Morning everyone !!

A very detailed video by the dice tower .

/cheers.
bob.

Hello again everyone !!

Quick review of the Death guard booklet that come with the starter box. (25 pages)

-First you get a brief explanation of what is the death guard.





-Then One fluff page per unit .

-Tainted sons description

-Different Death guard Vectoriums (Warbands).





-Heavy metal





-Models stats

Hope that answers a few of your questions !!

/cheers.
bob.

Morning everyone !!!

Last time I was doing the unboxing/presentation of "Runewars the miniature game" ( here ). Since then, I played my first game with the starter box and I wanted to do a quick debrief of the game.

Rules presentation:

I don't know if you are familliar with X-Wing or Armada, but Runewars uses the same type of wheel to issue orders (I explained it in the unboxing here ). The main difference with X-Wing is that you have 2 wheels per unit command tool, one for the order and one for the modifier. For the modifier to apply he has to be of the same color as the order. There are 3 to 6 differents colors (depending on the unit.) F.e.: I could use the move action (blue) and the blue modifier action "Rotate"(rotation at the end of the move), or the yellow move action with the modifier "defense" (+1 armor). That adds a very nice layer of strategy without complex rules and don't forget that each order has it's own initiative ranks (the lower the better).

As you can see the longer the move the higher the initiative rank (so act last)
Now that's explained let's get to it !

Deployment

We played the initiation mission. The deployment is fixed and we didn't draw any objective/terrain cards.



As you can see the table is not square, that is because we have an ongoing shadow war campaign and the main table was already occupied^^.

Human side

Undead side

Exemple of movement

The game started and we secretly planned our movement on our command tool. As you can imagine on the first turn of our fist game we just advanced forward (using the blue arrows)

Here an exemple on how a movement is done during the game, it was one of our first moves !

We begin by announcing initiative ranks. Starting with 1 then 2 and then 3 ...up to 9. If you have a unit that can act on said rank you interrupt the count. In this case the undead player skeletons unit acts with an initiative of 5 (the white numbers on the wheel are initiative ranks). he announces that he wants to move an unit. Then he revealed this command tool:

If you look closely, you'll see a blue arrow (2) and a white modifier meaning that the unit can move in a straight line using the size 2 ruler.
We place the ruler next to the skeletons unit.

Then move it until it reachs the end of the ruler.

.

Easy and very precise !

The game

A game last 8 turns but we only played 5 to seal the deal ;)

Turn 2 movement:
Cav charge top left impact the skeletons archer hard and dodge the undead lords charge. Yay !^^ rest of the force derps a little


.

After 2 turns we were already hooked ! the combination of the command tool and the rulers makes perfect sense with rank and file armies.
It's so perfect, you give orders at the start of the turn and you try to counter what you think the other general think you are going to do (what :P ?).
It's awesome to the point that I need to say out loud "This game feel like the warhammer, games workshop wanted to make, but without the 100 pages of move rules and with Actual movement and strategies (played 20 years of WFB and most game were usually decided during the initial deployment)

Turn3
Big golem (superb miniature) charges undead lord, pike-men try to do a slow charge after the big worm moved and on the right, skeletons know they can't charge because the ninja girl hero is going make a dash at a lower initiative rank !! Awesome :D


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Turn 3 is another example on how the game is interactive:
Smelling something fishy the undead player decided to wait with his worms and do a quick short turn with the skeleton unit. It worked perfectly as the pike-men charged nothing and got 1 panic token. (increase futur moral effect)

Turn 4
We learned that the undead lord is a beast in melee combat ! killing the poor golem before he could activate his defensive order.
In the center the pike-men use a defensive order to cut their loss /2 but they don't attack ! Super ninja girl charged the side of the skel killing bunch of them and dealing secondary damage to the worms, wow !
Cav spend the turn doing a rotation.


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Turn 5
Cav charge the undead boss, while on the other side pike-men suffer heavy losses from the worms and the skels (the ninja girl still hacks them.)


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End of Turn 5


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When the dust settled the undead lord was killed by the cav after loosing most of the unit ! On the other side, ninja girl rolled good and killed a good chunk of skel and the worms with a knife !.

Conclusion

This short battle (took 40 minutes) was incredibly fun and interesting ! we are both veterans of WFB and it's the first time a mass battle played like we imagined !
The system is simple, efficient , with a bunch of depth. And we are only scratching the surface.
We played a second battle using the advanced rules (terrains, missions, and deployments cards), I'll do a review about it in close future !!

I hope you enjoyed this and maybe you got a bit of hype for the game. I really think Runewars the miniatures game is going to be a major success !!!

/cheers.
bob.

Morning everyone !!

Yesterday was our shadow war campaign night, but some complication forced us to change our plan at the last second.
So instead of playing at our batcave, we were in a living room with an ovale shaped table. we had a few terrains and some models in different state of painting. The perfect setting to try AOS skirmish !

4 players split in 2 side (order vs chaos)
Warbands : Beast men + Nurgle vs Stormcast + sylvaneth.
Renown value : 30 pt each (25 is advised to start the campain but that felt too low.)

List :

Nurgle : Gutrot Spume + 6 nurgle marauders (using reaver)
Gors : 1 shaman + 6 gors
Stormcast : Questor, 1 liberator (Prime), 1 judicator (Prime with the 1d6 bolt bow)
Sylvaneth : branchwytch +7 dryad.

Equipement : both melee heroes took the +1 life amulet and both wizards took the tome grating +1 to spell casting.
From the get go the stormcast list was super super scary !

Mission : M1 - Clash at dawn.
It's the first mission of the campaign, the table is divided in quarters and you take turn to deploy randomly 1 model each by rolling a dice (1-4 is localisation 5-6 is reserve). It was funny because everyone was mixed in and we anticipated a brutal turn1.

Setup

First good point of this game is that in 20 minutes we made the list , gathered the models, installed the table and explained aos to a beginner.
That was fast, so yea Skirmish do the job as a fast game.

The game :

The game was bloody, there is no special mechanism to help models survive. The rules use AOS 100% so no crippling wound like Necromunda/shadow war. At first i feared that the fragility of models would be too much but in the end it was the opposite. Basic grunt hitting on 4+ 4+ (unless you are an under costed dryad off course ^^) there was a lot of blank melee turn. Chaos took the ascendant by using the speed of the gors pack to isolate order element and focus them down.

At Turn, 5 the victory condition was met, but we decided to go to the last side standing (pride was on the line^^). The chaos had won (minor victory). At this point we imagined a quick cleanup by the chaos forces and maybe some trouble against the questor standing in a terrain (2+ save with reroll). Ho my we were wrong !

yay !!

Boom it's nuke time !

The branchwytch casted unleash spite ! rolled big and a lot of 6 followed when the dust cleared only the shaman was left ! he was close to run away ^^.nurgle lost a couple marauders too.

We had a remontada on our arms ! wiping all the chaos force with one spell, order used the momentum to lock us in a stalemate lightly in their favor. The situation was : the melee monster from order and chaos locked in combat while the 2 caster were sniping from afar !

Between the grabbing by sprume tentacle and the questor shield the fight took 4 or 5 turns.
The gor shaman was trying to snipe the last Questor wound while the dryad was tring to kill everything with the bomb and wanted to charge the shaman too !! what a beast :D

In the end questor and the branchwytch emerged victorious after my poor gor shaman failed to cast 3 arcane bolt in a row :'( (with the +1 tome)

We made a quick post game were we rolled progression and treasure.
Nothing special about it they all got extra point and i got a meh counter spell effect.

Pro and Cons

PRO :

-Game is fun, even with the lack of skirmish mechanism it's working well.
-Game is easy to set up, as promised this as easy to get some models and play !
-Scenario are very fun. We only played the first one but the randomized set up and the fog were super interesting.
- Cheap extension
-Easy to include new players.

CONS :

-The game need more detailed terrain rules (like shadow war or something).
-A different way of rolling attack is needed too, 2 basic grunt fighting on a 4+ 4+ save 4+ is boring. Ok it's easy but it's totally random :D and can take age !
-We missed having an assist mechanism.
Question by the frostgrave player of our group : "hey we are 5 marauders against this solo liberator prime don't we get a bonus or something ?" answer "No activate 1 marauders." (then lost 2 marauders on prime split attack).

Conclusion :
I understand that they needed to keep it simple and they couldn't rewrite all the warscroll but some mechanism to reduce to random spike would have been great. Xp would have been awesome too.

In the end we had a super fun evening perfect for a beer and bretzel and we want to finish this campaign to see how it goes.
For the price you can't go wrong :D

/cheers.
bob.

ps: sorry for the pics the light was terrible ^^

Hello everyone !!

RuneWars have been released and i succumbed to the hype ! A great numbers of gamer i know have started collecting so it was already on the back of my mind. One innocent visit to my flgs + 10% discount launch offer + one weak mind = One new game ^^

My plan is to build this week end and play next week (Wednesday i think ) in the meantime here a quick opening :

I) Books
That first thing you see when you open the box. 3 booklets :

-Yea i know it's in french, i prefer English rule too :/ but if i want to buy locally.
-Rules presentation : If you are familiar with recent FFG games (imperial assault, descent2, forbidden stars..) this is the standard rules layout. One book for quick start, one book for advanced rules and one book for campaign + scenario (in this case it's a fluff book). TBH i am not a big fan of this presentation, you always need to check in a different book and pertinent rules are spread all over the place. It was the same for imperial assault and it kind of reduced my fun as the GM. I prefer a thematic presentation (like any rulebook you know).

II) Punch cards and little plastic bags !

Once again it's FFG, 3 punch cards sheets with movement rulers, order disk, token, magic wind. No problem here, it's top quality ! vibrant color, Perfect ! Even better there is 2d dual face printed scenery. "Beautiful"

FACE A

FACE B

Movebar : very close to Xwing ruler but with a slot for improved movement precision.

Bonus : there is a lot of small plastic bag to organise the stuff. +1

III) Orders wheel

To me it's the great plus of this game, at the start of the turn you and your opponents choose an Order (left wheel) and a Modifier (right wheel) secretly for each of your units. Then during resolution phase you count from 1 to 10 (calling the initiative, it's the white number on the left wheel) and resolve each action at the fixed initiative number. It's a great game mechanism as you can choose slower action with stronger effect or fast action with weaker effect. The second wheel let you slightly alter the order. Whats even more cool is that EACH unit have a DIFFERENT wheels pair it's really interesting.

First you need to assemble them. I will not lie that was terrible experience and the wheel don't have a smooth movement. At least the instruction were clear so no wrong wheel on wrong unit cards.

IV) Models :

The box give you a lot of models :
Human side : 1 hero, 4 cav, 16 spear, 1 golem
Undead : 1 hero, 8 archer, 16 skels, 1 carrion.

Quality : Soft plastic :/ with some bended weapons (will try different unbending method tomorow). While not being GW quality, the scult are crisp, with a moderate amount of details and a very nice look. Plastic is soft but not cheap boardgame like it's a very stiff plastic.

Assembly : clip + glue, bigger models fit nicely(golem + carrion riders), the 2 first archers weren't.

Assembled models (not glued)

Skels :

50% of the models bag :

I really like the style of the models and i am really eager to start painting them !!
I'll try to do a more gaming side review next week and a battle report when i play (i hope next week too).
There is a lot stuff to say about this game !

/cheers.
bob.

Howdy Guys and Girls :)

Today we have a little preview for Fracture of Biel-Tan - I'll start with some very cool artwork and do a full story spoiler post later today, so stay tuned :)

Regards,
Lady Atia

Howdy Guys and Girls :)

Today we have a review of 'The Hobbit - There and Back Again' for you. As usual, if you have any questions, just ask in the comments below :)

Regards,
Lady Atia

Howdy Guys and Girls :)

Via klull from combat phase:

"We talks news, hobby and games played, then... NEW BLOOD BOWL reviewed! We discuss the new box contents, rules clarifications and presentation, plus play testing not only the game w/humans vs. orks in the box but also using existing teams using the living rulebook stats you'd have been using if playing over these past several years. Or the stats Warhammer World has put up for the Beard Cup. Bottom line: it's awesome and no reason you should not pick it up and start playing right away, even if you don't play humans or orcs. Why not enjoy until your team is resculpted and released? :)
Enjoy!

Link to the podcast

Regards,
Lady Atia