I’m Jinxing it
Exemplar Errant UA
That's right; I'm doing it. Even after the last two disappointing Protectorate previews I'm going to talk about my hopes for the upcoming Exemplar Errant Officer and Standard Bearer. Errant themselves are solid, and if the Temple Flameguard are any precedent their UA will boost them into the realm of teh win.
In Mk I, Errant were known for their outrageous point costs but now a Protectorate only pays a whopping 5 points for a minimum unit or 8 for a max. For that point cost you can field an efficient jack-of-all-trades unit with at least one ability to help them fill any roll on the table:
Workhorse Brush
When I upgraded my brushes to Winsor & Newton Series 7's a few years ago, I started paying more attention to brush care. With the brushes' higher cost, I wanted to get as much life out of them as possible. For me that meant keeping an older brush around to do my painting dirty work.
Before I started using the S7's, I was pretty rough with my brushes. I was guilty of all of the brush sins, including things like stabbing at models sometimes with the brush and letting paint get into the ferrule regularly. While this wasn't a big deal when I was spending a buck a brush, I knew I had to change my habits with the new brushes, but doing so would slow me down. Lets face it - when you're base coating, dry brushing, or otherwise just trying to lay paint down quickly, doing things right takes more time.
¿Qué pasa con todo el azul?
My painting has been progressing slowly but steadily. Nowadays it seems like I can only spend so much time with the brush before I need a break. But I recently made progress on a handful of miniatures so I figured it was time to add to my (lacking as of late) collection of WIP shots.
Rhoven & Honor Guard
First up is Rhoven and the Honor Guard. I posted some initial WIPs of the Honor Guard a while back and since then I've made some pretty good progress. The Honor Guards have actually been sitting mostly done for a little while now while I worked on Rhoven himself.
I'm most happy with the lower portion of Rhoven's robes so far, but there's still some work that needs to be done. I'm going to repaint the stole for starters; the highlights were pretty borked when I did them the first time. That and some more general cleanup work should make him ready for sealing.
St. Louis Privateer Weekend III: June 4th – 6th, 2010
Ye be warned... For the past 2 years the best players from around the nation have descended on St. Louis to participate in one of the most intense and grueling Warmachine and Hordes competitions known to man and beast, including the first official MkII Hardcore tournament. The St. Louis Riverdogs are pleased to announce our third annual Privateer Weekend at DieCon X June 4th through the 6th. This will be the premiere event for the Midwest prior to Gen Con 2010. Privateer Weekend consists of 3 days of spine crushing, cortex smashing fun coursing over more than 7 events. The terrain is amazing. The competitors are top tier in both skill and personality. Here lies the ultimate in gaming. Featured events over the weekend include a specially designed train event by the Iron Agenda podcast, two Steamroller 2010 competitions, an ongoing Tide of War competition, Iron Kingdoms knowledge tests hosted by Capt. Saultydog, and our main event, the first official Mark II Hardcore tournament on Saturday. If this wasn't enough, the weekend will also feature various painting competitions and a diorama competition.
Complete schedule and details are available on our site, or keep up to date by following us on Twitter. See all the fun-filled convention activities and preregister at the DieCon home page. Registration for DieCon X is only $26.00 until April 15th. After that, registration increases to $31.00 – still an amazing bargain. Online payments will be accepted via PayPal. Those particpating in Hardcore will have an additional 5 dollar fee which goes towards a personalized 2010 Official Hardcore dogtag. Remember to select "PP Hardcore" under the list of Saturday events to reserve your spot today and enter your requested personalization at that time. Our schedule is listed below…
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Borderlands: No Heaven
First off, if the title of this article doesn't make sense and you haven't seen the original gameplay trailer for Borderlands, go check it out. The music is the song No Heaven by DJ Champion. It's not the kind of music I usually listen to but the trailer had it stuck in my head forever.
Now then, it's been a couple months since I mentioned looking forward to playing Borderlands, so I thought I should post a follow-up. I played the game pretty intensely for a while, running through two playthroughs on my first character, a Siren, once as a Soldier, and a little as the other two classes. Most of my gameplay was single player but I got in quite a few multiplayer sessions with a couple of my friends that were a blast.
From skag hunting to fighting off the denizens of the Eridian Promontory, the game as a whole was extremely fun. It wasn't without its issues but unfortunately that seems to be standard for PC games nowadays. Regardless of some of the minor issues, I got more than my money's worth on Pandora.
Packing Away the Cards
With the release of Prime MkII, I finally went through my MkI faction decks and gold card collections. They've all been packed away into a three ring binder. I'm not sure what use I'm ever actually going to get out of the collection again but my packratitis makes it so I can't just toss 'em.
The Fallacy of Risk vs. Resource Resource Management
Most of the time when an experienced player is trying to explain Warmachine and Hordes to a potential new player, they'll use a common phrase to compare and contrast the focus and fury mechanics that drive the two games:
"Hordes is Risk Management, where Warmachine is Resource Management."
I cringe every time I hear that.
Hero Quest: Return of Zargon
Half the dungeon, post-smite.
Since my Sunday gaming group is waiting for after Christmas to kick off our upcoming campaign, Hardarian Blackleaf, Ale, Mr. Wizard Nickelbane III, and Elfin John continued their Quest (tm) to become Heroes (tm). The story was thin but the cardstock terrain was think as... well... cardstock. And so the smiting commenced!
We ran through a couple more pretty generic quests this week - find a good wizard then go kill the evil one. Considered we played Are You the Traitor? beforehand (which features a good/evil wizard mechanic) I suppose there was a theme running throughout the evening.
Revolving Door Villains
"That will be 25,000 gp in diamonds, please."
There's a running joke that in high-magic fantasy games, death is naught but a revolving door and the party cleric is the doorman. I haven't played much 4e myself, but I've heard many of the epic-level abilities start out "Once per day, when you die..." If there's a bigger way to hang the "death doesn't matter" out for everyone to see, I haven't found it yet.
What about villains, though? Unless everyone is playing a pulp-style adventure, having the villain inexplicably escape every time he's encountered can seem contrived and simple GM-fiat, but can the revolving door be used as a plot device to present the players with a unique challenge?
Earthdawn 3e: Character Generation
At the last session with my group, we came up with character concepts and had decided to do the actual generation this week. I wanted to get it taken care on my end prior, so that I could both familiarize myself with the changes to 3e character generation enough to answer questions and be available to do so instead of needing to work on my own character. So earlier last week I finished up my human warrior.
If you're like me, one of your initial reactions to that last sentence is "a race and a discipline isn't a character concept," and you'd be right. However, for this post I want to specifically talk about some of the changes to Earthdawn from a character generation standpoint. So while a character back-story and personality are crucial to a good character, they're going to be outside the scope of this discussion.
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Recent Posts
- I’m Jinxing it
- Workhorse Brush
- ¿Qué pasa con todo el azul?
- St. Louis Privateer Weekend III: June 4th – 6th, 2010
- Borderlands: No Heaven
- Packing Away the Cards
- The Fallacy of Risk vs. Resource Resource Management
- Hero Quest: Return of Zargon
- Revolving Door Villains
- Earthdawn 3e: Character Generation
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