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I'm of the opinion the only remaining way to tolerate 40k is via Kill Team, Herald of Ruin (same thing), or Necromunda. Having never played epic except for the computer interpretations, I have no real opinion on that one. For Fantasy, it's basically Mordheim or nothing (so maybe warmaster I guess?). There used to be a Fantasy combat patrol, but they never updated the rules to my knowledge, and we're now stuck with AoS, so I don't care about that (unless someone updated it to 8th/9th age I guess?). Otherwise, I'd rather go learn Infinity, or play Battletech.
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Sep 9, 2016 08:40
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RE: Trek talk, my favourites would be the Enterprise-A, the Enterprise-E, Voyager, and the Defiant (in roughly that order) in regards designs of the ships. The -A really is just kinda nifty, while the -E is streamlined, and looks like an arrow shape. Voyager looks a little goofy, like a space duck, but it's kind of okay for all that, and the nacelles move, which I thought was a nice touch. The Defiant is a give no fucks fighter craft writ large, which totally gels with how different DS9 is from everything else as well. The reboot hull is a design that I've never decided if I thought it was kinda cool, or goofy as poo poo. It's like it tried to mash up the TOS Enterprise, with the -A, and then slap chrome hubcaps on top for reasons. The -D just looks increasingly bad the more I look at it, which is funny because it has an awesome captain who gets better the more you watch him (read: the first couple seasons of TNG aren't as great as later ones because Roddenberry was pretty much just redoing a lot of his TOS work all over again with new tech). The -C hull is sort of nice though, and I wish we could have seen more of it. It's like a less goofy -D. All that aside, I'd still be hard pressed to accuse Star Trek designs of being better than Star Wars, BSG, or Homeworld (although the -E came pretty close, for my money). Sadly I'd accuse Battletech's aerospace designs of being reasonably worse in most cases than any of the above, as for my money, most of the aerospace I've seen so far largely all ended up being goofier than Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers type stuff. Of course I've mostly just seen the aerospace art for stuff up to 3050 or so, so perhaps newer art may have improved on this.
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Oct 7, 2016 09:45
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Given that, in general, I actually like most of BT's goofy art style (I like Macross also, so this isn't a stretch to begin with), I figured I'd give Sarna a skim, put my money where my mouth is. Here's the list of BT fighters I'd call good: Chippewa Corsair Cutlass?? Firebird?? Koroshiya? Morgenstern Picaroon Poignard Yun Wusun?? Typhoon striga sparrowhawk?? shikra shade schrack sagittarii sabre rusalka rondel Anything with a question mark next to it is one I'm unsure about. So I guess pre-3050 there's a small amount, but most of what I'd consider good ends up in the more modern bits of work. I've yet to comment on stuff like dropships, jumpships, or warships though. On a more thread related (vaguely) topic, I've tried Infinity, and I'm going in on Ariadna Caledonians. It's like Necromunda, but without true LOS rules. And a lot of rules for things like camo. One of our resident Infinity gamers at the local gaming club has joined a Necromunda campaign playing spyrers (I was controlling Van Saars, and it cost me 7 dudes to take down one Orrus, just because he actually had an armour save - this wouldn't have been an issue in infinity). He seems to have mixed feelings about it, but is enjoying it so far. And thanks to having lasguns, I was able to thoroughly abuse pinning rules for most of the game to keep his other (sadly only half-molested) Orrus temporarily at bay. GW rules are seriously hosed up. I'm convinced Infinity is the better ruleset, but lacking in a Necromunda-style campaign game, which leaves me playing both to cover both bases. If I can ever manage to get some cash together for Deadzone, and that turns out to have a better campaign system than Necromunda, *and* a better ruleset, I am totally going all in. Once I pick a faction.
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Oct 7, 2016 14:40
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Iceclaw posted:The issue with campaign rules is that they must not cripple losers/favour winners too much, lest the campaign devolve into a bunch of death/win spirals. Having played Mordheim as well, I agree with this. In Mordheim I suffered from a wierd death spiral (I'd lose games a lot, and then have a semi decent post-game, with the exception of having to replace the henchmen here and there). In Necromunda, I feel it's a little kinder (barely), as It's all heroes, and no henchmen, so you're more likely to have interesting things happen. But in both cases, once one player has a tearaway, everyone else is left playing catchup, or has to do some really sneaky poo poo to rebalance the scales. Even with the community edition rules. You need an active guy controlling the campaign and setting limits to fix GW's bullshit for it to really work. Also a degree of self-awareness and some degree of "I will try to win but not be an rear end in a top hat about it" from everyone involved. Which you'd think would be a given 
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Oct 7, 2016 15:14
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Yeah, in this campaign I'm the Van Saar player, and my first round opponent was the Spyrer player. Armour saves are basically god in this game, and lasguns are the best gun ever. The campaign group is 7 people, and we play by rounds rather than just playing as many games as we want. So we'll probably play enough rounds to fight eachother either once or twice, and then finish up with a mega game. The campaign organiser decided it that way so we wouldn't have a runaway gang by the end of it. We're also using the community rules, rather than the original rules or LRB stuff. I've got to admit, I've played Van Saars for years, and I've mostly been on the losing end, usually only barely staying positive (or sometimes reasonably lucky) on the post-game stuff, while my dice luck during an actual game is horrific - case in point, that first round game. I managed to jam a shotgun, a lasgun, an autogun, and nearly jammed a few other guns too, failed repeatedly to kill the weakest melee character my opponent had with my chainsword/plasmapistol leader (before he got taken out of action, having killed precisely no-one), and repeatedly flesh wounded one Orrus, but failed to actually down it repeatedly due to the armour those things have. I only "won" by taking the *other* Orrus out of action with a lucky poo poo from my only remaining ganger's lasgun, while my heavy somehow duelled my opponent's Yeld to a standstill. He failed the bottle roll, while I avoided bottling. I "won", and promptly got 5 credits for my troubles from my only ganger capable of checking territories, having rolled a 1 on the dice for my only dice-roll territory. Most of my gang somehow survived, although I now have a frenzied/stupid juve, and I got a couple levelups for one ganger and the headwounded juve. My leader now has flak armour though. My opponent got plenty of experience, and levelled up lots of characters - the one Orrus guy I took out went from random to super tough melee death blender thanks to his exp boosts from murdering my guys. Necromunda is apparently both fun, and terrible, all at once. Armour is OP?
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Oct 7, 2016 15:58
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spectralent posted:I checked and they're OOP and now I'm sad You're not the only one. If I could find a source for "good" or at least approximately decent sci fi tanks in that general style, I might put some cash out for one or two. As it is, all I can think of is to try to think of a way to pick the least offensive tank hull (Chimera? No?) and start bashing it into other things. Of course given that DO NOT GIVE GW MONEY, that either means ebay, or never wasting my time or money on the idea in the first place, and just enjoying my new infinity ariadna SAS CRAP cheese force of caledonians (I'll consider the USARF as well because devil dogs, and some basic troopers that have actual armour).
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Oct 13, 2016 09:35
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On a semi-related note, what 28mm scale tanks/vehicles are there that are both good, and reasonably tanky as per the previous threads tank discussion? Are there any that could conceivably hold 10 (or more) 28mm dudes from any given range, to act as APCs? Or are we entering the realms of just saying gently caress it, and buying reasonably scaled airfix tanks (my implied question here being which scale to purchase such tanks at)? So far, my quick searchs via google have led me to dead (Old Crow), or otherwise questionable (pig iron ironside?) tank sources for specifically sci fi tanks at 28mm (The Ironside is a brick that would probably fail completely as a tank, but comes with the dubious improvement of looking like it could actually stand a chance of containing ten marines/guard/neckbeards without too much difficulty).
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Oct 13, 2016 11:14
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lilljonas posted:You can look for 1:48 scale tanks if they are to go with heroic sized 28mm miniatures. Or hell, if you're looking for things to go with 40K style minis, you could go directly to 1:35, and the number of available kits increase thousandfold. I was considering this - I could probably give them enough 40k bits strapped to the top to confuse the average 40k player or "official" focussed employee/grog, while still leaving the model looking like something that is not crap. This link is turning up some amusing ideas though - as is sticking 1/35 into the search bar also. http://hlj.com/search/go?w=1%2F48 I gave the Gates of Antares vehicles a quick look as well, but honestly the aesthetic that line is using is mostly a bit miss more than hit, really. There's all of three hover vehicles that are examples of "close but no cigar" in miniatures design, while the rest aren't even that good, for my tastes. Probably still a better game than 40k though? E: On a similar note, what 1/35 scale real tank would be a good replacement for the IG chimera, if I'm going to go the airfix kitbash route? I'm not really "up" on my tanks in terms of good APCs. mcjomar fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Oct 13, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 12:15
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Yeah, that's a pretty good piece of work - I'd totally fight against that, because it's awesome. Ok so my quick google-fu suggests the M113A2 makes for a reasonable rhino replacement, while the russian BMP-2 or -3 would be an acceptable (after conversions) Chimera replacement. The Phobos (aka, rogue trader) land raider hull looks like it might be able to manage a reasonable number of troops inside the hull, but that's eyeballing the one I managed to rescue and repair for a tenner from a games show/day type thing at a second-hand stall. I'm thinking I'll want to get shot of my old vindicator and predator on ebay (they're the old Mk1 hull, rather than the M113 inspired Mk2 hull) and replace them with more reasonable tank hulls. The treads on the Mk1 would only really work on polite flat surfaces, which makes the original rhino hull worse (yes that's possible) than the current hull. Which is a small pity because I have a nostalgia-based soft spot for that thing. I'm still selling them on ebay though because I want to get at least some cash back. mcjomar fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Oct 13, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 12:42
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I've been thinking of taking that attitude with my own minis. Like, taking the 5Men In Normandy (Now in the new edition on rpgdrivethru it's 5 Men At Kursk!) ruleset, and then throwing my imperial guard into the ring as suitable minis to play with. Possibly against someone running traitor guard, chaos cultists, eldar guardians, dark eldar raiders, tau pathfinders, etc etc etc. Ditto Warpath or Firefight, or maybe even Deadzone if I ever get around to it. Maybe Infinity, for shits and giggles, if I can find suitable and comparable units that my GW minis could stand in for. (Marines could be PanO, or maybe the nomad HI guys, for example, and guard make excellent grunt-level troops for ariadna, say, or just about any human faction, really). And I don't know poo poo about Anatares, other than that the minis aren't inspiring at all to me, but maybe the rules are good? I like Infinity rules (they remind me of an alternative Necromunda, really), and I like battletech's initiative, and alternative movement rules, for example (also used by GW, sort of, for LotR, albeit in a limited and GW-style manner, sadly). 5Core rules also seem interesting for small scale stuff, so we'll see how that pans out. So, models question: Bolt Action 28mm, if I want to get a US Airborne trooper carrying a sniper rifle, are the parts from other plastic box sets in the US range compatible? Could I grab the sniper from the standard US Infantry plastic box, and throw it onto one of the plastic minis from the US airborne box? And does anyone have/know of a good/thread recommended trip report for painting/building the Bolt Action minis?
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Oct 17, 2016 09:45
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Just a note, but the 5Core system also includes a sci-fi version called 5 Parsecs which largely works the same way as core I think (again, don't have the rules, except for an old version of 5 Men In Normandy PDF, so can't really give a real trip report yet). The 5 Core system could be a good Kill Team replacement maybe(?), if you don't feel like using GW or the Heralds of Ruin work.
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Oct 17, 2016 10:56
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Ilor posted:
This is the best/worst thing about getting away from GW. On the one hand, GW got money (hopefully back when GW were less poo poo) for whatever was bought. On the other hand, the amount of stuff owned means you can easily play other rulesets without necessarily needing to burn money into getting minis for a ruleset that may or may not be horrific poo poo (or in some cases, without needing to get minis at all, especially if you don't like the "official" minis in the first place). This very readily covers my current situation as it is. Though I may want to keep some amount of GW stuff, as my local club is very heavy on the GW stuff, and light on everything else. Thankfully there are people who play infinity, wangs, historicals, specialist games, warmahordes, etc, so I can enjoy that stuff quite easily instead.
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Oct 17, 2016 12:33
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In terms of female guard, all that's available is the catachan grenade launcher - not-vasquez - or the out of print female guard from the rogue trader era, which you can still find if you dig through ebay. Otherwise it's off to victoria lamb I guess. You can grab the escher minis as well, but they're expensive on ebay as it is. I can't really think of much else in terms of GW female guard. If GW fixed that it might help them. Didn't know they'd added female tau to the new fire warrior boxes though. That's... good, I guess? Interesting that they've decided Tau don't have quite the same degree of gender dimorphism, but in a sense it's also kind of nice. If only they'd apply that level of thought (or pleasant accident) to the imperial factions.
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Oct 18, 2016 09:50
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Dale-Taco posted:All this talk about female imperial guard troops made me wonder what they would look like if GW actually made them. Oh... Wait... miniskirts Rogue Trader era female Imperial Guard:       This is the full extent of what they did during Rogue Trader. That's it for the ladies. You can still stumble over them on ebay occasionally. E: What a great example http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Games-Workshop-Warhammer-40k-Imperial-Guard-Commissar-Female-Astra-Militarum-/301997402541 mcjomar fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 09:15
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GW is truly impressive! Is there nothing they cannot make shittier? Their efforts in loving up everything they touch are truly amazing. They are world leaders in screwing up as much as possible! Simply the best! At being the worst! Better (worse) than all the rest. EDIT for content: Thanks to my starting to sell off my GW crap, I've now gotten myself my first Ariadna sectorial pretty much complete. Next up with whatever money I can make off my left over GW fantasy, 40k, and lotr stuff, I'll get a USARF set, possibly the army box. mcjomar fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 09:19
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RE: star wars chat, for old EU I mostly only thought the X-Wing novels were good (and maybe the thrawn stuff, in limited quantities). And even then it was mostly Allstone stuff, because the Wraiths books were where Star Wars didn't take itself seriously at all (except for the occasional emo bit) and suddenly it's good because it blatantly accepted that Star Wars is dumb. On the other hand, I, Jedi is a book that (against all forms of common sense) exists and was published. I've not read any of the New Jedi Order crap yet, but I'm sure it's going to be about as impressive as all the prequel novels, and the stuff that was published before Empire was a thing. For new EU, I've not watched Clone Wars, but Rebels was pretty good (what I saw of it anyway), for a kids show. Star Wars just needs to stop taking itself seriously, sort out the Force related stuff so it isn't written as bullshit as it has been, and then just run with it, and we'll suddenly have good Star Wars again. Especially if people read from the ESB playbook, rather than the RotJ one. I doubt that will happen, of course, given recent trends, but I guess anything is possible and I might be pleasantly surprised.
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Nov 15, 2016 10:26
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NTRabbit posted:They just put up a first beta of the GCPS faction for Deadzone on the mantic blog, to get an initial round of public playtesting. This is now my biggest reason to buy in for deadzone. The other factions were sort of okay, but the way those look in the blog is absolutely my sort of thing for that sort of game. Forget rebs, or the totally-not-space-marines. These guys are the way forward.
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Nov 23, 2016 10:24
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Given that deadzone is about the have Mantic-Totally-Not-Guard added as an army choice (and possibly for the warpath thing also?), can I get away with playing the game using any of my GW-Guard that I still happen to like the sculpts of, using them as the GCPS standard army guys in Deadzone, seeing as I'm not a fan of the GCPS "Not Marines" lookswise and I'm not sure (yet) how I'll feel about the aesthetics of the GCPS "Not-Guard"? In wargame startup talk, costs wise, Battletech is currently a mixed bag. The "current box" set gives you 24 plastic minis (plus two "bonus" minis). At launch, whenever they do a run, the official price is something like $50 for the minis, some gaming mats to play them on (hex based), dice, rulebooks, record sheets for recording the damage your little plastic robits take, and some flavour stuff. Pencils are on you to get, but that's not exactly going to kill you. As usual, when these box sets run out, the prices get hiked to stupid levels, so you're stuck waiting around until the next run of intro boxes. In the meantime, they sell 'em at 4 minis a box, at $20 a set (on amazon.com - it's a little pricier for me on .co.uk ). The lance packs (usually stuff like a "pursuit lance" or whatever) are usually okay. Basic game rules are free to download, and there's plenty of 3rd party software that even allows you to check out the rules and abilities of all these minis before paying a penny. Megamek, SolarisSkunkWerks, MegaMekLab. Heavy Metal Pro if you want to pay someone for something that's kind of outdated for anything beyond x ingame date. (something like anything beyond 3067 I think). Rules you only "need" Total Warfare, which is about 30-40 freedom bills, but I'd suggest waiting as a new rulebook is currently in development, and you can have plenty of fun playing just with robots using the free rules, rather than worrying about infantry, tanks, VTOLs, aircraft, space-aircraft (aerospace), spacecraft, armoured infantry, WiGEs, artillery, etc etc etc. So, at a core "40k-equivalent, what do I need for a 'tournament' standard fight to play the full game" level of buy in, that's some free rules for just robots only, and $20 for one of the lance packs, and you're good. Above this basic buy in level, most mechs are around $8 average, sometimes less, sometimes more (usually hitting a ceiling of about $15) for a single metal model. This allows you to buy specific sculpts if you really need to go WYSIWYG (you don't, most battletech players don't care, as long as it's obvious what it represents, and you have the correct record sheet for your imaginary robot). There are additional rulebooks - big books for beating people to death with continue to be about $30-40 or so, while smaller stuff is often as not in e-book form for about $15, and occasionally some more for DTF (that's Dead Tree Format). This is a game where the current game devs are still paying for setting changes from the old Dark Ages/Age of Destruction clix that came in with WizKids, and have been working to try and bridge the gap to make the background shifts marginally less terrible. This done, and with fantastic artwork from some people (Xarbala, this includes you, you make me want to buy Marik robots and it's all your fault specifically for being so good at drawing stompy robots), the company is now advancing the timeline again into about 3150 onwards, and from my perspective it looks pretty good. This is what recovering from a lovely End Times looks like when somebody who isn't GW does it. Of course, CGL has its own problems (I hear the CEO is/was an (accused?)embezzler? And there have been issues of people (like fiction writers) not being properly paid?), but management stories are universally lovely anyway. The Battletech computer game coming in 2017 faces none of these issues, however, and looks like it will be cool and good fun times, and is being made by a company/management that appears to have a good track record of delivering on promises, and making things that appear to be good and/or fun. This is a good business strategy apparently. Who knew? It should also be noted that there is a larger, fast paced game - Alpha Strike! which is basically less 40k-Necromunda, and more 40k-3rd edition in terms of pace to play, and Xarbala has often said it is a good and fun rules set - I have yet to play it myself, and I don't know what the buy in is like - the rulebook maintains the usual CGL pricing strategy of about $30-40 for the DTF, and about $15 or so for the e-book copy. Not sure how much it would cost for a suitable miniatures buy in to play it at a suitable (tournament??) level. I'd like to get in a game to test it out sometime, but I'm not sure when that will happen, as the battletech footprint in the UK isn't exactly what I'd call big. EDIT: I forgot. This exists: https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/collections/battletech/products/battletech-touring-the-stars-butte-hold-pdf mcjomar fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 13:05
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Atlas Hugged posted:Mantic pictures These looks pretty okay. They actually look more detailed (and in a way more believable) than the GW equivalent. Okay, sure the heads are a little derpy, but otherwise they're kind of cool. I think I could maybe get used to them? The vehicles also look unterrible. Honestly, if Mantic Warpath/Firefight/Deadzone takes off, I'll totally buy in on these guys as my army for that stuff. I guess I should grab a deadzone rulebook, and maybe a warpath rulebook (when they release it? Have they released it in DTF? and firefight?) as Mantic looks like my not-GW choice right now when I'm not playing with robots.
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Dec 13, 2016 14:13
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HotCanadianChick posted:Hah, I'm tickled pink to see someone mention SSW, surprised it got as popular as it did; the original author is my best friend/former GM/roommate/best man at my wedding. I'll have to text him and let him know people are still using it years after he stopped working on it. And Battletech was my very first tabletop game and introduction into gaming, it's still not a bad system for getting people into wargaming as it still has pretty reasonable balance and the rules aren't a total garbage fire. I use both SSW and the newer MML, because while they're largely similar, I've had a few less bugs with SSW even if it is no longer "in date". On the other hand MML has benefits too (newer tech, and they're getting the interface up to par). It really depends what I'm trying to do. Shadin posted:Seconding this, I love Battletech, warts and all. Building mechs (stats, not models) was always a blast. Thirding, seeing as the intro box set is still available from catalyst after all - although it's the one with the hammerhands on the front so I guess the plastic minis aren't as good as the boxes with the atlas on the front?? (the atlas cover box set had brilliant quality plastic) https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/products/battletech-25th-anniversary-introductory-box-set So I'm a bit sceptical about that copy - I grabbed two of the atlas cover because the plastic was that good.
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Dec 15, 2016 10:48
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I guess I'm only calling it brilliant quality in comparison to all the previous attempts at plastic mechs for CBT use that came before that box set. The intro box set from before the atlas cover tended/tends to have some sculpting/casting issues, and sometimes needs to be reglued, which isn't so hot when you're trying to sell this as a good alternative to x (x being whatever game you're comparing to). I've got a number of plastic CBT minis from various boxes, going back to citytech and unseen, and honestly, this new stuff is pretty drat good in comparison to most of that. The unseen plastics haven't been amazing so far for what I've had when I've dug them up on ebay, and the citytech stuff wasn't too stunning either. The old battlemaster box set wasn't great, and the hammerhands box set was the same plastics IIRC. So when you compare to previous sets, the atlas comes out a firm winner, overall. I'd love to see more of that sort of thing from catalyst.
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Dec 15, 2016 12:31
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What is that, and why does it have a lightsaber?
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Dec 21, 2016 11:56
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