Dakka dakka dakka.... vrooooow

During my recent rules purchasing frenzy I came across these rules:


I also got these with my first big order to TFL but not knowing much about them I left them alone. A bit of research through my friend Google found the rules to be pretty much what I was after. They have enough detail to have decent 1 on 1 dogfights but they easily allow for games of 10-20 planes, maybe even more. What sold me was how cheap 1/600 scale miniature planes are. Tumbling Dice have some of the nicest and cheapest planes I've seen.

A quick email to TFL and before I knew I had the rules sitting in my inbox, thank you Mr Clarke. My first few games consisted of coins for planes flying across some old Battletech maps. Before I played TFL games I had a pretty bad impression of card based initiative systems, I thought they wouldn't work. But I was wrong, very wrong indeed. Making the cards is a pain but there are plenty on the Yahoo site and some of them look quite professional.

Anyway I'm addicted, I have an order for 120+ planes on the way and they can't come soon enough. Until then my 5 cent piece fighters will have to keep trying to shoot down my 20 cent piece bombers.

And I hear there is a 2nd edition in the works... can't wait.

No more room in Hell

I love Zombies, can't get enough of them. I'll watch any Zombie movie no matter how bad it is, yes Zombie Strippers I'm looking at you. So it goes to reason that I would love Zombie games. Well I've been looking for quite a while and there are some excellent Zombie board games out there but Zombie miniature games was pretty slim pickings. Until I found All Things Zombie from Two Hour Wargames (THW). In fact this was the game that introduced me to the THW stable of games.


I won't launch into a review of the game right now but I will say this: it is an excellent skirmish level game with a great campaign system and has very good solo and same-side play.

I'm still looking for Zombie miniatures, there are a lot of great ones out there at a price. And since most of them are made overseas postage is a real killer. WW2 skirmishing has kind of put this project on hold for the moment but a couple months ago I got a link to World Works Games, more specifically a 28mm cardstock shopping mall. After retrieving my jaw from the floor I purchased the pdf and started printing. Click on the images for bigger versions.

A few hours later I had these:

Closer shots (click on the images for bigger versions):


Some shots with miniatures for scale (click on the images for bigger versions):



I've still got a fair bit of work to do on this but I'm aiming for running a game or three mid year.

Timbo

Flames of What?!

All kidding aside, I want to play Flames of War. Really I do but right now I'm completely hooked on this game by Two Hour Wargames (THW).

The reaction system which makes up the core of this game is simply amazing. I can see this being my game of choice for quite some time to come. Best of all is the game has solo play and it works incredibly well. The game itself focuses mainly on the late war period but it wouldn't be that hard to plug in your own army lists and play. On the topic of army lists, Nuts! has gone down a fairly simplistic approach to both unit and weapon stats but I can tell you it works. The game is fast and fairly straight forward to play.

The only thing that bothered me initially is that the rulebook isn't laid out as well as it could have been. This seems to have been addressed in the newer rules that have come out of THW, besides there is a Yahoo group that supports the game that has to be seen to be believed. Questions are answered fast and usually by the game designers too.

I can see myself playing Flames of War... it's an inevitable evolutionary part of being a wargamer right? But right now I'm happy playing skirmish games and Nuts! is about the best there is.

Timbo