Tuesday 21 June 2011

What we've been painting

A bit of a family painting session here. I have been painting Tyranids and I am currently working on a magnetised Hive Tyrant. These are my last efforts...


Holdenstein Jr. fancied a go at a Moria goblin, and it worked pretty well..

And finally Holdenstein Mk III wanted a go too. For you Tommy, this war is over. This is what happens to the enemies of the Imperium.

MkIII is only four, so give him some slack

Saturday 11 June 2011

Good News

We are playing again, today going through the Mines of Moria missions once more. This time a complete clean sweep for Holdenstein jr. First two missions as discussed below. I was actually pretty impressed with the way that Holdenstein Jr. approached the first mission, using Gandalf, Boromir and Gimli, who are basically impervious to missile fire to shield the hobbits (who are most definitely not impervious to bow fire).



The initial move
Just about to get the win

The third mission was a bit of a free for all, involving everything apart from the Cave Troll. Lots of goblins at the start with most of the Fellowship apart from Aragorn. The Fellowship have to close two trap doors at either end on the board, with goblins coming in as reinforcements through the traps and Aragorn arriving on the roll of a 6 at the end of each turn. Trapdoors are closed by a member of the fellowship standing on them at the end of the turn.

I originally thought that Holdenstein Jr. had made a mistake. He went in both directions, and tried to thin the goblins out as soon as possible. I would have gone for one trap door and then the other. Fortune favoured the brave, however, and he was able to attack the goblins at each of the choke points. He was also lucky that Aragorn turned up at the end of the first turn and immediately set about the goblins with extreme prejudice.
Boromir is about to lock the final trap door
So it all worked out in the end despite me taking out two of the hobbits on the final turn, and failing to wound Legolas, which would have bought me and unlikely win.

I am afraid to say there was much gloating from the boy. I am currently gluing model railway ballast to the bases of the unpainted models in preparation for undercoating.

Friday 3 June 2011

Risky Business

Last night Mrs H, Holdenstein Jr. and I played Risk. A lot of serious gamers turn their noses up at the humble game of Risk, but I have always enjoyed it, right from being a young 'un myself. What's not to love. You get to take over the world, rub your family's noses in it, roll loads of dice and improve your Geography (cf. Pandemic).
To be slightly serious, I have always found the defender and attacker dice to be wonderfully balanced, allowing large armies to usually take out small armies easily, but throwing the odd spanner in the works occasionally. For those not familiar you roll as many dice as you have armies, with the defender being capped at 2 and the attacker at 3. You then compare the highest dice (and then next highest if both players rolled at least 2 dice) to each other and whoever wins destroys one of their opponents armies, with defender winning ties. If you think that you've seen it before, or since, its the basis for the combat systems in Space Hulk, Lord of the Rings and a bunch of other games too, but Risk takes into account the second die. The genius of the game is in the title: Risk. You've got to know exactly when to push it and when to end your turn and let someone else overreach themselves.
Holdenstein jr. won this one due to the twin effects of me and Mrs. H tearing lumps out of each other and then going for it with his big turn and capturing the two continents that he needed to complete his mission (despite Mrs. H confusing Asia and North America because "the map was upside down").

Wednesday 1 June 2011

The Second Game

Woah there! What happened to the first game I hear you cry (I'm good me and I can receive messages from the future). Well the first game didn't go exactly to plan and there was a certain amount of bad temper after Holdenstein jr. lost the first game with both good and evil sides. Not ideal stuff for a blog post.

This went much better, and was at junior's suggestion. After a short renewal with the basic rules we were off with Scenario one from the Mines of Moria book, which only allows shooting in a mad dash to a doorway. I was pleasantly surprised by two things. Firstly Junior was able to remember most of the things he needed to, like movement distances, without any prompting, and despite losing both with good and evil again, wanted to play some more. He was particularly unlucky the second time too, with my Moria goblins just hitting and wounding constantly and killing Legolas. Junior is far to smart to allow me to throw the game too, in case you're wondering.

We racked the figures up again and played Scenario two, where Aragorn has to again make his way to the door, while getting through Moria goblins, this time only using his sword. Junior won using both forces this time. 
 Aragorn lays the smack down on Moria gobins

I was more impressed with the combat mechanic than the shooting one. Junior got the hang of them seamlessly and really got in the swing (and stab) of things. It really was impressive the way that heroes can take on one or two enemies with a high degree of confidence, but quickly find themselves at a disadvantage once they get surrounded, due to taking double strikes (wound rolls) when they can't retreat.
Overall this time: Great success