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

40K UnRant - The Mission Cards

One of the big issues with the tournament segment of 40K players on the new edition is with the Maelstrom mission cards. There has been a tremendous resistance to using those and a lot of exaggerations such as "unplayable" applied to using them in the game.

I've played them and the game worked just fine. There are videos online of people using them and their games seem to work as well. Even that first Frontline Gaming batrep where 7th was declared unplayable due to demonology and the mission cards being broken ended in a tie - somehow the doomed non-demon player managed to pull that off! Imagine that!

Anyway, rather than talk in generalities why not take a look at the actual cards and see which ones might be problems?

There are 36 "tactical objectives". It's based on a d66 chart (roll a d6 for tens, roll another d6 for ones) and each set of "tens" has a theme of sorts.

• The 10's, 20's, and 30's are all "score 1 VP for having objective X at the end of your turn". These are the core of the system, the bread in the sandwich, the baseline. Half of the cards drawn will be these.
• The 40's are more nuanced objective-related goals.
• 41 is related to Mysterious Objectives - I know this could be a problem because I know we've never used Mysterious Objectives and I think a lot of other players ignore them as well.
• 42 & 43 are related to having units near an opponents table edge - completely achievable by any army
• 44, 45, & 46 give multiple points for holding multiple objectives - again, this is certainly within the realm of possibility for every army 
• The 50's are combat-related goals
• 51-52-53 are scored for eliminating enemy units - this seems reasonable
• 54 is scored for issuing a challenge - not winning one, just issuing one, so if you have a character in the army, you can arrange this
• 55 is scored when an opponent fails morale, pinning, or fear tests - there are armies that are less likely to fail one of these but it's pretty rare to fight the 100% Fearless force, I'm calling it "conceivably impossible to achieve".
• 56 is scored for successfully manifesting a psychic power - you would need a psyker to do this so Necrons and Tau are out, though I hear there are allies in the game
• The 60's are the kill point objectives
• 61 is "slay the warlord II" and every army has to have one
• 62 is kill a psyker and so without one there's no way to score this
• 63 is kill a flyer - certainly there are armies without those
• 64 is kill a character and that's 100% do-able
• 65 is kill a building and there are lots of armies who do not use those, could be a problem
• 66 is kill a vehicle or monstrous creature - while it's certainly possible to build an army without either one, every army has the option for at least one of the two and many have both. In a smaller fight, maybe, but I don't think this one is going to be "unplayable" in any battle of 1500 points or more.  

So, what's our worst-case scenario? Cards 41, 55, 56, 62, 63, 65, and 66 are specific enough that they might not be involved in a game. That's 7 out of 36 possibilities. However, at that point you are fighting a Fearless army with no Psykers, Flyers, Vehicles, or Monstrous Creatures and have no Psykers of your own. So we're talking Tau (with no vehicles or riptides) vs. Necrons (with no vehicles) and both have somehow become fearless army-wide - HA! 

I just don't see that as likely, ESPECIALLY in a tournament situation where most of the complaints are concerned. Tournament organizers could easily cut this down by one by including a building or two (or more) on their tables.

What is a more reasonable scenario? No MO's, no buildings, no flyers, and maybe a lack of psykers on one side. Call it 4 non-scoring cards. That's 1/9. If you draw 3 cards per turn for a 6-turn game you will draw 2 non-playable cards on average. The rules allow a player to discard one card per turn. This seems like a perfectly fine solution.

Note I am not counting "well the enemy is sitting on Objective 5" as making "score for holding objective 5" an unplayable card, which seems to be a part of the early complaints. It's not unplayable - that's the !$%$#%$# game! Go take that objective from the other player - it gives you points and keeps him from scoring his own! This isn't the old edition where you can just sit back on a few objectives on your own side of the table and go for first blood or slay the warlord to win at the end of the game - you have to go take them away during the game! Think of the objectives as your orders from high command - sometimes you're ahead of them (I already have Objective #5), sometimes you're behind (The enemy has Objective #5), and sometimes you get orders that make no sense at all based on the current situation and you either clarify or ignore those - that's the discard!

The missions themselves are a part of this too: 

• The "draw 3 every turn" mission is nice and steady. 
• The "draw one per objective you control" doubles the incentive to go grab those objectives, regardless of the cards in your hand. 
• The hidden cards mission keeps things interesting and a little different from the others, allowing for feints and deceptions if you're so inclined. 
• Scoring from either player's objective cards blows things wide open.  
• The escalating draw mission keeps things really lively right up until the end.
• The decreasing-draw mission is the one where I can see some problems. Here, if someone did draw the worst possible hand, say 4 out of their 6 cards are unplayable, then they could find themselves in a hole at the end of turn 1, assuming their opponent draws the opposite kind of hand. Turn 2 it's a max of 5 cards. Assuming they discarded one of the bad ones , they start the turn at ... 5 cards - the same 5 they ended with on turn 1. That's how they spend the game. 

I don't think that last one is likely, but it is possible. Luck is part of the game but a bad run of it on the first turn sucks, whether it's bad cards or deep strike mishaps, bad scatter rolls, or a bunch of ones on your terminator armor saves. Both players are drawing from the same pool of possibilities so the risk is equal. 

To mitigate this when it comes to the cards, here's my suggested house rule:

"After drawing objectives on the first turn a player may choose to discard their entire hand and redraw, treating the discards just as if they had been discarded during the game (i.e. they are out of the pool and cannot be scored or redrawn)."

This solves the biggest potential problem described above, mitigates bad luck in the smaller draw games, and protects against the cherry-picking discard of "well I like these 4 but these two are not good" by forcing the decision to affect the entire batch. Additionally it leaves it in the hands of the player - if you think you can manage a marginal set of objectives (say, all on the enemy side of the board) then you can do that and potentially score more points, or you can toss them and hope for the lower-hanging fruit on a redraw.

Motivational Monday

40K Friday - Updates for a New Edition

I always suspected this would work and it couldn't be any more expensive

Apprentice Blaster kidnapped my rulebook over the weekend and will likely be holding on to it for another week. That makes it hard to noodle over the finer points of the rules and how it might affect my armies, but thankfully the internet hysterics are keeping the debate over those finer points alive and well for contemplation.

I'm mainly interested in how I should change up the armies that are still being built. My Crimson Fists, for example, are built around a core of three 10-man tactical squads in rhinos, plus some sternguard and some predators. That's not going to change because they're built and painted. I'm not going to suddenly try to convert them to an all-biker army just because that's the hot new thing. If I wanted to do that I'd just start a new White Scars force ... but I don't ... not yet. I suspect my still-under-construction Blood Angels will become my 7th edition obligatory marine army, assuming I can get the 6th edition Dark Angels finished this year. Maybe White Scars in 8th ...

My Chaos Marines are still under construction but I finally have the core force sorted out. Chaos Lord in terminator armor, a daemon prince, 3 units of plague marines, cultists, a unit of nurgle-marked bikers led by a sorcerer on a bike, some nurgle-marked spawn, a defiler, some havocs, some obliterators, a unit of terminators, 2 units of possessed, and a helbrute pretty much fill out the force. It's all very true to the lore as all of the marine infantry units and the bikers are in units of six, Nurgle's sacred number in the background. I may add a heldrake in there to finish out the fast attack slots, but other than that I already have everything, some of it is painted, and some of it is getting painted.

Dawn breaks and reveals a defiler sitting atop the Falcon - what will Han do?

How did 7th influence this? Well, with everything scoring now maxing out the troop slots dropped somewhat in priority. I still think it's good to have 3-4 super-scoring units and I have those with 18 plague marines and 30 cultists, but the "regular" chaos marines seemed superfluous. I dropped them.

The looser force structures and increased power of the psychic phase now mean I might drop the lord or shift him and the plague marines to a separate force in order to get both the daemon prince and the sorcerer into the same battle. Before that was only possible at 2,000 points - now I could do it any point level. I also have a second Nurgle-looking daemon prince. While I was thinking about using him more for my Chaos Daemons army, it makes some sense to look into expanding that second force org and using him here instead.

Vehicles are a tick or two tougher than in sixth, though most of the benefit goes to AV 13 or 14 targets. It still makes me feel a little better about including the defiler and a helbrute or two.

Termies and possessed were not highly regarded either but since they score now I think they have quite a bit more utility than they did. Nurgle possessed (and terminators) are fairly tough and once they clear an enemy off of an objective they can now hold it and defend it too.

Not drastic changes but the new rules have helped solidify my plans. More next week.

(You can see more of the impressive lego 40k force here.)

Mixed Emotions - The ETU Kickstarter for Savage Worlds

I debated posting this but decided I might as well share. Plus it's not about D&D, Pathfinder, or 40K so it might a nice breath of fresh air.

What do you do when a game system you really like runs a kickstarter for a supplement on a topic you care nothing about?

I really like Savage Worlds and almost everything that Pinnacle puts out interests me in some way. They've spent a lot of time publishing games with a fair amount of real history embedded in them (Deadlands, Weird Wars, Pirates) but with a twist to make them more interesting as a game. They've also done some interesting things with fantasy (Evernight) and superheroes (Necessary Evil) to the point that I'l take a look at pretty much anything they do. I own all of the original Hell on Earth books, almost all of the Deadlands books, almost all of the early Savage Worlds books, and quite a few of the later ones. I backed the Weird Wars Rome kickstarter and I am completely happy with the results.

That said I just can't get on board with this one. I'm working through why:

• It clearly has a vision behind it - the descriptions so far seem cohesive and make a lot of sense.

• It's set in Texas, modern-day-if-it-was-haunted Texas. That may be where my problem starts. 

• It's set in a school. I know that's part of the problem.

Going in reverse order:

I've never been a fan of the high school RPG, whether it was the old Teenagers from Outer Space (the first one I can remember), the various superhero high school games, the Buffy RPG, or even a Trek game set at Starfleet Academy. This one is set in a university but that's really not all that different in effect. I've never really felt the need to revisit the teenage years in a game. When I was a junior high/high school kid I wanted to play grown-ups, not teenagers. When I was in college we never wanted to play high school or college kids. As an adult I've never felt the urge to go back there either. Clearly some people do, or  these kinds of games wouldn't exist but it's not my thing.

As a side note, I could see playing (and probably have at some point) the college professor or even a college student in a game that wasn't set in a school. I think I had an "academic" in an old Traveller game and I know I've used "student" as a secret identity/day job on some superhero characters over the years. The key factor there was that none of those games were set in or focused on a school - it was just a piece of their background.

As far as setting it in Texas, well, it's probably a little too close to home to be all that fantastic. I drive to and from parts of East Texas several times a year whether for summer lake visits or springtime car shows. I have friends out there. I'm talking an hour or two's drive from Dallas, and while that may seem exotic to someone from way out of state or in another country it's just not that exciting to me. Drop it back 150 years and then we might have something, but as a "now" setting it's just very plain in my eyes.

The fact that we've been looking at colleges for the Graduated Apprentice for two years and that there are a great number of "Directional Texas Universities" probably adds to the lack of the fantastic in my eyes as well. The thought of getting familiar with another school, even a fictional one, with monsters and cultists, just sounds like more work to me.

My personal lack of interest aside the game looks like it's well done. There are not a ton of games set in modern day Texas, and the "Pinebox" guys do seem to know the area well. I like the art style. Savage Worlds seems like a great system to do this in. They have some nifty "unlockables" - though they are based on number of backers and not amount pledged which seems like an odd way to do it, but if it works for them that's cool. Even the miniatures seem pretty useful for a modern game in general.

Working through this, as much as I like Savage Worlds in general, I just can't get on board with this one. I hope it's successful for Pinnacle and everyone on the team, but I won't be backing it. By talking about it here, maybe someone who otherwise would not have seen it will discover it and jump on board. Regardless, I will keep an eye out for the next one and hopefully it will be something I can support.

The End of the School Year Gaming Update

This is the last week of school for the Apprentices (except for the one who's already out) and I wanted to collect some thoughts on what we've done so far and what we might do over the summer.

RPG's so far: The thing here is "Pathfinder". We've been playing it a lot and we'e managed to finish book 1 of the Wrath of the Righteous with full intent to finish the whole thing. During the school year we also managed some Mutants and Masterminds and some ICONS, which I have not written up, but we've had a lot of fun with them. I have not been in as much of a superhero mood lately, and the boys haven't been asking for it. The last couple of months have been busy enough that keeping PF on track was about all we could do.

Miniatures: We were playing a fair amount of Star Trek Attack Wing, to the point that I went out and bough a nifty new space mat so we wouldn't have to play in the Paisley Nebula anymore and then the 40K news came out and blew Trek right off the table! I suspect we will get back to it over the summer but we've had a drastic slowdown. The new edition of 40K is the big dog here and I expect it to stay the big dog for the rest of the year. After watching Band of Brothers we've talked about getting into a WW2 miniatures game but the time and expense of building at least two new armies (in whatever scale) is just not that appealing to any of us right now. I think the plan for the summer is "finish what you have" and then we will see what next year brings.

Board and Card games: About all we've played consistently is Memoir 44 (there's our WW2 fix), while the boys play Magic and Heroclix fairly often among themselves. This is not our main thing but maybe we should do more here.

With graduations and first jobs and kids learning to drive we've done pretty well in keeping the fun stuff going.

Plans for the summer:

• Keep Pathfinder going
• Get our 40K armies and terrain tuned up and get them some exercise
• See if STAW is a long-term thing or if it's just going to be a once-in-a-while game
• Play some supers, even as a limited campaign
•  Find time to play some Savage Worlds

The new edition of D&D will probably have an impact in there too but I'm not sure how much. The boys don't seem terribly interested as they're happy with what we have now. We will probably work in a test run of some kind at least.

I'd like to get the 4E game going again too but it's been a real challenge with schedules. Not sure how this will go but I'll keep trying. 

I'd also like to get a Trek game going, even if it's a limited run and just with the boys. I have extra copies of the LUG Trek TNG rulebook so it is possible. It's another "TBD" game. I just need a good idea and a mostly-clear weekend ... 

In between the usual swimming and movies and general time-wasting that's how I see the summer going.