Thursday, September 30, 2010

Board Game reviews

Since Gen Con Ellen and I have been on a board game kick. Before we left between the two of us we owned 2-3 board games. Mostly cheap card games such as Bang and Apples to Apples. We do enjoy playing thse games, but have never really gone out and increased our collection. This changed a lot with Gen Con. Since then between the two of us we have purchased 5 new board games. And I really enjoy every single one of them. So I will be reviewing them as I feel like it over the next week or two.

So Game #1 will be Chaos in the Old World.
Its a 4 player game, and not a very quick one, so it can be tough to get the right number of people to play. The game allows each player to take control of one of the Warhammer Chaos Gods and attempt to destroy the old world through corruption and battle. There are two ways to win. Every time you destroy a city you gain victory points. If your point total reaches 50 at the end of a turn you win. If mulitple people reach 50 at once, the person with more points wins. The Second way to win is the corruption dial. There is a different condition for each god to be allowed to turn their dial. Each turn gives you a bonus, and the last space on the Dial says you win. The Dial trumps the points as a win condition. Each god is incredibly unique and play vey differently. There are 3 unit types for each faction, Warriors who do the fighting, Greater Daemons, who do the fighting better, and Cultists, who you use to destroy the cities and corrupt the humans.

Khorne - The god of blood and battle. Khorne has the fewest cultists, making it hard for him to corrupt cities. His easiest win condition is to get his dial clicks. Khorne is allowed to turn his dial once each turn if he kills an enemy model. This is a very easy thing to do so Khorne is usually able to get his Dial turns very quickly.

Nurlge is the god of pestilance and plague. He has the most models, but his warriors are weaker then the others. Nurgle has the most clicks on his dial so he generally tries to win by corrupting locations and getting victory points.

Tzeentch is the god of magic and change. He is able to switch back and forth between the two roles and play the board as it develops. Tzeentch gains dial advancement by corrupting locations with heavy magic. Magic occurs when Tzeentch plays magic power cards or when there are Warpstone Mines.

Slannesh is the god of pleasure and pain. He is like Tzeentch in that he can play either the dial or the points. His dial is the shortest so it a strong way for him to win. Slannesh enjoys corrupting the powerful people of the world so when he corrupts cities with powerful heroes or nobles he gets to advance his dial.

So thats the general break down of the gods. Its a pretty fast paced game and its a lot fun. In the half dozen games I have played I have found that there is a good balance among the gods. I say this despite the fact that Nurgle has never won a game. I still think Nurgle is no more or less powerful then the other 3. It is a very fun game, and even people who know nothing of the world have enjoyed playing this game. In fact most of the people i have played with know nothing of the Chaos gods or the warhammer world and they still seem to enjoy it. The biggest knock on the game is the limited number of players. I understand that there are only 4 chaos gods and that is why there are only 4 players allowed, but I really wish that more then 4 people could play at once, were that the case the game would come of the closet more often.

I will give Warhammer: Chaos in the old World a B grade. The game is fun and the replay value is decent. It suffers from its small play size which is a shame as the game really is great.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Game Report Ogre Kingdoms v High Elves

I played my first 2k game of 8th ed fantasy yesterady, and what I think is my 3rd overal game of the new edition. I like the new edition and it has helped turn the Ogres from the laughing stock of fantasy to a decent list with some nice options.

My basic list looked like this
Tyrant, Butcher, BSB, 2 units of 5 Bulls (plus hero for 6 man units) 2 units of 2 ledbelchers, 3 Ironguts (plus BSB), 3 Man eaters, and A Rhinox Rider.

My opponent took 20 seaguard with a bsb, 15 phoenix guard with a level 4 mage, 15 sword masters with a named hero, 20 bowmen, and 2 bolt throwers.

His magic was pretty strong, but I was able to handle it with the butcher. He ended up moving his Phoenix guard into a building and I shruged and ignored them the whole game. He set up his sword masters and I olbiged him with a huge charge. I sent in both bull units, with a butcher and tyrant, as well as my Rhinox Rider. His attacks were pretty brutal, but mine were far worse. he was left with only his named Hero and Standard. They fled and I ran them down. On the other side My Ironguts got pincushioned by the bolt throwers and archers, but the BSB made it into melee. He spent basically the whole game slaughtering first the archers, then the bolt thrower crews. The Seaguard were the biggest pain. They shot down the maneaters, killed off the Butcher and his unit until Finally the Tyrant came in and set them straight. The game ended then, he had his Phoenix Guard alive and nothing else. I had my BSB, My Tyrant, My Tyrant's unit had only lost 1 bull, and 2 leadbelchers. The Tyrants had also catpured 3 banners. So it was a nice win for the Ogres. I was shocked by his hiding the phoenix guard the way he did, I was very nervous about them, but was able to ignore them.

All in all I had a ton of fun, the guy was very nice, he helped me with the rules, and really helped give me an even fun game to play with the ogres.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Game Report, Seamus vs Leviticus

Got in a game last night vs Leviticus. Its my second time facing him and this time I saw a very different type of list opposing me. It had 3 models to start the game. Levi, Alyce, and Kill Joy (Who even starts off the board.) I used Seamus with 2 neco-punks, 2 punk zombies, and 2 Belles. He had 7 stones I had 2. I got break through for my strategy and took army of the dead and Grudge (Alyce) for schemes. I can't remember what he got or called.



Turn 1 we both start moving up. He sacs leviticus to pop out kill joy. I start spreading my guys out becuase I don't want him engaging multiple targets. Turn 2 he wins init and Kill Joy goes hauling into a Belle and wipes her out.



I responded with the Copy-Cat and Seamus popping the big guy with a pair of .50 cal pistols and a couple spell shots. Kill-Joy died and I sighed a nice bit of relief. leviticus and Alyce moved in a bit and I started trying to wear them down. Alyce got taken out by a Necro-Punk and newly summoned Belle. Levi went to work pretty hard core turning a lot of my stuff into Abominations. I was killing them off as soon as he summoned them, but I was using my activations to kill off models that used to be mine. I was quite a pain. But each turn I would kill a few things and push my crew up a bit. Seamus was in the thick of it every time and was drawing a lot of cards. It helped me get a 3rd belle out too. Finally one turn looked like I might get the chance to kill his Waif and Levi. A belle walked up to levi and whacked him with her parasol dealing 2 damage. his wasting ability would ensure he dies. Seamus then hauled it 8 inches as close to the waif as I could get him. I was 8.5 inches away, just out of range to shoot her down.



So levi popped back up and tried to cut seamus' life in half. I had soul stones so I stopped those and he called it there. He was in a bad way at that point my 3 bellles and last Punk Zombie were getting closer and he was getting cornered. All in all I would say it was a damn good game for Seamus.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Awesome Weekend... again

So once again I had a friggin Awesome weekend. I'll start at the end and work back. First things, HAIL TO THE REDSKINS!!! Suck it dallas, and all the fans of Dallas. 13-7 you guys suck. Also its good to have football back on. I missed it a lot. Now the heartpounding sweat drenched final drive of the Cowboys I missed a lot less, but still it was a great game for the Skins to pull out a victory and showcase our top tier D.



Ok the real story of the weekend has to be the Bachelor party. It was a pretty great night. We got mega hammered in a fantastic hotel room, and ate at a pretty sweet Irish place all paid for by Eric, mike's very awesome Brother/Best-Man. We started the Day with a team Scavenger Hunt. My team of 3, known as Team Win was Me, Rockett, and Eric (Not mike's brother, there were 2 Erics)

Team Win!


So eric drove (like a maniac) Our first task was to bring Board Games, Pop Corn, and Soda, along with a 6 pack of beer to some dudes house in exchange for the second task. We hit the Target, Total Wine are in sterling. I ran into Total wine, Rockett and eric hit Target. I grabbed a 6 pack of Pumpkin ale, and was heading to check out when a man at a table offered me a taste of a different pumpkin ale, I was in a hurry, but not that much, so I tasted the ale and bought a second 6 pack of that one.



We made it to the first destination first, but not by much. And as we arrived Mark blocked us in the drive way. We tussled with them to try to make them move their car, and in the process I got punched in the gut. Rather un-called for in my opinion. Our second task was called Sex Drugs and Rock & Roll. Sex = A Porn DVD, Drugs = Liquor, Rock = A Rock CD. Well no one knew this at the time but no one in sterling sells adult movies. I killed my cell battery trying to get find a place. Eventually we made a run out to Chantilly since that was the closest MVC. Bonus points were awarded if we could get a female employee to; Pick the movie, pose for a pic holding the movie, and act out a scene from the movie. Well it took a small amount of convincing, but:



I also convinced her to Kiss a random dude in teh store, but I promised her that pic wouldn't end up on the internet, so, sorry.

That set us back a lot, and we were last to arrive at the Destination 2. aka My future sister in laws house. I was less than pleased to show her that I had a Porn DVD, but I pretty much had lost all sense on shame by this point. We grab the last task, which is The next step - A parenting book, Diapers, and pregnancy test. We peel out, but Mary stops up, saying she has those things. Well all but the pregnancy test. So we grab them from her and run off full speed to Giant. i jump out of the car in the parking lot when there is traffic and haul ass full sprint down the strip mall. I ran by a bunch of band kids who noticed I was wearing my Flash shirt and they cheered me on. I ran into the pharmacy section saw a girl stocking shelves and went up to her out of breath and sweating "I need a pregnancy test now!" She looked really shocked and possible a little scared. I bought it and we hit the road, destination 3 was in DC, and was the Hotel we stayed at for the night. We ended up their first, big props to Mary on that one, for the hook up. We got green smily shirts for the win, the back of the shirt said "I won Mike's Bachelor Party", there would be a pic, but its in the wash as it got covered in beer. The rest of the teams got a yellow shirt with a frown that said "I lost mike's bachelor party." I also won the MVP of Mike's Bachelor party, which was a cool ass Silver Cup trophy, which I drank most of my beers out of, by racking up the most bonus points, entirely from getting the girl to kiss the dude in the porn store. Then there was awesome drunken revelry. All in all it was a great night. Congrats Mike!

Easy Paint Tutorial Part 2

So to recap from part 1.

Step 1: Prime the Model
Step 2: Base Coat the Model
Step 3: Paint the detail work.

On to step 4. This one of the easier and quicker steps. Grab a large paint brush and a pot of GW's wash Devil mud. And go to town on the model. don't be shy or timid here, the new GW washes add instant depth and detail to any paint job. It takes a long while for the wash to dry and you need it almost 100% dry to do any more work on it, otherwise you will rub off the wash when you touch the model.

Step 5 is basing the model. If you glued on the sand before priming you can paint it. I start with a dark color, for my Chaos I used Scorched Brown. Once that dries totally I dry brush the flock with Snake-Bite Leather, its gives the sand a dity mudy look. Finally once wash is totally 100% dry I use super glue and add in a few patchs of Grass to the base. It ends up looking pretty good. Here is my Final product terminator



Its a good looking model and it is one of the fastest ways to pump out models. I personally hate painting large numbers of models. I tend to use dark colors becuase they hide mistakes better. And as anyone will tell you painted models look better then gray models every time.

Friday, September 10, 2010

My Bad

I finished the Termies last night and forgot to snap a pic of them. Hopefully I can finish the tutorial monday. my bad.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Easy Paint Tutorial part 1

So over this week I have been slowly painting my brand new Chaos Terminator unit. In the end they will be a 5 man squad with 4 Combi-Melta Guns, a Heavy Flamer, a Chain Fist, and the Mark to Tzeentch. As I was painting these guys it hit me how easy it is paint guys up using my scheme. So I figured I would give some details for easy paint tips, and people can use them or pass them along to others who need help getting an army painted.

So we're gonna skip ahead to after the model is assembled. Before you go and prime the model decide if you want to have painted sand on the base. Its easy as all get out and looks much better then regular sand. So glue it to the base and then prime the model. I almost always use black primer. White is probably better for show-case painting, but thats not the goal here. the goal is to paint up a bunch of guys fairly quickly so you can hit the table with them asap. So hit the model with black primer.

Once thats done base coat it. This should not be a very difficult process. Find the color that will be on the model the most and go to town. there is no need to be clean with this as you will be going back over the model and filling in the detail afterwards. Some colors don't cover well, Yellows and Light browns. For these colors I use one of GW's new foundation paints. Here is step 1 of the Chaos Terminator, all I did was paint all the armor with Khemri Brown.



Foundations are fantastic paints, they dry quick and smell funny. But they lay down a nice color base for a lighter paint. If you want to use darker paints for your models you can skip this step of the process. Step 2 for me is to cover the model in Bleached Bone. The Foundation makes this take very little time. I don't hit the weapons because they will be silver colored and I would prefer them to be a little darker, so I want the black primer to be my base for that area. So here is Step 2.



Step 3 is where things get a little harder and more tedious. Paint the detailed parts of the model. In this case the shoulder pads are blue with a gold trim. The arc over the terminators head is gold. the chains and weapons are painted silver, with a black trim. and the arrow looking things on the weapons is painted red. I also paint the eyes. They way I do this is to slop a ton of paint all over the eye. Looks horrible, but after that I go back with my original color, in this case bleach bone, and I trace an out-line around the eye to make it look much better. I end up with something like this.



I'll finish them up tonight take a few photos and finish the Tutorial tomorrow. The Final product end up looking pretty damn good If i do say so myslef.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Awesome Weekend

So labor day is always a good time, a nice 3 day weekend. This time around we had our Fantasy Football draft and then Ellen and I spent a night down in Charlottesville getting hammered. So to start the weekend, the draft!



Ellen and I were hosting it this year. We set up our TV to be the draft board, with a PC hook up. I think it worked out really well. I finished 3rd last year in Fantasy Football, so I had the 8th overal pick. I had 3 decent Running Backs who I could use as keepers. I ended up taking Beanie wells in the 6th round and Jamal Charles in the 10th as my keepers, letting Jerome Harrison go to the draft pool. My strategy was simple get two solid Wide Recievers early, then a decent QB and TE, and then go for depth in my line up. I started well getting Randy Moss and Roddy White. But in the 3rd round I was primed to take a QB, when I saw there were enough around to not reach for one. I took a 3rd wide out in Anquan Boldin, and grabbed Rivers on the way back. This I think will end up being a strong move through the season as I essentially have 3 WR 1's. It screwed my draft strategy up completely, but oh well. In the end I took a bunch of mediocre RB's who I can only hope will pan out. I don't have a lot of depth at RB, but as long as Charles and Wells do what they did last year, it won't matter. My Final team, in draft order:
Randy Moss, Roddy White, Anquan Boldin, Philip Rivers, Brent Celek, Beanie Wells, Johnny Knox, Donald Brown, Darren McFadden, Jamal Charles, Matt Stafford, Lee Evans, New Orleans D, Ryan Longwll, and Thomas Jones.

So that was the draft, and it was a good time. We went out for beer afterwards at Dogfishead, also we celebrated Laura's birthday. So happy Birthday Laura!



So Ellen suprised me with Hotel Reservations for this weekend down in Charlottesville. We woke up early.. ish sunday morning and made the trip down. It was a breeze, no traffic and almost no trouble with the lights. We went straight to a Brewery to start the day.

So we plug in the address to the GPS and are driving about 10 miles west of C-Ville. Garmin is telling us we are less then a mile away from teh place, but all we see are random warehouse, abruplty he says to turn here, I look and see nothing. About a second later I see a small sign that says star hill. So I make the turn and we get out very confused. We walk up a ramp into a warehouse loading dock. We see a lot of Fermentation Barrels, and way off to the side is a tiny Bar with a bunch of people around it. The bartender sees us, tells us to come on up and immediatley pours us a beer. We ended up tasing 8 of their beers, and I gotta say, I'm a huge fan.



At 1pm i was quite buzzed, and the Guy took us on a tour of the facility. He was pretty knowledgeable, and answered a wide variety of questions about brewing and beer in general. For Instance the reason Bud and Miller have no flavor is that they use Corn instead of Barley for their beer. Its cheaper and has no taste. The tour and tasting were free, so we bought 18 beers and a Pint Glass.

Next we headed over to the Blue Mountain brewery. It was meh... the 6 beer samplers was like 4 lights and 2 IPAs. The food there was pretty good though, but all in all it was pretty meh for beer.

We went and checked into our hotel after that and passed out, likely from a lot of beer early in the day. We then went out the Corner, its a hip spot for all them college kids. We went to a Burger Bar, which had a create your own burger from. So we did, and it was pretty solid. We then went for a walk and went back to the hotel.

Monday we woke up, got breakfast at the waffle house and hit a vineyard. We tasted like 13 wines. We also took a tour of the place and grabbed a couple bottles of wine. Then we hit the road.


All in all it was a pretty kick ass weekend. I like these 3 day weekends, got another coming next month =P.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Ramos vs Lady J + Painting Contest

So last night was the painting contest at Huzzah Hobbies, I made my way out there pretty early so I could get in a game against Bill, we haven't played since our Demo days and I wanted to see how his game is goming along. We played 30 stones, lists looked like this

Ramos, Brass Arachnid, Joss, Johan, 3 Spiders
Lady J, Peacekeeper, 2 Death Marshals, Judge, Austringer



I got a mission i've never done before, Deliver a message, he got Escape and Survive. I had to give lady J a message which required a (2) action while within 2' of her. He had to keep 75% of his dudes alive for 4 pts, 50% for 2, and they all had to be more than 8' away from his deployment zone. We each took a scheme we could do, Bodyguard for me, Claim Jump for Bill, and one we could not, Exterminate for bill, chosing constructs, and something where I needed a guy to hit a point in the back corner of all 4 board quarters. Well my army is pretty slow, so that failed badly. We both moved up to the middle of the board and got ready to engage, he used his peacekeeper to reel in Joss, who then powered up and slapped that thing around, its pretty tough though so it lived. Ramos threw an electrical creation out and it started buzzing through the Peacekeeper. Lady J moved up fast and got in my face, my Spider swarmed up and went over to say hi, they did pretty well too dealing 6 damage. Johan also showed her what for, but took a riposte when I flipped the black joker. Turn 3 started and I won the Init flip. I looked at the board and decided to let Joss die to the Peacekeeper so I could have my spider swarm deliver the message to Lady J. Then since its a melee expert 2 it started attacking her. I wasn't drawing any books so i was really liberal with my fate hand cheating anything that I could since I knew I was going to ditch my hand at the end of the turn anyways. He took first blood when the Peace Keeper killed Joss, I responded having Johan kill the Judge. Lady J killed Johan and dropped the Spider swarm to 2 hp. Ramos electrical fired a Death Marshall down and the Electrial creation buzzed the last wound off the Peacekeeper. He finished my spider swarm with the austringer and last death marshall hitting it.



Turn 4 started the board was looking barren. Ramos had high tailed it away from Lady J and was desperatly trying to make it to another board edge so he could live. He was popping out spider constructs and those were harrassing the Austringer. Lady J shot the Brass Arachnid dead, and we looked at the board. Ramos was deep on his side of the board. The Austringer was dead from the mini spiders attacking him, and the Death Marshall was pinned to a piece of terrain he needed for claim jump. So we called it there so bill could throw his guys in for the painting contest. It ended 6vps for ramos, 2 for Lady J. The score doesn't show how close the game really was. had we played it out I would have had only ramos alive as he ran over and anihilated my poor little spiders with the lady. Still a great game.

So after the game ended, Everyone got together and voted on the painting contest. There were two levels, the Intermediate and the Expert level. On the Intermediate side the crews were:

Lord Chomp Bits, accompanied by Teddy, Candy, and Kade, an evil little kid theme force
Marcus, A Waldegiest, A sabertooth, a rattler, and a Jackalope
Last was Seamus and his wonderful horde of zombie ho's

The Seamus Crew took second, which was cool, but Honestly they weren't as good as the Marcus crew in my eyes. But the real winner was the Creepy Kids and Chompy. Our very own Laura Schier(soon to be Kelmelis) painted this crew up, and I did of course vote for it. There was an entry in the Expert side that I would have said should be in the intermediate side, and even if they were I would have still voted for the creepy kids and Chompy.

Now for the Main Event! I was in a time crunch because I was going straight to my parents for a family dinner after the painting contest. But thats neither here nor there. The entries!

The Ortega Family, all 5 of the crazy gun slingers
Lady J, 2 Death Marshals, An Austringer, and the Judge
Viki, Viki, Taelor, Johan, and I want to say a gunslinger (I might be wrong, sorry Jay)
Kirai, Datsue-Ba, Ikiryo, a Seishin, and an Onryo


Anyways the real deal was that Jay managed to get his crew fully painted, and damn did they look awesome, as is the usual with a Wookie painted force. So Everyone looked over the Crew, and I was pleased that it took people a while to vote. Jay even complimented on how much better I was getting at painting. Finally after what was near a half hour, Chris began to announce the winners. Jay took Second which elated me as it meant!



So my Kirai crew actually managed to win it for me, Chris is ordering me a pack of Wyrd bases, I chose the Victorian set, they will be used to Base a small guild force that i'm starting up, its mostly the Ortegas. If anyone saw the final vote tally I would be interested to know how close it was, im betting it was 1-2 votes. So here they are the Award Winning Kirai and Crew