Gamma World: A Refreshing Role Playing Destination

In a nutshell, Gamma World is a steampunk/sci-fi mash-up of a role playing game, which follows D&D 4e rules, with some broadly artistic simplifications and a hedonist’s sense of shame. That is to say; it is shamelessly fun.

To be completely honest, I was skeptical at first. I need to be in the right mood to be “goofy,” and playing a game that involved randomly rolling for mixed origins from a list containing “yeti,” “android,” “precognitive,” and “cockroach” seemed interesting, but perhaps not enduringly reliable fun for a stiff like me.

However, this randomness, when coupled with a modern (commonly surreal) world setting, and a general lessening of rules about how and what your characters can be, do, use, feel, and shoot with eye beams, creates a wonderful cocktail of emotions toward the game and your character. This is something that D&D can rarely provide, due to its oft-silly need to be serious and “realistic.”

Character Creation
As stated, your character’s origin is random unless you foolishly prefer otherwise. The sole rule book contains a chart of 20 ridiculous backgrounds for your character, including animal types (hawkoid), conditions (radioactive), and powers (speedster). You randomly role two backgrounds – always a comical mix – and that’s where the madness begins.

In my first session, I was a radiated hawkoid version of myself from a different dimension. I decided that I preferred to be a turkey rather than a hawk, and that this multiverse version of Bill had always been a turkey [insert jokes here], and was irradiated while resting too often on a power line near a nuclear plant in my own dimension where, naturally, all people are birds. TurkeyBill is the Erin Brockovich of birds.

I spent the evening making quiet, deranged bird noises to the pleasure of my colleagues, and at one point, a grown man (who shall remain unidentified) found himself walking like a slow, off-balance turkey to get a beer from the fridge. Is this right? Is this wrong? All I know is that D&D has never caused this to happen.

Origins give your character powers and abilities, as well as resistances to damage types, etc, but Gamma World has no classes or established racial characteristics beyond the faintest hints of what it might be like to be telekinetic, or (intriguingly) seismic. It is so simple and random that it forces a different, broad creativity that can be shackled down by the preconceptions and thoroughly defined tropes of D&D.

Gamma World comes packaged with only one expectation of its adventurers – silly fun.

Equipment
Once you have your rad-turkey, or android yeti, or whatever the fates have in store; you need to equip yourself.

This is where Gamma World’s creators have made a small but masterful stroke. Weapons and armor are wildly simple. In addition to scroungin’ whatever items (ranging from mundane to absurdly fictional) your DM wants to populate the world with, your choices are simple: light armor (+3 to armor class) or heavy armor (+7), and generic ranged or melee weapons that are in the light or heavy class – dealing light or heavy damage accordingly. This may seem too simple, but it really offers the player an opportunity to improvise weapons and riff off of his fellows as well as the circumstances. If something seems heavy, it does heavy damage, and it could be something that your character picks up as needed, or carries with it. It turns out that TurkeyBill’s weapon of choice is a manhole cover, which he prefers to drop on mutants’ skulls from the skies - because in Gamma World, turkeys can fly.

Abilities
As I've alluded to, each origin offers a string of special attacks that manifest as you level. TurkeyBill started out big, not only with a nice little bird shriek that does burst damage, but with FUCKING LASER EYES. Gamma World, you had me at fucking; I stayed for laser eyes.

A last joy that I would like to share with you is something called an Alpha Mutation. Gamma World is an ever-changing place; saturated with mutations. To reflect this, it comes with a deck of cards that not only have special equipment and monsters (I think), but also these alpha mutations, which are drawn randomly at the beginning of each combat and lost at its end. I’ve only seen a few of them, but they can grant you a force field, enormous clown feet, or other zany things. They can also be “overcharged” to enhance their benefit on a D20 roll of 10 or higher, or will surely penalize your character on a lower roll. This allows each combat to be a little different from the last, and can be very enjoyable to visualize.

Conclusion
If you are a little tired of D&D, or have never been half one thing and half another, or if you enjoy fun; you should play Gamma World.

An Ode to Paul the Octopus...

It is rare in these modern and crowded times to stumble upon one of the few truly exceptional characters that a generation offers. Overrun by tabloids and cynicism, it is even rarer for us as a society to identify those characters as genuine, and recognize them for it.

Paul the Octopus was one such character, and for having known him, the world is blessed. Not unlike the internet, Paul could tell us anything we needed to know. Also like the internet, Paul had such potential before we squandered his abilities on sports (and porn in the case of the former).

Paul’s unique abilities were not his only boon, however. Paul was humble, quiet, contemplative- even in the face of worldwide appreciation. This is an example that we should all follow, a legacy that can reach further than Paul’s own slender, golden tentacles, or his extra sensory perception.

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to you, friend. We thank you for all that you gave us, and for all that you continue to mean to this nearsighted world.

May you find peace in Illithid heaven.

Planetfall in Columbus

Aside from having an awesome title, today's post exists to commemorate the first (FIRST!) Warhammer 40k game that our kitchen ring has played in Columbus. I'll make it light on words, and get to some fun pictures, but let me set the stage:

A Tau leader and his Firewarrior escourts have crash landed on a small planet at the edge of the Imperium of Man. Upon their arrival, they encountered a small band of Orks and managed to coerce them into working together to escape this derelect rock.

Derelect or not, Mankind will brook no trespass, and this rock belongs to the Emperor...

Bill's 500pts of Dark Angels vs. Ryan's Tau (250pts) and Ian's Orks (250pts) - Dawn of War, Annihilation.

Heading into the game, it was my hope to plop a full tactical squad behind cover to let them bolter-down the inevitable green horde, while drop podding my Company Master and five more marines amidst the Tau, with my five scouts supporting either effort as needed.

Shown above, my marines and scouts are in place behind some wreckage midfield at the end of turn one, Branch's shooters are approaching the roof of an Orky hut to the North, and Ian has begun his charge from the Southeast, with a bunch of gretchin in the lead.

Somewhat surprisingly, this game began to take the shape that I had expected, and I grew excited. The grots didn't look like they'd make it to me before dying, so I figured my scouts may as well make their way to the Firewarriors to engage them in melee, relying on the tactical squad to shoot up those Orks next, or die honorably while I took out Ryan's HQ with an impending drop pod of baddies. At this point, I think we each thought we were winning.

Around turn three, my Company Master made planetfall, and I really expected these cats to make short work of this HQ... Turns out, I underestimated the crisis suits that these middling xenos were hiding in. This encounter favored Ryan early, but once he engaged me in melee, it seemed more of a draw - the game ended before either HQ died, but to my foes' credit, an entire ork swarm was hitting the brakes to the south and turning toward my Company Master!

More to my liking, it turns out one space marine scout sergeant CAN fight an entire squad of firewarriors, and he managed to kill the seventh (only viscera in the shot above) before he and the other six settled into an uneventful but impressive stalemate.

WAAAGH! After the drop pod hit, I exerienced my first real life Waaagh!. Luckily, it didn't quite get the Boyz close enough to assault my HQ.

In closing, we hit the end at turn five, before the Orks could really bring their wrath down, which would have spelled more certain destruction for me. Even with that blessing, by a measure of points lost, the Dark Angels received greater casualties, and I congratulate my opponents!

Of course, we'll be back with reinforcements, and this planet will be cleansed!

Light Box Photos

So i built myself a small light box for photo taking ... i'm still getting a hang of how to use it and my camera to maximize the photo taking, but i figured i'd post my first couple shots. They consist of one of my warlocks, who turned out reasonably well ... but i think the photo's could stand to be a bit better, and some terrain from the board: craters and stone piles.

As you can see, some of the images came out yellowed, or white washed, and some came out near perfect. I'm working on the white balance of the photos, but ultimately ... i'm finally getting some close to great photographs.

For the curious, the craters (i have several) were made from a cardboard base and some foam and Spackle. The foam was cut into triangles to build the Spackle up on to create the crater. The stones were made from similar material ... the base is cardboard and the stones are made from foam. They were then coated with paint and sand, and little pebbles and stones were added to the base. A little Spackle for texture and poof. Terrain.

Paint Scheme

So i did a couple quick sketches of the paint scheme. I'm rather partial to the first two. I like the idea of 3 of them, two in ones style and a third in the negative/reverse. The bottom two were shaded differently, ignore that ... i'm focused on the colors. The first is just a curved two-tone design. The second is an eldar symbol ... tell me what you think i'd like your feedback before i start painting them up.

Battle Report! Eldar vs Dark Angels: Spoils of War

Matt and I played our first battle in a 5-long campaign last Saturday, and will chronicle it here (Matt's comments are in gold). After a sound defeat a couple weeks prior, I came with a modified force of Space Marines and some slightly matured tactics. Read on to see if they were enough to repel Matt’s Biel-tan Eldar!

First things first, Matt put a lot of work into some terrain and a three-part modular table that is not done justice in these photos. It’s a masterwork and I’d like both to thank and congratulate him. In person, the grain of the underlying wood adds fantastic texture to the field, and the colors offer a rich, unique setting in a community that is typically dominated by green felt.

Now onto the battle! The armies were 1,000 points each. The deployment was Dawn of War (deployment on the long sides of the table) with night fight rules for turn 1. The mission was Seize Ground, and there were randomly four points of interest to seize. In the pictures below, three of the points are near the camera; one behind a hedge, one on a plateau, and one to the left of the jungle terrain, while the fourth is in the far right, sometimes unseen corner.



Deployment and Turn 1
Matt rolled high and chose to place terrain/deploy/act first, which was perfectly alright with me, since night rules would likely keep me safe, and my terminators were not yet in play to get messed up. My plan was to bring my Ravenwing Bikers in as deep as I could and use their teleport homer to deepstrike my Deathwing Terminators in safely. This happened, but not nearly as close to Matt as I’d have liked. In Turn 1, I managed to take out a Guardian and felt that this game was already better than our last. The picture above shows our deployment moves and gives you a sense (in blue dots) for where our first real exchanges would later happen in Turn 2.

While the arrows may seem all over the place, there was lot of movement and gun shots. My guardians got picked at pretty early, and I was incredibly unnerved when the terminators dropped down so close. But it was a smart move as far as deepstriking terminators is concerned, and while expensive kept me occupied, and took my eyes off of the objective prize for a turn or two.



Turn 2
Matt’s shooting phase quickly took the wind out of my sails. My fancy new Terminator squad and HQ were in move/assault distance, but concentrated fire from his Gravtank, Wraithlord and Firedragons killed every single one of them – with some help from his Farseer’s psychic mumbojumbo and four, FOUR! ones rolled on Terminator saves. This was an expensive and critical blow to my effort. We exchanged fire elsewhere, and his smaller guardian squad was eliminated. Above, you can see that the 4th capture point in the upper right corner is home to Matt’s larger Guardian Squad, with his Rangers a bit closer to me.

Slaying the terminators was a huge boon. Took a lot of energy and fire power as well as putting my fire dragons in direct line of fire … but also, as William stated, took the winds out of his sails. Point for point … I think I got more.

My assault phase was nearly as disappointing for me as Matt’s shooting. Having never faced a Monstrous Creature before (and arriving unprepared for the event), I mistakenly charged his Wraithlord with my Bikers, only to find that they had literally no means of damaging it – because my meltabombs were ineffective against it. As you might imagine, it did not share this problem – though it did spend a couple turns pounding my bikes instead of shooting everything else to hell.

The assault on the wraithlord was my first big break, and William’s fatal error. Unable to harm the wraithlord, and blessed with the fearless trait the bikers broke at my wraithlords feet. With my farseer so close, the better move would have been to assault the farseer … lock him up, and force the wraithlord to come to his rescue. But even the greatest generals have made major mistakes in the past.



Turn 3
My scouts are visible on the far left and continue to plod their way through difficult terrain with rolls of 1s and 2s for movement. There is no assaulting in this round, but Matt loses some Firedragons and Rangers to bolter fire. Significantly, my bikes are gone by the end of this turn and Matt’s Jetbikes have entered the field from his Reserves. I begin drinking for comfort.

He Could drink for comfort all he wanted … it would bring him little.



Turn 4
This turn wasn’t the worst. My marines and scouts eliminated the firedragons and my “jungle” tactical squad also moved back to capture the waypoint that they were slightly in front of at deployment. In terms of volume, I’m not looking bad, but I have only sniper rifles and a plasma gun to punch through Matt’s armor, so it looks like my points are inevitably going to be contested. Meanwhile, his large guardian squad slowly strings itself out to stay relevant in the shooting phase, while still controlling its point, and the rangers begin to make their way to the point behind the hedge. Still, the Jetbikes, a scoring unit, lurk at Matt’s table edge.

The elimination of my fire dragons was foreboding … but it bought my rangers and jetbikes time. My remaining units were able to close the gap and assault or distract William’s troops and gain the upper hand. The most important part of this turn was a frowning of the dice god’s in William’s direction. Both of his units’ morale broke … though it ultimately benefited them … or prolonged the inevitable.



Turn 5
This turn was all about the movement phase. Eldar Tank, Walker and Bikes pressed forward to reach the 3 inch distance they need to cancel out my captures. Fire from the Gravtank and Wraithlord weakened both of my troop units the Wraithlord’s assault brought it in range of the jungle waypoint – enough to contest. Though not reflected above, I’m also rather certain that the Jetbikes moved within range to contest the middle point in this turn – leaving me with zero and Matt with his corner capture.

Yes my corner capture … truly the greatest use of 130 pts. They were left alone … and pestered the tactical squad holding the middle hill side objective with plenty of Eldar plasma missiles. The jetbikes sort of played their part up until this point … come in reserve … stay out of fire, claim/contest an objective … all for 76 pts.



Turn 6 & 7
These were clearly not necessary, but allowed time for Matt’s rangers to capture the hedge point and for his Wraithlord to kill my (now decommissioned) Scouts. With three points held by Eldar and one held by the space marines – who did valiantly charge and destroy those pansy jetbikes – the battle ended with little mercy left to offer.

With the destruction of the Jungle tactical squad (who only survived so long because of the cover offered by the jungle) the wraithlord removed William’s claim to the waypoint objective. Unfortunately in an assault with tactical marines … my jetbikes had no chance.

Aftermath
Having won this battle, Matt will receive some manner of important leg-up in the 5th battle, which will ultimately decide the campaign’s victor – I can only hope that I’ve learned to play my army by that time.

Additionally, two victorious units and the last remaining space marine unit gained experience! Using the rulebook chart, my lone living tactical squad appropriately earned the Fearless special rule. Showing that I still bear the Emperor’s blessing, Matt’s Wraithlord rolled a special rule that it already had (ZING!)

The win resulted in the rangers claiming the middle objective and the guardians on the far right objective. Another victory sealed for the mighty swordwind.

Battle 1 - The Spoils of War

This is the first battle of the campaign, a smaller one, at 1000 pts. We will be playing it Saturday (which is either tomorrow or today depending on how long it takes me to type this).

It is a seize ground mission: before deciding deployment zones, but after placing terrain, players must place 1D3+2 objectives around the board, a minimum of 12" from each other and board edges.

To win the seize ground mission, players must control the objectives. To control an objective a player must have a scoring unit (one of the 'troop' type) within 3" of the objective, and no enemy unit (scoring or not) may be within 3" of the objective.

In this particular mission we are using the dawn of war deployment which adds a few extra rules:

First the table is divided in half, and when placing units the player who places first may place up too two troops and one HQ any where in his deployment zone. Then player two does the same, but none of his units may be within 18" of an enemy unit.

Troops or HQ's that can infiltrate may do so, and scout moves may be made.

Once the game starts the player who deployed first goes first. All units not deployed, that were not held in reserve must enter the game in the movement phase by moving in from their table edge, as if they had been held in reserve.

Finally, turn one of the game is subject to the night fighting rules; also this game type allows for Reserves and Deep striking (rules for those must be followed as outlined on page 94 and 95 of the rulebook).

Flock

So i recently learned that flock costs a fortune. Covering a full 4'x8' table and the bases of terrain and an army could run all the way up to $100. Easily. But flock ... is just colored saw dust. So with a little research i found a video on how to make your own flock. The basic process is this ... take a bucket ... add paint and water 1:5 ... slowly stir in sawdust until all moisture is gone ... spread the sawdust out to dry ... once dry (24-48 hours later) push through a screen or mesh of some kind to break back down. Results .... Flock in any color you want.

Below, the dark green flock was made largely from sawdust from a sander. It's best to use dust from a sander as it's fine and creates the best flock.

This flock was done with the same sawdust, but done in a lighter tone. With a little mixing the two greens will offering varying tones of green, i'll probably mix up a 1:1, 2:1, and 4:1 with the greens, creating 5 tones.

The light brown i used a coarser dust ... still fine my comparison ... when it's placed near the miniatures and table terrain it's coarseness is clear. It's dust from a table router and plywood. I intend to mix it a bit with the light green, probably largely in a 2:1 or greater mixture for a dieing/dead grass and scrub feel.

Here's a video of the process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZmcWXz_q9o .

Deathwing Terminator

The Deathwing are the first Company of the Dark Angel Chapter. It's an important part of the army fluff, and it facilitates one of the most significant diversions from the standard force deployment rules in 40k - that is, you can field an army of terminators of you follow the Deathwing rules. Unlike the dark green standard for the army, or the all black Ravenwing squadrons, Deathwing - particularly terminators - boast bleached bone paint in memory of some badass space marines of yore.

I'm not certain that this is the final look, but it's definitely closer than I've ever been to happy while working with such a light color. I think it will make them pop a bit on the table too. The crest on the left shoulder really rocks my socks, and ties these guys to my tactical squad scheme.
I will say that, aside from the natural awesomeness of powerfists and such, the terminator minis have never really wowed me. They have a sort of muscle-bound look and never seem to be up to much - not that they need to be.
This green shoulder is begging for some sort of free-hand design. There are a lot of possibilities, and I just haven't decided yet. I think the Deathwing symbol is a broken white sword, so I'll probably see if I can manage that a few times.
These are surprisingly simple to paint. Beige foundation dry brushed, under bleached bone dry brushed, with a lot of brownish wash and a couple of accent colors. I hope to have an entire unit of five to post by the end of the week. Maybe a total of ten before the month is out!

Scouts!

Years in the making, I present to you my five-man, all-sniper extravaganza!

The paint scheme is very uniform, of course, but there is a lot of customization available through sprue choices for these guys. Pardon the unfinished bases; I've yet to decide what I want to do with them - maybe some crumpled leaves?
As poses go, these are some of the most dramatic minis available for the DA army, and they are fun looking in nearly any positioning. It's a shame that I'll be hiding their table presence behind terrain.
The face and cape camouflage are the highlights of the paint job. The cape pattern was taken from an online resource for aspiring hunters or soldiers of fortune or something.

A couple quick WIP

These are nearing completion ... the table is basically done, just drying. I've got two standards that are battle markers in preliminary stages of painting as well. x4 outcroppings of trees, x3 craters, x3 hills, and one rock pile all done as well ... the 16th will have a nice battle board.

An Unsolicited Tutorial on Painting My Space Marines

Anytime I go to the coffee shop, or grocery store, or nail salon, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll overhear a conversation about how drab the Dark Angels (DA) army can be. Dark green doesn’t leave a lot of room for details or shadow, unless you want to lighten up the green – but eldar already exist, so we don't need another army that looks gay. (ZING!!) Even in junior high, I recognized this was a problem and embraced the [silly] predisposition that space marines have toward bright red guns. Not only were my guns red, but my shoulder and knee pads too. This was a fine secondary color, I felt, until someone conjured up some yuletide insults. I pondered this for a little while (10 years) and have decided to go in a new direction.
















Intrigued by the inclusion of bleached bone for deathwing terminators (exclusive to the DA chapter) but never quite able to make it work in the past, I have now decided to incorporate that end of the palette, save red for a blood angels army some day, and tackle the european renaissance-esque split color paint scheme for my modern tactical marines and a “newly” purchased dreadnought. I feel this successfully maintains the DA namesake color, introduces the tans that I avoided in my youth, and stands to give the army a more mature appearance too.

For consideration and critique, I’ve included a rudimentary rundown of my updated tactical marine painting process below.

Stage 1 – Miniature prep and priming. Using standard nail clippers with a file, I trim excess material and file convexities down to a satisfactory level. I’m not much for puddying or modification yet, so sometimes I have little pits where the plastic tore away with the sprue etc. I’ll generally try to fill these concavities in using a little extra paint later on. (Microsoft word has just confirmed for me that convexities and concavities ARE both words.)

Once the mini is smooth, it’s time to prime – sorry for the rhyme… again. I haven’t always used primer, but in recent years I’ve grown to appreciate it for its dry humor and aid in applying brush-delivered paint more evenly - raw plastic and pewter will sometimes absorb or otherwise weird-out some paint, and the primer gives you a consistently cooperative foundation.

I’m a big fan of gray primer because it allows for the tones that I grew used to from painting plastic directly rather than brightening (white) the colors or adding shadow (black). If the entire mini were going to be the same color, I’d probably just prime it DA green. Lastly, I prime very lightly, because there is nothing more frustrating than losing detail before you’ve even laid brush to space murderer. I apply just a dash so that I can see the detail and muck it up on my own later.


Stage 2 – Base coats. This stage involves a bit less talking but a steadier hand. As can be seen here, I’ve decided to split the marines down the middle and alternate their shoulder pads. I recommend visualising your middle line and using whatever method allows a steadier hand to sketch a boundary to one side of that imaginary midline. Once my green boundary is there, I’ll carefully fill in near it and then fill in the rest of that surface with general recklessness. Adding the second color WILL disturb your boundary, but as long as you have a straight line near the middle, it’s best not to stress over it - touch it up a bit and move on. I’m using two citadel foundation colors that are actually darker than the classic citadel bleached bone and dark angels green (I start with Devlan Mud and Orkhide Shade). Citadel’s Foundation line of paints is meant for base coating and goes on strong in one coat with minimal fuss. They are awesome.


Stage 3 – Uhh, Main stage? This is sort of like the “Standard Action” of painting. The Dark Angels Green and Bleached bone go on to lighten the foundation colors, adding some depth, and I add warlock purple to the eye lenses, black trim, and some manner of gold for the Aquila (its latin for eagle, read a book). The bulk of satisfaction comes here, as the mini really takes shape. In the spirit of self-advocacy, I’ll point out that I love the black “crest” on the top of the helmet and how it breaks up the division of tan and green. Something about that region of the mini really does it for me in what might be described as an artistic way if I had any artistic credentials whatsoever.


Stage 4 – Finishing touches. Some black and brown washes find their way onto the green and tan surfaces, respectively, and it turns out space marines want hands and a gun, so I’d better whip those up too!

Newsflash: guns are black.

For fun, and to give some detail distinction, I’ll drybrush silver over the gun edges and hit up some of the bolts. I’m sort of boring with my bases, so no flock or rocks, et cetera, just some green paint, and I haven’t finished a backpack for him yet because I sort of hate painting these backpacks.

In case you forgot the four stages already.

And lastly, a look at my old scheme and new scheme flanking my fancypants scheme for veteran DA marines.