'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'

-Robert E. Howard
Beyond The Black River

Corrupt Cliffs

Corrupt Cliffs
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015

CONAN

Of all my fantasy loves CONAN is #1.

I was doing a random search the other day looking to see if there was any possibility of a CONAN miniature game I had missed out.

I have the board game, but I really was looking for miniatures.

I came across a game simply called, "CONAN" by a company called Monolith, but it wasn't available yet.  It was just *ABOUT* to go live on Kickstarter in a couple of days.

It funded it's $80,000 in under 5 minutes, and has since gone on to unlock a lot of stretch goals and is not just over $1,000,000 and on track for about $2,000,000.

If you like Conan and like Miniatures you should check it out!



Saturday, January 24, 2015

EVEN MORE FANTASY! Fightin' Fungi!

One of the first Fantasy battles I posted about was A Song of Blades and Heroes.

Now the creator of that rule set is launching a new game:  "Fightin' Fungi"

It sounds to me like more of the same awesome of A Song, but with unique mushroom warriors and an improved magic system as well as more combat abilities and weapons.

Find out more at his Kickstarter campaign!  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/9742092/fightin-fungi-28mm-fantasy-miniatures


If you like quick play skirmish rules that have an active community and creator I suggest you check out the new game and his website: http://www.ganeshagames.net/



D&D Attack Wing. First game.

I am more of a sci-fi fan than a fantasy fan.  That doesn't mean I hate the fantasy setting.  For example I am a huge fan of Conan.  I played D&D in my teens and when I did a lot of war gaming I played Warhammer: Fantasy as well. 

I liked the look of X-wing and have gotten a little into it and played a few times.  However one of my friends came back from GenCon excited about D&D Attack Wing.  He has played a few times after picking it up after Christmas, before but this particular game was new to me.

We picked a scenario that used named dragons, a blue and a copper.  I took the blue dragon and he took the copper.  We filled out our dragons to 50 points.  The scenario involved us in a cavernous lair with 5 treasure piles.  If you were within one of the piles you could pick up the pile and see what it was.  2 special items, 2 generic piles of gold and 1 fire trap, that could potentially damage the dragon.

Initial set-up two dragons in a lair locked in combat but still looking for treasure.

The first turn resulted in both of us moving 4 and falling short of the treasure piles.  In round two I got to my pile and he got to his.  My treasure was an iron tail spike, good for rear attacks. His first treasure was the FIRETRAP!  Sadly it did no damage to him.  I was also hit with a slow breath weapon which hampered my ability to maneuver.

We maneuvered and he picked up the other special item which allowed his red maneuvers to no longer be red.  He can now do the 4move Uturn easily.  Not good for me.  We had an exchange of breath weapons and I came out on the bottom suffering 1 damage, one being critical and removing my single agility die.

In the next pass I placed my dragon next to his in a beautiful attempt to hammer him with my magic missile spell.  When I attempted this he used a special ability called trixster to use it against me causing an additional damage to my dragon.

In an attempt to recover my breath weapon I chose to put distance between us to give myself maximum time and defense dice.  

This unfortunately put me close to the table edge, I might have been able to pull the u-turn but chose to just make a sharp right in front and use my evade action.  I suffered one more damage in the attack, rolling one dodge and using my evade token.

I had hoped to have him overfly me but I didn't choose enough movement and although it did allow me to use my tailspike, it allowed him to attack me as well.


I scored some good die rolls here, but sadly his three dice rolled ALL dodges.  The dice do really hate me.

In the last round I was injured to the point I thought he would try and win vie scenario win conditions.  I needed to get lucky and kill the dragon in the next turn.  Pretty large order since I had yet to wound him.  I wheeled and came to the position I thought he would move to.  Again I had poorly estimated distance and he ended up beside me, placing me in arc and him out of arc.

This was the end of the scenario.

Overall it was a good game.  Very strongly like X-wing which isn't surprising.  We didn't use any of the ground mechanics in the game, although they did add a some interesting tactical ideas.

Huge plus to the game in my books is there is enough dice in the boxed set.  X-wing suffers from not including enough dice.  ie 3 defense dice.  Ties with an agility of 3 and at long range need 4.

I would have liked to have done better in this exchange but it was my first time and I think I did ok in terms of predicting movement, just not distance.  Perhaps he just did a better job.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Song of Blades and Heroes. Neither 15mm nor SciFi.

Over Christmas I learned that my girlfriend who had never played anything to do with miniatures liked the parts of fantasy computer games that dealt with combat. The parts played out on a battlefield.  These are simple computer driven miniature combat in essence.  With this knowledge and a copy of A Song of Blades and Heroes, I felt I could introduce her to the wonderful world of wargames and miniatures.

Problem was I had zero fantasy figures.  My solution was to buy a bunch of Pathfinder booster packs and use them to stat up a couple of 200 point warbands. 

We had a "Fire" force and a "Forest" Force.  We played a find the magic item scenario on an aproximately 3'x3' surface with some pretty basic terrain (I really need some hills)

Roughly the sides were:
Fire: Fire Giant, Fire Elemental, Wizard and a Sin spawn (undead) type
Forest: Forest Drake, Boggard, Wizard and a hound beast.

The battlefield was an road between 2 hills with a stone arch causing a choke point along the road.

The first few turns were spent running our forces to the two closest possible magic locations.  She arrived first and rolled that it was indeed the magic item giving her an easy 3 victory points.   Once she had the magic item her drake flew over the hill and attacked my forces.  Nothing serious occured in this engagement.
 
However I took the opportunity to try and outright kill the drake and moved most of my units into hand to hand combat.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to kill the drake and it flew away to attack one of my more isolated units, the fire elemental.  I survived the initial attack but was pushed back leaving the Drake in the open. 

I cast transfix on the drake and succesfully held it.  My fire elemental closed and won combat, removing her biggest threat.


I then failed my next activation, trying to play too cautiosly and her hound kept my fire giant and sin spawn busy long enough for her boggard and wizard to eliminate the fire elemental.

 
The fire giant moves in while the sinspawn deals with the hound, elminating it from play.  During the next few rounds the sinspawn closed while the giant fought for his life.  He became transfixed at one point, and had a hard time breaking free of the spell, and truth be told we screwed up once here.  Missing a quick kill on the giant.  That being said the Boggard was killed leaving only her mage

 
The sinspawn and fire giant attack the final member of her warband, the sinspawn dies in the exchange leaving only two.....
 

With a swing of his fire club, the mage is knocked down and....
 
 Crushed under the feet of the giant.

Even with her three additional victory points, I managed to win by 1 or 2 points, only because my giant was the only one of my units left.  If it had died and my sinspawn had lived, I probably still would have not managed the victory points.

Overall the game went pretty smoothly.  She was brand new to miniatures and I had never played the rules before.  She enjoyed it and I think will play again.  I will need more miniatures though.