Arkham: Freshmen Year

This fall the Dark Knight faces his greatest foe, high school. I kid, thankfully Arkham High is not the name of the this year's Unreal powered Batman brawler. The full title shall be BATMAN: Arkham Origins, and will be busting through a giant plate window this October 25.

As the name suggests we will be getting a prequel to the previous games, just don't expect any ski-mask wearing Bruce. The story takes place after he has donned the cowl, but before getting Super Friend level street cred. Though the Batman's reputation is large enough to have eight assassins (including Deathstroke) sent to off him. These shall be the central villains, but as usual the city is just silly with ne'er do wells (just non that you have faced in the past, or is it the future).  The setting is of course Gotham city, but gasp, it will be snowy, because the adventure takes place on Christmas eve (how tall is the Bat-Tree?).

Warhammer, Warmachine, Battletech, and other games that have "War" in the title

PAX was just this past weekend, and I spent a good chunk of my time trying out miniatures games.  Something about army men with rules is incredibly compelling to my spergy mind.

I tried Warhammer, Warmachine, BattleTech, and X-Wing while I was there.

What I'm looking for in a tactics game are these criteria -
1. Crunchy battle system.  It should have tons of rules, and give me room to strategize my movements and attacks more effectively than my opponent.
2. Metagame - I want to buy a game (army?) that I can pick up and bring to a game store and find people to play with.
3. Cost - I don't want to break the bank here, if possible.
4. Flavor - It's gotta have hooks that get me interested.

Warhammer 40k
As far as I know, Warhammer is the original.  It's been around for years and years, and features various space races battling each other.  I played a group of Eldar which are sort of like Protoss, against a team of SpaceWolves.  There's also vanilla Warhammer, which is a high fantasy version with similar rules.

B+ on Battle System - it's fun, but it seems kind of slow, and I had trouble intuiting how powerful a unit was versus the other.  Also, I had a situation where my units were completely unable to damage one of my enemy's units, which is rather frustrating.  There's also a lot of dice to roll when your infantry shoot 3 times each from a group of 8 soldiers.

A on metagame - People play this game all over the place.

C on cost - There was an intro set available for $100, but it seems like a true army is quite a bit more than that, and then you have to buy all the paints, and the sheer amount of units means more painting.

A- on flavor.  I guess it would be higher if I had played the Orks or whatever the Necromancer race is.  They've got some good stuff to work with here.

Warmachine
Warmachine is only a few years old, and has a "Hordes" version as well which is akin to vanilla Warhammer.  However, they are designed and balanced to be able to be played against each other, which is, as they say, valuetown.  I played the Protectorate of Menoth vs. the Cygnar Dominion, which was like crusaders vs Terrans.

A- on Battle System - fewer units than Warhammer, and there were sweet spells in addition to just shooting.  Not as many units, its more of a squad than an army.  There was a lot of decision making about how to use the units, and how to power them up. Where Warhammer was more, these guys move, these guys shoot, Warmachine had decisions about how many shots the units would get, saving "Focus" for spells, etc.

A- on Metagame - I haven't tested this thoroughly, but it seems like there is slightly less Warmachine than Warhammer at stores.

C+ on Cost - Fewer models = less paint, less buying.  Still a significant cost here - the starter was also $100.

A+ on Flavor - The races are just awesome.  The firey crusaders, the Siberian Russian tank-mechs, all of this stuff really works for me.

BattleTech
For those not in the know, this is the universe that spawned MechWarrior.  It's got lots of history, and the game has been around for a while, but I had only played it once before.  The way they had it set up was like Deathmatch - you spawned in a mech, and fought until someone died, then they respawn as a bigger mech. We had a strange duel since I one shotted Kevin with my SRM in the second volley.  Right through an exhaust vent, just like bullseying womp rats back home in my T-16.

A+ on Battle System - Kevin couldn't handle the number of dice, but I loved the level of detail.  You track hits to your mech on their actual armor, and you can blow arms legs, engines off if you hit in the right spot.  Because its Mechwarrior, I imagine there is a lot of customization you can do before the battle to decide what weapons to have for a given battle.

C on Metagame - Sadly, I've never seen someone play this before.  I imagine you could run it like DnD and get games with your friends, but that's not reliable enough for me.

A+ on Cost - the starter set was $60, and if you're only playing with friends, thats all you need.

B- on flavor - It's just mechs.  Not a whole lot else going on here.

X-Wing
A miniatures game using the various ships from Star Wars.  I was falling asleep while I watched this being demo'd, but it plays a lot like Steambirds, an iOS and Flash app.  Unlike the other games, you set your orders in secret, and execute them simultaneously.  So you have very set moves you can do, with corresponding templates.  Interesting mechanic.

A on Battle System - I can't really comment much on this, as I didn't play as thoroughly as the other games, but it seemed fun, so I don't want to ding it here.

B on Metagame - I've also never seen people playing it, but it seems like a much easier game to play in small doses with friends than BattleTech.

A+ on Cost - $40.  And that's really all you need.  No painting.  If you want, you can add on ships like the Milennium Falcon or Slave I ($30 each).

A+ on Flavor - Cmon, it's Star Wars.  And OT, as well. Which stands for "Only Trilogy".

I didn't end up buying anything, but if I lived closer to a game store, I would be dropping cash on Warmachine.  It ended up mainly coming down to Metagame. I want to be able to play if I'm going to spend money and time on a game like this.

-Derek

Behold the coming of the Oculi!

The bit of tech news that came out of GDC this year (that hasn't been related to PS4 or the next gen systems) is about the virtual reality peripheral known as the Oculus VR. To give the basics, this is a head mount visor that contains a 720p screen, the screen is housed behind lens to give the user a immersive 110 degree stereoscopic 3D field of vision. The head piece is also equipped with sensitive accelerometers for a snappy image tracking. What advancement in super science do we have to thank for this piece of tech? Cell phones. As far as cool things go, watch out sliced bread, cause the Oculus is coming for that ass.

Thus far Oculus is only offering pre-orders of their development kit, which does come with a nifty visor (though the one pictured about is only the prototype design), and access to their developer message boards. Though you can just toss in some bucks for their kickstarter if you feel generous, but they have over 2 million, soooo your not obligated.

I am pumped for this. Granted, the scent of new gadgetry always gets me hot and bothered; virtual reality being no exception, but a younger me thought this day was coming sooner. Since at one point  I thought the Virtual Boy was the true beginning of home 3D, not to mention the bee's knees too.

                   
As well as...

100+

I would love to thank all of our awesome readers for giving us our first 100+ pairs of eyes!
Also a nod to our new readers from the UK, Russia, and France. Hello, Privet, and Bonjour!

And as always, leave us a comment.
Love,
The Loaded Dice Cast

D&D 5e? NEXT!

A Taste of What is to Come

At PAX East, I had the dubious privilege of playtesting D&D's next edition, cleverly titled "D&D Next."  Ostensibly, one day soon, Wizards of the Coast will realize (or has realized, but is just being stubborn) how absolutely silly a name this is for a variety of reasons.  But for now, that is the appellation we are saddled with.  Not only, once D&D 6e inevitably comes out, will this name, should it stay, feel as anachronistic as that really sweet-at-the-time Staind tattoo that your shitbird friend has, but it so inaccurately reflects the sentiment and feeling of this latest version of D&D as to boggle the mind.  This sort of decision making has set the tone for the entire process.  The tone is set.

Edition Wars Declarations and Caveats

And now as any good discussion of D&D must contain, the caveats and declarations:  Firstly, I am a 4e kid.  Despite fervent childhood aspirations to actually play Dungeons and Dragons, the closest I ever came to manifesting them was a couple of games of Hero Quest with my loving but completely-not-into-it father.  I finally had the werewithal and the lack of shame to start playing D&D in my mid 20s, and the edition to play was 4e.  I love this version, and I think there are good reasons for that, but I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that everyone has "their" version of D&D.  Additionally, I'm basing this opinion on, essentially, one playtest and a perusal of the material made available (which is changing in inexplicable ways all the time.)


Playtest Impressions:

Myself, Derek and Mikey C sat down with a couple other dudes to try D&D Next. All of us, to a man, 4e kids or blank slate D&D Noobs. We essentially were flying blind.  "Wow us, WOTC!," we said.

An immediate adjustment was needed;  We were informed by a very affable, cooperative (He allowed us to rename the main villain to Bub Rub) and seemingly competent Dungeon Master (who, self admittedly, did not have a ton of experience with Next) that the helpful minis and grids that we had clung to were gone.  We were in a dangerous place known as "The Theatre of the Mind."  Wow, that's different...I wonder how combat is going to work?  (Spoiler alert:  Shitty.)   Well, let's exercise them brain muscles.

Now let's examine these character sheets.  Hmmm, this is...short.  One page?   Well, I'm a dwarf fighter. That should be fun.  Let's kick some fucking doors in and get this adventure moving.  I was glad to get this character because it meant that, in many ways, I could control the pace of our adventure, and ensure that we delved deep and didn't durdle about.  Oh, what a naive fool I was.

Examining my powers, I discovered that the list was quite short.  Although my stats and modifiers were essentially familiar to anyone who had ever looked at a character sheet, my abilities were...sparse.  Verisimilitude considerations aside, I was rather disappointed to discover that in regards to combat my dwarf could essentially do one thing: Swing his axe at someone.  In regards to special powers, I had the ability to expend additional d6 to either parry blows or add extra damage.  How overwhelmingly thrilling.  Besides that I had some "Dwarves know stuff about rocks and digging" ability ostensibly used for exploration.

In any case, there is still much to be hopeful about.  After all, this play test is probably going to be action packed, and show off all the new mechanics.  Everyone will have their chance to shine, and everything will become clear in time.  What is our adventure?  Oh, a repurposed 1e adventure called "Danger at Dark Shelf Quarry"?

(Reaction after the break)

The Star Wars

No your grandma isn't throwing in a 'the' where it need not be, better Dark Horse and Lucasarts have announced the future release of THE STAR WARS comic.
This will be based on the 1974 draft of the film, but with some tightening up of the writing and story, because if you have read it, you know it is far from greatness. In the story we have Skywalker as a composites of Luke & Obi; also Han & Chewie are more singular as well (but as a reptile man not a carpet); The replacement of Darth Vader with a gent kindly known as Starkiller (though not to be confused with the protagonist from the Force Unleashed).
As for what parts of the story will change from the original draft I do not know, you can do yourself a favor till then, and watch The Hidden Fortress, along with other Kurosawa samurai movies and make lightsaber noises any time someone whips out a sweet katana move.
I held on writing about this but seems as if this was not an April Fool's shenanigan, thank goodness.

Pretty pictures after the jump...

Season 2 Ep. 5

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Loaded Dices Season 2 Episode 5: Live From PAX, it’s DIVEKICK!

This is a special one.   Whilst drinking ourselves into oblivion in our Boston Hotel Room, we decided to turn on the mic and record an episode of Loaded Dice Cast, live from PAX EAST.  Derek and I made the trip, along with some buddies of ours who joined us on the cast.  With a live studio audience, we spend about 25 minutes (not nearly enough time) talking about Dive Kick, the greatest indie game ever made.  We talk about Con Culture, Cosplayers, and what makes PAX so darn neat.   Special Guest Mikey C makes a nice point about the tensions between AAA Games, Free 2 Play, and indie games.  We give you a sneak peak into some of the games we played, and douse with haterade where appropriate,  including Dust 514, Hawken, War Machine, Battletech D&D Next and McDroid.  A good time is had by all as we get preetty drunk on the finest beers Harpoon Brewery has to offer ( like you do.).  From a technical perspective: On occasion I had to edit out some bits where we get a little weird, apologies.  Also the audio is quieter on this one because we were using a fancy mic, so pump it up.   Enjoy!  See you next year at PAX!

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