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Fairbanks

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  1. Fairbanks
    A few days ago, famed AoS Youtuber 2+ Tough had a livestream in which he built an AI for Warcry, based primarily using the AI from the Solo Warhammer: Troggoth Slayers article. Having dabbled with the idea of an AI for AoS before myself (because I love the game, but I have been a lonely player for forever), I thought this might be a fun exercise to go through as well. I will be starting from scratch, so our end results should look totally different.
    Rule Zero
    All actions that the player makes for the AI should be in the AI's best interest. After all, if you were playing an actual human opponent, they are not going to give you the easy win (unless, you know, they're a good guy and/or trying to get you addicted to plastic crack).
    Hero Phase
    Roll six dice for both Player and AI as normal.
    Player may add Wild Dice to own pool as normal. 
    Determine at this point who goes first based on whether Player or AI has the most singles, using a roll off as a tie.
    Add one 'Wild AI Die' to the AI's pool, and add any from the previous round. Roll each Wild AI Dice separately and consult the table below:
    Roll Wild AI Die Result 1 Discard this Wild AI Die 2 Roll an Additional Wild AI Die next round 3 Add the Wild AI Die to a single to make a double 4 Add the Wild AI Die to a single to make a double 5 Add the Wild AI Die to a double to make trio, or single to make double 6 Add the Wild AI Die to a trio to make a quad, double to make trio, or single to make double AI Phase
    For each Double, Triple, and Quad, assign an ability to a fighter who can use one of those dice abilities. When assigning, do not assign Quads to Triples/Doubles or Triples to Doubles unless the AI does not have a valid fighter that can use those multiple rolls. Do not assign Universal Abilities if a valid Army-Specific Ability has not been assigned yet, and assign values to those abilities that utilize them. Assign abilities in this order: Those that do damage to multiple models, those that give bonus attacks, abilities that give bonus movement, abilities that heal, and then all other abilities.
    Combat Phase - Activation Selection
    Select a fighter to activate via the following order, moving all fighters that tie onto the next tiebreaker level:
    A fighter that is at risk of being killed due to the amount of damage that can be done by the number of yet-to-activate models around it. ***See Note 1 Below***
    A fighter that has an ability assigned to it from the AI Phase
    A fighter that can deal the most damage this turn (remember that fighters in combat can attack twice compared to one that has to move into combat)
    The fighter closest to an Enemy Fighter, Unclaimed Objective, or Claimed Objective that is under threat of becoming unclaimed.
    Combat Phase - Actions
    Make actions for the fighter based on trying to accomplish as many of the following, and in the following order:
    Can claim an Unclaimed Objective or Treasure, or can deny victory for the Player
    If a model has an ability assigned to it from the AI Phase, incorporate further actions to maximize the effect of that ability
    Can move and kill a powerful fighter, yet-to-activate fighter, or any other enemy fighter
    Can move and attack a powerful fighter or yet-to-activate fighter, or any other enemy fighter
    Move toward the nearest enemy fighter (do not enter 1" melee range) or unclaimed Objective or Treasure, that the fighter would not have to pass through or around friendly units to reach. Use the next nearest enemy fighter or unclaimed objective if this fighter would be the third fighter heading for that fighter/objective (This prevents the entire AI army from clumping toward one weak decoy)
    Wrap-Up
    That should pretty much cover the whole system. I haven't had a chance to playtest it myself (that will require me having the time to clear my only desk space and setting up a game.
    If you have any ideas or find the time to playtest, post your experiences below. Comments and Critiques are highly encouraged.
    Happy Hobbying!
    ***Note 1: To determine a Fighter's Risk of Being Killed, Start with the Fighter's remaining health, then subtract each enemy's # Attacks * Non-Crit Damage for all enemy fighters who can make a move and attack, and twice that for all enemies within 1". If that number becomes less than zero, the fighter is at risk for being killed. Early thoughts were to use this to make some fighters run instead of fighting. But since the player isn't subjected to that rule, there isn't a point.
  2. Fairbanks
    I'm not exactly the greatest/fastest painter, elite tournament gamer/game breaking list-builder, or even have the biggest or largest hobby collection. I tend to minimize buying big models and almost never buy repeat models of the same unit. Hell, as of late, I've made it a habit of only buying Two-Player Boxes, then never proceeding to build them. There's still a sizable collection of models that haven't been built yet, including some that I bought as far back as the start of my collecting project (more on that another day).
    Every year, I take roughly one-two weeks to set out and take inventory of every model in my Age of Sigmar hobby collection, and re-evaluate where I want each army to go/stand. Here's all of it, sitting on a queen sized bed, in all it's poorly stored and unbuilt glory:

    Yes, it's a lot to cover. I may even share it on this here blog when it's finished. I say "When" because it was progressing smoothly until last Friday night, when my wife woke me at 1:30 in the morning to let me know that she was pretty certain that her water just broke. Eighteen hours later, our two beautiful "Hobby Ruiners*" were born, taken to the NICU, and we've been stuck here at the hospital since (helps to get a sleeping room, and then be snowed in during the biggest snowfall here in over three decades). We're hoping to take one home tomorrow and another a day later, and there's a part of me that's been both longing for hobby time again, and feels a pit of guilt that I could ever want to hobby instead of caring for their precious little souls.
    For now, au revoir Hobby Time!
    * I kid, I love them considerably more than 75,000 points of plastic army dudes.
  3. Fairbanks
    I fell behind and stopped posting for at least a week, probably longer. Basically, work finally got back into the swing of things after the Christmas and New Years Holidays, and my last week just saddled me with things to do (coming home late, having to grab something to-go for dinner, instead of doing home cooking and eating at 8, so we could get fed in a timely manner), and my hobby took a backseat to life.
    I'm now "over par" when it comes to the 400 painted models portion of my challenge. (I also realize that sports metaphors are usually wasted on the miniature gaming community.) The part that makes me feel bad isn't that I'm currently behind the curve, but that I don't know how far behind that curve I am.
    Here's what I got done since my last post:
    1. Finished another 3 Blue Horrors, as far as I can tell. Probably the closest I got to finishing something.
    2. Finished priming the rest of the Tzeentch Army. That's an accomplishment, considering the whole of my last weekend was swallowed whole by a visit by my mother staying with us. I don't regret it one bit, since it probably saved her close to $600 staying in a hotel, and I got to see her for the first time in a while.

    3. Painted a Kairic Acolyte in the color scheme I initially thought of (and while not what I was going for initially, which matches closer to the box color scheme, I still like well enough)

    I've painted the flesh bits on a few more Kairic Acolytes, and hopefully I can get back in the hobbying saddle again.
    Happy Hobbying!!!!!
  4. Fairbanks
    It has been a little over one week since I started the blog and 2020 hobby quest. So let's see what else I did.
    Painting the Brimstone Horrors knocked off 10 of 10 models for the first 9 days, so I'm not stressing about the painting goals. There will be bigger obstacles to come, I'm 100% sure of it (two ominous laughs).
    What you haven't seen that I have built/painted:
    1.  The aforementioned Rats from Carrion Empire that I built in the last post.
    2. I completed the generic Chaos Spawn in a Red->Blue transition, and one of the three Flamers that I have in generic Flamer paint scheme (Talassar Blue and Fire Colors to start, I think I added a few greenish and purplish colors to add contrast):

    3. 10 Blue Horrors and the other 2 Flamers. I put blue onto all of them, and three of the Blue Horrors currently sit complete.


    4. A completed piece of Warcry Terrain that was a testing ground for what I wanted to use as my paint scheme:

    Prime semi-light Grey, Prime White from a 60 degree angle and upward. Stone in Basilicanum Grey, then Drybrush with Grey Seer (yes, I like the color for edges) Wood in Wyldwood, then Agrax Earthshade, Seraphim Sepia, and/or Gore-Grunta Fur to provide variation in wood planks. Metal grates in Balthasar Gold, then Nihilak Oxide In my humble opinion about the old sculpts, the eyes on most of them are tiny and really hard to paint. I thought the Screamers were hard, but the Chaos Spawn was a whole 'nut-er level of difficulty, and it was only two of them
    Happy Wargaming!
  5. Fairbanks
    Saturday was a big preorder day for followers of the thinking man’s Chaos God. So I ponied up the money and got:
    Aether War
    Limited Edition Disciples Book (It better be good)
    Endless Spells
    Warscroll Cards (And for Slaves Too, since the store had them)
    Tzeentch Dice (At the time of ordering, I thought there was going to be a need for them to track Blue and Brimstone Horror Points, but I think having three colors from one set will still not be a bad trade off).
    And that will pretty much end my spending until the army is done. It’s not that I don’t already have a few dozen other boxes to build in the meantime. I can see only a limited Pointy Aelves set breaking that commitment.
    So this weekend, I started working on a Flamer (Sir Not-Appearing-Because-I-Forgot-To-Take-a-Photo). I’ll get a photo when it’s done (It’s still on a Square Base of all things)
    And then I built some Stormfiends and a Warplock Bombadier

     
    I opened up Carrion Empire at Thanksgiving hoping to do a whole FEC army over that weekend. I finished my test model and got most of the Flesh Eaters to where the skin was Basecoated, but that’s all I worked on (A New player was taking them in Escalation, so I chose something else, namely Tzeentch).
    Mostly, it was a good break from painting.
    Since I went up the the Warhammer store to order things on Saturday, I was told from the Boss that had to forfeit my usual Sunday gaming day to help her. Honestly wish I spent more than 30 minutes then.
    Happy Hobby and Gaming!
  6. Fairbanks
    In order to maintain pace for 400 painted models, I'll have to paint one model per day, plus an additional every 10 days.
    As everyone knows (Or if you are new to Age of Sigmar or wargaming as a hobby, welcome, but you may not know) that opening with a new box to clip out, remove mold lines and connections to the sprue, glue, prime, paint, and then base a single model from the box is a bit of a waste of time. So in all likelihood through doing this, I won't be finishing one model every day, but may be getting a step or two done on a few figures instead.
    I'm also counting figures as each individual one on a base. So a single Brimstone Horror counts the same 1 Model as a Tzaangor Skyfire is 1 Model, or a Lord of Change is 1 Model. Ideally, the goal is to spread this out beyond between 10 man units, a set of 3-5 mounted models, and the occasional behemoth (Although I will be happy to admit that for the longest time, I actively avoided adding behemoths to armies).
    Today, 10 Brimstone Horrors joined the ranks of "Painted":

    I'm not against sharing how I built the models. It's done primarily with Contrast Paints and while the first 3 steps share with how WarhammerTV does theirs, I do a few additional things that, in my humble opinion, make it better than the box art:

    It's a good practice to keep a notebook with your paint schemes in it, in case you have to reference it again to add more models to a previous unit and you want them to all be coherent.

    A few other things I guess I should mention before I sign off for this Blog Entry.
    First, I started Tzeentch at the start of December for my local GW's AoS Escalation. We are a new store and started at 150 points for the first two weeks, then went to 300 and are currently at 450. Our store is one of the newer ones, as it opened in September. We have an influx of people new to the game, a huge boon to my own gaming habits, as our FLGS had maybe one other person who actively played AoS, but we were never there at the same time to get games in,  or one of us were tied up playing 40K. I believe we are restarting at 250 this weekend.
    I fell into Tzeentch by meeting the newer people when they came in and as someone who collects every army (70K points of models strong), I migrated into an army that no one got into (I think only Skaven, Beasts, Fyreslayers, and Daughters are the only other forces not selected).
    Here's what I have painted since the start of December:

    Here's what is primed and ready for paint:

    And finally, all the other Tzeentch things that haven't been primed or painted (at least until I get my hands on Aether War):

    I this is a long rambling post about what I'm going to be up to in the future, but I'm committing myself to doing a plog/blog.
    Happy Gaming!
  7. Fairbanks
    My New Year Resolutions This Year:
    1. Finish Building all of the unopened models in my closet. 
    2. Paint 400+ Models this year.
    3. Significantly limit my spending this year to:
    a. Big boxes that save money vs buying individual boxes (a la Aether War), of armies that I do not have a large collection of (I actually have a ton of Tzeentch, but it's my army for the foreseeable future).
    b. Only buy things that would bring up armies to 1000, 1500, or 2000 points and I haven't bought anything for the prior two months.
    c. No Other games, especially Kickstarters, besides Warcry (and maybe Frosthaven, still debating on that one)
    4. Finish a ~1000 point army  each month, minus in February, subject to change. Armies to definitely work on are: Tzeentch, Flesh Eater Courts, Beasts of Chaos, Stormcast (Sancrosanct) , 
    5. Make a Blog/Plog, stay focused on the Hobby and stick to updating it. I fell off big time at the start of last year after going through all of 2018 doing things, and I want to stay back in doing this.
    Welcome to #5.
    Today's Subject: Local GW is doing a painting competition to start the year (I missed out on the Red Gobbo last month, but I had a crazy idea to use the Black Coach and Wild Riders kit in a conversion). The following will be my entry for the 'Single Model' and 'Contrast Only' categories. I just need to finish the base, which I'm not sure what colors to try out with:

    I used Ceramite White as a fix for mistakes, but entirely used it as that instead of in a more creative way (such as a brighter edge highlighter).  I didn't feel like using it in that way was in the spirit of the rules of "Contrast Only". 
    Currently, the other models that will help building an early lead to 400:

    Alright then, Happy New Year and Happy Gaming!
  8. Fairbanks
    At the beginning of 2018, I made a New Year's Resolution to do something related to Wargaming each and every day.
    Yesterday (the 31st of December, 2018), I crossed the finish line of my marathon. This is a fraction (About 1/3) of what I have to show for it:

    Since I know that a few of you have made this same pledge this year that I had made a year ago, here are my personal insights about the resolution:
    1. The idea came about from two summers ago, when I finished my first Warmachine models by committing to do some painting every day for a month. This go around, I was also motivated to help reduce the number of boxes and unpainted models I owned. I didn't make a promise to do all of them in a year, but I took a large chunk of them down.
    I proceeded to add a ton of new boxes to the pile.
    2. I pledged to do something that was creative and tangible each day. With respect to the various gaming forums/sites, reading or making a post, no matter how slow I am at it, counted for the resolution. Nor did buying anything count toward the total (since it is also a habit in contradiction to another goal)
    3. I restricted things to Building Models, Painting Models, or Making a non-update Youtube Video (I think 2-3 times).
    4. In May I added Taking Inventory to the short list, but wrapped that up that same month. If you have never taken inventory of your models, it is my suggestion that you do at some point in the future (at a minimum, for insurance purposes). If you are thinking that it's a cakewalk and/or cheating, you probably don't have over 1000 models (which sincerely I say, good on you).
    5. I added Book Reading (Soul Wars) in July/August, because I spent a day in which I didn't have any time to myself to build or paint to myself, but had spent the time on the airplane reading.
    6. If you are entirely serious with keeping with the every day pledge, having a travel box or contingency plan is an absolute must.
    7. Find a time to build/paint. For myself, it was the two hours between when the wife went to bed and I did, or the 30 minutes between when she and I went to work.
    8. If you know you are going to be out somewhere late and not be able to paint, try to paint in the early morning, or at a different time you can find for yourself.
    9. The toughest times to keep the pledge were on days in which I wanted to do something else. Working until 9 PM usually turned into playing a game until 11:45, then panicking to find something to do in the last 15 minutes. Building a hero model was a great stop-gap.
    10. What counted as "work" also had some loose terminology. This could be as weak as "Painting the handles on 5-10 models pink". If I kept the number of times this was done to a minimum, or for emergencies, I never felt bad about doing it.
    11. Keep a log. I kept a VLog on Youtube and while it never got much traffic, when I got to yesterday and wanted to see everything I completed, I found that an hour of scanning video descriptions was more than enough to catch everything.
    12. You probably won't get to any other recreational projects. For myself, I had wanted to build a league in a baseball stats simulator called Out of the Park Baseball, but found that between the pledge and other video gaming, I never got around to starting it for long.
    13. I suggest doing both building and painting, and not just one or the other. For myself, I found myself burnt out on one by the time I switched to the other, and would often get a lot more done in a month after switching than I thought I would.
    14. Definitely include other hobby related projects, like getting that army you have on your shelf completed. I basecoated/three foot detailed 3,000 some points of Stormcast during a Hobby Challenge.
    15. I didn't have one during the pledge, but if an emergency pops up, there should be no fear in dropping the pledge. You and your family matter so much more than a project like this. Author's note, not hobbying because I was 'sick' but wasn't hugging a toilet or laying in the fetal position constituted as failing the project.
    16. Because of how rarely I got them in, I included playing a game as 'hobbying'.
    With that, I feel I have provided enough help to start you on your own personal hobby adventure. If you have any questions or can think of any other ideas, post them below.
    Happy Wargaming!






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