Tyranids – planetary invasion: Epic 40k!

MAN! this game was a blast to play. 6 players, 9 hours or so of pure unadulterated 1990’s epic glory! This is the first really big epic 40k game I’ve played since college (before the 1997 rules came out, so it was the Space Marine 2 version with the unit cards) and I remembered why we loved this scale so much back in ye olden days. This is a semi battle report, semi-review of 1997 Epic 40k interlaced with a lot of pictures from this giant friggin game.

I talked to folks back in April to see if we could schedule an Epic 40K game at the end of July when Mouth was in town and told them only that it would be “very, very big‘ and plan for all day if they could. It turned out to be quite the large game, the biggest I’ve played since Space Marine 2 in about 1993 or so. We had 6 players, 2 for the Nids (thanks James), one Ork (Mouth), one Eldar (Dan), one Imperial Guard (Chris) and one for the Space Marines (Bill).

The Scenario

Epic 40k was released in a boxed set with ‘three little books’ for the rules, armies and battles. In the Epic 40K “Battles” book there are a slew of scenarios, and for what I wanted to do the Planetary Invasion was perfect. Not everything is on the board at the start of the game, so it gives players some time to come to grips with the system and just how big the game was going to be before it got really big. It uses hidden set up for the defenders as well as the objective markers and excellent morale system from Epic 40k.

The Orks, Mentor Legion, Eldar and Imperial guard would be the defenders and the Tyranids (all 5000+ points of them) would be the invaders. In the scenario, the defenders set up a portion of their forces all hidden (except titans and super heavy vehicles, which can never hide) and on the first turn ONLY flying and drop pod units can be moved onto the table by the attacker (the ‘nids in this case). Next, the attacker chooses a table edge and from turn 2 on, reinforcements from both sides come on to the table (based on rolls, but always at least one detachment). Ideally as all the rest of the stuff comes on the table, things on the table already aren’t there any more so the number of detachments doesn’t get overwhelming.

Fate Cards: we did use the fate cards from the base game as well as the army-specific ones from White Dwarf. These were great, but I would probably dole out a few more for this size of a battle.

We also used the 2D6 and choose the highest rule for firefights and close combat: recommended.

The Armies

One of the huge strengths (among many) of Epic 40k is that it has a very flexible detachment system, one that influenced many sets of 32mm 40k rules that came after it. Players can mix and match to come up with some really crazy detachment build outs as well as some that are HARD counters to tactics from other armies.

With this power comes great responsibility. Instead of the static detachment cards from Space Marine 2 with very generic (and not very effective) detachments, the player’s must create their own. From my last plays of Epic 40k, I learned the hard way that this can take a very long time indeed. If you do this all on game day, you will waste many precious hours doing that instead of blowing stuff up! Build out everything (long) before starting play. This has been made far easier with this super handy online tool.

My goal was to create a set of detachments that covered as many units from my huge Tyranid army as possible, and then create 1200 points of detachments for all four of the other races. With the exception of the Orks, I had to learn what detachments worked, what sucked and what everyone had for models. This took a LOT of research online and in old White Dwarf magazine, namely WD 211, 216 and 217. The Orks as you will see below were really simple to put an army together: it was ALL GARGANTS.

The Tyranids

This army included nearly everything I own to make up the massive invading force. This included a Dominatrix supported by three Hierophant titans, four combo gargoyle/Harridan units (flyers), an artillery detachment to lay disruption down and the obligatory genestealer, termagaunt and hermagaunt swarms supported by Carnifexes, Zoanthropes and Tyranid warriors. All in all, an absolutely monstrous army including over 40 termagant stands alone. This was the only army with air units as I felt the other players (except for the Eldar player) had no experience yet with this version of the game and the interdiction rules would have slowed the game down quite a bit. The air units were sort of just a distraction until turn 3 which showed just how badass flyers can be in the game, but I digress…

Tyranid Army List

The Mentor Legion

I stared from almost zero with painting my Mentor Legion in April and spent the months between then and the July game buying, assembling and painting as much of the army as I could. I meant for it to be a pure marine force and I got CLOSE but due to some unforeseen weekends out of town in July, I had to replace 500 points of a huge assault marine detachment with 2 Warhound Titans.

The main ‘hammer’ detachment was 9 bike units along with 5 Vindicators for close support. This a really good combo for a detachment as it is fast, hits really hard in close combat and can also win some firefights when needed to push back enemy detachments that are out of position. The second detachment is a more standard Marine one loaded into in Rhinos and Razorbacks. Of course, no Space Marine general is going to battle without Land raiders and there was a detachment of 5 plus 2 predators to keep enemy infantry away. I wish I had finished my massive assault force as the player playing the Marines (Bill) would have had a great time drop podding them into the middle of the Nids! I love the little dreadnought models from this version of the game but could not include any in the force unfortunately. Next time!

Mentor Legion Army List

The Imperial Guard

One of the dudes had models for the new game Legion Imperialis, so he brought a gigantic Leman Russ detachment, 8 griffons (for massive barrages) and a couple of Baneblades. It looked OK on the table with the 10mm scale difference, the Baneblades looking a lot like Ogres from the older game Ogre from Steve Jackson Games. He didn’t have a ton of infantry, which is probably good because they would just be meat for the grinder vs the ‘nids anyway.

The Eldar

My buddy Dan has a huge amount of Eldar from ye olden days (and some newer stuff) so I just made up a list very close to what was used in the WD 216 battle report but with the edition of a Titan instead of an Avatar unit. This contained a core aspect warrior unit in grav tanks, the absolutely required night spinner detachment to lay down disruption all over and an Engines of Vaul unit with 2 scorpions and one cobra for the pop up MADNESS. Plus the Jes Goodwin sculpted masterpiece of an Eldar Phantom titan to round them out. Of the forces, this one is probably the most effective overall and balanced.

Eldar Army List

The Orks

Last but not least we have our violent green friends. Though I have a large Ork army, none of the infantry or vehicles are painted and I made a rule for this game that everything on the table would be painted (and painted well, which is not hard for 6mm for the most part). As such the orks were by far the easiest to fill their 1200 points: two great gargants (one containing the Warlord) and one Slasher Gargant. I acquired three beautifully painted gargants earlier in the year, and they looked gorgeous on the table (which was good as they were hella expensive to buy).

Ork Army List

The Set Up

The Imperial Guard, Orks, Eldar and Mentor Legion were the defenders, so they had to set up first, but other than War Machines (including Titans, Baneblades and Engines of Vaul) all units could be hidden. Each player rolled to see what started on the battlefield and what was in reserve, and all the players had at least one unit that started on the table. The centerpiece was the Ork Gargant, that sat his fat metal body on top of the central hill of the table. After set up, we Nid players got to choose a side come on from, and I made the mistake of selecting a short edge of the table, thinking I could rely on my speed and drop troops to win the day. This was a mistake from a game play perspective as tons of units on both sides never saw battle at all as they had to slog across the giant table.

Per the scenario, the Nids could only use flyers and mycetic swarms (drop troops) during the first turn, all other units rolled to come on the table in subsequent turns. Drop troops come on as small pieces of paper dropped from above the table by tipping a blast template!

This was a massive battle, so I just touched on the highpoints in the turn descriptions below.

The Battle – Turn 1

The Nids had the only flyers in the game so we just went all out on attack run orders the first turn. The Aerial assault by the Gargoyles and Harridans units (5 of them) were all trained on the great gargant, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to take down even half of it’s 12(!?) power fields! Lesson learned.. use the flyers somewhere else!

After the flyers ran their missions, I made my first tactical mistake and dropped one of my larger mycetic swarms directly onto the great gargant which turned out to be a slaughter as the it was able to snap fire at over half the unit, destroying a ton of them before they hit the ground. What’s more, Gargants have assault 30, so it would be very hard to take it down with the remaining swarm, which were shortly after blasted off the other side of the hill by the Leman Russ detachment anyway. I learned my lesson about snap fire, and landed my other detachments more judiciously as a screen for my incoming troops.

The Leman russ and Eldar moved into positions in the center and left respectively and were set up to hold both areas during the next turns. The Mentor Legion had only their fast attack detachment on the board and moved it quickly to support the Gargant on the hill.

The Battle – Turn 2

During turn 2 was when fully I realized that our choice to bring the Tyranids on the short table edge rather than the long was ANOTHER tactical mistake as it allowed the defenders to line up in a smaller area to shoot at the ‘nids as they came on, making it impossible to overwhelm any flank. To the south were the eldar, with the Eldar titan holding that side, and to the north was the onrush of the Imperial guard, but worse, the center was still held by the impenetrable great Gargant who was back up to 12 power fields after the useless aerial assault the turn before– this turned out to be the only Ork unit that got any action in the game as the other two gargants came on as reinforcements and could not stomp their way into battle.

The Nids rolled pretty well for reinforcements and all but one of their titans were now on the board along with a massive assault spawn detachment that was poised to take on everything in the center of the board.

In the shooting phase, along with the blasting from the Great Gargant, the Imperial guard griffons did a number on any exposed Nids, which caused a lot of pain and anguish, but that would be taken care of in turn 3 when the flyers were back online to fly attack missions…

The Battle – Turn 3

This turn started out with the total annihilation of the Imperial guard griffon unit (8 strong) from five attack waves from the gargoyles plus Harridans during the flyer missions phase. It was a slaughter not unlike the road of death from desert storm 1…except just plastic and metal pieces. While a moral victory, this really did not amount to much in the scheme of the battle as the Tyranids were hard pressed to get their forces in close enough without being destroyed from shooting.

That said, taking the entire onslaught of a concentrated Tyranid force one side of the map was way too much for both the Eldar (except the Titan) and the Mentor legion vindicator/bike detachment, both of which were destroyed. The Mentor Legion drove back a detachment of tyranids in a firefight that had been blasted by the griffon’s artillery barrage already only to be counter attacked by the biggest assault detachments in the entire tyranid force. This was the only ‘very large’ close combat in the game and while the Mentors were able to do some damage, all but one vindicator was left after the Nids were done.

While the Tyranid Titans and Dominatrix cleaned up the Eldar on the flank, for all their shots at the Eldar Titan, it did not get a scratch on the damn thing the entire game! This was deja vu from dozens of games of Space Marine in my ill-spent youth.

There were so many blast markers on the table at this point that we had to search around the house for suitable markers from other games!

The Aftermath

We had to call the game after Turn 3 due to time, but it was obvious that the Tyranids were going to take the L on this one, likely after doing quite a bit of damage to the allied forces first though. The number of Titans concentrated on the left flank would have overwhelmed it until the other Ork gargants and warhounds could get into the conflict. On the force morale score card, the Tyranids were in the 60’s and the Allied forces were still at 99 (as high as those cardboard counters can go). I would have liked to have had the 4th turn to see whether or not the Gargant could be displaced from that damn hill.

Epic 40K is Incredible and should be played as much as possible!

The 1997 rules are insanely good at this size of a battle. Despite totally new players, despite running out of time, the game went smoothly with only a few checks to the rules here and there (a lot of looking at army sheets and the titan sheets could have been better). I’ve played this version three times now and I think it is better than Epic Armageddon that followed it a few years later, far better than Space Marine 2 (which just goes into far too much detail for the size of battle I want to play) and also better than the new GW 10mm games (Imperialis) which isn’t even a contender as it only has Imperials vs Imperials.

When you play these rules and really familiarize yourself with them you realize they are an iteration and improvement on the grand-daddy of this scale of miniatures games: Advanced Squad Leader. If you have played ASL or even just SL, Epic 40K in this version will feel like a faster, cleaner and fun update to those rules. The focus on firepower rather than shooting individual weapons, the charts for number of dice to roll and the way close combat is handled is all an improvement on the fundamentals from Squad Leader. I think Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers absolutely hit dynamite with this version– GW’s marketing department at the time just couldn’t SELL the game (along with some really ugly miniatures…).

Some other reasons (not in order):

  • Detachments: breaking away from the cards from Space Marine 2 was wonderful, now we could tinker with detachment builds with all sorts of units for the fight at hand, while this is extra work on the player’s part, this is really excellent and a crucial part of why this is such a flexible and fun system.
  • Shooting phase: There are big weapons, some special stuff like barrages and pulsa rockets, but all normal shooting uses firepower and a reference table. This makes things FAST and it works out totally fine.
  • Assaults and Firefights: the assault phase of the game represents a 4 turn 40K battle and detachments can either charge into close combat to wipe out the enemy (at risk to themselves) or manuver into place to get into an advantageous firefight which won’t do much damage, but will displace a detachment from where they are at and force a retreat. The combination of these two means of close engagement is the key to the game, and I hate to use the word elegant for anything but a dame, but it damn sure is.
  • Morale system: Each detachment contributes to an overall morale for the armies, and when detachments are broken or destroyed, they reduce morale, whoever gets to zero first (in most scenarios) loses the game. Morale can be increased by getting objectives so the game can see-saw from turn to turn.
  • Blast Markers: these are now used in tons of different games, and for good reason as it simplifies something a bit hard to abstract as it’s not damage, it’s not breaking of morale, but rather overall disruption, fatigue and chaos of battle for a detachment.

Well, I’ve written enough about this game, gotta get in some more plays! Thanks goes out to the Epic Remastered FB group, and the guys that created the Epic 40K Remastered detachment builder which made everything super easy for me to organize for all of these armies as the flexible detachment rules is one of the huge strengths of the system, but naturally it requires a lot of prep. GO HERE to give it a go.

This post originally appeared on mraaktagon.com.

Some Epic 40K Commeth

I was rummaging around my stuff and found my copy of Warmaster, read it a bit on the shitter and realized I would never be able to get anyone I know to play this game despite the rules and the ease of getting into with 10mm miniatures. This reminded me that I had a ton of Epic 40K stuff based about 8 years ago (my god how time flies) and that it was just sitting around un-played since about 2016 or so. Terrible! So I decided to bust it out and start painting and at the same time was looking on Ebay for some pieces I needed and scored a fully painted Tyranid army for a bit of dross. This army is HUGE and so I figured I would get the lads together to do a big game of Epic 40K: three small armies vs a massive Tyranid horde and see how long they can hold out turn wise.

This required painting as I have to supply three of the four armies and so it begins.

RULES

I’ve played almost all the Epic rulesets (not the newest one in the 30K time period) and I am pretty much done with the Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine 2 ruleset that I used to play in college. It’s too fiddly and the games take too long to play big stuff and Epic is ALL ABOUT THE BIG GAMES. So I was pondering either Epic Armageddon or 1997 Epic 40K and went with the latter– the reason is that the game play is super smooth and I just won’t need to explain all that much. Your detachment adds up it’s firepower in range, rolls on the chart, shit gets killed. Assaults and Fire fights have their own fairly simple rules as well. This way even if we haven’t played in awhile and may have a couple totally new players, it just won’t be tough to learn.

The biggest challenge with Epic 40k is the detachment building as it is completely open compared to other versions of the game. Luckily, these dudes built THIS to help people put together detachments really fast. The interface is a bit fucked up for building an army, but it is a HUGE help to do this. Anyway, here are some pictures of stuff I’m working on for the game. I am a SLOOOWWWWW painter so some of these miniatures I bought. Not my Mentor Legion though, that is all mine (for better or worse for the miniatures).

My first mentor legion vehicle, one of what will be very many Rhinos…

I bought these off a guy in the UK and though in some pieces when they arrived, a super easy fix for each of them.

A Falcon I painted for the LOLS.

This is the entire Tyranid army, painted probably around 2012? It’s had multiple owners since the original artist.

My ‘good start’ on the first Mentor Legion detachment. Trying to find how they are supposed to look has been a tough one, but everything is turning out.

Jagged Alliance 3 – the game we’ve been waiting for since 1999

I just finished JA3 after a long time of on and off play. The game is absolutely brilliant, a fantastic homage to JA 1 and 2 and most importantly, the most playable and best Jagged Alliance yet in the modern era after quite a few unfortunate missteps since… 1999. Is this the best and most playable Jagged Alliance game? Read no further if you want the answer TL/DR: Yep!

In the early days of PC gaming, Jagged Alliance was one of the first CD-ROM games that I remember fanatically playing (the other was Holistic Design’s Hammer of the Gods) and my 486 had only a floppy disk! So, in summer of 1995, when I should have been outside running amok after college, I was sitting crouched over my mom’s PC crammed into the dinning room goofing around on the island of Metavira with Biff, Skitz, Reuban and Ivan. I played this A LOT and realized once I moved out of the house, which was just weeks away, I would not be able to play the game without a CD player, something I wouldn’t be able to afford for months. Hence, I played JA for days straight and was completely enthralled by the game, it’s characters and the silly Metavira island.

Core Gameplay

Given some of you may never have played any Jagged Alliance game, I’m going to start off with the game-play which, while a critical piece of what makes JA3 good, is not the most important part of the game compared to other games in the genre (Xcom for example). Jagged Alliance 3 is essentially a party-based RPG with a substantial strategic layer where you manage your team’s non-combat operations, equipment, finances, read emails (!?) and negotiate contracts. In addition to your main character, you hire mercs into your ‘party’ and travel a large map exploring and destroying as you go. Outside of the strategic view, JA3 is real time while exploring until battles begin at which time it switches to tactical turn based combat. Unlike Xcom, Trouble Shooter, and JA: Deadly Games, your party can walk around the map sectors rather than just going on various combat missions and then sitting at home at base.

For the core combat engine, what JA3 brought to the table is a massive improvement of the tried and true skirmish game mechanics of Xcom: Enemy Unknown from 2012. Stripped down to the bare bones, the 2012 Xcom still managed to deliver and extremely satisfying tactical challenge and has been copied by many other games since (just like the 1994 version was). I feel that the JA3 developers were extremely thoughtful in what the added onto the basic Xcom 2012 set of mechanics and got a delicious mix of JA peanut butter in Xcom’s chocolate. I had a blast with Xcom 2012, but I think JA3 is far better in every way.

Instead of just 2 actions per turn, like Xcom, JA’s mercs have action points that they can spend on movement, reloading, shooting, and lying on the ground, et al. This allows the game to have enormous nuance around conditional effects, fatigue and differentiation between different mercs. Buns for example is an extremely slow mover while having the same level of action points for shooting as Dr. Q, who in contrast can run circles around nearly every other merc (and then karate chop them). Mercs can run, walk, duck and lie down on the ground to take cover. They can hide and sneak around, climb and jump of stuff in addition to weapon actions.

Shooting is based on physics, in contrast to Xcom, and a bullet, bomb, mortar, missile or knife is an actual thing in the game world that lands or hits somewhere, regardless of whether or not it hit it’s target. Like having action points, this engenders massive nuance to the game world, where bystanders are hit, bullets can shoot through cover and people, can hit gas tanks and break windows. Every shot does something, even if it’s just kicking up some dirt or sand or in some cases, causing massive explosions!

The nuanced combat engine is a lot to take in at first, and I was a bit worried it was too much complexity, but once you get rolling an take your time through the first island fights, you will come out of it knowing almost everything you need to know to succeed.

Weapons

I would be remiss in any review of a game like this without mentioning the vast weapon selection. There are a LOT of guns in this game and like 6 different types of grenades. All the weapons are circa-mid 90’s like the other tech, so Uzi’s and MP5’s abound. While you can buy weapons from Bobby Ray’s, there are rare and wonderful weapons to be found /looted off the map (and some come with certain mercs) and you are well rewarded for a bit of searching around in corners of the map board.

Each class of weapon has some special thing it can do to differentiate it from the other weapon classes, for example there are run and gun options with submachine guns and extra aim actions with rifles, heavy machine guns need to be set up to fire and have very different mechanics than all other weapons (much like ‘overwatch all the time’). This is another brilliant nuance to the games systems that really gets you thinking tactically about how to arm mercs and how to run them in the field.

Late early game through the mid game, my combo was to have a sneaky close combat fighter, a machine gunner and a couple of snipers to tap out anyone that was exposed. If I had enough mercs, I would have a couple of fast sweepers with grenades and the best automatic rifle I could get to finish things off. There were a few guns I found pretty useless in most situations, so even when you get beyond the starting game crap, there are some traps in the weapons you find (maybe they are more optimal with certain mercs?). Do NOT discount pistols in the mid/late game though, as some of them hit really hard and often at close range. Late game you get all the toys so there are oodles of heavy weapons that will AOE enemies who are then ready for the mop up, also due to ‘hardened’ enemies with heavy armor there are tools to hit them with status effects with gas grenades, flashbangs before getting in on a good shooting.

Map design

The strategic map is HUGE. When I finished the tutorial island I was astounded at the size of the overall map and the fact that every single sector has stuff in it to interact with and the variations of terrain are extremely distinct. There are underground caves, deserts, jungle areas, swamps, semi-mountainous regions and cities that have actual buildings with multiple floors (all of which can get blown apart!). Lots of places have little villages or points of interest and even in the most desolate desert regions there will be a burnt out car or truck or cave region to explore. In this you can get totally lost in the game and forget that you need to make cold hard cash to pay Buns to work with Fox! Cash comes from mines, and since they are the center point for most of the non-set piece battles in the game, each of the mine maps are distinct and create varied tactical challenges. Some mines have lots of buildings, others are in deep pits and others are super open with very little in the way of cover. This is critical to the game as you will be fighting over these areas again and again and again.

Strategic movement is pretty easy once you have access to a port or two, but if not, your mercs have to hoof it across some fairly inhospitable regions.

Story

Without any spoilers, you find yourself embroiled in a multi-faction struggle for economic and political control of an area of Western Africa called Grand Chien (big Dog) which is a fantasy mixture of French post-colonial and German post-WW2 gulash filled with all sorts of wacky characters, funny accents and stuff to shoot at. There are nazis, evil pharmaceutical companies, evil mining companies and rogue mercenaries in addition to the inhabitants who are just trying to get through the day without being shot up. The game starts where you have been hired by the President of Grand Chien’s daughter to enact a rescue of the President who has been captured by a mysterious figure.

Along with the main storyline there are countless side quests and some very strange events that happen (not so strange if you played JA2 though) for this rather hapless part of Africa. While the game is an homage of sorts to JA1 and 2, the story is not derivative, despite quite a few easter eggs from the older games.

Characters and the Mercs!

Ahh the JA characters… this is the meat of the JA franchise and why I feel so hollow sometimes with my faceless soldiers from Xcom and other games in the genre that don’t go this far with their character development. This JA has a huge roster of malcontents to deal with, all with tons of dialog, varied skills and specials and unique weapons and traits. Obviously certain mercs hate each other and others end up trying to do each other all the time, some are perfect pairs with tons of mutual dialog with each other. The hiring and firing and managing your team is a huge part of the game and should not be ignored for efficiency, that just wouldn’t be Jagged Alliance now would it? Not to give any spoilers, but if you have never played, you must start out with both Fox and Buns and ride that rollercoaster to the end.

They could have completely screwed the pooch with this part of the game, but it was fantastic– my only small complaint is that they didn’t get the voice actor for Ice quite right…

Challenge Level

JA3 is a challenging game and while the initial island is a bit of a cakewalk, once you get onto the mainland (a must to start making money) the game can start to get very harsh with constant attacks from various factions and the inability to keep up with threats as well as exploration. One thing to note is that you do not have to hold many sectors to make tons of cash, it can be cool to light up most of the map blue for your control, but it is just not needed. Get a mine quick, plan your attack to get your next mine, scout it out, then get it taken. Train militia (Raider is great for this) and then get rolling out.

Synopsis

JA3 is one of the best computer games I’ve played in a long time and is both homage to the older games and pushing the tactical turn based genre forward in terms of core gameplay, unique character/RPG elements and is damn fun to boot. This game blows Xcom away (as it should more than 10 years later). I cannot recommend this one enough.

Warcry Winter Showdown

2025 gaming is off to a great start after Sunday’s Warcry action. I had been planning this even with folks for a few months, trying to get adult’s schedules to align is quite the challenge afterall and Sunday, it happened. We met up over by Old Guard Games (Napoleon’s 2.0) and they had plenty of table space for a couple of Warcry boards. Two of the players had never played before so the first games were teaching games for the most part and I went through the rules quickly before getting stuck into battle. As I’ve played just under 20 times or so, I have the rules down pretty well overall, but there are always a few niggling edge cases to make rulings on in this type of game anyway. I get blamed a lot for overlooking rules when teaching but it’s ALWAYS some sort of edge case, yet I still get yelled at, but I digress.

The first game was the Untamed Beasts (the OG) vs the newish Black Talons mega hunters which felt like the Teen Titans going up against some Viltrumites. We had a “take out each other’s Daggers” mission and while I thought I would get blown to shit, it was a very close match where my Rocktusks took out the Black Talon elf really quick and nearly took out the crossbow gal as well before my dagger was beaten down by Naeve who is a ridiculous powerhouse (and looks like Anissa the Viltrumite as well…). Great game. I was running double Rock Prowler and had a good time with that list.

Untamed Beasts.

uunpainted Neave and the leader of the Untamed Beasts duking it out

Meanwhile the Royal Beastflayers and Rotmire Creed duked it out on a second board. I just got one snap of this one and didn’t get much info except they had some fun and also had nearly the same twist and the same mission as we did.

The third game was a 4 player Tower capture scenario where I busted out my Wildecorps Hunters. Even with 800 points, I was able to field a good force and 4 dogs! This was my first time playing them and strategically I was going to use the dogs to hold down the enemies and then knock the shit out of anyone on the tower with the Arbalester. I had some good rolls there to pop off some enemies but my dogs could not handle the melee meatgrinder near the tower well enough to get the (death grip) grabs. My sweepers that were going to come in and take the tower were wiped out by the boss man of the Royal Beastflayers. In the end, the Beastflayers and the Rotmire Creed decimated each other and the Black Talons tried some of their tricks to teleport to the top of the tower which, despite the fact that Neave Blacktalon was taken out of the game by a TRIPLE 6 ROLL from the Rotmires, one of their meaties climbed to the top of the tower and won them the game. They are really tough to take out and Neave’s move 7 makes them challenging to deal with on missions where the rest get outmaneuvered by chaffffffff.

Painting

I painted pretty furiously in the last week to get my last 6 models done for the Untamed Beasts. This included a few models that I really didn’t need (2 extra plainsrunners) that I had put together to make a silly mostly plainsrunners list at one point. I think the Untamed Beasts have a lot of solid options but my superstars are the Rocktusk prowlers, which I procrastinated a long time to paint as I’m traditionally not good at horses/animals. When I finally did, they turned out great except that when I varnished them they got frosted IN WINTER. I have no idea at first how this happened except that my brush might have been too wet with water to start the process, and when I mixed the batch up of varnish to paint on, the water got trapped in the recesses. Later I realized that I had used Lamia Medium rather than Contrast Medium by mistake, so that frosting was the medium and NOT trapped water. I tried olive oil and gloss coating them again, and neither worked, so I had to reshade various areas and it worked out OK, not perfect, but what is?

All in all, a great day of Warcry, one of GW’s best games and it made the work of putting together and painting all that terrain worth while. Now that I’ve finished my Beasts, it’s time to get back to the terrain painting… ugh.

Nosferatu – a successful remake in a world of shytte remakes

We get a lot of remakes, Roller Ball, Total Recall, Planet of the Apes. Many of them are jack shit and should have probably gone straight to DVD / Streaming. With Nosferatu, we got a real good one. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve seen the original, which I do not think I’ve seen in it’s entirety ever, just caught parts when it was on TV as a kid mostly not changing the channel out of curiosity (like when Metropolis would be on).

I’m not a film critic and mostly like trash movies, but the cinematography was amazing, the set design, costume design and atmosphere was spot on. Acting was superb from everyone. Pacing is critical in this type of film and Nosferatu is a long film at around 2 hours. Knowing the story pretty well, it took a long time during the middle of the film to get the conclusion started, but when it got rolling, the payoff was well worth it. Apparently there is going to be a longer version at some point, likely with a bit more in the beginning of the story.

The real star of this was Depp’s kid, who knocked it out of the park. She had a really challenging role combining what looked like early Olivia Hussey with Isabel Adjani (not just the seizure scenes but acting as well). I’ve only seen her in The King with Chalemet and Pattison (great movie) so she was basically an unknown to me –and rocked it. I don’t know if it was on purpose, but she looked like Olivia Hussey.

The other star was the design of the vampire which is slowly revealed throughout the film. It’s a must see just for that if nothing else. Unlike the horror of the Lighthouse, The Northman and the Witch, Nosferatu is pretty tame on the gore and nudity. While it has tits in it a couple of times, I’d say it’s not too bad of a film for kids over 13. Otherwise, it’s a movie that everyone should see.

2024 A year of stuff

Ah it’s Xmas break and I get to write about games that I liked and put a picture of Rebecca Bagnol yet again as by far the undisputed hottest chick on the entire planet. But first, the less important stuff, the games of the year and film, and books.

Board Games

For 2024 Arcs takes the prize but definitely not the base game, which is just goofing around with mechanics compared to the full game with Blighted Reach. The only reason to play Arcs base game is to prepare you for either a one off or campaign game with the expansion. I am only three games in (full game that is) and I’m loving it. The gamespace with the imperials and the Fates is crazy, there is REAL negotiation which Oath was completely missing, you are not at each others throats from turn 1 and may well work together to meet each other’s goals, as long as you are getting farther ahead in power than the other player. Can’t wait to play more.

Video Games

2024 was a bit soft on the video game front compared to 2023, which had a ton of great games. This year there are two that stand out above the rest (that I had time to play). I’m getting a bit older and I just sort of want to play the stuff I know well with some exceptions. Give me Quake 3 and the original MOO and I’ll be… almost happy. That said, as predicted when it came out, my favorite single player game of 2024 was far and away UNICORN OVERLORD. I’m not even completely done with the game but it has been my go to for car trips and plane rides and sitting around time on the Switch (which my kids finally got tired of playing on after years of never seeing the thing). The art, the theme, the combat, the food porn and the incredibly depth you can go to equipping and setting the ‘programming’ for your battle groups makes Ogre Battle fanatics like myself blush with joy. That game and ‘Soul Nomad and the World Eaters’ paved the way to Unicorn Overlord being one of my favorite games in that genre, despite the fact that the main two characters are straight out of every generic anime game. I am a horny old goat, so the subtle (compared to Dragon’s Crown) and in some cases hilarious naughtiness of the female character’s outfits and bouncy/swaying just pushes this over the edge into fantastic land in addition to the hilarious food porn sequences. Vanillaware just went to 11 on the tactical and artistic aspects of this game. Overall, a total package that I will be playing for a long time.

Unicorn Overlord is a single player game though, and does not really encompass the full joy of personal computer or console gaming with frenemies. For 2024, the most excellent, frustrating and deep multiplayer game goes solidly to Solium Infernum.

SI is fundamentally Fantasy Flight’s Warrior Knights but taken to 11 in complexity with way, way too many options to even conceptualize into any coherent strategy as a new player. Yet with more plays, the daemonic flower of this game opens up and it is a thing of beauty and madness extraordinaire. I’m going to do a review of the game on here so I won’t wax and tax much more until then, but like Armello (by the same developers), this is a very strong PC Computer “board game” style game, made even better by having tick-based turns (where everyone turns in their turns to the server and then it runs the turns with the orders all in). It’s pretty fun to play against the AI, but they will lay a beat down on you if you don’t know how to play, which I appreciate greatly as it helps vs human players more than a poofter AI.

over time, you learn to whip the AI’s ass, even though it seems to cheat, which is fitting really.

Movies

This is so obvious it’s barely worth mentioning as it’s DUNE 2 for sure. I went to see it three times in the theater and it held up every time. I liked Terrifier 3 and the new Mad Max movie quite a bit, but neither hold a candle to the DUUUUUUNNNE. The first one had some dialog problems here and there that annoyed me, a few times the characters spoke a bit too 1990’s if that makes sense rather than ten thousand years in the future. I didn’t notice this much at all in the second installment. The key things for Dune 2 to pull off were the battle scenes and man they knocked those out of the park.

Books

I got stuck on a few books this year, mistakenly starting off the year with the poorly written Gideon the Ninth which I got for my daughter to read and wanted to check it out first. I barely finished and she set it aside after about 100 pages. I then went on to the excellent and horrifying ‘Thirty Years War’ by Wedgwood, then THE TERROR, which was probably the best book I’ve read in a long time. Give it a go (it’s better than the show, which was also quite good).

I re-read Good Night, My Sweet by Jim Thompson before starting Confessions of an Economic Hit-man, which is a solid read but really could use a complete rewrite. It reads like a self help book a bit with addons and addons and addons rather than a cohesive text. The core ideas and accounts are important enough to push through the whole thing. You can learn why so many countries despise the United States.

RPG

Tabletop RPG wise I only played /ran Dungeon Crawl Classics this year and I have no regrets! I ran Beneath the Well of Brass twice (followed up by Temple Siege) and in my kid’s campaign, the great little crime module from the Lankhmar line: No Small Crimes. Well of Brass is a great starter module as it has a lot of chances for a TPK, but if those are avoided it’s not super deadly.

FLUX AI

I spanned a lot of time learning FLUX and COMFYUI: how to write prompts, build out LORAs and generally do silly as things with it. Now in a pinch I could whip out an advertising campaign for just about anything with photos in about 2 days or less of jagging around with it. Of course, I’m using it for stupid stuff such as the following:

Hottest Chick on the planet, 2024

It’s the same again this year: le Bagnol.

2024: Bagnol’d.

Return of the greatest fighting game ever: Virtua Fighter 6 in development

We’ve known this for about a year, but there was still skepticism around the project really having legs with Sega. Recently, that has changed and VF6 in all it’s glory is happening. This will make our current decade of tons of amazing fighting games go from very good to the best decade ever.

Why is Virtua Fighter the best if you’ve never played:

  • 3 buttons – the game is easy for new players to pick up (for most characters– not Akira)
  • Insane character depth: even though the game has a smaller roster than other fighting games, players can play characters in such radically different ways that it just doesn’t matter, you will face a different Akira almost every time you play vs human players
  • There are no tiers. I’ve seen tier lists based on tournament wins, but then the next one it’s completely different based on which characters players want to play, so if you decide on a character to main, you can have confidence that you will be able to be successful if you put the work in.
  • EVERYONE HAS COMMAND THROWS (and they are awesome)

I’ll likely be writing a lot on this as more information comes to light, but C-Money has some thoughts on critical system design/characters.