Monday 28 December 2015

Pondering a New Year of gaming

Good afternoon! I have a few musings for you today, all themed around the new year that will soon be upon us and my ambitions for what I can get done!

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Making a dice tray mk 2

Having had an opportunity to evaluate yesterdays design I have come up with this:

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Making a dice tray Mk 1

I had a quick play with a laser cutter as part of my experiments to come up with projects for school and thought I would have a go at making a dice tray to help people avoid rolling those cubes of doom all over the board when playing. So here is my first attempt:

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Making Kings of War movement trays

Just a quick image dump to show the trays I put together to get my Number daemons onto the Kings of War battlefield as Abyssals. I will need to get a few more models to hit the 2000 Pts mark but that shouldn't be too tricky after Christmas.



Saturday 14 November 2015

Playing more Battlelore!

Will had recently become the owner of the two new Undead armies for Battlelore so it seemed like a good opportunity to dust off my copy and see how well the Daqan army coped with the Undead hordes. 

Finally Playing Dark Age : Initial Thoughts

So myself and Will met up last night to finally dip our toe into the Dark Age waters. We had both read through the rules and scoured the unit cards, but, until you finally get a game or two under your belt, it's difficult to really tell how it plays and how effective some units and abilities are, or even what they actually do in some cases.

So first impressions.
The rules, in a mid game reference situation i was pretty impressed. Despite initially seeming quite complex, it's just a case of getting the process down. Attackers assault value plus targets defence value, plus / minus any modifiers, then roll under that value on your D20. I was also impressed with how precise the wording is throughout, I can't recall any ambiguous situations that arose.

The missions plus secondary objectives all seem fairly varied and are THE method for winning the game, most missions seem to end once a player has hit 3 VPs or so, forcing you to really play to the objectives and not get too distracted. This also leads to it getting very bloody, very quickly. Which also leads to another big plus for me, it's VERY quick. We bashed out 3 games and dinner in an evening, considering these were also learning games involving more rules referencing than would usually be the case, I thought that was darn sweet. I think once were a bit more familiar we could easily bash out 4 or 5 games in an evening.

All in all I was thoroughly impressed, it's quick, the alternating player activations keep you involved, it's got quite a bit of complexity with the special rules but with them all being printed on each units card coupled with the low model count it really works.

The only downside is I'm now eyeing up lots more unit cards for my wish list, now that I better understand what they actually do!


Thursday 12 November 2015

Learning about co-op X-wing.

Just a quick post to let people know about a co-op rules set for x-wing which I think may fix the game for me as I have found the straight up kill each other missions of x-wing a little too MtG with all the upgrade cards. Here is the link docking bay 416. There are a few bits to print and cut out but if people are interested I am happy to organise it all.

Sunday 1 November 2015

Fiddling with mechanics and points.

I had an hour or two when the wife went out on Saturday so I thought I would do my first little test of the mechanics I put together for a Sci-Fi game (I really need to give it at least a working title). Just a quick test of the movement, ranges and damage mechanics.

Wednesday 28 October 2015

Wondering how big an army should be?

I've been putting together my rules set for a Sci-Fi game where you can use any companies models and so have been coming up with the usual armies including your standard humans, genetically enhanced warriors, orcs, alien creatures etc. As part of it I have been pondering how to create the points costs for the units and I thought the best place to start was with how many models/units I wanted in each army. So I thought I would ask other people what they want from Sci-Fi armies. I was thinking a Standard army should be around 2,000 points, there seems to be a reason most companies use this number but I can't say that I know it. I figured that a standard human army should have something like:
4 Characters
4-6 Units of basic infantry
2-3 Support units
2-3 Vehicles
I wanted the game to play quickly (set up to pack away in around 2-2.5 hours) so figured with the reduction of dice rolling down to To Hit, To Damage and then the morale roll at the end of the phase you could probably get more models on the table but is it better to have a game with fewer models/units that are harder to kill or a quick game with lots of models that are easier to kill?
I thought a Space Marine style elite force should have average:
1-2 Characters
2 Units of basic infantry
2 Support units
2 Vehicles 
So what size would you want your Sci-Fi army to be? Does it even matter? 

Sunday 25 October 2015

Quick Sunday sesh

Thought I'd start posting about some games I've been playing!

Kicked off with a brand new copy of Terror in Meeple City (the game formerly known as Rampage) someone brought, so unfortunately there was some assembly required! With 4 people helping out though we were soon set to cause some mayhem:

Leonard the Long-Tail surveys his prey.

This is a game in which I'm all about having fun with winning an occasional bonus (well, it hasn't happened yet). There was much chaos with people moving aggressively, breathing fire aggressively and of course flinging buses to try to snag some teeth from the other monsters.

Leonard tried making a move on Gloria and got smacked upside the head.

Eventually we had a weird endgame situation where the next person to knock a meeple off the board would lose instantly, but the last building tile needed to trigger the game's end was precariously balanced on the edge of the board with a meeple still standing in it. Eventually someone sucked it up and knocked off the last meeple. I scored a dismal 10 with the winner racking up 33 by continuing to smack the others up and steal their meeples.

We next played Specter Ops - no pics unfortunately! - which I've been eager to try. I was a standard Hunter playing The Puppet - we had the full 5 so there was also a traitor in our midst. Blue Jay was the spy and tried pinning the suspicion on me with some cunning equipment use - luckily I was aware of the tools she *could* have and talked my way out of it! A few turns later we deduced the traitor (who revealed and slunked off into the shadows before we could call a vote) and started closing in on BJ. A desperate breakaway attempt was intercepted and the Beast pounced on her for some nasty damage. With limited escape options available, she fell on the next turn.

The opening seems quite important for the Spy - the Hunters quickly close in and they need to make a reasonably clean getaway without blowing too much equipment (which I think was BJ's downfall here). Awesome game!

Friday 23 October 2015

Playing more Epic the card game.

Having had a chance to properly go through the rules and play a few games last night I relaised just how different Epic is to magic. We had initially assumed you can play events like instants in your opponents turn but this turns out to be extremely wrong as there are only three points you can play the, and no one may ever play a card 'in response' to a card. This changed the dynamic quite a bit as it allowed players to act in their turn without the worry of something being killed just before they eanted to use it. You may only play a card in an opponent's turn: 
- when attackers are declared
- when blockers are declared 
- when your oppoent says they wish to end their turn

The other odd thing is that there isn't one attack phase but as many you want. You can attack with one champion then play a card and go through each one in turn if you wish. Also, if one creeature blocks all attackers are considered blocked. It takes a lot of getting used to but makes some of the other cards make a lot more sense.

Overall I'm really happy with it as a 'let's punch each other in the face with monsters' game which doesn't take itself seriously. One of my frustrations with MtG has always been the need to manage Mana so now I can cast crazy Dragons without the need to deck build. Squee!

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Attending the best board games convention in the world!

Anyone who loves board games knows that October is the month of Essen and E.L.F were there once again! Warning this is a big image dump of all the games I demo'd:

Monday 5 October 2015

Getting ready for a gaming pilgrimage.

I have had some great games over the last few few days and it has been a brilliant warm up for the crazy four days pf gaming to come.

Friday 18 September 2015

Stole this of Pimpcron, what do we think

Here’s a Fun Mission!

Deployment: Dawn of War
Mission Special Rules: First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Line Breaker
Place six groups of five people across the center line of the board. Civilian Objectives cannot give First Blood.
One team is there to defend them and kill the enemy. The other side if the attacker and wants to kill the civilians for whatever reasons you come up with. An Attacker unit can only shoot or assault the civilians as long as a Defender isn’t within 12” of that Attacker Unit. If the Defenders are within 12” of the Attacker, they are too worried about self-defense to kill innocents. BUT they may combo-assault an enemy and a civilian unit.
Defender Gets First Turn Automatically.
They scatter six inches at the end of each game turn with the scatter die and if you roll Direct Hit, they stay still and gain Stealth because they are cowering. They are immune to Difficult Terrain.
Each “Normie” has the following Stat Line: WS-2 S-3 T-3 W-1 Sv-6+
Despite what you would think, they will have the Fearless special rule for game simplicity’s sake.
Victory Conditions: The Attacker Scores 1 Victory Point for every Citizen Unit they kill by the end of the game. The Defender gets 2 Victory Points for each Citizen Unit that survives the game.

Monday 14 September 2015

Eagerly awaiting Essen!

A very quick post to say I was attempting to make a list for the annual pilgrimage to Essen and found this thread on BGG that lists a lot of the games people are excited about.

I thought people may enjoy a bit of window shopping in preparation for the big event in 23 days time!

Sunday 13 September 2015

Having a fun day on a Sunday!

Thanks to Mantic fulfilling their Kings of War kickstarter Will had some Chaos, sorry, Abyssal Dwarves he wanted to give a run out to so we organised a Sunday Funday and Rob and Emma joined in!
Ogres vs Dwarves round 1!

Sunday 30 August 2015

Playing games on a Saturday Part 2

After a little break we broke out a new purchase, Spectre Ops:
The board is a grid which the Agent will secretly use to move around the board.
The Agent uses this sheet to mark their movement, in my case I was using Blue Jay who can activate objectives from two spaces away and create a decoy once per game to make the Hunters think they have seen her. Rob had the Beast (Werewolf) and the Puppet (Android) giving him a quick, meaty hunter and one which allows him to move his car remotely which is really useful.
I won the first game by the skin of my teeth as I had unlocked all three objectives without Rob ever seeing me but he then cornered me and but for an unlucky roll to wound Rob would have taken away my last wound just as I was one more turn from victory.
The second game went very differently as Rob was revealed very early and started to take wounds as I thought it might end in a really quick game but he gave me the slip and it took me too long to work out where he was so he got all three objectives before I could corner him near the exit and put his Agent down. Again a very close game.
I really like Spectre Ops and think it will really shine at one Agent player and three Hunter players as the Hunters will probably start to bicker a bit mid game which should be amusing. I'll do a full review once I've tried it out.

Then came some Crokinole with Rob and Amanda, the honours were fairly evenly shared and as always we continue to make up house rules.
Finally some Sushi Go! We introduced Amanda to this and as you can see from the score card she beat us both both each time! I think I may be required to buy a copy as Amanda really enjoyed it.

Saturday 29 August 2015

Playing games on a Saturday Part 1

Rob and I have been going through Mice and Mystics chapters 7 and 8. We were playing a party made up of Colin, Filch, Lily and Tilda. 

A really fun Chapter that expands randomly like Descent first edition used to.
At this point we were feeling super cocky
We had chapter 7 over a barrel with only a couple of roaches left to kill with three spare pages left before we managed to get super greedy and try to level up and search rather than just finish meaning that we triggered both the win and lose criteria with the last attack! We called it a win but we had to lose all the equipment and skills we had achieved.

From a quick small chapter to a large one! We had to travel through the entire castle to save the King!
Chapter 8 saw us taking our mission a lot more seriously so we made sure that we collected every special item we could as the game progressed and this was the chapter where all your achievements from the early games could help you out so when we hit what felt like half way because we had the Miz Maggie ally from Chapter 3 we get her help to sneak into the King's chamber  rather than have to fight our way in through two more tiles! Unfortunately we hadn't claimed Vinestra's hair brush previously so couldn't transform the king and sneak him out but we did manage to cure him so at least we completed the chapter. 

A quick break then off to play more games.

Wednesday 26 August 2015

Playing Kings of War

Rich and I have been threatening to try out the full Kings of War seconded edition so yesterday we had a couple of games of Ogres vs Undead. It was a good example of how the rules can be used to proxy WFB armies as Rich was playing his Tomb Kings models as Vampire counts type models so that he could use his chariots and Ushabti but with the rules for cavalry and Zombie trolls. 
2,000 points of Ogres! I have high hopes of getting them all finished before the end of  September.

Monday 17 August 2015

Re-Planeswalking

Morning Elfers,

Thought i'd give you a mini recap on my one-off return to the big time MTG stage at GP London this past Saturday.

Sunday 16 August 2015

Enjoying absolutely awesome stuff!

Short and sweet post to say I have found two absolutely awesome things today. First up is FFg's Forbidden Stars. Will, Lee and I gave it two runs through and I freaking loved it! If you are like me and love the 40k background but are slowly dying inside as GW strangle the miniature game to death then this is the game for you. Each army plays very differently but without tons of extra rules, the board, armies and warp storms make every game different and it has just the right down time. So check it out as you will not be disappointed. (More detailed review to come)

Here is the other thing:
That's right crunch-monkeys, Dwarves metal coins!
I got my kickstarted metal coins and they are so good I want to play a game right away! All I need now is my other Kickstarted product (a chest to hold them) and I am in game bling heaven!
Until next time love-sponges!

Friday 14 August 2015

I'm back

Well after a small hiatus, I am back for a bit. It turns out a small child really does turn your life upside down.
Hopefully I will see some of you guys at the bbq tomorrow but for those who won't be there and for those who will and want a head start I have a weird question.

I have been fortunate enough to be involved in an ongoing project which may well be coming to an exciting head in the next few months.
So as well seasoned players of all sorts of games what do you want from a games shop/gaming venue?

Obviously there are the givens of accessibility, knowledgeable friendly but not pushy staff and cool toys but ....

Is it that we just want cheep product? Or do you want somewhere to play? Does food and drink in a venue matter to you guys? How big is right? Intimate with 10 tables or huge with 100 tables?

Charlie

Friday 7 August 2015

Painting Ogres Part 3

As predicted I haven't finished the Ogres by today (distractions such as series one of Gotham haven't helped, though they are enjoyable). Here is how far I have got.

Thursday 6 August 2015

Painting Ogres Part 2A

It turns out that I'm even slow at painting models simple base colours! Thus I realised yesterday that I wasn't going to finish by Friday (I seem to keep developing a pain in my right shoulder blade if I start painting sat in the wrong position which hasn't helped!). Still I have made some progress so here it is.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Ogre painting part 1a (Update)

With my Goblins undercoated I have embarked upon my four day challenge to get the whole army painted by Friday night! Where to start was a hard choice but I thought it best to go with the metal first as there was no clear single colour across the army and I still need to work out cloth colours extra once I have the skin on. Plus it always seems easier to touch up metal areas later on. I'll update again a few hours!

Monday 3 August 2015

Constructing Goblins!

A quick post to show what I spent today doing. Putting together Goblins for my Ogre army:
Sorry that they are all black but I inly just undercoated them

Thursday 23 July 2015

Pondering Role-play games

Having had a very positive discussion regarding playing an RPG (hopefully the FFG Zombie End of The World game!) I thought I post up a quick message to say that anyone who was interested in RPGs should a have a look at Pathfinder: Adventure card game. I played a few games of it on Monday and really enjoyed the balance between a role-play game where you can level up and develop your own take on a character whilst having a structure to your games without the need for a opponent player to beat. Whilst it is not as cheap as a standard role-play game might seem if you are just buying books the cards and art work help people like me, who need a little more than just imagination, to really jump into the world and start swinging those frost-giant swords!
This is the character I chose, along with the Juggernaught class! I liked the game so much I bought my own set of  silver and green polyhedral dice to play with!

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Pondering Skirmish Games

Hola fellow E.L.Fers,

Following the recent second coming of the ELF Necromunda day I've spent some time pondering what seems to be the current hotness in tabletop gaming, skirmish games.


Saturday 11 July 2015

Age of Sigma - Excited

Every time one of my YouTube subscriptions has an AOS video I cant wait to watch it. I have been chatting to Dave and reading your Blogs and I am really intrigued to try it out. My only concern was where to start? With what I agree with as an imbalance of points I was thinking of what would Dave suggest as he would probably be the one I play it with most; what would he think of to balance the points? However after watching this  http://youtu.be/6-gDM7sXVag (AOS talk starts from about the 1hr mark) I realise that I shouldn't be looking at any of the old Warhammer stuff to play unless I already own it.
Talk is, the factions are getting a review and this would also sort out some trademark issues and bring in new models and factions into play. This could sort the points balance/lack of points out.
But, lack of points doesn't seem to be the only issue. Miniwargaming showed this intro game  http://youtu.be/yDmz0P8WX8g and the original issues of, 'it becomes a huge squash and bash-fest' arise.
I am really undecided. I definitely want to play some games and I know of a few people getting rid of some cheap models or I can borrow some.
I REALLY like the Sigmar models, but am I behaving like a 12 year old boy that wants to collect Space Marines for their first army because they look cool and am I not using my imagination enough?

Summer holidays soon so will get some games in and I might be tempted to buy the started set.

Friday 10 July 2015

Star realms

Just wondering if anyone else has star realms on their iPhone/pad/pc/Mac/other and want to play an online game?

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Age of Sigmar: The Props & the Slops

So, having been on a massive downer about the rules as they were drip fed to us via leaks, a strange thing happened when the warscrolls got released Friday night/Saturday morning...


Monday 29 June 2015

Necromunda Campaign Shots

Hola Folks!

Thought id share the snaps i took of the games throughout the day (when i remembered to take them)


Friday 26 June 2015

Prepping and apologising.

First up a confession. I should have been sorting out my gang for tomorrows Necromunda day and I have so utterly not bothered that I should loose significant nerd points! the fact is I juts couldn't face trying to get them painted up by snatching a few hours here and there as I've always found I need loads of models to do Necromuda properly as you need to model the different equipment for the models you will need as your gang progresses nit just your starting gang. So what have I done?

Sunday 21 June 2015

Playing new things.

Having read the Alpha rules for Warpath 2 I thought it would be fun to have a little play through with some 40k models. So how did it hold up?

Sunday 14 June 2015

Playing Co-Op Descent.

Just a quick update to show some pictures of a few games of Descent using the co-op expansion Forgotten Souls. How well does it hold up as a co-op game? Lets have a look.

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Upgrading my board game bling!

Just a quick update to how off what I put together on Monday.
Adding in a stand up section at the end helps the player to read the cards more easily.
After giving the previous versions a try out it seemed as though it would be useful for the players to be able to have a bit of a heads up display rather than having to lean forward to read them. Whilst I was at it I thought a few (ok, five) card stands might come in useful for the Overlord or players in other games. Sadly I cocked up the template on the first batch of four so have quite a few extra bits kicking around with oversized sections for the character card (plus the four previous displays). 

Wednesday 3 June 2015

UK Games Expo - Ant's Report

First off, sorry for the lack of pics! :( next time! 

I've only been to this convention once before, in 2013. Back then we got there Friday night, Saturday we mostly just shopped at the Expo and played games at the hotel, and the Sunday fell kinda flat as people were thinking about getting home. 

So this year we went for a Friday & Saturday based plan instead. Got to the con mid-afternoon on Friday and it was a nice relaxed atmosphere, not too difficult getting around the trade halls, playing demos and finding tables for open gaming. Good times! I didn't realise beforehand that they've actually added Thursday night open gaming to the schedule, and that'll continue next year, so another option to consider. 

I also made use of the Bring & Buy this time - where you can sell your games minus 10% commission. This was also upgraded for 2015 to include an online system where you add your games. Once you arrive they give you printed labels to stick on the games and they're ready to go! I sold Robo Rally, Bang! The Bullet and War of Indines. I'll need a bit more of a clearout next year...


Sunday 31 May 2015

UK Games Expo Day 2 and Final Thoughts

So day 2 has been and gone and I'm sitting on the train heading home. (Dam you work!)

So yesterday was the mission of the day - arrived at 10am and then left at 10pm.

What did we see and play?

Saturday 30 May 2015

Deadzone and Rebs thoughts

So, after my games with Dave I decided to research more into Rebs tactics. What was I doing wrong? Dave did suggest my tactics were too conservative in the first game as I kept my Teraton back and I didn't position myself well enough to break out through his board edge, I agreed. The problem I had/have with the game is suppression just as Dave said. I wanted my troops to be as far up the table as possible, however that may mean putting more than one model in a cube. This can lead to both getting suppressed very quickly and you are then on the back foot. Another issue as Dave mentioned was command actions and cards. If you are the first player and you have a high command stat you have such an advantage over your opponent. Dave was able to cause key players in my force to activate with the use of command cards and orders! That mean they were done for that turn and I couldn't use them at all. Activate your opponents commander and they are done, no command actions to help and no way to counter it. I really think there should be a battle card that counters a distract (activate an opponents model). Also, if you are second in the initiative order a distract card is nearly completely useless as your opponent has already activated all of their models. Thoughts on Rebs as a faction: 1. Only one commander that has potential and is a lovely model but that is all they have. 2. Next command level model is the Yindij Sargent, 11pts and too fragile to want unless you just want to save points by not taking a commander. 3. Suppressive models. The Rebs are amazing at suppressing the opponent with their spotters and weight of fire. However, Grogans (onslaught cannon) and Soraks have no secondary weapon like a pistol. In my second game with Dave I managed to rampage his stage 2's which meant that their aggression levels could not change therefore no more ability to suppress them. I then was unable to hurt them. On one Blog however I did read that I should then bunch people in the same cube and use their help to increase your dice rolled for shot actions. Aim would have helped too. 4. Rebs missions - I can see Jake Thornton's reasoning behind how he wrote their mission cards but some are not balanced well at all. Infiltrate is a great mission for Rebs (get your players off of the the opponet's board edge) as long as you have the long thin deployment. If you have the corner deployment it is so hard as your opponent's forces are very concentrated. I also think that the points for scour or kill things should be higher for Rebs as they struggle to do it in the first place. Dave's Forge Fathers have a scour mission that gives him 3 points per item!! Rebs get 1 point. Where's the balance? Overall I really have enjoyed the games and playing them with Dave. I still think I can make the Rebs work and it may just be the luck of the mission draw etc. I was telling Dave that I like to take balanced forces that could cope with any mission so I will work on this more. I have read around other Blogs and Forums and Rebs do seem to be the worst/hardest faction to use in the game which is a shame as they have real potential. We were talking about the latest Mantic Kickstarter and how it will be a version 2 of the rules and maybe it will sort some bits out. Mantic may need to bite the bullet and just release a new Rebs deck that fixes some of the issues.

Update on the card idea.

So with a few hours to kill before the Rugby Union Premiership Final I thought I would mock up a sample card (not final art work to explain the type of design and use I thought I could get out of the decks.

Friday 29 May 2015

UK Games Expo 2015 Day 1

Hi Everyone.

So after a pleasant 2 hour train ride to Birmingham, we had to walk to the Hilton hotel and get our tickets.

We quickly got our stuff and started to wander around and get the lay of the land.





The dealer halls opened at 2pm, but there was plenty of open gaming going on. One room had a games library you could borrow from for a small deposit. We are going to head there tomorrow.




Me and Rob where eager to look round the halls, so just before we queue up for one of the larger halls, which had the fantasy flight stand and waited to go in. In all there where 4 alls with dealers and demo spaces.

So what jumped out after looking around for a a few hours. There where some nice bargins to be had straight away. Stars Wars Armanda and Imperial Assault for £55 each.

We played a number of demos and bought some straight after.

Stack Bots - A card game about battling robots. (Bought)

Xi Cards - A magic style card game where you use Time to cast spells and summon creatures. (Probably will)



Colt Express - A excellent combination of RoboRally and Bang. (Bought)


Oddball Aeronauts - A simple card game about battling airships crewed with animals. (Pass bit too simple)




Sopic - A card game where you play cards to get to 1000 points. (Not sure)

By the end of the day we had bought.
  • Stars Wars Armanda
  • Imperial Assault
  • Stack Bots
  • Ninja Dice
  • Colt Express
  • Camel Up and the expansion SuperCup.


Now Day 2. Where we will be focusing on playing games.


Playing more Deadzone.

Another day and another opportunity to play games! Today we had another go at Deadzone and tried out some different factions to see how they held up. So how did the Rebs and Plague fair?

Thursday 28 May 2015

Playing lots of games!

Just a quick update on todays games played sadly I did the usual and forgot to take photos as the day went one. So what did Rob and I pay today?

Wednesday 27 May 2015

Getting a handle on the Deadzone rules.

Over the last two days I have had the opportunity to play quite a few games of Deadzone so I feel confident to give a quick review of my current feelings towards the game. Will it come out as a replacement for Necromunda? Lets's find out.
2'x2,' some buildings of blue... and silver.

Free to any

Getting rid of these anyone want them? Let me know before I bin them

Monday 25 May 2015

Fiddling with Deadzone scenery

Just a quick post as I have been putting together a few bits of Deadzone terrain (and probably will do a lot more tomorrow as Will and I take on another modelling day challenge) and thought I comment on how I have found the process so far.
My current collection of box terrain!

Tuesday 19 May 2015

I'm actually doing some hobby

Thought I would post an image of my recent hobby work, been finishing off some units for my iron warriors, but also had a brain wave for a new space wolf list, what you see here is 10 of 15 models in the list.

Monday 18 May 2015

Getting feedback on an idea.

I know that I don't often encourage dsicussion on posts and that is mainly due to the fact that email is quicker but as it is too easy to only send a response to one person and miss out on sharing ideas I'm going to slap this up here. The question is: if you could have a custom set of cards for your Miniatures wargames would you rather have some useful generic set up and mission cards or would you prefer more sets with each one tailored for each game but will cost more?

To add a bit more detail, I have been inspired by the decks in Deadzone to go back to my old idea of creating a resource to collect the different army set up options and mission objectives but without the BS randomness of the 40k Tactical objectives. I have found a few companies that do it and wanted to get some ideas from others before I jump in and get designing. My first concept was to have just the set up diagrams and names of the missions so that it wouldn't matter what the game systems scoring mechanic was you still knew what you needed to do. The problem is that if you make them specfic to a system you can make more interesting. Any ideas?

Playing more 40k!

So another day and other game of 40k! It was revenge time for Alan's Deathwing. So this time I thought I would show him how Tactical Objectives work. Here's how it went.
Here is how we lined up

Sunday 17 May 2015

Playing 40k.

Just a quick post to document my Sunday afternoon game of 40k to induct Alan back into the GW fold. He has Dark Angels so obviously gravitates towards Deathwing (why not?) so I took my Guard as my Blood Angels need models painted and it's always nice to play against a fully painted army.
Here is the terrain set up.

Playing new games!

With Will having received his Kickstarter copy of Xenoshift (with loads of extras!) and the approaching release of Kings of War 2nd edition there was no way I could turn down an invite to try them both out yesterday!
Xenoshift in all it's sleeved glory!

Wednesday 6 May 2015

Looking at up coming games

Just a quick post to share an up coming game that I watched on How to Play, a new game from Plaid Hat games, Spectre Ops. 
It has a Giant Wolf?Yeah I want it!

Monday 4 May 2015

Putting my missions where my mouth is

So I figured it could be fun to use my idea for White Dwarf to do a mission a week but rather than just limit myself to one companies system I'm hoping to create missions for board games too (but more of that in future posts). For this week I had an idea for 40k that I thought I'd pass around for consideration.

Sunday 3 May 2015

Considering this weeks GW releases

now I know what you are thinking 'here he goes bitching about the Knight release and GW redoing a codex after only 12 months' but that isn't the set of products that caught my this week. I have been mire interested in the new brushes and White Dwarf subscriptions! What you didn't see that coming?

Saturday 2 May 2015

Looking at Kings of War 2.0

With Will having backed the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter and getting a beta copy of the rules it has allowed me to mock up a 2,000 point Ogre force. Has it changed much from the GW one?

Friday 17 April 2015

Hey guys, long time no see.

I am currently planning the following and would love for you to be able to attend

Saturday 1st - Sunday the 2nd August
Sanctuary gaming centre
Mansfield
Re fight part of the battle of Phall from the Horus heresy books
Zone Mortalis boarding missions (on our new ZM board!)
Battleship engagements (think battlefleet Gothic)
fighter craft dog fights (Think x-wing)
It is up to you what (if anything you bring)
The bulk of the forces will be provided but you are more than welcome to bring aprox 200-250pts appropriate to the battle of phall, this could include:
Imperial fists
Iron warriors
Deck crew
Mechanicum ship crew
Bridge officers 
etc.
these can be represented by any rules available within the horus heresy books
At the moment I am looking for a show of interest so we can book a venue and organise around demand.
Could those interested please make themselves know below
I have put a Facebook group together, look me upon there and I can add you if you're interested (I managed to find a few of you already)
Also, feel free to add anyone else who may be interested in a weekend of dice, heresy, beer and general Viet Taffery

Sunday 12 April 2015

Updating Blood Angels.

Having had a few oppertunities to play with the current Blood Angel codex I realised that I needed to change the special weapons in my Assault sqd from flamers to meltaguns as if they come up against things like Terminators, Meganobs or Soulgrinders they really need more options than being extra wounds for my Captain. 

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Checking out a new Kickstarter project.

Just a quick update to say I'll probably be backing the Fantasy version of Zombicide:
http://www.beastsofwar.com/zombicide/guillotine-zombicide-fantastical-black-plague/
How could I resist being an axe wielding Dwarf cutting down hordes of Undead?

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Testing tables and 40k armies!

So with some free time due to the Easter holidays I thought it a good opportunity to test out the new table and mats I received from 4thWar. Three games of 40k (and a lot to bumping and shuffling) later how did they do?

Saturday 28 March 2015

More laser cutting!

Having corrected my design for my Descent/Imperial Assault player organiser I manufacture a set of four and here is the finished product:
  
The space for the character sheet now fits much better (and should allow for sleeved sheets if I can ever find sleeves the right size!) and the extra space added to the counters section meaning that you can count them easier. Any games you can think of that could use something similar?

Thursday 26 March 2015

Laser cutting!

Just a quick post to show off my attempt at creating a player aid for Descent.
This is the Mk1 test model, it needs some tweaking on the internal holes
Inspired by a Kickstarter campaign that Will put me on to (which never funded just incase you were wondering) I eventually got around to giving it a go and I'm pretty pleased with the result. Having finally worked out how to cut material without leaving the dreaded burn residue on the back it means there is no need to clean the material before screwing it together. it is made of two layers of 2mm acrylic and one layer of 6mm plywood to give it the required rigidity. After I have these perfected I'll move on to other board games!

Sunday 22 March 2015

Kickstarting!

This weekend I have received my rewards from a previous kickstarter and backed a new one.

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Considering the Harlequins...

Okay, so the rules have been out and about for several weeks now and I've had a bit of time this past few days to leaf through the codex and see what they can offer my Dark Eldar.

The conclusion....

Well...

'Not a lot'.

Okay, so that's not strictly true, there are definitely some units in there that I can see uses for...

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Playing games!

I thought I'd take advantage of the school half term to get some more games in so here is a quick run down of the last two days.

Sunday 25 January 2015

Playing BattleLore.

Having had an opportunity to play it again I feel I can give it a quick review. Unfortunately no photos due to being distracted with all the playing.

Saturday 17 January 2015

Reading Shield of Baal: Leviathan

Having received the first instalment of the Shield of Baal campaign from Rob for Christmas I've only just finished reading it (it's not that long but I've been distracted by old TV shows, more on that later!) so thought I'd put up a quick review.