Pathfinder Update - End of February Edition

The game I'm running:
Wrath of the Righteous just completed Session #25 over the weekend and the party is just about finished with the Book 2. I'm happy with it and the players seem happy with it so it's an ongoing win.

Mass combat played a role in this part of the campaign and my guys enjoyed running an army quite a bit. We have named most of the individuals in their army, purely for the flavor when they take damage - "Oh no Sir So-and-So has fallen!"

So far Mythic has not broken the game, but from I have read Book 3 is where it gets hairy. We shall see. For now many of the mythic powers add some 4th edition flavor in their effects but they do typically take a point and a swift action to use so there are some clear limits on the power creep. Blaster is doing his best to push the limits of the system in one way as he keeps taking "more points" as his mythic ability to enable him to keep his initial choice of "extra shots/swings" going for every round of a typical combat. It's an interesting choice - find one or two powers you like and then use other choices to fuel them.

I am also having better luck tinkering with the difficulty of the encounters as having six mythic characters in play instead of the designed-for four makes the encounters far less challenging than they are supposed to be. Plus I think the AP's in general lean towards the  I'll share some details on that process in a separate post.

The game I'm playing:
Kingmaker rolls on once per month and it's a lot of fun. We've finished Book 1, slain the Stag Lord, and founded our kingdom. Book 2 has kicked off with a whole bunch of kingdom building and that's been interesting though I admit I am ready to get back to some more personal adventuring. Sir Ivan Zhukov (Russian name, French accent - don't ask me why) is now 4th level and in charge of the fledgling realm's military forces - which consist of Sir Ivan Zhukov and his mighty charger Fesarius - for now.

Coming at it from the perspective of taming and conquering a region has made for a somewhat different game than the usual looting for personal game approach. I don;t think I've ever hung as many bad guys, even in a western, as I have in this campaign. Having a legal writ in-hand, and as a prop in my actual hand, does do interesting things.

Paladin Steve is pretty happy because it's the first campaign that he's run for more than a year and that's a pretty big milestone after decades of being a player almost exclusively. Congratulations man!

Stuff I'm not playing
The Giantslayer AP kicked off this month with the first of the six installments. I've skimmed it, I'll read it once I get some time and I may even post some thoughts on it. After the "everything to 11" AP Wrath of the Righteous, the very distinct flavor of Mummy's Mask, and the Pathfinder 40,000 of Iron Gods I think this one is going to feel like the most traditional D&D style adventure path since Rise of the Runelords. I'm fine with that. It's definitely on the "I'd like to play or run that someday" list, exact ranking to be determined later.

I also picked up the Emerald Spire superdungeon this month. After a quick run-through I like it, but those levels are relatively small. I know they were limited by the size of the flip-mats as they wanted to do one for each level, but I'm thinking some of them could have been double-sized levels and we could have used two maps side by side to create some larger levels. With 16 of them there's no lack of content, and I appreciate the challenge of working within a set of constraints. I still would have liked some bigger playgrounds here and there. I'm not sure what percentage of people picking up the book will also pick up the flip-mats but unless you're only selling them as a package it seems a little forced as far as design constraints go. Regardless of my issue here, even if you look at a flip-mat as somewhere between a quarter to a half a page of notebook-sized graph paper, that's comparable to 4-8 levels of old-school dungeon and that's fine.

I have the Thornkeep book as well which covers the surrounding region and I think a pretty decent and very traditional type of campaign could be run with those two items. Couple of "home base" type towns, a wilderness area with various sites of interest, some power groups with a web of relationships in place, and a nice big dungeon to focus on is a nice start for a more sandbox type game than most APs. There's no plot going on, just an interesting region to explore.

That's the Pathfinder rundown - more on non-Pathfinder stuff tomorrow!

First Up - The Patreon Thing

A few years ago Kickstarter really turned into a huge thing, especially for game companies. There have been hits and misses, but it does seem to have opened up some options for getting some projects done that would not have been done before this.

I think 2014-2015 marks the explosion for Patreon, as it seems like over the last few months a whole bunch of people with blogs and podcasts that I follow have felt the need to ask strangers for money - on an ongoing basis. They all are quick to note that it's only a few dollars a month/ pennies per post/ a dollar per podcast/ some other kind of awesome bargain. That's technically true, but if I throw in "only a few dollars per month" across 15-20 sites/blogs/podcasts that I like, well, it's not so minuscule an expenditure now is it?  To me this introduces an element of competition between these sites where a potential contributor is only going to contribute $X to Patreon each month. I wonder how that will work out over time?

This isn't a new thing, but it's a new way of doing this particular thing but I have to say that I haven't noticed any particular jump in quality or awesomeness in the places that do this. There are some that seem to spend a fair amount of effort setting up a walled-off set of content for those who pay, but that changes things from the "tip jar" approach to more of a subscription model and anecdotal-ly it does not seem to last all that long. I see it as changing the relationship from "hey we're all doing this for fun" to "I am a customer" and I have not seen that to be a positive change in really any case I can think of offhand.

In contrast, Evil Hat uses their Patreon program to publish new adventures and in that case it works like a sort of ongoing Kickstarter. I like that approach as there is a tangible result from their approach. I haven;t always been bowled over by the results, but I like the general idea.

I suspect the reason an optional payment approach works is because if payment was required most people would move on to another site/blog/cast. The barrier to entry is zero, and there's always another hopeful hobbyist out there. Some get noticed, some don't, but there is just so much that if you're going to charge for your stuff it better be notably better than what's out there for free.

To clarify, I am rarely against people trying to make money off of something they like to do. If you can do it, why not? I'm just not convinced this is a truly workable approach for anything other than the tip jar type of funding. Maybe that's enough in some cases, but it seems pretty limiting to me. Traditionally making money making something and then selling it for a profit. A lot of these creative efforts revolve around a game or some other property that is owned by someone else, so you can't make money directly from the effort. Patronage programs allow for an end run around that. I can't make and sell a Star Wars book or game my self, but I can make a Star Wars podcast or Warcraft YouTube channel or a Trek blog and stick a link to my Patreon page up at the top and try to make some money that way.

As for me, well, I'm not signing up for any kind of Patreon anything for now. I get the occasional fund raiser drive to get new microphones for a podcast or to upgrade a server for a site I like, and I have contributed to them in the past. Maybe it's having a specific, achievable goal that makes the difference for me. The constant year-round open-ended request for money that is Patreon though, no, I'm not a fan of that.

Tuesday: Two Things I Think

Catching up on a few weeks of news-type-stuff:

• Modiphius has a new license for a Conan RPG. Let's see there was the TSR Conan game, the GURPS Conan books, the seemingly cursed Mongoose d20 version ... is this really a big deal in 2015? I'm a pretty big Conan fan (original Howard books mainly, the movies to a point, the comic books and later authors less so) and this doesn't really get me excited. Part of that is probably because despite owning or having owned in the past all of those versions of the game I've never been able to convince my players to do a Conan game. Part is probably because I think GURPS did a pretty good job of it and Savage Worlds could do a pretty good job of it so I don't really feel the need for yet another version of it. I guess we will see how it goes. I'm also not sure it's ever made a decent amount of money for a game company as a licensed property but I suppose people will keep trying. Color me mildly curious.

• Looks like the same company also picked up the license for a new version of Mutant Chronicles. Awesome - a new edition of a game that wasn't that popular in the first place and the previous editions were put out 17 and 22 years ago. Maybe they hope to ride the nostalgia wave? I really liked the original version of the game and I still own a copy, but I think a big part of the attraction was an RPG that was about as close to Warhammer 40,000 as you could get when there wasn't a Warhammer 40,000 game available. Now there are at least 5 of them and they seem to be pretty popular, so who is going to play this again? For those who do like the setting, well,  I'm not sure I need yet another system for this when I suspect Hero, GURPS, or Savage Worlds (there is a SW conversion listed on the KS page) or even FATE could handle it just fine. They have some pretty big plans based on their Kickstarter too and that makes me pause as well - besides the actual core game there are a bunch more books and bags and minis and dice and t-shirts and other knick-knacks that seem to be the downfall of so many RPG crowdfunding efforts. I hope it goes well for everyone involved.

• History on the development of the "Known World" D&D setting is here. I still have a soft spot for this setting as it and Greyhawk were the first two published campaign "worlds" I encountered circa 1981. There was a lot here I did not know so I'd say it's worth a look if you're at all interested. 

• Excitement over WOTC taking down infringing apps here and here. I don't see anything terribly surprising here. If you're trying to make money off of WOTC stuff and you're not paying them for the privilege, they're going to have a problem with it at some point. Lots of comparisons to Paizo but Paizo is operating under the OGL with a lot of its content which changes things considerably.

• In a discussion on the new Sage Advice column at WOTC we already have people refusing to buy a perceived 5.5 edition of D&D. The DMG's been out for less than 2 months. I see internet gaming forums remain the bastion of rationality they have been for years now. Do some gamers really have this much trouble living in the now? Sheesh.

40K Friday - Progress Report - Marines Marines Marines - and Harlequin news

The Eldar are on hold for a bit while I build out more of the marine armies but I am going to have to get that new Harlie codex at some point. I have 30+ of the originals running around here and now with some actual support it could be a lot of fun to play them solo. Meanwhile ...

• The Dark Angel vehicles are all base coated and just need some detailing and clear coating to be finished. I decided after sitting on them for a year I really needed to get them table-ready.

Insignia not glued on, but that's the general idea

• The chaos marines have been getting more playing time than painting time. I am also building a second force of Iron Warriors now (mostly from existing chaos marines) for Apprentice Who and I to share as my Nurgle Space Hulk force is just about complete. 

Couple of tac squads, helbrute, heldrake, probably some havocs, led by a lord and a warpsmith

• The Blood Angels are coming together. I have the new codex, the cards, and all of the elements I need for the force I have envisioned except for one more drop pod. The main work now is building and painting them though quite a few are already painted. The main force is this:

• Dante + Death Company jumping around the board (hammer unit)
• Two small assault squads with all-melta, likely deep striking in (tank-killers)
• Two tac squads with heavy flamer, flamer, and combi-flamer drop-podding in on Turn 1(enemy objective takers and loota-killers)
• One Multi-Melta/heavy flamer dread drop-podding in (wild card to be used as needed)
• Devastator squad in the backfield (objective holders who can contribute to mid-field battle)

Depending on point levels there might be some scouts, small tac squads or another devastator squad or some terminators in here as well. HQ's were going to be a pair of sanguinary priests joining the tac squads but if I do I have to drop the squad down to 9 men to fit everyone into the pod and that means I lose a flamer. I may be OK with that but I haven't decided yet.  

I really like the Blood Angels' vehicular options - Baal Predator, fast vindicators - but for this force I don't really need any so that may be part of a later expansion of the boys in red.

Next time: More progress then the February Big Battle Report

Combining City of Heroes and Necessary Evil - Why Not the Rogue Isles?

Z3-R0 at the beginning of his career in crime

One obvious question that might occur to some people is this: If you're running a Necessary Evil game and want to set it in the City of Heroes world, why not use the City of Villains home area? Why not use the Rogue Isles? That's a good question.

For one, the campaign is all about juxtaposition and if I have villains running around the "villain homeland" it loses some of that feel. I need them to be reminded that they are "fighting the good fight" whether they like it or not.

Second, the Rogue Isles are a dump and no one cares about them compared to the attention given to Paragon City. What are the big landmarks in the Isles? There's not much. The interesting, memorable stuff is over in the big city where people actually want to live.

Thirdly, Paragon is where the money and the power is. If you're interested in taking control of things, then you need to go to the center of things, and that is not the Rogue Isles.

Boss Thunder out for a stroll

Also, my players and I spent a lot more time hero-side than villain-side so it is far more familiar. That matters. For a group that played more villainous characters when the game was active I can see it becoming the focus of a campaign but for us it just does not make sense.

In-game I intend to justify it by saying the Isles were blasted by the V'Sori early and often. Much like before, it's a somewhat anarchic zone that is monitored but not occupied. We may take a trip there during one of our missions, but it's never going to be the focus of the whole campaign.

No, there's really very little mercy here

"But what about Arachnos and Lord Recluse?" I hear you saying. To which I reply "yes - what about them?" Perhaps that's something that needs to be investigated. Perhaps our villains protagonists will investigate that. We will just have to see.

Astro-Ranger suspects this might be an old Arachnos base ...

Combining City of Heroes and Necessary Evil - the Content

Well, that's certainly still relevant

So now that I have a framework for how I think I can run this, I need to decide on the meat of each session. Since it's still "Necessary Evil", regardless of setting, I'm going to start with that.

The core plot unfolds in 11 adventures. Originally it was 10, but the explorers edition added an 11th which is good because the original finale was not good and I was planning on changing it anyway. With the reset to Paragon City I plan on changing it even more. For those familiar with the adventure, Star City has a sort of plot of its own tied to its history, and it ties in to the original finale. I'm planning to drop that whole element anyway, rendering that particular plot point meaningless. My players also finished the first 3 plot points back in 2010 when we started this and we're keeping those adventures with a little bit of a retcon to reset them in Paragon City. So I have 7 core plotline adventures. These are pretty much usable as-is with simple changes to names, locations, and some NPC's to reflect the new setting. There's only one other major setting discrepancy and I'll talk about that below.

Iconic characters like ... Fusionette!

Fleshing out the main plot are a bunch of other adventures that form the meat of the campaign. Given my plan I need to build out 5 of these into "main" adventures, and pick out 12 of the remainders as "B plots" for the campaign. That will use most of what is provided but it does leave me some room to skip the entries that don't fit as well.

Finally I have to think about working in the flavor of City of Heroes. I think there should be some kind of touch point to Paragon City in each session. CoH had a lot of landmarks, like statues and islands and buildings and those could play a part. There are a lot of good and evil organizations and those should have a role. There are also specific heroes and villains that show up in the game and those make it feel like home too. My initial thinking is that each session should involve a group, a location, and an individual character in addition to whatever A & B plots are happening. Frostfire was a big adventure run at the lower levels in the game. One session will probably deal with Frostfire, the Outcasts, and the Hollows. If I can find a plot point that would tie into them nicely, so much the better. The Hollows zone was also tied into the Trolls and the Circle of Thorns and might lead into something with those groups in either the prior session or the next session. Officer Wincott was a normal cop in the zone and he might show up too. Laying out a web of these kinds of connections is the real challenge here in my eyes.

Faultline ... err "Overbrook" Dam - infested with Vahzilok

Another example: There is a non-core plot point involving a dam. I like it, so I plan to use it. In the original adventure it's Hoover Dam, so it involves a trip to Vegas and while that's very comic-bookish involving the landmark and all, it felt a little odd in a campaign that is so heavily focused on a single city. Fortunately, Paragon City has its own dam which was the location of a popular task force. Revisiting it during an alien occupation invokes both a familiar location and allows for some ties back to that original task force. The primary enemy there was the Vazhilok, a sort of zombie group. The primary allies were Longbow, a Shield-like organization. It involved a running fight into, through, and on top of the dam itself. This gives me some nice ties back into Paragon City lore and some ideas on how to expand it into the focus of an entire session. There were also some ties to the Clockwork and the Circle of Thorns in those missions so now I have some potential links to other sessions if I want to focus on any of those groups.

Battle atop the dam!

So flavoring and tweaking the preset adventures, then adding in some additional material for additional flavor is he plan. There are also some plot complications to resolve as well. The biggest one is that Atlantis plays a large role in Necessary Evil but there is no Atlantis in City of Heroes. This was a conscious design choice from what I have read and there were no plans to develop Atlantis or an underwater city of any kind. Solutions:

• Just add in the NE version of Atlantis. I'm still toying with this but it really seems like the easy way out. I'm of two minds on the concept too:
• Adding in something new that significant to the setting detracts from the effort to make it feel like Paragon City and shouldn't be done. 
• Think of it as an "expansion" for the original game - new zone, new race, new other character options - all of these things are pretty common elements in an MMO expansion, so why not take advantage of it?
• Find one entity to replace Atlantis - maybe the lost magical city of Oranbega can serve as a less-watery stand-in? How about the Shadowshard? Maybe Cimerora? Croatoa? I really just need a lost city that's difficult to access and has magical elements to fill in.   
• Part-out the Atlantean story elements to other areas instead of trying to go for a one-to-one replacement. 

Honestly my initial reaction was the second bullet, but after taking a break for a few days and coming back to it, I'm leaning more towards the first one. Most comic book settings have some kind of Atlantis, so it's not like it's a genre violation. Also, characterizing it as an MMORPG expansion is really starting to appeal to me, especially since I'm using a no-longer-active MMORPG as the setting. I need to make some more notes but it has a lot of potential and requires a lot less ret-conning effort to the adventure.

Combining City of Heroes and Necessary Evil - the Framework

Once I decided to combine these two things, I took a look at what I had to work with and how I wanted to integrate them:

• Necessary Evil has 11 adventures that form the main plot, plus 20-odd more written adventures, plus a random adventure generator which is pretty solid. There is plenty of material here for a year-long campaign - it's more a question of what I'm going to leave out than what I need to add in. I'd be doing that even if I ran it in the original setting.
• NE has its own setting and its own lore and some of the reveals in the adventure are very much tied to that setting. Changing the setting means changing those elements in some way or leaving them out entirely.
• Paragon City has extensive lore, numerous characters, and a lot of enemy and friendly groups that players interact with during the game. On a basic level there is some reassignment that needs to be done but my players may want to know what happened to certain groups or teams or characters during and after the invasion, so I have to think beyond just renaming NE's NPC 's with City of Heroes names and re-write how the whole invasion went at a high level. This will give me some guidance when stuff like this comes up on the fly. I've been working on this the most over the past couple of weeks and I'm pretty happy with where it's going.

Speaking of Faultline Dam ...

I was originally thinking it would be a simple "repaint" (e.g. there's a mission involving a dam, well I'll just recast it at the Faultline Dam and we're good!) but there's so much more background available with COH that I want to do a lot more. Attempting to run this on a fixed schedule though means that adding anything in might require eliminating something to make room. With roughly 30 NE adventures and planning to run 12 sessions for the whole campaign (once a month for 2015) I'm looking at 2-3 of those per session before I make any changes. Now these are not lengthy dungeon-crawl type adventures, and Savage Worlds plays pretty fast anyway, so for now I'm going to schedule it out like this:

• I'm keeping 10 of the original 11 core plot adventures. There's one I didn't like. Now my players have already done the first 3 back when we started this game years ago. So really I have 7 original core plotline items left. 
• I like about 18 of the "other" NE adventures and think I can adapt them to Paragon City fairly easily.
• Assuming I can fit in roughly 3 "plots" per session then this leaves me about 11 slots to work in something specifically tied to City of Heroes - about one per session. 

If I can pace this out correctly, that means I run a core plot item once every other session, an "other" plot item every session, sometimes more than one, and one Paragon-specific item per session too.  Now that's all fine as a mathematical exercise, but things rarely flow that neatly in play. Players get interested in a particular character/group/plotline, somebody misses a session, we have to cancel one somewhere, distractions mean we get less done than hoped for - there are a lot of variables. Heck, I don't have a great feel for how much we can get done in a "normal" session just yet so this is all just estimating for now. 

Atlas Park - head-on!

The other main consideration in planing is to make sure each session is self-contained - an episodic campaign rather than a normal serial-type campaign. By the end of session A, we should have completed X,Y, & Z. Playing only once a month I don't want to have to track combat states with a 3-4 week gap in between. This also helps deal with player schedule hiccups, among other things, and it feels more like a comic book anyway. 

Note: Thankfully in a supers game or any mission-based campaign it is possible to do this kind of planning as they tend to be more closely directed and/or more reactive so the GM has a lot of control over when and how things show up. If I was running a sandbox game or a mega dungeon I wouldn't be trying to manage it this way, namely a fixed-time type of campaign.

Now, with a framework for the campaign sketched out, I can start planning what goes into each session. More on that next time!

40K Friday - Chaos vs. Space Wolves and Eldar Battle Report

Apprentice Blaster and I got in our January 40K battle with a 2000 point fight. I took my Chaos Marines with Chaos Daemon allies while he took Space Wolves with Eldar Allies. With some recent upgrades to both of his armies he couldn't make up his mind so he took some of both, and I wanted to get the Bloodthirster back on the table so I took the minimum daemons needed to field him. My army list:

2000 Pts  -   Chaos Space Marines Army

1 Daemon Prince of Nurgle (HQ) @ 325 Pts
     Flying Monstrous Creature (Character); Psyker (Mastery Level 2); Daemon;
     Fearless; Veterans of the Long War; Fear; Hatred (Daemons of Tzeentch);
     Shrouded; Slow and Purposeful; Wings; Power Armour; The Black Mace; Gift
     of Mutation; Nurgle

1 Chaos Lord (HQ) @ 195 Pts
     Fearless; Champion of Chaos; Independent Character; Terminator Armour;
     Sigil of Corruption; Burning Brand of Skalathrax; Blight Grenades; Gift of
     Mutation; Mark of Nurgle; Lightning Claw; Warlord

4 Chaos Terminators (Elites) @ 241 Pts
     Terminator Armour; Mark of Nurgle; Power Weapon (x3); Chainfist (x1);
     Combi-Melta (x3); Heavy Flamer

     1 Terminator Champion @ [56] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Terminator Armour; Mark of Nurgle;
          Combi-Melta; Power Fist (x1)

4 Plague Marines (Troops) @ 140 Pts
     Fearless; Feel No Pain; Power Armour; Mark of Nurgle; Plague Knife; Bolt
     Pistol (x4); Bolter (x2); Meltagun (x2); Blight Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Plague Champion @ [24] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Mark of Nurgle; Power Armour; Bolt
          Pistol; Plague Knife; Bolter; Krak Grenades

4 Plague Marines (Troops) @ 140 Pts
     Fearless; Feel No Pain; Power Armour; Mark of Nurgle; Plague Knife; Bolt
     Pistol (x4); Bolter (x2); Meltagun (x2); Blight Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Plague Champion @ [24] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Mark of Nurgle; Power Armour; Bolt
          Pistol; Plague Knife; Bolter; Krak Grenades

4 Plague Marines (Troops) @ 150 Pts
     Fearless; Feel No Pain; Power Armour; Mark of Nurgle; Plague Knife; Bolt
     Pistol (x4); Bolter (x2); Plasma Gun (x2); Blight Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Plague Champion @ [24] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Mark of Nurgle; Power Armour; Bolt
          Pistol; Plague Knife; Bolter; Krak Grenades

19 Chaos Cultists (Troops) @ 119 Pts
     Improvised Armour; CCW; Autogun (x17); Heavy Stubber (x2)

     1 Cultist Champion @ [16] Pts
          Champion of Chaos; CCW; Autopistol; Shotgun

5 Havocs (Heavy Support) @ 148 Pts
     Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x5); Bolter (x1); Missile Launcher (x4); Frag
     Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Aspiring Champion @ [23] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol; CCW;
          Bolter; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

4 Chaos Spawn (Fast Attack) @ 144 Pts
     Beasts; Fear; Fearless; Mutated Beyond Reason; Rage; Random Attacks; Very
     Bulky; Mark of Nurgle

Models in Army: 52


Total Army Cost: 1602

Chaos Daemons Army

1 Bloodthirster (HQ) @ 300 Pts
     Flying Monstrous Creature (Character); Daemon of Khorne; Demonic
     Instability; Deep Strike; Daemon; Furious Charge; Hatred (Daemons of
     Slaanesh); #Warp-forged Armour; Lash of Khorne; Axe of Khorne; Lesser
     Rewards (x1); Greater Rewards (x2)

10 Bloodletters of Khorne (Troops) @ 100 Pts
     Infantry; Daemon of Khorne; Demonic Instability; Deep Strike; Daemon;
     Furious Charge; Hatred (Daemons of Slaanesh); Hellblade

Models in Army: 11


Total Army Cost: 400

So we ended up at 2002 points as Blaster ran over a little too.

The battlefield:

We set up the table with the idea that "Fuel Station 7" is a lonely refueling outpost somewhere on the planet Tranicos that just happens to be located near one of the numerous chaos shrines (the ruined tower thing in the lower right with the skull symbol in the center) that dot the planet. Chaos is coming to take the control of the shrine and the Space Wolves and the Eldar are coming to stop that from happening.

We usually play from opposing long-edges but this time we rolled for deployment zones and got the short sides, making for a narrower, deeper battlefield. Blaster chose the side with more trees so Chaos actually begin in possession of the shrine this time. We placed objectives (we're doing tactical missions) and deployed.

The blue dice around the table are the objective markers

Blaster set up first and went first. I hid in cover for the most part and hoped to be able to survive early fire. I started in total control of one objective (the chaos shrine), 2 within easy moving distance, and 3 others farther in his territory. My plan here is to hold the shrine with the chaos cultists, hold those two mid-field objectives with the plague marines, intercept his attacking units with the spawn, the bloodthirster, and the daemon prince. The havocs are there for fire support. The bloodletters are a bullet shield for the plague marines for the first turn or two. For his backfield objectives I'm going to drop in my terminators and my chaos lord. If the spawn or the big daemons survive they can help with late game objective seizing too.

Pre-game I took Nurgle for one (compulsory) and Biomancy for the other on the Prince and got Iron Arm. A flying Nurgle prince with Iron Arm ... this should be fun. The 'thirster got various ridiculous awards that gave him fleshbane and armorbane etc. It's not like he would be running from much of anything anyway - this just made him that much nastier. For the warlrod trait though, I got the ability for the warlord and his unit to outflank ... hmmm ... Instead of deep striking the terminator unit I now decided to outflank them.

  Blaster's wolf list was a wolf priest in a land raider crusader with 15 blood claws (his core unit), a squad of grey hunters deployed in some woods at the back on an objective, a unit of wolf guard shooty terminators on foot, and a unit of blood claw bikers. His Eldar force was a guardian squad with a missile launcher at the back, a wraithlord, a unit of harlequins on foot with a farseer, and a unit of rangers on another backfield objective. He also had a crimson hunter in reserve. His strategy looked to me like he planned to leave the 3 troop units in the backfield and send everything else forward in a wave with the Eldar going left and the wolves going right.  

Final Setup

Turn 1

First turn for the good guys  - he moved up and shot some bloodletters and one plague marine. Notably, his harlequins failed their psychic test to cast veil of tears.

Turn 1 for most of the Chaos force involved moving up and taking some objectives. For the Havocs it involved blowing away a chunk of the harlequin unit, including the Farseer! Bad luck and bad positioning meant he ended up as the closest model in a torrent of frag missile hits and died - first blood to Chaos!

At this point I have troops sitting on 3 of the 6 objectives and I'm pretty happy with the situation despite not having any cards for them.

End of Turn 1: Chaos 1 VP, Law 0 VP

The circles mark the other 5 objectives (other than the chaos shrine)

Turn 2

Law, second turn: Lots of moving up, some shooting, lots of charging.  The remaining harlies and the wraithlord moved up and charged the bloodletters while the terminators got themselves into position.  

The bikers moved up and charged the spawn.

The blood claws debarked the land raider and then failed their charge into the plague marines - uh oh.

The Wolf Priest says "oops!" 

Chaos Turn 2: The plague marines and the daemon prince tear into the blood claws. There are a few of them left at the end, but not many.

The fight between the bikes and spawn continues, down to 2 on each side.

The bloodthirster tore into the wolf guard - and one managed to survive!

Last but not least, the chaos terminator force came on from outflank and started roasting Eldar

Note the lack of eldar on the hill - heavy flamer + burning brand of skalathrax will do that.

End of Turn 2: Chaos 5 VP, Law 2 VP

Chaos losses at end of turn #2 - not too bad

Turn 3

Forces of Law: The eldar airforce makes an appearance and shoots up the daemon prince. The grey hunters move up to engage the chaos terminators.The spawn finally beat the bikers, wiping them out. The thirster finshes off the last of the wolf guard, and kills the wraithlord in the same combat! That did not go according to the good guys plan ...

The blood claw remnants charge the plague marine remnants.

Turn 3 Chaos: The daemon prince fails to get his iron arm off this turn - uh oh! so he continues to beat on the land raider to try and finish it off. The plague marines blow away the last of the harlies. The chaos terminators fry the eldar scouts.

At this point I have control of objectives 2-4-6 towards my half of the board plus objectives 3 & 5 and I have wiped out several of his units so the points start to roll in. 

End of Turn 3: Chaos 8 VP, Law 2 VP

Turn 4

Combined: They grey hunters move back into the woods, realizing I can charge them and that powefists will make short work of them. Shooting kills 1 of the chaos termies. Return shooting kills multiple grey hunters. The crimson hunter moves over and shoots up the bloodthirster, taking him down to 1 wound. The blood claws kill the last plague marine in melee, but the undamaged squad sitting on the objective blows them away. The prince fails to kill the land raider while the spawn and the thirster head down towards the grey hunters.

End of Turn 4: Chaos 10 VP, Law 2 VP

Turn 5

Combined: The land raider manages to  kill the daemon prince (who has been at 1 wound for some time now) with his multi-melta but we called it there.

End of Game: Chaos 11 VP, Law 3 VP

Final chaos losses (plus 1 daemon prince)

Aftermath

It was a big fight at 2000 points and it took a while to get it moving but once we did it was a lot of fun. That deployment type is not my favorite but I can live with it -just makes mobility an even bigger factor than normal.

Blaster complained somewhat about his cards but I still believe you have to go and get them, you can't sit back and wait for them to come to you. I had very few objective #x cards early on but I did have some "kill a unit" types and I went after those. In a game this big I could do that and still go for objectives I did not yet have cards for to control them just in case I did pull some on a later turn.

He did admit very quickly that putting the grey hunters so far in the backfield was a mistake. I think putting 3 big units of troops back there was a mistake - one or two, sure, but I like my backfield holders to be either a) cheap or b) long ranged enough to contribute to the rest of the fight. This outlook also affects my placement of objectives as I don't want all of them in my backfield - I want them where the fighting is. 

He took the loss well and is game for a rematch, likely with just one army this time. There were some fluke rolls in there like missing the harlies' protection power and failing a 5" charge. Those might have made a difference.

For my force, I think everything went pretty well. The havocs blew stuff away and the cultists held the objective and neither were ever touched. The bloodletters served their purpose as cheap bullet shields. The spawn did well being fast and tough. The deep-striking flamer terminators did exactly what I wanted them to do, and the big daemons were bullet magnets while they were busy wiping things out. It was a fun game and I'll probably take more chaos next time - until my Dark Angels are ready.

Catching Up - the Grab Bag

The Kickstarter for the next big Deadlands adventure is out and available here. While I wasn't a big fan of some of the recent settings when they put one out I do like I will support it - and I did.

Green Ronin is releasing a giant hardbound version of Freeport for Pathfinder. "Awesome! I thought when I first heard about it. I used Freeport in a 3rd edition D&D campaign I ran years ago and thought it would be fun to revisit in the wake of the original trilogy. Then my players mentioned that they hated that place! If it hadn't threatened the rest of the world I think they would have left before the big finale and let the city suffer whatever horrible fate awaited it. Reluctantly, I let that kickstarter go on without me ... sniff. Ah well. I have plenty for Pathfinder anyway.

Other News

• D&D Layoffs. WOTC is making themselves look bad, at least to the online forum crowd.
• The "BAMFsies" superhero RPG awards came out last week. Now I like the guys who do the podcast but right there at the top is the gamer's choice award and it's G-Core! Who the heck was stuffing the ballot box for G-Core?! My take on G-Core is here.
• Star Trek Online is celebrating its 5th anniversary. I was there when is started and I have come and gone at different points over the years, but if you're at all interested in a Star Trek RPG type experience, it's out there, there's a lot of content to play through, and it's still free.
• For Warhammer 40,000 the new Codex Necrons is out, with Harlequins on the way. Undead space robots and battle clowns for 7th edition!