Guys,
A new Kickstarter has appeared from some guys based in the UK – Guild Ball. Pub football (soccer) played on a wargaming tabletop. The game was funded in it’s first 12 hours and now we are hoping to see some stretch goals being met.
The first stretch goals is team-specific resin goalposts and that was reached over the weekend. Next up we have free agent players to all pledgers who backed at least 1 team.
So this week at Slayers we seen a great game of Malifaux – Wong vs Perdita 50SS match up with a victory going to the Ortegas. With Nino controlling line of sight to every Squatters Rights objective if was difficult for Wong to score points early on. The star of the show was perhaps the Rooster Rider, going reckless to get 2+ve flips on attack and damage and being allowed to (1) rooster charge out of combat seen him kill Nino, a witchling and death marshal in a single activation.
On another table there were 4 games of Bushido run during the night. 30R games of Ito vs Prefecture see a split in victories. Good times and a great start to our Bushido campaigns on a lovely bespoke board. We discovered that shooting can be devastating but nothing is better than a quick kill with a skillful sword strike.
D.
So this week we started our Slow Grow League at Dragonslayers club. Was a very good turn out with 6 players deciding to join in. The Slow-Grow is meant to be an encouragement for new players to pick up a starter box and get playing ASAP, learning the rules, game interactions and what their models are capable of by playing smaller games.
We went with very small games – 20 soulstones a side – which means that crews are led by their henchmen. This keeps the powerful masters off the board so new players are not overwhelmed by these models.
There was quite a showing from the Guild this week with The Judge leading 2 crews, Franscisco leading the Ortegas and Hoffman (I know, the only master on the board) leading some constructs on an expedition. In the other game we had Otototototototo and his Torakage facing down Barbaros and some Nephilim.
Let’s hope for more of the same in future games. I plan to keep the soulstone level small for the next few weeks and then introduce masters.
D.
So valuable lesson learned last night: Leaving your flank open to an enemy model in Bushido really hurts!
So the details? Takeji my Ito Ashigaru commander was on a mission to put some hurt on Ilyro after cleaving Nezumi in 2. In the process he ran straight towards her, lurking at the back of the field. In the process he bypassed an Armoured kairai who was pushing forward. Without thinking I left the enemy model unengaged and that is where disaster struck.
Reading up on Surprise we discovered:
Surprised models may not declare Ki Feats or Ki Boosts, are always the Attacker second in Melee Exchanges and may not benefit from traits or effects that affect Initiative, and suffer a 1 MS modifier. Models are only Surprised until the action in which they became Surprised is resolved.
So as long as you say out of LOS you prevent the enemy spending Ki to boost, perform feat actions and suffer -1MS. Ouch.
The melee swirled and eventually Takeji fell but not before a Bushi charged in and killed the Kairai who failed his Rise(4) test to come back from the dead.
This just left the Bushi facing down the horror that is Ikyro. Declaring the charge he ran into BtB and had to pass a Fear(6) test on 1D6. Rolling a boxcar he promptly struck Ikyro who deflected 3 damage back onto him but suffered 5 wounds and dropping dead!
Great game!
So a while back we were discussing expanding into a new system and Bushido was bounced around a bit. At the time I was happy in my Malifaux groove – Wave 1 was out, there were cards and wave 2 was coming up fast on the horizon.
Fast forward a few months to the Malifaux UKGT 2013 in Tabletop Nation. They have a lot of demo boards laid out and 1 of these was for Bushido, Ryu vs Savage Wave i believe. The scenery was beautiful and miniatures looked very well sculpted, 32mm metal. And on round lipped bases. Cashier, write me up!
A month or so later and Mark comes in with his Cult of Yurei models and the cards for them. I have to admit I had been looking in between times. There are 6 factions so far – The Prefecture of Ryu, The Monks of Ro-Kan, The Savage Wave, The Cult of Yurei, The Ito and The Silvermoon Syndicate.
I settled on the Ito Clan, a group of samurai warriors who have devoted their existence to a Snake God, Orochi. Some models exhibit outward signs of that devotion with half-snake bodies or poisonous weapons. Others are subtler than this.
We have since played 2 games, basically set up and smash each other affairs to learn the basic rules and it seems a lot of fun.
There a few similarities with Malifaux. Each model is represented by a card with all stats, abilities and options on it and it’s a alternate activation system.
This is where the similarity ends. Dice pools are used for all combat and tests. Models get tired and exhausted each round and LOS is the key to charging and moving. In combat each player takes their allotted number of dice and secretly assigns this pool to attack and defence and then both players roll off against each other. the active player hits first and compares his highest attack to the defender’s highest defence. If the attack is higher the difference is the success level which will determine how much damage is inflicted. If the defender survives and he allocated any dice to attack it is now his turn to compare his attack to the attacker’s defence.
In this way both players are active in all combat. But be careful as a model’s condition worsens each time he is active in combat.
The game seems like it will have a lot of options and the company is churning out models every month. Good times ahead!
That right folks from the depths of Old Malifaux comes the live match up of Viks vs Wong.
Strategy squatters rights
scheme pool
line in the sand, vendetta, make them suffer, assassinate, breakthrough
Vik of Ash, Vik of blood, 2 ronin, student, Taelor, specialist, void wretch
wong, lovely assistant, rooster rider, 2 glowin varmints, Francois, merris, 3 gremlins
turn 1
both ronin walk forward, the centre one doubles while the gremlins on the left flank skitter towards the centre line.
Th Viks move down the right flank in a huddle
Nordicon is a joint effort with Lisburn Gaming Club and Queen’s Dragonslayers to bring a plethora of tabletop wargames together and have a great weekend. So far we have Flames of War, 40K, Infinity and Malifaux all on the bill for the event.
Please find the rulespack for the Malifaux tournament below.
Format:
Strategy: Turf War
Schemes:
A Line in the sand
Protect territory
Plant Explosives
Breakthrough
Frame for Murder
Resurrectionists (Breakthrough Unrevealed, Plant Explosives Unrevealed)
Molly – Gorgon’s Tear, Spare Parts, Forgotten Life
Dead Rider – Decaying Aura
3 Crooligans
3 Belles
Necrotic machine
Arcanists (Frame for Murder, Gunsmith, Unrevealed, Plant Explosives, Unrevealed)
Kaeris
The Captain
Firestarter
Nemesis Mage
Blood Mage
Gunsmith
Fire Gamin
Essence of Fire
Turn 1
With the crooligans deploying deep they were able to get out quickly and drop scheme markers for their Breakthrough scheme. The Captain with his casting expert pushed up the Gamin, Firestarter and Blood Mage. In return a belle lured him towards the centre and the nemesis mage targeted a crooligan and put the hurt on him. The Dead Rider walked twice (0) actioned to push into melee with the exposed gunsmith, damaged him and then with a reap trigger pulled him back to the undead lines. Feeding time!
Molly then used the gunsmith to summon a punk zombie and dead doxy in range of the gunsmith who was lured in by the other belles and pounced upon, revealing Frame for Murder. The necrotic machine wandered towards the centre and was followed up by the doxy and zombie.
Turn 2
The doxy walked forward and dropped a scheme marker in the centre. This would be my explosive scheme if I could get the enemy in range.
Last night seen a good match up – testing out wave 2 Arcanist models with Mei Feng with a central theme around burning, either models that cause it or models that get buffed by it.
50SS Squatters Rights
Schemes available:
Entourage
Plant Explosives
Protect Territory
Bodyguard
A Line in the Sand
Arcanists
Mei Feng – 5SS, Imbued Protection, Vapormancy, Seismic Claws
The Captain Imbued Protection, Imbued Energies
Gunsmith
3 Union Miners
3 Fire Gamin
Large Arachnid
Outcasts
Vik of Ash – 4SS
Vik of Blood
Specialist
Bishop
Hans
Johan
Student
Ronin
Turn 1 seen the Arcanists line up on the centre-to-left flank with a large arachnid staring down at Bishop and Hans. Some hesitant movement from the Fire Gamin and miners and the Captain airbursted a miner further up the field before laying a Wind Wall in the middle of the board. Hans climbed into position staring down the length of the board. Vik of Ash sprinted across to the ruined temple with Bishop in supoort. This left the gunsmith who managed to walk and sight down Vik and with explosive ammo on a negative flip got double severe damage for 6 wounds. A prevention flip healed 1 wound.
Turn 2 opened with another salvo from the gunsmith who took out Vik of Ash and lost the Viks their Entourage (Unannounced). Pushing up the fire gamin flipped some objectives and held the centre, threatening the lone Ronin in the centre of the board. The specialist aimed at the Fire Gamin who took 1 damage point and in return took a Burning point for his trouble. Vik of Blood charged into the centre and killed all 3 Fire Gamin but took 6 burning for it. Mei Feng finished her off with a jumping jackhammer kick.
The union miners were throwing out scheme markers to help with Protect Territory (Announced) and placed some markers for Plant Explosives (Unannounced). Hans sighted 1 miner and took 5 wounds off him! He was going to be hiding for the rest of the game.
Turn 3 seen Bishop charge Mei Feng and take her down 2 wounds using her WP as defense and not allowing her to Leap Aside. She in return took Vapormancy twice on him bypassing his DF trigger. The specialist who had been given Fast by the Student seen it was hopeless and tried to get Mei feng as much as possible but managed to hit Bishop twice and take down a lot of wounds on him. The Captain pulled Mei Feng out of danger but couldn’t target the Ronin leaving the Ronin open to a salvo from the gunsmith.
On the far side Hans was tied up with the large arachnid but Johan walked up and swung his hammer, connecting for 1wd (on Armor+3). The Ronin was within range by the end of the turn to declare Plant Explosives and earn 1pt from it.
Turn 4 was a consolidation from the Arcanists with mei Feng moving out of range of the specialist. Bishop walked then charged Mei Feng and took her down to 3 wounds on a Red Joker damage flip. She prevented 1wd and was sitting on 3. The miners ganged up on Bishop and took his remaining wound. The arachnid attacked and butchered Hans and with that, the fight was over.
Final score: 8-0 Arcanists.
Arcanist set up
It heats up!
Gotcha in my sights
Must be the YMCA
Who’s afraid of spiders?
The dust settles
So with Black Knight celebrating its birthday we suited up and headed down to play some Malifaux and other games.
the idea was to celebrate by playing for 30 hours straight. Well, that wasn’t going to happen but we did do 7 hours before having to be called home by our significant others.
A good few demo games of Malifaux has given some guys the bug and a full game of Von Schill vs Viks see the game swing for the Viks then back to Von Schill but in the end the Viks hled out for an 8-7 win.
I ran a good game with Mei Feng against Andy who wanted to try Lilith. It was a close game but inexperience and more playing will be required to get the hang of Lilith.
Next up was a game of In her Majesty’s Name. I didn’t play but watched on. It was a skirmish game that uses D10 with modifiers for actions in a similar fashion to Gutshot. Everyone seemed to be having fun so all good.
Zombicide season 2 arrived so it would have been rude not to open it up and play a game despite it just turning 1am.
The first scenario sees the lucky survivors beginning in the prison but having to open various gates to achieve victory but doing that results in opening zones for zombies to spawn. Get to the tower and grab the sniper rifle and start taking out these walkers.
I made a valiant effort in an attempt to kill as many zombies as possible. Jumping into a police car and running them over killed half the zombies. In return they swarmed on me and with that the rest fell soon after.
Set up for demo games.
Von Schill beats down some girls.
In Her Majesty’s Name – killing mummies and cultists!
Get to the chopper!
Watts takes it to the zombie horde