A refreshing change of pace

Wednesday (yesterday) I picked Carson up and brought him over for gaming group. With Phil on vacation, instead of playing D&D we played Magic and Mordheim. I always have fun gaming (even a bad day gaming beats a good day at most other things), but after a few months without Magic or Mordheim, it was a refreshing change of pace. First, we played best two out of three at Magic, and stuck with the decks we each brought out first. His deck was classic, called "Tapdancer," with Instill Energy and related effects that allowed Llanowar Elves to provide extra mana, lands to untap and retap for extra mana, and big fatties to get bigger and fatter. One turn, he put three Rancors on a big fattie and took a swing. My standard deck, which I named "Not Again," takes advantage of the return of Terror and Fireball to the standard environment, along with Raise Dead, Gravedigger, Necrataal, Shock Troopers and similar creature destruction/damage effects of my creatures coming into play or leaving play. Theoretically, it's a good Sligh-type deck with a ridiculous amount of creature destruction, much of it recursive. But if it stalls for too long before getting to four mana (as it did in game three vs. Tapdancer), it has some real problems, because without Gravedigger and some of the other four-cost creatures and spells, it just doesn't go off very well. Also, I really miss Animate Dead and Dark Ritual , because when they were Standard legal I could bring out big enforcers quickly and dominate the board (unless the other guy had Disenchant handy). Game 1, Tapdancer looked like it was going to lose. I had such a big lead, I thought it was in the bag and then his deck went off and I lost. Game 2, I drew up 6 after having 1 mana in my first hand. I had 5 mana in my second hand, and kept it anyway. Then towards the end I drew a second Fireball, and it was all over; what seemed like a mana flush problem was no problem at all. Game 3 was close and a bit long, but I just couldn't draw that 3rd mana and got stuck with 5 or 6 cards in my hand that I couldn't play. Carson mana shorted too, but he was able to get 5 mana out of 2 lands pretty easily, and brought out his fatty. I chump blocked and stalled as long as I could, but that 4th land still just wouldn't come up, and in the end, it would have been to late anyway. So I lost in three. But it was fun. Carson's deck was really cool, and when I saw how many cards he had that worked into his combo/theme, I felt like "Not Again" was not up to my old level of deck design. But then my deck is Standard, which limits it a bit. Maybe I'll try a Classic version for friendly play. Or not. I don't know but it might be fun to build and modify some more decks.

So we still had time for a quick game of Mordheim. Carson had worked up a new group of Witch Hunters. There were three heavily armored, mounted heroes with 5 war dogs (the Witch Hunter version, with 4 Strength) for a total rating of 89. His models looked great. I used my Lizardman warband (I had built it a months ago from Town Crier rules). I dug through my big Lizardman Warhammer army and picked out the 8 figures that best matched my roster sheet, which included 5 heroes (4 Skinks and a Saurus, with the Skink leader being a Shaman) and 3 henchmen (a Skink, a Saurus and a Kroxigor the warband recently purchased) for a total rating of 129. Carson rolled for the scenario, and it came up Wyrdstone Hunt (or was it Treasure Hunt?) with 4 shards up for grabs. We set up the terrain fairly heavy, put the wyrdstone markers out, placed our minis, and Carson started play. He kept his band together, went for the closest stone (horses have good movement) and cursed about having to dismount to explore/pick up wyrdstone. On my turn, I scattered my guys a bit, sending about half of them to the base of a long building right in front of me with a shard on the second level, and about half the guys off to my right toward the other two shards. Skinks and Kroxigors have a 6" movement, while humans (unmounted, not a factor in this game) and my Saurus move 4" when not running. My Skink henchman was kind of exposed, but oh well. On Carson's turn, he shot a crossbow and missed, picked up his first wyrdstone shard, and sent one of his armored horsemen after my vulnerable, lone Skink henchman, but he came up about 1" short. On my next turn, 3 of my Skinks scrambled up to claim the second shard, my Skink Henchman scrambled away and up a ladder to escape the horseman, and my two Saurus warriors who had joined up next to my Kroxigor toward the middle of the board could see that they were too far away to reach his horseman. But the Kroxigor, with his 6" movement, charged and took him out of action. The next turn, 2 or 3 of the Witch Hunter wardogs charged the Kroxigor (I forgot about his Fear effect, so they ended up not needing to take their required Leadership checks) inflicting 1 wound on the big guy before being taken yelping out of action (Krox has 3 wounds, 3 attacks and a 7 strength (-4 to armor saves!), but he attacks last and only has a 3 weapon skill). Soon after, my pair of Saurus warriors found themselves taking out 1 or 2 of the remaining war dogs (a lightning bolt from my Skink Shaman had taken one war dog out earlier). After making their Leadership check to avoid routing after losing 4 of thier original 8 warband members, the Witch Hunters voluntarily routed after seeing my Shaman was about to loose another lightning bolt (Automatic Strength 5 hit, Strength 6 vs. armored foes). So my rating went up by about 14 points, I rolled The Lad's Got Talent for that lone skink henchman and I now have 6 heroes. The warband is sitting on about 5 shards of wyrdstone and something like 70 gold crowns, and has a rating of 143, I think. When I get a chance, I should really spend some time with the minis to get their equipment looking as WYSIWYG as it should (What You See Is What You Get) by gluing swords, shields and bows to those little guys. Anyway, even though this was a very one-sided victory for the Lizard Men, I know that on the whole they are as balanced as any warband, with a bunch of guys with 2 Toughness. I have seen them get their butts kicked a bunch of times. One thing for sure, that Kroxigor was expensive, a big sacrifice to save up over many games for a guy who counts as an animal and never gains experience. Another sure thing: he was worth it!

Jaramon, Transmuter and Escapist...

Robby, Roddy, Carson, Shane, Penny and Lance all played today in the monthly Saturday Aarde (+500) campaign. We picked up the session where things left off last month, in Moporia. Everybody did some individual stuff in the city, including reports by the Joseph and Revan to their respective churches. Revan, determined to rid the world of the threat of Jaramon, learned from sailors and traders in town that Jaramon could be on the Isle of Ancients, perhaps in Moonmist (one of the first and most highly populated Purple Order settlements). The theory went that Jaramon, like the party, would go to where he could lick his wounds and re-arm himself after battle, and that Moonmist would be the most likely place, since more high elves from the moon Sonaeed were there than anywhere (or so it was thought by a couple of sources). More importantly, a high elf ship by the name of Moonmist was in port. Though the odds were against success, Telpin arranged for a gnome illusionist friend to create and sell the party a hat of disguise each, and the party bought passage to Moonmist on the elven vessel. Telpin (gnome bard) and Henderson (lizardman fighter/rogue) are the only nonhumans in the party. Only Flegal and Telpin speak elven, but everyone wore the hats disguised as elves for the voyage at 10 gp per head one way.
Unfortunately, waiting for them at Moonmist on the Isle of Ancients was an elven horse-mace captain with a monocle of True Seeing who could see through the disguise of illusion and had his unit attack the party the minute they set foot on the beautifully ornate docks. The party fought their way through the encounter, and the captain was forced to retreat with only a couple of surviving soldiers from his unit. Along the seabank were great tree castles built into ancient knarled sea birches. Fearing the monocled horse-mace captain would return soon with greater numbers, the party hid in a sea-cave nearby and reset their hats to a new set of purple order high elves. Upon investigation within the cave, a sculpted archway was found exuding lilac perfume along with sewage from Moonmist. With nowhere else to go, the party followed the sewer deeper, to about the center of the elven (formerly dwarven) town. They waited quietly until nightfall.
Listening at the ornate eight-sided manhole cover, the party determined they were near an inn or tavern of some sort, as a couple were heard nearby talking. Everyone emerged unnoticed and went into the great ballroom of the dance hall smelling of lilacs. Dante Blackmorg (Lance played him) tried to dance with one of the elven maidens, and ended up embarassing himself, but the party was still not exposed. Nearly 100 elves were there at the peak hour of business, and the party kept mostly to themselves at their table, sending their only elf-speaking members to gather information. Telpin and Flegal learned indirectly from a group of wizards playing darts that Jaramon was expected to be dropping by to play later on. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself for the party to confront Jaramon for his earlier crimes, when he departed to the privy to relieve himself. Attacking him on his own, under cover of Joseph's Silence spell, Jaramon would not have had a chance, except for his ring of teleportatation, which he was able to activate without a sound and escape with a few hit points left.
Knowing Jaramon has many wizarding friends, the party unscrewed the privy, moved it aside, slipped back into the sewers and replaced it where it was on their way down. Within a couple of hours, Jaramon and three companions were in the sewers, launching 10d6 fireballs at the party from a distance. The party charged their enemy, running hard and launching spells and arrows to the best of their ability. Telpin went to -9 hp (cauterized by the flames, though, he remained stable). Dante was slain. Pressing the attack, the rest of the group forced Jaramon to teleport away again and abandon his entourage. The party defeated a small dragon-like creation of his, and captured his enchanting sorceress and war-sorcerer. I awarded the party 3,500 xp. We will resume next month, in the sewers below Moonmist. Later, I leveled up Henderson, Mick the Gangly and Telpin. For each of them, reaching 5th level was a pretty uneventful plateau.
Until next time, keep gaming... but don't obsess. Remember there's a real world out there too.

Blogs, links and more blogs

I have been reading some other blogs, and want to improve this one by adding links to other blogs, and possibly creating a new one also.