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Well, let's get back to the topic at hand shall we?


Turn 2

Eldar: The Eldar continue to advance towards their various objectives. There is some shooting by the wraithlord and scatter laser with the guardians but neither has any effect.

Mantis Warriors: The wraithlord is now close enough that only one unit of scouts can shoot at him, while the other unit shoots at the ork deffkopta. Neither unit accomplishes anything... so much for "sniper" scouts. The rifleman dreadnought does put a wound on the wraithlord though, so that's a good start.

Bad Moons: The various mob elements continue to move aggressively forward (and to the side like). The trukk boyz claim the ork objective and the main mob takes some pot shots at the advancing dire avengers (to no effect).


Turn 3

Eldar: The dire avengers finally close enough to unleash some pain on the ork mob, killing 6. The guardians and farseer consolidate their hold on the eldar objective. Meanwhile in the center, the wraithlord charges and destroys the nearest scout squad on top of the building. Now... in future I'm not sure if I'm going to allow this as the roof of the building is considerably taller than even the eldar dread... but he made his difficult terrain test and we could even get him to stay on the side of the building... so I figured it was fair enough. (see below) After destroying the scouts, the wraithlord consolidated onto the roof.

Mantis Warriors: Scared to death of the impending wraithlord, the second squad of scouts dives into the building, they can only hide in there one turn though and must exit their next turn of be considered destroyed (house rules). The rifleman opens up on the wraithlord again with it's autocannons, but the eldar armor is proof against the shells and the machine emerges unscathed.

Orks: The large boys mob continues to move forward... lots of shooting at the dire avengers... when the smoke clears only three are left standing.



Nasty surprise for the scouts...



Turn 4

Eldar: The wraithlord climbs down from the building top, and tow starcannon shots kill the techmarine. The guardians start to move into a long line to get their scatter laser and farseer into positions where they can participate in the battle. The three remaining dire avengers make a mad dash for the middle of the table and the relative safety of the building that's next to it.

Mantis Warriors: With the wraithlord gone, the scouts move back onto the roof of the building. The rifleman backs up a bit to avoid an assault from the wraithlord and pours more autocannon fire into it, giving it it's second wound.

Bad Moons: The big mob moves towards the center objective, while the two deffkoptas turbo boost across the back of the table to contest the eldar objective. The third deffkopta takes a pot shot at the surviving scout unit, who is saved by the cover the building provides.


Turn 5

Eldar: The wraithlord dives into the building (remember the big garage-type door in the back), not wishing to get handed it's third wound. The dire avengers notice that the orks are at a choke point where only one can get through at a time between the building and the wall and only a few can participate in the combat. They shoot & charge the orks killing 2 and winning the combat. The orks are still fearless however and the combat is a push.

Mantis Warriors: Having nothing else to shoot at, the scouts and dreadnought open up on the two rearward deffkopta's, killing one and putting a wound on the other.

Bad Moons: The surviving deffkopta is pulled back to join his buddy in the rear, while a second round of HtH results in no casualties on either side.


Turn 6

Eldar: The wraithlord emerges from the shed door, and rounds the corner to support the Dire Avengers still locked in hand to hand with the orks. He takes a pot shot at one of the deffkoptas doing no damage. The scatter laser shoots the MW dread, but no damage is done. Dire avengers are eaten by ork horde.

Mantis Warriors: Scouts unload on guardians, killing 3 but not causing them to route. Dread fires into back of wraithlord... no damage.

Bad Moons: Assume control of middle objective


Thing 2 makes the end of game roll..... game ends!


Final Score:

Eldar - 7
MW - 1
Orks - 7

It's a tie!!!



Dire Avengers last stand...


Saved!

Sounds like dad got whipped up on pretty good like.

Yep, kids are gettin' smarter... and I aren't.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Some comments in review..

I thought Thing 2 did well as orks. Nothing earth shattering strategy-wise, but then he's 6. His orks kept moving, secured their objective and went for the center objective in force... hard to argue with that. He even remembered to get the truck back into the battle after dropping off the boyz at the objective.

Thing 1 certainly has overcome his "timid" tendencies which is a good thing... and his wraithlord probably could have easily wiped out my entire army if he'd wanted it to. His main mistake as I see it, was to force Thing 2 and I to fight only him. We took occasional pot shots at each other but with the exception of the one volley of mine that did 3/4 wounds on the deffkoptas, my entire army was forced to focus on the Eldar the whole game. Same for the orks. Now his aggressive tactics did get him enough kill points to tie, but mainly because my MW's are such a soft target. The reason his wraithlord didn't finish me off is that at turn 5, he decided that the advancing ork horde was going to be a problem and opted to keep me in the game. Good thing, if I hadn't done all that damage to the DKs... they might have done enough damage to his guardian squad to lose him that objective.

While I wasn't really trying to win the fight... I wasn't trying to throw it either. It continues to amaze me now paper thin a scout based force is and how ineffective their shooting is in general, sniper rifles or not. The rifleman dread did fine, look forward to getting him fully painted so he can officially join the ranks. Though in any game this small, I would normally always take one CCW to make the dread a threat in assault. I can't blame rolling this game... my rolls were average, just ineffective. It's going to take a lot of work and practice to figure out how to make this army competitive (though I admit that this particular army was not picked to be competitive... see my other thread for details).

Thing 2 is much happier now that the chapter master is done, and he's eagerly looking forward to painting his marine swap models and his second tactical squad.

As always... thanks for reading!

I love the power Sword on the Wl looks really good! and love the guardian colorscheme! Over all good battle report, sounded like you all had fun which is important especially for little kids.

That power sword is made out of a piece of wood with a little bit of green stuff to build up the handle... (didn't have a real wraithlord sword). It's amazing that it's still in-tact considering the figure has been dropped several times.

I got the guardians (and farseer for that matter) off the web... but I agree... the color scheme is very simple, but it works quite well. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll probably never have the time or inclination to re-paint my eldar properly, so the only improvements or upgrades they get are when I can get the occasional deal on already painted figures. Not the best solution... but it's where I'm at.

Yeah, we had fun. Neat thing is we'd do a turn or two, then go do housework for a bit, then come back and do another turn or two, then go do some other chore. Kept mom happy, we got our game in and it made doing a bunch of chores not quite as odious as usual.

Excellent report. Now to get thing 1 to work on using your foes against yourself. Thou I have to admit he pretty much accomplished his plan.

Congrats to the thing(s)

Out of date slightly, but Re: Chapter master.

It's an interesting question of colour balance, metallic base colours are hard to "outdo" with detailing as you rightly said.

I'm no genius with a brush, so I have developed a rule of thumb to not use more than 4 different colours on a single model (excluding shades/highlights) of which only one can be metallic.

I also avoid painting fiddly bling if I can't think of good colours for it (see the link in my sig for an example of how much detail I can conveniently forget).

All the best for future painting!

@Atre: Thanks for the comments, unfortunately I couldn't get the link in your sig to work... would like to see what you've done.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/297396.page

I should also apologise for referencing my own stuff as an example - I HATE it when people do that (cocky self promotion).

The abaddon model has piping all over the breastplate, plus other detailing and skulls EVERYWHERE. Hard to spot in those pics actually, side effect of my ignoring them . Compare mine to the GW pics or some of those on how cool is my mini etc... I'm not saying that mine is better by any stretch of the imagination, but the simplified approach stops the detailing overbalancing the model*.


*IMO one of the big risks when us simple folk are painting Special Characters.

Hey bud, this blog continues to be an inspiration, yesterday spent the day playing 40k with my 12&9 yr old nephews, both of whom had previously expressed an interest though the younger is pretty easily distracted. They were great, played well and had a fantastic time. Thanks for leading by example!

@Atre: Don't worry about it. I refer to my stuff as well, not because I'm trying to be self-aggrandizing (at least I don't think so) but because I know my own work best... so it's natural to use it as an example. I see, just because all the stuff is there doesn't mean you have to accentuate it by painting it separately. Good point, especially if all the bling distracts from the figure. Well, at least that chapter master figure looks pretty good at table-top distance, and looks really good with his existing termies. Eventually we'll sit down and plan out and build his own custom chapter master from scratch... and that will be a very fun project all on it's own.

@inmy: Ah, now you make ME jealous... it'll be a while before the boys and I get a chance for another game. So tell us a story about your game? What did the kids seem to like best? Did either of them do something tactically or strategically that surprised you? Did any "great moments"... improbable or otherwise happen during the game that were noteworthy? Go ahead, hijack the thread for a bit.... we'll be camping with the cub scouts all weekend so someone should be posting something to keep the thread interesting! *grin*


On a separate note I need some advice...

Thing 1 is having a birthday party at our FLGS in a couple of weeks. Roughly 10 kids, all his buddies and all 40kers (9-10 year olds). I "hire" a couple of older boys who help out at the store for a few hours to help run the games, the kids play, we have cake afterwards... all very nice. I have some ideas of how I'd like to set the games up, but I'd like to run them by everyone and get your input... especially those of you who are younger or have experience with kids roughly about the same age.

Most of the boys are used to playing at the Friday "young bloods" thing they have at our FLGS each week. They play by the rules (mostly) but are pretty fast and loose with the FOC... it's really just to get the kids enthused about the game and get the basic rules down. As a result, when a couple of the older boys entered a regular shop tournament they were pretty unprepared for the level of competition and demands on time presented by that format. Now it's not my idea to go overboard, but I would like to give the boys a more formal look at what it's like to play 40k. I've only got 3 hours slated for the party, so we're only talking 1 game really.

Here are my current thoughts... I would appreciate any C & C.

- To give the day an overall theme, split the boys into two teams... "forces of the Imperium" and "Xenos/Chaos"... luckily with this group they pretty much split right down the middle... especially as my son has access to multiple armies and can shift as needed.
- We'd have all the tables end-to-end so there was a feel of the two sides squaring off in a larger battle, but each pairing would be a separate battle and you can't cross your table boundary.
- 1000 pts each (should be easily manageable but big enough to be versatile)
- Must adhere to FOC, no more than 2 slots in each non-troop category
- no named characters
- pairings would be made based (roughly) on skill and experience, so the newest boys get to play each other and the hardened veterans duke it out vs. each other (my son can help with this as well)
- each pairing would have it's own specific victory conditions for the battle which again, would be part of the greater effort.... I might even make up a little story to set the battle up to get the kids more into it.
- probably do a standard deployment (DoW) to keep everything simple.

The victory conditions along the "front" would be chosen as in a real battle plan. Assuming 5 pairings for example... the center might be a simple annihilate mission (to destroy the enemies center), the two to either side could be objective based for holding key positions and the two on the outside could be the one where you have to get units into the oppositions deployment zone (i.e. trying to outflank them). Something like that... so that all the boys feel like they're a part of a greater battle. To this I'd probably add universal secondary objectives (to all tables) like assassinate.

Might even photograph parts of the battle to show here on the blog (jury's out on that).

Anywho... while the kids are eating their cake & ice cream, I'll pull together the results of the day, and make up a quick story describing what happened & spin the tale for the kids with the tale at the party's end, along with giving out a few prizes.


I do have some specific questions though:

- Overall... do you think it would be fun for the kids? Games aside, does having an overall "theme" for the day add to the fun of it, or won't it matter (as it is extra work).

- Do you think limiting the non-troop slots in any category to 2 will accomplish anything? Emphasis on this game is fun, not competitiveness... so I'm trying to dumb-down the lists a bit, but at 1000 pts I don't know if that's even necessary.

- What missions or victory conditions do you think would work the best? How about more "universal" secondary objectives.... any other ideas? Don't want to make things too complex, but I do want to make it interesting and fun.

- I'd like to give out a few prizes at the end but I'm not sure for what... or for that matter what to give out. I thought about making a cool objective marker (which I'm sure none of these kids have) or I could always do gift cards at the store. Then again what do I give awards for? It's only 1 game, not a tournament.

- "Gift bags" are typical now-a-days for parties (each child gets a little goodie bag of treats and simple toys to take home) but gaming stuff is so expensive that I just cant see giving out a gaming related bag for each kid. Is it cool to just do a normal, non-gaming related gift bag?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer...

Not in any order and as you know I don't have kids, but I have "mentored"

My opinion: looks good. I 'd keep the rules as close to the original as possible. If they have been playing for a while they are building experience on what they already know. Changing the rules is harder to wrap your head around while in the mist of battle. The ability to adapt is key and a learnable skill, but the day is about having fun..

I like your idea for an overall battle theme. To me Stories make the game memorable. Give out prizes for events; I like the GW battle report on the “ rock star moment of the day”. A particular event or turning point of a game or cool moment. Call it something fun. IE.. the crusher award goes to ________ for his dread for wiping out all of XXXXX ‘s _________squad. The PETA award for creating another librarian squig. The super soaker award for the _______’s captain for shrugging off massive fire power. Best save moment ect. Everyone get a moment of recognition and there is always moment(s) in every game.

When we use to do kids tourneys ( small ). Every great moment we stop everybody and announce it. “ Blessed by the Emperor Captain flapjack of the IHOP marines just survived 24 dice worth of shooting unscathed.” Or in the old terminology “ the Brent Paradox” of storytelling. This should add some heroic moments to your story telling.

I can help with objective markers if you need something. Just let me know and I’ll whip them out this weekend.

I love your secondary objectives you use with the thing(s). Again it makes the game a better story, opens up new opportunities to win and quite honestly what make your battle reports so fun to read.

And lastly…Thou I'm old and probably out of touch.. don't give out prizes that cause players to "win" for money/gift cards. It's ok where you want to encourage competitiveness, but if you want a relaxed game, it doesn’t work. Besides these kid are already under peer pressure to win.

For mission I would do one thing throughout, mostly to keep everything organized (like your brain). I would say all annihilation or Capture and controll, and all the same set-up, tho different terrain is cool.
I wouldnt limit the FOC to 2 slots of anything or named HQs as its only 1k points, let em go nuts, assuming that the FLGS has house codicies to check things out.
For prizes, talk with the store and see if they can give you a bigger break then normal and get some of the small 3 packs of guys for em.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440273a&prodId=prod1630084
The store has about $4 in one of those packs, so see if they can sell you 10 for like $5 each. Notmuch moneyz, give em to everyone! Just about every army has one of those boxes (not Deamon/whichhunters, specific chapters, DE).

Sounds fun.

I would check that the kids can all make 1k with the 2x restriction on specials and no SCs. It could be ugly if 1 kid can't make points or has to play with an [eg] ubered vehicle heavy army to make points (ie. no-one else will have the guns to take him/her on).

Otherwise I agree with Solar lion

Also make the rules v.v.v. clear in advance. Maybe give the kids a print out a few days ahead of the event?

Hey Gitsplitta, if you go with an objective prize, or would like some objectives for the battles, I have a bunch of decently painted objectives that I could send over to you. The first one is a cool orky objective marker cobbled together from an aobr ork backpack, a deffkopta engine and two plastic rectangles.
My second objective is a cut up berzerker helmet half buried in the ground.
The third one is a bunker entrance hatch for a chaos base of operations, with the words "KILL! MAIM! BURN!" written on.
The fourth is a damaged dread arm painted in the colours of the blood angels, while the last 2 include a small dark angels statue and dark angels storm shield resting upon a rock. Tell me if your interested.

Also, I think a story of how all the battles are connected would be very cool. This month's white dwarf has tips on adding narration to battles and campaigns.

When I want a batch of trophies that look decent, yet do not cost much, and are not 'money' prizes, I go down to my local Hobby Lobby/Pottery Barn/Craft Store, and buy some plastic "Chargers", the plates you put under things on tables to make them purty. You can, usually, find copper, silver, and gold.

Then, I go buy some clear inkjet sticker pages, measure the interior circle of the charger, and make a quicky template. I put in some fluff for the event, store, date, etc. Gold for first place, and so-on.

Print out, cut out the circle, peel the sheet, and apply to the center of the charger.

Instant tournament plate.

IF you have a steady hand, you can use a Sharpie to write along the outer circle of the charger. Runes, the winner's name and army, etc.

--Brian

As a casual and competitive (teen) gamer who helps the 'young ones' with battles, rules questions, FOC etc. I'll give my two cents on your idea.

I wholeheartedly agree with Solar_Lion's view on having prizes and a story (and silly awards and commentaries to keep the atmoshpere lively).

Having endured/survived several (large) games with 9-10 year olds at my FLGS I know of many ways to (lose and) gain the attention of the younger children and keep them focused on the battle. So here are my top tips.

1. In a game that large (even with two people per table) it is important to give all of the children a simple objective (Anhilliation is the best from my experience, since a lot of kids don't seem to like C&C missions {because they don't like it that their HQ can't take objectives and that killing things doesn't give them points} [which is unfortunate for me because I prefer C&C]). If their are children their who like Capture and Control have them play one and other on one of the tables and work that into your narrative, this brings me onto point 2...

2. Narrative. A nice good setting is a good start, make up a planet name (Maroc V would suffice), a battle name (Battle for Death's Row etc.) and you already have the idea of spinning them a yarn about it and telling them the story anyway. All you need to tell them before the battle is 'Location, Time, Reason' kids seem to lissten to these points the most, then you tell them the rest of your tale after (or during) the game.

3. Prizes. I like the idea of giving them all a cheap box and try to negotiate some deal ($4-$5 would be ace). BUT, you should maybe also award two other prizes, one for most points and one for sportsmanship. (these prizes could just be another cheap box of SM/Eldar/Chaos/Guard)

4. FOC. it really depends on what minatures the kids bring with them. If all of the kids have at least one generic HQ then enforce the 'No Named Characters' rule, but if that aint the case and one of them turns up with a Named Character and no other HQ's then lift the ban. Same with the troops minimum, but personally I would try to enforce it since 1k points allows a lot of flexibility.

Yours

Gathering Storm

Hope thing 1 enjoys his party.

How about having each game be an objective game, with a single objective dead in the middle of the table and Spearhead deployment.

You could do up a bunch of quick objectives using spare bitz in a crate/pile/etc, with a simple paint job and wash. Shouldn't take very long to do something like this.

If the objective is contested, then the player with the most KP wins. If this also results in a tie, have a roll off. Winner gets to keep the objective, and as a bonus, will have a micro-trophy.

Or if you don't want to leave anyone out, have two objectives on the table center-line. Each objective is worth one Victory Point, and the player with the most KPs gets one Victory Point. Player with the most Victory Points gets their choice of one of the objectives, and the loser gets the other.

First off: Thanks to everyone for your great ideas and offers of help... I feel a "plan" forming.

@Heff: Actually I was thinking of something similar to your second idea. Though I'd probably do an Annihilation mission as previously suggested to keep it simple. However, I'd have one objective for each participant which they could lay out as a secondary objective. At the end of the day, they'd each get to take their objective home with them. That's a lot of objectives... several for armies I don't have any bits for, but maybe with the help that's been offered already I can get it done in time.

Count me in for a DA, BA or DE objective if needed!

OK guys, I'm going to mostly out of touch for the next few days, but when I return Thing 1 and I will have hammered out the details

Right now we have Imps, demons, tau, tryanids, nicrons, orks & 2 space marines (not sure of chapter but can find out... think one is BA).

The markers don't need to use the actual army figures of course, just need to be appropriate as objectives for that race. You don't have to go crazy on these, but try to make them nice enough that the kids can look at them as something to aspire to in their own painting and modeling.

Just post here if you want to volunteer for a particular marker, that way I can keep it all straight and everyone knows what's still needed.

Thanks again everyone for being so generous!

Git

Whats our deadline (not the event, maybe a 4-5 days in advance)? Let me know for sure on the SM chapters. You want em on 40mm bases correct?

Party is on Sat the 13th, so... in my hands by Wed. That way if we're short or I need to do some fixing due to shipping damage, there's time for that.

Yes, 40mm bases is best just because that's "standard", so they can use them without getting grief from their opponent. I'll post the chapters as soon as I know them.

Woo, that'll be fast. I'll get something SMish together for ya, not sure what tho. May end up being just a statue style marine if thats cool.

OK, I just realized how short a period of time that is... next week! Sheesh!

If you can get something to me by Friday, that would be fine. I'll PM anyone who does not already have it my mailing addy. If you don't have time to paint but can build something... that would be very helpful. I know enough "cheater" techniques that I can generate a pretty decent paint job in very short order if need be. Plus I'm all outta 40mm bases and I'm not sure my order for them will be here in time. I can pay for shipping if you'd like.


WM: That would be fine... thought about that myself as an option.

Thanks!

As I said above, I have a bunch of completed objectives already on hand. I'll work on the demons. What would daemons fight fight for?

A PILE OF SKULLZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know what, it all depends on the army. If it's a khorne army, the pile of skulls would work very well. For a tzeentch army, nurgle army, slaanesh army, or a mixed army, not so much.

If its a kids army I would be supprised if it were that organized/themed. Im guessing its going to be mixed.

Go ahead and PM me your addy Git.........again.........

A sacred artifact of some sort... I imagine they'd all be interested in that...