Friday, November 27, 2009

][con Team Tournament

Over the weekend I participated in a Warhammer 40k doubles tournament, Icon, held by the Ringwood Wargaming Club. I was invited to participate by a long time friend of mine who I have been playing Warhammer (and other games) on and off with for close to 13 years. Initially I was hesitant, I’m not the best tactician and I haven’t really been to any tournaments. However based on the assumption that as a team event it would probably be closer to the “Beer and Pretzels” end of wargaming and further from the “Hardcore Cheese Fest” of serious gamers I decided to go. Then came the grueling weeks of trying to make an army that was nicely balanced, effective and painted. But it was all worth the effort as I had a very enjoyable time.

Across the day we played four games, two individually and two as a team. Round one I fought a Space Marine player and so did Tristan. My game went very well mostly thanks to some really good luck on my part and my opponents inability to roll a hit on the scatter die. I took out his scout squad and Land Speeder Squadron taking almost no causalities in return. Tristan wasn’t so lucky losing to his opponent who was a tournament veteran with excellent luck.

My second game was against a Demon Hunters / Imperial Guard player. My stupidity turned what should have been a convincing victory into a draw. On turn five I had Crisis suits within easy range of the second unguarded objective. My opponent at this point had five models left on the table, 4 members of his platoon command squad and a Vindicare assassin. The platoon command was a good distance away and I didn’t want my commander, who had a single wound left, taken out by the Vindicare so I jumped back behind cover. Well the platoon command moved, used their “Move move move” order and ran landing themselves firmly on the objective. As luck would have it the game ended right then. Tristan fought a Space Wolf player and again didn’t fare so well, but with a clever maneuver he did manage to pull out a draw with his last few remaining models.

Our first team game was against a Space Marine and Chaos Daemons team. Our final result was a win but it could have go either way at one point. Thankfully the Chaos Daemons appeared one or two units at a time and we were able to take them out before they could cause too much damage. We could have improved our performance with a better deployment, but dice luck was average for both sides.

The final game of the day was against a Chaos Space Marine and Dark Eldar team. Another convincing victory, with perhaps a small chance of defeat, as we left our advance onto the objective a little too late. My small Firewarrior squad were defiantly the standouts in that round surviving not only a horrific volume of fire from Dark Eldar warriors and a chaos sorcerer but beating a Dark Eldar champion on a jet bike in hand to hand combat.

Overall we came 13th out of 42 teams which in my opinion was an excellent result. The two stand out things in my army were firstly my marker lights, they really made a big difference when used well. Also my Broadsides performed very well with most of my opponents underestimating the fire power they provided not viewing them with the same threat level as they would a tank.

There were a few detractors from the event, the hall was too small and had poor ventilation. They ran horribly behind time which was annoying, especially as they started 45 minutes late. On a positive note I thought it was an excellent idea to distribute the prizes across the whole field, even if we didn't get anything. Following this I will defiantly attend Icon again next year and will also try to get into some other tournaments in the interim.

Images were taken by myslef on the day and feature my own army and the amazing paint work Tristan completed on his Imperial Fist Captain.

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Friday, August 21, 2009

BlizzCon

BlizzCon is nearly here and i''m not going.

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Small and Fragile


Dryad - Photo and painting by yours truely

So when I was younger I played lots of miniture, card and other nerd games. For many years these games kinda sat on the side lines. I never got rid of my Imperial Guard army, my Escher gang, Battle Tech deck or Hero Clix. Recently I have had a resurgence of gaming desire. This has come in the form of starting to paint a Wood Elf Warhammer Fantasy Army and participating in a Dungeon's and Dragons game.

My intention is to try and post more pictures as Alassiel and I paint our way through the Wood Elf army and the characters my friends and I are using to play D&D. You can follow along with our D&D game at Ianis World.

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Making Progress (Not Bacon)


This week we made some great progress into Ulduar downing Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Ignis and Kulgan. We also made a couple of attempts at the Iron Council where I discovered I can still get one shot under the right circumstances. Five bosses is a good start and I think the Iron council will fall eventually, especially when I stop letting him stand in runes of DOOM!

A primarily guild group did get this far a few weeks back but I was off in an alternate (and distinctly more nerdy) fantasy world so much of this was new for me. If I may say so myself Alassiel and I made an excellent team taking out the adds on Ignis with the help of some great healing by Farex, Ianthe and Nums. It was also very rewarding to down Ignis after failing last week and several times this week.

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The end of CoS as we know it

It is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I announce to you the disbanding of the Children of Stormwind. With the guild master due to become a father and the guild growing beyond control into something far less organized and close knit than we had planned the leadership group unanimously voted to disband COS and form a new smaller guild, Focus. Saturday night was the curtain call with many members new and old gathering in Stormwind for the final group photo. Some celebrated with Champaign, others spammed trade with “OMG my guild disbanded LF Guild!” But I believe our new guild ‘Focus’ will be a fantastic step forward, the intention is to keep the numbers down and work towards making some progression through raids. We are off to a great start with three Ulduar bosses falling on the Sunday evening! Beyond that I see at least two more as achievable so we should start to see some solid movement.

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Monday, April 6, 2009

Moving foward

Many of you may have noticed my blog has been some what lacking again, additionally I haven’t giving Michelle over at Warcraft Outsiders for a couple of weeks. Firstly if you are an avid reader who checks this blog compulsively every day I apologise for disappointing you. There are a couple of reasons as to why my blog has lessened somewhat recently, mostly this is because I am moving jobs. A couple of weeks back a put in an application with another company and was very happy when it was successful. But aside from the turmoil involved in leaving one company and joining another I have found my enthusiasm for Warcraft somewhat lessened. Sure I have enjoyed logging on to do heroics and raids here and there but overall I am playing a lot less.

On a more positive note I have been thoroughly enjoying showing Ianthe (a friend of mine who just reached 80) through heroics and hopefully soon raids. We also finished off our 200 rate arena matches last night just in time for the cut off on Tuesday.

I think I will probably continue on this lessened play schedule until 3.1 comes out then it will be full steam ahead into Uldar!

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Monday, March 16, 2009

For glory! For honor! For… a Murloc?


In a genius manoeuvre clearly designed to make Blizzard piles of easy money the current arena tournament features a unique, desirable and achievable prize. All players who participate in 200 rated matches in the arena tournament will receive an armoured murloc pet.

Subsequently a large number of players who would never step into arena have paid their US$20 and stepped into the arena tournament realms. Alassiel with her insatiable desire to collect pets is one of these people so joined by Sellia and I, Triptych was reformed.

Although we have certainly lost our fair share of matches we have also won many of them. Typically against teams such as “Nom nom nom Murloc”, “Strip or Win” and “Murloc or bust”

As a team we are defiantly improving and I am confident in saying we suck less! Did I happen to mention I am playing a Death Knight?

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Warriors in 3.1.0 - PvP and Stances


You may have noticed my post a little while back about protection warriors in PvP. Well it appears we (by we I refer to all warriors not just tanks) are due for a buff in the next patch, a buff mostly aimed for PvP so all you Death Knights better watch out.Apparently all our stances will “suck less” with the penalties being reduced and a armour penetration effect added to Battle Stance. Currently of the three warrior stances one (Battle) is essentially a lack of stance with no bonus or penalty and the other two offer a bonus that comes with a penalty. So Berserker Stance gives you additional critical strike rating but increases the amount of damage you take and Defence Stance reduces the amount of damage you take but also reduces the amount you deal. The latest build is set to give Battle Stance an increase in armour penetration and halve the penalty of both Berserker and Defensive Stances.
Although these changes are squarely aimed at PvP where a warrior in Berserker Stance is easy prey with a nice big damage boost against them the changes to Defensive Stance will be fantastic for the tanks out there who will effectively deal an additional 5% damage.

We will also be getting a new ability; Shattering Throw deals damage, reduces armour and removes an invulnerability effect. It will have a 5 minute cool down, cost 25 rage and but will only be usable in battle stance. This will be a big deal for PvP warriors who will be one of only two classes who can offer some beat down to an ice blocked Mage or shielded Paladin. However It’s PvE effects will be somewhat limited as I highly doubt any raid bosses will be susceptible to this.

Last but not least there will be reductions to the cool downs on Last Stand and Intimidating Shout.

As a final note, I can be beaten by Death Knights.

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Saturday, March 7, 2009

You what Malygos?


After many failed attempts at Malygos last week I wasn’t expecting great things when I joined a PUG Tuesday evening for 10 man Eye of Eternity. To say I was pleasantly surprised when we one shotted him would be an understatement. So I can finally say that I have downed all raid cont in Wrath of the Lich King. Unfortunately as I have yet to complete heroic Oculus (I really should get around to that) I do not quite have the meta achievement.

If anyone is interested as to how it was so much easier with the PUG it comes down to two things. Firstly a Death Knight that was pulling the sparks perfectly onto each other and a Mage that topped out at 8.5k DPS which is INSANE!

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Warcraft Outsiders


The kind folks over at Warcraft Outsiders have posted an article I wrote. I will be writing one or two each week with a focus on instances. To begin with I will be covering the basics but I intend to work up to some more advanced details about raiding and end game.

Warcraft Outsiders is a spin off from the Videogame Outsiders podcast. Both are a great listen!

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Monday, February 23, 2009

Black Temple - Super Bowl of not Standing in Things

After a moderately successfully session of wiping repeatedly on Malygos and some premade PVP on Saturday night we decided to set up a Black Temple run for the following evening. Sadly we didn’t have enough guildies on to make up a full raid and ended up PUGing about a third of the raid out of trade chat. The first seven bosses were fun with the fact that nearly half the raid paid no attention to what anyone said, refused to wait for people and need rolled on items we agreed to distribute at the end merely a mild annoyance. However once we hit the Illidan council things got worse! I really shouldn’t be surprised as the stupid things people say and do when they think they are anonymous but I am. The evening was saved for me by the following comment on Wowhead for the Illidan council

“Well My friends its time for all that experence to pay off because Illidari council is the SUPER BOWL OF NOT STANDING IN THINGS!”
Sadly we did not down Illidan as we were unable to get past the second (fire elemental) phase.

But it is all too easy to get caught up on things like how I will never raid or group with anyone from thanks their horrible attitude and miss the fact that we did get to see something that when I started in the Burning Crusade I never thought I would get to see. Perhaps when we are running around in tier 10 equivalent badge gear we will come back and hand it to Illidan. It will be a lot easier now I know what is coming.

Also thankyou very much to Samyell and Smeric. Sam for his very helpful information of what to expect from some of the boss fights and Smeric for handling the majority of the loot rolls. Oh and thanks to Strag for coming into Vent and keeping me sain.

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Their cold dead faces - Death Knights and PVP

There has been mounting complaints that Death Knights are over powered in PVP, I’m sorry but I just don’t see it. Perhaps it is that my PVP experience with death knights is too limited, maybe I have just been lucky and only fought bad players or it could even be that a protection warrior (especially a Dwarf with a racial that counters disease) is a good counter to a Death Knight. Sure they have a lot of interesting and annoying tools but nothing that can’t be overcome. You are welcome to take my post with a grain of salt because I haven’t actually played a Death Knight but just the other day I managed to kill a Shaman, Death Knight duo (Keep in mind this is essentially four kills including a shaman’s Ank and Death Knight’s “come back as a ghoul” thing), sure I didn’t have much health left at the end but I was still the victor.

My comment earlier about protection warriors being a good counter to a Death Knight may in fact not be too far from the truth. I can silence, stun, disarm and sunder them while introducing my shield to their cold dead faces. But until I can craft a PVP protection spec and get into some more battlegrounds and arena I wont know for sure.

Alassiel, Sellia and I are reforming Triptych on the Arena Tournament realm. We have all signed up and will be participating in the 200 matches so Alassiel and Sellia can get their Armoured Murloc pets. Alassiel will heal for us as a restoration druid, Sellia will stay as a frost mage and I will create a Death Knight. It seems like this is will be an interesting chance to try the class without the bother of leveling it. Worst case I realise I can’t do it and swap to a fury warrior or perhaps even a protection warrior.

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Monday, February 16, 2009

World Events - The Good and the Bad

Blizzard have made some great world events and some really bad ones. So I thought I would detail what (based on my opinions as well as those in other blogs and guild discussion) are the good and the bad points of these events.

Good
Achievements/rewards
The introduction of achievements made world events a great deal more satisfying. However this makes obvious the world events that do not have achievements and leaves them slightly hollow. Having some sort of reward to work towards is also good, I am a big fan of the mounts, titles and other fun items that are slowly filling up my bank space.

Special bosses
I love special world event bosses, this was a great introduction and I hope more are added and updated for each year. Something that would be really interesting would be the addition special bosses, similar to Prince Tenris Mirkblood in Karazhan for the introduction of Wrath, every now and again. I’m sure there are a few instances in Northrend that could house an extra boss when required.

Fun daily quests
Daily quests sit hand in glove with a token based reward system. Despite a couple of small bugs I really enjoyed the Brewfest quests, groups of us would complete them together each evening before heading off to Black Rock Depth to lay some Smack Down on the Dark Irons.

Token based rewards
As mentioned below having rewards based on a Random Number Generator(RNG) is not fun! So the introduction of rewards that are purchased with tokens acquired during the event is a great way to go.

Available to all levels
Okay so every part of a world event doesn’t need to be available to all levels but it is good when newer players can still participate. Winterveil is a good example of this, lower characters can still get some of the presents and complete many of the quests.

Bad
Random Number Generator
Tasks or rewards that involve random drops are no fun at all. This is especially the case for short events where your opportunities to acquire said item are limited. A great example is the recent “Love is in the Air” festival. Instead of having each item be randomly included in a gift of adoration why not have different type of NPCs give you different things as a gift. So for example male guards give you Love Rockets and female guards Love Fools, male food vendors give you a Bag of Candies and female give you a Box of Chocolates. As mentioned above, for rewards, a token based system when you receive token for completing tasks is a much better. I’m all for having power items have low drop rates but when there is a limited time frame it just gets frustrating.

Long travel for short task
There is nothing worse than having to travel to a far off zone to complete a task that takes all of 5 seconds. So although I enjoyed traveling around the wo
rld for the “Honor your Elders” achievements having to go all the way to the end of Maraudon for one of the elders as very annoying.

Imposed participation
People shouldn’t have to participate in world events, I believe this was the mistake of the Zombie Invasion (well one of them). There should always be an opt out, especially in major cities where most people just want to do their auctions in peace. If for story purposes a city needs to be involved then limiting the event to only one city for each faction would mean people can escape to other locations if they needs to.

Opportunities for griefing
I play on a PvP server but there is a difference between PvP and griefing. If a world event allows a level 80 to kill a level 10 over and over then that level 10 player is going to be a bit upset.

Overall I think that World Events are slowly improving. It is nice to have a purpose in world events, a reason to complete quests that is storyline or reward based. Hopefully some of the annoying RNG tasks will be removed as events are revisited. It would also be good to see some of the rare items have their drop rates improved or be acquired with tokens. Probably the most important thing will be to have events with special instanced bosses updated to the new level cap of 80.

Images thanks to Wowhead and World of Warcraft Blogger.

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Monday, February 9, 2009

Weapon Enchants for Tanks

In the last patch Blizzard toyed with adding an excellent weapon enchant for tanking. In the end they pulled the plug and no new weapon enchant was introduced. But what does that leave those of us who aren’t Death Knights?* Below I have detailed what is, in my opinion, the top three tanking enchants and a bit of detail as to why. There are other options (when isn’t there really) but based on my research these are you best bet.

Titanium Weapon Chain
My current choice and also the cheapest of the three, this is a blacksmith created weapon enchant which improves your hit rating and reduces weapon disarm time. In terms of threat, hit is a great stat for tanks and although not stunning a reduction in weapon disarm time is handy. I prefer this enchant because it is cheap, easily acquirable and effective. If you min/max your character this probably isn’t the tank enchant for you.

Accuracy
Similar to the weapon chain, Accuracy provides hit rating but it also provides some critical strike rating as well. This enchant is usable by a lot of classes and is probably thought of most as a DPS enchant. However for a tanking warrior the hit and critical strike rating do translate to increased threat. The downside is the cost, this enchant is quite expensive. In fact if you had to buy all the materials and then tip your enchanter this could run at almost 1000 gold. If you can afford this and you aren’t low on mitigation then it is well worth the cost.

Mongoose
Mongoose was the tanking enchant of choice in Burning Crusade. It gives the weapon a chance to provide you with 120 agility and a slightly increased attack speed for 10 seconds. For a level 80 warrior this translates to approximately 1.3% extra dodge (based off these calculations) as well a slightly increased critical strike rating. If your low on mitigation then this may be well worth it as apparently it activates pretty often but the previous two enchants are still superior in terms of stat allocation and thus result.

*Death Knights can place runes on their weapons which function as powerful enchants. For tanking DKS, these runes help to mitigate the face they don’t have a shield (like warriors and paladins) or an extensive health pool (as with druids).
Image from http://www.solware.co.uk/gadgets-toys/radio-controlled-tank.shtml

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Victorian Bush Fires

Image from http://www.abc.net.au


Over the last few days fire has devastated many parts of Victoria, over 100 lives have been lost, nearly a 1000 homes destroyed and the toll rises almost hourly. It is believed that these fires which have displaced thousands and effected almost every Victorian where, for the most part, deliberately lit. We are currently planning a donation drive around my office and I encourage anyone who can to donate to the Australian Red Cross and help out those who have nothing.

EDIT: Sadly the toll is expected to reach 200 today.

A special shout out goes to our family friends who lived just out side of Marysville. I spent a lot of time on their property growing up and have many fond memories of times spent in the bush around their house. Last I heard they had made it out alive with their photos, dog and one change of underwear but they do not expect to return to a home. Stay safe guys! Our thoughts are with you.

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Monday, February 2, 2009

Three Mounts

So you have seen all those people ridding through Dalaran on their Caravan Mammoths or flying over your head on all manner of strange and beautiful beasts. But when you mount up it’s just the standard Ram or Griffon. Perhaps it’s time you went out and got that upgrade? Well here are three mounts that almost anyone can get a hold of with only some time, their eightieth level and perhaps a few friends.

An easy option is the Green Proto-Drake, this is obtained from a Mysterious Egg purchasable for 3g at Revered from The Oracles in Sholaza Basin. Getting to revered with the Oracles will take you a few weeks if you regularly complete the dailies, providing good experience or a decent payout. However there is a catch, each Egg only has a small chance to contain the Proto-Drake and takes seven days to hatch. The other downside is that although it’s visually unique and not a common sight it is, in my opinion, butt ugly!

This mount used to be a very rare sight in Vanilla Wow, it had a drop rate of less than one percent and required a group of five switched on players. But times have changed; the drop rate has been significantly improved and the majority of level eighty players can solo Stratholme killing Baron Rivendare with little trouble. Subsequently this is the perfect mount to aim for if you do a lot of solo play. There is also the added benefit that despite it’s age Stratholme can still be a profitable instance to run solo, plenty of items to sell of disenchant and large amounts of cloth. It is also a good time to start working on The Argent Champion achievement. A couple of tips for a level 80 in Stratholme:
Avoid killing what you don’t have to it will take you a lot longer if you clear the whole place out
Don’t stealth because the stealth diction mobs can see you more easily in stealth than out
Avoid the gargoyles they move quite fast and will bring lots of friends if you agro them

Of the three, the Bronze Drake is the hardest to acquire purely because you do need a good, well geared group. The Bronze Drake is a 100% drop from the Infinite Corruptor a timed boss in the Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme. You must reach and defeat this boss within 25 minutes of beginning the instance. He is located very close to the end just before the final boss Mal’Ganis. The 25 minute timer is achievable as long as everyone in your group knows what they are doing. Plenty of AOE helps because there will be no Crowd Control and don't bother looting the trash.

Of these three I have only acquired The Bronze Drake, so thankyou to Alassiel for providing the excellent screen shots.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Pimp your Authenticator

A while back I bought an authenticator to add an extra layer of security to my Warcraft account. But since it travels everywhere in my pocket attached to my keys, the art work on the front is starting to look a bit damaged. Then while listening to Turpster on the Wow Insider Show offer to sign the BlizzCon authenticator they were giving away and idea struck me. Why not make my own sticker to attach to the front, with unique artwork!


Twenty minutes later I had myself two templates and a handful of custom artworks for my authenticator. These along with some simple instructions I share with you.

  1. Buy an Authenticator from the Blizzard Store if you don’t already own one.
  2. Visit your local stationary store and buy some sticky labels. The word template works perfectly with the Avery L7163 labels but with a bit of tweaking or if you use the Illustrator template most sticky labels will work as long as it is larger than 52mm by 21mm.
  3. Find an image to use on your authenticator. You might want to use a screen shot of your character, some Blizzard concept art or even draw some thing yourself. You may need to revisit this step several times until you find a picture that fits well.
  4. Open either the Word or Illustrator template and place your chosen image behind the overlay. Once your happy with the placement print your design onto the sticky label.
  5. Using a sharp craft knife carefully cut out the blank spaces and then around the edges.
  6. Peel your sticker off its backing and attach to your authenticator.

Download the Word Template

Download the Illustrator Template

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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Did you notice something different when you swung by today…?

Yes I have another new banner only this one is good! Really good! The banner was created by a wonderful friend of mine who is an amazingly talented artist and graphic designer. If you would like to see more of her work, visit her Red Bubble page which has an ever increasing collection of t-shirts, cards and artworks which are all available for sale.

Now I know that I have been a bit slack with writing regular articles over the last couple of months but I am making a firm commitment to correct this and write more regularly. I also intend to write more specific articles such as guides and tactics.

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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Naxxramas Cleared!


After only four weeks to Wrath entering Naxxramas, Children of Stormwind raiders have completed the instance with the death of Kel’Thuzad last Sunday. With the Vault of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum already under our belts that leaves Malygos as our only undefeated raid boss. Should we be able to consistently recreate this effort with the addition of downing Malagyos regularly we should be in a strong position to begin the next tier of raiding as soon as the patch is released.


On a related note The Children of Stormwind stand at 66th in the WowJutsu rankings. I strongly believe we can improve on this, perhaps making it into the top 50 soon!

Additionally Ironarm now has four pieces of the tier seven “Dreadnaught Plate”. Considering that even after a year of Burning Crusades Ironarm only ever managed to get two pieces of tier four this expansion is going considerably better.

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