Apocalypse Gaming and handling big games

(Next time I am bringing my Wagner)

 

Well I had my first Apocalypse game the other weekend, and it was rather fun on average.  It was a 6k game with me and two other guys that had space marines, while the opposing force had two guys running a Tyranid force.  We played for four rounds after six hours and basically took turns wiping out one half of each side, with me in the center dealing with a few monsters.  I guess that Space Marines loss but it was one of those things where another turn and it would be a different story. 

All in all it reminded me of playing larger multi player games back in my days of playing WFB.  They are the fun to do on occasion but they have the same problems in my opinion.  Basically it comes down to how fast and comfortable of a player you are, in order to have an enjoyable game.  I would not call myself an expert, and I feel that I need some more experience in standard 40K before I take on another Apocalypse game.  Thus the reason why I don't recommend a game like this to anyone until they get experience in playing.  Playing fast and confident is a requirement in order to make the game go smoothly in a game like this where getting bogged down is easy to do. 

On another note, I am not sure that having different number of players is a good thing.  Usually when I play these games, I am usually ranking up against one guy and we never finish the game to the last model, so I rarely ever get to play other players in a game like this.  This is different, since I was in the center and attacking both opposing players at once.  The fun part is that I distributed playing against each other, but the bad news is that I have to vie for the attention of my opponent with my two other cohorts.  This lead to some confusion and having us wait on each other. 

All in all I would do it again, however like always, I want to try to do it with just me in command of the army.  It is one of things that partners in this situation causes hindrances to each other.  Like the old saying "Too many cooks spoil the broth."

Turning to the Dark Side

(Fitting given the Sci-Fi Theme)


I haven't talked much about my 40K collection, or much of anything for that matter in the past three months.  That damn real life again.  40K was not a game that interested me much when I was younger.  I am not much of a fan of the Genre when it comes to what we have in the Media.  It is something that really didn't appeal to me.  I do like the classical movies like the original Star Wars, Dune, and of course this. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8nPhsfYS5U


Recently what has driven me towards Sci-Fi is the Honor Harrington Series.  For those who don't know, it is basically like reading CF Forester interplanetary.  So that is my hook that opens up my mind to the Genre as of late.  Over the past few months I have been playing about half of a dozen games of 40K.  Space Marines are the army that I am currently playing with a Crimson Fist theme and play style.  After these games there are some issues that I have with the current edition of the game, however I would say that overall it is a system that I am liking more than Fantasy.  I won't belabor my disappointment with the 8th edition, since that has been expounded on in an earlier post. 

I espoused long ago that I would take my lessons of the past and limit my scope of what and how I do my purchases.  I do plan to keep that pledge with my space marines for the most part.  I have about 2/3 of a company that I am working on now.  I don't plan on getting anything new until all of this is up and running for Space Marines.  In addition to that, I am setting aside some time in my busy life right now to get some painting done.  Given how slow I am of a painter as well as the summer being as busy as it has ever been for me, it will certainly not happen overnight.  I will be posting my progress with this army.

Modeling Philosophy: Handling Doppelgangers in your army.

Over the past two months or so I have been very busy with other parts of my life and little for me to write anything down here.  Apologies for that, but I have not been resting on my laurels.  I have had a few games of 40K as well as find and buying up some 4th edition GW Fantasy Orcs.  In my recent forays into collecting these classic GW models, I have come across a few models that are multiples of each other.  That is rather normal given the ranges, however, my attempt is to avoid using the same model over and over again in your army.  It does tend to get redundant as well as boring painting the same damn guy.  In addition that it just is not what I want to collect in an army.  Of course I have a lot less of a problem if I can find no two alike guys for each regiment at least.  I can deal with a few of the same model in an army as opposed to a few of the same in each unit.  I can always say that there is "that guy" in each unit.  This comes to the concept of handling doppelgangers in your army.  I think that we do have a few trick depending on which kind of army that we are dealing with.

Army choice is something that I think can make a difference.  For instance any army that is either an undead army or fully armored army, as in Chaos Warriors, I believe that it should not that big of an issue.  I would still try to avoid redundancy when possible, but a skeleton is a skeleton.  They are by design uniform in appearance.  Zombies can be an issue, but can be overcome through creativity.   In the same idea, with uniform units like Elves, that are all kitted with the same uniform and helmet, I think that even in that situation it works.  Given that I am working on Space marines right now, I have to say thank god for power armor and helmets.

Painting may help out as well, but mainly for humanoids.  Basically changing the hair color is what makes the difference more or less.  This is something that should be used sparingly, however.  From my experience with my dwarves, even when you paint a face and beard a different color, they still seem redundant even with different bodies on them.  Thus the problem with flowing hair in my mind.  It makes the job harder to avoid doppelgangers, in my humble opinion.

Different manufacturers is a very good way in handling doppelgangers in my experience.  The hard part is finding a suitable manufacturer that is comparable to your collection.  With humans, I think that you can get away with a lot with the multitude of historical manufacturers out there, depending on what your tolerance is.  I have no problem with difference in height, however if they are supposed to be the same build, I expect them to be the same build.  I am not looking for freakishly shaped hands or very thin guys.  Basically I am not looking for Romans to look like these guys when the norm for every other manufacturer's Romans is as tall as the Dwarf's feather:

 

 

With all of this in mind I have come to a bit of a dilemma in some fashion.  The Orcs that I have been collecting have a good range, however, I seem to be having trouble finding a good variety on some units like the classic black orcs pictured here.  Some of these tricks will not work.  Painting is not an option, nor is their any other manufacturer's that I think will look comparable to these characters.(although I may be persuaded)  They don't have enough armor to hid behind like other models, so I guess that I need to be more creative with these characters, or do something like put them into regular units and find something else for Black Orcs if I must have Black Orcs.  Needless to say there is more for me to ponder with this army as I am collecting them.  Of course my knowledge on the orcs is rather scant during that time, so there may be more GW figs out there than what The Stuff of Legends has in their archive.  I believe that I have already found one big-un that is undocumented by these guys so hope springs eternal for the Black Orcs.  

New Games with Old friends

Well it has been a slow month for me so far with my miniature hobby.  However I was able to get a game in of 40K using the 6th edition last Sunday.  It is my first game and while interesting, we had a lot of distractions so it was not a great game to gauge whether it is an edition that I am fond of yet.  We were playing a 1K game and it took us over 4 hours to play.  One of the main distractions is that an old friend of mine dropped by the store that I have not seen in a few years. 

Honestly I was thinking of him as of late and wondering where had he been and if I should try to contact him.  It is kind of a chance encounter like what you read in the appendix of the LOTR with Gandalf and Thorin.  My fellow Roman antagonist for WAB told me last month that he was rather incognito due to real life issues that are occupying his time.  I know that he was not a fan of the current edition of WFB as I am, and had really not been active in any of the forums that he and I would frequent online.  As of late however he has been on TMP, so at least I know that he is still alive. 

My old friend and I of course struck up a conversation about 40K and WFB.  One of the topics of conversation was also the idea of trying to get together to play 6th edition once in a while, since we still had the capabilities to play the game.  Not to leave my opponent out in the cold, but he knew my old friend well and they conferred over an idea for a 40K apoc. game in the future. All in all it was a pleasant afternoon and needless to say I was glad to get out of the house for the time.  It is my hope that some good ole 6th edition game are on my horizon.