Kill Team 8th and 22nd March

We are going to be running 2 heats for the Kill Team Tournament the first on 8th March and the second on the 22nd March. Each week will have 8 places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. The date for the final is to be confirmed. The full tournament pack will be available at the club on Saturday but here are the basic rules.

  

Your Killteam

• Any current Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000 army list may be used to pick your Killteam. This includes those published in White Dwarf and Forgeworld publications.
• Your Killteam must not exceed 200pts.
• Your Killteam must adhere to the following force organisation chart.
• 0-1 Elite
• 0-2 Troops
• 0-1 Fast Attack
• You may not take Allies or Fortifications.
• Codex restrictions are still in place. If your codex says you must take 1+ of a unit (eg Tau Fire Warriors) then you must still take 1+ units of them. The only exception to this is if your codex requires you to take 1+ HQ unit or 1+ Heavy Support units.
• You must purchase complete squads. You cannot take, for example, a single Tactical Space Marine or a single Eldar Harlequin. Imperial Guard must fulfil the minimum requirements of an Infantry platoon, and may not take single squads from it.
• You may not take any Flyers or monstrous units
• Your Killteam must comprise of at least 3 models
• You may take a maximum of one vehicle
• No model in your Killteam may have more than 3 wounds (before Leader Upgrades)
• Your Leader must be the model with the highest leadership, if you have multiple models with the same leadership you may choose which is your leader.
• You must use appropriate miniatures to represent your army. Fantasy Knights cannot stand in for Genestealers, neither can Chaos Cultists stand in for Space Marines.
• If you are using non standard models you must explain what they are representing on the army list.

Specialists

• You may nominate up to three individual models in your force as being "Specialists" that benefit from one of a number of special rules. These Specialists and the rules they have must be declared on your army list, as should which model represents them. You may give one of the following rules to any one Specialist and all Specialists in your force must pick a different one (e.g. You may not have two Specialist who can chose Tank Hunter rule),
• The Special Rules they may pick from are:
• Adamanteum Will, Armourbane, Blind, Counter Attack, Eternal Warrior, Fear, Fearless, Feal No Pail, Fleet, Fleshbane, Furious Charge, Hammer Of Wrath, Hatred, Hit And Run, It Will Not Die, Monster Hunter, Move Through Cover, Night Vision, Preferred Enemy (Everything!), Rage, Rampage, Relentless, Shred, Shrouded, Skilled Rider, Stealth, Stub-born, Tank Hunter.
• For details of these Special Rules please refer to the Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook.
• Your leader (explained above) may be one of your Specialist.
• Note: While it if fine to say "Ork Boy with the bandana is Fearless" or "The Space Marine with the Mark IV helmet has Preferred Enemy", it's far cooler to actually convert up your Specialist to represent their specialty.

Annual General Meeting 29th March

Our first Annual General Meeting will occur at 12 noon on the 29th March, anyone will be able to attend but only signed up members can vote or propose subjects to be discussed. If you have filled in a membership form, volunteer form or had a parental consent form signed you are a member of the club. If you haven't filled in any of these you are not an official member and will need to do this before the end of the club session on 15th March if you wish to participate in the voting.

As part of the AGM we will be changing how the club is being run. Currently the club membership has no say on the running of the club, Lyndsey and I make all decisions in this regard and our team of volunteers carry out the day to day running of the club. In our new structure Lyndsey and I will retain strategic management of the club (i.e. the clubs directions and goals), but how these aims are achieved will be largely decided by the new management committee. The club will remain as a Bournemouth Library event, the members of this committe will still be official volunteers working for the council, but you as members will be able to choose who you want to run the club and will have a much greater degree of control over how the club is going to be run.

The committee will have 5 positions

• Club Leader - Will take the lead in organising the club and other volunteers.
• Wargames Officer - Will promote wargames represent the interests of the wargamers in the club.
• Roleplay Officer - Will promote roleplay games and the interests of the roleplayers in the club.
• Boardgames/Card games Officer - Will promote boardgames and the interests of the board game and card game players in the club.
• Libraries Representative - Will promote the role of the club in achieving the aims of the library and act in the strategic management of the club. This role will be held by Bournemouth Library staff, currently this will jointly be Lyndsey and me.

We are accepting suggestions for the meetings agenda and candidates for the new management committee until the 15th March. Please email these to gaming@bournemouthlibraries.org.uk

I expect the AGM will last between 30 minutes and 1 hour, and because we will be taking up your precious gaming time we will try and ensure there are refreshments to soften the blow.

Focus On - Necromunda

The original Necromunda Boxset

Taken from http://lawhammer.blogspot.co.uk/

Many of you in the club are too young to remember Necromunda, which Games Workshop first published in 1995 and finally stopped supporting part way through last year. The game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and is focused on small scale skirmishes between criminal gangs in the lowest levels of Necromunda's Hive Primus. Unlike regular 40K games you only need a handful of miniatures to play across a table strewn with scenery to represent the twisted walkways and hazardous chemical dumps in the long forgotten hab domes of the underhive.



A Necromunda board, full of scenery on multiple levels.

Taken from http://www.dakkadakka.com  

The main rules of the game are pretty much the same as those of the 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40,000 and were developed from a game called Confrontation that was published in White Dwarf in 1990-91. Both the original Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader and Confrontation were heavily indebted to Laserburn, a game created by Bryan Ansell prior to joining Games Workshop in the late 80's. The basic stat lines for models in Necromunda will mostly be familiar to current 40k players, with the addition of a movement stat (which also featured in the earlier editions of 40k), however some of the game mechanics are quite different (particularly close combat).


A Delaque Gang

Taken from http://thewargamingcynic.blogspot.co.uk/

There a a variety of gangs to choose from in the main game from muscle bound Goliath's, sneaky Delaque's, Latino inspired Orlocks and the all female Eschers. The supplements add a variety of other options from Redemptionist firebrands and Muties to noble born Spyrers and Ash Waste Nomads from the desolate plains between the hives. Each gang is recruited from a stash of credits with a choice of Gang Leader, Heavies, Gangers and Juves in the main gangs and a variety of other miscreants for the outlanders. Each ganger gets their own equipment and as a campaign progresses their own stats and personality.


Kal Jerico Graphic Novel

I'm not much of a wargamer these days, but Necromunda is a game I still really like. The rules for campaigns are great, the fact that mostly your gangers survive between games picking up experience, injuries and grudges against other gangs makes it a cut above the rest of GWs products in my eyes. Sadly GW no longer produce the models but they are available second hand through sites like EBay. Alternatively there are a range of other models you could use, the chaos cultists from the Dark Vengeance box set can easily be converted to form a Cawdor gang, Heresy Miniatures produce sci-fi ganger minis that are pretty much Delaques and there is a whole blog post covering other suitable miniatures here.



Though GW no longer officially support Necromunda you can still download the rules for free from their website (along with most of the rest of what became known as the specialist games).

An Escher Ganger

© Antti Autio, used with permission

Necromunda is in many ways a product of a bygone era for Games Workshop, it is far more cyberpunk than the grim gothic imagery of the current game. Gangs are able to get some pretty high-tech equipment, from lascannons to plasma guns, which feels somewhat incongruous given the very low-tech feel of the recent 40k roleplaying games. There isn't so much leopard print or pink hair dye in the 40K universe these days and perhaps that creates a more distinct background for the game, but I do miss it a little bit. I'm looking forward to bringing my Eschers or Redemptonists along to the club to create some more mayhem in the underhive.

PS. Sorry about the wierd formatting, Blogger refused to let me automatically add the captions on the images so I've had to edit the html, which is rather badly formatted meaning its quite difficult to work out what the tags are referring to.

Look what we found when tidying up the office.

So those of you who have been into the office to help move the gaming clubs boxes on a Saturday will know that that it is often a bit of a mess (it's because its a busy working space full of books and boxes and not because we are all untidy, honest!). Earlier today we were clearing out some unneeded furniture to be taken away next week and we found a copy of Once Upon a Time the Storytelling Card Game that was used on a project about fairy tales organised as part of Bournemouth and Poole Cultural Hub. Well I couldn't let that go to waste so its now part of the gaming clubs growing collection of games.

Lyndsey has been working on the latest newsletter and this should be with you all shortly. Keep your eyes peeled for more information on our Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team tournament, AGM and World Book Night.

Tony Barnes 1956-2014

I have just found out that Tony, the President of the Gaming Club Network, died suddenly this morning after a period of illness. I never had the pleasure of meeting Tony but had communicated with him via email considerably whilst we were arranging for our club to join the GCN, and Lyndsey and I spoke with him over the phone immediately prior to us joining. Tony was a thoroughly nice chap who was very helpful in guiding us through our earliest steps as a club. The GCN's press statement can be found on their facebook page.

Conception Report

So last weekend I went off to Conception, a local roleplaying convention held at Naish Farm Holiday Village in Highcliffe. I had made fleeting visits to peruse the stalls the previous two years, but this was the first time I had been with the intention of actually playing. Having been asked if I wanted to share a lodge on-site, by a group of friends I knew from my time at the University of Bath, I had jumped at the offer.

Despite living the closest to the site I was the last of our group to arrive on Wednesday evening, just in time for the start of the pub quiz. Our team (whose name was wholly inappropriate to repeat here), faired moderately, finishing in mid-table mediocrity. By the time I had arrived most of Thursday's games had been already been  filled but I managed to get myself into slots for Savage Worlds Sci-Fi, Modern Day Cthulhu and Traveller scenarios.

Up bright and early on Thursday morning I headed to the muster with a little trepidation, this was the first time in eleven years that I was going to roleplay with an entirely unknown group of people and the first time I had ever played at a convention. First up was the Savage World game, in which we were playing intergalactic criminals on the run from the law. It was quite a nice ease into the whole convention roleplaying experience, a fairly standard kind of plot and not too serious in tone. In the afternoon session I played an Icy Reception, a Call of Cthulhu scenario based on the premise of 4 scientists and 2 helicopter pilots heading to a remote research base. I am a big fan of Cthulhu, its probably my favourite roleplaying game and I was very much looking forward to this scenario. It didn't disappoint and was full of suspense and mystery, ramping up the conflict between the characters until the big reveal of the "monster" and then the desperate race for survival. As this scenario overran by half hour I decided to bail on the Traveller game and instead made a trip to Sainsbury's for some much needed food supplies.

On Friday morning I played S.L.A Industries, a cyberpunk game set in a dystopian future where you are the agents of the shady mega-corporation in the games title. The scenario was heavily based around the latest Dredd film, with the player characters suppressing a gang fight inside a massive tower-block and stumbling across a greater conspiracy of mutants and rival corporations. The GM for this game was excellent, producing wonderfully dark and evocative descriptions of not just the setting but the characters' actions as well. After heading back to the lodge for some lunch, I, and 3 of the guys I was staying with, were booked into a WWII Cthulhu game. Sadly it didn't really match expectations, with very little connection to the Cthulhu Mythos and being basically a WWII special ops scenario it ended up being a little dull. The final game of Friday was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which like S.L.A. Industries I had never played before. This didn't matter as we weren't even given character sheets, which I personally found a bit odd. It was an OK game but it suffered a bit from a mismatch in the type of game that I like andthat which the rest of the players clearly enjoyed. I'm not a fan of jokey roleplay and unfortunately this slot was awash with it.

Things didn't get better on Saturday morning with Dark Heresy (I think it must be something about games set in GWs worlds), which again was full of running gags and jokes. As a fan of the dark brooding horror of the 40K universe an action comedy game wasn't my cup of tea and jarred quite a bit with how I envisage the setting. After lunch, in a last minute change of plan I decided to drop out of a Serenity game and play Traveller instead. Traveller is another game that I had never played before and unlike WHFRP and S.L.A Industries I didn't really have much idea about the games setting, aside from the fact it is sci-fi. It turned out we were playing dog-men in space. I'm generally not a massive fan of anthropomorphic animals in fantasy or sci-fi settings but this worked quite well especially in terms of mechanics around pack organisation. I started off playing the group leader, which was a bit of a roleplaying challenge as I had no idea about the game and ended up being supplanted as alpha dog by one of the other characters. I really enjoyed the dynamics of pack loyalty and competition created in the group and though I'm not sure I'd run Traveller myself these themes are something I'd definitely like to explore. I didn't roleplay on Saturday evening instead we played the board-game War on Terror back at our lodge. The game is a bit like Risk but with more UN weapons inspections, pre-emptive strikes and a horribly sweaty balaclava with the word EVIL sewn across its forehead!

Sunday morning, after packing up my stuff to make a quick escape, I head over to play in another Cthulhu scenario. This one was set in the First World War with the players characters being members of the Royal Flying Corp. After four hours of crashing bi-planes, characters going slowly insane and numerous uses of the words "chocks away old chap", some noble self sacrifice ended my time at this years Conception.

It is hard to pin down the best game of the weekend the modern day Cthulhu, WWI Cthulhu, S.L.A Industries and Traveller were all excellent. I'm sad I failed to play any of the many Firefly/Serenity games that were run or manage to get into a Cyberpunk 2020 game. Overall it was a great (long) weekend and I'm looking forward to next years convention, I may even try and make it to Indiecon or Consequences which both run at the same venue later in the year.

Storytelling and Narrative in Games

Here is the first more serious post concerning why libraries should support the playing of games.

This week is National Storytelling Week which aims to increase public awareness of the art, practice and value of oral storytelling. Story is integral to many of the games that we play at the club, whether this is oral storytelling in roleplaying games or an implied narrative created in wargames. This inherent bond between gaming and storytelling is one of the reasons that we feel that libraries are a perfect location for promoting the playing of these games - I'll put up a post about the other reasons why libraries should support the playing of games sometime in the future.

There is a spectrum of disciplines that are used to tell stories, from acting, storytelling to roleplay. Actors typically play a single character having learnt a script with the fourth wall separating them from their audience. Storytellers will typically play multiple characters and interact with audience, typically reading their script. Roleplayers, with the exception of the Games Master, will normally play only one character without any script or audience. There is considerable overlap between these from improvisation theatre to storytelling with multiple storytellers. The only thing which is usually a constant is the fact the roleplaying will very rarely have an external audience.

Roleplayers are often familiar with the concept that the games they play are a form of interactive storytelling and whilst this view is most prevalent in players of rules light and diceless games the creation and telling of a story is integral to almost all roleplaying. Often storytelling games are considered to be a subset of roleplaying games, but I don't subscribe to this school of thought, even something as rules heavy as rolemaster is a game which tells a story no less so than something rules light like FATE. Roleplaying games do not have a single narrative, they have multiple characters each telling their own story. Though the skeleton of the game is created by the games master there is no single narrator, each player narrates their own storyline each affecting the direction of the others.

It isn't only roleplaying games that tell stories, every wargame in effect creates or re-imagines the story of a battle. The latest edition of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook features a series of "Forging a Narrative" boxes which deal explicitly with telling a story within its science fiction battles. In an article within White Dwarf 400 Jervis Johnson describes the benefits of playing with Games Masters. In addition to the reasons he states GMs are also able to help forge this narrative in a way that the current set of mission rules isn't able to (the 2nd edition missions from Dark Millennium were much better at this kind of thing). One area we have yet to explore in the club is story based campaigns, hopefully this is something we can develop over the coming year. Even many boardgames tell a story, though in a somewhat abstract way. For instance when we played Chrononauts at University we created stories to show how we were changing the course of history or games of Risk simulate the story of colonial expansion.

Stories form an important part of what we do as libraries, in the last 3 months of 2013 Bournemouth Library issued just over 15,000 fiction books slightly over half of all our book issues, about a third of these were to children. Across all the libraries in Bournemouth the number of issues in this period was over 150,000 for fiction, around about three quarters of the total issues. As well as supporting reading stories we have regular storytelling events for children of all ages. The importance of these kind of events in the development and education of children is well documented (see for example this UNESCO course on storytelling in education). The gaming club is another way for Bournemouth Libraries to support the telling and creation of stories and the benefits that this creates for all involved.

Horus Rising by Dan Abnett: Book Review

Horus Rising by Dan Abnett

Dan Abnett is by far my favourite author in the warhammer cannon, His lively and descriptive prose really bring his characters to life in ways that other books in this setting don't.
His depiction's of combat lively and engaging, his reflections true and deeply touching. I must confess to being deeply enraptured while I read "Horus Rising", as the pure skill of the narrative shone through.
Those with only a passing familiarity to the war hammer 40k universe will enjoy this book a great deal, but the more you know about the history of the Imperium the more you will enjoy this book.

This is the first book in what has become the phenomenally successful Horus Heresy series, a series written by the greatest writers in the Black Library's arsenal, and, as such you can expect a great deal of depth and characterisation that goes beyond what you may expect from a "war" book.

Don't misunderstand, it is still a book about conquest and battle, with plenty of graphic and pulse pounding action to keep you reading until the conclusion, but as a singular work of science fiction it also stands on its own merits.

The book does however suffer from genre awareness, and it often feels that it needs to conform to the lowest common denominator. fortunately these moments are few and far between and overall they don't detract from the story.

Overall I would Heartily recommend this book.

David

 

This book is available from Bournemouth Library, you can reserve the book online using our catalogue, you will be charged 90p to do this - Darren