Wow its been a while...

While I sit here taking a break from work, waiting for the Privateer Press site to load it strikes me, wow has it been a while since I posted last. September 6th was the last one, 15 days ago. Well needless to say I have been good. Real Life however has been nuts. I finally got hired on full time (though I have been working full time this whole time) at my job. Instead of just getting the benefits and vacation time that comes with full time, I got promoted, so had my whole job reformatted and added to. It is a good thing in the long run I guess but it is going to make the next several months much slower hobby wise for me.

So over that past two weeks I have been working on getting a Warboss and 7 Nobs painted for a new Ork army I have started collecting. You would be surprise just how crazy fast an ork army can come together with a few AoBR sets and a few wins on E-bay, I know I am. Next post expect to see pics of the finished models as they are acting as both my test models and the first few model I paint for the army so I am taking extra time to make them nice.

So what I really wanted to talk about today is something I haven't mentioned in a while. Some of you know I am a Pressganger for Privateer Press. Recently Privateer has been failing in my eyes due to their treatment of switching from Mark 1 of their game to the soon (Jan) to be released Mark 2 version of their game. Well folks, today they may have redeemed themselves. PP has release the preprint, prelayout final version of the MK2 rules and cards free of charge to all who wish to download them.

In this unpresidenced move, PP has release the new version of their new game 4 months early and free for all. The gaming communities have been stagenating with people wanting to play Mk 1 or Mk 2 or stopping gaming to wait for Mk 2 (I am in that last category) and this move really gives all of us incentive to go play. So if you have ever been a PP fan and stopped for whatever reason, I suggest you follow the links below and go check it out. Free rules are free rules. And while the nicely layed books and cards with all the fluff and painted figs are still to come, you can start getting your game on now.

Classy Privateer, Classy.

Rules
Cards

Until next time.

How many points is too many points?

Hey guys, welcome to post 30 of Blood and Blades. Today I am going to share with you photos of a mega battle I played in yesterday and talk about was the title suggest, when should you say stop and quite adding more and more points to one of your games. First off lets start with a pic of the insanity.

This photo was taken just after I had finished deployment at the bottom of turn 2. As you can see the board is littered with all sort of models and combats and firefights are raging everywhere. This brings me to part one of figuring out how many points to play. In my experience, a person can handle roughly 3 to 4,000pts of models effectively and still play in a reasonable amount of time. To be honest, neither of us know exactly how many points where on each side, but Chris's was using 3 Battle Companies and 2 Reserve Companies (1 Tactical one Assault) plus a good number of supporting vehicles and Dreadnoughts. I was using components of my Blood Angels, Bloodwing, Howling Griffons, Renegade IG, Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Daemons, and Ork armies. By our estimates is was close to a 30K vs 25K and Defenses planet strike game, pretty cool is you ask me.

To get back on topic, this is a pic of what the table looked like after chris finished his deployment on turn 1, which took more then 2 hours I might add. The important thing to note here is how much time do you have to play the game. When chris and I were setting up we thought we had all the time in the world, and took it very easy and talked and did not really focus on deploying. This made turn 1 take 4 hours to play. Chris finished deploying at 4pm and turn 1 was over at 8pm. Obviously we let the shear scale of the game get away from us and did not budget our time well.

Now if that is what you want, to just through all your models on the board and see what there is to see, cool, do it. That is what this game very quickly became as we realized we were not going to get to finish the game as midnight got closer and closer and Chris's wife began to text more and more frequently. So lets go over what you should plan for.

1. Plan ahead, figure out how much time to want to spend playing and pick a point sized based on that. A 2K game should take about 2 hours, with each additional 1000pts adding on in my estimate an additional 1 hour of play time. So a 3K game should last 3 hours, a 5K game 5 hours, etc. Also note that the you can divide the game size by the number of players and apply my 1K to 1 hour formula. Just for every 4-5 players and 4-5K of stuff add +1 hour. So 5 player per side playing 20K should take (20/5=4) 4 hours +1 hour for the number of players and +1 hour for the size of the game which is roughly a 6 hour game.
   
2. Budget your time, keeping an eye on the clock and setting time limits for turns or phases of turns can get games moving faster. In big Apocalypse games, with many many players per side I suggest 30 minute turns. This forces players to do what is important and not let the game get bogged down by finishing every little thing. Often times in mega games, the important thing to do is the stuff that will have battle sweeping effects and leave those 200 lasguns firing at 5 tactical marines alone.
3. Stick to your plan, every plan is going to change once things get going, but except that. That said, you should still try to stay on plan as much as possible, if you just throw it out then you are garunteed not to finish your game.
4. Play for Fun, not to win. Often times players do not understand what these big games are about. They will take the nastiest, meanest, craziest army the can come up with and end up not having fun because the are worried about winning the whole time. Big games are ment to be a fun time where you and your opponent can pull out your armies and show off those models you do not get to use that often in regular games. For example Chris had 28 tactical squads in our games, 28. 3, 4 yeah that is all you usually see in a normal game of 40K, but 28 on the table all at once, and an additional 12 or so assault squads is a sight to see. Remember, you and your oppenent want to have fun, use some stuff you haven't used, and just fill up the table with stuff. If you keep that in mind you will have a great game.
5. Rules are not as important in big games as they are in smaller ones. Do not nitpick as much as you would in a normal game. Cool things can and will happen in big games, let them even if to do so isn't quite in the rules, the game will be more memorable that way.

Well that is it for this post, please enjoy the following pics and please go here or even more photos of the game:

More Howling Griffons and TOEMP #3

Hey guys, in this blog entry you will find pics of Galvarium Vector, my Master of the Forge for the Howling Griffons and Rion, one of 4 Dreadnoughts I have in the army that go with Galvarium. Both of these, along with the two squads you have seen so far plus a second Tactical squad and a Scout squad made up the 1000pt army I entered into GW's paint contest that ended August 30th.

As I have said the army won first place, though to be honest not everything was quite done. Rion and Galvarium are both finished, but you are going to have to wait for pics of the Tactical Squad and Scout squad as they both need a bit more detailing before I am happy enough with them to show off.

In addition to being part of my 1K for GW, Galvarium is also half my entry for TOEMP's challenge #3. The task was to paint any amount of HQ and/or Fast attack choices you want by September 6th. With Galvarium Complete I am half way to my projected goal. I just need to paint up an Ork Warboss for my new Ork army that I mentioned I was starting last post. I primed him tonight so hopefully tomorrow I will have some time to get some work done on it.

Also, I am enrolled in what GW is calling a Veterans Class currently at my local GW store. Think GW's Academy classes, but for veterans that is more about sharing tips and tricks, best practises, and growing the Veteran community in the store by teaching them how to better pass on what they have learned to less experience players. This is a pilot program and if successful could be developed into a regular thing all GW stores offer.

While to be honest, I really do not need this class, I was one of the biggest supporters of its founding and developement as there are a lot of guys who play at my location that are okay painters, modelers, players, and leaders in the store but none of them have my experience as a Press Ganger and/or game organizer in the area to really fall back on so do not know how to give the best advice or teach someone else the best way to achieve a certain technique. Also no one else at the store, except one or two others, really has the depth of experience in wanting to be a better painter and striving to be that I do. I think this class is really going to help many of them for are just about at a level to really start improving and that it will push some several of them to start really uping there game to a higher level.

Well its time for bed, I need to be up early tomorrow. Next time more Griffons, the beginnings of the Orks, and maybe some pics of some other stuff I have laying around.

Until next time.