Dread Pageant on Parade

    With the rapid approach of the parenthood coming at us full speed, I convinced Rachel to play some Warhammer Underworlds with me. This readers, might be the last game for awhile as we will be knee deep in diaper changes and sleepless nights! Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. This gives me a chance to play with the Dread Pageant now that they are painted. It also increases the chance of the Myari's Purifiers being painted by Rachel, as she always comments about how nice the models look once we start playing. 

Rachel (unseen 37 week baby bump under the table)

    Rachel picked me to place the board first, I chose one with no lethal hexes because I guess I am nice. While Rachel decided on one that had 3 clumped together. At first I thought the extra lethal hexes could be joined to them, like a grand canyon you'd have to see to believe! With a quick rules read, this is not the case, all hexes need to be separate. Which is good, I think the Ylthari's Guardians are still a bit bum hurt from all the falling they did last game.

    For the roll off to see who went first, Rachel and I ties, so we rolled again with the assumption that Rachel still got the extra critical for the roll for finishing placing first. She wanted me to go first, to get me in closer for her spell attacks.

My starting objectives.

    The Dread Pageant is all about giving or receiving damage to get inspired. Once 6 wounds on all surviving fighters on the board have been placed, the member just needs to finish an activation to be inspired. My first turn would be completing the Endless Revel, then the other two objectives would fall in place as they came up. Ylthari's Guardians need to remove wounds to become inspired, something which was a bit hard for Rachel as the starting deck only had 2 healing items in it. Ylthari makes it a bit easier to inspire, critical hits on a spell attack will remove wounds (even if she has none).

Glissete, the best a man can get, charges in to miss completely at the leader.

    While I don't believe charging head long into combat will be the best strategy for this warband, it would be in my benefit to get some damage on the table, the objectives also fell in line with the tactic as well. Glissete is quite weak, only having two wounds. She is always on guard, rolls of shields are successes. On Rachel's turn, Skhathael toddles up to Glissete, but his leafy heart isn't into the swing and misses as well. Before starting the game I did read an objective called Bloodless Skirmish, scoring it on the third round if all fighters are on the table, maybe I should have picked it up if this was how the game was going to go.

Glissete and Skhathael stare off, fuming with disappointment.

    Betwix turns, I played Dark Desires on Rachel's Leader, giving her a move token. This turns out to be a silly move as Ylthari was within 3 hexes of range for her spells anyways. D'oh! No take backsies in this game, Rachel plays for keeps now. Vasillac drove his spear into Skhathael, finally blood was drawn and Slaanesh was pleased.... for the moment. Following up, that bloodshed, Ylthari casts The Reaping on Vasillac, wounding for 1 point of damage, inspiring her with a critical in the roll. Oh yes, more wounds please! Rachel power step, she used Last Guardians, placing a guard token on her leader.

If only I moved to the objective.

    Hadzu charges into the fry, shooting an arrow of desire into Skhathael with 2 support on him! BIG OL' MISS! That's it, you're off the team Hadzu! Ahnslaine shows Hadzu how it's done, wounding her for one damage. Wrapping up round 1, Slakeslash and Gallanghan moves up from the back of the board.

Slakeslash scoffs at your objectives!

    I scored Endless Revel at the end of the turn, upgrading Vasillac with Strength from Pain, adding 1 damage to his attack actions while he has a wound. Rachel played Domain Denied, scoring one glory for "denying" your enemy objectives, clearly I need to make that more of a priority next time. Going into the second round tied 1:1

Round 2

    Rachel rolls well, picking to go first because why not? Ylthari was shaking in her branch skirt, that Slaangor didn't look all too friendly. But The Reaping missed it's make this time. Slakeslash wasn't all too pleased with being missed at, charged into Ylthari and Ahnslaine, scoring a hit on Ahnslaine to for 2 damage, taking the total wounds on the board to 6! Hehehehe Slakeslash inspires, you thought he was trouble before with his 5 wounds? What about an increase to movement for the lumbering beast? I score Excess of Gluttony for being adjacent to two enemy fighters. Now I just need to keep the wounds on the board. I spend the glory on, what else? Upgrading my Leader with Swift as Desire, adding 1 movement when unwounded, but 2 when he was wounded. 

Slakeslash shows off his might to Ahnslaine.

    Poor one shot Hadzu, he wasn't long for this world, and yet, he had the most easily pronounced name. I will miss him dearly. Skhathael advanced, toppling the archer with a decisive blow. First blood goes to Rachel! To be fair, killing isn't really what the Dread Pageant wants, they prefer the drawn out suffering instead. I believe at the end of round 1 I had picked up Beautiful Deaths, a duel objective for keeping three members of the Dread Pageant alive AND killing off 3 of the opposing warband. This would net you 6 (the number of slaanesh of course) glory! With Hadzu being all but useless this match, I don't think that would happen.

At least I will leave a beautiful corpse.

    

    With Excess of Paramountcy still in hand, I ran my very swift leader ,now moving at 7 hexes, over to an enemy objective. And while I was there, I might as well strike Gallanghan in the back for more wounds! But Gallanghan was surprisingly ready for this attack! His reaction allows him to bounce back damage if he gets a critical hit on his defense. BUT Vasillac ALSO has a reaction that triggers on the damage deal step, choosing to heal or deal damage to himself. I chose to heal, as at this point, only Glissete was the only one uninspired and she already had a wound on her. With 6, maybe 7 wounds on the board now, Vasillac inspires. Gallanghan had a few upgrades on him, can't recall which, I used Sword-Shatterer on, the only member of my warband it seems, my leader. This would give me a chance to remove an upgrade from an enemy after an attack action.

Learning from my mistake of last round.

    Ahnslaine tries to finish off Glissete, but her gaurd came in handy, shrugging off the attack. She charges in to finish off the wounded Ylthari guardian. Glory was used to upgrade Slakeslash with a Sadistic Goad, which increases in damage for every wound on the enemy fighter. Probably not very helpful at this moment as most of Rachel's fighters only had one or two wounds left on them. Gallanghan strikes Glissete in the back to let her know how it feels, but she defends. With all my fighters tired or out of action, I used my final action to pick up an objective card.

Glissete takes Ahnslaine out of action.

Round 3

    My note taking gets really sloppy as we get closer to the end of the game. I just get too into the game! We were 4:2 at this point. Rachel casted Pangs of the Great Lack, Glissete would suffer 1 wound, taking her out of action for the end of round 2. We couldn't find rolls to find the difference between suffer and dealt, so Glissete didn't roll a defense dice for this damage. 4:3

Start of round 3

    Slakeslash slashes at Ylthari with his massive blade, removing her from the skirmish, freeing up the objective. Rachel played a bunch of gambits during this power step, I didn't take notes of them, I believe one made my movement a bit slower, but even with 3 move it was easy to get around. Oh I remember! She put a move token on Slakeslash, legitimately denying the objective to me. Excess of Idolency was in my hand, I just needed two objectives.

Skhathael's turn to lay the beast low.

Skhathael moves in to strike, I don't think it hit. Vasillac would move beside Slakeslash for support? Guess it didn't really matter where Vasillac was. Gallanghan was struck by the Leader, driving him back without damage. Gal retaliates, wounding him. On my last two turns, I picked up objectives hoping I might have one that was already completed. If only I was so lucky.

    The final score was 6:3 for the Dread Pageant. Rachel had Vengeful Revenants, scoring 2 points for taking 2 enemy fighters of out action and only having one out yourself, in her hand when Vasillac was on the objective. If she used her standard attack instead of the Enraged Spite, which uses more swords but less accurate she might've scored that. Another one was if we had remembered to drive back Slakeslash into a lethal hex instead of attacking Vasillac, for another point for taking him out of action. 

This was much better then our last game, it was much closer in points. With Rachel doing some post game analysis, or shoulda woulda coulda-ing, we might see more of Underworlds on the table!

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Not that it will be on the hobby desk, but the baby should be coming next week sometime! I do have some finished painting to show off, these Slaanesh models are going to be a pain to transport around when that becomes a thing again with all their whips whirling about. I have some metal Fiends on table now which are a breath of fresh air after the delicate Seeker chariot.

    
        

Isolation Gina Con

     As this coming March weekend would have been Toon Con 2021, or at least the anniversary of last year's convention. Rachel and I decided to have an isolation Toon Con, guess it would be a Gina Con instead, don't think that will be catching on anytime soon. 

   Photosynthesis was first, I don't even think we have played it with a full set of four players yet!? Pretty sure we had three players. This is why I have been a bit more diligent about tracking my games on board game geek, win/lose, play time, factions played, all sorts of good statistics. Hopefully this will get us to move some of our older games we don't get to as often.

    Rachel gravitates towards cutsy and nature themed board games, even though most of them can be very cutthroat in their game play, looking at you Root. In Photosynthesis, players take turns planting trees to make a beautiful forest of vibrant colours (yellow for spring, green for summer, orange for fall and blue for winter). Each round the sun give off sunbucks for you to spend on buying more seeds or trees, shooting out seeds from your trees or saving them to get bigger trees or survive turns in which your opponent shades your trees for 0 sunbucks from that tree. (or if YOU shade your own tree)

First turn, start with 2 small trees on the board

        Trees have three sizes, small, medium and large, they also shade, 1, 2, 3 spaces away and give sunbucks equal to their size. Each turn the sun rotates around the board, players are required to think ahead to make sure they aren't being shaded and have the sunbucks to buy the larger trees and cut them down for victory points. The middle of the board is normally the best place to plant as it would give you the most points if this was a three player game, but it's counted as a 3 leaf space instead for only 2 players. The more leaves on the title the more points, which get less as players take points from that pile. It doesn't get too crowded with two players, with 3 or 4 players, oh boy! let the thick tree trunks hit the flooooooor!

Close to the end of the game, pretty tight!

    Rachel ended up winning 71 to 69, we were very each to another tree to be cut down each. It's also a bit unclear when the game ends, we decided it was before the sun icon instead of on the sun icon on the far side of the board. It's a small rule, but we still both get the same amount of rounds anyways so I think either is fine.

    Next up was Hellboy The Board Game, last year at Toon Con Rachel didn't play this, she wanted to catch up with some nursing friends in Saskatoon. We played the tutorial, which I played a couple days before to refresh my memory on the rules. I wish I went through the rules a bit more thorough as I missed a few things that would have really changed the game. Liz might not have had to burn the WHOLE board if I had remembered.

    Naturally, being the only playable female character, Rachel was Liz Sherman and I was Hellboy. Though it was the tutorial, Jon decided it was too easy, so he forgot two things to make it more HARDCORE! The copy of Hellboy I bought was from the Toon Con auction last year, all the figures were painted by the previous owner, who did a great job on them.

The first room was such a cake walk I didn't even feel the need to take a picture of them.

This guy, is where it went downhill for Hellboy

    Final room, armed frog monster takes a swipe at Hellboy. I roll a complication, removing my highest dice of 2 leaving me with one defense. OUCH! 6 damage for Hellboy. This is where I should have realized that I didn't use the requisition credits, a Lucky Charm that ignores damage from a single attack or effect would have been handy! 

The OTHER rules that Jon decided for some unknown reason to ignore, is that the Boss Monster has runes for the specific monster. Using the right colours makes the boss function properly, instead, Jon had ALL the cards in the Boss Behaviour deck. Probably should have noticed something weird when a range 1 boss would be trying to shoot at us sometimes AND summon minions. This made what should have been a pushover Boss, into a Boss Rush mode, trying to kill all the different types of bosses at once!
    

Hellboy can heal in combat if he rolls a B.P.R.D. symbol on the blue die.

That turned out as you'd expect it to!

  

  With Hellboy rolling as good as a square wheel. Liz had to finish off the boss herself, Immolating the room to burn up all the enemies. After a few rereads and rerereads of the rules, we made the call that damage that was suffered, didn't have to go through the enemies resilience, turning it into straight damage. If that is the case, Liz's Immolate ability is deadly, good thing Hellboy is resistant to fire damage, just not armed frogmen damage.

Rachel's victory pose with Hellboy's "urn"

    Hellboy took a while to play through, with some supper and cookie breaks between playing. Not as massive as Toon Con, but I am glad I got to introduce Rachel to Hellboy.

On the other side of the hobby, I did finish painting the Dread Pageant for Warhammer Underworlds. This should sate my desires to buy the new models for.....time.

 

You can look this fabulous on the battlefield.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    The Bladebringer is on the desk, I keep finding adjustments that I need to fix with the Seeker Chariot that I bought used, but shouldn't be too much work to modify it to work. Fiends are also getting their new winter coats on. With the baby on the way, it might be a bit hit and miss on the blog for a bit... more so then normal. Due date is technically April 3rd, but who really knows?!