Prussian Month: Dystopian Wars Islands

Alrighty, so technically a bunch of islands are not really "Prussian" but I finished them off so that I could use them with my Prussian fleet for Dystopian Wars...

Enjoy these images of a Prussian Fleet sailing amongst them.

Sunday Gaming: Battlestar Galactica and Dystopian Wars

Had a great day of Sunday Gaming today and despite turning up late (as usual) Victor and I managed to get a game of Dystopian Wars in, before settling down for a good game of Battlestar Galactica with Sean and Casey.

Initial setup, Dreadnought and Battleship up the middle

Dystopian Wars was Victors Empire of the Blazing Sun up against my Prussians. It was really a chance to see how much of the new ruleset I managed to absorb after last nights read. In terms of the update to V1.1 I really like alot of what they have done. It feels like there is alot of streamlining, but I need many more games to really get my head around the changes. I also wish I had a quick reference sheet with the model assigned rules (MARS) to help me remember what everything is. I also need to look at sorting out some tokens as we had a lot of damaged ships limping around the table. We kept the game simple and avoided anything flying, as well as too many of the optional (or what we refered to as optional) rules like morale...

Cruisers head to the left flank, enemy in the distance

As it stood my little ships accounted for themselves well cleaning out alot of Victors destroyer screen, but his cruisers then took their toll on the survivors and my battleship. Meanwhile my gunships (think guns of a battleship but speed of a cruiser) worked over his battleship with a little help. In the end we called it a draw. I think I may need to re-read the rules again and perhaps cruise the Spartan Games forum for a few extra gaming aids / FAQs etc - either way a great game and a good test drive for my new islands (I'll have more photos of them soon). Hopefully this week my last two will arrive allowing me to create an island airfield an a table-corner industrial facility for some home-brewed scenarios.

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

Next up was BSG - the Fantasy Flight board game. If you like BSG at all, and you like board games at all, then this is a absolute MUST purchase. I've played it a dozen times now and each time is different, nail biting, back stabbing, high quality fun... and we haven't even had a single game yet using the expansions (but now Sean is hooked he will read the expansion rules and teach the rest of us!).

As they say on the site
The Board Game is an exciting game of mistrust, intrigue, and the struggle for survival which places each player in the role of one of ten of their favorite characters from the show. Each playable character has their own abilities and weaknesses, and all must work together in order for humanity to have any hope of survival. However, one or more players in every game is secretly a Cylon, and wants the humans to perish.

The basic premise is that anyone can be a Cylon, it is just luck. As a group you try to get your doomed fleet home whilst the Cylons (who many not even know they are one yet) try to stop you.

Oh really?

Short version of the game, I was everyones favourite (Baltar) and knew that I was a skin-job from the start. I spent the first half of the game hiding, counciling the other players, trying to hide my identity. Mike was playing a confusing game and even though I knew he was a human he had the rest thinking he was a toaster at heart. I changed sides with a bang and proceeded to cause trouble whilst I waited for an ally. In the end it was Casey (Adama) who revealed himself, more through accident than anything else though. In the end the Cylons plucked victory from defeat as the humans were moments away from salvation (not may humans admittedly, more than a few perished after a massive Cylon ambush).

Assuming I make it to the next Sunday Gaming session I very much hope that we roll out another game of BSG!

July is Prussian Month

With so many open projects, either barely started or almost complete I thought it might be fun to focus on two for the month and try to finish one, my Prussian Fleet for Dystopian Wars as well as getting a new one underway, my Prussian Army for Napoleon at War.

Dystopian Wars 101

DW is a Victorian era steampunk game (specifically in 1870) by Spartan Games. In their timeline the Industrial Revolution happened decades before our own so there is a wide variety of very advanced technologies as well as a lot of recognisable ones. There are two major aspects to the game in so far as you can play a land based or sea based game (or a combination of the two). We chose to get in to the sea game, largely because if we wanted to push tanks around we have Flames Of War...

Dystopian War 1.1 Rulebook

The game mechanics are pretty straight forward and quite fun. Basically you need a good number of D6, 6's are good and let you roll more dice. Don't let this comment fool you, it is not just a dice game as careful use of your resources are required - you don't waste a Battleship hunting down Destroyers. The rules also received a tidy up recently and so 1.1 of the Master Rulebook is now available, there is also an expansion coming out right about now.

Victor, Sean, Mike and I each bought a starter fleet, I of course found myself enticed by a number of extra models that were released early for the Prussian Fleet. The models are wonderful... they have been digitally designed and then rapid prototyped. This has left horizontal lines that are quite faint on the ships from the printing process. I choose to see those as just another part of the model rather than going insane trying to clean them off. Plus once the models are painted and on the table you will not notice them. For once I managed to get a bit of a headstart on the rest of the guys and got some ships finished off, however this lead me to being rather over confident and more ships were purchased. Now I find myself with a fairly large Prussian Fleet (as well as some great islands and buildings) that now need painting - hopefully over the course of this month...

Prussian vessels ready for undercoating

Napoleon at War 101

Napoleon at War is basically what it says on the book - a Napoleonic Game (think early 1800s and lots of guys with muskets and colourful uniforms, by a Spanish company called Man at War. I've read through the rules once and will be having a game against Wayne and Mike in the next couple of weeks. Based on that one read through I am very excited, so much so I went out and bought and entire 15/18mm Prussian army from AB Figures from Nic over at Eureka. 

Napoleon at War Rulebook

The rules are very Flames Of War-esque in that they are fun, don't spend too much time dealing with the minutia and look as though they will produce a fun result in a couple of hours. All of which are big wins as far as I am concerned. Each foot unit has 6 bases with 4 figures, the bases are about the same size as a FOW small base. Cavalry and guns each go on larger bases, and in the case of cav are 3 to a base. They even follow their own version of 3+/4+/5+ for motivation and and skill - called valeur and discipline.

They are let down a little by the fact that the Spanish to English translation can be a little tough to follow at times, but you take the good, you take the bad and there you have, a Napoleonic set of rules that looks fun...

In terms of the number of figures you need to paint it is the same as pretty much any Nappies set of rules. My estimate is approx 250-300 infantry and 50 cav, plus some guns. Basically a similar number of figures to a Soviet army for FOW, but with much more interesting uniforms. 

I have sucessfully painted up one (yes that is right... one!) test figure to get my colours sorted out. The version pictured below is not quite right - I have since changed the jacket colour to be a much darker blue and painted the mess tin on his back silver (thanks Wayne!). It looks a little rough in the photo but for a 15/18mm figure I am exceptionally happy with how it turned out. Now I just need to paint 23 more to have my first unit done!

Prussian Musketeer Test Figure (front)

Prussian Musketeer Test Figure (back)

Zee Plan!

So, what is the plan for Prussian Month. Not entirely sure if I am being perfectly honest... but I am going to set myself a "reach goal" whereby I set an impossibly hard target and when I fall short I will have hopefully achieved more than if I set myself an easy one.

Dystopian Wars: Finish everything that is in the photo (above) plus another 3 ships not pictured, and finish off all of the islands I have (which I also need to find as I am not sure where I put them after my last tidy up). I will not worry about painting the buildings as I have a plan for them which requires me to buy two more islands.

Napoleon at War: Paint one entire Infantry Regiment. That is 3x 24 figures (two Muskeeter Batalions and 1 Fusilier Batalion), plus another 3x 4 figures (for the skirmishers).

Sounds hard.... maybe I should go and start work on them rather than playing World of Tanks... I'll update my progress next week.

NiCon Teams Tournament & Baldur

A couple of weeks ago, Victor, Sean and myself played in the Warmachine Teams Tournament at NiCon. After last years poor showing we thought we would try and come up with some more competitive lists and perhaps even get some practice games in. Needless to say we only ended up getting a couple of games in but I think we all learnt a lot from it. Victor had his Zaal list packed full of annoying infantry and Ancestral Guardians, Sean had Blindwater list with Maelok and friends.

I took Baldur the Stonesoul and his Tier list

Baldur the Stonesoul

Baldur the Stonesoul (again)

The Wolds

Blackclad Wayfarer

Shifting Stones and Stonekeeper

Druids of Orboros

The entire army was painted (as a few of the other posts on the blog will tell you) over the weeks prior to the event and I am really happy with how the entire force turned out. I would like to have a go at re-doing Baldur's face as I know I can do better, but as a large cohesive army I think it looks great.

One of the things (at least in my mind) that really set it off is the foliage I added to the Wolds. This is the same stuff that I am planning on using on some of my Late War Germans (when I get around to doing them) and is made by a company called Silflor (same people that do the tufts). It was a little annoying to glue on and it is not really something that will last forever if you are doing a lot of gaming with it, but it really made these big wood and stone constructs "pop" on the tabletop.

Silflor Leaf Foliage on Megalith

As for the weekends gaming... it was great fun and our performance on the tabletop was definitely better than last year with a total of 5 individual wins and 2 team wins. For me the most amusing win was a balls to the wall, do or die effort where I knew I had moved badly in my first turn and Xerxis was up in my face too quickly - so the Shifting Stones and Baldur combined for a sweet assassination run. The Blackclad charged in first, hit and managed to knock a few boxes off, then Baldur appeared next to him and said - I have a full load of Fury, you have a few transfers, lets get it on! Xerxis transferred 2 or 3 hits, which killed an Archidon and badly wounded a Titan, however the last attack cleaned him out letting me claw out a victory. It was glorious!

Now to work out what my next WarmaHordes project will be....

Soviet Mid War Tankovy Company

It has been a while since updates - between a lot of painting and a couple of tournaments, not to mention all that 'boring' family stuff... Since the last post was about my GT list, I thought I would share some images of the 2012 Mid War GT "Best Army" (pretty chuffed I have to say - it was even worth the shot of ketchup during our 24 hour painting challenge a couple of months ago).

The list was:

Light Tankovy Companies: 10x T-26S obr 1939: 205 points.
9x T-26S obr 1939: 190 points.
Heavy Tankovy Company: 6x KV-1e: 620 points.

Tankovy Anti-tank Company: 4x 76mm ZIS3 guns: 130 points.
 Light Armoured Car Platoon: 3x BA-64 75 points
Armoured Car Company: 10x BA-10M: 310 points
Sporadic Air Support: I-153: 90 points 

I painted up a few extra pieces along the way just to give me a little flexibility for future events.

Battalion Commander

First T-26 Company



Second T-26 Company

KV Company



Zis-3 AT guns



BA-64 Armoured Cars

BA-10 Armoured Cars (winners of my "man of the match" for their performance over the weekend)



Objectives

If you shoot them enough, you can kill the biggest of targets!

Now I am trying to work out what I want to paint next for the force... the lure of T-28s is very strong I can tell you now!

Flames of War Mid War GT 2012

T-26 in 3 colour camo - thanks to http://www.o5m6.de/

Twas the night before the Mid War GT

When all through the house

Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse

In the figure case tanks lay

Put there with care

Painted and varnished

They would fight like a bear

When out in the lounge

There arose such a clatter
Oh darn... I've forgotten to put some decals on he said!...

During the Iron Painter event at work I managed to complete about half the force, and as it was I managed to go so close to finishing off the army with plenty of time to spare only to stumble at the last hurdle. Luckily my wife asked me a question about 45 minutes ago which reminded me of the 3 small jobs I had still to do. So here we are 10 hours before the GT, 2 jobs down leaving one last job to do - varnish my T-26s.

KV in process (left) and finished (right)

Luckily for me I love the smell of Moana (the worlds best varnish) in the morning and since it dries in about 5 minutes I can complete that final job first thing tomorrow morning. 

As for the army list - here you go:

Light Tankovy Companies 
10x T-26S obr 1939: 205 points.
9x T-26S obr 1939: 190 points.

Heavy Tankovy Company
 6x KV-1e: 620 points.

Tankovy Anti-tank Company
 4x 76mm ZIS3 guns: 130 points.
 

Light Armoured Car Platoon
 3x BA-64 75 points

Armoured Car Company
 10x BA-10M: 310 points

Sporadic Air Support
 I-153: 90 points.


Total Points: 1620 points

The plan is to use the KVs to lead the charge, T26s will protect the flanks whilst the BA-10s use their mobility and lack of Hen & Chicks to be my mobile force. The ZIS-3s can hopefully protect an objective and the air support will take out German Tigers.... or at least that is the plan. I'll let you know how it goes next week....

Wold Week: Megalith...SMASH

Wold Week has finished, I am just being slack in terms of getting the final thoughts on the blog! It was a good week, got a pile of stuff done (not as much as I hoped) but I am back on painting T-26s at full speed for another week now, so there is no chance to finish the Circle boys off. Of course they need to be ready in three weeks so I am sure there will be another update shortly on the Wolds.

In the meantime, here is the modified Megalith. I changed him from the standard pose and dropped the arms to make him a little easier to store and carry. The only part that I could not make my mind up on were the "shoulder pads". In the end I decided to remove them and rotate them in line with the arms - my logic was that these should be articulated so that he can more easily drop the shoulder whilst charging and put stone to face!

I'll have some more photos of the entire force up "soon"...

Wold Week: Wold Guardian

Wold Week continues... (Its like Shark Week on Discovery but with more stone and less teeth!)

This morning I finished up my Wold Guardian. I am happy on the whole with how he turned out, although I wished I spent a little more time practicing how to paint stone before tackling this guy as I think I could have done a better job. However the finished look is cool and once I add my secret ingrediant (more info coming soon) and finish the basing I think he will really pop on the tabletop.

Next on the list is Megalith, I have decided that I will convert his pose from the traditional hands up, to a something a little easier to transport! 

I've already put a little paint on him, but it is only the base colour for the stone and wood so no great loss if I end up having to redo a little of that work, especially if I have a nicer looking model at the end of the process. I expect to have some photos of him tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm off for my first game with eBaldur and the Wold boys. Going to give Victor a game later today and with a bit of luck I'll confirm that I have a workable list for NiCon... Mike has even promised to show me how Saga works, so it will be be a good day of gaming!

Wold Family...

Wold Week: The Woldwyrd

Been busy on the brushes again, this time finishing off a Woldwyrd. Very satisfied with how his “eye” turned out, definitely think it finishes off the figure nicely. Had a bit of a painting fail last night with my Wold Guardian – just too big to finish in one night, although I did managed to get the green glowy bits done and started work on the stone. With a bit of luck I’ll have him finished tomorrow (a lot of luck), leaving Megalith as my last Warbeast to finish up for the NiCon teams tournament. Next week I’ll be returning to Flames Of War, trying to get those 21 T-26s ready for the Mid War GT in a couple of weeks…

Wold Week: Woldwatcher Done(?)

Finished my test Woldwatcher with a little help first thing this morning before work, still needs basing and my secret final additional touch (more on that later in the week). Not 100% happy with the stonework, the face especially... might have a play with that later in the week once I have the other three completed. Victor suggesting trying some of the new GW washes to help build up some contrast... always looking for an excuse to buy new paints so I might have to go and have a look at them!

Also got distracted last night by having to do some more work on my Soviet Mid War GT army... finished the assembly of 21 T-26 tanks! Not a bad nights work I thought.

Tonight I will work on my Woldwyrd, leaving me a Woldguardian and Megalith to try to knock out over Wednesday and Friday nights... I sence a failure about to happen as the new Avengers movie is calling pretty hard as a much better way to spend Friday night!

Wold WIP Week Challenge!

Its been a little quite round here over the past few weeks, coming off some serious painting time for the NZ Nationals. Unfortunately that just results in more pressure for the next two tournaments (my final two before taking a 5 month break). I have a Mid War Soviet Tankovy list that I am working on for the Mid War GT that I'll have pictures of in the coming weeks, but I am also working on my eBaldur list for the Teams Tournament in about 4 or 5 weeks. I've come up with a style that I am happy with for the wood and stone, that is quick and fairly effective, the next challenge is to try and complete 4 Wolds over the course of the next 5 nights... Technically I think I can do it, but to help make sure of it lets call this a Wold WIP Week Challenge!

Tonights job - finish the Woldwatcher that I used as a painting test (now that I look at it, some of the painting looks a bit dodgy at 200-300% of its real size...)

Sorsha and Karchev go to NATCON

Over the past weekend we had the New Zealand National Wargaming Convention in sunny Hamilton (and for once I am not being facetious about the sunny part). I had an absolute blast and played about 12 games, many of which were real nail biters. Whilst there was way too much fun to remember everything I actually felt like some of the games were close (i.e. a couple of different dice rolls would have resulted in a reversal), some were completely at the other end of the spectrum, but overall I look back and think that if I made a couple of better decisions I would have done a little better.

Couple of highlights:
eMorghoul running into Karchev and a Juggernaut and hitting Flashing Blade a bunch of times. With 19 and 20 armour respectively you would expect that both Karchev and his friend would get equally damaged... no... the Juggernaut took a total of 2 points whilst the big man himself took around 20 (bear in mind he was not boosting ANY of the damage rolls).

A lone Man O War Demo Corp surviving attacks from a Shredder, Harrier and a ranged attack from an Angelius to contest a scoring zone and give me a scenario win. I actually asked my opponent why he was tying to kill the DC figure as I could not understand his strategy - once he explained it to me I almost apoligised for winning as I never saw his plan coming and if it was not for a string of bad dice he would have probably won.

Couple of lowlights:
Wading through a pile of Fennblades and Warriors to get my hands on eMadrak, only to fall 4 points short of killing him - thats after knocking off a couple of free transfers to nearby warrior models and a pile of transfers to beasts. Given that I was about to lose on the scenario it was my only play but still... sooooo close!

Forgetting to pop Sorsha's feat in my last game.... this was a real lowlight for me. Up against Xerxis and his Cataphract friends I felt like it was going to be a hard matchup for me - then I forgot to pop the feat in turn two and it went from being a bad match up to one where I had no chance. This was one of the few games I have ever played where I was seriously annoyed at myself.

Bottom line:
Did not come last in either of the events, won more games than any previous tournament... thats a great result as far as I am concerned. Had some great games, caught up with some good people and painted some more figures. Speaking of which, here they are!

Iron Fang Uhlans

Kovnik Markov