Planetfall - Relthoza - Core Helix

 Back in June I determined the paint scheme I would use for my Planetfall Relthoza models, as well as how I would redo my Firestorm Armada models for the same faction (but I will keep the space cloak look I used before). They are 10mm in scale. Here is the first batch of the two Core helixes I have painted and nearly finished them last year but had a few details of them to complete.

Here is the company paint scheme on the back of the box they came in. I got fairly close.

New paint scheme is primed black with rough coat of Folk Art Green Forest. Dry brush of DecoArt Hunter Green and lighter dry brush of Necrotite Green it accentuate the edges. Then detail of Craftsmart Plum with a light brush of Craftsmart Pink Blossom on the Plum and a highlight of Color Factory Sky Blue on the engine exhaust/weapon/crew systems. I applied Army Painter gloss varnish over the purple organic looking areas of the model to make them look more alive and creepy. Base was painted DecoArt Burnt Umber and drybrushed DecoArt Yellow. Lichen was added to the bases to give that alien world look.

First up are the 32 Jabri drone swarms. There are six variations of bases that were made making a group of them look more imposing and random.

Twelve Namasic light walkers.

Two Varic specialist walkers.

Four Salamas medium walkers. 

Two Visith heavy walkers.

Two Yayiss sky pod for transporting the Jabri drone swarms to the battlefield.

It was fun painting them during free time and will continue painting them for the enjoyment of doing so. No idea if I will play the game but I can use them for Horizon Wars. Perhaps can use them in Battletech: Alpha Strike if they come up with a system for creation of home built units.

Cascadia

Cascadia is a 1-4 player game where players attempt to make a their own ecologically balanced environment more robust than their opponents. The game is modestly priced, takes less than an hour to play, and has simple rules but great depth of strategy. No two games will be alike.

I saw that this game had great reviews and highly rated on the Board Game Geek list for family and abstract games.

Players start with a random starting area made up of a three hexes piece. Each hex has different solitary or mixed terrain as well as solitary or mixed animals (bear, elk, fox, bird of prey, fish). Enough face down wilderness tiles are chosen so that there are 20 per player and four of them are revealed. Then four wildlife animal token are drawn from the bag and placed below the wilderness tiles as pairs. This forms the active selection area. A nature leaf token is given to each player. Then a random scoring card for each animal (out of four possible ones) are drawn and placed on the board for all to see.

Each turn, the first player choses a wilderness tile and the wildlife token below it. They place the tile connected to their existing ecology and then the wildlife token is placed on their ecology on a hex matching the animal depicted, no more than one animal per hex. Wildlife tokens placed on a hex with a nature leaf symbol means that player receives a nature token. If the player plays a nature token before drawing wilderness hexes and wildlife tokens they may choose any hex and token, not just those that are paired, or may put aside any number of wildlife tokens and replace them from the bag. Play then proceeds to the next player.

Once all players have gone, the right most hex is discarded and the right most token is put aside with replacement hexes and tokens placed on the board. The set aside tokens are then placed in the token bag. Play continues like this until there are no more tiles to fill the active selection area.

Points are gained for completing scoring objectives for the animal cards, for numbers of hexes in size for each wilderness type (and bonus points for the most of any particular type amongst players), and nature tokens.

There is a very interesting flow to the game as you are building your own ecological area and the choices must be made from the hexes and tokens in the active selection area as well as your own ecological area. I played two solo games and I would like to try this with two, three, and four players. There is also family and intermediate scoring cards for getting introduced to the game as well as with younger players. I think this will be a standard one to bring out once I teach more of my friends to play it.

Battletech Alpha Strike Box

What brought me back to Battletech after 26 years was the Alpha Strike ruleset. Now they have a starter box with a star (5) Clan mechs and two lances (8) Inner Sphere mechs. The cost of these mechs alone is is worth the cost of the box.

The back has the list of what is in the box.

The primer is based on the ilClan era, the current setting. The rules are well organized and easy to go through to pick up the basics of the game before picking up more mechs and the Commander's Edition of the Alpha Strike rules.

There is also a short story in the ilClan setting, the mechs, support cards, and Alpha Strike/Mechwarrior cards.

The two sided reference card is handy for new and old players to the game.

The box set also comes with terrain with various sized buildings, trees, objective markers, and tokens.

The buildings look good on the table and go together very easily with no glue required. 

With some other terrain you are on your way to a filled battlefield and years of enjoyment.

Pulp Cthulhu

Pulp Cthulhu is a rule setting for running investigators through 1930's adventures in a world where H.P. Lovecraft's fiction exists. Unlike the Call of Cthulhu setting, investigators have a better chance of surviving their encounters with the mythos, hence the over the top cover of the rulebook. You do need a current copy of the Keeper handbook to play as not all the rules for the game can fit in this publication.

I enjoyed the changes in this ruleset and think it would be perfect as short adventures as a break from more serious setting games.

There is lots of adversaries and adventures that can add a little pulp in regular Call of Cthulhu games as well, consider the below group of formidable foes. Gadzooks!

Looks like lots of fun, in a scary kind of way.

A Gaming look back on 2022 and looking forward to 2023

2022 was another year of not being able to get together for games as much as I would have liked. Hopefully retiring will be able to increase the number of games played of all genres: RPG, Board, Miniature.

For miniature and RPG games read, I got through 11: Battletech: Alpha Strike, Call of Cthulhu (Starter Box, Investigator's Book, Keepers Book, Keepers Screen & Adventures, Keepers advice; Pulp Cthulhu Book), One Ring (Starter Box, Main Rulebook, Screen/Rivendell), and Rangers of Shadowdeep.

Role Playing games played were only four: D&D 5E Eberron (3) and One Ring Starter (1).

Solo boardgames played were a whole lot. Epic Tiny Dungeons, This War of Mine, and over one hundred of Marvel Champions. Going to continue to play more Marvel Champions and some of my GMT games. 

Boardgames played in a group were 52. In order of most to least games played of them are: Crokinole (19), Marvel Champions: (2p: 3; 3p: 2), King Domino (4), Wingspan (3), Carcassonne (2), No Thanks! (2), Seven Wonders (2), Terraforming Mars (2), Unstable Unicorns (2), 1989, Dice Throne, Great Western Legends, One Small Step, Puzzle Competitive Game, Robinson Crusoe, Settlers of Catan, Space Hulk Death Angel, Splendor, This War of Mine, and Villainous.

For computer games, twelve were played solo of Terraforming Mars and eighteen in groups: Terraforming Mars (15), Carcassonne, Dominion, and Splendor.

Only twenty miniature games were played. They are listed in order of the number played: Star Trek Alliance (7), Malifaux: Hamelin (6), Battletech: Alpha Strike (3), Bot War (3), and Baines Nebula (independent playtesting space fleet combat). 

For miniatures painted there were 264 painted: eight for Batman Miniature Game, 53 for Battletech, 10 for Bot War, 105 for Enlightened Dystopian Wars, five for Malifaux, and 58 for Relthoza Planetfall. I want to paint more Battletech, Malifaux Outcast and Arcanists, and finish off the Relthoza Planetfall models.

Dice Scrollcase Holder

I found this item at the Halifax "Have Yourself a Gothic Little Christmas" craft fair at the Halifax Forum. It was their 11th annual fair and it had many interesting items. I have a few dice bags but not a dice container that protects the table itself! For $25 I procured this item. As you can see it is small enough to fit in most gaming bags.

Folder out, it just needs a little bending back to have a flat surface to roll on.

About 14 dice could fit into here and it zips shut. The zipper looked study enough for repeated gaming nights use.

Tiny Epic Dungeons

Tiny Epic Dungeons, by Gamelyn Games, is a cooperative dungeon crawler game with two parts. The first part is the exploring, dispatching of goblins/minions, and enhancing your character. The second part can only be achieved by dispatching a number of minions equal to the number of characters and finding the lair of the final boss. Then the boss, randomly one of six, must be dispatched.

You start on a card representing the stairs. There are four facedown cards on the cardinal points of the doorways. A player gets a heroic action, a move action, and as many free actions as they would like. They can do any of these actions in any order. The rooms have various effects and rewards.

After a player's turn is done, the torch is lowered by one on the torch tracker card. This may trigger enemy actions, add a goblin at the entrance, or end the game on the last space. You may notice that there are four goblin spaces and that is because once all four goblins are on the board and another goblin needs to be added you lose the game. There are also different types of goblins that can be randomly drawn from the goblin deck: stabby, poky, shooty, bomby.

Here is a table at the end of my first solo game, which was unsuccessful. You definitely need to explore to reveal the minions while taking advantage of abilities and dungeon spaces that increase the torch marker on the board. In solo games you play as two heroes.

The eight heroes cover all of the typical tropes and are all different. After dispatching monsters and exploring both characters had very good items that stacked their potency but it came late in the game.

There are eight minions have more than one hit point and are stronger in combat. When dispatched they offer greater rewards and increase the torch marker.

I am looking forward to trying this game again, knowing what I know now. It was confusing deciphering all the symbols and what they mean and requires at least one playthrough before getting the system.

Marvel Champions - Cycle 2

In this cycle of Marvel Champions there was added to the game the first campaign expansion, Rise of the Red Skull, four additional Hero packs, and the scenario pack The Once and Future Kang!

The Rise of the Red Skull expansion first has two hero packs included: Spider-Woman and Hawkeye. Spider-Woman has been a little tricky to get the hang of as she gets more powerful for each aspect you play during your turn but has middling abilities otherwise. Hawkeye is much more variable and has more abilities to thwart schemes and attack both the villain and their minions. The expansion also has five villains to fight against standalone or in a progressive campaign. The villains are Crossbones, Absorbing Man, Taskmaster, Zola, and Red Skull himself. I played some villains individually but the first full playthrough of the campaign was with none other than Captain America and that was the perfect hero to go through it. A very fun expansion.

The four hero packs I tried out were:

Ant-Man: This hero needs to change between giant and tiny sizes every turn for increased effect but needs some help from teammates from time to time..

Wasp: Not great against tough independent villains but very good thwarting and against minions. A good teamup with Ant-Man..

Quicksilver: Could not beat Rhino with Bomb Scare after four tries but does well when teamed up with other heroes. Needs time to develop upgrades.

Scarlet Witch: Very good solo but because of her powerful abilities flipping encounter cards, needs to finish the game before the encounter decks is refreshed too many times or they are swamped with scheme markers to reduce.

Team Ups: In my last Marvel Champions post I spoke briefly about the ability to do solo play team-ups. Since the heroes in this cycle are very suitable for it I tried Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver and Ant-Man/Wasp team-ups against Rhino, Klaw, Ultron, and the Rise of the Red Skull initial villains.

The Once and Future Kang: For this interesting scenario pack, after Kang is defeated the first time, he splits the heroes he is against into independent play areas. After the level two villain is defeated by a hero, they can choose which hero join until all level two Kangs are defeated. The final Kang will be increased in side schemes depending on how well the heroes did. This plus his ability to give heroes debilitating or annoying obligations means he can be tough to face but not impossible. I decided to use Doctor Strange and it was a good choice as the game was challenging but always had a way to keep going forward.

Next it is onto phase three with the Guardians of the Galaxy!

Call of Cthulhu: Keeper Tips 40th Anniversary

A small little book with lots of great content, for horror and regular RPG storytellers, is the Call of Cthulhu Keeper's Tips. Some are in the Keeper's Handbook but many are from RPG industry people who know their stuff. The sections are on things like preperation, players, designing scenarios, gameplay, horror, NPCs, monsters, and props & handouts. It is contained in a small booklet for the 40th anniversary of the game but currently out of print. 

In the meanwhile, there is this gem of advice for people new to running games in the Call of Cthulhu or most RPGs on Reddit here. 

Call of Cthulhu - 7th Edition Core Books and Screen

Call of Cthulhu is one of the classic roleplaying games that has stood the test of time. Published in 1981 it has gone through six editions and is now on its seventh. The rules are pretty much the same except it has gone to a percentile system but their books include a conversion system for older material. These roleplaying books allow for a more robust roleplaying experience than the starter set, reviewed by myself here. They are also a RPG fan favorite and their system has been in the top ten of RPGGeek for a very long time.

The Investigator book is geared towards players of the game: Introduction, character creation (including skills and occupations), organizations the player can be a part of, the life of an investigator, the main setting of the game in the 1920's, player advice, and references. Everything a player needs.

The Keeper rulebook has a more basic player creation section but it is geared towards running a game set in the Cthulhu mythos setting: the game system, combat, chases, sanity, magic, playing, tomes, grimoires, artifacts and devices, monsters/beasts/alien gods, two scenarios, and appendices. Very comprehensive and lots of good advice to make the game engaging and thrilling.

The Keeper Screen Pack has maps, reference booklet, screen, and two scenarios with handouts as well as blank character sheets. Very handy for running a good game.

I very much love this roleplaying game and it has improved a lot since I first played it in the early 1980's and of a much better quality. It could even be used for generic horror roleplaying without the Cthulhu Mythos universe but you would be limiting your possibilities if you do. Highly recommended.

Battletech: "Counts As" Vehicles

 Not all of the vehicles have miniatures for them in the Battletech universe. Some are also hard to find. When looking through my old miniatures I found these that I had bought decades ago in a cool little game store in Hawaii. I painted them in generic colours so that any of my factions can use them in Alpha Strike. Painted Cold Steel with Thamar Black, Bastion Grey, and Khador Red paints. All these model rules can be found on masterunitlist for Alpha Strike rules.

This is my "counts as" Swift Wind Scout car. Eight tons and loaded with communications equipment it has no weapons but can call in artillery, indirect fire, or areospace support. Can come as an internal combustion or cargo versions. It will be handy in Alpha Strike games.

A halftrack that is my "counts as" Flatbed Truck. At ten tons it has little armour and no weapons but there are weaponized variants at the expense of cargo space.

Three different Armored Personnel Carriers, or APCs, of various types and time periods. Can have various weapons and gear but it's main job is to get troops deployed and support them in the battlefield. All ten tons.

A Centurion tank as a "counts as" Scorpion tank. At 25 tons it is an inferior version of a Vedette but has the same weaponry of an autocannon-5 and a machine gun.

A Merkva tank also as a "counts as" Scorpion tank but used for the SRM and LRM variants.