Role Play: Price Tag

So I got some positive feedback about my cost analysis of doubles so I thought I’d do another.


Our little circle of gamer has been lax with our hobby of late, partly due to money issues and partly due to the fact that we run a role-play group on a Saturday. I’ve mentioned the other blog before but you can find out what we do here. So let’s jump in.

Starting out.

We began with Death-watch, which at the time was the newest Fantasy Flight RPG. So we started out with:

Death-watch core rulebook - £40 (this is from the Fantasy Flight site, though if you shop around you can get it cheaper)
Mark of the Xenos – £25 (though this one’s not essential one copy for the GM means you’ll have more variety of enemies.)
Mechanical Pencils - £2 (Tesco)
D10’s - £4 for a pack of 10
Pizza - £3 for 3 (Asda)

Obviously you need a few print outs of character sheets and a GM screen is recommend for the GM but not essential. We took in in turns on the pizza front meaning each week costs less than a fiver. Once you’ve been playing for a while you may want some of the other books (Rites of battle, First Founding) these cost £25 but again shopping around they can be cheaper, then all that’s stopping is the scope of your GM’s imagination. There are several adventure books again each with a £25 ish price tag if your pushed for time as a GM but a homemade adventure is not only more satisfying but allows for more roleplaying freedom.

The evolution.

So after year or so we moved to Dark Heresy. The system was FF’s first system (well they bought it from black industries) so has more books out there, both adventures and rule books. Closer to the classic D&D style game your class and skills are what makes you a badass not power armour and being a powerhouse genetic freak. We bought a few more books for this one to open up some classes and add a few enemies in.

Core rulebook - £40
GM Screen - £15
Creatures Anathema - £25
Ascension – £25 (allows for higher level characters)
Inquisitors handbook - £25 (not 100% necessary but has a lot of extra equipment and started classes in)
Mechanical Pencils - £2 (Tesco)
D10’s - £4 for a pack of 10
Pizza - £3 for 3 (Asda)


We’ve gradually expanded the books we use as each class has a dedicated book for expansions and abilities, again not essential but leads to much more interesting characters I recommend buying the book for your character and scanning (or getting a not at all legal PDF copy) for the GM. So overall Dark Heresy is costing us more but again a few core books and some print outs and you’ll be fine.


Obviously there are other roleplaying systems, I myself have played D&D, Vampire – the masquerade, Serenity and dabbled in the Warhammer fantasy RPG. The joy of the FF 40k books is that they all work together; we’ve used Black Crusade and Rogue Trader (the other two FF RPG’s) in our campaigns so I rate them for this fact alone.

If you are really tight on cash then I suggest this:

Pdf’s of all books – easily found torrent
Mechanical Pencils - £2 (Tesco)
D10’s - £4 for a pack of 10
Pizza - £3 for 3 (Asda)
Beverage - £?? (I can’t recommend beer, I tried it and the mission got silly)
Friends – Free

This budget version will be a bit of a printer stress but use the works printer and you’ll be fine. So for the price of your food and a few dice, you can have a great day dicking about with mates.

My final point is three fold.
1) Find somewhere to play
2) Meet regularly, while it will slowly kill your GM it makes the campaign much more free flowing and dynamic.
3) Have Fun.  

Doubles

Tourament
So tournaments, I'm not by nature a competitive gamer, painting and fluff are why I enjoy the hobby but I do enjoy playing, usually win or lose as long as the guy (or gal from time to time) isn't an utter dick; however all too often they are. My first ever tournament was a small one at games day where I played pink necrons that somewhat abused the “no three wound models” rule in place and my sisters took a beating. This turned me off to competitive gaming for a fair few years.
I first went to ToS (throne of skulls) as a visitor with a load of friends and had a great weekend chilling out fetching beers and going into Nottingham. The next time I figured I’d go along to play. While I didn’t hate the experience I had 2 good games out of 5 with 2 guys being dicks and 1 taking a list I could beat in my sleep despite his extra points (there’s a whole series of articles in the sidebar if you’re interested.)
So when we all planned on going to ToS again a year later I was up for the project and the trip but the tournament idea left me feeling cold.

Doubles
The idea behind doubles was as my birthday treat, in that I didn’t care about the tourney but a week end away was just the ticket.
So after a trip to Florida…

A.D. and I were set on going I got the ticket booked the hotel and we had the list sorted. 3 days before the tourney I found out I was under pointed (there’s an article on that too) so we decided to head to WHW (war hammer world) on the Friday to pick up a few models and do some last minute painting. Even that day with no gaming was great, and we went to bed ready to go.

Side note – the hotel
for nearly £300 pounds for 2 nights I don’t expect the world but I do want a room that’s not 1000 degrees and has the number of beds I ask for in it. So A.D. and I spent a less than comfortable night in a double bed sweating like a fat man in a sauna.
We rolled up the next day tired but still ready and got to grips with the mission cards. At doubles extra cards are used for secondary objectives (e.g. kill a monstrous creature in close combat) these are totalled and added to the team’s final score. Most were reasonable but a lot were either too specific or way too hard, on the plus side you didn’t HAVE to complete them.
As I said in the reports everyone we played was really cool and even in quiet moments having a friend with you is just nice, so loo breaks don’t slow the game and you always have someone to sit with at lunch.



Conclusion – Doubles rocks, we’re heading to the September round for definite.

Doubles - Gsme 5 (Chaos Spacemarines)

So ok I lied, real life caught up to me last night, but finally we have the last game of doubles. with 2 loses a win and a dra under our belts, A.D. and I had no idea how this last game would go. We met Dan and Matt (cheers for putting your name on the list guys) on a corner table surrounded by several players not happy about being on the middle tables. The four of us were all pretty relaxed, turned out they had a fun weekend to so we all vowed to make this games a good one to top off the weekend.

This game started like many others with people looking at the guard element of the list and freaking out, they depoloyed second and there was much dbate about my corner bunker, this increased when A.D. once set up his screen infront on my troops.Their responce was to bunker in an opposite corner and hide their two daemon princes bhind a bastion.

A note about the mission, as the weekend was the 25th anniversay of 40k the final mission was down as "Cleanse" the old table quarters mission. Our opponents had clearly played this misson more.

So the game began with the speeders swooping forward to deal with the closet unit of bezerkers, A.D. and I decided that eliminating the close combat threat would allow us to deal with the high toughness models at our leisure.

 The long range fire whittled down a few bezerkers, and the rhinos but A.D.s attempt at moving the Raven's out of terran (placed there for a lovely cover save from the obliterators) decided to jump them not walk them, resulting in a 1 for the sanguinary priest, who promptly failed his feel no pain roll. (I was not happy).

 As an avid chaor player GMort disliked that who paragons of the dark gods hid for 3 turns.

 So back to the report, after a few combats the ravnes were running low but so were the bezerkers, our opponents held 2 table quarters to our 1 with the fourth empty. I began to shuffle a few squads toward to open quarter.

The immobilised rhino spat the second squad of bezerkers into the same wood as the plague marines, where both would stay and vex my long range shooting for the rest of the game. 

 Our finest moment of the game, A.D. sent a speeder to harass a Daemon prince, the prince fell for it and moved out of cover, this allowed my guard to call a bring it down order (well 3) and drop that plague infested fiend.

The remaining Ravens move to the "woods of death"

 View point of the Khorne Daemon price.

 side note... this picture shows me... well my crotch with a pint, 2 seconds later there is no pint as the man next to me knocked it over, all over my models and codex etc. not only did he take several seconds to apologise, I was down a pint. If this man reads my blog (unlikly I know), then sir you owe me a pint of bugmans!

 The two remaining Ravens in the bezerker combat win and tempt out the other daemon price, another round of auto cannons and he dies too.

 The final Ravens squad charge the second unit of Bezerkers, it ends badly.

 Turn 5, the unit of termies finally arrive and have no targets but my command squad in the previously vacant 4th quarter. they weather the fire leaving on left, the lieutenant that gets all the long range shooting until turn 7.

 3 las cannon shots, 3 cover saves.

The korne element was eliminated, but las guns have a hard time hurting nurgle especially when it has a 2+ save. the game finished 3 -1 narrowly the final 3 turns had quarters changing hands in every phase.

A great game with in our eyes what was the closest to a doubles lit we played all day. I think we have these guys a best games vote as well as the cornish boys but I'm not sure.

Coming up hopefully this week I have my overview of doubles and why ToS sucks in comparison and a little look at black library live, my favourite WHW event.

Also if you like my stuff give the blog a like on FB, I post updates on their for your convenince and I will honestly do something stupid if we get 25 likes. TTFN

Doubles - Game 4 (Imperial Guard)

Yes dear reader I finally remembered to ask GMort for the pics. However I have forgotten much of the game but I shall give it the old college try.

We strolled up Sunday morning and once again were greeted by two friendly people (Chris and.... ok I suck with names, thats what this has taught me).
*aside, some backstory* A.D. and I drank ALL Saturday from 10 am until about 1 am. Our hotel room was the temerature of the sun and we were sharing a bed. All this meant tactics were not in prime place in our heads.

The mission was one of the space marines battle missions and called for a defender and an attacker with the defender deploying and the attacker (space marines in the book) conducting a lightning strike.

We SO wanted to defend and the dice were kind, while half of our opponents force was ground infantry the other half was flying circus so they seemed fine with it all.

Now for some pics of deployment.

Our opponents rolled on the opposite corner to the one I had bunkered in. A.D. set up in front to sheild the guard and charge earlier.

My memory is fuzzy about much of the rest of the game, we excahnged long range shots theit manticore got off one missile (its killed 4 Ravens) before I sniped it with the world luckiest auto cannon, but they just had more fire power. Once the Ravens hit their line tanks began to pop. A lucky blood lance took out 2 tanks and a vendetta, with an assault squad munching through a guard platoon. None of this good luck was to last as the return fire dropped many Ravens )except one, but we'll get back to him). The game continued with us switching the upper hand every turn. we lost all the ravens and the enemy advanced.

One final round of shooting left them with 2 objectives and us with one. We had a turn, at A.D.s suggestion I fired a shot at a tank on the center objective not at the squad on our flank as was my instinct. The same lucky autocannoner took out the chumera leaving its occupants punned and unable to hold the objective.
1-1, through sheer luck.

Some more pics.

Super melta! This guy popped 2 tanks, charged a squad anf through sheer force of will survived 5 rounds of combat. Killing or chasing down 3 while squads then went after the last vendetta and dropped it before finally falling to his many many  wounds.

Over all another amazing game, where A.D. and I were frankly out classed but thanks to luck and well luck we snuck out a draw. The two fellas were great too, another pair of like minded gamers, which doubles seemed to be full of.

Tomorrow - Game 5!