No Last Jedi at GaryCon 2019

I got to run my "The Last Jedi" replacement Star Wars Saga adventure called NO LAST JEDI at GaryCon last week. I've finally recovered from the Con Crud, so can now do a recap of how it went.

First of all, in case anyone wants to run a game of SW Saga themselves using the new movie's characters, I've uploaded pdfs of the character sheets I made for the game under the Campaign Resources of the Vorpal Chainsword. Second, I uploaded a bunch more pictures from the game people were nice enough to send me under the Gallery section of the site.

The story starts out with essentially the same opening crawl as The Last Jedi. Only in this case Rey has been training with the enigmatic Luke Skywalker for about 3 weeks, but has learned little of his motivations. The game opens with Chewy returning from the Resistance fleet in the Millenium Falcoln with Fin, Poe, and BB-8 in tow (Poe came in on his X-wing). They were sent by order of Princess Leia to plead with Luke to return to the fight with the resistance. The players attempted to convince Luke of the nobility of the cause, but he kept insisting it was too dangerous for everyone if he left. At that point, BB-8 played a holographic message from Princess Leia for him.

"Luke, I beg you to return from exile and rejoin our fight for the resistance. We have lost much since you left, the New Republic all having been wiped out by Starkiller Base before we were able to destroy it. But we have hope yet, as we have learned the secret location of the leader of the First Order, this Lord Snoke. We believe that if we can capture or kill Snoke the First Order will fall and Ben may even return to us. But I know that Snoke is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and only with your help could we ever hope to prevail, but press on we must. The last remaining ships of the Resistance fleet are amassing for the final assault on his secret headquarters even as I record this message. This BB unit has the coordinates where to meet us. Help us Luke Skywalker, you're our only hope."

(Note: If the Players convinced Luke before playing the hologram then he will fight with them in the upcoming scene and one player can control him. But in this game they did not, and Luke still refused.)

BB-8 revealed that the location is in the Horuset system. At this Luke paled and says "We must stop her!" Just at that moment the sound of a Tie Fighter roared overhead!

(Note: I had a bluetooth speaker setup behind the DM screen and had a Star Wars soundboard loaded up on my phone so I could play sound effects from the movies. The sound of Tie fighters screeching by and blasters and lightsabers crashing together REALLY helps amp up the fun of any Star Wars game)

The Imperials had tracked the heroes to the old Jedi planet (the official name is Ach-To, fyi). The Imperials were now searching the planet for Luke. Now Luke has no choice but to go, so they've got to get back to the Millennium Falcon and Poe's X-Wing, and of course Phasma and a squad of Stormtroopers stand in their way.

(Note: The old Star Wars minis from the Wizards of the Coast line are perfect for the RPG, as they're pre-painted and super durable. I love them. You can still get them from ebay and some miniature websites like coolstuffinc.com.)

---

They fought their way past Phasma and her stormtroopers. Luke ran off to handle some AT-STs on the other side of the battlefield (if they'd convinced Luke earlier then instead he'd have stayed and helped and BB-8 could've controlled him). One unexpected hilarious moment of the game was that BB-8's player decided to roll around between bushes and ask if there were Porg nest under there. When he found some, he'd shock the Porgs to cause a burst of Porgs out of the bushes, startling nearby Stormtroopers, including Phasma! He even rolled so well on this that a hunting Nexu burst out of the plants intent on eating the Porgs and the Stormtroopers along with them. So the heroes were able to slip by Phasma (who was fighting off the Nexu) and blast their way clear to the Falcon.

Next we had a Starfighter chase scene, where the Falcon and Poe's X-wing were harrassed by Tie Fighters as they tried to break through the blockade surrounding the old Jedi planet. (I used the X-Wing miniatures for this, as they just look awesome.)  Finn and Rey acted as gunners in the Falcoln while Chewy flew, and Poe and BB-8 fought off Ties in the X-Wing. Luke just meditated mysteriously in the X-Wing.

They escaped the blockade and made their way to the Resistance fleet. Here Leia and Luke embraced and Luke explained the plot. Long story short is that Luke actually found Snoke over 5 years ago while he was mopping up Empire remnants and old Sith artifacts with his crew of freshly-trained Padawans (including Ben Solo). They had found some holocrons mapping out some of Palpatine's other projects and were shutting them down before they became a problem for the New Republic. Unfortunately one of those projects was the Tomb of Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's old master. Palpatine couldn't kill Plagueis because Plagueis could jump bodies, and had done so many times before to remain immortal. Plagueis would jump into his Sith Apprentice after he was fully trained but before the Apprentice got wise to him, thus allowing Plagueis to live forever. But Palpatine figured it out, and froze Plagueis in a Force Trap deep within a Sith Tomb on Korriban. This Tomb required Palpatine to occasionally visit and maintain the suspension so Plagueis wouldn't wake up. With Palpatine's death though, it was only a matter of time before Plagueis woke up. Luke learned of Plagueis and took his best Padawans to go shut Plagueis down for good. However Plagueis killed most of his Padawans before Luke could pull some Force magic and block Plagueis's ability to switch bodies within the Force. Ben and Luke then pulled the temple down on Plagueis and barely escaped with their lives. What Luke didn't know was that Plagueis had survived and already put his mark on Ben as his next apprentice, who was grieving from the loss of his friends and vulnerable to the Dark SIde. Eventually Ben turned evil and destroyed the New Jedi Temple, due to whisperings in the Force from Plaegus (also known as "Snoke"), and joined Snoke and helped build the First Order from an Empire remnant fleet.

(That's a lot of exposition! I know, I'm sorry. Now here I really wanted to run through a "Flashback" scene and I had the Sith Tomb map and a handful of 5th level Padawans and Luke ready to go. It would've been cool to let everyone be a Jedi and have a big battle between Plageuis (with some Sith robo-zombies) and the Players as Jedi. But the con game was already running long and time was short (only had 4 hours for the game!) so I just explained all that and moved forward.)

Luke finally explained that if he were to die, Snoke would regain his ability to switch bodies through the Force and would likely immediately take over Kyle Ren/Ben's body, which Kylo certainly wasn't aware of. So Luke had to stay in hiding to study the Jedi texts and figure out how to permanently sever Snoke's connection to the Force before he could take over Kylo Ren's body for good. But he's come out now because of where the Fleet discovered the hidden base, the Horuset system, which is where Korriban (and Plagueis's tomb) are! Luke knows Snoke's tomb is on the planet below them.

At that moment three giant Star Destroyers appeared out of Hyperspace next to the Resistance fleet! Leia commands the ships to jump to hyperspace but there's some kind of Hyperspace Jammer coming from the largest Star Destroyer, blocking their escape. Ackbar turns to the party and says "Its a Trap!" ;)

(So now we've got a Starship-scale battle to fight. I used the Fantasy Flight Armada minis for this as they look awesome. But for the actual battle we focused on the Falcon and Poe, and the other ships we rolled dice for, high/low war-style. It was a simpled D6's for Ties/A-Wings, D8's for X-wings/B-wings/Tie Interceptors. For each grouping we just rolled whoever rolled lower lost a ship (and one die) from the little 3-ship sprues. That way we could know how the general battle was going outside of the close-up battles of the PCs.)

The heroes knew Snoke was on the surface, and wanted to get Luke down there to kill him once and for all. They also knew they should probably stop the Hyperspace Jammer on the main Star Destroyer. AND the X-wings were getting killed out there so they wanted Poe to help in the overall Starship battle. So they decided to DO ALL THREE!

Poe flew out on his X-wing with BB-8, and fought his way to the main Star Destroyer. He then JETTISONED BB-8 into one of the hanger bays of the Star Destroyer! Just, out in space and through the blue shield thing right into a hanger. By himself! Then Poe just flew back into the main battle. So BB-8s goal was to disable the Hyperspace Jammer alone. Hilarious.

Luke, Rey, Chewy and Fin took the Falcon through the starship battle and down to the planet, evading and blasting Tie fighters along the way. Once there, they entered the Sith Tomb. (Chewy used quite a few Force Points on the piloting checks going down, and I just let them find the tomb rather than fight their way up to it).

So we had this three way encounter going on. Poe would blast a Tie or two. The ground heroes engaged Snoke and Kylo Ren and some Imperial Guards, and BB-8 had to bumble his way through the Star Destroyer. That was probably the most fun part of each turn, watching BB-8s player figure out how to trick a Stormtrooper into falling down a chute or electroshock him into tripping and falling. Eventually BB-8's player found a maintenance tunnel and was able to make his way to the Hyperspace Jammer (bypassing a TON of Stormtroopers I had ready to go) and disable it. He then shot himself out the garbage shute and into space. Poe had placed a tracker on him so just picked him up floating out in space mid-battle! It was pretty awesome.

Meanwhile I gave Poe's player Luke to play (the original plan was to allow BB-8's player to play Luke in the final scene, since anyone who had to be BB-8 for the whole game deserved a break, but BB-8 had his own infiltration adventure going on). Luke faced off against Snoke and Kylo with force powers while Rey, Fin, and Chewy took down the imperial guards and robots with their blasters. The Sith Tomb was full of traps and they were careful to move to safe spots during each round. Kylo started throwing Chewy around and so Rey ran up to Kylo to face him one-on-one. This would also allow Luke and Snoke (who were busy throwing pillars and stone coffins at eachother) to face off in lightsaber combat. Unfortunately we ran out of time at the Con and had to leave it on that cliffhanger...

What a game! I have to say, it was so much fun, and the players at GaryCon were some of the best folks to help re-write The Last Jedi into a Star Wars story worthy of the Saga!

GaryCon IX - Starship Troopers

Its been a week since Garycon and I'm just starting to feel like a human again. When the Con Crud hits, it hits hard. But its good to remember that its always worth it!

This year at GaryCon the Vorpal Chainsword represented, except I ran something a little different than I usually do at Cons. Instead of running a modern or AD&D role playing game about He-Man or Back to the Future, I hosted and refereed a couple of the out-of-print Starship Troopers miniature battles under the banner of the Dead Games Society as a change of pace.

Frostgrave at Open Gaming

Skirmish Saturday! Scheduled to play a game of Frostgrave at my local gamestore (Pegasus Games!) during their "Open Boardgaming" time on Saturday. Figured the folks there would be more conducive to having miniature gamers crash a bit of their rec-room than the Magic players were last time (Magic plays Friday). I also finished painting my Ravingspire-themed warband and a few pieces of frostgrave terrain and was really jazzed to play in the Frozen City! So I gathered up all the frosty and stone terrain I'd been making over the last couple weeks and toted on over.

The remnants of the Frozen city, in all its aquarium-terrain and foamcore-ruins splendor.

Frostwyrm

Just painted up a quick Giant Wyrm for Frostgrave from the never-ending Reaper Bones Kickstarter collection.

Can't wait to play Frostgrave again!

Game on! 

Quick bases for rocky terrain

As promised, here's another quick-n-dirty tutorial for the busy painter. When you've got a horde of monsters/soldiers/whatever you just want to get through in short order, then look no further!

So as outlined in the last post about painting hordes of minis by the dipping technique, we've now got a horde of goblins painted. Problem is, their bases look bare and boring. 

Its time to base 'em!

Dippin' Minis - How to paint a horde of gobs

Sometimes you've just got to get through a backlog of minis. Get them painted, get them done. Well, I finally opened up my Games Workshop Hobbit Strategy Battle game starter set box.

(Americans can probably find this guy in the "50% off bargain bin" of your FLGS like I did, since no one actually plays the Hobbit in the U.S.)

I opened it up and found myself faced with thirty-six little goblins to paint. 

Oh for the love of... GANDALF!

The hobbit and wizard minis were cool, but I didn't really want to paint a bunch of goblins, I don't really have an idea for where to use them for any upcoming games, or any reason to have them done, but it always behooves a dungeon master to be ready for anything. Especially ready to field a horde of monsters at a moment's notice. But how do you get them done in a short amount of time?

Why, you DIP 'EM, of course!

Dipping minis is perfect for giving a horde of models a decent tabletop-ready look without using up a lot of your precious painting time.

I took pictures at each step of my painting process I did for these guys this morning and am posting up a quick-n-dirty tutorial, to help others get their hordes of goblins or skeletons or whatever done and off the painting table.

If you've never heard of the "dipping" technique to speed up your mini painting, then this post is for you!

Frostgrave Friday in Middle Earth

 Finally got an official game lined up to play Frostgrave for the first time at my FLGS (Pegasus Games!). We would both be learning the rule-set to see if we liked it, so I put together two equal-sized warbands for us to choose from (represented by some minis I already had painted -- mostly Lord of the Rings) and we'd pick spells before we started. Having never really played before I just built warbands based on the minis I had opposite-army representatives for from my Mordheim and LotR range.

500 gold coin Warband: Wizard (free), Apprentice (200 gc), 2 Archers (50 gc each), 4 Thugs (20 gc each), Thief (20 gc), Ranger (100 gc)

Starship Troopers: Miniatures Resurrected

The other day I bemoaned about missing the excellent Starship Troopers miniatures game that left us far too soon due to licensing disputes. The game was only in production from 2005 to barely into 2007, but had one of the best wargaming rulesets I'd ever played. The initial models were based mostly on the CGI Starship Troopers cartoon from the early 2000s (yeah, unfortunately that CGI has NOT aged well). But the minis held up pretty good!

Come on you Apes, you want to live forever?!

So I decided to dig out any old Starship Troopers minis I still had and see what kind of shape they were in (after being in a box for ten years and three apartment/house moves). Figured I'd show a few pics of the resurrected minis below.

Starship Troopers Miniatures Game and the Perils of Licensing

I have a confession to make: I love Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

Whether its the serious Starship Troopers novelization proselytizing about taking responsibility toward a functioning society, or the tongue-in-cheek mockery of a militaristic dystopian future, both takes on it are equally pleasing to me.

That's why back in the ancient times of the early 2000's I got heavily into the Starship Troopers miniatures game from Mongoose Publishing. It had everything, beautiful bug miniatures based on the cheeseball movie, fantastic rules written by the illustrious Andy Chambers of ex-Games Workshop fame (who's wargaming genius was not being recognized by GW during their foray into a 4th edition of Warhammer 40k), and Starship Troopers fluff written by Mongoose publishing, which is a gaming company that only employs writers who really love the shit out of the stuff they write about. Unfortunately Mongoose has a bit of a "holding onto the license" issue, which I'll get to...

Monsters from the depths below

Had my buddy Shadowgolem over the other day to help me out with some product shots of our upcoming Ravingspire game, and while he was here he was kind enough to do some glamour shots of some of my painted miniatures as well. The guy's skills with mixing different flash colors using variable exposure times is out of this world.

Thought I'd post up a couple of my heavy hitters that he took shots of, freshly arisen from the depths below!

Cthulhu Ftaghn! He-Man and Skeletor are in trouble now!

I didn't think there was any way to make the Dracolich more frightening, but clearly there was!

Frostgrave 2: The Frostening

I recently picked up a new miniature skirmish game, Frostgrave, last week and thought it looked interesting upon first glance. Well, thanks to Darth Cibeous over at 20ontheDie, I got an opportunity to give the game a quick playtest last Saturday. Didn't take any pictures or anything as it was just a quick playthrough to see if we liked it, but I can say that it was a lot of fun. Even though Darth Cibeous's Necromancer pretty much ground my Wizard and Apprentice into fine dust, we learned a lot about how the game plays and had a great time. One of the best parts of the game is actually the post-battle wrap-up, as that's when you get to roll on the treasure tables and determine if you found any cool magic items or spellbooks in the treasure chests you collected. I think Frostgrave is going to breathe new life into my desire to paint all these Reaper Bones Kickstarter minis (that I keep on collecting for no reason).

Though I'll have to learn to actually base minis in something other than "standard temperate forest theme," I suppose.

But the real question is, would YOU be interested in Frostgrave? Well, there are a number of videos out of people playing it, so the best way to determine that is to give one of them a watch and see if it holds your interest. One of my favorite Youtube channels for miniature gaming is Guerrilla Miniature Games, and the host (Ash) always has excellent terrain and painted minis to ooh and ahh over while they play and explain the rules.

Check out their first playthrough of Frostgrave (and they have a lot more episodes if that catches your interest):

Game on!

Frostgrave

So I've been thinking about miniature skirmish wargaming a lot, and realized that there's no real reason to get into The Hobbit (or LotR) Strategy Battle Game. Because for that game you're supposed to only use Games Workshop miniatures, and my hearts just not in getting another person addicted to that drug along with me. Plus the game really doesn't play all that smoothly for beginners. Finally everyone's already got a bunch of the Reaper Bones minis (Kickstarters), and they're unlikely to want to start getting into overpriced minis from GW (even if they look rad as hell).

Then I realized while I really do want to start playing a miniature skirmish game like Hobbit or Mordheim (again, GW), I want to play one where people can paint, convert, and use their own Reaper Bones minis from the various Kickstarters we've all been into the last few years. So I went in search of something fantasy, skirmishy, but not GW nor miniature-specific.

Then I found the answer at my Friendly Local Game Store:

FROSTGRAVE

Back to the Future RPG - Teaser pics for GameholeCon2015

After three straight weeks of painting, here's the album of most of the miniatures and time-period sets for my upcoming 5e convention game Back to the Future RPG: Outatime that I'll be running at GameholeCon2015 in a few weeks.

This isn't quite all time periods/minis to prevent plot spoilers for the players, but it is a few of the possible time-periods they could end up. My goal is to not railroad this convention game entirely, so I made extra time-periods to have ready in case the players get a little off-track. Also I have some NPCs they can meet (Deckard, Time Cop, etc.) that could become PCs if a character dies.

You can check them out below, or  check 'em out in imgur if you prefer.

Painting Miniatures the Vorpal Chainsword Way part 1: Gathering Supplies

Sometimes I've gotten asked: "How do you paint your miniatures so quickly? I really need a lesson on painting miniatures, I don't even know where to start..." Well this series of posts aims to answer that question. I am going to lay out for all of you new to miniature painting (and to those who are still nervous about it) how to paint minis like a boss. A boss who gets things done, that is. They may not end up pageant-ready, they may not win contests, but they will be painted. And that's really the goal you should be shooting for. Simply get them done. If you find a passion beyond that then you will automatically search out guides on how to paint non-metallic metals (NMM) or other fancy painting techniques, but this guide is purely for getting all those minis sitting in your closet painted. So get out your notebooks, because here's everything you need to know to get started painting miniatures the Vorpal Chainsword way.

The Vorpal Chainsword Way = You ain't enterin' no contests, so stop procrastinatin'. Just get them done already!

Basing Miniatures - Shadows of Brimstone

One thing that I think really pulls a miniature together that is often overlooked is a good but simple base. If a miniature is beautifully painted but has a bare black base, it will remind the viewer that its just a simple plastic miniature and pull them out of the game. Similarly, I think that if a miniature base is full of little knick-knacks and skulls and broken swords and bodies and what-have-you and is overly complex, then it takes away from the miniature itself. Also I'm a pretty lazy hobbyist, so I like to base my minis simply.

 

Here's how I base my miniatures for the Flying Frog Cowboys vs. Cthulhu game Shadows of Brimstone. Since 90%+ of the games occur in an Old West Mine, I decided make just a simple rocky base for all the minis.

Drunk Painting Tips: Fixing modeling gaps at the last minute

I know its been a while since I've talked Shadows of Brimstone, but that's just because I was trying to finish painting all the minis (using only the official Shadows of Brimstone paint sets) before playing again. However it was a LOT more work than I realized when I started, so it has been slower going than I originally anticipated. Especially since I only paint on the weekends. With that in mind I decided to just shift it into overdrive and speed-paint all the remaining guys.

Almost there...

But that's not what this post is about, this is about fixing glaring past mistakes, or, as I like to call it, "What the hell did Past Cory screw me over with this time?"

Hellbat break

Things are going well with the upcoming Vorpal Chainsword podcast, however the editing and page building doesn't leave as much time for painting. But sometimes you've just got to stop, take a breath, relax, and paint up some demon serpents. For your mental health. I took a break from podcast prep last night to paint up some Hellbats from the Shadows of Brimstone boardgame.

Here's some quick glamour shots of the newly-painted flying snake-things.

Gaming DIY: Secret of the Laser!

Like many of you, I like shooting lasers at stuff. In fact, I'd wager to guess that all people like shooting lasers at stuff, at least a little bit. Lasers are just inherently great. I also have started using them in my tabletop RPG games, with mirrors and all that. But there is a secret to using lasers in your games. Something you may not have considered, and will only encounter when you've built the whole damn thing and it doesn't work right. Fortunately, we here at Vorpal Chainsword Productions were able to solve this dilemma, and in our generosity we will share with you...

The Secret of the Laser!

At the end of this post, that is.

GameHole Con 2014! - Shadows Over Eternia pics

Just got back from the last day of GameHole Con and have been up way too late for too many nights for an old man like me. Its Sunday afternoon which means its time to put the books and minis away and get things ready for the work week, but I figured I'd throw up a few pics from my game of Shadows Over Eternia: He-Man vs. the Cthulhu Mythos that I ran on Friday. It went incredibly well, thanks to some great players and plenty of Zip-fizz in my water bottle. And for me this game was only the beginning of an awesome weekend, because after running this I got to speak with the real Elminster in a game run by Ed Greenwood himself, died horribly in the Tower of Akbaba run by Luke Gygax, and even won one of the two open spots to play the Dungeon Bastard's World's Worst Dungeon Crawl!

Simply put, I can't wait for next year.

Beastman's jungle ambush!

Skeletor killed Beastman's pet T-rex, Evil-Lyn re-animated it, and then had it devour Beastman.

Sweet Terrain Finds - Buus's GM Screen

One thing I like to do during mindless internet surfing is to peruse other people's various miniature terrain building projects for sweet ideas. Sometimes I find things that are so awesome and inspiring that they demand I do my part to shout-out and bandwidth-boost them to more of the internet, because everyone's got to see this.

Here's a DM screen Copenhagen-based artist Buus built and posted on r/terrainbuilding that I absolutely had to share with everyone, because it is so incredible. And in a move of gentlemanly charity, he actually put notes into pics of various steps into an album on how he modeled it up as he went.


       Its hard to believe most of this is actually cardboard. And those faces are modeled out of greenstuff and sculpy. I would've thought they were cut up plastic molds of faces from halloween decorations or something they are so good. But nope, all original. Amazing.

 And even cooler is that it is functional as well as beautiful. Two dice towers are built into the thing. The tower on the left makes the dice roll out the front (where the two mouths with lava are) so players can see, and the tower on the right makes the dice roll behind the screen (for the DM only).

I definitely suggest you check out Buss's imgur album and Facebook page to check out his step-by-step pics, and to see more pretty close-up pics of the finished project. If seeing how this thing goes from cut up cardboard scraps to a majestic mountain of death doesn't inspire you to pick up the hot glue gun and static grass, I don't think anything would.