DE: A Different Take On Wyches

I mean sure, why not?  Let's give these girls another try.

Maybe I have been going after this all wrong.  I've been thinking to myself for a while now:  How do I get Wyches into my army while still being effective.  Well, maybe with Succubi down to 54 points with an Agonizer, it's time to start bringing more HQs, in general, to make up for this loss?  What about Wyches?  Should I go big or go small with them?  If I go big with them, they certainly take advantage of their Obsession bonuses and Combat Drugs more, but they lose out on their ability to be easily transported by Raiders.  I feel that's a big loss because you need something that can reposition them when they need to around the battlefield without exposing them to enemy fire.

The more I think about it, the more I want to try MSU Wyches instead of running larger units of them.  My reasoning is this:

• What do they really gain after they pass their min units really?  There's definitely more bodies to soak up during Overwatch, but that's about it.  It's only when they get to 10 do they get to take additional Wych weapons.  However, if you take 10, you can't really fit more in the Raider now, can you?
• If you keep them in min units, not only do you fill out your Troop choices easier, but you can take more Agonizers and Blast Pistols in a squad.  For example, you can run 2x5 and get double the amount of Agonizers and Blast Pistols.  The only downside is that your drugs are going to be more dispersed.
• For smaller units, it's really the HQs that do the most heavy lifting.  I guess you should start asking yourself what are you really using Wyches for?  IMO, the more competitive lists can kill MEQ just fine by shooting them to death, so what are you doing with them?  At this stage, I think we're just styling.

I think that kinda settles it:  I don't think Wych units are all that competitive, but they're not terrible either.  Reavers are some of the best units in the codex I think, but the Wyches themselves are decent at best.  Regardless, I think you can take a setup that is cheap enough, especially from an HQ perspective, that you can afford to take a Battalion for them if you're planning to use them in the first place.

Quick note:  I think Strife and Red Grief are the best for this.  They both have really nice Warlord Traits.  Strife gives you Blood Dancer and the 9-attack Succubus build with the Whip, whereas the Blood Glaive is just a fantastic weapon to have.  In general, I see +1A is very useful all around, especially with Agonizers because Strength doesn't matter for it and neither do Blast Pistols.  As always, I think anything that can Advance and Charge and re-roll the results of both after T2+ is just amazing.  I am definitely more inclined to take these two cults over Cursed Blade.

This is what I mean:

1990 // 10 CP
Black Heart Battalion +3 CP

HQ:
Archon, Agonizer, Blaster = 91
Warlord Trait: Cunning

Archon, Agonizer, Blaster = 91

TROOP:
10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, Dark Lance = 114
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
199

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, Dark Lance = 114
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
199

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, Dark Lance = 114
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
199

PARTY BUS:
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
Raider, Dark Lance = 85

+++

Black Heart Spearhead +1 CP

HQ:
Archon, Agonizer, Blaster = 91

FLYER:
Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145
Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145

HEAVY:
Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125
Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125
Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125

+++

Strife Battalion +3 CP

HQ:
Succubus, Adrenalight, Whip = 54
Warlord Trait: Blood Dancer

Succubus, Painbringer, Agonizer = 54

TROOP:
5x Wyches, Agonizer, BP, Shardnet = 59
5x Wyches, Agonizer, BP, Shardnet = 59
5x Wyches, Agonizer, BP, Shardnet = 59

>>>

Firepower:
12 Dark Lances at BS3+
9 Disintegrators at BS3+
6 Blasters at BS3+
3 Blasters at BS2+
3 Blast Pistols at BS3+
2 Razorwing Missiles at BS3+
25 Splinter Rifles at BS3+

Face it:  There's nothing that this list can do that the pure Kabal list can't do from a pure damage perspective.  Killing things at range is satisfying for sure, but killing them in close combat with some of the most ridiculous melee heroes in the game so far might be very worthwhile as well.

So what does deployment actually look like?  Well, the 2x5 unit of Wyches goes into a single Raider while all the Archons and Succubus pile into another Raider with the rest of the Wyches.  Yes, 3 Archons and 2 Succubus go into a Raider:  The beginning of every dirty film.

From there, you just treat the 2x5 unit as a single Raider unit while remembering that you will probably get murdered if you try assaulting before you Raider gets a chance to get in there first.  You charge in with the Raider, tie up whatever was trying to shoot your ass, and then run your naked girls in for some good damage with Agonizers.  Don't forget to bring you super killy Succubus along for the ride too.  The Archons can come if they want, but most of the time they will be running around the rest of the Kabal spreading good stuff 6" bubbles while totting Blaster fire down on your opponents.  However, always remember that they're not shy to getting their feet wet, so if you need them to take on a big unit of MEQ for whatever reason, hook them up with some Huskblades and throw them into the fray.

I'm just going to leave this list right here and let it marinate for a while.  This is just a theory list and I think it can do pretty decent.  One thing's for damn sure:  10 CP sure makes me happy.

People Behind The Meeples - Episode 210: Emma Larkins

Welcome to People Behind the Meeples, a series of interviews with indie game designers.  Here you'll find out more than you ever wanted to know about the people who make the best games that you may or may not have heard of before.  If you'd like to be featured, head over to http://gjjgames.blogspot.com/p/game-designer-interview-questionnaire.html and fill out the questionnaire! You can find all the interviews here: People Behind the Meeples. Support me on Patreon!

---

Name:	Emma Larkins
Location:	Seattle, WA
Day Job:	board game designer/board game media
Designing:	Two to five years.
Webpage:	emmalarkins.com
BGG:	emmalarkins
Twitter:	@emmalarkins
YouTube:	Emma Larkins
Instagram:	@emmalarkins/
Other:	https://www.twitch.tv/emmalarkins
Find my games at:	BGG

Today's Interview is with:

Emma Larkins
Interviewed on: 8/20/2019

This week's interview is with Seattle designer, Emma Larkins. Emma has a few published designs to her name and has just been added to Gamewright's catalog! Abandon All Artichokes will be coming from Gamewright this year! Emma runs a weekly designer meetup in Seattle, so if you're in the area head on out to say hi! Read on to learn more about Emma and her projects.

Some Basics
Tell me a bit about yourself.

How long have you been designing tabletop games?
Two to five years.

Why did you start designing tabletop games?
made my first board game as a Valentine's Day present for my then boyfriend/now husband

What game or games are you currently working on?
Abandon All Artichokes (simplified deckbuilder), Split the Loot (card-swapping tableau-builder), What to Eat After the Apocalypse, Have You Had Enough Cheese? Comeuppance (using a see-saw to simulate reaping what you sow)

Have you designed any games that have been published?
Heartcatchers, ...and then we died

What is your day job?
board game designer/board game media

Your Gaming Tastes
My readers would like to know more about you as a gamer.

Where do you prefer to play games?
At a friend's house

Who do you normally game with?
local Seattle Tabletop Game Designers, friends from Mox Boarding House

If you were to invite a few friends together for game night tonight, what games would you play?
Anything new!

And what snacks would you eat?
Cheese. Lots of cheese.

Do you like to have music playing while you play games? If so, what kind?
Sometimes - instrumental electronic music.

What's your favorite FLGS?
Mox Boarding House (I used to work there!)

What is your current favorite game? Least favorite that you still enjoy? Worst game you ever played?
Current favorite: Fantasy Realms.

What is your favorite game mechanic? How about your least favorite?
Current favorite game mechanic: deckbuilding.

What's your favorite game that you just can't ever seem to get to the table?
Keyforge.

What styles of games do you play?
I like to play Board Games, Card Games, Miniatures Games, RPG Games, Video Games

Do you design different styles of games than what you play?
I like to design Board Games, Card Games, RPG Games

OK, here's a pretty polarizing game. Do you like and play Cards Against Humanity?
it has its uses.

You as a Designer
OK, now the bit that sets you apart from the typical gamer. Let's find out about you as a game designer.

When you design games, do you come up with a theme first and build the mechanics around that? Or do you come up with mechanics and then add a theme? Or something else?
Whatever works. What to Eat After the Apocalypse - theme first. ...and then we died - mechanics first. Abandon All Artichokes - name first.

Have you ever entered or won a game design competition?
Entered and won selection to the Indie Megabooth.

Do you have a current favorite game designer or idol?
Elizabeth Hargrave.

Where or when or how do you get your inspiration or come up with your best ideas?
Everywhere. All the time. In my dreams, on the bus, while talking with friends...

How do you go about playtesting your games?
I run a weekly playtest event - Seattle Tabletop Game Designers.

Do you like to work alone or as part of a team? Co-designers, artists, etc.?
I like to work with a team.

What do you feel is your biggest challenge as a game designer?
Getting that first prototype to the table. Ideation and development are easier.

If you could design a game within any IP, what would it be?
Steven Universe.

What do you wish someone had told you a long time ago about designing games?
It's okay to make weird stuff.

What advice would you like to share about designing games?
The earlier you can get your design in front of people, the better.

Would you like to tell my readers what games you're working on and how far along they are?
Published games, I have: Heartcatchers, ...and then we died.
Games that will soon be published are: Abandon All Artichokes
Games that I'm playtesting are: Split the Loot
Games that are in the early stages of development and beta testing are: Sofas for Sale, What to Eat After the Apocalypse, Merge Game
And games that are still in the very early idea phase are: Untitled Space Botany Game, Have You Had Enough Cheese? Comeuppance, Portmanteau

And the oddly personal, but harmless stuff…
OK, enough of the game stuff, let's find out what really makes you tick! These are the questions that I'm sure are on everyone's minds!

Star Trek or Star Wars? Coke or Pepsi? VHS or Betamax?
Yes. Coke. VHS.

What hobbies do you have besides tabletop games?
Playing video games, hiking, watching movies, traveling, karaoke

What is something you learned in the last week?
RPGs are an incredibly powerful tool to help with therapy and reintroducing previously incarcerated people back into mainstream society.

Favorite type of music? Books? Movies?
Anything catchy. Science fiction. Action/adventure.

What was the last book you read?
The Martian.

Do you play any musical instruments?
Electric guitar.

Tell us something about yourself that you think might surprise people.
I wrote and self-published a science fiction novel called Mechalarum.

Tell us about something crazy that you once did.
Road trip from Texas to California.

Biggest accident that turned out awesome?
Accidentally moving to New York City.

Who is your idol?
Amy Poehler.

What would you do if you had a time machine?
Tell myself that everything's going to turn out great.

Are you an extrovert or introvert?
Both, depending on the time of day.

If you could be any superhero, which one would you be?
Imperator Furiosa.

Have any pets?
Two cats - Inigo and Fezzik. They're brothers.

When the next asteroid hits Earth, causing the Yellowstone caldera to explode, California to fall into the ocean, the sea levels to rise, and the next ice age to set in, what current games or other pastimes do you think (or hope) will survive into the next era of human civilization? What do you hope is underneath that asteroid to be wiped out of the human consciousness forever?
I hope the concept of using play and design thinking to improve all areas of human life survives.

If you'd like to send a shout out to anyone, anyone at all, here's your chance (I can't guarantee they'll read this though):
Hello Seattle Designers! You rock!

Just a Bit More
Thanks for answering all my crazy questions! Is there anything else you'd like to tell my readers?

Thanks for reading!

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Thank you for reading this People Behind the Meeples indie game designer interview! You can find all the interviews here: People Behind the Meeples and if you'd like to be featured yourself, you can fill out the questionnaire here: http://gjjgames.blogspot.com/p/game-designer-interview-questionnaire.html

Did you like this interview?  Please show your support: Support me on Patreon! Or click the heart at Board Game Links , like GJJ Games on Facebook , or follow on Twitter .  And be sure to check out my games on  Tabletop Generation.

Machine Learning For Beginners: Linear Regression Model In R - ScanLibs

Machine Learning for Beginners: Linear Regression Model in R

Kickstarter Ending Soon - Dreamforge Games Grav-StuG Tank

Take me to the Kickstarter...


What does this project include?


The project was created to fund the tooling and production of a polystyrene plastic model kit. The Eisenken Grav StuG.

We also offer 3d printable building terrain sets, modular, stackable and and loaded with details.

The icing on the cake... Two lucky backers will receive an extra free kit, painted by the extremely talented David Woods! Each StuG you back will provide an entry into the raffle!

Good luck to all of you! now lets get this Kickstarter across the finish line!

Cross-compiling Rust To Linux On Mac

In my last blog post I said I wanted to spend some time learning new things. The first of those is Rust. I had previously tried learning it, but got distracted before I got very far.

Since one of the things I'd use Rust for is web pages, I decided to learn how to compile to WebAssembly, how to interface with Javascript, and how to use WebSockets. At home, I use a Mac to work on my web projects, so for Rust I am compiling a native server and a wasm client. But I also wanted to try running this on redblobgames.com, which is a Linux server. How should I compile to Linux? My first thought was to use my Linux machine at home. I can install the Rust compiler there and compile the server on that machine. Alternatively, I could use a virtual machine running Linux. Both of these options seemed slightly annoying.

I've been curious how much work it would take to cross-compile, and I found this great post from Tim Ryan. My setup is simpler than his, so I didn't need everything he did. I started with these commands from his blog post:

rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl brew install FiloSottile/musl-cross/musl-cross mkdir -p .cargo cat >>.cargo/config <<EOF [target.x86_64-unknown-linux-musl] linker = "x86_64-linux-musl-gcc" EOF 

I then compiled for Linux:

TARGET_CC=x86_64-linux-musl-gcc cargo build --release --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-musl 

Unfortunately this failed with an error about OpenSSL. Tim's post has a solution to this. Before implementing that complicated solution I realized that I should't need SSL/TLS anyway. My server talks regular websockets, not secure websockets, and then I use nginx to proxy them into secure websockets. So I disabled the secure websockets with this in Cargo.toml, the file that has the Rust project configuration:

[target.'cfg(target_arch = "x86_64")'.dependencies] tungstenite = { version = "0.9", default-features = false, features = [] } 

At first I tried features = [] but that wasn't good enough. I needed to also use default-features = false to disable the TLS. With this, the binary built, and I was able to run it on Linux!

So now I have a Makefile that builds the wasm client, the Mac server for local testing, and the Linux server for production. Fun!

BUILD = build  RS_SRC = $(shell find src -type f -name '*.rs') Cargo.toml WASM = target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/debug/rust_chat_server.wasm  run-server: target/debug/chat_server  # local testing server  RUST_BACKTRACE=1 cargo run --bin chat_server  target/debug/chat_server: $(RS_SRC)  # production server  cargo build --bin chat_server  target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/chat_server: $(RS_SRC)  TARGET_CC=x86_64-linux-musl-gcc cargo build \      --release --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-musl  $(WASM): $(RS_SRC)  cargo build --lib --target wasm32-unknown-unknown  $(BUILD)/rust_chat_server_bg.wasm: $(WASM) index.html  wasm-bindgen --target no-modules $< --out-dir $(BUILD)  mkdir -p $(BUILD)  cp index.html $(BUILD)/ 

My Cargo.toml file is kind of terrible but it works so far for building the three outputs:

[package] name = "rust_chat_server" version = "0.1.0" authors = ["Amit Patel <redblobgames@gmail.com>"] edition = "2018"  [lib.'cfg(target_arch = "wasm32")'] crate-type = ["cdylib"]  [[bin]] name = "chat_server" path = "src/chat_server.rs"  [dependencies] wasm-bindgen = "0.2" serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] } bincode = "1.2"  [target.'cfg(target_arch = "x86_64")'.dependencies] tungstenite = { version = "0.9", default-features = false, features = [] } 

That's it for now. I'm not a big fan of writing client-server code in large part because I want my pages to still work in thirty years, and that's best if there's no server component. But I want to spend time this year learning things for myself rather than trying to produce useful tutorials, so I'm going to explore this.

Tim's blog post was a huge help. Without it, I would've compiled the server on Linux. Thanks Tim!

I've placed it on github.

Article: The Strategic Use Of Smartphone Features To Create A Gaming Experience Of Mystery: The Mind Alone Case

As I said in the last post, in July I attended the Human Computer Interface Conference at Orlando (Florida). Today I want to share my article (click here) and invite everybody to buy the conference's book with all the articles related to the subject "games" (click here).



#GoGamers

As The Dust Settles

This may sound over optimistic but after the last half decade of poking, prodding, experimenting and exploring, I think I may have just finally agreed with me and myself about what we want from the Square Brigadier.

 Well, until I get a brand new idea perhaps.

The rules are available here (click) .

The armies march on and deploy.
The game was a meeting engagement over random terrain with victory conditions being determined after laying it out.  (Capture a road exit on the enemy's baseline while stopping him from grabbing one on your baseline.) Each side had 4 "Brigades" totalling 14 units. Some dicing resulted in Blue having 4 cavalry, 8 infantry and 2 guns while Red had 2 cavalry 10 infantry and 2 guns.

Anyway all of the old ideas have been tried in various combinations as well as every alternative or new idea that has come to me over the last 6 years and most had some merits and some faults but when push came to shove, every attempt to make the rules more detailed or flavourful, or gamey (sic) eventually failed when tested and I'm left pretty near where I started  and originally got so excited because despite past preferences, I had discovered that I now liked the feel of this quick simple set of rules where the tactical details were below the grain forcing me to focus on over all battle plans and when and where to pull back or push ahead and when and where to throw in what reserves I had managed to hold on to. 

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

The lines engage.

On the far side of the table, Blue's guns struggle to silence the Red gun while Red's infantry start pushing around Blue's right causing heavy losses to the Bluecoat Brigade. The center is a stand off. 

As Blue's losses grow and the sun sinks (along with the remaining stack of turn cards), Red sends his whole line forward with orders to "Attack!". 

The Grey Coat Brigade managed to hold back twice their numbers backed by artillery but on the far flank, Red's artillery and infantry forced back Blue's cavalry and artillery. In the end Red's cavalry swept forward routing the Blue cavalry and overrunning their artillery. 

Time to get back to some converting and painting.