Archive for June, 2010

RoboRally and Fluxx

Posted in Board/Card/Dice Games, Reviewlet on June 29, 2010 by xbevisx

For about 10 years now I have been in the good position of having friends that work in the local games shop. It’s where I buy most of my Games Workshop, Dungeons and Dragons, Warmachine and any other gaming related items. The bonus of having friends working here is they can introduce you to new games you’d normally never try otherwise. I’ve chosen to review 2 of them I have recently played for you:

RoboRally

In the box you get, metal figurines representing the various robot characters from the game (character choices are purely aesthetic, they don’t have stats or any impact on the game as far as I can remember), several “course” boards which are printed on both sides, the rulebook and a myriad of tokens.  The first reading of the rules can be a little confusing, but after a few games everything starts running smoothly.

Here’s how a typical game goes. First you select your robot of choice, then you select which map/course you will be playing on. In the back of the rulebook they have rated each map to how many players it best suits and what level of difficulty it is. You then place down the objective marker flags in the squares instructed from the rulebook. Each Player gets dealt a hand of cards, which will control your robot. The cards you get are turn left, turn right, turn 180 or move forward/backward X squares (X being a value of 1 to 3). You have five control slots and you place cards down into these slots in the order you want your robot to move, the cards act like “programs” for your robot. The idea of the game is to reach each of the objective flags, in order, before your opponents.

It’s not as easy as it sounds however. The map is covered in hazards including conveyor belts, bottomless pits and defence lasers. It’s very easy to program your robot incorrectly and end up in trouble. The robots themselves also shoot lasers. If you happen to be directly in front of one of your opponents they will shoot you, damaging your robot. The more your robot is damaged, the less control you have over it. It begins with getting less cards dealt to you each turn, therefore giving you a smaller selection of programs to choose from. Take sufficient damage and your programs become locked, meaning you have no say over how your robot acts. There are also squares on the board that let you repair your robot, or even upgrade them with better weapons or defences.

This game can be a great laugh, especially when things start going wrong, usually down to not concentrating on your programming. There’s a lot of room for being malicious towards your opponents robots.  One good example was a game I was playing where I thought it’d be highly amusing to push a friend’s robot down a bottomless pit. However I judged my programming wrong and ended up following him down the pit!

Due to the potential unpredictability of each turn and depending on the number of players, one course can take quite a while to complete, and there are many possible courses in the box (I believe you can also purchase expansion packs). I think there is good re-playability value, as no two games play out the same.

Official Homepage
RoboRally.com : Site that contains many extra downloadable boards.

Fluxx

Flux is a great card game my friend introduced me to at the weekend. A deck contains four different types of cards: Keepers, Rules, Goals, and Actions. As the name suggests the rules are constantly changing during the game. At first glance this can seem quite confusing but once you get the hang of what the games about, it’s really very simple.

At the start of the game everyone gets dealt 3 cards. Before any new rules cards are played, each turn you will draw one card from the deck and play one card from your hand.  Now let’s look at each card type:
Keepers:  These are quite simple. They’ll display a name such as Love, War, Toast, Chocolate etc, and a relevant illustration. They are quite important as in most cases without these you cannot win the game.
Rules:  These effect how each turn is to be played such as altering the number of cards your draw, the number of cards you play, even which direction around the table the players take their turns.
Goals: These are the cards that inform you what you need to accomplish to win the game. For example you may be required to possess 10 cards in your hand, or another one is called “All you need is Love”. Any player that has the Keeper card Love and no other keepers wins that game.
Actions: Using these cards can have big impact on the game. Maybe you can choose to discard any of the new rules you disapprove of or you’d like to swap hands with one of your opponents.

It becomes quite a fluid game, and also gives you the chance to really turn the tables on the other players. Victory can be snatched away from you at the very last second. Yet again, it’s a good game to be spiteful in (Why is this a recurring theme for me/my friends? We do all like each other I promise) and in this spitefulness comes great laughs.  As it’s so simple and each game doesn’t last that long it’s great for when you don’t have the time to spend on something like RoboRally or Talisman (A game I like to call “Where’s my evening gone, OMG it’s 4am!).

I’ve found out that there are many variants of Fluxx available including Stoner, Family, Eco, Zombie and Monty Python Fluxx (the latter two I shall be trying to get hold of). Apparently they can all be combined into one deck for Mega Fluxx (however the Stoner Fluxx has a different backing to the cards).

Official Homepage

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Bill Bailey at Ashton Gate

Posted in Prittle Prattle on June 23, 2010 by xbevisx

The plan for today was to take a scenic route to Bristol, passing Stone Henge (making it a very scenic route, having to go right out of our way to see Stone Henge) get to Bristol, have a look around the city and grab some dinner before heading to the show. Well due to sleeping in a little too long, and not leaving the house until it was a bit too late, we pretty much had to head straight to Bristol down the M4, possibly one of the most boring roads I have had the misfortune to be driven down.

After trying to navigate within Bristol’s confusing one way system, we finally found a suitable car park. Many abusive words were hurled at our less than adequate sat-nav that day. Not having much time to look around the town now we were looking for a suitable restaurant in which to feast.

But wait. What’s that? My spidey senses are tingling. That must mean one thing. THERE IS A GAMES WORKSHOP NEARBY! True to form, my onboard radar had picked up the whereabouts of a GW in Bristol, funnily enough about 200 yards to the right of the exit of the car park. You see I have this ability, no matter where I go, to sniff out a GW. Even when I was in Syracuse, New York or Toronto I managed it, despite them tucking the stores in a forgotten corner of a mall, I found them. Now if only I had the same ability to find things that result in me making money rather than losing it, like truffles for instance.

So we went to GW. I asked the staff for helpful advice on building a new ogre army. The manager was very helpful, one of the normal shop assistants not so much. In fact I think I knew more than he did, which is saying something. Money exchanged hands (not mine for once) and I had gained a Ogre Butcher and two boxes of Gnoblars as a rather excellent birthday present from Amy. With models purchased we headed to Coal, a grill restaurant, then back to the car to attempt to find Ashton Gate, Bristol City’s football ground and the venue for this evening’s mirth.

If only it were as simple as that. Yet again our sat-nav did us proud and took us right out of Bristol and on a dual carriage way to the next town! What. The. Flip. More filthy words were blasted at this electronic imbecile as well as promise’s to smash the bloody thing to oblivion when we have a replacement. We recalculated the destination and headed off, the estimated time of arrival being 8pm, roughly the time the show should be starting. Luckily for us we find Ashton Gate, and the parking marshals tell us there is ONE PARKING SPACE LEFT! The sun is truly shining on me today, both metaphorically and literally, which is good as this is an open air gig.

This show is quite a departure to the intimate evening with Eleanor from last night. Whereas on Friday we were sat in a large purple cow-shaped tent with maybe a crowd of 200 at most, tonight’s show takes up at very least half the football pitch as well as some of the stadium seating around the edge. The stage is like that of large rock concert scale, with a huge screen projects Bill’s image to those nearer the back. Luckily when I booked the tickets I managed to get seats 11 rows from the front and quite near the middle. Excellent.


Before we even get to our seats, the Spinal Tap-esque “getting lost on the way to the stage” film is finishing and the Bearded Master of Whimsy is on. It’s the third time I’ve seen Bill Bailey live but he never fails to impress. He has such a laid back and affable style to his shows you can’t help but like him. Some of the subjects on topic for the night are James Blunt being awful, Simon Cowell and his determination to own the world, acronyms for societies for/against the moving of Bristol City Football ground, learning the words to La Bamba, the secret worlds inside supermarket self-service check-outs and talking about barnacle’s penises in Scotland.

The show whizzes past, and after the interval his straight back on track. In the second half we get a bit more a musical show. He moves from one hilarious song to another without giving us the chance to catch our breath. He starts with a French Techno version of Gary Numan’s cars utilising squeaker air horns, then is joined on stage by another comedy favourite of mine, Kevin Eldon to perform a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in the style of Kraftwerk, all in German with a Last Christmas by Wham middle eight. After this we have more German versions of Wurzel’s classics in a folk style and an Acid-House “I’ve got a brand new combine harvester”. Hearing familiar songs sung in German but with a west country accent is not something you experience every day. And the west country doesn’t finish there either with a version of White Lines (Don’t do it) like you’ve never heard it before. Finishing the show is a rendition of Bill’s “Midnight in Parliament Square” that requires audience participation. Hearing a football stadium full of people meowing and pretending to be tramps is a highlight for the evening.

It was a great night and as with every Bill Bailey gig I left feeling totally uplifted and very cheerful. A brilliant end to two nights of superb comedy! Turning 29 has a lot to live up to!


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Eleanor, The Tour Whore at the Udderbelly

Posted in Prittle Prattle on June 22, 2010 by xbevisx

On the 19th of June I became 28 years old, and just so you know this doesn’t trouble me one bit. In fact it was a pretty damn good weekend. Through a culmination of factors it turned out I was quite busy.

When Amy (my incredibly tolerant girlfriend) had finished work on Friday, we had a short amount of time to get changed and rush to the train station, with London Waterloo being the destination.

At this point I would like to ask you if you had realised that now, on the silly computerised ticket terminals, Waterloo is no longer called Waterloo or London Waterloo, it’s now called London Terminals. Also if you don’t have the opportunity to buy a ticket before getting on the train you must inform the conductor before stepping on the train, even if once on the train you go directly to him and ask to purchase a ticket. I think that South-Western trains believe we all have ESP and know all these bizarre practices already.

Upon arriving in LONDON WATERLOO we finally paid for our tickets and looked for somewhere to eat. We probably weren’t going to be able to eat a restaurant like we had planned, as we had to pick our tickets up from the venue and 8.30pm. In the end we decided to take a look in Wasabi. Neither of us had noticed this place before. It sells Bento and Sushi for very reasonable prices, especially for London, and it was delicious! I had some chicken dumpling type things (I forget the name) with rice and vegetables, and some chicken yakitori.

With our appetites satisfied we headed off in search of our venue. Luckily the South Bank centre is about a 5 minute walk from Waterloo, and I’ve walked past it many times. Where in the centre we would be seeing the show was a different matter. We asked at the South Bank Centre store where we should be heading to find the Udderbelly. We were instructed to head towards the London Eye, again just a couple of minutes walk.

Turning the corner from where the brigade of shops the SBC store is situated, we were greeted with a surprise!

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A huge upside-down, purple cow in the middle of London! After seeing it I kind of felt a bit foolish for asking directions, who could miss something like that! When I had read about Eleanor’s show I had presumed the Udderbelly would merely be the name of the event, instead we got this! We entered the fenced off area the event was being held in, and it was all very nicely laid out. Big TV screens placed everywhere showing the England versus Algeria match, deck chairs and picnic tables with parasols and various food stalls serving anything from burgers to lamb fajitas to Churros. The weather could have been a bit better, there was a light drizzle but nothing substantial and everyone seemed to be having a good time. All apart for a few idiots that decided to square off to each other and nearly have a fight (why they would fight when they actually support the same team completely baffles me, even more so than football violence in general). Luckily security got to them quickly and ushered them out of the venue. As we arrived Brazil! Brazil! were just finishing their upbeat set, and despite the drizzle the whole area had a summery feel to it.

When we finally got to our seats the show was slightly delayed to let the football finish, just in case any crowd noise interfered with the performance. It was well worth the wait.

Rich Fulcher has been seen as Eleanor during the third season of the Mighty Boosh. Since then he has fleshed out the character and made her THE tour whore. She is queen of the groupies and runs a school teaching other young women how to bed famous rock stars. Eleanor reads from her soon to be published autobiography “ Eleanor, My Highs and Helloooooooooos” and teaches us about the “Evolution of Fuck” (start with the drummer, move onto bassist, then guitarist and finally singer). The whole show incorporates props and projection slideshows/videos. Being on the front row I got included in a lot of audience interaction which was great fun.

Despite a few technical issues (2 of the 3 microphones failed during the show) Fulcher’s energy kept everyone on track and enthralled. Eleanor really feels like she is coming alive on-stage. It was a fantastic show, and had Amy literally crying with laughter. I was lucky enough to get a photo with Eleanor (In the slideshow, sorry it’s a bit on the dark side).

On the way home I had to struggle not to fall asleep on the train, it had been a long day. But this was just the start of my weekend adventure!

To Be Continued!


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Fantasy Battle or not?

Posted in Prittle Prattle, Wargaming, Warhammer Fantasy Battle on June 17, 2010 by xbevisx

The 8th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle is due to be released in a few weeks and it poses me a conundrum: Do I get involved or not?

I’ve been playing Warhammer 40k for a good few years now, and painting the models for even longer, but I’ve never really been massively tempted to play WHFB. There are many things I like about it (great models, interesting magic system, races that are not available to me in 40k) but also a few things that have put me off. I find the greater importance of unit facing and positioning quite tactically daunting (I’m not the greatest tactician, only just coming into my own in 40k, and I still tend to make silly mistakes), and occasionally the sheer number of models you need for an army.

Another negative factor is I already play 40K with the associated building and painting of armies, as well as occasionally painting a few Bloodbowl models. Do I have time for another system?

I think the answer is yes.

I already have Ogre Kingdoms and Empire armies that I bought ages ago, when thinking about trying out WHFB on another occasion, so I don’t really need to lay a lot of money out in that department. I’ll probably start with my Ogre army, as you don’t need as many troops to make up a decent sized army, saving time assembling/painting and transporting them to and from the FLGS will not be the headache it could’ve been.

As it’s a new edition everyone is going to be on a similar footing in regards to rules knowledge. Sure, things we’ll be a bit more familiar for seasoned WHFB players, but I’ve heard enough has changed in this edition that we’ll all be learning together. It’s probably the best time to get into the system if I am to do it at all. Also a bonus to this is everyone that plays at my FLGS is already a good friend or at very least a good egg, so the potential for squabbling over rules is at a minimum.

To be honest, I think I had already made up my mind before starting this article but I thought I’d share with you.

Tally Ho!

Grand Arch-Wizard Bevis.

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Gathering the troops.

Posted in Wargaming, Warhammer 40k on June 16, 2010 by xbevisx

I may have purchased a few bits of Imperial Guard related plastic.

 

Well, OK, a fair bit of Imperial Guard plastic.

My Plan was always to do an Imperial Guard army after I had finished my Tyranids. The fact that Games Workshop were recently raising their prices again, spurred me onto to buying a lot in a short space of time. Yes, it may have crippled my wallet at the moment, but in the long run I will have saved money and this lot should definitely keep me going for a good few months, just by building and painting them alone. 
Another factor is the next Warhammer 40k tournament at the FLGS is in October. It will be a doubles tournament, 650 points per player and I have already agreed with my team-mate that we are both taking Imperial Guard. So I need to get at least 650 points worth ready by that time, although that’s not going to be a great challenge.

You do realise these are all excuses I’ve made up in my head for shelling out a lot of money on toy soldiers, right? Lets move on shall we? Yes please.

Using the armoured tank divisions of the Imperial Guard will be a really nice, refreshing change from the hordes of gribbley bug-aliens and bio-monstrosities of the Tyranids. I’ve owned the codex for a couple of months now, and they did a great job on the latest edition. To me it feels like a more viable army. Yes, of course the troops can still easily get chomped down like an old Twix, but to me if feels like they have got a lot more of a sting to them.

Gone are the doctrines of the old codex. These worked by choosing a set number of doctrines for your army which would bestow certain effects i.e. troops equipped with better armour, rerolling dice that failed to hit in shooting, stealth etc. In the revised book, a lot of these are granted by upgrading your high ranking commanders to named characters. 
This time around there is a lot more tank variants ready to use. 7 different versions of the Leman Russ (the staple tank in an Imperial Guard army), 3 Hellhound variants (fast moving tanks based around flamer weaponry) and 4 Ordnance tanks for long range bombardment.
I think some of my favourite new vehicles are the Valkyries/Vendettas. Low flying, well armed, troop carrying skimmers. I’ve bought three at the moment but technically you could take 9 in an army using the vehicle squadron rules.

In fact, most of the vehicles in codex can be put into squadrons meaning you can field very large numbers of tanks as long as you field the minimum HQ and troop requires as well as have the points and money for the models.
With the recently published Spearhead ruleset from White Dwarf I would even be able to use my much forgotten Baneblade, a super heavy tank that is about four times the size of any other tank in the army.

I have plans for modelling my army. I don’t think I’m going to go clean cut Imperial Guard. They aren’t going to be screaming “For The Emperor” every chance they get. I’m making them a bit more renegade/traitor guard looking. To aid me in this I have purchased heads from Pig Iron Productions and West Wind Productions. Fantastic companies that make heads the correct scale for swapping with the regular Games Workshop ones. I’m hoping this will make the army stand out a bit and give them a more eerie feeling overall.

That’s enough for now. I’ll keep you updated with photos on how the army is coming together.

Pip Pip!

Primaris Psyker Bevis,
Scourge of the weak willed, Bane of the Imperium.

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Rental Reviewlet : Bayonetta

Posted in Reviewlet, XBOX 360 on June 15, 2010 by xbevisx

I think a lot of my reviewlets will be based on whatever I have rented out from the Tesco DVD rental service (much like LoveFilm, if not the exact same service). I get to play a great range of games, for as long as they keep me entertained, for a reasonable monthly price. I doubt I would’ve play games such as Dark Sector or Conan if I hadn’t rented them (the former being a surprisingly good game, the latter not so much).

A few days ago, Bayonetta turns up on the doorstep. As I picked up package from the door mat I felt a surge of electric insanity zap through my arm. This game is bonkers.

The first time I saw anything of this game was a report in Edge about Japanese developers and what they had in store for us. A witch who uses her hair for magical attacks and as a costume (not in a ”I can’t be bothered to shave my legs this month” way mind, she hasn’t been dodging the Veet Hair Removal Wax, though I may have just realised her Kryptonite), whilst simultaneously shooting off angels faces with high heel mounted guns! My first hands-on experience with it was at Eurogamer 2009. Straight away the controls felt smooth, responsive and any old button mashing produced impressive looking combos. Even the loading screen gave you the ability to practice said combos, upping your understanding of the system with a side bar showing the commands and keeping you entertained while the 360 and game disc secretly discuss how they are going to twang your brain like a rubber band in the next scene.

At the point of writing this review, I think I am over halfway through the game and it hasn’t disappointed. As you may know from the Big Man Japan reviewlet, I love the absurd. If it doesn’t make a lot of sense and does it in a comical way, I’ll lap it up. Cutscenes in this game nearly rival the battles seen in Final Fantasy VII : Advent Children for pure Over-The-Topness with a dash of stupid.

The controls are still spot on, nothing to complain about here. You have you usual levels of attack, block and jump as you do in most beat-em-up/hack and slash game. It plays quite similar to Devil May Cry, but perhaps a bit smoother. If you build up your magic meter through stringing combos without taking damage you can perform torture attacks, basically a gruesome if somewhat amusing finisher style move. These require intense mashing of one button to increase the damage, and bonus claimed in the form of halos (the games currency). Battling a horde of foes with these torture attacks thrown in here and there can become quite exhausting and add to the excitement of the fight.

Another skill this lady has under her pointy witches hat (actually she doesn’t have one, or a warty old nose. I think if she did there possibly wouldn’t be as much fan art on the interwebs) if she successfully dodges an enemies attack right at the last second time will slow down for a few seconds, giving you the opportunity to lay the smack down at your leisure. Unfortunately, this is where one of my only gripes crops up. The battlefield is usually so busy, with angels attacking from all sides, special attacks firing off like hairy fireworks (I think that phrase even grossed me out) and just the sheer pace of the fighting it’s hard to see individual enemies preparing to attack. This either results in a missed opportunity to initiate “Witch Time” as I believe it’s called, but more importantly ends up in the player taking damage.

And this game is no cake walk. Even having learned the enemy’s patterns and weaknesses, it can still take a decent level of skill and timing to defeat them. Miss Witchy-Poos can’t take massive amounts of damage, doesn’t regenerate lost health through inactivity (something you’ll find in the majority of games these days) and even using items such as green herb lollipops (the games equivalent of medipacks) or continues results in your overall score getting penalised once you have completed the level.

The visuals are beautiful in this game. The backdrops to each level are stunning, character designs are imaginative, bold and just downright cool and I haven’t noticed much, if any, slowdown even during the biggest fights. And you do have some pretty impressive dust-ups along the way. At one point I was fighting a 50ft angel, whose body consisted of an upside down cherub style face sprouting wings, and two long necks ending in very pissed off dragon heads. With brutes like these as your enemies, and the fact that they provide quite a challenge, you actually feel a decent sense of accomplishment in defeating them.

The voice acting is pretty cheesy but matches the action and style of the game perfectly. I wouldn’t really want the voice actors trying to take this nonsense seriously or I’d have to worry about their mental health. The second major gripe for my rears its ugly head in the form of the BGM. There are two songs, a poppy track written for the game and a rendition of Bart Howard’s “Fly Me To The Moon”, that seem to crop up every time something significant happens on-screen. It’s really noticeable and rather annoying.

All in all, I’m really enjoying this game. It’s very entertaining and the challenge level is really giving me something to sink my teeth into, like a nice, big juicy steak (apologies to veggies out there).

I’ve produced a chainsaw from no-where and sawn a vicious hovering angel in half, I’ve had a dance off competition with a doppelgänger of myself before beating it mercilessly to oblivion, and I’ve summoned a magical 30ft demonic parakeet from my own hair to bite off and swallow whole the head of a 60ft long heavenly flying serpent monster . You know, the usual.

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My Tournament Tyranid List

Posted in Wargaming, Warhammer 40k on June 11, 2010 by xbevisx

For those of you interested here is the Tyranid army list I used for the last tournament at the FLGS (Friendly Local Game Shop) with a breakdown explaining what each unit does for the uninitiated, my views on why I took them and how they fared:
 

Two Tervigons with Scything Talons and Catalyst (180 pts each):

Tervigons are big lumbering beasts which have the Synapse special rule. This means any mindless grunts that are within 12 inches of them are easier to control. Without this, there’s over a 50% chance these grunts will fall back to their instinctive behaviour and don’t act as maybe you’d like them to.
  Tervigons are very hard to kill. They have a high toughness, and many wounds. There are very few weapons in the game that can one shot or instant kill them, which is good because if they do bite the big one, any termagant units within a certain range of them also take significant wounds, as the tervigons synaptic connection to them overloads and bursts their tiny bug brains.
  The coolest thing about Tervigons is every turn you roll 3D6 and they give birth to that many termagants. You can keep doing this until you roll a double on the 3D6 at which point the skill “dries up” for the rest of the game. This is the one of the main reasons I took these beauties. The chance to spawn more and more troops that can swarm the enemy and claim strategic objectives is just a no brainer. Despite their low initiative, their high strength and toughness make them fearsome in combat.
  You can upgrade them with a psychic power called catalyst as well. This gives you the ability to grant one nearby unit the special rule “Feel No Pain” which is effectively a second saving throw taken after normal ones. With low armoured termagants running around, slapping “feel no pain” on them increases their survivability greatly and cause them to potentially be a right pain in the as for the enemy.

Tournament performance:
In two of my three games their ability to spawn termagants halted fairly on in the game due to me rolling doubles. There were a couple of times where failing the psychic test to cast catalyst resulted in losing a wound as well. Other than those little hiccups they did what they should. I destroyed vehicles with them in one game, held up a costly space marine vanguard unit for most of the game in another, and the match where the old egg sacks didn’t fail me, I was spawning wave after wave of termagants and overwhelmed the enemy with numbers. Catalyst when it worked, did its job as it should’ve making the ‘gants pester people and keep them preoccupied which gave my other units room to breathe and carry out the tasks they should’ve.
8/10


2 Hiveguard (50 points each):

The bonuses to these guys are, they have a high toughness, 2 wounds a good armour save so they shouldn’t be a push over. They do not need line of sight to use their ranged weapons, which also happen to be some of the tyranids better anti-armour weapons, which I felt was a bit lacking in my list before I added them.

Tournament performance:
Not too bad. There was only one opponent I faced that had a decent amount of vehicles to test the Impaler Cannon on, and due to bad dice rolls it could’ve gone a bit better. But with no armour to contend with, they harassed enemy troops and utilised cover for maximum effect. 6/10


2 Zoantropes (60 points each) in a Mycetic Spore (40 points):

Zoathropes kind of look like floating brains with little atrophied bodies attached. And they bring a whole world of psychic power hurt to any battlefield. They use this power to either blast apart vehicles nearly effortlessly, or to take big chunks out of enemy troop units.
  Mycetic Spores are like sentient drop pods. They crash down from orbit, with other tyranids aboard them, disembark their crew, and then with whatever limited brain capacity they have, attack the nearest non-tyranid life form.  However they are immobile. My plan would be to use the spore pod to drop the Zoanthropes into a advantageous position on the battlefield, and it things were looking bad use it to contest an enemies strategic objective marker.

Tournament performance:
The Zoanthropes performed admirably. On my first game they destroyed a Space Marine Land Raider in the blink of an eye. Besides that, they caused convincing casualties and were worth way more than the initial point’s value I paid for them.
8/10
The Mycetic Spore, whilst not demonstrating as thrilling results as other units did what it should, distracting the enemy and providing the zoanthropes with cover from receiving a potentially disastrous heavy weapons attack.  
7/10


Termagants (Squads of 10 and 11, 50pts and 55pts):

These are the bog standard grunts for my army and the cheapest way to fill the 2 troop unit requirement for a legal army. I felt I didn’t need to take more than the minimum for the list as hopefully the tervigons would be spitting plenty of these critters out anyway. Not particularly hardy or strong in combat, but their stock equipped gun isn’t too bad and you need these chaps to take and hold objectives. Not much more to be said really.

Tournament performance:
Oddly in most of my games these chaps acted as speed bump, tying up and annoying the enemy until the big boys had a chance to get up close and personal, and in this task they faired quite well, especially when buffed with catalyst.
6/10


Trygon Prime with Adrenal Glands & Regeneration (275 points):

This thing is a beast. Yes it may be a lot of points, but I have to say he’s worth every point I paid for him. Loads of wounds, high toughness, crazy shooting attack, can turn up anywhere you like on the board if you choose to have him burrow into battle, can nip around quick if he chooses with the “fleet” rule. Adrenal Glands make him even more disgusting if he charges into combat, and regeneration gives him even more survivability potentially. Its game over, man!

Tournament performance:
Enemies died by the bucket load, vehicles exploded left right and centre and I smiled. He also has a great psychological effect on your opponents. People will either take one look at this monstrosity and divert all their firepower into bringing it down or merely run away, either way it makes them play in a manner they hadn’t hoped to, in my opinion. Worth the points for that alone.  
10/10

Something I learnt whilst play-testing and rewriting this list:
Genestealers in a Mycetic Spore is a bad idea:
Having your fearsome if slightly fragile genestealers deep-strike onto the battlefield in the Spore, then having to stand still for a whole turn while they disembark isn’t good. They aren’t cheap to field and will more than likely get shot to ribbons during the enemies turn before the genestealers even get to do anything. NEVER AGAIN! 

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Reviewlet: Big Man Japan

Posted in Film, Reviewlet on June 10, 2010 by xbevisx

(Sorry for stealing your idea, KIASA)

I shall occasionally attempt to grace you with reviews of things I have recently played, watched, listened to or read. There’s a good chance these things will not be new releases, and have probably been reviewed many times before. But that’s their opinion and this is mine. Enjoy!

I have a taste for surreal humour. Some of my favourite comedy acts have inexplicable elements to them. Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer, Tim & Eric, The Mighty Boosh, Monty Python. Watching silly stuff that doesn’t make any sense makes me feel like someone is pouring lovely, delicious warm gravy over my soul. It’s like parts of my brain that lay dormant for the majority of the time are suddenly sizzling like sparklers.

So when I saw snippets of Big Man Japan on a Jonathan Ross TV show (I don’t recall which one I’m afraid) and then more clips thanks to a few Youtube searches, I knew this would be my kind of film.

The plot concerns a man named Masaru Daisato who, through his family heritage, has the ability to grow to huge proportions, with the aid of massive shocks of electricity. With this power, a steel pipe, and suitably large purple underwear, he battles monsters that terrorise the innocent Japanese people.  Although they aren’t particularly grateful for the collateral damage he generates during these battles, and they leave hateful graffiti around for him, and occasionally throw bricks through his windows.

The majority of the film is mockumentary style and fair low-key. We see a lot of Daisato’s everyday life, and learn about the breakdown of his marriage, his childhood and his agent, who insists he regularly sports sponsors logo’s on his enlarged body. Sometimes the interviewer comes off a bit cruel, almost taunting the subject of his documentary, perhaps to emphasise the lack of respect he is afforded as defender of the people

Injected throughout the film and fantastically created CGI battles between Big Man and the mosters, reminiscent of the fights from Godzilla or the Power Rangers. But it’s not always as action packed as you’d expect, sometimes just resolved with shouting between the foes, and this all adds to oddness of film. Big Man doesn’t really have great fighting skills and when a real threat turns up, well I won’t spoil it for you. In some ways this film reminded me of Audition, with the mundane “slice-of-life” scenes amplifying the surreal comedy (or horror in the case of Audtion).

Daisato himself isn’t a one-dimensional hero. Initially you feel very sorry for him. All he is trying to do is protect the populous from the menagerie of beasties that threaten them. He appears to have a grudging pride in the responsibility that has been handed down through his family. But as the film goes on he makes some dubious choices and shows a cowardly side. At first this is jarring as he is supposed to be the hero, but it makes you realise he is human, and not devoid of flaws as most heroes are. It made him a far more interesting character which is good because there are very few scenes where he isn’t the centre of attention.

The ending of the film was just spot on for me. It didn’t really resolve anything, didn’t tie up any loose threads, it just left me thinking “What in God’s name just happened there?”. I sat there for a few seconds dazed by the absurdity, then began to laugh. It was the perfect ending. I had rented this film with the hopes of it dazzling me with amusing insanity and it succeeded more than I imagined.

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Day of the Tyranids.

Posted in Wargaming, Warhammer 40k on June 9, 2010 by xbevisx

Since the ownership of the friendly local gaming store changed hands roughly a year ago, it’s been a much more welcoming place for my friends and I to play our tabletop games.  It started off with a brief Necromunda campaign that I was running for about 10 of us.  That lasted a good few months, playing mostly on a Wednesday night, as that’s the night that is set aside for the veteran/older gamers to play without the youngsters around. It’s a really good atmosphere and the guys there are a delight to play. You don’t get anyone having a strop about rules or taking things too seriously. It’s just a bunch of mates throwing some dice and causing some miniature scale bloodshed.

A few months back we had our first W40K tournament. It was set at 1000pts fully painted. It was great fun and despite not placing in the top 3 (of about 12-14 players in total) I think I did alright in it (I’ll go into my army in more detail in a future post). After that tournament I was chatting to mates about it, and we were trying to think what to do for the next one.  I decided that for the next tournament I was going to take a random army, decided by a dice roll. And I went through with it! The dice had spoken and my next army was going to be Tyranids! This was an interesting, if daunting, opportunity as I had never played them before, their codex hadn’t been updated all that long ago and I’d only painted a small force of them before just for something to do.

So off to the shop I went. Grabbed a copy of the Codex and set my task of learning, building and (hopefully) effectively using a Tyranid army. To be honest I was a bit out of my comfort zone. The biggest shock to the system was the lack of power armour. I’ve mostly played Space Marine armies in the past, with their lovely, reassuring +3 armour save. Now I was going to be using a army whose basic troops only have a +6 armour save. Most weapons in the game have sufficient armour penetration that even the measly 1/6 chance of not dying is denied. This is pretty scary stuff!

But over the 3 month gap between the two tournaments I glued, swore at awkward metal models while assembling them, painted (Dear Lord, did I paint. 78 individual termagaunts by the end, and these were just my grunt forces) and play tested until I was happy with my army list (the list will be talked about in more detail in a future post).

The 5th of June came around, the tournament was upon us and the weather was glorious, which didn’t actually benefit us at all! Top floor of a 3 storey building in scorching heat, with no air conditioning and only two crappy old fans to cool us down made for interesting battle conditions! However our spirits were not dampened, even though our shirts were, with the “MANLY SWEAT OF WAR!” RARRRRR!

Throughout the day, battles were fought, casualties were inflicted and historic victories forged. I had entered the tournament believing my army to be fairly balanced to tackle most hurdles, I had a nice mix of anti infantry and vehicle weaponry, but with the random aspects to certain parts of my list (I have two large creatures that have the ability to spawn smaller creatures) caused me to doubt my potential to win against more stable army lists. Luckily for me, in all three games I had played versus Space Marines, Orks and Chaos Space Marines, I managed to “table” them! (“Table-ing” is the act of defeating your enemy, leaving none of their units alive/intact on the table by the time the games turns end, usually 6 turns in this case).

All the luck I had that day led me to take first place in the tournament! No-one was more surprised than me! First prize was a £45 gift voucher for the shop and a trophy plaque. Needless to say I was quite chuffed indeed, spending some of the reward straight away on a new Imperial Guard Manticore for my next army.

It was a great day, everyone present appeared to have a good laugh. The Tyranids and the Dice Gods that led me to use them in the first place had done me proud.

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My First Attempt at a Blog.

Posted in Prittle Prattle on June 9, 2010 by xbevisx

Greetings to you all. I hope you all had a pleasant journey upon reaching my humble slice of the internet. I shall attempt to be as entertaining as I can on this wild ride.

I’ve often shied away from blogging before, worrying that I may not have enough interesting things to say to the world. Especially as friends of mine are rather excellent bloggers/podcasters. But there are also billions of awful blogs out there, so adding another one to the manure pile couldn’t hurt could it?

So here’s the deal. I will spout nonsense at you, concerning things I am doing or have interested me, and you will sit there and enjoy. Smile and nod, and no-one will get hurt, ok?

Expect to hear about (in no particular order):

Games Workshop related gaming, music, comedy, films, video games and whatever gallops across the verdant plains of my tiny mind from day to day.

Hugs and Axes.

Wing Commander Bevis

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