Empire Wizard in Green

Posted by Ranillon on 30. July 2009 20:31

Here is a quick and small down payment of our new policy to cover more Games Workshop games besides 40K.

This is an Warhammer Empire wizard I painted up a while ago.  I painted it for another game, in fact, which is why the base isn't flocked.  I really like the paint scheme; the gold and green go together well.

Tales from Origins -- The Rogue Trader Tournament, Part One

Posted by Ranillon on 28. July 2009 22:59

Origins lasts four days, but Sunday tends to be short and there is only at best time to run something quick.  As a consequence Saturday was the climax of our games – and fittingly enough it was a Rogue Trader Tournament.

The day started early (too much so for my usual tastes, but then again I wanted everything to go right).  It had to as we needed to put out terrain (it would have been too dangerous to leave the terrain out all night – it might not have been there in the morning), setup our table, organize all the paperwork, and so forth.  Fortunately, while I hadn’t run a tournament before I had certainly played in a lot, including GW Grand Tournaments.  As a result I made sure to make out copies of everything we would need, even special forms to help us keep track of points and determine the winner.  I even made sure to produce three separate, color-coded sheets for everyone to fill out with game results and sportsmanship scores.

Registration started at 9am and went to 10am.  The one fear I had in the run up to Origins was whether or not we would get enough people.  We had done everything we could think of to advertise, but this was our first year and thus we had no good (or even bad for that matter) reputation to attract potential players.  Add in the cost and the economy and I had visions of one or two participants showing up.  Fortunately, we ended up with sixteen.  It wasn’t as much as we could have gotten, but it was still more than enough to have a good tournament.

Things started more or less on time with everyone getting a random opponent to start off.  From there everyone would be partnered up with their next nearest competitor in terms of battle points.  I didn’t bother with using a tournament program given the relatively small amount of players (when we have the 100 man tournament within a few years then it’ll be necessary).  It wasn’t as hard as you might think as not everyone gets their results in at the same time and we made sure to provide enough time between games to account for possible hold ups.

A funny thing about running a tournament is that it doesn’t give you any gaming stories to tell after the fact.  No harrowing story about how I needed to roll three-sixes and no “I coulda been a contender” tales of woe about how I would have won “if only…”  Instead, as a tournament organizer you spend your time answering questions, making rulings, filling out forms, keeping an eye on things, and generally making sure everything goes somewhat according to plan.  I am pleased to say that we didn’t get any trouble makers – even when losing people kept their cool.  More than that it sure looked like everyone was having more or less a good time.  At least, that’s what you assume when you hear a lot of whoops and laughs.

One other thing you quickly learn about tournaments is that they are hard on the feet.  By the end of the day I was practically needing crutches.  What stinks is that was with inserts in the shoes.  I got to find a better solution for next year.

Anyway, the three games all went well without any significant problems save that we needed to alter a scenario rule that didn’t work as well as I had hoped (lesson:  You can’t over plan or overwork when it comes to tournament preparation).  It took me only fifteen minutes to figure out the winners, but we delayed the award ceremony until everyone got back (and, gratifyingly, every player was there).  Good thing too as I think at least a few were surprised by their wins.  A lot of congratulations and thank-yous came next with nary a complaint in sight.  The only downside to tournament being over is that then you have to clean everything up!

More to come...

Bastion Sprues

Posted by Ranillon on 25. July 2009 21:54

Although the model has been out for a while it occurred to me that most people may have not yet seen the sprues it contains.  So, here are pictures of the set's contents.

I haven't put it together as I am still debating exactly what to build.  The set's modular design makes for a lot of possibilities.

Tales from Origins -- Apocalypse Then

Posted by gbprime on 23. July 2009 16:15

Ranillon has already covered the flow of the game itself.  He mentioned having help from a teammate that flank marched into the enemy's rear?  Those were my marines, and this is my take on the battle.

FLANK MARCH

On setup, I found our force setting up opposite a player who brought a MASSIVE imperial guard tank company, complete with superheavy tanks and backed up by a Reaver titan and a Warhound titan.  While my own Reaver Titan set up on our side with space marine scouts as screening troops in cover around it's ankles, my space marine battle company was able to come in en masse over consecutive turns behind the imperial guard player, thanks to a distinct lack of jamming or chaos covens in his area.

I had intended to shoot up his transports and then assault the troops inside, so my marine company would have an assault to hide in during the IG player's next shooting phase.  But I discovered to my horror that the 16 or so Chimera transports he had brought were in fact EMPTY.  It seems he only had so much room in his car, so he'd left all the actual infantry at home!  While this seems a very odd thing to do for an unlimited-points game, it quite nicely left my space marines stranded behind a sea of battlecannons, and only his desire to shoot my tanks first saved my marines' ability to fight.  Krak grenades, melta bombs, and the odd powerfist or meltagun did most of the work.

HOT REAVER-ON-REAVER ACTION

Let's face it... no matter how you arm these monsters, a reaver titan is pretty much capable of savaging another reaver titan unassisted in 2 turns.  With the sort of help you find in an apocalypse game, even a Reaver titan stands up to only one turn of firing.

My Reaver went first, assisted by a squadron of my predator tanks who downed a few void shields.  An apocalypse barrage launcher stripped the remaining shields from my opponent, and I savaged him down to 2 structure points and a lot of engine hits with a Turbolaser and a stratch built Volcano Cannon.  Sadly, I inflicted no weapon hits and no "cannot fire next turn" hits, which I was counting on to slow his counterattack.

The IG player's reaver went next, preceded by a tremendous amount of battlecannon and lascannon shots from an approaching company of Leman Russ tanks.  They stripped my shields, and while his vulcan megabolter could not harm me, his plasma cannon inflicted some engine hits while his single shot Vortex Missile ripped through my titan like a hot knife.  His Warhound titan joined in and finished me off with a Turbolaser shot.

STERNGUARDS FOR THE KILL

I had two squads of sternguard veterans in the IG player's backfield at this point.  In an unlimited-points scenario such as this, both 10 man squads were fully equipped with Combi-meltas, and each squad had a librarian attached to them.  The librarian's job was to give the veterans a 5+ save and, more importantly, teleport them around at 24" per turn.  Though an enemy psychic hood was limiting the effectiveness of this tactic, one sternguard squad managed to teleport in behind the enemy reaver titan and unload with it's remaining 7 melta shots.  The damaged Reaver titan went down quite easily to this tactic, freeing my surviving predators and razorbacks to unload on other things.

80 PERCENT CASUALTIES FOR THE WIN

Doesn't seem like much of a win, but I did sweep the IG player off the board (Minus his superheavies, which Ranillon was dancing with) and claimed an objective marker or two in the process.  Oddly, about 1/3 of my marine casualties came not from incoming fire but rather from exploding tanks.  With so many krak, meltabomb, and powerfist hits each turn against densely packed IG tanks, I was losing marines at a steady rate to 6's on armor penetrations when they killed a tank.  One unit of assault marines in particular was reduced to a single model without ever being fired upon, due to 5 successful assaults with melta bombs.

LESSONS LEARNED

1 - For their points and/or cost in Assets, Orbital Bombardments are useless against tanks.  Even strength 10 ones.  Quite often, you'll just inconvenience a tank or two.  If you get them free as part of a formation or as an ability from your army codex, fine.  But don't waste an asset on them, and don't aim at tanks.

2 - Teleporting Sternguard Squads with combi meltas.  A squad is pretty much guaranteed to kill a superheavy target and then rough up any infantry they see on the way to an objective marker.  Even after they're out of combi weapon shots, they still have krak grenades at no extra cost!  If you're not limited by points and you have an asset that allows all your units to be scoring units, then there is no reason not to overload on these as much as you can.  Mine are represented by Deathwatch marines, since there are no current rules for Deathwatch.

3 - A Titan, any Titan, must endeavor to engage the enemy line from OVER 60" away, and use it's 96" or 120" range guns.  If it cannot do this for any reason (physical limit of table size), it will attract fire and die on turn 2.

4 - Psychic Hoods are normally wonderful for cutting down on the dirty psy stuff the enemy is pulling on you.  But a Psychic Hood has a limited range, and in Apocalypse it is easy for an enemy psyker to be out of range.  A DARK ANGELS Psychic Hood, on the other hand, HAS NO MAXIMUM RANGE.  One Dark Angel librarian with a psy hood can interfere with each and every enemy psyker in an Apoc game, no matter where he stands or how large the board.

Tales from Origins -- 40K Space Hulk

Posted by Ranillon on 22. July 2009 23:13

The first day of Origins was 40K Space Hulk, two introductory Warhammer 40K games for as many as six players.  From the very start I imagined it being a 3-D environment just like the models themselves.  I also decided to make it the players against the game masters rather than one group playing marines and the other Tyranids.  I thought this approach would allow greater control over the player experience, important since some of the players would be complete novices.

Building a Space Hulk

Originally my idea was to build a number of square sections with terrain built up on them.  Each would be designed to fit only with certain other sections in a certain way.  This had the advantage of allowing me to contruct large and complicated models with an overall impressive effect.  However, it also came with three major disadvantages -- one, it would be hard to move around; two, it would always be the same layout for every game, and; three, not only would it take more time and effort to construct, but it was all-or-nothing -- every part had to be finished or the whole thing wouldn't be useable!  Considering that I wasn't sure how long it would take I feared I wouldn't be ready in time.

Therefore, I made the choice to instead make the 'hulk' modular, with rooms and corridors seperate.  This allows the hulk to be arranged in different ways and to switch out components.  I could also build up to a minimum amount of pieces needed to play the game without being stuck having to get every last thing done.  I could always add more if I had the time.  The question now was how to create the thing.

In the end I used the gothic building sets from Pegasus Hobbies for the walls of the Hulk's chambers.  The box sets allow you to put together the walls however you like, a heck of a time saver for what I had to do.  I eventually constructed seven different rooms:  Two expanded hallways, an Imperial Shrine, a Chaos Shrine, a control center, a storage room, and a ship cannon room.  To connect all of these I cut up a bunch of long hallway sections.

In the end I had enough time to "finish" everything, but not to finish with the level of detail I had hoped for -- man, but it takes a lot of effort!  But, ultimately that's okay.  The Space Hulk still turned out well and I can always go back to do more work on the project for next year.

Playing the Game

I designed the rules to allow for a lot of fighting with the terminators facing being overrun if they weren't careful.  When a terminator squad enters a room it automatically faces a group of bugs while otherwise there is a 1-in-3 chance Tyranids would show up anyway.  Since I had the models I made it so that you could face not just genestealers, but gaunts and Tyranid warriors as well.  This allowed for a lot of variation and the feeling among the players that bad news was literally behind every corner.

The first game had a full house and everything went well.  The players tended to roll up a lot random encounters.  It wasn't unusual for squads to face down wave after wave of bugs.  That made for a tense game -- can he make that armor save?  Can he kill the last two genestealers?  Will any of his dead terminators return?  A player's entire game could rest on a single throw of the dice.  It all made for a great game -- you know things are going well when people are cheering during play.

The second game was almost as good, but in retrospect suffered because it had two less players.  That meant fewer encounters, all the more so as in this case there weren't as many random encounters.  As a result at times the scenario didn't quite reach the necessary "critical mass" to make for a properly exciting game.  Everyone clearly still had a good time, but I realized that for next year I have to make sure that there is always a regular supply of Tyranids rushing in.

All-in-all 40K Space Hulk worked out rather well, I think.  The players and game masters all had a great time.  It also taught me a lot of things that will mean tighter rules and more challenges for Origins 2010.  We should even be able to offer the game the whole convention, not just on Thursday.  So, if you want to play you'll just need to grab some of your friends and come on down.  Just make sure to bring extra ammo for your storm bolter!