Kickin' It Old School w/ pics

Here's some pics from the game last night along with a very, very brief report of the action. Had to separate it to here since my intro turned into a rant. Sorry.

Kickin' It Old School

Got to play one of my all time favorite miniatures games of all time this past Saturday at the Gopher. Battletech. If you're unfamiliar, Battletech (btech for short) is a game where you try to kill your opponent with a giant robot. Try to find one un-fun thing about that statement, I dare you. I've been playing it off and on for about the last 15 or so years and have yet to see a game where I didn't have a blast. Hell, one game I even had two. But in all my years I've yet to see btech do one major thing, catch on to the masses. As much as I try to preach it's funness (hehe I made up a word) I'm only one man. I've chatted with players all over the nation and all I can ever find are small maybe 5-6 member strong pockets of resistance, and they are strung out over quite a bit of distance. So why, if it's so much fun, doesn't it catch on. Couple reasons mainly. One, competitiveness. As much as I may not like to admit it, a competitive game brings more people. Like I said, I've talked to people all over the place, played with people all over the place, and not one of them plays this game to compete. It's a fun game, just for fun, and at the end of the night if you didn't have fun, then you probably were in the bathroom when the one guys mech fell over, critted it's self and blew off the leg of the other guys mech, trust me it was hilarious.  It's a win/lose for me, I love playing games just for fun, but on the other hand it's the competitive players that drive games. You look at games like 40k, Warmachine, Hordes, Warhammer Fantasy, they are all games that have a very competitive base to them. You can play them for fun, but the WAAC players will always be there ready to crush your "just because" list. Second reason: Speed. Btech ain't fast period. The four games I named above, all can be played in a relatively short amount of time say around 2 hours. Btech, you're lucky to get 3 rounds done in 2 hours. I've played games as long as 36 hours (though that game we had been drinking heavily and were using WAY too many mechs and vehicles). The game I played last night started at 6 roughly and I had to call time at 1030. We had only 6 mechs (3 per side) so I consider that one a quick game. If it had been allowed to continue it could have gone on probably another 2 hours, so you're looking at 6 and a half hours for a SMALL game. I've been to cons where there are only two btech games scheduled per day because that's all you're gonna get. This is the real killer. When you're looking at taking as much time for one game as an entire 40k TOURNAMENT it represents a large investment of time for anyone but the most die hard for the game. Kind of a side note to the time issue is the rules set. Nearly everything you can think of in the game is in the book. Want to kick a mech underwater? There's a rule for that. Want to know what happens if your mech skids into another one accidentily? There's a rule for that. The main rulebook for btech is nearly the same length as the 40k rulebook, but when you take out the fluff, the btech book has nearly double the rules, and all those rules take time to look up and that's one of the reasons it takes so long to get through a game. Another reason it takes so long, is because after you do something cool in the game you must spend at least 20 minutes talking and laughing about it like it had been years since it happened instead of minutes. It's a rule, look it up. I think it's in one of the FAQ's. So then with all of these problems, why do I still love it so much? Were you not paying attention at the beginning? It's giant robots shooting lasers at each other! And I'll continue to support it and try to drag as many others into the madness with me. Ok, this went on a little longer than I wanted it too so I'm making a separate post for the actual game. 

Space Wolves Take 2

Workin' on a second list. This one has a much, much lower model count but has a lot more special toys in it.

HQ - Rune Priest w/ Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane, Storm Bolter, Melta Bombs

Elites - Wolf Guard Pack x4 w/ Frost Axe x4

Troops - Grey Hunter's x5 w/ Power Weapon, Power Fist, Mark of the Wulfen, Plasma gun
               Razorback w/ TL Assault Cannon, Extra armor

               Grey Hunter's x5 w/ Power Weapon, Power Fist, Mark of the Wulfen, Plasma gun
               Razorback w/ TL Assault Cannon, Extra armor

               Grey Hunter's x5 w/ Power Weapon, Power Fist, Mark of the Wulfen, Plasma gun
               Razorback w/ Lascannon & TL Plasma gun, Extra armor

              Grey Hunter's x5 w/ Power Weapon, Power Fist, Mark of the Wulfen, Plasma gun
              Razorback w/ Lascannon & TL Plasma gun, Extra armor

Heavy Support - Long Fangs x5 w/ ML x3, Plasma Cannon x2
                          Squad Leader

                          Long Fangs x5 w/ ML x3, Plasma Cannon x2
                          Squad Leader

Basic strategy is to set the Rune Priest back with the Long Fangs and either use living lightning on squads or pop Murderous Hurricane to make them a rather unattractive target to deep strike near. Everything else drives up and hurts stuff going in, hopefully getting me into a charge position. Low model count could really be the death of this list though and I'm putting an awful lot of faith in armor 11 vehicles. Oh and an explanation, I put the storm bolter and melta bombs on the priest cause I had 8 points left and wanted to spend them on something.

Austin TX: An Awakened Perspective session 4

The night started off normal enough, as if anything in this town could be considered normal. Why the council had sent him here he still couldn't figure out, but they usually had their own reasons for everything and after all he was just a weapon, an arrow to be fired and destroy the target he was aimed at. He headed off to the Hedge Row to meet up with Reece the PI he'd been working with on the local disappearances. Meeting with the man always made him a little uneasy seeing how Reece wasn't exactly a member of the human race, or a member of the living either. He was surprisingly friendly for a vampire and that helped take a little bit of the edge off. Unfortunately their investigation had dead ended again. Calin had went to the public works department to see if any info could be gleaned from the building plans of the building over the area where they found TK's body. The clerk was all to willing to help stating that they had the blueprints I wanted, but there was no current owner listed and that it was basically condemned. Then she dropped the real bomb. The building had mysteriously burnt down just a week prior and nothing was left but rubble. Calin relayed all this info to Reece and they decided that whoever this was had decided to lay real low and that now it was just a waiting game.

Character profile: Calin

Well, this is it. This is my most current character. Calin is my second World of Darkness character. He's a mage like my previous character, so not much has changed there, but the personalities are totally different. Where as Dan was brash, vulgar and a drunk, Calin is very composed, sure and also sober. I've already posted one short story on Calin here but haven't done more since he wasn't properly introduced. Since he's an ongoing character I don't have a whole lot on him yet. In game he hasn't done a whole lot yet. His main contribution has been trying to decipher a journal found alongside a very much dead TK. He's also been involved with the local P.I. (who just happens to be a vampire) in trying to solve who this guy is and where he might be. Due to recent developments (the building over the chamber mysteriously burning down) however, they are back to square one. He's also finally given in to allowing an outside source to help with the translation of the book from Latin as his feeble language skills were just not enough to crack it. His most current situation is getting a little interesting and I'll be writing it up soon, as well as trying to give updates after each session.

Something Grey This Way Comes

For a while now I've been kicking around the idea of starting a Space Wolves army. I mean a LONG while, and it's gotten to a "shit or get off the pot" kind of moment. So, with a couple weeks of free play looming I made a list:

HQ - Rune Priest
         Murderous Hurricane
         Fury of the Wolf Spirits

Troops - (6) Grey Hunters x10
                    Mark of the Wulfen
                    2x Melta
                    Drop Pod

Heavy Support - Long Fangs x5 w/ Heavy Bolters
                           Squad Leader w/ Flamer
                           Drop Pod

There ya have it. 7 Pods o' doom, with the priest riding with the Long fangs. Is it a good list? Hell if I know. Will it be fun to drop 7 drop pods, 4 on the first turn? Can't see why it wouldn't.

I really hate the thought of leaving my Eldar even for a little while, they've been my only army since I started (except for this weird Tau phase I had) but I'm getting really burnt out on playing them, and I think a change of army will help this, that way when I go back to them (and I will go back) it will be even sweeter playing them. Of course this does mean I'll have to endure all the taunting and teasing I'll receive for playing a faction that I've always professed to hating, but hey, what else are friends for.

Done!

Well, here they are. I promised you pics of my two newest skimmers and I'm done with them. Well, not TOTALLY done, but good enough to use them in the tourney. Pics after the break.

40k Tournament

Tomorrow is the 40 tourney at the Gopher to celebrate the end of the league (only due to scheduling conflicts it's not the actual end of the league). I've got my list finalized and low and behold I'm short on points again. 22 points to be exact. Now, if you know anything about the Eldar codex, you know 22 points buys you a whole lotta nothing. I can buy stuff, just not anything real effective and I can only buy one so it kinda throws the balance off that I've got going on.

Change of Plans

So all last week I was working furiously on getting my firedragons done. I wanted to have all 10 done before the tourney on Saturday. Well, Monday came and I still didn't have them done. *sigh* These guys have been on my paint que forever and a day and every time I quit painting again it's because of those guys. I had them mostly done and wasn't real happy with them so I decided to ask my fellow gamers their truthful opinions: yeah, it wasn't good. I got everything from "Macaroni and cheese Eldar" to people fumbling for nice ways to say "they suck" so the general consensus was "Try again" so that's what I'm doing. I'm stripping them and starting anew. Luckily I only had 5 of them this way so it won't be too bad.

I'm moving on for the moment though. I have two skimmers left to paint, a fire prism/night spinner, and another wave serpent so I'll use them to get my painting kicks for a while. Hopefully I'll have pic's up in a couple days. I need to be careful though cause I'm running out of excuses to not paint those fire dragons.

40k batrep week 6 (game 5)

6 weeks down and only 2 to go. Had my quickest match to date. Played against one of the Blood Angels players at the Gopher. I was a little worried at first because BA's tear me up usually, we rolled for mission and I got "Hold Fast" which meant I had to hold my two objectives as my primary and my secondary was have more of my units in my deployment zone then he did. My opponent rolled and got the same exact thing. Wow. So basically neither of us were going anywhere because to move anything would cost us our primary and nothing short of an all out assault with the entire list would get us off the objectives. Looking at how the board was set up I could keep both units of wraithguard in Fortune range AND keep both objectives and still have the Wraithlords to sit back and take pot shots. My opponent did have some mobility options, but anything he brought over would pretty much die the next turn, thus costing him and I the match causing a draw. After talking it over for about 10 minutes we just decided to call the whole thing a draw and never fire a shot. It was either this or play what would have been the most boring game of 40k ever. Turn 1-5 Player 1: I'm not moving, your turn, Player 2: I'm not moving, your turn. Yeah, not fun. So we played a second game outside of league just because. That one was interesting and it's sad that I can't remember everything but here are some of the highlights (well, at least for me)

2 Warwalkers tied up an assault squad for 3 or 4 assault rounds
A ramming wave serpent blew up a rhino and was its self destroyed by the return hit
My Autarch bravely stood in front of a land raider (I shoulda got a pic of this it was really cool looking) and immobilized it with his fusion gun.
2 10 man squads of Dire Avengers blade stormed a 5 man Tac squad

This Saturday is the 1500 point tourney. I'm hoping to actually win a game this time around as last tourney I was in I didn't win a single game. I'll post up a tourney report over the weekend when I can.

War Walkers ASSEMBLE!

Holy cow! 4 posts in one day! No, you're not dreaming. Got my war walker squads finished(well, 2 of 3 anyway) and thought I'd throw the pics up.

Character Profile: Daniel Amsden

Ok, getting close to running out of characters, well at least the important ones, for you guys. Dan (aka Pence, aka Mr. Book) was my first World of Darkness character. I made him after much, much pressure from a couple of my friends ( you know who you are). I was really hesitant about joining the game, it's a LARP/table top hybrid and looked totally foreign to me. I'm used to a hard and fast tabletop game where everything is laid out for ya and all you need to do is sling some dice. This was nothing like that. Characters interacted with one another with and sometimes without GM presence, and it was a tremendous amount of actually thinking on your feet and actual role playing. An apt description given to me was "improv street theater with dice rolls" and that's really what it was. So, with all my previous characters I've played a spell caster of some sort with usually disastrous results (burned down a bar, almost killed an entire party, etc. etc.) so naturally I chose to play a Mage character.

Status update

Ok, I've got to apologize. I haven't been neglecting you guys on purpose. I still owe you a new character profile and vol 1 of "Tales of the Imperium" from just last week. I've just been really busy at work, I'm workin' my tail off, litteraly it's gone (TMI?) and that just makes me really tired and lazy. Factor in that I've had to make two trips into town here lately and I just haven't had a whole lotta time. So stay with me guys and I'll get the content to ya.

40k batrep week 5 (game 4)

Ok, got snowed in last week and couldn't play the second game at 1000pts so this is technically week 5 of the league but only game 4 for me. I took the 1250 list I posted about earlier. My opponent was AGG's resident  Dark Eldar player. I knew going in that if I played him, I should make another list instead of the one I had. Guardian spam with war walker back up seems to be effective against DE. But, the time came, he got chosen as my opponent and I said "Eh, to hell with it" and played my wraith list anyway. It was going to be interesting. He had massed volume of fire but I had re-rollable saves IF I got first turn. I didn't. I'll spare you the whole battle report cause it's kinda boring. Pretty much, first turn he took out half a wraithguard squad and all I killed in return was one Ravager. Yeah, it was pretty much that one sided the whole game. The only highlight for me was watching his Haemonculus and squad of Wracks charge into a full 10 man (11 with the warlock) with their feel no pain and furious charge and do nothing. I took no wounds from that at all. I returned and killed three only to have two get back up, he lost combat by one and promptly ran away. Next turn I shot all I had and made the entire squad dissappear putting an insta-kill on his Haemonculus with a wraith gun. That's pretty much it. I gave him the massacre at the end of turn 4. Oh, well. Lesson learned. Next week I plan on throwing my "Wraith of the Ancients" at someone again, hey, it's gotta work one of these times right?

Another one bites the dust

I know I haven't been posting a lot here lately, well, here's the reason why......

Jump for more

40k list revision again

Since I got snowed in and couldn't go to 40k night last week I'll be jumping headlong into the 1250 list. I'm kicking around using a paired down version of my "Wraith of the Ancients" list I like to use at 1850. Basically the 1250 would go something like this:

HQ Eldred Ulthran

Troops 2x 10 Wraithguard w/ Spirit seer with conceal

Heavy Support 2x Wraithlord (I don't have the codex in front of me so I'm not sure how I'll load them out)

What this does is give me two squads of T6 3+ (5+ cover) rerollable saves instakilling death, and then the 'Lords backing that up scaring the crap outta everyone. Yes, it's about as slow a list as you can get with Eldar, but it works more often than I thought it ever would, well, at least at 1850.

Kai 'Al Sun Origins

Found Kai's backstory on an old thumb drive. It's a little rough but here it is for your viewing pleasure. Oh, yeah, and it's kinda long. Enjoy.