The Adventures of Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 2 "Conspiracy Uncovered"

Got together with my friends again for another night of D&D (see first episode here).

Prior to starting I showed them some figures I planned on ordering to properly represent their characters. I never realized just how diverse Reaper Miniatures is with regard to the types of models they produce. Anyways, I picked up the following models to represent the following characters

• For Jack Crusher, I picked out Bledsoe the Evil Cleric. I figured he would make an appropriate Invoker of the Raven Queen. I might try and replace the skull on the staff with a bird.
  
• For Andre Zodiac, I picked Thorgram, Dwarf Warlord. This was more because I needed a general to lead my future dwarf army and Thorgram looked really cool.
• For Sergeant Enforcer, I picked Goldar the Barbarian. Not really a ranger looking character but the way Enforcer is played, the barbarian model makes more sense. Plus he's one of the only goliath looking models I've seen.
• For Cardiac Bison I am using Audt, Reptus Sergeant. I might replace the sword as it looks silly in my opinion.
• And finally for Mr. Hunter I picked Balthon, Overlords Cleric. Thought he would make a great Cleric of the Raven Queen. Might try to replace the skull with a bird though.

Hopefully they get here soon. Looking forward to having more character appropriate models. Anyways on to their second adventure.

Stomach flu sucks & Mantic Games armies

D&D adventure this weekend was cancelled due to me (the DM) catching my daughter Penny's stomach flu (which I probably gave her because I work at a school and who knows what crazy things the students have).

Oh well. Got around to making a new figure for our Goliath ranger, Sergeant Enforcer, and did some shopping around on the Reaper Miniatures website for some random hero figures for a future dwarf army I am planning. I need an army for next year's Orctoberfest as I sold off my old Bretonnians (I kept the newer models) and thus don't have a 2500 point army anymore.

What sucks is that I can't get to 2500 points with my Bretonnian army without shelling out an obscene amount of money. Even if I go all cavalry I need to buy some 2 or 3 boxes of knights which will run over $100 but then I have no archer or men-at-arms support and everything else is taken up by characters. To get the proper support I'd need to shell out another $100 just for some 200 points of archers and/or men-at-arms.

Enter Mantic Games. My god are those models cheap, good looking and so plentiful! One of their dwarf box sets which retails for around $100 is around 1500 points in GWs books. Then add some characters and runes and you've got close to 2000. A few more cheap box sets and it's easily 2500 for less than $150 or so. It also helps that I've got 3 28mm scale catapults that I can use for grudge throwers to help round out the army.

To help finance this new army I did have to sell some other things first though. Out went my AoBR Deathwing, my Deathwing Land Raider and some tactical squads I didn't use anymore (thankfully I made profit on those so I can replace the Deathwing stuff if I wanted to later). Once those make it to their destinations I'll place an order for a new Dwarf army. May not be GW but whatever, I can still play casually and at independant tournaments.

The Adventures of Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 1 "The Great Escape"

Haven't had any time at all to play any kind of wargame and I'm so dissappointed I missed the Remembrance Day Challenge. But that's life I suppose.

Instead of being too down that I can't get my gaming fix, I decided to start up a Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition campaign with my old playgroup. We haven't played an RPG in a long while and 4th edition D&D seemed like a great place to start. The ruleset is quite straight forward and there's a lot of variety to keep everyone happy. Not to mention we were all itching to play some kind of RPG again.

One of the things we always hated was character creation as it took a while if no one knew what they wanted to be exactly. So we decided to assign a role to everyone (each player took on the role of striker, controller, leader or defender) then roll for random classes in each role and then finally random races. We ended up with some interesting combinations and shortened character creation time considerably (no looking through each book to figure out what to be).

• The defender of the party is a dragonborn warden named Cardiac Bison
• The striker of the party is a goliath ranger named Sergeant Enforcer
• The controller of the party is a human invoker of the Raven Queen named Jack Crusher
• The party has two leaders (we had a fifth player who rolled his role randomly), one half-elf cleric of the Raven Queen named Mr. Hunter and one dwarf bard named Andre Zodiac.

We were all fans of the WWE at some point and one of the players had a wrestler name app on their iphone and named everyone in the party (and the party name too) using it, so the names of the characters are kind of strange (the app did speed up the character creation as well)

The party was balanced and the players got to play characters they haven't played before. Not surprisingly being veteran gamers my players all did their best to min/max their characters to be the best they could be.

Anyways what follows is a recap of our first adventure.

Lists for the Remembrance Day Challenge....

So regardless of my reservations about the tournament format, I'm still going to try and play. Hopefully my super themed army of terminators won't affect my army selection score too much. Considering everyone will outnumber me (aside from maybe Grey Knights) it shouldn't be too bad.

Unfortunately deciding on what to bring at 1850 is causing me a lot of problems. I have, however decided on at least the core. Regardless of what list I use it will at least contain the following:
HQ
Belial - Claws (maybe TH & SS if I can get the shield arm painted in time)

Troops
Deathwing Squad 1 - Apothecary, 1 TH & SS, 1 pair of Claws
Deathwing Squad 2 - 1 TH & SS, Cyclone, Chainfist
Deathwing Squad 3 - 1 TH & SS, Cyclone, Chainfist
Deathwing Squad 4 - Cyclone, Chainfist

Fast Attack
Ravenwing Land Speeder - Multi-Melta, Typhoon
Ravenwing Land Speeder - Multi-Melta, Typhoon

This brings the core part of my list to 1245 points. So I have 605 points to spend. Here are the best options available to me based on what is painted and/or easy to paint given the time I have (these are the best in my opinion at least)

14th Annual Remembrance Day Challenge

A tournament I can actually play in! The longest running 40k tournament in the region is coming back for its 14th iteration. I've played in this tournament every year I think except last year (Penny was born the week before) and when I was completing my 2 year Bachelor of Education.

Sadly, I generally don't do very well at these tournaments (somewhere in the upper half usually though) as I've only finished in the money once (I'm not counting my string of consecutive pop quiz wins) but they are still a blast. Admittedly I have reservations about playing in the tournament this year because of how I ran Orktoberfest (and Orctoberfest last year).

Orktoberfest 2011

Another year, another Orktoberfest.

Not as big a turnout as last year but fun nonetheless. Lots of prizes so everyone walked away with something. I will probably organize it again next year, but I'll need to do something to ensure I get more people attending. It would give me more money for prizes and will help grow the hobby more.

My new sportsmanship scoring worked better as I got a wider spread of scores this year. Also refined my Renaissance, Artistic, Honourable and Tactical rating formulas so the probability of a tie between the top players in each category should be practically non-existant.

Anyways pictures!

Orktoberfest 2011

'Ard Boyz semi-finals summary

Well the 2011 40k 'Ard Boyz semis are done. Not as good a showing as I would have liked placing 8th out of 10 people who showed up. Definately goes to show that practice is good. Still had lots of fun and even managed to get a door prize! (which will be added to the Orktoberfest prize pool as I don't actually need it).

Here's a brief summary (detailed reports hopefully later this week)

Game 1 vs. Razorspam Wolves w/ drop pods - Got Massacred
- Had a promising first turn as I siezed the initative and downed a bunch of razorbacks, but the retaliation crippled me way too much.

Game 2 vs. Orks - Major Loss
- Close game but lost my last few terminators in the last assault phase of the game.

Game 3 vs. Chaos Marines - Major victory
- Could have been a massacre for me but couldn't get passed the cover save of an obliterator who had gone to ground.

'Ard Boyz semi-finals scenarios up

They finally put up the 40k 'Ard Boyz semi-finals scenarios here. Seems a little better written than the prelims. They appear to be pushing armies with lots of scoring units but I suppose that's good for them as people will want to buy more models. One of the three scenarios require you to have a lot of scoring units and another may require you to have a lot of scoring units. For most armies though they can only muster 6 without some special rules like combat squads or imperial guard infantry platoons so they will have a hard time I think getting massacres.

Here are my thoughts on the scenarios with my army

To go to tournaments or not to go - Part 3: My Army Isn't Painted

So far I've talked about two reasons for not attending tournaments: cost and attitude. Those I think are the biggest deterants. But if neither of those reasons are a big enough deterant, the last reason generally finishes it for most people and that is the issue of having their army painted.

To go to tournaments or not to go - Part 2: Serious About Winning

Reason 2: People who play in tournaments are serious about winning

I think people fail to understand why tournaments exist in the first place. It's to find out who is the best at something, whether that be winning, painting, background fluff, or whatever, a tournament is there to see who is the best. One should expect that kind of attitude in a tournament. On the other hand, that is quite a turnoff for some people, especially if all they ever do is lose the games they play. It's frustrating to lose and even more frustrating to lose to someone who is super serious about winning.

However, I think this is a great way to make yourself a better player (and a better hobbyist if you go for the painting/fluff stuff).

To go to tournaments or not to go - Part 1: Cost

The area I live in had a pretty lively wargaming community at one point. I remember being able to play pick up games no problem at the local gaming store and my friends played often and well it was good times. The local store also hosted annual events for both systems (plus some misc. events in between) and generally supported the community.

Then stuff happened (i.e. people grew up, less time to game, models got expensive so new blood didn't come in, etc) and well the wargaming community kind of dwindled.

Now there seems to a resurgence again as the guys who grew up are finding the time to play again and there are newer players who are just entering the work force so have lots of disposable income but there are no events to go to. What to do...

Game 1 - 'Ard Boyz 2011 Prelims at Great White

Alrighty, so Game 1 was against a Blood Angels army played by a regular in the area. Quite scary as it had a lot of good assault units.

My list can be found here at the bottom.

The enemy list from what I remember

Seth + Honour Guard
riding in a Stormraven

Librarian Dread w/ blood lance, drop pod
Chaplain
Terminator Squad w/ assault cannon

Full tac squad w/ MG and combi-melta in a drop pod
Naked 5-man tac squad
Death company w/ 1 thunder hammer, 2 PWs
Death company dreadnought
Assault Squad in drop pod

Attack bike w/ MM
2 Land Speeders w/ 1 MM
Flamer Baal

Land Raider

1st Place at 'Ard Boyz in PG

Played at the 'Ard Boyz hosted by Great White Entertainment in Prince George and managed to fight my way through a Blood Angels army, Dark Eldar army and an Imperial Guard army to place first. I earned 2 massacres and a major victory to secure my spot in the semis which, thankfully, this year is being held somewhere nearby (i.e. I don't have to drive 13 hours or fly across the country).

My list was similar to the one I posted previously with a few minor changes (I swapped out the venerable on the dreadnoughts for twin-lascannons and swapped out the heavy flamers for missile launchers, that meant I had to drop a chainfist from Belial's squad though).

So here's a brief summary of how the games went.

'Ard Boyz 2011

Kind of last minute but one of the stores decided to host the 'Ard Boyz prelims this weekend and I am hoping to go with my Dark Angels. No time to practice with a list or the scenarios so I don't think I'll do very well, but at the very least it's free.

Anyways, here's the list. It's very Deathwing-centric but with the updates that's not so bad.

Orktoberfest 2011 & Other news

New Event!
Orctoberfest was such a success last year that I decided to do it again this year. The difference is that I decided to change the format to 40k. It made the most sense and if I continue organizing this event I can change the format back and forth (or maybe even try for a 40k & Fantasy event to please both crowds).

Unfortunately it seems that most of the Fantasy players from last year won't be able to attend as they don't play/don't like 40k. That's ok though, I know there are a lot of 40k players in the area (Northern BC if anyone from there is reading) so hopefully word gets out soon.

Now the big thing is can I get enough sponsorship (i.e. will last year's sponsors provide the same amount of support) so I can actually provide prizes, lol. At the least the gamers are getting lunch on both days.

My Gaming
Haven't had much time to game much in the last few months. Between the new baby (born November) and year end school stuff my time allowed very little for gaming. Admittedly I did get back into Magic: The Gathering as that required less of time committment than Warhammer and with MTGO I can play whenever I have free time (no need to set up a table and what not).

With that said, I still have my Dark Angels and now have time to model some cyclones on my Deathwing terminators. Just have to dig up some of the old missile pods from the plethora of random mecha models I have. My next project after that is to try and get a box of Grey Knight Terminators so I can have a proper Deathwing command squad (and maybe a new Belial model)

I'm hoping to test the scenarios I came up with for Orktoberfest 2011 this summer so there should be more stuff up in the next 2 months regarding 40k, the Dark Angels and gaming.

Grey Knights!

Grey Knights are out and boy do they look awesome!

Definately going to check out the book and compare to what I usually use in my Dark Angels. At the very least I will probably pick up a box of Grey Knight terminators to use as Belial's command squad as the models just look fantastic!

The Dreadknights look cool too, though I don't like the exposed pilot, but nothing a little plasticard couldn't fix I think. Really reminds me of the Aliens power loader.

March Tournament & Army List

I just got a heads up on a 40k tournament in March being put on by one of the local stores. It's slated to be 1500 points and with the advent of the new Dark Angels FAQ should provide ample opportunity to test out the changes.

I would have preferred a 2000 point tournament, but the store owner is playing it the UK/GW way, but whatever. A tournament is still a tournament and I love the competition.

The list I plan on taking is not going to take complete advantage of the changes. Not because I am feeling nice and un-competitive, but because I cannot change my models or add new models in time.

New Dark Angels FAQ!

Awesome, GW updated the Dark Angels FAQ not too long ago and brought a lot of the gear into line with the other SM books. It means we lose out on a few things (like our nearly always mobile land raiders and transports) but we gain a lot more (like the improved typhoon and cyclone but at a discounted price!).

A shame some of the prices didn't get updated, but oh well. A small step in the right direction.

Time to remodel some of my terminators to be able to carry a cyclone and I'll have to readjust my lists to replace the assault cannons with cyclones.