Plastic Legions

Lord the Rings SBG New Releases

2012-01-27T21:07:00.000-06:00

The Gorgoroth, if your recall this is what's pulling the Grond Ram in Return of the King

The cat's out of the bag more of less as the Feburary White Dwarf hits the stands in the different parts of the world. I wanted to this collected information up before GW sends out it's February releases email tonight or tomorrow morning. I spoke to my pal who runs our local one man store in my area and he was absolutely clueless about any of this. I quote " they dont tell us anything", "I'll see on the 4th like the rest of you" Leave it to us to hype Games Workshops products for them for free right?

The New Codes

Global Pack Code Complete Barcode Short Sales Code Product Name Contents D Release R/T Release USD CAD Route to Market Product Status Life Span Range Action Type
60041499029 978190796436-7 05-01-60 LoTR: The Free Peoples (English) 64pp Army Book 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $24.75 $29.75 RTD New - Active Book
60041499033 978190796460-2 08-01-60 LoTR: Mordor (English) 48pp Army Book 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $24.75 $29.75 RTD New - Active Book
60041499031 978190796450-3 09-01-60 LoTR: The Fallen Realms (English) 48pp Army Book 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $24.75 $29.75 RTD New - Active Book
60041499032 978190796455-8 11-01-60 LoTR: Moria & Angmar (English) 48pp Army Book 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $24.75 $29.75 RTD New - Active Book
99121464007 501192102290 8 09-07 Easterling Kataphrakts 6 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $36.25 $43.50 RTD New - Active Plastic
99801464015 501192102611-1 09-62 Amdûr, Lord of Blades 2 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $33.00 $39.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99801464016 501192102730-9 09-63 Easterling Dragon Knight 1 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $23.00 $27.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99801464018 501192102732-3 09-64 Easterling War Priest 1 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $23.00 $27.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99811499008 501192103248-8 - Lord of The Rings Casualties 8 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 - $29.75 $35.75 D New - Active Resin
99811499006 501192102947-1 11-41 The Watcher in the Water 1 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $71.00 $85.25 RTD New - Active Resin
99801499008 501192102949-5 11-62 Warg Marauder 1 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $24.75 $29.75 RTD New - Active Resin
99811466005 501192102952-5 11-42 Dweller in the Dark 1 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $41.25 $49.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99801462009 501192102951-8 11-60 Grôblog, King of the Deeps 1 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $15.25 $19.00 RTD New - Active Resin
99801462008 501192102950-1 11-61 Ashrâk, the Spiderkin 1 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $13.25 $16.00 RTD New - Active Resin
99811499007 501192102948-8 08-44 Great Beast of Gorgoroth 1 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $71.00 $85.25 RTD New - Active Resin
99811464020 501192102954-9 04-41 Gondor Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99811464021 501192102961-7 04-42 Rohan Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99811463004 501192102953-2 05-40 Galadhrim Elf Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99811465005 501192102959-4 05-41 Dwarf Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Active Resin

RE-PACKAGED PRODUCTS Infantry boxes will phase in Global Pack Code Complete Barcode Short Sales Code Product Name Contents D Release R/T Release USD CAD Current RTM Current Status Range Action Range Action Date Type
99121499025 501192102983-9 11-08 Wild Wargs 6 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $16.50 $19.75 D Active RTMC - RTD 4-Feb-12 Plastic
99121464012 501192102971-6 04-08 Warriors of Minas Tirith 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121464011 501192102966-2 04-09 Rangers of Middle-earth 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121466006 501192102969-3 04-10 Warriors of the Dead 10 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121464013 501192102972-3 04-11 Warriors of Rohan 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121463004 501192102981 5 05-09 Galadhrim Warriors 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121463003 501192102976-1 05-10 Wood Elf Warriors 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121499024 501192102970-9 05-15 Warriors of the Last Alliance 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121465004 501192102968 6 05-11 Dwarf Warriors 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121465003 501192102967-9 05-13 Dwarf Rangers 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121462003 501192102975-4 08-07 Mordor Orcs 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121462006 501192102977-8 08-08 Morannon Orcs 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121462005 501192102974-7 10-07 Uruk-hai Warriors 10 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121462002 501192102973 0 10-08 Uruk-hai Scouts 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121462004 501192102978-5 11-07 Moria Goblin Warriors 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121464008 501192102979-2 09-08 Haradrim Warriors 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121464010 501192102982-2 09-09 Corsairs of Umbar 12 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99121464009 501192102980-8 09-10 Easterling Warriors 10 Fig Box 14-Jan-12 4-Feb-12 $22.25 $26.75 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Plastic
99801464017 501192102731-6 09-61 Khamûl The Easterling (Ringwraith) 2 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $33.00 $39.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99811464019 501192102733-0 09-40 Easterling Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99811462013 501192102958-7 08-45 Mordor Orc Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99811462012 501192102957-0 08-46 Morannon Orc Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99811462011 501192102956-3 10-41 Isengard Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Active Resin
99811462010 501192102955-6 11-43 Moria Goblin Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $33.00 $39.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99811464022 501192102960-0 09-41 Haradrim Commanders 4 Fig Box 4-Feb-12 4-Feb-12 $39.50 $47.50 RTD New - Repackaged - Active Resin
99801462015 501192103249-5 - Mordor Orc Shaman 1 Fig Clampack 4-Feb-12 - $15.25 $19.00 D New - Repackaged - Active Resin

There a 5 Source books at $24.50 USD each book is going to overwrite the current force organization specified by The Legions of Middle Earth book. (code for the Kingdoms of Men book is missing above, I'm assuming a C/P error)

New Models...I've posted pics of sum, all plastic and Finecast, the prices, yes. Outrageous.

The Watcher in the Water no has legs and gets mobile!

Another Ghulvar type Demon (above) and the coolest of the new models this Easternling Cataphract sculpted by Alan Perry

What we know-

The Core Rules are not changing, The big book is being re-released by the page count is the same and the sample pages are the same. People are concluding the book has not changed.

The new Core books feature new Force organization rules and other new rules.

Basic rules revolve around 1 Hero Commands 12 Figures, so armies are built around that concept.
Wisdom suggests The Boromir of the White would have command bonuses over say a regular Gondor Captain but what we dont know. Illustrations with bonus to statistics for Instance Khamul leading Easterling Cavalry is now F4, etc. exist.

Points have seemed to have NOT Changed.

No word on Changes to Magic or incorporation of Monsters or Siege Weapons into the Hero +12 Command Structure. Following GW's lead in other games and big monster kits I expect monsters to more easily fieldable then they are now.

Alliance Rules gone, now just Good Vs Evil.

I expect many other unique Army rules to change in favor of a more streamline concept. as well as some Army lists.

War of the Ring is being shelved as specicalist game and this version of SGB is going to be e pushed the 3rd Flagship game at least thru the new films then it will slowly slide off into oblvion unless the fans keep it alive. This is surprising we thought War of the Ring would be the game the pushed but its just doest have the fanbase and the new troop box repackaging makes its price prohibitive to get into unless your filthy Rich or a long time collector, as the cost of 3 companies of stock troops went up from $30 to almost $50

I see alot of good here with the focus on Heroes and Command, the proof will be in its implementation, smaller warband and removal of alliance restrictions can be positive as you can run some different combos that dont really on a ton of models so Grey Company and Rohan Cav, etc., this freedom of design can also lead to some unrealistic or just bad combos in the name of gaming
so we are just going to have to see.

Overall, I am optimistic with what I see, but am of course skeptical as well because with everything
GW does the focus is on maximizing sales of over game quality. But they're going to get me for $125 next weekend as I get all 5 books....Big year for Lord of The Rings starting 11 months before the new movies..who would have guessed?

Photos, and information collected courtesy of members of Dakka Dakka, and the One Ring UK.

GW goes back to Middle Earth.

2012-01-25T14:56:00.000-06:00

Looks like Games Workshop has pulled a bit of a surprise out its hat and much to the chagrin of 40K haters over at the various forums. Rumor has been bubbling for the last 6 weeks or so about a new skirmish ruleset for the SBG in Feburary. While the LotR SBG community is small it is dedicated and we've seen a big rise in player populace here in the midwest over the last year, either as a result of the exodus from other systems or as just an increase in curiosity from other player bases. Last November's Bilbos Birthday Bash was the single biggest LotR tournament to date with attendance up 400% since its start in 2009. The tournament was as grand a *hobby* spectacle as you are going to see around these parts outside of Adepticon.

As the cover of this French version of February's White Dwarf confirms this is a reality. From the rumors that seem reasonable on a couple of reliable forums..It seems like they aren't changing the rules so much but tweaking unit values and command structures on how many models a particular hero model is capable of commanding. This is an awesome move that will shake the game up in a good way in my opinion because one the few problems with game on the tournament level is that players can spam models using only Captains or low costing generic command figures as leaders. This gamey disregard to *theme* allows you maximize model counts and while its the best tactical game GW has managed to come up with, It is still very much a game of numbers. Also mentioned are a whole of bunch of new models this month..*what* I am not sure as releases for *The Hobbit* should still be pending probably late this fall to tie in with the new film. Whatever they do lets hope they dont mess with core rules and keep the Finecast to a minimum. Going by the standard info release schedules we should know the details this weekend.

In other LotR/ GW news not sure if anyone else noticed who doesnt play but GW recently, in typical fashion, repackaged the plastic troop boxes lowering the number of models in a box by 50% but lowering the price only about 25%, This isnt something they would have invested money into if they were just trying to *blow out inventory* like I've read speculated. Considering GW fought like hell to even get the rights to do models for the new films, I think we can plan on a significant amount of attention on the game from GW over the next 24 months considering its the companies sizable investment. Sorry 40K dudes.

Dark Age Campaign Round 7

2012-01-25T14:11:00.002-06:00

Here is our Campaign Map post 6 rounds of play. Moves are pending for round 7 based on the above.
Scores last rounds where The Saxons over the Byzantines 34 -19 and The Caliphate over the Normans 34-10.

If you've been following this at all you'll see the Caliphate has been slowed slightly the last couple rounds a Saxon victory in Round 5 (barely) and a equal score forcing draws in Round 6 enabled me to consolidate and rebuild. Chris and his Byzantines have likewise held there own, and the loss to Saxons last round only really set the dispute over a neutral territory we where fighting over. What we currently have is 3 way ties with 19 territories a piece...Rich is in the lead with 101 Armies versus 81 for Chris and 80 for myself. Most number of territories at the end of 8 is declared the winner, with number of Armies as the tie breaker. The Norman empire is in its last throes, with 8 Territories and 24 armies he has suffered from a combination of being * man in the middle* and bad luck.. Dismissing his Heavy Cavalry would be foolish however and I since he and I are playing this week
I should probably work to complete absorb him and have him fighting for me in the last round, however a loss in that scenario would probably knock me out of the running so it might be best to skirmish against border territories and try for another smaller expansion protecting my Empires strength. However a strong push from either Rich or Chris with a high score could make that moot as well. Decisions, Decisions.

Course Correction- Adepticon Update.

2012-01-12T21:59:00.002-06:00

The Kraken Attacks, abandon ye all hope. In all seriousness I wanted to make a quick announcement about a course correction. Due to circumstances far beyond my control I am suddenly being forced to relocate my business operations over the next 3-4 months. As a result I have no choice but to cancel my Adepticon 2012, Legends of the High Seas Event. Thankfully Tim Kulinski, Author of the High Seas book is stepping up and running a big game in its place and current time slot, while not the massive scenery laden affair I had planned its going to be great game on great terrain with multiple crews fighting in a free all doing an table wide treasure hunt. Prizes, etc will be still be offered, look for replacement event details at Adepticon.Org and Tim's blog as well.

I'll still be at Adepticon myself, I may even play Friday Night. (I'll definitely show up) Unfortunately I am going to have very limited time this spring, and planning an event like I had run last year and stepping it up as I was aiming for this year takes just alot of time and planning, I had estimated between finishing new terrain, scenarios and all the paperwork involved I was looking at 100 or so hours of work between now and then, which is time and distraction I just can't have.

Anyway I want to give a big Thanks to Tim and Rich for bailing me out and saving the day here
Tickets will be refunded or honored depending. Once life is back on track, I'll be back to business as usual with my hobbies. This kind of throws a monkey wrench at some other announcements I had planned as I am loath to make them until I ride out this course correction...such is life...Arghhh.

Dark Age Campaign Round 6

2012-01-07T23:11:00.002-06:00

Here we have the Campaign Map, after 5 turns and before our moves for turn 6. Only 3 turns to go. Luckily, The Saxons called in their Pagan favors, (thanks in part to one bulletproof and credibly lucky Medium Cavalry unit) and beat the Arab force by 4 points!...basically nothing, 1 point on kill points and I killed the Caliphate General netting 3 more. It was great game. I made some big gains early, but started losing it toward turn 6 (of 8) finally coming back with a decent last round to close it, although my super cavalry finally succumbed to shooting the last turn..(losing me 4 points). This close spread of our game while forcing him out my territories barely phased him as he only lost 10 armies the whole round, and when he musters for his turn 6 moves, he'll 82 armies in the field, and still firmly in the lead, The Byzantines come in second with 69 armies ( Besting the Normans 28-10) After this victory, I have regrouped to third place with 60 armies. Normandy cant catch a break rounding out the bottom at 28.

All in all things are playing out great, I play the Byzantines next week and a big loss for either of us will be brutal. The Normans are on the verge of being absorbed, if that does happen, we'll have to Aaron play the campaign out as Vassal of whomever does it. Personally having re tooled his list, I think he's overdue for the big upset.

In other news I have been gearing for my Spring projects for Adepticon and even made some headway painting my Saxons..more on all that soon.

Dark Age Campaign Round 5

2012-01-03T10:29:00.000-06:00

Round 5 of our Quasi Historical Dark Ages Campaign is tonight. Above is the current map of the world before the festivities. As you can see the Green of the Caliphate of Cordoda, led by the Mighty Almanzor is spreading across the known world as quickly as the plague. My Saxons got lucky with a minor victory against the Normans last week but since the results against all opponents are based on Scores in the games you play my winning score of '30" was no match for Rich's "40" so I continue to lose ground to the Caliphate. I face off against the Caliphate tonight and all my Map moves are against Green, with the hope of kicking them out of Ireland and England, and not losing any more territory. A bad round with a low score against Rich in which I face aggressive moves from the Normans could legitmately knock me out maybe not this round by next...with the position Aaron and I are in we not make the 8 rounds of campaign!. and he faces of against Chris and the Byzantines tonight!. So wish the underdogs luck.

Despite my only semi serious gloom and doom above. This campaign and Warlords Hail Caesar rules have been great time. We are going to be hosting Hail Caesar open gaming at Adepticon this year so if your looking for something to do Saturday Night or just want to check it out..please keep it in mind!

2011 and the year that was.

2011-12-27T23:39:00.000-06:00

The hobbyist blogger year end review is an expectation this time of year, I'd be remiss if I didnt continue to do mine. I gave up on the resolution thing last year and this year I'll keep my year end short and sweet. 5 years in and Plastic Legions is hanging there, while my focus has certainly changed I am plenty determined to keep my chronicling of my hobby going as long as I can. I've pretty much become "another one of those guys" and have completely removed myself from Games Workshop when it comes to Warhammer. As much as I tried hard to embrace it, WFB 8th edition in 2011 was just a continuing landslide of bad decisions in both design and implementation.. I am now essentially a specialist games guys playing LotR when I can. It's really my main interest there but only because I am interested in LotR , not Games Workshop.

Looking back this year its clear most of my focus was on Terrain and I both started and finished some of best work to date in 2011, 2012 will be more of the same however. I am going to serious try to wade thru my sea of unpainted lead in 2012, doing as much single figure and army painting as i can first and any terrain ideas second. I have some big changes in my job coming in 2012 that will be a pretty big time soak, so I really dont know what my hobby time constraints will be. I am also looking to formalize some of my Miniature hobbyist work into something a little more professional and I will be talking about that soon. I still plan on running my Battle of Five Armies mega game sometime this year..and am looking forward to more Hail Caesar, Flames of War, Warmachine and various skirmish games all in non tournament capacity, I also have some Uncharted Seas and Dreadfleet sitting around untouched and will be just looking for a good excuse to crack those., so expect more of the same I suppose just less of it, minus the Warhammer. It is really a wide open sea for me, I just set a course and let the wind take me where it may. Happy 2012. people.

Legends of the High Seas At Adepticon 2012

2011-12-27T22:45:00.001-06:00

Just a quick flyer I threw together for LotHS at Adepticon this year. Rules are currently posted HERE
any event questions should be emailed to me at oldcoast@comcast.net. With last years event and a second summer campaign under my belt the rules have changed a bit for the better to include more of the mini campaign aspects and the scoring is alot more similar to what tournament players are used to. I've got some great stuff lined up terrain wise as well as all of last years favorites coming back. "Boarding Action" will be happening and rumor has it the author of the rulebook will joining us as a participant! There 20 slots max, 15 seats currently available as I type this. Note the later start..so you should be able to play in Friday daytime events and not have any conflicts. Also if you're playing in the event please keep an eye on lothscampaign.blogspot.com for all event related updates. Pics of terrain, etc are of course posted here, but event related posts and information will always be there first.

Scale Massacre

2011-12-22T03:03:00.000-06:00

( An example of when miniatures from various manufactures work together "scale wise", its rarer than you think Left to Right Reaper Dark Heaven, Avatars of War, Reaper Pathfinder, Reaper Dark Heaven X 2, Gorgon Miniatures)

I have dual or dueling narratives here, the photo text, and the regular text, you'll have to let me know if you like this style of post.

No surprise, I collect Fantasy miniatures and have since before high school, which for me was a long long time ago. Despite a multi-decade gap of abstaining from collecting , I'm doing my best to make up for lost time, its at the root of all the rest of this gaming nonsense and for me, the very essence of the hobby.

An often touchy subject with folks, me in particular is "Scale", we've all heard the term "scale creep" and these days the term "28mm" get used without much specificity to the point where it really just means "toy soldier". The first question I ask when ever I get interested in a particular model or product, is "how does it scale?? "how does it scale to what you ask?, well with what ever I am damn well planing on using it for, and these days that's all over the map, Nothing like spending your cash on something called "28mm, or 15mm, or 25mm" and it shows up and its nowhere near actual scale you thought it was.

(3 Berserkers by one of my favorite manufactures, Otherworld miniatures, and one Reaper Pathfinder model, The Otherworld figs are large proportioned 30mm, the Pathfinder fig is 32m, and a giant scalewise among his peers (although its a specific character in the Pathfinder RPG world so I think its supposed to be "huge", "in scale" that sword is like Six Feet long, its definitely getting replaced.

If go back to my old collection circa late 1970's and 1980's. most things called 25mm at the time scale up pretty well between a the small variety of manufactures of the day. The largest manufacture of the time for these types of models before Citadel was Grenadier, a while certain lines where true 25mm (I have stuff that would easy be labeled 20mm today) it was generally easy to buy something from a catalog (how we did it back then) and have it show up and be appropriate with the rest of your collection, definitely if it was in the same line.

Somewhere during my absence from the hobby, probably routed in the success of Citadel or Reaper miniatures, in the 1990;s "Heroic Scale" came to be whether this be exaggerate features being out of proportion or just larger figures, the damn broke and scale creep began either as a "bigger is better" mentality. a lack of attention of detail, or simply not giving a damn.

( The world largest Goblins by Otherworld Miniatures, I love the old school theme from this company
and have alot their figures but the scale is all over the damn place..They also make the worlds smallest human zombies and I cant believe I forgot to show a comparison of one of the these goblins to the "human" zombie. its really too bad these are great sculpts, but they should be easily 25% smaller, bright side I guess they work as Orcs??)

For collecting them and painting them scale creep isnt the end of the world, it becomes more problematic in large format army games, where people want to mix manufactures to create a nice variety. Games Workshop led the way in "proprietary sculpting" if you will, where as they make their miniatures in such a way that they didnt really work with anything else other than Games Workshop. This is a business model numerous other companies have followed successfully, to the point where new miniature manufactures have sprouted up just to manufacture alternative models that properly scale to the proprietary lines of Games Workshop.

In my case. I am working on going thru the bins of miniatures I have to base them up and paint them for Skirmish gaming, There going to be used in dioramas or rule book shots on nice terrain I've built for the purpose of illustrating the rules of the Skirmish Game I am working on. for this purpose I am limiting myself to couple things, 1) no Games Workshop or Citadel Models and 2) only stuff thats currently available on the market.The point of this is that I want my rules to be a clear alternative to GW style gaming and show that there are alot of other great miniatures out there you probably dont know about unless you look.

(L to R, Redbox, Reaper Dark Heaven, Pathfinder, Pathfinder.
I love Tre Manor's sculpts, in fact he's probably my favorite fantasy sculptor working today, however Redbox's line is 25mm, or while it might "true 28mm" his figures really line up with GW's LotR line where as thats called "true 25mm" and those are kind of all over the place too. The Reaper fig is a giant, no doubt and I converted the weapons so it looked even more so, but those two models just look silly in comparison, the big guy does work however with the smaller woman and largish man from Pathfinder.)

( 3 Reaper Dark Heaven Barbarian models with the one Redbox, despite the pose and being an amazing sculpt Redbox, just doesn't work with these Reaper Barbarian, he's stuck with other RBG models..The Redbox /Reaper non compatibility is most likely purposeful since Tre Manor has worked for Reaper.)

( LtoR- Otherworld, Hasslefree, Otherworld, Otherworld. Otherworld hit it out of the park with these "Drow" or Dark Elves...they're the right size and even scale right with Dark Elves I have from 20 years ago. As much as I like OW, these guys are one of the exceptions not the norm of the stuff, I've bought. Hasslefree is an odd one, they're somewhat erratic scale wise too. Most of there stuff , especially the modern/ Sci Fi stuff is "true 25-28mm and too small to use with say Reaper's Chronoscope' which is "Heroic" and 30-32mm but certain single sculpts are exceptions, this awesome model works as an elf, Elric, or whomever with various other lines models.)

(LtR, Avatars of War, Reaper Dark Heaven, Reaper Pathfinder, Rusted Heroes. Here is the one Avatars of War human model I have that works, the other humans and elves I have are just too large., for whatever reason this AoW Warpriest works...The Pathfinder "Low Templar" model is annoyingly small proportioned, it doesnt look too bad in this photo but its very small in comparsion with other Pathfinder humans, The Rusted Heroes sculpt is one of those great ones that "just works" with whatever too. Of the four of them the Pathfinder one in the odd man out, I guess it work as a young man or squire.)

The point of "Scale Massacre" is I am finding trying to combine models of various manufactures, even between lines of popular manufactures tough because the scales are so inconsistent in both size and proportion. I'm not a sculptor, I do a great many things with my hands, but sculpting miniatures is one thing I an never personally going to get to. So technically, I admittedly dont know what hell I am talking about however as a customer it seems to me that using similar armatures to start a sculpt off, and having a specific one for Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs..what have you..should not be that big a deal. I know sculpting is generally a freelance job so you make your pieces and try to sell or get commissioned to make it under certain guidelines, selling freelance sculpts has to be brutal because unless your targeting a specific product line you become a victim of the hobbys success by "28 mm" encompassing literally an full inch in variation..so your just throwing darts in the dark at whose going to buy it. Ultimately but I dont get how some of these get past the QA of the company putting them out without a "go redo this"...red flag, going up.

I miss the scale photos I used to see on the long defunct blog Wee Toy Soldiers, I wish I'd see more of these types of comparisons out there. Thankfully I do see this alot with Historical figures and its has saved me some money, by knowing what not to buy. No such luck with generic Fantasy. I'll try to do more of these from time to time I need to get a better set up happening to properly start cataloging scales. I could literally devote an entire blog to specifically just comparing all the "28 mm" scales out there, I've barely scratched the surface of my own stuff here-its crazy, and frustrating as a consumer?? you bet!

.

(Last but not least, the Otherworld, worlds largest Goblins with the above Knights, proportionally these goblins are so out of wack, that its not just the height. I am tempted to say these might work as 54mm scale goblins..what the hell??!!)

Hocus Focus

2011-12-15T01:58:00.001-06:00

The center sections where designed to use the GW hill as a bridge to change the new table up, yes,that hill needs reflocked to match.

No one is more aware that the content here has been sluggish of late, more so than I- but no apologies.The absence of Warhammer from my gaming calendar clearly leaves a big hole in my blogging pursuits, mainly because like it or not I found myself being a pundit about the machinations of Games Workshop, nearly as much as I talked about my own gaming experiences. While I am still quite of The Lord of the Rings SBG, and its due for its biggest year of releases (or might that be year after next?? as the films are 12. 2012 and 12. 2013) so I am sure I will be drug back into to conversations about how GW made some great models and ruined the game or totally killed metal for resin,etc. Regardless that day is a good ways off So I want to refocus on what I am currently doing which has always the bulk of hobby for me which is painting miniatures and building terrain. I've been working on a bit of both of late, as well fleshing out the most ambitious project I've been working on to date.

"My Skirmish Dungeon keeps growing, I do want to add another square foot to it..but at that point with replacement pieces being plasters it no longer portable. It will reach multi configurations soon enough."

I've had numerous things going on since I had any type of real gaming update in early November. Mainly getting 10 tables of terrain ready for Adepticon 2012 and my Legends of the High Seas event. The majority of is pretty much there, with exception of the tallest order finishing at least one probably two large Pirate Ships, these are big projects that will run me right up to Adepticon I am sure and I am not even getting started until next month.In last month, I have been tweaking older pieces, build a couple of new boards, and got a slew of figures based up and ready for paint for Hail Caesar, Lord of the Rings, Legends of the High Seas, and generic Fantasy miniatures for Skirmish gaming.

The new 4x4 boards are coming along, that river is going to be redone a proper shade and give some liquid resin for realism...I am using all woodland scenics products at this point.

Hail Caesar- No secret I love this rule set, the support warlord is giving it and its suprising depth in its simplicity My Saxon Army is huge, I keep buying models for it trying to configure a force that can deliver against Cavalry. Its really no surprise that English lost at Hastings...they would have needed a 1000 of Prince Harry's Longbows to have stood a chance but that was almost 400 years off. Anyway the great unpainted horde is looking strong (mainly thanks to some quasi historical but totally legal Mercenary units but I am going to dig into some heavy painting soon as we (the club) are going to be doing Hail Caesar demo games Saturday night a Adepticon and while this huge of an army wont be done by any stretch..I hope to keep it from being too embarrassing. HC's been my groups main focus since early summer and the current campaign is going very well (although Rich and his Arabs are pounding us all into rubble) talk of moving to the medieval period (HYW, WotR) is probably going to become a reality at some point.

recent skirmish shot, pre resin.

Lord of the Rings- Too many projects might be fun, but its not your friend when you're trying to commit to a game system and play competitively ( the main reason Warmachine isnt taking off for me other than very casually, is that it requires a huge committment) My plan was too do awhole new army by Adepticon for the Championships and while only 40 models it has Cavarly, alot of Freehand and need of cool display. So I felt its better suited for next year BBB in the fall. Coming off the Best Appearance award has some pressure to put out ( with three GD winners as regular participants in the Championships yearly) so running my Orcs again is a necessity but I have swapped out around 20 of the crummy plastic troopers for old citadel metals that are just killer and will be a pleasure to paint and will really pop..I've switched up the list to make a bit tougher as those crappy Warg Riders just needed to go..so I need to put about two weeks into this army to get ready for the Championships this year and I am excited to how V.2 turns out.

I recently did this Reaper model as Red Sonja for my daughter whose taken a keen interest in my Skirmish solo play. When I showed her some Comic Covers of Red Sonja..she said Oooo, I want to be her for Halloween...I said better now than when you're 16...

Legends of the High Seas- There is alot of good detail going on for this event , enough to merit alot of talk between now and then.which is better off as a series of itds own posts which should start very soon as finish off the Shipwreck board, and move on the large galleon and finishing the Brig. Skirmish Gaming- Quite alot going on here. I have tweaking several of the older board mainly used for Pirates. like the Dungeon. Finishing the details adding the Water Cavern which will soon have resin water and better looking rocks that those cork boards. I've mentioned I like making everything I can to be multipurpose so my new 4x4's for Skirmish Gaming are also my new 4 X8 for large army gaming. 2 4x4 sections that can flip around to different configs..with river running down the middle. We've been using it for HC and it working out great with lots of spots for specific terrain rules depending on how we set it up.

The more interesting thing on the Skirmish gaming front is I've been "hobbyist" game writer for many years, pages and pages of unplaytest ideas, games, campaigns or just general ramblings. late last year, I got the 15mm Sci Fi "bug" as they say mainly from all the great new miniatures being released and going through my old stuff, the RPG game Traveller and its companion Skirmish game Snapshot..trying to update Snapshots early 80's rules for the kind of game I wanted to play in 2011 led to one thing , then another, then some playtesting, then some changes, then more playtesting, then new concepts. Pretty soon it wasnt remotely like Snapshot anymore, but I was really liking it, Then I bump it back up to 28mm and built the Warehouse Hulk to test out the concepts and the ride stopped there. (Although considering the use the Hulk is getting ( i.e NONE), I am considering put it up for sale..so if the guy that offered me close to 4 figures for it last year is still out there hit me up!- or anyone else but serious inquires only..you're talking a 100+ hour project here.) Along the way I started thinking about how the concepts of my little game translated to Fantasy Skirmish, and while the Sci Fi version still had some big holes still to fill due to the complex nature of the genre. Bringing it home to Fantasy fits like a glove, its also a very playable as a solo game which is very cool, in fact I've done a dozen or so playtests solo and its been very addicting (a good sign) I dare say it has some unique mechanics and I look forward to some 1 vs 1 with one of the guys soon. Anyway given that and the way our current campaign is playing out..I want to formulize these things and look into some Indie self publishing. I am not going to share any more details at moment other than to say, I look forward to exploring this alot more in the next year and see if its worth the effort, if only for my own satifisfaction.

Skirmish solo play shots from "The Game" whose actual moniker will remain a secret for the time being.

My point here is of course, getting refocused, new year, new directions and all that The games may change but my basic loves are all still there. Its just you won't see me telling you how "Storm of Magic" or "Blood in Badlands" are pure marketing scams from GW that only further push old players away and fool new players or the more gullible old ones into buying way more models than they need to play a whole alot of other better games and at double the prices! I wont do this because I havent read these books and dont plan too. ..I just dont care..let someone else do it. So look for alot more hobby content and lot less caring about what GW is or isnt doing . There will surely be some of that again eventually, but with all of the above plus .a Flames of War day in Jan, a pal trying to get me to play some Uncharted Seas...and the current Chicago Warmachine craze..why bother?

This didnt end well for the good guys.

........Next up The Dark Ages Campaign, Round 5!

Dark Ages Round 4

2011-11-30T22:19:00.001-06:00

Here's our map after 3 Rounds, things are start to take shape with Normans and Saxons totally on the defensive. The Caliphate has just been rampaging, Rich is getting very high scores in his games the Caliphate vs Norman Score last week was 40-28, while explaining the scoring isnt pertinent here, the scores are mainly kill points and the relevancy is your score is used to dicate map move against all opponents not just the one you played this week. So with three high scoring games, the Caliphate is on a tear. Chris and his Byzantines had a very close game versus my Saxons (32-24 his favor) where I wiped our his center division turn 2 on charge from my Huscarls that was a result of Blunder, if you can believe that, and shattered his two main infantry units in that division, a follow up charge the same turn from my Coerls broke the division. Just when you thought I had the upper hand, Chris's cavalry came back and had similar revenge...it came down who crack the second division first, I had some chances but the dice said it was not to be and he did it
I have been pretty stagnant for last two rounds, and need to make something happen this week. I am playing the Normans this week, so I'll squeeze some of those French territories where I can but we need slow down the green tide. Aaron and his Normans have their hands full with two armies cut off behind enemy lines in the Pyrenees. Should be an interesting week!.

Hobbies and their Crossroads

2011-11-26T20:44:00.001-06:00

Lately I've found alot of things hobbywise competing for my time. That's outside the obviously important things like my family or Job. I think we all go thru phases with what competes for our time. I had spurts was where all I nearly did with my free time was work on miniatures related gaming. thats dwindled alot of late...while there a couple big miniatures projects coming up and in the works like my Legend of the High Seas event coming up at Adepticon in 2012, trying to get one Ancients Army finished (which is woefully behind, and one of the reasons you seeing alot of photos from the Ancients game sis the Sea of lead of which mine is the biggest!)
Continuing on with more Lord of the Rings figures and terrain for the only tournament (GW) gaming I am currently doing, and my Battle of the Five Armies game I plan do next Summer. That's a pretty big plate right there, let alone things like taking martial arts, reading, my musical endeavors or an old time sink that creeps up ever now and again for me. Computer games.

Before I got back in to miniatures hobby, in the time consuming capacity that is table top gaming, (that is versus just collecting them, maybe painting them and putting on a shelf.) There where computer games..I spent alot of time in 1990's during the golden age of PC gaming playing all the hits. mainly in the RPG and Turn Based Strategy department. Spent alot of time and money with these being pretty PC savy for the time I always stayed pretty current with hardware/ technology and games. That dwindled in the 2000's as in my opinion games simply got alot crappier, and while they looked better, I felt the content was lacking compared to past experiences Whether I had outgrown the attraction or developers just realized that as PC and then console became main stream appealing to lowest common denominator was where the $$$ was.

I don't talk about computer games here, (ever) as its a miniatures hobby blog, but bear with me for the brief distraction, as things come full circle. The last couple years I've noticed games getting a bit better and at least once year I get the bug for about a month to slug my way thru one. Obviously I have a soft spot for Fantasy RPGs...the problem with them I always thought was with the exception of old "Gold Box" Dos D&D game which where great in low graphic, turn based and text heavy environment, I thought every fantasy / D&D based real time RPG just really fell flat. even in the last 5 years..I tried and barely got my moneys worth out of bunch of the more popular titles. The one shining gem and my favorite Fantasy RPG (and its very light on that subject) is a somewhat obscure game called Severance: Blade of Darkness..which is just a great fantasy combat sim, light on story heavy on exploration and great combat which I find alot of games these days are missing. Repetitive "click, click, click" combat just kills games for me..I like it where you have to actually move, plan your swing and make sure you in the right spot to deliver the proper blow,most current games stunningly seem to fail at either the story or the play mechanics.

Now along comes- Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I wont bother giving you a game review since there are zillion of those currently available and let's just say I concur with the general sentiment- that it rules, and I was not a fan at all of its predecessor. I am already going through my horde of fantasy miniatures picking out characters for Skirmish gaming and sketching out how to build Skyrim style Barrow or Cairn entrance to go along with my dungeon board, and revist to my skirmish rules I've been working on at a snails pace as I play a host of other games. So, yeah while I might get distracted by a video game now and again, the virtual manifestation of sending your alter ego Dungeon delving, which has my brain churning out a couple dozen ideas for miniatures and terrain isn't necessarily a bad thing, Between Skyrim the below pic ( which I am sure most of you who read this blog have seen before and is hands down my vote for Diorama of the year 2011)..I need to get cracking on my own game, inspiration is a fickle muse, when it hits you need to roll with it.

("Outnumbered" by CMON member "Crackpot", photo by "Crackpot" www.brushhour.de )

While its creator sites his own influences, this piece immediate struck me as similar to my own adventures as Tukaram in "Blade of Darkness" , my Nord Barbarian in Skyrim, or my boyhood fondness for the "Savage Sword of Conan".

Dark Ages Campaign Round 3

2011-11-17T13:00:00.001-06:00

Here is current map as the move portion of turn 3 is under way and the games that will dictate the results of these moves will take place this coming Tuesday. So far the Campaign using Warlord's Hail Caesar rules has been great. We are playing either Pitched battles or picking from a handful of scenarios. As I mentioned as great many battles are fought each turn and it abstractedly resolved thru the one game week. This campaign system , something I cooked up based on trying to solve numerous things that went wrong with many, many Campaigns I've run over the years. Pairs are simply round robin, the only caveat being that if the majority of your battles are against someone in particular then you play them regardless if its two weeks in row. being our third week that isnt a problem yet, and because I got stomped last week by the Caliphate (more on that in moment) My turn hasnt happened yet, and since the Caliphate has repelled and the Saxon invasion, counter invaded and is now sitting in Ireland ( Arabs in Ireland in 1000 AD, my Ancestors are cursing me)
Rich has decided to put the pressure on his neighbors the Normans. Whether I make minor strikes against my neighboors or go for a viking-esque raid on the Byzantine Empire I don't yet. One the benefits in being the weeks loser (ye with least number of Armies on the board) means you get to last, so you can see what the other players moves are. This mimics the "Risk" type board game mechanic I was going for.

As for my game last time around The Saxons invaded, Northern Spain, Rich and the Caliphate counter invaded Ireland.. I made some small moves againt Neutral Armies and the Normans. The scenario we play was a "Camp Raid" where each player had camps in opposite corners of the board and deploy toward each other (for the short edge long ways) the kicker is one of your three divisions is in reserve and must roll to come on.I had one of my Divisions stupidly near the enemy reserve deployment, and of course fail orders on my part had them not get out of away before Rich got his reserves on first time and roll right over one divisions flank standing at the edge of my camp. Luckily I had some good performing units although not my Huscarls who for once seemed not at all the indestructable tanks they have been. mainly due to getting engaged with cavalry. My Second Division performed well keeping two division of Arabs at bay outside my camp, until my reserves finally came on (3 turns later) and started toward the Arab camp. The pressure from my reserves made Rich have to split his offense force to have some of it go back and support the camp..
There where a few turns where the battle actually started to drift back to my direction but its was not to be and I suffered enough early losses and didnt get the breaks I needed late to really flip it the other way.
As result, Rich got major victory ( or Conquer III as our scoring metric calls it) It was a fantastic and dramatic game. I did score enough points in our game to keep from getting totally creamed in some of my other battles on the map many of those resulted in draws or minor setbacks. I still lost enough amries and territories to be in last place but not by a ton. A good week could flip any of us to the top, but right its clearly the Caliphate of Cordoda expanding across Dark Age Europe. Lets see if anyone can stop him this week!>

Bilbo's Birthday Bash, Day 2

2011-11-07T08:49:00.012-06:00

I am sure I am not alone in thinking that while I love two day tournaments for the camaraderie and experience, playing on day two is always apprehensive, its always more pressure and its always when things go horribly wrong. I was psyched to see I was playing Chris, as I loved his army and display. I just met him recently and he and his friends from Joliet, IL are fantastic hobbyists who are way into the Hirst Arts thing, like myself and his group supplied many of the great tables at the event.

Somehow I spaced taking pictures during Chris and mines game so pictures of his army on display will have to do!

Game 4 Vs Corsairs of Umbar (Chris T)

Captain
Captain
16 HW& Shield
18 Spears
8 Reavers
12 Crossbows

I've have played the Corsairs many times and beaten them many times, they die easy but hit hard especially in the shooting department. I knew that would be a problem because of the scenario which "seize the artifact" in which there were three. I knew hanging onto the Artifact would be hard because of the shooting meaning I had the break Chris asap. as usual Shelob and Shagrat where great, and I early on had all three Artifacts in my possession. but on the far flank my Warg Riders again failed me miserably where the needed to punch thru and break his wall of Corsairs going for the artifact in my table quarter. The bounced off and where mowed down. they did screen for me long enough to get infantry in there, dig it up and pass it off to my Orc Shaman who bolted with it. I had some infantry in the middle who got the center artifact but they where just gunned down by Crossbow fire dropping the Artifact near my deployment zone. while a third Orc headed with far artifact back to my deployment zone, Shagrat left a trail of dead in his wake including on of the Corsair Captains. The problem at this point is that I was long broken again, surviving on making my courage checks, Chris Corsairs moved across the table to my Deployment zone where my Shaman was hiding, Corsairs has already picked up the center one and where closing and another failed courage check had me drop my third one which Chris's troops recovered., My Shaman was getting boxed in with nowhere to run, my only hope was to make my checks and win some priorities to get away and run out the clock, (10 turns from recovery of the 1st artifact), Problem was I lost the last 5 priority rules and hat kept me from not saving the minor loss but also, getting the bonus object which was to get a model into his deployment zone..I had Shelob engage the Corsair crossbows by herself but because I couldnt win a damn priority Chris just kept feeding her 1 at a time, (except on few where they failed there courage) I did kill them all but one, whom got lucky on the last turn and killed her, the only time she died or got close to dying the whole tournament. meanwhile, The lack of priorty wins kept my Shaman from getting out of chris's trap he got swarmed, killed and the Artifact recovered on the last turn. Major Win for Chris, Major loss for me, no bonus, 3 points.
great, fun game despite the loss.

Game 5 Vs Gondor -Osgiliath Veterans ( Rob K)
Faramir
Madril
Banner
10 HW& S
5 Rangers
12 Osgiliath Vets
11 Citadel Guard Bow
10 Citadel Guard Spear

This set of ruins should have extremely helpful in getting across the board, it wasnt, it wasnt terrible, but it didnt save me half of the shots it should have as odds would dictate.

I've played Rob lots of times but in WFB, this the first time we met up for LotR. Again Rob's list was shooty army with high defense. I new it would be a hassle, but if I could get past the shooting I'd be ok. The Scenario was standard meeting engagement, this one had built in bonus points for heros surviving, but the goal was too break the other army and get them to 25% and the game would end. The board was absolute fabulous to play on an Egyptian style Hirst board with lots of cover for the shooting,

Why I am always the guys marching across the table while my opponent stands there and shoots at me? I need to figure that one out.

unfortunately despite my best efforts my dice where bloody awful and his were over the top fluky great...I hate to bitch about dice but this was bordering silly. Rob shot the crap out of me, even with tons of "in the way" checks..when we got into combat he was throw 5's to wound like I was throwing 1"s (i.e. Consistently) anyway so despite an awesone double flanking setup that should have did him in, I took so many shooting casualties by the time we engaged, that average losses broke me quick, annoyed, I overlooked a key heroic move on a lost priority roll, that would have allowed me a big standfast check with about a dozen guys. Rob quickly engaged Shagrat , removing that ability, and simply left everyone to stand there and passed the move turn to me to make my checks...I fail easily a dozen courage checks without a standfast and go to 25% and game over. a third Major loss for me, but 6 points as we both picked the bonus points as all our heroes where alive. Great table, and should have be a good game, but lopsided dice rolling made this the absolute worst game of the weekend which is always a drag when its the last game.

I should have rolled this flank up in turn and been into the main line on the next turn, no not only because my Warg Riders, once again consistently 5 games in row failed to their, but even Shelob couldnt get any kills because I could win any fights..bad dice and Fight 3 vs Fight 4 are a bad combo.

So all is not lost I finish the tourney 1-3-1, my soft scores are always maxed out so I hope I am still somewhere in the middle of the pack. I was very happy to hear my named called when it came time for the Best Appearance Award. As its always a Razor thin margin and there where alot of great armies there. Chris who I played in Game 4's Corsairs where close in the unning in fact he picked players choice, but I managed to squeak it out this year, again I've now won it in 2009, was runner up losing the tie breaker to friend Jamie Welling in 2010, and winning in 2011..I guess I now have something to prove things on the hobby side have become more competitive than the actual games themselves (which I can quite seem to get a handle on (designing a list that works hobbywise and gameplay wise)

Let me finish up but showing some pics of some other great armies at the event. There was a separate painting contest, that I had two entries in but neither of those could pulloff a victory but in retrospect I did not really have the time to do anything new and used one older model and did a new one kind of quick and both could have been better. So better luck next time there. I'll do a separate post on the painting contest next.

The next big Lord of the Rings events in the US are Gathering in the Desert in Phoenix, in February and of course Adepticon in April, working getting myself to the former but I will surely be at the latter.

Bilbo's Birthday Bash, Day 1

2011-11-07T01:06:00.011-06:00

Bilbo's Birthday Bash 2011 @Chicago Battle Bunker.

The third year of BBB has come and gone, and let me say it was an awesome weekend, Brent and the staff at the Battle Bunker hosted another great event..with the best terrain I have seen at any miniatures event period. As you've read here previously paid registrations were at 42
which is the highest total of LotR players at single event in U.S. to date. Unfortunately with a large number of traveling players attending and several unexpected illnesses the final count to show up was 34, still surpassing most local tournaments for more popular games and still besting any LotR events in recent memory. We had players from all over the Midwest, Florida, California, and Virgina show up.

A brief rundown of my games. LotR tournaments are always played to variety of unique scenarios. This year we had the perk of 4 bonus objectives, that were passed out to us in an envelope to be used at our discretion one per match. The objective was secret from your opponent, to be revealed at the end of the match. This created some interesting twists late game and we all scrambled to meet our bonus objectives. it was a 600 point event and, my list was a Mordor, Cirith Ungol to be exact my list being:

Shagrat, Warleader
Shelob
Orc Shaman on Warg
18 Orcs HW&S
4 Mordor Uruk Hai with 2HW's
10 Orcs with Spears
1 Orc with Banner
8 Warg Rider HW&S

Another shot of my army and display. Dont worry it looks more intimidating than it plays. LOL!

Game 1 vs Isengard Raiders ( Jeff R)
Lurtz
Sharku
Uruk Hai Captain
35 Scouts HW&S
6 Scouts Bows
4 Warg Riders.

Scenario was "control the battlefield" centered around 5 objective markers. My bonus objective was "headhunter" meaning I needed to kill his heros, and I tried. The game was pretty straight forward scrap, the table was fittingly the Orthanc labor camp, so it had the large wooden scaffolding that this place is known for, these where particularly great for Shelob who could climb to the top and come down with ease. my army was split into 2 sections one on each flank. The Warg Riders all going after Lurtz and everyone else going after Sharku..game played out predictably, my side with Shagrat and Shelob folded up Jeff's one side pretty easily, but my Warg Riders just bounced off Lurtz and Co. I killed some but ended up back pedaling leaving him that table quarter. In the end we each 2 table quarters and were fitting over the middle, both armies broken, we sweated our courage checks, and the game ended a draw..I did pick up 2 bonus points for killing Sharku and the Uruk Captain.- 12 points.

Game 2 vs Lothlorien at Helms Deep (Tyler D)
Gimli
Haldir
16 Galadrim Spear and Shield
9 Galadrim with 2HW
14 Galadrim with Bows
3 Galadrim Knights

Scenario was "Contest of Champions" centered around a selected champion racking up the most Kills, my Champion was Shagrat, Tylers was Gimli. I had Shelob run up one flank and harass which worked very well, while I fed Gimli as few models as possible hoping to get Shelob on him at a key time. on the other side my Warg Riders went after Haldir, and once again bounced off. and basically got wiped out with little to show for it, Shagrat is a killing machine but by the time I marched him up the middle in his horde at the 14 Elven Bowmen, I got shot to pieces and was about broken. Gimli was ahead of me in kills by 3 or 4 at that point, and when Shagrat finally got into combat and totally wiffed, my heart sank. However subsequent turns went my way and Shagrat shot up to 6 kills in a hurry, now one ahead of Gimli, again both armies broken late game surviving on "standfast" courage checks, a flubbed priority and bad round of combat put tyler on losing side of the equation and we met the 25% victory margin and I had the Major Victory, but it was right down to the wire. I pick up 20 point plus 1 bonus point.

Tyler had the best looking Elf army there hands down, much better than another one that got alot more attention as it had a fancy display board. Why? you ask -Color!. Tyler's deep muted take and the traditional blue and gold of the Galadrim, were so rich they just popped, our two armies looked fabulous together, in perfect Good vs Evil contrast.

Shelob earned her keep this game, being the catalyst that broke the elves, allowing Shagrats
one kill lead, to bring it over the finish line.

I got a ton of compliments on this Orc Shaman model, but man, did he suck in combat as a performer, I got almost no milage out of his "fury" over 5 games..these guys (Warg Riders) are going back on the shelf for quite sometime.

Game 3 vs Isengard Raiders (Jeff G).
Sharku
Uruk Hai Capt.
13 Pikes
12 Hw&S
6 Crossbows
Troll with Spear
5 Warg Riders

Isengard , again..a much nasty list despite the lesser numbers than round 1. The scenario was Storm the Camp. Jeff parked his crossbows mid table and said "come and get it" I tried my dual flank approach again my warg riders ended up against his on the same flank ( the curse of " winning the die roll" and setting up 1st, I was hoping to lose so I could get them on the opposite flank) My Wargs bounced off Jeff's and hurt me bad, my Warg Riders were cursed all weekend, as the absolute poorest perfomers in my army. with one flank folding up and crossbow dropping 3 guys a turn, I got into it in the middle with the majority of jeff's troops and had to bring Shelob over from the other flank to help out. I cleared the middle including the troll but with significant losses, I was broken long before Jeff and my troops specifically the ones protecting the camp, ran away, leaving my camp undefened. with my wargs gone he rolled his Wargs into my undefened camp ending the game before I could try to assault his, with basically just Shelob and Shagrat left. Major Loss, 3 points no bonus.

Game 3 of day 1, I didnt get a ton of pictures to come out on this one , basically here is my mob running up the middle into crossbow fire..with troll lumbering at them. Man, Orcs are Stupid.

So 1-1-1 on the day, not bad but the lack of shooting was catching up to me, Shooting is a dicey subject in this game, most swear by it, many say its just a waste of points, I was in the latter category, when it comes to Mordor. Unlike my Grey Company which was all bows..Orc Bows are terrible 5+ shooting at Str 2...you cant kill anything, but neither were my Warg Riders...so by game three I was wishing I had 10 orc bows just to volleyfire but more on that for day 2.

I should add, that LotR's players are some of nicest folks you meet period, while I had played 2 of my 3 opponents on day 1 previously, they were all awesome guys that were a pleasure to play, and that alone is worth the price of admission. Day 2 up next.

When bad ideas catch on.

2011-11-01T10:35:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning got my cup of coffee and sat down at the computer to do my normal routine, check my email, and browse the news and hobby feeds and this one seriously put a downer on my day. The announcement that Black Scorpion Miniatures is switching to resin is some akin to finding out the maker of your favorite soft drink its changing it formula, because somebody somewhere "thinks its good idea." You'd think Games Workshops, bad press over "Failcast" (and whether sales or lack of back the hype in unknown to me, but regardless the BAD vibe is out there for all but the most faithful). would have enforced the old adage, "IF IT AIN'T BROKE DONT FIX IT" but apparently this is lost on Black Scorpions master sculptor and head honcho, Adam Clarke.

I love Black Scorpion miniatures and while thankfully, I have enough Pirates of theirs and other manufactures to make a 3000 point WFB army. It doesnt mean I'm not interested in new releases and with talk of Old West picking up around here as the next skirmish game we dig into, I have easy a good 3 dozen figs I want to pick up. Mr. Clarke goes into detail on why they make the switch, and to his credit he doesn't follow GW's lead with the bait and switch price increase, but the same old justifications/ rationalizations for covering that its just a cheaper manufacturing medium just isnt flying with me.
The primary reasons everyone likes to sell you is it looks better and holds more detail, and maybe so to a perfect cast. However considering Black Scorpions has some of best detailed pewter sculpts on the markets this is completely negligible. I can also tell you I have two of Black Scorpions' convention only exclusive releases in Resin and they do not in anyway look better than the pewter figures, in fact I was hoping they released the one (Lord Nelson) in Pewter because I thought it would look better.
Another line of bunk they like to sell is its lighter? well who cares Black Scorp doesnt release models for large format tournament style games so you're not hauling 100's of figures, and do you want models that can take handling and game play or ones the fall over when a breeze comes threw the room or can bend and be bent back or break and shatter?

Metal/Lead/ Pewter miniatures are the medium of craft and have been since this hobby got going in late 70's for old farts like me, who have involved in it since then. It "is" the medium, its part of the craft, the nostalgia its "what it is". Of course I realize the cost and mass production have forced the necessity of plastic and resin figures. I havent even really got that accepting of plastic, while I have alot of great plastic figures. And at the time I started this blog, (Note: Plastic Legions) I even convinced myself that plastic was the way to go forward in the hobby, based on GW's excellent plastics however as time went one I dug into other plastics out there. The writing on the wall was pretty clear I sure have plenty of mediocre plastic figures that really just remind of bag of plastic army men from the corner store but at 10 times the price. The issue with good plastics or course being price, which is why we have resin, its cheap, it feels cheaps, it looks cheap, its toxic.
Resin is fine for some things, like terrain. I look it at like plaster..its a cheap medium for making things in simple molds and gets the job done for smaller detail work as its cheaper than metal. Whoever thought its was a great idea for fine detail, hand sculpted, expensive miniatures, had the makings of great Con man because thats the bottom line, period. COST. No matter how they dress it up to you. Since Black Scorpion hand packs and cleans their products ( BS miniatures are also some of the cleanest out the package metals, I have seen). Something that its buyers surely appreciate, so I hope that its not following GW's lead there too and going on the chopping block a surely lethal combination for a small manufacture.

Games Workshop has of course pushed this charade on the gaming public for the uber boutique Forge World with its great sculpts and horrible quality or their "Finecast line" it all boils down to increase profit with a cheaper medium and marketing to make you think its better. I'm not sure if Black Scorpion has delusions of grandeur with its new Cutlass game thinking its going to cash on the GW faithful by going to resin as a selling point (laughable but true) or not. . But I think they need to do some research on who their customers are. Where fans and customers of Black Scorpion miniatures clamoring for a switch to resin and I somehow missed it? maybe so. Somehow I think if presented with the choice of a small price increase or a switch to Resin, people who buy figures for small skirmish games when presented with a choice would opt for the former.
I guess I could go to over the "Lead" (note: not "Resin" of even "Plastic) Adventure forum and ask around but I am pretty sure what the answer will be...sometimes this Hobby just makes you want to bang your head against the wall. I guess I wouldnt care if they didnt make stuff I actually had an interest in. And so another one bites the dust and creates a secondary market for own figures working against its itself...sigh.

Warhost of Cirith Ungol

2011-10-31T00:50:00.007-05:00

Like the title says, here's my 600 point army for the week away biggest Lord of Rings SBG tourney in years. Bilbo's Birthday Bash in its third year. I've already rambled on at length about the event and the what's been going on with the game in general, So this time I'll just talk about my Army. This is my second 600 point army I've completed (the other being my Grey Company) This one comes in at 44 models, but with separate Wargs and riders for dismounted cavalry options, its really 60 models. A pair of Warg Riders and the all the dismounts are not pictured as I am still touching up finish the last of the models.

Its' taken me a good six weeks with my limited hobby time of late to get this army in shape, I did have some models painted but the were quite old and needed touch ups. A lot of freehand shields to do, new characters, etc. The nice thing about Orcs is once you have this much done you have the makings of all the Mordor armies, and even Angmar with limited additions of the main characters or monsters of which I have many done, So say I want to run Angmar or Barad-Dur at Adepticon or something, I only need to paint a couple models. So a nice bonus to wade thru the 30 or so crappy plastic Orcs I had to do. yes, I am not a big fan of the plastic orc models, there some of the weakest in the LotR plastic line, I really like the original metal orcs the GW had out of which there are only 10 poses. I seem to have hard time finding them but would love to get my hands on some to mix them in. If its not super obvious in the photos it is in person, the far superior metals just jump out compared to the plastics. I use both the Mordor Orc and Morannon Orc boxes here, the later using alot of converted weapons.

Speaking of conversions, this Orc Shaman is one of my favorites, A simple weapon swap can go along way with some these figs, this guy got the resin base, the dead body the spear, made from the original head and the shaft of some historical metal spears. most dramatically he got a new arm, which took a little GS work but is really just an arm off a Mantic Ghoul. which pretty much fit perfectly.

I went back an forth on the display for some time, I was reusing a castle gate I have and I made a rock cave for Shelob. My large deep display tray I used for years for WFB just looked to big, so made a smaller tray. The top section (deck) is magnetized so I can pop it out and switch it if I want to use a different army. Anyway my original set up now looked two busy with the two pieces on the smaller tray., asking my wife her excellent atheistic opinion, she said "why dont you use that thing over there"..pointing to my "not weather top" I made earlier in the year. I said, right , "and" I made it modular, so I can only use part of it, perfect! and there you go. Not as themed at the gates of Cirith Ungol and Shelob's Cave, but trust me this looks alot better.

I've been making those signs/ placards you seen the first shot for years now, so that wasnt a big deal, I got the display work done pretty quickly, (consider I am using a finished piece here, the "not weathertop" model was a quite a challenge which you can read about here.)

I plan on having everything done for my last ditch practice game early Tuesday right before we hit round 2 of our Hail Caesar Campaign. I am woefully behind in my Ancients painting as the rest of the guys are way past me, but now that this is done, I can start digging into that. I've got a pretty large LotR collection at this point, its probably one of the only lines, I pretty much 'collect" as well as game with. ( I think I've referenced my "active" versus "passive" collections before) Anyway look forward to big write on Bilbo's with lots of pictures, I am going to try to make a real effort this year to get alot of good pics as people are coming in from all over, and there will be some awesome armies there, AND I should mention the painting contest.

I didnt have time to get 3 entries as one category is exclusively Cavalry models, and I just didnt have time to a new model done to where it needs to be....so I am just entering my Nazgul on Fell Beast and "something else" in the 25mm base category, not sure what yet..I have about a 1/2 dozen good options. Oh and Happy Halloween!

Good Promotion

2011-10-28T13:17:00.003-05:00

Just in case you dont follow it, and have and interest in some great figures at reasonable prices, I thought I mention that Mantic has some great Halloween promotions going right, from German Zombies to Gravestalker boxes (Ghouls and Zombies) to the yet to be released Dark Elf figures in a promo splash release this for just this weekend. This is the kind of stuff I love to see gaming companies doing and that we dont see enough of.

So if this your thing, get some! I think I am going to pick a small Gravestalker box myself.

I have not yet has a chance to try out Mantics 2nd Ed rules but we have been talking about and its definitely coming. We have all the new lists. I am definitely looking at Mantics rules for our replacementfor WFB for large scale fantasy battles..so hopefully we will get this going real soon.

In other news be slaving on my Cirith Ungol army for the upcoming Bilbo's Birthday Bash, the largest independent Lord of the Rings tourney in the US to date. The game is experiencing a resurgence here and as I result, I wanted to step up my hobby output for this event, so not only new army, but new display, display base , etc...I hope for photos up this weekend.

Campaigns and Comedy

2011-10-20T20:56:00.000-05:00

We kicked our Hail Caesar Campaign Tuesday Evening set in the Dark Ages in roughly 1000AD, The Saxons, Normans, Caliphate of Cordoba and the Byzantine Empire all square off for Control of the known world.While details on its mechanics I am keeping to our forums (feel free to join up if you're interested) . The map portion plays out "like" a game of Risk , where we move our armies during our turn, we play a game on the tabletop, and the results and score of that game are applied against all your moves and battles. Its Macro campaigning at its best ( or worst, depending on how you like it) as your one game dicates results of many battles depending on whom you played, how you scored, and how the other player did (and there scores) even the players you didnt play this week. To top it the are a handful of neutral armies on map throwing a monkey wrench into the scoring matrix should you choose to attack them

Round 1 of the Campaign

Game 1- Saxons vs Normans-
I faced off against Aaron, it was very close game, he shattered my center division early with a huge cavalry charge and with a dual sweeping advance rolled up the whole army, I got to close to his cav without proper support, a mistake I wont make again. Fortunately his Cav was so far exposed into my backfield with Sweeping Advance units from my other two divisions scored big rear and flank charges destroying his Elite Cav units as a response.

The game went back and forth like that the whole time. I had my 3rd Division ( my Vikings) the entire division was sitting with 4,5, 6 wounds (so shaken) Two of the units die and the game is over. Aaron pushed heavy with a bunch of units toward my 1st Division whom with failed Orders turn after sat unmolested until the end of the game...my Medium infantry charged two units of Norman Infanty (mixed Levy, and Med) and terrible dice shattered them. But my Huscarls and there two handed axes crushed the heavy Norman footman and overran into the flank of other two both units destroying them. With two broken divisons, the game ended. A failed Order check on follow me really hurt Aaron because bringing his last Heavy unit into the last melee would have probably turned the tide.

We have a very simple scoring systems of 6 points for a Heavy, 4 for Medium , 2 for Light, 3 for the General and 2 for other commander. lossed on both sides tallied the game at 30 for me to 24 for Aaron. a Standard victory result. the Norman advance into northern Europe was pushed back, enabling the Saxons to gain a good foothold in the North.

Game 2- Caliphate of Cordoba vs Byzantine Empire.-
Rich and Chris played a Storm the Camp style scenario where armies deployed from the short edge of the table traveling longwise. they also reserve units that had to be ordered on the board. Rich has been gathering Scenarios from various sources for Ancients play. I expect we'll trying a bunch of them as weeks go on. In this game, Chris had some terrible luck and despite some early gains, he failed his order check on his reserve in a "do or die scenario" things went very wrong and Caliphate forces crushed him Scoring was 24-0 in favor of the Arabs. Mapwise is shows the Caliphate taking Sicily and establishing a strong foothold in Southern Italy.

We were close enough with enough armies of move points to really mix it up beyond or closest opponent but I suspect that will change next week, although the loser suffered setback on the gaming table..they choose wise expansions into neutral territory so it helped minimize the losses.

For the Comedy portion of this post, I scanned this doodle I found on one of the tables Downstairs. Its from a previous Hail Caesar team match where Aaron and I played the English facing off against Musilms and their allies in an early Crusade skirmish. While Aarons division kept failing Order checks needing a "8"
I was using the Army General, (we play commander in chief rules) attached to on my division and had that key re-roll with time on his hands , Aaron was begging for the general to come give his troops a visit. Anyway if you played Hail Caesar at all the image below should give you a chuckle.

In other news, I rough finished my new 4 X 8 table, we played on it for the game described above..its still needs flock and prettied up, hopefully this weekend..with photos soon. Also my 600 points of Cirith Ungol is crawling along with the tourney right around the corner, I'll be painting right up until halloween finish all the extra pieces I need for separate Cavalry mounts and riders...leaving me 4 day to try to squeeze out a new piece for the painting contest...photos of this stuff coming next time too.

Dark Ages Campaign

2011-10-13T15:28:00.000-05:00

Our Dark Ages Campaign using Warlord Games "Hail Caesar" ruleset, kicks off next week. We are about a month behind getting this going, mainly to do my own workloadbut getting everyone armies in shape to have least 12 full units is somewhat of a process as well. I built a new 4 x 8 table that's actually 2 4x4's that can be flipped end to endfor either a valley or hill with shallow river running thru the center. I have some pics of Tuesday when it I write up the first meet. My army is still bare metal with the exception on 1 unit thats about half done, I've just been too busy to make the time to get into it, but will change soon, as I hate being the guys with the least amount of stuff painted.

The map above plays out pretty much like a game of Risk, its diceless campaign game, that resolves map moves by calculating victory points played on the game table. I did it this wayto avoid the time consuming pre game board turns of Campaigns past, this way people can resolve the map online during the downtime between session without have to rely on being face to face. After running gaming campaigns for years, I must say It just works better that way.The Campaign is Quasi Historical taking place pre Hasting at about 1000 AD. Forces are Saxons, (me) Normans (Aaron), Caliphate of Cordoba (Rich) and the Byzantine Empire(Chris) I had to stay a little loose with exact History and the map is just an excuse to give us something to fight for as we play out all these games.

Ancients interest around herehas picked up. We have couple a new interested players one with an actual army..if I could find another looks for us to expand this 6 player. Ancients gaming is surelycontinuing around here all the way thru Adepticon 2012 while the Ancients events there are WAB related Rich is running a big open game with HC rules and there will be HC open gaming. I figure this Campaign with run around 8 rounds so until late Jan /early Feb when we all have to start cracking down for Adepticon.

Surprise!

2011-10-06T22:24:00.000-05:00

Its not often I am surprised particularly by my Family especially when it comes to gifts, but I had a birthday just this last week and this one threw me for loop. At my celebratory birthday dinner, where I got several interesting gifts,a large box sat giftwrapped on the table, my little girls...going 'open it', "open it", long before we even had dinner. so I should have know something was up.

I had convinced myself sometime ago that I was not going to bite the bullet on Dreadfleet. At $126 shipped for one shot game with no support...I got over the initial splash marketing and said not this time GW. Apparently my wife didnt get that memo, as She saw me ogling over this when it was first announced...and I even said then..I'm not getting it, its too expensive. Before going back and forth on it again and saying no. So it was very much to my surprise she had the gumption to go out and get this for me on her own. She got me the mega paint set last year so I guess she has the GW thing down.

Very nice rulebook, comments on the game rules are again another beer and pretzels, random game that relies on dice, cards, a whole lot of luck and very little skill..things that GW seems to proud to hang its hat on with its own IP of late .

While I certainly dont have time right now to assemble this and get a game in, that will have to wait until next month. I did make the time to check it out and take some pictures. After reading a couple pretty negative reviews on the "game" itself I have mixed feeling on owning this, however examination of the box contents has gone along way to changing my mind.

The models in the box are really just great, same with terrain. GW again proves they are the king of plastics jamming so much on to sprue and not only labeling it for assembly but putting the assembly instructions on the box, which is nice touch. We all seen the sprue photos so I didnt post any here but all the images on the painted ships I though we freehand designed studio work, are actually all embossed on the sails in plastic so painting these ships and making them look great will be relatively easy for even the average painter. The game is jam packed with terrain and extras that can surely be used for any naval type game.

The 5 x 3 game matt is very pretty is thin and printed on a silk like fabric, if you lay it on a textured surface such as your sand covered game table it will hold stretched nice and tight, if you are playing on a kitchen table or smooth surface invest in a 5 x 3 piece of lexan to drop onto it.

Now I have been looking for a smaller scale naval game personally for a while now, it always comes up in our campaigns and would have been great for Legend of the High Seas to add Sea Battles into the mix and they just arent possible at 28mm other than close boarding actions. Spartan Games Uncharted Seas has been on my radar, for some time, much more so with the crazy new awesome models they are putting with it re-release. Dreadfleet will probably serve my purposes well as bunch of Naval components for parts of other games in the future...As a beer and pretzels' occasional one off I might get some use out of it, but I am definitely going to enjoy painting and building these models, I know at least two other people who have the game so who knows. Overall my feeling is major props to my wife for getting this, the sentiment is not overlooked despite her not really knowing the complications of my feeling toward Games Workshop, (how they can release plastics of this quality and still ship Failcast crappy resins is a total head scratcher)

Anyways there you go, So I got Dreadfleet, whether I actually wanted it or not.

Taking a moment to ponder

2011-09-29T23:52:00.001-05:00

I"ll end my all Lord of Rings SBG month of Blog Talk, with some food for thought. Our local tournament I have been talking about all month Bilbo's Birthday Bash, now has 33 registered and paid players. yes you read that correctly 33 "paid" players with 5 weeks to go for Lord of the Rings SBG. If you follow Lord of the Rings at all, you know its tight group nationally that travels alot. so half of the attendees are from out of town. Still 16 local players with 600 point painted armies..is blowing my mind, I have to tell you. When I started dabbling in this game in 2008 it was already waning as a GW core game, at the height of 7th Edition Warhammer, the first tournament I played in BBB 09, had 7 players and a ringer. You never saw the game being played in GW store. The National events in 2010 were at an all time low attendance wise, resulting in the worst turnout in years at Adepticon this last spring.

So what the hell happened in the last six months.??? Well we all have our own opinions I am sure, but for me it has alot to due with WFB's 8th edition wearing out its welcome for alot of people (which was not helped at all by GW recent behavior in the customer relations department, (aka, Failcast, insane price increases, and price fixing'/gouging in AUS/NZ) It's not just WFB defections, as for the record there are only a handful of people I know on the list who are former or on-hiatus WFB players, who did not choose to attend last weekends Core Competency event, which is "the" WFB fall tourney around here and only had 30 players turn out. Yes, you read that right 30..so three less the LotR current sign ups. If you told me 6 months ago, that BBB was going to outsell Core Comp, I would have told you I have a bridge to sell you. Now this isn't a slight at Core Comp, which is as great of a Warhammer event as you can get, (having played in 3 of them myself) but indicative in a change in player behavior.

Of course LotR SBG is still a GW game, yes rarely supported and treated as the red headed step child of the core games, and relegated to "Specialist Game", status for sometime now. Its large format cousin War of the Ring gets whatever attention GW has decided is merited and if your lucky you get updated SBG stats in White Dwarf. It easy to look the other way with this game and Games Workshop, its not their IP, with the majority of the sculpts by the Perry Twins and some of the better rules GW has written for game, and its the only game with low cost entry point, So there isn't much not to like, Company lack of support or behavior aside. This game is 100% fan supported by fans, guys who like this game who have supported through thick and thin. I think most fans of the game, as well as non fans of game where hoping GW would drop the game when the contract was up, hoping someone else who wanted to support it would pick it up. But with the new movies coming out next year GW eagerly persued and signed deals with Warner Brothers and renewed options with New Line Cinema. I dont think people realize there are lot of people out there who dont even play the game but collect the models, and people who do both have huge collections...as in "everything', not just an army or two. As result GW is all over the LotR for the new films, if the releases are SBG or WotR related I have no idea...part of the new cone of silence around GW new lack of information sharing has to do with strict confidentially agreements signed around the WB deal, so we wont see or hear anything on new releases I am sure until next fall at the earliest.

So much to the chagrin of various haters in both 40K and WFB camps the Lord of the Rings as a GW property isnt going anywhere anytime soon , in short its growing in popularity out a long period of neglect and stagnation because its something "good" thats been untainted by the years of GW bad decision making, The SBG has remained unchanged since the release of the big book. I think people are finding something consistent-refreshing. Compared to games you have thousands of dollars invested in that have army books that havent been updated in close to a decade and poorly written rules that can't keep pace with the splash releases or stand the test of multiple editions. In fact this game, is only damn consistent thing Games Workshop has done going back as far as 2007. I think people, around here anyway ,are catching to that fact. I have to ask you guys..is it just here? or are you seeing a resurgence of this game however minor in your area?

Cirith Ungol vs Isengard

2011-09-29T22:57:00.000-05:00

Another 600 point brawl, in preparation for the upcoming BBB tourney, My pal Jeff came by, recently being inspired by all the LotR SBG activity going on in these parts, he dusted off his Isengard and brought them over for an evil on evil tournament style match up. Jeff is a long time GW collector and hobbyist for all its systems, so its great to see him dig into the LotR case from time to time and put those models to good use. We of course had to use my new Amon Hen piece as the table centerpiece.

Jeff's test list was something close to
Saruman
Lurtz
Troll
8 Uruk Hai Scouts
8 Uruk Hai with Pikes
1 Uruk Hai with Banner
6 Feral Uruk Hai

My Cirith Ungol at 44 models has him at almost 2 to 1.

Unfortunately, I had way too much confidence in my Warg Riders as I sped them across the battlefield to engage. Saruman has a whole host of nasty tricks, "The Palantir" being able to call Priority being the worst
of them, other than that he's quite similar to Gandalf. Jeff just dropped back until I was out of 10 inch range
softened me up with Bows, after winning a key priority he brought Saruman out and hit me with big Sorcerous blast...then siezed the next priority with the Palantir and mobbed my warg riders, I took enough hurt there, that they were pretty neutralized.

I had Shelob looking for an oppotunity to go after Saruman..but the troll kept her at bay, with 3 attack dice
and no getting a charge bonus, the Spider only had one attack, meaning I needed my mob of guys trudging across the battefield to help me out with the troll.

We played the same scenario I played last game, where you have to contol 5 objective points. its very difficult to get a major victory as you need to control at least 4 at the end of game....in this shot here I have 3 but it doesnt stay the way. Shelob ends up facing off with the Troll once the mob rolls in, but I am losing guys almost 3 to 1 versus Jeff. I put a wound on the troll but dont kill it.

The troll fails a terror test and freezes, giving Shelob the in on Saruman...I got close but not quite
Shelob never took a wound herself, but used all her will to fend off Saruman, immoblization attempts
in the end both survive but the White Wizard with only one wound and out of fate.

My force was broken somewhere around here, while Jeff was still a few models away, I roll the game continued for two turns...Jeff had his troll grab an objective, but as he hoped the guys I had camping on the two objectives on my side of the board, ran away, with failed courage tests...my lone warrior passed killed on his leaving the center contested, and I killed enough guys near one of the others to make that one close.
In the end Jeff had 1 objective, 2 contested and 2 empty, another Draw. although in kill points department
he did a great job, ending the game with an unbroken force with a 2 to 1 kill ratio against me.

This a great scenario, as you need to really use your head to get a major victory, separating your force is an fine idea, unless you get broken and your guys run away, You'll need a combination of brains, mobile forces and luck to win this one...I would have been way better off holding my cav back until the end..live and learn.
Jeff realizes that while the troll had a roll in this match, it needs to go in favor of 100 more points troops, Saruman
and Lurtz are a great team..they dont need a troll.

Amon Hen and Some

2011-09-23T02:01:00.000-05:00

My latest terrain piece is a popular one, the Amon Hen lookout post from the finale of the Fellowship of the Ring or the scene of the breaking of the Fellowship. Yeah I am on a Lord of the Rings binge of late, with huge turnout for our local Bilbo's Birthday Bash, just about a month away, I am busy toiling away in basement late night. . (like blogging at 1:25am) Between trying to finish painting the army, doing a display base, getting some practice games in, getting the films on Blu Ray last month and talk about making the Five Armies battle happen, its an easy thing to go binge on.

The Amon Hen piece came about as I was working on some new boards mainly for Ancients gaming, I am using alot of new landscaping materials from Woodland Scenics, I haven't really used before so I wanted a small test pieceto try some stuff out, before I started landscaping the larger boards. somewhere along the way during that train of thought, I spoke to my pal Jeff and we talked about getting a game bringing his Isengard over and throwing down (this coming Tuesday.) or whatever reason while Isengard often makes folks think of the epic fight at Helm's Deep, It always makes me think of Amon Hen.

The Hirst blocks were already all cast, so all I really did here was build the hill out of Pink Foam.I worked up and built the basic design based by looking at the scene in the film and other peoples models. I wanted it to be playable, so I cut the design down a bit reducing the pillars to two so the was more room...I also made the model slight larger than some of the others I have seen, It just felt right when I start putting models next to it. The Seeing seat was the biggest challenge. I wanted to keep it simple. I cut the birds out with scroll saw and only used three instead of four as it just worked better. if your accustomed to detail work with a scroll saw, if was very easy, I wished I used a different material then MDF because it takes paint for shit..but this was meant to be a quickie project so I just went with it.

The fun new part was the landscaping, using the plaster rock molds and weathering pigment en masses was new for me. There is very little paint here, the building was sprayed Denheb Stone, the ground Brown and the rocks painted white..everything else here is weathering pigments except for some quickie drybrushing on the square edges at the very end to highlight...that's it done...I think from conception to completion may 10 hours since..Sunday. the bulk if being Sunday Night. Well get some good use out of it Tuesday as Mordor fights Isengard..in a 600 point practice game.

Speaking of my Cirith Ungol force, a couple quick pics of my Shelob, I spent alot of time on this model, from the posing, to re-modeling the face...(I think my model was miscast or something, I got it used and the face looked really weird..so I went to work on the scar tissue and proper remaining eyes) to the painting,. alot of washes, highlight, washes..repeat- going on...you can not really tell from these photos but while she looks "black" its really dark dark blues and purples mixed up from a black base..I want to give here a little more color than the standard Black/Red/Grey highlight I have seen with this model. when I unpack the photo tent to shoot my Vikings I'll take a couple more clearer shots. Mordor Orcs are a tough army to make "pop" appearance wise due to the dark and cruddy tones that fit the themes, hopefully my characters will at least jump out a bit over the horde of plastic orcs I have on the bench.

Okay So besides my LotR binge, we got a Hail Caesar Campaign kicking off soon, and Ancients Armies also getting painted, and probably some Warmachine going on, in the next couple weeks, good times.

Erebor vs Cirith Ungol

2011-09-14T17:23:00.009-05:00

Lord of the Rings Battle Recap and SBG update

I got the rare chance to get out the Chicago battle bunker last weekend, for some LotR SBG with my fellow blogger, miniature painter and LotR enthusiast Jamie W.

Jamie's got numerous beautiful armies and this time he brought out his Erebor Dwarven force for the upcoming Bilbos Birthday Bash and I brought out the Orcs of Cirith Ungol and their Spider Queen. Its was great game and we demoed one the event scenarios. I was happy to give the dwarves a go, as their brutal defensive stats make them one of the toughest armies in the game.

I forgot my camera so grabbing pics of Jamies great army of his blog is best I can do here.

Erebor

Balin
Dwarf Captain with Shield
Dwarf Warrior w/ Banner
12 Dwarf Warriors w/ Dwarf Bow
7 Dwarf Warrios w/ Shield
8 Khazad Guard
6 Iron Guard
6 Dwarf Rangers w/ throwing axes and two-handed axes

Cirith Ungol

Shagrat, War Leader
Shelob
Orc Shaman on Warg

8 Warg Riders, w/Hand Weapon and Shield
18 Orcs w/Hand Weapon and Shield
10 Orcs w/Spears
1 Orc with Banner.
4 Uruk Hai with two handed weapons

The scenario was a "control" scenario based on 5 objective points...how many you controlled at the end of game dictate either Major, Minor win or Draw.

My deployment was very straight forward..and I cant see it particularly different in any game I play with ths Army, The Wargs on one flank the, Shelob on the other and the mob of Orcs in the middle.

Jamies deployment was a bit more nuanced he had his captain and a mix of Khazad and Iron guard with a couple rangers on the flank opposite the Wargs. the warriors with Bows in the center. Balin, The Banner Bearer and mix of remaining troops spread out on the other flank around the objective.

Worried about Volley fire directed at Shelob...I held her back and pushed hard with Wargs slamming into their brick wall of defense 6 and 7 troops by my second turn. The shaman leading the way had cast "Fury" and away they went for long struggle. My infantry need 4 full moves to really mix it up with dwarves and Jamie just waited for me to come to him in the middle. Shelob played cat and mouse with some of the dwarves that where screening for Balin, I survived many a ranged attack and during a run of many lost priorities in a row. Jamie just fed single dwarves to the spider to keep her tied up. eventually when the brawl in the middle broke out there was no where for the spider to get to that could cause alot of damage, so she just stayed on the edge, killing single dwarves hoping to break his hold on the objective. The Warg vs Khazad/Iron Guard flank was were alot of the action was...I literally charged, bounced off and charged again, and again...eventually whittling him down to the Defense 8 Captain who survived a 3 Warg Rider charged and was also trapped..by the time I killed all the dwarves on the flank I'd lost most my Warg Riders and the battle of attrition in the middle evened us up on losses and both our forces broke at exactly the same time. According the scenario when one player breaks we roll to see how many turns the game continues. I roll "1" and then win priority. I start making break checks...Shagrat and his Orcs around him via standfast all stick around, so does Shelob, but none of my Wargs or few troopers I left camping on Objectives do...I go from having 2 objectives and contesting 1, to having zero....One more turn gets me some good kills and Jamie has bad break check run too. so in the end, it winds up 1 objective for him 2 contested by me...and a Draw...but its was literally down to the last turn, and we both easliy lost 75% of our forces with our main heroes and small entourages remaining.--a bloodbath, as it should be.

It took me half the game to get my head back in the rules, While I have been playing Legends of the High seas all summer and it uses the same basic rules, LotR is alot more complicated due to alot of Might, Will and Fate being continuely used plus alot lot more special rules. I stupidly forgot that your banner bearer needs to be touching another model it keep the banner on the field if the bearer dies...and a sloppy move cost me banner at a key point toward the end. It was all good thou as a great bloody scrap like this got me pumped up to get a few more practice games in before the tournament. I was happy with my armies performance, Shagrat was a beast and Shelob had alot more staying power than I thought given her Hunting Instinct liability. Great game to Jamie, and I look forward to the next one.

With a notable crew of regional LotR players in attendance its was very cool to see the renewed interest in the game from the older players and a lot of new players too. I was totally surprised to see Brent sweating that he only had enough swag for 39 players, as he had over 20 paid with inquiries from another other people that he had to post a 1st come, 1st serve notice on the local forums in regards to swag for the event. My reaction was of course -39 players!! are you kidding me?..when I played in the original Bilbo's bash in 2009, it was 7 players and a ringer, with 300% percent bump in 2010 to 21, with a projected another 100 % attendance bump this year? If you read various popular forums you won't have to go far to find some 40K of WFB fanboy crowing about how LotR is dead and just eating resources from the other games. I don't think so guys. because when the chips are down, its the good games that have legs. It is the only low investment, high return game that GW puts out. For a tournament turnout comparison -Core, Competency one of area's bigger fall WFB tourneys only had 29 players last year (although its looking at over 40 this year) but for whatever reason, (points, scheduling) Adepticon numbers for LotR remain anemic, while other games are in triple digits..However, let be clear. Rumors of this games death are greatly exaggerated..with the Hobbit coming out next year, if you are in the IL, WI, MN, IN region, its definitely a good time to get or get back into this game.

Lonely Mountain

2011-09-09T12:10:00.009-05:00

All things "The Hobbit" have been on my mind lately, not only from the upcoming Jackson films, or playing Game's Workshops Lord of the Rings, Strategy Battle Game, or even collecting various vintage LotR items. My wife even came home from the Thrift Store (2nd hand or resale shop) the last week, with an unprompted and totally unexpected score. The 7" 33 1/3 rpm story book version based on the 1977 Rankin/ Bass animated film for whole .25 cents (It routinely goes on eBay for about $20) This abridged, version of the abridged film is about 20 pages and clocks in at under 10mins and is perfect for my 5 and 3 year old. Since I am longtime fan of vinyl records we are dropping it on the turntable nightly as a bedtime story.

My 'active' miniatures collection has been in a state of flux of late as well. "Active" being gaming stuff I actually use for wargaming, versus my passive collection of vintage pieces, that dont really get used, other than to be painted at looked it. While for sometime now my active collection was much bigger due my interest in large format wargames, some parity is returning as I get rid of stuff that is strictly wargaming related. Actively what's been growing this year is various historically period figures or armies, and Lord of the Rings.

Since I have had a large enough army of Mordor for big "War of the Ring" style game, I have thought about slowly growing the good guys beyond the many heros I have to fill out the rank and file troops for a large format wargame. Not quite there yet, I could be for a modest sum. However I recently started thinking about my favorite part of "The Hobbit", The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you've read this far, you're surely familiar with the details of the above. So I am going to cut straight to the point of this piece. Recreating the "Battle of the Five Armies" in 28mm. We know Games Workshop produces this game in 6mm and its still currently available and of course it would be cheaper and easier to just play this on a 4x4 board. However if you've read Plastic Legions at all over the years you know the path of least resistance is rarely followed.

I'm sure over the course of 2012-2013, GW is going to release of slew of new models concerning the above in 28mm and I am definitely both excited and cynical about that...since that's along way off, my mind immediately starting thing about how to make this happen in a timely manner, and a serious of coincidences make attaining this goal not all that difficult. Lets get to the details.

The Battlefield

In 1998, Miniatures Wargames Magazine ran an article on BoFA in 28mm using popular rules of the time, I stumbled upon an online archive of this (and other great LotR battles) here, while the late nineties wargaming profiles were interesting, what was important here was the map and force structures. While familiar with the layout, the map immediately struck me as being coincidently similar to the new table top I am working on for our Ancients game play. In two 4x4 sections that can be flipped around is basically a low side and rocky high side with a shallow river running right down the middle. Since a Battle of this size needs more than a 4x8 table, a 4 x 12 would suffice with the extra section being the Mountain cul-de-sac and entrance to the domain of the dwarves.

With two sections already planned and WIP, for inspiration for the third section I had to go no further than my own Blog Roll.Back in 2009, the leading LotR hobby forum, The Last Alliance, shutdown over financial and organizational troubles. Two of most awesome prolific miniature scenery builders, I have come across to date frequented that forum. users, Onyx and Dagorlad.(The latter did resuscitate TLA at a later date and the forums still exist but not in the scope of the site 2007-2009.) While both have scaled back their output while Dagorlad is still active (see Blog "Spodding") Onyx's blog remains without an update for over two years now. His blog remains on my rolls because of its content. His LotR builds are simply the best diorama/ play boards I have ever seen. His "Erebor" or Lonely Mountain is about as perfect as I could envision with the exception of some side cliffs specifically for recreating this battle. A 4 x 4 section of this scope is probably and easy 40 hour project for me..so to get it off the ground. Playing this would need to be a reality with people whom actually want to participate to see it happen. That would be the planned table layout at 12 x 4 table that a gradual rocky slope ending in a mountain cul-de-sac with river through the middle, just as Tolkien laid in out in our minds in 1937.

Ruleset.

While many would gravitate to GW's "War of the Ring" for rules ( and GW will certainly push new releases for War of the Ring play)I am of the mind that the ruleset suffers some major issues for a tactical wargame, the magic phase and individual heroes "special rules" are wildly overpowered. While magic is non issue in BoFA, (there is none) The heroes and special rules certainly are. For a straight up lean, mean and tactical wargame, I have to gravitate to my current favorite rules set, Warlord Games "Hail Caesar". Both games are based at heart on Games Workshop' Warmaster Rules. WotR rules however are based on company perspective that first and foremost that they want to sell you a ton of models, and that the games players want there heroes to be awesome on the battlefield. As a historical game Hail Caesar does not suffer the burden of either, while model counts are high and Warlord certainly sell figures..the games rules don't so obviously, superficially call for "more models" and models counts are presented in scope mainly for aesthetics. You can play the game as you see fit with 16 model units or giant hordes. In my mind, HC is the perfect ruleset for this.

I wasn't sure exactly how it would work until I sat down to make some army lists.
Fortunately and I must admit surprisingly, I was happy to find Hail Caesar's current special rules all seem to find their place in my Battle of the Five armies army list. Rules I wasn't even familiar with yet because they don't show up currently in our Ancient English/Arab face offs, easily found there place in hands of Elves, Dwarfs, Goblins, Orcs, Men, Wolves, Wargs and Eagles. Rules like "Brave", "Valiant", "Marksman", "Drilled" "Phalanx" and "Marauders" all show up along with things we are accustomed too, like "Tough or Wild Fighters" "Elite" and "Feigned Flight", very little modification is needed from the core HC rules to pull this off. The only thing I had to do was treat some of the characters as an actual "unit" as opposed to commander. "Thorin's Company" and "Beorn" namely. We will also allow individual characters and command stands to fight alone in this scenario if necessary instead of only supporting. (which you cant do in HC). The one thing I am borrowing from WotR is its excellent use of force structure in the form of "Companies" being 8 models for infantry and 2 models for Cavarly. Using Hail Caesar model counts for this is beyond the scope of whats possible is terms of model counts which just forces a larger table size.

Force Structure

Using War of the Ring's, Company formations The force structure and model counts breakdown as follows..This is based on my own extrapolation of the 1998 MWM article and GW's forces provided in its 6mm game as basis for the proper sized event.

The Dwarves.
Thorins Company. - 2 Companies made up of 13 models
Dain's Company- 1 Command Company , Dain + 7, 8 models
Dwarf infantry- 7 companies - 56 models.

In HC terms, Dain is in command of two divisions of dwarves. While Thorins two company activate and an independent unit. minimum unit size is two companies. unless a character.

The Elves
Thranduils Company- 1, Thranduil+7 - 8 models
Elven Spearmen- 10 Companies- 80 models
Elven Longbows- 5 Companies- 40 models
Elven Commands- 3 Companies- 24 models

Organized, like a standard HC army, 1 General, 3 Sub Comands, 3 Divisions

Men of Laketown
Bard- Solo Command- 1 Model
Spearman- 8 Companies- 64 models
Archers- 6 Companies- 48 models

Organized as 1 Division.

Eagles
3 Cavalry Stands or 6 models

Beorn
as Bear- 1 model.

Goblins

Blog's Company, Blog +7- 8 Models
Orc Infantry- 7 companies- 56 models
Goblin Infantry- 28 Companies- 224 Models
Goblin Command- 4 Companies- 32 models
Goblin Cavalry (Warg Riders)- 16 Companies- 32 models

Organized as 1 huge army Blog with 1 company of Orcs leading, 4 Sub Commands leading 4 Divisions

Wargs

Warg Command, 1 model
Wargs- 8 companies...16 models
Wolves 12 companies 24 models.

Organized as one large division.

While models counts per side are not that far apart 349 to 393..Destroyed Goblin Infantry and Wolves would respawn as reserves until their division is broken, this would simulate..the endless factor of the enemy forces.

Models.

while 750 models is nothing to sneeze at, fortunately my unarmored Saxons proxy perfectly as the Men of Laketown, and I have a good portion of the enemy forces...28 companies of Goblin Infantry, drop it to 27 and its 9 boxes of GW goblins fortunately GW gobins are the one thing you can pick up on ebay on the super cheap, not to mention, I know some folks that have a ton of them. The real issue is Dwarves and Elves, of which I have almost none, other than a few heroes. I do have alot of the weird stuff from the passive collection, like Beorn, the Eagles, lots of wargs, wolves, etc. I am expanding my Elves a bit but would certainly need more and other than my 1985 Thorin and various Gimli models my dwarves stop there. so I need some like minded LotR collectors to join me.

There you go, Battle of the five armies in 28 mm, 750 models on a 12 x 4 table, with Hail Caesar, slightly modified rules."IF" it happens you'll be seeing it here.

Milestones

2011-09-01T09:50:00.006-05:00

I dont think I have posted one of these self congratulatory posts before, If I have humor me. But the blog broke the quarter million visitors mark last night. I started tracking this via site meter sometime in 2008...so roughly 3 and half years. My page views are almost exactly double that. So it pleases me to say that people that stop by here, usually find something else they want to look at as well. I know this is small potatoes in the real world of "internet hits" but Like a an old car, I just keep on chugging along doing my thing. I know I have lost some readers with my recent general anti-GW stance, and criticism at the more popular "hobby blogs" not really being good for the "hobby" at all. (BoLS was my biggest traffic supplier). but I have also gained some new ones because of that and with my coverage of other games, so all in its wash.

I will remain ad free here (my personal relationship with Cipher Games aside) as I don't do this for "hits". It really just about communicating with the like minded about our "hobby". I have busy couple months coming up with both my personal life and my Hobby life, and plan on knocking some great stuff before year end. I'd figure I'd start August with about as positive a post as I can muster this morning. So if your reading this, thanks! for sticking with me, I promise to keep the commentary "sharp" and the hobby output as heavy as I can manage.

I'll close with brief plug for Adepticon 2012, next year is its 10th Anniversary and like many of us it continues to grow and branch out of the "GW only" mindset to become the best wargaming hobby convention in the US. Expanding to 4 days this year. Look for a variety of all kinds of new games being featured. and If you are so inclined. please join me in my second Legends of the High Seas event!. Registration goes online this fall, so keep your eye on the site or just keep on stopping by here.

Bilbo's 2011

2011-08-30T20:32:00.007-05:00

There hasn't been much in way of tournaments for me since last spring. My Warhammer sabbatical continues and will for a good long time I suppose as long as the state of the game remains as it is. My dabbling into Warmachine has shown me that the competitive learning curve is steep and requires more dedication than that of guy who likes to play numerous systems and has two children under 5. Competitive Warmachine will be a slow process for me that involves gaming with friends and finding events that fit the bill for my skill level. The one system I am still playing that just seems to never get old for me. (and not because I dont get to play it all that often) is The Lord of Rings, Strategy Battle Game. As the mechanic of this game is the basis for Legends of the High Seas and Legends of the Old West. I am never that far away from it, even thou I have not played a game of LotR since the spring either.

Bilbo's Birthday Bash is our areas Fall Classic, in its third year, I am glad to say I will have been at the them all. A great time and extremely competitive event..the player pool for this game is small but dedicated meaning the half dozen events nationally each compel the players to travel. So when you go to one these things the talent pool is always top tier, in both player skill and Hobby chops. I do enjoy a 20 person event where Best Appearance award is drawing from 40 or even 50% of the attendees as starting base instead say 5% at a Warhammer event. Its just fun to bring your models to play with that much great looking stuff.

LotR is my last attachment to Games Workshop, I have to say I am not looking forward to a bunch of Finecast models, but am hoping for some metal or at least good plastic kits when the Hobbit films are released. While I am sure I'll end up disappointed we can always hope for the best. GW's has all but abandoned the SBG, with all LotR releases being geared toward the inferior but model hoarding War of the Ring. Thankfully we still get updated model profiles in White Dwarf. Reports from attendees I know, at this years Las Vegas Throne of Skulls, were certainly less than positive, so consider the game at this point, a "Specialist Game". Most already do although GW displays it as a core system. It would certainly be great if someone else who didnt have two other major game systems could eventually get this license and run with it. I think it would breath new life into the game, because in 100 years, Warhammer and Warhammer 40K are likely going to be foot notes or even forgotten in popular culture, while like it's successor "Star Wars", "The Lord of the Rings" already has timeless status.

One the great things about LotR is since it tournaments are strictly player run, you know what you are getting and I must tell you this a great event. Well run and well supported by its Organizers. This year has a three category painting event, which really got me happy and I plan on entering on piece in each category (the maximum) And the competition will surely be steep.
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If you dont play the game and have read this far. feel free to stop now. I want to spend a few minutes talking about LotR competitive play and my army this year, which will only interest the select few.

Army Selection this year for me was tough one, with two years in competitively running Gandalf with Grey Company, adding Gwaihir (the Eagle) at 600 points was an uphill battle. Low model counts left me little room for error, and against insanely high defense armies like Dwarves is was just a "how well can you lose" type game.

Competitively the only somewhat of bummer to me, is general player philosophy of playing this game. General theory, which is akin to any game where people apply win/lose game theory instead just enjoying the game, a fact of human nature we just cant avoid. Is that despite any point limit you always maximize you model count because the law of average dicates the more you outnumber your opponent the exponentially increase your odds of winning. So instead of seeing armies of various factions with the heroes or monsters from the game we love or loathe. Instead you'll see a Mordor army at 600 points with 3 Orc Captains, a Bannerman and 70 orcs.

These are the type of Armies that win events, its just math, the more dice you can throw against a lesser amount dice, the easier you will win. For a game with huge playbook of tactics, its a shame the tournament play is dominated by this type of Lowest Common Denominator thinking. It usually only this way top 3 tables..then the rest of folks bring out the fun armies and all the cool stuff, from some running just 13 models in the "Unexpected party" or just running all 9 Nazgul. I even faced off against a Dragon last year and it was one of the better games I had ever played. I would love to see our National TO's (hint, hint, I know most of you) Change the games cap of 75 models to 50 for tournament play just so we start seeing some different and thematic armies winning events instead of another different shades of 75 generic troops winning the day with the law of averages as their mightiest weapon.

As you know I don't roll that way, "gamey" isn't normally in my playbook unless like Warhammer you eventually get pushed into it. I had originally planned on running a Fiefdoms army this year, with Prince Imarhil at the lead with all the bells and whistles...for whatever reason its seems that the Fiefdoms are super popular this year, and another regular player (and great hobbyist) and I ran into each other at another event and realized we where both working on The same army and we weren't alone. Since he had already started the army, and most of my stuff was still in boxes or blisters we flipped a coin for it. Fair enough and I lost. so it was back to drawing board..well not really- I didn't need to contribute to 20% of the armies this year being Fiefdoms- So I went to my fall back position, either Angmar or Mordor

While I initially made the push for Angmar, I had all the models..it doesnt show up that often, and has one of the few factions that can use the cool undead. I felt I wanted to play a little more competitively this year, and I was just missing the bump I would need running naked Wargs, gambling on undead spells going off, and my Heavy hitter, Buhrdur surviving.

I finally went back to my original army- Cirith Ungol and decided to flesh it out at 600 points with the Spider Queen herself, and touch the whole thing up and finish it. I am quite happy with the line up and I think its going to play great.

Shagrat- War Leader- despite his brief but fun roll in the film, this version is the toughest orc, let alone one of the top tier melee character in the game. I dont need another combat hero with "epic" Shagrat on the field.

Shelob- The Spider has a bunch of nasty tricks but one huge weakness...she must make a courage check everytime she gets wounded and if she fails she is done..this makes her a huge crap shoot..bad luck on an early volley fire..puts you almost 100 points down immediately. you need to use her speed to hide her and put pressure for your opponent to go after other threats and then bring her in late game, if you pull it off...you're going to win.

Orc Shaman on Warg- "Fury" is a great spell and being able to cast it on your Orcs on the key charge is a game changer. not to mention he has "immoblize" too. IF you can get a chance to use it. This guy is leading my Warg Riders in battle.

8 Warg Riders with HW & shield, strong cavalry with the shaman backing them up, great cavalry. Archers shooting at Shelob, they are coming for you.

18 Orcs Hand Weapon and Shield-
10 Orcs Spears
1 Orc with Banner.

The muscle wading up the middle with Shargrat

4 Uruk Hai with Two Handed Weapons. the Honor Guard- Strength 4, +1 to wound
Defense 7 Dwarfs go down on "5"

There you go, 44 Models, 22 Break...the pros will say model count."too low"...but you need to kill 22 Orcs ASAP and my Wargs Riders are into you by the second turn on one Flank..Shagrat is bringing a wall of Orcs up the middle and Shelob is waiting in the darkness for a good target...I'll take it..either way it will be fun to play. Staying in theme, I think all my painting contest models are going to be Mordor too, just not sure on what my 25mm model is going to be. I'll post WIP shots of Army throughout the next couple months..the event is first weekend in November and I have about a third of it already done, so Orcs and Saxons on the bench thru November for sure!.

Foam Wars- Part Deuxish.

2011-08-27T10:42:00.022-05:00

Foam Wars continues on with everyone's favorite Miniature Case transport manufacture- Battlefoam and their quest to become either the Mark Zuckerberg or Winklevoss twins of the gaming industry. A blurb in my news feed last week on TGN seemed like a just another "notch in the belt" item in that Miniature Market was no longer carrying Battlefoam and were discounting their remaining stock and replacing it with the excellent line of products by KR multicases.

Battlefoam almost immediately issued a response to TGN, saying Miniature Market had asked for their trade account to be closed 6 months ago. This just fanned the conspiracy theories, given the documented history of Battlefoam's lack of truthfulness in its past business dealings with its competitors. While the truth seems to lie somewhere in the matter of Miniature Market breaching its trade agreement with Battlefoam over pricing restrictions with online sales. A 100+ comment dual thread is currently going strong over on TGN with rival commentaries going on Dakka and I am sure the other usual haunts. Plenty of mud is being slung from either Battlefoams supporters or detractors, but as usual people always seem to overlook the real issues that incidentally get brought to light, instead just jumping on the red meat.

According to Battlefoam's second response to TGN, and I quote:

"Romeo at Battle Foam stated that these restrictions are part of the trade terms to help protect brick and mortar stores that also sell their product and that they had numerous emails with Miniature Market asking them to conform to the trade terms they agreed with."

What smells here is the mention of "Brick and Mortar stores".This really stuck out with me because here in Chicago we've just had a relatively new, growing and popular games store, Black Sun Games shut it's doors. While that is due to some unfortunate extenuating circumstance. It sparked a discussion privately amongst my friends ( one a former game store operator). In that there are just not really any Brick and Mortar game stores left, the ones that exist do so outside the economic realities of the business model. This due to a host of "other factors". (which I'll talk about in its own post at a later date)

Sure, there are stores that sell gaming products all over. but how many are just game stores?, Online discounting and technology outpaced the need for the existence of Brick and Mortar gaming stores years ago, they currently exist as places to meet and play, and if you are fortunate enough to develop a supportive community around you, you can survive.. but without another revenue stream, or online sales component to give you bigger margins than what's standard for the path "manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer" dictates. You are just about D.O.A.

To claim say that someone is going to walk into a brick and mortar game store and buy a Battlefoam bag with a standard load out off the shelf, with all the mark ups and lack of customization that come along with that action being totally ignored, sounds like a fantasy. while I am sure that case exists somewhere, it can only by logic be a tiny, tiny minority. Someone that isn't particularly savvy about what said product is actually used for, and what you could be paying for it somewhere else. (a parent buying something for their child comes to mind) This mentality of customer is actually what Games Workshop has based its business model around, and not coincidentally what Battlefoam seems to want to emulate.

In reality Battlefoam wants you to buy from Battlefoam period. They dont particularly want to have their product in stock with online discounters, they do it to make themselves appear to be everywhere so they can saturate the market in order to make you think they are only people that sell miniature cases.

Here in the United States, Battlefoam is clearly price fixing within its vendor trade agreements. While I have not seen a trade agreement personally. It clear that they are setting the terms of how much their product can be discounted for, which they cannot do in other countries. and you used not be able to get away with here but...( Political Soapboax applicable here, sorry folks. )

Here in the wild west of Capitalism, the USA. we've spent the last 30 years dismantling consumer protections, and fair trade practices all in the name of economic progress, the problem of course, is that economic progress as a result of unfettered capitalism is an oxymoron as it doesn't work. As a result the United States is on its way to mirroring the last days of Imperial Rome with a corporately owned 2 party political system that doesn't really do anything other the preserve the corporate status quo in slightly different shades of grey. The result is the recent Supreme Court decision Here. Which essentially legalizes price fixing by manufacturers, So what Battlefoam does is completely legal.

So fantasies of Battlefoam bags on the shelves at Target and price fixing aside, What's going on here is that Battlefoam wants to be everywhere for market saturation but wants 100% control of what you sell their products for so you aren't under cutting their direct sales (sounds familiar huh?) Miniature Market (who I have bought from regularly since 2006, have great prices, fastest delivery times and great customer service) got sick of their garbage and said its just not worth it. Pretty simple explanation to an overly complicated question.

It's no surprise to me that none of my favorite online retailers carry Battlefoam products. Its certainly not because they dont make a strong product. A friend of mine recently had a Warmachine bag over here at my place and its quite nice if you think paying $150-200 for a bag to carry your toy soldiers in is worth your money, personally I'd rather have more toy soldiers, and a less flashy, cheaper bag with better (softer) foam.

From a business persons standpoint. You have to ask yourself, if someone makes a popular and quality product and you run a successful business selling these types of products why would you not want to sell it?. Well answer to that seems pretty clear, its the company not the product.

So if you're a "40K housewife" and need a fancy Battlefoam bag to elevate your personal social status to that of your actual wife at the country club with that new Louis Vutton handbag, Than knock yourself out!, but it's also quite clear plenty of gamers and people in the gaming trade, do as I do and have made their Miniature transport slogan "Friends don't let Friends buy Battlefoam" and seek out the many other viable alternatives.

Foam Wars, will continue I am afraid- for better or worse.

GW vs Mantic - Figure Comparisons

2011-08-22T23:28:00.007-05:00

My Liche King with minor conversion and custom base and couple sprue freebies mantic gives you.

Oddly enough, I havent seen too many shots of Mantic Figures close up until I got my hands on some.The pictures on the website arent exactly the best at showing off the line, and I havent seen anyone do heads up figure comparison against GW with decent photos before- so here you go!. (disclaimer, I am sure someone "has" done it, I just havent seen it.)

The boxes I am comparing here are the GW Vampire Count Skeleton Warrior box at $24.75 USD vs Mantics Undead Liche King and Revenant Troop box listing at 14.99 GBP on the site
or 19.99 USD at the Warstore.

Let start out with the GW Skellys, First price, these guys are roughly $2.50 a piece, mine are on expense resin bases that are .75 each (not that you'd need to do that ) making a unit of twenty $65.00 and a horde unit of 40, $130.00 dollars, if I rebased on the normal bases they come with you be looking at $100 for that horde unit, the bases being $30.00

Here what you get for Mantics $20.00, The Lich Hero is $10 alone so these Revenants (elite Grave Guard in Mantics world) are $1.00 each and you get the dog and guy bursting up out of the ground for free. The Horde Regiment would cost you $40.00 vs $100.00, I should note you dont get the options without great hassle to mount Mantics figures on other bases, also the GW kit has two separate weapon options

Comparing Figure Quality. The GW model is clearly larger, and GW's over sized weapons in comparison to figures like just look weird. Both models have a great amount of detail, I like the head on the GW model a bit more, and GW shields are all removable while Mantics are cast on. There is no comparison in the shield category (GW wins hands down) but over all both figures are solid is quality and sculpt. I have to admit in last 6 months as I have moved away from GW I am finding it silly how over the top GW sculpts are, I think ostentatious is the right word. I am still a huge fan of many GW/ Citadel older models and if I go back and look at my older figures and then look at these...I am sorry the old stuff is just cooler from a low fantasy perspective..the new stuff is just too much. On Mantic's side these guys have a very cool vibe..I think roughly half the models are bit to 'fancy" to be undead...the other half are perfect..the proof will be in the paint.

This shot of the two Standard bearers is great for showing detail, I really like both figures however this particular Mantic sprue doesnt even come with a standard..thats an old glory spear pole and some bit from the bitz box. While the GW is pretty cool, again it could be dialed back a bit, I really like the trooper.

Here are the normal troopers. In this case the dynamic poses of Mantic guys wins hands down. I like the GW figs, again I think there over embelished..I think these GW skellys make better Grave Guard then alot of the VC Grave Guard do, as I find the current GG line just too ridiculous looking.

Anyway both figures are solid, unless you are committed GW tourney player, I cant see buying hordes of the GW figs, The GW figs do make excellent skirmish figures and If I need Skeletons for some other game that only needs a dozen of so figs, this is my go to Kit...but for a large format
Fantasy army game, Mantic all the way.

Mantic
Pros-
- Price, cant beat it
- Freebies, the extras are cool. good modular armor and weapon selection.
- Great low, dark Fantasy vibe.
- Scale, realistic 28mm scale with proper sized weapons.

Cons-
- Cast Shields, lack of Shield Design and options.
- Cast bases, again lack of basing options.
- Less parts means less options, posing , etc.

Games Workshop
Pros-
- Options, two distinct weapon options, with great shields and separate command options.
- Great detail

Cons-
- Price, this is one of the cheaper boxes, and you'll need at least 4 of them.
- too many parts, these guys are separate legs, chests, arms, heads, armor.., every model is almost a dozen parts- it took me way too long to just assemble five of them...its literally what scared me off the army.
- Scale, " GW only" uber scale..doesnt fit with other stuff well.
- Vibe, again -Warhammer fans only

There you go...I'll try to do a Ghoul vs Ghoul and Zombie vs Zombie when I get around to building the rest of my Mantic stuff..

Hail Caesar-Saxon Command

2011-08-22T00:07:00.004-05:00

I've been digging into my massive Saxon Army quite a bit lately, It easily the largest army I own coming in at 250 models. I had (choice) to rebase quite abit of it for the larger units needed for Hail Caesar. Things like these commands stands are great fun to build and I wanted to get my feet wet painting one to what probably the final standard.

These guys are OOP Gripping Beast models, older and admittedly rough models (the king figure is a pretty bad cast) that have beeonly recently discontinued, My whole army is metal made up of mainly GB and Crusader models.

Nothing fancy here just base coat, a couple washes and a very few highlights. Shields are hand painted with simple designs. I have a whole bunch of decals I'll be using as well, hand painting 200 + shields is a bit further than I want to go with these guys. The Banner is a decal, just stuck to some heavy paper...I wished I used foil and will on the rest of my banners ,as the bends look more realistic.I guess consider these guys a test piece.

Outside basing, priming the whole army, I am on to, individual units working on my Viking Raiders who are getting a good amount of detail then moving into some big block of Coerls (Fyrd)

As we are gearing up for an Ancient Campaign in the fall, we are all in paint mode. Although I dont expect huge armies like this to get painted over the course of a campaign I am going to try, Rich is already 80-90% done with his huge Muslim force but he'd been working on the project for two years. I guess we will see how these guy are looking come spring.

The Real Housewives of 40K.

2011-08-16T10:36:00.013-05:00

I'm not sure if you are all unfortunately familiar with it, but one of the many scourges of piece of garbage television culture here in the US, is a series of programs on the Bravo channel called "the real housewives" of "blank (insert city here). The program concerns itself with a bunch of whining, spoiled, vapid, fake, almost universally moronic and always cruel women, who with their emasculated husbands (or boyfriends) parade around fighting with each other having pissing contests over things like who has the better boob job or who can spend the most money in an afternoon. Its the worst kind of mind rotting trash imaginable, akin to nothing but watching people argue for a hour. Unfortunately, women love it. I know some very Intelligent women who shockingly love it. They say its like watching a trainwreck, they see parts of many of their friends in these shameless shrews, and the weekly trainwreck provides them with endless entertainment. Until today I thought I had grossly overestimated the intelligence of some women I know, but then today I read this article on Bell of Lost Souls.

I've railed against Ard Boyz's before and what worthless pile of dung it is, an antithesis to the wargaming hobby, and something no one I would spend 5 mins talking to would ever play in more than once. (Hey- we all make mistakes right?) This article is about a recent Ard Boyz event, taking place in only what I can assume is Texas, and pretty much says it all,- zero hobby, cheating, physical intimidation, all over toy soldiers. This is what much of the 40k tournament scene has become stereotyped as, a bunch of "real housewives" a bunch of knuckleheads, who ought just go throw dice against the wall for money than bother with the wargaming hobby. While I know not "all" 40K events and players are like this, it is a real subsection of hobby that puts an embarrassing stain over the the rest of it just like steroids in Baseball. My greater point here isnt "how bad Ard Boyz sucks" but how places like Bell of Lost Souls perpetuate this behavior, and are these aggregator type blogs, even good for the hobby?

Let me say now that as much as this looks like one, it is not a shot at the guys who started BoLS, who did so surely with the best intentions, while I know neither personally more than in passing at Adepticon or a few emails. I do know they are passionate hobbyists with love of their game and their gaming community. As we all know sometimes the best intentions go astray, outside themselves and with the exception of a few smarter guys that have moved on, the writers are bloody awful, the articles, overall terrible and immature. Most of the "breaking news" is usually days old, recycled from other blogs. Other games are mentioned in passing, but we all know its primarily a 40k blog and The 40k articles generally promote, ultra competitive, Ard Boyz style play and hence its behavior. The kids are clearly minding the store and the whole thing at least to me looks like one big episode of "Real Housewives", not just the regular Episode but one of the special reunion ones, where people sit across from each and argue and scream at the top of their lungs for two hours.

The problem I have is two fold, One- like the trainwreck of said show, I can't help myself from reading it and now I understand where these women I know that watch this garbage are coming from. Two- on a more personal level is a matter of public perception. I see BoLS lack of self policing really just damaging to the overall perception of hobby because it indirectly hurts noble efforts like Heroes of Armageddon ( in which hobbyist built and donated 4 awesome armies for doctors without borders, raising over $30,000.00) While I am not sure there is even any cross pollination between the HoA team and the BoLS community the association is there, because of the blog and the HoA logo plastered all over it. So when you read some of these insane articles about the 40K hobby like I've mentioned. That is just frankly bad for business. Thankfully HoA has come and gone, but the greater point remains. Whether you like it or not Bell of Lost Souls has become somewhat of gatekeeper to the hobby, and when the gatekeeper, looks like the "crypt keeper", your going to scare away just as many people as you bring in.

I would not presume to tell the guys at BoLS what to do, or how to clean up their act. That simply isnt my place, I am one guy with a blog and an opinion, and these days they need to change the old adage from " opinions are like a-holes" to "blogs and opinions are like a-holes". This is just whats on my mind today. I'm not afraid of self analysis, I know I have easily become one of those old grognards who will inevitably will fit in better at Historicon than Adepticon I am sure sooner than later and thats ok, I am also aware its possible, maybe I just dont get it?.

My only bit of wisdom would be to point out that blogs are different than forums, and the shenanigans that go on at certain forums have there place where the public face of a news aggregator doesn't. Just like certain blogs with a narrower focus, are far less offensive, despite objectionable content, because they are not "gatekeepers" or don't try to put everything in one bucket or be anything more than what they are.

So unlike the "Real Housewives" trainwreck the women in my life just cant stop watching, I can't just drop Bravo from my cable channel, but I certainly can disassociate myself from the BoLS alliance and its place in my blog roll so I dont have to watch the trainwreck. In fact I am retooling the overall coverage of the blog anyway to be non-GW, removing the majority of the GW only and 40K blogs, with exception of "hobby only" powerhouses, like Dave Taylors blog, From the Warp and Santa Cruz Warhammer., because despite the traffic I did get from BolS, I have pretty good idea of who reads this blog and who doesn't.

Kings of War- Update

2011-08-12T20:15:00.005-05:00

Mantic Games released its newest army list today for newsletter subscribers. The Twilight Kin,(Dark Elves) along with brief update to its "Nerve" Rule (Break Test) That gives each unit a high and low stat to roll off against instead of relying on a chart. Same principle, just tidying things up in the stat block instead of the rule book. Speaking of which the new printed rule book (picture above)will be out in September along with the new started set (Undead and Dwarfs) and all the new army list for Mantics, current eight fantasy races. Undead, Dwarfs, Abyssal Dwarfs, Elves, Twilight Kin, Goblins, Orcs and Men.

Its the last one I am most interested in but in the meantime I recently picked up 110 Mantic undead models for $63.00 .Literally a seventh!! of the price of what it cost me in eqivalent of a GW VC army, (the same models in same slots is $336!!! pre tax and shipping if applicable) I already have a decent amount of GW VC Heros I hadn't sold yet. so I now have good sized Undead Army. I must say the photos of the miniatures on Mantics site are pretty poor, the models are much better looking in person, they're smaller than GW, but match scale with all much of my current Ancient stuff, and also match most of GW LotR plastic line (so if you've got a WotR army collecting dust, you might have use for it yet)

When any Mantic gaming actually sees the table around here will probably be another month as I am seriously digging into my Saxons at moment for Hail Caesar. And I am gearing up for a full Ancients Campaign this fall. I do hope in interim Mantic release some kind of "Chaos Warrior" knock off as three of main guys I regularly game with all have WoC armies, at least one has some Elves.

At Mantic's prices you shouldn't be afraid to pick up an army and give it a try if you're tired of the WFB merry ground of outrages prices and bad rules. Reorganizing my gaming armies from being primarily GW, to a minority GW is no small task. It was not that huge of surprise to realize I can field entire very large armies for 2 other systems for the same price it would cost me to field one Games Workshop WFB army of similar size under 8th ed rules.

Since I am already weened off GW. I didnt have any itch in my wallet when I was in my local GW today picking up a pot of Devlan Mud and some modular movement trays (the only bargain GW has) I was gagging at the prices of $33 finecast blisters for single or pair of miniatures. I went home thinking what a relief that I walked out of there spending less than $20 instead of the usual $100 plus, a nice feeling in these uneasy economic times.

I've been reading quite a bit of positive talk on Mantic people are very receptive of rules, their expanding very quickly with a whole people jumping ship from GW this year alone let alone what come in the next 6-12 months. I exchanged emails with Ronnie from Mantic recently and expect another big push at Adepticon this year, with Demos and talk of a KoW tournament. Nothing concrete yet, just talk, but KoW is infinitely a more tourney friendly game that WFB currently is, thats radically apparent from just reading the ruleset. Anyway look for alot more from Mantic games on their site, blog, in the blogosphere and of course here.

Alternative Rules

2011-07-28T18:51:00.012-05:00

So what to do if you're like me and own multiple Warhammer Fantasy Armies, but have fallen so out of love with Games Workshop's handling of the game's product and rules, that you can barely bring yourself to put your models on the table? The first knee jerk response is sell your stuff and move on to other game systems or genres..and I am doing so, (see my DoC For Sale)with my ventures into Warmachine and huge push with Historicals. However with the fantasy bug still quite alive and 5000 points of Empire on the shelf, all hope is not lost as I've spent some time reading other rules set and am quite pleased with what I find.

Most notable and not by any stretch below the radar is Mantic's Kings of War. Mantic cropped up a couple years back as an alternative miniature company making cheaper fantasy figures. They've been at Adepticon the last two years giving away gobs of promo sprues of their undead line and have rapidly expanded from elves, to undead, to dwarfs, to Abyssal dwarfs, to now Orcs, with rumors humans, goblins and something else not far away. With host of products they've quickly gone from an alternative miniature company to an alternative game company. Now I'd be lying if I said there was a great fervor about the figures, initial word on the elves were they were too slight scale wise to mix in with GW product and werent particularly attractive, the undead fair much better, and I like the promo figures I have..and every collected a bunch of freebie sprues from the guys that werent wanted for my various fiddlings. There are no shortage of manufacturers making Dwarfs and Orcs..so I didn't see or get the need there, the Chaos Dwarf knock offs were a great idea and look great too. Whats apparent to me now with Mantic, that was not early on is that they intended to compete directly with Games Workshop. Not as an alternative miniature supplier for GW but as a direct alternative altogether, hence the need for all the lines of figures.

Poaching pissed off former GW gamers doesn't immediately seem like the best business model, but I have to admit Mantics figures are a whole more attractive when, they cost half of what GW does, and their rules and army lists are free. What I wanted to talk about today isnt some GW vs Mantic debate, as there isnt really one. In real world dollar for dollar market share Mantic isnt even the stain on GW's radar screen compared to the growing blip Privateer Press is. I want to talk about rules, because I've spent some time reading Kings of War free rules and I have to say I like them, alot.

Its not lost on me, that they are written by Alessio Cavatore, who used to work for GW and wrote WFB 7th edition which for me, is my "game"..(remember many of us don't think its 7th ed rules that are "broke" it was the stupid army books by Matt Ward and Gav Thorpe that drove the car off the road).What we have with the Kings of War rules is a WFB 7th ed lite, without many of unnecessary abstractions written into the game to give specialty figures something to do, and without many of the those fiddly movement rules that drove us bonkers. The game is very basic, with smart use of unit stats, and maybe a dozen special rules. Combat revolves losses stacking up against a units "nerve" and making a break test against that nerve..a much better mechanic which similar in some ways to "Hail Caesar", it certainly isnt fighting every combat to the last man as WFB 8th edition is.

"Magic" the fun sucking black hole of 8th edition is relegated to minimal role taking place in the shooting phase as generic ranged attacks, breath weapons, or extra movement. For me -this is what I want from a magic phase, the flavor of magic, that adds to the theme and setting of the game, and does not shove it down your throat and out your rear end right along with your grand ideas of battlefield strategy and tactics.The simple place magic occupies in Kings of War..is A-OK by me. Artillery is handled as basic mass shooting attacks basic on type, there are no artillery dice or wonky distance mechanics.

Characters are treated as individual units and operate as such and as far as I read cannot join units..they're independent operators leading your army..not deathstar creating unit additions, that overpower the game.

The one thing I take pause with is just like WFB it is a ful-on bucket of dice game...horde units are throwing 20 dice as an attack value, and I like the fact other games I am playing a moving away from that. Still that is the top end of the dice throwing....so its really a half a bucket in comparision, because I had games in WFB 8th where my free company fully engaged was throwing 42 combat dice...now that's the proverbial bucket.

Overall I find the game system very interesting and am looking forward to putting the Empire on the field and giving it go...Human army lists are not released yet..I could easily make my own based whats published but I would just assume wait it out. Mantic supports use of other manufactures figures either with or without there own and their rules, being free are taking alot of user feedback into consideration. I find these types of policies very gamer friendly and worthy of your support.

So check out Mantics free KoW rules and give them a spin, I can already see a deeper tactical game due to sole fact there is ton less "random crap" (as I like to say) going on in the game (dice aside, there no "wheel of fortune" to spin either!). You never know, you may just like the game and realize what you are actually missing.

We over here at Xcom wargamers (short for "excommunicated"- as we were from our local GW shop in 2009, with my own nod to the greatest PC strategy game of all time.) all have Warhammer Fantasy armies so the KoW rules have come up before, with our current fondness of Hail Caesar there's talk of a hybrid rule set, (HC rules and profiles with KoW special "fantasy" rules) but before we go there I'd like to give the KoW core rules a try for sure I think they pretty damn good on their own.

There you go, the former figureheads of Games Workshop, who are no longer with company are now writing rules that I really like, for other companies. It should go without saying, (but I'll say it anyway) that we wargamers are all still in GW's shadow, its just how much of that shadow is blocking the sun in your little world that you have to reconcile..that is until Brian Nelson and Dave Andrews start working for either Mantic or Warlord..then will be looking at a full eclipse.

Hail Caesar! in the Dark Ages

2011-07-27T18:38:00.008-05:00

Another fantastic round of Hail Caesar took place with our Dark Age armies last night, with Aaron and I running a huge English force of combined Norman and Saxon models. 3 Divisions with 5 units per division we easily pushing 300 models. Rich and Chris ran Richs Muslim forces combined with Chris Macedonians proxied as Greek and Latin Mercenaries for another imagined East vs West Skirmish circa 1100AD. English vs Damascus and its Mercenaries.

We put it all down on and 12 foot by 4 foot table (adding a 4 x4 to my 4 x 8) although we only used 11 feet. Big games like this are blast in multiplayer and Hail Caesar rules really shines in the environment. Only our second attempt at the rules but its really coming together, we figure by the third game we will have all the bells and whistles down.

Everyone is gung ho and building up and painting their armies and we are starting a Dark Age Campaign after we finish our current Pirate (legend of the high seas) campaign.

Again forgive the unpainted terrain and models , this will be changing soon and we have solid group commitment to making this game look as good as it is fun to play. Here's a brief narrative I wrote from the English perspective today. that sums up the game Unlike last time, We won the day. I think Aaron is doing actual bat rep with army lists so I will leave the details to him.

In the fog of war...only Archers from division 1 manage to receive their orders and proceed across a forested hill and a volley of arrows routs a small unit of Turkish Archers on the flank, The remaining Saxon forces unintentionally delay, allowing a huge return volley of arrow to break and rout one of our Shieldwalls. Regardless the the Norman Cavalry (set behind a large hill) ambush smashes the Ghulam and Turkoman Cavarly that would threaten Division 1's flank...with the flanking threat gone from both sides the remaining Turks ignore the heavy losses and a retreat order and charge into combat., pushed back by the Saxons who are personally led by the Army General they are then re-engaged and smashed by our Huscarls axes, although the remaining unit of Fyrd takes heavy losses.. Skirmishers from Division 1 move into the hill country and surprise a small group of Berber infantry guarding the second enemy divisions flank and rout. them. Meanwhile the Norman forces proceed across the river to engage the enemies 3rd division of Mercenaries on the right bank.

In the Hill country, disorganization wins the day on both sides, as unaware of whats happening on the left river bank neither unit properly receives orders, causing one unit of Fyrd to strike out alone and take heavy losses from Turkish shooting but none the less holds disordered. being advanced on by the City Guard and supporting archers, The Viking Raiders sweep past the disordered Fyrd in the nick of time and attack both units routing them. the remaining Damascus Light Cavalry seeing its infantry destroyed and on coming Vikings retreats from the battlefield and lone unit of Heavy Calvary follows suit. The remaining Saxon Forces never saw action due to poor weather conditions. (failed order checks)

On the far side Normans and Latin Mercenaries fought to draw..although with Damascus' armies broken the Mercenaries fought for personally glory and eventually pushed the Normans back across the river but to avail as the much larger English army still held the majority of the battlefield.

Hardcore is, uh Hard.

2011-07-22T17:52:00.008-05:00

my Lich Lord Terminus

On the topic of Warmachine, I spent most of July painting my 1st 35 points. I've had maybe a dozen games this month only half of those with my my new caster of choice the Lich Lord Terminus. At 35 models, it's a high model count for 35 points but I like the undead pirate theme and its mobile tarpit playstyle that's just a delivery system for the big guy into combat.

Reaper and Machine Wraith

Along comes a 35 point "Hardcore" Steamroller in my area with a couple players I know turning me on to the event. The event is tomorrow and looking to get out there a give it try I oblige and signed up. feeling up to the challenge as I finally started winning some games with my current list going 2-2 my first four matches the losses being in one case barely a loss, the other stupidity I should have seen coming. However once my old WFB compadre turned Warmahordes guru Felix came over to demo some hardcore games last night the proverbial rubber hit the road and my head was swimming.

Captain Rengrave and Revenant Crew
(numerous conversions abound in alot of the revenant crew..those free mantic promo sprues come in handy and scale perfectly)

Hardcore events, for those that dont know feature a time limit -per turn, in case 5 minute turns.I I experimented with time limits early in my learning of the game (with tiny army) just to see what it was like and didnt really have issue at the time, so it didn't really register. Last night however, oh boy. It registered. I've havent experienced 5 minutes feel like 10 secs in recent memory. Trying to activivate 35 models is 5 mins especially in a Killbox scenario with fiddly units like my bile thralls.(who blow themselves up in 180 degree arc out to 6 inches killing friend of foe) who need to placed exactly..was simply not possible in the rookie state of warmachine that my brain is currently wired. I had several turns where units were missing activations or just activating to pass..to get to terminus who I didnt have enought time to sort what he was going to do..it was trainwreck and in short despite doing some seriously killing of felix's rank and file stuff...he just ran his big nasty jacks in on his feat turn and crushed me twice, the second time just for good measure clearly illustrating I am not ready for a 5 min hardcore steamroller in anyway but the paint department.

Blackbanes Ghost Raiders

Given the paint requirements, retooling my list isnt possible by tomorrow morning but its pretty clear to me for an event like this you want to go lean and mean with the least amount of activations possible to do the job...having 3 X 10 man units with special actions...ranged attacks, dual attacks and the tough rule...was just assine, basically counterproductive given the time constraints. What I am quickly finding out about Privateer Press in contrast to Games Workshop is, where Games Workshop writes its core rules to sell you the most models they possibly can, PP writes its events to sell you the most models it can, from multiple lists being required, to totally different formats at different point levels you need a wide variety of stuff just be able to "show up and play" and be competitive. It all good though and with 3 different casters and around 50 models and good selection of warjacks..I have enough stuff..I just need to compartmentalize so I can list build to the event in question and get my head wrapped around all the complexities of this game. SO, with whole life of miniatures gaming under my belt, I must admit that with only 3 months and a couple dozen games under my belt, when it comes to Warmachine, I am not Hardcore.

Bile Thralls

I am going to do my best to get some gaming in August and see where I am in in September and maybe shoot for a 7 min timed event first...baby steps right?

On the subject of paint, these are finished and semi finished shots, still have work to do on the big guy like the wings and some touch ups, the rest of the units and solo models (missing from the photos and in my list is a Pistol Wraith) are WIP in the base coated/ wash phase,
I stuck with nautical theme so the colors sea foam green and copper with heavy oxidation are everywhere, plus a little seaweed where needed. I am going to continue along and finish these guys up in the next few weeks and I'll get them up in Warmachine gallery on the sidebar.

Boarding Action

2011-07-20T20:57:00.005-05:00

A couple of great games of Legends of the High Seas last night, the 2 games were rounds 9 and 10 of the Campaign roughly half the players are fielding crews of 20 and higher and there are some serious tough customers currently sailing the Caribbean in our little world.

Not the prettiest board yet, the lexan is test piece for doing a water surface..once I dry brush it, Ill see I a couple different colors can mask that rigid geometry

We finally got around to playing the boarding action scenario using my WIP Old Glory Brig as the second ship. pretty much complete outside of the paint and rigging..its sporting a custom add on bottom to give it some height as the stock model is waterlined way too high for my tastes (and the other ships) has an added forecastle and entry point.and is sporting 3, Triple sailed masts. General consensus was that this ship was just to small for this scenario and was really just good for a set piece..so the scenario languished un-played through out the campaign. I'm glad some of the guys gave it shot as well a myself, as it was a blast, the swinging climbing and jumping was very pirates of the classic movies. Size constraints and the 1 inch control zone literally meant you had to brawl you way through the mob, both our captains got into some dicey situations as a result..as you can imagine and out of action rolls for your Veteran Heroes and Captain after 10 rounds are not rolls you want to be making Fortunately for the Crew of Delivery we killed most of the pirate crew before the "Red Devil" himself, Guillaume LeClerc got away with a few deck hands.

collecting dust for years..I finally figured out how make this ship work for me aesthetically, hopefully can see the promise here, is should look just as good as "The Griffon" before too long.I plan on two much larger ships for the Boarding Action at Adepticon in 2012, these small ships will be terrain pieces on other boards.

My Navy Crew also prevailed in my defense of the a captured Privateer hero put on trial for piracy as his crew desperately tried to free him from the Prison at New Providence. A good week for the Royal Navy going 2-0 after 2 losses last time. One more round to go before we declare the winner of this campaign coming up in a month. 1 more meeting with 2 games to go. As usual scoring updates are on my Legends of the High Seas campaign blog

A Shot from Prison Break, the Abel Seaman held the line here with some support from my Hired Hands (not pictured) Buy My Marines won the day along with my ferocious Lieutenant who missed the first games being immediately put out of action and then captured has come back "Hardened" and is my toughest sailor hands down.

The truth is out there

2011-07-10T23:47:00.024-05:00

Let me tell you about my Saturday Night. I attended Blood in the Sun a 50 player WFB tourney here in my area this weekend but not as a WFB player...I showed up at 8 pm Saturday Night to meet some pals and play Warmachine on the tables for the open gaming they had going on.

Considering I knew many players there, it was certainly weird showing up a Warhammer tournament and not playing Warhammer, and I had to explain myself to at least 3 people. But this is the world I now find myself in. I was a registered player and attendee of this event and planned on playing all the way up until probably the last week of June. When an odd series of occurrences somewhat snowballed into all 3 of us (myself and the two guys I was riding over and rooming with from our club) having serious issues with attending the event. For me it was a quick but mandatory overnight, out of town work trip getting in way and not allowing me to be there Friday night as planned. Instead making me head out early Saturday morning for the 10am game one. While not the earliest table call I've ever had but if my 730 am flight home touchdown was late (and when you count on those things they always are) with a 45 min+ drive to the venue.. I was screwed.

On top of that I also to face up to the reality this had become a major tournament with alot of notable regional players and I had played exactly ONE game of WFB since Adepticon. My knowledge of the 8th ed rules is still muddled with 7th ed hold overs that my brain isnt letting go..I know zero about, nor I have played a game against 8th ed version of Orcs, Tomb Kings or even VC,or Dwarfs..8th ed incarnations. The cool terrain contest aside, spending a few hundred bucks to get rolled all weekend suddenly became less than appealing. With 10 person wait list with a couple diehard players I know on it...I did the right thing and bowed out (in fact all three of us did). in favor of people that should be there.

As a result I was glad I did because the first thing I hear when I show up besides people are shocked that a Bretonnian player with one Trebuchet is running the tables and way ahead ( he goes on to win B.O.- so congrats guy whomever you are!) The other talk is that they changed the blood & glory scenario and (there was only one)..so when you lost your banners you didnt lose the game, just couldnt use your general or BSB any longer. Considering I signed up for this event after Adepticon, on the talk that alternate means of scoring where being considered, including Blood and Glory on numerous scenarios. I would have seriously been bummed out to find out the day of how the scenarios actually shook out. (They did not release the scenarios before the event)

I am sure they did this because of pressure from the status quo to go with the flow, that "flow" being the horribly annoying way Warhammer is currently being organized. The result being standard "by the book" scenarios with B&G neutered so people didn't whine. Outside of confirmation for myself in that I made the right decision, this event looked super well organized and well run by some great guys.(They even had the scores up tonight! ) If I only I liked the game in its current state, I surely would give this event a big thumbs up. IF you are digging 8th edition and its current tournament application then do put this event on your list next year for sure. Unfortunately for me, it was only again confirmation, with an outside looking in revelation that there will be no Warhammer Fantasy Battles for me in the foreseeable future.

We must take these changes in life in context. For me context is everything. I am one of those people who sees something under a different context and its just not the same. Regardless if its outward appearance remains unchanged. A great example I like to use to illustrate my mindset is the TV show from the 1990's the X-files. I loved this show when it aired for probably 5 years, (Coincidentally the same as my love affair with WFB) My girlfriend (now wife) and I planned our social lives around watching this show, (because my VHS recordings of it at the time looked like crap) and used to get together with a group of friends on Friday nighst to watch it religiously (kind of like our current "club night") As its almost decade of seasons rolled on, and of course like any show its quality deteriorated, I became aware of what an utter contemptuous d-bag David Duchovny apparently was in real life how he didn't particularly like the show, and it was just a paycheck until he could get some "real movie work" . While a normal person can separate things like that from the their enjoyment of it, I just cant and eventually there came a point when I watched the show and all I could think about was how insincere he actually was (I guess people call that acting?) and soon after I ceased giving a shit about the show, stopped watching it and life went on.

A funny anecdote I must add here in that many years after the show was off the air somewhere around 2007..I met Gillian Anderson a few times as she and I shared the same taste in restaurants and I kept seeing her at a particular place I like to eat near my work...eventually I was seated next to her and her husband and small child, while I with my wife and small child. we exchanged pleasantries, and eventually saw and repeated the episode again with some more chit chat. While very charming and nice, her comments on the show in our brief conversations where akin to hey it was "cool" but it was again "a paycheck".

Games Workshop is like the X-Files to me, I can still appreciate it to a certain point but in the end I am finding it hollow and insincere because of antipathy it has for it customers and too many of its customers obliviousness or acceptance of that antipathy. While one shouldn't obsess about thing you can have no control over and just enjoy what you can, there is no disputing GW's variety of offenses of late really pushed some buttons with me, that have had an impact on me as a player.

When you invest a ton of time and money or emotion into someone else product you want it to be as important to them as it is to you, but in life that often just not the case. its just a "paycheck".

There are just too many of other great games out there to sit there and say "I want to believe" when as a guy with all kinds of miniatures not just my 5000 points of painted Empire the miniatures/wargaming hobby keeps chugging along and getting bigger and better all the time.

So that was my Saturday night I sat at tables of a Warhammer tournament I wasnt playing in -playing Warmachine and actually did wonder if any of guys were upstairs watching reruns of the Xfiles.

Hail Caesar- Putting it to the test!

2011-07-06T18:32:00.016-05:00

The battle line are drawn, a whopping 325+ models

We played our first game of Warlord Games new "Hail Caesar" rules last night and I am glad to say it was great success..despite the mandatory rulebook scouring the game moved along, well played well and most importantly felt like a "real wargame" . After years of Wargaming with results determined by random dice idiocy. It was great see a game where I felt the randomness was in "all the right places". I really felt like we were in control of our forces and results were risk vs reward based on choice of engagement. I think there is good balance in this games effectiveness between the excellent orders systems, the minimization of shooting, (where it can, of course be deadly, but not game controlling) and a great Hand to Hand systems, most of our questions had to do required movement due proximity of enemy units and what happens to units that have retreated have not broken. I answered 99% of these myself by going the rule book in detail with examples of our own play fresh in my head. (Disordered but unshaken unit moves off the table is it destroyed?)

Games is big enough that I can only fit half in a shot.

Mocked up command stands. Hail Caesar recommends round bases for command units and square for regular units for easy id...I like that idea...looks cool too.

Our game was set toward the end of the Dark Ages with my English Forces (Saxon /Norman) vs Muslims circa 1100AD either an unaccounted for skirmish or something that could have been during the First Crusade, Rich ran his awesome Arab force which can easily proxy just about any Muslim force from Ancient times up until 1400 or so thats a pretty good investment as a historical army and that being the case his force is pretty large and mostly painted as he been working on it for a couple years now.

This was not good for Rich's Ghulam Heavy Cav., we got a bit cocky after this and decided to try out a "sweeping advance" sounded good in practice but I ended up disordered, facing another cav charge, not such a good idea after all.

Norman Knights in the flank couldn't break these guys one of the only incidents in a 3 hour game were fluky dice roll had any impact.

My Saxon forces on the other hand are straight up to Hastings era force (Alfred to Harold), so we added some Normans in to round it out to be a joint English force similar to what I imagine Henry the 1st..army would of looked like although I am sure he would have had much more Cavalry. Yes I know my army is completely bare lead or primed, at this point. But since my last Hail Caesar post I made alot of progress with the modeling and figuring out "what" I want this army to look like, which was something I wasn't wrapping my head around with WAB. So do expect some paint soon as this game is winner and if I am loving it I am surely painting it. Although there are rules for a multiplayer game, we played it as one on one, even thou Aaron was running one of my Division with the Norman additions to my force.

Conquests Norman Knights..a great kit and to scale..with Gripping Beast, Crusader and Perry Figs..as well with Warlord plastics..not always the case with new plastic figs.

Army lists are posted here courtesy of Chicago Terrain Factory.

Playing on the full 4 x 8 table was really the minimum required here, as when all was laid out there was over 325 models on the table. Now that's what a proper wargame should look like! There was too much going on to field a battle reports see the comments under the photos for some insight into the battle. The Muslims won in squeaker mainly due to my shaken Huscarls who were managing to holding fast despite being "shaken" eventually retreating into a hill and being destroyed on a tied combat.

End of the game here, my Huscarls taking there second flank hit of game, after winning and breaking a flanker in a previous engagement. tied the combat with only 1/2 attacks..force to make a break test..I rolled a "5" with no modifier, I had taken 6 wounds at this point my Stamina total so I was "shaken" thereby making my break result.."Give Ground Disordered with Supports together" While I didnt have any supports I retreated straight into that hill to the right, which broke me.

Look for lots more Hail Caesar soon, as the 2012 Adepticon Ancient online Campaign incorporates multiple rules sets (not just WAB)

My Crusader Viking Raiders here on the right were the money, Destroying those light cav to the top of the photo and doing a sweeping advance into the other unit of cav, destroying them in two turns. The Vikings "Tough Fighters" rule, gives you one failed attack reroll, you wouldnt think one die is a big deal but it is...these guys where my all -stars.

4 Wounds and two units of enemy cavalry later but still solid and victorious!, alas they weren't in the middle of the table were we eventually got butchered....

The Learning Curve

2011-06-29T14:20:00.002-05:00

If I get to keep playing Warmachine this much I figure I'll actually know how to play well by the end of the Summer. Nate brought over his Trollbloods yesterday for my second crack at Warmachine vs Hordes. I brought out my Bile Thralls for the first time, considering Nates lack of shooting they were a good choice, against the last Retribution list I played not so much.I finally have Skarre figured out...although I keep thinking shes tougher than she is, but after her feat turn she is super super fragile. still I could have pulled it of win here but bungled the chance

35 Points
My Cryx

pSkarre
Slayer
Reaper

6 Bile Thralls
6 Revenant Crew
Captain Rengrave
10 Blackbanes Ghost Raiders
Pistol Wraiths x 2

Nate's Trollbloods

Madrak Ironhide, World Ender
Dire troll Mauler
Pyre Troll
Troll Impaler

Fell Caller Hero
5 Trollkin Champs
10 Fennblades.

I keep the Pirates and Jacks close. The Bile Thrall were on the flank with facing the Troll Champs. Blackbane and company were on the other flank close between myself and the Fennblades. Pistol Wraiths were close to my jacks to support and go after the solo asap.

Game went very well, the bile thralls..absolutely put a major stink all over the Champions basically making them worthless (my Jacks came in and cleaned them out in a turn) and eventually blew the Fell Caller too. ..the Pistols wraiths ended up going after the Impaler which killed one them with a beefy spear shot. The other however, kept blasting away getting the deathchill every turn keeping the impaler in check with only one action a turn. I declared my feat early..I think a turn too early...as I wanted to gid rid of the Fennblades and Blackbane and Crew now P&S 15 (thanks to my feat)...did so easily on my turn even though the "tough" troll infantry saved three of them, but they where just killed the next turn.

Madrak is a beast..I never go into close combat with him..because he wrecked my slayer quite readily with his reach and threw a axe and popped the second pistol wraith easy. Madrak was tying up both my jacks..but Nate got the Dire Troll into Skarre...my feats huge ARM bump saved me from his attacks but I was still almost dead. I used Ritual sacrifice and ended up with 11 focus on my following turn..

Stupidly..I should have kept it all for Skarre just bought additional attacks and boosted until I killed the troll, However..I cast Dark Guidance...thinking I have 4 Pirates and Blackbane sitting right there ( Rengrave got killed in trample attack that put the troll into me in the first place)
I figured I'll gang everyone up on him and it will help put him away. Stupid...first of all, I immediately knocked the troll down with Great Rack so everyone else attacking auto hit and so I didn't need the 4 point Dark Guidance. Skarre pounds the troll, I buy extra attacks with soul drinker and heal up some wounds and put about 15 or so the troll..everyone else can not wound the damn thing..and buying 4 extra or boosted attacks for Skarre with that focus I wasted surely would have done it. as result on nates turn...my ARM back to 16...a huge damage roll of 30 on his first attacks puts me away (I only had 9 or 10 points left)...dumb. Nates caster was pretty much untouched but the all the Warbeasts were seriously hurting and if I had just put the troll away, Madrak was in trouble..as still had a couple Bile Thralls, an undamaged Reaper, most of the Ghost Raiders and Skarre and a couple Pirates left.

Anyway I got this game figured out as much as I know my own units. I am aware I'm not running close to an optimal build with pSkarre but its what I have...I have Terminus on the bench right now..and he seems alot more suited for the units I have...so I'll plan on giving him a tryout this weekend...thinking about trying to play in this event up at Games Plus end of the month its an all painted event...I am currently painting away...and everything is already primed and based- its doable...its only 30 models..and the 1/3 of them (the ghost raiders) are almost done so we'll see. Aaron and I get together Saturday for a couple of games. Then we try out "Hail Caesar", next Tuesday.

Hail Caesar and Some

2011-06-27T12:00:00.009-05:00

After checking out Rich's copy and reading some combat examples over at the Warlord Games website. I was excited at what I read. and the Hail Caesar book showed up at my doorstep mid last week. A departure from the large army wargames I am used to, Its a a non-bucket of dice game, While I am fine with WAB 2.0 as its an iteration of WFB 7th ed. Where I really like WAB 2.0's scoring system but It still has its annoying kinks, where random dice too often overrule common sense and psychology effects are just a tad too overwhelming to quantify as "fun". As a result trying another Ancients gaming system that seems to get away from these things and offers some new ideas with alot more modeling freedom, wasn't a hard sell.

Hail Caesar's rules also don't require individual model basing or fixed unit sizes. units fight as who;e units (not individuals in the unit) and casualties count toward morale checks and stack..so there is no need for pulling a model per wound ( you can- but its not needed a dozen counters will suffice) This gives you alot more modeling options for things like Shieldwalls and Warbands.

Unlike other games we are familiar with, Units will very rarely fight down to the last man before one breaks, somewhere after 4-8 casualties a unit (depending on its size) becomes "Shaken" and after that they start making break tests. You can of course continue to make your break tests and continue taking casualties but once you hit twice your "Stamina" in KIA's your going to auto break. There are ton of options for what happens when you break depending on the unit and its skill. Breaking doesnt automatically mean removed from the table. the best troops can of course regroup and keep on fighting , while others are scattered to the winds. There is also a detailed Orders system that enables you to declare orders and make multiple moves should your leadership succeed. Armies are arranged in divisions with sub commanders then an overall General, you know, like a real army.

I really like what I am seeing here with Hail Caesar, it makes sense, is very intuitive and leaves bases sizes and army lists up to the player. There is alot more open ended "player agreement" here, which is totally fine by me and fun for a game with adults. The rigidity of GW's rules and its tournament application often followed to letter and the arguments about RAW or RAI (rules as written or rules as intended) are about as tasty these days as cup of pisswater.

Hail Caesar is both simplified in its dice mechanic but complex from a tactical standpoint in regards to units there use and movement as a result this game reads like a breath of fresh air, I have yet to try it that is happening on July 5th, until them we are working on getting our armies sorted. Rich and I are working on getting four full side prepared, Ancients- Romans vs Britons and Dark Ages Anglo Saxons vs Arabs...my Saxons will be seeing the field of battle first I am sure. Since I saw a box of Conquests new Norman Knights floating around my basement last club night, I think I'll be seeing my traditional nemesis soon as well.

It worth a mention that another great thing about these rules is they are very amendable to other types of games. The Hail Caesar Yahoo group has some great discussion going on about Lord of the Rings...while things like magic and hero use will take some creative thought and house ruling, army to army type combat with fantasy armies with this system , simply blows stuff like War of the Ring and WFB's current incarnation out of the Water.

Go figure- this game was written by Rick Priestly, who worked for Games Workshop forever writing many folks favorite games (mine: LotR SBG) or editions of their favorite games. I don't know with any certainty but scuttlebutt on various forums seems that he left GW over differences with various games "new directions" and a personal quest to do his own thing. It not like there have not been alot of big changes at GW within the last 3 years. As a result, like alot of us it seemed the love affair with Games Workshop is over. Congrats Rick. I surely get some review opinions and Hail Caesar action reports in for our Ancients gaming as soon as we start throwing dice.

Warmachine Rolls on...

2011-06-24T14:06:00.006-05:00

Played a couple of great games of Warmachine Wednesday with two of my favorite fellow disgruntled WFB players Steve and Brian. I've known both since the early days of 7th ed, Both plainly state they have moved to Warmachine and are not looking back. I have two reasons I am still hanging on to WFB, one is my love for my Empire Army that I have 5 years of work into, the other is to socialize with guys like Steve and Brian, with guys like this dropping from the fold, I don't think I will be far behind.

I am still hanging on by my fingernails and have what looks to be a great WFB event (Blood in the Sun) right around the corner, how that plays out with dictate my interest in the fall. That and of course how bad Matt Wards new surely horrible book, aka "Storm of Magic", further pollutes the local WFB pool.

The fact that Rick Priestly is gone from GW and writes the fantastic "Hail Caesar!" (more on that in my next post) and Matt Ward who wrote the freaking DoC Army book for WFB and War of the Ring still has a job as is writing new supplements for GW is pretty telling in my opinion on the piss poor decisions being made in Nottingham. I swear from the looks of things its not long before we see crappy pre painted plastics on the shelves of Walmart with "Games Workshop" all over them.

Anyway back onto our Warmachine recap, we could get a 4th so we really on got two games in my Cryx force versus Retribution then the Legion.

At 35 points our lists were

CRYX

pSkarre
Reaper
Slayer
Deathripper

10 Blackbanes Ghost Raider
6 Revenant Crew
3 Black Ogrun Boarding Party
Captain Rengrave
Pistol Wraith

LEGION

pThagrosh
Carnivean
Angelious
Shredder x2

Striders +UA
Blighted Ogrun (warmongers?)
Forsaken

RETRIBUTION OF SCYRAH

Ravyn
Manticore
Griffon

10 Dawnguard Invictors
w/ UA Officer and Standard
10 Mage Hunter Strike Force
w/ UA Commander
Stormfall archers
House Shyeel Magister

Game 1 was versus Brian's Retribution...where he showed me how mage hunters work by killing me in one round. rebooting for a second game after that lesson. I gave him a much better game...but being afraid of mage hunters made me overly cautious...I fed my unit to him piecemeal and by the time I killed the mage hunters (or most of them) I'd lost to much stuff the threated Ravyn, a Manticore a Griffon, and half a squad of invictors with Skarre and few Revenant Crew...I did put a few wounds on Ravyn via backlash but that was it.

I went down to Ravyn and the Griffon pretty easily being already wounded..by my own feat and a couple of shooting wounds. Ravyn has this great move combo where she can shoot, melee attack, shoot again, and melee attack again etc..until she runs out of focus...she single handedly wiped 7 of my Ghost Raiders..the turn before they went incorp again...which was a bummer.. anyway tough list.

Game 2 was versus Steve's Legion. Steve mainly plays his Cygnar he brought out his Legion so he could show me the Hordes side of things and how it played.. I immediately got tied up with both his beasts while being harrased by the Striders on one flank. I was setup to do Ok, but fail to kill Angelious (who I have to kill twice as Thagrosh's feat is too totally resurrect it) I stupidly keep forgeting about Skarre Sacrificial Strike...which could have finished the thing numerous times as i had the bodies and the focus and It was only attacking me via its reach while engaged with my mangled Reaper.But I was too worried about the Shredders..anyway..I was careless and died.

At least losing all these matches, its showing me whats up, I'm not playing enough and am doing enough other things that everytime I play I feel like I am playing catch up with rules. I realize my units arent the most ideal for my caster. From what I read it appears from the way I like to play and units I have Terminus is the caster for me. but I like Skarre and want to learn to get decent with her. Anyway Warmachine is steep learning curve but I am really loving the game. Look for some painted units coming this way soon.

Monthly Pirate Update

2011-06-23T18:25:00.004-05:00

When this...

Our 3rd meeting of our Legends of the High Seas Campaign took place on Tuesday evening. 6 crews fighting for domination in our little mock up of the Caribbean circa 1720. My Royal Navy Crew took its lumps losing both games this week, however both losses where totally negligible in the campaign phase where I had only permanent losses of a few able Seamen. I played my own Raise the Flag scenario, which went quite well until a bad round turned things around...I ended up conceding before I took a chance as my very experienced hero's having to roll on that scary injury chart, even with the Surgeon I am wary..in fact my Midshipman took a chest wound and is now Defense 2. Still Adam and I agreed it was one of the better games we both played in the campaign.

The second game was quite similar as we demoed my scenario on my ship wreck board. Joe, my opponent had a larger crew than I did, got to both wrecks first and found all the chests quickly (which have to moved to your D zone to score)bad luck, placement, and poor rolls on shooting to wounds..had me breaking first and things went south quickly again I conceded.I did manage to capture on of Adams heroes.(via "Captured" on the injury chart) so he and I will play prison break first thing next week. 2 rounds, 4 games to go. As usual scoring update, etc are on my Legends of the High Seas campaign blog

Goes to this, you best give up the ship or meet Davey Jones locker.

Just a teaser WIP pic of new lighthouse for the shipwreck board, looks much more appropriate. Top section goes on this weekend. photos soon.

Pilots House

2011-06-13T00:25:00.005-05:00

My original favorite terrain medium was plastic kits until I got my skills up with the Hirst stuff and there is was going back. Still it takes a great plastic kit to catch my eye and those are few and far between these days. I do however have a bunch of opened, (i.e non returnable) GW and Pegasus plastic kits gathering dust..in my recent attempts to shed all my GW fat, I found myself staring at the GW Chapel.I never got great use out of any my plastic Warhammer terrain, my Watchtower gets some use, but usually some one or another always feels slighted when you bunker up in the building or use buildings to circumvent some other bad situation. While some people call this Warhammer tactics. I find it usually boiling down to ye who uses WFB lousy building rules to their advantage first wins.

As result plastic kits like this always find much more use for dioramas, set pieces or the best use Skirmish games. Since my interest these days lies squarely with Skirmish games over the large format wargames. Doing something with this thing had found its proper time.

Coincidentally the next WFB tourney I am playing here locally has a terrain contest, and since this meets all the criteria, its going to be my entry, That was probably in the back of my mind as the thing that got me started on this but with Pirates going, my early steps with War Machine, LotR or working on my own ruleset. I am always looking for stuff in the fantasy style that could be used with various systems. It is also the perfect addition for another piece for my town board..(which is getting another 3 x 3 add on real soon)

I should also mention I was inspired by user Galland on the lead adventure forums pirate buildings, he converted this piece as normal church and built an incredible scratch Pilots house, While I decided to use it for the Pilots house. Thankfully the kit is pretty flexible. there are enough doo dads you can do alot with it..I did bore out most of the windows skulls and church and GW iconography with a dremel before putting together and using some plastic needlepoint grid for window lattice., and of course the whole thing its augmented with the Hirst fieldstone base and some interiors floor and wooden pieces. The bay window is an old armorcast piece I've had for many years and never found anything to do with...mast and rope ladder nothing more than a dowel and string. This was built very quickly and looks great sitting at the end of the dock as the Pilot house, you can use the upper floor and mast for play easily with LotHS rules. The end result is very "mordheimy" more than historical for sure..but that ok..I like the GW Fantasy IP when it comes to Mordhein quite a bit..in fact I am getting the itch to play it with all crossover it has to Pirates.

The Ruined Tower and the Impatient man.

2011-06-08T23:48:00.005-05:00

I am not a patient man, odd I choose a hobby that demands much patience. I've always considered it a exercise in self discipline. I had been wanting to build the Ruined Tower or "Not Weathertop" as its often called for a long time now and just never got around to it. I had already cast all the blocks and built the base back in the Winter, the last time I had the urge, but ran out of gas before continuing thru to the build. Over this Memorial Day weekend, I found some time waiting impatiently for other things to dry, cure. And I thought. "Well- I'll just throw this together, how hard can it be?. This is not a hard piece to build, in fact I think its listed as one of the beginner pieces on the Hirst Arts site.The casting level is easy as it and the whole build only uses the one mold.(#65) The key to this project is to follow Bruce Hirst's directions on his website to the letter. I, however decided I didnt want to build it as specified but with the base as totally separate piece. In the original plans each section is attached to the floor. I attached the floors to the terrain piece/base and wanted each section as a single removable piece.

While it doesn't sound like a huge difference it is when you build it as gluing the pieces to the floor and working up allows you a symmetry you don't get working top down or from the middle, as I did. In short after I glued up the entire back section it was out of wack so I had to break it apart and do a half dozen casts to get the clean pieces I needed to get it straight. I also made the mistake of mixing block made from merlins magic and hydro stone...as both plasters cure differently even the perfect scrape every time will yield different finish depths between the two materials. To do a good build of this model all you blocks must be identical in depth. Any discrepancy will throw that big curved back wall out of shape.

My end result is less than perfect but is more than fine for my uses and can dual as the multi use terrain piece I wanted. The painting was very easy taking no more a hour or so to base coat, coat with my go to woodland scenic's umber,and go back and dry brush the thing. with one overnight dry period it still took me 4 evenings, instead of the two I was envisioning but another Hirst Lesson learned.

If you want to build this piece, and are not an experienced caster..I suggest you buy the blocks already cast from several vendors out there that sell licensed Hirst blocks, and then follow the directions and you will have a great build on your hands in no time. If you want to re-invent the wheel like find myself doing more often than not...then cheers to you man!.

(Here's the stripped down version of the build here, and why I didnt want to attach the floors to the walls)

Shipwreck- WIP

2011-05-31T19:26:00.007-05:00

Ive been pretty remiss in posting "work in progress" shots and since most of my hobby time these days involves things like this, I should probably step it up or be in fear that people think I dont actually do these myself. Here my skirmish board, called "Shipwreck" its a 3 x 3 Skirmish board that if comes according to plan will be the center piece of my Adepticon Legend of the High Seas event next year and will surely see use for a variety of games as fits.

The idea of the board is a rocky beach at low tide, where a wreck has been pushed to shore and broken on the rocks. The surface of this board will be 80% or so water or in this case clear resin. Thin layer of resin will tinted and poured over a painted sandy bottom. There's also a nice section of beach rolling up to a cliff that ends with crumbling lighthouse with water cresting up on the rocks below.

The cliff here is a combination of Foam, plaster rock from molds from Woodland Scenics and of course the lighthouse is from Hirst. Although I already built the majority of the ruin its getting scrapped in favor of a round one. I ordered the 4" round tower mold because I looked at it, it just seemed more and more appropriate. So expect a round crumbling tower in the end instead of square one. The Coral rocks are aquarium pieces that where on closeout from the local Pet Smart and I eyed them while there getting some Cat food and snag them both for $6 each.

I put some figures out here for the sense of scale..as you can see while not a full 4 x 4 the board is quite large with plenty of room for 40-50 model skirmish if need be. The predominate feature here is of course the two piece Shipwreck from Ziterdes in Germany. I have been eyeing this for awhile but buying from the EU was cost prohibitive. Luckily I found someone here in the US on ebay selling alot of Ziterdes stuff at a significant discount...with the product already being here the shipping cost was nominal, So I essentially got both parts for the price of the large section shipped from the EU. Good Deal..that's what made this board happen.

Envirotex Lite is the clear resin of choice..several notable modelers I know used this for their displays at Adepticon this year..and after my last disaster with pourable water, I needed a product that dried rock hard and would not get damaged from play. This seems to fit the bill perfectly but since everything on this board is going to be permanently fixed and painted BEFORE I pour the resin numerous test pouring must be done to ensure it doesnt get screwed up because if not the whole board would be ruined after all the work was essentially done, which would be disastrous. If you notice the water is only going to be 1/8 to 1/4" deep the trim pieces when fixed and chalked on the inside seam will be what holds the resin in place as it dries.

Expect to this get painted this month as the board and its accompanying scenario will be making and appearance in our Legends of the High Seas Campaign that is ongoing with its next meet coming up June 24th , its extremely doubtful that water will be done by then as I going to do as many mock up pours on smaller pieces as I need to make sure its right...so until then expect a few followup updates and even some games played on it before the final reveal of the finished product.

Pirates!, a Tale....

2011-05-26T12:21:00.007-05:00

I went to see On Stranger Tides yesterday with my wife and kids and outside the movie being a big "meh" other than the kick ass version of Queen Annes Revenge they've made for this film. The film only illustrated what a great night of Pirates we had Tuesday evening at the second meeting of our Legends of the High Seas Campaign. We are 6 games into the Campaign and many of us have crews around 20 models. While many great games were played, I wanted to talk about my second game of the evening that was about as good as any skirmish game can get.

The game was against Aaron and it was our first meet of the campaign...Aaron's crew of his ship "The Red Devil" or (Diables Rouge as his men are French) is 4-0 at this point, and my Royal Navy Crew of the HMS Delivery, are 2-2 at this point. The Mission was Jungle Run which is a campaign and slightly harder version of the scenario I came up with for my Adepticon event.

A brief synopsis: both crews start on the beach and have to fight there way thru the jungle and each other to grab the Idol sitting on top of the Pyramid, in the back 1/3 of table and bring it back to the boat. the caveat is not only is idol trapped(D6 chart, reaction varies) but once you grab it 10 Natives come on to board (Scatter die board edge, D6 per turn) to take it back killing anyone in their way. The idol is worth 200 doubloons in campaign funds and its 5D6 income roll if you win this scenario, so for my crew this is huge as I am currently bankrupt and could not afford to replace my full crew after round 4's loss. Aaron has plenty of loot..so are motivations to win this surely dictated how we played.

My crew was 14, including 4 veteran marines, My Captain and Lieutenant, Our Indian scout w/ Musket, (Hired Hand, Island Native) and 7 sailors with various weapons. Aaron's crew was 12, including his deadly Quartermaster and the Missionary- Hired Hand.

Aaron got the first turn and wisely ran all his crew into the Jungle as I had lined up on the beach to shoot him down if he had not. It wasn't long until we blasting away at each rarely killing anything with all the "in the way's" and "hit the deck" checks we were making. I had sent my Captain, Scout, and Sailors into the jungle while leaving my Lt and Marines on the beach so they could move to the center of the board and have a clear shooting view of the pyramid. I figured (correctly) that aaron would grab the idol first and I could shoot at him all the way to beach and at least try to get him in melee close to the boat and have him do all the heavy lifting of the idol, while taking it for myself at the last minute ( more a Pirates thinking, than a Navy Captains, but hey!).

We both pushed on toward the Pyramid, He indeed getting his Quartermaster up to the Idol first..setting off the spear trap, and his high defense saving him. A big melee broke out around the base of the Pyramid with the whole Pirate crew and my men. and thats when the Natives showed up. Aaron rolled "5" for Natives for the 1st turn, so 5 of them appeared at the rear of the Pyramid, Natives weapons were WYSIWYG so they had variety of stuff, 3 with shooting and they all missed the quartermaster. In the big melee, the killing is pretty even at this point. we are both only down 3 or 4 models. The second turn that natives arrived...I roll a "3" but they came on the edge of the beach, behind my marines who had been shooting into this mess where they could but not killing a thing. my Lt and Marines now have there attention turned toward 3 natives bearing down on them. The other 5 natives come over the Pyramid after the idol. Aaron pulls his Quartermaster off the idol and this guy is killing machine with 3 attacks moves him into melee. Aaron has his Missionary and another Pirate trying to get the idol toward the beach..but they are caught by the natives and remaining two come on from the closet table edge to where the Idol was not good. meanwhile my Captain and Scout and fighting Aarons Captain and a few other guys in a mutual high defense combat with heroes with multiple fortune points, so its
going nowhere.

Aarons Quartermaster is taking out natives, like a human blender..but the rest of his crew isn't so lucky and are dying like flies. Natives kill off his men, recover the idol and start taking it back to the top of the pyramid. My marines and Lt have killed 2 of the natives..but the third wont die and is tying me up..so I surround him with 5 guys to make sure I kill him. Aaron is making rout checks at this point and I am one away, losing 6 of my sailors. I finally gain some ground and Aarons Captain finally succumbs to our attacks. The only model Aaron has on the table is his Quartermaster..who agian makes his courage check and engaged by Natives kills the last of them and recovers the idol. His quartermaster kills 6 natives single handedly. However ,freed of the Natives myself ( my Lt killing two himself) I had moved my Marines up to be in musket range.

On my shooting phase I open up with the muskets and put Aarons heroic quartermaster down as stood alone on the Pyramid steps with idol. his fortune long since burned on the non stop combat. So No Pirates, No Natives, the Navy stands alone on the table and wins the scenario and recovers the idol. A huge win for us, just when I needed it.

The only downside of this game was during the campaign phased Aaron rolled a "12" on the Hero injury chart for his awesome Quartermaster..so he was Dead, killed permanently from the campaign, a glorious death for sure..but sucks for Aaron, on top of that Aaron rolled a whole bunch of (1" and 2's..meaning out of action crew members died and just weren't wounded) so he literally lost at least half his crew and one Hero...I had 4 of my 6 guys out die as well.....so it was a true bloodbath with 10 deaths between the crews. but one of the best and most exciting game of the campaign.

For stats and updates on this Legends of the High Seas campaign see the Campaign Blog, and if you want more photos see my Legends of the High Seas Gallery.

Skarre vs Severius- 35pts

2011-05-22T17:55:00.011-05:00

Felix stopped by Friday afterwork and we got in a couple 35 point games before we both went to eat dinner with our better halves. Currently while I am not griping about Games Workshop, I've either been prepping for our next Pirate Campaign Night (games 3-6, take place this Tuesday, stay tuned for my next post "Shipwrecked!") or playing Warmachine, With some creative trading, and some gift cards from the holidays, I am at about up to 40 models for my Cryx...enough for both my Skarre and Denegrah lists..and staying with the Pirate theme I'm thinkinbg my next caster is going to be Terminus. Getting way ahead of myself here, because I still need to learn how to play. I have alot better handle on Skarre now, and I think once I learn the rules and don't do stupid things that kill me ( like the one that lost me the 1st game this day) I think I can start winning a few.

My List

Pirate Queen Skarre
Reaper
Slayer
Deathripper

Captain Rengrave
Black Ogryn Boarding Party (Leader and 2 Grunts)
Blackbanes Ghost Raiders (Leader and 5 Grunts)
Revenant Crew (Leader and 5 Grunts)

Pistol Wraith x 2

Felix's Protecorate of Menoth List

Hierarch Severius
Blessing of Vengeance
Reckoner
Hierophant
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 5 Grunts)
Exemplar Cinerators (Leader and 2 Grunts)
Idrian Skirmishers (Leader and 9 Grunts)
Idrian Skirmishers Chieftain & Guide (attachments)
The Covenant of Menoth
The Wrack (3 wracks)

We just did a standard skirmish and we used my Jungle Terrain on a 4x4 board. Game 1 was a straight forward affair..where Felix brought his Skirmishers with the Pathfinder ability all over the Pyramid. The Choir boosted their Defense considerably and used their "Prey" ability (they selected my Black Ogryn) to put pressure on me to act. I brought the Reaper up to try it out it missed and summarily got Wrecked next turn by a crap load of shooting. I fared better on the left where the Black Orgyn brought some pain to the Cinerators. On the Right Blackbanes Ghost Raiders and my Pistol Wraiths who planned on storming the right flank with their Incorporeal awesomeness but had to divert to take on the Idrians on the Pyramid. Just went it was going to get good..The screwed my charge lanes with my Slayer (due the Reaper Wreck) unnecessarily exposed Skarre, and found my Slayer totally not where I wanted it. Next turn Felix Charged Skarre with the Reckoner and pounded her to dust. Why I defensively use my feat after I screwed up I don't know..at least I would have been Armor 20. anyway lesson Learned.

These guys (Idrian Skirmishers) are a particularly tough unit

I was doing pretty well at this point, Severius feat had not happened yet and all those undead got popped.

Game 2

Same set up, more of the same except this time Blackbanes Ghost Raiders were all over the Pyramid with Ogryns right behind..I use Dark Ritual and kill 8 of the 12 Idrians.I break my feat out early, Skarre kills the Reckoner (with whom I have casted "backlash" on) Single handed in one melee..putting 5 damage on Severius. Severius' feat is nasty, nasty for undead...POOF he lays waste to most of them during his Feat turn..it goes back and forth like this for another round..I've killed off his "book" (the Covenant) which is a real pain and Felix is down to Choir and Severius, The Blessing of Vengeance about crippled by my Slayer, I dont have much either other than my Slayer (engaged) a Deathripper, and a couple Pirates trying to screen for me. I try to get Skarre and my Deathripper into Melee with Severius but the jack wrecks, and choir in the way make my charge short and Skarre's path was blocked too..If I could have gotten to him on my turn, I think I would have been alright..but on the Following turn Severius unleashed a torrent of Spells on Skarre and some big dice killed her.

I'm getting a handle on things, still haven't won a game yet, but its getting close, learning the rules and figuring out my units is taking some time..and I haven't even started figuring in power attacks yet. There is alot to learn with this game...I forgot how long it took to figure out how to play Warhammer.

A couple of WIP's of my Blackbanes Ghost Raiders..these guys were pretty awesome until Severius wiped them all out...painted stuff should start seeing the light next couple weeks.

Embargoed

2011-05-17T16:04:00.016-05:00

(I googled "facepalm" and found many amusing images, but this one says it all)

Games Workshop made news again in the last few days, and once again it's not good if you're a loyal customer. GW's new terms and conditions for independent retailers were released and essentially put an end to all bypassing of your home countries standard taxes and tariffs for standard retail purchases by purchasing over the internet. Essentially you poor bastards in Canada, Australia New Zealand, Brazil and a whole host of other places can no longer buy GW products from your favorite internet retailers like the War Store here in the US or Maelstrom games in UK whom normally can sell and ship to you 20% cheaper (or more!) than you can buy it in your local store (if they can even get it). Now you are forced to pay whatever prices that result from not only import duties and bad currency conversions but in some cases whatever juice your regional wholesaler has room to tack on before it hits your retailer and gets passed on to you, in some cases your talking about your standard GW blisters costing 2x as much as I can walk into my local GW shop and buy it for.

This is seriously kick in the pants for hobbyists and collectors who are just trying to get by making a living. I have to seriously wonder if GW thinks their hobby is only for the rich or well off? Yes, we know kids with cash friendly parents and middle aged guys with expendable income are the target market but do they need to make it so annoyingly obvious? Such blatant price gouging on a trade level is really low, and stinks of the worst excesses capitalism allows. Now of course GW and its defenders will claim they are just trying to protect local retailers, but GW's standard bi-annual price increases (of which there is another one coming up end of the month) make that claim extremely hypocritical. All they're doing is shrinking and shrinking the customer base and shooting that independent retailer your trying to protect in foot because eventually people just stop...not being able to buy GW models isnt the same as not being able to put food on the table there inst much choice there. I just happened to find a receipt for my Empire Army book bought in 2007 and it was $20..the same army book will now cost $33 or something, have costs really gone up all the much with the mass gutting of the company that went on 2009? after awhile you just have to laugh.

Adding insult to injury GW also announced its Finecast Range of miniatures. For those that dont know, there's been talk for the last couple of months of GW phasing out metals in favor of a new resin / polymer that was cheaper, held detail better and wasnt as brittle as standard resin. My first reaction to this was, " I'll believe it when I see it" I've never seen a resin model look as good as metal one and I've seen plenty of rapid proto-typed resin polymers that dont look as good either. However since these could be cast in existing molds maybe there's promise- we'll have to see, but if they think the can get away with the crap Forge World does..I think they are nuts.

The sick thing about this is the basis in this change lies in the shortage of (or just price increase) of Tin , the fundamental metal in Pewter, which comes mainly these days from China..with Tin at an all time high as a commodity surely cutting into GW's bottom line, this seems like a great idea, however they're deftly rolling out the "Finecast" range as "special" miniatures and slap as much as a 25% increase on the Finecast models that are just the same damn sculpts in a new cheaper material. PT Barnum said "there is a sucker born every minute" and he wasnt kidding. On alot of blogs we all read, I am seeing guys salivating over this like its some awesome great thing. Its the same damn models and molds guys but in a cheaper material and your paying alot more for it!....nice hoodwink GW has going here. Now caveats must apply here...if somehow these models are stunningly better than there metal counterparts, I'll eat some crow here, and probably even buy a few..but I've had resin models break falling over on the desk let alone dropping one on the floor, getting past the brittle thing and new frequency of miscasts are just a couple of hurdles I see, granted I've become partial to metals...I just like some weight to my solo models, obviously I've got nothing against plastic ("plastic legions", and all)..I'm not opposed to new materials as long as quality is there, but the whole "metal is too expensive we're going to use a cheaper material AND charge you more!", is just flat out bad for business. The runaway train that is Games Workshop continues on down the line......

Warmachine- Learning to walk

2011-05-11T22:48:00.002-05:00

Don't look at my bare metal, check out Steve's Cygnar. I ran out of paint so wont be able to get my guys primed and based until tomorrow

Steve dropped by early Tuesday, it been forever since he'd be over here even thou we see each around at all the events. He picked up Warmachine in back in November when the WFB 8th edition malaise started sinking in. He's still involved in WFB tourney organization and support but has been playing alot more Warmachine than WFB the last 6 months and it shows. He Cygnar force is well on it way to be painted and he has plenty of stuff to run competitive 35-50 lists with alternate casters.

He had originally planned to come by for a couple of games before my 8pm WFB dice drop, but our 4th player WFB (Joe) this night had to do an early afternoon airport run to Ohare and you know how those go..Joe calls me at 7:30 saying he's still at the airport and wont be by until at least 9:30. with a midnight call around here we decided to reschedule Since Aaron and Chris were standing around..they decided to play each other and Steve and kept on playing Warmachine..5 games total, 4-35 point games and 1 -25 point game.

Steve Ran a couple games with Coleman Stryker and then the rest with Captain Haley
he mixed it up during the many games but his Warjacks were:
Ol'Rowdy
Stormclad
Defender
Lancer
Charger

Units in play over the course of the session:
Stormblades w/ Infantry Storm Gunner
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team
Longunner Unit

Solos
Squire
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist

I again was playing Cryx again with my small amount of models.
I ran Pirate Queen Skarre this time for all the games with the same list
except chopped down for the one 25 point game.

Skarre's Battlegroup was
Deathripper x 3
Defiler
Slayer

Units
Revenant Crew (6)

Solos
Pistol Wraith x 2
Captain Rengrave
Ogrun Bokur (client was Skarre)

I had a couple games were I got just one turn in and Steve showed me how easy you can get assassinated if you arent very careful. First time was Coleman Strykers
"Drop and Pop" the second time was Haley with some shooting that caught me unprepared.

The rest of games were pretty good, and went quite awhile, One of the 35 point Stryker games..I managed to surround Ol'Rowdy with backlash cast on him with Skarre and the Pirate Crew with Rengrave moving in on Stryker. I had popped my Feat a turn early when my Slayer and Skarre went in, the next turn I had the pirate crew in (and I stupidly forgot their gang rules) And I just a bad dice streak and couldnt convert..low damage rolls on rowdy and Rengrave missing saved Stryker only taking 6 or so damage and that was as close as I got. I beat up Rowdy good, but next turn the Slayer died and Skarre got exposed to the Defender cannon and got blown to hell.

Learned alot about the game and what works with Skarre and what doesnt..Bokur was a total waste I bought because he look cool and can take down a Jack in the right situation but he's too slow and Skarre feat doesnt work on him, he died everygame before I could ever get him in combat.( Im sure I wasnt taking advantage of him the best I could, since I dont know what I and doing but it seems I am WAY better off with the Black Ogrun Boarding Party if I want some biguns, comparison also for Deathtoll, Rengrave thing plus Skarre Sacrifice thing I need some more units and the Skarlock- so thats where I am headed next...plus maybe another heavy jack because the bonejacks are more Denegrahs style..I didnt really need all those arc nodes for Skarre and the bonejack just couldnt take all the Cygnar shooting.

I'll probably pick up some more stuff in the coming weeks and work on painting the battlebox and move on from there...Before that thou I have some LotR gaming coming up on the 21st and the next Legends of the High Seas Campaign night is the 24th..I need to start squeaking in some WFB real soon. I have much different Empire List than I have been running and need to practice it a bunch in the 6 weeks..the Tournament is in early July, not that far away..and there's bunch of new models I need to paint (10 greatswords, new command models for my Knights)

As for Warmachine, I like quite a bit so far...you cant really "half ass it" if you want to win, you need to know your stuff, fluky dice rolls wont win you the game alone you really need to work your brain, and that's pretty refreshing. I had alot of fun yesterday, so thanks to Steve on that!

Blurry picture, but here was my one shot at Ol'Rowdy with Backlash putting the hurt on Styker, my Slayer put 15 damage on the big guy right before this and I couldn't convert, it's going to happen.

Warmachine- First Steps

2011-05-07T08:50:00.009-05:00

First couple games of Warmachine took place last night, Felix my long time gaming compadre and Privateer Press Ganger , which is an official volunteer organizer akin to the old GW outrider program, came over after work to show me the ropes. We played 25 point games which I think is a decent starting level. If you dont have a concept over how these things work I'd recommend 15 points as this game is pretty complicated for the novice as far as skirmish games go, even someone as immersed in miniatures games as myself, had my head swimming in rules 20 mins or so into the first game, my knowledge of the quickstart rules not withstanding.

My force of choice is The Cryx, an Undead nation run by Lichlords melding their dark magic with the stolen technology of the living advanced Human nations my force was the Cryx battlebox plus two solo units.

Warcaster
Warwitch Denegrah
+4 Warjacks:
Deathripper x 2
Defiler
Slayer
Solos
Pistol Wraith x 2

Game 1 action- "I ghostwalked that Ripper in back through the building
so I could move into contact with that totally annoying choir"

My 25pt force as is...basecoated and ready for paint...which I hope to do in the next few weeks if I can get everything ready for the next campaign night.

Felix ran the Protectorate of Menoth, a faction of Religious Fanatics that are trying to convert the masses.
Warcaster-
High Executioner Servath Reznik
+3 Warjacks
* Dervish
* Reckoner
* Hierophant

Units
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 3 Grunts)
Exemplar Bastions (Leader and 2 Grunts)
Exemplar Errants (Leader and 9 Grunts)

Solos
The Wrack (3 wracks)

The first thing I noticed is at 25 points I was outnumbered 3 to 1, not good odds but strangely enough it was not that huge a problem, but I need to consider running some units at 25 pts for sure.

Both games kind of played out the same way but with opposite results

I'll spare you most of my noob details as I stumbled along, but my initial observations:
Both Denegrah and the Pistol Wraiths are very good, my Defiler with its acid cannon
not so much..but I see how it can be useful it could be in the right circumstance,
The Slayer can dish out the pain but not take it.. Deathrippers are pretty good for taking down light Warjacks, but I need the arcnodes for spells...I thinking using the 4 of these i have in bigger games will come in handy.

The Menoth stuff was filled nasty tricks, spell denials, flaming attacks..a lot of stat boosting, I'd be lying If I said I can adequately recall all the stuff felix was throwing at me

As I mentioned both games were similar...the real threats were the heavy Menoth Jack and the warcaster who had killer close combat moves. The three bastions also seemed difficult and hard hitting but I didnt have two much trouble nerfing them and put alot of wounds on them in the 2nd game ..although they took out my Slayer no problem in game 2.

In Game 1, down to just his Warcaster and Heavy jack and maybe 1 other unit...Felix charged his Caster at my Warwitch and handed out just enough damage in one strike (16 pts) to slay her dead. game over.

Game 2, Felix pushed to me hard...with his Errants gone early, my Deathrippers locking down his light jack, his bastions with barely a wound each left of him..he brought his caster up and finished off my defiler, leaving me with only 1 pistol wraith, Denegrah, and 1 Deathripper that wasnt going anywhere, I left all my 7 Focus on Denegrah... moved up right next to the remaining bastions whom with her reach I could get past them to get his caster..unleashing her feat "the withering" I used all my focus to buy extra attacks and boost the dice on each, and got enough damage in my debuffs to hack him down and victory...now having said that, If I had failed, I was getting slaughtered on Felixs next turn ..but I pulled it off.

Anyway that was that, I have some more games set up Tuesday against my pal Steve, before we get into some WFB tuesday...I'll let you know how it goes.

The defiler here is my one finished test model..nothing fancy here, just as close to box shot as I can get it...it will take me sometime to get up to speed painting these warjacks. thinking about doing this battlebox event Felix is hosting in June, I think I can this all painted up by then.

A better business model

2011-04-28T15:28:00.012-05:00

These days it's passe for many of us jaded veterans of the miniature hobby to throw stones at the "too big to fail" Death Star that is Games Workshop. Who like a Death Star seem at times to be almost universally loathed by the knowing for their questionable business practices. Starting from the never ending prices increases, while you feel like you're getting less and less all the way down the line to its CIA style secrecy, everybody seems to have some reason to gripe. BUT everyone including this author loves the miniatures and the IP so in spite of our armchair CEO expectations we all just keep on buying the Soylent Green.

In the end it is not a big surprise that GW pays no deference to its hobby veterans, so when one cranky old codger moves on to historicals or other game or leaves the GW branch of the Hobby altogether..the folks in Nottingham pay no mind as there are always 3 young faces to take that exiting veterans place. Such is life when you are "too big to fail" in a niche market.

Then along comes these guys.

At Adepticon this year Privateer Press did an amazing thing..not amazing from a business perspective (this type of promotion is as pretty common these days) , but amazing in this particular niche. Having been in their second year of attendance at what has been a decade old Games Workshop celebratory event. Privateer Press decided they would put a $50 retail Warmachine starter box in the first 1000 swag bags, Ponying up 50K in retail product is no small feat, and any more conservative GW bean counter would call it crazy, and Let me tell you what...they made it all back already, and some. Here's how.

First of Privateer Press did something GW hasnt done at Adepticon in as long as I remember. Shown up in force...I saw Jervis Johnson at Adepticon in 2007 since then the token celebrity has gone down the chain until last year we were left with a lame ass slide show from the regional manager talking up stuff that had been in White Dwarf for 6 months on Saturday Night when people want to go party. This year, other than Forge World showing up and making fools of themselves with their bungling...There wasn't a GW "suit" to be found. I find this particularly odd, given this event is primarily and had been totally about their product...how they never really took advantage of that is...er..well see paragraph 1.

Back to Privateer Press, who as I said showed up in force this year with staff, their best tables, said free product and plenty of people to run their games. They treated Adepticon like Gen Con or any other trade show/convention should be treated as a premier opportunity to expand their fan base and customers.

Let me back track here a second and say, I have never been a fan of Warmachine/ Hordes, its been on my radar forever. even since before I got back into the hobby in 07'. The Iron Kindgoms IP, just always seemed like bad D&D setting gone arwy...(in fact there is a similar D&D setting in its 3rd edition, not sure that was before or after). Anway the D&D meets Steampunk meets Anime oversized weapons has never did it for me, I like my " fantasy" "low" and "old school" I do like some steam punk "Arcanum" but the Iron Kingdoms IP just never clicked.

Compile the above with, the consideration that my number one WFB 7th ed compadre, Felix moved on to become a local PP Press Ganger here and that still didnt motivate me, mainly because ,except for himself, there is literally zero hobby community based around the game in our local meta. People seem content playing with bare metal models on green felt with piece of notebook paper as terrain and whatever else is laying around. This lack of interest in the hobby was game ending buzz kill if I ever saw one. However all along, I was hearing and reading that this was a very good tactical game, and while not a diceless system , the randomness of dice /vs your acquired skill was stacked in favor of the latter. So the game has the ring of actually being a game of skill, and not a game of luck. So I never totally wrote it off, it just became a "maybe one day", but seriously it was the last game, I ever thought I would get around to.

Well its looks like that one day has arrived. Thanks to Privateer Press good sense, myself and who can guess how many people got a look at there free box said "hey this is cool", I am going to try this, "what has GW done for lately other raise the price of a Specials 10 unit box to $45 with tax!" I personally got the Protectorate of Menoth Box in my swag bag, but since I am about done with playing religious zealots, (thanks Sigmar) I was lucky enough to trade with someone for the Cryx box, I like the undead, and we've got undead Pirates, so whats not to like?...I dont have to like the other stuff I am killing, that's the point..In all seriousness, there is plenty I do like in the Cryx and Mercenary Ranges...So I am sold, not to mention the new edition was publicly playtested with fan input so ruleswise that can only be a good thing.

On the hobby side. I know I am not alone in my previous opinion, but of course a quick visit to the PP forums or its No Quarter Magazine and you can find some great stuff on hobby side, not quite at GW levels as a player percentage. but its definitely getting there. The final kicker for me was I know a half dozen + guys up here who are kick ass hobbyists all expressing interest in the game. If you start seeing these guys playing in Chicago land then all of sudden the hobby meta for Warmachine/ Hordes in this area has seriously changed. Because when no one paints, then no one paints..when one guy shows up really painted well, it inspires a couple others to paint, when a half dozen guys are slugging out for best painted, well - its contagious like that. Same goes for terrain and tables.

Anyway..I was motivated enough to try to purchase some additional models (because I am a miniature drug addict) thru my partnership at Cipher Games and quickly was told tons of Warmachine stuff is now sold out?, go figure. My GW collection is probably 5 figures in value on the retail side .IF of those 1000 boxes PP gave away at Adepticon yields a 1% return in the player base on a level such as myself...it paid for all those 1000 boxes retail. The business lesson here is obvious. You need to invest in your customers, if you want them to invest in you. Are you listening Games Workshop?

While I'm in no more than planning/modeling stage right now DO expect to see painted Warmachine here on this blog in the near future whether I ever get past the handful of models and some cool terrain for a game or two who knows? (It not lost on me that WM/H is a "type A" game") The tournament organization and scenarios have also impressed me, so maybe even an event of two. I just wanted to add as I have said many times here before, You have a choice who you do business with "Too big to fail" doesnt mean "only game in town" Anyway I just wanted to give Privateer Press a shout out for doing the smart thing, probably getting themselves a whole bunch of eager new players, and changing one occasionally grumpy venerable gamers mind (that'd be me) ..about a game I thought I'd made up my mind about.

Hey, maybe I get to play Felix again? cool.

High Seas Alert!

2011-04-27T12:56:00.007-05:00

So we kicked off the new Campaign last night, 6 players, 9 games, a debaucherous time had by all. If you're interested in the details please see my Legends of the High Seas Campaign Blog
Also consider joining our Forums if you want details on its mechanics. On the hobby goodness side please check out the Legends of the High Seas Gallery also linked on the left side bar...over 125 photos of Campaign, Terrain projects, Crews and unreleased pics from Adepticon. I have more coming...Good time round here to be a Pirate.

Blood and Glory

2011-04-17T11:03:00.013-05:00

Viggo as the lead in while I talk about WFB?, Heresy you say?, no way..he is still the King in my book.

The post Adepticon hangover is gone and find myself back toiling away late night in basement, while I'm working on stuff for our upcoming Legends of the High Seas campaign, I am finding myself still preoccupied with my most fickle of muses. Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

You've read my gripes about the book scenarios before, and I spent the other night going the rules a bit. I am admittedly nowhere near where I need to be mentally for playing in competitive events if I actually have an intent of winning any games. In fact I have been getting a big kick of my friend James "rule of the day" over at his blog The Big House. because he keeps posting stuff that seems so obvious I should know, but I don't -so I keep kicking myself in ass trying to my head in game so to speak, so I spent some time digging into the rule book.

The book scenarios themselves are ok, for the big dumb fun of the "more, more, more" approach of 8th edition . (I tend to be a "less is more" kind of guy hence the conflict) The amount of work put into the narrative battles section of book clearly shows the designers arent particularly worried about us choosing to run tournaments with their game, as the "battle" scenarios we are using for events look like an after thought in comparison.

Beating the old drum again, let me rehash that from my perspective the problems with tournament scene and 8th edition is that we're still using 7th edition scoring for what is clearly a different game. The book scenarios are not meant for tournament play that is going to sort out a winner by straight up battle points. That's clear to me, but I guess not so much to the people I know that run events around these parts. Its way too easy for these scenarios incidentally give one player an advantage, that and the silly randomness of events from terrain on down to the games overall reliance on dice rolls..seriously just makes the whole thing a skill- less crap shoot. Now, Of course you can bone up on the rules, study up on every contingency of every army and put yourself in a place to minimize that dice crap shoot and that is what the best players do. However one scenario in the book is perfect for fixing the whole damn scoring issue and putting things back on track and its coincidentally the most controversial of the scenarios used at Adepticon this year: Blood and Glory.

Blood and Glory isnt just a scenario, (as people not preparing for it "going in" to the event led to the problems at Adepticon this year) its a tournament "model" -the perfect measure of how games should be scored and played in 8th. It bears direct similarity to WAB's Army break point system, which I've previously mentioned as a favored scoring solution of mine.However we did some demoing with it and it worked ok, except both games ended before either of us broke, so the WAB rules just revert back to victory points..so good in theory but not so much in practice.

For those unfamiliar, Blood and Glory is based on every army having a fortitude score based on your Armies General (2 points) plus 1 point for each banner of the field including the battle standard. Your army breaks, and the game ends when you armies fortitude drops to "x". "X" depending on the size of the game. In WFB tourney play..I'd suggest keeping the break point a "2" (the level for 2000 point games) instead of the "3" used at Adepticon this year. Because at 2200-2400 "2" still seems very fair..over 2500 points, It would go to a break point of "3" and it works up per 1000 points of game size from there.

Your average player in today's game should be showing up on the field with an average fortitude of "6", a General, a BSB and 3 Unit Standards..a couple more if you have the points. If neither opponent breaks the others army in six turns, the game is a draw with no other tie breaker.

These "Blood and Glory" rules would have the following postive effects on the meta game for 8th edition. No incentive to build "death stars" or massive horde units.A Death Stars maxium fortitude will be "4" (General, BSB, 1 unit Standard) Yes it might be nigh unbreakable, but you can't just sit in the back corner of the table and say "come get me"...because you're setting yourself up for a draw and if you just sit there let yourself get warmachined to death...you risk losing the game on bad panic check. Massive units which are currently used to keep wads of points on the table become an unnecessary points sink because once the unit breaks, its done as its lost is standard and its a scoring unit, unless it rallies and captures it back. No more lone Chaos Warrior or Temple Guardsmen keeping 800 points on the table alone, while fleeing at the end of the game. Fodder units become exactly that..with no standard they aren't scoring so a different tactical measure becomes apparent. With Objectives on the table for additional Battle Points for "Best General" I see two games going the field at one time, the battle for the win between scoring units and the battle for objectives between everything else..how you cross-use you units to get both becomes something a hell of alot more tactical than the gimmicky quirks of current play. Finally with a fortitude of only "2" your General can't "Herohammer" the game by himself without at least on other unit standard on the field..this is a very good thing.
(And No, I dont think the Slaan should get the extra point for being a BSB...he can be the BSB but you don't get the extra Fortitude point, you need a another model for that)

So, Pitched Battles with Objectives, "Blood and Glory" rules...that's how you roll with good 8th ed tournament in my book, your scoring is Battle Points 15/5/10 win/lose/draw + objective points + Sports (or Favorite opponent in my world) + Paint.

Some will inevitably ask "But John, What about bonus battle points?"

Bonus battle points are crap,normally contingent on whatever quirky fluke gets dictated by the parameters of the half-assed scenario the TO probably hasn't play tested more than once. Objective points are tactical capture..meaning you need to go out win them if you want them. Bonus Battle points are usually a freebie given to the winner by default or based on luck/ 8th edition is already way to based on luck to begin with, cutting it down and giving away less free points makes for a better tournament.

But John, Wont "Blood and Glory" rules produce alot of Draws?

They will, however considering Draws have gone from 1 out of 5 games (roughly 20%)in 7th edition to 1 out of 25 games in 8th edition (roughly >1%) with the change from 300 victory point margin to a 100 victory point margin, I think a happy medium of 10% or so is fine, people generally play to win, and a draw will become the self policing result or either a very good game, or someone just playing point denial under Blood and Glory, playing for draw might put you high in the standings if you have the soft scores to back it up but you still need to win games to win the tournament. A personal example: at this point I've played maybe 36 or so games of 8th edition I've had only two draws..one in the Team Tournament, which was literally to the point and the result of good luck turn 6 otherwise we had lost. The other was in the Blood and Glory scenario.

While I think its going to take the rest of season, having players "bum out" or just leave the game over lousy tournament experiences before mass self correction starts taking place, I already see positive signs of hope, One of our new local tourneys Blood in the Sun has publicly stated that "Blood and Glory" rules will be used for at least several of the scenarios this year and people best design there armies around it. While not the "full on" approach I lay out above..its a strong start and I am some of my Tuesday night regulars are attending this event in July, I'll let you know how it goes!.

Fail World

2011-04-11T14:54:00.009-05:00

Oh Forge World, how did I love thee?, Let me count the ways!

Summer 2008- @ Games Day Chicago, I ask the gentleman behind the rapidly growing line if they have the Empire Cannon emplacements? he says."sure do" we a have bunch. After waiting in line 90 mins...I find out, they are sold out..I ask"you sold them all in last 90 mins, while I was in line? it looked like 40K central to me?, No. he responds..we sold them all yesterday to the Fantasy players when we opened the store for the GT (this year the GT started the day before gamesday and was a 2 day event) OOOF.....buuut the guy told me you had them..I griped..."we did yesterday" also I should mention all the convention exclusives sold out too, its was 11:30 am at Games Day. I never got that 90 mins of my life back...but they offered me free shipping!

November 2008- Mail Order - I order a bunch of Space Marine bitz and vehicle parts. The package never arrives after about 5-6 weeks of waiting they reship. When the order finally arrives. Items are missing from the order, they say "no worries" we'll ship you the missing bitz for free! when I finally get the reship, in late Febuary 2009..I've lost interest in 40K.

Spring 2009 Mail Order-I order the Great Unclean One to compliment my rapidly growing Daemon Army, on sale at the time for 80 pounds with a great US/UK conversion rate. I bite the apple again, although stupidly I decided to use my debit card instead of a credit card. Forge World somehows enters an extra "Zero" and charges my bank account $800 Pounds not 80 which almost causes me to bounce my mortgage but I thankfully caught it in time. the overcharge is summarily corrected, they were very apologetic and offered me Free Shipping on the model. (credited me back shipping costs with my extra money ) Warning: never use a debit card to buy anything online..dont know what I was thinking there

Summer 2009- Games Day Chicago- somehow new pieces people are salivating for dont make it to Games Day in time, all those new Daemon Sculpts and whatever else people were waiting for doesnt make it to the show but are available in limited quantities..massive line..tons of unhappy people. Thankfully I had nothing to with this other than witness it and feel sorry for people that waited two hours for new Khorne Daemon Prince and Herald only to find out they didnt have it.

Spring 2011- Adepticon. Warhammer Forge. Knowing my own relationship with Forge World.I write in to order the Theo Bruckman on Demi Gryph model. I get a confirmation # and reserve order number from Forge World. I bring this print out with me to Adepticon.The day starts out with a bang when I get downstairs to lobby at 8am the line for the Forge World store is easily 150 people long. the line builds to over 200 but the time the open the doors. when they do..they also open the partition between the main ballroom and the store so people rush to Forge World from the other side...thereby screwing everyone who waited in line for 2 hours. Convention exclusives sold out quick many of those folks who thought they were covered getting out at 8am, got hosed..if you've been to a Forge World booth before you know what they do. They hand you and order sheet, and say "well give you Free Shipping".

Seeing this debacle I decide to wait until Saturday to go pick up my model, after round 1 of the WFB championships..I rush over to the Forge World booth and find only a dozen people in line..I jump in and it still takes me 20 mins to move up to where they can see me. Once I am only two or three people back. the Forge World guy sees me with a piece of paper in my hand and says quote " He knows what he wants and how to do it, this gentleman here has wisely pre-ordered his model!" he takes my paper and goes back to get..but cant seem to find it...(I think to myself this cant really happen, can it?) he keeps looking comes back to me red faced and says dont worry it has to be here..I'll find it...10 mins later...he still cant find it. Now its 5 mins before round 2, I'm like I have to go..I'll come back later..he's like " I'm sure I'll find it". I come back right before they close for the evening...I find the same guy..he remembers me and says "sorry guy, its not here..I dont know what happened" he shoves an order sheet at me and says. "Fill this out pay the guy over there and you'll get Free Shipping" I just walk away in disgust.

Monday morning after Adepticon I write a letter to Forge World explaining what happened and also detailing my history with the company. I ask them what they'd like to do about it..and dont ask for anything specific. Today, a week later, I get a response. "well I talked to all involved and we think the best course of action is to give you Free Shipping" "But you'll have to call in because if you order it thru the webcart we can't remove the shipping..so call us and we will take care of you". That's it. No apology, No, what can we do for you to make this right?, no grand overture of perhaps a discount is warranted?? Considering the time of mine they've wasted is worth far more than all FW stuff I own combined-any of these seem like small gestures..but nope, nada.

Well dear sirs..you can take your "free shipping" and stuff it straight up your arse. Despite your litany of epic screw ups in my short history with you, I have always made positive note (both privately and publicly) of your strong customer service in liu of these shortcomings. NO MORE, Free Shipping is not a customer service panacea for your inability to have even the most basic skills in running a retail company. If you were selling anything else other than boutique models with a fanatical high demand. you would have been out of business ages ago. So it is with much disgust I bid farewell to your company and hope that others whom currently support you have the common sense to come to the same conclusion as quickly as possible.

Storm of Magic

2011-04-11T09:16:00.005-05:00

The Winds of Magic are tumultuous. Drawn by Morrslieb, they are prone to rise from a strong gale into a howling tempest.And when they do, no kingdom or realm is safe. Monsters awaken from their slumber and are summoned from their lairs at the bidding of sorcerous masters. Armies assemble, ready to defend their borders or seize the opportunity to gain limitless power. It is in these desperate times tenuous pacts between wizards and creatures of darkness are sealed to create alliances never thought possible...

Prepare for battles ravaged with powerful magic and a host of fearsome monsters: Storm of Magic is the brand-new world-shattering Expansion for Warhammer. Launched in July 2011, Storm of Magic, along with a new range of Warhammer scenery and Wizards, will enable you to wage immense and spectacular battles. Head on over to the Astronomican on Games-Workshop.com for more information, as well as a sneak peek of what's to come...

Can't say I am looking forward to this...More Magic?, More Monsters?, can we just get rid of troops altogether and fight with wizards and monsters?, That seems to be the ridiculous path GW is on with 8th Edition Warhammer. Now, have no idea what the details are but considering Magic and Monsters are the most broken, stupid elements of the new edition, this cant be a good thing. The only bright side is there will probably be some cool models to collect. Good luck to TO's out there who know have to take grief over banning "Storm of magic" rules and lists, from events another repeat of the "Storm of chaos" crap pile, I think...SIGH. how about updating the other army books first guys??

Adepticon 2011 WFB Team Tourney

2011-04-08T15:23:00.005-05:00

After a big night out in the hotel bar with a great group of Warhammer players Saturday night, my Teammate Jeff and I got up really early Sunday for the WFB Team Tournament. Team Tourneys are the staple of Adepticon, and its traditionally been the building block of the whole convention. Now personally, outside the rabid popularity of the 40K TT, I think the Fantasy TT, in its spirit and intent. (a fun team event in which people build there teams, in design and look and fluff) has apexed recently and with the advent of 8th edition, tradition has left the building. I saw very few "built for the event armies" and it seemed to have boiled down to two guys putting the hardest stuff they could on table from two different armies, with the caveat of no Lords. Knowing how the 8th edition meta game was, we followed suit throwing the most bang for the buck we could into Two 1000 points armies of Empire and Bretonnians. We ran the same thing last year, I think 7th edition was definitely more our element we lost the first game on a fluke, and won the next two readily. This year, we both had a black cloud over our heads from both our personal let downs in the Championship.

First round we played Dark Elves and Orcs and Goblins, a tough match. after taking a big lead. Things went sideways on us when Jeff's BSB failed his save from a killing blow, he lost a rank and a big unit of goblins became steadfast. This put us on a crash course for numerous stuff to go wrong, and we ended up losing. This was a great game no doubt.

Round 2 m we took on Empire and Warriors of Chaos, in a desperate alliance, very difficult to run a desperate alliance because of the way the magic works. Again we started out big but again, one of those combats you take for granted, is were things went horribly wrong and we ended up upside down. By turn 4 the Empire side of our army was totally wiped out, except for my wizard., Jeff had just his General and some Peg Knights remaining. a strong turn 6 got us back in it by finish off a unit of Chaos Warriors MoZ, that were plaguing us all game. In the end its was Draw almost to the point.

Our third match was against Lizardmen and High Elves..a fun game, I kept waiting for something to go wrong but it didn't. we had control of the whole game, and our opponents had some pretty bad luck and made a couple decisions, they probably shouldnt have, they were pretty tabled, and we didnt even take our last turn.
So there you go, it took me 7 games of Warhammer to finally win one this year. pretty brutal. I need to say once again we had awesome opponents in all three of team games and I'd go as far to say as my group of combined opponents this year, was the best I've had ever!. So while I might whine about my bad luck, its not really that bad, because I did get to play and meet some great people so cheers to them and at 1 win, 1 loss, and 1 draw we wrapped the 2011 Team tourney.

Where the Team Tourney falls behind for me is in the scoring, at a whopping 71 teams, there were more bodies than already mention Championships that were the largest to date I'm not quite sure how to properly sort out 71 teams with only 3 games and find a fair winner given the context of the what event is "supposed to be" and what it really "is". Scoring wise- points were awarded to the whole package, so despite no comp scoring you got big points for your fluff and display, so really need to win all three games, and have the big soft scores to win. However I didnt really see people meeting the challenge, Even we didnt bother to present any fluff and got tagged 15 points on our soft score (putting us at 23rd overall despite a respectable battlepoint score and max sports and 24 out of 25 for paint).

I had a really hard time finding that one team or display that put the stand alone work into their army and display and make this event their focus this year. The army one that won, "Players Choice", was the one, I and I am sure many others voted for and they did a great job, however it would not have even made the radar if you go back a couple years.

My point being is I see confusion here in what this event is supposed to be and whats it become. Events need to change along with game, and just like Adepticon has grown and changed so do these events. is the team tourney going to be a beer and pretzels sunday good time based on the hobby with tons of folk working on unique displays for the glory of Warhamer? or is going to be a standard competitive event?..I don't think you can it both ways...or at least it didnt play out that way. I'm not sure there is that even huge an audience there any more for the former.
Overall thou had a good time this day, hanging out with a friend and throwing some dice with some fun people, but as I look back on it I just kind of find myself ambivalent about the whole thing, "lackluster" is the word that keeps coming to mind as I try to describe the WFB TT. Me thinks Its time for a reboot.

Adepticon 2011- WFB Championships

2011-04-05T14:18:00.020-05:00

Adepticon -2011 Warhammer Fantasy Championships

Well, no huge write up this year. Unfortunately this is just never my event for a variety of reasons, This year my crappy play it is 100% directed me being woefully unprepared for 8th edition at a competitive level such as this. While my army looked good on paper it wasn't so good in practice. That and some seriously comical luck brought me a whopping 0-3-1 finish playing my 4th game on the last table..that's a first for me.

all these pics are just things I liked. some amazing, some solid, just a fun random army sample.

On the good side, all 4 my opponents Derek, Lance, Brad and Mike were righteous dudes and using my usual personal scoring of Fun, Sports, and Comp all these guys were 5/5/5 (5 being Max). Sometimes the black cloud just follows you, after the ridiculous end of my second game..I just gave up started drinking and went along for ride and had a good time. I did find out later I was tied with 5 other guys for best sportsman and my soft scores were maxed so despite my miserable record..I still finished pretty good considering my record,

My Games broke down like this:

Game 1 Vs Lizards- Slann w/ huge temple guard Bunker, Scar Vet, huge Saurus Bunker, 4 Sallies in 2 units and a bunch of Skinks filling out the rest. I had the Flaggies in the front and Stank in the Flank of the Slann/ Tguard and couldn't bust them, if you cant do that, thats all Empires got, not being able to break either bunker left all the points on the table and I lost on points..fair enough. 0-1

Game 2 vs O&G - Well rounded list, 6 warmachines was only hard first turn, after that three were done, I was up most of this game until "boxcars" on an overrun after taking down a big unit of savage orcs put my General and Wizard's unit exposed flank to a horde unit of biguns with double choppers and a killy BSB. IF I had rolled a even an "11" I would have been ok, I had set up for a Front and Flank Charge with my Flaggies. the worst dice roll possible at the worst time started a chain reaction that caused my whole army to fold. bummer 0-2

Game 3 Vs High Elves- I started hitting the jack and cokes with my opponent and new buddy Brad, I killed his General and one of his Wizards early and thought it was an easy victory, however even shot up Swordmasters in 8th are filthy and hot dice streak had them and his White Lions rip me a proverbial new one..a big Searing Doom took the stank out. and I was basically tabled with only my Wizard on the table at the end of the game and he still had the Lions and Swordmasters. Pretty good for losing your General turn 2.
0-3

Game 4 Vs High Elves- A bit better prepared for 8th ed High Elves, The Empire came out angry, I took mike to the proverbial woodshed early on except this game I grossly under estimated the power of the Phoenix Guard..I thought the Steam Tank could take them down solo, but no way. I put it into them on my turn one, and by turn 5 its was dead and I had only killed about about half of them. This was the Banner/ Fortitude scenario. After I got two banners early, I only needed one and that left the Swordmasters or the Phoenix Guard, I brought my Knights back to give the PG another crack but they didnt budge there either after a ferocious charge. Mike wisely put his Swordmasters into the building on his last turn knowing on my last licks..I would have them in Front/Rear/ Flank sandwich if he stayed outside still no guarantee but a good chance. Knights had another chance at PG..couldn't do it..game ends.
DRAW.

Like I said thou, all these games where great fun, outside comical dice rolling and my opponents were all fantastic.

On the downside, I seriously hate all the book scenarios. The only one I like is the Banner/Fortitude one and that is the one you will inevitably hear the most griping about. For me, Pitched Battles with objectives is the only way to go for a tournament.

There weresome organizational /scoring issues this year, No slight on the man running things this year- Alex G, as he does and awesome job and I think this was the biggest Warhammer single day tourney to date with 140 players, so a huge challenge. There we some bad apples in extra staff department that caused some problems with the paint judging. I did paint scoring on Friday for the big brawl, so I know the system, it requires you examining a persons army set up on its display and closely looking at the models to in order to correctly go thru the checklist. There were two judges during round 1 trying to score peoples armies while their game was going on, which was complete idiocy. As a result the guy who won Player Appearance- Tourney Choice got a whopping "14" out 25 for his paint score..and my own army..which has never had gotten less than a max score here, got a "zero" for display base because..my base was under the table when they judged my army, go figure right? anyway this garbage got called out and these paint scores were corrected..and if this was the worst thing that went on a tourney this big...I'd call it a a success. I'm going to bone up on 8th ed with Empire and give it one more go at the local "Blood in the Sun" here in July and see if I can un-embarrass myself. In the end however, I'm not sure I'll back for the Championships next year because after 5 years...this is never a great day for me and there is just too much to do at Adepticon now and I'd rather do other stuff and its not like they need the players. My Empire needs a rest, "if" I have another army that can compete..I may change my mind. No commitments.

Next up, the Team Tourney.

Edit: In a bit of self congratulatory back slapping, in order to put a counterweight against my absolutely terrible game performance. I wanted to point out, was the only player out of 134 who had max sports and max paint..that's at least 4 events in the last 3 years I have maxed out as the "soft score whore"., If I could actually win some games, look out!

Adepticon 2011- Legends of the High Seas

2011-04-05T08:57:00.006-05:00

Picking things up here from the last round of pictures, this Friday night at Adepticon 2011, my Legends of the High Seas event. I could not have asked for 8 better players to sign up, this thing was blast on numerous levels, from the Pirate hats, to the ton of different quality rums, to great variety of miniatures and fantastic paint jobs on all of them. I think this was definitely the highlight of weekend for most of us and It makes me look forward to the club campaign we are starting later this month and future LotHS events. I'll leave it there with some pictures from the event. Next Post, I'll pick things up Adepticon Saturday with my WFB coverage.

The Pirate Castle, for my "Raise the flag" scenario

Jungle Run- Interesting how others decided to play this, different from our test group
guys were literally battling it out, inside the Jolly boat on the beach!...LOL

This Mordheim table has made the rounds for various games at Adepticon for years now. I added The Dock cast the from Hirst molds and the tower and of course the Ship. and it became table Five, so we had a scenario we could swap in and out...Everyone want to play it thou. I'm going to build something similar with traditional buildings...sooner than later.

my use of a blind group mechanic or "space hulk" style blip system on the dungeon board has
gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Tavern Fight, this crew of all pirate wenches, demanded the fight take place outside the bar.