Thoughts on the Game

A brief one this time. 

Clean Play document - John had this idea that if you set community standards so that everyone always played by the letter of the rules with the strictest interpretation and no forgiveness of errors then people would not assume other people were jerks for playing like that (as happened at the WTC in some games). This is among the dumbest sentiments I have ever heard expressed out loud (particularly if you include that he doesn't want it at most tournaments but still wants it to become a community standard that everyone is used to). Thankfully there were more than a few people who argued that maybe you should just talk to your opponent so you are both on the same page with that stuff. I hope this doesn't get made. 

Legion and the evolving meta - I feel like the meta is evolving away from Saeryn at the moment. Actually I feel like it's been happening for years but she was so strong it has taken until now for me to start thinking that its time to take her out of my tournament roster. Years ago I felt like I could drop her in almost any match up and now she seems to be standing on rapidly shrinking grounds. The new Skorne bugs are going to put that match up out of her reach and warders have made trolls a difficult proposition for her. I have been already moving in the direction of Vayl1 and Thagrosh1 as a replacement but the WTC guys have been talking about Thagrosh2 and he is another contender for that spot. I also think it might be time to have another look at Kallus.

8 wound infantry - are currently big in the meta and the sacral vault I think is going to improve them again when it comes out. I think as a player you need to be ahead of the curve, find ways of killing multi wound infantry in a way that puts you ahead. Press Gang are great for this because they are so cheap. MOM-Miami were talking about this and I think they missed the main points. You get 20 for 12 points which is 6-8 multiwound guys, they have tough and fearless, Hawk is hard to snipe out because she has sucker. It's almost impossible to trade favourably with multi wound infantry against them. Other things I made a change to my Harbinger list and now I have a unit of Hammer dwarves with attendant priest precisely for these kinds of lists, they replaced the battle engine and mechanic as with the reduction of single wound infantry the battle engine is losing stock. However I don't predict this to be a sustained trend. One of the reasons Fist of Halaak is so popular is because Skorne had problem match ups it helped with, the bugs change that equation. Warders are really good but they compete with runes of war for list space and are solved by a lot of the same lists. Morv2 lists are moving away from my favoured style of multi wound spam, I know I was thinking about trading out a multi wound unit for blood trackers and it is a change a lot of people have made. 

Exigence - I think there are only two dead releases in the book, the legion beast pack and the circle character heavy. The skorne beast pack still aren't great but there are interesting things you can do with them thanks to snacking and their animus and Skorne beast support. Skorne and Circle picked up game changing models in the circle lessers and the Skorne bug heavies. Trolls and Legion I think got more of the same but it was really good. I'm currently the most excited for Jaga Jaga. 

Spell Draft - I really like this format. I like the drafting process and the way you play your list changes so much with the spells you get. If there is a downside it's that it is really easy to forget a key spell your opponent has and get assassinated. I might even suggest building a list for that purpose. 

Conceding Pt 2

I wrote a piece on it last week so it's worth updating it with the Muse response.

http://museonminis.com/forums/index.php?topic=4349.0

To sum up - Team Muse now has a new policy whereby they ask everyone of their members to play each game to the best of their ability.

This is a very good response.

Good points

1. No one is policing games
2. It only affects members of the muse team
3. They are asked only to do their best
4. They are hoping to change values in the community through a community driven effort rather than a top down rules change

Bad Points

It gives "scooping" recognition as an issue when I'm not sure that it is one.

What about me? 
I'm going to keep playing the way I have. In practice the difference between letting people you like correct errors they have made and letting people you like beat you is not that big but I think it is one accepted by the community. I think a lot has to do with the way we players who live by that policy tend to apply it to everyone who doesn't shit us. I think that the difference might be that you are still playing to 100% which might be a fair thing to ask players to do. As a TO it is actually all I want, I would not want to ask people to avoid giving take backs or anything of that nature and I would be happy to see that the few jerks who occasionally come to tournaments get worse treatment than the regular friendly people.

My thinking on this issue still isn't 100% clear so I may come back to it when I have developed a proper philosophy on it.

Douchebags in the Hobby

OK this is something that has been rattling around in my head for a while now and was brought to the fore by the horrible responses in this thread.

http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?212651-Request-Gender-neutral-Rules-Please

So first off it should go without saying but there are 3 people in this thread who I think behaved in a matter acceptable for human beings; the OP, Stepfan and PPS_Simon.

I really wanted to give Nick from the Texas Renegades (the only name I recognised on the thread) a pass but he's the first person to claim that the OP is accusing PP of sexism and misogyny. That's not OK.

This is quite possibly the best request type post that I have ever seen on the forums and the responses among the worst. I have seen a thread that was nothing but the original poster complaining about how OP Venethrax was and demanding PP nerf him immediately or he would leave the hobby and the responses to that thread were mostly advice on how to win that match up. No one belittling the OP despite the fact that he was clearly an idiot.

So this is happening all over the place, women are trying to exist without harassment and dismissal. That's not what this thread started as but the thread shows what is happening to women on the internet and if I'm honest offline too.

The question is how is this going to affect PP, can we get rid of the dickheads or will PP become infested with them? I think sadly that as things stand it might be the second one. It seems to me that the signals PP is sending out are less that this is a safe space for women and more that this is a safe space for misogynist arseholes.

I think the biggest thing is sexualised female models. In particular it's the convention exclusive sculpts. The Bombshell Bombardier, the blighted bather, the druid gone wilder, the steelsoul keg protector. Every single convention exclusive is female and sexualised. Even the friggin robot.  It sends a message about who the game is for and about who the game isn't for.

The PP range also has a very large amount of sexualised female sculpts. There is a lot of female clevage on display, there is a lot of boob plate, there are a lot of female sculpts with high heels for some reason.

her heels give additional traction on the ice

Fluff wise there were a lot of sexist tropes in the early story line of the game but  PP has gotten better at that (at least with what I have noticed). 

I think the telling thing will be the community. There are some loud feminist voices in the community, Simon at PP is one and I applaud him for it. There is also Chad at muse on minis and the Irish Warmachine guys in particular Anto and Stu. However there are still a lot of misogynistic slurs that are used in the community as names for models and which are bandied around pretty freely. I already called out one guy on a podcast lets go all in, the Chain Attack guys use a lot of unacceptable gendered language, and Emmanuel Class from RFP thought that this was an acceptable way to advertise shirts for the WTC fun raiser.

These things are not OK, these things are fomenting the boys club, anti women attitude in the community. At the moment I feel like the hate directed at women in the community is overpowering the good things. 

I hope that the community is less shithead than I think it is, I hope that we get past this and the warmachine community becomes a safe space for women. 

Sorry I'm so down at the moment but this is really depressing to me. I don't want to leave warmachine but I don't want to stay in a community filled with this kind of stuff.

JagaJaga

This is just a quick one. I'm still working my head around the exigence releases but I do want to talk about Jaga Jaga and the spectral vault.

JJ is on paper an excellent cryx drop except for the existence of the blood hag. The spectral vaults completely fix that with eyeless sight and magical attacks, boostable with rapid fire. They are also immune to single wound infantry. 

My starting position is to take 2 in a JJ list. This pushes me towards the theme force as tier 1 drops their cost. Tier 2 however requires 3 undead models/units. The first one is easy, take a unit of Shamblers, however the second and third undead models currently have to be Boneswarms and they are just bad (sorry Boneswarms). The only other thing required for tier 4 would be a witch doc croc, I actually don't want a witch doc croc in this list, the Sacral Vaults need living units as does the shambler unit you need for tier2. That said the theme force is so unrestrictive that the list I made is tier1 anyway and gives me two more points.

Jaga-Jaga, the Death Charmer - WB: +5
- Bull Snapper - PC: 3
- Blackhide Wrastler - PC: 9
- Bull Snapper - PC: 3

Sacral Vault - PC: 9
Sacral Vault - PC: 9

Gatorman Posse - Leader & 4 Grunts: 9
Gatorman Bokor & Bog Trog Swamp Shamblers - Bokor & 9 Shamblers: 6
Gatorman Posse - Leader & 4 Grunts: 9

Annoyingly the theme force bonuses are not working.

Anyway if anyone remembers I did spend a lot of time earlier in the year trying to work out a pair for Rask that was not Maelok. I think now I have it though I really wish I had a good gator ranged unit, not like Brigands, a good one. 

On Conceding

A couple weeks ago Keith Christiansen played Tom Guan in the semi final of a warmachine weekend qualifier. Tom had already qualified but Keith had not only not qualified but had missed out on a ticket to the now sold out event. So he could not play in the last chance qualifier or any of the other events. Tom decided to concede and Keith ended up winning the final. This led to a rather toxic discussion on the Muse boards and I want a place where I can organise my thoughts on the issue because it is kind of complicated.

So there are two main ideas that are guiding my thoughts on this matter. 1. If I don't want to play a game I shouldn't have to play a game, whether that's because I have a pounding headache or because I don't want to dream crush a friend, if I don't want to play I shouldn't have to and even more importantly I don't want people looking over my shoulder telling me that I'm not playing my hardest. 2. Conceding is not something that should be encouraged because it's not a good look for other players in the comp especially if it is done to advantage another player. We should be trying to discourage it.

I'm going to veer off into a related topic as I have never really made an effort to qualify for the super series (Australia's Warmachine Weekend), I just play in as many events as I can. I do however have a history of helping out some players during games. So for example I once played a tournament game against a new player I liked. I had just met him but we were having an enjoyable chat about the game prior to the match. I was winning and he decided to go for the assassination. Had a shot with his Banshee and missed, then moved Ossyan into the wrong position to try and shoot as well. He didn't have LOS because of a forest but there was another knocked down model he could have shot through had he walked a couple inches the other direction. I told him about that and he moved Ossyan to the new position, hit and killed Styker (in fairness it was a Mage Hunter Assassin that killed Stryker but he would have missed without the DEF debuff). I was 100% happy with the outcome, it was a fun game and I think I taught a new player something. Here is the thing - I won't do that for everyone. If you shit me, I'm not giving you anything, in fact I'm going to be very tight on the rules. Or if I just don't know you, I'm less likely to help you out, particularly in a tournament game.

So I do arbitrarily advantage players I like and lets face it if I was in the same situation as Tom Guan I would not have wanted to win that match, I probably would have done a similar thing. Is that bad? Am I wrong? I don't know. As far as how I would handle it as a TO, I don't want to see it but I also don't want to interfere in games and I don't want to tell people how to play. I said on the muse thread that I would not penalise anyone for conceding but that I would throw one of my shoes at them. I stand by this.