#warhammer 40k motley

[magua-vida]

That part is probably the nearest thing to actual Solitaire romance so far.

And yeah, I was that anon and I am de-anonizing myself (am shy). I'm just really into Harlequins and I love Motley and Nocturne as two of my favorites.

Sorry, three WH40K reblogs in a row and have no art to post today, but I am tired and just want to soak in these clowns T-T

Context: Motley notices he's being chased while investigating alone in Commorragh.

"‘You don’t even have a weapon ready, I’m disappointed,’ purred Lady Aurelia Malys as she stalked forwards across the twisted metal. The Archon of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue was a shimmering vision of exotic beauty in the light of the firefalls. Her armour was fitted to accentuate every alluring curve, her hair was a river of pure midnight touched by flame and her red, red lips held a secret promise of maddening desire.

‘Clearly I am disarmed by your beauty, dear lady,’ Motley said with an ingenuous smile, ‘although the truth is that I’m more of a lover than a fighter, which is to say I’m more a clown than a grim warrior type. Perhaps you were hoping to challenge me to a duel or something? Not really my thing I’m afraid.’"

[some more flirt-fighting later]

"Lady Malys’s blade shivered aside at the last instant as it was deflected by a short, curved blade that appeared in Motley’s hand as if by magic. ‘So you do come armed after all,’ Malys mocked as she flicked her steel fan at his wrist to sever the tendons. ‘So small though – you must feel inadequate around the incubi with their great klaives.’

The Harlequin knocked aside the razor-edged fan and ducked beneath Malys’s follow-through swing with her sword, rolling beneath the hissing blade to gain a pace back onto the shaky framework. ‘I find it adequate for my needs,’ he explained equably as he parried another of her attacks, ‘although I always consider my wits, limited as they are, to be a better weapon.’"

This is all while Motley just dodging and blocking because he has no plans on hurting Malys.

______

Oh, do tell when you do look Ramin Karimloo up. The vids of him as Phantom are on YT and he's arguably the most famous version outside of Michael Crawford and the movie version for good reasons. He knows to crank up the hamminess as well as smoothly lower his voice to a gentle lullaby.

_______

Lastly, how do you think Nocturne consoles RT?

And ngl, it'd be funny if RT brings up that tropes are happening.

Omg, Motley sounds fantastic. I definitely need to read those books now. I can already tell I'm going to love him. :D

I did get a chance to watch Ramin Karimloo as the phantom and he's got such a good voice! I can definitely see him in the running for a voice headcanon for Nocturne, more in the lower, smoother range, though. Very, very nice.

As far as consoling Meli or another RT, Nocturne is very good at deflecting and distracting, I think he'd be pretty good at helping them get their mind off their troubles until they've calmed down and feel better.

[lindevi]

Running Your Best Convention One-Shot Part 2: Scenarios

At the 2021 Origins Game Fair, I experienced one of the best convention one-shot RPG sessions I’d ever played in—as well as the worst—back to back. This gave me a unique opportunity to compare and contrast what went well in the first session and what went awry in the second, especially in light of my experience as a tabletop RPG professional responsible for developing one-shots as well as demoing RPGs for convention play. Over the last ten years, I’ve run open and VIP tables at large flagship conventions like GenCon and Origins, regional cons such as AcadeCon and Con of the North, and local mini-cons on college campuses and at my own home. Over the years, I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes that I hope you can learn from.

Although there are many aspects to consider when planning and running an RPG one-shot at a convention, focusing on three elements of the session can give you a solid foundation and yield the best payoff per hour of prep spent. These three essential ingredients are: 1) exciting and accessible pre-generated character sheets, 2) a scenario that is optimized for one-off play, and 3) excellent player management at the table. In this second part of three, let’s take a deep dive into the next ingredient: the scenario.

The Purpose of One-Shot Scenarios

A one-shot is a roleplaying game session designed to offer an engaging play experience and tell a satisfying story within a single sitting. In most convention settings, a four-hour block of time is set aside for the game, but some “epic” sessions might last for six hours, while demos are typically designed to run for just one or two hours. With your regular gaming group, you might have a whole evening to play, without a hard cutoff point other than people’s energy levels.

I consider the play experience to be composed of two things: the GM’s primary motivation for running the one-shot, and what the players are expecting from the scenario. Are you trying to give players a taste of a game’s rules system? Are you looking to bring a set piece encounter to life with elaborate maps, minis, and terrain? Are you offering a chance to play a particular type of character that’s unusual, specialized, or high-powered? Are you trying to introduce or explore a particular setting, time period, or franchise? Or are you trying to entertain with an especially clever premise or mashup of different media properties? (“My Little Warhammer: Friendship is 40k,” I’m looking at you.) If you know what you’re trying to achieve, that can help you focus and prioritize your efforts.

Telling a satisfying story in a single sitting can be challenging, as it’s easy to try to cram too much plot or too many characters into the span of time available. There’s really only time to explore one main objective, a few obstacles, and a set of simplistic stakes. It might be helpful to treat your one-shot as if it were a single twenty-minute episode of a TV show—I often see folks try to cover the same amount of ground as a three-hou epic fantasy film, which just isn’t feasible. Here’s the basic formula I use when crafting scenarios:

When [a disruptive event happens], will a group of [adjective] [collective noun] be able to [adverb] [verb] the [noun] (to/from/at/in [noun]) before the [villain] [villain’s objective]?

And here’s that formula applied to a few different one-shots I’ve developed or written:

When a bounty hunter betrays a brutal crime syndicate, will a motley crew of scum and villains be able to capture or kill him before they become his next target? (“Under a Black Sun” for Star Wars: Edge of the Empire)

When a long-lost heir threatens to interrupt a politically crucial marriage, will a group of young samurai must choose see the match through, or call it off in the name of love? (“Wedding at Kyotei Castle” for Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying)

After a rival underhive gang kidnaps their leader, will a group of Escher gangers be able to rescue their champion and get revenge before one of them reveals themselves to be a murder-cyborg? (“Fall of the House of Escher” for Dark Heresy 2nd Edition, unpublished con scenario)

Time Constraints and Pacing

In my opinion, the primary consideration for a one-shot is the time constraint. If the game runs longer than its allotted time, you won’t have a chance to pick up where you left off the following week or session—you’ll have to rush to the ending or worse, not offer a resolution at all.

My rule of thumb is to plan on roughly one encounter, dungeon room, or scene per hour (from here on, I’ll use the term “encounter” to refer to any of these discrete RPG session elements). For a four-hour one-shot, I try to stick to this schedule:

Introductions (30 minutes): Players choose characters and unpack dice/dice trays, GM introduces rules and setting, answers questions. I try to make sure that the PCs understand their goal going into the first encounter before we hit the 30 minute mark.

Encounter 1 (45 minutes): In pursuit of their goal, the PCs confront an obstacle that might be solved with combat, social interaction, exploration, or investigation.

Encounter 2 (45 minutes): The PCs encounter their next obstacle, one more challenging or with higher stakes than the first. There might be a major twist or reveal at the end of this encounter.

Break (15 minutes): Bio break—let people use the bathroom, get a drink/snack, check their phone, or simply stretch their legs.

Encounter 3 (45 minutes): The PCs encounter yet another obstacle, and they might glimpse opposing sides of the dilemma or fully grasp the stakes.

Final Encounter (1 hour): This is the climactic encounter in which the PCs make a decisive choice and/or face their hardest challenge yet.

I typically have an extra encounter or two in my back pocket in case the PCs breeze through one or more or the earlier encounters faster than anticipated, but these encounters can be left out without hurting the players’ enjoyment or understanding of the overall plot.

Pacing refers to the rate of movement or progress. In RPG terms, pacing refers to how quickly the PCs move from encounter to encounter or experience the story. Bad pacing can make for an unenjoyable game—players might grow bored if they are progressing through encounters too slowly, or they could feel dissatisfied or confused if they are moving through encounters too quickly. You can also affect pacing through variety: a one-shot that’s solely combat, investigation, or social encounters can blur together or feel repetitive, so include a mix of the different types of encounters that feature in the game’s rules, as well as emotional highs and lows (juxtaposing comedy with horror, for example). But take care when stringing vastly different kinds of encounters together. Not having appropriate transitions between encounters can feel jarring, so if there’s a little bit of travel or if time passes, make sure that’s communicated to the players. Give the players time to react to big events and talk among themselves, and once the conversation has run its course, that’s your cue to move on to the next encounter.

It takes some practice and experience to get pacing right, but you can look to your players for signs that the pacing is off—are they tuning out and checking their phones? Chatting among themselves trying to figure out what’s going on? Remember, you can always “fast forward” using narration to get to the next bit of action or excitement (but beware taking agency away from the PCs—you shouldn’t skip over any major decisions that could affect the story). From a logistical perspective, if one encounter runs long, you’ll need to shorten one of the subsequent encounters. If the encounters go by too quickly, however, the session will end early, which usually isn’t too big a deal at big conventions where there’s plenty to do and see (and eat), but it can be a bummer when players paid by the hour for an event.

Agency and Choice

To me, great one-shots are those with multiple possible endings, such that I can run it for different groups of players and have wildly different outcomes. This isn’t always feasible in organized play circumstances, where a shared experience is part of the point. When considering alternative resolutions, you might ask: Do the PCs pursue their original objective, or do they turn on the person who gave them the mission? Do the PCs side with one NPC or another in a dispute? Do the PCs achieve their goal by talking it out, using violence, or employing magic to solve their problems?

Agency is “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power”—in games, that translates to the idea that the PCs can affect the game or the game world, whether for good or ill. Unlike most novels or TV shows, games are an interactive medium, so giving players some choices that matter will help them feel invested in the story.

The worst one-shots are those where the players don’t have agency and their actions don’t matter—the NPCs are too powerful or the PCs too weak to make a difference, or the PCs’ efforts turn out to be futile. One-shots that feature many long, scripted narratives in which the GM is basically telling the story without the players’ input can be indicative of one-shots with little player agency. In these moments, there’s no opportunity for the PCs to interject or act unless they—gasp—interrupt the GM, which many players will not feel comfortable doing. Cut scenes have become less popular in video games over time, and many players skip them altogether. Avoid cramming your one-shot full of cut scenes—think about where in your story would benefit the most from one deep, evocative description, and use it there.

When creating dilemmas and offering choices, one of the biggest considerations are stakes: what will or will not happen if the PCs fail, as well as what will or will not happen if they succeed? Choices should have consequences: rewards or punishments, treasure or injury, fame or infamy. Decisions don’t always have to be an either/or choice. They might be a question of methodology (how the PCs achieve the outcome), or a matter of degree. What matters is giving your players a say in how the story unfolds. Designing a scenario that takes player agency into account and offers meaningful choices and multiple resolutions are much more likely to engage players emotionally and make your one-shot a memorable one.

Let the Pre-Gens Shine

If you followed my advice and carefully crafted your pre-generated characters to suit the one-shot medium, those can be your guiding stars for designing your scenario. Try to match up the skills and capabilities of the PCs to the challenges offered, so that you have at least one sneaky character if the mission calls for stealth, one bruiser character for combat, one investigative character for discovering clues and solving mysteries, and so on. If the PCs come from different backgrounds in the world, try to make those backgrounds matter to the dilemma at hand or the choices offered. If your game features scheming and backstabbing among the PCs, those backgrounds can potentially put them at odds, as can conflicting motivations or agendas.

Once you’ve figured out what your four-plus encounters will be, return to your pre-gens and check whether they’re capable of tackling those challenges as a group. Ensure every PC will be able to contribute something to every encounter, and let them bring something extra to one encounter that can be their moment to shine.

Critical Hits and Fails

One spot your one-shot can crit fail is right at the beginning—if the players don’t know what they’re supposed to doing, they’ll flail around until they find something concrete to pursue, raising the risk that they’ll try to do something or go somewhere you haven’t prepared for. Create a strong and simple hook for why the player characters are involved and what they’re hoping to achieve—one that doesn’t require a ton of explanation or background knowledge. Such-and-such faction needs you to acquire the MacGuffin, rescue the princess, or eliminate the target (and in this case, yours not to reason why, yours but to do or die). You want to plunder the dungeon or raid the cultists’ lair for loot and glory. You need to get off this island/space station/planet because if you don’t, you’re all dead. If you need to provide a ton of context for players to understand the scenario, simplify the plot down to its essence or save that particular scenario for a mini-campaign, where you’ll have more time to get into the weeds.

Another area where your one-shot can go awry is if you’re trying to make the game system do something it wasn’t meant to do, or emphasize a part of the game rules that isn’t well supported. If chases are really challenging to arbitrate in that game, either simplify the chase rules (at the worst, narrating them instead of trying to mechanize them) or avoid chases altogether. If you want to include psionics in a game where psionics are rare and work totally differently from regular magic, either make sure players know that up front and study the rules ahead of time, or avoid psionics in the first place. More egregious examples would be using a game that’s mostly a combat simulation to run intricate social intrigues. If you find yourself homebrewing rules for your one-shot, ask whether you’re making the game more accessible or more complicated. Players typically need some reminding how the normal game system works, much less how something they’ve never encountered before should function.

One place where your scenario can roll a critical success is with physical props. If you prepare relevant handouts, print off maps or terrain, or provide standees or miniatures, you’re adding an extra tactile experience to your game, which can provide novelty and engagement. Handouts could be representations such as illustrations of certain rooms or NPCs, in-universe artifacts such as mission briefings or newspaper clippings, or even small trinkets from your local thrift store to represent important artifacts. If the MacGuffin is a special necklace that needs protecting, how cool would it be to have a physical representation of that necklace on hand for one of the players to wear? If the PCs will be attending a masquerade party, you can enhance the immersion by providing some cheap masks for them to wear while they roleplay. (If it’s something a little silly, dive into it with gusto, and your players will likely follow.) I always think of the enormous “Treasure Island” diorama that gets set up at Con of the North every year, complete with minis and pirate ship and resin water, which looks like an absolute delight to play on and is not something I get to do at home. And some of the clubs take over entire rooms and decorate their space to suit their games, creating an immersive and unforgettable experience.

A few caveats: Regarding text-based handouts, just make sure they’re brief and to the point (journals with multiple entries or a collection of letters are often too much for a one-shot). If hand-outs are going to need to be deciphered, figure in plenty of time for the PCs to work out the solution and discuss the implications among themselves. Along those lines, be sure to give yourself extra time to set up or tear down any maps or minis or terrain, and consider how you’ll transport them to the convention (including through airport security) and how you’ll store those items between sessions, if you’re running the one-shot multiple times.

Even if you aren’t writing a one-shot scenario from scratch, you can use these suggestions to improve how you run published adventures. If there are too many encounters, figure out what you can change to cut the scenario down to fit in the allotted time slot. Add choice points or dilemmas if the module is overly linear. Adjust the pre-gens to be more usable, and figure out ways you can make those lengthy read-aloud boxes part of the action.

Stay tuned for the third and final part of this series on managing players at the table! You can be notified of when they’re posted by subscribing to my email newsletter here.

[kristal]

Huh....TIL, Solitaires do eat soulstones to survive.

Dammmmmmn. Just reading a bit of Masque of Vile and It totally sidetracked me that Motley is a Solitaire (with a different mask) and I didn’t notice until the end where we did get a bit of fluff.

‘May I?’ Hradhiri Ra surrendered the spirit stone to Motley’s nimble fingers readily enough. However he chose to look away as, with an indescribable look of pleasure in his eyes, the slight Solitaire consumed the stone containing Vyle Menshas’s soul. This was the price the Harlequins must pay to evade She Who Thirsts – one of their number already promised to her unrelenting hunger. Legend had it that when a Solitaire’s soul was parted from his body Cegorach might appear and try to cheat She Who Thirsts of her prize. Until then Motley’s pre-ordained doom protected the entire troupe from extinction – but only at a price. After a moment Motley tittered, belched and excused himself comically. The Death Jester’s skull mask grinned sardonically, but inside it Hradhiri Ra could not escape the feeling of sick horror that crept over him.

[ahoyprint]

Website : https://www.ahoyprint.com/

AhoyPrint is an exclusive & limited edition pop culture loot that offers posters, stickers, T-shirts & more!

Our mission is to bring the iconic legends from anime, manga, video games, and movies that we all enjoy. Stickers and posters are the best way to show off the series we enjoy and nothing feels better than having your favorite character/series hanging in your living room to impress all your friends.​

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Admiral Black is our director of operation and the brain behind AhoyPrint. Admiral has been a graphic designer for roughly 16 years, and a video editor for 10 years. The chemistry between John Princeton and Admiral Black is a match that brought AhoyPrint to life.

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[anonymous-witness777]

1. Liam, my OC from Motley Quixotes (blorbo from my head)

2. Gabriel Syme (The Man Who Was Thursday)

3. The Death Corps of Krieg from 40k, or if I have to pick a specific one, this guy from AbsolutelyNothing’s fan animation (the lower-ranking soldier who comes into the strategy meeting ... when he just says “dead, sir” and then “yes, sir” in a completely emotionless voice ... shivers)

4. This is an old one, but Anthony Thu from Plague Journal. Which honestly was the worst of Michael O’Brien’s books, but Anthony was in it, so...

5. ahhh this is impossible to avoid but nearly every other comfort character is just. ocs. so I’m going with Elijah Wallace and Dr. Howard Harrison (they MUST go together), but with honorable mentions to every Motley Quixotes character, Exo, and August Bardelowe.

@prxckedradiolove @crocodilianworship​

five comfort characters, five tags

(had to start a new thread, got too long) thanks for tagging me @loulooser ooh i like this okay - nick nelson (osemanverse) - aled last (osemanverse) - peeta mellark (hunger games) - linh song (keeper of the lost cities) - xavier hawthorne (the inheritance games)

tagging @lyssified @mister3127 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights @weirdo09 @charliethinks

[andallhisausterenhost]

Organising Squats

I’ve posted a few times recently about picking up some old Citadel Squat miniatures. I don’t really have an excuse aside from ‘I always really liked them’ and ‘money is overrated’. Once I decide on a colour scheme and a basing style, I’ll paint up a small squad for Necromunda, but I do have an eye to expanding to something approaching an army.

The problem is that the Squats haven’t had an army list since the initial release of second edition Warhammer 40,000 in the 1990s, and even then it was a small, colourless list. It was enough to spark my affection, even though the models were already unavailable in stores by 1997, but a handful of 5-model squads and some bikes isn’t really the sort of thing I want to focus my collecting around.

1989′s Compendium, on the other hand, has a beautiful Brotherhood army list, for the Squat Homeworlds. It features robots, bikes, Exo-Armour Hearthguard and some unusual squad alignments. Plus, you know, it’s the only Squat-only army list out there. It’s a good place to start!

1988′s Book of the Astronomican, on the other other hand, contains no less than five army lists, including the first proper Space Marine army list (for the Whitescars chapter and they are weird) - and three of these lists feature Squats.

Finally, we can consider what Squats could counts-as in eighth edition Warhammer 40K. People use Space Marines, Mechanicus, or Imperial Guard. For my collection, focusing on Paul Bonner-style quilted jackets and sturdy gear, Imperial Guard are probably going to be the best choice for my infantry squats. Robots and bikes are a different problem.

There is also the Horus Heresy list, where one can get apply Survivors of the Dark Age and Abhuman Helots to the Imperial Militia lists, so that’s something to consider.

But first, let’s go back in time to 1988. I was a toddler, half of you Tumblr kids weren’t even born yet....

Hylgar’s Hell-Raisers is the first Imperial Army list. It has some similarities to the modern Astra Militarum - there are humans in it, and lasguns. Importantly, it offers several Squat options:

The only Squat character, the Sergeant-Major is equipped a little oddly - he has what is a special weapon in 8th-edition terms! He also has no other options, a feature of the early lists.

Character: Plasma, sword, bolt pistol, mesh/flak armour.

The basic squads, these lads are also a little different from modern squads, but broadly similar: 10 soldiers, lasguns and a special weapon (in this case a flamer) or a heavy weapon (heavy bolter). The part that takes some getting used to is how the squads have either a flamer or a heavy bolter, rather than the ‘one special, one heavy’ that is common across nearly every modern 40K list.

For some reason the Striker Squads have mesh instead of flak armour, but as long as you make it clear to your opponent, I can’t see the modelling making much difference.

Infantry Squads: 10 men with lasguns, a sergeant. Tactical squads have a flamer; Striker squads have a heavy bolter. Tactical sergeants have a laspistol; Striker squads a lasgun.

A squad of characters! Well, minor ones, anyway. This looks more like what we’re used to in contemporary 40K - a squad of 10 bolters, with one special (flamer) and one heavy (missile launcher), along with a sergeant with a pistol and a nasty melee weapon. A hand flamer is pretty unusual though!

Infantry squad: 10 men with bolters, one flamer, one missile launcher. Sergeant has a hand flamer and power glove/fist.

Finally, we have an assault squad. Again we have the mesh armour, but the main thing here is that everyone has laspistols, with one special weapon (another flamer) and one sergeant with a power glove again.

Infantry squad: 10 men with laspistols and knives, one flamer. Sergeant has a pistol and power glove.

So for the Imperial Army squats, this can be broken down as:

Officer with plasma gun

10-man squads

9 Lasguns, bolters, (las)pistols

One flamer/squad max

One heavy bolter OR missile launcher/squad max

If bolter troopers, then missile launcher AND flamer.

Sergeants either lasgun OR chainsword OR power glove (maybe also hand flamer(!))

The notable thing here is that other special or heavy weapons are notably absent, except for one officer (well, non-com) who has a plasma gun.

This is all a little strange, and makes it a bit hard to match this with both non-Citadel Space Dwarfs, who usually offer 10-man squads with a heavy and a special weapon, and the Citadel range, which has a number of various heavy and special weapons within. Modern lists don’t make taking heavy/special weapons compulsory, so I guess that would be fine..? Onwards!

The next list is for a Rogue Trader’s company. It’s a mixed-arms list, consisting largely of Marines, with a healthy dose of other Imperial forces, including Guardsmen, Astropaths, and our Squat friends.

No characters this time - there are no ranking Squats among Borodin’s forces. The Tactical squad is identical to that in the Imperial Army, except that we have some upgrade options now - we can give them chainswords (but not lose their lasguns) and give the sergeant a plasma pistol. This is called a Close Assault squad, but bears little resemblance to the Assault squads of the Imperial army - I suppose Borodin has more money than the average Marnier Militaris.

Infantry squad: 10 men with lasguns, a flamer, a sergeant with a laspistol.

OR

Infantry squad: 10 men with lasguns, chainswords, a flamer, sergeant with a plasma pistol.

These are basically identical to the Imperial Army Guard squads, with the addition of further equipment rather beyond what I’m worried about. Most Squats have visors - I guess these ones can be photochromatic if they want.

Infantry squad: 10 men with bolters, one flamer, one missile launcher. Sergeant has a hand flamer and power glove/fist.

So much for Squats in a Rogue Trader fleet. I suppose with all those marines around, Borodin can’t hire on many abhumans. These look like:

10-man squads

Lasguns or bolters.

Can have chainswords for lasgun squads.

One flamer/squad max

If troopers have bolters, also a missile launcher.

Sergeants have laspistol - can add chainsword & plasma pistol OR if troopers are bolters, power glove and hand flamer.

Other special or heavy weapons are totally absent.

This is even more strange, although I at least know which model they wanted for the Champion-Sergeant, as I have him on my desk. He definitely has a hand flamer and power glove!

At any rate, next up we have pirates...

This is where the Squats really shine in the Book. We have several characters and squad types.

A character! Another plasma gun! This time also with a power glove. I have no idea what model they intended him to be for, and somewhat suspect they meant plasma pistol, given the illustration there.

Character: Plasma gun (pistol?), sword, bolt pistol, mesh/flak armour, power glove.

More characters! This time one is compulsory - you want to be space pirates, you gotta bring some space dwarfs. Again, they have a special weapon! What the heck!

Character/s: Bolt gun/pistol, chainsword, flamer.

Only the one squad (although again, they’re compulsory!), probably because the pirate list also has a lot of pirate Eldar and regular ol’ Humans and so doesn’t lack for variety. Plus, this has loads of weird options, but first let’s look at the basics...

..which involves splitting the squad between autoguns and bolters. This is the first time we’ve seen Squats with autoguns, although there were four in the Citadel range and they are common among other companies. So we have eight riflemen, split between autoguns and bolters, one heavy bolter, and a sergeant with a chainsword, bolt pistol, and... flamer.

It’s certainly a very characterful squad, representing well the scarce resources and motley nature of a bunch of pirates, but it’s also weird. What are those options in the sidebar?

Oh, yes, another Close Assault deal, where everyone gets chainswords and the sergeant gets  a plasma pistol (so he has two pistols, a chainsword, a flamer, and a partridge in a pear tree). That’s fine, even if I don’t think any of the Citadel range has plasma pistols. What’s the other option?

Oh, cool, power boards. what the actual fuck

Sure, they existed in the Rogue Trader material and are incredibly cool, but there are absolutely no miniatures for them. Which is an absolute shame and I now want a recce squad of space dwarf rascals on hover boards because read that sentence again and then you should know why.

Infantry squad: 4 men with autoguns, 4 men with bolters, a heavy bolter, a sergeant with a flamer, bolt pistol, chainsword. MAY TAKE HOVER BOARDS!!!

OR

Infantry squad: 4 men with autoguns, 4 men with bolters (all with chainswords), a heavy bolter, a sergeant with a flamer, bolt pistol, chainsword, plasma pistol.

Despite the weirdness of the hover boards (!), this is basically more of the same from the Imperial Army and Rogue Trader lists:

Officer with plasma gun and power glove

1-3 Officers with flamers.

10-man squad

4 autoguns & 4 bolters

May add chainswords or hoverboards.

One heavy bolter

Sergeants have bolt pistol, chainsword, flamer. If the squad has chainswords, he gets a plasma pistol.

Overall, the Astronomican lists treat squats in much the same way across the board: ten-man squads, with an emphasis on single-man special weapon additions, nearly always a flamer. Elite squads have bolters. Assualt squads have chainswords. Some squads have heavier weapons. Pirates are a bit weirder, including the only autogun unit. [Autoguns and lasguns were similar weapons (and, since 3rd edition, have been basically identical). Most squat riflemen models have lasguns, so this is a bit academic.]

So, let us travel forward in time to 1989, and see what Squats doing it for themselves might look like....

I find this army list a bit annoying, actually. The background material is great, and it features a lot of truly excellent artwork (a lot by Paul Bonner), but list design has definitely improved over the last twenty-nine years. Ansell, Stillman, and Davis wrote a list with very few characters and an excessive amount of minimum units. The most egregious of this, for my money, is that you only get one Guildmaster if you take seven guild bikers - and even Engineers Guild lists only get the one, and they have to take fourteen. You should be able to have a couple lower-ranked engineers running about for the robots, am I right?

Anyway. That’s a problem for some other time. Nobody is going to hold me to any rules or regulations when it comes to an army which nobody plays with using these ancient rules, anyhow. This is just a guideline for me to have something to hang a collection on.

And we’re only looking at infantry, anyway. For the infantry, you must take a Warlord, and then 3-4 Combat Squads...

First off is the Warlord, who has four hearthguard bodyguards. This is pretty interesting, as they have carapace armour as a default and can take all kinds of weird, mostly invisible to WYSIWYG, wargear (anti-plant grenades indeed). The Hearthguard themselves get to roll on the equipment charts, which a modern collector can use to justify whatever armament they like. Which is what I intend to do.

The alternatives are threefold, for the Citadel range: the original Hearthguard models, which had plastic arms - that is, you can model whatever armament you like, or roll up if you prefer. Alternatively, you can get yourself a squad in Exo-Armour, or mount ‘em all on bikes.

My intention is definitely to eventually get a squad of exo-armour. I’m lukewarm on the Hearthguard catapace armour - it’s a bit too fantasy dwarf, and not enough ‘rugged miners’ for my taste. Exo-armour fetches a pretty penny on the second-hand market, so I’m definitely in no hurry on this front.... unless someone wants to give me a very early Christmas present? No?

Character & 4 Elite: Very flexible. If you don’t mind the armour not necessarily being ‘carapace-y’, it’s do as thou wilt.

Woof, look at those options.It looks weird, but most of it is grenades. Things to note:

8-man squads. This is very unusual for Warhammer 40K, which uses 10-20-man squads for even alien species. I think even the Tau have moved to 10-man units, although they don’t have base-10 mathematics.

Lasguns as the default, although they can be swapped for bolters.

Gunslingers everywhere. While a very cool look, I think I want to be a bit more uniform. It’s a good look for sergeants, though.

Everyone can have a heavy bolter(!). This is a long way from the limited heavy weapon selection of the pirates, army, and rogue trader Squats!

One other heavy weapon per squad, with a wide selection.

No ‘special’ weapons, aside from grenade launchers - no plasma guns, melta guns, or flamers.

Leaders have a very broad range of options, but it basically boils down to ‘a different pistol’, ‘a shotgun’, ‘a combi-weapon’ or ‘a melee weapon’, although I guess you could go with a power sword and a regular sword, if you wanted.

In terms of army design, having an army where the basic infantry unit can be equipped entirely with heavy weapons is an interesting one. I kind of like it. It has a great synergy with their low movement of 3 and works in terms of giving a feeling of grouchy, dug-in warriors.

In a modern list, this would never do - heavy bolter squads would be a Heavy Support choice, but with the way 8th edition detachments work, this wouldn’t necessarily prevent a player with an extensive heavy bolter Squat army from being able to play.

For me, I think I’ll have mostly or entirely riflemen squads, but it could be interesting to have one or two heavy bolter squads.

Putting aside the heavy bolter legion issue for a moment, 8-man squads would immediately mark the Squat army from being different from Imperial Guard or Space Marines. In gaming terms, you have a lower ‘trooper-tax’ for your special/heavy choices, allowing a more MSU approach to your army. In aesthetic terms, it helps reinforce the idea that Squats are fewer, but tougher, than their true human cousins. I really like this idea.

In 2nd edition, incidentally, the regular Squat squads were reduced in scope considerably, to 5-man teams, either Warrior Squads (lasguns and one special/heavy), Attack Squads (bolt pistols & axes, choose from the assault list, one special), or Thunderer Squads  (lasguns, but everyone gets a special or a heavy - this is your all-heavy bolter squad).

This was the gap-filler ‘Codex Army Lists’ list, which wasn’t intended to be permanent, but it’s also a little bland to be basing my collecting around. I’m not collecting a weird, antique, 30-year dead army of old lead in order to paint generic 5-man squads! I want recce teams of hoverboards and cigar-chomping bearded miners with bionic hands!

Sergeant with power glove and rifle, Theoc Miniatures. Sculpted and painted by Chris Nicholls.

Having written all this out, I’m still no closer to figuring out what I want to do to organise my collecting strategy. I’m leaning toward the unusual 8-man Combat Squads of the Brotherhood, with a single heavy weapon each - or a heavy weapon and a heavy bolter - and maybe a handful of special weapons as a Hearthguard.

..but then I do want an exo-armour Hearthguard squad, so maybe I could get 6 Combat Squads in total and keep a few flamer-armed chaps around for some space pirates. Maybe some extra riflemen if I use the army as counts-as Imperial Guard. After all, exo-armour can be counts-as Terminator armour, and the new detachments allow a lot of flexibility in that area, especially if bikers count as Marine Scouts.

oh no

[ao3feed-aizawashouta]

by ExcuseMeNo

All Izuku Midoriya wanted, from his birth on Iax, was to be an Angel. A Hero of mankind, striding forth without fear. He'd earned the right to try, but a sudden offer by his mentor figure sends him not into the traditional trials, but a mysterious and motley collection being assembled by a powerful and shadowy figure on the planet of Musutafu...

Or, BNHA, told through the lens of 40k, with some original bits for good measure and flavor.

Words: 3035, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia, Warhammer 40.000

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: F/M, Gen, Multi

Characters: Class 1-A, Nezu, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Kayama Nemuri | Midnight, Yagi Toshinori | All Might, U.A. Faculty (My Hero Academia)

Relationships: Midoriya Izuku/Uraraka Ochako

Additional Tags: No Beta ATM, Nobledark, quirkless au, Sort Of, Not strictly canon for 40k, Relationships as we go

[jamieclawhorn]

2 stocks I’d buy with dividends yielding more than 5%

You only have to look to the popularity of Game of Thrones or the never-ending stream of Marvel comics movies to understand just how much pop culture has come to embrace nerd culture. And just as consumers at large have found their inner nerd, I think income investors should learn to love tabletop gaming figure maker Games Workshop (LSE: GAW) and its 5.7% yielding dividend.

Games Workshop is the owner of the rights to the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K fantasy worlds that are fleshed out through books, video games, and the core tabletop games. Over the decades the company has built up an incredibly loyal fan base that buys these figures both online and at 460 retail locations scattered across the globe.

And a recent overhaul to the core products appears to have been enthusiastically embraced as constant currency sales rose 13.3% year-on-year in H1 to £62.7m. In the same period, operating profits rose a whopping 122% to £13.8m.

While this double-digit growth is very welcome for income investors, the main attractions should be the core group of loyal fans who buy the company’s new releases year after year. As long as the company continues to engage positively with these customers, it can rely on fairly reliable revenue streams over the long term.

Also attractive is the fact that the company currently pays out the vast majority of its earnings to shareholders since it has little need for big capital investments. In H1 this meant a 25p dividend for shareholders on earnings per share of 34p. With a 5.7% yield, a forward P/E ratio of only 11.7 and a very loyal customer base I believe Games Workshop is a share income investors will find easy to love.

A more mainstream money-spinner 

A more conventional income option is industrial property REIT Hansteen Holdings (LSE: HSTN). The company’s shares currently offer up a 5% yield based on last year’s dividends, but should be in for a hefty special dividend in the coming quarters. This is because Hansteen has just sold its entire German and Dutch portfolio for €1.28bn. Net of debt payback and tax, this should leave some £650m to play with and investors should expect a good chunk of this to be returned to them.

But even after selling off its holdings in these two countries, the company is left with significant property in the UK and smaller portfolios in Belgium and France. The remaining assets in the UK are still quite attractive as they’re throwing off an 8.1% yield and have an ultra low vacancy rate of 7.7%.

One thing to keep an eye on is that the value of the company’s UK property is only £676m. This relatively small size combined with the asset sales in Europe suggest to me and other analysts that management could be setting itself up for a sale. If they can haggle for a premium similar to the 6% negotiated on the sale of German and Dutch assets, investors should be quite happy. And if there is no sale, investors will still have a hefty 5%-plus dividend yield. Either way there’s no reason to complain.

The top analysts at the Motley Fool didn't include either of these firms in their latest free report, Five Shares To Retire On, preferring to pick defensive stocks that provide steady sales no matter the economic environment. This has worked wonders for their shareholders, who have enjoyed FTSE 100-beating performances for more than 15 years. 

To discover these five stocks that could help you retire in comfort, simply follow this link for your free, no-obligation copy of the report. 

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Ian Pierce has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Hansteen Holdings. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

[magua-vida]

I love that Motley and Nocturne present two different flavors of Solitaires; the former is loud, casual, and very affable while the latter is mostly calm, cool, and somewhat cold. Both are dramatic, insightful, and dangerous.

Also, it'd be hilarious to see the party's reaction to you Going Down With The Clown.

That's swell~ Motley plays more like The Fool kind of archetype but knows what he's doing. One scene is him planting a foot on a knocked down Drukhari and the latter can't do anything about it. A moment later,

"Motley frowned unhappily and shot Ozarhylh a mournful, pleading look. For all the cheap theatrics Ozarhylh understood that the Harlequin was telling him to come along now or suffer retribution later."

_____

Hmm, tbh, Idk who would suit voicing Nocturne. There's Samuel Ramey with a deeper register (albeit, he's an operatic bass), who voiced the Beast in Over the Garden Wall and performed as Phantom, but idk much else.

_____

What does Meli like about Nocturne? And how do you think Yrliet and Marazhai react to finding out that she's being romanced by a Solitaire? How would the two find out about it?

I love that "acts like an idiot but is actually absurdly smart and competent" trope. I dunno why, but I've always liked it. I feel like I'm going to enjoy Motley a lot. XD

Oh man, it's been forever since I've watched Over the Garden Wall. I may have to look it up, because I don't think I remember his voice, even.

There's definitely an allure to the mystery of Nocturne for Meli. He's got that sort of charm that's difficult to resist. Also, he's helped her out a lot when she's in difficult positions, which helps, lol.

As for Yrliet and Marazhai, I think they'd both definitely be taken aback. Marzhi less so, since he's somewhat more used to seeing Harlequin in Commorragh. He doesn't understand it, but he doesn't care enough about Meli on a personal/romantic level to do anything about it.

We see in game that Yrliet is definitely afraid of Solitaires in the same way many aeldari are, even saying something about how it leads to misfortune or something similar, iirc. She definitely tries to talk Meli out of having any sort of relationship with him, and genuinely thinks that this will end with Meli dead and the rest of the crew possibly joining her.