In case anybody out there cares... I'm back from my hometown.
Like every other visit I arrived with a "crunch." Seems the ditch through-pipe has raised another inch or so (or the surrounding earth sunken a bit more). I'm afraid bottoming out the car has knocked something loose ...again. I didn't notice on the highway but it was when made my way through the city back to my house that I realized just how unusually loud my engine was.
On the bright side a few bits of gaming news from this weekend.
I played M:TG and lost a lot to my brother. He played a variety of custom decks he had built over the years (some dating back to his early youth when Magic was still new). While I played with only the pre-constructed decks from the Jace vs Chandra set. I also threw together a custom Jund deck with my leftovers (my best cards are still locked away for the tournament, unfortunately).
We finally, after many months of bad timing, got to play AT-43 for the first time. Either it was mismatched unit types, or just unable to schedule a rendez-vous together, we never were able to even try a proper game after finishing the contents of the Initiation Set. The first game was... quite a mess, to be honest. We chose the first scenario in the rulebook (a straight up "kill your opponent for points" setup; no capture objectives, no reinforcement units). We randomly set up a game board by placing my collection of tiles, then the terrain elements, then randomly choosing sides of the map to start from.
Almost immediately, we made our first mistakes. There are certain things you don't really think of when you come from a WH40k 4th edition background... Like the fact that all units can run faster if they choose not to shoot. Instead, I misread the Therian optional "Dash" to mean that I could move a full 30cm in addition to whatever previous combat move they made! Other silly mistakes included the thought that "take cover" meant you could get a saving throw even when your unit was out in the open. About half-way through the game we decided that made no sense and went back to "warhammer logic" - if it's partially behind something, then it gets a chance to hide.
I thoroughly enjoyed our first match. I think its one major game mechanic that trumps WH40k is the fact that you take turns activating units. WH40k may be more "real" in that all your units are effectively acting simultaneously, but AT-43 is simply more fast-paced gaming because you don't sit around waiting for your opponent to move 6 to 10 units around the field. Both players are engaged at all times because you're busy thinking of ways to outmanoeuvre the opponent.
As a final note, if you missed it my Tweet, I did indeed find a Matcatz Fightpad. I chose the Ryu design. I am consistently amused that the EB-Games in my tiny home-town manage to get inventory for these sorts of hard-to-find items and that they seem to sit on the shelves for quite a while. I actually also saw a non-Tournament-Edition Fightstick as well, but I think I'll take my chances and wait to see if I can get my hands on a TE.
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