Pages

Saturday, August 31, 2013

I Choose You Rescue!



I have a love/hate relationship with a Facebook game. No, the game is not Farmville. It is  Marvel Avenger’s Alliance. Marvel Avenger's Alliance (MAA) is essentially a pokemon style game where you collect characters from the Marvel Universe. The focus is on the 616 and movie universes so far, but the game introduced Incursions recently so there are story reasons for doing alternate reality versions of the characters.

The player creates a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent whose job it is to wade into the thick of things alongside the heroes and provide support. At first this means giving access to med kits and such. Later on your Agent becomes one of the most potent people in the battle.

My S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is level 125 as of the writing of this post. That’s not very high all things considered. Max level is 300. I stunted my experience growth for a time while building up my heroes and other resources.

The reason for this primer is I wish to catalogue my progress. I thought I might as well share the experience while I am at it. I am also considering starting a second account. I started my first account during the time of the first Spec Ops. I have resources that a new player would not. I am curious as to how overwhelming coming into the game would be for a new player with some guidance now compared to when I started without any. I’m far from being an expert on the game, but there are some great resources on the wiki which is where all of my knowledge outside of personal experience comes from. I know more than the vast majority of new players are likely to learn on their own just playing the game for a month and I think I will struggle. I enjoy a struggle which is part of why I like this idea.

I haven’t made a decision on when I am going to start the second account. Right now I do not feel a whole lot of pressure on my resources of the first account. I may work on building up my first account to be just a bit more secured in case running a second causes me to slack off too much.

For this reason, future Marvel Avenger’s Alliance posts will be tagged either ‘Avengers Alliance’, ‘MAA Alpha’, or ‘MAA Prime’. MAA Alpha will be for posts relating to my current account. MAA Prime will be for the new account should I start it. Avengers Alliance will be for posts that do not contain anything specific to either character. This way I can track the progress of each account separately and better be able to analyze the meta for each of those two level ranges in PVP.

Introduction to the Warhammer Fantasy League

I am in an escalation league for Warhammer Fantasy hosted through the Crazy Squirrel game store in Fresno, CA. I believe the league began with eight players at the start of the year. It is currently at eighteen. It's pretty amazing not just because of the growth and retention rate, but this is in the face of the fact that Warhammer Fantasy has seen zero play in public for at least two years locally leading up to this league. There is already talk of starting a fresh league at the new year and what possible changes people would like to see along with additional events. He probably won't see this, but Ryan Mathews has done an amazing job running the league up to this point.

I was going to originally play Warriors of Chaos as I had next to nothing painted when I joined the league. It would give me an army with a small model count and be manageable. There was already a couple of people playing Warriors of Chaos however. There was nothing stating I couldn't play them, but the more variety available the more potential for fun.

After talking with a couple of people I settled on Greenskins. I had an easy 1500 point army with options already. So far I have expanded on that with the purchase of an Arachnarok Spider and thirty Savage Orcs. Closer to the end of the year I will pick up a war machine or two and snuggle nicely into the final total of 2500.

Here are the models I have finished painting since joining the league. I had some models painted before the league, and some I am in the middle of, but these are the ones started and basically finished since joining. I may go back and do more work later, but they are good enough to go forward with other models.
This comes to fifty four models all told. The break down is thirty three Night Goblins with spears, shields, and full command; 20 Night Goblins with short bows, boss and musician; and a Night Goblin Shaman. This comes to 259 points assuming no further upgrades.

I have learned some things so far with the league. The first is that I am a very poor general. That is okay as I am improving. I am also a very poor painter. In this I mean, my habits are poor. Part of this is physical difficulty, but part is that there are whole weeks where I don't touch a brush at all. I'll be posting some Spider Riders to the Wall of Shame soon if I don't get them finished.

Welcome to the Kibitz Knook



Salutations. I am the host of the Kibitz Knook, Nym Squee Pimpley. The Kibitz Knook is a personal blog with a focus on a variety of gaming topics. In time it should host posts ranging from table top wargaming to pen and paper role playing games to video games. Along the way I will spew out theories I have on gaming along with posts about related topics such as miniature painting and what exactly is the best tool for removing a spear after your cat leaves a model laying next to your bed in the middle of the night.

There may be personal information about myself from time to time as this is a personal blog. This post is one such example as I felt it was prudent to introduce myself along with the blog. I will endeavor to keep any in depth personal information to their own posts so they are easy to skip over should I ever feel the need to post such.

Speaking of myself, I am a wheelchair bound individual. I currently reside in Central California with my three cats and roommate/caregiver. Sometimes her daughter and grandkids along with their cat lives with us. My health waxes and wanes, but even with that I haven’t been able to sit up on my own for about five years. It’s been a slow but gradual degradation that has been taking place since the 1990s. The doctors do not know what exactly is occurring with my body. The most recent theory is Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), but they do not know for certain. I have controlled Type 2 Diabetes and bad cholesterol. Both are nearly to a level of control not worth mentioning, but I’m attempting to be thorough yet brief in case anybody does decide to read this. My health has actually been in a bit of an upswing starting roughly a before writing this. I am able to get to my computer with greater regularity and have been getting out more. Part of the reason for this blog is that I want to write about gaming or flesh out one of the many disjointed game ideas I have while I am able.

My experience with video game consoles includes the Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Gamecube, Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, and the first generation Gameboy DS. The one really comfortable chair that can accommodate me is sitting in front of my computer so I have had little desire to spend much time in front of the television. My first pen and paper roleplaying game was the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. I did a lot of bartering building up from my lunches to buy it and then had to smuggle it to and from school. Smuggling is wrong kids.

So far I have played and run many different RPG systems including Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Palladium, Gurps, Old & New World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, and Savage Worlds among others. The only CCG I’ve spent any real time with was Magic: the Gathering, but I haven’t played in years. I own a bunch of the Marvel and DC VS system cards, but never played. I have an interest in just about any miniatures game I can get my hands on. Steam says I currently own 123 games through that service while Origin has about twenty and over fifty on Good Old Games and yet there are still CDs and other games I have no clue what I have done with them. I used to cycle through MMOs. City of Heroes, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and World of Warcraft are the ones I have played the most, and in that order. The most recent MMO has been Defiance. I just haven’t put in much time with any MMO lately. I’ve also been playing Facebook games lately. One of the ideas I have for a feature is to start a new game for Marvel Avengers Alliance and catalogue what it is like going through with a fresh account since I started mine right before Spec Ops 1.

I think that is more than enough about me for now. Hopefully that will give those of you interested some insight into what you might find here. This should cover all the basics and give me one post to point people at if they ask about me.