Baby's first kickstarter

A few weeks ago now I got delivery of my very first Kickstarter reward.  I had pledged the minimum pledge of $10 for Bones 6, and after dithering a long time how to use that credit, I decided on getting a proper dragon.

I selected "Chaarondar the Cruel", the sturdy looking guy below. 

That's Chaarondar the Cruel, with two As

I eventually got a heavy box in the mail, which contained the following:

Since that does not look like much, here is a scale shot of the base. 

Hard plastic base, with an Eldar crew person on a 30mm base

So you can see that the dragon will be massive!  I did a quick assembly test, and everything seems to slot together nicely, although I would need five hands to hold it all for a picture to prove it.  I may need a bit of putty for the wing to body joints, but that is to be expected for a huge guy like this. 

Anyway, so far, I am pretty pleased with the whole thing.  Now it gets put away into a box for a while...

Alpha strike

This past weekend I was invited to P's house to play a game of Alpha strike.  Alpha strike is a quicker variant of Battletech, which instead of hexes has more of a traditional miniatures game feel.  Models have free movement in inches, and line of sight is closer to "real" from the model's point of view.  The basic game play is much like battletech where you determine a target number and then want to meet or exceed it to hit, and you are often fishing for criticals.  It also reduces the complexity of a battle 'mech from a full sheet of information down to a card, where a single mech has just a few stats.

Here is a Griffin (model GRF-1N) as a point of comparison.  The Alpha Strike card has five lines of information, and then a little critical hit chart.  Movement is a fixed 10 inches and is marked "j" to indicate that it can be jumping. Shooting is reduced to a Short/Medium/Long range output of 1/2/2. (and all range bands are the same for all mechs)

Simple

By comparison, the Battletech record sheet for that same unit has three modes of movement, and each of two weapons has heat/damage/Minimum/short/medium/long range stat.  (and most mechs have a lot more weapons than this Griffin)  Damage is not  limited to five little bubbles, but has a whole mech body to bubble in before you start getting to the good stuff on the inside. 

Detailed

In any case the main allure of Alpha Strike vs. Battletech is that in the same amount of time you can play games which are more than four times larger, more easily incorporate combined arms, and since they are not hex based, you can use more common terrain, so it looks a lot more "real" than Battletech can.  

In preparation for the game, I read the quick start rules, put together a small army from some existing figures, and gave some more details to some partly painted figures which were going to be a couple of mercenary lances.  I went mech only, and had this Marik Militia unit supported by two mixed lances of mercenaries. 

The real heroes of the day (mercenary scum not shown)

P has a LOT of battletech stuff from the kickstarters, so he had a more combined arms force, with power armored infantry, LRM carriers, tanks, and then a number of heavy mechs.  His were not painted, so we joked that they were the "Grey Death" (an in universe unit).  In the pictures that follow, his forces are predominantly on the left, and mine are on the right.  In the mission we selected, the attacker (me) had to scan each of the buildings to find six that were targets, and then escape with the information. 

Turn 1

Grey Death to the left, Marik to the right screened by the ridge, Mercenaries top right in the forest.  I ended up deploying the heavies on the bottom and top of the map, with mediums and lights in the middle, with the idea that they would zip in and scan the buildings. 

Turn 2

During the first turn, the forces engaged in long range speculative fire (mostly indirect), and the attackers were pressing in a bit.  Little fast mechs zoomed around the board and missed each other. Some damage was dealt, and the helicopter was shot down. 

Turn 3

By the start of the third turn, the Grey Death tanks and heavy units shuffled around to get more cover, the lighter units and infantry skirmished with the mercenaries, and the Marik heavies advanced to get into medium range for more damage. (potentially, you have to hit stuff for that to work)

Turn 4

At the start of turn 4, we tried some close combat... light mechs do more damage shooting than they do stomping on infantry (2 instead of 1, since close combat is based on size), and stomping on a tank seems to do a lot less than you would imagine.  None of the Grey Death heavies got killed, but a couple of them were pretty close, where as the Marik heavies had the damage spread out more evenly. 

We ended up playing through four complete turns, which took around an hour each.  Further play would be somewhat faster, as we did spend a lot of time looking things up.  The basic rules themselves were very easy to grasp, but there were some unusual interactions and a few areas that were not very clear.  The game would also have been a lot faster if we did not roll like crap for most of the game!  "Looks like I need to roll an 8 here, <rolls a 7>".  Mechs only go boom IF you hit them...

P was an excellent host, and after we finished the game we discussed playing again... maybe a game with Stew, if he can get away from the family for an afternoon.  I do after all have two companies of painted mechs, and a lot of random figures that could become mercenaries... 

Quick 40k Game #2

 Last month I played 10th edition 40k for the first time. 

The kid and I returned to battle this weekend with effectively the same forces, and tried to incorporate more of the various layers of special rules. 

The Kid had a Space Marine Vanguard force (light scouty sorts) and I had an Eldar force.  This time I remembered to take a picture of the mission cards, so I can report to you that we had a Sweeping Engagement set up, a primary mission of Take and Hold, and a mission rule of Supply Lines.  That means that we deployed diagonally, with five somewhat offset objectives, and the supply lines mission rule meant that we generated an extra CP if we held onto our home objective. 

This time I actually remembered most of my special abilities, but I still spent a lot of time shuffling through printouts comparing various rules.

Initial set up

In this initial setup picture you can see that the Eldar are on the bottom, mostly centered on the left.  I remembered to set up the guardians on the objective.  Swooping hawks are off board ready to... swoop.  Rangers infiltrated into the forest on the top left.  The large group of marines near the center was shrouded by the librarian, so I could not shoot them.

Wraith blades vs. scout dreadnaught

The dread is a real beast, since it has three heavy weapons, two heavy stubbers, a rocket pod, power fist, and as a vehicle can tank shock... it killed off the wraith blades before finally getting killed by the wraith guard. 

Reivers and a lieutenant drop in to assassinate the Farseer

The Reivers popped in to assassinate my Farseer (the warlock had just been sniped), which they did very successfully.  Then they kill d a few guardians, who then turned left and blasted them off the board.  The lieutenant unfortunately lived.  I feel less bad about my unpainted farseer base when the reiver in the back left has no head... 

Final positioning

Two wraith guard left alive, five guardians, and four swooping hawks left at the start of turn four.  Swooping hawks now toss a TON of dice, so they managed to blast the lieutenant away before getting killed.  Somehow I ended up with seven figures left on the board, but a major win on points?  40k is weird. 

Playing games with painted miniatures is fun, the 40k universe is fun, but I am not convinced that 10th edition is fun, since there is a lot of "game-y" interaction between piles of special rules that hurt my head.  Never-the-less, we are going to play some more soon(-ish, now that school has started up again). 

Quick 40k Game

For my birthday, the main thing that the kid wanted to do was play 40k with me.  You would think that what I wanted would have primacy on a day that is supposed to be about me, but not the case.

We set up the game mat that I made a few years ago, and a couple of small armies.  The kid took an Ultramarine scouting unit, which had a pseudo-dreadnaught, snipers, two squads of guys (one deepstriking) and a small squad of flying guys with autocannon.  I can never remember new marine squad names.  I played Eldar, and took one squad of guardians, two of wraithguard, a farseer, and a squad of rangers. The farseer was shamefully on an unpainted base AND was only about 80% painted, but somehow he did not get killed? 

Board setup, with objectives which garnered points for camping on them

marines being hacked to death by robots piloted by ghosts, and then shot by more robots piloted by ghosts.  Eldar are cool. 

As usual, I forgot to take many pictures, and we ran out of time to finish before my parents came over for dinner, but it was a fun game, even if I did have to ask for clarification about the interaction of CP/Army/Detachment/unit rules with the opposing army CP/Army/Detachment/unit rules about 100 times. 

It did get me painting more units, or rather finishing more units I started last year.  So maybe that is a good thing? 

Quar-Tastic

This past weekend the most excellent Stew of the blog A Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth had me round for a game of This Quar's War: Clash of Ryfles with the Quar he has been painting. 

Quar, for those of you who do not know, are belligerent little round anteaters with pseudo-Welsh names, and sort of diesel punk/Interwar level technology, who have been warring amongst themselves for hundreds of years. They are the new hotness in some circles, despite being out for years in metal, because there is a new boxed set of plastic figures, dice, rules, etc. all in one ready to go package. 

Ok, so on to the game. Clash of Ryfles (hence forth CoR in this post)is a skirmish level game, where roughly a platoon of figures fight on a small board to accomplish various scenario goals. Play alternates between sides, with some friction entering into it because you have a mystery number of activations 3-5 determined by a secret card draw.  Some actions take more than one activation, so no grand charges, and reacting to what your opponent does can be tricky.  Each figure activates individually, but officers can spend two activation to drag others around with them. 

For far more information about the game rules, here is Stew's post.

Stew had the board laid when I arrived, and was using his AWI/Civil war terrain for this skirmish.  Clearly this is a previously untouched battle field! I chose to play the Croftyran royalists, rather than the perfidious Crusaders. The objective was to have fewer of your Quar die, and to have more units across the midline.  Looking at the board as set, I decided to take the side with the barn and move to the side with the stone walls.  In retrospect, this was a mistake, as the paucity of activations means that moving in groups is difficult, and the barn blocked a number of my figures from supporting the rest on the other side.  Hopping all those fences cost me precious movement inches too.  It did look pretty though. 

My idea was to split my 15 guys into roughly three groups and advance two of them, while the LMG and the sniper formed a firebase. However, the inability to move as a group (I had misread the officer's ability to mean 5 quar at 2 inches, and not 2 quar at 5 inches) and a few bad reactions at the outset meant that only one group was very successful in their advance, and the LMG got wiped out early. 

Near the start of the game with my sergeant dragging a few ryflers with him over the fence. To the left are a light machine gun and sniper with a few ordinary ryflers.  On the other side of the barn are my officer and a few more ordinary ryflers. 

Later in the game, where my lieutenant guards a rail fence, and two ryflers take cover by a stone well.  When a light machine gun shoots at you, supported by more rifles, a fence is hardly enough cover. 

The only close combat we got up to had my poor officer bayoneted to death while he crouched by a fence, and then the ryfler to the bottom left of the picture avenged his officer by shooting the crusader in the head.  Again, this was a mistake on my part, as the officer was much better suited to charging into combat than waiting to get killed. He should have gathered up some supporters and gotten stuck in.

As always, I got rather more occupied playing the game than with taking pictures.  Stew has a ton more to explain the rules, and show in a very patient manner how he won, which he did (although not by as much as it appeared near the end as I had a run of luck shooting his quar)

So would I play CoR again?  Yes!  While it was not the most intuitive, it did produce a good game, and I suspect the full rule set smooths out some of the issues that we had in play.  The main factor of course was lovely miniatures, on great terrain, and with Stew as the host pretty much anything would be fun.  Would I buy quar figures?  Probably also yes, as they are fun without all the baggage of "real" 20th century conflicts.  And there are two more plastic armies and tanks coming out this year... 

Summer 2024

So uh, wow, have not posted for a while.  Usual excuses of being busy with summer and not wanting to post because it is too darn hot to do anything (over 40 degrees for what felt like weeks), PLUS one of my kid's teams made it to the Junior Olympics for water polo, so that was a ton more practice and an additional week away from the house. 

I do have some things to post about, which I will schedule for this week... then it will at least look like I have been doing some hobby.  Which I have!  Just not blogging about it, or finishing anything to make it feel like it was worth blogging about. 

How has your summer been? (or Winter if you are on the other side of the planet) 

And just so this has SOME hobby content, here is my birthday loot for the year:

Hobby clipper two pack, an Eldar Spirit Seer, Dune: a game of Conquest, Diplomacy & Betrayal, and coincidentally a Reaper Bones Great worm. (there are something like 100 Dune games out right now, so you have to specify which with a subtitle or it gets confusing)  I also got $50 at Barnes and Noble from my Mother-in-Law, which might turn itself into a couple of games too, we will see. 

Artizan Miniatures Frontier Scouts

As part of my new Space Frontier obsession, courtesy of Five Parsecs From Home and Star Wars threads on Lead Adventure (the most dangerous website to visit, even more than Ebay), I bought a few new figures.  I got the brand new Artizan Miniatures Frontier Scouts (FSF002) which were just released a couple of weeks ago as part of a small new line of figures (just the two packs).  Since they are so new, I have not seen any pictures of them anywhere, so thought I would take a couple of comparisons to show them off.

Artizan Miniatures Frontier Scouts against Stargrave body

Picture 1 shows one of the figures against a Stargrave plastic crew person body, and you can see that he is much taller, and thinner. (look for a more comprehensive review of the Stargrave crew I box in the future)

Artizan Miniatures Frontier Scouts compared to various miniatures

Comparison shot against a grab bag of figures I pulled out of a few drawers.  Left to right we have: Copplestone back of beyond, GW Stormtrooper (old), the three Frontier Scouts, the Rogue Stars Rogue, an old WoTC Star Wars figure, and oldest of all a Necromunda Scum figure.   As you can see the Frontier figures fit in pretty well here, but are tall and thin, with more realistic proportions compared to many figures. 

Artizan Miniatures Frontier Scouts height

Over all I really like the figures, as they have sort of a retro 70's Scifi look that is a bit rare, and their relatively low level of equipment presents more of a blank slate for imagination/additions than many figures these days.  Two of the figures have pistols (which look as if they could either be machine pistols or laser pistols), and one is unarmed, which is unusual for these sort of figures. They are a bit tall at 32mm+, but overall I think an interesting development for Artizan, and I would like to see more of them.  Listed for £6.60 they are not too expensive per figure either. 

Starmada: It is full of Stars.... and madas?

The most excellent Stewart of the blog A Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth, came round this weekend for a game of TNG era Starmada.  He brought his lovely 1/7000 ships, the mat and the rules, all I provided was lunch and a venue (as well as an escape from relatives...).

As it was just the two of us Stew looked up a scenario from the rulebook, and we set out some fleets.  I ended up with the noble Klingons, and Stew took the cowardly and weak Federation. As usual we got caught up in the game and I failed to take as many pictures as I should have, but here are some. 

Now, fortunately for the noble Klingons, they have ambushed, er gloriously engaged in battle with only HALF the Federation fleet, the other half to arrive later as a rescue.  The Federation fleet started with a Galaxy Class, and two Excelsiors. Klingons has two Vor'Cha class cruisers, a Vor'Cha with a torpedo module, a D7 analog, a warbird, and the Tsanenn, a heavy command cruiser. 

Close range disruptor practice on the appropriately named "Fearless"

This next picture shows what happens when two wings of your fleet cross on the location of a weaker opponent's ship.  Starmada utilizes written orders for movement, so usually we would futilely drift past each other, or end up with the business end of the ship facing away from the action, but a couple of times it all came together nicely.  This is also a nice closeup of the ships.  Look how pretty they are! 

After the unfortunate end of the Fearless the other half of the Federation fleet entered the board, and an Ambassador, as Akira, and a Defiant class ship warped in to join the fun.  The Akira has a whole mess of torpedo tubes and a pretty healthy phaser array so it was rather worrying.  The Defiant class is a slippery little thing with too many guns, but fortunately it spent most of the game moving past targets, or pointing those guns away from my ships! 

Two Vor'Cha ships uselessly pointing away from the Endeavor

Since the Tsanenn's guns all face forward, the Hardrov is in for a bad day

Keeping your ship squadrons intact when one or more of them take engine hits is complicated, particularly as they drift further apart and make several turns. The two Vor'Cha class cruisers on the bottom right of the picture were supposed to be staying together, but it was not working very well by this point. 

By the end, the Federation had to retreat, and the Klingons got to celebrate their victory with some bloodwine.  Another lovely game with Stew and all of that has prompted some more interest in getting through the TNG/DS9 era Cardassians I started last year, and I printed off a few more Galors of various sub-types, a small group of Netels (an obsolete destroyer), and a pair of Keldons.  I also struggled my way through the Starmada ship calculator, which is really not that bad, once you realize that not every ship can do it all.  So hopefully another game in the near-ish future with a new fleet! 

Holidaze 2024

Well hello again. 

Happy New year and Merry Christmas to you my dear reader(s)! 

Hopefully everyone is well, and you got what you wanted from Santa.

As for myself, my family was very generous, and I got a few gaming related items.

Dark Reapers are nearly built, just need to magnetize the Exarch's gun options

Santa brought the family a Nintendo Switch, and I am not sure if that is a good idea or not... the kid got enough Space Marines to be a whole new army AND an Imperial Knight kit, which is just too much.  I will have to get some more brightlances out to compensate.  Maybe a Fireprism is needed?

Inbetween early November and now I have played a couple of games, both thanks to the local library:

Godzilla Tokyo Clash! (obligatory exclamation point)

Flamecraft

Neither was something that we needed to own, although Flamecraft was an interesting cooperative engine builder that I could see being fun to play more.  The "board" was a neoprene mat, which was cool, and certainly easier to put away. 

I also managed to squeeze in a couple of short D&D sessions with the kids and their cousins, which was great, except that now the level 3 party is left between sessions facing down a green dragon... TPK for the new year?

As for upcoming projects, I have a lot more Eldar in various stages of completion, a couple of updated D&D character figures, and as I mentioned LAST year, I would like to get back to my WWII Normandy stuff... we will see what actually gets accomplished.

What about you?  What are you planning on working on this year?

Jump off to Joppa part 3

 In part 2 of this series, I discussed how I hosted a game at my house.

Unfortunately we had run out of time, and Stew and P had to depart.  The kid was convinced that we ought to keep playing, so rather than wrap things up where they were, we played on!  (and on and on).

This is how I felt after the game...

Since we only completed the shooting phase of the turn, the kid decided to take over the FWL invaders, and I took over command of both lances of Capellans. Finishing out the turn, the Highlander swatted the Wasp out from behind it, causing it to crash to the ground, and the FWl Crusader overheated, failed a shutdown check [rolled a 3 on 2d6!], and fell to the ground. 

The next turn the Highlander unloaded into the Crusader, the now fleeing Quickdraw, and then stomped the Wasp to death.  In the middle of the board the Battlemaster tried to evade the AC20 of the Huncback, and on the right side the various lights maneuvered around.  The Hermes II destroyed another Wasp.

Four Wasps enter, and three are burning wreckage

On the left the Highlander and the quickdraw-crusader duo fight it out rather inconclusively, as with a mighty +4 to the target number to hit the Highlander was missing nearly all its shots.  Near the middle everything seems to be trying to batter down the Battlemaster while the other FWL 'mechs tried to prevent that.  That pretty much defines the rest of the game. 

More of the same, although now the Crusader is fleeing from the Highlander which is following very very slowly at one or two hexes a turn.  Maneuvering for a shot at the Battlemaster, the Phoenix Hawk is unceremoniously shoved off a cliff, but manages to land on its feet.  Then it overheats.  I realized here that the Highlander had the range to the Battlemaster with its LRM20, and that the Stinger could spot for it... indirect fire followed. 

Different lighting suggests that this game is going on for a long time, and that is so!  The Quickdraw decides to jump over to the action in the center, hoping to get a shot at the rear of the Capellan Crusader.  The Locust gives up on trying to kick things and charges the Gladiator, but misses. (good thing too, as it ran something like 8 hexes for the charge)  The last of the Wasps is killed. 

Final action: 

The Battlemaster rather belatedly flees the action, but is shot to death, losing 3 of four limbs.  The Quickdraw, which had been leaping about with a damaged leg for most of the game finally goes down.

Closeup of the demise of the Battlemaster

The Battlemaster finally goes down! 

In the end, with only one 'mech remaining relatively unharmed, the FWL surrendered and negotiated to get their surviving pilots back.  The Capellans gained quite a lot of salvage... unfortunately most of it pretty wrecked! 

Lessons learned from all of this:

• Battletech is fun!
• Battletech is slow!
• Hosting games is fun! 
• Hosting games is also a lot of work!

Stay tuned for part 4, where I discuss some of the rules issues we had, and a few other general thoughts about the game.