Gamestorm 2011

Mostly board games this year, and almost exclusively with Carl and Phil... Carl brought his wife, Chris, who was a very good sport all weekend. I forgot my cameras, so the photos are from my camera phone....

Friday, Phil introduced us to a game he's been playing with his daughter and her fiancee, A Touch of Evil. Pretty cards, lots of characters and opportunity for roleplay in a early 1800's horror milieu. It's not about winning and losing, it's how you play the game.....

Saturday started with a zombie game from the same company (Flying Frog Productions), The Last Night On Earth. Rather more literal and colorful game board, with some modular variation, lots of stock characters and plenty of zombies, followed with a trip to Powell's.... I should not be allowed to go to bookstores.

Saturday night was the annual Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition:

The game ended with no bragging rights and an extended recrimination phase..... Chris actually played as the US, built lots of stuff and had launched Operation Torch with substantial forces. But the Italian Navy was going to put a stop to the naval side with a side operation to take out the uncovered air power in Gibralter. The Russian front was a bloody mess with no clear winner but the Japanese had taken China and were ready to move on the Russian's naked backside and the German industrial capacity was still at a high level. The British had strength in India to argue the point with the Japanese, but my money would be on the Germans eventually burying the Russians in an avalanche of tanks and infantry backed by air power. Also, the Japanese had landed a powerful invasion force backed by carriers...in Alaska. This was bound to distract the US player from Operation Torch. See, extended recrimination phase..... ;o)

Sunday was devoted to Hordes of the Things and the drive home. Here's a pic of Phil's new Beastmen, another gorgeous army fielded by him and not done justice by the camera phone.... According to Phil this was one of those nobody-makes-a-mistake balanced-on-a-knife-edge near run things that give great satisfaction to gamers....


Meanwhile, on the next table over, Chris was winning her first Hordes of the Things battle by defeating Phil's Goblins under my command with my Orcs.... It would have been humiliating, but they were Goblins, after all, a flawed tool at best.

Why I like Hordes of the Things

Where else could you see this:

Now.

Andrew's Bug Army

Regular readers may recall that I promised Andrew I would build an army for Sparky, his Aerial Hero, to command. Herewith are the bugs....

The front rank is a Scorpion (Blade), a giant spider (Shooter), a giant ant (Behemoth) and another giant spider (Shooter). The second rank is four spider Hordes and the rear rank is the aerial contingent, two flyers flanking Sparky.

Andrew woke up and followed the army like a moth to a flame....

A picture worth a thousand words....

HOTT GotS Ready to Go

The armies for HOTT GotS are done, completa, fin... On the right are the Old Glory figures as Lee the Magician and Grant the Cleric. The Union army has some available alternatives, you can choose from generic infantry as Spear with some Zouaves or Western troops in Hardee hats rather than kepis, and a stand of black troops as Warband, any six stands out of the available nine.... Hidden behind the Zouaves is Berdan's Sharpshooters as Sneakers, giving you an option of two artillery or one artillery and the Sharpshooters. The Cavalry on the left are either one stand of Riders or one stand of Knights if you use the stand with GA Custer on it....

The Confederate army doesn't have any options, seven stands of AK-47 armed infantry as Blades; one stand of artillery; one Lurker (Mosby's Partisan Rangers on the left in the photo) to make the AP come out at 24; one stand of Knights with JEB Stuart in command and Lee as the Magician....

Now all I need is to come up with something for a stronghold....

HOTTS GOTS Begins -

The infantry for the Union Army for RadCon's Guns of The South using Hordes of the Things (HOTT GOTS) has been rebased and a little touch up painting done. The figures for both armies have been removed from their old bases and the personality figures should be here tomorrow. There is still some finish work to do on these bases and of course, a little painting and a lot more basing to do.

The planned Union Army list will be:

US Grant - Cleric (To be painted, Old Glory figure should arrive tomorrow)
1 Cavalry or 1 Knight (Knight if led by GA Custer - Have painted figs, need based)
2 Artillery (need based) or
1 Artillery and 1 Sneaker (Berdan's Sharpshooters on left in photo)
6 stands of Infantry as Spears. Assortment above includes Western infantry in black hat, Zouave infantry, or various stands of regular ACW infantry;
or 5 stands as spear and 1 stand of Black Infantry as warband.

I have 15mm model of the farmhouse that was Meade's Headquarters at Gettysburg to paint up that might make a stronghold, but it's out of scale, so I don't really like it, but I don't have anything else to hand. Maybe could take some card stock and make a couple of rows of A tents and a firepit....
The Confederate army list looks like:

Robert E. Lee - Magician (To be painted, Old Glory fig arriving with Grant)
1 Cavalry or 1 Knight (Knight if led by JEB Stuart, need based)
1 Moseby's partisans as Lurker
1 Artillery (need based)
7 stands of AK 47 armed infantry as blades to the union spears.... (I have a lot of old figures with scrawny rifles and bayonets that have broken off. I plan to cut them short and pretend they are AK 47's.)

I'm still waiting for some 60mm x 60mm metal bases which should be here next week.

The army lists are still mutable if anybody wants to make suggestions.

Weekend

I've been pretty remiss about posting of late, but I'll try and get a post up at least once a week....

I completed painting another brigade of infantry (still have to mount it) while watching the football games on Sunday, always fun to watch the Raiders lose, Seahawks won a yawner so I checked in on the Patriots-Steelers game which the Patriots won in a yawner, and Sunday Night Football's Indy-Panthers game was a yawner win for Indy....so painting.

I also finished reading Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South so I am ready to start planning for the Guns of the South scenario for RadCon. Turtledove is next year's Writer Guest of Honor. This begs the question "How do you represent a brigade of ACW infantry toting AK-47's in Hordes of the Things?" I think I will pose the question on the HOTT list. That batch of creative thinkers will surely have 42 answers.....

Kim

HOTT at Tactical Solutions Gaming

We only had four players for the HOTT tourney. It was, after all, an historical gaming event.... I finished 1 win and 2 losses. The new Badger knights died ingloriously in both battles they fought. The Badger hero won a desperate final assault on the Undead Aerial Hero for my one win.

Somebody on the HOTT list asked for more details on Phil's mounted Elves, so I took some closeups and got some info. The figures are Grenadier, sculpted by ??? Naismith, who has been around sculpting minis for ages.

Below, Elven Heroes, one mounted, one not. There is a dismounted sword waver behind the mounted guy, hence the apparently two bladed sword.

Here are the two stands of Elven Riders.

This is a closeup of the Mounted Elven Hero. You can zoom in quite a ways before the picture pixellates, if you really want to....


The photo of all the mounted elves at the top includes the Elven Stronghold, a custom bit Phil did starting from an aquarium piece. Impressive, no?

MoBadgers, MoPics

Look, look! See, see! This is the completed Badger battle line. The two stands of warband in the back are extras. Bet you wouldn't wanna see that from the other side of the table.... ;o)


These are the new figures, if you zoom in on the photo, the personality revealed is just too much fun. I particularly like the stand of Red birds. They all look like Big Bird, but the one in the middle looks like she's looking over her shoulder in terror at the one farthest left who looks like he's about to take a bite.

Here is a rear view of the Knights, where you can't see that I painted them in trews....

Kim

Another Pile o' Treasure

What this really proves is that you really MUST go through your stash every once in a while. While going through mine (shrunken considerably by the move to San Diego and back), looking for something else entirely I found, and I must woot!, 8 blister packs of original Off The Wall Armies figures. Four packs are OTW BunRabs. 3 packs are Highland Badgers, including one pack of the Heavy Cavalry Lancers, which with the one figure that Steve Jackson Games had in stock gives me figures for two more stands of riders for the Badgers.... Plus there's a 3 pack of the Heavy Cav Officers I've been using for riders (I must have had a total of 3 packs of that figure).

However, the OTW BunRabs do not look at all like the BunRabs I have, so now I have no idea who made the ones I have painted, but maybe they CAN be found somewhere. I know the OTW BunRabs are long gone.



At the bottom of the picture is one (alas, just one) blister pack of the "Frateri Diversi Romuli Remique" which, if I get the Latin is (I guess, more or less) "The Changeling Brotherhood of Romulus and Remus", three footmen with spear. But at least now I know what to search for. ;o) IIRC, they were a werewolf Roman analogue, the figure looks like it might be intended to be Auxilia, but spear?!?.

Heh. I just had a thought. I could put two lancer figures and an officer each on two stands and call them Knights. More beef for the Badgers!

Kim

Sparky, the Aerial Hero

You may remember that Andrew really wanted to field his Dragonfly that he made in day program as an Aerial Hero in the Hordes of the Things games we played at Eighth Day last weekend. We also have Dinosaurs not yet mounted for the rest of the army....