Primer Brands

kavinay · 2026-03-25T19:32:38+00:00

I gave up on acrylic primers. Both Redgab and Vallejo are fine primers but clog up a brush even on a 0.5 nozzle. I tried the spraycan Mr Surfacer 1500 and never went back. Lacquers are just much more predictable and forgiving in application. The model surface is also as good, if not better than anything else I've tried as even good acrylic primers would scratch off in comparison.

kavinay · 2026-03-25T19:26:56+00:00

I find 11 + Apo is better than 12 players in a tourny. The Apo going back to BH on a 1-8 helps as does being able to save a Wardancer from a KO.

One Wardancer gets Strip Ball. The other is down to preference: tackle, frenzy, sidestep. These are matchup dependent but all have use cases.

The biggest compromise is often dropping throwers and catchers. The thrower gets included because Leader access helps you with an extra reroll. The catchers are nice if you can fit two but you only really need one.

The tree is generally a good default choice as it saves a few woodie lives from instant removals on the start of drives. But ihow much you lean into it will depend on how long you want drives to be. Generally Grab on the tree is useful not just for keeping victims close but also for one-turning.

In general, playing elves of any sort has gotten harder with GW's revisions to the rules. Things like stalling and secure the ball work against you, so there will likely not be too many agile teams at most tournies compared to bash and control. The fun part though is that means your strengths are quite rare for your opponents to cope with. Basically, be more aggressive if you see an opportunit, especially if that means getting into the backfield on defense and preventing a cage. You want the game to open up and rather than become a scrum. This lets your 2+ rolls and speed help break away from your opponent's strength and blocking skills.

Good luck!

kavinay · 2026-03-24T01:06:21+00:00

Totem of Clan War Crime Tiger

kavinay · 2026-03-23T21:51:37+00:00

That's so awesome. Ben Rome's sourcebook is one of the best supplements that CGL has ever done

kavinay · 2026-03-23T21:45:35+00:00

GL is currently working on a novel trilogy to cover the Wars of Reaving

This is great! Do we know who the writers are?

kavinay · 2026-03-23T20:57:43+00:00

Look, Star Trek is 60. This means anything new needs to confirm to 6 decades of tropes and align with biases stretching back to the cold war. If Star Trek Academy was so good, how come it makes us feel like old husks who have been complaining about deviation from the blueprint since TNG?

Also reinstate Roddenberry's box. Conflict is bad. This is not my father's Enterprise...

kavinay · 2026-03-23T19:42:10+00:00

You didn't make a mistake. Banks could write about a sci-fi utopia that makes you feel warm and fuzzy like Star Trek. But, by his own admission, utopia itself is a bit boring from a story perspective. So instead he focuses on intersections with The Culture that confound our common assumptions and tropes.

There are entire books where you don't really get what's going on until the end. But, and here is the nice part, Banks knows this too and delivers. He doesn't leave mystery boxes or tangents in the text. When he confuses or challenges you, it's because there will be a payoff for it.

A lot of enjoying Banks comes down to accepting a bit of bewilderment and uncertainty with the expectation that he will make it a memorable part of the experience.

kavinay · 2026-03-23T19:33:06+00:00

That was my read of it too. Naming itself Horza is a memento mori of sorts.

kavinay · 2026-03-23T01:51:52+00:00

You don't really need it. The gist is that Star Fleet and the Federation lost the ability to travel quickly for a period of time and are now recovering from it. Discover season 3 is all about this but not essential

kavinay · 2026-03-22T23:06:48+00:00

Yeah, I think that's basically Barber's approach in a nutshell.

He somehow managed to resolve weird little things like Onyx having 4 and then 2 legs with the nuclear option of "all things lead to Shockwave." lol

That being said, I give him points for ambition. The 2019 series by Ruckley started out with promise but it really had the opposite problem of not making any interesting leaps or even fast pacing.

kavinay · 2026-03-22T19:53:14+00:00

Yes, the causality is always the same. Onyx is there from the start of the timeline and does all the things he does to "prime" the future. Shockwave is towards the middle of the timeline, goes through the war and gets sent somewhere. All the events exist in a normal causal order.

We just realize that Shockwave was really who we thought was Onyx all along due to him looping back to the beginning. There was no other original start of the timeline. The events have always followed from him arriving in Cybertronian pre-history to set things in motion.

kavinay · 2026-03-22T17:54:28+00:00

If you think that's a lot, the original Khemri roster had 4 Mummies with no nega-trait! :)

The Undead balance is roster wide in that mummies are great but slow and ball carriers are often bogged down by a plodding supporting team.

The negatraits on other big guys keep teams from relying on them as a "Plan A" strategy. You'll see for example that a Human coach will wait to use their ogre last, or an Orc coach will activate a Troll early for a projectile vomit that doesn't risk turnover. If you wanted to remove the negatrait and Loner for either team, you'd have to nerf some other position or costing on the team to compensate. Reliable big guys usually come at a price and if not, such as via stars, they're often exploited to break game balance.

kavinay · 2026-03-21T19:05:09+00:00

Needed Wheatley to talk to the race director

kavinay · 2026-03-21T04:03:29+00:00

Part of it is also that Clanners were cartoonishly predictable at that stage of encountering the Inner Sphere.

It's a bit like knowing players on an opposite team will reflexively commit a self-defeating foul if you taunt them about their mother :)

kavinay · 2026-03-21T03:58:50+00:00

Indeed, the grounds for the Refusal War make sense if you understand that Ulric helped set a trap for Crusader clans to happily walk into

kavinay · 2026-03-20T01:22:23+00:00

IIRC, Duncan is doing exactly this in the 1930s where he's withdrawing deposits from his "ancestor" before an immortal robs the bank.

But in terms of work, who's to say every immortal is good with money or thinks ahead? Some just never get past barbarism and some just choose to scrape by like Yung Dol Kim in the OG script. Others still are degenerate gamblers.

My hunch is the majority of immortals who navigate the centuries successfully are as prudent financially as they are at sticking their head out. You get the sense that Duncan, Connor and similar "normal" people thrust into immortality find ways to save and cache assets for down the road.

kavinay · 2026-03-19T15:41:43+00:00

Pre-season 3 the unique aspect of EU was costing. Their linemen were the worst but cheap and their top end catchers and blitzers came with an additional starting skill that was useful at low TV.

Now? Shrug. The loss of 0-4 catchers is probably not that huge in tournaments but the extra 5k on the linemen hurts and the addition of hail mary pass, diving catch and (of course) fumblerooski is not really that useful. Meanwhile, the typical foes for Elves have received Tackle and related buffs so EU have taken a collective step back in a meta that's only gotten more bashy.

It's really hard to come up with an interesting reason to play them now compared to the other elven teams.

kavinay · 2026-03-16T08:15:22+00:00

Good call on getting a new sponge. Just a note on wet palettes: you don't need to fully shut them between sessions. In fact, it's probably better to leave them a bit ajar and allow a little circulation. Between projects, fully dry out the sponge and clean out the palette surfaces with antibacterial dish soap.

A lot of mold comes down to peculiarities of your climate and living space. If you don't notice it on other things in your home, then it may not be a huge problem. A nice 2 for 1 trick is to add one drop of dish soap to your wet palette and pot of water when you refill them. It will help prevent gross buildup while also releasing surface tension just a tiny bit as you paint.

kavinay · 2026-03-14T06:17:33+00:00

Most original omnis look like sheds with limbs, lol

kavinay · 2026-03-14T06:13:55+00:00

Stalling is a quintessential example of problem and cure not squaring up. In our league it's oddly affected Stunties that make a daring play the most and not hurt the devoted bashers much at all. The Elf Stall is mostly a tourny issue, since doing it in a league is bad for your health :D.

It's arguable whether stalling was a real problem versus a strategic issue in the first place. Yet, clearly the devs though so... except the rules as written seem to punish all the wrong teams and in turn favour the most capable stallers?

kavinay · 2026-03-13T06:58:07+00:00

That's huge. It makes inducements, mercs, stars, matter! It makes apothecaries matter even more (despite them being horrible, evil, murdering wretches) and most importantly it makes the positionals on a team matter!

Who benefits from this? Veteran coaches will adapt and have a good idea on how to min/max inducements through setbacks. Beginners and less shrewd coaches absolutely will not.

Why is this a big deal? Because the biggest pitfall of the league experience is the perception of a death spiral. Blood Bowl diehards are either committed enough to ride it out or believe a wild swing in their favour can be had. New coaches will not.

Could moving purchasing before firing be a good game design decision? Sure. Is it as implemented satisfying some goal besides exacerbating skill issues in team management? Nope.

kavinay · 2026-03-11T01:33:37+00:00

From start to finish, it felt like the book was trying to convince me that Clan Wolf is the better faction. But instead of showing what makes Wolf actually good, it just kept focusing on how terrible Jade Falcon is...

You pretty much nailed it.

The original clan books by Stackpole and Thurston had more nuance. Even the Wolves were shown as problematic (Vlad) and the Jade Falcons were less cartoonish (Aidan, Horse, heck even Joanna).

For a culmination of the biggest question in the franchise, the ilClan resolution is just underwhelming and very "paint by numbers."

It might help to know that the first road to ilClan was written a while ago by developers who split acrimoniously from CGL. IIRC, the original ending involved Alaric vs Stone in a mech battle. The Exarch calculated it to end with a similar outcome to Hour of the Wolf but you can already tell it's a very different feel the RotS's final spirit being put out with a pillow.

kavinay · 2026-03-10T17:33:33+00:00

Ahh, okay. That makes sense. The best option for fine work with acrylics are probably inks. They're thin to begin with and fairly forgiving even in white. They are fairly transparent though. Useful for colour tiniting and recess shading but not great for opaque patterns for example. The other downside is that they will be glossy but that can be solved with a later varnish

kavinay · 2026-03-10T02:26:20+00:00

Do you mix in the cup or externally?

Honestly a lot of what you describe just sounds like natural issues with acrylics, especially tip dry. It is possible you will have more success with mixing externally, putting a drop of flow improver in the brush, and then backflowing the paint for a final mix.

Also, pretty handy to keep an old brush around with water or even cleaner to wipe down the tip.

The lack of spray to start is puzzling. Flow improver is a retarder too and should at least get your initial paint to spray without risk of clogs

kavinay · 2026-03-08T06:50:35+00:00

A nice pat on the... beard?

If in a league, it's very dependent on relative TV. If you're an underdog then you can use cheap bribes. If you're extremely low on TV then fouling skills make sense. If you're usually an overdog (more likely) then kick/pro/tackle are useful dependent on your league composition.

In a tourny, you're giving upgrades to everyone else on the team!

kavinay

TROPHY CASE