Dishonored, and What's On the Horizon

Not too long ago, I finished off playing Dishonored, my silent killer teleporting all around the city putting his knife to peoples’ throats and ending them something quick.

Actually, he didn’t tend to do that too much.  Where in Skyrim, Red was something of a mass-murderer (I called her “the extinction event for humanity” at one point), Corvo was actually very polite with people.  Well, most people.  He would politely walk up behind them, and then politely choke them out, and then politely hide them while they slept so no one would stumble upon them.

It didn’t always work, of course.  I was climbing a massive lighthouse at one point and could not find an easy way around one of the guards.  So I loaded my crossbow with my patented (non-lethal) sleeping darts, took aim, and shot the guard.  He clutched his neck, stumbled a moment, then fell off the edge of this huge lighthouse.

I don’t think that guy survived.

But still, most times it worked out well.  I could climb all around the city and drop down near people, choking them out and putting them away.  I enjoyed choking out the last person in a line of people who were chatting with each other.  They others would keep talking while I dragged one of them away.  Then I would come back and wash/rinse/repeat.  Soon I’d have a pile of bodies all stacked up, all sleeping together.

Occasionally I would get a little frustrated with the game, give it a quick save, and then rush out and kill anyone I saw.  At the end of the day, I’d be standing in a mess of blood, smiling.  Then I’d go back to the save point and try to beat it without killing anyone.  Like the whole last run-through had been a dream.  Does that make me a sick man?

Anywho, my whole goal was to kill as few people as I could without constantly restarting the missions to get fewer kills.  I had a pretty good record, usually getting between 0-3 kills a mission.  Except one of the missions – the third one.  In this mission, there was a tower that would constantly zap anyone that came around not wearing a uniform.  I learned about its lethality first-hand.  I snuck up to choke out a guard in uniform at one point, and in the middle of choking him, the two of us were zapped by the tower.  He died and I got knocked away.  Another zap and I was dead.  Okay… maybe I should just ignore that group of people then.

I slipped past the tower and then in my exploring, I made my way back to it and rewired it so it wouldn’t shoot me anymore (my first rewiring!).

At the end of the mission, after recalling only a couple kills, the screen came up telling me I had killed 14 people.  What?!  Turns out that in rewiring the tower, it started shooting people with uniforms on instead.  So while I spent another hour or two wandering around and checking out the rest of the city, guardsmen constantly wandered in the way and got blown up.

After I beat the game, I went back and tried the mission again, this time with no kills.  It was much easier after I figured out that I didn’t actually need to do anything to the tower to make it through.

That was also the mission I learned how annoying little girls can be.  I found the Empress’ daughter who had been kidnapped, gave her a big hug, and sighed relieved.  I had just spent a long time cautiously sneaking around the building and making my way to her room without anyone noticing.  She told me she was happy to see me, then told me to follow her.  And she took off running down the stairs.  Running!  Seriousness!  Not knowing what to do I started chasing her, afraid at every turn that I would have a bunch of guards standing in my way.

It didn’t happen, of course.  She was pretty smart – she knew the guard-less route out of the building.  I told her to wait in the dark, cold alley while I headed back in the building and got some killing done.

So Dishonored is finished.  I can’t count all the different ways I died in the course of the mission.  One of my favorites was standing on top of a train that got run through an electric disintegration field.  The next time I tried that one, I jumped off before reaching the field.  I think I was also eaten by piranhas once, and spat at by plants.

But with Dishonored now finished, it’s time to move on to my next game.  By brother-in-law got me Assassin’s Creed 3 for Christmas.  Looks like I’m about to get some more killing done, Revolutionary-War-style!

2012 Gamers Resolutions Revisited

At the beginning of this year, I set up five goals to achieve over the course of the year.  Seeing as I'm a week away from the end, I figured it would be good to reflect back on the year and see how I've done.

1. Read 3500 pages.
I thought this would be a simple goal for the year and get me back in the swing of reading.  Well, it should have been simple, and while I did achieve it, it really did come down to the wire.  The problem I ran into was right around the September-November timeframe.  I was starting to run the Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game at that point and put down all my novels and picked up all my roleplaying books.  Since I skipped all around those books and didn't read any of them cover-to-cover, I couldn't really count them.

Still, at the end of the day I achieved this goal, so 1/1 so far.


2. Finish running Scion.
Another successful goal.  This one hit a few long breaks in the middle, but I managed to completely tell the story I wanted to tell.  In the end of the game, several of the heroes had bargained with the gods to gain their power in order to fight Chronos.  I had five players, and of them, three took on the power of the gods.  Two were killed in the fight, one ascended to Mount Olympus to replace Ares, who had been killed in an earlier fight with Chronos, and the other two remained mortal and completed the ritual to bind away all the gods and titans remaining on the planet.

The whole goal here was to run my campaigns through to completion.  I used to have trouble doing that - getting another great idea for a story well before the one I was telling finished, and from there I just ran out of steam on the older story.  It's frustrating, both as a player and as a GM, to go through a story and never really see where it's going to end.

Another success, so 2/2.


3. Limit my purchases to 3 computer games in the year.
I came really close on this one.  I had two game purchased heading in to the last quarter, but ended up looking over Dishonored and Skylanders: Giants and finally deciding to buy them both.  That put me up to four games on the year, one more than I should have bought.  I bought four games during 2011 too.  Might just be that's a reasonable number for me to buy - one each quarter.

My first failure.  I'm at 2/3 now.


4. Paint and base all Malifaux models before playing them.
Damn GenCon and the Ten Thunders models.  All year I had been doing well getting my models painted up and based before playing them.  Often I would go out of my way to get through painting my models before playing them - staying up late and working hard on getting them all done.  My McHammish crew was finished in less than a week meaning I could get it on the table all painted and ready to go.

But just after GenCon, Dan and I sat down to play a game and I pulled out my Jakob crew, unpainted.  I really wanted to give them a try, and they performed well.  But that one game (and that's the only game that had unpainted models all year) cost me this goal.

Another failure.  A poor 2/4.


5. Actively play no more than two miniatures games at once. 
This one was a success.  Currently I'm in two miniatures games: Malifaux and Blood Bowl.  I did briefly dabble in Warmachine, but only for a day and I never purchased another model for it.  Overall, I managed to hold my spending habits on models down to a reasonable level in a single game.  I already had Neverborn and most of Ressers by the time the year started, so my gains were just whatever new models were coming out for the factions, plus the three Guild crews I bought into and the one Ten Thunders box.

We're ending on a success, leaving me at 3/5.

I didn't do as well as last year, unfortunately, when I hit four of my five goals.  But I didn't do too bad either.  One of my misses was because of a single game, and the intent of the goal (get me to paint models and base models I was using) was successful, so I'm okay missing that goal.  The other one I missed by a single purchase as well, so I came close on that one too.  And I may have been unrealistic in what I was seeking to do.


Anywho, 2012 is rounding an end.  Time to come up with some new goals for 2013. 

McHammish Rides!

I finally got my first two games of McHammish under my belt after getting him all painted up and on the table.  Both games were 30 stones.  This was the first time in months I’ve played more than one game of Malifaux at game night.  All it would take is the newest President, McHammish.

The first game was against Second Generation Awesome Dan’s new Yan Lo crew.  My stuff was painted and his was not.  More, he was proxying a model in his list (Toshiro).  How did the gaming gods look on my offering versus his?  Well, read on!

My Crew:  McHammish (Armor +2, Hunter, (0) action healing), Luna, 2x Guild Hound, 2x Wastrel (Feather, Blade), Sidir, 7 soulstones

My Strategy / Schemes: Plant Evidence, Breakthrough, Stake a Claim

His Crew: Yan Lo, Soul Porter, Toshiro, Niece, 10T Brother, Ashigaru x2, 8 soulstones

His Strategy / Schemes:  Contain Power, Kill Protégé (Sidir), Eye for an Eye

I could tell right as the game started that it had been a while since I had played Malifaux a lot, and had been even longer since I had looked over this crew.  I started out timidly, slowly moving my crew forward.

TURN ONE – YAN LO INITIATIVE

This turn was a lot of moving up cautiously and preparing to engage.  I didn’t really have a shot with Sidir or McHammish, so I kept them together and a little farther back as Dan moved Yan Lo and the Ancestors (that should be a band name) forward.  Once he was mostly activated out, I shot my two Guild Hounds along one side of the board near some terrain far from his troops.  Odds were good I would be able to tag two Plant Evidence points with them next turn.

TURN TWO – McHAMMISH INITIATIVE

Sure enough, I started out with my two Hounds.  The back one moved up next to a piece of terrain with On the Trail, tagged it, and then moved towards a farther back piece.  My other Hound double-moved to the farther back piece of terrain and ended up close enough to my first Hound to tag the terrain.  Two points down on the top of turn two.  Not bad.

He started moving some people, an Ashigaru and the 10T Brother, closer to get ready to hit my lines.  I was able to move McHammish up nearby and shot the Ashigaru with a Net Gun, but he cheated to make sure the guy did not get hit and take Slow.

My Wastrels moved around, the one with the Feather hanging back a bit and the one with the Knives moving forward.  Sidir moved up to within 8” of the Ashigaru and shot at him, doing a couple wounds.

TURN THREE – YAN LO INITIATIVE

Yan Lo moved out and shot at one of the dogs with Weight of Ages, knocking him down to one wound, then cast again, cheating and stoning to get the trigger.  The Black Joker came up on damage, though, and the dog survived.  I activated both my dogs and moved the wounded one out near the back.  The non-wounded one moved around and tagged the third piece of terrain.

Now with the dogs behind him, the 10T Brother used Run Through to hit the first one.  He killed him in one hit, then finished his move next to the second one.  No cheating could save either dog, and the 10T Brother killed them both, netting Yan Lo a couple of Chi to take Regeneration and start on the DF7.  Losing two models in a single activation hurt, but they had done their job, grabbing three of the four Plant Evidence points.  On my activation, I surveyed my options.  I really didn’t want to lose Harmless on my knife Wastrel, but it was the only model close enough to finish out my strategy, and I thought that would turn out to be worth the effort.  The Wastrel moved up and tagged the last objective marker.  I was working from a 4-0 lead now.  The only thing left was to take Breakthrough and Stake a Claim.

An Ashigaru moved up and charged McHammish, but missed even with the bonus flip from Toshiro.  I activated Sidir and took a Machine Gun shot on the other Ashigaru, knocking it down a few points.  The Niece tried to move his models forward but failed, and McHammish activated.  He attacked twice, killing the Ashigaru on him, and then turned his Net Gun on the other Ashigaru, giving him slow and stopping him from being able to put as many attacks on me.  Finally, he healed up a few of the wounds he had taken.  The Ashigaru charged McHammish and dealt another one wound.  Luna charged the Ashigaru and got a severe damage, killing him off.  Toshiro was swimming in counters, and Yan Lo’s Chi was doing pretty well.  He had the DF 7 by now, and was starting on the Path of Bone.

TURN FOUR – YAN LO INITIATIVE

Dan started having another of our friends, Jonas, cut and bless his deck here, and it really started working.  My cards went cold and his went hot.

He was able to kill off my Knife Wastrel straight away, grabbing more Chi and making Yan Lo a walking death-machine.  I was able to kill Toshiro before he used any of his counters.  The 10T Brother moved back up to the fight and engaged my other Wastrel, but he used his Feather to jump to the piece of terrain in his deployment zone.  Luna was killed and McHammish started taking a few hits.

TURN FIVE – YAN LO INITIATIVE

Jonas’ blessing of the deck continued to help.  Yan Lo activated and summoned Toshiro back near McHammish.  He had enough corpse counters out there to come back at full wounds.  Then he shot at Sidir a bit, killing him and grabbing two points for Kill Protégé.

McHammish activated and used Stunner on the Slow Toshiro, but the stone I used came up Black Joker and he resisted.  I tried again and hit, Paralyzing him.  Finally, he shot his net gun at Yan Lo, but the guy used a stone to make it miss.  I was trying to run him out of stones, so I was willing to take that trade.

Everyone else moved in on McHammish.  He weathered the storm of attacks pretty well but was almost out of stones at this point.  Meanwhile, the Soul Porter was moving back to kill off the last Wastrel.

TURN SIX – YAN LO INITIATIVE

Yan Lo charged McHammish and hit him, then hit him again.  I had McHammish fall off his horse and placed him outside the melee range of most of his models.  He got a few more shots off on McHammish but was unable to kill him.  McHammish tagged Toshiro with Slow and then moved away from the models near him, avoiding the free strikes.  He ended up behind a building so Toshiro could not move his friends towards any enemy models.

The Wastrel shot the Soul Porter but did not kill him, then shot again and Dan cheated to make sure he missed.

TURN SEVEN – McHAMMISH INITIATIVE

I pulled a fantastic hand this turn, finally making up for the rest of them.  The RJ, a pair of 12s, a 13 and a 10 rounded out the good cards.  McHammish moved towards the back, whipped the totem to death, and then moved back to hiding.  Yan Lo was the only model on his side with a shot at finishing off McHammish, but with no stones left on either side, it came down to cheats, and I had the Red Joker.  We flipped and the game ended.

Had there been another turn, there was nothing I could do to weather the storm that was coming.  That said, my army was not designed to survive long – it was designed to achieve objectives which it did.

FINAL SCORE:
McHAMMISH 8 (4 Plant Evidence, 2 Breakthrough, 2 Stake a Claim)

YAN LO 2 (0 Contain Power, 2 Kill Protégé, 0 Eye for an Eye)

My second game was against Skill-less Brian.  He and I have not had a chance to play in a long time, so we hit the table with 30 stones.  Even though I felt Sidir was a waste of space in my last list, I wanted to keep trying him out to see if I could get him to work.  Fortunately this time I flipped one of the few strategies I would actually consider him good for.

MY LIST: McHammish (+2 Armor, Hunter, (0) Heal Action), Death Marshall, Witchling Stalker, Brutal Effigy, Wastrel (knives), Sidir, 7 stones

MY STRATEGY / SCHEMES:  Supply Wagon, Holdout, Kill Protégé (Warden)

HIS LIST: Lady Justice, Witchling Stalker x3, Austinger x2, Drill Sergeant, Warden, 8 stones

HIS STRATEGY / SCHEMES:  Destroy Evidence, Breakthrough, Kill Protégé (Sidir)

TURN ONE – McHAMMISH INITIATIVE

Again, lots of moving around on the first turn.  Sidir went around a central building on the left, the Brutal, Witchling and Death Marshall went to the back of the building so they could go either way, and my Wastrel and McHammish went around the right.  He got close enough to fire a shot off on the Warden that had moved up, and hit, paralyzing him.

On his side, the Austringers moved up to a broken down wall for some cover near the center of his board with the Drill Sergeant next to them.  The three Witchling Stalkers went around opposite Sidir, and the Warden moved up to protect the Austringers.  Lady Justice finished things off by moving into charge range of McHammish.

TURN TWO – LADY JUSTICE INITIATIVE

Brian went with Lady Justice first and charged McHammish, swinging twice and hitting for a total of four wounds.  I moved my Brutal Effigy out to heal McHammish and cleaned off a couple wounds, but he got shot down by Austringers flipping like crazy.  I jumped my Wastrel into combat with Lady Justice and swung at her, but he threw a low Mask and stoned into a Riposte, killing the Wastrel in one hit.  Ouch!

Sidir moved up and leveled a shot on one of the Witchlings, killing him with his close-range shot, and put up Camouflage on himself.  My Death Marshall and Witchling moved around to help on the Lady Justice side.

McHammish finally went and burned through some more stones, dealing 3 wounds to Lady Justice and leaving her with about 3 stones remaining.

TURN THREE – LADY JUSTICE INITIATIVE

The woman took some swings and left me with a single stone and a dismounted McHammish.  Oh, yeah, he had the 11, 12 and 13 of Rams for his three hits.  Ouch.  McHammish replied in kind, swinging as best he could but after two swings, I had nothing to show for it except a Riposte that left me with 2 wounds remaining.  Knowing I was unlikely to survive the fight, McHammish used Desperation and swung three more times, finally killed Lady Justice on the third swing.  Both masters vanished from the board.

One Austringer shot my Death Marshall leaving her with two wounds, and she shot a nearby Witchling.  The second Austringer finished off my Death Marshall which used Slow to Die to finish off the Witchling that she had shot before.  The Warden came in and hit my Witchling Stalker who hit the Warden back for a point.  Sidir finished off the last Stalker on Brian’s side.

TURN FOUR – LADY JUSTICE INITIATIVE

The Warden killed off the Witchling Stalker finally, but Sidir moved up and took a shot, killing the Warden himself.  I put up Camouflage again and braced myself for shots from the Austringers.  Somewhere around the end of this turn, I realized Brian was giving the Austringers a +2 CB as though they were shooting from Lucius (since that’s how he usually uses them).  I asked if he had been doing that all game and he sheepishly said probably.  That turned the hit into a miss against Sidir.

TURN FIVE – McHAMMISH INITIATIVE

I went with Sidir (obviously) and moved up to the center of the board, and then healed myself.  I had 8 wounds left, and Camouflage put me at DF 7.  Not bad at all.  The first Austringer shot at me, hitting and flipping three moderates on the (-)(-) flip.  Shot again and hit and got another pair of moderates, dropping him down to two wounds left.  The other Austringer went and shot Sidir twice, finishing him off.

TURN SIX – McHAMMISH INITIATIVE

I had no models.  The first Austringer moved up and dropped off the Drill Sergeant next to the Wagon in the middle of the board, then moved on towards an Evidence.  The other Austringer moved twice towards another Evidence.  The Drill Sergeant dealt two wounds to the Wagon by cheating and then flipping a Severe on the damage.

Brian flipped a card… the game went on one more turn.  If it had ended here, I would have won 6-2.  Part of what I love about Malifaux is how drastically the points can shift if you're not careful.  Unfortunately, sometimes I fall victim to it too...

TURN SEVEN – LADY JUSTICE INITIATIVE

The Austringer closest to my deployment zone ignored the Evidence and went straight there.  The other one double-moved on to an Evidence marker, and the Drill Sergeant cheated a Severe to destroy the wagon.

FINAL SCORE:

McHAMMISH 2 (0 Supply Wagon, 0 Hold Out, 2 Kill Protégé)

LADY JUSTICE 4 (0 Destroy Evidence, 2 Kill Protégé, 2 Breakthrough)

 

Finally, after over a year of playing, Skill-less Brian got that monkey off his back and defeated me.  Now I have to think of a new nickname for him since he has now defeated Bill, eChris and me.  Suggestions?

Fantasy Football Championships

This football season, I took part in three different leagues.  I had the fifth year of my local ten-person league with a bunch of friends from around the area.  I took part in the second year of my extended family’s twelve-person football league.  And at the request of my coworkers, I created a ten-person league in my office.

I have to say, overall I’m pleased with my season.  I drafted for my work league first with a number of people who had never played before, and a few veterans.  I was hurt a little by Jamaal Charles’ inconsistent play, and by Hakeem Nicks and Aaron Hernandez taking long breaks for injuries.  LeSean McCoy had trouble meeting his expectations, but Adrian Peterson made up for that.  I finished out the regular season in third place and last week I topped the second place team to head into the finals.  Next week I play against an undefeated team to try to hold the trophy high.

My second draft was for my local league with my buddies.  The previous season I had made it to second place, so I was drafting late in the order.  I took Chris Johnson with my first pick (ugg…) and then wrapped around to get Adrian Peterson with my second (yay!).  I started out slow, taking a 1-2 spot, and then went on a long winning streak to vault into first place behind a number of 120+ point games.  Right around the middle of the season, though, my team fell apart as Vick was injured, I had to trade a starting Receiver to get another QB, Rob Gronkowski broke his arm, and then McGahee became injured too.  Somewhere in there, the Bears lost a few good starters on Defense too.  From there it seemed for a week or two anyone I picked up to count on would be on IR the next week.  I limped through the last four weeks of the regular season putting up a miraculous 2-2 finish (my two wins were for a combined less than two points) and managed to hold on to my first place spot.  I faced my wife in the first round of the playoffs and she defeated me easily, leaving me battling for 3rd place next week.  It’s okay, though.  I have made fourth place in this league every year that I’ve been in it save last year when I managed to crawl to second place.  Now it looks like I’m back to my comfortable position.

The last draft of the year was with my extended family.  We are spread out between Virginia, Delaware, Connecticut, and Vermont, so we drafted online.  I had a chance for Adrian Peterson but felt taking him in all three leagues would be a risk given his questionable health.  Instead I ended up with a decent team led by Tom Brady.  I started out slowly but managed to start putting together a string of wins and by the end of the regular season, I was in fourth place and coming in with a good streak going.  This league let eight players into the playoffs, so it is a three-week affair.  I topped the previous year’s second-place team in the first round while the first and second place teams from this year both lost their opening round game.  The second round I faced off against my mother and while my team did pretty bad, hers did even worse and managed a league-season-low 30-something points.  Now I’m moving in to the finals against my cousin Christian.

Regardless of how it all goes, after this coming weekend, fantasy football will be all done for the year.  Running three teams was a lot of work.  I think ideally I’d play in only one or two leagues in the future, but I don’t think it’ll be easy to drop any of them.  I enjoy the one with my friends too much, and the one with my family helps keep me in touch with them.  The work one would be the odd one out, but I’m pretty sure if I don’t run it, it won’t happen, and then I’ll have some people unhappy with me.

No sense in worrying about that now, though.  I’ve got two Championship games to plan for!