On the 6th Game of Gamesmass

The magpies gave to me: a game of Impetus with Prinny! (Rhyming is funzors).

*Image copyright Dadi & Piombo

Prinny and I had a game of Impetus using our medieval armies. Prinny with his 12th century English and me with my 11th century Scots. This was in the hope that the game would give Tim enough impetus (pun) to finish his beautiful English knights!.

 My Viking general was captured in a combat between my Huscarls and Prinny's mercenary long Spear. Thorfinn spent the rest of the game watching the battle from the English side of the table,

The game was a classic Scottish v English fight. The massed English cavalry charged the massed Scottish spear and made some head way through the Scots, the counter attack from the Scottish cavalry was unusually deadly. The two elements of Light Horse cantered around the English right flank, destroying a unit of archers on the way and the Norman knights managed to sit behind the Scottish line all game right up until the point where the English King and his retinue broke through the Scottish line right in front of the Normans. The Normans charged the King in the flank and ran over the top of the retinue, routing the English command. Bloodied but unbowed the, Scots carried the day, chasing the English off the field of battle.

As you can see from the pics, the English army is still needing a lot of work but what there is there is bloody fantastic!

On the 5th Game of Gamesmas......

the magpies gave to me...

an Unbound game of Warmachine

So Pelarel, McZermof and the Tank Engine have been hanging out to roll out 150 points of Warmachine in the Unbound format for Warmachine found in the Colossals Book from Privateer Press.

This version is played on a 6x4 table and has to be because of the model count needing the space.

From left to right, far side, army layout, Three Asphyxious (Mechthralls x 2, Kraken, Wraith Engine, Stitch Thralls, Pistol Wraiths x 2), Exulon Thexus (Wrecker, Subduer, Mind slavers, Mind Benders, Overlords, Agitators, Bloat Thralls x 2, Pistol Wraiths x 2) and Epic Deneghra (Nightmare, Bane Knights, Bone chickens x 2, Withershadow combine, Pistol Wraiths x 2)

From Left to right, Avatar by himself, Harbinger (Devout, Paladins x 2, Vilmon, Gravus, Rhoven, Knights Exemplar, Knight Errants, Idrians, A and H, The book, wracks, Gorman), Epic Reznik (Reckinor x 2, vassals x 2, Battle Engine, Choirs x lots) and Vladamir (Ruin, Battle Wagon, Assault Commando's, Eliminators x 2, Widowmakers, Widowmaker solo, Kell Balloch, Fenris, Drakun)

As you can see from the deployment shot there are plenty of painted models....can you spot the two unpainted ones....

Pelarel and I teamed up to surprise the Menoth and Khador alliance that McZermof and the Tank engine had dreamed up. The scenario was one where the attackers had to destroy three buildings in five turns. Each building was ARM 18 with 100 boxes, so no mean feat, gentle reminder here players remember the scenario, always remember the scenario.

Each Round is diced off for which team will activate a battlegroup, up to four units and four solos, this alternates between sides until all casters have been, usually four turns as you have to tidy up the left over solos and units.

So the highlights or low lights depending on your point of view. As well as the hilarious situations and in true Regiment form abysmal and spectacular diced rolling (we don't do mediocre)

End of round one we all ran it is what you do on turn one after all....except for Pelarel who tuned up his mechthralls and charged the far left building doing 89 Damage (BAM), this of course lead us to believe that buildings were easy to kill....they aren't.

Round Two casualties start to occur.....The Harbinger Feats and stalls the Cryxian centre, though after some considerable efforts and particularly bad dice rolling (Scotty) we manage with a last gasp to destroy the left hand building, though this left the dastardly Menothians room for revenge. Please note the centre of the Cryxian line.....

On the far right Ruin had been charged by Bane and hurt though he took his revenge stamping his way though 5 of them threatening Denny who had feated to lower the defense on the assault commando's and widowmakers.

The Idrians had come forward and made mincemeat of the drudges, though Thexus had his revenge, lining them all up for sprays outside of Harbingers Feat.

Round Three....

The round that shall forever be remembered as McZermof and the Tank Engine rolls some dice....now you see it......

.....now you don't. This was the result of Rezniks Feat, Reckinor into the Kraken and things generally going boom.

That does not mean we didn't take revenge oh Pelarel and I kill lots of stuff the problem was as I said at the start, remember the scenario. We had killed off one building but only scratched the other two and with our forces disappearing quickly we had run out of punch to finish the job......

The table looks pretty empty, that is cause it was, stuff had died left, right and centre but without any heavies or damage dealers Pelarel and I had to concede as time and the ability to actually win were against us.

Unbound is a fun rule set, things learnt:
- prepare lists for the scenario
- give yourself plenty of time, this took us 7 hours for 5 turns....was fun though
- oh and remember the scenario!

Scotty

On the 4th Game of Gamesmas

The magpies brought to me:

I'm not even going to try to rhyme this one! We were invited to our new neighbour's house for christmas dinner and they happen to be avid boardgamers! Tzolk'in was offered by our hosts and we gave it a whirl.

Tzolk'in is set, unsurprisingly,  in the Mayan era and you have to send your workers out to gather resources to build monuments and earn points. Easy eh? Well, one twist with this game is the resource track isn't static:

You place your worker on the lowest available space on any of the smaller outer wheels and, at the end of the game round, the centre wheel us advanced one space which moves all of the outer wheels one space. Thiz means you really have to think ahead and plan what resources you're going to collect whilst making sure you also harvest corn to feed your workers. A great little game that we had to cut short due to tired kids but well worth picking up :-)

On the 3rd game of Gamesmas

The magpies gave to me:
An rpg from the world of Infinity

And a liberal amount of Sake to smooth the flow of the game :-)

Most of us have been enjoying the Infinity tabletop game for a while so, when Modiphius put up the kickstarter for the RPG I had to put my money where my mouth is!

As part of the development, Modiphius put together a quick start taster of the system as a free download.

The system is an interesting one where the addition of your stat and skill set a target number that you must roll equal to or under to get a success on a D20. The difficulty for the task is set by the number of successes you need to roll. An easy task would require one success whilst and epic one would need 5! The base roll for a skill only has 2 dice but you can spend infinity points to gain successes or give the GM heat points to buy extra dice. The GM can then use heat to trigger abilities for antagonists or boost rolls.

The scenario was a simple "body guard the alien ambassador" on a space station above a war zone. Needless to say, things go south quickly.

We really enjoyed the 2D20 sysyem and felt the combat was fast and reasonably deadly - as it should be!

Definitely looking forward to my KS rewards being delivered in February/March.

On the 2nd game of Gamesmas...

I am currently trying to corrupt my family away from the dullness of usual family games like Monopoly. So far it has been a total success, with us playing regularly now and playing a good variety of games, even playing multiple games in a night. Ahhh the magpie virus bites deeply :) So last night dinner was enjoyed (Roast Chook) and dessert was had (Chocolate fudge cake) and onto the serious job of games. Our first effort was...

Bang the Dice Game. We had 7 players and the scheming reached new levels of dodge, cut and thrust. I played a Deputy and died before my second turn. My sister Kate had the sheriff convinced she was the other Deputy but in fact she was an Outlaw and in the final shootout the Sheriff drew faster and managed to win (first time since I've been playing that the Sheriff won). If you haven't tried Bang the Dice Game, I highly recommend it - it's fast, fun and cut throat. I needed a drinks break and the drink of choice tonight was Sake, warmed to perfection and surprisingly good with Roast Chook.

The next game was Monty Python Flux, Another game of hilarity and last night we played with a couple of Monty Python Novices who had had no idea...nudge, nudge, say no more.....

We finished the night with a quick game of Timeline. 3 quick and fun games, great company and great food. 2nd day of Gamesmas.....DONE:)

On the first Game of Gamesmas....

....Fantasy Flight gave to me....

ELDRITCH HORROR!

Welcome to the Regimental Magpies 12 games of Gamesmas. Over the holiday period we will valiantly attempt to play 12 different games. If we can manage it (and we will try!) you'll get to see some Infinity, Frostgrave, a Warmachine Unbound game, Bolt Action, Black Powder, Impetus and probably the odd boardgame. We may even manage to wrangle a review of the new Infinity RPG if we can get it in.

Day 1

In the first of our 12 celebratory games of Gamesmas, the Regiment (less Pelarel but plus one McBeth) played Eldritch Horror on a fairly damp and unpleasant Wednesday night at the Casa del McZermof.

McBeth demonstrates the Paranoia condition while Tank Engine shows what happens when you accept a Dark Pact. 

 This is the first time I'd played Eldritch Horror but have been keen to give it a crack since I saw it on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop on Youtube. What I learned tonight is that we suck at this game. Boy do we ever suck. Some of that revolved around not really being sure what we were supposed to do (or how to do it) and quite a lot more of it revolved around the really quite terrible Natcon 2008 dice that were in the box. Thanks McBeth.

Shortly before Azathoth ate the world...

We were, up to a point, actually doing okay. The first mystery took a bit longer than it probably should to resolve as we hadn't really mastered the travel mechanics and then Tank got stuck researching at Uluru, Prinny got stuck fighting monsters in the Amazon that I kept drawing out of the monster cup (because why draw Cultists when you can pull Gugs and Star Spawn??) McBeth the Second went insane, as did McBeth the first. Then the Mi-Go started playing silly buggers with the Northern Lights, we couldn't close Gates and we went from not a lot of doom to Azathoth eating the world in fairly short order, helped along in no small amount by a bottle of Macallan.

All in all, a good Wednesday night and a good start to the 12 Games of Gamesmas! 

Happy Holidays! 

To Infinity and Beyond!!!

well, not quite.. The Magpie-ism hasn't quite extended to playing games populated by popular Disney Characters.. yet... Though, with Disney now owning the Star Wars franchise, technically.... ;o)

Anyway, Prinny decided to shift off a few of the Microarts Studios MDF buildings so I picked them up. Thankfully they were already assembled so I just had to crack out the airbrush to get them on the table. Rather than the same grey that I'd used on my buildings, these ones have been brought out with a little splash of colour. I managed to get a game with them with Mr Snook - dastardly Haqqislam invading the territory of the valiant Yu Jing (no prizes for guessing who was who ;o) )

 The mat under the buildings is made up of a couple of the paper base mats from the Infinity two player starter. The cardboard buildings and containers are available from Dat Ape for around $20, two sets fills a 4x4 pretty nicely once you add a little extra scatter terrain. I've covered them with that shiny plastic cover you use for school books to help it last a bit longer. Next time I'll arrange them so that the black band is in the opposing deployment zones - each of the paper sheets is only 24" x 32" so there's a bit of space to fill.

 the scenario we played was from the main rule book, there are 4 consoles in no-man's land that need to be hacked. points are scored at the end of the game if you're the only player to hack a given console - if both players have hacked the same console then an opposed WIP role is needed to see who actually got the info. You also get points for dominating a board quarter at the end of each game turn... not many points scored this way!

 the Kaisotsu HMG and one of his Multirifle armed buds take covering fire positions on the right flank

The Haqqislam forces marshal, ready to push into the city to download the corporate secrets from the 4 consoles...

The main Yu Jing force advances up the left flank with the Keitsotsu hacker - who resolutely refuses to hack anything and the Medic (standing on the entrance ramp to the garage) who I think has an organ transplant sideline as he manages to kill both unconscious team members he administers to :(.

In spite of everything, the Yu jing manage to see off the Haqqislam by hacking 1 console to none - a ninja hacker on the right flank hacked a console on turn 1 before being gunned down by a sniper!

All of the buildings have been given an MDF base and a lucky search on Trademe located a 0.5" Hex stamp - worlds most tedious jigsaw ensues!!

only 5 more buildings to go! :)

The Return of the Magpie.

I have been working away at my Bolt Action list for our latest foray into magpie-ism. I had bought a whole lot of 28mm German infantry a few years ago, off a friend. This was to be for the game "Chain of Command", but this game did not ignite my fire - in fact it doused it quite considerably. However my love for WWII gaming continued and when Bolt Action started to be played around here (looking at you Prinny) I fell head over heels for it. Firstly there was the purchases to be made - The Puma. On a side note, I was never a plastic kit modeller - in fact I disliked all my attempts at building models when I was young and never managed to build anything correctly. The Italerii kit, in this case, was fantastic to build - quick and easy with all parts fitting beautifully.

So the excitement took over and I started painting my squads. I have some teams to complete and I still have to decide on the final makeup of the list, but I have decided to base the build around the Panzer Lehr (demonstration regiment). I broke out my copy of Battlefront's Villers Bocage and I have the beginnings of the history of the stuff I want to theme the army on.

The next task is to make a table of terrain to fight over. I have dug deep into the collection and made the terrain from things I already owned or made. Bolt Action seems to be a game that requires a bit of cover - so now I get to do another favourite part of my hobby and create a table. This has also convinced me that I need to make some more bits and pieces to complete the board as some of my older terrain is starting to get a bit tattered.

Something else I wanted to show off is my Knights of Dice building that arrived this week. This is an Australian company and they make some great looking (kind of Art Deco-ish looking) buildings that I am hoping to buy a few more of to create not only a cool looking infinity table but a nice looking Zombie tables.

This kit was incredibly easy to put together and looks brilliant. I can't wait to paint it. The only issue is you can't take the roof off and access inside (no real biggy).

Well that's all for this time - off to the modelling table I go. Tank

Practice makes perfect.

Or Tank Engine and McZermof laugh uproariously at the stupid. 

I don't practice for competitions as a general rule and when I do, it's usually so someone else can actually practice.

However.

ValleyCon next year has offered up so many potential options I've actually had to try some of them out and today was the culmination of a lot of my ponderings about lists. I initially had planned to take Italians because Italian armour in Early War is very good but I couldn't settle on a list that I liked. The thing for me is that I have a list I love at 1500 and trying to pare it back for 1000 just didn't work and every build I started always led to the same place. Not quite enough points for the things I want and not quite the right options for something I'm happy with.

So I went back to the Panzerkompanie. And then I chucked that idea out too because while I love my Mark III Es, they're too expensive in a 1000 point army. Basically, I ran into the same problem as I did with the Italians. So I read through Blitzkrieg and ran across the Verlastete Panzerkompanie and I thought to myself that this list might have something to it. It's a bit gimmicky but Panzer Is are effective enough and most things I can deal to with the 20mm cannon on a Panzer II. If it needs a Panzer III or bigger, well, I probably wasn't going to be able to deal with it effectively anyway.

The Panzer II D/Es having half-tracked mobility to reflect their poor off road performance presents some challenges but after today, I think they can be managed well enough.

So we got to this list:

HQ - Panzerbefehlswagen, Panzer IID/E
Verlastete Platoon - 5 Panzer Is
Verlastete Platoon - 4 Panzer II D/E
Verlastete Platoon - 4 Panzer II D/E
Heavy Panzerspah Platoon - 2 SdKfz 231 8-rad (early)

Priority Air Support with Stutzpunkt

Camo stripes are underway.

That last line is a bit of a doozy. There's no mobile AT in the Verlastete list, no guns save 10.5 cm howitzers (which I don't own!) and while I can have pioneers, I think they'll be too slow. But, I hear you say, your tanks will be in the enemys base killing their dudes, your Stukas will have nothing to shoot at. True, I respond, except where there are things like 25 pdrs, PaK 38s and Matildas that I might have to contend with. In those cases, my little tanks will be far away!

So today I played a practice game with Tank Engine. He wanted to refresh himself on the rules for the Japanese (and my reaction to them which would make an excellent Doge meme....) and I wanted to see how the Panzers went in a game of Breakthrough.

Tank's list (if I remember it all!)

HQ - CO, 2iC, Regimental Banner
Full Hohei Chutai - 3 Nikuhaku teams, attached HMG
Reduced Hohei Chutai - 2 Nikuhaku teams, attached HMG
Reduced HMG Platoon - 2 HMGs
Regimental Gun Platoon - 2 Type 38 70mm guns

Result of topical application of Nikuhaku teams

So how did they go? Well as it turns out. Despite the photo above, which is what happens when three Nikuhaku teams blow themselves to bits in front of your little Panzer Is, the Panzers were able to beat the Japanese (although I had less than half my tanks left on the board at the end of the game.)

The end of the game-ish. Please ignore obvious missing objectives....

My superior mobility was hampered by Tank deciding to be Always Attacks (yep. He can do that. And not just in Defensive Battles) and doing a Dawn Attack (yep. He can do that too.) So I'm slower, lose my Verlastete move and have to rely on not rolling 1s to see how far I can shoot. It was an excellent tactical call by Tank and it meant he could move around the board in relative freedom (because Japanese can double in the dark and through terrain. Yep.)

In the end, I think the thing that saved me was all three of the Nikuhaku teams in the full platoon charging into my Panzer Is and while taking two of them out and bailing a third, they all blew themselves up in the Improvised Tank Assault. That let me bring my Panzer IIs on from reserve and wipe that platoon out with basically no fear of those Panzers being lost. They also cleaned up the HMG platoon while the other platoon of Panzer IIs cleaned up the smaller Hohei platoon and the regimental guns (despite the fearsome AT 3 on the Type 38s vapourising up my CO and a Panzer II!)

The well known and famous Japanese invasion of central Europe

It was a great game and there were a few moments where I thought I was really in trouble. If Tank had been a bit luckier with his Nikuhaku teams, I would have been in all sorts of trouble.

In time honoured tradition, the quote of the day goes to Tank Engine for the excellent and appropriate call "I CAST SWORD!"

Wargames, News and Terrain -Give Away

My favourite Wargames news feed, Wargames, News and Terrain has a give away running at the moment to celebrate 500 followers (man, I only wish we had that many :) I like to think of our followers as small, but well proportioned ).

The site is very good and covers a wide range of topics and genres. I have the RSS feed set up at work (cough) so I can keep up to date on things happening in the industry, especially from companies on the other side of the world that we would not normally hear about here in New Zealand.

All you need to do to enter the give away is head over to the WNT website and join as a public follower and then email them using their contact widget to tell them your username. You can get some more tickets if you use twatter (I don't, and no, that's not an accidental misspelling), or if you have a blog, comme nous, you can add a post referring to the giveaway, comme ça,

Wargames, News and Terrain. It is very good.

http://wargameterrain.blogspot.co.nz/

week 2 - not so incapacitated

After frigging around trying to get the pics off my phone I can finally update my painting log for the second week of my enforced painting seclusion.. err.. sick leave! :)

first up I managed to finish off Prinny's AWI regiment for the BrandyWine game

I am pleased with how these have turned out. The blue coats are virtually a wash over the white undercoat. this gives them a slightly faded look which I think suits the "on campaign" look. Taking the breeches up to white also worked out well in the end . Well, that's the 4th New Jersey sorted, now onto the 7th Virginia...

I also managed to get another ninja off the blocks for Infinity, this time with a sniper rifle.

damn picture rotation! Still, it doesn't look too bad. I think I'm going to try something different for the green glow on the last Ninja. The inks give it a bit too much of a shine so I'll give it a go with straight paint...

And finally, just in the background you can see my Pathfinder RPG character. It's one of the Reaper bones minis, technically a halfling bard but I'm using him to represent my gnome bard Wiki

I'm not a big fan of the resin material used for these minis, you lose a lot of the crispness that you get with white metal but hey, it's cheap :) He's a little rushed and untidy but more than adequate for the game.

Prinny's Finished Painting Project

Well I finally finished one of my many painting projects that I seem to have on the go at the moment...

I now have some space on the painting desk to put the AWI that I should of been working on.

Also I played a game of Bolt Action, which I enjoyed but suffered from some new game no idea moments. But it was fun so I see lots more BA in my future.

So here are some pictures of my finished Kiwi Bolt Action Forces, though I still might need to paint up a couple of figures to make it competitive. All of the figures are from Warlord Games apart from the Staghound which is a Blitzkreig Miniature (and very nice).

HQ with PIAT and Forward Observer

Squad One 

Squad Two

Squad Three

6 Pdr AT gun with Bren Gun Carrier

MMG and Mortar

My pride and Staghound

M10 Wolverine now with Stowage

Sherman

Also I have been painting some AWI for the Brandywine game we have planed for next year, most likely this will be with Blackpowder, but since it is months away this is subject to change :)

The Riflemen and 3pdr are from Foundry Miniatures.

Because you have to have rifles

Blinky the wonder cannon

And finally for something just a bit silly here is my pathfinder character.... From Super Dungeon Explorer.

Pew Pew "Magic Missile"

 Prinny