29 November 2009

Digital Temptation

I'd like to do more non-WFB gaming. I've come to an understanding, and can tolerate the game at this point. But it remains a matter of being the default option, because it's easy to find opponents.

I believe I've written my opinions on Field of Glory. I own the rules and several supplements, and have played a few games but it never managed to really grab me. A lot of that had to do with some of the minutia of the mechanics.

I recently saw the announcement for the release of this:

http://www.slitherine.com/games/fog_pc

I haven't played computer games in a long time. The last one was Diablo 2, which isn't even a wargame. But it was enough of to time-waster for me to give up computer games for a long time, now. A lot of that also has to do with the lack of turn based games.

(I think my favorite game of all time was Age of Rifles, which I still own but unfortunately haven't been able to run on newer Windows machines. So it's been collecting dust for a while -- if anyone can advise me on how to get it to work, feel free!)

I'm tempted to give the FoG game a go. From what I've read, the association between the tabletop game and the computer game are in name only. Even if it was the same results, but with the mechanics hidden behind a computer moderated interface, I think I'd be willing to give it a try.

I'd be interested to hear any opinions. Especially from anyone who has played it. (Or any other turn based games -- 19th century and earlier only.)

27 November 2009

Black Friday

Today is Buy Nothing Day.

I modified that to Buy Nothing that I Can't Digest Immediately, as I met my friend J for dinner and a Great Lakes Christmas Ale.


Earlier in the day I played a few games at TWA headquarters. No one else was available, so we played two games. I captured really crappy photos with my cell phone, a Palm Centro. Worst camera on any phone I've owned.

First was 2000 points of WAB. I once again acted as Roman punching bag for R's Macedonians. These Romans vs. phalanx battles are really curing my urge to play Romans. So I'm really starting to itch for that Successor army that's been part of my long term plans...







The second game went significantly better. 2250 points of my Skaven against equal points of Warriors of Chaos. I had a mixed army, highlighted by the powerhouse Abomination and Plague Furnace. He had a lot of dogs, marauder cavalry, and packed a punch with some chosen knights flanked by a pair of chariots, and a badass dragon lord.


26 November 2009

Snowmen

Some friends and I are making Christmas ornaments as a surprise for a friend who's has a bit of a rough year. I decided to do a rampaging snowman. I've sculpted it up and just primed it. I can't wait to paint it up. It's about 3.5" high, from base to top of hat.





I also made a few "back up" bodies, in case I messed up on the first one. The back-ups were done with a lightweight clay for children's crafts, from Crayoloa. I had to use the whole thing at once, so I got a bit of a strange idea...

I'm going to make a snowman Christmas village, with a Cthulhu-esqe giant snow-critter, and a bunch of smaller panicking snowmen, fleeing for their lives. Here's the start on the bodies so far... I did the arms on all the little guys last night.



22 November 2009

Mighty Empires - Year One, Turn Four

We played out the first four turns of the Campaign. Minor change in participants... The former Bretonnians are actually Orcs, and what I formerly referred to as Orcs & Goblins are just Goblins.

After four turns we've mostly had just minor skirmishes. The quelling of a couple of independent settlements took its toll on a few banners. Due to casualties, two Orc banners have merged into the now larger Orc 1. In the first turn, Skaven 1 and Goblin 2 met and fought over the highland villages in L6. The goblins were killed or sent running and lost in the mountains. The Lizardmen aggressively invaded the Ogre kingdom -- the smaller Ogre border force fought in an orderly retreat, and sought shelter in the safety of their capital city. It is uncertain yet if a siege will be fought or not.



16 November 2009

Might Empires

I'm taking part in a Mighty Empires campaign using an adaptation of the old, detailed rules and tiles. We've dealt out the map, chose locations and rolled upstarting forces. I've volunteered to be the campaign cartographer. Here's my digitization of the base map. (Click maps to enlarge.)





Below are the starting positions.

Goblins - Green - 3,600 points, 7 baggage
Lizardmen - Blue - 3,500 points, 7 baggage
Warriors of Chaos - Red - 2,500 points, 9 baggage
Ogres - Purple - 2,300 points - 9 baggage
Skaven - Pink - 3,500 points, 6 baggage
Bretonnians - Yellow - 2,000 points, 7 baggage




I will be fielding my Skaven, Clan All-Out-of-Bubblegum.

Edit: fixed minor error on the maps.

15 November 2009

Mini Exchange

I previously posted photos of the miniature I sent to someone else from the Warhammer-Empire.com forum as part of their mini-exchange: http://zerotwentythree.blogspot.com/2009/07/mini-exchange.html


I recently received my surprise figure from far off Finland, painted by Rune:



And here he is in a unit of my figures. I think he fits in pretty well. I'll be using him as a warrior priest.


13 November 2009

Black Powder update (sort of)

I just checked my Amazon account to see when I could expect my copy of Black Powder.

According to them it's still not released and I should expect my copy to ship Februrary 4.

:/

12 November 2009

First 7th Skaven battle

I played my first game with the new Skaven book tonight. Against a Dogs of War army, of all things. Ended in roughly a draw. We had to vacate the store, so didn't get an exact point count.

I had a very difficult time narrowing down my list. Too many new toys I wanted to try out. In the end, I did cram a lot of stuff in, but ended up with a small army and a not-very-optimized list.

I roughly had:

Seer on Bell
Priest on Furnace
Warlock Engineer
Assassin
2x30 Clanrats
1 Fire Thrower
1 Poisoned Wind Mortar
36 Slaves
30 Monks
6 PCBs
5 Gutter Runners
1 Abomination
1 Catapult

My opponent had:
Lv. 4 Mage Lord
2x Lv. 2 Mages
1 Paymaster
30 Pike
30 RoR Pike (the ones that are WS4)
10 Crossbow
10 Marksmen
2x10 Duelists with pistols
2 Cannons
10 Volands Venetors


It was a short & quick game. I charged up quickly, except when my bell unit was halted by a Wall of Fire I failed to dispel. That allowed both pike units to charge both my clanrat units (one had already chased off my slaves.) One unit fled, the other was held up by my Bell pushing unit, which eventually became Death Frenzied & beat the enemy unit, killing the paymaster. That screwed the DoW army a bit.

Volands charge the Abomination and we tied combat (I rolled very poorly for my attacks). Their musician broke the tie, and in true Empire Greatsword fashion, I blew the Stubborn Ld8 roll and was run down.

The spell Scorch was only cast once, but it was NASTY. Took out almost half of the RoR pikemen in one shot. The Bell, on the otherhand, was a bit ineffective. The results didn't have any useful effects, I rolled doubles every time I rang it, which meant casualties for me, and my Grey seer blew every ward save he was granded by the bell (and died.) Even the dispel dice from the MR(2) failed me, as the unit had Wall of Fire cast on it twice.

The furnace and PCBs, on the other hand, ran over anything in their way. Granted, they only had lightweight stuff "in their way." But the quantity of wounds they threw out was pretty impressive.

Not certain about the war machines & weapon teams yet. The misfires with the large template are ugly. Both the WFT & Mortar blew up the first time they were fired (typical) and ended up taking out other nearby figures in the process (also typical.) The catapult got a nice hit on the Venators, but failed to roll wounds and ended up only killing 2. The next shot missed the enemy by a long shot and hit my own Engineer.

Looking forward to the next game. I need to focus on building a better & tighter army.

10 November 2009

Perrry WotR plastics

I'm such a junkie for medievals, so I'm pretty excited about these:

http://theminiaturespage.com/news/842495/

:D

Now to stay on track with my current overabundance of projects and not get distracted just yet...

Skaven distratction begins

Tonight I was distracted by two things... one was the movie "Legend of the Black Scporpion" which was kind of OK. Not quite as good as the Hero/Flying Daggers/Golden Flowers series that sold me on Chinese epics. But still worth the free loan from the library! I would have even paid to rend the DVD. ;)


The second was a Skaven conversion... I was trying to put an army list together over the weekend, but failed. Too much interesting & untried stuff in the new book to fit into 2250 points along with my usual horde of infantry.

So I sat down to finish some commission work and instead an idea popped into my head...



This is my conversion for a PWG mortar crew. Actually,just part of it. But in game terms, this base is all that will count for firing, ranges, casualties, etc. I will have a loader tagging along behind or in front just for visual purposes. There just wasn't enough room on the base for a second figure, though.

It's a plague monk body & arms, with the gasmask head from the Doomwheel. I made the bottom canister of the gas mask with a bit of plastic rod and two small pieces of plastic tube. The wider tube parts are drilled with holes, though it's hard to see in the pic. I'm certain it will be clearer once the figure is painted. The cannon is a spare from the plastic Empire Steam Tank, adorned with some Skaven icons from the old clanrat set, and dragged along on a pair of solid wagon wheels. The "rope" is just twisted florist wire.

08 November 2009

Eye Candy

The link below takes quite a while to load up, but there a ton of great pictures of some fairly large battles being played by a gaming club in Paris. Some ancients, some medievals, some colonials, some WWII... it's worth waiting for it all to load up.

http://wabforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3023&start=80

I'm very jealous.

Romans and their crops

Two quick updates. I finished basing me second painted unit of WF Romans. This is not the same group I'm working on over at the new Paint Machine blog, but is the one that partially inspired me to track my progress & time and start that blog.






Next is a bit of terrain. I've been searching for two years (yes, really) for a plain coir (natural coconut fiber) doormat to use for tall grass/cropland terrain. Impossible. Every mat I have found has some sort of graphics, pattern, color or phrase on it. I found a couple via mail order, but the postage & cost seemed like a waste compared to the inexpensive ones available at the local stores. So I finally broke down and bought one with a Greek style keyed pattern around the perimeter, and just dealt with the fact that I would have a certain amount of waste. I've saved some of the small edges to cut up & use for small tufts of grass on other terrain projects, but here's one of the smaller patches of regular crops/fields I cut, with a couple of figures (GW elf on the left, older Foundry Celt on the right.) I may try painting the edges of the black substrate to match my game table & other terrain and bases.




06 November 2009

Paint Machine

This may seem a bit schizophrenic, but I wanted to keep a separate blog of some specific painting tutorials & info. Thus, the Paint Machine was born:

http://paintmachine.blogspot.com/

05 November 2009

Black Powder

I just ordered Black Powder.

I couldn't pass up the $30 including shipping price at Amazon -- seemed worth the risk.


edit: I had tried looking for some decent reviews of the actual rules, but most of what I found revolves around how "pretty" the book is, and all the great pictures. Hence the "risk" comment. I'm starting to develop a belief that there is an increasing anti-intellectual trend in wargaming...

01 November 2009

Roman Command

In my quest for mounted command, I picked up the Roman General pack from Crusader Miniatures. It comes with one mounted and one dismounted general. They are from their Punic Wars range, a bit earlier than the Marian/Caesarian era army I'm doing, but I think they look fine.




Nice, clean figures. Here they are compared to a Wargames Factory legion (which will make up the bulk of my infantry) and their metal Caesar figure on foot.