Receiving TAG Raid, and Other Sorting

 

It's been a busy hobby weekend here, as I've been tidying up, and checking my delivery of TAG Raid - a board game / battle arena game set in the Infinity universe, with a lot of Infinity compatible miniatures included. I picked up two full sets (mostly paying for the second with the money I'd got selling off my spares from the Defiance Kickstarter) so I could paint up one full set for the game and then loot the second box for miniatures for my factions and sell the spares.

First, though, a whole bunch of tidying. There were quite a few models in the basket of putting away later that had been there a good long while, so I gave them a sort. Quite a lot of the bigger D&D monsters went away into the new KR case I'd picked up at SELWG, but I realised I needed one more, and have now ordered it.

The painting desk is also drowning in miniatures - a Wizkids dragon awaiting photography, a whole ton of Morats who I've had assembled and are being put away for now, and a finished Brushchewer commission that's awaiting photography...

Meanwhile, over here we have a big pile of repairs that have been building up a while, some more of those big D&D models, and a Thunderbrush commission for my NA2 and Qapu Khalqi that have been photographed and just need putting away now.

Another thing that arrived in the post recently are these Jon Hodgson backdrop books for miniature photography. I've not played around with them yet, but they seemed easy to use and the art is amazing. I got mine via a Kickstarter, but if they look like something you'd like, Bad Squiddo has a pre-order deal running at the moment.

I'd ordered a whole bunch of TAGs and Heavy Infantry for cheap alongside the Kickstarter for various factions I play. I've had a few mispacks recently, so I went through every single box and checked each part in turn so I don't come to build something in a few months and find something missing, or have to get one of my commission painters to take the photos I need for Corvus Belli's excellent missing parts service.

The game itself also has a lot to go through. Fortunately, the Rulebook had clear pictures of everything in the box so it was easy to check.

The mining TAGs, which are used as Triphammers in Infinity, are single piece PVC plastic, and pretty solid quality. I'm also excited  that they need precisely no assembly whatsoever, and I'll be able to run a Triphammer whenever I fancy now.

There are a lot of metal miniatures to go through, though. For each box and supplement, I need to go through, and check every single miniature is there...

... and then that every single part of each miniature is there in turn. It's a time consuming process, but really important when you've had a big order come in.

Anyhow, that's enough chatting from me. I need to get back down the part checking mines!

Warcrow Demo Game

 

Corvus Belli has been promoting Warcrow quite a bit as they develop their foray into fantasy wargaming. But is it any good? Hearing that the first demos in the UK would be at SELWG, which is just up the road from me, I decided to go on an expedition to find out...

The demo set wasn't painted yet, having only arrived on the Wednesday before the show! They were lovely crisp sculpts with plenty of detail and looked like they'd be great to paint. These models are the ones intended for the starter set. I picked the northern tribe faction which is a mix of orcs and elves.

The other side of the starter set are the Embersig faction - which is a human, elf and dwarf faction. The orc faction played with tougher fighters, while Embersig had troops with more morale and discipline.

The demo game was around the control of the central objective. It's alternating activations, but with a mechanic where a unit can push itself to act twice. Embersig took initiative, and headed for the objective.

I used my wizard to buff the orc fighters, over-powering the spell by taking "Stain" on the caster. The demo game has this risk causing you damage, but the wider game is likely to have a more variable mechanic.

The orcs were charged by the humans and took some damage but didn't fall back. When they fought back, they won the fight without causing any casualties, the fear they were causing pushed the Embersig unit back away from the objective.

The Embersig wizard then used a spell to push the orcs off the objective. Rude!

While the northern tribe wizard tried to claim the objective at the end of the turn, the Embersig leader took control of the objective by being better at claiming objectives than the wizard.

I started the last turn by having the orc leader charge in and smush the Embersig leader into the ground. Can't claim an objective when you're cut down, can you?

I was really worried about the Embersig wizard repeating their clever push spell losing me the game, so I reasoned that a northern tribes wizard would punch better than an Embersig wizard. This proved correct and a surprised Embersig wizard fell to the bludgeoning of the northern tribes wizard.

Now the orcs charged into the Embersig Infantry and cut several of them down. It seems that models are more powerful on the charge, so moving so that you get the charge is a big deal!

Cutting down several Embersig solders, the couple of survivors fled the combat, leaving the field in the hands of the northern tribes! Victory for the orcs and their allies!

The game is currently in beta, and the game mechanics may change before publication. That said, the game as it currently stands seems really promising. You get extra move and better attacks if you charge, so there's a motivation to take initiative and manoeuvre to get the charge.

Add to that the ability to push your troops at the risk of them getting exhausted, an over-cast mechanic for magicians, and a morale system that causes you to retreat a significant distance if you fail a morale check in combat. This adds up to me as a game where movement and positioning are going to be incredibly important. I can already see how different factions might focus on different aspects of the game for their strengths and weaknesses. I'm watching with deep interest as to what comes next...

An outing to SELWG Show 2023

 

Sunday was the SELWG Show 2023. It's held in East London, and was about an hour's trip each way for me to get to. It has a Bring and Buy, that I took a bag full of stuff along to, and managed to clear out a few bits and pieces I wasn't using.

My main reason for attending the show was that I'd seen an announcement that there would be demos of Warcrow. This is the new fantasy wargame from Corvus Belli. I had a great demo game that I'll write more about later, but I'm now even more excited by the potential of it.

The focus of SELWG seems to be around historical gamers, both in terms of the demo games and sellers. There was a good bit of Games Workshop stuff, a few other big names (Warlord, a shop with Mantic, etc) and D&D bits and pieces too, but it was probably a little under half of what was there.

There were several impressive and fancy participation games. I've seen quite a lot of them at Salute before, but that's kind of fine from my point of view. Salute is a busy day - a smaller, quieter show is a good time to get more time to play some different games.

Participation games are not really my thing, but if you like them, there were plenty of options to try out at SELWG. I don't think it's a show I'd travel hugely far for, but as I'm in London and its in London, it's a good option for me.

I failed to get any photos of the traders, but there's two I would like to call out. Disain Studio does a bunch of 3D printed models, particularly animals and so on, so plenty of options for fantasy RPGs and wargames that use them. Meanwhile, Rok Minis do some nice small scale boxed sets that are a good self contained hobby project and game. It's also stuff that's suitable for smaller scale games - Epic, Battletech, Warmaster and so on...

My only big purchase at the show was an extra KR Multicase, which isn't very photogenic, so I guess this post ends here?

How do you end blog posts? I've never quite got the hang of it. I just run out of words.

Infinity Battle Report: Taking New Models to Supplies

 

My latest batch of Infinity assembly came back from the person I commission it out to, and on a whim I decided to just take all the new units in a single list, along with the Gator which I managed to finish building the evening before...

I arranged a game of Supplies with a friend who is still learning Infinity. They were bringing JSA, although I wrote my list before I remembered what faction they play...

To be clear, this is not a good list, nor is it meant to be...

The new units were the Heckler, the Motorized Bounty Hunter, the Cube Jager, the Zondnautica and Aida Swanson. Plus, of course, the Gator that I'd assembled. Broadly, the idea here was for the Gator to clear any big threats, then free up space for attack pieces like Aida or the Zondnautica to sweep into the gaps.

The holes in this list are broadly the lack of MSV and the lack of Hacking Devices. I brought a Killer Hacker to defend the TAG, but lacked anything to lock down enemy heavy infantry, which in a faction like Nomads was a definite oversight.

I set up the Gator on the right hand side, with the Moderators, one of whom is my Lieutenant, chill out on nearby rooftops. A Reaktion Zond and Warcor cover my ARO presence.

Meanwhile on the left, my bikes were ready to sweep up the flank, while Aida chilled out in the middle with the intent of being a Problem.

JSA took the first turn and a bike hacker went and grabbed a box under spoke thrown by Yojimbo, and then ran away.

I opened my turn having the Gator running up a ladder to take out some of the JSA ARO pieces...

Bother.

This basically took the Gator out of the battle. I rolled poor dice and took a missile and a flash pulse and it All Went Wrong. Aida Swanson went for a little walk and shot the awful link team Missile Launcher to death instead, but that was most of what I managed to achieve this turn...

The bike hacker came back out from it's hidey-hole. Yojimbo grabbed the box and headed back to safety, while the bike hacker then ran and grabbed a second box and also settled down at the back of the board.

 

With minimal options left, I ran the Zondnautica Spitfire up to try and clear the Ryuken Unit-9. There was a brief exchange of gunfire, but it ended in the biker a smoking corpse and the Ryuken Unit-9 was unharmed.

Off camera, my Cube Jager managed to grab a box under the cover of a Morlock's smoke.

Neko Oyama proceeded to go on an absolute rampage down the centre of the table and smushed my centre. The Tomcat Engineer came on to try and take out Yojimbo, now hiding on a roof. A couple of flamethrower shots were dodged, and then the Tomcat was brutally cut in half and I was out of the running...

Still, I had a fun game, and got a good idea of what at least some of the units do. I'll probably try and write an actually good list for my next practice game, though...

A week focussed on Infinity

 

I've had this Nomad Gator "in assembly" for weeks and weeks now, but I wanted to use him in a game on Sunday, so I knuckled down on Saturday evening and got him fully assembled.

Readers with memories may recall that I excitedly mentioned having two weeks holiday in a blog post, but then September only had the Mutant Marshes "scenery fingers" finished. In the end, it was a mix of the "too much work in progress" issue, and my needing an Actual Break.

So I focussed much of my time on sorting out putting away models and sending half finished projects off to commission painters, neither of which are particularly photogenic or interesting things for the blog. That said, there's a bunch less "clutter" around than there was before, so I should be able to get a bit more focus in when I am doing some hobby.

The new Operations Deck for Infinity arrived. This has a new set of Classified Missions in it, which are random secondary objectives in a lot of tournament missions. There's also a new way to play, called Resilience Operations. There's a lot for me to think about how this affects play with Infinity. I may write a ramble on that later, once I've had a chance to read and digest them...

One small note if anyone else is building the Gator... This upper body is four pieces - the centre piece, the two side pieces and the back piece... However, you shouldn't do what I've done here!

It turns out that you can't put the body on the legs if you've attached the back piece! Fortunately the glue hadn't dried yet, so I was able to fix it. You can get away with attaching the side pieces to the top before you attach them to the legs.

I also got my game in at the club on Sunday. It was a game of Supplies against JSA where I fit as many newly assembled models into the list as I could. This wasn't the greatest of plans, but I'll report back on that more later...

Wizkids and Reaper Bones Adventurers

 

My last batch from Brushchewer had a few Wizkids adventurers, along with a Reaper Bones miniature I'd not gotten around to.

First up were a couple of female dwarf spellcasters. I'm quite excited by the Pathfinder adventure Sky King's Tomb right now, so dwarfs seem particularly cool to me at the moment.

Meanwhile, we have a fighter with two weapons who's gained some blue warpaint, and Andowyn Thrushmoor from Reaper. A few more heroic adventurers for when I finally set up an in person game...

Wizkids: Monsters of Exandria Set 3

 

Another box I picked up during the Wayland flash sale was the Wizkids "Monsters of Exandria" Set 3. I picked them up because of the look of them, so I didn't realise when I bought them that these are all specific monsters from the first season of Critical Role.

The first season of Critical Role is before I got into it, and a lot of it isn't really my cup of tea. So once I started going through the box, I realised there was a bit more work than just using a pre-published stat block to use these in D&D games.

First up is Symphior. This is a cursed evil Celestial that was designed by Matt Mercer with the results of a viewer poll, which is why you have the weirdness of a tiny evil Celestial. For my use of this, I think that this is far more useful as a malicious fae, either as a summoned generic critter, or as part of an encounter in its own right.

The "abyssal abomination" is another Matt Mercer custom monster, but as a "creepy mutated person", it has a much wider potential for usage. This could easily be used for some kind of far realm incursion or a mad scientist's efforts. I'm also keen to use it as an Eberron creature for the Daelkyr cults of the Dragon Below, for which it's basically perfect.

Next up is a Naga Abomination, the last of the homebrew monsters. It's based on a Spirit Naga but with multiple heads. While it was used as a mutation, the five heads would work quite well as a Tiamat minion. It's definitely in the "boss monster" or highlight fight category, so there's plenty of options to see some use.

Finally we have Ghurrix and and "Servant of Ghurrix". While these are named characters, Ghurrix is a Pit Fiend and the Servant of Ghurrix is an Erinyes. These are high level, powerful devils who are likely to show up in the end game or mid game respectively. There's probably more Pit Fiend models than their Challenge Rating of 20 merits in terms of usability, but both devils are solid staples who can fit into any campaign with hellish forces as antagonists or allies of the antagonists.

All in all, this is a weird set that seems to mostly be aimed at collectors who are fans of the early show, rather than for game utility. That said, with a little thinking, there's plenty of games that these could fit into, although outside Critical Role, they're likely quite different campaigns. If you're not a Critical Role fan and a DM, this set is an assortment of rarely used monsters / homebrew that could easily provide something different for an antagonist - but it's certainly not a good pick for a newer DM who's looking for staples with a lot of reuse potential.

Reviewing how September went

 

I've finished painting the "Mutant Marshes" scenery pieces. I got these in a Kickstarter run by WilhelMiniatures. They are delightfully awful, and I'm very happy with the awfulness I've managed to instil into the paint jobs.

I'd tried some off brand undercoat in these that had not gone at all well when I'd used it on some Terrain Crate. I wasn't sure if this was a problem with the undercoat or the Terrain Crate plastic, so I gave them a solid base coat of Wraithbone before I painted them up using contrast paints. After the first round of contrasts, where I wet blended the green and purple, I did a bit of drybrushing to add more texture before finishing up the details such as the fingernails and the weeping sores.

To give you an idea of the scale of these things, here's a couple of heroic dwarfs facing off against a strange abomination in some corrupted dungeon.

I'm working my way through the Dungeon Fiends Starter set, having started with the ooze man. I was playing around with the techniques I learned in the Roman Lappat painting tutorial. I don't think I've quite gotten it right yet, but it was some good practice.

The troll is also coming along, with some basic colours dropped in to start working out what he's about. He's not done, by any stretch, but I'm pretty happy with the start of his colouring. I think I want to make his belly paler before I start building up the detail.

I was finding that while I've got one of the Dungeon Fiends done, I didn't get as much of a "happy success buzz" as I usually do. I'm unsure if its because I wasn't quite happy with him, or because as he's part of a group, he's not "finished" until the group is.

In case of the second, I've pulled out a few single models that I can do some nice simple paint jobs on in between the Dungeon Fiend project. I'm keen to up my productivity over the winter, and a few smaller wins to keep me feeling like progress is happening during the bigger projects seems to help quite a bit. Ideally, I want to get at least one project and two small things done in October.

I've already got enough models assembled and ready for paint to last me over a year, so my mental plan for October is to avoid start assembling anything new. I am part way through assembling my Nomad Gator TAG for Infinity, which I intend to get put together so I can try it in some games.

With the new Space Marine Codex out in a couple of weeks, I've held off from getting a learning game of 40K only to have to learn some different things in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, hopefully I'll get an Age of Sigmar game in before the end of October.

I am getting kind of keen to try painting some Games Workshop models - probably some Astra Militarum or Inquisition models I already have lying around. BUT, on the gaming side I want to get a game in, and on the painting side, I want to have got a bit more space cleared by finishing painting miniatures. Also, I still have, half assembled, the Gator, the Battletech starter and the Frameworks Kobolds, which shows the danger of starting (and failing to finish) yet another project. So, finish some models, clear the decks, then a new and fun thing...