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.