Vampire Team

The team's actually been painted for like a week now, but I was lazy in getting pictures. The starting lineup for Kublacon is: 5 Vamps, 10 Thralls, 4 rerolls, FF 2, and an Apothecary.

I found after playing a couple of games that 5 Vamps on the field is the sweet spot. Any less and you run out of Thralls late in a drive. However, I painted 6 Vamps and 12 Thralls for expansion & casualties. Provided I have the money & enough Thralls, I'll add the 6th Vamp after game 1. Obviously the Vamps get targeted, so you want a spare when one get injured or KO'd.

Also another thing I've discovered is that this team has a weird weakness: stunty teams. Against bashy teams and passing teams I do well because the Vamps have the natural stats to compete with both. Plus their hypnotic gaze is tailored to bust up a cage or negate tweaky powers like Dump Off.

So between the fact that there's only 5 of them, they can negate tackle zones, and they can bash or throw/catch the ball the vamps are flying around the field. I've had possessions were Vamp #1 runs up and hypnotizes a guy on the cage (taking away his tackle zones). Then Vamp #2 runs in and blitzes, knocking the ball out. Vamp #3 picks the ball up and passes it to Vamp #4, who breaks for the end zone.

The problem with stunty guys like Goblins, Halflings, & Snotlings is that they have Dodge. Normally, you can knock guys down 55% of the time: higher strength means two dice & 2 of 6 block results are the other guy down. Against stunty guys with dodge, you lose one of those block results. So you only get about a 31% chance with your two dice.

So ironically, the best thing a stunty player can do is just cage up and then force you to use your once-a-turn blitz on something that is a 1 in 3 chance of working. The cage isn't there to protect the stunties, but actually it's extra hands to catch/pick up the ball after its been popped out.

Now, since we play using the BBCS rules as standard, we started with 30 SPPs. So I can give those 5 Vamps skills. I've debated and tried several variations of what to give them.

Block is the most obvious and I'm trying to avoid it. Yeah it's good, but that's kind of dull. It's like putting Guard on 5 of my Chaos Dwarves: effective, but kinda boring. Also, I don't think its so necessary with Vampires. +1 Strength over an average guy is on par with block. Giving all 5 Vamps block would make them reeeeally bashy, as in 75% chance against a Str 3 lineman.

I read on some forums that dodge was the way to go. Personally, I didn't see it. Since my Thralls didn't have it, all the Vamps tended to do was outrun their happy meals. I keep Thralls nearby and usually don't waste rerolls on Blood Lust, so between the Agi 4 of Vamps and the team rerolls I can usually dodge pretty well. And if I don't feel comfortable dodging him because of tackle zones, then there's no way the Thrall will make it and so you have this situation of outrunning your happy meal.

I tried Jump Up, because my vamps spend a lot of time getting beat up. I tried it and it in fact was very nice. However, I don't think it'll work because of the "Stunty Problem." It's a good second advancement.

So I think Strip Ball is the way to go. In terms of the above "hypnotize a guy, knock the ball out, scoop it up, and pass it downfield" it's the best. Now 4 of 6 die rolls result in the ball coming out. If I have a higher strength, that's knocking the ball out 88% of the time. It also is hilarious because it means the ball is coming out or my vamp is eating the dirt (rolling 'skull' or 'pow-skull').

The question is how many times do I take Strip Ball, with 3 or 4 Vamps? Usually I've been lucky and gotten at least one Vamp with +1 Agi. That I take because he becomes my passer and since Hypnotic Gaze is an unmodified Agi roll, he also serves as a defender. +1 Strength I'd probably also take to fight the big guys. But +1 AV or Move, or even doubles, I'd probably just take Strip Ball.

But I usually give Kick to one Vamp. I sort of wonder if I shouldn't. Kick is nice, but I don't really feel the need to pin the enemy back when my Vamps can threaten the whole field. In fact, I've found I want him to bring the ball up because if I send 1 Vamp into the backfield, they can gang tackle him with lots of assists. But if he comes up, that means if I get a breakaway, then he can't get enough guys back to get a two-die block.

So I'm currently thinking 4 Vamps with Strip Ball and 1 with Pass (if I roll doubles), or +1 Agi/Str if I get them. Otherwise, maybe 5 guys with Strip Ball.

Really enjoying this team...

Bad day to be a meat-stick.

Got some Battlestar fun last night, with 6 people. So we had 2 Cylons and a sympathetic Cylon. The sympathetic Cylon was screwed because he got one of the harder missions: keep morale & population within 2 of each other.

Anyway, the humans died. Correction, the humans got curb-stomped. Never made it to New Caprica before we blew every civilian ship out of the sky.

I say "we" because I got to be a Cylon again. There were no Cylons in the first half and then Boomer and Ellen became a Cylon. I was Ellen and I was basically on the Cylon side before I knew it: two of my crisis cards were Cylon fleets jumping in (we got a lot of those again) and twice I fired Pegasus but rolled a 1 (damaging Pegasus).

But here's the real hilarity: I pulled off what is basically now the Corey Maneuver. It was Adama's turn and then me (I have my Cylon card, got it after the sleeper phase). We have two basestars in front of us, and a special rule on the cylon fleet card that says if we blow up the basestar instead of jumping we lose morale. And the engine room is damaged (you can activate it to make every crisis card advance you on the jump track).

So I tell Adama to activate me with Executive Order. I say I have a politics card that will let me draw two engineering cards so that when I go next I can fix the engine room. Otherwise, I say, we'll have to wait three turns before the engineering person can fix it. Next to me, the sympathetic Cylon player says "He's just doing what he did last game so he can reveal as a Cylon."

It took effort to not strangle him.

My internal monologue had to be a thing of comedy:
(After the Sympathetic Cylon speaks)

"Shit! Marco outed me. Damnit! Don't respond, look down!"
"Crap, you're looking down! You look guilty!"
"Don't look right at her, that's a dead giveaway!"
"You've been quiet too long, say something!"
"What do I say! Can't deny it! That just makes me look more guilty!"
"Okay, you're outed. Best bet you have is the Tell-the-Truth lie."

So I look straight in the eyes of my wife, roll my eyes, and say "Yeah, Marco's right. I'm a Cylon and I'm trying to get you to activate me so I can screw you guys and then reveal."

Yeah, you read that right: Meredith was playing. We asked Nana to drive an hour and babysit so Meredith could play. And in her very first full game, I give what's got to be the world's most bald-faced lie.

She believed me.

Enough to activate me anyway. So rather than do what I was supposed to do, I use Ellens once-per-game ability to become the Admiral. Nuke basestar #1 (morale goes down). Then I realize, between laughing, I get two actions. Nuke basestar #2 (morale goes down). No more nukes for the meat-sticks.

My turn and I reveal. The humans never really recover. Turns out Boomer was a cylon, and I helped get him out of the brig (the irony is that the previous game, we were both Cylons there with him getting me out of the Brig so I could reveal).

The hilarious part is that Boomer went before Adama. Then he tries to get Meredith to activate him again, but she's twice shy. So it didn't work, which is good because I think Meredith would've had a funny aneurysm if she was tricked twice.

Anyway, lots of cylon fleet cards blowing up civilian ships and not enough vipers to save them. Humans went from 10 population to zero in like 2 turns.

So I think "What you should do is activate me . . ." goes in the record books right besides Tom's "You're all making a big mistake."

Who knew that Battlestar could cause a divorce...

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.

Mordheim: seriously, can a brutha get a break?

I go to the game store every week to blow off steam, and the last two weeks have left with steam shooting from my ears...

I know, I know, its just a game. And I feel like a complete ass afterward. But one of my pet peeves is when I spend cash on new minis and then have to shelve them. I'm known in my group for being very hesitant to get into a new game because I'm annoyed if the game sucks and I have to put them away.

So I was all excited to have Dwarf pirates. They were the coolest thing. And after two weeks, I've played 5 games and had to start over 3 times. If you count the first list I put together, I have essentially started a new warband 4 times out of 5 games played.

That gets annoying.

K, here's how Friday went. Played Scott first, with my Dwarves. I did pretty well with the list (see the previous post) but my dice just sucked. We fought for roughly 3 turns, or 6 rounds of combat. I had about 4 models, each with two attacks. That's 48 dice. No kills. I literally rolled over a 5 twice when it came to wounding.

But that didn't bother me. Seriously it was no big deal. We had an Ogre show up and ally with the lowest warband (me) and she evened out the score. I ended up winning and had a decent number of heroes on the table. Only my captain and 3 henchmen were out of action.

Then came the post game: Got my captain back. Huzzah. Rolled for recovery my henchmen. Three 1s. Awesome, down 150 pts in the first game. Next came wyrdstone, 100 gold. Okay, I'm not feeling terrible. But I had to pay the ogre (both recruiting fee and retainer), which costs 110 gold. Couldn't do it. So she thumps one of my guys and leaves. Roll for injury on my engineer...dead. Now I'm down like 230 pts.

Son of a bitch. sigh. Starting over.

So the Skaven player wants to play me. His list is, I kid you not, 5 Skaven heroes and the Rat Ogre. He's restarted a twice as well because his whole list is the Rat Ogre. If it dies and doesn't recover, he just starts over.

I don't care at this point and frankly don't want to play but no worries. We roll the occupy mission with 5 buildings to grab, almost as many as I have models. Plus his sorcerer gets the spell that gives him free rats. At which point I know I'm not gonna win. So I figure I'll turtle in the back, fight a little, take my two casualties, and flee.

He races across the board and when I don't move looks at me goes "Seriously?" Ummm, Rat Ogre. So he screens his guys behind the 3 extra rats he gets. They come close, I charge, a dwarf to each rat. Six attacks, two stunned rats and one knocked down. Couldn't kill rats.

My heroes charge his guys, and I manage to kill one. Then in the ensuing counter-attacks, I lose 3 of my heroes. Yup, I'm down to 1 hero model. Fucking great.

Skip to the post-game: captain dies, slayer comes back, other slayer is out for three games. So I'm down 150 pts permanently and down about 220 pts for three games. Oh and only 2 wyrdstone, so I can't even replace my losses.

Fuck starting over. List gets crumpled into paper and tossed into the trash. My opponent turns to me and days "You know, I missed having (don't want to mention names) here. I missed having someone sulk from me across the table, thanks."

I didn't say anything for two reasons: 1) he was right, I was in a foul mood and I knew there's really no reason for it. 2) I knew if I responded, it wouldn't be with words. So I'll say it here:

Hey (no name), fuck you. I didn't complain when you whined about your (admittedly epic) bad luck. I didn't say anything when you took a cheesed out Skaven list. So I had a bad couple of days. Sorry it inconveniences you. Ass hat.

So at the moment, I'm done with Mordheim. One guy is playing lizardmen and has an army with something like a 200 rating, and another guy is just always going to have a Rat Ogre, so basically there's no way I'm going to have a chance to do anything but get slaughtered. Basically, I'm so far behind the curve that a high points cost warband like Dwarves won't be able to catch up. I have a Marienburgers list, but after Friday I'm pretty burnt out on Mordheim at the moment.

We're talking about paying a Bloodbowl league with the BBCS pitches, but I'll be honest, I'm really not feeling like it at the moment.

Mordheim: Well, back to the old drawing board. . .

So yeah, the Dwarf pirates list . . . let's just be kind and say it "didn't work."

3 games and restarted twice. Ouch.

The big problem isn't losing, I expected to lose every game. The big problem is that when they lose, I can get enough wyrdstone to build up slowly. Essentially, you're just always going to lose. After the second game, I was down to 3 models and one of them had a leg wound (so Mv 2). So my first restart and I played a third game: all but 1 hero went out of action. So when one model died and the other went out for two games, I was back down to 2 models.

Ultimately, I'm paying for a lot of stuff that simply isn't worth it. For example, the brace of pistols? Worthless as a shooting weapon, because you're almost always at long range & moving (so -2). Their only use is a first turn shot in melee. Frankly, I don't think they're worth it there either, but I want to use pirates.

Plus I used Clansmen instead of Beardlings for Henchmen, so that I'd hit better in both melee & shooting. Well, shooting I'll only hit on a 6 anyway, so no point there. And while hitting on a 3+ vs most guys is nice, it's not that nice.

Then there's taking lots of Dwarven Axes. The parry is neat, but it makes them pretty expensive. If I get master of blades as a skill, they become pretty brutal (essentially I can parry half of all attacks coming my way). But giving them to everybody (especially henchmen) just becomes too pricey. Still I should have a few so I don't have to search for them all the time.

The long and short is that at an average model cost of 100 gp per model, I was getting terrible returns on my investment. But I really like the idea of Dwarf Pirates. So I came home, sat and stewed (my dice were not kind to me either), and I'm gonna try it again next week with this:

Noble: 2 axes, pistol, helmet

Engineer: handgun

Slayer: axe & dwarven axe

Slayer: axe & dwarven axe

Beardling: 2 axes, pistol, helmet

Beardling: 2 axes, pistol, helmet

Beardling: 2 axes, pistol


The pistols still aren't worth it, and I could get another Beardling if I dropped them. But they're Dwarf pirates. First, half the models have pistols on them. Second, they're fucking pirates!

So the theory is that the engineer will hang back and snipe. This gives me some long range, plus an extra hero for wyrdstone hunting. Usually in a losing fight 2 heroes get dropped, so this'll give me 2 to search for stones plus the extra one Dwarves normally get. But maybe if I use the Beardling screen, when I drop two I can just run away with all 4 heroes and build up.

The pistols on the Beardlings are 100% for the first round of melee. I'll shoot as I approach, but not expect to hit a damn thing. I can tell in the rules: if you shoot (with a single pistol) and then get charged, do you get the pistol shot on that first round?

And the fewer Dwarf Axes is so that if one guy gets a skill, he takes master of blades and we swap weapons around.

We'll see how it goes. Again the goal is to be able to build up after each loss I take. Pretty low standards egh? "My goal is not to be crippled after each game..."

Mordheim: day zero

Two posts in a day? WTF?

Yeah, I have time and if I don't do it now when I have time, I won't do it.

So our local group has been playing Mordheim for a few months and just decided to restart the campaign. My Halflings were just murdering people. At last count, I had seven BS 5 henchmen, my Elder had BS 5 with Quickshot & Trick Shooter, and both my Youths had BS 4 and Quickshot & Trickshooter. I'd received a Pit Fighter for free, had purchased and Ogre, and was starting to purchase melee Halflings. And my band wasn't the sick-and-broken one. That honor went to the Amazon list with a model with Frenzy, Str 5, and 3 base attacks.

Like all groups, we struggled with armor. Essentially it's more worthwhile to buy an extra guy than armor. So the first thing we did was reduce the cost to 40% of list price (light armor is 5 gp, heavy is 20 gp).

It still didn't fix the problem, so I came up with a radical idea: in addition to be 40% list price, we increased the body armor by +1. So Light Armor grants a 5+ save, etc. We tested it out with a Gromril-heavy Dwarf list. In essence, if a shield+gromril armor (a 2+ save) isn't broken, then the idea had merit.

Turns out, it worked. I mean, it does make guys more survivable (which is the point), but not excessively. Suddenly people are looking at double handed weapons, morning stars, flails, axes, etc. People aren't just putting 2 maces on every model. People are considering "crazy" things like light armor and shield.

And its having positive ripple effects. It sounds weird that 7 gp could get someone a 5+ save, but the cost point vs the benefit makes it a viable option. So models are now only making 1 attack (since they have a shield), which means parrying suddenly seems like a better idea.

So its not that 2 maces are going away (it's still a decent option against light armor & shield). It's more that its one possible option among many. Warbands are starting to have a mix of axes, double handed weapons, swords, etc. Which is cool.

I ordered a box of Empire Militia to recreate the Marienburger warband I did when I first played 10 years ago. Scott is borrowing my Dwarves, so I picked up a box of Dwarf Warriors (because all I had for henchmen was Thunderers with crossbows).

I spent a couple days designing Dwarf warbands and I started thinking it'd be fun to build a Gromril'd up Dwarf warband. Scott felt 6 models was too few. So in the end, I built 15 dwarves out of the box of warriors so we could both have enough.

Then I saw these: Yaar! Me Mateys!

Dwarf pirates.

Dwarf. . .pirates.

DWARF. PIRATES.

Sveeet...


So here's my warband:

"Captain" (Dwarf Noble): Brace of Pistols, 2 Dwarf Axes (the cutlasses 'count as' Dwarf Axes)

"Master Gunner" (Engineer): Brace of Pistols, 2 Axes

"Bosun's Mate" (Slayer): 2 Dwarf Axes

"Bosun's Mate" (Slayer): 2 Dwarf Axes

"Midshipman" (Clansman): Brace of Pistols, 2 Dwarf Axes


Yep, 5 models. And no armor. I fully expect to be murdered each and every game. But it's gonna be fun, and I'll document it here.