Great looking Beastie, Grim. I'll have to echo everyone else in saying that it looks amazing. I didn't pick it for a conversion until you mentioned the parts, either - at which point I also remembered you mentioned doing that in the past. Seriously great work!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Great looking Beastie, Grim. I'll have to echo everyone else in saying that it looks amazing. I didn't pick it for a conversion until you mentioned the parts, either - at which point I also remembered you mentioned doing that in the past. Seriously great work!
As a reward for all of your kind words, have a look at what I'm considering for my next project:
It's a frontier world still in the process of terraforming. At this point the place is vaguely habitable but they're still working on bulking up the atmosphere to desirable levels. To aid in that they've got super trees, bioengineered to produce crazy amounts of oxygen or what have you. The energy shields that form the domes allow for regulated release of the oxygen and select additional atmospheric components. Though largely automated, each Oxyplant will have an entry point on the support shaft, with diagnostic equipment contained within the shaft. A ladder leads up to the growing surface to which access may be gained by a sealable hatch. The super-plants are inedible and the conditions within the domes are relatively unpleasant (atmospheric mix not fun to breath, I reckon), so even though man-sized creatures can pass through the energy membranes fairly easily, few bother for any length of time.
I like the domes. I think that they'll make a great upper/lower table setting, with slums and shops built around them as breathability and other conditions are usually a bit better around the domes, and its fairly easy to tap their power sources to leach a bit of juice for various purposes.
Going to try to run one 2x2' deadzone-sized board through to completion, but I have plans to do at least 4 mini boards to combine into a 4x4' table. If I ever find myself needing a wider board, I'll probably make a couple of relatively flat, fairly desolate boards to add the space. I figure most systems that want that much room usually like empty space anyway.
I'm thinking of having one set up much like you see, most/all of the oxyplants will have the same tubular support as I figure it would be fairly mass-produced, but I may vary the height a bit by having some built on hills. I may introduce some after-market gantries and catwalks the locals have built around the plants to facilitate moving about the place. This will be a generic slums/market.
Another board will probably end up made of more computer components as I have several and would like to use them up. Kind of an gritty/grimier Akihabara 'electric city', this would be a place to get tech-- both legal and illicit--, find a capsule motel for a 'relatively' safe overnight, or perhaps find some seedier entertainment. (yeah there's liable to be a robobrothel). All of this finery is achieved by the fact that this area is a hub for the electricity that powers the oxyplants in the region. While the controlling interest would be in it's right (not that it would even need to be..) to wipe the location off the map, it hasn't happened in the many years running that the place has existed and grown. Less Oxyplants than the first area, but either two, or at least one of the biggest ones.
I'm thinking another sector could have to do with a large freight train depot, not really a terminus or changing station, but a place where cars get loaded with ..something.. possibly processed ore. This sector could have a fairly tall silo with loading chute, a (potentially) raised railway, and a few un/filled cars. This area probably would only have 0-1 Oxyplants.
Not concrete on anything, especially the final zone. Possibly a research facility or military base. Mayprobably a dilapidated and abandoned one. Maybe even have a permanently damaged Oxyplant where the plant life mutated and escaped, wrecking the Oxyplant and driving the researchers/military/both out of the region. Left to the harsh climate and expected to die, the fearsome flora has actually managed to thrive. While the loss of the facility is a shame, the plants still seem to be generating oxygen and are apparently self-sustaining even in the unideal soil.
SO yeah, lot of blabbering but it helps me to remember if I write this stuff down somewhere
Plastic storage bowls from Walmart. I knew what I wanted but I couldn't find it readily on the interwebs. Technically I wanted proper domes and not something that tapers off like the bowls, but I think the neat interior 'texture' makes up for it. I think it cost about 6 bucks for 3 of them. Planning to clear another couple of sets sooner than later just in case its a seasonal or temporary item.
The lids are actually going to be really handy. I've cut everything away but the rim, and I intend to hotglue the rims down to the platform section. I should be able to easily remove and replace the domes into a secure setting this way.
I'm planning to explore options for engineering something similar for the dome platforms and their support pillars, I intend the domes to be used most of the time, but for some games (and just for a change) it might be nice to remove the domes from the pillars and have a clearer airspace.
The domes look fantastic, love the background idea of super trees for terraforming.
I really like how they add "height" to the table. Far too many setups lack any real differences in height on a table top and I feel players miss out when that happens.
Reminds me of snow globes. Is it wrong that I want to pick it up and shake it? Being war-gaming terrain, I’d expect a lot of spent brass, broken weapons, and maybe a corpse or two to start floating about.
Also note that the shorter variant would still have the catwalks and stuff, just didn't think to try some out when I was taking those photos.
Here's another photo for how they'll probably look while playing, it will likely just be easiest to remove the domes for the duration of the battle, or at least once there are models inside:
Thoughts?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Bonus daylight dragon photos, though still need a proper light box!
Thanks guys I was sitting there wanting to do a jungle board, then a desert board then... just brown/grey wasteland' with... something... domes came to mind. Now I love the domes so much I think I'm happy with the future of the board and settled into moving forward, i've got one dome progressed but I'll probably wait till its a bit further along to post more photos.
I'm thinking to paint the domes as some kind of forcefield/energy membrane to facilitate the gas exchange with the plants and atmosphere. So the whole dome does the venting, programmed remotely and potentially adjusted locally within the support column (there will be a small implied room).
GrimDork wrote: I'm thinking to paint the domes as some kind of forcefield/energy membrane to facilitate the gas exchange with the plants and atmosphere. So the whole dome does the venting, programmed remotely and potentially adjusted locally within the support column (there will be a small implied room).
I may put some support structure and maybe some power cabling. Maybe. Would be just as easy to tuck all of that stuff into the support structure to keep it away from the elements and interlopers.
@Azazel, yeah I think Netherstorm had something to do with it
I actually thought about trying to do them on the surface and have several more domes with structures inside but... ehh... I dunno where I'd find bowls big enough to really capture netherstorm properly. They are slotted to have greenery, probably jungle plants too, the train trees were just for temporary effect. But damnit now you've got me wanting to paint the ground purple with big glowy crystals sticking up at random angles.... gak... tempting as heck.
Variety of heights would be fine, I actually want to do that but making them uniform adds in the benefit of the boards being more stackable using the bottom support pillar as a support for the board sitting on top etc.
@Theophony, yeah those are the tubes from your supply drop, I was thinking biodomes/arcologies and then I saw those and knew it was covered. Where did they come from again? They look kind of like register tape tubes but a lot wider than those usually are.
Damnit... netherstorm... that was actually one of my favorite places.. forget shadowmoon or w/e it was called.
Crap Azazel.... crap.
Anyone have any good ideas for how I might create a larger dome covering more of a 2x2' area? Like most of it? Obviously you'd have to leave it off in game but y'know. Now I want to put those little field projector things that go up the sides like the netherstorm domes...
GrimDork wrote: All of those things are probably possible, but not sure if they're within my skill set though. I think I'm on to something with the salad bowl angle.
I can’t say I’ve ever looked into mega-bowls, but you might want to try punch bowls as well as salad. Might give you a few more hits. Heck, you might want to peruse skylights.
First of all that dragon-thing is horrifying. The glistening gives it a very squamous quality. I like the agri-dome idea. I think if they are taller it gives them great irony as they would appear tree-like.
@ Red I thought about doing that till I put them up on the pillars, if I was going to make them on the ground I might do them that way.
I think I'm leaning towards more of a netherstorm style implementation:
@Ereynaline that's a pretty cool way to go about it, though I wonder if I could do that method as much justice, especially while keeping it sturdy for games.
True. perhaps just a load of PVA glue or even resin could work? By having a small wall around the base of the dome or at the top you could allow for models to be added and removed easily. As for painting you could simply highlight the edges and add some sort of field pattern (classic hexagons?) pretty easily. the lightning would be an added bonus?
Scratchbuilder's syndrome, unless I'm just really tired I subconsciously scan the store for shapes that I could use, and I'm not even all that much of a scratchbuilder at this point
GrimDork wrote: @Azazel, yeah I think Netherstorm had something to do with it
I actually thought about trying to do them on the surface and have several more domes with structures inside but... ehh... I dunno where I'd find bowls big enough to really capture netherstorm properly. They are slotted to have greenery, probably jungle plants too, the train trees were just for temporary effect. But damnit now you've got me wanting to paint the ground purple with big glowy crystals sticking up at random angles.... gak... tempting as heck.
Variety of heights would be fine, I actually want to do that but making them uniform adds in the benefit of the boards being more stackable using the bottom support pillar as a support for the board sitting on top etc.
Perhaps a couple of each of varying heights? Or some way to adjust the heights? Again, just basing it (very loosely) off of Netherstorm where the domes were on differing heights of plateau (and different heights of floating rocks!) It adds a nice kind of untamed feel to it, that works well with the Bio-dome concept for me. Maybe even make some "hills" that can double as plateaus/mesas or the base for a Bio-dome.
Damnit... netherstorm... that was actually one of my favorite places.. forget shadowmoon or w/e it was called.
Crap Azazel.... crap.
Anyone have any good ideas for how I might create a larger dome covering more of a 2x2' area? Like most of it? Obviously you'd have to leave it off in game but y'know. Now I want to put those little field projector things that go up the sides like the netherstorm domes...
They're pretty much as good as any other prepaint, and aside from needing to be rebased for Warhams, some of them have a lot of potential for "real" minis gaming. I bought a ton of them awhile back, and a bunch of extras to repaint, but never got very far before I had to pack up to move. Now if I can just find that ogre I started again...
Haha, dinosaur. And yes, I have been considering it. I was thinking of sneaking a smaller one in somewhere but if I successfully manage the larger 2'-ish dome, I could just pop one in there for display purposes.
Actually haven't had the best luck with Amazon lately. They kind of like to be expensive more than they used to. I haven't found anything yet but I also haven't tried looking for punchbowls which is another avenue.
I agree that the varying height is cooler.
Got something coming up that may invalidate my needing to worry about space and storage for the most part, but still too early to say anything. If it happens though, I'll probably stick to the multi-height domes... though it *will* cause a steeper angle for ramps and such between them.
@Stormwall, I'm trying to source a ~24" dome to cover up one quadrant of my board, it would be on the ground
Thanks, I like skinny Cthulu too. And he's even finally almost totally dry! I dunno if its a bonesium thing or what, but it took the stain *forever* to dry on some parts of him, but its finally more or less done on the tentacles and even the base is getting better. So he should be capable of terrorizing the other models soon
I dunno about inspired, but I'll take kind words where I can get them, thanks
Today, I got to play some games of x-wing. My primary opponent has a doubles tournament to go to later in the month (I'll be celebrating my daughter's birthday instead, so also fun ) so we ran some 50 point skirmishes. The twin warthog y-wing thugs pulled two victories, soundly defeating 4 academy pilots and taking out a 'fat' Horton Salm (who did better than the ties interestingly enough). Kath Scarlet managed to get shot down by Salm in the third and final game, almost had him a couple of times but she took a regular proton torpedo to the face for 4 damage in the first exchange, and got hit with the advanced proton later in the game... allowing for the Y-wing (who was regenerating shields with R2D2) to eventually wear her down with the ion turret. Close game. Fun too as I managed to get a hit with my points-filler seismic charge.
I should have taken some pictures to show off my spiffy new 3x3' x-wing mat, I'll do that later I guess.
Thanks for hanging out guys, I may put some pictures up later but for right now I need to switch rooms to be closer to the AC!
Am very interested to see the mat Grim. What are your thoughts on X-Wing? You seem to be playing a fair bit of it. I just await the day of a full HIPS 28mm Star Wars game, only then will so many childhood wishes be met.
Your terrain ideas for the dome are great, I wish I had your vision for turning the mundane into great gaming scenery.
Thanks . I think ive picked up a lot of my scratch build tricks from dakka. Its fun stuff you've just got to try it and poke around for inspiration. Its good for when you have time and space (to store your ever increasing horde), but not as much disposable income. Well and its fun, sometimes I'll scratch build things I could buy
I dunno if I'm playing x-wing so much, or just not playing much else lately . Its a great little game. The balance seems fair, some ships are in better places than others but its a dicey game so even suboptimal builds can have a good day or strong lists can falter. Some ships do seem to be somewhat off the table and in need of update, but FFG does tend to address them. I think I'd like the system with generic ships nearly as much as with the star wars liscence, it plays well.
That's a lot of Greys. How many of those sci-fi expansions did you get from Bones 2? That Battle System terrain really looks good. I am kicking myself I didn't back it now. I'll have to rectify that with the post apocalyptic one coming in the fall.
Two, they came with 8 each or something. And ended up with 18 kulathi evil grin.
The battle systems stuff is pretty cool.
I doubt I'll have the money but after seeing some of the modifications to the set they were doing with the fantasy set (fort walls are clearly superior to bunker walls, for instance) the post apoc/modern city stuff sounds fancy.
Alright so I finally finished uploading my 54 photos to the Corporate Takeover? folder found here. But now I'm going to weave them together with a bit of fluff, mostly captions and a little extra here or there.
Below the story you will find a Legend with some extra info about the key players involved. A lot of it is more fluff than necessary, but I wanted to record it as I haven't written some of it down anywhere else before.
This incident occurred at the Grey research station GX-17 on a backwater little planet of little concern. A Ubiquitech patrol force was making the rounds and ensuring local security while verifying licenses and shaking down operators who didn't have the right clearance. Upon reaching GX-17 LT Riley was prepared to check the station off and continue to the next position, when Barker spoke up; "Looks like this place has a level five scan-dampening package, I'm not sure the Listening Post could penetrate it...".
"Tinfoil hat protocols?" Asked Riley suspiciously, "That kind of tech is only authorized for special C7 operations, there's no way these guys have a license for it."
Riley shrugged, resigning himself to actually working for his meager credit disbursement tonight, and said "Alright boys, lets show these Greys it doesn't pay to circumvent UT license and procedure, keep your weapons out for show but don't hot unless you see some resistance. These guys don't usually put up much of a fight so let Barker and I handle things with their leaders, should be a quick procedure. Just for extra bargaining power, Helga, take your breach team and push to the lab. With a facility this size, should only be a door or two into the place, if you've got a gun on their scientists the boss isn't going to try anything funny and we'll be risking our hides a hell of a lot less"
Helga rolled her shoulders and checked the charge on her pulse carbine, "You heard him, Charlie, Becca, Roach, with me." she barked as she moved for the second entrance on this side of the facility. "You heard the 'boss', don't shoot any of them unless they look at you funny. Let the marines hold the first room, as soon as you clear it move to the next. Once we hit the lab, I want all three of you on threat assessment until we get the all clear."
After issuing a few more succinct orders to his fairly disciplined team, Riley activated the facility's external intercom; "Attention GX-17 it has come to the attention of this GCPS patrol that your facility is running tech that you can't possibly have a license for. Prepare for GCPS forces to breach your outer doors, do not resist. This is Lt Riley, my aide and I will be making our way directly to your command center to negotiate your removal of the offensive tech and the issuance of the appropriate fees. Any resistance will be met with deadly force, these Genlings don't have a 'stun' setting. You guys know the drill, don't make trouble for us."
While the Greys did not immediately respond, Riley cut the comms anyway to give them no wiggle room. Some quick gestures had soldiers setting charges to scramble the circuitry and disable the mag-locks holding the portals in place. Nearly in unison, the charges pulsed and the multi dead bolts clicked to the open position...
GX-17 in the first moments of the conflict, Riley's team has yet to breach the second entrance in this capture.
The facility's leadership quickly attempts to cover the evidence of their illicit operations, while Defender G'nem orders his team into positions.
"This is Jenson, we've got some of the red ones over here, they look pretty miffed. Command center is nowhere in sight, we're gonna dig in and have us a bit of a pissing contest with the local security until you give word otherwise, Boss."
"Do not fire Defenders, let our commander settle this, but do not take your eyes off of the soldiers. If they act aggressively, fire freely."
The grey lesser guide holds the Defenders back, hoping for a diplomatic resolution.
GCPS marines seek cover behind storage bins, expecting the Greys to not shoot their own inventory (but unsuspecting of the volatile nature of the crates).
Helga and her breach team blow past the first line of defenders and locate the lab past the sleeping quarters.
"Listen up folks, make any sudden moves and I'm going to decorate the walls with ya. My CO is here to squeeze your boss for fees you guys were too stupid to pay. Like these dead guys. Do you guys have a license for human experimentation? Preety sure you gotta have a license for that. *click* Hey boss, we've got some human experimentation going on here in the lab, looks pretty tame but you might wanna check their permit..."
A corporation fire team advances in the wake of Riley and Barker, including some heavier equipment and a c-6 'chibi strider' combat robot.
"Let me do the talking Barker, but if they've got a red up there and he puffs out his chest, shoot him in his damn face. After that bit from Helga, I can tell these guys are up to no good and aren't as likely to capitulate as we had hoped... Keep your guard up, this whole thing is starting to stink."
"Alright you little bastards, I've got at least two high-profile license violations on you already, care to explain what's going on here?"
The attending defender bristled at the abrupt intrusion but his guides urged him to caution, the seeker looking rather anxious. The head guide spoke first, "Gentlemen, surely this is a misunderstanding. Don't you need some kind of paperwork before you can just barge in here like this? Why, I should like to con/" but Riley quickly cut him off. "Can it, you aren't talking your way out of this one, Grey. You've got Tinfoil Hat tier dampening protocols in place and you're experimenting on sentients with no apparent license. Step back, and call off your dogs or this is going to become a Seize operation rather than a fee extraction."
The c-6, named Li'l Ray by his squad, encounters a Grey robot guardian. The old Dreadnought class mech's drives whir up as it turns to face the threat. The Dreadnought was a relic of an older age, and it's processors couldn't handle too complex of commands, upon detecting the threat, the aged machine simply switched to 'kill mode'.
While browbeating the Greys, Riley got a brief communication from the c-6 unit.
--c-6 unit designation 'Lil Ray' reporting hostile mechanical unit, please advise. Request weapons fr-- crackle...CLUNK. CRASH!
The older mech had sucker punched the C-6 right through the safety railing. Landing in such a way as to break a key servo motor, Lil Ray as as useful as a marine with a broken back, and it still hadn't been issued a weapons free command.
"Oh HELL no. Geiger, get in there and NUKE that ridiculous rust-bucket! Barker, do it!" With zero hesitation, Barker snapped his rifle to a firing position and shot the defender in the face as previously ordered. Gore splattered the Prime Guide's face and he fell out of his chair in shock.
Once receiving the command, ranger Geiger wasted no time in executing it. He disengaged the safety protocols on his thermal rifle and used his attitude control pack to skip the stairs, arriving right on the flank of the Dreadnought. The ancient machine simply couldn't react in time. Geiger discharged the thermal rifle right into the robot's power plant, slagging the entire thing and causing the machine to lurch violently over the railing.
Geiger surveys the mechanical carnage he's wrought, grimaces a bit and nods. Li'l Ray had been avenged, hopefully the techs could get him back and running again. Every team needs its mascot.
Riley had pretty well lost his patience by this point. "Do you see the smoldering wreck of your ancient rust bucket you skinny little gaks? Is your dead defender enough to get you to cut your crap? Surrender your facility to my control now and report to the soldiers at ground level or I'm going to order my men to start shooting. Do you read me?"
Unbeknownst to the other parties, a door on the far side of the complex was blown inwards and hulking mutant creatures barged in to the empty room. "As planned... as planned.... Forward, you know our objective. Sweep this place clear of anything that moves, I will not risk harm to our goal" rasped Dr. Simmonds in her hoarse raw voice. Her subcommanders wasted no time in marshaling their forces.
One of Dr Simmonds' strongest assets is her ability to condition and control the stage 3z mutants that are spawned when plague victims fail to progress to full stage 3 mutants. Dr Simmonds has managed to train a large pool of usually mindless 3zs to follow rudimentary commands.
Sensing the nearness of its own kind, the captive 1st generation mutant rises in anticipation of its release.
Riley continued to attempt to cow the aliens and he barked "I'm gonna give you little bastards a three count before I give my boys the all clear for weapons free. Do you understand what that means? Why are you staring behind me? You think I'm gonna fall for the oldest--" before being cut off by a brutal swing from a rifle. His head jerked violently to the side and he fell away into blackness. Barker had attempted to alert his CO but a plague-ravaged former GCPS soldier, now a horrible plague zombie, managed to stick a knife in his heart before he could get off more than one shot. The zombie lost an eye but its hunger and fury were far from sated.
More plague zombies rushed Geiger's position and while he managed to delete the face of the first to enter his weapon's short range, the rifle's firing cycle was simply too long to allow for a second shot. The second zombie was on him before he could unholster his pistol.
The second half of Helga's breach team fared a bit better, cutting down several of the enemy fodder in a few seconds.
As yet more plague zombies poured into the laboratory Helga radioed for Riley, "Hey Boss, we've got some plague nasties moving in from the far side of the lab, these scientists are going down quick!" After a moment's pause Helga switched off her broadcast and assumed the worst. Turning to her team she said, "Alright people, code black, I want you to fall back to the entry points and lay down suppressive fire on these things while you do so. Keep it together!"
After getting the comflash issued when a CO's vitals go flat, the rest of the squad rushes to position and attempts to determine the next course.
Unfortunately for everyone else, Dr Simmonds brought a fairly large crew of s3 mutants, some of which brought heavier firepower.
Without wasting useless words, the plague mutants vaulted and rushed to catch up with their superiors, plague-enhanced limbs speeding their ascent.
The disciplined fire of the trained corporation marines proved effective at stopping the charge of isolated plague zombies, with enough laser burns melting functional limbs to the point of uselessness, or destroying vital organs even the plague zombies still needed to function.
But in other spots, the additional firepower of the latest plague arrivals began to take a toll on the beleaguered marines.
"gak, backpedal faster boys, these things are fast!" cried Helga as her position was rapidly overrun by the zombies.
Cut off from their command elements, the marines and greys had begun to open fire upon eachother, with the greys quickly outflanked and cut down. The marines and rangers in this area made a good show of holding down the advancing plague forces as well, at least at first.
One of Simmonds' followers had managed to appropriate a heavy military grade grenade launcher, nicknamed the Boomstick by corporate forces. Calmly lining up the shot, the plague eventually fired to a devastating effect, wiping out the local human resistance.
Chuckling to itself, the mutant advanced with its companions, moving ever towards their goal.
Meanwhile, at the command post, the zombies made short work of the unarmed grey leadership and unsated, they began to work their way back down to the rest of the fight.
Those same zombies eventually managed to reach the second line of defenders and the mutants went about their grisly work.
Helga screamed at her men, "Get back damn you, those aren't just mindless zombies!" She had noticed their coordinated actions and then spotted the reason. "Simmonds, I should have made a better effort to cross you off my list on Nexus Psi, you bitch!" The plague-riddled scientist cackled madly and then addressed Helga, "Oh you managed to survive Nexus Psi, did you? You're more resourceful than most. I should like to splay you out on my table to see what makes you tick... or perhaps you would like to join my growing army?"
Helga and the remaining members of her breach team are backed into a corner in the bunk room, their hastily erected defensive positions quickly overrun.
The surprisingly coordinated actions of the zombies, as well as the plague's overwhelming numbers quickly saw the fireteam cut down to nothing. Helga performed admirably, cutting down several mutants with her pulse carbine and skewering more than one on her wrist blade, but she wasn't quick enough to save her men. The mutants surrounded her and began to close in...
One of the last remaining fireteams prepared to give Helga some covering fire as they fell back, but their position wasn't as secure as they had thought.
Though riddled with holes and burns, the savage plague mutant managed to eviscerate or bludgeon all of the marines to death before expiring itself. Help would not come for any survivors on the other side of the complex.
Sensing the nearness of their goal, the plague mutants made one final effort to sweep their enemies away. The Boomstick was put to further violent use, clearing the last pocket of corporation resistance.
Helga burst into a whirlwind of motion, disemboweling the closest enemies before she broke off into a trot towards the nearest potential escape. The mutants scrambled to catch her and negate the last pocket of resistance, to kill the last witness to their acquisition.
Leaping up onto a crate, Helga called behind her "You bitch! You cost me some damn good men, I'm gonna let corp central know what you bastards're up to and the next time we meet I'm gonna slag your face clean off!".
Helga continued to run for the exit with the mutants hot in pursuit. Another zombie turned from its meal to attack Helga from the front.
Helga wasted little time on the mutant, plunging her wrist blade into it's torso and tearing the weapon upwards. The energy field playing along the blade sparked and sizzled as it cleaved the monster nearly in two from the waste to skull. Helga left it to rot behind her. One of Simmonds' aides began to order the rest of the minions to pursue Helga out of the complex, but a well placed plasma bolt bore a hole neatly centered in the mutant's face. Helga paused in the doorstep, cranking her vocal output settings to maximum with a flick a tongue switch set inside her helmet. "You're next you freakish bitch. The next time I see you, there won't be enough left to fill a sick bag." Having said her peace (what little it was worth at the moment) Helga retreated to the patrol craft. She disengaged the locks on her personal jetbike and proceeded to haul ass to the nearest GCPS center to report the worsening situation to her current superiors.
"I really *would* like to dissect that one..." Simmonds mused to herself. "Klein, activate that other switch, its time we got what we came for. With that other one escaping, we will have to move up our time table."
The energy field flickered and winked out of existence. Simmonds reached out to the hulking monstrosity that was the first generation plague mutant and began to cackle madly. The monster cocked its head slightly, and then a wide and malicious grin splayed across its features....
And there's a shot of the whole 2x2' facility after the battle ended.
I hope you guys enjoyed this little skirmish. Any advice for how I may improve the format? I was considering eventually cropping a lot more and editing something similar into more of a graphic novel format, something a bit more story driven as this kind of devolved into captions for long stretches at a time.
Legend.
Spoiler:
-Key players- Grey Union (title pending) - A loose alliance of all aliens known as the Grey, they are the little grey men who used to abduct humans in the years before humans wound up in charge conquering the galaxy. Greys are primarily interested in research, though some are destined for leadership and others are concerned with the safety of their race.
There are three castes of Greys, the Guides, Defenders, and Seekers.
The guides wear yellow uniforms and are the ruling class of Greys. They seek to lead their people ever forward and use their political guile to make sure Grey inventions and technology bring the best rates. Guides are shrewd diplomats and accomplished merchants, they lead expeditions, research facilities, and even starships.
Defenders wear an aggressive red body suit and are the only Greys who regularly carry and handle weapons outside of R&D test ranges. These Greys are more suspicious of outsiders and are highly protective of their own kind, while caring little for other races. Defenders are found anywhere the greys go, in varying numbers. For a particularly hostile expedition, the number of Defenders may even slightly exceed that of the Seekers. Greys often hire mercenaries as well, as there are only so many Defenders to go around. Defenders are equipped with some of the most sophisticated and small-footprint weaponry the Greys have produced, ranging from slight handheld force projectors and pistol-style energy weapons, to full out prosthetic suppression systems with an output greater than some heavy laser cannons. Even given their dedicated role and sophisticated weaponry, Defenders do not rank well among the various soldiers of the galaxy... Greys simply aren't built for combat and their physical limitations are readily apparent. Still, only a fool would take a Defender lightly.
Seekers form the bulk of the Grey population, they are the scientists of the race. Virtually all Greys who do not test into the Guides or Defenders will be of this caste. Seekers are obsessed with knowledge and see little value in morality if it impedes their research. Many seekers develop technology to aid their on race, while others develop technologies specifically to sell to outsiders. Other Seekers research simply to understand, and they pass their findings on to their general community so that more determined individuals may make use of the information. The caste structure for guides and defenders is fairly simple, with a relatively basic hierarchy, but this is not true for the Seekers. There are *many* sub-castes of seekers and based on their rank they will defer or command as appropriate. Even the guides and defenders would admit to not understanding the intricacies of the Seekers.
Ubiquitech - A massive corporation with vast influence, Ubiquitech is almost literally everywhere. One of their recent popular catch phrases is "Ubiquitech: Wherever you go, there we are". Others include "Technology, for every aspect of your life", and "Ubiquitech" We're everywhere.". Ubiquitech company colors include red, white, and black. Virtually all Ubiquitech products feature at least one of these colors, if not all three. Ubiquitech is a corporate powerhouse which frequently liquidates and acquires smaller companies, and which uses its military might fairly regularly. Contracts are enforced, and often at the end of a high-powered laser rifle. Ubiquitech is one of the corporations contracted by the Council of Seven to acquire Enforcer and Peacekeeper armor, and so many such Council soldiers bear UT colors. UT may be a despicable underhanded company, but they have a killer PR department. Although the ratings don't compare with Dreadball, UT funds a specialized team of young strider pilots and the exploits of these pilots are broadcast at regular intervals. UT can be found anywhere from the core to the expanding edge of GCPS influence and their aggressive polices will likely insure that this potent corporation stays that way for a good while.
Helga - A well-known merc considered to be one of the best in her field, Helga is a somewhat eccentric character who enters the fray wearing orange powered armor. Helga is one of those mercs that others tend to whisper about, and almost always respectfully. Even if half of the things people say about her are true, anyone crossing her would be a damn fool. Though she won't sign any long term or permanent contracts, Ubiquitech is a frequent hirer of Helga. Helga has even been spotted in a custom orange strider interacting with UT's strider PR team. Whether or not Helga fills out her heavy-set power armor or not is a mystery, for none have claimed to see her face (and lived), and no known records can link her to a civilian ident.
Dr. Simmonds - A researcher who was working on Nexus Psi when the alien plague artifact was discovered and all hell broke loose, Simmonds was ravaged by a stage 2 plague mutant and underwent the brutal transformation herself into a third generation mutant. Unlike most stage 3 plague mutants, however, most of Simmonds' brilliant mind was left intact. Hateful towards the corporations for abandoning her along with the rest of her team, Simmonds put her keen intelligence to work escaping the planet. As a 3rd gen, Simmonds is unable to infect other creatures with the plague virus so she often seeks out second and first generation plague mutants to use to further her designs (basically wiping out humanity... she's kind of pissed about that whole Nexus Psi thing...). Simmonds has also researched and developed techniques for controlling stage 3zs which are s3 plague mutants who died before the full transformation. These 'zombies' are usually a menace to all sides of an engagement (even the plague) but Simmonds can usually manage to direct them at a target of her choosing. She has acquired a cadre of similarly higher-thinking mutants to her cause who serve as her lieutenants and can also direct the 3zs that she has modified to her cause.
Not sure I can add anything to improve it. I found it a captivating read with a great combo of visuals and text. I also found it was really well paced and I raced through it in the end.
The story was great with a nice tense build up. Maybe I wouldn't lead with the details of who is involved as it technically ruined the surprise of the plague turning up.
Thanks guys. Good call Archer, I'll spoiler the extra descriptions, almost better meant for a separate post.
You will definitely see more of Helga and Dr Simmonds both, I've got some neat ideas for more gear for Helga like a custom strider and so on, and the lab-assistant plague look is probably one of the easier ways to paint them.
I mostly just set up my little toy soldiers and let happen what may, I didn't even know the plague were going to be involved until Simmonds and her entourage kicked in the back door. I might have used shasvastii but I simply didn't have enough painted for the scale of the conflict. I really want to get some more of my battlezones terrain done so I can have such an encounter spill out into the surrounding city, or what have you.
I may have to try to do this again with at least a skeleton of a script in mind, but I guess this worked out alright going in cold. I had done one with Infinity figures months ago but I think it was lost on the laptop.
Thanks I was thinking about it actually. I think in the laptop infinity skirmish I actually had some but that never made it to the blog. It wasn't really that fancy though.
Thought I may look into getting the GIMP and working on my not-photoshop skills eventually, maybe find some kind of template for graphic novel style pages.
Also something serialized like a webcomic could be cool, but I need to build up some more personalities, right now most of my dudes are mostly grunts.
I'm trying to source a ~24" dome to cover up one quadrant of my board, it would be on the ground
Don't know if this is still an issue but did you already check regular crafts stores? Here in Germany many crafts stores stock various sizes of transparent PVC domes. Normally they are used to create presents or custom Christmas Tree balls. They are cheap and available up to 600mm which would be almost 24" in diameter. I sourced some of them (although not the biggest ones) to represent hydroponic greenhouses for an agri world terrain set.
@Steel-Lynx huh, that isn't a bad idea. I was kind of assuming that my local Hobby Lobby would wind up being on the high side of things but I guess after seeing how bad skylights are... its probably worth another look so thanks for pointing that out
So I was perusing Adamsouza's blog which is currently mostly overrun with deamons and what have you, but he also featured a big-ass k'nex titanfall mech that can be had for about 20 bucks. Its taller than even the cerastus knight lancer, which probably puts it over the head of a dreamforge leviathan. Pretty big dude and barely even looks like he's made of next-gen legos.
So I was perusing those and considered purchasing one as my amazon bonus points almost cover the $20 they seem to cost. And I mean, it's a pretty damn big thing for 20 bucks, plus quasi-legos so fun to assemble too I assume... Anyway, I spotted this:
Which is two of those bigass mechs, which have cockpits that would totally accommodate 28mm minis. Probably could fit a couple in there in a mini command bridge kind of thing, or just get a smaller seat than it currently has (fits lego sized mini figs by default)
Whoops got on a tangent, its two of those bigass mechs and what looks like 2-3 or better buildings of a reasonable size. If you were to buy similar structures from any 28mm scenery provider you'd be looking at 20 bucks or more a piece. I figure you'd need some plasticard to make them wargamey and not just legos.. but thats a lot of giant robots and scenery for 60 bucks. May have to look into it the next time my amazon points get updated.
It's a good find. Also noticed that the box set that has them both has the mechs in the opposite colors of buying them singularly. Both have cockpits that open up and have command chairs, so you could totally detail those cockpits up if you wanted.
Great set of narrative pictures there. The transparent bases really work well on the scenery, and as said, you packed a lot of battle onto that 2x2. Was the story based on a scenario/game you played, or just your festering imagination?
I've heard that those mechs are actually not very stable though. Every review I've seen or read of them say that they fall apart if you look at them wrong. I had thought about buying one until I head that. Plus, I also learned that the hips have no lateral motion, and that just completely killed them for me. Why make a poseable giant robot if you're just going to neuter the articulation?
@Azazel, I just set up the greys and started playing with my models, took a bunch of photos. I think I had a rough idea in my head as I was going, the plague were going to win for instance, but I wasn't settled on using the plague until maybe after the dreadnought beat up the other robot.
In the future I may work out my own rough AI/whatever if I don't want to script something, or may just add the narrative to games against the MA/DZ AI that I actually play myself, dunno.
@Barzam hmm. Sounds a bit limited, though I think if I glued the parts that come apart (if they aren't also points of articulation) and introduce magnets in key locations... surely it would be as sturdy as some of the other finicky things I've got laying around.
Barzam wrote: I've heard that those mechs are actually not very stable though. Every review I've seen or read of them say that they fall apart if you look at them wrong.
The arms and legs are on pretty solid. It's the little detail bits, like flaps, that fall off regualrly. As a childrens toy it is dissapointing. It's more of a posable model than action figure.
As a source of bits, or basis for a mech conversion for a wargamer, it's pretty good for it's price. You can just glue the bits that would fall off in place..
The torso is connected by 6 thin rods, preventing lateral rotation. It wouldn't take much to replace the 6 thin rods with a 1" dowel or magnets
You can see quite a bit of the movement on those Titans in the Amazon video, but anything with "real firing weapons" has me sold on them. Just do not go firing them at any painted miniatures eh fellas.
Meh, my stuff is mostly dipped, I'm pretty sure the plastic/restic guys could handle spring action missiles and rubber bands.
I foresee these guys being upgraded with added weapons/Gubbins too so they may or may not maintain standard armament.
I think they'll be a necessary deterrent against space dragons, world ending monstrosities, and potentially barbie titans. Plus extra buildings are always useful... Gonna be moving forward with city terrain sooner than later.
So I was playing around with some bits... then this happened:
Not sure if they're pre-kickstarter Veermyn or some other rat-like humanoid species. What do you guys think? The arms are probably a bit freakishly long and the feet-to-hand ratio is bonkers, but I think they pull off the look using the eisenkern gear at least to a similar degree as the deadzone marauders do.
May make some more for fun, maybe even buy the regular eisenkern box for more weapons...
@Ckig, thanks, I had fun playing with my toys and taking pictures, as usual I've taken a few more but they're still partway through editing.. and I'm gonna need to drastically pad out my scenery before I can do anything much outside of facilities.
Right now, I've been assembly-line cleaning the contents of Imperial Assault. I've made decent progress but I've still got 8 infantry sized minis, the bigger gnarly fangly pikey catfrogsnake(?) thing, and the walkermajig.
I have plans to rapidly assembly line paint the lot of them.. all of the stormtrooper stuff should be super quick, undercoat white-->bit of black here or there--> even less grey highlights on the black-->dip-->seal-->profit! Droids will be quick, imperial officers will be quick. Vader doesn't have much to him either. The weird catfrogsnakes may have room for some funky paint schemes but there's still only two. We'll see though, but I'm approaching two months behind on that silly 365/365 goal and knocking the whole IA box out would cover at least one of them
Yeah, they're definitely different versions of the armor, one is likely a newer design as opposed to a differently purposed suit.
Got my first 4 Imperial Assault miniatures painted tonight:
I think they're called Trandoshan hunters, or something like that.
Monopose, and they're all done in an identical scheme but ahh well. If I had more I'd paint them differently and maybe look for different gear, but for the purposes of IA, these should do fine. Don't forget they'll be getting a dip, seal, and clear acrylic base before it's over.
I don't think I've mentioned it, but my intention is to complete all ~36 minis in IA by the end of next month. I've got everything primed now and 4/36 done. 11% to goal and that's 2 days before the month even starts, so I'm optimistic
Haven't gotten to play it yet, it looks confusing with like 7 types of dice and 18ish stacks of cards, but I'm guessing its not as bad as it looks once you're going. Gonna try to run myself through the practice/tutorial thing at some point and figure out some good missions. My intent is to bring it fully painted to the library for the next game day there, and run a mission or two.
In all likelihood, I probably only need to paint 4 heroes and less than a dozen imperial models for the first few scenarios, but I'd like to have it all done.
If I manage this goal, I may springboard from it to finishing the mars attacks base game, potentially with terrain. But one step at a time.
There is only 2 days left and you get two of those creepy Angel things, and you magically learn to make professional terrain with the $12 scenery accessory sprue...Buy Yours Today !!
I couldn't help being just a bit snarky. I wish SAS all the luck in the world, though I fear they may need it.
The supporters of ME are worse than mantic or GW fans from what I've been hearing (had to ditch the ks thread early on when someone tried to explain that people hand waving away eachother's points was the essence of arguing, and it seems to have gotten worse since then [I believe I saw someone point out that first edition eldar didn't look good compared to todays standards so why should first edition Medge models look good... because logic?]).
Anyway, realizing that those were the people who I would have to rely on for future rules questions, army list vetting, and painting/fluff feedback I just quickly lost interest. I realize its a vocal minority, but Dakka is going to be *the* home of ME and those people will be here continuing to profess that the game and company can do no wrong. Just isn't for me.
The terrain sprue is cool. I may buy some at retail if the price is reasonable and there aren't any weird bundling restrictions. The robots aren't bad. I can find cooler drones (albeit more expensive ones) and similarly sized humanoid mechs (reaper's CAV bones kickstarter will hit retail eventually, and some of them are similarly sized to either offered). I'm sure I'll be missing out on magical sliding core super detailed and modular robot kits if I go the CAV route, but I'd save money and once it's glued together, the poseability has done it's job. Just pick a CAV sculpt I'm already happy with and its a done deal.
I kind of want the suppression markers, and the size of the game sounds right... but I don't tend to kickstart games for rules and tokens, typically I want the models and there just aren't that many that I really want from Medge.
Anyway, I wish them the best, but I'll be quite glad when the campaign is over and the ad-space presumably returns somewhat to normal.
Eesh, I wasn't going to type that much but oh well.
I will say that the books were pretty cool. Kind of a raw deal that to properly enjoy the first book you have to buy the second, so what you're really getting is a $10 4-500 page kindle ebook instead of two independent books.. but I still enjoyed them. I would consider getting more in the future.
I may try to get the airbrush out a bit tomorrow, the storm troopers will go really fast when they hit the brush phase but they need their white undercoat neatened with the airbrush before I'm willing to paint the black details. Most of the rest of the imperial stuff is going to be basecoat+minor details into completion, with only the handful of rebels having much variation in color. Should be a pretty easy project to knock out.
For you Star Wars fan(atics), how horrible would it be for me to give the entire stormtrooper squad the one red shoulderpad? Is it a leader thing? I could do just one and be ok with it I guess. Would tie them better in with my corporation forces to which they'll be attached when active outside of IA games.
Trandoshans are looking nice! Simple, but effective! It is a shame they're all monopose, but there's not a lot you can do about that from the look of them.
As for the Stormtrooper pads, if you take a look at the Clones they all have coloured markings in Ep.III and Clone Wars, officers or not. Stormtroopers are kept plain probably to keep them as faceless baddies, but I can't see why they couldn't have similar campaign/battalion markings.
Makes sense. I think I'll give all of my guys a red shoulder pad, I'll decide if I wanna do right or left later on, still gotta smooth out their under/basecoat with the airbrush as it isn't very nice at this point.
I think I'm gonna do the Imperial Officers next, gonna paint two in the grey/green of the army/navy and one in the black that I think represents the stormtrooper officer corps or w/e.
I was worried that you were sucked into the Edge with the title change of the thread. Was reading your post and just now got another email from them trying to get me go back.
Should only be a few more days now... if you click the 'click here to hide this promotion' link it seems to remove the large-ass pictures at least.
@Theo, I really wanted to like it, was all gung-ho for the first few days but then the fan base killed it for me more than anything SAS could have done.
I'll be saving my money for other stuff, probably not even models for the most part... though there is a certain dropship I've seen floating around lately that I would like to have.
Gideon Argue is our first rebel hero. Shown with his character card. I think I did alright matching the colors. Seems like an interesting unit in game with the ability to cause a friendly figure to act. I'm guessing he's the boss of the rebel team.
Thanks guys. The drop ship still exists but it hasn't progressed. Kinda waiting on some stuff to fall into place before working on anything quite that large again.
Wondering with the neat new drop ships coming out if maybe I shouldn't turn it back into a tower lol.
GrimDork wrote: Gideon Argue is our first rebel hero. Shown with his character card. I think I did alright matching the colors. Seems like an interesting unit in game with the ability to cause a friendly figure to act. I'm guessing he's the boss of the rebel team.
With that rebellion command patch on his shoulder and wearing such non-drab colors, you bet he is a Rebel commander!
Got some time to spend with the airbrush. As a result, I got everything base coated that needed it! It was all thanks to Chemist.
'This mission is a gift from god!' - Chemist
They offered us a reward, Time Mage looked inside and found
A commemorative photo!
This mission was a big success!
Ahem... maybe I should just go play FFT for a few hours huh?
Anyways, got everything basecoated that I wanted to, even did some weak OSL on vader. I managed to do most of the work on one of my mars attacks trucks too, bonus!
Still want to paint at least one more of the heroes tonight, or any of those minis I just finished. Some of the new stuff is dangerously close to being done already, but I need to give it time to cure.
Haha! That's a Mars Attacks truck, the Patriot Silverback, used both by the military and general population. A Mans truck, America's truck. Or something. You just can't see the tires well in the photo
One of Mantic's studio paint schemes for them.
I do have a pretty strong urge to look up some repulsor/hover crafts and try my hand at one. I figure something with simple sides and a smooth underside can't be *too* hard to use, and most of my other scifi models are appropriately high tech that such a craft would certainly fit in.
And I've just blown my own mind.... I always thought the T-16 was the [i]hovercraft they were riding around in during the movie[/] and had kind of wondered why shooting womprats with a rifle in that thing would make him good at flying an x-wing etc... Now I realize that the T-16 is some kind of proper air/spacecraft that actually flies and has guns... now it makes sense /facepalm.
Now what the hell am I supposed to google to find the little hoverhotrod they were cruising around in. Oh right they called them land speeders... I just need to watch the flippin movies again apparently...
Yeah, I probably remember it now... its just they never showed him fly one so I figured he had a model of it because he wanted one, not because he had one and was really good at it. Luke's apparently high piloting skills always kind of confused me but if he had such a thing all along, it makes more sense.
GrimDork wrote: I couldn't help being just a bit snarky. I wish SAS all the luck in the world, though I fear they may need it.
The supporters of ME are worse than mantic or GW fans from what I've been hearing (had to ditch the ks thread early on when someone tried to explain that people hand waving away eachother's points was the essence of arguing, and it seems to have gotten worse since then [I believe I saw someone point out that first edition eldar didn't look good compared to todays standards so why should first edition Medge models look good... because logic?]).
Anyway, realizing that those were the people who I would have to rely on for future rules questions, army list vetting, and painting/fluff feedback I just quickly lost interest. I realize its a vocal minority, but Dakka is going to be *the* home of ME and those people will be here continuing to profess that the game and company can do no wrong. Just isn't for me.
The terrain sprue is cool. I may buy some at retail if the price is reasonable and there aren't any weird bundling restrictions. The robots aren't bad. I can find cooler drones (albeit more expensive ones) and similarly sized humanoid mechs (reaper's CAV bones kickstarter will hit retail eventually, and some of them are similarly sized to either offered). I'm sure I'll be missing out on magical sliding core super detailed and modular robot kits if I go the CAV route, but I'd save money and once it's glued together, the poseability has done it's job. Just pick a CAV sculpt I'm already happy with and its a done deal.
I kind of want the suppression markers, and the size of the game sounds right... but I don't tend to kickstart games for rules and tokens, typically I want the models and there just aren't that many that I really want from Medge.
Anyway, I wish them the best, but I'll be quite glad when the campaign is over and the ad-space presumably returns somewhat to normal.
Eesh, I wasn't going to type that much but oh well.
I will say that the books were pretty cool. Kind of a raw deal that to properly enjoy the first book you have to buy the second, so what you're really getting is a $10 4-500 page kindle ebook instead of two independent books.. but I still enjoyed them. I would consider getting more in the future.
I may try to get the airbrush out a bit tomorrow, the storm troopers will go really fast when they hit the brush phase but they need their white undercoat neatened with the airbrush before I'm willing to paint the black details. Most of the rest of the imperial stuff is going to be basecoat+minor details into completion, with only the handful of rebels having much variation in color. Should be a pretty easy project to knock out.
For you Star Wars fan(atics), how horrible would it be for me to give the entire stormtrooper squad the one red shoulderpad? Is it a leader thing? I could do just one and be ok with it I guess. Would tie them better in with my corporation forces to which they'll be attached when active outside of IA games.
I felt that way too, I feel like each time I post in the thread I could take a dakka vacation. Which makes me sad as I model and solely post my figures to Dakka. I was wondering if this was legit, to which I was nervous or if it was a snarky tidbit. I am glad it is actually the latter. I almost dumped my pledge of 114$ yesterday, and honestly, I probably wouldn't have pledged if I didn't have a trade agreement with Ritides, the only thing that barely interests me is the Karist big dudes, the mechs, and I definitely want the terrain. I just feel like I'm not valued as a customer, or worse, that the company can't do any wrong. Their marketing and PR skills suck.
I will be washing my hands of it once my minis are received, sadly. I really wanted to support dakka, and I did but, I won't give anymore. I'm sorry for typing that in your plog, at the risk of sounding like an ass but, it's nice to have someone who feels similar?
Anyways, your progress with the miniatures as of late has been stellar. I went on vacation so, I need to play 10 pages of catch up now.
Solidarity is a thing people crave. I think it's one of our more basic needs past the purely physiological ones. To know that we aren't alone, and aren't alone in how we think and feel (without the second, the first may hardly matter!).
I haven't taken the time to qualify exactly how I feel about Medge... I just know that a combination of the attitude/practices of both SAS and especially its most fervent supporters has put me off. As before, I do wish them success, and I much appreciate having DakkaDakka as a place to share my thoughts and models with fellow gamers, but the attitudes prevalent in the kickstarter thread fast-tracked me out of being interested even in a token rules/support pledge.
Fan(atic)s can be great, they can also be damaging. I almost walked away from a several hundred dollar deadzone pledge after putting up with all of the Brian Blessed DIVE nonsense that was polluting the kickstarter comments towards the end. I stuck it out and am glad I did, but the medge stuff killed my enthusiasm even quicker and so there we are.
I still may try to get some of the robots at retail, they're pretty neat.
I think its mostly been 10 pages of blabbing, trying to get some more solid results by blowing through imperial assault.
I want to support Medge, but no one else in my gaming circle does. Not going to pick it up, if I'm the only one who wants to play it, especially with Bones 3 and Zombicide Black Plague right around the corner.
First: I like those Star Wars minis. My son is just getting into SW, and I'm kicking myself for selling off my massive collection of prepaints when he was just a baby. Is the game worth it as a game?
Second: I pledged $10 for a copy of the ME rules, watched the dakka thread for a couple of days, then unsubscribed. Your description makes me glad I did so.
Yeah. Finances are also a concern. I may back it for the rules or rules+tokens (or really just the main pledge at that point) if money was less of a concern but I've got certain things coming up that are going to require some major restructuring and I only intend to add to the pile if it's stuff I really want.
Bones3 *may* get me, and it may not. I had a lot of fun painting the dragons don't share dragon (well most of it, and to that note..what part of the goroloth that I did paint too ) and some of the small dudes, and assume that I'll continue to have fun painting through bones 2 but... it kind of covers me for generic fantasy stuff for nearly ever. I may back bones 3 for the big stuff, but maybe not... there's only so much shelf space for ginormous display pieces / party eliminators.
I missed out on the other zombicide stuff and feel like without the kickstarter exclusives that i'd be missing out so I never end up buying the existing games, I'll probably skip that one.
But regardless of the viability of the rules, Warpath is gonna have a really cool dropship, virtually guaranteed to be in hard plastic so.. yeah saving a bit for that one.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Joshinjapan, the game is too complicated at a glace for me to fathom it readily. I think it will make more sense once I set it up and do a run through. Compel seems to think well of it, he's been doing mini bat reps in the what are you doing today hobbywise only thread, you might peruse those.
There's just something about the dakka/medge thing. Maybe if I primarily posted on lead adventure or one of the other wargaming sites and didn't see as much about it... but being around it so much has really put me off.
Its like the devoted Mantic or GW fans, but even more potent. Another issue, I think, is the immutable nature of the project. Most kickstarters come out and have some stuff set in stone that's done, and then it comes down to napkin sketches. Medge was virtually complete from the get-go and so they can't change anything. People ask and they can't. All you can say to people telling you your models could be improved at that point is that you can't change them. Fans quickly point out that they're perfect and the studio has no choice but to put a positive spin on everything they can as they can't take things they've spent so much on back to the drawing board.
Its funny, they're set up to be successful without kickstarter.. but in so doing they've almost crippled their ability to game and use kickstarter to their advantage. Of course, as they were already nearly ready to go... they should still do fine and I wish them luck.
I missed out on the other zombicide stuff and feel like without the kickstarter exclusives that i'd be missing out so I never end up buying the existing games, I'll probably skip that one.
Not to play Devil's advocate but, Zombicide Black Plague is kind of an ideal starting point for new players to jump on. While it uses the same core rules it's Fantasy setting, instead of the modern setting, making it sort of a reboot. It's kind of like Warhmmer Fantasty is to 40K, being built around the same core, but distinctly different games.
As for regualr zombicide, the Exclusive survivors are nice to have, but they are not needed. If you want additional survivors beyond what it's included in the box sets you can print the dashboards for the exclusive figures, or make your own. Each surivivor is ruleswise is just a skill progression tree linked to a cool looking figure. We spent months playing with custom surivors, and we have all of the official ones. Heck, we even played with superheroes customs using rebased Heroclix. The key is not to let players make up new skills, and require them to use the existing ones.
My favorite custom was Magneto. He had tough to simulate a force field, and flung zombies around with magentism using Push and Taunt.
Sorry I'm ranting, but I've yet to have someone play a game of Zombicide with us and not love it afterwards.
Yeah, I've always heard good things about the game. It would probably do well at the library game day thing too. Having it for a fantasy setting raises interesting questions... Is it like heroes and wizards surviving or farmers and what not?
I think I'd almost be more interested in the modern setting, unless they made a scifi one
GrimDork wrote: Yeah, I've always heard good things about the game. It would probably do well at the library game day thing too. Having it for a fantasy setting raises interesting questions... Is it like heroes and wizards surviving or farmers and what not?
I think I'd almost be more interested in the modern setting, unless they made a scifi one
The new Imperials are looking good. I like the variation in uniform colour as well. I'll have to do that with my own figures once I get around to painting them.
I felt that way too, I feel like each time I post in the thread I could take a dakka vacation.
I've felt the same every single time I post in that thread, though I've already said my final piece in the Discussions thread on Friday. I'm not even letting myself read the new posts that have come up since, in case I feel driven to reply. I'll look at the thread again at the end of the week, or perhaps in a week's time when any direct responses to me are too old to reply to. I've had a few short holidays from Dakka in my time here, and for better or worse, I kind of feel like I've painted a target on my back after sharing my thoughts in that thread - especially given my last few posts. I wish them all the best, but I don't like the uncomfortable feeling that the way the campaign has been handled has brought to Dakka, so I'm mostly avoiding reading threads in N&R and DD right now, let alone posting there.
The new Zombicide looks good, and from current experience with the existing product, I'm definitely interested in the new one.
That AT-AT is a pretty good model for coming in a boxed game. A friend has the SW Assault box, and we've all had a look at it, but not played yet. I think it will paint up nicely.
Nice work on the officers. Doing anything to them so they'll look less "samey"?
The officers have slightly different skin tones... But yeah they look a lot alike. I don't have any good matching arms for swapping so I've pretty much left the models alone conversion wise.
@shas bah, for all we know Diala Passal is just as cool she was just hiding/exiled. Or something. It's probably not the same shade of badass anyway, slightly off, somewhat less badass.
Looks good so far. I agree that she could use either some wash or a dip with some highlights afterwards. I'm a bit surprised to see the whole Starkiller holding a lightsaber backwards continued elsewhere.
Thanks. I'm expecting the dip to do wonders on the stormtroopers though it will dirty up the white a bit. May have to go back over it on the flattest parts to mitigate... We'll see.
If you don't mind having to do a separate coat of lacquer, the Payne's Grey glaze I use works great over white. Just make sure to thin it down a lot first.
Cool! ^^ I haven't had the time to start painting my models from SW:IA but yours look cool already. the second pic with the jedi exile is clear the lightsaber stands out enough. Is there a reason you followed the 'official' colourscheme except for the saber? ^^
Have you played the game meanwhile? I've read a couple pages back that you haven't the chance to play/study it thoroughly or something?
Still haven't gotten to play. I'm planning on getting it finished this month and taking it along to the library game day near the end of the month. Gonna try to learn how to play first, obviously
I altered the color on the lightsaber because the photos were coming out in such a way as to make the skin and saber look almost the same color. It's not as bad in person but since I'm not painting any glow effect for this light saber I wanted it to be a few more shades different from the skin.
Thanks, I wanted to do something and couldn't think of anything else.
Like many of the others, Vader will be getting some extra attention with stuff like 'ard coat and whatnot to make some of the bits shinier and help things stand out a bit more.
Had a notion to go crazy and try to finish it all tonight but then I clocked 15 remaining models and stepped down
Will try to do some more though!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Recent additions.
Great work on all those Imperials. Even after following your blog for this long I'm astounded by your speed. Are you planning to acrylic-base your IA stuff?
Yep, acrylic bases. They may end up commandeering the last of my bases actually. Gonna have to order more but waiting for things to line up, may have to not rebase some stuff for awhile but no big deal.
The Imperial Assault stuff is pretty simple, and I'm giving it a basic barely good enough for a boardgame paintjob too. Most people put a bit more work into their stuff than I have been lately. The dip does tend to mitigate that somewhat though, usually.
I just dipped the 20 minis I had done that aren't vader (no point in dipping an entirely black model, he's darker than the dip!) so as long as they dry fine (and they should) I'll be able to seal and base them soon-ish.
I may see about playing the game sooner than later, but we'll see.
Nope not yet. Gonna get a game of something in this week and if I can familiarize with the rules quickly enough I may just have some feedback for you by the weekend.
I don't think I would have bought it for $100 off the shelf, but I'm a cheapskate. I ordered mine for $60 from miniature market when it was the deal of the day a few weeks to a month ago.
Yeah, and wide mouths, these things beat out even certain actresses who must secretly be pureblood yuan-ti (you know who you are!).
I had to go with grey/black teeth because of the white fur, too much white. Kind of back asswards but I still like it, and they're aliens so why can't they have black teeth and claws and spines.
If I'm honest, I didn't even recognize it as a Star Wars thing, was leaning towards figuring it was just something new for IA.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok, looked it up, still don't remember that part too well, gonna have to give all six movies another watch it seems.
I think I've got the AT-ST to where I'm happy with it. I swear I'll have had enough time to get it all done today but the stormtroopers are kind of tedious (even given how little work there is) and the E-Web engineers are just more tedious versions of the storm troopers. Still got 4 heroes too but no inspiration yet... may go base the ones I just sealed today.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just got out my clear bases I need 33 to get the 25mm based guys covered, got 32. I think I can probably turn one out somewhere but.. gonna need more bases soon eesh.
Only 11 models stand in the way of Imperial Assault being finished...
Wonder if I can get them done by thursday or so. Not sure when the game is this week but probably not before then... be pretty close, I think I'm just gonna go watch starwars for now instead of painting more
The models are looking sweet. I am so, so tempted to get into it myself. That and all the work I am seeing on the D&D board games I am seeing. So tempting.
Last update for the night, hopefully not for the week but given the rising temperatures and how tired that's been leaving me after work... we'll see.
I definitely have enough models finished to play this week, although I probably need at least one E-Web engineer and preferably another trio of storm troopers. Having the other heroes would be nice to give the other player some choice as well. Anyway, here's what everyone to date looks like after dip, a bit of touchup (white on the storm troopers), matte sealer, and some selective gloss varnish:
Here's all of the finished models as of tonight on a few of the game tiles. Hopefully the heroes aren't always this outnumbered
Vader and the royal guard after getting some selective gloss. I think Vader would probably benefit from some cleanup and different black techniques, and some of the black should be darker but... hand waving boardgame excuses... so I think I'm cool with him. Thanks to Compel, I have a bit of insight to the whole normal/elite distribution and have opted to make two of the royal guard elite by giving them scary purple masks. I kind of think the regular guys are at least as intimidating stock, but something to differentiate seemed appropriate.
The trandoshan hunters again. I tried to subtly alter the skintone for the two elite hunters but it wasn't obvious enough for me. You might notice the two in the middle are a touch darker/bluer, but maybe not. After looking over their unit card I noticed that the elite variant had an upgraded version of the scattergun so I opted to paint the barrels silver on those two elites to show it.
There are nine storm troopers so the first three that I did with a red shoulderpad will be considered the elite team. I think if I ever use the stormtroopers for something else, I'll break them into fireteams each with a red-padded leader. Maybe two teams escorting an E-Web engineer and one team guarding an officer or some such. Something else being other systems or just me playing with my various models and taking photos Two of the imperial officers have the standard grey/green/olive navy/military uniforms, and one has the black of the (apparently) storm trooper officer uniform. All of them got a bit of gloss for their boots.
One of the more amusing things about this project for me is the fact that I had expected the stormtroopers to be the easiest thing about the entire set. In reality, they've proven to be a bit of a pain. Pretty much all of the work involved is tedious work going around things that will almost inevitably involve touch ups. Even after they were dipped, I had to drybrush them back with white to g et them closer to the proper color. The stinkers. Fortunately, everything else has proven to be at least as easy as I had anticipated.
These probe droids are, frankly, pretty boring. I didn't go out on a limb to make them fancy, I know some people have been painting them with pretty gem effects for the 'eyes' but I just wasn't feeling it. I should probably go back in and hit the three manipulators that they're standing on with silver on the claws. I forgot these things are technically hovering and the standing 'legs' are actually the same as the two that are out in the 'pinch' position. These should be useful guard/sentry/survey drones for a lot of systems and set-ups.
Here are the finished heroes, half of the set (not counting Luke as he's basically an upgraded counter and not a playable character). I'm fairly happy with all of them though I kind of wish I had invested some more time in the light saber. I think Diala will be fine though. I think Gideon may be my favorite, I like how the colors have worked out and he's got a pretty extreme face I also have a soft spot for characters who are in the support role, whether they're leaders or just backup. I'm not sure if Diala or Garrkhan will be seeing much action outside of the star wars universe, the light saber is pretty iconic as is the twilek tentacle/hair and I mean Wookie is pretty darn iconic. Gideon though, would make a good alternate Rebs commander or similar. Even a grunt if it came to it. I'm sure the rebs would gladly take an exiled jedi and wookie though so who knows, everyone loves crossovers right
And here's the progress of today/last night (stormtrooper last night, rest today). I'm quite pleased with the Xemus or whatever you call them, even if I blatantly copied a pointjob I saw on boardgame geek (except for the eyes and some other minutiae, and really, its not that different from the card they included with the game). Stormtrooper needs a bit of black yet, I've just noticed. I'm reasonably happy with the AT-ST pre-dip, the weapons are just enough of a difference to cover spot color and I threw in some scratches and blaster burns for good measure. Not the best weathering I've ever done, but its enough to add some visual interest on the flat plates and such.
And there you have the progress to date. Still got 5 troopers, 2 heavy gunners, 3 heroes, and Luke to finish but I don't necessarily need that all before the end of the week. If I can just get a couple of stormtroopers and an E-Web gunner dipped, sealed, and based.. I should have enough for most of the scenarios, just with limited hero choice.
That's what I think too. I figure they sent you some really nicely detailed BG tiles you may as well show the things off
Of course now I probably need to get another 3-400 bases if I'm ever gonna finish off all of my current projects. I've got a crapload of things that need rebased too beyond just the new stuff.
I think it was low 80s the last time I counted. Then I did a couple of bigger pieces like the space dragon. So maybe between 84-87 before I started imperial assault. Once IA is done, I'll have something like 120 models for the year (36 in the set) which covers me through April. I'll still be behind for may and June once this month is over.
Hoping to keep momentum and knock out some mars attacks and enforcers models after this. Maybe sprinkle in some bones.
I may knock out a block or two of fantasy models sometime to help me keep up.
Yeah but different places, employments, situations, priorities, etc.
120 is a bit behind where I wanted to be this year, still hoping I can make some more headway before even more painting obstacles rise to keep the total down.
I've been painting too. , not enough for an update, and the motivation is at that critical level of "do I really like this enough to keep doing it?" Not updating my blog until I decide one way or another. Plus I'm really waiting for some of my KS to start showing up. Trying not to get zombicide:Black Plague.
Theophony wrote: I've been painting too. , not enough for an update, and the motivation is at that critical level of "do I really like this enough to keep doing it?" Not updating my blog until I decide one way or another. Plus I'm really waiting for some of my KS to start showing up. Trying not to get zombicide:Black Plague.
That with painting in general or the model you are working on?
I would get black plague if it were a year or two ago, it looks good..those dashboards... Man. But yeah too much going on gonna be scraping bottoms of barells, shaking the couch for change, and so on this winter. All for good reasons, I'll get into them later though.
If I back anything it'll be warpath, and I need like 60-80 dollars worth of bases from litko too. And even warpath is questionable. At least a dollar for pledge manager though surely.
Not sure if I have any proper big kses to come soon. Only got a pack of naiads from KOW and those are second shipment. Dbx will see some minis but probably just a couple of softbacks and small baggies. DZI is way off yet and I'm not sure when Dungeon sagas comes out.. That'll be a fair few models though.
Right now I mostly want to consolidate my present holdings and try to buy as little else as possible.
We shall have to play Infinity (or whatever, really) one of these days...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Surely the current projects if he's waiting for ks's to show up, right? Hopefully.
Well I'm still waiting on my creaturecaster KS, but I have a feeling it will be a year overdue. Also bought well into Conan, blood Rage, MODcube, KOW2 and I put $1 in on deadzone. Current project is revival of a game called Alkemy, where I picked up a bunch of clearance from miniaturemarket for uber cheap, and the return of the Legion of extraordinary servo skulls (formerly the legion of extraordinary janitors)
Progress will appear in my thread when I finally get the urge.
Definitely will have to get together, I still have some of your x-wing things .
Alchemy is a bunch of boardgamey quality minis with few poses, was its own game I think. They often sell them dirt cheap at MM, something like 15 minis for 3 bucks or similar, absurd whatever it is.
I believe Theo was using them to do something like a clay/terracotta warriors army for awhile there.
Feel free to lurk and post here all you like Theo, till you wanna bother with your own blog again.
Theophony wrote: Well I'm still waiting on my creaturecaster KS, but I have a feeling it will be a year overdue. Also bought well into Conan, blood Rage, MODcube, KOW2 and I put $1 in on deadzone. Current project is revival of a game called Alkemy, where I picked up a bunch of clearance from miniaturemarket for uber cheap, and the return of the Legion of extraordinary servo skulls (formerly the legion of extraordinary janitors)
Progress will appear in my thread when I finally get the urge.
Definitely will have to get together, I still have some of your x-wing things .
Some serious money being spent there Theo lol. I too am waiting on Mr Glen's Creature Caster project. Man, that guy sucks at updates!
Actually the figures Grimdorm is thinking of are from Arcane Legions, and are really gummy plastic and 20 or 25 mm scale, way to small for working next to GW figures.
Alkemy is a fantasy skirmish game which I believe came out around the time of Necromunda and Mordheim. The figures are great, no ham fisted figures, all true scale, but I think are more in the line of 32mm than 28. The game is coming out again, this time it will be in English, the last two times (two separate companies) tried in French (where the game first came from) and the. French but poorly translated rules and cards, most of which were online and translated by players. The new company is fully behind English, and have even hired the player who did most of the translations from years ago to head up the direction. Here's the link to the News and rumors page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/648598.page
The four main factions for Alkemy are "cat people" very Arabian themed. humans, the main group is very oriental themed, but there are splinter groups that are loosely Knights/corrupted. The Aurlocks very Native American themed. And lastly a lizard/snakeman army I haven't dealt with them much as they don't have models yet.
@Angel of Vengence: I'm that John Mathews from the comment section of the creaturecaster kickstarter. If you liked me before, you can feel free to hate me now . I was a big proponent of Jeremy's models and I hope now that people forgive me if they followed what I said about being able to trust him.
Okay, I also have to say I am happy as I have not just 4/5/6th Ed 40k, but Deadzone, will get Warpath, and I have Sedition Wars(could adapt that from board to table top, ) I ought to get Dust tabletop, I also have Tomorrows' War and the supplement By Dagger and Talon so that when I do get folks I can play with, I can go and do things differently and at some truly flexible skirmish level
Well plenty of dust tabletop out there since the kickstarter had its snags, but looks like it's finaly going to ship, so there's always picking up what backers dump after receiving and rage quitting.
While I like the look of the imperial assault guys I'm glad I didn't get into that. FFG has done such a good job with the Star Wars license, and I cant afford another "collection".
Yeah, its a money pit. I'm not too interested in most of the add-ons to bother, I may pick up notable personalities like Han and Chewie. Probably only bother with the expansion that's coming out if I actually find some way to play all of the included scenarios, which is highly unlikely.
Which is good, because I'm sure I'll have to buy several x-wing wave 7 ships... for all of the squad building potential even if not for some of the ships themselves.
Oh well, I'll get a chance eventually. So I got off work an hour or two early today and wandered around... mistakes were made but... not huge ones:
I finally caved and bought this Revell Snaptite X-wing Fighter kit:
Its not a bad kit, but not a great one either. Some things probably need glued. Other things are probably gonna quickly wear out and no longer function (looking at the little landing gear pods on the underside). It's probably a bit brittle and all that but... really I got it for $13 from Hobby Lobby with their 40% off coupon... kind of hard to complain.
That, and its just about the right scale. The pilot it comes with is tiny but the R2D2 is large compared to it and seems more appropriately scaled to hang out with 28mm minis (and the imperial assault starwars stuff I have is probably closer to 32mm anyway..). Even though the pilot is too small, barely child sized compared to 28mm minis... I'm preeety sure you could shoehorn in a truescaled 28mm mini into the cockpit if you really wanted to... so I consider it to be 'pretty darn close' to the right scale.
Flying.
S-foils locked in attack position!
The wings just kind of sit inside the housing so the whole thing is kind of wobbly. I think if I'm careful with it though.. should hold up.
Added to what's been seen before, this leaves the bothan and the smuggler. I should be able to knock them out tomorrow if I paint at all. I'm still hoping to get them all dipped tomorrow, the remaining 15. We'll see. After the dip, I'll have to retouch the white on the stormtroopers (and probably E-webs), and eventually seal plus base them. I'm close though.
Doin what I can, when I feel like it. Everything I mentioned has been dipped, I just need to finish the bothan and smuggler tomorrow, dip them, and then do the retouches, sealer, and basing. The last two will probably time out to be a day or two behind the others but still by the ides of the month which beats my end of the month by half.
However, consider looking into Bandai's Star Wars models. You have to order them from Japan but they are about 1000 times better than anything from Revell.
Added to what's been seen before, this leaves the bothan and the smuggler. I should be able to knock them out tomorrow if I paint at all. I'm still hoping to get them all dipped tomorrow, the remaining 15. We'll see. After the dip, I'll have to retouch the white on the stormtroopers (and probably E-webs), and eventually seal plus base them. I'm close though.
Really liking your Stormtroopers here Grim . Look badass. I'm particularly fond of the tripod mounted guns
GrimDork wrote: Being from Japan, I wouldn't doubt it, but the scale would be the thing.
I'll have to take a look now that you point it out though
I don't know what scale you are looking for or what you need, but Bandai's X-wings come in two scales: 1/72 and 1/48 (both are common aircraft scales). The Revell kit is 'box scale' and from what I gather it's somewhere between the two, but probably closer to 1/48 (I've read that it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/55 scale).
I always liked the look of the E-webs, although I didn't know thats what they were called till I started on this project
@Scootypuffjunior I did a bit of looking after your post. 1/48 would be most appropriate. It seems there's still a fair bit of debate as to which scale is truly closest to 28mm but it also depends on the 28mm scale you're talking about .
I saw the 1/72s for sale and discovered the 1/48s before going to bed, I'll have to take another look for them.
Their 1/1700 star destroyer is amazing too, too bad it's still like 4-5 times too small to use for x-wing
Vick posted something about a globe base in graves blog the other day. It got me thinking of using an old globe and painting it up as the Death Star for x-wing . We've been doing a lot of cleaning out at church lately and have plenty of outdated globes that are in the "to be pitched" pile. Most have countries that don't exist anymore on them.....I'm looking at you USSR
Set it up in the corner of the board. It's all perspective after that. I've never played attack wing for Star Trek, but they have planets in the game, so a small moon wouldn't be too out of place
Theophony wrote: Set it up in the corner of the board. It's all perspective after that. I've never played attack wing for Star Trek, but they have planets in the game, so a small moon wouldn't be too out of place
'That's no moon!' Had to be done!
Might work well for Armada, although still massively under scaled. Failing that, it'd be a cool game/hobby room ornament!
Got to play Imperial Assault tonight. It was fun, glad I bought the game. We ran through the tutorial, switched sides and did it again, then played the first mission Aftermath.
The tutorial seems to heavily favor the Rebels, but this notion may be skewed by the adjustments to accommodate only two heroes (just had the one opponent). But it was good to get started. The first scenario seemed a lot more balanced and my Imperial forces managed (just!) to drive the rebels off before they could stop us from broadcasting our signal (of doom!).
Diala first sought to defend the second door (the Imperials had to activate a terminal within the building to win) but when the troopers opened the door, Finn's first shots went wide and he came under heavy fire.
In the next round, Dialla pushed herself (gained strain tokens) to quickly rush back to Finn and put down one of the storm troopers. It was a very You Shall Not Pass!!! kind of moment.
We played Aftermath next and the full scenario felt much more balanced. I think it could have gone either way, I just got luckier or perhaps made the right moves at the right time.
I didn't have time (or enough photos) for a proper battle report, but you can get a feel for the flow of things from the next few photos.
The rebels in question are Diala Pasal and Finn Signus, their initial imperial opponents included an officer, storm trooper group, and probe droid (who happened to be my MVP). To offset the missing two heroes, both chosen heroes received the Legendary reward card which gave them each 10 extra HP and an extra activation token, so the two heroes were very similar in overall stats and activations to a party of four.
Finn has blasted down one trooper, and Diala can be seen here taking advantage of the reach provided by her plasteel staff (doesn't start out with a light saber even!). Things may look a bit one-sided initially, but this is largely because the damage done to heroes is tracked on their cards, but imperial units die much more quickly and track damage on their models. Some of the shots by the troopers, leader, and especially probe droid all managed to chip away at the heroes.
The probe droid was my favorite unit, he had a nasty 3 dice attack and could bypass difficult terrain. He also managed to have more hit points than the other basic units. He was using the default card for the imperial trait deck (heroes get a deck of cards to get their default weapon and a slew of xp upgrades for later on, imperial decks do the same, there are three themes...I picked technological superiority) which allowed him to hurt himself to get an extra attack result. The probe droid could technically recover damage in addition to dealing extra damage depending on his rolls, but I always opted for maximum attack since my only goal was to injure both rebels before they could blow all of the terminals. An honorable mention goes to the Eweb engineer (who didn't live long enough to make a photo), he caught Diala in a compromising position and used his ability to fire twice a turn to do probably half of the damage it eventually took to put her into injured. Obviously she wouldn't let him live after that..
Here, Diala has killed the trooper to the right (the guy in that space now is totally not the same guy, check the shoulder pad ) and with her second activation, killed the commander as well. Now she's poised to tackle the first broadcast transmitter. I believe Finn may have killed another storm trooper by this point, or possibly missed a shot. Out of shot, on the next turn, diala kills the first transmitter and claims a supply from the crate (wasn't really useful though). Things look a little grim for the Imperial defenders, but wait... it gets worse.
For the rebels that is! Opening the door triggers an event that spawns another officer, 3 more troopers, and an eweb engineer. At the end of the round the door was opened I got the option to either reinforce the transmitters (7hp instead of 4) or drop a blast door sealing off the interior from the green side (but since the rebels were already inside.. pointless). As you can see, I was able to reinforce the initial group of storm troopers a couple of times over the turns (initially, you get 2 threat per round, and storm troopers cost 2 threat to reinforce. Alternatively, I could have hoarded my points and redeployed fallen units like the eweb engineer, but I think the steady pressure of the storm troopers was a useful thing to have).
You can see a lot of damage spread around here, and for that you can thank Finn. In short order he managed to use his specialty, Havoc Shot, to kill the officer and one of his troopers, injuring the other two and one of the consoles in the process! Clumping up around Finn is a recipe for disaster! His lone wolf ability helped him keep his strain down (use it to activate powers like havoc shot, but only to a point before you have to heal it to use more powers) whereas diala managed to get worn out with no chance to rest and recover. Diala is pretty damaged at this point, the probe droid got some really good shots this game.
Finn kept on Havoc Shot-ing murderizing another storm trooper and dinging the other transmitter. Diala managed to damage the transmitter but the storm trooper adjacent to it shored up its defenses not insignificantly. By this point, I believe diala was down to the wounded state. She still had 10 hitpoints to go but had reduced stats (and my win condition was wounding, not killing, all rebel heroes or delaying till round 6).
I do believe Diala used one of her actions to vanquish the terminal, and the other to shatter the nearly-dead trooper. Since the trooper's group was depleted I had to put their card back in my hand and chose to redeploy the 2 point officer (since I had no remaining trooper squads to reinforce).
As you can see, Finn put the hurt on the third transmitter, it only had one hit left. Unfortunately for Finn, the probe droid gets to roll three dice and he used the experimental weaponry card to add another success totaling 7 wounds, 5 of which got through Finn's defense...dropping him exactly down to wounded.
Having met that condition, the rebels were forced to flee with their mission incomplete while the Imperial forces continued to rally to their transmitter beacons.
I had a lot of fun, going to bring the game to the library game day this month (if I can go) and see if I can get some folks playing. We both agreed that the game would probably be more fun with at least one more player.
Still gotta finish the bothan and the smuggler, I'll get 'round to it... hopefully this weekend.
Towards the end of the month there's a game day at the library, planning on bringing IA to that. If I get the chance to go. Failing that, I'll probably work out some kind of AI and play some of the missions myself just to see them and take pictures.
pretty sure the tutorial is designed in favor of the rebels. It wasn't even close when we played it. It even says to make the most experenced player be the empire.
@theo, well that's why we're wargamers as opposed to board game enthusiasts, right . I do agree though, even simple jobs like mine go a long way. And I really like the clear acrylics for this kinda thing, why hide those sexy board tiles?
@para, did seem a bit complex but that comes down to the rpg elements too I think. Not as mindless as some stuff but quite fun if its what you're looking for.
@squall, as best I can tell it was... Felt like with a couple of key rolls going differently, my opponent definitely could have won.
That's the state that I've been in ever since I saw them the first time. I still like the scenic bases that others do, but for me, I think it's pretty much clear acrylics for life!
I think I'll have to do the clear bases as well as I'm translating more over into board games with nice tile floors than the bored games like GW seems to make now.
Jyn Odan, the aly smuggler. Just have Mak to do and I'll have the set done. May do some 3d counters but we'll see.
Automatically Appended Next Post: She seems pretty slippery, she can only do the QuickDraw twice before she needs to rest/recover, but she can use it to fire out of turn (and effectively attack for up to a third time in a round) which could potentially end the offensive unit. Plus, as long as she hurt it, she can reposition..woot! She is one of the squishier heroes with less endurance than some, but she looks like an asset to me.
@Archer: the main box has all the Rebel heroes and a bunch of imps, the expansion packs contain extra characters/villains/NPCs, as well as new missions/cards. The catch is that to play the 'campaign' in the main set using all minis instead of some minis and some card tokens, you actually need to buy most of the current expansions. It's one of the main reasons I haven't bought it, to get all the extra stuff you'll want to not have to mix minis and card, you'll basically double the cost of the set.
The way I heard it, basically the boosters are more for skirmish than for the campaign as they mostly just replace your tokens in terms of the campaign although there are side missions. But there are more cards/benefits for the skirmish side of things. Also, if you don't want a cardboard counter for han solo or the assassin droid etc...
And yeah they're like 80 bucks for the set on amazon, haven't looked to see if MM has a comparable bundle but its a bit high. I think I may paint up some deadzone rebs to match rebel colors and use them for those. Soraks for sappers maybe. I may get han and chewie though...
Already an expansion out too but I would only get that if I ever managed to get through all the campaign missions.
Woah, a lot of progress made on Imperial Assault. You seem to be getting a lot of enjoyment for your hobby dollar from the purchase, and that is great to see. The OSL on Vader is epic as well, kudos Sir.
Totally agree with your views on MEdge from a number of pages back as well.
Yeah, I figure if I get to play it a couple more times.. just about worth the 60 bucks at that point I'd like to play through all of the scenarios but you'd need a dedicated group for that.
Thanks, I had to do something for Vader that wasn't just highlighted black. It's not the best effect but it gets the job done.
Really wish Medge did better, but there were a number of reasons it didn't. May still look some of the stuff up at retail though, especially if they stay true to their talk of reasonable prices.
Post traumatic advertising syndrome? PTAS is a real thing, adamsouza here is proof.. apparently..
It gobbled them up from the core of the galaxy, I'm sure there's still some adverts that survived by fleeing to the fringe of the internets.. maybe reddit and 4chan
So, managed to play Imperial Assault again. Here's what I said about it over on another post:
Well, we did manage to get through the tutorial, aftermath, AND spice run. The heroes did fine during the tutorial. They nearly had the consoles blown in aftermath, maybe 5 total health remaining between the last two, they could have had it with just a couple more activations.
Spice run was similarly close. Everything on my side was dead except for some trandoshans I spawned that same turn. The E-Web gunner that spawns when you enter the spice room managed to knock Jyn Odan down and out before being demolished by Finn (it took two shots at him too, but both came up about a space short =/). But that action was apparently enough. Finn had to scoop up the access card on his way to the other door to let the wookies in to make an attempt on the last spice barrels. The party managed to seize 5/6 barrels but ran out of actions and activations on that last turn.
I believe we have to run the mission indicated by the text in Aftermath if we play again next month... which would mean the poor rebels would have to survive waves of imperials assaulting them, including Vader himself! Dun dun DUNN.
Still proving to be a fun game, glad I purchased it.
Additional observations... Jyn Odan is squishy. She's got some defense/escape mechanics, especially after she starts getting XP, but you've got to be on the ball when it comes to using them. I focused fire at Jyn in both games and she had to retreat to heal in the first, and got taken out in the second. It's entirely possible that she could have clinched either game if she hadn't retreated/gone down. I think the first game involved more of an issue with the players being too defensive/caring in regards to Jyn, had they been more aggressive... even if Jyn got dropped in that game another round of shooting was almost all they needed to win. In the second game, well... having an injured character pop open a door is turning out to be a bad idea in most scenarios, it seems. Though the party was pressed for time and probably had no other choice.
Gharkan (however you spell it, the Wookie...) is freaking *brutal*. Red dice seem to have a larger number of sides with a higher number of hits, and his ability to charge plus attack makes him even better at clearing out clusters of troops than Finn. They got him the extended haft item too, or whatever you call it, so now he's got reach! It's like having a high strength two-handed weapon fighter in D&D with cleave all over again!
I managed to get my tiles organized into bags which helped speed things up a little bit. I'd still like a slightly more optimized traveling storage solution.... I've had a, hmm, what do the UK people call it... a brainwave? Might look into ditching the imperial assault box (though it *is* nice) and customizing one of my plano pistol cases (specifically purchased for figures, I'm more of an edged weapons kind of guy) to hold the set. Gonna have to check that out after this...
The guy that runs the RPG/D&D kind of games during the game days is apparently moving/changing shifts/etc so I could probably step in to do that moving forward, but its kind of fun to do boardgames like imperial assault and x-wing too. Trying to decide what would be more fun. Not even sure which edition of D&D I would run... Frankly 4th edition would likely be the easiest in terms of...well ... almost everything I know a lot of people don't have any love for it but the combat runs smoother than 3.whatever/pathfinder, and while some of the more esoteric things that were technically neat about 3.xx/pathfinder don't really make it into 4th edition... for a 4 hour session that only happens once a month... it almost makes the most sense out of the systems that I own.
Obviously continuing to play Imperial Assault would be fun, and at least one or two of the other people seemed to be willing to do so.
On the other hand... I could derive some pretty serious painting motivation out of running a D&D game, and once a month would almost be something I could manage to keep up with (especially once the pool of heroes was covered and I could focus on new monsters and set dressing).
I've wanted to play at least once for a long time, but I'm not really burnt out on running games either, it's kind of in my nature.. I tend towards support roles. So while as a player this would lead to me being the cleric/whatever, as a gamer in general it tends to make me the DM
HRMRMRMR......
Anyway. Thanks for reading, I'll pop in a few pictures of Imperial Assault from today in a little bit, though I was busy going over new rules and stuff and so I didn't have many opportunities to take new photos.
Oh, yup. I'll get some pictures of the whole thing when I get a chance to do so with good lighting.
Pretty much out of bases but still trying to decide on what to paint next... I guess it'll depend on if I decide to try to run some kind of D&D or keep pressing on with IA.
It can be, especially now that I have so many heroes and monsters! Grah... I'd need tiles, wont' have those till dungeon saga comes out. Could get some other stuff sorted though.
And really, planning a 3-4 hour game per month isn't really that time consuming... though it would be more so if I tried to paint all the models to fit too
Adding some photos from imperial assault here in a moment.
Initial deployment for Aftermath. You can see the players were thinking defensively here as they stashed the weaker characters behind the wookie and soldier. They look outnumbered but...
As you can see... they quickly swept the defenders. They actually got trapped outside by a blast door for a round which is probably a solid part of why they didn't claim victory. I spawned a heavy gunner behind them but the crate they looted had a com scrambler thing and he got tapped before he could act.
Even more dead imperials later... nothing stays alive long for these guys, but the halls were figuratively stacked with bodies such that the rebels just didn't make it to the consoles as quickly as they could have.
Here's the last round, maybe at the very end. If they just had another shot or two... but alas, time ran out.
Here's the initial setup for the side mission Spice Run, in which the party is recruited by chewbacca on a potentially lucrative raid on a hutt spice facility. The party could win the friendship of chewbacca as an ally in the future, or abort the mission if they ran out of time.
So, here you can see my initial forces wiped out rapidly, with some storm troopers spawned to help delay the rebels. Jyn has claimed the keycard and Mak has taken advantage of his positioning to snag a crate (back when he didn't have any shots).
Jyn is pretty banged up, you can't see her here, as she's behind the door about to open it. You can see that Gharkan and Chewbacca have obtained a couple of spice barrels already, but will they have time to snag them all?
And *this* is what happens when a wounded character opens the door to the spice room. This round marked the fall of Jyn Odan which quite possibly lost the rebels the game.
Aside from a shot taken by Mak, the trandoshans I spawned on the last turn were practically ignored as the rebels desperately tried to snag the spice before the hammer dropped and they were forced to retreat. Fynn scooped up the card and made it to the door to let the wookies through, but there was one action too few to pick up all three barrels so we called it. Had Jyn been around, she could have gotten the door and Fyn could have grabbed the last barrel. Of course, any of those three interaction rolls could have failed, but chances of success were pretty high.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Bah, Theo... You have kid's don't you? Toddler happened
Still trying to decide if it would be more fun to take over monthly RPG runner position at the library gameday (totally made up and unofficial title btw) or to keep at Imperial Assault.
You could always run a Star Wars RPG using the imperial assault figures. I remember playing in many Star Wars campaigns, even though I didn't know much about the universe.
GrimDork wrote: Additional observations... Jyn Odan is squishy. She's got some defense/escape mechanics, especially after she starts getting XP, but you've got to be on the ball when it comes to using them. I focused fire at Jyn in both games and she had to retreat to heal in the first, and got taken out in the second. It's entirely possible that she could have clinched either game if she hadn't retreated/gone down. I think the first game involved more of an issue with the players being too defensive/caring in regards to Jyn, had they been more aggressive... even if Jyn got dropped in that game another round of shooting was almost all they needed to win. In the second game, well... having an injured character pop open a door is turning out to be a bad idea in most scenarios, it seems. Though the party was pressed for time and probably had no other choice.
Jyn is my preferred hero when playing the campaign. Yes, she is a little squishy, but her mobility and ability to deny the Imperial player actions via Quick Draw make up for it. Quick Draw gets even better once you get the Cheap Shot card because it adds a static +1 damage to Quick Draw. Once you get the Get Cocky card, you can recover the 2 strain or become Focused after defeating an enemy. Using the Trick Shot card with Quick Draw means you can attack and potentially kill an enemy figure within three spaces from Jyn (regardless of LOS), and then move afterward one space using Opportunist (if the enemy takes damage) and two more spaces if you have Sidewinder. Then, if an Imperial player attacks her, she can move another space with Quick As A Whip.
She is an Imperial killing beast once she gets a good weapon like the DL-44 or the Deathhammer.
Gharkan (however you spell it, the Wookie...) is freaking *brutal*. Red dice seem to have a larger number of sides with a higher number of hits, and his ability to charge plus attack makes him even better at clearing out clusters of troops than Finn. They got him the extended haft item too, or whatever you call it, so now he's got reach! It's like having a high strength two-handed weapon fighter in D&D with cleave all over again!.
Yes, red dice have the most hits but the least amount of surge and Gaarkhan can be nasty if he has a good weapon because he's pretty mobile using Charge and he can hit like a truck. Diala can be even more brutal once she gets a good weapon and Way of the Sarlacc as it lets her take two strain and attack every adjacent hostile figure, one at a time. If she has a weapon with a Cleave surge, she can dish out unmitigated damage to other figures. She also has the ability to cancel a target's defense roll with Precise Strike she needs to deal damage to finish off a foe and if she has Snap Kick she can attack a figure with one green die that will do a minimum of one damage.
Damn if talk about D&D doesn't get me interested. I would vote for that. I too found 4th edition had a lot going for it, especially if you had a lot of newbies or videogamers at the table as it is a lot easier for them to relate to.
That's possible. Interestingly enough, I always thought 4th edition would be pretty modular in terms of use for different settings... simply mix and match abilities from the classes and rename them appropriately. Suddenly the ranger's shoot in two directions attack becomes quick shot and its to do the same thing with a blaster pistol. Even some of the spell abilities of the casters would work out as grenades or bacta medkits etc. Though I'm not 100% if the D&D players would want to play starwars at this point.
It's definitely a thought. Got a large pool of scifi minis to draw from to flesh that setting out too.
ScootyPuffJunior, thanks for the insight, I haven't really be doing a lot of looking and thinking about the characters, just throwing stuff in the bag and taking it to the gameday.
What you said about Jyn is actually part of why I'm so hard on her, that interrupt can be nasty and she is quite slippery, but still has low health and endurance. They've decided to pool all their money to buy her the combat armor upgrade just because I'm so mean to her
Diala does seem pretty useful, though I think right now they're drawn to Gharkan's straightforward brutality and prowess.
@Archer, I only ever played one or two really brief campaigns with 4th, but it seemed to have a lot of potential. Also, the multiclassing seemed pretty modular so you could really tweak your character. And none of this well you're a lvl 10 fighter lvl 5 wizard so basically all of your spells are useless beyond some slight utility etc blah blah stuff. 4th multi lets you just take a power and it's right in line with your other moves. Lets you have classes that have dabbled into other disciplines to pick up sneaky tricks, show off demonic heritage by snagging a warlock power, or still eventually show off a true dual disciplined character with enough of the feats.
I never looked into the supplements, I'm sure they add some useful classes but with some ability tweaks or swaps to other classes... pretty sure the core set can cover a *lot* of ground.
Heck, I could even expand it a bit to a more generic scifi setting to easier shoehorn in more of my minis
But then you lose the starwars crowd. Plus they may be pretty hardcore into the fantasy aspect too.. hard to say.
I think, at this point at least, I'll probably prepare to bring imperial assault for next time and then see what those others end up doing... see what they'd be willing to play.
I played quite a bit of 4th when it was going strong, and the setting books for it are quite nice really. I like the Underdark and Darksun ones.
It plays pretty well up to about level 10 I think, after that you need to start thinking a lot about encounter design and it's easy to have "flat" encounters. Up to that point it's fun high fantasy shenanigans.
I've recently been running a 5th edition game for the kids in my school, and I really enjoy it. I don't have many tiles right now (just the original DKH tiles) so I picked up some of the old big battlemaps for D'n'D Minis (the Fantastic Locations series). The good thing about 5th is that it doesn't need a grid for play, so I just use a 1 inch to 5ft scale and let people move freely. This means I can easily put maps together using my existing wargames terrain with the added bonus of things looking cooler in three dimensions. Also helps to keep the game flowing. I'm also using a small hand held dry erase whiteboard (bonus of working in a school where we have stacks of them) and just quickly drawing maps onto that, which works really well and lowers the prep time significantly.
If you feel like it, and especially if you are running for new players, I'd recommend giving 5th edition a look unless you are really keen on 4th. I am really enjoying running it. Been painting up a lot of Descent and D'n'D Boardgames figures for use in the games too. I find it's really nice to paint diverse groups of miniatures rather than the grind of doing an army with huge numbers of troops. Keep us informed, I'd love to read about your campaign on here!
I would consider 5th edition but that would mean I'd have to buy MOAR BOOKS!
You're my de facto 5th edition expert, how many books do I need? PHB, DMG, MM like usual?
Surely 4th encounters can't be worse than 3rd by the time you hit epic levels.. man. It was like ok let's see here I'll make a wizard that can't be too hard right? Oh wait ridiculous epic feats to sort through. Crazy spells I have to craft by hand.. wait a minute.. generating lvl 21+ characters that take closer to hours than minutes but still die to a couple of swipes from the party's fighter... uhh no. That got tedious lol.
Even if they got a level after every session though, the group would only meet at most 12 times in a year, even if I *could* get there every time. Leveling up too far shouldn't be a problem for any system.
I'd probably have to do the inch conversion thing too, pending system. I've done it in the past and it does give you a lot of freedom of movement.
As far as the campaign goes, that would be the fun/challenging part. I'd need a structure that allows for hot-swappable heroes from week-to-week (kind of like the pathfinder guild system, I guess), and adventures that started and closed within the 4 hour window. I'd probably take care of leveling up characters on my own time for future adventures.
Really, it would end up running kind of like a campaign tree of scenarios/missions/nodes kind of like Imperial Assault but with less structure as I'd be making it up for my own use and not to guide someone else to run it. Given that each session might have different heroes and that the growth happens between sessions, I could have an overarching plot that the characters took part in and ultimately brought to conclusion. It would probably have to be something big and kingdom/world ending to help tie the disparate characters together.
I'd probably base the campaign on my largest continent though my tastes have kind of mutated over the years and I'd probably need to do some housekeeping and mild retconning, but not much. A few name changes, mostly. The continent is wider in terms of east/west than north/south with a range of mountains/crags/bad terrain and heavily forested/jungle area running across the middle. The badlands (full of monsters and other bad stuff, tribes of cannibals and what have you, maybe even dire animals/dinosaurs) generally do nothing but spit out the bones of fools who try to cross. The eastern side is kind of shrouded in mystery from most of the rest of the world, it's kind of my generic eastern/Asian themed sandbox area that's never really seen any light shone on it, and probably wont just yet either. The western side though, is full of kingdoms, probably divided up into 5-7, I forget the exact count. There's an obligatorily evilier kingdom, the obligatorily goodygoody kingdom, and several in between. Some are more magic friendly than others.
I'm not sure what exactly I'd have go down that was so earth-shaking as to force adventurers and heroes from all the kingdoms to work together to solve it.. but that's probably what I'd have to do. The rest of the continents are less fleshed out or particularly themed. Naroth is right out, it's full of undead and ghosts and ruled by vampires and liches, the humans that live there are pretty downtrodden though some can make a decent living... others are practically cattle. A couple of the other continents really need revamped entirely, I had one that was primarily a desert but that's just kind of dumb in retrospect, any continent is big enough to have a desert on it's own if it's the right distance from the equator, in range of the shadow of mountains, etc etc... so that one needs fixed. I suppose I *could* use the large arpeggio that comprises a small independent nation of wizards. They have a big extradimensional super-tower that serves as a city, and I'm thinking that the few remaining orcs in my setting probably live on the islands fishing and fighting for the wizards from a long-ago pact. Oh there's the polar continent too, with its freezyness, but again, potentially not the best setting for the adventure.
Either the western kingdoms of the biggest continent or some kind of big job from the caster nation, I think...
And this is all if I don't just keep running imperial assault
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, no lie, being able to tie in miniatures to paint will play no small part in my decisions on the potential campaign
What books you would need would really depend on what you wanted to do. You can get a basic bestiary and DM rules for free from Wizards in PDF form, and you can get a basic PHB (rules for Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling and Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard) from them too. I'd recommend the full PHB though, so that's at least 1 book. Apart from that, the free monsters are comprehensive enough, I guess, and it's easy to make new ones. I do really like their monster manual. But I reckon any system can do this sort of thing.
Really recommend reading the linked articles and their follow ons if you haven't, I found it to be really great stuff.
We based ours on a "Delving Company" in the fantasy city of Ptolus by Monte Cook. My co-GM and I essentially run two separate megadungeons which exist under the city. He's running Rappan Athuk, and I'm running a hodgepodge of homebrew and pre-written stuff all chopped up into one mega-complex. We let the players know when we're available to GM, and people sign up. To start with I had a few plot hooks and "jobs" to get them exploring the dungeon. Every so often I drop another couple in, but over the months the players have been mostly self directed. Each session starts with the players heading down to achieve some goal in the dungeon, even if that goal is just "Explore the second level of the buried temple complex". After however long or at the point when the players feel they are done, we call it a night and everyone goes back to the tavern. This is important as it produces an episodic playstyle that means players can drop in and out with no fuss. XP is awarded for exploration (because that is what I want to encourage) per session, so some more regular players are higher level than some less regular. If the level difference gets too high (more than 3 levels) I award 33% bonus XP to the lower players if they survive.
It's been a real breath of fresh air for our gaming, and it's allowed us to get a lot of gaming in (over 80 sessions in a year!) by having more than 1 GM and a large pool of players ensuring there is a game every week at least. You do lose that element of "designing for your group" (I make everything ahead of time in a naturalistic way so sometimes there is a mismatch between a challenge and a group, but that has produced some interesting sessions!) and I don't balance for level, so it's easy enough for the players to get in over their heads (I give some cues usually, but if they ignore them they can die ) and plot development and persistent NPCs have sort of taken a backseat to dungeoneering, but all the same we've had great character development and we are forming a basic plot over time.
Big block of text! Sorry. GMing is my real gaming passion
I like the sound of your fantasy world though. I have never really gotten a convincing homebrew off the ground- the prep needed always leads to burnout! Your world sounds like it could adapt this sort of structure to a "hexcrawl" style game as Ben Robbins describes (although he doesn't use hexes per se!)
2edition or nuthin. I'm oldschool. Plus the group I played with for a year or two had been together mostly for 20 years playing it. They had a whole world developed and played every Thursday night. I can now safely say (since it all broke up and all records have been expunged from the internet that I can find), that they audio recorded the game sessions and pod cast them. Seriously they had like 10 years of games on cassette tapes. They finally went digital and then stupid happened after I left due to work.
Yeah, I'm good for making my own monsters if I've got a few stock cases to get the gist of their design. Maybe not amazing at it, not trying to say that, but capable of doing so, yes.
Ahh reading through the first link, the megadungeon/gold-rush town combination does sound fairly appealing. I mean... the tables are all worked out for 3.5(th/rd?) edition but I even wrote a wee little program to basically make generic minidungeons, monsters, and loots just for this kind of thing... sort of forgot about it.
Huh, really good reading, thanks for sharing the links. I've gotta cut myself off or I'll lose sight of some other projects I've got going on today, but good stuff. I think I'd be just as happy making random dungeons for every session... but then again the "semi static" megadungeon *is* pretty cool.
I've been skimming a bit, but it looks like the Blogger's basic concept of execution is to make one large interconnected dungeon, give it several entry points, and then half flesh it out with coherent encounters. The next step is to develop random encounter tables that add just enough fights to flesh out the other half of the theoretical necessary level of action. In so doing, when a party returns after resting for a period of time (like weeks/months instead of overnight) or another party comes through... some of the encounters may have been 'permanently' vanquished, others may have been effectively saved from the previous party (as in, they locked a monster in a room, if the new party opens that room... boom same monster), and others will be random encounters that get woven into the story on the fly.
Thinking... probably way too far ahead... this kind of persistent megadungeon with not necessarily persistent occupants and adventurers... I could actually build the thing in 3d without bothering to make anything but the furniture and occupants modular... Interesting.
Damn...
@Theo, haha, interesting stuff I like *some* things about the earlier editions of D&D, I mean I have many hearts for baldurs gate and icewind dale etc... but I'm more familiar with newer rulesets.
Having said that... the seeming callousness of those rules may make a comeback in the support of the megadungeon... I mean the players won't be the same each month, the characters won't be the same each session... may as well let me kill them off
As the players eventually push through cavern after cavern, as some of them retire due to injuries (broken limbs and such) and maybe volunteer to become guards and watchfolk for the upper levels... as outposts get established on lower levels so future parties can start further down... eventually it will take dozens of players and possibly generations to clear the way to the bottom of the dungeon, to help the safety of the region and dredge up the rewards of the place.
Damnit all to hell... really starting to get into this again...
You could even do a "megadungeon" in a sci fi setting- delving the depths of the underhive/ancient techno-complex/crashed space colony to find lost tech!
And on callousness - yes, yes it does encourage it. And it is wonderful. We've had 20+ deaths.
Bwahaha, well I usually keep the kid gloves on for a couple of levels but if I'm the one making all of the characters anyway...not like they can't be recycled!
Also if character death is acceptable.. it lets me worry less about the difficulty tweaks.. maybe the encounter *is* too hard for the players unless an extra couple of guys show up... but they'll just have to run away or become resourceful about it. I think after the first player dies, they'll all come to realize running is more acceptable
Scifi dungeon could work too, but I assume these guys will want to play fantasy anyway. It's almost a shame I backed battle systems scifi and not battle systems fantasy TBH. The fantasy set got more polish and seemed much more versatile, but ahh well. I think the real problem with me making convincing dungeon terrain would more lie in transportability and overrunning my ability to store it all!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also just reread your post, Da Boss, kind of went right into the articles, that open table concept does sound fun. If I could get settled into a position to let people know I'd be running a game on x time y date, I could see myself doing it too.
I've been thinking about XP... I'm thinking to level some characters up as they survive one or more delves, and depending on the amount of players that show up, letting them pick from certain pools. It may be the same group shows up consistently, and then they can all have the same guys no worries... but if it was like 3-6 people and only some of them were the same each time... keep 6 people with lvl 1 characters and have smaller parties take the vets out.. maybe.
Sheesh... I'm already looking up prices on the DMG and PHB.. you guys are a bad influence... On the bright side amazon has them under prime for like half price, $25 a pop for what I know will be high quality books and interesting reading regardless of how much I end up using them.... much smaller pill to swallow than nearly a hundred bucks for a GW big black/red book nowadays...
In other news, I think I may have come up with a single box storage solution for Imperial Assault. If the storage portion works out I think I'm gonna paint it a bit to give it some character... I'll elaborate more as I figure out if my idea will get off the ground.
Bwahaha! Nah, it's just a plano 4 pistol case, but I have it in mind to spray the thing silver, seal it, spray it black with the airbrush instead of rattlecan and not seal it for a week or two so it gets naturally scuffed up revealing the 'base material under the paint job'. And at some point I'd maybe put the imperial logo on one or both sides like it's some kind of briefcase or equipment container.. maybe a case for blasters or com logs or utility belts or whatever..
May just give up and order 5th edition PHB. I've got like 30something bucks in amazon credit I could use. I'd really prefer to get the DMG too but I'm pretty sure you need the PHB more than the DMG to get started. More funds will be filtering into the amazon account via credit card bonus points/whatever though it's a pretty slow process. Haven't been having much luck finding any reasonable deals on minis to buy so I may just use them for RPG books...
I considered the adventure kit but I'm trying to vastly limit hobby spending atm, recently acquired a truckload of dice, and almost never end up sticking to default materials. Does seem like a bargain though. I just ordered the PHB since that's what my amazon credit would cover. Next time I get hit with points I'll probably order the DMG, if I like what I see in the PHB that is.
5e is pretty easy and fun. I got all 3 books but pretty much only use the PHB and the MM. I'm happy to have all 3 though.
I've run a few friends through part of the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign and we've had a grand ol' time with it.
I got a copy of the Goodman Games free one-shot that they put out for Free RPG day. It's a 5e one-shot for 12 level characters. I may run it at the shop one weekend.
You can still use maps and minis if you want to but you don't have to.
This link allows you to download the basic bestiary and DM advice. It is not as complete as the MM or the DMG (treasure is fairly absent) but it is good enough to start off with.
The online players rules are there, too. PHB is probably the best purchase to start with.
Cool, thanks. I'm thinking perhaps a paladin for this guy. Not an especially religious one, necessarily, but a somewhat foppish rich lord who thought he could be doing something more important. Still haughty and disdainful of common things like road dirt and poorly cooked meals around the campfire, he still gird himself for battle and rode out looking for adventure. Little did he realize that he was inadvertently following a higher calling.
I'm thinking for added interest, if I end up making these characters for others to run through a megadungeon or something, that they'll each get some kind of useful trait/skill/gear/item to make them unique (and to give the party a little boost...as they're gonna need it with 0% kid gloves from the get-go). I need to think of a suitably haughty name for him, but I'm thinking his purple cloak to be one of charisma, or perhaps leadership... he can probably command peasants to do stuff and just the imperiousness and confidence that they will do as he says simply pushes them into it. So I'm thinking he can take along free porters, or potentially a lesser NPC sellsword who will likely get thrown under the wagon if things go bad (but not on purpose, just because he isn't adventuring material, honest!).
Think prince charming from shrek, but slightly less of a dick. But just slightly
Got my 5e PHB today, pretty interested to see the minor (and not so minor!) changes to a lot of the core classes. I like the smaller bonus amount, +20 was just getting silly to a point, and that whole 5 attacks per round too. Definitely seems like an 'everything is awesome' approach, inasmuch as all racial ability scores are bonuses with no penalties. Dwarfs still have the best constitution boost, but no longer get a charisma penalty, though if you liked that you can certainly still dump your worst stat there.
All of the classes seem to have two or more paths as well, something that seems to have come from 4e but it's not a bad thing. It kind of integrates prestige classes into the core class progression, and helps make two of the same class able to distinguish themselves. Like you can be a open handed monk which more or less works like a 3rd edition monk, a shadow monk with some stealth and shadow walking abilities, and an elemental disciplines monk who's basically a bender from Avatar
Multiclassing seems alright. If you were a 5/5 cleric/wizard in 3rd edition you'd get two separate lists of spells and casts per day, but both lists would be totally separate and at caster level 5. In 5e, you'd be a 10th level caster. You would still only have access to level 3 or so spells from each class, even though you'd have 5th level spells slots. But you can use the higher level slots to cast lower level spells, and some spells get a decent bonus when cast at a higher level. You can also freely mix spells from your two classes as far as I can tell. So if you had a party cleric who suddenly dies or perhaps their player moves away, I think you'd be able to have your wizard take a level of cleric, and suddenly you'd be able to cast level one cleric spells out of all of your wizard spell slots to supplement healing as necessary.
Healing surges didn't survive 4e but they sort of did in the form of Hit Dice (one per level) allowing you to roll your HP dice after a short rest to heal damage. Overnight rest restores half of such points so you can get a bit more staying power inbetween big fights on the same day. Several class features seem to reset after a solid hour of rest too. Take a little siesta and you can fight a bit better again. Also HP are completely restored after a long rest (8 hrs, basically resting/sleeping) which is new to me, though it may have been in 4th. Seems like a big deal, used to take days to get back on your feet at level one, and healing up after adventures around level 5 was just depressing without a healer around.
The skills seem cool, basically you're good at it or not, and if you're proficient you get to add your generic class bonus (which increases with level, but only ever up to 6 instead of something like 20 from 3rd). Your class usually gives you a couple of skills from a short list, and your history/background/upbringing will give you another couple, and often proficiency with a set of tools (like thieves tools, metal working tools, scribe stuff, poison tools, etc). The bond/ideal/failing/whatever system seems really nice to help new players try to build a framework from which to start roleplaying, and if it's too rigid for experienced players, I'm sure the DM can swing something.
A lot of things seem simpler. Light armor, sets armorclass to 11 or 12 + dex mod. Medium has a set ac and adds up to 2 dex. Heavy armor has no dex mod and has a set ac bonus. All shields are +2. Weapons are largely the same, seems some of the extra/wonky special traits were thrown out in favor of simplicity.
Oooh, armor disables spells only if you aren't proficient with it, meaning certain multiclasses will see your wizard throwing fireballs while wearing plate mail
Certain spells can be cast as rituals, they take at least 10 minutes longer but don't cost spell slots. I think you need a feat or class feature to do so but.. could provide a lot of utility, especially if any healing spells are on that list.
Cantrips seem to work more like they did in 4th edition, basically give you something useful to throw around all the time instead of being stuck out of spells chucking darts or cranking a crossbow.
Bah there's a lot to sift through, probably going to be a fair amount of inspiration synergy between D&D and the bones minis.
My 2 cents regarding 5e is that it reminds me of what running D&D for my friends when I was a teenager was like (20+ years ago). I have very fond memories of those days, but there are a few improvements that I wish they had kept in, namely a few more skills like Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, and Engineering. Otherwise it's a fantastic edition.
I like how simple it looks. Make a perception check goes from having to scroll down on your big list of skills and looking to see if you have it, and what the bonus is as those tend to vary *widely* sometimes, then apply it. Now you just glance down to see if its one of your maybe 4-6 skills and if it is it's stat plus level based bonus (which only ranges from 2-6). I mean I guess it's not THAT much easier, but still seems a bit streamlined. Combat's the same way, less crazy modifiers in play from what I can see.
I think a lot of improvements have been made to spells, too. In 3.5/Pathfinder, you have the problem of players spending a lot of time layering buffs and recalculating all their bonuses from buffs, and lots of discussions about whether things stack.
5th makes most buffs simply set a score or value at a set number, and most buffs are also "Duration: Concentration up to X" which limits the number of buffs which will be in play at any time. Combine that with fewer spell slots at higher levels and mages are useful and needed but not overpowering and difficult to manage.
There's a lot to like about it. I've introduced lots of new players to it recently, and they've all grasped it very fast, much faster than they would have with 3.5 for example. Us hoary old Grognards sometimes forget how overwhelming it is to have so many different subsystems and derived values, 5th does a great job of stripping that out while still keeping the game interesting. The more I play, the more I like.
I ran my first 5E session last night. It ran very smoothly. The rules felt like a blend of the best parts of 3E and 4E, without the drawbacks of either edition.
As a DM I appreciate all the fidly bits being reduced to fewer modifiers. There is no nearly infintie list of positive and negative modifiers. Most situations can be handled by awarding advantage or disadvantage, and the target numbers being reduced eliminates the powercreep of skill levels.
What suprised the hell out of my group was how deadly things were. Addmitedly we had 4 1st level characters, but defeating a Bugbear, a wolf, and 2 goblins in a single encounter felt heroic. The encounter nearly resulted in team wipe and they had to cautiously make it through the rest of the mission with injured members and no healing to back them up. It made for a very rewarding session, knowing that it wasn't a guarenteed success.
Only used the PHB and starter set adventure book. The starter set was very well designed. I expect to get through at least 4-5 gaming sessions before exahusting the material in the adventures book.
Thanks for the report! Makes me a bit more interested in the starter to hear a good review like that.
I hadn't looked to see how string monsters are but some of the level one spells do like 4d6 damage... That's up to 24 which could one shot and catalog wound even tanks..
Automatically Appended Next Post: Thanks for the report! Makes me a bit more interested in the starter to hear a good review like that.
I hadn't looked to see how string monsters are but some of the level one spells do like 4d6 damage... That's up to 24 which could one shot and catalog wound even tanks..
Sorry guys been moving house. Wife and I decided to buy a neat house in town instead of renting. May or may not have been wisest idea, time will tell. Also prepping for new baby. I suspect that 365 challenge is going to be a bust but I'll wait to confirm in December.
Thanks I don't expect I'll be getting much done for awhile... but I think I may get *just* enough time to set up my office/hobby cave and the game room. That's right, not only do I come out of this deal with a computer/painting/whatever room.. that happens to be in the much-cooler-than-the-rest-of-the-house basement, but I also get a spare room off of the main garage in which to keep my game table and display shelves Shelves included too!
It'll cost a bit more a month due to those fun homeowner things like property tax and home insurance... but at least a (relatively small) portion of that high monthly expense will be going into the home as some kind of investment in the future.
Plus it has a comparatively giant back yard and porch/patio for the kids, win-win!
Unfortunately it's not all roses, since it took so long to close on the house the obscenely wet summer we've had (maybe close to record for our area) combined with the dehumidifier that went unused cause a bit of a mold issue in the basement. In my glorious mancave/familyroom basement! Curses! We're working on it though, the first day I get off of work and I'm not half dead (stupid 90+ fahrenheits...) I'll try to tackle what we haven't already gotten in the office, and then I think it's just the utility room (which wasn't bad) and whats left of the basement bathroom (and a bathroom with mold isn't that surprising really). I've been running the dehumidifier continuously so a recurrence shouldn't be an issue.
But yeah, hobby budget is pretty much nixed for awhile. Between moving expenses (relatively light, but we painted a couple of rooms and I wanted a better router for the larger house+ basement situation) and anticipation of incoming baby costs... yeah.. can't really spend anything on minis for awhile. Fortunately, I've got too many anyway Plus there's KoW coming (which is really more an excuse to repurpose my old models than an order for new ones), Dungeon saga before x-mas (bucketload of fantasy minis), the last of my dreadball xtreme, and deadzone infestation..eventually.
Ok time to get out of here, i'll see about more pictures than text next time
Busy, but very exciting times on the GrimDork homefront. Envious of the hobby setup you have bought yourself. Looking forward to seeing some photos of your completed setup. But family comes first and look after that wife of yours.
Baking soda hits mold with a Ph change it hates, once cleaned up, I suggest sealing the areas with Marine coat for warding off future mold growth along with desiccant to help the dehumidifier.
Good news on the house, and even better news on the pregnancy! I hope the move has been as stress free as possible, as it is never the easiest of times, but at least you have a new man-cave out of it. I say you save the 365 challenge until the time that the kids are old enough to paint, then you can try and knock out 1000 miniatures in the year .
Azazelx wrote: Triple congrats on the newses, mate! I'd been wondering why your blog turned so very D&D-discussion based recently. Now it all makes sense.
because he's been cave exploring and fighting off slime
Partially I just like dnd, but yeah scheming up adventures and reading manuals is easier to do while caring for the little ones, so long as this one doesn't have the projectile vomiting skill.
Thanks for the kind words folks . I'll keep you updated with what scant progress I do manage to make.
(Somewhere to finally wow nerd out, yay.)
All the monies will be leaving me soon. 
because he's been cave exploring and fighting off slime