Short Update

This week I spent most of my time working on a video showcasing the miniatures I am working on as they relate to my projects. I had plan it would take a day or two to finish the video and then I could work on the first issue of Holy Moon. Instead it took the entire week to finish. My experience with making this video will go a long way to help me with future editing. I now know the process of what goes into making a video for when I start to produce my own battle reports. I also got a valuable lesson into what it takes to make the War Journal: Flames of War podcast. New episodes will be recorded the same as before but now it will be on me to put them together.

Outside of working on the video, I did find the time to play a practice game of Warhammer Fantasy. It was months since the last time we played and I figure we need the practice to get back into form. The rules came back to us fairly quickly but I realize there is one skill in Warhammer that I have sometimes neglected. List building. When I make a list in Warhammer, what kind of story I want to tell usually has a bigger factor than battlefield effectiveness. I don't want my web novel to be about the Bretonnians that loses every battle! I don't plan on being hyper competitive but I now realize list building I need to pay more attention to. Not that Bretonnians have that many choices compare to armies with newer books, which is everyone else.

So here is a quick run down: Holy Moon - Going to start writing the first issue this week. I plan on it being out in about 2 weeks. Going to play another practice game with Bretonnians this week. Might do a short battle report about it. Everything else I'm working on is touch on in my new Project Progress video. Until next time!

Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights Intro

The land of Thylalon is protected by the guardian Lady Vivianna. She is beloved by Thylalon's people and in return she empowers Thylalon's defenders. Lady Vivianna's powers of precognition foresees dark days ahead and the Thylalon kingdom is not ready to deal with the upcoming threats. She tells King Dylan and his knights that they must undertake a dangerous quest that will end with the deaths of many beloved knights. If they refuses or fail in this quest, then everything they hold dear will be no more!

Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights is my serial fantasy fiction series. Key elements of the story will be decide by the results of various games such as Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights will be release as chapters and episodes. Chapters are entire story arcs made up of multiple episodes. Episodes are the individual story post. Episode titles will be based on the chapter it is from. For example the third episode of the first chapter will be entitled "1.3" while the fifth episode of chapter seven would be "7.5". The story will be told in two ways. Text post which will tell the story just like any other piece of fiction and with battle reports which is a description of what happen during a game that is apart of the story. I will be using two types of battle reports. Summary reports will give an overall description of what happen and will treat the event like a game. That means it will include game concepts such as army list, dice rolls and custom rules if any that were used in the game. Dramatic reports will summarize events in a narrative style. Any concepts that are game system specific will not be included in dramatic reports. Battle report titles will be named after the episode that sets up its events. So the battle report based on episode 3.6 will be entitled either "Summary Report 3.6" or "Dramatic Report 3.6". If a single episode sets up the events of multiple games then the corresponding titles would include a letter ie "3.6 A", "3.6 B" and so on.

The story centers around King Dylan and his knights which will be represented as Bretonnia in Warhammer Fantasy. As the story progresses other actors will take stage in the narrative represented by different Warhammer armies. Age of Sigmar will probably be used when the battles are either smaller or one of the forces don't neatly fit into one of Warhammer Fantasy armies. My personal collection is not as big as I would like and a lot of it still needs to be painted. My friend's collections is probably about half fully painted, half only assembled. I don't actually own a Bretonnia army yet. I will be putting together one as I am writing this series. Many of the early games will be done with my friend's Bretonnia army along with a lot of proxying. Hopefully by the end of the year the battle reports will be done with my own fully painted models.

In addition to the above I will be doing Author's Notes post as needed to keep readers inform on my current progress. These will be for discussing scheduling delays, answering fan questions or behind the scene elements I want to share. The Author's Notes are separate from my general Chaos Updates for the blog which I try to do every 3 to 5 months. I am a little behind where I wanted to be at this point so I will probably won't get to a battle report this month. Chapter 1, Episode 1 should still be out before the end of the month. I've never done a serial series before so it might take me a while to find my rhythm. I hope you will follow me along this journey and enjoy the ride. Until next time.

New Year Update!

2015 was a very mix year for me and Chaos Magic. I co-started a Flames of War podcast and we were able to release new episodes throughout the year semi-regularly. I also took the steps needed to move this hobby into a business. In the middle of the year I had a personal crisis which derailed everything I was doing for 4 months which prevented me from having the level of progress I had hope for in 2015. 2015 was not the year I hope it to be but it was a year I took many steps forward. For that I am very grateful. And I need to keep going. For me to be successful in 2016 I need to produce even more quality content. Here is all my current projects and my plans for what I plan to do in 2016 with them.

Border Prince Campaign - As far as I know, I am one of only two players in my local community that is still interested in playing Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. As long as that is the case then the Border Prince Campaign will remain on hiatus. That doesn't mean there won't be new updates in the new year for the Border Prince story. When I went through my notes to finish the skip story article, I realize I have many more partially written short stories that needs to be finish and posted. In addition I have ideas for stories I can tell as flashbacks in the Border Prince Campaign to help flesh out the overall story. The Border Prince Campaign will no longer be the main focus of this blog but these new stories will help bridge any gaps with my new main projects.

Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar - I no longer know enough people interested in Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar to do a normal campaign. So instead I'm going to commit to a narrative campaign. How this is going to work is I will write a story that ends with a battle of some kind. I will play out the game with my friend Phil using either Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition, Age of Sigmar or Kings of War, depending on what we want to play. I will followed our game up with a battle report here. Based on the results of that game will determine what direction the next part of the story will go. While Phil has told me he has no interest in working on the story aspect of the campaign, he will have an opinion on what armies we will play with, which in turn will affect how the story will go. My goal will be to have at least 1 story post and 1 battle report a month this year. The name and intro of the campaign will be upcoming in the next two weeks or so.

BattleTech - I have two projects in BattleTech I plan to do this year. I mention the Warhammer narrative campaign to my friend Chris and he suggested I do something similar with BattleTech. He gave me the idea to do a story about a group of warriors that is defending their home during a planetary invasion conflict. I love the idea as it immediately made me think about my favorite Gundam series, After War Gundam X. I don't feel as confident in writing science fiction but this is a great idea for me start practicing! I still don't own that much BattleTech stuff. After coming up with my team of heroes and their equipment I will need to pick up the corresponding models. The problem is that I'm not familiar enough with BattleTech to know what I want in my force (I'm always amazed at how large and in-depth this setting is). This have given me the idea of doing another project first before starting the narrative campaign. Chris and myself will compete in an abstract attrition campaign. The both of us will start with a set number of BV points, like 200k. When we decide to play a game, we will pick mechs from our individual rosters. At any time we can add new mechs to our roster by buying it with BV points. The campaign is over when one side is out of BV points and have no functioning mechs. There will also be a resource mechanic that will be earn by winning some of the battles. Resource will be use to fix damage mechs that have otherwise survive a battle or to pay ransom to the other player in certain scenarios. This gives us an easy to run campaign that will eventually end on its own. It is also a system that will allow me to try out many different types of mechs. I will give updates on where we are on starting the narrative campaign. Once we work out the numbers more details on the abstract campaign will be posted and its first battle will be around a month from now, hopefully.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark - I mention in my Refocusing post that I was considering doing something with Descent. Since then I have started running friends through the base game campaign. So far I am enjoying the game and I think my friends are as well, even though we are still making a lot mistakes with the system. Trying to craft a story to fit into my setting will be harder than I initially thought. So after we finish the base campaign, if my friends are still interested I will pick up one of the expansions and run them through that campaign as well. After that I think I might be confident enough to design my own campaign. In the meantime I will be picking up various Descent products such as lieutenant packs and the monster packs. We are playing with Tracy's copy of the game but eventually I want to get my own copy so I can paint the models. In the coming months I will be showing off my Descent models and maybe reviewing elements of the game. I am not sure we will get to my own crafted campaigns this year but we will see how far we can get.

Alien vs Predator: The Hunt Begins - This is a game I heard about but I really did not think it would be something that would affect me. I was wrong. I failed to realize how much Tracy and Chris were Alien fans. Tracy picked up the game when we were at the gaming store to play Team Yankee. We have since played it 3 times and overall think its a very good game despite some pretty big flaws. The rules are in desperate need of a FAQ. That said I can see many fun hours being had with this game. With it being such a big brand and how protective Fox is with this brand, I am much more reluctant to do anything with this game. That said, sometime my mind doesn't listen to reason and have already generate ideas on how to develop stories with this game. Nevertheless this is one game I will never buy anything for nor will I have any pictures of its models here. There is too much risk for me to include them. A possible idea I could do is recreate our games with Descent tiles and Warhammer models and I could take pictures of that. My only problem with that is that the marines don't have a good analogy in my fantasy fiction. Of course two weeks ago I barely heard of this game and there was no way for me to imagine it might be one of my most play games in this new year. Given more time I am sure I will come up with something.

Team Yankee - Team Yankee as well as Flames of War is in a weird spot for me in that I know they will be major elements of this blog in the new year but I am not sure how. With Team Yankee being a new game, all of my current efforts are going into learning how to play the game and deciding on what my force will look like. Much like with Flames of War, I am not sure if Tracy will have the time to commit to do a campaign with either game. That said, I have notice there is a lot of buzz about Team Yankee around my local gaming store when we played. If a couple people pick up the game in addition to Tracy and myself, then the prospect of a Team Yankee campaign increases immensely. The only thing I can be confident on is that I will have Team Yankee models in my gallery and a few battle reports here and there. I am very interested to see where Team Yankee takes me in the new year.

Others - Even when I think my hobby is full, something always surprises me and changes things up. I am sure 2016 will continue that trend. I have side projects like Relic Knights, Samurai Battles and BattleLore that I'm not sure at this time what my level of interest will be in the new year. It is possible in six months one or more of these games will be added or replace my current project list. Or they might remain on my shelves, unplayed. I do plan to show up at my local gaming store more often this year on my own and see what people whom I don't normally play with are playing. I might discover a new game that I'm interested in with new friends to play with.

I will end on two more points. In this new year I plan on playing as many games as possible and giving my thoughts on those games here. Whether I'm doing reviews, offering tactic advice or exploring ideas on how to make games better, I hope readers will find my content entertaining and informative. On my major project I will work hard to make sure they are release on a reliable schedule. I am working with friends whom have their own time constraints and may not be available when I would like. I will try to work around my friends' schedules but that may not always be possible. Those are my plans for the new year. Be safe and have a Happy New Year!

My First Game of Team Yankee

I played my first game of Team Yankee against Tracy two days ago. We used the models from the two box sets, Bannon's Boys and Potecknov's Bears, along with several Flames of War models as proxies so we could get a feel for the entire range. While its too early for me to give a proper review, especially how our game went, I did gain a lot of insight into the new rule set.

I played US while Tracy played as the Soviets. Even as we were setting up we both were learning new aspects of the rules. I quickly realize my list had a major flaw. Essentially I had nothing that could shoot at Strike Aircraft. I had no idea helicopters are unable to shoot at airplanes. So I was really worry about my chances before the first die roll. Turns out my anti-aircraft problems were worst than I thought and I didn't even get the chance to be concern about the Frogfoots! For the mission we rolled up Dust Up, which gave us Delayed Reserves. Only getting half our forces until turn 3 (maybe) really change how we approach the game. Tracy decided to start with a unit of T-72s, BMP-2 Recons, Gophers and Hinds. I had a unit of M1 Abrams, Mech Platoon and M109 Field Artillery Battery. In addition we both had our commanders and an observer. Tracy "won" first turn (neither of us wanted to go first) so his Hinds had to fly off the board. Since they used spearhead the BMP-2 were close to an objective so they moved up to take it. The T-72s moved across ruins and half of them got bogged down. The remaining T-72s plus the commander shot at my unit of M1 Abrams. They only bailed out two of my tanks which would be no big deal in Flames of War. However in Team Yankee since I only had three to with start, that was a morale test. Failing that test would mean I would instantly lost a quarter of my entire force just like that! Luckily I passed the morale test and began my turn 1. The Abrams remounted and were ready to go. Tracy had place pre-planned artillery target on that objective so I was hesitant to approach it with my M1s and commander. It slipped my mind until later that his artillery was still in reserves so I had nothing to worry about. I was fairly sure my shooting was going to removed the BMPs off the map but if I had bad dice rolls I would instantly lose the game. My Abrams destroyed three and bailed out the 4th BMP so now Tracy couldn't win on turn 2. Mech Platoon dash across the field to take on the Gophers. The Gophers couldn't do anything at the time but I wanted them destroyed before my aircraft came in from reserves. My artillery rain fire on the Gophers as well but I only manage to bailed out two of them, who immediately remounted next turn!

Turn 2 was the beginning of the end. The only Anti-Aircraft weapons I had were AA machine guns on the Abrams and M109s which I wasn't confident in their ability to take down Hinds and the Dragons in Mech Platoon. However Dragons are guide so I can only fire them on my turn and they can't be fired while moving. Given they also have a minimum range means the Dragons will never be a threat to the Hinds if Tracy knows what he is doing. So on turn 2 6 Hinds showed up and wiped my commander and M1 Abrams off the map. Turn 3 the hinds nearly wiped the M109s off the board as well and there was little I could do about it. Neither one of us got any reserves on Turn 3 so I surrendered. There was a chance with some good rolls I could delay Tracy from winning next turn. Ultimately I felt it wouldn't have help me win the game and next turn Tracy had a way to auto-win.

I wrote the previous sections the day after the game so those was my initial impressions. However my feelings have change after spending a day reading the rules and the forums. While my lack of dedicated AA made the game an uphill battle for me, I now realize that slope wasn't as steep as I first thought. My list did have the tools to deal with the Hinds if I only played it better. My points about Dragons were mostly true. However I forgot to consider the Blitz Move order. The ability to move 4 inches and still shoot changes its usefulness. During the game I thought both of the Abrams' AA machine guns range was 16 inches. This allowed the Hinds to be able to shoot at the Abrams outside of that range. In actuality the .50 cal machine gun has a range of 20 inches! If the hinds can shoot at the Abrams, the Abrams can shoot back with the .50 cal. I am not entirely sure I would have shot if I had known because in my mind its probably not worth giving up the ability to fire the main guns on my turn. Of course we had this rule WRONG as well when we played. The rule is if you fire AA weapons during the opponent's turn you are not allowed to fire that WEAPON on your own turn. We are used to it being teams but it is per weapon fired. That means the Abrams can fire both AA guns during the opponents turn and still fire its main gun on its own turn. So I had no reason not to shoot at the Hinds! I had another powerful option against the Hinds I didn't realize was there. My artillery had the laser-guided projectile upgrade which gives the guns the Guided special rule. That means while the FIST is alive the artillery could shoot at the Hinds on my turn. The next time we play should have a much closer result. That said I learn several things about Team Yankee in that game.

1. Options - When I first learn Team Yankee was just going to be Soviets and US at the start, I was concern that the initial lists would be limited in the options you could take. We were both pleasantly surprise this was not the case when we made our list. With the system as it is I could easily makes 3 to 5 very different lists and I wouldn't be shock if that number goes up the more experience I get with the system.

2. Need dedicated AA - Weapons need AA in there description to be able to shoot at Strike Aircraft. Only relying on Guided weapons to take out helicopters might not be enough to stop helicopters from taking over the game. US and Soviets both have cheap options for dedicated AA so remember to take some.

3. Strike Aircraft in reserves - Strike Aircraft can go in reserve like any other units and they count when picking how many units need to go into reserves. In the starting step rolling for Aircraft is before rolling for reserve. That means Strike Aircraft in reserve can not be used in the same turn they arrive from reserves. So if you put Strike Aircraft in delayed reserve, the earliest you can used them is turn 4!

4. Bogged Down - Being bogged down doesn't matter for morale, just destroyed and bailed out. This is one of the differences from Flames of War that caught me by surprise.

5. How many Abrams? - Abrams are really expensive so it is tempting to go with a few as possible. Six total Abrams (1 HQ, 2 platoons of 2 and 3) cost 48 points out of a default total of 100 point game. With the new morale rules however one or two bailed out results means a morale check that could wiped them out! I don't think there is an easy answer to this and will always be something to consider when making a list.

6. Brutal Game - Things die fast in this game compared to Flames of War. I'm used to playing with strategies that limited my own casualties. In Team Yankee that's not going to work. My models WILL die and I need to plan around what to do with those that survive. This makes delayed reserves a lot scarier than in Flames of War. I wouldn't be surprised if most delayed reserve games end before reserves even show up!

I foresee us playing at least two more games next week. Whatever knowledge I gleam from those games I will share here. Until next time...

Border Prince Lore: Warriors of Chaos 3

Healing

The battle between Chaos and Lizardmen was a close fight and extremely bloody. The generals on both sides had apparently died in the initial moments. The lost of their general did not affect Chaos morale much. If anything army morale went up because of how much they hated Xizamiron. Still they were surrounded by Lizardmen so they couldn't celebrate yet. So they fought all day long and in the end were the victors.

Without a leader the army decide to just celebrated their victory for the next few days. Those unfortunate enough to be injured and not die were taken to the medic squad. These warrior doctors uses a mixture of medical knowledge and dark sorcery to heal their patients. Sadly for the patients is that the medic squad's healing techniques are similar to their killing techniques, only that the killing techniques are less painful.

Dizadeim watch the celebration in silence. After a time he decided that their true leader and queen needed to know what had happen. Figuring a normal scout would be too slow to send the message he travel to his own personal tent. He was one of Vanacyr's most trusted advisers and arcane student. He knew dark magics that could get word to Vanacyr in mere hours. While in his tent he could tell the celebration was still quite boisterous and loud. However Dizadeim had elven ears and he was highly trained to use them. They alerted him to a presence entering his tent. He quickly spun around with a sword at the ready. He paused however once he witness the intruder with his own eyes. The intruder look like a male, possible human covered head to toe in dark robes. It was impossible to see the features of his face. More than that, the intruder moved like he was severely injured and seemed to be struggling to breathe. The intruder said something that Dizadeim couldn't quite make out, but he immediately recognized the voice. A very unique, unearthly and unforgettable voice.

“My Lord?” Dizadeim said amazed. Xizamiron was turned to ash in the battle. How could he still be alive.

“Move the army … march them northwest,” Xizamiron whispered. He sounded like every word was painful for him to say.

“First we need to get you to the medics, you need their power,” Dizadeim said.

“Don't worry about me. Your medics healing would do nothing for me. I just need rest and to be alone. Now get the army moving!”

Xizamiron gasp heavily for a few moments and then stumbled out of the tent. Dizadeim followed his commander to the entrance of his tent. From there he watch Xizamiron walking staggeringly away from the rest of the army and eventually vanishing into a copse. Dizadeim started moving towards the rest of the camp to issue Xizamiron's orders but then he changed his mind.

"No, our true leader must be informed first!" Dizadeim said aloud though he meant for those words to remain unspoken.

He returned to his tent. On a parchment he scribes the recent events of the army from encountering the Lizardmen to witnessing Xizamiron vanishing in the trees. Trying to balance finishing quickly with providing enough details proved to be challenging but Dizadeim decided it was worth risking time to make sure his mistress had an accurate picture. Once finished he rolled the parchment up and sealed it with his own blood by pricking his thumb and saying a short incantation which gave his blood the properties of hot wax. The words of another, more potent spell was already on his lips. Dizadeim left the tent with his report in hand. Unseen magic took hold in his surroundings as he finish the second incantation. The rhythmic sound of a flapping bird overhead told Dizadeim his spell had its desired effect. Dizadeim toss the sealed parchment into the air and a falcon flew down and yank it out the air. Raising quickly, the color of the falcon slowly darken until it was a solid pitch black. A third eye grew from its forehead. Each wing suddenly split into 2. The now 4 winged creature flew at such speeds that should be impossible for a living bird. Dizadeim eye sight was superior to most, but even he lost sight of the creature in mere moments.

Team Wraith

First I want to say the newest episode of War Journal: Flames of War is out. Episode 20 was our Team Yankee Special and you can listen to it here: http://neaceul.podbean.com/. In 'Our Hobby' on episode 20 we discuss ideas on developing a Team Yankee campaigns. I want to expand on that conversation and go into what my Team Yankee forces will look like.

Starting with my Himmlisch Drachen Stamm, I have decided that my fictional nations will only use what was available from a single nation. That means I won't have a nation that has Cobra's and T-72s. Tracy brings up the possibility of playing such a game but I am not interested in modeling a force in this way. The exception to this is if I ever decide to build a force based on the classic GI Joe cartoon. I have decided to keep my Himmlisch Drache Stamm to be inspired by Germany and I will have a NATO and Warsaw Pact version of them. I have time to develop my history and organization of the HDS since it will be a while before Battlefront gets to release Germans. Another nation I really want to work on is a France inspired force. Like the Germans there isn't much I can do until Battlefront gets to France. However if the community puts together a historical accurate fan list for France using models Battlefront had already release then I would immediately start putting together a French force. At the moment the only forces available for Team Yankee is US and Soviets. I am still working on a concept for the Soviets. It will probably be something based on Slavic mythology. As I know nothing about Slavic mythology there will be a little moment on this front until I can get some research done.

US is a different story. My plans is to develop a ghost theme battalion that I will be able to used in multiple different stories and campaigns. In scenarios where we are using fictional nations the ghost battalion can act as part of my country's fighting force. In a more realistic setting it can still act as a fictional part of the United States military. The ghost battalion, which I haven't came up with a name yet, will be compose of 4 companies. The lead company will be called Team Wraith. They will be a mix of ideas from Bannon's Team Yankee in the book, movie version of Delta Force and other ideas of my own creation. The color scheme of my vehicles will be black/near black with white/light grey highlights. I will be playing around with patterns so I might end up with a force with widely different markings. Uniforms will be something I will be waiting until I'm done with several vehicles before I decided on. I don't see myself picking up US infantry anytime soon. For upcoming battle reports I will be either using Tracy's infantry or my Germans. One of the other companies will have a more traditional US look. For the last two companies I will wait to see how things develop, both with Team Wraith and the local gaming scene. At a minimum Team Wraith will have a three tank platoons of M1 Abrams, 4 AH-1 Cobras and 4 A-10 Warthogs. After playing a few games I will decided what else to add.

Beside picking up US models, I will also be purchasing a small collection of terrain for my own use. I like the looks of a few building Battlefront and others are releasing that could be used with Team Yankee. This will allow me to play Team Yankee games without Tracy involvement, which will be useful to help spread the game locally. Also I will be needing my own terrain for long term projects. Once my Bannon's Boy box set arrives I will be posting updates on how the assembling is coming. Before the end of the year I plan on posting one more fiction piece and a update post on what is coming up for Chaos Magic. Stay tune.

Amended to War Journal Episode 19

We just release the newest episode of War Journal: Flames of War. On this episode, which is 19, Hydra, Cobra and a New World Order, Question of the Week #94 baffled us. Even after doing a little research we were still confused about this question. We say that we finally figured it out during the podcast but we really didn't. It wasn't until we were editing the podcast together that we finally got what was confusing us. I suggest you listen to the episode, or at least to Front Page News where the issue came up first before reading the second part of this post. Doing so will give you a frame of reference to understand my explanation.

First of all, this question only deals with moving in the movement step. I missed that part until much later. Knowing that wouldn't have help us get the answer right but it would have help us understand why their answer was correct. Next, rotating the turret does not count as moving at all. You have to rotate the turret to face whatever you are shooting in the shooting step which doesn't count as moving. I suppose it would be unfairly harsh to punish an action in one step when you could just simply want until the next step and do the same action for free. I think we made up the rule about the turrets hitting the trees causing bogging check because we were trying to explain a ruling about a different issue we saw in "Letters From the Front" which had to do with the stormtroopers move. That dealt with the question 'Can you use stromtroopers special rule to just rotate the turret'. The answer was yes but it counts as moving (thereby causing a bogging check). I think we mistakenly took rotating the turret with stormtroopers move causing a bogging check meant any rotating the turret in difficult terrain counts as moving. We now know that is not the case. I hope this brief explanation helps you understand what our issue was in the podcast. Until Next Time!

Inspirations From The Joy of Painting

At the end of October Twitch Tv did a marathon of every episode of the Joy of Painting to celebrate their new Twitch Creative community. The marathon lasted over a week and once I learn about it, it was always running in the background. For seven days I went to bed to the soothing voice of Bob Ross. Judging by social media, I wasn't alone. The number of viewers the channel had was insane. Blizzard's Blizzcon started around the time the marathon was ending. Compared with a highly anticipated opening event, the Joy of Painting marathon had about 20,000 more views than Blizzard's. There is good reason why so many people tune in to hear about 'happy little trees'. Even if you had no interest in painting landscape, Bob Ross's voice had a way to make yourself feel better. I've found one of the best ways to relax after a stressful day is to listen to the Joy of Painting while laying down.

While painting landscapes and painting miniatures are two vastly different hobbies that involved painting, there are a few tips I got from listening to Bob Ross that I plan to used the next time I paint. The big thing I notice is that he only uses a handful of colors that mostly remain the same season after season. Titanium White, Phthalo Blue, Phtalo Green, Van Dyke Brown, Alizarin Crimson, Indian Yellow and about 2 to 3 other colors was all Bob Ross used. Maybe exchange one or two colors for something else but that's really all he had. I heard Titanium White, Phtalo Blue and Pthalo Green so often that they were burned into my psyche. I don't know if this is common with oil painting, but when I thought about it I found it amazing. When I go buy a new paint for my miniatures, I'm looking through 60 to 80 or more different colors to choose from. My own collection has about 40 different paints in them and I feel I still need more. I didn't realize I had that many colors until I just now counted them. The reason Bob Ross can paint such colorful vivid painting while using few colors is because he is constantly mixing them. And half the time it seems he's not sure what color he wants. He just add colors together until he gets something that feels right. It is that kind of experimenting that I bring to my miniatures. I have mix paints before but until I watch Joy of Painting I felt mixing was more of a last resort opposing to it being a tool I should use as often as possible. I now don't feel paralysis by not having a specific color. Now I feel more comfortable going through my large collection and try experimenting mixing paints together to get something close to what I originally want. Or even mix random colors together to see what I get for fun. Now when I say mixing paint, I mean mixing together multiple colors on the palette before applying it to the model or canvas.

That brings me to my second related but slightly different tip I picked up and want to try. Bob Ross not only mixed colors on the palette, he also blended them together on the canvas. Oil paint is slow to dry, especially compared with miniature paints. That means Bob Ross is using wet paint on top of wet paint. So even using a single paint Bob can get a wide range of coloration because of the wet paint underneath. Every now and again I remember hearing Bob saying to switch to a new/dry brush or don't touch specific areas on the canvas with a particular paint because it would ruin the effect he was going for. This is something I doubt I would have thought of on my own. Granted no doubt that oil paints and miniature paints will behave differently so not all of Bob Ross techniques will work for me. Still it will be another tool for me to use, albeit much harder to incorporate due to miniature paints drying so much quicker. Also I am not sure what kind of look this technique will earn me but that's what experimenting is for. Though there is one look I think this technique will help me make. For some of my BattleTech mechs part of my plan paint scheme will have one solid color morphing into a different color. I attempted to do this look on my Valiant model but I did not like how it came out. The next time I attempt that look I can try out Bob Ross's blending style. My only issue would be that I will have to paint fast and will probably need to use three brushes at once. Two for each color and a clean dry brush to blend with.

I end with saying that the Joy of Painting marathon is not really over yet. Probably shock at just how popular the marathon was, the people behind the Joy of Painting twitch channel have decide play a marathon of a single season every Monday. In addition they have decide to have the full week long 24/7 marathon every year starting on Bob Ross's birthday. I'm usually excited at the end of October for either Halloween or the start of National Write a Novel Month but now they both have taken a backseat to my new favorite event, the Joy of Painting week! If the Joy of Painting have brought joy into your life, please tell me about it in the comments below. That is it for now, see you next time.

Refocusing

I initially created this blog to host my stories from the Warhammer Campaigns I was apart of. It was slow in the beginning because my group had the habit of ending campaigns early. For this blog that meant little was posted before the campaign it was based on was cancelled. The Border Prince Campaign was the first time I was able to produce a substantial amount of material here. Over time I've expanded what this blog about, such as including other war games that I play. The plan was to eventually have campaigns with other games but the core of this blog has always been Warhammer, until now.

I have come to the realize that my Warhammer world have fundamentally change and I need to adjust my blog because of it. When Age of Sigmar drop, it destroy my local Warhammer gaming community. Beside Phil and myself, it seems the rest of my peers have decide to move on to other games. None of them care for Age of Sigmar, which I can certainly understand. What is disheartening to me is that they seem to also giving up on Warhammer Fantasy as well. The games they are considering to move to are all games I have thought about getting into in the past but have decided I have enough on my plate for now. In about six months I will see how my peers still feel about 8th edition then. Or maybe I will have the funds to get into the games they are currently playing. In either case for now I have to contend with the fact I have only one opponent to play either Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar. That does put it in the same boat as Flames of War for me, just with a different opponent. At least Phil is still expanding his 8th edition forces and is interest in playing weird match ups.

Mixing games with my own fiction will still be a major part of this blog. I just have to use more than just Warhammer to tell my stories. Which games is something I still have not decided on. So much of this depends on who I get to help out and how much free time they have. Here are the games I'm considering. Legend of the Five Rings's Clan War is very appealing to me. While I have never read that deeply into the setting, I own the third edition RPG book and was in a short lived RPG game. In general I like the setting, I know several people who would be interested in playing and my podcast partner Tracy has A LOT of the models. However I have never played Clan War itself so I might not even like the system. Another downside is that I'm not sure Tracy could even commit to a campaign until the Summer. For a similar favor kind of game, Samurai Battles is also an option. It might be a little harder to get people into it but I do have my own small set of figures. If I could get enough interest in it then I would either be reliant on Tracy's large set or expand on my own. Fortunately, for a war game Samurai Battles is cheap to expand upon. For a completely different style of game I am considering Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition. Instead of a war game, Descent is an adventure game similar to a board game version of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. This will require work to figure out how to turn a gaming session into something I can post here as I don't want to just post videos of us playing the board game. The upside to Descent is that it will open the door to my friends whom are not interested in war games. I've actually have not played Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition, but I have played several games like it including very briefly the first edition version of Descent. I am confident that it will be a game my friends and myself will enjoy. Another option that I am much more reluctant to try is for me to game master a tabletop RPG. I would imagine it be even more difficult to turn gaming sessions into material I can use here than it would be for Descent. I've also been burnt out on tabletop RPGs in the last few years. There are two upsides to this. For one it will be by far the easiest for me to get people to join. Second, along with Descent will allow me to craft stories that are at a more personal scale. Instead of the focus being on large armies crash into one another, the stories can be on individual heroes trying to make a difference in the world. And I have to admit I still have the itch to want to GM a game. What system to use is yet another wild factor in all of this. Dungeons & Dragons 4th and 5th edition, Pathfinder, Anima and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are all options on the table. No matter which of these options I go with, from Clan Wars to Pathfinder, the story I tell in them will be set in the same world as the one I created for the Border Prince campaign. This means a lot less for Clan Wars and Samurai Battle as their story would be literally on the other side of the planet. For the others while I won't visit the Border Prince region, I will connect them to my current lore in some way.

With all that said, Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar will still have a place here, albeit probably much smaller. I will be working on designing a narrative campaign that the two of us can play. It will be a very free from system where we decide how the outcome of each battle will affect the next. In some ways it reminds me of the End Times storyline. End Times was written in a cycle of the plot leading up to a battlefield confrontation, pausing the story to discuss who were the major characters of that battle, telling you the results of the conflict and then continue on with the plot that would eventually lead to another battle. The narrative campaign will be posted here in a similar way. One or more entries detailing the fiction that leads to a conflict. The next post will be a detail battle report of what happen during the game and the significant of it. The following posts will continue on with the story. I've never tried anything like this before. I am hopeful that it will work out but if it crash and burns, I will just have to come up with some else. I will also be playing some 8th edition and Age of Sigmar games that will be for fun and/or practice that will have nothing to do with the narrative campaign. If something interesting happens during those games or I learn something new I will have a post discussing them on the blog.

One last thing to mention is that I am also working to get a BattleTech event here. Unlike everything else I have mention so far, if the event gets off the ground, it will be in its own universe. However a lot of things needs to happen and I'm not confident that it will get done in a reason amount of time. If it does seem like it will happen I will talk more about BattleTech then. I will most more once I come to a few decisions. Until then.

Narrowing Down Armies for 8th and AoS

Earlier this week I've played my first game of 8th edition Warhammer in while. It felt like months though it most likely hasn't been that long. I played Bretonnians against Orcs and Goblins. The vast majority of my 8th edition games have been with Chaos so it was rather refreshing to play something different. I didn't get a chance to take a really good look at the Bretonnia book before I made my list and played the game. I had an idea of how I wanted to play Bretonnians and created my list around that. I expected to lose but I actually crushed my opponent. Part of that probably had to do with my friend making a "soft" list and being really lucky with magic. The fewest amount of power dice I had to cast spells were 8. Magic by itself wasn't auto winning the game, but having that much certainly help. I learn a lot about Bretonnians from that game as well as me reading more of their army book. I've recently been thinking about new armies and my new found Bretonnia knowledge will be useful towards that endeavor.

With the release of Age of Sigmar I now have the urge to collect and play armies outside of Chaos. From when I started playing Warhammer Fantasy until recently, Warriors of Chaos was the only army that interest me. Other armies had models that I like but I try to think of ways to convert them for my Chaos army oppose to actually starting a new one. One problem I have with my Chaos army is that I never form an over arching story line with them before I started collecting. At first I just brought random boxes, mainly choosing what was the best dollars to point values. I develop multiple story lines later but they were not based on stuff I own or wanted to pick up. I let my imagination run wild and now I am slowly trying to turn those visions into something on the gaming table. I really don't want to repeat that process with another army.

Fortunately, the story I have crafted with my Chaos forces already has background references that can base new armies on. They are an elven nation, a holy knightly human nation and a goblin force that worships a death angel. The elves are the ones I have developed the least. Storywise I have two chaos characters that are elven maidens (Vanacyr and Zifa Winters) and a future event that involves the Chaos King invading the elves and that's pretty much it for now. I have a general feeling on how I want my elven army to be on the table but at the same time I've never read any of their army books. While I have a box of Mantic archers I got as a present, I think I should probably wait until I've develop more of their story before trying to build their army. In the meantime I can use the archers as practice for potential color schemes. As for the holy nation, that has a stronger case for me starting an army for. There is a lot for it I also need to develop (among which is an actual name), however I have a general idea who they are and where I want to take them. With that as a foundation it will make further development much easier. The holy nation's story is very light for now. They are enemies to the Chaos King and are a threat that my other forces need to keep in mind. Bretonnia is probably the closest play style to what I envision the holy nation to play as. What I will bring to the game table might look weird for a normal Bretonnia list, but I live and die by my themes. The other army option is the goblin one. This idea came about me combining End Times' Lore of Undeath with a pure goblin list filled with wizards. I like the idea as it will be vastly different from what I normally play with Chaos. I have a very rough draft of a short story that explains how the army came about lore wise. When I think about how I want to paint the army up, I find myself with an overwhelming urge to also paint up a "normal" goblin army. I don't know why other than its my ADD trying to take over. Now that I think about it, it could very easily be a non-chaos Arkyrian Cabal force. As attempting as that sounds I will wait on an Arkyrian goblin force for the time being. With that decided, my next step is to work on some Bretonnia, undead and goblin models.

Now you are probably thinking that its crazy to start two separate Warhammer armies at once and you will be correct. I do have two counters to that point. I do plan to go very slow and small on both armies. A single character and a few models here, a single war machine there. I tend to bounce between projects a lot which leaves most of my models partially or unpainted. For these two armies I plan to work on each unit until I completely finish it before moving on to the next unit. Even though this will be a slow process, these armies will be made with both Fantasy and Age of Sigmar in mind. That means I will be able to use completed models as soon as they are done in Age of Sigmar since its playable with a lot less miniatures. And that is just using my own miniatures. My other point is that I have a friend with complete Bretonnia and Goblin armies. While I build up myself force, I can use his stuff to test and play games in the meantime. This is not exactly a perfect option as what I want to do with these armies is quite a bit different from what he owns. For now it will be enough in our practice games. For campaigns and other events I will make an effort to collect the unique elements of my armies ahead of time.

I think I have ramble on enough. I will end on what will be the initial elements of my armies, most of which I already own. For Bretonnia round 1 will a damsel character and a few peasant bowmen. I have a Reaper model that I will use for the damsel. The model, Sarah the Seeress, is perfect for what I need as I plan to have a fair amount of characters on foot. My friend didn't get any damsel characters with his Bretonnia so it is lucky I already had a miniature I could start working on immediately. The bowmen on the other hand might be a while as I will need to purchase them. The peasant bowmen were one of the units I really like from my previous game. Perhaps a lot of that had to do with the fact that I'm use to having nearly no shooting attacks and was really happy to have something to do in a game phase I usually skip on my turn. It probably doesn't that they are even better in Age of Sigmar. What I am not sure of is if I want to pick up the peasant bowmen box or the Bretonnian Battalion box. The Battalion has everything that I want but its a lot more expensive. A single bowmen box is a lot easier for me to purchase. I suppose I can wait on making that decision after I finish work my other round 1 items. Round 1 for Goblins will be three Fanatics and 3 skeleton archers. I have a box of Night Goblin Fanatics already assembled. They just need to be prime and painted. I also have several packs of Reaper's skeleton archers. I will paint up at least one pack of them. I brought a bunch because they were cheap and I plan to use them in two separate armies with very different paint schemes. From here I'm not sure where to go with the Goblins. Unlike Bretonnians, the 8th edition and Age of Sigmar versions of Goblins will be quite a bit different. But I think I can wait on that discuss. No need to consider round 2 options before round 1 is done.

Team Yankee

Team Yankee is a new upcoming miniature game from Battlefront, the makers of Flames of War. It is an alternate history World War 3 game based on the novel of the same name. I talked a bit about it on the War Journal podcast, but I want to give it more attention here. As Battlefront's first non historic miniature game (to my knowledge) there is a lot to say about it.

At this time very little has actually been release about the game. Nevertheless, excitement for it runs high. Why the excitement? Set in the mid 80s, it will be the only major miniature war game that features modern day weaponry. So whether you are a historical fan of modern military vehicles or you love classic 80's action war movies then you will soon have a miniature game you can play at your local gaming store. There are so many vehicles fans are looking forward to such as the Tomcat, Apache, Black Hawk, Abrams and more. Probably the most exciting and talk about vehicle is the Russian Mil Mi-24, known by most as the Hind. In every movie I've seen that has a Hind in it, that helicopter has such a intimidating and terrifying presence. I wouldn't be surprise if most players of Team Yankee has a few Hinds, regardless if they play Soviets or not. Personally I have another favorite I want to see on the gaming table (well third favorite after the Hind and Apache). I've nearly forgotten about this helicopter until very recently. It is the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse and its various cousins such as the MD 500 Defender. I first got introduce to this helicopter from the TV show Airwolf as more than one villain had a Hughes variety. I also remember a Hughes variety in many other movies as well. Off the top of my head both Blue Thunder and Fire Birds movies had a final showdown with one.

I do have some concerns with the game. There are a lot of modern military vehicles that I love and they all are aircrafts. In Flames of War aircraft have a very minor role in the game and on the battlefield. That is not to say they are not important. Aircraft can easily change the outcome of a battle but the actual time they are on the game table is very small compare to other models. Lists can have a maximum of one aircraft and for that option you only need one model. I really hope Team Yankee does not go with the Flame of War style and instead give aircraft an much more active role in the game. I would love to be able to field an entire force of aircraft but that might be a bit much to balance against an all ground force. Nevertheless I want to be able to take more than one aircraft in my Team Yankee games. The ability to have 2 Apaches, a Hughes and a F-16 covering my ground troops would make me a very happy gamer. I think it would also draw in a lot of other players into Team Yankee.

Given that Team Yankee is not historic opens the door for creative options on the battlefield. Historical players can paint up a 1980s era appropriate force while others can bring something from their imagination to the table. Have an idea for a fictional private contractor or terrorist organization? Bring it to life with Team Yankee. Or go with a more well known fictional terrorists group. Painting up a force that looks like something from the GI Joe cartoon/comics would be awesome. I think this is a good direction for Battlefront to go. Flames of War is a great game along with its Vietnam and Fate of the Nation cousins I assume. However there is a limit on what you can do with historical games. You can't create new vehicles that wasn't in World War 2 if you are a historical game but alternate history is a different story. If the US and the USSR went to war with each other in the 80s, that would most like push the need to develop newer, more advance weaponry. After Battlefront puts out models for every vehicle that existed in the 80s they can then work on models of vehicles that could have been develop in a hot war. If Battlefront encourages new fantasy minded players that fictional armies are an accepted option then they can greatly expand upon their historical audience with Team Yankee.

There is lots of creative options to play in Team Yankee but what am I going to play? To be honest I have not completely decided on that but I do have a few things in mind. One idea that will definitely see light in some way will be my Himmlisch Drachen Stamm army, 40 years later. There is a lot I still need to develop for my fantasy Flames of War army so it might seem strange to also work on a 40 years later version of a work in progress but it makes sense to me. There will always be some regiments of it after its Flames of War results. Whether it is still a nation-state or has now become a private contractor like organization, there will be a Himmlish Stamm story to tell. How Himmlisch Drachen Stamm will look in Team Yankee is something I am less sure on. I might use West Germany as a template or I might use a mixture of various different nations to make my dragon army. Of course this is all before I even know what options to play as even are. The second option I thought about is quite similar to the first. Himmlisch Drachen Stamm will need a rival and Team Yankee might be the place to develop them. Being the GI Joe to the Drachen Stamm's Cobra of a sorts. Both Tracy and myself are excited about Team Yankee but nether of us have committed to a force yet. What I finally decided upon to play will partially be depended on what Tracy goes with, if he decides to play.

Which brings me to a point where I need to inject a little realism. What happens if Team Yankee is a game I don't like? With what little is known about Team Yankee it is very possible it will be a system I can't stand. I hope this is not the case. I enjoy Flames of War so I have faith that I like another game from the same company. But it is entirely likely that Team Yankee uses a different system. So in case I do not like it, I will still buy some of the models. Just not in the numbers need to play the game. There are a lot of vehicles I would love to have models for and I like Battlefront's miniatures. Of course I would prefer to buy models for a specific game but sometimes you need to look for the silver lining. Having a collection of modern military vehicle models can still serve a purpose other than being showcase pieces. I've recently came across an intriguing game called Frostgrave. Frostgrave is a fantasy game base around playing with war bands lead by wizards. The interesting thing I found about Frostgrave is that in my initial search I didn't see anything about the game's miniatures. I found a lot of information about how good the rules are and how nice the rule book is. But nothing on the official miniatures themselves. If anything mention models, they were about other companies models such as Games Workshop or Reaper. I finally found the miniatures on my second search attempt and they were nothing to write home about, at least to me. That tells me that the most important thing about Frostgrave is the rules themselves and I should just uses models I already own or buy them from other companies. The take away from this is that something similar could happen with a 15mm modern/sci-fi game. A game could come around (or is already out and I don't know about it) that has great modern warfare rules but lacks models. Heck, I could even use Team Yankee models in BattleTech. Battlefront's models are somewhat too large for BattleTech, but if BattleTech fans can accept counters and scraps of paper, then painted oversize models should work just fine. But here is hoping Team Yankee will be a rule set that I can enjoy.

Age of Sigmar, Round 2

I've played my second game of Age of Sigmar. Vampire Counts vs Goblins. We decide to go with 100 wounds per side. This game was even more of a disaster than the first but amazing I had more fun playing it.

Vampire Counts had 4 vampire lords, a tomb banshee, a Black Coach, 5 hex wraiths, 2 blocks of skeleton warriors and a unit of six vargheists. I had a goblin shaman, night goblin shaman, a unit of 31 goblins, 3 nasty stalker, goblin spear chukka, a unit of 20 night goblins, 3 night goblin fanatics and 14 forest goblin riders. You might notice my opponent had way more firepower and I had little chance of winning. That said this was the first time I've played with goblins and it was a learning experience for me. Also my opponent played a little loose so we could see some things in action. The forest goblin riders shot up and charged the hex wraiths. They nearly wipe the wraiths out, much to my surprise. Unfortunately for them the banshee move up and screamed at them which prove to be devastating. That and their bravery was well, goblin-like. Nevertheless they did remarkable well against the charging skeleton warriors ... well until the warriors got vampiric backup. On the other side of the battlefield the normal goblins fired their bows at the incoming vargheists. Being enhanced by the magic of the shaman, their arrows did work on the vargheists, just not enough damage to stop the vargheists from charging in and wiping them out. Did I mention the vargheists had the help of the Black Coach as well? It was not pretty. The nasty stalkers popup and said hi, but the undead just ignored them. The goblin spear chukka after 4 turns of doing essentially nothing, finally killed one of the vampire lords, and that was all it did all game. So that leave 2 shamans, the night goblins and their fanatics to face the remaining vargheists, Black Coach, 3 vampire lords, a banshee, and 2 units of skeletons. So yeah, I surrender soon afterwards but at least I got to see what the fanatics can do and it was glorious.

As I said, this game was more of a learning experience than anything else. My opponent and myself both agreed that making army list base on wound totals alone is not a good method. It hurts multi wounds models like the forest goblin riders unless they are really really good for its wound totals. Vampire Counts brought way more value per wounds than I did. That is okay because I didn't think wound totals was a good method in the first place. More importantly I learn important details how I can play a goblin army in Age of Sigmar. I was surprise at how fast the forest goblin riders were as well as the amount of damage they can dish out. They also die fast so they are a powerful but delicate tool. The key to their use is to know when to retreat with them. On the "core" front" I found myself liking normal goblins a lot more than night goblins. Night goblins has more unique tools that I did not utilize that should increase their worth but the sheer power of normal goblins' shooting is immense. If I had a warboss along with the shaman, my goblin shooting probably could have deleted the vargheist unit in one round. Their only problem is that they are worthless in close combat while night goblins seem to be more capable in hand to hand. Now when talking about these units, I also have to talk about what can be hidden in them, the nasty stalkers vs night goblin fanatics. Nasty stalkers are better to counterattack with since they can go first and their damage is decent. However I think fanatics are better in nearly every other way. They have no save but the damage they do is insane. In my game I had them charge the Black Coach on the Vampire Count's turn to prevent it from charging my night goblin unit. The safe play for my opponent would be to start combat with the Black Coach and wipe out the fanatics. But he wanted to see what they can do so we did another combat where he crushed my forest goblins instead. So the fanatics got the chance to attack and obliterated the Black Coach. Then the fanatics move across the board and charged a vampire lord. It was my turn so they got to attack first and obliterate the vampire lord. After that they just died but the thought of how much damage they can do makes me giggly. While I don't have to hid fanatics in a night goblin unit, its far too dangerous to start them in the open unless I'm facing someone like Vampire Counts with their limited shooting. That means fanatics and normal goblins are going to be fighting each other over who I am going to pick up for my own army. There is not much to say about the shamans other than I forgot about the mushrooms ability. They did well and I will use them when I used their goblin type units. The last unit I used was the goblin spear chukka and its results were disappointing. Reading its stats I thought it would be pretty nasty on the table but it was actually quite tame. The goblin spear chukka is only going to be useful against a handful of units and its going to take me some time to learn when to use it. I was really hoping more out of it because I have plans to pick up 6 for my 8th edition goblin list.

I keep saying goblin army because I am not a fan of orcs and I will not be using them. Of course this means I have few choices for a front line. Goblin archers are nice but I need a tough unit to screen and guard them. Fanatics are too much of a glass cannon to be of use for this job. That leaves for my choices either trolls or mangler squigs. I have 3 trolls that I need to finish up and will probably need to pick up a few more. I love the rules for the mangler squigs but I am not a fan of squigs concept. So I need come up with a replacement monster to use in place of the mangler squigs. I have started my goblin army with a pack of fanatics. I am slowly assembling them and then I need to decide how I want them painted.

I've been thinking about how to balance my third game. Just going by model or wound count doesn't work and I am still against using anything like points. I ran into another friend when we played our Age of Sigmar game. He mention he played a game of Age of Sigmar and it was completely unbalance because he plays Ogre Kingdoms. That got me thinking. Anything I come up with I want to make sure it would work with Ogre Kingdom as well. And I think I finally came up with something that might work. I still need to propose my idea to my friend but I want to do a game base on war scrolls. Each side gets an army of 20 war scrolls worth of units, of which there can only be 10 unique scrolls. There is a "limit" of three hero war scrolls and two monster/war machine war scrolls. War scrolls that has multiple models (non war machines) can take up to twice their minimum model count as a single choice. If the war scroll has no minimum, then it can take 5 models as a single choice instead. War scroll sizes can be increase at a cost. A war scroll can take up to three times their minimum model count at a cost of an addition choice. A war scroll can further increase it size to four times their minimum model count but this reduces the number of unique war scroll the army can use. Again if the war scroll has no minimum then 10 can be taken at a cost of an additional choice and 20 at the cost of the reduce unique of 1. Additional heroes and/or monster/war machines can also be taken at the cost of an addition choice. Heroes that are also monsters count as both.

My system does not deal with the issue of summoning yet. It does form the backbone of my ideal way to play Age of Sigmar. I still think what models you bring compare to what you use in the game needs to be consider with any comp system and will handle summoning problems but I am ignoring this concept for now so my friend and myself can concentrate on learning the other aspects of the game. In my next Age of Sigmar topics I will go into my design philosophy, why I am against using a point system and example armies using my comp system. Until then, stay positive and have fun.