D&D 5E: The Rise of Tiamat 3/5/2015

It has been awhile since I have last done an update for D&D 5E, but on Sunday March 1st our gaming group completed the campaign for 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen' and we were planning on rolling right into the next campaign book, 'The Rise of Tiamat'.

 

'The Rise of Tiamat' is a Level 8-15 campaign and the next installment in the storyline 'Tyranny of Dragons'.

 

With my oldest son just starting a new job, weekends were going to be tough for us to do. So our Dungeon Master put together a new group for us that would be meeting on Thursday nights. Some of his other weeknight players started to not take the game seriously, so he took his dedicated players and my son and I for a new Thursday night group.

 

Our first meeting was Thursday March 5th, it was more of a meet-n-greet with the other players, and the first half of the night some of them were rolling new characters. My son and I are happy with how our existing characters are, so we decided to keep playing with them. Our new group is going to consist of a 'Ranger' (myself), 'Fighter' (my son), 'Monk', 'Palladin' and a 'Warlock'.

 

Once the characters were rolled off, we started into the new campaign 'The Rise of Tiamat'.

 

Currently our characters are attending a council meeting, and are set to roll out for our first adventure.

 

Stay tuned for a quick recap following our next session on Thursday March 12th.

 

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/25/2015

Episode 6: Castle Naerytar  / Episode 7: The Hunting Lodge

The first thing we had to take care of today was getting our Cleric and Fighter conscious again.  Being a Level 5 Ranger, I had still had two spell slots remaining and one of my spells is Cure Wounds.  I quickly cast that on the Cleric so he could gain a few hit points.  Once the Cleric was conscious, he was able to cast Prayer of Healing with a Level 3 spell slot and we all regained 20 additional hit points.  Once we were all on our feet again we were ready to continue through the castle and carry on.

We managed to find the steps leading to the dungeon of the castle and hopefully our way out.  Once in the dungeon we came across a pool of water and we saw looed to be a gem sparkling in the water.  Our Rogue use Mage Hand to reach in and grab the gem.  Thinking it was safe, our Fighter got greedy and reached into the water to scoop up some gold and some kind of glob dripped onto him causing some acid burns.  Once we took care of the glob, the Rogue continued to scoop up the remaining valuables.

Continuing through the dungeon we managed to come into a room that was filled with mist, all but our Cleric rolled poorly on our Perception rolls and the Cleric being short as he is, managed to see on the ground what looked to be markings of a teleport.  Our Dwarf Cleric shouted out the words "DRAZIR" and poof, we all vanished.

The next thing we realized we were all standing in a wooded forest and what looked to be a lodge in the distance.  We decided to proceed towards the lodge and enter.  We searched most of the first floor and the second floor with not much alarm, until we were approached by four guards.  The guards had said that Talis has been expecting us.  Not wanting to put up a fight at this moment, we decided to see what Talis had wanted from us.  When we met Talis and asked what she wanted, she said that she has been watching us from the beginning and has an offer for us.  She believes that her ranking in the Cult should be higher than what it is, and wants us to eliminate Rezmir.  Talis also mentioned to us that she will provide guidance on reaching Skyreach Castle and will also provide a pass-phrase.  We accepted Talis's offer with the condition that she provide us food and shelter for the night and we will continue the journey in the morning.

That was all the time we had for today's session.  By completing Episode 6 and Episode 7, we all gained 2 levels.  Myself, my youngest son the Cleric, the Rogue are all Level 7, and my oldest son the Fighter is now Level 8.

We will be missing the next two weeks,  So stay tuned later in February as we eneter the final episode of the adventure 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/18/2015

Episode 6: Castle Naerytar continued

Today's adventure has us continuing to search through the castle to find more clues about the Cult of the Dragon Queen.  We had two encounters today, so not much exploring was done.  From where we left off last week, we headed upstairs to the 3rd floor of the castle and found ourselves inside what looked to be an observatory.  As we were investgating what looked like a telescope (but with the possibly of showing us the future), we were attacked by 4 gargoyles made of stone.  Being made of stone our mundane weapons did hot do much damage to them, only magical weapons had full effect.  It took us quite awhile to bring down these gargoyles, but we finally managed.  We also did manage to find some kind of a keyword, "DRAZIR", not sure what that means yet but I am sure we will be finding out.

We then headed back downstairs to the first floor to continue our exploration.  As soon as we arrived at the 1st floor landing we were approached by 8 cultists and 4 dragonclaws and they gave us a riddle: "when the sun is high", after two failed attempts at the riddle, we decided to attack.... 4 on 12.... we were abe to bring down pretty easily, but being outnubered 3:1 was pretty tough.  We eventually defeated them, but or Fighter and Cleric are both now unconscious.

We ended our session at this point and will continue next week...........

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/11/2015

Episode 6: Castle Naerytar

Continuing from where we left off, our adventuring party was now approaching Castle Naerytar.  We dismembarked from our canoes and started to make our way towards the castle.  We were approached by some Lizardfolk and talked our way into having them show us the direction to the castle entrance.  Instead of always 'hacking' out way through the adventure, I thought today would be best to try and talk our way out of some of the encounters.

We entered the castle and started making our way through the ground floor.  Most of the encounters we used the same story that we were working for the 'Cult of the Dragon Queen' and that Rezmir (a half dragon) was expecting us.  When we approached the inner ward of the castle we were attacked by 3 guard drakes.  Now that we are all at level 5 and our fighter level 6, the guard drakes were no match for us.  We continued our exploration and came across a guest room that looked to be occupied.  We rummaged through the dresser drawers and came acroos some red robes (we believe they belong to a red wizard we encountered on our caravan) and a small locked wooden box.  At that moment a fireball shot into the room catching the room on fire, our party took full damage except my Wood Elf Ranger only suffered from half damage.  Once we regained some hit points we attempted to pick the lock of the wooden box.  We left that to our Rogue, he picked the lock and opened the box and an acid arrow shot right at him causing enough damage to bring his hit points to 0.  Our Cleric stabilized him and then healed him with some magic.

We were at our stopping point for the day.  In the room we found a spiral staircase leading to the second floor of the castle and we will continue from that point next week.

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D&D 5E: Hoard of the Dragon Queen 1/1/2015

In yesterday's blog post I mentioned I am going to include some of the other games I/we are playing like Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.  Seeing how we are a couple months into the adventure I will just continue these going forward instead of catching the blog back up.  I will try and keep these pretty short and quick.

Yesterday on New Year's Day 2015 we continued our adventure in 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen'.  We are playing with a Level 5 Human Fighter, a Level 4 Wood Elf Ranger (me), a Level 4 Dwarf Cleric and a Level 4 Wood Elf Rogue.

Currently in our adventure we are on a 60 day journey taking us from the town of Balders Gate to Waterdeep.  We are traveling with a caravan and tracking down some Dragon Cultists who we discovered are carrying gold and jewels up North.  During this journey we are met with some encounters.  Yesterday we picked up on Day 22 of our journey and ran into a few more encounters.  The first encounter was 'The Golden Stag' in which our caravan approached the stag.  Most of the members of our caravan that we were riding with wanted to hunt down the stag, with a few that wanted to protect it.  Beeing a Wood Elf Ranger with a background in Outlander and the ability to favor Beasts and Forests, I wanted to track down the stag and learn some information.  I succesfully tracked the stag into the forest and approached the beautiful golden stag.  We spoke in the Elvish tongue and he was grateful that I did not harm him.  He presented me with a Magical Golden Bow +1.  We also learned information that we must follow the golden river to the castle in the sky.  I then found my way back to caravan and we continued on to Waterdeep.

Our second encounter 'Payback' we came across a man buried in the middle of the road up to his head.  We managed to dig him out and then magically healed him so we can gain some more information.  He also told us he was working for the same people as us and was a member of the 'Harpers' organization.  He provided us information that we needed to find a roadhouse that was North of Waterdeep.

We finally reached the city of Waterdeep and quickly settled any debts we had from our journey.  We were hired on as workers the next day to fix a road from Waterdeep to Neverwinter.  Once we reached the roadhouse our Fighter was recognized from our 60 day journey from one of the Cultists and was challenged in a duel.  While he was fighting the rest of us decided to search the roadhouse and came across a trap door.  The Fighter won his fight and we waited for nightfall to back through the trap door.  As we picked the lock to the storeage room (where the trap door was located) we came across 6 Lizardfolk, the 4 of us quickly defeated them and we descended down the door that lead us through a tunnel to a swamp.  When we reached the swamped I noticed some footprints and we decided to follow those to a Lizardfolk camp.  We were then approached by 9 more Lizardfolk and took down 8 of them and knocking out the last 1 so we can interogate him.  Once he awoken, the Fighter intimidated him to provide us with some information that would lead us to the castle.  We then decided to rest at the Lizardfolk camp.

We then ended our adventure for the day, with all of us gaining a new level.  I am looking forward to seeing what Level 5 will bring my Wood Elf Ranger.  Our next session will not be until 1/11/2015.

I guess I really didn't keep this short :)

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Happy New Year! What's in store for 2015

First off to any readers out there, I would like to wish a Happy New Year 2015!

As you can notice, I spent some time last night going back to a simplified template for Blogger.  I still have some work I need to continue on it today/tomorrow.  One reaon going back to simplified was the Blogger app for iPad.  Now when I use the app to write a post, my fonts will match the template.  With my advanced template I was running, the Blogger app would publish my posts in a large font and not match my site.

Today is the day we try and make a plan for our hobbying/gaming for the upcoming year.  I hope you read yesterday's post on what was and was not accomplished for 2014 and we will be expanding on that.

First off I'd like to say again that 2014 was a good year for me in regards to hobbying/gaming.  I picked up the paint brush again after a long hiatus and finished quite a few armies for Bolt Action and had my second highest 'Painting Points' total ever.  On a personal note, the end of 2014 was not too good to me.  The Monday before Thanksgiving my Father past away after being on this earth for 79 years.  It was all of a sudden and we were not expecting it.  Your life changes after something like that and we had to make arrangements to send him back to Chicago and for my family to all go back there.  Now a lot of my time is going to be helping my Mother out to make sure she can continue with the finances and what not.

Bolt Action

On that note we are going to be starting with Bolt Action.  With 'Gathering in the Desert' not happening this year, I was going to be organizing a 1 day tournament for Bolt Action, 'Operation Desert Assault' on April 18th, 2015 (www.operationdesertassault.com), but with the circumstances mentioned above, I had to cancel/postpone the event.  I am unsure exactly what our family situation will be at that time and I may have to devote some finances to my Mother.  I am hoping to maybe just postpone the event to maybe late August or early September.

Gaming:  Bolt Action will more than likely be a top 2 game for me this year.  With 3 fully painted armies, ease of rules, I definitely see this game hitting the table a lot this year, either in the smaller 600 point games, larger 1000 point games or even Tank Wars.

Modeling:  This will be a tough one, I do not want to get my hopes up to high for the year.  I still have planty of models for the game that need to be painted for the three armies I have.  I think to be safe to say, I will concentrate on those models before I venture off on any new armies (but we never know).

X-Wing

Gaming:  In 2014 I was really amazed on how much I really like this game.  100 points in 75 minutes with quick setup and pack up.  I have a feeling this will be my number 1 played game for the year.  I am even going to try to attend some of the local tournaments / store championships with a 'lets have fun' attitude and get some more games in.  I along with my son recently joined the 'Phoenix Squadron' gaming club on Facebook to be more in touch with X-Wing events here in Phoenix.  I am hoping to get more games in with the members this year.  With the new Star Wars movie coming out in December, I can see a late push in the year getting more games in.

Collecting:  Well there is not much modeling in this game (I am not one to paint the already pre-painted models).  So we make this paragraph about Collecting.  My goal for the year will be to have all the ships in the collection as they are released.  We are pretty close to it at this point except for the 'huge ships'.  We'll be sure to add those also to our collection even though they may not see much playing time.  Obviously some of the ships we collect, we will have mulitples.  I am also going to get caught up on the 'Battlefoam' that we need for our ships.  I still need foam for Wave IV and Wave V and maybe a dedicated abag (currently we share the same bag for Bolt Action), this one I am unsure about and it will soley depend on the finances.

Dungeons & Dragons

Gaming:  Back in August my family got into D&D 5E and I am really enjoying it.  We meet every Sunday (when we can) at Desert Sky Games from 12pm-2pm (we actually also played today to make up some time from the Holidays).  We currently playing the first adventure "Horde of the Dragon Queen" and I hope we finish that one shortly and continue on to the second adventure "The Rise of Tiamat".  We will see what other adventures it brings us afterwards.  I think for 2015 we will stick to just one RPG game, with everything else I have, there is not time to expand into any of the others.  I even went out and purchased a new iPad Air just for this game (so I can have a larger viewing character sheet over my iPad Mini).

Collecting:  Even though they do have models you can use for D&D, we currently do not need them for our adventures and I do no expect to be purchasing any.  Even though Wizkids did just release D&D Attack Wing which is very similiar to X-Wing.... OK, let's not go there.....

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

Gaming:  With the recent end of the year sale at our LGS Empire Games, my son and I decided to pick the core set for this game and the first 2 adventure packs.  I know this game is a 'living card game' and can get quite expensive to keep up with it.  All we have done so far was the get the card in their sleeves and start reading the rulebook.  We are planning to start our adventures tomorrow January 2nd.  We were debating between LotR and Star Wars, but with us already playing X-Wing and with the final release of the Hobbit movie recently, we elected to go with LotR.  Stay tuned to this site to follow our adventures while we learn the game.

Collecting:  OH BOY!!!! as long as we really enjoy this game, I can see us going back and catching up on all the expansion and adventure packs....

Now I am going to talk about some of our other games that we have previously played and may or may not make a comeback.  I know my son is going to be reading this, so these are a very slim chance and don't get your hopes up to high.

Warhammer 40K

Gaming:  I still have some armies left for this game (I did not sell them all).  I know I do not have the current ruleset (I don't think I even had the previous edition rules).  I would need to evaluate the cost of purchasing a rulebook to how much we would actually play before I make the leap and get a game in.

Modeling; I do not plan on any modeling at the moment.  I think I have still have at least 2000 points of Chaos Space Marines that need assembling and painting let alone quite a few models for my son. 

So there is a very slim chance in getting back into Warhammer 40k.  On a scale of 1-10, I would rank it a 3.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles

Gaming:  Even though I spent a little money and time getting some of my models out last year, I honestly do not see this game hitting the table in 2015.  I think Kings of War would stand a better chance.  Rank 1.

Modeling:  I do not see this happening in 2015, my son may be disappointed at this decision since we were thinking about updateing his Wood Elves last year.

Warmachine

Gaming:  I don't think I played a game of Warmachine since 2011 (maybe got a game in 2012, not sure).  I believe my rulebooks are still current and we do have quite a few fully painted armies.  I can maybe see getting in at least 1 or 2 games this year....anymore than that wil depend if the bug to replay bites.  Rank 3.

Modeling:  I have a Khador unit that needs to be finished.  Probably will not happen unless I really feel like painting.

Flames of War

Gaming:  There may be a chance for a game or two, but no plans at the moment.  Rank 2.

Modeing:  This may happen only because I would use the tanks in Bolt Action Tank Wars.

Legends of the Old West

Gaming:  If not Legends of the Old West (since Warhammer Historicals no longer exists) maybe another Old West skirmish game that may be out there.  Rank 2.

Modeling:  I have plenty of model and terrain for Old West that still needs to be painted.  Slim but a possibility.

Onto some possible new games in 2015.

Kings of War

Gaming:  Since I do not own any specific Kings of War armies (unless I can utilize some of my WFB armies) this is another slim chance unless the Fantasy bug decides to bite me this year.  Rank 2.

Modeling:  Not in the foreseeable future, but the models are not too expensive.

Beyond the Gates of Antares

Gaming:  This is a new Science Fiction game from Warlord Games that is based off of Bolt Action and written by Rick Priestly.  I also love Sci-Fi as much as Fantasy.  If I decide the pricing to get back into Warhammer 40K is too much, I may have to dive into this game.  Currently the rules are in Beta and are availble for free to download.  I'll have to spend some time in the very near future and give them a read thru to see how much I like the game.  Knowing the rules for Bolt Action, I should be able to easily understand them.  Rank 7.

Modeling:  They have just recently released some models for the game.  I have yet to see any up in person.  If I like the rules, I may order some to take a look at them.

Ok, I think I am now starting to stretch myself thin again.  Besidies gaming, my family and I have plenty of other hobbies.  We as a whole family love to go to the gun range (so ammo takes money), plus my youngest son just recently got into model rocketry, so I am spending time with him going to club launches.  Plus I used to race RC cars and Slot Cars and haven't touched those much last year either. Then there is the personal fitness.  In the Summer I started my diet again and picked up road cycling.  So I have been trying to ride as much as I can each week also.  It has been very busy.

I have also been thinking about consolidating/adding some of my other hobbies into this site (the model rocketry) and including D&D and LotR; The Card Game and others.  The name will still be The Old West Chronicle, but instead of 'Wargaming Out West' maybe 'Gaming Out West' or 'Hobby Life Out West'.  Making the blog more of an everyday blog instead of just a wargaming blog.  I am still undecided on this one.

I believe that is all for now....  time to start hitting the gaming tables for the year.

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2014 Year in Review

As with most miniature gamers who take up blogging, today is the day to write about what we acomplished and did not accomplish during the year.

For myself, all I can say is that 2014 was a huge success for me regarding gaming.  Seeing how in 2013 I only had 2 blog posts, and 3 in 2012, to already finish 2014 with 85 posts is an accompishment all by itself.

On to the actually gaming.......

Bolt Action

At the end of January 2014, I was introduced to a farely new 28mm WWII game called Bolt Action.  Seeing how I always loved the WWII era and have been waiting for a ruleset to catch on world wide, I jumped right into it.  A long time friend of mine (Tim @ Cursed Treasures) was bringing back his 2 day event "Gathering in the Desert" for 2014 and it was going to be Bolt Action (previously LotR).  I had 3 weeks to get an army built, painted and ready for the tournament.  I acomplished getting 1000 points of Soviets completed and had a great time playing in the event and catching up with some old friends.  My son had also played in the event with a borrowed army and also had a good time.  It was now time to get him an army built and painted so we can get some more games in.

I finished 1000 points of US for him, plus we managed to get a German army done and also added some new units to our armies.  I was able to get in 21 games for the year, most of them were in the first half of 2014.  After the summer my gaming and blogging took a little hiatus and I was concentratng once again on my personal health and exercising more.

We still have a lot more models to paint up and complete for this game, hopefully we'll get them done in 2015.

X-Wing

X-Wing really surprised me in 2014.  At first I did not want to get into 'another' miniature game with all my time contraints, but I am glad that I did.  My son was playing the game for most of 2013 and finally on my 40th birthday in March of 2014 I had him give me an introduction to the game.  Boy did I really like the game.  First off, there is nothing to paint (sure you can paint the models if you really wanted to, but I feel Fantasy Flight Games did a really nice job on the pre-painted models).  Second a standard game is 100 points which is to be played in 75 minutes.  This was a huge plus for me.  I really do not care to spend 3-4 hours playing one game, so to get a game in just over an hour was a huge benefit.  And finally it's 'Star Wars'....

I managed to get 20 games in for the year (with the last game being yesterday afternoon) and I see many more games for 2015.

Warhammer Fantasy

This was a bust for me.  I had some hope to revive this game in 2014 and managed to get 2 games in.  I also dug out a lot of my old models and started to touch some up, but the summer came and once again this game slid from me.  The time and money to get a unit completed in this game is starting to get ridiculous with Games Workshop pricing.

Flames of War

Another bust.  I also had some high hopes for this game seeing how I already had some models for this game.  I had my friend (Rob @ Drunken Samurai) re-teach me the game and also managed to get a game in with my son.  But seeing how at the time I was really into Bolt Action, another WWII based game (and in 15mm scale) was starting to look slim.  When Bolt Action released their Tank Wars book, my son and I did manage to use our Flames of War models to play some of the Tank Wars games.

Dungeons & Dragons

In August of 2014, Wizards released Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.  I always wanted to really get into D&D and did manage to find a group back in 3E, but that did not last long.  Before I bought any books for 5E, I went to find a group to play with.  I managed to get a hold of a Dungeon Master playing at Desert Sky Games who offerered to run a campaign for me and two of my sons.  We then also recruited another player and the adventure began.  We are now playing every Sunday from 12pm-2pm at Desert Sky Games and I am really enjoying playing 5th Edition.

Well that is about all for 2014.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on what to expect for 2015.

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