ACon TT Finished... Well, close enough anyway.

Segment complete.  I'm not certain if I ever said why I had originally started this army; but it was for the Adepticon Team Tournament in 2013.  As of this even the 1,200 point force is complete and pictured below.  Minus the unit of Pegasus Knights this is also my 1,000 point How You Use It list.  All I have to do is slap together a display board/tray for the 1k event (My teammate built the TT board) and I'll be raring to go.

Blood in the Basement... Round 1 Turn 3

We got together just 3 days back and ran our wrap up of turn 2 and moved on to turn 3.  As a recap of where we ended before fighting battles on turn 2 you can see the map below.

Book keeping is getting rather difficult at this point.  The pain that comes with campaigns I suppose.  However we forged ahead!  The battles concluded as such.

Chip defeated Ryan.
Chip earned Bolstered Ranks giving him D6x50 next time the army fights.
Ryan's army was scattered and earned itself some Inexperienced Leaders giving a unit in his army Stupidity next time it fights.

Dave defeated Josh.
Dave lives in infamy giving Josh hatred against him next time they fight.
Josh's army was scattered and he gained Vengeance will be Ours! giving him hatred in his next fight against Dave!

Dan and I did not get a chance to squeeze in a game.  We both work a lot; and have kids.

Chip took Ryans space they fought over and built a mine plus earned a relic.
Joe builds a fortress.
Dave builds a mine.
Ryan earns a relic.
Dan builds a mine and takes the tower from Ryan.
Josh builds a mine.

To begin Round 1 Turn 3 we establish our turn order.
Ryan
Dave
Joe
Josh
Dan
Chip

Events!
Ryan 31: The flying fortress moves.
Dave 44: In his next battle Dave can choose to deploy 1st or 2nd.
Joe 34: I can push an enemy army off of my land this turn.
Josh 65: +1 to fortification saves this turn.
Dan 31: The fotress moves.
Chip 55: Chalange any opponent regardless of position on map.

Declare War!
Dave and Josh are fighting again as are Ryan and Chip.  This leaves Dan and myself to try again to work out a game.  You think over a month it wouldn't be hard; but Dan's schedule changes a lot and kids make things hard.  We'll do our best this time.

Roll for Mines!
Ryan: +1 Relic and a 40pt Magic Item
Dave: +250 points in next battle
Joe: +1 Relic and a 40pt Magic Item
Josh: +200 points in next battle and a mine is exhausted
Dan +150 points in next battle
Chip: +1 Relic, 30pt Magic Item and a mine is exhausted

So to give you a view after the movement of Turn 3 you can see the map below.

So you can see where things have moved about.  It should be a great turn.  Hopefully after this in Round 2 when all of the armies return Ryan, Dave and I can begin pushing back out of our own territories.  Poor luck on our parts losing 2 of our 3 armies and then not being able to expand in Round 1 really hurt us all.

Old School Campaigning

One of the things I've always wanted to do more of with Warhammer is campaign play, and by that I don't mean Mighty Empires land conquest type of campaigning.  What I find far more fun and entertaining is story driven campaigning.  If you follow my blog you'll have gotten at least a taste of what I'm talking about in October 2012 when Chuck and I got together and played a small Tree Campaign from the Generals compendium.  If you haven't read that piece yet please do: Mini Campaign.

In general GW used to create a lot of material for the campaign player in this instance and I've dragged up quite a bit of it from back in the day.  The most recent things that GW has done are things like The Nemesis Crown and Blood in the Badlands which really fall short of the glory days of things like Dark Shadows and Storm of Chaos.  However I was still looking for ever more interesting things and to that extent I delved further back to the mid and late 90's.  GW had at one point produced 5 box set mini campaigns.  Each box came with a nice book full of background information as well as the storyline and scenario's to accompany it.  There were special rules for selecting your armies and using special characters associated with it and even some card-stock terrain that came in them.  The only thing that these boxes fell short on was that there were no miniatures included.  That doesn't mean miniatures weren't made for them as you can find many classic GW models that look extremely alike the artwork provided in the books.

The campaigns were going to be taking a look at are:
The Grudge of Drong (Dwarfs vs. High Elves)
The Idol of Gork (Orcs & Goblins vs. Empire)
The Circle of Blood (Undead vs. Bretonnia)
The Perilous Quest (Bretonnia vs. Wood Elves)
The Tears of Isha (High Elves vs. Dark Elves)

The boxes while originally priced around $20 USD are now so long out of print and difficult to find that they average $40USD as a general starting point on eBay.  The card-stock buildings are card-stock so it isn't like your getting super high quality terrain out of the boxes and the army lists are old which means many newer choices don't exist to use within the rules provided.  The most exceptional demonstration of this is in The Circle of Blood.  The campaign was written before the separation of the Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts from the Undead range and so you have The Red Duke (A Vampire Lord) leading an army using Screaming Skull Catapults.  To work that into 8th edition will probably be rather difficult, but it’s hard to say as I don't actually have this campaign and thus haven't given it a read through.

The two that I have managed to get physical copies of are The Grudge of Drong and The Idol of Gork.  Luckily between Chuck, Ryan and me we have the armies to run these campaigns and so you can most assuredly look forward to seeing some articles in a few months on these particular boxes.  While tempted to disassemble the books and make high quality .pdf scans of them so that they can be preserved I also hesitate to take them apart for fear of possibly destroying them.  I have yet to find a complete copy of the other 3 campaigns.  There are a number of eBay posts selling only the books but the books did not have the army liste selections or Special Character information on them; they were a seperate component from the books themselves.

So excitedly as we prepare for Adepticon I can only say that this will not occur until after then; but with my anticipation I will begin priming you all with articles for The Grudge of Drong which Ryan and I will be playing after the convention.  I will be fielding the Dwarfs and Ryan the High Elves and we look quite forward to having a lot of fun running the campaign, so keep your eyes on the Blog.

Warhammer Regiment of Renown

The names of many Regiments of Renown have gone down in the history of the Old World- The Alcatani Fellowship, Ruglud's Armoured Orcs, The Birdmen of Catrazza, Bugman's Rangers and Voland's Venators to name but a few. Each of these regiments began as a small company of heroes, determined to carve out a name for themselves and leave behind them a legacy of noble deeds, inspiring acts and incredible tales.

So this was announced by Games Workshop today as a special event that they will be holding at Warhammer World in the UK.  Thankfully they also posted the rules .pdf online for international readers to download and peruse which I think everyone should.  It's available on their website and the link to the .pdf specifically is right here: Warhammer Regiment of Renown

Its great to see something like this coming from GW.  It harkens back to a day when GW made smaller games and rule sets simply for the fun of it and more specifically for free.  Ah, many a hobbyist remembers the days when they hosted many fantastic hobby articles on their website.

While the immediate thoughts of any hobbyist whose been into Warhammer since the 90's the first thing you think of when reading the italicized flavor text above is "Dogs of War!" but that is incorrect.  This really seems to be more of an amalgamation of both the old Warhammer Skrirmish rules mixed with a bit of Mordheim.  You basically build a small contingent of warriors from an army between 3-20 models under 100 points.  You get to upgrade some of them and work with equipment of each model individually.  Ever model is its own unit and one guy gets to be upgraded to a 'leader' allowing him the only access to magic items.

When you win games your leader can gain properly heroic traits such as stat increases, etc...  All in all the rules looks pretty neat and I'm looking forward to getting a game or two of it in with some friends sooner rather than later.  I recommend we all do because nothing excites us as much as new rules.

Table Top Day

Hi everybody,
The powers that be over at Geek and Sundry have decided that boardgames are so great, that we as a community of gamers should dedicate a specific day to do nothing but play them.  Myself being not only an avid Miniature Gamer but also a huge fan of Board Games can only agree.  Thus they decided that international Table Top Day would be born.

The goal is to host, or attend an event and play board games.  It is an absolute win/win situation for everyone involved!  What a fantastic opportunity to get together with good friends, game groups, etc and get some seriuos gaming in.  I will definitely be participating in this huge event!

If you'r not sure how to participate then head on over to TableTopDay.com and they have an interactive map where you'll be able to enter your zip code and find gaming events being hosted near you on that day!  If there isn't one you are invited to create your own event and sign up to win free promo's from the companies that have jumped on board to help out which is awesome.

As of writing there are no events in Springfield, so I'll be hosting an event at my home from 10AM until 12PM or whenever everybody jumps ship I suppose, but even after that I'll probably insist my wife accompany me playing into the wee hours of the morning.  If your in my area and interested in participating in TableTopDay with me, just drop me an e-mail and I'll be happy to share this fun with you!

To help support the event, if your on twitter tag your twitter posts about it with #TableTopDay and help spread the word.  So, go forth, play games, have fun!