Going to a very distant land...

Hola!

Wanted to plonk up a quick write up about our Adventure Time Munchkin on Sunday.

I've never actually played a Munchkin game before so was coming in fresh. Once we'd ironed out a couple of instances of misreading the rules in game one, game two seemed to go really nicely with a bit of ebb and flow and much dicking over of other players. I did like that the play time wasnt so short that you didnt feel particularly invested, but not so long that it dragged.
So a thumbs up for the game itself from a mechanics and play point of view.

As for the license aspect, i really dont think you could ask much more from an adventure time themed game, its absolutely choc-a-block full of references. I do particularly like that the character cards have the opposing gender versions like Fiona and Cake on the flip side.

I can see this being a game that id be more than happy to crack out in that gap between other 'bigger' games for quite some time.

4/5 Richs! (thanks again Dave!)

Playing with new things!

Quick post, mainly a picture dump, of Rich, Will and I playing a few games yesterday.

Wishing peeps a very Merry Christmas!

Just a quick post to say Merry Christmas to all the E.L.F guys and gals and our Welsh cousins! Thanks to everyone who made it to CrimboCon and I'm looking forward to getting even more gaming in next year. Now I'm off to put together some Blood Angel models to update my army.

Perusing the new BA codex.

I picked up my new book and have been looking at what I can out together as an army using just what I've got painted.

Left thinking WTF GW?

I'll keep it quick. Blood Angels Codex an miniatures up for preorder, hurray! No surprises with the codex price or limited edition (yawn!) but when it came to the models I was left scratching my head saying WTF GW? On the one hand you have the tactical squad which is absolutely jam-packed full of bits and all with blood drops etc, you really couldn't fit more parts on the sprue - 5/5 Daves for that one and the £26 doesn't seem too expensive given the niche nature of the product. Then they have the Sanguinary Priest... (pause for dramatic effect) £18 for one model with no options whose rules you don't know until you get the codex. Yeah I know I don't have to buy it and that I can get a discount etc, it's more the thinking behind the pricing of the products. Three huge rammed plastic frames for only £8 more? WTF GW?

Some piccies from Saturday

Exactly what it says on the tin!

Finally finishing a model!

Here is the finished and constructed model. I'm not happy with the photo quality but I'm immensly happy with yhe final out come.

Saddened and surprised in equal measure by games companies!

Time for a moan and a slap on the back!

Making painting progress

Just another quick image dump to show how I'm getting on with my Blood Angel Captain!

Finished the white wings and all the gems (oddly my favourite thing to paint!)

I find it odd how one model can make me so excited to get an army out and play, then again it has sat on the table for over a year waiting to be finished!

Catching up on an old project.

Just a quick update on what's on the painting table. Having cleaned away those damn Daemons and Guard I had a choice of either getting my Nids going again or finishing my Blood Angel Captain in preparation for the (hopefully) upcoming codex. I plumbed for the Captain as being only one model I figured it would be nice to have a fully painted army for when the book comes out (and the new Nid models are tempting me so I need to avoid going down that route until I've get Christmas presents sorted!). 

Musing over the Psychic phase.

Over tha last few days my mind kept wandering back to 40k (must be the anticipation of a new Blood Angels Codex!) and I kept thinking about the psychic phase and how it could have worked better. So I thought I'd through a few thoughts on the blog.

Updating the Astra Militarum!

Just quick picture update of the models I've finally finished to update the guard army now that all the foot slogging Daemons are out of the way (it's been a good half term for hobby related projects!).

Word Bearers first outing

I decided that before I went back to work I would visit my local gaming store. I discovered That they are starting a 30k campaign. Each player using a 1500pts list. I had to have a taster game and break the Word bearers in!
My opponent was Alpha legion. The army comprised: primarch with 10 vets and rhino (sniper/ preferred enemy/ outflank), 10 Head hunter kill team with Exdos(preferred enemy/nasty bastard), 10 marines in rhino, 5 Lernean terminators.
Word Bearers list: Logar, 5 Terminators, 10 dark brethren, 10 Ashen Circle, Mortis Contemptor with two kheres Assault cannon.

Turn 1 saw the Alpha do nothing little with just terminators moving down centre and head hunters hiding just far enough away from dark brethren to sniper one dead (Exdos)
In return the Contemptor whirled death in a hail of bullets to two terminators in the centre as my terminator added a third death to there number. The Ashen circle and Dark Brethren pushed forward.

Turn 2 Primarch and vets  came on just on table edge(my back corner) to snipe dark brethren with preferred enemy, 4+ to wound and 6's rending wounding Logar twice!
Marines  fired fury of legion at rapid fire range on Dark brethren causing 2 more to die and head hunters picking of another 2. His terminators just made a charge on my Contemptor who just shrugged it off.
The Ashen circle helped the Contemptor by ripping apart the remaining terminators. The brethren failed a charge on marines through cover. My terminators headed towards their vets on flank picking 1 off.

Turn 3 The Alpha marines were exhausted and the head hunters picked of another brethren. Vets took out a terminator. If only I could just them all in charge range!!!
Ashen circle had the taste of blood and jumped 5 men within flame range of Alpha marines(marine on toast sir) the dark brethren took it in their stride to polish off the remain few. Contemptor and terminator kept closing in on vets unleashing bolt rounds, killing 2 more.


Turn 4 Head hunters charged Ashen killing two with pistol shots and another 2 with impact hits ouch!( rolled 1 flame over watch attack each causing no wounds)  . I basically was down to one man after combat and had killed two in return( have ap 2 daggers, these guys are bloody hards shooting and combat). Exdos had broken off and picked off last brethren with help of Primarch.
Lone Ashen flamed then charged Exdos wounding him twiceand forcing him to flee.
Contemptor really let loose killing 3 vets just befor Terminator and Logar charged in! Combat left the two primarchs  and two of my terminators.

Turn 5 The head hunters riddled the lone Ashen brother with bolt rounds leaving a bloody mess.
alpha Primarch killed the already wounded Logar and chased down the remaining terminator.
The Contemptor went out in a blasé of glory causing 2 more wounds by shooting and then charging the Primarch before being pulled apart.

What a great game. Contemptor was my man of the match!
Dark brethren  really need a delivery system of to deep strike so will get charge next turn.

Watch out for nasty alpha legion combo rule sets. Sure you will see many vets with outflank,snipe and preferred enemy.

Playing with myself!

Finding myself with a few hours to kill this morning (all my models were drying along with the kitchen floor I'd mopped before realising I needed to get into the kitchen to make lunch!) I thought I have a run through with the co-op version of Descent as it does state that it can be a one player game. The problem is that I've never been one for single player games as I just end up talking to myself.

Playing Descent!

Managed to get another Quest in tonight in an after hours gaming session at The Missing Geek! Having lost both of the previous Act 1 Quests I was hopeful that Castle Daerion would see a change in my fortunes!

Playing board games!

With a week off and new purchases from Essen it just made sense to take a day to play some new games!

TableTop Double Header: Game 2

For Game 2 we matched off a Dark Eldar list against Robs Orks at 1850.

To continue the theme we used one of the Ork 'Altar of War' missions which basically gave us a 3 objectives mission with the standard secondaries.

TableTop Double Header: Game 1

Hey folks,

Popped along to tabletop with Tom and Rob yesterday and got 2 games in, heres a photo write up!

Painting Daemons again.

Just a quick photo of the (oh so nearly) finished daemons. A bit of varnish for the Herald and they'll be all done. Only two Soul Grinders and the army is fully complete!

Really wish I could take a better photo!

Essen Day 2.

So after a busy Sunday we arrived ready to attack some more games.

We tried for Culthu Wars but sadly never arrived at the right time. Rivet Wars was also a miss. But we did play some good games.

Lobotomy - is coming soon to Kickstarter. You are mental patients that are escaping, and you are seeing weird creatures. Nice minatures and some nice mechanics. I will be looking for it when it appears in Kickstarter.

Dinorace - Race Dinos and escape the volcano. Nice kids game. Wanted to buy but sold out everywhere.

Masquade - a Coup like game where you have to bluff your way to getting the most money. Fun with a large group.

From matel can't remember the real names.

Monkey Tree Game - get the most money's off the trees before the time runs out.

Shooting Pig game - tedious games, get you pigs to the food. Other players can shoot you with the tractor off the board.

Lift Off - awesome game, very fun. Use the crane to build things. Will and Lee bought it. Can't wait to see it when people are drunk. :0)

Dragonscroll - A nice game with interesting miniatures and mechanics. The Fireballs are rolled down a ramp to see what they hit. Has a carsonne element of board creation. Would have bought but company don't do reprints and it was sold out.

Genie Game - real name.... - I like this and should have bought it. You moved magic carpets around collected Genies and captured other people's carpets. The direction you could move depended on where the collected Genies are placed on your carpet. Had a chess like quality to it.

Aqua Bunch - full silly game where you make the best hand and go on and compete to have brunch. Lady who demoed it was really competitive. :0)

Fizz and Miez - terrible kids game where a cat chases a toy car.

Co-mix - an interesting game where you make a comic strip bases on a title. Very similar to Dixett.

Dragon Valley - nice kiids game where you have to help dragons fly home oboe the evil wizard. To fly them you have to work with someone to fly them across using two sticks.

Best thing - giant version of ghost ghost treasure Hunter. Squee!!!!

We still left with things that we missed out.

Relic Knights and an interesting Space Combat Game.

Spiel Day 1

You have already seen the hall from everyone.

This is a list of all the games we got in today. In order. I played all of these. :0)

From Iello:

King of New York - great bought it.

Eat me of you can - fun May buy it. The big bad wolf visits.

Night of the Grand Octopus - Will is going to buy it. Cute Cthulhu!

Superduo - bought it. Superhero adventure which has two winners.

Some cute Alien Attack game - ok, badly demoed.

Wash Dash - fun, didn't buy it - you hang out washing.

Star Realms - cool deck building game, assession meets magic. Me and Will bought it

A Dino memory game.

Fun Farm - bough it. Grab the round animal stress toy.

Golem Arcana - odd and pointless why am I using a tablet or why am I using miniatures. Technology use is forcing the game to play in a unrealistic way.

Guardians Chronicles - interesting but odd mechanics that broke the narrative.

Played Back in the room

Road Kill Rally - cool racing game Lee bought.

Tomorrow we will aim to play Cthulhu War, Lobotomy and Dragonscroll.

:)

Today's haul

Spiel, so far so gutten

flights been good, Lee had a fun flight next to a German Lady who smelt like nuttella( well she did from where I was sat).

Smooth flight and good weather over here, ready to let the carnage begin. The Haribo has been flowing and the good times are rollingz

Watching Star Wars Rebels!

Just a quick post to say how much I enjoyed the new Star Wars Rebels show. I watched the first double episode 'Spark of Rebellion' and was really impressed with the balance it struck with the childish humour needed to appeal to the young children drawn to a cartoon and the more serious edge needed for an adult Star Wars audience.  The characters seem to fit into some of the usual archetypes (brooding leader, sassy lasses, grumpy strong guy etc) but the stand out moment for me came when Kanan steps up to take on the Imperials and reveal his secret past (not much of a secret but I won't spoil it). Haven't had that Star Wars moment since I read the Episode III book and Obi-Wan kicked Grevous' arse! Now I'm excited for Episode VII!

Yeah, Okay, Dark Eldar.

Hola!

Its not all negative. Honest.

Bloody rotters!

Just a quick picture of the plaguebearers with a fresh lick of blood. As usual it doesn't show up as well in the image but it's a very useful paint!

Pondering: D Weapons

Hola Gentlemens!

Just a quick discussion generator, have the 7th ed changes to D weapons made them 'acceptable'...

Yes? No? Maybe?

I'm currently on the fence having not really faced them yet. I think the 6th ed/escalation rules were a flat out no. But i think i'd be willing to give them a shot now at least.

Descent & Daemons

It's been a long time since I felt I had something worth sticking up on the blog but over the last few weeks I've managed to get quite a lot done on my Daemons and organised a game of Descent for today so I thought I'd add some of my thoughts.

Metallics & Glazes - The New Hotness?

So i've been lurking around on a 30k forum of late and quite a few of the guys on there are having really quite striking results with this particular painting technique.

Painting Update

Hai Guys!

Its been a while since we've had anything up here so i thought id drop a couple of snaps of my outriders unit on here. Got em finished towards the end of last week.

Playing with a brother!

Rob joined me for some a Sunday fun day of games so I thought I'd post up some of the highlights. First up was a 40k rematch between my Guard and his Orks followed by an exploration in to speed Zombie killing with Zombie 15'!

More Midweek Heresy

Hey Dudes,

Had another 3000 point game, this time vs Toms Ad Mech.
This time we had quite a nice centrepiece to fight over in the form of a 'Dark Angels Action fortress Thing'.

Following that i also got challenged by a guy with his Tau who was curious to try his hand against a primarch.

Follow the jump for the snaps and recaps!

Receiving Kickstarter rewards!

A nice surprise came today in the post:

 ZOMBIE 15'!

Admech painting

First castellax is done, I just need to sort out basing and a wash to clean up the edges

Making my games work better!

Today's update has two parts. First up is a quick update on my Astra Militarum army list based on my experiences of 7th and the second is a quick list of the changes to the Firefly board game that Will and I will trying out over the weekend to try and bring it up to the fun level of Spartacus and Merchants and Marauders!

Finishing our game of 40k!

As the game went on I realised I'd made a huge error in taking first turn as almost all of my units have to be within 24" to be effective and that is just too close to Orks now that they can reliable charge with the Ere we go reroll.

First blood to Rob!

Lesson number 1: never let tank busters charge a vehicle (stupid open topped trukks)

Playing more 40k!

Taking advantage of the summet holiday Rob and I are goimg for a late Synday game of 40k. It's Orks vs Astra Blahblah. We are trying out the Deadlock Maelstrom mission where your objectives start at 6 and go down each turn. 

Fixing simple errors!

Anybody remember how I messed up those X-wing templates? Well I've finally found the time to fix them!

Midweek Heresy Game Photo Dump

Hola!

Played some heresy last night at tabletop so i thought id dump the photos i managed to remember to take. As you may notice the photos tail off pretty soon into the game (isn't that always the way? perhaps we need to start allocating an extra person to be record keeper)

The end game!

The final turns saw the death of Will's Warloed that netted Charlie some big points and a face off between the Flyrant and the GUO!
Final tally
Will - 12 vps
Charlie - 6 vps
Will faced off against a total of an extra 1291 points not including the models that came through the portalglyph with only 1250 points!

Having finished off the Tervigon the Great Unclean One decides to  take on a Flyrant!

The Bloodletters and Plaguebearers finally get an opportunity to roll some dice, luckily for them it was against the worst unit of Gaunts the world has ever seen!

As the game ca,e to a close that's all that was left

Turn 4!

Quick update on the game:
- Charlie's psychic mastery has floundered as a comination of bad deep strikes, poor warp storm and a sea of Nids killed off his main casters!
- So far Will has killed two Greater Daemons and now faces another extra one in the form of a Great Unclean One!
- Will has achieved more Tactical objectives so far but the worm could turn!

See those Daemons in the bottom of the picture they both misshaped and were placed way ut of the fight by Will

Odd how  Tzeentch Herald turns into a Nurgle Greater Daemon

Will & Charlies's fist game of 7th!

Just a quick update to show you how Will and Charlie's first game of 7th is going. Charlie is practusing for a tournament so it's 1250 pts on a 4x4. Charlie has a Tzeentch Daemon factory list which generated 300 pts just in his first psychic phase. It's getting very messy ;-)

The Green tide pours forth. 

Yes you can see two Soul Grinders, a Lord of Change and four Heralds. 

Thinking about games that I've still never played!

Whilst enjoying the closure of my school today I had a quick look through the games cupboard and thought I'd have another rook at FFG's Horus Heresy as I bought it a long while ago but have still never managed to get it onto the table (the cards are still in their wrappers!). This got me wondering if anyone else has any games in their collection they still haven't played? How old is your oldest unplayed game? Come to think of it I have an old Lord of The Rings Reiner Knizia game from around 1999/2000 which I'm sure I've never played with anyone (gave it a go solo as it's a co-op, but that was last millennium!).

Finishing our Descent campaign!

After a few months of dungeon delving it all came to this, two more Quests to complete our Descent campaign. The heroes had been suffering a little of late but could they pull it back as the stakes were raised?

Rueing the day I stopped taking my own advice!

Just a quick update to point out that it doesn't matter how old we get we always fail to take our own advice. Today's evidence for the prosecution is the following:

X-wing counters and templates!

Now you'd think I would be over the moon with such a large collection of custom made counters... and I was until I realised all the templates were 2mm too short. I have absolutely no idea HOW they came out consistently short as I measured the originals at the computer as I drew them. So rather than print them on paper to check them (which is always my advice for the students) I just went for it and made loads! Ah well, guess I'll have fun next week doing it the right way.

Thinking about tactical objective cards.

Whilst out shopping yesterday I picked up a copy of the Ork datacards which contain a copy of the tactical objective cards. This lead to me pondering how how they could be used beyond the missions found in The Rules book as my experiences with them sow far have been mixed

Musing over the Ork Codx

Well the codex was released on ITunes at midnight and was waiting for me when I got home so here's a few musings I've found giving it a brief perusal.

Ghazkul is now a little abusable, if you take a green horde formation, throw in old Ghaz after the first turn he can call a Waaaugh every turn making all troops  fearless, fleet, Hamer of wrath on a 10+ charge with rerolls, allowing mega armour to run/fleet and making his save 2+ inv. probably not play tested much with this combo, but drastically changes a foot slogger army and makes him hideous.Throw in a Warbiss with Headeoppas Kill choppa(instant death, rending, decapitating +2 strength choppa) and you have a very nasty pair of Killy boss'.

Kills Kans are less useful although how avaiable in units if up t6 to make up for there being way too many options to take in HS.

Lootas now having dedicated transports cool, and 5 vehicle Scorcha squads who outflank can be interesting.

Painboys being a whopping 50 pts and taking up a HQ choice instead of a Nob upgrade sucks.  Meks being able to be bought at 15 pts as a add on to a unit per HQ choice is interesting, giving access to kill saws and  s8 ap2 pistols.

The Mob rule is overly complicated. Weird boys get Force weapons and access to chaos summoning powers is odd but good for a conversion or three(orkified great unclean one....ork the orc idol being used as a stand in for a GreTer Deamon).

You'll see some very odd things soon, Big Meks can take a war bike with a Shokk attack gun and a git finder.

Over all I can't see me buying a Morkanaught except for a laugh with a stompa, it's too expensive and Orks work soo much better as foot slogger a now.

Now to make my army with  270 grots(9 units of 30, all legal and contesting/scoring using the organisation chart)

Mulling over gamer kleptomania!

So first a quick correction, it's not really about kleptomainia but the need to be a completest. Kleptomainia just ryhmed so well!

I was thinking about the way gamers always seem to 'need' to buy the next or latest thing and just have to keep hold of things for the sake of completism and it made me wonder why?

Over the weekend I took the time to go through my piles of books and games/audio cds to see what I could get for them as trade-ins on Amazon etc. Overall I netted around £130 all told for stuff which was just taking up room but it was hard to break up collections until I stopped to think of when was the last time I even considered using the stuff.

My most obvious completest projects were Descent 1st edition and 40k codices. Both of which I have cracked down on over the years and now have a far odder complusion. The need to have all the board games I hear about being good. It seems odd, I know, but to me it's the same problem. I see all these games and I really want to own them, even if I have access to a copy at someone else's place! It's almost as if I just want to look at all the games in the cupboard and bask in the glory of all the potential gaming fun!

So what's your gaming completest itch?

Quick Hit : Orks & Release Schedules

I've just this minute realised that, despite the big flashy new ork kit being out tomorrow. The codex isnt. In what world does that make ANY SENSE!?

Marvelling at dice!

Quick gaming update! Nic and I are dicing it out in Waterloo with some Marvel dice masters, with some Quantum to come! Will give a review of both later.

Quantum!