Bad Squiddo Kickstarter

 
Bad Squiddo have a Kickstarter live at the moment. They've got a whole bunch of new fantasy miniatures to expand on their existing line. They aren't for a particular system, but would work for general fantasy RPGs such as D&D and Pathfinder, and quite a few would also really suit Runequest, which is hard to find good minis for!

Annie's a friend, and I'm a huge fan of these minis, so if you can spare a few quid, consider backing the Kickstarter. It's a short one, and ends this Tuesday at 8pm UK time, so you haven't got long.

Malifaux Battle Report - Plant Explosives, Viktorias vs Molly

 

It's been a whole while since I played Malifaux, so decided to grab a game to remind myself of the rules. One of the London players volunteered to help out and brought a Resurrectionist Molly crew to face my Outcast Viktorias crew.

We were playing Plant Explosives so I yeeted Bishop up the field, pulling Taelor some of the way to get a marker down.

Archie charged in and smacked Bishop pretty hard. Taelor then swung in but couldn't quite finish Archie off. The next turn, Archie smushed them both, taking out two of my heavy hitters...

I didn't have much left that could threaten Archie or the Rogue Necromancy so mostly ended up with my scheme runners (ineffectively) running away from them.

One Vik got taken down, while the second went to go shank up one of the new Molly crew models, but found them a tough nut to crack.

Teleporting Crooligans were dropping scheme markers all over the place, and I was falling further and further behind in scoring.

My Prospector and Ronin made one last brave attempt to get some scoring down, but my numbers were low enough that markers were just getting taken out faster than I could put them down. We called the game there with a solid win for Molly.

I definitely don't really know what I'm doing just yet, but it was good to get a game in. I enjoyed the game itself even if I did get a kicking. There's some more figures I need to assemble, and a bunch of painting to be done...

Wherein a rambly post happens because I'm not blogging the housework...

 

Please find this picture of an awkward adolescent waterfowl learning to forage, which is as good a representation of me trying to tidy my flat as I can find. I've not got any painting or assembly done while I've been either tidying, LARPing, or feeling under the weather. But, plenty has been going on, so here's a bit of an update as to what's been going on...

I have managed to get a bunch of sorting done of my Flesh and Blood cards. A kind member of the UK community sends out a whole pile of common cards for the cost of postage to new players, and I've supplemented this by buying a few singles of rarer cards that are particularly useful for the hero I'm playing. Once the last of them arrive, I'll likely pop down to Dark Sphere for an "Armory Night".

The new competitive "season" for 40K has come out. I picked up the cards and markers for it as I really enjoyed the game of the current edition I had so far. I've got another Crusade game coming up soon, too. I need to line up my Astra Militarum clear out, followed by painting up some models for the new edition.

My copy of Tome of Tombs by James Holloway arrived! James is an old friend from LARP who also creates one of my favourite podcasts. This is a system-neutral zine for creating tombs and so on for fantasy RPGs. If you're regularly running fantasy RPGs, this is definitely worth a look.

Bangarang in the Gutterlands is a little skirmish game by Bill Making Stuff. It turned up recently and I haven't had a chance to nose through it. It's definitely got a home made vibe to it, which seems to be a more and more common aesthetic people are going for at the moment.

Also arriving this week was the Marauder Giant "Made to Order" from Games Workshop. I remember seeing this miniature in my old White Dwarfs, and when I saw that it was being re-released for a limited window, I absolutely had to get one. I doesn't go with my current Bretonnian Old World force, but I'm going to hang onto him until a suitable project shows up.

On an impulse, I ordered the White Dwarf anniversary figure at the same time as the Marauder Giant. I didn't have a particular reason I can remember.

What really impressed me about it was the assembly. It's a monopose model, which is fine on a character you won't want multiples of, but the way it fits together is really quite simple, with pretty large pieces and nothing super fiddly. This sort of kit is pretty accessible to a less experienced modeller, but is still going to look amazing at the end of it.

And finally, the Vampire Queen by Ana Polanšćak and Meridian Miniatures. It's a big monster model with optional wings and tail and two head options. Ana is the creative mind behind Gardens of Hecate. This is definitely an excellent final monster for some kind of folk horror campaign - I'm still having a think about how I might eventually paint it.

Beyond that, I've had a game of Malifaux that I need to write up, and next weekend I'll be grabbing a game of 40K for the campaign that I need to prep for. The points have been updated and I have a few more points I can spend so I need to work out what I'm going to get...

Product Review - Corvus Belli Siocast Anathematic

 

I recently assembled the new Siocast Anathematic - a Combined Army heavy infantry for Infinity. This is a staple of "vanilla" Combined Army lists. An aspect of the Evolved Intelligence, a heavy infantry with Hidden Deployment and Mimetism -6. It's most commonly used as a Hacker, but there's a number of different other profiles that don't seem to see much game play.

The Siocast was pretty good to clean up and assemble - I didn't try and use anything other than a scalpel blade, which you need to cut with rather than brush with. Everything fits together really quite nicely. The one danger is that the Siocast bonds with superglue incredibly quickly - if you don't line something up correctly it can get stuck in the wrong place.

I tried to pull two pieces off when they stuck in the wrong place and the Siocast snapped instead. The superglue bonds more strongly than the strength of the material... That said, the breaks were incredibly clean and glued without so much as a visible line.

So, really - clean up carefully, dry fit everything and you'll be fine.

UK Games Expo - RPGs, Books and Accessories

 

I picked up a whole bunch of bits and pieces that aren't miniatures at UK Games Expo. First up is "hobbit girl autumn", a zine project by Jens Brasier. I was ambling late in the show and just got nattering to Jens on her stall, and liked the conversation sufficiently that I decided to buy something, and settled on this. It's a series of short stories and art of hobbit ladies in autumn. It's very chill and cosy.

Hobgoblin is a fantasy wargame created by Mike Hutchinson, the creator of Gaslands. I already backed the Kickstarter for a PDF of the rules, but picked up a deck of the cards you use in the game to make it easier to play if I do get around to trying it out.

Ex Libris is by my friend Eleanor Hingley. It's a solo play game about being a magical librarian. Definitely an easy sell.

"The what on the Border where?" was on the same stall. It's an interesting little ?exercise? where you create an old school style adventure. I don't know how to explain it, really, but I found it rather interesting.

Talking Thunder is a two person letter writing game about living under a dystopian oppressive regime. This is another game by Eleanor Higley. This is definitely one to have a little bit of emotional oomph spare before playing!

Senet is a board gaming magazine. I'd not come across it before, and it only has a print version and no PDF / online version. Board Games aren't my major jam - I like them but wargaming and RPGs are way ahead of them in my priorities - but this is a really solid review magazine that lets you know about stuff you wouldn't otherwise find out about.

SoulMuppet were giving away some QuickStart copies of Paint the Town Red , a game about sad vampires. In the player tips, it includes the line "be an impulsive, hedonistic disaster".

I think a lot of my friends will like this game very much.

It is coming to Kickstarter later this year.

While I was at the SoulMuppet stand, I spotted this game, Teeth, with a little post it said "Bridgerton Meets Buffy in West Yorkshire", at which point I knew I had to buy it. There wasn't much reason involved beyond that.

Finally, these "Dungenerator" cards, again from SoulMuppet, allow you to make a dungeon layout in a hurry. It seemed useful, so I picked them up too.

UK Games Expo - Demos

 

I had a couple of demos at UK Games Expo. There were a lot more being offered than that, but there were often big queues and there weren't many things I was super keen to try out.

First up, I got a demo game of Shatterpoint. We got to play a turn, with two players on each side, so we didn't get a huge amount of experience of the rules, but the little I played of it seemed to feel really quite Star Wars-y, and the units seemed to act as you'd expect - droid troopers shooting at a Jedi had a Bad Time, for example.

I may have been at a bit of a disadvantage due to the Clone Wars era not being My Star Wars, but I did feel like the choice of having two people a side on the demo tables somewhat hurt the ability to get a full feel of the game. So my impression was broadly favourable, but not really enough to feel like I had an informed opinion on getting into the game or not.

The other game I got to try out was the Modiphius Fallout: Factions. The demo table was very pretty, it was one on one, and the demo agent did a solid job of explaining things.

The whole thing felt very "Necromunda" in terms of the level of detail - lots of individual stat lines (based on the SPECIAL system), lots of weapons to choose and a bit of book-keeping. I could definitely see that it would flow quite smoothly when you got the hang of it.

I would definitely recommend Fallout: Factions, though I won't be getting into it myself. If you enjoy Necromunda but are looking for something different, love Fallout, or are a little bit over Necromunda being spread over quite so many books - definitely pick this up. There's plenty of models from Wasteland Warfare already, and it's not like there's a shortage of folk who adore the Fallout setting.

The reason I won't be getting into it is that I have enough games of this complexity - I'm not after another skirmish campaign game right now. For me, Shatterpoint's "all you need is in the box" and models having set equipment with a few cards swapping in and out is far more the gap I'm looking to fill in my schedule. I think Fallout is doing very well at the market it's aiming at, it's just I'm not currently the target market for it.

UK Games Expo - Flesh and Blood

 

A friend of mine is really into the CCG "Flesh and Blood", and the UK Games Expo was the only place a particular promo card was going to be available... If you played in certain tournaments. So I agreed to sign up to play a tournament for a game I'd never played, and thought it'd be interesting to document the process.

The tournament was on the Sunday, so on the Friday I headed to the stand for Flesh and Blood and asked for a demo. That went well, but the free deck you get for having a demo wasn't tournament legal, so I picked up a pre-constructed deck for a character called Victor.

The premise of Flesh and Blood is that you're playing a hero with weapons and armour, fighting other heroes with weapons and armour. You select your hero first and equip them, then the deck you build represents the attacks and defences you have, whether that's fighting or magic.

There's two major tournament formats. The first is called "Constructed", and its broadly expected you'll build your decks yourself, with only one pre-constructed deck available at the moment. The second is called "Blitz", where your hero has to be a "young" version of themselves, but they sell a significant number of pre-constructed decks that you can use out of the box to play.

In this case, it was a "Blitz" tournament, which I'd picked as it meant I could use a pre-constructed deck.

My first game was against a hero called Vynnset, a "Runeblade" who uses a mix of magic and fighting. Victor is a Guardian, whose basic premise is taking a lot of damage and then hitting like a truck. Unfortunately, "out of the box", he doesn't really have much defence against magic, so I was very quickly smushed. But I felt like I was getting the hang of things!

I was handed a few extra promotional cards for playing. This is apparently quite a common thing. The players were all really welcoming and friendly. It reminded me quite a bit of how the Infinity scene is - competitive, but friendly and welcoming with it.

My next three games were against Blaze (a wizard), Nuu (an assassin) and Emperor (another wizard). Remember how I mentioned that the out of the box Victor deck doesn't have any defence against magic? Blaze even exploded Victor for all 20 of his health during my turn as some kind of instant interrupt... That said, I'd gotten Blaze down to 3 health so I could see how you could win with a slightly more prepared deck.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game! I could see that the different hero classes create plenty of different play styles. I did dive in the deep end with my first non-demo games being at a huge event where rare promo cards were being given out, so there was always going to be a disparity in the space. When I get a little more time I'll probably pop down to my local store and give some of their gaming nights a go.

If you like card games, I'd definitely give this a go. It probably requires a bit of investment of time and money to really get something out of it, but you could also absolutely buy a few "Blitz decks" and play at home with friends with the pre-constructed decks out of the box and nothing else.

UK Games Expo - Miniatures

 

I tried not to go too mad with getting miniatures at UK Games Expo, as its not like I have a shortage of miniatures to paint right now... First up are the multi-part Battlemechs from Catalyst, a I can't really get them from anywhere else...

The Phoenix Hawk and the Wolverine both work as Lyran Guards, so that's nice and simple. The Eris and the Rifleman are both not really suited to the Lyrans, so I'm thinking they'll join my militia force.

Finally, the Stormcrow and Vulture, which are Clan Omni-Mechs. While I'm not against playing my Lyrans in the "ilClan era" (the modern setting), both of these mechs aren't quite right for that either. So, its likely I'll pick a Clan paint scheme for a few Mechs. I'm a bit torn between Sea Fox and Jade Falcon, and will probably end up picking based on a paint scheme I like.

There are a couple of freebies I picked up, which is definitely guilt free. First up is this lich for Necropolis 28. He was being given out loose, and that pointing figure was definitely making me anxious...

I also had a good chat with the person behind Fauxhammer. He had a bunch of painted power armoured figures with his face on it. It was good to chat with him, and I'm sure I'll find a use for this.

I grabbed some filament printed scenery from Crafted Campaigns. I picked these because they were really nice practical pieces that weren't so specific you won't get much use out of it, and they were robust looking scatter of rocks and vegetation that looked pretty easy to paint. I'm not sure where they are on the website, sadly.

I had to pick up the latest miniatures from Bad Squiddo. She's got four halfling adventurers, which given I'm currently painting a few halflings at the moment, I really wanted to grab. These ones have some more obvious spellcasting types, which are good options to have available.

Finally, another freebie, but the miniature I'm most excited about of everything here. This is a Bucklerman for Warcrow, Corvus Belli's new game. If I was some kind of professional, I'd be assembling and painting this as a massive priority for the internet traffic from being early to publish... But I'm busy tidying the hobby space and have a LARP to go to right now, and then have a bunch of stuff I'm in the middle of painting that I want to finish...

WIP Wednesday - Battletech and D&D Adventurers

 

I just spend the majority of the weekend tidying the hobby room - in the end I got four crates of stuff and three other big boxes of stuff all up to our storage unit to make more space in the flat. That was at the expense of getting some painting done, but I've got a few things on the table.

I'm getting a Battletech Lance painted up, and alongside that are the leftover Warmonger Halflings from January, and a rogue from Strata Miniatures.

The painting scheme for my Lyran Guards Battlemechs is pretty simple and I think I've got it down now. I've started off with a thorough drybrush of navy blue and light grey to get the basic colours blocked in. Next will be a lighter drybrush, a little tidying and a few details.

I've got quite a lot of posts about UK Games Expo to get out over the next few posts, so it'll be a while before I check back in again on the painting... Hopefully there will be plenty to report on.