Well Ive left my ode to Papa JJ up long enough, I have started work on your mini my friend and its almost ready for painting! more on that another day.
However in the meantime I have been a busy busy boy. With only one exam left to go on thursday (which im not worried about at all... physics is my B%tch :P) my schedule is starting to free up once again for hobby! As my friend JP often says (which im sure has ulterior motive) im a wizz at contructing models which is probably connected to my type A perfectionist attitude but having said that I did knock together 5 drop pods for him in a single day, base coated and all. With a little chicken blood mixed in the superglue I have been assured by my resident witch doctor that "His pods will be dropping all over da place like a green snake in the sugar cane".
Now to the grit, what the title promised. JP and I played a few games of the new IA:9 boarding missions on the weekend. First thoughts, Great premise, decent rules, needs a lot of working to work. To be frank the rules are a little "open" to interpretation which lead to a series of house rules being implemented for the sanity of all and sundry. Additionally board setup is more complicated than "bang some bits down" as the rules would have you believe. With our first game the setup of the board lead to a natural chock point, as it stood the Astral Wolves were defending and the Ulhfen Templars were on the offence. With this chock point however the Ulhfen Templars were on the back foot from word go. Game 1 went to the Astral Wolves by stint of poor setup only.
Game 2 found us beginning with a board setup from the spacehulk missions with a few addons and adjustments into a much fairer setup. However this time it would be the strategems that would break the game. Astral Wolves this time on the offence, I took the Interdiction strat, allowing me to essentialy put an entry point right in the middle of his defensive position... fine deal with that but as it allowed me to come on as normal with no restrictions I did... with a unit of Khorne Berzerkers. Needless to say I made mince meat out of his heavy support ( Long Fangs make great sandwichs btw), Astral Wolves winning game 2 by a decent margin.
Now the ruleset does say to leave any sense of competitive nature behind as you play Boarding missions but it sure sucks playing a game you have no chance of winning. If you are going to play (and with space hulk board sections) then you need to ensure a few things, First no area of the board is limited to only 1 entry, second there are no long corridors greater than 12" long, You take units of no more than 5 and be prepared to have it all go against you.
Otherwise im going to keep trying to get this right, I love the idea of desperate measures to capture enemy ships or installations that ordinary 40k just doesnt give you. In the mean time I will have to write up a set of official house rulings which I will share with all of you when its done.
Until Next time good gaming!
Those are some nice looking models. Is this an expansion to Space Hulk? Never played Space Hulk myself but you may have just inspired me.
ReplyDeleteThanks for joining us at Grim, Dark, Far Future. Looking forward to interacting more.
Cool! These boarding games look like a lot of fun, no surprise though that the FW rules need a little extra work. Love the idea of using Space Hulk corridors. How many points per side were you using?
ReplyDeleteYeah they were a bit different. we played 1000pt games at roughly 25 models a piece as suggested. It worked quite well but we think a killteams approach might work better.
ReplyDeleteAs for the spacehulk corriders it wasnt bad but I think if we do this again it will be with custom made corridors, the spacehulk ones were a tad too small and limiting even though we used the whole board.