Alright, as mentioned here I am working on a Daemons of Chaos army. For the army I need a Herald of Khorne to go with my Bloodletters. As the only Herald model GW makes is Skulltaker (going to be riding a Juggernaught in 3K), I needed an alternative model to represent a generic Herald with Armour of Khorne. I thought I would be able to make one easily enough from bitz in the Bloodletters box but there simply aren’t any. Instead I intend to cop out and buy this.

Forge World. Helping inept modelers for years!

So why am I posting a whole blog article on me shelling out money for Forge World? Because I have absolutely no use for the (cool) Demon Prince. Forge World doesn’t sell them separately. So what’s a jaded gamer to do with a whole Demon Prince he doesn’t need? Give it away, that’s what.

I am going to give away the Forge World Demon Prince of Khorne. To do so, I am going to run a contest. Here’s the skinny:

I am going to place the order with Forge World on March 14 at 9PM MST. I am going to opt for standard shipping. The contest is open until it arrives in the mail (4 – 6 weeks). Once I have it in my hands, I am going to do a random draw of all the entries received between now and then.

How do you enter the contest? Two ways.

1. In honour of the Blood God, donate Blood to your local Blood Bank. Send me an email with proof (date, location and time it took to donate the full amount).
2. In case people have already donated Blood recently, or don’t qualify for whatever reason (damn my love of tattoos), make a donation of at least $25 to the Red Cross to assist in relief for the Earthquake in Japan. Prove it by forwarding me your receipt.

You can enter as many times as you want and each entry improves your chances to win. All entries should be sent to jadednathancast@gmail.com.

Blood for the Blood God!

*EDIT*

As per Jaded Gamer Cast Episode 20, Lange will be throwing in $60 in GW gift certificates or the box of GW product of your choice up to a maximum of $60 (for those of you without a Games Workshop handy).

Wow. What a shit storm the last post created. I had no intention of posting another blog this week but in light of the comments from that last post, I felt the need to clear the air a bit for the weekend and post up another one. I want to straight up say, if ANYONE tries to derail this post into a composition validity argument, I will delete your comments. Let’s not keep beating that dead horse.

The Composition Argument!

The Massacre on Istvaan V was a huge success as far as I’m concerned. This was a little bit surprising to me though, as my colleagues Teri, Kyle and I set out to run an event that was different than anything run before. We ran a narrative slanted campaign tournament with Factions (Horus vs The Emperor). The faction system wasn’t new as we tried it out at June’s 14th Black Crusade and people loved it.

Now due to the very nature of this event, we tried to encourage people to take lists that would fall more in line with this campaign feel and not super optimized lists. Not to mention the fact that we banned any army that didn’t consist of Space Marines (Although we made exceptions and let the stupid furries in). We then experimented with a unique tournament mechanic that we held close to our chests until the morning of: Players can choose their opponents for every round.

For round 1, players selected their first pairings after pledging allegiance to either Horus or the Emperor. A player had choice of selecting his opponent or the table he wished to play on. If you were challenged, you were able to select the table you would play on.

I really, really can't explain this photo. At all.

Now this idea was a carefully constructed social experiment. The big fish know who the other big fish are and we hoped they would stick to their own side of the pond (we were mostly right). With that being said, we still didn’t want to reward the people who were on top by ALWAYS giving them their pick of opponent or table. How do we make sure that doesn’t happen? Pairings are done in reverse order of generalship. First pick belongs to the person with the worst win/loss record and the best record chooses last. Now obviously a lot of people are going to have the same win/loss record. Especially after game 1. So what can you do to still make it fair? Composition.

Seriously Internet, WTF?

Composition was the tie breaker amongst win/loss ratios. This way, a player who is 2-0 with a relatively soft list will get to choose before a player who is 2-0 with a mother fucker list. Other than that, composition was weighted to affect your earned battle points by 10% or less. Nominal. It actually worked out that if you took the hardest list you could and earned max BPs every game, you would lose less points than your painting score provided your army was painted to an above average quality. Finally, we projected the names of all the player’s in their selection order. This allowed someone who didn’t know anyone (because it was his first tournament) to still choose a gamer who is of equal merit.

I personally love this composition system because it addresses everyone’s concerns nicely. Everyone has a fun time and we had 0 complaints with it.

Let me know what you think in the comments but be warned, I will not let this get derailed.

A lot of bad things have been said about my friend composition of late and I’m not about to lay down and watch him take it. After all, if people know anything about me it’s my devilish good looks and sophistication. If they know anything else, it’s that I will happily stand behind internet anonymity and defend an intangible concept!

Here's to you Intangible Concept!

I’m not going to go in to the history of army composition or even the ways it can be horribly bungled and leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. We all know and have experienced bad composition before. I instead want to talk about its place in tournaments.

If you are a gamer thinking about attending an event (notice the lack of the word tournament?) you need to look at what the event is hoping to accomplish. If the purpose of the event is to have fun, show off your army and not really care about winning or losing, then go to that event with an appropriate army. Your mech-vet spam list won’t be appreciated and is certainly not wanted. If you would rather go to a tournament that only rewards generalship and doesn’t care about anything else, bring your mech-vet spam list to that event and go to town.

Same goes for tournament organizers(TOs), understand what type of event you want to host before you start advertising. This will inevitably help in ensuring the wrong kinds of armies aren’t crashing the door.

The biggest problem with army composition as it has been executed in the last decade is that TOs simply used army composition regardless of the style of event. Pair this with a failed understanding on how to manage such an intangible concept and lazy ways (checklists) to try and police it and what do you get? The angst of gamers magnified by the power of the internet.

Does this mean every event should have composition? No. Absolutely not. This comes down to the TOs understanding the kind of events they are running. The Bay Area Open wants to see who the best general is and is running their event appropriate to that goal. They don’t have composition. They shouldn’t have composition. The Massacre on Istvaan V wanted to tell a story and even limited the armies player’s were allowed to take. Should they then use army composition to encourage player’s to bring armies true to the fluff and in the spirit of the narrative event they want to run? Yes!

I think the biggest problem is that gamer’s who want to be ass hats and bring their douche lists want to show up to events where they aren’t welcome or wanted. Because their style of play and army is anathema to the desires of the TOs, they get hit with bad comp and whine online. My suggestion is, don’t show up. If you hate an aspect of an event that much, don’t validate the TOs by paying money, YOUR money, to attend their event and play in their playground. If you stay home, trust me when I say that you’ll be happier and so will they.

I end this post with a random non-sensical demotivational poster.

You're Welcome.

…I started a Blog.

Expect Lange and I to post random things here as the mood strikes us. My primary focus for the blog is going to be on painting. Tips, tricks, army progress. You name it.

To kick it off, I want my inaugural post to let everyone know what they can expect for the next few months in regards to what I am painting and thus the techniques I am going to share.

Demons. Specifically the 2000 point Demon army I am preparing for the Las Vegas Throne of Skulls GT in June.

I know I ragged on the Throne of Skulls format (and I do still hate it) but the opportunity to rub shoulders with the who’s who of the North American tournament scene and shamelessly self-promote jadedgamercast was too much to pass up. Besides, Vegas baby!

The tournament is 101 days away and I have all this to build and paint.

Not Pictured: Bloodthirster, Seekers, Time

That right there is the majority of the 72 model army I am fielding at 2000 points. As of this morning, I have 11 painted. That leaves me with 61 models. Not quite 1 every day but still a whole lot.

I’m not going to post my list right now as I really want to focus on the painting instead.

As mentioned in the higher learning for Demons (both of them) the models are really gorgeous and let you go to town as a painter. Consequently, I worked hard to build a list that had at least some representation from every God of Chaos. Some are more heavily favoured than others (here’s to you Nurgle and Khorne!) but I thought the visual look of the army would suffer without it.

As the timeline is quite aggressive, I have dubbed March to be Nurgle month. If I am to succeed in my goal, I need to have all of my Nurgle models painted before the month is out. So far, it seems doable. We’ll see how it pans out.

With that, I leave this inaugural post with a picture of a complete (except his base) Plaguebearer. Expect tips and step by steps to be forthcoming on the different effects I did on him.

The Face Only a Mother Could Love

I apologize for the picture quality; they were taken with my phone. Once I remember to charge the battery on the good camera, pictures will definitely improve.

Let me know what you would like me to talk about next. Step by step painting guides, the list and my reasoning or even my list building process. Leave it in the comments.

Cheers!