Horus Heresy Board Game - Second Impressions

(For First Impressions, see HERE )

Got in another game tonight, still enjoyable.  I can see a lot of replayability with just the one scenario and even more when you factor in the other ones (IIRC there are six included in the scenario book).

A couple criticisms:

One, the early game seems pretty critical.  In the two games we've had so far, they've both ended very early on (one with Chaos spaceport victory, one with the death of Horus).  We've only used the first few event cards and haven't touched the majority of the initiative track.  I'd have to play some more games to really pass judgement, but if that trend of early endings continues, IMO that would be a weakness of the game.  Maybe as we get better at anticipating and countering each other we'll be able to make it go on longer, maybe not.

 Two, the pre-game corruption and bombardment effects can drastically shape how the game goes.  If the luck of the draw goes heavily one way, one player can really be behind the 8-ball from the start.  Putting a little more player control into this might be better.  A possible variant for the initial corruption might be instead of twelve 50-50 chances, let the Chaos player select nine units to corrupt and the Imperial player can cancel three of them out.  Still get the six units you would on an average draw, but eliminates big swings and gives a little more control to both players as to the exact outcomes.

Three, movement is really limited, since it has to be activated by order cards, which advance the initiative track, so they're really precious commodities.  There are lots of one-unit areas, some of which are in relatively minor or out of the way places and those units tend to sit around the whole game.  It can be really hard to concentrate force, especially for the Imperials who start out spread all over.

Two and Three reinforce point One, and combined with the luck of the draw on some cards can really skew the game one way or the other from the outset.  Some ways to mitigate the effects of extreme early luck would be good.

Some tips and observations:

Corruption - with the way co-existence battles work, the Chaos player is always counted as defender, so gets to "swing" first if desired (as the "active" player in the combat iteration).  With battles involving one unit on each side, and therefore each only having one combat card to play, this can often mean that you can either destroy the enemy outright or force him to use his only card to defend himself, ending the combat.  So, when you are doing your corruptions, you don't have to corrupt everyone in an area in order to neutralize/potentially take it - if it's one of the several areas with two units, you just need one guy.  So if you successfully corrupt the first one, move on to another area instead of wasting an attempt to get 100% in one spot.  There will be exceptions sometimes like if you want the extra forces in a particular region, but for just doing things like neutralizing defense laser forts, one guy is usually enough.

A second note on corruption - think ahead to your bombardment when doing corruption - don't corrupt somewhere you plan to bombard!  Personally I think that the forts and spaceports are good areas to corrupt, and use your bombardments on the spaces with titans (which you can't corrupt, but a Warmaster can dream!).  

Leaders - Leaders are beasts.  Get them involved in combats whenever you can.  Especially as only the Emperor or Horus are important for victory purposes, treat other heroes as expendable; get them into battle whenever you can.  Not only are they effectively a ten-hit unit that can only be targeted if all other friendlies are wiped out or by special card effects (requiring an enemy hero), they also get extra cards for the battles (hero combat cards), and even more importantly, have nasty special abilities.  Read those special abilities, get to know them.  Use those of your own heroes when you can, and try to deny the enemy the use of his.  For example, many of the Primarchs' special abilities are contingent on having marines from their legion with them, so where possible try to kill those marines off in order to weaken or nullify that power.

Imperial players, take special note of Khan's ability, as it gives you a very precious thing - movement!  In the (previously mentioned critical) early game it can give you a much better shot at ejecting the traitors from one of the spaceports.

Combat - From what I've seen, barring unusually good or bad luck in card draws (which can be mitigated by some heroes, remember those abilities!), there are three basic types of battles.

1. Small, one-on-one battles.  These will often go to the defender, given that they can choose to "swing" first.  Given that you otherwise need order cards to start battles, these will usually be coexistence battles...and since the Chaos player is considered the defender in those, they will get to swing first...so will be more likely to win these sorts of fights.
2. Mid-range relatively even fights.  Both players have a few cards, can do some damage and mitigate some damage.  Some luck could see a clear victory for one side or another, but will likely result in both sides being damaged and an inconclusive combat.
3. One side with overwhelming force.  Slaughter ensues.  Since the combat cards are used for both attack AND defense, a side with a big advantage can largely shut down an inferior force.  They have enough cards to burn for shield effects to stop regular damage, can put down enough to stop special effects that can be stopped, and still have enough to cream the enemy.  Plus, as a large force they're more likely to have a good mix of unit types, making the special effects on the cards more likely to come into play.

As mentioned in #3, a mix of unit types can help in combats, letting more special card effects come into play.  They can make the enemy retreat, prevent damage, completely wipe out an enemy unit, potentially wipe out ALL enemy units in the battle, or even do things like remove activation markers (which prevent you from using the units in that area until you can get them removed) or advance the enemy's initiative marker.  Some of these special effects can be stopped by the enemy paying a noted shield cost, while some can't be stopped at all.  Getting the most out of these is key to bigger fights, and the secondary effects like advancing the initiative track can have major effects on the game as a whole.

Defense Lasers - These have a chance to shoot down units landing at space ports/drop pods.  The ones in the palace itself are pretty safe at least in the early game, but the others are more vulnerable.  A turn of lucky draws by the Imperial player can gut Chaos reinforcements, so minimizing the threat is important - the forts should be prime corruption targets.  Plus once Chaos takes a space with a laser, it is removed, so the Imperials can't recapture them. The port Mortrarion starts in has two lasers adjacent; removing the one in the regular fort is a good idea.  As Chaos, take the others out as you can, but take out the two-laser threat first.

Order Cards - The recycleable ones are nice, but there are also some very good ones in the deck; don't be afraid to see what you can find there.  Putting orders on the strategic map can be good for four things: using the strategic effect (like Port Landing), saving initiative costs for cards that cost more than 2, burying enemy order cards, and for contingency planning (ie: that port is secure now, but having a drop pod assault on the rack is good insurance).  Otherwise, especially for those things that only cost one or two, just play them from your hand.

Early strategies for the basic scenario (YMMV):


Chaos:

•  For your pre-placed orders, put Port Landings down for both spaceports you already control, and for the Vengeful Spirit, and Drop Pods for one of the other spaceports.  I'd suggest the one next to the palace by the Blood Angels; the other one is remote enough that if sufficiently corrupted won't see strong counterattacks too early.
• Corrupt the laser forts that are not manned by space marines. Corrupt the ports.  If you have capability left over, corrupt other areas next to ports, to limit the forces the Imperials can bring to bear to recapture them.
• Bombard areas of remaining strong Imperial forces.  Areas with titans, or if you whiffed on corrupting ports, they're good targets too.
• Reinforce Angron and Mortarion's ports, but remember stacking limits!  Pod in on the other port you selected, bring a Primarch along.  Reinforce the Vengeful Spirit; put the remaining Primarch here along with some Chaos gribblies, but save the CSM for a possible pod attack later on.
• Work on holding the ports and try to disrupt whatever the Imperials try to do.

Imperials: 

• Suffer through the pregame corruptions, bombardment, and the initial Chaos action.  There's really not much you can do here except pray for favorable cards.
• Hit one of the ports hard.  If the Chaos player didn't reinforce Angron or Mortrarion, slam the weak one.  Use Khan's power to bring him and the two marines he starts with into the fight too.  All other things being equal, hit Mortarion as you can then have two Primarchs (Khan and Dorn) in the fight, but watch out for Mortarion's special ability.
• Keep trying to retake/disrupt Chaos' ability to control all the ports.  You only need to keep him out of one to prevent a spaceport victory.  You holding all four is doubtful, but you have a good shot at keeping at least one.  Two is of course better, as it gives you a bit of a cushion, but early on before a spaceport victory is even possible, focus on just crushing one; deal with others later.
• If you have a good shot at the Vengeful Spirit, take it.   

 

Chaos Guard - Bullish about the Grim Future

Here's the squad leader for the Chaos Ogryn squad, a fantasy minotaur with a gun and a few extra bits added on.  This is the first mino I've built with the new kit, and it took a while to find arms in decent poses; most are either down low and crossing the body for the great weapons or are up high, interfering with the horns.  I probably should have started over with a different body/head, but didn't think of it until now!  Oh well.  Caught up in the moment.  Had to trim off a dangly skull from the left horn to keep it from interfering with the "ripper gun".

The gun is a land speeder assault cannon from the Ravenwing sprue.  A couple of shields from the marauders/marauder horsemen and a marauder cloak finish him out.

Top down view, for the shoulderpads.  The chaos star proclaims his allegiance, in case him being a monstrous, likely blood-soaked abhuman mutant freak wasn't a big enough clue.

Front view. 

Rear view.  Cloak added to obscure the back door.  We may be ravening, murderous worshipers of the Dark Gods, but we're not savages.

He feels a little barren to me; I'd like to add some more stuff to him but I'm not sure what.  Maybe it will come to me as I assemble the regular Ogres, or maybe some extra sigils and such on his skin when he's painted will do the job. 

Chaos Guard - Reinforcements

These are some of the "also-ran" units for the army, units I had the figures for but didn't make it into the initial list setup.


First up is a squad of Forgeworld Vraks traitors that I got off of ebay.  They came pre-assembled, but I made a couple of tweaks, adjusting the powerfist, adding the pokey left arm for the sgt and fixing the "melta launcher" barrels which were kind of droopy.  Maybe they're a variant pattern that requires a large "melt coil", maybe they're really still grenade launchers that fire a heavy cannister of powerful acid, who knows with these crazy traitors and their wacky ideas about weaponry.  When I do shoehorn them into a list, they'll be a vet squad, grenadiers, three meltas, powerfist.  Sort of a third group, aside from the off-world techno-barbarians and the local cultist insurgents, I picture them as traitors from another recently "liberated" world that have tagged along with Astrakenor to help with the missionary work.  Here's a bigger pic:

Next up, nothing fancy, just some local insurgents with missile launchers.  Unlike the lascannons, which with the powerpacks made the bases pretty tight, there'll probably be plenty of room on the 60mm bases, so I will probably keep these guys individually based on top of the larger HW team base like I did for my Merkan missile launchers. 

Sometimes when I'm looking to shave some points, they might swap in for the lascannons/mortars.


Last but not least, another in the ongoing "make it chaos by adding a helmet" series.  Techno-barbarian heavy bolter support squad, based on the Ox figure from the Last Chancers set. 

Right now they're on the 25mm base the figures came on, but they'll move to 60mm at the end.  I'm debating whether to add a spotter/loader to the base too, or just have them as 2W 2A bad*** Rambo MFers alone on the base.  I'm currently leaning towards the latter approach.  Opinions?

"Say hello to our little friends."

I'm also debating leaving the HB barrels as is, or whether to chop through more metal and add gargoyle mouths to the end for a little extra chaos flair.  Thoughts?

I may keep one (probably the guy on the left) as a "base on a base" guy so I can later make him count as Harker for a vet squad down the road. 


I've also gotten the Ogryn bodies built and attached to bases, will be working on heads/arms/weapons/accessories later, will hopefully have some WIP pics of them up in the next few days, stay tuned!

Chaos Guard - Techno-Barbarian HW teams

Nothing too fancy, just some heavy weapon teams, some different heads on some guys and some gargoyle heads on the lascannons. 

Fantasy Chaos coming down the road...

 

 Wow.  Papa JJ over at diceRolla recently held a contest to clear out his increasingly limited closet space.  As part of it, he gave away the mass pictured above, a huge fantasy Chaos lot.  The Dark Gods obviously have plans for me, and I was fortunate enough to win!  But his generosity didn't end there - he also gave away stuff to everyone else who entered!  Stop on by and check his corner of the tubes out, and encourage him to work on whatever figures he has left.

I had been debating getting back into Warhammer Fantasy.  I used to have a Chaos army, but it was heavily mixed mortals/daemons/beasts, and didn't really work anymore after the split a few years back.  I also sold off most of my Gobbo army and basically dropped out of WHFB.  Now the sting of the Chaos split has (mostly...sniff) worn off, there's a new edition out, and a huge influx of models headed my way.  Tzeentch has spoken with the confluence of circumstances, so expect to see a fantasy Chaos barbarian horde here down the road, once I get the 40K Chaos barbarian horde finished!

Horus Heresy Board Game - First Impressions

Got a chance to try out Fantasy Flight's Horus Heresy game last night.  We had both skimmed the rules beforehand but this was the first time for either of us playing, and the first time for the game itself, as we had to unpack and assemble everything before we got started with the game itself.  

The game and pieces look good, and the quality is good.  It wouldn't stand up to rough handling, but for regular use it should be fine.  The rules are pretty easy to understand and provide good examples, though could probably stand a little more repetition and cross-referencing.  We spent a good bit of time tracking down rules, which even with the index takes some time.  This is more problematic the first time through; after a game or two I doubt we'd need to look much up.  It was also initially confusing for us as to which cards were which type, with each player having three decks each plus two decks they share it's a lot of cards to keep track of, especially since after they're used some cards can come back making two discard piles for orders necessary.  

We shuffled the various decks, though apparently not well enough at first as we had series of the same cards come up several times.  Spend some serious time randomizing those decks!  The first time through was also especially interesting since we had an idea of the sorts of things of course that occurred during the "real" Heresy but didn't know the specifics of what would be on the cards, so the events and some of the orders were surprises.  We made a couple of rules mistakes (that we know about, maybe there were more!) but discovered them and corrected where we could.  

Once you get a hang of how the game flows it can go pretty quickly, and the initiative track system keeps the game moving back and forth pretty well.  The initiative system is deceptively simple and like other games with simple rules like Diplomacy or Chess can lead to deep play and taking a lot of things into consideration.  You don't want to advance too far ahead on the initiative track for little gain, giving your opponent an opportunity to pull off major actions.  Do you go all out in one area, do you play it by ear and play directly from your hand or do you try to set up longer-term effects over many areas and keep your options open?  Should you set something up for one region, or try to stop what the other guy is prepping for?

Having multiple ways to win also makes for deeper play and a bit of a guessing game.  You can win by killing the enemy leader (Horus or the Emperor) or by controlling all the spaceports after a certain point in the game.  The Imperials also win if the time track runs out, representing other loyalist forces reaching Terra.  There are apparently event cards that can throw a wrench into plans, like forcing Horus to leave the relative safety of his barge, or by denying the Imperials a time-limit victory.  

While there are no dice, it can certainly be random.  A good run of corruption or bombardment checks or some lucky defense laser shots can change things pretty quickly.  Movement is pretty limited, helping to reinforce the feel of it being a siege vs. a pitched battle.  There's a lot of prepping and plotting for advantage and not a lot (at least in our first game) of big open-field clashes. 

It's a fun game, I look forward to playing it again, and will probably get around to buying it myself someday.  If you like board games and have a chance to play it, give it a shot.  

Spawn Riders - Coming to an Imperial city near you!

These guys came together pretty quickly, and for the most part I'm happy with them.  That'll do Pig.

The plan is to use them as Sentinels (obviously, the open-topped variety!), though I guess that they could be used as heavy weapons teams instead.  I've liked the idea for these guys for some time, they just scream the craziness that is "Lost and the Damned" to me.  I originally had thought about sticking some kind of mount on the back and using something like an autocannon, but later settled on a carried missile launcher - easier for the rider to dismount and still fire if needed, like if needs a better position or if the spawn bites it...or tries to bite him!

Front shot of the first one, has kind of a Pan's Labyrinth vibe going with the eyes in the palms, plus more eyes elsewhere.

Side view, can see more of the missile launcher, and old Chaos piece that came on a sprue along with an autocannon/heavy stubber looking gun and a conversion beamer.  The spawn is also being helpful with a spare tentacle to help the rider hang on.

Second guy, on the bug-spawn.













Side view and helpful talon.














Spawn three, mass of tentacles and heads.  Head on the rider is from the (newer) Space Wolf sprue.













Side view of number three, again the helpful tentacle can be seen.  Maybe they have some way to encourage the growth?  Or just hack one off somewhere and reattach it where they want it?












At present the riders are not glued on, and I plan to prime and paint them separately from the spawn, then attach them later.

Hope you like them!  The Ogryn should be the next to face the knife and glue, we'll see what I manage to come up with for ripper guns between some old grenade launchers and some Ork weaponry...

Chaos Rough Riders, 100th post

Charge!  Finished building the 20 rough riders last night, aside from a couple extra accessories like melta bombs for the squad leaders which I think I'll add after painting.  At first I didn't think I'd like the spear on the back look, but with a desire for different looks (ie not everyone with hunting lance in right hand) it's grown on me.  While officially RRs only have pistol OR CCW (in addition to the lance), I think they look better having both available, will just have to remember myself and remind my opponent.

Second group of five (for the first group, see HERE).   In addition to the normal variety pack of Chaos heads, included a couple from the new Space Wolf kit.  I couldn't resist throwing a beakie in, and the guy in the middle bears a resemblance to a certain Cimmerian so should make a good barbarian.

Second from right is another SW (scout) head with a little hair trim, and a Catachan head to help the tie-in with the other Catachan figs and parts in the army.

Last batch.  Second from left has a beastmen arm for the lovely spiked club and a CSM termie lord head.  First on right has the Catachan medic head, looked kind of creepy and post-apoc with the mask and goggles look, so on it went. 



Closer pics to follow, sorry for the blur on some.

A couple of tips from my own trial-and-error that may help others who may want to do something similar:

• The left arms provided are just single-pose, intended for the shields.  Hand swaps can add variety, and other arms can be added by cutting through the arm at a similar point and attaching under the shoulder armor.  The guy with two axes is an example of this.
• Scout, Catachan and Marauder heads seem to fit fine, but the Chaos Warrior and SM/CSM type heads have larger necks, requiring some trimming.  On the earlier ones I completely chopped the neck and used a small greenstuff ball to replace, but on the later ones I just trimmed and reattached the neck - cut off a small area above the rounded bit at the bottom and set it aside, then trim off the rest of the neck.  Glue in the rounded area and glue the head on top.  It can also help to trim off the raised area on the rider's back to help the head settle in.
• When attaching different things sometimes you may need to trim off some of the studs and spikes.  Even if building as regular marauders for example, the studs on the side of the bridle need to be trimmed off for the horned horse-head to fit properly.  

Next up on the agenda are the Chaos Ogryn.  Ten of them, or nine plus a minotaur bone'ead if I like how that looks.  Then a couple of vehicles and I'll be ready to paint the core force.


This also marks my 100th post!  Rather than repeat myself, I'll just provide a link to reiterate my THANKS from my anniversary post a couple of months ago.

I'll also suggest a few links for a "highlight reel" of older posts newer readers may have overlooked:

Judging by the comments, my most popular effort to date, a parody of Darkwynn's "Leafblower" retirement missive. Also check out a half-serious look at 40K names. 

An older piece about why to play Chaos that needed a new home when my old forum closed down, previously referenced by Gav Thorpe on his blog when he talked about the Chaos 4.0 codex.  While I think he read a little bit into it, see what you think.

More musings about the Chaos 4.0 codex, how to handle Renegades, and some sniping at Obliterators.

Some 40K thoughts about the common Myths about 5th edition and a primer on casualty removal.

A couple of general army-building tips, about planning for the long haul and a reminder that any progress is better than no progress.

Lastly, the intro post to a series of ideas for counts-as armies (use the label to find the rest of the series) and an article about counts-as vs. proxies vs. WYSIWYG. 

While not a post per se, if you'd like to check out some pics of my completed armies, check my Dakka gallery.   The links sometimes get fidgety apparently, so if you have trouble just search for "sonsoftaurus" in the gallery there and they'll come up.

Hope that you like them, and that you like the next hundred!