#gryph has opinions again

[gryphoneer]

i've seen talk about how to communicate progressive ideas to evangelicals. you know, things like citing deuteronomy 15, the bible passage that mandates the periodic forgiveness of all debt after 7 year intervals. and i'm like...

that's now how evangelicals (or other flavors of reactionary christians) work.

in the liberal imagination, evangelicals are people who believe in every word of the bible in a literal sense. in that conception, you could conceivably argue with them inside this framework. but that's wrong, isn't it? in reality, evangelicals are people who believe exclusively in the regressive parts of the bible and ignore the parts that contradict them. liberals try to beat someone with chess moves who's actually playing tic-tac-toe.

this is just the same old shit aaron sorkin did with president bartlet on west wing. that character had a minor in theology and was constantly Epically Owning evangelicals on the show by quoting scripture at them. well! in the real world, that had been bill clinton's move. and then evangelicals bombed abortion clinics across the country, while congressional repubs protected them and dems stood by idly. that should've been the ultimate proof that ploy Does Not Work, yet here we are 30 years later.

[exonia-robin]

We traveled....

We saw.....

We played....

We absolutely loved it!

4th edition Age Of Sigmar has left us feeling awesome! Our hopes and dreams continue to live on for Age Of Sigmar, whereas the ones for 40k are dying off (more on that another time...)

Whilst at the holy site of all warhammer, where hobbyists and Wargamers gather in a horde like fashion, we had the chance to play 30 minutes of 4th edition AoS and and FULL HOUR of Spearhead! Below you'll find our opinions!

4TH EDITION:

As mentioned we play 30 minutes of this in teams of 2. Our two opponents were absolutely lovely during this game and very friendly. We took the side of the stormcast whilst they got to use the Skaven.

The Models

Warhammer Community does not do these models justice at all. They are much better looking in person!! The stormcast have been given a fresh look, bringing them further away from looking like the Sigmar equivalent of space marines whilst the Skaven have been given some love this edition and have better looking, well, everything.

The models that stood out amongst the rest for both factions in the Skaventide box are:

- The Lord-Vigilant on Gryph Stalker

- Clawlord on Gnawbeast

Both of these are striking centre pieces for both of the respective factions and their armies. The supporting heroes for both are good, but these.... These are another level.

The Gameplay

The most important thing to mention here is that you can REACT to your opponent during their turn, making a turn rather interesting. While this was kind of a thing in 3rd edition with certain command abilities in certain phases, this has been expanded and improved upon, even allowing players to invoke the power of the gods through their priests in the enemy hero phase! Certain heroes also have the ability to react to themselves or friendly units around them creating a bit more of a synergy between outlying heroes that operate alone and the main forces.

Most of the core system remains the same as the previous edition, with changes to certain parts of each phase to make things easier and simpler. Each phase is now colour coded to allow players to easily find abilities that are usable in those phases.

In person the new warscrolls for each model/unit work well as well as being easier to read and find the abilities you are looking for. Ward saves are now a keyword so these will be found at the bottom of your warscroll.

One staple of 3rd edition may not be in the new edition. Heroic actions. These were game changers if used at the right time, however when we played 4th edition, there was no mention of heroic actions anywhere. It remains to be seen if these will return or not.

SPEARHEAD:

This was purely amazing. We cannot fault the spearhead game system at all. Literally there is nothing we can find bad with this.

We were able to play out 2 battle rounds in the time, and once again were in teams of 2. This time however we got to use the Maggotkin Of Nurgle Spearhead versus the Sylvaneth Spearhead. Both forces are literally the contents of their respective Vanguard boxes, in fact every army that was used to teach Spearhead was a Vanguard box....

Now, we are very excited if Spearhead gives any indication at the rules for the armies in the main game (we would hope there is some similarity between them)

Maggotkin didn't have contagion points in Spearhead and could only gain disease points for the ARMY. These were used to inflict mortal wounds to a unit that your in combat with, by rolling a number of D6 equal to your total disease points (max 7) and each 4+ was a mortal wound.

Sylvaneth had the ability to teleport a single unit across the board for free. This hurt. Teleporting Kurnoth Hunters is not fun for the opponent.

The game itself is highly tactical and is a good middle ground between Warcry and AoS. The uncertainty of which battle tactics you may have for a turn combined with how balanced the spearheads were, make this a game that simply comes down to a players tactical ability. Not army strength or ridiculous rules, but a players tactical mind. Spearhead is also brilliant in the sense that the random battle tactics teach you to be more tactical in your decision making, as each card contains a battle tactic and a command ability. Now you have to choose between these, either sacrificing a VP in order to kit your opponent harder, or maybe sacrificing a unit in order to score a VP.

You don't ever reveal your battle tactics to your opponent until you activate a command ability from one, or your score the battle tactic, meaning neither player will know what the other is trying to achieve at any one time. Though play with these cards enough and you'll soon learn from heart which your opponent will be trying to achieve through watching how they move their forces around the board. This aside, Spearhead is definitely something new, fun and definitely outclasses the 40k variant of it, Combat Patrol.

THE ROUND UP:

If you do love Age Of Sigmar as much as us, the new edition is for you. Whether or not you play Stormcast or Skaven the Skaventide box is definitely a worthwhile investment as this contains literally everything you could ever need for AoS to begin with including the matched play rules for the first season, a whole book dedicated to spearhead and the AoS rulebook, terrain and all the accessories needed to play Spearhead. Though we do see Spearhead taking off very quickly, so expect the decks, battle mats and terrain for this to be released separately at some point.

If your are not sure on 4th edition, then play Spearhead. Spearhead allows you to take your current Vanguard box out for a game so you can see what your army does, and play the core concepts of the new edition without buying into anything (let's be honest, someone you know will have bought the box...)

Lastly. We noticed a little thing at the top of the warscrolls we had to use for 4th edition, "July 2024"

This seems to be a potential release window.... (with the store Dawnbringer campaigns ending towards the back end of June and the new 2 week preorder's we are expecting early July)

[cienie-isengardu]

have you ever read darth vader (2020) and knights of the old republic? if so, what do you think of them?

Yes, I had a chance to read both. Knights of the Old Republic (2006-2010) is a pretty good and fun series that I enjoyed overall even though I did read it mainly for ancient Mandalorians (and oh boy, they are my personal weakness). There is an intriguing worldbuilding that nicely connects past events (The Sith War) with current, ongoing war and a bunch of interesting (if not morally ambiguous) characters, like Gryph who never fails to amuse me and his teamwork with Zayne is both hilarious and heartwarming. In all honesty, there are some issues I’m more likely to skip over than others while rereading KotOR but the story in itself is a solid piece with enough drama and humor to keep me entertained. Of course being set in a timeline then barely exploited gave KotOR a big advantage over most star wars stories, because lack of a stiff framework gave a lot of freedom to creators.

In contrast, my feelings about Darth Vader (2020) comics series are mixed to say the least. Partially, because I’m very picky when it comes to Vader and his characterization, partially because the series is still an ongoing thing and so I may change my mind about it again at some point. Like, the first arc, Dark Heart of the Sith in my opinion was pretty good - not perfect because there were things I definitively despite (like the whole deal with Padme sending her people to free Shmi, which doesn’t make much sense in the context of the Prequels and frankly, I’m tired by New Canon tendency of trying make Padme some saint or whatever) and some I wished to not happen at all (the fate of the poor droid, what a shame, Vader always get the most interesting droids to work with). But overall? It was so nice to see prequel characters being acknowledged. I liked how Vader’s troopers didn’t speak basic and the interaction between Vader, the droid and older Sabe was amusing. It is not the first story that dealt with Vader’s past and the effect Padme’s death had on him and most likely not the last, but the comics did a good job of connecting Prequels with the current storyline and so far was one of better Marvel comics about Vader I read. But then we have another arc, Into the Fire and the future part of Bounty Hunter Was and… yeah. Here comes back the typical Disney/Marvel storyline of “hardship” that is just coarse (vulgar) abuse of Vader. And this is where my good feelings about this particular series end. After the last six years of Marvel star wars I’m so, so tired of this repetitive bullshit. It seems like every Darth Vader series/storyline must have at least one scene when the man's body is literally ripped apart and this is not only disrespectful for the iconic character, but most of all boring and uncreative as hell. At this point, I’m more checking what is going on in the current series as a matter of principle rather than for the pure joy of reading about my favorite character. I strongly believe that every source, even the one passionately disliked by me, has something interesting and good to offer, but no matter how hard I try, Marvel/Disney star wars does not work for me the way Legends did. I simply don’t like the new approach to Vader as a character and if not for his sporadic relationship with sergeant Kreel, queen Trios or even doctor Aphra, I feel like I could give up reading Marvel star wars altogether. I still hope the upcoming issues will change my mind but, like Tor Vizsla said, hope is overrated. And… that is exactly how I feel about Darth Vader (2020) right now.

[gryphoneer]

sometimes people are incredulous if you suggest that even this specific type of rich person who made their fortune through inoffensive things like good music/tv/movies/etc, leads a private life and doesn't support awful shit is, in fact, part of the problem too.

i admit this is a tough idea to wrap your head around for a significant part of the public, so let me try to provide a palatable explanation.

money is the fuel that powers civilization. lack of money means our social services stop running, our infrastructure crumbles, our techno-scientific progress slows. rich people - all rich people - are sponges that soak up money. and no, any so-called "philanthropy" or investment deals don't balance the sheet. on the whole, rich people who know what they're doing - i.e. not the ones who develop addictions or otherwise become self-destructive and end up broke - spend their lives extracting wealth from the world economy to grow ever richer. it's just the individual expression of the aggregate capitalist behavior of infinite growth (in a decidedly finite world with finite resources).

so yes, even that rich person who superficially appears to be harmless is harming the world by their mere existence.