All dolled up/Leviathan

I finished the first mannequin of my Malifaux crew yesterday.

As with the performers, I tried to stick fairly closely to the color-scheme on the box, but I weren't able to mix a purple/pink that was as vibrant as the artwork. I’ve ordered a Vallejo “pink” (along with a bunch of other stuff), but I didn’t feel like waiting for it to arrive, so the figure ended up with a dress and leggings in a much more muted shade of purple.

Combined with the grayish “skin”, it looks slightly faded-out besides the much more colorful performers, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. It is, after all, supposed to be an assistant.

If you look at the date of my last post, you might be led to believe that it took me about ten days to paint this figure, which isn’t the case. For all its tiny details, it was actually fairly easy to paint and has a simple, but attractive, three color paint-scheme.

No, the delay was, once again, caused by something related to Battlefleet Gothic, though this time it was the new(ish) mobile game Battlefleet Gothic: Leviathan.

For some reason, it seems to have flown under the radar; there aren’t many reviews out there at any rate. I’ve been aware of it for a while, but until recently it was only available on IOS (I’m an Android person myself), but I finally got started on the campaign last week, and immediately lost 20 hours to it.

It’s basically a near one-to-one adaptation of the board game to mobile devices and it’s actually very good. If you like BFG, you should like this as well, even if you will spend a bit too much time fighting the interface in addition to the enemy. It usually works though; once you learn what all the buttons are for.

The main part of the game is a campaign where you try to defend a star system against the advance of (surprise, surprise) Hive Fleet Leviathan. It’s very tense, and you’ll constantly be struggling to make your (painfully sparse) fleets be at the right place at the right time. I’ve only just gotten my first heavy cruiser, so I’m probably not even close the end, but it already feels like an epic adventure.

If I do have a criticism, it’s that you’ll spend all your time fighting Tyranids (though you can play skirmishes against imperial forces). The ‘Nids have a very specific playstyle, which in turn means that you’ll have to adopt an equally specific style to combat them (torpedoes… lots of torpedoes). It would have been nice to see some Chaos or Ork raiders to spice things up a bit. Maybe even some Imperial rebels (‘Stealer cult, anyone?), which wouldn’t have required creating new assets for the game.

Fighting all those Tyranid drones has made me reevaluate the value Cobra Destroyers however. Sure, those puny guns are utterly useless, but the ability to fire off a torpedo salvo (almost) wherever I want to is simply invaluable against escort-heavy fleets.

Croaker

Striking gold (in space!)

Some weeks ago I wrote about my love for Battlefleet Gothic (BFG), which had been rekindled by the arrival of a (rather good) PC version of said game – Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.

I’m still playing Armada whenever I get half an hour to myself, but the more I play, the more I long to try the real thing. So, I did something stupid. Something you should never, ever do.

I bought the base game on eBay with nothing more to go on than a photo of the front cover and a description that it was “complete”.

Stupid! Stupid! – as Mr. Pool would say.

However, it was relatively cheap (a nice version of BFG can get expensive) and from a reputable seller, so I figured it was worth a shot (as much as I thought about it beforehand anyway).

Well, after paying for shipping, import tax from the US and a “handling fee” (a.k.a. the 15 pound arbitrary “fuck you” toll the Danish Customs levy on each package they check*) it wasn’t all that cheap after all, so it was with some trepidation that I opened the box when it finally arrived.

Inside I found this:

The very sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that it isn’t, in fact, complete. It’s missing a few normal dice (no biggie), a flight-stand (should be fixable) and four order-dice (a bigger problem – these are not cheap).

Other than that, it’s in excellent condition, with the counter-sheets unpunished and most of the ships still on sprues. This actually presents me with a bit of a dilemma, as I could potentially make some money by selling them and buying pre-assembled ships instead. I’ll think about it, but I’m just not sure it’s worth the hassle.

Not too bad, but it’s still not actually “complete”, which should piss me off, except that the box also contained these:

I really don’t know what the Epic magazines were doing there (and I have very little interest in Epic stuff from between the time of Adeptus Titanicus and Epic: Armageddon anyway), but the rest is pretty sweet.

All in all a very good haul. The next step will be to buy a small fleet for each of the four main factions (and maybe Tyranids, which are cool. Tau, Dark Eldar and Necrons can go jump the sea for all that I care).

This will probably take some time since everything connected to BFG seems to be massively overpriced on eBay (probably because of the game’s relatively limited print run). To make matters worse, it seems that BFG was more popular in the US and Australia than in the UK (at least that’s where a lot of sellers ship from) – which brings me back to my rant on the cost of importing stuff from outside the EU. Oh well.

Croaker

  

* I’m sorry to get all political, and it’s not really my business, but WTF UK!? If I end up having to pay import taxes on all my oldhammer goodies in a few years, we are going to have words. 

Getting sidetracked (in space!)

I have a batch of miniatures mere hours away from completion, though to be fair this could translate into several days due to the current demands on my time. What bugs me is that they’ve been in this state for about a week.

Why? Because Battlefleet Gothic: Armada came out, that’s why.

For the uninitiated, it’s a pc-reimplementation of the 1999 Battlefleet Gothic board game (BFG from now on). This one:

I’ve always had a soft spot for BFG. It’s not because it’s the most lavish product ever produced by GW (with only eight actual models in the base game it might even be accused of outright stingyness), but everything inside is just soooo lovely. From the components:

A (sadly) low-rez photo of the box contents

 To the rule book:

To the wonderfully moody art:

And the (surprisingly) interesting background and short stories inside the book.

I don’t know why, but everyone involved in the project just seemed to be doing some of their best work. It’s truly a labor of love and, unsurprisingly, it was quickly discontinued by GW.

I never got a copy of it myself when it was in print, which is one of my greatest hobby-related regrets, but I played a friend’s game a bunch, and I really, really liked it.

The best way to describe why I love BFG, is probably to tell a short anecdote from one of my first games.

First a bit of rules; You see, ships in BFG have a certain amount of inertia, which means that they have to move each round and can’t turn until they’ve moved a certain distance, unless you give them a “burn Retros” special order, which requires making a leadership test.

These things became very important when I, in my excitement to “get up close and personal” with my opponent’s Chaos ships, I flew my entire fleet too close to the edge of the table. Ships that leave the table count as having disengaged and can’t take further part in the battle, which meant that suddenly my entire fleet was scrambling to issue “Burn Retros” orders. Some made it, and some didn’t, and in the meantime, my opponent had moved behind my remaining ships (where I couldn’t return fire) and promptly crippled half my remaining fleet. 

How awesome is that!?
I made a huge tactical mistake and was promptly punished for it, but the episode taught me to always think movement at least a turn ahead.

Anyway, even amidst rumors of a new edition, I’ve been jonesing to play a game of space combat in the Warhammer universe for years, and now I finally can!

BFG: Armada is a fairly faithful interpretation of the board game. I could certainly point out some faults (mostly on the technical side) if I was in a mood for nitpicking, but I won’t, because it really would be nitpicking.

Still have to finish painting those models though…

Croaker