Atomic Warlords

I can't wait to get my hands on Black Library's newest book! I will have to get Rosetta Stone's Learn Binary in 00110011 00110000 days, but I'm sure it will be worth it!

From the Black Library website:

THE STORY

TO MARK THE MOMENTOUS RELEASE OF THE NEW ADEPTUS MECHANICUS WARHAMMER 40,000 ARMY, WE'VE RELEASED A NEW NOVEL ENTIRELY IN THE OMNISSIAH-APPROVED LANGUAGE OF BINARY!

THIS BRAND NEW, AND ENTIRELY NOT MADE-UP BOOK, FOLLOWS THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG SERVITOR WHO DREAMS OF BEING A SKITARII WARRIOR. UNLIKE MOST OF OUR NOVELS, THIS STORY IS WRITTEN FOR, AND BY, A COMPUTER. OF COURSE, READING IN BINARY CAN BE A LITTLE TRICKY AT FIRST, BUT BY THE 5TH OR 6TH CHAPTER WE THINK YOU'LL HARDLY NOTICE.

00110001 IS AVAILABLE AS BOTH AS A HARDBACK, AND OF COURSE, AS A DIGITALLY SUPERIOR EBOOK EDITION

01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01100001 01101000 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101111 01110100 01100101 01100011 01110100 01110011 00001010

Get out there and enjoy Tabletop day! Gamers are truly living in a golden age for board games. So many great games with top notch components and fantastic art, we are absolutely spoiled for choices.

We will only have time today for one, maybe two games today, but tomorrow is Imperial Assault all day!

Standby for a review and a battle report.

Go Roll Some Dice

When Fantasy Flight Games released Star Wars: Imperial Assault last December I was a little sceptical. Yes, I love X-Wing, but could they really pull off two good Star Wars miniature games? I was especially dubious when I heard it was based on FFG's fantasy dungeon-crawler Descent, which I didn't really care for. Yeah, well, turns out Imperial Assault is very good. So good I decided to paint the figures that came with it. And the expansions.

The Figs are a firm plastic with decent detail, some better than others. The Imperial are molded in grey plastic and the rebels in tan. They look quite good for boardgame level miniatures, but I could not stand to have a grey Darth Vader. So I took the plunge, and so did all the miniatures.

After a nice warm soapy bath to clean off all the release agent from the figs it was priming time.
Most of them got white primer, but Vader and few other received a black coat. It has been many, many years since I painted a non-GW fig, so this was novel to paint a different kind of stormtrooper.
I still used Citadel paints, just a brighter palette that I usually do. I didn't spent a huge amount of time per figure, so they look good from two feet away.

The Stormtroopers were by far the trickiest ones to paint. I used a black wash over the white, and then went back and re-painted the parts that were supposed to be white. The AT-STs were the easiest. Grey spray paint followed by a heavy black wash and finished off with a little bit of detail.

The Rebels were fun and fast to paint. I had always though that Han Solo was wearing a white shirt and black pants. Not so. I actually used internet research for good! Luke Skywalker's sculpt is quite nice, I'm just not sure why they chose his "Escape from the Death Star" look as the campaign is set right after the Death Star is destroyed. Totally minor quibble.

The bases gave me some pause. I have seen people do some amazing textures, but the downside to that is they can only match one of the three terrain types that are on the mapboards. So I went a dark grey, and it works great to making the bases functionally invisible. I put red or blue rings around some of the units to tell different deployment groups apart and done! When the weather gets a bit warmer I will seal them.

Having painted figures on the nice printed mapboards gives the game a great finished feel and adds a lot to the immersion of the game.

Next up, I'll yammer about how this game plays.

Go Roll Some Dice

And do a little painting

Imperial Assault comes with standard Fantasy Flight excellent components, but how does it play? First let us define what this game is. It is a tactical combat board game with two modes of play: Skirmish and Campaign.

Game mechanics wise, it is straightforward and quick. Players activate a character or a deployment group(i.e. a unit of three Stormtroopers). Each figure gets two actions on their activation: Move, Shoot, Interact, or Special. Character Heroes may also rest/heal. Play alternates in this way until both sides have activated all units, then the turn ends.

Combat is done with colored six sided dice for attacking and defense. The dice all have special symbols on them. The only real tricky part of the game is learning to use them, and that does not take long at all. Using the gridded map makes moving, range and line of sight quick and easy.

The Campaign game is for 2-4 players, one person taking the Imperial Forces and acting as GM with the other players being the plucky Rebels. In this mode the games acts like a light Role Playing Game. The Imperial player doing typical GM stuff, revealing the missions, throwing surprises/events at the players, and playing the Bad Guys. The players keep the same characters for all ten missions of the campaign and increase their skills and gear while doing so. The Rebel player's characters are also cinematically heroic, and they need to be, normally facing large number of Imperials.

The Campaign lasts ten missions, but they are many different side missions that can come into play and the main story missions are branching so you can play the campaign a number of times without it becoming repetitive. The Rebel player has six different characters to choose from, so again another chance to make subsequent plays unique. You do not get to play as any of the iconic Star Wars characters (Luke, Han, Chewie) but there are mission to play with them as allies to your team.

Campaign missions are no walk in the park for the Rebels. All the ones we have played so far have been very challenging to the players, most of which came down to the last turn. After the mission both sides get experience points to spend on new skills and upgrades. The Rebels get Credits, which they can spend on shiny new gear and weapons. The Imperial player may receive Influence points to buy fun cards that will make life a bit harder for the heroes.

Skirmish mode is a battle between two players. Each player buys 40 points worth of forces and they fight in a randomly picked mission. No super-heroics in Skirmish, the six Rebel characters from the Campaign have "normal" cards for them. Each player also gets a 15 card deck of Command Cards which give bonuses to your team. Skirmish plays very quickly, and the missions are well thought out.

In one mission I took Darth Vader (who is almost half of the 40 points you get) and a had a great time slaughtering rebel scum, but I did not have enough other troops to achieve the objectives faster than my opponent, I lost the mission quite badly.

Coffee or Death? Death it is!

On the flip side of that, in the next mission I had Han Solo, Chewie and some Rebel troopers versus Bounty Hunters led by everyone's favorite Evil Cappuccino Machine, IG-88. I got almost everybody killed (mostly from a pair of Nexu) and only had Chewie left. I pulled out a win by completing the objectives, and a bit of bloodlust on the Hunters part. Skirmish mode is fast and a lot of fun.

Imperial Assault is a winner. Great if you like tactical combat in the Star Wars universe. Doubly great is you want a RPG-ish narrative campaign. FFG already has more expansions on the way, and I'm sure this game has a fun, bright future ahead of it.

Go Roll Some Dice

Exeunt, Pursued by a Nexu

Welcome to a crossover project between myself and fellow Warlord, Pete over at In The Grim Cheapness of the Future. He is going to papercraft a Ork Gargant to be used at our annual BBQ/Booze/40K Kill-fest, Carnage Asada!
I'm just going to ramble about about the Ork war machines and come up with some rules. This week: real world releases.

Epic Scale
Of course it all began with Adeptus Titanicus. That glorious game of giant robot war machine combat set during the Horus Heresy. Soon after its release in '88 a sister game, Space Marine came out and added tanks and infantry of the Traitor and Loyalist Space Marine Legions. A few months later, Codex Titanicus hit the streets and brought the Epic system into the Post-Heresy era. Rules for Imperial Guard, Eldar, and Orks. The masses rejoiced.

White Dwarf 114 had the first ever image of a Ork Titan, not yet named Gargant.

Two months later in issue #116 the Ork Gargants had full rules and supporting units. The Gargant came in two main variants: The Smasher, armed with a huge "Gut Buster" cannon and the seldom seen Crusher, which had a enormous set of metal jaws called the "Snapper".

Just before Space Marine 2nd Edition came out, the Gargant line was expanded to include the Slasher, which was a smaller Gargant, and the Stompa, not much bigger than a Land Raider back then.

The Snapper Gargant faded into the mists of legend, while the Crusher became the Great Gargant.
Space Marine had a good long run with many supplements. The last major expansion for it was a big box sex, Titan Legions, which included a pair of plastic Mega-Gargants.

The Epic Space Marine system would slumber for a few years until Epic 40,000 hit the scene in 1997. The Great Gargant, and (no longer Slasher) Gargant got more angular remakes, still in metal.

Gargant

Great Gargant

The Stompa was done in plastic, and still about Land Raider sized, taller of course. Epic 40,000 didn't go over well with the fans and bit the dust six months later, so did any further plans for any new Gargants.

Epic Armageddon rose from the ashes in 2003 and was well received but not well supported by GW. The Orks got a few new metal Stompa variants but that was all for the Gargant line.

40K Scale
In the early Nineties, Game Workshop licensed a few companies to make 40K size resin models from the Epic scale vehicles. A sign of things to come. Epicast made a pair of Stompas, still much smaller than the current GW plastic one.

And of course, Armorcast made the massive Great Gargant.

Both had very short production runs, and were the last 40K scale Gargants until GW's plastic Stompa in 2009. Next time we will talk about the current state of Ork Gargant/Stompa/Dredz and scale.

Orks wuz made ta fight and win!

Just not Spelling Bees

Thanks for joining us for part II of Gargant History Month. A collaboration with Pete's blog, In the Grim Cheapness of the Future, wherein he is building a 40K sized Great Gargant.

How big would a Great gargant be in 40K? Let's have a look at the current state of walking Orky war machines. The plastic Stompa was released for 40K followed by a new plastic Deff Dread kit that is a bit bigger than the older metal one. Recently the Gorkanaut (or Morkanaut) was unleashed, a brand new walker, about the mass of a Land Raider. This sound familiar?

Yuuup. The Gorkanaut is about the size the Epic scale Stompa was in relation to ye olde Land Raider.

So what does that really make the 40K Stompa? A Gargant? Mostly, yes. It's not like the Orks have a hard and fast rule about specific nomenclature of the classification of war machines. Dreads get bigger until some ladz just start calling 'em Gargants. Fine. How does this help figure out how big the Great Gargant should be? I'm glad I asked me that. To the comparison pictures!

Scale is a funny thing in a fictional universe. Even funnier in a miniatures game, where looks trump accuracy every time, not to mention manufacturing needs. So we are after the right "feel" for a Great Gargant next to its contemporaries on the battlefield.

The Warhound is about 10" tall (more if it had better posture). Forge World's Reaver Titan is 16". I would put a Great Gargant's head around the 20" tall mark, anywhere between 18"-24" really. There are homemade Gargants well over three feet tall. I'm not sure the Mega-Gargant would be that tall. Imperial and Eldar Titans are tall and lean, Ork engines have lots of solid bulk to them, so a 20"-24" tall Gargant will be a massive presence on the field, as it should be, but not so large that it doesn't "feel" right. As long as it is bigger than a Reaver, and comparable to a Warlord it will be fine.

Next week: GUNZ, GUNZ, and other shooty bitz.

'Ere We Go!

Biggest is Always Rightest

Orks love the dakka. The more the better. In our continuing exploration of the Ork Great Gargant in conjunction with In The Grim Cheapness of the Future (where you can see the beast taking shape) we shall cast our eye upon the very essence of the Ork reverence of the Gargant: raw firepower.

One can broadly characterize two levels of weapons on the Gargant. Let's examine each in some detail.

Primary
The "typical" Gargant has three main weapons, a massive belly cannon with a slow rate of fire and two weapon "arms". These can be any of a wide range of types. Here are the stats I have pieced together from all the sources I could find. Balanced out against other 40K weapons, but mostly my own best guess.

Weapon Range Str AP Special
Gut Buster Belly Kannon 72" 10/8/6 2/3/4 Apocalyptic Blast, Slow*

Mega Kannon 96" D 3 7" Blast

Twin Deth Kannon 72" 10 1 Heavy 2, 7" Blast

Cluster Kannon 60" 8 3 5" Blast, Heavy D3+3

Kombi-Ripper Arm - D 1 +3 Attacks, Melee
-Twin Kilkannons 36" 7 3 5" Blast, Heavy 2

*Slow: Weapon can only fire every other turn.

Secondary
Two shoulder turrets are common to Great Garants, as is the Gaze of Mork. A few secondary weapons can be found in hull emplacements on some. Most smaller weapons can and are attached almost anywhere.

Weapon Range Str AP Special
Heavy KillKannon 48" 9 3 5" Blast

Supa-Flamer Hellstorm 6 3 Template

Mega Gatler 48" 7 3 Heavy 3D6+3

Lobba Battery 72" 5 4 Barrage 4, 5"Blast

Gaze of Mork 48" 10 1 Heavy 2, Twin Linked

Supa Rokkit 240" 8 3 5" Blast, One use

Big Shoota 36" 5 5 Heavy 3

FlakkGunz 48" 7 4 Heavy 4, Twin-Linked,
Skyfire

This entry will be updated a few times as I'm still fine tuning the weapons, feel free to leave any comments on the stats down below.
Next up: My Datasheet for the Great Gargant.

More, More, MOAR DAKKA!

Too much is still not enough

We interrupt Gargant History Month to bring this special bulletin: Due to Famous Author Pete having real world things to do in order for his publisher to give him money, I present Plan B!

The overly enthusiastic forces of Khorne have found a relic they would like to have, and maybe use to summon a daemonic horde into realspace. An Eldar Farseer who just can't keep out of other people's business, summons her warhost and tips off some nearby Space Wolves and Blood Angels to stop the Khornate mission.
Fun and violence will no doubt ensue.

The Gargant project will continue in a bit, including the datasheet and an Apocalypse battle.
Next week will be the Carnage Asada battle report.

Some Heads are Going to Roll

And a lot of tasty cow shall be consumed!

4,000 points of Khorne aficionados with 2,000 points of liberated IG penal legion versus 2K each of Space Wolves, Eldar, and Blood Angels. What does that equal? Epic bloodbath! Atomic Warlords annual BBQ and kill-fest took place and it delivered the goods.

We played a large game of 40K (as opposed to Apocalypse) on a 8'x 6' battlefield with six objectives scattered around the board and one big summoning objective in the center. Victory points were scored at he end of each player's turn, 1 each for the small ones, and three for the big one, plus one for the each sides warlord killed. This kept the objectives simple and the game fast moving. Which it was.

I have was having too much fun and did a terrible job at documenting the battle. Sorry, I have a kunning plan to do better battle reports in the future.

Here are the highlights!

The Marine/Eldar alliance went first and did a good amount of damage to my troops. I lost a Land Raider to a single hit from a Space Wolf Predator and the Brass Scorpion went down under a barrage of Bright Lances.

Pete's Psychic-heavy renegades did an outstanding job throughout the entire game, and summoned all manner of Daemon fun to the table, including a Bloodthirster. He only had a few psykers turned inside out from Perils of the Warp.

Matt brought a Venerable Host of six(!) Blood Angel dreadnoughts, quite an impressive sight, however a first turn traffic jam delayed their arrival at the center of the action.

Jeff's Space Wolves charged fearlessly into the center of the battle and held the summoning circle for two turns. It took 3 squads of Berzerkers, a Heldrake, and the Lord of Skulls to dislodge them.

Mrs. Blackheart's Eldar shot up my forces, but her Cloud Strike formation of Flacons loaded with Aspect warriors kept rolling ones to arrive. When they finally did arrive on turn three they blew up the renegade Shadowsword, my Predator, and a squad of Berserkers. But it was too late. the Forces of Khorne had built up a large lead in VPs.

The Lord of Skulls definitely had Khorne's favor that day. It took a couple of D hits from the Wraithknight before taking said Wraithknight apart in a hail of gatling cannon fire. For an encore it then fought off three Blood Angel dreadnoughts.

After four turns the game was called in a Chaos victory, with quite a kill tally on both sides. It was one of those games that could have easily gone either way, with a few key die rolls making the difference. We all had a good time and the Carne Asada was delicious.

BBQ for the BBQ God!

Skulls too.

We played a Sanctus Reach battle a few days ago. Mission 10: "Klaw of Gork", a small Imperial Guard strike force must destroy a Ork force field projector so a larger force can attack the traktor beam that is bringing an asteroid down to impact on top of the Guard's mountain fortress.

Three Valkyries, two stormtrooper squads, and a stormtrooper HQ with Commissar Lord comes out to a nice 1200 points. To counter this assault the Orks had three mobs of boyz, a battlewagon, a pile of grots workin' on the force field generator, with a Burna-Bomba in support lead by a Big Mek with his burna boy buddies. The Orks also received a pair of anti-aircraft quad guns, left by the previous owners.

The game was fast and bloody. Some fine shooting from the Guard thinned out the Boyz enough to make a direct assault possible.

The Boys crashed into Bravo squad and killed them over the course of two turns. The Big Mek had the misfortune of being hit by a meltagun firing on overwatch, and that was that for him.

What is the best way to clear out a building full of Orks? Blow it up with the power of Melta. That is what the HQ squad did immediately upon exiting their Valkyrie. The rest of the Orks were routed and the Stormtroopers won the day. The mission was very fast and fluid, and a bit rough for the Orks, but that is what they get for dropping rocks on people.

The Gargant Project is still underway! Go have a look at its progress over at In The Grim Cheapness of the Future .

Next up, yet more Knights!

The Emperor Protects

And Valkyries do His Work

I just finished my Imperial Knights upgrades. I built and painted a Baron in a Knight Warden, and did some various up-gunning to my three existing Knights. Even though it was just fourteen months since the first Knight Codex came out, a lot has changed in the 40K landscape. The new Codex is bigger, with more artwork and painting guides, not to mention three new Knights and five new weapon systems. New Warlord traits and a handful of relics make the new Codex a worthwhile upgrade.

The addition of carapace weapons are a significant improvement for the Knights. It gives them a much needed Anti-aircraft weapon in the form of the Icarus Autocannons. The two types of missile launchers helps out with light armor threats and/or large squads of infantry.

The new Knight Warden kit comes with all the parts needed to make all the variants. And as a bonus, the two carapace weapons are complete, so you will have one left over to add to a older model.

Keeping with my House Terryn theme, I wanted to make a Baronial Court with four knights, one of each shooty type. Sorry, Gallant, but who the hell wants an all hand to hand Knight?

So my new build, the Baron. I really like the few new bits: Meltagun, fancy tilting shield, and of course the Avenger Gatling Cannon (with built-in Heavy Flamer for the kids!) I did the decals the same way as I did for my first three and had very good results this time too.

My Crusader started out as one of my two Paladins, after a slightly stressful job of removing the chainsword from the left shoulder/arm joint, I replaced it with an Avenger cannon and added a Stormspear missile pod up top.

The Errant has the least amount of work done to it, new faceplate and a missile pod and done!

The remaining Paladin had a left arm upgrade as well, I just had to put the Thunderstrike Gauntlet on one of the Knights. I swapped out a Heavy Stubber for a Meltagun and dropped on the autocannon mount to complete the upgrades.

The Baron's Lance comes out to a nice 1745 points. Time to see who is can take it on.

Next up, we play the new 40K-themed board game, Forbidden Stars.

The Emperor Protects

Because Giant Robots

Forbidden Stars review on Tuesday. No, really. Today we will have a quick talk about Age of Sigmar. Famous Author Pete and I gave the free rules a spin the night before Comic-Con. Neither of us play Warhammer Fantasy Battles, so this will be a take on AoS just based on the current rules, not "how bad GW has screwed WFB players".

Pete has collected quite an array of Fantasy figs through time. I have some Beastmen (on round bases that are to be used in my mythical Renegade Imperial Guard Army) and some Chaos Spawn figs. More than enough for a test battle. It just felt wrong doing a not-even-primed battle report. Oh well, that's what rum is for.

The four pages of game rules plus Battlescrolls (unit cards) for over a dozen armies are available for free on Games Workshops site. The rules are pretty straightforward, but do have a few soft points. The oddest design choice was the lack of points for any model. "You got some guys I got some guys, let's fight" is fine in theory but difficult in practice. Especially after decades of building armies based on points. So we chose a common internet fix, total wounds per side. it was easy and seemed to give adequate balance. I took 30 wounds of Beastmen, and Pete brough the Brittonians.

The game was fast and fun. the rules have a very familiar feeling, but do have some distinct changes. The Battlescrolls as a total info unit card work very well. They are handy and clearly lay out what the unit can do.
Like I said earlier, neither one of us play WFB, so I don't have any points of contention or comparison. As a 40K player, it seems like a very streamlined version, but not so much that it loses it's flavor. I've been told by more than a few people that WFB is a more strict and/or complicated game than 40K, so maybe the the Age of Sigmar rules are in fact closer to 40K than WFB.

I would have prefered to see a reboot of the WFB world with these new rules (and maybe some point values) but GW doesn't ask for my opinion, so I will not bother with things I cannot control or influence. Time will tell if AoS is a good move or the death knell of WFB.

Of course there has been internet outrage over this, but that is no different from any other time. I can't even imagine what the troll rage would have been like if the internet was as prevalent when 40K moved from 2nd edition to 3rd.

At the end of the day we are just playing with toy soldiers. Pick a set of rules that you and your friends like and go with it.

Overall, it was a good time. A fast and easy ruleset for when you want some fantasy combat time. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

The Emperor Protects

Like, who's Sigmar?

The juggernaut that is Fantasy Flight Games rolls on with another quality product. Forbidden Stars is a Warhammer 40K themed strategic level game of system conquest. It is set in the Herakon Cluster, which had been cut off from the rest of the galaxy by powerful warp storms. Now the storms have abated, and four races rush in to claim the systems of the cluster.

2-4 players choose from the Eldar, Space Marines, Chaos, and Ork factions. The game is up to typical high FFG standards, very nice cards, counters, plastics, and map sections. Each faction gets four different ground force units, and two starship types. Each unit represents larger, more capable and expensive units. For example the Marines have Scouts, Marines, Land Raider, and Warlord Titan.
The map tiles have a olde tyme cartography style to them, which fits in great with the 40K Imperial aesthetic.

The game turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought it would be. That is not a bad thing at all. It has a easy learning curve, and pretty much falls into to place about 2/3 of the way through your first game.

The goal of the game is to claim a number of Objective Tokens, the number needed depends on how many people are playing. Each faction has their own specific Objectives scattered around the map. Each World on the map has ratings for how much material it produces each turn, how many units can be on the world, and any special assets you can receive from controlling it. Each World may also have a single Structure, these help with your tech level, defending the World, or being able build units in that system.

Each turn is made up of three phases: Planning, Operations, and Refresh. Of course the Planning Phase is the trickiest. So much hinges on the choices you make in this phase. If you did not plan to do something it does not happen. Gathering assets, moving forces, building units or structures, and buying upgrades all depend on you thinking ahead and giving the correct orders.

All this planning turns into action in the Operation Phase. Players take turns executing their orders, and if this leads to combat, this is when it happens. Combat seems a bit much at first, but it is a well designed and quick system. It uses cards (which are upgradable) and dice for resolution.

The Refresh phase is where some fun stuff happens, event cards are played (if you planned it!), material is collected from all the Worlds you control, and Warp Storms move about the map, cutting off some movement avenues, and of course you pick up any Objectives you conquered and see if you have enough to win. The game ends on turn eight if nobody has won yet, and the player with the most objectives then is the victor.

Warlord Jake approves of your little game.

Forbidden Stars is a fun, polished game. The 40K-ness is done well but doesn't override gameplay. I look forward to many more plays of this one.
Highly Recommended to strategy fans.

The Emperor Protects

Some days you just have to look at the Big Picture

1750 points, Tyranid Kaiju list vs. my Baronial Lance. Sadly, it all went wrong for the 'Nids.
The heavy firepower of the Knights is to be expected, but one would think once the surviving Tyranids got into hand to hand they would do some good damage. Not even close. It was a disappointing battle for both sides.

This battle did point out just how much the Tyranids have lost in anti-tank capabilities. Just the one (huge) change to monstrous creatures losing the extra D6 on the penetration roll is crippling. But add the lessening of Rend, and the complete lack of high AP weapons and there is really not much of a chance for the Tyranids to beat The Knights, or any army that has a few AV.13 or better walkers or tanks.

More Tyranids need to be able to take some kind of Armourbane. Tygons, Tyrannofex, and the Hive Tyrant have to be able to beat up a Land Raider, or a Knight in Hand to Claw/Tentacle combat. We are going to try a house rule or two and see how that goes. I just want the monstrous creatures to be monsters again.

The Emperor Protects

Sometimes by Editing His Foes

World's Best Dad does not approve of the new friends.

Sorry about the lack of posts this month, it's been a bit busy/crazy. Enough with real life, toy soldier time! Once a month we have been playing FFG's Star Wars Imperial Assault Campaign. A few missions each session, and we wrapped it up last weekend. Including the side and forced missions, we did twelve missions, and each one was tense and could have gone either way. It is evident that FFG put in some real work playtesting and balancing the missions.

That guy there!

The Rebel scum did win the Campaign, but I had a lot of fun playing the Imperials. The Rebels do become powerful killing machines as they increase in XP and get good gear, however, the Imperial side gets its toys as well. This is where some people are divided on this game.

I feel the Skirmish mode is the place for head-to-head combat, where you try to crush your opponent, not the Campaign. The Campaign is more like a lite RPG to me, and as such it is more important to advance the story and give the players a good fight. This doesn't mean I take it easy on them. Far from it, just ask them. It does mean I am more thoughtful in my decisions and how they relate to what the Imperials are trying to do, and how they should act. I tend to be much more thematic in my troop choices as well. I feel it makes for a better experience for everybody.

Things look bad for the Heroes...

There are plenty of missions we have yet to play, and the Twin Suns expansion just came out so there is much more Imperial Assault in our future.

Next up: The Gargant is getting closer.

Go Roll Some Dice

Time to Upgrade some Stormtroopers

After a few delays, the Mighty Great Gargant (brought to you by Peter over at In The Grim Cheapness of the Future) is ready to hit the battlefield. All it needs are a few rules, so at long last here they are!

GREAT GARGANT

2500 Points

WS:4 BS:2 S:10 ARMOR 14/13/13 I:1 A:2 HP:24

Unit: 1 Great Gargant

Type: Super Heavy Walker

WARGEAR:

• Supa Force Field: 5+ Save vs. ALL shooting attacks, including "D"

• Grot Riggers

SPECIAL RULES:

• Huge Effigy: All Orks within 24" are Fearless. If Gargant is destroyed all Orks

within 24" must make a leadership check. Units that fail are pinned.

TRANSPORT:

• Capacity: 70 Models.

• Fire Points: 8 Front, 4 each Side, 6 Rear

• Access Points: One at the rear.

WEAPONS:

The Great Gargant must have two arm weapons:

• Mega Kannon

• Twin Deth Kannon

• Cluster Kannon

• Kombi-Ripper Arm

The Great Gargant may have up to four secondary weapons:

• Cluster Rokkit Launcha

• Flakk Gunz

• Twin Heavy KillKannon

• Mega Gatler

• Gaze of Mork

• Supa-Flamer

• Lobba Battery

Also, up to six Supa Rokkits may be added, plus six Big Shootas.

A Gut Buster Belly Kannon may be taken, but the transport is reduced to 30 models.

Notes:

The stats for the weapons can be found here.

Being an Ork work, it is more a fluff-based feel of the weapons fit rather than a constructive set of design rules.

The one large change I did bring was the swapping of the Ork Power Fields for a Force Field. Back in the distant past Power Fields worked like Void Shields. The gargant would start out with a number of them but once they were knocked down, they stayed down for the battle.

Now that Super Heavies really only lose Hull Points, it seemed like extra bookkeeping for no real gain. Orks are known for their use of Force Fields, which fluctuate wildly from completely impregnable to non-existent. It works very well in place of the old Power Fields, and is far easier to keep track of.

Next up: The Great Gargant in battle!

'Ere We Go, 'Ere We Go!

Lots of Krumpin' to Do

Time to see how Pete'sGreat Orkzinga fares upon the field of battle. The battle crazed Ork's brought 5,000 points in the form of nine models. The combined Blood Angel, Imperial Guard & Knights stood ready with 5K of mostly tanks and the Baron's Lance of three Knights.

The Orks went first and unleashed a torrent of fire. The Belly Kannon was a big hit (pun intended).

Thankfully the Knight's Ion shields held, but the Crusader was taken out, and the Predator was immobilized.

On the Imperial's turn all seven Leman Russ tanks, the Shadowsword, and about half of the Knights firepower was directed at the Great Gargant for a total of 12 hull points damage.

The two forces slammed into each other around mid-field. The Knight's Baron and Errant came out on top, huge chainswords are hard to argue with. A heroic Blood Angel Landspeeder came in via deep strike and did some damage to the Great Gargant before falling victim to the Flakk gunz.

The bottom of turn three was the end for the Orks. The Mighty Orkzinga exploded in a blinding flash and the last Ork walker followed right after. Still, in three turns of combat, the Great Gargant had destroyed:
1 Land Raider Crusader
1 Razorback, and a six man Devastator squad
1 Landspeeder
1 Knight Crusader
3 Leman Russ Tanks
And a half dozen hull points worth of damage to a few other tanks.

Very good considering how much firepower was arrayed against it.

Rules-wise I think it was very solid, a few minor tweeks to the weapons and the addition of Grot Riggers was all we came up with. Next time we will try just the Great Gargant against 2500 points of Imperial forces.

Bigger is Better!

Though it does also make you a Better Target

Twin Shadows, an expansion for Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Imperial Assault came out a month ago, and I just got done painting the figures and sorting in the new stuff. Let's have a look.

It is a "small box" expansion with a six mission mini-campaign, a pair of new Rebel heroes, Tusken Raiders, and Heavy Weapon Stormtroopers. Toss in new map tiles and a handful of new cards for both Skirmish and Campaign modes. Not too bad at all. Also released at the same time, and used in the mini-campaign are Boba Fett, R2-D2 & C3P0, and the Stormtrooper Leader Character.

The mini-campaign takes place on Tatooine (hence the Twin Shadows title) so we do get the infamous Mos Eisley cantina (Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina for the deeply nerdy) for your very own seedy space bar shootout.

the new miniatures all look nice. The Sand People's Gaffi Sticks are a little soft and bendy, and Boba Fett's pose could have been a little more open, but that is the extent of my quibbles.

We are going to give some of new skirmish missions a try this weekend, and get started on the mini-campaign. I can't wait to see how Mr. Fett does on the field.

Go Roll Some Dice

What is a Jawa's favorite drink?

Martini!

Sorry.

Zombies. Yeah, we are near/past the saturation point, but killing them is still so much damn fun.

A quick top three list of zombie games game for this Halloween.

Number Three:

Zombie dice by Steve Jackson game. It's cheap, fast, and fun. A fine "filler" game that plays very well with 2-6 players.

Number Two:

Zombicide by Cool Mini or Not. It's expensive and fun. Game play is pretty quick, set-up is not bad, but not super fast. Oddly one of my biggest complaints with the game right now is too many choices, too much stuff not really integrated with each other. It's mostly all great stuff, but damn, it is a whole lot. I know, first world gamer problems. We are working on trimming our set down back to a lean fast and fun game with a few cool extras.

Number One:

Last Night on Earth by Flying Frog. Just nudging out Zombicide for the top slot, LNoE is a competitive game between the zombie player and 2-4 players on the human side. It is less "gamey" and it's expansions fit together well. Being a Flying Frog game it does have some weird, "leftover" counters and things that don't really have rules, but it does not detract from the game experience.

Honorable Mention:

All Things Zombie by Lock N Load/ Two Hour Wargames. ATZ started out as a really good miniature ruleset with slick game play. (That I am going to have to try with all these Zombicide minis) The LnL boardgame version lost something on it's way. A new, Reloaded version is due any week now and promises to improve a good game.

Next week A review of the new Tau Codex and Campaign book.

Go Roll Some Dice

Before the Twinkie Gage Hits "E"...

New shiny Tau books (finally) arrived for me today, so I have had only a brief flip through.
Codex: Tau Empire has brought the Mech-loving blue skins into line with 7th edition. Not a lot of changes to the base units, but the addition of Warlord traits, Formations, and continuing the datasheet style make this a essential book for Tau players. Not much artwork, but lots of very good quality photos of models.

Some of the changes were expected, Hammerheads and Sky Rays can now be fielded in squadrons of 1-3 vehicles, and Piranhas expanded to max size of 5. The surprises for me where that Riptides are now 1-3, and VX-8 Crisis squads are 1-9! This will be fun. Of course the newly released units are in the Codex: Breacher Teams (Fire Warriors with Pulse Shotguns) The Commander in fancy Enforcer or Coldstar battlesuit, the Ghostkeel, (big stealth suits), and the very big Stormsurge artillery suit. And new Drones. Lots of new Drones. The Tau now have more drones than the NSA.

I plan on bringing the Tau to the table this weekend to see what tweaks were made to all the support systems and such, there will a battle report next week.

The other Tau book released was the War Zone Damocles: Kauyon set. Two very nice hard covers in a slipcase.

Following in the mold of Shield of Baal last year, the two books are divided up into the fluff "history" book and the Rules. The fluff book has lots of new pretty artwork and a good narrative of the campaign. The Rules book is just what is says: Eight Echoes of War missions and a campaign chart to use them. Well done sections acting as a mini-codex for both the White Scars and the Raven Guard. The Tau section is interesting. It has a large amount of overlap with the Tau codex for the new units. The only formations not in the Tau codex are the five dealing with the Tidewall fortifications.

Overall, I am well pleased with all the books and look forward to dealing Mecha-suited death.

For the Greater Good

Which is Terribly Subjective

Black Library's 00110001

International Tabletop Day 2015

Imperial Assault Part I: Painting

Imperial Assault Part II: The Game

A Brief History of Gargants

Size Matters

An Arsenal of Doom

Carnage Asada '15 Update

Carnage Asada 15

Airmobile Assault

Four Horsemen

Free Rules Dude!

Forbidden Stars, Quick Review

Knights vs. Kaiju, Round One

Imperial Assault Campaign Wrap Up

Great Gargant Datasheet

Great Gargant in Combat

Meanwhile at the Cantina...

Happy Halloween

New Tau Books Quick Take