[Weekly Top X] We Waste Good Raiding Time

Hi, kids! Your Uncle Von's two week holiday is nearly up, and the objective of getting his Blood Elf Monk back into a position where she can go for whole hours without dying has pretty much been met. It's been a long hard slog and I absolutely haven't had cause to slack off and run the Firelands with my new super laid back friendly guild's absolutely serious and professional raid team. Nuh uh.

The most professional.

I've also been playing a lot of Magic this week, since my boardgame crazed housemates have given it a try and found it largely to their liking. This is quite a good thing as it means my cards get used more than maybe twice a year, and also that my deckbuilding skills get a fillip - they want to play colour combinations like red/green which I don't entirely (read remotely) grasp as a player, which means I'm having to think about things in slightly more detail than just "put everything with Extort, everything that needs black and white mana to cast, and everything with 'Orzhov' in its name together and see what happens".

Some Dark Ages Vampire has been played - the second act is rapidly coming to a close, as our intrepid and useless band of bloodsucking vagabonds have secured access to the lair of the Witch of Pharos, an ancient and powerful Assamite who they believe to be sheltering the character they're blood-hunting. Thanks to some well-placed divinatory visions, and the healthy paranoia of players who've been subjected to my convoluted plotting for over two years now, they're no longer entirely convinced they're doing the right thing, or even that they're fighting the right enemy, but given the sheer power of what they're up against, they don' have much to lose by just walking in and asking "so what the hell is going on here?"

Oh, and I've had time to read some blogs as well. Gotta love the Easter holidays.

I have no idea what Warzone is, nor why it needs a Kickstarter, but Johan Mars seems quite excited about it and the models he's previewing look a bit (a lot) like mutant Brian Nelson Orks, which is relevant to at least some of my interests and potentially yours as well.

Also relevant to my interests is this saucy desktop wallpaper, sourced by the chaps at Miscellaneous Miniatures. Behold the cyclopean majesty of the tomb! The Chaos Space Marine on the right looks rather impressed, but his mates are more on guard, and well they might be. If I were still in a position to deploy Chaos Allies, and I arc back and forth between "do it" and "don't do it" on a daily basis at the moment, this would be the start of the justificatory narrative...

Oddleg has been Enterprising about Dreadball strategies this week; I haven't had the chance to play any Dreadball as yet, but I do like these play-by-play breakdowns of winning tactics for Blood Bowl, and it's nice to see the new game of genre-fiction football being given the same treatment. Oddleg's also standing up for a team that's been criticised, bucking the trends in the community, and generally demonstrating that people are Wrong On The Internet, which is always something I like to see in a gamer.

J.D. Brink has turned his Chaos Theories toward fanfiction this week. I've always had a soft spot for the Space Wolves, as loyalists go - they're far more human, far more flawed, and far more interesting than either their Space Marine status or Space Viking aesthetic has any right to be. This one's quite well written, exploits the quirks of Marine biology for some nice turns of phrase (I particularly like 'His twin hearts were torn in different directions') and best of all it's part of a planned arc so it should actually have some sort of structure and closure to it. Goodfic!

Creepy Corridor has some medieval pikemen to show us and I quite like them. Historicals are always a bit strange to me - I understand the appeal but it's pretty definitively not my bag, I like my outrageous fantasy adventures a little bit too much.

Here's something a bit controversial for you - some well-chosen words from Gothmog's Sepulchre of Heroes, concerning the use of Forge World miniatures in mainstream gaming, the ways in which such an experience might be justified and managed, and the potentially obsolete nature of many objections. As usual, I'm not saying I agree, but it's food for thought if you're fortunate enough to own Forge World stuff. If you are fortunate enough to own Forge World stuff, donations of Mark III Space Marine kits are always welcome and should be dispatched to -

What? What do you mean, "no begging"? Lauby, you're no fun at all.

OK, fine. Over at A Gentleman's Ones, Brian is doing something a little bit unorthodox. He's contemplating not only a narrative event, in which balance is thrown to the winds in favour of telling a good story, but doing it with the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Yeah, you heard. That thing that only Hark and I still seem to like. And he's doing it properly, none of this pretending it's about points matches and pickup gameplay.

I gather that some Tau have been released recently. From the gloating of my long-time compadre Ben, I have gathered firstly that the Riptide is a thing of beauty, secondly that the Tau special characters are mostly actually special in some way, doing special things and enabling special options, and thirdly that it's all about the Skyfire down the Tau way. NockerGeek has some more thoughts on the Codex, which he'd like to share with you, and which are significantly more useful than any of that noise.

Adam B of The Dice Abide has got his scalpel out this week and done an extensive job of work on a rather dated model. His Abaddon actually looks like it could do some Despoiling. Check it out.

OK, I'm done. I also have at most three more days (two really, if I want to be at all ready for my professional responsibilities on Monday when I go back to work) to get this pointy-eared tart raid-ready. The Isle of Thunder beckons, and I must answer. Toodle-pip!