SELWG 2013: Crystal Palace

     

It was that time of the year for me to go again and visit Crystal Palace, a grade two listed building, and take my friend Trevor and his son Oliver to SELWG on what turned out to be a rather wet day.  As you can see Oliver is now taller than his dad.  

We bumped into Graham as we entered the show and had a natter, as one does, before diving in and see what the show had to offer this year.

The first game that caught my eye was this very nice 6mm Very British Civil War game battling for the control of Croydon Airport, which I believe was put on by a father and his two sons.

Wondering around the show it seemed less busy than last year, which I would put down to the appalling weather putting people off.  It was that or the economic recession, take your pick.  Nice to see youngsters in attendance too. 

Oh if only I had the time, money and room to play Napoleonic naval games at this scale. I also spoke to Jon and Mel at GZG, and Paul who came up and introduced himself as an occasional reader of my blog.  

Hi Paul!  

Anyway, Jon apologized for not having the new 6mm not VOTOMS cast up in time for this show, but promises me definitely by Salute. I've promised him more conversions when he has got the first lot I did cast.  

He also mentioned some not VOTOMS at 25mm for 15mm power armour, or robots etc.

Yes he is looking at me as I took this and saying don't put me in the picture, but relented when he saw it was me and the chance of fame and glory from appearing on my log. Who am I kidding here?  

Peter Pig demonstrating their new Vikings game called Longships: The Wrath of the Vikings.  I really like their rules and play AK47 from them, and his figures and exquisite. Now all I've got to do is get around to painting the ones I bought several years ago.

Trevor and Oliver playing 7TV by Crooked Dice as the Federation bad guys, or something approximating Blake 7 bad guys, and losing to a couple of seven year old's. Oh how we laughed. 

Okay, oh how I laughed. They took it well and had a fun game. Oliver's only complaint was that there were no Zombie games being run this year. He likes killing zombies, what can I say?

 

A Lace War's game put on by SEEMS: South East Essex Military Society, which I was a member of a long time ago. They always put on a good looking table.

Finally, Oliver at home painting up his squad of miniatures for a game called Mercs that he had to assemble immediately we got in the door. I think I can say a job well done, and the another generation of wargaming ensured.

Gruntz

 

Last week I received in the mail a copy of Gruntz.  Some of my readers may remember I reported playing Gruntz at last years SELWG, which you read about here.  I enjoyed playing the game, helped by the fact that I won, and receiving the prize of the day and have been wanting to review the rules for Henry for some while.  So now that I have a copy of the rules in my grubby paws my plan is to start work on the review at the end of the month; this down to being in the middle of finishing a novel, which you can read about here, and wanting to play another game or two to refresh my memory of the rules next weekend at SELWG.  I've been following the development of Gruntz over the years (scroll down for picture) and have to say this is one fine looking rule book where I know for a fact has been extensively playtested and revised in light of feedback from the players.

Look, I'll let you into a little secret now.  Promise you won't tell anyone.  It's going to get a good review from me, so go buy a set now and then read my review later.  You'll be glad you did.

I will also be putting a game report and overview as a follow up on here, once the review has been published in Miniature Wargames, along the lines of my Heavy Gear review game I've played.  Though be warned, I will be playing my games using 10mm figures, because that is what I have, and to show that one can do crazy things like that.  So more to come.
  

Ogre Miniature Variant

Remember the above from here. It's my unfinished sculpt of the Ogre Ninja. There are lots of reasons, some good, some pretty lame as to why this little beauty hasn't been finished.

One reason is that an official miniature is now available from SJG. The other is the amount of work required to finish it that I could spent doing other things

I've made a decision to finish it, but not as a Ninja, but as a Mark-2 Scout variant based on some stats from Henry Cobb's page here. Henry has to be one of the leading lights on Ogre stats, and has a lot of useful stuff on his web page. Check it out.

Anyway, to quote from here;

However if the Ninja was produced without the Missile Rack at first (until it was proven on the Mark-IV) and simply had the rest of its armament then it's load factor would be less than the Mark-V. And then you could assume that stealth was also in development until 2087 or so. The cost for this Ninja-Minus would only be 74 VPs (2 missiles in tubes, 1 MB, 2 SB, 8 AP, 5 treads per hex times 4 hexes of move) and it could have been seen as a scout replacement for the Mark-II until the stealth and rack technologies were available. Then when the Mark-IV was deployed, the Ninja was obsolete as a pure scout and so redeveloped with stealth and missile rack. 

So, that's what I'm going to do with this model, because it makes it unique.

Thinking about this has also made me start imagining a NAC Mark 1 variant that would stylistically be a better fit with the classic Winchell Chung designs, mostly down to the fact that I don't like the current Mark 1 & 2 models. By that I mean they're perfectly nice models, but they look more like Pan European mini-Fencers than precursors of the classic Mark 3 & 5 designs.

YMMV. More thoughts and pictures in due course.

Expanding My Ogre Combine Forces

It's been almost a year, a long time really, since I've looked to expand my Ogre/GEV forces. I've been having a bit of a sabbatical from my miniature wargaming this year having been working on writing three novels, which, if you should so desire, you can read about here?

Anyway,  The above picture shows my next stage of expansion of my forces. Last year I was very lucky to be able to purchase some more Combine miniatures from Daniel who was going over to Austin to be the new Ogre line developer. 

Hence the unpainted models waiting to be assembled in due course.

As you can see I did somehow managed to paint the first colour on the North American Combine miniatures I had squirreled away in my maturing box that were previously shown here, you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page.

As a reminder I've had these models sitting around waiting for me to do something with them for a very long time indeed. How long? Twenty years, which is a bit embarrassing really, except I do have the excuse of going off to train to be a nurse... and working... and other stuff like that.

The obvious observation is that miniatures don't paint themselves, and it takes time to get an army together. I've been looking through my notes on the number of armour units and infantry one needs to be able to play GEV scenarios and have identified a shortfall of miniatures in a number of areas.

However, getting these as a MiB is proving problematical as they're Warehouse 23 specials, and not generally available product, which means I'm not going to be able to realistically have enough miniatures to run GEV scenarios this year at Dragonmeet.

Next year, fingers crossed this situation will have changed

Robot Fire Breathing Dragon

  

All it needs is frickin laser beams coming out of its eyes and the robot apocalypse can begin.

  

The Chains of Command

My copy of Chain of Command arrived earlier this week and has that lovely new book smell when I opened it to read.  Now some of you may well be asking why I bought a set of WW2 rules given that this is not one of periods that I play?  A good question indeed, and my answer is that I'm a rule junky.  I like to read wargame rules that challenge my preconceptions and stretch my imagination and Too Fat Lardies publish fascinating rule sets that do precisely that.

My intention is to use these rules for Inter War games say for the Spanish Civil War, which I do have an interest in, or adapting them for WW1 games, and even stealing the mechanisms for Vietnam era games.  Somewhere deep and dark I have an idea about using the command and control aspects of the game for a near future SF game involving power armour, drones and cybertanks etc.  Muwuhuhahaha!

Anyway, after reading these, watching some games being played and hanging around with disreputable people talking all things Lard, I recommend that you just go and order this set of rules today.  The book is just so chock full of ideas that it ought to have a waning label that says full of addictive fun rules that will make your head explode.
  

Conquering Mars

As you can see Curiosity, our favourite atomic powered cybertank, is now watching the skies of Mars.  I live the future vicariously through our robot friends who are fun to be with.

I'm currently processing the germs that I picked up at last weeks Nine Worlds GeekFest convention.

There's a reason that conventions generally only run for three days, and that is down to what is lovingly called con crud.

On a happier note I went and spent my Steve Jackson Games MiB points at Warehouse 23 today, and an order of Ogre miniatures is now being process and will be sent to me soon. I doubt that they will arive in time for me to paint them for Dragonmeet as I opted for the cheapest shipping option, which means they may be some time getting here.

For those of you who are interested in such things I ordered the following:

2   Ogre Mark I
2   Ogre Mark II
2   Ogre Vulcan Drone
2   Bigfoot Mobile Howitzer
8   Yankee Light Tank
4   Alamo Superheavy Tank
1   Doppelsoldner
1   Fencer Cybertank

So yes Dorothy. Ogre miniatures are back in stock at Warehouse 23. For the first time this year I actually feel interested in panting some more miniatures, and I'm looking forward to these arriving. 

Edit:  Convention review here.

Nine Worlds GeekFest 2013

 

Just a quick update that I'm attending Nine Worlds GeekFest 2013 this weekend, which is being held at The Raddison Edwardian and The Renaissance hotels at Heathrow. I'm attending as both a punter, a MIB demo agent, and as a panelist.

My original intention was just to go as a punter as I had supported the KickStarter way back when, but then Roger announced that the MIB were going and could I bring my Ogre miniatures so we could run demos?  

I said yes, with the proviso that as I had paid for a ticket I didn't want to be tied down all weekend on a table and not see anything.  

Now my friend John asked for a woman for a Friday evening panel talking about superheroes on the small screen; and so it begins.

I shall try and take photos and post a report after the event. 

NB: Late addition to this post. The report can be read here.
  

Giant Robo Danger Close

I went with my partner to see Pacific Rim this week on our usual Orange Wednesday 241 deal, which makes the whole cost of going out to see a movie far more palatable.  Went to a 2D showing, because I'm not all that impressed with most 3D, Avatar excepted, and the show timing was better for us.

This is not going to be a review as such.  I thought Pacific Rim was the best B movie I have seen this year.  I was rooting for the heroes, cheering them on and loved every minute of it.  However, this paean to the Japanese giant robo monster genre by Guillermo del Toro while visually stunning and hitting all the right notes and tropes left me feeling a bit hollow.

This is mostly down to the fact that my first love is real robo shows like Gundam Universal Century, Fang of the Sun Dougram and VOTOMS, where this is more emphasis on the pilots.  Even so Pacific Rim rocked my boat and like most anime fans I had fun spotting the shout outs.

As for playing games I might look at the HeroClix models that have just been released, but of course one could always adapt Monsterpocalypse CMG, or The Creature That Ate Sheboygan for playing games monster munching robo mayhem.
  

Ghost in the Blog

  

 

Been a while since I posted anything and you can blame it all on my current obsession with writing novels.  If you want to know more then go here.  My plan, muwahaha, is to write three first drafts of three novels and then go back and rewrite them as my way of ascending the learning curve that is becoming a novelist.

Anyway,  I thought I'd mention I've been watching Girls Und Panzers*, which for those of you who do not follow such things is a Japanese anime show about school girls learning the martial art of Panzerfahren (the sport of driving tanks).  It's every bit as zany, off the wall mad that one comes to expect from Japan, and is a hoot.  In fact I thought about playing games based on Girls Und Panzers using TooFat Lardies Chain of Command rules, if only for shits and giggles.

Good news for Henry, if he is reading this, is that I have now played enough games of Dropzone Commander that I feel confident in submitting my review to Miniature Wargames.  That should be winging its way by email any day now.  I like the game, but you'll have to wait to read the review in the magazine to know more.

*I know that the post title is an allusion to Ghost in the Shell and really doesn't have a direct like to Girls Und Panzers, but given you all might be thinking I'd given up the ghost on this blog I thought it apposite.