Thursday, December 20, 2012

10mm Flames of War Infantry Basing

Having an extensive 10mm WWII german collection and recently acquired the 3rd ed of Flames of War rules, I've been thinking about infantry basing. A few options are open to me as follows:

  • RaW: Base 10mm infantry as the rules state. Might be a little sparse and out of whack with the reduced tank scale
  • Multiply by .66 the size of the bases: This would result in a standard base size of 7/8" by 1 3/8" (2.25 cm x 3.5cm)
  • Multiply the base size by 2 and use the number as cm: This would result in a standard base of 2.5cm x 4cm. I think that the extra 5mm width would be the most useful considering the space required for 5 infantryman models.
What do you guys think? Do you know of more options available for 10mm / 6mm Flames of War?

Thursday, October 25, 2012

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

And by this I mean it's time to play tricks and obtain treats! Halloween is upon us and our friends at Wargame Vault and DriveThruRPG are running their annual trick or treat treasure hunt. Just browse around on their webstore and click on every pumpkin you find. Some of 'em are trick, most of them are freebie treats.

To dress up your wargaming table for Halloween, one cannot have too many zombies, and with the upcoming release of All Things Zombie: Final Fade Out, there is no excuse (for me) to paint up more Walkers. Enter the Wargames Factory with their 28mm modern zombies. They look really nice and you can't beat the price since quantity is important in regards to zombies. $20 will net you a pack of 30 zombies, either male or female. Now all I need is the Romero-esque zombie clown to complete the set. I think i'll order me a set of each.

And finally here's a little something to add to your Halloween soundtrack from Jonathan Coulton:

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Vampire Counts @2000 points

Halloween is upon us once again. Here's a quickie list for our favorite blood  suckers for a late night skirmish or three.

  • Vampire Lord, L2 wizard, red fury, quickblood, armor of destiny, ogre blade, shield (428pts)
  • Wight King, BSB, nightshroud, barded skeletal steed, shield (174 pts)
  • 28x Ghouls with Ghast (290 pts)
  • 40x skeletons, full command (230 pts)
  • 28x Grave Guard, great weapons, full command, banner of the barrows (416 pts)
  • 9x Black Knights, barding, lance, full command, screaming banner (289 pts)
  • Varghulf (175 pts)

2002 pts total

Vampire lord goes in the GG block, and the Wight King rides with his knight buddies. The weight of number per unit should enable you to survive a round or two of combat to get that Invocation off to replenish the ranks.

Happy Halloween!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Wargaming terrain generation

Too many times has terrain generation been a necessary evil in my group. Either there's too much of one terrain type and we run out of ways to model it, or random generation required terrain that we don't have.

I recently found this universal card-based terrain generator inspired by Fantasy Battleground's Kingdoms expansion. I recommend using it as limits the number of terrain pieces that you would require while still keeping with adequate randomness to keep things interesting.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Solo play campaigns

I usually have a couple of hours free while the little one has her afternoon nap so I've decided to keep myself entertained with a wagames solo campaign. Here are my choices:

* 5150 Star Army (pro: have 40k and AT43 figs to use. Con: lots of charts)
* 5150 New Beginnings (Pro: have rezolution figs to use. Cons: need urban terrain and scifi civilian figs)
* All things zombie (Pro: Zombie figs available, terrain choice. Con: Survivor figs missing, urban terrain needed)
* Blitzkrieg commander (Pro: have figs easy rules. Con: no opponent automation)
* Cold war commander (Pro:  Easy rules Con: no figs or terrain)
* Future war commander ( Pro: have figs Con: same a BKC)
* Descent: road to legend solo (Pro: boardgame Con: no opponent automation)
* Battleground: fantasy warfare (Pro: 4 factions available. Con: no campaign rules)
* Heavy Gear Blitz (Pro: giant robots on roller skates. Cons: No opponent automation. Missing Southern minis. No campaign rules)

I *could* adapt the 'de bellis solitarius' unit automation for those games missing such rules so it's not as big a deal as it could be.

Now in making a choice, I absolutely have to stick with it 'till the end. None of this 'try if for a few sessions then switch' since that's what i've been doing recently which has resulted in too many false starts.

I'll have to give this further  thought, but i'm absolutely open to suggestions as well.

Edit: After careful consideration, I'm going to start an All Things Zombie campaign. Time to generate the survivors.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Quickie Malifaux campaign

I'm really smitten by the Malifaux game, so much so that i'm tinkering with a simple campaign system. It would go like this:

* 10 game campaign
* the player with the most accumulated VPs win
* Sudden death victory is awarded to the player who completes 8 different schemes in order (selected at the start of the campaign).
* players must select a faction at the beginning of the campaign and stick with it.

Standard Malifaux rules apply for crew selection and gameplay.

What do you guys think?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Post annual GW price hike

I approve of the challenge that this guy has put out there: Go out and find other games!



Now for a quick list of suggestions not covered by the video:

Games with rules + miniature line (Most with Free Rulebooks):


Games with rules to use with any minis:


These are just off the top of my head, there are *many* more out there. A great resource for PDF rulebooks is the Wargames Vault.

Hope this has been helpful to some, See you next time.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Lilith Starter crew for Malifaux

A while back I was looking for a skirmish game that was cheap to get started in, but with deep enough gameplay to sustain my interest. Enter Malifaux, a steampunk weird west skirmish game. The gameplay looks really simple to grasp but difficult to master.

Intrigued, I ordered a pair of starter packs and the rules from Meeplemart.com .

As you can see I've got a Lilith Neverborn crew starter and a Perdita starter to have their Guild nemesis.

While waiting to get a game in, I decided to start painting up Lilith and her children. First up were some Terror Tot Nephilim


Then was a Mature Nephilim

And last but certainly not least Lilith herself

Of course, a family portrait is de rigueur

Considering on how well these models painted up, I can't wait to get started on the Ortegas.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

The dead will rise from the blood soaked battlefield

The new vampire counts book is out and here are links to reviews of it:

* Hero's Gaming Blog
* Bell of Lost Souls

As a skeleton kind of player, i'm ecstatic that they are now about half the points that they were. What can I say? I loves dem bones. Vamps are more badass than they were (caster lord players will get dinged in points tho)  with the ability to feed of of a defeated foe. Speaking of healing, invocation of nehek is now an area of effect spell, healing all in a certain radius. Battle attrition? What's that?

To celebrate this edition's release, I have ordered a batch of models from Mantic games (have you *seen* the price on the new GW models? That's dentist visit money) Nothing special, some Ghouls, Skeletons, and Black Knights. Yup, the old stand-bys are as reliable as ever.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Dark Eldar strike into Virtual Realspace


It's been *forever* since I played 40k. So I decided to take out my beloved Dark Eldar out for a virtual spin. (Yay Vassal!) You see, it's been so long that I haven't actually used the new DE codex yet (it's only been a year!) 





This is the endgame of an Anhihilation Dawn Assault mission vs Tau. DE win of course (6 vs 9KP). The game hasn't really changed for the DE at all: Speed is life. All but one of those craters were DE vehicles, while 90% of the red smudges are what is left of the Tau infantry after the DE were done with them.

I lucked out on the Combat Drugs so all my combat monsters were so hopped up on drugs that they Felt No Pain, which mitigated much of the Tau shooting. I really like how the game moved from one end of the table to the other (Bottom right to top left). Power from Pain took care of the rest (represented by skulls in the image).


The Dark Eldar of the new codex are just as entertaining as the previous one, with some added durability thrown in so that the late game is still to be contested. I am absolutely statisfied with it.