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!

Memorial Day Weekend Batreps - part 1

Greetings fellow gamers and hobbyists and welcome to another semi-exciting post here at the Ramblings!  I hope you all have been doing well and experiencing success with your hobbies and games and today I’d like to bring you some more batreps and a couple of board game experiences.  I had a friend of mine come down for the Memorial Day weekend and we ended up playing a bunch of stuff.  So given the gaming bonanza, this will be another two-parter, with a wargame and a board game report for each post!  So pull up a chair, get your favorite drink, and relax for some batrep shenanigans!

So our first game to kick off the weekend was a hearty sized 1500pt game of Gates of Antares.  Wells and I had been chatting up the positives of this game some and so he was interested in giving it a shot.  I snagged some Concord (also known as C3) from Mike and so I made a couple of lists and tried to keep the Algoryn from being too flashy since I couldn’t do the same for the C3.  For those who would like to see the lists, I’ve included a quick link to them right here.  Wells took command of the C3 and I got to use my Algoryn for this game.  We decided on the basic “kill each other best” scenario so to get the rules accustomed to, with the scoring points being the dead unit’s order die. 

The first turn saw a good chunk of moving around the field on my part as the Algoryn forces tried to quickly close the gap between them and the C3.  Unfortunately, a common theme for this turn was that my soldiers apparently had run a marathon earlier in the week and so sprinting was not only tiring but quite exhausting with at least 3 units rolling 10’s and getting double-mint pins.  Meanwhile, Wells, who is adept at picking up new games relatively well, by the way, figured the best thing to do was to get into a nice firing position and start plinking away at my forces.  At this stage of the game, the casualties weren’t so much an issue as the fact I was getting more pins on top of the ones I had already acquired. 

The second turn is where things started to heat up a little bit on both sides.  My Algoryn started to toss out some mag shots to the C3 lines and managed to score a few hits here and there, though not doing well enough to take out any troopers.  This was my first game against C3 and I had sorely underestimated their resilience at the range.  Not only that, but my predisposition towards mortars also didn’t help my cause since their armor gives them a lovely extra +1 to their Res stat when hit by blast weaponry.  I continued to struggle with shrugging off pins but my right flank was effectively useless as I clogged up the lane with own Mag Light Support teams.  Meanwhile, my Mag Cannon Avenger and his C3M4 Drone with a Plasma Cannon started trading shots at each other, but with neither being able to do anything other than a pin marker or two.

Third turn Wells started to experience some difficulties with morale on his own, but not quite to the extent that I had with my Algoryn.  I moved my AI Assault Squad up to the building the turn prior as I was getting ready for that sweet charge into melee and I had hyped myself up with thoughts of plugging D-Spinners in places they should not go.  However…my Algoryn assault specialist…with 1 pin on them…failed their command test with a 10 and took a nap!  What a bunch of buggers!  Wells moved his C3T7 up the field and popped out his two squads, putting more pressure on my right flank that caused it to crumple easily.  He failed a couple of his command tests as well, granted not as momentously epic as I had, and so a couple of his Light Support Drones didn’t do a whole lot and one Strike Squad kept their heads down.

The fourth turn I was able to get my Command Squad and some AI Squads up the mid-field for a charge into his Command Squad and his downed Strike Squad.  I was able to wipe out the Strike Squad and did a couple of casualties to the Command but not enough to win the fight and so we broke it off as we both retreated into better cover.  My AI Assault Squad still kept their heads down and that nap was pretty spot on.  My Mag Mortar and X-Launcher continued to not do anything effective this whole game so no more mention of them eh?  My Avengers continued to trade fire with his C3 Drones, not only did we do any serious damage to each other.  Wells would hit my left Avenger with his Plasma Cannon with 1 die, then roll a 10 and get Plasma Fade.  I would make my Res save and then miss with one shot, sometimes both, and we’d sit there ready for the next turn.  The squad that braved the middle of the field and went into combat with his Command Squad ended up getting pinned off of the field as they were out of cover and in a bad shape, the combined crossfire left them running in the end.

The fifth turn was a bloodbath as the C3 effectively won this round.  His C3T7 rounded the side and with 2 successive order neutered my remaining AI Squad.  A Strike Squad in the back moved up and took out my last 2 gents in my Command Squad.  I finally got to launch an assault with my AI Assault Squad and I’m not sure I got the rules right but if I did then all the hits combined caused his Light Support Drone to take a 24 Strike Value hit, I know sounds awesome right? A -24 to his save, surely the results must have been spectacular! Nah it just took an extra pin and went immobile.  Good stuff.  However, it wasn’t able to score any casualties itself and so failed its command test and I guess teleported away.  So it ended up ok.  At this point, I conceded the game as I had nothing that could bring the gap between the score and so Wells came out the victor for this match!  Congrats Wells!

So before moving on to the post-match thoughts let’s go over how one of the board games went, and that is Twilight Imperium!  If you’ve not heard of this game then a quick explanation is that it is a 4X Strategy game where you command an inter-galactic race trying to vie for the conquest of the galaxy.  You’re trying to score 10 victory points using diplomacy, trade, technology, and warfare at your command.  Each of the 17 factions has unique spins on how they go about the game including faction specific technology, promissory notes (think strong diplomacy tools, like a powerful loan for favors), and other rules.  It’s a long game though and so with the 6 of us it ended up being an 8-hour game, so if you’re interested to make sure that everyone has at least read the rules prior to starting and plan for a long day.

So instead of going turn by turn, I’ll talk about the trends of how this game went down.  Participating we had a full complement of players including Mike, Wells, William, Sam, and Corey.  The first couple of turns were mostly spent getting used to the mechanics of the game and how the flow would proceed.  There wasn’t a lot of diplomatic dealing going on other than Sam making promises to help people replenish their money through trade.  Planets were absorbed into everyone’s respective empires.  William and I were neighbors and early on established a Cold War-esque truce while Mike and Sam (post-game information, aka PGI) had made some deal for supporting each other. 

The game didn’t really pick up until the third turn when Mike unlocked the Agenda phase, aka voting on laws, by unlocking the middle planet, Mecatol Rex.  The law came up where we nominated a player to essentially get to research technology for free when able to do so, and the deals and politicking took off!  Bribes for votes was coming hot and empty promises were made in the heat of the moment, it was glorious and possibly the defining moment of this game where it went from “hmm yeah I think I get this” to “aww yeah this game is awesome!”  Mike won the vote considering he had a lot of influence to spend and had secured some votes via promissory notes.

Meanwhile, Corey and Sam had some border disputes where Corey would go and secure some planets for his empire, and then Sam would go and take it from him.  Wells had been keeping quiet this game and stayed primarily within his own borders doing his own thing.  It wasn’t until a law came up for a vote that would limit the number of ships you can have in your fleet to 4.  Wells panicked and offered everything in his power except for sex to Mike, and then we noticed that Wells had positioned himself in a way where he was going to try and steamroll through the galaxy with a massive fleet!  It was like a ticking time bomb, however, everyone else wouldn’t have been affected by this law and so unfortunately for Wells, it passed and his fleet capability went from like 7 or 9 to 4.  Ouch.

As for myself and William, we kept our Cold War truce, building up until we couldn’t risk an invasion on the other without serious consequences.  Then Mike showed up on our borders with a pretty nasty fleet and then the pressure was on!  On the other side of the galaxy, Wells went through the wormhole with a fleet and started pressuring and conquering territories held by Sam, as he over-extended his fleet going into Corey’s territory.  William went into Mecatol Rex with his own fleet and conquering the planet, which then left his own borders exposed.  Taking advantage of this I moved my own fleet in and started conquering his unguarded flank, muahahaha!  Mike took his fleet and moved into Mecatol Rex and an epic battle ensued between him and William, but with Mike taking back the planet in the end.  Mike was able to score the last victory point through one of the public objectives and in doing so won the game and was the dominating force in the galaxy!

What a helluva game for sure, both of them were really fun and excellent.  In retrospect for Gates, I would not have taken so many blast weapons and would have gone for more shots on the field.  The few hits I did get were not heavy enough to go through his armor, a factor I underestimated with the C3, and so they were essential points wasted.  It was a good solid game, though I can’t help but wonder if using reactions more would have been the key to maybe not losing so hard?  I’m not sure.  Either way, it was a fun game and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking into it.  The rulebook is still janky though, but I think once you get used to where things are it might not be so bad.  Still had to look up a lot though because some things trigger on rolling 1’s and 10’s, but not every roll…and not every rule has a similar effect…so a lot of references.  Twilight Imperium was also a lot of fun and would definitely play again, just not anytime soon.  The length was appropriate especially for 6 players who have never played before, but now that I’ve played I might have done things differently.  Definitely more aggression with my forces and to not be so afraid of combat.  Also, technology can be pretty powerful so definitely need to consider adding more of that in my playstyle.

Well, that was a lot of batrepping going on there, stay tuned next time for the second half of the weekend.  In store, we have a game of Guild Ball to go over and also we tried out Aristeia as well.  Until next time folks stay busy and happy gaming!

Blood, Souls, and Fashionable Gator Boots - Cycle 4 Batreps

Good day to you fellow wargamers and I hope you are faring well in whatever it is you are doing!  We are back here today with another batrep post starring your potentially favorite tactical game of steam-powered robots and angry beasts: Warmahordes!  I had the privilege of being able to play some really cool gents for our local Journeyman League and this time I actually took more than 2 pictures.  I’m really excited to go over the games so let’s get right to it, shall we?  This might be a nice long post since I’ve got three games to cover this cycle, so get a nice drink and get comfy for the ride ahead!

So the first thing I wanted to mention is that my list-making has been craptastic this League.  The caveats of not being able to change my list at all in conjunction with forgetting about the Mk3 theme list push has left me with only one option to go for my Cryx and that is the Infernal Machines theme force.  Truthfully it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had planned it out but due to forgetting that themes were a thing I chose my models poorly and subsequently I’m catching up.  So I had to adjust my warcaster to meet the needs of my list and so I switched out Bane Witch Agathia for Warwitch Deneghra, as I’m going to need the “Queen of Debuffing” to help my poor undead minions out.  So here’s my current Cycle 4 list:

·         Warwitch Deneghra

o   The Withershadow Combine

o   Deathripper

o   Slayer

o   Reaper

o   X2 Ripjaws

·         Pistol Wraith

·         Mechanithrall Min. Unit

o   X1 Brute Thrall

·         Necrosurgeon and Stitch Thralls

·         X2 Soul Trapper

Had I planned this list out I would have avoided taking the Withershadow Combine and instead of a Skarlock Thrall, and I would have been spending more points on the Mechanithralls and Brute Thralls and instead of Ripjaws maybe a Defiler or a Nightwretch.  While I like the potential Ambush rule being used on a unit of Mechanithralls with Brutes, the giving of Hyper-Aggressive to my warjacks is not really that great when my ‘jacks are paper thin and break easily.  Ultimately it was my fault for not paying more attention when designing my list and so any derision has been my fault only, I’ll own that.  So for me, this theme is meh right now, but I’m determined to make it work!  Eventually, I’ll have it working but until then I made due with what I have.

My first game was against Mark and his Khadoran force chock-full of Winterguard infantry, led by the Supreme Kommandant Irusk.  Initially, I felt intimidated by the number of troopers he had on the field, and placing them in a brick formation around Irusk gave me pause as I didn’t feel like I had enough bodies of my own.  Not to mention his 3 warjacks coming down the field as well, all those hitboxes and ARM 20s were not appetizing.  It was going to be a test to see how well I could debuff his forces and whittle them down before they could crash on me like a tsunami of angry Khadorans.

The first turn was full of movement followed by turn 2 of cautionary placement and preparing for the inevitable melee.  Mark kept the majority of his infantry in the back and let his Decimator take the first hit from my Mechanithralls.  With the onset of Parasite, the amount of damage coming from combo-smite was impressive, but the follow-up attacks from Mark cleaned them out pretty quickly.  I think in this game the Necrosurgeon only managed to bring back 3 zambos before the unit was wiped out.  Meanwhile, on my right side, I moved up my Ripjaws along the flank to keep them far away from his jacks, knowing full-well that one hit would cause them to crumble immediately.  Early on I cast Crippling Grasp on his closest unit of Winterguard as they would jam the rest of the unit down with their decreased SPD stat.

After several Venom sprays and a "get over here" shot from the Reaper

Trying to clear out his warjacks

It was about turn 3 that I remembered that Deneghra also had Venom and realized that spell was my only counter against his infantry horde.  Mark took out a Ripjaw and my Deathripper without batting an eye (DEF/ARM 14 and 20hp does not last long) and leaving me with only 1 arc node to play around with.  I put Parasite on his Marauder, but not before it had a chance to deal some real damage.  This turn I popped my feat as well as I knew I would need that sweet -4/-4 to his Infantry as I cast multiple venoms.  I managed to clear out a good chunk but the Tough granted by Irusk left a lot of bodies unharmed.  I was able to do some serious damage to his Marauder as well but that Juggernaut was ready to replace its role and I was running out of options fast. 

The hard fought bloodbath

Mark’s Juggernaut was doing some real work on my left side as he quickly took out the Slayer and started putting the hurt on the Reaper.  I was running out of options so I resolved to try and assassinate Irusk with Deneghra.  It took me a turn of positioning and keeping his Juggernaut busy, but eventually, I was able to jam it up long enough for the Reaper to take it out (with the help of Parasite).  I was then able to rush on in and take out Irusk for the hard-fought victory against the Motherland!  Mark was an excellent person to play with and the game was difficult on both ends, definitely one of those “it’s anyone’s game” type of match.

My only chance to take out Irusk

My next game was against Scott’s Skorne and Lord Tyrant Zaadesh leading the massive beef wall that was his beasts.  This matchup was difficult for me for many reasons including the aforementioned list difficulties, but also Zaadesh was able to maintain Battle Lust which left a bubble surrounding each of his beasts where he could counter-charge anything of mine that moved within 6” of his.  Compound that with the animus from the Titan Sentry allowing him to make strikes back if attacked put me in a pretty rough position of hesitancy.

Deployment

So Scott laid down a couple of Burning Ash clouds which effectively neutered my ability to engage him first, which only further compounded his defense and limited my options.  Scott sent out one of his Cyclops early on but left his big beefy boiis in the back.  I was left with assaulting this lone light beast and hope the counter-attack wasn’t too bad, or I would let him rampage through and hope that it wouldn’t leave me unable to engage his heavies.  I went with the former option and went in for the kill.  A good shot from his Cyclops Raider took out half of my Slayer’s hitboxes, and thus crippling move and one of his arms.  That hurt more than just the lost health as it also neutralized my alpha Combo-Strike + Charge + Deneghra combo before he had the chance to get in the fight.

Initial advances

On my right side, his Gladiator and Bronzeback worked their way through my Ripjaw and Mechanithralls with relative ease, mere momentary roadblocks towards the march on my caster.  The only consolation was that my Necrosurgeon did some work and kept the 6 Mechanithralls up almost all game.  On my left flank, his Sentry engaged both Ripjaw and Reaper with some solid damage to both jacks.  I had a gamble and hoped that it would pan out as I was quickly running out of options.  I cast Ghost Walk on the Reaper, who I also fully loaded up with focus as I then moved him up into the woods nearby and took a shot at Zaadesh.  It was a hit and I was able to drag the little bugger closer in for some damage! 

Me taking the bait

Unfortunately, while I managed to score a nice combo off Zaadesh had some fury stacked on him and the counter-attack from him, 2 attacks specifically, took out the Reaper without blinking an eye.  At this point all of my heavy hitters were down and out, leaving little offensive bite to take on his beasts.  I had one chance, but in reality, it was more of a Hail Mary dropped in a prayer to win this game.  The mechanithrall farthest on the left took out the Beast Handler, leaving Deneghra a shot at being able to charge Zaadesh.  I managed to hit and deal some damage but let’s be honest folks, the Queen of Debuffing is no fighter and Zaadesh had fury on him to transfer the damage.  After my failed charge I conceded the game to Scott as my lovely lady was dead-center of the board surrounded by angry elephants.

The stifled advance of Cryx against the meat of Skorne

Last ditch effort

My last game for Cycle 4 was against Richard and his Gatormen, specifically running a nice Barnabas 2 list chock full of corpse tokens.  Hoo boy, this was going to be rough because a) his list was definitely superior in synergy and efficacy and b) I knew very little about his models except for a few exceptions here and there.  After deployment I moved my forces up on the two flanks, trying to spread my threat as best I could.  Richard responded in kind my deploying his forces in such a way that he had a central base to support his flanks but was able to send out countermeasures for what I had lined up.  Specifically, anti-infantry towards my infantry and anti-jacks to my jacks.  The first turn was what you expect happened as we ran and got into better positions for the next turn.  One thing I want to throw out so it’s not repeated was that he maintained was the spell Execration of Blackest Night which caused a -2 to all attack rolls within 10” of Barnabas.

Up against the Gators

This was a rough game for me but I gave it all I could!  I had some bad rolls early so threats that might have been neutralized or mitigated were not and I was left to spend more effort to trade pieces than I would have liked.  I was able to take out the Blackhide Wraslter, but at the cost of my Reaper taking his charge (which was ridiculously awesome for Richard, sad news bears for me) and committing a fully focus charged Slayer to take down.  Meanwhile, my Ripjaws were useless despite Powerful Attacks I only managed to get 1 crit off of the Boneswarm.  Deneghra couldn’t cast debuffs to save her life.  My Brute Thrall took out the Totem Hunter but that’s about it.  Meanwhile, Skarath was wiping out Mechanithralls left and right with his sprays and Counterblasts.  He had a perfect counter to every move I made, it was like a dance of perfect death.  Even on my feat turn, it made little difference, my debuff helped a little bit but without the weight of additional spells I just could not capitalize on this opportunity.

After the first turn runs!

Taking the Gator hit...not that well

Next turn Richard charged Barnabas in and let me tell you, where Deneghra is not a fighter…Barnabas is a murderer.  So one thing about Richard’s list was that he included a Boil Master & Spirit Cauldron.  This cauldron was pumping out special sauce like it was no business.  Big Shaq would have been impressed with the level of sauce.  Corpse tokens were flowing like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.  These gators were so fed on spicy corpses that they were looking like Homer being force-fed donuts in Hell.  Barnabas came in and slaughtered my remaining jacks and then he popped his feat.  Oh lawdy, this feat made me sweat.  So I did some damage right…Barnabas used all his fury…I was thinking “yeah I can maybe get him”…nope.  Richard used that feat, swallowed up his Farrow minions, some boney boiis and not only regained his fury but also healed up all that damage I had to manage to pull off on his Boneswarm.  So now I had one fat and angry Gator Boii with only a barn and the Withershadow Combine in between him and my sweet gentle Deneghra.  On my right flank, my Mechanithrall unit was being a nuisance but that’s about it.  His Boneswarm hot on Denghra’s heels, my only saving grace was that he could not hit a 10, which would have ended the game.

Trying to make some headway

Aaaaaaand Barnabas came in the fight.

Once again I found myself in the hot seat of “my only chance” and I put Ghost Walk on Deneghra and walked right through the shack right on the other side.  I managed to get Crippling Grasp on Barnabas and tossed Black Talons on him, which I managed to get the crit effect and Shadow Bound his reptilian self.  The Withershadow managed to get a couple good hits on him but not enough to get a transfer, but enough to get him down to 4 hitboxes.  Sadly the revenge of the angry Gator Boii ended the game for a victory to Richard.

The last attempt to snipe out Barnabas

I won’t lie all of these games were difficult and hard fought, which I can say is primarily due to Deneghra and her ability to debuff like no one else.  Each opponent played well and I learned a lot from the games played.  I think one core issue was that I spread my forces over-confident in their ability to hold their own, but forgetting that 12/12 zombies are not effective meat-shields.  Especially since I only have 6.  I think once I catch up in the next cycle or two my list will be a little closer to where I want it.  Not having the bodies leaves my threat limited to key pieces and ones those are gone I had little option left.  1 Brute Thrall isn’t intimidating, but if I had 6 on the field it might be a little different.  20 Mechanithralls move from annoying to difficulty, especially with the recursion mechanic with my Necrosurgeon and Gollums.  So for next game, I think if I stick with overwhelming force in one area versus spreading them out I might have better luck.  We’ll see.

Well, folks that is all for these three games.  I hope this has been an interesting read for you all and I look forward to bringing some more batreps in Cycle 5.  With more zombies!  More debuffs!  Extra tears!  Until then fellow gamers may your dice be kind and your opponents kinder!

Opening up Aristeia!, Blood Bowl, and Necromunda for the very first time!

Greetings fans of the hobby and welcome back to your lovely afternoon reading time!  It’s been the start of weather changes here and that means priming and painting galore for many!  It also heralds the coming of new games and that’s what we are here today to talk about, new stuff!  Not like a GenCon haul or anything but I’ve been eyeing a couple of games lately and so I decided to not only purchase them but also go over my initial impressions of just opening the box.  I’m sure you’ve seen many of these games and their respective unboxings but this is from the viewpoint a guy who a) hasn’t seen any of those unboxings so I have no idea what’s in them and b) I’ve not done much research on the games in terms of how they are played.  So let’s get to it!

The three games I’ve been eyeing are Aristeia!, Blood Bowl, and Necromunda.  I know what these games are on a surface level and so I’m not completely clueless about these games.  I’ve never played a game of any of the three except for a brief trial on the Blood Bowl PC version.  Since I had no idea what I was doing, however, I quickly moved on. With the recent revamping done by Games Workshop with their respective games and some of the good things, I have heard about Aristeia! I decided that it is time to dive in and just grab the 2 player boxes to check things out.  The first box I opened was Aristeia!

So my initial impression was that the contents were packed in neatly but the first thing I saw was a guide to the rules, a quick How to Play, followed with some large booklet about the game in the Infinity universe.  Next came the board, some weird angular things which ended up being team organizer spaces, followed by the rest of the box contents.  The miniatures came pre-assembled and in their own space along with a couple token sheets.  Overall it was easy to find everything and it is one of the few times where putting everything back was a breeze. 

Miniature quality was also good and even though I heard it was PVC I was still overall impressed.  Only a couple minor quirks like the big panda dude’s staff was bent as was the old man’s revolver.  I felt like I could with minimal effort starting playing this game from the get-go.  Everything was user/new player friendly and neatly organized so there wasn’t a lot of fuss about trying to hunt down what I might need to start playing.

Blood Bowl was opened up next and the first thing I saw was the miniatures and with it some gaming aids I can presume.  Now I have no idea what the tokens/ruler thingy is used for so I had to dig a little bit past the plastic frames to start locating the board and rules.  The models seem pretty easy to put together, I’m not sure if that’s how the whole BB range is but the simple plug-and-play type of models means that for a new player assembly isn’t as intimidating.  If you didn’t want to paint the models up they were in bright green and blue respectively so that there would be little confusion at a glance as to who was part of which team.  Beyond the models, there was a cardboard insert that had some info for Blood Bowl as a community/hobby/game.

Beyond that insert, I found the board and the rulebook, as well as some other cardboard pieces which I guess, is for the team managers?  As well as some cards but right now I have no idea what they are meant for.  The board and rules appear high quality and the dual-sided nature of the board meant some variety for gaming.  Everything was neatly packed albeit without any organizational aids but that meant putting things back meant that I would have to figure out myself how to reorganize it.  I felt like within an hour I could have the models clipped off and start to play at the bare minimum level (i.e. unpainted).  Now for the rules themselves, I have no idea but the rulebook didn’t seem too thick so I figure as a newbie it can’t be that bad to pick up on them and play a game.

Finally, I opened up Necromunda and I was a little overwhelmed if I could be honest.  This is not a new player friendly set I can tell you that much.  I closed the box and asked my wife to take a look inside to see her reaction (she is quite a new player type gamer) and her reaction was a mix of “oh geez” and “yeah I don’t want to touch this.”  The sprues for the models was a true GW model kit and the level of details on the parts are standard quality.  This is not an easy peasy lemon squeezy kind of assembly though, it is full hobbyist level if you ask me.  I’m excited to assemble the gangers but if I was brand new to the hobby I would be a little overwhelmed.  I also see they brought back the templates much to my delight (I miss those templates!) and they included some nice looking wall terrain as well.

Past the kits, the cardboard insert was a giant assembly guide for the models if that is any indication of what kind of models these are.  Beyond that, the rest of the box was neatly assembled like Blood Bowl with a nice quality cardboard board, token sheet, rulebook, dice, and cards.  The rulebook was a big larger than the BB one and a bit thicker but a casual glance through reassured me in that a good chunk of the contents were lore-based instead of rule heavy.  Still, the quality of the game appears to be GW standard in terms of what I paid for, so I am excited to see how it plays.  As far as prep work to get playing it definitely feels like I’ll need some time before it’ll be ready to play.  With all of the options on the sprues, I get the feeling that the gangers will need some forethought in equipment and/or load-outs before putting them together.  So I think they could be ready after a day or so of assembly and planning.

I thought it was interesting that the order in which I opened the boxes is the same order I would place the games in order of new player friendliness.  Aristeia! was definitely the easiest of the three to get started but I also feel like it’s less of a wargame/hobby than a board game so there is probably that element to consider.  Blood Bowl certainly has the hobby element to it but the impression I got overall was that it is in that spot of being a board-game and a hobby and so it had elements from both sides of the coin.  Necromunda was on the other side of the spectrum and despite the board that it came with, this is definitely not a board game but part of a bigger hobby.  I’ve heard that in the first expansion book the rules provide a means to play Necromunda without a board and into the 3D, so that reinforces my opinion.

So there we have it!  I enjoyed letting myself get an initial impression from these games since I had the opportunity to open three new games where I have NO experience with them outside of acknowledging their existence.  I’m looking forward to trying these games out and putting together the models, or in Aristeia!’s case painting them, and I’m already thinking of color schemes and backstories for the gangs.  Maybe I’ll do a Slaaneshi Escher cult gang…  Anyways until next time folks enjoy yourselves in the hobby and may your dice favor your armor saves!