Coatl Got Your Tongue?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a .... snake?

This Coatl has been sitting in the pile for a long time as I've been unsure of what scheme I wanted to use on it. But after seeing a beautifully painted example of this mini by Andrew 'Frogg' on the Codex Slann group I knew I had to steal his idea!

Skink High-Priest and Lobotomised Slaves

I've finished up a slightly esoteric unit for my lizardmen army today - a unit of lobotomised slaves and their skink high-priest!

It did feel a bit sacrilegious to remove the original slann inhabitants of the panalquin, but the fan waver at least will likely make an appearance as a standard bearer at some point in the future. I'd love to have had enough slave models for a couple more files of troops, so maybe I'll get a chance to add to this unit in the future.

Skink Culchan Riders

With the release of Total War: Warhammer 2, I've found myself wanting to pick up on an old project - my Lizardman army.

I'd originally started planning to use it as a pure 5th edition army, as that's when I first started playing them, but I'm far more fond of the magic system from 6th onwards and of the rules/flavour from 7th edition. As it is, it's probably going to be a fudged mess of everything from 3rd-8th, with an aim to play it using a post-5th rule set. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Over the years I've collected a wide array of bits and bobs to supplement the scaly horde including a variety of jungle beasties - scorpions, spiders, cotatls, snake/lizard swarms, leeches, snails and even a capybara! The first thing I felt compelled to paint though were some rather esoteric creatures - the Culchans.

D&D 3.5 - Population/NPC Generator

In my spare time I've been working on a tool which will quickly generate semi-random populations of NPCs, split by class and level, for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. Not only that but it will then generate largely ready-to-use profiles for the NPCs too.

Now I've finally got it to the point where I'm happy to release it to out to the general public - a terrifying step for any burgeoning programmer.

Be aware that this workbook uses numerous macros and so it will need to be downloaded and macros will need to be enabled for the functions to work. It has only been tested on Windows so far, although it *should* work fine on Macs too. You can find notes and a brief user guide after the jump.

D&D Population & Character Generator v10.7.9 ALPHA - Google Drive link

Population Generator Home-Page

Tournament Results Slips

Small update today. I mocked up some Infinity results slips for use in the 2016 ITS format and thought I'd take the opportunity to share them with other organisers.

The slips fit six to an A4 page and you can download the PDF from my Google Drive here: Result slips download.

Sample result slip

If you are running a tournament for the first time then do also check out my article for advice on organising a successful event.

Story League: Episode 4!

Welcome to the final episode of our Story League. Thanks again to those of you who submitted results for the previous mission as it resulted in a major victory for the attackers!

I've also now uploaded a PDF of all the missions for easier reading.

In the last episode an unmarked interplanetary transport vessel carrying Amelia Khan and Snowfall's cube suffered a "terrible accident" following a routine stop-and-search by a Yu Jing customs vessel.

They never stood a chance. With the generators destroyed and security forces routed the stricken transport ship was left drifting. A few demolition charges placed in key areas of the hull were sufficient to break the vessel up. There were no survivors. 

The formal report suggests an engineering failure in the starboard engine as the cause of the explosion and the blame has been laid at the feet of the port technicians, many of whom are now facing trials for negligence. 

Whilst the conflict continued in space, the Yu Jing judiciary revoked PanOceania's diplomatic status and demanded that any information pertaining to Snowfall be turned over immediately. Naturally, this request was denied. 

Ariadnan mercenary forces storm the grounds of the PanOceanian embassy.

New Demo Kit - Salute 2016

Another Salute has been and gone.

Once again I used the event as motivation to update my demonstration kit for Infinity. This year I added the USAriadna Ranger Force to my pool of available factions - joining PanO, Nomads, Aleph and Haqq - and also updated my player handouts which can be found in PDF form here.

The new hand-outs were redesigns of what I've used previously, having taken on feedback from those I've played with and from my own observations. Things have been sufficiently tested, updated and tidied up that I now feel comfortable unleashing them on the wider world!

Player handouts - front view.

Story League: Episode 3!

Welcome back once again to the Infinity Story League! Sorry this is a bit overdue but holidays, exams and tournaments have conspired against me.

Following the events of the last episode Snowfall has been killed by state-sponsored assassins although Amelia managed to survive the vicious combat. A minor victory for the attackers.

It was a brutal, if brief, battle. The close quarters fighting lasted only a couple of minutes until further security forces arrived but by then the damage had been done. Snowfall was dead and many of his security forces were injured or worse. Of their assailants there was no trace, bodies having been spirited away by state-sponsored conspirators.

What was not common knowledge however is that during his time at the embassy Snowfall had been implanted with a cube, a device which can be used to reconstruct someone's personality and memories even after death, and this had been recovered.

Amelia and Snowfall's cube, with all the vital information it contained, were hurriedly evacuated to New Shanghai space-port where they were put on an undocumented cargo ship heading out of system along with a substantial security detail.

Story League: Episode 2!

Welcome back to the Infinity story league!

It's been fantastic having people taking part, seeing all your tables and reading the reports. I couldn't be happier with the interest that has been shown in it. Results are still coming in but overall it is clear that a Defender Major Victory is the most common result.

Amelia's security detail successfully fought off her mysterious kidnappers and managed to extract information form one of the assailants as well.

The national media reported it as a terrorist attack. Nobody stepped forward to take responsibility for the act but the Yu Jing state was quick to point fingers at some of the more infamous nationalist groups.

The Yu Jing and PanOceanian governments issued a joint statement condemning the assault on the Sandbox the previous night and they promised full co-operation with each other in order to ensure that nothing like it would happen again.

Yeah, I don't believe that either.

PanOceanian security storm the nightclub as shots are fired by the mysterious kidnappers.

Story League: Episode 1!

My local Infinity group has been asking for me to organise a league for some time now but I've been putting it off because I'm not keen keen on the 'official' format and the ITS-lite style missions I used last time weren't as well received as I would have hoped. So I've decided to throw something together that's a little bit different.

I really want to take this opportunity to use some uncommon rules and asymmetric scenarios of the kind not really suitable for tournament play. I've got a rough idea for a story that will unfold depending on the outcome of the previous missions (decided by the most common result reported by those taking part) and a vague plan for how the missions will work mechanically.

The first part of this league and the basic rules are below and I'll hopefully release a new part every two to three weeks.

Malamir Khan is a high-profile PanOceanian ambassador currently visiting New Shanghai on the world of YuTang to discuss the defection and detainment of an Imperial Service agent turned info-hacker known only as 'Snowfall' who is currently residing in the PanOceanian embassy. 

Amelia Khan, his daughter who is probably better known by her stage name 'Lady Bay', is a P-pop sensation who is known for giving concerts in any cities her father is visiting at the time. 

This time she's playing a small, but packed, gig at a bar called The Sandbox. Normally these events proceed without incident but this time an anonymous tip has led to her private security being bolstered just in case...

Image property of Corvus Belli.

BFG - Missions and Advantages

A friend and I had a chance to play some Battlefleet Gothic a couple of weekends ago and to mark this special occasion (we don't get to play too often!) I wanted to try something a little bit different.

This 'little bit different' manifested itself as a set of Advantage Cards which give minor perks to the players during the game and a set of Mission Cards for use with a modified version of the Escalating Engagement scenario. You'll find rules for both of these below.

Are these cards fair? Probably not, but we had a fun, tense game that came down to a 6-5 win for the Chaos forces (boo!). There were some really memorable moments and it was interesting trying to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances.

A Mars class Battlecruiser escorts a pair of transports as they try and reach a dock at the far side of the planet.

BFG: A Sense of Scale

Realism and consistency have never been considered to be strengths of the Warhammer 40,000 setting and Battlefleet Gothic is no exception. No wonder then that the games designers and story writers play quite fast and loose with silly concepts such as size and distance.

One thing that I've always enjoyed about the game however is the sense of scale. There are space-faring cathedrals the size of cities that traverse the warp and are defended by high-tech shielding while they attack each other with... conventional cannons mostly. Yet these cannons are actually surprisingly accurate because they are able to hit targets, relatively frequently, from vast distances. But just how vast are we talking?

I'm going to try my best to tackle this question. Make no mistake that my guess is no better than anybody else's, but I like having a logically consistent setting to play in so this is mostly for my own benefit.

A Blackstone Fortress. The 40k equivalent of the Death Star.

Oldhammer Warband Creator

Well, I haven't had much time for painting, but at least I've managed to get something gaming related done.

Now, like many of you I'm sure, I tend to daydream and plot what projects to work on next and what to paint up or collect in the future, and one of the driving factors behind my purchases are chaos warbands. I was also concerned that my, completely amateur, programming skills were getting rather rusty, so what better project could there be than making a warband generator for WFRP3?

My goal was that the program should create a warband with the click of a button and that it should have a number of settings to allow you to customise the output. It should follow the rules laid out in Slaves to Darkness and Lost and the Damned as closely as possible.

The project was completed in an Excel workbook with lots of VBA and some tables carefully copied from the source books. There is a lot more I could do to work on it, but I've decided it's stable enough to release into the wild for now - although there's always the temptation to just keep adding little features forever!

Please note that for it to work, the file will need to be downloaded and macros will need to be enabled.

You can find the Download Link here.
(Now on it's own page!)

A sample output using the Lost and the Damned rules

Infinity: Covert Action

I really love playing Infinity and reckon that the core rules make for excellent cinematic game play. But I also think there is so much more that could be done with the system beyond just straight up fights.

So I introduce to you Infinity: Covert Action.

I:CA is a new way of playing Infinity, pitting an elite squad of specialists against the might of military or corporate security in randomised, asymmetric scenarios.

The game can be played by two to six players, with one player in charge of the defensive forces (and nominally acting as the Games Master) and each other player controlling one or more attacking models, up to a maximum of five.

Be aware that this is a super early version of the rules and is designed with what we currently know of N3 in mind so is liable to change once the new edition is fully released. It's probably (definitely) full of bugs, typos, loopholes, inconsistencies and imbalances. It's currently undergoing play testing but it's proving promising so far so I hope you'll enjoy it.

Also, yes, there are a fair amount of rules, however the vast majority of special rules, equipment and profiles in Infinity aren't being used, which keeps the complexity fairly low.

Download everything you need to play here: Infinity: Covert Action on Google Drive

It all started on what seemed like a quiet night.

There are a few more pictures after the jump.