Cheers to JS for starting a blog and under absolutely no peer pressure whatsoever too! More importantly cheers for inviting NZs self-proclaimed #1 Morticians player (suck it Hunter, in first!) to drown unwilling viewers in Spook-biased articles (while I'm on holiday / can be bothered / remain interested). Having been semi-successfully shilled into the game it is now my mission in life to convert all other players to using Morticians, spamming the meta with sexy control elements combined with hopelessly inadequate momentum building playbooks. This will result in a wave of games that are little more than old ladies slapping each other with their handbags in the supermarket parking lot while waving their dentures threateningly at metrosexual hipsters and wannabe Mason poster-boys. But I digest...
My contributions to this blog will be at once unsettlingly on fleek and almost immediately completely irrelevant. I shall fluidly shift gears rapidly, moving between boggling you with an unbelievable depth of tactical nous, and making such horrendously embarrassing mistakes that you'll move right past shouting "go back to Warmachine" and straight to "go back to 7th edition Warhammer".
Ah, the glory days...
The most relevant/only image for this entire article.
So... let's read some more about me then.
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Why Morticians? Pretty easy - they're the closest thing to Cryx I could see when I looked at the models and glanced passingly (and with total ignorance) at the rules. That and a carefully concluded process of elimination (all IMO of course):
- Masons are vanilla, rely on armour (we all know how broken the armour heavy meta is, amiright?) and are far too middle-of-the-road. Masons are beer and pretzels, staple diet Guild Ball whereas I'm more of a fine wine connoisseur who likes to eat dangerously (not sure what happened to that metaphor...). Masons are Cygnar and I'm genetically pre-dispositioned to hate the hell out of Cygnar. Also my son is keen on using Masons (more on this later) so they were auto-out. Little Dave is playing Masons.
- Butchers are clearly for morons who want to hurr-durr their way up the pitch, drool loudly and crump heads. These players should have stuck with Age of Sigmar or Orks in whatever passes for 40k these days. Dan Lister (he of the Butcher2 theme list Doomreaver spam) is playing Butchers so that will give you some insight into how they like to run. Plus Trent Denison is also playing Butchers so 'nuff said.
- Fishermen remind me too much of Circle Orboros (a nightmare of constant cock-ups that I'm currently living through in Warmachine). They've got an elvish vibe which translates quickly into flower picking hippies that need the proverbial kicked out them for the good of the world. I shall cheerfully oblige. JS plays Fishermen and I haven't seen him come close to winning a game yet that isn't 3v3 (totes fair when Fish are involved in a low model count game) so that's not exactly a hard sell for how good they are either. Pundit harder man!
- Brewers are the Trolls of the game and everyone knows that Trolls are dreadfully dull. Tapper is cute I guess but the rest of the team get a solid yawn. Painting tartan looks like the worst kind of torture. Nikola is playing Brewers because a) he couldn't cheese up a busted as balls Legion equivalent, or b) a terrible terrible terrible Menoth equivalent (self-flagellation is one of his great fortes). Asian Nick is also playing Brewers (cf. aforementioned Trolls simile). Pro tip - Brewers tokens are the WORST gaming tokens in the history of anything. Ever.
- Engineers have the wooden dummy and the big spider dude so once I'd dried the tears of hysterical laughter from my eyes over how stupid that is I knew I wouldn't be able to take them seriously. Painting wood grain will also end me. And I hate maths. I don't know anyone who's playing Engineers yet.
- Alchemists were third-runners up to my pick but I didn't love the ranged game/conditions focus of their play style. They also look too soft to take a hard tackle. And slow. And lacking in dimensions of play experience. Actually maybe they were my last pick now that I think about it...? The greatest of Daves, last of the fallen ones, and the veritable hive-mind of the many bodied organism sharing one soul Dave Dawn himself is playing Alchemists.
- Union were the runners up (I've printed and laminated all the cards and am currently making up the paper models for some future play experience). Love the variety and flexibility and that as the "Merc faction" option they don't suck. In fact they seem very very good. Blackbeard is hotness incarnate. Chas is playing Union so this is a natural match. Union also looks dangerously easy to collect once you've fleshed out your Guild faction models with some Union subs. Dat sales strat!
But it's all good and there's plenty of variety. Peter Hunter is also playing Morticians but don't hold that against the guild. I hear Season Three will even see the release of a new guild so there's even some room for those who love their bandwagons to jump ship and climb aboard the newest toys and most broken rules to capitalise on the ignorant and unaware.
Between that and other new season models it will be a good test to see if the developers stuff it up early or are able to manage ongoing and unfolding dynamic game balance.
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Future posts - shilling Junior, Morticians overview from my perspective (the only one that matters), battle reports with no photos or other media to break up the melancholy wall of text, rules traps when learning the game early on.
Thanks in advance to the weather in Auckland for crapping out shortly and providing you all with more rainy day reading material.
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