31 March 2010

House Cleaning - Stuff for Sale

I'm looking to clear out some stuff that I just don't see myself getting around to painting or using in the near future. (Or in some cases, I just bought too many!) So I'm only interested in selling, no trades. I'm in the US. Sale prices include USPS domestic shipping.

Email me if interested in any of it. My email address is the "name of this blog" @gmail.com


WFB Wood Elves:

In Box/Blister and/or On Sprue:
WE Battalion
Mounted Lord
Box of Glade Riders
Box of Dryads
War Eagle
2x Waywatchers Packs (6 figures)
Old Warhawk Rider Champion

Loose:
1 Old Warhawk Rider - no rider - primed
1 Old Warhawk Rider - painted
7 Glade Guard Horses (assembled, unpainted)
Extra hooded heads
Extra dryad bits

Retail: Over $250
Cash Sale: $135 includes USPS domestic postage




15mm Late Medieval

15mm Late Medievals (still in packaging, Rank & File):
RM01 48 Pikemen with pikes x2
RM02 48 Billmen x2
RM03 48 Crossbowmen
RM04 48 Longbowmen x2
RM07 50 Dismounted Knights
RM08 16 Knights & Sergeants x2
RM09 16 Medium Cavalry
RM10 16 Mounted Crossbowmen
RM14 Heavy Wheeled Gun (6 Guns + 24 crew)

Loose figures:
20 Crossbowmen (Also Rank & File?)
1 Ribaldquin (Essex MFPE5)
1 Bombard w/ Mantlet (Essex MFPE8)

Retail $235
Cash Sale: $120 includes USPS domestic shipping




WFB Dogs of War

Bronzino & Gallopper Gun box - Open, but never assembled, etc.
Birdmen of Catrazza box -Still shrinkwrapped

Cash Sale: I'm going to put these up on eBay, since they usually go for some fairly ridiculous prices. If someone wants to make a ridiculous offer privately, feel free.

29 March 2010

Men at Arms



Mounted Wars of the Roses men at arms from Old Glory. I'm not normally fond of their horses, but these ones look great. I have some hobilars/light cav as well. I picked up both packs in the flea market a couple weeks ago.

These are from my recent Paint Machine Project 4, where you can see the step by step painting. I just finished the bases.

They are admittedly not up to my normal painting. But I was seeing how fast I could speed-paint them, and ended up at about 12 1/2 minutes per figure.

26 March 2010

Roman Advisor

Foundry Roman and his advisor...


Cold Wars - Wab Singles, Part 2



Game 2, Romans vs. Indians


First off, a bit of a disclaimer. The scenario involved leaving a portion of your troops off the table in "reserve," to follow the rest of your army onto the table at a later point. Due to misreading the scenario, both my opponent and I kept rolling (and failing!) each turn, instead of automatically bringing on our reserves at the start of turn 3. In all honesty, though, this probably benefitted him more than me, since I left almost half my point value off the table, and due to the drilled + fast march "stupid Roman trick" I could have redeployed pretty quickly had I actually made it onto the table.


At any rate, here we go...


From left to right I've got (at the bottom of the pic) slingers, then skirmishers, in front of a unit of Spanish auxilia and a unit of legion, then more skirmishers and slingers in front of another unit of legion. That's it.

My opponent had, from left to right, elephand plus escort, big unit of archers, elite infantry (maiden guard?,) noble chariots on the hill, another elephant plus escort, followed by some mercenaries.






So obviously my plan was to rush ahead as quickly as possible and not get shot to pieces.

Early in the game -- turn 1, I managed to get a lucky sling shot into the left elephant's skull and send him stampeding through the woods. On the right, my skirmishers fled from the elephant and the legion let it pass through their ranks. Their combat with the escort, and pursuit sent them into the mercenaries beyond.






On the left the Spanish kept the flank occupied but did little. The legion, however, beat the maiden guard, sent them fleeing and panicked the archers and the general. The general rallied at the last minute (I think) but everyone else kept running.

Game over. Victory for the Romans.

OPP (Other People's Painting)

I haven't played 40k for a while and I just don't think it's my thing anymore. For that matter, I was supposed to give up Warseer as one of my 2010 resolutions.

But I'm just floored by this:

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=251180

Amazing painting, sculpting, color choices, composition -- everything! Best thing I've seen in a while.

19 March 2010

Cold Wars - WAB Singles, Part 1

As it turns out, I was really bad about taking pics of the doubles tournament. Again. So we're just getting a bit of commentary. To be brief, let's just say that things didn't go so well for The Good Guys.

The Good Guys were, of course, my fine upstanding Romans, and the barbaric yet noble savages in my friend Ron's Warlord army.

Our first game was against Macedonians & Persians, in which I started off by failing a few freak rolls, my entire flank crumbling in spite of having an advantage of position, and then recovering enough to at least hold off disaster (and even recover a bit.) The Warlord army was also thrown out of whack by an early bad dice roll, especially a failed Warband test which saw the biggest baddest unit on our side charge almost 90 degrees into the flank of an elephant instead of doing something more useful.

The second game was against Greeks. Lots of them. I screwed up trying to redeploy and get my allied cavalry away from the phalanx on the flank. My partner ended up getting pounded by hoplites. If we had been playing, oh, maybe like 10-12 turns I might have been able to bring my plans to fruition. But in hindsight, that doesn't seem like it was such a good plan.



My luck improved significantly in the Classical division of the singles tournament. Or at least it initially did...


Game 1, Romans vs. Picts.




Our bad rolls from the night before (doubles) seemed to plague my opponent. We set up per the scenario, and it looked like a straight forward battle. On my left flank, I hoped to get my Spanish auxilia onto the hill before the warbands arrived. On the flank, I also hoped to contest the hill with the cavalry and swing a legion around the far side, covered by the slingers. This turned out to be a bad idea, but I quickly redeployed the cav to the far flank (against the enemy cav) and my legion onto the hill.



A few failed warbands by my opponent on my left flank ensured that the left and center were mine. The cav surged forward into formed legion (and then flanked by the Spanish) and one Pict warband ran forward into my charge range, then stopped -- giving me another ideal flank situation. On my right, I managed to pull myself out of the awkward redployment quite well...



...until I rolled like crap. With the center and left more or less wrapped up, I started to use the legions' drilled ability to move them over to my right. I was holding and grinding the warband down on the hill, and my cav (with chieftain) on the right got the drop on the Pictish cavalry.

Sadly, I rolled no hits, but lost one of my own. In addition to running away from a decent fight, they took (panicked) the legion on the hill one half turn before they could receive support from the center legion hitting the warband on the flank. So much for famed Roman LD -- rolling 11 hurts everyone.

So with that last minute flub, the game went from what looked like a sold Roman victory to a draw.

Cold Wars Photos

I'm never going to get around to a proper entry explaining all the Cold Wars pics (or at least those I can explain.)

So I've just set up a public Folder of Cold Wars 2010 Photos. Browse and enjoy.

I'll just mention that some of the highlights, for me, are the WAB Aztec game, the Siege of Alesia, and the Hoth game.

I will make one final entry (with pics) about my Romans in the WAB tournament. (Embarrassing as that may be. For me.)

16 March 2010

Cold Wars 10 - Aztecs

I got a few pics of the Aztec game being played using WAB rules and (Ralphs?) lists. As always, click for larger pics...









15 March 2010

Cold Wars - WAB Demos, Part Two


The second WAB demo was on Friday morning.



The Germans and Gauls deployed tight, in the center, with just one unit of cav on the far side of the woods in the distance. The Romans put most of their infantry in the center, but send their allied Gallic cav on the near flank, and the Numidian cav escorting a legion on the far flank, beyond the woods.

The battle in the foreground was the first, and most important of the game. The Gallic cav just barely beat the German cav, but sent them fleeing. Unfortunately this also set off a wave of panic, with the flank player's entire portion of the army fleeing, and unable to rally for the remainder of the game. (I felt bad about that, but I wasn't certain what I could do, since it was all down to a few bad dice rolls.)




Here's a later shot, from the opposite side of the table. The barbarians were able to crash into the Roman line before they could take advantage of the victory on the flank, or equalize the numbers, since one legion was running around the flank. They hit, but not quite as hard as they needed too. The second pivotal moment of the game was another odd dice moment, when two of the center warbands failed to do any wounds, but took a remarkable seven wounds from the legion they were double-teaming (that included two chieftains!) Even against lesser troops (Spanish auxiliaries) they failed to hit hard enough to win the combat. So the center broke, and once again set off a bit of panic, and the line retreated. Miraculously they all rallied, but the momentum was stopped, and it was the Romans turn to charge, stealing the initiative from the barbarians. In the last fight of the battle, the German cav on the flank smashed itself on the Roman legion, fled, and was run down by the Numidian cavalry.

Another Roman victory, this one more solid than the first.

14 March 2010

Cold Wars - WAB Demos, Part One

I'm back from Cold Wars, I've unpacked, drooled over the small loot pile I brought home, so now I'm relaxing a bit before bed. I've started going through the photos. Some of the first are from the WAB demo games I ran Friday night and Saturday morning.

It's been a while since I've done any convention or demo games, but it everything seemed to go pretty well. The players seemed to enjoy themselves - though in each game there was one person who got a bit screwed by position or the dice. (I felt bad and tried thinking of a way to "bend" the rules, but didn't want to then upset the opposing side. A bit of a dilemma.) In both games the players all picked up the rules pretty quickly.

I probably could have stepped back and let them play the game themselves, and just hung around to answer questions. But my convention game "policy" is to keep the game moving at a steady pace by running through the turn phases and keeping people motivated. In this case it meant that we more or less finished each game to a discernible conclusion in three hours, even with me explaining the rules for part of the time slot and all the players being new. I didn't exactly calculate the points, but the armies had to have been over 2500 points.

It hit me, as one of the games was going on, that these demo games summed up a lot of what I like about WAB. One, it's easy to pick up, as I mentioned above. Two, it's a fun game. With eight players, everyone was moving figures, rolling dice, and joking around for the bulk of the game. I hate those games where you're stuck waiting around doing nothing for 20 minutes, or have to constantly dig through rulebooks & charts. Three, even new guys can play a decent sized game in just a couple hours. And four (and I will actually take partial credit for setting this particular game up this way) it can frequently look like what I would imagine an ancient battle to generally look like. And even play out in a generally historic way, for that matter.

There was no scenario, just a straight forward fictitious battle. The setting was the Cimbric War, so it was Marius era Romans (plus some allies to spice things up) against a mixed German & Gallic army.

So how about a few pics? (Click to enlarge)

Game one, Friday night:


The battle lines approach each other, Romans on the left, Germans & Gauls on the right. The flanks were the first to engage. In the foreground a unit of Roman allied Gallic cavalry first engaged some German cavalry and chased them off, resulting in a second battle between the Gauls and the German infantry backing up their cavalry. The German warband's victory sent them impetuously pursuing far forward, and getting flanked by the Romans on the hill. Surprisingly, they held! Valiaint as their stand may have been, the Gauls eventually rallied and came back a few turns later to turn the tide of this flank.

On the far flank, the Germans fared better. They managed to catch the Roman allied Numidian cavalry who had been harassing them with javelins. Using this area of victory to their advantage they started to press the advantage by pressuring the legionary line. Romans, being as flexible as they are, managed to respond in time. The furthest legion was defeated, but not before they were entirely surrounded and held out for several rounds of combat.





It took a little while, but the main lines eventually clashed. The Roman center held against the initial charge of Germans and Gauls, and pushed them back. This gave them the breathing room they needed to deal with the far flank, as well as re-deploying the legion and allied cavalry on the near flank once those troops had dealt with the stubborn resistance of the isolated warband.

The Romans ended up occupying the center of the table, with barbarians on both sides, but had the advantage. The barbarians had lost the initiative and the advantage of numbers.

The game ended in a minor victory for the Romans.


Pics and another quick report on the second game coming soon...

12 March 2010

Live From Lancaster

I'm at Cold Wars & just finished the second WAB demo game. Everything's going well, especially for the Romans. Thought I'd test the mobile (phone) posting - hope this works

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08 March 2010

Romans Hit the Road

I'm packing up for Cold Wars and thought I'd take a quick pic of the Romans I've finished so far, along with some of their auxiliary troops.

They'll be used in the WAB demo games I'm running, as well as my army (not quite as pictured) for the WAB doubles event. Click the photo for a slightly larger version.


02 March 2010

Skaven Review (and Procrastination)

I'm procrastinating. I have some last minute stuff to do for my WAB demos at Cold Wars. Like painting German cavalry & typing up unit reference cards for the players. I just can't get into it, though. The fact that Dexter, Season 3, just arrived from the library and is due back this weekend is not helping my motivation to be in the back room painting, either.



I wrote some comments on my opinions on the Skaven army to a friend of mine, and thought that as long as I typed all of that up, I'd share it here as well. I haven't tried everything in the book, and still only have about 10 games under my belt so far. I've also barely touched anything in the magic items section. So I'm willing to listen to disagreements & opposing views.


The things I like:

Helpit Abomination. It's the new thing everyone's complaining about more then the DE hydra. They put out a boatload of damage, can effectively charge in any direction (as long as you roll enough distance for their movement) and are tough to kill.

Plague Furnace. I've had good luck with mine. I'ts a bit vulnerable because it (and the unit with it) is frenzied, and neither the Furnace nor the guy riding it have any kind of save (and the hero only has 2 wounds) but if you can crash into something on a charge you've got a decent chance of doing enough damage to win that initial round of combat by a big number. It can't face off against some of the tougher/armoured stuff as well, though.

Plague Censer Bearers. If they're within range of a unit pushing a Plague Furnace, they're stubborn. They've gained an extra attack since the last book, plus they've gone down in points.

Grey Seer. He's got the same LD as the Warlord, so there's little reason to take the Warlord unless you want to make a combat oriented Lord. But the Warlord would never stand up to most of the badass combat characters (Vamps, Chaos, etc.) I tried the Screaming Bell once, but wasn't too impressed with it. A couple of the guys at the store seem to think it's good - it makes the unit pushing it unbreakable, it rings and gives benefits, and it's got a 4+ save. I may try it again to see if I have better luck with it.

Warp Lightning Cannon. It's still got the random strength roll like before (which has screwed me a couple times) but it works like a cannon plus a catapult template at the end. And it also got cheaper since last book. And the new Skaven templates don't have partial hits anymore -- anything touched by the template is automatically hit. If you can guess cannon ranges decently, the WLC is good. One of the other Skaven players I know argues with me that the Doomwheel is better. I'm not sure I like it as much, but I haven;t tried it yet. I may give it a spin (haha) just to see how it works.

Warplock Augmented Weapon. (Item) It gives +1A and +1S. I've been putting it on the Plague Priest, giving him a total of 5 S5 attacks. Not bad for a crappy little Skaven hero.

Assassin. He's not that great, but he can wander in from off any table edge, he comes with a 4+ ward (dodge) save, and can take down minor heroes, wizards, artillery crew, etc. pretty well.



What I *don't* like:

Stormvermin. I still think they are too many points and don't do anything impressive. Some people take them because they can get a magic banner and can push the Screaming Bell. I'd leave them at home unless I really needed the magic banner. (The BSB and Monks can also take a magic banner.)

Rat Ogres. Just like the Stormvermin. They got a little better, but still don't seem like that great of a buy.

Ratling Gun. Went from being a must-have in the old book, to only so-so in the new one. Still vulnerable to being taken down with missile fire, like all the other weapon teams.

Jezzails. They're still OK, I guess. But they don't skirmish anymore, so they have to be pointed at the right target to shoot. Even under the old rules they tended to be vulnerable to panicking off the table if they took a couple hits or if a terror-causing flying critter landed nearby. I'd rather use the Special slots for monks, Plague Censor Bearers, etc.




What I'm ambivalent about:

Clanrats. They're still worth taking for their ranks, outnumbering, etc. And they got a bit cheaper. Just watch what they get into combat with, because they still can't fight.

Slaves. More of the same, plus they are instantly gone if they break from combat. They have a chance of doing damage when this happens, but I don't think I've caused any wounds from this.

Giant Rats. They fight in two ranks now. Actually, they've got some potential to be cool. I just haven't had it work out yet. Someone suggested casting Warp Frenzy on them, giving them +2A, since they fight in two ranks. I might have to try that.

Globadiers. They can be good if they get the right target.

Weapon Teams. I've had no luck with the Warpfire Thrower, though it should do OK against some stuff. The Globe Mortar seems decent if you can nail heavy cavalry with it, since they get no armour save. I used the Doom Flayer once, in a small game, and it did great. But I need to see it in action more before I decide.

Gutter Runners and Night Runners. Both seem to have their uses, but I don't have enough experience with them in the new book yet. I keep forgetting to roll for my Gutter Runners to come on the table, so they never actually get in the game.