Still alive! Update: Tau, Cygnar, Pokémon, Infinity, and PS4/XBox One news!

Hey don't worry guys, I'm still here! I've been extremely busy and haven't had time for a post in a while but I'm back with some updates! More after the jump
Well It's been an interesting spring. I sold out of Magic: The Gathering entirely and picked up a boat-load of Tau (and I'm 8-2 with them), I've been playing more Warmachine with my Cygnar, I've finally been made aware of Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter's YouTube channels, I've got a really fun Pokémon deck after having my favorite deck torn to shreds by the meta, I've played some Infinity and already sold my army off to get into a different faction, and I've jumped back into some fun video games. Let me dive into each area just a bit.

The 2,000 point Tau list I've been running to great effect consists of a Commander, an Ethereal, a Cadre Fireblade, four squads of Fire Warriors (two with Devilfish), three squads of Pathfinders, a Riptide, a Crisis Suit unit, Broadsides with missiles, and a Hammerhead with Longstrike. Out of the 10 games I've played with this list, 8 have been victories solidly in my favor and 2 of them were losses (both to Orks, and even the same player). Tau seem to be fantastic at killing Marines dead as I've near-tabled them every time I've been matched-up against them, but that list has difficulties handling speed-freak Ork lists, which is absurd when you theory-hammer the offensive capabilities Tau have against Orks in genereal. Oddly enough in game 2 against the greenskins, we never had a single assault take place and I still lost. We shot the bejesus out of each other but I ended up not being able to hold enough objectives thanks to his Lootas scoring some in Big Guns Never Tire. I've recently tried an 1850 list with two Riptides and two Broadside units, backed by three Fire Warrior units (two mounted in Devilfish), a Cadre Fireblade, an Ethereal, and three Pathfinder units, and it has done extremely well. In one turn I shot nearly an entire Chaos Space Marine army off the table. It was pretty disgusting lol.

As for Warmachine, my club recently did a few weeks worth of Warmachine-dedicated nights and I got to play against some brutal lists with my Cygnar. I ran a Markus "Siege" Brisbane list (complete with a Stormwall and some Nyss) to decent effect against some Menoth, and won with a 3Nemo list with Thunderhead, a Stormclad, Stormblades (with UA, 3 WA's, and the Solo), and a Storm Tower against some angry Skorne elephants and slingers. I learned a lot in my games and discovered how weak and usually lackluster Cygnar can be, but nothing will stop me from loving their models and coming up with new and exciting lists. I love the faction and I am always excited to put new lists on the table.

Ah, Rooster Teeth, how I love thee. About two months ago I was shown a funny video and told it was by the guys who made Red vs Blue. As much as I loved that series (I own many of their DVD's), I had no idea they had daily content on their YouTube channels. I finally started watching them and not only has it re-invigorated my love for video gaming, but it also has gotten me to load up some older games and have some fun with them. I'm also dying to play some multiplayer games but first I have to re-up my XBox Live Gold account, and get my friends to get certain games and licenses back up and running. It's an experience I miss fondly from my days in the Air Force and growing up and I want to do that a bunch more.

In the Pokémon world, I've unfortunately had to dismantle my Darkrai EX/Hydreigon deck because the meta has shifted so wildly that it was no longer feasible to run it competitively. I made drastic changes (I ran Darkrai EX/Landorus EX for a little bit) and scoured the interwebz for ideas, and finally found and built the Landorus EX/Garbodor deck. Not only is it a blast to play, but I've routinely stomped many major deck archetypes with it. I've only had a little bit of trouble against Plasma Klang, but not because of its EX protection, but rather its Shift-Gear and Max Potion capabilities (in combination with Float Stones). I am currently dead even on wins to losses against that deck however, which has made for some great and intense games!

On the Infinity front, I had picked up a Yu-Jing starter, a Hac Tao, an O-Yoroi TAG, the Shizune ninja character chick, and a medic/engineer guy. I played a few games with it and discovered immediately the importance of ranged combat and decided that Yu-Jing, while cool-looking, is not the faction for me since it's widely dedicated to close combat. I like the look of most of the Infinity range, but I think I've settled on picking up Ariadna when the time comes. Hopefully new job prospects work out and I can dive back into this amazing game.

And now to the big news that everyone has already talked about until they were blue in the face lol. PS4 and XBox One have both been revealed and the Great Console Wars are raging on stronger than ever. With some pretty hard-hitting advertisements and some unfortunate decisions being made during this year's E3, most people have decided that the "winner" of this year's hottest gaming expo is Sony's Playstation 4. Even after Microsoft's complete "180" on their DRM policies, I for one am looking forward to picking up both consoles this holiday season because I know there will be some amazing games for both systems. Should my budget allow it, I foresee some long winter nights ahead of me lol.

In a future article, I'll go into all of my thoughts and wishes for the PS4 and XBox One as well as some ideas for handhelds. There's a lot I'd like to see happen but only time will tell.

Thanks for reading!