Designing the board.

Before I start working on the board I did some research.
The tiles from the original game are 22mm
I came across some really nice boards that added an extra tile for each wall.

Then I did some calculations

as you can see adding the wall though it looks great add a lot more tiles and increases the size of the table. Plus I would need to sculpt cast the walls those would need to be magnetized and would need space to store them. Kudos to those with the time and space for such a project.

So I will be looking to do some thing like this chap did
http://www.hq-cooperation.de/galerie/board/boardbau.html
but I am thinking of having the tiles 25mm with 2mm gap

Thats all for now, next post I hope to have started some tiles.

Custom made hero quest project.

Its been years since I posted here, but I thought I might share my new project. 

Summer is here meaning I have some time for myself and the weather allows for more time in the garden.  I have decided to recreate the iconic (and one of my favorite board games) hero quest.

 I used to play it as a kid on my Atari ST and in real life with friends. Even a few years ago I had a blast playing the barbarian, rolling like demon on movement and attack dice, been a room ahead of everyone else barging into the next room and slaying everything in the room, while the rest of the group trying to catch up to me. In the meantime, our dwarf  "specialist" disarmed all the traps with her body and hit points. 

Normally I would not justify myself adding another board game when I have myth and Cthulhu Wars and played them only once. But hero quest is truly different, this is a game that I can play with my normal life friends as a way to introduce them into board games. I see it as the best way to introduce someone to dungeons and dragons. You don't need to spend a session on character creation and the game runs at a good pace with simple movement and combat. Those who know me I am a bit of a hipster when it comes to miniatures. Using the ones simply in the box will Just not do. Just buying the old version would be to easy, cost effective and boring. 

No! I will be making a custom build version with a 3d board. The miniatures  are from a third party, so will be the furniture and doors. I will print out the cards and rule book. And make a custom wooden box for them all. The miniatures were ordered today and the should be with me by the end of July. Until then I hope to have finished the board. If I have some time I will paint the furniture next. I might paint miniatures and furniture as the team works through the levels.
That's all for now I will get in greater details as I tackle each part of the game.

Myth - My second Kickstarter pledge.

Good morning readers,

Yesterday I pledged 213$ on MERCS newest kickstarter MYTH.
Its a Hero quest type tabletop game, with more advanced rules and models to satisfy today's gamers.

I should have posted it before it ended but, I only took part in it 2 hours before it finished. I had seen the game when first put on kickstarter but passed it bye, but my old friend Mike brought it back to my attention when he started asking me some questions about painting minis. So I pledged at captain level which is around the price of these type of  boardgames (many minis inside), the thing that makes it so great was the bonus items you get cause of the number of backers and the amount of money pledged.

I believe for 113$ you get 149 minis (dragon and barbarian ally not included).

Were you can see the box without the pledge levels.

Really lovely stuff.

The last 3 hours of the kickstarter were really quite exciting,  i think overnight it broke the $700.000 barrier
giving us a free cyclops boss. Then 2 hours before the finish the $800.000 goal was achieved and unlocked and was still going strong, there was only one problem they had not predicted it to be such a huge success (I do think in 24 hours it had made $250.000) so no achievement for $900.000 was set.

The comment section was on fire, I was watching it religiously, refreshing constantly.
Everyone was pitching their idea for the the 900.000 achievement, it was true chaos.

One of the mercs staff told us they were in a meeting, so just around 13:00 (UK time) and with 2,5 hours left this was posted by the creator of MYTH:

"So, with complete transparency. You guys and gals have clearly outpaced our expectations and abilities at this point. I think that is abundantly clear.

Keith has 20 minutes to get a handle on a concept for a minor dragon. If it is good, we'll proceed and you'll have a 900k stretch. If it is not, you have everything we can give you. Cross you fingers.

Keith has 20 minutes to get a handle on a concept for a minor dragon. If it is good, we'll proceed and you'll have a 900k stretch. If it is not, you have everything we can give you. Cross you fingers."

An hour later the $900.000  target was achieved.

So at this point I had spent $113, a mixture of human greed and happiness and thankfulness overwhelmed me and I spent another $100 for add ons not the best value for money.

I now feel guilty and need to justify my impulsive buys, 
I bought:

•  the slauterfield deck $20
• the Spriggan and sleeves $20
• the scald $20
• battlefoam $40

So the slauterfield  give you another game type  a last stand type of game.

I bought the two addtional heroes (3 models) with theirdecks and  sleeves for $40, I know this is alot for three models but combining it with the last minute dragon is not that bad. I now have 8 heroes giving a wider choice to my fellow players, also the scald with their spells that form song looks realy cool.

And last the battle foam. I now it is pricey, but if I am to paint the models nicely I also want to store them and protect them, I consider this an good investment. The foams fit in the box  so everything stays in the box.

The game is to be delivered Jan 2014, but I am hoping to receive it in December, the game is half made, I believe the sculpting and production of the minis will be the most time consuming. When I receive them I will do some painting tutorials for the minis.

Now we play the waiting game...

Kill Team By Codex: Grey Knights

Second Codex to examine
Is of the Grey knights.

  Lets see the available options for your GK Kill Team. Options not listed can't for fill the 3 minimum models kill team count.

Troops 0-2

Grey knight Terminators

Grey knight Strike squad

Elites 0-1

Paladins

Techmarine

Purifier squad

Fast 0-1

Grey knight Interceptor squad

Dedicated transport

Rhino

Razorback

Grey knight Terminators

These 5 astartes come at exactly 200p you can change the nemesis swords for halberds and hammers.

I would recommend 2-3 hammers

 

Grey knight Strike squad This unit for me is one of the best in the game (for kill team). I took them to my second kill team and came 8th losing to a broadside and 4 dark angel bikers with some bad rolls.

 

 

How I would play them 

9 strike squad marines 

psybolt ammo  200p

thats 18 shot at 24" str 5

and close up they have power swords that can become str 5 or instant kill.

they also have some psycik defence.

 My brother tried the same unit with some falcions, but in the end he wanted more shooting.

If you add 1 hammer you lose at least 4 str 5 shoots and will break with the loss of 4 models instead of five. The best thing is that they are all the same models and have the same strenghts, were in  other lists if you pick out the special weapons you feel safe, here picking off models has no use, except for the leader with his ld 9.

 I do recommend this list there is nothing they cannot beat with their amount of firepower.  

 

 

Interceptors

Same as strike squad but with a 30" one per game jump. It could prove useful but at a cost of 2 men.
I still preffer the 9 men instead of 7, please prove me wrong.

 

Paladins

 Very simiular to Terminators, 3 models with 6 wounds, or five models with 5 wounds.

I am torn between the two entries.  

3 paladins (FNP, fleet, shrouded)

1 hammer 

3 mastercrafted bolters

 

Purifier squad

 Simular with the strike squad but with 2A and ld 9  you can have two psilences for free.

   You can get 8 with 2 pslisers and a hammer or 7 with psybolts, 2 pslisers and a hammer .

 

The grey knight have less entries than other books and even less viables, but the ones it does have are smokking hot! 

Kill Team By Codex: Chaos Space Marines.

Good morning readers,
This is what I hope is one of many new posts regarding the kill teams each codex has to offer.

Having attended two kill teams events does not make me an expert this is just my personal imput.
Also not all the miniatures are painted by me.

Today I am looking at the Chaos Space marine Codex, which is probably one of the difficult ones cause of all the available choises and wargear (weapons, marks, gift of mutation)

First let me list what is available for your chaos Kill Team.

Troops 0-2

Chaos space Marines

Chaos Cultists

Elites 0-1

Chosen

Terminators

Plague Marines

Khorne berserkers

Noice Marines

Thousand sons

Mutilators

Possesed

Hellbrute

Fast 0-1

Chaos Bikers

Chaos Spawn

Raptors

Warp Tallons

Dedicated transport

Rhino

As you can see there is a plethora of elite choices.

I am going to quickly try and eliminate some of the choises.

Chaos Cultists They start out with 10 men for 50p, that is too much even if you wanted to fill some point gap, so  you probably want to give them autoguns and a heavy stubber, that will make a 10 man squad cost 64points, 9 shots +4 str 3 at 24" (or 18shots at 12") and 3 shot hitting at +4 str 4 36".
I have seen them with terminators but even then i would recomend just using 5 terminators.
They have weak shooting and die like fly's t3  +6 armour. You might get many but that can also work as a disadvantage.Anyone crazy enought to play 40 cultists?

Mutilators
55 points for a combat tool that moves 6" cannot run and cannot shoot. terminator armour and 2 wounds. Maybe in a list where you want to play 145 of something else  you add on of these hulking beasts, again you can get 3 terminators for 95p that might be 1 less wound than 2 muttilators at 110 but the can shoot or run.

Warp Tallons
Basic entry at 160p does not let you buy another unit. You can get 1 more and give the gift of chaos to the champion or play 5 with mark of tzench giving them a +4 inv and gift of chaos or make them nurgle so they are a bit harder to shoot. I would preffer:

6 warp talons
Gift of mutation  200p

I still do not recommend this list, 6 guys +3 save with no range weapons, If someone appears in terminator armour (which they probably will) you have no way of beating them, or lose 3 models and start testing. You have no way of getting rid of the enemies special weapons. Maybe if you are the master of hiding models in terrain, but then you will need to take test and in 8 games you will kill your self.

Possesed

no guns, they have some unpredictable combat tricks. If your opponent is smart it will take you 2-3 rounds of shooting to get to him. They can take a rhino but still cannot charge the turn they come out so again you are looking at a turn 3 charge at best. But you do avoid getting shoot turn 1. I do not recommend this:

rhino dirge caster combimelta
5 possesed mark of nurgle 200p


Noice marines.
With sonic blasters they are 5 points cheaper than sternguard  but don't have half their abilities, I would equip the champion with a power sword and a doom siren. they can dish out many shots at 12 but no way of dealing with +3 armour ecxept in very expensive ways.


Khorn berserkers
 from all 4 marked units I like this one the least.Sure they get many attacks but until they get in that 13" range they do not do much. Sternguard and thousand sons grey knights will shoot the hell out of them. targeting the 2 plasma guns first.

Now lets go to the more interesting things.

Chaos space marines

This was my choice for my first kill team though it was based on one of the nightlord novels
  * Chaos Space Marines (200pts)
        5x Additional Chaos Marines (65pts), Autocannon (10pts), Bolt Pistol, 6x Close Combat Weapon (12pts), Meltagun (10pts), None, Veterans of the Long War (10pts)
        * Aspiring Champion (18pts)
            Combi-bolter (3pts), Power Weapon (15pts)

Things were a bit different back then one of my marines was a psycker and another had the smash universal rule, two good ways of taking out terminators. 

Tallos war band

They start at 75 and then each marine costs 13p which is quite cheap.


10 chaos space marines 1 meltagun 1 plasma gun
rhino 200p

11 models 2 special weapons. FNP on the leader and make the plasma gun twin linked.
A similar list can be achieved with chosen also. I think if you are thinking of giving marks nurgle khorne better look at the special units.

Chosen  
I think this is were things get realy interesting 5 for 90p all ld 9 and all 2 attacks.

5 chosen  90

melta gun 10

melta gun  10

plasma gun  (twin linked) 15

lascannon (preferred enemy) 20

and

Rhino 35 with 5p dirge caster or combibolter         or   rhino with armor or combimelta                         
Power sword or plasma gun 15                                     melta gun 10
Give the rhino shrouded

I would keep the lass cannon in cover or out of your opponents 36 or 30 depending on his guns. he has preferred enemy  so to hit you need a +3 reroll if you get a 1 and to wound you need a +2 with a reroll. I dont think it gets better than this. You use him if possible to target the opponents weapon that can hurt your rhino.
turn 2 the one plasma gun and one melta can shoot from within the rhino.
the other melta gun can come out and shoot in cover of the rhino.
This list loves all kind of 10 less armies. probable bad match up thousand sons. inv and ap3 bolts, nid and ork swarms. I am going to test this list out.

I  know they are again a low count number but regardless the number of  ap weapons you have  the opponent will target them I prefer if you take down my 2 special weapons I am left with another 2 than 4 bolter marines.

You could also drop the rhino and add a mixture of power weapons. or go 4 plasma weapons with preferred enemy and twinlinked so you reduce the chance of harming yourself.


Terminators

6 terminators 1 power fist and one combi plasma.

 6 terminators 2 combi plasma

5 terminators mark of khorne reaper autocannon

Good against  the stearnguard and thousand sons, seem to suffer against the greyknight strike force.

 Plague marines
One of my favourite units. FNP and T5 making them reliable against lots of low str shooting and able 1/3 to shake off a melta or plasma shot. With +4 poisoned str 4 plague knifes. 2 attacks with pistol.


7 plague marines 168
2 plasma guns (Preferred enemy twin linked) 30

7 beasts another list I like, you could make it 5 +1 spawn.

Thousand sons
This is another unit I like, they are all ld 10. They do seem to cost allot but they have a +3 inv, ap3 bolts,
the leader is a psycker and comes with a power weapon,
You have 50% to get the ap1 shot just hope it is when you are playing against terminators. Simple to make this list.

7 thousand sons (champion included) 196p
  

Hellbrute

The hellbrute at 100p (FAQ) allows you to add 3 terminators or 5 raptors both choices as is.
With the terminators you can have 4 hard to wound models. It would also make a grey knight strike squad and sternguard some way ineffective as they probably can not deal with the hellbrute, but instead focus there shoots on to the terminators. 8-9 shoots +3 to hit +2 to wound, it will come done to your armour saves and passing the break tests.

1 hellbrute with combibolter added to the fist
3 terminators 200p


This list suffers from a low model count, and will can break if lists take out 2 of your terminators.
The other option is to add normal chaos marines with mark of nurgle.

1 hellbute
5 chaos marines mark of nurgle 1 melta gun

       
Moving on to the fast choices.
Spawn 
What used to be the worst model in 40k gained two major face lifts with the codex and 6th edition. They cost 30p each and have 3 wounds, ld 10 but no armour save. In combat thay can do from 1-8 attacks hiting on 4s and probably wounding on 3s Like the mutilators no guns either, with the major difference they move 12" even into terrain with no penalties and have fleet. So you are looking at a turn 2-3 charge.

6 spawns mark of khorne or slannesh shrouded stealth fnp

5 spawns mark of nurgle 180p - unfortunatly there is nothing to fill in at 20p rending,hatred, prefered enemy I wll try this one.

3 spawns khorne
 hellbrute with combibolter

Raptors
Even if  not the best unit I realy want to make the unit of bleeding eyes from the nightlord chapter, when not hanging of a celling they are walking on all fours twisted and possesed from the warp, but not like warp tallons, they dont all have a pair of lightning claws.

The thing in big games I would use this unit to pick on some snipers or a weaker unit / blow up a tank.
So you get 5 for 95 and 2 melta gun or plasma guns lets say plasma with twin linked & prefered enemy.

5 raptors 2 plasma guns
5 chaos marines 200p

or
7 raptors nurgle 2 plasma guns power weapon simular to the plague marines but swapping FNP for jump packs. and the poisoned blabes

or
8 raptors  2 plasma guns power weapon.
 Here are just some raptor pics I found for inspiration

Chaos bikers.
Simular to the raptors but a unit of 3 for +1 tougness and a good cover save. and can charge the enemy on round 2. Just dont let the enemy to sneak into the ruins.

8 Chaos Bikers
Mark of khorne
1 melta gun twin linked
1 plasma gun prefeered enemy
Champion has plasma pistol and Power weapon. fnp

This completes the examination of the Chaos Space marine for kill team. Let me know if I left out what you think is a strong list? I will try to post results of my games bellow.

Tale of x Gamers/ Everything is Fast

Good morning readers,
Last obligation of 40k is coming up.
I have 14 days to produce a helldrake and 2 spawns for my tale of x gamers, too fast choises need to be completed fast.

I have started on the helldrake, It is going to be mostly a converted undead vampire dragon

but possed into a flying mode,
with festus as nurgle rider  

I hope to add more work to it tonight and have pictures soon.

THe spawns will be 2 undead dogs with lash tentacles like the dog had in the movie : the thing.

Hope to have some true work to show soon.

Kill team battle Report April Part 2

So after the lunch break,
Game 5 vs (I will fill in the opponent names when I get home) with sisters of battle.

I think he had 5 seraphims and 6-7 sisters one with a multimelta (relentless).
He played first, I deployed out of the multimeltas 24+6 range and took no casualties first turn.
my first target was the multimelta, I took it out on turn 1 and a coubple more sisters, the str 5 storm bolters took their toll. Big victory too me.

Intresting stuff in this game, my leader charged a seraphim, failed to shoot her in the shooting phase, then failed to wound her in cc and in return took a wound and ran away. When rolling for abilities he got nothing! and it serves him right! useless! lol.
My minotaur took done the leader and charged another (I split the shots) he did 2 wounds but the sisters faith was strong (are we playing starwars of 40k?) and rolled 6,6.  surviving the fury of the merciless minotaur only for a round, he sliced her up properly after, :-)

Game 6 vs necrons

This young fellow had some warriors and 3 wraiths, (I hate wraiths).

I killed his leader(specialist) wraith  and a specialist wraith and some necrons, he broke on turn 3.
He was a bit unlucky none of his necrons got up, then he rolled high on the rout test.

Another big win, I think my leader got +1str on his stormbolter now making it str 7.

Game 7 vs Riptide.
Until now I was doing pretty good, I needed 1 win in 2 games to equalize my previous score.
And I was blessed to avoid the riptides cause my friend Harry had already played two of them.
Well now was my turn, the theory was str 5 guns vs t6 so +3 to hit +5 to wound, and then him rolling lots of 1s.
Unfortunatly the riptide had feel no pain and t7.

Still team Dimitris was in high spirits even against a riptide.

I choose sides and picked the side that would give him little space to manouver, the last thing I wanted was him to start jumping around buildings.
his boadside could shoot 4 str 8 missiles i think with no los required and 3 str 8 ap2.
I moved carefully from terrain to terrain, but I started failing gone to ground in ruins saves +3.
My lord on turn 3 got close and took two shoots and he saved them ( I think I did in the whole game I made him take 3 armor saves) then I beleive on my 4th turn I broke.
I should mention that he wounded himself 2 times trying to overcharge.
This was my worst game, the fact that it was t7, some bad dice rolls and and the power of the beast made this game imposible to win. I did notice some mistakes I made, turn 3 my lord should have run towards the bastion instead of shooting. and maybe keep my troops back and try to claim the objective to try and win 5-6 points.

The deployment and position of the riptide for the entire game.

Now I can't claim lame play cause I did something simular to the 3 paladins,  though Mel made some mistakes (no fnp, shoot instead of running. deploying too far away  and still she took down 4 of my marines and had things to do). This one just shoot me from the edge of the board.

A couple more negatives about the broadside:

•  it will kill at least 5-6 models a game (it can do that much in a turn) adding a +6 to its roll for bonuses.
• After 4 games if it gets a bs or toughness increase its even harder to win it.
• Even if you win the monster and play perfectly, like ganing first blood, linebraker and objective it is still imposibble to gain max points cause it has only one speacialist.

And of course for the reasons above it wad 20% presence in the tournament meaning you would play against it 1-2 times, I consider my self lucky.

Funny story, it seems the pairings were random, so my brother got to play on table 1.

Game 8 was against Nick and his 3 terminator wolfs.
I felt sorry for Nick 3 wounds hiding behind a +2 armor save were going to be easy for me.

And I did kill his 2 terminators before they got neear me but lost 2 greeks to this beast.

This beast took 2,5 rounds of shooting, so we roughly calculated about 45 storm bolter shoots were aimed at him before he died.
I got max points in that game 17.


Best kill teams.
Bellow are the best kill teams selected by staff.

And the winner

And finaly here are the Chosen of Pythia.

Pythia is an oracle that inhabites near the eye of terror, the inquisition has declared her as a witch, for she posesses the power of foresight. Some astartes chapters still aid her either out of ignorance or deliberatly and others support her in secrecy. Each city-chapter offers tribute to Pythia in the form of astartes warriors. These warriors sent to her are the finest each chapter can provide; for the deeds of these champions is  reflected upon their chapter. They retain there chapters armor but swear an oath uppon a dark cloth with the symbol of pythia, the cloth is then attached to their right shoulder pad. When needed Pythia will send these demigods on missions reveleded to her in her dreams, either to fulfil them or prevent them.
I also had the honour of John Blanche looking at my models, I think at the end he choose the dark eldar over mine, and thats fine.
I myself am not a fan of his abstract artwork but I recognice and respect his artistic contribution to Warhammer.

Recap.
Overall it was a fun event we got back home relatevly early, making it a small cost event. I actualy thought that the food was realy good. I also think My brother and Harry enjoyed it, even though he had some bad luck and played 2 riptides, if they had sorted the riptides I think it would have made good into great.

More shenanigans - Love those idiots!

My list
I was really happy with my list. I think my list performed realy well, its a game with dice some times luck will abandon you. I do not think for the bikes (my loss)  another list would have been better. The chosen of Pythia were great gamewise and paint wise, I got some very nice comments. I have no complain for the list. I would recommend it. MVP I think goes to the spartan cause I think he survived most of the games, LVP (least valueble player or just useless) was my justicar, claiming to be a descendant of Hercules. He failed many saves, failed all feel no pain saves, failed many times to wound with bs5 and sr 7 bolter he was just bad. Plus he got betten by a girl. I finished 8th. 1st was nids with doom of malantai, 2nd &3rd place were riptides. My brother finished 33rd and he had no idea of 40k apart for our practice games.


Future plans
If I go again I will not take the greeks a) cause they have seen it before, b) cause of the non gw parts.
I think I will take nightlords raptors with 2 melta guns, I do not know if I will tool up my champion or add more bodies, I know already that they will not be as good as my grey knights or a group of stearnguard. But I think they will look cool, they will be 100% gw and they are needed for my army.
I also have an idea of Ig but that would require spending and then having ig that are no use to me.