K-bohls!

I also agree that the FPS Shadowrun was brilliant, laying down those spikes and trees, being able to warp through walls, flying around with those mechanical bat wings; yeah that game was rad. No opinion on the SNES game though, and all this Kickstarter stuff is kinda gross.

So TaleWorlds announced a DLC/expansion for Warband based during the Napoleonic Wars. As someone who never bought a M&B game this is going to do it for me, the idea of large scale multiplayer battles set during the Napoleonic Era makes the armchair historian in me go wild. Seeing as the multiplayer community for Napoleon: Total War is in the shadow of Shogun 2 I hope M&B Warband: Napoleonic Wars catches on. Did anyone play the original mod this is based on, Mount and Musket?

Sitting in the truck for 20 minutes only to get blown up by a nuke was my favorite part and didn't drag at all. It was actually a whole lotta' fun and I will lend my services to the Idle Thumbs Elite Strike Force whenever possible. /salute

I just started to notice that my general is costing more which would explain why I have mostly medium fund matches now, yeah that is kinda lame. But it makes sense with the avatar progression system, if the price didn't go up playing more would mean you have a straight upgraded general (which it already kinda does). And holy crap did I just have a bad night of battles, I really have found no way to break a FotS rifle + fodder army. I had 3 horse archers and 3 Yari Cav and was harassing my opponent with them the entire opening only to be shot down as my main forced charged. I feel the only way to win is either out range and kite or hid units and spring a trap on a gullible general. That or on certain maps with special terrain features such as hills or houses that bows can shoot over but guns can't shoot through.

It seems like the general strategy online from FotS armies is to get rifles and a bunch of cheap Yari Ashigaru lined up with rifles out front spears behind. If your opponent tries to charge you (your opponent being a vanilla Shogun army) then you block their charge with the Yari and let your rifles tear up everything in their way. In my mind the only way to stop this would be to charge cavalry into the rifles from the sides/rear after the Yari stop your infantry charge, but I seem to be unsuccessful with this so far in multiplayer. I did have one brilliant moment when faced against an all rifle army. I was camped in a forest with some bow units peppering his troops, my opponent knew all my men were in this tiny forest, and that I was moving in and out of my flanks. He decided to surround me, in doing this he split up his army into two separate groups to hit both my flanks. He left nothing in his middle, where his entire army had been, this was perfect for some cavalry to charge up through and hit the back of one half of his rifle army. Then I simply charged with my men and left him to decide whether to shoot at angry men with swords or fast moving cavalry with spears. Either way assured me a victory and somewhere Sun Tzu smiled to himself.

I shall stand to protect the Clan with honor! I actually think the clan competition is a really cool mode in how it breaks up Japan into territories that a clan controls. Hopefully I won't be complete shit, even through FotS armies are a tough nut to crack with just a regular Shogun 2 army. A whole lot of Yari Ashigaru die in order to protect my Katana Samurai charging into enemy rifle fire.

Fall of the Samurai recently came out, and along with it a Steam sale hit for Shogun 2. I picked it up and have been romping through multi-player, the avatar conquest is pretty neat and addicting. Are any Thumbs playing it? It sounded like Squid had a clan going but I have no idea how to find that so I just joined a general Idle Thumbs Clan (It is currently me and one other dude who doesn't play, I think). If anyone wanted to play some 2v2 I am fairly certain I could hold my own (although I only ever play on small funds).

As someone who actually spent a lot of time on Tested the new site design makes me want to kill myself. The prospect of Will and Norm teaming up with Jamie and Adam was an awesome concept. However it is hard to not feel like some business man came in and slapped his T.V. stars all over the site because he knew it would get more page views that way. I hope Will and Norm make out alright but they have already been cast into the "sidekick" position. Things look grim. Honestly, if Idle Thumbs wasn't coming back I would go cold turkey on the internet.

Hey, at least that whole SOPA thing is over. Right guys?... guys...

But the community missions are missing the great voice acting of the campaign.

The 25th should work for me, it is right at the start of my spring break so I will have time to kill. Hopefully people won't be buggering me to spend time with them. Also, I was looking through the ArmA 2 menus as it looks like the campaign is co-operative up to four players. It seems to be some sort of local host thing (I don't know servers, it just says host game and then you can create a server with a password). If someone wanted to play some of that to warm up for the "highly trained strike thumbs" I would be down.

I'm in if we play Arma 2, I don't have Operation Arrowhead, although I would not be opposed to buying it seeing as I always thought it was a cooler setting. My mic broke a few months back as well so I would need to pick up a new headset, but I've been meaning to do that anyway.

Hate to dash any ones hopes for Benjamin Franklin appearing, but he spent all his time during the Revolutionary War in France petitioning for money/supplies/men. Also, he only spent 1 out of the 12 years beforehand in America, the rest were in England trying to hold the Empire together. That said I will not be surprised when Ubisoft forgoes any actual history, and in turn forces all High-Schoolers to only know Benjamin Franklin as he was in this stupid game. (I am actually pretty excited at the prospect of a game based in the time period.)

After listening to the first progress cast I am super excited for the return of Thumbs! A really sweet Kickstarter to boot.

Within the first 30 seconds of that trailer there was a boob shot and an "I'm on a boat" reference. I want you to think about that. I assume the man running away at the end of the trailer is the main character and you need to rescue your girly girl. That being said what an asshole of a main character. He grabs a random, probably loaded, AK- off of some guys table to pose for a Facebook profile picture then calls the man a dick for yelling at him. The one good takeaway from the trailer was that the main bad guy maintains his absolutely bananas character which could be interesting if done correctly.

If someone can work the "d" and "m" out of this I'll be impressed.

1dl3 4hum5s If someone can work a 2 into this I'll be impressed.

Idl3 Thumbs This is the third series right?

Had a pretty heartbreaking game, playing as Death Prophet (voiced by Ellen McLain!) with a team of fairly competent people. Things were going great though the initial farm as well as the coordinated pushes, Exorcism/Silence/Crypt Swarm is a very supportive combo. Anyway we get into their base through mid and take down mid barracks and well as towers. Then Faceless Void and his %&$#*@ Chronosphere. Anyway they win 4-5 team battles, push into our base and take down our ancient. Wish I had more time to pour into Dota 2 but matches are just long enough to not match up with my schedule more than once a day.

So I put some time into AI matches and feel pretty confident that I wont "feed" the enemy team and I feel like I do a good job of spending money (I'm not sure if always on the right stuff, but at least stuff). Also playing ranged characters makes the game way less stressful because I have much better harassment potential, and it is harder to harass me. Plan to continue playing and should have more time to sink into the game in about two-three weeks. Until then it is mostly just learning and trying all the heroes.

Is there a way to buy stuff from secret shops and store it in your stash? I think the closest I got to something similar was by flying the courier to the shop, buying the item and then flying the courier to me. Also can you explain the steps one would take to tell if the Scepter would be a good upgrade. Is it simply just a look at what stats it boosts and what stats you need, combined with how good your ultimate upgrade is? How can you tell if an ultimate upgrade is bad?

I also just got in yesterday and have been trying my hand at a few AI games. I feel like I have the basic idea and flow of the game but item management and fighting other heroes is impossible for me to feel confident about. If the Thumbs want to do some games count me in, but don't expect a lot of skill.

This year looks a little sparse for my tastes, I don't really care for Mass Effect, Diablo or Borderlands. I just am waiting to see how Prey 2 and Max Payne 3 turn out. I feel like one of those will be much better then the other (Max Payne looks pretty bad...). Bioshock Infinite looks like it is going to be great, not worried about that one. Lastly I want to try DOTA 2, having never played a DOTA game I hope I enjoy it, it was certainly fun to watch The International. And I want to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, VALVe said the beta was coming after new years, but you know.... VALVe.

What am I doing with my life...

Yeah Valve really did a great job with the ARG. The whole community really came together and, not only supported indie developers, worked together to create the most efficient way complete the games to unlock Portal 2 faster. As well as solve clues and find new clues. I remember when The Steamcast played Morse code live over their podcast as a clue, awesome event. Honestly Portal 2 might be my third goty, the game was fun but I mostly remember waking up extra early to have time to play it in the morning. It was such a lovely day to boot!