Team Valencia!

How I made the latest base design.

Latest Base Design How-To

 First you take a 3"X4" Ultra-Pro Deck Sleeve

 Next you place it in a paper trimmer with the welded edge closest to the the blad hinge so it gets cut first. The right way to cut it is to bring the blade down quickly as going slow will cause the sleeve to buckle and not cut properly.(I learned the hard way!)

 The two identical photos above show the sleeve cut in half lengthwise. You will note the welded edge on the right side of the remaing sleeve. you wany to cut it off and cut the sleeve to just a hair under 3.5"

 The finished sleeve now looks like this above.

 Now you take some double sided mounting squares, use at least two, and stick them on the base. then you position the sleeve over the base and when its pretty close you press one side down and then the other. You don't want it flush because the weld is almost 1/8" and the card won't fit past that, so you want to place the welded edge over beyond the side of the base. Also note here that I have trimmed the corners from the bottom plastic so it is easier to lift up the edge with your fingernail and insert the card.

And voila, the unit card fits perfectly on top of the base and inside the sleeve and there is plenty of room to write game info on the card without actually marring the card. The bit of welded edge that hangs over the back won't be a problem if the unit is charged in the rear as the other bas will fit neatly underneath it. Two cards back to back would be a slight problem, but since I have never seen that happen in any game it shouldn't be a problem. If it ever does happen you can deal with it amicably I'm sure.

Wuxing v Dwarves

James and I threw down again and with Dwarves v Wuxing we were expecting a grindfest of epic proportions. It turned out nothing like expectations, and it was a very tense affair.

In this picture taken after the first turn you can see top down in the dwarven army you have axemen, spearmen, x-bowmen, two more axemen, and finally dwarven miners backed up by two Ballistae. A pretty Stand and Shooty build. Arrayed agin'em were, from top to bottom, Jun horse archers and a jade dragon then four salvaged with an imperial cav stepping out from their midst, and finally two rocket arrow battery's. James expected me to place my dragon on my left flank and that's where he put the miners with their seven strength. I put it on the other side and got a quick psychological edge. as he figured he was screwed.

A new piece of gaming accessory was tried this session with two enthusiastic thumbs up. It is the EXPO "CLICK" dry erase marker seen in the lower left of the foto. They have a decent tip and they click and retract like a ball point pen. When you retract them they seal up tight and last longer. If you leave one exposed and it dries out,  you can apparently just click it closed and leave it for a day and it will be good to go.

Also the dividers made their reappearance and showed good use.

Dang! Just beyond short range.

The Wuxing line is looking pretty sloppy after only the second turn. I realized after order writing was over that I should have capped the imperial cav at 3.5" instead of just 5" so it would stay with the rest of the line. On turn two I direct controlled them and had them hold their position and gave the salvaged on their right flank a movement mofifier that targeted the Spearmen right in fron tof the imperial cav. This allowed them to cut off the cav's advance and charge the spearmen. I thought this would bode ill as I recalled having the goblin fanatics surround my trolls and thet ended badly, but this worked out really well as will be seen. The left most rocket arrows wiped out the miners at extreme range in two turns, meanwhile the battery to the right, in spite of rolling 6 or 7 dice each turn did only one damage.

On the Wuxing right things get critical. The Horse Archers back out of FR range and the dragon moves ahead, but also is just out of FR range from the Spearmen as seen below.

The Wuxing commander is drinking imperial white tea and the dwarf commander has finished off a bottle of white wine that the Wuxing commander's wife has graciously provided, and is now pressing his engagement with the red. The salvaged are held just beyond FR range and the Dragon charges home. The Horse Archers end up pinching the following turn and finishing off the axemen, who ignore the dragon and take a last swing at the undamaged horse archers leaving them with just one box! In the picture below the horse archers have routed and the axemen have been eliminated.

The turn begins and I rally the Horse Archers and from the left to the right the salvaged charge the axemen, the imperial cav charge the x-bows, the jade dragon charges the spearmen and the horse archers move up to pinch following turn.

Taking a page from Marcus' play book, the dwarves fail a rune card enhanced fear check. The dragon attacks and gets 5 hits! Unfortunately, this was followed by damage dice that needed ones and twos, and only caused one wound, but wait! Fortune favors the bold, and the dragon re-rolls. Holy Crap, four ones and a two!!!

At this point the Dwarves have had enough and surrender. I think it might still have been possible for the dwarves to win, but their commander had had enough. Of course, what is't shown here is the two rocket arrow batteries that were still firing heavy from the Wuxing base camp, so maybe it would have been a vain dwarvish attempt.
Dwarven Heroes - Had to be the miners that went down in two turns but never broke.
Dwarven goats - The ballistae that never justified their points.
Wuxing Heroes - Every last one of 'em.
Wuxing goats - The right hand rocket arrows who merely justified their point cost, and which really paled v the left hand battery which was, verily, the hand of GOD.

Proxy unit template

Here is a template for proxies that I created in paint. This is the height of function over form.

Wuxing v Lizardmen

Here we have the two epic foes facing each other. The Lizardmen have fielded an army of swarmlings, trogs, and a trike. On the right in this foto you will also note a raptor pack. I was trying out the Wuxing faction and so I took a wide variety of units. From left to right I have Fu dogs, Jade Nobles, Salvaged Terracotta Warriors, Wuxing Heavy Cav, Salvaged Terracotta Warriors, Terracotta Swordsmen, Shenzhi Monks with Jun Horse Archers just behind, In the center I also have my Rocket Arrow Battery. Wuxing has nine units to the Lizardmen eight, but Wuxing has the Rocket Arrows stand and shoot, so the main vans of each army are eight units wide

Below you can see the lines have started advancing. The Raptor Pack at the top of the foto is moving out to try and instigate some decisive action. On the Wuxing left the Fu Dogs are seen making for the red die with the ultimate attempt to outflank the Lizardmen. In the foreground can be seen the wine that was consumed during the evening as we are civilized cosmopolitan Generals. Of course, I don't drink, so it was all part of my attempt to boggle my opponents thought processes. Of note before the forces engaged, the Wuxing Rocket Arrows had fired a couple of volleys at the swarminlings in the Lizardmen center and had fairly shredded them! The Jun Horse Archers had caused a point of damage and the Wuxing Heavy Cav had failed to do any damage. Their MC had been capped to 3.5" to match the line, but even with no move and shoot penalty my rolls just failed me there.

And they Clash! This foto is taken from the other end of the table, so now you will note the forces on the other side from the picture above. At the top of the picture you can see the Fu Dogs have reached their objective and turned to face the line. Moving down the line we can see the Jade nobles and the Trog Spearmen have begun what will become a gamelong grindfest which was helped by my EPIC FAIL charge turn dice as captured in the foto below this one. The trikes did heavy damage on the Salvaged Terracotta Warriors, but failed to follow it up with any success. The Wuxing construct's psychological immunity really told in this battle. James took the Lizardmen with the intent of outlasting Wuxing in the beatdown, but he didn't count on the no-rout and he did count on breakdowns, which drained me of CAs, but not as heavily as one might think, and I was able to draw many cards. The rest of the line was a grind untill we reach the flank where my Horse Archers stepped up to the plate and pinched the Raptor Pack that had charged the Monks.

The Raptors go poof and the game should be gravy now as Wuxing rolls up the Lizardmen right flank.

But wait, the salvaged in the center are reduced to fine dust and the Heavy cav gets pinched. The Lizardmen are back in the game! It is worth noting at this point that the Trikes had to take a morale check and if they had failed James would have called the game. It did look for awhile as if the Lizardmen were surely done in. However, in my experience, that usually means the game is going to end with the other player winning :-P

Which very nearly happened as you can see at this end game foto where the Lizardmen have three units (two trogs and a trike) all in the yellow, and Wuxing has the monks with one red box, undamaged Jun Horse Archers, the undamaged Rocket Arrows, and the Jade nobles about to go poof in a pinch.

Well, fast forward a few turns and you have one trog spearmen in the yellow and the Horse archers and Rocket Artillery ready to do in the trogs with relative impunity. It was late and we called a draw even though if we ran it out I would have certainly plnked the Trogs to death and if he had charged the rocket arrows I would have pinched him. One major error was James forgetting to invoke the Saurian Blood thirst on my guys which were in the yellow and red, which was most of the game. That alone would have tipped the scales. Also we had a situation where my units front arc was ahead of a Lizzies side center point and we decided since it was clearly visible he could charge as we culdn't find a rule that said you couldn't do that. If you go through the Final Rush steps it doesn't say clearly anywhere that the target unit has to be in the front arc. I'm sure that in the clearly visible rules it says that, but all that is in the FR section is a reference to the clearly visible rules. As read they make it seem that you could charge in any direction as long as the opponent was in the LOS of the unit. Ultimately, it wouldn't have been that much of a game changer as I could have FR'ed to the side and achieved the ssame success, but it was late and we were tired. Below you can also see James' array of useless cards since he could engage with me.

Here are the Dividers that made a real successful debut this game. The wide one was set to 3.5" and the small one was at 1.25" (L & 1/2S respectively). All movement and range measuring was done with great precision and the cards were not disturbed by the act of measuring. This was the first game where James had used my new bases and he gave them an enthusiatic two thumbs way up! They were quick to slide the cards onto and fulfilled the obligatory mark/erase needs without touching the card. There was so much text on the Rocket Arrow battery that the damage track wasn't under the sleeve, so I just sleeved them conventionally.

I will let James post his Wuxing impressions, but these were mine. Wuxing is a really fun and very interesting faction to play. It feels very different. You have to fix  construct units when they breakdown because otherwise being in the yellow costs you three attack dice and being in the red costs four. They don't rout, which makes them tough, but you still have to expend a CA to repair them or the outcome will not be in doubt. The benefit is you don't get a hole in your line, the drawback is that it will cost you a CA to fix whereas sometimes a regular unit will pass it rout check. I like the Monks and the way they work, James has very strong feelings about them however, not that they are over powered, but that they should cost more. We will see after he plays Wuxing next time. They certainly wouldn't have lasted so long if he had remembered to use bloodthirsty.

Orcs v. Lizards and Fancy New Bits!

 Today we have the 3" x 4" Ultra pro deck sleeves making their debut. As many have remarked, the problem with the perfect fit sleeves is that often, especially with the newer cards, they fit too much. They are hard to sleeve and they can bow and/or bend the cards. Marcus Giegerich came up with the great idea to cut those sleeves in half lengthwise. This solved many problems, but I found that the upper part flapped and so, even though it was the best option with the materials at hand, it was still was less than ideal. Back at the drawing board I came up with the solution you see here. I cut about a 3/4" strip off the bottom and trimmed it to <3.5" and affixed it with a piece of double sided tape. The sleeve covers the damage track and orders circle, which is the area which gets used most. If you still want to sleeve your cards in the conventional way they will still easily fit in the modified sleeve. The board that you see here is 1/8" hard board cut to four 15x18 inch sections duct taped along the 18" side and the felt is held in place by 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. This is the best product I have found to date.

 The battle itself was a 1500 point total warfare gig with no terrain. I was testing a couple new rules and was trying to "control" as many exogent factors as I could. The setup was double-blind, which is one of the cool things you can do if you have a Traumatic Brain Injury. :-) The Goblin Bomb Chucker is the only card which does not fit easily on to the new style bases, but you can make do. The Orc army was composed of 2xSwordorcs, 2xSpearorcs, a Goblin Bomb-chucker, and a unit of Wolfriders.

 The Lizardmen have Trog Warrior, Trog Warrior, Ancients, Trikes, Trog Warrior, with a swarmling bowmen behind.

                             This Battle was fought on our Baby Grand laundry folding table. :-)

 Here is a foto after the first turn. The Lizards moved second so they actually got to move. The orcs are playing S&S and are all on hold. I was playing my own house rule for the GBC which allows them to roll 3d6, but taking a wound if any doubles are rolled. The first turn they rolled doubles so took a wound, which you can see marked off.

 This is the fifth orc turn and you can see that the GBC has taken two wounds and finally fired successfully causing a total of 8 wounds in three turns, the Lizard commander regenerates a wound. The orc commander sent the spearmen into the trogs at the bottom of the pic by changing their SO to Close and did the same thing to the Spearorcs on the other end of the line.

 On the Lizzie turn the lines crashed full on. The Lizzie commander can be seen here refusing the left flank While the Trikes and Ancients pinch the Swordorcs in the center. The GBC keeps the pressure up on the Ancients and the card play is as heavy as can be expected in a 1500 point game.

 And the pinch by the Trikes and the Ancients is having a telling effect, though a profundity of Blue cards kept them from being one shotted.

 Having done enough damage to the ancients the GBC turns its loving ministrations to the trikes be fore they duck out of range and put them in the yellow, they fail the Courage check, but the green card allows a reroll which keeps them in the game (or at least allows them to avoid Disruption, which at this critical point in the game saves them a couple CAs). The Trogs at the top of the screen have finally been eliminated and the wolf riders can be seen closing in on the swarmling bows.

 Bad turn for missile troops. The swarmlings went poof after doing only one damage all game. At least they did as well as my elementalists at tournament, except this time Kevin's money wasn't on the line, and I didn't pay over 300 points for them! The Trikes did what they were expected to do and the GBC went poof.

Double pinch by the wolfriders and the other Spearorc that had been lashed from the far flank. This turn I drew two ferocity cards and played one on each pincher. The Wolfriders did an amazing 6 points of damage and that was that. I shook hands with myself and said "Good Game!"
The bomb chucker log looked like this:
Turn Dice rolls  (X means Doubles!)    Dice/Hits     Wounds
    1     1, 2, 2                 X
    2     3, 4, 4                 X
    3     4, 5, 6                                          15/14        4
    4     2, 3, 4                                            8/6          1
    5     1, 5, 6                                          12/8          3
    6     6, 4, 2                                          12/10        4
    7     3, 4, 6                                          13/11        6 (11 dice needing 1s and 2s!!!)
All my shots were against toughness four creatures, so I always needed ones and twos. This time I would say the GBC was definitely worth it, although by the end of turn two I wouldn't have said so. All shots were against large targets with 1/4 profiles, so the number of hits is dramaticaly higher and the resulting wounds are lower. It will definitely get more use this way, but it isn't a certainty, and I would never use it when Kevin's money is on the line as it is just too swingy. Swingy does mean high drama and lots of fun, however!

The new Fury rules did feel right, they didn't get used much this game because of the paucity of Lizard Rd cards that showed up and the tons of Orcish blue cards that were used specifically because of the Fury threat. I used it three times.

The most amazing fight had to be the last one with the ferocity pumped wolfriders rolled nine dice doing 8 hits and rolled 6 damage needing 1's and 2's! That eliminated the trikes but on their return strike they eliminated the wolf riders...Songs will be written!

Lizzy heroes had to be the trikes, everyone else died in a grindfest.

Orcy heroes were the swordorcs that got pinched by Trogs and Ancients and won! They can be seen in the last foto with two red boxes intact. I would say every blue card I drew went on them.

A new variant - Affinity

Some scenarios are just more favorable for a certain faction or troop type. Ravenwood in their home forest, Orcs and Dwarves underground, Lizardmen in a swamp. Then there are certain situations like the troops are in a particularly do or die situation - backs against the wall and what not. Sometimes when designing a scenario you just want to show that a certain troop type happens to have the upper hand, like the superior air maneuverability of the Dark Elf Drakeriders vs. the Ancient Red Dragon.

To adress this variant need I offer the "Affinity." An Affinity is defined by scenario only and should not be construed as a permanent change, as such an ability would require a different point cost for the unit. This variant is for flavor purposes only and is not intended to address fairness or balance.

Courage checks Caused by a unit with an active Affinity are at -1 Courage.
Courage checks Taken by a unit with an active Affinity are at +1 Courage.
If opposing units are both under the effects of an active Affinity then the only modifier that is applied is the +1 for Courage checks taken.
Units with an active Affinity ignore Fearsome and Terror abilities.

If it is a terrain based affinity it is active if at least half of the unit is in the terrain, the opposing unit's terrain is not considered unless the enemy unit occupies a terrain or map area for which a unit or faction has designated as Sacred Affinity.

A Conditional Affinity is active if the condition is met. Airborn Combat Affinity is an example of a Conditional Affinity

A Battle Affinity is always active. Underground Affinity  is an example of a Battle Affinity if the scenario takes place underground. Mutual Animosity Affinity is an example of a Battle Affinity that is possessed by both combatants. Two factions that possess a Mutual Animosity Affinity is a battle that is going to be very sanguinious. Two opposing units can also have a Mutual Animosity Affinity which means that if they end up engaged their affinity will be active, but it has no other effect, i.e. they won't necessarily seek each other out, but if they do end up in combat with each other, then the affinity will be active.

I am posting this hoping that others will try it and share their experiences with me on the BG forums where this will be posted http://yourmovegames.com/forum/index.php/topic,4706.new.html#new