Tim's Wargaming Stuff

First Game of Arkham Horror

2010-12-12T00:29:00.000+11:00

I've only played three turns of this game but I already love it. It heavy going trying to work out the rules and remember everything that's going on but the game rewards you for the effort with a level of flavour and atmosphere that's usually reserved for role playing games.

The base game has a heap of stuff and you could easily play it and never get the same game twice. But those of you who know me and my addictive nature won't be surprised to know I've already ordered the Kingsport Horror expansion which adds another board and another metric ton of cards and tokens. I think it'll fit on my table. Speaking of tables it's currently taking up the entire kitchen table so I'll probably have until lunch to finish up or pack up, I'll try to take some photos of the game before either happens.

I should also mention that the game has great solo play, which is fortunate as my kids are too young for the subject matter and my wife would never play this.

Not Exactly Gaming Related…

2010-11-13T11:32:00.001+11:00

It’s been pretty quiet on the gaming front for a while now and it’s largely due to me just being too buggered. It’s not a lack of motivation, it’s this:

Just imagine the little kid as a 30 something white guy with no co-ordination…

It’s only taken me 29 years to release my inner “Larusso” but I’ve finally started to learn Karate. It’s a hell of a lot fun and a hell of a lot of hard work. So for the next couple weeks I probably won’t be posting too much as I’ll likely be curled up in the foetal position waiting for the Deep Heat to do it’s magic.

It didn’t help the nerves that I was put in a beginners class where I’m twice the age of all the other students combined. Neither did punching myself in the ear… twice.

Hopefully they’ll teach me the crane kick next week…

Or maybe even that drum technique…

Dungeon & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft

2010-11-07T17:32:00.001+11:00

The friendly local game store has been getting in a lot of new games in the lead up to xmas and just the other day I saw them putting Castle Ravenloft up on the shelves. And after a few days of procrastinations I just couldn’t resist any more and went and got a copy.

This game is HUGE. It comes absolutely packed with cards, counters, tiles and miniatures.

The miniatures are “reprints” of existing D&D miniatures which ensures their compatibility with their skirmish game. To keep the game price down though the miniatures come unpainted, which is something I’ll rectify one day. A nice touch is that they’ve used harder plastic for these miniatures so they don’t suffer as much of the bent sword syndrome that most of the D&D and Star Wars miniatures have.

I think I’ve best heard the rules described as “D&D 4th Edition Lite with No Added Role Play”. This game has dungeons and it comes with dragons but “Dungeons & Dragons” it aint. It’s basically a dungeon crawler, all combat - all the time. Now this isn’t a bad thing and the rules keep things moving along at a brisk pace that makes sure the game never gets dull. The game also has a few elements that I found quite innovative and refreshing:

When a character ‘explores’ a new section of the map a new dungeon tile is placed and a monster is spawned. That monster is represented by a miniature on the table and a card that is placed with the player who spawned it. That monster (or mosters) are activated during the “Villian” phase of that player. It works with ease and creates an initiative process that “feels right”.
The second innovation is what allows the game to be played solo or cooperatively: each monster card has a list of conditions and actions that you evaluate in order each time the monster activates. It may be something like “If the monster is 2 or more tiles away from the nearest hero it will move adjacent to that hero and attack with a pounce attack”. Followed by “If the monster is adjacent to a hero it will attack with a bite”. It’s simple and it makes it quite clear what each monster will do.

The dungeon tiles are laid out almost randomly. The adventure guide will state which tiles will be used for the dungeon entrance and most will state to place certain named tiles in certain positions in the tile draw deck. When placing a tile you must place the tile so that the edge with a black or white triangle matches up with the edge of the tile you are currently standing on. It’s simple enough that my five year understood within minutes.

The game comes with an adventure book with a dozen or so adventures all themed around Castle Ravenloft and our favourite Vampire Strahd.

The first adventure is a solo quest and I took the opportunity learn the rules and get all nostalgic about adventures past.

I took the Dwarven Cleric and had to escape the crypt before Strahd woke up. Each tile I placed with a white triangle increased a timer that marked sunset.

A quick shot of most of the cards, tokens and status markers. The pile of dungeon tiles is HUGE.

A shot of the game on the last turn. I only just made it to the exit in time.

The game took a little getting used to, I’m a second edition player myself. High armour classes are good now, (no more THAC0’s – woo hoo!) so it’s a case of roll d20 and add attack bonus to beat armour class… easy. Each attack does a fixed amount of damage and state effects like “slowed” or “immobile” are automatic so no saving throws required.

At the first read through of the rules I was a little disappointed and kept thinking “this isn’t D&D”. But after playing the game I realised that “it is D&D” but it’s “not roleplay”. All the staples are there: brick fighters and wizards with magic missiles all running to the clearic for help when things get rough. You need to play as a team and coordinate exploration otherwise you’ll get overrun with monsters.

What I Liked

Playing with my kids. We were on this adventure together, we’d all win or we’d all lose. My eldest loves the game and got most of the concepts from the get go, I think we’ll be playing a lot. My youngest struggled to maintain interest for the whole game but picking up his character didn’t slow the game down and it’s likely we’ll play with two characters each from now on anyway.
Fun: this game takes the best parts of D&D combat and puts it all in a retail box. And lets face it, we played D&D because it was cool to kill imaginary monsters and get lots and lots of imaginary loot.
It’s D&D: or the closest I’ll get to playing D&D for a while.
Miniatures: lots and lots of miniatures

What I Didn’t Like

I would have liked to make my own character but it’s probably nothing swapping the mini out wouldn’t fix anyway. I’d just like my rogue to feel like “my rouge”.
Loot: you don’t get much. I’m not asking for a Vorpal Sword or a Holy Avenger here. A short sword +1 will do for starters. Could easily be fixed with some home brew cards but I’m hoping an expansion will remedy this.
Only first and second level characters? The game is pretty harsh on the characters and life expectancy isn’t too high but let players get to 10th level and they’ll keep trying.
There isn’t too much about this game I’m that I’m really not happy with but if I had to pick something I’d say that once again the designed have designed a box insert that simply doesn’t expect the players to put sleeves on their cards. There’s a spot for everything in this box and it holds everything perfectly, until you put sleeves on the cards and they no longer fit.

Expansions?

Yes please! There’s the Wrath of Ashardalon coming out in 2011 which I’m sure to snap up. But I’d like to see a set of cards made available that allowed the use of at least some of the miniatures already available.

Some more interesting tiles wouldn’t go astray either. The game as-is has plenty of scope for some fantastic adventures but I hope the game gains enough popularity (cough sales) that Wizards pays this game the attention is desires.

Or if they wanted to be really cheeky they could put articles and cards in their magazines Dragon or Dungeon. I’d buy a subscription if it got me new stuff for the games.

Bottom Line

It’s not the Strahd I remember but it’s defiantly the fun that I remember. I may even pick up the Red Box to see what all the fuss over fourth edition is all about.

So Close, Yet So Far…

2010-11-01T19:25:00.001+11:00

The Call of Cthulhu Living Card Game arrived today. The box was intact but it did look like it had been kicked all the way from England. The contents were pretty much safe and sound, the main game box had a crink in one side that should push out easily enough.

The urge to start open the boxes and start playing is killing me. I’ll have to put them away out of sight. After all I only have to wait eight, long… tempting… weeks. So working of the dispatch and delivery dates for this stuff, the Talisman stuff should be here early next week. And to top it off I can’t distract myself by buying anything off my wish list because of the Secret Santa.

Ooohh, so this is what it’s like to be driven insane.

HeroQuest

2010-10-31T12:46:00.001+11:00

With Talisman coming this xmas I thought it might be a good idea to ease the kids into it with some games of HeroQuest. I lost my boxset years ago and I’ve managed to build an almost complete set from a few eBay purchases. The only thing I’m missing is one combat dice (3 instead of four) and the hero miniatures. A quick dip into my Lord of the Rings collection found some suitable hero miniatures in Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas.

The brave heroes all ready to venture forth, Ethan (left) took the wizard and the dwarf while Dylan had the elf and barbarian. I played the Evil Wizard, muwhahahahahaha…

The wizard was feeling very adventurous and scouted out ahead while the others dealt with the nasty inhabitants of the dungeon… only to run into some serious trouble of his own.

A quick sleep spell to put down one of the chaos warrior and then a hasty tactical retreat… right into an even bigger mess!

Things were looking bad for the wizard until the dwarf finally managed to come to help. Amazingly the wizard survived and headed back to the barbarian for a bit of protection.

Only to be killed by a wandering monster when searching for treasure.

I found out after the game we we playing with an incomplete spell deck. One of the spells was doubled up and the missing spell: Heal Wounds.

Fun was had by all and the kids are keen to play again. After playing a lot of Carcassonne the setup time for HeroQuest seemed to take forever. Talisman is going to be even worse… I’ll have to look into some of the card holders and tuck boxes on Board Game Geek to help manage the components better.

The Dice Tower Secret Santa

2010-10-31T09:28:00.001+11:00

The guys over at The Dice Tower are once again running their Secret Santa gift exchange. This is an awesome idea, basically you send your details to the guys at the Dice Tower with a wish list of games you would like to receive. They work out who you are going to be a Secret Santa for and send you their details. You then simply make a purchase based on their list and send it off.

Have a look here to see what people got sent last year. Looks to be a fun event so head on over to The Dice Tower and sign up. If you don’t: then you’ll be visited by three ghosts, one of Christmas past, one of… ah you get the idea.

Carcassonne

2010-10-29T22:58:00.001+11:00

I’ve been bitten by the board game bug lately, or is it a case of war game burnout? I don’t know for sure but the concept of a game in a box is very appealing at the moment. So in continuation of this trend I picked up a copy of Carcassonne by Rio Grande Games.

It’s a tile game where players earn points by placing randomly drawn tiles to build cities, roads and farms. Very simple concept with very addictive gameplay.

My eldest (eight) picked up the game in under 5 minutes and by the end of the first game had most of the basic tactics down.

The first of our two games tonight was much closer with me winning by a mere point. During our second game it seemed like he had forgotten how to play and was starting cities everywhere but not finishing any of them. When I questioned him about it he replied “It’s ok Dad I know what I’m doing”. In the latter part of the game he joined them all up into an uber 17 tile city with 5 heralds (totalling a whopping 44 points it beat my current score on it’s own) and to add insult to injury he had placed farmers in strategic places to not only gain points from his cities but most of mine as well.

After totalling his points it was obvious there was no need to count mine, I was owned.

I’m so proud.

More Talisman Stuff

2010-10-28T04:26:00.001+11:00

I can’t help myself… well I can usually but when a good offer comes along I seem to lose all resolve.

When I was ordering the Talisman stuff I was really keen on getting the Dungeon and Reaper expansions since they seem to be very popular with those “in the know” on sites such as Board Game Geek. Sadly both of those expansions were unavailable at my usual haunts Maelstrom Games and Milsims Games.

I turned to eBay and couldn’t find anything that had a reasonable price AND reasonable postage. I took a gamble with some “Make an Offer” entries though and while going through the deluge of “Offer Declined” messages tonight I noticed one lonely “Offer Accepted”. Woo Hoo! So I managed to pick up a new copy of the Reaper expansion for less than retail including postage from the US. I’m as shocked as I am happy!

This does mean I’ll need more card sleeves now.

Man Cave Update

2010-10-27T20:39:00.001+11:00

The other day my managed to score two more sets of shelves and a table for my man cave. Great news, except it would mean I’d have to get back to cleaning it up to make room for them all.

Thankfully most of the dirty work has already been done, now it’s more of sorting stuff out and making some tough decisions on stuff that has been hanging around in boxes for years.

Here’s the two tables in painting mode (left) and gaming mode (right). In gaming mode they measure 4x5.5 feet which should be perfect for anything I play. If I ever feel the need to go 6x8 I can easily make up some chipboard tops. The grey table is about 4cm shorter than the white table but I can sort that out by making some risers for the legs.

The TV still works, I was afraid that it wouldn’t after getting shifted around so much. While I was unpacking I noticed the Dreamcast and just couldn’t resist. Luckily there’s a couple comfy lounge chairs to go back in here. Anyone up for a game, I’ve got bags on Taki.

And if I ever get tired of the Dreamcast, XBox, Playstation (1&2), N64 and the Saturn then I have this baby...

Sort of, the PC in it died years ago and the sound has never been wired up. One day though.

And now for the pièce de résistance:

This used to hang front and centre in my lounge room, sadly it’s not even allowed in the house anymore.

There’s still a bit more work to do in sorting out some boxes and I’m hopeful that I’ll get it done this weekend. Now if the ruddy electrician would just hook up the power then I can start moving my painting table out there.

More Christmas Goodies

2010-10-25T19:18:00.001+11:00

After much deliberation I placed the order for the last part of my Christmas present: Talisman, the revised fourth edition by Fantasy Flight Games.

I played this game a lot when I was a kid. I never owned the game but two of my friends did so it saw a lot of table time. I never really claimed to understand all the rules but I knew enough to do the basic stuff and I left all the tricky card stuff to my mates.

A little research and a strong nostalgia filter I came to a couple conclusions:

First the game is pretty much random in every way. As a kid I didn’t care about this too much as it meant that even when you were down you weren’t completely out. It also means that the game has a huge replay factor. That’s when point two hit me…
I could get my kids to play this. I’m sure I’m more than capable to manage all the cards and tricky stuff and just let him get on with rolling dice.
The game sure looks purty now. And is bigger.

The left photo shows the board size comparison between (top to bottom) 3rd edition, 1st/2nd edition and 4th edition on the bottom. The right photo shows game cards from (top to bottom) 4th edition, 2nd edition and 3rd edition.

It seems that while the cards of the fourth edition are bigger than in the previous editions the little buggers are in fact, little. Teeny even. Here’s a comparison shot against the now “industry standard” gaming card.

And Talisman continues the trend of modern boardgames to come with miniatures instead of meeples or standees. Here’s what you get from the core box.

There seems to be a healthy amount of expansions for this game and I was very tempted to grab more than just the Frostmarch one. I’ll see how much table time the game gets before doing my usual thing and buying everything.

Anyway I’m off to buy a truckload of card sleeves…

The Incursion Begins

2010-10-19T11:42:00.002+11:00

Played the first two missions of Incursion on Saturday night. The mechanics are simple but have a subtle layer of complexity added by the cards and command points mechanic.
Mission one had two APE’s facing off against a horde of zombies that kept growing by six zombies per turn. I went with the Allies and Brendan took the SWG. I made a big mistake by standing and firing at the zombies. Big mistake. You need to keep moving and keep shooting. Also as far as the Allies are concerned, corridors=good, intersections=bad. You do not want zombies to start surrounding you as their hand to hand attacks increase in power when hitting the same target. By the time I had worked out what to do there were around 20+ zombies on the table and most of them between me and my exit point.
Dark times.

The second mission gave us more resource points and I was able to field two grunts, a HMG and Sarge. The SWG brought along some sturmzombies, two bomberzombies, Hans Von X and a werewolf.

Splitting me men into two teams and taking great advantage of reaction fire allowed the APEs an easy victory for this mission. That and the fact I was rolling three dice for reaction fire instead of only two meant that I was hitting way more often than I should have. But it also meant that I was rolling doubles more often too and doubles cancels reaction fire for that player that turn.
Other than that play went smoothly and fun was had by all. The first game took close to an hour to play but there were a lot of interruptions and we were referring to the rulebook a bit. The second game was done in maybe 30-40 minutes and I don’t think we touched the rulebook much.
Can’t wait to get this onto the table again.

Cthulhu is Coming for Christmas!

2010-10-17T15:10:00.002+11:00

As often as I make light of my significant other and the imposed “Wife Law” I feel the need to clarify one thing: she never ceases to amaze me.
I had mentioned to her that I was interested in getting the Call of Cthulhu Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games and that it would make a great Christmas present. We were talking about the game, well I was talking about the game and she was tapping her iPhone and nodding when she looked up and said “Ok well you can have it, what other games do you want?” After a short meeting of the budget committee decisions were made and funds allocated.
After doing the rounds of the usual suppliers I found that once again Maelstrom Games came out on top for both availability and price. And better still I had an email with a 15% discount code to help my gaming dollar go further.

I managed to get the Call of Cthulhu Core Set and the Secrets of Arkham expansion as well as all six of the Asylum Packs in the Dreamlands setting: Twilight Horror, In Memory of Day, In the Dread of Night, Search for the Silver Key, Sleep of the Dead and Journey to Unknown Kadath. That’s over 500 cards all up and for a two player game which requires 50 card decks it should be plenty.
Why this game? Well it’s Cthulhu, ‘nuff said.
You need more? Well it’s a card game with a fixed distribution. I’ll pause while you mull that last bit over. That’s right, no random booster packs, no chase cards and none of that block cycle crap that keeps making you buy more cards. And you know what they do when they sell out of a set? They print more.
So I get all the deck customisation and combo chaining delights I can handle with a price tag that my wife can handle.
Win-win.
Roll on Christmas.

Painting the Incursion Miniatures – Day 2

2010-10-16T02:22:00.002+11:00

Well technically it’s day three but I didn’t do much yesterday so it doesn’t count. I’ve finished painting Hans the Hunter. But he is the coolest looking.

I’ve also finished the zombies for now. There’s plenty of little details I haven’t gotten to yet but I’ve already spent so much time on these guys and there’s other miniatures that need finishing before Saturday night.

They look good enough for use on the table but some close ups here show that things like the buttons, pouches, belts and so on all need to be done.

They will get finished off and given a coat of matt varnish, this weekend hopefully, but right now I need sleep and then tomorrow I’m finishing these guys.

And I still need to re-read the rules and get the current FAQ. Sigh, maybe I don’t need sleep after all.

Painting the Incursion Miniatures – Day 1

2010-10-13T23:38:00.001+11:00

I managed to get all the Incursion miniatures based last night and today I took an RDO and started painting.

Sorry there’s no close up photos as the lighting in the family room is pretty bad this time of the night and I’m too tired to set up elsewhere. I spent most of the time on the zombies but I have managed to also get base coats on the Apes and Von-X’s. The werewolf is the only one without any paint, but I still have two nights before they hit the table. It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious painting and I’m pretty happy with the amount of paint I was able to slap down today: 37 minis has to be a new record for me. I’ll be even more impressed if I can get them done before Saturday but so far I think I’m on track.

Incursion is Here!

2010-10-11T20:17:00.001+11:00

I got a phone call after lunch telling me that my parcel from the US had arrived. Incursion was here! Waiting until 5 (not a heck of a lot of work got done) was arduous. Eventually I got home and found these waiting for me.

Here’s the contents of the German starter (left) and Allied starter (right). Not the best photos I’m sorry but I’ll get better ones up when I put these together (starting tonight).

As for the game itself the box is a lot heavier than I imagined it to be. Opening the box explains why, the top inch or so of the box is all gameboard and card counters.

I won’t go into the details of the box contents yet but I will post something soon, right now I need to start painting.

Secrets of the Angry Wife

2010-10-07T19:53:00.001+11:00

I’m in so much trouble. I knew I would be before I did it… but didn’t stop me though. Dogui over at oMAD made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse and soon I’ll have both the 1949 - Secrets of the Third Reich rulebooks making their way to my gaming table.

I’m excited but my wife won’t be… when she finds out. I may have to move into the man cave for a while. Hmm, maybe I should get the books delivered there instead.

Thanks Dogui - for the books that is, I can get into trouble all by myself.

WW2… with zombies AND werewolves AND mechs… really does it get any better?

Incursion Zombies

2010-10-06T18:58:00.001+11:00

I came home to find some zombies in the meter box. Usually I just hate that, but these were the ones I ordered from Maelstrom.

The amount of duplicate miniatures in the package isn’t too bad considering the amount that you get. A bit of creative painting and the “Seperate Head System” that Westwind use should make it easy to create some unique looking zombies.

The quality of the scuplts are impressive with some very classic “zombie” like poses. The casting process has left a fair bit of flash that needs trimming. Most of it should be easily rubbed off with a blade with only a few miniatures needing a cut and file. The heads look like they’ve got decent sized necks to join them to the bodies so a bit of superglue should be all that is needed to stick them on. Pinning them would probably be overkill and very time consuming. These are the first miniatures I’ve bought that have the rolled shoulder type bases and I have to say that I love them!

I tried them on the Black Tree stuff and they look incredible. For a while I’ve had the feeling these miniatures were missing “something” but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. So off I went to eM4’s website and placed an order for 100 of the 30mm and 10 each of the 40mm and 50mm rolled shoulder bases. Best of all is that the washer bases I’ve used for the miniatures fit nicely into the recess on the bases so rebasing them should just be a case of a drop or two of glue. The metal washer bases won’t have been wasted though as I plan to get some small (4-5mm) cube magnets and paint them to be used as status markers for the various rule sets.

Standardising the bases of all my WW2 minis (28mm at least) should allow me to use the zombies in games like Hell on Earth or All Things Zombie, and likewise I should be able to use the Germans/British/US in games like Secrets of the Third Reich. What’s that you say? I don’t own Secrets of the Third Reich? Well no, not yet I don’t :)

Since the rest of the Incursion stuff is likely to be arriving any day now I really should get cracking and start painting these zombies.

Man Cave – Humble Beginnings

2010-09-29T23:55:00.001+10:00

Setting up the man cave has been progressing slowly but surely. Things have been hampered by the fact that at some point my shed was paid a visit by these little ahem “nibblers”.

They have gotten into almost everything and there are little black mouse turds every-fucking-where. So every box has to have every item checked for damage, de-turded and then sorted into piles so it can be unpacked or taken to the tip. Initially I was in shock at how much damage they’ve managed to do but it quickly turned to rage. I haven’t seen one yet and I honestly think they’ve moved, even my cat hasn’t paid any attention to the open shed. But I swear to God that if I see one freaking little whisker then I’m going to seek retribution Incredible Hulk style.

I should be able to get the shed completely emptied tomorrow and then all the shelves, cupboards and other storage can be moved in. Once I’ve decided on a layout then I can start putting stuff away.

On a happy note though, I’ve come across heaps of stuff I’d either forgotten about or that I simply couldn’t find. Some of it has been promptly squirreled away where I can find it again later and some of it such as a small Clan War army has been put up on the WargamerAU Buy/Swap/Sell forums for trade. By 9am this morning I had offer to trade them for a small collection of Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle game.

I’ve been wanting to get into this game for a while but the prohibitive cost of GW minis has put me off, $20 for a single character is just plain crazy. This trade will land me a various sets of the Fellowship, 48 elves and some elf heroes/personalities, 24 human warriors, 12 riders of Rohan, 5 Ring Wraiths, 12 Moria Goblins and the Fellowship and Two Towers rulebooks. I probably won’t do too much with these until after I’ve finished all the Incursion stuff (which all shipped today so I should have them here in about two weeks – woohoo!).

So hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to post some photos of “Man Cave mk 1”.

Zombies from the Maelstrom

2010-09-23T14:04:00.001+10:00

Sadly I missed out on getting the extra zombies for Incursion and six zombies in the German starter just won’t be enough. I don’t mind using proxies or even card standees occasionally but if I’m going to play a zombie miniatures boardgame then I want zombie miniatures.

So once again Tas from The Man Cave kindly guided (misguided*) me to have a look at Maelstrom Games in the UK where I ordered these:

Got them for about $30 and they offer FREE INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE to any order over £10. Now that’s such a ridiculously low threshold that any order should just get free postage.

I’ll be able to use these guys for other games like All Things Zombie, Hell on Earth or even Fear and Faith. When they get here that is, oh the wait is killing me.

* Legal disclaimer required by Wife Law.

Stupid Good Incursion Deal

2010-09-21T15:20:00.001+10:00

Well you’ve gone and done it now Tas… you just waltz in and blog about Incursion without a care of the impact it will have on the rest of us. But I held fast and I resisted the temptation…

Until now that is.

Damn Grindhouse Games have a Stupid Good Deal going where you get the game and one each of the Allied and German starter packs for $100US. Postage was a shock at $44US but I guess these things are heavy. It’s crazy but it still works out cheaper than buying them locally, $300AUS retail and on sale for $240 AUS at MilSims without postage.

First 25 orders also get an additional 6 Sturmzombies and a pair of Bomberzombies, I so hope I was quick eneough.

I was tempted to pick up some of their resin terrain pieces but I figured I could make them myself and I’d already spent enough. I may be their kind of stupid but I’m still smart enough to know I’ll have to explain this purchase to my wife.

The Game Itself

According to www.incursiongame.com the game contains:

Rigid two piece box covered in art
Glossy 28 page rulebook
Card rules summary/playsheet
4 sheets of two-sided heavy-duty die cut pieces (132 total) including counters, doors and stand-ups for all models that might potentially be used in the game.
Super Heavy duty two-sided six-fold game board
86 cards including the full deck of battle and all model cards in multiples where appropriate.
3 black dice
36 black plastic stand-up holders for doors and “models”
Vac-formed plastic holding tray
More fun than you can shake a stick at!

Now on to the really cool bits, the US APE suits.

Allied Starter Pack

German Starter Pack

Ilsa Von X, Gretel Von X, Hans, and the Blitzhund.

6 Sturmzombies

2 Bomberzombies

I just have to wait for it to arrive now. So while I’m waiting anyone have a good idea on how I tell my wife? Any suggestions at all, guys… guys?

*sigh*

If you don’t hear from me for a while send help.

Project: Man Cave

2010-09-18T12:09:00.001+10:00

It’s school holidays once again and I've got two weeks off to look after the Younglings. As with any extended period of time at home I have some handyman (and I use this term loosely) projects I need to finish. These holidays are no exception but I also have a *queue dramatic music* new project.

We built our house almost three years ago now and at the time we got power run to the shed. The plan was to get lights and power points put in and make it a quasi storage workshop. Well we’ve managed the storage part of the plan, albeit poorly done.

So the shed needs a clean out, a clean up and sorting out. All before Monday…

Quickly thinking of as many excuses as I could not to do this when my wife mentioned that once it was cleaned up I could move all my gaming stuff (she used a different word) out there. I was about to object when the thought hit me: man cave.

Now I know she’s only dangling the “gaming shed” as a proverbial carrot in the hopes that I’ll actually start and finish a project in the same holiday period. And damn her she’s right, I’ll work alright.

There’s a huge chunk of my youth hidden away in the last photo:

all my novels, books and comics
a 2,000+ CD collection
a sizable collection of old-school RPG’s
a lounge suite
a couple of tables
every gaming console known to man
an 80cm flat screen TV

What a good start for the man cave.

Of course this will be a great incentive to finish off the arcade cabinet I’ve been building for the last 5 or 6 years.

Tusk-en: Raiders, Jawas or Ewoks

2010-09-16T14:04:00.000+10:00

I'm still (im)patiently waiting for the rest of my Star Wars beasts to arrive and I really want to play Tusk so I've got to make a decision and rather than go through my usual procrastination process I've decided to put it to a vote:

Should I...

Wait for the "Reeks" to arrive and play Tusk-en.
Use Jawas and go hunting for droids.
Use Ewoks and go hunting for some of the beasts I already have (hmmmm Scout Troopers?).

So I ask you my fellow gamers, what should I do?

Ee Chee Wa Maa!

2010-09-13T21:58:00.001+10:00

Two more parcels of Star Wars miniatures arrived today, woo hoo!!!

The first lot was from a trade on Wargamer AU, mostly droids and a few droid tanks but it also contained a few beasties. Notably were the rat and cat like creatures in front of the walker like droid. I think they’ll do for “dog” replacements in Tusk-en.

The second parcel was a combination of two eBay hauls. A mixed lot of pretty much every era and faction. What was really surprising was the size of the beasties… they’re huge! And these are only considered their mid range sized miniatures - the Reek is bigger. I think we’re going to need a bigger boat!

A better shot to show how big these things are, the Rebel trooper and his little furry friend stand no chance.

I’ve got enough to play Tusk-en now, and with the last couple purchases I should also have enough to field a platoon or three each of Clone Troopers and Droids so I expect something to start happening with Star Wars Commander soon too.

Flying Lead

2010-09-11T04:27:00.001+10:00

I’m still waiting for my Star Wars beasties to arrive from eBay and trades. Sadly I’ve only managed to get one Reek for the Tusken Raiders to hunt, so I’ll have to just buy some more after the credit card to settles down. I did manage to score a handful of smaller beasties though so Tusk-en will get played at some point soon. In one of the trades I managed to pick up a crab droid, some Corporate Alliance Tank Droids and a Commerce Guild Homing Spider Droid. They’ll add some punch to the droid forces and help to even things out when the Jedi are on the table.

In the mean time I’ve been playing some games of Fantastic Worlds with the Star Wars minis I do have. The game is very good but the one area that is frustrating me is the amount of time it takes to convert the stats over from the Star Wars Miniatures system. Now to be fair it’s my fault as there are just so many wonderful options in Fantastic Worlds that it seems a shame to do just a basic conversion. The combat system also slows down with 20-30 miniatures on the table.

So I finally gave in and picked up a copy of Flying Lead from Ganesha Games.

Flying Lead is based on the Song of Blades and Heroes (SoBH) system which I’ve had plenty of fun with and we’ve also started playing their Naopleonic rules Song of Drums and Shakos. What attracted me to Flying Lead is that is builds on the simplicity of SoBH and adds in rules for modern weapons, vehicles and morale (among others). They also provide some online weapon, vehicle and squad builders which make converting the Star Wars statistics an absolute breeze.

So with after going through the rulebook and spending an hour or two with the squad builders I was able to come up with this:

I’ll play a few games this weekend and post some battle reports. I’ll also post the stats for the miniatures once I’m happy with them.

Tusk…en

2010-08-30T19:29:00.001+10:00

I picked up a copy of Wessex Game’s Tusk today with the idea of playing it in a galaxy far far away.

My idea is to use the Victorian science fiction variant of the game to recreate Tusken Raider hunts. I’ve got more than I need of these guys for skirmishing and a couple of these guys below would make fantastic replacements for the mammoths and dinosaurs found in the rules.

I’ll have a look online in all the usual places and in the meantime the kids have a few dinosaur and elephant toys the Tusken raiders can hunt until something more appropriate turns up.

Sshhh… more Star Wars Miniatures.

2010-08-27T20:18:00.001+10:00

I noticed that my last few blog entries didn’t contain many, if any photos. So I’ve decided to rectify that with a quick show and tell of another box of 99 cent Star Wars deals that arrived from eBay today.

They’re pretty much you trooper/warrior mix and for the first time in a while I’m happy enough with their paintjobs. Some of the Star Wars stuff honestly look like they’ve been painted by my cat, but these look like someone has actually taken care to colour in between the lines.

But I do have to say that I was little disappointed with the Ewoks, their axes are just too big. And the Jawa’s are either too tall or too skinny (both?).

The real surprise of the batch were the Imperial Dignitaries. The photo here don’t show the subtle shading on the gowns and the faces, but it’s there and it works.

Normally I wouldn’t bid on miniatures like these dignitaries as they wouldn’t have a lot of value in a traditional wargame, but a pulp game is a different thing all together and interesting characters can create interesting scenarios.

Gutshot Action Slips

2010-08-25T14:21:00.001+10:00

Gutshot went down rather well with the guys from the club and but two things kept it from flowing as smooth as it could have: firstly I hadn’t read the rules as well as I should have and spent quite a while looking things up, especially hand to hand combat. Secondly we were using plain playing cards for the action deck and each character was assigned a number and took an action when their card was turned over. This led to a lot of “so who’s 7” and “didn’t 4 die last turn?”

Every time we played I’d say “look I’ll make up some cards with photos of the miniatures and this won’t be a problem next time”… and for whatever reason I wouldn’t make the cards.

Well now I have.

I’ve got another 9 miniatures I need to paint before I can make cards for those, for now though this 12 should suffice. I need to start basing all the cardstock buildings as some of them are starting to distort.

Miniatures and terrain… check. Action cards and tokens… check. Read the rules… check. Time for a Gutshot campaign methinks.

Works in Progress?

2010-08-23T06:20:00.001+10:00

I’ve got so many projects on the go at the moment I feel I need to make a list of where everything is at in an attempt to work out where my time should be best spent.

So in no particular order here I go:

15mm Napoleonic Skirmish

I’ve got the Russians painted but I need to finish them off with a wash and a varnish. Haven’t done anything with the British. Need some terrain too. Song of Drums and Shakos is a little particular about the terrain quantity and size so I’ll need to sort that out first.

28mm WW2

Where I’m spending most of my time at the moment. A day or two of painting should finish most of the Germans and British I’ve already started. I’ve got a platoon each of US Airborne and German Fallschirmjagers that haven’t even got an undercoat yet. A couple infantry guns, anti tank guns and a Flakvierling are in various stages of (dis)assembly and painting. The terrain is eating up most of my time here but the results are looking promising. Sick kids and general laziness have stalled any progress this weekend.

10mm WW2

Haven’t touched the Pendraken stuff in a while. Probably not a huge amount to finish painting here, maybe 20 stands or so (they paint up quickly). I just need to finish off the bases on the stuff I have painted. I’m happy with the terrain I’ve done for this so far. I need to get a decent table mat, I’m looking at the Euro Fields one from Hotz Mats. Could use it for 28mm too, the flip side of it is plain green which is also useful. I should just buy one but I might make a trip to the fabric store and see what I can find first.

28mm Western Skirmish

Not much to do here really… sort of. Most of the minis are painted up. Enough for five of us to play with a heap of opponents to shoot at. I have the Hotz Mat which is great. The cardstock buildings are starting to warp which is not surprising but disappointing. To fix these I going to add balsa wood guides and mount them onto MDF. This means I won’t be able to stack them for storage anymore but it will allow for some little details to be added to the bases.

28mm Superheroes

I really need to get this on the table more. The kids are asking me to play a lot and I keep putting it off because I don’t have the right terrain and the minis aren’t based yet. I plan to resolve the basing issues this week and just playing with what I have terrain wise right now. I’ve got plans on making some Gotham City rooftop terrain tiles but I won’t start that for fear of stalling the WW2 terrain even more. Batman will just have to chase The Joker through a ruined European Village for a few episodes. Then again I could just get the HeroClix maps laminated and use those for a while. May even be able to simplify the game for the kids by using the grid rather than measuring… hmmm I’ll have to think about that one for a while.

28mm Star Wars/Sci-fi

This is another blank slate where all I have are the rules and some miniatures. Although like the superheroes I could use the Star Wars Miniatures maps to start with and the 1” squares may prove useful there too. There’s also the 28mm mass combat rules I started based on Blitzkrieg Commander. It’s playable but I need to make some more bases and build more terrain and lots of it.

1/600 Aircraft

It’s been ages since I got my aircraft onto the table. There’s a heap of aircraft to paint up yet and I haven’t even touched the US and Japanese aircraft. All I need are some magnets and a good weekend at the painting table. And as much as I love my hex map, it is getting harder to roll it out flat after being in storage for so long. Maybe I could get the Euro Fields matt printed double sided with a 1.5” hex pattern on the other side, more expensive but twice as useful.

Wargods

Considering the amount of money I’ve spend in these minis I really need to get them on the table soon.

And Everything Else

Doctor Who, Song of Blades and Heroes, Fear and Faith, Bloodbowl, Dungeonbowl, Mud and the Blood, Modern Aircraft… oh the list goes on.

So What To Do About It?

The 28mm WW2, Superheroes and Sci-fi skirmish are equally vying for my time at the moment. So in order of priority* based on:

How much time/effort/money is required to get it on the table.
How long it has been since I promised my kids we’d actually play or play again.
How interested I am in playing.
How interested everyone else is in playing.

* subject to change at any given moment.

It goes something like this:

28mm WW2 Skirmish
Supers
Western Skirmish
10mm WW2
Star Wars/Sci-fi

The rest of the list gets too hard from here on in. The top three are pretty much focused on terrain building and once I get the majority of the WW2 stuff knocked over I can see me working on a few pieces of each at any given time.

Flash Gordon over at Dampf's Modelling Page

2010-08-23T05:02:00.000+10:00

I like to look at the blog list of the blogs that I read, every now and then you'll find a fantastic blog that you may never have come across any other way.

Dampf's Modelling Page is one of those blogs. There are a few entries for Flintloque which is a fantasy game by Alternative Armies set in the napoleonic era, Orks and Halflings with muskets... so very tempting.

But the Pièce de résistance are his Flash Gordon pulp entries. This is just the sort of thing I hope to get on the table with Fantastic Worlds.

His terrain boards are simply amazing and have stage by stage blog entries which are both informative and inspirational.

So many ideas...

Two Hour Supers!

2010-08-17T02:17:00.001+10:00

Graham over at the Pairadice Saloon has been working on a set of supers rules using the Two Hour Wargames reaction system as its base.

This is exciting stuff indeed. The THW reaction system isn’t for everybody and it does take some getting used to but once '”you get it” then you’ll never look back.

A supers game is perfect for this system for a few reasons:

The reaction system works best with fewer miniatures so a supers game of 4-6 miniatures a side is just right for a fast game with a lot of interaction.
The way the reaction system flows back and forth until a character is knocked down, out of the fight or runs away should replicate the short and intense bouts between heroes.
The reputation system (defined in Chain Reaction as “represents a combination of training, experience, morale, and motivation and is an expression of a characters overall fighting quality”) is a simple but effective scale of a heroes power that also allows for improvement, which brings me to…
All THW systems are perfect for campaign play. Why play one game when you can play 5 or 6. And let your heroes gain (or lose) skills and abilities on the way.
Solo game play. This is great for a gamer that doesn’t get to play as much as he’d like, I can set up on the kitchen table and play ~~with myself~~… ~~by myself~~… a game on my own. Or better still…
Same side play. I can play a game with my kids, not against them. This is important on so many levels but it makes it so much easier for my five year old to handle losing a game if Dad lost too. “We’ll get them next time mate just you see!”

I’m very keen to see how Graham goes with this and the timing is perfect with my recent search for some good supers rules, maybe I’ve just found them.

Dave Graffam Buildings – Wrecked House Part 1

2010-08-15T18:45:00.001+10:00

While waiting for the glue to dry on the split ruin building I started working on the wrecked house. This build was a lot faster than the previous one, so fast in fact that I found myself waiting for glue to dry on this building.

While the column supports were optional in the previous build they’re really needed in this one. Not so much for the strength in my case but to actually hold the floor in place while I drill and pin it to the walls. The cardstock columns looked too fiddly to muck around with so I drug out the ever useful balsa wood.

Two 6.5mm strips back to back, cut to length and then glue to the floor. I gave the glue on the floor fifteen minutes and then glue on the upper floor. I was happy enough with the results that I added two to the other building too. An inkwash and a light drybrush should do the job when it’s all dried.

A couple shots to give you and idea of the size of the wrecked house.

While waiting for glue to dry elsewhere I added a few bits of rubble here and there.

After all the construction so far there’s about a third of the MDF sheet left, which may be enough for the tower and ruined cottage.

But even working on three buildings per $5 sheet we’re only talking about $1.66 per building. Not too shabby at all.

Dave Graffam Buildings – Split Ruin Part 2

2010-08-15T12:02:00.001+10:00

Spent a little more time on the split ruin this morning and it just keeps looking better. I eventually settled on using cardstock for the roof and it looks better than I thought. It helped that on this model you fold the roof over so it is actually two sheets of cardstock thick. I’ll have to do that with all the buildings I think.

Here’s a few shots of the building assembled and based.

I’ve added a little bit of sawdust, pebbles and wood chips to add a little 3D rubble. The rubble on the artwork is great and won’t get in the way of the miniatures so I’ll leave that alone.

Working on the wrecked house now while waiting for the glue to set on this one to dry. Tonight I’ll start painting the edges of the MDF and give the rubble a grey/black paint/wash and then tomorrow night I’ll look at flocking the rest of the base. If I’m feeling adventurous enough and I’m not too tired from work I’m thinking of putting a little stone wall near the side door, we’ll see.

These Dave Graffam buildings really are the business. They’re simple to build, look good and still allow you to get your hobby groove on what’s not to love?

Dave Graffam Buildings – Split Ruin Part 1

2010-08-15T01:01:00.001+10:00

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? Well I’m no John “Hannibal” Smith (Murdoch maybe) but I’m always happy to improvise. I had intended on using 3mm MDF and a hot glue gun to put my first Dave Graffam building together but a few test runs of the hot glue gun showed that I had maybe 4-5 seconds before the glue dried too much to reposition the MDF. This was just a little too quick for me to use it on my first build (ie I’m fit to bouts of procrastination).

First up I cut out one side of a wall section and then traced it onto the MDF. I took care to make sure the straight edges were in fact straight but the ruined edges I took less acre with. This is a ruined building after all and I intend to paint the edges so I can hide am edge that’s out a 1mm or two.

I went with adhesive spray to stick the artwork to the MDF because it dries fast and doesn’t tend to run or drip everywhere.

One of the reasons I couldn’t use the hot glue gun is that I wanted to “pin” the walls together. I have a roll of 0.9mm wire and a 1mm drill bit in a hand drill and it cuts into the MDF like butter. I drilled into the wall section about a centimetre and glue them in with super glue.

Then drill two holes into the opposing wall section, line the edge with MDF glue and press together. I let that join dry while I cut out the rest of the artwork and MDF for the opposite wall. It’s starting to look good even with just three walls and the floor artwork sitting in place. Again I left it to dry while I cut the floor pieces.

Floor pieces all cut, glued and ready to put into place. MDF glue on all joining edges and two pins on the left and right edges really give the floors strength. Not that there will be a lot of weight on them but there’s no chance of getting any bowing that happens with some multi story cardstock buildings. This build does come with some columns to insert which would help with a cardstock building but I won’t bother with those. I may paint up some balsa wood pieces and stick them in but I’ll wait and see, they may just get in the way of moving the miniatures around.

Only have the roof left to build now, I was going to just make it out of card but I’m thinking I’ll get some balsa wood or try to find some 1.5mm-2mm thick card.

Once the roof goes on I’ll base the building on some 3mm MDF and add some piles to the floors to help break up the “empty box” look that it has going. Some small off cuts, pebbles and sand should do the job. One of the other Graffam buildings has some furniture to build so I’ll make some for this too.

About 3 hours of build time to get this far and I’m guessing maybe another hour or two to finish off. It’s a little slower than I had hoped but things will be a lot quicker on the next ones now that I’ve worked out how to factor in the extra thickness of the MDF to allow the internal walls to match up with the external walls.

Once the construction is finished and the paint dried I’ll give it a coat of matt varnish, especially the floors and outer walls where most of the handling will be. A great thing is that if a section does get damaged all I have to do is print that page out and glue it over top of the damaged bit, easy fixed!

The actual size of the building is surprising too, I had imagined it much smaller. A squad could quite easily hunker down inside. The wrecked house and ruined tower builds are going to be downright impressive!

Looking for some Pulp – We Can Be Heroes

2010-08-13T20:15:00.001+10:00

I
I will be king
And you
You will be queen
Though nothing…

Sorry, just couldn’t help myself.

For a while now I’ve been looking for some good skirmish rules for my Star Wars minis but haven’t really found anything that “felt right”. I think where I was going wrong is that I was looking for some sci-fi rules and while that might fit the period it doesn’t suit the flavour of the Star Wars universe. What I really need is some pulp rules, and so the search begins…

I’m no good at writing reviews so I won’t try, instead I’ll just list some pros and cons of each of the systems.

I started by picking up a copy of We Can Be Heroes II by TFP Games. 70 pages inc covers, around $12.95US but currently on sale at Wargame Vault for $8.62US.

Pros

It uses a card based activation system which is something I really like in a game.
The system isn’t genre specific and comes with a huge range of examples of weapons and armour for different genres.
Each character in the game are either a Hero, Sidekick, Superior Troops or Inferior Troops (oddly enough there are no “standard troops”). Each of these types have a fixed set of stats, so all Jedi are the same as all Sith who are the same as all Bounty hunters. This does make for a lot less record sheet checking and even my kids can pick this up pretty easily.
Redshirts/droids/troopers: the game has got this trope covered. A single Jedi can easily take on a squad of battle droids and win in a few turns. Yes there’s still a little risk the dice won’t be kind and you’ll get hurt but the odds are stacked in the Jedi’s favour.
A random amount of Hero points are available each turn that we also use as Jedi power points for things like deflecting blaster fire, force push, throwing light sabers and so on. This allows for cool powers but keeps them in check too. Yep Obi-Wan can use force push to knock over that unit of droids but there’s six of them and that’ll use up all the Hero points for this turn… you sure you want to do that… there’ll be none left for Anakin to use this turn?

Cons

Each character in the game are either a Hero, Sidekick… I know I listed this as a Pro but it also takes away from the game. My kids won’t care that Anakin Skywalker has the same stats as Yoda or Darth Maul but I do. This will affect long term playability for me but I’m happy to wear that as this is a game I can play with my kids.
Skills, these should be a pro but they feel tacked on and really don’t add much to the game. Reference is made as to how the First Aid skill helps to heal a character but nothing is said in the Combat or skill sections of the Strong, Very Strong or Super Human Strength skills when surely they would have some effect. A missed opportunity I think.
It doesn’t really affect play at all but the layout of the book consists of the rules being presented as speech bubbles, see here: Just like that… for the whole book. It’s not unreadable and it’s doesn’t get in the way but it doesn’t sit right with me for some reason. The same goes with all the pictures of the miniatures, there’s just too many of them. At least on for each speech bubble, obviously as it would just look silly having a speech bubble full of rules floating on an empty page. If they cut the speech bubbles and reduced the number of photos they could easily reduce the size of the book to 35-40 pages. But like I said earlier this doesn’t affect the fun you’ll have at the table as I haven’t had to refer to the rulebook once during play.

Overall

I’ll definitely be playing these rules with my kids. There’s a cheap magic supplement available too which makes it a little easier to work out force powers and could easily be used for any form of magic, psionics, voodoo or whatever.

Since the the rules are so simple (not always a bad thing) it won’t take much effort to convert the Star Wars characters into the WCBH rules.

These are the sort of rules you look at and think “I could have made this up myself” well that’s true but TFP have saved you the trouble and the time. A solid set of rules that are fun to play, and like a true pulp game no one ever really dies. Which is another plus when the Jedi your five year old is playing takes on two Droidekas and rolls badly… very badly. The force was not with him that day…

So the search is still on for a set of rules for me.

Next time I’ll have a look at Fantastic Worlds by Ratrap Productions, other rules I’ve got lined up are Larger than Life by Two Hour Wargames and Flying Lead by Ganesha Games.

Any suggestions about other pulp rules I should have a look would be greatly welcomed as well.

Dave Graffam Buildings

2010-08-10T02:17:00.001+10:00

Just picked up some Dave Graffam buildings from Wargame Vault and I’m aiming to get a couple of these built over the coming fortnight. Most come with single and multi layer variants so they give you plenty of scope for variations and should suit just about any period from fantasy to napoleonics right through to WW2 and beyond. And at around $5 AUS per building they’re great value.

My plan is to build these using 3-6mm MDF for the walls and floors, the roofs I may just leave as cardstock. Haven’t entirely decided yet and I’m sure to change my mind part way through construction. What really caught my attention is that the buildings look functional at least for 15mm and 28, I think they’ll look awesome at 10mm scale but they’ll be much to small to hold a stand of infantry.

But one thing is certain that the strength and durability combined with the amazing artwork should leave me with some sweet gaming terrain.

Ruined Cottage: www.davesgames.net, www.wargamevault.com.

Split Ruin: www.davesgames.net, www.wargamevault.com.

Tower Ruin: www.davesgames.net, www.wargamevault.com.

Wrecked House: www.davesgames.net, www.wargamevault.com.

Back to the 28mm Germans and Long Grass

2010-08-08T00:17:00.001+10:00

I’m making one last push to get the Black Tree Design 28mm Germans finished this weekend. So far it looks like I’ll get the full platoon done by Sunday, this post however isn’t about the Germans but more about the bases they’re um based on.

I wanted to put some tufts of long grass on a few of the bases to help break up the flat look the green flock I’m using causes. I was looking on eBay when I thought I probably should do them myself. I tried this method a few years ago and it turned out crap. Back then I blamed the technique for the bad results, unfortunately the current results prove that it was my implementation that needed improving.

I had an old brush laying around that was gunked up with glue and had the right looking bristles for what I wanted.

Cut a small length of around an inch or so.

Fold it in half, this takes practice and the first few lots of bristles shot our of my hand and across the table.

Twist the end nice and tight, dab a small ball of super glue on the end and wait 4-5 seconds.

Then simply put it on the base of the miniature. I’m just using the cheap superglue you get in packs at $2 and I find I can stick the tuft on the base and in about 10 seconds I can use a toothpick to move the bristles around and they stay where I want them.

Tomorrow once they’re completely dry I’ll use some small scissors or nail clippers to cut them to the lengths I’m after.

One nice effect you can see in the photos at the top of the post is that the superglue makes the base of the bristles go white when it oxidises. I’ll subdue that somewhat later with a green/yellow ink wash. For some bases I’ll try putting little dabs of paint on the ends of the bristles to make them look like they’re flowering.

More photos of the Germans themselves once they’re done.

Dungeonbowl!

2010-08-01T11:06:00.001+10:00

While searching the net for some Napoleonic terrain ideas I came across this on a Mordheim terrain site.

I instantly thought of Dungeonbowl. I’ve made some corridor and room pieces out of mdf in the past (think Space Hulk) and they looked good but moved around on the table a lot and just lacked that little something.

These however seem to be the perfect idea. Interconnecting rooms made out of a sturdy little box that shouldn’t shift about of the table, allows for great scope in detailing and with a lid becomes it’s own storage box! What’s not to love? I’m making plans to build a couple of these. A big room like in the photo on the right and for starters four of the smaller square rooms around it.

Once I’ve done the math and worked out the room sizes and door placements I’ll put some plans up here for comment.

After all the cardstock terrain I’ve been putting together lately I’m really looking forward to “building something”.

I’ll just have to paint my Skaven team now.

Paper or PDF?

2010-07-31T16:57:00.001+10:00

Every now and then I’ll get an email like this one:

Hello Tim Coombes,

You can re-download SuperSystem 3 to get the latest version, the 3rd printing.

Please follow the links to download the file(s).
They will be active for you until Aug/01/2010
SuperSystem Third Edition: http://www.wargamedownloads.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you
Greg Moore
http://www.wargamedownloads.com

This is one of the main reasons that I prefer the pdf rulebook over the paper versions. Why bother with FAQ’s and addendums when you can just get a corrected copy of the book?

I still print out the pdf books for use at the game table as I like to highlight certain rules and passages to help when playing the games, not something I’d like to do to an actual rulebook.

I’m very keen to get my hands on an iPad or similar device so I can try that out at the game table. Having all the rules at your fingertips in an electronic format allows you to search entire libraries for certain keywords. Better still it allows you to look stuff up on the Internet when the rulebooks don’t seem to have the answer you’re after. Hmmm… maybe I could buy my wife one for Christmas.

Eureka 15mm Naps Arrive

2010-07-20T01:21:00.001+10:00

The Eureka 15mm Napoleonic miniatures arrived today. These are great quality miniatures that require little to no cleanup. There is detail everywhere, much more than I’m going to bother painting but the great thing is that all the usual weak points such as plumes and bayonets have been sculpted a little thicker to make them stronger. Which will help since these are going to get a bit of handling being used for skirmish gaming.

I was going to use 20mm washers for the infantry and 30mm for the cavalry but decided to go down a slightly different path.

They’re maybe a millimetre or two smaller and they’re not magnetic like the washers would have been but they’re cheaper. And cheap is always good.

All based up we have the Russians to the left and the British to the right.

All done in fifteen minutes and with $1.10 worth of “bases” left over. I’ll leave then to dry tonight and I’ll start painting the Russians tomorrow night.

Sorting out the Super Heroes

2010-07-19T03:29:00.001+10:00

Searching through the mass of HeroClix miniatures it quickly became apparent that it was going to take “a long time” to find the dozen or so figures I needed. So I foolishly decided to kill two birds with one stone and sort the miniatures while I went along.

This is what it looked like about halfway done.

I had previously started to sort the miniatures into their appropriate release sets but this time I decided to group them by their teams affiliations. WizKids have made this easy by putting team affiliation logos right there on the base. This has left me with about a dozen plastic bags worth of teams and two huge loose piles of figures, the non team specific ones and a whopping pile of bits where the mini has come away from the base. These are mainly the flying characters which come shipped separate from the their base. Sorting them out is going to be a couple evenings worth of Googling and gluing.

Right now though I have found all the minis I need and have a small collection of other cool looking minis that I’ve verified against the S2 Character Sheet Builder. So when I the mood gets me all I need to do is grab a bag of miniatures and start making some cards for that team. Justice League is up next and then I’ll switch to the Marvel universe and have a look in at the Avengers.

All that will have to wait though because tomorrow night me and the boys are going to roll some dice.

Making the Hero Cards

2010-07-18T19:32:00.001+10:00

With the final look and feel of the cards sorted (well for now anyway) I decided to get a couple printed out and laminated.

I started by cutting out the cards, using a cutter makes quick work of this. Then fold the cards along the centre line.

My first thought was to put six cards per A4 sheet but I ended up sliding in the last two once the sheet had taken and was rolling though. It’s very important to hold the sheet while it’s moving through the laminator as you don’t want the cards to move.

Once its though you’ll have something like this.

And when you’ve done them all you’ll have this.

Which after you’ve cut up will give you this.

I just use scissors when cutting these out, they don’t need to be stacked or shuffled so their size isn’t so important. Just make sure to leave 3-4mm around the edges to keep the seal and your fingers will also appreciate it if you round off the corners.

I’m working my way though both the DC and Marvel universes and trying to match up miniatures I have with stats that have already been created for the Super System. There’s a few annoying omissions such as no Harley Quinn but that’s something I really can’t complain about and it’s something I can remedy by sitting down and nutting it out myself.

Now to sort out the rest of the miniatures. I started this ages ago and have got six boxes like these full of teeny little heroes.

Just got two more boxes to unpack and sort…

Almost 2,000 of the little buggers before I stopped counting. What else can I say except I love those 99 cent deals on eBay.

I’m thinking about debasing some of these and putting them on the 30mm rolled shoulder display bases such as these from eM4.

A bit of work but they should look nice.

Holy Skirmish Rules, Batman

2010-07-17T05:29:00.001+10:00

I recently picked up a copy of Super System 3rd Edition and wow what a great set of rules. I won’t go into too much detail about them until I’ve played a few more games but I will say that if you’re looking for a deeper set of rules for your Hero Clix minis then you simply can’t go past these.

The core game mechanics are simple but still have a lot of flexibility. Most dice rolls are opposed and you tend to roll a lot of dice with plenty of rerolls. Characters don’t tend to die often either, they may get weakened or hurt but they’re be back next episode.

Best of all the character creation rules are deep enough to create any character you can think of, or in my case you can easily recreate your favourite comic book heroes. Better still is that someone has already done a lot of that work for you here. One nice touch is the section on adding non combat related skills to your characters to add an RPG element to the game.

I’ve created a few hero cards for the game, mainly because I like pretty cards but also to help my kids get a grip on the system with colour coded stats.

Here’s a link to a PDF version of the cards above. Just print, fold and put them into a card sleeve or laminate them like I have.

I’m very keen to get a few games going with the kids so I’ll post some reports up when I can.

Aren’t You A Little Short For A Gladiator?

2010-07-11T21:45:00.000+10:00

I’ve had these Museum 15mm minis laying around for a while now and I thought they would be good to practice on before the Eureka Miniatures 15mm Naps turn up.

The paintjobs are simple but effective. The photos bring out every blemish and missed brush stroke so you’ll just have to trust me they look better in person.

The obligatory “comparison shot”.

I bought these way back when I picked up a copy “Red Sand Blue Sky” from Two Hour Wargames. I’ll have to drag it out and have another game or three, once I finish the skirmish table that is.

Building the Skirmish Table

2010-07-10T19:39:00.001+10:00

After a trip to Bunnings I was ready to start building the skirmish table. The plan originally was to make the table 600mm square but the materials I got were already pre cut to 600x900mm and 900mm long respectively. I really didn’t want to make any extra work for myself and decided to leave the board as is. The extra space will come in handy for 28mm skirmish games. Besides the lengths of pine were exactly the same length as the particle board. Not surprising since they’re supposed to be 900mm long but a lot of the MDF stuff from Bunnings is often 4-5mm larger in any given direction.

The lengths timber of timber came with a useful but annoying watermark that needed to be sanded off first. Three of these were really easy to do but the last one must have taken a good 15 minutes worth of sanding to remove it.

The first side is on, wood glue and three bugle screws should keep it in place.

The lip around the edge looks high in the shot below but once a terrain board is in place it only sticks up about a centimetre or so.

Almost done, each of the short sides are also screwed into the end of the long sides to give the corners extra strength. When this is done you’ll be able to pick up and carry the board by the edges without worry of them breaking free.

The two holes are so you can poke up from below to help remove terrain boards once they’re in place.

I would have stained the edges and sealed the particle board but the weather today was terrible. I’ve got a few pieces of particle board and MDF laying around so look at getting some terrain boards made up soon.

15mm Skirmish Terrain

2010-07-09T12:50:00.001+10:00

One thing that rears up every time you start a new scale is the issue of terrain. Sure I already have some stuff that would work ok but most of what I have will be out of period or slightly too big (28mm) or too small (10mm). Luckily most of my buildings are pdf/cardstock so all I need to do is reprint them at the appropriate scale. I’ll wait until my miniatures arrive before I make any decisions about trees and hedges (I’ve made enough of them lately anyway).

The one thing I can start on now though is the terrain boards. Just about all the skirmish games I play recommend an area of 60cm square (2 feet in the old measurement).

So the plan it to make a 60cm game board with a raised lip that holds the boards in place and rogue dice on the table. Simple enough and shouldn’t cost much to make. The only dilemma I have is what size should I make the terrain boards? Option 3 (30x30cm squares) offers the most flexibility but there’s more “join lines”. I’m not sure if this will affect the aesthetics of the board. I’ll flock all the boards so that should help hide the joins but they’ll still be noticeable.

I’ll probably go with option 1 to start with and have a river flow through one corner of the board. I’ve always wanted to make some river sections so this will be good practice.

Alright then I’m off to Bunnings.

What? Another Scale… in Another Period

2010-07-09T03:19:00.001+10:00

Yep, 15mm and Napoleonic's. I’ve had the rules for Ganesha Game’s Song of Drums and Shakos (SDS) for a while now and had neither any miniatures or interested opponents. I’d get a bit of attention at the club when I’d mention Napoleonics but I’d always lose them when I mention that SDS was a skirmish game. Apparently that’s a dirty word in the Nap community.

Anyway when Mick mentioned an interest in the game I jumped to it and ordered some miniatures. We eventually went down the 15mm path for a few reasons:

Price: cheap, nuff said.
Availability: there is just so many manufacturers to choose from.
Small usually means easier to paint.
Smaller playing area (and less terrain), maybe 3 feet square for most games.
Mick already had some.

So I did a little reading, did some thinking and placed and order with Eureka Miniatures.

1812 Russians

1 x Mounted officer
3 x Musketeer/Jager, advancing
3 x Musketeer/Jager, firing and loading
2 x Musketeer/Jager, march attack
1 x Standard bearer (senior NCO)
1 x Musketeer drummer
2 x Kurassier, charging
2 x Kurassier
1 x Kurassier officer

Peninsula British

1 x Rifle officer
1 x Rifle bugler
3 x Rifleman, skirmishing
3 x Rifleman, marching at trail
1 x Mounted officer
1 x Highland piper
1 x Highland infantry officer
2 x Highland infantry centre company, marching, shoulder arms
2 x Highland flank company, skirmishing

I was going to get some cavalry for the British but they’re really just my second army and when I say these guys I just had to get some.

Can’t wait for these to arrive, and being just a few hours down the road I should get them mid next week. Which should give me time to get them cleaned up and based ready for painting next weekend.

Storing All The Star Wars Minis

2010-07-06T22:01:00.000+10:00

My week at home with the kids has kicked off to a great start. Finally managed to get some plants planted in the garden we've been working on for far too long, and I've actually been able to spend some time doing some actual wargaming, woo hoo!!

I've been busy with a few things, first is I've been able to get a spot playtesting a new game from Ganesha Games called Songs of ShadowSea. It's a stand alone supplement based on their Song of Blades and Heroes system and is being written by Dragonblood Miniatures for use with their range of miniatures produced by Cavalcade Wargames. Played a few games so far and I'm pretty impressed with the system, especially the way they've tweaked the rules to manage magic and artifacts. I've been using proxy miniatures for my games (hence no photos or AAR's) but I think I'll have to pick up a couple of their Dark Mariners miniatures, wow they look nice.

On the Star Wars front I've finally managed to get all the miniatures sorted, boxed up and packed away.

No seriously look here they all are all packed away in boxes labelled by faction and troop type. A lot of mucking around but it's a lot easier to find that damned Jawa box when I need it now.

And speaking of storage, here's a shot of the shelves my wife managed to win in an auction for me. Most of my stuff all in the one spot and in an orderly fashion too boot.

I'm hoping to get a few more Star Wars Commander bases made up this week and with a little luck I'll see if I can wrangle someone into coming over and giving the current rules a run through.

Droids, Clone Troopers and... Grubs?

2010-06-23T22:36:00.000+10:00

Ebay delivered some more Star Wars minis today. Mostly droids and Clone Troopers, I have another 20 Clone Troopers on the way too so I think I've got just about enough of them. Wouldn't mind a few more droids though, especially those nasty droidekas.

More droids with some of the cool rocket battles droids and two of the crack shot battle droid assassins. Also some super battle droids, you can never have too many super battle droids.

To help even things up a little there's some heavy duty firepower for the clone troopers. Some heavy clone troopers and some clone trooper grenadiers. Note the later period clone troopers in the back left.

I never knew clone troopers rode grubs. And now that I do know I still don't understand why. But the mini is pretty cool looking even if somewhat strange.

A very nice looking chameleon droid.

To lead the clone troopers who else could I turn to but Aayla Secura. Need to sort the light saber out. Just have to remember to keep the clone troopers in front of her at all times. Order 66... nasty business.

And to lead the bad guys I just had to have Darth Sidius

Like I mentioned earlier I have another lot of clone troopers coming as well as these scum:

Don't know how they'll fit into Star Wars Commander games but they're so cool I'll just have to find a way.

I'm Still Here

2010-06-08T00:14:00.000+10:00

I'm still here and I'm still pottering around with my various projects. Although I really haven't spent all that much time with either a paintbrush nor dice. I've been in the study most nights but I've been getting reacquainted with my arch nemesis the treadmill. It's been a bit of a battle but it's one I'm slowly winning. I'm feeling so much better for it and my energy levels are at an all time high. So the plan is to start channelling that energy back into my wargame projects.

Star Wars Commander is coming along nicely as I've been able to spend some time during lunch to work on it. I have a couple boxes of minis coming my way via eBay and hopefully some more via the guys at the local club.

As a side project... no I won't call it a distraction as this project has some relevance, I'm looking at getting some of the Star Wars Starship Battles minis and using them for a Bag the Hun variant called Bag the Jedi.

More to come soon.

Supplies from eM4

2010-05-31T23:25:00.000+10:00

An order of dice and bits from eM4 arrived this afternoon and was promptly put on the desk while I was busy with other things.

Everything came packaged in a padded bag with the contents all sorted in little ziplock bags which always helps with checking the goods vs the invoice vs the actual order. Everything was present and accounted for in this case.

I ordered three lots of 20 x 10mm D6 in "Assorted Colours" and I'm pretty happy with the breakdown. I got at least six of each colour (I know there is only five white dice pictured but one is being used for the photo below this one), the order even included some ivory and purple dice which aren't an option on their website. The thought behind purchasing these dice is to use them as markers/counters for specific effects or statuses on the battlefield: suppressed, routing or horrified units. The coloured die can be used simply as a coloured token but can also double as a hits/wound counter and so on.

Bag the Hun will probably get the most use of these dice. The colour of the die on the base represents the ability of the pilot:

Yellow: Sprog
White: Regular
Blue: Veteran
Red: Jnr Ace
Black: Top Ace

I'll probably need to buy some more yellow and blue dice for the bigger games but I should have enough for a few games to see if the system works on the table as well as it looks on paper.

A comparison shot of the dice to give you and idea of size. Left to right we have: Bloodbowl block die, a 12mm(?) die from the Warhammer/40K box sets, an eM4 10mm die followed lastly by an eM4 7mm die.

My dice box after adding in this lot. I think we're going to need a bigger boat.

The 50mm round bases are a nice fit the 28mm prone Black Tree miniatures. The MG-42 is a little snug but I don't want the base to be too big either so I think it's a good compromise.

Echo Base, this is Rogue Two. I've found them. Repeat, I've found them.

2010-05-22T03:55:00.000+10:00

The Star Wars minis arrived from Hong Kong, which is suprising since they were the last of about three orders I placed and they're the only ones that have arrived so far. I'm so bad at waiting for international orders.

The minisatures themselves are basically what I expected: great sculpts and posing with very average paintjobs. I had to touch up a couple minis, Wedge had a huge black spot on his nose which just had to go. I almost started touching up other parts of the minis but resisted... for now.

I'm a little annoyed that the Tauntaun riders have different sized bases. They'ye both Rebels riding the same beast and yet a everyman Rebel trooper has a bigger base than Luke Skywalker? I may even rebase them one day but for now they'll do as they are.

With a bit of luck I'll get some more bases done this weekend and maybe even start playtesting Star Wars Commander.

Artoo Says That The Chances of Survival are 725 to 1

2010-05-12T13:08:00.000+10:00

But he has been known to be wrong... from time to time...

Hoth terrain it is... sort of, well more like Hoth inspired terrain. Going for snow and glaciers would look nice on the table (easy to make too) but I'd just end up with a lot of terrain that I probably won't use for anything else. Snowy, icy, muddy, rocky terrain still fits in with the theme of a Snowtrooper and would be very welcome on any game that had a Western European theater of conflict.

I managed to nab quite a few items on e-bay last night, mainly troopers and a few semi-famous characters. Who knew that some chick called Arica was actually Mara Jade in disguise? I sure didn't.

The prizes of my haul:

Ewok Shaman Logray
Luke on Tauntaun
Rebel trooper on Tauntan
Leia Organa
Han and Chewie in their Hoth gear

My eldest son looked over the list and nodded, "Oh cool, but you still haven't got a Threepio though".

My work is never done.

Many Bothans Died To Bring Us This Information...

2010-05-11T18:00:00.000+10:00

I've almost settled on a basing scheme I'm happy with... almost. I'll give it a few games and make my mind up after I get some feedback. Besides the materials have cost almost nothing so far ($1.15 by my rough calculations).

The bigger and more immediate problem at hand is, as it is for all wargamers, is storage. My SW minis are currently in boxes scattered between the study, the shed and Gork know where. As luck would have it there were some boxes being thrown out at work, boxes of boxes actually, that would fit a couple platoons of miniatures each, I'll have those thankyou very much. So I've started to the long process of finding, sorting and storing.

The bases got their coat of sand tonight and once the glue dries a little I'll give them a wash of brown ink and they should be ready for drybrushing and flocking tomorrow night.

It's too cold to make more bases tonight so I'll start tidying up the bases of the Clone Troopers. I'm making a huge effort not to start touching up the paintwork on these minis. I will do it, eventually, but right now I have better things to spend my time on than what shade of white looks best on a Snowtrooper helmet.

Huge dilemma: which era and location to game in first? Clone Wars era troopers vs droids or go classic era and somehow decide between Endor and Hoth?

*sigh*

Too many choices, too many cool minis. Ain't it grand being a gamer :)

I Have A Good Feeling About This...

2010-05-10T13:43:00.000+10:00

I've been wanting to do a Star Wars mass combat game for a while now (see here) and last night I had an epiphany while painting some Warmaster minis. I was thinking about Tim over at Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog and how he plays Hordes of the Things (HoTT) in 28mm when it suddenly struck me that I could use Blitzkrieg Commander to play Star Wars in 28mm.

My current theory is to use the late war army lists as a reference point to start working out the stats. Jedi/Sith and other major characters will be CO/HQ/Recce units and will have the ability to use force powers in the command phase. I've started to make some notes and once I've roughed them out a little more I'll post them here.

One thing I'll need though is stands for the miniatures. I've decided on 100x60mm bases for the infantry and special HQ/CO bases will have 2-3 slots for the characters. Idea is to cut two pieces of 3mm MDF to size and then drill five 25mm holes into one piece (the top) and glue it to the other (the bottom) creating a base with recesses for the miniatures to be slotted into. This is a *lot* of fiddy work but it means that I can make 20-25 bases and then use them with whatever figure I have. Unused figures can simply be stored in ice cream containers rather than needing valuable shelf space.

3mm MDF, toos and the plans.

I did that the width of the cutting blade into consideration when measuring the cuts but I did everything freehand as it was faster and as long as the bases are roughly the same size the affect on the game is minimal.

End of part one, the bases cut. Now onto the holes.

All ready to go.

The bases cut and base holes done.

A couple shots of the bases all glued and minis slotted into place. 30 or so minutes from first cut to gluing isn't too bad, another hour or two this weekend should give me all I need.

Next step is to add sand and flock to the bases and do likewise the minis. I'm pretty excited about this as I'm sure it's going to look fantastic on the table. May even get these on the table this weekend for a few test games.

Blitzkrieg Commander 2 Arrives

2010-05-03T21:26:00.000+10:00

Well after what felt like forever (no thanks to you Eyjafjallajökull) the postman finally delivered Blitzkrieg Commander II. I haven't had a chance yet to read the rules thoroughly so I can only give some first impressions here.

The first thing that is very apparent is that the production quality here is fantastic. The cover is nice shiny cardstock that almost resembles plastic. The pages of the books themselves have a nice sheen and there are full colour photos on almost every page of the rules. The book weighs in at 140 pages (compared to 120 in the first edition) with the rules taking up 40 or so pages before the book launches into the army lists. One of the greatest strengths of these rules has been that the rulebook has all the army lists you could need, no supplements required. Well the second edition has only improved on this, extra army lists have been added and most have been added to. The German North West Europe list for example have been increased from a page and a half of stats to two and a quarter.

Here's a shot showing the breakdown of book between rules and army lists.

As well as being added to and expanded the army lists themselves have gone though some changes:

The singular Attack Value has now been replaced with three values: anti tank (AT), anti personnel (AP) and close assault (CA).
The standard infantry unit has been replaced with the various unit types found in the conflict. The German north west Europe list has: Heer, Constscripts, Waffen-SS, Hinterjugend, Luftwaffe, Fortress Troops and Volkstrurm. In addition you now have infantry upgrades such as Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck.
Artillery now plays a bigger part of the game with a lot more on table units.
Sadly the sample battlegroup lists have gone, to make room in the book I guess. But to aid in creating your battleforce, each army list has it's own specific battlegroup selection rules, often citing specific units (eg Max nine Pzklfw III panzer units per 1000 points).

I'll post more once I've had a better read through the rules and preferably had a chance to get them into action on the table.

Warmaster - Empire vs Undead

2010-05-02T01:11:00.000+10:00

Mick came over tonight and we managed to almost finish a game of Warmaster. We're still discovering how to use each of the units effectively but this time I think we got the mechanics right for the most part. There were a few occasions where we got ahead of ourselves and missed a phase but I'm pretty sure that with a good quick reference sheet we'll get those issues sorted.

We swapped forces this time with Mick playing the Undead and I the Empire. Things started badly for the Empire with the Undead charging their cavalry into the flanks of my forces and scattering some knights, crossbowmen and flagellants. Quite reminiscent of last time when Mick rode two units of knights through the heart of my army. By turn three we had out massed lines of infantry and archers lined up in the middle of the table when we realised that all the skirmishes on the flanks had met the 7 unit break point of my army.

Three things became apparent from the game:

It is a heck of a lot of fun and flows really well know that we're starting to get the system worked out.
I need to finish painting the minis, especially the Empire commander who managed to successfully order a hellblaster, two cannons and a unit of pistoleers to wheel about and lay waste to an oncoming horde of undead.
I really need a green table mat.

I'm so impressed with how the 10mm stuff looks on the table. My kitchen table isn't that big and by game table standards it's probably too small for Warhammer but in 10mm it was just right. With a green mat, some fantasy period buildings and fully painted armies the table will just look fantastic.

Anyway I'm off to the Pendraken website, I need to order some Halflings to base up as Empire skirmishers.

And All Up That Comes To... How Much?!?

2010-04-30T19:13:00.000+10:00

No bones about it wargaming is an expensive hobby. More expensive than a lot of us would probably like to admit. Especially when you start a new genre or gawd forbid: a new scale. I've been a 28mm man most of my gaming life so over time I've amassed a nice collection of terrain, scenery and all the odds and bobs that go into an enjoyable gaming experience. My foray into 10mm was, initially with Warmaster years ago and more recently with Blitzkrieg Commander, was hampered by lack of any terrain in that scale.

So here I at at a point where I have most of the basics covered: trees, hills, hedges and buildings. I was thinking that maybe all I really needed now was some roads and a few stone walls. Then Squadron Leader Blanchett sent me this photo below. His intent was to show me the sweet sweet bocage but all I could see was: telegraph lines.

"I need me some of them" I thought to myself. I could make them I suppose but they look fiddly and they'd probably break too easily. I'll just buy some then. so at lunch today I started trawling eBay and hobby sites. I found some at roughly $12 for a pack of 12.

I was almost about to order some when I stopped and went through the need/want/afford process (see Vicki I can show some form of self restraint).
I don't really need these but they will definitely add character to the table and so I want them. I can afford them and I don't really think I can make them any cheaper. And these being made of plastic means that they'll be able to survive the rough environment of the wargaming table.

So I ordered them (ok I know my restraint needs some work). But this does raise a valid point: when does the value of time outweigh the value of money? I could probably get all the terrain and scenics I need for a game table tomorrow if money wasn't an issue and alternatively I could save a bit of cash by making everything myself.

I guess it all comes down to priorities. This year I'd like to spend more time at the game table than the painting table and so I'm spending less time than I would normally painting figures and probably a little more money on terrain and accessories than I would have in the past.

I suppose the real question I should be asking myself is "how much am I willing to spend?" So in turn I throw the question out to you my readers "how much would you spend getting into a new scale or system?" Not including the cost of the figures themselves but including any terrain, accessories, rulebooks etc.

This is Not Your Father's Incursion

2010-04-28T19:23:00.002+10:00

Damn you Tas... Damn you to Heck!

I almost bought this:

Which would have inevitably led me to buying lots of these:

But I didn't... haven't... yet. Well let me explain. I would have bought the game except for two things:

Firstly money, the game + miniatures = lots of money. AND MY WIFE WOULD NOT APPROVE.
Secondly you can download the game for free... legally I might add. Grindhouse Games have found it in their hearts to offer a print and play version of the game available here.

"Meh" I initially thought, too much effort it won't look as good as the shop bought version. Then I saw these (on Boardgame Geek):

Ok... now I'm interested. Methinks to myself "I can make that... and better to boot!"

So now the plan is as follows (in no particular order):

To make a board and the components.
Buy the miniatures (shhh do NOT tell my wife about this bit)
Play the game.

Parts one and three should be pretty easy... part two has me worried.

P.S.
Tas: I didn't really mean what I said before. Admittedly you are a bad influence but your blog still rocks.

10mm Buildings - Part 2

2010-04-25T22:06:00.000+10:00

I had hoped that my latest Pendraken order would have arrived by now, 19 days and counting, so in between my far too infrequent sessions of painting what I do have I've been making more of the MicroTactix cardstock buildings.

Two of the most recent have been some of the more fiddly designs but they look great. I'm seriously thinking about basing the church on a piece of plasticard and putting some gardens/trees around it. Maybe even model up a companion piece with headstones and the like.

Here's some shots, I've put in some 10mm minis and a 28mm one for scale reference.

Here's a lower shot to show the height better.

A shot of everything so far.

Enough for a believable built up area, I'll keep making more though. I'll stop when I either get sick of making them or my shoe box that I'm storing them in fills up, whichever comes first. I'm so impressed with these that I'll have to print out some fantasy buildings for Warmaster.

I'm a d8

2010-04-22T12:27:00.000+10:00

You are a d8: You are the true adventurer! Dragons rescued, princesses slayed, and all that business while O Fortuna plays in the background. Your social calender is crammed with heroic deeds, and you've personally saved the world from ultimate destruction at least twice. You are reliable, perhaps a bit predictable, but overall a shining example of what happens when courage meets determination.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

10mm Buildings

2010-04-20T01:21:00.000+10:00

A little while ago I purchased the Battlelands 15mm Normandy Buildings and Ruins produced by Microtactix. Initially the plan was to scale these up to 30mm and use them for my skirmish games. This worked, well for the smaller buildings at least. After a lot of wrangling the church ended up needing close to 10 A4 sheets to create just on it's own! So these just ended up sitting on my hard drive... until now that is. Reducing these down to 10mm I found that they fitted 2 original sheets perfect on a single A4 sheet of paper. So after an afternoon of shrinking, cropping and rotating these pdf's I printed out around 20 sheets with anywhere from two to four buildings per sheet, more than I should need for any reasonable north west Europe scenario.

Gathering all the tools I needed I headed outside:

PDF printouts
Cardstock
Gluesticks
Spray Adhesive

Gluing the paper to the cardstock is simple enough, spray the back of your printout and the cardstock with spray adhesive, wait 10-15 seconds and then join the two sticky surfaces. Most adhesives will still work if you only spray one surface but the bond won't be as strong.

Once all pages have been glued together I stacked them all up and piled as many big heavy books as I could find on them. Glues differ on cure time so follow what the can says but I prefer to leave them overnight if possible. What you should end up with is some fairly stiff card that is still fairly easy to cut.

I won't go into the details of how to cut, score, fold and glue a cardstock building as everyone will tell you different things and what works for me may not work for you. One thing I can say is the first couple buildings you make will take ages and look crap. The important thing to remember with cardstock buildings is that they're not supposed to look better than real terrain. They're a cheap, replaceable piece of scenery. If (when) they get smooshed then you simply sigh and print out another one.

There is one trick to cardstock buildings that makes a huge difference though: edging. Edging is the process of colouring those white edges you see when you cut out your building. These really detract from the overall look and they just scream "I'm not real".

When I've cut out my pieces and before I start gluing them together I simply paint the edges with hobby paint. The colour doesn't need to be perfect and I find darker colours work better at defining the edges than lighter ones do. There's no real need to be ultra careful here either, any splotches won't get noticed while they're on the table.

Some edging examples. The big grey splodge on the left hand side of the building in the second photo below is hardly noticeable on the table, in fact I had to point it out to someone while playing Blitzkrieg Commander.

Edging can take some time, especially on multipart buildings but it is worth it.

Cowboys and Panzers

2010-04-18T10:18:00.000+10:00

Managed to get in a game of both Blitzkrieg Commander and Gutshot at the club last night. Mick and I started out with Blitzkrieg Commander and we played a fairly straight forward 1,000pt all out battle, mainly because we wanted to blow the cobwebs off the rules and see how the 10mm stuff fared on the table.

Unfortunately almost all of the photos I took last night turned out rubbish as I'd forgotten to switch the macro mode off and in turn all the long range table shots come out... well rubbish. We both forgot to bring a green game mat so we had to play using my western one so north west Europe looks a little dry in the photos but the rest of the terrain and the minis (the painted ones at least) looked fantastic on the table.

Blitzkrieg Commander (1st edition) was a blast to play. It's close enough to Warmaster that I don't have to unlearn any of the rules from that game and the extra WW2 stuff fits into the system nicely. Sadly the Brits, played by myself didn't start out too well against the Germans who were superbly commanded by Mick. I handed over command to James in turn two who managed to fare better than I did but was still unable to turn the tide. Well we've got the main mechanics down now and I feel more comfortable that next time we can manage a bigger game. The German reinforcements will hopefully have arrived by then and I think I'll have to base the Aussies up for use until I can get some more British.

I was too busy painting WW2 stuff yesterday and forgot to quickly reread the Gutshot rulebook, so play was a little slow to start with but move along quick enough, with most players not needing to refer to the rulebook by the end of the game. We played the Last Man Standing scenario with two characters apiece. Each player started in a respective corner of the table and very soon the gunfight, and knife fights, began.

Game play is fast, I like the card activation, and characters seem to take a bit of a beating without being bullet sponges. The game play feels very Battletech-ish in the way the system handles combat modifiers for movement and damage with progressive negative modifiers to movement and accuracy is also very familiar. This is not a bad thing though. The game is simple and play is fast, it would get boring if all you played was shootouts week in week out but scenarios run by a referee are where this game shines. I think I'll bring this may just become our choice of "quick game at the end of the night".

I'm happy too with the cardstock buildings, they've suffered in storage but I can fix that with a little balsa wood and glue.

Cards: the card activation for Gutshot works a treat but the rulebook does recommend using name slips in a hat of something similar. I went with cards and just assigned a number to each character. This worked but slowed things down a little. I think I'll get hold of some poker chips we'll use those in future. A white sticker on one side with the characters name in pencil should do fine. Also removing dead guys from the deck helps and it quickly got to the point of turning four or five cards before we got to a live fella.

My two characters below, Blackie and Ol' Gray, named after their hats of course. Ol' Gray managed take take two hits from a revolver, got spat on and cursed at (twice), got stabbed in the back with a bowie knife before being shot for the final time Blackie didn't last much longer but he did manage to take down the gringo that snuffed out Ol' Gray.

I had a few people asking about where to get miniatures from so I think things look bright for Gutshot. Now all I need to do is find a Marty and Doc mini, I've got an idea for a "Mad Dog Mcree" scenario.

Terrain: 10mm Woods

2010-04-16T03:15:00.000+10:00

With my hedges almost done (just waiting for them to dry) I thought I'd turn my attention to the trees I need to base. While these trees are N scale the process is pretty much the same as what I did for my 28mm trees, I just used bigger bases (50-60mm MDF) and used a bit of modelling putty to help fix them to the bases.

The process is simple enough, just drill a hole where you want a tree. You want the drill bit to be a little smaller than the trunk width, if its too big then you will find it fiddly when gluing the tress.

I went for a mixture of two tree and three trees per base. I found that putting the tree closer to the edge of the base so that the limbs overhang looks best. It helps hide the base and allows you to bunch up trees to represent thick or heavy woods.

Since the trees were the same height (all 100 of them) I trimmed a little bit off the stem/trunk of each tree before pushing it into the base. As you can see here the fit is quite snug and probably wouldn't need gluing but I did anyway just make sure, after all these are going to get a bit of handling on the table. Just a small dab of superglue at the base of the trunk will suffice.

My first few completed stands, even now it's starting to look like a little woods.

As you can see, I forgot about the slotta tab slot. A bit of paper will do the trick but it was fiddly getting it in there.

So I stopped drilling and glued over the slot on the remaining bases first.

After all the bases had been drilled and trees glued into place I painted all the bases dark green (from memory GW Salamander Green methinks).

Almost done and looking good, just a bit of flock and they'll look even better. So out comes the flock and my trusty tub of "watery glue sludge".

And then I'm left with this:

Just a few shots of the trees in action. I'm really happy with these, and best of all is that it only took around two hours from start to finish. I'll be getting some more of these for sure, you can never have too many trees on the table.

Terrain: 10mm Hedges

2010-04-14T01:47:00.000+10:00

Only having finished making some hedges for my 28mm WW2 minis I realised I'll need some for my 10mm minis too... *sigh*. Well the having learnt a thing or two through making the big stuff I set myself some goals with these ones:

They have to be quick to make. I'll lose interest otherwise and they'll sit somewhere half finished for months. My wife will not approve.
They won't need to be based. Maybe, won't know for sure about this but I'll make them without bases and see how they fare on the table. They'll be dunked in glue/paint, flocked and then sprayed so hopefully they'll have enough weight to sit still on the table. If not then I'll just buy some 0.5mm/1.0mm plasticard and use that.
I'll need lots of it. Sadly, in this case at least, 10mm allows for big battles and you can get more of it on a 6x4 table so in turn you need a lot more terrain. Besides, you've seen photos of Western Europe right? Hedges, hedgerows and bocage everywhere.

Step One
Grey or dark grey foam is an absolute must as starting point. I won't have to paint it and if any does show through, and it will, then it will be darker than the flock and add a little depth.

I cut strips and used a knife to rough up the surface a little, pick away at it too making sure to get rid of any straight edges and flat surfaces. I wasn't being too careful here.

While doing this make sure that the hedges aren't bigger than the container you have your flock in. I didn't do this with the 28mm stuff and it was a massive hassle.

Step Two
Add water, white glue/hobby glue/mdf glue (anything water soluble) and paint. I used as sponge dabber brush (?) to mix up as it makes it easier to get stuff off the bottom of the container if it settled.

Step 3
Make sure your storage tray is right next to the dipping and flocking trays... I learnt this the hard way.

The finished hedge, maybe 15min from start to finish and I'm really happy with the end result. Now I just have to make more... a lot more.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Six (and a few)

2010-04-13T13:43:00.000+10:00

I've been slowly working away on the Pendraken minis, and with the long awaited plasticard arriving yesterday I got to work on basing the remainder of the minis. I should have enough bases left over to cover the extra German stuff, hopefully arriving sometime before Saturday.

Basing the HQ and CO stands proved to take a little longer than I had thought it would. You're basically building a little diorama so I had to keep my grand ideas in check and keep the base functional and quick to build/paint.

My first attempt at 10mm miniature hacks. The passenger has had his head removed and replaced with a commander torso (clipped off at the waist and glued to the neck of the passenger). The radio operator has been removed from his base, he was originally kneeling on the ground, and repositioned to sit on the seat. You can't really tell from the photos but the radio operator is missing his left leg. I had clipped it off and was in the process of gluing it on when after dropping it on the floor for the third &%^%$-ing time I decided to just glue him in as is.

My favorite CO stand has two German officers "discussing" which way to go. I'll model this base as a crossroads with the road sign knocked over or missing.

I'm on the home stretch now with most of the miniatures having varying degrees of paintwork and almost everything based. I'm hoping to get all painting and basing done by Wednesday night. This give me Thursday and Friday to put together some cardstock buildings and base up the trees. Hedgerows may be possible, I'll glue some flock to the dark grey foam I have and see how that comes up.

More photos to come as I get stuff finished.

Bag the Hun - French BC Dunkerque

2010-04-09T06:20:00.000+10:00

I made another boat... and by boat I mean battle cruiser and by made I mean I copied it from Wikipedia, cropped and scaled the image using The Gimp and Inkscape.

Anyway I hereby present the French battle cruiser Dunkerque.

Some More Pendraken German Infantry

2010-04-06T18:12:00.000+10:00

Due to a complete brain fade I left out the MG-34's when I based all my German infantry. I only picked up on this the other day when going through the few bags of what's left to paint. Initially I thought I'll just buy a pack or two of miniatures to redo the three stands that I was supposed to put the MG-34's on. Due to postage costs and the breakdown of the packs it worked out more effective (not necessarily cheaper) to buy a dozen or so packs and get another 12 stands made up. This should bring the Germans up to 3 full platoons with HQ and support platoons.

I picked up a pack of jeeps for the British CO/HQ stands and some German dispatch riders and motorcycles with side cars for either recce or CO/HQ.

1 x GR1 - Riflemen
1 x GR2 - MP40
2 x GR3 - MG34 (2) x3
1 x GR4 - MG42 (2) x3
1 x GR5 - Pz Shreck (2) x3
1 x GR6 - Pz Faust
1 x GR42 - Riflemen with STG44
1 x GR65 - BMW & Sidecar (3)
1 x GR66 - Dispatch Rider on BMW Motorcycle (5)
1 x GR165 - Late war tunic firing smg
1 x GR177 - mid war panzer grenadiers
1 x GR198 - Rifleman reversible jacket
1 x BR19 - Jeep (2)

Need I say that I'll eventually have to get the same done for the British but for the moment at least I can field a platoon of commandos and maybe a platoon and a half of the Australians. I know there weren't too many Aussies in slouch hats NW Europe (as far as I can tell there were next to none), they will eventually get based up and used for some Italian campaigns.

Besides I'm thinking of playing the Calais campaign where the British held out against superior numbers of Germans so it shouldn't be a problem in the short term.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Five - Late Edition

2010-03-31T00:41:00.000+11:00

Finally got some stands finished. Don't look at me like that... it does happen... sometimes.

Anyway I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Next up: Shermans, lots and lots of Shermans.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Five???

2010-03-30T14:41:00.000+11:00

Been a few days since the last update and haven't touched the paintbrush that much even though I've been on holidays since Friday. It's not entirely my fault: real life, health and other matters have kept me away (yes Final Fantasy XIII I'm looking right at you).

I've spent most of my time putting on coat after coat of Olive Drab (XF62 onto my British vehicles. The colour dries flat and looks wonderful on a mini but it has horrible coverage. While I'm not painting green over green over green I've been painting the German armour. This is slower going than I had originally hoped. I've gone back and touched up the Tigers as I didn't like the contrast of the camo stripes, they're more subtle now and I like it so much more. I finished the Jagdpather and I liked the mottled camo so much I started to paint the Panzer III's in the same manner. Three down and five more to go, these ones are boy tanks (don't have skirts) so they should be quicker to paint.

I'm finding it difficult to get a supplier of 2mm plasticard that has it in stock for a reasonable price. I can get it locally for $50 per square meter if I buy a 2440 x 1220 sheet. That's probably a little too much for what I need.

I'll still press on though (we can use vehicles un-based if needed) and at this point I'm hopeful of getting everything done by the weekend.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Four

2010-03-24T03:53:00.000+11:00

So very tired right now so I'll just post pics, commentary will be added later... need sleep.

Dr Wh..wuh, what? How did they get...

2010-03-23T19:58:00.000+11:00

Imagine my surprise when I came home and found these in the mailbox...

Yep... the Dr Hugh or "not Dr Who" minis arrived from Heresy. That's Heresy Miniatures... you know, in England. I placed my order Thursday afternoon and they arrive in Australia that Tuesday. I can't get service like that locally.

The figures were packed well, actually better than well. Each miniature was placed in the now standard ziplock bag but each bag was taped to the inside of the box. The figures themselves look great and while there is a huge temptation to start painting them I must stay focused on the Pendraken stuff (some photos coming later tonight). But they will get done soon.

To all at Heresy Miniatures: I tip my hat to you for such great miniatures and exceptional service.

Oh and it appears that more "Dr Hugh" are on the way, hopefully some companions.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Three

2010-03-21T21:43:00.001+11:00

Didn't get any more painting done this weekend. I did manage to stop procrastinating on the base sizes and start cutting up the plasticard. I ended up going with an almost standard BKC base recommendation. The only difference is that I decided to base my specialist weapon teams on individual 25x25 bases. That way I can use two bases side by side for BKC and individually for other games such as IABSM. If moving them about gets too fiddly then a bit of tape on the bottom should hold them together (I don't think it'll be a problem though).

I'm really happy with how the miniatures look on the bases, they present very well. Cutting the plasticard was an interesting experience. Following the instructions that came with it I made a cut by running my hobby knife along a straight edge 3-4 times, no need to press to heavily as a straight cut is more important than a deep cut. Turn the plasticard over so the cut is face down and pull up on one edge of the card while placing pressure down behind the cut. The first couple times I tried to bend it I couldn't get it to snap. Applying just a bit more pressure and *SNAP* I had two pieces of plasticard with very straight edges. The only issue I had was where I had a few pieces where I needed to trim off 2-3mm, I needed to use pliers to bend and snap the plastic and in every case it left a wavy edge. Nothing to worry about but just looks untidy compared to the rest.

So then out came the super glue and I'm left with what you see below. The 2mm thick bases just the right size for my fingers to pick up a stand by the base and not the miniature. I need to order some more to finish off the rest.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Two

2010-03-20T05:30:00.000+11:00

Haven't done as much painting as I'd hoped (real life *sigh*) but I thought I'd post a few shots of where I'm at. I started painting the British armour but the Tamiya olive drab goes on like green water. It goes on almost perfectly if I use the airbrush but that's in the shed, and it makes a lot of noise, and I'm lazy... so multiple coats it is. While they were drying I started on the German armour, I'm using Mr Hobby (H403) for these and that paint goes on very smooth and behaves much like the GW paints I've got. I may have to get some more of this range.

I was intending to do a more subdued camo scheme on the Tigers but I thought the bigger tanks could handle a more striking scheme without it dominating the model. I'm not completely happy with the one in the left of the photo but I'll hold reservation until after the army painter goes on. The smaller tanks will have the subdued scheme. The camo was built up with multiple layers of very watered down Red Brown (XF64) and Olive Green (XF58) and finally a thin darker more defined stripe was painted over the top of the layers. I like the effect I just think my pattern just need more work.

Tomorrow I'll finish the camo and then go over and detail the equipment, hatches, grilles etc. Once that's done I'll put the decals on and then make the decision if they need any more work.

The Doctor? Doctor Who?

2010-03-18T21:50:00.000+11:00

I'm not sure how I can across this blog but if you like Dr Who then you'll want to visit An Evil Giraffe. I was admiring his handiwork on the Black Tree Dr Who minis when I noticed these fellows below.

They're part of the Heresy Miniatures "not" sci-fi range. You know they're "not" the ninth, tenth and eleventh Doctors, they're (left to right) Malcom Ecclescake, Nerdlord & Dr Hugh McCrimmon. They just happen to look a lot like those other guys. Whatever, it works for me. I have no idea what rules I'll use them with as most of the skirmish sets I have a basically combat systems and that isn't the way the Doctor rolls. Maybe Larger than Life by Two Hour Wargames or maybe a modified version of Fear and Faith by Ganesha Games.

Well since the guys above would need some evil plans to foil I started off with none other than 'Dr Masterson', Evil Scientist... ahhh I mean: The Master.

I'll have to get as much of the Pendraken stuff painted as I can as I can't see myself waiting to paint these when they arrive (7-10 they state on their website).

This purchase does lead me back to Black Tree Designs as they seem to hold the largest license of official Dr Who minis, but I'm not sure if I can handle the probably dissapointment. I might have to keep looking for more "not" minis.

Painting the Pendraken: Day One

2010-03-16T04:06:00.000+11:00

Here's some shots of the first days work, nothing too special just a lot of flat colour, I'll come back and do the webbing, weapons, boots etc and when they're dry I'll give them a nice protective coat of army painter.

More tonight, should get these finished and then I'll start on the Germans.

Pendraken WW2 Miniatures Arrive

2010-03-15T22:12:00.000+11:00

Woo hooo! The Pendraken Miniatures arrived today, as predicted by David.

I only just noticed that the date on my camera is wrong, sigh. The two parcels I found jammed in my letter box. They were pretty heavy and I was a little worried about what I would find inside. Memories of my "mooshed" Black Tree orders still haunt me. A few of the tank cannons were a little bent but they were easy to fix. Out of the whole order only one tank had a broken cannon and that should be easy fixed with a drill and some super glue.

The contents of the first package.

The contents of the second.

The first thing I noticed is that every bag has the product code written on it. Very helpful and it made going through my order short work. What was very impressive was that the battle pack was labelled and so in turn was every bag within that bag.

Even Monty came in a bag of his own.

The whole order.

Everything checked and accounted for with the exception of the Australian Bren gunners. British to the left and Germans to the right.

A few shots to show the scale of the minis. They seem to fit well with the Warmaster minis scale wise so I feel better about making terrain now knowing that it can be used in either system.

I might even get the paint out tonight and start working on the infantry, they should paint up easily enough. Although there is plenty of detail there if I decided I want to punish myself, the infantry have chinstraps on their helmets... at 10mm! It's crazy and impressive all at the same time.

Back When I Had Free Time...

2010-03-14T19:45:00.000+11:00

Free time may have just become a scarce commodity, because I now have this:

Such a visually stunning game and while a lot of the changes to combat and exploration have split fans, to me at least they seem to be for the better. I'll know for sure when I hit the 30-40 hour mark.

Am I a... a Grognard?

2010-03-12T22:12:00.000+11:00

I a recent article on Bob's Blog "Coffee, Vegemite and Wurst on the Z9M9Z" he askes the question: Are you a Space Grognard?

Well after looking up the meaning of the word (just to make sure I didn't make a complete fool of myself... futile effort I know) I stand before you all and state resoundingly that "Yes, yes I am a Grognard, and a Space Grognard to boot".

I was playing Traveller back in a time when I didn't even know what a role playing game was. Traveller was just something my friend Doug pulled off his brothers book shelf one day and said "we have to play this, it's so cool". And cool it was, we would spend entire weekends just rolling up characters. Some were original but most were based on characters from TV shows, movies, books, you name it we rolled them up. We only had the little black box set which came with books 1,2 and 3 but it was like there was an infinite universe stored in that box. Whatever we could think of we could do. Characters came and went, some lived - most died but the adventures were incredible fun. We would recreate episodes of Star Trek in which Jim Kirk would battle Gorn or Klingons tirelessly (we only had TOS and a couple movies back then). Later on Doug's brother got one of the JTAS books and our universe just exploded into a million multi-verses.

With all the effort we were putting into converting Traveller into Star Trek I splashed out and spent $34.95 of my hard earned pocket money on the FASA Star Trek RPG. Now they call it the Basic Game but it came with:

3 Rulebooks: Star Fleet Officer's Manual, Cadet's Orientation Sourcebook & Game Operations Manual.
A couple hundred 1/2" counters representing all the races and star ships (at the time) in the Star Trek universe
Star Map with 1/2" hexes.
Complete deck plans for both the USS Enterprise and a Klingon D-7 Battlecruiser. All in scale with the counters, around 30 double sided A3 sheets in all.

Running gun battles in the corridors of the Enterprise would become a mainstay of every adventure and since the RPG side of things used action points for everything the game really played more like a tactical strategy game.

Speaking of strategy, the starship combat system was a fantastic game in it's own right with different console sheets for each of the bridge crew positions, players had to work together to allocate power to subsystems, move the ship, power shields and fire weapons.

So much fun and not a miniature in sight. And at the end of every game we would pack up all the counters into zip lock bags, fold up the maps and pack everything back into the box the game came in, nice and tidy.

Oh how I miss bookshelf games... *sigh*

We started to move back towards playing the Traveller board games, bigger grander scope and they interested the budding megalomaniac in us. Unfortunately we had to move away and ever since then I could never enough people interested in Traveller. Although I did keep myself busy with Battletech (boo yeah!) and Dungeons and Dragons (still undecided about that whole experience, I had fun but meh).

Magic the Gathering & Games Workshop derailed me for many a year until we come into the now. And back to the point of this post (got a little side tracked there didn't I?)

Bob also stated:

But the point of my Post is that if You're a Space Grognard then you have to give something back,
welcome a newbie
let them reroll that Damage control roll
get those house rules you've thought a about a try
or better still shared and posted on the net,
organize a game at your club rather than turn up expecting someone to have organized something.
Do that now, by Klono's Boranium Bollocks, so that you can play what you love in the times to come. you mightn't get direct benefit for your efforts, but someone will and the hobby will be better for it.

I agree with every word he said but here's my dilemma, these days I'm a lot more picky about the games I play and the people I play with. As a gaming husband and dad I find that my gaming time is precious and I tire quickly of fools and time wasters. I matter of moments I can go from "you're funny dude" to "cranky git". Why? Because I see so many young and some not-so young gamers wasting their time. They're playing with unpainted, unloved miniatures and spending more time arguing that playing. I bet you can guess which games they're playing too. Why bother even turning up if you aren't going to have fun? People who aren't playing to enjoy the process of 'playing the game' ie 'not playing for the win, only the win and nothing else but the win' just shit me to tears.

I don't ask for a lot of a fellow gamer but here's my golden rules:

Be proud and careful of you miniatures (you've spent all that time painting them... right?) so in turn: never touch your opponents miniatures without asking.
Give the other guy a break, because in a moment when it's your turn you may need the same.
When an opponent pulls of a great move and wipes out half of your battle force with a single unit of knights (sigh yes it happened) then you congratulate them on a good move.
When someone asks you "what's this game?" it's usually means "can I play?" so ask them if they want to. You will get more people accepting that not. Even if they just want to watch then get them to roll some dice for you, explain why they're rolling and before you know it they're playing.
Sometimes there's a game you really want to play but you know you'll have a hard time selling it to the other guys at your club then just build two armies, forces, battle groups or whatever you need and take it along. You will find players, some games just don't translate well until people see it in action. Bag the Hun was like this at my club, I'd talk about it but people would just say "yeah that sounds interesting" and that would be it. But get a nice game mat on the table and plonk down a dozen nicely painted aircraft and people got very interested very quickly. Yes this can be expensive but if you really want to play that game...
Nothing you do will be new, but everything you do will be valued by someone: so share everything you do. I have spent a ridiculous number of hours making cards and game mats for Bag the Hun, it's hard work and some people just aren't up for it. My Bag the Hun mats have been downloaded 25 times so far and I've emailed them to a few so maybe 30 people have got a copy of it. Even if only one or two actually get around to printing it out then that is fantastic. They're happy and I get to feel all warm and fuzzy inside for helping out. And people will often repay in kind.

And it's not all that hard either ... remember that cornfield scene in Field of Dreams:

Blog it and they will come.

10mm Trees

2010-03-10T04:53:00.000+11:00

My 10mm trees arrived in the mail yesterday and I've finally had a chance to have a look at them. At first I was a little worried about what I had bought.

My first fear was that like a lot of trees that I've bought from eBay all the branches would be caught up and getting them out of the bag would be a major operation. Thankfully the trees came out quite easily and I also noticed that there is very little loose flocking in the bag too. The trees themselves feel quite sturdy and shouldn't mind a little bit of handling.

The plan is to mount these onto MDF like the larger trees I've done, maybe 1" discs with 1-3 trees per disc.

Here's a few shots with some Warmaster minis and some of my 28mm trees for comparison. Thinking about it now I should have put a 28mm mini in there for comparison too.

You can see from the above two shots that the trees are simply five or so rings of branches but the look from above, where we should be looking at 10mm trees most of the time, looks quite nice.

I'll see how far I make these go first but after looking at these I'm very tempted to place an order for another pack or two.

1/600 Scale Aircraft Props

2010-03-08T12:18:00.002+11:00

I love my little planes, I really do but there was something about them that just didn't feel right. At first I thought it was because they were so small or maybe even because there wasn't that many miniatures on the table. But a week or so ago it came to me: no props. The aircraft look incomplete without them. So how do I make props that small?

Prototype
I found some scrap laminate I had left over from my card making projects and used a hole punch to make some small discs. Then using a hobby knife I cut a hole in the middle, this almost ended badly for my hand so please be careful if you are going to try this yourself.

It took a lot of work but I eventually ended up with an aircraft that looks like this:

Yeah I know, it looks freaking sweet! A little grey paint for some prop blur and it will look amazing. Great so now I just need to make around a hundred or so of these...

Mass Production

My wife has one of those Craft Robo hobby cutters which should do the trick nicely. The ideas is to use a laminate sheet which should be sturdy without being too thick for the Craft Robo to cut.

It's so obvious now but when putting a laminate pocket through your laminator with nothing in it you have to make sure it comes out the other side. I wasn't paying enough attention when I noticed half the pocket had gone in one side but nothing was coming out the other!

Done properly you should get something like this:

So I put the laminate onto the carrier sheet and loaded it into the Craft Robo, making sure to put in the right blade and the check all the settings... then I pressed the cut button.

It looks like it's working...

And it does!

I made two sizes, one based on the the Spitfire prop size and the other based on a He 111. I rounded the Spitfire one down to the nearest mm while I rounded the Heinkel one up. It turns out that the bigger ones are too big while the smaller are just right. I think the bigger ones will be fine for the really big boys like the B-17's and such so I'm not too worried.

I'm really happy with the results, they might need a bit of grey paint to show prop blur but even as is they look way better than they did. I've stuck them on using MDF glue which will dry semi transparent and help with the blurred look. All up this has taken maybe an hour from cutting the plastic to sticking them on the aircraft and it only cost me one laminate pocket which my rough calculations comes to the princely sum of 16 cents.

Here are the files for anyone who wants to have a go this themselves. I've included a PDF version so you can cut some out on plain paper to see how the size fares with your models.
PDF version

GSD version

Storage
The only outstanding issue is now of storage. All of my aircraft are currently stored here:

Most of the aircraft have enough clearance with the props on to be stored as-is but a few of them will need little risers. I think I'll make up some little MDF risers and put some a strip of magnetic sheet on top to hold the aircraft.

Conclusion

If you have aircraft without props and have access to a cutter of some sort then you need to do this. Your aircraft will look so much better for it.

Update:

Corrected aircraft names in the Mass Production section, thanks Doug. Not enough sleep and I think one thing and type another.

Warmaster - Army Painter

2010-03-07T12:22:00.001+11:00

With the long weekend and bad weather (read that as: no work in the backyard) I thought this is a good opportunity to give the Warmaster project a final shove towards being "finished". I put that in quotation marks because we all know that a project is never finished, maybe I should have put finished "for now".

Anyway I've finished everything in the top photo with these below to go.

I've also dug put my old Epic storage box to (hopefully) hold all the Warmaster and Blitzkrieg Commander stuff.

This shelf sits on some pegs so that I can store stuff on the bottom of the box, there is also another shelf like the one in the photo. I'll line each shelf so that, with the magnets, I'll be able to stack them tightly without them getting damaged by shifting about when I pick it up.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

1/1200 Scale Ships for Bag the Hun

2010-03-07T08:33:00.000+11:00

I've been having fun with the expanded rules for ground/surface targets in Bag the Hun I decided to have a go at replacing my plain scraps of paper with some less plain scraps of paper. I haven't bought any minis yet as I'm a little torn between scales. I like the look of 1/1200 scale but they're too big (and expensive) for anything except Bag the Hun, naval games at this scale would require huge tables. 1/2400 minis are just right for the table and the wallet for naval gaming purposes but don't have that 'wow' factor of aircraft buzzing over large ships. So I think I'll start with paper 'top down' shots of some ships for the Hun and see how things go from there.

At 1/1200 they're about 6 hexes long on my map which looks right to my eyes. To reduce them to 1/2400 just print them at 50% magnification. All images are courtesy of Wikipedia.

Download a PDF version here.

Eventually I'd like to get some of these made up for the Battle of the Coral Sea scenarios I've been putting together but for now I'll toy around with these until I'm happy with the size/speed/mechanic etc.

Let me know if you find any of these useful or if you have any particular requests for ships.

10mm Bases

2010-03-05T19:09:00.000+11:00

Some of my eBay orders arrived over the last day or two, namely the plasticard and the sheet magnets.

The plasticard looks a lot thicker than the advertised 2mm but upon measuring it is indeed only 2mm thick. Anyway it's sturdy enough and it's black all the way through so I won't need to paint edges (hooray!)

The magnets are bang on 20mm x 40mm so they fit Warmaster bases perfectly, no trimming required.

They add very little to the depth of the bases and the strength is quite good considering that sheet magnets aren't known for their strength, although the Carrion probably isn't the best test as it's a pretty light model. Then again I don't need the magnets to stick the minis to my fridge, I just want then to stay still on movement trays and in storage. Quite pleased with these overall, I may just have to order another pack or two and do all my Warmaster stuff too.

I'm a little tempted to start cutting the plasticard into Warmaster sized bases now so that I'm ready to start as soon as the Pendraken stuff arrives. Maybe I will for the infantry bases but I should wait and see how the tanks fit first.

Taking Stock: 28mm WW2 Germans

2010-03-04T05:49:00.000+11:00

Here are the Germans, I can only manage three squads if I field a command unit but I think with the addition of a heavy MG42 team and a recon squad full of MP40's the firepower evens out somewhat. The recon squad can also be deployed as a Pioneer squad with the addition of a few riflemen and a nice crispy Flammenwerfer-41. The infantry gun crew are dressed in DAK uniforms as I can't find all the original crew that came in the package.

I really need to order a pack or three of odds and ends to help make the platoon a little more flexable as far as options go but with my recent purchases I don't think it will happen any time soon. And there's also the fact that I'm not sure I can handle dealing with Black Tree Designs again any time soon, I might have to look into some of the alternatives out there.

Look! Up in the Sky...

2010-03-03T18:53:00.000+11:00

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's Johnny Danger's Bogeys!

Each pack comes with 10 each of red and blue and have "Bag the Hun" etched into the surface. They're 22mm from side to side (just a little over 3/4") and are made from rigid transparent plastic about 2mm thick.

When I bought these I had planned to use the old white crayon trick to fill in the words on each of the tokens, so I was a little dissapointed when I found the etching on these is too shallow. I would change my on this later though.

So how do they compare in size to a flight stand? Well I knew you'd ask that so I took some pictures to show you.

Yeah but how do they look on a game mat? I knew you'd ask that too so here another pic. It was when I was taking this photo that I noticed how the text on the token wasn't distracting at all and that it would have been if I was able to fill it in with wax crayon. My only complain, and it is a minor one, is that it's difficult to determine the facing of the bogey when it's on the mat. This will be remedied easily enough by painting one of the edges white.

So how do they look in your dice and token case? Well ok so you wouldn't really ask that question but I did want to show you that they don't require much space to store. One thing I should mention is that it wasn't until after I had ripped open both packets (I was excited ok) that I realised they came in perfectly sized reusable ziplock bags.

So there you have it, Johnny Danger's Bogeys for Bag the Hun. I wouldn't say that these are a required purchase purchase for the game but they are pretty spiffy and the extra thickness of them does make it easier to handle them than the 'tiddlywink' type tokens I have been using. And you can never have too many tokens.

Or dice...

Or miniatures...

Taking Stock: 28mm WW2 British

2010-03-01T23:26:00.001+11:00

Ok so I'm on a roll today, I've done more painting, building and sorting in one day than I have in weeks. Anyway with the 28mm terrain coming along nicely I thought I really should sit down and work out:

What I've got.
What I can use.
What I'm likely use.

So after going through the British supplement for Disposable Heroes, "Go Forward Together" I've come up with the following rifle platoon. Pretty much everything is available (scenario pending) with the exception of the second sniper team which shouldn't be there and I'm only able to field up to two of the company support units (sc1..4). I can easily field this as a motorised platoon if/when I can source a heap of trucks and or halftracks, read that as: not any time soon. It will be fairly unlikely that I'll field all these miniatures at the same time, if things are getting that big then we'll probably drag just out Blitzkrieg Commander. With that said though I can see me buying some more of these soon so I can field a unit or two of engineers and SAS squads.

What I'll do now is create some cards with all the relevant information, points, min/max and game stats. Should make building a force pretty straight forward and will be useful when playing.

Next... to sort out the Germans.

Terrain - Hedges & Forests Part 8

2010-03-01T17:37:00.000+11:00

Today I picked up a large pack of scenics blended turf with the idea of using it for the "forest bases" in both 28mm and 10mm. It was on the way home however that I started to think that maybe, just maybe, this would look good on my stalled hedges project.

So having a free hour or two before the kids came home I thought I'd give it a try on a test hedge, if it didn't work out then I'd just use it for the forest bases.

First of all I needed a container so I could dip the hedges. This is just big enough to fit the hedges in on the diagonal.

My test hedge all smothered in PVA glue.

Dipped and sprinkled on the first side.

The end result, I'm really happy with how this looks. Yes some of the edges are a little too square but I don't think it will be noticed too much on the table.

A close up of the flock, the white you can see is the wet PVA, this will dry semi-clear.

The first tray of hedges done.

The big test would be the saw dust nightmares. These sucked up a LOT of glue.

But the end result was impressive. I'll clean up any exposed sawdust after the glue dries with more flock or some clump foliage.

A close up of the now flocked sawdust monster hedge. Looks good even up close.

A shot of the first tray with a 28mm German to show the scale and effect of the hedges.

Ok it took me a lot longer than I originally thought, a weekend was it? But nevertheless I finally got there. I have another two dozen or so pieces of hedges in 28mm scale ready to paint and flock but I think I'll get some 10mm stuff done and see how they look.

I also need to fix up my western buildings as they've warped a bit from being in the shed. Nothing a bit of glue and balsa wood bracing won't fix though. I want to get them ready for this weekend... but with the hedges done I could probably get a game of Disposable heroes going... hmmmm.

Basing the Pendrakens

2010-03-01T13:31:00.000+11:00

No I don't have them yet but it's probably not a bad idea to start thinking about this now. I've pretty much settled on 20mm x 40mm for the bases, I'm sure there will be the odd tank or arty piece that needs a bigger base but the benefit of cutting your own is that you can make the exception where needed. I'll still try to keep the bases fairly uniform; eg bigger tanks might go onto a 25mm x 40mm and large arty pieces may even push it out to 30mm x 40mm.

The one complicating factor is that I really want to base my miniatures so that I can use them for other rules. One of the great strengths of any hostorical game is that the miniatures are still relevant regardless of the ruleset, basing pending of course. The areas where I can see things getting tricky is is with support weapons: MMG, HMG, mortars and such. I'm thinking that I can base these individually on 20mm square bases and simply put two side by side for Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC). To make this easier I've bought 200 adhesive magnets:

They are the same size at the bases I'll be using and are 0.6mm thick. They'll help with storage and will also allow me to make some unit sized movement trays out of paper steel (or something similar). That's the plan anyway. They will also help with some of the Warmaster minis which are just a pain to move as a unit (yes I'm looking right at you Carrion).

These are coming from Adelade so they should be here in the next couple days.