Wayne Financial

I finally finished up a project that had been sitting on my back burner for six months, the Suicide Squad buildings.  Now, I know what you are thinking; how did some pre-printed cardboard buildings take you so long to finish?  The answer may or may not surprise you, I don't like to do anything the  easy way.

When I first got my copy of the SS game I could not decide which of the building fronts I wanted to make.  One side was the rundown, graffiti-covered look.  While the other side was the clean uptown style.  So I built them without glue (which was surprisingly easy).  I figured I could flip it around if I wanted to.  However, as the buildings sat on my shelf the boards started to bow.

I tried to glue and reshape the pieces with no success.  I figured I could straighten the boards by reinforcing it with some foam-core.  It seemed like such a waste to destroy one side of the boards by gluing some foam to it.  Then an idea struck me.

I peeled one side of the boards off.  The card was still thick enough to build one set of the buildings.  Then I just cut it out and built it.  I then glued the peeled piece to a sheet of foam-core.   Then some cardboard to the sides to cover the seams and modified the roof to match my other scratch built buildings.  I made up some gargoyles to hide the holes where the roof supports used to be.  The last thing to mask was the balcony; for one I used a strip of balsa and for the other some spare quarter-round. 

All in all I was very happy with how it  turned out. I think I am going to go back and redo the roofs of the other two SS buildings to match. 

Kevin
 

DCU WAR recap and BMG v2 First Game

The Justice League WAR event at Lords of War Games and Hobbies last Sunday was a blast.  We had a solid turn out.  6 players playing the Justice League (Superman, Flash, Swamp Thing, Bat-Mite, Rebirth Batman, Aquaman, Hawkgirl, Suicide Squad Harley, Starfire and Wonder Woman on a Warhourse).  3 Players stood against them fielding Darkseid and Zod and about 26 Parademons!   The game went back and forth, with Darkseid dominating most of the table for the first 3 turns.  However in the end the Justice League pulled off a late game upset (thanks to White Lantern Wonder Woman) and achieved victory.  Notable Moments:  Every time Superman or Swamp Thing threw a non-winged parademon onto a roof, forcing them to jump back down, only to be thrown back up next turn.  Wonder Woman holding 1/3 of the table alone then coming back to life in the final round to clear out a group a parademons.  Aquaman fighting against Zod and about 10 parademons and surviving for like 3 rounds! and Zod not able to hit, shoot or grab Batman...ever...

I was a little worried about the scenario I wrote up going into the event.  I have done wacky scenario mega battles back in my GW hay-day.  However I wanted this one to be different.  Instead of a big exciting game to keep a group of kids entertained, I wanted a big exciting game to keep a group of grown up kids (me included) entertained...and still be fair and use the rules.  In an old GW megabattle it was very common place for me to favor one side over the other (it really depended on which kid was getting on my nerves).  For the WAR event I wanted both teams to have an equal chance at winning and to not have one side win because rules were changed.

I was especially worried about the Power Crystal tokens I made up.  To keep the game interesting I added 2 tokens each turn randomly on the table that players could grab.  They then got dealt a Power Crystal card.  It would either be a bonus for the player or a trap.  I tried to keep most of the cards fairly balanced by just using different abilities that were already in the game (like giving a player Heavy Batarmour, or the Fly ability).  I did make some more powerful cards too (activate a model twice in a single turn, return a model back to life that died earlier and heal/hurt an objective etc).  It worked out well that both teams got an equal amount of the powerful cards.   

There was a lot of excitement and strategy discussion around the table.  It looked like everyone had a lot of fun!  And to show that I was not biased for the JLA side, I was the first (and only) player to have every one of my models killed!  If anyone is interested in the scenario, let me know and I would be happy to post it.  

A few days later, I was able to get in my first game of the new Batman Miniatures game Version 2.0.  I am very happy with it.  The movement was simplified and the game moved very quickly.  I had Batfleck in combat first turn!  The new sewers are great (we actually used them for once).  The change to the batclaw was the biggest adjustment for me.  I know a lot of people are complaining that it can only be used every other round, but I kinda like it.  I had to be a lot more strategic with Batgirl.  I did not just want to batclaw into combat with no way to make a speedy retreat when it goes south (and with my rolling, it always does). 

I wanted to try out some of the new objectives too, the Fire Drum and the Ace Chemicals.  While they appear to be good, they were not the greatest for my crew.  Due to them being placed in no
man's land, Chris was able to get some early victory points from them and I just could not catch up.  Batfleck did punch a lot of heads though.  Looking forward to round two!

Kevin