40K Friday - 40K Football! with the Crimson Fists!

The second battle in our 40K weekend fun saw Apprentice Red's Necrons taking on my Crmson Fists - a very different army in what turned out to be a very different game. My force:


1 Chapter Master Pedro Kantor (HQ) @ 175 Pts
     #Dorn's Arrow; #Iron Halo; Power Armour; Power Fist; Frag Grenades; Krak
     Grenades; Warlord

4 Sternguard Veteran Squad (Elites) @ 210 Pts
     Power Armour; Special Issue Ammunition; Bolt Pistol (x4); Combi-Melta
     (x4); Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Space Marine Sergeant @ [50] Pts
          Power Armour; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs; Combi-Melta
          (x1); Lightning Claw

     1 Razorback @ [40] Pts
          #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; TL Heavy Bolters

9 Tactical Squad (Troops) @ 220 Pts
     Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Missile
     Launcher; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Space Marine Sergeant @ [41] Pts
          Power Armour; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Power Weapon (x1); Bolter

     1 Rhino @ [35] Pts
          Vehicle (Tank, Transport); Capacity: 10; Fire Points: 2; Access
          Points: 3; Repair; #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Repair; Storm
          Bolter

9 Tactical Squad (Troops) @ 220 Pts
     Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Multi-Melta;
     Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Space Marine Sergeant @ [41] Pts
          Power Armour; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Power Weapon (x1); Bolter

     1 Rhino @ [35] Pts
          Vehicle (Tank, Transport); Capacity: 10; Fire Points: 2; Access
          Points: 3; Repair; #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Repair; Storm
          Bolter

4 Scout Squad (Troops) @ 90 Pts
     Scout Armour; Bolt Pistol (x4); Sniper Rifle (x3); Heavy Bolter w/Hellfire
     Rounds; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Scout Sergeant @ [28] Pts
          Scout Armour; Bolt Pistol; Sniper Rifle; Frag Grenades; Krak
          Grenades; Melta Bombs

1 Predator (Heavy Support) @ 85 Pts
     #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; 2 Spons. Hvy Bolters; Turret Autocannon

1 Predator (Heavy Support) @ 165 Pts
     #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; 2 Sponson Lascannon; Turret TL Lascannons

1 Whirlwind (Heavy Support) @ 85 Pts
     #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Whirlwind Multiple ML

Models in Army: 37

Total Army Cost: 1250

Almost twice as many models as the previous battle and a bunch of vehicles! Now I may regret taking a mechanized force against Necrons but I wanted to get a decent chunk of my Fists on the table for a game in at least a somewhat similar fashion to the way I intend to field them at higher point levels, so that's what I did. The core concept of this army is Tacs in Rhinos + Pedro & scoring Sterngard in either Razorbacks or Drop Pods with Predators/Vindicators/Whirlwinds as heavy support. Termies or Dreads fill out the elites. Fast attack at the moment is a speeder - yeah we're a little light there after donating the assault squad to the new Blood Angels army across the room.

The Setup

We ended up with "The Relic", probably the most controversial mission in 40K 6E as it's a single objective that is movable, and some armies are far more mobile than others (hello Eldar jet bikes!), giving them an instant advantage. Neither of us had an especially mobile army so we went with it as-is. We had the diagonal setup too, which is fine for variation but it's a pain to figure over a terrain-filled board.

Speaking of terrain we are working on a themed-terrain setup and I wanted to get some prototypes on the table so those Mountain Dew cans showed up. Hopefully in their next appearance they will be fully dressed as "fuel storage tanks". I also wanted some LOS blocking terrain on the table for a change, especially since I had that Whirlwind.

The plan was to use the sterngard and tac marines as my retrieval force, possibly sacrificing one of them to protect another. The whirlwind, scouts, razorback, and dakka pred would concentrate on thinning the warrior squads while the annihilator pred would focus on blowing up the monolith when it arrived. I was really worried about how to deal with it as it's tough, deadly, and can teleport his troops around the board.  The sterngard had combi-meltas especially for dealing with it, as did the one tac squad with the multi-melta, and the other sergeants had melta bombs if things got desperate. Between these and the lascannon pred I hoped I had enough to handle it.

End of Turn 1

Turn 1 was fairly quiet as we both closed in on the Relic. With no monolith to shoot the laser predator shot up the destroyers and the last one was killed by a storm bolter shot from the rhino - first blood to the marines. Marines and the dakka pred shot up the wraiths, cutting them down to one. Red took a hull point off of the rhino and that was about it.

End of Turn 2

 Turn 2 - enter the monolith! My rhino and the combat squad are blown away. The other rhino is blown up and the tac squad inside dismounts with no casualties. The warriors move up to surround the objective.

The Necrons move in

I was not terribly concerned yet but I realized most of my melta was on the opposite side of the field from the monolith and out of range, so the predator was going to have to do the heavy lifting. Also the whirlwind wasn't hitting !#$@ after two shots. The sterngard can't get into the ruins so they park on the edge and shoot what they can.

Turn 3

Turn 3 continued the slow amping up of tension. I blew a hull point of the monolith and shot up the warrior squad on the objective.

Turn 4

Turn 4 the necrons shoot up my missile launcher combat squad who break and flee the woods. They also take a hull point off of the predator, while I take another one off of the monolith.

However, the warriors on the Relic are looking mighty thin ...

Turn 5

Turn 5 is one of mixed emotions - his secondary leader charges in and destroys my laser predator while his other unit of warriors move into the woods vacated by the missile squad and then shoot them off of the table. The monolith teleports his 3rd unit of warriors in front of the dakka predator and they blow it away with gauss fire. But ...

...my tac squad and sterngard move in on the objective after wiping out the last of the warriors holding it. So it's a rough turn, but now I'm holding the only objective AND if he wants to come park that monolith next to a bunch of melta shots I'm happy to accommodate him!

End of game die roll is high and the game continues.

Turn 6

He only has one unit close enough to intervene and I charge them with Pedro and the sterngard while the tac squad moves off with their prize.

Pedro shouts "remember the mission" as he beats down multiple necrons. The rest of the sterngard are lost but the tactical marines move safely away and the game ends! Crimson Fists win with objective + first blood vs. nothing!

Conclusions
The main difference here is that I remembered the victory conditions and Red started acting like we were playing for killpoints about halfway through the game. Sidetracked with blowing up my tanks, he didn't have enough units in the right place to pull out a win. More than any skill issues or army list issues that's what really determined the outcome here. Sometimes that's all it is.

The whirlwind did very little but I'm not giving up on it yet. I did like the ability to get tac marines into the center of the field by turn 2 so I think there is still a place for the mechanized marine force in 6th edition, despite the lessening of vehicles. I also really like scoring sterngard, so Pedro has found a home.

It's that time of year - The Crush!

BOOK BOOK BOOK BOOK
(Hey, it came up under "Gen Con Cosplay" - how could I not use them?)

It's that time of year when new games come out at a blistering pace. We've already seen Shadowrun's new edition and Edge of the Empire in the last few weeks DC Universe is shipping in book form. 13th Age is shipping now. Numenera releases in a few weeks. Stark City for ICONS and the M&M Anniversary Edition rulebook are due out next month. Pathfinder has the usual torrent of stuff. WOTC has a fair amount of Gen Con specialness for Next. I'm sure there are releases for everything from Rifts to Doctor Who as well. It's a firehose of game books!

I can't help but wonder if this hurts game companies on some level as there's only so much disposable income to go around within a certain time period and if someone is travelling to Gen Con it seems logical that they would have less money to spend on books than if they were at home doing their usual routine. Regardless, it's been the model for so long now I can't see it changing on its own but I wonder if the continuing popularity of kickstarter will have an impact? Good ideas and organizing a KS can happen year-round. Will that be the next trend - timing your kickstarter to enable having a product to sell at Gen Con? I'm just wondering out loud but I can see some experienced KS users making that a consideration on their next effort.

It's also interesting to watch the tactical maneuvering around Gen Con as well. If you release a new game at the con then you can post up a video of the design team opening up the game with a cheering crowd - not a bad way to promote the game. There is a risk though of being lost in the flood of other releases at the con as several days of cool new things bury your story. I know it seems like there are cool new things announced or released there every year that I manage to miss in the wave of news that washes over the web that week.

Some companies want some spotlight time all to themselves and release a few weeks to a month prior to the big con. This gives them a certain window of buzz as the only big news of the week. I think this is what we saw with Edge of the Empire and Shadowrun and it seems to be working alright for them. I wonder if it hurts sales though - if some hot new game is released in mid-July am I really going to wait a month to pick it up at the con? Maybe having a second product - a new adventure, a DM screen - maybe that's the trick to mitigating that and keeping the buzz going.

Star Wars is an odd case - they were in production almost continuously from 1987 on, then finally petered out in 2010. Then we went through 2011 with noting new. Last year saw the announcement and I believe they had the beta rulebook available and now this year we have the finished core book. I'm betting with FFG behind them now and with a core book out the door that we will be seeing a lot of Star Wars over the next few years. I'm taking their 40K line as a guide and if that holds up there will not be a lack of material.

With DC complete and Marvel cancelled there are no new comic book RPG releases for this one. Any bets on how long that will last? With almost quarterly releases of superhero movies you would think someone could figure out how to sustain a game for a few years but no one has in quite a while.

We haven't had any new Star Trek for years either. Again, there have been a couple of fairly popular movies in recent years, but no new RPG. I wonder if anyone has even tried for the license recently? Oh well, one of these years Traveller Prime Directive will get finished and I'm still interested in trying that. Maybe next year.

Finally, for the second year in a row, no new D&D stuff.  Sure, there's been some old D&D stuff coming out, and there are some Next adventures or documents being passed out there, but no "Complete Book of Modrons" or "Player's Handbook VI" or anything like that. There's a fair amount of hubbub around their new Forgotten Realms update kickoff as well. I suspect this will be the last year 4th edition is even mentioned. Next year though ... next year will be a massive August for D&D as whatever the new edition turns out to be will be released and it will be THE thing for Gen Con. Hopefully it's worth the hype.

Shadowrun 5, Part 1 - The Setting

It's funny coming back to a game after skipping an edition. It's a rare thing for me, I can only think of a few games where it's happened, and none of them were games I spent as much time with as Shadowrun. I picked up 1st edition around the time it came out, 2nd edition when it came out, and 3rd when it came out, and played and ran at least a short campaign in each one. We had a blast and over time I have picked up every book published for those three editions. I was a pretty solid fan and it was one of our main games of the 90's. Then in 2004 the 4th edition came out and changed a lot of the core setting and mechanics of the game and I skipped it - never bought a single book, did not run or play a single session of it. But that was then and this is now.

Nine years later the 5th edition is out and is supposed to be bringing back some elements of the older editions (you know a lot of this sounds familiar, what is it with 4th & 5th editions of RPG's?) and I decided to give it a look. Since it's a futuristic game I decided to go high tech and get the PDF instead of the printed version. This is written from the point of view of a long time fan who hasn't paid attention since 3rd edition but is willing to give the new stuff a chance. I'm breaking it into at least two parts - setting and mechanics.

If you're not familiar with the game, allow me to quote myself from an earlier post:

The background (which I assume most people know by now) is a baseline cyberpunk society recovering from a worldwide internet crash when the world is unexpectedly invaded by the Player's Handbook. Suddenly walking around town with a katana makes sense, especially if you have wired reflexes, body plating, and a friendly mage nearby to heal you. You can get claws like Wolverine, guns like Neo, and throw spells like Dr Strange, although probably not all in one character as magic and cyberware tend to not get along.

That's the basics.

This will probably always be the definitive cover for me

I've decided against doing an exhaustive page by page review - there is a lot of book here -  so let me hit the high points as a returning player/GM:

• There is a lot of short fiction in here, at the beginning and spread throughout the book. Normally I think a little goes a long way when it comes to this kind of thing but so far it hasn't annoyed me.  I think SR is unusual in that the stories do closely reflect how the game typically works for most groups, and they effectively communicate how it's supposed to feel. So I'm OK with this approach.
• Early in the book there's a page of the slang used in SR and after skipping most of the past 9 years I still knew what almost all of them meant. It felt like a familiar place after reading through that and realizing I was not as out of touch as I had feared. This is another atmospheric touch that I liked.
• There is a section on what is effectively the "theme" of the game: that everything has a price. This section breaks it down from the "price" of magic to cyberware to the corps to the shadows - very nice and again, setting up a consistent feel for the game.
• There is a short overview of the world and who runs each part of it. Brief but effective in highlighting that some of it is familiar and some of it is completely different.
• Then we get to a more detailed focus on a typical character with several sections including "A day in your life", "what you might be doing", and "The Opposition" which focuses on the megacorps of 2075, organized crime, and the other groups you might encounter violently.

Now all of this is in the first 40-something pages of the book. The rest of the 400+ pages is general rules, combat rules, sections on each "power source" from magic to the matrix and the rest, a bunch of gear, and a pretty hefty gamemaster section. I haven't finished reading all of that yet, and it looks pretty heavy, but old SR was pretty intuitive so I'm hoping this is as well. Also, it seems to have more illustrations than the 3rd edition books at least so I'm not staring at multi-page walls of text describing gear with no visuals as in that edition - that's a good thing.

Although this new cover has grown on me

As a returning player/GM I will say so far, so good - I like what I'm reading. The timeline has moved up from the 2060-something I remember to 2075 so there are some changes but at the same time there are a lot of familiar names and places. The default setting is back to Seattle but other options are mentioned. The gear and guns seem familiar enough and the full-VR Matrix has a role again in addition to the wireless augmented reality Matrix that came along in 4th edition. Magic is magic and most of the old stuff seems to be accounted for as well. There's a very familiar feel about it, from the language to the world, to how tings work, to the outlines of the shadowrunning life. I am very optimistic about this one.

13th Age - The Rest of the Game

Last week I waxed on about the Icons and Relationships element of the game and I really liked it. I like some of the other parts of the game as well and thought I would share those too.

• "One Unique Thing" - players declare one unique aspect of their characters at start. Maybe they are the only Klingon in Star Fleet or the Last Son of Krypton  - well, maybe not those in particular. Anyway the idea is to state something that makes the character unique. Now the old school side of me says "great, another special snowflake thing" but it doesn't really bother me that much. Heck, in the old days the idea that my magic-user wore red robes and was bald was about the only thing that made him different from a friend's magic user that wore blue robes and a pointy hat. Having something codified into the character building process to isn't automatically bad. Also, it comes across like a Fate Aspect, something that can be occasionally tapped in a social situation rather than a combat modifier so the power implications should be minimal. 

• "Backgrounds" - This is a new take on skills that is more retro than it first appears. Each class has a certain number of points to spend on backgrounds - moisture farmer, bush pilot, desert scout. The number of points spent becomes the skill modifier applied to any roll where that background might be relevant. So if I had 8 points to spend I might put 2 into moisture farmer, 2 into desert scout, and 4 into bush pilot. If I find myself trying to fly a ship later, I can use that bush pilot background for a +4 bonus on my skills to fly it. 
• This is a nice flavorful way of keeping a "skill check" mechanic in the game that stays away from detailed point management (like 4E did with "trained" or "untrained" skills and then goes beyond that to stay away from detailed skill management altogether. It's much more like the Secondary Skills of AD&D where a character used to be a farmer or hunter or something and could use that when discussing things with the DM. 
• It also gives the potential for some fun interaction ala Marvel Heroic as players attempt to justify including the bonus from their backgrounds in all kinds of unexpected situations. This on-the-fly development doesn't necessarily show up on the page but it does come out in play. The relevant ability is also something to be determined on the spot and that should add even more fun to the discussion. 
• The default assumption is a varying number of points per class but there is a note that that's primarily to honor previous editions and that giving all characters the same number of points isn't going to unbalance anything in this version of the game. That's probably the direction I would lean.
• There is no built-in advancement of the number of background points but there is the option to take a Feat that adds to them, so the option is there for players who want it. Nicely done.

• Gear is simplified in a lot of ways. Armor is heavy or light, no need to determine exactly what make it is except for flavor. Weapons are divided into a number of types like light/heavy and one or two handed and even that is an abstraction I am prepared to live with - it worked fine for Warhammer so it should be acceptable here. 

• Classes are less hard-coded as most pick from a menu of class talents and feats to determine their abilities rather than a fixed list. I like what I see though I expect playing would expose some favorites and some potential weaknesses. The designers are straight-up here, noting that a barbarian is much simpler to run than a wizard and describing the differences between each class is a solid way.

• Combat changes include general simplification, damage adjustments, and the escalation die.
• There are fewer modifiers, fewer defenses, fewer conditions, no grid requirement, and much less positioning and AoO tracking. Fighting in Spirit is a nice little rule allowing a downed character to throw a +1 on another character, chalking it up to inspiration or the force or past training.
• Damage is basically 1 die per level. If you use a sword for 1d8 at 1st level, you're doing 5d8 with it at 5th level. Ability modifiers double at 5th to keep them from becoming less relevant. This sounds similar to what Tunnels & Trolls does and I bet it works just fine.
• The Escalation Die is a mechanic I like - At the beginning of combat it is zero. As of round 2 put out a d6 set to "1" and move it up each round til it maxes at 6. This is a to-hit modifier for the PC's and a few special monsters. The idea is to speed up combat but it has some other interesting effects as well. Players are less likely to open with an alpha strike, instead waiting until hey have a solid bonus to add to their big blast. It also adds some dramatic tension to the fight as I suspect being at 0 or 1 is going to feel "down" to most players after they get used to the system. It also gives a nice mechanic to hook things on (like bloodied did for 4E) and some class abilities do tie in to the escalation die count. Also, there are monsters that can interfere with it as well. I think it has a ton of potential.

• Incremental advances are a way of smoothing out the leveling process. After each session, players can choose one part of the goodies form gaining a level (there is a list) and apply that to the character. This is a lot like the career advancement scheme from WFRP and I think it's a great idea. I don;t know that there are enough advances to gain one at the recommended rate, but I think it's something each group could figure out fairly quickly. 

• Monsters have quite a few changes and I like pretty much all of them. There are rules for mook monsters which are somewhere between the swarm rules and the minion rules from 3rd & 4th edition. Damage from monsters is fixed but has some triggered effects based on to hit rolls which keep things interesting. There are also some that key off of the escalation die which is cool too. There is also some interesting adjustment to the usual save or die type attacks that looks like it could work well - something I'd really like to test in play.

• Setting: I skimmed it. I didn't see anything I hated about it, I'm just not that interested in another fantasy setting when I have so many already. Conversion and adaptation would be the main plan here.

Possible Escalation Die candidate? Especially for a Roman-themed game?

Alright so there are a lot of parts I liked. What would I do with it?

If I was starting up a new D&D type campaign in August or later I would give it a serious look. Maybe take an existing D&D adventure, do some light conversion work, run it and see how things went and whether my players liked it.

As a DM running an existing 4E game ... well, there are parts I could take but I'm not going to scrap my current rules for these unless my players suddenly mutinied and demanded it, and even then scaling down from 30 levels to 10 would be pretty tricky. I could layer the icons and relationships over 4E if I wanted to, and the escalation die might be fun but without monster abilities triggering off of that it might not be quite as complete. I'm going to think about it.

The main thing I worry about with a game like this is that although it's getting a ton of attention now where will it be in a year or two? Castles and Crusades was a big deal when it came out as a lighter, more old school flavor of 3E and how active is out for it now beyond occasional adventures? How many groups are playing it? I loved Arcana Unearthed and later Arcana Evolved and they had a good run for maybe 4 years and now there's not much support at all. Book of Iron Might was the same way. With everything from Numenera next month to the ramping up of "next" over the next year to the ongoing Pathfinder juggernaut, I'm not sure how well or how long it's going to be supported. Maybe in the age of the kickstarter this is no longer the problem it once was but I'm leery of buying into a game that's a new flavor of D&D without actually being D&D. Sure it worked for Pathfinder but I'm not sure we're going to see the same thing here. There's a cost there, partly financial and partly not, and I may wait awhile to see if it's worth going all-in. One bright side: at least there's no licensing issue like there was with MWP and Marvel.

Motivational Monday

40K Friday - Return of the Big Yellow Hammer

After experimenting with Chaos a week or two back it was time to get back on the Imperial side of things. Apprentice Red and I played two battles featuring his Necrons. In this first one I brought back the men in big yellow power armor, the mighty Imperial Fist Deathwing army!

This was a 1250 point fight which is about as much as Red can field without gold-plating his units. That's going to be a tight budget for an all-terminator army but I came up with something I could live with:

1 Belial (HQ) @ 190 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Independent Character; Inner Circle; Marked for
     Retribution; Tactical Precision; Vengeful Strike; Warlord Trait: The Hunt;
     Terminator Armour; #Iron Halo; #Teleport Homer; Thunder Hm. & Storm Sh.;
     Warlord

1 Librarian (HQ) @ 130 Pts
     Independent Character; Inner Circle; Deathwing Assault; Vengeful Strike;
     Psyker (2); Terminator Armour; #Psychic Hood; Storm Bolter; Force Weapon

5 Deathwing Terminator Squad (Troops) @ 240 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Inner Circle; Split Fire; Vengeful Strike; Terminator
     Armour; Storm B. & Power F. (x3); Storm B. & Power W.; Asslt. Can. & Power
     F.; Deathwing Terminator Sergeant (character)

5 Deathwing Terminator Squad (Troops) @ 270 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Inner Circle; Split Fire; Vengeful Strike; Terminator
     Armour; Thunder Hm. & Storm Sh. (x5); Cyclone Missile Ln.; Deathwing
     Terminator Sergeant (character)

5 Deathwing Terminator Squad (Troops) @ 270 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Inner Circle; Split Fire; Vengeful Strike; Terminator
     Armour; Thunder Hm. & Storm Sh. (x5); Cyclone Missile Ln.; Deathwing
     Terminator Sergeant (character)

2 Ravenwing Attack Squadron (Fast Attack) @ 155 Pts
     Bikes; ATSKNF; Grim Resolve (Stubborn); Hit & Run; Scouts; #Power Armour;
     #Teleport Homer; Bolt Pistol (x2); TL Bolter (x2); Meltagun (x2); Frag
     Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Ravenwing Attack Bike @ [55] Pts
          Bolt Pistol (x1); Multi-Melta (x1); TL Bolter (x1); Frag Grenades;
          Krak Grenades

     1 Ravenwing Sergeant @ [26] Pts
          (character); TL Bolters; Bolt Pistol

Models in Army: 21

We both went a few points over and so ended up at 1255.

Red ran 3 units of warriors, a unit of destroyers, a unit of wraiths, and a monolith, all led by a tooled up Overlord.

Those poor old battered trees!

The setup was "Emperor's Will" so only two objectives on the table and we got the long setup. Having only 3 scoring units in my force I realized I was going to have to focus on defending my own objective with maybe some chance of knocking him off of his with my bikes. I setup Belial and the shooty terminators on the objective (that star thing), put the Ravenwing squad behind the ruin, reserved the attack bike, and delayed my Deathwing assault until Turn 2. I was going second so I wanted to give my small force a chance to survive. If things are going my way I'll drop a hammer squad on his objective and try to take/dispute it but they will probably help secure my own.

Turn 1
Turn 1 was fairly quiet with some moving and minimal shooting. Score is 3-3.

Turn 2
Then we get to Turn 2 and his monolith drops in - looks like we'll be fighting this one in my half of the board! It shoots up the gun termies as the wraiths close in. The Deathwing units drop in on target (thanks tp homers!) and we have a party now! Still 3-3.

 

Turn 2

Turn 3
I'm seeing a trap about to close here but my troops are really tough - challenge accepted! One squad for the wraiths, the other for the destroyers, and bikes for the monolith.

• The termies handle the wraiths fairly well, killing them all and giving me first blood.
• The monolith teleports a warrior unit with the lord right into the gap between the ruins and the forest. There's a lot of shooting and I end up charging them on my turn with hammernators and the bikes. The bike sergeant challenges and the warlord accepts. The sergeant survives his close encounter with a 200+ point leader while the rest of the Fists wipe out the warriors who break and are run down, including the lord who fails his get back up roll! The bikers start doing donuts on the metal carcasses a bit too soon though. Fists now up 5-3.

Turn 4

Turn 4
The Monollith opens up the gateway of infinity and sucks in the bikers - revenge! -  and there is another ton of shooting and one hammer unit dies as does Belial. That means we both have Slay the Warlord I am still holding my objective though, as is he. Now up 5-4.

Turn 5
The monolith drops another unit of warriors then parks right on the edge of the woods.. The last two THSS terminators walk over and destroy the destroyers. I am up 5-4 and the game continues.

Turn 6
There is a lot of shooting and the attack bike dies but the termies hang on and back away from that stupid gateway. Still up 5-4 the game ends on Turn 6.

Conclusions
This was a tense game and I felt like I was on my back foot for most of it. The monolith deep strike followed by warrior-dumping was an unexpected and tough challenge for my too-small force. I was never a threat to his objective. Some of that is the nature of the army I chose - terminator armies are always going to be smaller than most opponents. Some of it though was just a very aggressive plan on Red's part and it almost worked. He thought that his monolith counted for linebreaker and that he had a tie, but it turns out you have to have a scoring unit in the enemy deployment zone, and after I wiped his destroyers out he backed up that other unit of warriors to just outside of the zone! That one miss took him from a tie to a loss. Lessson: Know The Victory Conditions!

Fun stuff
The divination librarian was pretty effective in helping with re-rolls,  The hammers proved just as effective as expected, wiping out units in a single round of combat.

Aggrevations

• The bikes did all of one hull point to the monolith. This is sub-par for them. I was sure that a 2-melta bike squad and a multi-melta attack bike would be enough to break it but that dd not happen. I'll have to think about that the next time.
• I rolled a lot of 1's. I don't normally complain about luck but it was ridiculous, and it was worse in the next game.
• That teleport gate on the monolith really bumps up the mobility of the otherwise footslogging warrior army. Deep striking something that can beam your troops all the way across the board every turn is pretty handy, especially when it's armor 14. 
• Red was pretty annoyed that his 2+/3++ lord could be taken off the board without failing anything. That's what happens when he's with a bad HTH unit...

And a general note: does everything in the Necron army have to be different? Most armies have at least some standard gear but I swear, the Necron units and wargear and special abilities all have to have some funky thing that doesn't work like anything else. We spent a lot of time looking their stuff up in the codex and working out what it meant.

Anyway, another victory for the Imperial Fists! Tomorrow: The Crimson Fists get their chance!

The Obligatory 13th Age Post - Icons and Relationships

Well,  this is the hot new thing among the D&D Alternatives. The big release (like so many others) is next month.  I've glanced in on it a few times over the past year but was not in on the playtest and haven't played any of it. Now I have picked up a copy of the playtest rules and reading through them I am interested.

Mechanically it seems like a pretty good mix of traditional D&D stuff with most of it tied to 3E or 4E type resolution. But it clears away a lot of the 3E clutter while moving sideways from 4E in other places. Keeping races, classes, a skill system of some kind, feats, and the general d20 + modifier seems almost essential. Dropping the grid-based assumptions clears a lot of the mechanical complications away, and less rigidity on the balance front lets some of the flavor that 4E gave up (consciously) come back in. I'm going to spend a few posts looking at some of the aspects of the game that caught my eye and started some thinking here.

The Icons and the relationships with them is a great idea, codifying something that's been floating around in some other games but never really incorporated into D&D. The idea is that there is a set list of powerful entities in the campaign and a character has a few points to spend to identify relationships with those entities. These are categorized as "heroic", "ambiguous', or "villainous" and a character could have a "positive", "negative", or "conflicted" relationship with their chosen icons. Specifically a starting character gets 3 points to spend here and they could concentrate on a single icon or spread them around. The mechanical effect is that when desired a character can roll a d6 for each point and each "6" indicates some kind of benefit from the relationship and a 5 indicates a benefit with a complication.

The "High Druid" - one from the book

I won't get into the specific Icons used in the book because to me they are heavily setting-dependent and I'm more interested in some existing settings than the one included with the game. For a Greyhawk campaign this would let players define relationships with say, the Grandfather of Assassins, The Overking of Aerdy, The Circle of Eight, etc. with an actual mechanical effect which could liven up sessions in a fun way. It would work for the Realms as well, and could be very effective in a Dragonlance or Dark Sun game.

In the rules these examples are specifically powerful individuals, leaders and rulers of nations and races. I can see experimenting with using this with organizations, though I think making the focus the leader of an organization keeping it more personal. I can also see adding a layer for the gods, or their high priests or temples to help bring out the religious elements of the campaign world.

As an old Champions player this looks like a simplified Hunted/Rival/Ally/Sidekick system which is a good thing for any game! It's not as mechanically involved as that but it accomplishes similar goals in helping the players tie their characters to the world and tell the DM what kinds of friends and foes they want to see in the game.

I can see some fun with a system that expands by level/tier - starting out the "icons" might be the ruler of the local town, the head of a local temple, the leader of the local elf kingdom, the head of the merchants guild - keeping the focus more local and keeping things more in line with the way a lot of old school campaigns run at low levels. At the next tier that might expand to national figures, then finally to world/planar figures like the king of the fire giants or the princes of elemental evil. Mechanically it might be handled by giving a new pool of points at each tier to define relationships with the new group of icons.

The "Lich King" from the book

Now I can see this whole idea being out of step with some old school principles, mainly that it assumes a starting adventurer is important enough to have come to the notice of the movers and shakers of the world before the game begins. That's not how it worked in the old days - you were a nobody and had to earn your way to fame and hobnobbing with the powers of the campaign world. I've been slowly moving away from this view myself but I do understand it. I think this system still has a place though. I would just adjust it so that instead of having a pool of points at 1st level I would award one when hitting certain levels - maybe one at 3rd, one at 5th, then one at 7th (this game only goes to 10th level so the range is compressed a bit compared to classic D&D). This would keep the characters as relative nobodies at the lowest levels and let them gradually come to the notice of the bigger fish as they earn it by leveling up during the game.

This approach would reverse one important element though: selecting these relationships during character creation lets the players drive some of the campaign focus right from the beginning. Choosing them during the level up process means that the campaign will be driving the choices as I suspect players will spend their points on the icons that are already a factor in the game rather than trying to drive the campaign in a direction of their choice. It shifts things from a proactive approach to a reactive approach, from the player perspective. That may be a desired result for some groups but  it's worth considering before implementation.

I do think there needs to be a set list of icons for the campaign and it needs to be a fairly small number. In the rulebook there are 13 and I think that's a good number to target. If you expand it too much or leave it open-ended and let players choose whatever they want then it dilutes the focus and lessens the impact. This is where the DM gets to lay out the potential focus of the campaign by deciding what's on "the list" and the players get to narrow it down with their choices from that list.

Other Uses

• Star Wars: The middle version of WOTC's Star Wars d20 game had a Reputation system that let the DM track player relationships with a bunch of organizations from the Empire to Black Sun. This kind of thing seems tailor made for a Star Wars game and would be easy to add on to any version of the rules, from d6 to Saga. I think a list of icons would be easy enough to generate and off you go.

• Star Trek: Maybe not as obvious but I can still see a niche for it. Star Fleet Intelligence, The Klingon Chancellor, Section 31, Q - just watch the show and the possibilities bloom. This would give the players a nice hook beyond career history and current assignment and explain why they keep getting certain kinds of missions...

• Marvel/DC: SHIELD, the President, Congress, Stark Industries - I might take a more organization-based approach here but you could certainly make it personal - start with the illuminate and work down a list of powerful individuals,. DC would be similar. It's a looser alternative to the Champions approach and lets relationships have a mechanical impact outside of the usual powers found in a superhero game.

So it's a cool idea that works outside of the D&D style game as well. I think that's a strong indicator of goodness. I have some desire to link this to Dawn of Worlds to build a brand new campaign world from the ground up with my players. It would be an interesting exercise at least, nailing down the icons for the RPG campaign during the world-building game.

Motivational Monday

40K Friday - Calling up the Reserves

I've been working on my Chaos Marines, even after the beatings I took previously. I figure the bikers and other things will change the force up enough that I can make a better showing. I'll show more on them next week.

While building them - you know building Chaos Marines takes a lot longer than building regular marines. There are so many choices about how to arm them, how many to put in a squad, whether to mark them, how to tool up the champion ... loyalist marines it's pretty much 10 guys, missile launcher + flamer + maybe another extra guy with a different weapon. The only thought goes into the sergeant and that's still not much compared to an aspiring chaos champion. It took me a long time to build out two CSM squads and the biker squad and I'm still working on the terminators.

The old reliable Arm Sprue ...

Anyway, while building them I ran out of arms! I've been building marines for 25 years now, and I doubt I have bought an actual marine box in 10 years, other than starter sets, and I have never thought twice about arms - now I'm out! Those old 2E/3E blister packs came with (typically) two metal guys and 4-5 pairs of marine arms (so lots of spares), and I bought a LOT of those packages. Now, sadly, they are all gone. I actually had to break down and pick up a batch of marine arms (thanks eBay!) to finish them up. The loyal marines burned up those "under the bolter" left arms, and the chaos forces finished off the "holding something" left arms.

While ransacking the house for arms, I made another discovery. I have a lot of spare marines sitting around waiting to be drafted into one of my armies. In particular there are a lot of old metal and RT era guys that I was planning on *someday* adding to my RT-era Howling Griffons. Some of them have been "pending" for a very long time (longer than my kids have been around). I realized that it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to go back and do a significant expansion to that army. It is what it is, and while I do take it out and use it every once in a while it's mostly "retired". The Crimson Fists are my current vanilla marine army and my Ravenwing/Deathwing armies let me abuse that other codex. So what to do with that reserve force scattered from the garage to the display case?

Spray 'em red! Old school vindicator, dread, 2 squads of assault marines, a death company squad of old RT plastic bare-head guys, Mephiston, some librarians, some chaplains, and two squads of RT terminators (1 assault, 1 shooty) - instant Blood Angel force! It's somewhere around 1500 points depending on characters and gear - plenty to start with and adding a unit of sanguinary guard or some older Baal Predators or Vindicators will be simple enough.

Rather than adding to an old army I've built a whole new one without adding any new figures! They will be using the new arms, since I'm out of those, and I did pick up a used Codex, but that's pretty cheap for spawning a whole new force. No, I probably didn't need yet another power armor army but these guys were just sitting around - at least now there is a chance they will get to see some action.

Now of course the temptation is to become the "marine guy" - I have to Codex forces, two Dark Angel based forces, and now a BA force, and Chaos marines too. All I need is to build up some Gray Knights and some Space Wolves and I'l have the complete set, pending the future of the Black Templars as a separate codex.

When will I use them? Hard to say, but I am supposed to play a game with Apprentice Red tonight. If he can tolerate armless marines they may see the table then. More on that next week.

The Lone Ranger - A View From Texas

So a heavily-promoted movie came out and is failing. I did go see it and thought I would share a bit.

The Good

• It was reportedly an expensive movie and the money is up there on the screen. Big sets, big crowds of people, lots of stunts and set-pieces
• Johnny Depp does fine as Tonto though he's not quite as funny as the pirate.
• There's a fair amount of setup and origin but it doesn't all come at you at once, in order. There's a framing device and a lot of non-sequential storytelling that mix things up

The Bad

• It's way over the top when it comes to stunts and physics. I'd almost call it a Wuxia Western but it's not as cool as that would imply. This weakens the whole movie.
• The Ranger himself is a neophyte, not an experienced, mature, tough Texas Ranger as one might expect. His motivations are solid enough, but his experience and manner are just off compared to earlier incarnations of the character
• As others have noted, the plot is pretty much the same as the Antonio Banderas Mask of Zorro movie (of which I am a fan) so if you've seen that then you already know how this is going to go.
• The framing device I mentioned above is overused and becomes intrusive by the later stages of the film. It worked in Princess Bride but that was mainly a comedy. This is mainly and action movie and it does not work as well here.
• About 5% of the film actually looks like Texas, the rest of it looks like Arizona or New Mexico, despite it being set 100% in Texas. This was a problem with a lot of older westerns but I thought we were past it now - apparently not.
• It's just not funny enough nor is it serious enough, like it can't decide what it wants to be

Outside of these I think the biggest meta-problem is that this was made by the same team that made Pirates of the Caribbean and in that there was a heavy mystical element right from the start whereas here there is none. There is a lot of alluding to Indian mysticism, but there's no actual payoff.  This limits what they can do character-wise and plot-wise and was probably a mistake. Either go totally real and gritty and make a modern Lone Ranger that way, or let some mysterious stuff happen, similar to the Indiana Jones movies, and don't try to explain it.

Spoiler: When they started talking "Wendigo" and Silver Bullets I thought we were about to get this kind of movie - then it pretty much fizzled out like a wet firecracker.

I also didn't like the two-faced attitude towards the source material. They're making a big-budget movie based on something and when the classic overture kicks in as the big finale starts up (the first time in the movie that it is heard) I admit it felt pretty good. But making the hero a bumbling greenhorn was not a good choice, putting it almost to the level of Big Trouble in Little China's hero-as-sidekick as Tonto's competence and general savvy (heh) overshadows him. Plus, at the very end of the movie, there's a slam on a classic Lone Ranger bit that seems like a pointless cheap shot at the original and I didn't like that either. "we'll take the mask, the copanion, the silver bullets, and the theme, but this other part is dumb so we'll just make fun of it instead" - bad move.

In the end I didn't hate it but I was disappointed with it. A new western franchise that was as much fun as the Pirate movies would have been a very cool thing to have over the next few years, but that's not likely now. I will say if you want to watch a good actor play a quirky, interesting character in a western, you can skip this and go watch "Tombstone" and have a better time.

You're a daisy if you do...