The Art of Empathy - Gamer Style

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups. In the business universe, this concept has been adapted into the Art of Empathy - a set of personality models used to assess and empathize with prospective clients as a way to ensure a successful business relationship. A personality model is simply a set of descriptors that combine to form a recognizable archetype. The Art of Empathy details a matrix of four personality models with the goal of identifying an individual's personality as a gradation between any two models in the matrix. Identifying a person's placement within this matrix allows the user to better empathize and support that person's needs within a business setting. 

This got me to thinking whether the same might hold true within a gamer setting - namely would it be possible to identify and empathize with an individual on the basis of where they would fall within a set of gamer archetypes. The ultimate goal with this concept is to create a better gaming environment by understanding your opponent in advance and tailoring your game direction and preconceptions to how your opponent understands the game.

The simple notion here is to identify the type of gamer based on this set of traits. The matrix is comprised of two sets of diametrically opposed traits. Someone who is strictly a Painter by definition cannot be a Player as he does not enjoy the play aspects of a miniature game and a strict Player has no desire to paint miniatures and is happy to play with any representation of game figures. A Formalist plays strictly within a game universe which means using only prescribed models and/or models developed specifically for a game system. In opposition, the Inventor takes pleasure in using whatever models/conversions as he sees fits, which could include models from other systems, extensive conversions to "count as" something else, etc. 

Having said all of that, very few gamers will fit neatly into any one of these four personality models. The gradient arrows in the graphic above represent a sliding scale of personality traits and I maintain that any gamer will exist within one of these gradients. For example, I find myself somewhere between the Inventor and the Player, with a general tendency toward the Inventor model. All of my miniature armies have some aspect of heavy conversion to them and I tend to use rules that show off these conversions to good effect. However, I still build lists that are intended to be effective in normal game play and do enjoy getting deep into the rules mechanics.

Where do you see yourself within this matrix? How about your friends? Would using this matrix to better understand how your opponent sees the game help you to adjust your perceptions and thereby have a better game? Did I miss the mark with these models? Are they nuanced enough to capture the type of gamer personalities that you have experienced?

As a footnote, the following are visual cues to identify a given type of gamer:

The Player

• Models painted to a basic standard (or unpainted)
• Proxied models that are being used to "play test" a unit or option
• Multiple units that are identical, or nearly so, to provide list redundancy

The Formalist

• Models painted within a specific theme including unit markings and identifiers
• Army lists that are self-limiting in order to represent a theme "in game"
• Will have a depth of models within a specific theme (i.e. every unit from a given army)

The Painter

• Will have one of many different models
• Will be painted to a very high standard
• Will actually not be at a gaming table to game (i.e. is probably just entered into a painting contest)

The Inventor

• Heavy use of conversions throughout the army
• May be using a ruleset that "plays as" the intended theme of the army
• Will have "counts as" options that are consistent throughout the entire army

Adepticon - Team Remote Presence

Remote Presence is sponsoring one of the top teams in the 40k gamerverse. Having gathered gamers from near the D.C. Metro area, this fearsome foursome could likely prove to be this season's solid middle performers!

In the run-up to the grand weekend here are a couple of pics of Lo Pan's DKoK army:

Here is a pic of the beginnings of a hoard. The basic team with be two 1k lists each comprising a twenty-five man infantry platoon.

A close-up shot of the heavy weapons team - looks like someone brought an air-guitar to a gun fight!

This was all Tim's idea - he loves DKoK!

Quadcopter UAV

These guys do a very quality series on R/C vehicles. In this one they test an Arduino based chipset that basically allows any RC plane or copter to become a drone (UAV). This video also shows how you can fly a quadcopter via First Person View (FPV) with a remotely transmitting camera and a goofy set of goggles.

I would recommend skipping forward to the bit where the copter is flying hands free. You will also see a demo of the FPV technology shortly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZQoGfCKKLo#t=8m30s

Miniatures Up for Bid

This may be the first of many posts in which I am selling off a good chunk of my miniature wargaming gear. No, I am not leaving the hobby but I am consolidating as I embark in a new one - Arudino-powered UAV-based gyrocopters! More on that mouthful in another post.

The following link takes you to my ebay listings. If you win an auction, drop me a note for discounted (or perhaps free) shipping:
Austin's Ebay Goodies

I also have a good size collection of painted/based Tyranids (2 color airbrushed - but its still painted). Leave me a comment if you are interested in checking them out for a quick sale.

Dark Angels 6e Rules Preview

Given the dearth of Dark Angels rules rumors, I figured I would post a translation from the Spanish site Akiba Station. With only three days remaining, this post will soon be OBE (overtaken by events) but at least its something to whet your appetite:

General Rules

• The special rule "Inner Circle" gives hatred against Chaos Space Marines and Courage.
• The table of Warlord includes options to increase the turboboost 1D6 of motorcycles, rabid Assault, +1 / -1 to the roll of reserves, courage, feel no pain
• Belial will cost 190 points and can change their weapons as now at no additional charge. Allows Deathwing Terminators as troops.
• Land Speeder Sammael has its shield 14 as an alternative. Allows bikes are troops.
• Azrael allows bikes and terminators as troops. Gives a 4 + invulnerable to his unit and his power weapon is S6 AP3.
• No specific psychic Dark Angels. However Ezekiel has an AP2 S4 attack, if this hurts the enemy and survive, subtract 3 to its BS and WS.

Deathwing Knights

• +1 To their strength if in base contact with each other
• The champion's CCW is S +2, AP3

Deathwing

• The champion's CCW is S +2, AP2
• Land Raider gets Venerable rule (re-roll result in damage table) - "Deathwing Vehicle" upgrade for 30 pts

Land Speeder Revenge

• The plasma turret is S7 AP2, 3 shots or large blast shot

Land Speeder Shroud (80 pts)

• Has the dark rule, which gives +2 to their cover save.
• A 6 "units have +1 to their cover save.

Ravenwing Dark Talon

• Vortex Cannon: Strength 5, AP-, small blast, blindness.

Nephilim Jetfighter (about 150/160 pts)

• Megabolter revenge: Strength 6, AP4, Heavy 5
• Blacksword Missile: Strength 6, AP4
• Relentless Hunter: Allows exchanging a result of the enemy weaponry destroyed by an immobilized result.

Black Knights Ravenwing (126 pts, unit of 3)

• Hammer Corvus: Strength +1, AP-, Rending
• The plasma have a range of 18 "rapid fire. Seems to provide a special rule to bolter shots later.
• The champion carries the Sword of Caliban, A +1 AP3.

Command Squad Ravenwing.

• Same points as the Black Knights.

Ravenwing (80 points, unit of 3)

Primaris Psyker with Force Axe

The 40k bug has been nibbling at my toes lately. Got in a couple of games yesterday with my Inquisition with allied Guard list. First game was against a straight CSM list - the spiky marines got tabled. Next game against the Sisters of Battle - let's just say the nuns with guns got revenge for their sisters' blood spilt by the Grey Knights!

A direct repercussion of these great games is a fully painted Primaris psyker (missing highlights but done enough). Although not much of a star in these two games he does tend to anchor a twenty man guard platoon pretty effectively. This Primaris is a mix of parts from various kits: legs and torso are Cadian, arms, axe, and head from WFB Empire Militia kit, a Necromunda laspistol, and the haft from the power maul on a Dark Angels upgrade sprue.

Squats are the new Grey Knights!

With the general interest in Grey Knights somewhat waning (hi, CronAir and Flamer Bomb), I have decided to dust off some minis and blow the cobwebs out of an idea that I've had since the GK codex dropped. A fair number of the OOP metal Squat miniatures came strapped with a boltgun and since GK acolytes can take boltguns I started playing with the notion of a Xenos inquisitor at the helm of a crew of squats. I really like the old squat minis and the fact that they come with different load-outs and different poses make them a good candidate for the motley crew that is a henchmen squad.

More to come on the squat miniatures - the subject of this post is the removal of squats from the original 40k universe (and only now having been slightly re-introduced into the background of 6th edition). In searching for more information on the squats, I came across Jervis' original post explaining their removal from the universe. While this has been widely re-posted across forums and blogs, I decided that I wanted a copy locally on 23lines.

Originally Posted by Jervis johnson 

I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist 

Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background. 

First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K. 

No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on. 

Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by. 

Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.  

In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based on the Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell... 

I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army. 

Best regards,
Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic