I'M BACK FROM THE DEAD!!

Save your prayers, 

Don't bless my bones, 

Erase my name from my headstone...

It is fair to say that my 2023 did not have a very good start. 

There was a lot that went wrong over the new year, but one of the worst parts - and the part that's most relevant here - concerns a lady who was friends with my parents. We'll call her Sarah. Growing up, Sarah was pretty much the closest thing I had to an aunt. My biological aunt lived a long way away and did not really have that much presence in my life except for the occasional visit and a couple of trips to Christchurch. But I spent a lot of time with Sarah as a kid, not only from the frequent visits my parents made to her house but also day outings where she looked after me when my parents couldn't by taking me to the zoo. Most notably, she also gave me one of my deepest, closest and longest friends, Katy The Kakapo, who kept vigil over my bed for about a decade or so. 

Anyway, at the end of last year I found out that Sarah now has something the doctors called Cerebral Decay. My understanding is that it is similar to if not synonymous with Alzheimer's. 

Visiting Sarah to check up on her was... quite an experience. Sarah was even in her later years sharp as a razor. She had multiple academic credits, read a massive range of literature, and was until very recently learning both French and Arabic. To go from talking with someone like that to talking with someone who was... not... is a feeling that there is no word in Orcish, Elvish or the language of The Ents for. 

Then I also learnt that my Grandparent-in-all-but-name had also had a heart attack while I was occupied elsewhere (fortunately they survived, but still). This left me spending most of the new year staring down the barrel of mortality and a world that was vanishing even more rapidly than I thought. 

When Forest Gump found himself facing the concept of mortality, he responded by running a marathon across the United States. It turns out when I find myself grappling with mortality I respond by burying myself in model painting. 

The first project of this year was the biggest model I've ever painted thus far. A few years ago I purchased a Castle with the aim to painting it and using it for Warhammer games in the future. Last year I resolved to paint it in the coming new year as a Summer Project. 

It took me over two months, six times longer than I had originally anticipated. But by god, I did it. 

This had been sometime coming. Ever since I first got into Warhammer I knew I wanted to have a fully painted Warhammer Fortress set for use in games. You see, I have this sick perverted disgusting fantasy of one day playing map campaigns of Warhammer using the Mighty Empires tiles, with rules for constructing castles (again using the Mighty Empires castle markers) in territories you control, and a rule where if an army attacks a tile with a Castle on it then they play out a Siege game with the Warhammer Fortress castle on the table. 

But it was a revelation last year that expedited the castle's painting and assembly. See, there are a few people in the local area who are Warhammer 6th edition curious. Some even have armies built with an eye towards using them in 6th edition. This is of course excellent news, except that due to various factors most of these other armies are tiny - only around 1500 points in size, as they're still under construction. This leaves a lot of my regular 4000-5000 point Wood Elf force unable to be brought to bear in its full glory (ironically, this is the opposite situation to Warhammer 40,000, where I am the one desperately struggling to cobble together enough models to reach small scale skirmish size against much larger and more established model collections). 

However, towards the end of last year I had a realisation. You see, in 6th edition Siege games are asymmetric - the attacking army has twice as many models as the besiged army. That means that if I can get these other people playing Sieges as the defenders, I can match their 1500 point armies with 3000 points of my own and get a much larger portion of models on the table! The first step towards this is of course a Castle to besiege, so here we are. 

There was a cost to this though, as several planned features of the castle were sacrificed and never made it to the finished model. In particular the towers were originally going to be pinned on the upper story, allowing for metal arrow slits to be attached and interchanged with plastic door pieces to provide options for expanding the castle with extra walls and towers. As it was I was unable to source a set of GW Arrow Slit pieces, so that feature ended up being discarded to simplify the construction process and speed up actually getting the thing painted and on the table. 

The painting itself was a mixed experience. The actual painting work was simple enough, as the entire model is almost completely drybrushed, but the sheer scale of the model and volume of surface area to paint in very monotonous greys ended up dragging the process out much longer than it needed to take. The towers were particularly bad, given that they had almost twice as many faces to paint as the walls. I am very tickled by the result though, a lovely white stone effect directly based off the GW Studio castle model featured in the army book for this castle's future masters that will be moving in soon... 

In the mean-time it will be under the protection of whatever armies my Wood Elves will be opposing. Eventually. I'm still not quite fully ready to play Siege games yet, as I still lack siege equipment for my own army. 

What my own army does have though, is its first two fully painted Rare choices, a pair of Great Eagles. 

 

The Great Eagles have always been one of my favourite Warhammer units. I have always been very fond of birds of all kinds, and Raptors have held a particular place in my heart since I was a kid (not the same central place as parrots of course, but close nonetheless). So when one day I happened to be browsing the wall of blister packs at the local GW store and happened upon the Warhammer section with its distinctive red blister packs, and my eye fell upon a blister pack for a High Elf Great Eagle I was immediately intrigued, because the idea of a fantasy army with giant eagles in it did seem a lot cooler than the fantasy offerings I normally found. And the more I thought about it the more right it felt to have giant eagles as a monster for the Good Guys to have on their side against the Trolls and Giants and assorted Big Scaly Things that the Bad Guys always seemed to have. 

Of course, as history shows, it still wasn't enough to get me actually invested in fantasy stuff, but it was another little signpost along the way. And when I started up with Wood Elves, I was only too delighted to learn that they too could take Great Eagles as a support unit. 

These guys are of course the classic 6th edition Warhammer eagle, released in 2005-2006 in glorious solid metal for the 6th edition Wood Elf release. If you were to purchase one, this is what you would have got: 

They were a dream to paint. The hardest part was getting the undercoat on, which took several days to get all the nooks and crannies on the sculpts covered. After that and a basecoat of Dryad Bark, it was just a series of dry brushes. The body and forewings were drybrushed with... well basically every brown in the Citadel Paint range from darkest to lightest, starting with Rhinox Hide Scorched Brown over the basecoat, followed by Doombull Brown Dark Flesh, then Mournfang Brown Bestial Brown, then Skrag Brown Vermin Brown, followed by a final dusting of Steel Legion Drab Graveyard Earth to mellow out some of the more vividly bright hues. The inner wings were done with Dawnstone Codex Grey over the basecoat followed by Administratum Grey Fortress Grey, and the wingtip feathers were painted with Ungor Flesh Bronzed Flesh and Ushabti Bone Bleached Bone over the base colour. 

These are also notworthy for being the first Warhammer models where I've really bothered to paint the eyes. Normally for the other Warhammer models I'm content to just leave the eyes shaded in the base colour, or an occasional dot for monsters and creatures, but that just felt like a disservice for animals that are legendary for their fantastic eyesight, so after studying some reference pictures of real life Raptor eyes, I picked them out in yellow and then put a small circular dot of black at the centre of each eye for a pupil - it helps that Raptor pupils are completely perfectly circular, which is an easy shape to paint at small scales. 

Finally, I decided to give their bases a little something extra and populated them with some spare doodads from the Glade Guard sprue, most notably some skulls and a Spite each (Haast's is from the Glade Rider sprue). I had wanted to use the larger Gor skulls that come with the Dryad sprue, but I appear to have used up my entire supply of them elsewhere, so I had to resort to multiple Ungor Skulls from the Glade Guard kit to showcase the healthy appetites and superb hunting skills of these majestic predators. I then tried to place the Spites foward to suggest them becoming startled and scattering before the diving and swooping eagles as they make their attack. 

And so here they are, ready to rescue any of my Wizards that end up captured and imprisoned at the top of a very tall tower. 

Tactica: Chess

 Even if you don't follow tabletop games, you've probably heard of Chess before. It is by far the biggest tabletop game, with hundreds of thousands of players across the world, and it's dominated the miniature game market for decades now. It's even started breaking into the mainstream with popular Hollywood actors opening up about how they're big fans of Chess. It's easy to see why too - Chess is a masterpiece of game design, and one of the most legendarily well-balanced games ever made. 

The Chess Community has grown a lot in recent years, and one of the constant questions I keep seeing on the Chess social media groups is about how newbies can play Chess better. Luckily for them, your boy here M-Daddy has got their backs, which is why I decided to put together this tactics article to help newbies improve their Chess skills so they can win more Chess tournaments or just beat their friends in pick-up Chess games. 

It's fair to say I know what I'm talking about here. I've been a constant player of Chess since 2nd edition Advanced Chess was first released 35 years ago, and since then I've swept up 22 Grand Chess Tournaments, and 12 Global Chess events, as well as 35 Grand Tournaments. I've also been reigning club champion at my local Chess stores across seven different towns. And just last year I participated in the St Petersburg Chess Open and came away with first place. So you can trust me when I say I know a thing or two about Chess. 

Now, the first thing you need to know about Chess is that it is a competitive game, just like any other sport. Maybe there are a few sad pathetic losers out there who just play Chess casually with fluffy Chess pieces in their mom's sewing circle, but they're so rare and lame that no-one cares about them and they don't matter. What does matter is competitive Chess. That's what everyone who collects Chess does it for, a contest of two men matching skill against each other in absolute carnage until one of them is able to brutally assert his superiority and dominate the other man into submission, forcing him down and marking him as the weak beta that he is with their superior Alpha Male musk spray, the same way that Dylan Boswick shoved my head into the school toilet every lunch recess in High School but I just took it like a man and sucked it up because he was doing me a favor by building my character and shaping me up into the hard top-dog well-adjusted trauma free Alpha Male that I am today. 

That in turn means that you need to get serious about Chess, because real Chess players are committed to the game they're so passionate about and what Ashley Lockfeldt didn't realize when she laughed at me after I asked her to the homecoming prom and then went with Dylan Boswick instead is that athletes come in all shapes and sizes and Chess players are athletes just like high school football captains. All too often I see the Chess Community being polluted by disgusting filthy casuals who come in with their poorly constructed fluff Chess lists and waste everyone's time by being checkmated on turn 2 after slowing the game down to farce because they wasted time painting their Chess pieces instead of studying the Chess meta. If you're going to be a filthy pathetic casual noob like that, then you can pack up your little toys and go play in the sandbox with the other little babies. 

The next thing you need to know about Chess is that Chess is a game of math. Every action and every decision in Chess can be rendered down to a mathematical formula for Chess units, and the whole point of Chess is analyzing the Chess meta to refine that mathematical formula so that you can dominate the other guy into submission beneath you by checkmating them on Turn 2. 

The formula for working out the best piece for capturing another piece, for example, is this: 

X=θ×sin∑℃πΔ≠−b±b2−4ac−−−−−−−√2a±!cos9$$\mathrm{<br>}$$

X=θ×sin∑℃πΔ≠−b±b2−4ac−−−−−−−√2a±!cos9

$$ $$

By putting in the stats and units of all the Chess pieces, we can work out exactly which the best ones are for capturing a given Chess piece and even the best Chess army for checkmating the other player on Turn 2. It doesn't matter how many squares are on the board, or what kind of Chess pieces the other guy has brought, as long as you follow the math, you will routinely dunk on your Chess opponents every time. 

Of course, the other thing about Chess is the units, since they're what you're analyzing with the math. So let's look at the Chess pieces you should be using. 

Now before we move on we need to take some time out to talk about faction choice, which is very important in Chess. And what you need to know is that you don't bother with White. Ever. White is fuck-off broken and stupidly overpowered, it just flat-out breaks the game. I honestly don't know what the game designers were thinking when they just flat-out made White always move first. It's an impossible advantage to beat, and doesn't make for a good game at all, which is why all Chess tournaments that are worth going to ban it. Really White doesn't even fit in with the core design philosophy of Chess in the first place, which is built around being able to guess which hand the jellybean is held in as a key skill. Without that key match of skill in guessing which hand the jellybean is in to work out who goes first, the game just turns into a random crapshoot. Seriously, playing White isn't really playing Chess at all. White just ignores so many basic rules of Chess that you just shouldn't even bother with Chess if you want to play White and go play Shogi instead. Trust me, all of the other gamers will hate you if you decide to play White, and you won't get anyone to play with you, and worst of all you won't be accepted at any of the good tournaments. So just don't even  bother with White. 

With that out of the way, these are the units available in Chess. 

Pawns: The basic Chess Piece, you're required by the rules to take at least two, but it's OK because you want more anyway. They have pretty shitty stats, but at just 1 point they're dirt cheap so you can afford loads of them in addition to your good pieces. What makes them really good however, is that when they're at the other end of the board they can be replaced with ANY other Chess piece available to Black! This is the only viable way to get Queens in the game, and getting 8 Queens instantly deployed in the enemy back row is a recipe for meatbread and PAIN. There is nothing sweeter than ROFLstomping the other Chess army with a full back row of 8 Queens that you got for just 1 point each. 

Rooks: Honestly these guys are pretty mediocre. They have good movement range, and they're not as overcosted as Queens, but they're still too expensive for what they do. You can take one for using the Castle stratagem, but otherwise you're always better off spending the points on another Knight and 2 Pawns. 

Bishops: Garbage. Pure absolute trash. Don't bother with them. If you even THINK about playing with these things, go punch yourself in the face immediately like Dylan Boswick made me do every morning before class in High School. The fact that they look like a pacifier should give you a clue that anyone who plays with Bishops needs to go put on a daiper, stick one in their mouth and then suck on it like the dumb baby they are while Daddy gets on and plays the game like a real man. For the same points as a Knight, you get a pile of turd that can only move on half as many squares and can't even jump over other pieces. There is NEVER any reason to use Bishops, EVER. 

Knights: Now we're talking. Easily the best Chessman in the game. For just 3 points you get a Chess Piece that can cover a lot of squares each turn, which is already pretty good, but what makes them REALLY worth it is that their special ability that lets them JUMP OVER OTHER CHESS PIECES. This is crazy good, and Knights are the only unit in the game that can do this. They synergise really well with Pawns using the Outpost stratagem too. 

Better still, their move is an L, but RAW the move can be any kind of L! Lower case l, Cyrillic л, you name it! This makes Knights able to attack just about anywhere. Always take as many as you can. 

Queens: Not worth it. Unlimited movement sounds nice, but they're a 0-1 choice and stupidly overcosted at that. For the same price as 1 Queen, you can get 3 whole Knights. Even 1 Knight and 6 Pawns would be more worth it than taking a Queen. Since they're 0-1 but still die to Pawns, and cost the same as 3 Knights, you should never bother taking them. If you want to use them in the game you are always better just taking more Pawns and then getting them to the other side of the board, which gives you unlimited Queens for just 1 Point each. Unless the game developers errata this game hack, Queens taken as an army choice are garbage and a waste of time. 

Kings: These are a weird unit. They're basically Pawns, but they can move backwards, don't get to change into something else when they reach the board, and if one of them dies you lose the game. They're basically garbage, but they also don't cost any points to take and don't use up a Chessmen slot, and the rules force you to take one in every Chess army, so instead they're really more of a tax you pay to field the actual Chess pieces you'll be using. Use them once for the Castle stratagem and then forget about them for the game. 

So with those Chess pieces in mind, we can use math to construct the most optimal Chess list, which is the only one you should be bothering with. Based on the formula above, and the points costs of the different Chessmen, the list you should be using is: 

1 King (mandatory) 

10 Pawns 

1 Rook 

8 Knights 

The math doesn't lie, and numbers don't care about your feelings. The fact is that this list is so optimal it is literally unbeatable. If you play this Chess list, you are mathematically certain to destroy your opponent's entire army and checkmate him by Turn 2 at the latest.  It doesn't matter which moves you make, assuming you can correctly guess which hand the jellybean is in to get first turn, you will win every game and shame your opponents by dominating all over them. 

So there you have it. You are now armed with the best tactics there are to Chess, so now you too can get good and win all your games against your local opponents, and you stand a good chance at winning Chess tournaments! 

Come back next time when I'll be sharing all the optimal ways in Chess to seize agency from your opponent in their turn!