on the horizon. The inclusion of the Mouldy Crow, which is by all accounts from an Expanded Universe computer game lets me hope for the inclusion of Tie Defenders.
I will try and get some photos up, especially as I am going to attempt to repaint the squad markings. One disadvantage of pre-painted models is that everyones will look the same. I want to make mine more personal.
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