BSF - mission uno (really for real)

[original post draft 20190403]

spiky o'monocle done...

not a huge fan of the model or the stat line but fully intend to run him for first set of missions next session to take advantage of his vessel bonus. [bit of a waste of effort as it so happens, but such is the fate of those who put their fortune in the roll of a dice... gah...]

bit of a minor kitbash. the original model was rapier left hand and smoking a space-ciggy in the right; so a bit nonce. ended up carving off the holster as well (on the back of the model, so unseen)

spiky o'monocle re-done...

so, now he has a smaller pistola. and one of the necromunda orlock chaps is minus a gun... and a hand... and a forearm... it's not like they're getting any use at this stage anyway.
it's kind of a boxy pistol and i guess i'd have preferred something like the slimmer, eldar style pistols but i think it will do. more suitable than the previous one anyway.



[update: 20190823]
Despite this STILL not being entirely the gun i'm looking for, spikey now has a new shooter.

Mainly this is inspired as i wanted to give the dude from necromunda git pistol back. There's talk of potential necromunda games in the wind so thought i'd get him back to 'functional' (if not painted and sans rules... anywho). Had a look on ebay for bitz but there's few/none without buying a whole sprue (which is not an option). 

So, on the cards is giving the orlock gang a paint up. Probably with 'traditional'/whats-on-the-box colours or close enough.

Anyway, i managed to find spikey a spare forearm and found a (dark) eldar splinter pistol which is actually bang-on with the fluff anyway. 

It's not as ornate as i'd have liked for him, however, having a splinter pistol is far more satisfying. Will paint it screaming skull representing a wraithbone object, then a wash of agrax, then a dry brush of possibly white... maybe screaming skull... or maybe even pink (pink highlights can be narly in the right place).

the forearm was actually from a space marine so it has a 'cuff' which i'm going to highlight or accentuate with the screaming skull treatment (same as pistol), kind of tying the pistol to a controller or something like that. 


[update: 20190826]
Now complete with splinter pistol... much better.

Missions

We're planning another session this coming thursday and will probably start playing a 'for real' mission this time, keeping progress and scores and actually running for strongholds etc.  should be good.

[later]
So that happened, and was (as anticipated) good.

We started out on a fresh mission, first expedition, and started by drawing 3 challenge cards in a row...

Challenge cards don't use combat/maps and largely rely on dice rolls for success/failure [blerg]. Suffice to say that we did survive them but didn't gain a great deal of loot for the effort.

This is our first actual combat. The '3' slot was a 'twist' so we had slightly fewer hostiles to face, which was handy....

...given the last 'challenge' had dished out quite a few wounds and we were staring off the combat on the back foot (pious had 2 or 3 wounds too). By the end of the combat we had rolled off what wounds we could (i.e. all except grievous) and were as good as were going to get.

We then drew another combat map straight away, which was manageable.

Safe to say that we now see 'challenges' as the riskiest part of the game for us (at the moment). Combats allow our tactical experience to mitigate a lot of the risk. but... early days, easier enemies and settings so far.

We ended up playing 4 challenges, and 2 combats due to time. Think we started just before 6pm and walked out of the FLGS around 8pm. 2 ship 'support' features were used. Not a bad effort for our first 'true' expedition.

We rolled up a legacy card and have spicy spindle drones to look forward to...

Our final loot haul looked something like this...

The ship 'facilities' features weren't of much help (refer trader comment at the start).
We do have enough clues to hit a stronghold.
There wasn't enough archotech to purchase anything much at the trading phase (however given we were out of time we might revisit that at the start of next session instead).
Shadowguide got her perma-inspire which will certainly be a massive boon ongoing.

As per the previous session Pious and Shadowguide earned their keep on flamer and sniper duties respectively.
Grrrr Krootons was all over the board securing objectives, shooting where possible and was a nice versatile option - potentially player of the match.
Spiky O'Monocle was largely unimpressive and may well sit out the next expedition. To be fair having zero activation dice did hinder his potential a lot and once inspired his auto-gambit might be extremely helpful.
Overall game strategies included sticking to cover to avoid accruing extra (grievous) wounds, using overwatch as much as possible (very successful at times) and laying down traps and flame cover (before overwatching survivors).

There was some nervousness about attempting a strong hold this early, however the hostiles are only going to continue getting harder, the timer is counting down, and, if we maintain the cover/overwatch strategy there's no real reason delaying it should really help (aside from maybe getting some cool wargear perhaps).

Anyway, was a fun evening; progress was made, both on the mission and our knowledge of what was going on with the game, so worthwhile.


Until next time...