And the Tomb Kings Rode to War

First off, I would like to apologize for my long absence from the blogging world.  I have had a lot going on in my life, mostly the birth of my son!  y wife and I are extremely excited for the new addition to our little family.

  Now, on to the topic at hand...The Tomb Kings.  Now, I wasn't around for the first release of the Tomb Kings as their own army book back in sixth edition.  When they were released I was serving an LDS mission in Taiwan.  But when i got home and got back into the hobby, I was very interested in them  Who wouldn't be.

   An army of skeletal legions led by their ancient mummified kings, and supported by constructs of stone and metal.  But what really got me was the fact that they were undead, but not evil.  I'm not the most well versed person in the world, but usually undead=evil, but not so here.  The back story and "fluff" of the Tomb Kings army was very interesting.

   So,  about two years ago, I started a Tomb kings army.  I was getting tired of my usual armies and needed something else.  I had just sold my books back at school so I had about $150 in my pocket while at Dragons Keep and so made the plunge.  The result was an army that was fun to play and paint and put together, but not very competitive.  Were were in the closing months of Seventh Edition, and the Tomb Kings book was still running on sixth and had not aged well.  I loved the army, but with more tournaments happening in my area I needed to focus on a more competitive army.

Now, however, I can now put more of a focus on the Tomb Kings because their new army book is out.  A beautiful, full cover, hard back book that had me anxiously waiting for WEEKS leading up to its release.=, and I was VERY impressed.  I know, I know.  Many of you out there aren't all that impressed.. They didn't redo the core models at all, the Knights and stalkers look a little silly (to you) and the sphinx (especially the Necro Sphinx) loos like a Power Ranger monster (I'm looking at you Wayne Kemp and Dan Heelan).  But you know what?  I don't care.  I like the core skeletons.  I don't think they look that bad, especially in mass formation.  The Skeleton Horses that receive so much hate are basically anatomically correct for a horse skeleton, so I don't know what you guys want, and as for they stalkers/knights and the sphinx, I' not really planning on using them in my army so I really don't care what they look like, but keep in mind that they are supposed to be animated STATUES and so will look a little goofy, and that is basically what the Power Ranger monster were to, animated sculptures (yes, I watched that show).

   Rules wise, I'm VERY happy.  Not over the top, but not crappy.  I like them a lot.   My favorite new rule was is the change to "My Will Be Done."  Now a Tomb King or Tomb Prince will always give their Ws to whatever unit they are in.  This automatically gives a huge boost to big blocks of Skeleton Warriors.

  Another change that i really like is the magic lore.  Raising the Dead as the Lore Attribute is a wonderful idea, and it works really well.  Having more augment and hex spells in the deck, and only one spell that actually does damage to the enemy is a stroke of brilliance, and really pushes what I have always thought the Tomb Kings army is about, synergy.

  This is not an army you can push across the table without a plan (see Lizardmen).  When you take each individual unit by its self, they seem weak and easily killed.  But when put next to each other, and with the proper Character support, this army can be very effective.  Take your normal Skeleton Warrior for example.  Not too effective in combat,  Add in a Tomb King and they are now Ws 6.  so now those skeletons which would normally hit on 4's if not 5's will now be hitting most things on a three or better.  Still not good enough? use spells from the Lore of Nehekahara to boost them  How about adding killing blow and extra attacks to those same warriors?  So now you have a 4 point model, with two attacks, Ws 6 and killing blow.  pretty stinking good from where I'm sitting.

  All in all, i love the new book, and I can't wait to get some more games in with it.  keep an eye out for more on the Tomb Kings from the Bard.

Rogue Trader Tournament

Last Saturday I took the opportunity to attend a Warhammer Tournament at my friendly local gaming store, Dragons Keep.  These tournaments are known as Rogue Traders.

   Now, for the unfamiliar, I should write about the format first.  In a typical Warhammer Tournament, there are a number of rounds.  Three in this one.  Each round you get a different opponent.  There are three outcomes you can get each round.  Win, draw, loss.  Each  outcome is worth a specific amount of points.  25 for a win, 15 for a draw, and 5 for a loss.  Each round there are specific bonus battle points and objective battle points you can get each round.  Each opponent you get also grades you on your Sportsmanship and painting of your army.  At the end of the three rounds, the individual with the most battle points, combined with Sportsmanship wins.  Prizes given, Generally, 1st, 2nd 3rd places as well as best sportsmanship and best painted.

    This tournament went just like about every other tournament I go to.  I started off in the first round playing a man named Mike.  he was playing a rather well planned out dark elf list, and I was playing a Lizardmen list.  his strategy was built around a large tower that he had, and I knew from the get go that if I just sat back out of range of his massive amounts of Crossbowmen in the tower I could get at worst a Draw,  But that isn't how I like to play.  I pressed forward, a large unit of mine got cut down by the tower unit, but I destroyed his Black Guard unit, and all but one of his Witch Elves.  If I would have destroyed the last of his Witch Elves it would have been a Draw, but it was a Loss.  Oh well.  I would rather Lose and go all out than Draw and play like a pansy.

    So with that Loss I got pared up against Big Mike and his New Orcs and Goblins.  Now, I have played Big Mike many time, But the Orc and goblins army is Brand new, and I have not played against it or read the rules.  that gave him the advantage right off the bat.  Add that to his big spell that he got off in the first round destroying a quarter of my army, and my Slann Mage-Priest dying, this was an easy win for Big Mike.

    Round Three comes up and i am paired with Full-Time.  Ahh, I have played Full_Time several times.  More importantly he is playing MY High Elf Army,  this Army I know inside and out.  My Strategy was sound, my rolls were good.  I won with ease.

    In the end, Mike(1st round opponent) won 1st place.  A guy named grant won 2nd, and a guy named Rich won 3rd.  There were several other random prizes, and I won Best Painted.  Well....Mike (1st round) actually scored Best painted, but since he finished 1st overall, I got the prize.  But I ain't complaining.

Battle Report: High Elves vs Lizardmen

High Elves and Lizardmen are two of the oldest races in the Warhammer World.  At one time their empires spanned the globe.  Now dwindling under the threat of chaos, these once proud races must march forth and do battle.  this time, they fought each other.

Saturday, Full Time and myself ventured up to our friendly local gaming store known as the Dragons Keep to play a game of Warhammer.  I used my trusty old High Elves and Full Time, because he doesn't own his own army yet, used my lizardmen army.  It was a very fun game.

Above is a photo of the battle field after the set up, but before the game began.  The High Elves ar positioned on the right, and the Lizards on the left.  Both armies are very heavy on the Infantry.  The High elves have NO cavalry, and the lizards only have one unit of Cav, but have a very large monster in the Stegadon, and some very formidable smaller monsters known as Salamanders.  Both forces have very strong casters.  The elves have the always formidable Teclis, High Loremaster of the White Tower.  And the Lizards have a very powerful Slann Mage-Priest.  I could tell from the start, whoever controlled the Magic Phase would win the day.

So, to make what could be a very long story short, the Lizard dominated the magic phase.  I showed mercy on Full Time in the first turn and cast a very devastating spell "Pit of Shades"  on a unit of Saurus instead of his Slann Unit (which it could have decimated) and payed for it dearly.  He proceed to destroy my unit of archers with his salamanders, and got off a few spells, but failed a charge on my unit of White Lions.  All in all, Turn one was a draw.

Turn two was the turning point.  I failed to cast my first spell with Teclis, which meant I couldn't cast any more this turn.  I failed a charge with my White Lions on his Cold One Cavalry, But I got the charge on his Skink unit with Sword Masters and totally destroyed them.  pretty good eh? well, In his turn two, Teclis was destroyed by a well cast spell "The Dwellers Below."  After that, I did well in combat, but not well enough.  all that survived was a spearman.

Lessons Learned?  If your are going to cast a spell with Teclis, roll enough dice to make sure you get it off,  Sword Masters better break the unit they fight in turn one ir they won't survive, and White Lions don't ALWAYS run.

The Rat Men

I Recently got a text message from my cousin, we'll call him "scruffy," that seemed quite odd to me.  Scruffy and I are as close as two people who live several states apart can be.  We converse regularly, he was my Best Man at my wedding, and has been and will always be one of my best friends.  At a younger age Scruffy would come visit his grandparents, who live in the same town as I do, for the summer and we would hang out all summer long.  I actually lived at their house during the summer more than I lived at my house.  as a result, Scruffy and I got into the same things, including Warhammer.

As I built up my High Elf army Scruffy built a Dwarf army.  this was advantageous in several ways, the first being that we could actually play against each other when we weren't at our local gaming store of choice (Games People Play at the time).  As time wore on though, Scruffy drifted away from the hobby.

It wasn't really his fault.  I went on a two year mission to Taiwan for my Church, and he had to get along without me.  Since I was the only person he knew that played Warhammer, he stopped.  that was nine years ago that I left for Taiwan.  Which Brings us to his random but interesting text message.

"I have officially started a Skaven army."  That was his message.  Apparently the appearance of my blog had some how ignited a fire from a spark that was burried deep inside him, a fire to play Warhammer.  His army of choice? Skaven, the lowly (literally and figuratively) rat men that threaten society from their subterranean Under Empire.  So, to honor Scruffy and his choice to start playing Warhammer again and his choice in army, I give him this blog entry, a look at the Skaven.

As you can see by the image to the right, the Skaven are a true "horde army."  To any non-warhammer players out there, this simply means that their troops are not very well trained, but what they lack in skill they make up for in numbers.  Skaven, put simply, will beat you with magic, firepower, and lots and lots of rats. 

In Warhammer, armies are built to an agreed upon points limit, usually between 2,000 and 3,000 points.  Each model in your army list will cost a certain amount of points, and Skaven don't cost very many points at all.  A skaven Slave will cost less than a quarter of the points as a High Elf Spear man, and a Skaven Clan Rat about half.  So, for every Spear Elf I buy for my army, Scruffy can have almost twice as many Clan Rats, and four times as many slaves.  This comes in handy when you concider that the Skaven have a special rule called "strength in numbers" which basically a higher Leadership score the more Rats you have in each unit.  Add that to the new "steadfast rule" (if you have more ranks than your opponent in the combat, you're stubborn), even if Skaven lose the combat they aren't likely to run away.  Keep the General and Battle Standard near by and they won't be going any place any time soon.

The second thing the Rats do well is shooting.  This army can rain down almost as much firepower as a Dwarf army, and it's probably twice as deadly.  the problem is that this shooting isn't very reliable.  Take the dreaded "Ratling Gun."  Is contraption, like almost all Skaven weaponry, is almost as likely to shoot their own army as it is to shoot their enemy.  This adds a fun and exciting element to the game.  the feeling that anything can go wrong at any moment is something that isn't present with most of the other armies. 

Add that shooting to the craziness that is the Doomwheel and the Hell-Pit Abomination and ou have a recipe for an army that is just as likely to kill its self as the enemy.  Like I said, this is part of the fun on the Skaven army.

Magic is the third and final thing the Skaven do well.  their Grey Seers and Warp Lock engineers and Plague Priests can magic you to death as well as the most tooled up Slann in the game.  All-in-all, a superb army to say the least!

Pathfinder

So yesterday (that would be Thursday the 30th of December)  Three of my friends came over to my place and we had a Pathfinder game session.  And if you don't know what Pathfinder is, it's D&D 3.5 done RIGHT!  I know some of you may be D&D 4th edition fans, but I personally don't like it.  I really liked 3.5, but I knew that it had it's problems, and Pathfinder fixed most of them.

A little background to our Campaign.  It started out with just two players and my friend "Big Game" as Dungeon Master.  As such both me and my other friend "Full Time" had to play two characters.  Not a big deal, we've done that a lot in our gaming group.Our "primary character" was supposed to be us, transported into a different world by a freak accident.  Over three years (game time) we trained and learned the arts of our chosen class.  I chose tho train to be a Wizard (despite wizards being hunted down) and Mike chose to be a Fighter trained specifically in the Long Bow.  Now, wizards in Pathfinder may choose to dispense with a familiar and choose a bonded Item instead.  This bonded Item gives you special powers and abilities to enhance the spell casting.  Since I was supposed to be playing myself, I chose as my Bonded Item, my Wedding Ring.  Cool eh?  Our other characters were a Dwarven Paladin named Uthor played my me, and a Cleric played by "Full Time."  Later on, "Full Time's" nephew James decided he wanted to play and he created a character.

So, on to the events of last night.  After finishing exploring a wizards tower began in the previous session, we decided to take a shot at the "cave of many wonder"  Which sparked several "Aladdin" references beginning with Full time calling out "TOUCH NOTHING BUT THE LAMP" and ended with my breaking out in song "YOU AINT NEVER HAD A FRIEND LIKE ME."  Turns out the cave isn't quit as wondrous as it sounds as much as it is a breading ground for Dragons and Wyverns.  After barley defeating two Wyverns (hey we're level 4!) we decided to go back to town before trying to get through the rest. We go back to town and my character decided to go back to the wizards tower where he and Full time's character were presented an opportunity to go back to our world, which we took much to the surprise of Big Game.

Not to worry though, both me and Full time are experts at creating characters and we both had new ones to play in 15 min.  I had a new Swashbuckler (my second favorite class). After greetings, during which Full Times new nameless Rogue lied point blank to the Dwarven paladin that he only reason he was in the stockade (and was escaping at the time)  was because he was hungry and stole some food, claimed he was a homeless orphan child (he was in fact a halfling of 17).  The dwarf took mercy upon him (after failing his attempt at reading his bluff) and took him to the inn to buy him food and took him on as his squire.  My swashbuckler was introduced to the group by a bard he had been telling the tale of his thrilling and and embellished fight with bandits on the highway.


We all ended up back in the wizards tower trying to find the two characters that had gone home.  We met the wizard who sent them home and he decided that he would grant each of us a wish.  Now, anyone familiar with D&D knows that a wish spell is very dangerous.  If you aren't specific enough on what you want, the DM might take this opportunity to screw you over.  You could wish for a +5 vorpal longsword , and he'll say "ok, you get a +5 Vorpal Long Sword that is made out of wood."  Nasty, nasty DMs.  Oh well my swashbuckler wished for an opportunity to showcase his skill, Which he got!

he was transported to the top of a tower where lightning was striking all around an d down three vicious monster all by him self felling the final foe, a Troll, by tripping hm and watching him fall over the edge of the tower with only 5 HP left. 

All in all, a fun night!

Of Elves and Things

My first and foremost army that I play is the High Elves.  Now this doesn't mean that I think they are the best, Far from it.  Though the new edition has been kind to them they still have many glaring problems, but they are fun to play, and I like them.

One thing you may find as you read my blog, I don't always make the choice that will be "best" for my army, character, gaming group or sanity.  I do what I think will be the most fun, interesting or rewarding.  Often I take silly army lists to tournaments just to see what will happen.

So anyways, about my friend above.  this is Norbert, affectionately named after the Norwegian Ridgback Hagrid so briefly owned in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."  I do not claim to be a great painter, but I think that I do pretty well.    I know many of you have seen better, or could even do better.  I would like to hear about others painting methods they may have used.  I am always trying to get better.
 
With High Elves, I think the key is to minimalize the number of hits you take.  Elves a frail and weak and to represent this they have been given a toughness so low even a lowly Skaven Slave has a 50/50 shot at wounding even the most fearsome of Elven Warriors.  High Elves have the ability to always strike before their opponent, which used to be how you kept them alive.  Kill them before they kill you.  But now with the new step up rule it has become much harder.  If you kill they guy in front of you, the guy behind him just steps up to take his place and takes a whack at you.

The answer to this, as far as I am concerned is in the shooting and magic phases.  Use these phases to thin out the opposing army before getting to you, giving them fewer people to fill in the ranks with.  Use magic (lore of Life and Lore of Shadow specifically) to buff your units and keep them alive longer.

That's all for today.  Pathfinder RPG gaming session tomorrow.  if anything interesting happens I'll blog about it. No, i am not playing a bard in this one, but I thought about it.

About Me

I am the Bard!  I just happen to be a gaming enthusiast, and when I mean gaming I mean table-top war games and paper and pencil RPG's.  I have played Warhammer Fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons for about 12 years, and have finally decided to run a blog sharing what I love.  In D&D my favorite class to play also happens to be the least popular, the Bard!

In Warhammer: Fantasy Battles (here to after refered to as "Warhammer" or "WFB")  I have several armies and many years of experience, though I won't pretend to be very good.  I win a lot, but I lose a lot too.  But that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing.  Often Warhammer is a game of chance.  Dice are involved, and of Dice are involved you never really know what the outcome will be.  The key is to try to stack the odds in your favor, but no matter how much you do that you will eventually roll a "1" on the die when all you needed was a "2" or better.

I also love video games, but this blog will not focus on them  I have an Xbox 360 and currently play "Black Ops" a lot.  Don't expect a lot of commentary on Video Games though.

I am a HUGE American Football fan, especially the College game.  My team is the University of Utah Utes.  I habe season tickets and didn't miss a play n the 2009 season (home and away).

I am married to a wonderful woman and we have a child on the way!!