Thursday, June 30, 2011

BCon 5 : The Sunday Match

Too Long Didn't Read (tl;dr):
Don't be so lazy, but if you must, there's pictures at the end for you to feed your eye holes.

At BCon it's become a habit to try something a bit different on the Sunday. For BCon5 we had a free for all face off, 2000 points a pop, Lords and Hero's onlymatch of the day extravaganza.

We'd award 1VP per 100 points of things killed, and more VPs for buildings held. Half way through the game the buildings became merely obstacles much to a few players surprise. I'm not sure what happened there.

Unfortunately it didn't turn out the best, but it was a bit of craic sure.
Everyone was too far away from each other, some alliances briefly formed only to be broken. Nobody wanted to commit troops, we all got bored, the magic phase was ridiculously too long and overpowered, etc.etc. 


I took:
- a bunch of 50 point Slayers
- a bunch of Thane's with GW's and Dwarf Pistols (lacking warmachines I wanted something which would let me do some damage from afar to help equal the offensive magic other players would have)
- 2 runed up Lords (<drones in a bored tone of voice> yes dave, one of which you killed with killing blow, with your wight, which makes it the second time that's happened</drones in a bored tone of voice>. Remind me, who had the most VP at the end and faced the Bloodthirster?)
- a runed up BSB
- 2 runesmiths with 6 spellbreakers between them (I used one by the end)

We created a nice bit of fluff around it, anything for bragging rights eh? King of the Brothel town, his time was up. We were fighting to become the next King. We drew to see who'd become the defending King & Mr.Saturday's undead won the right to become the spitoon.

In brief, the dwarves, undead and dark elves agreed to ally until they were then only ones left standing, then all bets were off.

4 hours (turns) later, I got bored. The Skaven, Daemon's and Warriors of Chaos were pretty much still on their side of the table, the skaven had had a go at the daemon's, and no one else had committed. I fastened my beard to my belt, hiked up my britches, smiled apologetically at dave, and charged his troops which were occupying the ziggurat building (wait, it's an obstacle, it only helps against shooting, wtf?).

We were busy killing each other off, the Dark Elves decided to stick their toe in the water, some of them died, some of them killed dwarves.

In the end, we had to cut the game short. It was decided the two highest scoring sides would chose a character of their own for a show down.

Before you start reading this final paragraph, we need to set the mood. Click this link, and leave the music play in the background while you come back here and read. Good? Good!

I had more VPs than the the Undead (hah!), so chose my surviving Lord to go toe to toe with the Bloodthirster. My Lord had the tasty Master Rune of Smiting (any wound caused actually causes D6 wounds), a Rune of Resistance, and Master Rune of Spite. I was confident enough.
The daemon looked at me and declared that it was carrying some evil magic which cancelled all magic weapon effects used against it. Damn. How was my S4 going to harm that daemon?
It lasted a few rounds, it was fun. The Eye of the Tiger was played, air guitars were strummed and hips gyrated.  The Lord got the daemon down to 1 wound (it had already taken some in the battle). The Lord saved many wounds with the armour and ward saves.
Then I think the Daemon realised that there was a dwarf attacking it, and actually defended itself. It hit and wounded with every single dice. The Dwarf Lord became red paste between the daemon's toes.
Oh well.

And now for the lazy reader, here's the same story, brought to you in new fangled tech-ni-colour.
Roll on BCon6!

Turn_1 12-06-2011 12-31-09
Turn 1

Turn_2 12-06-2011 13-24-08
Turn 2

'See you jimmy? Oh ayyyye, you!'
'See you jimmy? Oh ayyyye, you!'

Turn_3 12-06-2011 13-27-00
Turn 3

Turn 3 - Demon!
Turn 3 - Bloodthirster Daemon thing!

Turn_3 12-06-2011 13-30-25
Turn 3

Turn_4 12-06-2011 13-36-19
Turn 4

Turn_4 12-06-2011 13-36-43
Turn 4

Turn_5 - Dwarves and Undead go hell for leather
Turn 5 - Dwarves and
Undead go hell for leather

Turn 5 - The Grim Reaper points the finger and turns a dwarf to dust
Turn 5 - The Grim Reaper points
the finger and turns a dwarf to dust

Turn_5 - Here's Johnny!
Turn_5 - Here's Johnny!

Turn_5 - 'Dodge this, Elf!'
Turn_5 - 'Dodge this, Elf!'

Turn_5 - Chaos and Skaven fight together against the Demon foes, it's not enough
Turn_5 - Chaos and Skaven fight
together against the Demon foes,
it's not enough

Turn_5 - the chaos warriors finally make a move from their altar of Khaine
Turn_5 - the chaos warriors finally
make a move from their altar of Khaine

Demon V Dwarf - One on one final combat-1
Demon V Dwarf -
One on one final combat

Demon V Dwarf - One on one final combat-2
Demon V Dwarf -
One on one final combat

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

MyBattleReport.com bannery widgiteroo


I'm sure it's old news to the rest of the steam powered interwebs, but I chanced upon this while wandering the dark corners of MrSatsMumblings (there are no light corners there). 
I signed up, decided upon an army name using a Khazalid Lexicon and entered Karak Az.
Google has no (or few) mentions of 'Karak Az' or 'KarakAz' or 'Karak-Az', but I'm sure it's well taken, as no doubt I'll be educated in the comments for this post!

I added some of my recent history at BCon5, and away we go.

Initially I had some issues with BattleReporter, I think that someone had previously entered RedCraig as an opponent, who never signing up to the site, I inherited their battle history - which was amusing, it was all 40k.
The Dwarves of Karak Az vs Imperial Guard! Dwarves win, woo!

Way to go on the unique usernames there lads.
I PM'd an admin type in the forum and he fixed it quick sharp. Fair dues to them.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

GF9 Tokens for WFB

I picked these up today in passing at GamersWorld, impulse buy. I quite like them.
Gone are the days of scraps of white paper littering the table with 'Blood Forest' or 'Abyssal Wood'. They have named each and every one of them them slightly differently, for instance 'Blood Forest' is on the token as 'Bloody Forest', and 'Fungus Forest'  is on the token as 'Fungal Woods'.

They're made well, they have a perspex layer on top of the printed image, so they have a bit of weight and substance when you pick them up. The backs are felted. A bit on the expensive side I suppose, but a thumbs up from me.


Mysterious Waters Markers

Mysterious Woods Markers

Fantasy General's Token Set

Click on the pictures to follow through to the product page on gf9, where the potentiality of embiggening exists.

Unfortunately, GF9 don't seem to have an offering for Arcane Architecture or Mystical Monuments.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Holiday painting

So I've fallen off the wagon with regards to my painting & assembly plans. The guilt & enthusiasm have been slowly combining in equal measures.
Kuffeh's recent longbeard post (and the other one with the BSB for that matter) got me thinking. I have a week of holidays soon, which are not at home (i.e. no painting supplies). Would it be possible to squeeze enough into a case to get some assembly and painting done?

EDIT: I'm flying to destination. Will the citadel paint pots explode?
Thinking of what happens to water bottles, they probably would. Shoot.

I'm a kitchen sinker when travelling, and I just know that if I don't get everything in I'll be sitting there doing some painting and thinking - "damn! why didn't I bring that thing X, I totally need it to paint thing Y. Gorram".

In reality though, if I beat the kitchen sink compulsion, even if I forget something I could surely get some assembly and base coating / base painting done.

Hrrmmm.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Nice paint job

It's not mine, I was browsing around seeing what there is to see.
I can't link to the photo in place as the author has turned off sharing.
You'll have to go clicky:


I like how the painter hasn't used too much (any?) gold on his Dwarves.
Also, the black & silver on the longbeards looks quite good. I think I saw a unit in the Dwarf rulebook with the black / silver colour scheme.
In the Longbeards again, I notice he's used a darkened blood red / gore red as the main uniform colour. Looks quite well.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

BCon5 : my Dwarf Army List

Army board needs a little work here
Below is the army list I fielded at BCon5.

I removed a bunch of the output from ArmyBuilder, the full output is far too verbose.
  • the Grudge Throwers underperformed spectacularly. I didn't roll an on target once in both battles.
    I would possibly swap out one of them, definitely not both. I'll give the 2 thrower list another bash before I decide.
  • ETC rules limit any unit to 450 points. As I wasn't taking a Lord (which would give the Hammerer's immune to fear and terror), I took a RoCourage instead.
  • I took a MRoGrugni (5+ ward save against missile fire) on the BSB, this meant the BSB was naked but the Hammerers had some cover.
    I'd much prefer to take a runed up BSB, RoPreservation, Gromril Armour, RoStone. That kind of thing, but needs must.
    Oddly, even with one of my opponents being the DarkElves, The MRoGrugni hardly ever came into it. 
  • I completely forgot about the master rune of immolation in both battles. And each time I had a nice opportunity to use it. Ah well.
  • I love SpellEater Runes.
    They totally paid for themselves in the Battle with the Dark Elves, cancelling out that Fulminating Flame Cage spell and making the Sorceress forget it. So sweet.
__________________________________________________________
2400 Pts - Dwarfs Roster
   40 Dwarf Warriors, 415 pts (Standard Bearer, Musician, GW's)
   39 Rangers, 444 pts (Standard Bearer, Musician, GW's)
   33 Hammerers, 444 pts (Standard Bearer, Musician, GW's)
      1 Runic Standard (Rune of Courage)

   1 Thane (Battle Standard Bearer), 140 pts
      1 Runic Standard (Master Rune of Grungni)

   1 Runelord, 284 pts (General; Great Weapon; Shield)
      1 Runic Armor (Rune of Iron x2; Rune of Stone)
      1 Runic Talisman (Spelleater Rune x2)

   1 Cannon, 150 pts (Rune of Burning; Rune of Forging; Cannon)
       1 Engineer (Hand Weapon; Brace of Pistols; Light Armour)

   1 Organ Gun, 120 pts

   1 Grudge Thrower, 150 pts (Rune of Accuracy; Rune of Penetrating x1; Stone Thrower)
       1 Engineer (Hand Weapon; Brace of Pistols; Light Armour)

   1 Grudge Thrower, 175 pts (Rune of Accuracy; Rune of Penetrating x2; Stone Thrower)
      1 Engineer (Hand Weapon; Brace of Pistols; Light Armour)

   1 Bolt Thrower, 75 pts (Master Rune of Immolation; Bolt Thrower)


Composition Report:
 Points of Lords: 284 (0 - 600)
 Points of Heroes: 140 (0 - 600)
 Points of Core: 859 (600 - Unlimited)
 Points of Special: 994 (0 - 1200)
 Points of Rare: 120 (0 - 600)

Total Roster Cost: 2397

Created with Army Builder® - Try it for free at http://www.wolflair.com

Friday, June 24, 2011

Wayland returns finecast stock

My opinion on finecast is along the same lines as 3D movies. If I ignore it, it will go away.

One of the guys in Underground Gamers sent this around earlier:
http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/games-workshop/finecast-resin-models/cat_955.html

I am amused.
At the same time, it's early days for finecast, you kind of have to expect this sort of thing?

Electrickery

At the last BCon there I had forgotten to print my army list - and on the second day we had no printer.
We're big on Army Builder you see, I guess too many (genuinely innocent!) mistakes have been made in the past. It's a great tool.

I created the army list and output it to PDF, slapped that sucker into dropbox which my phone could read. One easy access army list.
"Bah, smart phones!" you say. Meh, smoke em if you got em.

One of the others in attendance had been doing a similar thing, downloading his army list to his kindle. If one were to find oneself with a PDF of the BRB which had full text, putting that on your kindle would mean a searchable rule book. It'd be hella smaller than dragging the massive hardback version of the rule book. I should really invest in one of those A5 rulebooks, see if I could fine one on ebay.

I heart gadgets.
If I were a Dwarf, I'd be an engineer.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

BastardCon 5 : The ETC Rules Cometh

Bcon5 posterBabylonBastardCon 5 :
"Where the tears of your opponent are like sweet sweet wine."

The frequency with which we're getting these BCon weekends in is increasing, but I think that's unfortunately misleading. We really just tried to squeeze this one in before folks all disappeared off on summer holidays or other family commitments; if we hadn't made this one it likely would have been Sept before BCon5. That's too long a wait seeing as the last one (March '11).

"Wait, what?" say you, "You can't just start posting again after a whole month without saying anything."
Eh. Whadya gonna do. Excuses? None to be found here.
Hopefully you few, you happy few followers kept yourselves warm with each others bodyheat. Now, back to BCon.

"Godzilla posts always three
time bigger! RAWR!"
It's at this point you should duck out for your coffee. What was going to be 3 posts (bcon + 2 battle reports) has become a Godzilla like post. Don't worry, there's plenty of pictures.

Unlike BCon4, we had a format where the total possible you could get for winning a game was 20 points, total loss 0.  At the end of the battle, tote up you and your opponents victory points and use the ratio between them to award the 20 points between you.
There 8 of us and everyone got in two games. We took it handier this time, with longer lunches. The games felt harder fought and we all thought we deserved the break. :)

There was a good mix of armies in attendance:

  • Dwarves : Craig (me)
  • Ogres : Dec
  • Dwarves : Tom
  • Lizardmen : a late delivery of Tomb Kings meant the Lizardmen were in attendance for JK
  • Chaos Dwarves : MrSaturday
  • Dark Elves : Vic
  • Beastmen : Noel
  • Daemons of Chaos : Paul
My two battles were against the pin cushion experts, the Dark Elves; followed by the straight in no kissin Beastmen.

Rules:
2400 point army lists.
ETC rules in attendance. The major one which affected me was the 450 point max per unit, which I have to say if fair enough. It keeps the stupid o'clock sized units down a little bit. The power dice affecting limit worked in my favour as well, so no complaints here.
Limiting war machines to a max of 5? With two templates? Done. Easy. I wasn't even going to take 5 until I saw that was in the rules. :)

Scenarios:
For each round of battles we rolled a single scenario, and each table had to play it.

Terrain:
We setup terrain at the start of the day on each table, the first battle players setting it up for their own table. We decided to keep the same terrain for the rest of the day after it had been setup. It would turn out, this was kind of foolish...

Battle The First: Dark Elves 

Scenario: Battle for the Pass
...we setup the terrain completely for our benefit to suit the Battle for the Pass scenario, so when it came to the battle #2 - things got ugly, but interesting!

Turn 1: setup fun. Remember it's battle for the pass, the length ways battle field. Each sides deployment zone is still only 12" from the centre, but you can deploy waaaay back if you so wish.
I wished. It happened. The Dark Elf dealt with it.
Bcon5 - Vs Dark Elves 11-06-2011 12-52-23
Turn 1 - the setup.
You'll notice the massive unit of dwarves in the top left. A large block of 39 Rangers. GWs. I wasn't sure about placing them here, I figured that the DE would turn around and munch them easily as I was coming at him piecemeal. That's not quite what happened though.

The Dwarves got to go first, the turn was spent moving the all inf blocks forward, then firing ineffectually. Pretty much did next to no damage. Both grudge throwers missed. Cannon missed the Hydra, killed a few BlackGuard. BoltThrower missed. Orgun gun out of range. etc.etc.
DE's advance, and don't turn around to face the scouts. Phew.

Turn 2:
The Rangers get their above average distance charge against the DE bolt thrower, wipe it out and overrun into the back of the two units: Corsairs and BlackGuard. Mental State? Tasty happy with the overrun, but very uncertain about how the rangers would stack up against those two units.
The rangers did good. Over the two turns, they took heavy losses, but wiped out the corsairs (except for that damn last man!) and took out 15 out of 20 blackguard.
Unfortunately they still lost on wounds in the second round, and fled. Corsairs have the Slavers ability, which meant that I had to re-roll the highest D6 for my flee roll before they make their pursuit roll. They caught the rangers, and then did nothing for the rest of the game.

Bcon5 - Vs Dark Elves 11-06-2011 14-44-11
as things stand at the start of turn 4
~Turns 3 & 4:
Shooting still ineffectual.
DE fast cav playing silly buggers, Hammerers can't get into combat.
DE wipes out war machines, the Manticore gets an overrun from the Bolt Thrower and on into the Grudge Thrower.
The Hydra triumphantly marches (I know, march and shoot? wtf!) down beside the Warriors, and flank flames the unit. Luckily the cannon had caused it 3 wounds, so it's breath weapon strength was reduced to 2. Not a dwarf was lost!

The shooty phase finally comes good, the cannon gets a shot off and takes out the Manticore and it's expensive character rider. There was some (understandable) desperate straw grabbing, about how the cannon could hit both the mount and the rider.
Bye bye DE general. Those tears tasted good.

The Hammerers wanted so bad to charge the Hydra but couldn't as they would have come into contact with the fast cav first. You can't come into contact with an enemy you haven't charged, so I had to charge the fast cav - and of course they fled. I'm not sure of the rules here, more than half my unit could easily see the Hydra, but I agree that they'd wheel and hit the fast cav first. Does the ranked unit skirmish it's way around and charge the target? 8th Ed has certainly simplified the rules, so possibly...

The Hydra obligingly charged the hammerers, and got munched - mainly due to the cannon doing those 3 wounds to the Hydra earlier in the battle.
Bcon5 - Vs Dark Elves 11-06-2011 15-11-37
start of turn 5
Turns 5 & 6:
Clean up. 
Hammerers wipe the floor with the Spearmen.
DE Scouts flee the Warrior charge.
DE Fast cav fails to rally (hah!).

Game ends with only the surviving corsair and blackguards hiding behind the ziggurat.


Final Score: 14-6 to the Dwarves.


WorldsEndRadio - great name
for a podcast
Battle #2: The Beastmen:
Scenario: Dawn Attack
The one where you roll to see which flank the unit can be placed in. Scout Rangers were totally worth it in this scenario, being able to place them wherever I needed to plug the gap.

Rather than an in depth turn by turn summary, I'll just go with some highlights.
First off, we were still playing with the Battle for the pass terrain. Bummer. It pretty much divided the board in two.

Second off, you see the ship wreck in the middle there? That's a Haunted Mansion, right, smack, in the middle of my deployment zone. Every turn, if a unit within 6", that unit takes D6 S1 hits with no armour save. That gets pretty annoying I'll tell you.

Third point to note, that black altar on top of the hill, is an Altar of Khaine. Units within 6" gain frenzy.

This battle was definitely of the straight in no kissin variety.
Cool stuff:

  • Centiguars are badass. Be Afraid. They charged my GW Warrior horde of 40, and held them for a turns before help arrived. They're in the next pic, the unit that looks like it could be cavalry which has charged the Dwarf Warrior unit in front of the Shipwreck.
    Now, the Centiguars performance was boosted by Khaine as they were within 6" of the altar, thereby gaining extra attacks and frenzy; but still, holy cow they did the deed!
    The Minotaur unit and a chariot charged the warriors to help finish them off.
Bcon5 - Vs Beastmen 11-06-2011 17-27-10
~end of turn 2 - centiguars taking names, "Simon? Here!"

  • Target those Minotaurs:
    The orgun gun and stone throwers did the deed, and killed off all the other Minotaurs except for the character - who is still an awesome force to contend with.
  • The Gors(?) showed up with the ambush rule. The cannon tried for grapeshot, only 1 kill.
  • In a rather tasty move, the Hammerers and the Rangers charged the main unit of 40 UnGors (?) which contained the general, BSB and a Shamen. The skirmishing Gors left enough of a gap to charge around. 24 wounds later (see next pic) and that unit is outta here.

Bcon5 - Vs Beastmen 11-06-2011 18-38-05
~end of turn 4

Bcon5 - Vs Beastmen 11-06-2011 18-43-54
~turn 5
  • the skirmishing gors finish off the warmachines
  • the remaining centiguar taunts my stone thrower, forcing indirect fire by sitting in front of it! 
  • the rangers chase down the remains of the BSB unit, which rallied, and wipes it out (woo!)
  • The Hammerers turn and face the Minotaur who charges them, this time Frenzy is on the Dwarf side and they turn the Minotaur to a red paste.
Final Score: 14-6 to the Dwarves - yep, same result again. 
He killed a lot of warmachines, and that warrior unit.


Job done.
When we added up the points, myself and the other Dwarf player both had 28. He had faced the Chaos Dwarves and I think the Demons, so fair play to him.

We intend on playing the final against each other in Dublin, some evening soon. 

The Sunday game? That's a different story, most definitely deserves a fluff based post.