For the Horde!

WoW:tBG

A couple of years back our DnD group went in on a group purchase and picked up some Fantasy Flight board games. We're a lucky bunch, most of us have been roleplaying together going on nearly twenty years now. We picked Fantasy Flight because they are well known for great games, guaranteed to pack an entire evening full of fun, and are loaded with tons of pieces with a very high production value. The games would be our 'backup', for those times when not everyone could show up for the RPG, we'd still have something to play.


Initial setup of the Quest monsters

It was a fun game, moreso because of the game itself, or because of the company, I can't tell you, but we had a blast. The mechanics, although we were horribly rusty, were easy to pick back up on, and although I've got fairly large game table, most of it was occupied. I was going to link to a review at Boardgame Geek, but I was shocked to find their site down, hopefully it's only temporary. If you want the ins and outs of the game, you can check out this official blurb.

I'd have to play it a couple more times to give a credible review, but my initial impressions are favorable. There are a lot of irons in the fire to keep track of during play; quests, items, talents, abilities, etc. I did find myself about halfway through the game wishing I had more options in the talents/skills department, but conveniently there's an expansion to cover all of that. Combat seems complicated, but after a few times, you get the swing of it, and it's easy to plod through. There's also a mechanic where one side, the Alliance, goes up against the other, the Horde, but we didn't capitalize on that.

That's the other thing, you play in cooperative groups, but there's two sides to the conflict. You've also got to have an even number of characters on both sides. The goal is to complete quests, find/buy items, acquire new skills and talents, and level up so you can be tough enough to tackle the 'boss' monster, of which there are three to pick from. The monsters, locales, items, and even abilities will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever spent some real time in the fake world of Azeroth, so that's kind of neat too. You do not, however, have to have any prior WoW experience to enjoy the game.


The Alliance squares off with a Doom Guard


The Horde actually made their move to get to the boss monster first, and surprisingly, defeated him on the first turn. I was on the Horde side, and I'll tell you I was as surprised as the rest, and herein might lie one fault with the game, it ended in an instant and felt a little anti-climatic. It took a while to get there, and the fun's in the journey, but it's still something to think about.


The last turn of the game

By the time we were done, the table was chock full of cards, items, counters, figures, and what-not and lasted about five hours or so. It delivered where it was supposed to, and we all had a good time. There's a couple of expansions, one of which is fairly inexpensive and I think would instantly add to the overall playability, and that's the Shadow of War box, which includes just new cards, quests, and the like. If you want to get more in depth, and really add to the WoW:tBG experience, there's also the Burning Crusade mega add-on.

Assault Squad Icarus

Assault Squad Icarus of the 4th Company

Size: Ten Man Squad
Leader: Veteran Sgt.
Wargear: bolt pistols, grenades, close combat weapons, jump packs
Special Equipment: flamer, Veteran Sgt. gear
Naming Convention: Being jump pack equipped troops, their name wasn't too much of a stretch, Icarus being the Greek God whose flight too close to the sun caused his death. In this case, it is the arrival of the Dark Angels from such heights that spell the enemy's doom.

Back in the 'old days', ahem, models armed with a bladed sword of some kind (power, chain, force, etc.) were able to 'parry' in melee, which meant forcing your opponent to reroll a number of their attack dice equal to how many swords you had in the combat, if you wanted. That's not the case any more, and power swords are much more rare these days too, so for all intents these troopers are armed with bolt pistols, and "close combat" weapons. There's a couple of plasma pistols thrown into the mix for posterity, as well as a flamer armed trooper, which was another option not available in the old days. The squad's Veteran Sergeant, Muša, is equipped with a power fist.


The overall squad is broken down into two five-man combat teams with a plasma pistol in each five-man 'flight'. The above combat squad is lead by Veteran Sergeant Muša.


The second flight combat squad contains the second plasma pistol, as well as the flamer armed trooper.


Taking a suggestion from Andy, who in turn took a note from his Witch Hunters codex, this flamethrower trooper is actually armed with two hand flamers, Sister Seraphim style.


Both combat squads were painted with different colored jump packs; one squad being black, the other green. This helps in differentiating them on the tabletop, especially if they're fielded as separate force organization chart choices.

Librarian By-tor

Prince By-tor was found by the Dark Angels chapter while on a primitive death world not unlike their now destroyed planet of Caliban. The prince's exploits were well known, and when he was first encountered by the Dark Angels, they could tell he had abilities far above average, and a latent, untapped psychic potential laid within. He still carries the same massive blade he had the "wizards" of his home world forge for him. It was made to his specifications that, according to him, "came in a waking dream" and yet there is no difference between his blade, the Black Sun, and the force weapons found in the chapter's armory crafted by Techmarines.

Many natives to the planet were indoctrinated into the chapter that campaign, death worlds are notorious for sturdy recruits, but they went straight to the Scout companies, but not By-tor. He was whisked off by the Librarians and Chaplains of the chapter to the Inner Sanctum; they needed to first determine if he had become susceptible to the Warp, miraculously, he had not.


As with many, many of my Dark Angels, Prince By-tor here was an easy refurbishment. He needed to be based to match the rest of the growing army, which was quick and easy. The only other thing was his backpack, which needed to be switched out since he obviously had a Black Templars one on. The great pack he's wearing came from the Dark Angels veterans box, and it also painted up quickly (plus, it just looks cool). I added a little bleached bone to the robes, and looking at these pics, I'm going to add some light green highlights to the edges of the armor.

The figure, obviously, isn't a Dark Angels fig, but a Black Templars Emperor's Champion model instead. It fell under the category of being 'too cool' to pass up though. This particular model was one of GW's "limited editions", very limited, you could only get it for two days (May 20th / 21st) back in 2000 during GW's 25th anniversary event. You could also get it in this boxed set, but it was also limited to the anniversary weekend, and since it was pricey, and such an eclectic mix of figs, I don't think too many picked it up.

Enter the champion,
Prince By-Tor appears to battle for freedom from chains of long years
The spell has been broken...the Dark Lands are bright.
The Wraith of the Necromancer soars
away in the night.

Stealthily attacking
By-Tor slays his foe
The men are free to run now
From labyrinths below

EDIT: I did go back and add some brighter green line highlights to the armor

Scout Captain Winter

I really liked the idea of the Scout Sergeant Telion in the new Space Marine codex, and when the figure came out, I knew I would be painting one up...even if I wasn't doing a Space Marine army, this would be one of those figs I paint up "just because". I should point out the model is absolutely huge. I would say he's easily 35mm tall, if not more. He dwarfs regular marines, and nearly as tall as some of my 40mm French Indian War figs. I forgot to take comparison pics...

Telion is an Ultramarines character after all, and I play Dark Angels, so it took just a tad of [amateurish] hacking and slashing to remove all of the Ultramarines iconography on his arm greaves and shoulder pads. Then I commenced to paint him up in Dark Angels colors. As with the rest of my scouts, I painted him with camo face paint and matching desert base and cloak. When I was digging the above pic out of my photo library, he was so blended in that you couldn't make him out in the thumbnail.


I went with the name 'Winter' because I painted him up, appropriately enough, during a snow day. Snow days are great if you're a kid, but let me tell you, they're absolute heaven if you're a teacher. I wanted to give him a little more weight in the Dark Angels hierarchy than just a 'scout sergeant', so he got a field promotion to Captain of the entire Scout company. Nice! The stats in the codex are fairly beefy, and he's got some very cool special abilities to boot, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to make him captain. He's also equipped with the Stalker-pattern Boltgun, which not only looks cool, but it's got a few nifty abilities as well.


"Screw you!" Pun intended

Note to self: Next time I photograph on the deck, put the fig OVER the screw in order to hide it!

The 44th President

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye...

I'm not really one to espouse my political inclinations, and I certainly would never do as such here on a blog dedicated to all things good and geeky. However, as I write this, a new president takes the helm of our country today. Any time this happens, history takes place, and today is certainly no exception. I found the above vignette, by AFOL Digger Digger Dogstar, to be exceptionally clever, so I thought I'd post it for posterity's sake.

Blood Bowl Inventory

99 Blood Bowl Figs (and a couple o' Big'uns)

On top of the ongoing (and fun!) 40k campaign we've been embroiled in, there's been talks of getting some Blood Bowl back in action too! Well, we were going to have a massive, dual campaign game last week on a whopping 14x5 table over at Andy's, but we had a couple of cancellations. I wasn't able to play my game, but it was still fun to go hang out. I had to still get transportation for my Dark Angels army though, and since we play most of our games at my house, I don't actually have proper army transportation. I had to clear out my Blood Bowl storage to get something that might work and when I looked at the table, I was kinda surprised to see just how many figs I actually have. I have to admit that all the teams aren't fully painted, and those that are, well, aren't that great (except for two of 'em), but I've got options. It's funny though, I don't think miniatures gamers are ever happy with their current inventory; I've got half a dozen teams, and yet, I kind of want to paint up a new Dwarf team!

Here's the team breakdown:

Norse
Human
Chaos
Chaos Dwarf
Undead
Orc

Predator: SWEDED!

Having just watched the excellent movie Be Kind Rewind, I poked around the internet a bit to see if I could find any more "sweded" movies. Yes, it's now an official term. I ran across the above tidbit, and it is the epitome of a sweded film. I love Predator as much as the next, and there are so many subtle (and not so subtle) nuances to be seen that it's too good to pass up. It's laugh out loud funny, especially for those who can quote the original at the drop of a hat.

The Rat's Nest

I braved single digit temperatures to take these pics today, and it's with a sigh of relief that I'm officially done with my January terrain obligations! Here's the last piece, the "Rat's Nest". Fluff wise I imagine it as a wrecked Blood Angels Land Raider, that's been shanty-rigged up with concrete rubble reinforcements for armor and additional room added on using a variety of scavenged building materials and whatever scrap and what-not was on hand.


Plenty of cover, and enough room to squeeze / shoot through as needed


Extra armor on all sides means this will protect more like a bunker, rather than "rough terrain" on the tabletop. At first I thought all the color would work against it, but I really wanted to emphasize it looking like it was built from half a dozen different pieces. In the end, it worked much better than I thought, though it still needs a blast or two of Dull Cote.


I guess this would be the 'rear view', although it doesn't really have a front facing. The busted tread here provides enough chest high cover for a squad of five. Ten total can fit if you put troopers inside the wreck; twelve if you stick a couple of guys up top!


My homage to Turn Signals on a Land Raider!


It's footprint overall is only a six inch square, but it has fairly large table presence. Putting the extra 'floor' up top added a good deal of height, and it is based on a fairly large tank chassis after all, even though the new Land Raider kit is absolutely massive. Shown here with a marine sniper...who I think will be a frequent visitor!

Four Color Ruins

Here's a pair of ruins for the ongoing terrain Trucidos campaign. I went with a simple building technique, as well as a simple and efficient painting technique, with a focus on something that not only looks good, but is easy to whip up. I also made a matched set, and just used identical techniques, assembly line style, along the way.





As I've mentioned before, I made these so they can stand alone, or butt up against one another for a larger footprint. Since they're matched, they look like they belong together if they're paired up.



I only used four paints (hence the post title) to complete everything. I love using craft paint, and although I have a ton of hobby-specific paint, I've got almost as many craft paints too. They're super cheap, about .89 cents a pop, and you get an amazing choice of color selection. Here, I picked two shades that were close to one another, it's the drybrush one-two combo. For the buildings, I went with a Midnight base, and a heavy drybrush of Night Sky. For the rubble, and exposed areas of broken concrete, I used a base of Grey, with a heavy drybrush of Dove Grey on top of that. It's only four colors, but the effect seems to work.

The End is Nigh

Get off your C.A.N.

Imperial C.A.N.

This is supposed to be an overall geek blog, but lately (and for the next few months to come) I think it'll primarily be a terrain making blog, heh. I'm okay with that, if anyone's guilty of not having quality terrain to play on...it's me. The above C.A.N. is a step in the direction to fix that.

The Imperial STC blueprint for the C.A.N. is widespread across countless Imperial worlds. The C.A.N. (Contained Architectural Nexus) serves a variety of purposes and can be built for a specific task in mind, or left bare so it can be altered with construct modules to adapt to different needs. This particular C.A.N. found on the surface of Trucidos represents a science research post. It has room to comfortably house two people for up to a month at a time. There are two levels inside containing living quarters and storage, with an observation and communications deck up top. Below ground is a basement level that houses scientific equipment, research station, and additional storage.





It's obvious where I got the name from, as this is most obviously a...can. I put this wide panel on one side of it to alleviate that somewhat, however once painted you can't escape, so I decided to embrace it, hence the name.



I used a large refried beans can for the building itself, which has a sizable footprint. I used the lid of the can to serve as the floor, and covered it with mesh screen. I put a card stock panel on the side and to plastic panels on the front and top to serve as hatches. Two arches attach to the front and Andy's resin skull motif adorns the front. The chimney and antenna are a piece of PVC pipe and a wood dowel rod.


Fully loaded

Here you can see the C.A.N. is large enough to hold an entire tactical squad of ten troopers on the roof. If I had placed the chimney on the side of the building, it would be even less crowded (or hold enough room for a character model). I don't know how often you'll be sticking ten guys on top of such a small emplacement, but it's good to know you C.A.N., haha, get it, can? I crack myself up.

Rubblelization

My four (of five) January terrain pieces

Remember my post not too long ago? You may not, 'cause it's showing the images are gone! I guess I need to fix that, ahem. Anyway, I spent the rainy morning in the living room floor adding some rubble. I used a large box lid to catch all the excess pieces, and had pretty much zero mess. I got to count it as family time to boot since cartoons were on, coffee was being drunk, and what-not.

The best terrain tip I've come across as of late is using generic cat litter for rubble. I say generic, because the scoopable stuff we use for our cat is incredibly fine grain, and might work as ballast, but not for rubble. The generic clay cat litter is irregular in size and shape, and instead of grains, it has flakes and chunks and what-not. It's still cat litter, so when it gets wet it clumps up, and if you use a watered down glue mixture, it clumps AND solidifies. Once dry, you've got a texture that looks like busted up concrete and is just as solid.


Two for one

These are actually two pieces, but I tried to bring the rubble all the way to the edges. I also made them to be pretty much identical so can stand apart on the battlefield, or be butted up against one another for a bunch of combinations. I added a lot of clipped up sections of leftover sprues, almost where I'm thinking these be classified as 'dangerous' instead of just 'rough'.


The Rat's Nest got some rubble too



Rounding it all out was yet another H.E.A.P. that got more rubble and dirt. This should be a breeze to paint up, but I'm all out of black undercoat! Both my gloss and flat blacks are empty and I don't know when I'll get out to the store to get some more.

Death to the Undead Robots!

40k Battle
Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Spearhead
Size: 750 points
Forces: Dark Angels vs. Necrons

Andy and I squeezed in a non-campaign game of 40k last night. The new rules may be streamlined and fun to play and what-not, but I'm still hazy on them and need a lot more practice. Plus, since I forget half the special rules and special equipment my army usually has, a little practice never hurt. Not to mention it's always god to get in a game of 'pew pew', rolling dice and hanging out. Oh, and Evan Williams showed up too. Good times.


Marines deploy as far forward as they can


The Necron line readies for battle


Scout snipers take up elevated positions

Note to self: in an annihilation scenario, do not deploy your snipers way up in a ruined building. I was able to tag an enemy squad in the first turn, and maybe the third. But the rest of the time I was either trying to move into a better firing position, or just trying to get down off the ruined building. This was a good example of a normally effective unit being pretty much ineffective the entire game.


Proxy monolith!

No, it's not unpainted terrain, it's Andy's Monolith, ahem, proxied! I don't care what the model was on the board, I just know that it was nigh impossible to take down. An all around armor value of 14 is a tough nut to crack for sure, plus it had some funky special rules making it even more formidable. I did have the foresight to equip a couple of meltabombs, and I had a missile launcher out there too, so I had some krak missiles to lob at it, but either way I think I was looking for natural 6's. Fortunately, other than being a big ole floaty mess, it wasn't too much of a thorn in my side.


Othniel's heroic charge

Captain Othniel isn't a combat monster, but he can certianly hold his own. He's kitted out for melee, and charged headlong into the middle of the Necrons, their Lord accompanying them. Even though I was outmatched, I had a trick up my sleeve with the Hit and Run skill thanks to the campaign veteran tables, I never got to use it though, the first time I charged in, they ran after the combat was over! The second time we locked blades however didn't end well...for me.


Othniel's heroic death


Flame on!

I had lost the game, it was all but over. It was the annihilation scenario and we were playing for kill points. Andy had wiped out Othniel, and one of my tactical squads, which was two points already, and he was fast working on killing the stragglers of my second tactical squad, so he was soon to get a third point. For me, I had managed to eliminate only one of his two squads, I hardly scratched the Monolith (I did shake the 'crew' at one point), and his Necron Lord was well protected in the middle of a regenerating squad of troops, wielding an assault 3 glaive.

In a heroic charge, intent on assaulting, Veteran Sergeant Methuselah and a marine armed with a flamer fired as they rushed forward, they were the sole survivors of Squad Antiquis. The flamethrower template got just about as perfect of an overlay as you can get, and then I scored an amazing number of wounds...which in turn Andy rolled an amazingly low number of saves, which further in turn saw four out five failed "I'll be back" rolls!

It was a fairly one-sided battle, the kill points make it seem worse than it was, but I really stood no chance to pull out a comeback win on this one...until this happened. There's a standing rule with the Necrons; once they suffer 75% casualties, the remaining army vanishes from the battlefield. It's the only reason I squeaked out a victory. With nineteen out of twenty tactical marines dead, including my Captain, I think Andy can easily claim a moral win on this one.


"Huh?"

Moment of the game:
Veteran Sergeant Methuselah, squarely in Death's shadow, prepares to die a hero's death...then, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. The shouts from the distant Scout squads were the only noises to be heard, not a single Necron was to be seen, even their fallen were gone. Were it not for the broken bodies of fellow marines strewn about the ground, it could have all been a dream.


Trooper Brann

Match MVP:
Clearly the most valuable player of the match of Squad Antiquis' trooper Brann. No, I don't normally name each member of the squad, just the sergeants, but the new house rule is that if a fig is the match MVP, they get a name. "Brann" is Norwegian for 'fire', not the most original, but it works, haha. I'm going to add both 'match MVP' and 'match moments' to the way I do battle reports from now on. They've been doing that in the latest White Dwarf reports, and it's a nice touch, so there you go.