Tried Diablo 3 again, got fed up in 10 seconds flat

I tried to play Diablo 3 again. I quite enjoyed my first playthrough, but the always online thingy annoyed me.
So I try to log in and what happens: Error 3 Login Information incorrect.
After 2 1/2 hours later I had set up another admin account for my PC, had changed my password, deleted my cache multiple times, even trawled Blizzards annoying ticket system. (No, if I write "Problem with login" i do not mean "I can't take part in a promotion")
I decided to do post on the forums. Could not log in. Then I tried to detach my Authenticator. Didn't work via the account. Finally I managed to do it via phone.

And suddenly I could log into the game! I chose my Barbarian Korgar, ran into some sewers and shreddered my way through a bunch of snakemen. As I lept into a group of enemies, axes swinging wildly, the old Diablo feeling was establishing itself. I dropped to 30% health and Revenge popped up. I pressed the hotkey to use it and heal my self up and mighty Korgar ... stood there. Just stood there, while nothing happened for a second.
Then another one.
Then he keeled over and died, slain by lag. Tadadada!

Let's have a hurray for forced online play!
Hip, hip, fuck you, Blizzard!


At that point I shrugged quit the game, loaded up the next episode of Doctor Who and started painting my next Freebooter Amazon.

Be aware, be safe. Don't let a pile of cruiseships fall on you.
Fenris

Werewolves are better than Vampires

I wrote a little article on Kaya the Moonhunter for Lost Hemisphere. Have a look at it here.

More Infinity and a Spider

Found this little guy hanging around my balcony. May he destroy any gnat that dares trespass on my property!









And now more Infinity:

Line Kazaks

Hassassin Muyibs

Tankhunters

Tankhunters Back

Cheers
Fenris

Photodump: Clouds, Black Ivan WIP and a first foray into Infinity

Bought a tripod for my Camera. Turns out that it can hold it much more steady than I can. And then some clouds came along.

Believe it or not, this is Bonn, not rural Germany. In fact this is the view from my window.
Also, I'm getting into Infinity, so here is a Scotsman of the Ariadna faction...

God, Infinity miniatures are tiny. But awesome sculpts!

and a Jannissary of the Haqqislam faction.

Damn Camera stole the accents from the blade and gun.

And finally something Warmachine:

WIP Black Ivan commands me to paint for the Empress and the Motherland!

By the way studiying for semester finals sucks when it's so hot andhumid that you start sweating from reading. I'm contemplating moving to Khador and becoming a Greylord, just so I can cast Blizzard on myself. (Bonus: Fuzzy hat!)

Cheers
Fenris

PS: Tartans are a bloody horrible lass of a dog to paint. Excuse my poor attempt at Scottish.

RPC 2012 - Pictures

Yesterday I visited the RPC in Cologne with my Cousin. Weather sucked hard, lot's of light rain and quite cold. Buuuut, have some pictures.

Upon entering we immediately saw a sign pointing to the kids area.

 Lots of LARPing stuff to be had.

We headed through the Hall with the PC games where a loud man with a fake lightsaber was yelling stuff about Star Wars: The Old Republic Online to the tabletop area. We were greeted by a woman with a slightly wooden demeanour.

 The Freebooter's Fate booth was awesome as always. I really need to get into that game. It has no dice, but works with cards, very attractive if your average on 3d6 is a five.

 My Cousin playing a demo game, while I ran around taking pictures.

 Awesome Costumes, awesome tables. I want to build a bay with a ship wreck as a gaming table now. And a sunken Aztek temple. Which fit none of my Wargames factions. *sadpanda* Just means I don't have enough factions. *dangerous thought*

 

Dun dun dun ....

Highlights of the demo game: I. Goblin Pirate climbs up to a Pirate Musketeeress (Is that a word?) and promptly gets pushed down the tower by her, landing squarely on his face. II. Pissed of pirate gal runs at a bunch of goblins to skewer them with her sword, but is beset by Polly the Parrot looking for a cracker, making her flub all her attack rolls/draws(? you can't roll cards...).

After the game we returned to the PC games hall, because Malte had to play Aion. A free to play MMORPG. Why you have to do that at a Con eludes me. The guy with the light saber was now demonstrating some game, where you picked nicely colored symbols from circles to make your guy stab and whack stuff with your sword. Graphic sucked, so I guess it was some Console game. But if you stand behind someone and whack him with a two-handed sword he takes more damage. Wow, Id never guess that!
Seriously, is it so difficult to come up with good sword fighting in a game? Skyrim did it, but in most fantasy first person games I click people dead. Lame!

Soo, Aion. The game with the wings. I have it on good authority (the blond guy in the picture) that it sucks. And though the banner in the background might suggest it, Khorne did not have a booth this year.







Costumes!

I did not expect the Imperial Inqisition. Actually I did. There is always someone with a cool Witchhunter costume. I don't think they found any witches though.

Someone might have misunderstood the roleplaying involved in this con. But then, she was giving out flyers for the Warhammer card game Invasion. Cue Archaon: "I'm going to invade the realms of men by playing a CHILDREN'S CARD GAME!" Ever watched Yugioh: The abbriged series? Well you should!

 If the world ends, I'll stick with these guys. They are cool. I saw their awesome stuff last year already, but this time they had really upped the ante with two vehicles and a tent.

There were also a lot of Airsoft players running around in full combat gear.

 This time its the Empire, not the Imperium. (Distinction only makes sense in English)










Lord Vader. Badassness incarnate. One of the few characters whose voice actor I like more in the german version.
Looks like he is recruiting.

That's how you look cool when fencing.













Back to the tabletop area

 "Stell dir vor es ist Warhammer und keiner geht hin." That's how that would look.

 Still nice gaming tables. Though my Imperial Guard might run into problems with their 9+ tanks and AFVs.

More sucky photos of gorgeous Freebooter miniatures.

 Le sigh. There was a couple dressed up as the Vodoo guy on the left and the creepy rat lady (not shown)

Can't see shit, Captain!

The cats (Oncas) had an espeacially beuatiful paintjob. Spider Amazon? Mantis Amazon? Crocodile Amazon? I think I just found my faction.









Back at the Tabletop testing area I played demogames of Dystopian Wars and Infinity.
Dystopian wars was nice, though my dice kept exploding. (If you roll a 6 you get a succes and roll again. If you get another 6 repeat. Guess what happened.) Now I want a fleet of war Zeppelins.
Infinity was great fun to play. Now I get why it is a shooting game. One of my line troopers blew away my opponent's strongest model in a round of shooting with his rifle. My opponent had problems to wrap his head around the fact, that his miniatures could react to moves made by me. He just tried to shoot back every time and was pasted by superior firepower.
I also watched a game of Mercs. Looked interesting, but I think I understood barely half of the game.

After the games I decided to have alook at the medieval market outside. Luckily I had my raincoat. It was a wash. I was looking to get a horn, not to drink from, but to make noises with. But there were only ones with the annoying plastic things inside that goe "FWEEEEEEE!" to be had. The food however was good. Meat on a stick and bread. Can't go wrong with that.

Speaking of charred meat:

Hang over your fireplace for that unique Dragon Slayer look.

Some more random stuff:

No Creepers to be found, except the one on the Tshirt. Whew!

They are lying! They spoke perfect German! I felt rather dumb adressing them in English and getting answers in German.

They say dress for the job you want. What if I would want this job? No, not mannequin.

After drifting around a little, I went to collect my cousin. We just wanted to leave, when they started a Live Raid on the buffed.de booth in SW: The Old Republic Online, so we had to watch that till the first boss. It looked like World of Warcraft with slightly smaller, glowy swords and a lot smaller shoulderpads.Roleplay seems to be quite good however, as my cousin told me. I might try it out if I should suddenly  have hours upon hours to burn on it.
And apparently the cool guys play the evil side again.

Also played 10 Minutes of Risen 2. Looks nice. Pirates and Voodoo are cool.

Finally we left. My Cousin with a metric ton of dice (won't roll well, everybody knows only dice you get as presents roll well) and me with a hand-and-a-half sword, some Freebooter minis and a boatload of flyers.

Next year, I'll have to buy a ticket for both days.

Fenris

Shooting flowers

cause they don't shoot back. Or move. Which can get annoying, when you just want to try out your camera.

Some red flowers.

Some white flowers.

Some blue flowers, not that good a photo. Still getting the hang of it. Also the colour isn't really correct, but you won't notice unless you visit my parents garden.

Tried to get a picture of the full moon. Didn't work so well because it was at night. (duh!) But the result still looked cool.

Cheers
Fenris

Where now the horse and the rider?

I have always been a sucker for cavalry. I absolutely loved  Tolkien's depiction of the Horse Lords of Rohan in Lord of the Rings. Elves, Dwarves? Not for me, Vikings on Horseback it is! This  often lead me to pick factions with a focus on cavalry in video games. I swept everything before me with my Ritterbrüder cavalry in Medieval 2: TW and my heart soared everytime my artillery had weakened the enemy enough to order an all out charge with my Cuirassiers and Hussars in Empire: TW.

Knights who don't say ni.

Sadly this did not expand to the tabletop. In Warhammer 40k I played the Space Wolves and while they had cavalry in the form of bikers, I ran them once and they sucked. I never really got into Warhammer Fantasy, so that was that. (I still have an Idea for an Empire list but that would probably cost more for the core troops than two Warmachine armies)

Then I started Warmachine and lo and behold. My faction Khador derives from ancient Khardic horselords. Though this was not my primary concern when choosing the faction, I soon noticed I could run lots of cavalry. One unit of Uhlans and three solos. There is even Vlad's theme list which allows you to run 11 cavalry models at once. I was in the process of building this theme force when Privateer Press dropped a bomb.

Vlad: My horse better be amazing!

A cavalry caster!

Coming out in July. What's my birthday? Oh right, July. Thanks PP. Gone are the days of envy for the Swans cavalry caster. Now what to run with him? Since whe know next to nothing about his spell list, the prudent thing would be to hold of on choices, analyze him when he comes out and then run the most competitive choices.

F**k prudent, f**k competitive! This is what I will run:

• Vladimir Tzepesci, Great Prince of Umbrey
• Drago
• Full Iron Fang Uhlans
• Uhlan Kovnik Markov
• Manowar Drakhun
• Fenris
• Gun Carriage Battle Engine
• Min Steelhead Heavy Cavalry
• Stannis Brocker, Steelhead Commander of Ternon Crag
• Alexia Ciannor, Mistress of the Witchfire

Assuming Vlad still has 5 Jackpoints, this adds up to exactly 50 points. 16 models, 14 of them heavy cavalry, one a Battle Engine that behaves like cav. *insert mad scientist laugh here* There's also some room to cut and adjust. Lose Alexia and max out the Steelheads. Since we might even get light cav in colossals, maybe switch those in.
It's the time of the horselords come again! So how much cavalry can I paint till July? And why do I not have Fenris yet?


I'm on a horse!
Fenris

"But a force of Iron Fangs would also look really cool with Mr Giant-Shoulders." SHUT UP, BRAIN!