The Painted Thumb

The Convention MillenniumCon 16 was held in Round Rock, Texas on November 8-10th.  Once again, it was a successful event with over 100+ game sessions. MillenniumCon is the largest historical miniature wargame convention in the state of Texas. This year, I was part of the convention staff and got to see what happens 'behind-the-curtain'.  I learned a lot about how the convention is organized and coordinated.  It was a great experience! Fortunately, I was able to break away from those duties to host the 'Song of Blades and Heroes' game session. The Scenario The scenario was a multi-player treasure hunt.  The game borrowed heavily from the Chicago Skirmish Wargamers' scenario called ' The Dead Rise '. Please visit their blog! Basically, the map had several terrain features like rubble and tree stands, surrounding a single large crypt.  Partially collapsed walls were spread around the map to break up the line of sight. The table layout The o...

This past weekend, I participated in the second Lord of the Rings Tournament. After getting crushed at the last tournament, I was determined to place this time. After many games with my Wood Elf army, I came to the conclusion that the list is just not competitive in the tournament environment. So, I painted up some Numenorian reinforcements to help the poor elves. My army was led by Legolas and a band of wood elves including one Wood Elf sentinel.I exchanged another elf warband with a band of Numenorian warriors with shields, led by Boromir (Fellowship version). Removed the horse Asfaloth from Arwen and gave her an escort of 3 High Elf warriors. This resulted in a force of only 30 figures. I was hoping the Numenorians with their heavy armor, would improve the overall survivability. The reinforcements have arrived In round one, I was matched up with Charlie, the tournament coordinator. He brought a force of orcs, goblins and warg riders. The overall theme of the tournament was ...

Wow! I've been playing lots of games from different rules systems lately.   It's been difficult trying to remember how each one is played.  There comes a time when it all seems like a blur! At last Tuesday's club night, we had a game of Ganesha's Flying Lead . It is the same rules for Song of Blades and Heroes but modified for a modern genre with firearms and explosives as the main weapons. My squad leader realizes the point man is down and so is the Medic! The flamethrower getting ready to fire up some Soviets I enjoyed this game!  The only drawback was the activation mechanics don't necessarily fit with the kind of figures I was playing. I was given two squads of 'near-future' professional soldiers (figures from the AT-43 game), which I would imagine, should have no trouble moving across an open battlefield and staying in formation. But, the rules require activation rolls to move each soldier and after a few failures, my squads were horribly sp...

Stopped by the house of Desert Scribe for several games of Star Wars miniatures and Hordes of the Things. Kerstan met up as well and the three of us played several games of Star Wars.  The Scribe had the three figures from the basic set: one TIE fighter, one TIE Interceptor, and one X-Wing.  Each game we switched figures so that we had a chance to play each ship.  My favorite was the good ol' fashioned TIE fighter.  It's quick, nimble and get out harm's way in a hurry if necessary. In the hands of an experienced pilot, it can be deadly! Later, we played some Hordes of the Things.  Scribe and I tried to convert Kerstan to the game and we may have succeeded. It is just so easy to put together an army quickly and Kerstan has plenty to 28mm figures to work with. Game 1: Scribe took his flaming 'Sons of Muspel' army against my 'League of the Scarlet Falcon'. He was the defender and setup a large water hazard to disrupt my magician.   I w...

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...