Blood Bowl and a bit of game withdrawl

Im a big fan of Blood Bowl, have been since I first tried it a few years back. The problem I always run into is that its tough to keep a league afloat. But last week I got a buddy of mine to try and drum up some interest in his area, I did the same for the Huzzah guys and it seems like we have about 8-10 people ready to play. So lets hope this one lasts. I've made 2 teams, a Norse Team which is my standard guys. I find them a lot of fun. They can dish out an awesome beating and pretty much any team that faces them will get some points since they are all low armor. My other team is a Human team which I have never played before, but Im excited for.

Since Gen Con I haven't really been the same on mini games. Not blaming Gen Con or anything really, I think Im just in a down spot on malifaux and warmachine at the moment. But the past few weeks I've been out of commision on game nights. Im not really sure why it is, but I just feel a bit burned out. Its also why I haven't written anything up here in the last month. Board games still hold their fun, I just picked up Ascension and that game has been a blast. But Minis games aren't doing it so much lately.

On a completely different note RG3 continues to be a BEAST!!! he is fun as hell to watch and single handedly makes the Redskins entertaining.

Its Tuesday

I had no idea what to call this blog, its gonna cover a few things.



1st up is Im kind of on a Warmachine kick. Not sure how long it will last, but there is an event this weekend, its an achievment day I think is the best way to put it. And I'm going and bringing my Mercenaries. To that end I want to paint up the last few models of Shae's Crew and a couple for Drake McBain.

Paint List
2 Sea Dogs
2 Sea Dog Riflemen
Drake McBain
Rupert Carvolo
Rover Warjack
Nomad Warjack
Sylyis (I dont even own this guy yet)

The Sea Dogs are top priority.



Next up I got Mei Feng in the mail finally. She, Kang, and the Emberling are assembled. The Rail workers are still on the sprue. Im tempted to melt them down into a litte clumps and fling them at Wyrd employess at Gen Con next year. Just so we are clear I believe that their table effectiveness is not reduces by being left on the sprue or melted down.
*Note* The Hat that Kang is wearing was taken from a Rail worker

Fantasy Football week 1 went well for me. I won my game and posted top score. Lets hope my team can avoid the injury bug that has plagued me the last few seasons.



Finally RG3 IS A GOD DAMN BEAST!!!! I have him on my fantasy team and lets face it at this point he's locked in as my season long starter. Peyton Manning can ride the pine!

I will try to remember to post up after the Even Saturday to get some thoughts out on how Im liking MKII which I haven't really played and to see how Im feeling about WM on the whole.

Smash Up the Awesome Review

Smash up is an awesome game, it says so on the box. It plays very easily and fairly quickly. There are 8 factions in the box, you take two of them, shuffle them together and that forms your deck. Next you place bases in the center of the table. These are the spots that you are trying to destroy. Then you take turns playing 1 minion and action each turn. Once a base gets to a certain level its destroyed and players earn points based on how much strength their force had at its destruction.


This is a Base card. The top left number is the required strength to destory it. The large numbers in the middle are the points its worth once destroyed. 5 to the winner, 3 to second place, and 2 to third. Each base also has a special ability written at the bottom of it.

Next up the Factions

Aliens
A very "Mars Attacks" feel to their art work. The Aliens are average in their minion strength, don't have a lot of kill actions, but do have the ability to send a lot of minions back to their owners hand. They can choose their own minions or their Enemies.

Wizards
The Wizards have some of the lower strenghts in the game. But they make up for this by allowing their side to play multiple actions a turn and draw a lot of cards. While they won't likely do the heaviest lifting on your side they will support your other faction quite a bit.

Ninjas
The Ninjas are masters of trickery and Death. They come with the most kill actions of any faction. And they have some neat tricks that allow them to swap their minions in play with ones from their hands, or even add new ones as a base is being destroyed to claim more Victory Points.

Dinosaurs
The Dinosaurs have the least amount of trickery, but back that up with the most power. King Rex here is the strongest minion in the game. Im not sure what else to say... they have lasers too.

Pirates
Right behind the Ninjas in kill power are the Pirates. The Pirates have some ways to move minions around to different bases, both theirs and their enemies. They also have ways to keep their minions in play after a base is destroyed.

Robots
Every faction has 10 minions and 10 actions, except the Robots, they have 18 minions and 2 actions. In place of the other actions they get Micro-Bots, 1 strength minions who have bonus effects on them. Robots have a lot of ways to play muliple minions a turn, and their 2 actions let you draw more cards for each minion on a base. The Micro bots all tend to have stacking powers as well.

Tricksters
These guys I had the most trouble understanding. What they do is play Action cards that remain in play on each of the bases. These things offer either a bonus to the Trickster or a penalty to their foes. They also have ways to make people discard cards from their hand while they draw cards. They are a very Control/lock-down based faction.

Zombies
The Zombies discard pile may as well be their hand. They have an amazing ability to play minions and actions from there as though they were in their hand. And given the right circumstances can drop an entire zombie horde in one fell swoop.

So I have played 5 games now. And thus far I have not seen a single combonation that looks unbeatable. I did hear that the Robot/Wizard combo was a poor one, due to the Robots having very few actions and Wizards wanting more. But I would like to see it on the table again to be sure it wasn't just a bad draw. To this point this is easily my number 1 Gen Con purchase. Its fun, fast, and easy to learn. The Rulebook is rather hilarious, and does its best to make the rules as clean as possible. I would fully recommend this game. It only goes up to 4 players so if your group is far too big for that be warned now.

They gave these away at Gen Con

At Gencon I spoke with the AEG creative director and he told us that a new expansion was already in the works and would be released either at the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. With 4 new factions: Ghosts, Steampunk, Russian Bear-Cavalry, and Plants(little shop of horrors) This expansion gives you the ability to play a 6 player game... Im not sure the game works well at that level though. But, I can tell you right now that I will be getting it as soon as humanly possible.

A Crap Load of Swag

So here are the pics of the things I picked up at Gen Con.




Some Privateer Pick ups

Storm of Shadows

A new round of Plastic Arkham Characters

Some new stuff for A Touch of Evil

New Infinity Models

evil baby orphanage, and the Dragon Age RPG

My new board games

The awesomeness that is my new Malifaux dudes

Gen Con 2012

Im back from Gen Con safe and poor. I have pics of all the games and stuff I picked up, but those are on my camera and that is not with me. So Gen Con: The Photos, will be a later post. Lets get started

Wednesday: 5am I got my car packed up with Ellen and Rockett and drove it over to Mike's place. By 6am we were on the road. 10+ hours later we rolled into Indiapolis. Wednesday was decent. We played a few board games, had a light dinner and called in an early night.

Thursday: 10am the doors to the Con Hall open and I literally ran to Wyrd. I was really disapointed to find out Mei Feng's box set would not be there until Saturday. But shrugged, grabbed the book, Rail Golem, Metal Gamin, and Willie. Then we proceeded to hit a bunch of nearby booths, like Battle Foam, Flying Frog, and then looked at PP but saw the line was likely around 498 hours long and stretched all the way to Ohio. We ran around picking things up, I spent nearly 50% of my weekend budget in like 2 hours Thursday. It started to Pour so we met up with my Brother and ordered Pizza. I got sick so, we went back to room and played Last Night on earth. I passed out early.



Friday: I awoke feeling 100% better. Apparently I moaned in pain in my sleep, must have been me fighing my stomach bug! We hit the con floor for a bit then went off to try the IKRPG. We got in early sat down at the table and our Demo was being run by, Doug Seacat. No joke, it was awesome. I played the Arcane Mechanic who had a trusty Steajack, since we were an odd number of people Mike took over running my Jack. Ellen was the Magic Investigator, kind of like a Harry Dresden almost. Laura was an Alchemist Thief, and Chris was a Big ass soldier Troll. We ran through the adventure and I think everyone one of us loved the system. My biggest gripe of the entire weekend is that they only had like 300 books, and those were gone in like an hour. I plan to buy it as soon as it releases. Later Mike got a Copy of Level 7 and I got Smaash up (Smash up deserves its own blog post). We then met up for our True Dungeon. I've done True Dungeon before. Its fun, but very over-priced. We ran through the dungeon and with the exception of an annoying girl who was with us for half the dungeon until her parents came and yelled at her for something which made her leave and the rest of us cheer, It was a blast. Just not a $38 blast. It was more like a $20 blast. I ran the druid and did way better then I thought with my Druid Spells, getting 7/8 leaves correct to cast my spells. After that it was Dinner and Level 7. That game is kind of freaky.



Saturday: We awoke really damn early to go to the "Hickman's Killer Breakfast" That was a waste of $10. Mike could not hear anything and left after like 40 mins, and the rest of us felt the jokes got old and the entire thing just kinda ran too long so we left too. At noon we went on an awesome Brewery Tour around Indy. We hit 4 breweries and got rather drunk. The bus dropped us back off around 4pm, and we hit the hall for before Dinner so Mike could get Mage Wars and I could get Mei Feng... Except Mei Feng never came. Wyrd pretty well F***ed up their Gen Con this year. I vented a lot on this already and am over it. But this was a prety big botch in my eyes. After Dinner Ellen got Sick, (I swear it was someone almost every night, Mike had migranes and vertigo wednesday) But she felt better in like 2 hours so we made it back to the Hall and Played Flash Point. An AMAZING (Check that out ok, amazing in all caps. this game will blow your god damn mind and then give you cookies!) game where you play firemen trying to save people in a burning building. Its 100% co-op and about 314159265359x better then it sounds. I know right now you're thinking, firemen... really dude? I know this becasue I did the same thing. But then you play it and the game just rocks! This was the #1 surprise Gem of Gen Con. (Smash up is #2, but that game sells it self) So we put out fires until we felt like we might pass out.



Sunday: We hit the hall one last time, I thought I might make it home with some cash, but blew all I had left Sunday on Dice, Warmachine, and a few odds and ends. We rolled out around noon, stopped a lot on the way home to break up the trip. We got back to Mikes around Midnight, I dropped Ryan off around 12:40, and got home a bit after 1am.

This Gen Con rocked!!! A few mis-steps in events we did/didn't do. Should not have done killer breakfast, should have done MEGA robo-rally. (I have pics, words, can't do it justice) But this was an awesome trip overall.

Pics will come later.

Resser love

Pics from the new book

25 Stone Tuesday Tussle 8/7

So I lied, the next update is before Gen Con. Bill ran a 3 round 25 stone tournament last night, ended up with a great showing with 12 people there. I of course took Ressers.



Round 1 vs Bo and his evil Vicks.
I have played Bo 2 times before both with Marcus, thing did not go well for me in those games. This time I had a better Master with me though and Nicodem came to play. We had Shared Supply Wagon, I called Grudge on a Ronin who I dubbed; "Stabby Pony Tail Ho" and Hold Out, since I figured he'd be forced to protect his wagon he would have trouble coming to my Deployment Zone. The game went fairly quick, we finished in about 45 mins. Highlights - Sword Vicki destroyed the dead rider, who only made 1 attack that game. Unfortunatly (for not me) the Vicks were then in range of Nico who kept them paralyzed for the remainder of the game. The Grave spirit and Nico then then took turns bouncing Decay's off the Vicks (unreal how well that little guy can cast spells sometimes) Eventually the Vicks Fell, I killed my Grudged Ronin with a Slow to Die attack from my Crookedman. Both our Wagons made it into the center untouched and the game ended. I got 2 for Grude, 2 for Hold Out, and 3 for Supply Wagon. He got 3 for Supply Wagon, 0 for Thwart (ballsy call) and 0 for Stake a Claim... This one was rough, he just forgot to put the Convict on the Terrain, and I forgot it was a scheme for him, should have been 7-5, but it ended 7-3



Game 2 vs Dave and Zorida
We got Shared Deliver a Message, which made me cringe. I took Seamus with Sybelle and some Belles. The game featured a ton of killing and a large play mistake by me. On turn 4 I had Sybelle and Belle ready to deliver the Message but wasn't paying attention to that, I instead used Seamus to try and Kill Tuco, forgetting that he had Slow to Die and botching the turn. He then delivered the message right there. I did manage to wipe almost his entire crew, of Lilitu, Lelu, and Tuco. We both ended up grabbing both our schemes, I had Kill Protege Lelu and Stake a Claim, he had Stake a Claim and Kidnap. I ended up losing 8-6.

Game 3 vs Hugh and Kirai
We flipped Shared Plant the Evidence. I called Breakthrough and Eye for Eye. He called Grudge and Assassinate. I decided Nicodem could handle Kirai and took the old guy. I ended up with a clear line to Kirai on turn 2 and had both Crookedmen and Nico start blasting them. On turn 3 I had killed the Seishin and Lost love and had Kirai down to 3 wounds. She booked it away from them but landed near my night terrors who then finished her off. It was kind of amazing. From htere I just started to clean up his crew. The problem then became Eye for Eye. I ended up with 2 models left after forcing most of my crew to kill each other, but it was too many and I ended up winning 6-2.

So I ended up with 6 tournament points, a differential of +6, and 19 total VPS. That was good enough for 3rd, and very close to 2nd (Second place when 2-0-1 so he had 7 tournament points) It was a good time, im looking forward to the next one.