Sons of Anarchy and the 50k

Greetings overlords, to another DBD post. Yes, two in one week, tis madness! First of all however, I have to thank you all for this.

My humble blog about gaming, whether it is war or board based, has reached 50,000 views. I'm a little surprised as it wasn't long ago I posted about the 40,000 views and I'v ebeen to busy over the last few months to be that active, but still people come from far and wide to look at some of the oddities I've posted, and I cannot thank you enough. 

A quick pic of the grots I took to Dragondaze, largely done bar a few details and I will prob do bases at some point too. Better pictures will come when they're finished!

But now for the main event of this post! 

As I mentioned on the Dragondaze post, I'd bought myself a new game, Sons of Anarchy. I absolutely love the show, so the game was appealing to me immensely. 

You start off with a screen, with which to hide your stash behind, your club house with the basic rules and what you have, and then a series of locations across which you ride and exploit via specific area traits. For example, one location may allow you to buy 2 guns and 2 contraband for four cash, then another will allow you to sell one gun for four cash. Did I mention that cash is key? Well whoever ends up with the most cash wins the game, so combo-ing these deals is key to getting the most cash. 

Obviously. if you're a fan of SoA like myself you know that this game sounds a little too quiet for a Men of Mayhem game... well thats where the throwdowns come in. If two gangs are in a location, that area cannot be exploited. A throwdown however can be ordered where the two games go at it in a fight. Prospects give you +1, Members give you +2, and if you choose to use a gun, they can give you +3/ Also, if guns are used and whether you win or lose the dice roll, players choose which of their members go to hospital and potentially die. Theres an ER room and St Thomas location cards for a reason! You also gain heat for such actions, which can lead to you finding it harder to deal drugs in the contraband phase. Here, players secretly hold how many drugs they wish to deal, and depending on the combined total you get different amounts for each contraband. The less, the more its worth, where as if a lot of drugs are being sold you flood the market and make them worth less.

Its a great little game that takes little more than an hour, although now we know how to play it'll take even less. Above you can see how my stash was hidden, and I ended up winning the game too, think watching the show gave me an edge! I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game tho and look forward to a full four player game. Even if you're not a fan of the series I think people will enjoy playing this, so its a great little game to mix in with other games you play. And for £30-35 its a good price point. 

We also cracked out Munchkin to give a new member an intro to tabletop gaming, and he ended up with the best starting hand I've ever seen. At level 3 he had a level 16 combat capability... lucky sod! He ended up winning too so he was well chuffed with himself. I'm hoping next monday some X-wing will be played, having some withdrawel symptoms so hopefully a member will be looking for a game. Thats all for now though!

10 years and an Update.

As you may or may not have noticed, regular posts on Death By Die have become a rare thing. Its not because I've lost interest, motivation, or my passion for tabletop has waned. Its been life, that ohg so hectic thing! I've recently opened up a photography studio in the valleys of South Wales, and its taken over my time. However, times are a changing. With the studio up and running, and a PC at hand to 'work' on, it means that blogging can once again come to the fore. Not only that, but with the studio being fairly spacious and the club being a bit smaller in terms of members, the Tredegar Reavers have moved to Abertillery and we'll be having our first club night here on Monday. Not only that, but the club has been renamed, more on this later! 

Before we get to whats happening and what may lie in the future, what6 has actually been happening? Well, a few weeks ago we had our Tenth Birthday celebrations. Yes, the Tredegar Reavers got to 10 years old this year and many games were played to celebrate. One of the new darlings of the group, is Munchkin!

I didn't get to try it this day, but soon after I did and have fallen in love with it, Its nice and quick, deviously tactical and games where you can equally help and backstab other players are always going to be good! I've even got my own copy now, so heartily recommend to anyone else out there!

With some visitors from the Mid Wales Wargaming Society, one of their number was keen for some 40k action, so myself and Alun took on his Necrons! It was Matts first go at using the new tactical objectives, so we did have an edge... but he did have a C'tan! 

Our first turn gave us 3 cards, one of which was where you have to get all objectives and claim a nice bonus. Looking at the battlefield this could be acheived... I had two drop pods to bring down first turn, this landed on objectives, and Alun zoomed a Raider across the board to capture the 6th objective. We'd both spoken before about whether it was possible, and thought maybe at the end of a game where the battle is probably already won, never thought we'd manage on the first turn!

Matt suffered some bad luck throughout, his monolith simply not wanting to deepstrike and being delayed until turn 4 after rolling for mishaps.  The C'tan made a meal of killing my dreadnought, which held up the star god shard admirably.

From what I remember the Dark Eldar managed to get into combat and did reasonably well against the Necrons, although they did lose some numbers.

Alun looking Dark Eldar-like. With a bit of 'gimp' thrown in. 

As the game went on we could see we had the edge and pressed home the advantage. Matts luck was still lacking, and we won the game by a large number of points. The Monolith did finally land, on the landing pad of all places and did some damage, but it was too late in the game. We all enjoyed the game though and it looked pretty good! It was nice to play against Necrons and actually win too, I've not had much luck against the metallic blighters! 

We also got some X-wing on the go too, I battle and triumphed against another of the MWWS members, this time Lee, who you may remember just got a win against me in the tourney we recently played for Help For Heroes, I really enjoyed playing Lee then and the same was true for this. We both learnt a little from playing each other, and luckily this time I managed to get the win. My nephew Josh also played Lee, and lost after they were both down to just one ship each, but Lee was able to win. 

Here they are looking at the range of a firefight. Note Graham sat down, the other member from MWWS who came down to visit and general allround nice bloke. He even got an extra cake! 

Heres Mike having an intro game against Bam. I don't remember who won but Mike did say he enjoyed the game, more people to fight against hopefully! 

Myself and Bam played, and it was he who took the win. Always fun playing Bam, we've known each other a while so winning is always nice, and the trash talk is always good!

Owain turned up eventually and Dredd was played! 

He and Mike battled it out for control of Megablock, and they seemed to enjoy themselves immensly. Looks like the Adeptus Arbits have close ties to the Judges... Hmmm..

And there we have the tenth birthday of the Tredegar Reavers. 

As I mentioned in the introduction, we'd decided to move the club. Convenience and money being the main issues, as most of the members were now from other areas Tredegar was becoming a difficult place for many of us to get too, and with only 3 and a half hours it was difficult at times to fit games in that were more involving. We were also paying a lot for what was, in all honesty, a really good venue but it was simply too expensive for us. 

Now however even though its a smaller space, we can still fit four 6x5 tables in here easily, have a slightly larger store room and its only half the price. Perks of having your own studio! We also now have internet access, which means blog posts can be done while at club, which is a huge bonus for me. The main benefit, is that we now have 8 hours of gmaing time! from 2-10pm every monday, we  shall be rolling dice, flipping over cards, or painting our latest models. With the move, came a name change. Abertillery Reavers did not seem right in my mind, and I wanted it to be more all encompassing. So reborn.... 

The Gwent Reavers. This covers the more general area and better shows where its members are from. Lets hope we continue to grow and evolve to become an even better gaming club! 

As for the future of this blog, expect more posts, whether about news, reviews of games, and I'd love to get into making videos too. 2 HD cameras will make that tempting! Cheers for sticking by the blog anyways, there be more to come!