And We're Off...!

Last night, Brian and I got in the first game of the Firestorm: Armada campaign. Going through the rules I spent so long on and actually playing a game got me very excited for it. I've enjoyed playing the games before, but having an actual scenario and special rules made for quite an interesting fight. It wasn't just a standard smash-face game, but rather had some interesting twists to it.

We rolled randomly and Brian was the attacker. He brought his fleet to bear against an uncontrolled system, and my fleet hustled to defend. As I wasn't actually present in the system, I was starting down by 10% of the points total. We agreed on a 1,000 point game (so I got 900 points) and rolled up our mission. Escalating Engagement. We each split our forces five ways and randomly, different portions of the forces would show up on different board edges. You had to come on strong when you had the advantage in ships, and back off a bit when your opponent was outnumbering you. Made for a very interesting game.

In the beginning of the game, Brian and I both randomly figured out which ship group was on the table. We both had a battleship, but I had three frigates supporting mine. On the first turn, three Cruisers joined my fleet while his reinforcements held out. I was able to get a quick jump on him and while he destroyed two of my frigates, I was able to destroy his battleship with an AMAZING torpedo roll. He had four damage on his ship already and I tossed seven dice for a torpedo run. Well, the dice kept exploding and by the time he had to roll his shields and point defense against it, I was up to 27 hits! He stopped two of them and I double-critted his battleship, destroying it outright. Wow!

Now you see it...


Now you don't!

The look on Brian's face was priceless.

I didn't have long to savor my victory, though, because his second battleship joined the frey with a lot of reinforcements.



I had to hustle to get my ships back around in position to fire on him.




Evidently my maneuvering leaves something to be desired.

His reinforcements kept showing up and I was able to bring on my second battleship, but he was coming in far from the action. We traded small ships back and forth, but he knocked the main guns off one of my battleships just as I was closing on him. Now in full range of attack with little chance to strike back, my battleship turned and headed into an asteroid field, trying to gain some manner of protection.




He was able to clean through a lot of my ships, and I kept pounding away at his cruisers, keeping them honest. Finally, my last group of reinforcements showed up in perfect position, and my battleship cleared the asteroid field with a fixed gun and repaired hull.




My squadron of cruisers and my battleship pincered his remaining battleship, taking him from fully fixed to six damage in two rounds. Recognizing the field as lost to him, he opted to shunt (warp/hyperspace) his ships out of the battle to avoid losing them in the long term for the campaign.

All in all, a fun game. It went from me winning with the early destruction of his battleship, to me losing when he had three cruisers fly in and destroy a cruiser and two frigates that were holding a flank and then pouring through to eliminate all my frigates in one or two turns, and back to me winning when my final reinforcements showed up and I was able to maneuver my battleship back into the fight. Looking forward to the next showing!

Well, It's Official

Check out here. The Game of Thrones story by George R.R. Martin has been picked up by HBO. It's been a rumor for quite some time, but now it seems like the first season, at least, will see air time. After how beautiful shows like Rome, Deadwood and Carnival looked, I have to say I'm quite anxious to see what happens here. I only hope they don't decide it's too expensive to do and stop shooting the series.

A few of my friends have different concerns. Martin is only four books into his eight-book series, and is already over a year delayed in the fifth book. Is working on this show (in whatever capacity he will be working on it) only going to delay the books even more? He has such a rich and interesting world, but it's been a long time coming for the next book to make its appearance.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing how this one goes. Game of Thrones has been a fantastic series so far. I'd be interested in seeing some of the awesome characters come to life on the screen.

A Clear Set of Rules

I am a very logical thinker, which sometimes bites me because I think everyone should be a logical thinker. I can understand that not everyone thinks things through during casual conversation, but when I see a published rules set, I tend to assume it is internally consistent. Perhaps not the correct assumption to make, but I do not understand how to make a different one. If a rule says something, I assume it operates under that model. I cannot extrapolate from the text in a rule what the intention of the rule was. That is in the head of the designer. All I have to go on is what’s on paper. And when I seek clarity about it, I start to feel like a tool if my interpretation of the rule is something that weakens my opponent’s model from what they expected or strengthens mine.

I’ll give an example. There’s a particular model in Malifaux’s Guild army that can cast a spell called Inferno. Inferno has a range of “C” (Caster) and says “Models within 3” of this model suffer 3 Dg at the start of the Closing Phase. If this model is killed before the Closing Phase, immediately apply the effect and increase to 6 Dg.”

Most people looked at the ability and said, “Awesome, she blasts everything around her.” I looked at the ability and said, “Cool, she basically drops a fireball on top of her.” In the former, everything within 3” of her except her takes the damage. In my interpretation, everything within 3” of her including her takes the damage. Clearly the two interpretations are vastly different. So which is right?

I figured it came down to a simple question. Is a model within 3” of itself?

So I started scouring the book for anything that talked about models being within x” of themselves, or if an ability said, “Model’s are not considered within their own range” or something like that. Instead, I found two other rules – for Pulse and Aura, two terms that are sometimes put into the range of spells.

Aura: Represents an ongoing circular range of effect around a target, extending from the target’s base edge. All models within the effect’s number range, in inches, excluding the caster or effect originating model, are affected for the duration indicated in the effect’s description.

Pulse: Represents an instantaneous circular range of effect around a target, extending from the target’s base edge. It immediately affects all models, except the model using this effect, within the effect’s number range, in inches.

So here the game has created two terms that say, “Within x” except for the caster”. Which implies to me that the basic assumption in the game is that models are within x” of themselves. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t need that language in the ability. And if they wanted that language in the Inferno ability, they would have used the Pulse icon in the description, right? Or at least stated that the “within” doesn’t include the model, the same as they did with the Pulse and Aura descriptions.

The problem with that assumption is it requires me to assume that the people who wrote the rules are logical-minded too, and would be internally consistent. As the game is less than a year old and already has 14 pages of Errata, I know for a fact that the design team missed some things. The question is, is this one of the things they missed? And what do you do until official word is handed down.

I wish rule sets were fine when they were first crafted.

Just a Couple Pictures

Dan and I got a quick game of Malifaux in last night. I intended to take more pictures throughout the game, but then got distracted by a very tight match. Neither Dan nor I were able to achieve our objective, and it came down to the secondary objectives that we both achieved. I got four points for them: two for kidnapping his Master and two for announcing Bodyguard and keeping Lilith alive to the end (she was pretty much all I had left at the end). Dan got four points: one for hiding Breakthrough and one for hiding his claiming of another building on my side of the map. For the second game in a row, the game extended to turn 8 for us with two flips of a face card. This time, I was losing at the end of turn 6, but a well-timed Earthquake pulled his models off his objective for turn 7 and 8 and kept me as the victor.

Play Us a Song

I love listening to instrumental music when I’m at work. I find that listening to anything with words distracts me as I spend a good clip of time just trying to figure out what’s being said, and if I already know what’s being said, I sing along with it instead of concentrating on my work.

As such, I have a particular fondness for movie soundtracks. Back before my iPod days, I had a CD of a mix of soundtrack bits. Last of the Mohicans, Independence Day, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc. All great soundtracks, and all helped get me through the day.

Now, however, buying one song at a time has brought me to even greater heights of listening pleasure. Right now I’m listening to “In the House – In a Heartbeat” by John Murphy, or better known as that awesome song from 28 Days Later where the main character goes all crazy on the soldiers. Next up is “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” by Moby (not to be confused with Not Moby… a little HIMYM humor there), the song that capped off the movie Heat.

I’ll spend my day listening to 40-50 different songs, sometimes backtracking to hear one again, but all of which keep my head clear and keep me from going crazy in the silence. If anyone has any suggestions for good movie soundtracks, let me know, and if you want some of my favorites, just ask. I’m always interested in trying some new songs to add to my playlist.

Ambitious?

I think I want to build one of these.





First step: find a picture that actually works, and design the full scope. Can you imagine it? Models running up and down conveyor belts, jumping from one spot to another, fighting on all levels? Now that would be awesome...

Learning in Malifaux

So I got three games of Malifaux in over the weekend in addition to the buildings I crafted.

The first couple games, I just played Zoraida with her box. Bad Juju and three salads. The first game was very quick, ending on turn two when Zoraida Obeyed Papa Loco and used him to blow up the rest of his force, killing off several other minions in a nice blast and leaving a distinct advantage in my favor. The second game was pretty poor for me, ending with Chiid engaging Zoraida and keeping her from casting any spells. There were a few things I could have done to make the game go better for me, but I’m still figuring out everything I can do with this army.

The last game was against Dan and Seamus, this time picking our own 30 stone lists. I took a few things I’d never tried before, just to see how they’d work. Dan took some stuff I’d never seen before too. We had…

Zoraida
- Mature Nephlim
- Younger Nephlim
- Candy
- Baby Kade

Seamus
- Rotten Belles x2
- Grave Spirit
- Madame Sybelle
- Necropunks x2
- Convict Gunslinger

After that, we each rolled our missions and took our secondary objectives.

Zoraida: Treasure Hunt, Kidnap (Seamus), Bodyguard (announced)
Seamus: Treasure Hunt, Army of Dead (announced), Hold Out (hidden)

I had 8 points available, and he had 7. That proved to be the key, as both of us were able to max out our victory points that game. I’m not going to go into great detail about the game (Dan has a pretty solid battle report on his blog), but I will talk about a couple things I learned:

1. OBEY is an awesome spell. In my first game, I used it much more against Ryan’s models, but against Dan, I used it a lot on my own turn. I was able to use Obey to create an awesome assassination-run on Seamus with my Mature Nephlim. I Obeyed him to charge with my Voodoo Doll, then on my Nephlim’s turn, he attacked three more times, then Zoraida Obeyed him to attack again and created a new Voodoo Doll. Seamus was able to luck into not one but two Slit the Throats on his two attacks, and killed my Mature Nephlim, but by that point, he was down to 1 life and had used all his Soul Stones. If I had planned my activations better, I would have been able to kill him before that. I still had one more opportunity to cast Obey (my new Voodoo Doll) but didn’t get the chance before the Nephlim died. Six attacks by that beast in one round is just awesome.

I was able to kill off Seamus the next round by using the same trick, only this time with Baby Kade. That baby’s a beast in combat!

2. PACIFY is surprisingly useful. That was the other crucial part of my plan. Candy was able to get Pacify on Seamus both times I set up my assassination run, ensuring that Seamus wouldn’t be able to go until everything else in his army was finished. It kept me able to keep his master activating when I wanted him to. Not too bad. Baby Kade’s got the opposite of that, INCITE, and I’ll have to give that one a whirl. Pandora’s got both, I know. Can’t wait to try them out.

Can’t say much more – I’ve got to get back to work. But all in all, a lot of fun. Looking forward to the next match.