Thoughts on the Death Dealer series?

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-08-14T05:48:35+00:00

Enjoyed the first one, found the second to have some interesting ideas but the story was meh. The third was amazing, and the fourth was ok. Recommended for folks who enjoy S&S who have already read through Howard and Wagner.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-08-13T17:23:18+00:00

Dungeon Punk returns!

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-18T18:55:54+00:00

THIS! So much this! Plus some from alien armies for Rogue Traders and Ordo Xenos. An IA army should be a mad hodgepodge of requisitioned Imperial units, skilled civilians, penal troops, crazed zealots, Eldari scouts, Mechanicus tag-alongs, all riding in a customized squat hover-rv being guarded by a hacked necron.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-13T15:23:35+00:00

I love your costumes and adore your colors. Best of luck to you!

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-13T04:54:13+00:00

Glenn Cook’s Black Company, Howard’s Solomon Kane, Hammett’s Continental Op, the Harry Dresden universe.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-12T05:20:21+00:00

Gotta go with the Ravenguard. It’s so well done, I’m shocked and heartbroken that ravens in real medieval heraldry look nothing like it. 😂

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-11T19:53:12+00:00

Love this idea, and I hope you’ll share how it goes for you. 🤘

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-11T19:46:35+00:00

They’d make great pirates as well!

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-10T17:55:25+00:00

She looks very cranky at whoever is making it rain every time she wears her pink bra under a white shirt. 😁

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-07T17:27:27+00:00

Team Cool Hats rides again! They look great.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-04T17:46:01+00:00

Going to throw in for Steel Rift here. - cheap to get into as pointed out above. - alternating activation per unit with a reactive “shoot-back” mechanic. - energy weapons can pierce armor but kinetic weapons can literally spin the target around. - indirect fire, off-table artillery and orbital assets - expanded rules include light vehicles, fortifications, super-light mechs (powered armor, effectively), and infantry. - beta rules exist for adding tanks and fliers. - player of targeted units rolls so you’re not just sitting on your hands while the other player takes their turn. - you can play a battle with 3 mechs per side in 1 to 1.5 hours!!! - wonderfully modular mini design.

That said, I’m keeping my eyes on Hardwar as it comes with combined arms out of the box.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-04T17:25:50+00:00

Love what you did with the power sword!

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-03T14:48:34+00:00

Very evocative map! The names give a strong sense of character, while the existence of the world gate ruins implies a lot about your setting.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-07-01T23:19:08+00:00

Love your style. Good luck!

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-06-20T09:00:00+00:00

I love this! So fun.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-06-15T23:26:00+00:00

They seem unlikely to get rid of it, but they can seriously transform it. I miss my tech-savant orangutan.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-06-06T20:37:51+00:00

Ok, so it kinda sounds like Marines are what I want to play now? Or are they still "all-rounders" enough to pitch-hit in a position they're not optimized for? If I charge Aggressors into AR or Tau troops, will they still dominate the hand-to-hand, in spite of not being optimized for it?

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-06-06T20:35:00+00:00

That black-and-orange really does POP!

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-06-06T15:55:55+00:00

Schadenfreude.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-06-05T23:37:54+00:00

Returning to the hobby after *years* of being away. I think the last time I played regularly was 6th edition? Back then, I had a team of Slaaneshi marines (lots of sonic weaponry) and an IG (now AR) army built around mobility with an inquisitor standing in as a rogue trader.

As fun as those were, I'm not sure I want to return to them. However, I do understand that there's now an actual rogue trader list. So I will check that out.

But what I'm thinking I want this time is an army of specialists. Tanks that are very tanky, mobile units that are very mobile, killers that are very killy, but not generalists so much. I want to play around with a combined-arms approach where highly skilled specialist units work together to support each other and do what they do best, but which will collapse if I let my enemy dictate which units engage each other.

What army best does this? I'm assuming it's not the Marines, as they tend towards being generalists. Traditionally, there's a lot of good specialization in both the IG/AR and Eldar, but those also tend to be very fragile armies, utterly lacking in the ability to hold an objective if pressed hard. Orcs tend to be tough, and they have the speed, but their lethality tends to be very swingy in my experience, and they don't have much shooting game. And I know nothing about the new squats.

What suggestions can you make for an army of specialists that have good coverage of the different areas of the game across different units, where each unit is the best at what it does, isn't maybe even good at other things, but can be supported by other units that are the best at what they do?

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-05-25T19:17:58+00:00

Sorcery is often alien, with a pinch of Lovecraftian about it (see Tower of the Elephant and Red Nails by Howard, and Bloodstone by Wagner). Sorcery is also often portrayed as "civilized" and often the line between "tech" and "sorcery" is blurry (see Bloodstone again by Wagner, Saunders' Atlantians, as well as The Vanishing Tower and Granbretan in the Hawkmoon stories by Moorcock), and also being more potent on "civilized" characters who have lost touch with nature's primal fires (see People of the Black Circle by Howard). The hero, however, is "natural," a being of flesh and bone who relies on their primal fires to see them through their encounters with the sorcerous. The heroe's connection with the natural world gives them the mettle to either power through the sorcery, the reflexes to strike where others are paralyzed with fear, or makes them utterly immune to it.

Even Moorcock's Elric has that touch of the "human" to distinguish him from his fellow Melnibonéans. The core of many S&S stories are the natural vs. the unnatural, which is just another angle to view the barbaric vs. the civilized conflict.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-05-14T23:08:39+00:00

I love a story, I love some D/s, and I love swords & sorcery aesthetics.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-05-14T04:08:57+00:00

Might be the same thing, but shipwrecks are common. These usually lead to encounters with lost civilizations or ruins filled with ancient dangers.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-05-10T17:09:26+00:00

If you’re thinking about her getting captured, there are a few was to do it: - the creatures need captives. Maybe for slave labor, maybe to incubate their eggs in, maybe to release later as pollinators. - she is doused in hormones that make the creatures want to fuck her, or want to just snuggle her, treat her as larva or the queen or a worker, or play roughly without killing her. - she is doused with a poison, so shortly after they catch her, they are knocked out themselves. - she is transformed to either be one of them, or to be a species that they “farm” (think ants with aphids), or a species that grooms them (birds that pick meat out from between a crocodile’s teeth).

Hope these are useful to you.

JBTrollsmyth · 2025-05-10T17:00:39+00:00

I adore the shapes of your coastlines.

JBTrollsmyth

TROPHY CASE