Chaos in the Old World

Might be time to talk about more boardgames here at Plastic Legions...while we had a blast on our last drunken foray into Talisman, FFG pulls out the suprise with this. I am sure this has a little more meat on its bones being an FFG designed game than the former does and that makes me very interested. I am sure I am not the only who stops by here who is interested in giving this a spin!, Warhammer board games with cool miniatures? Whats not to like. Personally I can't wait, a nice alternative to the GW re-release of Space Hulk for the Fantasy inclined.

Tuesday Night Gaming

Plastic Legions HQ, 5/26

Despite the Legends of the High Seas campaign its been a relatively slow month for me. Games Workshop new policy of store hour cutbacks have prevented me and countless others out there from being able to game in their shops. Even thou I want to come in and spend my money there I can't, because getting there before it closes to buy some paint is hard enough forget about trying to get a game in...The Chicago Battle Bunker closing at 8pm was the nail in the coffin for me. Outside of a special event.. like a tournament that I plan on for months or having a very rare free Saturday. If I do get a Saturday free..Oak Park runs its events for beginners on weekends and getting to the battle bunker is traffic nightmare there and back so I barely have time to get a full game in before I need to leave. My options for playing WFB are now limited to twice a month at my own hosted club night (glad I got my fill with those 18 games in the month before Adepticon because I wont be seeing 18 more games of Fantasy outside a tournament until probably 2011).

Tonight was return to a classic, The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game..this is the game all the rule sets for those Historical Skirmish games I talk about are based on. This game simply rules and its too bad it never got more popular..While I like the new War of the Ring, lets be honest. GW wrote WotR to help try to sell the huge amount of unsold back stock of product they had laying around because they were not capable getting the game to catch on due to the terrible way they marketed it. Again- I like War of the Ring but its overly simplified and walks a razor thin line of throwing all strategy aside to pure luck by the crazy number of dice thrown. Whether Lord of the Rings SBG falls into the no mans land of the Specialist Games still remains to be seen..GW has more than likely run the course of potential supplements or are close to it..thankfully the new models are dual purpose and you can get alot of milage out of both games.

Tonight I played a pair of 500Pt SBG games, Billy (not Bill, Billy is the other Bill) brough both Umbar and Harad and showed me why Sauron made them his allies and not his enemies.

Mordor vs Harad - Domination

Mordor

Shagrat
3 Uruk Hai
10 Orc HW& Shield
8 Orc Spear
Orc Capt.
Orc with Banner
6 Warg Riders , HW & Shield, Bows
Troll

Harad

Suladan
Hasharin
Raiders
Serpent Guard
Infantry with Spears

In Domination the objective is to capture 4 specific points on the board...in this game it was each corner, we both deployed in opposite corners so we had to defend our own corner while trying to capture the others. Billy deployed in the city, while I deployed outside on the beach. Although Billy won most of the Priority rolls..he put alot of man power on killing my troll which allowed me to spread all over the board..my Warg Riders managed to do plenty of damage this game removing three of his intercepting Raiders allowing me to capture the church with infantry and send some Warg Riders after his own base removing the lone defender with some arrows. My Orc Captain led his own assault team to remaining quarter, and although he couldnt climb to save his life..his men held off the deadly lone Harshin long enough for Shagrat to break the will of Harad and start the courage checks..The Assassin routs..I know have all four control points.. The game continues and Suladan battles his way back..causing me to rout and many of my troops start to flee the battlefield. I lose one Objective due to routing, Shagrat and Suladan have an epic throw down and while the Castellan of Cirith Ungol goes down..his men holdfast and games ends with Mordor the victor.


(1st time I've got to game on my Osgiliath Table, while its still along way from being done, its slowly coming together and quite playable in the rough shape its in and I am currently working on 12 x 12 " city tiles of different textures (cobblestone, Flagstone, Brick) to really bring it to life I should be updating soon.)

Mordor vs Umbar- Contest of Champions

I ran the same list, this time Billy brough Dalamyr, an Assassin, Captain and Bosun with a bunch of Corsairs and 8 Arbalesters. Fate and Luck abandoned Mordor this time..as the Arbalesters shredded both my Troll and Warg Riders like pincushions. Without their support and my forces split, My Orcs were eaten alive my Corsairs, Shagrat couldn't convert anything losing numerous fights to a "hand of fate" die roll, while Dalamyr was stacking up Orc bodies like firewood for the winter..Once the routing started it was all over..Shagrat proved why he's the toughest S.O.B Orc hero in the game, He sticking around until the very end (most of it surrounded)..but eventually Mordor was tabled.



( I've changed my Walls to these pieces for the table, much more practical to play on, plus they are taller and look the part)

As you can see from my brief recaps while I brought the same army and we played on the same table- both games were completely different. Billy's heavy support (the Arbalesters) was devastating and while my superior number and Cavalry won me the day against a smaller more specialized Harad force..I was softened up enough to get crushed when I met the seasoned Pirates of Umbar. Both these game were dynamic and exciting and its the kind of stuff you often don't get a chance to appreciate in the larger format games like WFB,WotR, 40K, etc.

We also had some Warhammer Ancient Battles going on. I've been struggling getting my Celt Army built..I am not loving the models from both Wargames Factory and Warlord Games that I have. Both have significant issues that bug me and when you are building tedious multi part plastic models you'd better love what you are doing or you will go nuts. I still love the game but am debating dumping all the plastics and just going with Foundry's Models..I am so impressed by the recent Foundry stuff I got...That a 1000 points of Foundry Celts would be simply amazing to paint, however its pretty steep luxury at around $300 USD to replace the $80 of plastic troops I have built. Anyway I gave up my WAB game to Chris since we had an odd number of players tonight. He and Rich did the Arab vs Celt rematch and the Arabs carried the day once again..With a new WAB campaign open to all being hosted by Adeptus Windy City and the new book coming this year..I expect to see alot more WAB ahead..what models I will be using is another story.

All in all a great night we were missing some bodies but I expect to see us back at close to a dozen for the next meet.. That's it for now, June is coming and June is about the Empire!

The Spanish Main - Post Campaign Wrap

So the evening long campaign for Legends of the High Seas took place last Friday night, and much fun was had and beerconsumed. We had our share of issues from getting a later start than I had planned to round 1 games taking too long. By the time we got round four going it was already almost idnight...and someone had already dropped in round 3 forcing a 3 player FFA the previous round which wasn't ideal. So in the end we only had 4 players for "X marks the spot" it turned into a blood bath on end between the Royal Navy, Spaniards, and Chinese Pirates...who basically killed each other off...while the sneaky green skinned pirates ran off with the gold...I went into round 4 at 3-0 and a crew of 15 and was the 1st player to arrive on the island, so I split up into 3 groups of 5 to hunt for the gold. Luck wasn't with me this game and I was taking fire from all sides. Eventually I ended up voluntarily routing with only 2 Heroes left.. Even this 4 player game took over 2.5 hours so by the time I shut the lights off and went to bed it was 3AM... a good time but lesson learned..the event was too long...Better organization and time management is a gimme and potentially a normal round for game 4 instead of big group game that's bound to eat up the clock are in order. I'll need to some homework on making a 1 day or evening campaign event work..there is already talk of doing another one..and I am quite happy we have a whole bunch of people eager to get in some Legends of the High Seas...despite the issues with time, I am calling the event a big success.


Some of my Spanish Privateers hunting for the treasure in the final "X marks the spot"
unfortunately I didnt get the mileage I wanted to out of my Cannibals...for having twelve "x" markers Cannibals only came up once! (if the treasure wasn't found..the marker had variety of game effects you rolled on 2d6, Cannibals were on the list twice..(4 and 10, ) I should have made
4,5 9,10


You know you've drank too much beer when your miniatures start getting attacked
by giant parrots!!! Argh..

Tavern Fight!

Last night one of my fellow Pirates stopped by in preparation for our Spanish Main campaign for Legends of the High Seas which takes place tonight! here we have Jasons awesome Tavern Fight battle board Jason put hours of pain staking work into this all the way down to the awesome liquor bottle and wooden stump seats and bar tables and mainly all green stuff work. The table itself is all from various Hirst Arts molds, you got the standard block, small brick, cobblestone and accessory molds in action here. at this point I think I've posted all the terrain that is on the tables..I will save the few missing set ups for my full report on the evening which I post this weekend. it's been a great month of Legend of the High Seas and it all comes to a head tonight!




These liquor bottle tokens as well as the seats are all improvised weapons
in this scenario, you fight completely unarmed except for using these tokens.
Jason did an incredible job on these!



The stairs and walkway here are carved basswood..again
excellent work

Castillo de San Cristóbal

The Spanish Main campaign is this Friday night, here is another new piece of terrain I've completed which is set up here as the "Castillo de San Cristóbal" or San Juan Prison if you'd like, for the Prison Break Scenario.


The attacking players view as the scenario begins


The piece is actually 8 sections that fit together in variety of configurations
these pieces will also be the walls for my Osgiliath Table, which is slowly but surely continuing forward, expect a major update for that in the next month. The pieces are by Miniatures Scenery, AUS or CNC workshop as they are also known. I currently own a lot of their stuff
and if you familar with it you can see the modification's I've made to the stock kit..every thing is made from 1/8" MDF so it very easy to make your own bits to dress up the stock pieces.
Basically here all I did was square off the jagged walkways..to make them look like walkways as opposed to a collapsed roof..I also added interior detail to the inside walls for appearance sake.






The front gate is custom piece as well, a piece of MDF cut to fit and dressed up
with some different sized plastic I-beams I had laying around from my 40K bitz.








Here is a close up of the texture I applied to all these pieces...standard Krylon textured spray paint. Getting the application correct was a bit of a learning curve but the end results are great. the Spanish Soldier is one of my finished member of my crew of Spanish Privateers who will playing in the campaign and defending this prison in round 1.

I've got one more update of buildings before the event takes place so look for that soon..I may even get my crew done in time to photograph and post them!

On the new GW June releases

Here a brief update on my last GW post


This one slipped through the rumor cracks. This is the first time I've seen this, pretty cool however its somewhat redundant with the Arcane Ruins...but it seems to me combining both those kits could lead to a really nice scenery piece...since I have an unbuilt Arcane Ruins lying around this looks like something I will pick up.

Also released is a new Empire Battalion including the much talked about new Greatsword kit.
Seems like the $41.75 for ten plastics was not a misprint or website error.. even with the extra bits included in the kit, I still waiting to see someone from GW justify a 95% price increase over the standard $22 troop box. Battalions have $90.00 for good long while and that is seen by most as a pretty good price. If you notice the price isn't listed for this yet while the GW bean counters figure out how to price it. This is a much better battalion troop wise than the previous one...30 state troops is what should be in a battalion, plus you get Knights and some Greatsword as Specials. Problem is the retail on these individually is $142.75..that kind of blows the battalion pricing concept out of the water I'm guessing GW stamps a $130-135 retail on this..... so you get a slight deal but the problems/questions remain. Why are the Greatswords so expensive?, and if you going to bump the price that much Then the Empire needs new Knights!..8 Knights is a left over from 6th edition you want 5 or 10 these days Eight's somewhat useless and your paying extra for unused models. New Knights along the lines of the new Chaos Knights would go along way to justifying the price increases..instead this isn't really any kind of deal. As an Empire player your better of just buying 4 boxes of state troops because Empire Knights can be had cheap as hell on ebay simply because they have been around so damn long! Just a bit of wisdom from a guy with a 4K Empire Army, PASS on the new battalion. Greatswords look cool but you need 20 models to have a really useful unit, So with sales tax your looking a $90 for a plastic unit? I don't know about that.

Santa Domingo, Hispaniola.

A combination of our club night getting moved to my place as well as my upcoming Spanish Main campaign, I am fortunate enough to have alot of other peoples work at my house. One the great things about gaming with alot of talent people is when you all get your stuff together the results are pretty awesome. Today I started putting tables together for the Scenarios of my upcoming event and I was happily suprised when I realized how much stuff I current had at my disposal and how well it all works together. Below we have my "town" for my Legend of the High Seas event coming uo 5/15. I still need to add my dock, but this is a great layout with a dozen buildings, 4 of them borrowed from friends including some vegetation from the Pirate Castle, there are 5 tables for the event...I'll be showing them all of in the next few weeks but here, you go- Santa Domingo, Hispanola circa 1719.








Thanks to Bill, Billy for the Flying Tricycle stuff and Rich for the tropical vegetation!






As an added bonus Tim from Cursed Treasures who is the author of the High Seas book has been kind enough to trade me some of his painted Cannibals for my upcoming event. These models from old glory look awesome and I am very happy to own some of Tim's work...these guys will show up as NPC's in the event..and will surely throw the players a curve ball..nothing like being a pirate and having to worry about the Royal Navy and then the Cannibals show up. Tim sent me a bunch of stuff but also included here are some awesome markers for "X marks the spot" thanks again Tim!, I'll make sure I keep track of the body count for you.



painted by Tim Kulinski