2016 and 2017 Years in Review

The last two years were busy to say the least.  I'm going to blame all the other stuff on why I didn't write anything about my gaming those years.  It's not that I didn't get a chance to play games or be involved in the gaming communities in town, just didn't have time to write or reflect about it.

Here's a brief run down of what occured

• Started an Esports club at NVSS.
• Even competed in the High School Starleague
• Penny and I played the Pokemon TCG competitively and regularly placed in the top 8 at our local events.
• Once she could read better, the decks we played got more complicated and we started buying singles and building meta/net decks.
• Finally reached Gold rank in League of Legends in Season 6 (2016)
• And got the shiny gold border for all of Season 7 (2017)
• Sadly I didn't play much ranked in Season 7 and ended up in Silver again.
• More board games!
• Got into cooperative board games big time.

Back From the Void

I have not paid much attention to this for a year and a half now.  I did not die and I did not stop gaming.  Just got busy and fell into a rut with regards to chronicling my journey as a gamer and geek dad.

Anyways, I neglected to do a Year in Review post of 2016 like I did the years prior, so I will post a Years in Review 2016-2017 later this week.

Lots of cool things happened in the last year and a half, the most significant of which being that Penny learned to read!  That opened a lot of opportunities to show her various games and what not.

So stay tuned as I chronicle my continuing journey as a gamer and geek dad.

2015 Year in Review

This year has been a busy one.  Both in terms of gaming and life in general.  A lot of highs and one gigantic low at the end of the year.

Here's a brief run down of what occurred this year.

2014 Year in Review

2014 was an interesting year.

• Taught in a distance educating school
• went on strike for 4 weeks and a bit,
• went to London and Paris with the family
• and played a lot of games (both digital and non-digital).

Overall a good year even with the loss of a months salary and stress caused by my work strike.  Now on to some more specific accounts on various gaming fronts.

General Gaming - Summer to do List 2014

School year is over and although it ended on a really sour note (see BC Teacher Strike) at least I'll have the summer to do some gaming.  Not as much as last year though as I am going on a 3 week vacation with my family mid-summer (see here)

Alright so in no particular order here's my to do list for this summer.

• Finish painting my Deathwing squad.  Carry over from last year, they are primed and ready for painting at least.
• Get to Gold division in League of Legends.  Currently at Silver II so just need to get into Silver I then from there it's on to Gold!  Better than last year where I ended the season in Silver IV.
• Finish Assassin's Creed 3.  - Completed July 9th
• Finish one of the Imperial Story lines SWTOR.  Still working on my Bounty Hunter but at least she's now past chapter 1!
• Show Penny how to play D&D with rules!  Currently she plays a rule-less version where we just throw down random minis and she knocks them over with her hero mini.  Time to introduce some structure and dice!

Smaller than last year but again I'm on vacation for 3 weeks this summer so less time.  Hopefully I can cross more off this list than last year's list.

Travel - Civilization 5 World Wonder Tour

While planning our summer vacation this year my wife asked me if there was anywhere I would want to visit in the world.  I thought about it for a brief moment and told her that there wasn't anywhere in the world I really wanted to visit for the sole purpose of just visiting.  I mean I like travelling, but if all I am doing is just sight seeing, it's not that great for me.

I like attending events so a lot of my previous travel plans were centered around events, whether it be family reunions, funerals (these are unplanned by the way in case anyone was wondering), gaming tournaments or whatever.  Case in point, for the past few years I've tried to plan a summer trip to Edmonton because of a big annual Warhammer 40k/Fantasy tournament (It Came From Out of the Basement) arranged by some former Prince George gamers (hasn't worked out yet though as things always seem to get in the way) and late last year I thought about going to Seattle just to attend PAX Prime 2014 or to see We Will Rock You.  This year I was even considering trying to go to Cologne because Gamescom (and coincidentally the League of Legends EU LCS Summer Playoffs!) happens to happen after our week in Paris is done (though not sure if the rest of my family would share my enthusiasm about the event)

A few moments after my wife asked the question it dawned on me that I could relate our travel plans to some of the games we play and I suggested we do a Civ 5 World Wonder Tour - basically visit every World Wonder in Civ 5 that still exists.  This would help us plan future vacations and for me it wouldn't just be sight seeing; we could actually visit the wonders we build in our games of Civ 5  (we play Civ 5 together a fair amount)

It's going to take a very long time though to hit all the Civ 5 wonders (here's a list of all of them http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_wonders_in_Civ5) but it's an interesting family goal to have.

This summer we'll be heading to London and Paris for two weeks so we'll hopefully be able to cross off the following:

• Oxford University
• Stonehenge
• Big Ben
• Globe Theatre (though the original doesn't exist they did reconstruct a new one not too far from the original location)
• Eiffel Tower
• The Louvre
• Notre Dame

Penny probably won't understand any of our plans but she'll have fun regardless (she's only 3 at the moment and she likes going places outside her house).  As she gets older she might have a better understanding/appreciation of why we our vacation plans are the way they are.

Holiday Gaming

Christmas break is always great for gaming.  Even more so this year as I did not bring any marking or other work with me (normally I bring a boat load of marking or planning home over the holidays).  The majority of my gaming this year was online games with friends, mostly League of Legends but we did also delve into Team Fortress 2 a bit and I played a little bit of Star Wars: The Old Republic (finally got my Bounty Hunter past the first chapter)

Anyways, while playing League with my friends I quickly realized that it would be quite a while before most of my friends get to my level (and I'm only Silver at the moment!).  Sometimes it's frustrating I suppose but I've decided that I just need to get better so I can carry them harder whenever we play normal games.  I've become quite a good Leona player and can set up a good deal of plays to help feed the carries on my team.  I also can't wait for the Season 4 LCS to start.  Will give me something to watch again.

On the MTG front I did enlarge my cube (see earlier post) but due to various issues I never did get a chance to try it out.  I'm thinking of starting some kind of MTG cube league at one of the local gaming stores so I can play more cube with more people.  I just have to be careful no one steals anything (I'm thinking of buying some unique sleeves to help prevent this).  Thankfully there are no big money cards in my cube.

Family gaming has become quite a thing in my household too as my in-laws have been coming over to play games on a weekly basis.  Generally it's board games like Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan.  This holiday season we got the Seafarers of Catan and the 5-6 player expansions to Settlers so I am thinking of inviting my sister-in-law and her husband to join in.  It helps that their son is around Penny's age so the two can play together while we play our own game.

Steam had massive sales this holiday season as they usually do and I got a Steam gift card from my sister (she always gets me gaming related gifts which is great as no one else does).  I picked up a few games I had been wanting to play (Hitman: Absolution and Assassin's Creed 3).  I missed out on the 75% off Skyrim sale on the last day because of the alleged DDOS attacks but oh well.  I'm sure that sale will happen again in the future.

Work also gave me a reimbursement for my internet which I turned into a new desktop that plays games better than the laptop I was using.  It's hardly a super gaming computer but it does play all the games I want to play at medium-high settings and some games at high-ultra settings.  The biggest bonus is that I can upgrade it fairly easily with a relatively cheap graphics card (it's got an AMD APU processor so I can pair it up with a graphics cards to get better mutual performance).

I'm looking forward to this year as Penny is getting older and learning her numbers and is getting quite an imagination.  All this translates into a great opportunity to teach her how to play RPGs and other games.  She already likes playing with my dungeon tiles and rolling dice so it should be an easy transition.

Summer is over and new school year

So over the summer I decided to make a gaming to do list which I will put up here again with the status of their completion.

• Finish painting my Deathwing squads.  I think I have two and a half squads to finish.
• Only got around to priming them.  Never got into the mood to paint or play as GWs whole pricing structure just put me off the entire hobby.  I don't understand how they are still in business given the price of their kits but I guess there are enough fans who want the latest models.  To be fair I really like their new models (the Riptide is really cool) but I've got better things to spend my money on that don't feel as much of a waste but probably are just as much of a waste, but at least it doesn't feel as big of a waste.
• Get the Road to Orktoberfest 2013 League running and hopefully smoothly.
• Not enough interest in 40k so this never really got off the ground.  Again this was mostly due to how I felt about GW so I had no drive to try and get this off the ground.
• Get all the Orktoberfest 2013 details finished.  The sooner the better so I can advertise it to the local gamers. - completed 8-2-2013
• Finish LA Noire
• Bought Dead Space through the amazing Humble Bundle deal and played that instead.
• Complete my MTG Noob Cube - completed 7-7-2013
• Rebuild my old desktop into a mediocre gaming PC
• Couldn't set aside any money for this but I did get a new laptop from work so that tided me over as far as new technology is concerned.  I still want to build a mediocre gaming PC as laptop gaming just isn't that great (my personal laptop is in its 3rd year of service and the work laptop isn't meant for gaming)
• Continue my Outlaw Shizzle D&D Campaign
• A few key members of the group moved away and we all decided to just play online games instead.  Might try to find new blood though as RPGs are still really fun (and way cheaper than GW games)
• Get to Gold division in League of Legends
• Harder than I thought.  I think I may have screwed up my climb as I went on tilt one week and had a massive losing streak (something like 15 losses over 20 games) so my MMR is fairly low.  Lately I've gotten better and over the past month I've been winning more than losing so I may yet be able to hit Gold before Season 3 ends.  If not, there's always Season 4.
• Finish one of the Imperial story lines in Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Sadly only got to the end of Chapter 1 on my Bounty Hunter.  Still, being free to play I'm not too concerned about my progress.  A friend wanted to start a commando so we all rolled new Republic characters as well.

So my progress on my to-do list was really poor but I did have other things outside of gaming to attend to.  My daughter (2 years old) can now recognize famous space ships (the USS Enterprise, X-Wings, etc.) and has a vested interest in a lot of fantasy stuff (sword fighting) so maybe next summer she can actually help me with some of my gaming related stuff.

For now, I've rekindled my interest in MTG with the Theros release and I'm going to stir up more interest in 40k for Orktoberfest 2013.

General Gaming - Summer To Do List

Woooo!  School is done for another year so I have a few weeks to relax a bit.  So between doing my normal house duties and dad duties I've got some gaming related things I want to complete this summer.  Hopefully I can incorporate my dad duties into some of them so that Penny can be exposed to the gamer side of the family and appreciate the little army men I play with.

In no particular order, here's what I want to accomplish:

• Finish painting my Deathwing squads.  I think I have two and a half squads to finish.
• Get the Road to Orktoberfest 2013 League running and hopefully smoothly.
• Get all the Orktoberfest 2013 details finished.  The sooner the better so I can advertise it to the local gamers. - completed 8-2-2013
• Finish LA Noire
• Complete my MTG Noob Cube - completed 7-7-2013
• Rebuild my old desktop into a mediocre gaming PC
• Continue my Outlaw Shizzle D&D Campaign
• Get to Gold division in League of Legends
• Finish one of the Imperial story lines in Star Wars: The Old Republic

I might add to the list, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.  Hopefully I will be able to do all of those during this summer and hopefully Penny can assist with some of it and maybe learn a thing or two.

My Gamer Bibliography

On the drive to work one morning I had some time to think about being a gamer.  It amazed me at how long I have been playing and the types of games I have played in my time as a gamer so much that I tried to chronicle when I started gaming and what I played throughout the years of my life.  I came up with the following list.  The list is by no means complete nor accurate but gives a sense of what I have been playing all these years.

To go to tournaments or not to go - Part 3: My Army Isn't Painted

So far I've talked about two reasons for not attending tournaments: cost and attitude. Those I think are the biggest deterants. But if neither of those reasons are a big enough deterant, the last reason generally finishes it for most people and that is the issue of having their army painted.

To go to tournaments or not to go - Part 2: Serious About Winning

Reason 2: People who play in tournaments are serious about winning

I think people fail to understand why tournaments exist in the first place. It's to find out who is the best at something, whether that be winning, painting, background fluff, or whatever, a tournament is there to see who is the best. One should expect that kind of attitude in a tournament. On the other hand, that is quite a turnoff for some people, especially if all they ever do is lose the games they play. It's frustrating to lose and even more frustrating to lose to someone who is super serious about winning.

However, I think this is a great way to make yourself a better player (and a better hobbyist if you go for the painting/fluff stuff).

To go to tournaments or not to go - Part 1: Cost

The area I live in had a pretty lively wargaming community at one point. I remember being able to play pick up games no problem at the local gaming store and my friends played often and well it was good times. The local store also hosted annual events for both systems (plus some misc. events in between) and generally supported the community.

Then stuff happened (i.e. people grew up, less time to game, models got expensive so new blood didn't come in, etc) and well the wargaming community kind of dwindled.

Now there seems to a resurgence again as the guys who grew up are finding the time to play again and there are newer players who are just entering the work force so have lots of disposable income but there are no events to go to. What to do...

Seeding in smaller Warhammer tournaments

Every tournament I've played in has always gone 6 rounds unless it's been a GW one (i.e. 'Ard Boyz) which goes for less (usually 3). This of course is usually enough to determine an undefeated player by the end (6 rounds is good for 33 - 64 people) but can cause problems for tournaments with 32 people or less.
That's because you could have multiple people with records of 5-1 and one person may not necessarily have an undefeated record. Only a problem if you don't have enough prize support and generally smaller tournaments don't.

So what is the solution?

Firestorm Armada & Ship Design

I spent some time last week mulling over the various starship models available at my friends store and making up their stats using the rules found in Firestorm Armada.
The store has a lot of starship models available (see store here) and I took on the challenge of writing up the rules for his Battlestar Galactica ships.

How do you improve the competition?

My wife recently commented to me that whenever I play pickup games at the stores I frequent, I more often than not win. Not to mention the victories are incredibly lopsided. She went on to say that the only times I ever seem to lose are at tournaments where the competition is no doubt a lot fiercer.

This got me thinking about how I could improve the competition in my area.