News Roundup

I know I say this a lot, but it's been way too long since I last posted. A lot has happened in the last few months so here's a few highlights.

Bolt Action Partisans
My last post was about these guys and since then I've managed to get everything finished.

The plan was always to take these to Rushden for their most recent tournament, Operation: Chastise, and that's what I did. As always at Rushden the results are split with separate prizes for axis and allied commanders and at the end of the event, with 3 wins and 1 loss to my name, I managed to take the prize for second place allied commander. More than that though, I also took the prize for best painted allied force. I'm still not convinced I deserved that one but I'll post some more photos sometime soon and you can judge for yourselves.

I've played more games with this army since and I'm intending to give them another run out at Derby later this year.

Dreadball
I've been playing a lot of this as well as running the DreadBall league at the club. Right now I'm leading the league but there's only 3 points in it and there's plenty of teams who could catch me. So far everybody's having fun and we've got new players joining even though we're halfway through the season. I haven't made it to many tournaments recently but hopefully I'll be able to soon.

Our attempt at staging a tournament at the club failed miserably due to a combination of incompetence on the part of our landlords and apathy on the part of our players. There's talk of giving things another try later this year, but unless there's a clear commitment from our players I won't be the one running it.

Deadzone
Mantic have finally delivered all the parts I was missing from the Kickstarter (almost six months late) and I've even managed to get a couple of games in. I've not made my mind up about the game yet, it seems to have promise but I've not got a handle on it yet. Playing again tomorrow night so we'll see how that goes.

Judge Dredd
The JDMG campaign at the club has been fought to a conclusion with Andy Miller coming out victorious and stamping Chief Judge Cal's authority acoss the throats of tge citizens of Mega City One. Andy managed to go throgh the whole campain undefeated (I was the only one to even fight him to a draw) so it was a thoroughly well-deserved victory.

I'm taking a bit of a break from Dredd for a while as I just have too much on my plate right now. I think 18 months of constant campaigning is sufficint for now.

New Job
After being seriously stressed out throughout my time at my last job, I seem to have finally landed on my feet. As of last week I am now the new web designer at Wargames Foundry!

I've always been a fan of Foundry's miniatures, my partisans include a handful and I have most of the Judge Dredd range, and having a chance to be part of the process feels incredible. Plus I'm working with the legend that is Bryan Ansell, one of the guys responsible for the games that got me into wargaming in the first place. I keep having to remind myself that this is actually happening.

All I will say is please don't judge me on the state of the current website. I'm purely concentrating on a replacement, we're not doing any development on the old one. It helps that, for once, I'm actually the target market for my work.

Spartans
I am currently in need of some ancient Greeks for a new ruleset I've been asked to help playtest. I can't go into much detail about the game until it's much more developed but I will be trying to keep this blog up to speed with progress on the forces I'm putting together. Fortunately Foundry do an excellent range of Greeks so I may be a little biased in my choice of miniatures.

Right now I have one solitary Spartan painted and ideally I need at least two complete forces. This may take a while.

Oldhammer
Next month Foundry will once again be hosting the Oldhammer weekend which promises to be packed with gamers of a similar vintage to me celebrating the kind of games I played back when I was just getting started in gaming. And as my new boss was encouraging me to attend it looks like I'm going to be spending the weekend at work. :-)

I don't have enough time to get anything substantial ready for the day, but I have signed up to play some Judge Dredd (using Necromunda rules), Gorkamorka and Heroquest. Otherwise I'll just be hanging out and ogling all the vintage lead. I'm going to enjoy this.

Looking Ahead
I see many Spartans in my future. But I'm also going to be trying to progress with my God of Battles/Kings of War force. I need to finish off my WWII Italians for the next event at Rushden, I have about half the models painted that I will need.

Kickstarter will be adding to the lead pile in a big way. I have another lot of Deadzone turning up next month that will need some attention. Plus the Baker Company winter war stuff (Russians and Finns). Plus Robotech. There may be more stuff I haven't thought of as well. I'll be keeping busy.

Dreadball and the Future

Another DreadBall tournament today, this time out at Athena Games in Norwich. Headed over there early this morning with Dale from PWC, he's fairly new to DreadBall and has more or less the same tastes in the game as me. As a result we both took Teraton teams and were both looking to play as aggro as possible, we both had our eye on the Hitman prize for Most Violent Coach.

I'm not going to write up a full report for this event, as I didn't take enough notes. All I can really say is I played 5 games that I thoroughly enjoyed, despite losing my first 3 in a row, and that the guys at Athena were really welcoming to the out-of-towners. At the end of the day though, I can report that I did indeed manage to take home the prize for most violent coach (again), apparently by a small landslide. Dale didn't go unrewarded though, he got himself a prize for the worst performing team (partly my fault, as we played each other in the final game which I managed to win).

Once again, I cannot recommend DreadBall highly enough. It really is an excellent game, and I look to be playing much more of it in the near future (tomorrow night at the club, then on to Mantic's Super League at Vapnartak).

Plans for 2014
As this is my first post this year, I guess I should try and lay down some idea of what I'm looking to achieve. I expect I'll be looking back on this list this time next year and making jokes about how little I actually got done but here goes...

Bolt Action
I intend to play a lot more of this in the coming year. While the game has its issues in places, it really is great fun to play and I have a couple of new armies on the go. First off, my Italian Paratroopers that I've been meaning to paint for several months. The good news is that I now have 25 infantry fully painted up, 3 sections and a couple of command models. I have an Autoblinda armoured car to start on, plus a Semovente assault gun on the way, with those plus a handful more infantry I should have a viable 1000 point army painted up.

Once that's done, it's onto La Resistance. At the tournament at Derby last year I somewhat jokingly announced that I was going to do an army based on the resistance from the classic sitcom Allo Allo, the plan really materialised when I found out that Artizan Miniatures do models for Michelle, Rene and a few more characters from the series. So I now have most of the models I need for the army, a list worked out, and I'm just in need of the time to get it painted.

Both these armies are being done with specific tournaments in mind. The Italians are destined for an event up in Stockport in early March, the resistance for the next event in Rushden in May. The good thing about this, is that it gives me the incentive I need to get things done. So here's hoping.

DreadBall
As I said, I intend to be playing a lot more of this. I have a Nameless team on the painting table right now, aiming for the league that we're going to be starting up at the club next month. We also have (largely speculative) plans to run a tournament at some point next year. On the subject of tournaments, I'm heading for Vapnartak in a couple of weeks, then Milton Keynes a couple of weeks after that. I'll keep you posted.

Dead Zone
From the people that brought you DreadBall, I haven't had a chance to play this yet. Largely because Mantic still haven't sent me the scenery that I was meant to get as part of the Kickstarter, so I've been holding off on assembling the bits I do have until I have the full variety available. Looking forward to playing it though.

Kings of War
Another Mantic game, this is another one I've been meaning to play for a long time but never quite got around to. I plan to rectify that ASAP, after all I have 3 armies for the game that need exercise (and that I will get around to painting some day, honest). Although I'm actually planning on a  fourth, Kingdoms of Men based around the Roman infantry I have left over from an abortive WAB army.

God of Battles
Another great game from Jake Thornton, this time published by Foundry, that I haven't had time to play nearly enough of. The only real problem with the game is the fact that Foundry took most of the accompanying miniatures range off sale pretty much as soon as the game hit the shelves (genius, sheer genius). But the armies I want to use can be filled from my existing collection, so it's not going to stop me from getting more games in.

Kickstarter
Hi, my name is Rob and I am a Kickstarter addict.

I have backed way too many projects on Kickstarter, most of which have delivered games (and other stuff) that I'm really glad I have. That said, I need to cut down the amount of money I'm throwing at this, to the extent that I'm now only logging on there to keep track of various projects that still have to deliver. My aim for 2014 is to avoid backing ANYTHING on Kickstarter, although I freely admit to a healthy dose of scepticism as to whether or not I can manage this.

One things for certain, Mantic will not be getting any more money from me through Kickstarter. I've backed them on Kings of War, DreadBall and Dead Zone and they've managed to screw up delivery on all three. On top of this, their customer service when trying to sort out the problems has been absolutely appalling. I really do think that they're incapable of supporting projects as successful as the ones they've been running to date, so unless I see something to give me some faith in them I won't be throwing any money their way except to buy stuff off the shelves.

Judge Dredd
Last week we restarted the Judge Dredd campaign at the club. The gap between the top level forces and the smaller ones was just getting insurmountable, plus we had a number of new players sign up so we took the decision to go with a fresh start.

So I tried out a Justice Department force, that got absolutely hammered by Mike's Sov Judges. Obviously their first patrol after leaving the academy, but 3 sucking chest wounds later (one fatal, 2 crippling) I've decided to go back to where I've done best and restarted my Vigilante force. One win already, I'll keep you posted.

Other Stuff

• I have more scenery I want to build, for various games. We'll see if I can find the time.
• I really want to play more Ogre.
• I still have plans for some kind of ancients army. Maybe if I do get the Romans painted up I can find the time to use them for the kind of game they were originally intended for.
• There was talk last year of a Pirates vs Cowboys game, combining the rules from Legends of the Old West and Legends of the High Seas (from Warhammer Historical). I still want to make this happen.
• We're starting to play some games of Warhammer using older editions of the game at the club. Namely 5th edition, which I maintain is probably the best version GW did. I still have all my old books so I'll try to find time for a game or two.

Anyway, that should do for starters. I'll let you know how I get on.

Mantic Open Day - Dreadball Tournament Report

Yesterday was Mantic's second open day this year, I went to the last one for the Dreadball tournament where I had a less than stellar result playing as Orx. This time, I had the new season 3 teams to pick from and went for the one team that's capable of playing even more aggro than the greenskins, Teratons. This gave me a team of teleporting tortoises where even the jacks are as good at slamming the opposition as an Orx guard, so my natural tendencies to win by just pummelling the opposition into the ground should be well-suited to the tools at my disposal.

I only managed a couple of practice games with the team before the event and only finished painting them the night before, no I wasn't exactly confident about winning my matches. However I went into this with one goal, whether I won or lost my matches I really wanted to be able to win the award for most violent coach.

Matt, from PWC, and I set out bright and early. Matt was about as well prepared for this as I was, also having only finished painting his team the night before. However in his case he had a good reason, he's only been playing the game for a month so this would be a bit of a baptism by fire. We got to Nottinghamjust before the doors opened to the same disused NHS surgery as last time, that Mantic are apparently looking to turn into a permanent games centre. They're going to have to sort out the lighting before then though.

Slightly worrying, the lighting at the venue owed a lot to duct tape and hope.

My first game was against Adam, another Teraton player so this should be interesting. I was playing the home team, which allowed me to get a good start on the inevitable fight that kicked off by killing one of his guards with the first dice roll of the game. We had a very close game, but at the end of 14 turns I was ahead by 3 points and claimed the win. Unfortunately, that first kill was the only one I got so I was hoping for someone squishier for my second game.

Between games I checked out the Kings of War tournament that was taking place in the main hall. Some great looking armies, and unlike some companies I could name Mantic weren't worried about players using models from other manufacturers although the "best painted" prize could only go to an army of Mantic models.

I have no idea what this thing is, but it looks cool.

My second game was against Chris, playing Orx so there goes that hope. This game was truly incredible, two teams who started out only paying token attention to the ball, then proving to be incapable of doing anything with it when they tried. We reached the end of turn 14 with the game scoreless and went into sudden-death overtime. I managed to miss what should have been an easy 1-point strike to win the game, then Chris's goblins got the ball, ran down the pitch and managed the same thing. Eventually I managed to score a point in turn 8 of overtime to claim the win, but this was a truly epic game against a great opponent who really took our combined incompetence in his stride.

Dreadball convict team

We had a break between games 2 and 3 to allow us to attend one of the seminars that Ronnie was hosting, which was a nice touch as we hadn't had a chance at the last event. The seminar was just a Q&A session with Ronnie and Jake Thornton about the future of Dreadball, Dead Zone and Mantic games in general and was informative and amusing in equal measure. I may be reading to much into things, but at times the 2 of them didn't seem to be on quite the same page as Ronnie was making pronouncements from the corporate point of view that didn't seem to sit with Jake's game-designer point of view, so it'll be interesting to see how various predictions shake out.

Dreadball Brokkrs

Highlights included - Dreadball annuals, Dreadball Extreme (saw some sculpts for a couple of teams for this, looks good), Warpath getting a 3rd edition (still free-to-play beta) that will be more in line with how Kings of War plays and Jake's throwaway comment about the next Deadzone scenery pack coming with added skulls and eagles in an obvious dig at another Nottingham-based games manufacturer. This last one got a huge round of applause, not least from the guys from Beasts of War who were filming the seminar (and whose contribution to the discussion was amusing, predictable given their recent history and largely unrepeatable).

Back to the tournament and game 3 saw me up against an Asterian team, unfortunately I have forgotten the name of their coach which is a shame because he really deserves a mention. This could have gone really badly for me, as Asterians were more than capable of running rings round me. They're also capable of getting my players sent off too, and 2 of my guards wound up watching from the sidelines as a result. I tried to get into a position to score, but the Asterians kept stealing the ball from me no matter what I tried. A well timed "The Ball Shatters" card stopped them from scoring a 4-pointer, and allowed me time to get back to plan A. Six fatalities later, we went into overtime scoreless and with only one Asterian player left on the pitch. Once I pounded him into the dirt, I won the game by default. Another great game against an opponent who really kept his sense of humour throughout the battering I dealt out.

Between games 3 and 4 I took the opportunity to pick up my Dead Zone kickstarter rewards, so I've got that to look forward to playing sometime soon. I have too many games on my "must play" list again, an unfortunately all-too-common occurrence.

The Dead Zone rewards waiting to be collected.
Not ALL of these were mine.

Game 4 saw me up against Luke and his Zzor, another hard-hitting team with 4 guards. Luke really made the most of his "sticky" guards, using them to keep my players on the floor once he had them down. Once again we managed a game with no scores, despite our best efforts, and went into overtime. This time my opponent had 5 players on the pitch, but only one of them was striker capable of moving the ball so I committed my only foul of the tournament and stomped on him while he was down. With Luke now unable to score, I won this one by default as well.

End result: 4 wins out of 4 games. Much, much better than I've ever managed before. Since none of my wins were landslides, and because all my tie-breakers sucked because of all the overtime wins, I would up in 6th place overall which I was more than satisfied with. More importantly, 10 kills over the course of the event saw me take home that coveted title of "Most Violent Coach". Mission accomplished, and proof that playing the ball can be regarded as optional in Dreadball. :-)

Overall I had a great day, played against some great opponents (I still have yet to play a game of Dreadball that I haven't enjoyed, win or lose) and had a lot of fun. In fact the only negative point on the whole day was getting home and finding out that, once again, Mantic have managed to screw up my Kickstarter rewards. Hopefully that gets sorted out quicker than the mess they've made of my Kings of War and Dreadball rewards, and I refuse to let that take away from my enjoyment of the day.

Mantic Open Day 2013 - Tournament Report

Today was the Mantic Open Day, held in Nottingham in one of the most unusual venues I've seen for an event like this. We were in a disused NHS surgery that had been fairly comprehensively stripped of anything that could have been considered useful. The Dreadball Tournament (the reason I was there) was in the main reception area, the shop area was in a storeroom, Mantic CEO Ronnie Renton was holding seminars in on of the reception offices while the other reception office was being used for Deadzone demonstrations. The highlight (pun very much intended) was the Warpath participation game that they had set up in what I think was an old exam room; the room itself had been stripped of its light fittings so the whole game was illuminated by a single spotlight set up in one corner of the room. Made it very atmospheric, but I'm not sure that was intentional!

Corporation troops defend a fortified position at twilight (well, sort of)

All in all it was a very weird setting, it felt a bit like we were gaming in a squat. None of this stopped it being an excellent event though.

One thing that really struck me was just how quick to play Kings of War is. I backed this on Kickstarter, I love the miniatures and I really like the look of the rules but I haven't had a chance to actually play it yet. Mantic had set up a 16ft table packed with miniatures on both sides. If we tried doing something like this at the club using Warhammer the game would take all day and we'd still run out of time. Mantic ran the whole thing in about 3 hours and were set up for another game after lunch! I need to give this game a try sometime.

The battlefield for the Kings of War game

Orcs with battle elephants - great idea

As far as the tournament goes, I started out great and got steadily worse as the day went on. I had intended to run a human team using the new Void Sirens list from Season 2, but after getting the models painted up last week I chickened out at the last minute and went with my Orx and Goblins, the Obliterators,  since they're the only team I have any experience with. My first game was against a Forge Fathers team (I'll apologize to my opponents now, as I've forgotten all of your names). This really couldn't have gone better, I battered his team into the floor and basically controlled the pitch all game. The lack of speed from a Forge Fathers team makes it easy to play around them, and this really was a landslide. My opponent admitted he'd only played a handful of games before but he took the result very well and was great sport. Plus his team will look great once he's painted the rest of them.

The Obliterators face off in their first game of the day

My second game was against a human team and was a lot more hard fought. I managed to get 3 of my Orx killed, but hung in there and fought back. In the end, time got called on the game while we were in the middle of sudden-death overtime and the final result was a draw. A fair result for an excellent game.

My third game was more humans, this time an opponent I'd faced before at the tournament at Hammerhead in February using the Void Sirens list and . In fact this was exactly the team I'd been considering bringing. I had an absolute nightmare of a game; everything I attempted seemed to fail, I had players who refused to get up off the floor for several turns, 2 Orx killed and one ejected from the game. In the end, I was lucky not to have lost by more than I did although I was actually in the running right up until the final turn and could have won if my last couple of dice rolls had worked out.

Finally, I had another standard human team. This time from the Starktech corporation wearing standard-issue red and gold armour. I had a great time in this game, hammered my opponent into the floor, got a couple of kills and was looking good for the win. Then I lost. Things really can shift that quickly in Dreadball, a couple of good dice rolls and the right cards played can see the ball down the far end of the pitch in the blink of an eye. Even my opponent didn't realise he'd won until I pointed it out. Unfortunately it appears I didn't grab any photos of this team.

End result, 1 win, 1 draw and 2 losses. Better than my last tournament, but this time I hadn't killed enough opponents to get the "Most Violent Coach" award. Apparently this is going to be an annual event, so I will definitely be back next year.

Mix of Dreadball and Deadzone models on display

In addition to the Dreadball, I got a chance to see Deadzone in action. The game looks really interesting, it doesn't play like any other wargame I've played before now. It's a bit boardgame-like, but in a good way. Really looking forward to this one. Plus the models look amazing.

I hadn't realised just how big the first generation Plague models were until I saw one in the flesh...