Wednesday 27 November 2013

2014 Gaming Calendar

So with NORAD firing up the santa tracking soon, its time to get your time booked off with your better half's and look at the 2014 show/gaming schedule.

Some of these are yet to be confirmed hence the question marks, however if you have a local show or torney then pop a comment below and I'll update the list.

Jan -

5th Penkridge Wargames Tabletop Sale http://penkridgewargames.webs.com/
25th - Crusade http://www.penarthwargames.co.uk/crusade/

Feb -

2nd Vapnartak http://www.yorkwargames.org/Vapnartak.htm
15th Call to Arms http://colours.org.uk/
23rd Cavalier http://www.twws.org.uk/cavalier_2.htm


Mar -

1st Hammerhead http://www.hammerheadshow.co.uk/
2nd Overlord http://www.abingdonwargames.org.uk/overlord
8th Albanich http://solwaycraftsandminiatures.webs.com/albanich2014.htm
9th West Midlands Militry show http://www.alumwellwargames.co.uk/
16th Skirmish http://www.harfields.com/Skirmish.html

22nd A Call To Muster 2014 http://www.teesshows.co.uk/
30th Cannon http://retfordwargames.wordpress.com/cannon/

Apr -

12th - Salute http://www.salute.co.uk/salute/salute-2014/


May -

3rd Legionary http://legionaryshow.co.uk/
4th - X-wing Leicester Phat Cats

10th - Carronade http://www.falkirkwargamesclub.org.uk/index.html
18/19th? - Triples http://www.sheffieldwargamessociety.co.uk/

30/1st - Expo http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/
31st Fisticuffs http://www.peterpig.co.uk/fisticuffs.htm

 
June -

1st? - Wappinshaw http://wappinshaw.blogspot.co.uk/
1st - Partizan http://www.partizan.org.uk/
8th - Broadside http://leofwinewargamerson.blogspot.co.uk/p/broadside-2013.html 
14th - Phalanx http://spartans.org.uk/#&panel1-1
28th - Wartorn http://www.wartornuk.com/

July -

TBC Bovington http://www.battlegroupsouth.org/wp/
TBC Attack http://www.ddwg.org.uk/Attack.html

Aug -

3rd - Claymore http://seswc.co.uk/
TBC - Ruinstorm 2014 40K Torney Leicester Phat Cats
31st? - Border Reivers http://borderreiverswargamessociety.co.uk/show/

Sep -

1st? - Border Reivers http://borderreiverswargamessociety.co.uk/show/
7th - Other Partizan http://www.partizan.org.uk/
14/15th? - Colours http://colours.org.uk/ CANCELLED
16th - Skirmish http://www.harfields.com/Skirmish.html

Oct -

4/5th - Derby Wargames Show http://www.worldwargames.co.uk/
4th Blast-tastic http://blast-tastic.blogspot.co.uk/
11th Battlemasters Kings of War Torney Loughborough Dice Devils
19th? - Skelp http://www.anguswargamesclub.co.uk/#!page4/cfvg
27th? - Fiasco http://leedswargamesclub.webs.com/fiasco.htm


Nov -

29th - Battleground http://www.battlegroundshow.co.uk/

1st - Crisis http://www.tsoa.be/crisis_2013_general.html
15/16th - Warfare http://www.wargamesassociationreading.co.uk/

Dec -

6th Dec - Recon http://recon-wargames-show.blogspot.co.uk/ The blog page is out of date, but my google-fu couldn't find anything else?

Friday 22 November 2013

First Look : Warzone Ressurrection

A couple of weeks ago myself and Rob managed to get a cheeky game of Warzone in and these are my thoughts...

I decided to really challenge the rule set by bringing a complete novice into the game who has no knowledge of wargaming and see how the rules came across.

So as myself and Rob hadn't read all the rules I decided to keep it quite basic, Rob on the other hand wanted to go whole hog and hardcore it!

We decided to keep it simple and just use the basic starter sets, Rob however used a doom trooper as his commander.






So a nice simple mission so that we could focus on the rules and the like, Capture the centre of the table. The Legion being commanded by the noob known as Salma and yes she's a girl...


Camera shy but hey you can't have it all. The legion were set up in the middle ready to race for the objective and Rob's Brotherhood where Split into three assault groups, doom trooper with some dudes on left, some dudes in the middle and a robot thingy on the right, 

Rob managed to get range on a group of undead legionnaires and blasted some, at this point Salma got that killer instinct in her eyes and went turbo on me! 


The Razman and a unit of legionnaires  go bouncing into cover and this is where the first rule mistake crops up, I thought that if you burnt a resource card then you can ignore light and heavy cover you can only if its an engage action, that's charging to the masses! Opps! 

After some exchange of fire and shifting about Alaknai the Rockhard charged a bunch of Rob's brotherhood chaps, and Salma got her rocks off killing then ones in combat range off and getting a free 2 inch move into the rest for the next turn. 


at this point it was all down hill for Rob, Alaknai took out the robot thingy, and the Razman shot the snot out of the unit aptly by the grave yard! then the last remaining unit of legionnaire's jump onto the objective and that's game to Salama and the Legion!

So the Actual game system them -

Gameplay:

A couple of weird factors to get your head round, its a D20 system, and each model activates with two action points like warmachine/infinity, so for example a 5 man unit would activate and each model has to do its two actions before the next model is activated and simply rinse and repeat until the unit is done and your opponent then gets a unit to activate, nice and easy and you can do multiple things so your HMG could soft up a unit and a couple of guys can charge in whilst the rest of the unit shoot something else its that versatile!

your commander and unit leader give you resource cards which you can "turn to burn" to do special actions if you start losing said squad leaders etc then you lose the resource cards, easy example is when Salma activated Alaknai she turned to burn a card for an extra attack.

Other nice touches are that the stronger you are the more minus modifiers you have to your armour save so strength 10 will give you 0, 11 is -1 and so on, if you charge you have extra strength on the turn you charge and if your jumping from a height that adds extra strength to the attach, you can also do squad actions where three guys can combine fire or swarm a target in combat.

You can effectively trample with larger models and actually pick up and throw people away, or into charge range of something else! one of the ones I liked was hold him down and you get to re-roll combat attacks. Loads of scope for fun playability and I've not even read the armour rules or construct your own bossman bit yet!

Lastability:

The system was around a while back and the kickstarter was a huge success so loads of models are available already and if I was offered a game of warzone or 40K I'd choose warzone I like it that much the background is cool, and the way that the rules work are very simple I can see this one lasting a while,

Models:

This is what attracted me to this game when I was first given the heads up by Rob over at Lemington via the book of face, and if I had known at the time how good the models came out I would have pledged alot more.

The resin is a nice material and casting tip top, detail is really nice and you don't have to wash them like you do with most resins, they take washes really nice and likewise can be dry brushed quite easily as well.

Prodos have delivered a great game with a veteran fan base and actually listen to the masses, with a Torney planned in for Feb over at Telford I'll be strutting my stuff over there with either my Legion or Cybertronic I just need to decide which one! For those people who want the good old Brits then mutter from the gutter is Salute 2014 is the release date for those.

And as always keeping in traditional "Anton" I've splashed some paint on the legion, I decided to get the cannon fodder done first and with some great feedback from the facebook page these unwashed nasties are sorted!













I've gone a bit "twinky" on the bases but I decided to play about with some army painter tufts I've had for ages, over all I'm happy with these and I also decided to get some necromutants done as well.










I just need to base these the same and jobs a good un! I wasn't too sure on the skin tone as in the rule book you don't have a gallery of the models so I kinda went for the recently converted blokes gone mad look.

I also watched pacific rim and saw the T-90 crew and had a vision....






but I'm gonna work on the legion first then on to the Russian speaking robots! 

Sunday 17 November 2013

Battlemasters 2013 - The dust settles....

With all the prep of painting the Naughty Dwarves ready for the torney one slight thing had slipped my mind...

How to play Kings of War!



So with this "oversight" I started to flick through the book, however Isla had other ideas and and wanted to play with play dough!

But Beasts of War came to my rescue as they had just done a KOW week and had done a battle report that took you through the basics of the game, so after a hourish of watching the two guys beat the snot out of each other I'd got a grasp of the rules, in the back of my mind I was thinking is that it? Surely it can't be that simple!

 Beasts of war kings-of-war hub

The other thought that hit me was the timed games, now I've not done any torney scene since Warmachine at Expo back in 2010 so did I still have the knack be a nice chap to play but also play a 1750 point game in 90 mins so 45 mins per player?

Game One -

Carl with Elves and some weird looking models that looked really cool, I owned up saying that this would be my second game of KOW and Carl was a cracking opponent to play explaining things as he did them (one interesting once is that you don't have to charge the closest unit!) and also giving me some feedback after the game with how to use certain aspects of the army, even Ronnie piped in and gave some words of wisdom, in a nutshell I was told not to be a pussy and charge with the half breeds!

A rare photo of me on my blog!


Game Two -

Andy with a Kingdom of Men army all out of perry models, really scary looking army with loads of units and cavalry all over the place, again a lovely chap to play against and I was very surprised to actually win this game, mind you the decimators were on fire for this game and with once breath attack caused about 14 damage on a huge unit of pikemen, who then decided to go back to the pub!  

Lunch...

Sharad had invited Ronnie & Alessio from Mantic/Riverhorse games who hung about in the morning and chatted to the players, As Alessio had written the rules for KOW there was some discussion with regards to line of sight and charge lanes and other stuff like that, personally I was more interested that Ronnie had bought some of his deadzone models that he was banging together and also chatting about deadzone in general as well as the next steps for dreadball which were really interesting and good to see that the systems will develop as time on rather than just stagnate.



According to Sharad Ronnie really liked my naughty dwarves and made an appearance on his facebook page!

Game Three -

I drew my fanticide mentor Nick and his army was the forces of nature made up of Fanticide models which looked really cool as my flying monkeys were also used. bit of a tough one this was as the earth elementals (I think?) were really tough, some might say rock hard ;)
I managed to squeeze a draw out of this game as the points difference at the end were less than 350, however I was about an inch away from the "secret" objective that  no-one knew about but that would have made no difference anyway.

Game Four -

Name TBC! a five cannon dwarf gun line! so I lined up and braced for impact! it started really bad with units vanishing as the cannons vaporised units with ease, and to protect my own warmachines I had to get my half breeds and immortal guard in on the action, and the immortal guard did a sterling job holding the left flank for 2 or three rounds of combat! Those boys will get promoted to a 20 man unit!

However I nearly did succumb to the dreaded "I'm screwed attitude" but as I wanted to give the guy a good game and I thing he was as shocked as me with the effectiveness of his cannons I carried on going and the rolling for my heavy mortars and rocket launchers were statistically impossible! I was focusing on the units near or holding objectives so I could reduce the additional points that these would give, In the end I had one objective to my opponents none and drew on victory points as again the difference was less than 350 points.

This did actually surprise me as what looked like a whitewash became a bloody affair and the warmachines showed the strength!

So after 1 loss, 1 win and 2 draws, I didn't finish last, didn't place in the top three so over all not a bad outing for my first KOW torney with an hours worth of youtube watching!

I'm sure that Sharad  will be doing a 2014 Battlemasters and I'll be coming along to strut my stuff, I'm tempted by Orc's or Ogres but after some cracking advice from Nick they seem a little lacking in certain areas even though the models are fantastic, bit of a shame really or is that the real challenge...

So I didn't manage to get any pics of the great looking armies as I was rolling dice like a mad man, but the standings...

The highly prized wooden spoon....






Third place....





Second Place....





And the Battlemaster 2013....





Most fluffy Army/Background..




Big man hugs to Sharad for running a cracking day! Bloody good job!!

note the table for scale ;)

Sunday 10 November 2013

Kings of War Abyssal Dwarves army complete!

Indeed its a rare moment that a wargamer can actually say that they have "finished" an army, due to the fact that you always add extra bits as the arms race between you and your gaming group is always on going.

With this lovey lot I can say that they are complete as I've painted the naughty dwarfs up for a tournament next weekend at Loughborough Dice Devils,





 
The points limit is 1750, and this lot is about their I just need to throw some magic items in and its all good to go!





there are that many models I had to extend my usual photo taking area!





Decimators with black souls behind, these I did a while back so have simply finished them off with some of my special mix flock






one of the two halfbreed units, rather than the red that most people have gone for I went green to tie the colours in with the rest of the army and they also reminds me of mini dragon ogres for some reason?





more decimators with immortal guard behind, again these have been collecting dust on the shelf





Halfbreed champion and a sorcerer, so quick to paint it wasn't funny!





2 Ankor mortars, these are on a recommendation so I'm expecting big things if they hit!


2 Katsuchan rocket launchers, I'd got these in a deal I did with a chap on facebook so I figured why not!

I needed to do a 20 man unit of black souls, 20 halfbreeds, 4 warmachines and the 2 leaders so that I could field a fully painted army and managed to achieve it well before the actual deadline so I'm very happy with the final slog and looking at my painting table it's actually clear of models to paint so I need to fill it up with some stuff!!

As I've only played a couple of games of Kings of War any tips for a noob?

Sunday 3 November 2013

Warzone Resurrection Convention/Openday at Telford STAG's

Myself and Rob jumped into the batmobile and headed west via a very dodgy satnav and eventually ended up in Telford,

the "mission" was for Rob to pick up his kickstarter and for myself to get my rule book and cards, however as all good plans it went to pot when we saw the models in the cabinet.....





to be honest the guys could have done with a couple more of the traditional ikea glass cabinets as they were stacked and racked with resin goodness, so much to look at and most of it pleasing to the eye.









a couple of the models didn't really float my boat, one was the armoured hussars juggernauts the weapons look a bit weedy for them, the other was the Judicator the pose is ok but looked too much like a lump of resin, some detail on the cloak would have been nice.









So considering that Prodos have made about 200 models only two that don't turn me on is a pretty good hit ratio! 

The Telford STAG's have a cracking venue and meet up once a fortnight on a Sunday and have about 30 warzone players so I'm planning on wandering over once a month(ish) and getting a game in, 
























apart from the open gaming area which looked great with the scenery, there was a area for card games, RPG's and monging









there was a painting compo, with some cracking entries I would have given it a crack if I hadn't been busy with work and cranking out naughty dwarves for the dice devils torney on the 16th 
















































So whilst munching on lunch myself and Rob flicked though the shiney rule book and sussed out whats classed as a "mastercard" unit, 





So the book is hardback, that straight away is a winner in my eyes! Shame the malifaux ME2 book wasn;t the same,





the quality of the book is superb with full colour throughout and loads of nice little touches,





god knows whats going on here.... bloody blogger/photobucket!















So for a mere £35 you get a whopping tomb, and it looks good whilst you bludgeon your annoying sideliners to death with it... 

But due to this man on the right with the V on his sleeve...





He gave myself and Rob a cracking intro taking us though the system and answering all my annoying questions that games ask... most important one "Can you pre-measure?"

then tie in this whispering devil... 





and I walked away with another legion starter set, some necro mutats





a convention only model that has additional missions that you can play, 





some necromutant squad leaders





and after some pondering a couple of the beast riders





overall a good day, chatted to loads of randoms and the atmosphere was nice and relaxed throughout. 

Myself and Rob are gonna get together at some point in the next few weeks and get our geek on, and Rob from Prodos has given us an open invite to Lemington Spa for a game as well which I'll be taking him up on the offer, 

All I need to do is splash some paint on these bad boys and we're good to go, Move over 40K Warzone has landed!!