Scimons Random Thought Table

Last night I was playing Dawn of War, specifically the single player campaign in the First version. The one where you play the Blood Raven space marines kicking seven types of crud out of a bunch of Orks (and Ooo it’s just been revealed that there’s some Chaos guys). As I was playing it I got to thinking why I prefer the original Dawn of War games to the newer Dawn of War II. One major reason is that Dawn of War is one game, you can play the single player campaign mode (4 different types of them if you’ve got all the expansions) or the single player versus AI battles or multi-player on-line battles and it’s the same gameplay. OK in the first game you get a cut down tech tree for the first few missions but that’s fine.

In Dawn of War II on the other hand the single player campaign and multi player missions are very different. So if you’ve played through the campaign (with your teeny tiny squads of marines, one dreadnought and a distinct lack of tanks) you’ve learnt absolutely nothing about the multi player version of the game. Which I found a bit annoying. Plus I found the multi player a complete pain to play as unlike most RTS games it’s about keeping people alive as opposed to building huge armies and crushing all before you. Every time I played it I’d find the opponents bulding stuff way faster than me and kicking the crud out of which every units I wasn’t looking at.

One thing I find funny about the whole thing is one the reasons given for not having Tyranids in Dawn of War was that the Engine couldn’t cope with the unit sizes. But then when Dawn of War II came out the numbers of troops you can control dropped like a stone. Where’s my 5 units of marines, each 8 man strong tooled up with heavy weapons?

So for this reason I’ve gone back to playing Dawn of War. This by the way, is after I tried to play Mass Effect again, giving it the benefit of the doubt after the last hellish time I tried to run it on my PC. So I went and managed to find the patches (and that is an epic quest in of itself, go on, give it a try) got them installed, went out and started playing and lo and behold the game crashed.

This is why I’m not buying Mass Effect 2 unless it comes out for the PS3 and probably not even then. Only Dragon Age has stopped me from completely giving up on Bioware and the Return to Ostagar issues are not helping there. Of course at this rate I think I’m just going to wipe the PC, install Ubuntu and just get back into some coding in the evenings instead. Hmm apparently Dawn of War and Civilisation work on Cedega, anyone know about Steam?

Well I’ve got this idea in my head and I thought, unlike the normal fate of my ideas, I’d regurgitate it onto the intertubes to see how it progresses. It’s a idea for some variant rules for that wonderful, if sometimes slightly long, game Talisman. It should work with the 1st/2nd edition and the new 4th edition, I don’t have 3rd any more so can’t remember.

I’ve not tried these rules out yet, if anyone does please pop in a comment how it went. If anyone would like to give them a try again the comment box is just down. In fact any thoughts or other communication is always appreciated. Anyhoo, here it is.

Iron Man Talisman

Setup

Before playing reduce the Talisman deck to one card, if you are using the 4th edition Dungeon expansion remove the Talisman from the Dungeon Treasure Deck.

Play

Play proceeds as normal with the following rules modifications:

• If you die then you are out of the game.
• If you complete a Warlocks quest and someone has already got the Talisman they are Teleported to the Warlocks Cave along with you. You may encounter them as normal. If you beat them in Battle (or Psychic Combat if you are able to initiate it) you may take the Talisman as well as your normal reward for winning.
• The game has a Difficulty Level. The Difficulty Level starts at 0. Whenever a space tells you to draw cards add the Difficulty Level to the number of cards you have to draw.
• If you draw a Talisman from the Adventure deck (or other similar deck such as the Dungeon Deck) it is discarded and the Difficulty Level is increased by one. If a card or Space (other than the Warlocks Cave) instructs you to take a Talisman the Difficulty Level is increased by one.

Please note Talisman is copyright, trademark and all other kinds of stuff Games Workshop. I am in no way trying to infringe on this. Go buy a copy, it’s a great game, and you’ll be helping the economy.

This is not a follow up to my last post, that will be later. This is a quick test to see if the site is still suicidal.

Fingers Crossed.

Rob Donoghue and Ga Hanrahan (great guys one of whom I know the other I just read) have both posted about their ‘Gaming DNA’ the history of them and gaming. Recently I’ve been starting to realise that I’m fast approaching 40, something I don’t really feel, but I’m also fast approaching 38. See for me 2011 will be a bit of a milestone birthday, in Octoder 1981 my mother popped into a local toy shop. She asked for something for a bright kid who needed something a bit different. She left with a copy of Dungeons and Dragons, not Red Box, the one before it.

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