Necessary Evil: Third Time's the Charm - Session 3: The Hammer of Justice

 

Our Villains:

• MEGASTRIKE - Strong, radioactive Russian mobster brick. Played by Paladin Steve. A returning character from the prior attempts at this campaign.
• LEGION - Demonic leader of a criminal organization. Face with a sidekick and a lot of resources. Played by Grognard Mike.
• NIGHT BLADE - Sword-for-hire, a mix of melee offense and melee defense. Played by Shootist Will, another returning character.
• NIGHT TERROR - Intangible assassin, stealthy with a side order of ranged combat capability. Played by Variable Dave and yet another returning character.
• Y2K BUG - AI in a stolen robot body. Tech-guy and mainly good at ranged combat, not terribly strong or tough - for now. Played by Battletech Terry.
• THE MIGHTY XYZZIFAX -  Wizard who traveled here from another world. Ranged combatant, heavy defense, and a lot of flexibility. Played by Blaster - a character returning from a completely different game!
• PHANTOM BLADE/EDGELORD - Yet another sword-guy who eventually broke out of the same prison camp and followed them to the warehouse. Whole bunch of melee offense, not a ton of defense - but he can self-heal. Played by Invisible Paddy.

For this Episode both Xyz and Phantom Blade/Edgelord are otherwise occupied. Speculation is that the Wizard has discovered the internet and Edge is busy arguing with someone on that same internet ... possibly Xyzzifax. Also, we are using the Adventure Deck for the first time in any of my games. Before I felt it would be too disruptive and random to make sense in those campaigns but here in a supers campaign and an alien invasion on top of that I figured "why not"? As it turned out it would indeed prove fairly disruptive. 

Legion's "safehouse" is a four-plex with two bedrooms in each unit so there is enough room for everyone (and her sidekick) to stay there, especially with MegaStrike off at the warehouse. They looted 3 of Terron's robots from the prior expedition which are also stored at the warehouse for now. 

• Bug keeps himself busy beginning to take one of those bots apart while also planning out how to hack into a bank - he's going to need some funds.
• Legion is making calls looking for a tech expert resource to help analyze the bots
• Nightblade is doing katas and training etc.
• Night Terror is searching for rumors about his arch-rival Red Death and ends up working over a detective to get some information.
• MegaStrike is decorating the warehouse
• Edgelord is plotting and brooding.

Dr. Destruction sends a message informing them that an old hero, The Hammer of Justice,  has returned and is stalking Omega cells. He wants them to track the rogue down and either convince him to join the resistance or - if he will not - kill him. He directs them to where he thinks Hammer's old sidekick can be found and signs off.

It turns out most of the team had at least heard of the Hammer. Megastrike has no idea who he is. Nightblade fought him many times. He disappeared years ago. 'Strike goes to Valerie and asks her what her Undergrounders know about him and between that, Dr. D's information, and some legwork by the team they have a pretty good idea of where Hammer and his sidekick are. They decide to go visit American Anvil, Hammer's old sidekick, first. 

American Anvil was badly injured and retired around the time Hammer disappeared but the team figures he might be able to help turn the old hero around into joining the resistance. Meeting him at his penthouse apartment downtown they establish communications* and Anvil is amenable so they sit down to figure out a plan. It turns out Anvil has been in contact with him and knows the neighborhood where he's been hiding out and agrees to accompany the team. Anvil sees this as getting Hammer some help while the teams sees it as getting the movement some help so it should be good for everyone. Anvil does warn them though that Hammer is not quite his old self, mentally and he may have to be subdued. 

*By this I mean Night Terror sneak-phases into his place and manages to not get punched through a wall when he surprises Anvil in his place. 

Hammer has been hiding out under a bridge in Northpoint with a group of malcontents he has picked up. He shows up pretty quickly when the team and his old sidekick step out of their minivans and start looking around. Words are exchanged and it is clear that Hammer was sent into some other dimension by Dr. D years ago and had a lot of time to think and work up a big 'ol hate for villains. Coming back to find Earth conquered by aliens he blames the villains for not helping to stop it and is ready to murder them all, so a fight breaks out almost immediately.

Rhino as minivan, old school bennies drafted in, and the clear thing is a flying stand when we need one. 

Multiple Adventure Deck cards are played so this one gets interesting quickly. Nightstrike's player drops "Arch Rival" on The Hammer, MegaStrike's player drops "To the Rescue" (this one places civilians or innocents in immediate danger, rewarding heroes with a Benny each time they spend an entire turn rescuing or protecting them) so now there are a bunch of civilians in the area. Nightblade and Legion and her bodyguard start dropping gang members as MegaStrike goes straight for the Hammer. Bug and Night Terror start rescuing the innocent bystanders. 

The fight goes on with Bug and Night Terror zipping all over the map grabbing people and carrying them out of danger, gunfire and swordplay dropping Hammer's gang followers, and at the center Hammer and MegaStrike whaling away on each other with little actual damage. Night Terror's player drops "The Last Stand" to keep Mega upright after a lucky set of rolls by Hammer, and then later Y2K Bug's player plays "Desperate Times" to get "The Last Stand" going again. 

In round 3 Hammer stumbles and takes 3 wounds as Night Blade joins in and stabs him in the back then the Hammer falls in round 4 as Night Terror hits him with a darkness blast. The gangers are down, the citizens are safe, and Destruction sends a transport to carry off the downed hero, accompanied by American Anvil. The team gets a simple "Good Work" and then everyone heads back to the safehouse and warehouse to recover and reflect on their experiences.

It leaves a lot up to the GM. Also Variable Dave ended the session with 10 bennies after this was played.

GM Notes:

This was a lot of fun. I made some mistakes and it also started to expose some issues with Super Savage Worlds but it was a lot of fun. 

• The structure of this campaign is pretty limited. Call comes in from Dr. Destruction, party goes and does whatever. Nothing in the book really deviates from this pattern. Now I am trying to give the PCs some room to pursue their own ideas and I am getting some action there but it's not as active as I had hoped. They know the next big thing is a call from the resistance leader and so everything else feels like smaller potatoes. The prior times I have run this I didn't mind it so much but it is starting to grate a little bit. 
• The adventures themselves. individually, are extremely limited. You get a concept outline, an idea on location, and some NPC stats in most cases. For a few of them you get a map. Now I don't mind this to a point but most of them are written with no connections to anything else in the campaign other than Resistance and Invaders. I know it gives maximum flexibility but the campaign would benefit from way more interconnections like 'if you have run plot point x use NPC Y as the bad guy here". There are a couple of these scattered through the book but not many. 
• Some of this is on my players too - they could be more proactive about some things, whether following up on their own agenda or going after alien targets on their own. I might be expecting too much of people playing up their supervillain backgrounds here but they are not particularly furious about the invasion and repelling the invaders. They are quite happy to wait for the next mission drop. Heck, maybe that's pretty in-character for what they are. 
• I should have use the knockback rules in this fight. MegaStrike is built as a brick/tank by someone who has been playing tanks for decades. Hammer is pretty solid on offense and defense. They basically stood there in the street trading blows with little impact for 3 rounds +. Now sometimes this is just how Savage Worlds goes but with 20-30 point impacts being the norm for them and with Knockback kicking in at 20 points of damage it could have made for a more dynamic fight with the potential for someone going through a wall. I spelled out the rules in the campaign doc and then completely forgot to use them here. I did start trying to work them in after this. 
• Adventure cards ... <sigh> ... people talk them up online anytime you bring them up but I have resisted them until this campaign as they looked like absolute chaos to me. This time, considering it's supers and considering I have a nice clean deck of them and it's hard not to play with toys when they're right there in front of you I decided to use them - and they are absolute chaos. It's an entire deck of buffs for the PC's, barring a few debuffs for whatever opponent you are facing at the time.  I thought since it was a super campaign I would give it try as things would be fairly over the top already but ... wow, it is way more than I expected. I have enough to say here it's probably worth a separate post so I'll leave it at that for now. 

So anyway I am writing this up weeks after this session and it was a lot of fun but I can see cracks starting to form already. I'll talk about it more in future summaries. 

Old D&D Games on Steam: Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor

 

There are a lot of old D&D PC games available on Steam these days but one that no one was really asking for is coming back in two weeks! Yes, that buggy disaster from 2001 will finally be available to purchase again! I don't know that it was technically unplayable for everyone but once people started talking about truly special gems like this one would you risk it:

The Infamous Installer / Uninstaller Bug:  Data Loss / System Wipe: The most notorious bug in the game's original launch version involved the uninstaller. If the game was installed to a directory other than the default path on the C: drive, running the uninstaller could mistakenly target and delete critical system and personal files across the drive, sometimes rendering the operating system unbootable. A patch was quickly released by Stormfront Studios to fix this catastrophic error.

"Quickly" - is it ever going to be quick enough after a game has wrecked your hard drive?

'member computer game boxes? Big art on the front, big hype on the back? So much more satisfying to pick up and hold and read and then think about on the drive home.

I remember a lot of hype around this when it came out. We were riding a wave of really pretty good D&D computer games with the infinity engine games from 1998 onward with Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape:Torment, and their various sequels and follow-ons. This one looked a lot like those games but it used a new engine plus it was turn-based if I remember right, not pausable real time. 

There was also a tabletop tie-in: Attack on Myth Drannor!

Presumably the Attack on Myth Drannor happened in the Ruins of Myth Drannor so it was all cross-compatible. Then you could see future sequels like "Return to Myth Drannor", "Defense of Myth Drannor", "Elfstones of Myth Drannor", etc.

Look it even says it can be played as a tie-in to the computer game. Not sure how that works exactly but it is officially stated on the back!

I never acquired or played the game as the bad experiences sounded bad enough to me and I'm not a fan of buying a game and then having to wait out a long debugging process on it. It hit the bargain bins pretty quickly and haunted them for years. According to the Steam entry ...

The re-release comes with a full suite of enhancements:

• Runs smoothly on modern hardware
• Fixed numerous original game bugs
• Widescreen support, including 4K
• Sharper visuals
• Improved UI with the addition of the action bar and tooltips
• Adjustable combat animation speed
• Optional "Legacy" mode that preserves original gameplay and visuals
• Full controller support
• Reworked camera control
• Customize the scope of the enhancements with the in-game settings
• Other Quality of Life improvements

We wish you good luck on your quest to stop the sorceress and the dracolich from ruining Faerûn!

Well, OK. That all sounds ... fine. I think the reception of this will depend largely on price. Is it a $10 game? I might try it - after 25 years of bug fixes! More than that? Well, we will have to see. They did just release a demo for it so maybe I'll give that a spin.

I might need to go find that "Attack" module too now just to see if it has anything useful for my maybe-someday FR/Dalelands/Myth Drannor campaign that's somewhere on the "Future Campaigns" list.

40K Friday: Wednesday Edition - Legends, Space Marines, and Blood Angels

 

One of the challenges of playing the Warhammer games over the long term is the "legends" phenomena. It really came up over the last 10-15 years but it's become a big factor with this edition changeover and the retirement of the firstborn marine range in particular so I thought I would share the impact it can have.

First up, "legends" is when GW effectively retires a unit in the game by making a final set of stats - the datasheet - and publishing it as a "legends datasheet" in a separate PDF document on their website. It's no longer available in the codex for that army, they no longer sell that model, and they will not be making any subsequent updates to the sheet for the rest of the edition. It's effectively retired. They do try to promote that the unit is still perfectly valid in normal play but tournament organizers may not want to allow it in their tournament. The problem is that the greater warhammer community has taken this to mean that it just shouldn't be played at all so people don't discuss them or put them in lists. Now this is a bigger problem for warhammer in general and 40k in particular that the tournament mentality has just taken over the game but that a discussion for another time. The good thing is that if you're playing with friends (which I feel should be the default assumption but is not) you can use legends units at will and many of us do.

So recently with the new edition and the new space marine codex coming out and the new points for marine units I figured it was time to refigure the points for my armies. Marines went to Toughness 5 - this is a big deal if you have followed the game at all because they have been T4 since the late 80's I believe. Their main guns also went to Strength 5 (has been 4 for forever) and all marine types received a similar bump. The points increase for this was significant but not a big as I had expected, looks like they've gone up 10-15% in general so most armies lost a unit or two at the 2000 points level which is the standard game. I keep a spreadsheet with a tab for each of my armies that lists out all the units I have, whether they are built/painted/finished, and what the points are for each unit and then the total points for the whole collection. There are other notes as well like what i waas thinking about unit combos at a given time, paint colors, lots of other details written in ad hoc. Yes, it's a thing for me at least, and it helps a lot when I come back to an army I haven't touched for a year or years either to paint it or play it. 

This means I know, after updating and re-checking the whole damn thing, that I have over 12,000 points of Blood Angels and most of it is painted. Considering a normal game is 2,000 that's a lot, way more than anyone really needs but I like that chapter and I've been building them for years. It's still a lot. 

It does include a lot of old models though and many of them have been pushed to legends with the latest update. Over 3,000 points of them. Yeah. All painted and finished too. Stormravens, The Rhino hull tanks like the Predator and Vindicator, various dreadnoughts ... it's a lot. You should know about it before diving into the game because they do it every edition now.

Worse, some of them don't even have Legends rules now. The older units that were technically declared legends last edition like the Blood Angel specialty dreads aren't even listed in the current legends rules so they are effectively unplayable - moreso than the "but it's a legends unit" problem. Now they are not even that. Yes it sucks.

The positive thing in all that is that the people I play with don't care. We play with legends, we play old rules, we might even play OPR if I twist some arms, so my guys are not permanently retired. 

You know the line I'm not going to put it here

Now you might ask "why do you put up with this, why do you still play this game, why do you still give them money? Those are legit questions. Sometimes I do put it on pause, mostly go work on a different game when I'm just not in the mood for the BS we put up with at times, but I will never truly drop it. I love the setting, I love the game (in general), I love the models, the concepts, the books, the computer games, and I doubt that will ever change. This game came out when I was 18 years old and it was the coolest damn thing we had ever seen - the look, the tone, the models, just everything in that original Rogue Trader book was mind blowing. I had been playing Warhammer Fantasy for several years before 40k was published and I already loved it so to see it transmogrified into a post-apocalyptic galactic space fantasy was awesome. Clearly I and my friends were not the only ones to feel this way because  here we are about to hit the 40 year mark and it has been in print the entire time and popular too, for most of that time being the dominant miniatures game all over the world. I have grandkids now and a few years down the road I'll be teaching them to play and loaning them books and helping them learn how to paint. Might be 14th edition, might be 5th, might be 2nd - we will just have to see. 

That said no, I don't like everything they do. I don't like every decision they make. I don't think every new edition is an improvement on the prior edition. I don't think every new model is great - or even good. I don't think many of the updates they do - like the new version of the Sanguinary Guard - is an improvement on the older kit. 

But I'm not going anywhere. Longevity tells me a current run of weakness has a good chance of blowing over and being replaced by something better - and I'll be there for it.

Pre-Gen Characters

 

Paizo puts their iconic characters out as free pregen downloads

Last week I talked about crowdfunding stretch goals seeming diminished these days and one of the items I used to illustrate this was including pre-generated characters as stretch goals. Well, now someone is selling pre-gens as a standalone product. It's probably not the first time but this one caught my attention because it's for Savage Worlds and it's part of a Scarred Lands line for Savage Worlds and I tend to pay attention to both of those things. 

Most companies give pre-gens like this away as a free download, often to accompany some other product like a new game or a new adventure. See Paizo's take on this for Pathfinder here. Not this one though - here they think they're worth five bucks. Weirdly, these same characters are included in the starter adventure for the Savage Scarred Lands product line which is $7.95 for the whole adventure. Why would you sell these separately? They do point this out in the listing on DTRPG to be fair, but why do it at all?

"1" - implying there will be more

To me, pregenerated sample characters have zero value. They are easily created by anyone who has the basic rules for the game system. As multiple people I've known over the years have cried out "pre-gens suck!" and it is inevitably true. They are a nice-to-have on a new game or a published adventure at best. Old AD&D tournament modules included them in the back to give event DM's a standard set of PCs to hand out to players, or as a list of easy drop-in replacement characters during the run. It's become almost a tradition for old school adventures to include some of them as a nostalgia thing. If nothing else it gave a DM some interesting names for the NPC file as who can forget "Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter" or "Fonkin Hoddypeak" and the like? I know I used them for rival adventuring parties a few times back when. But no one was buying Against the Giants or White Plume Mountain for the pregens in the back.

Those are some fun names though

In this case they are specifically Novice level adventurers. That's a starting-out level Savage Worlds character. No advances. So you spend your 5 points in Attribute, your 12 points in Skills, your up to 4 points in hindrances, pick your race and your gear and you're ready to go. It's 30 minutes, maybe an hour to put that together and it's the time when you get to know your character! Who are they? What do they do? What are they good at and what are they not so good at? Reading over a pre-gen you're still going to need time to put the character together in your head and put your own spin on it so I don't get the point of this kind of item as a standalone product, especially when the exact same information is available in another product for a few dollars more. 

Remember Archetypes? Sort of a pre-gen but meant to be modified by a player as desired before starting out. It's a better approach and was also just included in the game.

Ah but it does include "recommended advances" for the characters as they level up. Who is this for? Part of the fun of playing Savage Worlds is picking out what your character might "get" next. Stat bumps? Skill bumps? One of those nifty Edges? Once you've started playing the character why on earth would you need advice on this? It's your character now, playing through whatever adventure you happen to be playing. Unless you're playing solo (see this other post for more on that) then you presumably have friends to ask for advice if you're completely new to the game. It just feels like overdone hand-holding and I don't know why anyone would need this kind of advice or why it would be touted as an extra bullet point feature. 

This one and the FFG Star Wars sets in particular are very linear but they are a starter set, intended as an introduction to the system, not a normal adventure.

I could go off on a rant here about this kind of thing in so many modern games and adventures where the writers expect you to play through something in a very specific way and give no consideration to players stepping off the path either conceptually with the game itself or practically in a particular adventure. It makes me question how much they have actually played or run actual RPGs with a group of other players when there are such glaring holes in what is presented. Many starter sets for RPGs do this with pre-gen characters, pre-selected advancements, and a very linear adventure - but at least those are introductory sets. D&D, yes even modern D&D, is pretty flexible but WOTCs published adventures are linear to the point of ridiculousness. As a counter-example Wrath of the Righteous for Pathfinder had a whole section in one of the books about "what if the players fail in this quest" but that was more than a decade ago at this point. As far as Savage Worlds goes Pinnacle falls into some of the same traps as well with some of their material. Now we have a company trying to sell pre-made characters for a fairly well-known game with a fairly simple character creation system as if that was a thing people wanted or needed. It feels like either nickel & diming your customers or it says something about how you see your player base that I really do not like.

I think WEG Star Wars did it first and maybe the best. Also included in the core game.

To wrap up including some pregens in an adventure is fine, sure. It might help with a party of brand-new players, it might help someone run it at a con with no prep time. Making a few pregens as a standalone product with a price other than "PWYW" or free is just a no - it's not for me and I think it's a bad practice for running an RPG game line and for the hobby in general.

Monday Hot Takes: Solo RPGs

 

I know they exist I just don't see the point. If you have no other players and no GM ... at that point just make up a story. Or read a book. The Choose Your Own Adventure books were a lot of fun back when - and still could be now - but they weren't a game. If your solo RPG is heavier on the "game" then your outcomes are either heavily pre-determined or completely random. You lose the input of the GM and that "guiding hand" of another human mind being involved. You also lose the input of fellow players which we all know can send things off in some very unexpected directions.

Obviously to me there is a huge collaborative element to a tabletop RPG. Anyone who's run a game for a group of people knows there's "how you thought it might go when you read it or wrote it" and there's "how it went once the players got involved" and those are usually two very different things. I've been playing with some of my crew for 10, 20, 30+ years now and they still surprise me! Even a published adventure, even one that I have run multiple times over multiple decades, can be a different experience with every new group of players. I know people who have published adventures (well, and RPGs) get a kick out of seeing accounts of how different groups tackled their various challenges. To me, a solo game is just not going to come close to that experience.

Oh yeah, this one too.

My answer to "I don't have a group" problems is that there are a bunch of solo RPGs that can be a lot of fun to play. I know my friends and I played through a bunch of the early ones even as we were playing D&D or Gamma World or whatever when we could get together. The Ultima games, the Bard's Tale series, Wizardry this, Might & Magic that, the Gold Box games ... there were a ton of them and the stuff you can get nowadays is way more elaborate. From Baldur's Gate 1-2-3 and the other Obsidian Engine games to Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, the  Elder Scrolls games, The Fallouts, and on through the Owlcat games like Kingmaker and Rogue Trader. Then of course there are the online options from World of Warcraft (now in 3 flavors!) to Star Trek Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Final Fantasy Number Whatever Online, City of Heroes ...I mean there's no lack of these either, most of them are free to play, and you can choose whatever level of "solo" you prefer, including "not". 

I am just not a fan of the solo player tabletop pen & paper RPG. It lacks so much of what makes them special to me. That said, I get it on some level because I still occasionally play solo tabletop wargames even when there are perfectly good computer wargames out there and have been for years. The "solo" option, particularly as an add-on capability to a normal 2-player board wargame, has been a growth area for tabletop wargames the last few years. It's hard to find regular in-person opponents and it's even harder to schedule get-together time to play them - especially since we have an ongoing RPG campaign (and I'm not going to upset that schedule) and occasional 40K get-togethers (and I'm not going to break that either) so the board wargame time is limited. There are games made now specifically for solo play. They've been around for a long time but it was fairly quiet for a while and now it seems to be an active area again. This is a different animal than an RPG to me though - it's a specific scenario or situation with set forces so it is possible to have a satisfying game as a single player if the system is built to do that. 

Such a good game - I have great memories of playing this "solo" game as a co-op game with a friend

To wrap up I know there's an ongoing quest to make a good RPG that can be played solo but to me that's missing one of the major points of RPGs in the first place: a game where you can do pretty much anything you want to do. By definition, a solo RPG will be limited to the options that have been built into the solo rules. This applies to computer RPGs as well and is one of their biggest limitations: you can only go where they have made a map, you can only talk to NPCs where that was expected, and you can only encounter monsters that were set up in advance. It's not unplayable, it's just not the same thing as a decent tabletop RPG with a GM and (preferably) a group of friends.

Probably the highest achievement in this field and it's from 1981. Here's a decent take on it with some additional solo game discussion. 

40K Friday: October? Orktober? Chaostober?

 Looking back at the last few months' effort it was mostly Grey Knights, then Dark Angels & Blood Angels in late August, September was Blood Angels & Custodes, and for the last week or so I've been going though my ... Chaos Knights! Yes, another small elite army! Yes another mostly-painted-but-not-quite-finished army!

Battletech Terry (not that surprising really considering) brought up 40K knights a couple of weeks ago and sent me down a path.I counted it all up and I have roughly 3000 points of the things and a bunch of it is magnetized and so ridiculously flexible. I only rarely use magnets as I'm more of a "commit and learn to use it" kind of guy but this was done before I acquired them and I admit it does make a huge difference, especially with an army like this. I "only" have six war dogs but I have enough magnetized weapons to build them pretty much any way I want, with at least 3 sets of everything. I can't see myself wanting to use more than that really as much like some other armies* I didn't get a Chaos Knight army to play baby knights - I got into it to play the big boys. The 10 little ones + a single big knight is just not something I'm interested in playing. 

So they are totally playable now but there's work to be done as they are not nearly as pretty as they could be. I am starting with the smaller ones to work out paint schemes and then I will dig into the bigger types. With all of the magnets I have to paint more arms and weapons than bodies so it will be interesting. I may add one more abominant chassis to accommodate some more options. I'm also looking at aftermarket heads and parts to see if anything catches my eye. For now though the focus is to gwt what I already have closer to "done".

As far as the other mentioned armies ...

• The Dark Angels are kind of set aside for now. I know what I want to do and I have most of what I want but it's going to take a while to get it all built and painted. I'll come back to them down the road. 
• The Blood Angels are still on the desk and I will work on them as an alternative to the knights. I'd like to finish up a few more units for them and they are 2nd or 3rd priority for now.
• The Grey Knights have seen a lot of progress this year so I'm taking a break. I will go back to them , mainly to finish their vehicles up, but it'll be a little while.
• The Custodes are in great shape with a few new additions. I have less than 20 models to build/paint to complete everything I have 4000-ish points of them and while there are a few gaps - especially with the new stuff coming out now - I'm pretty happy with the mix of units I have. I'll keep my eyes open for a few things but I'm not feeling much urgency to add anything here. 

Finally there are the Orks, who I have been fooling around with in the background these last few months. There is a pretty big pile of "to-do" and having the new codex means I can settle down and commit to certain unit types and sizes without the uncertainty that's been hanging out there for months. A lot of the new stuff will be revitalizing my Evil Sunz contingent but some of it is going to the Goffs so neither will be left out. There's just a lot of it and I need to at least build it in complete units. Ideally I'd like to paint it that way too but we will see.  

*Just like I didn't get into chaos marines to play a bunch of cultists and I didn't get into Custodes to play Sisters of Silence - I want to play the thing the faction is truly about. 

I Did Finally Receive My Scientific Barbarian Kickstarter Books

 

I've talked about this one before but the story does finally have an ending. The Kickstarter funded in November 2023 with an Estimated Delivery of Feb 2024. After that we got various updates and long periods of silence. This month I finally received the package with all 6 issues and at first glance it looks like everything is correct. So it's on the shelf and I won't be posting about it any more here. 

Am I happy I backed this? No.

If I had known up front that it would take this long to complete would I have backed it? No.

Will I back any future crowdfunding efforts by this team? No.

A thing to keep in mind with any RPG Kickstarter is that the vast majority of them will get made whether you back them or not and the days of great deals or exclusive extras are long gone. I often find RPG Kickstarter items available online for less than I paid for them via the KS very soon after release. I also find that any "exclusives" nowadays tend to be "exclusive until six months after launch" or so - so don't let that fear of missing out push you into backing something. Most of the time I would say just wait - they will make it and they will want to sell it to you once it's finished. In the meantime, you don't have money tied up in someone else's drama and health problems. 

40K Not-Friday: Custodes!

 

The Wolves Land Raider is still under construction so the Howling Griffons let them borrow the car

We did manage play a 4-player game a week or two back. I took the Custodes out for their first 11th edition game. Variable Dave brought his Votann, Battletech terry brought his Space Wolves, and Invisible Patrick brought his Eldar. We are trying to make this a regular, ongoing thing so hopefully there is more to come. 

We each took 1000 points and we decided that this was imperials vs. xenos. Last time we played our storyline was the Eldar feeling left out of the Space Dwarves and Space Vikings having a party at the only pub on the planet where my Eldar teamed up with Paddy's Harlequins against those two. This time someone called the cops so the Custodes are here to crack down on the rowdiness and the Wolves are trying not to get in trouble (again) so the sides have switched around. "What, dwarves? No we don't hang with dwarves, No sir!"

Anyway, my list was tweaked slightly from what I posted before as I wanted another jet bike squad:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Custodes

+ DETACHMENT: Shield Host (Martial Mastery)

+ FORCE DISPOSITION: Purge the Foe

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1165pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char1: Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike

+ ENHANCEMENT: Panoptispex (on Char1: Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike)

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 7

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (1x2) - Assassination: 1 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char1: 1x Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike (145 pts): Warlord, Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

Enhancement: Panoptispex (+5 pts)

4x Custodian Guard (170 pts): 4 with Sentinel blade

4x Custodian Guard (170 pts): 4 with Sentinel blade

1x Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought (155 pts): Achillus dreadspear, 2x Lastrum storm bolter

3x Venatari Custodians (165 pts): 3 with Venatari lance

3x Vertus Praetors (215 pts): 3 with Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

2x Vertus Praetors (145 pts): 2 with Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

We managed to get through about 3 turns and it was pretty lopsided points-wise in favor of the imperials.

He took out a unit of bikes solo and then went straight for the biggest target on the board

It was a lot of fun seeing how the golden boys do against some tough opposition. My Contemptor Achillus took I don't know how may attacks from dwarf bikes, dwarf berserkers, and the land fortress (played here by a land raider) and never went down while dishing out some real damage. I lost the full jetbike unit after charging into a squad of wraithguard and then getting shot by them and everyone near them - but it took the firepower of the entire eldar force and some Votann as well to do it.

Monday Hot Takes: Stretch Goal Dilution

 

Originally it felt - to me anyway - that the goal of a "stretch goal" on Kickstarter was to incent people to jump in to help add value to the final product for the same cost. You would end up with a bigger book or more pieces in your game or more levels in your video game or more art in a book or full color printing instead of black & white only. I feel like that has been diluted over the last few years . It's probably related to the "crowdfunding as preorder" trend we see now instead of the old days where things were genuinely being created as part of the campaign. 

The Kickstarter for Underworld: Sunless Depths for 5E D&D and TOV has a good example of this:

New adventure ... alright ... another new adventure, sure ... pregen characters ...

Pregen characters? As a Stretch Goal? Implying there is some value in pregen characters? Seriously? This isn't even a new RPG where an example of some completed characters might be interesting to see - it's for 5E and Tales of the Valiant! In what world are 5 pregen characters worth anything?  In general I'm a fan of Kobold Press but this is just a waste of everyone's time.

The Guild had a Kickstarter to make a movie recently too and their stretch goals were mostly "make more movie" - what one would hope for right? At the end though they were adding music videos and finally an animated special. Not strictly making the movie bigger or better but at least they were fairly late in the game if still outside the boundaries of "let's make the thing better". I dislike this less.

Deathbringer had a big crowdfunding effort with a lot of stretch goals:

Most of them were adding monsters or items to the book so that's fine. Some were tokens to be used on the battleboard which was admittedly a significant part of the campaign so OK I guess. A VTT - OK not really part of the book and I'm sure they will sell access to this later. Online character creator -  That's fine, especially if it's free to everyone down the road. The one for offering unpainted versions of the statues which are pricey extras ... yeah that's a cop-out. There were a lot of these goals so I won't get too cranky about these few outliers but it's worth noting them. I feel like some of them are pretty loose-fitting as far as stretch goals should go.

Heck, the latest Savage Worlds Kickstarter for Deadlands didn't even bother with Stretch Goals. "Here's what we're making and here's a chance to order all of the other stuff we make for Deadlands too if you want it!" and that's pretty much it. Can't complain about your stretch goals if you don't have any!

40K Friday: Marine Stuff & Our Next Game

 

Nothing new on the Blood Angels this week - work continues and I'm not putting up a picture of half-painted Jump Pack Intercessors. There is other stuff going on though!

It's the week of leaks apparently as after some preview articles on Warhammer Community the entire Space Marine Codex for 11th leaked on Wednesday. It's unusual for the complete book to leak this far ahead but it does happen from time to time. It might be bad for GW on some level but one thing it does is spur the community into a frenzy of activity as the datasheets are analyzed and over-analyzed. As a player it is handy to see in advance what they are doing with various units. We already knew some things were going away but for the units that remain and the new units coming in it lets you get an idea of what you might want to add or modify.

For example, I have a bunch of Outriders. They've been push-fit monopose miniatures since they came out in the 9th edition starter set a few years ago. I have always liked marine bikers in the 40K universe going back to my epic scale armies 35 years ago and my Blood Angels have always had some kind of biker unit in the mix. Right now I have 9 of the regulars plus a biker chaplain to lead them so I was curious what the options would be with a new multi-part kit coming out. I also wanted to see what the new biker captain would do. Now with the leaks I can look over those and make some calls on whether I want to modify my already-finished squads, do I want to mix in some of the new options with a new squad, and do I want to pick up one of the captains to go with them? Having seen the info, well, I'll definitely be getting a captain. I'm not sure I want to cut up a finished model just to add a Thunder Hammer and maybe a plasma pistol on the sergeant. If I can just modify one hand on one guy I might but we will have to see. I could just use the new kit and some extra parts to make 2 new sergeants and add them in - 12 total bikers would give me two squads of six, one for the Chaplain and one for the new Captain and that would work out really nicely but it will still be some work to match up paint jobs. I also cleverly put sequentially numbered decals on the 9 I have and I think that's as high as they go so I painted myself into a corner there when it comes to expansion. I'll figure it out but I'm feeling kind of stupid on that one. I may just leave them as-is and make a new 3 or 6-bike squad with the new kit and mix them all in with the various characters as it comes up for actual games. 

Beyond the red marines I have 6 + a Chaplain set aside for the Ravenwing force but thankfully here's an area where procrastination/indecision will actually help me out as I can decide how to modify or add to that batch. I also have a 3-man squad set aside for the Crimson Fists that has seen very limited progress so I have options there too. Beyond that I kind of like the idea of putting a unit in my Black Templars too. No firm decisions there yet though.

So anyway you can see the impact of a new kit that expands or revises an existing unit, adding or taking away options, and the calculations that start when the details emerge. Keep in mind this is just one unit! It's not exactly a "core" marine squad either - they're kind of a flavor add-on option.  But the wheels are definitely turning now.

Side Note: The new Ork Codex was the most difficult one to acquire that I have run into in a while. I don't know why. I tend to pick them up as the come out for the armies I am most likely to play and I couldn't tell you the last time I had trouble finding one. For the last few weeks though they were tough to find online other than way overpriced bidding wars for a few on eBay - sorry, I'm not paying extra for a normal, in-print codex. Even the early release versions in limited box sets have been easier to acquire in the past. I finally went to Games Workshop's online store and bought it there, at the new cheaper cover price! No drama, no fuss! Usually I look for less than the GW list price but considering how the search was going and considering they've chopped at least $20 off of what they've gone for over the last few editions I just went with it. Happy to be paying 8th edition list prices in 11th edition I suppose. 

Not mine, I just liked it.

We are playing again tomorrow with another 2v2 game since there are 4 of us available. It's 1000 points each which is kind of fun to compose after playing 2000 for so long. I played Eldar last time, breaking out my Iyanden Wraith Force for the first time in a while. It was fun but the current Eldar rule adds a whole extra layer of calculation with tracking & spending battle focus tokens and in a small battle where I am also teaching newer players how to play 40K in general while learning 11th alongside them ... I wanted something simpler. So I'm taking Custodes. Their army rule is "decide whether you want Lethal Hits or Sustained Hits for each unit as they fight" so it's way simpler to keep up with during the game. At 1000 points I also have a really small force so it should be pretty easy to run during the game. Army list for fun:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Custodes

+ DETACHMENT: Shield Host (Martial Mastery)

+ FORCE DISPOSITION: Purge the Foe

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 970pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char1: Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike

+ ENHANCEMENT: Auric Mantle (on Char1: Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike)

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 6

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (1x2) - Assassination: 1 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char1: 1x Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike (155 pts): Warlord, Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

Enhancement: Auric Mantle (+15 pts)

4x Custodian Guard (170 pts): 4 with Sentinel blade & shield

4x Custodian Guard (170 pts): 4 with Sentinel blade & shield

3x Allarus Custodians (165 pts): 3 with Balistus grenade launcher, Castellan Axe

1x Contemptor-Galatus Dreadnought (165 pts): Galatus warblade

2x Vertus Praetors (145 pts): 2 with Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

So yeah ... 15 models in the list. Nothing over a 24" range. Captain runs around with the small bike unit. Only 1 character and only 1 unit with any  mobility - we will see how it goes but I think it will be fun. I'll share some details after the game.