I notice I've talked about several Battletech plans but I have yet to follow through with them. There were plans to do a battle report for a game and while we did play that particular game, I didn't take enough notes to be able to write a report about it. We made plans to do a campaign about an invasion of the planet David, but between miscommunication and me taking too long to write up a list, those plans fell apart. We still have those notes so it is possible for us to try to do the campaign again sometime in the future. Most recently we had plan to do a Word of Blake scenario this summer. That obviously didn't happen and I can say it wasn't my fault this time. The plan was for me to get as many of the actual mechs in the scenario as possible. I order 4 at my LGS (local gaming store) to start the project. However only 1 ever came in. I've come to learn (or remembered) that my LGS has trouble getting Battletech merchandise in. We still want to do that scenario so I will have to get the mechs elsewhere.
My Battletech collection is about to get a massive surged. Not only did I recently pick up the two new box sets, I've also invested into Catalysis Games Clan Invasion kickstarter. I'm looking at getting 40 to 50 mechs from it depending on how we split our pledge level and paying for additional add ons. With such an influx of models I will be building multiple faction forces. Some will have a history appropriate to the lore of Battletech. Others will be more of my own touch. In general, it will probably be a mix of mechs that faction is known for plus mechs I personally really like the looks of. Some of the factions I'm making armies of are: Word of Blake (obviously), Comstar, "Rome" and the Society. I will be using my own color scheme for each of them though I will try to incorporate something from the official scheme in my version. The plan is to focus my Battletech energies into these 4 forces but I'm getting a lot of stuff from the Clan Invasion and I don't think all of it would fit for the Society. I'll find out more about that in the months coming up. In the meantime, I don't think I will do anything story or games related on the blog for the rest of the year for Battletech. I will be doing updates showing off progress I make with my minis and I'm sure these 4 Battletech forces will be making an appearance.
Word of Blake - Word of Blake are the villains in my Battletech world. When I first heard about them I wanted to have a force dedicated to them. They never meant to be one of the first teams I wanted to work on but that changed when we pick a Word of Blake scenario to play. My friend wanted to play the good guys for once and since I already wanted to painted up Word of Blake minis, this sounded like the perfect scenario to play. As I've have grown tired of playing with proxies all the time, getting the actual minis the scenario calls for is important to me. Since I've only got one miniature for Word of Blake, it will be a while before we can play. I also don't plan on getting much more for Word of Blake outside of what the scenario calls for. I'm more interested in the other 3 factions. I've notice 3 of the mechs I need for the Word of Blake scenario will be available in the kickstarter so that will bring us closer to the scenario when the kickstarter products ship.
ComStar - Besides maybe a Chaos flavor mercenary group, ComStar was the first faction that I really wanted my own version of. The more I learn about the history of the Battletech lore, the more I became fascinated with the Star League and ComStar. Yes, I know Star League and ComStar are two different but related organizations in the lore, but for me I see no reason to separate them for my army. I'm not sure how often I will be able to play as the Star League so it might not be a big deal. Of all my factions, this is the one I don't own any mechs for yet. Any progress for ComStar will have to wait until my Kickstarter stuff comes in. The kickstarter has 2 different ComStar packs and you can be sure I will be getting at least one of each, if not more!
"Rome" - My Rome army is currently my only Battletech force that wasn't inspired by something in Battletech. Instead I was inspired by a character in the media empire "Fate" series by Type-Moon. Fate has many novels and games based on it and probably my favorite character in the Fate series is Emperor Nero. Despite Fate's Nero being a historical figure, you probably have no idea what this character is like unless you are familiar with the way Type-Moon approach to history. She (yes, she) has a personality that combines being supremely arrogant with fun to be around. She isn't the only arrogant character in Fate but she manifest it in a very different way. Characters such as Gilgamesh and Ozymandias feel other beings should be humbled and honored to be in their presence. Nero on the other hand feel that because she is so great, it is her duty to show you a great time by showing off the arts and wonder of her Rome. How this comes back to Battletech is when I learn Battletech has a Rome styled nation in its lore with the Marian Hegemony. I will start my Rome army by picking mechs in the 2 new box sets that are commonly used by Marian Hegemony. I don't know how many that will give me. I have the feeling that most of the mechs in new Box sets were widely used by most nations in the Inner Sphere.
The funny thing I just realize is that I could make my Emperor Nero character be in proper Battletech canon. I supported the kickstarter at the level to get a canon character made into the setting. That's not going to happen. I did the kickstarter with a friend and the canon character was the first thing I gave up to my friend. I didn't want it at the time and my friends knows the setting well enough he could make someone that would fit perfectly. Oh well, it just means I don't have to do a crash course in Battletech lore in the next 2 months so I can get Fate Emperor Nero Battletech history right. It's a "what if" worth thinking about.
The Society - The idea about doing a Society army is based on a random conversation and a single mech, Septicemia. My friend was telling me about his struggles in just finding information about a Battletech source book he wanted. His problem was that the book, Wars of Reaving had a particular mech. When tried to do online searches for the book, he kept getting information about that mech. That mech is the Septicemia. I had a fearful reaction when he told me the name of the mech. The name reminded me of one of the 3 types of plagues that I learn in a college class over a decade ago. I don't even remember what class that was but I told my friend that name probably meant something like blood disease because I remembered the plague had something to do with an infection of the blood. The disease I was thinking of was the Septicemic plague and I was right in that it's an infection of the blood. Eventually my friend was able to get the source book and inform me that the Septicemia was design to be like a blood disease to the Clans Warrior Culture. I might be a little fuzzy on the details but I believe this was because the Clan Warrior Caste thought there was only one way war should be perform and the Septicemia was meant to counter that way of thinking. It is an amazing story how I've learn this bit of Battletech lore and is the reason I decide to make a small Society force, along with me really liking the look of the Septicemia. It was a few months ago but I saw a pack for the Septicemia at my LGS. With the history I told you about, I instantly brought it. It will probably be the only mech I have for the Society for a while, but at least its a good one.
A War Gaming blog
Friday, August 30, 2019
Friday, August 2, 2019
Intro to Monsterpocalypse and Back to Flames of War
Sometimes when you are working on a project and can't seem to make any progress on it, its probably good idea to put it aside and work on something else for a while. This article is the something else to the project I wanted to finish before anything else on my blog. That project was suppose to be a followup youtube hobby progression video to the ones I did a few years ago, starting by summarize my current hobby. For some reason I could never finish the audio of what I wanted to say. The sad thing is the information I wanted to say is already outdated. If you follow my blog for any amount of time, you already know my hobby plans changes remarkable fast. 3 things happened two weeks ago that changed my hobby plans. This article will talk about two of them, starting with the game that was the catalysis for everything else, Monsterpocaylpse.
Monsterpocalypse is a miniature game about Kaiju (giant monsters) meeting up with giant robots and other giant creatures from media using a city as a ring as they destroy buildings trying to hurt each other, with a few planes and tanks thrown in to annoy them like gnats. Version 2 was just release last fall. I never got into nor played version 1 of Monsterpocalypse. This was mainly due to it being a collectible game. Like Collectible Card Games (CCGs) like Magic the Gathering, Monsterpocalypse version 1 was sold in random packs. You never knew what you were going to get. While I could accept that practice from CCGs, thought of doing that with more expensive miniatures was a non starter for me. Version 1 also came pre-assembled pre-painted, which for the younger me at the time would have been fine. Today pre-painted miniatures would be a reason for me to NOT get involved. In any case Monsterpocalypse version 2 is more like standard miniature games in that you know what you are purchasing and the models needs to be painted. Two weeks ago Tracy suddenly called me up to show me a demo of it. We haven't talk since the beginning of Summer so I was surprised to hear from him. It was a fairly easy game to learn and Tracy have at least one of everything that is currently available. I quickly found mechanics that I loved and wanted to make force around. Fortunately, the force construction rules are really simple.
The first thing you pick when building a force is decide what agenda to used. Currently the agendas are Protectors (the good guys) and the Destroyers (the bad guys). Each agenda is made up of several factions. When making a force, everything you pick needs to be from the same agenda though some models may have rules that is only beneficial to their own faction. Standard games have 2 monsters, up to 20 units and 6 to 12 buildings per player. Monsters are the core of your force and are unique. That means you have to pick 2 different monsters from the same agenda in a standard game and you win the game by defeating both of your opponents monsters. Units are the smaller models of your force like planes and tanks. Units are used to control the battlefield and setup advantages for your monsters. Units don't start on the map, they need to be spawned in. When units are destroyed, you can just spawned the model back in the next time you can spawn units. In this way, you have unlimited units to spawn, your choice of 20 units is picking what options you have available to spawn. This opens the door for deep strategies as the game ages. I could see players having one unit in their list that they don't use in a lot of their games yet it is there in case the right scenario comes up. Buildings play an unique role in your list and the game itself. Both players build the game map by placing their buildings one at a time, taking turns. Game maps have spots mark for where buildings need to go. This makes building the map a mini-game of itself as you want to set it up to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible while your opponent does the same. There are two types of buildings: apartments which have a defense 5, no limit to how many you can bring and no special rules; and special buildings which have a defense of 6 or 7, a limit of 4 per type and a wide range of special rules. Some building special abilities require you to have 3 units around it first before you can use it. Here is some of Tracy's buildings...
I decided to build a protectors force around Zor-Maxim and teleport rules. I first pick Zor-Maxim because I thought he could teleport around the battlefield only to realize that his ability only works on units, not himself. I stuck with him because I could envision controlling the battlefield by teleporting all over the place. Shadow Sun Industries is a building that interacts with models with the teleport rule. That's why the first two things I own of Monsterpocalypse are Zor-Maixm and Shadow Sun Industries. I haven't yet played a game utlizing my theme because Tracy doesn't own what I need to test it. My core force is going to need multiple Shadow Gate and Shadow Sun Industries. Once I have that, I can play a game to see if my theme is viable and what other units and Monster I want to add to my force.
While learning how to play Monsterpocalypse, Tracy inform me that my Flames of War plans needed to change. My plan was to slowly collect models that I could use in a force from my Berlin list and evenually go to tournaments. I was aware that something about Late War was coming out this Summer but I didn't know any of the details. Little did I know that previous lists, like my Berlin list were becoming invaild with the new Late War book. That makes building a Berlin force for tournaments kind of pointless. A little frustrating that a lot of my recent purchases were from late Late LATE War are now useless until Battlefront comes up with new rules for them, in 3 or 4 years! On the bright side, my recent (beginning of the year) purchase included a box of Panther tanks which can make up over 50% of a force in the new system. Between that and the new plastic men, it shouldn't cost that much to finally have a playable army. I have several big ticket expanses to deal with so it might be closer to the end of the year before that playable army becomes real.
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| Tracy's Monster Collection |
Monsterpocalypse is a miniature game about Kaiju (giant monsters) meeting up with giant robots and other giant creatures from media using a city as a ring as they destroy buildings trying to hurt each other, with a few planes and tanks thrown in to annoy them like gnats. Version 2 was just release last fall. I never got into nor played version 1 of Monsterpocalypse. This was mainly due to it being a collectible game. Like Collectible Card Games (CCGs) like Magic the Gathering, Monsterpocalypse version 1 was sold in random packs. You never knew what you were going to get. While I could accept that practice from CCGs, thought of doing that with more expensive miniatures was a non starter for me. Version 1 also came pre-assembled pre-painted, which for the younger me at the time would have been fine. Today pre-painted miniatures would be a reason for me to NOT get involved. In any case Monsterpocalypse version 2 is more like standard miniature games in that you know what you are purchasing and the models needs to be painted. Two weeks ago Tracy suddenly called me up to show me a demo of it. We haven't talk since the beginning of Summer so I was surprised to hear from him. It was a fairly easy game to learn and Tracy have at least one of everything that is currently available. I quickly found mechanics that I loved and wanted to make force around. Fortunately, the force construction rules are really simple.
The first thing you pick when building a force is decide what agenda to used. Currently the agendas are Protectors (the good guys) and the Destroyers (the bad guys). Each agenda is made up of several factions. When making a force, everything you pick needs to be from the same agenda though some models may have rules that is only beneficial to their own faction. Standard games have 2 monsters, up to 20 units and 6 to 12 buildings per player. Monsters are the core of your force and are unique. That means you have to pick 2 different monsters from the same agenda in a standard game and you win the game by defeating both of your opponents monsters. Units are the smaller models of your force like planes and tanks. Units are used to control the battlefield and setup advantages for your monsters. Units don't start on the map, they need to be spawned in. When units are destroyed, you can just spawned the model back in the next time you can spawn units. In this way, you have unlimited units to spawn, your choice of 20 units is picking what options you have available to spawn. This opens the door for deep strategies as the game ages. I could see players having one unit in their list that they don't use in a lot of their games yet it is there in case the right scenario comes up. Buildings play an unique role in your list and the game itself. Both players build the game map by placing their buildings one at a time, taking turns. Game maps have spots mark for where buildings need to go. This makes building the map a mini-game of itself as you want to set it up to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible while your opponent does the same. There are two types of buildings: apartments which have a defense 5, no limit to how many you can bring and no special rules; and special buildings which have a defense of 6 or 7, a limit of 4 per type and a wide range of special rules. Some building special abilities require you to have 3 units around it first before you can use it. Here is some of Tracy's buildings...
I decided to build a protectors force around Zor-Maxim and teleport rules. I first pick Zor-Maxim because I thought he could teleport around the battlefield only to realize that his ability only works on units, not himself. I stuck with him because I could envision controlling the battlefield by teleporting all over the place. Shadow Sun Industries is a building that interacts with models with the teleport rule. That's why the first two things I own of Monsterpocalypse are Zor-Maixm and Shadow Sun Industries. I haven't yet played a game utlizing my theme because Tracy doesn't own what I need to test it. My core force is going to need multiple Shadow Gate and Shadow Sun Industries. Once I have that, I can play a game to see if my theme is viable and what other units and Monster I want to add to my force.
While learning how to play Monsterpocalypse, Tracy inform me that my Flames of War plans needed to change. My plan was to slowly collect models that I could use in a force from my Berlin list and evenually go to tournaments. I was aware that something about Late War was coming out this Summer but I didn't know any of the details. Little did I know that previous lists, like my Berlin list were becoming invaild with the new Late War book. That makes building a Berlin force for tournaments kind of pointless. A little frustrating that a lot of my recent purchases were from late Late LATE War are now useless until Battlefront comes up with new rules for them, in 3 or 4 years! On the bright side, my recent (beginning of the year) purchase included a box of Panther tanks which can make up over 50% of a force in the new system. Between that and the new plastic men, it shouldn't cost that much to finally have a playable army. I have several big ticket expanses to deal with so it might be closer to the end of the year before that playable army becomes real.
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