War Room - The ultimate card browsing software?

After our last WM/H gaming day, I'd like to write down my experiences with War Room at game time. To make a long story short: I doubt it's ready for gaming, certainly not tournament gaming.

When I came to the gaming table, I was facing my friend Robi's Circle army and we agreed to try playing the game with War Room only.

Robi was hosting the game and I punched in his player name (Turambar), but weirdly War Room didn't make me join Robi's session, but our friend Sven's session instead... I canceled, retyped his player name, waited for the connection and on the second attempt it worked. Weird.

Then I downloaded Robi's army list. That went smoothly, but at this point I really miss auto-sync between my devices. Maybe it's an educational method to learn them better, but I don't really fancy the idea of having to retype all of my opponent's lists, too.

Then the game started and I realized looking up values and rules is just a mess, i.e. slow, if your phone automatically turns off the screen if resting untouched for a couple minutes. It is especially annoying if your phone is code protected like mine is. Having to retype the code every time you want to look up something is annoying. Of course you could turn off the code lock during game time, but still I don't like it. Yes, that's obviously not Privateer Press' problem, but it just makes me wonder if this is really meant to be used during a regular game. Unless you do it like my friend André and purchase an extra battery pack to leave it permanently turned on.

Well, then I tried to mark the damage when my first Troll got hit. I never attempted to do it before in a dry run, so I decided to tap the damage boxes on my iPhone. It was a mess.

Botond was trying to be helpful by pointing out that I could just tap the column number and then define the damage on the slider. Well, it didn't work because I couldn't hit the correct column number either as the buttons are just too small. Now that I tried it at home in a more relaxed setting to do the screenshot it did, but playing this game on an iPhone is awful.

Assigning damage to your warcaster/lock is ok on an iPhone.

This game really doesn't get better until I started picking up my iPad; the buttons are now large enough to be tapped, now I can even reliably tap the white circles on the spiral. However, with so much empty screen space, why did they not make this even larger?

Hreidgotaland

Finally I come to talk about the reason why I named this blog Hreidgotaland. Well, one of the reasons was that the domain name was still available. ^^

The true reason is that I have always been fascinated by the cultural heritage of Northern Europe. According to Wikipedia, the Hreidgoths came from either Scandinavia or Eastern Europe depending on the source you trust. Either way, the Goths played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire, the Migration Period, and Medieval Europe. Put simply, the Hreidgoths lived in a time where one could take nothing for granted and the history of Europe was to change forever.

In this mess where various tribes forced each other to move onward and resettle again, Hreidgotaland bears the meaning of "bird's nest", but it can also mean "journey". If you are familiar with the lore of the Trollbloods in Hordes and the development pressure on their tribes from a world that is about to leave the Medieval and enter the Modern Period, I think you can see the parallels and the reason why I think Hreidgotaland is a fitting name for this blog.

Another reason is Rök, the winter Troll. Rök in Swedish bears the meaning of "smoke", so the Privateer Press designers clearly had a certain set of lore in their head when they designed this miniature. Trolls are very important in Norse Mythology.

Last but not least I also really got to love Pagan Metal, a type of music that mostly refers back to Northern Mythology and the Migration Period, too. Pagan Metal even knows a band called Finntroll and even by hearing their name you get an idea what they are about. The cultural clash between Christianity and the pagan roots of local tribes are part of their music, too. Now why does this remind me of Cygnar and the Trollblood tribes?

Games Workshop's Jervis Johnson loves to talk about archetypes in his monthly article and how it influences their design of miniatures. Well, the Trollbloods in Hordes are clearly based on archetypes, too, and it's the reason why they nicely blend together with things that don't seem to be related at all on a first look. Once you look closer, you open the door to an exciting new realm of history and lore.

War Room Updates

Well, War Room received an update from the iTunes Store pretty much half a week ago and so far I have only see improvements. All my purchased cards are nicely being shown without the worry of reregistration again. The app seems now to be way more stable; had never any problems on the iPhone 4, but now it seems to run even on my 1st gen iPad without crashing.

Currently I am still deeply missing these two features:

1. A list validator.
2. List synchronisation between my two iOS devices.

Wendell Hicken, the creator of iBodger, wrote a very good piece concerning usability, War Room, and the potential list validator.

Right now, my favorite function (due to a lack of those named above) is browsing the cards in the bus as I listen to good music. This gives me an opportunity everyday to learn more about the games and the miniatures it has. Of course I took an in-depth look at anything Trollbloods, but I have also started to read on Cryx and Skorne as they are tournament favorites and I don't know that much about them so far.

Basecoating Trollbloods

Tonight I started painting up Sven's Fennblades and did a lot of thinking on how to basecoat Trollbloods.

Disclaimer: I am still thinking with the vocabulary of the old GW painting line, so please bear with me and look for equivalents. I myself will paint my upcoming Trollbloods army with Army Painter paint.

At the very top you can see Greygore Boomhowler & Co. that I painted up for my Warmachine/Cygnar army. They are painted in the classic style with blue skin, brown leather, bronze armor, and green cloth. I started by spraying on a bacl undercoated and worked my way up from there. It took me dozens of hours to paint them with all the various layers.

Before I started to work on Sven's Trollbloods I realized something and saw this confirmed tonight: ideally, you are getting two basecoat colored sprays from Army Painter: a blue one for Trolls showing a lot of skin (e.g. the EBDT) and a brown one for the infantry models as they are mostly covered in leather and armor.

So as I was painting up the Feenblades tonight, I spent a lot of time just painting on a dark brown basecoat for anything armor or leather later because Sven basecoated them all in something very close to Hawk Turquoise:

(the little guy on the top right serves as the reference model as it was painted by Sven)

With every new army project I wanna boost my painting skills, but I also try to become more efficient. Getting to different types of colored primer indeed would make every more efficient. The reason why I am hesitant to do this is because I don't want to end up with a full bar of different primer spray cans plus there is an extra cost to have it, of course.

Thinking about all this I realized there is a smart yet good looking way to be both efficient and have a great looking army: start with a green basecoat on everything.

1. For the skin, you simply start to work your way up from towards a Hawk Turquoise and Ice Blue tone.
2. For armor, you go the Goblin Green/Scorpion Green route.

I think this setup will be both very efficient as you can quickly build up the layers yet have a distinctive look/difference between skin and armor. Furthermore it will be sort of permissive if you slip with the brush and paint something you didn't intend to paint with your current color. If you are lucky, it will be hardly seen, if you're unlucky, it will be very easy to fix by painting over.

I like the idea so much that I will violate my rule of never doing a test model and try it on Madrak Ironhide from the starterbox first. If I like what I see, I will apply it to my entire Trollbloods army. And I will also strip Boomhowler & Co. and repaint them in my new painting scheme. Their paint job got already chipped in numerous places because of the rough air travel they had to endure so I may as well repaint them again.

Painting Trollbloods - Getting started

Last night I finally got started on painting my first Trollbloods (or Trolls, to be more precise). I am painting up the rest of a friend's Trollbloods army that I am allowed to use for the OETC. In early summer we decided that I am going to play Trollbloods at the OETC because Botond is playing Cygnar, but while I immediately loved Trollbloods, I didn't have a realistic time frame to get two fully painted 50pts lists for the OETC. Luckily, Sven lets me play his army at the OETC and I help him paint it in return, so it's a win-win situation for both of us.

I am also very grateful that he allows me to paint his army because doing so I can develop inspiration for my own Trollbloods army later. I never do test models and start painting right away, so by having this part of the process happen on Sven's models I will hopefully have an accurate idea once I get started on my own models.

Now that Wargames Con in Austin is over, it's time to get focused on the Trollbloods for OETC.

I decided to get started with the Trolls because they have a large surface that allows to paint rather quickly. Sven had already basecoated the models and dipped them in some sort of quick shade (probably Army Painter). You can see on the models/Fennblades in the background of the top photograph how they looked before I got started on them.

The first thing I noticed was that I don't like quick shade. It gives the miniatures a smeary/oily look that doesn't exactly fit Trollbloods. Plus you have to be really careful to let *everything* drop off or you'll get spots covering parts of your model with the eventual loss in detail.

Sven already painted large parts of his army with Rök almost fully done, so I used Rök as a point of reference for my activities:

On Rök I highlighted the skin, drybrushed his hair, painted the trinkets and skulls in Rök's beard, and painted his eyes yellow. Sven has some of his Trollbloods painted with yellow eyes and some with red eyes, so I wasn't exactly sure which route to go. After a little while (I even thought about calling him first) I decided to play offence and painted them yellow because the blue-yellow contrast are one of the two strongest color contrasts for the human visual system and we all want a rather fierce Troll, right?

After that I did the EBDT as he was rather easy to do. I only had to highlight his skin, paint his teeth and eyes, his toe- and fingernails, plus the stones he is leaping over:

Finally I had to do Mulg and he is almost as easy as the EBDT since drybrushing helps a lot with Mulgs delicate runes.

I was kinda worrying about how to paint Mulg's club adequately, but once again starting with a dark brown, using a black wash on it, and then slap on lighter layers of brown again did the trick. I felt like a club in a light yellow/sand color or a light/dark green doesn't leave a realistic impression as the club doesn't look like Mulg just made it from a fresh tree prior to battle, but like it has seen many battles already.

Painting Mulg is a special moment as it is a very impressive model. While you paint it, you get a close understanding why his enemies run away screaming in terror once he shows up on the battle field. ^^

Aus parat

Ok, I guess I have been able to improve this Warmachine Rap with my latest attempt quite a bit. My latest song is Aus parat (Everything ready):

Aus parat
es isch aus parat
s spüu foht grad a
mischt! do merki
dasi d schablone vergässe ha!

(everything is ready
the game is about to begin
darn! I notice
I forgot the templates!) 

Drü Trollkin

One of the reasons I love my gaming group is because someone may bring in a new idea and the rest usually is pretty fast at picking it up. Since we are all connected via Google products (most notably Google+ and Google Groups) there is a constant flow of ideas as anyone posts as soon as he has one.

So my fellow group member André found an app called Autorap and just created a rap song about the hobby during lunch break. So welcome to the first hobby rap in Swiss German! (click the link to listen to the song)

Schaffe

so vil schaffe schiist mi a

i chume gär nüme hei

cha nid game, was i wott

cha nid mini mändli amoole

es isch ächt zum hüüle

(so much work, can't stand it
I'm hardly home anymore
can't play the games I want
can't paint my minis
it really makes one cry)

I was immediately hooked when I heard it in the bus this morning and decided to go for a reply:

Drü Trollkin

i bi langsam müed

und sött doch no go mole

mindischtens drü Trollkin

bevor mi s Sandmändli chunnt cho hole

(slowly I am getting tired
yet should still get up and paint
minimally three Trollkins
before the Sandman comes to get me)

I really like how the app slowed and quickened my speech as it both expresses my tiredness and the urge to get everything painted for the OETC.

Now I am really curious to know what the other group members are gonna do - maybe we'll get our own soundtrack for our gaming group. We are a very multicultural group so I am sure we can get many interesting and weird raps. And I am seriously thinking about doing a movie - it's gonna be really bad for sure, but we'll have something to laugh once we look back to 50 years of gaming!

War Room app 1st impressions

Steamforged did this extensive video review of the new War Room app. In the meantime, bug fixes keep coming in for my friends with Android phones. Privateer Press has also published a road map and FAQ concerning the state of War Room and future developments; news are published there on a daily basis.

I really like the way Privateer Press cares for its customers and I think they do a great job, yet I also hope that this won't repeat itself in the future again!

Open letter to Lyle Lowery, Privateer Press marketing manager

Dear Lyle,

So we all finally got War Room, the highly anticipated app for mobile devices that promised us to dive even deeper into our fandom of steam powered robots and fury fueled fantastic creatures. I was really glad when I got it Monday night; from the smile on my face my wife immediately knew she could write me off for the next couple hours.

As soon as I started the app, I liked what I saw, although I also noticed a couple issues - not the troubling kind of issues, but nagging issues. It is very unlikely you read my blog post, but you surely noticed the fans venting their frustration in the War Room release thread leading ultimately to various statements by Privateer Press (1, 2). My friends fancying Android devices are utterly disappointed.

I guess we can savely say that this release didn't go as you envisioned it regardless of all the speculation on how this could happen. However, deep in this mess there are three factors that are the seeds to success:

1. You listened to your fans (I don't say "customers" on purpose),
2. You replied to your fans,
3. With the internet, you have the perfect delivery system for quick improvements and you are using it.

Seriously, I was most notably impressed when I noticed Lane Daughtry of Tinkerhouse Games started to respond in the War Room release thread, too. You are doing all things right that crisis management handbooks tell you to do and I am very confident that these things plus your company's success are rooted in your company's culture. Ever since I noticed the nagging issues in War Room I knew that on one point, they will be a thing of the past because you take responsibility and fix it. I still think that the 60$ on the Ultimate Bundle are one of my best investments in wargaming ever.

Both you and I know that a company's marketing department not only promotes products, but also collects customer feedback. I deeply believe that Privateer Press' success is deeply rooted in the the way it interacts with the community with the Press Ganger program just being one example. However, considering your track record of interaction with the community, I have a very simple question:

Why didn't you let fans beta-test the app?

One way to learn from this mess is to do the tech talk and look at the things gone wrong in the software development process. However, let's leave this to the techies because you have a weapon that is minimally as powerful, i.e. your fanbase.

Yes, I know there are reasons why a company doesn't want to release information too early. However, look at it this way:

You were trying to replicate an excellent app that already existed, so it's not like you were to reveal something new and groundbreaking there. We took this stuff for granted. We expected your app to be even better because (a) it comes directly from you and (b) we expected you to copy all the things that made  iBodger great. Furthermore, postponing the release several times with you stating that you "don't want to pass on any opportunity to make improvements to the app" made us expect a perfect and finished product.

However, if you had released a beta, you would have immediately found fans to test the product. You are close to your fans, you know how to talk to them. You could have collected feedback on how this app is doing on Android devices, an ecosystem that is hard to betatest. And even if the feedback from fans may have been harsh during the design process, they would have closely observed the improvements and built up excitement just the way they did passively waiting for the product. However, in that scenario nobody would have had to burn their midnight oil and frustrated feedback would have come in quantities easier to manage.

I didn't read the entire War Room release thread with its 1000+ posts, but I noticed that people are generally complaining about the product, but not about the company. Heck, people even opened a Thanks for War Room threat in your forum despite the flaws it has - and I wholeheartedly agree with them! You know, this is quite the opposite in comparison to a competitor of yours where people love their products, but don't miss any occasion to wish them to hell. Your fanbase and the way you communicate with it is your biggest strength as you carefully nurtured it over the years. If I am in the position to make any suggestion, I only have this one: whenever you embark on an exciting new journey (one could also say "risky journey"), allow your fans to participate even more closely. They will love it, you will love it, and your competitors will be left wishing they could release innovative products just like you do.

Cheers,

Philipp

War Room first impressions

After getting my greedy little hands on War Room here are my first impressions:

War Room is a 150MB download from your iTunes Store so it takes a while to download depending on your connection speed.

Once you start it, you need to be quite patient as it is loading up. It will also automatically pull the latest updates from the server.

Once it finished loading, you can create your own account.

Once you created your own account, you can start using the app. However, at this point there isn't really any use to it as you are missing the faction decks.

Now you can purchase either single faction decks, all faction decks for a game (Warmachine or Hordes) or a bundle with all decks for both games. The more you buy at once, the cheaper the price for a single faction deck.

The paying process is very painless because the iTunes Store already has your credit card information. You hardly notice you are spending money. Yes, I bought the big bundle.

Once the payment process is completed, you already have access to the faction decks in your purchase. In other words, you already have all the necessary data after the initial download, paying for the decks just unlocks them.

After setting up everything on my iPhone, I started the app on my iPad. All it takes is to log in with your new account, after that everything is updated automatically via the server. However (accuse me of bitching, but I don't like this), the app notifies me that a second device has been successfully registered with a maximum total of two devices allowed!!!

After the initial start on my iPad, the app didn't recognize I had already purchased all faction decks and kept asking me if I want to buy them. I turned off the app, restarted it, logged in again, and then found the "Restore Purchases" button at the very bottom of the Store. Once I hit that, everything worked on the iPad, too.

War Room works on the iPhone only in the vertical position, on the iPad only in the horizontal position. I guess that was the only way to do it in order to use the screen space efficiently.

If you have an iPhone and an iPad, you want to look at it on your iPad. iPhone is good enough on the go and doesn't feel too tiny, but it's on the iPad where the app shines.

Whenever you open a new faction deck, it takes a while to load. I wish there were a way to make these loading times shorter.

Browsing the cards and creating an army list is a breeze. However, compared to iBodger I really miss the collection feature and its filter. PP, put that on your feature list.

Also unlike in iBodger, you cannot manually enter the army size - the app only lets you pick the standard army sizes in the rule book.  PP, put that on your feature list.

All in all, I give this app 8 out of 10 points.

War Room ships

War Room is in the iTunes Store now and I am downloading it as I am writing these lines!

I will buy the Cygnar, Mercenaries, and Trollbloods faction decks for sure.

However, the most nagging question is if silly me will buy a new 3rd gen iPad just for this app to have all those graphics on a retina display. The other option would be a Nexus 7 which will be handier to carry around plus I don't really like Apple's new approach to Google apps on iOS. However, reading through Vowe's latest reviews [1, 2], I guess the iPad still wins.

The most extensive P.A.C.K. Air review ever

At this point, I have traveled with Battle Foam's P.A.C.K. Air accross the Atlantic three times and in a nutshell I have to say this bag is no good for air travel although it's a supreme quality product. If you buy a competitor's product, you'll probably run into the same amount of trouble or even worse, but although the Air implies it is good for air travel, I think I will use it for surface travel in the future only.

See, the problem with the Air are its dimensions. According to Battle Foam they are

25W x 16L x 11H" (635W x 406L x 279H mm)

but in reality they are a little bit larger because of the rail, the weels, etc. Even with empty outside pockets my bag didn't fit into American Airline's carry-on sizer, so the bag with my miniatures flew as a checked bag twice in connection with the 2012 Wargames Con. Now for Battle Foam's defense I have to admit that they print this on their website:

Please check your airlines carry-on rules before travel.

which I didn't do, of course, until my last flight. I mean, when you purchase a ticket, you usually look at departure times and ticket price, but not the carry-on dimensions, right?

Well, before my last flight I did check on carry-on dimensions and found this one the AA website:

Total dimensions may not exceed 45in / 114cm (length + width + height). Length shall not exceed 22in / 56cm, width shall not exceed 14in / 35cm and height shall not exceed 9in / 23cm. The bag must fit in the baggage frames located throughout the check-in area at the airport.

So based on the AA information I would have had no chance (25/22, 16/14, 11/9) to even remotely fit my Air into the carry-on sizer. However, curious me still tried to do it and the only thing that made me fail was the rail on the Air's backside. If you somehow could unscrew/take off the rail,  you could fit it into the bag sizer.

To wrap up this part, I can say that

1. Having to check carry-on dimensions is bothersome and not reliable.
2. Using the Air for air travel is bothersome.

To be honest, my best air travel experience with a Battle Foam product was during my initial journey to the 2011 Wargames Con when I borrowed a P.A.C.K. Plus from a local colleague. Traveling with that bag was simply smooth. National flights in the USA normally feature smaller airplanes with less overhead cabin space and a flight attendant was sceptic the Plus would fit there, but it perfectly did.

Now that I rechecked Battle Foam for this article for the Plus I noticed in its product description that 

The P.A.C.K Plus was designed for airport travel and meets all FAA regulations for carryon luggage.

Heck yes! So take this advice from a fellow gamer: if you are looking for an awesome reasonably sized pack for ground travel, go for the P.A.C.K. Air. If you need something for air travel, don't let its name fool you and go for the P.A.C.K. Plus instead. The Air may work on your flight, but chances are very high it won't. With the Plus you are on the save side, though.

I for my part will definitely purchase a Plus on top of my Air. It can easily hold a large WM/H army, probably even two of them, but my 2011 experience while traveling with Blood Angels tells me that for Warhammer 40K the options are rather limiting your army list. Since I don't intend to take any competitive 40K lists to the USA anyway, I don't really care. So yes, the Plus it is.

Now let's look at the damage to my miniatures that traveled in my check Air:

On a first glance, everything is ok.

What I found really impressive was that the rods on my Stormcallers nicely stayed on. The antennas of my two Dust artillery observers got slightly bent because they were moving up and down in their compartments. (other than that, WM/H small infantry Battle Foam trays are perfect for Dust miniatures) The part that makes my heart bleed is that pEiryss lost her arm again - and so far I haven't been able to find it. Normally, broken off pieces stay in their relevant compartment, but her arm managed to slide to a place I haven't found it yet - and this happened despite the top beaing heavily covered with foam layers.

I also found very impressive, too, that the Fennblades took absolutely no damage, although their swords are oversized for their compartments. The Kriel Stone fell off, but this can be expected from such a heavy piece resting on two small joints only.

eCaine lost both his arms. Luckily I was still able to find them (unlike pEiryss' arm), but it's still kind of bad because it damages the painting job. On the other hand, eNemo's staff nicely stayed on although he suffered the same averse conditions.

Looking at the Warjacks and Warbeasts. The Fireflies and the Impalers didn't care, neither did the Stormclad (except for its banner that fell of again; it was broken before the flight already).

The Thunderhead, however, fell into all its pieces.

The Hammersmith tilted in its custom sized cut out and lost his arms/Hammers.

The Stormwall... well, I really didn't expect any damage to it because it sat so firmly in its custom foam. Obviously, that wasn't good enough. However, the big relevant parts are still intact so it's not that big of an issue especially since it's not painted yet.

So here are my big lessons learned:

1. Battle Foam makes superb products, but the P.A.C.K. Air is not meant for air travel.
2. Although I had to check the P.A.C.K. Air twice, damage to my models was very limited except for bits that I am not able to find anymore.
3. The P.A.C.K. Plus does the job well. If you travel with that bag and carry it with you for the entire journey, you can expect to see no damage at all.

Unpacking the 2012 Wargames Con

Well, I finally managed to unpack all the stuff brought home from Wargames Con, almost one month after returning home. The 2012 WGC wasn't that much of a swag fest and buying frenzy, but it still takes time to neatly tuck everything away. I am especially proud now of my army case that shows the achievements of a proud table top general. Hey, I lost almost all my games, but I had a great time doing it and my case will always remind me of the fun I had. :-)

I also took the time to quickly glue the Ork and Space Marine in my swag bag from Spikey Bits plus the Stormclad's banner that keeps falling off for a (very) quick diorama. Yes, I don't know what this diorama's point is, but I somehow found it funny.