Ish

I just want to play a game with my toy soldiers that doesn’t involve a rule book, a faction supplement, a campaign supplement, an errata document longer than the original rulebook, a deck of game cards, a deck of faction cards, fourteen different types of ”adjective points” that get spent during gameplay, and having to pay $60 for each of the above.

Haven’t played Kill Team (2021) yet… But, what the heck, might as well learn. I’ll bring the Talons of the Emperor, because it should be entirely possible to pacify an entire space hulk with only four models, right?

I just moved to St. John’s, absolutely lovely house and a very nice neighborhood… But it isn’t exactly local to any of our friendly local gaming shops. The Portland Game Store is about 30-40 minutes by bus, Guardian Games and Ordo are about an hour. On the other hand, my new job is downtown and is mere minutes away from Ordo and Guardian… So that’s nice. Theres a set of STL files linked in the earlier pages of this thread for putting 20 x 20 mm square or 20 mm round basis onto Oathmark sized 125 mm frontage trays. But there’s a good amount of other options floating around the internet. Some of the ones for adapting round bases are usually like 128 to 130 mm in width, which really isn’t that big of a deal… So don’t stress yourself over a few millimeters.

The game is “miniatures agnostic,” so just about any historical or fantasy miniatures will work. The official factions in the game are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Orc, Goblin, Undead*, and Halfling**. Running other fantasy armies as “counts as” proxies is a pretty common occurrence. Heck, the game’s own author has several articles on his blog about using his Skaven as “counts as” goblins. So although there is no “Beastmen” faction, it should be easy enough to find unit equivalents among one of the factions in game (Orcs seems the obvious choice) and while there are Ogre units, there’s not a real good match for a lot of the things in the full army from WHFB/9th Age… But you should be able to run the basic chonky lads as Ogres or Ogre Linebreakers. The real key is to make sure your units have an appropriate “footprint” via their bases or movement tray and that your opponent can tell what unit is what: “These Beastmen with spears are Orc Spearmen and these Beastmen with two-handed axes are Orc Linebreakers.” is perfectly fine. “These Beastmen with spears are Orc Spearmen but these Beastmen with spears are Goblin Slave Slingers.” is not fine. * Undead are added in the Oathbreakers supplement; ** Halflings were added via an “officially unofficial” download from the author’s blog.

Literally finished moving into our new house yesterday. Starting a new job on Monday… Hope to be able to resume coming to the club by month’s end.

Either the irony was lost on the ‘bot or it’s just playing it coy. Trying to get the meat-bags to lower our guard.

Ask it how to paint a Sarah Conor miniature.

That’s actually kind of the point the video was making. Go read the opening scrawl in the video: Star Wars is simultaneously “an assemblage of spare parts” as Pauline Kael criticized it upon release and so influential on later works that Roger Ebert said it “colonized our imaginations.” Star Wars was basically an homage to the space adventure serials of Lucas’ childhood, mashed up with Westerns of his teens, and the chanbara films he discovered as a film school student. Like Tarantino who takes blaxploitation, Hong Kong action flicks, and other grind house B-movies and mashes them up into something that is both novel and an homage, that’s what Lucas did with Star Wars.

Just gonna leave this here…

Yes; All BattleTech units are built according to the same formulae, so all ‘Mechs are priced balanced with all other ‘Mechs. The current system is Battle Value 2.0 and the official points are listed in the unit write ups on SarnaMaster Unit List. There’s also a process for converting BV to Alpha Strike, but I’m not precisely sure what it is. For example, the “standard” Warhammer is the WHM-6R model that was introduced in 2515 and was a workhorse of the Star League Era and Succession Wars. It’s 1,299 BV. All the way out on the other side of the timeline, the newest Warhammer variant is the WHM-11T, debuting in 3084, it’s got all sorts of shiny advanced weapons and costs 1,698 BV.

We’re scrambling to move out of our current house and into a new one… which we haven’t even found yet. So I have zero free time (and even less mental energy) for gaming at the moment. But hopefully I can get my giant stompy robot on soon.

@zcaust83seems to be a fan based on his avatar.

I’ve recently decided to jump into BattleTech, I’ve always been vaguely aware of it and have dabbled, but never did a deep dive. As a teenager, none of my friends were interested in anything other than Warhammer and WH40k. When I was in my twenties, FASA was dead and WhizKids went the clix route and the franchise was sort of stagnant. But it’s recently seen a new surge in popularity, new models, et cetera. Seems like now is s good time to finally jump in. The Third Succession War seems like the most interesting era to me, but I also see the appeal of the Clan Invasion era. Anything too much after the Battle of Tukkayid just seems kinda “meh,” although I’ve read positive reviews effects new ilClan Era books…

8th Edition Custodes didn’t have subfactions, had very little in the way of relics and traits, and the only stratagems I ever used were re-rolls, tanglefoot grenades, and the deep strike option. Because stratagems annoy me. So, yeah, good to go.

Or just flat out run them using their 8th Edition codex, which lacked the silly ka’tah stuff altogether and ignoring most of their stratagems…

Slight problem with Index-hammer for me: my army doesn’t exist! Index only has rules for Custodian Guard, basic Venerable Contemptor Dreadnought, and Venerable Land Raider… Because that was their entire range at the end of WH40k 7th Edition. They didn’t even have an HQ yet.

If nerdrage could be tapped as a power source, GW could build a new Sun.

Any time Games Workshop makes any change to the rules, be it a points tweak, an errata change to a rule, a new codex, or whatever… 33% of the fanbase will declare it is the best thing ever done and that the game is PERFECT AT LAST! 33% of the fanbase will declare it is the most idiotic thing ever done and that the game is RUINED FOREVER! 34% of the fanbase will recognize the game has always had some good bits, some bad bits, and it’s always kind of a moving target for the developers. But mostly just to play with their toy soldiers whilst wishing those other two groups would just shut up.

Look for things like “Space Kraken” or “Space Whales,” which tend to show up in a lot of other space ship games.

Remember, there are no failed prints. Only surprise bonus bitz for your future terrain projects! That tri-pod elephant? That’s a statue now.

Yes, when the edition launched there was no distinction between “super-factions” and “factions.” The intent was to make it easy for players to splash a few Daemons into the Chaos Marines list, have a couple of units Space Marines help out their Imperial Guard, etc. But, of course, the “competitive” players quickly created the non-sense that was Imperial Soup. Finding the absolute best unit for each FOC slot from across all 24,601 Imperial factions and only using that. So you had armies that were drawing from twenty different factions…

When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall barbarian grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite ram’s head staff up against the castle wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big Eternian right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Skeletor always says at a time like that: "Have ya paid your dues, Skeletor?" "Yessir, the check is in the mail. Nyaaah!"

It’s risky, but an scalpel heated with a lighter or a candle will slice through filament like butter.

Saw this posted on Reddit once and it stuck with me: [quote] I just want a version of the game where the gap between "base power" and "maximum power" is dependent on the board state and not just on stuff you freely declare about the model. Normal wargame: The models power is 1. It is standing still, firing at a target it can fully see, it is behind the target, and it is in close range. It's power is modified to 4. 40k: The models power is 1. But it is a member of the well known stabby bois The Good Stabbers. And it's standing near a Stabmeister. And it's been upgraded with an extra stabby Stabber. And I declare the special stratagem "it's stabbing time." Oh and i can only see 1 square millimeter of one model in the target unit and it's at the very edge of my maximum range but who cares that doesn't matter. The models power is modified to 10. [/quote] I’m cool with a little bit of customization (“This model’s power is 1, but I upgraded one model in the unit to have an anti-tank gun so they’re power 2 versus tanks.”) and some synergy between models (“This is Leader Guy, friendly models near Leader Guy have their morale increased by 1”). But GW has just sort of decided to grab every possible rules mechanic in the hobby and stuff them all into WH40k: universal special rules based on unit type, faction special rules, subfaction special rules, special rules for specific models, cards, spells, missions, secondary missions, scenarios, campaigns… For crissakes, I play Adeptus Custodes. I have less than twenty models on the table in a 2,000 Point game — why do I need three pages of notes to remember what my toy soldiers can do!?

It probably wouldn’t be impossible to “retrofit” some of the armies and units that came out later… More effort than I would want to expend, but do-able.