Taco Bowl I 2018 in the books!

So,

Ever since I bought my first Blood Bowl box game way back when, I have always wanted to run a Blood Bowl Tournament. Now I had tried many times, but thee was no real interest with my group of players. I had run a few Blood Bowl days with a few folks, but with the game being out of print, it was hard to get folks excited about it.

Well last year when GW re-released Blood Bowl, a few of my gaming group got into it and played a few games. My son over lunch one day (while eating tacos) brought up the idea to do a tournament and I thought maybe it would be a good time to do something about it. As we were eating Tacos at a favorite place of ours the Taco & Dilla Parlor we came up with Taco Bowl I.

So with an idea in my head, I came up with this back story for the Taco Bowl:

Taco Bowl I came about after an up incoming Halfling named Paul Hairytoes went on an “adventure” across the Great ocean in search of new recipes. His travels took him to a far south western port where the locals made hard crispy corn shells that held various meats, vegetables and cheeses, the locals called these Tacos. Well, Paul Hairytoes found his newest creation and sailed back across the Great ocean to introduce this amazing, delicious creation to the people of the Old World.

Unfortunately, Paul had run into some trouble with gambling and betting on Blood Bowl matches before he went on his little “adventure”.  So, while on the ship back to the old-world Paul came up with a brilliant plan, He would change his name to Paco, no last name, just Paco and start selling his own brand of Paco’s Tacos (trademark pending). But Paul aka Paco, had to figure out how to get the word out about his Paco’s Tacos. His plan was simple; he would sponsor a new Halfling Blood Bowl Team called the Tiny Titans and sell his Paco’s Tacos to the crowd. This would allow him to get rich off Paco’s Tacos and let him bet against his own team, thus guarantying that he would never have gambling issues ever again, because Paul aka Paco knows, Halfling teams never win!

With that said, Taco Bowl I was launched, with Paco’s Tacos being a proud sponsor of the Tiny Titans and the glorious Taco Bowl I. Teams from all over the old world will travel the newest venue, the Paco’s Tacos Stadium or as the fans call it, The Taco Bowl.

As this is the first ever Taco Bowl I, this will be an invite only (as Paul aka Paco is trying to stack the deck to better his winnings). 

With the story set, I hand picked 8 players to participate in the first ever Taco Bowl I. The format would be simple, build a Million point list of no more than 16 players on the roster. Each round would have the teams reset but the players needed to keep track of kO's and TD's scored. I also allowed each player to pick one card out of the the various special cards used for the game.

The Mighty Taco Bowl I Trophy as well as the lessor Assassin Award & Mr. TD award, we spared no expense1

Now that we had eight players I needed a fun trophy for the event which was secured at the local party store and then my brother said we need something to put in the trophies. So it was decided that hot sauce packets from a local Del Taco were just the perfect thing! My wife found a "Taco" hat, and we had our prizes for this glorious event. 

Our venue for the glorious Taco Bowl I would be at Funkatronic Rex Board Games and More here in Phoenix. Mike the owner just opened the store about a year and a half ago and was looking to do something with me. And with it being right next door to the Taco & Dilla Parlor, it was a no brainier.  Plus it got a few new folks to come over to his shop.

With that, we were set and 8 players arrived at Taco Bowl I and we were able to get in two games each. Here are a few pictures from the event.

Everyone had a great time, we had two old pros (Myself & Mike G) as well as some veterans (Kat & Derek) and the rest were all newbies (Jerry, Robert, Mychal and John) some had only played one time and that was a few years ago (more like 7 but who's counting!).

After all was said and done, we had three winners for the day. My son Mychal took home Mr. Touch Downs, Derek took the Assassin award and Mike G took home the big Taco, being the First Taco Bowl Champion!

The Big Winners!

All in all it was a very fun day and I used this event to dip my toe into the waters of running a bigger Blood Bowl event. I wanted to see how everything would shack out and I am trying to get folks to join me in playing a small league for BB, we shall see on that.

TK

Smoke and Death

Well,

Robert and I finally after about 5 years of painting and planning, got a small game of ACW Black Powder on the table. Now we have played larger games, but we had this idea that BP could be played on a smaller table (8'x4') with about two brigades each. Now some of our game friends had said that BP couldn't play on a smaller table due to the orders and how far movement can take place. But we were not convinced that would be the case, so we put it to the test. Now to be honest, Robert was waiting for me to get my two brigades completed, hence why it took so long.

The Battlefield

We each took two brigades worth of stuff, which each brigade having a Brigade commander and four regiments along with a gun. Model count for my Rebs, put me in the 220 figures or so. Roberts Union had a few more, with these model counts, it reminded us of the WAB armies we used to play with at 2000 points.

The Brigade General in the center.

With the armies chosen, we rolled off to alternate deployment, which the Union arrived first and began to deploy. I choose to deploy with a strong middle and a heavy right flank. keeping only one Regiment to hold the left flank. My plan was to push the center faster than the Union could out flank me. But this is BP and I am notorious for not passing command checks. But it was a plan and I tried to stick to it.

Right Flank

Well as the game began, the Union pushed across the table pretty quickly in the center, while the left flank stalled and his right flank pushed to the edge of the fields. My left pushed up to the edge of the fields and a stand off ensued

Left Flank holding off the Union

. 

My Left Flank was getting hammered but they held their ground and the poor Union troops could not pass through their own lines, apparently the volley fire was too much for them. This allowed me to get one of my guns up to start laying down fire to support the left flank.

Mean while the fighting in the center intensified and the Rebs started to make headways on the Union troops in the woods. The Rebs must have had to Grace of God on their side because they hardly suffered any casualties during the fight. One Regiment was able to take the bridge and pour Volley after volley into the Union troops.

About this time, the Union center started to fall apart and the Rebs started pushing them back. One Regiment was able to get across the river and enfilade fire into the Union troops. After two vollies, the Union troops retreated back across the river to leave the battle.

The Union feeling the pressure of the Rebs Advance

Needless to say the Union troops started to suffer more casualties and soon the battle was over with the Union having a broken Brigade. The Rebs had pushed the Yankees back across the River!

The Union Center collapses!

So, how did the game play, it played great! The movement orders that a few thought would be too much, never happened and the game felt very much like a WAB game of old. It was great to see that BP can be played in a smaller setting (if you say 200 models a side is small!). And I am sure that Robert and I will be doing this again in the very near future.

Union Surgeon doing his best.

Now really this game was more for us to re-learn the rules besides try out smaller armies. We will be doing the Battle of Salem Church in about a month or so which we will have well over 1600 models on the table and Oh, this is all in 28mm people!

Stay tuned for that coverage in about a month or so...

This is the end...

TK

Gentleman, Start your engines...

So,

On my Amazon Wish List I asked for this awesome board game from GMT Games called Thunder Alley. Its a Nascar racing game that I was introduced too by Mike over at DaGreenskins Blog with his crazy idea to upscale the game to 1/64th scale cars. The plan was to build this for con games and honestly, Mike likes doing cool things to games like up sizing them!

Well I wanted a copy for myself but never actually pulled the trigger to purchase it, but my brother settled that dilemma for me by purchasing it for me this past Christmas.

Thunder Alley is a very unique sort of racing game in that it uses cards to move the counters rather then rolling dice. You are also racing a team of cars of your own trying to get them to place as high as they can. This then will get you more points at the end of the race to determine a winner. Also, when you move a car, you could be moving the whole pack of cars, which to me is always making the game very interesting.

To make the game more interesting, there are event cards that are generated after everyone was gone. These events could be anything from restarts to major crashes on the race track, it is very amusing to see these events come up, especially when it effects the lead car.

This game is a traditional board and chit game, and everything in it is high quality and well produced. You do get a lot of counters and plastic bags for them, which was nice that they included those.

 My only issue, which was minor, is one of the boards I got was torn apart, it looked like it was a bad seam. The good news was that GMT games took care of replacing the board rather quickly, they have an online chat and I had a new board within days of contacting them. I offered to send the damaged board back, but they told me to keep it. Great service and very quick on helping me out.

Needless to say I got the game on the table with the wife and my brother and his wife on New Years eve. My brother and I enjoyed the game very much, the wives, not so much. I look forward to playing more of this game in 2018 and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a race game. I would have to say I enjoy the game more than Formula D, and that says a lot. I am also now eyeing there other race Game, Grand Prix which uses the same card activation as Thunder Alley.

TK

Goals for 2018, sort of...

Well,

I have been thinking about what goals I want to accomplish in 2018 for my hobby, I know it’s already started, but I wanted to just put something down on the old blog. One thing I noticed with my hobby is that it really hasn’t been my hobby for a while. My hobby time has always seemed to be focused on others hobby projects, which is not a bad thing, but I needed to figure out what “My” hobby is.

So, I had to go back in time to figure out when I was really enjoying my hobby of playing with toy soldiers. That time trip back had me the happiest when I was really working on my Lord of the Rings projects. I was building terrain, painting miniatures and staying focused on LotR. Before that it was WAB and many of the WW2 games my buddy Drunkensamuari were playing.

At first, I thought it was the games themselves that I was missing, which was part of it, but then I did some more thinking on the matter and identified one important part. The real key was the focus on the hobby, I was lacking focus on my hobby. I was all over the place with different projects and was just working on those to fill time. There was no real rhyme or reason to what I was doing, just working on whatever I wanted. Now this was not a bad thing, but I felt like I was not getting anything done. In years past I could see my progress because I stayed focused on one project and I was able to produce more terrain or painted figures. I was spending time reading about whatever project I was working on and planning new armies, collecting models for these projects and planning new terrain for those said projects.

That was my issue, a lack of focus on any of the things I was doing. I was just going through the motions of doing my hobby and had no real focus. I think part of the lack of focus was just how many games that I was playing or were about to come out. As most gamers, I want it all, but the realization is that I may be able to buy everything, but I will not be able to play everything. Last year I tried and purchased many games and some only made it to the table once, some never even hit the table. This was causing lack of focus and too some degree, stress in my stress-free hobby.

So, for 2018 I am going to try to stay focused on a few projects and actively work towards those. With that in mind, here are a few things I will try to stay focused on moving forward.

CAV SO

I will once again be working on CAV SO, I am also working with the author of the game to try and get more exposure for this great giant stompy robot game. I have a large collection of models that need to be built and painted as well as a large 28mm scale Dictator that needs to be built and painted.

WW2 in 28mm

Bolt Action has been the main game of choice for us here in my gaming group. So I am sure that will stay the same, but most of us would rather play the 1^st edition on the rules as to the 2^nd edition. To that end, Drunken and I are working on pacific theater armies, he with Marines and me working on Imperial Japanese. I am currently reading “With the Old Breed” by E.B. Sledge, this is a great book that covers the battle of Peleliu and Okinawa and gives you a glimpse of what it was like to fight in the Pacific theater.

Blood Bowl

I will continue to work on the back log of all the Blood Bowl figures I have, I am currently working on repainting my wife’s old Elf team. All I am doing is touch ups as opposed to repainting. Blood Bowl was my second GW game, and I have a passion for the figures and just love the idea of the game. I am doing a little get together for a few friends called Taco Bowl I, which will see about eight of us playing three games against each other.

Warhammer Quest

So, Last year my brother moved to Arizona, we used to play lots of Warhammer Quest. Since he moved to AZ, we have been monthly getting together to play. Well one of the first things he told me was that I needed to paint up all my Quest models. So, this past year I have been working towards having a fully painted Warhammer Quest set. I am close to getting there, that’s if I stop looking for old Warhammer Fantasy models to buy!

Space Hulk

So, this was the first GW game I ever bought and last year I picked up the new copy. One reason for picking it up was that I lost my copies of the rules and the Deathwing supplement of the rules. Another reason is I like the new models, so I plan to get a fully painted up copy of Space Hulk before the year is up. I got one game in already with Drunken before the year was up, look forward too many more.

Frostgrave

Well I have still a bunch of models that I need to get painted, Drunken and I have plans to get this out on the table more this year. So, I will be working on getting another Warband completed as well as a few more creatures for the game. I keep toying with the idea of doing some snow terrain, but not sure on that one.

Saga

Rumor mill has it that we are getting a new edition of Saga this year. When I heard about that I put a hold on my 2^nd Viking army as well as my Moor army. We are all waiting to see what the new rules look like, and if they work we will continue to play and I will get two more armies ready for play. Heck, I may just paint the Vikings just for the fun of it as well. 

Black Powder

Well the ACW project for BP is ending, although it seems that there are only a few of us still working on it. This weekend Drunken & I will be getting in a game to remember how to play. We have also been talking about the War of 1812, so we could see where that goes.

So, there you have it, 8 things that I will hopefully stay focused on in 2018, we shall see how that goes. Stay tuned folks…

TK

Where has the time gone?

Well

It has certainly been a very long time since I posted here, you may be wondering why? Well I just haven't felt like posting, I mean I have tried posting but then the urge passes and I am onto to something else. Also it seems that most folks (myself included) have switched over to posting either to Facebook or Twitter. Another thing that a few folks have mentioned on other blogs, it seems that blog readership is in decline. Well that is true, most of the blogs I do follow are in the same state as mine, so in order to try to reverse that, I am going to start reposting here.

So with that I guess the next question is what have I been up to then? Well recently I have been drug back into the GW hobby! You see, GW has been revamping their "Specialist" games. Well GW re released Blood Bowl. Well BB is my weakness and I knew I had to have it!

So now with the new box set in my hands I started,working on a proper Orc team. You see out of all of the teams I have collected I never built a Orc team for myself. A few years ago I did scratch build an Orc team for my son out of GW fantasy kit models. 

Well not be happy with stock models I started to convert the models. You see I hate to have duplicate models, and converting is part of the hobby after all.

With that, the Azog Orkinals were born, since I am a Arizona Cardinals fan, it seemed like the rich choice for the Orks, plus Orks love red, so I came up with Red white and green as the colors.

Well after I did this team, I sort of dug out a few of my older teams and started working on them. Since I first started playing Blood Bowl, I always wanted to,build a Halfling team,. Too me it is just plain funny that Halflings would want to play Blood Bowl and the size of the models is jfunny to see on the board. 

Well for years I have been slowly collecting models and finally I had enough and decide to get them painted up as well. Going with the funny side, I decided to paint them up in the Tennessee Titans colors, because after all, Halfling are such a might team! 

And then my brother and I got in a game and he said he would like to play a dwarf team. So once again I busted out a few models and asked what colors to paint up this new team. Well my brother took one look at the models and said how about purple and white like the Minosotta Vikings. 

So there you have it, a few new Blood Bowl teams for the new year. So I will start posting more this year to try to reverse to decline of blogs and get back to doing my hobby here. So stay tuned for more content on Cursed treasures. And remember to Eat Pacos Tacos!

TK

Time for War!

So,

Last weekend I got to Demo CAV: Strike Operations to my buddy Tom, it was also a quick chance to see if I was able to break down the rules for Talon Games into a quick play demo style of rules. I was given the task from Jon Walker of Talon Games to create a 4 or 5 page set of the rules just going over all the basics.

Rach Starter Set

Terran Starter Set

With two fully painted starter sets, Tom and I set out to demo the game. All in all I nailed all the core mechanics of the game, although I did forget to add the section about damaging (which I have corrected).

As well as showing Tom the game, I had a few folks come by to see what we were doing, it seems that Big Stompy Robots are a draw! Tom enjoyed himself and actually won the game by having only his Starhawk alive at the end of the game.

All in all it was a great showing for CAV: Strike Operations. In a few weeks I will be doing more demos and may hit up a few other stores in the local area as well as possibly heading down to Tucson to show off the game.

So as I mentioned above, I am contributing to Talon Games on CAV:SO and will be doing some further writing for them in the very near future. I will also be going down to Reapercon/CAVcon in October to help run games as well as answer questions about the game and future projects.

I have also set up the CAV: Strike Operations HQ Facebook group and I am the Admin for the group. I am also running the first ever CAV: SO paint competition on the group with prizes for 1st, 2nd & 3rd place, this is all being hosted on the CAV:SO HQ group at the above link.

Besides that, I am also working on my  Malvernians and have a new battle group.

I am thinking of taking this group to Reapercon/CAVcon in October, I have a few more models to paint up.

Oh and I am about to start writing my first ever fiction book, which I plan to self publish on Amazon. I have the blessing of Talon Games to set the book in the CAV: SO universe. In fact this weekend I plan to do a story synopsis of the book, I am a little nervous about writing fiction and I will not lie, it scare the pants off of me. But what scares us makes us stronger right???

So lots of CAV: Strike Operations going on around here, but I will confess, all these new GW games is making it very hard to stay focused on CAV!

TK

Oh Days of Old...

So,

With my brother moving out to Arizona, we have had a resurgence of Warhammer Quest. You see back in the day, we used to play the crap out of this game, our wives also enjoyed exploring the long lost dungeons and we all had characters that were starting to get pretty far advanced in levels.

But all good things pass, my brother and his wife moved out to Georgia, I moved out to Arizona and pretty much the game went up onto the shelf. Yes I did bring it down for a short while and actually ran a few games for a group of folks at my local store. But I was on to other games and slowly Quest slipped into the past.

During this long slumber, I actually acquired another almost complete set of the game from a friend that only really wanted a few of the miniatures. This second copy went up onto the shelf with my copy and there it sat.

Then about 6 months ago, my brother gave me the news that he was relocating to Yuma AZ, (I am in Phoenix) and he came out to stay for a weekend. While out he suggested we bust out Quest again. Now my good friend DrunkenSamurai mentioned he would be interested in trying out the game. So when my brother made the trip out, Quest came down off the shelf and hit the table again.

So with that, I set up a game night, which included my wife, my son (who loved watching us play back in the day), Drunken and his wife as well as my brother. I choose the DM role, flipping cards and running the monsters. A great time was had by all. We all agreed that we would retain the characters for the next time we all got together.

Well a few weeks pasted and my brother made another trip to the valley, in which prompted another night of Quest! Fun was had by all, except my wife, who's Wardancer set off a trap and fell into a pit, which wouldn't be so bad, but the group forgot to bring a rope and the Wizard did not have a levitate spell, so her character was trapped for eternity in the pit! So is the Warhammer Quest Gods, they are brutal at times.

Then last weekend I was visiting a friend in Kansas and he just happened to have the last piece of the Warhammer Quest puzzle that I needed, the Catacombs of Terror models! I had the campaign pack, but no models. So with an agreement to paint for him, I secured the models.

Then just today, my brother informed me that he would be back up in Phoenix on the 20th, and his game of choice, you got it, Warhammer Quest! So it looks like I will be painting up a bunch more models for this game night.

Which got me thinking, I need to start putting more paint on these classic models, I also need to come up with a better way to store said models. Right now they are just thrown into a box, no rhyme or reason, painted with unpainted. So I think I am going to try to paint up at least one new (old) model a week. I will try to get more done, but at least one a week is doable.

So it looks like Quest is back on the table, my family and friends are enjoying it and so am I. In fact I think I will take up more of a DM roll and actually design adventures instead of using the cards, that was always my goal, why not get started now on it!

So stay tuned for more Warhammer Quest posts folks...

TK

CAV Strike Operations

So,

Its been a short while since I last made an update, so here we go. Today's post is on Talon-Games CAV Strike Operations, a game about Combat Armored Vehicles (aka CAV's) or big stompy  robots! I first heard about this game from Reaper Miniatures sometime around 2010 or so while at my local game store here in town. Back then all the models were metal and I contemplated picking it up, but never did. You see, I was a big Battletech player many many years ago and ever since I left that system I toyed around with getting back into a robot combat game. But for whatever reason, I never picked it up and to be honest, I even picked up Heavy Gear and tried playing that, but just could not get into it.

My next run in with CAV was when Reaper Miniatures announced the new Kickstarter for CAV Strike Operations and the CAVs would be in Bones Material. Well a bunch of friends here got excited and backed the Kickstarter. Sadly I did not due to financial issues. But I had at least 4 friends back it, and my buddy, Mike over at DaGreenskins Blog,hooked me up with the first eight models Reaper did in the white Bones material. Then we had to wait for the kick starter to be fulfilled. So once the models arrived I got to painting them up with ideas of writing our own rules for Robot combat fighting game.

First Reaper Bones White material CAVs

But as things go, life got in the way with my own rules for robots fighting and the Kick starter dragged on. Also the white bones material was rather interesting to work with. The models I was given had slight bends in them on the gun barrels. I followed the Reaper instructions for heating them and cooling them to straighten them out. That last about 4 days and the bends came back to them. Last time I was at Adepticon, I even asked the Reaper guys about this and they were shocked that I was still having issues. I finally had to drill out the gun barrels and insert brass wire in them to keep them straight.Needless to say, I was not feeling very good about this new material and had reservations about the game.

Well the game finally came out and the new grey material was much better than the white stuff. But by the time all the guys here got their stuff, they were pretty much ready to move onto something else. I think part of that is the Kick Starter bubble, people get excited about these new games and then forget about them and move onto the next game or fund the next project.

Well about a year ago one of the guys that got all the stuff in the KS, asked if I was interested in picking up his set for the amount he paid into it for a trade in paint. So that following weekend I had a huge box of CAV models and more importantly the CAV Strike Operation rules. I wish I could say I was super excited about it, but I filed the models into the closet and the rule book onto the shelf to be looked at later.

Well, at the end of last year, I decided that I wanted to take a hard look at CAV SO again, so I pulled out the rules and started reading. I started to enjoy what was in there, in fact I then pulled out all the CAVs and started to assemble them and base them up. Then I found out that my buddy Merle in Kansas, was interested in the game as well. So he and I started talking about the game. He told me that he had talked with the author, Jon Walker while at Reapercon last October. If Merle was into the game i knew it had to be good. So with that I started going through the book and identified the faction I wanted to build, The Ritterlich Republic, a strange Germanic force that had a very WW2 vibe to them. SO with that I decided to paint up a few more CAV's, below are two Ritterlich CAV's, the Cataphract and Cougar, these are two CAVs from the 92nd Schwarzenwald Brigade, the Panthers.

 

I have about eight more Ritterlich CAVs to finish, but I am super excited about this game and you will see more CAV Strike Operations here on the blog in the very near future. So if your looking for a cool Robot combat game that is pretty cheap to get into, than CAV Strike Operations is for you! Now recruit, get signed up for some CAV combat!

TK

First trip into Frostgrave

Well,

Today DrunkenSamurai and I got in our first game of Frostgrave and in a nutshell, we both loved it. What an interesting game it was, we both just put together two Bands and threw down. We did not do any creatures, or specific scenarios. We just wanted to try the game out and get the mechanics of it down.

Necromancer Apprentice and a few men.

I ran a Necromancer Wizard, apprentice, two crossbowmen, two thieves, three thugs and a barbarian. Drunken ran a Summoner  band with Wizard, apprentice, two thieves, two bowmen and a couple of men at arms. Which was surprising that the two bands were pretty similar to each other.

Necromancer himself and a few more men.

Basically we just sort of bummed rushed each other to see how everything worked, since this was our first game. We placed the objectives and just started the game. Figuring out how to move was a challenge, with group activation and such, but we had both printed out the errata and figured it out.

Barbarian hiding behind a wall.

 Combat was pretty straight forward to figure out. We did have a funny situation were I had two Thugs fighting a Zombie (that Drunken had raised). My first Thug attacked, won the fight and only caused 4 wounds, leaving the undead beast with one wound. I then activated the second Thug, only to have him roll a 2 for the fight and loose to the zombie, who in turn killed him outright. We joked that Thug two was cocky and turned his head to congratulate his buddy, only to be attacked by the zombie and tear him apart. I guess he forgot got the Zombieland rule of Double Tap!

Drunkens warband, picture taken from his Twitter page

 When we got to Spell casting, my first attempts were pretty bad, and I wondered how my "Wizard" had become a Wizard, because he couldn't cast crap! Now the Apprentice on the other hand, must have been taking notes, because he was a casting fool. The best casting was when he cast Bone Dart at Drunkens Wizard and killed him outright since he couldn't resist it. I also had killed his Apprentice, but can not remember if it was with a spell or not. I need to remember these things so I could find out experience in later games.

Necromancer Warband

All in all it was a fun game, I actually got two objective markers off the board while Drunken had got none I think, maybe he got one, not sure. But all in all I got the win for the first game of Frostgrave in our little group.

Necro Band Close Up

 So what did I think, well it plays much different than I imagined and different from how it read. I liked the Initiative sequence, feels very much like LotR which of course I love. It made me really think about how I should move models especially about forcing combats.

The rest of the Necro band Close Up.

The movement seemed strange at first, with having to move first and second moves being half of your rate. It got funky when you are in rough terrain, but we figured it out.

Combats are pretty straight forward, and it once again reminds me of LotR, with the higher roll winning. In fact my new Rules use a very similar to Frostgrave, which is strange because when I wrote the Heroic rules, I had not seen Frostgrave.

Shooting is pretty straight forward as well, being much like combat. It is nice that its pretty much the same and keeps the game simple.

Spell Casting is very interesting, I really love if you miscast your spell, which we had a few of those today. I have heard from a few people that they did not like it, but it did not bother me at all. Choosing spells is a very important part of the game, funny thing today, I was playing a Necromancer Wizard, but did not have raise Zombie, Drunken did. So after I get more games in, I am sure it will get easier. I wish that Osprey would have continued to sell the Spell Cards that a guy on LAF had designed. But oh well.

The other part that I like about this game is the terrain, it is going to force me to look at more fantasy stuff like 4Ground lines that I have been eyeing for some time. Today I was able to bust out my old Osgilith terrain for LotR, which was good to have on the table again.

So all in all, I really really liked this game and Drunken and I will be doing more with it for sure in the future, so stay tuned, we will be returning to Frostgrave...

TK

Life is short, death is eternal! - Frostgrave

So,

I am pretty slow at jumping on the new game band wagon and it has taken me a while to get on this Frostgrave wagon. In fact, I picked up the game and first Nickstarter when it came out and promptly stuck the book on the shelf and miniatures in the closet, until this weekend.

Well what happened this weekend to make me bust it out? Well I hosted a Warhammer Quest game for a few family members and friends and the itch to do some fantasy gaming kicked in. So with that inspiring me, I busted out what  I had and started thinking of what sort of warband I wanted to assemble for the game.

Being an old Warhammer Fantasy Undead player, I knew I wanted to try out a Necromantic Wizard with apprentice. With that decided, I tried to think what sort of people would follow a Necromantic wizard that  pursues death. So the next choice was taking a apprentice which cost me 200gc out of the 500 I had to spend. Then I decided that I needed two Crossbowmen at 50gc, one to hang out with the wizard and one with the apprentice. That meant I had spent 100 gc for the crossbows, 200gc left over. So I went for not one, but two Thief's at 20gc each, there job was to go after treasure quickly and bring it back to the Wizard. After that I choose three thugs as cannon fodder and after all the Wizard doesn't care about life, so cheap troops works to throw away. This took me to 9 models and left me with 100gc left over, so I decided the Wizard would hire a Barbarian to watch over him and protect him while casting.

Necromantic Wizards Warband.

So with the models figured out, I decided that the back story would be a Necromantic Wizard and apprentice approached a Thieves Guild to offer his services as a wizard to the guild. But the Necromantic wizard only wanted cheap, dispensable lives that he didn't really care about, and who would care if a few thieves disappeared from town. Plus it made getting bodies easier for his necromantic incantations and would allow him to practice raising the dead!

So there you have it, my Necromantic War band for Frostgrave, the wizards motto is Life is Short, But Death, that is Eternal!

TK

Point 213 Progress - Germans Complete

Well,

This weekend saw the last models I will be contributing to the Point213 game completed, Two Tiger I's.

Two Big Cats

Once again, these are Warlord models and went together pretty fast. Once assembled I primed both models flat black. Once that dried, I then applied Vallego Middlestone by sort of wet drybrushing onto the models. Once the first coat was dried, I applied a second coat of Middlestone to the models.

Wet drybrush of Middlestone applied.

Once that was dry. I started on the tracks and other details like the tools on the deck and such. This went pretty quickly since the Tigers don't have too many detail to pick out. Interestingly I bought the Rubicon German Stowage and was going to apply some of these to the Tigers, but as I looked at pictures, I could really not find too many that had extra stowage on them, especially the ones in Normandy. I chatted about this with Drunkensamurai, and he has a great Tiger book and it seems that only Tigers on the Eastern front had pictures with extra stowage. The Germans seemed pretty fanatical about keeping the Tigers in clean good shape and seemed to have been supplied via other means rather than the crew having to haul it around with them. So long story short, no extra stowage was modeled for these two.

Camo Applied, do you see me?

After the tracks and details were painted, I applied the camo to the tanks using Vallejo German Cam Brown and German Reflective Green. I actually struggled with which camo scheme to apply to these kitties, but in the end with a rather simple design. Once I was satisfied with the camo pattern, I then used Army Painter Strong Tone all over the models and let them sit to dry. Once that had completely dried, I then applied decals to the vehicles using the smaller numbers in the Rubicon decal sheet instead of the larger ones that Warlord supplied. I choose to use Tank Numbers 234, which Herbert Steif commanded and tank number 221 which was George Hantsch commanded. Both of these tanks were at the real Point 213 Battle and were part of Michael Wittmans platoon.

Herbert Steif Tiger
 

George Hantsch Tiger

Once the decals set, I then applied a dry brush of Americana Mississippi Mud color to the whole model, this gives the tanks a light layer of dust and just the right amount of weathering. Once again Tigers were kept pretty clean and I can't stand when modelers go crazy with the weathering effects. If you talk to most tankers (current and past) they kept heir tanks in pretty good condition since it is/was their home away from home. So just a simple weathering effect looks better than going nuts.

And there you have it, two more tanks completed for the Point 213 game. So since I completed these, on Sunday I went down to Drunkensamurai's place and we started working on the 48 linear feet of bocage that will be needed for this game. We are doing the Bocage in 6" sections (once a tank successfully crosses bocage you remove a section per the BA rules) and were using pink insulation foam for the base of the bocage.

Here is about 40 of the sections of Bocage!

 We cut the bases out and beveled them, then cut various heights of pink foam and glued them to the bases. Once that set we went back and filled any gaps and cut the foam into more random shapes. Drunken will be adding some of the section we cut off glued to various sides to give them a more robust, plump look to them. Once that is done, we will be painting them dark brown and applying Woodland Scenics coarse ground foam and applying a ton of glue to harden them up.

So stay tuned friends, the Battle for Point 213 game progress' forward...

TK