Conventions in Gaming – Dice

From my history page it’s clear that I have grown up with Games Workshop, therefore this post will present a pretty clear bias to that fact, historical gaming isn’t my forte and I’m sure old man Servitob can chime in with some extra points once I’m done.

Classic board games and pretty much every tabletop war game I’ve seen all use dice. Varying quantities of dice to be exact. You can get by with a mere 6d6 if you’re playing Privateer Press games whereas in 40k you can easily end up rolling over a hundred. I remember reading a copy of White Dwarf where the author of an article describing the new War of the Ring game was using the fact that you got to roll an ill-fated Southampton built cast iron behemoth load of dice to decide combats. One of the things that can help you pick out closet gamers is the fact that, more than likely, there are various boxes of dice scattered around their house and the odd errant wanderer lodged under a TV cabinet of sofa.

So, why are dice used? Normally this is to add in an element of chance that exists in the real world, just because you line up a perfect head shot doesn’t take into account that at the last minute a random gust may take the bullet off target, or the mark may find some extra cover to protect themselves. Dice naturally represent the vagaries and random elements that can and do take place in normal real life activities (not really just talking about actual combat here, I have much more experience with the virtual kind and am thankful to not have had to experience it in real life). Yet some games let you roll way more than others, some people also seem to be unlucky at certain kinds of rolls. Personally I struggle with Instability tests with my Chaos Daemons and Power Klaw attacks from my Ork Nobs. Servitob has a reputation for unerring accuracy with a blast template too. While obviously the dice do not favour one person over another, we see patterns in the fate we receive. But surely, there can be other mechanics that we can use other than dice? I like dice and sometimes there is something sadistically satisfying as getting a full mob of Orks into combat and then rolling enough dice to reconstruct the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 3d, however, is this the best way to do things or just an accepted part of our hobby?

We’ve already talked about how different games require different numbers of dice, I’m pretty certain that if there was a game where you just compared the stats of one thing to another  Top Trumps style, it’d be a pretty crummy and boring game (just like Top Trumps). This is why I’m so interested currently with Malifaux, it forgoes the use of dice and instead uses a pack of 54 cards, being a money making venture of course you can buy official faction themed Malifaux decks, but there are rules in the main book that cover using a normal deck of cards, you just need to have two Jokers in there as well. With cards you need a slightly different mechanic than with dice, but just as dice can be re-rolled due to certain rules, in Malifaux you get rules that allow you to add additional cards to a total as well as having a hand of cards that allow you to “Cheat Fate” by swapping the card you drew with one you possess in your Hand. With dice you’re completely at the whim of chance as to whether your re-roll is higher than the previous, but with the mechanic in Malifaux if you really need to cast that spell or win that combat, if you have the cards in your hand then you’re in a much better place to predict the outcome of the action.

I don’t know whether you can call it lazy game design that leads a lot of our games to rely on dice, after all, dice have been in use as games in their own right for millenia and now we use them to add that randomness to our games. Is being able to control things using cards better than the pure random chance of a dice roll? Well, that’ll be down to personal preference and I’m not leaning either way, it’s just nice that someone has come up with another way to play and I believe it to be a nice change of pace from the staple that I’ve seen over the past almost 20 years of war gaming.

As long as whatever system is developed is non-intrusive and doesn’t detract from the ebb and flow of a game I’m all for trying out something new. I’ve played dice games and I’d played card games. I’ve even played card games that have used dice, but I do think that while it’s easy to fall back on using dice as Malifaux demonstrates, using something a little “out of the box” can add an extra dimension to a game that makes it stand out against the ever increasing crowd.

Armies Vs Skirmish

I’d like to thank Servitob for his last post as I believe it feeds nicely into what I want to discuss today. Being on the same kind of wavelength like this is why we are not generally allowed to form a team against our wives when they insist on playing boardgames of the non miniatures/wargaming variety. Although the link may be tenuous to others, it makes perfect sense in my head and follows on nicely. So, if you’re sitting comfortably, then we shall begin.

I first picked up tabletop gaming in the 80’s, although I’d put Space Crusade more in the board games category than true tabletop wargaming I did pick up 2nd Ed 40K when it released. Being a spotty teenager at the time things like sci fi universes filled with marauding aliens and fantasy stereotypes of half naked Elves were vastly appealing, hence the fact that I was aware of things like historical wargaming, but then, who wants to play an Imperialist French homunculus when there is the possibility of the aforementioned Elven ladies?

I have grown up alongside Games Workshop products and spent around 12 years loyally following their games, 40K, Warhammer, Man-o-War, Necromunda and I even bought Mordheim although I never got to play it. Although there have been alternate ways to play both of Games Workshop’s flagship products over the years things mainly revolve around the fact that ideally you play 40k with 1500pts of dudes and Fantasy with 2000pts of dudes. These are both army games and play as such with units designed for various roles and you play very much on a reasonable scale. Now, Necromunda is interesting because of what I want to compare in this post, it was a game that reduced the number of models and the scale of the battles you fought. The hives of Necromunda being a microcosm in the larger 40k universe and therefore, even though the core ruleset followed 40k conventions, there was a lot more depth to those rules. This was in the day when you had to have an A4 card on the table to list all the weapons and their individual rules and now you added Ammo rolls and reloads. Now I happen to believe that Necromunda was the greatest game that GW ever put out. I have an Escher gang at home (unpainted in the box) and the terrain from the first edition box set that I got off eBay.

Now, as I’ve gotten older and especially over the past 5 years there has been an explosion of serious competitors to the GW crown. As I mentioned that I was aware of other historical wargames, I did know of some other miniature games but nothing that was a really serious contender (in my mind at least) to the big daddy of the day. While I went through my gaming drought as I left school and went into the world of work I saw the odd piece here and there from other companies but still stuck with Warhammer as a main focus of my buying and painting. Once I found the start of my current gaming circle things started to change. I can’t remember how it happened but I came across a game called Warmachine and I was so impressed with the models that I bought a starter set for myself and my regular gaming buddy. We played some games and were very impressed and I’m looking forward to the finalised rules for Mk 2 when they hit the shelves next year. I also got into Confrontation with the release of Version 3 of the rules, although shortly after they went to 3.5 and within another short period they changed to pre-painted and effectively killed off an amazingly unique game with incredible models. Following on from that I’ve bought various pieces, I have a Pan Oceania force for Infinity that have never seen battle and the most recent additions are my Imperial and Bone Griffins fleets for the excellent Uncharted Seas, then yesterday my rulebook for Malifaux arrived and once stock is replenished I’ll be getting a Crew box.

So, what has changed? Well, when I first started out everything was to do with large armies fighting across vast landscapes, yet now, things have tended to come down to more of a skirmish style. There are still those games whereby you can collect huge forces to play but a lot of the newer games we are seeing require fewer models and correspondingly have a greater depth to their rules. Although with Warmachine/Hordes you can run forces that equal the size of a 40K force it’s not necessary in order to play and enjoy the game, Infinity requires a small number of figures similar to the starting size of Gangs in Necormunda (around 10). Uncharted Seas can very easily be played with the starter box you get and Malifaux is playable with 5 figures and again, this is what you get in a Crew starter box.

For me, I prefer these smaller scale skirmish games. The rules tend to be tighter and have more to them, not overly complicated in any instance (except for perhaps Confrontation, that had more special rules than a Tax manual) but meaty and interesting enough for me to be interested in the game. Although I do enjoy the grand scale of games like Warhammer and 40K I can attest that I would be happy playing the skirmish games more than the larger ones. This is a question that we asked as a gaming group to each other, we still need to formalise our schedule as we’ve been slipping on our trying to maintain at least 1 day a month given over to our hobby.

I think that I can also speak for the majority of gamers here that we tend to have more models than you can shake a stick at. Last year I sold a lot of what I had in order to consolidate what I owned. Not playing Confrontation anymore I sold all of my stuff there, I got rid of excess 40k and Warhammer armies to leave me with only that which I really wanted to play and vowed to keep these down. I got rid of my Khador for Warmachine to stick with Cryx and I have some Skorne models for Hordes (which I prefer to Warmachine in all honesty). I now have my Orks which are (for the most part) nicely packed away in a storage case, my Daemons which can be used for either 40k or Warhammer, mainly Warhammer at the moment as I prefer my Orks in 40K). I also have a Warriors of Chaos army for Warhammer that is most definitely NOT in any case and is spread around the house with no actual storage area dedicated to them. My Uncharted Seas stuff is new and has therefore not found a home either so even though I sold a lot of stuff and did make a saving in terms of the space taken up by my hobby, I still feel like I have too much.

Personally I would rather have 10 games needing 10 models each than having 1 game that took 100 models and in this arena we are now almost spoilt for choice. Spartan, the company behind Uncharted Seas are going to be releasing a sci-fi version and Malifaux, the new game from Wyrd has hit the shelves and sold out quickly and no-one was expecting a game from them, they just seemed to produce some excellent looking models.

Games Workshop originally set the gold standard but there are many lamentation across the Interwebs about how the company and their business has changed over the years and I don’t plan on going into those here. I am just offering my opinion that I am happier with skirmish games and the lower model count they require than the huge armies that are the GW forte. With such a market now, Games Workshop still dominates as it owns its own stores and they can be found in almost every high street, yet there are other companies now that are producing really good stuff that I find a lot more interesting than these larger battles and I know other people that feel the same.

While I can’t see me giving up my 40K and Warhammer gaming, it may be time to once more have a clean out of the cupboards and come up with a better plan of what we all play and what we want to play. Rather than spending a day fighting two games of a GW game, we might be able to fit in 4 or 5 of the smaller skirmish games. That big battle will still come up every now and again but I will get more satisfaction off variety and depth that these smaller games can bring.

Space Hulk – Rules Review

While not managing to get in a game over the weekend I did manage to have a read through the rulebook. It really is quite short but then again it’s not a complicated game to play, at least in terms of the rules, strategy is another matter. The accompanying campaign book is a lot thicker and I am looking forward to sinking my teeth into it over the next few days. I’ve also cut out all the models and pushed them together and am impressed by how snugly they fit.

As with Space Hulk of old all actions cost action points. The Space Marine player restricted to 3 minutes a turn while the Genestealers enjoy a much more leisurely pace. In terms of action points a Terminator (if they die they certainly won’t be back) they get 4 a piece, whereas Genestealers get 6. Moving and turning cost differing amounts depending on which side you are playing but most things cost 1ap to perform. You can combine things like moving and shooting which costs 1ap thus allowing you to save action points. However, just like chess you’re going to want to have your moves planned out if you’re the Marine player as you are up against it time wise. Also, even though the ‘Stealer player is allowed to spend as much time as they want in their turn, you’ll also want to get done pretty sharpish in order to cut down on the thinking time your opponent gets. If you can make decisive decisions quickly when you’re playing the gribbly aliens then you are going to put even more pressure on the time sensitive warriors of Humanity and that can lead to unexpected mistakes which give you the openings to cram four limbs worth of armour piercing talons down their collective throats.

That’s not all as every turn the Marine commander gets to pick a token out of a cup which gives him a number of Command Points. These can be used as additional action points and, more importantly, can be used in the Genestealer turn. Ran out of time to put your dudes on Overwatch? Well, spend Command Points to lay down a suppressing fire with the Incinerators and fall back by squads to the APC….. ah-hem. Just be sure you remembered what was on that token though, you get to see it at the start of the turn but then it’s placed on the mission board and your opponent moves it according to your spend, at the end of the turn it’s turned over again and if you spent more Command Points than you were entitled to you lose the game immediately!

Overwatch allows you to basically stare down the corridor you are in and shoot anything that moves within range. Genestealer bursts out of a bulkhead in front of you? No problem, now you can gun it down, every step they take closing you down allows you to have another shot. However, if you roll any double on your dice, your gun jams and you have to spend time clearing it and with the speed of the Genestealers a jam at close range will probably result in Marine kibble.

Guard is effectively the melee equivalent of Overwatch, helping you out when a horde of aliens are determined of ripping you a new one. Definitely worth it if you’re staring down some of these guys and you have one of the more melee oriented Marines out front.

Some of the missions cause you to find an artifact or relic, while others want you to torch certain sections of the map (it’s nice to know that in the far flung reaches of the future mankind still resorts to chucking in gouts of smouldering napalm in order to complete missions). I’m lo0king forward to working my way through this as there are some maps that are played over more than one level (with the chance of falling down the stairs and breaking their neck in the cases of the Terminators) and some of the maps look like they use every single tile that comes in the box. I have yet to go through the whole book but they look varied enough on the face of it to keep things interesting. I want to play through it all and document the campaign here on the blog for you all to enjoy.

Rules wise therefore I give the game a whopping 9/10 Zombies. I’ll give a fuller rating once I’ve actually been able to play it.

Nurgle Daemons Poison Loren Forest – Story at 11

Following on from my recent escapades with the all Slaanesh army I knocked together an all Nurgle list.

I wasn’t expecting it but I managed to get in a game yesterday but this time the Vampires had been substituted for Wood Elves which had me a lot more worried. To kick off I’ll throw my army list down.

Great Unclean One: Level 3 Wizard, Staff of Nurgle and Noxious Vapours

Herald of Nurgle: Level 1 Wizard, Slime Trail, Noxious Vapours, Battle Standard Bearer, Standard of Sundering

Herald of Nurgle: Level 1 Wizard, Slime Trail, Noxious Vapours

16 Plaguebearers: Full Command with Icon of Virulence

15 Plaguebearers: Full Command with Icon of Virulence

15 Plaguebearers: Full Command with Icon of Virulence

Beast of Nurgle

Beast of Nurgle

Overall from looking at it on paper I was hoping that it would be tricky to kill. I only had two units with a Herald so knew the one that didn’t have Regeneration was going to bear the brunt of whatever was sent my way. This wasn’t built around a particular army to counter but thought that it would be a decent force to have a go with.

I ended up facing Wood Elves, who I already have a healthy respect for especially in the hand of my usual opponent. Hopefully the hard to kill Daemons would prove their worth.

I ended up winning the roll to go first and handed it to my opponent, I was wary about doing this but it would mean I’d get the last turn for capturing table quarters but I had to take my time to think if it was the right thing to do. The Wood Elves moved their cavalry forward as well as Wardancers, Dryads and one of the heroes, everything else got ready to shoot. I had picked the Lore of Athel Loren with my Standard of Sundering, so despite three casters they were all at -2 to cast (with the exception of the Treeman’s bound spell) and I had a whopping 6 dispel dice anyway. I think the Wood Elves got off one Tree Singing the whole game. Shooting picked of some of the Plaguebearers from the non heralded group.

I just moved everything forward and got a couple of Miasma of Pestilences on the Heralds, none of the Rancid Visitations (either cast by the GUO or his bound staff) went through. I was facing 3 dispel scrolls.

Second turn Wood Elf noble charged the Great Unclean One, more shooting thinned out the non herald squad and I lost some from the non-BSB herald unit. Turns out that this Noble had been geared out for killing Greater Daemons (or at least the Keeper I used the last time). he was Alter Kindred and had an Annoyance of Netlings so I’d only be hitting on 6’s. So, first round of combat I rolled two 6’s as my Noxious Vapours made him strike last, he had also declared a challenge which I accepted (puny elf thing). Two auto wounds from Poisoned Attacks and he failed one of his 3+ ward saves which meant the ward save was now gone (some magic item) and I knocked a wound down. My guy also took a wound so we drew the combat.

Over the next few turns I didn’t get anything magic off other than Miasma of Pestilence on the Heralds. my Plaguebearers got thinned although the unit with the non BSB Herald saw off  the Treeman. The Great Unclean One saw off the hero as well as a unit of Warhawk Riders. The Treeman killers got flank charged by Dryads after pursuing the Treeman and rear charged by Wardancers. Slime Trail paid for itself there. I got a rear charge with one of the Beasts into the Wardancers. The Dryads fled and the Wardancers were killed as they were surrounded with no way to run. In the next turn I failed to declare a charge on the Glade Guard with the survivors of that combat. Another unit of Plaguebearers (the non-Herald one) took charges from the Wild Riders and Glade Riders, leaving only the unit champ remaining, however, I did see off the Wild Riders and the Glade Riders died when the BSB unit charged them. I ran my other Beast into Waywatchers and proceeded to do no wounds and suffered one back from return attacks. By this time though a lot of the Elves were gone and I had only lost 1 Beast due to a bad instability roll.

We totted up the victory points after turn 6 and I had a Solid Victory, I had lost around half of the one Herald unit, nothing from the BSB unit, 1 Beast and 1 wound off the other, the third Plaguebearer unit was down to its Champion only and the Great Unclean One had 9 wounds left. I grabbed two table quarters too. Now, I can’t claim that this was all down to pure tactical genius. The Wood Elves found it hard to wound anything I had and I was passing more of the normal ward saves than I usually do (so in retrospect I probably hit averages) but backed up with the Herald giving the one unit regeneration is stuck it out amazingly well.

I’m not sure about the Staff of Nurgle as I spent a lot of time in combat and therefore it was useless, I may use those points elsewhere the next time. I have also yet to try and combined Gods army, but with another mono-God army working really well I had a lot of fun. I don’t consider Nurgle to be overpowered they did what I expected to do in terms of soaking up punishment and it was a good game even if the final result did make things look a little one sided.

Uncharted Seas

The thing about blogging is that you need to write posts. I have been on holiday for the past two weeks and even though the second of those weeks was spent at home I have failed to add anything here.

Well now is the time to try and sort all that out.

During my holidays I got to try out Spartan Games‘ Uncharted Seas. It’s a maritime game that pays homage to Man-o-war if you’re old enough to remember that. Although I’ve managed to lose my first two games I’ve also had a lot of fun playing it and getting used to the system. You can buy a starter fleet that is a viable fleet straight out the box and get change from £30 which is really good. The models are also made of resin rather than metal or plastic which allows for some really nice detailing.

The game is simple enough to play and follows normal D6 rolls for everthing. There is also a card deck included with everything that allows for extra actions to happen throughout the game that keeps you on your toes.

It’s a game I’d recommend to anyone looking for a break from the usual tabletop fare, I’m hoping to get some more games in soon.

“What do you mean 5 armies isn’t enough?”

I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, but I have an inkling that many do;

That urge you have whenever you see a new army for whatever game tickles your fancy and you end up with this overwhelming desire to go and spend your hard earned cash on something for it. There are even those times when an army you have previously discarded as one you will “never collect” actually inspires you out of the blue.

I’ve often mused that once you get into miniatures wargaming it becomes more of an obsession than a hobby, hordes of metal and plastic end up taking over your home and heavens help you if you are married or co-habiting… I have a couple of army cases that are full of stuff and STILL these things are all over the house.

Currently I have the following forces;

Warmachine: Cryx and Cygnar

Hordes: Skorne

Warhammer: Warriors of Chaos

40k: Orks and Daemons

And I am just waiting for my Uncharted Seas fleet to arrive through the post.

Last year I managed to clear out a lot of stuff to try and consolidate my collection, I sold Space Marine, Dark Eldar and Necron armies for 40k in order to get my Orks. I sold my Dark Elves as I wasn’t playing Fantasy and my Khador from Warmachine. I also managed to get rid of my Confrontation Celts and Daikinee due to the changes that Rackham made to their game. All in all I sold a lot of pieces and my main game since has been 40k. However, even though I know that I don’t want to be in the same situation again with having millions of models all over the place I still find myself being tempted, quite severely, that leads me to have to rigorously put down my own will.

I like my Orks, they are brutal and seem to fit with how I play. My Daemons are really an accident as I got them for Warhammer but on the eve of the Warriors of Chaos release and ended up with an army of them instead and converted the Daemons over to 40k. Yet, after having two battles with my Warriors I am now looking at the option of using my Daemons in Fantasy for a change. I have been facing the new Vampires and have to say that I am finding them to be a tough challenge. I have won both the games I have played but they have invariably been horribly bloody affairs but highly enjoyable nevertheless. I am now looking to throw a spanner in the works by changing what I field.

I never design an army around beating a particular opponent, I tend to throw an army together to face whatever would come along, even if I know pretty much exactly what I will actually be facing. The Daemons have a unit that I do not currently have in my collection. It’s not one I’d be using in 40k only for fantasy and therefore I am reluctant to go out and spend money on the stuff (I’d be doing a conversion as well) just to satisfy things for one game. I’ll proxy with my opponents permission. But really, the crux of this post is that after playing with one army, I get the urge to look into another and then I go work out an army before I have to take a step back and realise that to do this would mean another batch of plastic. Another few nights of actually assembling everything and another lifetime of having to provide storage for all these extra models. I just find it very hard to settle on any one thing and with having multiple games that I like to play this just makes it all the worse.

Should I just give in to the obsession of gaming, or is there a way that I can curb the desire to create new forces with which to surprise my enemies?