My gaming season starts in June and ends in Middle of August. Release date of Descent 2E is torturing my soul. I deeply hope in late June release date. Otherwise there is little reason to buy this game this year :(

Malicain I hate to admit it but Youre right. I told You all it's going to be this way. A couple post sooner I posted a news from publisher of polish veriosn of the game and the release date is between  3Q and 4Q 2012. I know it feels like a big kick in the ... from FFG. And like You all I don't like it but it FFG. They do what they want. You will see the game will be avaliable after GenCon (a few copies will be there to buy for sure). So maybe we will see it in September or November (when You live in Europe).

Cheers

PS. I really don't like the new politcs of publishing form FFG. They announce games give them release date and then move those release dates the way it suits them. As good they could just make an announcment of a game ant then give it the release date 2012 or 2013 that would be more honest. And the way the upcomming section is treated looks like they don't care about fans and players. Now there are tons of games that are not updated. The PR and customers support form begginning of this year is  going really fast down. Thay should do something about it.

Malleus is a great site, but its not as up to date as I'd like and there are a lot of useful features in Hero Lab for GM's and players alike. None of that is available on the Malleus site. 

Have you looked at Hero Lab? Are you familiar with what it does? 

Not sure about there.. there are many more effects that target characters than attachments so far.. it is much easier to put dmg on the daughter than to discard an attachment.

From the note in the article I really think it shall not be an ally. But both the article and me have been wrong before. Still I guess it is an attachment with Mount trait.

 I've had a great number of impromptu I-forgot-my-notes games set in the underdecks of my players' ships. Many larger vessels, by virtue of their great age and incredible size, have entire subdecks that nobody from the crew has even been to; be they service tunnels for the ship's less-critical functions or a design oversight that's been copied by rote ever since (original enginseer responsible for design forgot to include a drop-off button for level 128c in the elevatus and now it's only accessible via a series of hatches and easements through the walls) or more sinister events in the ship's past, where a previous captain was forced to seal something away in one of the holds, unable to remove it from his ship but unwilling to let the crew know what was truly in there with them.

There can be any number of reasons as to why a Tau character is on a RT's ship.

1)  The Tau were attacked by someone else and RT rescued them.  For the time being they will help the RT, until contact is made with other Tau at which time they will probably leave.

2)  The Tau were exploring, got lost, and the RT rescued them.  Same as above.

3)  The Tau's are part of a trade agreement.  An Ethereal or a Water Caste member (more likely the later) asked/told the RT to let his people work with him/her and watch what they do, then the Tau will allow trade if all is well upon completion of the allotted time.

4)  The Tau are part of a lost civilization.  Say, since humans have come into contact with them, ships with warp drives might have been used to transport some Tau people, or at least were used in close proximity to the Tau (like a battle, and the ship had to use or intentionally used it's Warp Drive).  The ship(s) was lost in the Warp along with the Tau, they crashed landed on a planet, and poof, a lost Tau colony sprang up.  Could of been Imperium Trader's getting lost, Navy ships in battle with Tau with a Warp Explosion happening, or Chaos ships wanting to drag along Tau ships into the Warp with them for some crazy fun times. 

5)  It's possible the Tau were prisoners on a human ship, and since they crashed landed about 200 years ago, all hostilities have seized and they've coexisted since them.  Unless of course it was Chaos, and who knows what happened.  :)

6)  Or a combination of the above listed options.  Mind you, an Ethereal is never going to be present on a RT ship, because that would mean one could finally be captured and handed over to the Inqusition.  I wouldn't even allow Ethereal's to talk to RT's, unless they have a fleet of ships guarding him/her.

7)  The Faresight Enclave have discovered a Warp Gate created by who-knows-who, and have used it to colonize worlds that the RT has discovered.

The possibilities are limited by only what you can imagine.  If you don't want Tau in your game, then you don't have to.  GM discretion is advised.  ;)

Off to UK Games Expo tomorrow to ready myself for Friday, Saturday, & Sunday (3 solid days of gaming). See some of you guys there!!!

Ell.

Nerd King said:

This looks pretty awesome, thanks for sharing :) Please update frequently, I love reading stuff like this. 

<shrug>  Just doesn't look like it to me.  Nothing in there says shuriken, or ninja, or war fan, or... well, anything the least bit ninja-y.  Take away the title and flavor text, and consider what you see.  That's my dislike.

 So while I was looking around to see if I had that ship building excel spreadsheet, I came across something I did a long time ago. I sat down and wrote out every single stat given for every single ship. I calculated volume as length*width*(height=width*2) it's not a perfect guess by any measure, but it's consistent and a "rule of thumb". If someone wants to more carefully calculate the estimated volume of each ship and let me know by PM, I'll gladly take it, but if it's a consistent measure that it doesn't matter.

Ship Type Crew/Volume Space/Volume
GC             4.42                    3.25
BC             14.29                  10.74
C               14.28                  12.06
LC             29.72                   29.71
F               75.62                 117.69
R               63.76                 142.59
T               24.03                  50.09
 

Hopefully the above table comes out reasonably well. What I've noticed is that the bigger ships (GC especially) suffer from extremely poor crew to volume and space to volume ratios.

Rather than start say ok, lets scale everything to a raider and get totally borked stats, I think maybe exploring a "fluff" explanation, examining 40k tech to explain these.

My thoughts are:

1.) Bigger ships have more automation, necessitating less crew/volume

2.) Bigger ships have more redudancy, and are hence more durable. (maybe scaling up hull integrity further?)

Any other thoughts or questions?

KEM said:

The thing is, you don't make a Runner deck.  Similar to Decipher's Star Wars CCG, with it's Light/Dark side cards, in Netrunner every player is expected to have both a Runner and a Corp deck.  Most games are actually a pair of games, each player playing each side.

You may not be comfortable with that, maybe because you don't want to have to collect both sides, or don't like the idea of ever playing the Corp, whatever.  That's fine.  But I think most people are taking exception to your describing it as a limitation - if you only want to play half the game, that's fine, but that doesn't really fit the definition of a limitation.

Brilliant rich, thanks for spending the time and effort again to do another in your series. Looking at Tolkiens thoughts from outside of Middle Earth, maybe he wanted the hero to be the most innocent, peaceful, unnoticed character he could create. (Even the smallest person can make a difference!!) During the war years he was obviously influenced that all these ordinary gardeners, bakers, millers etc (all keeping themselves to themselves and getting on with their peaceful lives) were sent off to this terrible war that would shape the future of Europe. I dont think he wanted an ordinary tall, strong man or an amazing elf to win the day, he wanted to show all his readers that the most unlikely person could change the course of history. As you say, the hobbit history is not complete but i believe his idea of a hobbit came from the stereotypical country folk; not that intelligent but strong, hard working, peaceful and only interested in making their own little community go round. Another "quirky" thing i remember seeing a while ago was when reading through hobbit family history, (i think) it was frodos cousin was called Viggo, and the only other Vigo ive ever seen in my life is Vigo Mortensen. Silly but weird! Well done again rich and these certainly kickstart my thoughts, cheers mate.

Well... it's time to make some updates.

And sorry for the delay on The Long Dark.

They will be posted soon(ish). 

I forgot one other small quirk. I'm not a fan of the rally command removing all suppression counters. I feel like the initiating player should have a chance of suppressing the enemy before the unit phase, and the reactive player can just whisk away all that suppression with a single command. It's not that unit's shouldn't be able to clear suppression in the command phase, i just feel there should be some dice involved. I think just giving a unit a chance to roll away some suppression (just like it would get when it activates) would be good enough. Essestially you're giving the unit two shots at getting rid of it's suppression. If that's not good enough, you could always have the die reversed.

 Yes, LF7 cards have been reworked a bit, I added some features on the item cards for example. we added also LF8 cards, and as for LF9 we added the NPC card.

If you wish a page-wide monsters card (like in the books) check the other extension (2nd link). 

mitseni-greg said:

Yep. Effects that allow characters to be inserted into challenges do not require that character to have the corresponding icons. That's also why several of the characters that have such effects also have the challenges that they can be used in defined in their card text (have a look at KoW Catelyn or CS Greatjon for example). In a similar vein the newer Greatjon can be used to defend intrigue, Burned Men bounced into intrigue challenges via Hidden Vale Pass, Walder Frey participate in challenges at all... etc.

Cool, So if my  opponents and I all choose CWC division teams, we'd just ready the one CWC star player pile and disregard the OWA star player pile?  If that were the case, it would be one pile right? splitting it into two seems like one "manager side" would have a potential advantage...or maybe I'm being to analytical. lol 

Thanks for the feedback.

I do what you do, though sometimes I send SMS in the same in-game style.

I sometimes write up a summary of events from past sessions if we take extended breaks in mid-campaign, to remind them of what happens. This I often do in the style of a diary of one (often unnamed) of the players. 

An example from our current run through Tattered Fates (ACHTUNG! SPOILERS INCOMING):

+++ Status Report
+++ The following sections recovered from a torn and stained journal from a rented room in Xiparph.

Dear Diary,

+ Woke up today in a pit littered with the bones of dead people, together with some other unfortunates. Then the Spindle-maws were released to feed, and I barely escaped the slaughter that followed, thanks to the help of some mysterious fellow in a Heron mask. Alone and almost naked we then got lost in some hellish underground maze of bloodworks and incomprehensible machinery, and from there things just got worse. I remember a guy in a Jackal mask leading the people who must have brought me here (wherever here might be), and that they did ... things ... to me.

+ We found Inquisitor Sand. Or at least, what was left of him. Apparently the Heron Masked Man did some serious work on him. Guess he's not such a nice guy after all. Sand told us the Beast House were the people who brought us here, and that the Jackal mask is one of their slaver chiefs. Goes by the name of Marcus Vulpa. Death is his sentence, and it will be my pleasure to execute this duty! The Beast House are not the masters here, though, someone else is pulling strings. And this someone seems to be the Heron Mask and his people. He has some terrible plan, apparently, which somehow involves "the old blood, I think, to lure it out". And something about the Haarlocks. "Find him, and stop him". Yes, Sir! Oh, and the fate of the world is on the line, as usual. And the world is Quaddis. Nice place, apparently. Seems there is an ally out there too, some White Schollar bookworm working for Sand. "Ask him...ask him what can be found in the ninth stack on Prol. He will answer, “emptiness” if it is he". 'course he will.

+ Burned Sand, killed some Beast House slavers, escaped through a Carmageddon Arena, and arrived in Xiparph. Picked up a priest along the way who doesn't appear to be a total dick. Makes for a nice change.

+ Xiparph's nice. Lots of friendly and festive people, and the wine flows freely. Apparently they like their bloodsports here. That's good, we know a little about bloodshed. Bossman has an idea to win some money on the fights. The Fates Wheel is the place to go, or so they say ...

+ Well that went well. Our attempts to give ourselves an "edge" didn't sit too well with the locals idea of "a fair fight", something fundamental to "honour duels", they say. They had a little witch, too. Seems our resident warp-head didn't much care for him. He now has a shiny new headxploder around his neck to remind him of the fact, too. On the plus side we got to know the owner of the Wheel, a certain somebody in the underworld here, it would seem. Goes by the unlikely name of Papa Grist, and he wants us to kill his rival in Crimformation, a certain Spider Bride, resident of the Twilight Gardens. Sounds fun. We get paid, too! 1000 Thrones each, and an invitation to the party at Gabriel Chase at the time of the Passing of the Shadow. Unmissable, or so they say.

+ Seems there is a mythical beast called The Widower, a fiend of a thousand faces, that goes around killing people in really horrible ways. Been around forever, apparently. The local boogeyman mothers scare their kids with. Come kills you when you sleep. Or when you're awake. And armed. And ready, with an army at your back. Sounds like a nasty piece of work.

+ Today we met a local street preacher, a solid looking fellow by the name of Obadiah Psalter. An agitator, rabble-rouser, and devout puritan of the Imperial faith, Psalter was on a pilgrimage barge that was diverted to Xicarph at the whim of its noble master. He has found the city to be an anathema and has founded himself a small congregation among the poor and destitute in the Collapsed Palaces. But several days ago, he lost his fledgling following to the honeyed tongue and twisted promises of another voice, a preacher calling himself the Beloved who first came to them wearing a Heron Mask.

We rapidly agreed to pay a visit to this Beloved, and to reclaim the chapel, and to kick some heretic butt in the process.

+++
+++ The Beast House

The Beast House is a quasi-legal group that hides its true evils behind a mask of tradition and violent entertainment.It is comprised of beast slavers, hunters, smugglers, and purveyors of bloody sport and savagery whose influence reaches scores of worlds throughout the Calixis Sector, and who have become deeply embedded in the sector’s underworld over centuries of activity. Each regional “Beast House” is run largely independently—mercenary and beholden only to its own masters and connected to others of its kind through a shadowy network of contacts and contracts, and ultimately to a mysterious figure known as Solkarn Senk, said to be the Beast House’s founder.

+++ The ToDo-List
+ Find the White Schollar. See if he knows something.
+ Find Marcus Vulpa, and kill him
+ Learn what the Heron Masks plan are. Stop them. Kill him.
+ Find a way off this planet. Or maybe not, it seems nice here, if we could only get some serious cash. Nobody knows we are here... There are worse places to retire.

Awesome thanks man!

 I'd like to say the same. But I'm skeptical about those effects waiting for an opponent's action. What use for against a control deck?

Greetings from  greece to all the members of the community.

Yesterday i was playing mt lanister deck against a STARK [siege].

during marshalling my opponent plays THE WALL location and and when i attacked

he put in play from his hand as a def a big NW character[ DEFOTNORTH] i think.

my question is >>the nw character is legally put in defence with no icons gained through agendas or other card effect?

Huh, I would do it the other way around: Use a different system to run WH40K games with. I'm not too impressed with the rather clunky system used in the 40K games so far. BC is better, but still not there. Looking forward to Only War, but my hopes aren't too high.

As for Post Apocalyptic games I heartily recommend picking up Apocalypse War, which I think was $10 for the pdf. At the ApW forums some swede has already made a 40K conversion, so here you can come full circle :)

Ah, another old grognard. Yes, I miss them, too. Particularly the staggered approach you mentioned to learning the game; remember Starship Troopers?

I agree with the people saying that the GM is either throwing way too hard opposition at the Kill Team, or the Kill Team has no sense of tactics whatsoever. I'm more inclined to think its the former.

Speaking on the subject but slightly off-topic, how much do you think that a normal Kill Team of 3-5 characters can take on at rank 1? For example could they take on a Carnifex or a pair of Lictors? Or would it be to much?

I live in MD, a state that at one time was nearly 100% dense forest, and I find that any area of woods on a game table is so small it would never block LOS. Woods do indeed get dense pretty quick, enough to block LOS in real life...but not little patches like most game tables have. If you were to play with real-scale woods, nearly 1/3 the table would be covered by trees.

It always bugged me playing warhammer and hiding units behind three trees on a piece of felt. Just feels like cheating.

 There doesn't seem to be a Dragonstone convert in the list.

Still looking for everything!

Initiating a challenge in the Plot or Dominance phase by cards like Blackwood or Shadow Politics downs not transform the phase into a Challenge phase anymore than taking a Big Mac to KFC would transform it into a McDonalds. 

There are card effects - like Den of the Wolf - that make it possible to have more than one challenge phase in a round, though 

I think the biggest risk here is fratricide. Just because you point a star or iron cross on the vehicle. Doesn't mean I' m not going to identify the target as an enemy and blast it.