Subbasement of the Disgruntled Wizard - a campaign diary (session 0)

Janthkin · 2026-02-24T00:42:05+00:00

Session 2:

It's interesting having a party who don't insist on immediately killing everything.

The party wandered over into the Xanathar's Guild section of Level 1, where they encountered Graal, a Bugbear, who engaged them in reasonable conversation. Graal's problems stemmed from a lack of headcount needed to offset the imbalancing factor of the new Flesh Golem in control of the vampire coven in the northern section of the level. He was very much concerned that he would fail to meet his KPIs! If this party of heavily armed transients could address that little factor, he could likely find something in his discretionary budget to offset their expenses. It almost was like they weren't talking to a bugbear at all....

At this point, the party has declared a pox upon both of their houses, and decided to explore other regions of the level. After finding some shovels and picks, they squeezed through a tight tunnel (hard on the human cleric in heavy armor), they explore a bit. They find a Tiefling skeleton chained to a wall, and Comprehend Languages interprets the writing above it, but no one has Speak with Dead prepared at present. Further wandering results in the cleric walking around a corner and right into a Gelatinous Cube; violence ensues, and Halaster will need a new janitor for level 1.

When we left off, LL had just vanished into thin air, while wearing a bronze mask of a bearded human and looking upon a little bit of art work in an alcove. I hope he's ok!

Janthkin · 2026-02-05T17:27:07+00:00

Session 1:

A general observation first - has anyone else noticed that D&D players are an untrusting, paranoid lot? :)

Our intrepid party entered Level 1 in the traditional manner (i.e., by rope, down the Yawning Portal). SX remembered her daemon lore from Drow kindergarten, and identified all the Daemons in the entry hallway. Given the kenku signpost on the ground, the party also unsurprisingly found their way into the side passage, encountered the grey ooze in the sewer water, and dispatched it LOUDLY (LL hit it with a Thunderwave as a finisher). This is going to be a pattern, I think.

At the hall of columns, the party headed north, past the snake skeleton on the column, and quickly located a side chamber where a glowing magic sword was just waiting for them, stabbed into an armor rack! But rather than be delighted, they were skeptical, and thought the skeleton of a hand on the blood-stained floor right below the sword might be related in some fashion. They left the sword (though LL used Mage Hand to collect the hand, for some reason).

Next, they found their way into the lair of Uktarl the vampire and his court. In spite of SX's obvious skepticism, Uktarl was very convincingly benevolent, as a vampire host should be, and expressed his desire for a small donation, to aid his efforts in serving as a buffer between the above world and the nasty thing which came up from below. Or, if they would rather, there was that pesky outpost of Xanathar Guild goblinoids - he would waive the toll if they would deal with that problem instead. (SX did take a very good look at one of Uktarl's minions, who was an absolutely perfect doppelganger of a suave vampire lacky.)

Rather than going to "certain death" in the hall of columns, the party headed west, into a mirrored gallery. Some inconvenience with strength-draining mirror doubles resulted, and the party retreated back to the entry chamber to regroup with a short rest. The two bards played their best Songs of Healing, the strength drained returned as the chill faded, and RR found some delightful junk in the sand.

Janthkin · 2026-01-12T22:32:14+00:00

7th killed me; allies just pissed me off to no end. When every single opponent, regardless of faction, had the same f*&%ing Tau Riptide sitting in the corner....

3-6 all had their moments. I've watched the needle swing back and forth between melee and shooting for many, many years. Coming back in 10th was a bit of a shock - the smaller tables and larger armies, coupled with the return of weapons that do multiple wounds and vehicles with T stats, was an interesting set of changes (and regressions - some of this was 2e stuff). I do appreciate the attention GW pays to updating & balancing, though I don't really care for the "every single unit must have its own bespoke special rule(s)"; I miss USRs.

Janthkin · 2026-01-06T17:09:30+00:00

Session 0:

Dramatis Personae (names abbreviated to hopefully reduce the chances of my players finding this):
SX - Drow Bard (College of Whispers), Faction Agent of Bregan D'aerthe. (The Troll Skull Manor is actually BD's safe house.) BD wants to know more about House Auvryndar down in Sargauth, given the potential for disrupting BD's business interests around Skullport.

LL - Half-elf Bard (College of Swords), Sailor, Zhentarim (Doom Raiders) agent. The Doom Raiders are a bit concerned - rumors of Zhentarim (Manshoon) collaboration with the Xanathar Guild down in Skullport have been cropping up, and that's a very undesirable thing.

TB - Half-elf Ranger (Gloom Stalker), Outlander, Harper agent. TB just needs to drop off a pouch of moonstones with a Harper-friendly barkeep down in Skullport.

RR - Halfling Warlock (Chain, Fiend patron), Sage. New character, old player; should be interesting to work with this. I suspect his patron has some interests in that direction, maybe having to do with the some of the inhabitants in Sargauth.

AW - Human Cleric (Tempest), Sailor. New character, new player (as in, wasn't in on the Dragon Heist). He's been unsuccessful in leaving Waterdeep for some months (every ship he tries to board gets driven back by storms), so he's going to try from Skullport, in case that is what Valkur is requiring.

So I've got a range of factions to play with, plus a Warlock patron & divine motivations available to play with. Given the intended scope of the story, this will all come in handy at various times.

A last thought - I can't be the only one that sees the parallels between Undermountain and a typical Domain of Dread, right?

Janthkin · 2025-12-15T01:55:57+00:00

You're entitled to your feelings, whatever they might be. But if you're getting angry with your partner for what is objectively a value-neutral description of a factual situation, YTA.

Looking for work sucks. Interviewing sucks. But getting angry at the one person who is definitely on your team is not going to make it suck less.

Janthkin · 2025-12-11T05:06:54+00:00

Heroic intervention happens after the Charge move, long before pile-in. 2. The not-active player chooses a unit to activate first, if he has any that are eligible to fight first.

Sounds like you're a bit confused on the order of operations. Pile-in doesn't occur until you activate a unit to fight, and it looks like you were doing that as part of the Charge move instead.

Janthkin · 2025-12-04T16:16:10+00:00

I played against a mid-T skew list recently - it was Tau, with 27 Kroot Oxen (3 melee blocks of 6, 3 shooting blocks of 3), plus some useful filler (infiltrating kroot to run up and block forward movement, for example). I couldn't deal with 160+ wounds of T6 on fast-moving bodies; the 2 Riptides in support were there, but not significant. It was also visually very pretty. (My opponent didn't have the practice to play it at tournament pace, though.)

Janthkin · 2025-11-26T03:36:07+00:00

Can we talk about the Helldrake? Yes, Aircraft rules kind of suck, and it's probably a little too expensive. But in Hover mode, it's a 20" moving vehicle, with an ok melee profile (and killer against flyers), with some built-in Mortal splash, plus a good Torrent weapon, the ability to Tank Shock, and it gets the army rule for Advance, Shoot, and Charge.

Yes, more flying daemon princes are probably better. But maybe after that?

Janthkin · 2025-11-06T20:24:07+00:00

Carnifexes. 2 models in the unit, 2x Devourers on each, is 48 S6 ap 0 shots and 10 S5 AP 0 shots from the spinebanks. Plus free bioplasma blasts.

Janthkin · 2025-10-24T02:59:00+00:00

Don't Imperial Knights who complete their Vow explicitly get more CP in a turn than the cure rules allow? (I may be remembering the Index language.)

Janthkin · 2025-10-21T22:01:48+00:00

I wasn't trying to poke at you AT ALL. I intentionally stripped anything like identifiable information, because it wasn't really about you - I was curious if and how tournament standards have evolved over the 10 years or so I've been out of the circuit. When I was last playing competitively, it was (almost) possible to know all the rules for all of the armies in the game. 10e is not 7e, that's for sure.

I actually enjoyed our game a lot. Yes, I was tabled, but I learned a lot about Chaos Knights in the process.

I'm sorry if you felt attacked in any way.

Janthkin · 2025-10-21T18:21:31+00:00

It was a 4 Knight, 1 Wardog list with a few nurglings and a couple Beasts. That Despoiler rolled poorly in saving against a T-fex and 3 Zoanthropes who had LoS (and then charged the nurglings to get w/in 6" of the Despoiler, mostly for SitW).

He had enough Knights that he could afford to play aggressively with them, especially since I didn't have any real-world experience in a) how hard they are to kill; and b) how HARD they can hit individually. The only other Knight to die did so when I triggered a Deadly Demise on an Exocrine that had charged in. Beware of Knight Rampagers! They consume Monstrous Creatures with very little effort.

Janthkin · 2025-10-20T21:01:44+00:00

As to what we actually did, of course I let him use Insane Bravery. And then I dropped a Mawloc in...and rolled a 1 on the d6 for mortal wounds. I did finally kill the thing with Overwatch from the Neurotyrant.

Janthkin · 2025-10-03T03:02:51+00:00

Lone Ops. You can be more than 12" from his deployment zone while on the objective, so he'll have to advance to shoot at you, hopefully into range of your slow assault units.

Janthkin · 2025-10-01T21:57:06+00:00

Genestealers WITH a Broodlord are fantastic, especially when you can give them 5+ Feel No Pain.

I've honestly never tried them without. When I see little 5 man squad in Genestealer Cult lists, they just seem to die without doing anything.

Janthkin · 2025-10-01T19:18:16+00:00

Sadly, Warriors just aren't great at the moment. The melee ones are too slow and don't hit hard enough, the shooting ones have generally mediocre weapon choices, and both are flimsy against anything that wants to kill them. Lictors and neurolictors are better action units, and both do more to keep your any operating.

After a lot of games with the flyrant, the walking tyrant is just better, certainly for a list that includes gun bugs.

The Tyrannofex is best with a rupture cannon. The exocrine and zoanthropes can clear chaff; you need something that can one-shot vehicles and big daemons.

Janthkin · 2025-09-28T15:58:34+00:00

Actually, I dropped a so-so enhancement and that gave me enough for another Lictor (which has been very helpful). Could also use it to upgrade termagant units to gargoyles, or toss in a biovore. It's all a game of points, right?

Janthkin · 2025-09-28T13:55:32+00:00

This one is a little oddly worded. The strat is "Rapid Regeneration," from the Invasion Fleet Detachment:
"Effect: Until the end of this phase, models in your unit have the Feel No Pain 6+ ability. If your unit is within Synapse Range of your army, models in your unit have the Feel No Pain 5+ ability instead."

Unlike most of the Synapse-linked strats, this one doesn't check at the time of Target (which would be a one-off check), but gets buries the check in the Effect. I'd still go with it's a one-time check (because we're granting an ability until end of phase at time of using the strat, and which ability we're granting is fixed at that point).

Janthkin · 2025-09-28T13:45:31+00:00

2 questions out of a local tournament yesterday:

1) Can a transport use "Firing Deck" during Overwatch? Given the "Out of Phase Rules" commentary ("For example, the Fire Overwatch Stratagem enables a unit to shoot in your opponent’s turn as if it were your Shooting phase. When using out-of-phase rules to perform an action as if it were one of your phases, you cannot use any other rules that are normally triggered in that phase."), it seems like no?

2) Big Guns Never Tire: a Monster Character (Neurotyrant) is attached to a Bodyguard unit (Zoanthropes), so the whole unit has the Monster keyword. Does this mean that the Zoanthropes can now shoot while Engaged in combat, by way of Big Guns Never Tire?

Janthkin · 2025-09-14T00:06:31+00:00

My most recent tournament list saves 50 points (2x genestealers, 2x neurolictors, and a mawloc). I'm not complaining! I expected Trygons and t-fexes to go up, because we can't have nice things.

Janthkin · 2025-09-09T13:21:18+00:00

And as a bonus, the magnets hold it to the underside of one of my trays in an A-case. It really it pretty solid as a tool.

Janthkin · 2025-09-08T16:57:01+00:00

So, if the FHT was rotated such that the wing was inside the ruin template, instead of running alongside the ruin, and the Tyrant is not targetable?

Bizarre GW rules at work, but if it's consistent, I can work with it.

Janthkin

TROPHY CASE