October 2019 – CodexCaster's Contribution

TW:W2: Felkon ascends to the throne of the Everchosen by winning the 5th iteration of the event.

On the path to the title he defeated the reigning Everchosen champion Tlaxtlan Soothsayer. He was joined in the final by HjalleNalle a new player invited to the tournament who took it by storm, getting to the final without dropping a single game. It’s fantastic to see new players coming to the tournament and doing well. It’s also good for the game to see new Everchosen champions.

In the first battle of the competitive final HjalleNalle played Greenskins into Felkon’s Norsca, he brought a mass of Orc Arrer boyz and used them to great success as he spread them wide and picked apart the slower Norscan advance after eliminating their skirmish units.

In the second map, Hjallenalle took Lizardmen into the Wood Elves of Felkon. Hjallenalle had done his homework on Felkon and how he likes to play Wood Elves with use of Wild Riders and Forest Dragons, and picked a strong counter to that style of play focusing on aerial units. Unfortunately, Felkon completely flipped the script and brought a vast army of mostly tier 1 archers. These archers wiped out most of Hjallenalle’s vanguard deployed air force almost immediately. Having removed that value from the map, Felkon could focus fire down the remaining expensive units. Despite some excellent engages from Hjallenalle to try and bring it back there was just too much volume of fire to deal with.

Felkon took the lead 2-1 by convincingly winning the third map. He played Lizardmen versus Hjallenalle’s Beastmen. Felkon brought a Slann mage priest of light with Temple Guard and some long range artillery to focus down the beastmen single model units. Use of Birona’s Timewarp buffed up the front line Lizardmen units to be almost unkillable. The Beastmen giants did manage to pick the stegadon and do some damage but the massive units of infantry remaining managed to clean up the fight with Felkon’s army only losing 188 models.

The final map was Felkon’s Dark Elves versus Hjallenalle’s Chaos. Felkon brought his favourite unit The Chill of Sontar and used his elite infantry to screen while his repeater crossbow cavalry were able to pick apart Hjallenalle’s army. Whenever Malekith was getting focused he would send him into combat supported by that core of infantry that was never far away.

Creative Assembly hosts these invitational tournaments after major content drops, and this Fall Invitational comes weeks after the Hunter and the Beast DLC pack.

The regular on screen talent of Turin, Italian Spartacus and Loremaster of Sotek were joined by newcomer PartyElite, who hit the ground running maintaining the high quality commentary and analysis that Total War fans have come to expect from Everchosen streams. The broadcast was as entertaining and insightful as ever.

Total War: Warhammer 2 provides a unique esports experience with fast paced yet incredibly tactical battles, varied races and a plethora of talented casters and players. It’s great to see Creative Assembly putting on these events and investing time into the competitive side of their product.

Richard Lewis forced to share fictional writing to prevent it being used against him out of context.

Veteran esports journalist Richard Lewis, winner of the 2016 Esports Journalist of the Year award, has revealed a previous interest in creative writing and fictional work in order to stop the material being used to blackmail him.

In a stream on October 16, Lewis spoke about how he was made aware of a group of journalists who were going to use this material out of context to attempt to do the most damage to his reputation. The stream was focusing on showcasing the abuse that he had received having blocked over 100 members of the Overwatch community.

During the stream, Victoria Rose from Fanbyte tweeted the message “Get off my feed or we’ll share your old WordPress”. This WordPress blog is a platform that Richard used to develop his passion for creative writing, and display segments of a novel to share with friends. Having had no audience since 2011 Lewis noticed a spike in traffic to the site around August this year. The intent of those who would use the material would be to take this fictional work out of context and present it as truth that Lewis believes. The blog contains segments of a novel called The Romantic.

“The Romantic, was about a chauvinistic, bitter drunk who worked in a call centre and was miserable and the only way he could feel a connection to real life anymore was basically by seducing women but doing it with really horrible cynical means, and it was an ironic title because obviously there’s nothing romantic about that.”

During the stream Lewis showed screenshots of emails to publishers, published writers and previous girlfriends sharing sections of the work as evidence that it was indeed fictitious. In the interest of full disclosure and to remove the threat of blackmail, Lewis then read aloud the “most incriminating” sections. He did so to remove the power anyone had over him in using the material for blackmail stating;

“I always believe that, when people are blackmailing you and doing it so brazenly, that you have to neutralise the power. You can’t let people blackmail you for things, especially things, that you do not have to be ashamed of.”

Lewis shared the link to the already publicly viewable blog and encouraged viewers to read the entries for themselves. In order to get to the extracts mentioned, a user will have to scroll past journalistic works on the same site. This change echoes the change in direction of Lewis’ career moving more into journalism away from the creative writing. Any user can see therefore, the change in style dictated by the differing purpose of the work be it fictional or journalistic in intent.

In making all this public, Lewis has been clear that he will not be blackmailed and has gone on the record to prove that this material is fiction and should not be used as direct quotations from the author himself.

“I’ve got e-mails from the time proving they are fiction, I can put you in touch with fellow writers, publishers that reviewed and assessed this fiction, I have the original manuscript over there, I can release original unedited copies of the work, I can release the novel as it is to this day, which is, you know, a good ten-thousand, maybe twenty-thousand words, so you can even see the reason it was abandoned.”

At time of writing there has not been any pieces released by journalists using this material as direct quotations. Richard Lewis has urged fans to share an article he has written for Dexerto detailing the position he is in, regarding routine abuse and harassment he is subjected to by people who claim to share in his profession.

Rugby Union: World Cup 2019 – Pool Stage Review

Wales 43 – 14 Georgia
Wales 29 – 25 Australia
Wales 29 – 17 Fiji
Wales 35 – 13 Uruguay

Surface level analysis would conclude that Wales are heading into their quarter-final against France in strong form. They have won all their games in Pool D of the tournament. Unfortunately as with all things, the reality paints a more complex picture. Wales have looked stronger than their warm up games would suggest. They are probably favourites to beat France in the QF, but as a fan I’m somewhat underwhelmed.

The most recent match with Uruguay featured 13 changes to the team and rested some key players, as always with Wales, lots of changes resulted in a mess frankly. Wales were inaccurate, with so many passes going behind players or going to ground, and a fantastic performance from Uruguay made them look far more challenging than the difference in the world rankings would suggest. Emblematic of this were two disallowed tries due to two forward passes, simple errors that cost points.

This alludes to there still being a gulf between the probable players and the possible players. Wales appear to be dangerously on the edge with one or two injuries being all it would take to derail the high level of execution the game plan demands.

Against Australia, Wales were amazing in the first half but then didn’t do much else but defend for the final third (heroically admittedly), but for a moment it looked like at some point Australia were going to break the red wall again and sneak the game. Wales seem determined to kick the ball away no matter what and “trust their defence” I just wish they would hold onto the ball longer and play the final moments in the opposition half, not camped on their own line.

Wales were also given a fright against, Fiji who played really well and tore the Welsh defence apart. For the neutral these games were fantastic, but for me Wales should have enforced their will on their opposition rather more emphatically, especially versus Fiji and Uruguay.

The Welsh game plan is based around a high level of execution. Kicking, claiming the ball in the air, getting the defensive line up correctly etc are all basic skills of the game that teams will emphasize, but for Wales they all need to be there for the machine to start grinding out points. You only need to look at the Uruguay game to see how the plan falls apart when the basics are missing. We have lost a bit of the flair for a more pragmatic, approach.

Wales should have enough to beat France who are hilariously inconsistent. I expect the Welsh defence to stifle the France attack and force lots of mistakes for Wales to set up camp in the French half and start racking up points. Overall I cannot really complain as Wales have won all their pool games and will face France instead of the far trickier England. I am pleased, but the games were not ones I could sit back and relax in that’s for sure.