Tuesday 26 March 2024

Board Games Night - Cascadia

The Monday Evening Gaming Association (known informally as MEGAforce) tried a new board game last night, Cascadia.

The game at the scoring phase.

The aim of Cascadia is to create the most sound ecosystem using habitat tiles and placing wildlife tokens on them.

There are five different habitat types (mountain, forest, prairie, wetlands and river) and the hex tiles usually contain more than one type. 
There are five wildlife types as well (Grizzly Bear, Roosevelt Elk, Red Fox, Chinook Salmon and Red-tailed Hawk), and the habitat tiles have icons to indicate which wildlife token can be placed on it, but only one token per tile.

Five cards are drawn at the start of the game to determine the points scored at the end, so using the recommended starter cards we got points for placing pairs of bears in adjacent tiles, for placing long 'runs' of salmon or for placing hawks not adjacent to other hawks. Some of the other cards impose quite tricky conditions for scoring.
There are always four tiles and four wildlife tokens for a player to choose from, drawn and placed in pairs. These are usually taken in the pairs but can be placed separately in a player's ecosystem.
Once each player has placed twenty tiles the game finishes and points are totted up. 
Firstly the points from cards are added.  I adopted a fairly scatter-gun approach to placing my wildlife and definitely didn't make the best of it. I did benefit from trying to make large habitat zones which did my points total a lot of good.

All in all a great game. The concept and play is simple, but there are hard choices to be made when choosing and placing stuff.
I'll currently place this firmly in A tier, though I suspect once the more complex victory cards are used it might edge into S tier.

Cascade is produced by Flat Out Games, Grim had a Kickstarter version of the game.  The rules include a solo version, and works for 2 to 4 players in group play.  There seems to be some sort of campaign or quest system in the back of the book, but I didn't explore this.  There is some good scientific information about the habitats and creatures used in the game as well, making it informative as well as entertaining.

Saturday 23 March 2024

Oldhammer Elves part 2

I've actually finished painting something!
I'm aware that we're nearly a quarter of the way through 2024, and I've not actually posted anything newly painted this year. This is probably because I've been so caught up in thinning out the minis that I've not allowed myself the time to get any finished.

The First Elven Unit
Back in July I showed the unpainted models for the first unit of elves for Team Good. I've had to revise that slightly. The elves were a mix of 'Wood' and 'High' elves, and didn't quite work as a unit for me. I got part way through them and stopped.

I've managed to obtain a few more old school elves since, and I now have enough for six of this more Sylvan style. I thought I might as well finish the three I'd started before beginning anything new (besides, I'm also part way through painting something for Team Evil).

A (Very) Reduced Model Unit
4210/13 Bow 9, ME 31 (02) - Sylvan Elf, ME 31 (01) - Sylvan Elf



That tactical rock needs some lighter tones.
Initially I painted the grip and tips of the bow as metal, but I though that some sort of horn or ivory might fit wood elves better, besides, I've seen compound bows like this at the Royal Armouries.


So here they are. Individually each one was a joy to paint, and I think that's significant. My dwarves were each painted as individual models with no intention of them being a unit. Perhaps I need to be a bit looser in approaching the elves as well?
I enjoyed keeping to the vague brief of "the greens and browns of the forest" while avoiding having them too uniform. I can't really give exact paint recipes as everything tends to get mixed up on my wet palette, but I gave each elf light green hose and a dark green jacket or tunic. The collars were all reddish brown, based around the rather nice Vallejo Model Color Orange Brown. 
I feel that the contrast between hose and jacket on ME 31 (01) could be greater, and perhaps ME 31 (02) is a bit dark overall. I may go back and touch up a few details at a later stage, but for now I'm calling these done.
The bases were textured using Geek Gaming Scenics Plains of New Zealand mix.  I added more grass tufts to bring out the 'nature' side of the elves.

Oh, and I'm experimenting with my photography again.  I've gone back to my fold up light box, this time using my newer phone.  I think there's an improvement, and I like the effect of the blue background. I think I need to find something without the fabric texture though, as the camera has tried to focus on this and my eyes don't pick that up until I enlarge the pictures.

Tuesday 5 March 2024

Birthday Zombies!!!

As is the custom, T'Other One had complete freedom of choice for the Monday game nearest his birthday. He chose Zombies!!!  from Twilight Creations. The object of the game is to be first to reach the helicopter, while, obviously, avoiding being eaten by zombies.

The town layout is drawn randomly from a tile deck, there are event cards to play, giving equipment or hazards for the other players and health and bullets to be found in many of the named buildings. We've played this a few times, notably for T'Other One's stag do

This time we added the Mall expansion. The Mall is discovered somewhere in the town, and the helicopter pad is on the top of the Mall. It has its own tiles and event deck.

The helipad is revealed (lowest left) and it's full of zombies 

'Eaten' players respawn in the town square tile, meaning it's a long plod back towards the helipad, we ruled that respawning at the entrance to the Mall was better. I think all of us had to respawn at least once.
There was a good bit of card play, such as doubling the number of zombies on the helipad (snigger),  but by eleven o'clock we were sort of helping each other by clearing zombies out of the way.


T'Other One's yellow pawn about to respawn. So close. Gosh, I wonder why there are so many zombies on the helipad?

In the end Grim (blue) managed to get through. 

Zombies!!! is a fun Beer and Pretzels game with many expansions. I suspect that regular play needs these expansions to add something fresh, we certainly enjoyed the new cards.
Every time I play it I think the mechanics could easily be adapted to exploring an infested space station, a sort of more random Space Hulk type game.

Friday 23 February 2024

Space Ork Super-attack Onslaughter Dreadnought

I've been very slowly building up a small Rogue Trader era Space Ork force, you can see the first ten painted minis here.

I'm not really collecting them for any reason, other than the sheer joy of revisiting my younger days, and I've no real goals. But one thing I really wanted was one of the original Ork Dreadnoughts. There's something so impractical about the design that I find really appealing, I mean, how does it even walk? It must need to swing from side to side, making accurate shooting nearly impossible. Mind you, these are Orks (though the BS of the Dreadnaught is surprisingly high).

They do crop up occasionally on evilbay, but always at a much higher price than I can justify.  I've seen some that I swear must have been built around a Faberge egg, so I had accepted that there would be a Dreadnaught shaped hole in my Space Ork force.

A Lucky find
But when recently browsing the FLGS (the same one where I got the Space Marine bits shown here) I saw this on the rack 


This is the Dreadnaught with the expansion kit added. It comes with a Heavy Flamer and a Heavy Plasma Gun, because in those days, orks used the same weaponry as the Imperium. It is missing a few bits though, the Gretchin pilot, the banner pole, and most significantly, one of the weapon mount arms.

Dreadnought - Seeks arm
Still, I bought it, hoping to cobble something together for the missing arm.
Then next day I found this on eBay, and for a reasonable price too (£3.50 plus postage*).

Not one but two weapon mount arms, and a lascannon

Now I have a complete enough Dreadnaught to build and paint, and a spare Lascannon. I might even magnetise the weapons so that I can swap them out.


Now this wasn't as cheap as when originally released (£3.50 for the basic Dreadnaught and another £2.50 for the expansion pack), but I consider it a good purchase, and, perhaps, a little reward for clearing out so much stuff recently.

Painting it (eventually)
I need to strip the new arm and the lascannon, and, as I mentioned, I'll look at making the weapons swapable.  I may even extend this to the one Ork with Heavy Weapon, in his case, a Missile Launcher.  I'm not sure what colour scheme to go for though.  The original models, both in White Dwarf etc and, IIRC my own, tneded to wards bright reds an similar.  It might be nice, given the khaki on my ten Raiders, to go for a similar sort of colour, it being Armour after all.  If you've any suggestions, please leave a comment.

I don't seem to be doing much painting at the moment, various other things, both hobby and otherwise, are taking up my time, but I'd like to get this done fairly soon. There are a few more infantry I'll paint first though, as I have a vague plan for my Space Orks.



*I'm baffled by this. Individual arm mounts sell for upwards of £8, and I've seen Lascannon fetch over £10. It does all seem to be genuine stuff.

Sunday 18 February 2024

More Crimson Fists

When I painted the first squad of Crimson Fists I mentioned that I was hunting for the missile launcher in the 'loft of shame '. Well there's been no sign of any more marines up there, so I was pretty much resigned to never completing them. They are available on evilbay, but they command very high prices, far above what I can currently justify.  So it looked like this project was at a dead end.

Discovery
Recently I was browsing a box of second hand minis in my FLGS* and found the following;


Three more partial RTB01 marines, including a missile launcher and a flamer (originally glued on to the arm of the newer metal marine bottom right). I've got plenty of the bits needed to complete them, so now I can assemble enough Crimson Fists for The Battle at the Farm. But I'll strip them first.

Stripping Plastic Minis
If you read my posts on stripping, I'm using Dettol as its far kinder to plastic.  Unlike the earlier trials I'm leaving the minis in the Dettol for several days, before dunking in washing up liquid for a day or two longer, then after scrubbing clean (and it gets the paint off very nicely), in Isopropanol, to make sure that all the Dettol etc is gone. 
I have heard that methylated spirit is also a good solution, but I've yet to try it. For now I'll stick to what I know.

Not More Marines?
Given my previous post discussing selling off minis, it may seem ironic talking about getting more. Well I have a double defence. I'll be sorting through Warhammer 40K stuff soon, and that means getting rid of a lot of the more modern Space Marines. Also this post was actually started some while ago, so the purchase of the above was long before the current cull and they are all stripped and cleaned up ready for assembly and painting.
These original RTB01 Space Marines are definite keepers for me, or at least, a tactical squad of them are. I may well sell off any surplus, though they are such fun to paint.


*Actually, one of three in Huddersfield, though it's my favourite.

Saturday 17 February 2024

The Joy of Slimming (the Minis Collection)

I realise that it's been weeks since I last posted. I've not been idle, but I've done very little painting. In fact, I've finally got round to seriously addressing the minis pile, a job that I've tentatively been toying with for quite a while.

Can you have too many minis?
Like many gamers I've bought far more minis over the years than I've painted, (I've boxes of RPG stuff that's never seen a paintbrush, and don't even mention Trident Realm) and of the painted stuff there's a fair bit that I know I'll never need again. I'm not great at keeping my stuff well stored, so it's always been easier to just shove stuff to the back of the loft of shame, but I'm determined to finally sort this out.

I've recently come to realise that having all this stuff is actually harmful. It's a psychological burden that can take the joy out of the hobby. I've had episodes over the past few years where I the thought of painting minis filled me with dread. Very much a first world problem, I know.
I want to bring the joy back into my hobby and dealing with the horde of stuff is my best first step. 

What to thin 
I'm going through everything. I'm deciding what use I can get out of it, and if the answer is little or none, it goes.
As an example, I've collected minis for D&D for decades. As a result I have many different types of the same creature. I have kobolds from the early days (Minifigs), official kobolds from TSR,  prepainted WotC kobolds of several different styles and sizes, and at least three different styles of Reaper kobolds. Witness my efforts to find the perfect orc for another example. The same applies to practically all the humanoid races, undead, beasts etc, and even dragons.
I only need one style of kobold, orc, etc, so I have a lot of spare minis that I need to ge rid of.

How to thin 
I've started with the RPG stuff, collecting together as much as I can find then sorting by type. These go into ziplock bags, such as a goblin bag or a zombie bag. These are then stored in Really Useful Boxes by type, so a box of undead or a box of fiends.

Next I decide what I don't need/want. This is a very rough sorting, the intention is to further sort once everything has been looked through once. As an example, I'm hanging on to a lot of the WotC prepainted minis as they cover creatures that just aren't available elsewhere, such as decent Displacer Beasts, but a lot of humanoids and PCs/NPCs are much better in Reaper Bones. 

The actual disposal of surplus stuff is mostly through eBay or specialist Facebook sales groups. I might not get top prices, but so far just about everything has sold.
As of the end of January I've sold on over 400 of the D&D prepainted minis and over 100 Reaper minis that don't fit in my collection any more. I've also cleared a few boxes of minis games, such as Bluebird Toys' Havok, oddments of GW bits, such as the old plastic WH40K trees and far more Heroclix minis than I thought I had.

What's next?
I've plenty more of course. I've just started on wargames stuff. Here I'm going to have to make some difficult choices. I know that just keeping a few of something will lead eventually to regret (if only I'd kept that one particular mini or unit I'd have a great army). It's going to have to be "lots or none at all", as Bilbo might say.
As an example, I've loads of Forge Fathers, originally I got them for Deadzone, then I added a lot of the then new plastics when Firefight came out. Now I'd still like to play Firefight, but I've got plenty of Marauders and Enforcers, so all the Forge Fathers will go. Keeping a few, for, say, a Deadzone team, will just lead to me regretting selling the rest off and/or me buying more.
Lord of the Rings minis are next for sorting, and I have a plan for what to keep. Then hard choices over what Kings of War armies I want to concentrate on.

If all this sounds a bit 'anti hobby' it's not meant that way. I've been doing a lot of work on the online D&D campaign, and I've even done a little bit of painting. However, I hope that once the exercise is complete I'll be a lot happier with the hobby.


Tuesday 2 January 2024

23/24 Janus Post

The traditional look back and forward hobby post for the New Year.


Firstly it's fair to say that my hobby effort has been erratic last year. It's a sad fact that as you get older, so do friends and family, and you find that the numbers decrease, or readjust. 

I've been far more active musically in 2023, but I still managed to get hobby things done as well.

Gaming in 2023
Whilst I'll always think I'd like more gaming, I didn't do too badly last year.
I managed some Kings of War, finally getting my Kingdoms of Men force to 750 points for a four player game with Bodvoc and the rest of the SADdos (sadly my last game with Phil).

I got a good amount of MESBG-ing done in a Battle Companies campaign with my son.  The intention behind this was to sort through our huge collection of MESBG minis and thin the collection considerably.  This is becoming a theme, and will be an important factor in my hobbying going forward.

Monday nights gaming is now dedicated to board and card games, though we reserve the right to do a few one shot RPGs.  I've played Aliens, Era, Sushi Go! Azul, Moon and several others.  Generally they've all been fun, special mention must go to Era, Azul and Moon.

Sadly my D&D campaign was paused due to schedule problems, but I have started a game to introduce two new players to the game. This is progressing well. It's all online, due to geography, but I've been kept busy designing stuff for it. One day I'd like to be able to rerun an old adventure, simply so the majority of the work would already be done.

I played a couple of games of Galactic Heroes Star Wars style, trying out the Hero rules to see how well they fit for Star Wars (pretty well).  It confirmed how good the rules are for this sort of skirmish game, and also how much I wish I'd concentrated on 28mm rather than 20mm.

I also had a game of Fantastic Battles using 6mm minis.  This allowed me to play Fantastic Battles without the restrictions we placed on ourselves for the Middle Earth FB lists.

Painting in 2023
Painting wise I did a few 'Oldhammer', or 'Old School' minis, and I came up with a way of organising them, or is it justification for keeping them?

I got a bit more done for my Kingdoms of Men army, and I think it's time to get the initial 500 points up for sale, as was the original intention.  I also got around to basing (most) of the orc army I painted in lockdown.

I painted up a group of Haradrim for the Battle Companies campaign.  With only a bag of unpainted (and often broken) Harad minis at the start of the year, I now have 15 infantry and 2 cavalry painted. I'm at the point where I know, more or less, what of my Harad bag I'm going to keep and what I can get rid of.  
I also painted some more terrain for the games, GW's nice Ruins set.

A new project was 6mm Fantastic Battles. My first army is dwarves, and with a combination of stuff I did many years ago and newly painted minis I have 1000 points already.  Again the reasoning behind this was to see what 6mm fantasy I had and if it was worth keeping.  I had been thinking about more generic fantasy games of Fantastic Battles, this allowed me to use minis I already had, and, again, thin out the collection.

Other Stuff
I also decided to review the first few copies of Hachette's Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer part-work.  These have proven to be popular posts, and I've enjoyed writing them.  Thanks must go to Bodvoc who split the cost of the magazines, without which I'd not have done more that the first two or three issues.

I began 'Island 23' my version of the popular 'Dungeon 23' stuff that sprang up last January. As with a lot of other bloggers, I couldn't sustain this beyond March, and towards the end the entries were sporadic. However, I still have the file, and there are some good ideas there that I shall revisit. 

2023 saw my blog garner a lot more views, passing the 40 000 and 50 000 marks (currently standing at over 56 000).  I'm both astonished and delighted by this.  I must be doing something right.

The Future
Looking ahead into 2024 I'm starting off by finishing various projects from last year (and earlier!). 
Here's a list of some of the things I'd like to get finished, in, as they say, no particular order.

Finish painting six companies of dwarves and a couple more characters. This is to give me 1000 points of newly painted stuff.  I already have pretty much all I need to get this army to 2000 points, probably with a few interesting options, though I suspect a small order to Irregular is in the future somewhere.  I'll be selling off a lot of the armies and part armies I bought back when I first collected 6mm, so I'll finish up with less stuff, have an army I can use, and, hopefully fund any small additions.
I'd also like to get at least one more army done as opposition, and terrain is, of course, something else I'll have to address (indeed I'm already collecting bits for this).

I have a few more Haradrim to paint, partly to model changes to my Battle Company and partly to give me a good base for playing other MESBG stuff. I'd like to play through the journey books at some point, though I'd probably use Fantastic Battles for the larger games such as Pelennor Fields. If I thin my collection down to meet this goal then I'll have cleared a lot of stuff out.  Of course, once Harad is sorted, there's the other factions to attack.

As mentioned above, I'll get the Karpath Kingdoms of Men Ambush Force up for sale soon, and I suppose I should look at replacing those units so I still have a force to bring to battles. I think I've got enough unbuilt minis to replace the Ambush force, though I might go for slightly different units. I've also got plans for some more units to eventually expand the army to around 1000 points.

I've currently got five orks part painted to add to my slow growing Ork army. I doubt I'll ever play 40K. What I've heard about the latest edition hasn't changed my mind, but maybe, one day, Grimdark Future? Besides, I'd really like to have a go at scratch building some vehicles.

As mentioned above (and ad nauseum in earlier posts) I'd like decent terrain for my games. Ideally I want to be able to play good sized games without always using my old GW Realm of Battle. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's looking a bit tired now and even switching the boards around, the layouts eventually seem a bit samey. I've no idea how I'd replace it, space precludes having a 4ft x 6ft board. This is going to take a bit of pondering.

Possibly the biggest project, though easily broken down into small sections, is a complete overhaul of my RPG/D&D stuff.  I've given a lot of my various floorplans away to local gaming shops and I'm looking around for a system to replace them.  My current leaning is towards the Crooked Staff stuff (I made up some of the ruins here, and have a few of his Dungeon Tile files as well).

I'm going through my RPG minis and deciding what to keep.  I have a lot of different styles of, for example, goblins and kobolds.  I've even painted several different goblins and kobolds, but which ones will I use, and how many do I need? There's no quick or easy answer to this, but for kobolds I think I've settled on the most recent sculpts from Reaper. I've already got sufficient, though I do need to do a bit of weapon swapping. This frees up all the previous versions of kobolds (yes, even the ones I painted here) including a lot of the WotC pre-painted minis. 
I may well put the kobolds near the front of the painting queue soon.

I'm hoping that I'll make some good progress with all this. There's always going to be the risk of new projects, Warpath is one that springs to mind, Kickstarting soon. However, I doubt I'll get much interest among my gaming friends, so I should be able to avoid it.

So if I'm setting any goals for 2024, its just one very general one.
By this time next year I'd like to have more minis painted and games played with them, and considerably fewer minis overall.  This last point may be difficult, as Bones 6 is due to land this year, but I'm sure that with focus I can manage it.

Thursday 28 December 2023

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine, a Baker's Dozen

Last time I told you that I'd bought my last issue of Adventurer. However, I needed a new set of dice (a present for my son-in-law) and they had a copy in at the local newsagents. The cover price is close to that of a decent set of dice and I didn't have to wait for delivery.
So here we go, a bonus review.

Sage Advice
We have a second article on time. This discusses how different movement rates affect distance travelled and the differences between fast normal and slow travel.
Curses looks at a few of the ways that characters can become cursed. Given the wide variety of curses in the game, the effects of a curse are glossed over. Importantly it also addresses common ways of removing curses 

Character Creation
This issue introduces a new character, a Dragonborn Barbarian. Last issue we had an introduction to the dragonborn race (though no rules as such) this time we have the standard introductory page on the class and a page each for first and second level features. As is standard, any potential choices have been made for the pre-gen character.
Better Roleplay looks at adding quirks to your character and how different drives can influence how characters interact with the rest of the world. This is good advice, though as a DM I shudder at the thought of every player choosing an 'amusing' character quirk

Lore
We have a page on The Weave, which is where magic comes from in the Forgotten Realms setting and a page looking at the pantheon most commonly used in the Realms. This latter is intended to give players some choices for their characters to follow. It very nicely suggests how characters in a world with many different gods with different portfolios might interact with them.

Freebies
The dice are a nice silver and blue and come with their own dice bag. There are also character sheets for the barbarian at first and second level. As an extra bonus freebie there's a large sheet of card printed with a dungeon floor texture on one side and a plainer texture suitable for outdoor encounters on the other side. This is 21 squares by 25 squares, and is the same thick card as the map in issue two. This is an excellent addition to any DMs equipment, though actually using minis and floorplans has yet to be covered. Personally I'd recommend photocopies to allow a DM to cut out individual rooms or perhaps some form of laminated sheets for using whiteboard or dry erase markers.

Conclusion
This is certainly one of the better issues. The articles continue to gradually roll out the rules, and I've expressed my understanding of that necessity and my frustration already.  That said, there are some good points, such as a character's relationship with multiple gods.
The encounter is another very good one too, more details below.
The extras really make this issue. I'd looked on both Fauxhammer, to see what the freebies were and Hachette's website to try and work out what the articles and encounter were likely to be. None of that mentioned the dice bag or the floor plan.

Encounter Chasing Shadows
As hinted last issue, the party have left Phandalin behind them and are on their way to Neverwinter. 
This encounter gives them the opportunity to foil a nasty little scam which is well presented. Bonus points for suggesting that the villain should try to escape if found out, and there's even mention of including them in future adventures.
Definitely one of the better encounters, and another that I'm going to steal.

Monday 25 December 2023

Yule's Delight

Season's Greetings in whatever guise you are most comfortable.
If you are a regular reader, many thanks. If you've somehow stumbled on this, welcome, stick around and I hope you like what you see.

And the foxes want to wish you a Happy Violet Night.

Saturday 23 December 2023

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine Issue Twelve

Issue twelve marks the start of the second adventure. Apparently there will be seven adventures in total over the eighty issue run.  To mark the new adventure we have a new cover picture. Three of the original pre-gens (the dwarf cleric is missing) accompanied by a dragonborn are in an underground setting. Behind them lurks a beholder.

This is the last issue I intend to buy. I hope I've given the part-work a fair run to base my reviews on, and I wanted to see how the first adventure finished and what the difference was between the first and second adventure. I'll do a final post looking back on the first twelve issues, and perhaps even an extra post giving advice on running the first adventure.

Sage Advice
Sage Advice opens with an article on dice. Seriously, twelve issues in and we are just looking at the dice. If you've been collecting all the issues so far you have ten sets plus an extra d20. There are some suggestions on situations where certain dice are more likely to be used, but on the whole, a bit of a let down.
Then a DM guide to setting atmosphere at the table. Essentially this is a look at lighting, sound effects and music. There are some interesting points here, such as comparing film and video game music, and I'm delighted to discover that the BBC Sound Effects Library is now available online. 
I suggest you take the lighting advice with caution. At my age I need as good a light as possible, especially when reading character sheets and rulebooks. For me that's always going to be more important than setting a particular mood.
Finally a guide to grappling and shoving. This is useful, and I'll be using it for player reference. I do think that this should have been presented earlier though, perhaps in issue one's combat booklet?

Character Creation
Age first with a few suggestions how a character's age might affect their behaviour, and a table listing different species' lifespans and when they are considered adults. 
The Dragonborn article introduces the race as it appears in the Forgotten Realms. The next official pre-gen is going to be a dragonborn barbarian (next issue) so this is a bit of foundation laying.
The Life Domain is next, again a broad overview. Frustratingly it mentions that domains grant special abilities and access to certain spells, but these aren't actually covered.
The Folk Hero background gets a page, and we do get the associated rules as well as guidelines on how to play one.

Lore 
Ghouls get a page. As usual, this is just general history and a few suggestions on where they may be encountered and how they are likely to behave. No stat block, but you won't be surprised when you look at the end of this issue's Encounter.

Freebies
This issue we get another set of dice and a booklet of spells. This gives the rules for all the cantrips and first level spells relevant to the pre-gens. 
This is actually a great idea, though, of course, I'm going to suggest that it should have been included earlier. Presumably we will get more of these to cover other spell levels.

Conclusion
I found many of this issue's articles disappointing. I appreciate that the nature of part works means that there may be times when information needs to be imparted, but it might not be very interesting. Similarly, there are times when information can't be given early enough in the magazine's run, so it seems to come late (such as this issue's article on dice). However, I constantly feel that better page layout (and less artwork) would allow for more information to be presented on each page, allowing more to be covered each issue.
I'm not even sure that some of this issues articles are even needed.  The useful information on age could easily have been included on each race's pages (as it is in the Player's Handbook), and I feel that the dice article is long past being useful.

In terms of the Adventure, I'll address the Encounter below, but I will point out that there's no real difference between many of the Encounters in the first Adventure and the opening Encounter of the second (a basic escort quest). There's no sense of starting something new or different, though the PCs are moving away from the village at the end of the Encounter, heading towards Trentor.



Encounter; Plight of the Roaming Dead
The heroes are tasked with escorting an NPC. On the way they meet a pack of ghouls and have the opportunity to rescue more NPCs.
While there's nothing outstanding here, the Encounter is well constructed.  Once the Encounter is over, the party travels on to Trentor and the next Encounter, so the intention seems to be that they are leaving Phandolin.
The initial NPC is a relative of one the party already knows, so there's some continuity here, helping build relationships with the villagers (shame the PCs are leaving, but perhaps they will be back).

Sunday 17 December 2023

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine Issue Eleven

Issue eleven marks the end of the first Adventure and nearly the end of my review series. I plan to get issue twelve to see exactly what the transition to Adventure two is (different area? Level increase? New characters?) and also to get the Magic booklet, which hopefully will be as useful for my players as the combat one was (if a bit late).

Sage Advice
A look at temporary hit points and maximum hit points. 
Useful, as I've certainly known players who got confused over this.
Then articles on Treasure, discussing the many and various forms this can take, and Food and Drink. Although the latter article lists common inn prices there's nothing on cost of living.
Then the DM gets a couple of pages on Monsters. An overview of the different creature types and an explanation of how to read a stat block. 
Interestingly it mentions Challenge, which isn't included in the published stat blocks as the Encounters use milestone advancement.  It's nice that they are explaining how to read stat blocks, hope you didn't struggle too much for the first ten issues.

Character Creation
The only Character Creation page is another Background, the Acolyte. 
Once more filling in the stuff for the pre-gens.

Lore
A look at the city of Yartar and a page on Mummies. 
This is very general background stuff, no stats for the mummies.  I wonder what creature will feature in this issue's Encounter?

Freebies
another dice set and another dice tin.

Conclusion
More stuff on more stuff. I can't argue with the usefulness of it all, but I find myself constantly frustrated with the piecemeal nature of the role out. As an example, I previously knew nothing about the city of Yartar. I now know a bit about the leadership, the fact that the city is associated with piracy and a bit about five notable locations. It sounds interesting and suggests several adventure ideas. However, if I were running a Sword Coast campaign I'd want more, probably starting with a map of the city.
It's great to see more stuff aimed at the DM, but by now the DM's in the group have run eight or more Encounters, and should be able to read a stat block by now. Another example of pages that should have been included earlier in the run.



Encounter Cat's Cradle
Can the adventurers help out at an auction? They act as ushers during the sale and then guard the items overnight.
There are some issues with the Encounter, but I did enjoy it. It should be fun to run. The potential final encounter could be nasty for second level characters, but I bet the players will remember it for a long time.  The events leading up to it are all interesting and entertaining, and help foreshadow the main action.  All in all a superior Encounter.

That's the positives, now a few minor grumbles 
A better map of the location would be useful, as would a more in depth description (neither the map nor the introduction mention the skylights that play an important role in the adventure). Again I'm thinking that a website with downloadable content such as maps and handouts would really improve this series.  Would it cost a lot more to run?  I don't know, but it would certainly improve the usability of the magazine, especially if it included digital maps for virtual table-tops.
I do find Phandolin an odd place to hold such an important auction, and apparently the Miner's Exchange is now the closest place to a town hall in Phandolin, despite there being a mayor, as mentioned in the Queen of Scars Encounter.

Also, the Encounter goals states that the adventurers are to guard or steal the gem. If they do take it for themselves there's no indication of what the repercussions might be, though as this is the last Encounter in the first adventure, perhaps the second one begins with them avoiding justice? Given that Halia, the NPC running the auction, is a member of the Zhentarim, I would think that the adventurers might be facing repercussions if they take it. There is a lot of potential for spin off adventures (sorry, Encounters) here. My favourite idea is if at least one of the party is already affiliated to the Zhentarim. Their superiors might be impressed with the party's cunning and replace Halia with one of them.
It's not really the place of the magazine to cover in detail such fall out, but some hints would be good. Also there is no mention of the value of the Star of Khonsu (the value at auction, 2d10 x 100 GP, is laughably low for the effort put in by everyone involved) nor any magical properties it might have. They actually use a picture of the gem of brightness for the Star, but of course this could be simply reusing artwork (if you decide that the Star is a gem of brightness but don't want the characters to have immediate use of it, it does require command words to activate).

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine Issue 10

Issue ten includes the final part of the Deadnock Mine Encounter. I really liked the first half, so I'm excited to read further.

Sage Advice
The second part of the article on movement, this time it covers Crawling, Climbing and Swimming. Jumping, including calculating just how far a character can jump, and a bit on riding, both on a mount and in a vehicle.
NPCs offers useful advice for DMs 

Character Creation
The second part of the article on Equipment, looking at some of the more obscure items and some more ready made packs.
Two more backgrounds, the Sage and the Charlatan covering more of the Pre-gens backgrounds.

Lore
Another area, the Sword Mountains and another faction, the Order of the Gauntlet.

Dice
The dice set this issue issue is a set of small metal dice.  These are great, they a nice weight to them.  

Conclusion
We are getting more part two's of articles, which is useful. Careful examination shows that these are rules and guidelines that weren't really necessary for earlier Encounters, though not in every case (I'd suggest that the NPC article would be useful far earlier for example). 
I have to keep reminding myself that the rather scattergun approach will be ironed out as pages are put into their correct order in folders.
The dice are lovely, probably justifying the issue on their own.  On the other hand the Encounter is not my favourite (see below).


Encounter Deadnock Mine part two
Last issue we left the PCs about to enter the second half of the mine, possibly riding in mine carts. What is waiting further down the line?

There is a large central cavern and several smaller caves containing goblins. These are set up as combat encounters. The main encounter is with the goblins' leader, a Nilbog and his unwilling audience. If they aren't careful, the adventurers may end up participating, so to complete their quest they need to defeat him.
And that it. The main encounter is titled Feywild Grotto, but there is no mention of the strange temporal slip that the dwarves were victims of.  This is a shame, as at a rate of one day equals one month, even an hour in here will have some noticeable effect once the PCs leave the mine.

I found this to be an underwhelming encounter, partly because I felt the first part promised much. There are always going to be bits of published adventures that individual DMs feel could be better or that don't work for their world/players/themselves, but often this is simply due to different groups finding different fun. This time there were so many missed opportunities that I'm
One issue is the lack of space. With just three pages, or six sides, there's always going to be stuff that isn't covered, and improvising mid game is an important skill for any DM. However, the way this Encounter is presented is very wasteful of space. The first side is given over to a lovely picture of some adventurers in a cave. I think this is taken from an already published book as it doesn't feature the Pre-gens. There is a brief summary of part one, which I suppose might be useful if the DM missed issue nine, otherwise, once the pages are snuggled up in an Adventures folder all nicely in order, its irrelevant.
There's a nice bit of original artwork showing the adventurers in a mine cart, emphasising the potential fun there, (and indeed they can use the cart to bypass the first group of goblins on this level) then the rest of the rather dull adventure. 

The stats for the Nilbog take up one a half sides (details of the Nilbog's spells are included, and it's nice to have them ready for use). However, the picture of the creature takes up at least half a side, a smaller picture and slight layout changes could have condensed this to one side. 

Worse to come, the back side is a repeat of the Goblin stat block from the previous issue.  Several of the Encounters have referred back to earlier stat blocks, so its not as if this couldn't have been done here.

There are other issues, such as the lack of details on using the mine cart, how fast does it go?  How easy is it to stop or redirect it?  The Feywild Grotto is described as having glowing crystals, stalagmites and wooden platforms, yet none of these are shown on the map, again, requiring DM improvisation (not in itself a bad idea, but this is supposed to be teaching new DMs, and it's quite important to the running of the adventure).

In conclusion we have a disappointing Encounter that promised much but lacked the space to develop them properly, yet two and a half sides were wasted space. I'm baffled by this, as it makes a potentially great scenario much the poorer.

Wednesday 6 December 2023

6mm Fantastic Battles: Dark Elves vs Dwarves

Bodvoc came down for a game of Fantastic Battles, the first outing for both our 6mm armies. We had around 1000 points each; I suspect that we will be adding to them soon.
We played a straight up fight since the armies were new, and I'm very rusty with the rules.
Bodvoc set up the terrain, it was all his as I'm still putting together a 6mm terrain set.

The field of battle. This is prior to rolling for Mishaps, but they were relatively minor, just a few outbreaks of disease resulting in a bit of Resolve loss
1000 points of Naughty Elves 
999 points of Doughty Dwarves 
The Dark Elf skirmishing flank makes for the Avenging Hammer. Both main battle lines advance

The Dark Elves' main battle line advancing

And the Dark Elf skirmishing flank

The Dwarves flawed deployment in two lines

The centaurs have done some damage to the Dark Elf infantry, but the dragon charges them, aided by the lizard riders.

The two hosts start their long drawn out melee

More units join on either side

The Avenging Hammers finally take out the Giant Lizard, seeing this the Scouts flee as well

I didn't take any more photos after this point, but the right hand Dwarven Shieldwall fell to a combination of lizard riders, infantry and witch-elves, and the Dwarven artillery were wiped out by the remaining scout company and accompanying rogue.

Sadly we ran out of time, far too much chatting and looking through my collection of 6mm stuff. 
We called a halt at the end of the fifth turn. The dwarves had lost seven companies to the dark elves' three. I'll willingly concede, though we felt the big melee in the centre could go either way with an extra turn.
Bodvoc certainly handles his army very well, I'm very much getting to grips with mine. For some reason I didn't put my Warlord or a Captain into combat, and when they were in combat, such as the ill-fated captain with the centaurs, I forgot to add their dice, those extra dice would certainly have helped. Both of us managed to get units stuck, blocked by others in front. I deliberately set up in two lines, with my elite behind the 'ordinaries'. Rather than having a tough reserve that swept in just at the critical moment, I ended up trapping my best units, they were too close to manoeuvre around the melee to play any part, so I never got to see how well they could perform.

I suffered some bad luck with dice (six dice needing a 4+, only one hit), and my magic was laughably bad, failing the first three spells. Shieldwall on formed or elites is powerful, and I'm tempted to add it to the City Watch. I do need some sort of annoying skirmish type companies, probably Rangers.  I've also got plans for some ROUS's and eventually the DFC.
So an excellent game, the 6mm stuff looks great, and the rules work well (except Blink - I hate Blink). I'm looking forward to many more.

The Dark Elf version of events is here