It Must Stand for "For The Luv'a...!"

I had that review of Looper done for like a week before I finally managed to put it up. So what stopped me, huh? Well, there was some house painting, and Thanksgiving, but those are pretty temporary affairs when you get right down to it. No, if you really want to derail someone, and I mean just strip hours and hours and hours out of their day, you have to do more than just throw a holiday and some home renovations at them.

You have to show them FTL.

Ironically, none of your ships look anything like that.  Cover art, amirite?

FTL is a ten dollar game (actually $9.99) from Steam, a simple little resource management sim wrapped around a pretty basic space adventure. A Federation ship, carrying vital intelligence, has to traverse seven sectors of space to bring that information home, staying ahead of the advancing Rebel fleet. Each sector is made up of a random number of star systems, laid in out a random pattern, with your entry point on one side and the exit jump on the other. All you have to do is travel, from star to star, from entry to exit, and then jump away to do it all over again six more times.

But of course, it can't possibly be that easy.

Despite its apparently simplicity FTL is actually fiendishly difficult, primarily because there are just so many resources to manage. First you have your crew; you start with three, and can have up to eight. Do you want them to be excellent specialists, or decent generalists? Because your crew can be killed, by boarders, oxygen deprivation, fire of even just being in a room one too many missiles have hit. Then you have those systems your crew are working on; there are five (engines, shields, oxygen, weapons, piloting), all of which draw from your reactor, and three more (doors, sensors, autopilot) that work on their own. You can upgrade all of these systems, to varying degrees, and for every boost to the first five you also need to upgrade your reactor to produce more power. Then there are two more optional systems (drones, teleporter) you can pick up along the way. And you can have two different drones installed at a time (three on some ships). And there are three slots for ship augmentations, like faster-charging weapons or shields or jump engines. And you have three finite resources you have to keep an eye on, as well; fuel, which you consume one point of every time you jump, missiles, which can go clean through the shields that energy weapons have to batter down every time, and drones, which can provide a wealth of options. And then there's your scrap. Oh, the scrap.

If you want to upgrade a system, or your reactor, or purchase a new weapon, or hire more crew, or get more missiles or drones or fuel, you have to spend scrap. Everything you do, basically, costs you scrap. You will never have enough, unless you're doing especially well, at which point half the time the randomly generated stores won't give you anything worthwhile to spend it all on. FTL can be cruel, that way.

Ship on fire, key systems shot up, no missiles, section exposed to vacuum... Yup, that's FTL alright!

So, sounds a little overwhelming, right? Well, that doesn't even get into the events you'll roll up on your travels! Each time you jump to a new star, you'll encounter something new. A rebel ship? Pirates? Slavers? A drifting wreck? An asteroid storm? Solar flares? Distress calls? The game has an impressive library of random elements it can combine into an event, and many of them offer the player a choice. Interestingly, there's a sort of personal morality system at play. Do you accept surrender from your enemies, letting them live in exchange for sometimes-token offers, or do you slaughter them for their scrap and supplies? Are you a fearless pirate hunter, challenging them anytime you cross paths, or do you resort to piracy yourself when the opportunity arises? The game doesn't make any particular note of your choices, in terms of the reputation of your ship or the like, but it can be easy indeed to fall into the habit of constructing a persona for your ship's crew, and sticking to it as you advance. Will you uphold the ideals of the Federation, come what may? Or does survival trump all other concerns? It's completely up to you.

FTL is cheap, and simple to get started. It's a casual game, but definitely a solid one, if you like resource sim-style games. Be warned, though! Individual events are pretty short, a few seconds a moral choice, perhaps a couple of minutes for a particularly gruelling battle. As such, it's very easy to tell yourself you're going to play just one more, time and again, until you realize you meant to play 'just one more' ninety minutes ago. If you're the sort who's susceptible to its wiles, this game will most certainly eat your free time, one brief random encounter at a time.

And you'll love every minute of it!

Well.  Maybe not every minute.

And He'll Keep Looping Until He Gets It Right!

There's this scene in Looper, about halfway through the film. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing the same character, Joe the Looper, separated by thirty years of life experience, sit down in a diner. Gordon-Levitt starts to ask about Willis' memories, his understanding of their shared existence, particularly as it diverges further from the past Willis remembers when he was Gordon-Levitt. Angrily, Willis cuts off the questions, declaring he's not there to talk about that; if they try, then it's only a matter of time before they're trying to make diagrams out of straws on the tabletop.

It's an amusing line, and somewhat self-aware, but it's important because it represents the views of the creator. Rian Johnson, the writer-director and therefore basically the authority on the film, has made it quite clear that he had always intended to make a movie that involved time travel, but not a time travel movie. There would be no neat 1985/1985A drawings on chalkboards, no predestination paradoxes trying to rescue doomed loves, no men in terrifying rabbit costumes and none of whatever the heck Primer is. At the end of the day, Looper is about a guy, a functional junkie who's happy being a trigger man for the mob, whose life suddenly gets turned completely upside-down and who has to finally take a good, hard look at himself and justify his choices.

It just, y'know, happens to involve time travel, and telekinetic mutants, and a plot to kill a future criminal overlord while they're still a child.

I wonder if Willis insisted on getting the cooler gun...

Set in 2044, clearly in the midst of the collapse of western civilization, Looper is seriously bleak. Everyone seems to have weapons, and no hesitation about using them, with petty thieves getting gunned down in the street and not a single eyelash batted. Nobody, however, has much of anything else; food, clothes, housing, it all seems to be in decidedly short supply. For Joe, his best friend Seth and the other Loopers, however, things couldn't be better. Young men of limited horizons and simple appetites, the Loopers are paid well to execute prisoners sent back by the mob thirty years in the future, on the understanding that they too will eventually be sent back to keep the precise information regarding time travel a secret. When that happens, one 'closes their loop'. The payday is bigger, much bigger, the Looper is let out of their contract, and are set loose with the knowledge that they have about thirty years of guaranteed survival to enjoy before someone comes to send them back, bag on head and gold bars strapped to their backs.

Of course, if it were really that simple, there wouldn't be much movie. Instead of simply being sent back and dealt with quickly and cleanly, the older version of Joe manages to arrive unhooded and unrestrained, and with the help of just a moment of hesitation turns the tables on his younger self. This sets off the plot of the film; old Joe is looking for the identity of the Rainmaker, a brutal criminal crime lord in the future who's been closing all the loops, so he can stop them before they're too powerful. Young Joe is looking for old Joe, since if he fails to close his loop he'll have to answer to the present-day representative of the Rainmaker, Abe. And Abe and his lieutenants are looking for both of them, to kill old Joe or to use young Joe to find him, in a none-too-gentle fashion. This three-way chase sequence drives the overall plot, but it's young Joe's slowly-unfolding realizations about himself that propel the story.

Despite being slathered in makeup to try and look like a young Bruce Willis and called on to occasionally imitate the venerable action movie superstar, Gordon-Levitt turns in a truly impressive performance. Joe isn't stupid, just short-sighted; a child of the streets, at a time when the streets are as dangerous as they've ever been, he's never had any use for a long-term view. But as he confronts his older self, the choices he's made and the choices he's going to make, and interacts with a few other, key characters, including a slightly precocious child and a few of Abe's lieutenant's, he starts to develop a sense of himself and where he fits into the wider world. Gordon-Levitt plays young Joe with a fine mixture of swaggering street-tough, recovering junkie and frightened victim-to-be, trading time among these aspects but never letting any one of them overwhelm the others. It's a good, nuanced performance, in a role that could easily have just settled for someone doing a decent Bruce Willis voice and playing the cliched Gruff and Stoic Killer With a Good Heart. Joe's not a monster, but he's not a hero either, and Gordon-Levitt plays both sides of it quite nicely. He does it so well, in fact, that the ending seems comes at you straight out of left field, but after even just a second's reflection it's entirely obvious. The more I see of Gordon-Levitt, the more impressed I am.

For instance, I'm impressed by his ability to act wearing an entire second face.

Willis turns in a less nuanced performance. With thirty years of experience as a killer for the Chinese mob, a revenge plan in his head and no ties to anyone in 2044, he's mostly just a killing machine. Think Clint Eastwood, at the end of Unforgiven. But even then, he manages to put in a couple of nice, emotional beats. Old Joe had a wife in the future, the loss of whom he feels very deeply, and despite his singular focus on ending the threat of the Rainmaker before it begins, after he guns down his first lead he really sells the depth of his horror and disgust at murdering a child, in cold blood, for nothing.

Looper is a rock solid action movie, with some really good ideas and an actual heart, a rare thing these days. There are some beats that are obvious, such as young Joe picking one of the three target houses to lie in wait for his older self and, of course, forming a relationship with the child there. Some cliches, you just can't get away from. But overall the movie is sharp, willing to tread strange new ground both as an action movie with science-fiction elements and a science-fiction movie with action elements. It has a certain timelessness to it, simultaneously racing along and feeling like it could have already run for hours. The sets are well designed, futuristic but not so much that they seem fake, a space designed rather than lived in, and there some nice, subtle touches that make it clear that while this isn't our world, it could be, down the line.

I must offer a warning, though. Despite the writers' disdain for straw diagrams as expressed by Willis, it's hard not to try and make sense of the conflicting timelines. Go ahead, but realize that things are not going to line up neatly. This is the sort of time travel where effect can precede cause, even incite cause in the first place, and there are elements of the final timeline that are blatantly paradoxical. Since none of the characters in the film are scientists this isn't really addressed, becoming neither a problem nor a source of technobabble, which is ultimately the best way to handle it. It just is; the universe is, as the saying goes, not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. But yes, the timelines of certain characters, and particularly the entanglement of Joe and the Rainmaker, do create something of a puzzle to chew over after you leave the theatre.

But, only well after you leave. Because when you first walk out of the theatre, I can pretty much guarantee you'll be focused on one of two things. Either you'll be thinking about Joe's character arc, or about what happened to poor, dumb Seth...

Escalation in Alpha Prime - Week 5

Opponent: Owen (Space Marines)
Deploymenet: Vanguard Strike

Mission: Crusade

Point Level: 1500

Chapter Master w/Jump Pack, Digital Lasers, Hellfire Rounds, Combi-Melta, Relic Blade

Captain w/Artificier Armour, Digital Lasers, Hellfire Rounds, Combi-Melta

10 x Tacticals w/Flamer, Missile Launcher

10 x Tacticals w/2 x Flamer

Venerable Dreadnought w/Multi-Melta, Powerfist, Drop Pod

Venerable Dreadnought w/Twin-Linked Lascannon, Missile Launcher

Venerable Dreadnought w/Twin-Linked Lascannon, Missile Launcher

Vanquisher w/Hunter-Killer

Oh, come on, Vanguard Strike again? Why is a one-in-three chance turning up so regularly!

Owen was a bit of a kid, which a strange little hodge-podge of an army, much of it clearly still in the process of being built and painted. Which I think goes some way towards explaining what happened this game. I don't condone clubbing seals, but nobody learns except through trial and error in the game. Trial and disastrous, disastrous error.

I won the roll-off, and deployed the following:

Shas'El w/Twin-Linked Missile Pods, Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

3 x XV8 w/3 x Plasma Rifle, 3 x Missile Pod, 3 x Multi-Tracker

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/3 x Twin-Linked Missile Pods, 3 x Flamer

8 x Fire Warriors

8 x Fire Warriors

8 x Fire Warriors

5 x Pathfinders w/Devilfish, Disruption Pod

2 x XV88 w/2 x Advanced Stabilization System, Team Leader, Target Lock

2 x XV88 w/2 x Advanced Stabilization System, Team Leader, Target Lock

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Multi-Tracker, Blacksun Filter, Disruption Pod

Aegis Defence Line

The disruption pods were the post-FAQ ones, a change Coulton, who happened to be passing by, was unspeakably grateful he hadn't had to face the previous week. On the other hand, the new rulebook FAQ had nixed the idea of spreading the Aegis out, which meant I didn't have quite the scope for my defences, anymore. That wasn't too much of a problem, though. I put it in the centre-right, stretched out to cover most of my army in its traditional three-point configuration, with the third group, consisting of a squad of XV88s, the stronger Fireknives and a Fire Warrior team, sheltering behind a bit of natural terrain and the Devilfish. I placed my objective there, and handed off to Owen for his deployment. He put one of his dreadnoughts in a tower-top, with the other on the ground behind the double-flamer squad and the artificier captain off to one side, while the third waited for its drop pod to touch down. The jump pack captain and the other tactical squad took up a central position, and the Vanquisher deployed on the left corner of his zone. Again, night fight and seize rolls failed to kick in, and the game was afoot!

Amusingly, despite directing four twin-linked railguns at it, the Vanquisher ultimately succumbed to nothing more than the missile pods stripping off its hull points with glances. Well, the important thing was that it died; who killed it was a decidedly secondary concern. With the only really heavy artillery gone, I hunkered down to weather the fusillade of dreadnought return fire, my forces spread out as widely as possible to limit the drop pod's landing options. Happily, said drop pod managed to scatter clear off the table, which isn't something its inertial guidance systems protect against. Like Typhus the week before, the dreadnought with the multi-melta found himself landing smack in the back corner of the board, as far from the fighting as it was possible to get.

Owen didn't have much better luck with the rest of his turn. The save-enhancing disruption pods proved far too much to get through with just a handful of shots, and both the dual-flamer squad and the missile launcher squad were too far out of range to contribute, save for the missile launcher, which missed. Without scoring a single kill, Owen ended his turn.

The game was brutally lopsided, far more so than even the previous weeks, not least because of Owen's poor strategy. Rather than combat squad the tacticals, which would've given him two squads to hold the objective, he kept them together, meaning they were easy picking for a concentrated torrent of fire. My XV88s trained their railguns on the dreadnoughts, though a combination of poor shooting and good cover saves meant only the multi-melta dreadnought ever went down, while everything else that could simply obliterated the squad on the objective. Hesitating, Owen started his second squad back, which was probably the worst thing he could've done; if they'd pushed on they might've survived long enough to hit my lines, at which point even just a handful of Marines are a serious problem, but by pulling back they just gave me that much longer to shoot at them outside their own optimal engagement area. By turn 4, both Tactical squads were gone, leaving Owen incapable of holding the objective and in possession of just two dreadnoughts, against which the vast majority of my cadre's striking power remained available. With no way to win and several consecutive miracles needed even just to tie, Owen offered to surrender. And of course, being the enlightened Tau commander I am, I was perfectly content to accept my opponent's withdrawal from the field, even with such precious items as a pair of Space Marine dreadnoughts, to preserve Tau lives.

Running Total: 3-1-1

Escalation in Alpha Prime - Week 4

Opponent: Coulton (Chaos Space Marines)

Deployment: Vanguard Strike

Mission: The Emperor's Will

Point Level: 1300

Typhus

Daemon Prince w/Mark of Tzeentch

7 x Chaos Space Marines w/Plasmagun, Mark of Nurgle, Rhino

7 x Chaos Space Marines w/Plasmagun, Mark of Nurgle, Rhino

7 x Chaos Space Marines w/Meltagun, Mark of Nurgle, Rhino

5 x Terminators w/5 x Combi-Melta

5 x Havocs w/2 x Lascannon, 2 x Missile Launcher

5 x Havocs w/2 x Lascannon, 2 x Missile Launcher

You would not believe how grateful I was not to see a Land Raider anywhere in that list. I don't know what it is about Land Raiders; Imperial or Chaos, I just cannot shoot those darn things down. And I've run into no small number of Chaos players who bring one of those mobile bunkers along as a terminator delivery system, which pretty reliably ruins my day.

We rolled off and I got to go first, which pleased me to no end. I deployed along the lower-left corner, rich in hills and forests, an ideal defensive area even before I spread my Aegis line out through it. I went with my standard arrangement, XV88s in the wings with a squad of Fire Warriors and a Fireknife team, my Hammerhead, the third Fire Warrior squad, my commander and Deathrains in the middle, and my Pathfinders deployed as the opportunities of the table present themselves. In this case, they ended up midway between the middle and lower-right wings, with their Devilfish sheltering that XV88. In return, Coulton laid out a line of Rhinos, Marines huddled inside, around the centre of his diagonal, the two Havocs on a ridge along the right table edge, the Daemon Prince sheltering behind the tanks and Typhus and the Terminators in reserve. Each of us laid down our objective, my just behind my Aegis on the upper-left diagonal, Coulton in a forest along his board edge, and with no help from Night Fight and no success on seizing, we were off.

I got off to a respectable enough start, wrecking the Rhinos with the combined fire of pretty much everything I had that could draw line of sight. One of them exploded, but failed to wound anything inside. The only real exception was my Hammerhead, which managed to drop a submunition dead-centre on the heads of one of the Havoc units, costing them their sergeant and one of their missile launchers. Somewhat staggered by the savagery of a proper Tau alpha strike, Coulton's own first turn was rather lacklustre. His Havocs fired on my Devilfish, which had a 4+ Flat Out cover save, and achieved precisely nothing. His Daemon Prince rumbled forwards, along with two of the Marine squads, while the third headed up towards the objective. With no small amount of reluctance, he handed the game back off to me.

Turn 2 was significanatly less impressive, for the simple fact that I'd run out of big, fragile targets, and was stuck dealing with small, fragile targets instead. The Rhinos had been fire magnets, targets as obvious as they were incapable of surviving such a beating. The dismounted Marines, on the other hand, were a lot better at obscuring lines of sight, leaving parts of my army unable to draw a decent bead on anything. Still, I gunned down the upper-left Marine squad, and took down the Daemon Prince, while taking a model or two out of the squad moving for the objective. Coulton's admittedly rotten luck continued, as Typhus and the terminators, attempting to deep strike close enough to pose a very serious threat to my army, managed to land on the heads of a few of my guys. They weren't lost in transit, a result for which I would not have blamed Coulton for flipping the table in frustration, but all that meant was that they landed nice and safe in the far back corner, no threat to anyone for several slow, foot-slogging turns.

As the game continued, the losses grew steadily more one-sided. Coulton's Havocs just could not perform, failing to hit the Devilfish, or to penetrate, or just being frustrated by the Flat Out cover save. In fact, he invested considerably more effort into destroying it than it really warranted, particularly since the Hammerhead was still flying around, dropping submunitions on the Marines in the trees. His second Marine squad was gunned down, leaving me basically in control of two-thirds of the table. Unfortunately, this wasn't a kill points mission, it was an objective game, and I'd forgotten one very important detail; Chaos Space Marines are Fearless. No matter how often I plinked away a model or two, the survivors would not break. I would absolutely have to shoot them clear off the objective, and I realized I didn't have the firepower to do it. But that was okay, since I had First Blood, and Linebreaker is notoriously difficult to achieve in Vanguard Strike. All I had to do was hunker down and wait.

But apparently Typhus was more than a little upset by being left out of the game for so long. Finally charging into the fight, he and his terminators managed to catch my commander and a squad of Fireknives, who I'd been moving up to try and put more pressure on the Marines in the woods; a telling miscalculation on my part. Typhus of course easily dealt with a couple of battlesuits, wiping them off the board before they even got a chance to strike, and earning Coulton Slay the Warlord. Seeing victory slip through my fingers, I tried to bull my Hammerhead across the open space for Linebreaker, but it had been hanging around the rear area, and covering that space was just too much for it, especially since I still needed it firing on the off chance it could deal with the objective-holders. No such luck, however, and when the game ended it turned out that, despite having lost nearly everything he'd put on the table, Coulton's tenacity had managed to earn him a solid draw. Both of us had a single objective, and both of us had a secondary, with the tiebreaker unclaimed by either player.

Let this be a lesson, then. No matter how well things are going, no matter how clearly the dice are favouring you, you can never be too prepared by an appearance from good old Murphy and his law.

Running Total: 2-1-1

Escalation in Alpha Prime - Week 3

Opponent: Scott (Imperial Guard)

Deployment: Dawn of War

Mission: Big Guns Never Tire

Point Level: 1250

Company Command Squad w/Powerfist, Astropath, Master of Ordinance

10 x Storm Troopers w/Power Weapon, 2 x Plasmaguns

Marbo

Platoon Command Squad w/Powerfist

Infantry Squad w/Lascannon

Infantry Squad w/Heavy Bolter

Heavy Weapon Squad w/3 x Lascannon

Heavy Weapon Squad w/3 x Missiles

10 x Penal Legion

Leman Russ w/Lascannon

Leman Russ w/Lascannon

Hydra

Well, the good times couldn't last forever; eventually I'd have to run into that great anvil of the Imperium, the Guard. And I suppose, if I had to do it, doing so at 1250 wasn't a terrible point range to have it happen in. Even the notoriously points-efficient Guard can't bring too many toys along at that low a points value.

As for myself, my list was just an expanded version of last time's.

Shas'El w/Twin-Linked Missile Pods, Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/3 x Twin-Linked Missile Pods, 3 x Flamer

8 x Fire Warriors

8 x Fire Warriors

8 x Fire Warriors

5 x Pathfinders w/Devilfish, Flechette Discharger

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Multi-Tracker, Blacksun Filter

Aegis Defence Line

A little light on railguns to face the armoured might of the Imperial Guard, but there were only three tanks across from me, one of them a comparatively fragile Hydra. Not an insurmountable problem.

Scott won the roll off, and spread his army out nice and wide. The company command squad were on my left, behind a ruined church; inside those ruins were the infantry squad with the lascannon and the three-las heavy weapon squad, the platoon command squad near the doors. In the centre were the Hydra and one of the Leman Russ, screened by the second infantry squad. And on the right was the second Leman Russ and the heavy bolter team, the latter hidden inside a small ruin and the former behind it. Marbo, the Storm Troopers and the Penal Legion all started in reserve, the former to pull his traditional appearance trick, the other two outflanking. In response, I put one of my Fireknife teams in reserve, since the Pathfinder's Devilfish makes their deep strike slightly more reliable, and spread my own force out. My commander joined an XV88 on the far left, beside a team of Firewarriors behind a section of Aegis. In the centre, a second squad of Fire Warriors, the Deathrains and a Pathfinder team were sheltered behind a Devilfish, which was just waiting to start sea turtling for them. And on the right, my Hammerhead, the third Fire Warrior team, the second Fireknife team and my other XV88 were hidden behind the last section of Aegis line. There were three objectives on the field, one on my left, one on Scott's left, and a third around the middle of the board. Night Fight failed, my seize failed, and we were off.

Scott turned the full power of his army on pretty much the only three real threats; my two XV88s, and the Hammerhead. Thankfully, the protection of the Aegis line sufficed to let me weather the storm, mostly. Unfortunately, I lost the right-most XV88, and First Blood, though nothing else of note. In return, I managed to pick a few Guardsmen off with my pulse rifles, their long range and the relatively short rear area allowing them to reach most of the infantry. My commander split from the XV88, heading up the left flank towards the infantry in the ruins; against Sv5+ models in area terrain ruins, his AP5 cover ignoring AFP would be a godsend. Pity about the short range, though. Thankfully, the walls of the building mostly blocked Scott's line of sight on that angle.

The two of us traded fire for a while, but I'm sorry to say that he got the better end of it. Over the second and third turn, he managed to take down my other XV88 and Hammerhead, removing the threat to his Leman Russ, only one of which I managed to destroy before losing my railguns. I also lost one of the Deathrains and a few Fire Warriors, trading them for assorted dead Guardsmen and the aforementioned central Leman Russ. Despite that, though, there were some bright spots. My commander had managed to close the distance, thanks to a good run roll first turn, and dropped his AFP with unerring accuracy into the middle of the densely packed Guardsmen; the company command squad, which sallied forth to deal with him, found themselves suddenly outgunned and outfought, as he proceeded to take them apart over the course of two assault phases, thankfully avoiding the very real danger the powerfist represented. And of course, once he was unengaged, his large blast, S4, AP5, cover ignoring barrage weapon started to do exactly the damage I'd expected it to.

Unfortunately, while I was blasting his infantry to pieces, he'd pulled a very real threat to mine out of reserve. Turn 3 Marbo appeared, tossing his demo charge and killing the XV88 on my left and about half the Fire Warrior squad, the survivors promptly breaking and running off the objective. And at the same time, the Storm Troopers deep struck in front of my central Fire Warriors and the Penal Legion, gunslingers the lot of them, emerged from outflank just behind the Aegis line. Scott had initially scoffed at gunslinger, having hoped for the more impressive rending ability, but it turned out this served him quite well. When a second turn of shooting from the Storm Troopers and Penal Legion wasn't quite enough to do in my Fire Warriors, the latter could use their assault-classed weapons to follow up with a charge, and weak as Imperial prisoner-conscripts might be, the few lingering remnants of an 8-man Fire Warrior team were no match for them.

Of course, they were no match for what came after them in return. The Storm Troopers took a couple of flamer blasts to the face from my surviving Deathrains, whittling them down but sadly not doing them in (I forgot they had carapace armour), while the Penal Legion squad went down to a hail of pulse fire from the central Fire Warrior squad. And those convicts certainly weren't wearing carapace. At the same time my commander continued to rampage through the infantry in the far left ruin, AFP'ing the command squad to death, including the warlord, while a Fireknife squad dropped in to finish off the heavy weapons team with the three lascannons in the ruin, killing everything off of Scott's objective. Of course, he responded by turning around and blasting my Fireknives to pieces, but they'd done their job, and as far as last-turn assaults go, it didn't add up to much.

When the game ended, it looked for a moment like I'd pulled out a win. There were no Troop units on any objectives (and fair few Troop units left alive, period), and no Heavy Support units on them, either. Scott had earned First Blood by taking out my XV88, but my commander had singlehandedly secured me both Linebreaker and Slay the Warlord. One secondary to two, it looked like I had it. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that in Big Guns Never not only do Heavy Support choices score, they also count for victory points. Which meant that, with my three dead units and only one of Scott's, things suddenly went from 2-1 my favour to 4-3 his. Accursed fragile Tau units!

Running Score: 2-1-0

Escalation in Alpha Prime - Week 2

Opponent: Austin (Tau Empire)

Deployment: Vanguard Strike

Mission: Crusade

Shas'O w/Missile Pod, Shield Generator, Blacksun Filter, Vectored Retro-Thrusters, Stimulant Injectors, Failsafe Detonator

6 x XV15 w/Shas'ui, Fusion Blaster, Bonding Knife, Blacksun Filter

12 x Fire Warriors w/Shas'Ui, Blacksun Filter, Rail Rifle, Bonding Knife, Markerlight

12 x Fire Warriors w/Shas'Ui, Blacksun Filter, Rail Rifle, Bonding Knife, Markerlight, EMP Grenades, Photon Grenades, Devilfish w/Smart Missile System, Sensor Spines, Decoy Launcher, Disruption Pod, Flechette Dischargers, Blacksun Filter

Hammerhead w/Railgun, Smart Missile Systems, Multi-Tracker, Target Lock, Disruption Pod, Blacksun Filter

One of the surest signs of an inexperienced Tau player is a proliferation of stuff. While many Tau units can't really take anything at all (Fire Warriors, Kroot, Vespid, Pathfinders), the ones who can have options out the wazoo. And many of them look like perfectly reasonable things to take. They all do interesting, even valuable things, and some of them stack together nicely enough. But they also eat into your points, and being a fourth edition codex Tau don't have a lot of points to spare for bells and whistles. Which is why, as soon as I looked at Austin's list, it was pretty obvious this would be less of a game, and more a teaching experience.

My list, for comparison.

Shas'El w/Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Twin-Linked Missile Pods, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

2 x XV8 w/2 x Twin-Linked Missile Pods, 2 x Flamer

8 x Fire Warriors

8 x Fire Warriors

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Multi-Tracker, Blacksun Filter, Disruption Pod

Aegis Defence Line

Lots of units, with lots of guns, and nobody drunk on wargear options. In my experience, barring tactical wizardry, this is the only way to run a successful cadre.

We rolled up Vanguard Strike and Crusade, and I won the roll-off, selecting my corner and dropping my objective neatly behind one of my Aegis sections. I spread out in the usual three-point formation, the corners anchored by XV88s supporting a team of Firewarriors, with the Fireknives there to provide close support. My commander, attached to the Deathrains, and the Hammerhead made up the central spur, the tank hidden as best it could behind a large hill. Austin opted for a more aggressive approach, though also a less optimal one; one Fire Warrior squad, joined by his commander, held the objective on top of a hill opposite the one my tank was hiding behind, with his Hammerhead hiding it behind it in a mirror of my own strategy. The Fire Warriors with attached Devilfish, meanwhile, started out on the left edge of his zone, along with his XV15s, the lot of them just raring to go. He failed to seize, Night Fight kicked in, and we were off.

Unfortunately, the first turn was less than impressive. I'd put my Fire Warriors too far back to open up on his lines, and my suits found their shots either going awry or being blunted by Night Fight or Disruption Pod saves. I made no major advances, just shuffled around a little, and let Austin go. He sent his XV15s and Devilfish off as fast as he could, just as expected, while his commander took the odd potshot at my Fire Warriors behind the Aegis line, while his Hammerhead proved just as ineffectual as my own. Unfortunately, while the Devilfish is good, it isn't that good; putting it so far out in front earned it a railgun slug through the nose, wrecking it and spilling its contents out into open midfield. Where they perished mightily, caught under the guns of my own two Fire Warrior squads and the significantly more deadly firepower of my left-side Fireknives. Poor guys never knew what hit them. In return, however, Austin managed to do what I had failed at, using his Hammerhead to take out my own with a solid explosion that, thankfully, failed to do any collateral damage. His XV15s popped out from around the side of a building and took a few pot-shots at my Fireknives, who thankfully were behind the curve of the Aegis from that angle, since the fusion blasters were in range. Stymied, they jumped back into cover, though a bad roll left them slightly exposed.

Amazingly, that squad of XV15s would go on to completely destroy my left flank. They took casualties from my Fireknives, but not as much as they might've without their stealth fields, but over the next several turns they managed to shoot one of those Fireknives, break my Fire Warrior squad, and then charge and defeat both my remaining Fireknife and my XV88. There might only have been one of them left by the end, but that little guy earned his keep!

Unfortunately, his success was mostly a sideshow. On the main stage, I managed to shoot down Austin's Hammerhead after a few more turns, its submunition blast singularly failing to do the job when it came to clearing my Fire Warriors off the objective; a 4+ cover save, jumping to 2+ when he really got a solid roll to wound and I opted to go to ground, proved too tough to overcome with just a single vehicle's weaponry. Meantime, his single battlesuit, anchored to a unit of Fire Warriors, was steadily chewed up by a pincer strike of my own commander and the Deathrains coming left and high, and a Fireknife team, supported by the surviving XV88, coming in low and right. At the end of Turn 5, when the game ended, he'd completely lost the squad and commander, leaving him shot entirely off the table save for that single, valiant XV15 hiding down on my far left flank.

Running Score: 2-0-0

Quoth the Raven? Thankfully, not in this book.

Like the White Scars and the Iron Hands, the Raven Guard are one of those Space Marine legions that just never seemed to get much in the way of publicity. Sure, each of them have a single special character in Codex: Space Marines, and there's the odd book devoted to them or their successor chapters, but it's pretty small potatoes for a First Founding legion. The Raven Guard are third tier, falling behind not just the big names, the Ultramarines and Blood Angels and Space Wolves, but the lesser-known but codex-toting Marines, the Black Templars and the Dark Angels. Which is all a really long-winded way of saying that unlike The First Heretic and A Thousand Sons, I went into Deliverance lost with no real preconceived notions one way or the other.

Deliverance Lost picks up from the infamous Dropsite Massacre, which at this point is probably running just behind D-Day for 'most fictionally covered battle', where the Raven Guard have been practically destroyed. Corax and a handful of his men make it off the planet, thanks to a slightly psychic noble and a rather daring Raven Guard strike cruiser commander, and the primarch of the Raven Guard is faced with the fact that there's no real way for the shattered remnants of his legion to participate in the accelerating civil war. The Raven Guard would make a particularly strong chapter, but this is the time of the legions, and there just aren't enough of them left for that sort of designation. Which is why Corax decides to take drastic measures to rebuild his legion, setting the plot of the novel into motion.

It's a bit of a slow burn, really, but Gav Thorpe puts the downtime in the middle of the novel to good use. Corax, of course, needs to be built up; unlike Magnus the Red or Leman Russ or Roboute Guilliman, this is not a primarch the reader can be expected to know from the start. Humorously, the only think Corax is really famous for are his reputed last words, which are not going to be of great use in any story but his very last. Thorpe unspools Corax' past through a series of flashbacks, explaining how he came to be on Deliverance, his campaign to establish himself as ruler and his meeting with the Emperor, the seminal events in every primarch's pre-Great Crusade life. But he also spends time on a couple of Raven Guard characters, who give the reader a good sense of what it means to be a member of this particular legion, demonstrating both their common cause with the other legions and the particulars that make them unique. And even with all that, there's still a little time left over for an Alpha Legion character or two.

I've said it before, and my opinion hasn't changed; I fundamentally do not like the way the Alpha Legion decided to align with Horus. The Emperor's goal with the Great Crusade was always and explicitly to elevate humanity to the rulers of the galaxy, so to have Alpharius and Omegon swayed by a group of aliens explaining how the extinction of humanity would destroy the powers of Chaos just rings false. Not only does it not really make sense, since Chaos pre-dates humanity and Slaanesh was explicitly born from alien actions, with no human involvement whatsoever, but it requires the twin primarchs to somehow intuit that while what the Emperor has always said he wanted was the primacy of humanity, secretly what he wants even more is the destruction of Chaos. Also, they have to trust aliens, which is sort of a non-starter in the grim darkness of the far future. I just don't buy it.

That being said, though, Thorpe does a good job with the Alpha Legion characters. The soldiers are believably conflicted about their actions, infiltrating and sabotaging a loyal legion, killing their battle-brothers while pretending to fight alongside them, and Alpharius and Omegon both get some good scenes. The former's meetings with Horus, which book-end the novel, are particularly solid, presenting Alpharius as a consummate schemer faced with an ego-maniacal madman in Horus, both of them entirely aware of the others fundamentally untrustworthy nature. Given that the traitor primarchs as basically a collection of unbridled egos just waiting to stab each other in the back and festering grudges that have completely ruined the ability to think rationally, this is about what I would assume every gathering of more than one of them would boil down to. Also, there's a nice little Fabius Bile cameo in the end, which ties smoothly into his codex abilities. It's really quite delightful, and clear evidence of the author really thinking out how to connect fluff and tabletop.

Deliverance Lost is another of those 'basically inconsequential' Horus Heresy novels, which is to say that by the time the story is resolved the situation is basically back to where it started. Like Nemesis and Battle for the Abyss, however, Deliverance Lost manages to be an excellent read despite not really advancing the larger story of the Horus Heresy, and like those others it also manages to plant a few little seeds that will, a few books down the line, no doubt pay off nicely.

Escalation in Alpha Prime - Week 1

Black Knight has offered those daring enough to wage war in the grim darkness of the far future a new opportunity to test their mettle; Escalation in Alpha Prime, a six-week league event. The league starts at 750 points, and adds 250 points each week, ultimately ending up at a full 2000 points. The main scoring determinant seems to be win-lose-or-draw, of course, but the league also provides a small, standardized list of milestones to reach over the course of the series. Some of them are easy (play 4 games, roll a 6 when you need to), and some of them require a little more persistence (kill a model with 4 wounds, kill two HQs twice). They haven't actually announced what impact the sheets will have on the overall score, but since it seems unlikely they'll have none, a smart general would do what he could not just to win, but to win in a way the meets the demands of the sheets.

For the first week, I took what I thought was a pretty basic Tau cadre, with the caveat of course that I still don't care for Kroot. At 750 there's not really any room to get fancy; no Fortifications, no Allies, nothing but the basic options in the codex, and not nearly as many of those as usual, either.

Shas'El w/Twin-Linked Missile Pod, Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

2 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker

8 x Fire Warriors

8 x Fire Warriors

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Multi-Tracker, Blacksun Filter

This was actually the first game I'd played at this particular points level, so I went into it with a certain amount of concern. In the past I've had trouble getting my cadre to perform in the 1000 points range; would they have what it takes to get the job done with even fewer tools at their disposal?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Opponent: Aaron Plate (Orks)

Deployment: Vanguard Strike

Mission: Big Guns Never Tire

Old Zogwort

Weirdboy

19 Boyz w/Nob, Power Klaw

19 Boyz w/Nob, Power Klaw

Dakkajet

Dakkajet

Usually, Aaron goes for the Nob bikerz, but I suppose if he couldn't rationalize cramming them into this points level. Instead, I found myself facing off against an Ork foot list, with a couple of flyers for support, something I haven't seen in quite some time. Usually the Orks in my neck of the galaxy are backed up by Killa Kans, Deff Dreads and Battlewagons, and nowadays looted Imperial Guard hulls and grots with lasguns and flak vests. The chance to test my guns against nothing but hardy Ork constitutions made me cautiously optimistic, as did my successfully defeating Aaron in the roll-off to go first. We rolled up four objectives, with each of us basically depositing them in our deployment zones, and got down to the business of murder.

I deployed in my customary spread-out fashion. The lone XV88 and a unit of Fire Warriors claimed the top floor of a ruined building, and the objective I'd placed there for them, while the other Fire Warriors took up position on a hilltop beside the Hammerhead, near the centre of my zone. My commander joined one of the units of suits on the far right edge, while the other two suits took the far left wing, deploying well up from the edge of the table. Hemmed in, Aaaron deployed his two mobs, one with the Weirdboy and one with Zogwort, towards the rear-centre of his zone, trying to get as much cover as possible. He attempted to seize, and failed, he checked for Night Fight, and succeeded, and the game commenced.

And almost immediately ended. Manoeuvring for advantage, I managed to align the Hammerhead and the commander's squad with the Weirdboy's squad, getting both units nice, clear shots through gaps in the terrain. With Blacksun Filters on each the cover of darkness did nothing to protect the Orks, and between six missile pods, two plasma rifle shots and a submunition that landed dead-centre in the middle of the mob, those twenty Orks very quickly disappeared. Throw in a bit of supporting fire from the central Fire Warriors on the hill and the other Fireknife squad, both managing a few kills even with the Night Fight saves, and there was no chance of Mob Rule carrying those Orks through the end of my shooting phase. Reduced to their own lousy leadership, which is not unlike my own lousy leadership, the few ragged survivors promptly struck up their heels and bolted for the table edge, giving me First Blood. Turn one, and half of Aaaron's ground forces were dead before they'd had a chance to move. Not that they actually accomplished anything once they were given the chance, though, with Aaron sending them shambling forwards, though not nearly as quickly as he'd hoped given a lousy Run roll. With Night Fight no longer an issue, and the Orks even closer to even more guns, there was a very real chance that I could win the game on Turn 2, by simply killing everything on the board.

Thankfully, I didn't quite manage that feat. I did, however, kill a heck of a lot of boyz, once more pouring firepower into the Orks and watching as body after body was lifted away. The new 'cover on an individual basis' is frankly brutal for armies like Orks, and makes the Kustom Force Field virtually mandatory if you plan to have a foot list survive to reach the enemy's lines. Old Zogwort survived the fusillade, as did a handful of boyz, and with his slightly better leadership the survivors managed to hold on until the arrival of one of the Dakkajets. Unfortunately, that wouldn't turn out to help much, as the Dakkajet managed to put all of one wound on one of the Fireknives accompanying my commander. Zogwort himself attempted to use his Curse on my commander, only to fail his psychic test. An attempt to charge my Hammerhead also came up short, even with the re-roll, leaving the Orks nothing to do. With the dice having failed him, at this point Aaron could frankly do little but await the end.

Turn three, I managed to put down the Dakkajet with my XV88, giving it its first kill of the game; turn one there'd been trouble with line of sight, and turn two the railgun had whiffed the to-wound roll. It made up for those failures with the jet, however, blasting it clear out of the sky in a single hit, and thankfully not scattering the flaming wreckage onto my own units. I sent the rest of my army to deal with the remnants of Zogwort's mob, save for my second Fireknife squad, who were tasked with making dead certain they were in Aaron's deployment zone at the end of the game, which at this point could come at any second, for the Linebreaker secondary. Rolling up the remnants of Aaron's Orks wasn't difficult, just a little time-consuming, though the appearance of his second Dakkajet did cost me my commander, the sole casualty of the match. At the end of turn 4, however, I'd shot the second Dakkajet from the skies and hunted down the last of the Orks, including Zogwort who provided me with the Slay the Warlord secondary, and ensuring total victory for the forces of the Tau Empire.

Opponent: Jamie Goddard (Tau Empire)

Deployment: Dawn of War

Mission: Purge the Alien

Shas'O w/Missile Pod, Fusion Blaster, Stimulant Injector, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter, Bonding Knife, Hard-Wired Drone Controller, 2 x Gun Drones

2 x XV8 Bodyguard w/2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Fusion Blaster, 2 x Targeting Array, Hard-Wired Drone Controller, Shield Drone

2 x XV8 w/2 x Twin-Linked Burst Cannon, 2 x Plasma Rifle, Multi-Tracker

10 x Fire Warriors w/Shas'ui, Blacksun Filter

10 x Fire Warriors w/Shas'ui, Blacksun Filter

8 x Fire Warriors w/Shas'ui, Blacksun Filter

As a bonus for finishing off Aaron so quickly, I was offered the chance to help out a late arrival, who was otherwise opponent-less. Jamie usually gives me no end of fits with his Imperial Guard, but when I saw him fetching out battlesuits I must admit, I was intrigued; I'd never faced other Tau before. Of course, since neither of us were Farsight Enclave, clearly this was just a particularly realistic training simulation. So we rolled up the mission and the deployment, one of the few times I was content to see Kill Points as an objective, and got down to business, with Jamie winning the roll-off and Night Fight once more kicking in.

I'm not going to go into as much detail, this time around, because it was mostly just me chasing Jamie around the board. My Hammerhead accounted for two of his three Fire Warrior squads, while my commander and his squad duelled with the two XV8s, and the other Fireknives and y two Fire Warrior squads did their best to take down his commander and bodyguard suits, and finished off the third Fire Warrior team. My only casualty of the game was my XV88, who surprisingly died not to missile pods, plasma rifles or fusion blasters, but just to a few too many pulse rifle rounds to the face. Still, with all three of his infantry squads down, and me having only lost my XV88, it was a pretty convincing victory, and if the game hadn't ended it just would've grown moreso as my numerically superior force finished off the remaining few models he had on the board. A solid training exercise, and one that clearly indicates a certain shas'el needs to spend a little more time reading the tactical output of the shas'ar'tol.

2K Tournament - Round 3

Round 3: Chris Bader (Imperial Guard)

Deployment: Vanguard Strike

Mission: Purge the Alien

Secondary Objectives: First Blood, Linebreaker, Battlefield Superiority (control 2+ table quarters)

Company Command w/Vox Caster, Meltagun, Lascannon, Officer of the Fleet, Straken, Chimera

Platoon Command w/Vox Caster, Meltagun, Lascannon, Chimera

Infantry Squad w/Flamer, Missile Launcher

Infantry Blob Squad w/Grenades, Autocannon, Power Sword

Commissar

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Missile Launcher

Platoon Command Squad w/Vox Caster, Meltagun, Lascannon, Chimera

Infantry Squad w/Flamer, Missile Launcher

Infantry Blob Squad w/Plasma Gun, Lascannon, Power Weapon, Vox Caster

Commissar w/Power Sword

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Missile Launcher

Vendetta w/Heavy Bolter sponsons

Vendetta w/Heavy Bolter sponsons

Manticore w/Heavy Flamer

Imperial Bastion w/Quad Gun

Yes, it's the Imperial Guard, yet again. Fewer tanks and no Allies, but a couple of Flyers, my first matchup against such units in 6^th. I can't say I was particularly optimistic about this, especially since it was kill points; infantry blob squads with attached Commissars take a heck of a lot of killing for one point, and Guard tanks can inflict some pretty serious casualties, especially if, as Chris did, they win the roll-off.

Chris elected to go first, and deployed pretty well strung out along his diagonal; Bastion in the middle, with the two small squads inside and on top of it, command squads in their Chimeras around it, Manticore towards the back, and the heavy weapon teams and blob squads on the wings. Unfortunately, poor terrain placement left my own deployment somewhat hamstrung, with my Hammerhead, commander and Deathrains behind a huge building smack-dab in the middle of the table, a Devilfish full of Firewarriors, a Fireknife team and an XV88 team on the left being hassled by some craters (skimmers and jet packs don't like difficult terrain tests) and a mirror group on the right trying to hug a forest and small outbuilding as much as they could. Sadly, the BKG guys had decided not to allow for Night Fight this round, so if I failed to seize, my Devilfish were going to be stuck out with pretty minimal angles of cover. And so I did fail to seize, that's exactly what happened.

First round, I lost both Devilfish; a 5+ cover save is nice, but not really enough against the kind of firepower a Guard list can put out, even with the Vendettas stuck in reserve first turn. Though sadly, in both of the fateful fails, having the 4+ Flat Out save would have made the difference. Alas! Even more unfortunately, hampered as I was by the giant building in the middle of the table, which prevented my two wings from supporting each other (what good is superior Tau range if you can't get LOS?), my own shooting was too scattered to really crush any one thing in return. We traded shots, him shaking my Hammerhead, me managing to hit the Bastion with it anyway but only glancing it, a Chimera for a Devilfish, a few Guardsmen for a few Firewarrior squads. Unfortunately, while I was chipping away at models, he'd removed several units, putting him up to start with. And it only got worse when one of his Vendettas arrived second turn, and immediately lascannoned my poor Hammerhead straight into the ground.

I got my revenge, though, and let this be a lesson; always, always understand the rules. So, I hit the Vendetta with a couple of missile pods, and managed to lock its speed with the damage, forcing it to go 18" straight. Not exactly devastating. But then I realized I still had one Devilfish left, which hadn't fired yet, and whose 6" Flat Out move could basically put it exactly where the Vendetta's flying stand would have to be. The stand can't end its move within 1" of an enemy model; the Vendetta can't turn, or go further than 18"; and any Flyer that can't travel a minimum of 18" is automatically wrecked. Which is to say, with a conveniently placed Devilfish, I managed to turn a mere locked velocity roll into the destruction of the flyer. Not bad, not bad one bit.

Unfortunately, I wasn't having too much luck, otherwise. My entire right flank basically disappeared, save for the experimental XV25s who dropped in, only to be caught completely flat-footed when the nearby blob squad charged them. I'm used to my enemy's charging Tau units, but I must admit, I completely failed to anticipate that anyone would want to voluntarily charge a BA Captain with power sword and five Death Company. Unfortunately, while my Allies were grinding down the blob squad (both Chris and I having completely forgotten Challenges were even a thing), they weren't doing it quickly, or without casualties themselves. The game ended on account of time before the combat could be resolved, but it was depressingly clear that the quality of those counts-as-Marines simply wasn't going to match up to the quantity of all those Guardsmen. I did, however, take out one of the Chimeras before I went down, and more dramatically I managed to blow up the Bastion, which did impressively terrible things to the units inside and on top of it. Fortifications really are unforgiving if you can put them down, especially if you've only got t-shirt saves on the units embarked in them.

Unfortunately, even with the other Vendetta counting as a kill point for being off the table when the game ended, things went as I'd feared. Chris had won overall, and scored First Blood, while neither of us had Linebreaker or Battlefield Superiority. So while he only scored fourteen for his victory, I escaped with just a measly three for participation.

If only that blob squad had let me get the charge off, instead!

Still, ultimately I was pretty happy with how the tournament went. I had a pretty solid grasp of the new ruleset, I completely dominated that first game, and I even scored 'best presentation' again, which is always nice. Even nicer, though, I came in fifth overall that day, a new personal best and definitely something worth celebrating!

When Creators Lose the Plot

As much as The Dark Knight Rises has problems with its plot, and pacing, and some of its character work, and it most certainly has problems with all three, that's not the real problem with this movie. No, the real problem is so much deeper than that. It took me a while to really wrap my head around it, but after talking it over with a few associates, particularly Major Armstrong and the Lovely Madame Meagan, I think I've put my finger on it. Those issues I mentioned, at the start of this paragraph? Those are simply issues with Rises on its own, irrespective of its standing in Nolan's trilogy. No, the real issue is that of the three major themes running through the Nolan trilogy, Rises completely wrecks two, and just sort of ignores the third.

Be warned; from here on out, there be spoilers.

"As a man I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol... As a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting."
- Bruce Wayne

"Everlasting, two years, y'know, whichever comes first."

In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne realizes that Gotham is so far gone, so riddled with corruption, so owned by the mob, its people so terrified or coerced or co-opted, that no man could save it. Not even billionaire philanthropist industrialist Bruce Wayne. Wayne's parents had tried to save the city, and enjoyed some minor success, but by making themselves so visible they made themselves targets. A mortal man (or woman, in the case of Martha Wayne) simply couldn't redeem the city, because the city would eat them before they could succeed. What was needed instead, then, was something more than a man. A symbol. The Batman.

And it works. At the start of The Dark Knight, the symbol of Batman has clearly had an effect on Gotham. The police are still shaky, but where before Gordon was completely alone, now he has a core of mostly trustworthy cops who actually seem set on doing their jobs. The DA's office is far stronger, and even if Dent doesn't trust Batman at first, Batman's existence has certainly motivated Dent; showing he can replace Batman is just as much a reflection of the symbol as wanting to live up to him. And the people of Gotham are starting to push back against the corruption; even if the Citizen Batmen are a disaster, untrained, out of shape and wearing hockey pads, at least they're doing something. The change from the Gotham seen in Batman Begins is astounding, and shows, yes, the power of a symbol. But by the end of the film, that symbol has been tarnished. Branded a cop killer and held responsible for the death of Harvey Dent, Batman is a fugitive, an outlaw who fights outlaws, a symbol twisted around itself and ultimately sacrificed to burnish another symbol; Harvey Dent, the 'White Knight'. So, to carry through the idea of Batman as an everlasting symbol, obviously Rises would have to provide a story in which Batman can be redeemed in the eyes of Gotham City as a whole, shaking off the mantle of killer and criminal and replacing it, once again, with the idea of Batman as an incorruptible force for justice.

But none of that happens. Instead, the movie opens with Batman apparently having hung up the cowl about five minutes after the end of Dark Knight. Far from being an everlasting symbol, he's abandoned the city for about four times as long as he ever operated in it. This makes Batman's totemic significance to certain characters completely baffling, and totally unearned. Yes, he stopped the mob and the Joker, but it's been the police who've been doing all the heavy lifting for almost the last decade, and the last thing anyone saw of Batman he was running from the cops after being accused of murder. A force of terror on the side of the angels, he isn't. But what's even worse, he never earns back his place as a symbol for the people of Gotham. As far as the people of Gotham are concerned, not only has Batman completely disappeared for eight months, he never did anything to stop Bane's initial assault on the city, and has left them languishing under his tyranny for five months, straight. The only thing he does is disable Bane's big guns so the police can do most of the fighting, go toe to toe with Bane, and then die for Gotham by getting the bomb away from the city. It's a nice gesture, and if this were Adam West's Batman, or Bruce Timm's, or heck, even George Clooney or Val Kilmer's Batmans, it would really have affected Gotham. Those Batmans actually established a strong relationship with the city. Nolan's Batman has given up on it. Most of the impressive things Batman accomplishes are done where nobody can see it, and while what little he does in public is good, it's hard to buy that these guys decided to put a statue up in his honour. It's a nice moment, but it doesn't feel earned.

And of course, it's completely ruined by the knowledge that there'll be another Batman along soon enough. Sort of robs that heroic sacrifice of its value if you turn up later...

"What chance does Gotham have when the good people do nothing?"

- Rachel Dawes

Although sometimes, nothing is exactly what good people should do.

If Batman is to serve as a symbol, though, there has to be someone to see it; Ozymandias' feet mean nothing until Keats observes them, after all. It is for the people of Gotham that Bruce Wayne creates Batman, as a symbol of justice and the power of the individual to triumph over crime. This is an important element in Nolan's Batman universe, because individually the people of Gotham have been made to feel helpless in the face of the seemingly insurmountable scale of the problem facing them. It's too easy for each of them to say that they're just one man or woman, and what can they do, and therefore atomisticly allow their society to collapse around them. It's really hard to understate the importance of Batman as a symbol for this particular Bruce Wayne; he's not Adam West, having a grand old time trading wits and fists with ultimately harmless criminals, and nor is he Frank Miller's creation, a disturbed and violent misanthrope who is acceptable because he can't not fight crime, even if he's barely a step above the Punisher. Nolan's Batman understands the seriousness of the situation far better than West's ever could have, but unlike Miller's he's not willing to devote his entire life to being Batman; as early as the end of Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is trying to visualize some kind of way out for him, a goal he can aim for and that, once reached, will justify him stepping down. And for this particular Bruce Wayne, to paraphrase American officials on Iraq, when Gothamites stand up, he'll stand down.

And he starts to have that effect in Dark Knight. I mentioned the Citizen Batmen earlier, and while they're a disaster in the film, it's not for lack of heart. They just don't understand that Batman is something to aspire to symbolically, not literally. To live up to his example doesn't require you to dress in black capes and masks and fist-fight drug dealers. So yes, Bruce Wayne shuts down the Citizen Batmen as best he can, though with not nearly the finality the Joker employs later, but that's not a serious problem because that's not what Bruce Wayne wants. We see what he wants in the form of Harvey Dent, in particular, and in the reaction of the Gothamites on the ferries, in general. Dent is a man who is willing to take up Batman's challenge in his own way, to wage the war on crime from inside the system, rather than as an outsider. He needed Batman to exist to encourage that system to work, but now that it's been primed, Bruce Wayne desperately wants to believe that Harvey Dent can keep it running. But again, it's not just about one man in Gotham City; one man can be ignored, or destroyed, as Bruce Wayne himself realizes. So, Harvey Dent is important, but arguably not as important as what happens on those ferries in the harbour.

Can there be any doubt that, before Batman began operating in Gotham, any of those people would've hesitated to blow up the other ferry to protect themselves? It was a brutal, violent, amoral city, where those like Jim Gordon were few and far between, and utterly powerless. But Batman serves as an example; he doesn't kill (mostly), he doesn't steal, he doesn't oppress the powerless and he stands up to the mob on behalf of the people. Capturing the Joker is ultimately of secondary importance in Dark Knight. What really matters is that he has offered the people of Gotham another, better way, one where even convicted criminals will refuse the Joker's offers of personal safety at the expense of others. The people of Gotham don't have to put on dollar store Batman masks, they just have to be good people, who are willing to risk their own lives for their fellow human beings.

Unfortunately, the people of Gotham are almost completely ignored in Rises. Where Ra's al Ghul corrupted them from within with money and drugs, and the Joker brutalized them with exploding hospitals and murdered public officials, Bane mostly ignores them. He has his own army, after all, and despite a throw-away comment that some of Gotham's poor might have been drifting down to the sewers to find work (apparently to escape a grinding recession we never really get any evidence of) and Bane and Catwoman mooting about how this is a revolution of the people, it never looks like anything other than the conquest of a city by an outside force. The people of Gotham aren't eating themselves alive again, like before Batman came along, they're just being killed by outsiders. But nor are they standing up against Bane, either. That may sound like a strange objection given my earlier take on the Citizen Batmen, but bear with me. The Citizen Batmen were wrong, albeit with the best of intentions, because they were trying to simply ape Batman without any of his training or abilities or equipment. It was the inappropriate response to the situation. And here, it would be again, even if having the Citizen Batmen keeping that symbol alive in occupied Gotham would have gone a long way towards demonstrating the utility of that symbol in such a drastic situation. But there are other ways to fight, to resist, if you will. Such as, oh, forming a resistance.

But we never see that. Yes, Gordon and a few of his men are doing something, though not much that really amounts to anything. And eventually the police, rescued from the sewers and shockingly hale and hearty after five months trapped underground, turn up to fight Bane's army. But Gordon and the police are not the people; they're an institution of Gotham itself. And they're not really rising to the occasion, beyond what their position requires of them. If Bane had turned up before Batman, when the city was in the grip of the mob, do you really think the bought-and-paid-for police wouldn't have fought just as hard to keep Bane's men from muscling in on their territory? The police can't represent Gotham's people, because they're too busy representing Gotham as a thing, an institutional system in its own right, and like all such systems it will of course fight to defend itself. But if Gordon, deprived of his cops, had turned to the citizens of Gotham? If groups of armed civilians had established safe zones in the chaos of a lawless Gotham, fighting off the remnants of the criminal elements and Bane's forces, doing their best to show that Gotham isn't entirely beaten? Well, now that would have actually meant something. Instead, after a brief flurry of anarchic violence, the people of Gotham apparently just go inside and shut their doors for five months, emerging only once everything is over to put up a statue.

Talk about good people doing nothing.

"We start carrying semi automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds. And you're wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops."

- James Gordon

Escalation - Batman wears a mask, so Joker wears a dress. You'd be a fool not to see it coming.

The issue of escalation is the only one of the three that Rises doesn't completely ruin. Which makes it a success, I guess, but hardly a rousing one.

The thing is, if it's even happening, and that's always supposed to be a chicken-and-egg sort of question where Batman and his villains are concerned, escalation is supposed to be directly tied to his accomplishments. In the beginning, there's the mob, whom normal police can't handle. Then there's Batman, whom the normal criminals of the mob can't handle. But as he cleans up Gotham from the normal criminals, standing as a symbol and putting himself very squarely in the spotlight as the hero of Gotham, his presence inspires a very different kind of criminal. Super-criminals, if you will. Or supervillains, if you're feeling less fancy.

In Begins, Batman is basically fighting against ordinary crime, plus Ra's al Ghul, whose plot predated Batman's appearance and so cannot be said to be inspired by his presence. But once he's mopped the floor with those guys, along comes the Joker in Dark Knight, a supervillain to face off against a superhero. The Joker could've run rings around the GCPD, which is probably why he never bothered to; as a man who clearly craves constant entertainment, tangling with the police would've been unbearably dull. But Batman, ah, now Batman offers a worthy test of his deranged mettle! And so, you'd think, the same could be said of Bane. And, well, it sort of can be. But at the same time, it really can't.

If the presence and success of Batman is meant to be at least theoretically the cause of this escalation, then it can't really be used to explain Bane's presence in Gotham. After all, when Bane's plot begins, Bruce Wayne is a retired shut-in with a bum knee, and it's been eight years since anyone saw Batman. Batman can't be escalating the situation if he's not around. Bane represents a larger threat to Gotham than the Joker did, so it sort of works, but only in a purely superficial kind of way. Where the Joker had henchmen, Bane had an army. Where the Joker wanted to frighten people, Bane wanted to completely change them (apparently). Where the Joker had a few rigged buildings, Bane has a nuclear bomb. Where the Joker was a purely mental threat to Batman, Bane can both out-think and outfight the dark knight. But while the threat itself has grown larger, it's done so independent of Batman, who if anything has de-escalated the situation by hanging up the cape and cowl for nearly a decade.

So, yes, escalation. The situation itself is biggger and more dangerous than in previous instalments, but not through anything Bruce Wayne or Batman have actually done. If Wayne had left Gotham entirely after he decided to give up on it years before the movie starts, if he was living in seclusion in the Himalayas or in the jungles of South America or in a little domed hamlet on the North Pole, Bane's plan wouldn't really have been affected in any way. And for any Batman story to talk about the issue of escalation that surrounds Batman, that's sort of a bizarre situation to engineer.

So, three key themes that run through the trilogy, and Dark Knight Rises kind of demolishes two of them in its own stumblebum kind of way, while the third just sort of stands in the corner, out of the way.  Hardly a triumphant close to one of the biggest original trilogies to hit the box office in the last, oh, decade at least.