Friday, March 1, 2013

So We are starting up a campaign

I tried to be creative, while keeping this not only simple but allowing everyone to play everyone else.  Basically not letting the map dictate who can fight who, but being a little restrictive to army lists.  I think I was successful (pats self on back).  I know there will be some kind of issue at some point, because, well I can not think of everything.

Campaign Proposal

Hero/Army selection

A player may pick an army from any of the currently available source books, with the following exceptions/additions(basically including The Hobbit armies into the sourcebooks profiles):

Angmar list: Azogs hunters, The trolls
Moria List: Goblin town
Durins Folk: Army of Thror
Eregion and Rivendell: Elrond's Household
Wanderers in the wild: Thorin's company, radagast's alliance
Rohan: Men of Dale

Once a player picks an army list, they may play any hero in that army and may ally with any other army list IN THAT SOURCE BOOK.  Ex.  If I pick Harad and Umbar, I may ally with any other list in the Fallen Realms source book, but not out of Mordor ( unless you have enough Kingdom Points, which we will cover later ).

The goal, like it is every thursday night, is to take over the world!  How do we do this?
Expansionism, Imperialism and Conquest!  The lands to the east and south of Mordor are ripe for the picking!  It is time to build your empire abroad and bring wealth and honor to your western kingdom.
The people who inhabit this eastern land are drawn to power, you must defeat your competition in combat in order to earn their trust, and more importantly their trade.  Every western lord is on a stealth campaign to gather as many trading partners as they can, without going to all out war with their neighbors back home.  To that end you are secretly fighting battles in the east, and, the politics in the western lands are tricky so neighbors come in and out of alliances as everyone strives to become the imperialist power in the east.

Each player starts out with a three hex area on the western side of “known” middle earth, these may never be lost to or annexed by another player.  To gain renown, and lands, your secret army must defeat your “friends” to gain hex tiles in the east.  Every hex tile brings one Kingdom Point, which are calculated every week, and are not cumulative.  You may freely swap tiles with other players,  negotiate at your own risk.

A win will allow players to claim up to three hex tiles that are unclaimed, a loss means you gain nothing.  If there are no free hex tiles that you wish to claim, you may annex up to 2 of another players hex tiles.   Players may also do both, a win will allow a player to annex 1 tile and grab 1 unclaimed tile.  That is it though, a ? v1(win) allows:
1)Grab up to 3 free tiles
2)Annex 2 of another players tiles
3)Annex 1 tile and claim 1 free tile

a 2(win)v ? allows:
1)The winners may grab up to 2 free tiles each
2)The winners may annex 1 tile

Hex tiles MUST be in groups of three or more to be stable.
But why annex then Jobu?  Well, if you win the next week after annexing tiles from another player, then you can annex another two or grab free tiles that connect to the annexed tile(s).  If the player does not win, or somehow negotiate a tile swap, those tiles revert back to free tiles.  Only tiles with some land on them may be claimed.  Open water may not be claimed unless it is an inland lake.

Each tile in your favor gains you 1 Kingdom Point (KP), at the end of the campaign the player with the most KP's win.  Kingdom points are calculated once a week, on friday.



What do KPs bring you?
They allow allies, they allow buying priority once a game, they allow an extra fate to be given to a unnamed/named hero, they allow you to deploy a specific terrain piece, and maybe something else if I can think of it.  You may only pick two of the following and they may not be from the same list:

1)A force of renown(based on # of models, no points values) allows allies outside the sourcebook, still limited to good with good and evil with evil:
Spend 3 KP's and you may ally up to 25% (or one warband, whichever is larger) with another force using only unnamed heroes.
Spend 9 KP's and you may ally up to but not over 50% with another force using only unnamed heroes.
Spend 15 KP's and you may ally up to 25%(or one warband, whichever is larger) with another force using a named hero.
Spend 30 KP's and you may ally up to 50% with a named hero.

2)I swear it was Deja-Vu:
Spend 6 KP's and you may automatically have priority for one turn, must be used before priority dice are rolled – NO EXCEPTIONS
Spend 30 KP's and you may do it after the dice are rolled.

3)Luckiest Red Shirt:
Spend 3 KP's to give an unnamed hero an extra fate
Spend 20 KP's and give a named hero an extra fate
May only be given to native heroes. i.e. no allies

4)Brick in the wall:
Spend 3 KP's and you may remove one piece of native terrain from the table before armies have been deployed.
Spend 6KP's and you may place one small ( about the size of a DVD) non-native terrain piece anywhere on the board.
Spend 9 KP's and you may place one medium ( about 2x DVD ) non-native piece of terrain in your deployment area.


Fortunes/Fates
Hero of renown-You may nominate one hero in your army, that hero now acts as a banner for native troops( not allied ones).

Heroic Intervention-One nominated hero may call heroic fights without using any might.

Courageous charge-You may nominate one hero, during the game all units who begin the turn within 6 inches of that hero will automatically pass all courage tests.

War Chant- You may nominate one hero, during the game all models who begin the turn within 6 inches of that hero cause terror.

Faltering nerve-Before priority and for the duration of the game you may nominate one enemy hero, if that hero wishes to use might the controlling  player must role a d6, on 4+ nothing happens and the might is used normally, on a 3- the might does nothing and is lost.  This is only effective on the first might that hero spends each turn.

Ancient Lore-If a model or hero is the victim of a magical power, any native or allied hero within 12 inches may expend will points to help the model resist, the dice are added to the regular resist roll.  This is only allowed to be spent to resist magical powers.

Good Counsel- Before priority and for the duration of the game you may nominate one friendly hero, if that hero wishes to use might the controlling  player must role a d6, on 3- nothing happens and the might is used normally, on a 4+ the might is free.  This is only effective on the first might that hero spends each turn.

Counterspell-Nominate an enemy spellcaster, during the game if a spell is successfully cast that caster must reroll all the dice used to cast.  The second roll stands.

Mithril Coat-At the beginning of a turn declare this fortune/fate.  All wounds during the turn may be rescued on a roll of 5+.   Use this before rolling fate on heroes.







Last nights game

Eight brave souls showed up to fight mighty battles



Thursday, February 7, 2013

GW and the great patent war.....

If any reader here follows some of the more popular US/UK forums about tabletop war gaming( it has even happened on this blog) you may know about Games Workshop's pattern of intellectual property protection.
As in, we will send out cease and desist letters to anyone who may use any common term that can describe anything we make.  Now they have had a book about "Spot the space marine" pulled from amazon because apparently GW owns the words "space marine".
For some more info head on over to Plastic Legions
This is bullying plain and simple, they are attacking people not ideas.

To Learn more about the author of Spots the space marine go here.  She has updated her site with more information.
The ebook has been returned to the ebook store on amazon.  Show her some love if you can and purchase a copy.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

SBG Campaign.

Plans are currently underway for a SBG (Hobbit-LotR) campaign, perhaps as early as March. Jobu and I have solicit the aid of Aristo to manage the campaign for us. Aristo is a very good SBG competitor who have not been a regular gaming night participant for family (wee ones) reasons. This way we get someone firstly who know the game, secondly a neutral master, and thirdly allow him to continue participation in our gaming activities.
We all want a campaign to tie our games together, but effort in the past has failed in large part due to a lack of consensus on how to structure the campaign. This time the majority of us have decided gamers consensus is like herding cats. Thus we will provide suggestions to Aristo as our individual thoughts but in the end, will abide by his decision. Aristo will be our Campaign Master. I encourage all of you to do so.


My thoughts are here.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Last week's roundup

If you haven't had a chance to stop by FTW Games in awhile, I recommend trying to make a Thursday game night some time soon. There's always fun to be had, and this past Thursday, we had an action packed game! The game was a total of 4000 points between 4 players.



 I originally started collecting the GW Lord of the Rings miniatures as a hobby to paint and play SBG. I never got around to playing SBG much, and after 7 years in mothballs I resurrected what I could find of my collection and started to finish painting and collecting them again. My wife purchased me a box set of Riders of Rohan after I broke my collar bone as a way to ease the pain of not mountain biking, and the addiction started again!

 

These pictures include models from the battle that took place on 1/24/2013. It is always fun to watch the armies of Middle Earth clash together and see the outcome of an army build against someone else's.



I hope this inspires some of the "retired" folk to come out of their Hobbit holes and get down to FTW this Thursday for an adventure in Middle Earth again!



An album of all pictures taken during the game.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Februa...wwhhhhaaatttttt!!???

So, here we are nearing February and GW has put up some advanced order for The Hobbit.  Now, let me say these are some nice looking plastic models, you can't tell from the paint jobs ( especially when you compare them to the Warriors of Chaos ) but looking at the sprues shows they have a great level of detail.
Great job GW, those elf cavalry look great, as do the grim hammers.

Now, if only I could afford them. Okay,I can afford them, but I can not justify them.  Wargames factory offers 12 cavalry or 32 infantry models for less than $20.  Gripping Beast offers 44 infantry for @ $30 and Perry miniatures offers at least 12 cavalry for @ $30. True mulitpart, variable models.  Do they look as good as GW do in relation to the Hobbit?  No, but they are more than usable, and a good paint job will take them far.   We also do not play in a GW store, so no one cares what miniature represents rohan, elves or orcs.

I can not, for the life of me, figure out how 6 Rivendell Knights can be more expensive than 6 Morgul Knights when they are all made out of the same material.  They are almost 30% more, where does that price difference come from?  Those 2 dead extra models? I was really looking forward to these, was planning on buying them too.  Will I now? No.  I simply can not justify the price.  I thought the grim hammers might be less expensive than the hunter orcs. I know, I know that was a pipe dream but I really wanted them, I still want the hunter orcs on wargs, but I will not pay this price.

Some will say, " just go on the internet and get them for at least 15% off".   No, If I do that then there is no reason for Rob to have a game store, he could just stick to internet sales.  Then I will not have a place to throw dice.  My friends and I do not have the space to hold all the warmancers and game at the same time.

More to come.....

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Hobby stuff yeah!

A little bit of painting going on, still have not had a chance to play the new SBG rules yet. However I have had time to paint. First up is a figure from Red Box Games, which will be utilized as a black numenorean Marshall. The figure was fun to paint, it is a little warhammery skully but does stand out among the regular black numenoreans.
Next up is a Great Beast of Gorgoroth. This was a quick paint job, a true finecast nightmare. There were so many air bubbles in the figures that I lost count. The actual beast came out pretty well. Each figure is removable via a pin. I am looking forward to using this with the new monster rules. At some point anyway.