Shifting gears

I find role playing games skirting farther and farther from my interests. They have been surpassed almost totally by Wargames! Yaaay wargames!

It started sometime in November I think. I found out a group of guys were playing Warhammer 40K at the local gaming store on Sundays. This was the day I normally ran my Pathfinder campaign. Problem with the Pathfinder campaign, of the six or seven players I had recruited, I could reliably count on only two or three showing up. So it kind of petered out for me.

On to Warhammer 40K, says I. The attendance over there is just as spotty, but really, I only need one other player to show up. The game type alternates between normal with about two players per side, Apocalypse with about three players per side, and monthly tournaments. My original army was Eldar, but damn near half of the guys who show up play them. This convinced me I needed to look into another army, so I'm currently building up a Dark Eldar army.

I'm really the only player who shows up who has a fully painted army. They all have a few figs painted, and some have much better paint jobs than any of mine. But all of mine are painted, so I win, nyah.

Last weekend, I went to Winter War in Champaign again. Only played in one event, Blind Sniper. Lasted two rounds, me and another guy shot each other, while a lucky bystander looked on. Bought a copy of Malifaux, Hostile Aircraft (WWI biplane combat wargame), and Elfquest Rpg.

Fulci made a barbarian movie

I vaguely remember seeing this at a video store, way back when I was a wee lad. The kind of video store that had a box on the shelf, with little aluminum tags dangling beneath for VHS and Beta. Loads of movies had fantastic covers like this, only to give none of what was promised in the art.

Not so with this one. This really has a lady with a metal face, dressed only in snakes and a loincloth. There is a metal plated demon, and the barbarian protagonist fights with bone nunchucks.

I'd be lying if I said it was a good movie. It's totally not, or you would have seen it. It does have plenty of awesome things about it. Dog men tear a quarter a naked girl, then drag her head back to their master. Old men get their brains bashed in. The hero has a bow that shoots lasers. The villainess cooks an underling on a hot stone. Bog mummies, spiderweb shrouded stone men, Dog men, devils, bats, cavemen, and a golem demon.

It's got a misty dreamlike quality that I liked, but could see would be annoying for some. Sort of like Excalibur, or dream sequences.

No deaths to speak of

Tonight the Pathfinder session ran roughly five hours. Which was good, it never dragged or became boring. The party had a couple of near death experiences. I really didn't want to fudge the rolls or "let" them live, but really, a chance encounter with 3 trolls would have ended them. They met the green buggers in a field, based on movement alone, the trolls would have overtaken them. Even if they had split up, they were a party of three. All three would have been digested and pooped out.

First session.. a success kinda?

Played the first session of my new pathfinder campaign. I told the players, make what ever alignment you want, do what ever you want, this is a sandbox. Mmmhmm, the session ended with two of the characters knifing the lawful evil priest of Azmodeus in a healing pool he had just desecrated. So that's why letting players have evil alignments is frowned upon. Huh, now I know.

So first session, 1 kill, but totally not my fault. Also, they enslaved a kobold, then got it killed. Anymore first level is all about enslaving at least one humanoid, then putting it in the line of fire.

Gonna run some damn Pathfinder

Been a while since I blogged, since I haven't been doing much gaming. The only gaming I've been doing has been Warhammer 40k, and tons of World of Warcraft. For 40k, my girlfriend built me a huge gaming table in the garage. So now I can play on a battlefield that is the correct dimensions of 6' by 4'. Haven't had a chance to play any traditional pen and paper rpgs though. Pretty weak showing, time to start playing the D and the D again. Or Pathfinder, which is the crazy stepchild of Ye old D&D.

So today I'm going to start the first installment of the Kingmaker adventure path. Sandbox in all it's glory, good times. It has a couple of homages or inside jokes to classic DnD. The most noteworthy to me is an encounter with a crazy hermit who lives in a hollow tree with his pet puma he calls "Cat". Mmmhmm, ripped straight out of Keep on the Borderlands.

I have 3 "tenative" players so far, need to expand that to about 4 or 5 I'm thinking. I like the format of the sandbox campaign. Weekly attendance isn't as important as it would be in a character story driven railroad campaign.

40K Failure!

Here is an image of what was left of the Biel-Tan host. The couple of guys in white uniforms in the upper left? Only Eldar left alive, everything else on the table was green and had huge tusks. Spectacular loss! 2 Wraithlords, an Avatar, a troupe of harlequins, 10 rangers, and 10 dire avengers got Waaghd to death. My kills consisted of a bunch of grots, a squadron of 4 deff kopters, and like 2 boyz mobz. Need to put more speed in my army against these damn greenskins!

First 40k smackdown!

So it's not my first smack down, but the first one with Lori, with my terrain. Oh yeah, and her first go at 40k. Here is the set-up. Observe the choke point right there in the middle...









Here is Loris Orkie hoard, ready to Waaaaggh all over my Eldar. Scary!












Here be my Eldar, trying to hide out, and stay in a position to shoot shoot shoot as long as possible...











Right off the bat, had a sweet plan involving shooting goblins, and then charging war-trakks. Not a very awesome plan, these chunky ass jalopies are covered in armor. The thick kind that my weak little space elves can't poke through :(











Here is what's left of the goblins I shot to shit though. Pretty awesome! After the Trakks I assaulted kind of just ignored me, I sent my Dire Avengers over here to stab them in they face holes.











This is the kind of mess that started to occur after midnight. Hordes of hardened greenies dog-piling my Avatar. Boooo!











So tomorrow, when I wake up, this is the cluster fuck of a fight I have to finish. Might be easier by the light of day. Really don't understand why I didn't apply the Risk "don't play after the sun goes down" rule of thumb.