Its LPL Again

I participate in LPL again this year (my third time) - I love it to be hones even if I have no chances to win it :) I like to built small crews and pose them for cool photos.
So you've seen my Frostgrave entry already
I chose to tie my entries with little Easter egg. Look out for Sinister Chicken!

here is the rest
First round was thematic one - with Victorian horror. I am not particularly inclined towards this genre but I hag Malifaux 2e crew I havent finished and beautiful metal 1st ed McMurning to round it up

Then mentioned Frostgrave one  and My Late Roman Comitatus of Flavius AWitus as third round photo (funny detail - legionaries in the background were in one of my earlier LPL entry)

Then I went intio 4 th round with my Battle Company of  Rohan group (Starring Rohan Battle company with upgraded mounted leader)

This week Is another thematic round - this time Only paint - minis without any scenic details. As I like setting up little scenes the best its not that interesting as thematic round - I used my Slaanesh retinue - Boldly named AWitus Comitatus 40K (as its similar - Leader and 4 retinue men at arms- in composition to my late roman comitatus) to try hypnotizing voters with bold colour choices (although I won 4 previous matches so there is a chance I will be put against some of the real masters there and nothing will help me against just devastatingly better painted miniatures :)

My last year quest was to won half of the matches I participated in - I did it and finished at 13 position overall. - My target this year is to keep that position :)
Now to prepare entries for the remaining 5 rounds  - I have one ready to photograph and 2 almost done. That is leaving me 2 rounds one of which will be thematic round with something American - that will be hard one as I don't have faintest idea what to paint...nor anything american bar some 15mms... Yet!. :O :D

Frostgrave Archaeology team of Summoner Awixus the Rich

This is my team of adventurers after second game in the campaign. Some Ive shown before as they were part of my LPL entries some are completely new.

This is My team how they entered the not-so-Frozen ( we loosened on winter theme because of no place to store completely new set of terrain)

As you see only 3 henchmen from the original cast survived the dangers of the first scenario Fountain of youth

Previous photos featuring our heroes:

 Start of the team in 2017 LPL round

Second part in 2018 LPL

This year LPL

Frostgrave treasure tokens

Useful in many games and scenarios but made with Frostgrave in mind.

Main component and time saver here were Rendra cobblestone bases.
Bits are random parts of leftover bits ad one piece from Kinder Surprise toys from 20 years ago.

I played Warcry and lived to tell about it

Its quite cool and very tactical game. Scenarios are constructed in a way that you have to play scenario and some bands could be handicapped.

I played Untamed beasts and had to decide which of my models carries a treasure chest. 

My opponent had to kill him and take the treasure. But I had to nominate a model at the start of 2 nd turn when reinforcements arrived and the scenario had only 3 turns.

So to catch potential campy treasure keeper my opponents would have to plan accordingly and wait. He decided to smash my starting guys and had very small chance to get the treasure guy. Anyway again he went for carnage and killed my leader unnecessarily and I won easily.

Its hard to not want to kill everybody with bunch of bloodthirsty chaos cultists :P

 

First turn brawl in the centre 

I've killed his leader and 3 lesser guys and grunt and i lost my beast herder leader and some grunts.

Most definitely MVP was big wildcat thingy with 8 of movement and ability to be forced by beastmaster for and extra attack and survived the game.

Kitty attack

If I understand it correctly there is one building miniatures decision in the starter box. You can built Iron golem standard bearer with an iron gong or Preceptor (?) with huge hammer.

Gong or hammer - tough choice to made...

I cant say anything about the terrain as we used pre painted Garden of Morr shop had on hand.

Golem leader fall

The cards for creating the missions can have big impact or almost non existent. We had a card that asked for drafting another pair of cards and using both from which one was +1 to movement for everyone (meh) but the second one gave the both bands extra die for activation rolls (we rolled 7 dice each turn - and this was huge - my opponent managed to use pair of quadruple results in one turn- that would let him win the scenario most probably but he went for max carnage of Ogre model.)

They were bragging about 30 millions of combinations of cards during creation of battlefields but lets be honest - those options are quite cosmetic sometimes.

Most important thing is that you have to split your forces between 3 detachments Dagger, shield and hammer (each one need at least 1 model and no more than 1/3 or 50% and biggest one (shield?) need minimum 33%)

But you dont know how they will deploy and If they will deploy turn one or turn 2+ from reserves - this is dictated by card drawn after splinting.

You can see hammer, dagger and shield icons and deployment zones. They are symmetrical on all cards I saw. Here - Dagger and Hammer deploy in second turn.
This is major factor creating friction and fog of war on the battlefield and its the tool for making games different.

Abilities card example
Second factor is roll for initiative/abilities - they can change course of the game allowing extra attacks, more devastating attacks, extra movement and even one heals - but its hardly useful IMHO in such low turn games. Those again are quite few and will be repetitive but combination of dice rolls should make game unpredictable.

Overall great game. I loved it. And preordered a copy.

Just don't expect to play deep campaign with it.

It will be perfect for pick up games though (and probably tournaments and such which interest me less). Its less time consuming and tough decision game as Underworlds but its much easier to get into and don’t need great investment in cards ( you only need your model cards and your faction and shared activated abilities so one box of a miniatures and you are playing the game.

It won't be for everyone but I will have great time with it.

Burrows and Badgers test game and some rules presentation

So I've been recently tempted by beautiful miniatures and great tournament report to try Burrows and Badgers - a game of anthropomorphic animals.
I was a bit skeptic at first but pretty and well painted miniature ca lure me to many traps  (and I liked Mouseguard :)
Before I order any miniatures I've decided to try the game with proxies.
So I raised a small Skaven Warband that served me well in Underoworlds + one added mice  works great in B&B assuming that Skritch (who is The greatest Yess Yess remember?) will be larger kind of rat.  I  added one mice with a bow to fill the roster (random skaven from Mordheim I've bought pre painted  many years ago and never bothered to do anything with him - Fun fact Skritch will be my Assassin adept in Mordheim too so that small dude after rebasing and repainting/rebuild will find a way to Mordhaim again)

So we have Team Rat consisting of Leader Brown Rat with Halberd (pole arm) heavy armor and Feint skill, Black (smaller kind) rat with halberd, pair of rats with double hand weapons, rat with weapon and shield and one mouse with a bow.
At the other side of the table Team Prox mustered..

Mollog is a Massive Badger with Two handed sword and Zweihander skill (Tough and powerful killing machine)and the bad case of tinea, His sidekick is Otterbestman (larger beast the size of my Leader brown rat) with twohander and heavy armor, pair of GoblinMice have only bows and bat is armed with hand weapon, band is complemented by this rabid Shrew (those teeth counts as two handed weapons. two hand weapons

The Scenario was Recover the Paychest (I have older version of rules so the name could change in the Osprey book - I will buy it for sure as the rules improved). Both team had to dig for hidden chest with treasure of some unit destroyed in the previous war hidden somewhere along the  huts on the center line..

The game started slowly but my shieldrat could feel cold glimpse of inevitable since turn 1!

Every model rushed forward, the sneaky bat managed to search rightmost hut but to no avail (that happened to by only attempt made during the game as things escalated quickly)

Combat was started by Otter and shieldrat, but they were mainly inefficient (due to armor and shield).  It is quite nice interaction of shields - which give bonus to defense roll so its easier to awoid the damage and heavy armor -which grants tough 2 skill ( that means each time character takes damage it is lowered by 2 points).
Then the BadgerTroll joined the fray and BUM, one swing of that giant double handed club and the shieldrat was smashed into the cobblestones..

Combat itself is also  very elegant.
Its opposed roll of Strike die ( D10+2 for the Badger) vs  Block skill (D4 on my rat +2 bonus from a shield)   Most definitely not a fair combat..
 What could save the rat was a Miracle - when you rol natural maximum on any dice test the test get +7 luck bonus.. That gives larger chance for a bonus to smaller animals with lover types of dice - cool heroic narrative can be made here.
But my rat rolled 1 on his D4 so the end test result was 1 (+2 for a shield but -1 for multi model combat as  he was in base to base with Otterbeastman  and then -1 for wound penalty as he was lightly wounded by the Otter earlier).
The furry (well fungy) monster rolled 9+2 for zweihander 1 to 11 = 10 points of damage and then + 3 for his uncanny strength...  That was 13 damage..
Each critter have 16 damages with 4th, 8th, 12th and 15th point taken result in penalty to every roll made after suffering them.. Rat  had 4 damage from Otter charge so he went down with one strike of the Badger..(was squished like that Frog Mollog model is carrying.. :(

The rest of my team was furious about poor critter demise and prepared next turn charges!
Then some arrows were exchanged and my humble bow mouse put an arrow into the Badger wounding him lightly..
- Game uses alternate activation method so I was shooting BadgerTroll after he killed my shieldrat.
Then Goblinmice hit my bowmouse with some light hits in response.
Then my leader and his henchmen charged into the fray but failed to do serious damage to the Otter.
The turn ended with the bat failing in searching the building and mu last rat catching him off guard and wounding.

Next turn my leader managed to put halberd inside the dent of Otters heavy armor and put him down but just after my two smaller rats wounded him lightly each but not before himself being wounded by stubborn Otter.. The giant Badger swung his mace but my rat rolled 4 so he scored +7 luck bonus and dodged the mighty blow. Then shrew charged but failed to wound my Halberd rat. Bat ineffectually fought the Ratty and in response was slightly hit again accumulating more than 8 damage and putting him on -2 disadvantage to any tests.

But Unfortunately Badger won the initiative and swing again at my leader.. and again it was 1 for me..
To 10 - bastard got Lucky bonus so final test was 1 to 19.. 18 +2 damage OUCH!
Skritch has fallen, and then was stomped into the dirt..
rest of the combats were non decisive but the bat got one more wound and some arrows hit the target.

Then things went further south. Dual wielding rat run forward to kill finish one of the BowMice/Goblins (and avoid the Badger) but managed only to wound him.
Halberd rat miraculously survived two Troll attacks with rolling 4 and getting +7 but finally meet his demise. Fortunately my band morale was strong and I did not run away then because..

Then Mollog team made a mistake. Instead of atacking bat run away to search another terrain for a paychest (and don't be slaughtered - what could inevitably happen this turn) provoking disengagement strike. It was risky buy not that risky.. 50/50 chance and he was hit and hit to death..

Unintentionally the bat move freed my dual wielding rat to activate and charge seriously wounded bow-mouse-goblin.. He did and he scored the second kill that round and the final kill of the game.. Now the Prox team too was at 50% down and needed to test for morale.
It had the advantage.
Morale is a roll off too.
Suffering team leader fortitude (d8 for Otter) vs the team forcing the roll leader Presence.. (as my leader was down my second  highest presence was only d6).
So the rats had to test D10 ( Badger presence) vs d6 ( rat fortitude) and prevailed..
But Badger-troll D8 was a failure against Rats d6 presence..

My guess is that after two kills straight in a row, just few seconds apart
.. my murdery rat had to strike fear even in badgers.

via Gfycat

Flurry of  whiskers and knives was just to much.. and Team prox fled the battle field leaving the Paychest to the Team Rat.. Yaay!

I liked the rules very much. There was some numbers but they were quite easy to chew. Simple additions and subtractions. Game flown very well and was quite exciting. Will play again for sure. And I want to try the campaign.

Lamp lighter Kaas - Look out hanger on

I finally finished my last year built of Kaas the lamp lighter. protagonist of Necromunda novel Junktion. Grim and down to earth character whose day job was maintaining lightning system around underhive shanty town of Juntion and roads leading to it. hard job for hardy people. I started to built him in January  IIRC. Soon rules for hangers on were released so he will not by just random citizen with lamp but playable character. Gang look out give bonus to gangs in scenarios using sentries - surely due to good lighting of the premises watched over..
I love idea of those Hangers on. They are not normally deployed during the games but could be cached loitering around when gang home turf is attacked. GW haven't released models for any hangers on yet (but some were previewed) but IMHO its much more interesting to built your own. Additionality to being hanger on he will be member of my Hive dwellers usable in some scenarios when Gangs fight inside of settlement.

 

 He started life as Perry plastic XV century mercenary, but equipped with Victrix Napoleonic backpack, lamp (using his original pike :) ) and portable ladder Ive built from plasticard he is ready to light the lamps in the underhive.

IIRC head is from Frostgrave cultist sprue.

And whole bunch of Hive dwellers I built (some of them still WIP - they take me a loong time :)

Left to right: Old pro - pit slave emeritus (originally member of my trade caravan), pair of Goliath workers off duty (I built them ages ago to test what can I do with old Necromunda plastics), water seller servitor, Kaas and some poor fella that fought the law but the law won (originally slave from the same trader caravan that old pro came) I need mor of them..
40k civilians are really useful for any narrative scenario but hard to come by.

Short skirted intermission

Ive got those two models for civilians and objectives almost by accident. Painting them was pleasure.
I really like Copplestone sculpts.
(Damn I missed her eyes :D

Plague marines

I don't like Nurgle stuff.. Daemons, characters nor Marines. Nurgle aesthetics is just not for me.
But those new Plague Marines are just so good I broke and painted Nurgle things first time in my life.. They don't have purpose but I guess this is nice starting Kill Team kill team :P

I did 6 of them. 4 from Dark Imperium great set ad pair I got from some smaller starter set I bought for extra poses of Pox walkers.
I converted the champion. Removed his ugly face and silly stalagmites from his armor. Added skull helmet and shield - I cannot decide what cat of arms he should be wearing there but I want something atypical. I will decide later. I call them finished now and he is black shield :P

                                           
 
























Next are stock guys from Dark Imperium and Grenade launcher guy from the second set.
Plasmagunner is my favorite

 

 

 

 


Great models despite being Nurgly.
I am waiting with great anticipation for hinted Slaaaneshian Marines revival.. maybe I will finish my own builds soon..