Monday, 5 November 2012
A true original?
Poor old Jake Thornton, no sooner does he announce plans to self-publish a new skirmish game then the first comment, the very first comment, assumes he will be ripping off Games Workshop. I can't say I blame him for writing a blog post on the subject. Since Dreadball a vocal part of the wargaming community seem to have decided that he is simply copies existing games.
That said, me writing a whole blog post on the subject probably doesn't help. So, before I go any further, I should say that I think his skirmish game Eternal Battles sounds very interesting. The plan is for a modular structure with the basic rules covered in one volume and multiple add on modules to cover different periods. I will be watching with interest.
I still want to talk about the "rip off" accusation though because it illustrates something quite interesting about the attitude of some gamers.
It's odd that Dreadball attracted such criticism, actually. There have been dozens of mass battle, dungeon crawl, space ship exploration and skirmish games released without anyone batting an eyelid. Maybe it's because Blood Bowl feels like one of Games Workshop's few truly original ideas. I say truly original, but even then it's a splice of two existing concepts, Warhammer Fantasy and American Football. Nevertheless, it does seem to be associated with Games Workshop more firmly than any other game concept ad has a lot of loyal fans.
Still, the attitude to Dreadball suggests that its critics believe there is only one legitimate route to design a game. That is to start with a totally original concept and then right rules to simulate it. That is certainly the route taken by some games; Malifaux and War Machine spring to mind. But this isn't the only route.
Take a look at historical gaming. There are games for all different periods and conflicts and the most popular periods are supported by multiple rules sets. Fields of Glory, Hail Caesar, Clash of Empires, War and Conquest, as well as others, all cover the ancient to medieval period, but all do so in a different way. Some rules focus in on a very particular period, such as Beneath the Lilly Banner, Killer Katanas or Saga, while others cover a much broader period, such as Pike and Shotte. When Warlord released Bolt Action recently Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestly didn't receive any criticism for writing rules based on a period that has already been covered by other games. Not to say there wasn't any criticism, but not for that. Possibly this is because in historical gaming everything is based on actual history so no-one can be accused of ripping anyone else off based on this.
But historical gaming also illustrates a different approach to designing a game, namely looking at an existing period or concept and trying to simulate it with a different set of rules. As far as I can see, with Bolt Action the designers had a unique selling point based on the rules, the order dice, and built the game from there.
Why is this not an appropriate approach to take to Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming. If a designer has a new way of simulating fantasy skirmish or mass battle or even sport why not build a game around it? Surely not every game has to be completely unique?
Now lets take a look at the current state of Blood Bowl. It is still formally available, but has been tucked away in the Specialist games area of the Games Workshop website, with no formal support and no new models for years. Many of the existing models haven't been updated since the mid 1990s. The game is effectively retired. So what is a designer with a good idea for a sports-based game supposed to do? Forget about it because Games Workshop have a game vaguely similar they hardly support? Whatever else you might say about Mantic they certainly have big plans for Dreadball with three supplements and twelve teams planned and no shortage of additional material.
So from the perspective of gamers Dreadball looks like good news. It's an interesting rules set and the game looks well supported. Should the whole concept have been dropped simply because it is vaguely similar to a game Games Workshop have all but abandoned? I think not.
I'm already signed up to Dreadball, I put money into the Kickstarter and will be keeping an eye on Eternal Battle and I hope that no good games are strangled at birth because tehy are judged insufficiently original.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
The numbers game
With Mantic's open day last weekend and my recent foray into Realms of Chaos I have had both Warhammer and Kings of War on the mind. One of the more distinctive features of KOW is the way in which it treats units. In Warhammer the basic element is the model and units are made of groups of them, while in Kings of War the basic element is the unit, it has its own stat line and is moved and removed as one element.
When playing a KOW style game, you tend to assume that the unit does not necessarily represent the number of individuals on the table. There might be twenty models, but your would tend to assume that that represents several hundred or even thousand individuals. The exact number is less important than the unit's abaility to project power on the field. For that reason the unit is removed all at once. The fate of individuals doesn't matter, when the unit is removed it is assumed that the unit is no longer able to fight effectively either because everyone is dead or has run off.
You wouldn't necessarily think this in Warhammer. When each model has its own stat line, it feels like an individual. But this doesn't actually make sense in practice. For a start, the units in Warhammer behave like much larger bodies. There may twenty men (or Orcs or Elves) on the table, but they move and fight like formations of several hundred. They stay in formation, can't manuevere easily and don't break formation except in route.
Looking at things on a larger scale, Warhammer-style games use maybe 100 to 200 models. Real historical armies run to thousands or even tens of thousands. Even the largest Warhammer battle represents only a skirmish in historical terms. And yet the conceit of the Warhammer game is that battles involve Emperor's, Kings and Warlords.
Both styles of game involve an abstraction. In KOW style games you assume that each unit represents more individuals than seen on the table. In Warhammer style games the abstraction happens almost in reverse. You assume that units and individuals behave like much larger formations than they actually represent. Either way, the effect is to simulate a massive battle with a much smaller number of models.
This division of model versus unit is common in historical wargaming. Warlord's Black Powder, Hail Caesar and Pike and Shotte all use the unit as the base element. Field of Glory and its successors as well as DBA and DBM use a similar system, of multiple models on a single base, even if they are not necessarily called units. In the other side, Clash of Empires follows a similar system to Warhammer, with units of individual models.
While the unit versus individual concept cuts across fantasy and historical gaming, in one area historical games usually fall on one side and fantasy on the other and that's in the handling of characters. In the Black Powder family, Clash of Empires, Field of Glory characters are essentially order givers. They enhance the fighting ability or units and/or are required to allow them to activate, but they don't fight units directly.
In contrast Warhammer treats characters as particularly capable individuals able to join and leave units and fight on the same level as other individuals. Kings of War goes even further. Characters are units in their own right and a single hero can fight on even terms with a unit of 20 or more models. This makes sense, while in the real world no individual, no matter how capable can fight more than two or three at a time successfully, in a fantasy world mighty heroes really can take on entire armies and win.
So many games use abstraction to deal with numbers, but the exact way it's managed varies from game to game and genre to genre.
When playing a KOW style game, you tend to assume that the unit does not necessarily represent the number of individuals on the table. There might be twenty models, but your would tend to assume that that represents several hundred or even thousand individuals. The exact number is less important than the unit's abaility to project power on the field. For that reason the unit is removed all at once. The fate of individuals doesn't matter, when the unit is removed it is assumed that the unit is no longer able to fight effectively either because everyone is dead or has run off.
You wouldn't necessarily think this in Warhammer. When each model has its own stat line, it feels like an individual. But this doesn't actually make sense in practice. For a start, the units in Warhammer behave like much larger bodies. There may twenty men (or Orcs or Elves) on the table, but they move and fight like formations of several hundred. They stay in formation, can't manuevere easily and don't break formation except in route.
Looking at things on a larger scale, Warhammer-style games use maybe 100 to 200 models. Real historical armies run to thousands or even tens of thousands. Even the largest Warhammer battle represents only a skirmish in historical terms. And yet the conceit of the Warhammer game is that battles involve Emperor's, Kings and Warlords.
Both styles of game involve an abstraction. In KOW style games you assume that each unit represents more individuals than seen on the table. In Warhammer style games the abstraction happens almost in reverse. You assume that units and individuals behave like much larger formations than they actually represent. Either way, the effect is to simulate a massive battle with a much smaller number of models.
This division of model versus unit is common in historical wargaming. Warlord's Black Powder, Hail Caesar and Pike and Shotte all use the unit as the base element. Field of Glory and its successors as well as DBA and DBM use a similar system, of multiple models on a single base, even if they are not necessarily called units. In the other side, Clash of Empires follows a similar system to Warhammer, with units of individual models.
While the unit versus individual concept cuts across fantasy and historical gaming, in one area historical games usually fall on one side and fantasy on the other and that's in the handling of characters. In the Black Powder family, Clash of Empires, Field of Glory characters are essentially order givers. They enhance the fighting ability or units and/or are required to allow them to activate, but they don't fight units directly.
In contrast Warhammer treats characters as particularly capable individuals able to join and leave units and fight on the same level as other individuals. Kings of War goes even further. Characters are units in their own right and a single hero can fight on even terms with a unit of 20 or more models. This makes sense, while in the real world no individual, no matter how capable can fight more than two or three at a time successfully, in a fantasy world mighty heroes really can take on entire armies and win.
So many games use abstraction to deal with numbers, but the exact way it's managed varies from game to game and genre to genre.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
A Jolly holiday with Mantic
Bit of a digression from my previous post here, because I spent most of the last weekend in Nottingham and most of Saturday at the headquarters of Mantic games. It being the occasion of Mantic's open day. I had managed to acquire a ticket as a free bonus for having pledged some money to their Kings of War Kickstarter and so I and MLB decided to make a weekend of it.
Suffice it to say, Mantic's HQ is not quite on the same scale as that of another significant Nottingham-based miniature company and doesn't have any massive bronze statues outside either. It consists of a handful of semi-ventilated offices and a warehouse out back. But Mantic attempted to do as much with the space as possible. The front end of the warehouse had been cleared to provide space for Warpath and Kings of War gaming tables and a decently sized retail stand. Much of this space was dedicated to testing out Warpath 2.0 and showing off the new Enforcer models (which look more like they've escaped from Iron Man 2.5 than Space Marines). There was also space for a large scale Undead vs Dwarfs Kings of War game in which Mantic's models were supplemented with Reaper Werewolves and an Undead Elephant/Mammoth of uncertain origin. The Warehouse surroundings, if anything, added to the atmosphere as gamers shared space with still to be assembled miniature boxes and paper inlays.
Off to the side of the warehouse, Golem painting studios offered painting tutorials for Undead and Enforcers. Getting on on these required an additional £20 fee, but came bundled with a box of models. MLB spent some time learning how to paint flat surfaces and certainly got his, by which I mean my, money's worth as he was in there for two and a half hours.
Upstairs, in a short corridor of offices, sculptor Bob Naismith spent half the day holding court and showing off the early versions of the impressively huge Abyssal Golems. The major attraction of the day was opposite in the "Jake room" in which Jake Thornton's board games Dwarf King's Hold and Project Pandora played a supporting role to the four demo games of Dread Ball.
Following a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Dread Ball is looking like Mantic's breakout hit and the demo games stayed busy throughout the day. The demo version reduced the number of players on each team and started the action two-thirds of the way through the game in order to keep things simple and maximise turnover. The game itself plays very swiftly; it is perfectly possible to score in a turn with a reasonable degree of luck. But, the fact that models are not reset after scoring, with the ball returning to the centre, means that you have to keep an eye on the position of your whole team. While there is an element of risk management, if you lose or fail to pick up the ball your turn, or rush, is over, the game is much more about resource management than Blood Bowl. You have fewer action tokens than players, which means not every player will act each rush, but you can play more than one action token on a player if you wish. This allows for faster scoring, but can leave other players out of position. With better quality game pieces than I have seen from Mantic and some very well sculpted players I could see this game becoming a major hit.
At the end of the corridor Mantic head honcho Ronnie Renton and Jake Thornton spent most of the day in seminars with whoever showed up. These took the form of surprisingly candid Q&A sessions with a fair bit of discussion of future plans.
Dread Ball was, unsurprisingly, a prominent feature. Mantic clearly have big plans, with four supplements outlined and, thanks to Kickstarter, largely funded. The intent is for the first three to introduce new teams, before the fourth "Dread Ball" extreme introduces the illegal "street" version of the game. This sounds genuinely fascinating as the teams will not have fixed rosters, but instead be recruited game to game by shadowy "backers". These backers can potentially hire any kind of player, but will get significant bonuses to certain types depending on their background, so an alien ambassador will get cheap aliens, a mad scientist cheap mutants and genetic modification. Overal, it sounds like the intent is to create a much broader game than Blood Bowl and Mantic may have the resources and enthusiasm to really run with the content.
Kings of War and Warpath also got their share of attention. Warpath has gone a bit quiet of late, but Ronnie let slip his intent to produce cheap plastic vehicle and plane kits (he thought £12 was about right for a hard plastic tank) and that he wants it to be quick and easy to play with large numbers of models. On the Kings of War front, he made it clear that there are three principal poles in the Mantica world, Good, Evil and Nature. The latter would be represented by druids and elementals. We have already seen the archetypal good army in the planned human Paladins, Battle Sisters and Angels. The plan is also to produce an army of demons which will be more Satanic and Diabolic rather than Chaotic. Though what this will entail remains to be seen. Having covered the main fantasy archetypes (plus Abyssal Dwarves which appear to be a case of trolling Games Workshop for a laugh), Mantic now appear to be moving on to some distinctive and interesting creations of their own.
So not a big day, but an enjoyable one and one plentiful access to the movers and shakers and a refreshing willingness to actually provide us with information.
Mantic Undead on display
Suffice it to say, Mantic's HQ is not quite on the same scale as that of another significant Nottingham-based miniature company and doesn't have any massive bronze statues outside either. It consists of a handful of semi-ventilated offices and a warehouse out back. But Mantic attempted to do as much with the space as possible. The front end of the warehouse had been cleared to provide space for Warpath and Kings of War gaming tables and a decently sized retail stand. Much of this space was dedicated to testing out Warpath 2.0 and showing off the new Enforcer models (which look more like they've escaped from Iron Man 2.5 than Space Marines). There was also space for a large scale Undead vs Dwarfs Kings of War game in which Mantic's models were supplemented with Reaper Werewolves and an Undead Elephant/Mammoth of uncertain origin. The Warehouse surroundings, if anything, added to the atmosphere as gamers shared space with still to be assembled miniature boxes and paper inlays.
Off to the side of the warehouse, Golem painting studios offered painting tutorials for Undead and Enforcers. Getting on on these required an additional £20 fee, but came bundled with a box of models. MLB spent some time learning how to paint flat surfaces and certainly got his, by which I mean my, money's worth as he was in there for two and a half hours.
Upstairs, in a short corridor of offices, sculptor Bob Naismith spent half the day holding court and showing off the early versions of the impressively huge Abyssal Golems. The major attraction of the day was opposite in the "Jake room" in which Jake Thornton's board games Dwarf King's Hold and Project Pandora played a supporting role to the four demo games of Dread Ball.
Mantic Abyssal Golem - work in progress by Bob Naismaith
Following a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Dread Ball is looking like Mantic's breakout hit and the demo games stayed busy throughout the day. The demo version reduced the number of players on each team and started the action two-thirds of the way through the game in order to keep things simple and maximise turnover. The game itself plays very swiftly; it is perfectly possible to score in a turn with a reasonable degree of luck. But, the fact that models are not reset after scoring, with the ball returning to the centre, means that you have to keep an eye on the position of your whole team. While there is an element of risk management, if you lose or fail to pick up the ball your turn, or rush, is over, the game is much more about resource management than Blood Bowl. You have fewer action tokens than players, which means not every player will act each rush, but you can play more than one action token on a player if you wish. This allows for faster scoring, but can leave other players out of position. With better quality game pieces than I have seen from Mantic and some very well sculpted players I could see this game becoming a major hit.
At the end of the corridor Mantic head honcho Ronnie Renton and Jake Thornton spent most of the day in seminars with whoever showed up. These took the form of surprisingly candid Q&A sessions with a fair bit of discussion of future plans.
Dread Ball was, unsurprisingly, a prominent feature. Mantic clearly have big plans, with four supplements outlined and, thanks to Kickstarter, largely funded. The intent is for the first three to introduce new teams, before the fourth "Dread Ball" extreme introduces the illegal "street" version of the game. This sounds genuinely fascinating as the teams will not have fixed rosters, but instead be recruited game to game by shadowy "backers". These backers can potentially hire any kind of player, but will get significant bonuses to certain types depending on their background, so an alien ambassador will get cheap aliens, a mad scientist cheap mutants and genetic modification. Overal, it sounds like the intent is to create a much broader game than Blood Bowl and Mantic may have the resources and enthusiasm to really run with the content.
Kings of War and Warpath also got their share of attention. Warpath has gone a bit quiet of late, but Ronnie let slip his intent to produce cheap plastic vehicle and plane kits (he thought £12 was about right for a hard plastic tank) and that he wants it to be quick and easy to play with large numbers of models. On the Kings of War front, he made it clear that there are three principal poles in the Mantica world, Good, Evil and Nature. The latter would be represented by druids and elementals. We have already seen the archetypal good army in the planned human Paladins, Battle Sisters and Angels. The plan is also to produce an army of demons which will be more Satanic and Diabolic rather than Chaotic. Though what this will entail remains to be seen. Having covered the main fantasy archetypes (plus Abyssal Dwarves which appear to be a case of trolling Games Workshop for a laugh), Mantic now appear to be moving on to some distinctive and interesting creations of their own.
So not a big day, but an enjoyable one and one plentiful access to the movers and shakers and a refreshing willingness to actually provide us with information.
Sunday, 23 September 2012
The Battle of Wurtbad - The Fetid Alliance
Having decided that our battle would be between the Empire and a Nurgle Chaos army we had to iron out the specifics of the army lists. For our Chaos army, two elements had already been decided on, namely the warbands of Rolf Hurtziger, my Nurgle Champion and Owesteen, MLB's Nurgle champion.
Under the rules outlined in Realms of Chaos - the Lost and the Damned, Chaos warbands can be included in Chaos armies as unusual mixed units of different creatures. This could get frustratingly complicated with large armies, but with only 1,000 points to play with seemed reasonably manageable. Under the rules, the points value of a warband is based entirely on the number of rewards received by its champion. This lead to the slightly crazy situation in which my Warband, lead by a level 5 human hero and consisting of three Beastmen, four Orcs, a Dragon-Ogre and a Beast of Nurgle cost exactly the same points as MLB's warband of a level 5 Dark Elf Hero, a level 5 human Wizard and four ghouls, 200 points each. Still, between the two they probably represented 400 points and balanced each other out. It does, emphasise the extent to which Realms of Chaos was based on creating weird and wacky Chaos armies, champions and creatures, rather than competitiveness and fairness.
This left us with 600 points still to spend. With both our warbands lead by only level 5 heroes (the lowest level hero in Warhammer 3rd edition, equivalent to a unit champion) neither seemed up to the job of acting as general. Independent Champions can be included in a Realms of Chaos army, but they must be randomly generated, either from a big list of pre-generated champions or from scratch. But, in our case we already had a model we wanted to use.
For a while I had felt my existing Chaos army lacked a decent centre piece model and when the opportunity came up to grab the Epidemius model cheaply from a convention, I snapped him up before Games Workshop finecast him. I had no intention of using Epidemius himself, I just wanted to get my hands on his Palanquin. Using a combination of old champions bits, Nurglings, bits box fodder and green stuff I fashioned together my Nurgle Champion Balios the Corpulent. Balios would make the ideal general for the Fetid Alliance. The only problem was that he already had a distinctive look of his own. So, rather than randomly generate him we decided to fudge things. Balios was not randomly generated, but he could have been, we simply picked the results that best reflected his look. A Palanquins could already be purchased for champions for fifty points it didn't feel like we had created anything overpowered or under-costed and got a chance to use the Balios model in third edition.
With Balios on board we had 550 points left to spend on troops. I was keen to use some of the more exotic, and thematic elements of the Nurgle army, and we were constrained by the models we had available. With that in mind, we added a unit of Plague Zombies and unit of diseased Flagellants.
The Plague Zombies are really just regular Zombies, but Nurgle is the only Chaos power able to use them and I rather liked the idea of the victims of his various diseases being compelled to follow the army around. It would certainly be intimidating for the defenders of Wurtbad.
The diseased Flagellants are also a uniquely Nurgle unit. Possibly even more demented than standard Flaggelents what they lack in fighting prowess they make up for in Fanaticism, that and the huge cloud of flies that follows them around. I had already started putting a unit of these together to use as Nurgle Marauders in Warhammer 8th edition. Given that I had been inspired by the Realms of Chaos unit in the first place it seemed appropriate to add them to our third edition army list.
Units in Realms of Chaos armies must contain a number of models divisible by the Chaos gods sacred number. In Nurgle's case this is seven so we included 14 Flaggelants and 28 plague Zombies.
This left us with just enough points to buy a Nurgle war altar. This would give a considerable Leadership and close combat bonus to any unit within 12" and, again, I had a model I wanted to use. I assigned the Flaggelants to act as Honour guards. This would cost them their usual Frenzy bonus, but would make them immune to psychology and break tests as long as the altar was still in one piece.
And so, our Chaos army was complete.
Under the rules outlined in Realms of Chaos - the Lost and the Damned, Chaos warbands can be included in Chaos armies as unusual mixed units of different creatures. This could get frustratingly complicated with large armies, but with only 1,000 points to play with seemed reasonably manageable. Under the rules, the points value of a warband is based entirely on the number of rewards received by its champion. This lead to the slightly crazy situation in which my Warband, lead by a level 5 human hero and consisting of three Beastmen, four Orcs, a Dragon-Ogre and a Beast of Nurgle cost exactly the same points as MLB's warband of a level 5 Dark Elf Hero, a level 5 human Wizard and four ghouls, 200 points each. Still, between the two they probably represented 400 points and balanced each other out. It does, emphasise the extent to which Realms of Chaos was based on creating weird and wacky Chaos armies, champions and creatures, rather than competitiveness and fairness.
This left us with 600 points still to spend. With both our warbands lead by only level 5 heroes (the lowest level hero in Warhammer 3rd edition, equivalent to a unit champion) neither seemed up to the job of acting as general. Independent Champions can be included in a Realms of Chaos army, but they must be randomly generated, either from a big list of pre-generated champions or from scratch. But, in our case we already had a model we wanted to use.
For a while I had felt my existing Chaos army lacked a decent centre piece model and when the opportunity came up to grab the Epidemius model cheaply from a convention, I snapped him up before Games Workshop finecast him. I had no intention of using Epidemius himself, I just wanted to get my hands on his Palanquin. Using a combination of old champions bits, Nurglings, bits box fodder and green stuff I fashioned together my Nurgle Champion Balios the Corpulent. Balios would make the ideal general for the Fetid Alliance. The only problem was that he already had a distinctive look of his own. So, rather than randomly generate him we decided to fudge things. Balios was not randomly generated, but he could have been, we simply picked the results that best reflected his look. A Palanquins could already be purchased for champions for fifty points it didn't feel like we had created anything overpowered or under-costed and got a chance to use the Balios model in third edition.
With Balios on board we had 550 points left to spend on troops. I was keen to use some of the more exotic, and thematic elements of the Nurgle army, and we were constrained by the models we had available. With that in mind, we added a unit of Plague Zombies and unit of diseased Flagellants.
The Plague Zombies are really just regular Zombies, but Nurgle is the only Chaos power able to use them and I rather liked the idea of the victims of his various diseases being compelled to follow the army around. It would certainly be intimidating for the defenders of Wurtbad.
The diseased Flagellants are also a uniquely Nurgle unit. Possibly even more demented than standard Flaggelents what they lack in fighting prowess they make up for in Fanaticism, that and the huge cloud of flies that follows them around. I had already started putting a unit of these together to use as Nurgle Marauders in Warhammer 8th edition. Given that I had been inspired by the Realms of Chaos unit in the first place it seemed appropriate to add them to our third edition army list.
Units in Realms of Chaos armies must contain a number of models divisible by the Chaos gods sacred number. In Nurgle's case this is seven so we included 14 Flaggelants and 28 plague Zombies.
This left us with just enough points to buy a Nurgle war altar. This would give a considerable Leadership and close combat bonus to any unit within 12" and, again, I had a model I wanted to use. I assigned the Flaggelants to act as Honour guards. This would cost them their usual Frenzy bonus, but would make them immune to psychology and break tests as long as the altar was still in one piece.
And so, our Chaos army was complete.
The Fetid Alliance
Balios the Corpulent
Level 15 Hero
M
|
WS
|
BS
|
S
|
T
|
W
|
I
|
A
|
Ld
|
Int
|
Cl
|
WP
|
|
Balios
|
2
|
5
|
4
|
4
|
6
|
3
|
4
|
4
|
9+2
|
7
|
8+1
|
8+1
|
Palanquin
|
6
|
3
|
5
|
3
|
D6
|
Chaos Rewards:
Immensity (+1 A, -1 I), Face of Nurgle (Cause Fear), Chaos Armour (4+
Save)
Chaos Attributes:
Tentacles (1 arm) (+1 FP), Limb loss (1 leg) (½ M), Horns (+1 A, +1
FP)
Palanquin
Total 150 pts
The Warband of Rolf Hurtziger
(Level 5 Human Hero, 3 Beastmen, 4 Orcs, Dragon Ogre, Beast of Nurgle)
200 points
200 points
The Warband of Owestine
(Level 5 Dark Elf Hero, 4 Ghouls, Level 5 Human Wizard)
200 points
200 points
War Altar of Nurgle
M
|
WS
|
BS
|
S
|
T
|
W
|
I
|
A
|
Ld
|
Int
|
Cl
|
WP
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
10
|
5
|
0
|
0
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
+2 Leadership Bonus to
units within 12”. +1 Combat Resolution bonus to units with 12”.
Cannot reserve move. If destroyed, every unit must make a panic test.
120 Points
The Wretched Brethren – 14 Diseased Flagellants
M
|
WS
|
BS
|
S
|
T
|
W
|
I
|
A
|
Ld
|
Int
|
Cl
|
WP
|
4
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
4
|
1
|
3
|
1
|
7
|
7
|
7
|
7
|
Includes Standard
carrying the disease banner (Every time the units suffers a
wound in close combat the enemy suffers a wound on a 4+) and Musician
Hand Weapons and Flails
Altar Guards – Immune
to Psychology and Break tests while within 6” of the Altar.
Otherwise subject to Frenzy and hate all enemies.
Chaos Attributes:
Plague Bearer (the shakes -1 WS, -1 A)
165 points
The Devotees of Balios – 28 Plague Zombies
M
|
WS
|
BS
|
S
|
T
|
W
|
I
|
A
|
Ld
|
Int
|
Cl
|
WP
|
4
|
2
|
0
|
3
|
3
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
Hand Weapons
120 points
120 points
Sunday, 16 September 2012
The Battle of Wurtbad - Preamble
So it has been a while since I last wrote anything on the subject of my and MLB's Realms of Chaos campaign. That doesn't mean the campaign has been completely inactive. Just mostly inactive.
With two warbands a piece we had played out three of the four possible battle combinations (ignoring the two possible combinations where our own warbands fight each other). The last combination presented something of a dilemma. For a start both of our remaining warbands were Nurgle warbands. This didn't rule out a conflict, champions of the same God often fight each other to gain the favour of their god, but it felt less natural than the previous battles we had fought. More troubling was the relative strength of the warbands. Thanks to a couple of lucky rolls, Rolf Hurtziger's warband had added a Beast of Nurgle and a Dragon-Ogre to the four Orcs and three Beastmen in already contained. MLB's warband, however, only contained four ghouls and a level five wizard. So far things were looking a little one sided.
Initially, we looked at a scenario in which the warbands ambush a Dwarven caravan. This would allow us to focus our attention on the dwarves if we wanted and allow both sides to grab some victory points. We the considered it would be more natural if the two warbands teamed up to carry out the ambush, instead of coincidentally attacking the same caravan at the same time. It was then that we hit on a more ambitious idea.
The Realms of Chaos books don't just contain the rules for Chaos Warbands, but also the rules for full sized Warhammer Armies in the 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In addition to the usual mix of units, characters and monsters, these armies can also contain randomly generated warbands. These can be generated specifically for the army or part of an existing campaign. What is more, these warbands can gain rewards and followers from fighting in battles as part of the army. We had our solution. Our warbands would combine and, bulked up with additional troops from my Chaos collection, we would play out a full 1000 point 3rd edition Warhammer campaign.
The next question was who to use as an opponent. The Dwarves were an obvious choice. Having been a dwarf player for around fifteen years now I have plenty of models and the dwarf army list hasn't changed dramatically since third edition. However, MLB has been slowly buying up Perry miniatures War of the Roses infantry with the intention of building a cheaper Empire army and this looked like an ideal opportunity to give them a test run. Plus, Empire vs Chaos felt like a more natural and classic lineup for our first full scale 3rd edition battle.
So with the forces decided, it was time to draw up some army lists.
With two warbands a piece we had played out three of the four possible battle combinations (ignoring the two possible combinations where our own warbands fight each other). The last combination presented something of a dilemma. For a start both of our remaining warbands were Nurgle warbands. This didn't rule out a conflict, champions of the same God often fight each other to gain the favour of their god, but it felt less natural than the previous battles we had fought. More troubling was the relative strength of the warbands. Thanks to a couple of lucky rolls, Rolf Hurtziger's warband had added a Beast of Nurgle and a Dragon-Ogre to the four Orcs and three Beastmen in already contained. MLB's warband, however, only contained four ghouls and a level five wizard. So far things were looking a little one sided.
Initially, we looked at a scenario in which the warbands ambush a Dwarven caravan. This would allow us to focus our attention on the dwarves if we wanted and allow both sides to grab some victory points. We the considered it would be more natural if the two warbands teamed up to carry out the ambush, instead of coincidentally attacking the same caravan at the same time. It was then that we hit on a more ambitious idea.
The Realms of Chaos books don't just contain the rules for Chaos Warbands, but also the rules for full sized Warhammer Armies in the 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In addition to the usual mix of units, characters and monsters, these armies can also contain randomly generated warbands. These can be generated specifically for the army or part of an existing campaign. What is more, these warbands can gain rewards and followers from fighting in battles as part of the army. We had our solution. Our warbands would combine and, bulked up with additional troops from my Chaos collection, we would play out a full 1000 point 3rd edition Warhammer campaign.
The next question was who to use as an opponent. The Dwarves were an obvious choice. Having been a dwarf player for around fifteen years now I have plenty of models and the dwarf army list hasn't changed dramatically since third edition. However, MLB has been slowly buying up Perry miniatures War of the Roses infantry with the intention of building a cheaper Empire army and this looked like an ideal opportunity to give them a test run. Plus, Empire vs Chaos felt like a more natural and classic lineup for our first full scale 3rd edition battle.
So with the forces decided, it was time to draw up some army lists.
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Does everyone have to have a Kickstarter now?
The news is out that Wyrd games is planning a Malifaux RPG Kickstarter. This following Kickstarters from McVey studios, Soda Pops miniatures, Reaper, Mongoose and Mantic who are now on their second. It's starting to feel like Kickstarter is the thing all the cool miniature companies just have to have.
For anyone not in the know, Kickstarter is a website that allows companies (not necessarily miniature companies) to gather donations to put towards a specified project. In return for these pledges they offer contributors a reward. In most cases this will be a copy of one or more of the funded projects, though all kinds of rewards are on offer.
Given that I contributed a not insubstantial sum to the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter (enough to get my name in the rulebook) I can't oppose the concept in principal. At it's best its a smart way for a company to crowd source its funding and to gauge whether a project is worth pursuing before committing any money. It can also be good for the customer, though its worth be careful. Its all to easy to get carried away in the momentum and fail to realise that the rewards aren't much more than exactly what the company will be selling in a few months time.
What I do wonder, however, is whether Kickstarter is strictly a good idea for every company. Most of the established companies have declared their Kickstarter goal to grow their gaming system and release models earlier than they would otherwise be able. This sounds great in principle, but I question whether it is always a good idea for the company.
I have written before about the difficulties faced by established miniature companies, like Games Workshop and Privateer Press, before. Essentially the dilemma is whether to keep growing the game in order to maintain the interest of the existing fan base at the risk of losing new players, or move in the other direction and endlessly re-release in order and rely on high player turnover. A more rapid release schedule could simply exacerbate the problem. The more you release the harder it is for a new player to find a way into the system, Warmachine and Hordes are all but impenetrable to new players, and the more you risk losing casual players who can't keep up.
As the game grows only the truly dedicated can keep up, and these are exactly the sort of people likely to contribute to a Kickstarter campaign. This could fuel a kind of positive feedback in which the most dedicated, even fanatical, fans drive the development of the game. This could lead to a distorted picture of the popularity of the project. What happens when the audience for a Kickstarter is the same size as the contributors?
At least Wyrd are focusing their Kickstarter on a new game, the Malifaux RPG. But I do wonder just how much Malifaux do people want? There are already three main rulebooks for the miniature game with a forth on route and a handful of new releases every month. With this rate of growth it becomes harder and harder to find an entry point. Ultimately, will Kickstarter provide a boost for these companies or just allow them to grow faster than is wise?
For anyone not in the know, Kickstarter is a website that allows companies (not necessarily miniature companies) to gather donations to put towards a specified project. In return for these pledges they offer contributors a reward. In most cases this will be a copy of one or more of the funded projects, though all kinds of rewards are on offer.
Given that I contributed a not insubstantial sum to the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter (enough to get my name in the rulebook) I can't oppose the concept in principal. At it's best its a smart way for a company to crowd source its funding and to gauge whether a project is worth pursuing before committing any money. It can also be good for the customer, though its worth be careful. Its all to easy to get carried away in the momentum and fail to realise that the rewards aren't much more than exactly what the company will be selling in a few months time.
What I do wonder, however, is whether Kickstarter is strictly a good idea for every company. Most of the established companies have declared their Kickstarter goal to grow their gaming system and release models earlier than they would otherwise be able. This sounds great in principle, but I question whether it is always a good idea for the company.
I have written before about the difficulties faced by established miniature companies, like Games Workshop and Privateer Press, before. Essentially the dilemma is whether to keep growing the game in order to maintain the interest of the existing fan base at the risk of losing new players, or move in the other direction and endlessly re-release in order and rely on high player turnover. A more rapid release schedule could simply exacerbate the problem. The more you release the harder it is for a new player to find a way into the system, Warmachine and Hordes are all but impenetrable to new players, and the more you risk losing casual players who can't keep up.
As the game grows only the truly dedicated can keep up, and these are exactly the sort of people likely to contribute to a Kickstarter campaign. This could fuel a kind of positive feedback in which the most dedicated, even fanatical, fans drive the development of the game. This could lead to a distorted picture of the popularity of the project. What happens when the audience for a Kickstarter is the same size as the contributors?
At least Wyrd are focusing their Kickstarter on a new game, the Malifaux RPG. But I do wonder just how much Malifaux do people want? There are already three main rulebooks for the miniature game with a forth on route and a handful of new releases every month. With this rate of growth it becomes harder and harder to find an entry point. Ultimately, will Kickstarter provide a boost for these companies or just allow them to grow faster than is wise?
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
AAARGH!!!
As you may have gathered from previous entries, I have a fair bit of time for Mantic games. I'm not as enamoured as some but I think, in general, they produce decent quality miniatures and affordable prices and are providing Games Workshop with some much needed competition. In fact, I'm confident enough in them to have shelled out some money to their recent Kickstarter project and a substantial quantity of Undead should be on its way soon.
Mantic have just published the Beta rules for version 2 of Warpath. The plan for Warpath appears to be essentially the same as the plan for Kings of War; release version 1 for free online or bundled with every decent sized box of models, take on board feedback and release a revised version 2 and then, about a year later release the final version 3 in hardback while keeping the basic rules free to download. So far so good. Warpath version 2 features a significant number of changes which has also prompted a re-jig of the army lists. This was good news to me for one reason in particular.
This is the contents of the Forge Father Drakkarim boxed set.
The Drakkarim are supposed to be close assault specialists. In version 1 of the Forge Father army list they have shorter range guns with a little more punch than the standard storm guard. The boxed set features a leader, two troopers with Drakkarim rifles, which look slightly different than the Stormguard rifles, one dragon breath flamethrower and one mjolnir rocket launcher.
This is the Drakkarim entry in version 1 of the Forge Father army list.
Note the absence of a Mjolnir Rocket launcher option. Oh dear. Still, nil desperandum, the Steel Warriors can include a Mjolnir, so I swapped one of my plastic Steel Warriors out for the Rocket Launcher. The Drakkarim squad can include a heat hammer and the leader doesn't have on so I gave my plastic Drakkarim a heat hammer.
With Warpath version 2 out I assumed that this error would be corrected in some way.
This is the army list entry for a five member Drakkarim squad in Warpath version 2.
Note the continued absence of the Mjolnir Rocket launcher. Also note the requirement to include two Dragon Breaths. Note also that the boxed set includes only one Dragon Breath. Also note that the army list requires a ratio of two Dragon Breaths for every five Drakkarim and that the Dragon Breath model cannot be bought seperately (you can order a pack of five of the weapon, but as they only fit the metal bodies you may as well buy the box). Oh deary, deary me.
It isn't a disaster, the Steel Warriors can also include a Dragon Breath and, now that the Drakkarim rifles are considered to be the same as the Steel Warriors rifles, I intend to mix them in with my Steel Warriors to provide some much needed special weapon support. But, we still have a boxed set sold as a particular unit that it cannot possibly represent.
This is sloppy. It's the kind of stupid marketing I would have expected to see from Games Workshop in the early to mid 1990s (when they sold Eldar Aspect Warriors in packs of four despite the army list demanding they be used in squads of five). Mantic should be better than this and this sort of stupidity just looks unprofessional. Mantic looks like a company that needs to be closer attention to the little details.
Mantic have just published the Beta rules for version 2 of Warpath. The plan for Warpath appears to be essentially the same as the plan for Kings of War; release version 1 for free online or bundled with every decent sized box of models, take on board feedback and release a revised version 2 and then, about a year later release the final version 3 in hardback while keeping the basic rules free to download. So far so good. Warpath version 2 features a significant number of changes which has also prompted a re-jig of the army lists. This was good news to me for one reason in particular.
This is the contents of the Forge Father Drakkarim boxed set.
This is the Drakkarim entry in version 1 of the Forge Father army list.
Note the absence of a Mjolnir Rocket launcher option. Oh dear. Still, nil desperandum, the Steel Warriors can include a Mjolnir, so I swapped one of my plastic Steel Warriors out for the Rocket Launcher. The Drakkarim squad can include a heat hammer and the leader doesn't have on so I gave my plastic Drakkarim a heat hammer.
With Warpath version 2 out I assumed that this error would be corrected in some way.
This is the army list entry for a five member Drakkarim squad in Warpath version 2.
Note the continued absence of the Mjolnir Rocket launcher. Also note the requirement to include two Dragon Breaths. Note also that the boxed set includes only one Dragon Breath. Also note that the army list requires a ratio of two Dragon Breaths for every five Drakkarim and that the Dragon Breath model cannot be bought seperately (you can order a pack of five of the weapon, but as they only fit the metal bodies you may as well buy the box). Oh deary, deary me.
It isn't a disaster, the Steel Warriors can also include a Dragon Breath and, now that the Drakkarim rifles are considered to be the same as the Steel Warriors rifles, I intend to mix them in with my Steel Warriors to provide some much needed special weapon support. But, we still have a boxed set sold as a particular unit that it cannot possibly represent.
This is sloppy. It's the kind of stupid marketing I would have expected to see from Games Workshop in the early to mid 1990s (when they sold Eldar Aspect Warriors in packs of four despite the army list demanding they be used in squads of five). Mantic should be better than this and this sort of stupidity just looks unprofessional. Mantic looks like a company that needs to be closer attention to the little details.
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