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.

God of Battles - First Impressions

I spent today up in Nottingham at Foundry, where they have a truly impressive set of gaming tables set up on the main floor of their building and open their doors to the public every Saturday. God of Battles is the new fantasy wargame from Foundry written by Jake Thornton (of Dreadball fame, amongst others), and on the first Saturday of every month he's running games at Foundry. I picked up a copy of God of Battles at Salute but hadn't had a chance to play it yet, so this was my chance to play an intro game with instruction from the designer.

One of the gaming tables at Foundry, a valley with proper sized hills

Right off the bat, I'll just say that I am hugely impressed with this ruleset. The basic rules are deceptively simple, but they manage to capture those ever elusive aspects of wargaming; playability and realism. Or at least as realistic as you can hope for in a fantasy game anyway. I'd read through the rulebook before the first game (last night in fact) but I was still impressed with how easy it was to pick up once the game was underway. It helped that all I really had to do was concentrate on the tactics, unlike a lot of games the rules flow so easily and don't stop you from doing what comes naturally so you wind up fighting the battle rather than gaming the rules.

The game is a fairly straightforward alternating-activation system, with a few added tweaks. The biggest is that each side has access to a number of stratagems and can choose to play one per turn, immediately before activating one of their units. These stratagems can allow you to do things like activate a second unit at the same time, mark an enemy unit as activated (so they can't act this turn) or remove an activated marker from one of your units so they can act again.

All movement and measurements are done from a unit's leader, to an opposing unit's leader where appropriate; the rest of the models are really just there as wound markers for the unit. It's a little odd for someone coming from a Warhammer background, but it works really well and saves any arguments. Another thing that seemed odd but worked well is that the number of models in a unit govern not just how many dice you roll when attacking but also when defending; each dice succeeds on a fixed roll that depends on the unit involved with any modifiers adjusting the number of dice rather than the target number. Nice, simple, straightforward and remarkably instinctive once you get a turn or two under your belt.

The armies advance across another impressive battlefield

My first game was against a guy called Matt who had also never played before (and who it turned out I knew from playing CCG's against him about 10 years ago, small world). We each had fairly small forces, mine were Blood Gorged (aka beastmen) while his were Orcs. Both very aggressive armies so we could get stuck into things quickly. After a turn or two of maneuvering, we got stuck into things fairly quickly. The big turning point in the battle was when I managed to bring my elite unit of Ravagers alongside his Orc Ironskins, use a stratagem to remove their activation marker and then charge into the flank of his unit. With supporting attacks from a chariot and a minotaur, the Ravagers made short work of their target and went on to rampage through the remains of the Orc army. The result was pretty definitive but we both enjoyed the game and I learnt a lot.

The Orc Ironskins fall to the elites of the Blood Gorged army

I got a second game in against a guy called David who was a pathfinder for Mantic games, and had also never played God of Battles before. This time I took the Orcs and he had the Blood Gorged. Having seen what the Ravagers could do I made sure to charge them with the Ironskins and play the battle on my own terms. It worked, the Ravagers and Ironskins tied each other up for a few turns, before I managed to get some supporting attacks in again and wipe out the Ravagers. Only for the Ironskins to get trampled underfoot by the minotaur. In the end, this game was much closer and came down to whether I could wipe out a unit of Blood Gorged brutes before my Orcs got overrun by the enemy chariot. As it turned out, I couldn't.

So two games done, in approximately two hours each. It says a lot about how easy it is to get the hang of the game that, on our second turn of the second game, Jake just said "you guys really don't need me any more do you" and just left us to it.

If I have any issue with the rules it's that the big monsters really don't live up to their billing. We had a troll and a minotaur in our games, but with a couple of exceptions they generally weren't aggressive enough to do much damage and simultaneously tough enough to shrug off anything thrown their way. It made for a lot of drawn combats when they were involved.

So yeah, I can't recommend these rules highly enough. Simple, fun and highly tactical. I can't wait to see how they scale up to larger battles rather then the small skirmishes we were playing today. Anybody at the Peterborough club can expect to be pestered to play a game sometime soon.

P.S. We also got a chance to talk to Jake about Kickstarter and what he thinks of the runaway success of the Deadzone project. Short answer, he seems a bit blown away but he wishes Mantic would stop making promises that depend on him writing more scanarios, rules, characters etc. without running them by him first. :-)