{"id":376,"date":"2015-06-30T15:39:01","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T15:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/?p=376"},"modified":"2015-06-30T19:38:14","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T19:38:14","slug":"the-sad-illithid-op-green-slaad-collecting-update-new-map-and-playing-with-friends-now-with-more-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"The Sad Illithid, OP Green Slaad, Collecting Update, New Map (!), and Playing With Friends, now with more Babies!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shuluth\"<\/a>Hi everyone!\u00a0 Yes, I’ve been incredibly neglectful of this website, but I am still here, and actually playing more DDM than ever (now with a friend!) so I thought I’d give an update!\u00a0 My wife had our third daughter Astrid on June 10; our online business will be pushing more than a million bucks this year in sales, with our first two quarters being about double what we did last year.\u00a0 So things are a little crazy!\u00a0 I hired a full-time employee at the warehouse to help me get things under control, but that’s just about got me back to working 55 hours a week instead of 70.=)\u00a0 But I won’t bore too much with the personal stuff!<\/p>\n

Sad Illithid<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve always liked D&D Mind Flayers (Illithid); I think Shuluth, Archvillain<\/strong> is the best looking available of the 5 I think they made for DDM.\u00a0 It’s disappointing they never made any headway in competitive play.\u00a0 I wonder if the challenge is their Stun Cones<\/strong> and whether WoTC thought it important to balance a potentially huge ability with an extra-high point cost?\u00a0 That, combined with their difficult to implement (though often pretty powerful) secondary ability (usually attached to a Rend with their melee attacks) simply makes them too challenging to run?\u00a0 I’d love to hear folks opinions and whether they’ve ever tried Mind Flayers<\/strong> in a warband.\u00a0 Looking them over, it seems the Mind Flayer Lich from Night Below might be the one to try due to the undead traits, making him a bit more durable than the rest.\u00a0 At a DC 18 Cone Stun, he has a good chance of of incapacitating a couple of units, and his dual empowered Magic Missile and Melf’s Acid Arrow means he’s not completely useless during the turns he tries to set up for a great cone.\u00a0 Still, at 63 points, he better get multiple stuns off or he’s going to get chopped up!<\/p>\n

Playing With Friends<\/strong><\/p>\n

So my new employee (an old friend) actually plays DDM!\u00a0 Yay!\u00a0 We’ve been playing once a week during lunch on Friday’s, and it’s been really great.\u00a0 We’ve been using the sealed cases I’ve picked up to do sealed booster warbands like I originally did in my early blog skirmishes.\u00a0 This past week we both used 2 packs each of Blood War.\u00a0 I ended up with one of my favorite pieces in all of DDM, the Horned Devil<\/strong>, as well as Thundertusk Cavalry<\/strong>, also a pretty beastly piece (who also brings up a rules question, see below)<\/strong>.\u00a0 Eric ended up with Lillend<\/strong> and Kolyarut, <\/strong>who I consider to be pretty average.\u00a0 Free League Ranger<\/strong> was commander for both of us, though I also had a Harmonium Guard<\/strong> as well.\u00a0 I was pretty confident going in, as I figured Lillend<\/strong> would be similar to the Guardian Naga<\/strong> and other’s in the ‘utility-style’ mid-high point creatures.\u00a0 I thought that while the Devil doesn’t put out as much damage as most titans, he would be very hard to take down, especially with the Harmonium Guard boosting him to AC 26 for much of the game, and his Stun did prevent a couple of big creatures from taking a turn.\u00a0 However, it ended up there were several rolls where I could have lost the game instantly had I missed.<\/p>\n

It was the closest battle we’ve had yet, and it ended something like 220-180, with the Horned Devil just barely ruling the day.\u00a0 However, I will say the scariest piece on the field to play against for me was the Green Slaad<\/strong>.\u00a0 A cone that makes one roll automatic morale saves has to be one of the most ridiculously brutal powers in the game!\u00a0 With the way the board ended up, it was going to be very challenging for the other side to kill or even make the Horned Devil<\/strong> make a morale save.\u00a0 Yet a 35-40% chance to make the outsider rout when he rolled the ability on the Slaad was crazy (luckily Eric chose to use the cones on other easier-to-rout creatures instead of trying to insta-win by making the Devil rout).\u00a0 Of the Slaad’s 5 spell activations, he ended up with 2 Fear Cones, 2 Fireballs (Was very glad the Devil has immune fire!) and a Skein of Shadow’s.\u00a0 Combined with Lillend’s spell to automatically Rally creatures in her warband (used twice, once on the Free League Ranger and once on the Slaad), the game was heavily about morale checks!\u00a0 To make matters worse, Lillend managed to get a successful Beguile<\/strong> off on my Thundertusk<\/strong>, who happened to be sitting next to my Free League Ranger<\/strong>, and he died instantly to 2 20-damage attacks from the Big Boar.<\/p>\n

For Ira or any other rules loving folk<\/strong>, my rules question for the day is regarding the Thundertusk<\/strong>.\u00a0 Can he make 3 attacks per turn between a full attack and mounted melee attack<\/strong>?\u00a0 Does MMA work separate from his standard move action?\u00a0 It didn’t say so explicitly so I don’t know how or whether the ability replaces<\/strong> his moves and\/or attacks.<\/p>\n

New Map<\/strong><\/p>\n

A very exciting announcement is that IraFay<\/strong> and I have been working to get a new (official!) DDM map created<\/strong>!\u00a0 Ira did the design for one of the maps (and it’s awesome<\/strong>!), and the backside was designed by another member of DDM Guild.\u00a0 We’re commissioning one of the old DDM artists to do the actual artwork, and we are getting very close to putting it into production!\u00a0 We hope to have it all wrapped up by the end of July, but it may be in August sometime.\u00a0 I hope folks will consider buying one or two of the maps (2 because the maps interlock to form an even bigger map!)…we’re doing this out of our own pocket for the love of this game.\u00a0 If we can even recoup half our costs, we’ll probably start work on another map or something else cool DDM-related pretty quickly!\u00a0 Playing some real games has rekindled even more my desire to expand the game, so I’m excited to see the final product.\"shuluth<\/a><\/p>\n

Collecting Update<\/strong><\/p>\n

I now have about 95% of my collection done.\u00a0 However, being so busy I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what I do and don’t have.\u00a0 I am down to about $1100 for the cost of my whole collection (about $.31 per mini right now with about 4000 minis in hand; total spend is about $18000).\u00a0 I expect to break even in 4-6 weeks or so.\u00a0 When that happens I’m going to put all my mini buying and selling on hold and do a complete inventory and will do a full update of my collecting pages here on the blog.\u00a0 I think it’s pretty neat that I should have about a 3000-piece collection with 0 out of pocket cost. (Though probably 200 hours worth of time sorting, selling and shipping minis!)\u00a0 I’ve also picked up some groovy odds and ends, including a mint sealed Harbinger Starter<\/strong> and Booster <\/strong>(these 2 came with a sealed War Drums Starter<\/strong> as well, all for about $54<\/strong>!), as well as most of the maps and a dozen original tiles or so.<\/p>\n

Alright, I think that about covers it!\u00a0 One of these days I’ll start doing some skirmish coverage<\/strong> of my weekly games so folks can get a glimpse of some OEDDM in action!\u00a0 We’re not much good, but we enjoy ourselves immensely.=)<\/p>\n

Thanks y’all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi everyone!\u00a0 Yes, I’ve been incredibly neglectful of this website, but I am still here, and actually playing more DDM than ever (now with a friend!) so I thought I’d give an update!\u00a0 My wife had our third daughter Astrid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playingwithmyself.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}