Rulic Love

Wow...

Lots of love from Privateer Press for Mercs coming up. MkII is going to add some much needed synergy plus we have tidbits of new character units like the bounty hunter. However, as a Rulic player, a new heavy warjack is just fricken awesome. Check this guy out!

Is he cool or what. It is like a Gun Bunny on Steroids! Check out the rotation on the Privateer Gallery. Some grenades and most likely a slam for free type thing... maybe a free trample.

On Tuesday night I played a 750 game versus Chris. I used my Khador with Sorcha, shock troopers, widowmakers, man hunter, Kovnik, Destroyer, Juggernaut, Berserker, Mechanics, and Grey Lords. Chris fielded Epic Doomshaper with champs, hero, bubble generator, one of each diretroll (Mauler, Earthborn, Mulg), whelps, Bouncer. It was a very bloody game. Both of us had some heavy hitting units and I forced his main line to freeze so I could set up charges. My usual dice failure kicked, but I did a pretty good job of taking out his hard units/beasts. In the end it was Sorcha, three Shocktroopers, & Grey Lords with Mulg, Bouncer, Doomshaper. Forced Doomshaper to make a tough roll on the last attack I had, and he passed. Mulg was able to move just close enough to Sorcha and smush her dead with that big club of his.

Great game.

jp

Go Gorten, Its your birthday!

Weekend O' Gaming

Salutations,

I got quite a bit of gaming in over the weekend. I kicked it off with a game of Flames of War with Paul at the house. I was suppose to go to the slow grow league, but forgot to pack my toys! Paul was nice enough to come over that night so we could knock out the game.

The game was a great game of my Recon Italians versus Paul's Motorized Brits. It was a blood bath on both sides with me having a clear line to the objective, but loosing one stand too many and loosing enough platoons to force a test. Since Capitino had passed away, that wasn't happening. Paul got the win with a 4-3.

Saturday I had a game of Warmachine with Adam. I started my Khador stuff and used a Sorcha rush with four Shock Troopers, a Kovnik marshaling a Berserker, Mechanics Marshaling a Juggernaut, Widowmakers, & Grey Lords. Adam was running Magnus with a Mangler, a Mule, 2 Renegades, Herne & Jonne. I moved everyone up pretty aggressively, and on turn two I popped Icy Gaze to freeze all the 'Jacks, allowing me to run my heavy hitters in position. Won't be able to do this trick in MkII, but it worked for now. The Kov & Berserker took the Mule while the Shock Troopers worked on the Mangler. Neither finished the job, but they did some serious damage. The Widowmakers exchanged rounds with Herne & Jonne and came up on top. I used the Juggernaut and Grey Lords to tie up a Renegade and keep Magnus worried. Game ended with Sorcha doing a few solid hits with Ice Fang. It was a good game from my point. Adam and I discussed tactics, like hiding the lights behind the heavies so they could both fire. Also discussed swapping the Mule for a Nomad so he could bring the Pirate McNale into the fight.

Saturday afternoon I was at Rob and Steve's and we rolled up Savage World characters. It is interesting system and I hope to run a modern setting game in Las Vegas. The characters are all 'real world' entities. Rob and Steve opted to make a larger version of themselves at 'GAMA Trade Show' while Eric made an employee of the Excalibur in full medieval attire. Paul rounded up those present with a cowboy reenactor from one of the sideshows on the edge of town. We tried the combat system versus a pack of dogs and it wasn't pretty. That lead to some minor character mods to help things along. Hope to have a real go in a few weeks.

Later Mic showed up and we played a bit of Rob's Forgotten Realms D&D game. I rolled up a new character, a 5th level Tempest Fighter that had lots of attacks, but low damage. One encounter was good, but I was dead tired and headed home about 11pm.

On Sunday, The Eldest and her Roommate came over for dinner. I roasted a chicken with potatoes, carrots, & green beans. It was pretty yummy if I say so myself. We played a three handed Ticket to Ride with The Eldest winning with a whopping 8 routes complete. We then introduced her Roommate to Pandemic. We lost to virus outbreak in the first game, but one the second.

Lots of games... :)

Finally, I worked on the WARMACHINE MkII Slow Grow League Rules. You can find them on The Game Shoppe Forum for review and comment. It should be fun.

jp
Play!

Plastic 'Jacks!

Holy Cow!

The preview page for the new Plastic Warjack kits are up and they are snazzy! Each one will make one of four different 'Jacks. My favorite is the Decimator.

It looks like it ought to be a Merc 'Jack with that buzz saw and gun. I'm glad he is Khador so I can include him in my slow grow once it comes out.

The next coolest is the Menoth Templar, which looks very nice and most likely have a sweet armor boost given the shield. Plus reach is rarely a bad thing.

I also really like the new Cygnar 'Jack. They have needed a two gun guy from early in the game and the Cyclone provides the needed fire power.

Finally the new Cryx 'Jack, the Corrupter, is plenty Cryxian. I like the bug head. :)

Painted, the plastics look great. I am hoping the hold up to day to day playing and really look forward to looking at the pieces when PP puts them out.

You can read more here.

jp

I'm want'n a Decimator!

edit: Stupid Graphics...

WARMACHINE Weekend Round Up

So much for being a better poster!

Just got back from WARMACHINE Weekend late Sunday night and thought I would shoot some highlights your direction.

As usual, I didn't do all that great. My records for the events I played in are as follows

- Early Bird 500: 0-4 (Plus a bye)

- Mangled Metal: 1-4

- 1000: 2-3

- 1-1-1-1: 2-3

So my total was 5 wins, 14 losses, and 1 bye. Could have been better. Some lessons learned from me.

- Don't play in the 1000 point tournament. I was fried. The games are so big and intensive in a tournament setting that it just makes my head boggle. By the end, I was just not carrying so much. Plus, because I was so fried, I just didn't want to play in the 350 Hard Core, which I heard was a great event.

- The hotel was nice, plenty of room. I liked the nicer hotel vs. the flea pit we had last year. Yes it was about twice as much per person, but the short walk and clean spaces was better. Plus, the suite was only $24 more per night. For a second room w/ a fridge. May have to look at the suites again next year

- Go down early? The Lincoln guys went down the night before and had a good nights rest before the event. That looks appealing to me to prevent the early morning dash with out much sleep.

As a group I think we did OK. The Lincoln guys (Tyler) won at least one event, maybe two and Chris took best theme with his drunk Borka list. Nobody walked away from the event with a free army, but we were up on armies from our first two years so that is ok.

Carl does have a good selection of 'used' warmachine stuff on sale and since I am going to be playing Khador in the MkII slow grow, I thought I would pick up some stuff. I got some Winterguard, Iron Fang w/ attachment, Mechanics, & Kossites... A good chunk of my infantry needs.

jp

Home but tired

100 pounds gone... Forever!

Greetings,

I’ve been in a stall the past two weeks and I have been hovering around 220 pounds every morning at the gym during that time. Stalls are common in the process, they can last 1 to 4 weeks, and they are just part of the process, so I wasn’t worried about this being the end, but it was very frustrating knowing I was sooooo close to my first goal.

Achievement Unlocked!

This morning, after a grueling workout, I stepped on the scale and was pleasantly surprised to see 217.4… Just over 100 pounds from my high of 318. Hallelujah and pass the protein shake!

The process has been a great benefit to me, helping me adjust to what I should be eating. I haven’t been perfect, nobody ever is, but I’ve been pretty good by and large and I am very happy with the results.

So… New goal? 200 pounds. 20 more to go!

I also started a new workouts this week. Crossfit. It is like a cult in the gym. The work outs are very tough and I am not even coming close to the proscribed workout of the day. Today’s routine (our group is 24 hours off from the official cycle) was:

21 - 95# Sumo dead lifts

250 Meter on the rowing machine

15 - Pull-ups

Wash and repeat for 20 mins… The goal is to do as many as you can in that cycle in the allotted time.

Since I’m just starting out and I just don’t have the upper body strength yet so I did the following:

15 – 20# dumbbell Sumo dead lifts

250M row

9 – Assisted Pull Ups

In the 20 minutes I finished three full cycles and started the sumo deadlifts again, but didn’t finish.

My legs are killing me (a good thing), but I just feel like I could rock all day.

On the gaming front I hope to get at least one game of FoW with my Italians tonight at league night and then Saturday we have the continuing mis-adventures of the “I can’t believe we didn’t get TPK” gang.

J

jp

Hey, Hey, Hey, Good-bye

Painting up the Italians

Ciao,

I've been working on the Italians for the paint and play being run down at the Shoppe. I've been pretty happy with the work so far, used my crappy camera to take some shots, but it has never done close ups very well.

This is the general painting area and all the stuff in its general areas... Most of the 600 points is on the dirty paper towel. For those I still need to do the highlight colors after doing the wash on the infantry and guns. The tank teams need the treads done as well as some detail pick outs. Not sure how I'm going to do the markings yet.

This is the motociclo platoon. They are all but done except for some tuffs of static grass for dead weeds.

The last picture to show is my one objective for round one.

The camp scene is nearly done, static grass and work on the fire pit a bit as well as the highlights on the troopers to help bring back some of the detail following the wash. Also need to dry brush the palm a bit to make it greener... I guess it isn't quite ready for prime time yet. :)

A few more happy snaps can be found here

Hope to get a game in on Friday with them.

jp
Putting the IT in Italians

Edit: Having some pic issues with Blogger. :(

Saturday Nuke Con Round Up

Ahoy,

I got to spend all day Saturday at Nuke-Con and had a great time. I had signed up to play La Havre and Dominion early at the con. I've been interested in both of these games for some time, but never had chance to play them. Unfortunately, the guy running these games never showed which was the only downside to the day's activities. Luckily I brought Pandemic (with its expansion) and Race for the Galaxy with me. I played two games of the base Pandemic with a nice guy named Jim since he was suppose to play in the La Havre game as well. We cleaned up pretty well on easy, but lost to the game on medium, with the role combination that we ran being the real stickler.

Around 10ish, the time I was suppose to be playing Dominion, Steve volunteered to sit out of the Flames of War tournament as they had an odd number, so we picked up the Pandemic and added the Viral Strains into the deck for a few games then the Mutant Strain for a few more, and finally both on the final game. We had a few players come and go as we played, what was most likely 6 or 7 games. Good times were had by all as we saved the earth about 50% of the time.

At 2pm, I had signed up to play in Bob's White Line Nightmare home brew using the Savage Worlds engine. It was a 'Car Wars' like game where the players had to race around Council Bluffs and got $500 for hitting designated wickets and $100 for every zombie killed. I played 'Big Sam' an obese, but lovable driver of an armored PT Cruiser with a rocket launcher on the roof. It was a fun game, with the mechanics dragging the game just a tad. By 5pm, of the five players, only one had a working car and was racing around backwards trying to not get swarmed by the Zombies. One was just getting pulled out of his pickup, another had wrecked his sports car going too fast around a curve, and myself and one over were racing on foot to the safety zone. Although I ended the game with the lowest cash prizes (my wickets kept being randomly selected at opposite ends of the table... A mechanic I think needs to me adjusted as others got three wickets right in a row), I had a great time... Just wish Sam could run a bit faster. ;)

At 6pm to about 8pm I ran Race for the Galaxy, and unlike other board game runners, I showed! :) First game was with two younger players that had both played before. They had a pretty solid understanding of the game, with only a few minor reminders (like grey planets do not produce goods). The older of the two kids took the first game by 3 VP over mine. The second game Steve joined in as did a new guy Daniel that had just picked up the game, read the rules and played the 2-player vs. his wife. Daniel did a good job of picking up the parts he missed when you just learn via reading and was soon on his way. I won the game with 47 VP with a brown planet build strategy having both of the <6> brown cards allowing me to double dip the planets.

Afterwards, Steve and I broke out his copy of Agricola and played three games of 1v1. Steve won the first two by health margins and I won the third by a few points. I really liked this game a lot. It falls into that pleasantly complex category, especially when we added in the occupations and the minor improvements as those really changed the complexion of the game and your strategic options.

We finished up around midnight, and I packed up my stuff and hit the road. It was a very pleasant day of gaming and I can't wait for next year!

jp

(=| KABOOM! |=)

Lets see if I can do better in October, shall we?

So last month I was pretty lame in my posting. Only 7 out of 30 days. Pretty sad to be honest. I offer no excuses and take full accountability for my own lameness.

To make admends, here are a few things going on in the world of games for me.

On the Brink - The new expansion for Pandemic finally made it to my grubby little hands. What I didn't know is that it is actually three expansions in one. In case the old game was just too easy (Yea, right), it offers three new challenges for the players:

• Virulent Strains - Replaces regular outbreak cards with special cards that can do funky things and make it harder to kill off one of the strains
• Mutation! - Adds a fifth color virus (Purple) to the mix with extra cards on how it comes into play... Making it harder to kill off the other strains
• Bio-Terrorist - Adds a bad guy to the mix, where one player sits on the bad guy side and tries to keep the other players running... Making it harder to kill of the other strains...

Do you see a trend? :) In addition you get new 'Roles' that can be played and a much needed update to the Operations Specialist, new special player cards, a fifth player, and best of all, petri dishes to store all the little wooden viruses. Those were pretty cool. With out playing the game yet, my only negative I can say is that all the stuff doesn't fit in the main box any more, forcing you to carry both. I'll post playing views after Nuke-Con where I hope to get a game or two in.

Speaking of Nuke-Con, it is this weekend and I'm spending all day Saturday. I schedule several board games, but it looks like only Dominion will get in the mix, which is fine, because I've been really wanting to try it out. I'm also playing in Bob's White Line Nightmare game which should be a fun four hours. I'm also running a few rounds of Race for the Galaxy, assuming anyone signs up. Either way, it should be a good day of gaming. I'll post the outcomes of what I end up playing.

jp

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