The year of the campaign continues. Peter and I have been playing a bit of Flames of War recently, so we decided to give the Infantry Aces campaign (from Cassino) a try. In the past I’ve fielded elite armies, so for this campaign I decided to field some ordinary Grenadiers from the Hoch und Deutschmeister Reichsgrenadierkompanie. These are pretty ordinary Confident Trained foot sloggers, but the thing that tweaked my interest were the fortification options they have.

The campaign starts with some 500pt games, with only troopers allowed in the armies. In the first two games Peter and I shared the honours. Peter’s Ranger Rifle Company overran my position in the first game as my reserves were very slow to arrive. I managed to get a single Infantry Aces point for taking part in the game! Peter picked up four for taking part, winning the game, having his Infantry Ace survive and destroying an enemy platoon.

In game two fortunes were reversed when one of Peter’s platoons Truscott Trotted into the face of an ambushing Rifle/MG platoon. They were decimated by the incoming fire. From there he had little chance to recover and the game went my way. We gain a skill having achieved 5 Infantry Aces points each. I think I’ll go the leadership route.

I’ve started constructing my fortifications. Here the list I’m planning to use next (built using the excellent Easy Army) -

I’ll post about the fortifications soon.

Owen

I only flew back from Italy earlier today, so instead of playing the final 50pt game of the campaign Phil and I played a small 15pt battle that pitted pKaya against Rhyas. It was a fun game…

Enjoy!

Owen

I love painting miniatures and in particular I love the spectacle of a fully painted army. I’ve had the pleasure of facing Tomek’s sublimely beautiful armies on a couple of occasions and not only were the games fun, but they were also stunning to behold. Tomek has been painting for over 15 years and this experience shows in the amazing paint jobs he produces. Here are a few examples -

You can check out more of his work at CMON or on Facebook.

For anyone interested in having an army as beautiful as Tomek’s the good news is he has set up a painting service – Coldren Minis. If you are interested in owning some gorgeously painted models drop him an email (coldrenminis [at] gmail [dot] com) and he’ll get back to you with details.

Owen

I will be running a 35 Point Warmachine/Hordes Tournament on Saturday, 8th October in Gamer’s World Dublin. Full details are:

Steamroller 2011 Rules
35 points
2 lists allowed
10 Minute Turns
Registration begins at 10:30 am
Entry 10 Euro
No painting requirement (though there may be painting prizes!)

Prizes will include best general, 2nd place and a few spot prizes.

See you all there.

Owen

I painted these guys ageas ago, but never really got around to photographing them for the blog. Paul and I played a campaign game last week and I took the opportunity to do up a quick video of this 1500pt force.

Owen

This it the third game of four in our Annihilation in the Rustwood campaign. I’ve managed to win the last two (reports here and here), but things could get tricky this time out as Phil already has a good idea what my Absylonia Tier 4 force is capable of. I’m using Absylonia again as I think Saeryn will be better suited to leading Legion into the final 50pt game. Both Absylonia and Saeryn really augment the survivability of my beasts, making them great campaign warlocks, so I’m hoping win or lose that I can have a good few beasts survive this game.

Game 3

For the third game we were playing with 35pt forces over the Demolition scenario. My army was a Tier 4 Absylonia Theme force comprising the following:

Faction: Absylonia – Winds of Change
Points: 35/35
Tiers: 4
Absylonia, Terror of Everblight (*5pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Stinger (2pts)
* Angelius (8pts)
* Carnivean (10pts)
* Carnivean (10pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
The Forsaken (2pts)
The Forsaken (2pts)
Feralgeist (Free: Benefit from winning Game 2)

Phil went with a Moshar led force:

Mohsar the Desertwalker (*5pts)
* Gorax (4pts)
* Woldwyrd (5pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
* Druid of Orboros Overseer (2pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
* Stone keeper (1pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers (5pts)
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers (5pts)

If you know the Harlem Globetrotters theme music, now might be a good time to start humming it!

Enjoy!

Owen

This is the fourth post in my Audit series and this time I look at Warhammer, a game that has very much fallen out of favour with me.

Warhammer

My Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux and Flames of War models all sit in their cases in the house. My Warhammer models are out in the shed! They outnumber all of the game system models, but they haven’t seen the tabletop in over two years. You can tell where my prioties lie by looking at the number of blog posts in each category – Warmachine:160+, Hordes:90+, Malifaux:27, Flames of War:22, Warhammer:7 (and several of those are sympathy categorisations!). I haven’t played any 8th edition games and indeed the goliath rulebook was my last Games Workshop purchase.

My anti-Warhammer sentiment stems from a couple of places. Privateer Press put in a lot of effort to produce a well honed set of rules that manage to (more-or-less) balance two different games (Warmachine and Hordes) across almost dozen factions. They did this in less than ten years. After 25 years Warhammer is still sloppy in parts, with FAQs appearing almost as soon as rules are released. Privateer Press held an open playtest before coming up with MkII. Warhammer still feels like only a dozen players ‘tested’ it before it was released. So, my first main gripe lies with the lack of precision in the rules and (acknowledged) lack of balance across the armies.

My second problem is with GW’s pricing. Starting a new army is prohibitively expensive when compared to other systems. GW have crept the ‘standard’ size game up to 2500pts. You still only get a 2 hour gaming experience with that and compared to the other games listed above it is at least twice as expensive to collect an army.

It’s not all bad though. The guys playing Warhammer in our club (certainly the ones playing it for fun rather than the tedious ETC/tournament practice ones) seem to be having fun with it. Recently Fergus ran a campaign with custom scenarios and everyone who participated had fun. I think this is what Warhammer is designed for. As I said above, the rules and balance are suspect in (a lot of) places, but what does that matter if you can still have fun with it.

I may play some Warhammer in the next year, but it’ll be for fun, with existing models and rules. Warmachine is my competitive game of choice. Warmachine is also something I really have fun playing. Warhammer will struggle to compete with it, Malifaux and Flames of War for my attention this year, but who knows!

Next up in the audit: The Rest!

Owen

This is the third post in my Audit series (the first on, on Warmachine and Hordes, is here and the second on Malifaux is here). This time around it’s a game that I don’t get to play much, but that represents another interest – Flames of War.

Flames of War

I’ve always been interested in war. It’s a peculiar thing to say as war is a terrible thing that humans inflict on each other, but war and specifically the engineering that underpins warfare really interests me. Flames of War allows me to explore World War II through wargaming. I think I’ve only played two games in the last year, painted one platoon and added some 28mm Paratroopers, but Flames of War is still an important game to me.

This game has inspired me to read deeper into certain campaigns and battles, specifically the fighting around Carentan after D-Day, the slaughter in the Hürtgen Forest, Market Garden and the allied offensive in Italy. Each reading is guided by the armies I own – US Paratroopers and Gepanzerte PanzerGrenadiers (Mechanized Infantry) – and the conflicts companies of these types fought in. In that sense the game really does influence my knowledge WWII.

I have little intention to expand my forces in the coming year or to buy any more books. I have the core rulebook and plenty of expansions. If I decided to only play Flames of War in the coming year (I’m not going to!) I think I’d have more than enough models and books to keep me going. That said, I may add a few discrete things, some Stuart tanks and some regular US infantry. I’ll probably use a different company for the models though, as the Battle Front models are pretty pricey.

I’ll probably play some campaign games over the coming year, but I suspect, like this year, I’ll only play a handful of games.

Owen

Peter and I played out a fun game of Flames of War this evening, but boy did we make a lot of mistakes. We played the Free for All mission, which is thankfully pretty straightforward. The game was set in Italy in October 1943, just north of the Volturno. Peter fielded a 3rd Infantry Division force from the Dogs and Devils book with three infantry platoons, one of which was an assault platoon, a platoon of 105mm artillery, 8cm mortars and a platoon of Priests (armoured artillery). I went with a Gepanzerte Panzergrenadier army from Fortress Europe that comprised two mechanised infantry platoons, four Panzer IV Hs, two StuGs and a battery of Nebelwerfers.

The first mistake we make was with the terrain – there wasn’t enough of it. This really encouraged a static battle as neither side was willing to slog across the battlefield. I managed to perform a mounted assault on the left flank, but that was only because I had the terrain to maneauvre around.

The next mistake we made was forgetting to dig in with the artillery on the first turn. As this the mission had the Mobile Battle rule they did little else on the first turn, so we should have gotten them dug in.

We made other silly mistakes. When my Panzers hit the Priests, as the Priests’ armour couldn’t stop the shot we forgot to make the Firepower checks to determine if they were bailed out or destroyed. Instead we simply marked them as destroyed!

We took our time on the assault on the left, but forgot that defensive fire can pin a mounted assault as the platoon is mixed.

In the end my shooting routed Peter’s three artillery platoons and the infantry I assaulted quit the field (despite winning the assault). My assaulting platoon quit the field as it failed the Sole Survivor morale check. The game ended in a Victory Point win to me.

Next time we’ll play with fewer mistakes and with more terrain!

Owen

This is the second post in my Audit series (the first on, on Warmachine and Hordes, is here). This time around I’m taking a critical look at my Malifaux gaming.

Malifaux

I picked up Malifaux not long after it was released, but interest in the game locally plummeted after the initial release. I still kept interest in the game, mostly driven by the beautiful models, and even started to build a VASSAL module for it just over a year ago. Other projects took over so it stalled before it had really begun.

This year has been much better for Malifaux. From a hobby perspective I have really enjoyed painting the models, particularly in experimenting with the underpainting technique. I’ve painted the Sonnia Criid and Lucius crew boxes this year and have more stuff lined up for the next few months (Guild Guard; Dead Justice and converting a Lady Justice Avatar from the alt. sculpt). I’ll continue with the underpainting approach as its muted colours help to unify the models quite nicely.

On the gaming side I’ve gotten more Malifaux games in this year than I have at any other stage. I only started playing Malifaux in May 2010, so playing more games this year was pretty much guaranteed. The fun I’ve had playing the game re-invigorated my interest in doing a VASSAL module for it and things have been progressing well on that front. There will be more news on that later in the year!

Puppet Wars is something I’m looking forward to. I have it pre-ordered and I can’t wait to get a few games in. I’m really looking forward to painting the puppets as it’ll give me a chance to use some interesting colours. Expect a few posts about colour theory and palette selection when I start work on those little models. I plan to use them as Malifaux models too, so that’ll present an interesting modeling challenge when I want to have a crew of mixed models. Basing might be the secret there.

Apart from completing and releasing the module and getting into Puppet Wars, my main plans are to continue learning to play The Guild and trying to play as many enemy Masters as possible. Painting the Dead Justice crew is something I’m particularly looking forward too.

Malifaux is in the ascendency. The main problem is that there are few players locally. The VASSAL module will mitigate that somewhat, but I may think about writing a campaign system for it. I am a little disappointed that Wyrd don’t have a campaign extension for the game…

Next up in the audit: Flames of War.

Owen