Thursday 26 July 2018

Malifaux 3rd Edition Announced

So here was something I was not expecting, Wyrd has announced that 3rd edition for Malifaux is moving to closed beta. What got me was that they were actually doing a 3rd edition.

From what they have shown so far on their website is that they are simplifying some of the rules (which always worries me when someone says they are going to do that) and that the total number of conditions will now be a straight forward set of 9 (so things like Brilliance, which is a key condition for the Jacob Lynch crew, will now use a different system it appears). Heck, Masters now have a Soulstone cost so you can have more then one in a crew (though I could only ever seeing this as an option for larger games).

Speaking of Masters, there have been some alterations to them. First off, four seem to have been killed (well, two have been confirmed? The Puppet Master is MIA and his fate unknown and the former Neverborn ruler has been imprisoned) along with some other characters (Like the Judge) and while they'll still have stat cards to use, some tournaments will not allow them cause story wise, they are dead. Likewise, each master is now more focused towards a particular play style (so Ulix who I have mentioned previously will have a much less combat focus play style and more pig breeding play style). To help with this, keywords will have a more important role for selecting models for crew. This means crews will have a more heavy focus on theme, with themed models being cheaper to hire then non-theme models. So for example, Colette has a strong focus on Showgirls, so I imagine that she would get to hire models with the keyword 'Showgirl' at a set price, but hiring non-showgirl models might cost a Soulstone more (note, I am just guessing here, there still is much they haven't shown yet). What effect this will have for the mercenaries rule I have no idea.

Some have also taken up their duel-faction role (Like Hoffman and Marcus) while others have lost theirs (most of the Ten Thunders faction). This does concern me a little as I have both the Jacob Lynch crew and the Nightmare version of Lucas McCabe crew, both who were duel faction and who's crew has a heavy focus for the faction they have now lost. How this will effect the crew hiring (and my model collection) I still have no idea and it does worry me a little. As for Nightmare crews and the Alternative models (I'm thinking of the 'Miss' series and holiday themed ones like the War Rabbit), they haven't said anything about them getting new stat cards or how crews like my Nightmare McCabe crew will work.

This news is a mixed bag for me, as on one hand I am excited to see this new rule set and to give it a go, but on the other I have concerns over what I can now use and if it's even worth getting any alternative sets as nothing has been said about if they will also get stat cards (Heck, just bring out a card box set with stat cards for all the alternative models and call it 'Twisted Reflections' or something).

Update:

So as I've been going through the forums and reading peoples personal thoughts on this over the last few days, I'm beginning to feel less excited and more concerned. While I understand that there needs to be time spent in preparation for GenCon, the lack of any real response over the last few days to concerns of players I consider an issue. Given that this is one of the better times to push the game, some have now said that they may consider leaving it, while others are cautioning people into not buying any of the range until we have more clarity and certainty to a number of important questions.

From what I understand, Wyrd hadn't intended to announce 3rd edition when they did, but leaked information forced their hand into announcing it. If that is the case then I understand not wanting to reveal too much, but I'd have assumed that they would have a list of questions they'd have expected players to ask them and an a set of appropriate responses to them. Some people seem happy with the rules, but things like stat cards, character removals, nightmare crews & alt named models along with crew hiring and theme questions have thrown confusion into all this. As such, it was a bad time for the announcement as while the company has had to turn their focus onto GenCon, the player base has been thrown into speculation with some even begun attacking one another in these threads.

Personally, I don't care for things like tournaments and such (they just don't interest me and while I love some competitive gaming, that level of it is something that I just don't enjoy), preferring to play for fun (one guy even posted how Gremlin players never use Gators, which is a wrong assumption as I love throwing them into games with my Gremlins). The problem I have is how the changes will now effect my current crews and their hiring lists. I can look past having to use two of my Masters as Ten Thunders now (any story campaigns I'll mostly just use my Gremlins as I don't like Ten Thunders story wise at all, though my Arcanist and Outcasts are mostly unchanged.....I think?), but given that most of their hiring options for both were from their other faction, will they still be able to hire up to four of them still or will some just be rendered unusable and I'll just have to retire them (mostly the McCabe one in this regard as I suspect that the ones relating to the Hungering Darkness and his Brilliance will either still be there to hire cross-faction or will have a faction switch to keep with his theme).

For the moment I will watch cautiously and keep my opinions open to possibilities, but so far I still have a number of concerns and questions that need answering before I'll feel satisfied to give a proper yes or no to the game.

Tuesday 17 July 2018

Gremlin Nightmare Box Preview


OMG YES! So I've been looking for a while now for another Master for my Gremlins faction and earlier in the year I decided I wanted Ulix as his box set would allow me to run a full pig crew in smaller games, plus I have Slop Haulers and recently that Ross Gremlin, plus I have Maurice who is a conversion for a Boozer character I want to play as in a game of Through the Breach RPG (if I ever get around it) and who has a pet piglet called Wilma so he can be a Hog Whisperer with Piglet for in game.

I held off due to working on Age of Sigmar and perhaps that was for the best, because this is just down right hilarious. They've thrown in various MLP reference gags in previous books so it was only a matter of time before they would finally get in a model related gag and as far as this one is concerned, it's perfect. If I wanted to extend the theme, I could take something like the Arcanist's Mechanical Rider horse model and use it as a stand in for the Mechanized Porkchop (maybe the other Riders can act as things like War Pigs & Mounted Guard horse models as more Wild Boars).

Who knows, maybe I can get my sisters to play too as I'm already working on the Colette crew and this could be another fun crew (I'll paint them without the blood n stuff obviously).

Monday 16 July 2018

To Build a Ship & More

So I've been thinking about what to do with that ship idea and for this my next source of ideas comes from both Youtube and Pinterest. See, the plan is to create a model ship for the show idea I've got to take place in and so the model will be created and filmed in front of a green screen. This is one of two popular ways that ships in space scenes are done in (the other being in 3D animation).

From what I've seen, I have two ways to create it, either with just strips of plasticard (thus giving the ship are more straight and sharp edge design) or mixing things like the plasticard with other bits & pieces along with other things that would have been just thrown away (so the design could have smooth parts and a rather unusual design). Then there is the problem of its actual design, as I am still stuck on how it should look. Given that the crew is from various styles, I want to mix them all into its design to give it a rather mix & mash look rather then one of sleek and well planned design (so a mixture of Sci-fi, Steampunk and Techno-Sorcery).

On top of that, I don't have a lot of room at the moment where I stay should I eventually get around to test any filming of characters, let alone any room for actual scenery. It would be very time consuming to do 3D backgrounds (mostly cause I'm not that great a creating and texturing them, let alone that my only usable program would be Blender and I have no experience with that), but I do have a tiny amount of experience with miniatures and am looking at the idea of creating miniature size sets, which I could film and edit in a program to add effects, lighting and other things to help blend it into a more realistic background and just green screen the characters in front of it (perhaps breaking down the background/objects into several layers with extra effects like blur to help give it more of an effect). Certainly the lighting would be kept a little darker so as to not make it too obvious that it's a model and not an actual prop or 3D animated background.

At the moment it's more about collecting ideas and various bits. When I feel ready enough I will start perhaps with a few test objects and give it a go to see what I can come up with.

Sunday 15 July 2018

Moonclan & Death Update 1

So it turns out I wasn't happy with Glibbins' current look, mostly being the GS moss and back shrooms (see this post), so I went looking online for some ideas on how to fix it. One such Youtube video gave the answer to that plaguing question.


As such, with this idea, I began to test it out on some Fanatic bases, before moving on to Badfang and Glibbins. Personally, this was a major help in resolving that issue and I'll let you decide if it works better:


As for Badfang and Oddball, I added a bunch of colourful funky mushrooms to the bases. This was a mixture of green stuff and thumb tack varieties to see how it looked. I like the look of these funky shrooms, though I admit I doubt some will stay on for long without some careful use so I may need to work on strengthening them later on. Either way, it is the starting point to get ideas on the kind of mushrooms I want to add to some of the bases:


Finally, I was looking for another idea to get creative with the Death faction and I think I've come up with something. I was looking at the Glavewraith Stalkers and their animal skulls and I though that with some fur on the back then they could look more bestial like:


These would be the Shrine Guardians. Given that my group was one that honoured animal and beasts as their religion and that such iconography is displayed on banners and such, it wouldn't be hard to see them having a large number of shrines and that these shrines would have those who acted as both maintenance, priest and guardian. As such, these guys would be Shrine Guardians, those who's spirits have fused with those of beasts and they flow forth on the hunt to all who dare oppose their kingdom and desecrate their sacred Realm.

My first back of green stuff fur was a failure and I had to remove it. I'm now weighing up my options as to whether I attempt a more time consuming, but more accurate green stuff attempt or if I should get a mold or the stuff to create a mold for a fur back (say, with the Fenrisian Wolves bodies). Might need to do more research on this one before another attempt.

Tuesday 3 July 2018

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - General's Handbook 2018

Now that I've looked over the book a few times and heard a few peoples own opinions on the book, I will now give my own little view on the book (which might not be too accurate as I still don't have the core rule book yet, thanks to GW forgetting to send it to my local independent retailer so forgive me if I much up or miss some vital points).

There is a lot to like about this one. The book feels somehow more cleaning and organized then the previous book, though some of the explanations are not in it (it's considered that you have already read the Core rules and you already understand things, particularly the Allegiance section). The book is broken down into several parts and like my previous General's Handbook review, this too will be in short parts.

Open Play Games

This section has been shortened down greatly with a page full of various map layouts, though the open war cards have now been replaced for dice rolls. Simple and effective and I like that.

Aerial Battles

With the ever growing number of models with the Fly rule (not to mention much of the Kharadon Overlords), the idea of actually having air battles seems like a great idea. There are two types of combat types, a two map one where is on the ground and one is in the air and the second one which takes place in the sky, with ground units having to stand on tower/mountain tops with the risk of falling off (flying units don't fall cause they can fly anywhere, so having more flying units can really help in this). As someone with very few flying units, I don't think this would be too good for me.

Narrative Play Games

This is probably my favourite part of the book, the Narrative Play has a collection of rules you can use to change the way the game can play out. These can be positive or negative and can either effect your army, your opponents army or both. There are over forty of them to choose from and they even have two examples to help show off how you can incorporate them into your games through historic battles. As you play games, think about the story these armies are creating and add appropriate rules to represent how these stories are shaping the battles you play. Much better then the previous book (which had the rules for fighting in the Realms, which has now been moved to the Core Book).

Gathering of Might

Want to fight battles with massive armies, then these rules can help shorten those games (cause you know, moving hundreds of miniatures in a horde army is just so much fun). With its own Traits, Artifacts, Spells and even a few missions, this is for those with large miniature collections who want to thrown down and given most of mine barely reach 2000pts, I'll probably never do it, but speaking of points....

Match Play

The main reason most get these books, match play has had a few alterations to it.Things like Command Points, Pitch Battle Profiles and Allegiance abilities have been adjusted. What caught my eye was the Understrength rule, cause while the whole 'pay full points for unit even if you don't have minimum number of models' rule is still there, it no longer mentions that an understrengh battleline unit doesn't lose its battleline status. Whether this is a mistake or not we probably won't know until an faq update or unless it was stated in the Core Book, but if this change is right, then I do like it (didn't make sense to pay full cost for players who didn't have the model numbers and not get the battleline rule, at least from a poor players perspective). I'

Points changes for the most part are fine, either adjusting them by 20 - 40 points (a number of wizards have been altered like this, mostly due to Malign Sorcerey is my guess), with some gaining and some loosing. For me the most annoying one was the points change for Pink Horrors, which jumped by 80 points. From what I understand from players, it was because the Disciples of Tzeentch faction was a bit too overpowered and this was altered to help balance it out. Unfortunately, my Tzeentch group is actually a collection of Daemons and Slaves to Darkness, with an equal amount of both. As such, I can't pick neither Allegiance due to model numbers and so am a general Chaos Allegiance, but the increase cost means I am better off just picking a Gaunt Summoner and going to a Realmgate and just summoning the Pink Horrors. What this just means is that now I have to seriously think about what to do with my Tzeentch Chaos faction.

Update: So apparently from what I've seen on online battle reports, so long as the Chaos units have the Tzeentch keyword (so a Mark of Tzeentch) they apparently count as a part of the Allegiance and not allies. This means I could form a Disciples of Tzeentch group, but it would still mean I'd have to fork out roughly $80AU just to get the book which has the Allegiance rules (Also, my current smart device's OS is not current enough to use the AoS app and upgrading that would cost a hell of a lot more then getting the book), so for the moment I'll just have to rely on the General Allegiance rules. 

Speaking of summoning, each Chaos God Allegiance now has its own summoning rules, along with a summoning cost for each Chaos God specific Daemon you can summon. Each rule to gain summoning points seem to be more in line with the associated Chaos God, but the old warscroll spells to summon those Daemons are now gone. A few characters have also had a rule or two altered to adjust to this too. The Allegiance rules for Seraphon also have these summoning rules now, so if you want to rain Lizardmen from the sky you can.

The Allegiances from the previous General's Handbook are back and have been alternated a bit, mostly to bring things in line with the new command points and a few minor tweaks. There is some debate from Slaves to Darkness players as to how useful the new changes are for the faction, particularly with the Chaos Lord, but from my understanding of the description only the 'units' with the same mark as the Hero within that set range gets the mark bonus, it never states that the Hero themselves gain the bonus (since it the Chaos Lord already has that bonus), so while I agree that the Lords command ability is useless for those with a Mark of Tzeentch and No Mark, it still has a longer range then the other marks and still has its uses. I suspect that their Heroes will be updated in the near future to make them more useful, but for now it is just a waiting game.

Scenery now has their own warcrolls and are brought in line with the cover rules for movement and shooting, but what is interesting is that Sylvaneth Wildwoods no longer cost points and that units from other AoS games (like Shadespire) have their own pitch battle profiles and points. Great additions now that the game is really changing into a more fun direction (well, in my opinion it is).

Overall

Obviously if you plan on playing any game with a points value system you'll be picking this up regardless, but I would recommend it mostly for the Aerial battles and Narrative play sections, as the first can really add a nice twist to armies with a nice number of flyers, while the second for the shier number of options to give more fun (or challange) to your games.

As for how it currently effects my factions (apart from my Tzeentch Chaos mentioned before)? Most already use the General Allegiances, so it's more down to the points changes (though the addition of more Nighthaunt units does give more options for my Death faction) and the only difference to my current Skryre faction is that the Doomwheel is a little cheaper (though Warp-Grinder teams went slightly up while Stormfiends went slightly down, so things to think on in future expansions).

As with all things, this is just a short personal opinion of mine and you should check out other peoples reviews for a more in-depth look.

Glibbins McGibbinz Returns!

Let the Mortal Realms quake with fear, for the great Pie Prophet of Mork has returned and he has a pastry for every occasion.


So the idea behind this conversion was to bring back my original character of Glibbins McGibbinz (Pie Assassin) into the world of Age of Sigmar. The original character had a serious obsession with mushrooms, so when they announced the Fungoid-Cave Shaman I knew who would be the foundation for the characters return.

I removed the centipede from the staff and the back, replacing the staff top with a Shroomling (the little sentient mushrooms that roam the Funky Fungus Forests) and to cover up the back I added some rather poorly sculpted mushrooms and surrounded it with liquid green stuff patches for moss. Moss was also added to one foot, the back of the pie hand and on his chin, so he now technically has a moss beard. The pie hand was the open hand of a Battle Wizard and the Pie was completely made of green stuff (the original was a Skaven drum arm with green stuff on the top). I also added a trinket or two just to round him off.

The head mushroom was painted a heavy pink starting from the head leading to white near the top of the underpart, with the top being slightly grey leading to white (with a thin black wash being lined in the gaps). I wanted it to come off that his brain shroom was turning into a look more suited to a bakers hat. All the other mushrooms are painted in bright colours with spots (the common theme of the Funky Fungus Tribe) and the Pie is a little more crispy in its crust then the original one was. I did have to go over the white eye a few times as this Shamans eye didn't stand out compared to the head used in the original Glibbins conversion, so I had to give it a more bruised/purple outlining in order for the white eye to stand out more.

Overall, I feel some areas could have been converted/painted better, but I still love the way the character came out. May add some mushrooms to his base later on (I plan to produce a bunch and then add them to most of the Moonclan Grot models bases).

Crusty doom comes to the Mortal Realms and no one is safe from the delicious filling of destruction.

Update: I decided I didn't like the way the green stuff moss looked on him (that and the back cloak shoorms) so I decided they had to go and re-done. For this, I looked up some tutorials and various options on doing these and having found a few, I've begun working on the alterations, so we'll see how it turns out soon.