One Page Rules: Prime Brothers vs Plague Havoc Brothers

This evening we enjoyed another game of the excellent One Page Rules. Up until now we’ve been learning the game with multiplayer games so we can learn together, discuss issues, etc.

This evening we broke out into one-on-one games. I took 2000pts of Plague Havoc Brothers against 2000pts of Prime Brothers. We use the Objective cards system to determine victory, but we keep the cards secret and don’t play the possible 5^th turn.

Plague Brothers

• Plague Champion (1) (psychic (1)) - with plague brothers
• Plague Champion (1) (psychic (1)) - with plague brothers
• Plague Champion (1) (jetpack & war chant) - with plague mutated brothers
• Plague Brothers (5)
• Plague Brothers (5)
• Plague Mutated Brothers (5) (wings)
• Plague Drone (1) (Twin plague sprayers)
• Plague Drone (1) (Twin plague sprayers)
• Plague Drone (1) (Twin plague sprayers)
• Plague Infernal Brute (1) (Twin lascannon, Brute flail)

Prime Brothers

• Elite Raider (1) (Energy sword) - with Infiltration Squad
• Elite Raider (1) (Energy sword, Psychic (1)) - with Prime Brothers
• Prime Master (1) (Energy fist, Fist pistol, Energy sword, Battle rites) - with Prime Brothers
• Infiltration Squad (5)
• Prime Brothers (5)
• Prime Brothers (5)
• Blaster Squad (5) (Heavy plasma rifles)
• Jetpack Squad (3)
• Anti-grav Tank (1) (Twin gatling gun, Twin heavy fusion rifle)

 

We placed the six objectives, dealt out the initial three objective cards each and deployed our forces. Both of us deployed conservatively, with our units in cover or well placed to make ground towards our objectives. 

Both of us deployed our heroes within units. In my case, my psychic heroes were leading my plague brother units. The war chant hero deployed in my plague mutated brothers, and I kept them in ambush, ready to deploy on turn two.

The prime brothers also kept a Jetpack Squad in ambush, but these wouldn’t hit the battlefield until turn four!

The prime brothers take up positions in a firing line

Prime brothers infiltrator squad sneaks forwards into a strong central position during deployment

Plague brothers advance on the flank supporting a plague drone

That tank's going to be a problem...

Turn 1

I was really worried about the Blaster Squad, and the Anti-grav Tank but one of the things I’ve noticed about OPR is that to win you simply need to expend your resources to score the objective points, so I set about advancing to capture as many objectives as possible and score my cards.

In the initial exchanges, I came out better. My opponent’s dice rolling was woeful, and he just couldn’t kick out damage or stop me hitting him hard. My plague brother’s regeneration also proved its worth in keeping the plague brethren alive.

Most notably, the prime infiltrated were wiped out in the centre.

The plague drone's spewers sprayed filth, wiping out the prime infiltrators on the roof

End of turn score: Prime brothers 0 – 2 Plague brothers

Turn 2

I dropped my ambushing mutated plague brethren into the rear of the prime brothers line, ready to take out his psychic commander.  As it happens, I’d drawn an objective card to kill one of his psychic units so that was my priority for the turn. My opponent chose not to bring his ambush on.

The plague mutated brothers wipe out the prime psychic's units

I pushed in on both flanks with my plague drones, capturing more objective markers. My Plague Infernal Brute continued as it did throughout the battle, standing off in the backfield and plinking away at the prime brother’s tank. He did hit a single shot in the whole game! D’oh!

The prime brothers pushed out in the centre but didn’t close in on any objective markers.  My plague mutated brothers jumped on the prime psychic and butchered his supporting unit, before my plague drone sprayed toxic filth to finish off the psychic, scoring my more points.

End of turn score: Prime brothers 0 – 4 Plague brothers

Turn 3

By now, the prime brothers’ lines were severely thinned out and they were struggling to make headway anywhere. Their ambush still didn’t deploy, but they set about advancing into melee with the plague brethren wherever they could.

Plague mutated brothers trying to eat a tank. They certainly took some chunks out of it.

Not much of the prime army left to try to turn the tide

I now had control of five of the six objective markers on the board, which meant the replenished objective cards game me a good chance of scoring each turn.

The prime brother’s melee assaults weren’t as effective as my opponent hoped, but the prime tank did manage to bring down a plague drone! My plague mutated brothers, pounced from behind onto the prime tank, tearing chunks out of it, and together with fire from elsewhere, taking 7 of the 15 wounds the tank had.

The prime brothers terrible dice rolling, and my exceptional luck continued, but also, I was still controlling the objectives and setting up for good scores.

End of turn score: Prime brothers 0 – 5 Plague brothers

Turn 4

Finally, the prime brothers decided to bring on their ambush and the jetpack unit dropped right into the centre of the field, far from any objectives, and hemmed into a small area by circling plague brothers. It seemed unlikely that the prime brothers would be able to recover the battle. The jetpack troops opened the turn by advancing and pouring fire into a plague brother unit, which was protected by the psychic power of its leader. A couple of plague kin were killed but passed their morale to carry on the fight.

My plague mutated brothers turned their attentions from the grav-tank and flew from the back field to take on the prime jetpack unit in melee. I won the fight be three more wounds than the prime brothers for another objective score.

With only a few prime brothers left the turn petered out to a decisive win for the plague brethren.

End of turn score: Prime brothers 2 – 7 Plague brothers

 

Overall, another excellent and fun game. My opponent certainly suffered from some pretty poor dice rolls but ultimately the game was lost by the plague brothers being able to score the objectives more consistently.  This is a primary feature of OPR that is a real plus for the game play. You really have to concentrate on achieving your current goals and objectives.  Sacrificing units to do this is fine and I’ve found that seizing control of objective markers can really set you up for late game scoring as you never now what objective cards you’ll draw. Apparently this swung the game from a loss to a draw in the Dark Elf vs Robots game on the other table with a big last turn score directly from controlling objectives!

My thoughts on why I won this game:

1. Dice

Obviously dice and what they roll are always a factor, and while I was rolling probably above average, my opponent was rolling below average. However, OPR with objective cards isn't won or lost on units destroyed, so I think this is less of a factor than it would otherwise be.

2. Seizing Objectives

There are six objective markers in play on the table and I set out from the start of turn one to try to seize control of as many as possible. By the end of turn 2 I had control of Objectives 2-6, with Objective 1 remaining uncontrolled.

I was interested to note that even when my opponent had the opportunity to move to contest or take control of objectives I had controlled but left undefended, he didn't do so.

This in my view was the decisive action for the win. At the end of each turn, I was able to score points off of the cards I was holding as most of them relate to taking or holding the on-table objectives. My opponent only managed to score any points on the final turn as a result.

3. Goal Focus

Related to point 2, each turn I focussed on achieving the objectives I had on the scoring cards I was holding. Where I had a card that was "destroy X unit", I focussed fire on a relevant target, and I was secure in the objective capture scoring too.

The scoring card system we use is a fan-made add on, and we've been debating the randomness of how they work. It may be that we modify them as we get more experienced. I rather like the idea of fixed scoring objectives, together with a random card draw, but that's "to be considered".

Dark Elf Raiders vs Robot Legion 

The other game this evening was a battle between Dark Elf Raiders and Robot Legion. The Dark Elves had the lead throughout the game, but the Robots pulled back a 5-5 draw on the final turn!  Apparently an excellent and tense game that saw most the units on both sides wiped out.

 

Apparently, this was typical for the Robot Legions dice...

A great evening's gaming and OPR is fast becoming “the only game I want to play”!

Necrons

As One Page Rules (OPR) continues to occupy our gaming schedule, one of the notable things about it is that it's made me excited to get some old armies I never started (or finished) painted and on the table.

Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 rules are so heavy and complex that getting a new army on the table is daunting to the point of, well, not actually doing it. The thought of having to wade through the incredibly un-fun process of trying to learn a new army, finding out the miniatures your bought are rubbish in-game and you need to buy all new units, only to have those new units altered and downgraded in effectiveness three months later is just awful.  As a result I have a variety of Warhammer 40k armies that just never made it off the Lead Mountain. Some of these have been lurking there for many years!

OPR is very different. Fun, stable, balanced (seemingly) and easy to play, its army building freedom and enjoyable rules mean that the route from sprue to table seems highly achievable. Having sorted out my Tyranids, its now time to move onto the Necron half of the old Indomitus box set.  I never really thought I'd get these miniatures onto the table (for the reasons set out above), be here we are.

So I delved into the Indomitus box and found that there's still a bunch of space marines unmade in there too! I've never really got on board with the new space marine "Primaris" sculpts. I mean, they're OK, but I really do prefer the older marines, now retconned as "firstborn" (and no doubt on their way to being discontinued), so I guess that's why these new models are still languishing here. It is what it is I guess, but there just something I find "generic" about the new larger miniatures that just doesn't seem right to me. And the new floting tanks they have are a serious misstep in design. Again, in my view.

Anyway, I digress. I retrieved the Necron sprues from the box, broke out the "instruction" booklet and began the tedious process of assembly.

Lurking at the bottom of the pile...Indomitus

Ugh...plastic hell. Just give us the models! I've bought work here...

Indomitus has a rulebook in it, which I already had a copy of

Model building is something I don't enjoy at all, so this part of the hobby is a tremendous chore for me. I much prefer single cast models for that reason, but here we are in multi-part hell again.  

Thankfully, these Indomitus Necrons are push-fit models that makes assembly (once desprued, cleaned, mould-line scraped, and generally prepared) a bit easier, but these minitures are INCREDIBLY fragile. I mean they look good, but Games Workshop seem to have forgotten that they produce gaming pieces, not display models. These little toys are going to be handled, pushed about, knocked over and otherwise roughly treated in the melee of a game (and the transportation to and from said game).  They're simply too fragile for such treatment. How fragile you ask? Well, I broke a couple of bits just trying to "push fit" them together! The air was also blue as several times I snipped off and cleaned up a tiny bit, only to glue it on, look at it, and think, "why the heck was that a different part!? It could easily have been moulded onto the other bit.  Weapon tips in particular seem to do this.

The first four done

Anyway, I'm looking forwards to getting these down double-quick, as they should have a very simple paint scheme. Mostly metal I need to make a decision about the accent colours. With these fantasy miniatures I prefer to follow the box art usually, but I think I might move the default green into a more aquamarine or teal colour.  

Not sure...TBC

Continued...

I've made some progress this weekend, and I've constructed and nearly finished painting the Indomitus Necrons. I also nipped out to my "Friendly Local Game Store" (FLGS) to pick up some paint and accidentally bought a Canoptek Doomstalker. It'll come in handy no doubt.

A simple black undercoat with a overspray of Leadbelcher spray paint (from Games Workshop) did the heavy lifting and basically the figures were table-ready at that point.

However, I did a bit more work on them. Weapons are painted Tin Bitz, and the heads and shoulders of unit leaders (and heavy weapons robots) got a similar colour.

Commanders and "heroes" are painted with gold trim. I figured the more important a robot became in the amry the more precious the metal they would be adorned with. The only other colour I plan to use is green. Cabling is dark green.

I have to make a choice about what to do with the well established "glowy bits" on the Necrons. I don't have an airbrush and my attempts at object source lighting techniques in the past have been a failure. So...do I go for it, or do I go a non-glowy direction? Not sure yet. I've watched a few YouTube videos on how to do a simple effect so I may take the plunge.

The Final Leg

So, after mulling things over for a while, I decided to have a go at "the glowy bits". I used a bright green, a yellow dot, and a green glaze.  I found it worked for the small details, but I'm not happy with the larger glowing balls.  The yellow bit needed to be built up with a blended/glazed approach. I'd thought the glaze over the top might do that but sadly no.  I may try to fix it later but for now I'll accept the sub-par finish.

Overall though, I'm happy the army is done (once I complete the base edges).

All told, it took 6 hours to build the platic models, and about 3 hours of painting to get to the end.  Maybe another hour for the bases, which takes time as the technique i sue means it takes a couple of passes to get the PVA glue to take the various materials.

for these bases I used Minibits (Pendraken) Coarse Sand and Fine Sand layered on each other. Its an interesting result, although on the larger bases I may add a couple of tufts for a bit of further interest.

Glowing effect worked OK on the eye here

The leader and heavy weapon warriors among the crew have "bronze" colouring to denote their status

Jolly nice model this

Dirty Down Rust paint liberally applied to the desert wreckage.
I feel like these larger bases need something extra.

The glowing effect on the larger orbs hasn't worked well.

The Robot Boss

The basic warrior. Its a quick and simple job.
I think the glowing orb effect works well enough to add flavour.

Again, the glowing eyes haven't quite got what I wanted.

Dirty Down Rust again. The PVA Glue reactivated it, bleeding into the sand.
A nice unintended staining effect!

Now to get the Robot Legions onto the table...