Hello all,
Well it has been a while, January 2015 as I check my last posting. Wow how time flies!
I am hoping to get this blog up and going again so this post is to just give a quick update of what has been keeping me busy on the wargaming front for the past eighteen months or so.
When we last met I was suffering from the "Ooooh Shiny" curse that affects so many wargamers.
I was trying to keep focused on a few games to maximise my output. Well eighteen months on and this still remains a problem. I am still playing and painting my "core games" such as Chain of Command for WW2 (North Africa 28mm , Early war Eastern front 15mm) , ECW in 28mm, Empire of the Dead for my VSF fix but I have added some new games to my stable.
By far the biggest addition, and one that has caused a frenzy of minature painting and terrain building is Frostgrave! When this game first appeared I thought "Nah! Not for me" but I got curious and then I listened to the Meeples and Miniatures podcast on Frostgrave and it sounded interesting enough for me to buy the rulebook and a box of Frostgrave soldiers. Well what happened next was I had a wargaming epiphany!
For gentlemen of a certain age who spent their youth battling dragons and bugbears playing Dungeon & Dragons, Frostgrave will have an immediate appeal. The game also has similarities to the GW game Mordheim but I never played that. The game only requires a maximum of ten figures to play so it's an easy in (although you can and will get carried away acquiring a heap of monsters for random encounters) and the D20 mechanic is elegant, quick and often quite deadly too!
The vast majority of 2016 has been taken up with terrain making, figure painting, and playing Frostgrave. I will post a few pictures now of my current setup and will also publish a tutorial on how I made my terrain for anyone else to follow.
Well it has been a while, January 2015 as I check my last posting. Wow how time flies!
I am hoping to get this blog up and going again so this post is to just give a quick update of what has been keeping me busy on the wargaming front for the past eighteen months or so.
When we last met I was suffering from the "Ooooh Shiny" curse that affects so many wargamers.
I was trying to keep focused on a few games to maximise my output. Well eighteen months on and this still remains a problem. I am still playing and painting my "core games" such as Chain of Command for WW2 (North Africa 28mm , Early war Eastern front 15mm) , ECW in 28mm, Empire of the Dead for my VSF fix but I have added some new games to my stable.
By far the biggest addition, and one that has caused a frenzy of minature painting and terrain building is Frostgrave! When this game first appeared I thought "Nah! Not for me" but I got curious and then I listened to the Meeples and Miniatures podcast on Frostgrave and it sounded interesting enough for me to buy the rulebook and a box of Frostgrave soldiers. Well what happened next was I had a wargaming epiphany!
For gentlemen of a certain age who spent their youth battling dragons and bugbears playing Dungeon & Dragons, Frostgrave will have an immediate appeal. The game also has similarities to the GW game Mordheim but I never played that. The game only requires a maximum of ten figures to play so it's an easy in (although you can and will get carried away acquiring a heap of monsters for random encounters) and the D20 mechanic is elegant, quick and often quite deadly too!
The vast majority of 2016 has been taken up with terrain making, figure painting, and playing Frostgrave. I will post a few pictures now of my current setup and will also publish a tutorial on how I made my terrain for anyone else to follow.
Another new game that is proving popular at our local club is Lion Rampant ( and Dragon Rampant for the fantasy players). This is another game towards the smaller battle end of the genre where you only need around 40-60 figures to play. A lot of new games are pitched at this sort of commitment level (Saga immediately comes to mind). Lion Rampant focuses on battles between medieval retinues. No specific period is mentioned, but I think roughly the hundred years war period is most appropriate. I have seen Lion rampant being used to play War of the Roses and also Dark Ages games so the rules are quite flexible.
One of the nice appeals of this game is the potential for imagi-nations games. Several members of my gaming club have put together medieval retinues and created fictional personas for their commanding Lord. I have also put together an army made up from old GW Bretonnian knights and archers with foot sergeants from Fireforge games and Foot knights from Old Glory. My commander is "The Warden of the West Marches" a fictional barony somewhere along the border between Wales and England. We hope to kick off a Lion Rampant campaign later this year which should be a lot of fun.
The last new game that I have taken an interest in for 2016 is the latest edition of Sharp Practice by the Two Fat Lardies. I am already a fan of the Lardies with their excellent Chain of Command WW2 rules and Sharp Practice 2 doesn't disappoint. I have only played a couple of games but I can tell its going to be a lot of fun. Sharp Practice is also a nice way for me to finally get my Napoleonic Russians on the table top. I can play these rules while I slowly build up my army to eventually play Black Powder for Divisional Sized games.
And finally in an attempt to control my wargaming purchases and track my painting progress I have for the last two years kept a record of every figure purchased versus every figure painted. I am aiming to reach a target of 365 figures for the year and end up in the black with more painted than purchased.
I am currently sitting at 182 painted figures for the year. Its an improvement of nearly 40 figures on last year with four months still to go. I do have to put in a solid effort for the rest of the year to hit my 365 target though.
Bye for now.
