The Painted Thumb

I had an open Saturday morning on my calendar and wanted to have a game of Lord of the Rings - Strategy Battle Game. Most of the usual LotR crowd had planned to play other games later in the day and they weren't available. I asked about hosting a game at Multiverse Games. They were kind enough to set a table aside for me and put an announcement on social media. I was wonderfully surprised to see some newbie players arrive at the table that Saturday morning! Good to know that there are players still interested in the world of Middle Earth. We setup the table with a quick fantasy themed layout. My 3D-printed square tower was placed in the middle of the board as an objective. Two other minor objectives were placed at the halfway line. The scenario was simple. Three objectives were valued at 3/5/7 victory points. Whichever side had the most number of stands on an objective at the end of the game would win that objective and the corresponding victory points. I pulled out some

The latest report from our Gulf Strike game .  The "Soviet-Persian War" continues with increasing casualties on both sides. The Iranians are running out of supplies, while the Soviets are hitting the Iranian armor divisions with everything they got. Here is a brief recap of the events from turns 3 and 4. Turn 3: On Land: Continued grinding in the north. Iranians continue to take damage from Soviet ground and air forces. An ill advised counter-attack around Tubriz causes more damage to the Iranian attackers than Soviets. US Special Forces raid the Yemen base where the Tu-26 Backfire bombers are stationed, disabling the airfield for one turn. Soviet bombers start dropping mines in the Persian Gulf. The 82nd Airborne division arrives on Iranian soil in port city of Konark on the gulf but is out of supply due to Soviet diesel subs patrolling the straits.  In Air: The Iranian F-14 gets into a decent position to call interceptors from Tehran and this helps support the ground

Blake put together another fun game session at Multiverse Games. This time it was a game of Hordes of the Things. It's been along time since we played a large HotT battle. We got four participant this time. We broke up into 2 teams. Each player on each team took a 24 point army. Blake has tons of armies from his massive collection of GW Fantasy figs. Some of the guys were friends of Blake's son, Hunter. They were completely new to the miniature war gaming hobby. These were 20-something, Millennials who might have been intrigued by some GW games or perhaps D&D and were ready to try a full miniatures game. These are just the sort of players that Blake likes to recruit. As you can see in the photos, Blake has lots of the 3rd-edition-era Warhammer fantasy figs. They are amazingly great figures and they look awesome in formation on the table. I really think the striking look of these armies are what draws the players into the hobby. Sadly, new pl