With most
games taking some time off it's a good chance to catch
up on some recent news, notes, and observations from around
the league:
It's looking
more and more like Decast's northern group have found
a winner in Thornapple, a once-throwaway Hobbit Assassin
who suddenly finds himself tied for the lead in party
seniority and seems poised to settle in for what could
be a very long career. Say what you like about Assassins,
but there's no denying that sometimes they work out well;
and while Thornapple has a ridiculously long way to go
to challenge any of Judah's historic numbers out of Telenet
there are already a few early similarities beginning to
appear. Rookie of the year? Probably not; as for all his
solidity he's not flashy or memorable enough to garner
December votes. But will he outlast every other 2010 rookie?
Don't bet against it…and don't bet against the party
being built around him sooner rather than later.
Every now
and then, amidst all the pain and woe as characters arrive
in the game only to face horrible fates of every kind,
a flash of inspiration and pure joy arises. Bob the Bold,
a low-level hench still finding his feet in New Dafan,
is such a one. When he waded into a deadly melee with
only his staff left to him - he'd already thrown every
spell he had - and in one blow slew the most dangerous
foe, you'd be made of stone to not join in the cheer.
He brings the gonzo, this one, smiling and enthusiastic
all the while; and while he'll most likely come to a crashing
end the first time he gets hit by anything significant
let's enjoy him while we can.
Speaking
of bringing the gonzo, before this week when's the last
time a Cavalier pulled off a full-on mounted lance-down
charge? It's quite possible you have to go all the way
back to Telenet, where Kalvin and Havelock certainly did
the full charge on more than one occasion with sometimes
spectacular results; since then Cavaliers have been a
rare breed indeed. What made Chumley's recent charge more
gonzo than great was that it was indoors (!); barrelling
down a dark passage with a light hanging off the front
of his horse he resembled nothing more than a train coming
down a tunnel. Worse yet, he missed absolutely everything;
and were it not for Ciaran's timely intervention would
have died in the attempt.
In the same
vein, nice to see beleaguered Mei-Peng finally get it
right. She managed to miss everyone in her party with
the nasty area-effect stuff she so loves to cast; a moment
later she got up a dead Ogre which then quite possibly
saved Karg's life. Brilliant stuff!
And finally,
what a turnaround for Holden. In his first year in Decast
he couldn't keep a character alive for love nor money,
and some of the ways they found to die were truly awe-inspiring.
But here he sits in Decast's southern party a year or
so later with two senior characters - hall-of-famer Perseus
and not-far-away Claire - and neither has ever died! Now,
characters lasting quite some time before dying is not
that unusual; what is unusual to the point of possibly
never having been done before is two from the same player
building up such streaks side by side (Claire's entire
career has been spent in Perseus' party) and even more
remarkable for it to happen in otherwise-deadly Decast.
From the
penalty box, I'm Lanefan Detustre.
