BB Vampire team (in progress)

Picked up a box of Empire Militia to be my Thralls. Unlike most fantasy boxes, nobody has shields so you don't have that "everybody's lowering a shoulder" thing to deal with but you do have some weird hand positions. The back row are the ones I consider not perfect fits. But by and large I liked them, with an honorable mention to the "duelist" in the front row, far left. I also like the bruiser; front row, third from left.

I'm using reaper vampires. I'll have two of each of these: Cloak_1 and Cloak _2. Each will be painted with their cloaks a different color so that, in addition to numbering the front of their base (thank you Trent), I'll be able to say "Green Cloak has Strip Ball, Blue Cloak has Kick, etc."

Then I'll round it out with one of each of these: The Lady in Red and her Wench.

The plan is to use 5 vampires to start and as the BBCS progresses pick up the sixth. When I was playing them I felt that 5 vampires on the pitch at any given time was the right balance. Enough happy meals (i.e. thralls) around to keep them playing.

But I will definitely need to play a couple of games through the year because unlike the Chaos Dwarves, the Vampires require some serious forethought to play. And rather than take 3 hours to play a game I'll just need to have the experience that I intuitively grasp what order to do things. (For example, always move your happy meals first wherever the vampires will be. Also when busting a cage or facing a player with dump-off, use Hypnotic Sight first and then blitz).

Geek Weekend 2010 (and Kubla '11)

Well actually Geek Weekend has been over for a week now, but I had a day between when Trent got back on the plane and when I got on a plane for a family trip. And this is the first chance since I hit Discovery Bay to just sit and type up stuff.

Geek Weekend. Got in 15 games. Less than last year, but the quality was better. Last year there were a few games of Cardhammer where I wanted to smack my head into the table. This year, I can't say I had a bad game at all, and I got my ass kicked in more than a few.

Highlights:

--Going to play Vampires for Bloodbowl. I tried them out and they're awesome! Oh yeah, they're actually a sub-standard list, but not terribly. There's a learning curve, but they played thematically very like the Ogres (i.e. 5-6 guys do the heavy lifting and the other 5-6 guys are just space filler; except the Thralls can actually do stuff).

Even when I got my ass kicked (Dwarves on the Karak Bowl pitch . . . oy . . .), I had fun with them. So time to get some reaper figs and a box of empire militia.

--Relictors: holy crap these guys were fun. After last Kubla, I decided to actually play my army before I built/painted it. Amazing concept. Anyway, played a proxy game and they were simply cool to play. Now, again, I lost. But not as bad as I thought I would. Trent had like 2 objectives to my 1. Not bad for the first time playing a list.

So its using the Chaos Space Marine codex to represent the Relictor's chapter. Each chaos Icon will be some chaos relic used by a squad.

Anyway, yeah, fun. Put it this way: I finished the game and spent the rest of the day wishing we had time to play again. I finished a game of 40K and wanted to immediately play again. That hasn't happened in some time.

--Battlestar Galactica: I GOT TO BE A CYLON!!! Mutherfrak yeah, baby!!! Ahem. I've been playing for close to a year now and I've never been a Cylon (except the time I played a revealed Cylon, which doesn't count).

Sadly, I didn't do much to stymie the fleet except get out of the board's way. Seriously, the game beat the humans, not the Cylons. During the first half of the game no one was a Cylon and we still lost. We seriously drew 5 Cylon invasion cards out of 6 draws, and it would've been 6 out of 7 if one player wasn't Roslin.

Still, it was cool that I got to pull a trick on the humans. I was Tyrol and because of a Crisis Card, I'd been brigged. But since the Cylons kept attacking, I kept taking one for the team and not getting myself out of the brig. Instead, I was activating people using Executive order (or whatever the card is).

So the sleeper agent phase comes about after we jumped away from what seems to been a Cylon thoroughfare and I'm a Cylon. So during the next player's turn (who is the admiral), I make the comment that it'd be nice if he executive ordered me so I could get myself out of the brig, since I'd "taken so many for the team." Turns out that the admiral was a cylon too. He activates me using executive order. Action 1: get out of the brig. Everyone is very nice to spring me from the brig, so I didn't even have to burn any cards (Zarek lowered the difficulty, then someone played Investigative Committee so the cards were face up).

Action 2: reveal as a cylon. I send Roslin to the brig and then resurrect. What's even cooler is that it's Zarek's turn then mine. Almost a two-fer.

But what's cool is that Roslin has to burn two turns trying to get out of the brig (dropping cards to activate the location) because they failed the first time. The humans are so screwed that I spend two turns just drawing super crisis cards, that I never got to play because it wasn't needed.

The colonials never even make it to New Caprica. Admiral cylon sends them to a crappy location where they couldn't get fuel, then he uses Helo's once a game power to make the president choose the worst of two choices. Luckily, there's only 1 player to go before admiral cylon gets to go, and both the Admiral's Quarters and the Airlock are damage, so no brigging the cylon.

At one point, Galactica had 5 locations damaged. They managed to repair one, but they were down to 1-2 fuel and food, and down to like 4 population. What got them though was the centurions that I managed to get on board (activated the cylon fleet and sent two heavy raiders onboard).

It was a clusterfrak of a game. Had a blast.


And so from Geek Weekend, I get my goals for Kubla 2011. I'll build & paint a vampire team. I'll build the relictors, but no plan to get them all painted just yet. If it happens, great. If not, no worries.