A Different Perspective

So any of my readers will know that this blog is not about painting. I am not sure exactly what it is about but certainly not painting. You will not find any painting tips or even many pictures of painted projects. I have been pretty much a dedicated nonpainter for all my years of miniature gaming. I have 20 year old epic space marine stuff that has not seen a brush or spray can near them. Recently I had a game that changed my perspective.

I have read in a few different places discussing that these games are representative games and having the fully painted battlefield and pieces really add to the enjoyment. I personally had always not really felt that way. I figured the painting requirements was another way for GW to try to suck money out of me for paints and such. It did not bother me and I did not see the other side of it. Lots of people around my FLGS play with a few unpainted pieces but I was the only one with a nearly totally unpainted 8K points army.

Interestingly I have always been an extremely strict WYSIWYG guy. The only time I have ever fielded units that were not strictly WYSIWYG was in a few big Apoc games where I had a couple of marines with CC and Boltpistol count as marines with true grit or some Multimeltas count as meltaguns for a drop pod army. I figured this really might affect how people play the game so I should get it right. You can see this is my Honor Guard where I have modeled everyone with the power weapon, bolter and bolt pistol. Even the guy with the banner. While this is not strictly required since it is standard equipment for the unit I thought I should do it since it is one of the things that make the Honor Guard stand out by having the multiple weapon options.

What has changed my mind and made me decide to really get serious about painting? It was a recent game of Blood Bowl in my new league. I am really excited to get to play the game and happy to see new people brought into the game. GW does not make that easy with the box set costing 82.50 now. Wow that is steep. Plus full league teams are 50 for the basic 12 guys plus 20 for a 4 man booster if it is even made for that team(or 8.25 each otherwise) plus 25 for a big guy. So you are essential at 100 dollars retail for a full team now. No wonder bidding has gotten more serious on ebay. Plus the rulebook in the box is totally out of date so you have to download and print a 60 page rulebook.

So a few people in the league play with basic home made board(not a fancy pitch conversions) with proxied teams using heroquest models. I played such a game recently and found it slightly less evocative than playing with the real pieces. I know that that orc is really a norse lineman or that chaos warrior is really a werewolf but it made things seem just a bit off.

Do not get me wrong, I still had fun and do not think everyone should have to spend 200 dollars to get started playing a game which they might not play for very long. It just got me thinking. Is this how people feel when they play me? Maybe I should do a better job of getting my act together on painting. So I have decided to start painting again. Since painting tons and tons of marines currently is not calling to me, I thought I might paint my wood elves for blood bowl. But not green. I remembered a cool article from an Aussie who painted up wood elves in a winter style so I was thinking of giving something like that a try in Blood Bowl.

Stay posted for developments as a non painter tries to learn to paint.

Picking Up the Slack

So everyone who reads this blogs is probably aware of the From the Warp blogger group. Ron has done a great job over their getting everyones posts read around the net. I know it brings in more than a third of my traffic but the 40K and GW blogging community has just gotten to big to be contained in one blog list. With over 300 blogs the list minding software just starts to have bot break downs. So he has changed his listing structure which will cause more posts to disappear fast from news roll.

While I have been steadily adding to my blog list I still have a few spots open for the 25 long list so I will be on the look out for a few new ones to add in the next couple of days. I think everyone out their should set one of these up to help let everyone know of the great work out there. While it is tempting to always include the big blogs it might be better to intentional add some smaller ones also. The little guys need to look out for each other. I know most people have these lists but I can think a few blogs that don't so if you do not think about adding it. Ron cannot do all the work.

Interesting the way Ron has his lists set up now it is hard to say if you want to be in the major list or the general one. The majors are 10 spots for 60 people all who update pretty regularly. This might completely turn over 3-4 times a day. The general one is 25 spots probably 200 people. A post here might be listed most of the day. The turnover in the top list will be more but you are up higher on the page so it will all cancel out.

Thanks for listening

Transport Contents Tip

Here is another part of my line of simple gaming tips. Nothing fancy just sharing some things I have seen done that work for some people.

Tank Riders:

Sometimes especially when you are like me and have a number of unpainted hard to distinguish rhinos it is hard to remember who is riding in what and what is still occupied. One solution to this is to place a representive figure on top of the rhinos. So if Pedro and the Honour Guard are in that Rhino place Pedro on top. If Sternguard are in that one place a sternguard on it. Just keep moving the rhino and guy together and your opponent will never have to ask who is in that rhino.

The above pic is pretty grainy but you can see the two rhinos with 1K Sons units sitting there. I might be helpful to place people who intend to shoot out the firepoint to remind you to have them fire.

Blood Bowl League: Game 1

"Hello and welcome to Blood Bowl Tonight on Cabalvision, your number one stop for all the best on the pitch action. I am your host Sknock Van Pelt. Our lead story is a match between the norsemen and beasts of Reddeck Wins and the twisted ratmen of the Darkthunder Deviants where the crowd really took control of the action."

"We take you now live to Orkin Andrews on site"

"Thanks Sknock, We had a very balanced match early today between Reddeck and Darkthunder. The opening kickoff taken by Reddeck managed to score despite the ball being knocked loose twice by those cunning Deviants. Pretty miraculous scopes of the ball off the pitch for the Norse men. While the Norseman had been able to knock down the rats during the drive, they kept getting back up. The heavily norse crowd was getting restless due to the lack of blood shed on the pitch"

"On the insuing kick off, the berserkers in the crowd stormed the pitch and decimated the Deviants leaving only about half standing. A critical loss was the deep man who could not get back to snag the norsemens untrained perfect kick to the back of the endzone. With time in the half running short and having first to fall back significantly to regroup from the mauling done by the crowd, the Deviants were hard pressed to try to score. They came close after some wonderful footwork of runner Tarrik Owns to get free in the back field but he seemed so impressed by this excellent moves that he gave up on his deep route without using all of his speed."

"Had not the Deviants done such a good job harassing the ball carriers on Reddeck's first possession, they might have had more time to recover from the angry fans."

"At the beginning of the second half, the crowd was still looking for blood and upset at how close the rat men came to scoring that they stormed the pitch again. Again the massive norse fan advantage left almost half the skaven down. After recovering the ball and moving to set up a passing lane , skaven thrower Dred Bleedso stopped a few paces too close to the downed snow troll for no good reason. The icy chill caused his pass to just miss the mark. While the ball was recovered and scored by Teary Hold in a few moments, the delay allowed for the norseman to gang up on the skaven rat ogre, Rage Lewds, who had already left 2 norseman in bad shape. Looks like Rage will miss next weeks match also in a critical blow to the Deviants."

"Without Rage to help pressure the ball carrier the Deviants had trouble putting any real pressure on the ball carriers for the hard blocking Norse. The 2 Ulfwerner and snow troll really started to put the hurt on the rats. All told the norseman did 4 injuries to 2 for the skaven in the 2-1 victory. Reddeck played a very solid and conservative game which payed off for them. The coach for the Deviants responded after the game that having the fastest player on the pitch does not matter if you put them in the wrong places."

"Back to you, Sknock"

"Thanks for the report, Orkin. Looks like the Deviants had their hands full with Reddecks 12th man."

Is it wrong to ...?

Sometimes when I leave comments on people sites, I will mention a post of my own that is closely related. I will usually even provide the link. Generally I only do this when the topic is actually very related like we have converted the same type of model or the poster is planning on doing something like something I have already posted.

A couple of examples come to mind. Once someone was showing their homebuilt drop pods and calling them ghetto. They were actually pretty good so I provided a link to my really ghetto drop pods. Or more recently, someone was discussing converting a lizardman blood bowl team so I provided inka to a well converted one shown on warseer and my easy one from this blog.

Am I hijacking other peoples comments to get page views or am I providing the community with valuable information. I have yet to have any of the comments deleted and most of the time I get a return comment on the original post about how my post relates.

I do not do this often maybe 1 in 20 comments I leave but I am still wondering if it is ok.

Cities of Death Buildings

With the new release of Planetstrike and its terrain by GW, I have decide to show off some of my Cities of Death terrain. Once again not painted. This set is made up of the cities of death starter box (not in print) which came with frames for 2-3 buildings plus the rulebook and the battlefield accessory. I then added a manufactorum building set so I could fill a 4 by 4 for cities of death. Currently the Imperial Sector box looks like a good starting point for city ruins. I have tried to make smaller buildings so that I had more compared to a few tall buildings. I am really thinking about getting a new terrain kit either the imperial sector to make a full table of ruins or planetstrike kit with the 2 bastions and several wall sets. If I got more ruins I was going to build them with lots of line of sight blocking first levels to make them better cover in 5th ed.


Here is a close up of one of the buildings. The biggest problem I have with buildings is storage and transport. So I have decided to pin the levels together instead of gluing. The buildings can then be separated into more flat arrangement for transport to the FLGS.

Two Levels separated.

The corner pins. Longer is better since they have to hold the levels from toppling when models are placed and moved.
The game of tetris that is played to get all the ruins into the original box. This will probably not be possible if I painted them but is pretty good now since this box can then sit on other closed boxes at the top of the plastic transport tub I use.

With this arrangement I have no problem taking my buildings and 3-5K points of marines down to the local gaming store for the big Apoc battles. If I add another set of terrain this might not be possible so we will see. My anniversary is coming up and nothing says love like wargaming terrain. Right Guys.

Skaven Team Name

I need to pick a name for my new skaven team. I like to have interesting names. My undead go by the name Forgotten Martyrs and my lizardmen are the Lost Claws. Here is what I am thinking.

Fifth Column Tunnelers: Classic Skaven team name for a traveling team. I saw it listed in my Star Player book but I am not sure that the fifth column is.

Darkthunder Deviants: Darkthunder is the college from which most skaven blood bowl players in the NAF days came from. Supposedly a massive load of warpstone.

Regents of Rigen: Rigen is the clan in charge of blood bowl for skaven and what is more unusual than Regent ratman.

Eishen Exterminators: Payback from the ratmen.

What do you guys think?
Fill out the Poll, pretty please

Saturday Board Game Day

I went over to a group of buddies house last weekend to take part in their semi-monthly board game days. The house has three of my high school friends living in it and usually they get about 10-15 people over playing games. Attendance was lighter this time but it allowed me to get to talk and play with my friends instead of friends of friends so that was good.

We played two different games both of which I had not played before. One was Kingsburg which is a very abstract game in the Settlers genre of empire building. You gather resources which you spend to build things and defend you area from yearly attacks. The game lasts 5 years with each year having 3 seasons of resource gathering and building and 1 season of attacks by goblins. It is very different from Settlers since the only direct competition between the players really comes during the resource gathering phase where you have to place your dice on the King's Advisors to get the resources and you have many options to try to block other people from placing dice by selecting the same adviser. The game was not bad and I would play it again just a little more abstract than I like.


We also played the retro game, Thunderroad. This is essentially a car racing and combat game from the time that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome came out(1986). Not a direct tie in just trying to grab some of the interest that the movie generates. This game is pretty simple with the object being to have the last car standing by either out running the other players or destroying them. The board is made up of 2 road lengths and when you get off the front, the one in the back becomes the front with all the cars left there removed. Each player had 3 cars that can get destroyed and repaired plus a chopper which just shoots people. I would be willing to play it again since it is fast but it is not a deep game. I have a copy of GW's Dark Future and the White Line Fever expansion book which is a much deeper combat and racing game from about the same period.

League Skaven Team

So I am going to be playing my skaven in the upcoming league. Since it is an ongoing league team creation is getting a little modified. First I must create a 1,000,000 gold piece standard starting team. Next I get 350,000 gold pieces to spend on advancements and upgrades. The only advancements allowed at normal access skills at 20,000 points each on individual players. These players are award 6 star player points to start which would normal get them a roll on the advancement table. This is worth more than just a basic skill but the trade off is that I get to choose who gets the upgrade specifically.

So my basic idea is a standard 12 rat starting roster with 6 linerats, 2 blitzers, 3 gutter runners, and 1 thrower with 3 rerolls. I will then use my upgrades money to then get an apothacary and rat orge. I then have enough remaining cash for 9 skills. That is enough to skill up all the linerats and blitzers and then one other player.

Here are the skills I am thinking off since I get no options for doubles:
2 Linerats with Block
2 Linerats with Wrestle
1 Linerat with Kick
1 Linerat with Dirty Player
1 Blitzer with Guard
1 Blitzer with Grab
1 Thrower with Leader

Any comments? Still Need a Name.

New Warhammer 40K Mission: Accumulation

I wanted to devise a new mission type that is sort of the mirror opposite of the current objective grabs. This mission will challenge armies that are designed to stick and run and avoid heavy contact with the enemy

Accumulation

While holding ground at the end of a battle is important, sometimes merely holding it for vital seconds may be all that is needed for victory. Capturing enemy intelligence, destroying key infrastructure, or an atack of misdirection can be accomplished in a few moments.

Rules:

Players roll off to determine first turn. Winner can choose to go first or second. The players then place 1d3+2 objectives starting with the player going second. No objective may be positioned in the deployment zone of the player placing it. All objectives must be at least 12 inches from each other or a table edge. The players then get to deploy as per the deployment type with the player going first deploying first.

At the end of each player turn, both players earn 1 point per objective they control with a non vehicle troop choice within 3 inches which is not contested by any opponent unit with 3 inches of the objective. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Mission Special Rules:

Seize Ininative, Deepstrike, Reserves, Outflank, Battlefield Jammers, Boots on the Ground. Note Inflitrators and Scout are not active and can only be used to outflank.

Battlefield Jammers: Battlefield wide distrubances being it some type of jammer or warp anomaly have made deepstriking into the battlefield challenging. All Deepstrikers scatter regardless of special rule to prevent the scatter. A hit roll on the scatter die scatters according to the small arrow. Units with special rules that limit scatter to avoid mishaps should roll a d6 in the case that the scatter leads to a possible mishap. On a 1-3 reduce the minimum amount to avoid the mishap. On a 4-6 increase the scatter distance the minimum amount to avoid the mishap(ie the drop pod scatters over to the other side of the obstruction).

Boots on the Ground: Sometimes to accomplish your goal, you need to get down and dirty at the objective not hide in a tank or ride over at high speed. To count as a scoring unit during a turn the nonvehicle troop choice cannot be embarked in a transport. The unit also cannot have turboboosted in its last movement phase.

Fast Re-Rolling Tip

Nothing to magical here but just sharing a little tip on speeding up your play. There are a lot of rerolls around in 40K. One thing I like to do roll the reroll die at the same time as the normal roll die. This can essential cut the dice rolls down a ton. For example I often have a Predator with TL Lascannon and 2 heavy bolters in my mech list. So when I roll to hit I will roll 6 white dice and 2 red dice. White dice are the heavy bolter and the red are the TL lascannon. When I am picking up the dice to move on to wounding or armor penetration I just have to check both red. If they both miss pick both up if not pick one up since 1 hit and 1 miss or 2 hits both yield infact 1 hit. Same thing works for difficult terrain tests with dozer blades. Roll 2 dice as long as 1 is not 1 you are fine.

Now you might say that but the second die is final. That is way you can only use this trick on things where the result is either pass or fail with no penalty to get the die roll(Bosspole). If I passed the first roll I would not have rolled the second so the other die is ignored. If I failed the first then the other die is the pass. All the odds work out the same since the each dice roll is indepedent. If both dice succeed, I use my logic since I know I am limited to 1 success.

Now for scatter dice you do not want to do this trick since they are not purely pass/fail the numbers and directions matter.

This trick is great for those Vulkan buffed Thunderhammer Termis. Since the weapons are mastercrafted not Twin Linked you only get to reroll 1 miss each. So that means you have to roll each termi seperately. Roll three dice and reroll 1 miss on the charge. Instead just roll four dice and know that the max hits is 3.

Bell of Lost Souls Alliance

So I finally joined the Bell of Lost Souls Blog Alliance. Recently I had not been posting enough to make it worthwhile but since I am doing some promo for the Tzeentch Challenge blood bowl tournament I want to increase my profile.

That got me thinking about the various levels of blogs out there and where I would want mine in the groupings. This is how I see the community:

Super Blog: Bell of Lost Souls is a super blog. It has multiple people providing the great content and does a lot of news posting. No single person could probably run a blog of this level with a day job and still get any hobby or gaming done.

Major Link Blog: From the Warp shows off a lot of Ron's great hobby content(he will admit he does not really play currently) but most of the really interesting stuff is built off a link to other community members sites. This is very important to have since all the blogs out there have a lot of great content in their back files that people would not find without help.

Major Topic Blog: There are a couple of blogs out there that really own their specific part of the 40K universe and are the first stopping point for information about that topic. This is usually a race/codex or specific playing style. These people have some really greats ideas and a solid posting record but are often very specific to their topic. Fritz's Way of Saim Hann comes to mind here.

General Blog: This your normal blog like mine. Some cool stuff. Some ordinary stuff. Just what I am thinking and up to at the moment. A good resource for feeding the Link Blog but not a must read ever post type of thing. Might cover a broad range of topics. Posting is regular but not always daily.

Starter Blog: People just getting started. Might have some interesting things to show but have not been blogging long enough to see if they are going to be a general blog or a major topic blog.

Understanding where you want to be and how much work it is going take helps you be more satisfied with your blogging experience. I have discover I really have no interest is getting much beyond my current level. Before I thought I wanted a bigger blog which my wife(she has more than 3 times my followers on one and probably 10 times on another) has been able to get in other areas. This lead to probably a little jealousy on my part, but I have decide I am fine with being a small potato out there in the big big internet.

Blood Bowl: 2nd Edition Orc Team

As part of my Old School Blood Bowl Series, here is my 2nd edition Orc team. I got this team maybe 3 years ago on ebay for like 18 dollars. That is pretty close to the cost for the team back when it was new so I was pretty happy with that. The ebay market has since increased significantly so I doubt I could get it again at this point. I added the 5 Orc I had since the early 90s. That addition makes the team pretty playable under the current rules. In the second edition rules orcs and humans were essential the same. I like that they are now different.

6 Ork Lineman. All pretty much the same looking.
3 Ork Throwers. So I have a extra thrower.
3 Ork Catchers who can be lineman in the current game but I am not sure if I need more than 6 lineman anyway. All three are different though.
The classic 4 Blockers. No horns but some serious bulk and armor. Serious Bruisers.
Only 3 Blitzers though so this needs another orc for a full option team.
Orc Kicker so he is a lineman with kick and Starplayer Greaser Geargrinder who in the current rules would be the missing blitzer even though he was a thrower in 2nd edition.

Here is a new addition Orc Secret Weapon Starplayer: Ugroth 'Ripper' Bolgrot.

Here we have another Cyborc Star Player who was never named as far as I know.  He looks like he was taken directly from a 40k table but was sold in the Blood Bowl brand.

Will You Accept the Challenge?

Tzeentch Challenge!: Blood Bowl Tournament

September 12-13, 2009

Rider's Hobbies, Ypsilanti, Michigan

So I am trying to let everyone out there know about a new Blood Bowl Tournament for the Metro Detroit Area this fall. The area used to have a Fall Blood Bowl Tournament (Underworld Cup) which occurred at the U-CON gaming convention at the University of Michigan, but due to an organizer change that was moved out of the state last year.

This event will hopefully replace that. The event is scheduled to be held at Rider's Hobbies in Ypsilanti which has easy highway access and plentiful free parking. So if you live in the metro Detroit Area and have any interest in Blood Bowl you should definitely come. Two days of on the pitch mayhem and the opportunity to meet other coaches from the metro area and hopefully all over the Midwest.

The event is running some different rules in terms of skills to encourage broader range of skills to be taken. This is done by essentially limiting access to a certain skill from each skill group to positional players who start with it. For example, the most common skill selected normally is Block due to its almost every turn usefulness, but a team elf team with 6 lineman all with Block does not really match how that team should evolve and play. Certainly sounds like an interesting change to cause experienced tournament coaches to rethink their standard set ups. You also get more gold pieces to pick up skills so some more advanced players can appear or more skills on different players.

Hope to see you there!

Forgotten Martyrs

I am very excited by the fact that I found a very local Blood Bowl League (Commish lives in same village). It is small group but better than going almost 2 years without a game. This was my undead team that got me playing again when I found another small league in Santa Fe like 4 years ago. It is my team closest to actually being painted with 7 guys pretty much done.

Pretty basic painting which I certainly can do a least a little better now. I think the problem especially with the wight's is over painting. This is an undead team things should look messier with more undercoat showing. Off to the paint stripper these probably go.

White Dwarf Archive

Games Workshop has decided to post some recent White Dwarf articles in their new White Dwarf Archive. You need to be a registered user but no subscription is required. They currently have about 8 gaming articles for 40K.

This seems like a great idea to allow more players access to more material on the hobby.

Tackle Zone Radio

I recently found this new Podcast on Blood Bowl with discussions of both the board game and new pc game. I enjoyed listening to the shows and picked up a couple of interesting ideas. The show is put on by some guys in the Brisbane Blood Bowl League. So if you are interested in learning what Blood Bowl is all about check it out

The pilot episode introduces the hosts and talks about what Blood Bowl is. The first episode talks about the 4 main offensive playing styles and gives a review of the new PC game

Currently I am on a Blood Bowl posting kick in preparation for joining a new league.

Storage Issues

Everyone involved in these type of games can have storage issues. In our last place everything was under the bed which was really inconvenient. Anytime I wanted 1 specific box I had to pull them all out to find it. When we moved to our new place, I got an upgrade. This was our entertainment center from IKEA which we have had about 7 years. It normally held our CRT TV and tons of books in the family room, but it had no place to properly fit in the layout of the new place. So it ended up in the basement. This made it the perfect storage place for my hobby stuff.

It really does not look like I have that much stuff here. RPG's, Board games, Old GW Games, Probably 10,000 points of 40K stuff, Chainmail Minis, Xbox Games, School Books, etc.

Blood Bowl: 2nd Edition Dark Elf Team

Here is my 2nd edition Dark Elf team. Dark Elves used to be very similar to normal elves with pretty much the same players. The new edition changes this by giving Dark Elves Assassins and Witch Elves so this team does not well represent a current team. It is playable but not really different from what you could do with High Elves.

Star Player Tuern Redvenom and 3 other Blitzers

2 Throwers and a damaged Kicker. He is supposed to have a feather sticking out of his forehead but it broke off like 15 years ago.

Standard Lineman
Dark Elf Catchers no longer have a position so these would just be used as lineman.