The Spring Fantasy Anime League 2024 result

 Fresh of the back of my best season ever, the Winter 2024 where I ended up in the top 6%, the pressure was on to get at least back in the top half of the table.

Which is a nice goal I've set for myself going forward the coming Leagues, though this all is fickle.

The trick is to get as many aces in, and that is something one does not control unfortunatly, on how people's viewing behaviour will turn out, especially with the dubbed versions often influencing the ratings one or two weeks after the original subbed release.

Anyways, here is my selection of picked anime's for this season:

Yuru Camp season 3: strong performer that I managed to ace

Misfit of Demon Academy season 2: my personal flop, I had expected way more of this

Kaiju nr 8:as it blasted through the tresshold on it's debut week, it couldn't be aced. 

Spice and Wolf: The third most popular anime of the season, so I had some good picks

I'm Addicted to You

Date a Live V: Solid performer, though not spectacular.

Black Butler Public School: not as heavy a hitter as I hoped

Whispering You a Love Song

A varied selection, with solid sequel seasons, and some like Spice and Addicted that I had high hopes for.  So let's have a look how I progressed over the 13 weeks of the challenge.

Week 1: 115773 points, 2435 th place, succesfully aced Spice and Wolf

Week 2: 216602 points, 3166 th place 

Week 3: 526163 points, 3184 th place, swapped in Date A Live for I'm Addicted to You,

Week 4: 722229 points, 1907 th place, succesfully aced Yuru Camp

Week 5: 995107 points, 1358 th place, succesfully aced Date A Live

Week 6: 1140488 points, 1796 th place, swapped Misfit for Addicted

Week 7: 1474541 points, 2595 th place

Week 8: 1588911 points, 2906 th place, swapped addicted for Love Song

Week 9: 1832045 points, 3981 th place 

Week 10: 2167417 points, 4170 th place, swapped Love Song for Black Butler

Week 11: 2322103 points, 4696 th place

Week 12: 2565915 points, 5080 th place, used the Bomber Up wildcard

Week 13: 3316521 points, 4805 th place

So right at the finish line, I managed to sneak 200+ places in still, ending up at a nicely done 17% from the top.  While this was achieved with the best and the 3rd ranked anime of the season, to be honest the rest of them didn't do that well at all as can be seen above.  This also resulted in only being able to play 3 out of my 5 aces, so that is a lot of bonus points I couldn't use unfortunatly.

 

So yeah, with some decent though not spectacular performers apart from the obvious Kaiju nr 8 and the good performing Spice and Wolf, I still managed to end in the top 17%, so going over my aim of top 50% once again.

 

There will be no Summer league this year it seems, so that means more time to prepare a strategy (insert hilarious laughter) for the next seasonal contest when it hits!

Kaijuu number 8

 Probably one of the most anticipated series for the spring season, I also jumped on the hype train and sat down to give this sci-fi series a watch.

Yes, because big monsters galore!

The Defence Corps is a special unit tasked with defending Japan from large roaming monsters, the Kaijuu.  Kafka Hibino was once dreaming of a military job, but found himself instead a Sweeper, a unit to clean up the mess after the battles.  When 18 year old Reno joins his unit, his dreams are rekindled though.  When Kafka encounters a parasite that forces himself into him, he gains the powers to become a human-kaijuu hybrid and pursue his dream after all.

But the captain tasked with taking him down as he sets a kaiju alarm, is his childhood friend Mina, accompanied by her white tiger. Kafka has to get to grips with his new form and power, and the fact he pees from his nipples...  When they run into a young girl attacked by a huge kaiju, Kafka interferes and resulting in the stories of a "good kaiju" being rumoured, so he tries again for the Defence Force, passing the first round of exams together with his young protege Ichikawa.  On the parking lot he is met by Kikoru, who wears a suit that powers her up immensely.  As they start the training exam, they face the prodigee's of many schools specialised in raising kaiju hunters.  But using his knowledge as a sweeper on the weak points of kaiju, they manage to stay in the exam.

However, an intelligent kaiju that can revive those taken down has snuck into the exam cemter, gravely wounding Kikoru.  As the fields are being evacuated, Kafka saves her, even though this forces him to reveal his secret to her.  But the special kaiju apparently is also someone able to shift to human form, working in Kafka's sweeper unit.

 

 

Kafka is recruited, even though his exams where amongst the weakest.  But lt Hoshina sees something in him, and not only his comical value.  While he suspects something is off with Kafka, he loved his ability to sacrifice his own kill count in order to guide others on how to score better, something not many people can do.  And so his training starts, as he pushes himself everyday more and more to raise his combat power, as he gets out on his first mission.  While he feels initially being a slag to the team, his knowledge of a sweeper once again helps out by finding the core of the beasts, their vunerable spot, allowing the team to effectively fight them.

 

But they run into another sweeper who also has transformative powers, and was behind the assault on the training grounds.   He barely kills Ichikawa, as Kafka arrives and smashes the opponent to pieces, but it regenerates and goes in his battleform to face Kafka.  But just as he is about to finish the other kaiju humanoid off, the Defence Force troops arrive, allowing the other to escape.  During his escape though, he runs into Hoshino, who attacks him as he believes he is the kaiju causing the havoc.  

Pressed back, he needs to hold down in order not to injure the vice-captain, opting to escape instead of defending himself.  They celebrate their succesfull mission back at the HQ, as Kafka witnesses the captain's training, seeing him recreating the battle with him.  But as they wrap up, huge flying kaiju are approaching the city led by another humanoid kaiju.  The vice-captain looks in deeper on the case of number 8, as Kafka witnesses the arrival of the winged beasts.  They attack the base of the Defence Force, as everyone needs to be mobilized for the fight.

Their leader challenges Hoshino as he sees him as the prey, being the strongest human at the base.  Kikoru has received a custom weapon, as she is ranked the third most powerful in the unit after the commanders, and goes about annihilating the wyvern type kaiju together with the other recruits.  Hoshino goes to it's full power to fight the humanoid beast, initially getting the upperhand before it regenerates and transforms in a huge beast of even greater power.

 

But Hoshino is being pushed back, his suit reaching it's maximum limit resulting in the beast overpowering him.  As he gets injured, we learn on how everyone wanted him to quit, yet pushed onwards at the behest of his captain, Mina.   But never the less he is no match, and Kafka rushes to his aid.  But the captain arrives just before he transforms, keeping his secret, as they tackle the monster as a team to bring it down.  But the beasts starts merging, about to create a huge bomb.  Kafka has to reveal hsi true identity to stop it from exploding above the base, launching it into the high skies to reduce the blast.   

Kafka is detained and the higher ups want him for tests, but Mina and the troops try to make sure he gets absolved by filing special reports and accounts of his actions.  Interrogated and tortured by Kikoru's father, the director-general, he must prove he is human.  The director uses technology extracted from kaiju number 2 in order to get Kafka mad at full power, the beast inside him driving him into a frenzy.  He struggles inside the beast to regain control over it, as it keeps enraging and powering up against the director-general's attacks.  Thanks to his thoughts of Mina, he overcomes the beast and regains his humanity, in control of his powers. 

Mina is heard after the examination by the high brass, recounting her experiences with him in the unit and the things he did to help them.  The director general decides that he will be assigned to the unit instead of disposing him, to use his power for the benefit of the nation.

So this was hyped for good reason, as it was both action packed as well as fun as hell!  I for one look forward to the second season to air!

 

 

 

 

Warhammer Underworlds casual evening: Granddaddy Aggro comes to the Party

 It has been a few weeks, but at last I managed to get a game evening in for some Underworlds!

And I brought a Nemesis format warband of the good old days: Granddaddy Aggro himself, or Garrek's Reavers, a warband from the very first starter box of the game.

Coupled with Breakneck Slaughter, I wanted to see just how well these aggressive fanatics could hold up against the modern day warbands.  So with a battleplan resolving around pure ugha-bugha, I literally rushed in to see what they can do before starting to fine-tune the deck and the plan.

Facing me for the first game was Peter with Lady Harrow's Mournflight, boosted by the Malevolent Masks deck.  

We set up the boards, drew our cards and off we went as a bloodfilled roar sounded over the table.

Saek thundered forward, wielding his massive axe and boosted for extra dice took down one of the ghostly ladies, Widow Caitha, immediatly.  But he himself was in turn taken down as the Lady Harrow drifted into combat, quickly dispatching the raging berserker.

 

 

As Garrek approached the battle, Arnulf thundered past to have a poke at the enemy leader, lightly wounding her, before he was taken down as well, causing the remainder of the warband to inspire.

The first round ended with 4-4 on the table, and the Reavers ready to cause some mayhem.

A boosted Karsus engaged Lady Harrow and the Screaming Maiden with his scything axe, but missed both attacks.  This was the break point for me, he could have taken out both, but instead missed everything.

Moments later, the ghostly ladies took down the crazed warrior, and my chances of victory where miffled.

As Garrek was also dispatched, it was down to poor little Targor to salvage the situation as we finished round two, the Reavers tailing 10-5 behind.

A whole heap of cards, which gave him 6 momentum counters to boot, transformed him into a frothing, maddened nutcase who raced over the whole board to get to Lady Harrow...

... and took her down, before this poor 2 wound bloke was taken out as well (and failed the reborn roll), resulting in an 18-9 victory for the Mournflight.

The second game was against the other Peter, who brought the Rimewyrm empowered Cyreni's Razors to the table.  

In an opportunic strike, boosted by a devastating charge, Saek thundered forward again, immediatly taking out Cyreni who had only managed to do a single Hammertide.

But like in the first game, he was soon dispatched as well, so I am going to have to work on the timing with him, but this was to big a chance to pass over.  I know what Cyreni can do, as I'm tinkering on a deck for her myself for future tournaments (because, Idoneth), so she had to go as soon as possible.

The rest of the Reavers advanced, not able to reach anything and preventing me the objectives for making three attacks unfortunatly, and a 4-3 lead for the Idoneth on the board.

Beginning the second turn, Arnulf assassinated the already injured Renglaith, but Cephanyr took him down shortly after.

Targor charged the huge squid, but failed miserably before he was also strangled by the beast, and putting a 12-9 lead for the Idoneth on the table, even though Garrek took down Alathyrr, scoring double glory thanks to his upgrade.

This left a duel between berserker and octopus on the table, and I started to move around, hoping Peter wouldn't score big and obtain all my objectives in the end phase myself as I wouldn't be able to take down the squid in one charge.

After some dancing and skating around, I did score the 4 points I had on hand, but unfortunatly Peter also had 4 in hand, so after a very uneventfull fourth turn, the Idoneth won 16-13.

So, that's two smackerings for Granddaddy Aggro tonight, but I did pick up some very intresting ideas.  Sacrifice Arnulf and Targor early on, with any damage they might do a bonus, for the inspiring, and hold Saek perhaps back just a little longer before unleashing him on the enemy.  Surely, he did two alpha strikes with success, but never himself lived longer then his first activation.  Deckwise, I will be doing some minor tweaking, albeit I love the combo effect I concocted to turn someone in a charging bull to great suprise of the opponent though.

Well, time to tune and play some more with these guys, before beginning the preparation road for the next tournament, somewhere in november normally!

 

 

Free Hack issue 1 - September 2008

 In a further effort to reduce my reading backlog, we are looking at Free Hack issue 1 today.

Free Hack is the irregularly published magazine by Ganesha Games (from the Song of... series), and the first issue was a 27 page magazine.

Beginning with the editorial, they introduced us to the magazine and what the goals where of it, bringing FAQ's, experimental and official rules, and more along those lines as company made magazines tended to do.  I as such starts as a first article with a questionnaire about Song of Blades and Heroes.  This is quite a long FAQ article going over all the phases of the game and any ammends and clarifications that might be needed.

Afterwards, we get some cool houserules, like variations on the summoner, necromancer and such, and what if you can't recoil due to lack of space.  

In the following article, they take a look on the release plans for 2009, before going with an article to convert your movement to hex based movement.

In an article about new units, the Frogfolk make their appearance in this issue, complete with a fully fleshed out army list, and their own scenario to face the Silva who raided their homeland and stole their totem.

In Dispatches from the Rad-Zone, we get errata, rulings and FAQ's for MDRG due to their newest released expanion, Assault on Neo Tokyo.

That concludes this very first magazine, which was okay to read (the FAQ's long being outdated, that happens when you read something 16 years after release) but the Frog People where an epic article!

It's freely downloadable from Wargame Vault, so check it out if you like!

Battlefleet Gothic The Book of Nemesis

 Good old Battlefleet Gothic, up there with Mordheim in the summun of classic Games Workshop games that remained alive thanks to the community.

And that community created the Book of Nemesis, an unofficial supplement to the game (that is widely played), edited my Marcin K. Gerkowicz.

The book is a compilation of rules published on the Cypra Probatii fanportal, born from an idea all the way back in 2007.  

It begins with the history of the Nemesis sector, an often unnoticed and not really strategic important sector in space.  The story goes through the rise and fall of the prosperities in the sector, and how it became a bounty field for pirates after a huge battle, the Battle of Consterfield's Nebula, had left the Imperial Navy with to heavy losses to keep the shipping lanes safe.  Hence why today, it is called the Age of Rum in the Nemesis sector.

The greatest conflict as such in the sector in the 41st millenium is called the Pirate War, with rebelling planets, profiteers and renegades abound.  Next to these rebellious rag-tag fleets, the Eldar Pirate-prince Avercenna also operates in the sector, often coming to blows with the weak forces of the Navy of the shamble fleets of the pirates.  Add to that the scattered remains of a liberating crusade and the ever present thread of the greenskins, and this whole sector is a volatile powder keg without any regulations.

The book then moves to the various vessels operating in the Nemesis sector that make up these fleets, starting with the mighty Chaos Blasphemer battleship class, but also light cruisers for the Chaos forces.  These mostly represent the various renegade and traitor vessels, older lighter ships then the regular cruisers of the Gothic sector.

Facing them on the Imperial side are two new Battleship classes and a battlecruiser, together with a light firgate.  But the Inquisition Black Ship is also operating alongside them, the personal vessel of an high ranked inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, together with the Grey Knights.

We get more vessels for the other races in the sector, the Eldar, T'au, Necron and dark Eldar, before moving to the defense platforms of the sector.

Next up are the fleet lists, mixing the newly presented vessels with some of the original Gothic vessels (no Planet Killer's you Chaos followers!) to represent the pirate fleets of the sector, together with any special rules for those fleets to give them their unique flavour.

There is also a full campaign, the Gehenna campaign, with all the necessary scenarios and tables, as well as a set of historical scenarios based on events from the Nemesis sector.  Another form of scenarios included are Tournament scenarios, for balanced battles in, yup, a competitive setting.

A well executed supplement and a fun to read, bring back old memories of the fantastic game.  Drop by on their website, or do a quick google, and have a look at this book for sure!

Highspeed Etoile

 Sometimes you find an anime series by accident, and this is one such case.

While strolling through my regular viewing service for some series that came out this season, I suddenly bounced upon this one.

I had no idea another racing series was on the horizon, but never the less I sat back and gave it a watch.

In the near future, NEX Race is a new racing series that allows safe racing at over 500 km/hr.  Rin Rindou, who recently gave up her dream of becoming a ballet dancer, became a NEET who accidentally is thrown into this world of next generation racing.  These races are a whole spectacle, where young upcommers try to defeat the undisputed champion that emerged within the 5 years the racing class exists, with only Alice, aka Queen, being able to compete with him.

 

Rin makes her debut, getting through qualifying for her first race.   Forced by the memories of her past, she makes a great impression on her debut to prevent ending up in last place on her debut race.  But when she is lapped, she mistakingly thinks someone is still behind her.  As "King" laps her, she goes all out to overtake him again, As a result she is disqualified though as she didn't know the fundamental rules of clearing away when lapped.

 

Rin is contacted by Alice, who wants to help her out with simulator training and all, but Rin has no idea who she actually is.  Thinking she is a racing fan gamer that beats her on the simulator, she learns some tricks to control her heartrate and focus.  Alice wants to know though how Rin passed the King in the race she got disqualified.  Rin keeps struggling though, but in the park she unknowingly meets King who is looking to visit a vintage toy store, as he ran from a fundraiser event.  They end up at the restaurant her grandma runs, letting him taste her signature dish to his great enjoyment.  They manage to find the kaiju toy, as he confides in her he misses his son due to work.  He knows who she is, then introduces himself causing her to blush as hell for not recognizing him.

Then at last she starts putting on a strong performance, thanks in no small part due to their AI.  She gets in the fight for the podium, ending fifth.  But in her next race, she returned to her regular spot of finishing last.  Together with her friends, she starts training harder and learn more about the personalities and skills of the top drivers in the competition.

Using an unorthodox tactic, Sophia takes the lead as Rin's mechanic predicted a downpour that comes unexpected, and had the rain tires already prepared, giving her a strong advantage to the others that still needed to pits and saving the timeloss of and extra stop.  But Rin, now in second behind Sofia, wants to take the risk of overtaking her.  But she misses her corner and crashes out as Sofia takes the unexpected win.

There is a nice feature about the legendary Toyata 2000GT, as Rin needs to drive it for training.  Her mentors have noticed something with her driving style, and particularly how she uses her left leg.  In the meantime, they are building her a brand new car.  Rin actually knows how to work the sublte old clutch, compared to all her friends only driving the AI assisted cars of the current day.  It turns out she still driving with her heart like in the old days.

Driving her new car, Rin starts putting in better performances, qualifying 4th for the next race.  But something goes wrong at the start as her mechanic has changed the settings, causing the AI to not start the car.  With the King also not in the race as he doesn't like racing in the night, the others smell their chance and Kanata actually challenges the Queen for the win together with Youran.  The Queen is beaten by latter by mere centimetres as Kanata spins of in her last effort to pass them.  

At the next race, on the brandnew Osaka track, everyone is struggling with set-up except King.  She smashes the King's time after he gave some pointers, but is totally demotivated when the AI took over for a part as she faded due to high G forces of missing a turn.  She gets additional training in her favorite racing game as the AI is seemingly on of her friends in there.  She comes to term with "Ami-chan" and why she did what she had to do.

At the new track of Osaka, the final race of the season takes place.  Thanks to King's pointers, she qualifies highly and soon finds herself battling Queen.  She finds herself in the lead, but the King comes up to her, making a pass.  She overtakes him, but then suddenly the power on the circuit fails, bringing all cars to a stop.  This causes her AI to short out, and she needs to drive on on her own when power returns and they restart with a rolling start, which has taken her and King's lead away.

King reclaims his first place, and they have to stop for manual pit stops.  Rin is out first, as her pit crew does an amazing job.  With King on her tail they are getting back towards the front, having only Queen still in front of them on her older tires.  This proves to be a downfall as one of her tires break and she sportingly clears the track for the duel between Rin and the King.  He blocks her at every opportunity to use her revolburst boost, as they pass the line nearly at the same time, Rin beating it with the point of her car's nose!

Yep, this was a bad series, and one that ends up on the bottom of my MAL ratings.  The main character is uncredible, as she seemingly doesn't even know basic rules yet competes at the highest level of the sport.  Other characters are bland or even 'unknown' to the viewers, and the computer animated style just makes it look like a large, to long cutscene from the PS4.  Avoid this for sure!