Another New X-Wing Ship - The Moldy Crow

A bit of good fortune crossed my path a couple weeks ago, I had a nice little lottery win. Nothing in the quit-work-and-get-some-hookers-and-blow category, but a nice wee three figures.  It was sensible hat time though, so a good chunk went to paying some stuff off and another hefty piece went into my saving account. There was enough leftover to be a little self-indulgent.  I took a mate out for dinner, bought some new togs and, of course, picked up some miniatures for the pile!

I'll keep the first purchase quiet for now, but I'm quite happy with them.  The second was another ship for X-Wing, the HWK-290 Light Freighter.  Similar to the YT-1300/Millennium Falcon and the Firespray-31/Slave-1, the HWK-290 is better know to fans as the Moldy Crow, and for it's pilot Kyle Katarn. Actually, many people won't recognize the HWK at all, as it's the first ship in the X-Wing range not to have been in the movies.  Those of you who played the Dark Forces series on the pc "Do you fear me Jedi?" should be happy at it's release.

Now I think it's fair to say this ship was the least popular of the Wave 3 releases for X-Wing. A lot of people didn't like the model (it's brown after all) and it's stats are hardly that impressive. Still, I thought, it can't be that bad, can it?

Well, no, it's not bad at all, but it's not great either.  Not terribly manoeuvrable, not that resilient,  not even dishing out that much damage.  The HWK-290 is really the first support ship available for the rebel fleet; it's not going to do much on it's own, but with the right options and in with the right mix of ships. . .

The most obvious build is using Kyle Katarn, The Moldy Crow itself, a blaster turret and a recon specialist crew member.  This will pump out Focus tokens for the whole game, two per turn, allow you to give one to nearby ships each turn and also make proper use out of the blaster turret.  If you have a couple ships with Advanced Photon Torpedoes along side, then they can really dish out some damage in one or two turns.

A similar, but less obvious, way to use the HWK is by just using the cheapest pilot, the blaster turret and recon specialist.  This doesn't give any fancy benefits to your other ships, but it makes an excellent finishing ship.   As the turret can fire in any direction, swing this ship safely round the sides or behind several enemy ships, wait to see what survives the attacks from your better pilots, then use the HWK to finish them off. Best of all, this build is fairly cheap at 23 points so you could squeeze in three other ships in a 100 point game.

I'm quite happy with my purchase, despite the fact I actually wanted a B-Wing (they didn't have any left.)  It's not a ship I'd want two of, unlike the awesome Tie Bomber, but I'll certainly try it out the next time we manage to get a game in.

Incidentally, for any X-Wing players out there who don't know about it already, the Unofficial X-Wing Squadron Builder is a great tool for messing around with lists (and avoiding uncomfortable mental arithmetic.)

New X-Wing Ship - The Tie Bomber

So what's better than buying yourself a little geeky something (or Mr Visa buying you something?)  Well it's getting something bought for you!

Cheers then for my mate Adam for picking me up a Tie Bomber for X-Wing! Nice.

Fantasy Flight obviously know their audience; the TIE Bomber is easily the least cool ship from the original films, so they've compensated by making the rules for it terrific.  Cheap and loaded with ordnance seems to be the way to go with it.

The usual FFG bundle of cards and cardboard features.

A nice enough pre-painted model, but, like the rest of the X-Wing range, would benefit from some touch ups or insignia markings. It'll get to the table in a couple of weeks hopefully, up against another new model, the B-Wing.

Still here. . .

. . . Just not been up to posting anything lately.  Apologies for the long absence friends.  Life has been fairly stressful lately and that, coupled by a wee break to Spain, hasn't had me in the frame of mind for blogging or painting lately.

Things haven't actually turned the corner yet, but I'm at the point now where there's not much to actually do, just a case of waiting for things to happen.  Realising that, I'm actively working to get into a settled routine and resume doing the things that make me happy.  That sounds a bit flakey, I know, but hey, that's how I've been feeling lately.

Still a bit of gaming going on.  Had a few games of Netrunner this week; still my favourite game full stop at the moment, just wish I was a bit better at it!  Also had another outing for Dreadball the week before. Still oodles of fun, but I want to try another team for variety; robots, bugs or rats.  Can't decide.

Naturally, some retail therapy has been needed lately and I picked up two boxes from Fantasy Flight Games; the Elder Signs expansion; Unseen Forces and the new Star Wars RPG beginner box.  The RPG looks very entertaining, it's based on the WFB system (which I've never played) and has a ingenious dice pool system.  The artwork and writing are top notch too.

Frustratingly, I've not tried out the Unseen Forces yet.  The box FFG have used for the expansion is slightly too small for the cards Elder Sign uses, meaning that the large cards are all bent out of shape.  They've spent the last two days under a pile of the heaviest books I have, trying to straighten them out.  Still, reading the rule sheet, the expansions seems to add a welcome degree of difficulty to Elder Sign and the new Blessed and Cursed dice seem fun.

After moving house last month, I've managed to create a little space for modelling and painting.  No painting done yet, but I have managed to finish basing my 28mm Viking warband for Saga (wow, reading back I'd planned to have these finished in May.)  Hopefully I'll get these undercoated over the weekend, providing the rain eases up.

Lastly, we're finally getting to try out In Her Majesty's Name at the club next week.  Sholto has been beavering away creating factions for us to use.  Looking forward to it, pics if I can take anything decent.

Mobile Blogger App and X-Wing Pics

Yesterday's first post from my Android phone using the Blogger App wasn't without teething problems.  Firstly, it failed to publish the post first time AND deleted the draft in the process. Secondly, I notice it didn't publish any of the pics I'd taken, but neither did it save them on the phone either?  Anyone know what I was doing wrong? Still functional enough to use when I'm out and about.

So what pics didn't appear yesterday?  The new X-Wing releases, that's what!  Oooo, shiny.

First up, piloted by everyone's favourite scum, is Slave 1. It's an impressively large bit of kit, although still dwarfed by the Millennium Falcon.

The coolest Tie variant (at least from the original three movies) is next.  I bought two Tie Interceptors mainly because the game store only had two left, but I'm sure I would have picked up another one at some point in the future anyway.

Lastly, my least favorite Rebel ship (again from the original movies,) the A-Wing.  Meh, nothing wrong with it really, and it's rules look deadly, but it doesn't really do it for me.

For those of you who already have X-Wing, I'd like to point out that the quality of the models and, in particular, the paintwork is a vast improvement on the initial release.  All the weapons point in the correct way and the coloured panels on the A-Wing and Slave 1 have a nice thick colour to them. Compare the first X-Wing model I received where I had to cut all the engines off and reattach them, bend the weapon barrels back into shape and basically have cream paint splashed over black.

Not sure when we'll get our next game in though, next week looks pretty busy.  Maybe I'll have to kick the Mrs out shopping for a while and get some folk round to the house!

Black Crusade - Tome of Blood

40K haters look away now.

The latest Black Crusade sourcebook, Tome of Blood, arrived a wee while ago and, during our week under the covers, I've had a good thorough read.  Billed as a sourcebook for followers of Khorne, it actually has lots of content for all players and GMs.

Like the previous book, Tome of Fate, there are four new character types to chose from and, again like Tome of Fate, it's the human choices that really catch the eye.  The Chaos Marine archetypes are just as you'd expect with a Berzerker (melee) and a Night Lord (fear) on offer.  The human archetypes let the reader explore some frontier worlds of the 40K universe, Messia being my favourite with it's Dune/Arrakis feel.  Other than characters, there's a lot of background material here, rules for legacy weapons, massed combat, more rituals and investigations.  Lastly, there's another complete campaign using the newer rules.

A lot of new artwork is on show, most of it very atmospheric, some of my favourites are on this page.  And I'd also say the standard of writing here is pretty impressive, much more so than the early Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader games. FFG have pulled in a few new authors in their recent books and they have seem to have picked up the freshness of the writing (if that even makes sense?)

To be honest, ToB was the book I was least looking forward to, as just how much depth is there on offer to roleplay an uncontrollable frenzied killer.  Overall though, the rage/frenzy aspect isn't all that prevalent for the players (NPCs are another story) and the book is much more about new options and scales for combat.

I haven't managed to get a RPG session in for a few months now; we were running them over skype and, when my broadband went, that wasn't possible any more.  I think I'm going to try and find a group locally (it would be the first time since my uni days,) but not until later in the year; not feeling terribly sociable at the moment and can't see that changing in the near future!

X-Wing - New Year, Same Old Luck

After a break for the holidays, it was back to the club this week for a game of X-Wing.  Since we played last, Adam has picked up a copy of the game for himself, which now gives us the opportunity to run some different lists.  I decided I wanted to try the "Tie-Swarm," fitting in as many Tie Fighters as possible, in this case, seven.

Opposite, Adam opted for three tooled up Rebel ships, two X-Wings and one Y-Wing.  Luke Skywalker was one of the pilots and his ability is to regenerate shields, while the other X-Wing had an Astromech that let him repair damage.  Two abilities that would prove decisive.

Still, at the end of the first turn, above, I was feeling pretty confident, those seven Tie Fighters can put out a lot of shots!

Turn two and the Imperial squadron focused all their attacks on the Y-Wing which was destroyed, but only just.  I saw this a triumph in itself (it takes eight hits to destroy a Y-Wing) as I've barely put a scratch on the Rebel Battle Bus before!   There were still two X-Wings on the table though, time to deal with them.

Or not.  Turn four and I'm down to five Tie fighters.  At very close range, X-Wing is a very brutal game as everyone gets bonus attack dice.

Turn six and I'm starting to get a bit pissed off.  Another two of my ships have gone.  To make matters worse, Luke Skywalker has managed to restore both his shields and the other X-Wing, which was almost destroyed, has repaired all the damage.  Still, if I could isolate each and focus my attacks I could still turn this around...

I'm not even going to bother telling you how the game ended!

So, a new year, but my luck (or skill) at X-Wing hasn't changed.  I can't think of anything worse in wargaming, than having your opponent point out your obvious mistakes, not only to you, but to everyone standing around the table watching!  Despite my horrendous run of losses, I'm still enjoying X-Wing.  We're both looking forward to the new wave of releases and seeing what FFG have planned after that (fingers crossed for the B-Wing next!)

Only War 40K Rpg

Well I trust everyone's recovered from whatever trials you put your bodies through yesterday. Everyone one got what they wanted from under the tree?  The Mrs and I decided to go halves on one of these tablet computers (sharing hasn't caused any arguments, yet) so I thought I'd put it through it's paces on the 'ol blog.

 

My copy of Only War turned up on Christmas Eve and I've had a couple hours to flick through. The latest in the line of 40K role playing games, Only War sees you inducted into the ranks of the Imperial Guard, fighting in one of the Imperium's countless wars.

Are these guys from the Gaunts Ghosts series?

Setting aside initial concerns about how much fun playing a nameless grunt would be, FFG seem to have made a number of interesting additions to the 40K RPG system, most notably the squad mechanic and a dedicated set of vehicle rules (about time!)

The book itself is mostly up to the standards expected from FFG, the only criticism I have is that there is less artwork than in previous books and a lot of what is there is recycled from GW's back catalogue.

Proper vehicle rules.  Finally.

Only War is by far the best 40K RPG to be played with miniatures, but I still need to be convinced just how much role playing there is on offer here.  Still the book was a nice distraction over the last couple days and is a goldmine of background material for Imperial Guard fans.

Death Angel: Deathwing Quick Game Report

Brought out Death Angel the other night for a few solo games, wanting to try out the Deathwing expansion I'd picked up cheap (see here and here.)  I thought I'd put up a summary of one of the games and try and show off some of the hooks that keep me coming back!

I chose to play the game almost straight from the book, leaving out most of the changes I've made to the game.  This meant choosing three pairs of Terminators at random, then drawing their formation at random.  If I want a more tactical game, I choose both the squad and their formation myself, which I think is a sensible enough change.  The object of the game is to move through the four, randomly chosen locations and complete the objective on the final card.

So we entered the Space Hulk with a force of Techmarine Hephaestus (Red Team,) Sergeants Arbalan (Team Yellow) and Zaltys (Team Blue,) each accompanied by another Terminator for six in total.  Each pair have different special abilities they can use, but they only apply to the three guys named above - losing them hurts a lot more than losing their "goon" as we shall see.

The squad emerged from the Void (air) Lock to be immediately attacked by four Genestealers (GS.)  I'm not going into the mechanics too much here, but quickly, the Marines have a choice of three actions in a turn, move+activate, support or attack and they can't do the same action two turns running.  Combat is very simple and brutal, with only one dice roll determining life or death and the key thing to remember is that getting attacked from behind is waaaay worse than from the front.

Turn 1, so far so good.

Team Blue Supported the squad by placing a support token on him.  This lets him re-roll attack or defence rolls, but his special ability lets any marine use that token instead of just him.  The other two teams attacked, each taking down one GS.  Zaltys support ability was immediately needed to keep Hephaestus alive.  At the end of each phase, an event card is drawn that adds a random event, spawns more GS and moves the GS already in play.  This turn, we had a gun jam meaning Team Zaltys wouldn't be able to attack next turn.  Damn.

This turn saw two Support tokens enter play and Techmarine Hephaestus Activate the door.  Doing this lets you kill a number of GS when you move to the next location card - imagine the squad sealing a door behind them, cutting them of from the pursuing GS.  Lots of GS attacks this turn, as we couldn't thin their numbers this turn, one of which took out Sergeant Zaltys (and his handy ability.)  Brother Gabreal, Arbalan's goon, was then surrounded by all the GS in play.

Down one Terminator already!

So some sneaky manoeuvring needed this turn.  Gabrial moves and uses his ability to take one of the swarms opposite with him, leaving him facing four and Raphean against two.  Red team then attacked but both missed.  Team Yellow put another support token on the door. At this point there was only one GS card in one of the spawn piles.  If it came into play at the end of the turn, we would instantly move to the next location.

That was a bit harsh! Two down.

The GS attack, Gabriel surprisingly survived (needing a 5 on a 0-5 sided dice) but Raphean was killed.  The "Out of Thin Air" card put two GS behind Arbalan and, with no more GS cards left, we moved to the Black Holds.  Immediately another two GS appear behind Brother Jerico, but we manage to seal two of them behind us.

Two more Genestealers attack!

With all the GS spawned already, the squad should be able to move to the third location in two turns at the latest.  Red team then supported Jerico, who was up against four GS, and triggered Hephaestus Gun Servitor attack.  Unfortunately, it missed.  Jerico kills one GS while Gabriel missed.  Jerico dies and Gabriel moves into his position, only to be killed in turn by a second swarm of GS behind him!

Hmmm, not many Genestealers here. I'm a bit suspicious.

A secret route appears, letting the marines evade some of the GS attacking them.  The remaining squad members, Hephaestus and Arbalan, enter the Hibernation Clusters.  Not many GS to get through to the final location, can we hang on?  Following the rulebook word for word, the two marines would be overwhelmed by GS in a turn.  I use a little house rule to keep four "slots" in the formation; meaning that although there will be GS everywhere, the marines are never in a position, however unlikely, where they can't survive.  This turn Arbalan puts a support token on himself, triggering his ability to try and stop and GS spawning on him (he fails.)  Hephaestus manages to destroy the spore chimney, reducing the places where GS can appear this turn.  With his Quick Instincts, Arbalan attacks a swarm, but doesn't do any damage.  Only two GS appear, but that's enough to take us to the final location.

The Genestealer Lair.  Bugger.

No more GS will appear this game, but two Broodlords do. They draw all the GS in play to their location, fortunately the big swarm wasn't facing either marine.  Both attack, but only kill one GS.  Arbalan is then killed, leaving Hepheastus alone against thirteen Genestealers. I'm sure he went down swinging!

Some points:

We were put up against the hardest possible final card.  The other two can both be one on dice rolls.  The card we had here actually penalises you for rushing through the game. Maybe if we'd thinned the numbers against us a bit, we might have had a fighting chance.

The other two options for the final mission, both easier than the Broodlord card.

Even with all the GS against the squad at the end, there was still a chance to win.  The way the GS move around relative to squad means that the Broodlord may have been isolated and vulnerable.  That didn't happen, but there was a chance it could!

The Deathwing expansion is well worth taking.  It certainly appears that their abilities are much more effective than the Blood Angels from the base game.  In fact, I think I drew two of the weakest teams from the Deathwing; the Assualt Cannon and Librarian teams are both capable of taking out whole swarms at a time.  Next time I think I'll play with all six teams in a single game.

Well, I hope that made sense to those of you who've read this far.  You should get this idea that the game is very fast paced, very brutal and very difficult.  There's probably slightly too much random in there for some gamers, particularly when attacking, but I don't think that the game is ever decided randomly.  One of my favourite games, hope you enjoyed reading about it.

Death Angel Expansions and Relationship Advise

So I had to spend a bit of time today in town after work, shopping for the Mrs birthday present.  Didn't find much, so I'm stuck tonight on t'internet trawling through websites, credit card at the ready!

And a quick aside for some relationship advice.  NEVER get yourself a reputation for giving good presents.  Not only will you have to do all the shopping for her relatives as well as yours, having that rep each year piles pressure on you to keep up your run.  Not sure what's wrong this year, but I just can't find what I'm looking for this year.  If anyone knows where I could get one of those big DNA/Molecule models (as seen on the Big Bang Theory) in the UK with 24 hour delivery, let me know.

On the way home I nipped in past the local comic-book-with-small-gaming-section store for a browse.  I don't spend too much cash there because, as I've mentioned in the past, it isn't that friendly a place.  Still, it's the only place we have in town and I like to support them when I can.

Today, I spied a bit of a bargain, two expansions for the Space Hulk: Death Angel card game.  For those unfamiliar with the game (you can read my review here) it is a card game recreation of the classic Games Workshop, Space Hulk.  It's a very tight, very taxing co-op card game that I find very rewarding to play.  How taxing?  I've probably beaten the game only on a handful of occasions, despite playing it at least fifty times!

The first two expansion packs released were in Fantasy Flight's Print-On-Demand range.  Essentially they were a small number of cards that complemented the base game (one was extra characters, the other new mission cards) without changing any fundamentals.  The following two expansions, those I bought today, are still Print-On-Demand, but are much larger and change how the game is played.

The Tyranid Enemy Pack adds a variety of enemies, replacing the original Genestealers, to the game.  As a fan of the Tyranid background material, I'm really happy with the range of cards and in particular the artwork on them.  Some of the enemy abilities are pretty mean however.  The Deathwing Space Marine Pack replaces the original twelve Blood Angel Terminators with Terminators from the Dark Angels chapter.  On offer are a whole new range of abilities, some look immense although I can't see the point of one particular ability.

I've wanted these for a while, but never got round to ordering them (actually I did, from Maelstrom....)  The clincher for buying them today was the fact that the store had gotten the price wrong on these two packs; they had them for £4.99 each, while the RRP if £11.99 each!  Sweeet!  Can't resist a bargain.  I managed a couple quick games this evening with the Deathwing, but I want another couple games before posting my thoughts.

X-Wing: Political Escort Take 2 Battle Report

After a relatively quick (but not rushed) first game of X-Wing, we decided to swap seats and try the same mission with the opposite factions.  Considering that I had suffered two comprehensive defeats in a row playing as the Empire, I looked forward to getting a win on the board with the obviously overpowered Rebel Squadron.  All pilots and upgrades were the same as in the previous game, the details of which you can find here.

I decided to place the Y-Wing covering the shuttle on my left, while the two X-Wings were more central.  My plan was for the Y-Wing and shuttle to plough straight forward through whatever forces were ahead of them (there's no risk of ship to ship collision in X-Wing.) Getting the shuttle off the table should take six turns or so, so durable Y-Wing was the best bet for escorting it.  I presumed that Adam would similarly spread his forces across the table, not knowing exactly where the shuttle would be heading.  Therefore, as he moved to congregate on the shuttle, the two X-Wings should be able to come in from my right, using their superior firepower to knock out any Tie or Advanced they come across without too much return fire.

Philistine that he is however, he decided to forgo anything as sophisticated as a plan and massed the two Tie Advanced and a Tie straight across from the shuttle to bumrush the Rebels!  Still, assuming the shuttle made it past the first wave, it should have a couple turns grace while the Imperials manoeuvre to get back into firing position, giving me enough time to thin their numbers.

Rebel deployment, with some menacing Tie Advanced opposite

Things started much as you would expect, the shuttle and Y-Wing went straight for the opposite table edge, the Y-Wing putting a target lock on a Tie advanced.  The X-Wings both swung round slightly to my left, one target locking a Tie and the other Focusing.  The Imperials mirrored the Rebel manoeuvres, Darth and co heading towards the shuttle, while the basic Tie and Backstabber moved closed in on the X-Wings. 

Things get crowded after the first attack run on the shuttle

Shooting, mostly at long range, was a mixed bag.  Neither Darth or his two wingmen managed to put out any damage, but took none in return from the Y-Wing.  Garven Dreis used his one Proton Torpedo attack at long range, to put two damage onto the Tie opposite (one more would blow it up completely,) but Wedge failed to finish it off.  Worse was to follow for him, as some poor defence dice stripped him of his shields following attacks from Backstabber and the other Tie.  Still, it's Wedge, he's in all three good movies, he isn't getting taken out by some fluky dice, is he?

Turn two and I was expecting the shuttle to take a beating.  There was nothing for it but to keep moving forward again, the X-Wings continued moving round to my left.  The Imperial right slowed slightly and put the shuttle into medium range, while Backstabber and the other Tie moved round behind Wedge and Garven.  A quirk of the movement step in X-Wing is that both players decide their manoeuvres each turn blind i.e. you don't know what your opponents is going to do before you commit to what your ships will do.  I gambled that Backstabber would move the similarly to the previous turn, so moved Wedge on a longer left turn.  Instead of this however, Backstabber pulled a tight right hand turn and moved up into close range against Wedge's rear arc.  Not good.

The shuttle desperately limps on towards the board edge

Vader and his two wingmen combined to knock out four of the shuttle's shields, although it could have been worse.  The Y-Wing tried immobilising one with its Ion Cannon, but the attack was evaded.  Next up the Wedge and Garven attacked, but caused next to no damage, instead taking a shield off Vader.  Backstabber then attacked Wedge, rolling four attack dice (two for his normal attack, one for close range, one because he was behind Wedge.)  The net result was one damage and one critical hit.

Ship damage in X-Wing is handled with an elegant little card deck.  For each hit not negated by defence dice or shields, a damage card is dealt face down to that ship.  Most ships have three hull points, so can take three normal hits before going kaboom!  If a critical hit is rolled and not negated, the damage card from the same deck is dealt face up, counting as one damage, but also causing an additional effect.  As Wedge didn't have any shields left and rolled nothing on his defence dice, he got one face down damage card and one face up. Unfortunately the result was:

WHAT!?!

Three damage from one attack was a bit extreme, but that's what happened.  Losing a ship wasn't totally unexpected, but I was annoyed to lose Wedge instead of Garven.  Not only is his special ability much more useful, but Wedge still had his one off proton torpedo attack to make, something I was hoping to use next turn.  I was a bit distracted by that result, so I can't remember if I blew up the other Tie Fighter on my right or if it simply crashed into an asteroid.  Regardless, a rookie Tie Fighter would show up next turn.

Turn three and things looked a bit grim for the Rebels.  I thought it possible to still get the shuttle off the table if I could reduce the amount of fire it would take this turn.  I planned to get Garven's X-Wing close to the Tie next to Vader and have the Y-Wing immobilise the other Tie Advanced (Vader has a high pilot skill, so regardless he would be attacking before either of my own ships.)  The Y-Wing did immobilise the Tie Advanced, but it hadn't moved very far, so was still able to attack the shuttle.  Garven also fluffed his own attack.  At the end of the turn, the Shuttle was down to a single hull point.

Seeing the writing on the wall, I decided to try and at least take Vader down with me by putting Garven at point blank range to his rear.  However, as Vader had the highest pilot skill on the table, he moved and performed his actions last, so was able to double barrel roll out of Garven's arc of fire. Foiled again.  (Although, when flicking through the rulebook yesterday, I discovered you can't perform the same action twice in a turn, so technically this was an illegal move.  Grasping at straws, I know!)

The nearby Tie missed with his attack, so it was up to the Backstabber to finish off the Senator's shuttle.  I only hope that Jimmy Smits was onboard.

He really bugged me in the that last film

Another enjoyable battle.  Adam pointed out that the two attacks against Wedge were fluky in the extreme, I think that is the only damage card that inflicts extra damage, so it was an unusual result. Still, that's what you get with dice and cards.  In retrospect, I think I should have bunched up my ships and tried to take out the Tie Advanced early on.  The regular Tie can't reliably put out the same damage as the Advanced, so even with respawning Ties, it would have been a easier fight in the later turns.

I'm really enjoying the whole X-Wng experience.  As I'm the only one at the club with a copy, I'm really tempted to get another started box.  Not only would it let me field the "Tie swarm" (eight Ties,) but it is also a lot cheaper than buying the ships and the extra dice pack separately  you really need more than three of each dice.  However, that will have to wait for the moment.  I've decided November needs to be a frugal nerd month.  I'm only allowing myself to buy the essentials; bases, paints, magazines, a new brush or two, different flock, some flags and decals, maybe a rulebook or two.  Like I said, essentials.