Being a vengeful revenant has its perks

A few days ago I jumped at the chance to acquire Shadow of Mordor. The game is mechanically similar to the Assassins Creed series and the Batman Arkham series. But the setting is obviously very different.
You play as Talion, a Gondorian ranger. Quite early in the game, in fact during the tutorial, your wife, son and yourself get murdered as Sauron's forces overrun the citadel you are stationed at. (Minas Anor?) However, since it is Sauron's Black Hand that kills you in some kind of ritual, you don't stay dead.
You come back, as a wraith. And you bring back a buddy, an Elf Lord, who is just as undead as you are. And also even more vengeful. And a bit of an amnesiac. From what I pieced together he seems to have fallen in battle during the time when the last alliance fought Sauron.
Now both of you are united in the quest to bring down the Black Hand.

You do this by eliminating the Captains and war chiefs of Sauron's army one after another. This is the highlight of the game. Captains are randomly generated with different strengths and weaknesses. They grow in power and fight each other. Orcs and Uruks who manage to kill you get promoted.
But since you don't exactly stay dead, this is a mixed blessing for the orcs as you will come after them.
For example the first orc that killed me and became known as Puk Eye-Gouger. He became quite powerful as I died twice to him, before I put an arrow through his eye. But the bastard survived that. So I used the help of the Elf Lord to gain insight in his weaknesses. Read that as "forcefully tore it from the mind of one of his underlings". I found out he was scared of Caragors, those Warg thingies.

I rode a Caragor right into his fortress, tore apart his guard and chopped his head off while he was screaming in terror.

Yeah, the Nemesis system is fun!

Another great thing is the free flow combat system. Each attack you land increases a counter, set number allow you to land special moves, such as an instant kill or knock everyone back. Any hit you take resets the counter. If an enemy attacks, you have to block. Certain enemies like berserkers can't be blocked and must be dodged, shieldbeares have to be attacked from behind etc. And everything has to be done with, as best as I can describe it, a rythm. Also, it looks freaking beautiful, as you slash, slice, dodge, block, weave and slaughter your way through masses of enemies.

There are also hundreds of things to collect, because Batman and the Assassins liked to hoard stuff, too. Guess you can't do games like this without this.

I'm just wondering, don't all wraiths fall under the spell of the Dark Lord?


A wraith for barely four hours and already loving it!
Fenris

Spitfires are awesome, but so is ODD...

Two more games done, both against Kenza(Mark) 200pts and 250pts with a 12XP Specop. Both with classifieds

First game:





I fielded an Al'Hawwa hacker, a Hunzakut FO, a Muyib with Spitfire, a Kaplan with Spitfire, a Ghulam doc, two Ghulam (one LT), a Lasiq Sniper and a Djanbazan Doc. My enemy brought Joan of Arc decked out in her mobility armour, an ORC Hacker, a Bulleteer, Konstantinos, a Fusilier Hacker, two fusiliers, a Trauma Doc.

Mark won Initiative and set up mostly on the right side, with Joan and an Fusilier holding down the left. I set up my Lasiq and Djan in good overwatch position, the Ghulam hid, covering secondary firelanes, the Muyib and Kaplan positioned to move up left and center and the Al'Hawwa infiltrated far left, while the Hunzakut hid near a Snack Bar upfield near the right.

Mark moved up Konstantinos, who promptly got shot at by my Lasiq. Sadly, it bounced off his BTS. But it gave him a bit of a scare. Next, Joan moved to the right, discovered my Hunzakut and promptly put a lot of superflous, but deadly holes into him.




During my turn I snuck up my Al'Hawwa and D-charged one of those pretty japanese arches netting me a classified. The he recamoed and put a Boarding Shotgun slug into the Fusilier holding down the left, before hiding again. I repositioned and went into suppressive fire where possible.


Next turn saw my Lasiq go down to a deadly shootout with the Bulleteer, though the Bulleteer also bought the farm. (Do Remotes dream of electric wheatfields?) Sadly the Lasiq was killed outright, leaving the Ghulam Doc close to her unable to do anything, but scream: "NOOOOOOO!" in a suitably dramatic fashion. Konstantinos moved up behind the Snack Bar, chugged a D-Charge into the coffee maker and denied this vital resource to the enemy, fulfilling a classified. (I think Haqqislamites prefer Tea, though.)



I responded by moving up my Muyib, who relentlessly chased down Joan, finally downing her with the deadly hail of bullets from her spitfire and putting Mark's troops in loss of Lieutenant.




This put quite a spanner in the works, but Mark managed, with the last of his orders to move up a fusilier hacker, who spotlighted my Muyib, netting him his second classified.

Finally my Muyib traded a silly amount of shots with the Fusilier Hacker, finally killing the girl in blue. Then the Kaplan moved around the bar and shot and killed Konstantinos. The Orc Hacker may also have fallen to the Muyib, my memory is fuzzy on that.

Second game


I fielded the Al'Hawwa, A Farzan FO, a Husam Specop (Engineer, Hacker, Myuib armament), an Odalisque with Spitfire, A Kaplan with Spitfire, A rifle-Lasiq, a Djanbazan with HMG, a Hafza LT, and a Ghulam.
Mark had Joan again, a Aquila Guard with HMG, a Specop, the Bulleteer, a Fusilier Hacker, a Trauma Doc and later on an Akal and a Croc Man.

He setup well spread out this time, with Joan and Aquila taking the left (now my right) and the Bulleteer and Specop took the right. I setup my Lasiq and Djan central, planning to cover a firelane up the middle. But having a bit of a brain lag, I setup prone, so I could not get shot. And also not shoot at people passing the firelane. *deeerp* The Al'Hawwa infiltrated on the right, the Farzan on a building on the left.

First turn the Bulleteer and specop moved up, because my Lasiq and Djan were prone. The Bulleteer blasted my Al'Hawwa to shreds. The Aquila moved up in a better firing position as did Joan. I scrambled to stop the Bulleteer with my Djan, but due to a Hacker buff and suppressive fire, the Djan went down. I tried to hunker down in suppresive fire, not sure how to blow up the Snack bar since I had pulled the Sabotage classified again.



Second round the hidden Croc man appeared, moved up to the Lasiq and placed a mine. I'm not sure what else happened. On my turn I tried to nanopulser the Bulleteer, but failed. My Lasiq tried to bring down the Aquila, but failed. -,- My Farzan leaned out, tried to discover the Croc man and suceeded ... wait, what? Then he forward observed him. Several times, but finally netting me a classified. The he shotgunned the Croc man.



Third round an Akal walked in close to the Bulleteer, who shot my Hafza to death putting me into LoL. Joan sprayed the Farzan with her Spitfire, taking him out.

The Specop moved to my HVT and nicked Gogo Marlenes camerbots card, probably hoping for racy pictures of the Human Sphere's prime celebrity.



I used up my leftover Command Tokens to move my Husam around a container, shotgunned the Akal, slinging the templates into the Bulleteer. The Akal dropped, the Bulleteer didn't. I shotgunned the Bulleteer again, but the Husam took a Spitfire round to the face and dropped. Maybe the adrenaline made him miss. Lastly the Kaplan Doc fired a few rounds at the Bulleteer, but missed entirely.


What did we learn?

- High burst is great
- ODD makes it really hard to hit things
- if you want to hold down a firelane, make sure you can actually fire -,-
- coordinated orders are useful
- don't be too aggressive with infiltration
- Joan makes for a great Lieutenant (I have been wanting to do an Order of Mercy force for some time now)


also highly classified
Fenris

Pretty pictures!

I found some trial pictures I shot in the summer on my camera, while shooting some of my Infinity minis:

Flowers are great, they don't move and are colorful, so you can play around with your cameras settings.

Al'Hawwa

Ghulam

Jannissary

Also some minis, The last one was painted a while ago. The first two are my current Haqqislam color scheme.

Fusiliers

Presented in Technicolor

Fenris

Rangers, lead the way ... to the gaming table

My USAriadna Ranger Force arrived. Hooah! A whole box of armor, guns, motorcycles and a werewolf marine. Yeah, you read that right. Werewolf Marine! My table is also getting ahead.

Needs more hexagons!

And a testmodel for the Rangers. He's a dogwarrior from the Ariadnan Kazaks. Meaning he's coming at the enemy with his knife and chain rifle, regardless of terrain in the way. And if they manage to shoot him on the way in, he flips out, turns into a werewolf and murders your face.

Rawr! I look like Clint Eastwood, when he wasn't a senile, republican old man!

And now I'm off to chew bubblegum and make food to bring to a friends party.

And I'm all out of bubblegum!

Fenris