Old School Champions - Adventurers Club #1

Hero had its own house magazine for many years - Adventurers Club! This is the first issue dated Fall of 1983. It was allegedly a quarterly publication but it came and went at its own pace during the 80's and 90's. Issue 20 was published in 1993 so you can do the math there. It's a 32-page black and white booklet (other than the outside cover).

The content of this inaugural issue is pretty solid.

• We start with the editor's column explaining the purpose of the magazine. 
• We then get a designer's notes/rules question column for all of the hero system games. 
• Then we get stats for the Awesome Exo-Skeleton Man! I always liked the Foxbat stuff in the various Champions books and this just adds to the legend. 
• We get the police academy and police detective package deals for Espionage.
• There is a column on Champions power variants for Endurance Reserve and Multi-Form
• The letters column is "Foxbat and Fandom" where Foxbat answers the reader mail and it gets off to a fine start in this issue. Also, if you get the joke in the title YOU ARE OLD! Like me, apparently ...
• The middle of the magazine is a 16 page adventure called "The Mechanon Gambit" that I would be happy to run today. There's a secret base underneath the local airport and Pulsar wants what's in it. There's information on the airport including a full hexmap of the area in the center spread of the book. There's a tactical map of the main encounter area in the airport, a tactical map of the secret base, stats for participants like thugs and airport security, and a fairly solid plan for the villains. There are also notes on how to include some of the other back-of-the-book Champions villains in the adventure too - it's a good solid piece of work and it's better than some of the stuff I see now.

I had never read this issue until I picked it up earlier this year. I do own quite a few of the later issues as I always found it to be a source of creative use and interpretation of the mechanics and a rich source of the  Champions meta-verse with Foxbat and the rest. I wasn't sure how good this first issue would be but I really liked it. Stuff like this still makes me laugh:

 So, Adventurers Club: Issue 1 is good, and I will be walking thru the rest of them as I can work them in.

40K Frenzy

Well the bug has taken a strong hold here. Rules have been read, Codexes have been reviewed, online discussions have been had, glue and paint has been recovered and put to use, and dice have been rolled.

Apprentices Red and Blaster have been fired up and Apprentice Who has been asking about all the fuss so over the weekend we played our first home field game of 40K 6th Edition. I see this as more of a test game so the unlikely pairing of Chaos and Dark Angels took on an equally unlikely pairing of Space Wolves and Orks. Working through the setup rules and all meant that we only got a few turns in but we will be continuing the fight during the week as the boys are insistent that someone has to win. 

One thing I have discovered is that I am very rusty - Plague Marines are a lot less tough when you forget "Feel No Pain" - but that the "edition blurring" is not as bad as I had feared. This happens when you have multiple editions of the same game in your head and rules sometimes pop up that no longer apply. That wasn't too bad tis time so there is hope for me yet. Still seems like you can't just shoot freely through other squads though ... maybe it grants a cover save.

Even in a test game you get those memorable moments:

In the center there, right above the flamer template, the last survivor of the Dark Angel bike squad has charged the last survivor of an unfortunate Blood Claw squad. Both were reduced to one man, both passed their morale checks to stay put, then the biker charged and the blood claw (whose companions were all gunned down moments before) counter-charged  in most glorious fashion and engaged in single combat.  - so far the combatants have exchanged blows to no permanent effect! The first one to die gives up a victory point! Of course the survivor is likely to be shot down soon after for another point, but it's very cinematic at the moment and everyone is having a good time.

Anyway this battle will be wrapped up in a few days and some new ones will likely start soon. Army enhancements are on the way as well so it's a very active time for us on this. I've already dropped a 2 vs. 1 challenge on the two older boys for 2 weekends out. They have no idea ... More to come.

Motivational Monday

Dark Vengeance - Chaos

I finished up the Chaos half of the set:

These were a little more fiddly than the Marines and some had a harder time staying together. There are some bits not attached in the pics.

The cultists are simultaneously the most useful and least useful units in the set. Less useful because I don't particularly like basic human cultists cluttering up my spiky badace chaos marine army - just a preference. Most useful because they could be a gang from any cyberpunk or post-apocalyptic RPG or miniatures game out there. The shooter squad is carrying relatively normal looking assault rifles with a big machinegun and the leader has a long coat, sword, and shotgun. The assault squad is carrying pistols and various clubs and blades with a  flamethrower and the leader has a mutated-looking hand. They have a very Road Warrior punkish look to them and the next time I run something in that genre  (Maybe Deadlands HOE?) they will fit right in.

The chosen are supposed to point the way towards a new look for chaos marines - more ornate, warped, and less tied to current Imperial marine fashions. I like it. The only problem is that in the current codex they just aren't all that great at anything and the only advantage they have that I can use is Infiltrate. Plus they're competing against Chaos Terminators in the Elite slot and I have a pretty strong like of termies. We're supposed to see a new codex in early October so this won't be a problem for much longer. I saw someone comment that if the mechanics weren't spectacular he was going to use chosen to represent normal chaos marine just because they looked so good and I can certainly get on board with that.

 The big daddy of the set is the chaos Helbrute. This is effectively a chaos dreadnought renamed. I have to admit that I like the look - it's a much more menacing pose than that old static chunk of lead we've had for the past 15 years or so. With the fist and the multi-melta it's a pretty solid combatant, though we will have to see how that plays out with the new rules. At least there's no mention of the old fire frenzy rule, which single-handedly made Chaos Dreads vanish from the tabletop for much of the last 4 years.

I'm not sure how I'm going to paint these up. I may wait for the new army book and see how things work and what my options are.I have my preferences as far as color schemes but with chaos it's more appropriate in some ways to have units with completely different color schemes in the same army. I'm considering the challenge of making sure that every unit in my army has a unique paint scheme - at last I won't get tired of the colors.

Oh and I went ahead and did the bikes too:

You kind of need them to finish out the box set marines. I still don't like the standard Dark Angel colors but I think I've come up with a color scheme that I can live with. I still don't need another marine army, but Apprentice Who is asking about playing 40K and it would make a nice starter army for him, with some additions from my pile of  "uncommitted" space marine stuff.

Motivational Monday

End of the Week Thought

Ironically, not even the developers knew the true answer to this question ...

I will finish the other half of the 40K box exploration, and I have an idea for an interesting series of posts later this month, but this week I realized something

• At the start of this year my main RPG (the one I run and play the most) was D&D 4th Edition

• At the start of this year the miniatures game I played the most was Warhammer 40,000 5th Edition

• At the start of this year the computer game I played the most (online or otherwise) was CIty of Heroes

By the end of this year all of those things will be out of print/over/gone. 

Now I don't think of any of those as particularly exotic so I don't think this is me picking oddball games from dodgy independent publishers - this is just a weird coincidence. Regardless of status, I expect the 4E train will be rolling into 2013, 40K will probably be played more as we explore the new edition, and as for COH ... well I'm not sure what we will do there. I'm not that excited about any of them right now. Heck, Mechwarrior Online looks about as enticing as anything out there but it's an entirely different kind of game.

Dark Vengeance - The Marines

I thought I'd take some time and go through the new 40K boxed set since it's the Project of the Week around here. For tonight we'll look at the set as a whole and the marine figures in particular.

We start with 4 sprues of plastic which will end up making 48 miniature figures. Considering the price is right around $100, you're getting them for around $2 each, which is as cheap as you're ever going to find new 40K figures. Two of the sprues are the same which is what makes up the bulk of your marine squad and your chaos cultists. It breaks down to 20 marines vs. 28 chaos figures.

But wait there's more! You get the bases for all those figures, some dice, and those nifty neon green templates for playing some of the more fun weapons in the game. Also, if you act now and find one of the Limited Edition intro sets you get an additional special character mini, bringing the total to 49!

There's also the info card for said character, an introductory booklet, 2 quick reference sheets, and an assembly guide. Plus a rulebook! Which I did not think to include in this picture!

Ah, there it is. This one is about the size of the Savage Worlds Explorer Edition rulebook. Considering the Big Daddy version goes for $75, weighs about 10 lbs, and counts as a tactical vest, I like this one for ease of transportation.

So if you spend an hour or so working on the sprues you can get this:

That's with just a knife and some quiet time. They're "push-fit" or as we used to call it "snap-together" and they are perfectly playable like this. I didn't do the bikers yet because I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I like bike troops and they are stronger with the rule changes in 6th Edition, but I was planning to use bikes in my chaos force, so they may turn traitor...

The tactical squad is nice, including a plasma gun and a plasma cannon (heavy plasma gun for us old-timers) and a sergeant with a plasma pistol - hey, did you known the Dark Angel marines are known for (among other things) their love of plasma weapons? Subtle! It even includes a pair of beakie helmeted marines, another nice touch.

The terminator squad is really nice - I love that winged helmet/shoulder thing - and it comes with a decent weapon loadout. Sergeant with a power sword, 3 termies with powerfists, and one with a chain fist, and the assault cannon as the heavy weapon - that's just about perfect. The poses are nice too, being a little more dynamic and a little less "hulking brute looking straight ahead".

For regular troops these things are covered in detail, which is awesome if you're playing Dark Angels but a huge disadvantage if you're not. It's difficult to even use them as a successor chapter as the winged dagger icon is molded into the shoulder pads of every model, and it shows up in a lot of other places too, from jewelry to backpacks. It seriously compromises the flexibility of this starter set, the components of which tend to become very common for that edition as a lot of people buy them. They get parted out on ebay too which is nice if you are playing an army that can use them. I'm not sure that's going to be as popular this time.

On the left is the captain and he has a seriously cool helmet, along with the giant power sword. I may steal that head (it's a separate piece) for my Howling Griffons- hey, Griffons have wings too.

On the right is the Librarian, which is 40K's confusing name for psyker marines. One of the other things DA's are known for is wearing robes, especially hooded robes, over power armor. I think it lends them a bit of a Jedi look and I think with a few changes this guy could easily find a home in a Star Wars campaign too. That outstretched hand just screams "Force Lightning" to me.

Yes, both of these guys are covered in detail which is nice but does have it's downsides, though I expect it on the leader figures so it's less of a downside here. Painted up they should look pretty good. It's easily the most detailed set of mini's that's ever been in the starter box...

...although the boyz from the Second Edition boxed set apparently do not agree. Roll for initiative! Wait, wrong game! Draw cards! Check reaction speed! Darn! How did that work again?

(And yes, there's an example of how ubiquitous these things can be - twenty years after its release you can buy unpainted ork boys from the 2E set on ebay for dirt cheap. I doubt this one will be quite as common but the newer mini's are quite fancy in comparison.)

The final take? It's a solid force, giving you 2 (3 right now) HQ units, a troop squad which can be broken down into 2 Troops, an Elite squad, and a Fast Attack choice which can be easily expanded. Trading the chaos figures for a buddy's DA figures would net you two full tac squads, two termie squads, and a 6-man bike squad, plus a bevy of HQ options, which is a pretty strong starting force too. If you like Dark Angels over your other space marine options - or if you like Chaos - , it's a great deal. If not, well, it's less clear that this is a good idea. If you're just starting out it's still good for the other things in the box, but even then if you don't plan to play either army then it might be better to go rulebook + separate templates, ebay for small rulebook + non-mini contents, or trade with a buddy who has an army you do like.

Next up: The spiky stuff!

Weekend Update

Well we didn't get any RPG time in this weekend, partially due to kid discipline - don't do what you're told, I'm not running D&D. Yeah, it's a weird place to be but hopefully it will be effective.

While they were busy finishing projects and homework and not playing D&D, I was busy reading our newest   acquisition - yes I went ahead and took the plunge. So far I like what I see with one large note: The figures in this box are far less flexible than the ones in the 5th edition boxed set. This one comes with Dark Angel Space Marines and a Chaos force of marines and cultists, and if you don't play one of those two forces then you would be better off buying the rulebook by itself. More on this on Friday's post.

Also this week: reading more classic Champions stuff, 50 Fathoms, and trying to get the main D&D game up and running again. Fall is tough with all the kids school stuff but we will get it started again one way or another.

Motivational Monday

Two Updates for ICONS

ICONS Update:

Looks like we're getting a new publisher - hopefully Steve can give his creation the support it deserves

http://stephen.kenson.home.comcast.net/~stephen.kenson/Steve_Kenson/Blog/Entries/2012/9/5_The_Future_of_ICONS.html

Hopefully this also means Team-Up will be out this year ...


Stark City:

Also, up above there is the cover for Stark City, which is being developed by some people who have done a lot of good ICONS work to date. I don't normally pimp kickstarter projects but if you're interested in ICONS and haven't heard of this it's worth a look.