Waaagh additions and October painting totals

OK so as promised, here is the completed tank from the 'How To'. It's a Looted Wagon under the new rules, inspired by the Epic scale Seigfried light tank. In fairness it's more inspired by the availability of a cheap 'Tonka Toy' bulldozer, which I was able to convert.

Painting aside, the most pleasing feature of this vehicle is that it comes with its' own sound effects! The original toy had a friction motor (ditched) and sound, light and movement effects. In the build I was able to preserve the sound board, so when you press the cowling on the bonnet the dozer blade lifts up and the horn sounds! Childish fun.

The turret came from a bleach bottle in the recycling at home, the flamer barrel was part of a Robogear piece left over from the other builds. The bulldozer itself was a mere £3; money well spent.

Other than those, the two Killer Kans are also finished. I added more details to the both before beginning to paint them, and following the same basic process as the wagon, these chaps came together in no time at all.

This one I've now dubbed 'Uggy':

And here is 'Eggy':

And here they are together:

Next up for these are the characters, and that'll do for now. I'll have a good 750 points painted, which serve me for the time being. The rest can be tucked away for the winter if needed.

So what of the painting totals for the month?

October started well, but my trip to Fiasco threw it all to pot. Painting total now stand at:

Bought: 227
Painted: 364
Sold: 80

Having spent much of the month working on vehicles, the result looks pretty bad, and to be fair it is smaller than I'd have liked. Still a rapid fire battalion of Germans are half finished on the table at the moment, ready for eBay of course. November should start strong, but will finish early. So no better than a 2:1 ratio is likely for the year now, not bad, but my buying habits scuppered doing better.

How to: paint weathered vehicles

In a rare moment of organisation, I managed to get a shot of every stage in the painting of one of my current models. Part of the reason for this is that it represents a honing of my new technique for doing extremely battered looking vehicles. Many of the painting guides will give you a different technique for chipped paint, but I always felt that unless done in very modest amounts it looked very false; This is my solution.

Now when I say weathering, I mean here, really heavy weathering, rust and steel show most everywhere there is an edge on the vehicle and the effect of the paint job is to represent bubbling and blistering paint. This is pretty far from a factory fresh result.



The model in point is one for my Ork army, but don't let that hold you back; the techniques would apply as easily to any well worn historical vehicle, from WW1 to Gulf War2! Where I talk about dags, think of tank numbers and so forth, and it'll soon make sense for any model.

That said, common sense will be needed, before attempting this with 15mm models or smaller!

And you can see the finished model in a day or two...

Fiasco 2008

My one and only show of the year, and terrible timing too! In so far as I leave the country again in little more than a month. Still even if the show isn't needing a visit, it does have possibly the best venue of any wargaming show - the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

You could easily spend all day exploring the displays at the Royal Armouries, and my visit for Fiasco also allowed me the opportunity to catch the Weta armouries exhibition, featuring amazing weapons and armour from the Lord of the Rings movies, The Chronicles of Narnia (if you like that sort of thing) King Kong and others.

Just the techniques involved in making the real weapons and the props were fascinating, but seeing things like Sting and The Sauron's armour in the flesh was great.

As for the show itself; well a much smaller affair than recent year, and with no Bring and Buy at all! Why the club didn't organise their own is beyond me, but with the space available it'd been a squeeze to say the least.

A few notable absentees in the traders too, no Irregular Miniatures for example. But thankfully there were a number of great games on to provide some nice eye candy.


Here, the Battle of Ravenna in 25/28mm. Very tidy painting, but somewhat unispired (presumably historically accurate) terrain.

Another set of 15mm WW2 rules entered the fray, with a scenic table. On close inspection the figures were more of a let down., but you can't have everything now, can you?

A gorgeous 28mm ship of the line bombards a fortress in what I presume was a Napoleonic game of some sort. I never got any details, but the model ships were fantastic!

But the winner for me, was this 28mm Indian Wars game. The figures were lovely, the table visually striking, and strongly evoking its' theme, and the details were fantastic. Aside from the Indian camp, there was the chasm, the gold mine, the farmstead, the cavalry fort....

Gladly I bumped into a variety of the local gamers and my old opponent, Chris, giving me the opportunity to arrange a last game with him before I depart again.

As for shopping, well, What I would've really wanted - A copy of Victory at Sea and its' supplement seemed to be the only thing not for sale anywhere. Otherwise I caved in on the lush Perry plastics, and picked up a box each of the American Civil War models. The only other purchase being 10 Halberdiers to add to the Dogs of War. All in all 58 miniatures for £26. Great, if only I could justify them!

Ah well, I'm sure by this time next year they'll be painted; and quite possibly sold. Such is the wargamers lot.

Belang-Alasan: War at Sea in the East Indies 1943...

1943, and as the war in the east slowly begins to turn, a British fleet attempted to intercept the Japanese Carrier Akagi on a run to port.


The Akagi, fat with aircraft was accompanied by light cruiser Jintsu, and a single destroyer. Running a few miles to the north were the Battlecruiser Kongo and the heavy cruiser Myoko. Picket duties were being maintained in this sector by a I-19 class submarine.

In response, the British assembled a force centred round HMS Rodney and Carrier HMS Illustrious. A pair of Australian cruisers and two destroyers were seconded to the operation, in the hope of stopping the Japanese reaching safe waters. A British submarine was also rushed independently to the area.

In the engagement the Japanese were split by a pair of small Islands 10 miles east of Belang. The Royal Navy was able to initially engage the smaller but powerful Japanese battlecruiser group. However air attacks by the Japanese fighters based on the Akagi effectively neutralised the British air power.

Nonetheless by 11.45 hrs the Japanese had already lost most of their offensive air ability in an unsuccessful strike on the British carrier group. Though their submarine picket managed to Torpedo the Illustrious.

By this stage the Rodney was beginning to make its' impressive main battery tell, with a firepower the Kongo and Myoko were unable to match. However the engagement had now descended to one of a close quarters assault, as the Japanese attempted to use their 'Long Lance' torpedoes to sink the British carrier and its' escorts, whilst screening their own.

The Kongo, Myoko and Jintsu were lost, but the combined efforts of these vessels, the I-19 submarine and desperate surface attacks by Japanese fighters were enough to sink the Illustrious, and allow the Akagi to escape.

Although the Royal Navy could count control of sea lanes and the destruction of several key enemy assets in its' favour, the loss of its' own carrier and the escape of the enemy's resulted in Belang-Alasan being considered a Pyrrhic victory at best. It would be some time still until the mighty Akagi was sunk, but for now all it could do was slink back to port, unescorted.

A fresh start with Orks

I hereby swear, this will be the last Sci Fi/Fantasy army I start for a long, long time. This year has been a big one for fantasy games of on sort or another for me. But I'm glutted on them now and really need to return to some more historical gaming. Still in the current phase, I have as mentioned yesterday made a start on painting my recent accumulation of 40 figures. The image below presents the initial 400 point plus combat patrol army.



The core of this is 20 Ork boys, straight out the Assault on Black Reach box, and given a straight forward paint job.

Doc Greenthumb (bonus points for the musical reference folks) the Orc Painboy and his loyal orderly. Bought full price (gasp) from GW. Reasonably happy with what is a quickie paint job for a character figure.



Then there are the Nobs, from the same source as the boys. The paint job here adds a wash of the GW Mud wash mixed with Red wash. A couple of slight weapon reposes were added. Great models with plenty of variety.

Next up are the Deffcopters:

I've really honed the chipped paint technique on these guys, a full tutorial is to follow soon. Overall I think these look great on the table, and the models are fantastic considering the come as part of a starter set.

A Ork wartrakk, cobbled together from one of the Robogear models released (unsuccessfully) by Airfix a few years ago. I picked up a couple of kits for £3 each; they even came with Humbrol acrylics (good for undercoating but not much else). This one needed a substantial rebuild of the running gear, and a new weapon, also from Robogear parts. The crewman is an otherwise unemployable plastic Orc archer.

Finally a couple of the upcoming items for the force, which should make it to 750 points in the next week or so. Firstly a Big Mek; made from a plastic Nob, Robogear parts and plastic bits:

Some work still to do but I'm happy with the pose and equipment. He's tooled up with a custom shooter, 'uge choppa/power claw and a force field generator...

Lastly for today, Robogear and the bits box is also providing some Killer Kans (mini combat walkers). This is the first one, though there's work to do on it.

Best of all, to my mind, there are enough parts left from the one kit to make another of these.

So, about £70 will eventually supply around 1000-1200 points of Orks; an army on its own, or a large reinforcement to my old army.

Cool.

But as thoughts turn to the winter, I wondering what to do next, and influenced by the new 28mm Plastics, I'd have to say I'm leaning toward the horse and musket era for something new. Let's just see though, it might be 6 months before anything comes of it.

Out come the Waaaghs

The latest thing at the Leeds NightOwls is another mini campaign, this time set in the 40k universe. The star system Sodallere finds itself at the end point of a rift in warp space and the sudden arrival of unexpected guests sees sudden and explosive action amongst several alien races.

I quickly painted up my new Orks to get involved, more on those in a subsequent post, and have set to getting a decent number of games in before either the end of the campaign, or my time in the area!


And overall it's been going surprisingly well. The games are combat patrol sized, which means a maximum of 400 points and a variety of restrictions on unit types. On the plus side a game should never last more than an hour, so several can be played in a session; or around a more conventional game.


My initial, and current force is ordered thus:

• 5 Nobz, wearing 'eavy armour. Lead by Fangback the Ork, accompanied by Doc Greenthumb the painboy.
• 20 Ork Boyz with two 'eavy shootas.
• 2 Deffcopters with twin linked Rokkit launchers.
  

So far this little force has won 5 and lost only 1, and that was against an all long ranged shooty space marine force. Otherwise we've been victorious over Tyranid, Chaos Marines, Tau, Adeptus Arbites (imperial police) and Guard forces!

A narrative acount of one of these battles should serve to illustrate the point!

Whilst Fangback was notionally in command when it came to brains, Doc Greenthumb usually held sway. "Them's look like marinez over there, but dey is all spikey like." Fangback motioned over the ruins of a small village towards a handful of glinting figures. "Whaddya fink." Greenthumb Scratched his masked nose. "I reckon the plan last time woz sound, just need to keep tha boyz 'eads down more until it's clobberin time."

Greenthumb knew how to keep the group of Nobs motivated, a smouldering blue liquid was injected into each ones' arm before the battle, sending pulsating spasms of raw energy through their limbs.

Fangback ordered the smaller boyz to advance through the centre of the village whilst Deffcopters looked for targets of opportunity. To their bemusement the enemy didn't spray them with a hail of explosive bullets. Instead a curiously emblazoned Rhino rumbled forward, unleashing gouts of black smoke and a group of red warriors. "I've seen thems before," yelled one of the lesser nobs "thems Beserkers; this'll be a proper fight. Waaagh!"

In rushed the Nobs, Greenthumb barely able to keep pace. The Nobs hit hard but the Chaos warriors held firm, despite the fresh sheen of their own blood across their armour. Behind the scrap, the unloaded Rhino tried to tangle with the Ork boys. They allowed it through their lines though, crawling all over it; gibbering and screaming as they set to it with Axes, Chainswords, Bolt pistols and Grenades.

The Rhino finally lifted up on one side as the suspension was rent from its hull and before long the remains were burning; thick with the acrid smell of the crew, boiling alive in their armour.

Things weren't going all their own way for the Orks though, and Greenthumb glanced away from his own favourable scrap to see a Deffcopter spiralling into the ground. The Nobs were oblivious to it, and the Boyz seemed only interested in the burning tank.

"Oy, grots for brains," he yelled, waving his syringe in the direction of the other Chaos warriors trying to encircle his lads. "There's your fight!"

The Boyz swung around and screamed with joy; a half dozen warriors had left themselves exposed in their efforts to bring down the copters, they'd broke cover. Some screamed revenge for their fallen flyboyz, others simply relished another battle.

They charged and scrambled over the wreckage toward the near helpless foe. It was over so quickly, that as the last Chaos warrior fell their only casualty was a fool who attempted to leap at the warriors without paying heed to the remains of the rotors, spinning in front of his - soon to be decapitated - head.

At last the final Beserker fell too, their toll on the Nobs was significant, but not severe. Fangback roared with unconcealed relish whilst Greenthumbs Grot, Randi, scampered around trying to fix up the wounds - generally getting a swatting for his troubles.

The Nobs wandered over to the Boyz, who were busy firing Plasma guns at each other and wondering why their enemy hadn't bothered to use them.

"Gimme that!" rumbled Fangback. He turned the gun on the burning Rhino, and carved a neat hole through it's front armour. "Hmmm, good work lads, Wrenchmangler will be well 'appy with this lot."

Greenthumb looked over the injured, not many really, and only two actually dead. Pity; he needed more to work with than that. Still, these 'spiky humies' would make for some effective transplants.

Or failing that, a tasty dinner.

It's going well so far, and the games have motivated me to paint up a plentiful array of Orky bits and pieces, which otherwise would have languished indefinitely. More on that tomorrow...

Last addition to the Dogs for now.

Well unless something changes to give me time to do the unit of Pikemen I have waiting attention some day.

This is Klaus Von Mettwurst; who'll serve as Army General in larger games. I wanted to introduce something unique and fantastic to the army, to give it a blatant fantasy aspect. The army list allows for certain characters to be mounted on a Pegasus, so that seemed a reasonable starting point. However, I quite fancied something a little rarer. So a quick eBay purchase supplied some wings, and a forum associate did a trade on a model lion from the Elven Chariot kit. The rider was already in my supply of knights bought in the first round of the army assembly, and is I think the current Empire General model.

As it was marrying white metal wings to a plastic body, the creation of this model was always going to be difficult; much hacking and carving later and the wings slotted in to the body. The saddle and wing joints were made of modelling putty, in such a way as the joins were all covered and the general didn't need gluing to the model to sit securely in place.

At first the model was pinned to a rock, but the balance was never right and eventually it pitched itself off my modelling 'table' on to the floor and broke off the base. Hence the rather simple and low flying base it now has.

The photo's don't do justice to the details in places, but it's not my best work, and frankly I was glad to see the back of it!

Here is the back of it:

And with that, the army goes into storage; I'm not quite sure on that though, and I may yet end up selling them on. Trouble is, that to make them a playable force, albeit a small one, I'd really need to paint up the second unit of pike. Is there enough time to do that I wonder, what with the other projects I have on the go...

Orc Civil Waaaagh

Another day another game; well, it'd make sense in a gaming blog wouldn't it.

I took my Orc & Goblin army out for a session, as I'd been forced to pull it out of one storage site to transfer it to another, I figured I ought at least to use it at some stage in between. On the day though the only other Fantasy player in the club with 2000 points to play with was another O&G player. So it was going to be a civil war!

My army was light on characters and special troops and so numbered about 200 figures, Loosely speaking three large blocks of Orcs, A smaller unit of Savage orcs, two skirmish lines of goblin bowmen, a mass of Goblin spears, Spider Riders, Wolf Riders, a Ballista, a Doom Diver catapult and some modest heroes and wizards.
His was the opposite, focusing on some powerful characters (one was worth the same as all four of mine) and several war machines; and even with two large units of goblins, was little over half the size of mine.

The battle progressed well for me, with my centre marching hard behind screens of goblin bowmen, whilst my cavalry outmanoeuvred his. Though we suffered a slight reverse on the left when first the goblin bowmen and then the unit of 36 spears backing them up fled, the attacking Spider riders, Pump wagon and Chariot were effectively out of the battle as a result of the delay these caused.
In the centre his trolls came up against frenzied Savage Orcs in the field and were thouroughly beaten; at about the same time , I successfully got of the incredible "Gorks Warpath" spell, and gave four of his units a good kicking with it. At the back my wolf riders wiped out all his artillery before turning on the rear of his goblins, My warboss too was busy killing outclassed gobbo's, and as a result on the last turn his only Orc unit was charged on two sides, with two units moving up to help finish him off. Unsurprisingly they were destroyed!

A great and solid victory, showing that a no frills army can win in Warhammer against a gimmicky tooled up one. This was a victory for better generalship, something I certainly don't always manage! But it does mark the start of a much better run of luck on the table for me. Some may recall this time last year I was in the midst of a three month victory drought. No such problems at the moment, as future posts will reveal!

Warhammer 40k: 5th Edition

Well these days it seems Games Workshop can't go more than four or five years without deciding to rehash it's core rules. What with one thing and another though I decided to forgo the hardback release of the rules as they were I considered, very poor value compared to the previous edition.

Your £30 bought you 300-odd pages but only less than half that was actual rules. The rest was what gamers commonly call 'Fluff'; background on the races and so forth, a chunk or two of fiction and a section on 'The Hobby' (not wargaming though you'll note, just 'Warhammer'). Given the previous version of the rules fitted in two distinct alternative ways to play the game (Combat Patrols and Kill Teams) this was in my mind not worth the asking price.

The same could not be said of the new boxed set however.

Firstly the latest boxed edition contains one of GW's now standard slimline rulebooks, printed at half size granted, but with a surprisingly sturdy cover and importantly, ALL the rules needed to play, with almost no wasted space on 'Fluff'. For those who need it, an A4 booklet contains basic background, painting tips and the like, and in some respects does a better job than the hardback rulebook. Though I'm sure there will be those who miss one hundred pages eulogising the Imperium/Space Marines/Games Workshop themselves.

The other obvious boon to the boxed set is the figures. Now the previous box supplied a disappointing amount of figures, of admittedly high quality, and a lot of scenery. This set skips scenery in favour of what the buyer really wants, lots of nice figures! And lots there are; 46 pieces in fact, including a small horde of Orks, a neat Dreadnought, some terminators and the unique Deffcopters. To buy the available alternatives to all these figures would cost somewhere around £150; when you consider the price of the boxed edition is only £40 it seems almost ludicrous, but on the other hand, what a bargain.

Also these are by far the nicest plastic figures Games Workshop have ever released in a boxed game, good detail and a real effort made to provide a variety of troop types. Both forces easily produce a 500 point force when their equipment is taken in to account, and I can speak from having already painted them that the Orks are delightful little models to work on.

Aside to that you also get the required templates, a handful of dice and the usual useless bendy red measuring sticks - mine went straight in the recycling bin.

All this would be for nothing if the game had become a stinker in the process though. So to get to grips with it, me and old adversary Chris arranged a game a week or two back. 1200 points was agreed as being enough, but not too much to get to grips with the changes.

Chris had a surprise for me however, since our last game he had done a burst of painting and instead of the expected Blood Angels or Tau, a largely complete Tyranid army face me. Chris claims to have been using some of my painting tips and techniques, if so then they've served him well, as his 'Nids are really nice, so much improved over his previous work! I particularly liked this chap, rearing up to some six inches tall.

The gig looked to be up straight away, as I found myself outnumbered three to one. We'd ended up with a simple 'kill everything' mission, essentially the same as the old Cleanse mission. The first notable change in the rules for us was the 'True line of sight' rule. If you can see it you can shoot it, and that includes through what would've once been blocking cover - most notably through woods. This meant at all time we were firing hard at each other, but the amended cover rules also allow most forces a cover save at all times, which is often a 4+ Better certainly than the Tyranids base save.

Reserves and the like had changed too, becoming optional in all missions IIRC. Sure enough, Chris' Genestealers turned up behind my lines (despite this being a chance roll it felt inevitable). The new rules allow units to engage several targets at once, great for Tyranids and Orks certainly, with their large units. Vehicles assaulted are always attacked on the rear armour; you can guess what happened to my stationary Predator Tank on its' first foray to the battlefield then!

With my rearguard destroyed I was reliant on my own reserves, my terminators turned up and made short work of the Genestealers, but then found themselves being sniped through a doorway in that long wall. Damn line of Sight!

Gaunts attacked my other infantry unit across the wall, Whilst my Dreadnought dispatched the giant Carnifex; who couldn't hide anywhere at all. Foolishly I allowed my Dread to get tied up in a melee rather than staying back and giving covering fire.

The game ended randomly on turn 5 to my great relief. We totted up Kill points - a simpler system than victory points - and found the game was a draw. Immediately KP appeared inferior (if easier to calculate) compared to VP; as by any other assessment I was losing, and another turn would've secured total victory for Chris.

All in all though, in this small game 5th edition plays much like 4th, only with some, largely acceptable tweaks. Many don't seem to like the line of sight rules, but with a simple agreement of what constitutes a target they seem fair enough. The casualty distribution for saves is an excellent rule, though one which favours generic armies facing specialists like the Marines or Tau. And although we didn't use them here, the concept of objectives should bring a new dynamic to the game and about time too.

Overall it's a good refresh, but buy it as the boxed set, not the hardback book.

Recent club activity

Some recent-ish photo's from the Leeds' NightOwls club as I try to get the blog up to date. On this particular night I rocked up with nothing arranged and ended up playing Uncharted Seas (the photo's being used in an earlier entry).

Elsewhere members of the club (mainly it must be said from the older age-range and mostly dyed in the wool historical gamers) were trying out rules for their Perry Miniatures inspired club ACW project. The figures look quite nice on table, but the variety of painting standards didn't appeal to me, and neither did the rather bizarre basing convention they'd settled on of one figure behind another on a 25mm x 50mm base.

In their defence, it's none of my business how they choose to play it as it is a war I've really no interest in gaming. I'll play anything, sure, but I don't collect a number of periods or systems as other than as a game they have no interest. The American Civil War is certainly one of those.

Not dissimilar for me is Battle Fleet Gothic, A game I'd play but almost certainly not have considered buying any models for, that said when you see the quality of the finished models in the hands of a quality painter:

Dan's second generation Tau fleet (deliberately Star Fleet inspired)

...or what can be achieved by using leftovers and bits of other models:

Ross' Dark Eldar - made from their 28mm brethren's jetbikes and so forth

...there is a certain temptation. But the rules themselves seemed to take a long time to get much of a result; and besides, I'm really not in a position to try anything new just now.

Dice schmice

Funny how some weeks I have lots of posts to make; you find you have lots to say, or a catch up on recent activity you've not bothered to record before.

Or for no apparent reason you get struck by a thought on the bus to work.

In our wargames dice are the single most commonly used arbiter of chance, and as such it's fair to say that for some gamers they take on an unusually high significance. Most gamers have a set of favoured dice they use. And I can think of several such instances, mostly, I must say not mine.

When does this go over the line into superstition, or even suspicious behaviour?

Some of my dice are close to thirty years old, and yes I have favourites; a set of six medium sized red dice do most rolls and - to my mind at least - give the best overall results. These are backed up when needed by a batch of freebie white dice from Warhammer games which roll adequately. The only down side to these being that the are the same as so many other gamers dice. Still I seem to be gradually accumulating them rather than the reverse.

Here is my irrational moment: I once bought a set of 36 distinctive yellow dice; most gamers like to roll all the same dice for some reason. They ultimately let me down in so many games, that I retired them from play. I felt I could irrefutably blame the dice rolls for my defeats in so many games with them I refused to use them any more.

So far so reasonable, or not; but I've met worse.

There was the guy who kept a pair of inch square brass dice in a special case, for those critical rolls. They could be rolled intimidatingly at the enemy's troops too. I've met people who liked to use tiny dice so it was harder for the opponent to read the results, and of course there's the 'scoopers' people who roll their dice and immediately scoop up the 'hits' before you've had time to register all the results (Do it the other way round guys, it's more sportsmanlike!).

One of the best though was the chap who seemed to have a dozen ways of fixing things in his favour. Firstly it was known, because he confided in us this fact, that he would test dice at home, statistically rolling them countless times to work out their average result, thus he could select the dice, or combination of dice, that would most likely ensure his result.

Also he had a 'technique' for rolling, generally known as 'the drop'. Essentially he'd mastered the technique of letting the dice out of his hand in such a way that, say, if the 1's were face up in his hand, they would land 6's up on the ground. This roll was always executed onto a soft surface to boot, so that, you know, bouncing would not effect the predetermined result. For massed results he was always something of a scooper.

If that was borderline gamesmanship then their blatant cheating (rolling behind your back and then declaring a favourable result before you saw any dice, for example) was often admonished and caused more than one player simply to pack up and go home!

Then of course there's the flamboyant rollers who seem to think their in Vegas, and whose dice are liable to scatter like a claymore mine over the entire room. Then there are the non rollers who basically present a less honed version of the drop.

Another annoying habit, and a common trait with DBA gamers is the 'contact with anything makes it a cocked dice unless I like the result' mentality. This one I've mentioned before and it was enough to put me off one sort of tournament. If it's obviously a one, why re-roll it just because it has stopped partly on a piece of felt? A cocked dice is one that is impossible to agree a final result for as it is clearly stuck between two or more possible results, not merely resting at an angle. Grrr.

And don't get me started on the fad for personalised dice; bored with a six on your dice, feel it doesn't express you as a person, it doesn't show your loyalty to a brand or ideology? Fear not you can now get dice with GW logo's, Skulls, Iron Crosses, your club logo or whatever the hell you want on them!

Customised dice; like a red rag to a bull, but for geeks. Do you honestly need it to be that obvious?

Personally it seems like just another way of obfuscating your results. And is often used in conjunction with the scooping technique. Don't get me wrong, a dice with symbols on it which actually mean something in the rules (Such as GW order dice and artillery dice) are fine but just replacing one number with an image, is lame.

Then of course there are gimmick dice, remember round D6's, those oh so obvious loaded dice? And I've not even mentioned all the multi-sided options out there. The 4's, 8's, 10's, 12' and 20 sided dice. Ive a bagful of them gathering dust, as increasingly (barring the percentage roll of a couple of 10 sided dice) they have fallen out of favour.

The humble dice, a bigger topic than you'd imagine!

Cross unt Geld - 924ad

A kid called Ralph wanted to give Warhammer Ancients a go at the club, and who was I to refuse! Given that the game would be on a Sunday, a time when a big game could be finished easily I scraped together every last figure I could for a 2,500 point game.

The armies were my usual Vikings (AKA: The winners) against the generally luckless Franks and their cowardly cavalry.

The Vikings above comprised three blocks of 24 Hird, including the General, Godi, Army Standard and a couple of Besirkir; 36 Bondi foot warriors; 18 Jomsviking adventurers; 12 Ulfnedhar and 18 Bondi bowmen.

The East-Carolingian Franks comprised two units of heavy Milites including their King; one unit of lighter Swabian Milites; 32 Swabian Milites on foot with the army standard; 32 Liberi with a Bishop and two units of a dozen bowmen each.

At the end of that I had one cavalry figure spare in his box, I almost felt sorry for him!

We opted for randomised terrain set up (where it is laid out alternately and then each piece 'scatters' at random), which resulted in an interesting layout of interspersed woods and fields. After that we went with map deployment so we couldn't respond to the other persons plan as it happened. Ralph set up as a result with a dense centre formed of his Hird, the tougher small units in the field to his left and the weaker, but numerous Bondi on his right:

In reply, I'd placed my infantry in the centre, intending to occupy the field with the weakest, but stubborn troops of the Liberi, and with all my heavy cavalry on the relatively open ground to my right. The lighter troops were to my left:

The battle swung back and forth throughout the game, though a couple of key moments sealed eventual victory for the Vikings. Early on Ralph's Ulfnedhar got stuck into the Kings cavalry, and although eventually destroyed, three rounds (!) of drawn combat meant that by the time the vikings were destroyed only two knights (one being the King) were left.

I still had a cavalry reserve on that Flank, but Ralph was able to get the charge in first; I elected to Flee to expose the troops to my own foot Milites; thinking that for once surely my Milites must rally on the next turn. Of course they didn't and off the table they went. When will I ever learn!

At least on my left the light cavalry charged down and wiped out the Bondi spears without loss, they too turned round towards Ralphs reforming centre.

At the same stage, two of his units of Hird attacked my men in and around the field. The defence of the field was aided by it's stout wall which saw me defeat one unit

But after a long fight I lost the other. Still panic swept through Ralphs forces when the Godi was killed, leading to the unit he led being destroyed, the retreats of his Lord giving me a window of opportunity. My Milites were routing but so were their previous foe, If I could just rally them, my Bishop and the light cavalry might be able to hold out to final victory...

Alas, my foot troops would not be swayed, and fled the field. It was all over really, there were simply too many enemies for the bishop and 20 or so Liberi to beat, even with some cavalry support. Hands were shook and battle concluded.

So, another confirmation of the brittle nature of Frankish cavalry, or perhaps my tactics. Whenever the enemy gets the charge in they are stuffed; if on the other hand they make contact first, even a large enemy unit is hard pressed to meet them head on. On the other hand, you can't go far wrong with the Vikings, could they be the winningest army I own?

Possibly.

Armageddon it

Another opportunity to play Epic a while back saw me field my new Ork Gargant and Gunfortress; much to the surprise of my opponent (clearly, not readers of the blog) who didn't think I had such a thing.

The scenario was again the Orks trying to storm an imperial defensive line, this time skirting a city. Also the forces were larger - 3000 points - and the imperial forces were divided between Space Marines and guard.

The Imperial might, including these Baneblades was mainly hunkered down.

Whilst the Orkses formed a cloud of dust approaching en-masse.

The heavy handed outflanking tactics of my previous foray with the Orks worked ok, but the enemy was able to use the tactical flexibility of the Marines to counterstroke most moves.

I paid too dearly for a foothold in the centre of the town too, losing my Gargant in the process.

Overall it was a tactical draw, with my securing of one objective in the city, however in terms of losses the Orks were a spent force, and the Imperials though badly blooded could regroup to defend at least half the city effectively.

If there is any criticism I'd make it was that we couldn't play the scenario out to a full conclusion, just managing to scrape through two out of the four notional turns in 5 hours. On a small table, with lots of terrain, Epic plays slow, as everything can always act on something; there are no approach moves. Maybe next time we'll butt two 6x4's together and keep the same level of terrain and see what happens.

A Tidy Profit

Resisted a pun there; I'm being obtuse I know, but it's early. Anyway the insurgents sold last night for £33. Not bad, a quid a figure. Next for eBay is likely to be a Rapid Fire German battalion I'm hoping to start over the weekend.

More later...

Across the Uncharted Seas

I always like a naval wargame, after land based mass-battle wargames, naval are my next choice (thence star ship combat, Board games, Aerial combat and skirmish games , for anyone who's interested). I nearly ended up in the Merchant navy in my youth, and have always loved the sea.

Naval combat can be hard to present well, and there is always a choice between realism (usually a long slow complex game, as with most genres) and fun; Uncharted Seas, falls in to the fun end of the scale, but with some classic conventions to realism which old school gamers will be familiar with. And a bunch of rules that players of Axis and Allies: War at Sea will be very familiar with!

It began with a guy turning up at the club with a full collection of the models and rules. He'd helped with the art design of parts of the game, and so could be considered to be actively promoting its sale. The game is a Fantasy based system with with each fleet representing a specific race. Those initially released are:

• Imperials: Humans, with ships akin to late medieval or Renaissance galleons
• Dwarves: with steam powered ships strongly reminiscent of American Civil War monitor ships
• Orc: Using roughly hewn vessels with mixed powerplants, looking like chubby Viking ships
• Dragonlords: Strongly influenced by the Melniboneans in the Elric books
  

Each fleet is released with three unique ships and more to follow; each fleet also comes with a deck of cards representing the special abilities, tactics or spells available to them.
A turn basically boils down to:

• Draw cards, one per squadron commanded (normally 4)
• Roll for initiative
• Winner of initiative selects a squadron and activates it, moving it and then firing.
• The opponent then replies with a squadron and the turn continues until all squadrons have acted or been destroyed before able to do so

Cards may be played at any time during the turn, so long as their specific activation rules (stated on the cards in a simple code) are met. Firing actions may also be replaced by a ramming/boarding action.

The activation phase is a sensible option in this game, and add to the tactical nuances, as it does in most games. Unlike many though the speed of play is such that making each squadron go separately does not slow play down. The sample games we played were with standard fleets of 4 squadrons each (10 ships) generally took under an hour and a half even with learning the rules.

Ships move in inches, and generally the smaller the ship, the fast and more nimble it is. Templates are used for turning, and for some fleets sailing into the wind slows the vessel down. There is no allowance for approaching land, but shallows and the like may be covered in the rules.

Firing is simple to describe, and I must be honest here, it is identical to A&A:W@S. Absolutely identical - measure the range band and roll the number of dice your ship has at that range, 4's and 5's are hits and 6's count as two hits plus a reroll. If the total of hits is equal to or higher than the ships damage capacity it takes a point of damage. If the Critical capacity is met then the ship suffers critical damage. Parallel evolution anyone? One nice feature is that ships in the same squadron can choose to link their fire onto a single vessel, this means small ships can attack cruisers or battleships if there are enough of them.

The criticals basically result in double damage, but may also, immobilise ships, kill crew or cause a catastrophic explosion. A single table is used for all ships. If a ship sustains equal to its hull points in damage it sinks; again the same as W@S, but then how many other ways could you cover this in a fast play game?

In a boarding action a similar method is used, but with a crew combat round if after contact both vessels survive.

Tactical variety again is based on the cards used; for example a ship may load chainshot, or be better equipped to repel boarders based on the play of a card. Magic spells are powerful but can be countered by certain cards.

There is no morale as such, other than if a player decides to run. In a campaign this would be less of a problem, but otherwise each battle will be a bloody affair.

So, in gameplay terms, what do I think? Well it's pretty good actually. I like most of the conventions it applies and it moves along very swiftly. At present the available forces are limited but that should change if the game is successful.

The presentation of the material is a real strong point too. The rulebook is £15 and full colour throughout, the rules taking up about half of it and the fleet lists background and so forth the rest. Lovers of Eye candy or painting inspiration will find enough to get started with, and there are even two paper fleets included to allow play without models.

The ships are a mixture of resin hulls and metal masts. They work out as reasonably good value, from £14 for a Dwarf fleet to £28 for the imperial - mast heavy - fleet. The models if I'm honest are not hugely detailed, the resin hulls lack the fiddly noodly bits, and not all of this can be laid at the scale of the models (1:600th scale). If I bought in to game personally I would go in for a lot more detailing of my vessels; however they do paint up well and easily, and are an impressive size on the table; some of the battle ships are around 5 inches long!

Their website will sell you a set of rules plus all four starter fleets and card decks for £100, which I think is a big initial commitment but excellent value.

Overall, anyone, especially anyone into fantasy gaming, should enjoy playing this game, it's easily accessible and makes for a fun casual gaming experience with enough strategy to make it more than just lobbing dice. As the only real competition - Man'o'War by Games Workshop - has been out of production for over a decade, this game should have the market sewn up. History buffs, more interested in the specific performance of Nelsons third refit of a captured Spanish 78 gunner in a westerly wind, will find it's not for them though.

Uncharted Seas is made by Spartan Games. I wish 'em all the best.

Insurgents on eBay

Just a self promotional quickie folks:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=330275667347

That is all, you may return to your business!