Don't Panic

Hey y'all Miss you guys! Hope all is well :) Anywho I haven't played in a tournament since my last update... not shockingly as some of you may know Emily and I have a son named Lytle Jeffrey Roberts that is roosting about(born Jan 25th). Named his middle name after Emily's father who passed away the past year from cancer. Has been rough... Anywho, actually going to play in my first(very small) tournament coming up next weekend. Will stick with LI OS lists as they are quite fun(although 2 group lists with shukra are also pretty enjoyable!) and I can play them fast paced which seems to be the desire anymore lol(Marut and an asura haris list... i no longer suck donkey kong at asura so running with it when i can lol). Really love the way CB is doing things lately, but honestly I'm struggling to keep up with my lack of playing and the increasing amount of rules/factions/sectorials. Use to be all for that but now that I'm quite casual it's a different story which is kinda funny! Life wise we are still on a parental leave schedule. Emily takes care of Lytle M-Th and I do F-Sun until October in which we will start daycare for Fridays. Life is weird now but I also like it. Not as much time for games(having a baby on the weekends nerfs that), but really enjoy it when I can! Work is pretty great and making a lot of progress in the gene editing field(scientist). Wish everyone a good mama's day weekend and give them all a hug! Cheers, Nate

Gonna update some folks on life/games and such! As I'm sure you all are 'shocked' to hear but I've been playing OS since they dropped and they lured me back from the abyss lol. I have a ton of thoughts to share about them as it is the sectorial I've always been waiting for(never really liked the greeks and actually sold most of my greek models...). -The dakini link is great, but after playing a bunch of lists I'm not really digging the point investment in an asaparas as it feels like just too much investment in them for what they do. They play kind of differently than unidrons even though everyone seems to say they are 'better' versions of them I tend to disagree as unidron loadouts and the dogged makes them a bit more dynamic i feel than dakini. Dakini are probably the 'stronger' choice for firepower but not having template weapons(besides the csu/deva) and ability to take a chain rifle AND being not difficult to hack makes them a bit less flexible in pressing forward(although 6-4 mimetism doesnt mean nothing lol). So I enjoy them, but wouldn't say they are my favorite link team I've played which my first knee jerk reaction was that they WOULD be! -haris options have really strangely wowed me. 2 devas(and multi versions) plus shakti are just incredibly fun to play. I've honestly never played many haris's due to my faction/sectorial selections, so this has been a very warm welcoming to me! -i thought for sure i'd be running max nagas as my first knee jerk reaction. Strangely: I actually run 2 or less more frequently than I did playing vanilla lol. Just points become an issue and generally dart(get to in a second) subs out one or a dasyu. -dart is a game changer. totally my type of piece. if its not my favorite piece in the game its pretty close now. -shukra Lt is amazing for 2 order group lists. Very underrated unit. -asura is better and i dont fail ALL the wip rolls with her anymore haha. apparently using a hacking model as a hacker is better than using a spitfire as a hacker? -deva additions are really really good. FO and the AHD in particular are seeing a lot of table time for me. -Yadu I still havent tried out besides shakti but they seem pretty darn good(same as rudras) -Its been a struggle to list build with them. They make fine LI lists, but 2 group lists are pretty weird sometimes. Found 1 that I really enjoy and do well with but with netrods and a cheap-ish link I'm surprised how long it took to find a 2 group list i enjoyed. As for tournaments: had 2 recently. First was Iowa Incident. This was kind of bittersweet as almost all our veteran iowa players have pretty much left iowa or had kids in the past year lol. So we had 4 or 5 players total from the state out of 55 people tournament.... which is pretty low percentage wise. So we lost the dire states cup to illinois 😞. Games at Iowa: Played some super good players. I knew this would be the last ITS tournament for me in a long time(get to that...) so I challenged James Chaveaux playing steel phalanx as he won the past 2 years and I've yet to play against him. He didnt disappoint. Super solid player and blew most my pieces off the board(poor dakini sniper kept getting crit first order each game except one lol). It was capture and protect and I was losing models very fast, even with putting him in l.o.l. turn 2 with dart. put up a mine field for him to go through with nagas, made some good play I feel but he just tanked his armor saves for the most part. We had a controversial ruling that I feel bad about as it went in my favor, so hope to play against him again. We both were super close to getting the beacon but just fell short of orders essentially and tied. Second game I played Brian Solomon from Minnesota(we play a lot it seems lol). He had nomads. It was the turn on the heaters mission(whatever its called, you know what i mean lol). He started off with some hot dice and nuked my dakini team and took deva spitfire out of my haris. I responded with some hot dice of my own and killed his intruder with white noise and eventually his SWAST to swing the game my way. He's a hoot to play. Third game I played Tor from Minnesota playing vanilla haqq for higly classified. I took out a chunk of his range first turn but his lasiq kept popping back up lol. eventually got his lasiq with a new classifed and was able to squeak one out. Super tight game that honestly could have gone either way in the end as he just needed to have one of his muyibs live through some firefight. Fourth game was against Matt Lofthus. safe area. I bought him a beer midgame... yea it was that kind of game that I could do no wrong. Took out his fusi team. killed his swiss in ARO with 2 suppressive fire crits from an asparas(wtf...). Killed his aquila with Dakini sniper in ARO(this was the one it lived..). im not sure he made an armor save.... so yea, it was one of those games. Table was super open too so once his guns were down it gets pretty bad for NCA. Fifth game was against brandon from chicago. Last year we had 4 intruders vs my marut for final game of the tournament. This time he returned the favor with marut-ing me lol. I isolated it first turn and felt pretty good about position, taking out a bunch of things and such. But a couple interactions went wrong and i started pulling off a bunch of models and not paying enough attention to what i had left. It was firefight and we ended up with a draw. He had 3 more army points and i wasted my last 3 orders thinking i had it, while having 2 pieces sitting next to his netrod. Yea that's one you just kick yourself for, especially knowing the golden rule to always kill netrods.... still, had fun so who cares! Think I finished 4th? But yea some really good games! Ill update with minnesota tournament in a bit. It was a narrative with a hacking theme so I took 2 asura lists for giggles. Continuing: Went to a narrative ran by Greg Strom(of remote presence) in minneapolis. It was themed around nomads controlling a scientific study basically to make a new kind of AI and even some sepsitor-esque EI shenanigans. Each faction was a team with NA2 filling out the incomplete ones. They each got unique bonuses for their 'infowar operative' which was just a hacker that got bonuses. You got 2 lists but could only use ONE named character per list and only have one infowar operative between them. It was pretty fun. Since it was hacking themed, i brought a few hackers... ok i brought a lot of hackers lol. Especially ones i wanted to try out like the new deva AHD with lightning and, of course, wanted to give my old nemesis asura hacker + yet another try in not disappointing me(she actually more than made up for it lol). So i brought two LI lists as i wanted to play faster given that it was a narrative which can get long. So one had an asura spitfire L2 and other had asura HD+ L2. First opponent was brian solomon(again lol). Playing vanilla nomads again. We had secret objectives but were supposed to interact or defend middle consoles(nomads were defending). They came with bonuses called ASPs which were TR bs11 combi bots that sided with nomads. It was... interesting lol. Anyways i was fortunate enough to win the midfield war and dart took out the intruder. I had a lot of things go my way this one that probably shouldnt have. But for my secret objective, and knowing greg it was probably important, i had to data scan a hacker. I realized this when my opponent only had an interventor left 'gulp' who was alive lol. i tried surprise doing it once and barely lived so just said screw it and redrumed him and flushed it away haha. Long story short aparently that was important but who cares as aleph killing nomad hackers is wayyyy more important 😛 . Second opponent was playing NCA(im terrible and forget his name..). I infiltrated mk2 as it had an exclusion zone and killed his link team along with his Lt. Asura spitfire killed his swiss... pretty much everything went my way turn 1 and i left him with 3 models. Now, I must say, he played amazingly well in a gritty fashion. He used his swiss AHD very well for the mission. He knew i had to get objectives that were next to his swiss yet couldnt kill his swiss without going in retreat so it put me in a bit of a bind. luckily i had most of my orders so i just chucked EM grenades and it paid off after like 6 or so orders and was able to sweep objectives. third was tor again(funny that both of my first 3 games had 2 similar opponents for both decently sized tournaments!). he was playing corgidoor this time. This game was a lot more fun and we had a hoot. he had to protect a box from me opening it and i had to open it. he put both his morans and a bandit next to hit. i sacrificed a couple dudes clearing koalas but he kept putting more up thanks to his baggage box. he ended up planting 8 total koalas this game which had me sacrifice a naga, dart and mk2 trying to get the box(and failing wip rolls...) to do. I was able to wither his orders away and finally kill the moran to get it with the dakini team. only to learn that opening the box turned the game into an opposite side biotechvore(the box was on 8 inch line of one side, had to get to other 8 inch line). where at the end of the game everything with a cube died except cheating nomads who had a serum lol. i was able to pull this one out but it was very much so a hilarious weird game that you talk about for a while(asura survived a glue gun from a bandit... that bandit was a thorn entire game). Sad news was whoever was lost this game was lost for good if they had a cube. So i lost most of my people in my main list except a dakini para, naga khd and my asura hd+. We could switch things out with those profiles for the next day to make a new list which was an interesting twist! 4th game was against a guy named aero(sp). He had beautifully painted vanilla ariadna. He had a standard ariadna list(All the camo... and van zant). this mission was essentially one box of supplies. i was able to clear the midfield, kill spetz(asura makes this way easier than it usually is..) and tankhunter and run mk2 back to my deployment zone. the game ensued with basically wave after wave of ariadna coming into my corner with the box including van zant and dogs. each time i was able to fend them off just to the point where they couldnt do actual damage, then killed them in active turn. did get to do the hilarious change facing trick with a yudbot going in CC with van zant. it was a pretty thematic game tbh. 'that camo list(especially now wtih streloks)' is never easy to go against... 5th was against my iowa buddy jeremy. he's my main nemesis and great player to play against. yu jing was 'apparently' in the lead somehow, so had to beat him(he was playing vanilla yu jing). mission was to hack 3 middle consoles and bring back info to 8 inch corners. problem was there were 3 corpses on the ground near each objective that would cause damage at the end of each turn within zoc(biotechvore damage). an additional problem was that greg decided after deployment that he would throw on mary problems on the table to thwart us along with 2 bs11 combi TR bots and all 3 corpses became repeaters for her.... long story short mary problems caused a lot of... problems for us haha. she prevented me essentially from moving either of my link teams up the board as they had hackers or were hackable. she also put 2 wounds on asura, 1 wound on shakti, killed jeremy's hacker, killed jeremy's lu duan and just kept us from basically doing anything. I was able to take out most of his army from distance and capture a box but he dropped 2 tigers on making it difficult for me. i ended up winning the game on objectives BUT because his Lt survived he ended up winning the event for yu jing. i admit i love narratives way more than ITS and it's always a blast playing them as the nature is so much more relaxed and the shenanigans is why i play this game, which greg did a great job of lol. life wise emily got a new job as well and is working 3 12s on friday saturday sunday. good news is more money and less need for daycare. bad news is that means my weekends become pretty much irrelevant once baby hits. so i know this is probably my last tournament for a while so it was good to finally get some games in with OS and enjoy myself. hope all is well with everyone DP

hey RD!!! nice showing at ECI bud!! Wish I could have gone and someday will trek back for a tournament to clash with you folks again! Also, you are a very capable player as I know from playing a lottttt of people now and it's nice to see when it pays off 🙂 congrats bud!

when i was in pdx they had the outrage box which is kinda hard to find... i have all 4 of those(use as pretas cause like &*%$ i can tell the difference between pretas/gakis in game) otherwise they are still fun models!

they are my favorite standard in the game(usually bring 2)! fun tactics: hold it back to triagulate fire something annoying. sometimes ill move it up to get shot, bring it back later in the game when people forget about it and triagulate fire something thats really dug down(like a TO model in suppressive or a sniper) also, sat lock is hilarious... i mean i only ever do it if i bring an EVO but its pretty awesome!

there is a hacker naga, but its from the old starter. pretty boring model though tbh and they should have just updated it in the new starter... oh well, beating a dead horse there lol. that new asura though and bow girl has me droolin for vedic

yup one of my fave models! also, why on earth CB decided to resculpt a naga sniper(which is already an amazing model... actually possibly my fave next to the dasyu hacker) instead of doing the boarding shotgun minelayer just blows my mind... as thats the profile i used in almost every game haha.

been a while! Forgot to say i did stop by the club! got to play some card games with Jay and Seth and maaaannnn it was fun haha. life update: got a new job at the company i work with and finally get to go back into the research field. Pretty pumped as i now finally get to go back to a real life day job making real life money as well as a bonus. Also... ba-dump... emily is pregnant and due in january so @Raindog can proceed with his future reading skills lol. infinity wise: had a bit of a falling out lately just due to lack of games. basically most of my games have been tournament games and my interest was fading due to not being able to get opponents even on a monthly basis. now with occupation change i should be able to make it work until baby comes and then back to square one lol. I've still been playing onyx. won an ITS with them but also took them to a large tournament in St Louis and did a lot better than i thought i would. Got to play against some really good players including Tom from mayacast and the guy who won twinfinity last year! Vedic or whatever they are calling them is going to bring me back.. been waiting literally years for it so I'm quite excited to bring them out to the Iowa Incident this fall for kinda a last hurray before a long break again lol. Hope all is well with you guys! Nate

Excited as well! I wish I could play, but I'm not bringing models(Emily was not down for me bringing them taking up space in our luggage lol). So ill just hang and heckle which is what im best at anyways hehe. club opens at 3 right?

so two weeks til I return! My infinity life has kinda slowed down a bit since 'paca. Play about once every other week at this point. Still playing onyx but picked up ISS and morats(traded my steel phalanx) recently so those suckers will be 'sometime in the future when I paint them'. Still sticking with onyx, but have tested ISS a little(they are disgusting). Have had a lot of success with my 8x8 onyx list which has been fine tuned to be an 8x9 list thanks to kerr nau replacing HD+ legate haha. Tournament wise I'm going to one in St Louis this summer and meandering about going to Colorado for a brewery 5 game ITS because... brewery ITS lol. Sad that twinfinity was cancelled as that was going to be the one I wanted to go to... and no way in hell am I paying hotels for GenCon so kinda bummed about lack of playing, but eh tis life. Hope all is well with everyone~!

lol there were just as many infinity folk there as aos and 40k had about double to either group with a 10+person wait list so it made ZERO sense to me at first... got the reasoning and its basically 'space'. Joe Rogers will run a separate infinity event now later this year(he runs superb narratives!) in wisconsin. Not sure(nor care) what 40k will do but their numbers are pretty big. I will admit: local who came up with me played High Elves and really really wants to play AoS, which we talked about trying it out and maybe doing a one day of it next year but now they are stand alones so thats a big NOPE for me lol. KoW is unfortunately just non-existent in my area so my models pretty much continue to collect dust lol. I have heard AoS is pretty decently size in midwest though. But walking past tables i think someone just had like 3 lord of changes and i almost burst out laughing....

alright guys got some news along with updates! So went to the OFCC of the midwest(basically) called waaaaaagggghhhpaca in wisconsin! Always wanted to go to it when i played whfb, finally got to go this year but obviously playing infinity. Sadly will be the last time as infinity is being removed and its becoming an AoS only event(they are even booting 40kers...). so 3 single days 3 game tournaments. two of them narratives and one an ITS. I just brought onyx cause its 'paca so F it. First day was a yuan yuan narrative where you had to do weird objectives that were very pirate-y. It was LI 250 points and you had to bring at LEAST one yuan yuan. Your yuan yuan could get boosted stats too through objectives! So it was pretty fantastic! I played a rodok list as I wouldnt be playing one for the ITS so wanted to play them that day. Had a legate HD+, samaritan spitfire Lt and ikadron chumps to fill out with the yuan yuan. Finished second on objectives and really had a good time! ITS was probably my least favorite and not because of the guys but because the missions just really really suck for onyx compared to most things. Also my dice were trash game 2. Played the list i posted before with unidrons and then had another unidron variation with fraacta, noct ML and a Qdrone for stupid power pack aka death to link teams and those that dont have much forward deployment/infiltration lol. of course i played like arguably the best player there in that mission playing MO(he was reallllly good with them) and my dice were abysmal. still really enjoyed getting to play him! Then played a JSA player that is one of the best in minnesota who had 4 ninjas and saito lol. I somehow beat him still not sure exactly how except 'i rolled 5 dice on 11s and crit a lot' lol. Finished 6th which i was super happy about considering the missions and 2 of the 3 players i played were top 10 midwest players. Last one was my favorite. You made 150 point lists for a narrative. So you played modified versions of firefight, supremacy and annihilation. Obviously one group(ariadna...). So it was a team event where your Lt could duo with your teammates Lt. How teammates were selected was 4 people were put on a table. You all do a ftf wip roll and figure out order 1-4. The choices were partner, initiative or deployment(obviously last person gets nothing). Then it goes in order for selecting per usual. There were objectives as a team and then individual objectives to beat out your teammate. At beginning you all get 1 of 4 cards for your duo powers. Theres +3 BS as a duo, +1B as a duo, veteran and something else i forget. After the game the loser of the loser team gets nothing, winner of loser team gets to select another of the 4 duo cards, loser of winner team gets to select either a 4 duo card OR rolls on booty chart, winner winner gets to choose between metachemistry, booty or 4 duo cards. So that happened at the end of each game. There are limitations as its 150 points so no TAGs and no link teams beyond a single 3 member team. I took a samaritan spitfire Lt for kicks as i just wanted to eat things and took a unidron link with ML and two FOs. Then E drone and 2 ikadrons and 2 imetrons lol. It was surprisingly very effective! I ended up taking first but most importantly my samaritan became a badass and did badass things. he got an hmg, +3 phys and d-charges. along with being +3 bs in duo link. It was pretty funny. so that means he throws his mono thingy on 19s and dodges on 19s lol. killed Tarik with it which was first time using it ever lol. Also got to eat a kuang shi and boy that felt good cause screw kuang shi hahaha. Got a painted highlander from Joe Rogers who runs these fun narratives(he came up with the one that we did in iowa last year). I remember his beautiful painted whfb armies so its awesome to get a model painted by him. Last but not least: booked flights for Portland in April 10-17th. Plan on stopping by the club on the 15th(if its open) and emily will do things with her friends as I hang with you guys! I wont have models with me probably but will be good just to hang with you guys for that entire afternoon if possible!

yea... personally im fine because vedic and shas being released within this year would give me trouble concentrating on one or the other lol.

mostly when we were all picking armies to start i wanted to make sure we had diversity and noone had picked aleph which was honestly my favorite appealing one anyways so i went with it lol. after first army though i wanted to pick 'distinctly different things' that would challenge me and as per usual wanted to play low rep'd things so my next two choices were shock army and shas. currently playing onyx and this one was the first choice that i really did mostly due to appeal as the models are gorgeous! also each one i chose plays really really different yet has some overlaps(nagas in shock, shas has a lot of overlap with my favorite aleph models in nagas/dasyu with shrouded/malignos, noctifers/malignos in onyx). my next choice will be a low tech army someday. im leaning towards haqq as its underrepresented locally.

yea emily and i were just looking at flight things for pdx. flights were just too expensive right now so we were waiting for them to go down... We'll probably just come whenever this year and try to make it next year unless things open up! And Adam, I agree about not expanding. 32 people(16 tables) is a lot for one person to handle unless you can get additional TO/assistance it's not a great idea to go higher than that. Hope you guys have a blast. Who would have thought brewery+gaming would sell out fast .