The changing meta between two continents

Heya all, and welcome back to the Webway!

Well, now that I have finally graduated and returned back to Malaysia, I am able to experience what I call the 'Rip Van Winkle' effect. It has been two years since I have left my country, and when 6th edition hits me, it is when I am in the US and thus my 6th edition meta knowledge is based upon the US meta. Once I returned back to Malaysia, I have observed some interestingly odd things when I jumped around the few stores around the Kuala Lumpur/ Petaling Jaya area.

To be exact it is not really that odd as I knew the meta in its essential sense before I left, but that was during mid-5th edition. So with that I can now observe the meta from an outsider's view which is fun. Anyway.here are the main highlights of my observation (Disclaimer: This is based upon my observation and thus this may not be indicative of the general population or can be used as an objective data);

1)It seems that people rarely play more than 2 flyers based upon my observation. This is a big contrast with the US where any army that can take flyers will always take 2-3 of them (I am the odd one out as I only play one flyer). I believe that this is due to the prohibitive cost of buying flyers in Malaysia which is a significant amount of money, even more so here than in the US.

2) It also appears that not a lot of people actually pay a great emphasis on having lots of troops in their army. This is entirely at odds with the trends that I see in the US where troops are filled to a greater degree. Over here I am seeing a tendency to go for units that can dish out a lot of firepower, thus Malaysians are more prone to fill out their heavy support and any slot that could put a whole lot of firepower (Which usually means fast attack and/or elites).

3) There are a greater amount of Non-Marine players in Malaysia. The only Marine players have either jumped to the Dark Angels boat or the Chaos Space Marine boat, and the general 40k meta revolves around the Xenos races. This has always held true in Malaysia in my opinion as a result of our smaller community, for we like to be unique snowflakes. Also with 6th edition favouring non-Marine armies for the time being, I could see why the marines are not out in full force.

4)Everyone plays with the hardest list that they could do, and at the same time also adhere to a certain concept in mind that may or may not be fluffy. I find that this is rather interesting as in the US, the tendencies for army building is between two very extreme spectrums; Competitive to the point that it is bland, or fluffy to the point that the list is utterly useless. Of course there are a few in between those two, but they are quite uncommon and the netlisting can be rather endemic.

The Malaysian wargamer on the other hand is a very different kind of beast; they tend to be casually competitive players. That means that they intend to win with a powerful and/or efficient list, but they also like to have a certain concept to have in their lists that allows them to use models that they want.

In a way, I am very much surprised and yet not surprised by the meta. The main reason why I have these mixed feelings is that it is a meta that is very reminiscent of the 4th edition meta for me, the edition where most Malaysians are introduced to 40k (at least to my knowledge) which prioritized the use of heavy firepower and min-maxing. I am also surprised that despite the change of the rules to have a greater emphasis on objectives, the players are playing to kill than to take objectives.

On the bright side, my Dark Eldar feels at home both here and at the US, for I build my Dark Eldar based upon a Malaysian mindset but also at the same time I also build it for an American meta. This impacted my playstyle as I now have a bizarre range of philosophies that I used in my games now in Malaysia.

Alright my evil bondage sado-masochistic space elves of doom, time to get used to your new home.

It's Been A While......

Heya all and I am back in the Webway after a long foray in Realspace!

It has been a brutal few months for me, as I am getting ready to graduate slowly but surely, and managed to get the grades necessary to secure my future a little more steadily. Rewarded myself with a Arcade Joystick for my PS3 and also a trip to Vegas with my friends, and I am very much rejuvenated for my other fun pursuits. The main ones of these other pursuits are actually Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition 2012 and the new season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Hey it is a fun show to watch that does not need me to be entirely serious when I am watching it or be jaded by it (anime makes me really jaded these days when it comes to entertainment) and I enjoy the pop culture references in MLP).

In the 40k front I managed to get a few games down with my Dark Eldar and also read about the new Chaos Space Marine book and get a gist about how the army actually works and stuff. From my experience playing against them, I noticed that they are more akin to a horde-ish army supported by more heavy hitting elements of the army. Personally I am not as worried about Chaos Space Marines as compared to Imperial Guard, but Imperial Guard is perhaps THE strongest army around these days. Anything else is a fair game in my opinion, if not easier. Perhaps as a Dark Eldar, I have gotten really good in dealing damage hard and fast.

Based upon my experiences I believe that my Dark Eldar army for 6th edition had been set into stone. With the new rules, these units are now in the core of most of my lists;

Archon with Huskblade, Soul-trap, Phantasm Grenade Launcher, Shadowfield and Combat Drugs
Haemonculus with liquifier gun
2 squads of 3 Trueborns with Blasters in Venoms with two splinter cannons
1 squad of 6 Incubi in a Raider
2 squad of 5 warriors with a blaster in a Raider
2 squads of 5 Warriors with a blaster in Venoms with two splinter cannons
2 squads of 6 Reavers with two heat lances
2 Ravagers
1 Razorwing with flickerfield with 4 Monoscythe missiles

Anything else would depend on the points and also what I feel like I want to include into the army for the day. So far I am really tempted to put a blob of Kabalite Warriors to round my army up, but we will see how it goes.

In addition, I also have started my own Black Crusades 40k RP sessions with three other players. So far with at least 8-10 sessions into this game, two out of my three players are now on second, if not third characters. The book actually encourages the players to backstab and also seek extreme risks for glories for the Chaos Gods, and combined this with the very realistic and brutal system of 40k Roleplay means that my players are often really injured and/or having dead characters/new characters by the end of the session. The current party composition consist of a Tzeentchian Sorcerer, Tzeentchian Chosen and a Forsaken renegade of a Space Wolf. I hoped that they would not suffer a true party wipeout, but hey the dice gods are indeed fickle as heck.

With that, 2012 is about to end, and the year of 2013 is about to arrive with new things for me and for the community as a whole. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year to everyone!

A day well spent

On Saturday morning (and by morning I mean around 5am), I managed to get all the papers that are due on the same day done (pending editing), and since I am so hyped about getting the work done I did not sleep and decided to let loose and get my wargaming fix at Knightfall Games around 10.30 and arriving on location at around 11am via the bus.

The day only got better as when I entered the store, they are having a 2k points tournament and everyone but one player is not playing. Apparently they needed a 'ringer' to make all the matches even and not have a match with a 'by'. Unlike most 'by' systems that I know off, apparently having a by in the store means that you have quite a number of disdavantages in terms of points to be earned in the game.Since everyone in the store is playing in the tournament, and being a ringer means that I don't have to worry about winning prizes (in fact I can't to make things fair to those that are already playing the games midway) and stuff and play like there's no tomorrow I decided to jump on the bandwagon. Due to the fact that I did not really think about making a real battle report this time round, I am unable to report in detail about the games and thus I made a very brief summary of the mission and how it went.

Life is tough = less stuff on blog

Heya all.

Sorry about the lack of input these days, but life is getting a big piece of my time and I am unable to even do anything much save for some very minuscule painting on my part.

I have a battle report just sitting there incomplete, and I will try to get back to it ASAP. That and also playing more games.

A little thing that made my painting efforts worthwhile.....

Heya all,

A few weeks before I came back to Malaysia, I entered my Archon into an online competition for the Open contest in Second Sphere and I wondered how I will fare out.

Today the results are in, and I got.......

A minuscule update....

Heya all, I just came back to Portland but sadly enough, there isn't too much going on.

As of this moment, I am just basing some of my models and....ur.....that's about it. No assembly of any kind nor  conversions. In addition, I would also need to do the final finishing steps on the Venoms, and paint the Wyches and Haemonculi. And just in case, I would also paint like a few Kabalite warriors.

Add that with being a tour guide/ vacation buddy for my mom who came all the way from Malaysia to have her first vacation outside the country for 14 years (she really deserved this vacation), and yeah, real-life can put wrenches in army completion. But the real-life is always the thing that makes one enjoy the hobby even more. 

Will be back with more stuff.

In memory of a great mentor.

Hello all and welcome back to the webway.

Unlike my other posts, today I feel like talking about a great woman who is a great mentor to me, and perhaps if it were not for her I would not understand the fine workings of mathematics and in a way she is also vital in my understanding of probabilities. That woman is a person I always known as Aunty Pat.