tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72078289196715338092024-03-13T08:34:10.755-07:00Bren's WargamingBrendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-62681755862223076932010-12-04T21:41:00.000-08:002010-12-04T22:23:23.222-08:00More ATZ!Game 1:<br /><br />Again I headed to the LGS today with ATZ, some buildings and zombies. A friend of mine had a buddy in town and wanted to play some THW games. Since I’m a bigger fan of ATZ than 5150 (currently) I set up a simple ‘town’ and away we went. Each player was to start with a rep 4 civilian star (rolling two abilities and picking the one to keep). A fourth player wanted to try it out, so we split into two teams playing on a 4x6 board.<br /><br /><br />It didn’t go well… The end game was two idling cars and two turns of no action by the humans allowing the zeds to swarm both cars. One car (driven by me) managed to kill all the on zeds attacking while idling only to hit a zed and flip the car putting both passengers out of the fight!<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso8LqksnI/AAAAAAAAAUI/ttx4lX3U1Iw/s1600/ATZ-120410-03.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072380425515634" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso8LqksnI/AAAAAAAAAUI/ttx4lX3U1Iw/s320/ATZ-120410-03.JPG" /></a><br /><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">There is our car, flipped with both humans OOF and no one to help them.</span></div><div align="left"><br />The other car was attacked and the driver was put out of the fight. The passenger was able to drive the car out of the area, but not before kicking the driver to the curb. In the zombie apocalypse, everything goes. </div><br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso76AhCWI/AAAAAAAAAUA/KYiGbB-ri5w/s1600/ATZ-120410-02.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072375685712226" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso76AhCWI/AAAAAAAAAUA/KYiGbB-ri5w/s320/ATZ-120410-02.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">You can see where both cars are and why we were doomed to fail, 24 dice per turn!<br /></span><br /><div align="left">Results: 3 KIA, 1 survived </div><div align="left"><br />---------------- </div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">Game 2:<br /></div><div align="left">Another person who was watching was asked and decided to play. We moved to being gangers trying to take back the suburban area. Again each player is a rep 4 star. The first building held two gangers and the talk-the-talk moved to walk-the-walk and the enemy ganger leader (rep 4) gets the drop on our guy and fires a shotgun blast. Only the cover of the building and the bad die rolling saved our guy who fired his BA pistol dropping the guy! The other ganger makes his checks and will fire back when next active. In the end, our two guys manage to drop the guy, but now 7 zombies are busting at the doors and the two gangers leave the two OOF guys to act as food to slow the zombies. Our group now having about 15 to 20 zeds in the area begins to run off.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso8s_uwNI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/QXwIPjPQOLk/s1600/ATZ-120410-04.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072389372625106" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso8s_uwNI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/QXwIPjPQOLk/s320/ATZ-120410-04.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">Here we have three of our gangers looking down 11 closely zed!<br /><br /></span><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso8153aeI/AAAAAAAAAUY/B3Px-zxQLSM/s1600/ATZ-120410-05.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072391763945954" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPso8153aeI/AAAAAAAAAUY/B3Px-zxQLSM/s320/ATZ-120410-05.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">Here is our other two gangers checking cars and hitting zeds!</span> </div><div align="left"><br />A car alarm goes off and all gangers hid in a building finding a sixth ganger (another person wanted to play) allowing the 20-25 zeds move slowly towards the alarming car (I decided that on doubles, a random effect would occur if that player rolled doubles again and a double 4 was car alarm). The zombies stay in the area for 5 turns until the alarm shuts off and the zeds begin to move again. We decide that it has gotten out of hand and attempt to flee. Splitting up, two jump into a car and the rest run to the other (we… er… one of us found two sets of keys). While heading to the cars, one of us happened to be within 12 inches of the zeek swarm who came from behind a building and an In Sight test later, all 30+ zombies begin to shuffle towards us.<br /><br /></div><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPspIJpaXTI/AAAAAAAAAUg/DDnG3Qo8SY8/s1600/ATZ-120410-07.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072586042203442" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPspIJpaXTI/AAAAAAAAAUg/DDnG3Qo8SY8/s320/ATZ-120410-07.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;"> The alarm of the car at the bottom of the picture is going off creating a possible 3 zeds a turn, but steering the zeds away from the humans...</span></div><span style="color:#ff0000;"><div align="left"><br /></span></div>One of us (the newbie) decides that he wants the shotgun and machine pistol that the two food… er… dead gangers and heads off. The zombie swarm follows. One car races off the board but the second fails to start, but it breaks about 10 zeds to turn about towards the car. The newbie tries to catch up to the car dragging the other 20 back towards the second car. <div align="left"><br /></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">I flee toward the edge where the first car fled since I didn’t make it to the car, but the zeds created by that noise are able to charge (well actually one of them and even though I was a knifeman with a blade, I fail in combat going OOF). The newbie tried to check on me and head off, but before he was able to check me, 4 zeds are able to charge him and he also goes OOF. We keep zeds busy for 4 turns! </div><div align="left"><br /><br /></div><div align="left"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPspIgT_hKI/AAAAAAAAAUo/rP8gIFwYr4g/s1600/ATZ-120410-08.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072592126379170" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPspIgT_hKI/AAAAAAAAAUo/rP8gIFwYr4g/s320/ATZ-120410-08.JPG" /></a><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">The second car has taken down (ran over) 14 zeds and made every check...<br /></span><div align="left"><br />Meanwhile, the second car gets moving and begins to head off the map. With a turn of no player activations, the swarm catches up to them. The driver makes 24 successful “out of control” checks doing donuts running over the zeds before being able to move themselves. There are two zeds in the way and the car lurches forward killing one and knocking the second one. On the final zed until freedom, the driver loses control of the vehicle flipping it and causing both occupants to go OOF. The zombies slowly move over to the car finishing off the last of the two gangers…<br /><br /></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPspJMp4o1I/AAAAAAAAAUw/hTocC_obfCU/s1600/ATZ-120410-09.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072604029363026" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPspJMp4o1I/AAAAAAAAAUw/hTocC_obfCU/s320/ATZ-120410-09.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">Even if you make 25 checks, it's the one you fail that matters!</span><br /><br />Results: 2 survivors (car with 1 unit of fuel), 4 KIA. One of the survivors goes up a rep becoming a rep 5!<br /><br /><div align="left">------------------ </div><br /><div>Game 3: </div><br /><div>We decided to play a third game with those that died having a 50-50% chance in losing a rep. It turns out that of the 4 dead, I’m the only one that is a rep 3 (athlete) and our newly created leader decides to head to another suburban area with a military outpost in it to collect some resources. With the rep 5 ganger leader and some really great die rolls, we are able to make short work of the area barely making a dent in my 48 zombie horde (we learned our lesson I guess). At the time that we left, we had only 5 zeds on the board (and two gangers hanging out in the top floor of the military building).<br /></div><br /><div>Results: 6 Survive (3 are now Rep 5, 2 stay at Rep 4 and 1 goes to Rep 4). We found a machete, 9 units of food, some meds, a bow, but not a single drop of fuel. Looks like we are hoofing it to our next location…<br /><br />Whew! This was a long report. I think I am going to run a couple of these at the local gaming convention in March. I need more zeds, some ragers and a bunch of survivors. .. </div></div></div>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-89018928850725985652010-11-27T12:12:00.000-08:002010-11-27T12:23:26.639-08:00All Things ZombieLast Saturday a couple friends of mine decided to play a little All Things Zombie by Two Hour Wargames. Each of us took a rep 5 civilian star and a rep 4 civilian buddy. Due to a friend saying there was an unknown umbrella Corp. in the area, we play in an urban area. I balked, but my idea was shot down so urban area it was.<br /><br />The board was a 4’x4’ affair with eight buildings and two “roads” (we were unable to really pull much terrain since we were at the game store and there was a tournament that day). Still we managed to make a fairly “rustic” looking urban with the terrain that we had available (note to self: Pick up some grey felt to act as roads).<br /><br />I didn’t take really good notes, but the board started with ~25 zeds on the map (I only have 48 assembled and painted). We made a couple of mistakes with the rules… again. Still it was a good time. What happened you say?<br /><br />Well, my star was charged by three zeds from a building when my companion fled the area (one of the mistakes – she ‘retired’, but we didn’t read the rest of the rules on what should have happened) and I was forced to deal with allof them. A shotgun blast later, one zed was down but the other two stunned my star. A bad activation roll later saw those two zeds devour her (well in three, maybe 4 turns).<br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPFmmxdZLjI/AAAAAAAAATg/wvSvtyMCOF0/s1600/ATZ111310-01.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 212px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544325432567475762" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPFmmxdZLjI/AAAAAAAAATg/wvSvtyMCOF0/s320/ATZ111310-01.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">On the far right of the picture, you can see where my fallen star is (the orange dice are the removed building).</span></div><div align="left"><br />The other group found a couple of people in a building who decided to follow them for the remainder of the scenario. That group walked out of the building to a tide of zombies. In the melee that followed the Star fell to 4 zeds (and was feasted on later). The rest sped around the building and then saw the 10+ zeds heading towards them and fled the board.<br /></div><p align="center"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPFmrffOOFI/AAAAAAAAATw/fgb9GqTvuLU/s1600/ATZ111310-04.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 272px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544325513642653778" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPFmrffOOFI/AAAAAAAAATw/fgb9GqTvuLU/s320/ATZ111310-04.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">A feeding freezy on the other player's star!</span></p><p>The final group slowly moved killing the needed zeds in their way and made it into a church where they found 2 zeds. Quickly dispatched, they searched the building and found a S.A.W. (another of our mistakes – this time using the risk and rewards cards). Once obtained, the pair made their way off the board.<br /></p><p align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPFmoYyw3AI/AAAAAAAAATo/CorU65x8bBE/s1600/ATZ111310-03.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544325460305959938" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TPFmoYyw3AI/AAAAAAAAATo/CorU65x8bBE/s320/ATZ111310-03.JPG" /></a><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">The two looking down at the approaching hoard!</span></p><p>By this time, there were 54 zombies on the board (using plastic stand ins), 3 KIA, 1 possible infected and 3 survivors (two who went their own way). A fun time had by all!<br /><br />I realized that I need to get a lot of zombie hunters painted up (with an array of weaponry) if we are going to do these games on a regular basis. I also decided that the 48 zombies are good for all but the massive urban area games. Now that I'm reading the new I Zombie book, I’ll need to find some cool looking Ragers! </p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-51836365434263122832010-11-24T10:02:00.000-08:002010-11-24T10:22:49.178-08:00Blood Bowl!<div>Whew! It has been a long time since I have made a blog post. Thankfully the lack of post is not due to a lack of gaming! One of my favorite Games Workshop games has had resurgence in the area which has me gaming almost twice a week now. The game I’m talking about is none other than Blood Bowl. If you haven’t tried this little gem, I recommend it! Simple rules and a fun campaign system and you only need around 13- 16 figures! We have a league going on (season 3). I even got my wife into it which in itself shows how great the game is!<br /><br />So, without further ado, lets take a look at some teams (painted as well). </div><br />First off are the “Wildfire Witches” – my current team in the league (season 3). The miniatures come from Shadowforge miniatures and are great sculpts. I have 4 “Blitzers” and 4 “catchers” in order to play them as a variety of blood bowl team. Right now, I use them as Elves, but they can also stand in as high elves and amazons. I am in fourth in my division having a string of bad luck. Be warned, armor 7 is not for the weak of heart…<br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1V5wCyKgI/AAAAAAAAAS4/DuBbaVdtIPo/s1600/bunny-2.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 139px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543181167000431106" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1V5wCyKgI/AAAAAAAAAS4/DuBbaVdtIPo/s320/bunny-2.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">Here is a picture of the Blitzers and Catchers!<br /></span><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1U0Q9k_rI/AAAAAAAAASo/_0GRGRS6quM/s1600/bunny-1.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 120px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543179973246123698" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1U0Q9k_rI/AAAAAAAAASo/_0GRGRS6quM/s320/bunny-1.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">Another picture showing the linebunnies, throwers and the two catchers</span><br /><br /></div><div align="left">Next, we put on a tournament on a couple weeks ago and instead of playing something “competitive”, I decided to play Ogres - thus the Gnomish Gearworks team was born. Instead of the normal ogres and snotlings, I went for a different approach and found some old mage knight golems to stand in for the ogres and tiny gnomes to stand in for the snotlings (the gnomes are actually 15mm gnomes produced by peter pig). I actually painted the little gnomes myself using dip method to get them done in a hurry. All in all, they turned out pretty good! </div><div align="left"><br /><br /></div><div align="center"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1V7wwgCWI/AAAAAAAAATA/cy7BCf_kWRk/s1600/Ogres-1.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 134px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543181201551919458" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1V7wwgCWI/AAAAAAAAATA/cy7BCf_kWRk/s320/Ogres-1.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;"> With a strength of only 1 and an armor of 5, snotlings don't stay on the pitch long!</span><br /><br /><div align="left">Lastly, a “while” ago a friend of mine went to a GW Game’s Day and picked up an undead team which he eventually sold to me. I didn’t know at the time that I had a complete team of undead (20 miniatures total). This team is the one that my wife is playing and she’s getting fairly good with the rules, but now needs to work on strategy! </div><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1WFTp0q0I/AAAAAAAAATI/vr1kg4iphr4/s1600/undead-1.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 147px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543181365537975106" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1WFTp0q0I/AAAAAAAAATI/vr1kg4iphr4/s320/undead-1.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;"> Here are the Mummies (right), Wights (middle) and Ghouls (left)</span><br /><br /><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1WF0LpErI/AAAAAAAAATQ/XRGvCQBWt8g/s1600/undead-2.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543181374269756082" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1WF0LpErI/AAAAAAAAATQ/XRGvCQBWt8g/s320/undead-2.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">and the skeletons<br /><br /></span><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1WIt-d8ZI/AAAAAAAAATY/PpKEk9HeVq4/s1600/undead-3.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 139px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543181424143495570" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TO1WIt-d8ZI/AAAAAAAAATY/PpKEk9HeVq4/s320/undead-3.JPG" /></a><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">and don't forget the zombies.<br /><br /></span><div align="left">At the time of writing this, I have a new team on the way (Necromantic) as well as the needed figures to flesh out a human team. Was going to play the ogres as my next premiere team, but after the tournament, I decided that it wasn’t going to be all that fun…<br /><br />I have a lot of back log stuff to talk about. Hopefully, I can get it all done over the Thanksgiving break! </div></div><br /></div></div>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-23173005881332951442010-08-13T13:01:00.001-07:002010-08-13T13:38:35.585-07:00Gencon - 2010 (LONG)<div align="left">Last week was Gencon and again I went for all four days! It was a lot of fun and if you are any kind of gamer and in the area, I recommend it!<br /><br /><strong>Wednesday – Day 0</strong><br /><br />Like last year, I decided to “Cull the Herd” and sell some of my games. In the end I had two containers full with 31 auctions. I had a mix of games that I was looking to sell and a bunch of old 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons. After a couple of hours of waiting in line (I pre-registered all my stuff this year), I got out of there happy that everything was in there.<br /><br />My purchases started that day since I went and bought the Privateer Press Ram shirt like I have every year (it’s a tradition – like the hirstart mold). Once done, I headed to the Game Preserve (the local game store) for Urbie Wars! It’s a fun little pre-Gencon Battletech event that is a King of the Hill scenario. One of the guys had a bunch of Urbies – that’s Urbanmech for the masses – one of the crappiest mechs in the game and we tear about a heroscape board trying to kill each other. It’s a whole lot of fun (and very tongue in cheek). I managed to not be killed this year, but I able couldn’t hit anything so I probably was the most ineffective mechjock in the most ineffective mech (it’s a talent).<br /><br />After the event, it was time to head to a friend’s house where I stay for the convention (he lives 15 minutes from the convention).<br /><br />Spending: $20.00<br /><br /><strong>Thursday – Day 1</strong><br /><br />I was helping at the Privateer Press booth most of the morning/afternoon so there isn’t much to tell here. I demo’ed all of the games since I was doing the break shifts. I like the break shifts since they are a bit shorter, but more importantly, I get to do all the games so I never get bogged down on any single table. It works for me and my style... The only downside is I have to keep current on all their games, but I got that so what can you do!<br /><br />That evening, I had an obvious zombie event (it was called the Umbrella Chronicles). As fate would have it, the game system that we were played under was Ares (by Majestic Twelve Games - www.MJ12games.com) which was on the description, but I somehow missed it. Actually, the game itself was a mash of Ares and ATZ (from two hour wargames). It took a little time to get back into how the mechanics worked, but soon we were playing and keeping the game moving. In the end, I was surrounded by zombies in the middle of the field I was trying to escape) and was slowly mauled (normally you only get a +1/die if you are outnumbered, but zombies get to add an additional +1/die for each extra zombie in the fight – when my final models died, I had 4 zombies on both my remaining characters they were rolling +4/die or +8 – bloodbath). Still the game was a blast and I have played Ares with that GM at Origins a couple years ago. The refinements that he has made to the game have really made it work.<br /><br /></div><div align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpAs9zuiI/AAAAAAAAARY/zrqBZDTkoFc/s1600/Gencon2010-13.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504991949065796130" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpAs9zuiI/AAAAAAAAARY/zrqBZDTkoFc/s320/Gencon2010-13.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">If you look closely, I'm in the middle of all those zombies near the yellow truck.</span> <p align="left"><br /><strong>Friday – Day 2</strong><br /><br />Friday was jammed packed with events for me. I really loved being able to pre-reg for events. My first one was a Malifaux Demo. Both of us to play the demo had a basic understanding of the game, but we only got into the second turn before we had to stop. Still, it was a great little game and to be honest, any game that requires only 5 to 10 models is awesome! We didn’t get through much of it, but I really enjoyed the demo and the game system has some real cool concepts and ideas. I’ll have to put that on my watch list once the Great Painting is complete!<br /><br /></p><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpBMXwVKI/AAAAAAAAARg/giHAmyxkT2E/s1600/Gencon2010-24.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504991957496124578" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpBMXwVKI/AAAAAAAAARg/giHAmyxkT2E/s320/Gencon2010-24.JPG" /></a> <p align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">My Malifaux models line up for a picture!</span> <p align="left">I had about two hours in the dealer’s room and I spent that wondering about with Jarrod (and getting a Dr. Who cup for Meghan). We just combed through the hall and I was making a mental list of all the places that I wanted to stop on my larger shopping break on Saturday. I did manage to play a little bit of Claustrophobia before having to head to my next game (it wasn’t that bad, but it’s only for 2 players).<br /><br />From noon to 4pm, I was scheduled to play in Battlestations – Bot Wars. Due to the number of players, both brothers ran a game and since I kinda knew what was going on in Bot Wars, I moved and played with Jason in a Deep Ones in Deep Space game. My returning character is a mad genius and get into trouble with sanity check more often than you would think! Still, the game was a blast and we barely made it out with our lives (go us).<br /><br />Right after that, I moved to the main mini’s hall and played in a Star Wars – Full Thrust game. I played on the rebel’s side looking to destroy one (or more) of the Star Destroyers. We had the option in setting a trap for the Imperial players and it worked perfectly! We skirted out of our hiding place and got one of the smaller Star destroyers with minimal damage to ourselves. It was a lot of fun for us, but I’m sure that the Imperials (who were way out of position once we showed up and as a result got barely any shooting in) would say otherwise.</p></div><div align="center"><br /></div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504991967534699858" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpBxxI1VI/AAAAAAAAARo/DlPnhTZXefk/s320/Gencon2010-66.JPG" /> <p align="center"><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">The trap works perfectly and the Star Destroyers are facing the wrong way!</span> </p><p align="left">Finally I had a Desperado game sponsored by 19 & 1 gaming group (they are based in Indianapolis and I used to hand out with them when I lived up there – heck, I was a member of the club for a while). Due to a scheduling issue, I had to leave after a single hour, but I did get a head shot in before I left killing a guy outright (thankfully, you got to come back in once killed). After the hour was up, it was time to run to the Press Ganger party at Jillian’s. I thought it started at 9pm, but it was really 8pm, so I missed the demo of the computer game that is coming out (heard from others that it was sweet).<br /><br /><strong>Saturday – Day 3</strong><br /><br />My first game was a Song of Blades and Heroes game and it was a lot of fun (even if a bit one side – action-wise). The scenario was that the dwarves are looking to settle the score and reclaim their lost items. In my case (since I played the dwarves), I was looking to kill the Rat-man and take back an anvil that was stolen. My opponent had lower quality than me and really had a tough time keeping his warband together. Using my better quality (and thus more actions), I was able to take the battle to his flank and kill some of his rat-man and then slowly grinded away the middle until finished.<br /><br />I actually had a game from noon to 4pm (Circus Magicus), but due to a major problem, I didn’t have any time to really check the dealer’s hall. Due to that, I had to cancel that event. In the end, I should have played in that cuz it looked great (and the home-brew rules were promising) instead of the SBH (since I’ve played a bunch of that). In any case, these four hours were the only time that was going to get to all my purchases done.<br /><br />Without really slowing down to look at anything else, I went to ‘work’. I had a list of all the booths I needed to stop at and I quickly went from one side to the other getting all my stuff. I did get a ‘demo’ of Settlers of America and it was good game (and I needed it to complete my Catan good set and my 50% off a game). My only beef was that the demo lasted 45 minutes and was a bit too long for me (give me a 15 minute demo – I have stuff to do). Of course, once I got all my goods (did some serious trading – Ore for Wood, Grain for Clay and Clay back for Wood) and was looking to buy Settlers of America, the coupon was not usable for it so I picked up Nuns on the Run instead.<br /><br />The buys: A battlefoam Warmachine bag ($145), the Iron Dynasty RPG book using the Savage Worlds Ruleset ($25) - I thought it was going to have more in the skirmish side of things in it, but that’s okay should be an interesting read regardless. Then a starter deck for World of Warcraft: the card game (Jarrod and I did get a game in and it was only 5 bucks with a coupon so what can I say – it was an impulse buy). Next was Deep Ones in Deep Space for Battlestations($20), a Devil’s Panties Comic - after all this time reading that comic, I finally got to meet the artist and I totally geeked out ($20). Lastly, the above mentioned Nuns on the Run game ($18).<br /><br />At 4pm, both Meghan and I had a WEGS Old Skool (see http://www.gamewick.com/ )game called Tale of the Trojan Pig (ran by one of the ‘designers’ in the Table Top Gamers area – a great set of guys/gals based out of Ohio). The game was a basically a long-winded demo, but it was entertaining and that system is quite good for the quick ‘hack and slash’ game of old. Personally, I think it would be a lot easier to run it as a boardgame than say Descent (less prep, still a ton of options). Definitely need to get into the larger games for the next year. Did I just say I was going to move away from miniatures at a convention to play in a RPG???<br /><br /></p><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpCAgVJII/AAAAAAAAARw/wF86ZIYeWnk/s1600/Gencon2010-103.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504991971490735234" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TGWpCAgVJII/AAAAAAAAARw/wF86ZIYeWnk/s320/Gencon2010-103.JPG" /> <p align="center"></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">See, a Trojan Pig!</span> </p><br />Spending: $233 + $40 just now for the new edition of WEGS<br /><br />Sunday – Day 4<br />The final day, I worked for Privateer Press. I started in the Iron Arena area, but due to a double booking, I actually found myself giving breaks in the dealer’s hall. Not a big deal, but I didn’t want to completely kill my voice. Thankfully, the hall was more subdued and I didn’t have to scream the entire time (like Thursday). Once the hall closed, I helped with some minor clean up and got to heading home! No buys and no ‘fun’ on the final day – just work!<br /><br />Final Thoughts:<br /><br />Of the 31 things I put up for auction/sale, all but 4 sold netting me just over $500. After the 15% processing fee, my total take home was around $420. Not a bad haul if you think about it. Now the remainder of the money from Gencon is going to probably get me a better Subbuteo setup.Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-64449288205928430552010-08-01T17:21:00.000-07:002010-08-01T17:30:01.961-07:00Red Sand, Blue Sky<div align="left">After reading all the battle reports on this game I went ahead and picked it up. After reading the rules for myself, it was time to get into the arena and finally play a game. So excited about this game, I made an arena for all my gladiator combats using a pizza pan (see previous entry). I don’t have any actual gladiator figures, but I have a ton of fantasy figures laying about so I grabbed a couple and placed them in the arena for the first contest! I have been thinking and talking about working a more fantasy spin on RSBS since I purchased it. However, since this is my first technical game of RSBS, I decided that I should use the regular rules and not add any specials, weapon or armor modifications into the mix.<br /><br />-------------------------<br /><br />In the early morning light, two gladiators face off for what could be the start of their glorious careers. Our first combatant is a lizardman Retiarius named G’agg and our second combatant is a human Secutor named Fetch. Both are REP 4 on the Fringes of the Empire (whatever that would be in my fantasy world)…<br />Both combatants are sent into the arena and the fighting (and betting) begins in earnest…<br /><br />The first turn sees both move straight towards each other. Fetch closes the distance, but it looks like G’agg will still get to throw his net! G’agg lets it fly, but Fetch grabs it out of the air and causes a tug of war! Both gladiators fight with all their might, but in the end, the net is flung useless to the ground.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFYP0JZjYFI/AAAAAAAAARQ/ug51cThDSBc/s1600/Gladiator-01.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500601383430348882" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFYP0JZjYFI/AAAAAAAAARQ/ug51cThDSBc/s320/Gladiator-01.JPG" /> <p align="left"></a><p align="center"><span style="color:#cc0000;">Both square off in the arena</span> <p>Fetch moves in grabbing the initiative (again) and strikes at G’agg (not having enough movement for a bash). What looked like a telling blow turned to be a mere scratch on the left arm of G’agg. G’agg doesn’t opt to flank and attack and both exchange ineffective attacks. G’agg grabs the initiative, but both fighters fail to damage their opponent. Fetch seeing a possible opening attempts to flank and attack, but G’agg was ready for him and all Fetch does is tire himself out (G’agg passed one more die then Fetch). Wanting to conserve strength, Fetch backs down for this attack and it works. It looks like G’agg saw an opening that wasn’t there and wastes energy on nothing (Fetch rolled a single die, where G’agg rolled 3 – no successes for either however).<br /><br />Current die pools:<br />Fetch at 12, G’agg at 11<br /><br />G’agg retains the initiative looks to flank Fetch and end this, caught a bit off guard, Fetch wastes some energy and gets a spear shot into his upper Left Leg causing him to stumble back (G’agg passes one more die then Fetch and forces him to spend a 1d10 to keep G’agg to his front). On the attack, G’agg hits Fetch in the unprotected upper left leg and causes a wound that does a total of 3d10 and pushes him back an inch). Not to be outdone, Fetch rushes back in to attempt to win this battle, but G’agg is faster and stabs Fetch for a deep cut into his chest. Exhausted Fetch falls to the ground. G’agg is awarded his first (of many?) Laurel wreaths (and 4 AP). In the coming months both of Fetch’s wounds do not heal correctly and he is sold off never to combat again…<br /><br /></p><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFYPzh9KztI/AAAAAAAAARI/PsHxNh4AL5I/s1600/Gladiator-02.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500601372842315474" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFYPzh9KztI/AAAAAAAAARI/PsHxNh4AL5I/s320/Gladiator-02.JPG" /></a> <p align="center"><span style="color:#cc0000;">G'agg stands victorious over his foe!</span> <p>Final thoughts: The game plays great. Between this and Fight Night Fights, I feel there is a lot more options available for the player to choose in RSBS than in FNF. Still, I can't wait to play again. </p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-5187993520725946222010-08-01T12:14:00.001-07:002010-08-01T12:28:49.965-07:00Gladiator Arena!<div align="left">There have been a lot of people playing Red Sands, Blue Sky (RSBS) on the THW forum so I went ahead and bought the game while at Origins. After reading through the rules, it occurred to me that I was going to need a suitable gladiator arena for my combats. In a bit of inspiration, I realized that if I could find a decently sized pizza pan, that I could have a quick (and cheap) gladiator arena! A trip to Walmart netted me a 16” metal pizza pan for a mere 4 bucks.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIHexUf1I/AAAAAAAAAQo/2l7dpTzzC8U/s1600/Arena-01.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500522550747496274" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIHexUf1I/AAAAAAAAAQo/2l7dpTzzC8U/s320/Arena-01.JPG" /> <p align="left"></a><br /><span style="color:#000000;">I scuffed it up with some sandpaper and placed felt on the bottom to keep it for sliding (yellow was on sale).</span> </p><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIHzXRChI/AAAAAAAAAQw/C6sGqT4trhU/s1600/Arena-02.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500522556275362322" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIHzXRChI/AAAAAAAAAQw/C6sGqT4trhU/s320/Arena-02.JPG" /></a><br /><br />Then, I glued down a mix of sand and rocks (I find that the best time to get my 'perfect' rock mix is to get some from roads during winter - my city uses sand instead of salt for the roads).<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIIj42YZI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/IGRnywcnR_k/s1600/Arena-03.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500522569301123474" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIIj42YZI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/IGRnywcnR_k/s320/Arena-03.JPG" /></a><br /><br />Next step was to spray painted the whole thing brown (I use the cheap spray paint for terrain. I think the can cost about 2 bucks).<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIJLLdAhI/AAAAAAAAARA/D3ZMsTQCktA/s1600/Arena-04.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500522579848135186" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TFXIJLLdAhI/AAAAAAAAARA/D3ZMsTQCktA/s320/Arena-04.JPG" /></a><br />A couple of lighter browns and a few tan colors later, I had a nice effect. Clear coated it with cheap matte spray and was ready to play! I found out later that the pizza pan that I bought is metallic and I can add terrain to the arena with a couple of strong magnets (talk about convenient)!Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-16177382367890012992010-07-20T08:36:00.000-07:002010-07-20T08:58:06.715-07:00Origins!<div align="left">The last week in June was Origins Game Fair, a four day gaming convention in Columbus, Ohio. A group of my friends and I go every year and it’s always a good time. This year didn’t disappoint in the slightest. </div><div align="center"> </div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Thursday – Day 1</strong><br /><br />I was helping Privateer Press run a Warmachine/Hordes tournament so I had to be at the convention center around 9am. I got my badge and my pre-reg tickets (not a fun prospect this year) and was the Co-tournament organizer for the morning and most of the afternoon. After the tournament was finished I wandered through the Dealer‘s Hall seeing if there was anything that I wanted/needed to buy. In the end, I went ahead and picked up the new Risk’s and Rewards card for ATZ by Two Hour Wargames. As an added bonus, I got Red Sand, Blue Sky for half off. There has been a lot of talk of that game on the yahoo board and I could pass up the 50% off sale! </div><br /><br /><div align="left">The only game I played in before heading to sleep was Assault on Vault 51. It’s a fallout scenario using the Mutant’s and Death Rays rule set produced by Ganesha Games. It had a wonderful looking terrain and the game was well thought out and provided a ton of enjoyment. I am going to keep my thoughts and game recap to a minimum since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who is going to play in it. After the game it was around midnight and since I woke up at 5 am to get to the convention on time, I didn’t feel all that bad for cutting out early.<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXC7Ox6xhI/AAAAAAAAAP0/9fmLoOlbl6E/s1600/IMG_0598.JPG"></div></a><br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496013243111097874" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXC7Ox6xhI/AAAAAAAAAP0/9fmLoOlbl6E/s320/IMG_0598.JPG" /><br /></div><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Some of the beautiful terrain used in the Assault on Vault 51 game!</span> </div><br /><br /><p align="left">Spending: $20</p><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Friday – Day 2</strong> </div><br /><br /><div align="left">I got to the game room a bit early so I had some time to kill. As I was wondering around, a game of Deathrace (based off the Warlands system) was starting and even though I told them I couldn’t stick around for the while race, I jumped in. The rules are quite simple and the game itself was a lot of fun. I was bumped by a car during the first turn and that player managed to do a critical that killed my driver. It turns out with all the crashing and bumping that no car survived to the first ‘curve’. I was killed by my awesome ram in the back of two vehicles (after using nitro of course). </div><br /><br /><div align="center"></div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496014616707783746" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXELL043EI/AAAAAAAAAP8/KA5Bdd5NmPY/s320/IMG_0635.JPG" /><br /><br /><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">If you look closely, there is a car barely over the start/finish line (way behind yellow), that's me!</span><br /><br /></div><br /><p align="left">Again I was helping run a Warmachine/Hordes tournament. This only was a 2 caster/’lock, 50 point beast/warjack and it was a whole lot of fun to watch. Since we had an odd number of players and the second TO left to hang with his father for a round, I even got to play a Haley/Striker list against a Cryx player. Due to the number of players, the tournament ended a bit early so I spent the remainder of my time wandering about the game hall before my game that night. I picked up a couple of block die from Impact miniatures and some counters from Litko (<a href="http://www.litkoaero.com/">http://www.litkoaero.com/</a>)<br /></p><br /><div align="left">In the evening, I played in an “Adventures in Lost Lands” game (by Two hour wargames) ran by Ed himself. There were 8 players so we split into two groups of 4 (with a bearer apiece). This game was a lot of fun. For some reason, the fates were against my side and we had to deal with a couple of feeder dino’s (which we wounded and sent towards the other group), Trogs (which we handled without any issues), Early Man (who surprised us and kill most of our team’s bearers) and second dino (who turned out to be a meat eater). We managed to kill it, but one of us was wounded in the process. </div><div align="left"></div><br /><br /><div align="center"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496015296493114834" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXEywOV1dI/AAAAAAAAAQE/ManhnwJN6nk/s320/IMG_0672.JPG" /><span style="color:#ff0000;">See the other dino's flee in the wake of KONG!<br /></span><br /></div><p align="left">While trying to skin that dino (to prove their existence), three PEF (that’s possible Enemy force) showed up right on top of us… One of those PEF turned out to be King Kong! I fled when he came “In sight” but the others fled when Kong went after one of our hunters. Of course, we flee towards the other group and after losing one of their hunters, manage to kill Kong (amazing die rolls I might add). I didn’t make it off the table. I was attacked by the other of those PEFs after Kong ran through and we grouped back up. A great game! </p><div align="left">Afterwards, I found a group just starting Red Dragon Inn and sat down to play. It was great fun and I even managed to win the game allowing me to have a chance at a prize. I rolled amazing (a 17 on a d20) and got Street Illegal for free. </div><br /><div align="left">Spending: $25 (but I knew I was buying Warlands when I came home) </div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Saturday – Day 3</strong> </div><br /><div align="left">This day was jammed pack with gaming starting at 8 am and heading straight through until 4pm. First up was “Wings of War” with miniatures. I really enjoyed the game with its simple rules and quick play. Due to an error in scheduling, a second group of people showed up to play at 9am and we all just played a huge 4 on 4 battle. Great fun… I can’t remember the young lady that showed us how to play, but I can tell you that she was a fighting ace taking down at least 4 planes in the short time we played… Even got me on turn two (took 4 damage cards that were enough to destroy my plane). </div><br /><div align="left">After that, it was time for some Savage Showdown in the Iron Dynasty campaign setting. The book is not out, but they are hopeful for Gencon. When I signed up, I wasn’t so excited about the setting since it’s ancient Japan with steampunk included, but I couldn’t find any other Savage Worlds non-RPG so I figured I’d take a stab at it. The game was a lot of fun even if my side (with the designer no less) didn’t manage to win. Each team had a clockwork vehicle of some sort, a magician of some sort (a wild card) and a couple of units (some samurai and some ‘shooters’. I was playing the vehicle (which tried to go toe-to-toe with the other vehicle and was destroyed). The system plays great as a skirmish wargame, but the point system can be easily abuse. I figured that I enjoyed the rule changes and the game enough that I’ll probably pick that up in the end. </div><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXFshmvfZI/AAAAAAAAAQM/mSu--OI4PMo/s1600/IMG_0699.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496016289001340306" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXFshmvfZI/AAAAAAAAAQM/mSu--OI4PMo/s320/IMG_0699.JPG" /><br /><p align="left"></a></p><p align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The two steampunk vehicles command respect (at least their's did).</span> </p><p align="left">Final scheduled game for the day was a Battlestations game called Bot Wars ran by one of the designers (Jeff instead of Jason) and it was a hoot. There newest release is a mini-campaign where the bots have gone crazy and are attacking the humans (and the rest technically). We barely managed to survive the game. The only major beef with the convention games is that the returning characters can be a pick strong which really can have a huge impact. Our game was super rough since we had a level 6 pilot that was awesome at flying the ship, but the scenario we played was all about fighting robots. A friend of mine said his game was a mess since they had a level 6 marine who single-handedly fought most of the robot attackers! I’m glad that our game wasn’t that one-sided. </p><p align="left">After that, it was back to the dealer’s room to again look about. Due to how much fun I had playing the Lost Lands game, I picked up a bunch of prehistoric models (mostly dinos, but I did pick up some prehistoric men). </p><div align="left">Most of Saturday night was a trip to the Sausage house that we always go to. It’s has an all you can eat brat buffet with all the fixings. My only gripe (and it’s minimal at best) is that I eat too much good German food and am a mess for the remainder of the night (it’s also disheartening to leave the convention for ~2 hours, but I wouldn’t miss “Sausage Fest” for anything).</div><div align="left"><br />When I got back to the convention, a friend of mine (Justin) bought All Thing Zombie including some Rebel Mini 15mm zombies/survivors. Since we had some free time and didn’t have anything lined up, we put together a little scenario and played through the game. It was a bit rough to remember all the rules and such (it’s one thing to read the rules, it quite another to actually explain and play it). Still, with a lot of page flipping, we got through the game pretty well. Both of us had a Rep 5 survivor (star) and a Rep 4 grunt so things weren’t as bad as they could have been (like lower rep civies). I think we ran into only a couple of minor problems on our trek across the board (to a car park). </div><br /><div align="left">Spending: $60 </div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Sunday – day 4</strong> </div><br /><div align="left">I had a single game lined up due to one getting cancelled. It was another from Ganesha Games called Song of Armies and Hordes. I wasn’t going to play this since I’m not a big fan of large scale battles, but in the end I stuck it out and played in it anyways. In the end, I’m glad I did; using their activation mechanic made famous in their “Song of…” series, it played fast and fun. Honestly, there were just a couple of minor changes to the core mechanic, but really made the game a lot of fun. </div><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXG5kNYg8I/AAAAAAAAAQU/p7CpRV_g7-M/s1600/IMG_0734.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496017612550210498" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/TEXG5kNYg8I/AAAAAAAAAQU/p7CpRV_g7-M/s320/IMG_0734.JPG" /> <p align="center"></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">The Dwarven and Elves clash!<br /></span><br /></p><div align="left">Afterwards, I went back into the dealer’s room for some last minute buys. I first picked up a copy of Bot Wars complete with autograph! Next, I picked up three boxes of Starship Trooper models (costing 5 dollars a box), a dreadnaught for my ‘space marines’ (I have a couple of squads from Space Hulk) and some of the Iron Kingdoms RPG miniature line (including a bridge troll for use in Blood Bowl). If that wasn’t enough, I bought more dinos and lions for gladiator gaming (when I finish reading the book of course). </div><br /><br /><div align="left">Spending: $80 </div><br /><br /><div align="left">Somewhere in there I played in a Leviathans demo from Catalyst games. It has some really cool ideas to it and I can’t wait to see some of the finished product. I wish I would have taken more pictures of it since my memory is fuzzy on when I actually played it. The system is easy. You pick a weapon that has a color code which coincides with a die type (I’m told that the polyhedron dice are ‘weighted’). To that add any addition dice for ‘crew’ (green die) and a die from the target (its speed & trajectory). With those dice, a final normal d6 is rolled to determine location (much like in Warmachine for the column). Sum the value on the dice and check to see if equals or exceeds the armor value in that space that location is damaged and whatever was ‘there’ is gone. I guess the idea is the hull of the ships are standard, but the ‘slots’ for each ship are going to be customizable. We will see once it gets closer to release on the full rules and the like. If I didn’t have a bunch of other game systems sitting in the house, I’d probably get into it.</div><br /><div align="left">Final Thoughts: </div><br /><div align="left">Origins Game Fair is always a fun time and if you can make it, I recommend going. Nothing many of the big game companies there, but don’t let that stop you. The dealer’s room has more than enough stuff to keep a gamer like me happy and the games being played are always fun to watch and play! I can’t wait until next year. </div>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-72716820377225735862010-04-29T14:00:00.000-07:002010-04-29T14:11:01.615-07:00Boardgames!Of course I made this blog mainly to play miniatures games, but I decided that I could also use it to record other gaming (like board games) that I do. Honestly, I should probably log plays and even session reports on <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/">http://www.boardgamegeek.com/</a> but I rarely actually do that for some odd reason.<br /><br />So enough explaining the new plan...<br /><br />Lets talk about some gaming! I found a simple game called <strong>The d6 Shooters</strong> on BBG a while ago, but never played it much. In the process of cleaning some stuff, I refound it and in a moment of boredom I figured that I play it a couple of times. Simply put The d6 Shooters is a modification of the classic game of yatzee where you roll a number of dice (8 in the case of this game) and have three chances to get the 'best' possible round.<br /><br />The object of the game is to move an outlaw from one city (Pyrite) to a second (Reno) in 40 days (aka rounds). The key is that the dice are in two colors and three of them can be 'locked' if you roll either a 5 or 6 on the first roll (both those numbers are bad for you). It's a simple game, but quite entertaining! I played three games and the first two were dismal showings (funny that a made it to the city of Thompson and then killed by the outlaw's gang both times).<br /><br />My third game went a lot better and I actually made it to Reno and won the game with 44 points. I can't tell you if that is a good score, but at least I won. If you have a couple of minutes to kill, 8d6 dice (in two colors), a pen and the score sheet (a single sheet of paper), I completely recommend it!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/54201/the-d6-shooters">the d6 shooters</a>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-49770199844525874252010-04-18T11:03:00.000-07:002010-04-18T11:33:02.876-07:00Privateer Press - LeaderboardAs you might not know, I am a press ganger for Privateer Press (a volunteer that promotes their game and runs events). To that effect the last couple of weeks/months, my gaming time have been used to get things ready on that end.<br /><br />The first was getting ready for a tournament at the local game store. One of the scenarios requires the use of flags for objectives. I quickly whipped up some (aka 18) for the game!<br /><br /><br /><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461541908080179090" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S8tLbc0HN5I/AAAAAAAAAOE/Hzd4MLRv3Mk/s320/Flags.JPG" /></p><br /><br /><p>As you can see, I ran out of time for the actual flags and just had to use white paper with the Privateer Press faction symbols on them. The rest of the flag was quite simple. The base was coated in my 'basing material' (the road crews in my town use sand/dirt for the roads instead of salt. After the snow melts and the sand/dirt dries, I go and get a couple of scoops, sift out the bad stuff and volia - cheap rocks for bases) and spray painted black. </p><p>For most of my bases, I start with a basecoat of dark brown, followed by a dry brush of light brown and finally a dry brush of tan. Nothing fancy and it works. The only issue is that I have to do my 'basing' prior to the spray painting the model or it takes a bunch more time. I need to buy some pre-painted basing material for when I get the miniature done prior to the base. </p><p>The flag pole is a dowel rod cut to ~2 inch pieces, also sprayed in black primer followed by a brown and then a red/brown ink. All in all, they came out great and I really need to have more objective games so I can use them! :)</p><p>The next warmachine/Hordes project was for the Nightfall League. It started a couple of days after the tournament and most of my energy has been going into that (I mean, I'm playing my Trolls two or three times a week). The one thing that needed to be finished for the league was a ladder board. My local game store didn't have one so I took it upon myself to make one. Here is the end result...</p><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461544881445825138" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S8tOIhduanI/AAAAAAAAAOM/4r3cLCw5xnA/s320/ladderboard.JPG" /></p><p>The board started as a 2' x 2' one half inch oak board that I had Lowes cut into half. Then, I (and my dad) cut the 0.25 inch slits for the cards to fit into (the slits are 3.5 inches). Finally, I added a 0.5 inch square dowel rod to the top and sides so the board would sit out from the wall. The board was stained twice with a minwax and two miniature hooks were added to allow a piece of paper at the bottom (to show what league is currently going on). I think I am going to tweek a couple of things once the league is finished, but for now, it is a nice little piece that in currently hanging up at the game store.</p><p>How am I doing in the league, you ask. As of Friday, I was in second (tied with first in points), but I'm sure that I have fallen off since games were going to happen on Saturday.</p><p> </p><br /><br /><p></p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-8616131294100231312010-03-06T08:10:00.001-08:002010-03-06T08:21:32.218-08:0035 point Warmachine Army - Color on the metal!In an effort to ensure that I meet one of my missions this year, I am planning this early so I can have a lot of time to finish it. Since I have a new army, I figured that I would go with the Retribution for my choice (I really should paint pirates, but I'm scared of the number of solos)!<br /><br />35 Points:<br />Ravyn, Eternal Light (*6pts)<br />* Griffon (4pts)<br />* Phoenix (10pts)<br />Dawnguard Invictors (Leader and 9 Grunts) (10pts)<br />* Dawnguard Invictor Officer & Standard (2pts)<br />House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)<br />Arcanist (1pts)<br />Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios (3pts)<br />Ghost Sniper (2pts)<br />Ghost Sniper (2pts)<br />House Shyeel Magister (2pts)<br /><br />First mission is that I'm going to need to purchase two Ghost Sniper models (not really an issue - I need them for the army anyways). Then a paint scheme. I really don't like the official white - that's not true, I don't think I can make te white look cool.. In that end, I'm looking for something different. I really want to do Black/Orange, but I don't think painting-wise I can pull it off.Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-19606427950687526372010-02-02T01:02:00.000-08:002010-02-02T01:26:38.385-08:00Saving Private Ryan - the Return!The heroes make their way back to Death’s Hill with the evil statue (smaller now due to the loss of Flashfire).<br /><br />The first two turns go without much incident. The statue creates a guard on each turn and the heroes move up slowly (The three slow moving models are now in a group and are being ‘commanded’ by Jareth).<br /><br />On the third turn, the statue fails to create a guard even with a hero reroll. Most of the heroes again move forward, but Xaria casts a 3 power transfix which does nothing and Erdan shoots, but does nothing.<br /><br />On the fourth turn, the statue creates a guard, but uses the final hero reroll in the process. Xaria casts a magical bolt and Erdan shoots, but again nothing happens.<br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2fuAl2In9I/AAAAAAAAANQ/ZzoRT_WVGiE/s1600-h/SSPR2-01.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433573169372372946" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2fuAl2In9I/AAAAAAAAANQ/ZzoRT_WVGiE/s320/SSPR2-01.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;"> See what strategy can do for the game - Go Leaders!<br /></span></div><div align="left">On the fifth turn, the statue makes a fourth guard. The slow-moving group has finally made it to the edge of the hilltop. Xaria again tries to transfix and Erdan tries to shoot a guard to no effect (I’m seeing a pattern here).<br /><br />The sixth turn happens with the statue creating a guard and Jareth failing 2 dice on his activation ending the turn. Thankfully, the seventh turn, the statue does nothing. Pip, Selena and Durgon move onto the hilltop and Xaria fails to cast a spell and the momentum shifts (she failed 2 activation dice).<br /><br />The eight turn sees the first hero death as Pip falls to his aggressor (the classic 1 against a 6 - 3+1 v 3+6). The statue transfixes Selena. Durgon kills the fallen guard (that Selena knocked down) and Selena shakes off the transfix effect, but little else happens (Xaria casts a low powered bolt, but the guard is unaffected – and ends the turn in the process).<br /><br />The ninth turn has a guard knock down Selena, but no other guards manage to exploit the opening (I thankfully rolled a lot of ones for the guards) and the statue fails to do anything. Selena stands up while Xaria fails to transfix the nearest guard. Durgon and Erdan climb to the top of the hilltop.<br /><br /></div><div align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2fuBHmT2GI/AAAAAAAAANY/3DSvr94Yc9k/s1600-h/SSPR2-02.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433573178432804962" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2fuBHmT2GI/AAAAAAAAANY/3DSvr94Yc9k/s320/SSPR2-02.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">If I lose one more model, I'll have to take a morale check.</span></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Turn 10: Selena is powerfully attacked and is killed (with a second guard in contact and the powerfully attack, it was 0 to 3 in favor of the guard). The guard to attack Durgon rolls snake eyes and the turn ends there for the statue. Durgon kills the guard in combat with him with a powerful attack.<br /><br />Turn 11: Durgon is attacked twice, but is pushed back and then pushes his second attacker back. The statue tries and fails to entangle Erdan. All heroes are now on the hilltop.<br /><br />Turn 12: The first guard moves but can’t attack Durgon. The second guard powerfully attacks Durgon, but is knocked down in the process. The Statue fails to make a guard.<br /><br /></div><p align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2fuBd1eYpI/AAAAAAAAANg/CZshLgXoob0/s1600-h/SSPR2-03.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433573184401990290" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2fuBd1eYpI/AAAAAAAAANg/CZshLgXoob0/s320/SSPR2-03.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;"> If we can get rid of these two guards, we might have a chance!</span></p><p>Erdan kills the fallen guard, but fails to make his terror check and can’t move into melee with the statue (he moves to help Durgon with the last guard instead). Xaria casts a powerful transfix spell at the statue and even with its magic resistance, it fails the roll and is transfixed! Jareth makes his move and attacks the transfixed statue with a powerful attack but fails to destroy the mighty statue. Durgon knocks down the final guard.<br /><br />Turn 13: The guard stands but does nothing else while the statue remains transfixed. Erdan knocks down the guard again and this time can move into melee with the statue. Durgon kills the final guard and moves into melee with the statue. Jareth again tries to defeat the statue, but fails.<br /><br />Turn 14: The statue fails to recover from the spell and Durgon destroys the statue with a powerfully attacks (6+3 v 5+3).<br /><br />Injuries:<br />Pip: Serious Injury<br />Selena: Full recovery<br /><br />I get 30 gold for winning the scenario! However, the scenario states that I should get 20xp for destroying the statue and 4xp per guard. In the base campaign rules, that would be 40xp. If you include the 8 guards I killed in the first game (can’t believe that I killed that many guards), I should have about 72xp or 144 points to buy characters with – almost three times what I can do with my current funds.<br /><br />So, to update this scenario to the campaign rules in Song of Deeds and Glory (if I may be so bold), I’m going to state that killing the statue is worth an extra 1d6x5 gold coins and each guard killed is worth a single gold (perhaps there were some precious gems used in the rituals)... With my dice rolls, that’s an extra 30 gold for the second game (If you think about it, my average with 5 guards killed would be (~57.5 gold and a campaign point, close to the purchase power of 40xp). If you add the 8 gold from the guards killed in my first time, I have a total of 83 gold.<br /><br />In searching the surrounding lands, we stumbled upon an old alehouse which we manage to cut a deal with the proprietor and will always have a stock of ale if we need it. Durgon all shook up about the loss of Flashfire and injured forgot about the ale we found, but decides to learn the trade from the current brewmaster and is making some pretty good ale (added the special Brewmaster to Durgon).<br /><br />With my stash of gold I recruit a human warrior (Q3+ C3) for 30 gold and a human barbarian (Q3+ C3 – Fearless, Giant Slayer) for 42 gold which leaves me with 11 gold. With the campaign point, I purchase “Retaining the Initiative”.<br /><br />The experience: This scenario is still fun and worth a second go. First of all, I rolled a lot better this time. There weren’t as many turnovers as in the first game and I think that was in part me remembering to use a group move for the slower lower quality characters. I had to take a chance with my heroes when I first went on the hill and I paid the price really early. Losing two characters so quickly made me pretty worried about the ending (lethal against personalities is scary, but really makes this scenario shine). With only 4 members left another death would have been a morale check and we saw what that could do. In the end, casting a transfix spell on the statue was what really won the day.<br /></p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-74746435604281997172010-01-31T02:43:00.000-08:002010-02-01T23:57:36.235-08:00Song of Saving Private Ryan - Game 1I located a four scenario campaign called Song of Saving Private Ryan by Aleksandar Saranac for the Song of Blades and Heroes rule set. It turns out that it is to be played solo (the rules have how the enemy warband is to be played). I decided to go ahead and try the first scenario since I hadn’t heard of anyone trying the games from the yahoo group. To that end, I worked a new warband using my knowledge of a couple games and my idea to play them in the new campaign system (found in Song of Deeds and Glory). Before I pass judgment on the campaign rules, I wanted to try them out a couple of times.<br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKSL8sRcI/AAAAAAAAALs/zodFwOJUIgI/s1600-h/SSPR-02.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432970939286177218" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKSL8sRcI/AAAAAAAAALs/zodFwOJUIgI/s320/SSPR-02.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">You know things aren't going to end well when you can roll a die cocked without anything in the way!</span><br /><div align="left"><br />Here are the new Saviors of the Savage Lands:<br /><br />Jareth - Personality (60)<br />Quality 3+, Combat 3<br />Special Rules: Leader<br /><br />Xaria - Personality (38)<br />Quality 4+, Combat 2<br />Special Rules: Magic-User<br /><br />Erdan (50)<br />Quality 3+, Combat 3<br />Special Rules: Forester, Shooter: Long<br /><br />Flashfire (56)<br />Quality 4+, Combat 3<br />Special Rules: Animal, Blast, Flying<br /><br />Durgon (50)<br />Quality 3+, Combat 4<br />Special Rules: Fearless, Heavy Armor, Short Move<br /><br />Pip (23)<br />Quality 4+, Combat 2<br />Special Rules: Free Disengage, Shooter: Short, Short Move, Stealth<br /><br />Selena (23)<br />Quality 4+, Combat 3<br />Special Rules: Free Disengage, Short Move<br /><br />Warband changes: The first major change is the addition of a seventh member. Due to the fact that in the campaign rules your starting number of models determines the maximum number allowed, I wanted to add an extra character. I’ve also noticed that a ‘horde’ of models is not necessarily a bad thing either when trying to gang up on someone. This allows me to have 14 models if I ever get that big. Of course that means that Erdan had to lose a point of combat and Pip lost both a combat and a quality to make room. The biggest change is to Flashfire having to rework the specials and combat around to get a better quality. It remains to be seen if Blast is worth the points.<br /><br />Changes to the scenario one: I couldn’t find anything to use as the flat hilltop that was suitable so I changed the hilltop to be 12x12 inch (30x30 cm). This allowed me to use a piece of cork laying about the basement. Other than that, I went ahead and played the scenario as written.<br /><br />One thing I noticed is that I have very little in terms of ‘trash’ terrain: rubble, boulders, hedges, trees and the like. Perhaps that should be my winter month mission since it is barely 60 degrees in the basement at the moment.<br /><br />Turn 1: The Statue rolls two successes and creates a skeletal guard. All is looking good until Flashfire fails 2 activation dice and the two Halflings don’t get to go!<br /><br />Turn 2: Statue creates a second guard. Both guard hold position. The uphill climb is taking its toll on the heroes, especially those with short moves! Flashfire (not surprisingly) rolls three ones for activation and stays put.<br /><br />Turn 3: Statue fails to create a guard (failing on the reroll as well). Erdan aims and fires at a Guard with no effect (1+2 v 2+3), Durgon moves slowly up and Pip fails to activate enough to move (passes the turn in the process).<br /><br />Turn 4: Statue creates a third guard and all guards hold position. Jareth fails to activate on snake eyes! </div><div align="left"></div><div align="center"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKSrZ1BSI/AAAAAAAAAL0/vf2jB2Sn22w/s1600-h/SSPR-03.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432970947729884450" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKSrZ1BSI/AAAAAAAAAL0/vf2jB2Sn22w/s320/SSPR-03.JPG" /></a><span style="color:#ff0000;">The two halflings are lagging behing the rest of the group</span> </div><div align="left"><br />Turn 5: Statue creates a fourth guard. Selena fails to active enough to move which causes a turnover.<br /><br />Turn 6: Statue creates a fifth guard (using its last hero reroll). All heroes move closer except for Erdan (turnover on Xaria’s turn).<br /><br />Turn 7: Statue gets two successes and creates a sixth guard. There are heroes within a long band of it so there is a chance that it will try to entangle if it gets three successes on its activation. Erdan aims and fires at a Guard but again with no effect (1+3 v 2+6). Xaria casts a magical bolt at a guard (1+2 v 3+2), but the guard shrugs off the attack. Durgon finally makes on the hilltop and Flashfire blasts into two guards with no damage (3+4 v 3+5 v 3+6). Pip moves closer, but Selena stays put.<br /><br />Turn 8: Two guards move and attack Flashfire and both are knocked down for their trouble (3+4 v 3+2 and 2+6 v 3+4), but the third guard manages to kill Flashfire (1+3 v 3+5). A guard moves to attack Durgon, but is pushed back (4+5 v 3+5). The statue has nothing within entangle range so creates another guard! Erdan moves into melee with a fallen guard causing a gruesome kill (5+6 v 2+1), but all the undead are a high enough quality that all morale checks automatically pass... Durgon pushes his opponent back with a powerful attack (4+5 v 2+4). Xaria casts a magical bolt at the other fallen guard but doesn’t kill it (0+5 v 3+3). </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432970951795277442" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKS6jF_oI/AAAAAAAAAL8/2sr5D_r18U8/s320/SSPR-06.JPG" /></div></div><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Durgon is managing to keep alive with overwealming odds. How long can it last?</span></div><div align="left"><br />Turn 9: The fallen guard stands and moves into melee with Erdan. A guard moves and attacks Durgon but is knocked down (4+6 v 3+5). A second guard moves in and attacks (3+ 3 v 3+3 ), followed by a third guard who attacks (2+2 v 3+3) and pushes Durgon back! Durgon moves back into melee and kills the fallen guard (6+ 3 v 3+5). Erdan gets pushed back from his attack on a guard (3+2 v 2+5). Xaria tries to transfix one of the guards, but it manages to shrug off the spell (3 powered spell, but no 1s rolled).<br /><br />Turn 10: Durgon is attacked by a guard (4+3 v 3+2) and pushes it back. A second guard attacks but both are evenly matched (4+1 v 3+2) followed by a third guard that attacks (3+3 v 3+4), but his heavy armor saves him! The statue fails to do anything. Durgon gets a single success (out of three mind you) and does nothing. The turn passes.<br /></div><div align="left"><br />Turn 11: Both guards powerfully attack Durgon, but nothing happens (2+6 v 3+5 and 2+5 v 3+4) and the statue still does nothing. Xaria transfixes a guard (another 3 point spell that a guard fails), but Erdan fails to kill it (5+1 v 2+6). Durgon kills one of the guards attacking him (3+5 v 2+2). Both Pip and Selena move closer to the action and Selena tries a shot, but it is highly ineffective (-2+4 v 3+6).<br /><br />Turn 12: The transfixed guard can’t shake off the effects, but a guard finally manages to kill Durgon (3+1 v 3+6). The statue finally creates a new guard. Erdan again tries to kill the transfixed guard but fails again (5+2 v 2+5). Xaria tries to transfix another guard, but moves a bit forward instead (the turn switches however).<br /><br />Turn 13: The transfixed guard shakes off the effect and the statue creates a new guard. Erdan pushes the warrior back (3+5 v 3+3) and Xaria casts a low power transfix spell, it manages to work on a guard (rolled a single power spell and it works, but at the cost of the turn).<br /><br />Turn 14: A guard moves and attacks Erdan, but is killed in the process (3+6 v 3+1), but another guard takes his place. The transfixed guard is still transfixed, but the statue finally can cast a entangle spell powerful enough to hit Erdan who fails the check!<br /><br /></div><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKTe6HoBI/AAAAAAAAAME/a6Cqcvo0xRs/s1600-h/SSPR-08.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432970961555529746" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKTe6HoBI/AAAAAAAAAME/a6Cqcvo0xRs/s320/SSPR-08.JPG" /></a> <span style="color:#ff0000;">The heroes are slowly losing their numbers and their foothold on the hilltop.</span><br /></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Erdan easily shakes off the effect, but does little else. Xaria casts a powerful transfix spell, but the guard resists. Pip finally makes it to the battle and attacks the transfix model, but can’t strike true (5+3 v 3+6). Selena moves up, but she and Jareth do nothing.<br /><br />Turn 15: In a lucky break (hopefully), the transfixed guard rolls snake eyes ending their turn early! Pip powerfully attacks the transfixed guard killing it (5+4 v 2+4). Erdan also kills a guard with a powerful attack (3+4 v 2+1). Xaria tries a low powered transfix, but fails.<br /><br />Turn 16: A guard moves and pushes Erdan back (3+4 v 3+5), but the guard that attacked Pip does nothing (3+2 v 3+2). Xaria again transfixes a guard, but Erdan fails to kill it (5+1 v 3+4). Pip knocks down the guard in front of him (3+4 v 2+2) and Jareth moves on the platform killing it due in part of Pip’s ‘distractions’ (5+3 v 2+5)!<br /><br />Turn 17: The first guard shakes the transfix spell and the second guard moves into melee with Jareth while the statue makes another guard. Erdan attacks, pushing back his foe (3+5 v 1+5) and moves to aid Jareth. Selena fails to activate and causes a turnover (this could be the end)!<br /><br />Turn 18: The guard attacks Jareth, but is pushed back (2+5 v 2+2). Erdan is pushed back by the other guard (2+4 v 3+5) and the third guard knocks him down (3+5 v 3+6). The statue makes a fourth guard. Erdan stands up and powerfully forces a guard down (3+2 v 2+2). The turn ends with Selena (rolled double 1s).<br /><br />Turn 19: The guard moves into contact and attacks Erdan but is repelled (2+5 v 3+2). Selena is attacked but strikes her foe down (2+6 v 3+3). The fourth guard moves to an open position against Erdan and knocks him down (2+4 v 3+4). The statue entangles Selena. Erdan gets up, but does nothing else. Selena breaks free of the entangle spell, but gets knocked down by her foe (4+4 v 3+6). Jareth moves against the fallen guard and kills it (5+3 v 2+1). Pip moves to protect Selena and manages to beat back a guard in the process (3+3 v 2+3).<br /><br />Turn 20: Erdan holds his own against a guard (3+3 v 3+3) and Pip knocked down the first guard, but get knocked down himself by the second guard (3+4 v 3+3 and 2+5 v 3+6). The statue doesn’t do anything. Erdan and the guard exchange blows (3+5 v 2+6) while Pip just gets up (the momentum shifts).<br /><br />Turn 21 (whew): The fallen guard arises and Pip is gruesomely killed by the other (1+1 v 3+5). Most of the warband flee (Xaria's at the edge of the board). Thankfully, that is not 50% of the warband yet. Erdan is pushed back by the guard (3+2 v 3+5) and the statue does nothing. Erdan moves back and attacks (3+5 v 2+4) pushing the guard back. Xaria moves closer, but the momentum shifts (again).<br /><br /></div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKT5wtCtI/AAAAAAAAAMM/zuR7jHZ5dIs/s1600-h/SSPR-10.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432970968763796178" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/S2XKT5wtCtI/AAAAAAAAAMM/zuR7jHZ5dIs/s320/SSPR-10.JPG" /></a><br /><br />Turn 22: Erdan is attacked by all three guards. The first moves and is knocked down (3+2 v 3+1), the second is also knocked down (2v6 v 3+3) and the third is pushed back (1+5 v 3+1). Erdan attacks but doesn’t kill a guard (4+1 v 2+5). Xaria inches closer, but again the game shifts.<br /><br />Turn 23: Erdan is knocked down (2+5 v 3+6) by the first guard and is gruesomely killed by the third guard (1+4 v 5+5). The two resulting morale checks have the remaining heroes flee off the board.<br /><br />Injuries:<br />Durgon: Moderate Injury<br />Erdan: Full Recovery<br />Flashfire: Dead<br />Pip: Full Recovery<br /><br />I manage to find 15 gold. At least all remaining characters gain an experience point. I also explore the countryside about Death’s Hill (and it is now being referred to) and find a lone keg (Durgon is quite happy).<br /><br />The experience: I really liked this scenario. It was quite fun and was really tense throughout the game. I’m amazed at how many turnovers I had. I know that I should expect a couple throughout the game, but there were a couple times that it was just crazy! When most of my warband fled, I should have had Erdan also move back, but I was really getting tired since in the end, him being unsupported killed him (gruesomely I might add). Thankfully a gruesome kill doesn’t automatically kill a character in the campaign or I’d be done for (or if it does, I can’t find it).Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-29236231297796525852010-01-15T16:08:00.000-08:002010-02-02T01:35:06.626-08:002009 Year in review - thoughts for 2010?I really didn't want to put a 'year in review' in my gaming blog since it seems so cliche. But then again, perhaps it will spark me to get off my butt and get moving on more gaming.<br /><br /><br />My plan for 2009 was to play two games a month for a total of 24 games. I logged only 10 actual games over 17 messages. It seems like I am way off and that I don't play very many games (which is true), but these numbers don't include all of my Warmachine/Hordes that I played on Thursdays or the Bloodbowl league that started last year (3 wins, 0 losses). Except for a few miniatures, I really didn't paint anything either.<br /><br />Enough excuses... The simple truth is that I need to formulate a plan and stick to it.<br /><br />So the 2010 plan<br />I think I can get to the two games a month so I will try to make my goal be 24 games. Also, I am going to look into getting a couple of genre finished so I can play games in those.<br /><br />Mission 1: I am starting to get everything I need to play post-modern and modern horror (aka zombies). That means a lot of miniatures to assemble and paint. Honestly I have about 50 zombies that need to be put together and a handful of modern hunters that need some paint. Should be easy!<br /><br />Mission 2: Space fleets - I have a lot of spaceships about, but I don't have anything really complete. My mission here is to go through the two GZG fleets that I have and redo them (possiblity with a new paint scheme). Then work through fleets of about 1000 - 2000 points in the different iconic Sci-Fi films about for Starmada. I had a lot of fun running the Starmada games at Origins and want to do that again.<br /><br />Mission 3: Terrain - I have a collection of half finished terrain projects in the collection and I really want to get those done. When I didn't have space or the need, it was different, but I'd like to clean up that part of the basement and finish some terrain<br /><br />Mission 4: Painting - I have a lot of miniatures that aren't painted. I'm not looking to complete the whole list, but perhaps I should get to painting some of my Warmachine/Hordes stuff. As well as the other things I've bought along the way.<br /><br />Mission 5: Use or lose - I need to go through my collection of miniatures and clear out stuff that I'm not going to need or play. I have a lot of micro armor still in the boxes that I need to paint or get rid of (perhaps both). I also have a some 15mm stuff that needs to go.<br /><br />Okay, that's it for now...Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-67912083128835921582009-12-09T21:26:00.000-08:002009-12-09T21:31:29.784-08:00Crown of Kings - Part 3Not to be outdone by this module, I started the game at the same place after the total party kill of last time. I got a couple of replies from the Dark City Games forum and it looks like I have a new plan for GM bennies. Of course, after a bit of time at the SW forum, I decided that I would try round 3 if the following GM Bennies rule in place (thanks to Marc for his input):<br /><br />A GM WC will receive 2 bennies as per the normal rules and will use them in the following instances:<br /><br />1. Use as a soak roll whenever it receives 2 or more wounds.<br />2. Remove a shaken result if they are in melee and failed their Spirit roll.<br /><br />If a GM WC does use a benny (not always possible as you can see), the character that caused the WC to use a benny will receive one.<br /><br />There is talk about giving out a benny after every combat, but I haven’t felt that is necessary yet so I will hold off on that house rule unless I feel that I need it later.<br /><br />I couldn’t tell you if it was better die rolling or the above rules, but I managed to kill the dragon without any real issues. A couple bennies are spent, but all characters are alive and well. It only took 5 turns to kill the dragon!<br /><br />Turn 1: Dragon moves in and breathes fire on Marcus and Merula. Merula manages to move out of the way, but Marcus is stunned (shaken). Marcus fails to recover (must be patting out all those flames), but Merula casts deflection on Janine (spending a benny since she rolled a critical failure). <br /><br />Turn 2: Dragon goes first again hitting Marcus for 2 wounds, but he soaks one. Nothing else really happens.<br /><br />Turn 3: Janine does a wild attack to the head and manages to wound the dragon, but it was only one and due to the new rules, the dragon does try to soak it. Ramel heals Marcus (and could have healed 4 wounds).<br /><br />Turn 4: Marcus failed to recover, but spends a benny; Causing a single wound by attacking the head. The dragon continues to not use its bennies. Dragon can only recover from shaken. Janine does another wild attack to the head and hits for a wound again. Now the dragon has 3 wounds, but hasn’t spent a single benny.<br /><br />Turn 5: Marcus goes first and hits the dragon causing a fourth wound killing it!<br /><br />It is odd to have the creature die without using any of its bennies. Especially on the last one when ‘it’ knows it will be killed! Had there been a rule that talks about the final blow, the dragon would have failed the soak roll on the first benny spent, but the second one were had worked to avoid the killing stroke. Of course, that gives Marcus 2 bennies (which puts him back at 3). I’m not sure if I like the way that felt, but for now, I’m going to take the win!<br /><br />Now to the rest of this module…<br /><br />Okay, I lied; due to the overwhelming success from before, I was curious if I was just having a good day or if it was something else. I decided to play the scenario one more time.<br /><br />I did have an issue on the first turn; Marcus hits for 2 wounds on the dragon (he got a joker) and the soak roll didn’t stop any wounds. With the above rule, should the WC NPC try again? My thought is no since it doesn’t “exactly” know if that will be the ‘worst’ attack… but this brings the dragon to 3 wounds and could make the battle really quick! I decided to use the second bennies for the soak roll and it healed one wound. The dragon with two wounds, just recovers from shaken. The second turn starts with Janine hitting the dragon for a wound. The dragon now with 3 wounds can barely recover from shaken. Marcus attacks causes a wound and the dragon is unconscious, but the heroes quickly dispatch it. <br /><br />Yep, two rounds of combat; with Marcus getting a joker on the first turn and all attacks being a wild swing to the head (at least +0 with no other modifiers, both were higher than that), the dragon went down unexpectedly quickly (not a single benny spent).<br /><br />I decided to go ahead and finish the module and overall it was a lot of fun. If I remember correctly, this module was online for free before they decided to make these available in print and is probably one of the first. Their style, writing and game flow as gotten much better over the years so I’m a bit disappointed that this was there first conversion. Be warned, there are a couple of conversion issues, but nothing that can’t be solved with a little common sense. Well worth the money if you got the time for a solo game. Hopefully Dark City Games will be pursuing this crossover in the future.Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-89129942107326449692009-11-29T02:17:00.000-08:002009-11-29T02:39:09.216-08:00October 7, 986 – Outskirts of Altengard<br /><br />The alpha creature sniffed the air a second time sure now that there was food to be had at this small dwelling. Not only from within, but there were many large horses about. The real question was, how much blood would be on his massive axe when it was all said and done…<br /><br />1 Alpha Lycan (Star) - REP 6, AC 4, Move 16, Hardiness 4; Weapon: Massive Axe<br />Terror, Magic Resist<br />Massive Axe: IMP 7<br />CV: 10<br /><br />2 Brotherhood Lycan - REP 5, AC 4, Move 12, Hardiness 2; Weapon: Arm Blade<br />Arm blade: IMP 5<br />Frenzy, Magic Resist<br />CV: 6<br /><br />3 Pack Lycan - REP 5, AC 4, Move 12, Hardiness 0; Weapon: Spear<br />Spear: IMP 5<br />Frenzy<br />CV: 2<br /><br />Total CV: 28<br /><br />Raid Encounter roll was an 8 so there are 28 CV of locals about. Since this was an inn, I decided that if I rolled doubles, the type would be: Drunk (CV: 1) – REP 3, AC 2, Move 8, Hardiness 0; Weapon: Improvised Weapon (IMP 3). There are no other buildings in the area, but there are four horses found in the corral on the opposite side of the road.<br /><br />4 Knights, 2 Skirmishers, 6 Infantry (2 inside), 5 Arquebus (2 inside), 4 Drunks (2 inside), 3 Polearms (1 inside)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SxJKkf7dFRI/AAAAAAAAALU/V6JFrCgqO8s/s1600/Lycans-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SxJKkf7dFRI/AAAAAAAAALU/V6JFrCgqO8s/s320/Lycans-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409468093332002066" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Here is the setup for the raid. You can barely see the alpha and his pack on the right. The two brotherhood are on the far left.</span><br /></div><br />Stats for the other combatants are in the following format:<br />Name (REP/AC/move/Hardiness/RNG:IMP)<br /><br />Knight (5/6/12/0/-:7 or 4)<br />Skirmishers (4/2/8/0/36:5)<br />Infantry (4/4/6/0/-:5)<br />Arquebus (4/3/6/0/24:7)<br />Polearm (4/3/6/0/-:6)<br /><br />The defenders are set up in a random fashion. I split the board into 6 areas and I rolled a d6 for each figure. Once the location was determined, I placed them in a spot that I figured would be if they were on patrol. Funny how of the 24 figures only 7 are inside the inn. Word about the Lycans has spread and perhaps this raid is more of a trap???<br /><br />As the Pack moves closer to the Inn, it appears that the humans are waiting for them. Hopefully how the human are spread out will help them keep their injuries to a minimum.<br /><br />The alpha moves his group of pack lycans into melee. The human stand their ground in the test of wills (I knew I should have used the star ability and picked 6 successes instead of 4) and the lycans all charge. The arquebuser doesn’t manage to do anything with his shot, but the skirmisher manages to take a lycan OOF with a well-placed arrow! Both Knights hold their own even though they are outclassed. The poor drunk is sliced through without a care by the pack lycan and one of the knights retires a normal move on the crisis test! The Brotherhood lycans are unable to go due to the activation number.<br /><br />The same skirmisher manages to take out another pack Lycan OOF. The arquebuser manages to hit the alpha, but the alpha shrugs off the blow, roars and moves to engage (with 3d vs 6d rolls well enough to hit, but then just forces a control test which the star ‘fails’ and engages in melee). The knight wants to charge in, but can’t manage to force himself to do it (the alpha star picks ‘6 successes’ and the knight can’t hope to beat him). The rest of the humans move to create groups in order to fight better (or fail to charge the final pack lycan.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SxJLB_TzcWI/AAAAAAAAALc/VMI0bLXZgv4/s1600/Lycans-2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 181px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SxJLB_TzcWI/AAAAAAAAALc/VMI0bLXZgv4/s320/Lycans-2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409468599971836258" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">The lone skirmisher on the right is taking out the pack lycans without worry...</span> </div><br />The alpha cleaves the arquebuser in half and the skirmisher ‘hero’ routs off the board. A second knight races over to help take out the final pack lycan and after a couple of minor successes manages to run him through (OD result). The rest of the humans stand in wait (I rolled a 6 for the lycans again and a 5 for the humans).<br /><br />The alpha lycan moves to attack Lord Byron (the leader of this group) but they are evenly matched. The brotherhood lycans finally move into the battle, one charging an arquebuser who fails to hurt him as the lycan comes crashing close. The arquebusers screams of pain force a second arquebuser and a polearm fighter to flee in terror (both failed the crisis test). The second brotherhood lycan attempts to charge the last skirmisher, but halts in place instead (same number of successes on test of wills). The final skirmisher wastes no time in firing at the dumbfounded lycan hitting the foul beast and seriously wounding it (Since they are now within 12 inches, there isn’t a second test of wills so the skirmisher fires her short bow at the lycan rolling 3 successes to 2 hitting it. The result of OOF stands after rolling on the hardiness check)! The alpha seeing that he is outnumbered, fails the crisis test and retires (there are now only 2 lycans remaining).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SxJMIkv_GLI/AAAAAAAAALk/umPg-YlhQcM/s1600/Lycans-3.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 186px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SxJMIkv_GLI/AAAAAAAAALk/umPg-YlhQcM/s320/Lycans-3.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409469812612995250" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">How the tables have turned for the lycan. Who knew bows are the way to go!<br /></div><br />The alpha retires off the board, but the brotherhood lycan doesn’t get the message. The skirmisher rounds the forest looking to take a shot, but misses and the lycan charges in. The second shot manages to hit, but doesn’t faze the lycan who rends the skirmisher in two which causes the nearest swordsman to flee (and a second to retire). The two knights on the flank dispatch both wounded pack lycans. The final lycan grabs his other brotherhood lycan buddy and flees off the table.<br /><br />The encounter wasn’t a total loss muses the alpha after a couple of days. Sure the pack is smaller, but the two that survived are more powerful then when they started. Perhaps next time they will dine on horse flesh…<br /><br />The alpha gained a Social status that it lost by fleeing the battlefield. One Brotherhood went up in REP and both went to hardiness 3.Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-74231088378360512692009-11-06T00:59:00.000-08:002009-11-06T01:05:15.189-08:00Savage Worlds - Crown of Kings Round 2Okay, after mulling over my “defeat” by the dragon in the last episode, I decided to do some research on Savage World combats. Thankfully, right on their website in the download section gives a one page survival guide to SW combat. After downloading, printing and reading, I wanted to face this dragon again with a couple of changes of strategy. Also, I wanted to count the number of rounds and see the time it took. Remember this is supposed to be a RPG game and a two-hour battle would try me as a gamer!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SvPmDeksvXI/AAAAAAAAAK0/kZiITHk--9Q/s1600-h/SW-01.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SvPmDeksvXI/AAAAAAAAAK0/kZiITHk--9Q/s320/SW-01.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400913325568343410" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Here is my setup for the game. The map is under a piece of plexiglass so I can use a wet erase marker to take notes. Notice all the game counters included with the game.</span><br /></div><br />Started @ 2:14<br />Ended @ 3:07<br /><br />Result: total party death in 11 turns…. How it happened:<br /><br />Turn 1: Dragon is shaken by a great attack by Marcus, but it recovers quickly and causes a wound on Marcus after a soak roll. Merula casts deflection on Janine and Janine moves in and attacks the head (called shot), but fails to cause any damage<br /><br />Turn 2: Dragon gets a joker and hits Marcus for 4 wounds and he begins to bleed out. Ramel fails to heal Marcus.<br /><br />Turn 3: Marcus dies (a roll of 2 – 3 = death). Ramel intimidates the dragon with a success?!? Dragon recovers and hits Ramel but rolls a 6 for no result<br /><br />Turn 4: Dragon again hits Ramel but only shakes him. Janine wild attacks to the head (the modifiers are in her favor; +1 for gang up, +1 for trademark weapon, +2 for wild attack and +2 for dragon’s size with the –4 for a called shot) and connects with a 27 (3 wounds). Of course, if the dragon gets the two GM Bennies, it uses one to soak. An awesome roll of 17 completely negates the damage.<br /><br />Turn 6: Ramel hit for 3 wounds and is unable to soak them.<br /><br />Turn 8: Janine hit for 5 wounds and soaks 1. On the Incapacation Table, she scores a raise meaning she is stunned, but is busted (die type loss to strength).<br /><br />Turn 10: Janine hit for 5 more wounds and starts to bleed out. Ramel tries to flee combat, but is hit for 2 wounds. He also starts to bleeds.<br /><br />Turn 11: Janine continues to bleed out; Ramel expires. Dragon hits Merula for 1 wound (she soaks 2), then two more wounds on the second attack. She Full defenses and tries to run, but gets hit while fleeing and receives another wound going unconscious…<br /><br />Now I’m curious if my “new” play style is the cause of death or the awesome rolling/cards for the dragon at the beginning of the combat. I’m feeling that my tactics were sound, but the awesome cards that the dragon got was what did me in. Also, the two GM Bennies that I gave the dragon saved it when Janine did her wild attacks to the head. I sent a message to the Dark City guys to see if I’m suppose to be giving GM Bennies out, but I haven’t got an answer yet. Again, I’ll “reset the power button” and go at this again…Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-74366383925617528352009-10-30T22:46:00.000-07:002009-10-30T22:58:20.099-07:00Savage Worlds - Crown of KingsThe Crown of Kings is an adventure module produced by Dark City Games. Constructed as a sort of “choose your own adventure” game that can be played solo. Recently, they have started to convert some of their modules for Savage Worlds. Now, I purchased this “Savaged” adventure a long while ago, but due to the amount of time the free trial module took to play, I was leery of playing through this adventure. Don’t get me wrong I love the stuff that Dark City Games produces, but as a scripted solo game you don’t get many replays once you have completed the ‘entire’ module. Trust me, in playing their games, there are times that you really need to go back to a ‘save point’ and start again. I can’t tell you the number of times playing through their system (an offshoot of melee/wizard) that I’ve been killed by the die rolls!<br /><br />Of course, I picked up the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion so after reading I really wanted to use my now two (err… three) savage world books. I’m a big fan of the Savage Worlds game rules so any time I can get a chance to play, I’m all for it! My new spark for playing this game is that I’ve been reading a great web comic called Clockworks that is based on a RPG using the Savage Worlds rules. So, I got everything ready to play and waited for a couple hours free time to have at it…<br /><br />Since it is a scripted adventure, I don’t want to spoil too much of the game, but since you get monster counters in the game, I feel like I can give some highlights…<br /><br />It was all going pretty well until I met a dragon! Unfortunately, the module doesn’t give any rules on Game Master Bennies (or if you should even get any). I ruled that the module itself doesn’t get any GM Bennies, but Wild Card (WC) creatures would. I also ruled that the WC creatures would use their Bennies only for wound soak rolls. Also, critical failures by wild cards would result in a shaken result. In the end, I might have made the dragon harder than the writers’ intended. With the creature rolling d12+4 and d8 for damage, my characters were in a world of hurt if they got hit. Once the Bennies were all gone, characters starting to take wounds. On my end it was easy to hit the dragon, but with a toughness of 15 I really needed to hit with a raise and roll pretty well on my damage roll. In the end, Ramel was killed (got 4 wounds and with two bad vigor rolls died).<br /><br />Fights with a WC with a high toughness also take a lot of time at least it did for me. I didn’t count the number of rounds that I was fighting and I admit that I had to look up the rules a lot, but it still took me 2 hours to fight the dragon! <br /><br />I’m pretty sure that this was one of the major fights of the module, but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to make it through the rest of the adventure with only 3 characters - all of who are out of Bennies or Power Points.<br /><br />To Be Continued (with pictures hopefully)...Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-1763161905293244402009-09-19T23:45:00.000-07:002009-09-19T23:54:55.046-07:00The Velikimrav NestOctober 15, 986 Outskirts of Altengard<br /><br />Even though Mattis gave Randell some ideas on how to locate a velikimrav nest, Randell hadn’t had any luck actually locating one. Of course, with the rarity of said velikimrav nests, he wasn’t discouraged. Hopefully with a little luck, one would be found before too much time had passed. With the Lycans still at large, time was precious…<br /><br />Game Notes: "Quest: Is it here?" Result: 4 – Not in the area. Roll for an encounter normally. Result: No encounter<br /><br />November 2, 986<br /><br />After weeks of searching, Randell has finally found the signs of a velikimrav nest. He and his current band venture into the cramped tunnels below the earth. The ground gapes open to reveal a fairly large chamber with a single exit. After a quick look about, the party heads deeper into the lair. Moving off into the side passage, the party heads down a very large passageway that ends in a right turn (T1: 2/4). Due to the difficult terrain, it takes them a bit to move down the corridor (T2: 6/3, T3: 2/4). So far, there hasn’t been any sign of occupants.<br /><br />In a second long corridor, a section of the floor gives way under Andus, a swordsmen. He falls hurting himself very badly (in the second corridor, there was a level 5 trap. The trap randomly attacked a party member, which was a swordman. The trap rolled 5d and the swordsmen rolled 4d. The trap got 4 successes to the swordsman 2. On the firing table, it was determined that he was OOF). After getting Andus out of the collapsed tunnel, Randell orders the party to continue. He can’t turn back now; too much time has been lost in search of this nest.<br /><br />Continuing down that same corridor (T4: 5/2), the lone passageway continues as it weaves under the ground (T5: 4/1). As the party turns the corner and sees a end to this passageway, a part of the ceiling gives way and Daniel jumps out of the way barely escaping from harm (Again there was a level 5 trap. It randomly attacks a different swordsman, but the trap scored no successes and the swordsman scored 1 stating the target was unharmed and the trap disarmed) – Of course, since there is no humanoid enemies in this dungeon, I continue to make the traps more accidents).<br /><br />Entering a very cramped chamber (T6: 1/3), Randell and the party discovers some velikimrav sulking about. Blades are drawn with the hope of eggs (Two of the 3 PEFs were to be resolved in this room. The first PEF was nothing, but the second was considered the main body. A roll determined there would be 1.5 times more than the party. Since the only thing to be found in this nest was velikimrav, I kept adding them until the maximum CV was reached. In this case, there were going to be 4 in the room. To determine if there were any eggs in the chamber, I rolled on the Loot and Booty chart modifying as follows. Roll 2d6, for every point over 7, one nest containing eggs were to be present. The roll was a 4 so no eggs were in the chamber).<br /><br />Game Notes: The room is only 2w in area (1.5 x 3 inches – I modified it to be 2x4”)! I continued to map the passageway so the velikimrav would have enough room to be deployed (yes, with the passageways all at 3w, they are considerably larger than that of the chambers). To make things easier on my self, I changed the 3w passageways to 4” which allows me to use some stuff I got laying about for the rooms and passageways!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SrXQHhZnOhI/AAAAAAAAAKM/8fQ06EoQbAQ/s1600-h/Nest-01.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SrXQHhZnOhI/AAAAAAAAAKM/8fQ06EoQbAQ/s320/Nest-01.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383437757234756114" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">4 Velikimrav, but no eggs to be found. At least not in this part of the cavern!</span><br /></div><br />Randell and the party see the velikimrav and with a battle cry, charge blandishing their weapons. The velikimrav that is charged by Randell senses the magic sword and rout! Seeing one of their kind retire, two others also leave leaving a single enemy (The test of wills has the party pass 3 more successes and then the velikimrav only get a single success in the charge test – due to Randell being a star, he picks 4 so the party charges and that velikimrav routs. Due to the rout, two more also flee). Randell and the creature battle each other, but it’s obvious that the Randell is out matched and is wounded and OOF (Randell gets only 4 dice against the velikimrav who gets 6 dice – 4 for REP, 1 due to protected and another 1 for larger base. After a couple of pushes back and forth, the velikimrav scores 2 more success than Randell. The following hardiness test has Randell passing 1D causes him to lose his last two dice putting him OOF). Two of the swordsmen see Randell downed by the creature and retire from the nest, but the lone arquebusier runs out of the cave screaming!<br /><br />(T6a:5/2): Tealwood grabs Randell’s body and attempts to get out of this nest with their lives while having Daniel pickup Andus. The velikimrav charges Tealwood and wounds him twice in a row putting him OOF. The rest of the party flees the cave once Tealwood is downed!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SrXQIS2DWoI/AAAAAAAAAKU/ZXuQUaxQXqo/s1600-h/Nest-02.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SrXQIS2DWoI/AAAAAAAAAKU/ZXuQUaxQXqo/s320/Nest-02.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383437770507377282" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Tealwood attempts to pull Randell from harm to no avail! The velikimrav win this day!</span><br /></div><br />Randell wakes up on the cold ground of the cave. Surprised to be alive, he looks over and notices Tealwood close by. It looks like the velikimrav are nowhere to be found. Randell quickly wakes up Tealwood, grab their dropped gear and they stagger back to the Compess. Perhaps I need a bigger party before I head into the second nest thought Randell has he recovers his wounds. The days drawn on, but soon the entire party is back on their feet (some of the party is worse off, but there is nothing one can do about that). They have lost precious time since they had to journey back to Compess. Once it all said and done, seven days pass before they are well enough to head back out on their quest to destroy the Lycan. <br /><br />Game Notes: Both Randell and Tealwood survive their OOF result without any issues, but one of the swordsmen (the one I called Andus) and the arquebusier (now called Tobus) lost a point of REP. Between encounters, a number of days pass equal to the roll on 4d6 (so on average two weeks pass per encounter). This is a change of the rules, but I have my reasons. Since my star went OOF, it adds recovery time to the roll for time between encounters depending on the amount of ‘care’ that can be provided. Compess is a town and it takes an additional 2d6 for recovery (cities are 1d6 and wilderness is 3d6).Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-16607640159360236802009-09-12T02:08:00.000-07:002009-09-12T02:33:39.213-07:00Randell's Quest 2 - Dangerous Dealings?This is a continuation of the previous game that I ran. I decided that it would be fun to continue the tale of Randell so I started thinking about how to play this out. It occurred to me that I could take some elements from the other THW games and make this into a little mini campaign of sorts. Besides I have the rules in my head. Why clutter things up!<br /><br />"I need more men!” stated Mr. Randell staring at the commander of the small outpost near the Timmerland Estate. He and the men that he had taken with him had recovered their wounds nicely under the direction of the staff here, but he couldn't get the commander to budge on even a single conscript.<br /><br />"I've heard the tales of the Lycan issue, but we just can't spare any of our defenses. All our resources are currently protecting the towns and roads in the area. We just can't send any more people with you, but you can continue to use the services of Captain Tealwood. He's the best we got! I'm sorry, but you will just have to find a different way."<br /><br />Randell stormed out without any words. Words were pointless and would not help clean the infection in his lands. Simply put, the Lycan had to be exterminated! What really got under his skin was there were humans helping the Lycans! These Wolfen Cultists would not taint his homelands. If he ever caught one of those cultists, there would be no trial; just a confession and execution. With his dwindling force, he needed an edge. Perhaps a trip to his friend, a local friar would be in order… <br /><br />A short while later, Randell makes his way to the Village of Compess where his old friend Brother Mattis resides. The village is small and Randell finds Mattis quickly, but it seems that there is something on Brother Mattis' mind... Once the pleasantries are complete, Randell gets down to business.<br /><br />Game Notes: I worked out if Mattis was to be found using the Larger than Life (LTL) rules also from THW. The Difficulty to find Mattis was 2 (rolled a 5 & 2) and our star passed 1 more die than the quarry so they meet up but with complications. Since in WHAA you only have REP (and no skills) I decided to roll just based on their REP for the outcome of their chat. I determined that Randell would get information to help his quest if he won the opposed task. If Randell failed, he would have to complete a side quest for Mattis in order to get the information he needed. After a bit of discussion (and two more complications), Brother Mattis agrees to give the help Randell needs! <br /><br />"Brother Mattis, there are Lycans in the area. They must be stopped before any more deaths can occur. My men and I need something to give us the upper hand!”<br /><br />"I have read tales of a creature called the Velikimrav that might help you in your quest. It is said that the Velikimrav eggs have a potent substance on them! Properly distilled, it’s said to weaken even the most hardy ofcreatures! Beware, the Velikimrav are known for protecting their lairs and eggs with great fervor!"<br /><br />"Just direct me to these eggs, my good friend..."<br /><br />Stay tuned for the next installment. Will Randell be able to acquire some of these Velikimrav eggs or will this quest lead him to his doom?Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-65403069999062971152009-09-06T20:43:00.000-07:002009-09-06T21:46:52.617-07:00The Timmerland Estate AffairWhen reports of fiendish creatures found their way onto the Prelate's desk, he had no choice than to send a contingent of men to investigate. His first choice was the famed Witch Hunter Randell Burrie. To aid Randell, he sent the capable captain Tealwood and a group of determined soldiers. Since the latest report was at the Timmerland Estate, Mr. Burrie headed there to check the disturbance.<br /><br />Mr. Randell Burrie (star) - REP 5, AC 3, Hardiness 3; Weapon: magical sword & pistol.<br />Pistol: IMP 7, RNG 6<br />Magical Sword: IMP 5, -1 to opponent’s hardiness<br />Dual Class<br />CV: 6<br /><br />Captain Tealwood - REP 5, AC 4, Hardiness 2; Weapon: sword & dagger<br />Sword: IMP 5<br />Elite Melee Trained<br />CV: 5<br /><br />4x Arquebusiers - REP 4, AC 2, Hardiness 0; Weapon: arquebus & dagger<br />Arquebus: IMP 7, RNG 24<br />Dagger: IMP 4<br />CV: 1<br /><br />6x Swordsmen - REP 4, AC 4, Hardiness 0; Weapon: sword & shield<br />Sword: IMP 5<br />CV: 1<br /><br />Total CV: 21<br /><br />Quest goal: Check both buildings for survivors and check all the PEF on the board.<br /><br />For ease, all PEF have a REP of 4.<br /><br />The heroes split up with each controlling 2 arquebusiers and 3 swordsmen.<br /><div><br /><div><br /></div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 322px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 226px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378575992645246114" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SqSKXk8QXKI/AAAAAAAAAJM/9nKR815ftHM/s320/WHAA2-01.JPG" /></div><br /><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The situation at the start of the game. The question mark tokens are the PEF markers (there is one hidden behind the left building).</span></div><br /><div><br />T1(2/1): Soldiers move first. Randell moves up the road and Tealwood moves to the right getting LOS to one of the PEFs, but it was just some unfettered farm animals...<br /><br />T2(4/4):<br /><br />T3(1/4): One PEF moves into the complex, the other moves directly towards Randell's party. Randell and his group moves up looking for the enemy, but finds nothing of note.<br /><br />T4(1/1):<br /><br />T5(5/2): Both Hero groups move up towards the buildings. The main body of the Enemy force (as a PEF) moves around the building coming into sight of Randell's group. It consists of: 1 Alpha Lycan (Big Bad), 2 Brotherhood Lycan, 3 Pack Lycan, and 4 human cultists (it's been a while since I've read the book and didn't understand the gaps for the recruit column in the Lycan Brotherhood so I just decided to improvise). It turns out that there were so many enemy figures that they didn't all fit in the space around the house. Decided to place the human cultists in their own separate group coming out of the house's front door...</div><br /><div><br /></div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 352px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378576003410075778" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SqSKYNCyoII/AAAAAAAAAJU/sR2K9RgKYtM/s320/WHAA2-05.JPG" /><br /><br /><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The PEF is transformed into 10 figures. There isn't enough room to place all the models behind the building...</span></div><br /><br />1 Alpha Lycan (Big Bad) - REP 6, AC 4, Move 16, Hardiness 4; Weapon: Massive Axe<br />Terror, Magic Resist<br />Massive Axe: IMP 7<br />CV: 10<br /><br />2 Brotherhood Lycan - REP 5, AC 4, Move 12, Hardiness 2; Weapon: Arm Blade<br />Arm blade: IMP 5<br />Frenzy, Magic Resist<br />CV: 6<br /><br />3 Pack Lycan - REP 5, AC 4, Move 12, Hardiness 0; Weapon: Spear<br />Spear: IMP 5<br />Frenzy<br />CV: 2<br /><br />4x Swordsmen Cultists - REP 5, AC 4, Move 6, Hardiness 0; Weapon: Sword & shield<br />Sword: IMP 5<br />CV: 2<br /><br />As soon as both enemy groups appear, they encounter a hero group within 12" and both separately test a Test of Wills (as least that's what I went with). The cultists get the drop on the captain's men and they test to charge! As they move in, one arquebusiers draws a bead on the lead cultist and fires but misses. The two groups merge in a scrum. The cultists are able to get numbers on a swordsman scoring a telling blow and putting him OOF (5 dice are rolled for the cultist and only 3 dice for the swordsman). The first cultist scores 2 more successes and takes the swordsman OOF). Captain Tealwood manages to do a bit better fighting both cultists beating them both back but when he is in single combat, the cultist holds his own (Tealwood won with a single success pushing them back 1", then when he was by himself the combatants rolled the same number of success and the combat ends).<br /><br />The bulk of the Lycan's come in view of Randell's group and even though terror griped the men's hearts, they charged the beasts! A single swordsmen made contact with a Pack Lycan and manages to hold his own at the start of the combat (the Lycan was rolling 8 dice - 5 for REP, +1 for frenzy, larger base and the spear to 4 dice. I managed to roll only 2 successes for the Lycan rolling 4 sixes and 2 fives. The swordsman actually won by 1 success)! But the Lycan pushes the swordsman back and the end locked in combat (the Lycan wins by one and pushes the swordsman back and the finally roll equal the fight is over)! The captain seeing his share of wounded push on, but one of the swordsman stammers back.<br /><br />T6(4/2): Both arquebusiers fire at one of the cultist but both miss. The swordsmen move to attack the cultists. It looks grim for the Captain's men as another Swordsmen is OOF (a lot of die rolling, but the better REP cultist continue to prevail).<br /><br />A second swordsman moves to fight the Lycan, but the man that moved up is no match for the Lycan and is OD!<br /><br />The other two continue to parry attacks! Randell sees an opening on a cultist once the swordsman fighting him is OOF, but misses. A couple swordsmen move back to regroup as reaction to their fallen comrades.<br /><br />A pack Lycan and the Alpha fail their charge test and stand back. The rest of the Lycan forces moves in and a huge melee about the complex starts!<br /><br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 342px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 232px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378576008992831778" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SqSKYh10uSI/AAAAAAAAAJc/eVdUx9wCpOM/s320/WHAA2-07.JPG" /><br /><p align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">At this moment, three of the swordsmen are either OOF or OD. The cultist have managed to get the arquebusiers into the fray.</span> </p><p>A cultist takes an arquebusier down, but the other holds his own! The Captain is pitted against two opponents, but only pushes them back. Randell gets into melee with a Pack Lycan is outclassed and is wounded, but survives the onslaught. A second arquebusier is killed by a Pack Lycan. Both an arquebusier and a swordsman flee off the board and even Randell chooses to retire. At the end of the turn, the heroes are in bad shape. Only 1 arquebusier, 2 swordsmen, Tealwood and Randell are alive. </p><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 319px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 212px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378576025241186994" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SqSKZeXu8rI/AAAAAAAAAJk/ZBUF5N-VKJE/s320/WHAA2-09.JPG" /> </p><p align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The remaining heroes are attempting just to stay alive.</span></p><p>T7(1/2): The final arquebusier is killed by a Pack Lycan and the heroic swordsman is finally killed. Captain Tealwood survives the attack as does Randell, but is startled not once but twice in the combat! On their turn the remaining heroes retreat off the board.<br /><br />The Aftermath: The two routers and two wounded swordsmen return to base, but the other figures are never heard from again. All in all 2 swordsmen and 3 arquebusiers are killed in the exchange with none of the enemy even being taken out of the fight. Our heroes will want revenge!<br /><br />Notes: This game was inspired by the games that were played a couple of weeks ago on the yahoo group for Two Hour Wargames, but I never got a chance to play them until now. Once I got the rules in my head, the game went pretty fast. I forgot due to the speed in some places to actually take pictures and the like, but all in all, a good time. I have some questions about the rules, but I’m sure they will get answered quickly on the yahoo group dedicated to the many THW game systems. </p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-75423671541757050992009-08-18T16:07:00.000-07:002009-08-18T16:09:29.464-07:00The Great Gencon Giveaway!<p>Okay, so perhaps not really a giveaway, but I did manage to sell off a bunch of my boardgames! It seems that though the years, I have amassed quite a collection of boardgames. All told my collection is well into the 100 range. Of course, that means in order to play every boardgame that I own, my friends and I have to play 2 games a week, every week for an entire year! </p><p>So, after reading a couple of blogs about trying to manage the size of our addictions ( <a href="http://yearoffrugalgaming.blogspot.com/">http://yearoffrugalgaming.blogspot.com/</a> ), I decided to lower the number of games that I have. To that end, I went and took stock at my ever increasing game library and I noticed that I had to cull the herd. With one of the largest gaming conventions (www.Gencon.com) an hour away, I set out to take a number of my games for sale. My thought was I’d take a couple of the games that it was obvious that we weren’t going to ever play and get some spending money. Two large plastic tubs and about 30 games later, I traveled to the convention center to see if I could make some money. I used boardgamegeek.com as a starting point for the selling price, but I also allowed for the price to go down over the three days (100% the first, 90% the second and 75% the third). My thought was that even 75% of what I wanted was better than having to lug all the unused games back to my house.</p><p>The only downer was the commission cost for the service! They took 15% of the final sell price as a commission fee and there was an initial cost to place it in the store (50 cent per game if placed into the store and 1 dollar is placed into the auction).</p><p>Of the 30 games I took to the convention only 4 didn’t sell! My totals were $586.00. After the $87.90 commission fee (and the 16 dollar initial fee), I made out with $482.10. Of course, a lot of that was spent at Gencon, but it’s nice to have the entire convention paid for by stuff you sell! Now that I got rid of about a third of my collection, I don’t feel too bad picking up the occasional boardgame again! </p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-58436800382586745662009-07-06T18:48:00.001-07:002010-02-02T01:39:53.021-08:00The Great Mage Knight ConversionHalf way through working through my idea for the Murky Caves (my Origin’s game for SBH), I knew that I was going to need a bunch more miniatures if I was going to have enough to run the dungeon as I wanted. I had bought a bunch of D&D singles (pre painted plastic miniatures), but it was just not going to be enough. After determining exactly how much I had spent on stuff, I remembered that I had a lot of old Mage Knight figures that hadn’t seen the light of day for a while. <div><br /></div><p><strong>Preparing the Figures</strong></p><p>I needed to get the miniatures off click base. There were two main reasons for this. First the base is 1.5” around which was too big for my purposes (most of my stuff is on a 1” base) and second, I had to hide the click nature of the miniature. </p><p>1. I found the best tool for the job is a razor blade scraper (used to remove paint and such from glass). Carefully slide the blade under the miniature until it pops off. Some were relatively easy and some took a little work.</p><p>2. I found a great deal on wooden disks online somewhere so I wanted to use them. The only major problem is that superglue won’t attach a miniature to the disk. In the end, I used a two-part epoxy and it worked great. Remember that the fumes that are produced are dangerous – have decent ventilation! As you can see I have two wooden disk sizes available a normal 1” disk and a larger 1.5” disk.</p><p>3. After the epoxy dries (mine only took about 10 minutes), paint the base black. This is mainly due to the fact that all my D&D miniatures are a simple black base and they fit right in.</p><p align="center"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5355529564878648018" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlKpw7KxstI/AAAAAAAAAIE/91Cv5KHo-1I/s320/MKC-02.JPG" /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">(From Left to right: a starting MK figure, the scraper used, the same model off the base, the epoxy I used, the wooden disks, a model on a disk and the figure on the black painted base)</span></p><div>I hope to go back and repaint some of the MK figures. Most of my come of the earlier sets and the paint job is really bad. Hokey in some respects! I’d also like to finish the bases on some of them to make then stand out less, but it’s definitely not a priority.</div><div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5355529781917885970" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlKp9js9phI/AAAAAAAAAIM/i2lQCQ1nLaU/s320/MKC-06.JPG" /></div><div align="center"><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">(You can see the number of empty bases from the now converted figures)<br /></div></span><p>Most of my MK collection is from the dungeons series that came out. I have the whole line of heroes that I should go ahead and convert as well. More so now since I really don’t have enough of playable mage knight figures!<br /></p><div></div>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-19975216430260227712009-07-05T08:20:00.000-07:002009-07-06T14:36:44.972-07:00Origins 2009 ReportFinally Origins has come and gone and I can finally stop working on the games I’m running and start working on actually playing games. At least I can say that a good understanding of what to do and what not to do for conventions. For those who don’t know, Origins is a gaming convention that takes place around the end of June in Columbus OH (its official title is Origins Game Fair). It’s a five day event that has a little bit of everything a gamer would want! Board games, miniature games and RPGs go on throughout the day.<br /><div><br /><div><p><strong>Thursday</strong></p><p>We got to the convention center around 10am and after a brief visit to get my badge and a small tour around the miniatures room, it was time to check out the Dealer’s Hall. I used a lot of restraint and didn’t buy anything, but I used the time to mark where I would be making the trip back at a later date.</p><p>At 1pm, I headed to play in a Fear and Faith (F&F) demo by Ganesha Games ( <a href="http://www.songofblades.blogspot.com/">http://www.songofblades.blogspot.com/</a> ). When I got there, Andrea (the designer) was explaining the rules for the game. I jumped in as the zombie player and got trounced handily. It turns out that my opponent had played the fantasy version of the game and wanted to see the differences. Of course before I sat down, each of the human survivors were given a single grenade. It was a slaughter! Still fun though.</p><p>2pm was a Battlestations game by Gorilla Games ( <a href="http://www.battlestations.info/">http://www.battlestations.info/</a> ). Again I got to play with the designer (Jason) and they were trying out their new expansion that will be released at Gencon. For those that have never played, Battlestations is a light RPG/board game that the players are all characters on a space ship completing missions for the UREF. Each character has a race (which gives a special ability), 5 stats (Engineering, Piloting, Combat, Science & Athletics) and a profession. Mechanics are simple (2d6 + stat vs. Difficulty number) and the action is quite entertaining. There are rules to advance your character and the like (and with clones, you can never truly die if you don’t want to). The game was a blast and I had so much fun, I went back for more.</p><p>Every year, my friends and I head to Schmidt’s for “Sausage fest” ( <a href="http://www.schmidthaus.com/">http://www.schmidthaus.com/</a> ). They have an all-you –can-eat sausage buffet with all the trimmings. Add a 32 oz beer and a cream puff for desert and you got a German experience to knock your socks off! It’s been a tradition since we starting going to Origins and I’m sure it will continue!</p><p>I did get to play a demo of Squadron Strike ( <a href="http://www.adastragames.com/">http://www.adastragames.com/</a> ). Once you get your brain wrapped about the 3D nature of the game, it’s pretty fun. I wanted to play in a full fledge ship to ship battle before I made any commitment. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for my pocket book), I never got into a full battle over the weekend…</p><p><strong>Friday </strong></p><p>9am: I actually ran a Starmada: Battlestar Galactica game ( <a href="http://www.mj12games.com/">http://www.mj12games.com/</a> ). I had 2 players show up so I gave them two ships apiece and let them tear into each other. Due to the amount of work that I was doing for the SBH game, I didn’t have much in the way of scenario or terrain, but the players didn’t seem to care! In the end, the colonial forces wiped out the Cylon attack force with minor damage to the Pegasus. </p><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 339px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 221px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354999863924003346" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlDIARV0khI/AAAAAAAAAHc/56zr71jsLbc/s320/Origins-024.JPG" /></p><p>1pm: I had a single player for my Song of Blades and Heroes game from Ganesha Games so after a quick rule discussion, we started playing the game. The player caught on really quick and it was good fun. It’s too bad more people didn’t want to jump in, but that’s due in my opinion two major reasons. One, the Warlord/Reaper guys already do a huge dungeon game complete with an awesome Hirst Arts( <a href="http://www.hirstarts.com/">http://www.hirstarts.com/</a> ) setup (something I didn’t have with my converted Mage Knight figures and simple vinyl dungeon tiles). Secondly, there was a ton of SBH games running throughout the convention (too much of a good thing can still lead to too much). <img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354999876491939250" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlDIBAKQDbI/AAAAAAAAAHs/zomXG8EinWw/s320/Origins-033.JPG" /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354999868990295522" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlDIAkNuDeI/AAAAAAAAAHk/zZ2qhY21gC0/s320/Origins-028.JPG" /></p><p>After a quick peek into the Dealer’s Hall (I played the reprinted Tales of the Arabian Nights board game by Zman games – which I would have bought had they not sold out of it) and a little dinner, it was back to the miniature hall. I went to play a playtest of the Tales of Blade and Heroes, the new RPG from Ganesha Games. Personally, I’m a little leery of playing RPGs at conventions having too many bad experiences to count, but I really like the miniature system and the designer is awesome so I figured what the heck… Also, I wanted to see if I could adapt the rules for use as an expanded SBH miniatures game. The system was quite entertaining (the exploding 6 mechanic and the boosts were a great) and although I don’t think I’d ever play it as a pure RPG game, it has a ton of potential for use in the SBH miniature game. </p><p><strong>Saturday </strong></p><p>9am: Again a Starmada: Battlestar Galactica game and this time I had six players (I even had someone with generics, but I just didn’t have the space). Each player had a single miniature (granted it was about 1000 pts worth) and it was a slugfest. In the end, the Cylon players managed to destroy the Atlantia and cripple the Pegasus having only minimal damage to a single baseship. I was pretty glad that the scenario yielded a 1-1 overall! </p><br /><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 336px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 246px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354999882747117762" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlDIBXdmgMI/AAAAAAAAAH0/z2ZnSFZ3L9Q/s320/Origins-040.JPG" /></p><br /><p>~2pm: Due to the previous game running a bit long and the reasons above, I didn’t have any players for my second SBH game on Saturday. It’s unfortunate that I spend all the time, energy and money getting the game ready and not having any players, but there wasn’t much I can do. Thankfully most of the stuff that I prepared for the SBH game, I can reuse for my own personal games so I’m not too worried! Actually, I learned some valuable lessons in game presentation and scenario design that should help me in the conventions to come. I was a little disheartened, but I used my new found freedom to get into a second Battlestations game (Note: the second game was great has well. I tip my hat to the brothers). </p><p>~7pm: Due to dinner running over, I was unable to make it back in time for either of the games I wanted to play in. The first was a Hordes of the Things (HOTT) tournament. I did stop by and watch some of the action, but never got into a game. The second was a game using the “With Hostile Intent” rules (a great name for a spaceship combat game in my opinion). In the end, I spent the time moving from table to table watching all the different games being played. </p><p><strong>Sunday </strong></p><p>8am: I played in a Ghostbuster game that was a blast. The presentation was wondrous and the game play was perfect for early morning of the last day. We defeated the bad guy (you know the one) and walked away with a cool sticker showing off my ghostbuster skills (not mine, I couldn’t hit anything really).</p><p><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 317px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 216px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354999893455201586" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SlDIB_Wm5TI/AAAAAAAAAH8/2cnDHmqS86I/s320/Origins-095.JPG" /></p><p>The rest of the day was making my way back into the dealer’s hall to buy all of my needed purchases. I learned how to play Steam – the ‘remake’ of Age of Steam. It’s more forgiving than AoS so I might buy that as soon as Tales of Arabian Nights arrives. Due to a calculation error, I spend a little more than I wanted to, but nothing that I can’t handle pending I don’t buy any miniature stuff for a while (like until Gencon). </p><br /><p><strong>Notable purchases:</strong> </p><p>All Things Zombie (ATZ): Haven – I even got a quick demo by the Ed (the designer). I really need to finish my zombies and pick up some modern figures for use in ATZ and F&F. As an added bonus, I got 5150 book 1 for 10 bucks ( <a href="http://www.twohourwargames.com/">http://www.twohourwargames.com/</a> )! </p><p>Song of Splintered Lands: I knew that this was going to be an auto-buy since I have all the rules in the SBH series. What I didn’t know that I would be leaving the booth with ~50 dollars worth of their beautiful 15mm figures. I’m in the process of removing 15mm from the scales I play in, but these miniatures are beautiful and work awesome side by side with the larger 28mm cousins. </p><p>Savage Worlds – Fantasy Companion: This was a complete impulse buy for me, but due to a blog that I follow I picked it up. I have used the Savage World system for Dark City Games solo adventures and I’ve also seen people using the Savage World rules for purely miniature game so I figured that this would help me expand the rules ( <a href="http://www.peginc.com/">http://www.peginc.com/</a> ). </p><p>Spaceship models: I bought a second Prometheus from the Iron Wind Metals booth ( <a href="http://www.ironwindmetals.com/">http://www.ironwindmetals.com/</a> ) . The one I have will need some serious work since the engine piece doesn’t match up with the ship hull. I figured that I could use the second one for some serious BSG actions! I also bought a couple of ships from Ninja Magic ( <a href="http://www.ninjamagic.com/">http://www.ninjamagic.com/</a> ). Mainly the main colony ship from Homeworld and a couple of BSG inspired ships that actually are in the BS Prometheus fan story. </p><p>Dominion: Intrigue – The expansion for Dominion was out and I saw people walking about with it all weekend. The game itself is a good one so I really wanted to pick up the expansion. I have not been disappointed yet, although the new actions cards are a bit strange. I’m not sure why they needed to make it a fully playable game on its own (it has the needed VP and money cards), but I’m not going to let that harm my view of the game. </p><p><strong>Final Thoughts</strong> </p><p>Origins Game Fair is always a great time! I enjoy the weekend of gaming and although I didn’t get to play all the games I wanted to, it was still a lot of fun. Now I have to relax and read all the books I bought from the convention and get ready for Gencon.<br /><br /><br /></p><div></div></div></div>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-13151506386279278792009-05-08T20:49:00.001-07:002009-05-08T20:58:48.808-07:00No 'games' to reportOkay, so another month goes by with little actual gaming occurring. The big issue is that I do find time to play games; every Thursday I go to the local game store to play either Warmachine/Hordes or MonPoc. Warmachine was in the mk2 playtest for April which was very exciting! It changes a lot of what has come before, but I find myself wanting to play games with the new set. It's a nice change.<br /><br />I'm still working on the both the starmada and SBH scenarios for Origins. I have to make sure that I have enough stuff for a decent game, but not alot in terms of packages. I don't want to have to drive myself so I would really like to limit it to a case or so.<br /><br />My current project is making the room monsters and the assorted accesories located in the dungeon. I am in the process of taking a bunch of my old mage knight miniatures and rebasing them for the game. Hopefully, I'll have that done in the next few days and I can begin to playtest what I got...Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7207828919671533809.post-18582916756650443612009-04-10T23:30:00.000-07:002009-04-10T23:47:24.597-07:00The Dungeon - SBH<div align="left"><br /></div><div align="left"> Since I am going to be running a dungeon crawl for 6 players at Origins using the Song of Blades and Heroes rule set, I need to work out how I wanted the game to flow for the event. The first test was to figure out what sizes or rooms and corridors that I'll need to make the game fun and challenging. Although I would love to have a huge 3D dungeon for the event, I just won’t have the needed place to carry and store it.<br /><br />So, a while ago I picked up the game Dungeon Bash from The Other Game Company (TOGC) and while cleaning my gaming area found the tiles that I had made for that game. I figured that I’d use those as a starting point and move from there. The Dungeon Bash rules also have a random dungeon generator so I figured that I could use that to create my dungeon. The tiles are your standard D&D variety. All corridors are 2 squares (read inches here) wide with two room sizes - small (4 by 6) and large (6 by 8).</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">Due to the ability for players to bring their own warbands to the event, I need to have a warband that comes completely from the printed rosters to test out my ideas than the one I normally play. Looking over the rules for dungeons, I came up with the following:</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">1x Elf Archer (55pts)</div><div align="left">2x Dwarf Elite Warrior (46pts apiece)</div><div align="left">1x Human Warrior (30pts)</div><div align="left">1x Halfling Thief (16pts)1x human Mage (40pts)</div><div align="left">1x Human Leader (60pts)</div><div align="left"><strong>Total:</strong> 293 pts with 100 pts of personalities</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">I'll eventually need to create 6 warbands for the game so I'm not sure if I like the multiple race types in this one. Only more playtesting (and seeing what model I actually have) will determine this. I also want to limit the number of figures in the warbands that I create (although 7 isn’t a bad starting point).<br /><br /><strong>A couple of rule tests:</strong><br />1. Each player (and monsters) will be given a card to determine the turn order for that round. I think that will be the easiest and give some randomness to the turn order. I haven’t decided how to move the enemies in the event yet since the rules for failures.<br /></div><div align="left">2. At the end of the player’s turn, they will check for wandering monsters by rolling 2 dice. If doubles are rolled and it is equal or greater to that player’s wandering monster number (WMN), a wandering monster group will be placed in some cool fashion. A player’s WMN starts at 6 and will lower by one each turn it is unsuccessful.<br /></div><div align="left">3. Normally monsters will not have enough treasure on them to matter, but after each monster killed, 2 dice are rolled. On doubles, a number of treasure cards will be drawn determining the worth of the stash. Some especially powerful creatures will add a die to this roll (still looking for doubles). </div><div align="left"><p align="left">4. Each character may carry a single treasure load without penalty. Big creatures can carry 2 and huge can carry 4 without penalty.<br /><br />For the game, the normal sized creature group was about 100 points and the wandering monster groups were either 2 orc warriors (1-2), two orc archers (3-4) or one of each (5-6). The ‘quest’ room was around 150 points.<br /><br />Note: the first of the two numbers for the combat results is the die roll.</p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323318241387991650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SeA5vIRJ0mI/AAAAAAAAAGE/2mHrwPPirXg/s320/Dungeon-02.JPG" border="0" /></div><div align="left"> </div><div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The 'start' room with the Heroes all inside.</span></div><div align="left"><br /><strong>Turn 1 and 2:</strong> Heroes start to move up to the closest door. Both corridors are long and complaex (I rolled really high for both).<br /><br /><strong>Turn 3:</strong> My human warrior end her turn next to the door finding a large room with 4 orcs and a single treasure (I was places a treasure horde on a 5+, but I might change how this works)! The mage casts transfix at the closest warrior and successes. One of the elite dwarf warriors moves into the doorway. I also rolled double 5 for the wandering monster roll (WMR) and 2 orc warriors appeared down a second hallway. Both orc Archers activate and shoot at the dwarf with nothing happening (3+3 v 5+4 and 1+3 v 4+4).<br /></div><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323318247300850690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SeA5veS45AI/AAAAAAAAAGM/26Q3mSWuyb0/s320/Dungeon-04.JPG" border="0" /></p><p align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The heroes are being flanked as most are doing battle in the large room.</span></p><p><br /><strong>Turn 4:</strong> My elf archer moves and attacks but doesn’t manage to score a hit (2+3 v 6+3). The dwarf move father into the room to attack pushing his opponent back (5+4 v 5+3).The human warrior moves in and knocks an orc warrior down (2+3 c 1+3). The Mage casts bolt at the transfix model, but the effect doesn’t seem to do any harm (1+4 v 6+3). No wandering monsters (needed to roll double 6s). The orc archers shoot at the halfling and the elite dwarf warrior but nothing happens (2+1 v 5+1 and 4+3 v 5+3). The orc warrior shakes off the spell and attacks but is knocked down by the dwarf (3+3 v 4+4).<br /><br /><strong>Turn 5:</strong> The leader moves to engage the orc while the human warrior power attacks the fallen warrior scoring a gruesome kill (4+5 v 2+2). One the orc archer runs to the door and opens it and the other archer runs off the explored area.<br /><br /><em>Playtest thought:</em> I determined that the next wandering monster would include any model that fled from a battle. This won’t be an issue when the complete dungeon will be set up for the event.<br /><br />The elf archer attacks the warrior but merely pushes it back (5+3 v 5+1). Both of the dwarves move with the second one making an attack. Due to the door instead of being fallen, the model falls (1+4 v 3+1)! Still no wandering monsters.<br /><br /><em>Playtest note:</em> Since the door was ‘opened’ by the archer, perhaps he should have just been placed one base width through the door.<br /><br />The Orc warrior attacks the human leader killing him (6+3 v 2+2). The elf human warrior and mage flee 1 move (It should have only been the elf since no other characters could see the leader, but I was messing up how the +1 Quality for the leader was working so it kind of balances out – I’ll know next time).<br /><br /><strong>Turn 6:</strong> The mage transfixes the orc warrior and the elf archer aims and finishes it off (3+5 v 1+2).One of the dwarves power attacks the orc archer killing him (4+4 v 3+1) while the second dwarf picks up the treasure. The orc warrior pushes his target (4+3 v 5+3)<br /><br /><strong>Turn 7:</strong> The elf archer moves up and power attacks the warrior knocking to the ground (6+3 v 4+1), but the orc warrior stand and attacks and pushes the human warrior back (5+3 v 3+2).<br /><br /><strong>Turn 8:</strong> Heroes surround the final orc and a dwarf gruesomely finishes it off (6+3 v 2+0).<br /><br /><strong>Turn 9:</strong> Heroes discover a small room with a mummy and two skeletal archers (no treasure). Both skeletal archers attack the human warrior – the first manages to knock her down, but the second can’t kill her off (4+1 v 1+3 and 5+1 v 6+2). The mummy (the reaper model) moves next to the fallen human warrior who tries to flee but is killed instead. </p><div align="left"><br /></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323318251043086786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SeA5vsPG4cI/AAAAAAAAAGU/aapBhUleyVU/s320/Dungeon-06.JPG" border="0" /> <div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The human warrior must have found an old crypt.</span></div><div align="left"><br /><strong>Turn 10:</strong> The elf aims at the mummy and hits it with a lethal shot (6+1 v 1+2) making its quality 6+. There are still no random monsters (my WMN is now a 1). The skeletal archer fails two dice and that round ends. </div><div align="left"> </div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323318253934629698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SeA5v3AgU0I/AAAAAAAAAGc/F5voHFKR2Do/s320/Dungeon-07.JPG" border="0" /> <div align="center"><span style="color:#ff0000;">A clean shot from the elf archer strikes the mummy wounding it!</span></div><div align="left"><br /><strong>Turn 11:</strong> The elf archer rolls three 1s ending the hero’s turn. I also roll doubles and 3 orc archers appear. One of the orc archers attacks the Halfling knocking him to the ground (5+1 v 3+1 – normally a push back, but can’t due to the fact that there is a model in the way). </div><div align="left"><br />There were a couple more turns (4 to be exact), but most of them were spent attacking the mummy in the doorway and the orc archers that appeared in a separate corridor. At this point, I had ran out of time to play so I decided to roll up the whole dungeon to see what it looks like once complete. I stupidly didn’t keep track of the amount of time played so that will have to be in the second test. All in all, it was a good playtest. I have some ideas for the set up and the like that I’ll need to get finished as soon as possible so I can try them out. I have about 2 months to finish everything.<br /></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323318258884628610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p313gDzgtwc/SeA5wJcrUII/AAAAAAAAAGk/Q2no1BvENBA/s320/Dungeon-09.JPG" border="0" /> <p align="center"><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">As you can see, it was a big dungeon complex. I wonder how long it would have taken to actually 'explore'.</span><br /><br /></p>Brendan Mayhughhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10151134853650487382noreply@blogger.com0