Ish

6 minutes ago, Romans832 said:

I only know of him from Celebrity The Apprentice where he was less than impressive.

Well, that’s gonna earn you some bad karma, karma, karma, karma, karma...

3 minutes ago, Romans832 said:

I know Mr. T... but who the ???
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DMsw4J3eu2WreFdc8

And some sort of special rules in place to allow those armies where it’s thematically appropriate to make some other units to either count as scoring (e.g.,  White Scars Bike Squads).

You’d need to change the underlying mechanics more than just swapping D6’s for D10’s... Probably something so that total unit size affected the number of dice rolled. So, like, a full ten-man squad might throw 5d6, but drop down to 3d6, then 2d6, then 1d6 as they take a casualties...

1 hour ago, Yarbicus said:

Um, i was born July 12, 1967 and if you have played against me...well...let's just say sharing a birthday with a historical figure is not all that meaningful. 

Have you tried conquering Gaul? 

I meant the 8th Edition style armor save reductions, but with the values for most basic and special weapons reduced in effectiveness. But not universally and not making anything give bonuses.

My thinking is that the standard-issue, man-portable weapons like boltguns and pulse rifles shouldn’t be piercing the armor of the standard-issue infantryman... Boltguns would remain AP 0, but Bolt Rifles would go from AP -1 to AP 0, etc.

This was just a passing thought, I haven’t sat down and evaluated all 24,601 weapons in the game to work out the specifics.

(As for making Troops viable, my gut instinct is to go back to the days of only allowing Troops to score.)

Ahh, man... So I mentioned above that I recently started re-watching Highlander. Just a few minutes ago, I looked up the Wikipedia entry on Stan Kirsch – who played MacLeod’s protege and served as the audience POV character – to see if he’d been in anything else.

Turns out he committed suicide just a few weeks ago. 

I never knew the guy, obviously, nor do I know all that much about his life or work outside of Highlander. But when I was ten years old, I thought that Richie Ryan was absolutely the coolest dude on earth (apart from Duncan) and totally idolized the guy. He was smart, sarcastic, raced motorcycles, hung out with immortals, and got all the babes... Up to and including Joan Jett in her prime, man.

Stan, we barely knew ya, but I’m sad to see you go.

First visit is free. All future visits must be paid for in cheesesteaks. 

It’s been my opinion for years that most of the problems with WH40k and WHFB, across all editions, stems from GW using six-sided dice. This creates a fairly narrow band of possible outcomes and makes the “gap” between results seem a lot bigger than they would be with say, ten-sided dice. No easy fix for this, I’m afraid.

On the other hand, a lot of the issues with the Armor save modification system could be fixed rather easily just by tweaking which weapons have AP values... I’d say an across the board reduction of every faction’s basic small arm (boltgun, lasgun, shuriken catapult, etc) by one point of AP would be a good start. 

North Star Figures is running a pre-order NickStarter for Muskets & Tomahawks. No, it’s not a crowd funding deal, despite the name, it’s an actual preorder and you will get the items you paid for within a few days of the promised delivery date (I got Gaslands Refueled via a NickStarter) and with the possibility of getting some bonus stuff thrown in...

Just gonna point out that 12 July 100 BCE was the birthday of Julius Caesar. I’m not a believer in astrology or any nonsense like that, but sharing a birthday with one of the greatest military minds in all of history is a pretty cool omen for a war gamer’s kid. (Especially, since you’re called ROMANS.)

Although, if you can persuade the stork to hold off for two weeks, 27 July 1938 was the birthday of a certain Ernest Gary Gygax. Just sayin’

Luckily, unit stat lines didn’t change much (if at all) from Third through Seventh Edition. So most codices will just need to have special rules tweaked and point values adjusted.

This project is doable... It’s insane, sure, but it’s doable.

Sounds like they plan to expand on too, like they did with Saga: one core book with the rules, then several supplemental books to cover specific eras. Saga has the Viking age, the Crusades, etc.

I haven’t read anything official, but Muskets & Tomahawks could probably be used to cover the Golden Age of Piracy, Jacobite Uprising, maybe even the Wild West (although they’d need to add rules for repeating rifles and revolvers).

Looks like Muskets & Tomahawks is getting a second edition; I’ve never gotten to play Muskets & Tomahawks but the game has always intrigued me... It’s from Studio Tomahawk, the same guys who created my beloved Saga, and was actually their first big success.

The era it covers spans from the French and Indian War (1754-63), the American Revolution (1775-83), and that little side-skirmish of the Napoleonic Wars that we yankees insist on labeling the War of 1812 (1812-15).

The focus is on small skirmishes, maybe 20-30 models per side. Although by all indications it should “scale up” pretty well to larger games around 50-80 models...

Default game sizes are 200, 400, or 600 points. Doing some rough “back of the napkin” maths has a force of an Officer and 12 elite Regular Infantry (“the best of the best of the best, sir!”) or an Officer and 24 lousy Militiamen (“I’m scared, sarge!”) both coming in at about 200 points. There’s also rules for artillery, boats (think canoes and skiffs, not frigates), cavalry, and so forth... So even a big 600 point game is probably going to have less models on the table than even a small game of WH40k.

It’s a skirmish system at heart, think of movies like Last of the Mohicans or Sharpe’s Regiment. It probably could be pushed into doing full-blown Napoleonic War “squares and lines” type stuff, but I thing you’d be better off with games focused on that. It’s Lexington and Concord, not Waterloo.

Re-watching Highlander: The Series for the first time in forever. It’s cheesy, it’s melodramatic, it’s rife with historical inaccuracies, and it relies extremely heavily on the same three neighborhoods of Vancouver, BC pretending to be areas all around the world... But damn do I love it.

Bonus Nerd Point: The second episode has a Games Workshop store in it that’s plot relevant!
 

I felt the same way about Blaine and Major during the first season. I won’t spoil anything, but there is some major character growth for them (and everyone else, really) in the seasons to come.

The show knows it’s characters are filling certain narrative niches, but it isn’t afraid to subvert those archetypes and even the characters that stick to their archetype tend to do it in a more interesting way than most tv shows. Rob Thomas did much the same in Veronica Mars.

Fantastic series, overall. If you’re a fan of shows like Buffy or Angel, you’ll dig iZombie.

I’ve been a fan of Rose McIver for years and iZombie really let her show her range as an actress. I’m hoping she gets more attention.

Vaguely disappointed to learn that Super Bowl LIV has nothing to do with iZombie.

Roll for initiative...

Vampires are a risky team, I knew that going in, but I’ve had a run of extremely improbable dice several games in a row now... C’est la Bol de Sang.

17 minutes ago, WestRider said:

It only qualifies if it's Steven Seagal in Three Word Title. I didn't make up the rule, I just acknowledge it. Oh, and Sniper: Combat Ops is totally another counterexample to the preposition thing

If it helps, me and most of my friends refer to it almost exclusively as Just A Cook

£0.75 for a pack of three! 

38 minutes ago, Brother Glacius said:

1917: I really enjoyed it. Good solid story, great cinematography, and lovely music. I will have no problem at all watching it again and again. The long shots of no-man's land were simply fantastic. Also the realization of communication and intel limitations just really strikes home with this film. If you like war movies, this one should check a lot of boxes.

How does it compare to Paths of Glory?

4 minutes ago, WestRider said:

Under Siege is also not technically a Steven Seagal movie. Under Siege 2 is.

First of all, it’s Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, show some respect for the cinematic tour de force and use the full title.

Second of all, how in the world can Under Siege not be considered a Steven Seagal movie!? He’s not just the star, he’s also the producer!