Looking Ahead

Its that time of year where we all take stock of the year past and look forward to a new year. Personally, I don't do the whole reflecting on the past thing too well, so instead I'll concentrate on 2013.

I think the motto for 2013 should be to do more.

As regular readers will note, I'm not the most frequent blogger, however I'm full of ideas and really should write more. So, as well as my painting blogs, I'm going to try and write more about books, films and other random stuff.

I really want to get more gaming in. While the Warmahordes weekends are highlights of my year, for the amount of models I have I don't get that much use out of them. Unfortunately the 2 local war gaming clubs to me meet on my only other day of gaming, so I'll need an alternative plan!

And perhaps, it should go without saying, but I need to do more painting! I think this year I have painted the most I have ever done, but I can and should do better. Not only do I have a load more Warmachine/Hordes stuff that needs painting, but I have 40K, Fantasy and Dropzone Commander armies that need finishing, as well as the boxes of random models I've collected over the years.

Well that's the plan, lets see how well it goes!

Iron Kingdoms RPG Review

It's been a while since I've had a new RPG to review since I've started becoming a lot more selective with my gaming purchases. That, and many of the lines I was buying have slowed down considerably! However, this one is well worth singing its praises.

I don't think it would shock anyone to say I'm a huge Iron Kingdoms fan. I bought the 2 of the original Warmachine battle boxes, despite not having anyone to play against at the time. With the exception of the Force Books for armies I don't play, I have all the rule books from Mk1 Prime. I even bought 2 of the original Hordes Battle Boxes when I still didn't have anyone to play against. (forever the optimist!)

The Iron Kingdoms though, didn't start off in the miniatures game. It originally existed as part of a adventure trilogy for 3rd Edition D&D published under the OGL. The Witchfire Trilogy was so popular that eventually a small RPG line was published alongside the emerging miniatures game. WHile the setting was good, unfortunatley the use of OGL D20 caused some issues meshing gameplay to player's expectations, especially once they saw what the equivilent unit in the miniatures game could do. While I did run the Witchfire Trilogy (its an awesome campaign BTW. Key moment in Iron Kingdoms history, great set peices and classic NPCs) the D20 rules held us back, and Gun Mages and anyone wanting to craft stuff was seriously disadvantaged.
When Privateer Press started work on Mark 2 Warmachine, they put a hold on the entire RPG line, promising to re-visit it with a new system once Mark 2 was up and running.

Roll on a couple of years, and we now have one of the best looking RPG books around.

With production values on par with the Warmachine/Hordes rule books (and light years beyond the original Iron Kingdoms Character Guide), the new Iron Kingdoms RPG is a full colour hardback book, weighing in at 340 pages.

Kicking off the book is an excellent section on the history of Western Immoren. Covering prehistory, all the way up to the "modern" day, this is a great introduction to the world. Much of this history has been covered in various of the miniature books, but it is well written and worth having in one place. Following swiftly afterwards is a section looking at aspects of Western Immoren as it stands, including magic, religion and Mechanika. These two sections total over 100 pages and gives even those completely new to the setting everything they need to know.

Character creation gives you the chance to get into the crunchy parts of the book. Building from a stat line that will look familiar to anyone who's played the miniature game, each character gets to pick a race, archetype and 2 careers to form the backbone of the character. The races feature all the options available in the original RPG, and cover just those living in Western Immoren, later books will open up options to play Skorne and some of the more exotic races. The careers are much like you would expect with classes key to the setting such as the Alchemist, Gunmage and Warcaster represented along with more generic, but equally important careers such as soldier and spy. With each character picking 2, it leads to much more variation and gives much more opportunities for creating interesting characters.
Each career seems balanced, with even the lowly Spy being able to bring something to the table when up against Warcasters and Gunmages.

The conflict resolution system is very similar to the miniatures game, with the combat and magic systems being a pretty straightforward port. While I don't find that a problem, some people may find the overly tactical combat system, which works better with miniatures, to be a problem. Certainly it would not take much to shift to a miniature-less combat, and there is a section in the back that covers this, but otherwise they expect models on the table.

One of the biggest flaws in the D20 version was always the crafting. In the setting, magical items are rare, with most "magical" items actually being Mechanika, a blend or magic and technology. However D20 could never handle this, and so you ended up with much of the fun classes (Alchemist and Arcane Mechanic) being hobbled and unable to be truly awesome. Thankfully the new book presents crafting in a manner that really fits with the setting, and allows crafting classes to be really useful.

My only real gripe is there is not enough in the book. Its a poor gripe, but a valid one, as there is so much crammed in, that some sections are much shorter than I'd have liked. The antagonists section feels especially small, but this is being supported via the No Quarter magazine (and excellent publication for Iron Kingdoms fans) and online. Given the scope of the setting, there is plenty of material and I look forward to an updated Monsternomicon.

Overall, the Iron Kingdoms RPG is an excellent successor to the D20 variant, and continues the tradition of excellent products that started all those years ago with the Witchfire Trilogy.

November Painting Challenge

This idea has a couple of sources of inspiration, so bear with me while I ramble for a bit before getting to the point.

You might remember that back at the start of the year, I decided I’d try and paint 4 15pt armies, one for each of my factions. You can find the original post here. I’m not giving up on that challenge, in fact I’m only 4 models away from completion. However I don’t like making things too easy for myself, so I’ve decided to take on a further, shorter term challenge.

In writing circles there exists an event called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) where people who like to write set themselves the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. My wife has decided to take part this year in order to help encourage her to write more, and being the supportive husband that I am, I’m also getting involved.

Ok, so I’m not writing a novel, I know I can’t write, but I can paint! So, to take a leaf from such threads as RPG.net’s monthly painting threads, A Tale of Warmahordes and other such things, I’m going to set myself more of a challenge in November.

So, my challenge is, to paint a load of models in November!

Ok, perhaps not a huge challenge, but given my painting speed, it could be. I haven’t yet decided what to paint, mainly because I have a birthday coming up and have been told to expect a load of lead as presents . Also, I hope to finish off what’s still on the table by the end of the month.

At this point, its time to get some volunteers from the audience. I’m looking for people to join me in this endeavour, especially if you are a slow or unmotivated painter. Simply pick a number of models to paint over November that would be a challenge for YOU. You don’t even have to be that specific, you could say “I’ll paint 15pts of Menoth” rather than specific models. As long as its more than you’d normally paint, that’s fine. Then post your progress somewhere, either as comments to my progress reports, or on your own blog/forum.

WarmaHordes Weekend–August

At the end of August, another WarmaHordes weekend was held, with the added bonus of a day’s extension due to everyone being accidently available on the Saturday as well!! Didn’t manage to get many more WarmaHordes games in, but did play some fun World of Warcraft CCG games, as well as a demo DropZone Commander. I’ll talk about DzC in a different post later.

As is typical of me, rather than stick with my regular list, I wanted to try out a new Epic Skarre list.

Skarre, Queen of the Broken Coast
* Deathjack
Satyxis Raiders (Leader and 5 Grunts)
* Satyxis Raider Sea Witch
Satyxis Raider Captain

I love the aggressive nature of this list, and is synergy-tastic! The raiders gain Fearless, immunity to knock down, increased def vs ranged and immune to blast damage AND have a 14” threat range. Along with their Advance Deployment, I can have them in your face from turn 1. The Deathjack is a beat stick that’ll put anything its matched against into the ground.

Unfortunately I only managed a 1-1 record with it, and neither battles I was amazingly happy with. I firstly went up against a Kreoss force (I was giggling like a loon as he deployed!) in a straight up caster kill fight. I was busy working on my positioning to slam the DJ into the side of his force when I stupidly placed Skarre a bit too openly, and had her die to a volley of rockets.

My other battle with this force was using the No Man’s Land scenario against Cygnar. Scenario play is new for us as a group, and unfortunately my opponent misjudged his turn leaving me controlling the zone at the start of my 3rd turn. Ignoring this technical victory, we went on to beat the crap out of each other. I was loosing Raiders to Stormblades, but unfortunately Caine made the mistake of standing within melee range of the DJ, and was promptly dispatched.

I don’t think either battle was a good example of the force’s potential. I’m still getting used to Skarre’s spell list, as its very different to Denny or Gaspy’s. As I found when I played my Skorne force, Admonition is an interesting spell, and Perdition should open me up some charge angles. I also need to work on when to use her feat, as both times my opponent simply backed away. While it did get me the technical scenario win, I’m sure there is a better time to use it. Back to the drawing board there I think.

Speaking of Skorne, I also broke my Skorne out for a Horde-off vs our Circle player.

Master Tormentor Morghoul
* Cyclops Brute
* Cyclops Savage
* Titan Gladiator
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts)
Bloodrunner Master Tormentor

Being my first outing with a Warlock, and Circles ridiculous movement manipulation, I failed to make a dent, and ended up loosing on scenario after my only assassination option fell very flat. However, I’ll be back!

Overall, another fun weekend, where I (hopefully) learned more.

Save City Of Heroes

Last week, NCSoft announced, to the shock of everyone including the games developers, that City of Heroes would be closed down this year.

I’ll admit, I haven’t played CoH for a while, real life and lack of time getting in the way, but I had always hoped I’d manage to get back on.

This is why I’m supporting the Save City of Heroes campaign and hope that you will to. To give you an idea about the game, I’ve re-posted below a post from last year where I do my best to tell you why I love City of Heroes.

Please help out by signing the petition.

Change.org|Free Online Petitions

Why I Love, City of Heroes

City of Heroes is a Super Hero MMO that's technically been around longer than World of Warcraft, but has never managed to gain such a massive following.

Later this year, City of Heroes goes Free to Play, and so I'm going to tell you why I love playing it, and why I think you should give it a go.

City of Heroes (CoH) was the first MMO I played, and therefore holds a special place in my heart. Not only that, but it still manages to maintain is uniqueness. Most of the later MMOs followed Blizzards formula for a fantasy game, while CoH has managed to avoid any copycats. Even Champion Online feels more like WoW than it does CoH.

An interesting aspect of CoH/V is that most of the missions you will run are instanced. Instead of running around and competing with the other players for the same mobs, you run to a door and enter your own personal mission instance. While this has the upside of meaning no interferance from other players in your leveling, it does mean that you don't run into as many players, and some servers do feel like a ghost town at points.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given its name, you play either a super hero or super villain and run around doing heroic/villainous things! Not only are the missions you are sent on well written with some nice storylines, but while doing so you feel like a super hero. One of the things I had to get used to quickly when switching to WoW was how squishy you were, even in full plate. On CoH, I wouldn't think twice about jumping into a group of mobs 2 levels higher than me, and coming out victorious. In WoW, you will just keep dying if you try that (and I did).

One of the best bits about CoH is that lack of gear. Yep, no need to run around farming mobs to get you that piece of tanking gear you need. Instead are things called Enhancements, which can be added to your powers to make them better. The beauty of this system is that there are many options to choose from and there is not a "Right Way". Enhancements can drop from any mob, be bought or created. If you really want you can never slot an Enhancement and still be a decent tank/dps/healer, although obviously not as good as someone who does.

An important (and fun) part of CoH, that comes from having no gear to worry about, is you can concentrate on your costume. The character creator is robust, with many, many options for you to choose from. Each character can earn extra costume slots and maintain a number of choices, with transformation animations as well. Your character will always look the way you want it to!

Unlike WoW, grouping is a breeze in CoH. You can group together and run content regardless of your level, as you can either downgrade your level to match friends, or pull them up to your level. This makes for running missions much more fun as everyone is challenged, and everyone gains something useful as drops are tailored to your actual level, not the one you are running at. You are also not limited to 5 players, as the missions scale depending on the number of players and your level.

There are also the equivalent of raids throughout the level range, meaning there is always something to do, its not all about the end game. The raids also can be done at later levels, and you simply get downleveled to match the content.

In fact, I can't really speak too much about the endgame as I've never managed to get a character that far. I keep wanting to try each class and powerset, and find that I've yet to get bored of the low level content.

Not only is the official content good, but there are options to make your own content, and run other player's content. 

All together, City of Heroes/Villains is a great MMO, that is going to be a bargain at Free to Play. Check it out!

On The Painting Table

I'm going to try and get these posts going once a month, because if nothing else it pushes me to paint more. Id like to think that people find them interesting, but I'm not that deluded, my readership isn't all that big. Although I treasure each and every one of you.

My last project to come off the painting table was a full unit of Menoth Zealots, with Monolith Bearer. Coming off the back of finishing my Harbringer, I think the scheme on these guys works well, especially as they are effectively mooks. I went with a dirtier white, and replaced the gold in my normal scheme with brass. They hold together well, both as a unit and alongside my other Menoth.

Perhaps my biggest achievement has been to base all of my painted Warmachine models. To most this may not sound impressive, but I’m notoriously bad at getting bases done. However, after being shamed at the last gaming weekend, I forced myself into basing. I went for a very simple base, that is easy to do, but can be improved with simple additions. A simple base really does make a model, but an over complicated one can drown any model. I'm counting with the K.I.S.S approach and so far it’s going well.

One thing to crop up when doing the basing was how much of a pain it is to do when the model is finished. This won't come as a surprise to most people, me included, but it now means that all future models will be based as they are painted.

So, that's what I've done, what am I currently painting?

Well first up, I've made a start on the Dropzone Commander miniatures I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. While they are wonderful models, they need a different set of skills to paint. Things are made harder by the fact the undercoat didn't quick go on as well as it could. Sprayed them on a too humid day, and I've got a very grainy texture to them. It shouldn't hurt the final finish, but its not as nice a surface to work on. I’m going for a close to studio for the Shalatri, although this version is a bit dirtier than I was aiming for. For the PHR I’ve gone with a two tone blue and grey scheme as I’ve got enough stuff to paint white!

As well as the DzC models, I've got some Warmachine on the go and all of it Cryx. I've got the first layer of paint on the Withershard Combine as well making a start on the bulk of a new list. I'm hoping to field it at the end of the month, so to keep it a surprise I won't say what they are. However, I look forward to the reaction of my opponents when they see the force in action.

I should be in a position soon to display many more of my models, so I’m likely to soon go back and finish off some of the smaller projects that are unfinished. I have 2 Terminator units I’ve never managed to finish, as well as large chunks of my Tau army. So I’ll soon be adding bits and pieces of them to the workstation and try and get my painted model count even higher.

I’ve got to say, the last year has seen me paint many more models that I have previously. I’m not sure which is prompting this, the blog or actually getting some games in, but I’m really pleased and hope I can maintain (if not increase) my productivity.

Dropzone Commander Rules Review

My Dropzone Commander rules arrived a couple of weeks ago, and after reading the book through I'm ready to write up my thoughts.

Presentation

The book is 152 colour pages printed on a nice glossy paper. Throughout are more photos of the miniatures taken in scenery which look amazing. The cover itself is a photo with special effects added, that brings the miniatures to life. The rules sections have some nice clear diagrams and there are plenty of pictures highlighting the technology and units released in the first wave. My only complaint is that the text does go a little close to the spine meaning you have to open the book wider than you may like. Then again, not everyone is as precious about not breaking spines on books as me.

There is a nice write up of the background to the setting at the start, giving the rules a grounding in the background. Nothing ground breaking in the background, but it is solid and well thought out. Each faction gets a couple of pages of background before a complete list of the units in the initial release wave. As a bonus you also get some alternate schemes painted up for those that aren’t taken with the studio schemes.

Rules

This is my opinion based on a read through of the rules.  Obviously to get a full understanding of them, there is not substitute to playing, but I'm still putting together my starter armies.

The first thing that struck me as I read the rules was how simple it is, while still maintaining depth. It’s great to see a sci-fi game where the focus can be on shooting, with infantry combat being only a minor aspect. In fact infantry combat seems to be one of the more complicated areas of the game. I need to read that section again to get a decent grasp on what’s going on. G

I think the game meshes ground based and aerial combat well, with fighters mainly being called in for strafing runs and not having to hang around on board being shot at. Given the scale, battlefield manoeuvrability comes from the dropships which will make battles much more fluid. Having your units move around under their own power actually can result in very little movement depending on the unit.

Another excellent feature is the turn sequence, which sees each player activating small portions of their forces at a time, allowing for strategic reactions to your opponents actions. No longer will you find you forces annihilated in a single turn and being unable to react. Instead you have a chance to try and repair poor tactical decisions, or at least run away from what’s killing you.

Terrain plays a major role in the game, as does playing scenarios rather than straight up annihilate the enemy battles. The book comes with a selection of scenarios with options to improve them based on the points size of the battle you are playing. In the scenarios objectives are located within buildings meaning your infantry has to go in and get them. Without terrain, the game would very quickly go to the force with the longest range, which isn’t all that fun.

For added tactical fun, each faction has a command deck that they can draw from and gain important bonuses. This simulates the actions of the commander on the battlefield, and each deck has a number of staples across each faction, and faction specific cards. The faction specific cards go towards building the feel of each army, and could help you save that vital unit from destruction. The number of cards you draw is limited to the level of your commander, and many of the abilities only work within an area of them, meaning you’ll need your commander up near the action. The decks don’t come with the rules unfortunately, but each starter army comes with them, or they can be bought for an additional £5. Alternatively you could not use them in your games, although that would limit the usefulness of Commander units within the game.

Perhaps the area with the most complexity is the army construction rules, although this does seem to be partly due to future proofing than anything else. Also, with so few army options at the moment, you might find yourself falling quite short of the points limits.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm extremely happy with the Dropzone Commander rules. They have lived up to the promise of the miniatures and I eagerly await a chance to give these rules a try. The book is a bargain at £15 with a decent amount of fluff mixed in with the rules.

With luck I’ll be getting a game in at the end of the month, and I’ll write up thoughts on how the game plays then.