Imperial Vox Cast

First off, if you are one of the few that has actually read these, I am sorry for the delay in reposting.  Haven’t felt inspired to write an entry in here and have started back at school.  Well, thanks for those of you who read and who are interested in my musings.

Now, if you listen to the Podcast, and if your reading this I am assuming you do, you should know that Tor, Dawson, Silas and I are all preparing to go to the Broadside Bash here in two weeks.  For this I have started to stress.  I have limited tournament experience, I know I am a decent to good player and I have a good list in my eyes.  Due to this limited experience I start to question myself and my abilities to compete.  Though to tell you the truth, I always have butterflies and doubts before any match, even against people that I routinely beat or for games that don’t matter much.  It is something about my competitive nature tied in with my low self esteem (I will say it now, it has been a problem I have had for a long time).  This causes me to always question my ability to win.  Now, I often calm down and my nerves settle down around turn 3 when I can see how the game may unfold.  I am not sure what to do about all this.  Perhaps its even a good thing, giving me that competitive edge.  Keeping me aware of all that is going on.  I have been playing games against some good lists and viewing the scenarios.  I am going over rules and reviewing several Codex.  I am hoping that when the time comes around I will be ready and shall be able to represent myself and the podcast with a decent performance.  

Beyond the table top, I am working on finishing up my guard’s painting.  Just last night I decided to lay out all my units in formation to see what I have and what I needed to paint.  I am down to 3 models and finishing up a tank.  Well, I suppose there are a few other things I would want to go back and work on, but for the sake of the tournament, I am almost done with everything (pics to be posted shortly on the forums, though I am no where near the skill many of you are).  I am excited to see my 82nd ITF on the table top, ready to face the enemies of the Imperium and those the Inquisition has suspicions against.  

Look for my next entry probably during or right after this tournament. 

Happy New Year everyone!  Thats what we say, we wish for a year better than the last, and lets face it, 2010 better be a better year.  With the economic climate 2009 has been pretty harsh on a lot of people.  I was lucky so far to keep my position and and just now seeing the light at the end of a long tunnel as far as my education goes.  Some losses in the family made it a tough year along with some people close to me unexpectedly passing on (Brian I think of you often and hope you are in a happier place, we miss you!).  Finally, as I write this my wife is sick in bed, well the blow up her brother is lending us, and I am gonna sleep on the couch again– can’t wait to get home!

Now, I can’t fully knock ’09.  This new podcast started up in may of ’09 and I think they have potential to be something worth while.  It has attracted a lot of great listeners and have made some new friends across the globe.  I really have to say that the people on here have become almost a second family and having not been broadcasting in several weeks makes me feel as if I am missing something.  

As for ’010, I am truly looking forward to it.  Making new friends in the industry and looking forward to some cooperative works with others in the podcasting world.  Hopefully we will see some new Sponsors that can help us grow and get to those tournaments that you have all asked us to get to.  Our one year will be coming up in may, perhaps something special for that?  We will see.  Our first Real contest coming to a close and a slew of articles to be added to the website.  

Non-podcast related, I will hopefully be graduating this spring from my terribly long educational journey and shall be searching for another job (anyone need someone with a bachelor’s in history?).  I will be traveling a bit in celebration of that– Europe here I come!  Who knows… maybe adding to the family (my vote is for a dog, my wife is voting for a little human, we will see who wins).  Tor got engaged on Christmas, so I will get to see him get married (very excited for you bro)!  

So, I am raising my glass of Crown Royal to all of you out there, truly wishing you a Happy New Year and look forward to continuing our journey together.  I look forward to the future with a mixture of excitement and fear, as I always do with the unknown.  I hope this year shall be prosperous for everyone!  Cheers!

Thanks to my university having the day off and my wife having to work, I was able to show up to the local game store today and get a couple games in.  It had been a while since I was able to go to the game store and play against someone other than Dawson.  The main thing was, I got to meet some new people and had a good time.  Though there are a lot of people there I wouldn’t want to hang out with, I met a few that would be good to get games with.  Those I would hang out with were  mostly Military.  Its good to see military playing 40k and its good to meet new people to play against.  It gets old real quick playing against the same people every time.  

So, nothing totally enlightening or special, just wanted to say, go out and play with new people from time to time.  I am going to try and work it in a bit more in the future.  I think it helps you build your strategies.  If you play with the same person over and over, it becomes nearly second nature to predict their moves.  By playing against new people, you are forced to think through the multitude of possible ways a game can go.  

So, the podcast and the website has been taking up a lot of my time recently.  I have been making some new contacts and have been expanding our social networks.  Since I have never created anything like this I am feeling this out.  All in all I think things are going well.  Of course there have been some hiccups along the way and I really appreciate the support from our listeners and my fellow hosts.  What I really wanted to say is that I am really excited about our future, especially with the new contacts we have established. 

First and foremost I would like to mention our friends over at Dice Like Thunder.  Their support has helped us expand rapidly in the last few months.  Through our promo on their show and Tor’s Buttal/Rebuttal appearance we have drawn many new listeners.  Thank you Richard for taking a notice and helping us out.  We look forward to possible future collaborations and wish you guys continued success in this community that we both look to support.  

Next, I would like to say thank you to Phil from the War Banner and the Broken Forge.  Through his support, we have been able to broker a deal to give our listeners a huge discount on GW products.  Please check out the Broken Forge and enter the promo code VOX to receive an additional discount on GW products.  The discount listed on the banner is in addition to his already discounted prices, so this is the best price I have seen online.  Add that to his offer for free shipping on orders over $100 and you have an amazingly generous offer to gamers.  I would also like to say Thank you to Phil for his time, we have been sending messages back and forth and have talked for a spell about podcasting in general and how to further my efforts here.  His advice helped immensely.

Finally I would like to say I am excited by yet another relationship forming.  The Black Library has agreed to offer some books as prize support and some for the show to review.   We are huge fans of the fluff and are looking forward to being able to discuss some of their books on the show as well as being able to offer some books to you, our loyal listeners. 

We are excited to see what other relationships will evolve from here.  It has been great to be able to do so much as it is and we are looking forward to what the future has to come.  Again, none of this would be possible without you, our loyal listeners.  Thank you all for your support!  

So, for my standard gaming night this week, I took a detour from the norm.  For a change I strayed from 40k (don’t worry it was only a distraction).  I did this mainly because I wanted to go hang out with a friend that I haven’t taken time for in a while. He isn’t a Warhammer 40k player, so we decided to pull out our old Magic Cards.  

At first I felt a bit guilty, kinda like cheating on a girl.  On my normal night to play 40k, here I was playing something else.  After playing the first few hands, it was becoming more natural.  No, I am not switching over… I am simply not ruling out a night of MTG.  

It was a fun night with old friends.  Not just my friend who I hadn’t hung out with in a long time, but my old friend MTG, my first true experience with an addictive competitive game where you could build your own forces and put them into play.  I think I may venture to get my children into MTG when they are in Middle School and use that as an excuse to collect them a bit.  I also think it is a good branch into the world of gaming.  It is easy for a kid to carry a deck of cards with him and play with his friends.  It isn’t as easy for them to collect and paint a 40k army.  Thinking back, I remember those days as a kid, getting my first fix to an addictive society of gaming.  MTG was a good gateway drug for me.  

I guess the main thing is to not forget about those old hobbies.  Every now and then it can be good to blow the dust off of them and take them up for a night or two.  Hell, you spent all that money on it in the past, might as well enjoy it still.  Just don’t forget the true god of gaming, that 40k Army that takes up all your time and spare money.

Often my sister has called me “King of the Nerds”.  I earned this title through my ability to interact easily with both the gaming community and those in the general public.  I have achieved this through various means that I don’t know need be addressed.  The main means I did this is simple, I did NOT talk about my hobbies with those that I didn’t think would be into what I did.  This has continued to be a tactic I have used, not talking to those I work with about 40k or neglecting to pull out a codex at the family camp out (my immediate family knowing what I do, but my extended family does not, and definitely not to the extent that I have gone).  My wife recently called me out on this, “Why do you hide what you do?” 

Such a simple question, but the answer wasn’t easily obtained in my brain.  I have been doing this for so long that I don’t even notice my efforts to hide what I do from others.  The reason, or the main one I can think of is tied to that childhood fear of rejection and ridicule.   Being an overweight child all my life around these southern California tanned, fit, surfer kids has never been easy.  Add in my childhood attraction to comic books and video games and I was a prime target for the sporty, rich jocks that ran around the school thinking they were better than…well everyone else.  As any creature, those survival instincts kicked in eventually and, especially after moving onto a high school where only four people there knew me before, I reinvented myself in as “King of the Nerds”.  

I didn’t discuss gaming or comics with people.  I learned about popular culture and watched sports, hell I took up playing sports for a while.  I went to parties and concerts.  I must admit that this was restrictive for my growth as a gamer, but it allowed me to embed myself into the general public.  I am not saying I fully regret this, this time of my life helped me meet a great woman that I would eventually go on to marry and I have met some of my best friends during this time.  Luckily for me that one of those friends I met during this period of my life happened to play this obscure game call…Warhammer 40k!  Sometimes though, I look back and wonder, had I been more open with my hobbies, could I have fit in with others and still been able to enjoy my Nerd lifestyle?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Unfortunately there is no way to know.  I do think I missed out on some good gaming time and meeting others who enjoyed hobbies similar to mine. 

This mentality has followed me beyond, as I mentioned above.  I am not saying that I will go to work tonight and tell people that I host a podcast about this game called Warhammer 40,000 which involved miniatures that I paint and set on a table full of terrain that, I build and paint.  However, I did find myself telling a friend here at school about what I did when he saw me working my forums.  I am looking to ease myself out of the “closet” (go ahead Dawson, I will take the obvious jokes) and be able to tell people about what I do if it were to come up in a conversation.  

This transition I think is becoming far easier in todays society.  Lets face it, it seems to be far more popular to be a “Nerd”.  Video games are things that celebrities talk about, hell there is even a video game award show.  Comics have hit mainstream through blockbuster films and hero orientated TV shows.  Among these newly risen pop culture elements are a series of games by THQ.  The Dawn of War series, like them or not, has done a lot to advance our hobby into the world of pop culture and main stream.  After seeing my screen saver, a classmate asked me if I played Dawn of War.  Something obscure like Warhammer 40k a few years ago would never be recognized.  

On the horizon are several other things to bring our hobby up.  There is the Fabled and long off 40k MMO, perhaps it will emerge when people are finally over WoW, and the eventual Ultramarines Movie.  Two more weapons in the Arsenal of the “nerds” that play this game.  There may be a day when we have nothing to fear from those that mock and ridicule us.  I think it will help anyway.  As an adult, I realize that there is far less to fear, most grown adults don’t bully each other, but for those teens that are getting into this hobby, I hope that this slow rise of 40k into the pop culture realm will aid those children and keep them from needing to hide their hobby and not have to create an alter ego.

After a recent talk with Dawson, my mind was sent wondering about what exactly draws us to a new army.  After DJ got a chance to read the Space Wolf Codex, he tells me that he believes that he has “found what he was looking for” and feels that he no longer wants Orks.  Space Wolves will most likely be his new army and that will fulfill his current unease about any of his given armies.  So, what is it that draws us towards an new army?

The first I will talk about is what Dawson has been going through, that desire for something that your army just doesn’t seem to be able to handle.  For Dawson’s example, he wants a heavy hitting, preferably close combat orientated army.  With this he has always been drawn to the more elite forces.  His Deathwing fit one of these, but in his oppinion wasn’t overly good at the Assault criteria.  Yes, these forces would dominate many in assault, but there were plenty of other units that were cheaper that could do similar levels of damage and thus be able to take out his small elite army.  When he realized that his army couldn’t quite fulfill his desires, he started looking for something else.  He bought Necrons, perhaps this shooty army would fulfill this.  When finding this army, Dawson feels liek he found his match (we will see once he has played a few rounds with them).  

Similar is that opposite effect.  I started out with Imperial Guard, a highly shooty army.   After playing with them for a while, I decided I wanted to go for something totally different.  I wanted and assaulty army.  This brought me to my Chaos Army.  My Yin and Yang if you will.  I have two armies that cover complete opposite ends of the spectrum and this, along with lack of funds, has kept me satisfied with the forces that I currently command.  I think many gamers fall into this area.  

 Finally, I will attribute this to that shiny, magpie mentality. Many people rush out to grab the new and “most powerful” army.  They see all the shiny models and the new abilities offered and “have to have it”.  Obviously everyone is drawn on some level to the new army that is out.  Most of us would admit some interest in the Ork Codex when it came out and, I must say, the Space Wolves look good (thought rather similar to Chaos and will not be able to snare me, at least not yet).  

So, this isn’t really a problem.  Well, not for GW and all in all, not for the hobby.  The more models that are sold, the better off the company is doing and thus, the more they will be able to spend on the game in general.  For us gamers, I would say it is dangerous if you allow yourself to crave every army.  I hear stories of people who play five or more armies.  If they are able to balance this, more power to them.  In my opinion, if you spread yourself out too thin with armies, you will be unable to master any one force.  If your simply collecting 40k models for the sake of having them and play only for fun with friends, there is obviously nothing wrong with this.  If you are trying to be a competitive gamer, I can see a potential problem.  It is my belief that one must play many, many games before become proficient with an army, let alone master it.  If you have too many armies, you are neglecting the practice and the games that you need to do in order to truly know your army.  As Silas Said in our Broadcast X, he has been playing his Dark Eldar for 5+ months and still feels that he is far from mastering it and he plays multiple games a week.  

I urge players out there to try and stick with an army or two.  I can understand not wanting to stick with only one as sometimes this can cause one to succumb to boredom of the repetition, but don’t let yourself get carried away.  When you get a new army, spend several months of playing that army exclusively.  Allow yourself to truly know your army in and out.  Choose a build and play that build with very little changes to that build for months until you have determined the strengths, weakness, and ticks that your build and army as a whole can perform.  Allow yourself to become an expert, at least in the build of your army you are fielding.

So, in Broadcast V, we talk about the “tournament” Gamer vs the “beer and Pretzel” Gamer.  In it, we talk about how some players look for every loophole (we call them advantages) possible to use against their opponent and others look for a list that fits their belief of what the army should be fielded as, something fun for both players to play.  My argument has always been that my opponent is just as capable to create a hard list and in my mind they should do so.  

I have started to question this stance after playing one of Tor’s coworkers who is new to the game and soundly destroyed his army.  I am so used to creating hard and powerful lists that it is hard for me to create a weaker list.  I realize now that I should have “gone easy” on a noob like him, but I wasn’t able to do so.  So ingrained into me is the need to create the most powerful list I can that I find myself refining my lists like a sceince.  With this revelation, I suppose I must Admit that I am a Powergamer!  

Now my lists are fluffy, I don’t take chaos troops from multiple gods or anything like that.  I stick to the theme of my army.  However, one can build a hard fluffy list that other players will groan at when they see me set it upon the table top.  It is hard for me to change my ways and as I write this, I truly don’t know what I should do to change this tendancy within me.  I suppose I have just stepped upon the path to change.  ”Knowing is half the Battle!” GI Joe told me when I was a kid.  So half the battle is done.  I have admitted it to myself.  The rest will be more difficult and I see as a journey that I only now set out upon.  How shall I fix my problem?  Is there a Powergamer Rehab?  If you know of a specialist, let me know!

In the past year or so, I have come to truly enoy magnetizing my armies.  Recently, after finishing building another leman russ, I started to think about just how much I enjoy their use.  I was able to magnetize it so that I could swap between a demolisher cannon and a battle cannon.  I have also magnetized the Valkrie’s heavy bolters, multilaser, and rocket pods.  These magnets will alow for quick and easy changing of the loadouts to allow for one model to be changed depending on the list build your using.  So, I say find yourself a good magnet that you can use, one that is strong enough and small enough and start drilling into those models, making way for your versatile new models.

Alright, so not exactly 40k, but he makes a good and interesting point.  I found this clip, and many more by David Mitchell on ChannelFlip.com (free plug).  One often sees games where one player is dominating the other and, as they should, continues to decimate their friend needlessly.  Why? Because it is fun and often funny too.  Well, perhaps not funny for the poor soul who is getting trounced.  As he points out, the further away from the event, the more funny it can be.  So, it might not be so funny to a friend minutes you table him, but wait a week or two and you may all be laughing about it!