Guadalcanal Diary Part 1 - The Cunning Plan

2022 is the 80th anniversary of the Guadalcanal campaign, one of the pivotal moments in WW2 in the Far East. Over on the Blood Red Skies Ready Room, stalwart Gísli Jökull Gíslason mentioned he was thinking of running this as a campaign where players could report their game results and this would be collated into a coherent campaign narrative. Brave man!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1649101651822260/search/?q=guadalcanal%20campaign

I'm up for this. It ties in nicely with the Midway releases and based on his previous Battle of Britain campaign should be fun.

So I've decided to do the Japanese. Here is the plan. 

I intend to run a Zero Squadron and a bomber unit of G4M Bettys initially. To be a bit different I'll be using the less common A6M3 Zero rather than the classic A6M2s. 

So that's it - two Squadrons worth to prep - six fighters and three bombers - should be easy enough ???

Watch this space........

Loot Boxes one year on. Rolling the dice again

Last year I mentioned my annual dip into the murky world of loot boxes in computer games. Read it here if you missed it https://twtrb.blogspot.com/2020/12/loot-boxes-in-computer-games-my-world.html 

Actually I should probably of read that again before pressing the "buy" button this year because a bit of reflection may have been worthwhile. 

Last year as I mentioned I got 30k Gold, 72 days of Premium and 4 mil in silver. This year I got 28k Gold, 48 days premium,  and 2.9 mil in silver - all down. I should add the price remained the same. The total "value" of all that is about £100, so still more than the sticker price of £85 for the bundle. 

Last year they included some already released low tier Premium tanks in the boxes, and if you got one you already had, you got the gold price as compensation. If you were a new player this was quite good, as it gave you some interesting tanks to play. If like me you probably have them, and anyway don't play low tiers that much, it was a nice boost to gold. This year they've been looking at their spreadsheets and realised that if they released "new" low tier tanks in the boxes not existing ones then the old guard like me would not get the gold compensation........ I can still sell them, but only for silver NOT the more valuable Gold. Kerching............

Now on to the Tier 8 Premiums. Last year I was hoping to get the GSOR tank destroyer, and I did. A year on, how has this worked out? I got three Premiums. The coveted GSOR, an ISU152K Soviet tank destroyer, and an Italian heavy tank the C45. I've played 166 games in the GSOR, 20 in the ISU and 4 in the C45. I do enjoy the GSOR but it's limitations - mostly a reload time between clips about as long as the Christmas holidays mean it is a novelty rather than a first choice, and the others are Ok but of no real interest to me at the moment as I am not really going much on the Italian and Sov lines.

This year there are three new Tier 8 Premiums, and two being recycled. Also for the first time this year the drop rate - ie the chance of actually getting one, was published, and it is 2.4%, so if the dice roll as expected you should (hopefully) get 2 in the 75 boxes. The interesting one for me is the British heavy tank Caliban, plus there is a Swedish and US heavy, and the two recycled models are a Czech Heavy and a Chinese Medium. I suspect my ideal drop would have been the Caliban then the Czech, and I got the Caliban, Chinese and Swede. Nice to beat the odds I suppose.  

So pretty much like last year I think the conclusion is: don't buy loot boxes if you are doing so to get a specific tank - no matter how special you think it is. If you play regularly and would have spent that sort of £££ anyway over the year on premium accounts, fill your boots.