Fire Broadside!

To Dust or not to Dust?

2012-01-22T17:35:00.001+01:00

I've had en eye on Dust Tactics ever since I saw the first miniatures two years ago, I liked Paolo Parentes designs for AT-43 and having them brought back into their 'true' weird-war setting seemed like just the right thing to do. I never did get the old core set though, for two reason: the Allies didn't really do it for me (mainly due to their so-so medium walkers) and I wasn't sure the rules themselves would keep me interested. Simplicity can certainly be a good thing, but it seems like it might be a bit too shallow. The judge is still out though. Need to play it more...

Anyway, the Axis troops and walkers looks great and I was thinking about buying some anyway to paint at least, and then perhaps get into the game later. While I mulled it over my friend Anders bought the core set and since he's the kind of guy who always go for the German faction if there is one I shelved my idea. Simply because it felt boring for both of us to build the same factions. Instead I turned my attention to Infinity (and I'm glad I did!).

However, Dust has stayed in my mind and it has been interesting to see the new models FFG has produced. I'm still not very keen on the Allied medium walkers, but the rest of the range looks great. And I might be in the minority here, but I really like the Allied heavy walker! Hehe! The light walkers look cool as well and the addition of command squads and heavy infantry seems to help diversify the game. But again... with only two factions I hesitated.

There has been talk of the Russians for a long time and now they have finally been announced! Or rather, the Sino-Soviet Union, so expect some Chinese as well. Even more than the other Dust Tactics miniatures the Russians really channel the old Red Blok faction of AT-43. Obviously this shouldn't come as a surprise, but I'm happy since I liked those old minis.

Obviously the star of he show is the KV47 medium walker. We've seen it before in different collectible model kits from DustGame.com but now they're available for gaming (and a more affordable price). It kind of looks like someone took a Scopedog from VOMOTS and hit it over the head with a huge mallet! And since the Scopedog is one of my all time favourite mecha it might explain me instantly taking to the KV47. It comes in three different configurations; twin cannons, twin flamethrowers or twin combat saws. And then there's the special character walker as well, Grandma, piloted by Koshka Rudinova (seen up top) which is armed with a cannon and a flamethrower.

Then there's the core troop choices:

NKVD Close Combat Squad armed with shotguns, Molotov cocktails and a flamethrower. Really like the guy throwing the molotov!

NKVD Battle Squad armed with rifles and two machineguns. The true backbone of the army I suppose. Perhaps not as nice looking as the close combat guys, but very Russian! :)

And then we have the Command Squad that in addition to the regular officer/medic/radio operator combo includes a machine gun and a power tool - supposedly to dismantle those pesky walkers in close combat. Great looking squad! The medic is probably my favourite but the mustachioed officer looks the part as well.

And then we have... er... the chopper (or is it an autogyro? I'm not sure). Until now the minis have been really nice so seeing this thing made me a little sad. It just doesn't look very good, it reminds me of a bathtub toy for toddlers! Now, they obviously modelled it on the Kamov Ka-25 and the Mil Mi-4 but they messed it up somewhere along the way. While both of those choppers could be considered 'ugly' they still look real (as in, not like toys) whereas this SSU chopper is just too squashed up and weird looking. I'm hoping it's the angle but something tells me it's more than that. Now if only there were 1:48 scale models of any of the real choppers I wouldn't have to bother with this thing!

However, it comes with one redeeming feature: a squad of Chinese volunteers! Sure it's basically just a headswap but for some reason I really like these guys! Might be the paintjob. So unless the volunteers are released on their own later I guess I might have to add a chopper to my collection.

So, thos are the models, but what about the game? While I would like to play it a bit more, especially using command squads, I'm far from convinced that it is the kind of game that will keep my attention for long. There's of course the upcoming tabletop version of the game (instead of board game) that is being written by Andy Chambers, but since it's written with the intent for all the unit cards to be compatible I fear it might have too much baggage from its board game sister. I'll give it a look for certain, but I think the answer lies in looking at different rules systems.

My first instinct is to go with Secrets of the Third Reich. I don't know much more about it than what I read in this review, but I've heard several people speaking well of it and the setting fits like a glove. There wouldn't be any need to make up rules for walkers or Nazi zombies - they're already there! Then there's AE-WWII but it doesn't seem to enjoy as big a following as SotTR. Company B is working a 28mm version of DP9's Gear Krieg, called Gears and Guts, which might also fit the bill. Don't know much about how it will work though.

Looking beyond the Weird WWII stuff there's Tomorrow's War (which I'm going to get anyway), although it might be a bit too gritty and realistic for the semi-fantastic minis of Dust Tactics. Also, I'm not sure how well it handles larger games, which is something I would like to be able to play - kind of like a counterweight to skirmish games like Infinity and Heavy Gear.

Any other suggestions for 28mm miniature game rulesets that can handle infantry and walkers well? Or do you think there's more do Dust Tactics/Warfare than meets the eye? Let me know. :)

Wanted: More Spaceship Gaming!

2012-01-18T20:20:00.000+01:00

Yepp, writing that Firestorm: Armada review got me thinking about other systems out there and my desire to play more spaceship combat games made itself known again. Well, it never went away but it grew even stronger! So here are some random thoughts on different systems, models and gaming mats.There are several systems that I have never tried but would like to as well as a few that I'd like to play again.

Full Thrust

There's only one way to start this article and that's with Full Thrust from GZG that I simply want to play more of. While I've played it a few times I don't think it's enough to form a firm opinion on how the system really works. It's a little clunky with all the order writing, but on the other hand I really like the kind of thinking ahead it forces you to do. In many ways it feels like the game you compare other games to - it has that kind of grandfather feel to it. In a good way! Sometime in the future we'll hopefully see a proper second edition of Full Thrust, but I know how busy Jon is and even though he wants to there is simply no time right now.

As for models, well... you've seen my UNSC and FSE fleets. I really like the GZG models in general and would love to expand my UNSC fleet. Unfortunately they're still out of production and waiting for new moulds to be made. In the meantime I've been thinking about getting some more ships for my FSE instead, or perhaps make a small pirate fleet and of course you can never have too many civilian/support vessels!

Lightning Strike

Another oldie is Lightning Strike from DP9. While you can still buy the models and the books there is no active support of the game from DP9 at this time. I really love the setting of Jovian Chronicles and the rules are interesting as well. The real stars of the show are the EXO armours that are supported by a small number of ships, however I think the system is stable enough to play without the mechs as well if that's more your thing. I would like to try it both ways, although my selection of models is very limited. I like the submarines in space vibe you get from the game and the fact that ECM plays a large part.

Right now I have a handful of Jovian and CEGA EXOs but no ships. Some of my favourite ship designs are made by DP9 though and I'm have no idea why I still haven't ordered a Valiant-class strike carrier - it's such a beautiful design! While the ships aren't to expensive, getting enough EXO's in your fleet can get a bit pricey since they're relatively cheap in points but not in dollars. Now, if only I could find some more great eBay bargains...

Starmada

Recently I've been looking a lot at Starmada from Majestic 12 Games. Whenever you see a thread on TMP or SCN where someone asks what system to go with Starmada is one of two titles that always come up (the other being Full Thrust). From what I understand it has a pretty much unbreakable ship creation system which sounds cool! It's (primarily) hex based but I don't have a problem with that nowadays. I probably would have discounted the game for this reason alone when I was younger but now I actually see it as a plus. Sure the mat won't look quite as pretty, but neither will you have to do all that measuring and careful turning of models. In any case it's nice to have it as an alternative (double-sided mat anyone?)! The picture above is from Mike Wikan's excellent blog The Redoubt. See the rest of the pictures here!

MJ12 is coming out with a new edition of Starmada soon and I've been reading some of the designer's notes on the forums (Attack Dice, Vector Movement, Defense & Damage) and so far I like what I see. It seems like Dan is going for a more streamlined version with more "built-in" dice rolls but without sacrificing granularity (which is what I think is missing from Firestorm: Armada). I will certainly pick up the new edition when it's released in... February(?) but I think I will get the current edition as well to compare. Besides it's cheap from DriveThru RPG!

There are no specific models for use with Starmada and I'll probably use my Full Thrust minis for it. I did also order a few Deisho ships from Chris at Ravenstar which will hopefully be the start of a new fleet so there are those as well. Really love the Deisho design! There is a clear Sulaco vibe to the ships and they simply look sleek and brutal at the same time. Starmada also lends itself exceedingly well to stating out ships from your favourite fictional universes, and if I ever manage to dig up some proper Babylon 5 miniatures I might use them with this game.

AV:T, Squadron Strike and Voidstriker

I would also like to try a game with more realistic Newtonian movement. The ones I have in mind are Attack Vector: Tactical and Squadron Strike, both from Ken Burnside at Ad Astra games as well as Voidstriker from Irrational Designs. Of the three AV:T seems to be the more complex one so I'm thinking Squadron Strike might be better as an introduction as they are of a similar design but Squadron Strike allows for a few more ships in play. It also allows to choose how many of Newtons rules you want to obey when it comes to movement. Versatility! There is a demo available for Voidstriker and it seems to be the least complex, eschewing 3D movement for ease of play for example. Like Starmada it's hex based which is nice. In the end I think I would like to try all three of them, starting with the Voidstriker demo.

There are miniatures available for all three of these games and I must say they are all great looking! Going from very realistic (AV:T) to fairly realistic but with "extra flair" (Voidstriker). They're all fleet scale so bit smaller and more delicate than my Full Thrust minis. The Ad Astra miniatures are fairly pricey and anything from Shapeways is as well, so getting specific fleets for any of these games is not a priority. However, I really do love the belters for Voidstriker and the British for Squadron Strike. Hmm...

There are many more games out there than this of course, I've heard good things about Babylon 5: A Call to Arms, but it's out of print these days. Might hunt it down on eBay though. I also haven't mentioned Victory by any Means (VBAM) which is a spaceship combat campaign system that has been applied to several different game systems and settings (including Jovian Chronicles and Starmada!). I haven't delved deeper into it but from what I've heard it's good! Definitely on the list of stuff to investigate further.

Battlefleet Gothic

I mentioned Battlefleet Gothic in my last post and I do think it would be fun to play it again, just to see what it feels like. It's not something I'm interested in pursuing in the long run, but doing a quick revisit could be interesting. I still have a bunch of ships stored away - a large Chaos fleet, a smallish Imperial fleet and a very small Ork raider fleet.

Gaming Mats

Something else you need when playing with spaceship minis is a nice looking space! So far I've simply used some black cloth but I really need to upgrade. My friend Anders have a mat from Hotz (the regular, not the enhanced) and it's decent looking but to be honest I thought it would look better than it did. There are also mats available from Terrain Mats and Monday Knight Productions. I don't really like the look of the one from Terrain Mats. The mat from Monday Knight looks better, although a bit plain, but I would like to see more pictures of it. It's the cheapest of the bunch though, so there is that!

The best looking mats, in my opinion, are the ones available from CorSec Engineering (who also make really good flight stands that you can disassemble). My personal favourite is the Blue Stars mat as it's still fairly dark and "spacey". The CorSec mats are also made from fabric instead of felt which most other mats are made from. This should make them more resistant to damage in the long run which is a nice bonus. However, they are also the most expensive which of course is a factor in deciding what to get. User neghvar on the SCN forums made an interesting post on the prices of different space mats as a price per inch chart. Check it out!

Right now I'm leaning towards getting a double sided enhanced mat from Hotz. It's not the best looking and the hexes that are printed on one side look like they might be a bit brittle, but it does look nice and the price is affordable. I would like to get a CorSec mat later on though.

I'm sure there are many of my readers who have other games to recommend or more nice miniatures or mats that I haven't mentioned (I'm especially curious about Colonial Battlefleet). Let me know in the comments! :)

A Review of Firestorm: Armada

2012-01-12T20:32:00.000+01:00

About time I reviewed a miniature game here on Fire Broadside, and even more about time that I reviewed something involving giant starships hurling plasma at each other! In short... time for a review of Firestorm: Armada from Spartan Games.

This blog was born when I wanted to document my first forays into starship gaming back in 2009 and my game of choice was Full Thrust. It's been out of print for more than a decade but the books are available to download for free from GZG and it's still one of the most widely played starship combat games, so I thought it was a good place to start. Also I really like the models, and the price. Anyway, I managed to get my friends Anders and Martin interested as well (even though we lived at the opposite ends of the words at this time) and they each bought a couple of fleets each.

However while I was painting my ships in Tokyo my friends started looking more and more towards the upcoming Firestorm: Armada from Spartan Games. They liked the look of the models, but mostly I think it was the fact that the rulebook was actually in print and it had reasonably high production values that did it. I know they're both suckers for flash! Especially Martin. Haha!

So instead of sticking to my guns (or spaceships in this case) I decided to give it a go myself. I had followed its development over at Starship Combat News so I knew what it looked like at least. That was a bit of a problem though as the only fleet that appealed to me was the Sorylians that Anders had already bought. The Dindrenzi looked decent as well but that was Martin's fleet of choice. That left the Terrans and the Aquans and they both left me cold. And I do mean cold... as in I think they're plain ugly (and yet...)

Although I pondered getting one of those fleets anyway in the end I simply couldn't do it. Instead I started my little Firestorm: Yamato project; making a fleet based on the classic Japanese cartoon Space Battleship Yamato, aka Starblazers. In the end that project kind of stalled and I got the Relthoza when they were released instead. I quite like the design of both the Relthoza and the Directorate but in the end the vertical design of the Relthoza won me over. So with a starter fleet almost fully painted (missing some cruisers) I got to play Firestorm: Armada.

The Company

First off a few words about Spartan Games. I will be a little harsh in this review so I would like to preface that with saying that I simply love this company! They're small with fairly niche-games so far, but have managed an amazing output of miniatures ever since they started. Not once have they faltered, there has always been new minis hitting the streets as well as updates to the rules. The design haven't been perfectly to my liking every time, but the execution of the models are spectacular. Incredible detail with usually very little cleanup needed.

They also listen to the fans and mr bigwig himself, Neil Fawcett, actively participate on the forums. I think many other miniature games companies could learn a lot from Spartan Games.

The Miniatures

In my mind Firestorm: Armada started out so-so but steadily the miniature designs have become better and better. Let's start with the bad stuff. Looking at the original four fleets I think the Terrans and the Aquans should have gone back to the drawing board. The Terrans are much too blocky and featureless for my tastes. I can see they went for a BSG-vibe but all those flat panels make them look like cheap toys and doesn't give a feel for the scale. Making the Aquan ships more organic looking and with a marine theme was a cool idea, but in the end the starter minis just looks strange, in all the wrong ways. Now, I've seen people rescue these models with great paint jobs - making them look really good - but I think they should have looked better from the start.

The good news is that the Sorylian ships look great! They're certainly not breaking any new ground, but look really cool in a traditional sci-fi way. The Dindrenzi have a more interesting design principle with their long "necks" and I quite like those as well. The fleets that were released later (Relthoza and Directorate) also look good with their own distinctive features.

With the addition of new ships to the different factions I wonder if the designers at Spartan Games felt similar to me as the new Aquan vessels look a lot different (better!) than their original outing. The same goes for the Terrans, with more panelling and detailing being put on their floating shoeboxes (kidding!) - the Aegis class shield vessel in particular is excellent! I'm harbouring a hope that they will actually go back and resculpt the original Aquans and Terrans. It would certainly make me happy!

The recently added alliance vessels add more variety to the fleets and I like what we've seen of these so far!

The System

The game has been out for a while now so I won't really go over the rules in detail. It's your basic age of sails in space with buckets of dice! You each ativate one ship or squadron at a time and then the turn goes to your opponent. During combat you roll a number of dice equal to the ship's firepower value (you can link fire with other ships in the squadron) and every 4+ is a hit, 6 counts double and "explodes" adding another die to the pool. If you manage to score more hits than your opponents Damage Rating he looses a Hull Point, and if you also go over his Critical Rating there's some bonus damage inflicted. All in all it's a good solid mechanic that is used throughout the game.

There are also rules for fighters and bombers as well as torpedoes and how you can use your ships' Point Defence systems to defend against them. Battleships are large and lumbering while frigates are quick and nimble, very nimble actually - making a 180° during their activation is usually no problem. Ships are also surprisingly durable and a cruiser can usually survive even a full broadside attack from a battleship.

Boarding plays a part in the game as well and there are surprisingly intricate rules of how it works with every ship having stats for both crew and marines. I'm not sure how large part it plays in the game (I haven't managed a boarding yet) but it's cool nonetheless!

Like the other games form Spartan Games there are also a deck of cards you can use while playing which gives you some special rule breaking abilities that can hopefully sway things in your favour. I like the idea, although I would be much happier if each faction had their own deck of cards to help diversify them more (which Neil has said will come in the future).

The "Feel"

So far I have only played line them up and fight battles, which are never as much fun as more specific scenarios, but I still think I have a decent grasp on how the game plays. The battles have all been pretty much the same with both sides maneuvering towards each other, trying to get your opponent into your broadside fire arc at range band two (all ships excell at this range) and while there might be some initial torpedo volleys they usually don't do any damage. And as even larger ships are relatively fast it's difficult to stay at arms reach. In one battle I tried to stay as far away for as long as possible, thinking I'd make use of the Relthozas' stealth technology and torpedoes. But it was still just a couple of turns and then we were in each others range band two again. It's also pretty easy to maximize your firepower each turn as you can usually maneuver enough to get something in your broadside arc.

This means that it kind of boils down to a battle of attrition and who rolls more 6's. Yes, I'm a bit harsh here and oversimplifying but that is what it feels like. It rarely feels like you have the opportunity to make some smart tactical maneuver to surprise your opponent or move in a way where he can't attack you, it just feels like a slugging match. A large part for me I think is the all pervasive resolution mechanic, the only thing that that makes torpedoes different from firepower is that you can defend against them with your PD fire. Besides that they're mechanically identical. And there are also only two types of weapon systems, firepower and torpedoes... and they work almost the same.

Fighters and bombers are similar as they also (after having gone through Point Defense fire) simply add up their Firepower value and try to roll over the target's Damage Rating. I can certainly understand the designers wanting to use the same resolution mechanic throughout the game as it does streamline the experience, but I wonder if it's not at the cost of variation.

My Thoughts

When I play Firestorm: Armada it reminds me of the old GW game Battlefleet Gothic. There are some passing rules similarities but mostly it's that the theme of both games have a lot in common - space opera with huge boats in outer space. But while F:A quickly starts feeling like a boxing match between two punch-drunk heavy weights just trading body blows BFG managed to retain a sense of tactics all the way through a battle. In it you have three quite different weapon systems (Firepower, Torpedoes and Lances) and how your ships are positioned relative to your opponent actually matters. And while it's harder to plink away at a cruiser in BFG, gradually wearing it down, it's perfectly possible through clever tactics to simply cripple it in one swift blow.

When I play miniature games I want the rules to capture the right feel of the miniatures and the setting. I want a machine gun to work differently from a shotgun and I want clever gameplay maneuvers to be more important than my list or the luck of the die. Now, I don't mean that you can't play tactically in F:A, and all those buckets of dice should even out statistically, but I don't think there's enough diversity in the game to keep me interested. Granted, I've started leaning more towards "realistic" space battles as the years have gone by so perhaps I'm not the target audience, but even so I remember having more fun with BFG.

I'm starting to repeat myself but in the end it comes down to lack of variety in how the weapons work and the fact that it's all too easy to get to use your strongest broadside fire arc every turn. When it's all about the almighty broadside I think actually achieving that elusive firing position should be somewhat difficult, and when you do make it the "I'm screwed!" look should be plain in your opponent's eyes! In this game though, you keep hammering at each other to see who breaks first. If I'm allowed to oversimplify for a little bit; it all contributes to a feeling of weapon choice and maneuvering not mattering all that much, or less than in other games at least.

Now, I do like the basic system - there is certainly nothing wrong with it - but I think it's over-used and makes the game feel "samey" as you go along. For some reason I am much less opposed to it in a true wet navy setting like Uncharted Seas or Dystopian Wars (although I have played neither yet). It might be my inherant preconceptions of space combat but for use with plain old cannon the system seems much more fitting. I've talked about Dystopian Wars a lot earlier and I'm looking forward to trying it out to see if how it "feels".

Conclusion

Well... there's been a lot of I, my, me in this article as well as talking about touchy feely stuff. But the bottom line is that Firestorm: Armada is probably not the spaceship battle game I'm looking for. It's not that it's completely unenjoyable or the rules are bad, I just think there are better alternatives out there for this sort of game. I want a bit more detail and more tactical... granularity. If you're anything like me you will likely have a similar reaction to the game.

However if you are looking for a simpler more streamlined game than a lot of the other stuff out there you should definitely check it out. Something else that Firestorm: Armada brings to the table is availability and broader appeal. I would say it's the best produced and supported spaceship battle game available today. Granted that doesn't say an awful lot in this little niche of the miniature gaming market, but it's still something. Sure, Full Thrust have been around for ages, but you can't go to your FLGS and pick up the rulebook and a starter box for it.

I will likely play Firestorm: Armada again and I'll more than likely pick up a few more models (have you seen the dreadnoughts?! They're insane!!) but it is not the game I hoped it would be. Yesterday I ordered a few Deisho ships from Chris at Ravenstar Studios and I think I might have to cook up some neat Full Thrust scenario where they could be used. And I've got the urge to play BFG again, just to see if it's my rose-tinted glasses or not...

If you desperately crave some kind of arbitrary number to quantify the merits of this game I give you... three out of five.

Past and Future II

2012-01-04T23:39:00.001+01:00

Here we are! A bit late but here's my 2011 retrospective / 2012 prospective. Basically what I've been playing in and what I will (hopefully) be playing soon. I'm one of those anal types who log every single time I play on Boardgamegeek.com and using those statistics I can reveal my top played games in 2011.

Board Games

In first place I'm happy to say we have Earth Reborn! I mentioned something about it making this list next year back in 2010 and indeed it did. It might sound strange that it got so many plays since it's fairly complex and not always easy to introduce to new players, but we played it pretty intensively for a few months. It's been a while now but I'm feeling a resurgence coming! It's definitely my board game pick of 2011 as I think it's awesome in pretty much every way.

Then we have Lord of the Rings: The Card Game that also saw a lot of play when I first got it. We haven't played it for a while now, but I'm getting excited about the new Khazad-Dûm expansion! So far I have also only got the first Adventure Pack and would like to complete the Mirkwood cycle before delving into the depths of Moria. What I really haven't started doing yet is deck building. Probably about time though...

Number three on the list is Gears of War the Board Game which me and my group of friends found to be a lot of fun! We still haven't managed to actually win a game yet, but I'm sure we'll get there. So far it goes splendidly well in the beginning and then we muck it up right at the end.

Below the top three we find Mansions of Madness, Race for the Galaxy, Claustrophobia and... well it goes on and on. Overall I think these top three games correlate well with what I consider the best new board games I played last year. Games I'm looking forward to playing during 2012 are Rex: Final Days of an Empire, High Frontier, X-Wing, Merchants and Marauders, Star Trek: Fleet Captains, Dark Darker Darkest and the reprint of Merchant of Venus (whoever publish it) to name a few. Besides discovering new games it would be fun to try more expansions like Shards of the Throne for Twilight Imperium and Banners of War for Runewars (which I think I might just buy at the end of the month.

Roleplaying Games

We finished The Gathering Storm campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd ed. during the spring and after that I was certainly ready for something different. It's not the fault of the game, but rather the adventure - it's a bit too... conventional. My friend Anders told us that he would GM a session or two but in the end that didn't happen. So I started looking for something fresh and different and returned to Diaspora, discovered Mouse Guard and experienced the joys of Fiasco.

We've only played Mouse Guard twice so far but it's been great fun and I really want to play it more. I think Diaspora might be next up though as my friend Jimmy fell in love with it when I first showed it to him, so he's very eager to get going and between the two of us I think we can rustle up a couple more players. Our Farrely brothers-esque session of Fiasco was a blast! From now on I'll simply always bring it and a bag of dice with me to all our gaming nights and pull it out when we want something different.

For 2012 I'm looking forward to more of the same as well as trying new stuff. I've been reading Pelgrane Press' Ashen Stars and Trail of Cthulhu as well as the Dragon Age rpg and Apocalypse World. Not to mention The One Ring which is right behind Diaspora on my want-to-play-list. It will be interesting to see what FFG does with the Star Wars license - I would definitely be in the market for a non-D20 version of Star Wars. For quicker pick-up games it'd be fun to try 3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars and Lady Blackbird. Hmm... it'll be a busy rpg year!

Miniature Games

Well... I think you already know. Yes, Infinity which actually was the second most played game overall! That certainly surprised me since we play a lot more board games than miniature games these days. But again it proved popular with the group of friends who I introduced it to. Sure they still haven't actually painted anything, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm really happy that we took the plunge with Infinity, especially since we all seem to enjoy it and it feels like something that's here to stay. Would like some proper terrain though, and with the new Project Infinity releases from Sarissa I think an Ariadnan frontiers town might be in the cards. Really love the look of their designs!

I also squeezed in a couple of games of Firestorm: Armada. It's decent enough but it doesn't quite click with me. I'm not sure why but think the rules might work better in a traditional naval setting like Uncharted Seas or Dystopian Wars. I'm in the process of writing a review of the game that should be up soon where I expand on my thoughts.

15mm sci-fi deserves a mention as well. I've only played a single game of Gruntz so far but I've been painting a fair bit at least. My EarthSec army is currently the largest with a small group of Reds and some other random elements as well. We should see some additions during January thanks the Gruntz painting competition. I'll prooobably end up painting another EarthSec squad and their ride. Oh, and there's still time to get in on it! Robin will hand out the 1.1 version of the rulebook to the winner and I heard something about Critical Mass Games also contributing with the beautiful new Imperator Mecha. Good stuff!

During the coming year I'm looking forward to a lot more Infinity! That's my number one priority at the moment. But I would also like to finally get my Heavy Gear Blitz army all finished as well as continue on my AE: Necromunda project. I mentioned Dystopian Wars in my last Past and Future post but I managed to hold it off for a whole year. With the release of the French faction though, I think my defences have finally crumbled. There are a few other games I've been looking at but I try not to get (more) distracted. Tomorrow's War is high on the list, but especially I would like to try some more realistic spaceship battle game, with fewer ships but more details. Currently looking at games/minis like Cold Navy, Zandris IV and Squadron Strike. Although the upcoming space supplement to 5150: Star Army (aka 5150: Fringe Space) is looking interesting as well, check out The Ceres Crossroads for more info on the project.

EDIT: I just remembered something miniature game related that I really want to get into during 2012 and that is airbrushing! It's something I've been wanting to do ever since I saw it first used on miniatures in my early teens, but even more so during these last few years when it's become more and more popular. And just looking at the results I feel like I'm missing out. Jarret over at Minijukie.com recently made an excellent Airbrush Equipment Video that has also really inspired me. Check it out!

And, there you go! It's actually fairly similar to the post I did at the end of 2010. I'd say the biggest new things are Infinity and 15mm sci-fi... and perhaps the addition of the new wave of Indie RPGs. Hmm, that's pretty much half the list so I guess there are some changes afterall! Haha!

Twilight Imperium - final days of the year...

2011-12-31T18:27:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of updates on Fire Broadside! It's all because of the that damn Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's very addictive! My bounty hunter is in his mid thirties and I have a smuggler and an agent on their way up in life as well. Excellent story and solid gameplay. Anyway, I'm here to talk about Twilight Imperium - my favourite board game. Unfortunately I don't get to play it all that often but it's always a blast when it actually does hit the table.

So I was really glad when we managed squeeze in a game of Twilight Imperium (with the first expansion) before the end of the year. Sure, we were only three people but it allowed me to refresh my memory and, more importantly, introduce a new player to the game! Mats had never played before but had heard me wax poetic about the game many times before. Me and Anders met up early and started setting up the board. We decided to use one of pre-made maps from the FFG website as I have heard from several veteran players that they make for a more balanced (and hence fun) game. We also included Artifacts (but revealed from the start) but decided against the Distant Suns as that option which, while kind of fun, really adds to the time it takes to play and makes the experience quite a bit more random.

What we played.

We also picked a race for Mats. Both to save some time and also to make sure he got something with some fun special abilities but not too tricky to play, so the Mentak it was. I wanted to try the L1Z1X Mindnet as I had never played them and the technophile Anders took the Jol-Nar Universities (well, he's a technophile in TI but a luddite in real life!).

Setup. I'm blue, Anders purple and Mats orange. Sorry for the blurry pics.

We started out and Mats grasped the rules fairly quickly. We all started to spread out and approach Mecatol Rex. Anders as the Jol-Nar was the most aggressive as he brought two planetary defense platforms and placed them in a system next to MR... it felt like the Cuban missile crisis in space! Mats and Anders each had an artifact while the one between me and Mats lay unclaimed for a couple of turns.The Jol-Nar annexed Mecatol Rex through Diplomacy (which is against the rules as we discovered afterwards) and then managed to push through a new law stating that no one could invade MR, effectively making it his for the rest of the game! The Jol-Nar had a lot of systems with high Influence values so there wasn't much of a political game. Anders could simply decide what would happen.

After a couple of turns. Notice the unclaimed Artifact between me and the Mentak Coalition.

He also took the lead and I decided to risk making a pre-emptive strike against his fleet massing near Mecatol Rex. Just before that another law was passed saying that all space docks had their production capacity reduced to two, meaning no one wanted to spend it making fighters and ground forces. This put me in a good position as the L1Z1X has cheap dreadnoughts and I had build a number of fighters before the law was passed (which the others hadn't). Also, since I had Hopes End I could make shock troops for "free" each turn. With the help of my fighter screen it was a fairly one-sided battle when I attacked the Jol-Nar and Anders' only managed to retreat with his damaged Warsun.

After my first attack on the Jol-Nar. You can see the damaged Warsun has retreated to a friendly system.

This put the Jol-Nar on the defensive while I slowed down to try and redeploy my forces. The Mentak had grown a bit and started acting more aggressive. I was hoping Mats would invade and finish off the Jol-Nar Warsun that had escaped but instead he decided to do a raid into one of my systems using his cruisers. The Mentak also took the unclaimed artifact between us. Around this time Anders was leading in points with me right behind and Mats trailing a little bit behind. But then Anders announced that he'd managed to achieve his Secret Objective, giving him two more VP's and securing a solid lead.The rest of the game mostly centered around how to catch up.

My secret objective was to destroy two space docks from two different players in one turn. I had a chance early in the game when the Jol-Nar had a space dock close to Mecatol Rex, but as it looked now it was pretty much impossible. I invaded Mentak space and took control of the Artifact Mats had just taken, but only managed to get a single ground trooper planetside. In the following turns there were three or four battles fought in the system between the Jol-Nar and the Mentak (twice involving Warsuns) but they never made it down to the planet and my lonely guy held it to the end of the game!I fought a couple of skirmishes with the Jol-Nar towards the end as well, trying to open a path to one of his space docks, but it didn't work out and Anders won with eight points agains my five and Mats' two.

What the board looked like at the end of the game.

All in all a great game! It showed that although three is perhaps not ideal for Twilight Imperium it certainly works and can be a lot of fun! I should also add that I think the pre-made maps are the way to go. Sure, you loose a little bit of the fun of making it yourselves, but on the other hand you'll have a lot more balanced playing experience and since there are a lot of planets around Mecatol Rex there will probably be more player interaction (battles!) as well. Highly recommended! I also think artifacts are good and have changed my mind about Distant Suns; I prefer playing without them. Anders thought that there weren't enough resources to go around, but in my opinioin it was just right. At the end of the game I could squeeze out a couple of dreadnoughts without too much trouble but building a warsun was still taxing. As it should be I think.

Mats really enjoyed himself and I thought he played very well for being a complete newbie. He might have focused more on creating a strong fleet than on actually claiming victory points, but that is something we all do quite often. Warsuns are fun! It never felt like he was out of the game though, thanks to his strong military presence. In the beginning it was a tight race between me and Anders, but when he got his Secret Objective I knew it would be very hard to be able to catch up. It's such a huge game and all the variables create a different experience every time. This time for example, thanks to the spacedock law, saw the return of large dreadnought-centered fleet warfare as opposed to the fighter heavy fleets you often see in TI.

Looking forward to playing again with more players and the new(ish) Shards of the Throne expansion. I'm especially keen on the added political element in it as that is one of my favourite phases in the game.

Well... happy new year everybody! I'll be back in a couple of days with a proper 2011 retrospective!

A Cosmic Encounter causes Panic at the Station

2011-12-11T13:47:00.001+01:00

It's been a while, but we actually managed to get some non-digital gaming done this past Friday. There were five of us and there were going to be board games. Since I had recently got Panic Station and it's a quick game that was a given, however what more to play had not been decided. Some suggestions were Mansions of Madness, Cyclades, Fury of Dracula, Battlestar Galactica and Cosmic Encounter. I voted for Mansions of Madness or Cosmic Encounter but would have been happy to play any of the suggestions (although I feel a little burnt out on BSG).

Either way, we started with Panic Station. It's a new game designed by David Asloos (check out his upcoming game Dark, Darker, Darkest!) and published by White Goblin and Stronghold Games. In a nutshell it's The Thing - The Board Game. Your team of soldiers are dispatched to a research base to discover why it has stopped communicating. As you arrive you come across parasitic alien creatures that are resistant to normal weapons, and you realize that one of you has most likely been infected by an alien virus... but who?!

So you need to explore the base to find a new type of ammunition that is effective against the parasites while you try to avoid getting infected. The final objective in the game is to find the Hive and destroy it with your flamethrower (which requires three gas cans). So it starts out as a cooperative survival horror game but with a hidden traitor, aka the Host. The main difference from games like Battlestar Galactica or Shadows Over Camelot, that also have a traitor mechanic, is that in Panic Station the Host can infect other players and they can in turn infect others. This is built into a trading mechanism in the game. Every time you enter a room where there's another player you have to trade; you give each other one card face down so the others can't see. If you recieve an infection card (all players start with three of these) you are now an alien pawn, unless you traded one of your gas cans in which case you're still human.

Exploring the base...

It doesn't make perfect thematic sense (like a few other things in the game) but if you're prepared to overlook a few "logical holes" there's a great game of paranoia and betrayel in Panic Station! Another really neat mechanic is the Heat Scan. If one of the players manage to get to the computer room one of the actions he can perform is use it to scan the entire base and find out how many humans and how many infected there are in it. It doesn't tell you who, just how many.

Anyway, during our first play I got infected by Mats who was the host in the first turn, and I managed to infect Anna on my next turn. So the humans went from four to two very rapidly! However both Micke and Anders heavily suspected this and when Micke made a heat scan it simply confirmed their fears. They tried resisting the alien virus but me and Mats ganged up and killed Micke's two characters (yes you can attack each other) after we had tried to infect him, unsuccessfully, several times. Anders held out for a bit longer but was finally infected by Anna.

We had fun although we played a few things wrong, how parasites are placed on the board for example. Oh, and I made the classical mistake that's so easy and stupid that you think you'll never do it: I said "Oh, so you just need one more gas can" insantly revealing myself. Silly silly silly. Haha! This first game, with a lot of rules checking lasted about 45-60 minutes.

Our next game was decided by a roll of a die. Some other games were added into the mix and the candidates were Elders Sign, Cosmic Encounter, The Name of the Rose and... something more... Fury of Dracula perhaps. Anders rolled a two so Cosmic Encounter it was. Which made me very happy!

I owned the old Swedish translation of Cosmic Encounter called Universums Härskare (Ruler of the Universe) but as kids we never "got it" when playing. The rules weren't difficult, but we simply missed out on the whole human interaction element, which basically is Cosmic Encounter. Hey, we were used to Monopoly. So I was very happy to A: get to try the game again as an adult, and B: do it with FFG's lovely looking reprint!

We drew some random aliens. I drew the Warrior (grows stronger throughout the game), Micke drew Morksomething (each ship is worth four), Anders drew Something (something, something), Anna drew Loser (can switch the result of a battle around so the loser wins) and Mats drew The Mutant (always holds eight cards in hand).

After a couple of turns. I'm green.

Micke and Anna soon took the lead with Mats right behind them. Anders had only got one colony while I had none. I think I tried relying a bit too much on my ability while the others feared it too much. In the beginning of the game I joined the loosing side only to get more experience points, and later in the game the others were afraid that I'd get too strong and simply didn't invite me either on the attacking or defending side. This meant that I only got a chance to get colonies in my own turn and then I often faced a large alliance, or I faced the Loser against whom I simply couldn't win.

Either way I did very poorly while Micke or Anna would clearly win the game, it was just a matter of who could do it quickest. In the end Micke conquered the final fifth planet and won the game, he even allowed me to get two pity colonies in his system as a reward for aiding him. Haha! Again a game that is quick to play, features tonns of human interaction and that I feel will be much better the next time when everyone knows what to expect of it. Looking forward to it!

Did I mention I was green?

We still had an hour or so left of our alloted game time so we decided to try Panic Station again. We almost played Elder Sign (that I'm eager to try as well) but since only Anders and Anna had played it we opted for Panic Station instead so we wouldn't have to do another rules explanation.

This game was very different from the first. Since we played with the correct rules there were a lot more parasites on the board and we were all much more paranoid from the start. We also split up early on and when I and Anders both found magnetic key cards and security doors to hide behind we did just that. I ended up alone in a corner of the base with a computer terminal. But only two gas cans. I tried searching for more while holding the parasites at bay. Finally the Hive ended up in my section and I just needed one more gas can to torch it.

The others had real trouble with the horde of parasites and all of them were wounded and Mats was even killed by them! In the end Anna used another computer terminal to open the security doors to my isolated section. She rushed in and tried to infect me, meaning I had tro trade away the third gas can that I had finally found. I was really lucky though and found another on my next turn meaning I could run in and burn the Hive.

As I said, a very different game this time. Anna was frustrated as she felt that she couldn't infect any of us as we all carried gas cans and both me and Anders were behind security doors. However, since Panic Station is so short it's not the whole world if you sometimes get a game that feels a bit off. I think it's much worse when it happens in Battlestar Galactica and you have invested four or five hours into a game that doesn't feel as fun as you know it has the potential to be. When you only play for 30-45 minutes you can just shrug it off and give it another go.

All in all I really enjoyd both Panic Station, which I feel could easily become a staple filler game, and Cosmic Encounter which I think really appeals to our socially minded group! Looking forward to playing them both again soon. Naturally their quick play time is another point in their favour.

With Panic Station still in my mind I just had to check out the new prequal to John Carpenters The Thing, also called The Thing. I watched it today and was surprisingly satisfied with what they've come up with! Basically it tells the story of what happened at the Norwegian polar station that McReady explores in the original 1082 film. Overall it's done very well and it slots pretty smoothly into the original film. There's a lot of Norwegian actors in it and the language barrier creates another dimension of paranoia. There is (of course) CGI in this film which you won't see in the original but it's generally well done and captures the feel of the well. It's not perfect and they show too much of it in places but it could have been so much worse.

The big difference is that the Thing is a lot more aggressive in the prequal. It's more of a monster movie with some paranoia sprinkled about than the other way around. I didn't like this at first, but you could argue that this shows the Thing trying out different approaches and in the end realizing that it's better to try and stay hidden than simply aggressively trying to assimilate each and everyone fairly openly.

There are some continuity errors, or rather continuity confusion, here and there where you go "oh, I thought that guy went away on the snowcat?". But bottom line I think this is a worthy companion piece to Carpenter's original. Go give it a watch!

And I almost forgot! I played the original Drakborgen, aka Dungeonquest, with my wife and seven year old niece the other day. You know you're in for a grim ride when you die in the first room you enter as you get bitten by a poisonous centipede! That happend to me so I started over with another character. My wife made it half way to the treasure chamber as Yuubara Tori-Jima before a stalking shadow throttled her. Both me and my niece made it into the chamber, scooped up loads of treasure and made it out without the dragon waking up. I made it about half way back when I ran across a mountain troll, I tried to hypnotize him with my psychic powers but got my head caved in instead. Damn. My niece was in the final room before the exit but the path was blocked by a portcullis and her character, Iril, only has a strength of four... and the sun was about to set! She tried lifting it four times but failed and then the sun set.

Totally unforgiving game. Love it!

November Wrap Up

2011-12-01T00:46:00.000+01:00

It's already time for the November wrap up?! What happened? Oh well...

Roleplaying Games

We played a second session of Mouse Guard. It went well and I think both the players and me as the GM are starting to get more comfortable with it. A session report is forthcoming...
I've also started reading Trail of Cthulhu (again). Call of Cthulhu was a true RPG stable for us back in the day and I'd love to re-visit the setting in these new mechanics. Also I hear a lot of good things about the adventures that Pelgrane Press has published for it.
Next up on my must-read-RPG list is Apocalypse World. It sounds really interesting!

Mini and Board Games

This has been an unusually dry month. Me and Anders played a quick game of Gears of War, using the Roadblocks scenario, but failed miserably yet again. Haha!
I'm eagerly waiting for the reprint (and slightly updated) High Frontier as well as the second edition of A Game of Thrones. Also, kickstarter project Exile Sun has caught my eye, it looks interesting.

Painting and Modelling

I did do some painting this month although it was commission work for Khurasan Miniatures again. Jon asked me if I'd be willing to paint his new Kilo outpost, which I was. You can see the result above. It's modular and if you buy some extra wall sections you can make it a lot larger.
My Yu-Jing are staring at me from the shelf and I've decided to get at least one miniature into the Christmas painting contest. Haven't started yet though. Also the new Crane rank Agent is absolutely spectacular!
Speaking of Infinity I'm seriously tempted to get some Shasvaasti...

Video Games

This one will actually be quite lengthy, and it's all because of SWTOR. Just scroll past it if you don't care about video games. I've played some other stuff as well, so let's just get those out of the way first.

I got The Missing Link DLC for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I had forgotten all about it so was really happy to get it and sneak around as Adam Jensen again. It might be slightly overpriced, but if you're a Deus Ex fan I still think it's a solid purchase. Quite liked the story!
Play.com had some bargain prices so I got Singularity and Rage. Unfortunately I couldn't play Rage because I have a Japanese Xbox and Bethseda/ZeniMax often region lock their games (bastards!!).
It was all forgotten once I got The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim though. It's just as great as everyone says! Go get it. Now. Even if you didn't really like Oblivion (like me) you'll like Skyrim. I think it has to do with the more realistic feel of the world. Cyrodill, where you spend your time in Oblivion, always felt kind of cheesy to me, in a cheap American fantasy tv-series kind of way. Skyrim, with its roots in ancient Scandinavian culture feels a lot more real. And the snow is lovely, not to mention the northern lights! Or the music! Or Max Von Sydow!

Indeed, Skyrim would have been the game that would have taken most space in this secion had it not been for me playing in the beta/stress test of Star Wars: The Old Republic this last weekend. And oh what a weekend!

I was let in late afternoon on Friday and could play until early morning Tuesday, and since I had the whole weekend off I could get a lot of gaming in! As I've mentioned before I'm an old SWG player and with all its flaws I still hold that game in high regard, my other MMO darling is EVE online, so although I was hoping SWTOR would be great (hey, it's BioWare!) I was kind of expecting it to be World of Warcraft in a different attire. And sure, it does owe a lot to WoW. But just as much or more is actually taken from BioWare's single player RPGs like KotOR or Mass Effect. And who doesn't love BioWare RPGs?!

What surprised me was how well they've managed to integrate the story (usually a purely single player experience) into the MMORPG environment. I played a smuggler to level 7 and a bounty hunter to level 22 and in contrast to other MMOs it was the story that kept me going, not the grind to the next level. Every class has an epic main quest line and then there's of course loads and loads of side quests, all of them fully voice acted with the now commonplace dialogue system that was first introduced in Mass Effect. Your character is actually just that, a character not just a "toon". BioWare has managed to bring back the RPG bit that's been missing from most MMOs since WoW made it's debut. Thinking of it like Knights of the Old Republic III is not far from the truth.

So the story aspect is great, how about the game play? Well, it might look WoW-esque on the surface, but the creators have made a lot of subtle changes, creating a game that feels very different. First of all you're pretty heroic from the get-go. For example, the bounty hunter get the Death From Above ability at level one, and it's pretty darn spectacular (and powerful!). Also you're constantly fighting several enemies at once. This might seem trivial, but juggling between the different targets, using your different abilities to control the flow of battle and then take them out one after one (or all at once!) is very satisfying! Finally I think they've managed to capture the essence of the different classes very well. I'm not interested in wielding a lightsabre, so don't know about the jedi/sith, but the four other classes feel right. As a smuggler you get to live out your Han Solo fantasy, just as bounty hunters can get their Boba fetish on (loved having all those tricks up my sleeve as a BH!). The Imperial Agent is the James Bond/Jack Bauer of the game and the trooper is the heavily arme soldier he should be. Naturally it comes across in the story and cut-scenes, but also in their abilities and how they play. I'll be playing a smuggler at launch with a bounty hunter alt. For starters.

Just like any other BioWare RPG you also find companions during your journeys and they then form the crew on your ship (every class get an appropriate large spaceship. Think Millenium Falcon). Your companion works kind of like a pet in other MMOs except they also have a story to them and you can actually talk to them. They also make up the crafting portion of the game, basically staying busy tinkering with stuff back on the ship or going on crew missions on their own. The crafting game actually seems pretty cool. Not as deep and complex as say SWG's or EVE's but definitely a step up from WoW. I think my smuggler will be a cybernetics expert, dealing in illegal blaster mods. "You need some extra kick in that Czerka model 19 rifle? Well, I just happen to have something that might fit... if you have the credits."

So your spaceship acts as your home base/house and you can actually fly it as well. So it's cool that we do have some kind of space game at launch. However, it's an on-rails shooter and is more of a mini-game casual activity rather than being an integral part of the game. I spent a lot (most?) of my time in SWG in space and it really was an awesome part of that game, so I'm really hoping we'll see a space based expansion from BioWare in the future. However, I do think that what we have now is a pretty good placeholder! Yes, it's on rails and it's very basic, but the format does allow for some really cool cinematic moments (a destroyer jumping in right in front of you!) and it looks spectacular if nothing else! I'm surprisingly happy with it. For now...

Urm... well, I could go on, but I really shouldn't. Basically I found myself liking the game a lot more than I would and I went ahead and pre-ordered a copy (need the early-access!). If you like Star Wars and/or BioWare RPGs and are not particularely adverse to MMOs in general chances are you'll like it. It certainly has its share of flaws, but it's pretty damn fun!

Other Geekstuff

I mentioned The Reality Dysfunction (plenty of spoilers there, watch your step) last month and how I had started listening to it but not really got into it yet. Well, now I have and I'm hooked! It's hard sci-fi but with living starships and satanism! What it really reminds me of is George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series in terms of scope. There are many different factions maneuvering for position, a huge tableu of characters and you learn early that they are all expendable. Almost done with the first book in the series.
Watched some movies as well. Enjoyed Captain America, although I can't really recall much about it now. As I started watching the new Conan movie my hope climbed during the first 10-15 minutes only to come crashing down as the film continued. It just felt like a waste of such a good character and world! While John Milius might have got the character of Conan wrong he at least got the world right! Marcus Nispel (who?) didn't manage to get either one right. Conan felt like some brooding emo child, and the Hyboria seemed to be made up of four people - Conan, the princess, the bad guy and the bad guys daughter. Yes, there were some mooks here and there, but you got no sense of scale. Not socially nor geographically. Blergh. A disappointment.

I think that's about it this month. Sorry for the long SWTOR bit. Hopefully some of you found it interesting. :)

Jovian Diaspora: Gagarin-class Fleet Tender

2011-11-12T13:36:00.001+01:00

T3, Gagarin-class Fleet Tender

The enormous Gagarin-class fleet tender is used as a mobile shipyard, making sure the ships of the Jovian fleet are always in top shape wherever they may be. The ship came about simply out of the necessity to be able to cover so much space. CEGA has it easy with their supply lines being relatively short. JAF is not so lucky and needed the supplies to actually follow their fleets and task forces around.

The Gagarin was the answer to this need and allows fleets to be a lot longer out on patrols or missions. It also serves another important function, namely as a flying classroom of sorts where cadets are trained and evaluated before assignement to other vessels.

While the Gagarin is equipped with a missile bay and point defence systems it is certainly not meant for combat duty.

V-shift 3, Beam 0, Torpedo 2, EW 0, Trade 5
Frame OOO OOO
Data OOO O
Heat OOO O

Slipdrive: Can traverse slipstreams.
Drydock: A docked ship can treat the Gagarin as a T3 space station for maintenance puroposes. (3bp)
Point Defence: Base defence 2 against torpedoes.

A home away from home
"We've got every spare part manufactured in the Confederation. And then some!"
Not for frontline duty
Flying classroom
Modular, easy to understand components

Image from Ships of the Fleet Volume 1: Jovian Confederation (click for a readable version)

Any other ideas for a big floating shipyard? Would you say 3bp is fair for the Drydock stunt?

A Revisit of the Saitama Storm Drains

2011-11-08T21:25:00.000+01:00

I wrote about the Saitama storm drains (or the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, if you want to get technical) in this old post from 2009 and likened it to the dwarf-city of Dwarrowdelf, aka Moria. It's a very interesting location that's been used in numeours commercials, movies and video games.

TheOneRing.net had an article about it the other day, making the same connotations to Moria that I did, and it reminded me that I had forgotten to post my own pictures of the "Underground Temple" from when I was there with my friends in early 2010. So without further ado:

And this is what it looks like from the outside. Nice that they have their own soccer field.

It's a spectacular location and if you visit the Tokyo area you really should try to make your way there. It's a bit off the beaten path as it's out in Saitama prefecture (not Tokyo as is usually claimed) so it's an hour or two by train and then a 45 minute walk. Well worth it though!

Review of The One Ring

2011-11-03T12:41:00.000+01:00

I got my copy of Cubicle 7's new Lord of the Rings roleplaying game The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild (try saying that three times fast!) last week and I spent the weekend reading through it. It's been in the works for some time and it's been apparent from the start that the authors have tried to take a new approach to roleplaying in Middle-Earth compared to earlier RPG efforts. The game was written by Francesco Nepitello together with Marco Maggi and if those names sound familiar it's probably because you've played their board game War of the Ring. If you have you already know that these guys truly know their way around Middle-Earth! If you haven't then what are you waiting for?! BGG has it listed as the top thematic game (followed by Earth Reborn!) and 15th on the overall board game ranking. It's a great game in and of itself and it also manages to be a great Lord of the Rings game!

In this review I will talk mostly about the different mechanical systems in The One Ring (TOR). Since you all know the setting pretty well I thought you'd be mostly interested in seeing how this game differs from the earlier ones from a rules standpoint. I'm not going to get too much into the nitty-gritty, but if you just want to read my concluding thoughts on the game and aren't all that interested in individual mechanics scroll down to My Thoughts.

Setting and characters

Well, I suppose I should mention something about it anyway. The One Ring takes place in the areas around Mirkwood five years after the death of Smaug. You can play as a Barding, Beorning, Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit or Woodman and you get to choose from a number of Callings: Scholar, Slayer, Treasure Hunter, Wanderer and Warden. These two choices are what will make up the core of your character, but you will also choose Skills as well as a set of Traits and some gear. So that's that.

The Set

The game comes in a slipcase containing the two core rulebooks and a set of seven custom dice. There's the Adventurer's Book (190 pages) and the Loremaster's Book (141 pages) and they're both soft cover. There are also two maps of the region of Middle-Earth relevant to the game, namely Mirkwood, the Misty Mountains and the surrounding areas. The graphic design and layout is pretty much spot-on for a Lord of the Rings roleplaying games, it even has art from John Howe himself and John Hodgson's full page spread paintings that each chapter starts with are stunning! I really don't have any complaints on the physical look of the books. Some might be disappointed that the books are not hardcover, but I actually think there are pros and cons to both the soft and hard format so it doesn't influence me in this regard. I quite like the slipcase approach as you get the sturdiness of a hardcover book with the ease of reading a softcover.

Anyway, when reading the books you can tell that the designers have allowed themselves to be inspired by many of the "new wave" indie games that have become increasingly popular in recent years. From a storytelling standpoint I'd say TOR is fairly traditionall, but there are many mechanical elements that are definitely inspired by more unorthodox games. Perhaps it's because its fresh in my mind but I can see a lot of Mouse Guard in TOR. It doesn't have the strict storytelling structure that MG has (although there's a nod towards it) but there are many mechanical and general conceptual similarites between the two.

The most obvious one might be that when playing The One Ring you divide it into two phases; first there is the Adventuring phase where the heroes are on their mission or quest and the Loremaster throws all kinds of obstacles at them. Then there's the Fellowship phase which takes place once the quest is accomplished and the heroes have some "free time" to spend as they want. It might sound like the GM/players turn of MG, but here the adventuring phase can extend over several sessions and it's not until the heroes have actually accomplished their quest that the Fellowship phase kicks in. And when it does it's really a lot more similar to the winter phase of Mouse Guard - essentially the players get to decide what their characters do during their downtime; how to spend their experience and advencement points, how to spend their treasure, where they spend their time (at home, at a haven) and if they try to use their resources to try and establish a new haven or make sure to uphold their reputation back home. Basically it's more big picture stuff, rather than going into detailed skill rolls.

Basic Mechanics

Speaking of rolls, what kind of mechanics are we talking about here? Well, the basic resolution mechanic is a dice pool; roll a special D12 (the Feat die) plus a number of D6 (the Success dice) corresponding to your skill rating, add them up and try to beat a set Target Number (TN) which is usually 14. However there are some added functions to this mechanism. First off there's a Gandalf rune and an Eye of Sauron on the Feat die in place of 12 and 11 respectively. The rune signifies an automatic success and the Eye of Sauron counts as zero and is generally used to add some additional complications if it happens to come up while you also fail the roll. The D6 dice are special as well; the numbers 1-3 are printed in an outline while 4-6 are solid black. There's also a tengwar rune on the number 6 face. The outlined numbers are used when your characters is Weary, you simply count them as zero if you happen to roll them when Weary. The tengwar rune is used to measure degrees of success, ranging from none (a narrow success) to two or more (an extraordinary success).

Although there are a lot of different mechanisms crammed into these dice the pool is actually exceedingly simple to read at a glance and compared WFRP3 (which also uses a pool of custom dice) it's a lot quicker! While I mostly like the dice pool mechanic in WFRP3 it can take some time to sift through it and come up with the actual result when you have just rolled 15 dice and they cancel each other out. In TOR you can quickly eyeball the result and see if you beat the TN but you don't have to add them all up exactly since the degree of success is taken from the tengwar runes and not from the actual number you rolled. It's quick and at the same time allows for a number of clever little uses in the system, like the aformentioned Weary mechanic. You could of course use regular D6 for all this, but it would definitely take away some of the speed. I for one will pick up another set or two once they become available separately.

There are a couple of ways to influence dice rolls. You could invoke one of your Traits (Keen-eyed, Vengeful etc) and if the Loremaster and the table in general agree that it's fitting you simply pass the test, no roll required. Or you could spend a point of Hope (kind of like fate points, but also a measure of your characters mental well being) to add the value of the relevant attribute to the final roll. This is something you can do after you've rolled so it's quite powerful, especially considering your Attribute can be as high as seven. But then again Hope is not a resource to squander as if it dips too low you can become Miserable.

Numerically speaking your character is made up of three Attributes, Body, Heart and Wits, and skills of which there are 18 divided into three categories. Your attributes range from 2 to 7 while your skills range from zero to 6. Your skill rating determines how many Success dice you get to roll besides the Feat die and your attributes can then be added to this total with a Hope point. Another little twist here is the Favoured mechanism; if the skill you're using is Favoured (marked by underlining it) you get to used the Favoured rating of the relevant Attribute, which will be 1-3 point higher than the base Attribute.

All in all I quite like the mechanics of The One Ring. They are relatively simple and easy to remember (even after just one read I feel that I have a really firm grip of the system) but there are still room for a lot of nuances and neat tricks.

Combat

There's also a fairly different take on combat as well. You start by choosing what Stance your character is in, ranging from Forward to Rearward. The further forward you are the easier it is to hit your enemy but it's also easier for them to hit you. Rearward is a bit of a special case since you can only choose that stance as long as you have two companions in close combat stance (they're basically protecting you), and you can only use and be hit by ranged weapons. This is somewhat of an abstraction but still allows for a lot of tactical decisions; general risk versus reward and more specific tactics in who should be protected in Rearward stance (the injured Beorning, or the Elf who's skilled with a bow?!).

There are no hit points in TOR, instead you use Endurance. When you get hit you loose Endurance, and when it sinks below your Fatigue value (basically your encumbrance from weapons, armour and equipment) you become Weary and only get to count the solid black numbers on the dice, and when you reach zero you pass out. But there's also another damage mechanic! At certain times (usually when rolling the Gandalf rune) you can achieve a Piercing blow, forcing your opponent to make a protection test, using his Armour, against your weapons Injury rating and if he fails he becomes Wounded. There are also additional rules for knockback (take half damage, but loose your next action) to tearing your helm off in the middle of battle (lowering your Fatigue score by 3, possibly preventing you from becoming Weary). There are also different actions you can perform depending on your stunt, like intimidating your foe or trying to rally your companions.

This all combines into making the combat feel both cinematic and true to Tolkien. It's easy to visualize the scene as you have the hardy dwarf in a forward stance with his great axe, while the Barding warden is fighting in an open stance, giving the elf enough room to use his bow to deadly effect. Fights are also quick and fairly lethal (most enemies die if you manage to Wound them) and while the heroes can rely on their Endurance there's always the risk of a Piercing blow, even when their Endurance is at max.

Oh, and it seems to be very quick during play as well. I haven't tried it out myself yet but from what I hear it's just as fast in play as it looks on paper; a fight between a group of four heroes versus nine orcs only took two rounds and a total of about 20 minutes. That's pretty rare in the RPG world I'd say!

Journeys

One of the systems in the game that certainly screams Tolkien is the way travelling is handled. It's not simply about getting from point A to point B but everything that happens in between and how it affects the heroes. When the players start planning their journey they do so using one of the large, beautifully illustrated maps that come in the set and when they've decided on their rout the Loremaster checks it on his map that is the same, except it's divided into hexes and areas are colour coded, showing how difficult they are to traverse. He makes some calculations depending on where the heroes will travel, what season it is and their means of transport. The result is how many days it will take and how many tests the characters will have to make to try and resist stuff like getting fatigued or receiving Shadow points. Most likely he will keep these numbers secret from the players though. You can see both maps in the nearby picture, the left one is the player map and the right the Loremaster's map.

During a journey the players also get to choose different roles in the party for their characters. For example, one of them must be the guide (and there can only be one) who should have a high Travell skill. Then there are roles for Scouts, Huntsmen and Look-out men. They all have different tasks during the journey and should, for example, the Scout fail on his test it might mean that the party run into an ambush, or they face an obstacle in their path and have to go around.

Fatigue and Endurance also play a large part during journeys as you will have to make several tests and might gain Fatigue as you go. And since Fatigue can make you Weary it can really lead to situations where a difficult journey through Mirkwood puts you at a serious disadvantage when you suddenly need to fight. It all comes together to make journeys a core part of the entire TOR experience and I'm very eager to see how they play out.

Corruption

There are also rules for how the corrupting influence of the Great Shadow affects the characters. When travelling through Shadow regions or experiencing something nasty you risk getting Shadow points and when your Hope becomes lower than your Shadow point total you become Miserable. In this state you are susceptible to Bouts of Madness which can result in permanent Flaws being added to your characters. What kind of Flaw depends on what your Calling is; a Treasue Hunter will get more and more greedy etc. If you aqcuire more than five of these Flaws your characters is for all purposes lost to the Shadow - basically they're driven mad. So remember to keep your Hope up!

The Rest
There are a lot more to TOR but I've tried to highlight what makes the game special to me. Other stuff that I really like is the Valour/Wisdom mechanic, how money (Treasure!) is handled and the fact that some things need upkeeping. The character advancement rules are also interesting with a lot of different options on how to develop your hero.

Naturally there is also the setting itself. I think the time period and the location is well chosen; I've always liked Mirkwood and the time between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring is certainly an interesting one, with a lot of white spots on the map so to speak. What I think might have gone unnoticed though is that Cubicle 7 has decided to do the same thing Black Industries first pioneered with the 40krp-line, and release three different core sets based on different time periods and regions. The first is The One Ring, which will be followed by The Errantries of a King, which will somehow connect with Aragorn's travels in the west, and the final release will be The War of the Ring which I think speaks for itself.

My Thoughts

Here we are then. What's my overall thoughts on the game (and remember I've only read the books, no actual play)? Well, to be honest I'm pretty bloody impressed! You rarely see a game system that so well integrates with the theme. And when that theme has such gravitas and is as well known and loved it's even more rare! As I mentioned in the beginning Francesco Nepitello knows Tolkien, he gets Tolkien and it really shows. Pretty much everything in the system feels right for the setting. It simply feels Tolkien. That's a very fuzzy kind of statement but once you sit down with the book and read it you'll understand what I mean.

The character creation system does it's part here as it's easy to make it fit over the characters from the books. Combat is the same way and when you think about the skirmishes from the books they mesh very well with what the combat system in the game would produce. And finally the journey mechanic ties it all together and I think this system is probably what brings most of the Tolkien feel to the game! The struggles and joys of the journey, the different dangers and opportunities it can bring. It's certainly what makes The One Ring stand apart from its predecessors.

There are some niggles though. Speaking of the journey mechanic for example, there is a bit of calculation involved when plotting a rout and if you try to do it on the fly during a session there will probably be 5-10 minutes of downtime as you figure everything out. This can be remedied by plotting out likely routes ahead of time, but it's still there. I'm also a little bit wary that the journey could simply become a long string of dice rolls. This is very much up to the Loremaster and players to act it out, but I think if you play with the wrong people, or in the wrong mood it might become simply an exercise in dice rolling.

There's also the Encounter mechanic which tries to bring a bit of "social combat" into the game. While I like the initiative and the overall idea of it, I think it needs to be fleshed out more. It's hard to tell since I haven't seen it in action yet, but I think some more roleplay-oriented players might feel stifled by it while the more rules-oriented might be confused as what to do next.

Finally, there is no magic. Well, no look-I'm-a-Wizard-kind of magic anyway, although there are some subtle things in the game, more suitable to Middle-Earth. I don't think this is a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact! But I thought it was worth mentioning in any case.

So what we have here is a great game in general and a spectacular Middle-Earth game in particular! Now, I'm some of my opinions will change once I've actually played it but just from reading the book I'm very impressed. You have elegant, slightly indie-esque but with traditional roots game mechanics that are integrated very well with the setting combined with heroic, but not too heroic, characters that feel real in just the right ways. And the smell of Middle-Earth are all over the pages. I think The One Ring just might have jumped to the top of my want to play list!

For the numerically minded readers out there I'd say this is a strong four out of five at first reading.

October Wrap Up

2011-10-31T16:21:00.000+01:00

So what have I been up to during the month of October - beginning of autumn? Lets see...

Website Changes

As you've seen by now things are looking a bit different around here. I felt it was time for both a visual update and a structural update as well, making it easier to find content on the site. The navbar at the top of the page is now the main way to access the different content of Fire Broadside and more or less replaces the tag cloud (although that is still available further down). The links in the navbar usually go to the relevant tag, but there are a couple of new pages in there as well; I've finally got around to doing a proper About Me page where I talk (at length!) about my gaming history. There's also a new Current Projects page, or "The Navigational Chart", that I've been planning to do ever since I saw Mik's HUD page. It's a page where I'll continually list all the little projects I cook up and update them as they progress (or not, as the case might be).

There's also a new Reviews link on the navbar that drops down to reveal board, miniature and roleplaying game review sections. While I've done some reviews, or incoherant rambling about games in anyway, in the past I thought it was time to do it a bit more properly. My recent review of Mouse Guard was very well received and, more importantly, was a lot of fun to write. So from now on I'll try to do more reviews of the games I play as well as review some of the games I've written about on the blog in the past like Full Thrust, Firestorm: Armada and Infinity. I hope you'll enjoy them!

You might also have noticed the large rotating pictures at the top of the site. These are the monthly "featured posts". Basically links to some of my stuff that I think might deserve second glance or that might have some connection to what I'm currently doing. Or they might just be some articles picked at random. Hehe!

Oh, and finally there's a Contact link if you want to send me an email and complain about the atrocious lack of any miniature gaming content these last couple of months! :)

Anyway... onto the rest of the wrap up!

Roleplaying Games

This has certainly been an RPG themed month!

I played Mouse Guard with an entirely new group of people (RPG-wise that is). I think we all enjoyed it although the unorthodox mechanics will take some time getting used to. You can read the session report, Delivering the Mail, here.
We finished Mouse Guard pretty early and three of us thought that there was time for some more gaming, so I suggested Fiasco and the others agreed. We chose to use The Ice playset and the story involved a Mexican wrestler, his unwilling protegé and the wrestler's former trans-gender love interest. I'll try to write a proper session report for this later on, but suffice to say we had a great time with it! Although in the end I think the film we created was more Farrelly brothers than Coen brothers, but it doesn't really matter as long as you're having fun. Looking forward to more Fiasco!
Bought some games as well. Most notably The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild that I just finished reading through today. I'm pretty impressed with it and you should see a review of it shortly. I also got Burning Wheel Gold that I'm looking forward to reading as well as the Swedish sci-fi RPG Coriolis which is getting a second life as the new company Fria Ligan is taking over the line. In a nutshell you could liken the setting to Firefly but with the cowboy bits replaced by elements from Arab culture.
Have had it lying around for some time now, but finally got around to reading Lady Blackbird and I think it'll find a place in my GM folder as the perfect backup RPG since it requires zero prepp. Only thing is that you probably need the full five players to really make it shine.
Diaspora. Yepp, it never goes away does it! One of the participants in the Mouse Guard game, Jimmy, thought it sounded really interested and after reading the SRD he was pretty much hooked on both Diaspora and FATE in general. He's now invested in a hardcopy and we're now just sorting out who will play and we're off! In preparation I started porting over ships from another hard sci-fi RPG I really like, namely Jovian Chronicles. You can see the first ship here. Really looking forward to this.

Mini and Board Games

Been playing a lot of Gears of War since I got it at the end of last month. I think it's a great game that manage both to capture the feel of the videogame and also to be a good game on its own merits. You really feel the pressure! We haven't actually managed to win once in five games! Usually it's all nice and easy in the beginning and then we get overconfident and gets horribly killed when we try to do too much too quickly.
Had a game of Mansions of Madness with some of the "new friends". They hadn't played it or Arkham Horror before (or Call of Cthulhu for that matter) but they do know Lovecraft and I think they had a good time! We played the Inner Sanctum scenario since I thought that is one of the easier ones to understand as a new player. However, there were two things that I bungled; I should have made sure that there was at least one fighter in the group and I should have stressed the importance of focusing on following the clues rather than try to kill monsters or look for loot. Because of my little blunders they spent about four turns trying to kill a Shoggoth with their bare hands! In the end the game was a draw with one investigator managint to escape, two were killed and one joined the nefarious cult they had been trying to stop!

Video Games

I finished Darksiders which I began playing sometime in June. It's a Zelda-like game except you play as War (of the four horsemen) as he battles all kinds of demons and angels. I quite like it and will probably get the sequal later on.
Waiting for Skyrim I decided to give Dragon Age II another go as I felt the need for an RPG fix. I started playing it a couple of months ago, but the new button mashing fight system disagreed with me and I put it on ice. Now as I picked it up again the story has started to get interesting and I've realized that the fighting system does in fact have a depth similar to the first game I'm enjoying it a lot more. Not as good as the first, but definitely worth getting if you like the setting. Looking forward to the third game as it will hopefully be the "best of both worlds".
My friend Anders, inspired by the board game version, started playing Gears of War on his Xbox and actually got inspired enough to finally get an xbox live gold account (after four years!) allowing us to tackle the second game together. They really are some of the best co-op games around!
And speaking of GoW, I played the third one and experienced the end of the trilogy. A solid game in every sense of the word, but I still think my favourite in the series in the second one.

Other Geekstuff

Listened to Old Man's War by John Scalzi and enjoyed it greatly! It really made me want to play 3:16. I've just started listening to The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton and while I have still to 'get into it' I enjoyed Fallen Dragon so I'm not loosing hope.
Watched Duncan Jones' Source Code which is almost as great as Moon. Yesterday I went to the movies and saw Tintin in 3D. Overall I had a great time and although Spielberg and Jackson take some liberties with the material (making it quite a bit more "cartoony") it does feel like Tintin. It was also nice to see a restrained use of 3D where it was mostly there to give the movie a bit of depth and added realism. Inspired by Fiasco I also watched Burn After Reading. Great film!
Community is back on the air again and as great as ever!

Painting & Modelling
Nope... nothing this month. :-/

That's it for October. Roll on November!

Under Construction

2011-10-27T00:39:00.003+02:00

Yepp... things are looking a bit different around here eh? I thought it was well past time for some remodelling so please bear with me as I continue to experiment with the layout.

Hopefully this will make Fire Broadside easier to navigate as well as giving it a bit of a facelift. Please let me know your likes and dislikes in the comments!

Oh, and thanks to Frontline Gamer for actually providing me with the virtual kick in the pants that I needed to finally get around to this. I think it was all the web 2.0 talk that made me snap! ;)

Jovian Diaspora: Alexander-class Destroyer

2011-10-26T00:20:00.002+02:00

Image from http://www.fritzwork.de

Ever since I got Diaspora back when it was first released I've been toying with the idea of bringing the ships from Dream Pod 9's Jovian Chronicles into it. Jovian Chronicles was actually my first introduction to DP9 and although I've never managed to play in it I absolutely love the setting! Basically it's hard sci-fi in our own solar system with one caveat, there are exo-armours (think Gundam) and they play a large part in space warfare.

While I quite like the mecha part of the setting, what really got me was the ships, especially when I read the Ships of the Fleet series of books! They might be broken from a rules perspective, but damn, those are some great looking and well thought out ships! Especially the Jovian ones, but I really like the CEGA designs as well. If you're into space ships in general and hard(ish) sci-fi in particular I really can't recommend these books enough. While there are some rules pages in there they are far outnumbered by the pages simply bringing the ships alive! Each book describes three ships in exquisite detail and even includes interviews with crewmembers about their experience aboard. Great fuel for your imagination!

Although the JC vessels are a bit more visually stylized than the ships in Diaspora, mechanically they both adhere to a certain level of realism; exclusive use of reaction mass engines, no artificial gravity (besides, acceleration or spinning modules), actually caring about fuel etc. Basically it felt like a natural fit! So as we're gearing up for Diaspora, and inspired by Mike's excellent work over at The Redoubt, I thought I'd make up some stats for the different ships and use them as the navy for some T:3 system. First up we have the Alexander-class Destroyer.

Image from Ships of the Fleet Volume 1: Jovian Confederation.

T3, Alexander-class Destroyer

The Alexander-class is a fairly new and its main tasks are to help patrol trade routes and act as an escort. It is using a new modular design concept, making it easier to manufacture and maintain. As part of the design a spinning habitat module is included so the crew can enjoy some form of gravity no matter the acceleration.

Main features include wing mounted area defence lasers capable of creating a kind of "laser umbrella" protecting nearby ships from incoming missiles and a powerful spinal mounted particle accelerator. This makes the Alexander a versatile class of ships, being able to both defend against smaller "missile boats" as well as pose a threat to more heavily armoured vessels. (Of course there's a lot more information available in the actual book, 22 pages on the Alexander alone!)

V-shift 3, Beam 5, Torpedo 2, EW 2, Trade 0
Frame OOO OO
Data OOO
Heat OOO OO

Overwatch: May use its beam in defense of friendly vessels.
Slipdrive: Can traverse slipstreams.
Interface Vehicle: has a separate vehicle capable of landing on planet surfaces.

Defender
Trigger happy marines
Spinal mounted particle accelerator of death!
Modular, easy to understand components
Pirates beware

What do you think? A bit too vanilla? Would love to hear your ideas in the comments! I actually came up with a stunt for modelling the particle accelerator at first, giving you +2 to Beam when firing on a "stationary" (a relative term) target. But it seemed unnecessary as you could just cover it with a high Beam score and a fitting Aspect instead. Got to love FATE! If the inspirational juices keep flowing I'll work my way through the Fleet Books and make stats for the different ships.

And lets end the post with another lovely render from Fritzwork...

More later!

Mouse Guard Session Report

2011-10-22T02:58:00.000+02:00

Yes... it's more Mouse Guard. Sorry guys! Will be back to more futuristic deathkilling shortly. :)

After a lot of reading, a lot of pondering and a lot of imagining mice with swords we got to sit down and actually play Mouse Guard! It was an interesting experience in that it was both a new game with a radically different system and an entirely new group of players. Well, not entirely new as we've played board games together a number of times, but this was the first time for us playing an RPG together. As I mentioned I decided that we should at least start the game with some of the pre-generated characters. With an entirely new system like this it felt like the right thing to do, having well-made characters right off the bat.

The Deliver the Mail mission seemed like fun so I parceled out the characters to my three players. Jimmy wanted to try playing the leader so decided to play Dain (although re-named to Benjamin), Martin3 decided to play Benjamin's best friend Quentin and Rasmus took the role of the tenderpaw Robin (or Aengus).After first talking a bit about Mouse Guard in general, as Rasmus and Martin3 were pretty much ignorant of the setting, we got into the actual rules system. It's different from what any of us have played before, and while I at least have a passing aquintance with "indie roleplaying" none of the others did. I think Martin3 took it the best since he simply hadn't been roleplaying at all for a number of years. Tabula Rasa and all that I suppose. Jimmy who's regularely GMing for his own group seemed to have the most concern with the system but more in a "this sounds strange, but interesting" way rather than a "not D20=bad!" way. I think we were all really excited to try the game.

The Game Master's Turn

The patrol got their assignement from Gwendolyn; springtime in the territories is a busy season and one important duty of the Guard is to deliver the mail that has been piling up during the winter months. So their mission was to deliver the mail to Elmoss, Sprucetuck and then continuting to the more far off villages of Dorigift and Gilpledge. Before heading out Benjamin requisitioned a packbeetle to carry the mail for them (I would call them lazy except it's pretty cool with a packbeetle).It was a cold and clear spring day and the journey to Elmoss and then Sprucetuck proved uneventful as it was a trip that both Bejamin and Quentin had taken on numerous occasions, both hailing from Sprucetuck. They did manage to exchange some quick words with loved ones before they had to continue their journey to Dorigift. All the while Quentin continued making notes and drawing little squiggles that he could hopefully compile into an actual map later on.

Now they were entering unfamiliar territory as the two villages are quite far off the beaten path. This called for an Obtsacle 6 Pathfinding test and although Quentin tried to Scout ahead and Aengus kept an eye on the sky Benjamin failed the test. While I could have let them find their way but given them a Condition I instead opted for an animal twist. A curious raven began following the patrol, jumping from branch to branch, clearly eyeing that interesting looking mailbag! Suddenly it swooped down, trying to steal the bag from the patrol.

For this we used a Fight Conflict. The raven's Goal was "Must have mailbag!" while the patrol's was "Protect the mail". The raven rolled for composition and got four (which I continued to roll in pretty much every test during the conflict!) while the patrol managed to get five. However, with the raven's high Nature of eight it was still a tough fight. It didn't help that I managed to pick all the right Actions for it in the first round, defending when they attacked and attacking when they feinted. In the second round the raven won the conflict but had lost a little bit of Composition so owed a minor compromise to the patrol. We talked it over and decided that the raven got the mailbag but made a beeline for its' nest - making it easy to track. To be able to track it and then actually get the mail back would require a Hunter test followed by Scout, both versus the raven's Nature of eight (although I think I forgot about hunter and used something else instead).

They managed to track the raven, even with some Traits used against them and then Aengus literally leapt at the opportunity to prove his worth to Quentin by climbing the tree and trying to snatch the mailbag back! Good character moment there. However Aengus failed the test and I thought this was a good opportunity to introduce some Conditions, so Aengus became Tired from all the climbing while both Benjamin and Quentin had become quite Angry at the entire situation. Damn raven! They did manage to get the bag back though and made it the last couple of miles to Gilpledge.

Before even entering the village though, a mouse came running up to them pleading for assistance in getting an old family heirloom back from the fallen city of Walnutpeck. Benjamin wanted primarily to complete the mission but Aengus generous nature and Quentin's inquisitiveness made him give in in the end. They would help the mouse (named Martin) but only after actually delivering the mail. This was a simple Persuasion versus test and Benjamin won the test but felt that his companions both had good points. They continued into Gilpledge and finally delivered the mail.

This was the end of the GM's turn.

The Player's Turn
They had all managed to accrue a couple of Checks each, which made me very happy as I thought it would be a bit difficult during the first session. They started with trying to get rid of their conditions, but obviously the resting place Aengus used wasn't very comfortable and Benjamin just couldn't seem to let go of the whole raven situation! Quentin on the other hand went away for himself, lit up his pipe and sat down with his notes. This relaxed him quite a bit and his anger faded. He then used a check to try and actually compile his notes into a useful map and managed to create and accurate map of the path from Lockhaven to Gilpledge. Goal accomplished! Aengus also used a check for a resource test to get some supplies for the coming journey to Walnutpeck.

The rest of the checks were spent journeying to Walnutpeck and then searching for the rocking chair (the heirloom in question). They failed the first Pathfinding test to find the fallen city and were made Hungry because of it and I was hoping that they would fail the other one as well as I thought it would be fun to introduce some kind of weasel related twist, but they passed it with flying colours. The last couple of checks were used to prepare some food from the supplies Aengus had brought, alleviating their Hungry condition. The player's turn (and the session) ended with the patrol making it back to Gilpledge with the rocking chair.

When handing out rewards everyone got points for playing according to their belief (perhaps a bit generously but it was our first time) and for achieving their respective Goals. Only Quentin earned points for playing his Instinct though. Aengus got the MVP award for bringing the mailbag back and Benjamin got the workhorse award for making a lot of tests during the GM's turn. We all felt that perhaps nobody would get the Embodiment reward this first session, but then we remembered Quentin's little pipe break where he went off for himself. It seemed like a very in-character moment so Martin3 got a point for that.

And that was the end of the session!

Afterthoughts
I for one had a great time, and as far as I could tell the others enjoyed themselves as well. I could tell that they sometimes struggled a bit with the format of Mouse Guard and I know Jimmy isn't entirely comfortable with the meta-gaming aspects and the strict rules of the GM/players' turns. And to be honest I completely understand how he feels. Since I've read the rulebook I probably have a better understanding of the concept and ideas behind this but for a traditional roleplayer to be thrust straight into Mouse Guard can probably be a bit of a system shock. :)

As a GM I felt fairly well prepared as I have read the book a couple of times and have been checking the Burning Wheel forums for newbie problems. I think it went smooth overall and was surprised to see the players collecting a decent amount of checks and creating their own little adventure during their turn (which could easily have become much larger!).

The only thing I felt a bit unsure of was how to handle player initiated tests during the GM's turn. For example, Quentin wanted to roll for Cartography as they went along, but as that wasn't part of a mission obstacle I simply told him to narrate it and then had him use one of his checks in the player's turn to see how the map turned out. Basically, is the GM's turn obstacles only? 100%? Or is there room for some other tests as well? I was very strict this time around, but think I might be a bit more leniant in the future, but also remind the players that all tests are subject to twists or conditions when failed...

Bottom line is that I am very happy with our little session. It lasted a bit over four hours but that was with a dinner break in the middle. It felt just about right!I'm very much in a RPG mixer mood at the moment, I want to try a lot of different games (apart from Mouse Guard there are Diaspora, 3:16, The One Ring, Coriolis, Ashen Stars and Trail of Cthulhu just off the top of my head) but before we jump to the next we will play Mouse Guard for a couple more sessions at least. It's tricky when there's so much cool stuff you want to do!

Oh, and we also tried a three player session of Fiasco which was a lot of fun! More on that later...

Prepping for tomorrow's Mouse Guard!

2011-10-20T00:22:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post I've been trying to get some new blood into our roleplaying group. Or, failing that inject my own blood into somebody else's (eww!). With Mouse Guard it ended up being a bit of a mix as we've got parts from another group plus another friend who haven't roleplayed in years. As it happens nobody from my "original group" could make it to tomorrows meeting so it's a new game, a new way of playing and with new people! Should be interesting.

So! I decided to do some prepping! Since preparing the actual adventure is very quick in Mouse Guard (and Burning Wheel as well I imagine) there's more time for doing nifty things like character profiles etc! I decided that we should start out with some pre-generated characters and I went with the group from the Delivering the Mail mission. Although with some name changes.

I put together a summary page for each of the chosen characters (like the one on the right) that also includes his Belief, Goal, Instinct and Traits. I hope this will work as a quick intro to all of the characters and also for easy reference for the other players during the actual session. Also the artwork is awesome and really adds to the feel of the table. I also got a cheap set of poker chips that will be used for Fate points (white), Persona points (black) and Checks (red). There are also some blue and green ones but I'm not sure if I will use them. Perhaps for Disposition during conflicts...

Been thinking a bit about background music and have been considering different soundtracks. Might give some music from the different Fable games a try. Or perhaps Dragon Age. I guess it depends on how well the players know them.

Anyway, just wanted to share that! Will report more on tomorrow's session after the fact. Can't wait!

Review of the Mouse Guard RPG Box Set

2011-10-13T23:06:00.000+02:00

The other day I finally got the recently released Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game Box Set set in the mail and I thought I would actually take the time and do a proper review of it here.

What's in the box

The meat of the review will naturally be the contents of the main rulebook, but first let's have a look at the actual components in the box. The box itself is surpsisingly sturdy, actually more so than most board games I own (including FFG's that are usually pretty good quality). It has a glossy finish both inside and out and it feels like it will stand the wear and tear of carrying it around. The original hard cover book was released in 2008 and I think the only real difference between it and the book in the box is that it's now soft cover. It seems to be of good quality so I'm not worried about it falling apart. Only time will tell though.

Then there's the new extra stuff: a Game Master's screen, a bunch of cards, 10 mouse dice, a booklet of new rules and missions, player and GM sheets, a map of the mouse territories and five mouse pawns in the style of the ones you see Gwendolyn handle in the comics. Ooh! Lots of juicy stuff!

The screen is well designed with things liks skill factors, weapons and animals and their nature listed on it. It is relatively flimsy though, more like how GM screens used to be rather than the heavy linen card stock that we often see today. It's very much an optional accoutrement though so I don't have a problem with that.
There are two cards for each weapon (except for just one mace), three cards for each condition and three cards for each conflict action. They look great and are of a very sturdy, gloss cardstock. I will probably sleeve them although I can't imagine that you would actually need to. Just my anal nature.
The booklet has some new rules for additional weapons (for all the different conflicts) and mounts. There are also a couple of new cities introduced as well as three new missions, one of which is based on the Winter series (think snow, owl and Darkheather). All in all a nice addition!
The map is the same you see on the inside cover of the books only it's in full colour. It's a beautiful map but I was hoping that it was going to be larger. It's actually only twice the size of the book which is not bad but... would have liked it larger. Well, hopefully I can find a high resolution image that I can print out nice and large to put in the middle of the table during play.
With a map you naturally need some mouse pawns to put on it! You get five of them in a variety of colours and they are very nice. They really don't serve any other function than eye candy but I'm perfectly satisfied with that. Larger than I expected.
The new character and GM sheets have been slightly redesigned. First off they're now square to match the books (and the box) and some of the information has been moved around or swapped. Nothing dramatically different but they look a bit nicer.
And finally my favourite components; the dice! They are simply fantastic and I was really sad to hear from Luke that extra sets will not be available separately. I'd buy two or three packs right off the bat! There are three ouroboros symbols, two crossed swords symbols and one axe symbol on each die, corresponding with 1-3, 4-5 and 6 respectivally. The symbols are emgraved on the dice, not simply printed on and they look spectacular. Love them!
Oh, one final thing that bears mentioning. The box actually comes with a transparant plastic insert that fits on top of all the books and sheets which has room for the pawns and cards as well. It seems to be designed with reusability in mind and will serve to keep all the components in place when you put the lid on the box. A nice touch!

Bottom line is that the production values and design of this box is through the roof. Sure, the book isn't hardback and the screen is kind of flimsy, but apart from that it really deserves the highest praise!

Now, onto the rulebook and the game itself.

The Game

I've been reading the PDF while waiting for the hard copy and it's one of, if not the most interesting RPG product I've read to date. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best roleplaying game but it's certainly one of the best roleplaying books.

I first came in contact with the Burning Wheel system and Luke Crane a couple of years ago when I first started looking around for alternatives to what I suppose broadly could be called "traditional roleplaying games" (incidentally that is also when I discovered Diaspora and FATE). I read through the Hub and Spokes and while the concepts therein were absolutely fascinating I was also wary how well the system would go across with my regular gaming group. So I kind of filed it among the other would-like-to-play-sometime-games and left it at that.

I had heard about Mouse Guard at this time but the subject matter didn't appeal to me (mice with swords? What?) and I hadn't really made the connection with Burning Wheel. Nonetheless I had of course noticed that it was very popular. Then a couple of months ago something made me want to read more about Mouse Guard, and I'm glad I did!

I got the PDF and as I started reading I simply could not put it down. For a grizzled old roleplayer like myself reading about radically different concepts and ideas like this is a novel experience! Sure, there are buttloads of RPGs out there with all manners of neat mechanics and interesting rules, but very few of them put half as much thought in how to actually create the story, play the characters and how it all ties into the mechanics as Mouse Guard does. This kind of nonconformity are almost immediately apparent just from the layout of the book.

Pretty much all RPGs I've read so far have started with talking about what an RPG is, then they describe character creation, then probably skills and abilities followed by weapons and equipment and finally a world section and a GM's section. You know how they all look, right? In Mouse Guard the chapter for character creation is the last in the book! Skills and Traits are just ahead of it and the book starts with what is actually the core of Mouse Guard: how to truly play your character - not from a numbers standpoint but from a roleplaying one. There aren't many equipment rules so they're covered in the Resolution chapter and the information about the world is sprinkled throughout the book (although you could argue that the Seasons and The Territories chapters are the "world chapters"). So what about the GM's section? Well, there is a chapter for it (The Mission) but to be perfectly honest the entire book is like a guide to Game Masters everywhere!

I will try to make a short summary of the essential concepts of Mouse Guard (the spokes!) for those of you out there who have no idea what I'm on about.

I think the core idea is to more closely integrate roleplaying with the actual mechanics of the game and to try and make the story more "alive". In traditional RPGs the mechanics are pretty much disassociated from any actual roleplaying that might or might not be going on. The mechanics are the gamey bits provided by the book and the roleplay bits are supposed to be provided by the players. In Mouse Guard these two are very much integrated and to be able to play the game you will have to actually roleplay your character.

To create this integration each character has a Belief (a snapshot view of how the characters thinks and reasons), an Instinct (something your character does without really thinking) and several Traits (one word descriptions) that further helps fleshing out your character.

Your Belief is the main guide on how your character should be played. If, during play, you're not quite sure what to do in a certain situation you can simply read over your belief and think about how your character would act. It also serves as a reminder for the rest of the group what kind of character you play. This is not to say that your Belief is some kind of rule that you have to follow. While you do get rewarded with Fate points when acting according to your belief you also get rewarded with Persona points for acting against it (since it shows the difficult decision your character faced and potential character development). Instincts also net you bonus points if you use them at the right time, mind you the right time does not necessarily mean the best time. Having an instinct like "I always draw my sword at first sign of trouble" can be just as much a detriment as a boon.

And finally we have Traits. If Beliefs are the overarching concept of the character, the Traits are the meat and bone of it. Traits are simple statements like Tall, Stoic, Inquisitive, Sceptical etc and is yet another way to develop your character's thoughts and habits. Traits can be used to receive bonus dice to your tests ("I'm Sceptic, don't you think I should get a bonus die for resisting that Deceive attempt?") which is all well and good but the real punch comes from how you can use the Traits against yourself during play ("I'm Sceptic so I probably don't believe that a weasel army is marching against Lockhaven"). Purposefully tripping yourself up like this helps to further develop your character and also earns you Checks that can be spent later. For those of you familiar with FATE this mechanic is rather similar to how Aspects work in that game.

Now, Fate and Persona points can be used at any time to allow you to add extra dice or re-roll bad ones, but Checks (that you earn from traits) can only be used during the players turn. "What the hell is the players turn? I thought this was a roleplaying game!" I hear you say. Yes, this is another very different concept that you'll find in Mouse Guard. Each session is made up of the GM's turn, in which the guardmice are sent on a mission and need to overcome a number of obstacles set before them by the GM. However, once they accomplish the mission (or this leg of the mission at least) the reins are handed over to the players and they get to take the initiative instead. However, to be able to take actions and roll dice during the players turn you need to use the Checks that you earned in the GM's turn from using your Traits against you.

This concept of the GM's turn and the Players' turn is probably what had me most perplexed when reading Mouse Guard, and I know I'm not alone. However you need to remember that the entire structure of Mouse Guard is completely different from traditional RPGs. Someone somewhere likened the turns with playing Grand Theft Auto. When you go on a mission in Mouse Guard it's like when you go on a mission in GTA - you have some specific instructions on what to do and certain obstacles are set before you. And all the other time where you just ride around and do whatever you want, be it robbing people or buying new guns, is the players turn in Mouse Guard. It's not a perfect allegory but it's close enough I think. During their turn the players can try to heal up if needed, tie up loose ends, visit friends or relatives or even start a conflict of their own choosing if they want. It's worth mentioning that this kind of balance exists in pretty much all RPG's, only not to such a formal extent. In actual play I think it will feel more natural and I'm very interested to see the Checks economy in work.

So that's a little bit about the character part of Mouse Guard. And if you haven't noticed by now it is the main part - the characters are the game. It's not about the mission it's about how your characters act during the mission. This really can't be stressed enough and it's what has me so excited about Mouse Guard; 100% character driven! The mission is simply a framework and there are no guaranties it will go as initially envisioned, as a matter of fact it probably won't...

And this leads into the other big thing with Mouse Guard: there's no failure. Yes, you can fail a test and not make it over that river, or not find the path to that village or get defeated by that badger but that isn't a failure from a story standpoint it simply leads it into a different direction. When a player fails a test the GM can either allow him to succeed anyway, but with a condition (like Hungry, Tired or Angry) or he could introduce a Twist! When using a Twist the character does fail to accomplish what he set out to do, but something is added to the mix. Perhaps you get swept downstream straight into a weasel patrol! Or maybe you get lost on your way to the village and the cold spring rain turns into snow forcing you to seek shelter. Or the badger chase you into a hole leading into the Darkheather. Basically your "failure" drives the story forward creating new events and opportunities. At times the story can take a completely different turn from what the GM had in mind from the beginning, going from Twist to Twist to Twist!

This kind of organically growing roleplaying again helps to put the character in the center as there's no wrong way of playing. As long as you simply play your character the story will unfold naturally. In fact when GMing Mouse Guard what should be first in your mind is not the nitty gritty of the mission but the Beliefs, Instincts and Traits of the characters. As long as you challenge them you will have a solid play experience. Or as Luke puts it in the text:

"There’s an easy trick to it: Lean on the players’ Beliefs; interfere with their Goals, trigger their Instincts and stomp on their traits!"

As a player you should actively try to put yourself at risk by using your Belief, Instincts and Traits not only when it's beneficial but also when they get in your way. It's very liberating not to have to worry about failing an important roll, or failing to do the right thing during a mission - it will just drive the story into new unexplored territory!

In summary, this is a book that I think every roleplayer should read. It doesn't matter if you don't like the subject matter (mice with swords!) or if you will ever actually play the game or not, but just reading it will change the way you think about roleplaying games in general. When I first read Diaspora/FATE it had a similar effect on me but with Mouse Guard (or Burning Wheel) it was much more pronounced.

Speaking of the subject matter, as I said in the beginning of this review my initial thought was that I would read Mouse Guard and if I liked the system transplant it into another setting (Warhammer Fantasy to be precise). But as I was reading the book the world of Mouse Guard really came alive and I became more and more interested in it. I read the many examples in the text featuring Lieam, Kenzie, Saxon and Sadie and my curiosity kept growing. In the end I ordered the three Mouse Guard books released so far and they are spectacular!

While the stories are fairly straight forward the characters and the art really puts them a level above the competition. Mouse Guard are no childrens stories (although they could be read by kids) and are certainly not light or "whimsical" as The D6 Generation's Craig put it. In fact, to me at least, they have a kind of weight to them that I feel are comparable to... dun-dun-DUN, the Lord of the Rings. Yes, also very different naturally, but the way that they are similar is that when you read Mouse Guard, just as when you read LotR, you simply accept the story fully and at no time does it become anything less than serious. Especially Winter 1152 which is both so dark and so epic. The owl could easily be compared to the Balrog of Moria and their respective battles are equally epic. Ooh, getting chills just thinking about it!

So not only has Mouse Guard provided me with a fantastic new system to try but it has also introduced me to a completely new world. So now I'm doubly excited to play the game - partly to use the system and partly to begin exploring the Territories!

Conclusion
There are of course still many things I haven't even mentioned, like the conflict system, the importance of weather and the seasons or the large part the guardmice's Nature play in the game. But I still hope that I have managed to give you an inkling about what's between the covers of Mouse Guard. It's completely different to what most of us are used to, at the same time being more structured and more free.

Ironically I think that Mouse Guard is probably more accessible to people who are not experienced roleplayers. We simply have too much baggage and too many notions about how a roleplaying game "should" be that we simply have a hard time grasping this radical new concept. I listened to the Minions of the Monster Master's playthrough of Mouse Guard and I could tell that they were struggling with wrapping their heads around this new system. They definitely seemed to enjoy themselves (right?) but the phrase "I just don't get why ..." was uttered on more than one occasion. And I don't blame them! I imagine my first venture into Mouse Guard/Burning Wheel territory will be a similar experience. However, this is part of what makes Mouse Guard great!

Even if you never intend to actually play the game the book is worth reading simply for all the new thoughts and ideas it will put in your head and I think it will make you a better roleplayer in general. Be it as a Game Master or a player. So, if you are a roleplayer, buy this book (or PDF. It's only $20) and read it. It's that simple. For those of you out there who are looking for a numerical rating this is clearly a 5 out of 5.

Tomorrow I'm heading over to my sisters house to see my eight year old niece and I will bring Fall 1152 with me to read to her. But before I go, I just might head to town and treat myself to Burning Wheel Gold...

September Wrap Up

2011-09-30T22:49:00.000+02:00

Going to try something new here and see if I can keep doing monthtly gaming/geek wrap ups like this one. When listening to gaming podcasts and reading other blogs I find these kind of discussions are usually very interesting. I want to try and keep these things fairly quick and dirty so I'll be able to crank them out at the end of every month, so without further ado...

Painting & Modelling

Finally got back into painting Infinity and managed to get my Su-Jian to an almost finished state and get started on one of my remotes. The pic above isn't actually current as I've painted the top halves as well now. Should be able to finish them during the weekend.
Also got my Zuzzy mat although I haven't started working on it yet. Looks really good though!

Mini and Board Games

Have also played Infinity a couple of times. First when I introduced it to Gille and then against Anders' Nomads. I lost against Gille (who also really liked the game) but won against Anders. It's simply the best minis game out there! With the new October releases coming up I'm feeling the Shasvaasti is looking more and more attractive. Just look at that awesome Sphinx!
Managed my first complete game of Dungeon Lords and had lots of fun with it! In the end I ended up at a close second place but am looking forward to playing it again.
Introduced Race for the Galaxy to Martin3 and he really liked it! Should really hurry up and get the others play it so we could easily use it as a filler. We played twice and won once each. I think he really quickly grasped the mechanics and how to play it successfully.
Five player game of Battlestar Galactica yesterday where I finally got to be a Cylon (haven't been one for ages!). I got the Cylon card from a revealed Cylon who had two so it doesn't really count but it was fun being the bad guy nonetheless. When the humans were at distance 8 we managed to drain the last of the fuel and won the day.
Followed that by a short half-game of Gears of War the board game. Even though I was really excited about playing it I wasn't sure how my friends would react (they haven't played the game) but they absolutley loved it! Great success! I think I'll have to paint at least the player figures until next time though, to make it easier to distinguish them from each other.

Roleplaying Games

Haven't actually played anyting but the cogs in my little brain never stops turning. I talked mostly about it in my last post about alternative gaming, but besides that we have WFRP that we'll (hopefully) get back into in the not too distant future (oh, speaking of which: Hero's Call was announced!). Might also get to play some Mouse Guard with another group (or mixed groups) of friends. Yeah... pretty focused on Mouse Guard at the moment. Hehe! Also look at what you get in that box. Even mouse pawns like in the comic! How awesome is that?! More pics here.
Not really roleplaying per se, but have been listening to RPG podcast Minions of the Monster Master again. Mainly in prep for MG, but also since they're a bunch of gamers who manage to both spin an interesting tale and be funny and entertaining at the same time. I have a lot of catching up to do though. Looking forward to hearing their FATE version of Deathwatch. Go and listen to them!

Video Games

Only one entry here: Deus Ex: Human Revolution that I've actually played through it twice during the last month (and got all the achievements). It's a really excellent game both in how it plays and the amazing Blade Runner/Cyberpunk atmosphere they've created. Having grown up on William Gibson this was like crack for me. The screenshot above is from my favourite area in the game: lower Hengsha in China. Anyway, you can play in a number of different ways, everything from stealthy hacker to smooth talking softie is catered for. So far I've been a pretty stealthy guy, sometimes resorting to my silenced pistol, but I'm thinking about playing it again but going in all guns blazing. Highly recommended!

Other Geekstuff

Wrote a couple of reviews over at Dropship Horizon. One of the excellent Omni-Stands from Corsec Engineering and one of the new releases from GZG (Crusty walker and heavy infantry).
Watched some movies; liked Thor, felt indifferent towards Transformers 3 (but liked that you could actually make out what the robots look like and are doing this time around), was incredibly bored by Space Battleship Yamato (great dissapointment!), liked Super and Attack the Block.
Read (or listened to) A Dance for Dragons (great, but GRRM is pretty much treading water now) and William Gibson's Zero History. Damn, I love how that man writes! It's something about how he uses objects and brands combined with interesting characters combined with a lightness of touch that I find absolutely compelling.
Have also started reading Mouse Guard (duh!) and although the story is fairly simple the world really draws you in. Mainly thanks to the fantastic art of course, but it's more than that. Read it!

And that's about it for September. Roll on October!

My Craving for an Unorthodox Roleplaying Experience

2011-09-27T01:18:00.000+02:00

Not much roleplaying during the summer months as you might have noticed. With all the vacation trips and country house visits we simply didn't have time for it. However as autumn draws ever closer the long dark Swedish nights just calls out for some roleplaying!

We have our ongoing WFRP3 campaign of course, but since my friend Anders have stepped up to take the GM position in that (at least for a couple of sessions) I've been looking at other games. I'm really dying to try something different and I think a few one-session or at least short scenarios might be in order. Naturally my first instinct is to go for Diaspora as we have still only managed the cluster creation part of our budding game. However, there are so many other alluring RPGs out there.

3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars - I think this is what we might try next as it is such an easy game to setup and run on the fly. However it is fairly limited in scope and I don't see it developing to a long running campaign for us. When talking a bit about it with a few in my group they seemed intrigued by the Strength/Weakness mechanic as well as the subject matter. Perhaps I will bring it instead of a board game for our next general gaming night.

Mouse Guard - I started reading The Burning Wheel last year and was fascinated by it but also felt that it was a bit too radical for our current gaming group. I did try to incorporate parts of the mechanics in our WFRP gaming (Beliefs and Instincts to be precise) but it never really took off. Now, Mouse Guard uses a streamlined version of the Burning Wheel system that I think would be more accessible to our group. At first I simply thought to use the system in a different setting, perhaps the Olde World again, but the more I read the more interested I became in the actual Mouse Guard setting. I even ordered the first two Mouse Guard volumes by David Petersen to get the full backstory. I think using the pre-generated characters and simply running the sample mission and see how everyone reacts is the way to go. Just like with FATE I think people might be a bit confused by the non-traditional aspects of the system but hopefully it will provide an enhanced experience in the end.

Rogue Trader - Here I backtrack a bit rules-wise but the scope of Rogue Trader is so different that I think it fits in this article anyway. Commanding a kilometres long starship with a crew numbering in the tenths of thousands is certainly a step away from the dishevelled adventurers that has been around since the dawn of roleplaying time. Being able afford anything, go anywhere and decide the fate of entire planets I think will provide a play experience that we simply have never even approached before. Rogue Trader, with its Endeavour mechanic, also seems much more open to less structured, more player-driven adventures than its sister games Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader and this is also one of the main draws for me. Using more of a sandbox approach to gaming where the players create just as much of the adventures as I would. One thing that makes this approach harder though is the fairly clunky rules system that I think might interfere with creating stuff on the fly.

The One Ring - Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild - Quite a mouthfull isn't it?! I just started reading this the other day and it is what made me sit down and write this article. It seems to me (from what I've read so far) that it combines elements from both newer and older games and it brilliantly evokes the setting of Middle-Earth! I thought Decipher's stab at a Lord of the Rings RPG was pretty good (although a right mess in many ways) but the feeling you get from The One Ring is definitely superior. Leading up to its launch I remember reading a lot of critical voices from people who didn't like the time period (five years after the Battle of Five Armies), didn't like what they had heard of the mechanics (too much indie RPG) or didn't like the fact that the creators were some unknown Italians! For me it was the complete opposite though, it seems logical to me to use that period as it's reasonably free of large "canon" events, I like "indie" mechanics and most important of all Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitelli are the creators of the absolutely excellent War of the Ring board game. War of the Ring is not only a great game from a mechanics standpoint it's also impressive how much of the setting it evokes, indeed far more so than FFG's later release Middle-Eart Quest even though that is meant to be more of a thematic adventure experience. Anyway, the simple fact that it was the same authors put my mind to rest - these guys get Middle-Earth. This is another game I'd like to run a session or two just to see how our group would take to it.

Diaspora - I'll just put it here for a sense of completeness. I've talked a lot about Diaspora in the past and it always hovers in the background, waiting to get played. I've also thought about introducing FATE in other games and we've started experimenting with Aspects in our WFRP campaign. It's going well, but I'd like to play some pure FATE just so that people really can get a hang of it. The idea of intertwined character creation is also something I think I'll start using pretty much anywhere from now on. It's simply such a good way to create a dynamic group. Rogue Trader touches upon it slightly with it's Origin Paths, but it's really only a bleak shadow next to the original FATE version. For more about integrating FATE into other roleplaying games have a look at this excellent article by Tourq Stevens over at Stuffer Shack.

Project W - I would like to try something different with this and how it's introduced to the players so won't go into details, but again it's meant for a couple of sessions and I have a feeling that our group would love it as it's a bit of a callback to our gaming roots.

Naturally there are other RPG's that I want to play (Dragon Age being high on the list) but I think these are the more non-traditional games making most noise in my mind at the moment. If you have played any of these and have any hints or advice, or perhaps some other interesting game to recommend (been looking at Fiasco recently) let me know in the comments!

Taking the Leap From 40k to Infinity!

2011-09-21T21:31:00.001+02:00

"Commissar Skullen sir, that Oniwaban is getting awfully close!"

"I can see that trooper, but it is his turn so you must hold your fire."

This article has been rattling around in my brain for quite a while, but today I finally sat down and let it pour out into the digital realm.

I think that most people who follow this blog are probably playing all kinds of miniature games and GW games like Warhammer 40,000 is either not their main interest or just a distant memory. This article isn't for you. Neither is it for 40k die-hards who will be pushing those Rhinos around decades from now. This article is aimed at those of you who play 40k (or insert-other-GW-game) but have been looking at other games, wondering if you dare take the leap (I imagine my target audience is a large part of the House of Paincakes network). Specifically I'm going to talk about Infinity as it has got a great influx of new players through Beasts of War's Infinity Week. I don't mean to belittle 40k or its players, you should do what you enjoy say I, but I will try to explain the main ways in which Infinity differs from 40k as well as put some misconceptions about the game to rest and hopefully you'll give Infinity a try.

I'm not going to go into nitty-gritty details so Infinity players who are reading this may think that I'm oversimplifying a few things, but I want to keep it quick, to the point and discuss concepts rather than specific rules. Those who are actually interested enough after reading this can easily pick up the quickstart rules (or the full rules for that matter!) for free and read the details for themselves.

So what are the big differences?

0. Skirmish! (pretty obvious but worth mentioning anyway)

In 40k you field, increasingly large, armies against each other with model count numbering from a few dozen to over a hundred.In Infinity your "army" is rarely larger than 10 models, you sometimes see forces with perhaps 15-16 but this is an exception.

In a nutshell open warfare is very uncommon in the world of Infinity, instead we play small skirmishes between coflicting special ops teams. The closest analogy in the GW-verse would probably a team of Necromunda Spyrers - low model count but with most models having several different special rules. When it comes to gameplay having much fewer miniaturesmeans that they can all be a lot more detailed (rules-wise) and that adding a single model may change the way your army plays drastically depending on its abilities.If I for example decide to field that thermo-optically camouflaged, infiltrating Ninja instead of my impetuous, Spitfire toting Aragoto biker this will effect my battle plan to a large degree.

1. Order Pool!

In 40k each of your units get to do one action (move and shoot, charge etc).In Infinity you get one action, or Orders as they are called, for each of your miniatures (units) as well, the difference is that you are free to use these Ordershowever you want. You could use one order for each miniature (which you often end up doing during your first couple of games just because your used to it) but you could justas well use every order on a single miniature, activating it again and again.

"Wow, that sounds totally overpowered! What if I could do that with my termies" I hear you say. Well, "Ramboing" as it's often referred to is perfectly possible and is sometimes a viable tactic. But many times a single miniature advancing on his own without cover fire will simply end up dead, no matter how toughit is (more on that below). However the main impact this mechanic has on the game is that it becomes a lot more dynamic as you are able tofocus your resources where they are actually needed. It also creates these little mini-narratives within each game that you rarely get from a pure IGOUGO gamelike 40k or Necromunda. I remember one game where my PanO opponent had me pinned down by two Order Sergeants using Suppression Fire but my camouflaged Guilang could sneak past the enemy firing lanes and pop up behind them, easily killing both - all in a single turn (but requiring several orders).

2. Actions and Reactions!

In 40k the turns are purely IGOUGO and during your opponents turn you can pretty much go for a coffee break. Infinity does not use an inegrated turn sequence but it'snot pure IGOUGO either, it uses something called Active Turns and Reactive Turns.

When it is my Active turn it is my opponents Reactive turn and vice-versa. So I recieve myorder pool and I use it to activate all or some of my miniatures, but more often than not my opponent will be able to react to my actions by way of the Automatic Reaction Order (ARO). Basically if he can see the action I'm taking with my miniature or if it's close enough to one of his miniatures he gets tomake an ARO. An ARO could be a number of different things, but the most common is Shoot, Dodge (move) or Discover (to try and find a camouflaged enemy)."What?! Whenever I move my guys everyone who sees them will shoot at them? That sounds totally lame!" I hear you say. However, consider the flipside to that coin; I have my Imperial Guard fire support squad covering a street, ready to put a lot of lead downrange. Suddenly a lone Termagant scampers across the street, followed by a couple more... and then an entire brood! You're just itching to pull that trigger but since it's not your turn you have to sit there and watch as the entire brood makes it safely to the other side. That would never happen in Infinity. Your miniatures will actually be able to react to what's going on around them, although at a slightly reduced capacity (only one shot instead of an entire Burst etc) . That is it in a nutshell but rememberthat Infinity uses a lot more cover in general and a lot more full blocking cover in particular. But yes you will have to be very careful and use your abilities to youradvantage when advancing in Infinity. Smoke grenades (and ways to see through smoke) are highly priced for their utility!

3. Way of the Gun!

In 40k lasguns are considered flashlights and even the mighty boltgun will fail to kill an unarmed human a third of the time, and when you start bringing armour and high toughnessinto the mix you can pretty much forget your low level basic weapons.In Infinity even a bog standard rifle that the most basic grunts carry gets to make three attacks and each shot has a roughly 60% chance doing damage.

So, getting shot is a really, really bad thing. Evenheavy infantry with heavier armour and multiple wounds can easily be put out of action by a regular line soldier if used without care (it happened to my Su-Jian justthe other day!). Hugging cover, which makes you harder to hit and gives a bonus to armour, minimizing the amount of ARO opportunities for your opponent and actually having your miniatures cover each other (like in the real world!) is imperative for playing Infinity succesfully. My Su-Jian would probably be alive today if he'd had someone cover his back, but instead I rushed him forward (Ramboing!) which did allowe him to gun down my opponent's Zero but left him open to attack from a simple Alguacile with a combirifle. Lesson learned. It's also worth mentioning that close combat plays a much smaller role than shooting in this game. While Infinity has its fair share of close combat monsters it's still risky and simply the act of getting a miniature into base to base contact requires clever tactics or a lot of luck. Generally you should be aware of the possibilites and opportunities of close combat, but not rely on it.

4. Face to Face rolls!

In 40k you roll your dice unopposed.In Infinity you often roll so called Face to Face rolls.

Basically, if I fire at your miniature and you use your ARO to fire back, dodge or do anything else that might affect wheather I'm succesfull or not we roll againsteach other and the one who rolls highest wins, cancelling his opponents roll(s). Usually the Active player will have the advantage as he gets to fire the entire Burst of his weapon while the ARO'ing opponent only gets to fire one shot (or roll once for dodge) but of course the modifiers applied and the different stats of our miniatures and weapons used play a large roll as well. This mechanic combined with the ARO mechanic puts a certain amount of risk into most actions during your Active turn and you carefully need to consider how to minimize this risk. It also rewards you for managing to flank your opponent as he won't be able to ARO if attacked from behind.

5. Camouflage!

In 40k camouflage doesn't really exist (feel free to correct me on this as I'm not familiar with the newer editions).In Infinity camouflage often plays a large role during the game as it means you can potentially avoid your opponents ARO's and make surprise attacks on unaware opponents.

As has been demonstrated above Infinity is a fairly lethal game so having the ability to simply remain unseen is a great advantage and you need to use it to its fullest extent. It's also somewhat of aminigame since you replace your camouflaged miniatures with a camouflage markers, forcing your opponent to guess what kind of miniatures you're really fielding. He won't actually know until one of his models has line of sight and succeeds on a Discover test. Camo was one of the features of Infinity that really drew me to the game as the idea of having hidden models really appealed to me. I could probably have squeezed this into the "God is in the Details" category below but felt that it plays a big enough part to warrant its own category.

6. It's not about what you bring, it's how you use it!

In 40k a game can almost be decided at the army construction stage, or at least army construction plus deployment. In Infinity there are no genuinely bad choices and if you play to the strengths of your units you have as good a chance of winning as anybody else.

This has become somewhat of a mantra for Infinity players as more and more newbies pop up on the forums asking for list building advice. While you can certainly build lists that work better or worse than others it's very hard to make something totally unworkable. This game rewards good tactics and smart maneuvers more than what you actually choose to put on the table. That is not to say that list building isn't fun, on the contrary. I've spent many hours tinkering with my Yu Jing, considering different options and how this miniature would interact with and support that miniature. But it's never about finding that perfect cookie cutter force, but rather about considering what kind of gamplay you're looking for in your next match; an all camo army? A lot of heavy infantry? A TAG based force? Drop troops? A charging wave of suicidal, brain washed political prisoners? Anything goes!

7. Rules, Wiki and Army Construction Program, for Free!

In 40k there is no such thing as a free lunch and (legal) PDF's of rules and armybooks are simply non-existant. The rules for Infinity can be downloaded completely free, there is an amazing army builder program available both online and as a desktop client (and soon for iOS and Android) for free and there is a extremely useful rules wiki on the main site... for free.

This is not really a feature of the rules system, but it's such a great thing that I would be stupid not to list it. First off all the rules and expansions are available on the downloads page. On the main page you can also find the Infinity Army program by DevilTeam which is a great working and great looking army builder that easily lets you put together a fighting force. Corvus Belli have also gone through the trouble of putting together an Infinity Wiki which contains all rules with additional notes from the FAQ and forums. While the free PDF rulebook is really cool I actually think the combination of the Infinity Army and the Wiki is the greatest tool for quickly getting to grips with Infinity. Well, first I suggest you read through the quickstart rules to get the basics, but then head into Infinity Army and start clicking around! Whenever you click on an ability you will be taken to the Wiki where it is explained in full and as you muck around you learn more and more about the system.

8. Excellent Community!

The community found on the official forums is ever helpful and always welcoming to new players. This is really important when starting a new game, and even more so when the rules are very different from what you're used to. There are a host of patient veterans (and newbie veterans like myself) there who are willing to answer all kinds of questions as well as give advice. I still think I've only seen something resembling flaming happen once over there and it was quickly sorted out.

9. God is in the Details!

Above are what I consider the core elements that makes playing Infinity into such a different experience, but there are many (many!) smaller things as well. Some of my favourites are hacking (completely immobilizing your opponents big expensive TAG is priceless!), grenades that you can actually throw and blow people up with and the fact that weapon ranges are generally long but modifiers greatly diversify the different guns. Oh, and CrazyKoalas!

10. Did I mention that the models are absolutely stunning?!
Just look around in the miniatures section!

That's about it I think. I'm sure there are things I've forgotten or overlooked but just let me know in the comments and I'll be able to add to this article. Hopefully it has provided some improved insight into the world of Infinity and made you a little bit more curios about the system. I suggest grabbing the quick start rules and simply try it out with a few proxy miniatures (I'm sure you have one or two lying around. Hehe!). So far the people I know who have tried it, even jaded anti-miniature games people, have enjoyed it a lot and I suspect you would too...

Angel's new Szalamandra...

2011-08-27T22:49:00.000+02:00

I felt I just had to re-post this image of Angel Giraldez newly painted (re-painted? Not sure if he did the original paint job) Szalamandra TAG from Infinity's Nomads faction. It's just... wow! But even so he mentions that it's actually still a work in progress.

This really goes to show how big a difference the paint job can do to change your view of the miniature as a whole. Seeing it with its original paint job (at left) I was never all that attracted to the model. It looks nice enough but it was one of my least favourite TAGs. But now... just look at it! A completely different feel to the entire model! That black and orange goes together perfectly, and the the non-metallic metal looks amazing. Granted Angel is one of the best painters around when it comes to technique, but this also shows how skilled he is at picking the right colours as well.

Well, that is all.

Infinity - why play anything else?

2011-08-26T00:19:00.001+02:00

Domaru Butai on the prowl...

After a couple of months without playing any Infinity me and my friend Anders thought it was time for some action! So the other day Anders brought his terrain boards out of storage, we plonked some terrain down (quite a lot of terrain actually) and put together a small 150pts force each.I've been using my Kuang Shi quite a lot in earlier battles to great effect, but I thought it'd be fun to try something else. So some Zhanshi, a Domaru, a couple of Celestial Guard, a Tiger Soldier and finally a Ninja as I hadn't used one before. Anders who plays Nomads had some Alguacile, a Zero, a Hellcat, an Interventor and a Mobile Brigada. I won't go into a blow by blow account, but just summon up the highlights.

We rolled up a couple of missions using Mission Roulette (looking forward to the upcoming campaign/scenario book from CB) and I got Blockade and Degrade, two fairly straightforward ones, while Anders got Triangulate and Collect that are a bit trickier.

Anders started his turn by dropping all of the Zero's mines, practically making his right flank unavailable for me. Earlier we've been fairly conservative with our mines, waiting for that "perfect opportunity" that usually never comes. I think this might be a better strategy.
In earlier games our play area has been fairly tight, about 80x100cm, but this time we had a full 120x120cm so weapon ranges mattered a lot more. This was really noticable when I air-dropped my HGM toting Tiger Soldier and he took down four enemies alone (five if you count the one he had to put down twice because of the medic!). Having +3 to hit at a range where a combi rifle has -6 means you rarely have to fear the return fire from most opponents.
Doctors (or Engineers) feels like they could be worthwile investments considering their cheap price. In this game Anders only managed to revive a single Alguacile, but if he had managed to take out my Tiger Soldier with his Hellcat he could very well have been able to revive most of the casualties thus far.
Flamethrowers are nasty! We had actually played it wrong in earlier games where we rolled for continued damage at the start of each turn (habit from Necromunda I guess) instead of right then and there when you get hit! This means that not only are flamethrowers an excellent counter to TO troops, but to multi-wound heavy infantry as well. My Domaru almost bought the farm when she charged the Mobile Brigada and got a face full of liquid fire!
Close combat is not all that common in Infinity, but it's very rewarding when you actually do manage to get one of your melee monsters into base to base contact with something! My Domaru did survive the flames (barely) and then simply proceeded to cut the Mobile Brigada into tiny little pieces.
I had a TO infiltrator for the first time and I think I need to consider a bit more where best to place it in my next game. Now I just kind of plonked it down in the middle of the field.
The important thing in Infinity is actually hitting with your weapon. If you manage that there's a good chance you will do some serious damage, no matter if you fire with a rifle or a heavy machine gun. That being said, range can play a big factor (see above) and not having any heavy weapons of their own really crippled the Nomads. I think a HMG or a sniper might be the next purchase for Anders, this looks nice...

At the end of the fourth turn the last remaining woman standing was the Interventor who decided to hoof it.It was a fairly uneven battle but nonetheless a lot of fun. Around the time my Tiger Soldier had gunned down his Hellcat Anders said kind of off handedly "Why look for any other game when we have Infinity? It has the best rule system by far." And I had been thinking pretty much the same thing as we played. Returning to Infinity after a few months of not playing it felt almost like coming home - it really is such a cool system!

Me and my friends have this thing about classifying miniature games after how 'headachey' they are. 40k is probably the most headachey for us, but any game can get headachey, no matter how much you actually like it. Except for Infinity. A lot of it naturally comes from the fact that you don't have all that many minis to worry about, but also from the amount of choices you have as a player. It's not only the active-reactive turn system that does it, nor is it the large selection of different actions available to you - these are really great, engaging mechanics, but what really makes Infinity unique is the entire system with Orders and the resource management that single mechanic brings. It also allows you to sometimes do some really cool cinematic maneuvers that you simply can't do in other games!

Hmmm... I could go on but you get the idea; Infinity is excellentacular! Of course I'll be playing other mini games but I think Infinity will be the go-to game that I'll always be up for. Now I really should finish my Aragoto and get started on my Sù-Jiàn...

Khurasan Lion Attack Transport 2.0

2011-08-15T00:29:00.000+02:00

"We break for no one!"

Hello everybody! I'm back from Belgium and as summer madness is starting to wind down things are slowly getting back to normal here, so from now on you should see an increase in activity here on Fire Broadside!

As I mentioned earlier Jon, of Khurasan fame, approached me about painting a few upcoming releases. It seemed like fun and you can never go wrong with helping smaller companies like this.

There were a few different things, but my favourite is the new remodeled Lion attack transport. It's the same model but it has been cleaned up quite a bit, meaning the print lines from the 3D printing process has all but disappeared. If you look closely you can still see them in some recessed parts of the model, but the areas that actually matter are as smooth as you could ever hope for. Also the wheels that used to be metal has been cast in resin this time around and use a clever way of attaching them to the main body that I really like. No fear of them breaking off on you.

The completely new bits are the turret and its two different gun configurations. You might remember the old model came with a slightly retro looking ray/plasmagun looking thing. It has been replaced by a separate turret (that is fairly reminiscent of the turret of a certain famous movie APC) and comes with two gun barrels; one twin autocannon (seen at right) and one larger railgun. Naturally I put magnets in the different parts so I can switch the barrel depending on what role is needed on the battlefield. I prefer the stubby look of the autocannons, but then again, you can never go wrong with a railgun...

I like this kit very much. The design of the vehicle itself is brutish and uncompromising which I find appealing and its size adds to this look (it's about 10cm long!). This new version is also very smooth and neat requiring almost now cleanup. And of course, more choice in weaponry is never wrong. My plan is to use it for my growing "sinister corporation" forces that will consist of Khurasan's Control Battalion and their upcoming transport.

Keep an eye on the Khurasan website for the actual release of this model. As for the other stuff Jon sent me, look towards the (dropship) horizon...

Summer Update!

2011-08-04T23:31:00.001+02:00

Marines from Khurasan, APC from Konami and (unpainted) mat from Zuzzy.

Hello everyone!

Yes, it's been a bit quiet here recently. I think it's a case of summer catching up with both me and my gaming buddies. The last couple of weeks have been very quiet gaming wise and I've been busy with a friend from Japan staying with us. It's not all quiet though and I thought I'd make a bit of an update post about what I've been doing (or planning to) and some general ramblings. Business as usual as you know by now.

First off, today I got my Despoiled Reaches rubber gaming mat from Zuzzy and I have only one word for it: spectawesome! The detailing is excellent and I really think this will make a great looking Mars table. Also Jim was kind enough to send along a smaller 28cm x 35cm mat as well that I'll likely use for small skirmishes, photography and perhaps for Diaspora gaming. The sulphur mounds look good as well and will give me some heavy cover on the table top. More on this when I start painting it later on.

In other miniature news I've slowly been painting my UNSC and you will see more of that later. My recent games of Earth Reborn has really made me want to paint that bunch of minis properly. I also got the Exterminators from Khurasan and they look good indeed! Especially combined with the Konami APC. Speaking of Khurasan, Jon has asked me to paint a couple of upcoming releases for him so those will show up here or on Dropship Horizon in the near future.

With no one to play board and miniature games with I've gone over to the digital realm. First off I played Dragon Age: Awakening which I thought was an excellent expansion. It's almost an entire game in it's own right. I've been reading the Dragon Age rpg and the first Dragon Age book (The Stolen Throne) as well recently so I thought I might as well keep the ball rolling and bought the sequal for the Xbox when I found it for a good price. So far I miss the greater tactical combat of the first game. I love Mass Effect for its action (well, besides the story I mean) but I loved Dragon Age: Origins for its deep tactical, almost turn-based combat. I hope they go back to it in the third game. I've also played Beyond Good & Evil HD. Great game with great world building. Definitely worth the small amount of money needed to download it. Got the last chapter left right now. Finally, yesterday Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was released on Xbox Live and I really enjoyed the trial game so will have to get the full version. Love the graphic design! And the music! And the name!

As I mentioned above I've been reading the Dragon Age rpg from Green Ronin and I would like to give it a whirl when we can get the group together. I like the world and the written adventures seem good, but what's really attracts me to it is the simple fairly old school rules system. It's fairly simple but with some interesting twists (Stunts!) but having run WFRP3 for some time now I look forward to playing something more... minimalistic. I like the cards and the bits of WFRP3 but sometimes a few character sheets (that are eerily reminiscent of the first edition of WFRP's sheets!) and three dice is all you want to bring. Other rpgs I'm considering are Diaspora (as always) and 3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars.

Then I have some random thoughts and doodads that I don't think will go together very well so here's a list of bullet points:

Listening to A Dance with Dragons at the moment. I'm almost half way through and I've finally started to get used to Roy Dotrice's narration. He has a great voice but only three modes: 1. insane pirate, 2. gruff senior citizen, and 3. toothless old crone. It's hard imagine the nubile Daenerys Targaryan when she sounds like Terry Jones in drag. Been a year since I last read anything GRRM-related so all the names made my head hurt and I found myself a little lost. So today I tried to find some kind of portable companion guide and lo and behold: A Game of Thrones Companion for Android! Yes, I could have just used The Tower of the Hand, but having it as an app is very conveniant. It really enhances your reading experience to be able to quickly look up people and places. Highly recommended!
Started watching Breaking Bad and I love it (yes I know, I'm late. But in good company at least)! About half way through season three.
Getting more and more excited about the Gears of War board game which is just around the corner. Reading through the rules the other day clinched the deal and I've pre-ordered it from Maelstrom (who have started selling more FFG board games recently!). The rules seem to be fairly straight forward and easy to comprehend but with a quite a lot of depth in them anyway. I also like how FFG has managed to keep token and card count down. Feels elegant.
I keep wondering if they're going to stop faffing about in Falling Skies and it will become actually good.
The number of different 15mm projects keep growing in my head. Will have to get them organized somehow.
O-Yoroi Kidobutai!
Speaking of organizing, I will put together a master plan akin to Gyro's HUD: Project's 2011.
Also considering a regular (bi-weekly perhaps?) series of posts where I just mention stuff I've done, seen, read or played. Kind of a catch-all thing.
Too many cool looking video games on the horizon! Just to mention a few: Deus Ex: Human Revolution (pre-order!) this month, then Battlefield 3, Rage and Skyrim later this year and Mass Effect 3 (Spoilers!) and Prey 2 early next year. And then I still haven't played stuff like Dead Space 2 or L.A. Noire!
Glad to finally see it become official: FFG has the Star Wars licence (although, not for board games?). Like the looks of the Wings of War-esque X-Wing and intrigued about the Star Wars LCG, although worried it might be too similar to the (admittedly great) LotR LCG.
Happy Curb is back on the air!

There is a lot more to write about but it will have to wait. Now it's time to grab a quick bite to eat and maybe watch the continued adventures of Walter White.

Oh, one last thing; flowing water on Mars! How cool is that?!

Earth Reborn - Shotgun Wielding Babes!

2011-07-14T23:12:00.000+02:00

The first turn of "Nuclear Threat". The Salemites advancing towards the camera.

It's been a bit quiet around here recently as you might have noticed. I've been fairly busy at work and with general summertime activities so haven't had much time for blogging.

Thanks to some weird quantum mechanic time loop I have managed a decent amount of gaming though!

We've played Lord of the Rings: The Card Game quite a few times (appreciated by all so far!), Shadow's Over Camelot, Mansions of Madness, Gruntz 15mm and, of course, Earth Reborn. I'll make a post about LotR at a later date as this post will be devouted to the Earth Reborn "review" I mentioned way back when. Those who've followed this blog for any length of time know that my reviews are mostly just me letting my thought train spill onto the screen through my finger/keyboard interface. Hopefully it will be of some kind of valute to you. If only just amusement. :)

When I wrote that post I had only played the first couple of tutorial scenarios and though we hadn't even used firearms yet I was very impressed with the system! Since then I've played up until the two player scenario 6 and 3/4 player scenario 4 and it's been a blast every time! And there's still a bunch of rules we haven't tried yet like prisoners, interrogation (aka torture), large models like the Mammoth, combined orders, radio scrambling etc etc.

During this past week we played two sessions racking up a total of four games and all of them (even when we re-played a particular scenario) have been very different. In the scenario we played yesterday, Nuclear Threat, the Salemites (played by me) were attacking a NORAD base in an attempt to launch a nuclear missile. Mats and Martin (the third) took control of two NORAD defenders each. They did what they could to fend off the attack but were overrun in the end. The combination of Frank Einstein and Jessica Hollister equipped with a kevlar vest and a shotgun proved too much. But although I won in the end the game was very tense until the very last turn. I had pushed through the most ardent defenders with Einstein and Hollister while Jeff Deeler and the professor took the back door to the missile control room.

You can see Cherokee Bill (upper left) making his way to the Generator room to cut the power while Einstein and Jeff Deeler are trying to get into the Missile Room to actually launch the missile.

Looking at these pictures reminds me that I really need to paint these guys!

I managed to start the missile countdown but Cherokee Bill and James Woo then cut the power, halting it temporarily. In the end it came down to if I would be able to stop Woo and Bill from disrupting the power again. Luckily for me (but unluckily ofr Hollister) they stood on either side of a mine so I made the slightly suicidal decision to have Hollister step on the mine to catch them in the blast. She survived thanks to the kevlar but it killed Woo and severely injured Bill. A final blast from her shotgun and the game was over. Like I said though it remained tense up until the very last turn as the NORAD side would have won if they'd managed to cut the power just once more.

There were some misunderstandings during setup leaving Nick Bolter in a vulnerable position which I think kept Mats and Martin off balance in the beginning and they had a hard time regaining it. But then again, if they had remembered to use their mines to better effect, and perhaps even sacrificed Bolter to consolidate their rear positions, I think it might have ended differently.

Something that has impressed me every time I've introduced Earth Reborn to new players (third time now) is the reaction I get. It has been roughly the same every time; first some wrinkled foreheads as I start explaining the order tile system, then general comments like "hmm, that's pretty clever" as they start to get it. Then as we actually start to play there are very few actual rules questions. The system is so intuitive that once you've understood the basic concepts it flows very naturally. And the icon system, while perhaps not to everybody's taste aesthetically, is very easy to follow once you start playing. There are many moving parts in the Earth Reborn rules but they all interlock beautifully and when you introduce the rules gradually it's no problem at all learning the game. Also, while strict realism take the backseat to enjoyment in my book, it's still really cool that most of the rules feel like they make sense from a "realistic" point of view. There are exceptions made for playability's sake of course, but overall it has a nice feel to it.

I think if you like Space Hulk (more on this below) or Descent/Doom or small scale skirmish games like Necromunda then I think you will enjoy this game. If you've also played old turn based computer games like UFO: Enemy Unkown (aka XCOM), Jagged Alliance or even the first two Fallout games you will enjoy it even more! If you on top of that harbour any love for zombies and tounge-in-cheek characters and worldbuilding (again, like Fallout) you will love this game!

Naturally there are some with a different take on the game. I remember listening to The D6 Generation a while back and someone had emailed them and asked why they didn't review Earth Reborn, whereupon Russ said that he'd tried it on some con or other and that he "couldn't wrap his head around it" (I'm paraphrasing here). So there are some people out there who don't like it but as far as I can tell they seem to be in the minority. (Might be worth mentioning to people who don't listen to the show that Russ has a fairly conservative taste in games (in my opinion) and since his absolute top favourite games are Descent and D&D Ravenloft/Ashardalon I could see that the more... progressive concepts of Earth Reborn might have gone past him.)

Finally a word on Earth Reborn and Space hulk.

Chris Boelinger has stated that Space Hulk is one of his favourite games and he wanted to make something similar but better. Did he succeed? Short answer yes.

The long answer is a bit more complicated as Space Hulk is such a singularly focused game. It only does one thing, but it does it great! If you want a tense, almost chess like game with marines slowly moving down corridors fending off aliens then Space Hulk is the better game. In any other situation Earth Reborn is the way to go. I love Space Hulk and I have had lots of fun playing it, but you have to be in that special kind of Space Hulk mood to play it. It manage to create a great atmosphere and you can almost feel the heavy thump of terminator boots and hear the screeches of the genestealers, but this comes at he price of limiting the game to a needle point.

Earth Reborn on the other hand has so many more variables, so much more freedom and tactical possibilities that it doesn't suffer from that problem. You're always in the mood! I'm oversimplifying it a bit, but in the long run I think Earth Reborn beats out Space Hulk with sheer freedom of choice!

The door is locked? Break it down! Hell, blow a hole in the wall! Kill or capture the guy who's holding the magnetic key card. Or be sneaky and cut the power so all the magnetic locks stop working! Just a few solutions to a simple locked door. Just imagine what the rest of the game holds...

Mansions of Madness - thoughts and opinions.

2011-06-29T22:14:00.000+02:00

A few turns into scenario 1: The Fall of the House of Lynch.

You might remember me mentioning that we played Mansions of Madness from FFG back in March. Well, since then we've managed a couple more plays and I thought it was time to type out some of my thoughts on the game.

Just a couple of months before the game was announced I had a discussion with Anders about how nice it would be if FFG could use their Chaosium license deal to produce another Lovecraft-themed game. Something that was not simply more Arkham Horror. I like AH but I thought something more true to Lovecraft that maybe took place on a smaller scale as opposed to an entire city would be cool. Something RPG-ish perhaps. And then they announded Mansions of Madness. "Blimey" I thought, "they read my mind!"

The first time we tried it I messed up a little bit as the Keeper, I switched two stacks of cards around during setup, which resulted in a slightly off-kilter game that didn't flow very well as a story. It was still fairly entertaining but nothing really spectacular.

When we next had a chance to play it I decided to try the same scenario again, but making different scenario choices, to see how well it would stand up to repeat plays. The story aspect worked better this time around as all the cards were in their right places, but although we had a good time I had hoped for more when it came to Mansions of Madness. It felt like there was a lot of cool concepts there, but as the basic game stands right now you don't really get that Arkham Horror-but-more-intimate-story-driven-pseudo-rpg-experience that I think a lot of people expected. I know I did at least.

Then again, it might simply have been the particular scenario we tried. After having played it twice I felt that the it was a bit... well, boring. It's a cool idea to have this crazy maniac keep showing up, hacking his way towards you just to chop off your ear and run away with it(!), but from a pure game play perspective it gets a little repetative in the long run. So when we managed to get the old Arkham Horror crew (me, Anders, Micke and Claes) back together a couple of days ago we gave Mansions of Madness another whirl, this time trying the second scenario: The Inner Sanctum.

Setup for scenario 2: The Inner Sanctum.

Now... there might be some SPOILERS below, so if you want to avoid that skip ahead.

The story was that the Investigators are going to an old monastary in Dunwich to investigate (didn't expect that did you?!) some cult activity. As always in MoM they didn't know what their final objective would be, but started to simply wander around the house, trying to find clues. All during setup there was quite a bit of talk about sticking together and presenting a unified front, but when we actually started playing the stupid sods split up in three different directions! I guess the lure of being the first to pilfer a shotgun was too great.

My objective as the Keeper was to get four cultists into the Ceremony Room where they would sacrifice themselves to summon a Cthonian. If I then could keep the Cthonian alive for four turns I would win the game. So I started summoning cultists by the two altars in the basement and the crypt and then used them to collect some nasty Mythos and Trauma cards for later use against the Investigators. I kind of forgot that I was supposed to march them towards the Ceremony Room and had some fun turning two of them into a Hound of Tindalos and attacking the poor bumbling humans instead!

Two of the three investigators simply ran into locked doors and dead ends, while the third (who actually followed the clue from the intro text!) ran into some stiff resistance. After some close calls and some debilitating injuries they teamed back up and started to make some headway. By this time I had remembered my objective and had a bunch of cultists make a beeline for the Ceremony Room. Not knowing exactly what they were up to, but certain that it was probably nothing good, the Investigators tried to stop the cultists and a fierce battle ensued! It looked like I would have succeded in getting them all in there when Gloria Goldberg cast a Shrivelling spell that set the room on fire! That pretty much dashed my hopes of achieving my objective before the time limit was up, so I decided to simply hinder the Investigators in achieving theirs.

At the beginning of the game I pretty much dominated and the Investigators were at my mercy, however after grouping up and having found an axe and learned the Shrivelling spell (as well as Michael McGlenn's tommygun) they proved a much more formidable threat. By this time McGlenn's sanity was down to zero while the other two had only one or two points left. This left them much more susceptible to mental trauma cards and I thought I would have a field day! Having one of the Investigators being insane sounds like play time at the zoo, but it turned out that it didn't do much of a difference. Now and then I could move one of them a few steps or some similar little trick, but I didn't really feel that I had a chance of stopping them. Then I drew the really nasty Trauma cards...

So this is how it all ended: the cultists had summoned a Shoggoth that blocked the investigators way! McGlenn and Aschan Pete did what they could against the protoplasmic horror but it was far from enough, and Pete even lost his trusty axe to one of its' slimy pseudopods! They needed Gloria's spell. When she saw the monstrosity she simply turned and ran however and in the following round of combat it almost killed Ashcan Pete! Gloria did manage to find her courage again and put an end to the beast with a Shrivelling spell (again setting the room on fire!). She and McGlen advanced forward in the cave system and were about to enter that last forboding door when McGlen suddenly shouted "I see your slimy tail!" and opened fire on Gloria! She fell dead to the ground as McGlen turned the gun on himself, splattering the wall behind him with his brains. Pete stared at the scene in horror, barely noticing the cultists who were surrounding him...

McGlenn vs the Shoggoth!

Basically having McGlenn at zero Sanity allowed me to play a card that had him attack a fellow Investigator (killing Gloria) and then another card that has him committing suicide. The reaction to this from the Investigator's side was pretty great; that I could have them attack each other wasn't much of a surprise and more of a "Ah, you got me since I only had 2 hit points left"-kind of thing. But when I told them that Micheal McGlenn wrapped his lips around the barrel of his gun and pulled the trigger there was a short stunned silence followed by a "For real? Cool!".

In the end neither side won but I think we all agreed that it was a true Lovecraftian ending! Some hightlights was the early fight with the Hound of Tindalos, me forgetting about the Cult Leader and Anders' and Micke's bad dice rolling when trying to kill him, and then how Claes set the entire Ceremony Room on fire foiling my plans! Then of course the battle with the Shoggoth and the dark ending.

END SPOILERS.

In any case, this time Mansions of Madness played out a lot more like I had envisioned it. It still isn't quite the game I had in mind (it never is, is it?) but we had a lot more fun with it. What I think we're still struggling with is that it's actually very linear in nature; you have to follow the clues to make progress. And while you can go around and explore you will most likely only end up finding locked doors and waste time that could have been better spent following the leads together as a group. Given the open layout of the map, having to follow a set path can feel counter-intuitive.

As I'm sure you've gathered by now sticking together is the way to go (most of the time) but this presents a problem in itself as it's simply not as much fun. Given the choice of just following someone else (who has probably already scoured the room of any goodies) or exploring that other mysterious looking corridor the second choice is by far the most fun! If not the most strategical. So far the Investigators have split up during our games... we'll see what happens next time and how it impacts the flow of the story.

Wow, this is starting to get a bit long. And here I thougth I would have room to make a combined post on both Mansions of Madness and Lord of the Rings: the Card Game. Forget that!

So in conclusion I think Mansions of Madness has great potential but that it needs to be cracked open a bit, allowing a little bit more freedom into it while still managing to tell a compelling story. This is a tall order I know, as it's a thin line to tread. Arkam Horror is the polar opposite where you have a complete freedom to do whatever you want, but no semblence of a coherent story. I do think there is a middle ground though but I fear Mansions of Madness will need the inevitable expansion to really get it there.

It's still a fun game, don't get me wrong, but as it stands right now it depends a fair bit on your players and even more on what scenario you play. The first one was mediocre while the second one was fun so I'm hoping the third one will be great (and the upcoming print on demand scenario sounds neat!). I remain hopeful however as I think there's definitely room for this kind of game on the market. FFG just need to refine it a bit more.

A (small) new project!

2011-06-16T23:21:00.000+02:00

Just a little sneak peak on an upcoming project. Yes, I know I have my hands pretty much full... but some upcoming releases from Khurasan combined with Steve's recent post on cinematic gaming over on DH forced my hand. The above pictured beauty arrived today but the rest will probably will probably have to wait until next month.

I'm thinking I might get Spacejacker's Star Station Zero paper terrain as well to tie into this project. I'd love to get some of Creative Gamescapes starship corridor sets, but they're a bit more pricey. Looks pretty great though (see right).

By now you probably know what I'm up to (and I'm sure some of you just needed to see that first picture) but I like to pretend that I'm being sneaky and clever so I'll keep it under wraps for a while.

As my projects keep multiplying I find myself in need of a Master Plan...

Tanks in the mail!

2011-06-08T11:29:00.000+02:00

After an extended holiday here in Sweden (Feast of Ascension... although Sweden is a very secular country) I had a bunch of stuff turning up at my doorstep yesterday; some bases from warbases.co.uk, some different bases from EM4 Miniatures, Bad Company 2 from Play.com (which I couldn't actually play due to my Japanese xbox!) and some replacement parts from Corvus Belli. There was also a slip telling me that I had something awaiting pickup at the local supermarket. I headed out there this morning and it turned out to be almost a kilogram worth of tanks and infantry courtesy of Jon over at Ground Zero Games!

Some hovertanks (including the new Wittmann class) and some of the new UNSC infantry packs. That HAMR is looking nasty!

Dropship... hijacked?!

2011-06-05T21:45:00.000+02:00

Well, Mark did indeed step off the dropship Horizon. But it seems some brave (or foolhardy?) souls have stepped up, gripped the controls and are trying to take her back to the stars! ;-)

Full announcement at Dropship Horizon.

New Project: AE Necromunda!

2011-06-03T00:45:00.000+02:00

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I was considering getting some of Pig Iron's Kolony Ferals to use as Scavvies for Necromunda. It's been rolling around at the back of my head, but while Necromunda is the single GW game I've played the most number of times in my days (possibly challenged by Space Marine) the rules could be better. The strength of Necromunda is its theme and to an extent the campaign rules. I don't necessarily mean the campaign rules are exceptionally good, but they do convey a lot of theme. Let's say it again together: Theme!

Kolony Feral command. I think the guy with the circuit board would make a good chief. He looks like a people person...

It was when I read this review of AE Bounty over at BGG and then this one at WarGameGuru that things started to come together in my mind. Now, I haven't got my copy of AE Bounty yet (ordered cheaply from Bookdepository though) but it seems like a really fun skirmish system that's very customizable when it comes to put together your crew. If you're interested in miniature skirmish games in any way, I implore you to read those two reviews! Anyway, this got me thinking about Necromunda and how I'd like to play in that setting, but maybe with some more modern rules. The two seems to go together very well, with AE Bounty even having campaign rules and a boatload of suitable scenarios.

Now this is a kind of slow cooking project as well as being a pretty low-profile thing since the investments are quite cheap. The first step is simply to sit down and read through AE Bounty, which I hear is a delightfully small size, and see how I could adapt some regular Necromunda gangs to the rules format, starting with my Delaque. Then I'll see if I can get together with Anders and play a couple of games to get the feel of it. I've been wanting to re-visit my old Necromunda minis (and the paper terrain!) but have been putting it off because of the rules.

Then if we like it and it's malleable enough to turn into an ersatz Necromunda I'll get a bunch of Ferals and start painting! Or to be honest, I'll probably get some anyway and if I never use them I'll enjoy looking at them from time to time as they sit on the shelf. Pig Iron Productions have a lot of good looking models, but the Ferals were the ones that really caught my eye. And they look much more nasty and dangerous than the slightly cartoony Scavvy models that GW released back in the day. The newer ones are better in some ways and worse in others, but still don't compare to the Ferals.

I do need something to use as scalies though. Maybe something like Large Belly from Eden, it could be used almost as-is. Studio McVey's Jagganat Heavy (see left) would look awesome, just have a huge spear stick out of that barrel! I'd have to de-tech him a bit though. Or I could go a completely different way with something like Hans the Hunter from Incursion. Hmm... any other suggestions?

Now, this is a future project to be sure. Currently I'm eagerly waiting a recent order from GZG with some 15mm hover tanks and some new UNSC stuff! Hopefully you'll see a review of it here next week.

Dropship taking off!

2011-06-01T23:54:00.000+02:00

Mark over at Dropship Horizon has announced that he'll stop updating the blog after a last post tomorrow. He started his blog about the same time that I started Fire Broadside, but in only three years Dropship Horizon became one of the go-to places for 15mm gaming. Mark also had a good relationship with many of the big miniature makers out there and made a whole lot of great previews and reviews.

The Dropship will still be there though, and it's still a great resource for 15mm gamers. Hopefully some other blog will rise to the challenge and try to fill the void.

In any case, thanks for three good years Mark and have fun over at Winter of 79 and Crisis in Alcovia!

Aliens: Colonial Marines

2011-06-01T19:32:00.000+02:00

New trailer for Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines that's supposed to be a direct sequal to Cameron's film. It's been in development hell for a long time, but hopefully it's worth the wait... until spring 2012. I always keep my fingers crossed for anything USCM related.

Some more info over at Kotaku.

15mm Mecha

2011-05-27T19:26:00.000+02:00

I feel some more 15mm musings coming on...

I have a three Warbots from Micropanzer Studio that fit the mech-profile very well, but I would also like to have some kind of power armour/exo-suit/walker type soldiers in my army. Something humanoid but maybe twice the size of an infantryman.

My first thought was to simply get some more Gears from Dream Pod 9 since they're arguably the best looking humanoid mechs in the market today. But, for me at least, they're too intrinsically linked to Terra Nova and the Heavy Gear game and I don't think it would feel right in some weird way. The Valkyrie walkers from Art Crime Productions are another option that also have that specific kind of look that I'm going for. They're a bit pricey, but then again, so is DP9. As you can see here and here, size wise they're slightly smaller than a DP9 Gear but still substantially larger than an infantryman. I quite like their chuknyness as well.

Of course the perfect solution would be if I could find a Scopedog model (see top picture) in the right scale! It's like the grand daddy of realistic mecha (yes, you could argue Gundam here, but I don't agree) and the design is almost ageless. Unfortunately the models produced so far has either been too large (1/12, 1/20, 1/48, 1/35 etc) or too small (1/144). Hopefully one day...

Shàng Jí Invincible!

2011-05-27T03:44:00.001+02:00

Once more, Yu Jing has revolutionized the concept of Heavy Infantry. The fourth generation of servo-powered combat armour implies a qualitative step up in mobility and in info-biotechnological protection. These unique new Shang Jí (“Superior”) armours are faster, lighter and definitively better. Only the best equipment for the bravest defenders of the People!

EDIT: Oops! Seems like Blogger burped back the post that dissapeared and this time with all the comments as well. Too bad it's not in the right place chronologically. Oh well...

I wanted to get some more heavy infantry in my Yu Jing force since that's what they're famous for, so I painted this Shang Ji Invincible tonight. I really should have been painting for the last LPL entry, but I simply can't quit these Infinity minis! I'm addicted!

Anyway, here he is:

Since he's basically just different shades of grey he looks a bit... "plain", but then again simple was what I was going for with my Yu Jing so I shouldn't complain. Hehe!

He's armed with a combi rifle and light flamethrower and wears powered armour, yet still retains a high movement speed. The complete package wouldn't you say? :)

15mm Musings...

2011-05-25T23:51:00.000+02:00

There's been a lot of Infinity here at Fire Broadside lately, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten my 15mm guys (or any of my other projects for that matter)! I've been especially inspired by fellow blogger Peabody's recent 15mm GZG outings, and the ever interesting guys over at Gruntz. Peabody has a great looking force already and some FanVans are coming along nicely. At the Gruntz website there are loads of neat stuff to oogle over. Currently they're working on converting the new GZG crusty mecha (which I thought was a bit of a letdown) into something more like the movie.

Anyway, currently I'm considering my next purchases. I think I'll focus on my UNSC/Earth Sectorial Army for now and build my Reds later. I have a few squads of light and medium infantry, a MATV and three drone walkers. I think I would like to get some more vehicles (transportation and armour) as well as some squad support weapons.

In conjunction with GZG's store re-opening they released a few new UNSC infantry sets with exactly the stuff I want: command personnel, heavy weapons etc. The problem is that apart from the command squad all the figures are prone, and I don't really like that. It looks ok on larger bases with several figueres mounted on them a la Flames of War, but with singles it's hit and miss. If the base is too small it can look cramped, and if it's too big it simply looks silly. I mounted my prone SAW gunners on a 25mm base (I normally use 20mm for my 15mm stuff) and it was a tight fit, but I think anything larger and it wouldn't have have been too much empty space at the side of the body and wouldn't have looked good.

I'm thinking that I could probably get away with mounting some of the dedicated weapon teams two to a base. Like the HAMR with his spotter (although I guess that depends on the game system). A 40mm base might be about the right size, allowing me to add some terrain as well. Hmm... have to ponder this some more.

An alternative that was recently brought up over at Dropship Horizon is to use different kind of drones and remotes instead of SAW's and dedicated heavy weapon troopers. This is something I've been considering since earlier and I find it an attractive concept. Besides there being loads of neat little models that fit the bill, it also feels like a fairly realistic development of our armed forces.

Then there's the vehicles. I have a hard time deciding which way to go here. Originally I was thinking about going with the wheeled hi-mobility series from GZG (love both the Phalanx and the Paladin!). But then it occurred to me that they might be a better fit for the Mars rebels who have more of a hit and run-feel to them. Next up I was looking at grav vehicles (especially the Arc Fleet tanks from Critical Mass Games - see right) but although they look awseome they're a bit too hi-tech for my near-future Mars army (not for the UNSC though, so I might get some anyway). Then I considered simple tracked vehicles, but it feels kind of boring in a sci-fi setting. Not bad per se, but not very imaginative. I haven't ruled it out though.

Finally I've been considering air-cushioned (hover) vehicles in the style of Hammer's Slammers. I quite like the idea and it feels kind of hi-tech and retro at the same time which I think would fit my little spacemen just fine. While there are some official Hammer's Slammers models made by Old Crow, they don't really do it for me. I think I want some more detailing - they're simply too smooth (too retro?!) but I might get one or two anyway to check them out in the "flesh". Again my eyes are drawn to GZG and their hover vehicle range. I especially like the Gauntlet APC and the Rommel gun-tank.

So while it might seem that I've set my mind on hover vehicles, I'd love to hear from the blogosphere about any other neat ideas out there that I've overlooked! Hit me!

Oh, and I almost forgot! I'm definitely getting some air cav! The Mantis and the FanVan are pretty much already in my shopping basket, but again, I'd love to hear about other alternatives.

Wet Palette for (poor) Dummies!

2011-05-23T21:04:00.000+02:00

So I was starting to write an email to fellow Infinity-player Martin (who play Ariadna) about how I made a simple wet palette on the cheap. But as I was writing it occured to me that I might as well turn it into a quick blog post. So here we go: how to make a wet palette from an Infinity blister (or Spartan Games blister or any other that use the clamshell construction):

1. Buy some Infinity stuff! This is the easisest step... resistance is futile.

2. The little metal pieces you find inside? Well, all we want is the blister so toss them in the bin!

3. Which leaves us with this. She's a beauty isn't she?

4. Cut it in two pieces at the bend.

5. Get some tissue paper and some baking/waxed/parchment paper and cut it into pieces roughly the same size as the blister.

6. Soak the tissue paper in water (don't just wet it, soak it!) and place it within the 'lip' of the blister back part.

7. Then just place a piece of baking and... ta-daaa! Done! Now get painting!

8. When you're done for the day (with your 15 minutes perhaps?) just use the top/front half of the blister and snap it into place. That way the colours that are still on the palette will stay fresh until the next day.

There we go. Cheap and easy, don't you think? There are definitely larger, better and more expensive alternatives out there, but this'll get you by in a pinch. Just remember to re-soak the tissue paper and replace the baking paper as it slowly gets covered.

Now I think it's time to get back to that Aragoto...

LPL Sunday: Final Round!

2011-05-22T22:44:00.000+02:00

A little delayed, here's the final LPL Sunday post.

As I mentioned last time my inital plan to finally paint my space battleship Yamato fleet went awry and I put together the scene above on the fly. It still felt kind of right to make a summary of sorts of my adventures in 15mm so far so I'm not too bummed out about it. And spaceships (even the mighty Yamato) would probably not have prevailed against the opposition I faced in any case.

Braxandur had put together a really great Starship Troopers scene simply called "Would you like to know more?". One of the best entries this round and definitely the one most similar to its subject matter. In the end I lost with 95 votes against 242.

So in the end I won five rounds, lost five rounds and finished on 44th place. I was aiming for the upper half of the board, but this final round unfortunately dropped me 13 places from 31st. Oh well, I think I did fairly well considering what I entered. :)

Some other great entries this round:

'They're coming outta the walls' - Excellent entry that really captures that Aliens feel.
Jason and the Golden Fleece vs 'I've Got a Bad Feeling About This' - Nostalgia! I remember watching Jason and the Argonauts as a kid and that skeleton scene made a great impression on me. And well, Star Wars is Star Wars. But besides that I also painted that very same set of miniatures when I was around 10-12 years old.
The Untouchables... Canadian Confiscation - Great minis, great use of colours, great scenery!

So that is the end of that! Although I had a lot of fun during the LPL I'm really glad it's over. I kind of lost focus and motivation towards the end as I got more into Infinity. And although I entered my Infinity models twice it didn't "feel right", I would much rather have entered more 15mm Mars stuff. But I simply had more fun painting my Yu Jing.

It would've been nice if I'd been able to bag some more bonus points. By entering a couple of old teams and missing out completely on the two theme rounds I lost 70 points. That's quite a lot and it would have netted me 24th place in the league. Well, next year eh?

Oh, so who won do you ask? Well, not surprisingly Frank, whom I faced in the first round, snagged the first place. He put together really amazing little scenes for every round and really deserved the win. My fellow Swede Hammers held the lead for the majority of the league, but faltered toward the end as real life got in the way.

I'll most likely post a more extensive LPL wrap-up post later in the week...

LPL Sunday: Round 10! And round 9 recap

2011-05-15T14:46:00.000+02:00

Again my LPL painting schedule got bumped in favour of Infinity, so I simply entered them instead. The minis I had painted were the Yu Jing Kuang Shi, their Celestial Guard "minder" and a Daofei. The four Kuang Shi are political prisoners that have been brainwashed, given a chain rifle and an exploding backpack. They're basically suicide troops, but surprisingly effective for their cost! I kept the basic colour scheme I had established for my Yu Jing, but added an off-white colour to their helmets, manacles and the Kuang Shi control device that the Celestial Guard is carrying. The idea was to create a kind of unity through that single colour. But then I went and used it on the Daoefei as well. Hehe!

The Daofei was a late addition but I couldn't resist a camouflaged heavy infantry with a heavy machine gun. At first I actually tried painting her with urban camo, but it didn't look good so I went with a simple black/grey instead.

I went up against Cwchmc's "Doctor and Friends" that was both very well painted and had a theme that I think really appeals to many LAFers, so a loss was inevitable. The votes ended at 101 vs 221.

Some other great entries this round were:

Allied Battlesuits - I've seen minis that are technically better painted, but these guys have so much character!
Morat Vanguard + Winter is Coming - Two excellent entries! And featuring two of my favourite fictional universes as well! In the end Frank's more subdued colours got my vote.
Mountains of Madness - Can't resist such a beautifully rendered Lovecraft entry!
The Summoning - Usually I don't think photo and lighting effects fit into a competition like this as I like to see the minis clearly, but this time it works perfectly. Great scene!

The 10th and final round is a bonus round and the theme is movies! My plan was to use this to finally finish my space battleship Yamato and Earth Defence Fleet. But I had another spraying accident and one side of the Yamato became kind of grainy. It was still paintable but I would definitely have put that side away from the camera. However, as I sat down and made ready to kind of speed paint these ships I felt that I didn't want to do it that way. Sure it's getting long in the tooth now, but I still want to take my time with these models.

So instead I cobbled together a kind of group shot of some of the 15mm Mars stuff I had painted in the LPL so far. So no bonus points for me at all this round, but it still felt like a nice wrap up of the competition. And I must admit I've been suffering from a bit of a LPL fatigue these last few weeks and have found it hard to get excited or care much about it. Anyway, I'll type out a longer post recaping the entire league some time after round 10 is over.

Now head on over to the Lead Adventure Forum and check out mine and all the other entries. And don't forget to vote!

More Infinity!

2011-05-10T02:49:00.000+02:00

Infinity madness! Yepp, at it again. This time also against a first time player, my friend Anders and his Nomads, so we we had kind of weird forces. But what the hey...

My army looked like this:

YU JING
GROUP 1 (Regs: 9/Irrs: 0):
ZANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (11)
ZANSHI Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (11 | 1)
CELESTIAL GUARD Hacker Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (25 | 0.5)
CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife (13 | 0.5)
3x KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife (5)
DOMARU Boarding Shotgun, E/M Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW (36)
GŬILÁNG Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (26 | 0.5)

137 Points | SWC: 2.5
ARMY CODE: eNozNFQ1VDNQM6yBkeZA0ljNDEyaAkkjsDgyaWihZgTiGIFUAQDHfw4cArmy Infinity v.3.0. - http://www.devilteam.com

While Anders had:

NOMADS

GROUP 1 (Regs: 7/Irrs: 0):
2x ALGUACIL Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
ALGUACIL Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10 | 1)
SECURITATE Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (23)
MOBILE BRIGADA MULTI Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (43)
ZERO Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (18)
ALGUACIL Hacker Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (22 | 0.5)

136 Points | SWC: 1.5
ARMY CODE: eNozMFQ1VDNQM6yBkRZA0gjChgqZQmVM1QwB554J9Q==Army Infinity v.3.0. - http://www.devilteam.com

Since I had a bit of a "swarm" army the nomads went on the defensive early on, setting up several suppression fire corridors every turn. But not before one of my Kuang Shi managed to run up to the Zero and blow him to bits!

Thanks to the smoke cover from my Celestial Guard I could avoid a bit of the nomads suppression fire, but even so I had a hard time getting anywhere.

Lots of suppression fire...

In the cover of smoke another of my Kuang Shi made a heroic dash downrange and managed to get a shot off at the Securitate and an Alguacil, but unfortunately they both passed their ARM rolls (something Anders was very lucky with throughout the game!) and he was gunned down in response. I forgot all about the Kuang Shi's Dogged skill here! Had I remembered I could have run forward and made another shot and then caught both enemies in the blast as he exploded. Oh well...

We traded shots for a while until Anders decided to try and make an attack on my left flank with his Mobile Brigada. I had wanted to do the same thing with my Domaru, but he had a strategically positioned hacker setup, as well as a suppression fire corridor.

Anyway, the Mobile Brigade simply ran straight out into the open, using two orders to get into position, even though I could ARO with both my Guilang and my Celestial Guard hacker. However, his luck held and he either managed his ARM rolls, or I missed. Grr!

My answer was to shoot more smoke to cover my hacker who could then get close enough to Immobilize his Mobile Brigada. Yay! My Domaru took this opportunity to run up and fire a couple of AP shots into him, but only managed to wound once. And was then hacked in return!

Anders was able to reset his Brigada and ran up behind my Domaru to get a clear shot. However, my hacker again managed to immobilize him, leading to this:

"Well then... I propose a staring contest!!"

The dirty Nomads continued to gun down both my Domaru and my Guilang with combi rifle fire (even though I was in cover!) and then it was back to me.

I had the Degrade mission (from the mission roulette) so I really wanted to kill that Mobile Brigade. I ran up with my hacker and fired, but had to spend three orders before I could get Anders to fail an ARM roll! Even though he was square in the open. And then, to add insult to injury, I failed my anti-hacker protocol roll and my hacker fell unconscious.

In the final turn I managed to kill his Lieutenant giving me a final score of 3 VPs, against Anders 4. So victory to the dirty, dirty Nomads!

The one thing that we should have done different was the terrain. Setting it up I thought it looked ok, but once we started playing it we realized that it would just end up with a giant suppression fire fight with very little movement which felt a bit boring. Should probably have had some more stuff in the middle and opened up a couple of more avenues of advance on the flanks.
Also, while this paper terrain is functional and looks decent enough I need more small stuff to scatter about. Some k-rails, barrels etc. Lessons for next time!

Hacking was interesting and locking down some one's expensive HI was fun! But using anti-hacker protocols felt very risky.

Good game in any case! Now I just need to figure out how to protect my HI from the Nomad hacker assault that's bound to happen in our next game.

Infinity Session Report

2011-05-09T02:30:00.000+02:00

The Guilang sat perfectly still, his combi rifle trained on the small group of soldiers advancing towards his position. He wasn't worried. The camouflage he had prepared earlier rendered him all but invisible to the naked eye and there was a mine planted in his blindspot. Just to be safe.

For two days the Guilang had tracked the Pan Oceanian troops as they made their way through the wilderness of Svalarheima. It had taken some time to get reinforcements to this sector but now there was a squad further to the south and the Empire had even promised jump troop support in the form of the feared Tiger Soldiers.

The four enemy soldiers were coming closer now, almost there... "Four?! Shiòng mâo niao! Where's the sniper?". The Guilang rolled back into cover and made his way around the other side of the small building while he called in the updated situation to the Celestial Guard team leader. As he stuck his head around the corner he saw the sniper who had taken up position in a rocky area to the north east. There was a sudden roar coming from above, the unmistakable sound of a dropship on approach...

So, a few days ago I played my second game of Infinity. While we're still very much in the inital trying-things-out phase I was feeling a bit more adventurous, so I wanted to try out some of the more interesting stuff like camo, infiltration, smoke and AD troops. I was playing against Alex and his PanO Military Orders and we had decided to do proper 150 point armies, so here's what I came up with:

YU JING

CELESTIAL GUARD Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (13)

CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife (13 | 0.5)

KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife (5)

2x ZANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (11)

TIGER SOLDIER HMG / Pistol, Knife (35 | 1.5)

DOMARU Boarding Shotgun, E/M Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW (36)

GŬILÁNG Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (26 | 0.5)

Besides wanting to try out some new stuff my plan was to use the Guilang who both has Infiltration and Camouflage as an advance detterant. Basically he'd spit out a few mines in strategic positions and use his camouflage to make life difficult for Alex. Hopefully forcing him to funnel his forces into the other half of the table where I was planning to land the heavy machine gun equipped Tiger Soldier. At the same time the Domaru and the (impetuous) Kuang Shi would advance backed up by the Celestial Guard with the smoke grenade launcher while the other light infantry provided fire support.

This plan worked, in a way of speaking, but it was mostly due to us both being new at the game in general, and this being the first game ever for Alex in particular. Also, none of us had really appreciated the damage a HMG in the right hands can do...

Setup. Actually just at the start of my first turn as my Tiger has landed...

Alex had decided to choose table edge and deploy his units last while I got to choose who took the first turn. Not being used to how Infinity works the PanO were mostly out in the open at the start of the game. Sure I couldn't see any of them from my deployment zone (terrain extravaganza!) but I had a Tiger Soldier incoming!

So the first thing that happened was that I dropped the him and he took up a firing position where he could see most of the enemy squad. A couple of bursts later and the Knight Santiago (and almost a third of Alex's entire army) was lying dead and the Tiger Soldier set up a deadly suppression fire corridor, halting the PanO advance. The Domaru and Kuang Shi advanced on the right flank while the Guilang made his way towards the enemy sniper further north west.

Boom!

In his turn Alex avoided the HMG fire by going through some nearby trees and the sniper took aim at my Domaru that was juuust visible to him. Luckily for me she managed to dodge and went prone behind a stone wall.

At the start of the second turn the Celestial Guard fired some smoke, obscuring the the view and letting the Domaru advance unmolested by sniper fire. The Guilang peaked his head around the corner and fired off a burst against the sniper. As he was camouflaged this was a normal roll and not a face to face roll, but even so he couldn't get a clean shot in. A short firefight ensued, but the Guilang was victorious in the end. He advanced further around the building, trying to outflank the rest of the PanO soldiers to the west.

The Tiger Soldier didn't have a clear line of fire anymore so I decided to pull him back a bit, putting him in the doorway of a nearby factory building.

One of the PanO Order Sergeants put up some suppresion fire towards the corner where the Guilang might emerge, covering his brethren as they advanced towards the Tiger Soldier and the Domaru. A few shots were exchanged, but to no effect.

The Guilang re-applied his camouflage and made a dash across the suppression fire corridor into cover on the other side. Thanks to his camouflage the only reaction the order sergeant could take was Discover, letting him avoid the hail of fire. He was discovered (loosing his camo status) but by then he was in cover on the other side and could pop up to put fire on the order sergeant. This resulted in another dead PanO soldier.

There were a few more exchanges of fire, but with only two models left we decided to end the game.

My Domary and Kuang Shi up ahead at the end of the game, supported by a Zhanshi and a Celestial Guard. The two camo markers that can be seen are mines left by the Guilang.

Now, this might sound a bit one-sided, and it was. I think there were two reasons for this: 1. this was Alex's very first game and although I'd only tried it once before that small experience gave me a bit of a head start. 2. even though 150 points makes for a fairly small game, even at this scale only having five models is cutting it close, some more support to get your big tough heavy infantry into place would have been good.

But in any case, this really cemented my faith in Infinity. The system is very smooth and even though it might seem complex when reading it, it actually often plays much faster than similar skirmish games like Necromunda. The order system is absolutely awesome and really allows you to do that cool action movie-esque stuff that you rarely see in other wargames. I'll make a more indepth analysis/review of Infinity in a few days, so keep your eyes peeled.

Oh, and painting these figures is a blast! I mean, I've always enjoyed painting but it can at times be a bit of a chore and it's rare that I feel this level of enthusiasm when painting. It might sound silly, but I really can't wait to get home after work because then I can start on the next figure! Hehe!

LPL Sunday: Round 9! And round 8 recap

2011-05-08T21:44:00.000+02:00

A Domaru Butai leading a Tiger Soldier and three Zhanshi.

A bit of a hot streak in the LPL currently (up until the current round anyway) with this entry giving me the third win in a row! Whee! The plan was to paint some of Micro Panzers 15mm warbots and their operators, but as they arrived just a day before the deadline I went with my newly painted Yu Jing instead. I've really been bitten bad by the Infinity bug and I can't stop painting the minis! It's just so much fun!

I had painted a Zhanshi and the Domaru and then finished the Tiger Soldier and two more Zhanshi on Friday evening, snapped some photos and put together the collage above. Overall I'm happy with them. I decided to go with a blue/grey/white theme for my Yu Jing instead of the traditional orange or yellow and I think it gives them a slightly more realistic but still fairly striking look. I'm quite happy with it!

I went up against Rosie's Garage by Bobbo, a very characterful entry showing Rosie and her robotic collegues. Bobbo used some really nice looking (and cute!) models and created a good composition, but my Yu Jing still managed to bring home the bacon with 182 votes against 147.

Some other great entries this round:

Children of Doom - Really nice barbarian warband! Both the painting and the sculpts from Red Box Games. Could definitely see these feature in John Milius' Conan movie. :)
Anjin-san + Pulp: Pharoah Ki-Oskh Cigar Afficionado Society - Samurai (and Richard Chamberlain!) vs Tintin?! Too hard a choice. The final vote really doesn't reflect how close these two are in quality.
Brainiacs Army of Z's - Just love the bizarreness of this entry and its giant brain-tank!
Quar Car - Excellent models, excellently painted by Mancha. I really should get myself some quar some day.
Life on Mars - Yes, the photo could be a bit closer in, but I still really like the way it's compositioned now. Kind of quiet and desolate.
Rock Hard, Ride Free - Bit of nostalgia here with these old beaky marines, their bikes, their tank and their scratchbuilt Whirldind (I built the same one). Cool stuff Pil!

Since I didn't get to paint the warbot I'd enter them in round nine instead... or at least that was the plan. But as I mentioned, the Infinity bug has got med bad and I simply couldn't tear myself away from them! Or at least I didn't want to jinx the painting roll I was (am) on. So instead I decided to enter my recently painted Kuang Shi, their Celestial Guardian controller and a Dao Fei. Very stiff opposition this time around with a well painted Dr Who entry, but that's ok. A three round win streak is enough for me and even if I loose round 10 as well I will at least have won half of my matches. Hehe!

See my entry and all the other great stuff over at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

"Weird" Japan

2011-05-07T00:18:00.000+02:00

I just came across a post on Kotaku about a new Toyota commercial where they use a virtual idol to promote their car (watch it above). However it's not the post itself that is important here, or the ad, but one of the comments on it that is so in sync with how I often find myself feeling about Japan and how it is perceived in the west that I just had to repost it here.

For those who don't know I lived in Tokyo for five years between 2005 and 2010 and I know exactly what FarmboyinJapan is talking about (just change America and American to Sweden and Swedish):

As someone who has lived in Japan for the better part of decade now, I find all of this incredibly fucking offensive, on so many levels.

1) I am CONSTANTLY engaged in an "image war" every time I go back to America. Family/friends come to me with BS questions like "I hear there is (some stupid shit) in Japan," or "I read that in Japan everyone does (some made up crap)", or one girl in Harajuku wears some ridiculous "hey look at me!!!" attention seeking outfit....and it ends up in the style section of The New York Times. And so now Japan has this stereotype of being "weird". And all this ad does is reinforce that stereotype. So now when I go home again, I'm going to have to explain to people that yes, virtual idols exist, but only the hardest of the hardcore actually gives a rat's ass.....and that the average Japanese person (much like the average American) is utterly bewildered at why something like this exists. This is absolutely embarrassing. I truly hope that the devastation and subsequent international coverage of the recent disasters over here will cause the tourism industry in Japan to change its marketing strategy. Because while the international media carries most of the blame with helping to create the image of a "weird Japan"....Japan itself is not blameless either. They have constantly been prioritizing "sub-culture" in how they have chosen to market Japan as a tourist destination. "Come to Japan! You can watch cartoons, read comic books, go to a maid cafe, and do cosplay." And while a model like that certainly helps attract a very specific group of people, it has done a lot to stigmatize this country as "weird."
The Micheline Guide has classified Tokyo as the "best culinary city in the world"...not just for Japanese food, but for any kind of cuisine you can imagine. In my travels, I've been all over the world, and Japan is by far the most fashion progressive country I've ever been to...Japan has a booming fashion industry for every taste imaginable. Japan has some of the most beautiful nature preserves in the world. Certain parts of Japan still have a tight grip on ancient traditions, so a trip to Kyoto can seem like you've stepped into a time machine. All of these are assets Japan has as a tourist destination...but they are rarely if ever exploited. Instead, Japan seems more content with marketing itself as a country "where you can buy video games, listen to virtual idols, and look at girls walk around in Little Po Peep costumes". It really truly does break my heart. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if part of this ad was subsidized by the Japanese government to promote tourism.

2) Right now, this very day, if you were to ask the average American what springs to mind when you say "Japan", I'm almost certain that it would be the recent disasters. So while "capitalize" might be a dirty word, why doesn't Toyota US start some kind of campaign that takes into account the recent headlines? How about an ad campaign proclaiming "Help support Japan with us at Toyota," or announce a percentage of sales will go to help disaster victims. Nope....virtual idols!!!

Yepp...

Master of the Gardens

2011-05-04T17:25:00.000+02:00

Oniwaban means ‘the one who is in the garden’ or ‘the gardener’. During the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate, each Shogun had in his service a personal gardener that belonged to the elite of a Ninja clan. The Oniwaban was the Shogun’s link with the Ninja.

While I've always been a bit ambivalent about space ninjas I really like the Oniwaban miniature! The design is great, but what really takes it to the next level is the pose. He just looks appropriately awesome and ready to cut some poor Pan-O troopers into teeny-tiny pieces.

Since I have a kind of grey-blue thing going on with my Yu Jing I thought I'd try to continue with that theme and decided to paint him blue instead of the traditional green. I'm not entirely sure it was the right decision since the blue-grey is a bit too close to the black/grey of the rest of his outfit. The green creates a great contrast while the blue creates a... not so great contrast. However, he still looks pretty good and he does fit in very well with what I've painted so far. Oh, and the glitter effect is from the spray varnish I used and let me tell you, from now on I'm using paint on varnish! Anyway, some more snaps:

Next up some Celestial Guard I think. Although that Shang Ji is looking mighty attractive as well. Decisions, decisions...

First (test) Game of Infinity!

2011-05-02T00:07:00.000+02:00

Perfectly clear, right?

Today I met up with MartinH and we had our first test game of Infinity. And even though it was only to start learning the rules and we setup pretty much in each other's faces we had a lot of fun! I see a huge amount of potential in this game...

I used what I had painted, namely three Zhanshi, a Tiger Soldier with a HMG and a Domaru Butai with a boarding shotgun. Martin, who plays Ariadna, had three Line Kazaks, a Highlander Grey Rifle and a Chasseur. However, we decided to make the Chasseur a Line Kazak as we wanted to save the camo rules for next time.

Like I said we setup reeeeally close to each other just to get things rolling and I started by setting up a suppression fire corridor with my Tiger Soldier, mostly to try it out, but also to prevent those Kazaks from advancing too quickly. Then I positioned the rest of my guys so they'd be able to make some effective ARO's. Then it was the Ariadnian turn. Martin decided to risk the ARO's and while he lost a Line Kazak to one of my Zhanshi, he managed to down another and wound my Domaru Butai! He also advanced his Grey Rifle a bit, but not too far.

The next turn I took a huge unnecessary risk with my Tiger Soldier by peaking around the corner where two Kazaks were waiting. I was hoping that my higher Ballistic Skill and amount of fire would see me through, but in the end I only managed to down one of the Kazaks while the other put my Tiger Soldier out of action. The Domaru took up the same suppresive fire position as the Tiger Soldier had had earlier while my last two Zhanshi advanced on the right flank.

In his next turn the Martin threw a smoke grenade with his Grey Rifle, allowing him to cross the suppresive fire corridor I had set up with the Domaru and unload on my two Zhanshi with his two light shotguns! It was a smart move and even more effective since my two minis were bunched up, meaning he could hit both with the scatter from the shotguns. In the end he only managed to hit once, but it was enough to down both of the targets. Eek!

Now... I only had the Domaru left and we still hadn't tried out close combat. So gritting her teeth she ran straight into the guns of two Kazaks and charged! She was lucky and managed to dodge both shots and the poor Kazak at the receiving end of her katana didn't last long! Unfortunately that triggered the Domaru's Frenzy and from next turn she'd be Impetuous, meaning that she'd have to move towards the closest enemy model. This doesn't always have to be bad as it's essentially a free move and action for your model, but the way my Domaru was positioned at the time it didn't look good...

Martin used this to his advantage and used suppresion fire with both his remaining soldiers, aiming where he knew the Domaru would emerge from cover. What he didn't expect was that she'd first manage to out-shoot and then out-dodge their combined fire and ended up in close combat with the Grey Rifle! There was a glimmer of hope for me as we rolled the dice since I definitely had the advantage (although chances were great that we'd both die) but alas, it was not to be. We both managed to hit each other (which can happen because the Domaru is Berserk) but I failed my ARM roll while Martin passed his.

So victory to the Ariadnian dogs! Just you wait...

Of course, this wasn't a "proper" game, but even from this little appetizer it feels to me like Infinity is a great game! It's very different from the miniature games I've played before and it forces you to really think tactically.

Sorry that there aren't more pictures, but I forgot all about it mid-way through. Only took the one. I'll do better next time!

LPL Sunday: Round 8! And round 7 recap

2011-05-01T12:19:00.001+02:00

"I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar!"

Ooh! Trend breaker this round as I managed to win again. Two times in a row! I hope my luck holds for round eight as well. Hehe!

Yepp... it was finally time to get some spaceships into the LPL. And not just any ol' thing, but Serenity herself! I had been thinking about how to do something fun with my spaceship entry and not only do a straight on group shot. Background and terrain was my first thought, but then I remembered that my friend Anders had the Firefly model from GZG lying around unpainted and I thought it would make for a great "mini scenario". So I borrowed it from him (together with the asteroids and matt. Thanks Anders!) and painted it. It went real quick but I'm pretty happy with the result!

Originally my intent was to paint the remaining FSE ships, but in the end I decided against it. Primarily for lack of time, but also because I didn't want grey ships pursuing the already grey Serenity. So I missed out on the 10 bonus points for newly painted, but meh... it's not really about the points is it?

I went up against Charlie's Hobo Revolutionaries who were hanging around from a previous round. Theire painter, Rufus T Firefly, seems to have done a good job painting, but the picture could be a bit clearer and I think it helped me swipe the victory. In the end the vote ended at 212 vs 101.

Some other great entries this round were:

Baby Cthulhu's Nursery - Awesome! The alphabet blocks and the painting is what really kicks this to the next level. Probably my favourite this round.
Death by Inadequate Masonry - More tentacled goodness!
Desert Column + Merchants - These two entries from Frank and Prof. Witcheimer respectively are both pretty amazing. I especially like the prof showing off some post apocalyptic stuff!
Masks on Boys! - Love the "chunkyness" of these minis! And the painting has a nice gritty feel to it.
Mad Doc's Masterpieces - Really cool selection of models that really have a great Earth Reborn-vibe to them. Wouldn't mind getting some of these myself...

For round eight I was going to make some more Martian stuff, more Earth Sec to be precise. But the minis I was waiting for didn't arrive in time so I had to come up with a substitute. I could have just painted more 15mm infantry or something, but that felt boring so I decided to try and finish a squad of my new Infinity minis. I had a slight accident with some spray varnish (more on that later) but I managed to get a decent picture in the end.

See my entry and all the other great stuff over at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

LPL Sunday: Round 7! And round 6 recap

2011-04-24T13:06:00.001+02:00

A band of Martian rebels with walker support.

After loosing against Bugsda last round I'm back to winning again this round with my newly painted "Reds".

The infantry are Sahadeen from Rebel Minis and the walkers are DIMOGs from Khurasan (with converted drivers). All reasonably nice models, although the infantry are not as clean as the UNSC minis from GZG or the heavy infantry from Blue Moon. There are quite a lot of greeblies and they were trickier to paint. The DIMOGs are nice sculpts, but speaking of greeblies... the driver! Phew! He's just one giant greeble isn't he?! Khurasan does amazing stuff but I was a bit dissapointed with the driver. Good thing is you don't see much of him when he's seated.

Something I tried out when painting these guys was using a regular pencil to make the chipped paint effect at the end of the rocket launcher barrel. I thought it might not look metallic enough to actually read to the naked eye but it worked really well and I'm looking forward to trying it again in the future.

I went up against Tomsche and his Sons of the Sand (with a big nasty sand golem!) this round and in the end I won with a bit of a margin. If the trend continues I'll loose rounds seven and (of!) nine but win rounds eight and ten. Hehe!

Some of my favourite entries this round were:

Big Trouble in Little Fishbowl - Really cool minis (love diving helmet!), well painted and a beautiful composition!
Field Trip with Miss Bachaus - I haven't seen the film(s) but Hammer's produced an awesome entry!
Frontier Men - Once again Frank has put together the perfect nature scene.
"You have 20 Seconds to Comply" - But I had to vote for the ED-209. :)
Larkhall Police Lieutenant Omega Fives Riot Squad - Excellent use of digital camo and lighting effects.
Agents of Evil - Robo-Hitler!

For round 7 I'm fiiiinally getting some starships into the league! Unfortunately only one is newly painted, but I think you'll recognize her...

See my entry and all the other great stuff over at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

New Painting Paradigm!

2011-04-20T00:35:00.000+02:00

So... just now, out of the blue I decided to try something new painting-wise. I usually don't touch my minis for ages and then I sit down for a marathon session and do everything. And while this kind of works it can be a long time between these painting frenzies. So from now on I'm going to try and sneak in at least 15 minutes of painting every day!

It's not a long time, but probably enough to do one step in the process and if I manage to do it every day it'll soon add up. I'm not sure how well this strategy would work if you had hordes of things to paint (say, an entire 40k or WHFB army), but when you're mostly moving about in the skirmish region like I am I think it can work wonders! For example, my current project (besides the LPL) is Infinity and since I'm mostly painting one mini at the time 15 minutes can go a surprisingly long way. Probably enough to go from basecoat to final highlights in one area at least.

Today I've been prepping my Yu Jing and I'll start for real on my Zhanshi tomorrow. This'll be interesting!

LPL Sunday: Round 6! And round 5 recap

2011-04-17T13:10:00.000+02:00

See! My gears aren't forgotten!

After last round's narrow victory I went back to loosing again this week. Hehe! The theme for round 5 was Africa and I had nothing. I really don't want to get any models that I won't be able to use for gaming later and since I'm mostly a sci fi guy this made things kind of hard. However, I came up with the pretty cool idea to get "Crusties" from GZG and make a District 9 themed entry. However, just as I was about to order I realized it was March 1st and Jon had closed the store for the upcoming update. Arhg!!

So... to at least make a nod to the theme I decided to base my gears as I'd always planned to make them deserty anyway and then snap a picture with the Pyramids in the background. It felt bit plain though so I sat down and painted a squad of infantry as well, and they really pulled the whole thing together. Also I'm really satisfied with them and I'm definitely going to paint the rest in the near future. Then it's only the last two Cheetah's and my small army is done! This is the cool thing about LPL; it makes you finish all that old stuff you have lying around.

Anyway, I went up against Bugsda, one of the true LPL heavyweights, and his "Prof Witchheimer up the Jungle". Although there were several positive comments aimed at my mechs (like Plynke's "this is the first time for me where a Bugsda entry isn't the automatic winner." which I thought was pretty funny) it was soon clear that I was going to loose. Bugsda's entry is very well painted and more importantly he stuck to the theme so I'm just glad I managed to put up a decent fight. In the end the votes were 161 vs 101.

Some other great entries this round:

Lion Hunt - Frank's best entry so far I think. Just look at those lions! Probably my favourite entry this round.
The Dawn of Man - Who can resist a 2001 reference? Not me.
Meat's back on the menu - This entry was well painted but for me it was the composition that did it. It's very simple with only a white background, but I can definitely see the natives sneaking up on the intrepid explorers. Hehe!
District 9 - Well, it seems like Pil had the same idea as me, although he converted his own 28mm prawns instead. Unfortunately the picture obscures the minis quite a bit, but for me it works anyway thanks to the concept. And the mech is awesome!

For round 6 I've finally painted some opponents for my Earth Sectorial Army; a squad Mars rebels, aka Reds, with some walker support. I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out but I don't think they "pop" in the same way my EarthSec soldiers does. Oh well, we'll see how it turns out. See my entry and all the other great stuff over at the Lead Adventure Forum. And don't forget to vote!

Switching size...

2011-04-14T19:50:00.000+02:00

Never mind what's going on in the background...

Among all the 15mm stuff on my workspace some 28mm stuff has started to appear. Namely my Yu Jing minis! The other day I started putting together the ones I was most keen on painting and it was a pinning and greenstuffing extravaganza! Now, don't get me wrong, the Infinity miniatures are the best I've ever seen, bar none. Incredibly beautiful sculpts that rarely even need cleaning; the very miniscule mould lines are either in a flat area where you easily can file it away or run in a way that renders them invisible. Really amazing quality all around!

However, there are a lot of small parts; stuff like antennas, sensor booms, fins (yes, fins!), arms, swords and of course rifles that need assembling. Everything fits together perfectly, but to make a nice secure bond I've decided to pin almost everything and then use greenstuff where it connects to hide any gap that might still be there. So it's a bit time consuming but the end result is well worth it.

So far they're only basecoated black, but hopefully I'll be able to start actual painting even though the LPL is still going on (currently painting for round 6!). I'm thinking of a dark bluish-grey and off-white colour scheme for the hard armour pieces and then a kind of olive drabb for fatigues on the Zhanshis and the Tiger Soldiers. Hopefully this will give a hi-tech yet militaristic feel. We'll see...

Oh, and again, any advice on wheather to assemble the minis fully or leave some of the arms off to make sure I can reach everywhere? Currently I'm thinking of leaving them off and painting to a medium level, then glue them on and finish the highlighting.

And of course, the bases are just temporary. I'm getting urban ones from Antenocitis Workshop.

Shooting Space

2011-04-13T00:58:00.001+02:00

Just took a couple of test snaps of part of my UNSC fleet against a more cinematic background to see what it would look like (just for fun... you know, no special reason) and it is indeed rather tricky to photograph spaceship models well. I think the above shot is decent (considering what I have to work with), but it could be a lot better.

Bringing these models out reminded me of how much I like the Full Thrust range. I really should order some more UNSC stuff and some civilian ships when the store is back up.

That's all. Just wanted to share a space picture with you guys. :)