Salamander Tanks WIP

New additions to Deathbot's Salamander force.

I assembled a pair of tanks the other day. Both of these were hand-me-downs from Laertes from his last purge just before moving to Arizona.

Land Raider. This was my first "modern" imperial tank build. I added the quotes because(I don't think this is the current version of the model. All of my previous tank builds are from the Rogue Trader era.

I am going back and forth weather or not to magnetize the doors and sponsons. In the meantime, I need them off to prime the interior.

Predator. My second "modern" tank! The kit was actually a Chaos Rhino. I put the chaos sprue in my bitz box, and added a turret aquired from a previous eBay purchase. The turret was broken when I got it and needs some green stuff repair.

Currently, I am looking for a pair of Predator sponsons with weapons for around $10-12 or without for about $6-8 to finish up the build.

I'm not sure if the kits were missing the accessory sprues when I got them, or if I had already canalized them. Whatever it was, when I dug the models out to build them, there were none to be found. Fortunately, I have plenty of hatches in my bitz box. However, I was all out of smoke launchers and searchlights. Since taking these pictures, I found a set of 10 of each on the ever-giving eBay for about $12.

Here is the most recent Progress Chart. There is a lot of painting ahead, and Deathbot reminds me every day!

Until next time!

DC Universe Online Review

This is posted on behalf of Laertes...

Image taken off interwebs without permission.

Character Creation:

This can be the heart of a superhero MMO and this one is adequate.  You've quite a variety to choose from, and at this stage you choose not only your appearance, but your faction (Villain or Hero), your power set, your starting Weapon skill, your movement skill (Flight, Superspeed, or Acrobatics), and your starting mentor (there are 3 for each faction, and it impacts your quest lines).  While you have a great deal of items to choose from, you character is still going to basically be human(oid), so no crab people or centaurs or mermaids.  Likewise there’s three basic body types and three basic sizes within those types, so you cannot go too crazy with sliders for eyebrow shape or distance or things like that.  You can really get in to different types of skins and costumes for your character as well, but do not be too caught up in that at the moment, because DCUO does something a little differently.

When it comes to your superhero “looks” most games do not have the same feature of WYSIWYG like a fantasy MMO does.  That is, if your character has a cape, he ALWAYS has a cape.  DCUO just combined that.  So the gear you pick up and are wearing will be reflected on your character . . . if you wish it to be.  By default, if you pick up a helmet, and put it on, your character will now appear with that helmet.  But you also have a Style tab and you can lock changes out.  Gear also comes in two forms:  the regular form (which adds stats, etc.) and a “style” form, which does nothing aside from change the appearance.  But regardless of the appearance, if you’re wearing a cape that adds abilities, even if you've selected a different style from the Style tab, you’re still getting the benefit of those abilities.  You are still wearing that cape.  But that does mean that, by default, by the time your character is level 10 it likely doesn't look like what you created to begin the game . . . except for one aspect.  Your color scheme is ALWAYS your color scheme.  So if you chose an Iron Man red/gold scheme, even if you later are wearing an ancient Greek helmet . . . it will be in that red/gold scheme you picked out initially.


Control Scheme:

I admit that this took some getting used to, and initially I did not think I would like it.  Clearly it was designed to accommodate console game pads and I thought that this might not be a good translation to the PC.  Surprisingly it works though.  Mouse look is always “on”, but unlike some other games (which still have quite a few menus or mouse interactions on the screen) the keyboard in DCUO is minimized.  I think where they really succeeded though is with targeting.  The targeting system is quite fluid:  you mouse over it and it is targeted.  You can “lock” your target with the Tab key but there is no specific need.  This makes combats quite free flowing, and especially works well with movement powers like flight.  You hit number keys for your powers, which might seem like something of a handicap, but you don’t have that many powers or toolbars compared to most games.  You have 6 power slots (1-6) total, with a slot for consumables and a slot for an activated item (Trinket).  That’s it.

The game also has no auto-attack:  you want to hit someone, you need to click the mouse.  Left-clicks are melee attacks and right-clicks are ranged attacks.  There is also blocking and block breaking.  Indeed combat is basically a game in to itself, as there are numerous combos you will need skill to perform – but it can feel like a bit like combat is nothing but button mashing.  It does not feel like your standard MMO where you go in, hit auto attack, and then use various powers for the rest of the combat.  It’s almost the opposite – you need to use various Skills and then use your powers in between.

Powers:

This is what really can make or break a superhero RPG.  In DCUO the power sets are divided in to three primary groups based on the Role the character will play:  Controller, Healer, Defender.  If this sounds like the “holy trinity” from back in the days of EQ, it is, but there are a couple of additional twists thrown in.  First off, every character will always have at least two “loadouts”, gained at level 10:  a “damage” role and a role based on your power style (Controller, Healer, Defender).  You can flip back and forth (but not in combat) and it essentially gives everyone character a “solo” mode (usually Damage) and a “group” mode (usually the other).  It should also be noted that the individual powers themselves are NOT simple and have quick descriptions.  That Ice blast that just does damage, for example, may be modified by the role that the character is in or stack with other effects the character has.  In some cases the power can change completely:  someone with a base Sorcery power casts Circle of Protection in Healer mode and Circle of Destruction in Damage mode (it is the same power).

That being said, the power sets are therefore not “pure”.  A Controller power set like Gadgets can suit a DPS role quite well, as can some of the Healer power sets.  It is going to come down to your individual play style and what you can control and what works for YOU:  there is no one BEST power set for each role.  Really – they’re just different.  Any or all of them can have melee attacks, or ranged attacks, or knock backs, or stuns, or AoE attacks.  About the only thing that is given is that ONLY a Healer power set will heal, for example.  In addition, each power set is going to have two power trees within it that you are not going to be able to completely fill, so everyone with a Fire set is not going to necessarily have the same powers.

There is a rock/paper/scissors aspect to it.  Each Role has an advantage over, and is vulnerable to, one of the other roles.  If the Defender is the rock, for example, then the Healer is the paper and the Controller is the scissors.  This primarily comes up in PvP (more on that later).

A note on the Controller:  while that power set does indeed have crowd control abilities, the primary focus is Power restoration.  A good group needs all three types because the Defender will hold aggro, the Healer will keep the Defender alive, and the Controller will keep everyone supplied with Power to keep all of their abilities going.

Skills:

In addition to choosing a power set, at character creation you will also choose your initial weapon skill set.  I say “initial” because unlike your power set, at level 10 (and beyond) you can choose to invest in another set of weapons later.  Each weapon style has both melee and ranged aspects to it, although the special moves for each are different (and can be purchased by you).  It is mainly a matter of choice, as is a power set:  the ranged weapons are perhaps a bit better for Healers and Controllers but again you do not have to be that way, as you can select Martial Arts or Dual Wield and still have ranged attacks.  If you have more than one weapon skill you switch them by just equipping the correct weapon.  There is no ammunition or the like to worry about.

Your Speed skill is set at character creation.  Of the three, I’m somewhat disappointed that teleporting (like in Champions Online) is not an option.  They all work in somewhat similar fashion:  you turn on the ability (you can leave it on all the time if you’d like, although you will slow down in combat), and then move around.  Superspeed and Acrobatics get a super “leap” when they jump, but you need not worry as I don’t think you can die from falling damage at all (you can land with a satisfying crunch though).  With Flight, you really are moving in three dimensions, and you can move up and over and through things.  It can be handy for engaging certain NPCs who don’t have very good ranged weapons . . . just fly above them and let loose.  They can knock you down but they have to get a special attack off.  The other two powers don’t have as much advantage in combat, as it’s harder to run/climb up a wall and then be facing the right direction to attack.  But rarely do you get kind of stuck like you can with Flight . . . that being said though, I still think Flight has a clear advantage, although perhaps some later skills help the other Speed skills.

Leveling:

After going through an introductory tutorial adventure (which you cannot skip, unfortunately), you start in Metropolis or Gotham City.  From there you have the standard variety of quests to go through, a few of which are exploratory, but more are along story lines based primarily upon which mentor you have.  What is interesting is that in many cases both Heroes and Villains will have quests in the same area, usually with different objectives – so the Gorilla troopers are not hostile to the villains, for example.  Many of the quests will conclude a section with entering in to an instanced zone, usually with one or more bosses at the end.  These can usually be done solo, although some of the opponents can be particularly difficult because of their special abilities (they almost all do something different) or the special objectives, and it is sometimes advisable to wait to gain a level or two before attempting some of the more difficult instances.

In addition to quests for knocking out the opposition, there are a series of exploratory quests and there are a series of collection quests.  The latter can be easy to overlook as the spawns for these locations are not fixed and it is easy to miss them when flying overhead.

A note on the PvP server:  it’s not that fun.  Remember where I said that your newbie quests sometimes cause you to go to the same areas?  That doesn't change in PvP, and so leveling is very hard on the PvP server, especially as a villain.  You WILL be attacked by level 30 players at every opportunity.  Seriously, why do it?  You can play on the PvE server and still level and PvP when you want to.

Which brings us the queuing system.  We've seen other games where you enter a queue for PvP battles.  DCUO has that also (two types, more on that later) but brings in a queue system for a number of instances.  You queue up for a story line with 2-4 other players (you don’t have to be in a group) and it loads it up and runs you through that instance together.  I really like this concept, although I can see how it might get perhaps a bit repetitive – but it’s a good way to get experience.  At every level that the instances open up (they start at level 5 and go through level 20) it will give you a quest that encourages you to compete in it (just once).

There are two additional types of PvP instances.  “Arena”, where you use your main character, and “Legends”, where you use a special unlocked character.  You only start with one, but can buy additional Legends characters with currency earned in game or with real money (Station Cash).  This gives you the opportunity to play Two Face or Future Batman, and there are a series of different games (Iike Capture the Flag, etc) you can play.  It’s quite interesting and makes it feel “lower risk” since everyone is kind of on the same playing field.

The level cap is 30, and leveling up to that cap is not particularly strenuous.  Each time you level you will get either a Skill Point or a Power Point (very rarely both).  Power points can be spent in either of your two power trees or, after level 10, a special “Iconic Power” section that lets you take certain power boosts or abilities from famous DC characters.  Skill points are spent either in Weapon skill trees or in Speed skill trees.  The Speed skill trees either give additional Speed abilities or possibly additional Powers that derive specifically from that Speed ability.  Someone with Flight, for example, could take a Dive Bomb attack ability that would do damage out of the Speed tree.

You don’t need to group for most of your leveling, although doing so speeds up the process considerably.  The quest system is quite generous – if you and I are on the same quest, and not grouped, and we end up attacking an NPC that we both need, we’ll both get credit.  So when you do group, you can blow through the quests fairly quickly.  Groups are really only necessary for the Bounties and some of the PvP events, as otherwise the queue system will create them for you.  You can easily solo your way to level 30.

There is the standard looking for group system and channel, although one thing that is somewhat innovative is the use of the Combat Rating (CR).  This is an aggregate of both your level AND the gear that you have, so most groups will not ask for a “level 30 healer” . . . there are a ton of those, after all.  They will ask for a Healer with a “CR 93+” or something like that.

Free to Play:

As it is a Sony game, anyone with any SOE account likely has some Station Cash in the balance.  There are three levels of players:  a basic Free player, a Premium player, and a Legends player.  The Free player is what you start with, and is limited to a certain amount of cash and only 2 characters slots.  That’s about it.  A Premium player is someone who has purchased something with Station Cash at some point – the cash limit is still there but the character limit changes to 6.  If you exceed the cash limit you will see cash in “escrow” . . . meaning that you cannot buy really expensive stuff without being a Legends player.  A Legends player is someone who pays a monthly subscription fee.

What you end up buying with Station Cash is small things like special gear (mainly cosmetic), special items for your Base, re-spec tokens, or keys for these Promethium lockboxes you sometimes can loot.  But primarily what you can buy are Downloadable Content Packs (DLCs).  These content packs contain extra content (duh) but each of them contains one or more new power sets.  If you are a standard Free player you will only have access to a certain subset of the available power sets – the others come from DLCs.  So if you want to be a Light Controller (like the Green Lantern) you’ll need to get a DLC.  These are basically $10 worth of Station Cash.  Other than that, there’s not really much to buy.

The cash limit is likely what you will notice the most.  Because of the limitations of the crafting system (see below), you won’t have many times you will want to go to the auction house to grab some gear.  But when you do check it out . . . you can’t afford it.  The market is driven by level 30 players who have a LOT of cash (as you've little to spend it on before then) so expect some pretty serious inflation.  How serious?  Well you may have a cash limit of $2000 and be looking at gear for auction at a minimum of $30000.

Crafting:

Crafting is . . . odd.  The trend in many games is to have a robust crafting system that encourages a massive secondary market for player built items.  That is not DCUO.  There is a crafting system yes, and it is primarily used to create item enhancements (your more advanced gear can have different “sockets” for these improvements).  And like many games it relies on gathered resources to use as raw materials for these items.  These are various “bits” which you need 8 of to make a “byte” (yes, clever, I know).  But they are basically random spawn, and they are RARE.  My highest level character has not managed to gather 8 of ANY raw material.  This really discourages crafting until you are much higher in level or can run more instances to get loot.

Other details:

There are numerous other details.  You get a Base too (Player housing) that you can furnish and have them in different sections of the city.  There are Bounties that can be collected (special NPC bosses that spawn . . . bring friends and watch out for them).  There are Leagues (guild of heroes).  I didn't go in to the practice areas at your headquarters or the mechanics of some of the powers.  Or the races that each Speed skill can engage in.   But there’s a lot there – you can tell they wanted you to pay for this game at some point.

Replay:

This might be the weakness in DCUO.  While it might seem fun to go out and create a bunch of characters, they’re going to start out in a very similar manner.  You start with the same tutorial which gets you the first 3 levels.  After that it depends on your mentor, but the quest lines basically are in the same areas, and after a while they begin to intersect with one another.  So you might start with a Circe magic-related quest line but still get a Lex Luthor or Joker quest line later.  Because there is also no one “best” power set, and it takes you a while to gain significantly different powers, it feels like your first 10 levels are very similar regardless of the character you have created.  It helps if you change factions and mentors, but still if you’d like to level up several characters at the same time I really don’t recommend it.  Play one for a while, then play some others . . . but eventually you’re going to likely want to invest in those DLC packs simply to get some variety interjected.  I do hear that there *is* still quite a bit to do at level 30, so it is not like there is no end game.

Conclusion:

This has to be one of the more robust, “casual style” of MMO games.  The solid mechanics and stable controls mean that it is an easy game to get in to with limited time and feel like you are really making progress.  While at the same time if you really want to put some time in to it you can make a lot of progress, but this is one game where the casual gamer can make it to the level cap in a pretty reasonable amount of time.

The Snow Elves

Laertes sent me this op-ed in response to an article he read.

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It all began (perhaps as such things do) with Rick Priestley’s column in issue 65 of Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy magazine.  They graciously pulled the article out of the magazine and posted it in PDF form on their website.

At first it would not necessarily seem that controversial, although it did spark a fair bit of comment, such as on blogs like this.

And what might be the big deal?  Rick is merely chronicling the rising standard, and how armies went from paint jobs that were “good enough” (note that this does not read “bad”) to the more modern standards found in glossy magazines, catalogs, and websites throughout the world.  He gives the genesis of perhaps how this came about and how even his own standards really don’t measure up against what they are putting out now.  At that point I had a moment of clarity:

Perhaps this is how the snow elves came to be.

Let me back up a moment and say that I do understand that this is a hobby and, as such is always about allocating resources (time and money).  The average gamer only has so much time to devote to both painting and gaming, and how they choose to split that time might largely determine where along the game spectrum their interests may lay.  At one end of the spectrum are those gamers who likely are more akin to static modelers, in that for them the enjoyment of the hobby is in painting and converting miniatures, with the gaming as a distant second (or lower) priority.  At the other end are those who are primarily interested in gaming, and view the miniatures employed therein as simply gaming pieces – they might be as happy simply using cardboard mock-ups or small chits to represent figures or units.  But I would say most gamers fall somewhere between the two extremes, somewhere along the bell curve:  the enjoy gaming but also enjoy the modeling aspect inherent in playing a miniatures-based wargame.

So then, do we play with painted miniatures or not?

Something that had been pointed out in a number of articles, sometimes mentioned on podcasts, and something you will see in battle reports scattered about the Internet, in particular.  Historical games, by and large, seemed to be played with painted miniatures, while fantasy games (including WH40K) featured a large variety of armies that were simply only assembled, and perhaps only wearing a primer coat.  That is why we originally called them the “snow elves” – they were High Elf units in the white basecoat that was popular at the time.  But why does this seem to be the case?

It did not seem logical to think that historical gamers had more time (or necessarily more money) than those WH40K players, for example.  While they tend to be older, it could mean that they have invested more time in painting their armies over the years so the net effect is that they simply have more figures laying about that simply are painted.  But after reading the article and having that little moment of clarity I think perhaps there might be a different explanation.

As Rick mentioned, the standards for painting have gone up and up and up over the years.  The high color images and professional art departments now dominate.  But I think the side effect of raising the bar higher and higher has a profound effect upon the newer gamer:  the new game does not have a definition of “tabletop quality” that the historical gamer likely does.

Think about it:  if all you’ve seen are the professionally painted miniatures in White Dwarf, or on the box art, or in other magazines, that becomes your idea of the standard, does it not?  You know you may not with the Golden Daemon award, but your goal is to shoot for something like that, isn’t it?  And that’s where the new game runs smack up against that issue of limited resources:  if the standard of the day is that each figure requires 20 man hours to paint, and you need to paint 200 figures, that is a fairly daunting task.  And let us not kid ourselves:  painting to a higher standard *is* time consuming.  There is no way around that.  Yes with practice in your technique and a certain amount of natural ability you can accomplish things faster and faster, but paint only dries so quickly and those 6 layers of blended highlights per cloak do not take 30 seconds.  So what do you do?

Well you put them in primer until such time as you do have the 20 hours to devote per figure.  One at a time, figure by figure, unit by unit.

Seems fairly daunting, does it not?  The new games do not have the idea of a “tabletop standard” unless they’re playing in a group that somehow recommends it.  Unless they’ve seen it done, or lived through the times where it was the norm, how are they to know it is even necessarily an option?

Part of the complication is the scale.  Nearly all of the Warhammer games are in 28mm, as are those by other popular publishers (like Privateer Press).  Historical gamers often started in 10mm or 15mm scale, and no one was aspiring to works of art on figures that small.  In a similar vein, the historical gamers were using 15mm (for example) because someone wanting to game the battle of Borodino using 28mm figures was unlikely to be successful.  Skirmish games lended themselves to the larger 28mm scale, and that is indeed where WH40K began, but the unit and battle sizes have crept up over the years.  A high quality 28mm figure lends itself well to a high quality paint job much more so than does a lower quality or a figure in a smaller scale, so what’s perfectly acceptable at 10mm from 3 feet away looks rather plain in 28mm scale from the same distance.

We have raised the standard over the years, but it is also a barrier to entry and forestalls progress.  We want more gamers, not less, and playing with painted miniatures is what this can be all about.  But by constantly promoting the modeling standard we push gamers out of that middle “zone” and force them to make a hard decision:  they need to take the time to paint up the figures “correctly” (leaving little time for gaming) or they need to abandon the idea of really painting their figures and spend more time gaming.

And thus the snow elves move onward.

It is kind of natural – I find myself doing it too.  I see the beautifully painted miniatures, I know how long they take to look that good . . . and I want them for my own armies any way.  Then the resource issue simply becomes not one of time, but of money – and note all of the painting services that spring up just so that you too can have your miniatures painted to that (ever higher) new standard.  Pretty expensive to do an entire army that way but hey, who has the time?

So Rick’s article was inspiring for me in a way too.  I recognized what I was doing and identified with what he was saying.  No I cannot paint that well .  . . but I can paint it so that it is “good enough” on the table top.  I have seen, and read, articles that promote just such abilities and techniques.  The snow elves don’t have to remain in the snow forever.  Let us dispense with the notions that everything needs to be that quality, and field the armies painted, ready for winning battles and not winning awards.

Blood Bowl League BatRep Day 3 - Necromantics vs Orcs

Here is another Blood Bowl BatRep written by Laertes!

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Pre-game thoughts:

The preliminary scouting reports did not look promising. Since our opening game the Orcs had now doubled our Star Player Points and picked up key skills. They now had 4 players at level 2 versus only 1 on our team. That they had to replace two players was likely the only mitigating factor. That and fact that at least we were seeing them in game three of the season, rather in game six! While the Orcs were riding high, our team was somewhat the worse for wear. After having only rolled a “2” (twice) for the last game's winnings we had only 90,000 in the treasury, which was well short of the 140,000 we needed for another re-roll (again boys and girls, buy them early when they are cheap!). That and, in the last game, continuing our trend of not being able to make regeneration rolls a Zombie was going to have to miss this game, leaving us with only 10 – so I bought a replacement Zombie to bring us up to 11 for the start of the game. That being done, we resolved to do what we could to get this over with. Here is what I thought were our keys to the game:

1. Home COOKING. Playing at home we were going to need to get some luck, either in the form of us getting some good rolls or John making some bad ones. Either way we would very likely need it. Bad luck by the opponent would mean that if they blew through their re-rolls early then things would be relatively even – having everyone with no re-rolls makes it easier.
2. Stay UNHEALTHY. Always playing with fewer players on the pitch makes things unnecessarily challenging. Yes we don't have Armor Values that are that bad, nor do the Orcs all come with Mighty Blow, but this just seems to be a particular issue that we have.
3. Be CAUTIOUS. Playing with one re-roll we needed to take as few chances as we could so as to both maximize our luck and to hopefully minimize our chances of getting clobbered early. While we did not need to play full out defense we knew we were going to have to watch things very closely.

Grimly we walked out on to the pitch to start the game.

First Half:

My initial mistake was in the pre-game inducements phase. I quickly skipped through it, only realizing later that by kicking in 10,000 from the treasury we would have the 100,000 necessary or an extra team re-roll, as our team rating was 90 lower than the Orcs. Having 90,000 meant I couldn't buy much: I bought a Bloodweiser Babe for 50,000 and then forgot that I could have at least bought an extra player instead. This was not starting off that well.

John lost the coin toss and I elected to kick the ball to the Orcs. The kick-off roll was favorable, giving me an extra turn (for those not in a tackle zone). I used it to get one Ghoul deep downfield to perhaps harass the ball pick up on John's turn. However the Orcs turn did not start how I wanted it to: one of the Zombies was an immediate casualty (another failed regeneration roll) and I'd be playing the next 15 turns of the game with only 10 players. That wasn't how we wanted to start.

The Orcs picked up the ball and had a pretty good block formed up at about mid-field. Still I was an opening to rush in and Blitz the ball carrier . . . well it certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. The ball carrier went down but the ball couldn't be picked up by any of the Black Orcs, and it ended the turn 3 squares closer to my end zone than it had started the turn, and now right next to two Black Orcs!

Things looked grim. The Orc Blitzer who had been blessed with +1 AG calmly picked himself up from the turf, dodged out of my tackle zones (not hard when you are AG4!), picked up the ball, and threw it to an Orc who was deep downfield. The throw was good, but the catch was not, and the Orcs turn ended. Still I thought it was a great play –the majority of my faster players were now on the wrong side of the field, and with too many Orcs near them.

Now what?

There was only one possibility, and that seemed slim: a lone Zombie. If he were to “go for it” twice he would at least be able to pick up the ball. I hardly thought it would matter – the Orc could blitz him off of the ball, pick it up and walk in to the end zone. But it was worth a shot – even with an AG2 Zombie. I had a re-roll right? If it didn't work he was going to score. He went for it, made it, and went to pick up the ball . . . and failed. And re-rolled . . . and failed again. The ball was still in his tackle zone but my turn was over and then the Orcs would simply have to knock him down, pick up the ball, and score easily.

That is when things got . . . odd for the Orcs.

They only needed to knock down a Zombie with no skills. Even on a 1 die block, that is 50% of the time if you have the “Block” skill. But the Orcs started a string of 3 straight “Attacker Down” rolls on 1 die blocks. We were both out of re-rolls this late in the second half, and these turnovers cost the Orcs. I was able to get a Wight downfield, pick the ball up and start heading up my left sideline. I was able to have the Ghouls dodge out of their engagements, cross the field and form a little bit of a cordon. But I still found myself next to two Orc players, on my [8]th turn, with a Ghoul and a Werewolf for support. Should I make a block to free the Wight? The Wight was 8 squares from the end zone so would have to “Go For It” twice to reach it. But that would mean not rolling a Dodge roll. Throw a Block with which player? If the Werewolf doesn't knock him down, Frenzy will mean he will have to throw another block, but this time at 1 die because of the position.

Doing the math in my head it seemed like the better idea to dodge out and head for the end zone. I held my breath and double-clicked on the square of the end zone I wanted him to reach. The dodge worked! The first square worked . . . and then the second! Touchdown on the last turn of the first half! Orcs had lucked out, and we had “lucked in”. We'd take it!

Second Half:

Okay now I felt a little bit better. But strangely so: this was entirely unexpected. Up 1-0 on the Orcs and having them kick off to me? Now what to do? Lining up short a player, I figured I had two objectives: either score as quickly as I could or hold on to the ball until at least turn 14. My thought was that if I managed to hold on that long and have the ball on their side of the field, they would be hard pressed to score in two turns.

The Orcs kicked off to me and the kick-off result was “rock throwing” which resulted in one of my players being stunned. Okay not a great start being down 11-10 players and already have a player taken down until my next turn. I picked up the ball with a Ghoul and began to push up the right side of the field. A few more KO's later and I'm looking at playing 11-8 and that side looks completely untenable . . . so I decide to reverse the field as best I can. This is tricky as one of the Orc blitzers has +1 MA and so moves faster than I might think. Finally the Troll is really stupid a couple of times and is doing less than clogging up the middle of the field. But in reversing the field I have not been able to push the ball up field successfully. So it comes down to this: my Ghoul still has the ball, it's our turn 14, but he is still 5-6 squares short of the center field stripe. He's covered on two sides by an Orc and the Troll. Even though he has Dodge and Block, I don't think his chances are great. If I can break free and sprint up the left sideline, I will not have much protection but force the Orcs to Blitz me on their turn 14 and they won't be able to pick up the ball: it will be on their side of the field. I figure even if they Blitz they will first have to knock him down (likely on a 1 die block, which isn't easy). The Ghoul might easily survive to turn 15 and make a further run. Now all I had to do was make a Dodge roll out of their tackle zones. Ghouls aren't AG4 (rather they are AG3) so it is not automatic, but it's still a 3+ roll: a 4 is needed for AG3 but you get a +1 for an empty square. So basically a 66% chance – and the Ghoul has Dodge, so if I fail it the first time I get another 66% chance to make it. Meaning essentially there's only a 1 in 6 chance the Ghoul will fail . . .

And fail he does.

That leaves the ball very close to our own end zone with very few players able to come back to play any kind of defense. We've only 8 players left at this point so being down 3 it's really hard to generate much pressure or coverage. The Orc Blitzer with the AG of 4 easily stands up, goes in to pick up the ball and heads towards the end zone. Now the only way to catch him is have a Ghoul make a Blitz move that involves not one but two Dodge rolls within Orc tackle zones and then make a one die block to knock down the Orc . . . needless to say that doesn't happen. Orcs score on their turn 15 to tie the game. The 8 remaining players line up for the kick off but it's really a moot point – we can't score in a single turn (nor can the Orcs) so the game is effectively over.

Post-Game:

The locker room after this game was very subdued. If you had told us before the game that we could take another 1-1 draw, we likely would have been rather elated and relieved. Instead the atmosphere was more somber – this felt like a loss. We had kept the lead for 6 of the 8 turns in the second half, only to squander it at the end.
Still, luck has a way of evening out. We had ended up scoring on a fairly lucky play (in that it required a sequence of rolls we HAD to make without a re-roll) and it was fairly unlucky that the Ghoul could not make that Dodge roll when he needed to make it. Still overall the Orcs were far unluckier in their blocks – they tended to burn their 2 re-rolls fairly early in both halves of the game so it was really not much of an advantage.

Casualties continue to plague us – it's simply too hard to be competitive on the pitch when you're down 3-4 players. If that doesn't happen perhaps there's no need for the Ghoul to make that Dodge roll, or perhaps there is more coverage available downfield.

We gained a bit of money back and our injured Zombie brings us up to 12 players. The Wight who scored the lucky touchdown went up a level and, perhaps appropriately, gained +1 of Movement Allowance. That was our only player to advance though so the Orcs now feature a level 3 player and 3 level 2 players while we still have just two level 2 players. I'm glad we got this done when we could.

Up next is Dustin who has doubtless learned a great deal since facing us the last time. We've only managed 1 touchdown per game so I hate to have it such that the only way we can win is to keep the game a 1-0 affair: that's a lot of pressure on our defense. We need to work on that scoring.

Blood Bowl League Batrep Day 2 - Necromantics vs Amazons

Three friends and I started a Blood Bowl League. I am soo satisfied!! I have been itching to play this game for quite awhile, and it is my favorite GW game. Even though we are playing the video game and not my painted miniatures, I am still happy to be playing. We have already completed day 1--The following Batrep will close out Day 2.

I am posting this Batrep on behalf of Laertes...

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Pre-game thoughts:

I must admit that I was somewhat dreading the matchup against the Amazons. In some ways our teams are almost opposites – the Amazons start off well, with a team loaded with many starting skills, is fairly fast, and can pass, while the undead (any sort) tends to start off slowly, with few starting skills, and rely pretty much exclusively on a running game. I was afraid that we could get in to trouble quite easily against them. I'd played with them (my D-Cups team) but I'd only played against them a few times. Here is what I thought were our keys to the game:

1. Play DEFENSE. This is challenging for me. If you've seen my teams play, or the teams I tend to choose, you know that I tend to play offense first and let defense be a rather secondary concern. But in previous games against the computer (playing Amazons) defense was absolutely key – trying to run up and down the field with the would fail.
2. Get LUCKY. I knew I had likely erred when I purchased only 1 re-roll – I should have skimped and bought 2. I knew the Amazons would have at least 2 re-rolls plus the re-rolls from their skills. Simply put I could not afford to make many mistakes, take silly chances, or get some bad rolls. I needed to get some luck on my side: perhaps nothing huge, but a Cheering Fans roll, or a Quick Snap, or something that would help out.
3. Stay UNHEALTHY. This may seem odd for an undead team but I needed to stay out of the KO and casualty box. It's just how I seem to end up playing: my teams take casualties regardless of their armor value. And with only 11 players I knew I did not wish to be facing situations where I would be facing 11 Amazons with only 9 player on my team.

That all being said, after a long while I hope the game lived up to the hype!

First Half:

My heart sank a little when I saw the Amazons didn't have 2 re-rolls . . .they had 3!! That meant the “Get Lucky” part was going to be that much harder. I won the toss and, in keeping with playing defense, elected to kick. The first kick off result was a Quick Snap – okay not that lucky for me, but not terrible either. I then thought I got a bit lucky when the Amazon thrower failed to pick up the ball. It ended their turn, but the Amazons were still in good position. I did manage to get a Ghoul deep and have him “Go for It” a few squares that put him very near the ball. I thought I was even luckier on [Lord Grimskull]'s turn when his block failed to knock down the Ghoul (only push him back). This was the game plan! It was going to be turn three, all I had to do was Dodge out of one tackle zone, pick up the ball in an empty square (no tackle zones on it) and waltz in the end zone. No problem, right?

Well, wrong.

The Ghoul managed to Dodge out of the tackle zone without effort – now to pick up the ball! But then roll a 1. No worries – I have my one re-roll, and it's a good use on a scoring play, right? Well not when you roll another 1 and end your turn. I had tried to position the team first just in case this happened but that still left me with a Wight against the sideline whom the Amazons promptly pushed off of the pitch.

The Amazons were able to pick up the ball on the next turn and start up the field, but we'd run through the midway point of the first half already and I knew I just needed to keep the scrum going and not let any Amazons deep. The Amazons completed one pass on their last turn but could not score. I did not feel too badly: we had not perhaps gotten as lucky as I might have hoped, but we had played defensively enough that there was no score. Unfortunately we had not kept ourselves unhealthy, and were only going to start the second half with 9 players. We had KO'd some players though, so it was going to be 10-9 (players) in favor of the Amazons.

Second Half:

Okay now I felt a little bit better. The lack of players meant I had to set up with some significant gaps in my line, but I felt I still could take advantage of the Amazons. Well that is unless they were to get a free turn for the defense . . . which they did. But I got what I wanted out of the kick-off: a touchback! No more sweating to see if I could pick up the ball, I could give it to any player so I gave it to my Ghoul who was closest to the line and started the “funeral march” up the field to my left.

But I started to stall out. [Lord Grimskull]'s Amazons were quick to recover and, even though I had a Flesh Golem and a Wight leading the way, they were able to quickly wall them in. I had hopes that I might be able to hand it off to my other Ghoul but again he got pushed off of the pitch . . . and now there were simply too many women in the way. I knew folks tend to underestimate the speed of a Ghoul so I was trying to get close to the end zone, punch a small hole and scoot through it, even using Dodge if necessary. But the Amazons were thick like the rain forest. But there might be one opening . . . I ran the Ghoul to the right and backwards, towards mid field and almost along the mid field stripe. There was a lot of open space but very few Amazons – and I had both Werewolves, a Flesh Golem, and a Zombie over there. That put the Amazons in a tricky position – they could put a crimp in things, but they'd have to get lucky on a few rolls. But [Lord Grimskull] couldn't roll it, leaving the Ghoul to sprint towards the right sideline now with a bit of an escort. Still the Amazons put up resistance, and when the Wight couldn't block an Amazon off of the Ghoul, the Ghoul was forced to Dodge away but made it in the end zone for the score. Unfortunately on the Amazon turn they seriously injured my Flesh Golem (yes I know he is AV10 with regeneration . . both failed).

Not many turns left so I knew I just needed to play defensively. The kick off roll gave me an extra re-roll (Cheering Fans!) and was also not a touchback (boys and girls I cannot stress enough how important it is to make your opponent always always have to roll to pick up the ball). We were still at 10-9 players (in favor of the Amazons) but I knew we needed to stay deep. [Lord Grimskull] surprised me a bit when he picked up the ball and threw it almost to mid field – it was not an accurate throw and caused a turnover but the ball also wasn't in a place I thought I could pick it up ([Lord Grimskull] said he confused is catcher and thrower: it was the catcher who threw the ball). Still we couldn't reach the ball and I didn't wish try too much – I thought I'd throw a 1 die block with my Werewolf just to get things in position. And he knocked himself down and out . . . that left a lane on the right. But time was running out – the Amazons picked up the ball and hurled it down field towards their catcher, but the Ghoul intercepts! Perhaps only the 2nd time in 70 or 80 games I've seen an interceptions and the first time my team had actually done it! I ran to the left side of the field and the Amazons could not catch the Ghoul as time expired. Hard fought to the end for a 1-0 victory.

Post-Game:

Two out of three keys to the game is not bad, is it? We had played defensively, we got some luck (and did not have any really terrible luck, perhaps the first two “1”s notwithstanding). We did not stay unhealthy – we suffered 3 casualties while causing none in return, and failed 2 of 3 regeneration rolls. We were fortunate to knock out 7 Amazons, but that doesn't get you SPP, which is something that the undead definitely need to get out of the gate quicker. I rolled a 2 for winnings, re-rolled it and also got a 2, so I don't know if we finally saved up enough or another re-roll or not.

[Lord Grimskull] played well – I think the only times I caught him were in a tendency to have the Amazons bunch up a bit. On defense that enabled the Ghoul to reverse the field and on offense that sometimes would hinder his ability to go deep on some of those pass routes. Of course, to be fair, the one thing that tends to surprise people is that the undead tend to be faster than you think, so he moment you believe you have an undead team blocked off . . .

His team was very physical – he sets up a lot of good blocks and he makes high percentage plays. That is going to make the Amazons very difficult to beat as they get more and more SPPs from league play.

Flames of War - First battle

(click on image to enlarge)

 After a few scheduling hic-ups, Laertes and I finally had our Flames of War battle. This was simply a "training battle". We wanted to get the rules down, and didn't put much effort into strategy or tactics (well, at least I didn't!).

Fortress Europe was the book we pulled our forces from, and I detailed our army lists in this post. We played on a 4'x4' board with some hills to break LoS. We chose to play the Free-For-All mission.

Here are a couple of thoughts on the battle:

1. The US stabilizers were nice, but with the German Veteran troops, I needed 5's to hit (6's at long range).
2. Even with the extra firepower the US forces had, the German armor was tough to crack.
3. We completely ignored the objectives and slugged it out in the middle of the board.

We made a some mistakes throughout the game. Here is a summary:

1. Morale Checks.  If I shoot at your team of 3 tanks, and I destroy 1 and make 1 crew bail out, there's no morale check, because the team is not below half strength.  The number of tanks that can fight (one) equals the number of tanks that are destroyed (one).  The tank whose crew has bailed out does not count in the calculation.  If another tank was bailed out then a check would be required. 
2. Protected Ammo. The protected ammo on the Panzer IV's would have meant that they should have re-rolled every failed roll to re-mount the tank.
3. Allocating Hits. Once the hits have been allocated across the unit, THEN we start rolling saves and firepower rolls to destroy or bail out.  But we're rolling for a specific team or tank.  If a tank that is bailed out gets another bailed out result, it has to take a Motivation test or be destroyed.
4. Company Command. We probably should have had our company command "join" one of the other platoons.  They're like independent characters in Warhammer, although if you have the company commander in your unit you are then able to re-roll any failed Motivation test.  So not only would we have had 5 tanks firing as one unit, but we would have been able to re-roll the unit tests and the bail out tests.
5. Objectives. We only placed one objective (not 2) and we placed them in our own deployment zone (not the opponents)

It was fun, and we are planning to try another match, this time with more effort in defense!!

Flames of War

Two Panzer IV G tanks take on 3 confused M4 Sherman tanks

Laertes picked up Flames of War last week, and we are planning to play an introductory battle on Friday. He will be taking control of a German force and I will be fumbling my way through with a US force.

We both like big armored machines with guns, so we are opting to play tank companies. Which also works because we don't have any miniatures for Flames of War! Fortunately, I have a small collection of Axis & Allies miniatures, so they will be substituting in for the "real" models. While the A&A figures are less detailed and less historically accurate, they are apparently the same scale as FoW miniatures.

The army lists have been chosen (limited to figures on hand)-- Laertes will have 8 Panzer IV H tanks and I will be sporting 11 M4A1 Sherman tanks. The total points will ring in at 760.

German Panzerkompanie List
1 Company HQ, 190 pts
   2 Panzer IV H

1 Panzer Platoon, 285 pts
   3 Panzer IV H

1 Panzer Platoon, 285 pts
   3 Panzer IV H


US Tank Company List
1 Company HQ, 140 pts
   2 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman


Wish me luck... I'll need it!

Resin Bases

I have never used resin bases before, but decided to take the plunge! Recently, I received 2 shipments of resin bases to add to my existing Necromunda gangs. I wound up shopping at 2 different companies to get the styles of bases I was looking for-- Tech-Deck from The Dragon Forge (for my Goliaths) and Scrap Yard from resinfx (for my Scaavys). About a year ago, I also purchased some Swamp resin bases from Kerr & King for a Warmachine Cryx force that Laertes bought me.

On a side note, both The Dragon Forge and resinfx shipped their products relatively quickly (for crossing the pond)-- they arrived in about 11 business days. When I opened the packages, I was pleasantly surprised as both companies sent extra bases (a 60mm base from The Dragon Forge, and five 25mm bases from resinfx).

The Dragon Forge bases are crisp and free of bubbles. The bottom of the bases have not been sanded, but it will be unnecessary as they are already smooth and flat. There is a little bit of very thin "flashing" that easily flakes off with my finger. Overall, these are an excellent product!

A few of the 25mm & 40mm bases from The Dragon Forge

The 60mm "freebie"

The resinfx bases need a little bit of clean up. While the bottoms are sanded flat, the base edge has some "over cast" along the ring that needs to be sanded and/or scraped off. I noticed a few bubbles, but they are very minor. I am very pleased with these bases.

A few of the 25mm & 40mm bases from resinfx

The 25mm "freebies"

The Kerr & King need the most clean-up. The bottoms aren't flat, and will need a fair bit of sanding, and there are multiple bubbles on nearly every base. Also, there is a fair amount of "over cast" on a number of bases. I want to be clear that I do not think these are an inferior product-- they are perfect for my Cryx warband, but in comparison to the other two companies' products, these bases can't be used as-is..

A few of the 30/40/50mm bases from Kerr & King

I also ordered a pair of wreck markers from Kerr & King. They have a selection of large and small wreck markers for all (most?) Warmachine factions.

Blood Bowl Legendary Edition (Part 2)

Screen-Cap of team after adding a lineman.

 (click on image to enlarge)

OK, I started playing a campaign and I'm 7 games in (part way through the second tier/period). Here is my team as it was initially built.

Greenskin Packers (Starting Line-up)
1x Troll
4x Black Orcs
4x Blitzers
1x Thrower
2x Goblin
1x Re-roll

I wanted to ground and pound with the Orcs, but sheesh, I cant get a break and play vs. any soft teams!! While you could say the Dwarves are the "weakest" team I've played against in regards to strength (# of STR 4 & 5 players), the team I played vs. had a Death Roller (STR 7)!!

Throughout Period 1 (including playoffs) I received between 200-300k in pre-match inducements as I had the lower team value. Once I hit the second period, I am much closer in team value to my opponents.

Period 1:
Win vs. Dwarf 2-0
Win vs. Ogre 2-1
Win vs. Undead 1-1

Period 1 Playoffs:
Win vs. Dwarf 2-0
Win vs. Ogre 1-0 (sustained 1 serious injury)

Period 2:
Win vs. Undead 2-0 (sustained 1 death and 1 injury)
Win vs. Khemri 1-0 (sustained 1 injury)

The last game I played was unbelievable! I received the kick-off, and started trudging slowly up field in my typical wedge along the sideline. The Khemri coach managed to squeeze someone through, after a blitz from a Blitz-ra Star Player. On my next turn, I had to move the ball carrier out of a tackle zone and failed the dodge roll. The fans threw the ball into the middle of the pitch, but I did manage to scramble and we exchanged possession twice with no movement on the pitch throughout 5-6 turns. I finally broke away on the 8th turn and fell one square short of a TD, pushed it once, and failed. First half ended 0-0.

In the next half, I kicked off deep, almost landing in his end-zone, and rushed up field. I managed to create a big jumbled up mess he couldn't get around or through. I was able to knock over the ball carrier on the 15th turn, scooped up the ball, and was just able to run it in for a TD on turn 16!! That was a close one!

So far, there have been 4 pitch invasions (out of about 16 kickoffs)... those SUCK!!! However, I think my opponents have taken the brunt of the results.

I really wish you could export/save/keep game stats, even if it was only a w/l record vs. what races. It keeps a good set of player stats by season and by career, but I'd like to be able to reference a team's past games.

While I've kept up with the Blood Bowl Living Rules Editions over the years, there are some teams that I never played or played against. I typically need to see teams (or fleets, gangs, or squads) "in action" to really understand what their capabilities are... uhm... my first enfcounter with Kemri... 4x STR 5 Tomb Mummies!! (while this is not as good as 6x STR 5 Ogres, the Ogre teams have snotlings!! :P ...which actually aren't that bad any more-- 3 snotlings taking down an orc blitzer is a little humiliating)

Kemri have reinforced my opinion from all the way back to second edition Blood Bowl-- I still hate with a passion, playing against Undead!!! Plus, I think Kemri are worse!! I've never played with/vs. a Vampire or Necromantic team, so I'm not sure how I feel about the later two undead teams.

Oh... BTW, the team that is missing in the video game is the Chaos Dwarves. (Laertes main team in the board game)

Blood Bowl Legendary Edition (Part 1)

The latest edition of the Blood Bowl video game is a MUST BUY for any fan of the game. I had been watching the progress of the game on their website very early on in development, and was extremely excited to get the game. However, I was disappointed in only 9 playable races in the initial release. I decided to bide my time until an expansion came out to include all (or most) of the races found in the board game.

So far, I have only played a couple of games in the "classic" mode (turn-based), but it is amazing how well they captured the feel of playing the board game. There are 20 playable races, lots of customization, dirty tricks/weapons, and all the pre/post game campaign rules.

The "classic" mode was enough to sell me, but there is also a "blitz" mode (real-time) that I haven't even looked at. I bought Laertes a copy for Xmas, so we will be testing out the online "blitz" mode in the near future.

Trying to Tau the Line

For the second round our forces were pretty much the same as the previous game, although this time we rolled the secure and control mission. I knew this was going to be a challenge: how to get a scoring unit of Necron Warriors across the board and then contest the Tau objective in their deployment zone?

I won the roll and set up first, putting my objective on a low hill in the southwest section of my deployment zone. I naturally chose a squad of Necron Warriors to baby-sit the objective (hey, two objectives and two scoring units! I do so much better when I don't really have to think that much!). I deployed the Lord with the other unit of Warriors as far forward as I could, ready to dash across the table towards the Tau. The destroyers and heavy destroyer were deployed more or less as a unit guarding the flank.

However, the Tau seized the initiative and the Hammerhead opened up on the heavy destroyer. Yes, it was going to be this kind of cat-and-mouse kind of game again -- again with heavy destroyer filling the part of the rodent. I should consider painting a series of concentric circles on it and then convincing folks that it was some sort of ancient Necron glyph. There was little other shooting as he had reserved his Troops choices and no others were in range.

The battle unfolded from there: again, the Tau Commander and Crisis Suits were early casualties thanks to the destroyer unit. At this point level, I think it is going to tend to go that way as, with this unit combination, the destroyer unit simply does not have a better target (especially early in the game) than the Crisis suits. They could only glance the Hammerhead or the Devilfish, the Fire Warriors are all safely ensconced aboard their transports, so what's a Necron to do? The destroyers then turned their attention to the Fire Warriors guarding the Tau objective, eventually causing one squad to break (but rallied immediately in the following turn).

Again, the Hammerhead and heavy destroyer each tried to be less effective against each other. In 3 or 4 rounds of shooting, the BS4 heavy destroyer only hit the Hammerhead twice, and failed to glance or penetrate each time. In return, the Hammerhead also only hit the heavy destroyer twice, once failing to wound, and the second time killing the big jetbike.

The unit of Warriors with the Lord never made it across the table -- indeed, they only basically made it in to killing range when the game ended on turn 5. One of the Devilfish attempted to tank shock the squad guarding the Necron objective, but the squad easily passed it's Leadership test and then sprayed the Devilfish with Gauss fire.

Unlike the last game, this time I did not roll so well and the game ended on turn 5, in a complete draw, 1 - 1. The Necrons had only lost a Warrior and the heavy destroyer, while the Tau had lost the Commander, both Crisis Suits, and almost a half dozen Fire Warriors.

I'm not sure what I could have done differently -- wish only two (walking) scoring units my only strategy had been to try and force the Tau off of their objective once the Crisis suits were eliminated, but it would still likely have taken a few more turns of firing to achieve that goal. For the Tau . . . well, I'm not sure what they could have done. With smaller squads of Fire Warriors, they cannot go toe to toe with the Necron Warrior units. The Crisis suits are rarely getting in to range, and I think that's a key factor. I don't think Z is going to bring the Hammerhead with a Railgun again -- it's nice in case I had a Grey Knight Land Raider, but against the Necrons I think he's going to want to outfit it with the Ion Cannon.

Thoughts?

Tau versus Necron Redux

Once again the Necrons will be materializing to take part in another battle. For the second outing, I'm not going to change anything except for some of the wargear that I had purchased for the Necron Lord (mainly as point filler, as buying another Warrior would have put me something like 2 points over the limit). I've been assembling some Wraiths (side rant: in the time it takes to clean up and assemble a single Wraith you could have had an entire squad of Warriors ready to go) but I don't think they'll see action until we up the points cost a bit. I'm hoping to also see a mission OTHER than Annihilation so that I have a chance to see how they'll perform against the more mobile Tau when they have an actual opportunity to get out and run around, as it were.

There are also other difficult decisions to be made. Our last game featured the old standby: beer. For the next game, I'm thinking perhaps of vodka, or perhaps something else? I don't know . . . what goes well with Necrons and 40K?

More to come . . .

Necrons vs Tau 750pt Battle Report (Laertes perspective)

Before the game began:

The list I brought, after some internal debate (okay, not a heck of a lot of internal debate, given that it's kind of tricky at this point level to have very many options with the Necrons):

1 unit of 10 Necron Warriors

1 unit of 11 Necron Warriors

1 unit of 3 Necron Destroyers

1 unit of a single Necron Heavy Destroyer

1 Necron Lord with Res Orb

I knew the Tau forces I would be facing would be highly mobile, so I was somewhat relieved when he rolled "Annihilation" for the mission. I figured that was the only mission that favored my foot troops, as I knew now that he would have to come to me, instead of having the Necrons march across the board and try to contest objectives. I rolled highest and elected to go first, and then subsequently deployed my forces in the far corner of the board, with the larger unit of Warriors and the Lord inside the small forest (area terrain). The Destroyers and the Heavy Destroyer grouped themselves together to the left, and the other unit of Warriors positioned themselves behind the small forest, kind of in a clump ready to move and protect the other flank. The Tau were kind of spread out across the deployment zone, with a Devilfish on either end (containing Firewarriors), with the 'Fish furthest away from the Necrons supported by the Hammerhead and the overall Tau Commander, joined to the unit of Crisis suits.

The first turn was fairly uneventful, as I moved the Destroyer block forward and moved the smaller unit of Warriors out to my right flank. The shooting phase went fairly well, although I was hoping the Heavy Destroyer could do better, it still managed to glance the Hammerheard so it would not be returning fire next turn. The unit of Destroyers reached out to the unit of Crisis suits, as they could just see the Tau Commander beyond the one hill. They managed to cause four wounds to the unit -- this is where things went astray a bit. Z divided the hits in to two on the Crisis suits and two on the Commander, as we were both a little shaky on the rules for dividing up wounds on multi-wound units. While certainly a legal way to do things (allocating the extra wound to the Commander), it was probably less than optimal, as the unsaved wounds end up going through to the Commander and contributes to his early demise. As he was armed similarly to the other Crisis suits, Z tells me he think it wouldn't make much of a difference, but it would still likely have been nice for the Tau to have their Commander around for more of the game.

The first Tau turn is largely movement, with the Devilfish sweeping around the flanks and the Hammerhead moving out near the center of the table. The Crisis suit unit slinks around behind the one 'Fish, but is now within easy sight of the Destroyers. Most of the Tau weapons are out of range, but a few of the burst cannon shells bounce off of the Destroyers.

On my second turn I admit to succumbing to target fixation. The big tempting target of the Hammerhead in the middle of the table is too much for me, and I have the Heavy Destroyer break off from the pack of Destroyers and work in to position to take a shot with the Heavy Gauss Cannon . . . only to a roll a one to hit. The Destroyers stay after the unit of the Crisis suits, and manage to wound one and finish off the Commander this turn. I've mixed feelings, as I've killed the Tau commander but left myself wide open in the middle of the table. The Crisis suits break and start to run, but they're a long way from the table edge so I think they will likely rally.

The second Tau turn has the Hammerhead turn and take a shot at the Heavy Destroyer . . . only to miss with the massive railgun. The Crisis suits, after rallying predictably, turn on the Destroyers and manage to down one . . . but he stands up at the beginning of the next Necron turn. The Devilfish on my left finally discharges the Fire Warriors, but most end up slightly out of range and so only a few shots get through to the unit of Warriors taking cover in the forest.

The third Necron turn saw the unit in the forest finally returning fire, albeit in a somewhat limited capacity, as not all could get a line of sight to the Fire Warriors. They manage to do fairly well, though, killing 3-4 of the Tau. In the center, I attempt to maneuver the Heavy Destroyer to gain a shot at the rear armor of the Hammerhead. I don't take advantage of all of the jetbike rules, and then look it up to my chagrin, as I am only in the side arc. Z offers to let me re-make the move, but I figured I will try the side shot . . . and the Heavy Destroyer misses again, making the point fairly moot. More shooting on the left takes down a few Fire Warriors.

The next Tau turn sees the Devilfish on my right flank finally disgorge the Fire Warrior unit, this time a bit more in range, and the unit of Necron Warriors on my right flank takes the brunt of the fire, downing three. The Hammerhead decides to stop playing with the Heavy Destroyer and holes the ancient machine with a point blank railgun shot. The Crisis suits return fire on the Destroyers, downing one.

The Necron turn starts with all but one of the Warriors standing back up (the Destroyer stays down). The Destroyers move back to within range of the Lord's Res Orb, and the unit of Warriors move forward to get the Fire Warriors within Rapid Fire range. In the Shooting phase, the fusillade from the Warriors almost wipes out that unit, even with cover behind the 'Fish. The Destroyers add to the fire, and kill off the unit.

I'm not quite as sure on the last few turns (I'd had a few beverages by then) -- basically, the Tau on my left flank embark on the Devilfish and move out of range. The burst cannon (from the second Devilfish) and the Hammerhead finish off the unit of Destroyers, but return fire from the unit of Necron Warriors destroys the burst cannon then immobilizes the Devilfish. The Gun Drones are also shot to pieces. The last Crisis suit chooses to move out of range, and the game doesn't end until turn 7, with the Necron forces prevailing by a 3-2 margin in kill points (Tau kill the unit of Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers, Necrons kill the Commander, a unit of Fire Warriors, and the unit of Gun Drones).

In retrospect the "target fixation" did not hurt me too much, as you ended up with a Hammerhead also essentially fixated upon a Heavy Destroyer that was less than half of it's point total. I was also so paranoid with regards to cover saves that the unit of Warriors with the Necron Lord never moved out of the forest, and their shooting only served to whittle down the one unit of Fire Warriors a little (and a few of the models never got to fire they Gauss weapons in anger). In hindsight, the Tau weren't really carrying that many AP3 weapons, a Lord with a Res Orb was standing in their midst . . . clinging to a 4+ cover save may NOT have been the most useful thing they could have done.

I thought the luck was kind of average -- in three turns of shooting I could only get the Heavy Destroyer to hit the Hammerhead once (and could not score a penetrating hit), but I did roll fairly well on the "We'll Be Back" rolls and I thought the unit of Warriors on my right flank rolled well against the Devilfish and the unit of Fire Warriors (then again, just rolling 18-20 dice might also have something to do with that!).

We'll need a few more games to get things to go more smoothly (and doubtless discover more), but I did like that, every time we seemed to have a rules question, we could look it up quickly and the answer was pretty much there. That is, there was not the ambiguity that sometimes accompanied our games of 4th edition.

And now . . . who knows? Perhaps I'll paint more Necrons!.

Pending Battle!

Well, I will beat Laertes to the keyboard and let you all know we finally put a game on the calendar... T-minus 6 days in fact!! This will be our first 5th edition battle, coming it at 750 points. I previously posted my army list in an earlier blog here. While I agreed with some of the feedback, I decided not to include any of the great suggestions from Chernobyl and NockerGeek and to stick with the list as is.

I believe Laertes is running necrons (I'll let him post his list). However, I wouldn't be surprised if his Demon Hunter army showed up as a last minute replacement if the 'crons assembly plant didn't make its quota!!

We are both long-time hobbyists, but infrequent players... I think we only managed 3 battles of 4th edition!! So there may be a few mistakes during this game. I plan to take lot's of pictures during the game, and Im sure we will both want to post a battle report.

Wish us luck!

Z

The Chaos Fleet Enters Dry Dock

After the move now the damage assessment begins. Breaking out my Chaos fleet for Battlefleet Gothic, after a number of years and perhaps far too many moves, I have begun to see what it takes to bring them back up to fighting trim. There seems to be minor damage at least all around: masts snapped, pegs broken off of flying bases, turrets now falling off, paint chipped, etc. It looks like the only choice for a flagship at the moment is the Quietus, a Murder-class cruiser you can just make out in far upper right. Not shown are some escorts still in the box, and a couple of the more badly damaged larger ships. My Repulsive-class grand cruiser is in pieces but looks eminently repairable -- I'm afraid I'm hesistant to say the same about my Despoiler-class battleship, that seems to be missing some pieces for her bridge! I shall have to redouble my efforts to locate those pieces and hope that I didn't just dismiss them as a general bit of left over somewhere.

I'm not quite so confident when it comes to figuring out what to do for the flying bases. For my Necron Destroyers in 40K, I'm going with a modified version of a magnetic flying base that I first saw mentioned on Fritz's blog. I will cover my version of that in a future post (dealing with the Destroyers), but the basic idea is a small machine screw in the model and a replacement post bearing a magnet on the flying base. Should work fine for most of the jetbike-type of models, as they're fairly light and made of plastic. But what about the heavy metal ships? I don't think the same method is going to work quite as well, and, of course, they're the ones most likely to snap their flimsy stock flying pegs. Any ideas?


If you'd like to check out the Battlefleet Gothic rules, including the descriptions and stats of the various ship classes that I've mentioned, you can view the rules and supplemental PDFs here.

A Gateway Game

Moving is done and now I can't find anything, but there seem to be few casualties (with the notable exception of an old Imperator Titan -- the Mechanicus can't be pleased with me at this point). So this post will have to do for now until more work can be undertaken!

A recent article on the Bell of Lost Souls on the possible return of the Chaos Dwarves (and no, I’m not falling for “Dwarfs” as the plural -- I'm just stubborn that way) caused me to wax nostalgic with memories of big spiky hats on which I may have impaled fingers, useless formations of hobgoblins, USENET groups (and being the illustrious editor of the Chaos Dwarf FAQ section – so I had that going for me) and, more to the point of that article, what I would like to see in a new Chaos Dwarf book.

And that got me to thinking about how I had started with the little Chaos Dwarves in the first place. It was back in the mists of time, but it did not start with Warhammer at all, but rather with that other nifty gateway game, Blood Bowl (check out the rules here). Mention Blood Bowl these days and reactions will run the gamut, from ardent fans who play nothing else, to Warhammer players who occasionally dabble, all the way to 40K players who have never heard of it, and regard it with a suspicion typically held for Epic or for Battlefleet Gothic.

However one might think of it, Blood Bowl was indeed my “gateway” game for a Chaos Dwarf army. As I may have mentioned before, I am neither a skilled nor a speedy painter, so the various incarnations of Blood Bowl would often allow me to bask in the moment which, for me, was rather rare: the moment of showing up with a fully painted force! To be sure, that might only require somewhere between 12 and 16 figures, but, for me, it allowed me to actually try out several teams and styles of play. I began with the High Elves, but I already had a High Elf army, so they didn’t really hold my attention overly long. So I turned in other directions and looked at other teams. I loved my Skaven team for two reasons: one was the style of play (a high scoring passing offense and a defense . . . well, we didn’t really play defense), and the other was the fact that I could paint Skaven fur relatively well (for me), and so I thought the models turned out nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I briefly (perhaps for a few months or so) flirted with the idea of forming a Skaven army in Warhammer (there were some really cool models) until I came face to face with the fact that, while I could get some good results painting Skaven, I was going to have to paint a LOT of models to field a viable force, and I blanched at the though of painting up 50 Skavenslaves. I also realized that the army seemed to be of a certain type and played in only a certain style, and I didn’t think it was one to which I could readily adapt.

But I also had another Blood Bowl team that was fun to play. Those were my Chaos Dwarves, and they were almost completely the opposite of the Skaven. Where the Skaven could average three to five touchdowns per game, the Chaos Dwarves were lucky if they scored a pair of touchdowns . . . but they could play defense! Instead of a long passing attack, they played a different form of offense, which I gave the rather catchy title the “give-the-ball-to-the-bull-centaur-and-have-him-smash-things” offense. In retrospect, perhaps it really was not that catchy of a title after all. In any case, the Blood Bowl successes lead me to enlarge my Chaos Dwarf purchases and (unlike with the Skaven), fill them out to a more sizeable force.

In that respect Blood Bowl served the purpose for which Games Workshop had likely intended it: to introduce players to different aspects of the hobby, or to introduce new players to the hobby entirely (I already had Warhammer and WH40K). I am kind of curious if others were perhaps lead down similar paths – did some games of Space Hulk spark the interest of either a new Marine or (later) a Tyranid player? Or did someone try a different army in Epic that led them to then collect that army in 40K?