Geek-POWER!!

This post comes to you via my I Phone a little piece of kit that I've only had for a few months that I now wouldn't want to be without. I've even downloaded a dice app to play through the Fighting Fantasy books that I got for Chrimble. Salvation may find me one day though I doubt it. The main price seems to be my reading time on the train home or in bed at night as I now just play a mindless game mindlessly. Corrective action is required.

Meanwhile I've completed the move and now have to TWO node foci within my abode. The lounge is quite large and has a dogleg so one end has become gaming corner and has already hosted D&D on Thursday night. The spare room can accommodate a game for two or three max and so is likely to become a semi-permanent workbench with a laptop DVD player and an I Dock for background entertainment. I
All much easier to entertain polite company should I ever do so. I'm rather smug!

Hmm... Just discovered that I can't upload photos from the camera roll so they'll have to wait.

Meanwhile I enormously enjoyed England beating la Francois yesterday evening and just hope that Wasps can manage the same against Sarries this lunchtime.

I also went and saw Paul at the flicks last night and it was better than I thought it might be with plenty of witty one line homages for true nerds!

May the farce be with you.......always ;)

Straight from the box

This is likely to be my last post for a good ten days or so as i've failed to appreciate how busy Virgin Media's installation chaps are. Just over a week without internet or cable TV!! I'll be catching up on Fable III and a few DVD classics and boxed sets then!

As manually 360'd below i've re-painted an AT-43 Therian Golgoth. Initially just messing about a bit it turned into a full repaint, though no undercoat was needed as the pre-paint finish keyed really well. A few more manga-ese Tau transfers produce a good result.

Not a lot of effort required so another 3 PPs. See you in a while!

Economies of Scale

On Wednesday I started packing for the impending move to my new abode and as always was amazed by the amount of STUFF that i've accumulated since last time.

I've pretty much packed up the shed and as a part of that process spent some time trawling through various boxes of plastic and tin-pewter.

I've even managed to dispose of an awful lot of Empire and Orc and Goblin sprues that have been with me longer than many of my socks.

It struck me that i'm predominantly a 25mm boy but thats mainly because, like many of us, i'm a child of Games Workshop, and have been programmed as such. FoW was a serious flirtation with 15mm, since sold on, and i've got bits of 10 and 15mm floating about but always found 6mm too small to paint.
HOWEVER,.. i've slowly been experiencing 15mm skirmish,.. and I like it! I've been following the Gruntz 15mm Sci-Fi blog, walked past it several times at Warfare and intend to actually play a game at Salute.

Browsing around the Khurusan, Critical Mass and Ground Zero web-stores has been on the increase. Jon has even gone as far as making some purchases.

I've built up a good resource of figures and scenery for the Star Wars roleplaying in 25mm BUT if I was starting that up today i'd be more than likely to do it in 15mm. The quality is good as are the comparative prices, the ranges ever expanding, and it would make the best of time, space and funds available. The worst you've got to deal with is adjusting ground-scale!

I'm sure that you could do the same with almost any genre, theatre etc.

BUT 25mm just looks so good when done well! Flip over to Geektactica, all the links are in the sidebar, and take a look as personally I find the stuff that these guys do truly inspiring.

I'm genuinely torn! Happy gaming :)

The Cow says....

.......nothing,..mainly because its dead as is Mr Horse but the pigs, Essex breed (no white stilettos), are doing alright so there you are. Best keep them away from the dead-stock though as apparantly they'll eat anything.

I've also finished off the Zombie spawn-point markers including my three "bursters". I was temtpted to Zombie-fy the dead-stock but they're more widely usable this way.

So another 16 little pieces gets me another 16 PPs and the project is really motoring along. I need to start packing next week so brace yourself for more posts involving random musing and Rugby.

You have been warned!!

Catch 22?

So from my prior post it was actually another 22 zombies completed to join the horde-ette of 27. If you were being sneaky the WIP shot a few posts back would have been a winner.

Being 3 short of the box set has come as the price of three "ground-burster" tokens neccesitaiting the same number of "spines on legs", which I really don't like.

So 44 points and I should be able to finish off the zombie tokens and the stock, live & dead, tonight. Just as well really as I'm some to be relocating abode, with standard feeling of dread, and the pack / move / unpack schedule is bound to disrupt things for a while.

On the upside I will have and indoor gaming room :)

Spot the Zombie

I've finished off all of the generic zombies and thought I'd show off and as such just popped down the shed to set up the farm for a "shoot".

Now, sat on the sofa in front of the laptop i've realised that I haven't counted them up to work out my painting points. Maybe we can have a best guess compo and use the photos? Answers on a comment!

Them's the RULES!!

Another good gaming week for the shed.

Tuesday night was D&D, following a number of missed Thursdays, for THE RITUAL followed by a hard fight against a variety of end of scene beasties and bad guys. There are a few loose ends to tie up but i'm fairly sure that the locals can sleep a little easier in thier beds...... at least for a while!

As far as the rules are concerned we're fairly old hands now. We know the sequences, what checks are required when and how to do / attempt certain things.
We're all used to our individual tasks and roles, something of a well oiled machine! It's only really during the tight combats and harder tasks that we have to pull out the special abilities and "tricks".

That happened on Tuesday with Charlie scanning the back of the rulebook whilst the rest of us metaphorically shoved Mr C's Paladinic "tank" towards the teeth of the Green Dragon we had unleashed.

"You can do X" says Charlie. "Oh...good!" says Mr C. Mr C did X. It helped greatly. Scratch one Green Dragon. The post battle heal and loot SOP was then engaged :)

On Thursday shaun and Rich came round for a run through Operation Squad a set of Italian written WWII squad skirmish rules being sold through Warlord Games.

Plugs over, once I got my head around the activation system I discovered that I really liked them. Basically you take turns to nominate one of your boys and state what they're going to do. Your opponent CAN respond by nominating a reaction activation. You CAN then nominate a reaction to his reaction.

Either side can nominate a maximum of three actions in this manner. Once all nominations are in you roll an intiative order and get on with resolving them.

It might sound confusing but in my first game I picked it up fine, even appreciating how it gives an otherwise straight forward set of rules a much greater depth whilst retaining fluidity.

I'm not getting into a diatribe about rules but wish to make another point. I grew up within gaming via GW and thier rulesets. Within that culture there has always been an idea of "veteran gamers", another can of worms that I don't wish to unleash. This seems to be defined merely by time and money invested.

To be honest I now find GW rulesets too basic, prescriptive and limiting to figure within my regular gaming. Like many I limit myself to a couple of GW's Specialist offerings.

So, to me at least, another and potentially better definition of a veteran gamer is one that is able to appreciate and deal with more open and intuitive rulesets to produce a better game. One measure we often use is wether proper tactics properly applied produce a realistic result.

Another thing for me is that to play with better, less prescriptive, rules you need to be a better, less prescriptive, gamer able to use rather than abuse the latitude offered all in the name of FUN for all.

Happy gaming to all :)