Monday, March 14, 2016

Been playing a ton of BFG lately

Beta is nice and all, but where the F are my Eldar?!

What can I say?  I've played over 30 hours of the game already and the beta came out last Thursday.  I won't write out a full review, but let's just say that I think the game is absolutely fantastic, minus the fact that I crash 9/10 times when trying to play multiplayer.  Yes, it's really that bad, the multiplayer in the game is extremely unstable.  Solo skirmish however, is completely fine.  This leads me to believe that there's something dreadfully wrong with the netcode.  Whatever it is, they better figure this shit out quick because the game comes out in 2 weeks.

The only downside with the game for me right now is that when ships die in multiplayer, they go under cooldown, meaning you can't use them again.  It's something like 2 games for a destroyed ship and 1 day for a heavily damaged one.  Then afterwards, another turn where you don't get crew exp, and sometimes your ship even gets lost in the warp so it can be delayed up to 3 games.  I think this mechanic is dreadfully stupid for multiplayer, but a very cool and fluffy mechanic for single-player.

Check out some of my gameplay videoes here.  I updated my Twitch channel is it's all Eldared out:
https://www.twitch.tv/lkhero

And of course, some cool highlights:
Let the galaxy burn!
One battleship vs. 3 cruisers
Exploring the AI and teaching how to play

Make sure to follow me on Twitch!  This is probably the only game I'll be playing for quite some time.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

BFG: Armada MP Beta starts Thursday

I have made Admiral Ackbar proud this season.

The title says it all gents.  BFG: Armada, here we come!  I don't know exactly when they plan on releasing the MP Beta phase, but it's supposed to happen Thursday at GMT+1.  That should mean anywhere between 4pm and 12am my time?  Vague, I know.  What does this mean for you folks that have been looking forward to playing it as well?  Well, you can follow my Twitch channel since I will be streaming the hell out of it.  My Eldar is going to be pretty bloodthirsty, so I plan on playing a few skirmish games to get a clue of the commands and then send the fleet immediately into battle online for some good times.

On another note, last week I had a Armada Store Tournament.  I'm happy to say that I scored 28 out of 30 possible tournament points with a 9-1 win, 10-0 and 9-1 win with the following list..

ACKBAR1
Author: HERO
Faction: Rebel Alliance
Points: 390/400
Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Assault Objective: Advanced Gunnery
Defense Objective: Fire Lanes
Navigation Objective: Intel Sweep

[ flagship ] MC80 Command Cruiser (106 points)
-  Admiral Ackbar  ( 38  points)
-  Home One  ( 7  points)
-  Intel Officer  ( 7  points)
-  Engine Techs  ( 8  points)
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points)
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points)
-  Leading Shots  ( 4  points)

Assault Frigate Mark II B (72 points)
-  Gunnery Team  ( 7  points)
-  Electronic Countermeasures  ( 7  points)
-  XI7 Turbolasers  ( 6  points)

CR90 Corvette A (44 points)
-  Turbolaser Reroute Circuits  ( 7  points)

4 YT-2400s ( 64 points)

I played against Rebels in all 3 of my games because the meta was insane.  In my first tournament this season, I saw a good mix of Imperials and Rebels, but in this last one it was 10/12 Rebel players.  My first game was vs. an Ackbar Defiance MC80 with 2x TRC90s and a bunch of squadrons, my second game was vs. dual MC30c torps, MC80 with Dodonna and a MKII, and my last game was vs. this crazy 3x MKII (one was Galant Haven) build with Dodonna and 10x Ys with a HWK.  That one was really tough, but I just got right up in the middle of the pack and Ackbar slashed with my MC80 Battleship.  I was able to slash in every single one of my games thanks to Engine Techs and that was devastating for all my opponents.

Does my list look familiar?  It's pretty much the list that I perfected over Wave 2 and the list I'm most familiar with.  This marks the second 1st place showing this season for Armada with the same list, so I'm pretty happy.  I was going to try for 3/3, but with BFG needing my full attention, I'm going to bail on this weekend's tournament.

Anyways, catch me on Twitch if you like BFG or just want to see a new game.  I'm going to giving this game my full attention for quite a long time so come hang out on my channel.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Some updates and Battlefleet Gothic Armada

Getting pumped!

Sorry I've been a bit busy folks.  It was been quite a hectic turn of events lately with real life, work, and only one lousy X-Wing tournament where I came in 11/40 running Brobots.  Can you believe it?  I was the only Brobots player at the whole event.  I ran the variant codenamed Tricky Crabs and it was B/C with Crack Shot with Advanced Sensors with HLCs.  There were some games where the dice spiked really wildy like the first game vs. PalpAces, to a point where I think my opponent rolled 21/21 hits on red dice without mods.  He was kind enough to apologize for that craziness, so props to him.

I'm going to an Armada Store Championship this weekend AND next weekend, and I'm probably going to bring my MC80/MKII/TRC90 list with 4x YTs to both events.  I haven't played in a while though, so I might be a little rusty to say the least.  No worries though, the events by me are fairly casual and we're still trying to build a community here and that's the most important part.  I would much rather grow the community than show up super competitive, stomp on some newbies and then drive them away from playing the game ever again.

On the PC gaming front, this month will be pretty exciting.  News on the street says Battlefleet Gothic Armada will be releasing, and I have already pre-ordered the game so I'm going to be in the multiplayer beta that will hopefully be in the next week or two.  Since I have such a huge hard on for  BFG and RTS games in general, this is going to be life-consuming.  I'm thinking about doing full coverage using the blog, the gaming channel AND streaming through Twitch.  The idea behind that will just be to play the game as much as possible and see how I like it.  Hopefully the game will be good; with solid gameplay mechanics, good balance and rewarding depth.  I'm really hoping that it will be good, but I'm keeping a very close eye on For Honor and Total War: Warhammer too in the next couple of months.  Both of those should be coming out for PC and both should be purchase-worthy for me.

Once BFG:A hits beta, I'll start spamming links all over the blog, complete with strategy guides on how to play.  I'll probably play a lot of Eldar since that's what I played back in the day, but I'm also intrigued on what the Chaos fleet has to offer.  Stay tuned!

Here is a blurb about what I had to say about how Eldar could play in BFG:A compared to the TT:

Eldar on TT are as follows:
>They are extremely maneuverable and fast with the right sun facing.
>Their ships are rather specialized and cost more than other races.
>Their ships are more fragile and can take critical much easier.
>They have more accurate torpedoes and gunnery.
>Their torpedoes and aircraft are much harder to hit while being superior.
>Their Pulsars are essentially rapid fire lances.
>Their ships are protected by Holo-fields; which makes them very difficult to hit, but no turrets.
>Their ships' weapons are generally shorter ranged and prow-focused.

In short, they use speed and maneuverability to get in close, hit extremely hard, while slipping away from return fire due to their Holo-fields. If they do suffer hits (generally due to AoEs, celestial phenoms, and/or saturation of fire), they will take greater amounts of damage due to the lower hull values on their ships and being more susceptible to crits.

How they will translate on the PC remains to be seen, but I think all of the above can be translated quite easily as long as the damage formula incorporates hit chance. I believe there is hit chance because looking at some of the gameplay videos and tutorials, it's pretty clear that ships can actually miss shots. This means that roughly 83% of conventional weapons will miss the Eldar, but once they do hit, they will hit for significant damage and increased crit chance.

With his playstyle in mind, it's going to be quite clear that Eldar are going to be extremely micro-intensive compared to the other factions. It's just how their ships are designed to play.