The Tides of War

Mantic Games has nibbling away at the heels of Warhammer Fantasy players for sometime now. A slow nibble but one, none the less. The success of the Mantic Kickstarter project is truly awesome. Over $350K from 1500+  backers and average of $230ish dollars a contributor which is roughly about half of what you'd pay for a GW army, your getting some amazing stretch goal pieces plus a great deal for your contribution.  I did not get in on this myself, given I have an Undead Army still in shrink wrap  but am lamenting I didnt even at the at lower level for at least  the rule book. The kickstarted funding has allowed all manner of new pieces to be added to the schedule and your looking at a big splash from Mantic in the next 12 months culminating in Grand Tourney at Adepticon 2013 with a $1000.00 1st place cash prize.

KoW has made the rounds here as well, we had our second KoW only outing Tuesday evening where and it was a big success with the guys liking the game even better on the second go. The rules, while simple have alot of nuance and the games reminds me of a stripped down version of  7th ed WFB with simple system for Magic and Artillery which is in no way as fluffy but plays way better. The affinity to Hail Caesar (the current game of choice for us), is obvious, if you have played both you'll see there is easily room for both games to co-exist side by side. It's easier for us without having to worry about delving into homebrew HC rules for Fantasy so Kings of War fits the bill nicely.  I expect big Fantasy wargaming will be returning to the tables around here a bit more often moving ahead, while I wont be playing in the Mantic Tourney next year ( as the current LotR US Champion, I must return to be unthroned!) I will certainly be checking it out. I am looking forward to building my Perry Bros Human army ASAP.

To quote one recentposter on our local WFB forum summing up Kings of War, he wrote:
"Alessio basically took all the garbage that makes Fantasy a joke and either threw it out, or replaced it with rules that don't suck."

Pretty much the opinion around here too.

Gallery and status update

If you're interested, I added all my entries from this years Lead Painters League on the Lead Adventure Forum as one photo gallery on the left for easy viewing. I know the blog has been kind of dry of late. I have found myself seriously busy this summer.  The Club is meeting Tuesday Night for what looks like  Hail Caesar! and Kings of War. I've got new models and terrain in the pipe. Hopefully life will let me get them posted soon!.

Skirmish Dungeon Expansion.

 While I havent had much of chance for an update in awhile, I have been working on a couple of things. I finally finished this piece which is the upper section of my Skirmish Dungeon. Working on this inspired me to the expanded original piece to double the size with a much larger water cavern section. The base here, with descending staircase is entrance to the dungeon. In in the final state
this is going to fill up most of 6 x 4 table

 Chris and I got a chance to do some more playtesting on my home brew skirmish game. These games are always pretty interesting. Without more focus objectives the just grind down into bloodbaths but the battles are always pretty memorable.

 I'm past the full design stage and into the casting process, so I hope to be posting results this month. The basic expansion and painting shouldn't take that long its all the little details for instance it took me long to build and paint the base here, than it did to build the actual model. Once you become seasoned with working with HA stuff, it goes pretty quick.

Some Fantasy skirmish action, more on this soon, its just going much more slowly than I hoped due to time between playtests..its coming along quite nicely thou, we tested the magic system this evening.

 This side tunnel leads to the original staircase entry in the dungeons 2 x 2 form , it remains as is, its just the Dungeon over all is growing 100% overall. While the upper ruin serves as the entrance.
I need to add some led lights..

Looking forward to running a ton of games on this, an epic project for sure but when you space them out over years..they arent as daunting plus any any particular time, you look back and you're half way done!, or in this case more than halfway,.

I'm way behind my self imposed schedule on my Saxons,as I have 2 Ancients armys in the que, and whole bunch of of LotR to do for fall and tons of skirmish fantasy figs to do.. We gearing up for an Antiquity Campaign second half of summer, So we'll just have to see how quickly I get this done..
time has not been my friend of late....

Brilliant Business Strategy

Despite the strong showing at this years Adepticon and its continued strong fanbase despite the total lack of support. Warhammer Historical has now had its last throes and is dead. I wont bother too much with jumping in on the  public flogging over  the epic stupidity of no longer officially supporting WAB, The post title says it all..(.I just wish I had a font that bled sarcasm.)  Needless to say, Warlord Games certainly thanks you. I guess its cool we move all the Historical events  at Adepticon over the Hail Caesar rules since The rule system is in print and well supported. That just makes good business sense.

LPL 6 Concludes!!

Round 10 and the contest has concluded over  at the LAF for Lead Painters League Season 6.  (link is the final standings)


What a ride, I ended up coming in 14th place out of 46th..I did'nt meet my goal of the top ten but close enough. Above is my final entry. "The Capture of the Griffon"  which lost by 30 or so votes. leaving me with a 6-4 Record. I would have to have won this one, one of the others I lost and figured out how to get at least half of 20 bonus I couldn't take advantage of..to make the top ten. Pretty big jump...so it wasn't really doable even if I won Round 10.

Couple on interesting notes. 1. I called the winner in round 3 after he beat me in round 2, and I saw his round 3 entry. He ended up going 10-0 (which I think is a first) anyway this guy can always find side work as studio painter if he wants it (a bunch of these guys could, some might be, not sure).
2. Getting max bonus points and winning every round is a huge accomplishment, every entry you put in really needs to be jaw dropping. Otherwise your subject to losing to any oddball entry that strikes peoples fancy for whatever reason not just the painting. Whether that be, naked ladies, comedic dioramas, or just damn creative entries These things will beat a better painted, less attention craving entry 9 times out of 10, so you need to be that one of ten, that still can trump those occasional match ups to consistently win.  3. Your Photography needs to be good. If you cannot consistently take excellent pictures of your stuff, dont waste your time here. Good photos make all the difference. I let a shoddy photo slide in round 2, and it cost me, and I am usually quite happy with my photos but I must say during this process, I learned a couple tricks to make them better, so it was a fair trade off.

A fantastic contest, quirky with a great scoring system and a incredible of amount of awesome eye candy, If you are miniatures enthusiast and are not particularity interested or married to GW this contest is certainly for you.  Hat's off to Dr Mathias for winning this and going 10-0. The top 4 guys this year all undoubtedly paint at Studio professional level, the majority of the top 25 are all, serious painters with long term hobby skills...or guys that would routinely win best appearance awards in public events, if you will. Hell of a contest...I know some guys who read here, who should definitely think about this  just for the experience, and they're all LotR players so you guys know I am talking to you!.

In other news we "finally" play Kings of War this Tuesday, after talking about it forever. The first time our WFB models are going to use for more than just myself in over a year.  looking forward to see how the game plays and if it puts the fun back in large scale Fantasy gaming for us.

I reached the light at the end of tunnel on the personal front with my real life work debacle, that I  have mentioned here. Things have sorted them out for the best, its all good and life is moving on. I am actually going to have pretty easy summer, on the work front, so I look forward to a vacation
and digging in to finish a couple of large hobby projects I've been secretly talking about.

LPL 6 - Round 10- Maritime Bonus Round

Round 10, The final round has begun over at the LAF for Lead Painters League Season 6.


Above is my round 9 entry "Crew of the Atramentous" which your Privateer Press fans should be familiar with. This guys squeaked out a victory over some nicely painted Dwarves.  My round 10 entry "Capture of the Griffon"  is somewhat old hat around here...you've seen these models alot with my Legends of the High Seas stuff. I did spend some time getting a good photo to meet all the bonus criteria. Except "newly painted" which I could honestly try to claim.  I was very confident going into the last round unless I got paired up with one of the top 10 or so, or I thought..My entry is currently losing by a close margin, (but close enough to beat me in this thing) to a very ool 15 mm river scene that makes up for what its lacking in paint department in a really great idea. That's one of the things about this contest I am discovering- is that paint will not always get your thru..its combination of things not least of which is the whims of the voter on what's fresh or immediately eye catching, and unfortunately Pirates are seemingly a bit long in the tooth this round. So I could really use your vote, if you think my entry deserves it.  Overall its been a great first time LPL, I was shooting for a top 10 finish..but dont think I can pull it off without winning this last round...

HMGS Midwest- Little Wars 2012

 I made a quick afternoon trip out to Little Wars in St Charles, IL yesterday. Never having been before I was interested purely as a spectator in on a couple fronts, mainly to see how one of these events operates from Historical gaming side of the aisle and also to (what else?, shop Historical miniatures!) Couple weird things going on, 1) this event has a cross pollination of some of gaming you see at Adepticon. being a week after Adepticon this is very odd. In fact the scheduled WFB tournament had ZERO registrants (we saw Rob the organizer there) there was also a Privateer Press event run by my pal, Felix who never ceases to get the bodies there, Adepticon just last week or not. I stopped by the table and he had probably a dozen players.  And # 2) for the size room they had there where alot of empty tables there, while we arrived late in the day, so it possible alot of there events where completed but for Saturday afternoon I was looking for a bit more in the tables and terrain department, I was a little let down there.

Our main goal (since we weren't signed up for any events) was to check out the vendor hall. unlike Adepticon where vendor space is very limited. and probably less than 10% of the total floor space Here it takes up probably 40% of the event including the flea market room. This was pretty awesome. I because of way vendors bring the ton of stuff there alot just in bags..I could have literally spent all day in the vendor hall rummaging thru various things. Out initial hunt was for various Historical miniatures that you just cant get a good feel for from the various websites or just arent pictured. We saw alot of usual suspects, we were both kind of looking for some classical antiquity 15mm Historicals as the subject has come up for our next Hail Ceasar campaign. However we totally struck out there. I did find alot of metal Crusader blisters (which you cant get in the US anymore, you know have to order overseas)  at good  prices however it wasnt enough to get me to invest because I couldn't find two of the same blister of anything I wanted (as in enough to make a unit) Hank from Gorgon was out with a great display showing Gorgon's fantastic stuff. I am eyeing a bunch of different Gorgon's 28's depending on what period we settle on next but since he's local it's not tough to get.

 ( awesome skirmish table , no idea what they where playing but love the table)


Then we stumbled up the Iron Wind metals both who currently does Battletech but also has all the old Ral Partha molds and still casts and sell them..It was a Fantasy/ Sci-fi- / Pirates geeks- miniatures paradise- thousands and thousands of loose pewter models in buckets going for $2 an ounce. Some  seriously great stuff in there, Once Chris and I got a load of that..we were finished and we spent the rest of time there scouring stuff...I found some kick ass. Orc's from probably late 80'early 90's. I think these are Bob Olley sculpts as they look very similar to my Reaper Orcs..anyway I got 14 of them for $20. Chris picked a mix of Pirates and Fantasy Figs...we spaced out on the flee market room and by the time we got there they where packing up..bummer as it looked like there was alot of cool stuff  there. Next year I am making this a priority to get out there the first. if its not right on top of Adepticon or we dont get a Hail Caesar tourney to make the Adepticon cut next year..this might be the thing to do.

 As an aside, I was speaking to the Iron Wind gent a bit about this insane amount of figures and the amount of molds there must be..he tells me alot of the stuff 75% of it isnt even on the website..where they might so 5 poses of something but really there are 20..I did some digging and found this interesting article on Iron Wind . HERE. Battletech is currently experiencing some growth I've seen so expect these guys around for awhile which is cool with the old Ral Partha coming along for the ride.

Finally I wanted to show this awesome 15mm game I saw.  We've been taking about 15mm for size consideration and expense when jumping around to different periods with Historicals. I quickly realize the trap. Yeah figs are cheaper..but once you get the bug..you just start expanding the game size as the scale get smaller. Currently in Hail Caesar we run three divisions of 300 points. We've been talking going 4 division or 400 points.. because it removes the 3 division triangle where games can implode quickly due to bad event (like strong flank push with multiple sweeping advances) with 4 Divisions these quirky game enders based on bad luck are minimized so for a more balanced game we've talking about 4 Divisions. Due to excessive model counts four divisions at 28mm maxes out an 8 foot table really quick, I say its basically playable but too crowded, if you really want to use alot of Cavalry and use them effectively. SO-  15mm solves that problem. BUT The new problem, as perfectly illustrated above is once you go 15mm, if you are like us the next thing you know, you are saying " hey well instead of 4 divisions a side", lets do 6, then 8, or even 10....Arghh...something to seriously consider.