Conference Doodling

Or, the art of flexing one’s creative muscle in the face of uncompromising creative oppression

By Tim Hunter 

It’s conference time, hooray! And you have been selected to endure a solid week of PowerPoint slides, shifting paradigms, and exciting new corporate bullshit that will drain your soul out through your ear, and replace it with a powerful desire to run naked through the streets, screaming, “everyone, remove your clothes, break your laptops, and burn every copy of MS PowerPoint you can find!”

But you don’t. Instead, you endure the fifty slides of forecasts and pivot tables. You smile politely, and nod occasionally as you are fed clock speeds, marketing slants, and forced to participate in role plays with illusory customers. You shake hands, trade business cards, lock eyes with Emma from payroll, and silently share the look that says, “We will never build our own huts, or hunt our dinner, nor will we paint a mural depicting our life and times, but at least we had Sydney, and that conversation about Intel promos… at least we had that.” But most importantly, you stave off the madness of oppressive corporate exposition by rebelling, and flexing your creative muscle. You engage in the time honoured, and ancient ritual of doodling on the conference hotel’s stationary. Oh sure, you start by noting down a few key points from the presenter, but as the madness builds, and your desire to strip and paint yourself with jelly mounts up, your doodles become a window into your soul. I’m a firm believer in the arts of creative writing and drawing, and the power that they have to express our inner-most feelings. From the dog-eared school text book, to the ledgers of the mightiest of money movers, we all open ourselves up for soul inspection through the window of our art. This is my story: FY17 Kick-off Conference.

I want to start by letting my employer know that they throw a hell of a party to help us swallow the throat obstructing pill of a week-long conference. This is me, for those of you that I have never met:

I'm the cheeks on the right

The quality of entertainment that went into keeping us alive, and not driven to vegetative paraplegia, was second to none, and I want to acknowledge that in advance.

But the story of my conference madness will begin innocently enough, with my first, and only real attempt at professionalism, and making useful notes that carefully documented the information I was being imparted. Here you can see the notes on objection management:

As you can see, I genuinely took to the info, and it was part of the highlight of the learning. In this session, we discussed the “Boomerang Method” of objection management first, that being the art of taking an objection and feeding it back verbatim to the interlocutor, and clarify that their position, which demonstrates your understanding and genuine concern for their needs. Next was the “Feel, Felt, Found” technique, which is a minor story-telling manoeuvre that relates an objection to a story of a similar, and successfully resolved situation. Sneaky, snacky, no? This was the point that my attention span began to waver. In spite of all my genuine interest in becoming better at handling objections, and negotiating mutually beneficial settlements, I felt the creative urge begin to well inside me. The bland, perfectly uniform distribution of florescent lighting, and the perfectly practiced speech of the presenter all called out for the imperfection of the human condition. I needed to draw something. I needed to break the uniform perfection of the factory-assembled work environment. I needed to express myself.

In the bottom right corner of the paper, my rebellion began. It is small, and tucked into a corner, but you can make out the first attack. The presenter might have called it a terrorist cell, but I call it my freedom fighter band, taking up arms against the oppression of PPT, PDF, and PNG. It is incomplete, and imperfect, it is a small, poorly rendered sword, and an arrow being readied on half the string of an undrawn bow. It is small, but it is a start.

The conference breaks momentarily, while presenter one packs up his Latitude, and is replaced by the Thinkpad X1 Carbon bearing rep from a stats company. Here, in this moment of weakness from my oppressors, the underground resistance bursts forth into fully-fledged, open rebellion! The warrior spirit in me has been totally unleashed, and I unleash the heroes of history onto the pages:

Ignore the Olympic reference top right

A spear-wielding warrior of ancient times, bearing his hide shield, and naught but his flesh for armour bursts forth. I practice his wild, lean but muscular physique above, and imagine what it would be like if he burst into the room during this presentation on in-store demonstrations. Would his lack of a suit and tie be more disturbing than his garishly-feathered turban, or tiny loincloth? I decide to pull my head out of the world of semi-nude warfare just long enough to reply to the announcement that our presence in stores leads to a massive increase in attach rates; that’s the part where you buy a mouse, or MS Office, or a designer bag to go with your new laptop, instead of just walking out of the store with the bare bones option of the sale. My mind reels with images of celebrations befitting such a feat:

But before long, I return to drawing the warriors of destiny. I draw and draw. Firstly, the death-howling mask of the Samurai whose Katana adorned my first page, now with his bow completed and drawn. Next I add the Chinese swordsman, preparing to cut a swath with his Da Dao, the mighty two-handed cleaver; his top-knot and loose robes swashing in the sun! Next I decide to step up the protection with a Gothic-Plated Knecht, with his form-fitting armour, versatile Langschwert, and Lanze, ready for anything. The battle is in full swing in my head, and glory is to be earned with fire and steel. And then we broke for lunch.

Lunch consisted of the usual fare, a selection of fruits, pastries, and some hearty salad rolls, and chicken-pesto sandwiches on Turkish. I’m always cautious about overeating at lunch, since the lethargy that takes effect can drive you straight to sleep in the post-repast session. So, I keep it to just a salad roll, and a few slices of melon for the sugar. No coffee, though. I don’t know exactly who thought this was a good idea, but no coffee gets served at lunch. I know, right? A room full of bored 18-30-year-olds, being forced to endure an endless array of slides, and no coffee till afternoon tea. The Stalinist Purges weren’t this oppressive. Okay, maybe they were, but at least they didn’t use weapons-grade bar graphs. Someone get onto The Hague.

Clearly, suffering under an unjust system

However, while I claim to be the hero of the revolution, I must warn you that this was the point in the conference where my mind started down the path of perversion. If you are easily offended, or feel that it is right to judge thought-crimes of a man under PowerPoint duress, it might be in our mutual benefit for you to skip to the drawings I did of kittens a little further down this page. Just don’t read anything till you reach the kitties.

Are they gone? Good. As young men in forced comradery are often obliged to do, I bonded with my fellows sitting the presentation. Our corporate motto for FY17 was #playtowin, something that we only found out later was already a hashtag for crossfit. I’ll let the next few pics speak for themselves as to my conversations with the fresh-faced young corporate go-getters that sat next to me that day:

"Laurence, what would you do if you had a million dollars?

I tell you what I'd do, Peter man..."

Let the jury know that it the defendant was under the influence of PPT.

Seriously, if you read that earlier warning, and still looked at those pictures, you have only yourself to blame.

And now: KITTIES!!!

Somehow the shame of the male bonding conversation left me feeling unwholesome, and like I needed the pure honest cuteness of kitties to wash away the filth from my soul. At this point the presenters had switched, and the Thinkpad X1 Carbon had been replaced by a new weapon of corp-order-only choice, the Elitebook. You won’t find any of these in retail, so don’t bother searching (bourgeois custom orders only, ala the Mac Pro with the 5k display).

For those that were disappointed by my cat drawing, this is Oreo and Milo, my friend, Paris', cats

It was around about this point the new presenter made an incorrect use of Latin, describing a slap-dash, improvised solution as “Ad Hoc”. For the benefit of the young man sitting next to me, I outlined the actual meaning of ad hoc, and how it means “for that/to this”, or that in modern English use, while pompous, it denotes a specifically created solution for an exact task, and while synonymous with impromptu, it does not implicitly mean that it was done without forethought. As his eyes glazed over, I explained to him the connotations of the above-listed shocker and show-stopper, and re-established his attention.

My passion for words and grammar once again aflare, I decided to express my outrage by developing a new list of creative insults, which I have put in an easy-to-use table as follows:

The final act of the day came when I realized firstly that there were things on the internet I could be looking at, like grand works of philosophy, historical archives, and freely-viewable art from this century, and the many that have come before. Not to mention the endless cavalcade of drivel, memes, cats, and scantily-clad maidens for me to vacuously mull over. Literally anything but this. Secondly, I realized that there were five syllables in, “Is there Wi-Fi here?”

The next day was no less a treat than the last. This time my creative assault began with a desire to understand the mechanics of the spear. The spear is one of the simplest weapons imaginable, and the art form behind its use relies on geometry, angles of attack, and lines of defence. I was fascinated by the techniques of the spear, and of rapiers, which shared the similar simplicity of the thrust, and the angular defence. It wasn’t blood in the streets today, but an attempt at articulated design. I wanted to capture the essence of a battle in its scientific exactitude.

Then I decided to be completely immature, and come up with some names for my imaginary progressive rock band.

For those that can’t make out the childlike hieroglyphs of my handwriting, and shitty spelling, I’ll translate. My band may be called:

-        Digital Spudgun

-        Wonky Shocker’s Whacky Hackers

-        The Galah Gala

-        Gun Dog: The Wild Pug Slinger

-        Excel Bedsheets

-        Reality Czech

-        Funkier than Yo Monkey Bunch

-        Trans-Digital Acceptance

-        Consensual High-Five

-        Flogging Boxes

-        Critical Sass

Got to admit, it’s down to either Gun Dog, or Critical Sass.

The morning tea break was a well-deserved reward for listening to whatever the hell our presenter was reading from his fancy new Zenbook 13. I knew that we were in Sydney Harbour, and there was something special I needed to do before leaving town. My uncle was a seaman in the Royal Australian Navy during the Vietnam War, and his wit, sass, and outstanding storytelling have always been an inspiration to me. One of the ships he served on, along with 300 other Aussie sailors, was the HMAS Vampire. The Vampire, also known as The Batmobile, is a museum ship, docked in Sydney Harbour right now. I knew I wouldn’t get much of an opportunity, so I bolted for the door during the 15-minute tea break, and managed to look upon Vampire in all its glory.

Magnificent

Vampire was one of three Daring Class destroyers operated by Australia during The Cold War, and Ian Hunter served on it, and its sister the Vendetta. His stories of laughter, debauchery, and the horrors he witnessed down the telescopic sights, all contributed to the hero he is today, and I was thrilled to get the opportunity to see his ship, even if only for five minutes before sprinting back to the gulag for more slideshows.

Audamus!

Of course, one can’t experience that thrill without having the creative muscle scream to be flexed. While I’m no great artist, here’s my etching of the Vampire launching a spread of torpedoes. ‘Audamus!”

By this point, my journey into madness was all but complete. Without the open air of the harbour, or the majesty of my mistress, the Lamia of Sydney quay, I had no patience left for the discussion of legal implications of predatory salesmanship, or use of a person’s image. I wanted to ride the waves, or charge with a couched lance across the steppe. My patience concluded:

I'm sure he was a nice man, and deserved none of this.

But anger is the perfect fuel for the artist’s soul. When you feel like your exits are all closed, and your flame is choked by the lack of air and closed doors of the conference, it is time to let loose the blast furnace they’ve stoked in your chest. Draw, recite, sculpt, create:

Slightly corrected below:

Consume

Eat of the wholesome fruit of the digital vine

Chew on the open vein of the cloud-based throat

Sing of the bloated, black reticulated spline

Scream at the choking, user-preying garrotte

Like, comment, subscribe, share, promote

Take the pill, buy the house

Swipe, tap, wave, and die

Check in to the madhouse  

Consume, buy more, shut up, and buy

Okay, it’s borderline Vogon poetry, but what do you expect, I made it up while watching a PowerPoint on market share growth. Thus ended my descent into madness. I take a small amount of solace in the fact that I was far from alone. All around me were the bored, slack-jawed faces of those that consumed the data like folk drowning in plain air. I toured the aftermath of the battle between work and creativity, and took many autopsies of the fallen. Sculptures, etchings, inscriptions of the lost. These were the works I recorded, and that I now submit to you. When you find yourself yawning in a silent scream at conference, I hope you find your creative will to fight, and summon the energy of these works of art to your side:

Express, my dear colleagues, express your inner desires

I’d like to close by thanking my employers for all the effort they laid on in keeping our spirits high. This article was in jest, and good humour, and I genuinely respect how hard it is to keep parasitic employees like me entertained, and receptive to the info we need to work our jobs properly. Thanks for the memories.

Damn it feels good to be a Gansta

Podcast: Redlands City Wargamers Unite

It's here! The first podcast from the Redlands City Wargamers is in ===============>


Redlands City Wargamers are a team of cheese-hungry gamers, whose interests range across the full spectrum of Games Workshop, and other awesome tabletop games. We put out this podcast to introduce ourselves to the world, and expose our seedy gaming pasts along with them (spoiler, there was no sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, but a whole lot of Doritos). Today we chat about the burgeoning Age of Sigmar community in Brisbane, and how we've all come together in the wake of The End Times, and GW's new beginning.

Introducing the Redlands City Wargamers:

Major Tim, of Geek Control 2 Major Tim: He's a typical bearded git with an interviewer's wit, and the charisma of a bag of scandalously clad potatoes.

Evman: he's the local head honcho of Age of Sigmar this side of the Pacific Ocean, and is the master of subtlety... no, really. I mean we can't get this guy to raise his voice above a whisper, so listen closely.

Luke "The Filth" Tailor: what he lacks in morals, scruples, and basic human decency as a wargamer, he makes up for with his... umm... he has a very nice car.

Listen, and enjoy, my sexy fans :)

Also on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-553381975/redlands-wargaming-ep1

World of Warships: Goodbye, Pretty Ms. Penny

After grinding up the American cruiser line, I finally unlocked the New Orleans today, and have officially caught back up to my progress from the closed beta test. It took ages, as I rarely get much time for WoWs now days, but it certainly was satisfying. From memory the New Orleans was a great ship, and felt like a massive improvement over the Pensacola, which, as a new player at the time, was a pretty damn disappointing ship. Since then, I've been right up the 'merican cruiser line in the game's open form, and I have gained new appreciation for many of the ships I originally found disappointing, the Pensacola being the biggest of those reversals.

The Pensacola class cruiser is one of the more hated, or at least unappreciated ships in the game, and with good reason. Any player upgrading from the Cleveland class at tier 6 finds themselves faced with a ship that seems less armoured, has ludicrously vulnerable citadels, and much slower firing guns. The Pensacola feels like an honest to goodness downgrade from its predecessor. However, as I said in my review of the Pensacola, the ship is actually pretty great when you learn its quirks and make it work for you. Seeing it as a downgrade from the Cleveland is a pretty dim view once you start putting the Pensacola in its element, and start hunting other cruisers. The 8 inch guns it packs can sink an enemy cruiser of equal or lower tier in about 3-4 citadel hits, and the performance of these guns is generally better than that of its contemporaries. While your armour makes it imperative that you shimmy and shake like a sneaky snake in order to stay alive, the Pretty Ms. Penny makes a mess out of pretty much any cruiser it finds. Similarly, it is a great DD hunter, even though it lacks the Cleveland's rapid fire. The 8 inchers will smash apart a DD in one or two volleys, making head on charges at DDs a super viable tactic. Only really battleships seem to be the Ms. P's real nemesis, as they are virtually guaranteed to citadel you if they land a shell in your postcode. Even putting your ship into a fully angled position seems to do nothing to save your sweet little citadel. My experience of the Penny is that of the ultimate glass cannon. Some matches I would absolutely wreck face, scoring dozens of hits, with plenty of citadels, all while dodging the lion's share of return fire. Other times, I would cop a single battleship salvo in the opening seconds of a match, and go the bottom without firing a single shot. Awareness, and patience is the key to the Penny, and daring when the time is right.

My final match in this ship was one of the most satisfying I've ever had, and I managed to bring down 3 cruisers, and a DD in about a minute before finally being sunk. Screaming, "Fight me IRL," and charging in to claim my three victims with a total of 4 salvos (each with multiple citadel hits), I actually didn't mind dying. I've now sold the ship, seeing that as a fitting tribute, and now I'm on my way towards rediscovering the magic of the New Orleans. Hopefully it is still the ship I remember, and doesn't end up getting outshone by my new appreciation for the USS Pensacola. 

X-Men Apocalypse: It's the end of the world... again... but it's awesome.

 Note: I use italics to refer to the movie title, to differentiate from Apocalypse the character ;)

This year has already been a great one for comic book films, starting with the Valentines Day romp of Deadpool, and the magnificence of Captain America: Civil War. It has also been a bit of a disappointment, with Batman V Superman leaving its community split between those that hate it, and those that desperately defend it, in spite of its critical drubbing. X-Men has had a string of successes in the last few years, maintaining a pretty high-standard of entertainment, and proving that Marvel Studios isn't the only safe bet in town for a good night at the movies. X-Men: Apocalypse wasn't my most anticipated film this year, but I'm glad to report that it delivers pretty much exactly the level of action, character, and social awareness that you've come to expect from the franchise. However, it also falls victim to its competition, as movies like Deadpool (a loose alumni of the X-Men franchise) gave a fresh breath of air to the comic book genre just recently, while Apocalypse rather fittingly sticks with the kind of overdone "big baddie wants to end the world" scenario. Civil War will still remain my pick for best comic book movie of the year for now, as it took the Avengers, a team known for saving the world on an epic scale, and boiled its story-line down to a deeply character-driven narrative, devoid of the stereotypes that have started to become routine in comic movies. Don't get me wrong, Apocalypse is great, and you'll love it if you have any love for fairly straight forward comic movie, but it is following some pretty tough acts this year.

Apocalypse is one of the X-Men universe's most popular, and threatening villains. The comic books have dedicated year-long events to the character, and he remains as one of the biggest baddies in the whole Marvel universe. Making a film about him seems like it would need to be big, and carry a hell of a lot of gravity, and X-Men: Apocalypse certainly tries its hardest to deliver. The stakes are about as high as they've ever been, with the titular villain attempting to wipe out all of humanity in a grand scheme that would leave only the strongest mutants alive to rule the world. So, great right? We've had Deadpool, and Civil War both offer smaller, more personal stories, it's probably time for a big doomsday scenario (actually, considering Batman V Superman, maybe we shouldn't ever ask for Doomsday again). Brian Singer, long-running X-Men director, does an outstanding job of building the seriousness of the threat that Apocalypse represents, and bringing to a head the character arcs of the generation 2 actors that started in X-Men: First Class. The film's biggest reward is its final shots, where the classic X-Men team assembles in full, zany uniforms, finally paying off on the years of black leather biker outfits, and half-measures towards the classic X-Men aesthetic. It's all so good, and yet I somehow feel like this could have been better.

***Minor Spoilers Ahead***

Call me a spoiled comic book fanboy, but I can't help but wonder if the character of Apocalypse deserved something bigger. Part of the problem with the current era of comic book movies is that we the audience are finally becoming as jaded as the comic book readers of old. We saw the Avengers save New York from an alien invasion, and then saw them prevent a comet from obliterating the world. We've had Superman save/annihilate major cities to save the world twice recently. We just had a movie called X-Men: Apocalypse, and the next Thor film will cover Ragnarok, the revelations chapter of Norse mythology. The doom of the world being thwarted by spandex-clad heroes is becoming the one thing that it should never be: routine. We've kind of gone over this all before, and it seems like we the fans are getting harder and harder to please. Marvel has found a way to address this by introducing Thanos, a villain so serious and powerful that he's been kept in reserve, operating from the shadows before he will finally be revealed in Avengers: Infinity Wars. This use of a recurring character that is just too big, and too powerful to deal with directly builds a suspense, and sense of impending doom that far outweighs a villain that is simply introduced, built up, and defeated in one film. This is kind of what I felt was missing for good old Apocalypse. What made Apocalypse great in the comics was his inevitability. No matter what you seemed to try, the bastard always survived, and always remained impossible to defeat. While it may be a slight spoiler, I must now mention that the good guys win in X-Men: Apocalypse (oh, shut up, of course they did), and Apocalypse is definitively defeated. While the film does a great job of making his defeat seem all but impossible, and makes it really come down to the wire, it does end with Apocalypse being destroyed on a pretty much atomic level. For a character that is "invincible", and has lived for thousands of years, to be beaten and definitively killed in a single film (with an in-film chronology of maybe a month at the most), it kind of feels anti-climactic. Maybe the creative team could have chosen to draw it out over more films, or end with at least some ambiguity over the finality of Apocalypse's death, and that might have made it more satisfying.

In summary, this film felt a little routine, and I kind of wish Apocalypse had been given a bit longer in this universe to really build his sense of threat, but all of that aside, I also feel that Singer, and Fox Studios are still safe hands for this franchise. X-Men: Apocalypse looks great, the characters are wonderful, and the villain works extremely well with what he has. I'm still kind of glad that X-Men is separate from the Marvel Comic Universe movies, since it allows it to act as its own player in the game, and we're not stuck with a duopoly of Disney and Warner Bros. Given that the first film came out 16 years ago, it is encouraging to see that the franchise, and its director, have still got the touch that helped save the comic movie genre.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada: buy the shit out of this game

I am not a proponent of early access games by any means, and I have traditionally frowned upon companies that try to force pre-orders by offering pre-release content. There are a lot of reasons for this, such as the content not reflecting the ultimate product, or the ultimate product having little over the pre-release materiel. PC gamers have been forced to defend themselves from anti-consumer practices from companies like EA, Sega, and Ubisoft, who desperately seek pre-release sales as a way of incentivising, or simply impressing their investors. I've gone on record saying that I deeply disaprove of Sega, and Creative Assembly's decision to hold the Chaos Warriors content from Total War: Warhammer hostage behind a pre-order scheme, and I have also been disappointed by some other early access Warhammer titles, such as Eternal Crusade (disappointing, but improving).

So, it is with that full disclosure in mind that I want you to believe me when I say that Battlefleet Gothic Armada is perhaps one of the most satisfying, and enjoyable early access purchases I have ever made. For those that are totally unfamiliar with the game, it is a video game adaptation of the cult classic tabletop game from Games Workshop, Battlefleet Gothic. Armada recreates the tabletop game's look, and spirit perfectly in a real-time strategy structure, which keeps the game fast paced, and accessible for those not looking for a turn-based game.

I had limited expectations going in, but had been encouraged by videos from commentators, such as John Bain. Armada scratches a pretty specific itch for me as a gamer, as it offers 2d strategic space combat, with a focus on tactics and micromanagement. Part of the original board game's appeal was that it was framed as "tall ships in space", with the ships acting less like realistic space craft, and more akin to 18th century galleons. The ships are all high-tech, and you'll find yourself blasting down energy shields with plasma cannons, only to then launch boarders, as though you'd thrown grapnels, and swung across the gap between ships with a dagger in your teeth. The lore does a good job immersing the player, and explaining the odd fusion of sci-fi and bucaneering. The gameplay may seem odd to those used to space as a 3d plane. Homeworld this is not. Armada also gives you a massive amount of ship customization, as well as skills to use, in combination with ships arsenals. The maneovers, orders, skills, ship's abilities all contribute to ships having a great number of different options and play styles. This makes the combat somewhat more tactical, since you need to choose when to use your panoply of abilities at appropriate times.

What is currently playable in the pre-launch build is a set of tutorial missions, which introduce the coming campaign, and the solo/multiplayer skirmish options. I just spent the whole of my day today, and most of the night before hammering out as much of this game as I could play, and I'm still keen to play more tomorrow. The core gameplay (I mostly experienced it through the skirmish mode) is so damn solid that I would have happily paid for the current level of content as though it were a release product. Obviously, I'll be much happier when the final touches are made, and the campaign is fully playable, but for what amounts to an extended demo of the game, Armada's early access build is amazing.

This title has all the things I would generally avoid as a purchase. It is an early access game, which means you are basically paying the company to play test their game for them. It has a pre-order incentive (the Space Marines are offered free after launch to early adopters), which normally stinks of cut content, or as I like to call it, "hostage content". It is also a cash-in on an old and disused GW license, which has been a mixed bag to say the least, looking back at the last few years of GW video game adaptations. But I want you to do me a favour and forget all that shit. Battlefeet Gothic Armada lives up to its promises, and to be frank, it offers more unbridled joy in its pre-release build than most games offer in their final build. If you are into space combat, the 41st millennium, or just a good RTS, I would say you should buy the shit out of this game. It is currently 10% off its launch price, and the pre-order bonus didn't really bother me that much. I know it's space marines, but they aren't the real movers and shakers of BFG, like they are in regular 40k, so as a pre-order bonus, I don't feel jipped. Defend the Gothic Sector, or burn it to ashes. This one's a keeper.

World of Warships: I'm back, and also, Russian DDs

It's been a while since I've done a WoWs post, and to be frank, I've not been playing for ages. I originally said to myself that I'd resume playing once the British were in the game, so I could take my Warspite captain, and put him to work in the new ships. Since Wargaming has continued updating the game without any sign on the horizon of a British line (I'm hoping that they release the whole fleet on WoWS anniversary), I decided to come back and check out the state of the game, as well as try my flipper at a bit of Soviet DD action.

The game has had a few cool updates. I noticed that BBs felt a bit more dangerous than last time I ventured into the game, and can see from the patch notes that a few buffs were finally made to their dispersion. The skill-trees have been revamped, and the retraining system has also been redesigned, reflecting a need for the captains to actually fight to gain their skills back. At its heart, WoWs is still good old WoWs, complete with everything that made the game great, and just a few less of the things that made it a pain in the ass. A persistently annoying issue that I noticed straight away was the rarity of aircraft carriers in higher tier matches, making my Pensacola's AA build risky to take, since about half of the games I loaded into had no carriers. This problem is still a fundamental one, where you can't force players to play carriers just to make the game fun for others.

Having enjoyed my time in the Gremyashchy, the tier 5 Russian DD, I figured I should transfer my captain to the Russian DD line, starting at tier 2. Low tier games are still fun, more so than World of Tanks in my opinion. I already knew going in that the Russian low tier ships had a shitty reputation, suffering the atrocious 3km torpedo range. Coming from an American DD background, I was already pretty comfortable with close range combat, and death-defying torpedo runs. The Storozhevoi looks like a submarine that surfaced and forgot how to dive again. It is narrow, sleek, and has a super sad armament of 3 DD guns, with two located at the rear rather than the front. These guns aren't even superfiring, meaning that if the enemy is in your rear quarter (you know, where the guns are concentrated) that you can't fire both at once. This means that the Storozhevoi ends up frequently only able to fire one gun at its foes, making it look less like a warship, and more like a kid spitting peas across the classroom. I make a big deal of these shitty guns because the torpedoes are so close range that you'll want to rely on your guns a lot more, and that is supposed to be the Russian way. On this ship, you really do need to learn proper ambush tactics, and get in to use those torpedoes. In that department, Russian torpedoes have stunningly short ranges, but this is complimented by the high speed, and evasive nature of the tiny Russian ships. Also, the other flavour of these ships is that they launch a lot of torpedoes, and have super fast loading tubes. Once you can initiate a favourable ambush, you can start wreaking absolute havoc, since torpedoes launched at those kinds of ranges basically can't miss. It is an even more suicidal tactic than American torpedo strikes (bet you never thought you'd be longing for that 5km range), but it does lead to a fast and furious lifestyle. In Russian DDs, you live fast, die young, and leave a lot of beautiful flaming wrecks. As this line progresses, the Russian guns start to get really good, but I feel this early ship is meant to force you to get used to this style of torpedo play.

I still recommend that new players steer clear of DDs as a rule, and you need a pretty advanced skillset and understanding of concealment to make these ships work, but I would probably recommend them to newbies over the Japanese line, who become a massive hazard to friendly ships. Stick to American cruisers if you really want a friendly learning tree. It's good to be back on the high seas.

Total War Attila: Slavs, Valentines Day, and the Swansong of The Hun

Pictured: Slavic Cataphracts

About a week ago, Creative Assembly announced what looks to be the final DLC for Total War: Attila, and this one comes in with about 2 months left before the release of CA's next big title, Total War: Warhammer. It may be a little while before we see another historical title from CA, and while this DLC doesn't exactly look as though it will revitalize the game, it may be just the thing that's needed to round out Attila's lifespan. The Slavic Culture pack is a faction pack, much like those that preceded it, containing 3 new playable faction. These factions will effectively be the final missing piece in the puzzle of Attila's campaign map. Much like the other faction DLC that came before it, this one will attend to a part of the map that is otherwise quiet, without majoy playable factions present. Like those that came before it, the Slavic pack will likely shift the meta of the game, making campaigns play out differently than they had previously. This faction announcement also comes with the news that it may be free, if CA is victorious in the Make War, Not Love competition, currently running on Steam.

Those that are familiar with my blog may recall the positive review I gave The Empires of Sand DLC. While I don't always like DLC, and believe that a game charging full retail price should always ship as a complete product, I do also believe that DLC is an important part of game development, and can vastly improve a gamer's experience if handled well. I ranted angrily at Attila's release, when CA shamelessly brought out 3 DLC's in quick succession, which I felt devalued the game (note, one was a pre-order bonus, but that has its own pitfalls). Empires of Sand came much later, spacing itself out, and coming at a time when the game was growing stale. Slavic Cultures also feels like it has come at just the right time. While CA has recently released a DLC for Attila, the Age of Charlemagne, it is a separate campaign, and does not affect the main game. A change to the main campaign at this time will spice things up one last time.

Slavic pack will introduce a whole new culture to Attila. Currently, the factions in the North-East of the map use the Germanic unit roster. The Germanic roster has copped a lot of flak for being the "generic unit roster" of Attila. It is the base roster for most of the Barbarian Kingdoms, the Great Migrator factions, the Longbeard factions, and were until recently the basis of the Alans. Attila's DLC seems to have spent most of its time chasing after cookie-cutter unit rosters, and replacing them with better developed ones. The Slavic pack will replace the factions in far-east Germania, and The Steppe with Slavs, who will have their own look and feel (view the roster here).

Who you calling German?

The new factions are the Anteans, the Sclavenians, and the Venedians. The theme of these new campaigns will be building of wonders, and the desperate fight to hold off the nomadic hordes. Life in the east of the map will be hard to begin, since you are starting in the lands that the Huns will be ravening, and it looks as if CA has built in a new "Last Stand" mode, in order to help you survive those early days. Other than that, these three factions will have bonuses such as:

Antians- These guys are consummate ambushers and, and gain bonuses for fighting in woods or by rivers, but are penalized for fighting in open ground. This will likely be annoying at first, but would lead to a unique play style. Their starting position is closest to Germania, with its prodigious forests, so it might not be too bad early on.

Sclavenians- These fellas might be the easiest ones to play of the bunch, as they gain bonuses vs nomadic tribes. Given that they start in the farthest of the eastern positions, this makes sense. Also they gain bonuses to income for enemies killed, so expect them to be the most combat-intensive faction.

Venedians- This faction gets a huge bonus to farm economy, and no penalties to squalor or happiness for the presence of farms. This is cut by a penalty to their income from commerce, industry, and culture. Their starting location is farther north than any other, so they will likely avoid combat with hordes early on, but suffer from contact with the Nordic factions. I expect a slower-paced campaign, with easier food management.

The other thing to address here is the Make War Not Love competition. According to CA, if they win Sega's little competition, they'll give us this faction pack free of charge. I like it when CA does little pro bono factions for the users, and it is sporting of them to make it up to us the players to work for our supper here. You can help get this content free, simply by playing the main campaign of Attila, and fighting as many battles as you can. You cannot auto-resolve these fights, and only victories are counted. I'm currently trying out The White Huns, and I recommend that if you want to get involved, you play a migratory faction (Huns, Vandals etc.), and that you sack and burn as many towns as you can. If Total War does not win the competition, the DLC will likely cost the usual amount for a 3 faction DLC ($8AUD in my case).

I'll look at the content in greater detail once it releases, but for now, I can say that I'm happy to see one last boost to this game as it gets closer to bowing out. In spite of my occasional frustrations, I believe in CA, and in Total War as a franchise. I believe CA is a company that loves and respects its users, even when it does occasionally clash with them on some issues. Total War: Attila was a great title, and stayed strong till the end. I hope this bow out cements its place in the hearts of its fans.