Chaos for chaos!

Greetings fellow bad decision makers!!!  I have been traveling again, but my mind always drifts to chaos during these long days in the field.  The new chaos book is out and I feel excited and lack luster at the same time.  I have not been so split with emotion since I was forced to make a decision between Pepsi and Coke.  To clarify, mouth Coke not nose coke.  Once again my creative juices started running and I just could not stop myself from seeing chaos visions of my own design.

I would like to keep each army feeling different.  Right now Slaanesh and Khorne feel like a similar army due to how assault heavy they are Khorne troops sucking at everything.   Here is my first idea to differentiate chaos cult armies from one another. 

Chaos Taint: (only one test may be forced on a unit per game phase)

1) Khorne Blood Boil: When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of an enemy wishing to shoot or overwatch; the unit must pass a blood boil test (leadership test) including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed the unit may shoot as normal, if the test is failed the unit must move D6 towards the closest enemy model and forgoes their shooting.  Units with mark of Slaanesh are immune to this test. 

2) Slaanesh visions of excess: When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of an enemy, all enemy models wishing to move, shoot, use psychic powers, or assault must pass a vision of excess test (leadership test) including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed the unit acts normally for that phase; if the test is failed the unit may not do anything that phase.  Units with mark of Khorne are immune to this test.

3) Nurgle harbinger of disease: When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of the enemy all enemy units must pass a disease test (leadership test) each phase they remain within 12”; including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed the unit acts as normal if the test if failed the unit suffers -1S, -1BS, -1T, or -1AV until their following player turn (chaos player’s choice).  Subsequent failures do not stack but the unit may suffer multiple effects such as -1T and -1BS.  Units with mark of Tzeentch are immune to this test.

4) Tzeentch aura of mutation:  When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of the enemy all enemy units must pass a mutation test (leadership test) at the start of each phase they remain within 12”; including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed nothing happens to the unit, if the test is failed the unit takes one wound or hull point per point the test is failed by; only armor and invulnerable saves may be taken.  For each unsaved wound suffered add a wound or horror to any Tzeentch unit within 24”; if there are no wounded units or horror units within 24”, place the horrors within 12” of the unit with the aura.  Units with mark of Nurgle are immune to this test.

The overall theme of chaos taint matches up really well with the fluff of chaos taint. The taint of chaos is stronger in some than others which would have to be described in each profile.  Greater Daemons would have chaos taint with a -2 modifier applied to enemy units.  Chaos lords, heralds, and sorcerers would have chaos taint with a -1 modifier applied to enemy units.  Chaos champions or units with the daemon special rule would have the chaos taint special rule.

My overall hope would for each army would be to give Khorne bonuses to assault, give Slaanesh the ability to reduce enemy LD values and "will" to do anything, give Nurgle the ability to reduce stats of enemy units, and Tzeentch mutating everything around him.

***Note: I am not happy with the Tzeentch test.  When a unit with low leadership comes across a greater demon which would apply a negative modifier, there is a high chance the unit would go poof and a unit of horrors would take its place.   As cool as the power sounds it is just not fair.  If anyone has any ideas on what it could change to let me know I would love to hear other ideas on the topic.

Adepitcon update: Sounds like I am getting a whole much of Tzeentch models in the mail soon and they sound medal.  I have an idea of making miniature tornados out of snow tec around the waist of the horrors and trying to paint it like a puff of smoke.  I will take a couple applications of snow tec to get what I am going for I will send updates when I get home and start working on it.  If you have any ideas of modeling summoned demons let me know!

Thanks for reading!

Ian

paint for the paint god

Welcome fellow bad decision makers!

The warm leather couch welcomes my posterior again while I was laying my paints across the table.  Once again I am faced with a decision.... Star Trek, or Harry Potter movie marathon.  Now that I forced an internal conflict within myself and hopefully my readers I am faced with an undeniable, fact that I have no idea what I am doing.  Adepticon is 7ish months away and we still have not figured out a paint scheme that works.  

Below you can see a picture of my hopes and dreams; basically my first full test unit.  The skin is four types of blue and a blue wash.  Blue is such an unpleasant color to paint not because of the color, but more because of the GW color options.

Hmm looks like the teeth need another highlight.  The Skin too

Let me tell you why GW blue is the dagger in my heart.  With Red games workshop has a really good color blend.  Start base Khorne Red -> drybrush Wazdakka Red->drybrush Evil Sunz Scarlet-> highlight Troll Slayer Orange.  This is a perfect progression of a red base all the way up to a bright highlight.  If you follow that color trend you will get beautiful demon skin; note early in the painting process you will need a good wash to bring out all that muscle definition. 

Now Blue.  Kantor Blue,->Aldorf Guard Blue-> Caldor Sky blue is the best progression of blue GW has.  The issue being that their end color being way too dark.  So this leaves me with a predicament.  Either find a game store nearby that would give me a better progression of blue or I need to start mixing white with blue.  I hate hate hate hate mixing, I would rather hit my hand with a hammer than mix.  Mostly because if you ever need to go back to painting those models you have to perform another mix and they don't always match 100%.

We talked about skin.  Let's talk about fire.  Games workshop has a pretty sweet tutorial about fire when going over the bloodthirster model.  I honestly don't like their fire.  If you squint really hard and cross your eyes you can make out my effort to paint fire the GW way.  My major issue with it games workshop fire is the lack of depth when I paint it.  What I want to do is paint my fire like I painted my Khorne skin.  Look below at how I did fire.

So how do you like the blue skin?  Any ideas on what would make it better.  Right now is your chance to change how Team Bad Decisions paints our models. 

I am traveling again for work.  I will be back in town late this month.  Maybe when I come back and my world is not falling apart I can make some more progress on test models.  See y'all next time!

Whats Red, Blue, and Yellow?

Greeting fellow Bad Decision makers!

Just getting back into the swing of things with more progress.  Currently, I have been trying to figure out how to paint blue demon skin.  Games Workshop reds are really easy because you can follow the paint from one to another.  Blues are a different story.

Now these are NOT our horrors.  You think Marcus, our model engineer would allow boxed models on the table; I think not!  These are my personal horrors.  I painted one blue, one red, and the last one was split both blue and red.  I figure I will paint a full squad of each just to get practicing before the real models come.

My only real complaint about the blue is that the color is dark to the point you don't see the model definition from far away.  It's one of the rare instances where the model looks better the closer you get.

If you have any tips for painting blue please comment.  I still have some time to work to improve my blue painting skillz before the Adepticon models show up.

Scroll to the bottom of this post to see some sneak peak images from Adepitcon 2017.




Sneak peak!!!  Adepticon 2017

Who wants to see a Tzeentch Mauler Fiend?

On the road again...

    We are a Michigan based team but through our years we have made many 40k friends in the Midwest area especially Ohio. The weekend of June 17th we travelled there once again to compete in a pairs tournament at origins game fair.  Everytime we go to a tournament we try to bring something new with us and everytime I work right up to the 11th hour to get something done. While this is extremely hard on your sleep it is very helpful at getting projects completed. For example, this time I thought I was golden and had a small display I could borrow from a friend but it turns out that I wasn't able to get it in time for the tournament.

So, like many gamers, I looked through my backlog of partially completed projects. I had once started work on a display board for Kenny.

Unfortunately this all I had done with 2 days to days to go(This pic is actually of the display after spray painting this day).  In two days I didn't get completely done but I got pretty close. 

I have a black frame that goes around this as well and the tower is there for scale( I pulled out of the coffin display). I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out. The end vision will have a jungle and a river that goes through it. 

We got to the tournament and had a great time. I brought kdk and teamed with nate Kline who brought cult mech. They were mostly fun lists and we brought home players choice award for sportsmanship and appearance. At the event there was professional photographer. T.B.R. Photography took a lot of amazing pics of our army. 

These are just a few and she took a lot of great pics of the origins game fair. You can take a look at them at tbrphotography.com. Thanks Tiffany for the great pics.  

Origins was a great experience because there was so much to do. I would greatly recommend people going to see it of you get a chance.

Pondering Rules in 40K

Welcome, again fellow Bad Decision makers!

I have been pondering what is the meaning of 40k life.  Specifically my interest in 40k games in general.  I got to play a game last week and like a baby with an ugly face, I was beaten pretty bad.  I thought about my tactics and yes I probably played like a hummingbird with ADHD but I felt totally uncomfortable about the game in general.  Lord of War choices, mass psychic powers, and death stars have decreased my interest in playing; in reality, I actually dread playing with my former gaming partners.  No reason other than I don't want to play against a bunch of rules I don't know about and a bunch of formations I have no idea how they work.  I think I spent four hours trying to figure out what models I had for what formation then settled on not using any formations.

Everyone can agree there are codex's that need to be reworked so I am not going to focus on that.  I want to emphasize that each edition had a particular list or three that ruled 40k like in 3rd it was rhino rushes, in 4th falcon and serpent spam or fish of fury, in 5th it was the imp guard parking lot, in 6th it was all about the flying circus, and in 7th superfriends death star is all the rage.  Each of these power-house army lists normally lasts till the next edition or more frequently their next codex.  Each time GW normally does not resolve these crazy lists until the new edition changes the rules. I believe we would be overall better off addressing these issues inside the core rule book.

Here is my top 3 list of changes to 40k to resolve my anxiety of 40k here in 7th.

1) I would like to remove neutral warlord traits and neutral psychic powers.  Ideally, each army would have balanced  psychic powers.  Don't get me wrong I like the neutral powers a lot but there are too many wombo combo powers that turn great units into insane units.  It may be easier to remove invisibility or tweak it but I really miss 40k when it was a simpler time where broken psychic powers were only found in a single codex.

Wanting simplicity and complexity that is heresy.

2) Superheavy, gargantuan creatures, and formations belong in Apoc or points costs of 2000 points or higher.  Imperial knights are generally ok but when you start to combo them in formations they can get pretty crazy.   Just this week I had the lovely opportunity to play against 3 knights with KDK.  After eliminating my D bloodthirster he began systematically destroying my army with little repercussion. Removing these monsters removes the need for D weapons/Stomp and let's face it having an Avatar or bloodthirster die to a Knight from a stomp makes as much sense as Elmer's Glue being a milk substitute.

3)  Units should be able to disembark and assault out of vehicles if they did not move.  Even if they could only deploy 2" out of the vehicle and charge after it would be better than the imagery of squad of marines trying to stumble out of a rhino like a bunch of children trying to get out of a ball pit.

Honorable mention rules:  To gain an objective you should have to hold for a full game turn.  Assault from outflank and reserves.  Slam on monstrous creatures should half the number of attacks of the MC not reduce attacks of the model to one.

We will be adding more pictures of the current models we are working on next week so stay tuned!

Have a great July 4th and keep making those Bad Decisions.

Eldar Turned Dark Eldar Turned Awesome

Welcome back fellow bad decision makers.  I am back from vacation and decided to do a little throwback to Adepticon 2015.

We knew Eldar would be everywhere and we knew that we did not want to play an army that was going to kick too much butt.  So how could we tone down Eldar and still play them?  By making half our team Dark Eldar!  Win Win!

Friends have asked to share pictures of some of our past armies.  Before I get to the pictures I am going to let you in on a secret about team Bad Decisions, we destroy all evidence of armies that have won games.  Below are the last known good pictures I have of them, all evidence has been destroyed. This Eldar army has been dismantled or crushed, the only thing more beautiful than an incredible looking Eldar army is watching that same army be burned, crushed, and destroyed down to atoms.

All models were painted and converted by Marcus Baxley AKA Headkeepa AKA Bitsmash

#Bitsmash

Above: Warp Spider

                                             

Grotesques

Eww more Grotesques  

Wave Serpent

Vect turned ravenger

                                             

Thanks again for reading and keep making those Bad Decisions!

Ian

Campaign Corner

Welcome Bad Decisioners to Campaign Corner.  It is I, Ian your herald to everything bad and team captain of team Bad Decisions.  This post will be involving the key decision points in making a good campaign.  Just some background about my experience, I have run several campaigns, tournaments, and events.  Some hugely successful and some less so.  Let's talk about 40k campaigns and how to make them successful.

#1: Know your audience.

Campaigns can be great but they can easily get off track if your audience is not into the campaign.  If you are in a small close knit group of gamers who play regularly with each other then a campaign will be easy and fun.  If you are a regular at a game store and want to put a campaign together then it will take a lot of forethought because it will be impossible to know how many players will show up and what army they will bring.  If you don't plan then you plan to fail.

#2 Which campaign to run Stage vs Map

What is a map based campaign?  Normally a map based campaign is either team driven or player driven.  Normally teams/players have a starting location and gain territory around them.  There are normally special zones that grant small bonuses to the controlling player.  They are normally long and very intricate.

Nothing is cooler than seeing a map and watching the progress of campaigns and how they affect a world/city.  To witness a player swear a blood debt to another player who kicked him off an important tile/map space is funny to see and funnier to think about.   That said map based campaigns will often lead to abandonment.  It is normal for a losing player or team to concede when it appears all is lost or impossible to come back based on time.  Every map based campaign I have ever run ended early and normally not in a good way.  Once again see #1 if you have a small group of friends that are consistent you won't have any issues with a map based campaign but if you are doing this at your FLGS be prepared for people to drop or not show up for their games.

What is a stage based campaign?  You have two sides good vs evil.  A stage is X number of weeks at the end of the weeks add up who wins and move on to the next phase.  It is easy does not require a lot of work to perform.  It normally ends with a final event but it does not have to.

Stage campaigns are easy.  Have everyone play track the results and declare who wins at the end of each phase.  The results are not visible to players so it is harder for players to get discouraged.  Bonus 5 points because you don't have to make sure players get games in because it is amazingly casual.

#3 Army/unit/model bonuses / neagtives

Whoever is winning a campaign should get some kind of bonus right?  After all, if someone is meeting all their objectives you would think that it would either help or hinder their enemy in some way.  Always keep in mind bonuses should be small and are meant to be minor.  -1 to reserves, adding +1 to your reserves, reroll warlord trait, giving a unit the ability to deep strike or infiltrate.  Relatively small sure someone could try and abuse deep strike or infiltrate just remember to not be a dick.  These are little plastic sometimes metal and resin men.

What can be fun is making your own campaign mission where games played and won are tallied together and at the end of the phase a bonus is given out to the winner.

#4 Experience
Another unique thing I tried was evolving units or create your own special character.  The imagery of units becoming veterans after a war or conflict feeds my fluffy bunny.  What I quickly realized adding up experience at the end of each game ended up being a huge pain in the butt.  Having players track it ended up being a confusing and often unfair.

I did have moderate success with a create your own special character campaign.  I would make everyone model their very own special character. You give your special character wargear and his own warlord trait from his respected book.  Sometimes there will be an exception of no unique wargear because you would give out unique wargear over the course of the campaign.  At the end of a phase or a certain point in a map based campaign everyone gains a stat bonus to their HQ.  After a certain point, the HQ could trade in his stat bonus for a random special ability which would be much better than a small stat boost.  For notoriously bad HQ the bonuses would be much better in attempts to make it more even.  The idea is if everyone gains a bonus at the same time then points would be relatively close enough together you would not have to worry about a great divide in points costs.  There would be exceptions to bad HQ choices and how they would not see a noticable difference until they gain their first ability but tt ended up being fun and pretty fair.

#5 Ending

It is important to figure out an ending to your campaign.  Informing players when a campaign is over is in the best interest of everyone so players don't get campaign fatigue.  Campaign fatigue: A player who plays a lot of games in a campaign with no end in sight will eventually stop playing or quit.  How to end a campaign is very important, most players will remember how good a campaign is based on the end not the beginning.   I have seen a tournament run ending, mega battle, and my favorite an end game event.

Tournament style:  Have a small entry fee for prize support if your gaming group has young bloods then also encourage unopened box donations from the vets to the young bloods.  Have a tournament like ending with each match up being good vs evil or whatever makes sense.

Mega battle: The most exhausting but coolest picture worthy choice.  Mega battles are long and by turn 3 most players want to quit and go home.  This option is for dedicated players only.

End game event:  This can be whatever you want, anything from a bunch of scenarios to a kind of narrative style game.  One of my favorite ways to run this event has a large game 2v2 1500 per player.  Then have side games 2-4 tables with objectives each playing at various point levels.  The large table has a time limit of X number of hours generally you want it to be 5-6 hours enough for the rest of the players to get 2 or more games in.  The side tables have special objectives that affect the main table allowing the main table to bring on units that were destroyed or adding an ordinance shot or anything else you can think of.  Note I would shy away from adding units from the side tables just because you don't want the other players to get upset at the fact they are not controlling the models or making saves for their models, it's best just to allow only brief interruptions from the side tables.

At the end of any campaign, the most important thing to keep in mind is making sure everyone has fun and that the games move smoothly.  Prize support should be small if there is any and make sure to have door prizes if you are doing prizes.  A cheap alternative to prizes is to have special custom dice for the event and give 1 die to every participant at the end.  I find small door prizes or small prizes for everyone puts your players in a good mood vs an all or nothing prize support system.

If you have any questions post them in the comments I am more than happy to reply or provide some of my older campaigns I have run.

Now go out there and make some Bad Decisions!