Age of Warhammer

I've lately picked up playing Age of Sigmar.  When it first came out, I really wanted to like it, but couldn't get into it.  I played half a dozen games with my brother and a few others and all of them devolved into a massive kill box in the center of the battlefield.  It was boring, didn't make me happy, and I moved on to Malifaux for a few months.  As time went on, I found that Malifaux (an excellent game, check it out!) didn't scratch the itch that Warhammer used to of pushing minis around the battlefield and trying to eke out victory with the dice providing ridiculous outcomes no matter how hard you may try.  So I decided to give Age of Sigmar a second chance.

I decided that my main problem with Age of Sigmar was that I didn't like the feeling of moving blobbed infantry units around and navigating them into combat as much as I liked moving ranked infantry blocks in Warhammer Fantasy, so I set about resolving the issue.  I created the optional rules page I call 'Age of Warhammer'.  It brings back ranked infantry in a way that has so far been quite functional and enjoyable without clashing with the general vibes of Age of Sigmar.  The most important thing about Age of Warhammer is that every rule in it is optional.  It has miscasts, misfires, and ranked infantry, but ultimately it doesn't force anybody to play by rules they aren't interested in.

AoS Downloads

These are other supplements I have created for Age of Sigmar (there are more scattered throughout the blog, but these are the ones I think are worth looking at).

  
  

Campaign - Efengie (Efengie book 1) - a five battleplan two-player narrative campaign with a history the Vale of Efengie and Time of War rules for battling there.

Campaign - Through the Deathgate (Efengie book 2) - a five battleplan two-player narrative campaign with Time of War rules for fighting at the Gates of Eucebium.

Campaign - Coalescence: Aftermath (Efengie book 3) - a five battleplan two-player narrative campaign with a recap of the events of Coalescence: War of the Ring.  Also includes the Colossal Red's Wrath raid-style battleplan and warscroll!

Campaign - Malign Portents (Efengie book 4) - a five battleplan two-player narrative campaign themed around Malign Portents.  It also includes the stories of Coalescence: Malign Portents, and Coalescence: Desolation of Eristrat as well as Regions of War rules for battling in Ghyran in the Vale of Efengie.

Campaign - Escalation (Efengie book 5) - a five battleplan two-player narrative campaign chronicling Efengie's involvement in the war between Kytos and Lamellia.  It also includes stories, rules for naval battles, and Allegiance abilities for the Bloodpact of Kytos, Lamellian Sellswords, and the Magi of Efengie.

Skirmish Campaign - Big Trouble in Little Azyrheim - a five battleplan skirmish campaign following the story of two warbands battling for control of the city of Reaper in Efengie.

Battleplan - Stuff of Legends - a narrative battleplan that uses story-gaming principles to help you forge the narrative

Campaign - Heart of Darkness - a broad-reaching campaign book laying out building blocks for telling stories in the Dark Age of Sigmar.  This book includes five grisly battleplans, dark age spells, artefacts, etc, some history and fiction set in the Ruins of Hammerstadt, and a brand new Quest style of narrative campaign!

Campaign - Soulless Seas - an expansion that adds naval battles to Age of Sigmar.  This book includes rules for fielding warships.  It also includes rules for weather, specialty munitions, high seas command, and a three battleplan naval campaign.

Age of Warhammer Irresistible Force table:

** This is solely a not-for-profit fan activity and in no way intends to infringe on copyrights held by Games Workshop (only to have fun with their awesome stories and models!).

Sons of Medusa

  Most of us began playing miniatures games by playing Space Marines.  Most of us played Space Marines by picking some colors we like and a cool name for our chapter and going nuts.  Today I want to tell you about the Space Marine chapter of my childhood.

  My first space marines were ostensibly Dark Angels (because they were green and I'm not really sure what I was up to).  But it wasn't long before I read a bit of fluff in the 2nd ed. Ultramarines book about the Grey Knights, a Cursed founding chapter.  Cursed founding sounded pretty awesome (now my marines are Lamenters, I guess some things stick with us).  

  This was before Grey Knights were well known as the daemon-fighting chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus, so I just thought they were:

1) Knights

2) Grey

and 3) because there was a picture of some ultramarines next to them and one of them had a medusa head on its shoulder pad; had a medusa head as their chapter icon (I was like, 11, give me a break)

Anyways, this led me to repaint my marines grey and black with red bolters and bright green (Scorpion Green (now Moot Green) to be precise) eyes and chapter markings.  When I looked through them this morning they were too hideous to photograph, so I'm going to spare you those old models.  But to continue my story, one day it became apparent that Grey Knights were already kind of a thing and they totally were not my radical Cursed Founding guys in grey power armour.  Thus the Sons of Medusa were born (which I'm sure most of you know turned out to also already be a thing).  

  Anyways, since they already had skull decals with painted serpentine hair on their shoulderpads, I renamed them the Sons of Medusa and they had a fresh new backstory about how they pursued some Chaos heretics into the Eye of Terror and were forever cursed to bear the blight of the medusa.  It was actually pretty cool.

  A couple of years later a new Space Marine book came out and I flipped through it and saw this crap (see right).  Who are these impostor Sons of Medusa?  I felt betrayed.  But I was all like "I'm not changing because they're wrong".  So mine remained the Sons of Medusa who had nothing to do with those puce green jerks.

 So I told you that story so I could tell you this story (one of my friends says this all the time, you can hear him telling stories on Storytime with Blake and Highcove at iPodcast Magic Missile).  Many years later, after I'd left the Imperial fold to hang with the Tyranids (and sometimes Space Orks), I came back to my Sons of Medusa with a pack of Naga (from some game or another).  I crafted the Snake Marines.

   There are only two of them.  I guess I'd count them as Space Marine bikers if I had an army to go with them.  But the moral of this story is that even though my childhood wacky creativity with total disregard for sense was constantly crushed by real fluff, in the end it resulted in what I think are some pretty cool conversions and maybe even someday the basis for a kinda neat army (not that I'm likely to build it, but you never know).

   

Then and Now...

  So I saw a cool thread on BOLS today about how far we've all come since painting our first models.  So I took some pictures to post in the thread, but I thought I shouldn't let it go to waste and so I'm gonna post it on my blag too.

  The first models I ever painted were a pack of Warhammer Cave Squigs.  I painted them with Testors oil model paints.  They turned out a lurid glossy purple with glistening white teeth.  Two colors.  But that was all it took, I went out and bought some more models.  Honestly I have no idea where my second models went.  They were a pair of space marine knockoffs for who knows what game.  They had big blocky shoulderpads and static poses.  I painted them red and blue and then drybrushed them with silver... cuz... ya know.  It seemed like a good idea at the time (did I mention I was in sixth grade?).  Anyways, my parents got me a Marneus Calgar and a Razorback for my birthday that year.

Mr. McCragge has since been repainted (he didn't look very good back then).  The Razorback is in pieces.  So the oldest models I have with their original paint-jobs are the Dark Eldar from the 3rd edition 40k starter I got that Christmas.  The Space Marines got new paint-jobs because I actually used them from time to time.  The Dark Eldar were never used again and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.  History became legend.  Legend became myth.  And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.  Er, I mean the Dark Eldar.  So anyways, when I saw this thread I rooted around, found them, and took these pictures of a Dark Eldar from 1999ish next to a Lamenters Sanguinary priest from a couple days ago.

It's nice to take a step back and look at how far we've come since the days of globbing on crappy acrylics (or worse yet, oils) over a half-done base-coat and calling it a day.

Chess vs. Craps

  For a long time, I have used a scale to compare games.  At one end is Chess, a game which has exactly one random element, at the other end is Craps, which has (correct me if I'm wrong (which I'm sure I am (but I'm probably close))) zero non-random elements.

<--------------------->






         The Game of Kings                                                                                                   Show Me 7s!

  The defining factor here is that Chess is a solved game.  It is a (more or less) perfectly tactical and determinate game in which the better player will almost always win.  Craps (at the other end of this spectrum) is completely unsolvable and computers are no better at it than humans.  Maybe I should be using a different game for my example here because I am getting the sneaking suspicion that I am soon going to receive a thorough education in the tactical intricacies of Craps, but I'm going to stick with it because it's still a good example (says I!).
  Neither of these games is implicitly superior to the other.  Maybe that sounds all new-age special butterfly-y, but I think that these games simply cater to different audiences.  I prefer Chess (sorry Craps enthusiasts) and I think that most gamers would follow suit.  I feel pretty safe saying that gamers want to have some element of control over their win or loss in a game.  However, some amount of crapsiness (how do you like this word I've just made up?  Try using it in conversation (I do... it's fun)) can add to the fun of a game.
  If you look at popular miniatures, card, and board games, the Craps element of the game frequently outweighs the Chess.  I like to think that most miniatures games (once models are on the table) are somewhere toward the middle on the Craps side of the spectrum.  Some games like Warhammer are extremely Craps heavy, whereas WarMaHordes is shifted a bit toward the Chess side.  The difference in predictability meaningfully affects who plays each game and why.

 In the Grim Darkness of the Chess<>Craps spectrum, there is only war

  Chessier (not to be confused with Cheesier) games are (presumably) better for competitive play because they reward tactical thinking and often are won by the 'better' player.  Crapsier games are (also presumably) better for casual play because they shift some responsibility for results away from the player (your friend didn't just steamroll you... you rolled poorly).

Expanding Scenarios in 6th ed 40k

  So Brent (from BOLS) has challenged us to write articles about possibilities for expanding the 40k scenario options under 6th edition.  My personal preference for this is to simply expand the current 3x3 scenario table into a massive 6x6 scenario table.  I'm going to take a few pages from the 8th ed Fantasy scenarios to come up with three new deployment schemes and three new objective schemes.

Deployment

1 - Battle for the Pass
  Each player chooses a short board edge.  Deployment zones are 12" from the center (so that the armies begin 24" apart).  Units that aren't jump infantry cannot outflank because the long board edges are cliff faces.

2 - Meeting Engagement
  The players choose opposite corners.  Deployment zones are 6" from the center line (between the two unchosen corners).  Before each player deploys, they must roll 1d6 for each character and unit, on a roll of 1 the unit is not deployed and may move onto the board from the long board edge on the first turn of the game (Because the long board edge is 'the players board edge' for all purposes).

3 - Dawn Attack
  Each player chooses a long board edge.  The deployment zones are 12" from the center and each deployment zone is broken into three sections by the following chart.  Units are deployed one at a time by rolling on the chart below and placing the unit completely within the indicated section of the deployment zone.
    1: Left Flank - 18" from the left edge of the board.
    2: Right Flank - 18" from the right edge of the board.
    3-5: Center - the remaining portion of the deployment zone.
    6: Anywhere - anywhere in the deployment zone.
In addition, the first turn of this battle uses the night fighting rules.

Mission

1 - Bloodbath
  Place a single objective in the center of the board.  The player who controls the objective at the end of the game gets +3 kill points.  The player with the most kill points is the winner.

2 - Extraction
  Each player places an objective in their deployment zone.  The first player to move the objective that began the game in their opponent's deployment zone into their deployment zone wins.  If a unit controls their objective at the beginning of their controller's turn, the objective may 'join' the unit.  Once an objective has 'joined' a unit, the unit loses any movement special rules and can only move and assault 6" each turn (and can still run).  The game ends when one objective has been moved into its controller's deployment zone or by random game length.  If the game ends by random game length, the distance between each objective and its controller's board edge is measured, the player with the shortest distance is the victor.  (If this explanation didn't make much sense, it's basically capture the flag.  Hopefully that helps.)

3 - Assassination
  When an army contains no HQ choices, the army breaks and is defeated.  If neither army is out of HQ choices at the end of the game, the result is a draw.

  So these are just some of my ideas for expanding the scenarios.  With a 6x6 table, there would be a total of 36 different combinations, making for a lot of fresh and interesting 40k.  If anybody tries out any of these, let me know.  I'll probably try some out next weekend, if I've got anything interesting to report about it, I'll add an addendum.

Mycetic Spore Tutorial

  This is the story of how I made a Mycetic Spore.  I know there are about a million Mycetic Spore articles out there, but I thought I'd contribute mine because I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was dirt cheap and dead simple to make.

  The materials you will need to make this are

    1) One 6"ish styrofoam egg from your local craft store.

    2) One block of Sculpey or Sculpey equivalent.

    3) Some plasticard

    4) One of those little Squamous Bits from Battle for MaCragge or the Genestealer kit (not absolutely necessary, but I think it is a nice touch.)

    5) Mat Gel Base (apparently this is made by Vallejo, it's a gel substance meant to be mixed with paint to give texture or with collagey stuff)

  The first thing you'll need to do is cover your styrofoam egg with Mat Gel Base.  The purpose of this is to tone down the styrofoam texture and to protect the foam from the primer.  This will probably take a couple coats which can be scraped on with a butterknife or similar implement  Each coat will take a while to dry, so let it (otherwise it'll get all fingerprinty).

  After the Gel Base is on and dry, let's make the tentacles.  To make the tentacles, you'll need to roll out tentacle shapes from Sculpey.  My 'pile-o-tentacles' used exactly one block of Sculpey.  Make a ring from Sculpey large enough to set the egg on and attach the tentacles to said ring, then flop the tentacles all over eachother in a big old tentacley mess.  Squish the egg into the center of the pile of tentacles so that after the Sculpey gets baked the egg will fit nicely.  Remove the egg and bake the tentacles as per the directions on the Sculpey.

  Once the Sculpey has been baked, you can glue the Squamous Bit to the egg and the egg to the tentacles. Then cut out a base from plasticard, glue the tentacles to the plasticard, and you're done!

  I painted the egg like I would the shell on my bugs, and the tentacles like flesh.  The end result is about the size of a drop pod, large enough to hide a Carnifex behind, and looks pretty good (if I do say so myself). Mine of course looks something like an eldritch coconut, but that's just the way things go.

  If anybody asks you to justify this design, I like to tell them that it's an egg full of biomass and instructions for assembling a unit, it births out gaunts or zoanthropes or whatever through it's little Squamous Bit.