LPL Sunday: Round 3! Plus Round 2 Recap

Round 2 is over and almost all of the contestants submitted new entries. Lots of good stuff to look at! I submitted my old Necromunda Delaque gang as I hadn't had time to paint anything new. However it's never been shown online before and I thought this was as good an opportunity as any. My first foray into Necromunda was with the Cawdor and has since then tried most of the other gangs, but the Delaque with their trenchcoats, baldness and general sneakyness always appealed to me. The green colour for the coats was inspired by the Cyclops gang/cult in La Cite des Enfants Perdus.

They were fairly well received (even though they're GW minis!) and in the end I scored 342 votes against 32 for Tom Reeds U.S. Rocket Corps.

Some of my favourite entries this round were:

• Boys Will be Boys/Indian Summer - Two great entries. In the end my vote went to the one with the dinosaur because of it's great theme and execution.
• Followers of the Mahdi - Frank, that I faced in round 1, is at it again with a great scene. This tops his wardancer scene I think and is probably my favourite entry this round. Great stuff, even though the banner is upside down. :)
• Sniper Team PA-6mm - Can you see them? They're 6mm and very well camouflaged.
• The Frozen North - This entry makes me want to pull out Beyond the Mountains of Madness. Or re-read The Terror. Or watch that documentary about Shackleton that I've been puttin off.
• Papa Hobo - Nice to see some Secrets of the Third Reich stuff. Especially this well done!
• Frida's Smugglers - Some hot seaman action here! Hehe!

Special mentions go to the Dicks in Space for putting some Phalons out there, and Andy's Royal Dutch Navy spacefleet that went neck to neck with Tomsche's weeping angels the whole week! Very tense. :)

This round I'm back to 15mm with my Mars theme as the Earth Sectorial Army is taking shape. See them and  all the other entries at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

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Update!

What my workspace currently looks like. See if you can figure out what the different minis are. Hehe!

Just thought I'd make a quick post about some random stuff going on.

First off, I'm getting into swing of this 15mm stuff! My little spacemen are finished and I'm now doing some Earth Gov/UNSC that may or may not appear in round 3 of the LPL. It depends on if I get the other stuff I ordered in time (ie tomorrow!).

It seems like Firestorm: Armada might get an upswing as Spartan Games has released new Model Assigned Rules (aka MARs) as well as rules for the upcoming alliance fleets (you can find it all on this page, just scroll down to Alliance Fleet Documents). The renders shown so far are looking really good, I'm especially eyeing the RSN ships. Also, the additional Stealth Systems rule for Relthoza make them seem a lot more how I envisioned them to be. Good stuff all around!

I got Mansions of Madness the other day and we tried it out this past Sunday. Unfortunately I put a stack of cards in the wrong room so the "rythm" of the scenario went completely out the window, breaking immersion a bit. I really liked what I saw though and I'm looking forward to our next (correct!) game!

That same day we had another WFRP session. I know, I know... I'm running behind in updates. It's that LPL sucking up all my time! Hehe! In any case, I think the next one or two sessions will be the finale of the Gathering Storm campaign, and I'm glad it is. It's not a bad campaign per se, it's just a bit... pedestrian. I'll write a proper review once we're actually done. Oh, and I'll try to get some session reports posted again soon.

This week is Infinity Week over at Beasts of War and to celebrate it Corvus Belli are selling their new(?) Infinity army boxes for half price! They've also updated their website and it's looking very swank, they've even integrated the Infinity army builder. Neat! On top of that Beasts of War have released a bunch of videos on Youtube during the week showcasing all kinds of Infinity stuff. Basically, there's never been a better time to get into the game, and since it's something I've been looking at since it was released in 2005 it's a no brainer for me and I'm getting the Yu Jing army box. I just hope I can get some of my friends interested in it...


So that's a small update on what's happening over here. Stay tuned for more LPL Sundays and WFRP session reports. As well as some other stuff...

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LPL Sunday: Round 2! Plus Round 1 Recap

So round 1 of the LPL is over and done with, attracting a whopping 72 entries! My contribution was the "Intrepid Mars Explorers" that you can see above. They're 15mm minis from GZG and I've wanted to paint a bunch of them since I first layed eyes on them. I'm quite happy with the result as they have a very nice, generic spaceman/astronaut theme. I'm planning to get a few of the armed versions as well as the heavy vac-suit ones as well. Just need to wait for GZG to get their new webshop online!

They were well received but my opponent, Frank, had a whole indian wardancer scene built up that was amazing so he won with 280 votes against 92. A well deserved victory!

A few of my other favourite entries were:

• Monks in a Samurai Village - Probably my favourite entry this round. Beautifully painted miniatures and great scenery. Makes me want to start collecting medieval Japanese!
• King in Yellow - Being a fan of both the book by RW Chambers and its mythos counterpart I couldn't resist this entry.
• A Walk in the Country - I would like to say just "The dog!" but that would be unfair to all the other great stuff going on in this entry. Just look at the plaids!
• On the Streets of Breugelburg/Abdul's Alterations - It was tough voting on these two entries, but in the end I had to go with the Olde Worldish Breugelburgers. Both great entries.

I really liked the civilian theme as it brought out a lot of models that you normally don't see. Round 5 is the next theme round and the theme is Africa. I have some ideas, but I'm not sure they'll work out. I said that I wouldn't buy any new figures for the LPL, but that rule went out the window when I discovered how much fun 15mm really is, but I do have a rule that I don't want to paint stuff that I won't use. And I think that rule might make it hard to do the Africa theme. We'll see...

For round 2 I bought myself some time with a slighly older team of miniatures. See them and all the other entries over at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

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Android - a Last Chance

In 2008 Fantasy Flight Games released Android, a science fiction game with a very strong Blade Runner vibe where you were trying to solve(?) a murder as well as keep your own personal daemons in check. It had beautiful components and everything about it seemed to appeal to me. Blade Runner is one of my absolute favourite movies, and I'm a huge fan of William Gibson, so when I got it I pimped it out and studied up on the rules.

Then I got together with a bunch of JIGGers (this was back when I lived in Tokyo) and we tried it out... and it was kind of... meh. I tried it a couple of more times but I never really got the experience out of it that I was hoping for. It simply took a long time (easily rivalling Twilight Imperium) and I think in the end everyone just wanted to get it over and done with. The "murder mystery" just felt very random and after a while you didn't have the energy to care for everyone's personal plots.

So when I moved back to Sweden Android was one of the games that I decided to sell. And this is very rare for me, I'm a hoarder! Naturally I would have liked to keep it, but I had to make some priorities and I simply had a lot more fun playing Age of Conan, Chaos in the Old World or Arkham Horror (although I have a feeling that AH might get "fired" by Mansions of Madness).

However, it has always lingered at the back of my mind. I simply want to like it so much - it has all the right ingredients! I've been thinking that maybe if we tried playing it with just the right crowd when we were in just the right mood then maybe it'd click. So when me and Anders (who's also a huge Blade Runner geek) were planning a game night we decided to give Android another try. Mats and Jimmy joined us as well and I think all of us are very much into the theme and experience when gaming, meaning that Android should be right up our alley.

Android set up and ready to play.

We set up the game and started playing and in the beginning we got really into the story, reading all the cards out loud and playing pretty much in character (although we all jokingly agreed Floyd should speak in a monotone). But as time went by the card reading fell by the wayside as the characters stories never really drew us in, and after four hours we had only made it half the way through. We decided to end it at that time. Checking the different suspects it turned out that the guy with the least tokens on him was the murderer, making the mystery seem even more random! We didn't mess much with the conspiracy since the mechanics for it are kind of boring (although it's definitely what you should go for if you want to win), but most of us had managed to get the positive ending on our plots.

First off I have to say that this is the most fun I've ever had playing Android and I'm glad we gave it another shot. Playing with the right kind of people and with the right mindset makes a huge difference. If we'd had the time I could probably have played the second week as well and had (kind of) fun with it, but in the end the game still left me largely unfullfilled, and it scores very low on the commitment vs fulfillment ratio. The theme is excellent (although at times ham-fisted and clichéd) and I love the concept of the different mechanics - murder, conspiracy, plot - but it never really comes together as a harmonius whole. As the game goes on it just feels like you're less and less in control of what's going on.

There are a bunch of posts on how to play Android "correctly"out there (like this one) and they usually come down to stuff like "play the story", "play the characters", "play as the designer had envisioned". Although I understand where they're coming from, to me that seems to be an awful lot of restrictions to put on a game that is as open as Android in fact is. Why give the players all these options and freedom if you "have" to play the game in a certain way to "get it" or make it fun. To me that is not good game design.

Now, I hate drawing Twilight Imperium into each and every board game post I make on this blog, but there is a game with tonnes of different things to do and ways to play the game, but it all fits together and all the different ways are valid. Sure it might be a little clunky, but everything you do in TI has an impact on the game and although you can fall behind you never feel out of control. Damn, it's about time I stop talking and start playing some TI again. It's been ages!

Well, this is starting to get long-winded.

Even though we talked about this being the last chance for Android in our group I don't actually think it was, the attractive elements are simply too many. I'm pretty sure that in a year's time from now some of us are going to thinking that maybe if we tried it just once more... then it might be really cool! Maybe we'll try it with some kind of variant rules next time, like the Directors Cut or something.

Perhaps I'm suffering from some kind of Star Wars prequal denial thing when it comes to Android, I like the concept and ideas so much that I can't make myself let it go. Hmm...

UPDATE: Nope, I indeed can't let it go! I just got my hands on a used but unpunched copy for the same cheap price I sold mine for in Japan. More on this later... :)

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LPL Sunday: Round 1 is go!

Late friday night I managed to finish my entry and submitted it so now I'm officially in the league. Fun! The voting is in full swing and there are a lot of great entries, so head on over to the site and make your voice heard.

I'll do follow up posts on my own entries and the entries I liked the best when each round ends, so expect LPL updates on Sundays over here.

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Running behind

Devastation in Minami Sanriku where 10,000 of the city's 17,000 inhabitants are missing.

I'm running behind on my updates. I do have a bunch of stuff to post; WFRP session reports, my thoughts on our recent Android session, some painting plans and some stuff about the LPL (that starts tomorrow), but it's all been eclipsed by what is happening in Japan and I feel I don't really have the energy to type things out at the moment.

While family and friends over there are alright (although they now face the more longterm problem of water, food and electricity) it's still mentally taxing to see what is happening to what I consider my second home. In some weird way it feels strange not to have been there. Like we should have been there. Some mild form of survivors guilt perhaps?

Hopefully I'll get up to speed next week or so.

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Old Stuff Day!

Yes, today is the newly instated Old Stuff Day, and I thought I'd contribute! The idea of OSD is to repost or link back to some of your older stuff that you think deserves a second chance (for whatever reason). So without further ado here's my list of stuff, from older to newer:

UNSC all done!- Because it was my first finished fleet of spaceships! And I really like the group shots. Hmm... maybe I should update the pictures with some terrain and stuff... 

Chaos in der Alten Welt - Because it's such an awesome game and I want to play more of it. 

Hey-Yo! Recon Squad done! - Because by the time I'd painted this squad I'd realized that Heavy Gear was going to be a fixture in my gaming life, regardless of if I would actually ever get to play it or not. Also I'm happy very with how they turned out. 

Find a job, find a crew, keep flying - Because I like thinking about spaceship-based RPGs and  hopefully this could be of help to people in a similar situation.  

Massively affected - Because Mass Effect is Mass Effect! 

Board Game Extravaganza - Because I managed to cram so much stuff in there. 

Return of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - Because it's where I started chronicling our RPG sessions. 

Carrier done! - Because this list started with spaceships and it feels right to end it with spaceships. My Relthoza cruisers are staring at me, but I think the LPL might get in the way...

So that is some of my old stuff. But I'd like to recommend a post on another blog as well and this time I'm going with The Micro / Macro Divide from A Warrant of Trade. There are a lot of excellent posts on this blog concerning Rogue Trader and RPGing in general, but this was the post that resonated most strongly with me as I'd have similar thoughts but hadn't been able to type them out as neatly.

So that's Old Stuff Day on Fire Broadside this year. It'll be interesting to see what turns up in 2012.

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Infantry of all sizes!

I was working on basing my recently acquired  UNSC marines when I realized that I had a nice three-scales-of-infantry thing going on at my workspace and felt it deserved a mention. Two squads of 15mm UNSC marines from GZG, a section of 10mm Northern Guard infantry from DP9 and some 6mm Eldar Dire Avengers from GW.

As you might have seen on the Twitter I've started working on my Heavy Gear infantry (at long last) but I'm kind of mixing it up with other stuff to keep my motivation up. The UNSC stuff is mostly just basing, but they might show up in the LPL, I'm not quite sure yet. I dug out my old Eldar a few days ago after talking Epic with my friend Martin. It's one of my favourite miniature games (whatever version, but preferably Armageddon) and it was actually the first miniature game I got into, and my first army was Eldar.

That was back in the old Space Marine days, and I've since repurposed my Eldar minis, clipping them off their old square bases and put them on the better looking rectangular bases. You might also remember one of the Titans I mentioned in an earlier post. I've been talking about Dystopian Wars recently, but I think I might actually get my epic Eldar ready for play instead. I'm thinking... Saim-Hann!

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