Vacation

I'm on vacation this week, so updates may be a little spotty.  I'll try not to have that happen though.

I've been working on a piece of software which will be a combination list builder and campaign tracker for Age of Sigmar.  More specifically, I'll be designing it to work as a tracker for my War Bands Campaign rules.  I spent part of yesterday typing all of the General's Handbook tables for Destruction into an Excel spreadsheet and then importing them into a database.  I also added all of the unit Keywords.  The end goal is that you'll be able to sort units by their keywords, letting you pick, for example, an Orruk unit to be compatible with a certain ability.

We'll see where it goes.  This is the sort of thing I do where I work, so I know it's something I can do.  It's more an issue of time and motivation.

Ironjawz Orruk Megaboss Conversion

I decided that the leader of my Ironjawz war band would be an Orruk Megaboss.  The offical model is definitely nice looking, but doesn't wow me.  It basically looks like a slightly upscaled Brute.

Enter this guy...

He's the Green Goblin model from Disney's Infinity video game thing.  I've used a Hulkbuster Iron Man from the same line before to act as a Tau Empire Riptide.  I know you can't tell the scale in the above photo, but this guy fits on a 60mm base, same as the Megaboss, but is about twice as tall.

I sifted through my bits box and came up with a ton of bits that I thought would work.  I think when  I get some paint on him, he'll fit right in with my war band.  The barrel in his hand represents the Battle Brew artefact.

Ironjawz War Band?

Yeah, so everyone else has taken a mulligan and reworked their war bands.  I'm seriously considering doing the same.  I like the Skaven I have, but they just can't compete with my opponents.  Kurnoth Hunter ad Crypt Flayer spam just can't be overcome with a ragtag band of rats with fancy guns.

EDIT...

Yeah, just deleted a bunch of stuff and just went out and bought an Ironjawz Start Collecting box.  The shop also had some old Black Orks and I was able to get a bit of a deal given that I had some credit.  This gives me a Warchanter, 3x Gore-gruntas and 30x Ardboys to get started with.

I'm sure I'll be posting pictures soon.

My god...  my hobby ADD is terrible.

Kurnoth Hunters can Suck It

My friends and I got together last night to play some more of our custom War Bands rule set for Age of Sigmar.  I was paired off against my buddy Chris.  Chris is a nice guy.

Let me repeat that.  Chris is a nice guy.  I needed to say that twice, because I'm about to go off on a tirade that characterizes him as a living breathing asshole.

My war band remains my Warlock Engineer, Warpfire Thrower Weapons Team, 2x Rat Ogors and a single Stormfiend.  The army I went up against was a Branchwych, a unit of 3 Kurnoth Hunters and another unit of 1 Kurnoth Hunter.  Oh, and the ever present freebie Wyldwoods.

Fuck Kurnoth Hunters.  Seriously.  What was GW thinking when they wrote these rules and priced out this unit?

They cost 180 points for three models.  Given that you get free Wyldwoods, any half decent player is ALWAYS going to have them standing in magical Sylvaneth cover.  This means they have a 3+ (4+ plus cover) save and 5 wounds.  Oh, and did I mention that they have an ability that lets them re-roll saves during the combat phase?  Yeah, so a re-rollable 3+ save can EASILY become a re-rollable 2+ save.  These things are damn near impossible to shift.  Combine this with a very good 2 attack, 4+ to hit, 3+ to wound, -1 rend, D3 damage missile attack and they can just stand around and take pot shots.  Did I mention they have a 30" range?  In a game where 12" missile ranges are more common, 30" is ridiculous.  They don't deal much damage in melee, but they don't need to.  They just need to stay alive and fire their bows.

It's so frustrating.

And the trees...

Any decent Sylvaneth player will have his Kurnoth Hunters standing in these trees.  Standing near them when magic is cast can cause mortal wounds...  unless you're Sylvaneth and then you're immune.  Charging across them can cause you to lose entire models on a D6 roll of a 1...  unless you're Sylvaneth and then you're immune.  Sylvaneth players get one free Wyldwood to put ANYWHERE on the board before either army deploys...  and one Wyldwood is three bases.  The Branchwych has an allegiance rule that allows her (him?  it?) to drop another Wyldwood in the first hero phase.  Oh, and all the Sylvaneth units can teleport between tree bases.  AND a unit can be held aside and deployed with no real risk of peril to any tree stand on the board during any movement phase.

Sigh.

Between the Kurnoth Hunters and the Wyldwoods, his war band feels ridiculously overpowered.  I know that things will end up balanced as we have a built-in balancing mechanism...  but I'm just not sure how long that will take.

Chris is literally hovering over me as I type this.  He's asking me to remind you all that he's a nice guy.  I'm pretty sure I saw him drowning kittens earlier today.  Might have been someone else, but it was probably him.  Just sayin'.

Come back tomorrow when I rage some more.  Ten bucks says I'm at the gaming store purchasing some Ironjawz.  They have a fun ability that lets them destroy terrain features.  Yeah...  that sounds good.

More Painting!

I sat down with a friend this week and just muscled through the Warlock Engineer.  I'm really happy with the results.  I kind of winged the paint scheme to a certain extent.  The base isn't done yet, but the rest of the model is.  The base will be getting a glowing green slime treatment as well as some dead looking grass.  I should have pictures of that up pretty soon.

EDIT...

Finished the base!  I'm so happy with the look.

Painting Happened!

I played the first scenario from the Zombicide Black Plague core box last night.  It was a ton of fun.  I had previously played the tutorial mission.  The tutorial was a little boring.  This was a nightmare of zombies coming out of every room.

I also got some painting done on my rats.  I'm using the paint scheme from Duncan's WarhammerTV channel from when he painted Thanquol and Boneripper.  I like the results so far, but man is this tedious.  I might shift up a little and work on the Warlock Engineer tomorrow.  I still need to do the reddish puckering around the branding wound.  Really, only the skin on the back is done.

War Bands - Priming has Occurred

I ran out of primer almost immediately upon starting to prime these guys.  What a pain.  Turns out I had something like 10 empty cans of primer.  Evidently, throwing out empty cans so that I know how many spares cans I have isn't a skill I've mastered yet.

I had to make a side trip to Walmart to pick up more.  Man, that place is a nightmare scenario of bizarre people.  I picked up 10 cans of black primer, a Plano 732 that was on special and a can of Pringles.  The Pringles were an impulse purchase.  I went home, ate a few and then threw out the rest.  I haven't eaten them in a long time and it turns out that they're sort of gross.

The Plano 732 is so that I can re-organize my Star Wars X-Wing collection.  It's a game that involves about a million little pieces, so it's important to have a good organizational scheme.  The larger Plano cases are perfect, what with all the little plastic subdivided trays.  I have a similar one I'm using for my Star Wars Armada collection.  I might end up getting another one for Descent: Journeys in the Dark.

War Bands, Week 2 Expansion

After finishing our first week of War Bands gaming, we all rolled off for additional points.  The way we do this is as follows.  We roll a D6 and add 1 to the result if we have more victories than losses.  On a 1, you get 50 points to add to your army.  On a 2-5, you get 75 points and on a 6, you get 100.  If you have more losses than wins, you get a bonus D3*10 points.  The idea is that if one army keeps losing, it should keep getting a few bonus points each week to try and balance things out.  If the army starts winning, it stops getting bonus points.

I had more losses than wins, so got the bonus points.  I rolled a 6 for the first roll, giving me 100 points.  I then rolled a 3 on the second roll, which is a D3 result of 2 and got another 20 points.  120 points is a fantastic result.  From week 1, I had 20 points 'in the bank', so this gave me 140 points to spend.  I decided to spend 100 points on a Stormfiend equipped with Warpfire Throwers.  The remaining 40 points went back 'in the bank' for week 3.

The Stormfiend is a spectacular looking model.  I never thought I'd be playing an elite Skaven force, but here it is.  My plan is to try to get these models painted up in a relatively short period of time.  I'm not sure how I'm going to paint them yet.  I'll probably spend some time researching Skaven paint schemes.  I'm just not sure how best to handle the skin and fur.  I'm good with human skin, but not animal skin.

Also, this weird little stunted rat in a harness on the Stormfiend's back is super weird.  Reminds me of Total Recall.  OPEN YOUR MIIIINNNNNDDDDD...

War Bands, Week 1

My friends and I met up for our first test run of our homemade War Bands rules.  I'll give the conclusion up front this time...  it was a huge success!  First, the quick build rules...

• Build a 300 point list using the General's Handbook points.
• Your general can't be more than 150 points and can be any solo model with the Hero, Priest or Wizard keywords.
• There are no Battleline, Leader, etc. requirements.
• Units are purchased per model with no minimum unit size.  You just can't start a second unit of the same type until the first has grown to minimum size.  In other words, Plague Monks are 70 points for 10, which works out to 7 points for 1.  I could buy 6 Plague Monks for 42 points, but then I can't build a second Plague Monk unit because I'd have two below 10 models.

The four of us went with the armies we're most familiar with.  Jon picked Flesh-Eater Courts, Dmitri picked Khorne Daemons, Chris V. picked Sylvaneth and I went with a variety of Skaven clans.  I'll post the lists a little farther down.

We decided to play a multiplayer mission called "Fog of War" from the General's Handbook.  Essentially, each player rolls off for an order and then deploys in one quadrant of a 4'x4' board.  After everyone has deployed, we rolled off to see which two players were paired up on a team.  After that, it was go time.

Round 1...

We all ended up deploying more or less close to the center of the board.  That ended up being something of a mistake for some of us as it ensured that combat would occur immediately.

The Khorne Daemons crashed into my rats and shockingly, broke upon the bulwark of two Rat Ogors.  I was shocked.  The Rat Ogors are significantly more effective than I thought they'd be.  The undead ran straight for the trees.  The trees turned out to be remarkably resilient.

Round 2...

Round 2 was bascially combat time with all models locked in combat.  My Skaven cleared the Khorne models off the board.  The Sylvaneth continued to be nearly impossible to shift.

Round 3...

In round 3, the Skaven finally died to magic and shooting, with some of the wounds coming from within.  The Warp Fire Weapons Team attempted to super charge their fuel and exploded, causing 3 mortal wounds to themselves and dying in the process.  The Sylvaneth continued to be impossible to shift.  Their saves are insane.  A re-rollable 3+ save gives them a roughly 90% chance to ignore non-rending wounds.

The game ended in round 4 with a major victory for the Sylvaneth/Khorne team.  It was a good game and really highlighted how durable Kurnoth Hunters can be.  I think we may have actually played a few rules wrong, especially as relates to mortal wounds.  The trees might have actually gone down more quickly if we'd played correctly.

After the game we sat and talked for awhile and made a few tweaks to our armies.  Then we rolled for extra points for our week 2 expansion.  Overall, this was a ton of fun.

Here are the armies we used...

• Skaven
• Warlock Engineer
• 2x Rat Ogors
• Warpfire Thrower Weapons Team
• Sylvaneth
• Branchwych
• 3x Kurnoth Hunters
• Flesh-Eater Courts
• Haunter Courtier
• 3x Bone Horrors
• Khorne Daemons
• Herald of Khorne
• 3x Bloodcrushers
• 3x Flesh Hounds

Path to Glory Review... A for Effort, D- for Implementation

As you might know, the General's Handbook describes three different ways to play Warhammer Age of Sigmar.  The first is Open Play.  It's basically standard, free for all AoS with very few guidelines on how to build an army other than "bring what you want and try not to be a jerk".  The third is Matched Play, or AoS with points.  It's a lot more structured and we've been having fun with it.  The second option, Narrative Play, is what I'll be talking about.

Narrative Play has several options, one of which being the Path to Glory.  In the Path to Glory, you pick a Champion from several options and then roll (or choose) to see which followers you get.  Everytime you win (or lose), you get to roll on a table to see how your war band grows.  On the surface, this seems like a good idea.  There are issues though.

The main issue is that there is no real balance.  What I mean by this is that the options you can select aren't even remotely similar in power levels.  I was playing Skaven, so decided to choose a Skaven Warlord as my General.  This then gave me 6 follower units.  We had decided to roll randomly and I ended up with 10 Clanrats, 10 Stormvermin, 2 Rat Swarms, 5 Plague Monks, 5 Plague Censor Bearers and a Warlock Engineer.  So far so good.  That seems like a solid list that would compete OK against similar lists, right?

If only I was going up against similar lists.  My one buddy plays Flesh-Eater Courts.  In Matched Play, his army is strong, but not close to unbeatable.  In our Path to Glory inaugural fight, he dominated.  Between his General being an Abhorrent Ghoul King on Terrorgeist and all of his randomized units being measurably more powerful than, say, 5 Plague Monks, he started out with a much more powerful army.  We assigned points to the randomized rolls based on the Matched Play numbers only to find that his starting war band BEFORE summoning was 900 points.  Mine was 575.  That's a pretty huge power divide.  By the time I'd been tabled on turn 4, he'd summoned another 680 points worth of models.

Let me say this...  mainly because I think he'll read this and I don't want him to think I'm pissed or anything.  I had a good time.  I don't blame the way he played his army.  I think I would have played it the same time.  I'm just...  utterly perplexed as to what I was supposed to do.  Matched Play points aren't always the most balanced, but are pretty decent.  This was just too one sided.  I think if we'd played the scenario 100 times, my buddy would have won 99.  I have faith in the dice gods to give myself at least one scenario of lucky dice rolls.

It was actually a three player game.  You'll note that I didn't mention the other player.  That's because he deployed in the corner and couldn't compete with the Terrorgeist's movement.  We did the math.  The game would have been long over by the time his Spirit of Durthu and Treelord were able to get close enough to engage.

So...  what to do?

Age of Sigmar : Warband Campaigns v0.1a PDF

We talked about it afterwards and came up with a couple of ideas.  I'm not going to go into everything in detail, but I will say that we came up with something that we're going to try.  I wrote everything down and created a rule set to govern Age of Sigmar War Bands with an eye towards narrative play, building a connection to your models and slowly growing your force.  We'll be trying it out over the coming weeks and I'm sure I'll be uploading new versions on a pretty regular basis.