Delve 1: Fighting Brigands

Saribke: Human Battlemind, using glaive and speed to toss enemies tumbling back.
Mia: Half-Elf Warlock, blasting enemies from a range with eldritch power.

First Encounter
Our heroes are travelling along in the desert when ambushed by a cadre of kobold slingers atop a rock outcropping. In a devastating stroke, they all hammer Saribke with sling stones, bloodying him immediately. Mia reacts by blasting two of the kobolds apart with a blast, while Saribke stirs into action, charging up the outcropping in time to hobble an assailant while forcing four other kobolds to escape Saribke's arcing glaive.

Three of the taller kobolds hurl magical slingstones against Saribke in panic to the charge, although their aim faltered. The remaining kobolds jumped into melee against him, doing significant damage. Mia runs closer, hurling blasts into the froth. Saribke, near death and furiously dismembering his assailants, jumps off the rock outcropping to Mia.

Taking their cue, the kobolds turn attention to Mia, to disastrous effect. In response, she blasts two of the taller kobolds, and Saribke charges back in a daring effort to turn the tide. Luck on our hero's side, the kobolds are reduced to one tall kobold, which is promptly finished off by a blast from Mia. Our heroes catch their breath and heal up a bit (4 healing surges each!).

Result: Heroes barely win. Saribke with 2 HP, Mia with 4. 13/21 healing surges left.

Second Encounter
Descending into a cave entrance found in the rock outcropping, our heroes find themselves entering a small, dark ruin. Using a sunrod from Mia's bag, a group of well equipped kobolds are revealed! Saribke leaps into action, with Mia targetting a shaman-garbed kobold further within the ruined hall. The battle is pitched but quick, with Saribke using the glaive to disperse the kobolds to gain attacks of opportunity. Mia and the shaman kobold get into a ranged spellcasting duel, with Mia using a fey blind spell to win the challenge. The battle is incredibly pitched, with the well armored kobolds using flanking attacks and the shaman using blast spells. Our heroes heal up a bit (another 8 surges used).

Result: Heroes scrape a win. Saribke with 5 HP, Mia with 10. 7/21 healing surges left.

Third Encounter

Carefully inching down into the deepest part of the ruin, our heroes run into an audience room where a young white dragon holds court over 10 kobold supplicants. Forewarned by the sounds of earlier battle, the kobolds move quickly to attack. However, Saribke is quick and dives into the fray, cutting down 3 before the kobolds pile on in a huge cluster of melee. Mia blinds one kobold that snuck behind Saribke, saving her ally's life: the kobolds do huge amounts of damage to lightly-armored Saribke, and any extra flanking surely would have been the end, since the young white dragon promptly breaths icy jets of cold into the melee, knocking Saribke to 5 HP and destroying 3 of its own kobolds. Reacting swiftly to the development, Mia lands an incredible critical hit, taking the Dragon from fresh to bloodied in a single massive stroke (32 damage!).

Saribke deals with 2 more kobolds, and trips the dragon. The remaining 2 kobolds keep striking at Saribke, hurting him more. The dragon launches into an enraged fury, biting and clawing at Saribke, but in its haste only lands glancing scratches. Mia responds by finishing off the dragon with another great set of hits. Saribke quickly finishes off the remainding kobolds, and the halls go quiet.

Results: Heroes win! Saribke has 6 HP, and Mia is unharmed. 200 gold is found, as well as a suit of Mithral Scale Armor +1 (for Saribke... 13 AC was waaaaay too low: 20 AC much better!). Both level up.

Analysis
Surprisingly effective duo, considering that they were only level 1 and didn't take an extended rest. The first two encounters Mia was consistently a great ranged blaster, dealing well with the stronger enemies in each encounter. However, this focus on the stronger enemies left Saribke alone to deal with the hordes of minions and fighters. With only 13 AC, there was essentially a whole set of freebie shots from minions, building up into huge amounts of damage: Saribke had 40HP, but regularly took 20~ damage after the first enemy turn. Thankfully, Saribke could reliably dish out multiple hits each round, and used a special attack heavily, shoving enemies 4 squares away. Both heroes performed quite well considering, and the Mithral Scale armor bodes well for their chances in the future. The extra cash will likely go towards buying Mia an implement to improve her attacks.

Running Solitaire D&D

I've decided I'd like to actually use the various 4e Dungeons & Dragons books I brought back out to Boston with me by playing a few solitaire games. The plan is to run as many of the small adventures in the Dungeon Delves book until I die. The book has tactics and monster stats handy for each encounter, so should be easier to run for myself than randomly generating a dungeon myself.

An interesting bit is that I'm too lazy to run umpteen monsters at the same time as a full party of adventurers. So, instead of running 4 player characters, I will be running 2! I'm also too lazy to tweak the encounters every time to account for my tiny party: instead, I'm giving my adventurers two initiatives: this will let them do their thing twice each round. No extra hit points, no extra action points, and half the variety of accessible powers will still make this quite a challenge :)

Last night, I ran two of three encounters in the first level delve: I'll write up the delve when I finish the third boss encounter. So far, it has been narrow victories with clinging-to-life-ed-ness.

Painting Update

Did a good bit of details on the marines yesterday, finishing up shoulder pads and jetpacks. Will be assembling the marines once I'm sure I've hit everything up.

Some Painting Progress

Have been adding different shades of gray for the past week on assault squad Chordeiles. Generally pleased with them so far, although they have a looong way to go before being finished. I also worked on their jetpacks, but they aren't shown here.

Combat Squad Nighthawk and Combat Squad Poorwill

Combat Squad Nighthawk

Highlights: Highlights

Testing out highlighting on my assault marines... being super cautious, since I have some model-fear. Mixed Gray & Black 1:1 and got a very subtle shine on the model's exposed surfaces, leaving crannies black. Any tips on highlighting? Right now just planning on going 1:1 to 2:1 to 3:1 with more limited application each go, then applying a black wash, then a gray re-highlight.

Update

Working a lot, and we should have a release candidate for our first computer game by the end of today: it's been a good touch of work, but pretty fun!

Warhammer Stuff:
-Assembled all the assault marines
-Spraypainted them (in the future, I'll return to spraypainting on sprues... touch up is a pain)
-Got my order of Scouts and Scout Bikes.

My Army List is looking like this:
--bought--
HQ - Captain Korvydae @ 155 pts
Troops - Assault Marines (x10) @ 255 pts
Troops - Scouts w/Snipers + Tellion (x10) @ 200 pts
Fast Attack - Scout Bikes (x4) @ 145 pts
--planned--
Troops - Tactical Squad w/Pod or Rhino (x10) @ 250 pts
Troops - Tactical Squad w/Pod or Rhino (x10) @ 245 pts
Elites - Sternguard Squad w/Pod or Rhino (x10) @ 350 pts
Elites - Assault Terminators (x10) @ 400 pts

Total: 2000 pts

Stuff Arrived

My GW order arrived today:

-2 Assault Squad boxes
-Codex: SM book
-2 brushes
-6 paints

Still waiting on my Forge World sprues, which should arrive either tomorrow or early next week.
-2 Raven Guard upgrade sprues
-1 Captain Korvydae

Idea is to make a very special assault squad to accompany Korvydae: his rules (if my opponent allows Forge World rules) lets me take assault squads as Troops units as long as I bring along a scout unit too... in all other senses he is just a jumppack Captain. The big thing there is that it'll let my assault squads not only contest objectives, but claim them too!

I'm hashing out a tentative Army List plan tonight: goal is to have a very mobile, fluffy force emphasizing mobility and precision deep striking that can play well from 500 to 2000 points.

UPDATE:

Forge World sprues arrived too... the detail is incredible on them!

Also grabbed cutters and a file from the hardware store... will be fun to get started in on these models!