Miniature Monday: Imperial Golden Lions squad finished

Some of you might have seen the first model that I finished for this squad. Well now two of his mates is done as well and the first of my Golden Lions squad is finished. Not much more to say really, I of course painted them like the first model which I was really happy with. And I like the squad even more, next one will probably be in my Blood Beret camo though but that is in the future because this squad is enough for some time.

As always, comments, suggestions or whatever is very much welcome.

Hobby Tools: Upgraded to an Evolution Airbrush

Like two weeks I have tried out some airbrushing for the first time, I deliberately bought a cheap Airbrush because I didn't know If I liked it or not. Well I did, it's so much faster to put down all the base colours. especially for vehicles. But the cheap gun I use (no brand on it, bought from a generic shop here in Sweden) works but not for much more than put down the most basic colours (primer and one base colour). And I want to try it out some more so I early decided to upgrade my Airbrush for a real brand.

After some checking on the Internet and what not I decided to go with Harder & Steenbeck Evolution 2 in 1. Haven't had time to try it out yet but I'm very eager to do so. I also bought some more stuff I needed, new hose, nozzle cleaning kit and a cleaning pot. Now I'm ready to do some more Airbrushing!

The Evo comes in this nice little yellow box

All the stuff I bought now

The old one and the new Evo

How I put down the basic first colours on my models (done with the old airbrush)

First model I Airbrushed, I used blu tac to do the camo on this one.

Guest Article: WZR Deck Building Pt 1: Introduction

Hello and welcome to the first part of my "Warzone Resurrection Deck Building" article series. What I will aim to do in this is explain both basic deck building techniques and some more advanced as I progress. This will probably be a long read, be prepared for this.

Who am I?

I'm a (soon to be) 32 year old swede who has played a lot of games. I'm currently applying to a fast track education in computer gaming with the special focus on level design, tied in with some big developers based among other places, here in Sweden (DICE, Massive Entertainment etc). Currently working inside the education system both as a sort of teachers aide and managing aftercurricular activities at a low to middle grade school.

My gaming career has been long, and began with role-playing games (and later Warzone) when I was 14 years old, progressed to Warhammer when Target Games folded, as well as semi-competitive Magic the Gathering playing when I got older. Computer games and board games have been a constant part of my life since the family got the first 486 PC computer, and SNES before that. I have a huge interest in game design. Gaming mechanics are a puzzle to me, and I like to understand the intention and interaction between them. Games that just "work" based on innovative rules are extra fun to me. On the flipside, games that have convoluted and unneccesarily heavy rules are annoying. I like to try and "break" the ruleset to see what its capable off. I tell you this so you'll understand where I'm coming from examining the card mechanics and interactions between cards and models on the board. Oh, this got longwinded. Moving on.


Why build a deck? Can't I just build an army the way I want to and then just use some of the cards I got with the models?

You can and you should do this! This introduction is not meant to tell you how to play. It's meant to examine how to get the most out of your army and cards when they are working together. The end result is greater than the sum of its parts kind of deal.

Example;

This card on it's on is not very good, unless you are changing weapons from Blast to Plasma, thus giving your Legionnaries some more armour. However, Necromutants have a rule that says;

Quote:

Passive: Black Technology: Necromutants have the ‘Heal 
(8)’ Special Skill against weapons with Type: Plasma.

Now. If we construct our force out of only Necromutants in the Troops slot, and we have three of the "Algeroths Dark Pattern" card, we have a way to make our Necromutants ignore death 40% (8/20) of the time.

Now, lets add a second card into the mix.


With five of these cards as well, we have just now substantially increased the survivability of any auxilliary units we have as well (Stalkers, Razides, the Warlord, Lords etc).
This is what deck building is all about. Finding synergies between different cards and different units that turns the army into a smooth and well oiled machine that performs the way you want it to.


This sounds like something you would do to win at all costs! That's not fun to play against.

Yes. This is somewhat competitive. It is however, in my opinion, fun. By making sure that a larger part of the community knows about deck building, and knows some of the core principles behind it, other people may build armies and decks to match yours. This means that everyone becomes a better player as a result. It also means that matches go faster, and are a lot more exciting. I don't mind losing to a perfectly combined army and deck. Watching such a thing is fun in itself. Plus, it will get me thinking about how I'm going to beat it.


Wont it be down to blind luck on who draws better cards and because of that wins?

Yes and no. Luck is involved, but Prodos has give you tools to modify your chances. Just as everyone can get unlucky and only roll 20s when shooting their weapons, someone can get unlucky and not draw their crucial cards needed to win. However, the laws of probability comes into play here. You have 35 cards, and can include a maximum of 5 of each Tactical card, and 3 of each Strategy and Gear card.

Example: The chance to draw 1 of 3 Strategy cards, when drawing 5 cards (your starting hand) is roughly 40%. If you draw none of these 3 cards, you can dsicard your entire hand to draw 5 new cards. This raises the chance of you having one of those crucial 3 cards in your hand to roughly 65% chance. If you still don't have your card, you can discard cards and draw extra cards for resources.

As the above example illustrates, even though luck is involved, you can modify that luck by including the max amount of the card you are relying on, and ruthlessly discarding cards you don't need in order to get to the ones you need. That being said, the chance (with discarding starting hand in mind) to draw your crucial Strategy Card is about the same as rolling 13 or under on a D20. That is pretty good odds.


A quick note about cards:

Strategy Cards - You can only include 3 of each in the deck. Strategy Cards have a global effect, and can be used in between squad activations. Including the first squad activation. As only one strategy card can be in play each turn, and the person who won initiative has the chance to play first, playing it right away is crucial. Many decks will be built around Strategy Cards as they affect multiple units or the entire battlefield. This means they get exponentially better the more units they affect (the enemies or your own).

Gear Cards - You can have 3 of each in your deck. The only card type that stays during the control phase. Many affect the entire unit, while some may effect one model in the unit only. Playing these early is usually a good idea, as they get more to be used for longer on account of not being removed in the control phase. Exceptions may exist. Remember that gear cards can be played on opposing units. Many of these cards will only be playable on the unit they came with. This is worth remembering. Taking 3 of a Gear Card that affect a unit you only have one of is bad. If the unit gets killed, or you already played the gear card on them, the rest of those gear cards will just clog up your hand.

Tactical Cards - You can include 5 of each of these cards in your deck. These cards are usually played on a unit for a temporary effect that lasts for one round. The bonuses can be both offensive and defensive, and can also be played on either enemy or friendly units. Many of these cards will only be playable on the unit they came with. This is worth remembering. Taking 5 of a Tactical Card that affect a unit you only have one of is bad. If the unit gets killed those cards are dead in your hand.

Basic deck building tips.

*1 Never go above 35 cards in your deck. You want your deck to be as efficient as possible. That means you want as high of a chance as possible to draw the good cards. If your deck is 40 cards rather than 35, you will have a lower chance of drawing the good stuff. Weigh the cards against each other, and cut out all but the very best.

*2 These guides will assume you have the maximum amount of each card you are going to put in the deck. I know that's not how the cards are packaged right now, and I don't know if they ever will be, or if you'll have to buy a second Valerie Duval just to get three of her Bonded Strategy Card, but for theorys sake I will assume you have 3 of each Tactical and Strategy Card and 5 of each Tactical Card.

*3 Look for synergies in both the army and the deck. The above example with Algeroths Dark Pattern is a good show of what synergy is. Generally, it's worse to take cards to make up for a weakness in your army, over taking cards that make you better at what you are already good at. As an example, if your army is shooty, take cards that make you better at shooting over cards that gives a small boost in CC to a unit that is most likely doomed in CC anyway. Except in certain cases as noted in point 4.

*4 Cards that work both ways are great. The DL card "Blood-Lust" gives the entire unit RoF:0 but +1 to RoA. Even if your army is shooty, this card can be used to shut down enemy shooty units that might threaten yours (its primary purpose) but it can also be used to give a shooty unit trapped in CC an unexpected boost (its secondary purpose).

*5 Look at your balance of cards. Did you include only Tactical Cards? Your opponent will play a Strategy Card each turn, probably winning him the game as they are global effects. Too many Strategy Cards? What will you do when your opponent wins the initiative? I can't tell you what the perfect mix is, but I would at least include as many Strategy Cards as there are max amount of game turns. This means that in the extremly lucky scenario where you win the initiative on all turns, you at least have the potential to play a strategy card on each turn, preventing the opponent from doing so.

Final words.

Ok, that was long. Phew. And here I am getting ready for a party. Got stuck with this instead. Hope everyone enjoyed the read and I'm more than happy to accept criticism. If you have any card you would like me to muse about and make a deck from, feel free to post it below. Keep in mind that until we have a full image card list, I will have a hard time building decks from cards I do not own.

Next, in WZR Deck Building Pt2: An entire armylist and decklist built to work together to great extent.

Written by: Anders Hedvall aka Kollar

Battle Report: WZ:R Bauhaus vs. Dark Legion 500 Pts

So I have now played my second WZ.R game ever and this is the first Battle Report I do for the system so bare with me that we probably play a lot of the rules wrong (I have realized plenty of stuff already), but hey that's how you learn right? Also this Battle Report wont be much in depth because of this, and the fact I was a little stressed out during the game and we unfortunately had to end it before the scenario was finished. So on with this then...

As this is mainly a learning kind of game the point allowance weren't as important, but as the Dark Legion starter and Bauhaus starter are kind of uneven we made some changes so here's the lists.

Bauhaus

Warlord:
Angelica Drachen 170 Pts

Troops:
5 Hussars /w 1 Rocket Launcher and Advanced HtH combat training 120 Pts
5 Hussars /w 1 Rocket Launcher and Advanced HtH combat training 120 Pts

Light Vehicle:
1 Vulcan Battlesuit 115 Pts

Total: 525 Pts

Dark Legion

Warlord:
Golgotha w/ Dark Banishment (Dark Summetry) 205 Pts

Troops:
5 Undead Legionnaries w/ 2 Valcheck HMG, Necromutant Squad Commander upgrade 88 Pts
5 Undead Legionnaries w/ 2 Valcheck HMG, Necromutant Squad Commander upgrade 88 Pts

Support:
1 Razide w/ Plaguedealer 75 Pts
1 Razide w/ Plaguedealer 75 Pts

Total: 531 Pts

Scenario Secondary Objective: Vital Information (one of three tokens in the middle of the board could be the the Info, when activated the model who activated it must hold it the whole next turn to win the scenario)

Turn 1
I won the initiative roll and choosed side, I moves up Angelica behind cover and turned to burn three cards to place her Distortion device. Erik moves his undead squad on his left and I move up my right Hussar squad. Using the higher movement  gained by one of Golgothas passive powers his Razide runs behind the cover in the middle. I counter by moving my Vulcan forward ans firing my HMG at him but I roll really poorly and misses all but one shot which is saved by the Razides armour. Not much more happened this turn more than we going forward with our remaining squads. Oh besides the other Razide taking aim at the distortion device but fail to wound it.

Turn 2
Erik gets the initiative and activates Golgotha who does her dark summetry power so the Vulcan don't get any cover from anything. Then it starts with with the Razide in the middle and Vulcan exchanging fire, the Vulcan get one or two SP down (we totally forgot that the Vulcan can "heal" each SP) and the the Vulcan fluff his rolls against the Razide who is still on full wounds. The Vulcan also flips the right most Objective token to see if it's the 'ONE', it isn't though. The Legionnaire helps out and take out one ore two SP:s more on Vulcan, they are spread out though so he is still fully functional. His other Razide runs as fast as he can to the cover in the middle and tries to hide. One of my Hussar squads runs towards the left objective marker and manage to flip it and it is the right one! Now that model just need to hold that objective for the whole next turn. The other Hussar squad goes in the same direction and all of them opens fire against the Razide behind hard cover in the middle but all either fails to hit or to wound it. Dammit those Razides are hard to kill!

Turn 3
I didn't take a picture this turn which is a shame because it was the most eventful one, but I will try to remember everything that was going on. The Vulcan get's more damage from the combined fire from the Legionnaries squad and both Razides, so much that his main weapon explodes. Now I remember the vulcans Life Support System which means I can save a SP taken on a roll of 1-5 on the D20. We decide to take them all now on each SP already taken separately. I fail all but one and it's the one on his main weapon so it is now functional again. And that is awesome because I go forward with him, fires of his flamer killing all in the legionaries unit accept two of the legionaries. And then fires the HMG at thre closest Razide and he get two wounds but is still living. The Razides fires back and now it was to much for the Vulcan and he explodes.

Erik uses the untouched Legionnaires squad to race towards the Hussars holding the objective, and manages to kill the Hussar holding the objective (we forgot about target priority here and it could have saved the poor mans life and me winning the game). A new hussar takes the objective but needs to hold another turn. They respond with trying to kill of the Razide in the middle together with the other Hussar squad fails to do so just taking two wounds of it. Then Angelika in the middle tries to both shoot with her Equaliser handgun and her Neurolash Energy Expulsion but fails to take the last wound of the Razide.

Turn 4
The battles between the the Razide and Hussars continue and they finally manage to kill it off. They get shot in return from the Legionnaires and the Hussar holding the objective gets killed together with the Hussar having the Rocket launcher. The other Hussars responds by killing a couple of Legionnaires but we decided to call the game here because we now understood that with only the one objective to win the game which where very hard to do with it being in open like it where. I also needed to go now as the game took longer than expected for various reasons.

It was crazy, WZ:R is normally a game where guys gets killed left and right. In this game not much was in the deadpiles in the end of the game. Dark Legion: 3 Undead Legionnaires, 1 Necromutant Leader, 1 Razide. Bauhaus: 1 Vulcan, 3 Hussars 

Conclusion
We should have handled the mission better, the one we did now didn't really work well with the small forces we had and how the terrain was laid out. In the next game we will probably have bigger armies and do and real game with a Priority mission and maybe an Secondary mission.

Hopefully we will have all the cards and stuff by then as well, the stat cards really helps actually making it so easy to keep track of your squads equipment, stats etc.

We learned a lot in this game and we discovered a lot of things during and after the game that we had missed out on, like get the gun rules, target priority etc.  And that was the purpose of the whole game, to learn how it plays and hopefully to get Erik into this lovely game as well (which I think we did because he really liked how the game played and is now looking for which army to buy). It was a really fun game but we know it would have been even more fun if we knew the rules better and choose a better Mission to go with the conditions we had. So really looking forward the next game and hopefully it will be against some of the others guys armies instead my own :) Will try to do an bat rep of the next game as well and hopefully a much better one where I don't forget to take pictures. 

Miniature Monday: House Valmonte Distortion Device

Sometimes it's the little things that make that something extra, like tokens for example. In Warzone: Resurrection we have a lot of different tokens, but no models for them (yet at least) so we have make our own and that is really fun in my opinion. 

So when I did the Bauhaus starter the warlord in the box (Angelika Drachen) have this ability to place a Distortion Device on the battlefield; Here's the rules for it:

Active: House Valmonte Distortion Device: ‘Turn to Burn’

3 Resource Cards. Place a 30mm token (counts as 1” high

and Light Cover) anywhere on the battlefield within Angelika’s

LOS. The token has an AV 15 and 1 SP and is hit

automatically in CC. Any Model within 3” of the token

cannot make a Ranged Attack. Only one ‘House Valmonte

Distortion Device’ token may be in play during the Game,

but if it is destroyed, Angelika can place another one. The

token stays in play until its SP is reduced to 0 or owning

Player decides to remove it during any Control Phase.

I of course needed to do this and there will be more tokens in the future, but here's the first one. Anyone that can guess what is is originally?

 

WZ:R: Imperial Golden Lion finished

The first member of my Golden Lions squad is finished. I went with the classic red camo colour scheme despite it not really making any sense in the Venusian jungle theme I have going for my Imperial. It could be explained though with this squad just recently being transferred from an Martian battlezone for example. Or them normally operate in the shadows and darkness so the actual camo don't have much of an impact.

The model was really fun to paint and it was one of the first models where I used airbrush for the initial layers of paint. You can see in the pictures further down how he looked when only painted with an airbrush. I will probably do more airbrush work in the future but I need an better airbrush for that. I didn't paint on the Imperial emblem on his right shoulder pad because I heard rumors about transfers in the future so I hope I can use that instead, the emblem would be a paint to free hand anyway. Hope you like how he turned out.

Unboxing: Warzone Dark Legion Valpurgius

The third of the Nepharite Warlords from the Warzone: Resurrection book is one of the newer models in the range, and he looks awesome. Some changes are made from the orginal artwork and the old model but I must say I really like the new incarnation. So on to the unboxing.

Front cover of the box is the classic Paul Bonner art

The things you get in the box

The main body had fell of the sprue, but no other damage whatsoever

The cloak is looking really awesome

You get six cards, the stat card, two Tactical cards, one Gear card and two Strategy cards

As you could see in the pictures above you get three alternative heads, all which looks really cool. I choose the classic looking on though and can't wait to start and paint him up (I have plenty of other stuff to paint first though). All in all a great kit, almost no moldlines or flash. Just glue him together and your set to go and paint him.