This Geek's (Thanksgiving) Week...

**Due to being out of town all of last week visiting the In-laws, and being sick on top of that, this time around I won't be doing the normal daily format for this "This Geek's Week" post.
WARNING: puking will be a common theme in this post!
All in all, I hope everyone's Thanksgiving week was less eventful than mine!

- So, we left Tuesday November 20th for our 8 hour drive from Kansas to Memphis TN.  My daughter (who wasn't feeling great to begin with the night before) started throwing up in the car about 4 hours into the trip.  Stopped, got everything cleaned up, then had to decide whether or not to turn around and drive 4 hours back home (what I would've done) or continue the 4 hour trip to the In-laws.  Seeing as my wife was the one driving, and it was her family, I had her make the call.

- Once there, everything seem to settle down.  I brought Sentinels of The Multiverse with me, and played 2 games of it that night with the bro-in-law after teaching him the game.  We lost the 1st game to Omnitron (poor hero choices) but easily smoked Ambuscade in the 2nd game.  Then, I started feeling ill myself.  Later that night, about 12-1 am, I ended up puking my guts out... EVERYWHERE!  Even now, I question whether or not I'll be able to eat another beef-stick or peanut butter cup ever again!

- Wednesday.  Slept for 20 hours... literally.  The rest of the vacation was a bit of a blur.

-Thursday, I felt a bit better, so I ate Thanksgiving dinner with everyone else.  Kinda regretted it, as my belly hadn't fully recovered.  Luckily, I kept it all in.  My daughter however, did not.  (Even though she really didn't eat anything at dinner)  That one I blame on the wife feeding her a bunch of greek yogurt and other stuff just before bed, despite telling her I thought it was a bad idea to give her that much dairy when we already new her stomach was on the sensitive side these last few days.

- Friday, took my daughter to a random doctor (another reason why we should've turned around imho), and because we were out of state, had to pay for the visit out of pocket.  $200 is nothing when it comes to the well being of my family... not to mention I would've gladly paid $200 to not get puked all over for like a fourth time that trip!

- Now, it wasn't ALL bad!  I did end up playing Skyrim for the 1st time, and absolutely fallen in LOVE with the game! (Especially the Argonians)  I had played one of the very early Elder Scrolls games, and just couldn't get into it, so I think I may had wrongly written off the whole series which is why I never got around to playing it despite all the internet fanboyism surrounding Skyrim.  Needless to say, I played that all weekend long, and ended up buying myself a copy for the PS3 to bring back home!  In addition to Skyrim, I also picked up Dead Space, and Batman: Arkham Asylum, both of which have also been on my "to play" list for the longest time, I just never had gotten around to picking them up.  Sunday, I also introduced my brother-in-law to Mechwarrior Online, and showed him the ropes a bit. I say that, because MWO can have a bit of a learning curve to it imo.  I also ended up finishing "A Dance with Dragons" on the trip as well, and moved on to a Battletech novel, "Way of the Clans".  I'm all nostalgic for "Way of the Clans", as it was the first sci-fi novel that I ever went out and purchased with my own money back in the early 90's.  I actually never even got around to truly reading it, as at the time it was waaay of my head, but I can remember constantly going over the mech schematics in the back of the book, and pretending to pilot a "Hellbringer, which was back then, and still to this day, remains one of my favorite mechs.  It was also a pain in the butt to find and get ahold of at a reasonable price.

- Now it's Monday the 26th, and we finally made it back!  My daughter is sleeping soundly, and hasn't gotten sick for a few days.  On my end, my stomach is feeling better as well.  Not perfect, maybe feeling about 90%, but I can live with that.  Hopefully things will be getting back to normal, and I can start playing my new games tomorrow...

This Geek's Week...

A bit light this week... and with being out of town all next week, I predict another light week to come...

Monday

- Slapped together a chaos and empire deck for Warhammer: Invasion and a Targaryen Dragon deck for A game of Thrones.

Wednesday

- Tweaked my Scorpion Clan Magistrate and Ninja decks for L5R.

Thursday

- Picked up a couple of Chapter packs for A game of Thrones.

- Played 6 games of Netrunner.  3 with my Noise deck and 3 with my NBN.  I won all my games with my NBN deck, twice via Scorched Earth kills, and once via agendas.  However, I lost all my games with Noise.  A couple of them were close, but I think I put way too much emphasis on the Viruses, and in general, my economy sucked.  He just seems to take way too much time to set up.  I think I need to play him as more of a normal runner, while using only a few viruses like data sucker to augment his inability to pump up his icebreakers.  If this doesn't work then I'm just going to go back to playing my Criminals exclusively.

Plans for my 40k Eldar army...

Let me preface this by saying I HATE "Net Lists", people who have broken 40k down to numbers and science, ally abusers, the whole lot... for me, it takes a lot of the fun out of the game.  I'm a bit of a fluff player, in that if the fluff says an army doesn't have access to something, I won't use it, if fluff says something is rare, I wont spam it.  That said, I do still strive for some kind competitiveness, and firmly believe there can be some sort of happy medium between a fluff list and a competitive one.  The reason I'm staying all this before hand is so that whomever reads this will know I didn't look up the latest "internet hawt-list" for the Eldar (if there even is such a thing), and as I break down my reasoning behind unit choices, you'll probably notice plenty of "non-optimized units" and poor unit choices as well as 1 or 2 descent ones.

The whole list I made is based off of experience with previous editions, a single demo game of 6th ed, and after reading through the 6th ed rule book... one time.  Needless to say it's all theory crafting.  More important than building a hardcore list, this will serve as a "to buy" list to get me to start collecting and building an Eldar army. In addition, I was looking for a list that would break down easily into other values like 1k, 1500, or 1850.  

With all that said, on with the list!

This Geek's Week...

More, more, more LCG's!

Monday

- Played a couple of rounds of Space Marine's "Exterminatus" mission, solo.

- Painted some on my Eldar D-Cannon, but I think I may need to redo it a bit.  The solid "Alaitoc Blue" i was going to do looked a little bland.  I think I will do a mottled pattern instead.

- I also began to cast a Summoner mech for Battletech. (Shame, shame, I know)  The Battletech intro box came with a ton of mechs, 2 of which were clan mechs (Summoner & Hellbringer, my 2 personal favorites) in a high quality, multi-part plastic format.  However, they are also at a larger scale than the original.  As a Jade Falcon fan (hence why those 2 mechs are my favorite) I had originally planned to use the Summoner as my primary mech for my Falcon lances, with the only addition(s) being a light Kit Fox.  Thus rather than trying to track down 4+ of the summoners from the intro box, I decided to try and cast my own instead.  As an added bonus, I'm hoping the Summoner/Hellbringer's larger scale will also give the Kit Fox the appropriate look of a light mech on the tabletop.  Casting is definitely a unique part of the miniature hobby experience, and a challenge to say the least.  (or I should say one I have not mastered yet)  If you haven't done so, give it a try!  It'll definitely make you more appreciative of the work that goes into crafting miniatures.

Tuesday

- Did a little more painting on my Eldar.  I also realized that I needed to thin down my yellows a bit more, and now they flow and go on much better!

Wednesday

- Painted a bit more of my Eldar.  I also started a test model for a future Imperial Fists project now that I have a better handle on the yellow situation.

- Played a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse vs Citizen Dawn, and we... got... rocked!  I just don't think we had an ideal team set up for it.

- Played a 4 player game of Warhammer Invasion.  It was Orks and Dark Elves vs Empire and Dwarves.  I ended up losing as the Dark Elf player, but it's such a fun game!  I think I may have to pick some of it up...

- Did a demo game of Netrunner and found it fairly easy to teach.

- Played a game of Elder Sign vs Hastur.  We got close to beating him via Elder Signs, but he ended up awaking on us.  We then ended up defeating him the old fashioned way, without losing a single investigator.

- Finished the night with a game of Smash Up.  I played as Ninja/Robots, and ended up tied for 2nd/3rd at 13 points.

Friday

- Played 2 games of Killzone 3. (botzone)  I haven't played KZ in FOREVER, I used to be pretty good, playing both online as well as botzone on the highest setting.  This time around, due to rust, I played botzone on the mid setting.  Did ok K/D wise  at 24/8 and 34/14, but back when I was playing daily those were typical scores for online play and the hardest botzone settings.  I'm now slow, and my aim is a bit off! =P

- Dismantled my Criminal and Weyland decks for Netrunner.  They worked really, really well for me (if you've been reading these, I've been posting my results), so I kept them written down.  Built an Anarch deck for something new on the runner side, and an NBN deck on the corp side.  Hopefully I can test em out sometime soon...

Saturday

- Played a bunch of L5R.  I lost vs Phoenix using my "for fun" ninja scorpion deck.  Although, the Phoenix player (and myself for not catching it) made a pretty big mistake that affected the outcome of the game.  I then got to play against a real "high end" player visiting the shop.  He runs the semi-local kotei (national) tournaments.  I played his Scorpion Dishonor vs my Crab Berserkers.  The game went in my favor pretty quickly, despite a slow start on my part.  We followed that up with a game against my Scorpion Dishonor vs his KL mantis, and I... got... spanked... HARD!  My deck had a rough start, but it was no real excuse, his deck was just waaay better! Before he left though, he hooked myself and several of the players there up with both free packs and promos!  What a great L5R night!

- Played several games of Netrunner, both using my newly built NBN and Noise decks.  the first two games I used my NBN.  The first game was over so quickly it barely counted!  I waited till I had 2x Scorched Earth in my hand, advanced breaking news to 2 but waited to score next turn. Runner drew cards/gained credits then my turn I scored breaking news and Scorched Earth for the kill.  2nd game went much the same, but at a slower pace as it took longer to get my second Scorched Earth hand.  Then I tried my new Noise deck, and it didn't work so well.  I started the first game hitting hard and fast, scoring several quick agenda points.  Eventually, my deck stalled out, and i couldn't get the final agenda point in time.  Next game with my Noise deck was bad from the start.  Made a couple of dumb plays early on, and the game went south.  Oh well, it was my first time trying Noise out, and I think I learned a thing or two about what I need to do to tweak his deck.  His play style was completely different from earlier Criminal deck, and I think I was still stuck in Criminal mode while playing him.

- Tweaked my Noise deck for Netrunner.

- Picked up the Warhammer: Invasion LCG core box set.

Sunday

- Played a game with my Noise deck, I lost again, but I'm on the right track as far as deck building goes.  I need to further tweak him a bit more and get some more experience to get a handle on a play style for him.

- Picked up the Game of Thrones LCG core box set in a trade.

- Tweaked my Noise deck again.

Netrunner Decklist: Gabriel Santiago - "Always the Professional"

This has been the Criminal deck that I have been running in Netrunner since I picked up my second core set box.  Although it looks and feels rather basic, it has worked really well. (Undefeated so far)  As I've mentioned before, when it comes to Netrunner, games are won and lost based on a player's decisions and gameplay throughout the game, and not deck building perfection.  Hence, why a basic deck like this can work... it has an answer for everything I have encountered so far.  Another perk of it being rather basic means that there are plenty of sub-optimal card choices built in, making updating it when new cards come out much easier.  Also, I should note that this deck was created using the CardGameDB.com Android: Netrunner Deck Builder.  If you have not checked out CardGameDB.com before and are into ANY of FFG's LCGs, then you probably should!  Anyway, on with the deck...

This Geek's Week...

This week was pretty much all about MWO!

Tuesday

- Played a couple of games of Mechwarrior online.  Rebuilt my Commando 2-D after the latest wipe for like the 4th time.

Thursday

- Played several rounds of Mechwarrior online.  If you haven't already, I'd suggest giving it a try as its in open beta right now.  It's more of a mech sim than a twitchy shooter like Call of Duty though, and it's way better if you can get in group to play as tactics are vital!  Give it a try, join Housesteiner.com and add me under the name "WuhSawBe".

Friday

- Played a for more rounds of MWO while my daughter napped.

Saturday

- Played MWO, then played MWO a ton more!  Literally, for several hours that night.  So, yeah, I've been bit by the Battletech/MWO bug once again!

The Traveler: My Sentinels of the Multiverse "Design a Villain" entry...

Back in September, the creators of "Sentinels of the Multiverse" had a "Design a Villain" contest with a Time travel/alternate dimension theme.  Sentinels gets played a TON up at the local shop, and I'm definitely a fan, so I jumped at the chance to submit something.  Sadly, I didn't win, but I thought I would share exactly what I submitted to "Greater Than Games".  (Note: if you are not familiar with the mechanics behind Sentinels, then a lot of what I'm listing out will mean little to you!)

"THE TRAVELER"

I envisioned something kind of like
the Shade from DC comics.

Aliases: Drake Dexter
Age: 47 (at the time of receiving his powers)
Height: 5’ 8”
Weight: 157 lbs
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Brown
Birthplace: Unknown
Power Source: Mystical/Alien
Group Affiliation: None
Occupation: Time Traveler, self-proclaimed god
First Appearance: Mystical Mysteries #4

Nemesis: The Visionary

Physical Appearance- 

"Gentlemen" looks.  Early 1900's black tuxedo, top hat, white gloves, monocle, and black cane with a silver "ball" on top.

Backstory - 

A shrewd business man from a wealthy background, Drake Dexter felt there was nothing outside the reach of his money... and what his money couldn't buy, he could always pay someone else to steal.  A museum exhibit made the front page of the "Herald", and the main attraction was a priceless orb recovered from a recently discovered sunken city in the south pacific.  Drake attended the unveiling, and was instantly mystified by the orb... he knew he MUST have it all for himself!  As usual, he knew the museum "stiffs" would refused to sell, so as usual in these cases he sought some outside help to acquire the orb.