Monday, March 25, 2013

League of Legends - Ranking up

With the price increases by GW and the general lack of anyone playing Warhammer in the area (either fantasy or 40k) I've been spending more and more of my free time playing League of Legends.  I've even started watching some of the more prominant streamers as I want to improve my game play.  That last bit baffled my wife as she didn't quite understand why I would want to watch someone else play.  At which point I told her it's just like a sport (the only real difference is LoL is played on a computer and most other sports are played in a larger arena).  To be honest, after watching some of this weekend's European LCS, you'll think League of Legends was a major sporting event.

Anyways, the most interesting aspect I find about competitive LoL is their impressive ranked play system which I never did participate in when it was first introduced about 3 years ago.  Since I'm currently on my spring break it was only natural I spend some time gaming and I managed to grind out enough in-game points to get enough champions so I could start playing ranked matches.

Oddly enough ranked matches are really no different than normal matches and I actually really like the draft format of the ranked matches (reminds me of drafting MTG which I don't do enough of either).  After my 10 placement matches I managed to land in Tier 1 of the Bronze Division which in layman's terms is basically the best of newly ranked players (see my profile here).  Will I play enough to get higher?  I dunno, but I do want to try and hit Gold division (at that point I think my nameplate becomes a cool golden colour).

So begins my journey through all the ragers, haters, leavers, afkers and feeders to try and reach Gold division.  For anyone interested my summoner name is Deathwing40k and I like to jungle (though I have played every role now and it has dawned on me that I need to get a few champions for each role)

Monday, March 11, 2013

League of Legends - Returning to the League

So as mentioned in my last post, I have recently gotten back into League of Legends (otherwise known as LoL).  Not entirely sure how or why to be honest.  One of my friends just asked if I played and I said yes and he invited me to a game.  I kinda felt bad though as I have a lv30 account and he just started so the skill disparity was quite obvious (even if I had not played in about two years I stopped just before season 1 started).


Sunday, March 3, 2013

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 3 - How they found the Fox

Alright, so it's been a while since I wrote about Outlaw Shizzle mostly because it's been a while since we all got together.  To give an idea of our group, we're all old gamers around our 30s (maybe not as old as some gamers and definately not as young as some) so we've got obligations outside of gaming.  Being a teacher, I tend to have a bunch of stuff to mark or plan (and this planning isn't about what monster or insane dungeon to throw at the party) so some weekends just don't work for me.  Others in the group have out of town jobs or kids or work late or whatever.

We're all still gamers at heart so we try to get together as often as our schedule permits to game out.  If we can't get together, well there's a lot of online games we play (lately the group has been playing a lot of League of Legends).  Speaking of League of Legends (or LoL as it's come to be known as), I've been playing the game since it got out of beta off and on and I am amazed at how popular it has become as well as the plethora of champions available (I remember when Udyr, the first non-beta champion, came out). Currently I've been playing as a jungler with Xin Zhao or Jarvan IV mostly because of their way awesome Warring Kingdoms skins.

Anyways on to a recap of Outlaw Shizzle Episode 3 - How they found the Fox.