A lot happens in 2 months

Good tidings my dear wargaming friends!  I hope things are going well for you all and many greetings to you and yours.  It's been a couple of months since the last update and it's been a busy time not only for myself but a lot of my friends, co-workers, and family.  Work has been killer so obviously the answer has been to turn to pursuits of relaxation and hobbying, and what a time it has been!  Hopefully it's not been as crazy for you all as it has me, but in case it has make sure to grab your favorite drink and take a few moments to relax as we dive into a shared hobby together (it might get long up in here).

So like the post suggests a lot happens in a couple of months.  For me there's been a lot of things going on in my own life that makes you appreciate the times you can snag to enjoy hobby time.  The career has been progressing in a great ball of crazy fire and times have been rough.  So what does that mean for the hobby you ask?  Well I've been putting in a lot of work on painting up models!  That's right I've been actually engaging in that oft-forgotten aspect to our hobby, at least I feel like it's the most neglected part.  It's like the icing on the cake in a lot of ways, it's not necessary for the cake to be functional but it's the difference in being great.  I felt particularly motivated to start painting at some point where a mix of staring at the horde of primed plastic/metal/resin, longing for color and creativity, and the desire to paint as part of my Blood Bowl league came together and caused me to just...start.

That's the hurdle isn't it?  Starting the process.  It's awkward at first when you've not painted for a long time but soon the fine motor skills get back to their old spot and you can even start to improve in some ways.  So I decided that I am going to try.  I won't promise to make myself do something everyday, because that's not reasonable or feasible in my mid-30s.  No, all I can say is that I will continue to make an effort to try and paint more.  I want to paint more.  I want to show up to events with painted models (because we all know that they roll better when painted amirite 😉) and not continue this cycle of buying more models without painting some first!

So now every couple of months I'll come back and let you know how this promise is going.  With that in mind I want to share with you my progress:

Blood Bowl Orcs

Blood Bowl Nurgle

Blood Bowl Humans

Necromunda Orlock Gang

Current WIP: Blood Bowl Dwarves

As you can see there is a common theme and since I've been playing Blood Bowl like a lot, it only seems appropriate to keep the pain train coming.  In total that makes 61 models I've painted in two months!  That's about a model a day, which is pretty good in my books because it was originally 0 models a day...or a month...or two months...it's been awhile.

It's a pretty solid routine to get some painting done when I get home from work and it's been lending to progress overall.  One thing I've had to learn is to let go of some high standards I have in my mind and just paint to the best I can right now.  So far I think the results have been working out and I've been able to try out a couple things, especially weathering on a couple of the Necromunda pieces/bases.  I also have been looking for opportunities to just try new things out, and I feel that Blood Bowl has some good models to be experimental with.

So while I am working on the Dwarves I am of course looking ahead for the future and I think no greater motivation can exist than attending a con.  Specifically:

Except totally not 2018

Yes sir/ma'am it is the NoVA Open.  I went last year with my brother and some friends and I had fun...buuuuuuuuut I didn't sign up for anything so really I went to watch people play games and let's be real with each other: it's not as fun no matter how hard you try.  A good break from your own game sure. Maybe to watch a friend, sure.  To watch games without really playing any yourself?

So this year it's going to be different!  I've signed up for events (yeah!), and I've got my schedule (aww yeah!), but now...now I have projects (oh).  See a lot of these events want your models painted and so now I have several goals in mind.  So to run down my list of events and accompanying model count (estimated):

• Zone Mortalis (Warhammer 30k): A One Thousand point list of Thousand Sons (heh).  
• 32 models
• Aristeia!
• 4 models
• Infinity After Dark: So it's a DnD style Infinity event where I am not sure what the model count will look like.  So I will just paint up my Yu-Jing and hope for the best.
• About 12 models?
• Blood Bowl: I haven't decided my team yet but it's an all day tournament.  I am probably going with Dwarves, but if I had access to Dark Elves I might swing that way.
• 18 models (including tokens)
• Guild Ball Regional Cup: A Guild Ball tournament you say?! WELL I NEVER.
• 0 models (I already painted my Morticians)
•  Godtear: Steamforge's new game but I don't need the buy any models or do anything other than show up.
• 0 models

So overall I'm looking at about 66 models which as I have shown myself that I can get it done in about 2 months.  So once I start the paint train I do believe I can get it done before the deadline in late August.  That and I have some plans for airbrushing the Thousand Sons and maybe the Yu-Jing that will help speed the process up.  For Thousand Sons I plan on using the method outlined by Epic Duck Studios (link right here) because not only is it reasonably quick but also I reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaally like that color scheme.  For the Yu-Jing I am looking at sticking with my usual palette of cool colors as I am used to those and would like the models to look semi-decent. I've got some friends, a couple of which are fellow bloggers, WaaarghPug and The Ordinary Wargamer, who are also going so it's going be a solid weekend I am sure.

I have another event I am going to try and get models painted up for and that's a local Steamroller in June and I've recently acquired some Crucible Guard!  With some trading done with WaaarghPug I have acquired a new project to get into and hopefully if I time things right I can assemble and get these buggers painted before June...before I paint everything else for NoVA...hoo boy.

Well that about sums up my current project completions as well as my future paintings.  I will be sure to take plenty of pictures so that with my next update I will have pretty models (and hopefully better skills too).  I hope you all are doing well and wish you best of luck in your own hobbying.  Until then, happy gaming!

Memorial Day Weekend Batreps - part 2

Good tidings fellow wargamers and welcome to part 2 of the Memorial Day batreps!  I hope you all have been doing well and your hobby experiences have been solid and fruitful!  We’re continuing from our previous post and moving forward with the other 2 reports.  Just as before we’re looking at a table-top game and a board game as we ended up getting in 2 more games before Wells had to leave.  For this, we are going to look at our game with Guild Ball and we tried out Aristeia for the first time as well.  Let’s hop right on in!

Starting with Guild Ball, Wells wanted to try something a little different.  Typically he has been playing with his Fisherman’s Guild but having little success, which he and I have talked about the possibility that there might be a dissonance between his playstyle and the Fish’s.  This time he brought down his S2 Hunter’s Guild group while I decided to also experiment with a different guild and went with a blend of models from the Brewer’s Guild.  I’ve had the guild for a while now but this would be the first time I’ve played them so suffice to say I had a limited idea of what I was doing.  

Here are our lineups:

Hunters

• ·         Theron
• ·         Fahad
• ·         Egret
• ·         Zarola
• ·         Hearne
• ·         Jaecar

Brewers

• ·         Esters
• ·         Quaff
• ·         Pint Pot
• ·         Spigot (V)
• ·         Stave
• ·         Stoker

Wells won the roll off and was the receiving team, I chose to have Spigot go for the kick and off we started!  First turn had some action going on in the form of trading ranged attacks.  Wells had Theron and Egret pop off a couple of shots including a Flurry from Egret, tossing 2 DMG and Poison all over, while I had Esters subsequently clear off the conditions with her Heroic Play and tossing out some Blasted Earth AoE’s.  Little did I know until turn 3ish that most of the Hunters ignore rough terrain anyways so all it was effective for was the 2 DMG.  Pint Pot and Spigot went up the right side with Stave and Stoke going to the left.  Stave’s primary role this game was tossing out the Lob Barrel to hopefully get enemies into better charging positions.  Wells had an early charge with Zarola and Fahad, as he tossed Midnight Offering on Fahad who then charged Spigot for free totaling a nice 16” move this turn, ouch!

Next turn I had Spigot, Pint Pot, Quaff, and Esters buff each other up and took out Fahad for an over-committed series of actions, while Wells had Egret continue her trend of tossing out Flurry to my grouped up brawlers.  Esters managed to toss out a Fire Blast, catching a few of the Hunters on fire, which I then attempted to move them into better positioning with Stave’s Explosive Brew (i.e. Lob Barrel with the heroic play for 2 DMG), but failing to move the people I needed.  I wanted to try and get Stoker into the fight and take advantage of his Burning Passion character trait, but I had Zarola and Hearne as potential charge targets.  Wells had Zarola pick up the ball earlier and so I wanted to get the ball from her but without 2” reach and her Unpredictable Movement I settled on charging into Hearne as a Human Ball of Fire.  All this effort and I barely touched Hearne, so it was a moot effort on my part. 

So next turn I won the initiative and I had Stave go first so that I could Lob Barrel right in the middle of the Hunter pack, with the hopes of knocking Zarola down to scatter the ball.  A successful barrel later and Zarola lost grip of the ball, which I subsequently picked up and through a series of maneuvers I was able to give the ball to Spigot.  Wells attempted to slow down Spigot by hitting him with a Snare condition via Jaecar’s pit trap, but with him having the ball and Ester singing a sweet song of “hurry your ass up Speed” I had a solid 10” Jog, with a healthy 8” kick.  Combined together and I had that goal threat easily and ended up scoring a goal! Ayyyyyyyy!  In this turn, Wells managed to knock out Quaff and in a revenge for scoring the goal Spigot went down as well, with the score now 5 to 3. 

Not to be outdone by the Hunters, I ended up taking out Theron and Egret in the following turn with a combination of Pint Pot’s “drunken 6-pack gone anger” and Stave knocking people down left and right.  Only needing 1 hit to knock someone down is pretty strong if you ask me, especially when you need that extra -1 to their DEF.  Before his fall though Wells had Theron toss up a forest behind my lines, which he subsequently activated Hearne and through Zarola’s Midnight Offering he grabbed the ball from the return kick, teleported into a forest, and then moved within Tap-In range of the goal post for a goal to be made for the Hunter! Goooooooaaaaaaaaal!  Now the score was a close 9 to 7 favoring the Brewers, but I didn’t have many players at decent health and so it was looking rather precarious for me.  I had the return kick favor my left side as I planned on bringing Spigot into the side the next turn.

The best way I could describe the last 2 turns was good-natured frustration at Wells blocking all of my plans.  Theron countered Spigot by moving into the forest and Pinned him, preventing him from being able to pick up the ball.  Stoker was too far out to go snag the ball and run it to the goal in the same turn, so he just held on and ran as close as possible.  Stave was busy fighting Fahad but was able to get a Lob Barrel off pushing Egret closer to Pint Pot and Esters, who was working on getting in better position for a hearty scrap.  Wells tried to get some damage out and knockout potential players but the dice were not with him this time around and so nothing lasting happened.  On the last turn I won initiative, a critical moment in my opinion, and I activated Esters who sang her song of “Oi let’s hit them hard lads Strength” song, and loaded with Influence she went to both knocked down Egret and Jaecar.  With a wicked gleam in her eye, she flat out stomped on Egret and then walked over to Jaecar and slapped him out of the field, scoring me the last 4 points I needed and closing the game out 13 to 7.  Victory to the Brewers!

So I originally thought of Aristeia as a small skirmish style wargame but in truth, it’s probably best described as a tactical board game.  Regardless we decided to give this game a try since neither of us had played before and it promised to be relatively quick.  The game came with a “Learn to Play” booklet and a Rules Reference (i.e. the full rule description) and after reading through briefly we went with the guided tour of the first turn.  Normally I would have scoffed at such things being a veteran gamer, “foolish game!  I do not need your guidance, I am a Gaming King!”  However, given the format and layout of these rules, it seemed prudent at best to go ahead and just do the tutorial first turn.  In truth, I don’t think I can really give a play by play of this game per se so let me just give a batrep from the stance of “hey this is how this game rolls, here’s an example of how that worked.”

So the premise of the game is that in the Infinity universe there is this “sport” called Aristeia where these combatants compete and fight in an arena, where the fear of permanent death/injury is not there due to the wonders of medical technology.  The goal is that these combatants fight each other to control changing points in the arena, dominating each zone to score points over 5 rounds.  First to 8 points wins, failing that whoever is in the lead at the end of 5 rounds wins, and should there be a tie then whoever killed the most wins.  Combatants are never permanently removed from the game, instead of coming back to the arena the next round but with fewer action points than usual and they can arrive in any of the 6 areas on the board except for the current scoring zone.  The game uses a series of colored dice and specific icons to determine the results of whatever action you’re trying to do.  Sort of like FFG’s Star Wars game system, except it’s all d6 format.  Once you get the hang of the symbols and flow of the game it’s not a hard game to get into, but the tutorial round definitely helps.

So pre-game you not only select your team of 4 combatants but you then build a tactics deck out of the generic cards first and then adding 2 of 4 cards that belong to your specific combatants.  The tactics deck is used to add certain effects in the game such as extra dice before an attack or gain some kind of bonus/effect, and each card will state when it can be used.   After deployment, you determine the initiative order of how you will activate your characters, with each character having an initiative stat to determine who goes first.  In case of a tie the Underdog, Aristeia’s way of breaking ties it seems, gets to choose who goes first.  When Maximus and 8-Ball went at the same time, both of them having an Initiative stat of 4 meant that whoever has Underdog gets to decide who went first.  There’s a bit of pre-planning here but also you can get the drop on someone if your person is faster than the other team’s personnel.  When you activate you get 5 actions points, which seems the standard but maybe, later on, there might be someone with less/more, which you use to do all of the various actions.  However, if you’re knocked out then you start off with a -2 AP token, so when Gata came back on the field after getting shot at by Major Lunah (Haqqislam sniper extraordinaire) she came back with only 3 points.  When you move you get a pool of movement points that you can spend throughout the action, so you can move > attack > whatever > move again as long as you have points left.  While everyone seemed to get the same number of action points, not everyone got the same number of movement points.  For example, Maximus on Wells’ team had only 3 movement points per use of the Move action, whereas Gata on my team had a solid 5 every time she moved.

There are 2 types of actions: face to face and standard.  Face to face (F2F) is a term used similarly in Infinity, both players roll their respective dice pool and apply the results together.  Often this means negating hits with blocks, as unmitigated hits result in equal amounts of damage and should damage reach your health stat you’re off the board.  Most attacks are F2F rolls, so your player can take damage in return if their dice results are unlucky.  For example, when Wells had Pavarti try to gun down Wild Bill, I ended up dealing 6 damage to her 1 damage to him which resulted in Pavarti being removed from the field.  Standard rolls only require a single hit to go off.  There’s a concept in this game called ‘Switches’ which are like triggered effects from when you roll dice.  Essentially you use certain icon combinations (which cannot be used for other results) to trigger an effect, whatever it may be, and during F2F roll both players can activate their respective switches.  Switches are not once-per-action exclusive and you can activate multiple switches if you have enough icons.  For example, when 8-Ball attacked Maximus I ended up using 2 of my switches to displace (read: move 1 hex) not only Maximus but 8-Ball as well for better positioning.   Taking an opponent out of the match doesn’t grant you any victory points but it gives you a “frag” token which is used to help break ties at the end game, and you can draw a card from your tactics deck.  Holding an objective zone gives you points depending on the scenario rules, so in the introduction scenario you gained the most points for completely dominating the zone, some if you had more people than the other player, and the least for an equal number of combatants.

The game ended up being called a draw due to some player error in the die being used and an agreement of a draw, but I can tell you this game is pretty quick once you start getting the hang of things.  The flow of the game is aggressive and fast as you don’t have many turns to fulfill the objective but also the zone changing all the time made it fluid and adaptable.  I would keep a couple people near the middle as I had to anticipate where the zone would go, but at the same time play to get to the zone in that turn.  Major Lunah on Wells’ team was nasty to combat as she had the range and damage to take out people easily.  Her big counter was Gata, who while she had no attacks herself was fast enough and had a Line of Sight debuff to put on her, but I couldn’t get to her until the last round due to being taken out all the time.  Initiative order mattered as Wells had Pavarti’s activation go last, which could have countered the debuff (she’s like a medic-robot yo) but alas Lunah had to go first and fumble around into the zone.  Wild Bill was taken out the turn before so I had him go last to try and snipe Pavarti off of the zone which would have ended in a point draw, but I would have had more frag tokens and thus take the game.  Meanwhile most of the 5 rounds Maximus and 8-Ball fumbled around in the middle wrestling until the last round where Maximus tried to stop Miyamoto from being a samurai death-dealer and 8-Ball moved up to try and displace people off of the last scoring zone.  It was a bloody, fast, and fun game and I’m looking forward to getting more players for the roster in the future!

So that settles it for this weekend of gaming!  All of them were great games and I really encourage you all to consider not only the wargames but the board games as well.  The Guild Ball match went a lot better for Wells than historically with his Fish, so I think he’ll be using the Hunters more often here on out.  Aristeia was a lot of fun and though the rulebook had some translation issues imo it was overall an easy game to pick up once you got the rules down and it did deliver on a quick experience.  I think our game took…45-60 minutes after the tutorial round?  Right now there are 12 potential players for the game, 8 from the core and 4 from the latest expansion, so I think from a roster perspective there will be options.  If you're feeling competitive I believe I saw on their main site (right here) that they're doing some tournaments somewhere?  You'll have to look into that yourself if you're interested.    I still wouldn’t think of it as a wargame but a really good tactical board game with a low enough price-point to where it should be worthy of consideration.  I think I saw a copy going for like 45 bucks on Google somewhere, so it's not too bad if you ask me. 

Anyways I hope you all have been enjoying the posts and I hope that you have been doing well with your hobbying, however, and whatever it may be!  Tune in next time for whatever may come this way, whether it’s a batrep, a paint job, or something else!  Until then happy gaming folks!

A Time for Batreps Part 2

All righty folks and welcome back to another post by yours truly, I certainly hope your day is going well and you are enjoying yourselves.  We’re following up on last batrep post with another one, except this time we are going to try and cover 3 games all in this post!  Truthfully it’s because I sort of…maybe…didn’t take as many pictures as I had before?  Woops.  Anyways here we go with the next game we played, Guild Ball!  Sadly I took fewer pictures as we played, a bad habit of mine, and so the picture quantity and content is limited.  My apologies.

So starting the game off Wells wanted to try a different guild this time around and settled on the Mortician’s Guild versus me playing as the Alchemists.  Our rosters were:

1.       Obulus

2.       Dirge

3.       Cosset

4.       Ghast

5.       Mist

6.       Silence

1.       Smoke

2.       Flask

3.       Katalyst1

4.       Compound

5.       Vitriol

6.       Calculus

I felt bad for Wells because my friend here plays 40k a lot, but doesn’t get much exposure to other games and so I could tell he was having a hard time.  Throw on top of that a new team, especially one as nuanced as the Mortician’s, and it was just hard for the guy.  I can’t say for certain if he felt this way but the way he was playing suggested that he initially went defensive because he wasn’t sure of what his team could do.  Also, the terrain was randomly generated (by tossing the 2D terrain like pancakes from like a foot away lol) and so it was hard for him to maneuver around without taking penalties.  I’d say about mid-game the gears were turning again for Wells mechanically (also he had an overnight break to read about his team) and he started to work on making plays but at this point, it was too late.  The Alchemists had strong board control, kept slowly ticking away at his health with condition damage, and the scoring potential was too strong.

Right at the start of turn 2-3

In the end, the game was 13 to 3, with the Alchemists scoring 2 goals and 3 KO’s (one was the mascot).  Smoke is a fun captain I have to say with her Cloud Jumper ability and AoE manipulation.  Wells and I talked about the game afterward and his early game hesitancy really hurt his chances in the later phases.  The lack of team knowledge definitely hurt him as well and coming from a Fisherman’s coach straight into Mortician’s with no pre-knowledge was not going to be easy.  We also talked a bit about how some of his player use was sub-optimal and if he decided to try Mortician’s again what he could have done differently, for example, he rarely used Ghast except to shuffle around the board a bit when his playbook is pretty solid for damage and some board control.  I think next time I’ll see either the Fish back on the field or perhaps this new Falconer’s minor guild that might be interesting to Wells (dude loves birds).

Vitriol on the right went and scored while the middle was jammed up

Our next game was Infinity and I’m not going to lie I was really excited about this game.  I’ve been feeling the Infinity itch lately with some of the new models being published (the new JSA force is so goooood) and so Wells agreed to try it out.  We had a beginner style game at GenCon last year and he enjoyed it and so we decided to do “intermediate rules.”  This was like a style that had more than the basics but wasn’t full blown Infinity either, for example TO camouflage was the -6 to hit a penalty but didn’t have the marker/deployment shenanigans.  Our lists were 300 points and made up of the models from Operation Icestorm and Beyond OIS.  Wells went with PanO and I went with Nomads.  We settled on the scenario Supremacy from the core rulebook and because we were using starter box models/lists we decided everyone would be a “specialist troop” but in a generalized sense so they didn’t get any special abilities apart from if they were an actual specialist.  Also, we didn’t play with Command Tokens because we’re still acclimating to this game.

Not Infinity, but Smoke on the top left scored the last goal of the game

So I won the initial roll and chose deployment zones and order and let me tell you this was my crucial mistake.  I chose a bad zone and I paid for it dearly.  This game was in Wells’ hands from the beginning and it was like shooting fish in a barrel for him.  My active turn 1 had my Spekter, Intruder, and my Kriza Borac all go unconscious because of his sniper Nisse.  Oh man, this was going to be rough.  Then my Reverend Healer acted as if she was a bad anime trope as an MMO healer and ended up killing off the Kriza with a natural 20 on her Doctor roll.  At this point, I lost a significant chunk of my firepower and it just went downhill from there.  My Mobile Brigada Lt. was able to move up along a building edge and take out the Nisse before being able to move in and secure a computer for 1 point.  On Wells’ active turn it was just a slaughterfest.  He jumped his Akhali out of LoS from anyone, moved him up, and took computers for his ever-increasing score.  He moved his Father-Knight up from out of cover and was able to take out my Lt. and hold the zone.  Turn 2 and 3 there wasn’t a whole lot of interesting action, as Wells bagged the game early on with his sniper.  So the score ended up being 9 to 1 with PanO walking away from this fight with barely a scratch.  Rough game but it taught me many lessons about Infinity in general and it’s still a game I very much enjoy, even when I am dying by the droves.

Do you see the Spekter and Intruder down for the count?  The peeking Kriza in the bottom left was down too!

Our final game of his trip was a match of Dark Age and we played a 1000 point match where I made a couple lists I had been using (not that they are super-efficient or anything since I’m still newish to the game also) and we played Kukulkani versus Horde Skaard, Wells and myself respectively.  The scenario was Ancient and Bloody Wasteland where the goal was to kill each other dead.  You gained a VP per 100 points (rounded up by to the nearest 50) killed off and whatever Secondary Objective VPs gained.  Think Secondary Objectives like the Tactical Objectives from 40k, randomly drawn objectives but with the caveat that you can tailor the deck (as long as you have at least 16 cards) with whichever cards you think you can get that game.

I’d like to spend a lot of time on this game as Dark Age is a pretty solid game overall.  I only took one picture however and Wells having only played 2 games before was not prepared with knowledge to know how to best use his guys.  As a result it was a pretty harsh game for him as he struggled with a lot of the nuanced rules that K3 have and as much as I tried to help remember which rules he had, there was only so much that could be done.  The other part was not knowing how to use the models to the best of their abilities.  I give Wells credit it though he started to piece some things together pretty quickly and started using squad-links and combos here and there.  The nature of Dark Age is that it’s a brutal game and by the time the gears were turning, the sand was stained deeply with Kukulkani blood and littered with crystal skulls.  The game ended with a big advantage to the Skaard with a total of 13 to 3 VPs.  The Warhead gave a lot of damage out that, at times, was absolutely terrifying.  When down to only 1 hp that lummox hits with a PW of 14, and if you happen to be prone that’s x2!  For those unfamiliar with Dark Age mechanics when you hit someone they then make an armor check where you take your armor value and subtract the attack’s PW.  In a game where you are rolling low that means even if you had the highest armor value of 20 you’d still only be able to avoid a hit like that on a 6 or lower, and if there’s a damage multiplier then you roll that many dice and need to save on ALL of them to not take a wound.  Oh yeah, he was nasty.

How to ensure that no one else plays with you

So overall despite the beatdown Wells seemed to have enjoyed Dark Age and my impression was that with more games for experience and perhaps a different force then it would have definitely been a different game.  I think the big difference was that K3 is a wonky force in my opinion and the learning curve, while not too steep, does require some practice games in before it starts to click.  There were a lot of little rules here and there that ended up making a big difference and I think once taken into consideration I think our future games will be vastly different. 

Well, that’s it for gaming my fellow wargamers and I hope you enjoyed the batreps despite the lack of pictures and further details.  We pretty much played a game a day and so the details started to get hazy at times and the longer I play the more likely it is I forget to take some snaps.  Anyways I hope you’re enjoying your hobby and time and until next time have a fun game and may your dice be kind!

'TINK TINK TINK' goes the Blacksmith's Forge in Guildball

Hello there wargaming lads and lovelies and welcome to another fun blog-isode of Wargamer Ramblings!  I hope you’re doing well in your hobby time and you are making some good progress.  Now that things are settled and calm here I’ve been making some good work on my forever growing and changing line up of models.  That’s not what we’re talking about today however, nay verily instead let’s follow-up with the next guild in Guild Ball that’s relatively new, and that are the Blacksmiths!  As usually here be the cards.

So like the Farmer’s Guild they are currently available for pre-order in a faction start box made out of the same type of plastic it appears.  You get the 6 models, a goal post, a Blacksmith ball (which looks kind of cool if you ask me), and a forge terrain piece.  Right now it looks like the MSRP is going to be sitting at $50 USD, so you can get a full team for a decent price point.  Whether or not this is how Steamforged is going to progress with all of their future teams/models I’m not sure but it certainly seems to be looking that way.  So far in the roster there are 8 model choices to be had

The current box set line-up

So let’s talk about how the team generally operates, because as I mentioned before it has a couple of elements that make this team stand out amongst the others.  First off you will notice that two model types are missing: the captain and mascot.  Neither are present, but the former will not go missing for long.  What the team has instead are two types of models, Masters and Apprentices.  Second as of now there are no Union models available for the team, so you can only play with a pure guild team (personally I love that as I tend to run pure guild teams when I play).  Back to the model types, the team has to have an even split between the two, so 3 Masters and 3 Apprentices.  Additionally when you choose your team you pick one of the Masters to be your captain.  This model gains +0/+2 Influence and their Legendary Play takes on an additional effect.  Let me go on as to why this is pretty awesome stuff.

The Guild symbol and concept art of Alloy

So in other guilds you have 2 captain models generally right?  So one could argue that because of that your overall team strategy is largely affected by this decision.  Sure you could argue that you can have all kinds of team comps out there but ultimately you still have this binary (for now) decision to make about how the team functions with this captain.  The Blacksmiths currently have a range of 4 Masters, which mean there are 4 different option points for captain.  Your strategy, limited in other ways, are not going to be wholly limited by just 1 or 2 choices, but 4!  Need a captain with some speed boost? We have you covered.  Going for a more defensive, hold the line approach? That’s a potential as well.  A captain that puts all the suckas on fire?! WE GOTCHU FAM!  Essentially it means that when you make a team you have more captain options than the other guilds and that's always a good thing.

The physical embodiment of RPG "hold all my swords"

Which leads me to my next point moving on to the Apprentice models.  Most of the Apprentices have an ability that plays off of their Master being on the team and within a certain distance.  The one exception is Ferrite and Iron, Master and Apprentice respectively, which have the inverse where Ferrite gets a bonus being near Iron.  So this relationship between the models means that you will generally want to select the pairs in order to get the most benefit from them.  Now that’s not to say that you can’t take odd pairings if you wanted to, but you would lose out on some crucial and cool abilities by doing so.  For example if you take Alloy with his Master Hearth, then when you’re in 6” you get a benefit chosen from a list (i.e. 2” melee zone, +1/+0 Kick, or Anatomical Precision).  That seems pretty integral to Alloy as a player, so without Hearth you miss out on some abilities you could use for great benefit.  Overall it seems to get the best out of your Apprentices you need to match them up with their Masters.

Upcoming releases

To be honest I am going to avoid getting into too much detail about the stats and specific characters play with the Blacksmiths because I feel like just the guild itself being the way that it is can be enough to chew on for now.  Yeah there are some pretty good interactions between models, but the guild structure itself is interesting enough for me to talk about now.  Like I said, you have some flexibility in some builds with the Masters but some restricting options with the pressure in taking matching Apprentices.  It’s like Steamforged took the core of the nature of being Blacksmith as their concept for the team: like iron the team is malleable when being forged but rigid in its ending properties. 

So that's it for now, hopefully it has been a good chat with you all.  Until next time folks take care and happy gaming. 

P.S. This article was originally written back in October and reviewed today.  As a result some things have changed with the Guild, though I'm not 100% sure what (I think new players and whatnot), so keep that in mind!  Cheers!

PO-TAY-TOS! Or how the good ol' Farmer's Guild looks on the pitch.

Good day to you my fellow wargamers and welcome to another day in wargaming!  I hope things have been going well for you all.  I know it’s been a bit busy on my end here, I’ve been working on a couple of projects myself which hopefully I can share in the near future with you all.  Enough of that though let’s get in on today's topic: the Farmer’s Guild for Guild Ball!  As with the other guild chats here are the cards you can download if you need to!

“So why talk about the Farmer’s now, they’ve been released for a little bit?  In fact why haven’t you talked about the changes to Season 3 with the other guilds?”  Those are great questions!  Moving on!

A quick description I found from Google

Ah I’m kidding!  To be honest I didn’t have time to go over all the changes, and while I know there have been some significant player changes across the board I just never got to a point where I could read about it all AND put posts up about it.  Now things are different and I’ve been given the suggestion to talk about the new guilds so here we are today!  A little late to the party but whatever, let me give you my impressions!

The Farmer’s Guild is exactly what it sounds like, a group of farmers.  Since they are a newer guild they do not have the range of players that other guilds have.  Whereas the veteran guild have about 12 players, the Farmers have 6.  1 Captain, 1 mascot, and 4 players.  They have access to 2 Union players, Benediction and Grace, so there can be some variety but if you are like me like pure guild lists then well what you see is what you get.  I like to think of this as a personal side guild I might use from time to time for variation’s sake.

"Aye I can play da foosballs yes."

The box set comes the whole team and a goal post, but it’s made of plastic similar to the Kick Off! Box, which for some is great and others it’s meh.  I’m in the latter crowd, I personally prefer the metal models but if the plastic is sturdy and won’t bend easily then I think I can get over it.  The set comes in at an MSRP of $50 and is a full team.  So overall not a bad place to start, but because it’s a new guild you really don’t have any growing room right now.

Gonna need some more pumpkins I believe

So my initial impression of the guild is that they are going to be able to pull off some tricks because of their whole use of Harvest markers.  All of the models have some kind of interactions with these Harvest markers, either putting them down or consuming them to gain some kind of benefit.  Additionally they seem to have a lot of aura based abilities, being able to buff each other simply by being around.  This is reinforced by the character plays generally not having extended ranges, most simply being either self or 4” with a couple that go beyond that.  So as a team you might need to stick around each other to some degree in order to gain maximum benefit. 

First impression, quite right

Those benefits are pretty nice however so you might not worry about being near each other.  Grange, the captain, has a 6” aura that when friendly Guild models make a pass they get +1/+2” on their Kick stat (das a nice buff).  Grange has the added benefit of stacking Crowded Out penalties as well, giving an additional -1 to the die poll when applicable.  Harrow will heal his teammates within 6” 2hp per turn before conditions are resolves (against those Alchemists it might only prevent poison damage).  Finally Bushel gets an ARM buff for being around Harrow.

All those Harvest markers preciousss

As far as Harvest Markers go there are a lot of options you can use once you plant your eggplants around the field.  Bushel can gobble up a potato and re-roll all failed Kicks for this turn, which is great since she is the team’s Striker.  Windle can consumer a pumpkin in order to get an extra influence point but also +2 on his TAC stat.  An interesting side note is that you can use this to bump up his influence past his max of 2, and coupled with Berserk you can potentially squeeze out 6 attacks if need be.  Interestingly enough his character play, Snack Break, not only heals him the next time he takes someone out you gain an additional VP.  So in an unlikely scenario you could potential win with 4 knockouts if you timed it all with using Windle to finish people off.

Steamforged's concept inspiration confirmed (jk)

Last bit I wanted to go over was one particular model, and that’s Jackstraw.  His stats are overall low, his run/charge is at most 4” and he starts off with 3 TAC.  Kick has nice range of 8” but only 2 die (3/10” near Grange when passing).  His playbook has 3 columns, with at most 1 damage but tackle and knockdown results are easy peasy to get with 1 and 3 hits respectively.  The part that interests me is that he interacts with Harvest markers the most in my opinion.  At the start of his activation he can teleport to a marker or friendly goal-post within 4”, and is placed base to base.  At the end of his activation he can teleport 4” to a Harvest marker.  Once per turn and for 1 influence he can do that during the turn.  So in a turn he could move all over the pitch, and since he’s placed in base to base he can be positioned around as needed to do whatever he needed to.  I think how I’d use him is to teleport on a cabbage, knockdown someone with 3 hits, and then teleport back 2 pumpkins to relative safety.  You could do the same with stealing the ball too, go on the eggplant > tackle ball > teleport on the yam > pass the ball > teleport to the corn.  He’s one of those easily misunderstood if you looked purely on the stats, but I bet he’s a lot of fun.

hahahaplshelpI'mlonelyhahaha

So that’s it for my initial impression of the Farmer’s Guild.  I’d be interested in playing against them as the Morticians and seeing how that matchup goes, but I think they wouldn’t be a bad side guild either.  Next time we’ll talk about the Blacksmith’s Guild as they are the newest and some dare say are the currently most unique guild out there.  We’ll talk about it some more later, but until then happy gaming and smooth painting folks!  

Ah yes what a delightful surprise of a post

Good morning wargaming fans and welcome to another set of ramblings!  I hope you all have been faring well since we last spoke and so I've got some time on my hands to bring you all up to date with recent projects and happenings.  It's been a pretty busy time for a lot of folks with a certain game dropping a new edition and bringing the hype along with it.  So let's chat some!

So it's no big secret of surprise that Games Workshop has dropped 8th edition and it has been making some positive waves in the community (mostly positive)!  I for one am really excited about it, like really really excited.  It's the first time in a loooong time that I am actually excited to play a game of 40k, and that's been some time.  In fact I went out and started collecting more stuff for my Death Guard to get myself ready.  The wife and I were doing some project stuff, she painting her Retribution for Warmachine and I sat assembling 2 Helbrutes.  I'm excited that Helbrutes might actually be useful again, the marines can be manly marines, and I CAN SUMMON DAEMONS!  Aww yeah baby summoning daemons is back and I've got 20 new Plaguebearers to put together for the glory of Nurgle!

It's not just my own army that I am excited for, but others as well.  My friend Sam runs Tyranids and now it seems like they are the scary, nasty, massed horde army that they should have been.  My friend Josh over here just started Astra Militarum and I think his forces with the new changes will benefit greatly (I've heard tanks are nastiness right now).  My platonic life partner Mike has been flirting with the Necrons again (I mean have you read Reanimation Protocols? Nasty!), and Clayton right here has been painting up his Lamenters.  It's a good time overall for 40k players, and I'm excited to get into it in the near future!

Meanwhile on the Warmahordes front things have been taking a hard backseat.  I'm not sure what is going on over at Privateer Press or the community but I've just lost a lot of the appeal the game had.  Maybe I'm getting older and I want to just relax, or maybe it's Mk 3 just not living up to the hype, or the hardcore tournament mindset and WAAC mentality of the community, but I just haven't felt the spirit of Warmahordes.  I've actually been trying to sell off my Menoth army and have been selling it off piece by piece.  I'm mostly getting rid of them because a) I prefer the playstyles of my other 2 factions, b) I feel like the old soul of Menoth has been removed with Mk 3, and c) it's a pretty friggin huge collection taking up a lot of space.  I'm not quitting the game per se, but it's a low priority for me right now.

Gates of Antares hasn't changed much for me, but that new book is coming out with the pretty sweet looking Algoryn Hazard Suit teams.  Mmmmm dat team.  Mmm dat suit.

Guild Ball is still a good game I enjoy playing, but with my schedule I've not had much chance to get some games in.  I think Steamforged has been working on releasing full teams in boxes instead of the 3 basic players.  I think it's a great move and the associated cost from what I can tell are fairly reasonable too.  The Farmer's Guild is up for pre-order release on Aug 18 and I must admit I don't know much about them.  I think they synergize with putting down pumpkins and eating them, at least that's how I see it.  Also the Blacksmith Guild has been teased out as being the next one in line.  I know absolutely nothing about them other than they have a dude with a huge shield and they do a Master/Apprentice style of team work.

As far as other games go they are lurking in the shadows waiting for some kind of spark to light up the ideas and drive, but for now they slumber.  I hope you all have been enjoying whatever games have been tickling your fancy and having much success with painting/assembling!  In the meantime I've got some Death Guard to prepare for battle, take care gamers!

Ah yes a general update post for the weeks mmmyes.

Hey there fellow wargamers and welcome to another set of ramblings here at Wargamer Ramblings and I hope you are having a great time this day/eve/morn!  Things have been plodding along with war games in general in my household with no major updates so I'm just going to bumble a bit about what's been going on in general.  Let's get rolling!

So as you all know I've been painting up some Algoryn for Gates of Antares and I've got to say I'm pretty pleased with the overall results.  When I came up with this color scheme I was thinking to myself "like blue grey, like what Space Wolves should be but not so...pastel like?" One thing I've been getting annoyed with are my brushes which seem to make highlighting a bit more of a pain.  It goes to show just how important your tools can be.  So that's something I've been looking into upgrading but in the meantime I am using what I've got to the best of my abilities.

Right before it puts the wash on its skin it gets the highlights again

The only thing I've not been too thrilled with have been the Algoryn heads, the artichoke if you will.  The second squad has fared much better with the added drybrush layering than I did before but still I very much prefer the helmets to the heads.  I've also been rather fond of the snow effects and they've been incredibly easy to pull off.  After painting up the bases I just slather on some water effects from Woodland Scenics and spoon on some snow.  Let it dry and bam! Snowy bases!  For my sake I put some of the water effects into dropper bottles I grabbed from Hobby Lobby since the original bottle was meant for larger projects and as a result it's done wonders for my basing.

Le finished product~

Aside from Gates of Antares I've been excited for the release of season 3 for Guild Ball! Yaaaay Guild Ball!  They didn't change a lot to the game to disrupt the flow and feel but added some quality of life changes to keep things balanced.  I for one have been poring over the new stat cards and for some teams there haven't been a lot of changes but some models have had some work done.  I'm looking forward to testing out the new Katalyst and Midas models for the Alchemists and Bonesaw for the Mortician's got a lot more attractive in my eyes with his 'Football Dervish' rule.  I might do a post here in the near future about some of the changes but for the most part I'm hoping to get more games in general.

New Guild? Do you even farm bro?

Speaking of getting in more games I've got a couple of scheduled games here in the near future with a couple of gents from the Wise area for some Mk 3 Warmahordes.  I think I'm more excited about getting the games in than I do the game itself, but it'll be good to dust off some of the models and throw down.  I've been out of touch with Warmarhodes in general since my last game with Kevin.  I don't know there's just something about the game that hasn't thrilled me like Guild Ball has, but I'm confident I'll have fun either way.  Just have to figure out which force I want to bring with me on Thursday...Cryx maybe?

How I generally feel about WM/H

Finally there's been some chat in the group about getting into Age of Sigmar more with the upcoming releases of the new starter boxes for the factions.  I've got to admit I've been more and more drawn to it, primarily because of these guys here and here, and the new Ironjawz big starter is not a bad price for GW.  Have I committed to Age of Sigmar yet?  Not yet, but I think once some more projects of mine get smaller and completed there's a real chance I will be getting into it.  I do love the old Black Orc models and so a full force of Ironjawz (which c'mon, they're the same) has some great appeal.  Plus I've already came up with a couple color schemes in mind so painting them won't be too bad.

What the hell kind of name is Orruk?

That's about it for what's been going on, it's feels like a whole lot of nothing substantial but things have been progressing here and there.  Also holy crap I just realized we are close to this blog's 1 year anniversary too!  Geez I better come up with something to thank you all huh?  Well I'll think about it, and until then you all have some happy holiday time and wargaming in general!