This is NOT Sparta!

How much for a Finecast Orc Shaman!!!

Hello people, 300th post don't you know and an apt time for one of those retro/intro-spective posts that I'm sure we all enjoy reading all so much :)

As I have bemoaned previously and my recent posts and lack of painting points demonstrates over the last couple of months I have been playing but not playing.

This has been due to LIFE and as mentioned I've not really minded up til now but a probable 4th month without a painting point has arrived.


Along with a few other events I have felt the need to further define my more focused (+ve spin) / restricted (-ve spin) hobby goals. The recent GW price rise and 40K froth has finally killed any lingering desires to return to "the good old days" as they've not existed for sometime taking with them any gaming that's not skirmish. Even the alternatively retro pull of 15mm Sci-Fi has finally been designated ILLOGICAL :(

Aren't you a little short for an Uruk Hai?


That however is where the bad news ends :)

I've REALLY got into SAGA recently and not just because I've been winning but because I've finally caught onto it's full scope thanks to Rich's Fantasy style campaign down at the club.

My gratitude Mr Jones!

So much so in fact that I've finally bitten the bullet and picked up 44 Mordor Orcs and 20 Uruk-Hai via E-Bay for the princely sum of £35. A couple of dozen more Uruk-Hai scouts may join them along with a couple of characters but that will be it.

Beards! Dozens of them!!

Re-based onto tuppences this will give me everything I need to play any faction I like and keep the Fantasy angle covered with what I'm happy will be a good degree of "authenticity".

Watching The Return of the King again the other week I remembered how much I like the feel and background of the force, painted and sold previously, and how much I've enjoyed playing with them.

With sabots at the reading they can also work for Impetus, Fantasy or otherwise, as a few of us occasionally threaten.
Another shout-out to Mr Jones for my recent introduction to Muskets and Tomahawks, upon which I have recently blogged lyrical, which will so easily reclaim St Peytersburg from it's stalled project status. Smiles all round.

With my birthday a mere fortnight away I've even been brave enough to request both rulesets and some Perry Indians from my nearest and / or dearest :)

That covers those bases but what about the traditional indulgence of ones present to oneself?

Dystopian Wars still lurks offshore and though becalmed I have 90% of what I need / want, other than the application of paint. A campaign will appear at the club at some point. One way or the other games WILL be played. I digress.

Two choices seem to remain. Further investment in Warhammer Invasion or something completely different and a $100 Kickstarter investment in to Zombicide. Once again I've blogged about both.

WI is the "safe" option. A game that I do and will continue to play and enjoy giving me what I actually want from GW, feel and fluff, in a way that their products can't. Almost a no-brainer, an expansion on a current vice that doesn't stretched my more focused / restricted TIME resource.

Zombicide however is a new format for me in a lot of ways and something of a shot in the dark. Multi-use comes as it would provide most of what I need for modern day St Peytersburg but how long would it sit about for, a la Space-Hulk though does that matter?

So SAGA plus Muskets and Tomahawks ably supported by Warhammer Invasion. Just how focused do I want / need to be? Opinions welcome :)

It's a Kind of Magic?

Not been to much going on recently other than having the lurgy for the last few days.

I also didn't got to Salute on Saturday which was entirely planned. I did go last year and despite shedding about a ton from from my wallet the main thing I came away with was a lot of inspiration.

Inspiration is such a bid deal in this hobby and the cause of pretty much every lead / pewter / plastic / resin mountain in the world. All of us can sit round the dice and tell tales of ludicrous projects purchased half-preped and then utterly abandoned.

It just occurs to me that these days where you find that inspiration is more and more web based.

As part of my regular weekday morning warm-up I'm sat there with a coffee and have a quick browse round a few bookmarked sites including Tabletop Gaming News and The Miniatures Page. The bits that grab my attention I'll come back to have a longer look at later.

Two examples of my virtual travels are here;  

I've heard various recommendations for Muskets and Tomahawks as Studio Tomahawk are the same guys that have brought SAGA to the UK tabletop.

I'm a big fan of AWI skirmish and a recent convert to SAGA and it could work well for St Peytersburg which has definitely become a rather lapsed project. Something of a more traditional find. 

All in the cards??

Yesterday saw a SAGA campaign day down at the Enfield Gamers and with the sideroom available I ran a bit of an experimental Warhammer Invasion campaign day for those of us who weren't battling for domination of ye olde England.

I say experimental because I'd been wondering for a while if you could play a "traditional" Warhammer campaign with WI. As I believe that the game is Warhammer but better i was hoping that a campaign day would be the same. More than anything these were a couple of "converted" ideas that I'd had that I wanted to try out. I'm sure there's an official FF tourney pack somewhere on their site but that wasn't what I was interested in running, something far more fluffy thank you!

So, looking at two, potentially combing formats we played this;

1. Straight victory points. 1 point per point of capital damage scored upto a max of 8 per section, i.e. extra points dealt because of developments didn't count.

2. Order vs Destruction campaign. Play best of three games to capture a campaign location. Most campaign locations wins.

And here are the results;


Tournament scores



Campaign map

Lots of ways to analyse and score but here are the highlights;

- Charlie (Empire - Order) scored most victory points

- I (Chaos - Destruction) won all four campaign rounds and was the only undefeated army in that format

- Order won most campaign locations and triumphed over the forces of destruction

- Stewart (Lizardmen - Neutral) claimed the wooden spoon

So who claims best general, me or Charlie? He scored more points but I won all my rounds, all 2-1, including against Charlie himself. Does it matter?......probably not.

What was more important was that the concept feels proven and even with odd numbers and a couple of novice players it was all easily run and kept us fully engaged all day. Don't know that I could have manged 4 rounds of Warhammer in the same way!

Chatting things through afterwards there are plenty of options to run an actual campaign with, and plenty of interest to take part, which Stewart is keen to take forward possibly back to the Old Skool of a restricted deck / army list which gains options as you take territories. We shall see.

Personally I found no problem playing 12 games back to back with the same deck. By doing so I earmarked a number of cards that could be dropped as, apparently, expert players run near the 50 card minimum rather than the 70 we all seem to work from.

As an aside I also ended up ordering the next cycle of cards Saturday night. I wasn't going to you understand but then Maelstrom went for their 25% off clearance sale........

Slave to the darkness, so I am :)

It's a habit......

.....winning that is or so they say.

Wasps finally picked up an ugly win on Saturday and I was there to bellow them on. ANY win after nine straight league losses is mana from sporting heaven :)

I jubilantly returned home to my recently ordered Warhammer Invasion expansion March of the Damned turned up and so I spent some of last night sleeving cards and seeing what I'd got.

I've suffered something of a reverse of fortune recently and have been receiving something of a pummelling to all comers. My Dwarf deck in particular is still waiting for its first win despite coming agonisingly close on a number of occasions.

Much as with any strategy based game now that I've got the mechanics into my head its time to work on the army lists, so to speak, a little more. The Dwarf deck is a bit slow starting without enough decent combos and too many "Battlefield Only" bruisers. MotD has given me a few extra Slayers that fit the bill so they'll find their way in and I'll theme the deck to suit.

I'm still definitely looking to theme decks rather than going all killer but I definitely want to get a bit more competitive. With my main all conquering Chaos deck I'd actually like to get a bit more of a corruption theme in there, maybe got a bit more beast orientated and IF I'm feeling really brave take the insanely nasty Blood Dragon Knights out :/ Even the Orcs could do with some tweek.

Admittedly I'd be taking them out to put them in an Undead deck, possibly with some Dark Elf stuff as I haven't touched them at all yet. I've also been very impressed by the Lizardmen and their savage ability, which Stewart has harnessed to disgusting effect alongside the poncy High Elves. Not wishing to copy, or touch a high elf with something other than an axe, I'll have to find another option.

So as always boring prep is the key, just need to sit down and do it :)

Bossing It

Hmmm another week between posts and Tharg knows how long since anything new has appeared on the WIP page, probably time to use it or loose it really :/ Just been busy with Life really, ....oh and the odd hour or two of skyrim :)

Last week saw a decent amount of gaming, another highly enjoyable evening of Warhammer Invasion though Stewart may disagree as I don't believe he managed a single win all night. I did at least TRY to feel vaguely guilty and am fairly sure I was less of a c0ck this time.

D&D on Thursday was a bit of a talky one and then some inter-party squabbling. This was mainly because, following on from last session's kill-steal banter, I decided to pocket the Paladin's magical ring, that summons his mighty other-planar steed Salsa-Queena, whilst he was sleeping.

When he found ou he was the only one that wasn't amused and my "Where's your horsey gone" song, in terrible Irish brogue, probably didn't help matters. This caused a number of minor recriminations and stamped feet. All sorted out in the end but guaranteed that we didn't get to the next combat so an early finish rather than get stuck halfway through.

Both sessions involved zero figures and I think its just that my attentions are elsewhere at the moment. No bad thing to have a break every now and then. Last night I did however manage to finish off the Orc Warlord and BSB on boars to a suitable for sale standard. Rather enjoyed painting these, especially the check on the banner and the ginger BSB boar :)

Technically at least 8 PPs due but i'll take 5 give the quick and easy intentions.

In an effort to clear the project the other 30 boy block is next up followed by the Boar Boyz which will definitely break the back of it. Manual 360 below.......

Playing Nicely??

Hello all, very busy at work including this weekend so no brushtime, though the odd hour of Skyrim to keep me sane(ish).

Following that vein of escapism Stewart dropped round Friday night for another evening of Warhammer Invasion. I put myself together a Chaos deck which also featured some Skaven, Undead units and some Neutral Buildings / resource cards.

Some of this was necessity rather than design, given the cards I currently have, but being a mixed deck I was interested to see how it might affect the resource curve and if the potential lack of loyalty would be a problem especially against Stewart's more experienced decks. In short I expected a wooping.

Game 1 was exactly that as his Dark Elf denial deck pinned me down and slowly pulled my legs off as if I was a spider. Eventually he put me out of my misery. After that, bar one other game, it was all one way traffic in my direction.

An undoubted bits and pieces deck I stuck to building my resources first and with Chaos having access to a number of cheap multiple power, minimal hit point units the curve was steep. I kept on pulling Marauder Chieftain and Warpstone Excavation in my opening hand which meant that on turn two I was pulling 2 cards on 4 resource whilst doing 1 indirect damage to his capital per turn. For the uninitiated it was AWESOME!!

Knowing Stewart well enough to give some friendly "banter" I did so until through the laughs the retort came back "So when are you going to stop being a c*ck?". Taken as meant we fell about and carried on as before before eventually calling the night slightly before Saturday.

All good clean fun but it did make me think how with different opponents the line is drawn differently. Plenty of advice / stories etc are written and given in terms of how to play at tournament but that's not the same as playing with your mates or at your local club......but, especially with the latter, should it be?

At the Enfield Gamers most of us have been playing together for a VERY long time. The social element is very strong and as a result there's often plenty of banter about. We're aware that it can be daunting and even off putting for someone new to walk into, especially given the social skills of many of our ilk. I've visited clubs that I've been put off for a number of reasons, normally the members, but each to their own. We want to be welcoming and inclusive but people need to fit with us to. A balance thing then.

Elsewhere I've got Wednesday off work and have it earmarked for painting Orcs, especially as I've just ordered my latest cycle of WI cards. I intend to be in front of the paint station by mid-day and then crack on. No skyrim until I'm finished, if I get finished.....honest!

Horde of Things

So as threatened / promised I've picked up my first tranche of Warhammer Invasion cards, being the Core, Legends and Iron Rock sets, along with the necessary sleeves, deck boxes and storage.

Working through the cards placing them in sleeves and sorting them by race / type was useful, rather than just necessary, as I ended up reading through them all as I was doing so and made note of a few that caught my interest.

Running across the top l-r: Orcs, Elves, Empire, Dwarves, Dark Elves and Chaos, the main 6 races in the game. I've got more Orcs than anything else, by design, along with plenty of Empire, Dwarf and Chaos. Orcs will be my primary deck for a while, Empire secondary and Chaos sometime later.

Second row l-r: Buildings (neutral), Skaven, Undead, Lizardmen, Wood Elves and Bretonnian (Neutral) as the support races. Lovely way of including more of the races and expanding the options, especially as you start out.

Bottom row: some neutral tactic cards and Alliance resource / loyalty cards.

Stewart did me the favour of turning me onto the Deckbox website which allows you to set up an online inventory and decklists. I've also had a browse around the forums to find my feet a little. As mentioned, this is my initial tranche, I'm very sure that I'll be picking up a few extra packs with each pay-day, or maybe even a bit more regularly than that!

So a good solid start that we'll keep me plenty entertained for some time to come and all for less the the average GW Battalion! Deal me in :)

Swords to Ploughshares??

Stuart dropped round Friday night and before you knew it we'd played through 3 or so hours of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer Invasion. The phrase I kept on using was "Just one more game"!

I've blogged about how much I've enjoyed playing this game previously. My second proper session just drove home the subtlety of the varied strategies and tactics within the game, each faction and even each deck. I'm sold!

As such I've re-found my motivation to paint-up and sell-off the last of my WH Orcs and Gobs.......to reinvest in WI Orcs and Gobs....Chaos...Empire....and a game the I WILL actually play and WILL enjoy. I'll likely have some change as well :)

Merry Chrimble!

This lot shall be painted and sold....

....to purchase a fair old lump of this!

Zom-Heim 1.1

Stuart dropped round on Tuesday night for another run out for Zom-Heim and a few games of Fantasy Flight's Living Card Game Warhammer Invasion.

This time with Z-H we used a deck of cards for activation / initiative, mainly as I'd remembered to find a deck. It worked just as well as we remembered, though in honesty not really better than a D6, and added the little touch of tension that I was looking for to give the feel of the horror genre.

I ran out the Undead zombie horde again, though this time limited to a LEGAL 15 figures, of a vampire, necromancer, dreg and a dozen shamblers to check the balance.

Running out against them was a Witch Hunter list representing the local nobility and their tenants consisting of maxed out heroes, inc priest, all toting sword and braces of pistols plus 7 zealots with bows and hammers as yokels with worn out muskets and staves.

Two games and one win a piece, playing both sides I lost twice (as gracious host obviously). Between games I had a blinding idea to balance costs as continuing at 600 GC as the Undead were under pointed. Basically, spend the extra cash on stat upgrades for the heroes. We gave this a go for the second game and it wasn't overpowered.

Now I just need to work through some more lists and look at national characteristics. 1.2 shouldn't be too far away :)

We also ran through four games of Warhammer Invasion which were games 2 to 5 for me. I played Magic many years ago and had a quick look again a few months ago but didn't for a number of reasons. Hardly an objective review but I LIKE WI.

Nice bit of resource management and plenty of different strategies sat on top of a deceptively simple mechanic. You also get your junkie hit of GW lustrous imagery and background without having to invest a small fortune and hundreds of brush hours only to be let down by the actual game and a number of its players. Just my tuppence you understand ;)

Another possible distraction!

We got a great big Zom-voy!

Child labour? Witch Hunter vs Dreg

The Battle for the Bacon

Diving charge gone horribly, horribly wrong!

Welcome to St Peytersburg

The town welcome commitee turn out....

....only to become a light snack!