Sunday 31 May 2015

UK Games Expo Day 2 and Final Thoughts

So day 2 has been and gone and I'm sitting on the train heading home. (Dam you work!)

So yesterday was the mission of the day - arrived at 10am and then left at 10pm.

What did we see and play?

Saturday 30 May 2015

Deadzone and Rebs thoughts

So, after my games with Dave I decided to research more into Rebs tactics. What was I doing wrong? Dave did suggest my tactics were too conservative in the first game as I kept my Teraton back and I didn't position myself well enough to break out through his board edge, I agreed. The problem I had/have with the game is suppression just as Dave said. I wanted my troops to be as far up the table as possible, however that may mean putting more than one model in a cube. This can lead to both getting suppressed very quickly and you are then on the back foot. Another issue as Dave mentioned was command actions and cards. If you are the first player and you have a high command stat you have such an advantage over your opponent. Dave was able to cause key players in my force to activate with the use of command cards and orders! That mean they were done for that turn and I couldn't use them at all. Activate your opponents commander and they are done, no command actions to help and no way to counter it. I really think there should be a battle card that counters a distract (activate an opponents model). Also, if you are second in the initiative order a distract card is nearly completely useless as your opponent has already activated all of their models. Thoughts on Rebs as a faction: 1. Only one commander that has potential and is a lovely model but that is all they have. 2. Next command level model is the Yindij Sargent, 11pts and too fragile to want unless you just want to save points by not taking a commander. 3. Suppressive models. The Rebs are amazing at suppressing the opponent with their spotters and weight of fire. However, Grogans (onslaught cannon) and Soraks have no secondary weapon like a pistol. In my second game with Dave I managed to rampage his stage 2's which meant that their aggression levels could not change therefore no more ability to suppress them. I then was unable to hurt them. On one Blog however I did read that I should then bunch people in the same cube and use their help to increase your dice rolled for shot actions. Aim would have helped too. 4. Rebs missions - I can see Jake Thornton's reasoning behind how he wrote their mission cards but some are not balanced well at all. Infiltrate is a great mission for Rebs (get your players off of the the opponet's board edge) as long as you have the long thin deployment. If you have the corner deployment it is so hard as your opponent's forces are very concentrated. I also think that the points for scour or kill things should be higher for Rebs as they struggle to do it in the first place. Dave's Forge Fathers have a scour mission that gives him 3 points per item!! Rebs get 1 point. Where's the balance? Overall I really have enjoyed the games and playing them with Dave. I still think I can make the Rebs work and it may just be the luck of the mission draw etc. I was telling Dave that I like to take balanced forces that could cope with any mission so I will work on this more. I have read around other Blogs and Forums and Rebs do seem to be the worst/hardest faction to use in the game which is a shame as they have real potential. We were talking about the latest Mantic Kickstarter and how it will be a version 2 of the rules and maybe it will sort some bits out. Mantic may need to bite the bullet and just release a new Rebs deck that fixes some of the issues.

Update on the card idea.

So with a few hours to kill before the Rugby Union Premiership Final I thought I would mock up a sample card (not final art work to explain the type of design and use I thought I could get out of the decks.

Friday 29 May 2015

UK Games Expo 2015 Day 1

Hi Everyone.

So after a pleasant 2 hour train ride to Birmingham, we had to walk to the Hilton hotel and get our tickets.

We quickly got our stuff and started to wander around and get the lay of the land.





The dealer halls opened at 2pm, but there was plenty of open gaming going on. One room had a games library you could borrow from for a small deposit. We are going to head there tomorrow.




Me and Rob where eager to look round the halls, so just before we queue up for one of the larger halls, which had the fantasy flight stand and waited to go in. In all there where 4 alls with dealers and demo spaces.

So what jumped out after looking around for a a few hours. There where some nice bargins to be had straight away. Stars Wars Armanda and Imperial Assault for £55 each.

We played a number of demos and bought some straight after.

Stack Bots - A card game about battling robots. (Bought)

Xi Cards - A magic style card game where you use Time to cast spells and summon creatures. (Probably will)



Colt Express - A excellent combination of RoboRally and Bang. (Bought)


Oddball Aeronauts - A simple card game about battling airships crewed with animals. (Pass bit too simple)




Sopic - A card game where you play cards to get to 1000 points. (Not sure)

By the end of the day we had bought.
  • Stars Wars Armanda
  • Imperial Assault
  • Stack Bots
  • Ninja Dice
  • Colt Express
  • Camel Up and the expansion SuperCup.


Now Day 2. Where we will be focusing on playing games.


Playing more Deadzone.

Another day and another opportunity to play games! Today we had another go at Deadzone and tried out some different factions to see how they held up. So how did the Rebs and Plague fair?

Thursday 28 May 2015

Playing lots of games!

Just a quick update on todays games played sadly I did the usual and forgot to take photos as the day went one. So what did Rob and I pay today?

Wednesday 27 May 2015

Getting a handle on the Deadzone rules.

Over the last two days I have had the opportunity to play quite a few games of Deadzone so I feel confident to give a quick review of my current feelings towards the game. Will it come out as a replacement for Necromunda? Lets's find out.
2'x2,' some buildings of blue... and silver.

Free to any

Getting rid of these anyone want them? Let me know before I bin them

Monday 25 May 2015

Fiddling with Deadzone scenery

Just a quick post as I have been putting together a few bits of Deadzone terrain (and probably will do a lot more tomorrow as Will and I take on another modelling day challenge) and thought I comment on how I have found the process so far.
My current collection of box terrain!

Tuesday 19 May 2015

I'm actually doing some hobby

Thought I would post an image of my recent hobby work, been finishing off some units for my iron warriors, but also had a brain wave for a new space wolf list, what you see here is 10 of 15 models in the list.

Monday 18 May 2015

Getting feedback on an idea.

I know that I don't often encourage dsicussion on posts and that is mainly due to the fact that email is quicker but as it is too easy to only send a response to one person and miss out on sharing ideas I'm going to slap this up here. The question is: if you could have a custom set of cards for your Miniatures wargames would you rather have some useful generic set up and mission cards or would you prefer more sets with each one tailored for each game but will cost more?

To add a bit more detail, I have been inspired by the decks in Deadzone to go back to my old idea of creating a resource to collect the different army set up options and mission objectives but without the BS randomness of the 40k Tactical objectives. I have found a few companies that do it and wanted to get some ideas from others before I jump in and get designing. My first concept was to have just the set up diagrams and names of the missions so that it wouldn't matter what the game systems scoring mechanic was you still knew what you needed to do. The problem is that if you make them specfic to a system you can make more interesting. Any ideas?

Playing more 40k!

So another day and other game of 40k! It was revenge time for Alan's Deathwing. So this time I thought I would show him how Tactical Objectives work. Here's how it went.
Here is how we lined up

Sunday 17 May 2015

Playing 40k.

Just a quick post to document my Sunday afternoon game of 40k to induct Alan back into the GW fold. He has Dark Angels so obviously gravitates towards Deathwing (why not?) so I took my Guard as my Blood Angels need models painted and it's always nice to play against a fully painted army.
Here is the terrain set up.

Playing new games!

With Will having received his Kickstarter copy of Xenoshift (with loads of extras!) and the approaching release of Kings of War 2nd edition there was no way I could turn down an invite to try them both out yesterday!
Xenoshift in all it's sleeved glory!

Wednesday 6 May 2015

Looking at up coming games

Just a quick post to share an up coming game that I watched on How to Play, a new game from Plaid Hat games, Spectre Ops. 
It has a Giant Wolf?Yeah I want it!

Monday 4 May 2015

Putting my missions where my mouth is

So I figured it could be fun to use my idea for White Dwarf to do a mission a week but rather than just limit myself to one companies system I'm hoping to create missions for board games too (but more of that in future posts). For this week I had an idea for 40k that I thought I'd pass around for consideration.

Sunday 3 May 2015

Considering this weeks GW releases

now I know what you are thinking 'here he goes bitching about the Knight release and GW redoing a codex after only 12 months' but that isn't the set of products that caught my this week. I have been mire interested in the new brushes and White Dwarf subscriptions! What you didn't see that coming?

Saturday 2 May 2015

Looking at Kings of War 2.0

With Will having backed the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter and getting a beta copy of the rules it has allowed me to mock up a 2,000 point Ogre force. Has it changed much from the GW one?