Avengers Vs X-Men: An Introduction to Heroclix

In my introduction to Hooting Into The Abyss I announced that I was The Unpainter, a person who didn’t play miniature games, didn’t play wargames, and didn’t paint miniatures. There is an exception which has happened in the last year, a miniature game which sounds at first like it would be anathema to any other Abyss-Hooter on this site.

I’m talking about Heroclix, a game I have drifted in and out of a couple of times and recently returned to as my local community has been expanding its presence and the scope of its plans. I thought I would write about the four events which will take place monthly in gaming groups worldwide, but in particular the Brighton Heroclix community.

So what is Heroclix?

Heroclix is the name of a miniature gaming system for skirmish-size battles between two or more teams of generally, but not necessarily superheroes. The main two licenses the game carries are Marvel and DC, however the list of past Heroclix includes; Assassins Creed, Judge Dredd, Halo, Gears of War, Iron Maiden and Pacific Rim.

The system is really quite simple. Each player makes a team, places them on a map made of little inch squares, often replicating things like the Batcave or Columbia from Bioshock Infinite and you knock the snot out of each other. To see The Hulk chasing Batman and Ezio Auditore da Firenzi across a rooftop would normally be the matter for a fanboy’s dreams. Here, it’s a little plastic reality.

Each turn is short, players have an action for every hundred points of characters (so 500 points gives 5 actions) and each character can only be given one. If you move, that’s an action. If you punch or shoot someone, that’s an action. If you have Magneto fling a dumpster across a mall into the face of Captain America, it’s a really satisfying action. Really satisfying. Once your turn is over you’ve got little tokens on some or all of your people. The next turn they keep the actions and have to rest to remove them. Or, if you’re feeling risky, they can damage themselves to do another attack. There’s a whole risk/reward system to taking actions which makes prioritising what you can do and effectively budgeting cool superhero moves more tactical than you’d think. Can you afford to have Hulk headbutt the Juggernaut? What if he misses and is so weakened that the Toad can knock him out in one punch?

Dungeon World: Session One

I recently started a campaign of Dungeon World. I thought I’d collect some thoughts about it, as well as a look at the system and the wonderful monsters that are my gaming group.

First of all, what Dungeon World isn’t

I’ve grown annoyed with “old school” style games as the phrase seems to hand-wave a lot of shoddy design in mechanics, art and setting because that’s apparently what it was like when we were younger. Hackmaster was a fun parody of the mood of those games, but the system was unwieldy in its 4th edition and somehow worse in its newer iteration as it removed the ‘fun’ of the previous one. The Free RPG Day reviews I’ve been writing have been a slog because there are so many ‘old school’ adventures and systems and I can only write “hate” so many times.

So what is Dungeon World?

Dungeon World takes the feeling of the old games, the fun, wonder an yes, occasional silliness. Then we get some interesting and simple mechanics in the style of modern games like Fate, which are where my mind’s been at lately.

Dungeon World uses the six basic stats of most d20-based games; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma, then puts a modifier going from -3 to +3 on each one depending on each score. To make an action you roll 2d6 and add a stat, translated in the system as Roll + Strength, if you’re climbing a rope, for instance. Roll + Bond to call on your bond with someone to help or hinder them. Roll + Dexterity to roll through the blade traps. You get the gist, but it gets so much better from there.

You roll 2d6 + a stat, and if you get a 10 then you succeed. If you get a 7-9 you succeed at a cost. If you roll a 6, you fail miserably but get an XP from the experience. Not just that, but rather than having 100 pages listing all the detailed things skills can do, you simply describe what you’re doing and the GM determines what move you’re using. The key rule to this game is that the narrative comes first. Before anything else, you describe what you are doing and then the GM says if this is an attack, they say if it’s a Charisma roll instead, or an Intelligence, or if you don’t actually need to roll at all.

There’s more, but I’ll get to that when I describe the session.

Zombie Dice Review

A dice-risking game about eating the most brains, for two or more people.

Zombies are pretty much over as a thing now, right? The zeitgeist peaked a few years ago and now a game with zombies in have to be pretty damn good to get anyone’s attention. Last Night on Earth is thematically interesting but really imbalanced and not towards any particular side. Zombies!!! is a good occupier of time but not a very good game. Zombie Dice is thematically very light, but that might be its saving grace.

In Zombie Dice each player is a zombie trying to chase survivors who are represented by six-sided dice. The first one to munch on thirteen brains is the winner. Although really you’re all zombies, so you kind of lost at life already. It’s still a win in their books, I guess. It’s also a good time to practice your zombie noises, which I’m sure will be essential in the Unlikely But Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse.

The contents of Zombie Dice are thirteen six-sided dice, a rules booklet and the short cardboard pot they’re all contained in. Compared to board and card games it sticks out from the collection, but don’t throw away the pot, it’s necessary.

Each turn the active player shakes the tube and blindly draws three dice, they roll them and separate the results into brains, feet or shotgun blasts. You roll again, taking any feet dice you have and adding more from the pot to make three dice. If you choose to stop, you score every brain dice you’ve rolled so far. The thing is, get a total of three shotgun blasts and every brain you’ve rolled so far is gone, your turn is over and you score nothing.

So far so simple, but why the blind-drawing from the tub? Well, there are three colours of dice in the pot; red, yellow and green. The red dice have more shotgun blasts and green have more brains. The yellow are pretty average. This helps you predict what’s left in the pot to draw from.

As example turn goes as such:

You draw three dice from the pot, two red and a yellow dice. Damn. You roll them and get a single kablam on a red dice, and feet on the red and yellow. You scored nothing, so you may as well roll again because you’ve got nothing to lose. The red and yellow dice with the feet on have one more added from the pot. It’s green! You roll all three and get three brains! It’s not likely, but not impossible. With one shotgun blast and three brains, you decide that you’ve got most of the bad dice out of the way, why not roll another? But should you? The smart decision might be to bank the points and walk safely away with your three points, but your in last place so you let ambition get ahead of you. Two of the dice need to show up as shotgun blasts this time, so the odds may be in your favour if you draw well. There are five more green dice in the pot after all. What do you do? It’s a tough call. When I was in this position I drew a red and two yellows. Three shotgun blasts and all my points for the round were rendered worthless.

This is a very fast and simple game, but the use of risk and reward can make things tense as people eye up the pot, hoping they made the right choice and fate smiles on them. It’s also loud. Sure the people are loud but that might be group-specific with brain-eating noises and yells of excitement or disappointment with the dice rolls, but I mean the actual game. The dice clatter loudly in the pot, satisfying unless you’re a nearby family dog or a person who’s not joining in. I think the noise actually helps get people animated. I still remember the game designer saying to me that rolling dice = fun, so rolling more dice = more fun. Hence Zombie Dice, I guess.

Zombie Dice is so thematically light that you don’t need to give a toss about zombies to enjoy yourself with the game. I view this as a great gateway game for people who aren’t used to mechanically heavier games. It’s also a good start for an evening of gaming to get people in the dice-rolling mood, all excitable and ready for when the other players turn up.

WHW Weekender

A quick Hoot just to shout out and say this weekend is the biannual Warhammer World trip for me and my fellow bloggers.  Not much to report now other than we are very excited, there will be photos and reports post this event.

Good Gaming.

Preparing a Chaos Team for a Blood Bowl Tournament

A number of people I play Blood Bowl with in an online league have decided to get together and have a live game of tabletop Blood Bowl.  There are six coaches and I am using this as a chance to debut my all beasts Chaos team, with no Chaos Warriors.  I have played tabletop blood bowl before but this is the first multi game tournament of any kind I will have played in.

I managed to pick up a second hand 3rd edition Chaos team for around 11 pounds, which provided eight of the beastmen i needed (plus three spare Warriors).  I also managed to pick up a Minotaur and three other unused Beasties.

Picture Miniatures

The Chaos team had been painted previously so I went through the process of stripping paint from these models.  For this task I used Dettol, which is something I have done in the past.  I put the miniatures to be stripped in a plastic container that was surplus and left them for over 24 hours.

Picture Miniature in Dettol

After 24 hours I went, with a medium toothbrush, and scrubbed the paint off the miniatures.  After the amount of time it came off very easily.  I also used my fingers (in gloves) and toothpicks to get left over paint in the recesses.  These were quickly rinsed in the Dettol, and rinsed in neat Dettol to clear completely before being allowed to dry

After drying I soaked the miniatures in soapy water (use dishwashing liquid) to breakdown the Dettol.  Ensure the paint is off as if you put it back into water it will go claggy and stick.  A final rinse in clean water was all tha was needed.

I then assembled those requiring assembly and have undercoated the miniatures and added numbers to the bases.  As the tournament is with friends I will be able to play with undercoated miniatures.  I plan on painting them before the next meet.

Picture ready for the games

Now the tournament is tomorrow, my list has a Minotaur and 11 Beastmen and I get a chance to see how the team goes.  Report and photos to follow.

Pumped Level High: Preparation for a Nerdvana Weekend at WHW

So a couple a times a year a large percentage of the bloggers who post on this blog have a weekend away at Warhammer World in Nottingham.  We have been doing this for the last few years and the gaming and copious drinking and the company make for a great weekend.  The next weekend away is planned for the 19th and 20th of October.

Over the next few weeks I will be using the blog to post what I am preparing for this weekend and using it to motivate myself as well.

I also have a small maiden tabletop Blood Bowl tournament i am participating in which I have collected a chaos beastman team to play in.  I will detail what I am doing in preparation for that as well.

To finish this post lets state, Geek levels are high, rulebooks are to be read and strategies formed. For the Emperor!

Free RPG Day Reviews - Part Two

It’s been a little while. I’ve been busy and easily distracted, but I’m here now, with more reviews of RPG releases from this year’s Free RPG Day

In part one of the Free RPG Day reviews, I looked at the first five products in my bulging pile of free games. There was a fun dice tower to play with, an interesting adventure in the free Shadowrun rules, a really fun looking little sci-fi game, a beautiful Star Wars RPG and an ugly mess of a retro-style RPG.

This time I’m looking at the middle five of the selection of free games, which is proving to be a retro-clone-fest.