So, another Hotlead has come and gone and I have survived another mad crush at the bring and buy! So far I have had a great deal of success at the event, this year was no exception, except that I did not find as many great items as I have in the past.
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| The haul! |
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| The Fluyt |
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| The Dhow |
So, I have actually played this game a few times, but I have not played it for at least a decade or more. In my early days of gaming, gaming in 20mm was the natural starting point, it was cheap and readily available. We started with Napoleonic and WWII games with any rules that we could find. At that time it meant Airfix rules, Introduction to Battle gaming and Discovering Wargames. The point of this is to say that while my collection of Napoleonic forces were excised from my collection, I have continued to collect 20mm WWII stuff since the 1970's.
Now some might think that I would have a fully realized and painted collection, but not so. I have, for the most part, been a casual gamer. Work and life has often got in the way of the hobby (but did not stop me from buying stuff) So right now that semi annual (or bi annual) urge to do some WWII gaming is returning. But even just looking at my collection is demoralizing, so much stuff to work on.
So more ideas, not all of them are mine.
While I have moved away from Warhammer I still have fond memories of some of the quirky rules and effects. So for your consideration here are some quirky ideas mixed in with some ideas that seem somewhat reasonable.
For the most part they are untested, but we did try the artillery rules, they worked fine. Some like the oblique marching just seem reasonable as do the marching rules (I think maybe Nic talked about that)
Anyways here they are:
So, two 2 company units of light Dwarf infantry are done. They were actually fun to paint but kept getting shunted aside for other tasks which is why it took so long to complete. In the end I just wanted them off the painting table so flocked them up today.
Again these are going to be fast moving skirmishers.with decent shooting skills. It should make them fairly flexible.
So, back in the old days when we played Warhammer 3rd ed, there were two tomes that could be used to create a Chaos army. It was silly fun as you rolled on chart after chart to create your army often rolling something that had no functionality. The best result I remember was the general of the army who was a lycanthrope who walked on four legs when human but would turn into a bipedal mammoth. He had so many other mutations that should he gain one more he would instantly turn into a chaos spawn and cease to be the leader, he was the most expensive figure in the army.
Anyways, it amused me to start work on a simple Fantastic Battles chart to allow a chaos player to create their own strange units. So here it is:
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| Sprinting at you, some quick strike Dwarf archers! |
So, I finally got around to building and basing some of the Oathmark light dwarves that I bought many months ago. Up first are these 12 guys who will be an auxiliary unit for my Roman Dwarves. I envision fielding them as two units of two companies, but I might also need to spread them out into four one company units.
I think they look the part and are bright enough that they should not go unnoticed on the battlefield. With only three figures a base they do look irregular, almost skirmish troops. Many of the poses are running or at very least they are in action poses. The bows were an add on that I had not planned for but the box included a mix of weapons and bows made sense.
They stat out as:
Irregular Doughty Shooting Skirmish Fast
Just the way they look!
Here, despite the lack of demand to see them, are my cards for Fantastic Battles. They are in no order and are a mix of spells and relics.
Disclaimer: I found these images through online searches and was unable to determine if they were copyrighted, hopefully not. At any rate I, perhaps foolishly, thought I would share these, no copyright infringement is intended & if I offend let me know and I shall remove them.
I have found them somewhat useful as all required information is included on the cards. I tried to make the cards visually interesting and the images matching the spell.If you are using character cards you could clip these to those cards to indicate who has what.
For the spells you would want to record what level any given spell was selected at. I use plastic card sleeves for these cards, so dropping a damage marker into the sleeve is a quick way to record the spell level.
Anyways, for what it is worth here they are!
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| The Pointes across from Martin airfield |
The first game of the new campaign, oddly enough not actually from the Vice Alley book. We went for one from Perilous Island; Last Flight. We simply substituted substituted the location and used cops instead of French troops. Otherwise it fits well with the Vice Alley theme, one faction trying to sneak a star witness out of the city while the other seeks to prevent this from happening.
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| Martin Airfield |
So, I have been working on the buildings for the up coming campaign. Some of them had been started many years ago while others were started recently. Some, like the warehouse above (red brick and green) had been used before but had to be taken apart and redone. Still others were purpose built from either Dust tactics buildings or Pegasus gothic buildings.
So, the other night we got together for another board game night. This time around we decided to try a new game (to us) Horrified as well as yet another game of Sentinels of the Multiverse. The game features many of the classic Paramount monsters from the 30's, 40's and 50's.
So, a completely cleared gaming table, almost never happens. However this is just a temporary thing as I have already started working on the next campaign layout. This time I am going a bit over board...
