The Painted Thumb

For the Senate and People of Rome!  The Republican Roman army from Pendraken finally arrived this past week.  Woot!  Blake put together a great 10mm army for me using a combination of new and old sculpts. These figures will be used for Warmaster Ancients.  While Blake is the only other WMA player I know, I'll bet we could find some more players after we do a few demo games. The army will consist of the standard Republican legion including Hastati , Principes , and Triarii .  Included with the legions will be units of heavy cavalry, light cavalry, Latin allies, Velites , and Alai infantry. I am very much looking forward to painting this army and getting it out on the battlefield.  However, there is plenty of lead on my workbench waiting for some attention.  It may be awhile before I start painting these Romans. That might give me alot of time learn more about the history of this army and the Republican period of Rome.  This army is supposed to represent an army from the pre-

At the Stronghold Rebuilt , Kaptain Kobold has posted an old article describing an alternative unit for HotT called the Extraordinaires .  These units represent light infantry that carry all sorts of nasty unusual weapons like "incendiaries, corrosives or biologicals such as Greek Fire siphons, hand-hurled naphtha bombs, Chinese fire lances, quick lime or hornets’ nests."  What fun!  It makes me wonder why this unit was never included in the HotT rules originally.  For the details, click here .  Remember, these units are not part of the standard HotT rules.  Discuss with your opponent about including these in your army. This alternate rule helps solve a problem I've had with my "League of the Scarlet Falcon" army.  The army has always included two units that look like Shooters.  One, I have designated as a Shooter, and the other I designated as a Warband.  It's often confusing to my opponents and I'd really like to do something to fix it.  Here are t

Sometimes I wander into Dibble's Hobby Store just to waste time. Which is a terrible thing for me because I can't leave that store without buying something. I wandered in there this past week and sure enough I bought something rare and wonderful, a copy of the Warmaster Ancients rulebook.  Woot! This game includes all the good things about Warmaster Fantasy plus it's applied to 10mm ancient armies.  I've got an order in with Pendraken minis for a early Roman army and I'm really looking forward to getting it painted and out on the battlefield. In related news, I am organizing a casual Warmaster Fantasy tournament on March 24th with the Lone Star Historical Miniatures society.  This should be a great day of gaming. Photos and AARs will be posted.

The Stronghold has returned!  Details on the Super Galactic Dreadnought .

Book Review:  "The Keep" by F. Scott Wilson Just when you thought this would be just another blog about miniatures and wargaming!  Well, I've made it one of my personal goals for 2012 to read more books and "The Keep" was the first one I crossed off my list. This book was also my first purchase on my new Amazon Kindle  And I must say, if you enjoy reading, then you should really consider getting a Kindle. I was hesitant to embrace the technology, but now I'm converted.  I no longer have to scour through a bookstore or a library to find that one special book I was searching for.  Nope, I just browse the website from my device and download!  And no more shelf space issues! On with the review.  The Amazon description reads as follows, "The keep had stood empty in the Transylvanian Alps for 500 years. No one knew who built it, or why. But on the eve of WWII, German soldiers move in and awaken something - something hungry... " If that does

This weekend, we finally arranged an actual game of Cold War Commander at Joe's place with Bob, Ian, and myself.  Joe's been trying to assemble some kind of late 20th century or modern combined arms battle using Micro Armor minis.  There was some significant discussion about which rules to use which lastest several weeks prior.  Ultimately, the group settled with the Cold War Commander rules and I think it was the right decision. We decided to start with a modest sized battle; Ian and I took a group of Soviets including a group of T-64s, one battalion of troops carried by some BMP-3s, some artillery pieces with forward observers, a Hind attack helicopter, HQ and extra CO.  Joe and Bob were the Americans with a bunch of M-1 Abrams and Bradley tanks. Most of the afternoon was spent reviewing the rules, but once we got started the game moved fairly quickly.  I advanced my T-64s and BMPs toward the center of the board.  We tried to activate the Hind and the artillery but missed

Flames of War v3.0 is now available at better game stores in your area!  Here is the announcement from the official FoW channel on YouTube. So, if you got a 2nd edition rulebook, then run, don't walk to your game store and trade up!  I have never owned a FoW rulebook so maybe it is fortunate that I haven't.  No price has been set for the new non-upgrade rulebooks, at least not yet.  But, I am afraid to ask....

They say a old games never die, they're just played by old gamers.  Forgive me for paraphrasing General McArthur, but I think this statement is true.  And there is no other game that epitomizes this better than Games Workshop's Warmaster.  The game is published under GW's Specialist Games label.  It was designed by Rick Priestly who is no longer affiliated with GW.  (see his personal website here ).  The game represents large-scale battle in the GW Fantasy setting.  IMHO, it is the most impressive looking miniatures games once all the figs are laid out on the table. Somehow I never played this game during it's heyday in the mid-2000's.  But, I've met plenty of gamers who have fond memories for it and wish to pick it up again.  So, a by a strange twist of fate, I bought a High Elf army at MillenniumCon 13.  I was solely interested in using the set of 3 Great Eagles as a stand of flyers for HotT, but the previous owner was willing to part with the whole army for

Last Thursday, I was invited to participate in Desert Scribe's "Chancellor" campaign using the Starfleet Wars sci-fi ship combat rules.  It's a solid, compact rule set that doesn't get too bogged down in minutiae.  It was great fun and I was able to command a rag-tag fugitive fleet of Avarian transport vessels as part of the "Battle of Vertex".  During the battle, my ships were able to escape form the evil intentions of the super galactic dreadnought "Chancellor". Well, here is the link to Scribe's after action report with the details and photos of the game.  Here a few additional pictures I took using an IPhone app called Photosynth.  The app basically grabs a sequence of side by side photos and stitches them together to make a single panoramic picture. This scene shown here is the "Battle of Vertex" in progress.  The grey colored ships represent my transport convoy.  The big red star-destoyer ship is the "Chancello

Recently, I met up with Chip and Blake for some DBA 2.2 playtesting.  DBA has been around a long time and I have always thought the rules were about as solid that they will ever be.  Then again, most people thought the same about D&D at one time and yet Wizards of the Coast has plans to create Dungeons and Dragons v5.0 next year.  Anyway, Blake was late getting to the game so Chip and I filled the time with a quick game of Hordes of the Things (HotT). I didn't bring my "League of the Scarlet Falcon" army so I had to mix and match some of Chip's stands.  He had a incomplete army of purple colored Dark Elves blades and knights.  I re-designated the knights as heroes and the price bump made a nice even 24-point army.  Chip took his usual High Elf army. Unfortunately, we had to setup on a small bistro table.  And the nice smooth tabletop made the figures slide around like they were drunk hockey players.  Measuring and moving the pieces was a challenge but we made

Hello World!  Welcome to my new blog.   I created the Painted Thumb so that I could share my passion for tabletop games of all types and my general interest for geeky topics.  I am motivated by the general success of the excellent blog Super Galactic Dreadnought by Desert Scribe.  Also, I've found that Facebook just isn't very good at specifically targeting a small audience.  I prefer to share my game-related news and stories with just those people who would appreciate the subject matter.  My Facebook audience includes friends, family, and co-workers.  Most of them couldn't care less about my hobbies and frankly, some are a little frightened.  I think a blog will allow me to discuss these topics with enough depth to be satisfying and still have an engaged audience. This blog will include after-action reports of various games, but on occasion I'll include reviews of books, movies, or TV that I've seen recently. A little bit of personal information.  I am a mid