Plotting a Course II

Delayed from last week we got back to Dark Heresy last night. Mr C sorted us out with another e-update and the promise that plot holes had been filled:

Previously on Dark Heresy….

After making their way through the blockade of ships the acolytes land in Acreage. The acolytes start investigating and are pointed to an attack location next to the wall. On their way there they bump into a small group of enemy soldiers entering the city. After fighting them off, the acolytes find the scene of the attack with the blood trail leading into the city.

After tracking the trail into the warehouse district the acolytes, further investigation provides the lead of two corpse farmers Smeed and Smoot who might know something more. After finding and interrogating Smeed and Smoot, they admit to selling the bodies to three xenos who are hiding in a Skymill.

The acolytes stakeout the skymill and spot one of the xenos with his pets leaving. They follow him and watch him kill two locals and carry the bodies off. The acolytes attack and quickly kill off the pets but struggle to hurt the xenos. After finally killing the xenos and patching themselves up the acolytes decide how to kill the remaining two.

 

As previously mentioned we ambushed Bad-Dude and basically got our arses handed back to us, heavily spanked, not in a good way!

 

Dusting ourselves off we retreated to our stake-out house, healed up and planed our next move. Having chatted by e-mail we'd decided on going for the simple annihilation route and basically burning down the Skymill ASAP. We did drag back Bad-Dude and run a basic autopsy. Not human at any point, xenos worm-like biped.

It wasn't until we started looking at his robes that MrC got sketchy on detail again which piqued our interest. "It's obviously xenos"we were told, the clear implication being to leave it alone. "How" we asked deciding we'd found something useful that we weren't supposed to have. Eventually the Voice of God gave way to us spotting the bio-ware circuitry inside the lining. Imagine our delight when we found the alien pistol, especially once Charlie's Tech-Priest worked out the trigger! A quick test firing into Bad-Dude soon had it named Noisy Cricket and we had a reasonable plan.

 

Sourcing a four wheel cart loaded with wood, oil and a barrel of gunpowder from the docks we were ready to perform a medieval cart ram-raid. Robed and Cricketed Ryan crept up to the Skymill's loading dock and by luck the door was open and the beasties asleep. Setting the fuse we sat back and watched the barbie do our work for us. Bad-Dude's mates appeared about 50m up out of a window slithering their way down the mill. A couple of Spasms and some gunfire loosened their grip and the falling rules did the rest of the job for us........SPLAT!!

 

Heading back to the ship there were lots of pointed questions  from God about what we were doing with the robes and the now 3 pistols, having dug another 2 out of the mill ash, so we hid them and lied.......which was when we were gleefully awarded Corruption Points for playing with Xenos toys and checked to see if we mutated!

 

Rob's Arbite picked up super-dandruff, Charlie grew an extra toe (despite his refusal to have much to do with the whole issue in the first place), Ryan passed his Willpower check and I, the slightly unhinged paranoid psyker picked up..........Black Hearted :)

 

It would seem that we're turning Radical...... all of us!

Confessions of a Dreadball Coach III

Not so much to confess this time round I have to admit so I'll see where I manage to get us to ;)

I played Craig last night, Shaun's son, and it was his fourth game so a bit of a learner. He also had Orx and Gobs so useful for me to consolidate what I'd learnt by passing it on. On that basis and as it was his first league game I ignored my various upgrades and skill increases.

We had a good game managing a three and four pointer each for a highly entertaining draw. Striking each turn simply didn't happen and there were several big punch ups over the ball.

The interesting thing for me was that this didn't matter so much as we both playing in a similar style, mine, with identical teams. I'm sure that this shouldn't be a surprise and the point I'm eventually driving at is about specific tactics for specific teams.

Lots of chatter around the DB community about the apparent dominance of Corp teams and the point that they're easiest to use because their all round abilities mean that you don't to vary your game to your opponent.

I'm relatively sure I touched on this in part Part II and I suppose its a development of the theme. Mr C and I chatted about that very subject on the way home with myself questioning my 1 card, 1 assisted slam, move the ball model. Read an interesting post on the Mantic forums today where a guys better half runs Veermyn against his Forge Fathers and often holds onto the ball knowing that he can't strip it.

Nothing wrong with sticking to a formula when you're learning a new team / faction / army etc but variation on a theme is key.

Goblin sandwich!

Back at the game we'd been having mixed luck and I'd been waxing on about the importance of doubling when picking up the ball. We had done quite well at slam prioritisation and a steady chain of goblins flowed through both injury boxes. Not having that extra dodge dice makes a big difference,....playing to your opponent then!
We both also had some outrageous exploding dodging with both Orx and Gobs performing a few deft pirouettes! 6s always welcome!

With only Craig's final rush remaining his was four points down with ball deep in his end.

Four Pointer! :)

Run to the ball and pick it up - Double.
Free run down the pitch plus a couple of dashes.
Throw to the Gobbo on the two point strike hex.
Two successes and double the catch.
Free run and a dash to the four point strike hex.
Final action for a one dice strike.
Score the four pointer :)

Gobbos CAN get the job done and anything that gives them a chance of a double is golden but with one dice and card they NEED a bit more luck than others.

You can make you're own luck apparently, just need to work out how ;) The thought that comes to mind is identifying where each team is limited an then targeting that.

Ill let you know how I get on! Promise :)

Crawling the Walls

BOOO-YAAAH!

Finished up the Warp-Rift Wall-Crawlers. The pea-dot camo didn't come out quite as strong as I might have liked but it's there and it's enough. There was some worry that they were too dark but their ginger fairness has balanced them out. Pleased with the numbering.

Far better photos as well. Finally picked up those daylight bulbs I'd been threatening and took the advice I'd googled up. So lightbox, tripod, 2x daylight bulbed lamp, taken at night with no other lights on (light pollution) gets a far better result. I've updated the Arbite and Tech-Priest (I'm not a Nerd) photos too and left the old ones in as a comparison, BIG difference!

So another 20 PPs and the Forge Fathers to follow should see a bumper month with the brush. Still haven't settled the scheme for the stunties. Got two main schemes in mind so will paint up one of each and set up my very first poll, hopefully by the end of the week.
Something a bit different all round then :)

Watch This Space II

A horrible long while since the original one of these but it's not as if I haven't had anything else to go on about :)

Some may have noticed that I revamped the blog a while ago and I'm in the process of steadily adding further quality items to the blog roll.

Today I'm going to highlight two commission painters blogs both a little different to each other.

Den of Imagination is run by Brovatar who seems particularly for readers to "feed your imagination". He certainly inspires you to do so with a monstrous turnover of projects both commissioned and for E-Bay.

Plenty of 40K mini armies make their way across has paint station, often featuring recent releases, often with a strong theme and a matching display base.

Recent personal favourites were the snowy Night Lords and the rusty Necrons with plenty of source lighting effects. Something I'm suddenly quite keen on trying out myself :)

There's some nice tutorials to look through including basing with coconut shell no less. Lots of visual content with chatter being particularly business like I enjoy seeing his projects and commissions work through some very nice ideas.

Viking Pirate Painting feels a touch more relaxed and personal as you get a lot more general chat with longer more descriptive tutorials and advice, colour wheels / saturation. Stuff I was aware of but now have a better appreciation of. Nice to see some personal projects too.

Forgeworld kits seems to be a bit of a speciality with two Warhounds recently completed and a really good tutorial giving advice on how to fix and correct a lot of their kits.

Latest project is some REALLY nice Emperors Children armour.

At the end of the day both blogs are designed to attract customers and sales. Nothing wrong with that, some years ago I used to do quite a bit of low end commission painting to help pay the bills and know just how much WORK is involved. Not a service that everyone can afford but when you think about material costs and then a decent hourly rate for a highly skilled profession then you get where you get to.

Anyway plenty of eye candy and inspiration all for free :)

Pushing Card

In last nights thrilling episode at Enfield Gamers myself and Shaun had a first run out with a copy of Frontiers that Shaun picked up for a snap on E-Bay.

We've both been tempted by Heroes of Normandie by Devil Pig on Kickstarter (it's becoming a mild addiction) and its the pre-cursor game. Liking the look from the start the recent Cthulu stretch goal has turned interest into temptation.

Bit of a slow game given that we were learning as we went but very much as to be expected. Simple mechanics with all the relevant stats neatly printed on the high quality troop tokens. Initially felt a bit Mech Warrior / Klix but the real detail lies with activation.

In short there's a resource management element within the Orders Phase as you have a limited number of order tokens generated by your command elements. Numbered 1 2 3 etc they're placed hidden and also determine activation order. Revealed in order each units Speed rating determines who DECLARES (important word) their action first lower rating going first. Once declarations are made its movement, highest speed first, followed by shooting, lowest speed first.

Armoured infantry advance on the right......

......but are quickly engaged!

Took a little bit to wrap my head around it at first but it means that a faster scout unit can potentially decide to move away from the battle tank or heavy weapon crew rather than get shot at and potentially burn that order for them.

It means that infantry slog but fire nimbly whilst scout vehicles are the other end of the spectrum with armour in the middle. Once understood and appreciated it provides a real tactical depth to a simple set of mechanics which is always a bonus as well as avoiding IGO-UGO :)

Consolidation on the left.....

....while the aliens envelope!

Most units have a couple of special rules, none of them difficult to deal with and all make practical sense to the units that they flavour.  There's also a hand of four event cards for each player and often a smattering of kit crates around the battlefield to be grabbed. The Action Phase is nice and straight foward.

You do get a couple of decoy order markers to create a potentials of of war but they pretty much passed us by first time out. Infantry can take one order vehicles more but they're definitely a precious commodity. A final Reserve Phase sees non activating units getting a single move action to keep the game dynamic.

The PBI slog up the field.....

.....to take position amongst any cover they can find!

The battlefield itself has easily comprehended hills, woods, bunkers and buildings providing movement penalties and cover modifiers as you would expect. We had a couple of woods and a ruined bunker, prescribe versions can be demolished I'm very sure.

Taking an LT and what I considered a weapons supported platoon of grunts along with an IFV and scout  quad my battleplan involved and armoured drive up the relatively open middle with the grunts slogging up the left into cover. Early doors this didn't go so well as we worked through the whole speed / activation thing. Several times I experienced the ability to get shot up just before you get to activate. Shaun using a couple of bonus cards to enhance his shooting soon saw my quad junked and the IFV weaponless.

Retreating bravely across to my left I had slowly slogged into cover on the right with my grunts and finally started giving some back with a bit of enhanced shooting of my own. Consolidating my, rather tenuous, position I popped smoke grenades and dropped an orbital strike and redirected Shaun's missile back onto him. All of a sudden things weren't as bad though I was definitely going nowhere fast. I even popped one of Shaun's commanders which immediatley lost him an Order Token which seemed a big bonus.

The Infantry take a licking....

.....while the Fleet deliver a kicking!

Finally getting to grips with the Orders Phase it was gratifying to see PBI in cover being difficult to shoot up, just as you'd hope.

As time got the better of us we didn't manage to try an assault but I'm sure it wouldn't have been difficult to sort out. Overall we had a decent first run out and only felt slightly wary of the clunky feeling Orders Phase and activation generally. However with hindsight I've already grown to appreciate it, just tapping this post has got me more enthusiastic about it.

Got the rules to have a read through and watched the KS video which is very well and entertainingly done but doesn't tell me anything different not that its a problem. Keen to play another game or two and still 24 days to pledge. We'll see :)

I'm not a Nerd......

.........i'm a Level 30 Warlord!

So five days off work and as always I've not quite achieved my painting targets. I have been sinking a LOT of time into Skyrim recently, and yes have recently achieved level 30 but this weekend I was fairly restrained and was actually out and about a fair bit....honest :)

Rob's Arbite is all done in a fairly classic Judge Dredd style of black, blue and yellow. Nice solid figure, nice solid paint job. Another clear base, really coming round to these and easy to use after some intial scepticism.

Gabe meanwhile finds himself into New London WAR-SPs colours. Nice figure and gives me a third Gaurd, despite the caster on his right wrist, or fifth Jack for the next time the boys make it onto a pitch. Possibly at the upcoming Mantic Day.

 

Charlie's Tech-Priest also gets some brush-love. This is the Forge World variant and the extra £3 its an absolute no-brainer against the GW versions. Really enjoyed painting him up though after a lot of debate the cast on base stayed rather than a clear. Didn't want to risk damage whilst cutting him free of it. Maybe another time.

Finally, the Veermyn have been worked through basecoat, detail and a first wash. Going for a pea-dot green camo against touches of bronze and a nice neutral grey for straps and cloth. Just fancied the camo as something different and want to keep that the focus.

Also managed some better photos this time. Still a bit yellow, need to invest in daylight bulbs really. Re-shot a few previous figs to replace as and when. Work and toys tomorrow...... ah well, 6 PPs to start the month and another 20 well on the way. Not so bad :)

Kicking it up a notch

Last couple of hours of the Zombicide Season II KickStarter and time to put my money where my mouth is. Not only my moola as Mr C (housemate / landlord / fellow nerd) has gone in halves. We've upgraded to Fugitive for a full copy of both Prison Outbreak and Toxic City Mall along with a set of Season 1 tiles and most of the optional survivors.

Finishing up at $285 (£190) we get the following list of swag;
- 138 zombies
- 20 zombie dogs
- 30 survivors
- 6 doggie companions
That's a feck load of painting come September!

Playing with some stats the KS, at time of typing, took $2.2M with 8800 backers. That's a rough average of $250 per backer. With most backers, 5800, also going for Fugitive that's $100 of extras, inc P+P.
No real comment on the KickStarter business model just some observations :)

Tracking a couple of Season 1 extras on E-Bay, Dave the Geek is on £40 and El Cholo on £50 with six days still to go. That's something of a secondary market which may not be so strong this time round but who knows. We were tempted to go complete set and sell a few but that's just a bit wrong. We're just geeks at the end of the day.

£95 each feels like a lot to throw at a board-game but we can get lots of cross-over use for roleplay any urban gaming of a slightly bloody nature etc etc. Mr C made a very good point that it's a fraction of the price of a 40K or Fantasy army, probably the same for PP, and that's an army not the whole package!

Anyway, between Dreadball and Zombicide I'm likely done for the year.......dependant on SALUTE :)