Apocalypse At 'Em

This afternoon's (and morning's) gaming was all about Apocalypse.  My local gaming group is putting together an event for November (Fallpocalypse in Japan on the off chance that's local to you as well).  We figured it might be a good thing to have at least one game under our belts in the new system, so we queued up around 7,500 points a side and braved the weather to chuck some dice.

Get in there.  Mix it up.

As a prelude to talking about the game itself, let me say that in the past, most of my experiences with Apocalypse have been poor.  I have sat around a lot, games have moved unbearably slow, and a variety of poor attitudes from the players have all been contributing factors.  However, this game was a complete 180 degree turnaround.  I spent quite a bit of time just after the game thinking about why that was, and I believe I've been able to suss out a few of the reasons we were successful.

Just Rolling With It
Each of our players were willing to be flexible.  When one of our guys had to decommit on Thursday due to a morning commitment, we adjusted.  I suggested we play the Meat Grinder scenario, and allow his team to take between half and all of their units in their initial wave.  This allowed them to spend the first phase of the game on equal footing.  We loaned a few units across both sides of the board.  We even had two Mephistons on one side, due to a lack of communication, but whatever.  It's Apocalypse.  We just wanted to see this thing happen.

Small Victories
In a game this size, with plenty of ridiculous things happening, "winning" can only matter so much.  The objectives really seem to be there more to provide a reason to go to various points on the board.  Go to those points, forget the larger picture for a second, and wait to see something cool.  One side went Super-heavy hunting with their Assault Terminators, and let me tell you, they found them.  And the Apocalyptic Explosion that went with it.

You can just see Kharn(right), sans-unit, charging alone upfield.

I used a special power to attempt to bring down three flyers in one move.  The environmental condition were "all ranged weapons have 'Gets Hot'", so I possessed a Storm Raven, fired its Lascannon at another Storm Raven, and its Multimelta at a Storm Talon.  To cap off the move, I fired off all the Hurricane Bolters.  My buddy kept saying, "But they're strength four, so you can't do anything," until he finally figured out the joke.  And then his flyers went down.  It was worth a pretty good laugh even if you were on the wrong side of the exchange.

Proper Perspective
All your stuff is going to die.  Accept that fact.  And it is going to go down quickly.  I lost my Keeper of Secrets to bolter fire and angry Fenrisian Wolves.  What the heck?  Oh right, it's too many dice.  This stuff is just gonna happen.  Now, time to move the two Daemon Princes and the Bloodthirster.

Ticking Timebomb
The clock had a major effect and was a huge upgrade.  The 'just plan to shoot your whole day and play until you get to the end' way of doing things was terrible by comparison.  We put a thirty minute cap on player turns.  It might seem like a short time, but of the 12 player turns, I think we got close to the cap twice.  The first turn was something of a leisurely stroll.  Once we realized, "Oh hey, we need to have a bit of a plan and move quickly through movement to get shooting and assault in," our turns were moving quick.  This had the effect of keeping everyone far more engaged as conversations and combats did not drag on like they are wont to.

Keep the Joke Going
Really, there isn't much better to this whole thing than enjoying time spent with friends truly enjoying yourself.  If you're laughing, it's all good.  Even if you're crying.  Nothing is better than rolling a one and a two on a three inch charge, commenting on how it's a good thing that you just made it, then needing a three and coming up double one on the the very next charge.  When the snake eyes are staring back at you, you gotta laugh.

So that is my time of musing.  To sum up for the TLDR crowd:  40K is a game, Apocalypse is an event.  Get out there and blow stuff up.

Hobby Update: On the Board

I haven't exactly been killing it so far this year when it comes to painting.  That, my friends, is what's called an understatement.

The good news is that, in the last two weeks, I've managed to focus and get some things finished.  And it only took until Fall got here.  The main project I've been trying to get to the Finished stage on my board is a squad of regular Chaos Space Marines for my Word Bearers.  After playing most of the year with an army in degrading disrepair, I'm making a push to get everything rebuilt to an appropriate specification.  In the exuberance of my youth, I glued plastic to plastic and tried to make a unit of dudes that each looked awesome individually.  Everybody is posed.  Everybody has the flashiest available bit.  Unfortunately, nobody looks particularly cohesive.  In game, it was pretty darn hard to remember who had what, where the assault weapons were positioned, and which unit had what.  That was how it felt for me, which made me feel bad for my opponent.  Heck, most of the time, I forgot to say who had what before it mattered.  It wasn't good.

So Squad One is done.  Who is squad one?  Ten Marines with bolt pistols and close combat weapons.  Everybody is armed that way, except the bros with meltaguns.  WYSIWYG.  While that's a simple change and something most veteran gamers already do, I feel like it makes a big improvement, both in terms of the way the unit looks and what that means to my games.  Cohesiveness is a wonderful thing.

I am pretty happy with the way these guys turned out.  From a distance, the red is a deep vibrant color, reminiscent of the crimson that made me want to play Word Bearers in the first place.  Up close, it's a little bit messier and a less consistent than I would like.  There are spots where I hit the highlights just right, and spots where things didn't quite come together.  On the plus side, four coats of red means the base layers are really in there, so my previous issues regarding a dark undercoat without enough pigment over top of it aren't an issue.  Despite a few flaws, I will proudly put these guys on the table.  Maybe it's not the best work I've done, but these guys are solid, if I do say so myself.

Then, surprise of surprises, the motivation kept on rolling!  The Coven Throne has been three colors of green for quite some time.  I laid down the first layers of airbrushing and haven't done anything since.  After finishing the Marines, I decided, "Hey, it's close enough to done if I feel like just a little more effort."  I laid down one more shade of green and then a really solid wash on the trailing vapors.  After that, I stared at it for a good five minutes.  It had all the colors I planned on putting on it, but it really didn't feel done, nor did it look like it belonged with other models in the same army.  When put next to the other models I have done, the green doesn't pop the same way and the contrasting colors simply weren't there.  If I wanted the models to mesh, I had a bit of work left to do.

So that meant more planning.  A friend of mine, who is an excellent painter, had previously suggested Warlock Purple would set off the greens nicely, but Red Gore would come off similarly and would help give the impression of allies when I run Daemons and Chaos together.  I also wanted some black to ensure the Throne tied in with the Manticore.  I knew that I couldn't change the colors on the spirits, so the throne section of the model was the only thing that could be altered.  Red never would have worked for all real estate, so I went heavy on the black for the whole thing and tried to catch some bits and bobs with flashes of color.  In all, it took me about two and a half hours of extra work, but it came together way better than I could have imagined.

So what's next?  I gotta keep it rolling.  I have a unit of Bane Thralls/Daemons to work on.  Then it's back to the second squad of regular Chaos Space Marines.  I've got a bunch of dudes in the drink, trying to get Simple Green to do the work of getting my stuff back to square one.  Hopefully the motivation keeps on rolling.


Hobby Accomplishments!
-Painted the first Coterie
-Painted the Coven Throne/Daemon Whatever
-Ran and played in a tournament (more to come)

To Do List!
-Get the other coteries cleaned up and new
-Paint the Bane Thralls/Lesser Daemons

See Me Rollin

What I'm playing on.  Not too shabby.

Despite a few ups and downs (and I mean that sorta literally. Lots of earthquakes here, but little ones and it's apparently just business as usual after), I've managed to get my first few games in in Japan.  It's been a very good experience.  The local folks seem to be extremely flexible about what they're playing.  That seems to be the case for everything, so it may mean a pretty transient metagame, which makes sense with so many people rotating in and out.  Honestly, I'm kind of excited about that.  It means lots of new challenges and no must haves in my list.  Obviously, we're looking at mostly power armor, which is just about the norm everywhere, but there seems to be plenty of variety in the flavor available.

But, when hammers hammer, they totally hammer.

I've also made a drop from the typical 1850 point games I played for most of last year to 1500 points.  This is for a couple reasons.  Number one, again, runs back to new challenges.  Going in with blind lists and only having 1500 points means trying to have solutions for problems with resources that are even dearer.  Every troop unit that goes down makes the road to scoring even tougher.  Each time a hammer fails to break its target, the opponent's is free to wreak havoc.  It makes the game tougher and the board seem a little more open.  I like the challenge, though certain mismatches yield uphill battles.

Second, I don't know if you've heard, but there is a new Daemons codex out.  I don't have it.  While that really wouldn't stop me from playing at a higher points level, it feels weird to have a big Word Bearers army and not have any daemons in it.  It's kind of a shame, as I've heard some things that sound pretty cool about the book, but time and opportunity haven't met for my acquisition of the aforementioned book.

To these larger thoughts, I'd like to add three micro-level observations from each of my three games.  From my most recent game is this little nugget.  Grey Knights suck.  It's not exactly a new sentiment, but holy cow, do they try to take my fun and stomp all over it.  I'm sure they're good normally, but against an army with as many things with the "Daemon" rule as mine, it becomes a real uphill struggle.    I threw my Daemon Prince into a Paladins squad knowing he'd die, but hoping he'd take out the enemy warlord in the process.  Terminator troops make Possessed hammer units sad.  Land Raiders are tough to crack (as always).  Thankfully, everyone did there job.  While I didn't have much left, I squeaked it out, though that doesn't do anything to lessen my Grey Knight hate.

Picture preceded by: "It can't possibly happen again..."

From game two, I learned that bad luck on key rolls can only produce a shake of the head and a little laugh, cuz there's nothing else you can really do.  I played kill points against a Blood Angels army that had two serious hammer units consisting of Assault Terminators plus a Captain in a Storm Raven and Death Company with a Chaplain in a Drop Pod.  I planned on letting the Daemon Prince (with multiple boons!) go to work on the Terminators, but it was not to be.  I rolled FOUR ones on Daemon Weapon rolls.  That guy took all game trying to take out a five man assault squad and a ten man tactical squad.  It was ridiculous.  On the other hand, my Possessed popped up with AP3 weapons on the charge and totally wiped the Death Company in one go (minus the Chaplain in a challenge), so Lady Luck really does swing both ways.

Finally, from my very first game, I've begun "Playing to a Story" as I like to call it.  A few other members of the gang have made up a setting in which there games take place.  I have written up a little something to be an episode that will become a part of my army's history.  This means a little extra bookkeeping, but with the way things are in the codex, what's a little more?  I'm tracking specific events and deeds performed by various units and trying to produce certain things.  This doesn't always mean making the most tactical decision, but it adds a fun RPG element to my games.  As a general overview of what I'm talking about, my warlord is trying to secure the patronage of a minor deity, and to do that I am attempting to do things like force morale checks, headhunt HQ's, and force enemies to flee off the board (which is tough to do against all these marines).  It's actually a decent sized list, and I'm trying to come up with additional objectives, but it adds some spice to the decision making process which has been really enjoyable.

Homemade Special

One of my biggest draws about Fantasy/40K/Pathfinder/every game ever is the possibility of an on the field avatar.  Not THE Avatar, but, rather, an idea of a character given tiny form.

With this thread of thought in mind, I and a couple of friends decided to give the homemade design process a run during our weekly gaming session.  Each of us plays the same army fairly regularly at this point.  In making a set of special characters, we though we could put an interesting twist on our standard games.  Not only would it mix up the way units interact and provide some uniqueness, but it would help us structure a narrative around the games.

Antisthenes leading his merry band

So this is what I came up with:

Antisthenes, Master of the Host   200 Points
WS  BS   S   T   W    I    A   Ld    Sv
5      5      4    4    3   5    3   10     3+

Wargear:  Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak Grenades,
Sigil of Corruption, Gift of Mutation

Warlord Trait:  Black Crusader

Word Bearers vs. Death Wing

Special Rules:  Beseech the Dark Gods, Zealot, Demagogue,
Champion of Chaos, Magister of Rituals

Magister of Rituals:  An army that includes Antisthenes
can count one squad of Possessed Marines as Scoring.

Chaos Artefact:  The Accursed Crozius
S: +2   AP:  4  Special Rules:  Melee, Daemon Weapon, Legion

Legion:  On a turn in which the Daemon Weapon adds attacks,
roll a D3:  1: Re-roll Hits and Wounds.  2: AP2.  3: +2 A and I.

My Word Bearers have been wishing for a Dark Apostle worth being "the guy."  Someone who you look at and think, "Yeah, he'd lead a legion of psychotic zealots."  The standard Dark Apostle is a decent buy in terms of being a force multiplier, but in reality, he is only his special rules and wargear.  You take him for the Zealot rule and hope the Sigil of Corruption keeps your investment safe.  I understand him being a second to the Chaos Lord, but not really as the face of the franchise.  For the Word Bearers, something a little different makes sense. 

I'll pass on trying to take this objective.

I kicked off with most of the basic Chaos Lord statistics.  I reduced the weapon skill by one, reasoning that even if he were going to be "teh awesome", he still wouldn't necessarily be the master of blades.  I added the Dark Apostle special rules, a Warlord Trait, and went for a very minor force org adjustment.  Finally, I thought, "Time to come up with a daemon weapon."  While raking my mother-in-law's leaves, it occurred to me to make an artefact that reflected the Daemonkin table of the Possessed.  Obviously, this can be very random, but so it goes.  In his first three games of service, he's had positive results.  In the first game, he mostly did mop up duty.  A Daemon Prince on his last wound, plus a wounded enemy special character formed an auspicious pair of pelts to start with.  The second game saw him hit a timely roll against some Assault Terminators and roll a squad by himself.  The third game, against the same Deathwing army, he rolled the dreaded one.  In the end, he accounted for a total of two terminators.  He has yet to die, which, frankly, is quite surprising to me.  There have been a lot of Thunder Hammers floating around lately.  We'll see what the future brings for him.

Hobby Update: Spousal Perspectives, Death Company and More

I imagine that many men who play Warhammer or something like it have had something similar to the following conversation with their wives:

Wife:  I like that your army men are on the kitchen counter.  They're cute.

Me:  ...Um, they're the Death Company of the Blood Angels Chapter.

Wife:  They're still cute.

Can a unit with the Rage USR be cute?

Anyway, these past couple weeks have been good as far as painting progress.  Actually, quite good.  I managed to finish up the aforementioned Death Company.  I painted the entirety of three Banshees for some Daemons.  I airbrushed the first coat of green on a Coven Throne.  I finally finished remodelling my Defiler.  I primed a bunch of basic Chaos Space Marines.  Progress!

Of the ten models in the squad, one of them has been done for quite some time.  The remaining nine have sat with varying stages of colors finished.  At one point, all the actual Marines were finished, but the jump packs were still totally black.  Motivating yourself to bang out nine jump packs can be quite a task, but I managed to sit down and knock out three batches while watching football.

It's probably a little cliche, but I am feeling good about how they turned out.  OK, it's very cliche.  But once I slapped a layer of Dullcote on them, they lost a lot of the shiny black gloss color that tends to bleed through because of the crappy primer I use.  Prior to that, I was pretty nervous.  The varnish does tend to even things out, but it's definitely never a matte finish. So, happy surprises.  The other reason I like these guys is they include my first attempt at doing lots of highlighting.  In some cases, I may have gone a little overboard, but the orange really pops coming off the red, and the dark gray looks really good on the black armor without making them look like they're supposed to be gray.

Some of you who tend to focus on the play side of things may be wondering about the squad and its loadout of weapons.  Technically, Death Company can't take a meltagun, nor do they have a unit champion option, and seriously, where the heck are the power weapons?  Well, the squad was put together during fifth edition, when Allies weren't a thing.  This unit was intended to be a Skyclaw squad originally, but with the advent of sixth edition, I reached a point where I could conceivably include them as Death Company.  I'd love to do that.  What I'd really love to do is add five more dudes with power weapons and Infernus Pistols so I can do both, but we'll see what comes.

I plan on using them as Flamers.

Trying to prove that I can paint colors other than just red, I also painted a trio of Banshees for my Fear Daemons army.  My original intention was to try to do these girls in their entirety with an airbrush, or as close as possible to it.  That didn't happen.  I went all paintbrush.  Unfortunately, I had some serious issues with getting any kind of paint flow through the airbrush.  Turns out, I tried a little too hard to keep the pots clean and created some Q-tip blockage.  Whoops.  So I got that fixed, but not in time to work on these ones.

The models were originally from the Coven Throne kit.  I clipped off the tails after applying the paint, so I'd have something extra to grasp while I painted.  It was a pretty straightforward process.  The models got multiple layers of the same shades of green that I've used on some previous monsters, with lots of dark greens blending into much yellower versions. I've added some of the lighter colors towards the top of the models, which is a departure from the way I painted their big brother, the Nightbringer.  I tried to make those lighter colors more prevalent, but I think the extra layers could do with some more glazing to try to smooth it out.  I also might try to matte up the black some.

Briefly, I'd also like to touch on my Defiler.  Not in a dirty way.  A few weeks ago, I went a little nuts and ripped off all the legs and arms, plus I pulled the torso(?) from the chassis(?).  I'm not sure what to call what on a daemon engine.  Then I went even further off the deep end, magnetizing just about everything.  The result?  A defiler that was more transportable since I could take it apart and put it in a Rhino slot in my carry case, plus I could also easily represent the vehicle being immobilized, destroyed, or losing weaponry.  Success!  Except that the weight of the model was too great, so the Defiler just slid down to its base as the magnets would rotate.  Failure!  Because of that, I pretty much just left the thing at home.

Now he's a walker, instead of a sitter

After some practical thought about problem, I decided to go as simple as possible and glued some ordinary sprue to the Defiler's ball and socket joints.  This prevents the magnets from rotating, holding the legs in an appropriate pose.  It doesn't look pretty right now, nor will it when it is finished, but there's enough going on that I don't think it'll matter if I stick to dark colors in those sections.  Plus I'd much rather have a functional model at this point.

Hobby Goals
-Airbrush the Coven Throne by Wednesday
-Mechrite Red on the Chaos Marines by Saturday
-Silver on the Possessed by Sunday

Tournament Recap

This weekend, two friends and I ran a tournament at the local shop.  We were blessed to have a long lead time and a lot of publicity going in, based mostly on the fact that the owner of the store put up a pretty substantial sum for the grand prize.  You can find an independent review of the tourney here.

Overall, things went extremely well.  We had a full house of 24 people, even with a $20 entry fee.  Between that, the grand prize, and some prize support donated by some sponsors, our total prize pool broke a thousand dollars.  That allowed us to put out some substantial awards, beyond just Best General/Painted, to the point where ten different people got to walk away with something to show for their efforts.  Of course, the downside to having a full house turns out to be that the game store just barely has the space to support twelve tables.  We were pretty much bumping back sides for most of the day.

The missions we ran were a variation of standard book missions.  We ran, in order, Big Guns Never Tire, The Scouring, and The Emperor's Will, all with slight variations.  Every mission included a Kill Point component added in, however, there was a cap to the number of points available depending on the mission.  Big Guns was fixed at four objectives.  Beyond that, it was fairly straightforward.  The second mission, The Scouring, saw more changes implemented.  Rather than random values, we went for a pair of four pointers, with four more two pointers.  That fixed my biggest gripe with the design of the mission. Finally, for The Emperor's Will, we doubled the value of the objectives.

This all seemed fairly simple to us, however, we ran into a pretty common problem for TO's.  No one read the $%&# missions.  Somehow, despite me explaining it to what felt like every table in the first round, I was still explaining how to score the mission in the third.  I have been in tournaments where the mission packet gives a whole page of instructions to a single mission.  In this case, there was never more than a paragraph.  So, as always, simpler is always better for players.  The one thing that keeps getting pounded into my head from tournament to tournament is that most people won't take the extra time to digest the words you write down.  Make it as simple as possible.

It's always interesting to look at a tournament and try to understand why people chose to take certain things like armies, units, etc... According to the web, only certain things are "good."  Yet, I can't remember a single codex being extremely well represented.  Looking back at my notes, there still isn't anything that makes an impression.  There are a dash of Space Marines, a pair of Necrons, some Imperial Guard.  The IG also showed up as allies in a number of forces, but not in more than two or three armies.  Really, the only thing that was common was the Aegis Defense Line, which was pretty much ubiquitous as a fixture throughout the top tables.

The armies that ended up on tables included Sisters of Battle, which ended up taking Best General, plus Chaos Marines and Space Marines, all of which went undefeated.  On those very same tables were Black Templars, Space Wolves, and Tyranids.  So, not much of a consistent thread there.  I chalk that up to a couple things.  First, a high percentage of the guys were just locals who showed up with their favorite things.  Second, the top players were top players.  Apparently, we had four of the top ten players in the country as per one of the national rankings sites.  A lot of them really seemed to want to win with something that would be a challenge, which led to armies that I would consider unique.

The Sisters absolutely brought the thunder, tabling all three of their opponents.  It turns out rending Heavy Bolters are nasty.  Who knew?   The Black Templars player ended up taking Best Overall.  Despite the one loss, he scored a ton of battle points, had the second highest paint score, and maxed out his sportsmanship.  He ended up with a score just two-tenths of a point higher overall then the undefeated Space Marines player.  Adding in the results after the final round was about as crazy as Excel can get. 

Overall, it was a great tournament.  Everybody had mostly good things to say, and I think everyone had a good time.  I know I did and would love to continue running tournaments given the chance.

League Night: We're Talkin' 'bout Playoffs

Iron Warriors

Abstract:  Summarizing the last five weeks of time I've been too lazy to post about the league and using it as an excuse to run pictures of the "Best Painted" entries, finished off by my thoughts of the last nine weeks.

An absence from the game store became prolonged due to a hurricane.  I came back to find that the league had kind of taken care of itself.  Mostly. 

...and Champion

I knew I had a vacation coming up, so I made arrangements to have scores posted on the store's forums.  That turned out to be a great move, because the scoresheet gnomes wandered off with them in the meantime.  Between those results and what I pieced together from the few recorded games I found for the extra third week, I deduced that the final standings for the top two tables looked something like this:

Group A
*Necrons
*Blood Angels

Kustom Dakkajet

Eldar
Chaos Space Marines

Group B
*Tau
*Imperial Guard
Tyranids
Grey Knights

The lower two tables did not exactly keep up with their games, which doesn't really surprise me as it was pretty common knowledge that they were out of the running for the league title (which is something I think I'll talk about in the next league post).  Moving on from that point, in an effort to keep folks interested and coming until the next start up, we began running increasingly narrative driven games for anyone not in the playoffs.  These were a big hit and led to cries for more.

My Word Bearers

The initial random draw produced groups that saw a few surprise contenders advance.  In particular, the 'Nids player sought me out and mentioned that after three straight games of getting roflstomped, he was ready to return to the kiddy table for a while.  The real contenders really separated themselves at this stage, and while some folks came up with surprise L's, they were mostly after the dust had settled and the cream of the crop had secured advancement to the next stage.  That stage, being the single elimination playoffs type of deal, had fixtures that looked a little something like this:

Necrons vs. Imperial Guard
Tau vs. Blood Angels

Red Orks Biker

At this point, scenarios became random again, and ended up having a hand in who would eventually advance.  The heavily static Guard played Crusade against the hyper resilient Necrons.  In a game with three objectives, the 'Crons got two of them, and made no mistakes.  He refused a flank, got into the lines fast enough, and swept away his competition.  Meanwhile, the Blood Angels and Tau played Purge the Alien.  All those rail rifles led to easy light vehicle punches and the BA player got held off just long enough to secure an 13-7 victory for the Tau.  Between the Drop Pods and the Razorbacks there were just too many easy targets for that much strength 10.

Interestingly, this set up the first rematch of the league, as the Tau and Necron player both came out of the same initial group.  I think that speaks to how strong the group was, as even the bottom two players were pretty solid.  After way too many jokes about how nervous they were about playing for all the hyperbolic marbles, they rolled up the straightforward "Emperor's Will" scenario.  The Tau successfully shot everything to death except the Wraiths.  The Wraiths then ate all the Tau.    Thus ended the first league.

Frankly, I'm kind of glad.  I know I initially wrote about how excited I was.  In retrospect, I really think I got the format wrong.  Like, REALLY, wrong.  As much as it appeals to me, as much as it works cleanly and efficiently, as much as it is a strong system, it is just plain wrong for this store.  Other stores may have the culture to do it and enjoy it, but the guys here want the freedom to play whomever they darn well please.  If there is a structured way to determine who won the whole thing, that's great, as long as it is very simple and doesn't get in the way of pitching the dice.  So that creates the challenge.  Can I get creative and be versatile in creating a whole new format that appeals to this kind of player?  I've got two weeks to figure that out. 

   

League Night: Herding Cats

We have (mostly) completed Round One of the current league.  Things have not been boring.

Red Fish, Blue Group.

Current Standings (W-T-L Pts VP Diff)
Blue Group
Guard         3-0-0 6pts +14
Eldar           1-0-2 3pts +1
Tau              1-0-2 3pts -7
Guard          1-0-2 3pts -8

Black Group
Necrons            3-0-0 9pts +10
Tau                   1-0-1 3pts -1
Space Marines  0-0-2 0pts -4 
Orks                 0-0-2 0pts -5

Mano a mano, gunline a gunline.

White Group
Grey Knights     1-1-0 4pt +5
Space Wolves   1-0-1 3pts -3
Orks                 0-1-0 1pt +0
Chaos Marines  0-0-1 0pts -3


Red Group
Blood Angels  3-0-0 6pts +9
Tyranids         2-0-1 6pts +1
Orks               0-0-2 0pts -2
Orks               0-0-2 0pts -7


Blue Group had a runaway winner, but the final game saw the winless Eldar player win big over the Tau.  This forced a three-way tie, which had to be broken by VP differential.  The size of the win swung things, and the Eldar squeak through.  Black Group also had a runaway winner.  One game is supposed to get played this Monday, between the Tau and Marines.  I'm expecting the Tau to win, but you know how dice games go.  Red Group was an easy one.  The Orks lost both opening games, so the Blood Angels and Tyranids played to essentially see who would win the group.  Finally we have White Group.  White Group embodies a problem I'm going to talk about in a minute, but it is easily filled with the most intrigue.  I've been told that all the games have or will be played, but pretty much everyone is eligible to win this thing.  The deadline is Tuesday, so we'll see what happens.

IG+Fortress=Win.  Who knew?

I do have my doubts about White Group completing the course.  They are a microcosm for one of the problems with the league as a whole, and, perhaps, for gamers in general.  Thursday is league night.  How the heck do you pin people down for this thing?  Life does happen, and gaming doesn't exist that high on the priority list, but the commitment level seems to be very lacking.  I've had to be pretty quick on my feet as far as setting up games against ringers (which is why the game totals don't add up).  With a league of 16 people, we should filling up tables, no problem, but we only had five playing league games, and not all of them were complete league pairs.

I need to find a way to incentivize attendance, rather than disincentivizing forfeitures.  Perhaps I'll award points for attendance in future leagues.  I don't feel comfortable changing the rules now.  I've always been taught you finish with the same ruleset that you started with.

Having seen the dedication of other groups in the area, it's disappointing not to be able to match it.  I worry that some of that is on me being too rigid, but on the other hand, maybe I thought the group was ready for something it wasn't.  I don't know that this sort of league is the right ruleset for the group.  It may be elegant if you're sure you can pull it off, but a loose group of casual gamers are never going to make it work.  I am pretty sure that's what I have on my hands, which means I have to abandon some of my preconceived notions about what makes for a "good" league, in terms of competition, balance, and functionality, and sacrifice it for a "good" league, in terms of generating enthusiasm and providing a background for people to gather.  I'm pretty sure I've got an idea for how to pull that off too.

In the meantime, how to make what we have now work?

League Night, Opening Moves

One week down, seven to go.

Kick off for the new league happened Thursday night.

We had a pretty good turnout.  I was expecting something in the mid-teens and ended up having fifteen.  I gotta say, that's pretty solid.  We've got pretty much everyone from the previous league returning minus a few stragglers.  There is a pretty solid mainstay that we can rely on on that front.  We also have a couple new faces.  I've gotten to play against some of them, and they're at least decent dudes and good sports which is all you can really ask for.

The selection process seemed to go pretty smoothly.  I had everybody draw poker chips from a bag and grouped them according to colors.  "Random" doesn't always mean "fair", of course, but you have to be the last guy standing at the end anyway, so no loss in crawling over the toughest competitors in the opening stage anyway.  If anything, getting one of the tougher players in your opening group means you can avoid them in round two if you advance.

That said, match-ups are always a thing.  Here's what we came up with:  Blue group has two Imperial Guard players, plus Tau and Eldar.  Black Group has Necrons, Orks, Tau and Marines.  Red Group has Tyranids, Blood Angels, and a pair of Orks.  Finally, White group has Chaos Space Marines, Grey Knights, and Orks, and fields the ringer or wild card.  Interesting, only four power armored forces take the field, which is equalled by Orks, as well as the extremely shooty pairs of Imperial Guard and Tau.

Black group appears to be one of the toughest.  Necrons are a heck of an army, while the Tau and Orks are played by two of the better players in the league.  Blue group will likely have the most games fought at range, with Tau and both Guard players.  Red group is the one I am least sure about who will come out on top.  Finally, White group will have the easiest time through, since only three of the people there are eligible to advance.  I'm hoping one more person shows up to fill in the gap.  Meanwhile, it's not the worst thing to know that I have a chance to get in a weekly game.

Though I didn't stay for the entire night, it was interesting to see the way some of the games were going.  Two of the apparent favorites looked to both be on their way to posting losses, while the third was slogging his way through Guardsmen in a Fortress of Redemption.  If the first week is any indication, the league is wide open, which makes for an entertaining few weeks.

Beginning a New League plus Putting on the Pants

The bad news:  Thursday's regular 40K night was lackluster, with a grand total of two games being played.

The good news:  That's because it's the off week before the next league starts.

The exciting news:  I've been asked to run the upcoming league.

Previous leagues have been very well run, but the organizer has a lot going on and has decided to take a step back.  I was asked to step in and fill the void by the store owner, and the decision seems to be well received by those in the league.  I am very excited about the opportunity. 

While not being eligible to win the league is a drawback, directly contributing to the community I enjoy so much makes it totally worth it.  I also enjoy the organizational aspects involved in running things, whether that be an event or a sustained competition.  Blending the game into an elegant and competitive string of events that everyone looks forward to and can't wait to attend gives me a lot of the same things I enjoy about the game itself.  Additionally, if I'm being totally honest, I enjoy being "the guy."  I take a certain amount of pride from being the one to ask about rules, the ambassador to new players, and generally being in charge.  It feels good to know that you've got the trust of the whole group.  I might rethink that if we get three sign-ups for the next one.

Of course, running the league means coming up with a set of rules for the league.  Previously, there was not an established form for the league.  Things changed each time we started back up.  That means I'm working with a blank slate, which is bad since I have nothing to go on, but good because I'm free to operate without precedent.

The format I've come up with is drawn from my days playing volleyball in college.  It involves pooling players, then re-pooling those who finish high enough in their group together, and, finally, giving those who finish well in those groups a slot in the single elimination final four.  I'm expecting there to be roughly sixteen participants which would be ideal.  This would allow for four groups of four, though I can support more of each, with two members of each group advancing each round.  Because of this, players aren't eliminated with a single loss or hosed by a single bad game, nor can they win it all with a lucky draw and run against lesser players. Meanwhile, we still get the high stakes of a playoff at the end, so no one can run away with things.


There's no guarantee it will be perfectly, but I have seen it work before, and I think it accomplishes most of the things I want it to.  I guess we'll know in about eight weeks.  In the meantime, it should make for some solid material to post every Friday.

Hobby Update: A Return

It's been a pretty busy month.  Life is slowly starting to resume some pattern of normalcy.  I like what it seems to have in play and am looking forward to more.  As the pattern becomes more clear, hobby time has begun to appear in a regular fashion which feels pretty good.  Here is a sample of what that time has yielded.

One particular model has dominated my focus.  I have been working pretty diligently on the Nightbringer while rotating my attention between a few other units at the same time.  Rather than scrapping the current paint job and starting over, I decided to keep working on smoothing out the colors as they were.  The results have been generally positive, though I don't think I've had the same success as with the Manticore, nor do the colors run to as vibrant a finish as I'd like.  That said, it's a solid paint job in my opinion, and I'm ready to toss him on the field.

To do that, I had to build him a base.  I kicked off with a GF9 60mm magnetic base.  Because I plan to have a lot of other big models in the army, I wanted to make sure the Nightbringer would stand out.  It's a pretty easy effect to achieve in a Necron army where he towers over the basic troops, but on a disply board that has a Coven Throne and a bunch of other big creatures, the Nightbringer is so slight of build that he may not stand out as the centerpiece.  To save on glass material, I glued down a trio of 25mm bases on top of each other, then put the Nightbringer on those.  This bought me about an inch of extra height.  From there, it was a matter of adding rings of glass and building them up to the appropriate height and picking out a few things to add as detail around the base.

One of the aforementioned rotating projects includes a herd of old school/out of production metal Khorngors.  One of the reasons I like this project is that they're a return to painting some grittier fantasy models.  They'll get a little highlighting and a little shading, but they're line troops that are supposed to be dirty, with a bunch of natural browns, so I'm not sweating them too much.  They've been sitting in the queue for a while, but once they got in, they got done very quickly.  By far, the most effort consuming part was making the bases.  With everything else in the army, I just glued the model straight to the surface of the marble square.  The Khorngors were never going to be so simple.  The bottoms of the hooves are angled, providing minimal contact points, and the metal makes the models top heavy.  Basing them entailed snipping the metal strips for the slottabases into nubs, then drilling a pair of holes to sink the nubs into.  The end result is imperfect.  I have a few gaps to fill and hoofs that don't sit squarely.  Overall though, they seem to work just fine.

Finally, for those of you interested in nerdetry and sports at the same time, I recently completed a mock auction for a fantasy football league (the American version).  If you've only done a draft before, I'd encourage you to give an auction a chance.  It's extremely entertaining.  I'm pretty happy with my team:
QB: Michael Vick
RB: Lesean Mccoy
RB: Matt Forte
WR: Percy Harvin
WR: Marques Colston
FLX: Brandon Lloyd
TE: Cody Fleener
Def: NY Giants
K: Alex Henery

I have a pretty high ceiling for scoring from week to week.  My running backs should have consistently big numbers, and each of my receivers should yield solid weekly results, with chances for big plays.  My big worry is injury.  More than one of these guys has a history of getting hurt and my back ups don't inspire confidence.  I suppose that's the risk of paying to have nice things.  Resource management becomes tricky.  Finding value becomes important.  Patience gets put up against scarcity.  In a lot of ways, it's like many of my favorite games.  Except that I only get to play it once a year and don't know the result for four months.  Oh, and it's absolutely infuriating sometimes.

Hobby Accoplishments
-Finished the Nightbringer
-Finished the Khorngors
-Wrote down five of six missions for campaign project

Hobby Goals
-Get all six missions typed and finalized
-Finish the Death Company in the next two weeks
-Prep league format for two weeks from now
-Prime Banshees and Coven Throne
-Airbrush two coats on second Possessed squad

Tournament Missions and Recap

Setting up for round one

This weekend, one of my buddies and I had the opportunity to run our first sixth edition tournament for 40K.  We had seventeen players, which is three less than our max capacity, so almost a full house.  Things seemed to go really well.  I say that because nearly every one of the players came up to me during or after the tournament and said things went really well.  A portion of that may simply be that we provided a reason to play games for eight hours, and who doesn't love that?  But we also had no real logistical issues, managed to produce pretty clear winners, and were able to answer all the rules queries with pretty minimal fuss.

We opened the day with Crusade (Seize Ground) and Dawn of War (Pitched Battle) as the mission and deployment type.  We figured this would make for a pretty easy first mission for the day.  Everybody has seen it before.  Everyone knows what to expect.  Theoretically, no rules questions to speak of.  It's also a good way to ensure that everyone has a chance to score an equal number of points, since we preset the number of objectives at five.  We were operating on wins to determine the Best General award, but because of the number of players, it was likely we would need victory points as a tie breaker.  This is what eventually pushed us away from using Purge the Alien (Killpoints) since second round match-ups would favor those that scored more victory points.

Tau and CSM:  Surprisingly well represented

Round two pitted the high and low seeded winners against each other with Big Guns Never Tire and Vanguard Strike as mission and deployment type.  Again, we preset the objectives, this time at four.  This allowed for a little more variance in score, as Heavy Support choices gave away victory points, but the window for variation was only three points.  Things actually played out very cleanly for us, with one tie amongst the initial winners.  This ensured only four undefeateds going into the final round.  Even better, two of the players had a significant edge in battle points.  This was significant as they would be paired against each other for the title, barring a draw.

Our final mission was The Relic with Hammer and Anvil as deployment type.  We had judged this mission to be the most likely to produce a winner, while agreeing that we didn't want last editions "roll dice and tie" or The Scouring (because that most definitely is the worst designed mission, whether playing competitively or otherwise).  You may note that there are only six points available in this mission.  That was also an intentional decision.  The hope was that most of the points for establishing yourself as the top contender needed to be earned in rounds 1 and 2, while round 3 would be focused solely on winning.  Additionally, it meant that tanking your score to get an easier round three opponent was mighty risky.  Because of this, we felt like we could pair the best players of the day against each other with everything riding on just that one game.  Again, things turned out how we hoped, with one of the top table contenders winning his mission going away. 

Wolf on Wolf action.  Those on the left would take best painted.

At the end of the day, Tyranids (Tervigons and Gaunts) ended up beating Dark Eldar (hybrid gunline/Wyches) on the final table for the top spot.  It seemed to come down mostly to a few rolls, but that's how it goes in a dice game.  Chaos Space Marines also managed to go 3-0 with an interesting monster mash list, outlasting Eldrad with Eldar.  The Chaos Marine army won best overall, with some fantastic conversion work and paint. 

Interestingly, the field was incredibly diverse.  Seventeen players showed up with twelve different armies.  Miracle of all miracles, none of them were Grey Knights.  The most represented army was Tau (3), followed by Chaos Marines (2), Blood Angels (2), and Space Wolves (2).  Not counting Deathwing, only seven of the entrants were power armored armies.

Maybe interestingly, we tracked First Blood victory points against first turn.  The results may not be what you might have thought.  Out of eighteen games (we counted the first two rounds), ten of them resulted in the player with first turn getting first blood, and that figure includes a couple games where it was not earned on the first turn.  That is a majority, but hardly the runaway number some may have expected.  Granted, I would not consider this population normal, so I hesitate to say we've achieved a statistically significant figure, but it could be interesting if you're a stats nerd.

More pictures and such to come...

Hobby Update: Monster Mash

It's been a minute since I've thrown any models up here.  I've made plenty of progress, but that is what's supposed to happen over the course of three weeks.

The Nightbringer has seen a fair bit of attention.  I've got most of the colors down, but before I can be closer to "finished" status, I need to A) decide if I like the placement of the colors and B) work on getting the colors to blend together more smoothly.  If you compare the before and current versions of the model, you can see pretty plainly that the colors are migrating north and becoming increasingly extreme.  I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing yet.  I think I'm going to remain patient and decide when I've cleaned things up a bit more.

I've managed to do something somewhere between an update and a redo on my Dark Apostle Daemon Prince.  Previously, he had white armor with black wings.  Now he has black armor with white wings...  so the opposite.  But with a lot more colors applied and technique.  The wings started with Dawnstone, Badab Black, Codex Grey, then finally Skull White with a quick drybrush of the new dry compound Praxeti White.  From a distance, they look great.  Close up, I am less sold.  A few of the lines are a little less clean than I'd like, but I think the biggest issue is I may have left too much of the dark coloring behind.  I'm not sure how feasible it would be to fix without redoing the whole thing, so I think I'm going to make my peace with it.  I also redid the shoulder pads and highlighted the robes.  Previously the colors were clean, but flat, which was typical of my painting back in the day.  With a new Chaos book coming up, I really want to have my army up to what I consider my current ability to be.  This guy is definitely going to be a centerpiece so I'm glad to have him done.

My Defiler has been a pretty regular presence in my Chaos Army over the last few months... or always, I suppose.  It has always been an awesome model and being able to throw around a battle cannon shot is a lot of fun.  However, part of the model's cool factor comes from its size and design, which makes it tough to transport elegantly.  Because of this, his spiky bits tend to take a lot of damage.  I got fed up with it this week when he took a tumble and one of the legs popped off.  I gave the others a pull and they actually came off pretty easily.  Before I knew it the drill was out and magnets were setting in the glue.  Despite repeated testing, not all of them were set the right way.  As a general piece of advice, definitely set the magnets that are harder to get in first.  Now the model breaks down into eight pieces that fit perfectly into one of the random extra slots in my carrying case that is currently unoccupied.  My big problem is the guy is a little finicky about standing up.  It was top and forward heavy to begin with, and now the legs tend to spin and slide out from under him.  I might try a second magnet, but we'll see.  And of course there's the high possibility that they just give the walker a base when they update the book in a month or so.

I showed off the Possessed Marines I finished in one of my last hobby posts.  I was hesitant to start the next batch right away since I was hoping to acquire two more bodies and a few arms and legs from some friends.  Honestly, I never got around too it and, surprise, surprise, my patience ran out.  I raided my own bitz box and came up with an Ork head, some Crypt Horror hands, and a few other bits that got grafted on randomly.  They don't fit perfectly, but if you don't know to look for them (cuz you're not me) they'll blend well enough.  Now on to paint!

Hobby Accomplishments

-Finished the Dark Apostle Daemon Prince
-Built Possessed Marines from scratch
-Added layers to the Nightbringer
-Magnetized the Defiler
-Wrote rules packet for this weekends tournament... so all in all, a productive three weeks.

Hobby goals for the next two weeks

-Focus
-Get the next two coats of red on the Possessed
-Get red and gold on the Death Company
-Finish the Nightbringer