AT43 Addict

Tracy has a new comic up at at43comic. Dancing monkeys are awesome.

Currently both Minature Market and The War Store are having at-43 sales. So get on over to them before they sell out!

Update: Fantasy Flight Games has entered the mix with their own sale.

I often get asked the question, where should I buy At-43 and I used to always give the same answer.

Your Local Gaming Store (LGS) is the first place you should always check out for any gaming need.

My original thinking was that these guys are the ones that are running tournaments, offering prizes, building awesome gaming tables, great scenery and providing that great atmosphere for your local gaming community. If you take part in the events thrown by a store, you should at least throw some business their way.

The flip side of the argument, especially in the current age of social media, is that people are self organizing, gaming tournaments are becoming player driven with sponsors that may be globally based. The LGS is becoming less relevant to players and you only have to look at the number of  player groups to validate this.

All people need is a space, some game boards (which in AT-43 are supplied by Rackham for the campaigns) and someone to do a little bit or organizing. Things like Google Groups, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have made this sort of thing extremely easy to do.

My Question is this. While the LGS was the cornerstone of table top gaming 10 years ago, where do you  do you think it stands today?  Is the LGS relevant to you as a gamer anymore or has it faded from view, a relic of a less connected world.

I saw this over at Boardgamegeek.com and thought I would take a screen shot for posterity’s sake.  \w/

I’ve updated the look of the blog. It should be much easier to read now and the links to scenarios and the release plan are featured in a more visible location. Any thoughts on the current layout? Want the old one back? Let me know.

The tentitive release date for the cogs has been pegged at June 9th 2009. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to get our hands on the first wave of cogs. The first minis out are the hunter unit box + attachement 2 and Warmongers unit box. This should be enough to start playing some basic infantry level battles. I would expect the following month to have even more cogs in it so we’ll be able to field a full army shortly after.

Rackham changed the format of cry havoc online to be a monthly release. Cry Havoc Online Issue 1 is the first of the larger monthly magazines. First off there is a great fluff piece on the Karman AFVs. There are some hints as to strategy in there too so its definitely worth a read. Next up are the details on storm arachnids which gives some good background and the stats for those of you that want to make some of your own at home to play with.

New Scenarios

There is a new scenario Class of Snow which looks like it will be a lot of fun. You can get it here. In addition Awakening of the Machines is another interesting looking scenario involving 5000 RP for the therians vs 2500 assault, the catch is ALL of the therian forces are Reinforcements!. Both scenarios have been added to the scenario section of at-43 addict.

Upcoming Releases

First off there are grim golem overseers coming to the resin kit line. The decision of creating resin kits for the missing models is likely due to the cost of producing injection plastic molds. You’re going to have to paint these guys up yourself. An interesting find was made on rackhams servers. The release plan for the next few waves was discovered and what is especially eye catching is that Wendigo and Yeti Medics are being released in resin. This likely means that Karmans are going to receive a balancing by being able to get an additional medic in their type 2 units.

More on Errata after the break.

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I was giving a demo of some larger scale battles and decided to do a 3 way free for all in order to demo the rules. We didn’t play with reinforcements or VP as the goal was to get the core rules down so many of the strategic elements weren’t represented in this battle. That being said it was a ton of fun.

Setup

The setup featured a lot of terrain, the way AT-43 is supposed to be played. We used a collection of home made terrain, Necromunda scenery and crates. The density of terrain represents a decent board for at-43. it opens up a lot of tactical avenues and will make for a really fun game.

Armies

We used a Therian Cypher list with Tiamat, Atis, Grim Golems, Incubus Golgoth and some storm golems.

RedBlok was vanilla with Urod, 2 Sierps, Dragomirov Kolossus with Lt Dragomoria, min sized krasnye repair squad, and a full size RPG soldaty squad.

The Karmans were also vanilla with 4 kaptars, 8 wendigos with grenade launchers + cornelius, an easy trike, k-shooters and a king buggy.

We didn’t want to complicate things using support squads and what not so we played the core lists of each army pretty much. See the Full report after the jump

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Wave 8 has shown up at various online retailers. You should be able to get your Fire Crawler, Hussar, Hekats and Cobra M8 from your Local Gaming Stores now as well. I just picked up a Hussar myself, can’t wait to try it out.

Heroes play an important role leading infantry units in AT-43. While remaining fairly easy to kill, they bring many benefits to the battlefield. Some questions come up fairly often though. Why would you want to put your hero on foot vs in an AFV where they arguably are more protected? The Fire at Will combat drill is why. A unit that has a hero as an officer can spend 1 LP to increase the number of re rolls on their weapon profile by 1 if the unit doesn’t move that turn. This means that you can increase your effective range substantially.

For  Red Blok you will find that Fire at Will is a tremendous benefit as you can engage units sooner and you’ll have more of those 2 damage rockets hitting home. For UNA it means you can add a reroll to your missiles. Therians can engage with their sonic guns from father out and karmans don’t have to worry about their rocket launchers or drum pistols missing as much.

This will help to remove some of the disadvantages some of your units have, while still being balanced. A hero is easily sniped for instance. They have the same armour profiles as regular troops so there is nothing godly about them. This also creates incentive to bring lower ranking heroes as they easily become well worth the additional cost.

Heroes are a tactical choice, not a necessity, they can be point sinks if your opponent has snipers, but can give a unit the edge it needs to perform above and beyond its standard level.