More Romans - SPQR Maybe?

I've kind of got into painting Romans, there's something to be said for factory painting, especially when you get into a groove.

These are the same as previous, I think I must have about 60 of these from one of those Warlord Games Roman starter sets, I've also got some cavalry to do too along with a batch of Celts, which may just end up being some local auxiliaries or I may have to do a full ancient celtic force. Those Victrix chariots are just lovely!

Ste, put your money where your mouth is!

In a recent post I espoused the benefits to the gaming community at large of individual creativity and those individuals that work hard for little or no reward to provide some form of content for this crazy hobby. There are many talented and creative individuals out there that are working hard in the background to create new and exciting rules, models, ideas that make our hobby that bit more exciting. In addition there are also many creative and talented individuals with truly awesome and outstanding ideas or knowledge that aren’t creating or sharing anything.

Maybe we should all aim to contribute something to our community, because community it is. This hobby can’t exist without the social aspect, the face to face interactions with other human beings are a core part of what we do and how we all enjoy our hobby. Contrast that to online gaming where you can inhabit a virtual world and find great enjoyment out of electronically created environments/puzzles/challenges and yet never have the need to truly interact with another human being. We all have an internet presence of some-kind (this blog is one of mine) and there is no doubt that the internet is an amazing tool for our hobby, however it is just that, a tool to help facilitate that social gathering of dice rolling, chit drawing, card shuffling and general weirdness (Magic the Gathering???) that makes this hobby work.

So with that in mind I challenge all you blog readers and writers to produce something that benefits the hobby. It is very easy to critique what others do and I am just as guilty of it as everyone else however when all we do is critique then a critical mass will build up in ourselves and others that will stifle creativity and we’ll end up with nothing new.

Anyway here’s something that I created some time ago for all your reading pleasure. It’s a campaign pack/supplement for Warhammer AncientBattles – Age of Arthur. 

It can probably be easily adapted to other systems as the structure of it is not dependant on that rules system. In fact I may try and adapt it to SAGA as mate Ashley is dipping his toe into that world of crazy as we speak. So what wacky idea have you got, why not share it with the community and let’s see if we can populate this hobby with ideas that are not tied up in boardroom share value return on investment garbage!

Dark Age Saxons

After the release of the appalling Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th edition I, like many gamers, began exploring the wonderful world of Historical gaming. It was with joy and enthusiasm that I dived into the world of WAB, FoW, VSF and other interesting and challenging systems. Whilst exploring WAB in particular I discovered the excellent WAB supplement; Age of Arthur which on the surface looks very sparse however once you start delving deeper you find it is a balanced and varied book with many possibilities.

Anyway fast forward a couple of years and I had still to complete my Age of Arthur Saxon army, and therefore I foolishly agreed to take part in Scrivs http://scrivsland.blogspot.co.uk/ Age of Arthur Campaign day on the 16th March.

Three weeks before the event I suddenly remembered that I’d agreed to attend and frantically started painting up my army (can you see a pattern here?).

Anyway the end result is pictured below. I did take my camera to the day however got completely caught up in the enjoyment and forgot to take pics, therefore I’ll refrain from inflicting a write up on you good folks. Suffice it to say I had great fun, managed to win a few games (mainly through lucky dice!) and got to play with toy soldiers.

Geoguth

Cyning & Thegn with Gedricht

More Geoguth

Atheling & Duguth

Cyning

Atheling

Wow, I’m a year older. Guess I’d better do a review!

As the title suggests I am a year older (and that means me and not the blog) so in the tried and tested tradition of most bloggers on an anniversary of some kind I thought I’d do a review of my efforts since my last birthday.

September 2012 - Septmeber 2013

Well it was quite a significant 12 months in terms of gaming and hobby related bumpf (Yorkshire slang for “stuff”). It was around this time last year that I finally made the decision to abandon GW products completely, my reasons being much the same as many other gamers, bloggers, housewives, employees etc:

• Price increases
• Rules changes
• Change from hobby to profit orientation

I could wax lyrical on the decision however suffice it to say that I have happily not looked back. I had already been playing WAB for a while and still do occasionally, that being the one rule set that still appeals. However I have since broadened my interests into more historical periods and much like most wargamers out there have been overwhelmed with the amount of good material being published, cast, moulded etc. That’s not to say that it wasn’t available previously however it would seem that to this humble bloggers view there has been a sea change in where the £/$/Y/E is being spent and thus a number of smaller companies (one man bands) are benefitting from this bounty.

So where did my hard earned get spent in the last twelve months? Well my list of hobby projects seems to have sky rocketed over this period, with slight deviation into the evil world of WHFB (argh!):

In Her Majestys Name - Ooh where to start. A nice cheap ruleset from Osprey, skirmish based so there’s minimal outlay and the rules writers are active on discussion forums. The epitomy of hobby based wargames in my view and spawned my desire to do a little fictional writing (see Inspector Johnsons Casebook here).

WAB/Clash of Empires - Still playing however not so much CoE as it feels a little like the poorer cousin to WAB. Unfortunately I have too many projects on the go at the moment (Saxons, Early Imperial Romans, Greeks).

Bolt Action - World War 2 skirmish games at their most “Hollywood”. I jumped in feet first on this one when the rules were released, managed to drag a big chunk of our gaming club along as well and will be assisting in a campaign day we’re running in December. The side benefit is it managed to revive my interest in WW2 gaming in general which resulted in :

Flames of War - My disillusionment with GW led me to trade in a big chunk of my rulebooks to Amazon (boo hiss I hear you cry). However I then spent my ill gotten gains on a US Airborne force with some online sellers and have been thoroughly enjoying this revival in a system that big chunks of the gaming populace seem to have abandoned (typical). In a similar vein this leads to:

Lord of the Rings - I know, I said I had abandoned GW. Well it would seem that not entirely although in my defence I would categorise this as New Line/Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings gaming as the imagery comes from the films hence my reason for collecting this. It was also done as a way to demonstrate that you can game fantasy settings on a budget, all my purchases have been from other gamers who need to clear their lead/plastic pile and I have made some mutually beneficial trades.

WFB - Warhammer Fantasy Battle (on a budget). I did this purely as a finger to the ridiculous pricing policy of GW and put together a 1500pts Daemon army for our club tournament. I did badly however won the best painted for my £11.09 army (for my see my article here)

Saga - Still trying to figure this one out however its fun, uses my existing figures and seems different enough for me not to get it confused with other systems.

English Civil War - I started this simply because I picked up a bunch of Warlord Games Parliamentary figures on the cheap. Luckily a fella at our club is a bit of a local ECW buff so ran a small campaign based on the local area using WAB ECW and Pike & Shotte. We’re still finishing this one off!

Naval WW2 - This is a bit of a solo effort by me and I still have no opponents. Not sure what rules I’ll use however I intend on setting up the Hunt for the Bismarck and picked up the Davco models from Skytrex at Triples earlier in the year.

So am I going to complete any of this? Well I am still plugging away at my LoTR models and have opponents at the club on a slow boil (metaphorically speaking). WW2 seems to be my focus at the moment with our upcoming Bolt Action campaign and Flames of War modelling (which I’m thoroughly enjoying). I should have a bit of a modelling update shortly and have been trying to sort out the terrain for a Normandy beach assault for the club so will share that once I figure out the beast way to layout 5 x 6’ boards on a limited budget.

Age of Arthur Campaign Pack

Well its been some time since I’ve updated this blog, life has managed to get in the way and we’ve not managed to finish the campaign. However rest assured that the concluding battle for the British Isles shall be fought and some wacky aspects of the campaign shall be realised.

And in support of the craziness I’ve made the campaign pack publicly available for anyone wishing to download it. Please note that aspects of it are shamelessly stolen from other published works and therefore if anyone wants to have a nark then please get in touch. However the scenarios are mainly my own work and the Druid/Custodian elements are purely my invention. If anyone has any comment please feel free to get in touch.

So without further ado please click the image below:

Images courtesy of The Deadliest Blogger: Military History Page