More Rome II ramblings

Thoughts on Rome II after being Top50, now in Top100 because I actually go to work.

• All archer units are pretty weak in a game where the heaviest of infantry have strong armor, or formations that increases armor.  Not only that, but the units move fast and the range of most missile troops are 125.
• Only really heavy missile based armies have much effect, but a lot of the MP maps have random weather conditions and terrain that reduces their effectiveness (such as fog, rain, heavy brush, dense trees).
• The same applies here for artillery units:  Half of the maps do not favor the use of artillery so they can be a huge points sink.  All you have to do is look at the map, see what you random into, what kind of terrain you'll be fighting in, and adjust accordingly.
• Elite infantry are superior to other infantry:  They have superior stats, strong abilities, resilient to missile troops, are not unit capped, and have the same amount of bodies as a regular unit.  There's no reason to take any other unit.  Just form a line with Royal Spartans, Oathsworn and Praetorian Guard.
• Foot Companion are kind of ridiculous; they hands down beat every unit in the game from the front.  What's their counter?  Flank and rear charges once the pikes themselves have been engaged.  What counters that?  Just a little bit of micro and a IQ over 45.
• Lancer units are pretty trash overall.  Their pitiful melee defense, relatively low armor overall, and their overall impact on the battlefield is not worth their cost.  They will charge into other units, do damage sure, but other units with above average melee defense and armor will just swing back and make up for the damage done.  Once you're in combat, you also can't pull out; you'll lose half of your guys just trying to run out of combat.
• Also, all cavalry run at the same speed from what I've noticed.  The pricing of the Roman units are a joke.  Why would you ever take Praetorians over Praetorian Guard?  Or Evocati Cohort vs. Armored Legionaries?
• So what do we have here?  A game of rock paper scissors where none of it really matters.  If Archers are paper, they sure the hell don't kill the rocks which are all the heavy elite infantry.  If Scissors are the Lancers, then these must be safety scissors because they don't do jack.  And then we have Foot Companions, which might as well be a shotgun assuming you're terrible.

Some of best units in the game so far from what I've noticed:
Foot Companions, Hellenic Royal Guard, Praetorian Guard, Oathsworn, Swordmasters, Royal Spartans, Noble Horse, Aspis Companion Cavalry, Praetorian Cavalry

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Playing Rome II

Royal Spartans!

Summer's been pretty dry for in terms of minis, but I have been playing a lot of computer games.  Right now, I'm playing Total War: Rome 2 and I'm top50 on the leaderboards.  The game's pretty buggy right now and there's some issues to be addressed, but I just wanted to drop a line and let you guys know what I'm up to.

As I play more, I'll blog more and more about it.

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Wargame: AirLand Battle

AirLand nerding!

Been playing a lot of this lately.  A LOT.
Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've been out of a minis funk because this game is so damn awesome.

Here's what I wrote about it on my Steam Review:
One of the best top-down war simulation games I've ever played. For RTS players, there is minimal micro and macro. The depth of this game lies in how well you can negotiate battle tactics and execute the overall strategy on any given map. There is a much larger emphasis on unit choices, deployment, execution of battle tactics and smart use of attrition-based warfare. The game takes place during the height of the Cold War and so all the tactics are based on actual modern warfare. Infantry units dominate city battles, tanks rip apart APCs and aircraft play a dominant role on the battlefield. With a ton of historically-accurate units to choose from, this game is a must-have, must-play for any modern war enthusiast. I strongly recommend it.

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What kind of player are you?

Ready yourself, shit's about to get deep.

There's 4 camps for me in terms of table-top games:

• The story-driven casual player who likes to bring one of each unit, regardless of their effectiveness and adhere to cinematics and fluff.
• The competitive player who min-maxes his list, picks only the most points effective and stellar units for the purpose of winning games.
• The WAAC player is a competitive player but will do anything to win.  This includes cheating, calling the judge for random shit, being a horrible sportsman, running the clock, and is generally the type that gives competitive players a bad name.
• And then there's me.  I have no idea what happened over the years, but I think I'm somewhere between casual and competitive now.  Probably around ~5 years ago, I was definitely the competitive player:  Taking only the best choices without looking at anything else that's ineffective.  If Dark Eldar came out then, I would of probably went pure Venomspam.

However, something happened to my personality between then and now and I think it's changed for the better.  Shhh.. I'll tell you a secret:  I started off this hobby being very casual, only playing with what I like, loving the fluff, never fielding an army if it's not painted, and enjoying every facet of the hobby.  Sometime around the time where I'm constantly getting my teeth kicked in by better players using min-maxed armies like Nidzilla and Eldar, I changed.  If I started at year 1, my second year was devoted to becoming a better player.

Given my personality, this seems fitting because I'm by nature a min-maxing Tuner Spike.  From year 2 to year 7, I became a very good player.  During that time, I attended and won a lot of tournaments, placed well in many GTs and become to go-to person at local shops for strategy and tactics.  I also taught GW Academy during some of these years and I'm actually quite proud having introduced, taught and mentored many fine tournament players today.  I still get emails from them from time to time to talk about the hobby and how things have changed since I moved to the West Coast.

At year 8, something changed.  I refused to play the units I thought were lame fluff wise or didn't look good on the table top.  I found myself running themes like Kabal-only and no weird Haemonculi shit.  Hell, I don't own a single Thunderwolf because I think the idea of Space Marines riding giant wolves is a crapmix of Sci-fi and Fantasy.  Even today, I own a single constructed Venom lol.

I look back and see what has happened in the last 5 years and I see the following:  I started working at Blizzard (where a lot of people play casually), I got married, I got a house, and I'm looking to have kids in the near future.  Could this be me maturing as a gamer?  Or am I just getting old?  I find myself focusing more on the design of the units and talking about how things should be a lot more.  Part of this is because I work in the gaming industry, but maybe the other part is that I just don't find cutthroat games fun anymore.  Shit, maybe some day I'll paint again.

What about you guys?  How do you play your hobby?

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