Cities of Death in 6th Edition

 In the new year I plan to run a Crusade of Fire based campaign at my local gaming club. As any battles fought over Hive City tiles require a Cities of Death game to be played, I thought I'd have a look over the rules and bring them in line with sixth edition.

For starters, I'd say we need to take into account the rule changes sixth edition has brought. To that end, there are some basic rule changes to clear up first.

NOT all units are scoring, nor does it matter how many survivors there are in a scoring unit. Troops only score, others deny, and unit strength is irrelevent.

Deep Strike, Reserves, Dusk and Dawn, Random Game Length, Infiltrate... these are all basic parts of the game now, so anywhere that says "If these rules are being played" can be ignored. Likewise anything that let's that rule be played is fairly irrelevent.

Anything that talks about determining Line of Sight can be ignored, we use True Line of Sight now.

I will also suggest using the secondary objectives that we have come to know in sixth edition.

 All good so far? I can see you're enthralled!

Moving on, deployment. Now Cities of Death missions all used table quarters deployment. I did consider updating this to 6th ed deployments, but with the fact that Cities of Death had it's own different deployment when it was released and it isn't updates that have left it looking different, I will stick with table quarters. There will not be a specific order to what you deploy or alternating deployment - player 1 deploys their forces in their quarter, not within 12" of the centre. Player 2 then does the same. Player 1 gets first turn, unless player 2 siezes the initiative.

 A couple of other specific changes to the rules as listed in the book.

Page 9 - Rubble is listed as a 4+ cover. This needs to be a 5+ to bring it in line with 6th ed.

Page 34 - Command Centre - the secondary option for this is in relation to the long out of use Target Priority Checks. Best just to ignore this secondary power and stick to the primary power if you use this strategem.

Page 40 - As mentioned earlier, deep strike and infiltrate are now part of the game, these strategums are redundant. The sewer rats strategum is still useful though.

Page 45-46 - All rules are in line with 6th edition, these pages can be pretty much ignored.

The Missions

Firesweep
At the end of the mission each planted flag counts as 3vp.

High Ground
The objective building is worth 3vp to the side that claims it.

Domination
Each occupied ruin is worth 3vp to the holder.

Maximum Attrition
Each unit destroyed is worth 1vp to the opposition.

Urban Assault
Each objective building is worth 3vp to the holder.


There are also some special missions, but they're different enough in their own special rules that they don't really need modifying. Just use a little common sense and you'll be fine.

Hope all this is useful to someone, and I will be blogging about the campaign over on my personal blog when it all starts off, and will try to keep the writeups both characterful and also useful to anyone who wishes to run their own Crusade of Fire campaign in the future.

Pirates Dead in the Water...

I am sad to report that my begging letter to the tournament organisers fell on deaf ears, and the Pirate project is simply dead in the water.

They suggested using one of the Raiders as counts as venoms, but a) I don't want to confuse opponents that one of my raiders is a raider but the other ones a venom b) venom wouldn't fit the whole squad on, making it a pointless transport and c) the upgrades had been modelled onto the model, such as grisly trophies, enhanced aethersails, dark lance... and these would not be available on the venom. It just wouldn't look the part.

Limiting my force to one raider wouldn't work either. The crew of the Dutchman just look like weird mutants without their ship, so I'd have to include the Dutchman... but the Dutchman is easily recognizable because of The Pearl, and without that it's like "What is this some sort of ghost ship?"

I am continuing to work on the models as best I can but it is somewhat gutting. My hope is to complete the project and perhaps find a combat patrol doubles tournament that HASN'T incorporated this random ruling. Alternatively, I go to Bracknell this year and make my case for the problematic rule to be taken out so that we can take Pirates vs Ninjas NEXT year...

To that end, I have gone completely against character and come up with an efficient spammy beardy list. It is completely in line with the rules they have set. The restriction of vehicles was apparently to defeat Necron Quantum Shielding spam. Now given most people complain about Cron Air, QS spam is a new one on me. There are 4 vehicles that come with Quantum Shielding. The Annihalation Barge, Command Barge, Doomsday Ark and Ghost Ark.

Annihalation Barge - it's a HS slot, so self limiting. Only max of 2 in the combined 1000 point force if BOTH players take Crons.
Command Barge - needs an HQ choice to ride it, can't have HQ choices with more than 2 wounds, therefore ineligible.
Doomsday Ark - Ordnance weapon, so ineligible
Ghost Ark - sure you could spam these... but would you want to? They support warriors, and of all the things in the Necron codex, if someone wanted to spam warriors and ghost arks I'd say LET THEM.

Anyway, in their desperation to prevent anything more than one necron vehicle in an entire 1000point combined force, they have put the same limits on everybody else. The only vehicles you can take more than one of are sentinals, venoms, vipers, killa kans, grot tanks, war walkers, land speeders and storm talons. Now from the various tournaments I've heard, there's nothing there that can be spammed to death right? Right?

So, with about 6 weeks to go to the tournament, I now begin 500 points for Winds batch number 2. Ken and I have usually finished respectably mid table even though we've been playing with sub par fun whacky crazy lists. It'll be interesting to see what we can do if we realy put our minds to it...

Trazyn the Infinfinfinfinfinfinfinite...

So today I played a game with my Necrons where Trazyn REALLY excelled himself. In scenes reminiscent of Snatch he proved that you can't keep a good robot down, at least not for long.

Playing The Relic mission with standard deployment I gambled, and deep struck Trazyns squad to the centre, hoping to grab the relic with the edge of the squad and start my withdrawel on turn 2. However, a wayward scatter put me far from my target, about 6" in front of the enemy... an ork horde army. Ah...

Making the best of a bad situation the warriors Gaussed the battlewagon to death, giving me first blood... and spilling out a pissed off set of Ork Nobs toting lots of Power Klaws, lead by a rather angry looking warboss.

The nobz and a squad of 30 boys charged in, and thanks to trazyns empathic obliterator I managed to tie the combat. My lychguard piled in so at least some of the power klaws would be hitting invulnerable saves as opposed to chewing up combat res on the warrior squad. Trazyn helped tip the combat to a draw again with more empathic kills. My opponent then threw another squad of 30 boyz AND a squad of burna boyz into the mix. The burnas hacked trazyn apart with wild abandon, after he had failed to get a kill annoyingly. The combat was a massive loss and the lychguard ran, and everyone was hacked down. But trazyn got back up amidst the slaughter (on a 5 no less) Utterly surrounded I used my annihalation barges to try to blast my way through the burnas to let trazyn charge the big squad of boyz. Sadly I couldn't break them, so Trazyn charged the warboss and challenged him to a fight. He passed his mindshackle test... Trazyn wounded him, but without the mindshackle the warboss tore him to shreds. Again my opponent tried to block where he could deploy, but again Trazyn stood up. My opponent then tank shocked him into line of sight of the lootas, who gunned him down mercilessly. He got back up again. He then moved on and charged the boyz squad. He took out a healthy number but they took him down. Sick of his shenanigans, they finally deployed in such a way that he could NOT get back up. I then rolled for Trazyns other ability, and on a roll of a 5 (only needed a 2+ but still sweet nonetheless) he reappeared as a lord over in the other squad of warriors! He still lived.

After being held so long in the middle, my opponent broke forward with his boss and nobz to finish my immortals, the only scoring unit I had close enough to challenge for the objective. He moved one solitary boy that survived his first squad almost within spitting distance of the relic. The other squad had been sent packing by an effective gauss volley that put them below the 25% threshold, and they left the field of play. So the nobz charged my 3 immortals and one lord. The lord challenged the warboss, who accepted. Who then failed his mindshackle. The immortals did little but die ignominiously, but the warboss put three instant death wounds on his own squad, which only one cybork body saved. My lord taking the 2 wounds off the warboss left my lord winning the combat by 3, and he promptly ran down the surviving nobz. The game ended turn 5 with me scoring first blood and slay the warlord and my opponent scoring nothing. If there had been a turn 6, I would easily have taken his last scoring unit of one boy... leaving him just two turns to grab linebreaker and SOMEHOW slay my warlord to get the a draw, though slaying my warlord would have involved tabling me as he had 20 ablative wounds in the warrior squad. A solid victory, and I owe it all to just how tenacious Trazyn proved to be. Without him holding up the mass brawl in the middle then nipping at their heels to slow them down they'd have surrounded the objective and claimed the three points long before.

Trazyn, you'd do Boris proud...

Yarr harr fiddle de... oh f*$k...

So, there I was, storming along in my preparations for Winds of War 13 when the tournament pack finally came out, and my plan has completely come off the rails.

So yeah, I designed my army with last years restrictions on heavy vehicles in mind, meaning my two raiders plus two squads of wyches and a beastmaster with razorwing flocks was fine. Then the tournament pack has come out, and restricted the field to 2HP vehicles... So pretty much none of the transports, just light walkers and buggies.

You are allowed ONE 2+HP vehicle, provided it doesn't break the 33 armour value rule. That is, one for your combined force. So I'm still screwed.

I've emailed for clarification, because it seems a drastic change from last year. Chimera spam was annoying but you could still deal with it, and vehicles being easier to glance to death now I wouldn't have had a problem with facing them again. One of the more hated armies for small scale games would be venom spam, and that is STILL legal under this tournament pack. It doesn't make much sense.

The tournament pack was pretty clear and it didn't seem like a mistake, though it is a very drastic change from last year, which is why I've queried it. But it didn't look or feel like a misprint... it felt like a deliberate change of the way they want their combat patrol games to work. Which means that the nice little 500 point force I've been working through, am more than half finished, will be illegal. I can try to keep the stuff I've done and adapt the rest but I'm not sure how it's gonna work out...

Watch this space...

Why I should learn to keep my big mouth shut...

This won't be the usual kind of post, I'm going off-topic with this one. I'm planning to discuss movies. The inspiration came from perusing my game shelf trying to think of something that may be worth writing about, I spotted my old "Red Storm Rising" and "Hunt for Red October" games. This got me thinking about Tom Clancy and the ones that had been made into movies, and I came up with the idea of a post entitled:

Why There Won't Be Any More Jack Ryan Movies

Sadly it seems, hollywood has not read the script. I had an idea in mind for what to write about and just wanted to grab a couple of images off google to break the article up a bit, and lo and behold I find there actually will be another Jack Ryan movie. I will enter into the reasons for my despair later, but for now I'm going to start with the basis of my original thought, hastily rephrased to:

Why There Won't Be Any More Jack Ryan Movies That Are Even Remotely Connected to the Source Material

This title I have to admit, isn't quite as snappy... hence why I went with the one about learning to keep my mouth shut. Sure they've clearly been working on it a while, but equally I'd held this opinion for a while... I can't help but feel I've jinxed this into happening!

The Good

Ok, let's start off with the positive. Jack Ryan is the lead character in the majority of the books written by Tom Clancy. Readers follow his career (and that of his compatriots) through decades of espionage, government service, and eventually political life. The movies started off portraying some of these aspects quite well. Ok, they were condensed, as movies made from books always are to fit into a commercially viable running time, but generally they followed the basics of the plot quite well. Jack Ryan was first played by Alec Baldwin, and in the second and third movies by Harrison Ford. The movies saw the character older, and the actor was older too. This was acceptable. Admittedly, Patriot Games was chronologically set before Red October in the books, but not many people would have been aware of that, and it wasn't much difference in time anyway. I considered both actors to play the part of Jack Ryan well. Jack Ryan was in far more action than would normally be expected for an analyst while Harrison Ford played the part, but even then he portrayed a reluctant action star - not swaggering around perfectly at home, more someone who was caught in a bad situation and was merely trying to keep control of things. This suited the character well.

The Bad

We then move on to The Sum of All Fears. Hollywood decided to cast Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. To cover the sudden youth of the character, they reset the Jack character to be far earlier in his career and love-life. As reboots go this was a poor move, as for one reason by putting him far earlier in his career he was a lowly analyst... and therefore hardly likely to be involved in decisions of magnitude or able to access the areas or speak with the Russian president with great trust. In the book, Jack Ryan used his wealth of experience and "enemy" contacts to save the day. In the book, it was the "dinosaur" Jack Ryan being marginalized and ignored by the hip young political elite who thought war would never threaten them. Suddenly, in the movie, it's the youthful Jack Ryan saving the world from the political dinosaurs who want to nuke everyone because they can't get past their paranoia about the bad old days.I suppose I can see why they swung it a little bit - movie audiences are far more likely to be the hip young people than the dinosaurs, so you want your audience to feel good about themselves. But of course just reinforcing the young audiences attitudes won't help them realise that experienced people have opinions of value, but I guess it's not a movies responsibility to teach appreciation for ones elders. Above all else though, I thought this was a bad time to reboot the franchise, because I didn't see where they'd go from here, as explained below.

The Ugly

In this post 9/11 world can you ever honestly see someone making a movie where someone makes a suicide dive with a fully fueled jet plane into a building wiping out most of the US government? Of course not, people would say it was too close to the mark. But the next book in line after The Sum Of All Fears is Debt of Honour, which ends with exactly that occurrence. This was written before 9/11 - in fact I have often wondered if Tom Clancy ever felt some remorse, that he may have given the terrorists ideas? Highly unlikely, any idea for destruction can be thought up by more than one person... but it did seem like the rate of book release dropped off after 9/11 as Tom Clancy started to be more of an umbrella release name for other authors carrying on his style of work.

Now with this book off the table and all other books following on from it kinda being nailed to the pivotal plot moment where the US government gets wiped out and Jack Ryan ascends to the presidency (albeit reluctantly) it does leave the question of where, if The Sum of All Fears was intended as a reboot, did they intend to go? They can't follow the next books, and the few former books that were skipped out were in a different world (usually related to the cold war, meaning Ben Affleck can't be involved there, as Sum of All Fears was set in the modern day.

So I really saw nowhere for them to go.

Which brings us to Jack Ryan, the movie, to be released in 2013.

From what I can understand, it includes Jack Ryan (funnily enough) against a terrorist plot by Russia to destroy the US economy. I guess they could be taking one of the plot strands from Executive Orders for this, but it seems more likely that there is no literary connection whatsoever. The new Jack Ryan is played by yet another actor, who seems even younger than Affleck.

Which begs the question, if it's not got the same actor, and it's not based on the novels, what exactly is the point of making that tenuous connection to the character? You may as well call the movie something else and give the guy an original name! I can't see many people who are fans of Tom Clancys Jack Ryan going, and if they aren't fans... then the name is meaningless!

It seems it is just there to annoy me... Studio, I give you the Ford finger. Leave Tom Clancy alone, you've done enough damage already...

We shall need a crossbow, an hourglass, three goats, one of us must learn to play the trumpet, whilst the other one goes like this.

An update to the Pirates project...

The Pearl is ready! I never thought that a sewing kit would ever form part of my warhammer 40k painting tools, but hey ho life throws unexpected items at you sometimes. Here are a few snaps of The Pearl, ready to sail...

Hoist the Colours!

Power Through P... RUM!

This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost...

So, I have finally made a start on my Pirates project.

First up I've been working on one of the raiders, in the case The Pearl. I wanted to make a couple of conversions to this so that it was still easily recognisable as a raider, but also clearly fitting into my new theme.

The first idea I had was to change the main armament. I wanted to put a cannon on board. I had planned to represent this by using the gun option of disintegrator CANNON, but when I realised this would leave me with NO anti-tank in my force I re-thought this. I instead am sticking with a dark lance, but the lance will be a physical lance, fired from a cannon! Presumably it explodes once it's penetrated the target for those who are wondering what effect firing a sharp stick will have against a tank, but still.

Next up I wanted to change the aethersails. I wanted something more western and like a traditional pirate. I have made the mastwork I wish to use, and after I've painted the model I shall make some sails and rigging to go with it. The pictures are to the right and below.

Since these pictures were taken I've added a couple of extras - namely a skeleton as the figurehead and a barrel of rum on deck - my power through pain will be power through rum, therefore instead of grisly trophies (reroll Ld tests in range) it'll be extra rum rations for the same effect!

I also made my first squad of wyches, the crew for the pearl. I used mostly the wyches kit, but also some pieces from the Empire Militia box and the Dark Elf Corsair box.

 As for the sea turtles I mentioned the other day... when confused as to what I could do that would be piratey yet would represent a skyboard... I came up with the idea of lashing a couple of sea turtles and making them into a raft. And while so far I've only secured them with green stuff and superglue, I do intend to make the bond secure, with human hair. From my back...

Anyway, I have modelled the Beastmaster in place too...

So, as my project get's under way, I can merely hope to motivate my compatriot and team mate into starting by insulting his cause...

Ninjas are mean, as proved by the following. Pirates are too cool to do such petty things as the following...