Shadow Wars and Whatnot40K - 18 SEPT 2017

Where has the blog been? Not gaming, that's for sure. So the only thing to do to rectify that is........

Shadow Wars : Armageddon

It's not going to surprise anyone who knows me that I enjoy old GW and that Shadow Wars is the right format of Necromunda-Adjacent flavour to appeal to me. One book with all the rules and warband rosters you need to play anything 40K is pretty great value for those who have some old models about but don't feel like diving back into the large scale wargame.

It's also not going to surprise anyone that I picked the Inquisition and Ger picked Space Marines. So my Inquisitor gathered some expendables and Ger gathered the Battle Brothers and we went to (shadow) war!

Let's see - I started with an Inquisitor with Plasma Pistol and Power Sword, a Crusader with Power Sword and Force Shield, an Acolyte-Sniper with Sniper Rifle and Telescopic Sights, Camo Gear, an Acolyte with a chainsword, an Acolyte with a lasgun and an Initiate with a Bolter. In the first game I gave Frag Grenades to most of the crew, but then I was worried about being able to crack Space Marine armour, so I took them all back and gave lasgun-acolyte some... er, Krak grenades. This was probably a tactical error in a way, Chainsword-acolyte has the most motivation to get close, so I swapped them to him in the second game. My advice though, if your roster comes with an option for Krak grenades, take those bad boys.
I think you can see my full roster after the two games here, which is a handy warband builder. I added a Shotgun Acolyte after the first game and a Shotgun Initiate after the second.

For fun, we both had 1 Promethium at the start to hire a special operative with. I took a Death Cult Assassin with the Executioner Greatblade. Ger bolstered his Space Marine Scout Sergeant, 3 Scouts & 1 Recruit with a terrifying Terminator with a Power Sword. One of those Scouts was lugging about a Heavy Bolter, which gave him a cool full auto advantage.



Ger's ongoing terrain building gave us a great table to skulk about on. Game One was our proof of concept, so we just did "Kill Team Fight" - our guys run into each other and start shooting. Between my Assassin, my Inquisitor and those aforementioned Krak Grenades, the Space Marines suffered at my hands much worse than I did. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut when Ger finally got me to take a bottle (morale) test I rolled boxcars - double 6. So he won the game, but it felt a bit unsatisfying. We were just starting to smash each other to pieces and my guys ran away? 25% casualties being break point feels a bit early for action, but I suppose the teams have a reason to be cautious in the milieu of Shadow Wars, where supposedly supplies are hard to come by or whatever.



We set up for game two, where we got "Hit and Run" on the chart. Ger got the defender, so his guys are in camp when my guys decide to nobble them. My secret objective was "Shock Tactics", so I had to get someone off the far side of the table. I spent my consolation prize of one Promethium on re-hiring the Assassin, her speed meant she'd be straight off the far side given a couple of turns of running. Two of the scouts I mauled had to miss a game, so Ger hired in a fresh scout to replace them. He didn't spend any Promethium on a special op for some reason, which made my life easier.



Mad Chainsword Acolyte MacGee had the Krak Grenades, so he lobbed one through a window and blew up Ger's Sergeant straight away. My sniper picked his sniper straight off the ledge he was on. His sniper had downed my Crusader with some great rolls on his part and some bad rolls on my part, but he also failed his ammo check roll, so Ger didn't really care that I shot the Space Marine who was up really, really high armed only with a knife.



Ger's last two Scouts maneuvered about the central mass to get a bead on me. Cautiously, because he could see the Assassin pelting past him and he didn't know where she was going or why. She had cut one of his Scouts to teeny tiny pieces in Game One before the Terminator punched her in the face, but the Terminator only won because of a huge difference in our dice rolls. He had learned to be cautious of the crazy Assassin lady. His Heavy Bolter Scout swung around the corner and opened up on my Inquisitor, taming him out of action. And........ I failed a bottle roll again. We decided to play on and see where the game went as though I had passed, because ending on turn 3 seemed pointless. We kept taking bottle rolls, but we just kept a running total rather than apply the effects. In the end, I only failed that one and I think Ger failed two or three.



I had initially sent some acolytes around the side with the Scout Sniper to make Ger have to guess what I was up to, but when the Scout Sniper got downed early it meant I had three guys just wandering about to no effect. I think I could have downed all of the Marines if I could have applied all their force too. The forces in Shadow War are too small for feints and things. If I did it over I'd just have them all pinch in one side and have the Assassin still do the running.

I ran off the side of the board in like, turn 5 or 6, winning the game (technically I bottled out first, but we were finding that a bit boring, as I said). I think we'd be inclined to increase the bottle limit to 50% casualties or similar if we get a chance to play again. In funny result banter, all Ger's injury rolls got him guys missing games and head wounds and so forth, and my Inquisitor got the "What doesn't kill you..." result, so I got a free skill from getting shot. I like the Inquisitor list, there's plenty of variety in guys and gear to assemble a fun team. I should probably shove my Inquisitor into Power Armour in the future. I was surprised there was no option for a Personal Force Field, which is a 40K staple for Inquisitors and Rogue Traders from the eras of games I'm most familiar with. Space Marine Scouts are tough hardasses, but even though my guys are way more fragile, you can equip them with enough punch to knock the Marines down if you can get close.

Close Combat is satisfying and brutal and shooting is very 40K standard. The injury stuff feels a bit loose, it's easy to knock people over but not super easy to get them off the table permanently. I think successive hits should increase the chance of being KO'ed or something, especially on guys who are already down? You could tweak rules forever, but Shadow War:Armageddon is a great, quick, fairly robust ruleset. And it has all the current 40K staple factions in the book (so no Gangers, Squats, Ratlings, Beastmen or Arbites, but you know how that goes) so you can get started with whatever you've got.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Gerard somewhere West of here, on the Internet. I'll do my best to update with some more gaming stuff soon! I've been in a Fifth Edition D&D game that I've been enjoying, I recently finished running the old WFRP Doomstones Campaign and I am also meant to be running an...... experiment.

Bandits, bandits bandits! Frostgrave 01 DEC 2016

Our pursuit of building the better Frostgrave scenario continues with this one -

Bandits! Bandits! Bandits!
by Donal

A bunch of bandits are trying to profit from Felstad the same way our Wizards are - by grabbing treasure! They didn’t reckon on a pack of warbands turning up while they were trying to slip away with the loot. They hole up and try and sit the fight out, not realising that greedy Wizards will happily sacrifice soldiers to root out a nest of Bandits.

Set-Up

There are 1 bandit Archer and 1 bandit Thug (stats as per normal Warband members) per player, plus a bandit Knight as a “leader”. They’ve already collected one third of the treasure chests (1 per player) and have established a fort somewhere near the middle of the board. This should be a square about 10” per side with some high ground for the Archers to stand on. The Thugs should be grouped with the Treasures behind some barriers, walls or other 1”+ high obstacles.

Special Rules

The bandit Archers shoot at the closest visible Warband member every turn in the Monster Phase. The Knight and Thugs do nothing until a Warband member crosses the barricade. Once that happens, they move to attack the closest Warband member within their area. If a Monster Phase starts with only bandits in the area after they've been engaged in combat, the surviving Thugs each pick up a chest and attempt to make it off a random board edge, escorted by the Archers. The Thugs move directly towards the edge, only fighting if engaged (although they will force combat within 1” of a Warband member), using both actions to move. The Archers move first and then will either use their second action to shoot the closest Warband member within LOS or move again. They will stay within 6” of the Thugs. They continue until they are dead or off the edge of the board.

Treasure & Rewards

Each bandit a Warband kills (regardless of which member of the warband kills them) nets the Wizard killing them 10 extra XP.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This scenario worked fairly well, in that the 3 treasures gathered by the bandits drew us all into conflict for the "pot" of treasures that they were guarding. It made for a bit of a snafu in the middle where no model I sent in came out alive! Eoghan picked the side facing the bandit's compound on set up, so as myself and Ger tried to come around at them and into his LOS, he punished us for it. And he ended up having the shortest escape distance (only by inches, but still). In the end, the bandit Archers were the most dangerous part of the equation, so we obviously wiped them out as soon as we could. The others didn't do so well, but more on that in a second.



Set-up time! Eoghan is coming in on the long edge on the bottom of this pic. Ger is at the top. I'm on the short edge on the right of the picture. The bandits are that little gathering just outside the round-topped building in the middle.



Look how tightly packed my set-up was! Close, tight, professional. There's no way a group this good looking could leave the game with 66% casualties, is there? Yes. Yes there is. 4 miniatures walked off the board under their own power, everyone else was broken somewhere.



Eoghan gathered under cover just outside the bandit's LOS. One of the bandit Archers on the roof one-shot no-scope killed one of Ger's Archers with a Critical Hit in the first turn, but then after that they didn't have a massive impact, except making us wary of ranged attacks as usual. Eoghan made devastating use of a spell he hasn't unleashed before - Scattershot, which makes a low-power attack against every enemy figure within 12". He hit my guys and the bandits again and again and again until all those low-power attacks added up and we were on our knees.



Ger came in behind the building and had to work around the long way for the pot of treasures. He definitely got in the mix though, and certainly caused me a whole mess of trouble during the game. In fact, myself and Ger ground up against each other so hard that Eoghan would have had an easy game - if not for wandering monsters!



Our love of wandering monsters destroyed Eoghan this game - a White Gorilla came in an single-handedly flattened 2 or 3 of his dudes and wounded his Sellsword. His left flank was decimated by one big monster wandering on field. Brutal. This left him without the reserve he would have needed to drive Ger away and really win all the marbles.



Ger had acquired a new Construct, so he made this charming home-made model with a creepy, creepy face on the front. It got killed this game though, so there's no need to worry about seeing this nightmare smiling at us again. At least until he gets another one.



The carnage rolled on and on in the middle of the board, but as I said no-one I sent in came out in one piece. Eoghan came out with 4 treasures in the end, I got 2 and Ger got 3. A slight imbalance in treasure return, but still close enough that the scenario seems kind of balanced. The bandits might need some kind of AI behaviour to make them do something. The poor Thugs and Knight got ripped apart without achieving anything except delay.

We might be able to get another game in next week? Who knows with the way schedules align. We can but hope!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

Another day, another Frostgrave 10 NOV 2016

Yay! Game on in the city of Felstad. We had to rush this game as Ger had to head to work asap, but it turned out that my newly written scenario (below) made us hustle as much as possible!

The Piper of Felstad
By Donal

Unknown to our heroes, an unusual musical device attracts monsters to itself. The magical seal on a nearby treasure is currently keeping it inactive, Once that seal is disturbed, however….

Set-up

Set up 3 treasures per player as normal. Something can be used to represent the musical device if desired, but it’s not necessary.

Special Rules

No roll is made for wandering monsters. Instead, every time a treasure is collected, roll a dice. On a 16+, the seal on the musical device has been cracked. Add 3 to the roll for every treasure already collected. Once the seal has been broken, a random encounter is generated every turn until the end of the game.

Treasure & Rewards

The Wizard who gets the chest that breaks the seal off the board gains 50 extra xp from studying the seals on the chest.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We kind of forgot how my Special Rules were written, so we may have rolled for wandering monsters as well as the whole sealymajig. We still love monsters in our games of Frostgrave, so anything that gives us monsters, monsters, monsters is key to us enjoying the game. It turned out that the third chest picked up - by my Barbarian - broke the seal and then there were Monsters EVERYWHERE! Well, actually, most of our results were Giant Rats, which turned up to be not that dangerous a threat. Maybe the SR should limit it to Level 2 or Level 3 encounters (See Frostgrave rule book if you want to find out more about encounter levels). There was only one real moment of terror (for me) when an Ice Toad ripped one of my guys to pieces and badly damaged another. Here's how it panned out - Ice Toads do treble damage and he rolled a natural 20 on the dice, which causes double damage. So my poor Infantryman, who has 10 Health, took 60 damage? It has to be the most punishment one of our dudes have taken so far.



I didn't bother with too many pictures, we were moving too fast for that kind of thing. I'm coming in at the narrow end here, Eoghan is on the long end to my right and Ger on the long end to the left. I've been mostly taking a short table edge on set-up (although Frostgrave is meant to be played on a square field, so bear that in mind on this ramble). A short front means it's easier to project control down the board, particularly with the way that LOS and missile stuff works in Frostgrave. But the point *is* to get in, collect something and leave anywhere on your edge of the board. So do the guys get an advantage on the long edges as they get nearly half as long again to escape with treasures off? Also, this session ended up with a weird case of "travelling" - Eoghan's Wizard almost went the whole way across the board to Ger's side, which has been unusual in our experience. If I wanted to do the same thing down the length of the board, it would take a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer journey.



Eoghan came in packed tight and ready for action. He continued his "everyone gets hopped up on goofballs" strategy. They all drink a ton of potions on turn one and come in buffed (we use blue tokens for buffs). I don't know how much he's spending per game on his guys weird habits, but it must be adding up.





Ger came in strong in the middle and then slightly thinner towards the end furthest from me. He then climbed on a lot of stuff. It was weird in this game, none of us could cast a spell to save our lives. We had to spend health non stop to get spells to work. Ger got a 1 twice on Summon Demon, which creates a hostile Demon that attacks you straight away! Considering we've all levelled up our spells so that they're easier to cast, some of them as much as the system allows, it's weird that we failed more than probably even our first game! Our baby Wizards put us to shame.



Ger and Eoghan clashed hard in the middle of the field. Through poor luck and (probably) those extra Demon attacks, though, this time Ger was the one who bled most profusely. He had an impressive casualty list by the end of the game.



I had a more cautious game ( as usual ), but I tried my hand at a bit of flair here and there. My thief ran along this roof and jumped onto a nearby tower for a satisfying treasure chest collection.



My Archers and Apprentice combination still should be a good base of fire, but my Apprentice suffered the same terrible spell casting as everyone else and my Archers continue to be useless. They contribute a fear factor at least, I suppose. Keeps the guys wary.

Another cracking game of Frostgrave. The extra monsters (and there was loads) added a decent amount of extra violence. We got three treasure chests out each, and again, balanced rewards suggests a fairly balanced scenario. Very unbalanced casualties, think Ger must have had an 80% KO rate on his permanent warband members. I don't know when we'll next have a chance to play, hopefully the stars align next week, but Eoghan has written a crazy scenario that involves a Dragon that might make for another bloodbath of the highest order.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

(Frost)Grave of the Vampire - 20 OCT 2016

We squeezed in the 9th round of our Frostgrave campaign last night with some hackin' and slashin' and... another scenario we wrote ourselves! The next few weeks at work are going to be crazy, so who knows when our tenth game will be? But anyway -

Intercept the loot!
- By Donal

Word has gotten around that a Vampire is trying to accumulate wealth and Magical Treasures to challenge all these upstart Wizards that have turned up since he thawed out. Grab the treasure he’s sending his minions out to get before he gets too powerful!

Set-up

1 incoming group of 3 armoured skeletons per player, each carrying 1 treasure. They start 9” in from a table edge that a player is setting up on. Their base is on the side opposite them with a Vampire and 2 more Skeleton Champions (+1 fight, +2 damage - 2 handed weapons).

Set up 2 more treasures per player as usual.

Special Rules

The incoming groups make their way towards their base unless engaged in combat. They will force combat if within 1". They all move at half speed, but only one is carrying the treasure (mark as usual).

The vampire obeys normal rules for monsters up to 12" from their base. If he gets to 12", he stays at 12" until there's no one in his LOS. He then automatically moves back towards the door of their base. Unlike a normal Vampire, he also has access to Bone Dart at base casting ability (difficulty 8, +5 shooting attack). He will use this on the closest warband member within LOS outside 12” from the base every turn. Randomly determine any ties.

Treasure & Rewards

The carried Treasure chests are worth +50 gold coins. Killing the vampire nets a wizard +50 xp.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought the Vampire would scratch our Frostgrave monster lust itch, but things were not to quite turn out that way. The Vampire's stats are badass and they're immune to non-magical attacks, so... dangerous, right?


A shot of the action just as turn 1 was in progress. The Vampire's crypt was on the long edge to the left, I'm coming in from the closest side. Ger entered from opposite the crypt and Eoghan is on the far end.


This is my crew working their way in. My plan was to Fog my war forward so the Vampire wouldn't Bone Dart me into oblivion. My Sellsword and my Thug have Magic Weapons and I was going to have them take care of the Vampire. The LOS rules for the monsters means that the Fog would stop them coming my way when I got close. This did not work to my advantage, so it shows you can be acting too smart. Also, the houses and things I assembled using a hot glue gun are already starting to peel apart, but the ones stuck with UHU haven't even dislodged. UHU is King, my friends.



My Apprentice, both Archers and my Ranger, New Guy, held the flank closest to Ger with instructions to pepper everything that raised its head with arrows. This generally kept Ger from putting the heat on my flank, albeit mostly cos of the stellar spellcasting from my Apprentice and less from the haphazard archery from the minions.



Ger came in strong from the middle of his side. The Summoner rules from the main book are starting to tilt in his favour a lot as his wizard becomes more proficient. He now tends to have a lot of Major Demons wandering the field. Necromancy's limit to one crappy zombie has me jealous. I suppose I have to diversify into the Darker Arts to catch up.



He was using some Age of Sigmar Khorne dude as a proxy for his Demon this game. That's him in the middle, rampaging through the ruins of a house.



Eoghan came in in a tight wedge from his side and crashed directly into the Skeleton convoy near him (see the scenario rules, above). As I've said before, Eoghan plays a bit more aggressively than us and has taken some weird turns. We use the Blue counters to indicate a buff on the miniatures, so you'll see a lot of blue tokens near his crew.



He's taken into the habit of buying half a dozen Potions of Strength before every game and basically having his guys go around hopped up on potions in every fight. It's becoming standard now for the first action for most of his guys to down potions and start charging!

So, what was I saying earlier about the Vampire and not quite adding a lot to the fight, never mind being too clever with LOS on my part? Well, with a big chunk of Eoghan's warband entering directly into his LOS, the Vampire wandered over that way - where an awesome roll on a spell from Eoghan's Apprentice destroyed him in one hit. The Vampire was never to have much of an effect on anything! Such is the life of a monster in Frostgrave.

Another cracking game of Frostgrave. It was very even, with each of us pulling out 3 treasures, including one special one each (50 extra gold by Scenario Special Rules, above). The XP drift can be amazing with the "successful spells cast" count - Ger's Apprentice barely succeed on any spell during the game, but I got every single one. The difference really begins to reel out over 7 turns. As I said, it may be quiet for a week or two on the game front, but we'll find some way to put up something here.

Oh, we also played a quick round of the new GW Game Gorechosen after, which is quite silly but very satisfying. I would recommend it to a friend. The guys over at the Scale Creep blog have been having some fun with its release with their "Haemo-Erotic Tag" posts, so that was actually what drove me to pick it up. It's a very reasonable price, although I have no idea how replayable it will be. I got a win by decapitating Ger and kicking Eoghan into a pit, so if that kind of story appeals, you'll like it!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

Keeping it Frostgrave 23 SEPT 2016

So after a long month of work, work, work, we finally got together for another Frostgrave spin. We're running with 14+ for a random monster appearance, but it barely made any difference. Only once, where Eoghan's Sellsword got ganked by a freak roll and a pair of zombies.



The scenario we went with this time was The Keep, which places the treasures in the middle of teleportation circles - finish your move in the circles and you get sent to one of the other ones at random! It made for a nail-biting mechanic that dumped people's Wizards and warriors into the middle of other people's set-up's. It. Was. Crazy. Some of the turns made for serious bloodbaths. The only solution I could think of was to have my Wizard down a Potion of Invulnerability and take the trip (the Wizard got some bonus XP if they experienced the teleportation). The Potion gives you a one-turn invulnerability that I used to pop behind Ger's lines and then RUN LIKE CRAZY.



That's my tall Necromantic drink of water beside Ger's hand - Ger studiously ignored me while I was unkillable and I'm sure he knew I was getting the hell out asap too ( my reputation for "caution" is something the guys are used to now ). His guys were filing past to go grab a rich pot of non-teleporting location treasures in the middle of the board.



I made some little rimmed 2" circles to stand in for the teleporters. Eoghan tends to be ballsier and more risk-taking than myself or Ger, so his guys were hopping in and out of teleporters far more than us.



And in...



And out... all my photos seem to include one of Eoghan's guys in the teleporters. He also ends up the 66% casualty ratings each session though - it could be one of those things we should keep numbers on.



I forgot to take many pics this time around, we were playing late at night and some of us had work in the morning, so it was more important to keep stuff moving than record anything. Ger made out the best, working his way out of the corner (above) and keeping it tight and violent. He got 2 treasures from the teleporting circles and 2 from the non-teleporting stash. Eoghan and myself both got 2 teleport circles and Eoghan got the last non-teleporting one. Casualties seemed very high this game, although it was probably partly because there was a lot of Spellcaster casualties this time ( my Sellsword took out Eoghan's Wizard and Ger's Apprentice).

So a short report this time, but a good sign of being back in the swing! We're going to be getting another one under our belts within the next few days. I have a few more photos (not many) from this one, I'll edit this up if I can think of any other pointers or anything relevant that happened, but if you want an edge of your seat game of Frostgrave, I highly recommend The Keep.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.