40K Friday - Chaos Marine Bases and the Epic Aftermath

Lots of miniatures action here this week and some of it was even 40K.

Last weekend was all about Epic but the Apprentices did work in a 40K game of their own on Monday-Tuesday (remember summer vacation?), Space Wolves vs. Orks. I didn't get any pictures but Blaster got to dust off his Wolves and Red got to try out his new Nob Bikers to good effect. Not quite good enough as the Wolves won, but it was close and they both had a lot of fun.

The Epic fight had a secondary effect of driving me to drag out all of my Epic stuff, much of which is surprisingly well organized even after sitting on the shelf for 15 years and being moved a few times in there as well. The one big "dumping ground" box had quite a bit of stuff in it.  

...and that's just the Imperial stuff. Orks, Chaos, and Tyranids are off to the side and top.

Clearly I need to work on some titans. It's amazing how much stuff you can pick up when you're playing a game (with a lot of parts) on a weekly basis. I never thought of Epic as taking much of my gaming budget, but give it 8-10 years and the gear piles up.

For normal-sized 40K it's been a couple of weeks of getting the Chaos Marine force finished up. Well, part of it at least.

Here's a look at the bases I am going with for my Nurgle marine force. It's embroidery mesh sprayed silver then liberally smeared with Nuln Oil and my old Chestnut Ink to give it a battered and corroded look. The idea is "deckplates in a space hulk" and I'm fairly happy with the result. I will probably add a few more details to future versions - maybe some wiring/cabling or a pool of oil or slime. I will also say that if you're doing a space-force that's not supposed to look all gribbly like this, the basic silver grid on a black base looks pretty slick too.

Here's the first batch, finished and complete. I actually have 12 possessed done and based now, plus the daemon prince and the helbrute. The unusual bases do really reinforce the idea that this is a unified force. A unit of chaos spawn converted over from some old Dreamblade miniatures is probably next on the list. The plague marines, havocs, terminators, and bikers are all somewhere behind that. Work is extra busy right now, and the rediscovery of Epic didn't help with getting this done either, but it's good progress regardless.  This weekend I will probably take on Blaster for the first time in 7th and these guys will be part of the army hitting the table - I'm sure the new bases will enhance my chances of victory.

Overreaction Wednesday

• Bunch of stuff about future D&D organized play options here. I'm not really big into these kinds of things but this one looks almost over-complicated to me. They mention trying to lessen the "intimidation factor" of getting into these things. Maybe that's a problem for some, but I suspect the "hassle factor" of getting in and keeping up with all of this stuff is more of a problem for the grown-ups that might be interested. Want to run a game at the local store? Look - we've added paperwork to enhance the fun! I know, I know, I'm probably overstating it but that's how it strikes me reading the wall of text in those 30+ bullet points. 

• The D&D digital tools available information is listed here. I thought this one was particularly interesting: It includes character generation, adventure management, and rule lookups. CharGen I get. Rule lookups are something you can do with any decent PDF or website. "Adventure Management" though - what exactly would that cover? Combat manager? Loot tracker? I'm a little curious, though I'm not nearly as fired up about New D&D as a lot of people are. 

• EN WORLD did a nice release timeline graphic also - here. I'm sure I'll pick up some of these, I'm just not sure how much.

• M&M Gadget Guide - the compilation of the weekly guides - is coming and there's a little blurb here. I like the cover and the stats for the giant robot are a free PDF & HeroLab download which is pretty cool. 

Going a Little Retro - Epic Returns!

I had a wild idea over the weekend so late Saturday night I dragged out the old Epic Scale/Space Marine/Titan Legions miniatures, set up a table, picked out some forces, and let Blaster and Red discover them Sunday morning.

I went with Orks vs. Space Wolves since those are two armies they play in standard 40K

Orks - 100% painted

Both were about 3000 points which was a small to normal sized Epic force back when.

Wolves are mostly painted. They were the last Marine army I was working on when we stopped playing the game so not all of them were finished. 

This was straight-up early 90's Space Marine - no bloody 40,000, Armageddon, Net, or any other kind of Epic ...

Deployment - neither of them has ever seen this game played or set up before so I "DM'd" while they played.

I was pretty happy with the way it all looked on the table. I was trying to remember how long it's been and I'm pretty sure the last time I played I had at most one kid, which puts it about 15 years back. That means the mini's, the buildings, and that hill with the trees on it are all older than my kids ... there's a weird moment for you. For 40K players - when this game was released there were no codexes for any army if that helps you place it in time.

I won't go into turn-by-turn detail. Since our boards were in use on the 40K table (along with the green cloth) the playing area was a little smaller than standard. Red didn't really understand what it meant when I reminded him "hey if a transport is destroyed the troops on board are also destroyed" which meant that the entire Evil Sunz clan was blown up inside its battlewagons meaning they were broken pretty early when the Wolves (and the Ogryns) charged in. The Wolves ended up winning on Turn 3 and that's where it ended, but it took several hours to get there and we all had a blast.

One note - they really liked the system here - orders, IGO/UGO movement, then alternating activation for combat. It keeps things moving but adds a lot of tension as decisions are made about when and what to activate as the other players makes those same decisions. I enjoyed it too as a change from the 100% IGO/UGO of 40K. The victory conditions are also nicely simple - you get objective points, and you get points for breaking enemy formaitons - the best of both worlds!

The Mekboy is targeted for elimination

Grand charge of the Evil Sunz

The Space Wolf & Guard response

The Gobsmashas make a break for an objective as the streets of Bluesville see a ferocious clash

On the Ork right, the Stompas head for an objective but the Landspeeders are waiting

The Kult of Speed moves in to assist the Stompas

Nob Bikers vs. Land Speeders

On the Ork left the Snakebites seize a second objective. They were soon joined in the woods by Grey Hunters and Wolf Guard for a serious dust-up.

It was a lot of fun and they both spent some time yesterday making up their own forces for a rematch, which spurred me to dig out the rest of the Epic forces and sort through them - just in case. We may have a series of summer battles developing here.

Thrifty Gamer Alert - DTRPG 10th Anniversary Sale

Thrifty Gamer Alert: DriveThruRPG is having a Tenth Anniversary sale with some nice deals here.  Lots of RPG games and parts plus fiction, some comics, and even a mapping program. I liked it and thought I would share.

Motivational Monday