Actually Trying To Use The Rules

I got to play a game with Contwrath, who decided to buy in to Monsterpocalypse. He just received his models, so for now we used my stuff. He chose the Empire of the Apes, and I went for the good old Terrasaurs.


The Game:
We tried to pay more attention to model special rules this time, as well as actually using Cover and Terrain rules (which I've always forgotten or ignored until now). We stuck with basic appartment buildings though. I won the roll and chose to go first.

Pretty standard deployments.

I destroyed a building for funsies.

As did he.

My units start creeping up the sides.

His move up to meet them.

I start chipping away at Kondo with a blast attack.

Kondo responds with a brawl attack.

I take a second monster turn and nail Kondo with a Swat.

He does not activate Kondo again, going for a unit turn.

I knock a couple of his units off the power zones.

Despite this, by his next Monster turn Kondo is FULLY POWERED UP!

He still misses his Swat attack against Khan though...

I throw Kondo into a building, but he kills two of my units with a Tantrum.

The Apes push back against the Terrasaur units.

I send in reinforcements.

Kondo slams Khan for four damage, but is thrown into a building.

The Apes keep pushing for power zones.

As do the Saurians.

Kondo slams Khan into the double foundation again.

And Khan throws him back again.

With both monsters on just one health, the Ape units focus on Khan.

Throwing all the dice they can into a single attack, they get all the strikes!

"Not like this!" Khan goes down to a volley of gunfire!

We started a bit slow as Contwrath refreshed his memory on the rules. I feel like we both made better use of the units this game than in my previous games, securing buildings and jostling for power nodes etc. The monster side of the battle was a little subdued, partly because the units started to get in the way so we ended up not moving the monsters around very much. Overall it was a very fun game that I felt was was a bit more technical and a bit less "YOLO!" than some previous games, which makes sense when we were spending more time checking rules and so on. Still need to get that fourth Protectors monster painted...

Naval Combat With Giant Robots

Karas has been enjoying Adeptus Titanicus and he thought I might like it too. So we played a game along with Neo, who was on Karas' team.


Pre-Game:
We both had an axiom maniple (?) with a Warlord, a Reaver, and two Warhounds. I had Legio Vulturum, weapon-wise I set up the Warhounds with weapons that Karas said were good for stripping void shields, the Warlord with high Strength weapons, and the Reaver with a mix of the two; my idea was that the fast Warhounds would engage first and take off the shields, then the bigger, slower mechs would catch up and start hammering the exposed hulls. Or whatever. Karas and Neo had Legio Ignatum, I have no idea what weapons they were running.


Deployment:
I won the intiative and spread my models out (the photo was taken after one move so one Warhound is too far forwards, and I couldn't see the screen properly so I didn't realise my Reaver was out of frame on the left).

Round 1:
I decided not to use any orders this turn as none of them jumped out to me as being useful yet. Karas and Neo use the March (I think was called) order on the Warlord and Reaver. I walked stuff forwards. I pushed the engine on a Warhound twice in order to swing wide to my right; I rolled three heat, rolled a 10 on the D10 engine overheating roll, and the Warhound blew up and did a bit of damage to the Warlord next to it. So I lost a model before a single attack had even been made. The other Warhound took some void shields off the Warlord. My Reiver took some damage to the head, giving me a penalty to my command checks.

Round 2:
I decided to charge my Reiver into the Warhounds, but failed the command roll. I think I also failed a command roll on the Warlord, though I don't remember what it was for. I might have failed a "Shoot First" command on my remaining Warhound, but if so I forgot that I failed and did the Shoot First action anyway. Karas and Neo's Reiver got the Charge order. I shuffled my Warlord further around the terrain to try to isolate the Reiver so I could finish it before the Warlord could get a line on me. Since Neo's Warhound was moving towards mine, I repositioned my Reiver to begin to intercept. Karas kept pushing his Warhound, then tried to run it up to my Reiver to blow up next to it, but it didn't blow up. The Reiver charged my Warlord, only just making it into 2" range, and did a bit of damage.

I attacked the Reiver with my Warlord. Karas told me to use the gun first (I couldn't use the hull weapon because the Reiver was too small). This was "concussive", causing the Reaver to to rotate 45 degrees to it's right, which took it out of 2" melee range - before I could use my melee weapon. I measured it and said it was out of range, but Karas ignored me and just pushed the Reiver in closer. So I used the melee attack, which I think was also concussive, but I don't think we rolled any concussive rolls for it? Anyway in total I didn't do much damage. The reiver now retaliated. Because Karas had ignored the fact that was out of melee range, it was able to use its melee weapon as well. Whatever. Neo's Warhound attacked my Reiver, but I thought it was attacking my Warhound and resolved the damage against the Warhound, blowing it up. I rolled "moves and shuts down" on the death table, and when I went to resolve that we realised the mistake and I just gave up.

Post-Mortem:
OK, I understand now that this is supposed to be a very technical, dare I say "realistic" naval-style combat game. Repeated hits on the same location weaken it and make it more vulnerable to taking damage. As you take damage your systems break down, etc. I get it. I get it, but I don't like it.

It was all so old-fashioned. Look up tables all over the place, different numbers scattered all over the data cards that you had to check for different rolls, and that kept changing. Sometimes rolling high is good, sometimes rolling low? It's a stark contrast to modern game design, that is consistent, streamlined, and intuitive, but that still has plenty of depth.

Honestly, I had a miserable experience. I honestly never felt like... like I could do anything? I mean, part of that was that, for all the complexity the game has in damage allocation and whatnot, I didn't feel like I had many actual meneaningful decisions to make in terms of gameplay. Which direction to walk and which model to shoot; it's just my impression, but it seems to me there's games these days with so much more interesting decision making happening every single turn.

But it wasn't just about decisions; I felt like I couldn't do anything. I don't know how to explain it, but with alternating activations between players combined with the different phases, it felt like half an hour between when I move a model and when it gets to attack. And the movement was incredibly pondorous and unsatisfying; I can barely shuffle a model forwards a few inches at the cost of risking reactor damage. Then when my chance to attack finally comes, well, it felt like I was lucky to plink off a single point of armour or a void shield or two. It was not satisfying. And you could "push" to do better when moving and defending, but not when attacking (yeah, some special weapons which I didn't have had push effects, but it wasn't a general rule the way it was with movement and void shields). So I didn't even have the choice to increase attack power to try to guarantee at least a bit of damage, even if it came at a cost. I felt powerless playing the game.

Now of course part of that was just my dice. But then that's part of my issue: it's a VERY dicey game, in that a single attack (or bad reactor roll) can cost you a model, or you can unload volley of powerful weaponry and feel like nothing happened. Sure, technically that can happen in any game with dice, but most games these days have ways of mitigating the "feels-bad" moments. Warmachine uses 2D6, so you get a probability bell-curve and some degree of predictability, plus the core rules of the core models include the ability to boost attacks, so you almost never feel like there's nothing you can do, you can always connect or do damage, though it comes at a cost. Other games such as 40K have you throw so many dice that it evens out. Monpoc has you build resources then decide how to spend them; you can ALWAYS get damage through, as long as you commit the resources to it. Warcaster has resource allocation, and also the constant redeployment of troops means losing to bad (or opposing good) rolls doesn't feel as bad as you can bring models back.

I don't have a problem with inherently dicey games, but it depends on what is dicey. If the dice can have interesting effects, like say randomly swapping models' positions or something, then it can be quite interesting and fun. In this case the dicey effects were mostly just more or less damage. I know that there were some Machine Spirit effects that could have been interesting, so that's nice, but they didn't come into play, and even so it doesn't change the fact that the basic damage rules were just so... swingy. Which can feel bad, especially in low model count games. I've experienced this in several games now: low model count games where a model could die to a single shot or survive a whole bunch of attacks are not satisfying, the swingy nature of a few bad dice rolls is just too much when you can lose a huge chunk of your army to a single dice, or you can use your entire army to try to take down one average-strenght model and fail completely. It just doesn't feel good, to me at least.

To be fair it turns out that my Warhound should not have blown up because the reactor was only orange; so I should have rolled a D6, not a D10. But that's part of the problem! So much complexity in small details, so many little modifiers that you have to keep remembering or checking on, so many lookup tables you have to keep referencing; even Karas, who loves the game so much he wanted to get other into it, could not remember all the rules and missed this small but important details of there being different dice for the same roll.

Working with software, I've learned that the best solutions usually have an elegent simplicity to them. Simple formulas that determine results (e.g. Warmachine's "add dice roll to weapon damage and subtract armour") are so much nicer and better than having to deal with lots of specific cases and responses; damage in AT is like "if X then void shields so check for save number under current number of voidshields, else armour so roll dice for location then check location for damage bands so if dice plus strength is 11 or 12 it does regular damage so one point of damage, but if 13 or 14 it does extra damage so two points of damage, but that number is modified by the modifier under the current amount of hull damage etc".

What I'm saying is, AT is very inelegent. OK, some people enjoy that kind of "classic" wargame. That's fine. But I appreciate rules that are elegant, and games that manage to be deep without being too complex, I much prefer the modern streamlined type of game that PP tends to do better than GW. They are easier to get into, rules are easier to remember, games are faster to play, etc. Obviously you need some level of complexity as without it there will be no meaningful decisions to be made. But, like everything else, it's about balance, and different people will enjoy a different balance at different times.

For me? I'm old, tired, can't concentrate anymore on account of being constantly sleep deprived (or possibly I'm going senile), and I think I've lost a lot of my passion for wargaming. And this game of Adeptus Titanicus might have been the most miserable gaming experience I've ever had.

A Loud Acheta Domestica

I found this model online quite a few years back. In fact the first time I printed it was before I got into resin printing; I printed in PLA and used a ton of filler and did a bunch of sanding, then decided it was too much work and gave up. When I was stuck for ideas for a friend's birthday, I remembered this old thing and decided to try again, printing a fresh version and hitting it with some paint.

I no longer remember which version of the model I printed; there are several online. I modified the model somewhat, cleaning it up and supporting it for resin printing (the original was cut for FDM printing), and also modelling a 3mm hole up the handle to make it easier to paint. I thought of making a display base that incorporated a rod to hold the model, but I came across a fancy display base by Falconman, and created my own simpler version using that as inspiration (the one in the photos was an early version in grey PLA, I reprinted later in white PLA).

I wanted to paint it in chrome, which I figured would be easy: prime in gloss black, mask off the handle, airbrush chrome, varnish, done. Sadly it was not that simple. First of all I had to clean it all up. So removed the supports as best I could, sanded, applied greenstuff then later a milliput wash (following Marco Frisoni's guide) to fill the divots and other imperfections, and then sanded again, washed and left it to dery, before finally priming with Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black.

At which point I found a number of fairly noticeable imperfections that hadn't been obvious before. I tried to fix them but only ended up damaging the primed layer in a way that couldn't easily be fixed. So I stripped the model using a local brand of household cleaner (I couldn't find any Dettol). Now I was worried the dettol would soften the fillers if I left it to soak, so I would apply the dettol and brush it off quickly. This made the stripping process more labour-intensive than usual.

Once I had stripped all the primer, I applied more filler to the trouble spots, left it to cure, and sanded yet again, washing the dust off and leaving it to dry. This time I primed with Tamiya 87064 Fine Surface Primer Light Gray. This was an aerosol primer than, in my experience, makes it much easier to do repairs as it doesn't "peel" the way acrylic airbrush primers do when you try to sand over them. The light grey coat made it much easier to find any remaining imperfections; I did a bit more sanding before washing and priming with gloss black again.

And that's where I screwed up the primer. See, I usually prime with a syphon airbrush that puts down a very heavy coat of paint. But I was feeling so precious about this model that I wanted to try to be more careful than usual to avoid and primer buildup - which I had experienced that first time I primed, resulting in large "droplets" of exess primer collecting and running down the handle.

So this time I primed using a fine-nozel double-action gravity airbrush. And for some reason the "gloss" black went down very matte through this airbrush. Which was a big problem, because having a smooth glossy basecoat is essential for the chrome paint to work properly. So when I came to apply the Alclad II Lacquer ALC 107 Chrome, it ended up looking like a slightly matte silver rather than a shiny chrome!

What's more I did a bit of damage to the handle when pulling off the mask, and when I tried to fix it with the original gloss primer it came out FAR more glossy than the rest of the handle. So I decided to try to apply a gloss varnish (rather than the correct "aqua" varnish recommended for chrome) in the hope that it would npt only homogenize the handle finish, but also make the model look more shiny. Instead the opposite happened, and it ended up looking even more matte! You can see it here next to a test model I painted much less carefully:
You can clearly see the huge difference in surface finish. At least it fixed the handle finish. In theory the surface, despite looking matte, should have been fairly smooth. So I decided it couldn't hurt to try to apply another coat of chrome, using the syphon airbrush this time to put down a heavier coat (after masking off the handle again). This actually helped; the result was now a satin silver rather than a matte. Still a far cry from the intended chrome, but at least it didn't look terrible now:
At this point I just didn't have it in me to put any more work into it (in my defense I've been pretty damned busy these last few months). So I called it good enough, doing a final bit of touch-up to the handle and hitting it with a coat of Alclad II Lacquer ALC 600 Aqua Gloss.


This is the second time I try to paint a relatively large display model, and once again airbrush issues meant that the final finish on the actual model was worse than the final finish on the test model. But I suppose it's my fault this time and not the airbrush, not really. Well, it was a learning experience, especially when it comes to effectively cleaning resin 3D prints. The milliput wash was great, but a hit with an aerosol primer and then a second cleanup pass is almost essential to make sure you've really fixed all the surface issues. I've heard that hot water makes it easier to remove supports; I tried and and it does make it easier - especially for very heavy supports - but I'm not sure it actually improves the final surface finish. Some smoothing and filling does still seem necessary at any rate.

I would love to come back someday and give this model a second try, preferably using a version with separate handle scales so I don't need to do any masking or anything. But that sounds unlikely tbh. Oh well. I'm trying to get back to actual painting - you know, with a brush, not just airbrushing. I kinda miss it. Finding the time is a real issue.

More Fancy Boxes

As part of my continuing efforts to improve my storage and transport setup for my games, I put together a dice box for that Monpoc doubles as a building. The file is up on Thingiverse. I printed up two buildings that hold enough dice for a single player each. I will probably play them as skyscrapers or appartment blocks. I considered trying to model it to look more like one of the official buildings, but I decided efficiency and ease of printing was more important. It's also nice that they're really easy to paint. I painted the windows with Green Stuff World 1864 Metalcolor Sharkfin Blue, but I found it didn't create enough contrast (either color or value) on the grey building so I went over it with Vallejo 71.071 Model Air Metallic Arctic Blue. For the white building I went over the windows with Citadel 'Ardcoat first, then painted the Sharkfin Blue on top. This gave a smoother layer. It may look very simple, but this took several iterations and a LOT of swearing at my printer to get to this point. I might make improvements in the future, but for now this will do.

Old Enemies

I ran a demo game with Saint (playing GUARD) and his son (playing Terrasaurs - or as he called them Tyranids). I didn't bring enough buildings but we made do. Long story short, Saint did a better job of building up his power reserves, but his dice let him down, with Defender X missing several power attacks against Terra Khan. The two picked up the rules very quickly and seemed to enjoy the game. I really need to get some more monsters painted so I can start running 2-monster games. I actually have several assembled, I just can't seem to find the time to pick up a brush.

Mark 3.5

Karas and I finally sat down to try out the new Warmachine Mark 4. The only problem was: neither of us had actually read the rulebook. So we basically played using Mk3 rules, except for specific changes that I was aware of. Which I believe are most of the important ones. So we used the new unit movement rules as I understand them, the new run distance rule, the new AOE rules, etc.

I brought an Armoured Korps list I put together using mostly models I already own:
Armoured Korps 50pts
Harkevich 1
-Black Ivan
-Juggernaut
-Kodiak
MOW Bombardiers (proxied by two Butchers and a baker)
Battle Mechanics
Greylord Forgeseer
*Blessing
*Hit & Run
*Infiltration
*Power Swell
*Take Cover

Karas has been eyeing up Cygnar, so I encouraged him to run a proxy list:
Storm Legion 50pts
Anson 1 (Arcane Shield, Chain Lightning) (proxied by what appears to be Reznik 1 on a small base)
-Courser (Shield Guard, Heavy Stormthrower, Electrified Shield) (proxied by Vigilant)
-Stryker (Plasma Nimbus, Voltaic Halberd, Power Fist) (proxied by Fire of Salvation)
Stormblade Legionnaires (proxied by Exemplar Errants)
- Standard Bearer (proxied by Exemplar Errant Standard Bearer)
Stormguard Legionnaires (proxied by Temple Flameguard)
Tempest Thunderers (proxied by Exemplar Cinerators)
Legionnaire Officer (proxied by Exemplar Errant Officer)
*Blessing
*Hit & Run
*Old Faithful
*Put The Fires Out
*True Inspiration


Pre-Game:
We didn't know what the scenario situation was in Mk4; a quick search did not turn up any default scenarios in the rulebook in the app, so we literally did not play with a scenario. Guess it was a pure caster-kill game. I believe this edition is more terrain-friendly/centric? What I had with me though was some mousemat terrain I bought a while back for Mk3 but never used, so I just tossed some onto the table. We were playing on a table that was about 30 inches wide, so we played across it. I won the role and chose to go first.


Deployment:
Not much to say really.

Round 1:
I ran everything forwards, with Butcher in a trench in base contact with the Kodiak and the mechanics a short distance behind the MOW.

Karas put Arcane Shield on the Courser and Lightning Tendrils on the Stryker. He forgot to keep his Stormblades in base contact for Shield Wall. The Thunderers put some damage on one of my MOW, knocking him down with a crit.

Round 2:
I allocated 1 to Black Ivan. The Forgeseer Empowered him for another, bringing him up to 3. Ivan then took an aimed shot at the Stormguard, boosting three damage rolls and killing four models. Hark then cast Bombshell on the Stormblades. I rolled a crit, knocking three of them backwards... which put them into base contact, ironically increasing their armour. However after a bunch of boosted damage rolls I had killed three grunts and the standard bearer. Hark then walked to the back of the trench.

The Mechanics repaired some of the damage from the Bombardiers. I wasn't sure how Knockdown interacted with the new movement rules, so I just sacrificed my MOW combat action as I figured this should allow the unit to move normally. Which I believe was correct. They advanced and managed to kill one Thunderer with their guns. The Juggernaut ran up the flank. The Kodiak walked forwards, dropped a cloud, and repositioned back out of it.

The remaining Stormblades charged the Bombardiers, killing one. The Thunderers backed away and shot at my Juggernaut, doing very little damage. The two jacks shot at Black Ivan, putting a reasonable amount of damage on him but not crippling any systems. The last of the Stormguard repositioned to better protect Anson.

Round 3:
Last round was very good for me, killing a bunch of infantry models and only losing a single one in return. But without an objective I didn't see the lines actually closing, and I didn't want to be left standing around trading shots, so I came up with a plan to force the issue. I would run the Kodiak forwards under Hark's Feat to lock down his jacks (sure, he could technically walk away without taking free strikes, but I didn't think he would) while my other two heavies moved into better positions to threaten next turn.

At least that was the plan. Unfortunately I didn't really pay enough attention to the Juggernaut; I ran him further up the flank towards the remaining infantry, but forgot to keep him in Harkevich's Feat range, so he didn't get the ARM bonus from the feat. Black Ivan walked up and shot something but I don't think he did any real damage. The Mechanics took some more damage off the Bombardiers, who finished off the Stormblades.

Anson cast Positive Charge on the Stryker. The two jacks together were unable to take down the ARM 23 Kodiak... however, in their darkest hour, the Last (Storm)Guardian came charging out of the forest to deliver a mighty blow that finally felled the Khadoran warjack. Meanwhile the Officer and the Thunderers, taking advantage of Positive Charge's buff bubble, were able to cripple the Juggernaut's cortex and axe.

Round 4:
I had expected to lose the Kodiak, but the Juggernaut was a different story. That hurt. I guess I wasn't done making stupid mistakes, because I tried to cast Broadside with Harkevich, and when I remembered he didn't have it I spent 3 focus to cast Guided Fire instead, even though the only ranged attack my battlegroup was going to make was with Hark's handcannon (which hit the Stormguard but was shield-guarded by the Courser). For some reason I had it in my head that Black Ivan would make a ranged attack before charging, even though I had already used up the Feat. I also mixed up the Dual Attack icon and forgot Black Ivan had it, so I didn't even make a ranged with him after all even though I could have. Anyway, Black Ivan charged in and crippled the Stryker, but couldn't finish it. Either the Bombardiers or the Juggernaut took out another Thunderer. The Mechanics repositioned to possibly fix Black Ivan if he survived next turn.

Black Ivan did not survive the turn. Neither did the Juggernaut. Karas played Old Faithful to fix up the Stryker, with Positive Charge his army was able to finish off the two jacks.

With no jacks and no line of sight to Anson, I couldn't see any way to recover, so I conceded.


Post-Mortem:
I really threw away a good position there. Well, games being won or lost on a single decision is nothing new, and it's part of what I like about this game. My dice were pretty hot; killing eight reasonably high-ARM infantry models with just two AOE attacks is proof of that. Karas' dice in contrast were very cold at the start, rolling lots of 3s. But I think it evened out eventually.

I put Old Faithful in every list I've been writing, except this one because I figured I had mechanics so I didn't need it. It's a shame because it would have helped the Juggernaut hang in a bit longer, but in truth that wouldn't have changed the outcome. I actually didn't end up using any command cards; there were a couple of times when they might have helped a bit, but it's a new system, it's not unusual to forget things. Perhaps I should have focused Black Ivan's efforts on the Courser using the Blessed command card to ignore Arcane Shield? The Courser was very pillow-fisted, but the shield was effortlessly crippling my cortices, so... I dunno.

Overall the game felt mostly like Mk3. The new infantry movement streamlined and simplified things a lot; precise positioning feels less important now, which has advantages and disadvantages. But AOEs feel deadlier; you can't mitigate them by spreading out. Infantry always being bunched up feels a bit weird, but I'm not sure how much it will actually impact the game. I felt the game was pretty quick and fairly effortless, which is good considering it was our first time with this new ruleset and we tend to be pretty slow. I expect it will be easier for newer players to pick up. I just wish my list options hadn't been cut down so much; so many of my models won't be seeing any use for the forseable future.