Product Review: Pathfinder Battles: Impossible Lands - Masters of Magic

 

I had a pretty restrained Black Friday, but did take the opportunity to grab a few heavily discounted Wizkids pre-painted boxes from Thistle Tavern. I've previously bought cards for Flesh and Blood from them, and was after a play mat I really liked, but on an impulse grabbed a few Wizkids figures.

This box was discounted to £11 from the £35-£40 range, and when I received it, I became gently fascinated by the choices made to put these figures together in a box that led to such a large discount.

Pathfinder's setting is the world of Golarion, and they facilitate a wide range of different game styles by having different areas of their world hit different tropes. The Impossible Lands are where a bunch of the weirder concepts are: here lies the wild west / steampunk gunslinger city, a post magical apocalypse wasteland, a high magic land, a land ruled by undead, a fey cursed lost kingdom and a small India themed high magic island.

So, first up we have a Rakshasa Maharaja and a Japalisura Asura. These high level fiends are a good medium level adversary, campaign villain or boss fight, but their complexity means you're getting a mildly disappointing paint job for a premium price. Finding any miniature that meets these monster descriptions is likely a challenge, but given their leader / manipulator energy, I'd probably end up searching for a higher quality miniature I could paint myself so they weren't a bit of a disappointment for a climactic battle.

Next up is an Ifrit Pyrochemist and a Manticore Paaridar. So, a mortal linked to the fire plane who's become an alchemist specialising in firey bombs, and a monk from a niche group who's absorbed monster energy in some way to try and improve their physical prowess.

These are excellent odd profiles to add into a fight as a henchman, specialist hireling or leader of a bunch of goons. You'd want to craft some narrative around the encounter and design the fight around them, but they'd be memorable and interesting.

The next models we have are Nex and Geb. These are the ancient rulers of the high magic land and the undead land, each of which is named after them. You might meet them as a quest giver but if you end up in a fight with them, you'll have an entire nation after you.

Frankly, these are baffling choices to have made, let alone put into such an eclectic box. You might need one or other of these in a weird, niche campaign, but even adventures set in their respective lands might never see either of them.

And finally . . . Nethys the god of magic, and Anong Aronak, the leader of the Dongun Hold.

I'm straight up stumped here.

No-one is going to be straight up fighting a God in almost any campaign, and picking a neutral deity not one of the evil ones, and making it a human sized figure at that, is pretty baffling. I thought maybe you could use this for the 10th rank "Avatar" spell that allows level 19 and 20 clerics to take the form of their god as a powerful divine shape change . . . but that spell makes you Huge, so this model remains utterly pointless.

Alongside that is the third "ruler of a country" model - in this case the dwarf who rules the dwarf hold who makes firearms for the wild west steampunk town. Probably more usable than the other two ruler figures by sheer dint of being a slightly more reasonable power level, it remains weirdly niche by not being a prominent figure from Alkenstar, where most of the adventures happen, but the lore obscure neighbouring dwarf hold that helps excuse the setting's firearms.

So, in short, these perfectly tolerable figures will be unlikely to all be used in the same canon campaign, make little sense to be in the same style of adventure, and all see only weirdly niche uses. They have plenty of options in weird homebrew campaigns, but they're never going to be your first choice purchase. It's a weird one for completionists and lovers of the whackier settings Pathfinder has to offer. And even then.

I definitely only got this because of how cheap it was. I don't understand why it exists.

Druze Bayram Security N4 Update - In Time for N5...

 

I commissioned Thunderbrush Studio to get my neon Druze updated for N4. A mix of me focusing on other factions and scheduling meant that I only got them back after N4 had been announced.

First up, we have a Triphammer. This a large mining suit repurposed to an improvised military TAG. This Ariadnan Triphammer came from the TAG Raid Kickstarter.

The other part of the mining contingent are these two Diggers. Miner's in Exo suits, these are heavy infantry with short ranged weapons. In Druze, they can join the Druze fireteams and provide some defensive resilience.

Next up is Fiddler, a special character engineer who is canonically trans. She's got a history in Aristeia, before moving into mercenary work, allowing her to be hired by the Druze faction.

The next group are Denma Connelly and some Zellenkriegers. These fighters who take part in illegal underground Aristeia rings often get involved in other illegal activities, meaning it makes sense that they might end up involved in some Druze Bayram Security black op.

Finally, a new Bounty Hunter, a Beasthunter, and a CSU. The first two are pretty standard mercenary types, while the latter can't normally be taken in Druze. I've picked her up for Reinforcement games and the extra where you get a free CSU.

I'm absolutely adoring the vibes that the Druze force is giving off now. You've got some notorious mercenaries, pirates, criminals, miners and independent contractors. Every background text you read for the eclectic profiles in the list really hangs together as part of a coherent whole. I still have a lot of affection for the Druze faction so will definitely be returning to them in N5...

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 1

 Back at the end of September, I went to the two day Infinity tournament at the LGT. With it being towards the end of the fourth edition of Infinity, I decided I wanted to take a lot of the more 'fringe' profiles from White Company so I'd had a chance to use them. At the time, it wasn't clear if White Company was going to be continuing into the new edition, but it's since been confirmed they're still available.

I was running two lists - the first used a Chaksa Longarm to lead a small fireteam, had John Hawkwood as Lieutenant and Taowu Holomasked as a second John Hawkwood. The second list ran the Guija TAG, and kept to a single combat group of ten models.

Game 1: Unmasking vs Tunguska

First up was Unmasking, and I was paired against a club mate who I'd not played before who was running Tunguska.

My Tiger Soldier dropped in to neutralise the Grenzer sniper who was dominating the field to stop me advancing.

I sent the Chaksa, Hawkwood and Valerya to hit the first console, but as the team approached, a Heckler with a Jammer revealed and isolated Valerya, leaving the team a bit hamstrung. Worse, this was the real Hawkwood, and he got taken out the following turn, leaving me in Loss of Lieutenant.

To try and swing the game back, I sent the Kunai Ninja after the Vostok, but he got caught by another model's ARO, and I didn't really have enough orders left to get to the consoles and the targets. In the end, it was a 9-0 loss for me, but it was good to get my first game ever with a friend.

Game 2: Resilience Operations vs Corregidor

Next up was Resilience Operations against another club mate, running Corregidor. This is a mission where you get your objectives by random card draw. You have different objectives from your opponent, and you don't know what your opponent is trying to do.

The typical Maasai Morans blocked up the centre. I was able to clear some of the Koalas by getting lines of sight to them, but had to be a bit cagey about getting close to the Morans early on as I didn't want to get targeted and hit by guided missiles.

The Tiger Soldier went for the model I suspected was the Lieutenant, but got some unlucky rolls and he got taken out. One of my squads over-extended a little bit and ended up getting completely exploded by the Vostok.

I had trouble pushing forward, and ended up making a run to try and control the centre with Hawkwood, but couldn't get enough points into the zones I needed to score. This left me with a 9-3 loss. I got thoroughly outplayed on positioning, and my opponent really earned his win.

Game 3: Countermeasures vs Druze Bayram Security

The last game of the day was Countermeasures, and I was up against Druze Bayram Security. I decided to take my list with the Guija and a single combat group.

My fireteam got a Repeater onto the Druze remote, immobilised it, and got into cover to try and make it through the next turn...

On the last turn, I sent my ORC Lieutenant up to clear the reaction pieces, but he got shot down... It was all down the the Blade Ops Engineer.

The Blade Ops managed to get the job done, getting some nanobots onto a Doctor to score some of the objective cards.

The Guija then got into gun fight with the Triphammer, and rather embarrassingly lost... But it wasn't enough, and the White Company managed to win the game 6-2.

So, having won one of the three games on the first day, I headed home for some sleep before returning for Day 2. Could I improve my win record on the second day?

White Company Reinforcements

 

Here's another batch of miniatures painted by Tesseract Miniature Studios for my White Company. These are most of the different options I need to play the "Reinforcements" option in the game, though I haven't had a chance to try that game mode yet. It's something that doesn't seem to have taken off when launched, but with the fifth edition held up a bit, maybe I'll see if I can find someone who wants to give it a go.

The Anaconda is a bit of a weak TAG. I picked up a whole bunch of them cheaply during the TAG Raid Kickstarter for the different factions I play. In N4 it's a bit fragile for what it costs, though it might have some utility as a reinforcement profile? Still, completionist brain insisted.

Bounty Hunters! The Motorised Bounty Hunter is for a different game mode, but I've included because that's probably not worth a single post by herself... The other three are all different limited edition Bounty Hunters from different editions of the game I picked up either at the time or through a recent "Happy Days" sale of older models.

So, a Hatail Spec Ops (the model on the left) isn't really a valid profile for Reinforcements or White Company, but I'd picked her up cheap at some point, and Spec Ops models make good proxies for things. At the time I sent this batch off, the non-limited "Samsa" model hadn't come out, so the Hatail will work fine for that.

The other model is a Monstrucker, who is a cheap engineer, and thus a good model to make up points in a small reinforcement contingent. Their reinforcement profile is regular rather than irregular, which brings up their cost, but I've had such success with Monstruckers in other factions that I think it's definitely worth a go.

Diggers have been one of the stand out mercenary profiles in N4 and in a typical fit of organisation, I've basically not used them for most of the edition. These heavily armoured deep space miners have been excellent corner guards, assault pieces and general mischief. White Company can only take them as reinforcements, but I'm planning on taking the profiles for an outing with Druze Bayram Security some time soon...

There's some Brawlers still to come from this batch, but other than that I'm likely holding on for White Company until the new edition drops and I see if there's any new profiles available...

Warhammer 40K vs Chaos Daemons

"Captain, you don't have the instructions."

"Oh, I read them on the way here, it's fine."

"Are you sure, sir?"

"Oh, absolutely, I just need to pull this lever here..."

The stomachs of every member of the Tallarn XVI turned in the same moment. Primaris Washdraft screamed, then threw up. Looking around, the air shimmering, they looked on in horror as swarms of strange twisted creatures stepped out into space.

Perhaps accepting a "simple routine maintenance operation" for the Necrons on their pylon technology was a little higher risk than it first appeared . . . especially when your CO thinks that reading instructions is for chumps...

Pushing forward, a hail of fire from the Guard vehicles blew away most of a Bloodletter squad.

But worryingly, swarms of demons started materialising behind the Guard lines.

The Manticore and the Guard squad opened fire on a some Bloodletters, leaving only a handful of survivors.

The Hellhound incinerated a squad of Flesh Hounds, taking some pressure off.

The daemonic cavalry charges into the Leman Russ, carving into the armour.

The bigger, slower moving daemonic troops started bearing down on the Guard.

The Guard reserves, two squads of Militarum Tempestus, grav-chuted in and opened fire on the Pink Horrors holding one of the objectives.

One squad charged in while the other failed to make the charge...

The squad who failed their charge didn't have long to regret it, as a Skull cannon shot most of them down before charging in and wiping out the remainder.

The Soul Grinder charged into the Guard squad.

It. Um. Didn't go well for the Guard.

The daemonic cavalry charged into the remaining troops, cutting them down.

It wasn't long before the handful of remaining troops from the expedition were cut down, but as they fell, the daemonic incursion started to fade. The Guard had held them off long enough for the objective points to be tied, making the game a draw.

Setting up for November success

 

In a gap in the weather, I managed to get these Conquest Games miniatures undercoated so they're ready to paint. I've gotten a lot of my half finished assembly projects done, so I'm hoping to get on to painting shortly.

The last unfinished assembly project are the Bretonnian men at arms. It took me a bunch of time to dig out all the bits for them as part of my tidying up.

Trying to get all twenty five done at once is a recipe for disaster. It'll be way too many, and get overwhelming. I'm planning on breaking it down into individual ranks to make it a bit more manageable.

Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternals vs Seraphon

Back in September, I finally got my Stormcast Eternals out to get in my first game of Age of Sigmar. Mine were painted by Squiggle's Studio. One of the members of my club had offered me a game and had brought his Seraphon.

I won the first turn and moved a bunch of models forward and shot a few Seraphon, but then on the Seraphon turn they advanced back then charged into the Stormcast, causing a hefty chunk of casualties.

I brought on Yndrasta to try and take out the big Seraphon general. She's a monster hunter with huge bonuses on killing monsters.

Ah. Oh dear. It's like that, is it?

I did charge forward and take out a unit of Skinks with my spear troops, but a lot of other troops elsewhere were dying horribly...

On the right flank, my other spear unit had been whittled down by shooting, and the survivors had charged the skinks. They cut down a chunk of them, but the wait of numbers pulled down all but the hero...

Which led to a somewhat cartoon moment of the hero beating up the small lizards not realising their big cousin was bearing down on them...

So, unsurprisingly, I lost my first game. It seems like advancing on the first turn is bad? I'm sure there's something clever you should do.

Did I have fun? Yes. It was good fun and I could see the broad shape of how the game is meant to play. That said, I was spending most of the game wishing that I was throwing my minions in front of me, chewing glowing green rocks, and screaming "more-more power" at my unreliable wonder weapons before they explode.

In short, I really want to get my Skaven on the table...