Progress

Not much progress, but progress. Total of 19 models painted with 4 more at the 75% stage. I'm very lucky that I'm doing a small amount of infantry. Now to be fair, I hadn't touch those last four models in like 2 weeks.

I'm getting a few hours on football sunday to paint (down from having like 10-12 hours the year prior) but I do okay when I'm diligent and paint 2 hours a night after little one goes down.

Still no idea what to do for bases. I didn't get the groundswell of ideas I'd hoped during my last post and Trent in particular was about as useful as a tampon at a senior center.

Anyway, that's where I stand at the moment.

Basing

I have no idea how to base my Martian SRO, so I'm throwing it out to my loyal readers. Any ideas?

So far I'm leaning towards a rocky/rubble type setting. I could do it then ink it red, like Mars. Or I could do more grey and black motiff. I simply don't have any idea.

Help...

Game of Battlestar last night

Tom, Jeff, and Wayne came over last night to play some Battlestar Galactica boardgame last night. Players were Helo, Tyrol, Starbuck (respectively) with me playing Roslin.

Pretty much a near perfect game for the humans. Tyrol (Jeff) was the Cylon from the start but got found out very early. Jeff and Wayne put in cards for a test, and out comes 3 negative cards. So sombody's a Cylon. During my next turn I use Roslin once-a-game skill to draw 4 Quorum cards, hoping to get the one that lets me look at a player's loyalty card. I do and look at Wayne's card. Not a Cylon.

So I know Jeff is the Cylon and I out him. The funny thing is that Wayne acts incredibly guilty, because both Tom and I thought he was the Cylon.

Anyway, its Jeff's turn next and he makes a critical error. Instead of revealing himself, he takes some actions, drawing a crisis card. Then Tom throws him in the brig. Jeff spends a couple of turns in the brig, trying to cause problems.

During that period, I convince Tom to take a -1 Morale that puts us in the red because I know the collaborator card is coming soon and if we're in the red then the collaborator stays human. At that point we were doing great with none of our dials in the red.

Sure enough, come the sleeper agent phase, Wayne is the Collaborator. Within a turn we get not one, but two Cylon battle cards. The first one places a bunch of civilian ships behind Galactica and the second one is an ambush with a basestar jumping in back of Galactica with all those civilians nearby. But, Starbuck uses her secret destiny to ditch that card and draw another one. Humans jump away.

From there it just goes in the human's favor. Jeff finally reveals himself, drops his super crisis card, putting two centurion tokens on Galactica, but Wayne and Tom take care of them. Our dials start going down with Morale, Food, and Population at 4 (Fuel never got into the red). A few more crisis later, with Jeff trying to cause problems but the humans containing them and manage to jump to Kobol, losing a population on the way.

So humans win. We pretty much had it wrapped up once I outed Jeff, but it still felt a little tense. We went from one dial in the red to three in the red in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Having only played two games it makes me wonder, if the humans winning handily is still having 3 of 4 dials in the red, then close ones have to be real nail biters.

Anyway, fun game. Hoping to make this a monthly or otherwise semi-regular thing.

Corey

Where the hell have you been?

From the Dictionary of Life's Ironies:

Plan: (n) 1) A list of things that don't happen. 2) Existential proof that God finds your frustrations funny. 3) Job security for psychiatrists.

So after three weeks of football (my prime painting season), I had a total of 3 models painted. My test models of the paint scheme. I mainly painted them during week 1. Why you ask? Well, for week 2, my wife had an event for her school, so I was with Jocelyn. It was okay, I passed the time teaching her the words "touchdown!!" (in a high cheering voice) and "football..." (in a low growl).

Week 3 was the local art 7 wine festival (my wife loves going every year). This time was miserable because I was hot and hadn't slept well at all. Followed by a visit to the in-laws for dinner in the evening. With my niece stopping by in between.

This is also compounded by the fact that the 49ers don't seem to made of suck this year, so I find myself watching the niners games. Which means I really only paint during two of the football games, with liberal stops for daughter-time, food, and shower (ranked in that order of importance).

"But Corey, there's Monday Night Football. Perfect painting time!"

Yeah, it would be. Except Mer has enrolled in a Masters program. Guess what night classes are. . .


So yeah, last weekend I was on a "screw it, I'm painting all day today" binge. I got five models about 75% done. This is a far cry from last year when I'd get 12 models done over a day and a half. I blame myself, because after I assembled the models I said "egh, this shouldn't be hard. it's like 60ish models."

God was listening. And he has a twisted sense of humor.


Anyway, pics in the sunlight of my test models:



So, I like them. I intentionally kept the paint scheme simple. Or again, that was the Plan. I guess when you're painting different shades of black, you're not being simple. But I'm not painting eyes on them. I'm going to go with "they're all squinting." Really, I just don't think it adds anything.

The black clothing is Reaper's master series Pure Black, which gave a nice matte black. I then highlighted some places with Vallejo's Black Grey from the model color line of paints to provide a little depth. The boots, belt, and gear (canteens, pouches, etc) were painted with P3 Greatcoat Grey. The boots and gear were then hit with a smoke wash.

The gun was done with Vallejo Game Color black, which is a glossy black. I picked out details and the stock with the P3 Greatcoat Grey. I wanted the gun to have a very artificial feel, since these guys are from Mars, so I labored over what to paint the gunstock to make it look like a synthetic substance. Finally, wayne suggested just doing it the grey.

The armor plates were done with Vallejo's Burnt Cadmium Red from the Model Color line. It's my absolute favorite red. The skin was Vallejo's Dwarf flesh with a smoke wash. Finally any metal bits were Vallejo's Gunmetal Grey.

Like I said, a minimal effort paint job. Hopefully it'll be somewhere between "able to sell for a decent price" and "not going to drive Corey crazy painting it."

K, hopefully more to come before too long.

First game of BSG boardgame

Yeah, I know, I've owned the game for like a month and only now playing my first complete game. Anyway, it was a blast with a lucky hit by the Cylon player destroying Galactica's last reserve of fuel.

Was a three person game. I played Tigh, one person was Kara, and another played Baltar. Baltar was a Cylon from the very beginning, but he played really well. I actually found him out early on, when he and I were the only ones putting cards in and we had 3 negative cards. There were accusations and counter-accusations all over the place. Then after the sleeper agent phase, he used his Baltar ability to look at my cards, at which point I figured he wasn't the Cylon player.

Oh but it was a double cross on his part. He "wasted" his action to allay fears. And it worked, because I basically cost us the game. See, for most of the game I was both president and admiral because of a forced resignation crisis card. I kept drawing quorum cards and gained arrest warrant, which I then used on Kara. I over-thought it and didn't go with instinct, and so Kara spent a couple turns in the brig.

Then Baltar revealed, and damaged the FTL (next jump was to Kobol but we only had 1 fuel left). I bailed Kara out with my presidential pardon, but a cylon fleet dropped right on top of us. Kara fixed the FTL, and we were two spots awya from jumping. We could afford to lose the population, as it'd win us the game. Then Baltar played his super crisis, which activated the whole fleet if we didn't come up with a 24 between the two of us. We both played our entire hand and won with a 36, meaning only the base ship could shoot.

Rolls a 4, damaging Galactica. And then flips -1 fuel, bringing us to zero. Done and done.

Baltar played it really well, with only one slip which was more luck of the draw than anything else. Sadly, I failed two chances to spot the cylon. Very early on, I had a Quorum card that let me look at one of his two loyalty cards. I was gonna choose the bottom one (the one showing he was a cylon) but I changed and picked the top one at the very last second. D'oh.

Still a fun, fun game. Can't wait to play it again, actually.

Progress

Got a few spare moments this week to do some assembly, so I figured I'd assemble some Cadians and the "Astropath" for my army. Got the Vet sergeants with powerfists and the Heavy Flamers done:

So, if you're curious, the laspistol from the cadian box is right handed. And so is the powerfist from the command sprue. Commence rant:

What the fuck!? I mean, GW, seriously, what the fuck? What moron thought it was a good idea to put everything on the Same. Fucking. Hand. Is it the same guy who thought that there shouldn't be any complete fucking left hands on the entire motherfucking sprue?

Seriously, the only complete left hand (that wasn't cut off at the wrist with the hand attached to a lasgun stock) was the sergeant chainsword hand. So because the vaunted GW planning and design system couldn't design a sprue with another sprue in mind? These guys could find a way to cram thirteen skulls on a carebears miniature ("I'm apostate bear, tee-hee!"), but couldn't think to put a couple of empty left fucking hands on a sprue?

Oh, and the heavy flamer? Yeah, the hose doesn't hook up with the hose on the backpack.


Right, moving on.


Since I have two Vendettas in the army, I figured it'd be worth the 30 pts for an Astropath. But this is the Martian SRO, so I figured it'd be cooler if the guy coordinating when reinforcements showed up would be a Lex-Magos. Also I promised Trent the Astropath in from Regimental Advisors blister. Since the Officer of the Fleet was going towards my Mordians than left me the Master of Ordnance to work with.

Without much of a plan, I sat and started snipping away. Here's a pic of him after the point of no return:


And here's a couple pics of the finished product:


I really like the way the robes flowed on the back. The front, not so much. It's been warm here the last couple days and some of the green stuff dried a little quicker than I thought it would so when I to sculpt folds the greenstuff tore. I tried smoothing it out, but it was too late. But it's okay because the mechadendrites draw attention away.

Do people think I should elongate the right sleeve to cover more of the dendrites or just leave it? I'm reticent to go back, because its usually when I try to fix things that I make them worse.

More Malifaux

So it seems Malifaux is the new hotness in the gaming world. At Game Kastle, they literally can't keep the starter boxes on the shelves.

Anyway Here's a batrep to the game I played last night. The summary: my faction was a crew of Mercs, where each model is really good at what it does but is specialized. Her faction was all about dirty tricks (think Cryx).

Also, if you want an in-depth review of the game, it's Here. Scroll down to the post by Fallen Heretic if it doesn't take you there directly.

So I have to say, despite being very Warmachine-ish (a game I simply couldn't get into), I like it. The alternating activations does make it harder to set up the combos. The skill of the game isn't the tactical skill, its about keeping your head. You have six cards in your hand that let you "cheat" results (imagine in a dice game that you had some pre-rolled results that you could use once per turn, but only a finite number of pre-rolls and some of them suck).

Anyway, those six cards generally come to 2-3 actions. That's because you have to wound after you hit and so on. So you can guarantee pulling off 1 action every turn how you want. You can probably pull of 2 actions. In a perfect world you could do 3, but remember he's got a deck of cards too so you end up using some of your cheats defensively (not being hit, saving throws vs magic, etc)

So the trick is to keep your head through the alternating activations and the bad stuff he throws at you. You sometimes have to let the little demon in the form of a toddler stab your guy in the back because if you burn your cards you won't have them for the nasty trick you have up your sleeve. It's essentially a mental discipline game, trying to not obsess over things with an alternating activation game, which is hard to do. It's basically the same idea behind Wargods where you sometimes have to take your lumps and try to win the fight you can win instead of getting caught up in playing tit-for-tat.

One downside: the models piss me off. Wyrd minis are purrty, but I HATE how the models are assembled. More than one model has these fiddly little bits. Big giant weapons that attach to the main model at the wrist. Come on! Give the weapon the whole forearm or the whole frakking arm so at least there's a lot of surface area to pin. But no, it joins at the wrist, leaving you to try and pin a surface area not much wider than a paperclip or else the lever principle works against you the first time that katana catches on something when you pick up.

But other than that, the minis are nice. The fluff on the game is over the top, one of those things were it goes so far over the line its funny:

Mad hatter serial killer? Lame.

Fat, bald undead dominatrix? A Fail at shock value.

Undead whores who can distract models by gettin' nekkid? Okay, now that's just hilarious!

Guard and some Malifaux

Progress has been slow on the new IG. I did like 10 cadians (5 voxcaster dudes and 5 regular guys) awhile back, just to get myself familiar with the sprue. Last week I poured out the Kasrkin and started work on them. The first ten took awhile with all the flash, and I'm having a hard time getting large enough blocks of time to assemble stuff.

So I've had to start working like Trent: little bits at a time. I've been assembling a guy or two while Jocelyn eats or plays before she comes and asks me to read her a book or something. Anyway, here's the progress wth 4 more kasrkin to assemble (and 10 backpacks to add).


And here's the starter kit for the Malifaux game. I buckled down and bought the steampunk guys with some Mercs on order at the game store. Still interested in trying the mad hatter & his undead harem, just for the black humor of it, but that'll come later.


The models are:
Ramos
Steamborg
Clockwork Arachnids

Old West & a new game

Actually got in a game of Legends of the Old West last Friday. We're supposed to be working on a translation of AE WWII (a game I have given up on) to a free game called No Limits, which is basically an attempt to use the Vor rules for a generaic design your own army type game.

Anyway, Jeff (who has most of the WWII minis) couldn't make it so Gavin and I busted out our Old West minis so I could try out my Mexican Banditos list that I'd had for a couple weeks. For those who don't know, Legends of the Old West is basically the Lord of the Rings rules with the Mordheim warband & experience rules. And its actually better than the sum of its parts.

The Mexican banditos are an outlaws variant from the Alamo supplement, which is a $45 book with mostly army stuff (think the return of the king rulebook) and like 3 pages of skirmish rules.

Anyway, my banditos tried robbing the bank of a town where the only law is a posse of cowgirls. (Gavin has this thing for collecting female minis; if they came out with female Tau he'd be all over it). The banditos had a good showing early but took some heavy casualties from the trail boss, and we were both making Head for the Hills tests. But the trail boss, a mini pattern after Sharon Stone from the Quick and the Dead, realized she was all alone and decided she'd had enough. So a good showing and I've decided I like these guys. I'd very much like to do an Old West campaign, buuuut. . .

A new game has come out, called Malifaux. Thematically its a magical steampunk & Victorian horror minis game. From what I can tell, a group of guys said "hey, let's make Warmachine better."

So each Crew is led by a "Master" who is a character and can cast certain spells. Technically all models can cast spells but these guys are master sorcerers. Then there's minions and henchmen you hire for your crew. There's 4 factions and mercenaries (which can be fielded by itself).

There's no focus to be handed out. There are "soulstones" but only certain guys can 'boost' their spells & actions. There's alternating activations so the combo-ing won't be as bad as Warmahordes, or so I'm told. There are some 'companion' models which activate at the same time as other models so we'll see.

The big difference is the use of a deck instead of dice. Tests are handled with a 52 card deck w/two jokers (red joker is critical success, black joker is crit fail). To pass a test, you have to add your stat plus the number value of the card you flip from the top of the deck to equal/beat the target number. (for things like combat, it's an opposed test).

If you don't like the card you flip, you can replace it with one from your hand (you draw a certain number of cards from your deck at the start of your turn). Or, if your guy is a wizard, you can spend a finite amount of your 'soulstone' to flip a second card which is cumulative with the first (i.e. boost the roll).

Some abilities & spell require you to have a certain suit to pull off the effect in addition to beating the target number. So a spell may have a 13 target number and also require one of the cards to be a club. Then to top it off, some casters always count as playing certain suits. So a caster may always count as playing clubs, and a really powerful spell requires a TN 17 with a club & a heart. Since the caster "comes with" a club you only need to add a heart card to the total.

So I'm thinking I'll proxy some stuff and give it a try this coming Friday. There four factions are: Guild (the law enforcers, with a number of old west style gunslingers), the Resurrectionists (necromancers), the Neverborn (demons), and the Arcanists (techno-magic & beast masters).

I'm currently leaning towards the technomancers (but not the beast master guys in the faction) or the ressurectionists. There's a mad hatter master, who's a serial killer dandy running around with an entourage of dead hookers (who have as spells: lure, distract, and undress). Plus there's a dominatrix undead hooker. The black humor of it is what's appealing to me. The other faction is playing the outcasts. They're essentially like the Ronin from rez, where they basically are their own bevy of special rules, but some of them look fun.

I'll post more after I've given the game a try.

Mordians Vs Tau

Right took my Vet IG army vs my friend's Mech tau. He had 2 HQ crisis suits (one with a bodyguard), a hammerhead, a skyray, 3 devilfish (each with 6 man squads), 4 stealth suits, and 2 piranhas.

We played Annihilation with the Dawn of War set up. I managed to steal the first turn, and proceeded to do some decent damage on rounds 1 & 2. After that, my luck kinda went downhill until turns 6 & 7. I'd penetrate his vehicles, but fail to do anything. I blew up 1 vehicle all game. I even had a squad with a grenade launcher and 2 rapid firing plasma guns against an AV10 open topped piranha. Nothing.

In the end I managed to sneak a win with kill points: 6-8. Mainly I got lucky in killing his Shas'o in melee and through a judicious use orders. All in all, I really like the vets. It's kind fun playing a BS 4 army after years of regular IG. Other wrap-up thoughts in no particular order:

• Carapace is nice. Being Tau, there was a lot of AP5 shot being hurled around, and being able to still take armor rolls was nice.
• Have I mentioned I hate the 5th ed wound allocation system?
• Orders are interesting, with some upside & some downside. I made good use of Bring it Down (reroll hits vs vehicles) and Fire on My Target (enemy rerolls succesful cover saves). The latter especially let me win the game because I could put a hurt on his guys hiding behind his skimmer. The downside is the fact you have to do the orders first. More than once I'd have a unit in range for an order that I'd actually like to fire after something else because depending on how that other unit did would depend on what the order-receiving unit would shoot at. But since I'd have to allocate the orders first I essentially had to decide my shooting for the whole turn at once.
• Those Tau Disruption Fields (or whatever makes them always count as obscured) are insane. 5 pts to carry around your own cover is just nuts.
• The Officer of the Fleet is a good 30 pts. My friend forgot to roll for his stealth suits on turn 2 (not that he needed them), but the Officer of the Fleet penalty to his reserves kept him out of it the next turn.
• The camo netting is coming off the basilisk and russ. There's just not enough cover out there to be worth the 50 pts.
• The powerfists, at least 45 pts worth, are coming back in. I ended up being close that if I'd wanted to, I could've charged a couple of times. And there was certain his Shas'O that gave me troubles with his pop up attacks.
• 3 special weapons and a heavy weapon in a BS 4 squad with a 4+ save is really a nice change of pace. (I know I said that already, but I occasionally repeat myself for emphasis) Really like playing a whole new army.
• And my Chimeras live down to their cursed reputation. One chimera fired at a crisis suit unit for 3 turns, with both a heavy bolter and multilaser, without inflicting a single wound. It wasn't until turn 7 that I finally got the sumbitch.
  

Orks & Mordians

So I've settled on a couple army designs for my IG, and I've decided to shelve the Orks. This edition of 40K just isn't that favorable to footslogging armies that can't fleet. I've had my Orks torn apart a couple of times and I beat down Trent's Nurgle marines enough to know that with the scenarios out of the book, the way transports, blast templates, and terrain work, that footsloggers just get hosed in this edition.

I supposed I could change up the Ork army a bit, but frankly, I don't want to. Anyone who's seen my Orks knows I put a lot of work into conversions. So for the moment, they go on the shelf to await the pendulum swing of a new edition.

But the IG are the big winners so far. My Mordians feel quite nasty at the moment. I've devised two lists:

The first is the usual Mordian 442nd that you know and love:

Command Squad:
Commander: power weapon, plasma pistol
4 Veterans: standard, plasma gun, lascannon
Officer of the Fleet

5 Ogryns

6 Ratlings

Blue Platoon
Command Squad: autocannon, 2 grenade launchers
Squad: autocannon, grenade launcher
Squad: autocannon, plasma gun
Squad: missile launcher, plasma gun

Green Platoon
Command Squad: autocannon, 2 meltaguns
Squad: autocannon, plasma gun
Squad: lascannon, plasma gun
Squad: missile launcher, plasma gun

Veterans: lascannon, plasma gun
chimera: multilaser, heavy bolter, extra armor

Veterans: lascannon, plasma gun
chimera: multilaser, heavy bolter, extra armor

Banewolf: heavy flamer

7 Rough Riders

Leman Russ: hull & sponson heavy bolters, extra armor

Basilisk


Pretty straight forward, added the banewolf and the officer of the fleet, which is actually pretty in fluff for this army: a 40K version of a British Empire, with a high degree of coordination between fleet and the MEF (Mordian Expeditionary Force).


Okay, the second list is me going "hey, I can take all veterans if I wanted!"

Command Squad:
Commander: power weapon, plasma pistol
4 Veterans: carapace armor, standard, meltagun, lascannon
Officer of the Fleet

5 Ogryns

8 Ratlings

Veterans: carapace, lascannon, 2 plasma guns, grenade launcher

Veterans: carapace, lascannon, 2 plasma guns, grenade launcher

Veterans: carapace, missile launcher, 2 plasma guns, grenade launcher, powerfist sgt.

Veterans: carapace, missile launcher, 2 plasma guns, grenade launcher, powerfist sgt.

Veterans: carapace, autocannon, 2 meltaguns, flamer, powerfist sgt.
chimera: multilaser, heavy bolter, extra armor

Veterans: carapace, autocannon, 2 meltaguns, flamer, powerfist sgt.

8 Rough Riders

Leman Russ: hull & sponson heavy bolters, extra armor

Basilisk


I had to drop the bane wolf and a chimera to get carapace on everybody, so we'll see how that works. I use the chimeras mainly to shoot anyway, but I'll keep the one so that I can use that squad as my active response team. Or I can give it to the Ogryns.

The last two Vet squads have been coined my 'Come Get Some' squad. I found that against Trent, charging in would deprive me of some needed rapid firing with plasma guns and heavy weapon. So I gave the CGS squads assault weapons and autocannons, which wouldn't pop 3+ armor anyway.

The carapace on everybody is a bit of a stretch, but I find as I play more and more that I simply don't give a fuck. Especially when most the people who'd whine about it a) don't have painted armies themselves and b) are just whining little pissants.


Anyway, got a game set up for Thursday against a buddy's Tau. I'll be paring the Vets down to 1500 pts, which is basically dropping the Ogryns, ratlings, and rough riders. I also skimmed a few items here and there to put camo netting on the Russ and Basilisk. I just want to see if they're worth it.

Post 20 Games Thoughts:

So I'll send you to Trent's Blog for a summary of us playing 20 games from Friday night (technically Saturday as we started at like midnight) to 3:30pm Wednesday. We included several games of Bloodbowl and a pair of 40K games, on which I can comment.

The 40K first: in the two games I took the Veterans list I drew up. Essentially, it's six units of Veterans kitted out with special & heavy weapons, with 4 powerfists and 2 chimeras thrown in there. My random thoughts:

-The list is a little stronger than I thought, but also I was playing against Trent's nurgle marines on foot. And foot mounted armies are just the punks of this edition.

-The wound allocation rules for 5th ed are dumb.

-the big weakness to the veterans is, as I expected, they're still in flak armor. My guys are Mordians so it didn't feel right. Still if I played this list in the future, I'd give them carapace.

-power fists probably get dropped. If I gave them all carapace it might be worth it, but at a 5+ save they don't go on veterans. Often I'd die to a man before I could get to Init 1.

-Ogryns rock again. The pendulum swings.

-The wound allocation rules for 5th ed are dumb.

-Ratlings are fun again, with the sniper rifles being rending. They might've been rending in 4th and thus even better, but I honestly don't remember. Played like 10 games of 4th ed.

-The template weapon rules are weird. It makes my Russ and Basilisk more accurate because the deviation is reduced by BS and the tempate's big enough I'll probably still hit something. But the flip side is my grenade launchers seemed less accurate when firing the frag grenades. That's not true I know, but it felt that way.

-Oh, and: The wound allocation rules for 5th ed are dumb.


While playing at the store, we happened to be playing next to That Guy. He felt the need to explain to me that he hated guard and always rooted for the other player on the table when Guard were on the table. A direct qoute from our conversation:

Him: "Even when I'm playing my marines against Guard, I root against Guard."

Me: "Uh. . . if you're playing, wouldn't you always root for yourself?"

(later...)

Him: "I don't cheese out and play to win. I take weird stuff nobody takes. Like I put my command squad on bikes and then take an apothecary so my commander has Feel No Pain."

Trent: (Later when we got home) "Yeah cause nobody does that."

(I wish he'd said it at the game store. He's too much of a nice guy.)


Anyway, part of That Guy's lecture were how people move the Valkyrie onto the board 6" and then fire all 3 TL lascannons. His words: "the model's too long, so that a 6" move won't get it on the table."

So I asked Trent to build me 2 custom flying stands for my Valks. The first will be low to the ground with the access hatches 2" from the ground so my storm troopers can get out. The second will be like 8" tall and angled so a 6" move will get the thing on the table from nose to wingtip. If someone's gonna get chincy I'll politely ask him to point out where in the rules is says that a skimmer can't fly at a vertical angle.

Seriously, don't be a douchebag because GW built a model not compatible with its own rules. And don't say they built it that way intentionally, to balance the Valk. You're giving GW too much credit.


So, onto Bloodbowl: played 3 games with my new Desert Dogs (using the Norse rules). They're fun, very much my team. They can throw the ball pretty well and thump people pretty good. But there's going to be a lot of whack-a-mole with them. Going from AV 9 Ogres to AV 7 norse is a rough transition...

We also playtested two new pitches for Kublacon: Moot Bowl and Ulthuan Bowl. Moot Bowl has the Halfling building little hidey holes that people can run through bypassing enemies. Essentially they're teleport pads. They're fun, but the rules needed a bit of work.

Similarly Ulthuan bowl needed some work. The elves demand TDs and if you don't score quick enough they start zapping your with a wizard's lightning bolt. Again, we hammered out some details and I think people will like them.

Huh...a whole month

So those following my other blog know where I've been lately: finishing my book. That's why the lack of anything to post.

Last week was the first time I touched my minis since painting the blood bowl team. I've started assembling the Martian SRO. Believe it or not, this is the first time I'd assembled any of the plastic Cadians. When the last codex came around, I bought a box and promptly gave it away a couple years later. I had my mordians, I was happy.

Anyway, so over a couple days I put together 5 vox guys and 5 regular grunts. No pictures or anything at the moment, because, well, it's just some assembled cadians. Maybe when I get the entire infantry core painted up I'll post it. Actually, not a bad idea. Everytime I paint a squad I'll pull them all out and take a picture. It'll be this sort of "time lapse" photos of minis being painted.

Blood Bowl team finished

Right, here's some semi-blurry pictures of the BB team. I'm too lazy right now to bother taking good pictures, so here's what I've got. The team will be fore next year's Kublacon:

8 Linemen
2 Throwers
2 Runners
2 Berzerkers
1 Ulfwerener

3 RRs, FF 2, Apothecary, 2 Asst. Coaches, 2 Cheerleaders.

The Ulfwerener is the big burly dudes (I painted both of them in case I do well and can add another into my team). The Berzerkers are the dervish-looking guys that're bare chested with their arms in the air.

Anyway, here's the pics.

New Blood Bowl team

You know eventually I'll get to the Guard army (aka "the whole reason I started this blog"). But I succumbed to the gamer's arch nemesis: New Shiny Syndrome. I saw them at Game Kastle and after pondering, realized I could run these guys as Norse. Plus Mer has another long week at school (end of year) leaving me with Jocelyn for 12+ hours a day. The small blocks of rest (aka "Jocelyn's Naps") are strictly decompression periods. So a infertile soil for writing, but the perfect time to paint.

And here's the results, my first four test models:

Just some pictures

I didn't get a chance to take pictures of my finished Tau before Kublacon, so here here they are. I love the Micro Art bases, and I like the paint jobs. They could've been done a bit better, but by the time I realized it, Kubla was like 2 days away.





Also, I have some conversion work to do for my Orks and my IG. The Powerfist sergeants for my IG was the quickest, so they got done first.

Kublacon Report: Day Five

Right, so we wake up, go through the morning rituals. I'd actually gotten to bed at about 1:00 so I was positively refreshed! Anyway, Scott and I went back to our game while Manny watched Jocelyn.

Remember how I said there'd been another chainsaw on the field? Well we did it wrong. I forgot to add the crowd frenzy for the first chainsaw...which made the result a pitch invasion.

And this was where the wheels came off the bus for Scott: first, his chainsaw guy got beat up by the crowd. Scratch 1 chainsaw and the Dwarrf holding it is KO'd. Then 5 of his models were stunned. I also had 5 stunned models, but 4 of them were Snotlings.

Interest story: there's this one snotling doing a "na-na nanaa!" face. He spent the whole game getting stomped all over the place...but was never KO'd. His new name is Petey Bootprint!

From there, it was just a beating. I think I won 1-0 or maybe 2-0. But the game was fairly unimpressive as the Dwarves simply could never get enough assists when it came to dodging. I'd knocked out Scott's Troll Slayers early, to prevent just that sort of thing.


After the game, we had an hour before I had to take Manny to the airport. He and Scott decided to try and squeeze in a quick 1500 pt game of Cardhammer: Dwarves vs Undead.

This time Manny learned to leave the bony guys home and took Zombies. Basically he took a ton of Zombies, 2 Zombie trolls, and an abomination. The game got called just as it got interesting, with Scott busting through the zombies at various places, but the final rush into a pinch ended up exposing the flanks of his units to the second wave. The Longbeards had taken a rear charge from the zombie trolls in the center while some crossbowmen were desperately trying to hold off the zombie trolls on the left flank.

So we packed Manny up and took him to the airport. It was sad to see him go, but I can't say the weekend went too fast. We'd crammed just about as much gaming as we could with an average of 20 hours of awake time each day. Still, I was sad to see my friend go.

Getting home, Jocelyn went down and I suggested Scott try and beat the Ogre Kingdoms BGFW list. Scott also wanted to see how taking crossbowmen as Core would be. So we configured a Kingdoms tree, giving him enough gold to get to the keep. We made Hawkshold our mercenary faction, but neither of us took them.

My list was the usual: 4 Ogres, a Hydra, and a Healer Mage. His list was 4 units of crossbowmen, 2 ballistas (to kill that pesky Hydra), and a unit of Longbeards. The mission was Total Warfare with the terrain set so there was a small hill in the center flanked by a fence on either side.

He deployed with his crossbowmen on the left and center, his ballistae on the center-right, and his longbeards holding the right flank. I deployed basically centered with the table: Hydra in the middle flanked on either side by two units of ogres. The healer mage went behind on the left side of the hydra.

It went poorly for Scott. His crossbowmen moved into short range, but my Ogres were on him by turn 3. Sadly, on turn two, they'd ended up abutted to the fence. So while I didn't get slowed down by it (being Large), I did benefit from it. Meanwhile, the hill and the Ogres to the right of the Hydra shielded it from the Ballistae. Meaning the Hydra only took a wound or two, which it healed.

The Ogres on the right of the Hydra, though, took the brunt of the Ballistae firing. Essentially both units were weakened to the point that when the Longbeards got their, they sent the one surviving Ogre packing.

On the left flank, though, things were different. The Ogres and Hydras simply ate through the four squads of Crossbowmen. Combined pinches, failed fear/terror checks, the Healer Mages, and Scotts inability to draw red cards when he needed them meant the Dwarves were done for.

Eventually the Hydra turned, and ate the first Ballista. It got charged by the Longbeards, but the sheer number of attacks the Hydra had meant that even attacking to its flank, it simply ate the wounded Longbeards. Then is was a charge into the flank of the last Ballista with something like 12 attacks.

So my desire to build a fun, silly Ogre Kingdoms-esque list has resulting in a pretty tough army. They all move 5" and the Healer Mages can really make the difference with key heals at the right time.


But with that game, the Kubla weekend came to a close. Jocelyn woke up, and I went about trying to clean up the house from the whirlwind. Evenetually Mer came home (we forgot to take the car seat out of her car, so I couldn't take Scott home), we had dinner, then I took Scott home.

All in all, a great con. Much better than last year (which was the least fun I'd had at Kubla, so a poor comparison). Probably as much fun as 2007, which I ranked as the best Kubla I'd been too.

I'll post some pictures of my finished Tau later. The tanks has been absconded while the Tau have been pre-sold. Meanwhile, I got crazy and bought a new Blood Bowl team (what is wrong with me?). Because, you know, with the new IG army, the Ork Flash Gitz I have to build, and the IG guys I need to convert and paint, I don't have enough stuff to do.

Final Game Count: 16.

Kublacon Report: Day Four

More gaming, you ask? Isn't Kublacon over on Monday?

Well, yes. But I don't stop gaming until the Fat Man gets on the plane (and this year, not even then).

Waking up Monday was rough. Rougher than the post-Capt'n Morgan wakeup. Three nights in a row with 4 hours of sleep made the two nights with 6 hours seem like I slept in. Mer and I were literally dozing off while Jocelyn ran around the hotel room. But I got up and went down to get the coffee for the room, this time taking Manny & Jocelyn with me.

We did breakfast with everybody, including the minis coordinator and his friends. There we tried explaining Blood Bowl to my step-mom. Luckily, one of her daughters had moved to England so she understood the wackiness of "rugby with the forward pass."

From there we chatted about what to do next year, which was frankly new. Usually we're so done by Monday that next year isn't even on the radar. But we had all agreed to build new Guard armies and play them at Kublacon. So we decided to run a tournament, and as you can see, we don't believe in running things "Straight Up."

Breakfast done, we said our goodbyes to Trent, Darby, & their entourage. We packed up, checked out, and headed home. Manny & I stopped off at Game Kastle to unload the terrain while Mer & Scott took Jocelyn home and put her down. Both Mer and Jocelyn crashed for a good four hours while Manny, Scott, & I chatted.

After the women-folk woke, we did dinner at Armadillo Willy's. When we got home, we decided to play some Bloodbowl, since Scott had missed the event he'd been looking forward to. His Dwarves played Manny's Halfling on the Tzeentch Bowl pitch.

This about sums up the game:
On turn 4 of the second half, Manny was chanting "Pit-ty T-D, Pit-ty T-D"

By turn 6 of the second half, Manny was chanting "Make. It. Stop. Make. It. Stop."

As Manny said, one of the worst beatdowns he'd had in awhile. It was literally like Tzeentch had it in for him. For example:

On one drive, the roll on the Kick-Off table was Tzeentch letting people re-roll a reroll. People could use multiple team RRs. Manny had like 5 team RRs, so this would help him, right? Yeah, except when a Halfling went to dodge out (or pick up the ball, can't remember). He rolls a 1. Re-roll. Rolls a 1. Re-roll. Rolls a 1...

Yeah, Manny burned through 5 team Rerolls at once. I swear I thought he was gonna have a stroke.

Next kick-off result: magma burst. Every model on the table makes an unmodified Agi or be hit by magma (opponent rolls to break armor). Scott playing Dwarves had like 7 guys get hit. Manny only had 4 Halflings hit. Even the Treant managed to dodge.

Then came the armor: none of Scott's Dwarves got hurt, but 2 of Manny's Halflings were casualties and 2 were Stunned. It was hilarious...for me anyway.

So it's turn 8. Scott has scored (I think it's like 2-0 or 3-0 by this point), leaving Manny with one chance to throw the (halfling holding the) ball. Except Tzeentch changes the rules again: on a 4+ each team is allowed 3 GFIs. On a 3 or less, they're allowed only 1. Scott rolls a 3.

And of course Manny has a near perfect series of rolls: a 6 to pick up the ball, a 6 for the throw, a 6 for the Halfling landing, and a 6 for his first GFI. All of which brings him one square away from the endzone.

"Make. It. Stop."

"Make. It. Stop."


Right, so game #2. It's like 9:00pm at this time, so we know we're only going to get in half a game. It's Scott's Dwarves vs my Ogres on Thunder Bowl. No ref, special weapons are not ejected. But fouling and special weapons piss off the crowd who storm the field and stun a number of guys equal to your Crowd Frenzy rating. Plus you add the crowd frenzy to the kickoff, making storm the field more and more likely.

The first half is pretty uneventful (it's Dwarves vs Ogres, folks) save for a few things: on one kick off roll after my snotling scores the crowd throws in a chainsaw. Yup, a Dwarf with a chainsaw. Scott started protecting that guy more than he did the ball carrier. And I can see why: the chainsaw dwarf put my Ogre in the casualty box.

But the Dwarves failed to score and the half expired. We figured we'd set up, and roll on the kick off table then call it a night. I rolled up another chainsaw. This one too ended up on Scott's side of the field.


Greaaat...


Game Count: 14.5

Kublacon Report: Day 3 (pt 2)

So after the BGFW tournament, I ended up missing the painting awards. We'd set up the tournament so that we could wakl into the hallway and see the awards, but I needed to deliver some food to my step-mom who was babysitting. Then we sat and chatted while Jocelyn fought going to sleep. By that time, the awards were over.

So I went down and picked up my entries. I didn't rank (Kubla is using the open system, where each entry is judged on its own merits and not on a First, Second, Third system), which didn't surprise me. I had just entered some of my nicer 'table top quality' stuff. I was a little disheartened, maybe I'll advise Wayne to include a "gamer" ranking next year.

Anyway, so I met up with Manny to do some playtesting on a game. I can't really talk about it much, except to say a couple things: One, the system needs a lot of work. Two, Sunday night at Kublacon is not the time to do playtesting. The best you can do is identify problems. Forget brainstorming solutions.

So after we finished up, Manny and I decided to play a game of Cardhammer. It was midnight and I'd gone to be at 3:00am every night up till now, why wuss out on night three? So Manny pulled out his Undead and I pulled out the Ogre Kingdoms list (4 Ogres, Healer Mages, Hydra).

Manny decided to try an all skeleton force. As you can see, he doesn't play Cardhammer much... ;-) It was something like 8 units of skeletons (spears & horde) plus 2 units of trolls. That's not enough points, so maybe there were some archers in there or maybe he drew a bunch of cards. It was late...

We played Border Defense with a giant forest in the middle of the field. We had a special scenario with assassin's war. This proved to be pretty powerful as there were a lot of units that were on their last wound when it came time to assign assassin wounds.

The forest pretty well divided the match: I had two ogres on the right facing a bunch of skeletons while on the left I had 2 ogres, the hydra, and healer mages facing both skeleton troll units and then a bunch of skeletons.

The right flank went about as you would expect: my ogres crashed into his line, killing skeletons by the handfull but their sheer numbers meant pinches all around for him. The end there was that he had something left as opposed to my nothing. By the end of the game, he had two units of beat up skeletons and I had a unit of ogres that fled, rallied, and then got the last wound taken off as they killed their attackers.

The left flank was where the fun happened, for me anyway. ;-) The first unit of trolls got pinched between the hydra and a unit of ogres. Unfortunately, this exposed the Ogre's flank to a unit of skeleton spearmen. This fight was to be my bane. My ogres, attacking their flank, could not kill the frakking skeletons! Between my healer mages and his Reanimate, those two would still be there slugging it out.

Meanwhile, my Hydra was slowed by the forest, meaning the Skeleton trolls got the charge. The fight was a slugfest, but my Hydra eventually won the day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ogre-skeleton slap fight my other unit of ogres punched through the Skeleton line. In the end, the Hydra and Ogre unit carried the load and had to come back and help the flanked ogre unit.

Yeah, a unit of skeletons flanked and rear charged by a Hydra and ogres? Was ugly. But the insult? The unit of ogres that had been flanked was down to its last wound. So next turn Manny assigned the assassin hit to it.

At this point we called the game. I was going to get my healer mages and ogres off the table. However, the Hydra would be forced to run around the forest and run down the unit of skeletons over there. It had 1.5" on the skeletons, so the best Manny could do was delay.

We had a discussion as what the Hydra would do after he killed the skeletons. He was on Close and couldn't be direct controlled. So we saw no way I saw to steer him off the table. So we concluded that the Hydra just sat there, gnawing on the carcasses. Which mean I got 600 pts off the table, which was a draw.

A fun game, but oy some bad rolling on my part. So it was 2:30, and we packed up to head upstairs. The con was basically over at this point, but I'd reached my goal of games. From herein, it was all bonus.

Game Count: 14.

Kublacon Report: Day 3 (pt 1)

This 7:00am wakeup was simultaneously better and worse than the previous day. It was better because I was simply used to it, but worse because apparantly Captain Morgan had hit me in the head with a club while I slept. But I shrugged it off, got some coffee for my wife and stepmom, then headed down for the BGFW tournament.

We ended up having 5 people, but that became a bit of a blessing. This mean most people would get a bye one round, and I could tell most people needed it. We had a good spread of armies: Hawkshold, Umenzi, Orcs & Goblins, Dwarves, and High Elves. Ajax from the forum came to show us all how BFGW was played.

I took the bye round one, being adjudicator and food gopher. Meanwhile Ajax thumped Scott and Trent layeth the beat down on Manny. With my gold I picked up the Mine and Logging Camp with my gold and readied my High Elves.


Round 2: vs Ajax.
The scenario was Ambush or Trap. I chose the mission and to be defender so that I'd have an extra Command Action, something High Elves could use. My army was: Celestial Guard, 2 Batte Squads, a unit of Elven Swordsmen, Bowriders, Battle Mages, and Archers.

I set up in a line with a lake on my right flank and a small patch of forest on the center left. The battlemages and archers went in the forest. The swordsmen and bowriders went on the eft side of the forest. The Celestial Guard went on the right, flanked by the two Battle Squads. The trio of units were protected by the river and the forest.

Ajax had something like 5-6 Javelineers, a unit of worthy, a unit or two of Atlatlmen, and 4 Shamans. He deployed all on one long table edge, ready to swarm my line.

The game began with my army holding while his advanced to short range to throw javelins. Two units advanced to charge into my Archers and Battlemages. It was pretty reckless putting them on the front line, but if I had put them behind my melee troops, Ajax couldn't just come on from the other side. I figured a line was the least bad situation.

As it was, my archers & battle mages whittled down one unit before they got charged. From there, I directed my units to attack, figuring Ajax'd just whittle them down with javelins otherwise. I made selective use of Sprint, sending my swordsmen on the left after a unit of javelineers and sending my bowriders to charge the unit beating on my archers. Meanwhile the Battle Squads and Celestial Guards got stuck in.

The battle got heated with some sacrificial units being sent into the fray. Ajax flanked my bowriders with his Shamans while I rallied my Battle Mages whose whole job was to eat a flank charge from the Atlatlmen and buy my Battle Squad an additional turn.

It came down to a turn where we both inflicted enough damage to force Courage Checks in key places. On the far left, my Swordsmen forced a courage check on his javelineers (who did the same on my swordsmen). Meanwhile, on the center right, my Battle Squad had to take a check while his Javelineers facing my Celestial Guard had to check. There was one or two other (the Bowriders and/or Shamans I think).

What's important is that both sides passed all check. Which pretty much spelled the end for the High Elves. If Ajax had failed any of his checks, I would've had flank charges into pinches. However, we both stood firm and it just became a grindfest. Unfortunately we had to call the game for time, and extrapolate the results based on what we saw. We called it a decisive win for Ajax, 4 pts for him and 2 pts for me.

Anyway, I took my gold and was able to buy the Tavern and the Barracks, which'd prove fun for the next round. For me anyway. ;-)


Round 3: vs Trent.
With my whopping 5 campaign points I got to choose the mission. I picked Last Stand as the attacker. For the Tavern, I got the Recruiter so I was even more points up on Trent (Last Stand gives me like a 300 pt edge). I decided to get a little tricky and traded around units to get the following: Celestial Guard, Healer Mages, archers, 2 units of Swordsmen, 1 Battle Squad, & Bowriders.

Trent had: 2 units of Goblin archers, 2 units of Orc spearmen (or maybe swordsmen), a unit of Trolls, a unit of Goblin spearmen, and a bomb chucka.

The terrain had a river bissecting the table with some shallows in the center. On the left, Trent set up Orc spearmen, gobling spearmen, and goblin archers. I set up opposite them a unit of swordsmen, the battle squad, and the bowriders.

On the right he set up the Bomb Chucka, trolls, Orc spearmen, gobling archers. I set up my Celestial Guard, a unit of swordsmen, the healers, and the archers.

The game wasn't even close. Not from any tactical genius on my part, but from Trent never having seen Celestial Guard before. He figured the Trolls could take care of them. They charged up, outrunning his Orcs which he lashed to keep them up. The Trolls and the Clestial Guard got stuck in while the Swordsmen and the Orcs duked it out.

Unfortunately, all his ranged stuff was far behind while my archers were right behind the line. Oh and the Healer Mages...yeah that's a brutal combo with Celestial Guard. His Chucka would roll like 1-2 hits a turn despite needing 1s, which would promptly come off the next turn. Meanwhile the Troll discovered that Defense 4 is a tough nut to crack.

On the left, it was simple math: 3 units (one being cavalry) vs 2. I used Manuever Mastery to skirt the bowriders around the flank forcing him to give me his flank if he went forward into my line or turned to face the cavalry. So the Battle Squad fought the Gobin spearmen while the Orcs took the pinch from my Swordsmen and Bowriders.

The irony is that Trent did better on the left than the right. The Troll went down hard which allowed the Celestial Guard to the flank the Orcs. Once they were done, the line simply advanced on the poor the Goblin Bowmen and Bomb Chucka, wiping them out in the last turn of the game.

On the left, Trent managed to rout the unit of Swordsmen with his orcs. The Goblins died a hard death, and the weakened Orcs finally broke against the Bowriders. Amazingly, they lived to run away. Sadly, they never got to get back into the fight as the Bowriders ran them down. The Battle Squad then moved up and dispatched the Goblin Archers.

So a amazingly resounding victory wherein I whiped the Orcs and Goblins off the table. My only casualty was a squad of swordmen in the red, which I had the Command Actions to rally in the last turn as the Bomb Chucka was being carved into kindling by the Celestial Guard.


Round 4: vs Manny.

The mission was Ticking Clock with three terrain pieces (2 small forest and 1 small hill) in a diagonal pattern across the field. We were at 2500 pts this round, and I decided to be mean. Manny called me worse than the guy at the 40K event, but egh, it's Manny. It's not like he's people. ;-)

The source of my evilness? Take the above list from the last game. Drop a unit of swordsmen to upgrade a battlesquad to Elder Blade swordsmen Then add a unit of Celestial Guard. Yeah, I'm a bad man.

Manny had Hawkshold and he took: 2 Longbowmen, 3 Militia, 3 swordsmen, 2 heavy infantry or greatswordsmen, and a unit of Knights. This is from memory so the points may not work out.

Manny put his militia in the center with his swordsmen and great infantry/heavy infantry on the flanks. The knights went on the left flank. I had a bunch of watchtowers at this point, so he had to set up a good chunk of his army. I put the two Celestial Guard in the center, with a swordsmen unit on the right. The healer mages and archers went behind the Celestial Guard. The Bowriders and unit of swordsmen went on the left flank. (I've lost a unit of swordsmen somewhere in there, but I honestly don't remember what they did).

The real action all took place on the left flank, because the terrain in the center slowed down that engagement. His Knights made a beeline for my Bowriders, who I direct controlled to keep them in place while my swordsmen advanced. I knew that if I made my bowriders do some wonky manuever, he wouldn't expose his flank to me so I just kept them in place and shot (doing no damage).

Next turn, the swordsmen flank charged the Knights while my bowriders moved around the other flank. No need to give the Knights a charge bonus & impact hit just for the pinch bonus. So on the turn after, the Bowriders flanked & pinched the Knights. The only problem was that Manny had a unit of swordsmen and Greatswords moving up to flank my swordsmen and Bowriders.

This is where the center came in to turn the game. Manny's Longbowmen had tried to whittle down my Celestial Guard, but the combination of the range, their defense, and my Healer mages meant that wasn't going to work. At about the time the Knights were getting their first flank charge, the Militia met the Celestial Guard.

Yeah, that's a bad matchup.

The Celestial Guard on the left blew right through them and the next turn charged the Hawkshold swordsmen about to flank my swordsmen attacking the Knights. The Celestial Guard would eventually win, while the Great Swordsmen were just shy of charging my Swordsmen against the Knights (stupid 2.5" move). This allowed me to finish off the knights, then wheel and charge reserve units on the left flank.

It basically was all over after that. My right flank took a beating, with my Battle Squad forced to rout. (I think I had the second swordsmen squad there, it's a bit hazy). The eight turn saw me direct controlling to back away, ceding them the forest but avoiding a pinch. I held the central hill and the forest on my left flank. Meanwhile, my Celestial Guard advanced to final rush a unit of Longbowmen, forcing them to rout while my Bowriders turned the flank, giving me two units in his deployment zone.

So it was another crushing victory for me. When we tallied the points, I had 15 campaign points. Ajax had beat Trent, giving Ajax 16 campaign points. I heartily congratulated him as the winner. while shaking my fist in curses. Had Ajax failed any of his courage checks in that one turn of our game and I might've pulled out a draw. That net 2 pt swing would've put me over. Curses!!! 8-)

No seriously, it was good fun. My score was more indicative of the fact that I have a few games under my belt while Trent & Manny didn't get to play much. I have a feeling they're gonna thump me next year.

All in all it was good fun times. The campaign system worked perfectly, and we're planning on running an event again.

Game Count: 12.

Kublacon Report: Day 2 (pt 2)

After Rezolution, it was pack the stuff up, drop it off upstairs, then grab some dinner, then back down to the miniatures hall for our 40K for Pink Slips event.

This event has a storied history. Essentially Trent tried running it in 2007, but without many takers. So we decided for shits & giggles to do it at Kublacon. I'd always wanted to play with a Demolisher and some Tau Crisis suits, hence my painting for the last month or so.

The event ended up being much more popular than we'd anticipated, with 8 people clustered around my sole 8x4 green table cloth. Oopse.

Anyway, round 1 was my Demolisher vs Trent's drop podding Black Company Furioso Dreadnought. Yeah...bad matchup. Round one, Trent dropped in, moved up, missed with the meltagun, and then charged the tank. Pop goes the tank. Done on turn one.

But wait. You can't assault out of deep strike. So we put the two vehicles back where we found them. I turned and fired with my lascannon and plasma cannons, missing horribly. (I was using the old IG Codex because otherwise I'd come out to more than 200 pts). Furioso moved up and shot, killed my tank with the melta. Game one done. Twice.

Now Trent could pick from either my Tau crisis suits or my tank to take to the next round. He choose the crisis suits. Which actually suited me fine, because I got to play with his Movie Marine.


Round 2: Demolisher & Movie Marine vs Nurgle Demon Prince & IG Veterans in a chimera.
If you don't remember, the Movie Marine list is in White Dwarf 300. I've played the whole list, and it's really fun. This time I got to play a Space Marine Dude and his 5 extras (essentially 5 extra wounds).

The mission was to grab a piece of terrain in the center of the field. I advanced to get some shots then withdrew to put the objective forest between me and the chimera, to essentially deny shots. My movie marine layed on some Assault 3, Rending love to his demon prince, putting it on its last wound before charging in. Sadly the dice went poorly and my movie marine died. The demolisher made up for it by killing the demon prince.

Unfortunately, because I'd backed off, the random game length meant Manny held the objective. So despite staring down a demolisher from 24" away, he won.

Now you may ask why I made such a bonehead move. Well, there's two answers. First, I really am capable of that level of stupidity. Second, we made brought down about 15 or so Captain Morgan & Cokes. And I make them like so: pour the Mooooooooooooooooooooorgan, pour the coke. Three of those and I was having myself a good time.

Also, there was one other reason I was happy to concede to Manny. I knew who would pay the winner of our match. This guy played like this event was a Grand Tournament. He was looking for the most brutal combos he could. In fact, at one point, he looked at me and Trent and said:

"You know, I didn't really think about the combinations you could have until after I got to the con. I mean, I just took some stuff out of my Ork army from the Golden Gargant [the afternoon's 40K tournament]. But you know, there's some real powerful combos you could pull off. I mean, you'd be unbeaten if you brought a Vendetta full of Khorne Berzerkers!"

I remember this moment, despite the booze. Trent and I were playing Cardhammer (more on that in a second). We heard him speak, I saw Trent do the 'blink, blink' and then look at me. He wanted to say it, but Trent's just too much of a nice guy.

I, however, am not. I looked at the guy and said "You're completely missing the point of this event."

Anyway, so while the people who had our armies played, Trent and I decided to play a game of Battleground. We figured we'd brush Trent up on his skills. I honestly don't remember what Trent took in his army (again, the booze) but it was Orcs and Goblins. Mine was my "Ogre Kingdoms" army of: 4 Ogres, a Hydra, and a unit of Healer Mages.

We played until after the 40K event ended. My Ogres got all up in his coolaid with a quickness. Charging wolf riders into Ogres...bad idea. Beyond that, it went bad for him. Trent might be able to chime in with more because it was a bit hazy for me.

We ended the BGFW game early because the Mini Coordinator for Kublacon wanted to try out the Pink Slip. He borrowed Trent's Movie Marines and I used my Crisis Suits. I realized after I deep struck them that dropping them in 6" away was a phenominally poor idea. I had the guy down to 1 wound and I think all his extras (maybe he had one left) before he broke me in melee combat and ran me off the board.

Then from there, I think Trent played him. Like I said...things were a bit hazy in the evening. But still it was fun. In retrospect, it was probably the least fun event I did. Not because any individual game wasn't fun, but because I had so much fun with everything else that, well, something has to be near the bottom.

Anyway, so it was 2:30am and I was feeling no pain, but I knew that was a tab that was gonna come due with interest at about 7:00am. By now, that feeling that this was a pattern was replaced with grim certainty. Only I had a "okay, this is what I'm gonna do. Bring it." attitude. Went up to the room, had a couple glasses of water, watched about 20 minutes of MSNBC's obsession with prison documentaries and crawled into bed.

Oh, and by chance, if that guy I called out at the 40K tournament ever reads this: buddy, my name is Corey Somavia and I live in Santa Clara, Ca. You got a problem with what I'm saying, you can come find me. Just know that I'm a big fan of all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights.

Game Count: 9 (or 11)

(I count the 3 games of the 40K event as 1 game, because they were all really short, but if you wanted to count each seperate I'm at 11.)

Kublacon Report: Day Two (pt 1)

Promptly at 7:00, my daughter stood up in her crib and, seeing her parents, decided we should wake up as well. Meredith got and gave her a bottle while I wondered how the little gnomes managed to put sandpaper under my eyelids without me noticing.

But it was Kubla. I didn't come here to sleep. So I got up, went downstairs, and got some coffee for me, Mer, and my step-mom (babysitter for lil'un). The one nice thing about having a 7am wakeup is that I could slowly wakeup, have a costco muffin, and chat before I had to get going.

So shower and it was time for Rezolution. Luckily we had Dan crashing in the other hotel room and could use his cart to get all our terrain. The three Crews I brought all came down in 1 army transport. The three tables worth of terrain took up substantially more space.

The Rezolution campaign-a-ment used the system from the Outbreak book, slighty modified. We were playing the linked scenarios as our Crew tried to escape being trapped on the Serenity moon colony. Players got bonus campaign points for having a fully painted Crew and for choosing "non-standard" leaders. For example, Trent had a Bride of Lilith as his leader and got 2 campaign points.

I took my cursed Ronin Crew. I think in the two or so years since I assembled them, they've won like 2 games. Mainly because I take a lot of the not-normal choices. The crew is:
Maven
Fiddler
2 Ghosts
4 Fists
2 Bricks w/miniguns
Esper

Since my fiddler was my second (a non-standard choice) and my force was painted, I got 5 campaign points to start. I gave my Bricks +1 RCA, my Esper +1 craft, and Fiddler got +1 Nrv and Medic.

Round One: vs Dravani.
The scneraio was Resupply, essentially fighting over buildings to loot. Trent's Crew was: Bride, 4-5 Baggers, 2 Volkoda, 2 Wraiths, 2 Souless, and 4-5 Shamblers.

Nominally the game had deactivated gun turrets that our hackers could control, but that was just a roll for Trent to fail every turn. My hackers stayed away from the HPT because there was the Bride and Vokodas cruising up that flank. I put a serious amoutn of firepower into them and they went down, but the baggers and shamblers ran right up the middle.

My fiddler basically took the Souless out of the game with a suicide flamer run that ended up with him living. That was because the Baggers and Shamblers went into the middle where he had been, and beat up on the Fists, the Maven, and the Ghosts.

In an act of desperation, I moved the Esper up and rolled for Volcano know it'd catch my Bricks and my surviving Fist as well. I managed to pull it off and set everyone but the Fiddler, the Bride, and two Shamblers on fire. Five Baggers standing there screaming "Make it stop, it burns!".

I then followed up with the Fiddler who flamed the Bride and the last two Shamblers. It what would be the crucial roll of the game, I did just one wound shy of putting the Bride into Critical Damage. The next control phase, she put the fire out and charged the Fiddler. The baggers also put out the majority of their flames.

From there it was all downhill. All I had left was one Brick (the other was on fire) and my Esper. I tried in vain to shoot the Bride with the minigun, but she was just too dodgy.

So win for the Dravani. Trent rolled to see what type of buildings he found. Essentially he could take equipment out of the back of the Outbreak book, either ghost decks & software, cybernetics, or guns & equipment, depending on what he rolled. He got the Ghost Parlor and upgraded his Wraiths to some better decks. I picked up some campaign points, but honestly can't remember on what I spent them.


Round Two: vs CSO.

The scenario was the Beacon, which was getting inside a locked door to send out a homing beacon to bring the shuttle. Oh yeah, it was guarded by toxic zombies, with more zombies coming on during later turns. It was actually designed to be a short game to prevent people from just killing the enemy and winning by default.

Scott's CSO was on loan from me, so I knew the Crew well and it was tough. Marshal, 4 Peacekeepers + a major, 5 CSO troopers plus a Sergeant and Flamer trooper, a Technician, and a Field Engineer.

The field was set up so that the entrance to the objective building was down a wide street. There were some sandbags, but let me tell you, that's not enough against a CSO gunline.

So the early turns was us manuevering and killing zombies (rather quickly, actually). My Fists ran up (in teams of 2), killed the Marshal, then got gunned down. Not to worry, I thought, and sent in the second Fist squad. One got beat down by CSO in melee and the other failed to kill a single guy.

Crap.

The upside was that I managed to hack open the door and then put the second Ghost (with his wonderful Sneak ability) right by the front entrance. I won initiative next turn and resisted the urge to try and lay down a beating. Instead I walked inside and activated the Beacon.

So I picked up a quick win with a low casualty count. Still can't remember the advancements I gave to people other than I gave the Esper the +4" bonus to her Craft powers, thinking how much fun it'd be with Jaunt.


Round 3: vs APAC
The mission was Escape. The premise was simple: get on the shuttle by turn 6 and it'd takes off. Hackers inside the shuttle could speed up the countdown while hackers outside could slow it down. Oh and did I mention the zombies? The start coming on from the sides, with extra ones coming on behind the Crews who lost last round ("they're right behind us!")

That was Manny's plight. He was playing my APAC crew, but the build was exactly the same as his that had gotten lost at home. It was: Arashi, 2 Panthers, 2 Senshis, Yureii, 4 Enforcers w/Lt. and Heavy, 4 Enforcers with Shotguns. Manny had won Round 1 and gotten some extra guns & equipment. So his shotgun enforcers had smoke grenades and his Yureii had a shotgun.

This was an annoying game with a funny ending. The annoying part was Manny and I each had terrible luck for half the game, just not the same halfs. My first half was so frustrating I was banging my head onto the table. His was the second half.

Remember that extended Craft range for my Esper? Well that's not all that impressive when you fail 5 of 7 Craft rolls, needing a 6+ on two dice. Meanwhile, Manny claimed the shuttle early parking his shotgun enforces inside while the rest of the Crew caught up. He moved his other Enforcer squad onto the elevated platform I'd bought at the flea market the night before.

This would prove to be a mistake as zombies came on behind him. While they couldn't operate stairs and a ramp, the zombies did trap the Enforcers on the platform. Meanwhile, the zombies gang tackled a Panther and eventually dragged the robot down by sheer weight of numbers. The Enforcers on the ramp would whittle down the zombies but it'd be too little too late.

Meanwhile inside the shuttle, my fiddler and Fists engaged in a battle of attrition. There was charging and flaming, followed by shotgun blasts and Arashi psychic powers. My Fists let me down again. One got stabbed in the back by an acrobatic Senshii. On my left flank, the zombies charged my Maven, eventually bringing him down and zombifying him.

Then Manny's luck turned. My Esper managed to jaunt her Bricks to short range. Despite cover and with Storm Shield, a short range minigun is nothing to be ignored. Five dice, all coming up 5 or 6. Dead Arashi.

The zombies charged my Bricks, killing an zombifying one but my Esper jaunted right into the shuttle. Inside, a badly wounded Fist and a Ghost fought a Senshi while my other Ghost fought and killed the last shotgun Enforcer. The Fists lost the combat with the Senshi, but thanks to Manny's ability to only roll 1 wound (which became a theme), no harm. Then my Ghost wins combat and kills the teenage super soldier.

At the end of the turn, the shuttle lifts off, but not before a zombie manages to come aboard, killing my Ghost. I'd won with 3 models in the shuttle but decided to roll it off to see if the people survive or if the shuttle would spread the zombie plague.

My Brick minigunned one of the zombie but the other was unhurt. It charged the wounded Fist, killing and zombifying him. Then it was a lather, rinse, and repeat: I'd Jaunt out of combat with a zombie and shoot, but not kill all of them, then the surviving zombie would charge in. I'd jaunt out of combat and shoot...

This went on for 2-3 tense turns before the last zombie was killed, leaving my Ghost, Brick, and Esper. We joked about how that was right out of a horror movie, minigun blazing away in a pressurized shuttle and all... It was an entertaining end, and a fun game, but frustrating for us both at points.

Honorable mention to the table over where Trent and Scott faced off. Here's some advice: if zombies are coming on behind you, don't form a gunline 8" from the board edge. The Dravani got off the table with all but his Volkoda and one other model. Meanwhile, the entire CSO force was zombified. They literally ran out of zombie models.

So the Dravani carried the day, escaping from Serenity Station almost entirely intact. By the end, two big wins going into rd 3, the Dravani were scary. Both the Baggers and the Shamblers had Scout to go with the Volkoda, so their motto was "all up in yer grill, byotch!".

I was extremely pleased with how the tournament worked out. Most the games were close, and everyone had fun. I just wish we'd had more people. Anyway, second half of Saturday report will come later.

Game Count: 7.

Kublacon Report: Day One

Promptly at 6:30 am, my daughter alerted me that it was time to get up and start packing for Kublacon. She thinks she wanted to be picked up and fed, but she was wrong. Six hours two days in a row meant two cups of coffee, but I'd done worse.

Right, so long story short: we hoped to get out the door at 2:00pm (after Jocelyn's nap) and we got out at quarter of three. Not Jocelyn's fault either, she was awake at 2:00. Mer and I hadn't showered and we hadn't finished packing away all our stuff.

Also, if I had a motto for this Kublacon it would be: "Aw crap, we forgot that." Minor stuff from utensils for sandwiches and yogurt, to fairly important stuff like the cart we use to lug around our terrain. If Dan hadn't spent a night in one of our rooms, we wouldn't have had a cart come Saturday when we had like 8 boxes of urban terrain.

Anyway, we get there, get checked in, and the porter arrives with our stuff in like 10 minutes instead of the 90 it took last year. Before we knew it, it was 6:00pm, and time for some Bloodbowl.

The BBCS (Blood Bowl Championship Series) is essentially a 3 round league with 12 wacky pitches, each with their own set of rules. This ranges from relatively minor (playing desert, so always hot and bonus armor because of the sand dunes), to somewhat weird (playing in Mordheim where people can bounce-pass off the walls and drink wyrdstone potions), to outright hilarity (playing on a mostly secure forcefield over a lava pit and having Tzeentch change the rules every drive to allow such things as: no rerolls, rerolling a reroll, two blitzes a turn, 3 GFIs a turn, 1 GFIs a turn, etc.).

Teams are 1.3 million GPs and start with 30 SPPs, but other than that it's a 3 round league. We had five people, would've been six but Scott had "issues" with registering (at one point we thought he'd been banned from the con and escorted off the property). We ended up picking up a person who basically played a demo game.

So we have 5 or 6, depending on how you counted it. This was half of the 12 we had last year. But then again, while we had 12 start the tournament we only had 4 play round 3. Most of them said it was because of the flea market, but there was a lot of grousing that the rules for the pitches were wacky and they thought they'd be playing straight up Bloodbowl. Read the F'ing event description, people.

This year, everyone who started finished and had a great time. Hopefully we'll have more next year. Right, so my team and my games:

The Ten-Sea Titans
6 Ogres
9 Snotlings
FF: 0
Rerolls: 3
Apothecary
1 Asst Coach
1 Cheerleader

Before the game, I spent my 30 SPPs to give 5 ogres an upgrade. I got 4 skill upgrades and a double. Three ogres got Guard, one got Break Tackle, and one got Block.

Round 1: Ogres vs Halflings
The pitch was the Norsca Bowl with snow drifts (+1 to armor but GFI fails on 1-2), rowdy crowd (+1 injury roll if pushed into the crowd), and a revised weather table with more cold effects.

So a word to the wise: play a game of something less than 3 months before you're gonna play in a tournament. Will make the learning curve a bit better. I was just getting used to the Bloodbowl rules and Manny scored. Stupid Halflings. But it was okay, I thought, because I'm Ogres. Ogres are all about ball control (stop snickering, it's a valid football term). I held the ball for like 6 turns, slowly plodding down the field while laying a beatdown. Sure I could throw just like the halflings but I figured I'd play for the second half.

Silly, silly me. Manny got the ball back and scored on his turn 7 or 8 of the first half. Then came the second half and he kicked to me. I didn't get the ball as quickly as I should and the halflings scooted into my half and grabbed it. Three to one.

From there I decided to play for the draw. I never thought it an especially sporting tactic to sit one or two squares from the touchdown and just thump the other guy, but I was told by multiple people that it's a valid tactic for running teams. Especially when facing quick scoring teams. So with an ogre holding the football and flanked by two ogres, I kept the ball two squares from a touchdown for like 5 turns, playing for the draw.

Yeah...anyone who's reading this and saying "hey wait, the score is 3-1 for the Halflings" can count better than me. Imagine my joy when Manny informed me of this fact. Oh well. Right, a loss, no advanacements, and only 10K gp (not even enough for a snotling) I shamefacedly moved onto my next opponent.


Round 2: Goblins vs Ogres
The pitch was the Sylvania Bowl with zombie crowds (can fight/dodge free if pushed into the crowd), a necromancer for each team (dead players can be resurrected as zombies), and a zombie themed kick off table (including being pelted with body parts and zombiefying the ref).

I don't remember this game too well, except for the fact that it went bad for Trent. In fact, it went so bad for him that the parts I remember are basically a highlight reel of his humiliation. It started with him flanking his chainsaw Looney by two trolls with Guard. No problem, I put my ogre with block flanked by two ogres with guard. Pop-squish, hurt Looney.

This'd be a theme. Despite putting half his team in the injury box, nobody was killed. It was usually just a badly hurt or a KO. Still, it went badly for him. 2 of the 4 snots that left the field did so for being caught fouling. His pogoer never got to do anything before being removed. His bombadier ate fried chicken before playing and had greasy fingers, dropping the bomb at his own feet twice I think. His ball & chain fanatic carved a path through my line...and then I surrounded him so I could roll 2 block dice. Off goes the fanatic.

The real coup d'hilarity was the clutch fails. At the end of the first half, a gobbo with the ball has to dodge free of my guys (or maybe GFI), and promptly trips. Half over.

Fast forward to the end of the second half. He's got a gobbo with the ball covered by a snotling. and has to make a blitz roll on a snotling with gobbo. Double skull. Game over.

(like I said I don't remember too clearly the events, so I may be mixing them up. Beer was involved.)

So I get +1 FF (yay) and 70K in gold. I almost bought a 10th snotling, but figured "really, is it going to come down to that last guy?" Instead, I opted for +4 coaches and +4 cheerleaders.

So we had a quick 'check out the friday flea market' pause wherein I bought some urban terrain including a platform. It'd be useful for the Rezolution event the next day. Then it was back to the tournament.


Round 3: Ogres vs Pro Elves
I apologize because I don't remember my opponent's name (Sean?). Anyway, we played the Karak Bowl. It has a low ceiling (-1 to pass), stone floors (-1 to armor), and Dwarves Refs with a 'let them play' attitude (players ejected for fouling and secret weapons only half the time). Also the kickoff had skulldugery such as a rogue deathrolla, disgruntled goblins bombing the pitch, and Bugman's Special Brew.

Anyway, this game was the most fun I had despite being an utter blowout. I think I lost 4-1. But due to inducements, I could hire Bomber Dribblesnot. I had so much fun with him and he attracted a lot of attention until he ran into the one honest Dwarf ref on the payroll.

Meanwhile, the pro Elves danced around me, scoring pretty much at whim. I realized after the 2nd turn of the first half (when I was down 3-0) that I didn't stand a chance. I decided to roll out Plan B. The "B" is for Beatdown.

It's amazing. I had better results when I didn't try to win. All this silly nonsense about putting the spiked ball across some line way over there. Naw, I'd rather just hit stuff.

My personal crowning moment was rolling a twelve. On the Injury Roll. Against Prince Morianon.

Oh that was nice.

At one point, the Elf team was down to 5 players. I had 1 casualty, a snotling. It was my first of the whole tournament. Then the two guys of his in the KO box woke up and brought the Elves back up to 7 guys, allowing him to score a fourth touchdown. I decided at that point I'd do something wacky and try to score. I tossed a snotling with a ball and he managed to land and then make both GFIs. Woohoo walk off TD!!!

(don't bother me with facts like "I lost" okay? It was a walk-off TD...the fact that 'walk-off' usually implies victory is just that: an implication. I scored a TD, and then we walked off the field.)

So we cleaned up, chatted for a bit (shocking!!), and then made our way upstairs by about 2:30 am. As I lay in bed, so amped up and overtired that it took me until 3:00am to fall asleep, I had this feeling that the next day was gonna suck and that this was going to be a pattern.

Game Count: 4.

Kublacon Report: Day Zero

So Kublacon has come and past, and I'm frakking exhausted. Something about three days with a 3:00am bedtime and a very chipper little girl saying "Hiii!" at 7:00am. But I get ahead of myself...

The goal for the Kublacon weekend is 14 games from the time Manny touches down on Thursday until I drop him off on Tuesday. I don't try to best myself every year, because that just sets me up for failure. Just a healthy 14 games every year. This year I'm happy to say I blew right through it late Sunday night/early sunday morning, leaving Monday and Tuesday for running up the score.

Right, so Thursday. Day Zero. I'd picked up Scott the day before and so had stayed up a bit late chatting (me? chat too much? NO!!!). Still, got a decent 6 hours of sleep. Normally that was an extra half-cup of coffee but I was flying on Kubla-excitement.

11:00 am: the Portu-geek lands. The gay jokes commence at around 11:02. We get him some food (some whining about a bagel in the past 8 hours or some such), go to Game Kastle to pick up some terrain for the Rezolution event, then hit the grocery store for some last minute foodstuffs so we don't drop $300 on food at the con.

Between feeding Manny and Game Kastle, Jocelyn wakes from her nap (Scott was watching her, I wasn't leaving her alone people. Although leaving him in charge could be seen by some as more negligent...). She gives "Papa" Manny the hairy eyeball for the first twenty minutes and then decides she likes him. After that, Papa got hugs whenever he wanted.

Come home, BBQ some Tri-tip for Manny. By "barbeque" I mean "ruin." The bald fatman likes his meat well done. And well done tri-tip is a Geneva Convention violation ranking just shy of waterboarding and Episode II of Star Wars. I should've just taken off my shoe and thrown that on the grill. Anyway, my cut of meat was suitably rare: it had just stopped begging me to stop cooking it.

After recovering from the meat coma, we packed the game stuff in the car and got down to business: some gaming. Our tradition is to keep Manny up for 24 hours by gaming, and we went to our old standby: Battleground Fantasy Warfare (affectionally known as "Cardhammer").

Manny played Men of Hawkshold vs my Umenzi, using the Kingdoms campaign pack to generate a scenario. I honestly can't remember the scenario, it might've been Total Warfare. The point was, we just slugged it out with the winner being the guy with anything left as opposed to nothing. That might have even been the mission. ;-)

My Umenzi rolled Manny up pretty good, but his two units of Longbowmen on my right flank were unscathed. They were effectionally dubbed the machinegun pit, and while the majority of my army rolled him up pretty good (including my Possessed standing against the charging Knights so the Worthy could get a rear charge), they held the right.

In the end, my army controlled the left and center but was battered and out of position. I figured he'd probably have just eough shooting to take care of me while he figured I had just enough target saturation that one unit would get there and roll him up. But either way, it was going to be a rather grinding affair and so we called it a draw. It was 12:30 am (3:30 ET), so Manny had been up the requisite 24 hours and so we called it a night.

Game count: 1.