TugandRun made it from lv10 to lv20. nothing too harrowing if i remember it all correctly. it’s slow going with my necro build/style of play. i found a unique dagger that has +100% MF. that dagger makes the set items POP! pretty sure TugandRun pulled in 4-6 set items during the lv’ing from 10 to 20, also pulled more runes.
biotchlips the assASSin will be next.
I really am not a fan of politics– as a history buff, it gets all too cyclical for me at times. However, I took a listen to Dan Carlin’s Common Sense this afternoon for the first time and it deals quite a bit with the attack on public sector unions, teachers and the like by Wisconsin’s corporatist-cunt-in-residence-governor, but more importantly, America’s failure to manage it’s decline properly (a theme Dan Carlin has focused on in a couple of his history podcasts in the last year). Good stuff and worth a listen certainly, especially since it’s explicitly centrist. I for one think Wisconsin deserves what it gets for how it’s people voted last year. Though, how can you stop a group from collectively bargaining? They can strike or have sit ins or marches– you can’t stop it no matter how you legislate it. What are you going to do? Put all the teachers in the state in jail? Can they be replaced by Chinese workers making $.50 per hour?
As of 1:10 PM today, I made my quota for miniatures painted for the month. 4 Ungor, 6 Gor AHW for a total of 68 points added to the 1000 or so painted I have. That means In 5 months if I can keep pace I’ll have an additional 340 points for the beastmen army. That’s it? Ouch….
These were from a set off ebay that I picked up pre-built and pre-primed, so there are some mold line problems on some of them. Recipes– I hate it when people post pics of their stuff and don’t post recipes. Flesh is over a black undercoat, Dark Flesh, Vermin Brown and then Vermin brown with a slight amount of bronzed flesh for the final. I use the dynamic layering method so no washes, and only drybrushing where it really makes sense. The axes turned out pretty well as I overbrushed the blades and then cleaned up the head of the axe with a wash of black to just lightly cover the dry brush. Again, these are core troops, so if hold one to your eye you will see the impressionist style that layering methods create (as opposed to blending). and each color only at most, four layers (In contrast to 10+ for a blended model).
This batch of models includes the first time in history that I enjoyed painting shields. The plastic shields GW is putting out are just exquisite.
Now I just have to keep momentum and get more on the table to drive the horn in some more Night Goblin ass. Next up is 5 more Gor AHW.
Wisconsin state championship in Shadowfist this coming weekend at Plattcon. I’m either going to play my Dragon ‘A List’ deck or the Hand/Dragon big Bruiser cycler. Neither deck has done great at the Gen Con tournaments, but I’ve just missed getting to the final by a few points with both. I’m thinking of stripping out the legendary Iron Monkey from the aforementioned Big Bruiser cycler as he really is just has a giant target on his chest any time he hits the table and what I’ve found over the years is that he just doesn’t take sites all that often. I only got one box of Empire of Evil so far but there are some juicy tidbits in there to throw in to each deck– it’s just deciding which NOT to put in that is the challenge. One thing I love about the Shadowfist tournaments is that they are friendly and fun AND hardcore competitive. It’s a very tough blend to hit for a game, and a game community as getting walloped is usually never fun in a game–and Shadowfist has a lot of walloping all round.
Looks like AGTFOS is getting a new printing from Steve Jackson games with an actual real board and thick counters. I’ve gotten about 10 games of this since I picked it up for 3$ on clearance at Kay Bee toys when I was 12 or so and it’s solid 2 player fun and one of Tom Wham’s best. Now if we could get The Great Khan game printed on a real board with real cards and a few tweaks to speed up combat that would be pure dwarven gold.
Over the summer I fell into obsession with old west miniature gaming, well, painting them that is as I only got to play once so far. I had a goal to get through that involved painting 8 miniatures and completing two full gangs for Warhammer Historicals Legends of the Old West–gangs that I have been ‘working’ on since 2005. Over the Xmas break, I was able to finish all but two, and knocked the remainder out over the worst weeks of January.
Now after my first play of Warhammer 8th edition, I took a long view over my painting table and backlog in order to get to 2000 points painted. 50 beastmen, 1 chariot, a chaos spawn, a hound of scathatch, a giant and 5 harpies. 59 miniatures all told, with two of those being big models that will take weeks to complete. At my rate– about 5 miniatures per year that will take me until my kids are deep into high school. The bottom line is, I’ve never tried to paint an entire army before– sure Necromunda gangs, blood bowl teams, etc. but nothing equaling over 100 models– it seems totally insane. So to keep it reasonable, but to have a goal, I’m going to try to paint 10 miniatures per month, not including the big shit–the Giant will take me more than a month probably. At that rate I should be able to spend a few hours here and there on week nights and then one big chunk of time on either weekend day.
The motivational part is that my 1000 points painted hit the table this weekend, and though it was chaotic game where we absolutely did not get the rules right, my stuff just looked totally awesome on the table, even painted as mediocre as it is. Of course, the game itself was just great fun, 4 hours went by in a snap (and I stood for the whole game, forgetting to get a chair!).
The game was against Night Goblins, with their whirling fanatics, a doom diver and a stone thrower. All three did horrific damage during the initial turns of the game, but not enough to save the hapless goblins once the beastmen closed in for the kill. The beastmen themselves aren’t that great, just tough, but when you take into account that most of the time they can reroll misses on any round of combat with a slight chance of Frenzy happening, they get a ton of hits in combat with the potential, however slight, of just going totally fucking apeshit. Though the beasts smashed most of the Goblin army it was actually a very close run thing and a lot of luck in the pinch.
What I loved was the huge combats– just too fun, but also the insane terrain on the board. We randomly rolled and just about every roll had some crazy magical mystery terrain. The forest on my left was a fungus forest that caused Stupidity in my army, but helped the goblins! In the center was some sort of Necrosphinx who granted wishes or ate characters who tried to solve her riddle, and on the right flank was a Tower of Blood overlooking a dismal fen. The tower of blood shot the dicepools into the stratosphere– causing units within 6″ to have Frenzy (double attacks) and Hatred (Reroll misses). Never in my wargaming career have I rolled so many dice.
I’ve got a medium-size collection of gaming books, old D&D, some of the older White Wolf stuff dealing with the effete, paederast blood-suckers, loads of the obligatory Warhammer Fantasy/Battle/40K books, almost everything published for Exalted (of course) and quit a few random books here and there bunged from musty used bookstores I couldn’t pass up at the time. Many of these books are impressive in their binding and artwork and design, some are pretty hefty collections of paper, especially the 2nd Edition Exalted books– however, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer size and gleaming glory of the Warhammer 8th edition hardcover. I’d even seen it and handled it in stores before, but you forget you see, you forget just how huge it is. Clocking in at over 500 pages literally packed with full-color images throughout–it can easily be deemed the Armageddon of miniature war-game books. I contrast it to my first miniature wargame rule set from the late 70’s: Swords and Spells and it’s staggering reminder of how far we’ve come in the hobby– that a company that sells toy soldiers and some books to a tiny portion of the planet’s population could pull together the cash to write, design and publish something so massive it cannot even be used as crapper reading without a crapper reading stand– it’s just that friggin’ huge.
And so officially begins my descent yet another miniature gaming obsession that will produce probably less than 20 painted miniatures and 2-3 actual games in the next year. Sad but probably true.
I have made statments to the effect that while Minecraft owns the limelight at the moment, Dwarf Fortress will eventually be the game you’ll want to be playing long term as Minecraft is really just a timewaster that runs out of steam pretty quickly. Given that Dwarf Fortress is probably a decade away from a release most people would want to play, Minecraft has a long long time to be the darling of procedurally generated mining games–however, if you can brave the incomplete-ness, there is a new Dwarf Fortress release. Clay, Caravans, Bees, Sheep shearing– tons of stuff in this build– but I wonder if you can still build a ton of fishing infrastructure only to find that fishing hasn’t been implemented…
I got in on a 4 man, 4 planet game with the new expansion and it was great, though I got my ass kicked all across the galaxy during this particular game. Fantasy Flight continues to prove that they are making the ultimate version of Cosmic Encounter with no let up in sight. The new expansion is mostly about the new set of 20 aliens, but the 7th player cards and ships helps (black looks much better than I thought it would).
As for new rules and stuff in the box, the Hazard deck was entertaining in our first game, but it definitely made the game more crazy. One of the Hazard cards shuffles all the cards in the hands of the player and redistributes them (same number of cards, just random ones) and this was a game changer as the landscape of Flare cards was instantly different. A second hazard card is proof that the fantasy flight version of Cosmic Encounter will never have the Reverse Cone as one of the new Hazard cards did just that (Defensive allies get a base, offensive allies get cards). Really thinking about the Reverse cone and the hassles surrounding it (it comes up too often in the Mayfair version) I don’t think I will miss it in the FF version.
Though others may dig it, the alien power I played in this first game did I was not a huge fan of: Warhawk. Essentially, the Warhawk never negotiates and gets either a free Morph or a negotiate card converts to a 00 attack card. I am a wheeler and dealer and not having the option of negotiating with other aliens is tough to swallow tactically, and also means you are always going to have to fight for your bases. With so many better combat powers out there, Warhawk is going to have a tough time competing when he can only fight it out all the time.
All in all, art, components and new rules in Cosmic Conflict are top notch and if we needed even more excuse to just play Cosmic Encounter over all other games, here it is.