Clubbing Some Loons Part 2
“I wanna seduce the diamond dog!” The earth pony struck the most insubordinate pose as he stomped one foreleg on the table and screamed to the heavens.
And no pony turned to look at him but me.
The cafeteria was packed to the brim with ponies, all surrounding tables buried in boxes and maps and dice. Some were dressed in costumes and shouting, while others flaunted their pocket protectors with pride. Glasses, acne, and nerdiness abounded, yet I spied more normal classmates here and there.
The arcade machines lining the wall seemed particularly popular, although the corner in the back was full of ponies playing the games I was used to like Risk and Monopoly; at least, judging by the shouts of seething rage. The corner opposite them had a quiet, dedicated group of ponies playing chess, and the three of those combined helped calm my instinct to run.
“Awwwww, yeah! Nat twenty! Who’s your daddy!?”
My ears—already folded back from the din of the packed cafeteria—clamped further down at the shout of the earth pony from before—the one playing that weird adventure game with a rolled out mat and dice. The unicorn at the end of the table groused beneath his pointy hat, and began looking through his mountain of books with a scowl.
“Roll with disadvantage.”
“What? Why?!” The earth pony’s hoof made the table shudder.
“You’re half-cat.”
“I’m a griffon!”
“You’re half-lion, then. Roll with disadvantage.”
I stared as the earth pony grumbled and rolled one of the many misshapen abominations he called dice. It tumbled over the table and stopped before the unicorn; my hair prickled with the malice he exuded as he glanced down.
“No….” The earth pony paled.
“Yes.” The unicorn slid the die over to reveal a teeny-tiny one. “Critical fumble, lover boy. The diamond dog leader gleefully agrees to your proposal and slips a collar on you just like he has the rest of your captured party. While they’re led deeper into the mines, you’re taken to the leader’s personal den and bound in tight leather restraints for later.”
The players all groaned and planted their faces into the table, looking from one to another in silent communication. After a moment, the earth pony sighed and threw up his hooves.
“Alright, alright! I get it! I’ll stop being that guy and stick to interpretive dance!”
“Pfffffft! Bards, am I right?” With a guano guzzling grin, Button clapped me on the back with enough oomph to have me jump over the moon. “Come on! All the war hawks are back the other way. How the hay did you get over here?!”
“It’s loud!” I hollered back, my hoof rising up to my sunglasses to push them a little tighter as some arcade game over by the wall exploded with bleeps and bloops and lasers of all kinds while a pair of pegasi danced like their life depended on it. “Loud, noisy, and flashy!”
“And what? You got distracted?”
“No, I got lost! Sweet Nightmother, this is worse than the time Red got in Dad’s flash stone stash. Screep!” My wings rustled as Button grabbed me and dragged me off into the sea of students.
“Hah, really?! Think of it as training then! You’ll get used to it!” Button slapped me on the back as we reached a series of tables stacked high with various model ruins and terrain. “Behold! Your newest battlefields!” He puffed out his chest as I leaned in to marvel at the level of detail in the maps, each easily real enough for me to imagine flying above as I ordered my troops to glory. “Calculated and I spent a good… thousand bits between the two of us for all these?”
“You what?!” I stumbled and choked a bit, thankfully not into the maps. “Button! Where did you even— I don’t have that kind of money!”
With a laugh, Button pounded my back hard enough to remind me even the weakest earth ponies could get carried away when excited. “I know, right?! Me neither! I just used some of the club funds and bought the paints with my allowance when I could to help Calculated! Colt’s absolutely nuts for this stuff. Sunk his entire allowance into building his collection for years, so if you think this is expensive, wait until you see the models!”
“What have I gotten myself into?” I sank to my knees for a moment at the thought of actually spending my allowance on something so frivolous.
“That’s what they all say.” Button snickered as he led me around the table and towards a mountain of plastic boxes. “A lot of ponies just use proxies, but Calcy boi has such a huge collection he usually lets folks borrow some of his. These boxes? Just the stuff he brought today. Crazy, right?”
I boggled as he led me around the boxes to where the gangly unicorn he’d been talking to before school was squinting at a wooden block the size of his head; carefully, he chipped slivers off of a halfway done copy of the picture in the rules book floating nearby.
“I finished the Dark Templars you asked for, if that’s what you’re here for, Button.” He didn’t even look over as he continued working. “Very nice models, but I’m surprised you wanted them.”
“I already told you, Calc. They’re for a friend. Wanna meet her?”
“I have already met Miss Belle, Button, and her desiring them is no less surprising.”
Button blinked before scowling. “No, not her. I’ll have you know, I’m friends with plenty of fillies, actually.”
“Are you perhaps confusing reality with your role plays? I figured they were nothing more than acquaintances.” Calculated adjusted his glasses, tongue screwed up as he removed another chip of wood and sanded it slightly.
“Sweet Celestia….” Button’s hoof slammed into his face hard, loud enough to make me wince. “Can you just… not? Please?”
“Can I not what?” Finally looking over, Calculated blinked and craned his head up as he saw me. “Who’s he?”
“That….” Button sighed as I burned black. “You need to not do that.” He turned to me, grinning sheepishly and rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry about that, Night. This is Calculated, Calculated Plans; I swear he’s smarter than he sounds. And this, Calcy boi, is that friend I was telling you about? This is Nightingale Mooncrest, your newest chew toy on the battlefield.”
“Is she now?” Calculated narrowed his gaze at me as I squirmed and continued to blush. “I’ve heard things about you. You’re popular. Are you sure she hasn’t just lost a bet with whatever jocks she pals around with, Button?”
“Hey!” I took a step forward, wings rustling as Button sighed.
“Oh my gosh, Calculated, just cause that happened to you once doesn’t mean every popular filly is out to get you. Nightingale’s the one who freaking set Preppy straight for crying out loud.”
“That was you?” The unicorn tilted his head at me. “The first or the second time? I didn’t appreciate getting spit on that first time she apologized.”
“Yeah?” I managed a smirk even as it felt like his eyes were peeling me open to dissect me. “That’s exactly what she said when I apologized to her for not being clear enough. Didn’t know that was you, though.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Having so many adoring fans tends to send names in one ear and out the other.”
“Dude!” With a snort, Button rolled his eyes.
“Hrmmm?” Turning back to his work, Calculated opened a box to reveal thick foam padding with small holes cut into it. Placing the half-carved model inside one slot, he extracted several of the most wicked and feral little thestrals I’d ever seen and held them out to me. “Are they to your liking? I can change the color scheme next time if you want, but it’s traditional to highlight them in Nightmare Blue and Dark Royal Purple.”
My ears flicked. “N-nightmare blue?”
“No, not just any old blue, capital N, capital B, Nightmare Blue.” He shook his head, pointing to the slitted eyes and several veiny cracks on the armor. “The very corruption of the Nightmare itself. It courses through their veins ever since her most devoted servants drank of the blood to ascend!”
Both our breaths hitched as he finished the last part, although for him it was simply an asthma attack. After a few puffs of his inhaler and a few more deep and measured breaths, his brief bout of manic fanaticism was once again buried under his cold, calculating eyes.
And I quivered for dear life before that gaze.
“That’s not how—”
“Yes, yes, I am aware that thestrals are not the cursed kin of pegasi who fell beside Nightmare Moon. I made sure to do more research after I begged my parents for a vacation at the Griffish Isles and it turned out they had neither a god emperor nor an army of biomantically engineered super soldiers.” Calculated pushed the model closer. “Now answer the question: are these acceptable?”
“They’re, uh, great?” Turning to Button, I mouthed for help and asked myself what Sweetie would do. “I really like their… manes?” Another glance at Button showed him nodding. “Yeah, their manes! How did you manage to get so much texture in their manes?”
“Ah! You noticed that?” With a nod, Calculated finally gave me some much needed space. “Well, there’s a lot more to painting than just slapping colors on a canvas. Some paints exist just to muddle things up. It’s fascinating, really. Real life is messy and never perfect; in order to capture all that—to make it real—you need to be able to mess your work up just as much.”
“Errrr… that’s cool… ish?” I squirmed, glancing at his cutie mark to make sure I hadn’t just got roped into an art discussion with the next Photo Finish.
Nope. Just a weird screwy whirlymajig that kinda looked like Cherry Berry’s helicopter. What did that even stand for?
“…and then you lightly dab it, like this. See? No stroking. Stroking is too uniform. If you dab it, the bristles bend and twist allowing for—”
Nightmother above, he was still going.
“I think she gets the point, Calc.”
I praised Luna as Button stepped forward to put a hoof on his friend’s shoulder.
“How about you set up a game for Night and teach her to play?”
“I haven’t even gotten to how to do the mane yet, though.” Calculated tilted his head. “This is just how to dirty the armor.”
“And?” Button smiled.
“And she asked about the mane.”
“And?”
“I told you, she asked about the mane.”
“And?”
“And? I literally just told you. She—” There was a pause. “She doesn’t actually want the step by step process?”
“There we go! Now tell me what she wants!” Button beamed, slapping Calculated on the back.
“She wants…” The pause was much longer than it needed to be, and the follow up was the drone of some insubordinate whelp mindlessly repeating the lesson a commanding officer was trying to drill into them. “She wants to play a game, because this is a games club—not an art club, nor a book club, nor a wargames and military tactics club.”
“Oooh!” My ears perked. “That last one sounds fun!”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Calculated nodded.
“Not the point, guys!” Button groaned as he gave me the stink eye for some inexplicable reason. “Games club is for games. If you’re gonna nerd out, it should be consensually and with protection. Night is not a painter, riiiiight?”
“It’s, uhh… not a very popular hobby for thestrals.” I shrugged and smiled softly at Calculated. “It’s the colorblindness, you know? My friend Echo up in the Undercity is big on sculpting, though.”
“I see.” Calculated nodded as several boxes lit up with his aura to start resorting and extracting various models. “My apologies, then. I assume you’re simply here to play then? Let me see about drafting an army, then.” He glanced over at Button. “Should I take it easy on her? You said it’s her first time, and you remember what happened the last time I faced somepony new.”
“If you can manage to actually go easy on her, then yeah.” Button was grinning like a loon under moon now that game time was nigh. “Like, no offense, Calculated, but you going easy on somepony is still try-harding as far as anypony else is concerned.”
“It is?” Calculated cocked his head.
“Calcy boi, the last time you went easy on me, it redefined the meta.” With a sigh, Button patted his friend on the back.
“I fail to see what that has to do with anything. Experiments tend to do that.”
“Umm… what’s a meta?” My ears folded back as Calculated blinked at me in bewilderment.
“You don’t know what meta is?” The entire room went silent, the boxes almost dropped as Calculated’s concentration wavered. He furrowed his brow at Button. “Did you pick her units for her?”
“Eeenope.” Button’s grin was back as he started browsing a few of the boxes to find some models of his own. “She picked her army blind as a bat. That’s why I want to see how she does.” A brief nod to me was all I got before he tossed me a box to go through. “And a meta is basically a set of dominant strategies and tactics, Night. It’s like… You know how your dad is as OP as a red and black alicorn?”
“Excuse me?” It was my turn to blink, head rearing back as I whinnied. “My dad is not OP! I think? What does that even mean?!”
“He’s overpowered, Night.” Button snickered as he pulled out a bunch of yaks from the box he was looking through. “Come to think of it, you are too!”
“Are nooooot!” Ears folding back, I blushed and looked for a lampshade to hide under. Finding none, I shoved my head in the box to pull out more thestrals that matched the ones in my book.
“Something, something, wrestling manticores.”
I blushed even blacker and looked up just to slug him into silence. “Make your point already.”
Button lifted a sadistic looking carving of Queen Chrysalis from his box. “Basically, in real life, your dad can’t be everywhere at once, so he can’t be the hero of every battle, right? It doesn’t matter how OP he is when there’s only one of him.”
“I guess? He’s not really suited for—”
Four more Chrysalises thunked onto the table.
“This is a game where any player can field any piece in any army. I could say we’re playing a five hundred point game, right? And if I kept to the spirit of the rules, then that match would basically be two patrols stumbling on each other or a really small skirmish or something. There’s a lot we could sensibly spin it as.” He ran his hoof down the line of changeling queens. “Rules as written, I could also run nothing but Chrysalis and four other changeling queens disguised as her.”
I bristled. “But that’s—”
“Stupid and impractical? Hay yeah, it is.” Button nodded. “But some units are so powerful that players will find any excuse to use them even if it wouldn’t make sense in a real world battle. Imagine going to a tournament where every single player decided to play an army full of nothing but your dad. It doesn’t matter that there’s probably not that many ponies like him and your mom—that’s why they’re the co-captains of the Dawn Guard—a meta player simply uses the best units at their disposal to utterly crush their opposition.”
“But that’s stupid!” I huffed. “Real war isn’t like that!”
“Funny you should say that.” With a smirk, Button put the spare Chrysalises away. “You picked your army blind, but most of your army is the current meta for the Dark Templars.”
“Really?” I blinked. “I-I can pick other units then!”
Button laughed while Calculated arched his brow. “Don’t! Dark Templars aren’t even that strong an army to begin with. It’s just kinda funny, ya know? I wanna see if you actually know how to use them or if you just stumbled onto it accidentally.”
My hooves settled upon the carved box of pieces, the nocturnal creature etched into the wood stretching a grin across my face. I slid it open, pulled out the first piece and turning it over it my hooves. Bending close, I whispered to Captain Mooncrest: “Oh, Captain, my Captain, I shall not fail thee.”
My troops were deploying strategically as I looked over the battlefield in the blessed light of the Nightmother. First Lieutenant Owl Eye was already leading his squad of Hellions around to outflank the enemy, meanwhile Second Lieutenant Murky Lurker was waiting for the word to have him and his Incubi crawl up from the Deep. Me and my fellow Wytches stood atop the mountain like gargoyles as we watched our prey prepare to storm our mountain sanctuary beneath us.
“They dare….” I had to fight not to growl as my tail twitched; my sisters needed a proper example if they were to cease their impatient hissing.
The enemy continued to abuse our honor, blatantly erecting fortifications and defenses upon our land as my young squire Flicker stood below and waited for their ‘official’ answer to my declaration of war. I had given two hours and they had dared use it to build on our lands as if it was already theirs.
“Nightmother protect us.” My wings flared wide in prayer as I checked the moon again. “Their two hours are up. Call Flicker back and let us end this farce.” Growling to the sister beside me, I spat at a nearby rock hard enough to crack it with flashfrozen spit.
As if hearing my words, their troops coalesced into an ironclad formation within the hastily made defenses, and a single warning shot was fired toward Flicker to have her retreat. The growls in our throats all grew at the sight, and my fangs gleamed as I bared them in the moonlight.
“Come then, sisters. We hunt!”
Our screes echoed down the mountain as we took flight and charged—the snow beneath our hooves crackling as it broke free to rumble down the mountain. As planned, the entrance to our sacred caves was buried just as the enemy forces soon would be, and we descended upon them like lighting as they methodically aimed their crossbows and fired.
I roared in fury as so many of the soldiers I’d trained and shared blood with fell before the first round of bolts, unable to use the trees for cover as the avalanche rushed by beneath us. Signalling the first lieutenant with a loud, piercing shriek, I watched as his Hellions took to the air from the right only to despair as our ambush was wasted—the unicorns below lighting their horns to contain the camp in a shield that not only held the avalanche at bay as it finally hit, but barred my advance as the enemy used the respite to take aim and ready a deadly volley of fire.
I cast my gaze about to try and find a way to minimize the losses, my eyes inevitably drawn to the sisters around me. The whimsical Echo triplets. The stalwart Dark Night; Far too many of the mares I was honored to serve with had already fallen this night already; I couldn’t afford to lose anymore. There had to be some form of cover I could—
Looking back, I saw the avalanche was leaving a flurry of wind and loose snow in its wake.
“Retreat!” Unwilling to risk the enemy having another trick up their sleeve as we waited for the avalanche to pass, I pulled my troops back and had First Lieutenant Owl Eye circle back around to prepare for a full on charge rather than my original three-pronged pincer plan.
As the avalanche passed beneath us, we dropped low and flew right above the ground as we charged. Side by side, Lieutenant Owl Eye and I swooped in at the head of our troops, ready for whatever carnage we’d face as the avalanche cleared the Equestrian encampment.
The wave of snow broke before us, and we screed to the heavens as we charged the fortifications point blank.
Then the sunblasted pegasi raked us with a spread of lightning that arched from one of my soldiers to the next.
My troops were wiped out en mass from how clustered we’d been coming in. Flesh sizzled and popped as screams filled the air. My blood boiled as I saw my comrades being so ruthlessly cut down—
“Screep!”
And a wall of crossbow bolts cut through the air in the lightning’s wake, the First Lieutenant throwing himself over me as a squad of snipers singled me out.
“Nooooooo! Owl Eye!” Even the rumbling of the avalanche seemed to pause at my anguished cry, and then the battle resumed as I gladly threw myself at the earth ponies pulling themselves up and over the walls to finish us off.
“You— You bastards!” I managed to take a whole squad of earth ponies by myself as my sisters fell one by one to the other. “He had a family! Kids! Another foal on the way! You’re. Going. To. Pay!”
I leapt up and out of the sniper’s shadows to tear into the squad leader’s throat. My coat shifted with the pulsing blackness of the Nightmare, yet my troops were gone and no soldier could face an army alone.
The snipers desperately scrambled back.
The crossbows leveled at me in unison.
Even as they fired, I used my few remaining moments to try and leap on one last enemy.
Button edged back from the table as I glared bloody murder at the snipers who’d downed my First Lieutenant. My tail flicked side to side as I muttered plan after plan, looking for how I could have saved the poor soldier’s life, and for some reason Button must have thought I was distracted enough not to hear him as he leaned over to whisper in Calculated’s ear.
“Kids?”
“Yes, kids.” My ears flattened as I sulked, finally turning my head from the plastic pile of carnage. “What? Did you think soldiers were just bred and born in a lab for battle?”
“Actually, the lore says—” Calculated’s glasses were briefly knocked askew as Button elbowed his side. “But I suppose that’s a story for another time. That was a rather… odd game, I suppose. Good match.”
“I was a guano guzzling arschgeige.” With a growl, I took his hoof and shook it.
“Yes, well, no plan survives the enemy intact, but that makes you neither a butt nor a violin.” His glasses gleamed as he readjusted them.
“I know that.” Gently kicking the table leg, I looked down to avoid staggering them with the full force of my pout. “But that—” I flailed a hoof in the direction of the mountain that was my grave. “That was just sad.”
“Hrmmm…” Calculated squinted at the table, circling it like a shark. “Was there a reason you didn’t call in the Incubi?”
“I…” Squirming like a maggot about to be sent down the hatch, I blushed black as midnight. “I kinda forgot to call them in for a pincer attack when I charged, and after you tore through the front ranks, I didn’t want them or Second Lieutenant Murky getting torn to pieces.”
Calculated frowned as he nudged a corpse here and there, dissecting his well earned victory like it was a frog. “Huh…. Is that why you pulled back when the shield went up? You had a pretty good three prong attack set up if you’d just stayed put and dropped the Incubi in the middle of my troops as the shield went down. I was only able to reposition my troops like I did because you fell back.”
“Say… what?” Each word was said with a hitch and a squeak. “But I would have been a sitting duck if I’d—“
“You made yourself even more of a sitting duck retreating for cover. I knew where you’d be coming from and positioned accordingly. Plenty more Dark Templars died from that than would have if you’d just stuck to your three prong attack.” Picking my models up, Calculated quickly mocked up both scenarios, and I cringed as I saw how consolidated his forces became when they weren’t trying to cover every direction at once. “If you’d just committed to your strategy, I might have faced an actual challenge.”
“I was just trying to save lives.” I gave him a firm look, a scowl forming as the carnage played out anew.
“Didn’t work out, did it?” Calculated gave a hollow laugh, unfazed. “Soldiers die, Night. It’s a work hazzard, I suppose.”
I slid my captain back into the wooden box, pushing my chair back and standing up stiff straight. My hoof snapped to my forehead in a textbook salute. “You have won the battle, General Calculated, but I swear that I will win the war!” With pounding hooves, I left the games club, and definitely did not slam the door.
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It's a pity Diamond couldn't be there. I bet she would have found Night getting so deeply into character even more adorable than we the readers did.
Is... Is this a real insult? Are there actually people who get called "ass violins?"
I kind of want to use it just to see the person's confusion.
10294242
The germans have a bunch of weird and interestingly eclectic insults. You google for them and you can find them in batches. That said, I'm still unable to read between the lines and understand the proper severity of some of the more repetitive ones, so I'm probably using them poorly. One is my favorites is a word that literally translates to 'one who waves back at teletubbies' as a way to call someone dim.
I wonder what the griffins would think of that GM’s ruling on being half cat? They may not be happy about it, but unfortunately D&D has tons of odd rules like that. Still I hope Night learns to love this game.
Always a good time to read Night doing things
RIP Owl Eye, he will be remembered fondly
Thanks for the chapter! Always lovely to see.
As for this original fiction you mentioned, what is it? Are you posting it somewhere? :)
Woot!
Thanks for this.
10294267
Any chance on hearing that one?
I was a bit like this when I first started playing 40k too, but being a fantasy wargame it doesn't even try to model things properly so casualty rates that would normally be considered horrific are par for the course in a normal game. Still sucks when you've spent ages carefully converting and painting every miniature in the army only to get swept off the board though.
Funnily enough my first army was Dark Eldar, way back in third edition. One of my fondest memories was when the local store had a summer campaign going on. They had a map of a hive city drawn up covered in small coloured stickers (Imperial one, chaos and aliens another with Tyranids a third, because of the numbers of people who had signed up with what armies). If you played a campaign game the winner would take a sector of the city from their opponent's faction for their own. It was pretty cool.
At the time I was in the under sixteens club and I wandered in one afternoon to the end of a match with a poor kid with a Dark Eldar army he'd only started playing that day and was getting soundly crushed by an Ultramarine player. Turned out this was the second game in a row like this and the kid playing the Dark Eldar looked utterly miserable, with the kid playing marines crowing about how Dark Eldar were the worst army in all of 40k (which was arguably true from fourth onwards until they finally got updated rules, but not third).
I had my Dark Eldar with me, the army I took in if I felt like playing for keeps with. I challenged the marine player to a game and his face lit up when I said what army I would be fielding. As we deployed he kept bragging and boasting at how bad Dark Eldar are. I didn't rise to the bait but I probably couldn't keep a smirk off my face.
By the end of turn three every one of his units was either dead or falling back off of the board with my casualties almost negligible (he fell hook line and sinker into firing everything he had at my aircraft that were strafing him, pretty sure he'd never seen a plane fielded before). In one fell swoop I'd taken the worst braggart I've seen down a few pegs and inspired a new player to keep going with their new army. It was great.
Then consolidating into close combat stopped being a thing and my army became absolute garbage because it was absolutely a one trick pony and I couldn't afford to change up my army that much (the majority of my troops at the time came from bootsales).
10295292
Poor kid, having to face ultra marines. I have always disliked the marine armies and their absurdly high armor saves. I cam in around... 7th edition I think? And the lack of proper AP 3 weapons was so frustrating. I'm just glad they fixed my beef with that with 8th edition. All or nothing AP was very very meh.
Also, bootleg sales? Do tell, I don't actually have an army cause of how much it costs, I just sink a mini-fortune into the books and play with proxies like coins and index cards or use tabletop sim. I am also, a dirty filthy xenos player at heart. I can never decide if I'd want to actually commit to Dark Eldar, Necrons, or Tyranids more, although I've mostly been playing Necrons lately, even if they're considered kinda meh in 8 from what I've heard. Dark Eldar models might be cooler, but I like how Necrons are a close second and have the rigid hierarchy and rules of honor for when they fight each other--which funnily enough probably fits Night far better than the Dark Eldar she's basically fielding.
10295386
I don't like the way it's gone with command points and special rules everywhere. Also blast templates were really fun and the really big units like super heavies and titans are far less cool than they used to be (in some cases arguably weaker than they were back when it was old school Forgeworld rules).
Most of my older stuff was bought second hand (apart from my resin Forge World addiction, where a lot of my money in my teens went). Car Boot sales are basically like a yard sale but everyone goes to the same place to sell their stuff, with a few professional traders mixed in. You never know what you're going to get but you can get some great stuff. You find Warhammer on a fairly regular basis, but obviously it's pot luck what condition it's in but sometimes you get really lucky. Ebay can also be good but generally more expensive, but I lucked out on a Warhound Titan for about half price and put together really well in the early days of Apocalypse and it probably ended up being the most dangerous unit I've ever fielded both point for point and pound for pound that I spent on it (eighteen super heavies killed and god knows how many lesser tanks and units to zero losses). It was also on display in the local GW for years until they decided they weren't going to showcase anything you couldn't buy in the shop itself (the irony being I was first attracted into the shop by the old store titan which mine replaced after the previous one's owner moved away and took it with him).
I've largely moved on to radio controlled model boats now (ironically moulded parts for those are even more expensive than Warhammer) and I'm very slowly putting together a jungle themed force of marines more of a display piece than anything.
10295417
command points are useful, but giving certain factions the ability to regen or negate costs was a mistake. I think it might have been better to just allow more things like the... oh what's the general term... its technically different for every army, but the army wide bonuses? Like how an army of dedicated Ultramarines plays slightly differently than an army of White Kahns? and there's special rules specifically to represent that? I like those and other thematic boosts. Like, I know there was one book with rules on a sort of further customizing the generic HQ units, but it was meant strictly for narritive play and the like. I think it'd be neat to ecourage stuff like that rather than command points, but it'd arguably be a lot harder to balance. The main pro to command points is since they're a consumable resource, they're supposed to do flashy and powerful but ultimately nonspamable things, and that didn't happen with how some armies can just get their points back.
I also, miss templates though. rolling Xd6 to determine the number of hits is much less satisfyling and generally seems to under perform. It basically cost the game some of the importance of positioning.
10294267
To my non-German speaking ears, that seems to also have connotations of simple (not "stupid") innocence and a complete lack of guile. I could easily see Derpy doing that in all earnestness every time she came across the show...