Big games equal Total War!

So,

Robert and I have picked back up with our Flames of War El Guettar Campaign and we have been having a blast with it. In fact after not playing for the past month or so, I forgot just how cool the game looks on the table and just how much I missed playing. Now as some know, I was not always a huge fan of 15mm or Flames of War, but I have finally embraced it as the main game I am playing.

Now, even though I enjoy Flames of War, I still have not embraced playing in a tournament. My first FoW tourney was a bust due to my own fault. If you remember I went to an early war event and took a Cezch 38t list, having all 38t's representing Rommel and his Ghost Division. Well right before the event started, I had one player look at my list and then go tell the tourney organizer that my list was wrong. Well when the organizer asked about my list, he asked where were my Panzer II's at. I told him it was an all 38t list and I did not take any PanzerII's. Well in my race to get my army done, I forgot one thing, the entry for the Cezch Tank list, you must take a platoon of Panzer II's as a compulsory platoon. So you had to take at least one platoon of them!

I was shocked and embarrassed that I over looked this one little aspect! So I told the head judge to put me down for three loss' and to take me out of the running for any other prizes. I felt like a tool and even though the organizer let me play, I just wanted the day to be over. So this may be a reason I have not done any other event along with the fact that our local group of FoW players all like to play Late War.

Now there is another event that is sort of like a tourney but has more of a campaign feel and it is the Shifting Sands events that the locals run. Up until last night, I was actually thinking of playing in this event since it was going to be the battle of Kursk. Now I am a tread head at heart and knowing that this was the largest tank battle of all time, got me fired up. Last night Robert and I spent about an hour talking about possible lists. He mentioned a StuG G list and I was pretty excited about it.

But it seems that I will be sitting this game out due to the points restrictions they are putting on the event (1500 pts Mid War). Well if you play FoW Mid War, you know that 1500 pts is not going to get you very many tanks. I still do not know why they are not doing 1675 points, this makes me scratch my head. So even though they are going to do the largest tank battle in history, there will be very few tanks companies at the event. I could be wrong, but that is how I see it.

Now being a tread head, I would love to see a ton of tanks on a large table (just like in World of Tanks!) and this made me think about something I wanted to do earlier this year, run a huge tank game using FoW rules. Then this morning while searching the net, I found this article by Battlefront themselves, Total War.

It seems that someone at Battlefront had the same idea as me and they have gone ahead and put this out as a PDF. The funny thing is that our local FoW players have not mentioned this on their forums, which again has me scratching my head. But this is playing FoW in a different way than the tournament setting. It allows huge armies to be played on huge tables and has that grand feeling of battle.

So this has gotten my head thinking of all the cool possibilities with this and now suddenly a Kursk battle of all tanks could work. So I think I will start planning on doing a huge game for Kursk and I will see if there is any other folks that are interested in joining me on this crazy little event. In fact I am thinking of doing this as a two day event somewhere here in Phoenix to allow folks from other parts of the country (or in fact other parts of the world) to come and play.

Just how cool would it be to do a 1 for 1 tank game of the battle of Kursk, I think it would be awesome! But lets see who may be interested first. If you are interested, drop me a comment and we will talk. Now I must start some planning....

TK

Welcome back old friend!

So,

Continuing with the trip down memory lane, I have been playing another old school GW game, but in a new form. You see one of the first games I purchased from GW was Warhammer Quest (well actually it was Space Hulk then Quest a few days later). WHQ was awesome, you got a ton of figures and counters and it was a basic dungeon crawl game.

Look at all this stuff!!

It was easy to get the game crew to jump on this one since it was very close to AD&D games we used to play. My wife enjoyed it as well as my Sister In-law and my brother. The four of us got so much play time in that we advanced our characters pretty far. This game was also my sons first experience with a miniatures game and it taught him how too read and do math.

The only down side to the game is that we could never get everybody together all that often and when we moved here to Phoenix, the games slowed. Sure I ran a few games here in the valley, but the interest faded and with no dedicated group, it got put on the shelf. My son still every once in a while wanted to bust out the game, but once again the interest was not really there.

Then the other day I found an old friend but in a new format. Rodeo Games released WHQ in an app for I-Pads and I-Phones. So since my wife has an I-Pad, I downloaded the game for $4.99 and at that price I thought what the heck. So after taking about 20 minutes to download, I was back in the world of Warhammer Quest.

Screen shot of the game!

So what do I think, well I have put in over 5 hours with this game, I would say that I love it! It has most of the rules from the game and Rodeo has done a fantastic job or re-creating the game. There are a few other upgrades you can purchase, but I have found that the basic very satisfying. I am sure I will purchase the other upgrades (extra money or special characters) but that will not happen until I get through it.

So if your looking for a cool little game for your I-Pad and your an old fart like me that played classic GW games, than this app is for you. Now I wonder when they will come out with an app for Space Hulk or Blood Bowl? I can only hope it will be soon!

TK

Its all the Ferrets Fault!

Okay,

So I have been following a blog called Laughing Ferret for some time now and he has been posting up some coverage of the NATC: North American Team Championship of Blood Bowl in Las Vegas. Well after seeing his reports and also watching him do some amazing conversions for Blood Bowl teams, I decided that I should put up a few of my teams.

I still have the box!

Remember these oldies, yes I still have them!

Now I have been a huge fan of Blood Bowl for some time, starting with 2nd edition. We had about 10 people with teams and we ran a couple of leagues. My wife even was involved and had a team (Rainbow Warriors). But other games took our interests elsewhere and Blood Bowl faded away from the table. Up until the beginning of 2012, which I hosted a Blood Bowl day and had a few friends come over. Everybody loved it, but once again it faded away.

Well, I want to change that, I may try to rally the troops to play more Blood Bowl. Now GW is once again making it tough with the demise of Specialist Games, but where there is will, there is a way. So the first plan is to post up some of my teams to hopefully inspire folks, we will see. So here are my teams, first up the Dirty Rat Bastards, a 1st edition Skaven team. This is a pretty basic team, I do want to pick up a Rat Ogre to flesh out the team, we will see.

Dirty Rat Bastards

Next up are the Brittle Bones, a  Tomb King team that is all converted from plastic Tomb king model. I built these guys a few years ago on a whim and I loved every minute while doing it. I also loved the color scheme that I used, which was going to be the colors for my Tomb King army before I sold it. I purchased a Mummy from Westwind Miniatures to add to the team, but I pressed him into service for Pulp games, so I will need to buy another one (oh darn!)

Brittle Bones!

The Throwers! No witty names yet.

A couple of Blitzers

A few Catchers

 Next up is my Dwarf team, the Black & Bruisers! This is another 1st edition team and there are a bunch of them. This was my brothers team, although they were Green & White after the Eagles colors. Well those were looking pretty bad so these boys got a dip in the Simple Green and repainted back in 2012. I love these figures, they have a bunch of character in there faces. Also you will see one figure that is a dwarf, but a Chaos Dwarf and that's the Thrower. Since Dwarfs were not a throwing team (nor are they now) my brother wanted a dwarf thrower, well he found one and it works well with the team.

Black & Bruisers

Chaos Thrower, why not?

 Now for a time out, here is a referee for Blood Bowl. Back in 2nd edition you could have these guys on the field, so I picked one up.

Hey you, come here!

I got something for yeah!

 Next up is another classic team from the good old days, a High Elf team. Now this paint job was dictated to me from my son to look like the Denver Broncos. We still need to come up with a name for them and like High Elves, they are colorful. There are also a few other cool figures, like the Elf Blitzer (Can't remember his name) as well as the Elf Kicker. Yes you could actually have kicker models on your teams!

Bucking Broncos?? Or something else?

Blitzer whats his name!

Look everyone at my pretty nails!

Hair Band wannabes!

 Next up is another fully converted team, my son's Orcland Raiders (yeah I know, but that's what he wanted to call them). This team was put together with plastic Orc models from the Fantasy line and was another fun team to build. It has goblins (gnobblars) and even his own touchdown token. I gave this to my son for Christmas of 2011.

Orcland Raider team shot

Da Black Orc Blockers

Da Blitzers!

Da Throwers, Little gunz on the Left, Big Gunz on the right!

Were sexy and we know it!

Da Stealin Crew

Our TD marker!

 Now, that concludes the fully painted stuff, here are a few others that are in need of work. First up is my wife's old team, The Rainbow Warriors. This is another 1st edition team and my wife painted these here self 20 years ago. They are a bit dinged up and she will not let me strip them. So they sit waiting there turn to play. Notice the old color bases, that's how we used to keep track of which position the models were. No fuzzy rings here!

My Wife's Rainbow Warriors!

Now the next few pics are interesting, first up are a couple of Chaos Dwarves that my brother bought for his Dwarf team. He gave the figures to me for a season that allowed us to draft other races onto our teams. These guys were on my Dark Elf Team Drows Rage. Now they also show the hideous paint job that I had on my dark elves. The team got stripped down to bare metal, but these guys stayed around with their old uniforms still on.

Drow's Rage Chaos Dwarves!

Now here is my Dark Elf team in all there bare glory, this too is another 1st edition team and I will one day get around to painting them. but for now they wait there turn, but they will return.

My old dark elves!

 Last team I have are 16 Halfling figures. I love the face work on these guys, they have so much character. Now all I need is a cool Treeman to throw these guys around with. One day these guys will get finished up.

Were mean, were tiny, were going to kick you in your hiney!

So there you go, a little trip down Blood Bowl lane. Hopefully this will inspire some of my buddies here and I will get Blood Bowl back onto the table.

TK