Grab Bag

-Warning: language-

1- I really and truly love reading BatReps (most specifically 40K, but WM too). They are almost always fun and informative. I learn a great deal about deployment (which absolutely confounds me), seizing initiative, HQ/troop selection, approach choices and rationale as well as overall tactics. BatReps are in many ways the best kind of education- most of them have pictures to describe the action, which helps me immensely.

Most writers are fantastic and fair. They describe their failures just as well as their wins. Many of them have great senses of humor with commentary like "Here's where the other guy's forces made Swiss cheese of my army" or "I actually had a chance until my dice decided to be traitors". Others are a bit more serious with excellent insights such as "in hindsight, separating my forces and sending half to advance on [X model] was a dumb move" or "Wow, could I have deployed in a more terrible fashion?".

There are a couple guys whose BatReps I read that are less than fair. One guy wins a lot, which apparently inflated his ego. His writeups are all glorious washes of his greatness and descriptions of how awesome his list and tactics are. His descriptions are great, but very inflated. There's another guy that has a pretty standard win/loss ratio, but his reports are always more than a little lopsided. His opponents are always dumb (but lucky, if they win) and when forced to partner with someone, his partners are morons that he has to prop up in some way. His reports are full of condescension and rationalizing, and his dickwashing never fails to make everyone else around him look idiotic.

So why do I read these guys? Well, the first guy wins a lot. I DO learn a lot from his approach and his explanations of tactics, even if they are douchy. The second guy is somewhat local, which makes me feel sort of obligated to read his comments, and in addition, he's a GREAT writer. If he was less of a turd, I would thoroughly enjoy his writeups. I don't know that there's any way to un-jerk-ify these guys, so I'll keep reading them, knowing I'll have to scrub the layer of slime off my brain when I am done.

2-- I had an awesome out of game session with my WOD ST recently, talking about motivations, directions, options and ideas for Eile. It was probably one of the single best head-to-heads I've had with a  GM type in YEARS.

3--- I envision Eile as a less moral Neil Caffrey.

4---- I'm trying to come up with a chicken dinner for Saturday's WOD potluck.

5----- Still working on Diamond. What do you do when you love the shell of a character but the inside is empty?