Arena of Death Pregame show

Monday. Monday! MONDAY!!! Prepare for skull crushing action!
It's time for the 40K ARENA OF DEAAATH!!!

It has been a long time (about three editions) since we have done the Arena of Death, and we are criminally overdue, so this Labor Day Monday grab your favorite characters and meet us at the ARENA OF DEATH for carnage, carnage, and a bit more CARNAGE!

(To both of my overseas readers, the above makes more sense if you are familiar with the over-the-top commercials we have for Monster Truck events.)

To clarify things, we are playing the olde tyme Arena of Death as first put forth by the Citadel Journal, wayback when (mid-90's). Not any of the various newfangled overdone versions.

The rules are simple. Sixteen named independent characters are picked, then are randomly paired off and fight one on one in a 3'x 3' arena. The winner advances to the next round. Repeat until there is only one.
No Characters who have an AV. Sorry Bjorn!

My shortlist for contestants:
Azreal
Swarmlord
Ghazghkull
Abaddon
Kharn
Yarrick
Deathleaper
Farsight
Dante
Mephiston
Ragnar
The Avatar
Maugan Ra
Jain Zar
Typhus
Plus other surprise guests!

Anyone you want to see?

The Emperor Protects

Now fight for our amusement

On the Bench

Our planned start of the Sanctus Reach Campaign has been pushed back due to work schedules. A funny thing about The Atomic Warlords, we all work in the entertainment industry, or are software developers (or whatever the term is this week). This makes finding time for the toy soldiers a bit challenging most days.

The upside of this delay is I am working away at painting models for the campaign. I finished up Grukk Face-Rippa and a trio of mega-nobs with killsaws, and I am about to embark on painting three Knights and twenty five stormtroopers. I have always said, events are a great way to gain some project focus. For an encore, I am going to paint my Cadians, who have been languishing in a primed state for years.

The (current) plan is to start on September 6th, and run a mission every week. I've no doubt life will intervene some, but we will adapt. This means it will be three months before the Space Wolves get involved. I'm sure Jeff, our Space Wolf player, will use the time to paint up all his shiny new models.

The Emperor Protects

When he has the time

Star Wars Armada

I was wondering what Fantasy Flight Games was going to do after they had released all the fighters and ships they could for X-Wing. Now I know. They will just keep printing money.

Not due until 2015, the possibilities are very exciting. I'm liking the relative scale of the minis. This will allow for a much wider range of figures. Somebody say Executor vs. Mon Calamari cruisers?
Check out FFG's news on it  here.

Go Roll Some Dice

And start saving your credits.

Showdown at DS9

On the night before Comic Con what should you do? Check the schedule? Wait in line for hall "H"?

No! It's time to drink rum and play games! Fellow Warlord Pete was in town for the con and hanging out at Fortress Blackheart, so we decided to play a epic 250 point Star Trek Attack Wing battle.

Destroy the station was the mission, and to give us more maneuver room we played on a 4'x 6' battlefield.

250 points is getting close to the upper limit of an Attack Wing game, purely due to large number of cards and tokens to keep track of. Actual game time did not increase by that much, a testament to the cleanness of the FlightPath system.

Pete took five solid ships chock full of upgrades, and a well equipped DS9.

I didn't take two Jem'Hadar battleships, but I did really think about it. My fleet consisted of the Jem'hadar Battlecruiser, 4 attack ships, a Keldon, a Galor, the Hediki fighters, and a Breen Cruiser to round out the Dominion multicultural Battle Fleet of Doom. It took two turns to get into phaser range, but the fireworks was worth it.

The battle raged hot for two more turns, but Pete's ship were unable to support each other well and couldn't finish off cripples. The end result was all my ship took a good amount of damage, but I only lost three. Four out five Federation ships were destroyed. The end came swiftly for DS9 as the Dominion fleet closed in around it.

The the sole surviving Federation ship, Defiant, took out the Breen Cruiser, but it wasn't enough to save DS9 from a torrent of fire.

It was a very enjoyable game and went smoothly. The only complaint that both of us had was DS9 was not tough enough. It needs some additional special rules to give it some more bite. One thing we are going to try out is having DS9 be able to always fire its primary weapon in addition to any torpedoes it fires, at the same or a different target.  

Go Roll Some Dice

For the Founders!