One day I will finish the painting and put sails on the little ships, Man O War at the club

Quieter night as the RPG and Magic lads and lasses were not there. Yet 3 games were played. Barry's obligatory Wings of Glory WWI this time, 40k Nids vs Marines and a dusty old favourite from GW Man O War, Bretonnians, Chaos Dwarves and Orc fleets, plus more random sea monsters than all the pirate movies put together.

Let Battle comence

Nids won but it was very close this time

About to conquer the high seas, yes that is the dreadfleet mat and a beauty it is.

Orcs and Allied Norse

My Brettonnian fleet

Hand built Chaos Dwarves that rolled more miss fires than I have seen in a long time, boy did we laugh, well 2 of us laughed!

Closer to the lovely Norse ships and the ring in Skaven Vessel that we allowed to act as an orc.

4 on this table with smiles as well.

Check out the ones.................I never get that many ever.

Battlegroup at home rather than the club

Unfortunately I was not available at the club night in early November due to other commitments so I can't give updates for this night. But I can tell you about a fun game with my son on a recent weekend.


I have been very keen to get a proper game of the BattleGroup rules up and running and it game me pause to think about what to play. I have run this system solo with 15mm miniatures but decided to return after 34 years (ouch) to 1/72-1/76 scale or 20mm if you prefer. The old Airfix and Mathcbox kits still hold their own if you want access to huge amounts of models for WWII.


Well the game was a complete success. We played a small squad game with 220 points a side. Basically a platoon of infantry, a tank and a little support. Needless to say I lost but only just. I made a rush to the objective in the last couple of turns only to have a German Panzerfaust blow my Halftrack and Leaders apart. Thus causing my battle rating to plummet and the lads to retire off the board.


All I need now is a few more games and I will introduce it to the club.

Btirish battlegroup

German battlegroup

The House in the middle is the objective, Brits to capture, Germans to hold

German Positions after a couple of turns

Brits moving up

Germans using the hedge wisely

Nasty MG to remove my troops and the HQ in a cool resin car I bought at Cancon 2016

Brits moving up the flank

Germans still control the forest and stop my flank movement.

The end is near, yep the halftrack is torched leaving me with failing morale and a much diminished force.

It really was nice to play in 20mm again, almost regression therapy.

An old favourite has new life breathed into it, more club antics

40K took a nose dive at the club over the last two years or so, due to, well a lack of desire to by the same army book over and over again. In fact one club gamer that played 40k recently admitted that the last rule book he purchased was for 4th edition. Yet all good things come around again. Sure enough an astute purchase (new and second hand) by a couple of club members means that 40K is up and running again. It never really left just went into hibernation.

Picture show time

8 gamers with 600 points aside, nice.

Necron Crab like thing perched precariously on a rocky out crop. Brilliant model

Marines

Battle of Britain

The fine art of simultaneous movement

Not sure who won this dogfight over Britain but Wings Of Glory is such a good game.

Magic the Gathering and ........chips.....lots of chips.... surely you get your cards messy?

October 2016 Down at the club

Well a relatively quiet night as the older school students are busy studying for their big HSC exams in NSW. Thus exams take priority than playing with toy soldiers...............? Hmmm not the sort of priority that will lead to fun games, but it may lead to jobs and University and, well, life beyond games.

Never the less two games occurred

Infinity and Wings of Glory

Sadly some turned up late and could not be accommodated into the Infinity game but WOG filled up fast.

I am keen to see an Infinity Slow grow at the club, just have to work out how  best to do it for the benefit of the group.

On with pic show

Infinity Nomads Vs Yu Jing. the orange counters are objectives

One club member said "this was the nicest board he had seen" at the club ever. (not even finished painting it, well done Brendan)

Different angle

Nomads sneaking up the board flank taking objectives.

New WOG plane, very nice.

shoot the bomber or bomb the city

Close to the end of the game, but too close to call, not many die in this game

I could not capture this objective it was too well guarded

heavy infantry: Brendan's whole force was built and painted in a week, talk about motivation.

Zoe (with bag of explosives) took four orders to move and shoot the guard from the objective. I was down to 1 order to take the objective on the last turn and needed a role of 14 or less or I would lose. Woot success but this was the closest game we have had in at least 3 months.

Chimera chewed up by nasty heavy infantry it should have been the other way around but you know how the dice fall.

 

All in all a good night even if numbers were down. Now how do I convince the others to join a slow grow league?

September Happenings at the club

Life has been rather busy for me of late and blogging has had to take a back seat but here are the latest images from last Tuesdays club night.

Saga 4 way or really just two versus two, an unlikely alliance of Irish and Byzantines against the vicious Vikings 4 points per player

Byzantine General showing the usual ability to bribe his way to victory!!!!

First game for my ally but he picked up game very fast and played well in the actual game. First game for the Irish commander too.

See the nice wee farm? Well unbeknownst to me a horde of invisible Irish spear chucking nasties lurked behind the hedge.

Wonderful all female Byzantines, most of the minis are from Eureka miniatures in Victoria Australia. Sadly I forgot to take any more photos of the game. But alas it is all for the best as the Vikings were well and truly trounced. Well played to the Irish and Byzantines. Saddest moment..... berserkers hit by 4  Byzantine hearthguard. They throw a mere 8 dice and due to the battle board I had 16 dice. Nice. Well you would think so. End result glass canon is no more and the Byzantines escape with a figure remaining and they run away.

Barry's usual Wings of Glory with a huge crowd. There was more yelling and laughter than I had heard in a long time coming from this game. At one stage a Conga line of 5 planes were flying.

End result a win to the Germans this time. After the game most of the lads and lasses moved onto a horror board game. Great to get two games in in one night.

Teaching, year advisor and family has slowed any progress on my painting queue. I have a small 2 box medieval Swiss commission that is underway but here is something I have been working on as well.

Infinity Nomads

Blue and white bases were complete oh 2 years ago........ the rest has been awaiting love for a while.

Grey bases painted by someone else. Second hand stall around 2 years ago as well. I was going to strip them and repaint but realised that the person that had painted them had done a rather nice job. So the paint stayed and the minis join the force. I will have around 50 Nomads shortly but only 20 or so will have been painted by me. Oh well more time to complete the Swiss commission.

Kings of War fantasy style this time

Well it had to happen, the old fantasy minis had to make it onto the table. Even though we have talked about playing Warhammer 8th most of the club has lost heart and well to be honest new games have captured our imagination. Thus KOW fantasy has at last made it to the club in the 2nd edition form. Also one of the regulars with a now defunct tomb kings army is about to bring the out of the sand again as well. Oh and another one is buying into dwarves. Mantic should be happy.

Some sort of Slasher flick board game, looked cool actually

Kings of War with Kingdoms of Men vs nasty Chaos horde things with HUGE units of beastmen, 200 points a side.

Barry pointing out the delicate art of flying in the skys above London, all he needs is a pipe.

Yep Horde of marauders or beastmen as it were and flank protected by regiments of warriors

My gallant knights looking into the horror that could be.

Looks good doesn't it?

After charging the huge horde and using a big chunk of my army I came to realise that you can get rid of the bigger units but you have to hit them with two units at least. I still lost one of the knight units  in this combat.

Nasty winged demon mounted general about to eat bowmen or catapult or both!!!

Hold up the warriors with spear and charge in the knights. This will hurt.

At the end of the game the Chaos force had lost but with the generals and wizards still on the table and most of my units with decent damage another turn or two and the Chaos may have made a come back. 

Kings of War is a fast and furious game and to be honest a lot of fun. Tactical depth is there even if there are not a lot of rules and as a club game it does seem to play well in a couple of hours for around 2000 points. Plus Mantic games is about to release some historical rules based on the same system. Looking forward to this. Mind you Neldoreth's historical supplements are very good.