Goodbye for now...

So, after only a few short months, Cast Dice is going to be shutting down in its current format. I'm getting involved in a new, collaborative blog project what will cover all things gaming. I'll post more information when it becomes available.

Let me tell you about my character(s): L5R edition

I return again after too long a hiatus. I've come to realize that weekly or bi-weekly updating is probably not the best option for me. I go through periods of intense creativity where I want to write, and then I direct my creative efforts elsewhere.

Before our main topic, a quick painting update: all the Wolf Guard (terminators and power armour) are finished along with the Grey Hunters. My terminator Wolf Lord is nearing completion along with my newly wolfified Vindicator and another Rhino. I'll definitely have the Vindicator and Wolf Lord done in the next week as I prepare for a fast approaching tournament. I plan to post a painting report and a tournament summery toward the end of the month.

Anyway, on to the main topic! A while back, I gave a review and overview of The Legend of the Five Rings Role Playing Game. My campaign at the time pettered out due to a number of player drop-outs but this week, the world of Rokugan has made a triumphant return. To begin the campaign, I intend to give a sense of closure to the unfinished tale in the earlier game. Exactly how... I can't say as I don't want my players getting too much of a preview. I'll talk more about the story in a future post; for now, I want to introduce the PCs.

Doji Hitomi is a young but promising Crane Clan courtier. She fits her clan very well and is viewed as a rising star in the court at Kyuden Doji. She is ambitious and values the tenets of honor and courtesy. She is leaving the comforts of the courts for the first time which gives her a much need break from emotional difficulties.

Isawa Hitori is a gifted Shugenja of the Phoenix Clan . He is tied to a bitter marriage and he travels the Empire to avoid is troubles at home. He is less of a pacifist than most in his clan and the Kami of Fire come easily to his call. He seems to be seeking something in his travels though he could not say what it is. He values honesty above all other virtues.

Kitsuki Mikage is an experienced investigator and representative of the Dragon Clan. He is skilled in a wide range of topics from astrology and bonsai to kenjutsu and shogi. He is yet unmarried though he speaks quite highly of his family, at great length if one is not careful. He has been unable to find inner peace for some time and seeks out wine and women to replace it.

Togashi Yamada is a tattooed monk of the Dragon Clan. He has a way with words; one that most would describe as off-putting at best. He began following Mikage without a word and responds only with riddles when asked for his reasons.

Tsuruchi Juri is a brash archer of the Mantis Clan fresh from his Gempuku. His is a skilled hunter and the Air Kami guild his bow.

The characters have been pulled together by Omen, the enigmatic Oracle of Jade. The Oracle bid them to travel to the contested Yasuki provinces. He gave the two pieces of advice: "Let Bushido be your guide," and "The will of the Heavens will be made clear."

Mustering the Warriors of the Fang

So, please indulge me in looking at another picture post. This time, I'll show you the foot-slogging half of my painted Space Wolves. Also, I tried to do some more interesting formating with the text and images last week and it didn't work out. I will not be trying the same this week.

Grey Hunters are the core of any solid Space Wolves army and I've spent quite a lot of time building and painting them. I've finished painting 20 so far and plan to do at least another 10. Here's a number of photos of the ones I've painted so far. Since taking the photos, all the models have been based with the same sand and stones mixture.




The Wolf Standards are not magnetized but they are set on pegs so I can remove them for storage and to indicate when they have been used. Now if only I could remember to re-roll my 1s when using them...







To show which Grey Hunters were afflicted with the Curse of Wulfen, I painted facial tattoos in read and gave them wolf skull shoulder guards instead of the squad markings.












I finally settled on the Great Company symbol for my army, which was the personal heraldry of Russ. While painting it freehand doesn't create a perfectly uniform look, I draws a lot of attention.



To lead the Grey Hunters (and other squads) I've build and painted a number of Wolf Guard veterans. These were the first two finished. I'm currently working on several more with a variety of armaments.







Wolf Scouts are experts at operating behind enemy lines and destroying parking lots full of vehicles. They have been an invaluable asset on the table. This is the first of two squads; the second is still unpainted. I have since converted the bolter into a melta to make the squad even more effective.





While missile launcher Long Fangs have become a staple of most Space Wolf forces, I prefer to use a mix of weapons. That being said, I have another two missile launchers in progress with the intention of running 3 missile launchers with 2 heavy bolters or lascannons depending on the points value and/or my opponent.

I've made a number of minor conversions in an attempt to make the weapons more Space Wolf-y.














Finally, to lead my army, I've painted a Wolf Lord/Wolf Guard Battle Leader and one of the ubiquitous Rune Priests. The WGBL is fully magnetized so I can swap the weapons load-out as needed. I'm and currently working on finishing up some of the options and will post all of them at some time in the future.













The Rune Priest is pretty much the standard model, though I have swapped the totally unnecessary plasma pistol for a bolt pistol. Seriously, if your shooting with a pistol instead of using a psychic shooting attack, you're doing something wrong.

At the moment, I have quite a lot on my painting table or in the queue to be painted. My current project is a unit of Wolf Guard Terminators kitted out for close combat with magnetized options along with a Wolf Lord in terminator armour. I also have another unit of scouts (though they're still headless); I hope to make them a bit more wolf-y than the fist group. As I said before, I'm going to paint another 5-10 Grey Hunters to fill out my troops and 2 more missile launchers.

After finishing those models, I have a converted Wolf Priest to finish along with a unit of Blood Claws (which will be fielded as counts-as Grey Hunters). I have two Wolf Guard with power fists and multi-meltas to lead my scouts in the works as well. Early next month, I hope to fill out my motor-pool with a Vindicator and a third Rhino/Razorback (I plan to use the Whirlwind kit so I can use the missile-platform in combat patrol games). My hope is to have all of this finished by the end of the summer, hopefully just in time for a new wave of Space Wolf models (I'm holding out for plastic Thunderwolf Cavalry).

Happy New Year! Fear the fury of Fenris!

A new year is upon us! This year, I have a few gaming related New Year's resolutions. First, I am going to continue updated my blog. I plan to update at least three times a month. Second, I'm going to commit to finishing my Space Wolves army before the end of the summer. I got a lot of work done on it in the final months of 2010 and I have a lot of work ahead of me. I'll be posting photos of models as they are completed. Finally, I'm going to try to expand my customer base for commission work. Part of that will be though posting photos on this blog and part of it will be spreading the word in the local community. My current commission project is an Ultramarines Techmarine, which should be finished in the next couple of weeks.

So, to start off the year, here's some of what I've done with my Space Wolves army...

I've always been a big fan of dreadnoughts and I wasn't going to miss the chance to convert and paint a few for my Space Wolves. This one has a number of conversions to match the themes of the Space Wolves army. First, I know I wanted to replace the front plate with a Space Wolves shield and change the fist into claws. Neither task took a lot of conversion work and were finished quite quickly. Later, I added a wolftooth necklace to the close combat arm since it seemed a bit bare.









The next round of conversion work on the dreadnought involve alternate weapon options. I added a number of bits from the Space Wolves troops sprue to the missile launcher arm.

For the las cannons, I wanted to do something unique. Using the dragon heads from the Chaos Predator, I began sculpting wolf heads to decorate the gun barrels. Finally, I decided to replace all the skulls across the whole dreadnought with wolf skulls. It was a fairly simple conversion using green stuff. You can see one example on the las cannon arm.




As a center piece model for the army, I spent quite a while working on my Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer. I spent several weeks before I started painting cleaning the pieces, figuring out how to magnetize all the options and doing some pre-assemble. Before finalizing the assembly process, I spent several hours painting the interior. You can see one shot of the instrument panel below. Unfortunately, I made a mistake in the assemble and it is now very difficult to see the detail work that went into it.













I wanted to give the melta gunner a wild, windswept look so I used one of the Blood Claws heads. I figured, the guy who sticks his head out of the battle tank to operate a pintle mounted heavy weapon is probably a bit crazed. As with the dreadnought, I resculpted all the skulls into wolf skull except the ones in the Adeptus Mechanicus symbols.




By the time I finished panting the hull, I felt it looked a bit flat with such wide areas of blue-grey. I decided to add some freehand work to make it more interesting.

Below, I've added a few more shots of the Land Raider for your enjoyment. Next week, I'll post shots of my Grey Hunters, Long Fangs, Scouts, Wolf Guard, and Rune Priest. I'll also follow it up with a list of what I plan to finished painting as part of my New Year's Resolution.

List Building for Advantage

This week, I'm going to talk a bit about something that comes up for every miniatures gamer: list building for advantage. Now, I don't mean building strong tournament lists or taking the strongest net-list. In fact, what I want to talk about probably wouldn't work well at tournaments at all. I'm going to use my Space Wolves for Warhammer 40,000 in my example but this kind of list building can take place in any miniatures game (or even card games with a deck-building element).

Rather than continuing to talk in broad generalities, I'm going to present a situation. One of my regular opponents has recently started a new army (Tyranids). He asked me if I wanted to play a 1000 point game. I agreed and now I need to make my list.

Most of the time, I would take my generic list at the assigned points value. I have lists for 1500, 1750, 1850, and now 2000. Each game, I tweak them a bit (mostly fiddling with the load out for my Wolf Guard) but the majority of the list stays the same. This is where I run into a problem; I don't currently have a 1000 point list. Looking at things in a black and white perspective, I have two options: I can make a generic 1000 point list including melta guns, scouts with melta bombs, etc (which loses a lot of effectiveness); or I can load out my list with flamers and mech (which is very effective against 'nids).

Players face this choice almost every time they schedule a friendly game. Should I bring my all comers list or specialize my list specialized to my opponent? Ultimately, I chose something between the two extremes. I took a list without Wolf Scouts (a usual staple of mine for their anti-tank capabilities) but I didn't overload on 'nid killing elements. I expect my opponent to do the same; don't take units that are going to be useless against your opponent but don't be a jerk either.

I've been on the receiving end of a list designed specifically to kill my army. I was my first game with my Space Wolves and I was playing against IG. It was a small game, so my options were limited. I put together a fairly standard list and while I would have liked to take meltaguns, I didn't because I wanted to play WYSIWYG. On the other hand, he took 3 veterine squads in chimeras with plasma guns to cut down my marines. To make matters worse, his plasma vets were all proxied meltaguns and grenade launchers. I was not an enjoyable game (though the list was not the only problem).

So, to sum up my thoughts: list building for advantage is OK as long as both players are on the same page. If you want to play WYSIWYG, agree with your opponent; if you want to run the hardest list you can, let your opponent know ahead of time. If you're unsure what your opponent expects, follow one simple rule: don't be a douche bag.

"Let me tell you about my character!" Dark Heresy Edition

I have recently had the fortunate and exciting opportunity to play in a Dark Heresy campaign. For those of you who don't know, Dark Heresy is one of three roleplaying games made by Fantasy Flight Games set in the universe of Warhammer 40,000. All three games (the others being Rogue Trader and Deathwatch) use a fairly simple percentile system. In Dark Heresy, you take on the role of a cell of acolytes in the service of the Inquisition and root out and kill the enemies of the Imperium. I'll give a full review of all three games in a later entry.

So, on to my character. I know this is a bit self indulgent but I need to write up my character description and backstory and finish a blog post so here's two birds with one stone. I promise I won't do this very often. My character uses material from the core book as well as from The Inquisitor's Handbook.

First, the mechanical details. My character is using the Arbitrator careers and the Noble background. He's quick-witted, perceptive, and sociable. He can handle a gun quite well but he's less skilled with a blade. His name is Severus. Now, onto the story...

Severus was born into a noble family tied to the Inquisition. His family descended from a planet bound branch of a Rogue Trader dynasty. They had be responsible for managing the Rogue Trader's vast mercantile network in the Calixis Sector including a cold trade in Eldar and other xenos artifacts. Some of the artifacts were discovered by the Ordo Calixis and eventually traced back to the noble family. In a series of events not entirely clear to Severus, the family was bound to the Inquisition by a tithe of souls born into the family. Every 33 standard years, one of the family's scions would be sent to serve the Holy Ordo.

Several generations later, Severus, along with all his siblings and cousins, were groomed for potential service to the Ordo Calixis. On the appointed date, lots were drawn and Severus was chosen. Stripped of his family name, he was sent to the Inquisitorial headquarters on Scintilla Prime. There, he underwent extensive purity testing before being declared fit for service. While he has been chosen by or assigned to one of the Inquisitors, he has not yet met his new lord.

Severus is a young but ambitious man. He believes in the Imperium of Man and in the mission of the Inquisition to keep it safe. He is pragmatic but he would not turn to heresy even if it served the greater good. While he has not been formally introduced to the faction, he shares the belief of the Amalathians; the Imperium must be preserved and the status quo maintained. He is, however, somewhat agnostic regarding the ultimate divinity of the God Emperor.

Severus's highest ambition is to join the ranks of the Ordo Calixis as an Inquisitor. If he proves himself as an Acolyte, those above him will take notice and his advancement will be swift. He believes that he is superior to the vast majority of the masses by birth but he understand that all in the Imperium service a purpose.

He is fit though his isn't particularly tall. He has an angular face and a well-trimmed goatee. His hair is dark, as are his eyes. He tends to dress in fine but functional clothing and prefers darker colors (though usually not black). He enjoys fine amasec and would like to have the opportunity to begin collecting rare or unusual bottle of it. Unfortunately, his current itinerant service to the Ordo prevents him from doing so.

Well, there you have it. Once Dark Heresy character ready to step into the line of fire in the service of the Inquisition. I'll have to tell you a bit about his companions in a future entry. Now, off to the game.

Ninjas, Pirates, Samurai: Legend of the Five Rings RPG

One of the games I run regularly is the Legend of the Five Rings (abbreviated L5R) Rleplaying Game. The game is set in Rokugan, a fantastic empire based loosely on the Warring States period of feudal Japan. Created by AEG, the game world has more than 15 years of development and the RPG is in its 4th edition. AEG also produces a card game of the same name which is also set in Rokugan.

Rokugan is an extremely rich setting filled with story opportunities. There are several central conflicts in Rokugan. The first, and most important, is the struggle between the honorable Empire the the corrupt and twisted power of the Shadowlands. From the beginning of the Empire's history, the people of Rokugan have been threatened by the oni (demons), goblins, ogres, and corrupted samurai (known collectively as the Lost) directed by the dark god . Periodically, the forces of the Shadowlands muster and test the strength of all Rokugan. Additionally, there is significant conflict between the Great Clans of the Empire.

The basic assumption in running the game is that the players will be members of the samurai caste that make up the Great Clans of the Empire. Standard characters can be bushi, the traditional image of a samurai warrior, though often with a twist based on their clan; shugenja, powerful spellcaster-priests who draw their power from the elemental spirits of Rokugan; and courtiers, who represent their clans in the courts of Rokugan. Each of the eight Great Clans has their own variation of the standard character types, sometimes more than one, which allows tremendous diversity even among characters of the same type. For example, a Kakita samurai from the Crane Clan is a perfect duelist, a Hida samurai of the Crab Clan is a heavily armored demon slayer, and Tsuruchi samurai from the Mantis Clan is a master archer. Additional schools allow you to play characters ranging from ninjas, to master smiths, to pirates.

Clan is probably the most important factor in playing a character in L5R. Each clan has at least four character schools (like classes in other RPGs) each with a unique set of techniques as well as four or more families with different bonuses. The clans and families also carry a great deal of personality; each clan exemplifies a particular archetype and the family focuses on one facet of that archetype or creates an interesting contrast to it. The history of Rokugan lays out rivalries and alliances between the clans as well, producing and interesting social dynamics for characters to follow or eschew.

Doji Seo, Samurai of the Crane Clan as seen in the core rulebook.

The character possibilities don't stop with the Great Clans, however. Using the core rulebook, you can also create characters from the Minor Clans, monastic orders, Imperial families, or even ronin (outcast samurai). A particularly unusual group could even play tainted Lost characters seeking the overthrow of the empire. The first supplemental book, Enemies of the Empire, also gives details for playing the rat-like Nezumi and the snake-like Naga.

What I think makes L5R (both the RPG and CCG) really amazing is the interactive and evolving world. With more than 15 years of story development, Rokugan has seen three Imperial dynasties, countless internal wars and conflicts, and innumerable existential threats. All of these events were influenced by player input and game results over the years. Long time L5R fans and players get a real sense of ownership of the world. There are three previous editions of the roleplaying game, as well as a number of novels, which flush out the world in tremendous detail.

For L5R (and for other games in the past) AEG utilizes the roll and keep system. Players roll a certain number of 10 sided dice based on their attributes and skills, and add up a smaller number of dice in an attempt to reach a particular target number based on the difficulty of the task. It is an extremely elegant system which fits the setting perfectly. Combat can be easily modified to suit the style of the group, but the basic assumption makes it fast and deadly (most combats last 2-3 rounds).

The core rulebook is beautiful and full of artwork depicting the world and people of Rokugan. The pages are decorated with Japanese style watercolor painting and printed in full color. There is so far only one additional book in fourth edition, the aforementioned Enemies of the Empire, which gives details on many of the threats the Empire faces. Future planned supplements include a book with more information on the Imperial Families, one that goes into greater depth on each of the Great Clans, and a book that details the various historical periods of Rokugan.

If you want more information on L5R in general, you kind find the official website here.

In a future post, I will go into more detail on the L5R game I run as well as include the thoughts of some of my players. I was hoping to include some of that in this post, but this weeks game session was unfortunately cancelled. I also hope to have a large picture post of my newly finished Space Wolves in the near future.

Until next time, keep on rolling dice.

All images in this post are the property of AEG and are used without permission.