R.I.P. Captain Spaulding

Way.....back in 2015 when me and the eventual wife met Sid Haig at Days o' the Dead Indianapolis.
It was cool to meet hi  and it one of the few pics around where I like what some humans refer to as "happy."

Captain Spaulding might be what he is known for most, (and his best role in my opinion)  but Sid Haig has been around in cult movies for sometime. Sad to hear the passed this weekend.

Gen Con 2019 purchases

Well here is the pile of loot garnered from Gen Con 2019

Detective L.A. Crimes, the follow up to Detective a Modern Crime Game. A game that my wife (a huge fan of Law and Oder and every other procedural t.v. show out there) loves and I play because I am married to her.

Ticket to Ride, which we discovered everyone in my house loves to play but me!

Action Cats, a game like Cards Against Humanity, but with cats.

Villainous Evil Comes Prepared, the second expansion/ stand alone for the Villainous game, which is really fun!

Giant Book of Battle Mats, a huge flip book of....battle mats for D&D. 

Pandemic Rapid Response, the newest addition to the Pandemic series of games. 

War with the Evil Power Master, the second Choose Your Own Adventure game from Z-Man games. 

A Railgun Squad and a HQ unit to flesh out my Dust Mercenary army.

Tactical Maps for D&D, just like the Battle MAt books, but with different locations. 

Battletech  Tech Manual 3025, so I can toss out some different stompy non-robots when we play the new version of Battletech.

GEN CON 2019 painting comp models

As usual I went to check out what people had thrown into the yearly painting competition.
Sadly we did not go back Saturday..so this is only stuff from Thursday and Friday.

 

Gen Con 2019

Well last weekend was Gen Con and of course me/we attended. 

It was a different trip than years prior as I didn't do a lot of exploring and looking at stuff.

This was the first year I was surprised by what I didn't see more than what I did see.

We spent more time doing the game demo stuff over with a tiny bit of shopping for the game essentials I was looking for. 

This will also get me off my butt and doing some blogging again.

Pics and Stories to follow!

Adepticon 2019 floor models, display boards, army stuff and misc photos

 The following are a few pics of one display board for one of the 40K tournaments.

Who has the time and $$$$ to do this?

Seriously?

 The same goes for the scale megagarant. Why?

Adepticon 2019 cavalcade of models

A big photo dump of Crystal Brush competition models.

Amazing stuff just like always.

Enjoy.

My favorite piece of the competition.

Adepticon 2019 Wreck Age

Wreck Age game with 7 other player review….or…..Why playing with 7 other people really kind of sucks.

I saw an opening to try a post-apocalyptic sci-fi mini combat game called Wreck Age. The game world sounds very Fallout but without super mutants, VATS and the associated accoutrement.

Game play was described as a D6 system with rolls made from various character stats. There are turns where players activate a single model at descending initiative steps. During you turn there are a myriad of activities to do: fight, shoot, search, climb, run, jump, throw ,interact with objects and….pretty much anything you want to try with your little miniatures. At least that is what was happening during our game. I had the pleasure of being the only sober person who had never played before and soon that would become both a blessing and a curse.

The game info

The game objective was to meet and speak with some travelling reporter who was just lucky enough to happen upon a town full of various warbands. By doing this your warband could gain points toward victory. There were also secret side objectives each warband would receive on turn two that when achieved would score points. There were  also chances to get points by trying to kill the reporter, trade with the reporter or kill anyone the reporter had interviewed. 

We are farmers. DA, DA, DA, DA, DUM

Warbands were chosen. I didn’t know/ care what to play, so I was given a group of farmers. I was facing off against some crazed drug carnival guys, another group of farmers, some feral beast handlers, a high tech security force, a super scientist/doctor and his flesh slaves, Wreck Age’s version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, some type of not Necromunda  Goliaths and finally a wasteland squad of police.  Players deployed and I chose to turtle up in a corner since I wasn’t sure who to play and what all my little force could do. I wanted to be defensive and just react a bit on turn one. That was my plan anyway. I did get a quick once over of my force with; a two hand grenade guy, a shotgun guy, a sniper rifle guy, an actual mule and then a guy with a beatin’ stick. 

Adepticon 2019 The Narrative Guys 40K game

Last Adepticon I saw a table 40K game that was on several tables and looked like a recreation of that  book/movie/real life event Blackhawk Down. A small chat later and I learned this was a group called The Narrative Guys. They do large narrative/themed 40K games. I was bummed I didn’t get a chance to try that game, but I did manage to sign up for their game at Adepticon 2019.

This year’s game was titled Nurgle Don’t Surf! I knew (and many more of you out there should know) that this was going to be some Apocalypse Now themed game.

Here a group of Space Wolves needs to travel down a jungle river and stop a traitor guard captain/ Colonel Krutz from doing a bunch of Chaos shenanigans. A patrol boat would carry a Rune Priest and Wolf Priest to the end of the river to confront the chaos themed Colonel Krutz. Along the way Space Wolf units would need to run interference for whatever the jungle was going to throw at us (Nurgle stuff). There were four players vs. two guys running the Nurgle stuff and the game.

We had four squads two heavy weapon filled squads and a regular squad with the Rune Priest and two close combat squads and some jump packing plasma pistol thing squads for the Wolf Priest. I have no idea what these units are anymore since they have all been reimagined and renamed since I quit 40K. I happily took over the close combat units for the Wolf Priest, but was also given the three man giant plasma pistol jump pack squad too. Maybe these were some sort of Primaris Marine thingies?

The goal was to get the two HQ units on the boat and delivered to the shrine at the end of the river. We were also tasked with getting the jump plasma guns and heavy weapons five man squad to the end as well (more for support than anything else).

The pics will detail a lot of the game.

Where it starts......

.....and where it ends in the far left corner.

Adepticon 2019 Dust 1947 tourney after action report

Well I jumped into my first gaming tournament since…well….maybe nine years prior at Adepticon.

I have to say….I did not miss the tournament scene.

Alright so the Paradise Lost Narrative and fun/friendly Dust 1947 Tournament Saturday at Adepticon will more than likely be the last of that tournament which I’ll participate.

Why?

Well it was anything but “friendly.” There were several guys with list crushing armies and I had the pleasure of playing one of them in my second game.

My first game I had to play a kid, maybe 12 years old. Ugh. I don’t hate kids, but I damn sure didn’t want to play in a tournament against one. Why? It is a lose/lose scenario. If I beat the kid…then hooray I beat a kid. If I lost…then I’m a goon for losing to a kid. It was lose/lose and karma would remind me of that in my second game.

As the game played out I systematically dismantled his army, and I felt horrible doing it. I wasn’t trying to table this kid. I was playing the scenario and he wasn’t. I even reminded him a couple times that he needed to grab the objectives. I tried to help him, yet he was trying to wipe my army and doing a poor job of it. I outnumbered him roughly 3-1. He came at my zombies hard and was torn apart by numbers. Soon, I had achieved my objectives and had nothing left to do but finish his last three units and deny him his objectives. I left this child with only two smoking wrecked vehicles on the board. Hooray for me! I wiped the floor with a kid (insert thumbs down with a wet fart noise).

Onto game two and three where Karma proves to be a bitch goddess...giving with one hand and taking with the other.

Adepticon 2019 - Through the Breach RPG

Through the Breach is an RPG set in the gaming world of Malifaux. You know that crazy Victorian times meets Old West, Steampunk, fantasy, magic stuff and some Lovecraftian horror game setting. It all sounds like a giant mess of genres tossed together……and it is. I have played a few games of the tabletop game and thought why not give the RPG a try. Especially outside of a convention I’ll never get a chance to try it.

I grabbed a pre-gen character from a stack, one Mr. Balahadra Raju a fated dabbler…which meant I was some sort of spell caster from India. .  I did my best not to just channel Mola Ram and Apu. I could go all astral plane out of body. I could also summon eldritch tentacles toy throttle my enemies. Plus I had a creepy human skull that I drew my power from/ acted as my spell focus/ spell book. I joined up with an old west-ish gunslinger and large beefy Scandinavian woman with a steampunk artificial arm and a pension for smashing stuff. We were hired to investigate an iron mine out in the wastes where more than just rock was being brought to the surface. We did discover what was going on, yet my character’s survival at the end of the game was really up in the air. Between the attacks from a giant shadow jumping spider and being shot (by accident) by the mining camp captain of the guard while fighting said spider, I was “unconscious” and hauled out from the mine.

It was a pretty straight forward convention game. You know where you have some roll play talkie bits, some combat and some type of skills challenge. It moved fast and we were a well-oiled team. It helped only having three players that kept on track. It made for a very enjoyable game.

Through the Breach uses the Malifaux suit modified deck of cards…or Fate Deck instead of dice. Here you flip a card and add the number to whatever skill, attack roll, spell etc. that you are trying to use.  The players also have a small hand of cards they can use to “cheat fate” by playing a higher card or suit than what was originally flipped. It makes for a very different mechanic than using a handful of dice. Especially, the “cheat fate” bit because you can alter the card draw and make sure you pass that skill or hit that monster with your attack.

 

The best, Red Joker, and the worst, Black Joker, cards in the game.
Guess which one I drew three times during this game...

If I knew more about this game world and had interested people I wouldn’t mind running Through the Breach. Ideally, I would rather play than run the game though. It checks a lot of my pop culture boxes; Old West, horror, magic, fantasy, steam punk and Lovecraft stuff. 

Post Adepticon 2019 week

Dog walking through the shot added for scale I guess.

The loot bag was pretty stupid again this year. Not only did it include a few models, bases and paint, but it also came with the Level 7 Invasion game, The stating set for A Song of Fire and Ice (the Game o' Thrones tabletop battle game), a full warband plus their dice for Shadowspear/ Nightvault from G.W. , and a complete Guild Ball team. That is all cool, but they are games I will never play. Here is hoping the local gaming community wants this and if not.... there is always Ebay.

Nothing says dystopian future full of nonstop horrible war like an activity book! 

However, I do like the fact they have 40K stories for the kids. It is a great way to try and hook them into the hobby while they are young, impressionable and still have some semblance of imagination.

I only bought 4 models from Reaper and that was it for the entire weekend. 

The brain in jar model is just great stuff and they will make fantastic objective markers from my Dust Blutkreuz army.

The chi bi Cthulhu models are going to be painted as statues to go with the statue and Cthulhu pillars I bought from Reaper last Adepticon.

I'll get pics and posts of my adventure up this week.

Adepticon Dust 1947 Axis Army

An over head shot of my Adepticon Dust 1947 army for the Paradise Lost Tournament this weekend.

I have a healthy swarm of melee zombies to be a first wave meat shield. They will be followed by my weaponized zombie troopers with heavy weapons and my walkers. The second wave of zombies is also able to grab objectives.

Blutkreuz Army List

Bluetkruez Zombie Schwarm Platoon

Totenmeister                      9AP

Zombie Squad x7                  35 AP 

Bluetkreuz Krampfgruppe Von Stein's Platoon

Frank Von Stein                    8 AP 

Zombie grenadier Squad x2  18 AP

Zombie Suicide Sqaud x2      16 AP

Henrich Tropical walker x2   16 AP

Flammluther II                       13 AP

Total Points: 107 (with 10% faction bonus)

I figure with a army based on two waves might work. Hopefully, I can tie down units with mindless fearless and resilient troops. Then my guns can walk on to counter attack. 

Granted if I am up against heavy vehicles and/or aircraft I will be at a real disadvantage. I have a few guns to plink at aircraft and a few rpg's for some small and mid range vehicles. The bigger stuff I am gonna be screwed if it drives up across the board from me. 

Dust 1947 why this is my new tabletop game

I entered the tabletop mini gaming world in the twilight of Warhammer 40K 3rd edition. I dabbled, briefly, in Mordheim. I then was pulled into the Lord of the Rings mini game. Then I bounced back to 40K from 4th to the beginning of 6th. I then jumped to Hordes and Warmachine. I dove head first into X-Wing. I was introduced to Infinity. I tried Malifaux and Atherium a few times. last year at Adepticon I tried a few games of Dust 1947. I really enjoyed the game play and whole minutia about it.I then decided this will be my new tabletop game (along with the occasional 1st edition X-Wing games).

What is Dust 1947?
This was once Dust and then Dust Tactics and now is actually called Paolo Parente's Dust 1947.
It is table top miniature combat game set in a alternate and wyrd WWII.
Throw in the typical WWII stuff we know with the Axis and Allies bit. Take out all the Hitler, Nazis and all the horrors they committed. Toss in a helping of crashed alien spacecraft found in Antarctica technology. The rise, recruitment and actual summoning of  Elder creatures from a Cthulhu style cult. Add a lot walkers instead of tanks. Then mix in jet packs, rocket fists, chesty mercenaries with flame throwers, laser weapons, armored battle suits, tesla guns, helicopters and all manner of silliness. Finally grab a ton of D6's and pair of battle mats and you have yourself a game know as  Paolo Parente's Dust 1947.