Monthly Archives: August 2018

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On Weapon Variety

Warframe has a very large number of weapons. There are currently over 100 primary weapons, almost as many secondaries, and more melee weapons than I care to count. While it’s true that many of these are variations of each other (there are 4 versions of the basic Braton assault rifle for example) there’s still a relatively large number of unique weapons. Here are a few primaries that I like:

Vectis


The most standard weapon in this list, the Vectis is one of the first sniper rifles that you can get in the game. It only has one round so you have to like reloading, but does good damage with great critical stats and is capable of killing things from when you get it through some of the hardest content in the game. There is a somewhat difficult to get prime variant that does somewhat more damage and loads two rounds, but the normal one is still an amazing choice if what you want to do is kill enemies before they can even see you.

Supra


The Supra is a hand-held plasma minigun, and is my most-used weapon overall. In sharp contrast to the Vectis, this one’s for pointing at a group of enemies that you want to go away. A significant amount of travel time and spread make this unsuitable for anything longer than mid-range, but for anything in the same room this can clean up amazingly. This also has a mod that can make it give you energy, cause an AOE explosion, and boost your max energy slightly.

Quanta


There are a few cases of weapons that make it incredibly obvious that Digital Extremes worked on the Unreal Tournament series before making Dark Sector and Warframe. The Drakgoon bears a more than superficial similarity to the UT flak cannon (without the secondary fire, unfortunately). The Angstrum (which is a secondary weapon somehow) has a similar charge mechanic as the UT rocket launcher. Along these lines, the Quanta is a re-implementation of the shock rifle. Primary fire is a perfectly accurate continuous beam; secondary fire shoots floating cubes that explode when touched by enemies. If you shoot a cube before it blows up naturally, it does additional damage. This union of great AOE weapon and great single-target weapon is useful for just about anything.

Others


This is just scratching the surface. There are shotguns that shoot exploding shells. There’s a giant cannon that you’re going to probably blow yourself up with more often than the enemy. There’s an energy bow that shoots arrows that explode into a giant cloud that freezes and then blows up your enemies. There are several highly-effective normal bows. I’m not sure where this statement was going.

The giant variety of weapons on offer here is one of my favorite parts about the game. The variety in Warframes and their abilities is a close second; the combination ensures that many different playstyles are possible. If you tried Warframe forever ago, now might be a reasonable time to give it another shot.

P.S. You have one week to finish the FFV Four Job Fiesta. Get to it!

Meta

On Being On-Call

It turns out that when I’m in a state of high-stress, the blog is one of the first things that gets left behind. If you listen to the podcast you may already know this, but I played a decent chunk of Warframe in the past week. Warframe has changed a lot since I played it last, but it’s still just a game that’s fun to play for me.


I’ve never really articulated my thoughts about this game, but that seems like it might make a good topic going forward. Today is dedicated to recovery, however.

Gaming

On Gundam Breaker

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I was quite excited for New Gundam Breaker when it was announced to be releasing here in the States, but it turns out that game’s quite awful. This was quite disappointing because Gundam Breaker 3 was pretty amazing, so I’d like to talk about that game instead.


Taking a bit of a step back, the Gundam series has been putting animated giant robots on TV for almost 40 years. Models of said robots, generally known as Gunpla, have been around for almost as long. Gundam Breaker is a game series that is entirely about building and battling Gunpla. Gundam Breaker 3 is the first game in the series to be translated into English, although it was only released in Asia. The general premise is the typical for a tournament anime: you fight battles, you crush all comers, you sometimes get sidetracked by odd sidequests, and you win everything. Gameplay involves you and potentially a few AI-controlled teammates battling swarms of other gunpla in order to progress through a linear stage. This is occasionally broken up by objectives or stronger enemies in the form of “other players”. Most stages end with a boss or two, which can be anything from just a stronger enemy, a giant enemy, or a large “Mobile Armor”.


Along the way, as you beat enemies you may break parts off of them. This has a chance to cause the parts to drop, as well as a chance when you defeat an enemy. When you finish a mission, you have an opportunity to review what you got and potentially incorporate anything you find into your own gunpla. Your skills level up, you can combine parts to make your parts level up, and there’s a lot of depth to the whole “building” system. Some parts have built-in skills which you can only use when the part is set. Mastering these skills will let you use them even without an appropriate part equipped. Also attached to parts are Option Equipment, which are additional weapons/attacks enabled just by having certain parts set. A pair of legs with a sword strapped on will let you swing the sword, for example.


It’s this building and customizing that really got me hooked on the game. It’s so much fun just seeing what you can make and getting to then turn around and use it in the next mission. It’s still pretty easy to get this one with all of the DLC, so I highly suggest you give it a try if you’re into Gundams in any way.

Gaming

On EDH

In most senses, I’ve known how to play Magic the Gathering since I was in middle school. I never had any cards of my own (I had Pokemon cards when those were new) but I knew the rules somewhat and I could play at a very basic level. Most of my Magic experience remained theoretical until I got Duels of the Planeswalkers (the first one, in 2009) on a whim and really enjoyed it. At the same time, I never really got into “competitive” Magic. I was (and still am) uninterested in putting in the time and money it would take to get “good” at any of the constructed formats. Draft is also a skill I just never picked up.


Fast forward several years, and I find out about the Commander format. For those unfamiliar, this is a format usually played with more than two people, using decks containing 100 cards where you can have no more than one of anything other than basic lands, and using a legendary creature as your “Commander”. This is a card you have access to at all times that also determines what colors of cards you can include in your deck. (The original Commanders were the Elder Dragons from way back in Legends, so that’s where the original name “Elder Dragon Highlander” comes from.) Commander games tend to be quite a bit longer and crazy things can happen that are unlikely to ever see any use in a normal game. The multiplayer aspect is also relevant, because it encourages playing politics if someone is getting ahead.


I started with the pre-constructed deck featuring Atraxa, the rather ridiculous card pictured above. I’ve since tried building my own decks, some of which have been more successful than others. It’s definitely re-kindled my interest in the game, and this more casual approach has helped other podcast members get into it as well.

Gaming

On Finely Cast Resin Miniatures

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It’s as much a surprise to me as anyone else that I’m getting into Warhammer Fantasy (now called Age of Sigmar). It’s also a surprise that the first faction I took an interest in wasn’t Lizardmen (now called Seraphon); this one actually caused someone else to lose a bet. Instead I decided to jump in with the start Collecting box that looked most interesting to me. I tend to favor large things, and the Beastclaw Raiders box is just 5 big things, so that’s what I ended up with. The majority of the units in this faction are mounted ogres (now called Ogors) and they’re large and hard to kill and it’s a faction definitely suited to my playstyle.
Yes, it's really just 5 "minis" in that box.
Branching out into other things in this faction, one of the options to field is a hunter and some frost sabres. This would add a few more bodies on the table for me and enable the faction to attempt some strategies that aren’t “rush forward as fast as possible”, so I ordered some. These come in the form of what Games workshop calls “Finely Cast Resin Miniatures” and everyone else calls Finecast if they’re being polite.


To date, I have never heard anyone say anything good about Finecast. I’ve assembled lots of plastic in the past, and I’ve had metal minis too, but this was a first for me. Getting these to a reasonable state involved a lot of cleaning, other work I’m not completely used to. In the process, I learned a few things.

  1. Resin is soft, and cuts with a sharp knife much easier than plastic. Care should be used when dealing with these.
  2. Resin warps in shipping/storage. The tip I got was to use hot water to bend them into shape, and then cold water to set them into that shape.
  3. Resin pieces don’t always fit together that well. I found it was okay to just hack bits off until they did fit, but keeping in mind point 1.


I’ve now filed this material away as “something to be avoided” and am factoring that into list construction. At least it’s good to be informed?

Meta

On Blaugust Reborn

Greetings! It is now the official start of the month of August, and this year Blaugust is back!

This space has been pretty unused for quite some time, but I’m hoping Blaugust helps me get back to regular posting a bit. Back when I was able to write posts during lunch at work, I was able to keep to a pretty consistent 3/week schedule, so I think for the month of August we’re going to try going back to that. This past year+ has been a little crazy for me personally, and I’m very gradually getting back into the swing of things. In the meantime, I’m still playing games and you can hear me on a weekly basis on Aggrochat.