Curve Balls

 

Hi all.  Well things went off the rails quick, at least in regard to the blog.  We are still recording the podcast though so thats good.  I started a new job in October and it has me beat when I get home every day. The big downer that has kept me from writing is the loss of my father.  He passed away from complications due to covid a few days after I started my new job.  Things have been pretty rough after that.  2020 kept throwing curve balls at us.  Shortly after Dad passed away my wife and I had a covid scare after being exposed at a restaurant.  I know what you are saying.  It was dumb to go out.  It was and we are not anymore despite things opening back up here in Michigan.  I go to work, come home exhausted and basically thats it.  I have been able to get a few games of Battletech in though with my best friend Schoop.  We are playing the Tukayyid campaign.  The new year came and we had some hope things would be better.  Things are still not optimal, but I think things are starting to perhaps turn around.

Firestorm Armada 3.0 Beta is Here!

 

Greetings all!  After long last the Firestorm Armada Beta test is here.  It began on the 9th of September and has already been revised a couple times after a slew of player feedback.  I am not going to go real in depth into the rules as they are changing week to week, but I thought I would talk about some of the new mechanisms that make up the game.  I would have gotten into things sooner than the end of the month, but I wanted to play some games and see some games played.  I also wanted to chat with the group about the new version.  Lets dive in

And We Are back!

 

Well it has been almost a year since I have done anything with the blog.  I don't even know if its on Anybody's radar anymore.  I am back though after this long hiatus.  I am not going to make any promises but I am going to try and post every couple weeks to keep people in the loop about stuff and talk about gaming.  I am into a few different games now so I should have a decent amount of stuff to talk about.

The big news is that Ruckdog and I are going to be starting up our old podcast Exploding Dice Radio.  With the aquisition of all the Spartan properties by Warcradle Studios and Wayland Games, we have our favorite ship and space ship games coming back with new editions and new models.  Dystopian Wars has been in beta for a while due to the Pandemic and Firestorm Armada has been on the back burner for beta testing also due to the pandemic.  Ruckdog and I will be chatting about all things Dystopian and FSA as they develop and as the games reach their final stages.  I know I am eagerly waiting for the new Firestorm Armada.  So what else is new?

Back In The Saddle Again

Hello all.  SeerK here after a long hiatus and a rather busy holiday season.  Planning for 2018 has been in full swing.  The gang will be heading out to Adepticon in March.  I was hoping to be able to swing going to the Rumble on Route 66 in addition to going to Adepticon, but sadly its not in the budget.  I have a wedding to save up for.  That's right I am now engaged as of October.  This has put a bit of a kibosh on my convention travels.  I am attending Adepticon, Origins, Gencon, The Iowa Incident MK5, the Michigan GT and U-Conn Games Convention in 2018.  Still a decent amount, but not as many as I want to go to. I would love to do some more Dire States Infinity events as well as some more conventions on the east coast, near the west coast and down south.  These would namely be the NOVA Open, The Las Vegas Open and The aforementioned Rumble on Route 66.  There are several big Infinity Tournaments on the list as well. SO I left you kind of hanging in regards to Spartan Games stuff and Adepticon......

Godspeed Old Friend....

Hi Guys, Its been a while.  I have not been posting because I have been pretty burned out.  There has been a load of drama in the Spartan community and that has culminated with Spartan closing their doors on Friday August 25th.  Its a mixed bag of emotions for me.  I am sad to see the company I worked hard for go.  I am at the same time relieved as a lot of things are now off my shoulders.  I am going to continue to pay and love the games Spartan made.  I am going to go on a bit of a rant though so if you don't want to read it stop here.  I have some pent up thoughts and emotions and they need to come out before I can move on and focus my efforts on Infinity and Corvus Belli's new game Arestia.  I am going to be posting here and there about my Infinity exploits so I will be around now after this Hiatus.  Ok...time to vent.....

Origins Game Fair!

Greetings all.  Life and game testing has had me very busy and kind of neglecting the blog.  I am making myself do I post a week from here on out.  I wanted to let everybody know I will be at Origins Game Fair next month.  I will be running Learn to Play classes  for Firestorm Armada, Halo Ground Command and Halo Fleet Battles.  We will also be doing an FSA tournament on Sunday of the Convention.  I will be pulling double duty with the help of Larry also doing Infinity Boot camps and an ITS tournament on Saturday of the convention.  So come on out and play and say HI!

Lets look at the Schedule!

Adepticon: The Aftermath

Greetings all!  SeerK here once again.  It has been about a week and a half since I got home from Adepticon and I am finally feeling normal.  I was exhausted for a couple days after, especially since I had to play catch up on several fronts. This would be why I am only posting about the convention now.  This year was very fun but at the same time extremely exhausting.  We had 6 events running this year and all of them went pretty smoothly.  I am going to list off the winners and announce the winner of the one of a kind Cortana portrait done by Sarah Campbell who is one of the 3D modelers at Studio 343.  Our Halo Event participants are all in running for this great piece of Halo memorabilia.
So lets dive into the winners and some reflections on Adepticon 2017.

New Spartan Games Podcast: Exploding Dice Radio

Logo by Tim " Miniature Tim"  Toolen

Greetings!  SeerK here once again.  This time I am here for some shameless promotion.  A new podcast will be released later this month.  Exploding Dice Radio on the Freebooters Network is a collaboration between myself and Andy "Ruckdog" Rucker of Man Battle Stations Podcast.  Exploding Dice Radio covers Spartan Games and nothing but Spartan Games.

Ruckdog and I will be talking tactics, new releases and previews, hobbying and whatever else we can squeeze in about our favorite games made by our favorite game company.

You will be able to get new episodes via the Freebooters Podcast Network  We just got done recording the first episode.  We are in the process of getting a blog set up, but you can send questions to edrpodcast@gmail.com.

We will have a new episode every month.  Our release dates are not set in stone as it will be posted when the network puts it into the rotation schedule.  I will post updates here and Ruckdog will be posting updates on the podcasts blog and over at Man Battlestations.

Next time I will be delving into game design.  I am in process of writing it and its taking longer than I thought it would.  I planned on it being a multi part series, but man we are really going down the rabbit hole.  We are also 2 weeks away give or take from Adepticon.  I will be doing daily updates and pictures dumps here and on Twitter.  If signal is good enough or we have wi-fi I will be doing some live streams as well.

Well back to writing and painting a metric butt ton of terrain.

Until next time crush the Alliance and as always...

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!!!

The Road to Adepticon: Webcart Closes Soon!

Hi all! SeerK here with a quick update! We are 5 days away from the closing of the Adepticon webcart.  Pre registration closes on February 24th at 5 pm CST.  There are still openings in all the Spartan Games events.  Firestorm Armada, Firestorm Planetfall, Dystopian Wars, Halo Fleet Battles, Halo Ground Commmand and The Flashpoint Amber Narrative mega battle.  The details for each event are in the links below.  You can register at www.adepticon.org.

Registration will be on site after February 24th.  Reserve your spot in Spartans Premiere events in North America! Links are below and to the right! Read on for more info!

Shiny Prizes! Halo Events Get Hooked Up!

Greetings all! SeerK here once again to talk Adeptcon.  I wanted to welcome aboard our latest sponsor.  Its official yet unofficial.  I want to send a special thanks to Ken and Rick from Studio 343 for their generous support of the Halo events at Adepticon.  If you have not seen the pictures on Facebook, we received a big box of goodies from the studio. How can you get some of this exclusive stuff?  Well you can sign up for the Halo Ground Command and Halo Fleet Battles tournaments!  Players will also have a chance at a studio exclusive piece of Artwork of Cortana.  Participants in both tournaments have a chance to win this beautiful piece of art.  A drawing will be held Sunday after the Halo Ground Command Tournament and one of the players will go home with it!

The Road to Adepticon: Primer Missions!

Greetings all!  SeerK here with your mission briefing.  The team has labored long, but we have a set of Primer missions for all our events at Adepticon.  The exception is The FSA Mega Battle also known as the Flashpoint Amber Narrative event.  Spartan Neil and I are working on that currently.  The Narrative requires much more work as it ties into the impending Flashpoint Amber Campaign.  In fact is is going to be a major pivotal event in the campaign.  The Amber system hangs in the balance.  The Schaumburg system under Kurak control as of last years Championships.  Will they be able to hold it as the Zenian League unleashes hell upon them. The Stage is set and the trap has been sprung. Be a part of history as we unveil something never before seen at Adepticon 2017.............but first lets look at those Primer Missions!

The Road to Adepticon: The Schaumburg Prime Offensive!

Greetings all!  SeerK here with our next update on the road to Adepticon.  In this installment we are talking about the big show.  The Firestorm Armada North American Championships.  The 3rd Schaumburg Prime Offensive.  As I write this, Spellduckwrong, Dreadbeard and Myself are putting the finishing touches on the Primer missions.  In fact we will be posting primer missions for all the Spartan Games events at Adepticon the begining of next  week.  Links will be here in the side bar, on the event pages and on the main Adepticon website

This Year we are back to 900 points and we are now in a two day format.  Day one is 3 rounds and a Qualifier for day 2.  Day two is the top 8 players from day 1.  Lets dive in and look in depth at this years North American Firestorm Armada Championships!

The Year in Review

Greetings all.  Its December 31st.  That means 2016 is coming to an end.  The crew and I are getting together tonight for a big party to usher out 2016.  It has been a year of extremes.  There have been epic highs and some pretty epic lows. Other than a decent paying job and meeting my future wife, it has been kind of an Empire strikes back kinda year.   The Spartan community is at a low point while the Infinity community is growing and has had some pretty awesome stuff happen this year. This has me in  a weird spot.  I am part of a community that has momentum and is growing at a rapid pace.  It is full of positivity and generally speaking a really good bunch of players.  It has a company that actively supports its community by going to shows and having a very tight and active tournament scene.  On the other hand the energy and momentum has kind of gone out of the Spartan community sails.  There is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of ill will from the player base right now.  There are signs of life and I hope this means the energy of 2 years ago makes a resurgence. Lets take a look back and I will have some resolutions as well as some stuff I would like to see in 2017.

Happy Holidays!

Art by Isra-ac

Seasons Greeting all!  SeerK here to wish you Happy Holidays from the whole WayGate Crew!  Be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule or Saturnalia I hope you all have an excellent holiday.  I will be at home with my lady and the cats.  I have a bunch of terrain and models to assemble and paint.  The WayGate crew has a big party planned for new years and we have some plans for 2017.

Next week we will continue our road to Adepticon with an overview of the big show.  The Schaumburg Prime Offensive North American Firestorm Armada Championships.  Also next week our year in review.  2016 was a crazy year and we will look back and reflect on it.



Until next time crush the Alliance and as always......

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!

The Road To Adepticon pt 1: The Flashpoint Narrative Event!

Greetings everyone! SeerK here to talk Adepticon. I wanted to start going into specifics for each of the events we are running this year. As I said a couple posts ago we have expanded the events to include almost all the games that Spartan makes. I am going to give some details about each event starting with the new ones joining the mix in our Road To Adepticon series. We have Firestorm Armada, Firestorm Planetfall, Halo Fleet Battles, Halo Ground Command and Dystopian Wars this year. Spartan Fans can look forward to an event every day of the convention except Wednesday. I am planning on doing an unofficial mixer and meet and greet Wednesday night, but I am still deciding what to do. I wanted to start our series with our new Firestorm Armada Event. In addition to the North American Championships we decided to add a fun event for those who want to play, but may not be ready to throw into a tournament. Friday night we are proud to bring you The Flashpoint Narrative Event!

UCON Games Convention Demo Sessions!

Greetings all! SeerK here.  With all the Adepticon hype starting I almost forgot that I was going to be doing some demo sessions at a local convention here in Michigan.  As some of you remember I have attended UCON Games Convention in the Ann Arbor Ypsilanti area for a few years now.  This Year I will be running Learn To Play sessions of Firestorm Armada, Halo Fleet Battle and Halo Ground Command.  I will also be running an Infinity Boot Camp  The events start on Saturday night and continue through Sunday. Lets take a look at the schedule!

GateCon FSA Megabattle Debrief!

Greetings all. It was a busy weekend for me. I had two events going on this past weekend. I played in an I.T.S. event and we had an FSA mega battle at Evolution Games on Sunday. It is this event I want to talk about. We decided to kick off the War Gaming season with a Massive fleet battle that tied into the Flashpoint Amber campaign. Granted we did take some liberties as we wanted our own FSA personas to be involved. This was a 5 on 5 game of Zenian League vs Kurak Alliance. It was 1000 points per player for a total of 10,000 points of ships on the table. We got a little bit of a late start due to the grilling of steak. You can’t battle on an empty stomach. The whole battle took about 6 hours or so. Let’s dive in and take a look at how the battle unfolded.

Relthoza Tactics: SeerK Style

Erebi's Awesome Fleet From the Spartan Community Forum

Greetings my spidery brethren.  SeerK here to talk Relthoza.  I recorded an episode of The Hub System Podcast with Alex Mann which was posted a few weeks ago.  The main topic was the Relthoza and the tactics of this rather hard to play fleet.  Craig, from the FSA Focus Group, was also a guest host.  Both of us have been Relth players for a while, but like most Relthoza players I have met,  we all have very different play styles and tactics which basically all move towards one common goal.  Sowing discord in your opponents fleet and directing them where you want them in a well laid web of destruction.  I wanted to share my style of spider.  So lets take a glimpse at the Relthoza from my perspective.  I will be be rather General in this post and I feel as though it is time to delve into the fleet once again now that we have a bunch of new ships.  More tools for the tool box.  Lets dive in.

State Of The Union

Greetings all!  SeerK here and I am going to get a little philosophical.  Last week was quite an adventure.  You may say, “of course it was you went to the Nova Open!”  My response sadly would be no I didn’t.  I was unable to attend Nova due to some circumstances I would rather not go into, other than say I had to attend a Funeral.  We had a lot of setbacks with our planned trip.  It is setbacks I want to talk about.  Setbacks and a malaise that has gripped the community. Players and Spartan fans grumble about it, but nobody is really talking about the fact a lot of established communities and play groups seem to be dwindling in size to the point they cease to be.  I want to talk about it a bit, at least my take on it.  Join me won’t you.

I am going to use the local scene as my first example.  Things die down during the summer around here.  It doesn’t really matter what game it is.  Infinity is catching on and we ran a league this summer, but we only had 6 players participate.  Others are starting to play now that summer is winding down and people are itching to play again.  We have not done a whole lot of Firestorm Armada or Planetfall in the local are this summer.  Halo is pretty much not a thing here in Lansing.  I am going to be trying to change that, but the player base is kind of tuckered out.

I am hearing about this from a lot of places.  Attendance at The Nova Open was lackluster say for the build and play tournament.  It makes me worry a bit about the North American Championships at Adepticon this year.  I think we are seeing our first real community wide rough spot.  This is going to be a major test for Spartan.  The only communities that seem to be growing fast and gaining momentum are the Halo related ones.  They have a feel like FSA when 2.0 came out.  

I think this is from a combination of things.  First and foremost I do not think the Vanguards are getting out there enough and in the right way.  Demo’s days and such get people into the game, but you have to be more involved than that.  If you cannot make it up to the shop on a weekly bases to help foster a growing community you should not be stepping up to lead it.  There is a lack of follow though.  There is also a lack of follow through on Spartans part.  We hear about stuff in the pipeline and plans for the future, but we are not seeing them come to life.  This has hurt Spartans credibility and the communities trust in them.  That is not a good thing.

Spartan is getting better and improving though.  Official play kits for the games and a marked increase in convention attendance is a good start.  The planning for shows and conventions is months in advance and they need somebody dedicated to doing it if they want to really get out there and get the community fired up.  They need somebody in the United States to do this.

The apparent supply problem has a bit to do with Spartan and more to do with the Distributors that shops use.  Golden Distribution is pretty much the only reliable one for Spartan product.  Most shops tend to use Alliance, who is terrible in my opinion, Southern Hobby and ACD.  I know Spartan has been working with the latter two to get products in and out to the players.  Shop owners will not carry stuff if there is no community to support it though.  It is a big investment getting a new game on the shelf.  This is where the Vanguards and local community cheerleaders come in.  

Keep the community going and growing with follow through and regular attendance.  I know it is disheartening when people don’t show up.  I have gone to game nights and been the only person there for weeks. I still went though.  Sometimes you have to be the beacon to get things going.  I know real life is busy, but if you want a community to flourish, you have to put in the extra effort.

So to sum up.  Spartan needs to overhaul the Vanguard program, they need to kick some of the rule sets in the pants and follow through in a timely manner.  They also need a dedicated Event Coordinator in the United States.  The supply issues could be solved with their own warehouse here, but in lew of that they need to continue to work with the distributors to keep products in stock and restock regularly.

This is really dependent on all of us getting out there and getting our communities rallied and playing.  Not only playing, but buying stuff.  That’s what shops want to see.  Players buying locally, not on the internet.  I am not going to get into my view of internet only vendors, that’s a whole different post.

So join me in getting the community back on track and growing again.  It’s going to be tough, but if we want to see more events and have more players we really need to start working together to do it.  I am hoping Spartan plays ball as well and continues to improve.  Well that’s my two cents

Until next time, Crush the Alliance and as always…

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!!!!

NOVA is Nigh! Adepticon Planning Has Begun!

Greetings all!  SeerK here once again.  As many of you know I will be heading to the NOVA Open next week.  For once I am not running any of the events.  I will be playing in something FSA and maybe something Infinity while i am there.  My primary purpose is to award the top two winners of the FSA GT their golden tickets to The Schaumburg Prime Offensive North American Firestorm Armada Championships.  The winners have guaranteed spots in North Americas premiere Firestorm Armada event! Adepticon is quickly shaping up to be bigger and better than last year!