Friday Rucht Hour: Convergence of Cyriss Unboxing

So, the big news for Warmachine this year was the Convergence of Cyriss. They are a new faction in the game and they are pretty awesome. What I like the most about them is that the Cyriss faction isn't some B.S. dreamed up by the Privateer Press to make money. They were in the Iron Kingdoms from the very beginning. They spring from the original Witchfire Trilogy which spawned the setting in the first place.

Here, I've unboxed their starter set. Unfortunately, however, I cannot give it top marks. Let's start with the good. Here's what you get for your fifty bucks.

Quite a bit! You get the parts and pieces for four complex and interesting minis - the Warcaster, two light vectors and a heavy vector. (Vectors are warjacks, guys. Let's not kid ourselves.) You also get their quick start rules, which contain the base cards for all of the major factions. So, if you want, you can play starter games with all of the major factions.

You also get a miniature copy of their No Quarter magazine. I thought that was a pretty brilliant piece of marketing. No Quarter is a great mag and getting a mini copy in your box is a nice touch. 

Now, let's get into the bad. Pieces and plastic. First of all, the plastic pieces of the figures are loaded with flashing. It's going to take me a long time to get them ready to glue together. Another problem? Tiny, little pieces. You can see this entire bag, here - that's chock-full of little pieces. Below, you can see an example of some of the "larger" pieces. Overall, it doesn't look like a picnic to me. I can certainly conquer this, but it's definitely not noob friendly. And one of our friends was hoping that this boxed set would be his gateway into the hobby. 

Overall, I would say that the box is worth it. I don't have buyer's remorse or anything like that. The minis look amazing, so I'm excited to see how they turn out. But the box isn't noob friendly by any means and may annoy some people with so many pieces and the copious flashing. Only three stars out of five, for me. An "expert level" set is how I would classify this box, due to the amount of work you'll have cut out for you when you get it. 

Friday Rucht Hour: 120 mm Bases and Reaper Bones

I was recently down in Mik's neck of the woods and I made a trade for some Reaper Bones minis that he picked up as extras. I received a Cthulhu and a dragon for my trade. The Cthulhu "mini" was well worth it, of course. I use the term loosely, because it's pretty big. It's probably now the biggest mini that I own.

I'm sure many of you want to see that...but its time to appear here will come. Never worry. Right now, I want to talk bases. 120mm bases. I've always wanted to try one out. Here, I went and got two of them. I got my bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures. I came across my site a couple years ago, when I was looking for my ideas for my Cryx battle engine.

Anyhow, here's the base Cthulhu will eventually sit on.

It's all covered with fungal growth and giant maggots. It's going to be nasty and fun to paint. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. My dragon. 

So, here he is. Fantastic pose. As you can see, he already has an amazingly dynamic base. He's perched up on a statue's face. By the way? The figure you see above hasn't been glued together yet. I've fond that's a nice byproduct of the Reaper Bones plastic. It's very slightly "squishy" and so you can actually put pieces together without glue so that you get a sense of its shape and pose. It was very helpful to be able to pre-assemble the figure. 

Here's the 120mm base he finally got mounted upon. The whole process was quite interesting. First thing to note - Reaper Bones material is not that easy to cut with your Dremel. It's malleable, making it want to often bend or flex when it's being cut. But in the end, I cut it just the same. I kept the statue face, of course. 

And...below is the final product. I just used a piece of real wood to prop up the dragon a bit . I really like the result of this dragon on the super-large base. I probably need to add some flocking to the base before I'm completely done.

Friday Rucht Hour: Next Reaper Bones Project - The Giant!

As I told Mik, the only reason you'll ever paint minis is having a reason in the first place. It doesn't really matter how gorgeous a mini is or how cool it is - you really need to have a purpose to paint to get the job done.

And by purpose...I mean you have to have an excuse to play with your toys. Andy proposed that he and Mik set up a painting schedule for his Reaper bones minis. Maybe take up painting a whole team of minis at a time or something like that. That may work with some folks, but in my experience, it won't.

Now, if you know that you are playing a game in two weeks and you need four specific miniatures to play your game, that's a different story. When you take on a project like that, suddenly you have a deadline, and suddenly you find your motivation.

So, here's my latest completion. The Reaper Bones giant that was included in the Vampire set.

Here he is most of the way done. I haven't gotten in and done the fine details, yet. I've experimented here and use plain old cardboard to create my own base for him. He has a base that works fine...but it's just so-so. 

And here's the final product. I was okay with this base, but it's not anything to write home about. I did add a little flair to the base of the model. In my portion of the mini purchase, I got a bunch of skeletons. I cut them up and created a small pile of bones, a shield, and some skulls nearby the giant's feet. 

Next up on the Reaper Bones painting queue...a dragon!

Friday Rucht Hour: Bearing the Torch - Crossbows and Catapults

Crossbows and Catapults is an old game. BoardGame Geek dates it back to 1983. I remember his game fondly from elementary school of all things. Back in 2nd grade, we were allowed to bring board games to school to play after our lunch break. For about a month or so, Crossbows and Catapults is the game that dominated board game time.

Apparently, it was popular, because vintage editions of this game go for $200 to $300 dollars on eBay.

Since its inception, this game has seen numerous iterations. The latest edition is known as Battleground: Crossbows and Catapults. I believe this game is out of print (someone correct me if this is not the case), because it retails on Amazon for over two-hundred dollars. I guess people have a serious hard-on for this game!

The original, in all of its glory. 

The newer version - they added castles with battle damage and cannons. 

Anyhow, I got this game for my kids a while back and for a long time, they played it just like we did in 2nd grade. And that is to say - we all simply used it as a playset for toy soldier wars. My kids, just like me, didn't use rules. They just shot at each other's castles and got into fights. However, my dim memory of those ancient years remember the 2nd grade owner of the original edition of Crossbows and Catapults. Jeremy always complained that no one wanted to play by the rules...

So, I looked at the directions in the box and was surprised to see a robust little minis game hiding in this product. The rules are simple. You set up your castle. Then, you set up your toy soldiers (knights or orcs). Obviously, you want to set up your soldiers behind cover. Each model can stand alone or stand on a power disc. If they stand alone and that mini is hit with a projectile, they are out of the game. If they stand on a power disc, they can be hit once with a projectile and lose their disc. Thereafter, they must stand alone.

Each side has a king mini. If a king is hit, the side possessing the king loses a turn. The king can be finally killed if the king is the last minis to go down. We added a house rule that hitting a king twice in a row was disallowed, so you couldn't lose two turns in a row.

Each mini can move (with their power discs) at a rate of 6 inches. The king can move 12 inches. If a mini is within 2" of a weapon, they can activate it and get it to shoot a projectile.

Each turn, a player gets two actions. With an action you can:

• Move a mini 6 inches.
• Move a siege weapon 6 inches.
• Fire a siege weapon.
• Move the king 12 inches.

You cannot fire the same weapon twice in the same round. If the king is hit before all of his army is gone, that army loses a turn. We house ruled that you cannot lose two turns in a row.

There is also a flag mechanic. Knock down all four of the opponent's flags and you can bring back a deceased warrior from the field. Knock down three flags in the same action, and you can bring back a warrior AND the opposing side loses a turn.

What made this game a minis game for us was the simple stipulation of having to move 6 or 12 inches. Because there was that difference, we get out the tape measure each time we play the game. It makes the kids feel like they are playing one of "daddy's games". Totally awesome.

Playing on the carpet! But totally viable on the table top as well. 

The new minis and weapons received an update from the original version. 

Friday Rucht Hour: Bearing the Torch - Catacombs

So, I've got a three post segment here where I'm going to talk about getting kids into wargaming.

First of all, I want to say for the record that I knew my kids would be into wargames. I just didn't know when it would happen. How did I know? Well, every so often, dad goes off and plays games with the guys. When I do this, the kids are simply not invited. "Can I come dad?" "Not yet son...maybe when you're older."

This gave all of my wargaming an immediate mystique. In my circle of friends, it is viewed by my two sons as one of the gateways into manhood. And what little boy is not attracted to that?

Also...I play games that have really, really cool toys. In my games, giant robots fight. Undead hordes swarm against knights with electrical swords. The few times I've played something historical, I'm sitting there in front of tanks and troops - things that have immediate appeal to young boys. Plus, it helps that they are all hand-painted and look nice.

The first thing I started them off with was Catacombs. I've posted about Catacombs before. It's a great dungeon-crawling board game that relies on dexterity. Players take on different roles like the Barbarian, Thief, Wizard, or Thief. Their character is represented by a wooden pog. Players move or attack with their character by flicking their pog into the opposing monster pogs. Most monsters are killed by a single hit, but some monsters are tougher. When you hit tougher monsters, you flip that pog over to represent it being damaged. Mik has a more complete review and discussion, here.

So, as you can see, mechanics of the game make it extremely easy for kids to pick up. Hit a monster, and you kill it. Or, maybe you flip it over. That's it. No numbers to read. Nothing to add. Player characters do have multiple wounds, but these are easily kept track of on large cards with helpful markers.

Most characters have only one special ability, meaning there is very little to memorize or think about. What gives these abilities depth is that activating them is usually a expendable resource. The strategy comes in when to to use or not use a special ability.

My kids loved, loved, loved this game. They liked the excitement of seeing what was in the next room, the thrill of collecting money for vanquishing foes, and buying magical items.

Here's how much they loved the game. When they finished off the dragon at the end, they wanted to keep going. "Dad, what's next?" "Um, there is no next. That's the end of the game." "No! What is the next room?" "There is no next room, guys..."

In the end, I had to make it up. I told them a great story about defeating the dragon and let them buy more magical items. It was hilarious. And by the way? We had some friends come in from out of town. Their little girl played with us and had the same reaction. "No! This can't be the end. What's next?"

All right, that's all for now. Next time, I'll talk about their first proper wargame - Crossbows and Catapults. 

Friday Rucht Hour: Okay, Gents! It's Been A While

As the title suggests, I haven't posted in a while - real life and that sort of thing. I have a lot of posts coming up, however. 

To start with, we'll talk about some miniatures, right? Here we go: The Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game.

At our latest annual gathering in the woods, we drank a lot of beer, drank a lot of liquor, and played a lot of games. One of those games was the X-Wing game that I mentioned above. Simply put, it was terrifically awesome. I learned that the game is based on Fantasy Flight's Wings of War, so that immediately was a large plus for me. If I know that a game is based on an existing ruleset that is already proven, it piques my curiosity. 

The rules for the game are quick and easy for wargame enthusiasts. I've never played Wings of War, but the game's core mechanic reminded me of Car Wars (in a good way). Players choose a speed, direction, and angle of turn for their respective craft. Cardboard templates are laid down after player make their decisions create precise craft movements and turns. 

Here's a sample of some of the templates they use for movement...

The craft all move in initiative order, determined by pilot skill. The lower your skill, the sooner you act in the round, which is disadvantageous in this game. Then, all craft take "actions" which is what you use pull of special tricks. Finally, they fire upon one another. Craft fire upon each other with the pilots having the highest skill going first. Thus, if you are the highest skilled pilot on the board, you'll act, take an action, and then fire all in one go. It's a big advantage, as it should be. 

Shooting and defending are done with specialized eight-sided dice. The  dice are marked with a quantity of explosions, blanks, and eyes on their sides. Pilots roll a small dice pool when attacking or defending. If firing, for example, you score a hit if you roll up explosions. If you get eyes, then can be turned into explosions if you happened to spend one of your actions in "focus". But that means that you didn't spend your action doing something else important. Blanks do nothing - they're misses. 

The best thing I can say about the game, however, is that it has drop dead gorgeous minis. If you've followed this blog, you know that I'm a minis painter and I love my painted minis. But for serious - these pre-painted minis were exquisite. I would be hard pressed to match them if I had an unpainted version of the X-Wing Miniatures game. Another thing - they are to scale! So the Millennium Falcon looks big compared to X-Wings and Tie Fighters! It's awesome! But don't take my word for it, look at them for yourselves...

Here's the fastest ship in the galaxy... 

Check out Slave I, folks. The glossy cockpit contrasts perfectly with worn-in armor plates.  

Two TIE Advanced

A TIE Interceptor

This is from the actual space battle. It's a great way to show you how the different scales of ship interact. The death star mat below the ships was made at Fed-Ex. 

Friday Rucht Hour: The View from RuchtCon

Usually, around St. Patrick's Day, I run a gaming convention from my house. This year, I went big. As big as I could get. I had some folks flying into my tiny convention. There were the locals and there were folks from Georgia and North Carolina. Baltimore was as furthest distance traveled. Check out the dragon cake!

Anyhow, the weekend started with a round of roleplaying games. There was Gothic Earth Eternal, a Pathfinder-based horror game that I wrote. There was also Deadlands and Inspectres. Inspectres was interesting - basically it's a game where you form a Ghostbusters franchise of your own and go around bustin' ghosts!

Saturday morning was cartoons, sugar cereal and boardgames. We played more than one rousing game of Zombicide, which was great fun. Nick drove a car around the board, running over hordes of undead while the rest of us scrambled for resources.

While zombie killin' was going on, elsewhere people were playing Elder Sign, which is a dice-centric game which is the nephew of Arkham Horror. 

While some zombies were bashed and Elder Gods were battled, other folks adjourned upstairs for a game of Arabian Nights! 

After that, we adjourned back to role-playing games. I had tremendous fun playing the Trail of Cthulhu, which uses the Gumshoe system. In the Gumshoe system, you are allowed to "spend" skill points in order to gain or ensure success, which is great for investigative scenarios. It's not a question of if you find a clue, but how good the clue is that you receive. Meanwhile, other folks had fun with Mouseguard and Shadowrun. 

In the evening, for me it was another round of Gothic Earth Eternal, while Fantasy Flight's Only War got off of the ground. In the kitchen, people battled martians in a 50's sci-fi mash up using the Savage Worlds rules. 

Finally, on Sunday morning, we got together one last time to do that old favorite - Fiasco. However, I was lucky enough to play Jason Morningstar's newer game - Durance. I'll just say this. Mik, Durance is right up your alley. 

All right, that's all for now. Happy Friday everyone!

Friday Rucht Hour: First Reaper Bones Painted!

So, as you know from my last post, I got my third of the Reaper Bones Kickstarter. As I said in my comments, the best motivator for me to paint is purpose. So, I quickly painted this guy up from use in an upcoming session of Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords. Everything about this guy was hastily done.

The base was constructed out of some spare Hirst molds pieces I got a few months ago from my buddy Nick. He imagined them being used a sort of pedestal. Instead, I have it as a pieces of rubble in giant skulls. There are plenty of giants in Rise of the Runelords, so the idea is that this bad guy is stepping across the skulls of his own minions. That piece of rock is actually a piece of mulch. 

The base isn't nearly as cool as it could have been had I had the time to really craft it. If I could do it over again, I would have shaved off pieces of the figures base, so it really looked like he was standing on the paved stones more. I might have also mixed in a lot of human-sized skulls with the giant skulls to make the base look more thematic. 

But again - time. Just didn't have it. However, you guys can see how well a Bones figure takes the paint. It takes it very well! There were no differences that I noticed in painting this from a metal figure, except, of course, heft of the model. 

All for now. 

Friday Rucht Hour: Miniatures Assemble!

So, this past Friday evening, we got together for our usual round of Warmachine, but this time we did something different. Instead of playing a game, we sat, assembled, painted, and chatted. Many of us hadn't seen each other over the winter very much and also - many of us just needed a kick in the pants to get painting again.

Me

For myself, that means the Kraken. Here's where I am with that.

Still need to finish the body he's holding and the bottom of the figure. Also, I'll need to finish the base, give the whole thing a wash, and the most important thing - add verdigris to the carapace so it looks like it's been in the ocean for a while. 

Rob

Rob's mission was to assemble his fenblades. Now, these were plastics, which was a first for us at the Warmachine table. The plastic figs were rigid and solid. Not as flimsy as some plastic models I've seen, but still not the same as metal for me. The pieces fit together very well, snapping together nicely. We did have to dip a few of the models in boiling water to get them to bend right so that their parts could fit. The big downside I saw to these was they were not as easy to mod. Weaker plastic is actually more forgiving when it comes to modding, but doesn't have as nice a "feel". 

I'm sure many of you are familiar with using rare earth magnets on your minis to make them posable, storable, or easily modified. Well, we have Rob's first models with magnets. This model can be a Troll Bomber or Mauler, depending on the type of head and armaments he chooses. Warmachine is pretty found of this modifiable kits, allowing you to buy a single model body type and mod it to be different things on the battlefield. The pictures below demonstrate a simple hand switch.

Nick

Nick's big project of the night was unboxing and assembling the Mercenary Colossal figure - the Galleon. Here are many pieces of the Galleon....

The pieces were all resin or metal. And there were many of them. More pieces than the Kraken. At least it seemed like it. Also, many of the pieces had large chunks of flashing on them. So far, Privateer Press's work with resin has not impressed me. I love the heft and feel of resin, but come on, guys. The two knobs on these pieces below are flashing, not pegs or intended pieces of the model. 

To give you some sense of the size of the Galleon mini, check out this! The first picture is the Galleon's chest piece and the second is the Galleon's trident, which it can launch against enemies. Finally, it does come with a thick cardboard wreck marker, just like the Kraken did. I must say, these large, well-made wreck markers are a nice touch. 

All right! That's all for now. Let us know what you're assembling! 

Sunday Rucht Hour: D&D Next

So, the next edition of D&D will be coming out in 2014. I was surprised that Mik hadn't heard about it. In any case, if you somehow haven't heard about it, the news is that they are planning for a 2014 release after a two-year development cycle.

I perused some of their early playtest materials and thought it was...okay. It was definitely recognizable as D&D and much closer to the 3.0 or 3.5 editions of D&D than it was to 4th edition. However, it just lacked oomph.

This latest playtest packet, however, I have been impressed with. Making characters was an exercise of interesting choices. The whole game seems to invite houserules as well. Throughout character creation, you are given lots of guidelines, not hard and fast rules. For example, whenever you start taking feats, you can just pick whatever feat you want or pick a themed feat list (called a specialty) which shows you what feats you get and when.

I suspect that most people will want to pick whatever abilities they want, not abiding by any list. However, what the specialty lists did was to help me make my choices. For example, I built an archer and looked at their Sharshooter Specialty list to get ideas. More importantly, all of their theme lists have a decent amount of flavor, giving you character ideas as you build your character. As I was building characters, I got all sorts of ideas for different characters, different settings, and different games.

Most importantly, I was impressed that when I built some sample characters, I was "forced" to give them all backgrounds. You cannot make a generic fighter. When you sit down to make a fighter, that character will have a personality and a background. This is accomplished by Character Backgrounds an aspect of your character which determines what skills you get and gives you a cool story ability as well.

Anyhow, the playtest went well, but I'll talk about that next time. In the meantime, if you want to see the state of their current Beta Version, check it out here!

Friday Rucht Hour: Position, Position, Position

This battle report is a bit old, but it's about something interesting that I'd love to hear your comments on - positioning.

Positioning your minis on a battlefield is crucial to miniatures based wargame. Whether it be HeroClix or Flames of War, positioning is crucial. And that's as it should be.

The reason I bring this up is that the whole discipline of field positioning has been one that I've been struggling with lately with Warmachine. It's definitely what lost me this latest game while playing my dwarves.

First up, though, another shout-out to Doug, who is continuing to hammer away at painting minis. The guy is new to Warmachine, new to wargames, new to painting minis. And he already has two armies and has over 50% of each army painted. They look fantastic, too! Check out the purple Skorne again:

A little background on the game: We were playing a three-way match up. The scenario was a King of the Hill game, where you scored points if your warcaster was in a square zone in the middle of the field. The zone lay upon a ruined building. 

So, onto my sound defeat. 

Mistake #1 - Misplacing my ranged unit. I completely misjudged by advancement and declared shots on two or three of my opponent's minis, when I could have fired upon all of them. I didn't think I had them in range, but I totally did! The result? I missed an opportunity to fire at my opponent and I advanced too close to the enemy. To my unit's credit, they lived much longer than they should have. But I completely fumbled this flank. 

Mistake #2 - Charging my warcaster up too far, too soon. We were playing a occupation scenario where you scored points my putting your warcaster up on the ruined building that you see here. My warcaster has a rep of being tough, so I put him up on the ruin by Turn Two. And that's with a dwarf! My opponent's forced initially dinged him for a little damage, but nothing I was worried about. Below, you see him - Gorten, painted by Mik, first on the hill!

This flank went okay. Below, you can see my forgeguard before were eventually slaughtered, but they tied up an opposing unit, a heavy warbeast, and a solo. If they were going to be sacrificed, they were sacrificed well.

Mistake #3 - Well, my warcaster was first on the hill and I almost won the game. After two turns, I was one point from victory. It became an imperative for my opponents to kill my 'caster or concede victory. The Skorne warlock marched up into the occupation zone and slaughtered Gorten. My mistake was that I didn't know my opponent's full capabilities. Had I known them, I would have certainly rushed into the zone with more support.

Mistake #4 - This wasn't my mistake. It was Doug's! He was so thirsty to kill my warcaster with his warlock, he charged his own man onto the Hill with little security. Alexia (an infamous Warmachine solo) swept in at last and finished off the warlock with ease. So, the mistake here was being too eager about claiming a juicy prize. Especially disastrous in a three-way game. 

All right, enough about me. How about you? What's your favorite wargame story about positioning? When did you really goof it up? When did you position your forces so perfectly that it lives in your memory? Tell us your story!