For the Great Good - Tau first two battles

In a previous post I told you about my new second hand Tau army, today I will speak about their two first battles or glorious defeats :)
The first one saw only infantry involved as we are trying to get the rules step by step. My opponent got a starter set and was having the Space Marines ready for the game. There were two squads, a big one with several Space Marines, one of them armed with a nasty heavy weapon and blast effect, and a second one of 5 guys in Terminator armour (2+ saves).
For the Tau I was fielding two Fire teams (each with 12 soldiers) and a 12 members Kroot unit.
We did not check for the balance of points as our intention was to try the rules and see how the game mechanics worked, winning or losing or any army points consideration were left aside. Although we were pretty sure that the Tau were "under pointed".
Anyway, we set up a table on the long, so that the Tau were pretty far away from the Space Marines and were able to enjoy the 30" range of the Pulse rifles, however the one Space Marine with the heavy weapon with range 36" also got some Kroots dead.
The good thing was my initial great rolling as the Tau Fire Teams managed to kill 3 of the 5 guys in Terminator army in the two first rounds of the game.
The Game, by the way, was decided to be played on 4 rounds, with a central primary objective worth 3 points and as secondary objective were First Blood (1 point) and Line Breaker (1 point).
All the Tau were in the back basically all the game shooting from the distance and trying to stop the guys in Terminator armour who were advancing towards the central primary objective. The rest of the Space Marine forces started the game in a corner inside a ruined building, out of their weapons range (except for the mentioned 36" heavy one) and were "tasted" by the Tau pulse rifles, but later moved carefully outside of the ruins and under cover of a chemical reactor and some walls tried to move towards the primary objective. The Tau were waiting for them and the first one that showed his ugly face from behind the chemical reactor is still looking for the insides of his skull on the battlefield. The rest just hunker down behind the cover and let the guys in the Terminator armour control the central objective.
The Tau were not able to get clear fire lines to the two surviving Terminator armour guys and were trying to maneuver into a better firing position, that leaded to the dead of more Kroots who actually managed to fail a Morale test and Fall Back out of the board and giving the Space Marine player the First Blood secondary objective.
At the end of round four, the guys in Terminator armour were still there, controlling the primary objective and  not scared at all of the fire of the Pulse rifles.

The second battle was against an Ork army. This time we agreed on 500 points and at least a vehicle to try the rules further.
The Ork fielded a kind of open truck, a unit with three bikes, a heavy unit with three guys and a very impressive leader again in 2+ armour and a normal unit full of orks (a lot of them).
For the Tau I field a Hammerhead with the Rail Gun configuration, a five members stealth team, all of the with the Burst Cannon, a unit of 12 Kroots (they should have been 14 o 15 to be close to 500 points but I forgot to check the number of Kroot on my bag and I was short of points again...) and a team of 10 Fire warriors with Pulse rifles.
This time we used the long side of the table for deployment, so we were having only 4" to deploy and the central 24" as battle field.
Again I lost the roll to see who decided to start the game and I deployed first, which upon reading now again the rules should have made me the first one in activate my units but actually my opponent deployed after em and activate before me... Well, next time :)
Anyway, I deployed the Hammerhead in the left corner, behind a very low hill, the Fire team on the right corner, behind a slightly higher hill, the Kroot to the left of the Fire team, just behind a broken wall (forgot they were able to infiltrate...)
My opponent deployed the normal ork unit in front of the Fire team and the rest of his troops mainly on my left side, so in front of the Hammerhead.
I deployed the Stealth Team in the open, in front of a container, to the left of the Kroot and a bit deeper into the battlefield. I was counting on the 4+ save given by the stealth armour.
The battle field was having an impassable swamp in the centre of the table, some wall, a container of each deployment side (from the AT-43 game), a chemical reactor close to the hill on my right, the one with the Fire team and a ruined building also on that side, but on my opponent deployment zone.
Primary objective with 3 points was controlling the reactor, secondary objective again First Blood and Line Breaker.
This time we decided to have variable game length, so rolling on the 5th and 6th turns and ending on the 7th the latests.
The heavy orks started inside of the open truck which was also a transporter but it was not able to move more than 6" to be able to disembark the orks, so my opponent was a bit disappointed with that. Anyway the truck moved around the container on his deployment zone a disembark the heavy orks who moved closer to the central swamp. The bikers joined them there and the normal orks tried to approach the chemical reactor. As the frontal armour of the Hammerhead was impenetrable to their fire weapons nothing serious happen to it, however the stealth team in the open lost one member (bad roll in the save and good rolls in the attack)
The Fire team moved on top of the hill and fired upon the normal orks, the Kroots moved also to the left to have a good view of the same orks and fired also against them, together they kill enough to force a morale check, but they past it.
The stealth team jumped on top of the container and got one of the bikers but the hammerhead was not able to get any one of the heavy orks. As in the first game, those 2+ armours were a problem for the Tau.
In the next round, the ork bikers and the heavy orks killed two more stealth guys, the remaining Tau failed the morale test, and fall back and eventually left the field, again First Blood for my opponent,
The hammerhead was again not able to score any casualty to the enemy, but the Kroot and the Fire warrior finally decimated the ork unit, leaving only two guys to fall back. They managed, however in the next round to regroup with a double one (!!)
The biker managed to get close to the hammerhead and assault and destroy it with four penetrating hits.
After that I was ready to concede the game as no one of my troops was able to stop the heavy orks, but we play a turn more, wherein my Kroot moved to be able to fire a half range against the heavys but without any success.
The counter attack of the heavys killed enough Kroot to made them fall back and the bikers were able to approach the Fire team on the hill.
This time my opponent was convinced of the Tau defeat and we finish the game.

With only two games and a very imperfect knowledge of the rules I can not say a lot about the future performance of the Tau. I need to learn my army before I can talk or criticize it with any rigour, but one think is clear, I need to field people able to hit 2+ armour with a certain amount of dices To Hit. The Hammerhead has an Armour Piercing (AP) of 1 but it is "only" a Heavy 1 weapon, so basically you roll one dice against a unit of 4 heavys and will Hit one with a 3+ (Balistic Skill is 4 for the Hammerhead). This does not sound to me a too much, it is like flipping a coin. After that you need to Wound but the enemy can save (Cover, for example).
Reading the Tau codex I was thinking about the plasma rifle with AP 2, 24" range and rapid, which will roll two dice below 12", but for that I will need to field Crisis battlesuits.
Also the Stealth teams can field a Fusion Blaster, AP 1 and range 12".
Don't know yet, need to re-read the rules again and see what can be done.
Now, I see the Hammerhead as too short on To Hit dices but again, I still need to learn how my army works.
More soon....

Star Wars X-Wing Miniature Game - Unboxed and 1st impressions review

Well, after listening to the d6generation podcast I was were enthusiastic about this new game, so I ordered the basic core box and this is what I found inside :)

Three very nice ships: two Tie fighters and one X-wing. Contrary to what I was told, the material allows for deformations of the models and actually the X-Wing four cannons are not perfectly straight but I can life with it.
The ships are supposed to fit into a plastic peg which goes into the base. Those pegs are cylindrical and with the corresponding holes for the fitting, which are not round but have wedge shape so that the pegs do not rotate when mounted. This translate in that the ships can also not rotate over the base.
This should no be a problem BUT the X-Wing is not perfectly aligned with the orthogonal position, so any person will instinctively try to fix it right by turning (when we try the game, after assembling the ships it was precisely that what my friend and opponent for the game tried). Luckily he knows how delicate this join points / pieces are and did it carefully and realized his error on time, but imagine the opposite and you have a broken ships or peg. The second is not so much of an issue, the first, well...
I think this is a particular bad design point of the ships, which on the other hand look very nice and detailed.
I do not see the need of a fixed peg which can not rotate. I think this complicated the components without offering any substantial advantages

Further components:

 And all the pieces on the table :)

1st impressions

The rules:
They come in two sections. Basic and Advance rules. The basic rules are really basic. I would not play with only them, they are too simple and the game offers nothing in terms of excitement or tactics at this level.
The advanced rules are a bit more complex but not very good. I will explain.
The ships can not collide with each other. The movement is performed using templates which fit into the base of the ships and it is very fluid and easy, however if two ship bases overlap at the final position of the ship moving, nothing really happens except that the moving ship "breaks" and stays just before the other ship, in base contact and they can not declare themselves in attack.
On the other hand, there are rules for obstacles, such as asteroids, whereas if you fly through the obstacle (the template overlaps with the obstacle) or you finish your movement in the obstacle, the moving ship get an attack of 1 dice.
The reasoning for the non-collision of ships is that the space is 3D and big enough for the ships to maneuver so that they do not collide, this reasoning seems not to apply to the obstacles.
I see the point of the obstacles as an interesting feature of the game (and needed) but then, why limit it to other obstacles and not extend that also to ships.
Maybe I would like to ramp with my Tie fighter the insidious X-Wing. But, this is alas not possible with the actual set of rules.
Also, the game is supposed  to represent 3D combat, however the rules are totally 2D. There is no indication of different levels of altitude, so all the ships are flying on the same plane.
I know this game is based on the previous Wings of Glory, but I cannot recall if that game was having altitude rules. If not, why no one bothered including them here ? If yes, why they removed them?
I know that it is very difficult to represent 3D on a 2D board, but this game not even tries to do that, it just ignores it.

The Core box:
Not enough. Just so simple. The box is 30 €, it is true, but with three ships it feels a bit short. We got the impression that at least another core set would be needed to start to enjoy the game and to see some tactical challenges.

The Missions:
We play the first mission, the escort of the Senator twice, changing sides.
The scenario is very neat in terms of winning of losing it, as the movement of the Senator ship and the attack of the Tie fighter are borderline in terms of who will win. Actually in our game, the Rebel won once and the Imperial the other.
However, the X-Wing which escorts the Senator is pointless. It has more shields and hull that the Tie fighters, so it is very difficult for the Imperial player to destroy and for what reason? The objective of the scenario is clear, destroy the Senator ship. So, the Imperial player will launch both Tie fighters against the Senator and disregard the X-Wing.
If the X-Wing makes a wrong turn it would be out of game as it takes ages for it to turn back into the combat and obviously, the Senator ship would not wait for it as two Tie fighters are just pounding on him.
So, basically the Senator runs forwards at maximum speed and the X-Wing try to destroy the Tie fighters which by ignoring him can concentrate fire on the real target.
If the X-Wing destroys a Tie fighter and being honest, he can do one Tie fighter per turn with a bit of luck, nothing really serious happens. At the end of the turn, the Imperial player gets another Tie fighter as reinforcements coming from his boardgame side which is the same side the Senator has to go.
So, think about this, the Senator is running towards the direction from which one the Imperial reinforcements are coming !
Therefore if the Rebel destroy a Tie Fighter, another exactly equal appears in a better position as it would be directly in front of the target to destroy.
Now, tell me, why will the Rebel player try to destroy Tie fighters ? Just to avoid two of them firing to the Senator, yes, point given, but that would only be so if the X-Wing manages to destroy one Tie fighter, each and every round.

The second mission is Lucke Skywalker trapped inside of an asteroid field waiting for four complete round before being able to activate his hyperdrive and scape in the fifth round.
At the beginning I was very excited because we were using some of the characters from the movies with better stats, but it does not matter if you are playing with the core set.
In the first mission, the Tie fighters are on the hands of Academy pilots which are both equal and with pilot skill lower than the Red Squadron pilot of the Rebel player. So Imperial moves first and attack last.
In this mission, the Imperial have again two pilots with pilot skill lower than the Rebel pilot, only difference being that the imperial pilots have different skills and one goes before the other, but again both go before the Rebel pilot and attack after.
Yeap, true, they have special skills and so, but it feels a bit too short again.

My final impression ?
Well, I am disappointed. The reviews I read and specially the podcast crew, they were all very excited about the game, the rules, the scenarios and so on, and maybe they are right, maybe the game is great, but with the Core set you do not feel it so, or at least, I do not feel it so.
But, even if I would have two core sets, two advance Tie fighters and one Y-Wing, the 2D rules would be the same and I cannot see me expending around 100 € in miniatures for a rule set which is below optimum.
Maybe if there would be a More Advance Rules, then maybe...

Also, the FAQ is already there and a lot of people apparently were discussing what my opponent in the game calls "millimetre discussions". That is, when you start arguing about the relative position of a ship based on an accuracy which is far beyond the experimental error of the game.
You are moving not so heavy items over card board templates with your hands !
Of course it is not possible to make machine precision movements. Of course, it would be never possible to move a ship in a crowded area of the board without disturbing the others, specially when the template has to go over those other ships.
Therefore I found funny that one of the FAQ was about how to use the range ruler, if its broadness was used for the measurement or not, so that you can add one or two more millimetres to the arch of fire of the ship. I find this ridiculous.
In the first game we play, after two movements, there was one situation where a Tie fighter was dubiously able to fire against the X-Wing. My proposal was to use a dice, my opponent says, "no, too much dices is no good, we will give the advantage to the attacker always". We could also have given the advantage to the defender. That is not the point, the point is that some people need a ruling about one millimetre (!?)
Anyway, it was not my intention to criticise anyone.
Coming back to the game.
It is a nice game, but with several shortcomings. The rules could be better and it looks like just an excuse to collect Star Wars miniatures. This last is not so bad if you are a Fan boy (which I am) but still.
Maybe I am just tired of investing money in games to which I never play...


Update: I almost forgot, I was so in a disappointed mood and maybe a bit depressed too that I just decided to invest my money in people instead of in plastic and so I visited the Extra Life Charity Event under the sponsoring from Craig Gallant (from d6generation). Here the link just in case you decide to give away some money to help some Children's Hospitals:
http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donordrive.participant&participantID=34681

Landing Pad for 28mm - Final Update

Well, after some time without doing anything more on that project I think I am done with it :)
I mean, I do not intend to add more details.
As you can see in the picture, I painted two pairs of landing lights, two greens for the front, the approaching face and two reds for the back side of the landing pad.
The size is 23cm x 17 cm (9" x 6.7") which fits quite nicely with my Tau Devilfish and the two escorting drones ;)
Hope you like it.

Tau Army unboxed !

Yesterday I just got my new, second hand Tau army. How can an item be new and second hand at the same time ? Quite simple. I never had a Tau army, nor anything from Warhammer 40k, only long time ago I was the owner for a short time of a starter set of Warhammer Fantasy, I think to remember that it was the 3rd Edition, but maybe I am wrong.

Anyway, with the 6th Edition of Warhammer 40k recently released and after bothering and yammering all my gamer friends, finally some of them are decided to try to play a short of campaign of Warhammer 40k.

The only problem was that we were not in the possession of any army, except for two guys, each of them with an ork army.

In a previous life, exactly when I got the starter set of the Warhammer Fantasy I was talking about, the Tau were released by 40k, and I remember my thinking how nice they were.

However, I never played with my starter set of Fantasy and some time after that I just tried once the 40k but not really my thing at the time.

A lot of things happened since those times. I played AT-43 and developed an itching for painting scenery. So far I have not painted any figures, only a vehicle and some walls and similar stuff (some of then are in this blog somewhere to see).

So, I decided to get a Tau army from the web, a second hand, assembled and painted. Therefore, new for me, old for the guy selling it :)

On ebay I found a pretty big army by a decent price and luckily for me I was the only one bidding, so I got it without too much trouble.

The army arrived just yesterday :)

In a huge box with a lot of protection material :)

However three models were broken during the transport :( but were easy to fix :)

Unluckily one of the metal sniper drones is missing :) and the seller so far did not reacted to me :(

However, a whole five members stealth team was included which was not in the pictures on ebay :)

So, in general terms I think we (me and the seller) are even.

Now, to the pictures: 

On the back, the stealth team, on the right some drones, half of them very nice painted the other half open  to my experiments :)

The two sniper teams, each with an observer and in theory three drones, but as said, one is missing. Also the Ethereal with the base on which it was needed to glue him back.

The Fire teams, 24 members, although two of them seem to be scouts or pathfinders or something different. Some are nice finished, others again open to my unskilled experimentation :) 

An the three vehicles. Nice painted. The Devilfish in the left allows for the back door to be open so that you can see the inside of the transport bay. Great detail.

Now we only need to read the rules and try them out. More (I hope) in next posts :)

Zombicide - Game Review and first contact

Cover Picture of the Game Box

Last week a friend from my local gaming club got his kickstarter copy of Zombicide (official web) so we got not only the basic game but some other additional stuff such as a nice lithography of the cover picture, two extra heroes and an extra abomination zombie.
What it is in the box:
The basic game includes a lot of zombies of three different types:

• Walker: very slow zombies, have one action per zombie round and can be killed by any weapon which inflicts at least 1 damage.
• Runner: they have two actions per zombie round but can also be killed by 1 damage weapons.
• Fatty: slow as the walkers whit only one action but can only be killed by weapons which deals 2 damage.
• Abomination: a Fatty with steroids, also one action per zombie round but can be only killed by 3 damage weapons.

The miniatures for the first two types of zombie are not identical, so there are different walkers and runners, for the mechanics of the game makes no difference which walker you place on the board but it is nice form a esthetic point of view.

Zombies as in the box

The board is done by tiles which are to be arranged to build the different scenarios.

Some tiles of the game

The tiles include buildings with several rooms and street areas. Also included are some tokens which represent cars (police cars and pimp mobiles) which are required for some scenarios.
Other tokens are the EXIT token, the SPAWN tokens, the NOISE tokens and some yellos arrows to mark the skills of the heroes in the corresponding cards.

The heroes

The heroes are the survivors of a zombie apocalipse and have to fight for their lives in this very hostile environment. Each hero has a miniature in a different colour and a hero card where its special skills are indicated.
The heroes are based in the geek culture, for example one of them is Dr. Seldon Copper, other is Machete, another looks like Bruce Willis in Die Hard and so on...

Nick - The bad cop

How to play:

1st you choose a scenario, the rules book includes several, the first one with the number 00 is an easy tutorial, so my group decided to jump to the second one with the number 01, City Blocks.

Scenario 01, City Blocks

In this scenario the heroes start in the middle of the game board and have to collect the five objectives, search for some food and run away by the EXIT.
The players choose the heroes they would like to play, and randomly give to every one a weapon. The initial weapons are a Fireaxe, a Pistol, a Crowbar and as many Pans as needed to complete the number of heroes which would play. Yes, a placer can play with more than one hero, and yes it can be that your initial weapon is a Pan.
Afterwards every player checks the special skill of the heroes he is going to play, some have extra actions but other can have extra equipment, the hero get this equipment for free.
In our game I played with Wanda, which has the special ability of moving two zones pr movement action.

Wanda - the rollerskating waitress

At the beginning of the game each hero has zero experience points. Those point are recorded with a moving arrow on the upper part of the hero card. The colour of the experience bar of the hero with the higher amount of experience points determines the Danger Level. From zero to six experience point, the level is blue, the initial level.
The danger level is used to determine how many zombies and which kind of zombies spawn at the end of the zombie round. Obviously it is wise to keep the Danger Level to a minimum. Important to remember is that if one hero is in yellow and to other in blue, the Danger Level will be yellow as the Danger Level is the colour of the higher experience ion the game. If this hero is killed the Danger Level could decrease if the next high experienced hero is a level below :)
A first player is chosen and given the token of first player. This player acts with his heroes, each hero has three action (plus any extra action given by the hero card) and if the player controls more than one hero, first one hero act and when it has completed his/her actions, the next hero gets to act.

Part of a game

As Actions a hero can:

• Move: a zone can be moved per movement action. A zone is defined as a room inside a building or the space between two pedestrian crossings in the streets. In the picture above, the heroes in blue and lila are in one zone (bottom of the tile) and every one could move and joint the grey hero on the zone to their left (bottom, left corner) with one movement action. Special consideration is needed for the case that the zone wherein the heroes are is also occupied by zombies, for example, on the centre, top, Wanda (green colour) shares the room zone space with a zombie, to be able to left the room, she will need to make a movement action to move and expend another action due to the presence of the zombie, so in total she will need to pay TWO action to be able to move normally. So, for EVERY zombie in the zone the hero is, the hero needs to pay that amount of extra actions to move out of the zone. But, remember that every hero has only three actions, so be careful where you finish your movement.
• Search: one per turn, the hero can search a room zone or inside a car. Ned has an extra search action, but that only means that he can search for free and still have three OTHER actions, the limit of searching once for turn is absolut. Search allows you to take the upper card from the items deck. There is an item, the torch lamp, which allows you to take two cards ;)
• Opening a door: to open a door the hero needs a weapon/tool able to open the door. This is indicated in the item card by the corresponding icon. Some weapons make noise (like the fireaxe) other are silent (like the crowbar). Making noise will be indicated with the noise marker (in the picture above there is one in Wanda's room).
• Inventory: the player can reorganized the items in the inventory, you can equip only two items in your hands but you can carry another three in the backpack, by reorganizing the hero can give items to ONE other hero in the same zone, this other hero can reorganize immediately its own inventory for free.
• Taking an objective: in the upper picture, in the top, right corner, the red hero is in the same zone as one objective, so this could be taken by expending an action. Taking an objective gives the hero usually 5 experience points.
• Making noise: by doing so, a noise marker is put on the zone the hero is.
• Attack: using a weapon the hero can attack foes either in the zone the hero is (weapons with range zero) or in adjacent zones (weapons with range one or more). The game ignores diagonals for both movement and vision, so only orthogonal zones are considered. From the street into a building or inside a building the line of sight is limited to the next adjacent zone. On the streets the lini of vision is unlimited. Melee weapons allow the player to chose the target of the attack, so specific zombies can be targeted, for example the Fatties, whereas the ranged weapons (except if equipped with a scope) cannot chose freely target and MUST shot the possible tagets following this orden: other survivors, walkers, Fatties and runners. Yes, you read well; if you fire a ranged weapon on a zone where other survivors are, first you assign to the survivors as many hits as you can, once there are not more survivors to take any more hits (they are dead) any remaining hits are assigned to the walkers and so on. Therefore it is not a very good idea to fire in a zone where other friendly people are. Other consequence of this is that it is very difficult to hit a Runner who is sharing the zone with other zombies as first you need to clean the area of Walkers and Fatties  Curiously enough the Fatties require a weapon of 2 damage to be killed, the pistol for example is only 1 damage, so even if you score multiple hits with it, you will never be able to kill any runner in a zone wherein a Fatty is also present as the Fatty will take all those 1 damage hits BEFORE the runner takes any of them and being 1 damage hits, they are not going to kill it and therefore it would be as if nothing has happened at all. Nice, isn't it ?
• Cars: in certain scenarios you can move inside a car and with the car.

What Zombies do:

• The Walkers, Fatties and Abomination have one action each, so if they are in an empty zone (no heroes there) they will move towards the survivors they can see. If they cannot see any survivors they will move towards the noisiest group. Important to realize is that a survivor count as a noise token, so a group of three survivors amounts to three noise tokens and will be preferred over an alone survivor who used his gun and got one noise token.
• If they start their turn in a zone wherein survivors are present, they will attack the heroes in the zone they are. Their attacks are automatic success. The hero receives so many wounds as zombies attack him, but two wounds mean that the hero is dead. Also, being wounded by a zombie causes the automatic lost of an item the hero is carrying. So, if your hero is brand new and in a zone with a zombie at the beginning of the zombies turn, the hero will lost one item and get one wound, bad enough but still alive. If instead of one zombie, two happened to be there, well, bad news, you are dead. Zombie do overkill, so if there will be three zombies and one hero in one zoe, the hero is dead, the three zombies kill him and stay there.
• Runners have two actions, so they can move towards some survivors and if they reach them attack them, or kill ay hero in their zone and move to an adjacent zone.

How zombies move:

• They need one action per zone as the heroes, but if at any moment a group of zombies has two equally valid options, such as two identical long routes to a hero or group of heroes or is able to see two different zones with heroes on them, it will cause the group of zombies to split in equal numbers (!), which means that if the group has an odd number of a type of zombie, another one is add. So, if three Walkers has visual to heroes in two different zones, two groups of two Walkers will split and each one will move towards the one survivors group. Yes, zombies do replicate out of thin air, bad news, very bad news.

Spawn:

• At the end of the zombie's turn or when a building is open by the very first time, new zombies spawn. To do so, the first card from the zombie deck is revealed and the indicated amount of zombies corresponding to the current Danger Level is added to the board.

How was our game:

• Well, out of five players, only two have played it the day before, out fo the three new guys, two were dead pretty soon. One of them wandered alone to one corner of the board and was eventually surrounded by zombies coming form the street in the building were he was and eaten there. The second one was crowded by zombies in a crossing and died fighting there.
• I was the last one without previous experience, but got lucky a few times and survived the game. I was playing with Wanda and was wounded in the second round of the game, but later on managed to prepare a molotov cocktail and drop it just on time upon a group of zombies, including an abomination, which gave me 14 experience points, more than enough to put Wanda in the orange danger zone but also to give her the Slippery ability which combined with her extra movement capacities muted her into an unstoppable running machine :)

The best of the game? The molotov cocktail, without a doubt. It destroys everything in the zone you throw it, and by everything I mean it. Survivors and Zombies, but all zombies, also abominations are destroyed. Great, great thing :)

The more curious thing of the game? there are two, at least for me, the multiplication of zombies when they split odd numbers and the noise mechanics. It is possible to make noise and guide the zombies to one area so that other heroes can do something somewhere else. However, the game has so many zombies that this tactic can only be used at the beginning of the game or by precise synchronization of the players.

In the d6generation podcast someone commented an optional or variant rule wherein the players can only talk to other players if they heroes are in the same zone and that this produces noise tokens in that zone. We did not try this but I think it can awesome :) :)

The game is great and with nice mechanics however there are something in the rules which could have been better written, for example it is not said what happen when the item deck runs out or as now, it is perfectly legal for a group of survivors to make a hero to attack twice with one weapon and pass it to the next player on the line, so that a group can use the same weapon all the round.

But I do not think those points to be too serious, without doubt the FAQ and the forum will deal with them and with other similar issues in the future.

In short, a nice game, elegant and simple, based in scenarios, so some will be better than others and with a lot of zombies :) :)

La Abadia - restaurant review - Madrid

This nice local is located on the street called Ancora, a perpendicular to the Paseo de las Delicias. It has a semi-open terrace on the same street with plenty of space between the tables. The food is very good and not so pricy. The portions are generous even in the so called Menu del dia which at this moment cost 12€.
The service is friendly enough except for one waiter who looks like he is mourning someone.
In short, good food, not expensive, relax atmosphere.
Insider tip ;)

Priest - Film Review

It is difficult to descrive this movie without being negative. The actors are more or less well in their roles, but the story is quite pointless and looks more like a pilot episode of a TV series than a real film, maybe it was a pilot episode, well, not that I was aware of it when I decided to watch it.
The plot summary on IMDB has already a spoiler as at the beginning of the story it is told that the girl who has to be rescued is the daughter of the brother of the priest, later it turns out to be his daughter, but IMDB already tells you that.
This spoils one of the two not so big surprises of the movie. The second is quite obvious after 20 minutes of watching.
However, the combat scenes even if more or less forced into the story are quite fine and the post-apocalipse feeling of the movie is quite well done.
Not so bad, could have been worse but, well, not really a winner....

Battleship Galaxies - Review and Battle Report

You can find some info about this game in Board Game Geek (link) and a nice video review where you can see the components of the game in You Tube from the guys on the Dice Tower (link).
The video is great but there are some minor issues regarding the game. First, it is true that once you assemble the spaceships in the stand and in the base, there is no use for the plastic insert where they came except if you disassemble them after the game. We did so, it does not take so much time, the game stays always as new inside the box and does not seem to be a problem to assemble and disassemble the pieces every time. Maybe in the long term it could be some damage in the join point due to material wearing but I do not know for sure.
Also, the game comes with two board which are basically the same thing, a hexagonal grid over a background of the space. On the video it is suggested that they should have put the two board in one, using both sides of the board. Actually the idea is to allow to play with one or with two board. The game is scenario driven and some scenarios require two boards (and four players).
In the video, also, we can see how a transport ship is deployed, moved and then the ships inside are launched into the board. Actually this is not possible, deployment is the phase previous to movement and also includes launching ships from a transporter, so if you deploy your transporter and move, you are already in a different phase and you can not deploy further ships (including the ones inside the transporter).

The components of the game are great. Each faction comes with two motherships, two medium ships, and two squadrons of three ships each.
The miniatures are prepainted, with a good quality finish on them and they feel right on the hands. They are to be mounted on a stand which goes into a base.
There are two little screens, one for each faction, to hide your fleet from the opponent.
Also each faction has its own deck of cards, called Tactics cards, which include heroes, ship upgrades, additional weapons and maneuvers for the fleet.
For each miniature we have two cards with the statistics, actually there are three set of stats for each ship, one for the standard version, one for the seasoned version and one for the veteran version.
Each version has a different launch cost but also different, better skills as the crew becomes more experienced in combat.

Some of the ISN components used in the game from last Friday

As I already say the game is scenario driven. The rules book comes with several scenarios, and for a starting game they advise to use the scenario called Dead Zone.
In this scenario the initial fleets and the composition of the Tactic Cards decks are given for each player, only one board is used with three discovery tiles on it and the victory condition is to eliminate all the ships of the opponent from the board after the second round. The reason for this victory condition I will comment later.
First I would like to comment on the discovery tiles. The game comes with several tiles, some are called discovery tiles other are obstacle tiles and there is even a "One victory point" token. Those tiles are suppose to be used on the scenario as required by it.
In this basic scenario, the discovery token are shuffled, three are taken and placed face down on three pre-determined spots on the board. If a ship happens to end its movement on the tile, it is move face up and the effect of the tile takes place immediately. The Rules Book explain what each tile does.


How the game works? Well, let go with the battle report from the game last Friday.
The game was between two new players and even if I was supposed to explain them the game I must said that I only read the rules and that I never played it before. But the rules are so straight forward that I think that we didn't make too many mistakes :)
Both player get 15 points of energy, 5 tactics cards and their fleet (which goes behind the screen).
They also roll a dice to see who rolls the higher number, the player with the high roll decides who starts. In our game the ISN player won this roll but she decided to let the Wretcheridians start the game.
The starting player gets 5 more energy and 1 tactic card, so before he decided what to do he was having 20 energy and 6 cards. That is always the first phase, collect energy and one card. There is limit of 10 cards in the hand. If at the moment of drawing this one new cards, doing so will make that the limit of 10 is exceed, the player has to discard enough cards so that he can take the new one before drawing this new one. Each discarded card gives the player one energy extra.
If you are getting the idea that energy and no the cards are the critical part of the game, you are right :)
The second phase is deployment or launching ships. Every ship has a launch cost that you pay with energy to deploy it on your border of the battleboard or to launch it from a transporter.
The Wretcheridians decided to put all their fleet inside of the transporter and deploy it on their border of the board.
A transporter ship has a cargo capacity which can not be exceeded and can only transport ships that are smaller than itself. So a Large ship can transport Medium and Small ships, a Medium ship can only transport Small ships and Small ships cannot transport other ships.
The initial fleet of each player for this scenario were a Large transport ship, two Medium ships and one squadron of three Small ships, so all of them fitted inside the Large transport ship :)
The Wretcheridians end the deployment phase.
The final phase is activation, here the player can pay the energy to activate one ship which would be entitled to move and the after paying the charging cost of the weapons to fire with them.
The Wretcheridians activated the transporter ship and moved it towards the center of the board.
Now, the ISN turn started.
The ISN player got 10 energy points and one card. Only on the first round of the first player will the first player get 5 energy on the energy phase, after that each player gets 10 energy in the energy phase.
She also placed all her ships inside of the transport ship and deployed her on one corner of the board.
After paying the activation cost, she moved her along the left flank.
The victory condition activates only after the second round to avoid that a lucky hit from the opponent which destroy the only deployed ship on the board (or the few deployed ships) when you still have more ships behind the screen to be deployed (not the case here as both players put all their ships inside the transporter ships) in the 1st or 2nd round will end the game prematurely. So, you have 2 round to deploy your ships, after that if all the ship on the board get destroy, you loss, even if you still have more ships behind your screen awaiting to be deployed.
Anyway, now it is the second round of the Wretcheridians, they got 10 energy and one card. Instead of launching (deploying) any ships from inside the transporter, he decided to pay the activation energy and to move the ship closer to the centre of the board and onto the discovery tile there, which turned out to be an alien artifact which gave him 7 extra spaces range to the primary weapon of the ship placed over the tile, which was his transport ship. Actually this gave him almost infinite range as the primary weapon was having already a range of 4 hexagons.
With the extra range and a shield siphon card played on the transport ship, he decided to attack the ISN transport ship with pretty good result. The shield siphon gave him one extra shield for his ship from the attack.
How you count damage and shields in the game ? quite easy. The bases of the ships have holes to place counters. Blue counters represent shields, red counters represent damage. Each ship starts with a certain amount of blue shield counters and each damage removes one or more, depending on the strength of the weapon. Once you have no shields, the ship starts taking hull damage, if a certain value is taken, the ship is destroyed. Some weapons or cards can by-pass the shields and damage directly the hull.
How you hit enemy ships in the game?
You roll two dices for each attack. One dice is a d10 with letters instead of numbers the other one is a d8 with numbers and each ship has a matrix on her reference card with the blue print of the ship. If the coordinates of the attack are outside the blue print of the ship, there is no hit; if the coordinates indicate the red dot inside the ship, she will explode if the ship get damaged there (no shield or effect which ignores them); otherwise the ship will take damage as stated before.
Sounds confusing ? my fault. The game is actually simple and with very straightforward rules.
Next round: Due to the damage to her transport ship, the ISN player deployed the squadron of fighters and a medium vessel, attacking also the Wretcheridians transport ship with everything. This also included two nukes which however did nothing as they fail to impact the enemy.
The Wretcheridians kept on attacking the ISN transport ship, which moved away in the next round, approaching a discovery tile on the border of the battlefield and deploying the last medium ship she was carrying. Also one of the ISN figthers was destroyed.

The ISN transport ship took serius damage this round

Just right on time as the Wretcheridians destroyed the ISN transport ship in the next round.
However in a feat of amazing fire power, the remaining two medium ships managed to reduce the Wretcheridians transport ship into small, incandescent pieces, together with the medium ship and the squadron of fighters still inside of her.
Now, it was a dogfight between the remaining Wretcheridians medium ship and the ISN ships which approached a insane final when each site was having only one medium ship at 2 range from each other in a mortal barrage of fire.

This time, the Goddess of War was smiling on the Wretcheridians who remained as only survivors on the space.

Dust, Dust Tactics, Dust Warfare and Paolo Parente

I was reading the Forum about Dust Warfare and there were some fellows asking about the relationships in the Dust universe. I mean who is who and what is what.
I though that maybe a short overview from what it was explained there could be useful for every one with interest in the game.
The whole idea of Dust and the Dust Universe is responsibility or creation of a guy called Paolo Parente.
Parente not only created the Universe but also designs everything (as far as I known) related to the universe, from comics to story line and of course the line of miniatures (soldiers and walkers) which run amok in the world of Dust.
This takes place in the hands of Dust Studios at Dus-models.com, which are the designers of the models set in Paulo Parente's Dust universe.
Dust-models.com is Dust Studios web site, and a great place to scout upcoming models, buy Premium pre-painted versions, and get extra odds & ends like decals and dice.

The main confusion point arrives from the fact that there are more games than one based on the Dust Universe. like also happens to other Universes, such as Star Wars, where more than one game is based on them (also books, comics, etc.)

There is borad game called Dust, a kind of Risk game, which takes place in the Dust Universe. Obviously is thematically related to Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare but it is a different game and a game on its own. You buy the box, you play it, you do not need anything else.

The relationship between Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare is a bit stronger than mere thema or Universe.

We said that Dust Studios produces the miniatures.
Well, those miniatures are sold in boxes for a BOARD game called Dust Tactics, you have also a started set which contains the boards for the board game, the rules, the cards with the stats of the units for the board game, some terrain elements (antitanks and craters) and the miniatures for the board game (some soldiers and some walkers).
Dust Tactics is a Boardgame using the Dust miniatures.

FFG took over the Dust Tactics game from AEG, iirc, and is the official supplier of Dust and Dust Tactics.

Then, a wise guy called Andy Chambers and his sidekick Mack Martin of FFG wrote a miniature WARGAME set of rules in the same Universe which uses the same miniatures from Dust Tactics.

So, one guy (Parente) designs the miniatures and the universe, together with some other guys take care of board game which uses the miniatures of Parente and another group of guys create a wargame using the same miniatures (think about it a a form of game-recycling :D )

The main difference between then is the set of rules which even if somehow similar have a totally different principle in mind, the board game uses a square grid, you have boards with maps to play the mission and so on; the other one is a wargame, so no board, only a table, a lot of terrain elements, people measuring inches here and there, some arguments about which miniature "sees" which miniature, etc.

But, remember everything in the same Universe :)

One universe, One set of miniatures, but Two games using them.

Zombies !!! - Painting experiment

For sure you will remember or know the game Zombies!!! (Wiki) which cames with a lot of plastic zombies in grey (male),  the dog zombies, the soldier super zombies and the female green zombies from the expansions.

Well, I am listening now to a podcast called d6generation (Web) wherein one of the authors (Russ Rant) was talking about his video "how to paint a miniature in 10 min the 20 min video) (Russ's Blog) so that I decided to try something similar with one of my zombies.

It was not so easy and the final effect not so nice. Here some pictures.

Apart from the mastering of the skill of painting miniatures which Russ shows in his video, I did a lot of thing in the wrong way but I wanted to try to paint quick.

Frist thing that did not went as planned was the adherence of the paint to the miniature. The Dust Tactics miniatures which Russ was using are pre-primer, the ones in the Zombies game are not. You can see how the paint "slips" over the plastic surface and do not adheres to it so clearly and neatly as in the video.

Second I use a different paint, more viscose, actually it is normal hobby paint, barely undiluted, which makes the paint more thick.

Anyway, I started with a quick coat of blue on the body of the miniature to cover and paint the suit of the guy avoiding the spots where the body of the zombie or at least what remains of it is visible. I intended to paint those part with a brown red combination to suggest the insides of the body and the rotten flesh.

After the blue I wanted to give a bit of dry brush of grey to make the miniature look covered by dust and dervis. Well, as you can see I did not exactly achieved it. Parts of the arm are pure blue and the rest of the body is covered in grey with the blue almost invisible.

Not the best painting job in the universe and clearly not even table suitable.

But it was a beginning :)

Next time I will put a primer and mount the miniature on a stick to manipulate it a bit better. I only have grey primer in spray but also a black spray, so my intention is to apply the primer layer, the black paint layer and then play a bit with the blue and the grey and a bit of red.

But that is for the future :)

La Manga - Spain

I have never been before in this part of Spain (Wiki), but last two weeks of June we managed to get there and enjoy some fabulous time.
The weather is pleasant on that time of the year and by far not so hot as it will became in July and specially in August. Actually it was already quite warm and the sun was getting more agressive every day.
The place is a refugee for families with kids and people with a lot of time to spend doing nothing as due to it peculiar geography everything is far away. So, basically either you go nowhere or you use the car all the time.
There are some small shopping malls along La Manga and several supermarkets, so you will never run out of supplies. The idea is to go there to a rented apartment or to a hotel for a shorter stay and enjoy the beach and the sun.
Close by is the city of Cartagena (Wiki) which is a nice place to visit, full of history and naval tradition including the original submarine build by Isaac Peral y Caballero (Wiki), probably the first modern submarine.
However, one of the best discoveries for us was an Italian Ice Cream shop, owned by an Argentinian couple called New Bo (Web), which probably has one of the best Ice Creams in the area as the owner has been in Italy and has learned the traditional Ice Cream making there. Really worth a visit :)

Landing Pad - Update

Ok, here I'm again.

This time with an update of one of my on going projects, the landing pad for 28mm miniature wargames such as AT-43 or Dust Warfare, my current obsession :)

On a previous post I talked about how to use some protecting cases for picture frames made of polystyrene as surface for the landing pad.

After painting the cardboard which will replace the picture frame and will give consistency to the landing pad, I just spray the polystyrene with black painting without primer and poured some decorative sand on it.

The sand I got from a normal outlet store for household items, looks like normal beach sand but a little bit bigger (I mean the size of the individual particles).

The black paint not only fixes the sand onto the polystyrene but will also dissolve partially the polystyrene and give it a more rough surface which will look quite nice.

A upper layer of anthracite grey, aslo spray, will not only fix the sand to the black paint but also give the proper colour to the surface as the sand was white originally.

The surface of the sand particles is slightly light reflective and give some nuances to the grey colour which makes it not uniform.

The border (not visible in the pictures) was painted with some more dark grey with the pincel and I will apply some light grey to highlight the surface as soon as I get some more time for it. 

I intend to paint the four corner in reflective green and maybe put some green and yellow light on then.

1st game of Dust Warfare

Ok, finally we played today our 1st game :)

We did a lot of thing wrong but it was funny, a bit slow, but funny.

We were using the list that we discussed here. For the Allies it was 

Comm: Ranger Attack Squad 25

1st: Heavy Ranger Assault Squad 28

2nd or 3rd (don't have here the list with me) Recon ranger squad

4th: Ranger Weapon Squad 20

Sup: Black Hawk 25

Hero: Rhino 22

Improved resources (to reroll the smoke screen)

Total: around 150

For the Axis it was

Command: Kommandotrupp 25

1st: Battle Grenadiers 17

3rd: Heavy Laser Grenadiers 35

4th: Recon Grenadiers 17

Sup: Hans 25

Hero: Lara 29

Total: 148

We took the mission March battle from the book, which has a deployment of unprepared. We used a 48" (120cm) x 64" (160cm) table as per the rule book with the long sides of the table as border of the off table deployment. We found the table a bit too big but maybe it was just an initial feeling.

According to unprepared deployment, first only the command section, the 1st section and the solo heroes enter the game.

I got the initiative, so the Allies used one order to call the smoke screen and I moved Lara into the board with Blitzkrieg, also the battle grenadiers I think. The Axis moved the command section close to a building and the hammers and rhino jumped 24" forwards.

I moved the command section into a building on my border of the table.

Every one was too far away so no attacks, no reactions.

The second round, again I got the initiative, Allies called the smoke screen again, Allies moved some units into the table and jumped further with the hammers and rhino into cover, at more of less 16"-18" from my position.

My command section was able to suppress them with help from the Recon grenadiers and the heavy laser grenadiers, but due to the hard cover and the armor of 3, was not able to kill anyone of them, also some blocked lines of sight prevented the full of my forces to attack them.

3rd round the walker came in, some blitzkrieg to move Lara into position, failed smoke screen, an reaction to the jump of Rhino I think, which obviously goes agains the rules. Anyway some hammers were killed by either Lara or my command section.

4th round, I lost the initiative, but anyway everything was looking good for the Axis, Lara was closing to the building were the allied command section and two squads of rangers were taking cover, the Hans was approaching also that direction, and the rest of the hammers were dead, but Rhino managed to land between the heavy laser grenadiers and kill one of them, Lara was hit but no damaged by the rangers in the building, we put a suppression marker on her but removed it after realizing that heroes do not get suppressed, we roll for cover in the close combat from Rhino and the heavy laser grenadiers but also discovered more or less in the moment of doing it that it was not so.

We completely forgot about the death of unit leaders...

We realized also too late that Rhino invert the combat dices...

We rolled for end of the game but not yet.

5th round, debacle for the Axis which not only lost the initiative again but also the hans as the blackhawk activated its special ability all in one, which rolled 4 hits, minus two for armor, 2 hits for 4 damage and ciao bella goes my walker...

Rhino went crazy and made a slaughter house of my heavy laser grenadiers, but got injured (2 damage) by my recon grenadiers

We rolled for end of the game and it was it.

Rule errors:

well, that I can think of without reading the book, only by reviewing the game, there was, the hammers and rhino with the special movement (jump) which does not provoques reactions, the death of unit leaders, the inversion of the combat dices for the rocket punch, the extra combat dice of the lasers, cover in close combat...

Some we corrected on the spot, some we will need to remember for later.

For sure more things will come upon reading the book tomorrow in my way to work.

From the point of view of strategy, well, the hans has artillery strike, my radioman was alive, but in a building on the border of the map... I need to re-read those Artillery rules, could have been nice to attack from behing full cover (blocked line of sight), my battle grenadiers were deployed on the other side of the table, did nothing in the whole game...

We were not having so much of the reaction mechanics, maybe the table was to broad or we were too afraid of the other as we moved our forces very carefully and reluctantly on the board.

At the end, the Allied got 35 points for the heavy grenadiers and 25 for the hans whereas the Axis only got 28 for the hammers

I think we need another round, maybe with some objectives and using the battle builder...

The feeling of my opponent about the game were mixed, he did not read the book, nor the units and he was bored with the waiting time in my command and unit phase, which he found too long in comparison with AT-43.

Landing pad for 28mm

I must say that this project actually started for the AT-43 game, which even if officially dead and with questionable rules I still like. Unfortunately I do not have too much time to play now nor to design or build thing for it.
Usually I try to make things which are not very difficult to assemble and with the materials I find around me. As a friend of mine put it once while holding a piece or random plastic "imagine this painted in black..."
So, I am always looking to what I have at hand and trying to see how it would look once is out of context, glued to something else and painted frist, of course, in black and then in the new context.
In AT-43 there are some maps which include a landing pad of a spaceport and in the now disband AT-43 forum there was a nice 3D home made version which made me wonder about trying my own version.
In the mean time Dust Warfare was released and even if we still did not play it, the game sounds great and in the next expansion "Zverograd" they are going to introduce the SSU faction which will include some aircraft units, so a landing pad could also be a nice addition to the terrain elements for that game ;)
It happend I was having some picture frames still in their styrofoam (polystyrene) covers and some pieces of isolation for the floor (the one you put below the laminate or other "wooden" floor) which I cut to fit inside as you can see in the picture.

The thickness of the isolation piece just an exact fit for the height of the styrofoam cover which was a bit bigger than the thickness of the picture frame.
Once they are assembled, they look like that.

The styrofoam will be painted as concrete and the isolation piece as red-white landing signals. For this I just cut a template in piece of thick paper, actually part of a cardboard carton from a package of something for the household, nothing fancy. Obviously the colours of the template are inverted, I mean the white would be red in this case and the holes is where I intended to paint with white, but this picture represents more or less the final idea seen from above :)

 I painted in dark red the inside "corners" of the landing pad in the isolation piece.

And using the template I applied the white colour.

Probably I will need to retouch a bit the border of the white lines but I will wait until see how it looks once the styrofoam cover is painted and on top of this piece. And the part which is supposed to be like arrows pointing towards the centre does not look like I have it in mind but, we will see...

A different fairy tale...

A quite strange maybe bizzarre even movie we watched yesterday. In some respects it resembles the Dutch film "Sint" (Wiki, IMDB) wherein a traditional fairy tale or "story for kids" takes a more tenebrous aspect.
This one is a Finnish product, the land of the real Santa as the film proclames, which if weird in its story and narrative, not so really scary but actually funny. Soundtrack was in Finnish in our copy, so we have to read the English subtitles and learn a bit of Finnish in the process :)

Zero Tolerance

This blog was actually intended to deal only with hobbies and similar stuff, non with "real life" concerns (apart from the cooking recipes) but, sometimes, real life just makes you (even more) to be somewhere else (in time and space).
From a English language news source in the Netherlands (source)
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Problems with Poles? Report them to us, says new PVV website
 (Wednesday 08 February 2012)
Geert Wilders' anti-immigration PVV party has launched a new website where people can report complaints about central and eastern European immigrants in the Netherlands.
'Do you have problems with people from central and eastern Europe? Have you lost your job to a Pole, Bulgarian, Romanian or other eastern European? We want to know,' the website states.
The website is illustrated by newspaper headlines such as 'Wouldn't it be better if you went back?' and 'Eastern Europeans, increasingly criminal'.
Insight
PVV parliamentarian Ino van de Besselaar told the AD the aim of the site is to develop proper insight into the 'problems caused by central and eastern Europeans in terms of crime, alcoholism, drugs use, dumping household waste and prostitution'.
The results will be delivered to social affairs minister Henk Kamp. Questioned by Nos television, Kamp refused to condemn the PVV’s campaign, saying it is up to individual parties to decide what they do.
Discrimination
According to media reports, the Polish embassy in the Netherlands is 'not pleased' with the initiative. 'Insulting party initiatives do not contribute to calm discussion,' a spokesman is quoted as saying in the AD.
Last year, the Polish ambassador to the Netherlands Janusz Stanczyk said the attitude to people from eastern Europe 'borders on discrimination'.
Over the past year or so, local and national politicians have called for action to curb the 'tsunami' of Polish and other Eastern European workers in the Netherlands. Social affairs minister Henk Kamp even called for jobless Poles to be deported, even though this is impossible under EU rules.

(© DutchNews.nl)

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This is Europe today...