Saturday, September 26, 2009

MKII Khador Update

This is one of those guilty WIP posts. The last 4 weeks have been the busiest of my career, which is not quite what I had in mind when I moved jobs in an attempt to try and get my life in balance with my work. I have been attempting, fitfully, to spend a little time at the hobby, directed towards my MK II Vlad list for GenCon 2010.

Plan A for that list involves Drago. I had to rebuild this model due to my initial poor planning on the fit. Again. It's a sweet miniature.

Plan B is a Beserker, one of two I'm going to need. The other is coming from BrookHurst Hobbies in the next week or so.

This isn't Plan C. I'm painting these MOW Shocktroopers because I like them and I had planned (in the MKI days) to do an eIrusk MOW list. These will be finished in the same scheme as Beast-09, so I'll be raising the green up quite a bit.

As for the GenCon MK II list, it will be Vlad, Drago and a Wardog, a MOW Kovnik with 2 Beserkers, and a Koldun Lord with 2 Juggernauts. This assumes that 35 point lists will be the level set by PP for HardCore at GenCon.

As for Vlad, I fully understand why PP changed him, raising the costs of casting both Blood of Kings and Signs and Portents to 4 focus each. It has to do with his feat and how well he runs jacks, which in MK II means he's much more of a go-to guy for Khador - and threat against everyone else - than he was in MK I.

I also appreciate PP making available the final MK II rules and card stats as free downloads. Thanks.

To war! To war!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Space Hulk!

There is so little happening from a hobby perspective in my life right now, leaving aside the usual imaginings of any committed wargamer, that I have just got to post last night's introduction to GW's latest regurgitation, the 3rd edition of Space Hulk. In short, nice components, nice gaming miniatures, and simple rules which I learnt the essentials of in about 3 minutes.

The first mission in the rules provided in the box is Suicide Run. A Space Marine terminator squad has to destroy a control room to prevent the Tyranid genestealers on the space hulk from exiting it via functioning lifeboats located on same that are controlled from that room. The room can only be destroyed by the flamer armed terminator. The Marine player has to accomplish this or fail. Killing the flamer dude is a win for the tyranid player.

This first picture shows the gameboard after turn 2. There are four genestealer blip markers on the board, one being hidden behind the door at 12:00 o'clock. The Terminator sergeant is leading the way. He is dead hard, but genestealers are dangerous critters in their own right. The rearmost terminator is on overwatch to deal with trouble from behind, the worst kind.In the next picture, the stealers are revealed. The tyranid player did not move blip markers again for the rest of the mission.
In this next picture you will note the absence of the Sergeant. Yes, torn to little pieces after his pistol jammed. One of the great risks for a Marine player is a jammed storm bolter on overwatch as it does lead to unpleasantness. One of the main effects of the death of the Sergeant was to expose his companion bearing the Flamer to unwanted attentions as can be seen below.
The Flamer Marine was able to ward off the genestealers for a while, but on his last firing he was unable to kill the closest of three genestealers he shot at (he rolled a 1 on his to wound roll) which allowed the confrontation below to occur. Genestealers get three attack dice againt the one attack back of this particular Marine. Victory to the Cult!


Final thoughts: this is a very well produced game. It has to be said that this particular mission was not particularly riveting from a gaming perspective. As well, I am in my 5th decade on this planet and I did not play first edition Space Hulk back in the day (25 or so years ago). So I don't have the nostalgia that playing it in my late teens/early twenties would bring to the table today, and I guess it just wasn't that exciting from a gaming perspective. I don't mean to damn it with faint praise. I'll pick the game up if there are any copies left in the MSRP range and it's not too much trouble, but if I can't get it I won't lose any sleep. I am going to paint up a couple of squads of my OOP Deathwing terminators for the next time I play against my friend.