Iron Kingdoms RPG

I am happy to talk about some roleplaying here again. It is an oft neglected part of my hobby. I was really excited to get my hands on a copy of the Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game on Friday. I haven't managed to spend quite as much time digesting it as I would have liked the weekend once again proved bizarrely hectic. The book cost €59 which is a little pricey, especially in comparison to the dollar price. I guess I will be ordering the supplements from the States. The quality of the book is top notch, though the artwork is repeated in places something that always feels a bit cheap to me.

I am a little dissapointed I have to say. There are going to be a lot of fanboy reviews popping up soon I guess but overall I think the ball was fumbled somewhat with this product. I am going to enjoy playing this but I think for what I paid I could have been given a higher quality product. The game is a wonderful transposition of the wargame onto a roleplaying game framework. The mechanics are solid but seem very restrictive in certain ways. I am saying this without having played so maybe I am completely incorrect. The statistical values of all the starting characters fall within a very predictable range. Having checked through the levelling mechanics, which in themselves are good, there is relatively little increase in these statistics over the course of a campaign. This works excellently in keeping the system balanced, something I applaud in the wargame. It does make your character seem a little bit similar to everyone elses though. The differentiation comes in skills and abilities. These add small but significant modifiers in places that you want your character to specialise. Interestingly a change of a point or two towards the positive has a much bigger effect on probabilities in the 2d6 system than in a d20 system. So maybe I am being unfair. Looking at the raw stats alone and their slow development over time makes characters seem very similar. I hope that the abilities however really allow some specific specialisation. I look forward to proving myself incorrect as I get to play.

The background and setting material is also a little lacklustre. Everything needed to play in the world is provided but maybe that is the point. We are presented with a little bit of everything rather than some specifics. I haven't come across a decent map yet, the book only contains one and its detail is sparse. Khador for instance has seventeen locations named within it. For one of the major kingdoms in the setting seventeen locations isn't much to go on. There are better maps available online but I can't see why new maps weren't produced. I think for a lot of players maps are one of the most attractive parts of an RPG. They spark the imagination in ways that text and pictures can't. I always hated Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for not providing decent maps in the expansion books. A lot of the 4e Dungeons and Dragons expansions failed to provide decent maps. Moving on the bestiary section provides maybe twenty creatures. Aagain I find that this is poor fare. I can excuse the magic spells having no description, I have often found pages of descriptions for things like that boring and pointless. Some of those saved pages should have been dedicated to good creature descriptions and more detailed location descriptions. I have to assume that a Monsternomicon and some setting books will be available soon. Going on the monsters presented in No Quarter I am really happy with the presentation. The boring presentation in the Core Rules reminds me a lot of what I hated most about 4e. The No Quarter presentation provides a lot more information

Overall I feel that we have been presented with a 'Players Handbook' and we are left waiting for numerous supplements to fill in the rest. I suppose the fact that core rules is printed rather boldly on the cover should have given a lot of this away. It wuld have been nice to have been presented with a Monsternomicon and Setting book along with the core rules. At least then the contents could have been shared better between the three allowing some expansion in certain places. I guess the two supplements a year it is a fine model to make the game viable over an extended period of time. If each year two expansions are published it may keep interest in the game up. The book does leave me hungry for more but I wonder how long that will last.

Friday Showcase - Ork Nobz

I must resist painting Orks! The more of these showcases I do the worse the temptation becomes. Goff 'Ardboyz are the current flavour. These would of course come with a Battlewagon transport as they need to arrive in style. The worst thing is I wouldn't have to buy anything as it already resises in my collection. Lets see if I can resist. My Warmachine and Hordes stockpile is defintely in decline so eventually I have to paint something else. This week I have some Bad Moon Nobz, with a Waaaaagh Banner. I cut this from some Fantasy Battles terrain and it is almost the correct scale. It is a little unwieldy I guess but thats in true Orky style. I want to add eventually a few trophies and a flag but for now it serves its purpose. I never painted more of these guys as I wanted to give them Power Klaws, reasoning that they would be more effective in the game ths way. Seeing as I don't play this doesn't matter and I should top them off with the missing three squad members sometime soon.

Fly, my pretties fly!

I picked up the Scarsfell Griffon last week. It is a great model and the plastic doesn't suck too much. He was much easier to clean than the Man O' War's I had to do. Hopefully more of the plastics are like this. The arms on the griffon can be posed a little differently and I guess with some sclading hot water the wings could be bent a little. That would allow for some variety which is nice. I am somewhat tempted to get a second one as I think they could be really awesome, especially with pKaya. Their extended control range and the ability to teleport them right back to her makes for some interesting hit and run tactics at extreme range. I lost fairly badly last week with this but I wasn't playing Spirit Door properly. My opponent, Owen from Farfaraway.org, showed me the last line of that spell and from then on it was game over. I do still think there is some potential there but it would be an uphill battle!

I don't really like painting wings. They are hard to get looking convincing and they are often really detailed. I checked a few places online for inspiration and I came up with this picture. I wasn't brave enough to copy it exactly but I took a good few elements from it. As is usual I am unhappy with how the painting of the Griffon went. I guess I am never happy or maybe satisfied with my painting. I over did the dark grey/brown on the underside. It is fine on the outer feathers but it is too intense I think when it gets closer to the body of the griffon. Next time I would have kept it to mybe two rows of feathers and then I would have darkened the inner rows more in keeping with the picture here.

I am a good bit happier with the back of the wings. They are a little dark despite what I felt was an extremely light highlight. The orange pieces break up the monotomy of the wings a lot and there isn't much I would change overall. Lightening up the feathers towards the head of the 'beast light have been better but the feathers there are so small and lack a lot of definition and I thought that changing the colour of them might make them look like fur. Anyway he is done now and can be put onto the display shelf with the rest of the Circle army. I just need to paint a Winter Aargus and that is all the light warbeasts done for the army. Incidently the griffon is the 100th model painted for Circle by be.

Painting Fail

Sometimes despite all the best inspiration and techniques painting just goes wrong. I painted this Feralgeist twice now and both times it has come out terribly. The standard scheme is nice but I wanted to go for something a little different. I started off with a blue scheme and it came out really bad. I am not sure why but I guess I started with too dark a base coat. It made the ghost seem too solid. I didn't learn from this however and I think I have repeated the same thing here. The red purple base colour here is just too solid looking. I highlighted it in reverse much like painting flame. I brought it down to a yellow white in the deepest crevasses. It just doesn't look right to me. I won' be changing him however, done is done. I have too many other models calling for attention at the moment. I may revisit him at a later date. Aat least for now he is a lesson to pay a little bit more attention to the planning stages of painting!

Steamroller Flags finished

I managed to get these done over the weekend despite aching muscles. Moving furniture is not something I do eagerly or particularly well. I think the flags came out fairly well although the colour of the internal wood isn't exactly as I had intended. I sculpted a few more little details such as Dryad's Saddles onto them to break up the surface of the wood. The colour scheme fits in nicely with the rest of my Circle Orboros army and I think these will be a nice addition to scenario play. I just need to think of what appropriate objectives I can make now. I think larger stumps wouldn't be quite right!

I am still tempted to make up some more of the stumps to use as a terrain piece. It is a lot of effort for some terrain but I could cast them up to save some time at least. I have a few half completed terrain projects that would cast up nicely I think. The train tracks for instance would be really excellent to cast as would a trench piece I have. Maybe I will research it and see.