The Painted Thumb

Local players have decided to start playing Warmaster again.  We setup a small battle for our Tuesday night game. This match involved two players on two teams with each player bringing one army of 1000 pts. Team ' Goodness and Light ' included me and Jake.  We both fielding 1000pts of High Elves.  I brought plenty of archers, two heroes and one wizard, which was probably more command strength than necessary. Jake brought a band of eagles and bolt throwers followed by lots of Silverhelms. Team ' Darkness and Stink ' included Dave with a Chaos army and Tony with Orcs, Goblins, and a Giant! The battle started with the elves successfully passing all the command rolls while the enemy struggled to get their units moving.  Jake sent the eagles around the right flank while the Silverhelms pushed the center.  Tony's night goblins and black orcs moved up to meet the elf cavalry. The Orcs an Gobbos were outmatched against four units of Silverhelms.  They w...

There has been plenty of buzz in the Blogosphere about the new game BattleSworn.  BattleSworn is the latest product from Ganesha Games , the creator of Song of Blades and Heroes.  It is a simple, fantasy skirmish game for just two players. There has been some discussion about how to manage more than two players but nothing practical has come up yet, more about that in a little bit. The game is played with similar warbands used in Song of Blades and Heroes. The really innovative part of the game is that it does not require any die rolls and there is no measurement for movement. The game is played out in a series of bidding contests. For example, player A secretly bids a number of actions the he wants to take for his turn.  Player B bids as well.  They reveal their bids at the beginning of the turn. The player with the lowest number will get to take that number of actions *first*; the other player gets to take the difference of the two bids for his actions. Movemen...

Long view of the battle Last month, I participated in the Battle of Pelennor Fields; a dramatic re-enactment (can you re-enact an event that occurred only in literature?) of the epic battle from "The Return of the King" using the GW Lord of the Rings figures and rules. The city walls Charlie hosted the battle at Dragon's Lair . We used the the standard Strategy Battle Game rules; not the 'War of the Rings' rules. Charlie had all the figures necessary for the game and he setup the terrain on a huge table.  He pushed together 3 large 6' x 8' tables to create the map. Charlie was willing to stand by and play as moderator and referee while the rest of us played it out.  We had 17 players involved!  I think the odd player ended up on the evil side but I'm not sure.  The forces were broken up into individual commands of each faction.  Each player handled one faction.  As a result, the whole battle was played out in several smaller battles occurri...

September 7th was our annual 'Flames of War - San Antonio' tournament (code named = FoWSA).  We had 15 players show up including a few nationally rated competitors.  This year I brought the same battalion of Soviet Naval infantry that I used last year with one change.  I dropped one company if Fearless-Conscript infantry and added 3x SU-122 for firepower support (confident-trained). Here is my list for 2013.   Fearless     Trained   Morskaya Pekhota Batalon Soviet Morskaya FOWSA 2013 Soviet   Late-War Infantry Company Platoon Qty Unit Points Headquarters Morskaya Pekhota Batalon HQ   p.5 2 1 Cmd Rifle team Komissar team 35 Combat Companies Morskaya Pekhota Company   p.5 1 5 5 1 Cmd Rifle/MG team Rifle/MG team SMG team Maksim HMG ...

This was my first year at GuadaComaCon and I found it an enjoyable little convention. My GURPS: Prime Directive game was scheduled first thing in the morning. A single, willing victim showed up to play the adventure. When it was clear there would not be any more players, the Tekumel group invited us to join in that game hosted by Jeff Dee.  We proceeded to play what I would call "the weirdest dungeon crawl ever!", but Tekumel is a strange world setting.  I played a warrior-priest and was the point man as explored a dungeon through various rooms.  One filled with blinding light, another with thick smoke, another with sweaty mist, another room with stinky six-eyed lizards and finally a room filled with magically animated torture devices! The party survived all this and we stopped play for a lunch break. Later, I jumped into the Star Navy: 5150 game.  This was only the second time I played the game. It took some time to recall the rules and the abstract nature of th...

GuadaComaCon 2013 will be held on August 17 th and I’m looking forward to it! This will be the first year I’ve attended this convention and I’ve signed up to run a couple of games. First up will be a multiplayer Song of Blades and Heroes scenario where five objectives will be placed on a large map.   Four of the objectives are hidden inside four ruined buildings.   The fifth objective will be out in the center of the map and in plain sight.   Each ruin has a different terrain challenge inside for the players to overcome such as a bog, blade grass or a rope bridge.   Objectives will each have a random value in victory points.  The objectives take 2 actions to pickup and the team with the most victory point at the end of the game wins.  Game play continues until one team remains on the board. In this game, the ruins will be large structures, dimensions 12”x 8”,  and I needed to find some simple walls with doors or openings.   There i...

Last month Charlie hosted our first Games Workshop Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Tournament at Dragon's Lair . I participated and painted my first ever Lord of the Rings warband, 500 pts of Wood Elves. The whole week I furiously tried to get paint on the figures and successfully got all of the base color on them. Well mostly. I've come to the realization that I am just a slow painter. My wood elves warband includes: Legolas w/ armor 4 Elf Warriors w/ Elf Blades 4 Elf Warriors w/ Spears 4 Elf Warriors w/ Elf Bows Wood Elf Captain w/ Bow and throwing Daggers 4 Elf Warriors w/ Elf Blades 4 Elf Warriors w/ Spears 4 Elf Warriors w/ Elf Bows Arwen w/ horse (Asfaloth) 8 High Elf Warriors w/ Elf Blades This is not an army designed to win the tournament. Since this was my first tournament, I was really just interested in having a fun time. Round #1 , I was matched up with Brandon, who I've battled often. He fielded a group of Uruk-Hai with lots of pikes. The map ...