Friday, January 6, 2017

40K Friday: Blood Angels Holiday Battle 1: 500 points, "Cloak and Shadows"




Even as I was busy figuring out how to paint up the last of the Eldar for the year, I was playing a still-forming Blood Angels army in a series of battles against Apprentice Blaster's Space Wolves. I have been noodling around with these guys for 2-3 years now without every really digging in. I figured it was time. Blaster's Wolves have been gathering dust since he got into his Eldar about 2 years ago and he was interested in taking them out for a spin. So we have two not-at-the-top-of-the-heap armies run by two rusty generals facing off. We decided to do a series of encounters at 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 points. We would only do one battle per day so we had time to plot and plan for the next one and stick together any new units we might need.

The Battlefield

The Blood Angels Force
I took a librarian dreadnought as my HQ. With only 500 points it let me check off two boxes with one mini. Beyond that I had a 5-man scout squad set up for assault, a 5-man tac squad with a heavy flamer, and a 6-man assault squad with a veteran sgt wielding a power sword.


The Space Wolf Force
Blaster had an Iron Priest, a lone wolf, ten grey hunters with double plasma, a 5-man grey hunter squad, and his long fangs with missile launchers and a plasma cannon.

About Turn 2 - even armor 13 won't save you from repeated Krak missile fire. One bad roll and poof - no HQ!
The assault squad took a beating too.

Birth of a legend: Assault Sergeant Nameless survives missiles and bolters and wipes out the long fangs - he is the only survivor.

I had awful rolls the whole game. I am sure the phrase uttered right before this was "Hittin' on 3's!"
I did learn to stop saying that after another game.

Assault Sergeant Nameless bears down on his new target.

Meanwhile tac trooper Hapless is the last member of his squad on the field.
His heavy flamer is not really helpful at this point.

Assault Sergeant Nameless reaches his goal


Victorious!
The legend grows!

Sometimes you have to get farther away ...
... to get closer to victory 

The Lone Wolf spies a challenge and heads for the Sergeant.
Nameless is only too happy to oblige!


The only ending that would have made both of them happy - and that's how it ended. 

Yes, I lost, but Assault Sergeant Nameless was born! The objective cards just were not with me in this one. The tac squad sat on an objective for 4 turns and I never saw one card related to it or another one nearby. Losing the librarian dread early really hurt me for combat power. I didn't mind sending Nameless against a smaller squad but I wasn't going to have him get "overwatched" by the big squad of hunters.  If this had been a Baal Strike Force instead of a CAD he might have lived through that last fight and made one more charge for glory!

We had a lot of fun with the game  - we always seem to with these smaller fights. Maybe it's because every move and every roll of the dice means a lot more. I also started re-learning about charges and jump packs and the power of missile launchers.

Next up: 1000 potins!





Tuesday, January 3, 2017

The Big Game: Time of Crisis Session 2



Against all recent precedent I managed to run a second session of a superhero adventure/campaign and almost everyone showed up again! The Big Game I talked about previously has now completed session 2 and is about a third of the way through.

Our Heroes:
  • US Patriot - super-strong, super-tough, flying symbol of patriotism
    (known hero in Freedom City, played by Paladin Steve)
  • The Descendant - heir to an ancient legacy tied to artifacts of elemental power
    (new hero, played by Apprentice Red)
  • Dark Justice - lurking, menacing, bringing justice to the streets - a dark justice
    (known hero in Freedom City, played by Variable Dave) Dark J is only slightly in this episode as Dave couldn't make it this time.
  • Heavy Metal - builder and wearer of a hi-tech armored battlesuit to defend the defenseless and make a difference in the world
    (new hero, played by Apprentice Blaster)
  • Barry Allen, the fastest man alive, aka The Flash - yep, that guy. This whole flashpoint thing is way out of control
    (This is TV show Barry Allen, down-powered, and more is explained in the original post linked above. Played by College Guy Alex)
  • Blank, a brand new hero and a brand new character played by a new player who has never done a superhero RPG before, College Guy Shawn.
So I ended up losing one player but gaining one so the numbers were the same. This session ran 5-6 hours depending on how you want to count it as our actual start times tend to be somewhat later than arrival times and our departure times are often significantly later than the last die roll.

Last session ended with our heroes discussing things with the local resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Freedom City. The cosmic bomb sought by our heroes was probably the same thing as the new superweapon the occupiers had recently discovered and brought to a high technology lab at their base in Freedom City. The resistance could smuggle the heroes on to the site but could not offer much help once inside. This was fine with the heroes. They began to prepare for the journey. Dark Justice realizes that a diversion in the city would help make the infiltration easier. He volunteers to stir things up in the streets of Freedom City, much like he does back home.

Lilith, an agent of the resistance who had first encountered the team in the outer barrens of the city brought a ten year old boy forward. "His name is Blank, because he doesn't remember much of anything. We rescued him from a secret lab. He has some interesting ... abilities. He wants to go with you." 

Patriot laughed - "you want us to take a ten year old into a secret Nazi base? Where there's a universe-destroying bomb?"

Blank responded with "I can help you" and proceeded to demonstrate his power. Once Barry recovered, the team grew quiet and agreed to bring him along.

Packed into a shipping container the heroes from another dimension made their covert voyage on to the base. Along the way they picked up sights and sounds and signals of the terrible conditions in this not-so-free Freedom City. Several of them vowed to make things right.

Eventually the container stopped moving. Cautiously they emerged - into a huge round chamber with multiple levels of catwalks, huge blast doors, and concentrations of advanced technology. The focus of the entire room was a huge crimson orb, thrumming with power as waves of energy crackled across its surface. A classic Mark 1 Nazi Scientist emerged form behind a bank of machinery and gave Classic Nazi Villain Speech A, basically "we know who you are, we know why you are here, and we are so confident in our supremacy that we brought you here, right where you wanted to go, anyway because there's no way you can win." As he does this, a 5-man team of Nazi Superheroes (villains?) drops into place beside him, one by one, until he closes the speech the only way he can - "Gett Zemm!" and the fightin' commences.

The teams square off as the Cosmic Energy Device looms over all ...


Now I won't break it down punch by punch but in classic superhero fashion it goes like this:
  • Paragon of American values, red, white, blue and star-spangled tights and cape-wearing U.S. Patriot slugs it out with paragon of Nazi ideals, black tights red cape swastika-on-his-chest Ubermensch
  • Armored up Heavy Metal goes straight for blazing white flame-aura'd, sword-symbol-ed White Knight
  • Magical Master of the Elements The Descendant moves in on the greenish, translucent, creepy Der Geist
  • The fastest man alive zips over to ... a guy wearing a fairly normal looking coverall type worksuit - perhaps a worker standing in the wrong place?
  • Blank hides behind a crate. This leave Der Eule, stealthy nightbird-themed defender of the Fatherland as a free agent.
The very first thing that happens is that Flash zips over to "normal looking guy" and in a blur punches him a whole bunch. The fact that this merely dazes him should tell you that this is not a normal guy. As the others engage Blank runs to a crate very near this Flash-Guy confrontation. He has "hide in plain sight" as an ability and so is effectively invisible at this point. So nobody notices or cares.

After the Flash-punch "normal guy" can only take one action and it's a doozy - he raises his now green-glowing hands, claps them together, and a blast of green energy erupts from him and hits nearly everyone in the room. Despite the chamber being 150 feet across most of the combatants are engaged in a very small area. Several of our heroes are noticeably injured by the blast from the feared Nazi super "Gotterdammerung" - basically a normal guy except that anything he touches explodes. Oh, and he was a pretty loyal Nazi believer. Also, due to his awesome combat power his personal life sucks as he cannot touch anyone, or anything, really, with his bare skin. He's a troubled man after living this way for years as he's really only good for being a weapon.

Now I share the backstory of this particular villain as what happens next is one of those unplanned one-in-a-million coincidences that makes some sessions live forever in our own gaming history. Blank is nearby when the Guy makes his explosion but manages to survive. Terrified, as a ten year old kid in the middle of an interdimensional super-battle should be he lashes out with his main power:

Nullify

So Blank turns off Gotterdammerung's always-on-make-anything-he-touches explode power.

Gotterdammerung falls to his knees, staring at his hands, in shock.

The rest of the battle continues around them as Blank maintains GD's "off" status.

Patriot and Ubermensch pound away without a lot of progress until Blank decides he can keep GD down and still do something else to help and ... turns off Uber's Protection power. Right before Patriot lands a full-strength critical punch. Now there's a visible effect happening to Uber here but Patriot has no idea what it is and so no reason to hold back as this guy's been taking his best swings with little impact so far. In this case, the punch does a devastating amount of damage and has about 150' of knockback. The nearest solid object is only 50' away - the cosmic bomb. Uber flies back into it, there is a blinding flash, and when it fades there is no sign of Ubermensch at all. 

Heavy Metal goes a few rounds with White Knight giving better than he's getting until he takes a mighty, mighty swing (power attack) and lands a critical hit. This sends Knight into the opposite wall and he leaves an inch-deep impression of a human form in the concrete before he slides down to the floor.

Descendant's magical artifact happens to have one form which is made to fight spirits. This is most unfortunate for Geist who is shocked the first time this interloper hurts him. It's even more unfortunate a few rounds later when, after switching dance partners a few times, The Descendant pops up behind him ("look I can fly too") and cuts him in half with the mightiest blow he has ever landed!

Flash, once his initial opponent takes a seat, dashes around helping here and there until he sees an opening and runs around the inside of the domed chamber, building up speed, then launches himself from the ceiling at Der Eule in a devastating move-through attack. The red, lightning-lit blur streaks down to the ground then disappears, leaving The Flash standing there unharmed and the Owl laid out unconscious on the concrete.

Through all of this Gotterdammerung is a total non-combatant. He sobs uncontrollably for a bit, then notices Lilith crouched behind some equipment. He walks over to her, falls to his knees, and begs to touch her face while his curse is lifted. Yes, there is a back story here. As the villains fall, our heroes gather around this scene and attempt to figure out what's going on. Lilith notes that he has killed thousands and pulls out a pistol and shoots him in the head - or she would have if Flash hadn't grabbed the gun out of her hand. She continues unfazed that "he wants to die" and whips out another pistol but Flash grabs that one too - "I can do this all day". Frustrated, she turns to the man on his knees and says "don't you"?

"Yes, yes, why do you keep stopping her?" he sobs.

This prompts a long totally appropriate intraparty discussion about what they should do. No one really thinks it's right to just kill him themselves, and they aren't thrilled about letting her do it either but a) "turning him over to the authorities for due process" isn't really an option because the authorities here are Nazis! b) he is a Nazi supervillian who has killed thousands and c) he wants to die.

This is one of the high points of my Super-GM career. There's not a scripted right answer here. This is totally up to the characters and the players.

It gets even better as Patriot finally hits on a solution. "Do you want to die a hero?"

The heroes know they need to disarm the bomb. They explain the purpose and the power of the cosmic device. Metal analyzes the technology of the thing and figures out the best place for GD to touch it. He is pretty sure that they will both destroy each other without a gigantic explosion - at least that's what he tells the others. They start to debate how far away they should be when they realize it's either going to cancel out GD and hopefully disappear like Uber did or, he's going to set the thing off and destroy the universe in which case there's not enough distance available to be "safe".

Gotterdammerung stands, looks at Lilith. She looks away. He looks down, then steps away from everyone and nods to Blank. He begins to glow again shortly thereafter. The most hated and yet in some ways most admired man in the room walks over to the universe-destroying bomb and places his hands on it. There is a rapid series of flashes, some strange noises, then both are gone, leaving only a crystal rod lying on the ground. Metal notes that it's an important part of the detonation system if his analysis is correct. Flash picks it up and then the universe fades around them. 

They see Lilith moving towards them "No wait ..." 

They are back on the asteroid, standing before the great face of the Norn in the place without time.

They are whole again. Blank is with them. Dark Justice is not. 

"That was an excellent performance" says the voice of the Norn. "Are you ready to deal with the second device?" 

They are.

The rock fades from view and they find themselves in a shining, sunlit city. The three towers of Freedom Plaza rise in the distance, the stars and stripes flying in the breeze atop the center skyscraper. This looks like home! They walk out into a main street. They see a police officer. 

"Officer can you help us -"

The officer turns around. It's a gorilla. In full police uniform. Speaking perfect English he stammers out "Wha-what are you?!" as he reaches for his sidearm.

Even better than the first session, this one will stay with me for a long time. Blank was a totally new character run by a new player. He just happened to end up with GD as the villain closest to where he was hiding. He just happened to "nullify" the only person in the room who wanted to be rid of his powers!`A totally unexpected development that completely changed the fight, the tone of the session, and the finale. It was amazing! I did not strictly follow the rules with some of this stuff at the end. When something awesome happens you go with it! It made for a dramatic and ridiculously comic-book-appropriate ending.

All of my players dove into the genre full-force. There were snappy comebacks, witty challenges, puns galore, and it was just a ton of fun. This adventure is one big homage to the big crossover events/team up specials and the author (a regular guest on the BAMF podcast) proudly admits it. The cliches are supposed to be engaged as you're playing it this time, not just reading it. My guys all get it, even the ones who aren't traditional comic book fans have seen enough movies and cartoons to get it. They range in age from 17 to 40-something and they all get it and they all work together to make it better. It's a different mix from my other games as this was Flash's second time to play and Blank's first. It went really well and everyone is pumped for the third session. 

Fun stuff: Barry Allen's need to reveal his secret identity has basically turned it into a greeting at this point. One hand reaches out to shake, the other pulls back the mask as he introduces himself with "Hi I'm Barry Allen, the Fastest Man Alive and I am ... The Flash!

More fun stuff: Blank grows up to become Agent K of Men in Black. The neuralyzer is just a prop, he's really using his "memory wipe" power.

Bonus Example of Fun: As the teams line up and the Nazi scientist makes his speech Patriot clenches his jaw and responds with a tirade about America and beating Nazi's. At the table a joke is made about a tear rolling down his face as Heavy Metal flips on a loudspeaker playing the Star Spangled Banner and inside, Patriot realizes he's going to get to beat up Nazi's while the national anthem is being played at 80 decibels behind him.

Next session is this Friday. As a guy who's waited a decade to run this adventure with "the right group" I could not be any happier with how it's gone so far. 


Monday, January 2, 2017

The Old Year and the New Year



Game-wise 2016 was good and bad. Thoughts on it, practical talk, and hopes for 2017 below.

My "main" campaign, Pathfinder's Wrath of the Righteous, staggered through the year with all of six sessions played. That's less than Paladin Steve's once-a-month Kingmaker campaign! We're supposed to be playing every other week but we're averaging every other month! We're a session or two away from finishing Book 3 which put us approximately halfway through the campaign. We started in September of 2013 and we've managed 37 total sessions in the 39 months since. Call it once a month. I like the campaign but I'm not sure I want to spend 3 more years trying to finish it.

This has me questioning if these long term epic campaigns are a thing we can really do. Some of it is the system as Pathfinder is not nearly as quick in play as Savage Worlds, Star Wars d6, or even M&M. I have 3 or 4 more of these things I'd like to run but at this pace I'm not sure I could live long enough to do them all! Maybe after we retire ...

I admit, the concept of "finishing" a campaign isn't one I've always been attached to. To me you make characters, start playing, and that's a campaign - not a specific plot but the players and the characters and the setting.

Regardless of my long term doubts I needed to take some immediate action as I'm not sacrificing more weekends to "somebody can't make it so we're going to have to cancel" as we have a hard enough time making room on the schedule in the first place. With multiple active teenagers in the house and full time jobs this is a thing we have to plan ahead most of the time. So for 2017 I am going with the plan I discussed earlier on the blog:

  • 1st weekend of the month: Superheroes, mainly Mutants and Masterminds
  • 3rd weekend of the month: Wrath of the Righteous
  • Otherwise: whatever we manage to fit in without interfering with other commitments
I'm also changing my "all of us or no game" policy I've been sticking to with the Pathfinder game. That's killed us, even with only 3 players. I'm willing to flip between Fridays and Saturdays when I can to accommodate schedules but I'm going to have to go with two available = game just to try and keep the thing moving.


Now other than this it was a pretty interesting year. I ran 5 sessions of a d6 Star Wars campaign that just kind of popped up. It's not on a regular schedule - the schedule is "whenever I have all 3 boys here and we have a couple of hours free". I also ran 2 sessions of FFG Star Wars. That means I ran more Star Wars than Pathfinder, more Star Wars than any other single game. I'm pretty sure that's the first time that universe has been at the top of that particular list for me, but I'm pretty happy with it. Combine that with persistent flare-ups of X-Wing, regular visits to The Old Republic, and here at the end of the year the acquisition of Armada and it was more the Year of Star Wars when it comes to my personal game time than anything else. The Apprentices are loving the d6 campaign, even with the irregular schedule so I expect it to continue through next year. I think the ongoing greatness of Rebels and the awesomeness of Rogue One helped show them that the Rebellion Era can be cool too. Of course Rebels also showed that there are more than 3 or 4 force users left in the universe and that didn't hurt either.

Other RPG's that I ran this year: Couple sessions of Marvel Heroic (a game we all still love), a few sessions of Deadlands (which I would like to run more), Mutants and Masterminds (getting into a regular groove perhaps), and ... Dungeon Crawl Classics! That one squeaked in Friday night with 4 players, a bunch of zero level characters and a roughly 40% casualty rate through about the first third of the adventure. We had a bunch of fun with it though picking names, arguing over miniatures, and "unlearning what we had learned" about combat from Pathfinder.

Miniatures: 40K, with visits to X-Wing, Kings of War, and Dropzone Commander, pretty much in that order. I picked up Armada this week so it's on deck for 2017.

Boardgames: I won't claim we have a regular rotation but if we did it would include King of Tokyo, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Munchkin (mainly Marvel this year), and Pandemic. Apprentice Blaster and I still work in Command and Colors Ancients when we can.  I did play my first game of Axis and Allies in at least 15 years this year. It's amazing how much comes rushing back after all that time. The boys liked it so maybe it will become a thing.


Games that fell off the radar this year:

  • Star Trek - I brought up the old game early on as an option then brought up the new playtest rules here towards the end of the year and ... no one was interested. It's not like that's a new thing but it means I'm not going to worry about it too much for now. I'll probably pick up the book whenever they publish it but that's more for me to read and think than any real hope of running it. Honestly with an active Star Wars game I'm not all that upset about it. Attack Wing is also pretty much dead here and no one her is playing Star Trek Online anymore either. Even Federation Commander is dormant for us for now.
  • 40K Roleplaying & Boardgames - we've had a few of the RPG books floating around the house but no one cares. Even some of the more ornate boardgames associated with it generate an "if we have time to do that we could just play real 40K instead" and I tend to agree. 
  • D&D 5th Edition - I'm still interested in giving it more of a chance but Pathfinder is the main fantasy RPG for us and with a friend running it and two boys running PF campaigns of their own  I just don't see that changing.
  • FATE - I like it in concept but I don't know that I will ever talk the group into running it. 

Enough about last year!



Goals for 2017

RPG Stuff:

  1. Recover the Pathfinder campaign enough to feel like it's a living thing again - or call it, kill it and move on. Nine sessions in 2015 followed by six in 2016 is not a trend I care to continue. One of my players has already told me he has a conflict with the third weekend in February so it's not looking all that promising on just day 1 of the year! Having what feels like a failing campaign is a drain on things so either outcome will improve our situation.
  2. Make a supers campaign a regular, ongoing thing. The first-weekend-of-the-month Freedom City game is it! I have interested players, a great system, and a plan - now we just need to execute! This one is looking pretty good. I hope next year's summary has a bunch to say about this, and maybe Atomic City and Emerald City as well. Our every-once-in-a-while Marvel Heroic and our equally intermittent ICONS campaign will be Plans B and C here. 
  3. Ride the Star Wars wave with one or more RPG campaigns. The current d6 campaign is for me and the boys but if the opportunity opens up to run something for my friends I will, either with that system or the FFG system. Everyone seems more interested in it now so I'm going to strike while the iron is hot.


Having regular, ongoing options with these 3 games makes me a pretty happy guy. Everything beyond this is a bonus.
  • Run some more DCC, at least finish the adventure we started. It doesn't have to be a regular, scheduled campaign. I'd just like to run a complete adventure as it was a ton of fun. 
  • Run some Runequest - all of this fun with other games like DCC has me optimistic.  
  • Run some more Savage Worlds: Rifts, Deadlands, Slipstream, 50 Fathoms, Hell on Earth, or another flavor of Star Wars. I like the system too much to let it lie for another year. 
  • Sneak in some Shadowrun. Maybe a one-off, but I want the kids to experience it and I suspect I could round up enough players to make it fun
  • Set up a Gamma World one-shot. It's too cool to ignore completely and it also helps set up a potential Mutant Crawl Classics experiment later in the year,
If I could pull off all of these over the next 12 months I'd be ecstatic. Most likely some of them will happen, some will not, and something completely unexpected will show up too - but this is the plan/priority/hope for now. I am having a lot of fun running my own material so I'm less interested in getting in to another giant campaign arc in a premade setting and more interested in doing our own thing.


Miniatures:

  1. 40K: This is our standard and I do not expect that to change. We averaged about a battle a month this year but they tend to be clustered around time off with multiple fights over a week and then a month or two of nothing. I'd like to smooth that out. Right now the sub-goals are:
    • Play with those Eldar I painted up
    • Get the Blood Angels painted up and into  a field-able force
    • Get the Dark Angels painted up and field-ready as well
  2. Star Wars is a big player here too. We already like X-Wing and Xmas bumped up our selection of bigger ships like the Falcon, Slave 1, the YT-2400, and the Ghost. It will continue to be a thing here. Armada is new and I hope it turns into a big player, maybe even #2 behind 40K. Imperial Assault is the only option here that has really not impressed us - it takes too much effort to play when we could either play the RPG or go play 40K depending on what we're in the mood to do. 
  3. Fantasy now means Kings of War for us. We will probably get in a fantasy mood and play a few more games. I don't expect to be buying new armies for it but the ones we have should see some action this year. Maybe we'll even paint them.
  4. World War 2: Bolt Action - there's a new second edition of the rules and I am ready to go with a 28mm army option. It may be a few months before we get anywhere but we will probably play it more than we did in 2016. I'm really interested in some Pacific battles but that new starter set looks pretty nice. We may start there. Flames of War is just a non-starter for us, plus there's another new edition coming out which means "wait and see" at best. 
  5. Dropzone Commander - I got one starter set and built some of it but we never played a real game of it. I'd like to do that. it doesn't have to replace 40K or the Star Wars games, I'd just like to play something more like the old Epic scale games.  
Mantic is constantly bringing out new games and GW is bringing back some old favorites but I just don't have the bandwidth to research them, buy them, build them, paint them, and play them. The door's not completely shut but something new is going to have to really bowl me over to get any real attention at all.

All that said I had a pretty good 2016 and I am looking forward to a 2017 that is at least as good.


Sunday, January 1, 2017

40K Friday Special Edition - Year of the Eldar: Finale



Finally! I finished up the wraithknight yesterday and managed to get the stretch goal of the dark reapers (all 3 squads) finished too. I had finished the spiritseer and the cannon battery the day before. Extra extra bonus achievements were getting the second gun painted and put on the metal wraithlord and getting some snow on the bases for one of the dire avenger squads.

Overall it was an incredibly productive 4-day run. I painted up to the point of completion 26 models and touched up or added to another 12 for 38 models finished to a standard I think is table-ready to good. It's been a long time since I knocked out that many mini's. If you go back and in the rest of the wraith host I built and painted from scratch 42 Eldar models this year, along with 30+ Iron Warriors. That's a pretty good year. I do tend to paint in bursts like this around holidays and time off so one of my goals for 2017 is to even that out and make some progress every week.

Effectively the painted part of this army is some combination of wraith host, aspect host, dire avenger shrine, and a combined arms detachment - depending on points available and how I want to play it. There's more than enough stuff here to play with at over 3000 points so I am very happy with the current state of things.

All that said it's not yet finished. There are 30+ guardians sitting on the table along with the associated heavy weapons and warlocks, a wraithlord, 3 war walkers, 3 vypers, and another farseer - enough to build the big guardian host formation and really put this over the top. I have two unpainted wave serpents too. There are two squads of swooping hawks in the queue as well. Those may be at the top of the list before I dive into another massive batch of yellow.


Things it doesn't have:

  • Jetbikes! I might add one small 3-man squad just to have some cheap speed for objective grabbing, backing down on my anti-bike stance. They've been an eldar "thing" since the earliest days of the game and it seems wrong to have zero of them in an army this size. I won't go full scatter laser on them regardless. 
  • Banshees! Not that great under the current edition, especially with no assault vehicles to jump out of into a fight. I'll pick up a squad someday to complete the set of aspect warriors but it's not urgent by any measure.
  • Warp Spiders! I'd like some but I just haven't seen any of them cheap enough to make me want to get them. They're tricky to find new and ever since that guy won a tournament with30 of them they've been pricier used as well. One of these days. Towards the top of the list. 
  • Wave Serpents! I do have two on the shelf as I mentioned but I am not really feeling the need for them as much. The eldar battle focus rule, especially when it applies to the entire army, eliminates a lot of the need for transports. They are fast, but with no firing ports you can;t use them as bolter shelter like marines do while still being able to fire out the top of a Rhino.  I'd kind of like to have 3 of them for the dire avengers to sweep in en masse and blast something but it's really low on the priority list.
  • Fire Prism! I'd kind of like to have one of these available but this isn't a tank army so it would be a big shiny target for anti-armor weapons - even more so than they tend to be already. 
  • Avatar! I love the background and the model but he's just not that great these days and he's not cheap either. Maybe once I finish the guardians I'll cap it off with an avatar, though I don;t expect him to see much table time. 
  • Crimson Hunter! The one thing I do not have in the army that I think would be useful. I'm low on anti air and it's very effective AA and anti-vehicle once that's handled.
So for 2017 I expect to be playing them more and painting them less. The goal of the focus last year was to get a painted, playable army together and I have pulled that off. Now I can add a unit here and a unit there as time allows while having fun playing it more. It's been a long time since I've had a "finished" eldar army and I am really looking forward to using it. Here's to 2017!