Tolkien about Heroic Fantasy

 

“One game to bring them in….and in the expansion, bind them!” The 1st edition base game and the Battles of the Third Age expansion

Some time ago I acquired a copy of the War of the Ring, at that time published by Fantasy Flight Games and the first edition. The game is now produced by Ares and is the second edition. It is a sprawling strategic campaign game set against the backdrop of the Lord of the Rings in the good guys have to unite in order to by time to beat the bad guys whilst the Fellowship makes it way to Mordor to destroy the ring. It is features cards for various actions within the game and best of all, nigh on 300 Bob Naismith designed figures representing the key characters and armies. In the first edition these have been moulded in a hard polythene, unlike the second edition which uses the same figures but moulded in a softer, more oily polythene.

Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures but these are taken from the rule book. Above you see the good guys whilst below are the forces of evil

Sadly the Battles of the Third Age does not include such a page but does see the addition of models representing Rohan captains (Theoden, Theodred and Eomer), Gondor captains (Faramir and Imrahil), Black Uruks, Southron horsemen, the Witch King, Corsair ships, Treebeard and the Ents, Half-orcs, Dunlendings, Galadriel, the Balrog and a dozen siege machines, six for each side - Towers for the forces of evil and Trebuchets for the bad guys. I will get some close ups of the figures in my next post.

Needless to say it was the figures that originally clinched it for me. The foot figures are roughly 25mm, the mounted slightly smaller, say around 20mm-ish. The Ents are around 35mm tall whilst the siege machines and Corsair ships do not really fit in with the figures at all as they are too small.

I had a plan about painting the figures (many owners of the game have done so) and using them for such things as HOTT, Dragon Rampant or even low level skirmishes. A bold plan given my aversion to painting but these figures would suit even my old-fashioned and amateurish painting style. They have nicely exaggerated detail that lends itself well to shading and highlighting and, to be frank, older eyesight!

To cut a long story short, an opportunity arose to acquire the only expansion that was available for the first edition - elements of which found their way into the second but not all. It was a little on the expensive side but in the interests of completeness I grabbed it and was hugely pleased that I did.

Battles of the Third Age is really two expansions in one as it expands the original game as well as providing two standalone battles - the Battle for Rohan and the Battle for Gondor. These two are effectively ‘games within a game’ and are a perfect way to get into the heat of the action quickly. As I recall the Lord of the Rings version of Risk had a similar idea with the expansion that included additional figures and a game based on the battle of Minas Tirith.

What does this all mean then?

Well, I still like the idea of using the figures outside of the original game but obviously, there would be shedload of painting to undertake first. Call it a long term slow burner then, unless something profound happens in the meantime!

Which of course it has….

The latest offering from Two Fat Lardies - and hugely impressive these rules look as well!

The rear cover

These will need more figures than for HOTT or Dragon Rampant but not excessively so in my opinion. I reckon that given the range of models available from the two War of the Ring sets I could easily raise a couple of forces that would be usable in a Tolkien/Peter Jackson style setting.

Oh well, another project to add to the list but, and it is a significant but, I have everything I need to complete it in terms of figures.

Meanwhile though, back to the ships (and not the Corsairs of Umbar!).

Boot Sale Bargain - At Last!

This has got carnage written all over it!

Cue the Conan soundtrack album - or maybe not!

Despite the erratic nature of the weather recently - wind, rain and blue skies, usually in quick succession and in no particular order - Laurel, holly and I popped out for a short while to the local-ish boot sale for a few hours. As expected it was quite sparse in terms of sellers and none of us were expecting any great bargains.

Until I saw the above that is!

This is a tongue in cheek game of back stabbing, stealing treasure and (hopefully) killing assorted monsters and is described as being a dungeon crawl without the role playing stuff. I am all for fun games, if not down right silly even, as they are a nice change from the more serious games we routinely play.

The game is complete and to be honest looks barely used and cost me the princely sum of £4 which is a small price to play for the laughs this will generate.

One for the family at Christmas as well - it will make a change from Monopoly (and the ‘frank exchanges of opinion’ that usually ensue!) - as it is designed for three to six players.

Boot sale pickings have been very slim of late so this was a most welcome way to break the dry spell. I may even look out some of the other Munchkin titles. Just for a laugh naturally!

More on Patrol and Dark Attack 54mm Fantasy Figures

Following on from my recent boot sale acquisition I thought it would be good idea to share pictures of what the actual models look like on their sprues and so here you are.

The box art from set 5001

Minotaur Renegades

Elite Paladins

Centaur Scouts - these are rather cleverly sculpted in my opinion

Dark Warriors

The box art from set 5002

Orc Warriors

Elf Squad

Tomb Guards - got to have some animated skeletons!

Dwarf Squad - I thought it best to have another picture between them and the Elves for safety sake….

I have already given some thought to the make up of the opposing sides and any reader of fantasy literature will probably be able to work this out but if not my plan is this:

The Forces of ‘Good’ or ‘Light’

Elite Paladins (naturally!)

Centaur Scouts

Elves

Dwarves

The Forces of ‘Evil’ or ‘Darkness’

Dark Warriors

Minotaur Renegades

Orcs

Tomb Guards

Simple.straightforward and definitely stereotypical! The models themselves have prominent detailing which will help with the painting considerably. For my own part I will probably go with a more muted palette than the box art suggests - I am not a huge fan of overly garish looking fantasy figures, the odd splash of colour works well enough, just to brighten the figure rather than saturate it in colour!

Hark at me, worrying about artistic aesthetics!

Whatever next? :-)

“Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

Fantasy in 54mm (hard) plastic no less and a terrain pack that has a very gothic look (clue in the title methinks) about it

The types and the poses - they are all sporting rather more armour than I would have liked as well some unfeasibly large weaponry - rather like GW on steroids - but for all that they look suitably heroic

Sorry to say but part two of my planned naval game has not taken place so you will have to wait until next weekend to see how it goes. Time has run away from me this weekend, not helped by dealing with an infestation of ants in the kitchen, organising bits and pieces around the house, booking tickets for a concert - which means I shall be missing Broadside next month - along with a raging toothache! Fortunately the latter is now somewhat under control and I think manageable until my next dental appointment in a few weeks.

Laurel and I made our first trip to a boot sale this year and I managed to score the collection you see 

above. 

Examples from the box sides of some colour schemes….

….they look suitably ‘fantasy mainstream’

I have what I call a long distance relationship with fantasy - naturally I enjoyed Lord of the Rings and am also rather fond of the Conan stories. I have never really looked at fantasy as a big battle option and to be honest am not sold on Warhammer or its descendants. Hordes of The Things appeals due to its versatility and the fact that you can pretty much use anything. On balance I think I prefer a more skirmish based approach - probably a throwback to all those games of D and D back in the day and more recently, Heroquest (not the latest version though).

This little lot cost me next to nothing and in truth there is everything I need to rustle up some fantasy mayhem and to be honest they will be fun to paint. I just need to hunt down some rules to use with them.

For the record I will get just one more box - the set that has the orcs and skeletons in, simply because in my experience you can never have too many of either in a fantasy fight! 

Empires of the Fantasy Kind

Plenty of potential in a ‘Mighty Empires’ kind of way - along with HOTT and the Portable Wargame

Many years ago, around the turn of the century, I came across a fantasy game system produced by Hobby Products in Germany called Daemonworld. The range of figures that supported the rules were 15mm, sold in blister packs or boxed sets and the whole thing had a very ‘GW Warhammer-like’ feel about it. The initial release featured Humans and Orcs and expansion incorporated all the usual fantasy types - elves, dwarves, undead etc. The whole thing is now owned by Ral Partha Europe with the rules and expansion books available via PDF. 

The boardgame you see above was released as a standalone game designed to support the figures from a campaign perspective - similar in concept to the GW game Mighty Empires. There are a number of additional maps available to download so that the choice of terrain can be varied if required. Essentially the game features resource management so that you can build an empire complete with villages, fortresses and even fleets. Armies are raised and heroes and wizards etc can also be acquired and used to add extra firepower in combat.

The back of the box. The two ‘cities’ at the bottom of the picture ACW metal castings that come with the game.

As seen on the back of the box the idea is that figures are used to represent the units and needless to say my first, second and third thought was very much Command and Colours/Portable Wargame or HOTT related. The map for the game looks like this:

The map. The hexes enclosed within the dark boundaries are provinces - apologies for the poor quality of the picture.

The map is quite usable at a strategic level for pretty much anything pre mechanised - the absence of villages and towns etc is due to the fact that these are ‘built’ from a player’s treasury and deployed where needed. These can also be upgraded and fortified in time. 

The two metal castles, a deck of cards with artefacts, units and other game related stuff, dice and red hit point markers.

The human counters - painted examples of the figures available to support the game.

The Orcs - again using painted examples of the available figures.

I had a quick scan through the rules and it is all pretty straightforward. Units have a number of hit points - these are what the red counters are for - and roll a number of combat dice equal to the unit rating for the type. The Combat dice have three shielded sides and three hit sides and opposed rolls are used. Typically troops have an attack and defence rating against missile and melee combat and this varies depending on the type. I have yet to look at the magic section.

The game is currently unpunched with the cards still in shrinkwrap. Similarly the two fortresses that serve as the players capital are still sealed in the blister pack. The cost of all this? A mere £10.

I am thinking that the map could easily be replicated using Heroscape or Hexon and also with figures and in fact from my perspective the potential for this is huge. I am already thinking about something Samurai related but reckon it could easily be used for other things - especially as the other maps are available to download and print.

Apart from Samurai I have a feeling that something in a small scale would look really good - perhaps 2 or 3mm with some of those lovely buildings etc from Brigade Models.

My plan is to produce a quick play sheet for the tactical rules and see how the units can translate into historical types. The game is good to go as is and so I would not rule out using some fantasy figures - one would certainly not need many of them. All in all then, for a tenner I reckon this is a great little purchase that I am sure will get lots of use - once I have worked out what for that is!

A Game of Thrones: Battles for Westeros

Sharpe’s Throne of the Rings - you have got to (King’s) hand it to Sean Bean - he has been in three epics and survived only one of them!

One of the side effects of the current pandemic is that SWMBO and I have indulged in all manner of binge watching via Netflix or on catch up TV. One of these has been the vast sprawling fantasy epic that is George R. R. Martin’s The Games of Thrones.

I have a chequered history with this series and the books upon the TV series is based. I missed it when it was out as it was on a SKY channel we did not have. By the time it was more readily available the real world was up to something like season 5. We watched season 1 and then it was no longer available to us. This happened a number of times until eventually the whole thing finished so SWMBO decided to download the whole lot for us to catch up with.

This was a good idea or so it seemed. The entire 8 seasons was downloaded in glorious HD BUT, following a SKY price hike we decided to bin the HD channels as, to be honest, we did not watch sufficient HD channels to warrant the additional expenditure. The only problem with this was that we found out later that as we had cancelled our HD subscription we were then unable to watch any HD downloads! Every time we went to watch an episode a warning message would appear telling us that in order to watch the following programme we would need to upgrade our subscription! SWMBO then went on to delete all the HD versions in order to download the SD equivalents.

We are now working our way through the entire series and am now halfway through season 5.

I have yet to read the books although I did make a start with the first volume on holiday a few years ago. I really could not get into it at the time and, as I recall, I opted to read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom as an easier option....

The base game includes forces for both Houses Stark and Lannister but expansions are available for additional figures for the above as well many of the other combatants and heroes of Westeros. Would I buy this? I would certainly like to but I would also want a lot of the expansions and the cost would be astronomical. To be honest I would struggle to justify the expense.

Given the popularity of the books and the TV series it is no surprise that there are a number games around covering the world of Westeros and the Byzantine/Machiavellian machinations of the great houses as they compete for the iron throne. There is a quite exquisitely designed board game using 32mm figures with a whole heap of expansions which looks stunning. The figures appear to be closely modelled on the TV series in much the same way as Games Workshop produced their Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit figures to tie in with the films. I have seen a number of strategic boardgames covering the series - including a Risk variant as well as some card game versions.

However, and I must confess that this has rather passed me by, there is another option available for fighting battles set in Westeros, albeit not as all encompassing as the game above but with a very high design pedigree.

This has been around for a while and there a number of expansions available for it but it does not have the coverage of A Song of Ice and Fire

I am of course referring to Battles of Westeros published by Fantasy Flight Games, modelled on the Command and Colours rule system devised by Richard Borg for his fantasy game Battlelore. I was able to pick a secondhand copy of the above and at first glance it looks really good. There is plenty of  GOT flavour so it does not just feel like a medieval battle and the components are top notch. The board is sturdy and all the game counters are of thick card, including the terrain cards. It is card driven in the same way that all Command and Colours games are and these can include the leadership traits of the commanders depicted. As you might expect Stark and Lannister feature in the core set and I have managed to track down a couple of the expansions - The Wardens of the North and House Baratheon.

Painted version of the House Lannister figures and....

....those of House Stark.

The rules and the scenario book

The figures are scaled at 15mm and are of plastic. They are really lovely in my opinion and there are some very helpful painting guides on the FFG website. The rules are the usual C and C style with some very welcome additions in respect of army morale, command radii for personalities and also the option to fight at a skirmish level.

My first impression of this is that it is a more, dare I say it, period specific Command and Colours set in that there is flavour aplenty with the rules and game mechanisms.

The figures in the base game are crying out to be painted and certainly this will satisfy my hankering for something medieval and fantasy-ish or should that be fantasy and medieval-ish? The figures are also based individually so there is always the possibility of the Portable WarGame of Thrones....

In closing, this is a pick up and put down mini side hustle of a project - I am really enjoying the TV series and will certainly attempt the books again - that I can dip in and out of as the mood takes. With the additional expansions there will be sufficient variety to extend the shelf life of the game and of course, there is always the possibility of using the figures elsewhere. The Portable Wargame for sure but also Dan Mersey’s Dragon Rampant as well as Hordes of The Things.

The Mighty Box of Conan....

"Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jewelled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

I have always had a soft spot for fantasy stories and those involving Conan the Cimmerian have featured high on the list. I suppose tapping in to one's inner barbarian against the backdrop of the (largely) civilised lives we lead is a welcome antidote to the rule of law and order! In any event I have always enjoyed reading his adventures and the usually overblown style they are written in (they were classic 'pulp fiction' in any event) - probably because I enjoy this as much as the content itself!

After all, there are probably only so many times one can use the expression 'mighty thews' when describing a muscle bound and loin cloth wearing barbarian cleaving an enemy from head to sternum with a two handed sword....

When the miniatures game you see above first came out I was interested in it for sure but it was more than I really wanted to spend at the time despite being crammed with some 74 models produced in various grades of plastic/polythene (and very nice they are as well). To cut a long story short and as the result of some of my legendary wheeling and dealing I am now in possession of the above for a whole lot less than when it first came out.

This is fantasy combat skirmish game with some quite lovely models that will be a lot of fun to mess around with. In fact, I am even looking forward to painting them - which is something I NEVER thought I would say!

In all seriousness the acquisition of this game ticks a number of boxes. It is for the most part self contained and with a lot of replay value. There are a number of expansions available - some of which look like they would be well worth taking a serious look at - so it is not a game that would grow stale over time. Also I have a number of alternative rule sets that would work well for this background. The base game contains more then enough material to be getting on with so as an occasional entertainment this will be money well spent (at least I hope so!).

Ordinarily this kind of acquisition would be a major distraction for me but front and centre at present remains the whole Del Prado project so aside from skimming the rules and re reading the Conan Chronicles for the umpteenth time it will be business as usual.

The strategic game - Conan wanders about the map and is used by whoever has his services at the time. It is more about kingdoms battling for supremacy and has been described as a toned down version of The War of the Ring

It will be fun though and I am seriously looking at the strategic level game -The Age of Conan - to provide a backdrop to the skirmish level version.

Almost inevitably I will revisit the Schwarzenegger films and so with that will leave you with Conan's words on the ultimate meaning of life.

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

A bit like wargaming really....

Putting the Hero in Heroscape

                                      
                                         

The first Starter set....

You may recall my earlier posts on the subject of Heroscape - the fantasy miniatures board game formerly produced by Hasbro. Many war games players have acquired this game primarily for the hexed terrain tiles that came with it and there are many blogs that feature games taking place on this terrain - with your truly also having done so. I now own the tiles from three copies of the first starter set as well as whole pile of flocked and painted tiles courtesy of Bob Cordery. From a land perspective I have more than enough for my needs and if I am honest the only disadvantage of using these is their size as the hexes are only some 45 mm across the flats - less than half the size of the Hexon version. In the game as played a single model occupies a hex (in some cases two hexes for the larger types) and this is fine. In fact if you check out Google and look at the images under Heroscape you can see some quite superb set ups. For my own use though these tiles will be used for games involving small scale models - I am thinking about the 3mm troop blocks from Peter Pig or those from Tumbling Dice - and will be suitably painted in due course.

 ....And the second - which I had not seen

What of the figures though?

The figures thet come with the game are, in my opinion, not bad. They are prepainted and fairly basic in terms of detail BUT are very usable en masse. I had mentioned previously about using some of them as the basis for games of either HOTTs, the forthcoming Dragon Rampant or any other skirmish level fantasy/sci-fi rules that came to hand. I also have a downloaded set of Command and Colours Fantasy rules produced by a chap from Belgium called Te Wapen - needless to say given my fondness for this system this is very much in the forefront of my planning.

 

A Heroscape map of Africa - now that is a clever idea and one that would lend itself to many other settings

I had even mentioned about repainting the figures as they are very basic in that regard. The ideas I am considering will certainly need some painting in due course and whilst I have no objection to basic painted figures - flat colours and no shading/highlighting - I do get very upset at sloppy painting though - you know the kind of thing, where the paint has gone over the edges and has slopped onto something it should not have. Heroscape figures are ideal for the gamer that is either unable or unwilling to opt for something more aesthetically pleasing - and up to a point I am guilty on both counts.

I now have a very large collection of the figures from the original starter set and also from the second version courtesy of Jim Duncan and I cannot begin to tell you how pleased and inspired I am to be in this position!

Jim came to my rescue in the biggest possible way. Like many gamers he has a lot of Heroscape terrain and has also purchased sets specifically for that reason. It has also meant that he has a huge selection of the figures being unused and unloved. Several emails and a phone call later the entire box full figures, rules, markers, dice and even some terrain was winging its way to Chez Crook. The plan is that I will cherry pick the pieces I want and then put what is excess up for sale to raise funds for th charity that Jim is supporting - so everyone wins. I get some figures that have given me a major boost in the inspiration department, Jim gets a whole lot of extra room in his den and the charity will hopefully benefit from the sale of some of the rarer items.

Some of the Marro figures. I will probably leave these as they are but I will do something with the bases.

To say that I am pleased with this little lot is an understatement and I am truly overwhelmed by the generosity of Jim in passing this lot on. To give you an example (and I will be posting lots of pictures over the next week or so to give you an idea of the scale of the windfall) I now have some 80 Marro figures. The Marro in Heroscape are a race of aliens similar to the GW Tyranids in concept. The plan is to use them against the US Paratroopers supported by the robot types - the paratroopers will need repainting into something a little more near future/sci-fi ish - for some Aliens type games. The Vikings and the Samurai may turn into some HOTTs or Dragon Rampant armies and there is even some figures that would be usable for Frostgard.

The Heroscape Vikings - complete with horned and winged helmets and therefore eminently suitable for some heroic fantasy action. I will need to do something about the spears though!

I was also delighted to get a great pile of the blue tiles as well so I now have some 250 plus of these so the seascape for the Salamis project will have a playing area in conjunction with the land tiles and the 1/1200th scale models I have been stockpiling.

So all in all my mojo has been given a fairly substantial kick up the derriere with this little lot and I cannot thank Jim enough for this - even more so given that he is still recovering from surgery and various assorted health issues. I titled this post specifically with him in mind....;-)

More on Heroscape

Following on from my last post I have managed to acquire another set of the figures from Heroscape as well as a complete copy of the game courtesy of EBay. Aside from the terrain tiles it means that the figure selection now consists of three sets which will be enough for me to be going on with. Dragon Rampant - the fantsy version of Lion Rampant - should be out in December so if I get a move on I should be ahead of the curve for a change with some models ready to go.

The first lot I will be tackling will be the Viking types which are suitably heroic looking and ideal for a fantasy type set up. There are also some Samurai types - more like well dressed Ronin to be honest that look pretty good and should be useful. The rest of the models are mainly sci-fi types (excepting the dragon of course) which is not a problem as I will have a use for them as well.

The great thing about skirmish level games is of course the fact that you do not need a huge number of figures and so are a good option for me at the present especially as even a DBA army presents a real challenge in terms of time to prepare.

The terrain tiles I am especially pleased with as I have a number of plans for these. You may recall that I have a large selection of these that have been flocked and painted courtesy of Bob Cordery which I have used for a couple of games. The plan is to use the additional tiles for a desert type set up (Bob's old set is in grass green) in due course and I may well be tacking this as my Christmas project. My firm shuts down from Christmas Eve until the New Year so tackling terrain will make a pleasant change from eating, drinking and watching endless repeats on the TV!

The blue tiles are also very welcome as I now have sufficient to make a 13 by 9 hex playing area - the standard Command and Colours battlefield - ideally suited to smaller scale ship models. This will enable me to revisit my 1/1200th Ancient galleys in due course and the often mentioned Salamis type project.

Much to ponder methinks.

An Unexpected Journey....

Letter opener indeed! (You will need to see the film to appreciate that comment!)

To my eternal shame and embarrassment I have never read The Hobbit. I must have read Lord of the Rings dozens of times but have never read the 'prequel'. This is something I will urgently need to address especially as I had the very great pleasure of seeing the film on Saturday - in 3D and with the high speed frame tweak thrown in for good measure. Was I inspired? Of course I was! Am I going to do anything about it? Probably not as I have enough trouble painting anything organic as it is although the idea of a Dwarf troop would be hard to resist....;-)

It was great fun and fast paced and I cannot wait to see part 2 and 3 in due course.

Meanwhile, in a book shop far, far away....

May the force be with you.....

I finally went and did it. Making use of a Waterstone's gift card received fom my son for Christmas, I acquired two starter sets of Star Wars: X Wing - the starfighter combat game with some onscenely good painted minitures contained thereein. Definitely an 'Ooooh, Shiny!' moment but a very self contained one because absolutely no work will be needed from me other than sorting out the components. Mr Fox is already building up his own Imperial Empire so it would be churlish of me not to follow suit.

On a more serious note, I have completed all the revised data cards for Angels 20 and so all that will remain will be sorting through the special abilities - a task I shall sit down with the aforementioned Mr Fox to discuss in further detail.

Ancients, Napoleonics and....Fantasy

A piece of Fantasy Wargames history

It has been a busy few days on the great label-fest front with the result that all of the Command and Colours ancients blocks are now complete - at least the two base sets of Carthaginians and Republican Romans and the Greek and Eastern Empires expansion are. I shall be collecting the remaining sets from Mr Gow at some point but in the meantime I am really pleased to have gotten this lot out of the way. I will need to get Expansion number 6 - The Spartans - and then it will be all systems go for some ancients action. I am not sure what I shall tackle first with this although the lure of Salamis and the campaigns around it has a compelling attraction - especially as I really fancy painting some ancients galleys.

I have given some thought to the movement trays fr the blocks and my preliminary experiments have gone rather well. Basically I am sticking some very narrow plastic strip to the base to form a perimeter in which the blocks are placed. This serves to stop them sliding about all over the place and gives the unit a respectable 'footprint' on the table top - especially useful for non grid-based rules such as DBA. The trays will be textured and painted which will add to the look of the thing hugely. Base sizes have give me some problems for sure and I am still thinking about this issue. The main problem is that deploying four infantry blocks in a single line means that a 60mm frontage is too small. I am leaning towards using 75mm (3") as the frontage with base depths of 1", 1 1/2" and 2". This will maintain the differential used for DBA for troop depth. As mentioned, by using these base sizes I hope to give the units a reasonable 'footprint' on  the table top and also when used on my Hexon set up. Once I have cobbled some together and painted the same I shall post the pictures on the blog.

SMWBO and I headed out to our usual boot sale this morning and I managed to acquire the above book - Fantasy Wargaming by Martin Hackett - for 50p. The book is very much a product of its time - published in 1990 - in terms of the level of detail around character development (much role playing stuff therein) but it is a piece of history I am very pleased to have acquired. There is a very nice 'imagi-world' detailed as well as various ideas about creating story lines and running campaigns. Very useful for any period really - certainly quite thought provoking and for me anyway, handy for those fantasy or science fiction itches I occasionally need to scratch.

Buildings and a Sniff of an Idea

My head is now clear and so all that remains of my general illness is the Niagara like running nose and the chesty cough. I can put up with both of these (although the cough is quite wearing) but the 'cotton wool' head  feeling tends to knock the stuffing out of me and so it was with some relief that it finally disappeared to coincide with the sun finally appeared after the monsoon of a downpour last night. SWMBO and I decided that some fresh air was in order to reinvigorate me further and so we hit our local Saturday boot sale. To be honest, I was quite surprised that it was on given the recent downpour and I was not alone in this as the number of sellers was fairly modest compared to usual. I picked up a couple of bargains though, including two of the Greek ceramic buildings from the same range as my existing collection for a pound and also a copy of the Lord of the Rings version of the popular boardgame Risk for one pound and fifty pence.

The two buildings - I already own one of the left hand versions but not the very impressive looking church

"One ring to bring them in, and in the man cave bind them!"

I have absolutely no intention of playing this game as is but will certainly look to use the figures at some point as well as the map board. The figures are pretty good and are made from hard plastic and so would serve for the forces of good and evil in a cheap and cheerful way. The eagles are very nice models although I reckon they could easily have the bases removed so they could be mounted on flying bases. The figures could easily be converted (as could the vast supply of 18th century figures I own from that particular version of the game) where required and for terrain there are some suitably useful aquatic fortress or tower models of the type used in aquariums that would make some fantastic looking strongholds. I even have a Battle Cry/Memoir 44 set of fantasy rules that could be pressed into service if needs be and so the potential for some Middle Earth action is certainly there. In the meantime though, I will see about acquiring another couple of sets to build the numbers up and then see what develops. This will be a slow burner though....;-)

Back in the Construction Business via Narnia

After a day of Xmas activity - including a visit to the cinema to see the new Narnia film (more of which later) - not helped by the second downfall of snow; I was able to get some more work done on the gunboats and rams for the ACW collection. Looking through my copy of Gibbon's Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War you can see that there is an absolutely bewildering variety of ships pressed into service on either side, all with a greater or lesser degree of protection and weaponry. This gives the scratch builder almost a blank canvas upon which to work as for every documented and illustrated ship there is probably a dozen that we have no idea about! I will be making models that are best described as typical of their types, rather as I did with the casemate ironclads, and so the naming of these models will be an exercise in educated guesswork!

Last Wednesday was my daughter Holly's birthday and as part of her celebrations we went to see the new Narnia film - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I must confess that aside from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I was unfamiliar with rest of the Chronicles of Narnia but judging by this film (and the previous: Prince Caspian - we watched this a couple of weeks ago as my daughter has the DVD) I may well have to rectify this omission as it was great fun. I was aware of C.S.Lewis being great friends with Tolkein but I have never read any of his works. Happily my daughter has all of these so I will be borrowing them from her - all in the name of research of course!

Te Wapen - Fantasy Rules by Phil Dutre

It must have been about four years ago I printed off a copy of a Battle Cry/Memoir 44/Command and Colours derived set of fantasy rules called Te Wapen by Phil Dutre that are available from the files section of the yahoo group of the same name. These came about before the 'official' Command and Colours fantasy game Battlelore was released. With these rules and a large number of unpainted D and D figures and some cardboard scenery I managed, on a rather rainy Sunday afternoon, to have a game using them with my daughter and they were tremendous fun. They use the tried and trusted mechanics from the Command and Colours system but with a simple difference. Rather than using period specific command cards they use a standard deck which for me is a great idea. All the usual fantasy attributes are included – orcs, elves, dwarves, monsters, heroes, wizards, clerics, undead, magic weapons, banners and artefacts – and the system is a quick and simple one to use.

My interest in gaming in a fantasy environment waned at the time simply because it was yet another distraction and would have been potentially expensive given the prices for most fantasy type figures. I ditched the rules and used the plastic wallets and the folder for something more pressing (which is probably still sitting in the back of a cupboard somewhere!). Fantasy gaming is something that I have always fancied tackling but baulked at anything GW based as my own preference is for something a little more, for want of a better expression, mainstream. This means for me the worlds of Tolkein or even Conan. No doubt readers will have noted my recent acquisition of great piles of GW Lord of the Rings figures – not to mention books – and also the Complete Chronicles of Conan and the superb visual guide to Hyboria. I want a quick playing set of rules and had already decided on HOTT when I remembered about the Te Wapen. A quick download from the Te Wapen files section later and I now have a stonking set of rules to use for whatever flights of fantasy I wish to indulge in. All I need now then is a nice large hex grid to fight over. One thing I had not noticed about the rules the previous time I had used them is that there is the option to use a deck of Tarot cards instead of ordinary playing cards. This is a piece of chrome that I think adds immeasurably to the fantasy feel of the rules and such decks are very easy and inexpensive to come by.

For the record, the only game I played using these rules on that rainy Sunday afternoon all those years ago saw yours truly getting thoroughly hammered by his daughter…………oh the ignominy!

Sci-Fi, Fantasy and the Curse of the Conscience

After the dramatic announcement in my previous post concerning my own ‘brave new world’ I decided to have a closer look at the fun side of the collection – namely the sci-fi, fantasy and VSF kit I own. Readers of my earlier posts will no doubt recall my mentioning the various ideas I have in mind for these genres – 2mm OGRE, Aeronef, Space Hulk and Land Ironclads. I also have some 28mm fantasy figures from the old board game Heroquest that need something doing with them – not to mention the Lord of the Rings Risk figures that really ought to be used in some fashion!

I tend to pick up odd plastic figures from the old M.B. Games/Games Workshop Space Crusade and Heroquest at car boot sales and such like and they are perfectly suitable for sci-fi or fantasy skirmishes and such like. I had this idea at one time to make up some sci-fi and fantasy forces exclusively sourced from plastic figures acquired in this way as it would be a cheap option given the usually enormous prices charged for these figures. In terms of numbers I would think probably forces no larger than a HOTTs style army – perhaps three or four dozen figures maximum. Given the small numbers required painting these is not too onerous and I must confess that I really enjoyed refurbishing the Space Hulk figures a while back. I have a number of other plastic space marine types as well as some figures from EM4’s game Combat Zone which is a near future set of skirmish rules, typically between troops and gangs. Mention of this reminds me that EM4 produce a nice range of plastic 28mm figures available separately for both sci-fi and fantasy and are pretty cheap into the bargain – typically £2.50 for 5 figures. They also produce metal conversion kits for things like heavy weapons or command figures, again very reasonably priced. I like the robots they produce and have a number of these which are not scale specific so would be equally at home with anything from 1/300th up to 28mm. I intend to use them on a 1/300th basis for a fast play robot/mech type game. There is a good selection of weapons for use with these models and so the number of permutations of hardware fit is quite large and again, at £2.50 for 5 models they are a bargain. EM4 also (and this really is not a plug!) produce in plastic the star fighter models that used to be available in the Silent Death game of space fighter combat – you get one of each type (12 in all) and the flying bases for £2.50.

I must admit that I tend to use sci-fi or fantasy very much as a ‘gap-fill’ between historical periods and so for me having a selection of kit that is small in terms of numbers and ready to go at a moments notice is very appealing. Space Hulk fulfils that criteria admirably and once I have the planned extra pieces ready then that will be even more appropriate. I have about another dozen or so models to add to this collection – including a couple of scratch built remote sentry guns. The OGRE and Land Ironclads set up will need more work and to be honest I am not sure when these will get tackled. The 28mm robots and star fighters will probably feature first although as yet I am undecided. I also have my ongoing Aeronef activities to consider – the metal Turkish Dirigible fleet is still in need of attention having been assembled (mostly) awaiting the brush and I also have a few ideas around scratch building some additional items for this set up.

This lot probably seems like a whole pile of projects and to be honest if I were to apply myself to the whole topic there would be a reasonable amount of work to tackle. Having said that, these sit firmly in the realm of having to fit around my historical interests and so the impact on my available painting time etc should hopefully be minimal.

Of course, now that the latest edition Ragnarok – the journal of the SFSFW – the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers has arrived these may have to get a little more urgency applied to them – curse my fickle conscience!