Podcast Reviews, From Start to Now: Hitting On 3’s

For years, gamers have been reveling in foul, unmentionable and unspeakable jokes: slurs, fart jokes, crude sexual references and absolutely vile insinuations about each other’s mothers. Cooler heads in the community would warn time and again that such conduct would drive away more sensitive minded members of the wargaming community and that soon, there would be consequences for the depravity, but still the party continued.

With exponential increase in excess, the gamers writhed in a cataclysmic orgy of  double entendre. No topic was sacred. No subject was left unviolated. Bad liquor was consumed, dice were rolled and the innuendos roiled forth in blistering waves of viscous moral decrepitude.

And then it happened. The energies reach critical mass and the very fabric of the universe rent open and a mewling, laughing god was born, rolling in its open afterbirth and spewing forth an endless series of new ways to describe male genitalia.

And thus, Hitting on 3’s was born.

Hitting on 3’s is a newer podcast, starting around last July. They don’t talk about a whole lot of 40K, though it is mentioned on occasion. At the moment, they’re spending some time getting to know Warhammer fantasy and are a little pre-occupied. It would be fairer to say that they’re a tabletop gaming podcast with a fairly strong focus on Games Workshop products and some other nerd topics thrown in for good measure. In the beginning, they did have a segment about movies which was entertaining and, surprisingly, stayed on topic. Unfortunately it has been subsequently dropped.

I enjoy their shotgun approach to the hobby. It’s never focused on any one thing and their coverage of other tabletop games, issues in the gaming community and their reaching out to create a gaming community help to give them a unique feel among other Warhammer 40K podcasts. They’re a Jack-of-all-trades gamers podcast and it’s a nice change of pace from the uber-specialization of podcasts like DeepStrike Radio and The 11th Company.

They are also the raunchiest, most disturbed podcasters that side of the Mississippi and I cannot recommend them to anyone. Ever. Slanesh is their patron demon and they are spreaders of It’s good word. I have never laughed harder at a podcast, never felt sicker and never more offended. And I will continue to listen to them until they are called Home to the Warp.

I give them three near-vomits, a wave of nausea and a belly-laugh.

Links:

Hitting on 3’s Website

Previous Podcast Reviews, from Start to Now:

Deepstrike Radio

The Overlords

The 11th Company

The Screaming Heretic

-D-

Podcast Reviews, From Start to Now: Deepstrike Radio

Next up on my series of reviews of Warhammer 40K podcasts is Deepstrike Radio, which focuses almost entirely on the lore and background of the game.  Deepstrike Radio is one of the few podcasts I’ve listened to that has such a restrictive focus. The Screaming Heretic, Eternal Warriors and The Overlords all tend to move about the hobby, touching on whatever subjects that happen to interest them at the moment. However, if you’re less interested in tournament play or tactics and you spend way too much time googling the exact mechanics of geneseed and have questions about what Alpharius is really doing, than Deepstrike Radio is for you.

Deepstrike Radio also wins the award for Most Improved Podcast. Their early episodes were, for lack of a better word, juvenile; Lots of cussin, goofin off and no real direction for what they would talk about. I was worried I was in for a slog. However, once Big Jim joined the cast, things began to straighten out and Deepstrike Radio settled on a format and stuck with it.

They choose one topic in the 40K background (Blood Ravens, Emperor’s Children, Bad Moons) and then talk the hell out of it. They cover the origins, what’s going on now in the narrative and even how the story has changed through the editions (I especially liked the episode on Tzeentch). If you don’t want Black Library books spoiled for you, you need to be prepared to hit the skip button, though they usually give fair warning before unleashing key plots points. They also take questions from listeners, build army lists based on the fluff they’ve just discussed and give modeling and painting tips to create a more fluffy army.

The current batch of hosts share a good mix of lore knowledge and ricochet off one another very well. It’s one of those shows that I’ve embarrassed myself by laughing out loud while at work.

All in all, this has become yet another podcast that has entered into my regular rotation. What The 11th Company does for tactics and tournaments, Deepstrike Radio does for the narrative and lore of 40K.

I give it five interrupting wookies.

Links:

Deepstrike Radio Website

Previous Podcast Reviews, from Start to Now:

The Overlords

The 11th Company

The Screaming Heretic

-D-

Podcast Reviews, From Start to Now: The Overlords

I don’t think I could have picked a podcast more different than The 11th Company in terms of tone, focus and accents. The Overlords is both a gaming group and a podcast coming out of London. The cast has rotated a fair amount in the three years that they’ve been online, but, for the most part, it’s been Jon and Steve holding the reins, with folks like Dagmire, Ciaran, Shagga, Mark, Jason, Steve #1, Sarah, Sam, Teras, Skew, Dean and many, many more hopping in front of the mike before disappearing for several episodes and then reappearing again.

The Overlords cover a broad range of topics from Black Library Books (and talking with Black Library authors like Sarah Cawkwell, Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski-Bowden and Gav Thorpe) to fluff and narrative  forging to tabletop tactics to the various specialist games that surround Warhammer 40K to slide whistles. In fact, if a subject happens to be connected to 40K, no matter how loosely, there’s a good bet that The Overlords will talk about it.

Listening to all of their episodes is interesting in that you can see a very definite trend toward more: more jingles, more guests, more contests, more people in the studio, more hours, more and more and more! And then…the build-up stopped. Now,very rarely are there more than three people on the cast talking at a time. There are only introductory jingles for the hosts and the guests and not for every segment. As a whole, the podcast has been slimmed down and is much trimmer and, while I am a little sad that it’s not as…ah, zany as it used to be, I think their podcast has hit a proper stride. It’s more focused, taut and ready for action.

With Steve’s departure a few episodes back (which was depressing, as was the absence of all the rabbiting at the end of each episode), Jon and Jason are in charge now and, with the exception of new jingles and a new singing voice gracing the airwaves, it’s much as it always has been: lots of laughs and lots of general 40K discussion.

If you’re interested in 40K in all its various forms, if you love the Black Library and modeling and painting and if you love to listen to people who clearly enjoy the hobby more than should be legal, check out The Overlords.

I give it Five Dagmire Innuendos, A Ciaran Wail of Dismay and Ten Jasons Laughing.

-D-

Previous Podcast Reviews, From Start to Finish:

The 11th Company

Links:

The Overlords Website

The Overlords Facebook Page