Commands & Colors: Fantasy Update!

My opponent, lo these 35 or so years. ATTACK! He's a pretty good sport and a hell of a lot of fun to play a game with. He's even more fun to play against. I suppose that's the little brother in me talking.

On New Years Eve, my brother Chris and I had the opportunity to playtest some ideas I had for my long-suffering Commands & Colors: Fantasy project. Yes, I know about BattleLore. Read this for a reminder.

My interest in this project was jump started when I traded for a Warhammer Empire army. Now, adding a pre-painted army to my collection was a huge motivator. While there were a number of unpainted figures in the collection, they can be assembled and painted later. Along with the other Empire figures I have lying about. What can I say, I like the look of these dudes with their armor and plumed hats.

About half of the Empire troops I traded for. They are based on black movement stands. Four figures to a stand, four stands to a unit. These are made of matte board. I'd like to get something a little more substantive and magnetic.

Anyhow, I wanted to get these guys on the table and have them go up against my (partially) painted Skaven. Now, I'm not going to lock myself into the Warhammer setting, but many of the figures I'm using are GW in origin. But not all. Many of the Empire figures I recently traded for are actually Wargames Foundry. Gorgeous figures. I need more of them. Or the Warlord/Pro Patria Landskechts. But I digress.

The battle lines clash! It really looks quite nice with 28mm figures on such a big mat. My eventual plan is for the Ratmen units to be based five figures to a stand with four stands in a unit. Units with 20 rats will look epic indeed.

Not wanting to place a high Medieval/Rennaissance veneer on the existing C&C: Ancients units, I opted to tweak some of the ratings and abilities. For example, Human Halberdiers are essentially CCA Auxilia without the ranged attack. Human Bowmen are pretty much CCA Light Infantry Bows.

I created a wholly new unit in Handgunners and Crossbowmen. These guys are light foot infantry as one would expect. They move 2 hexes and have a ranged attack of 3 hexes, like Bowmen. When they fire their weapons, they roll a respectable 3 dice. In close combat, they roll 2 dice but do not strike with swords.However, due to the relatively cumbersome nature of handguns and crossbows, they may not move and fire in the same turn. I suppose on a "Move, Fire, Move" command, they could hold their movement, fire and then move. But that might be a risky endeavor. Or it could be a highly profitable gambit. Fortune favors the bold.

I really liked the pistoliers in small three-model units. I'd like to get more of these dudes.

Another unit I devised is Swordsmen. On the surface, they look like standard Light Infantry with a move of 2 hexes and close combat with 2 dice. However, I took away their ranged attack and gave them the ability to strike on swords. What use are swordsmen that don't strike with swords?

Other units include flagellating Zealots (basically Warrior infantry, but they can ignore one banner result in a given attack), light mounted pistoliers (light mounted cavalry), and mounted knights (heavy mounted, move 2 hexes, CC with 5 dice if they moved the full 2 hexes, may momentum advance, take an additional hex and battle again with the same 5 dice since they moved another 2 hexes), and even a Dwarf unit (heavy foot).

And what about the Skaven, or as I'm calling them, the Ratmen of Suttar? They have some nifty units of their own. Plague Monks are basically like Warrior Infantry, but they'll get some type of limited magic ability in the future. Ratmen with swords are basically light infantry. Rats with spears are basically auxilia. Rat ogres are heavy cavalry, through and through.

"We ignore everything but green when we evade, right? Damn."

The real neat thing about Ratmen units is that they can always evade. Even into friendly units, so long as they move completely past and through the friendly unit. I just love the idea of units of Rats passing one another as they swarm over, around, past and through each other. To make up for this undeniable advantage, Rat units require three adjacent units to claim support. I like this as a nod to their cowardly and craven ways. And it simply encourages evading through the Rats' own lines!

The Zealots punch a hole in the Rats' line and advance in the breach to attack the spear rats to their left!

Chris and I played a pretty straight forward "Kill the enemy" scenario. We didn't notice any particularly hideous results. There were some exciting moments like when a unit of Zealots crushed a unit of Plague Monks in one go, momentum advance and battled a unit of Spear Rats, only to have the Rats battle back, roll three banners and send the unsupported Zealots back to damn near the edge of the table!

The Spear Rats turn to face the threat and send the crazed humans running! Can't ignore all those banner results, boyo!

A few things we'd like to add:

• Objective-based scenarios beyond "Collect X banners." BattleLore does this right and I will definitely be taking a page or two from their scenario books for this. 

• Named characters with special abilities. Maybe an elf ranger hero allows a ranged attack unit to reroll a single die, or a heroic knight makes one sword hit count double.

• Simple magic. I don't want magic to be a mini-game like it was with versions of Warhammer I've played. We're kicking around an idea where magic using heroes and units have a menu of available spells. In order to cast a spell, you order a unit or leader as you normally would, but you can dump additional orders into the unit or leader to cast more powerful spells. I'll explain this further.

• Much, much more!

As I've stated in previous blog posts, this is a long-term project for me. While we are using a 6-inch hex mat, it's still the basic 13x9 (6.5 foot by 4.3 foot) hex playing area. Eventually, I'd like to have a full 26x9 (13 foot by 4.3 foot) mat for a full 8-player Epic experience. To get the most painted bang for my buck, I will concentrate on getting my Rats painted up. My goal is to have a 2-player game fully painted for J3 and I'll take it to Recruits this year as well. I also have an undead force that I will be adding to at some point. I'd like to add more dwarves and some elves to the "good side." Stay tuned!

Kanto Underground

During my visit with Poké Maniac Bill, he mentioned a Pokémon tournament that was being hosted in Vermilion City. He had been invited to attend, but his illness was currently preventing him from traveling. He'd given his tickets to some other trainers, but assured me that if I made it in time they would consider me a contender with two gym badges. So after acquiring the Cascade Badge from Misty, I decided my next destination in Kanto would be Vermilion City. The tournament was held aboard a luxury cruise ship named the S.S. Anne where it was being hosted to entertain passengers with displays of Kanto Pokémon and its trainers. Local trainers were organized into tiers and allowed to battle the crew, interested passengers, and each other for various prizes. Key among the prizes was a Hidden Machine, a secret technical machine, that allowed certain Pokémon the ability to learn useful skills that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. This one in particular was owned by the captain of the S.S. Anne and was able to teach lucky Pokémon how to adeptly cut through overgrowth. I was interested to say the least.
Just south of Cerulean City lived a kind old man in a secluded homestead offering a Pokémon Daycare service. This kind of small business is a lot more widespread nowadays, but back then it was a bit of a novelty. He allowed any trainer registered within the Indigo League of Kanto to leave one Pokémon in his care for a nominal fee. I had never heard of anything like this at the time, but after our brief conversation, I used Bill's transfer system to bring Charlie out of storage and into the old man's care. At the daycare, he would get lots of exercise and activity and be allowed to play and train with other Pokémon instead of just waiting in storage. It seemed like a really good way to get him some extra training in case anything unspeakable ever happened to Kiwi. The old man assured me that he'd been doing this for a long time now and Charlie was in good hands.
I was attacked by some wild Pidgey on Route 5, but I decided to save my Pokéballs for better options since I had Kiwi and Charlie as members of Team Fox. It didn't seem prudent to waste the resources on a third fighting Pidgey. It was during this time between Cerulean and Vermilion that I was starting to think about the future battles. I had to be careful with upcoming Gym Leaders and at the Indigo Plateau and I had to plan accordingly. After passing on acquiring a new Pidgey on Route 5, I made an effort to avoid more wild encounters in the future unless I was ready to add a potential candidate to my team. The way I was training my Pokémon meant that every new capture had to be strategic going forward. An army of Pidgey weren't going to win me the rest of my battles.

I was pretty oblivious to this at the time, but the region of Kanto was in a bit of upheaval the first time I was there. As I mentioned, I wasn't really aware of Team Rocket much before my unfortunate encounter with them at Mount Moon. I didn't realize what a hold they had on the region. I also didn't realize that things were changing rapidly since their operation at Mount Moon crumbled. For a long time the organization moved in the shadows, acquiring Pokémon and using them for illegal activities without drawing much attention to themselves, but things were now changing since two local trainers had them riled up. I mention it now because typically moving south from Cerulean, you would end up in Saffron City before heading to Vermilion City, but Saffron was under a bit of a lock-down thanks to Team Rocket activities. Police sentries were posted on all sides of the city and were not allowing anyone in or out of the city. They tried to explain the situation to me the best they could, but I really didn't understand the gravity of it and they got impatient trying to explain to me why I needed to get to Vermilion another way.
This other way was an underground passage originally intended to be developed into a subway system to and from Saffron City. It's development had been abandoned due to escalating economic tension between the local government and Team Rocket. It now served as a convenient, although shady, underpass between Cerulean and Vermilion, as well as Lavender Town and Celadon City. You could bypass Saffron City entirely this way. The path was reasonably lit and maintained by local volunteers. Pokémon battles were prohibited and efforts were made to repel Pokémon from infiltrating the path as long as it was needed. Apparently Saffron had been cut off from the world for some time in order for this to have been as well established as it was, but again I was ignorant of the state of affairs in Kanto at that time. I merely enjoyed an uninterupted stroll underground, picking up various shiny objects I happened upon.

I arrived in Vermilion City sometime in the evening. I managed to secure a place to sleep for a few nights and then set out to learn what I could about the local Pokémon scene. I could see the S.S. Anne to the south all lit up like an angry Electrode. Tomorrow I would have to find a way to get into the tournament aboard and hopefully earn my access to that Hidden Machine, but I did have a few other concerns. The gym leader in Vermilion was not a push-over and he favored electric attacks above all else. It earned him his nickname as Lt. Surge. As it stood, my team consisted mostly of flying Pokémon who would easily be burst out of the sky by a well placed thunderbolt. Kiwi, Lucky, Vesper and Shakespear were all going to be huge liabilities in the Vermilion Gym. Arnold had recently evolved on his way south through Route 5 and 6, but I wasn't sure that my powerful Gloom could stand up to the kind of voltage Lt. Surge was known to put out. It seemed clear that Arnold and Rascal Jr. Simply weren't going to be enough to ensure a victory here in Vermilion. If I were going to get a new Pokémon, then the battles aboard the S.S. Anne would be a great training ground for them, so I set out that evening to add one more friend to my roster.
Vermilion City is the busiest port in the Kanto region and naturally surrounded mostly by water. Water-based Pokémon weren't going to stand a chance against Lt. Surge when I went to face him, so I had to look somewhere else. I had overheard that just beyond the city limits was a small rock tunnel the locals called Diglett's Cave, because it had been dug out by a large colony of Diglett and Dugtrio. Though it was a bit unsettling to crawl into their nest, I knew a Diglett or a Dugtrio would be the perfect addition to the team and the perfect counter to Lt. Surge. Their ground affinity would make them immune to any electric attacks Lt. Surge could throw at them. So despite my apprehension and the apparent dangers of crawling into a Diglett tunnel at night, I felt I had no choice.

Almost instantly I was assaulted by a Diglett who did not like me mucking around in his home. He was a quick! It was tricky to pin him down with my team. Lucky was able to put him to sleep with the powder off his wings, and it took a few balls to snag him without causing him to faint. Fortunately, we captured Douglas before any reinforcements could arrive and we made a hastey retreat from Diglett's Cave. Douglas replaced Shakespear on my team since official Pokémon League rules only allowed a trainer to carry a maximum of 6 Pokémon. Shakespear would rest comfortably in Bill's Storage System while Douglas stayed with me to train up for the Vermilion Gym. I slept easy that night knowing that Douglas would secure my victory against Lt. Surge and all I had to do now was get aboard the S.S. Anne to do some intensive training - and get my hands on that Hidden Machine.

Current Team:
Attacks in Blue are recently learned.



Bill's Storage: Shakespear (Spearow)

Old Man Daycare: Charlie (Pidgey)

Forza Horizon 4 - Tips & Tricks | Pro-GamersArena.

As we probably are aware that Forza Horizon 4 is out now for the individuals who pre-ordered the upgraded version of the game, and it'll be out in full for everybody on PC and Xbox one week from now. So in this Forza Horizon 4 control, we'll be strolling you through the entire rundown of fundamental tips and tricks which you have to know going into the game. What's more, let me disclose to you Forza Horizon 4 is right now the best open world racer game made in these couple of years.

Forza Horizon 4 Tips & Tricks :

How to Unlock Fast Travel Anywhere in Forza Horizon 4.

Driving anyplace in Forza Horizon 4 is gigantic measures of fun as you get the chance to see the excellent open world, incredible taking care of and lovely autos, at times you simply need to get some place in a moment, deserting all the mission that is going on. 

Ideal from the beginning of the game you can quickly make a trip to occasions and different spots of intrigue you've found for a cost (except if you've discovered the majority of the quick travel sheets, at that point it's free), yet to quick travel totally anyplace, you have got some work to do. 

Picture of location of Fairlawn Manor 

With the end goal to open the capacity to movement quick anyplace in Forza Horizon 4, you have to buy a reasonably costly home that is toward the south of Edinburgh. 

Fairlawn Manor will cost you like 2,000,000 credits, which means you most likely wouldn't get it until you've made a not too bad scratch into the game. Yet at the same time it merits doing , as it empowers you to movement quick completely anyplace on the guide, or, in other words. Particularly once you've discovered all the quick travel sheets so it turns out to be allowed to utilize. Purchasing Fairlawn Manor additionally grants you with 10 Super Wheelspins, or, in other words, and a Silver Top Hat for the individuals who get a kick out of the chance to dress their symbol up in style. 

How to Download DLC Cars in Forza Horizon 4.

In the event that you've acquired a unique release of Forza Horizon 4, or on the off chance that you claim the auto go for game, at that point you may consider how to get your hands on a portion of those superb elite DLC vehicles, similar to the James Bond autos. To get to a rundown of DLC autos in Forza Horizon 4, you'll right off the bat need to make a beeline for either the primary Festival Site amidst the guide, or a House. 

With the end goal to buy the autos, first you need a houses and they are not difficult to establish, you simply need to continue seeking them on maps while driving around, and once you've discovered a House, you'll at that point have the capacity to buy it utilizing CR (despite the fact that they're normally entirely costly, which means you presumably wouldn't purchase until you've made an OK gouge into the game.). Either visit the Festival Site in Forza Horizon 4, or visit a house you've acquired, and you'll have the capacity to see a rundown of all the accessible DLC autos that you can download.

There's one thing you have to remember that while the vast majority of the DLC autos in Forza Horizon 4 are accessible for nothing once you've acquired their comparing development packs, some will cost you CR to get. These are typically the more first class autos, similar to the James Bond Aston Martin DB10, in which case you'll need to get out on the streets and procure some CR through races and different occasions. 

This may be the finish of our initial Forza Horizon 4 guide for the time being, however there's bounty more to cover on the game presently. We'll be refreshing this guide at a later date, when we reveal any extra subtle elements in the game.

Till then keep sharing and tell your friends too, to "ENTER THE PRO-BROS ARENA"