Rivet Wars: First Impressions

Last week I had a chance to play my first games of Rivet Wars. I packed up the game and headed out in the frigid cold to my buddy Steve's house. Just in case we weren't "feeling it" I brought Zombicide as well. When I finally left at around midnight he had played six or seven games of Rivet Wars and never thought about breaking out the zombcide.We played through the first few mission in the book and swapped forces a few times. It feels like the forces are pretty well balanced but I do think the Blight character plug is better than the Alliance character. The game is a realy fun "beer and pretzel" game.

My only issue was not actually game play related but instead an issue with the board tiles. They was some mention that people were having warping issues and CMoN said they thought it was due to the extreme cold while shipping and that if you let them some to room temp before unwrapping there should be no issue. My box was in the house over a week and I still had an issue with some warping as you can see in thegame photos below.

All in all we had a really fun time playing this game and it will most certainly be one of the game we play on our game nights. I think the game will only be more enjoyable once we have a little more variety in our forces once the rest of my kickstarter arrives.

When it Rains it Pours

After waiting so long for Kickstarters to arrive I have now received two boxes in the last 7 days :) I received my Rivet Wars kickstarter shipment about an hour ago. Lets do a little unbox shall we.... I love new toys :)

Brand new game smell :)

Packaged nearly identically to Zombicide

The green cards are the starts for all the minis the other cards say what they are ;) The dice are just regular old brown dice. I will be receiving faction dice later down the road when the fulfill the rest of the pledge items.

Small box contained the tanks and their hatch plug. Another try will be arriving at a later date.

Allied forces. This tray also contains the wound markers and a few other tokens. Will be getting another tray like this (minus the characters) when they fulfill that part of the pledge.

Blighten Empire. I think these are going to be my guys. Same as Allies another tray or grunts coming.

Dashboard sheets with the stats of all models in the base set. I think these will be very handy up front but once more of the Kickstarter items arrive the will lose some of their utility.

Punch cards for bunkers, objectives, and terrain items. As part of my pledge I will be getting plastic 3D versions of all of these but they decided they are going to ship them at a later time with other pledge items.

Lastly we have the boards. While I wanted to unwrap them I held off due to an email I received earlier today. I guess some people have been having some issues with warping and the guys at CMoN said they feel it may be due to some of the extreme weather going around at the moment....seriously its like Hoth cold here I'm pretty sure if it gets colder we are going to have to go to Tauntauns for transportation. The box and the contents were icy cold when I opened it so I am going to allow it come to room temp before I unwrap the boards and hope that will avoid any issues.

 

There you have it my shiny new copy of Rivet Wars! I hope to get a couple games here soon and I'll try and take a few photos and do a little write up on our first few games. Have a good one and try and stay warm y'all.

Looking Back/Looking Forward

Hello all the first of the year has come and gone so I suppose I should do the obligatory year in review. I'd first like to say thanks to those that stop by from time to time and see what I am blabbering about. I haven't done a good job blogging this year (really bad the last part of the year) and I appreciate those that stop by and occasionally leave a comment.

I would have to say 2013 was the year of the kickstarter addiction and one of procrastination. I have continued to work on my beloved troll throughout the year and have picked up a few other projects but never really made much head way with anything. I think some of this was due to the "oh new shiny" syndrome of kickstarters and the other (probably largest contributor) was my lack of actual game play. I feel like I got more game in the first half of the year and this lead to me being more productive and to a larger number of posts. I'd say the highlights of the hobby year would be Templecon and the two painting class I tool in Toronto......what’s that? Oh right I never wrote about it :/ I plan to do my write up soon....I promise.

2014 will be the year of the fulfilled kickstarter and the continued growth of the Kriels. Most of the kickstarters I was expecting to receive in late 2013 have been pushed to early 2014 so here is the list:

-Rivet Wars (maybe tomorrow!)
-Wild West Exodus (by the end of the month?)
-Mega Mat (early Q2 2014)
-Kingdom Death (missed the KS but got in due to a last min deal should be late Q2 2014)
-Wrath of Kings (middle/late 2014?)
-Warmachine Tactics (late 2014?)
-Relic Knights (?)

I have Templecon 2014 looming around the corner and I am really looking forward to catching up with friends from out of town. I don't intended to play a ton of tournaments but will play in one or two. While I am not planning on going crazy with tournament games it doesn't mean I don't have a painting goal and I will post on this early next week. I am hoping to play some demos for my upcoming KS releases and maybe pick up some items I didn't add to my pledges.

Ok so there is the mandatory wrap up :) Hope y'all had a great year and hopefully you will be hearing from me far more regularly this year. If you're going to be at Templecon hit me up and maybe we can grab a game in the Iron Arena or a cocktail in the bar :)

Templecon Day 2 Wrap Up

I had big plans for day two prior to heading to Templecon but those changed for me. I was expecting to play in hard core but after finishing the warcaster's dilemma tournament at 7am that morning and getting to sleep around 9am I just didn't have it in me and I actually didn't get up until 11:30 (30 min after registration).

Team Spite had two players hitting up hardcore. The first was Zack aka playing Galleon oh I mean mercs. His list was a T4 Shae pirates life. This list had a very heavy assassination focus (more on this later). The other representative was Adam aka Bloodyarcane the junior member of our crew. As I think about it Scudo may have played his Circle army in hardcore too but I cannot remember.

Round one was starting as I was getting out of the shower I received a text message from Adam say he was paired with Warmahorde super start Jake Van Meter (neutralize). I knew Adam was super pumped to play him but was afraid he was going to be a little start struck. Well turns out I was right as Jake turn two assassinated pDenny with Typhon and didn't kill a single additional model. This is important to not as the new hardcore rules have been changed for mage hunter and killing a warnoun w/o killing another models puts you at the top of the heap to win. As it turns out Zack was playing Volt Ron playing Protectorate. I was hoping to run into Volt as his blog is one of the ones I check into regularly and you can see it here http://miniarmyhugetimesink.wordpress.com/  Well it turned out that Zack got an assassination as well killing only one model in addition to the 'caster. This would have put him in great shape for mage hunter if it were not for Jake's 0 against young 'arcane.

After hearing round ones results Zack was on a mission and was "hunting that zero" the rest of the day. Round two found him a L, round three another assassination with only one model killed in addition to the 'caster. Then came round four and Zack got that zero putting him in a tie with Jake with a 0. Round five came about and saw Jake and Zack matched against each other. As long as Jake didn't throw a 0 up against Zack he was going to hold on and take home mage hunter.

Picture says 1000 words. Team Spite dun got a metal! z1g1 "sniffed out that zero!" and won mage hunter.

Those that know hardcore know the four metal categories and my personal favorite is master craftsman. Master Craftsman was won by a gentleman named Erik Lui (I believe). He painted up a stunning Gaspy3 force. I took a few photos for y'all. Behold the beauty!

The water on the back of the base was hand painted! 

 How can I not love this army he even did trolls! Cryxian trolls but trolls.

While hardcore was going on I wandered around a while once again looking at the demos and watching some of the hardcore matches. It was during this time I got a demo game in of Rivet Wars. Rivet Wars had a kickstarter going which ended Monday am around 3am. I had been watching the kickstarter pretty closely prior to heading to Templecon and when I saw they had a table set up I knew I wanted a demo. I had a fun demo with one of the cool min or not guys and when I got home late Sunday I jumped on the computer and bought into the kickstarter as a birthday present to myself. I now have another game to look forward to in September.

After my game of rivet wars I headed back to the room to grab my trolls to hit the iron arena. Last year I didn't really have a clear cut goal for iron arena points this year however I had a very specific targeted item at 45 skulls. I also wanted to try and get a game with one of the PPS guys this year. As I was just getting back down to the gaming hall Ed Bourelle was walking in with his tray and appeared to be looking for a game. I inquired as such and off to a table we went. Ed was playing a new Legion army for himself (only the second game played I believe he said) while I was playing my beloved trolls. I feel I kinda net decked him a little when I pulled Jarl out against his Saeryn list. I played:

Jarl Skuld, Devil Of Thornwood (*6pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Dire Troll Bomber (10pts)
* Rok (11pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
War Wagon (9pts)
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (Cylena and 9 Grunts) (10pts)
Sons of Bragg (6pts)
Saxon Orrik (2pts)

I played one point down as the only one point mini I had was swamp gobbers and they aren't worth taking out of the bag against eyeless sight beasts.

Mr Bourelle's list:

Saeryn, Omen of Everblight (*5pts)
* Naga Nightlurker (5pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Carnivean (11pts)
* Ravagore (10pts)
* Scythean (9pts)
Blackfrost Shard (5pts)
Blighted Nyss Legionnaires (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Captain Farilor & Standard (3pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
Succubus (2pts)
 

In game action.

The game was a ton of fun and I am really grateful that he took the time to play me. The game was a bloody mess with both forces being decimated. When I finally killed Saeryn all I had left on the table was five Nyss, an impaler with 6 life, Jarl with 4 life remaining and on fire, and Saxon with 2 life left. It is interactions like these that I feel set PP apart and really fuel my love for the game and the people developing it. I doubt he will see this but once again thank you for the game Ed and hope to play again some day!

After the completion of hardcore a group of the guys found a table and set up a game of Twilight Imperium. They played a game the night before which I watched a little. I was going to join in on this one but it looked far to complex for my current mental state plus I had those 45 arena points to track down.

Adam and John setting up

 

Adam looking tough or trying at least

 

Dave and Zack really getting into TI. The adult beverages may have helped here :)

The standard issue tournament was going on after hardcore as well. Team Spite's Oxyguy and Theprofessional Mr Cash played in this event. Les one one of the round by round drawings for not having any characters. He won a Thor blister. Unfortunately for Les this was about the only thing he won that afternoon.

While the other guys were playing TI or standard issue Abe, Nick and myself hit up the iron arena. We played a few multiplayer games on scenario tables.

Abe borrowed Nick's stormwall for this game. He played Nemo2 double stormwall. If you look at the bottom of the picture mountain king is saying bring it old man.

Nick breaking out some Skorne. 

Last game of the night we played a four player 2v2 game on a cave scenario board. At this time I was pretty shot mentally. We picked up another play to fill out the team. I forgot to write his name down and it is eluding me at this time but he was playing pSevy. We ended up losing on scenario around 4am but I got my 45th skull and hit the redemption table!

 

Here is my prize. I saw on day one they had a stack of about 10 copies of No Quarter #1. I was a little set back by the number of pts required to get one but I think it helped keep them "in stock" while i was building my points. I was very excited to see these on the prize stand as I was only missing three issues of No Quarter prior to heading to Templecon. I only need issues three and four to complete my collection.