State of the Game and Zombie progress

Well the blog might itself might have seen a bit zombie-like for most of this year. I have been quite busy and I do have some posts to finish on Cangames and my trip to Louisburg and some other odd games but I thought I would just post on what I am working on right now.

I have been very busy with work this year and my painting has been a bit start and stop but I have made some progress on painting my Franks for Saga -- I was slightly disheartened by reading the strategy discussion on the Muskets and Tomahawks forum which suggests the Franks are among the weakest factions but I still like the idea of them (and especially the special rules around Roland).

I have had 2 games in with them (and anyone who knows my Saga playing habits, 2 games with any one faction is almost a record) and I think I am getting a sense for how they work. (Not taking any Levy until the Saga dice are maxed out seems to be a key to the strategy so painting the Levy first was probably not the smartest thing to do)

Frostgrave is also high on my gaming schedule and I have started quite a few figures for it but never seem to get any finished.

I had bought the starter bundle for Warlord games Project Z in the spring and in attempt to get it actually painted and ready, I have committed to running a game in November. Although I was working for a large part of this weekend, Ed came up on Saturday afternoon and I managed to glue together all the figures from the basic box plus the Special Ops and Ed was very excited to see the Z-Mart terrain from Sarrisa Precision so he did quite a good job in getting that together and painted.

There are somethings that I had planned to paint but haven't -- My US forces for Team Yankee are still mostly sitting in their shrink wrapped boxes. I was going to buy an infantry force for my Italians for the upcoming campaign at the club and I decided I didn't really want to paint that much 15mm infantry so I didn't even buy them -- I do have some tanks that I didn't get painted last time that I will paint up and I have been sort of looking at ebay to see if there is a painted Fucilere force since I would like to have one even if I don't want to paint one.

Hopefully the blog will get updated much more often with some progress on these projects (and the backlog games as well)

2016 Plans for the New Year

With being sick and being very busy with my new job I haven't had a lot of time yet this month for the blog or for gaming (though hopefully there will be gaming on Sunday) In an effort to kick-start some progress I will set down my plans and goals for this year.

Team Yankee

This is going to dominate my painting time (and hopefully, at least to some extent, my gaming time) for the first part of the year. I put together 2 starter boxes of Soviets when I got back from Halifax and a handful of Americans and have been planning to start painting them since then. With any luck that will get started this weeekend -- the Soviets should go quickly since they are one colour (I plan to try a bit of "colour modulation" with the airbrush to give them some depth) and then I will follow up with the US. I plan to get enough of both forces so I can do both a mechanized and a tank force. The real test here will be to actually get the infantry done.

SAGA / Dragon Rampant
Here I want to get the rest of the Islamic forces from the SAGA starter boxes painted up. After we play a few games of Dragon Rampant I will get a better idea of how many I HAVE to paint but to be honest, I enjoy painting these. Once they get done I do have some plastic cavalry to paint up but they are not currently in the "official queue". I also want to play more games with the 3 SAGA factions and get good at at least one of them!

I am also going to paint up a force for Nick's Trojan War campaign but it will likely be the smallest force possible i.e. all hearthguard.  I think I will go with Foundry Greeks for this but I haven't decided yet.

Frostgrave
I want to have two relatively coherent warbands for this and paint up most of the stuff I got from the Nickstarter. I foresee this being a useful break from the Team Yankee painting.

Bolt Action
I would like to paint my Canadians but my only real goal is to finish the basing of the Germans and to play a game with them.

Hail Caesar
It didn't look like there would be any Romans in my immediate future but Ed want's to try out his siege rules that he developed for the French and Indian war in a (much) earlier period so we are dusting off our plans to do some Dacian war battles. I am planning to paint up 4-5 Roman siege engines for this and maybe a unit or 2 with some Aventine figures (since I have to get the set that has Trajan and Decadulus' head)

Terrain
Weirdly, the terrain I most want to do is for my Ortona campaign for 28mm WWII for which I don't have any inspiration to paint the figures! I want to do a river bank type terrain, a piece with the gully and a cityscape.

I have some ideas for Frostgrave and Team Yankee terrain and I should probably get more 28mm terrain suitable for SAGA.

I think that should keep me busy for the rest of the year and I am going to make a real effort not to get anything that is not on this list

2015: The Year in Review

Looking back over my blog posts for this year it was a pretty good year for playing games but it wasn't all that great for painting (but it wasn't really terrible for that either). I will divide the year up by game rather than time and take a look at what was (and wasn't accomplished)

Descent 2nd Edition:
After having this game for over a year (and buying more expansions than I would care to admit) I started playing this in the summer (we are about halfway through the Heir of Blood campaign now). When I bought this my plan was to paint all the plastic figures and that way I would get something out if it even if I didn't play that much. I did manage to get a reasonable chunk of the base set done when I first got it and I thought that once I started playing it, I would be frantically painting but the reality is that nothing got done (but the game is a lot of fun!)

Flames of War:
We played 2 campaigns at the club in 2015: Firestorm Lorraine and a Fate of the Nation Escalation campaign. Both were a lot of fun and I did a fair bit of painting for both.

For the Fate of a Nation, I painted a bunch of T-55s, SU-100s, PT-76 and and IS-3s for the Egyptians and some Ishermans and AMX-13s for the Israelis. On the downside I bought some M48s and Sho'ts as well as infantry for both sides that didn't get painted (though some of the infantry is primed!)

For Firestorm Lorraine, I had posted my painting goals here and I think I did a pretty good job of getting through that stuff. The PZ IV/70s, the PZ IVs and the Panthers all saw action during the campaign and I think the halftracks got assembled. I also didn't buy anything new during the campaign which is a victory of sorts.

I might as well mention my Vietnam stuff here as well-- there was almost no progress. I based some and primed some infantry but nothing that really gets me close to a game. Again I resisted buying anything new (especially the Riverine stuff  which I am still tempted by)

Hail Caesar:
The beginning of the year was good for Hail Caesar as I painted a bunch of Roman Legion as well as archers and slingers for the game I ran at Cangames in 2015.  The Romans are still my favourite army to paint. I had plans to paint up zombies, skeletons and Beastmen for a Hail Caesar Fantasy game based on the Teutoburg Forest to run at Cangames this year (I had a weeks vacation in September where I was going to paint up a large chunk of it and ended up playing Destiny on the PS4). I would still like to do this  but it is on the back burner.

Frostgrave:
This got played a few times and up to the end of the year, I managed to keep to my plan to play this with the figures I already had. Then this happened. I didn't plan to paint these this year so I don't consider that a negative (yet!).

Bolt Action :
This has been my painting millstone around my neck. I have a lot of good ideas for games based on the Canadians fighting in and around Ortona at the end of 1943. I have discussed terrain with Ed and he has even made me an Italian Farmhouse to try and get me inspired. The idea of running and playing the games is very appealing and even making the terrain should be fun but I just can't get myself to paint the figures.

The number of pieces for each figure in the Warlord Games army box was daunting to start with so I put off putting them together. Then once I had them together I really didn't want to paint them. I wanted to get them painted so I kept them on the painting table and put off starting other projects just so I wouldn't be distracted (the result of which was that nothing got painted for several months). With some prodding from Ed the Germans are mostly painted (but they all need their bases worked up and the halftracks need some weathering and decals.

For the Canadians, I have put together a mortar, a vickers MG and an AT gun and maybe 5 other guys. I am not thrilled with this but I pushed them aside to paint SAGA stuff and hopefully when I come back to them I will be more inspired.

SAGA:
The year did not begin well for SAGA. I had bought a Frankish Starter army and the Gripping Beast plastic medieval guys to paint over the Christmas holidays and I ended up being sick so they are still in their boxes.

When the Saracen set came out for Crescent and Cross as I was pretty good and got that painted up quickly and played a few games with Mike but then the Bolt Action block got in the way. I have managed to catch up and have played with both a Mutatawwi'a warband and and Moorish one but there is still a lot unpainted (my ultimate goal is to have a genericish Arab/Islamic army for Hail Caesar).

I did also pick up the SAGA revenant army in the thought it could also be used in my Hail Caesar Fantasy game and I have done nothing with it.

Other:
I played some Fistful of Kung Fu this year and finished painting the figures I had for that (well, to be honest, Ed painted most of them). I based and primed a Transylvanian army for By Fire and Sword. And I bought a lot of stuff for Team Yankee at the end of the year but that is definitely a 2016 project.

Frostgrave: The Eclipse

The second game of the weekend was a game of Frostgrave, playing the Eclipse scenario which is the fist scenario from the newish "Thaw of the Lich Lord" book.

Mike used the same warband as he had from our previous set of Frostgrave games (as related here) and I chose the same type of wizard (Sigilist) but, since I had lost my paperwork, I started a new warband from scratch.

We made the table with a castle wall and a series of larger buildings separated from it by a wide street. There is more open LOS here than is recommended by the Frostgrave rules but this was balanced to a degree by the eclipse special rules which reduced the distance for LOS.

I had split my warband in 2 and sent the apprentice with a smaller force along the top of the castle wall and my wizard with the rest of the warband along the road to the near treasure.

Reaching the first treasure turned out to be quite easy but it turned out that disturbing the treasure attracted the attention of an ice troll who came on the table behind my warband.

The ice troll made short work of my thief who was carrying the treasure, fortunately he was far enough away from the rest of my warband that he didn't automatically move towards them but he stayed near the treasure for the rest of the game so no one got that one.

Soon the two warbands meet in the middle of the table and combat ensues. I briefly had the upper hand by distracting the enemy templar with the "Furious Quill" and almost killing him with bow fire. The group on the wall managed to get another treasure (and disturbed some wild dogs)

The dogs came on on one of the neutral sides and just wandered around their entry point for the whole game.

As the battle in the street went on, things got worse and worse for me.

Things started to go badly on the tower as well, I did get the first treasure away but lost the fight over the next treasure at the top of the tower.

In a move of desperation the apprentice climbed up the tower and cast explosive rune where the treasure was. When the enemy moved, the rune exploded and caused great carnage but sadly the only survivor was one of Mike's warband. In the following turns everyone in my warband was killed except the thief that managed to get off with the treasure.

I ended up with 1 treasure, Mike got 4 and the ice troll kept 1. When we checked the warband for casualties I only had one warrior who was seriously injured (sadly it was the best one!) but Mike had several deaths.

We did set up the treasure properly this time (the treasure is placed before table sides are chosen) so I think that  made a big difference and the eclipse did a bit of interest. In the post game discussion we decided that a lot of the house rules we used last time were not really needed except for the one that removed the gain of XP for killing enemy warband.

Looking forward to more Frostgrave in the New Year!

Another Distraction Arrives today

As I was painting my Moors this afternoon the doorbell rang and it was Canada Post delivering my Thaw of the Lich Lord "Nickstarter" order (on a Sunday)!

I had bought at the level where I got most of the unique charcters in metal plus the plastic Cultists and the book.

There is not an overwhelming amount of stuff here but I think it is going to be put aside until some time in the New Year.

I want to concentrate on finishing my Saga Arab armies and then Team Yankee will be coming (delayed until December 12th but that is not that far away). I wasn't sure how much Team Yankee stuff I would get but when I was in Fandom and Randy asked me if I was getting any and I ended up telling him I would get both sides!

Frostgrave -- First game and some thoughts

On Friday, Mike came over and we played some Flames of War (I will post some pictures of that soon) and Frostgrave.

When the "Nickstarter" for this was announced I wasn't super excited about it. I had lots of other stuff to paint and don't have a lot of 28mm terrain suitable for fantasy. As I read more about it, I realized I could use some of my existing 28mm collection including the stuff that I had accumulated for D&D over the years as well as those figures from Descent that I have painted up. I picked up the kindle version of the rules and they seemed like they were worth giving a try.

We decided we would use some modifications after reading some reviews on this blog and some discussion on the Lead Adventure Forum. These mostly increased the XP for getting treasure and removed the XP for killing opposing wizards.

My warband consisted of a Sigilist (I think a Reaper Dwarf Cleric) and his apprentice (a Grenadier wizard from one of their first D&D sets), a Templar (a GW figure from the first "End Times"), 2 Archers (Warlord Roman Archers), 3 Thugs (Perry Korean Peasants) and 2 Thieves (Gripping Beast Welsh slingers). I didn't spend a lot of time choosing my spells as I was more interested in seeing how the game would play out. I spent all the money on the warband so I didn't have any magic items.

For the fist mission we played the Keep which has 2 treasure in the centre of the table and 4 others each of which is on a teleportation pad which can move you to another teleportation pad if you end your move on it.

I started by moving up to the edge of the large building that was on my table edge. I divided my force into 3 groups, 1 with the wizard, 1 with the apprentice and the 2 archers by themselves. (Still not really sure how best to arrange the force at the beginning)

I managed to get lucky when I moved my thief onto the teleportation pad, he didn't move and he was set to bring the treasure back to my side.

Meanwhile, Mike was moving his warband up as well. He made really good use of the "Leap" spell to get people onto the treasure and to get the treasure of the board. Summoner is the opposing school for the Sigilist so it wasn't even an option for me.

My wizard and his retinue made it to the treasure in the centre at the same time some of Mike's henchmen got there.

Meanwhile Mike was having some trouble with a wandering monster (a bear dressed up as a Yeti).

I had some wandering monster troubles of my own as 2 ice spiders tried to stop my thief making it off with the only treasure I managed to grab. They weren't as dangerous as they sounded and my archers managed to kill one each.

My thugs rush up to try and grab the treasure that was dropped after the Yeti/bear killed one of Mike's minions.

The melee in the centre of the table heats up as I get more guys in there. We reached the time limit at that point. Mike had manged to get 2 or 3 treasure off and I had managed 1. I had not suffered any losses (though one or two were wounded) and Mike had lost 2. We went through the end of turn stuff and I went up one level and Mike went up 2.

For the next game we decided try the Djinnin bottle mission. For this one each treasure has a 25% chance of releasing the Djinni when it is picked up.

This game was much less interesting as we both concentrated on the treasure on our own side of the table and Mike had the bad luck of getting the Djinni and a minor demon wandering monster attacking him.

We ended up both getting the 3 treasures that were closest to us and we each got 1 enemy with our archers and Mike took a bit of a beating from the Djinni and the demon.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I feel that the changes we made may have been fixing problems that might not be there with our play style. The turn limit really seemed to reduce the opportunity to interact with the opposing player and getting XP as well as treasure seemed to just amplify this. (I get the impression that the people who suggested these changes have played it more than we have so maybe things will look different with some more experience).

I think that adding things like traps and treasures of different values (so treasure further from your start point is worth more) will make things more fun and even making the turn limit more in game (something like after turn 5 a wandering monster will arrive each turn is going to force people to get off the board in fairly short order).


Mike has posted his report here