Dark Crusade

Since school already reopened, I might as well set some time now to write about what I feel about Dawn of War’s new expansion/standalone product: Dark Crusade, seeing that I would not have as much time in the near future.

Dark Crusade is probably the best thing that ever happened to me in the RTS department, other than learning Starcraft. 2 new races, Tau and Necrons, both 200% more colorful, more lasers and cooler than your standard bread and butter humans from Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Chaos Space Marines. These two races bring more unique playstyles, more PewPews, and a new stealth system.

The new stealth system is indeed a system that could become extremely overpowered, or extremely underpowered. There must be a balance between detector units and stealth units. Blizzard did that for Starcraft, and Relic managed to reproduce something similarly good. It’s definitely not easy to balance that kind of stealth system over 7 completely different and unique races. One must take into consideration the playstyle of each race and not let the detector unit’s playstyle contradict with it.

Having expressed my thoughts on the new stealth system, I shall now move on to the 2 races and the changes to the old 5 races.

Space Marines
I’m a bit vague on space marines, mainly because I haven’t really explored much of it. To me, it feels pretty much the same other than stealthed scouts which could probably bring hurt to races like Chaos or Imperial Guards since their tier 0 and tier 1 is low on detectors.

Termies seemed to be buffed but I haven’t tried them yet. There are some hard hits on the new cap limit on Tier 3/4 units like the Whirlwind being limited to only 1 and cost 5 support from 2. Armory can be built 0.01 seconds into the game now too, but I’m not a SM player so I don’t know how this will affect them.

The new Grey Knights are just too incredibly powerful against daemons. I know they are supposed to be but the only race suffering from this is the Chaos Space Marines. From what I heard (with data reports), Grey Knights can easily beat everything daemonic Chaos has to offer with the exception of the IMBA Possessed Space Marines.

As far as detectors go, Space Marines is an all out detector race. Remember observers from the Protoss side of Starcraft? SM get skull probes which functions the very same way.

Against the new races, I’m abit doubtful of SM beating Necrons at early game. It takes 2-3 sniper shots of the scouts to take down ONE Necron Warrior. SM should fare well against Tau imo, considering that stealthed scouts eat everything Tau has at tier 0/1, forcing Tau to take a hit on their eco by building their 300 req Vespids.

Chaos Space Marines
I haven’t tried CSM at tier 3 yet. I was kinda looking forward to getting CSM’s stealth research at their armory but instead, now it has been shifted to tier 2, so that kinda disappoints me. A lot.

Like space marines, CSM’s detectors are everywhere, and are ridiculously cheap -> Cultists. At last these paper idiots are finally useful for something. CSM can also carry plasmas now at tier 3, making the barrack building somewhat more useful than what it used to be (raptor/zerker spam, tier 3 fuck it ). Sorcs detects stealth now, and the Chaos Lord can drop some AE thingy that detects stealth. As an Eldar player, it doesn’t affect me. It’s not like I’ll build rangers to fight units with no morale.

Stealth is just crazy at tier 3. CSMs are just crazy…plasmas + stealth. I think that’s gonna rape Tau. It could rape Eldar but tier 3 Eldar gets their newly buffed termie armored Seer Councils.

Imperial Guard
Karskins and Ogryns capped at 1! Guardsman has a new upgrade that doubles their ‘nades and plasma damage! Psykers are now detectors and IG now has the com-sat station alike to the Terran forces of Starcraft. Basilisks are extremely accurate now. It can actually HIT buildings consistently now. I heard Hellhounds get a new ability but mine died too fast for me to check during my first IG game in DC.

Overall, I think IG still stink, but not as bad as last time. Heavy Weapons Support is also pretty crazy

Orks
I’ve been playing some orky recently and the more I play and think about it, the more I think Orks are extremely powerful as long as you can manage your resources well. They can overwhelm Eldar with average micro with ease. Eldar HAVE to go rangers, the ork early game rush is just too powerful. Good thing Eldars have FoF to help.

Orks also get Free Sluggas at tier 3. Well, not really free, they cost 2 ork resource. Yeah only 2 ork resource, nothing more. Yee Howe threw me 8+ fucking waves of sluggas and co. against my IG. It’s incredible to watch them enter my base. It’s even more incredible to see them swarm and walk over my entire base like nothing. The most incredible sight is to see them all die to bunkered guards.

Also their new unit: Flash Gitz, are an insanely powerful bolter unit that CAN hit. No cap but made of tissue paper.

Eldar
Eldar received a ton of stuffs this patch. Seer councils now have melee knockdown 50%, take only 50% off ranged attacks, 2 times more hp than before and for all that, they are shifted to tier 3, which isn’t so bad because tier 3 for Eldar used to be empty like heck. Only warlocks can detect stealth though, that’s a pretty bad hit esp if I’m playing against orks. The interval between tier 2.5 to tier 3 is when the orks can launch an attack with sluggas+bustas+shootas+tanks to rape my ass.

Dark Reapers got buffed as they receive 30% or 40% off the accuracy upgrade. Even banshees benefit from it now (20%) I think. Furthermore, if I’m not mistaken (which i think I am), the 2nd upgrade, Superior Optics, buffs all Eldar units to almost 100% accuracy.

Fire Dragons still suck like hell though.

Oh yeah, Harlequins are like godsend to me. She’s some crazy paper unit that CCs the living shit out of your troops. Love them so much Tau
Ah where to begin. I don’t know much about Tau since I don’t really like that race too much. All I know is that right now, Kroot route > Tau route, which didn’t really make much sense does it lol

Necrons
I’m not gonna shout imba. When I first saw necrons, I thought they are powerful like hell. But now, things have changed. Eldar can easily outmaneuver necrons and screw their build. Tau can probably try to Vespid rush but I have tested that with Heber and it doesn’t seem to work much. Space Marines can easily easily (and easily) hard tech to uber cheap Landspeeders which RAPES Necron units. Orks can definately beat necrons. Chaos have to hard tech to zerkers if they want to live and push into the necrons…it’s not like Flayed Ones can do anything to your zerkers lol, but seriously zerkes tear Necron Warriors apart. I am not too sure about IG. I highly doubt IG can rush Necrons or vice versa. IG has the advantage of mobility though.

That’s all for my DC glimpse.

The Revival!

Finally, the Saturday came. After so long, Singapore finally have their own fighting games competition. The Revival takes place in Bugis Virtualand and I humbly feel that this night was worth going. $2 to compete is nothing compared to the atmosphere generated by the crowd.

john and I arrived when Tekken 5: Dark Ressuraction just started at around 3.30pm. Crowd was insane, much more than I expected. Microphones suck though, but I’ll let that pass. Because of the huge crowd, I couldn’t see anything so I headed to play a few casuals instead.

There was a horrible delay…around 2 hours, to set up the KOFXI competition. Apparently the video capture wasn’t working or something and OldMan wanted a working machine that can video capture properly or something. jellon wanted to fuck the video capture thing and proceed with the competition. The crew’s decisions clashed and ended up delaying the KOFXI competition for like 2 hours to get another machine, set it up and test for it’s video capture abilities.

The crowd for KOFXI was immense. Fucking awesome crowd. I wish I had taken pictures really but the organisers didn’t allow it…at least that’s what they said at the website but I still see people taking pictures. I don’t know if they have been caught or not though. If I was a player, if flashlights pop out from nowhere I’ll definitely be more distracted than the crowd cheering me while doing my combos. But for such a huge crowd, the noise level and cheers were utter crap. I’m beginning to believe that KOFXI IS a game for anti-social people…mostly anyway.

So the CVS2 competition was delayed until 10pm. I wasn’t pissed tbh, I’m just happy they didn’t so dumb things like cancelling or postponing the event. The consequences are disastrous. And one of the goal of The Revival is also to somewhat ‘revive’ the CVS2 scene. I heard they were on a brink of cancelling but most of the crew opted not to. Props to them =).

So the game started, half the crowd left because it was getting late I guess. But man, the CVS2 crowd was fucking awesome. About 3 times more hyper and crazier than the KOFXI mute crowd. I fought this guy that fucking looked like tanakan. I wish i had taken a picture of him. He seriously looks like tanakan with a chubbier lower half of his face. The hair style is EXACTLY the same AND he wears the EXACTLY SAME white frame glasses. I have to look at him a few times before I am fucking sure that this guy is not tanakan.

Fighting him, I can tell that he lacks practice and experience, but he knows how to play. Probably haven’t played for some time, which he claimed it was the case. Finn walk-overed Ken because Ken is happily killing hongkong people 30 games straight and couldn’t make it back to SG. He fought with an yishun guy that came over to bugis recently. The yishun guy was good, plays smart and turtles, compared to a more rushdown, combo-whore person like finn. Finn did well abusing RC A-Iori, but the yishun guy was better.

Leo walk-over to fight me. He choose A-groove and fuck I played damn well that round. But fuck why did he change to K-groove. I do horribly against K-groover. It’s like those things when you suck at fighting against your own weapon kind of crap. And when he chose blanka above all, I know I am doomed. Small jump blanka totally eats the fuck out of my team. I’m just happy I didn’t get ocv’ed. imo, I think I did really well against his K-groove. Usually he would totally school me. But Leo is Leo, the ultimate taiko king, the guy who anyhow play, the Ino of Singapore. There is almost no logic to his attacks, making it pretty damn hard to pressure or read his moves.

Weitian (K-Maki/Rock/Hibiki) fought someone I wished to fight. It’s like fighting a person who knows what all the top tiers can do but have absolutely no clue what oddball characters can do. Why should I not stand near a raged Maki? She has no uppercut or anything dangerous like Sagat! Well you can eat the otg 720 super in your face. Why should I not stand near Rock? Eat 360 grab into super.

roland is my hero. He managed to fight all the C and A grooves. Managed to eat all the top tier Sagats and Blankas and managed his way to 4th place with his super low tier K-R2 Zangief/Haohmaru/Todo. Everyone was cheering for him. He lost to thambi’s A-Are (K-groove killa) though but even then he managed to fare extremely well against A-Are. 3rd place was Raven aka fatty. I really admire his playstyle with his C-geese/rolento/Sagat. Though those characters are top tier, it is not everyday you see a Geese or a Rolento in singapore of such high caliber. He deserves the 3rd place, though I believe that he should be 2nd. His rolento is really really unique to me. He’s the only rolento I’ve ever seen do pogo hop for okizeme game.

The 1st and 2nd place was pretty dumb to me. It’s 16-year-old airconman aka thambi vs 32-year-old anthony. A-Are vs A-Are. Sounds boring doesn’t it. I too don’t want to see two A-grooves, A-Are at that, mirror matches, but here we have 2 really talented players from singapore and they happen to choose A-groove. Anthony was really really rusty. He missed his customs and performed 0 combos whatsoever. Thambi on the other hand perform those sweet bison and sakura BnBs. but Anthony, despite his rustiness, his able to pull of impossible 1-frame links like chaining two sakura’s hurricane kicks. Anthony won the match 2-1. Very close matches all of them. And commentators went pretty crazy and so did the crowd.

All in all, everything went great despite the delay. The cheering were especially great. Like the time I went up, roland and weitian were like cheering “low tier! low tier!”. I thought the commentator would distract me, but really I didn’t hear him much at all. I know he is talking about my match, i just don’t know what he’s talking about. All I can hear his the game. And damn the sound system from the game is fucking loud. It’s damn cool. I think it’s the original volume set for the arcade, but with the place quiet except for the people, the empty LAN shop nearby, the echoing. It’s damn cool.

Wrapping it up, i’m hoping for a future tournament like this. The participation for all the games is incredibly good and damn the crowd for CVS2 is fucking great.

[u]Memoriable quotes[/u]
Commentator (after roland defeated a character): “So Roland, what have you got to say to your opponent?”
Roland: “Taiko rocks!!!!”
(next match lasted 5 seconds as rolento jumps in, comboed into super’ed roland’s R2 zangief)
Commentation: “That’s what Raven has to say about taiko!”

“Low tier! Low tier! Low tier!” — K-groove low-tier players cheering as I go up to play

Commentator: “What the..?! How the hell? How the hell did Sakura managed to grab Blanka first? I mean how did Sakura grab Blanka first? Roland, how come Sakura managed to grab Blanka first?”
Roland: “Er…dunno…”

“shoshoshoshoshoshoshoshosho” — Crowd and commentator during Sakura CC

“Rargrrargrargrargrargrargrarg” — Crowd and commentator during Bison CC

Commentator: “So Roland, anything to say about today?”
Roland: “Er…nothing…”
Commentator: “Nothing? Just say something! Anything!”
Roland: “Er…no bus.”

Thambi (after the match): “Fucking nabei @$#!@#$ Anthony fucking !@#$@#$ taiko !@$!@$!@”

“ONE PIXEL SAGAT!” — Commentator after raven’s 1 pixel health sagat managed to beat anthony’s bison.