Dropzone Commander

I've been looking at this game for awhile now.  I mentioned it in this post, in fact, as one of the games I'm hoping to check out in the next four months.  As launch gets closer I'm getting more and more excited about both the models and the rules.

The cover looks like it really captures the flavor of the game.

Dux Britanniarum Pre-orders up

The latest game from TooFatLardies is finally up for pre-order.  Dux Brit is a game covering the period following Rome's retreat from Britain and the invasion of the Saxons.  It fits nicely in the period between Hail Caesar and Saga, for me.  It also comes with a really slick sounding campaign system, which I'm hoping can be modified for other game systems.

Sci-Fi Monday - Star Drives

The Kang-Smith Jump Drive.

Extra solar system human space travel became feasible when the Kang-Smith jump drive was developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA in 2237.  The KS drive allowed ships to disappear in one location and reappear up to three light years distant, instantaneously.  Later improvements to the KS drive allowed jumps of up to seven light years.

The jump drive, as it is called, is powered by a battery system, the Twitch Battery, which discharges all of its energy in one giant release.  The battery is then recharged via the ship's fusion engines.  Initial battery/engine combinations took up to three days to recharge, limiting the speed of a ship to approximately six light years a week.  Later developments allowed two battery sets to be carried, and recharged in only two days, enabling  a jump per day, or two in rapid succession.  When combined with the longer jump distances, of seven light years, this improved the speed of a jump ship from six light years per week to 49 light years per week.

Update

I haven't been posting much lately because I haven't finished a thing.  My normal posts seem to be either painted minis or battle reports.  That doesn't mean that I haven't been doing anything, just that none of it has fit into either of those categories.  So here's what has been going on.

A 15mm dropship, in the making.

Sci-Fi Monday - The Fury Reach

This is the first of Sci/Fi Monday articles.

This post is going to be a long one.  No pictures, just a wall of text.  If you don't want to read it, no worries.  It's the history of the Fury Reach, the background for my sci/fi campaign area.  Once I have this out of the way I can start working on the fun stuff.  Fun for you that is, I like this sort of thing.

The Fury Reach was colonized during the Fifth Wave of human expansion.

More after the jump.

Sci/FI Monday

Now that I'm back at work I've been having a much harder time finding both time and desire for hobby.  Working two jobs just kicks my butt.  By the time I've gotten the boys to bed it's all I can do to read everyone else's blogs.

In an effort to kick things up a notch I'm going to devote Mondays to science fiction.  Every Monday I'll have a post about Sci/Fi.  I was going to start this last week but I had food poisoning and just wasn't up to it.  I was so sick that I was throwing up things I haven't even eaten yet.

The first few posts will lay out the background for my Sci/Fi setting.  I don't know about the rest of you but I need to have a context to put my games in.  Even if I'm not playing an actual campaign I can still place the battles into a campaign like context.

I've written the first post, and it's a doozy.  I won't blame you if you can't wade through the whole thing.  I'll be posting it up on Monday morning, if I can remember before I head off to work.  That will get it up in prime time for my UK followers and it will be waiting for the lunch crowd here in the States.

Battle Report - Harad/Dwarfs vs Easterlings/Gray Company

This game doesn't lend itself to my usual narrative battle report style; so it's a good thing I've already decided to just do it as a pictorial report.

This game was a four person, team game.  Nick and I had just finished our game of Force on Force and were going to start a game of LotR when Jonathan and his brother arrived.  This was perfect as it let us play four on four.  We played the same scenario as the last two reports.

Since the brothers wanted to be on the same team we ended up with odd match ups, good/evil on each side.

I'm on the left with the Easterlings, and some rangers, opposite me.  I parked in the ruins for most of the game.

Battle Report - Harad vs Gondor

I played a couple of games of LotR last week.  It's too much effort to write them both up, so I'll tell the story through pictures.

The first battle was against the Traveller.  We were brewing up a batch of beer, and smoking some meat, so we were running in and out all day.  He chose Gondor and I had my Haradrim.  We played the same scenario as in the shop the week before.  There were three objectives (yellow dice, I really need to make some).  Warband deployment but within six inches of the table edge.  Extra points for wounding and killing the enemy general.

Rangers in one set of ruins.  Most of my army is bottom right.  One warband top right, opposite Faramir.

Battle Report - Force on Force

I finally got in my first game of Force on Force.  Verdict?  I loved it.  The game was fast and furious, very tactical and had plenty of room for cinematics.  It seemed to capture a realistic, but fun, simulation of combat, not getting bogged down in details.  It has a quick mechanism for including variables that makes attachments and weapons count, but doesn't slow the game down.  I ordered Tomorrow's War last night based on how this game played.

The setup.  Two infantry patrols meet in a destroyed village.

Battle Report - Harad and Corsairs vs Wood Elves

Last League night we had four players for the club night.  We were prepared for a three person game, with each of us bringing a 300 pt list and a 600 pt list.  Happily that was not necessary as Jake joined Jonathan, Tony and I for the game; and a real corker it was too.

This pretty much sums up this game for me.

Battle Report - Harad vs Elves

Sunday was Father's Day, here in the states.  For me it meant a new grill, with a smoker, gaming, family time and no responsibilities.  It was a great day.  The Traveller and I smoked some ribs and brisket and got a game of LotR in during the intermissions.  Sadly, my shade monkey was not out helping me.

The, self described, shade monkey.  It wasn't even Father's Day yet. 

On the workbench

I haven't had a lot of hobby time lately.  I had almost two months of leave when I got back from Afghanistan, which meant that I got a lot of time to work on my minis.  Now I'm back to my real job, which is not leaving me much time, while I get locked back in.  Stuff has been piling up, but I have this weekend to start nailing some of it down.

I'm actually working on all of that right now.  It totally makes sense in my mind.

Four month plan +

There's a lot I want to do this year, since I'm trying everything that catches my fancy for twelve months.  I've called it the year of rules but I'm also dabbling in scales, mediums and genres.  The only real rule I have is that all of my gaming activities have to be games.

This year I'm deliberately being a gaming magpie.

Offering of Toy Soldiers for no cost.

A quick note for two give aways going on right now.  One is guaranteed and the other is a prize draw.  The first one is from The Assault Group.  If you go to their Facebook page and like them, they will give you a free mini of your choice from the Freebies section of their website.  Just like them, put a comment on their page and they will contact you and arrange to send you your free mini.  Great stuff.


The second give away is a prize draw.  This one is from Frontline Gamer and involves the usual, become a public follower of his site, make a comment, get entered for a new model.  Good stuff.  In the interest of full disclosure, I now get to entries in the bag.  Details can be found here.  This prize is for reaching 700 followers.  He has two more in the works, at 750 and 800, so, really, this is just a win-win since his blog is worth reading on its own merits.

Edit - I changed the title of this post as it was obviously attracting scum sucking spammers.

Battle Report - Harad vs Gray Company

Thursday night is club night, though there were only two of us there, as is usual these days.  Jonathan brought his new Gray Company list, which I have never played against before.  This was a real nail biter of a game, and one of the closest I've ever played.  We played a straight up fight.  Kill to 25%.  First one there loses.

Initial set up.

Product Review - Sabre Dropship from Rebel

I took advantage of Rebel Minis sale, last month, and picked up a couple more Sahadeen weapons teams as well as four more Vipers and a Sabre drop ship.  It was quite a bit of swag for not much money.

Image from Rebel Minis

The Games that Define Us

An interesting tide is sweeping our small section of the blogosphere.  I refuse to use the M word (meme, there I did it, but only this once).  It started with the Frontline Gamer, whose blog I've pimped out before.  Several others have done it as well.  The topic has been bubbling around in my mind for a couple of weeks now, and it's finally germinated into something.

The idea is to talk about ten games that define you as a gamer.  Some interesting things have come out of it.  More North American gamers seem to have gotten in through RPGs, whereas the UK gamers seem to have come into it through GW.

In my case, I definitely follow the trend, coming to GW late in my gaming life.  There are some on my list that I have not seen anywhere else.  Others seem to be on every list.

First Mini Ever

Rhys is in love with the Lord of the Rings.  It's no Star Wars, mind, but it's a very close second.  When I play on Thursday nights I usually have him with me at the store.  He used to call it Daddy's store.  Then he started calling it Rhys and Daddy's store, which we still do.

 Collectormania is a very friendly store, where they have known Rhys his whole life.  It is under the second set of management, in the time we have been going, but it has kept the same vibe.  They have a box of star wars minis, the soft rubber pre-painted ones, that they keep around for kids to play with.

I take Rhys in and he plops down at a table, out of the way, and plays with the star wars guys on some un-used terrain.  He will also take breaks and watch me play LotR.  He loves the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.  He desperately wants to play.  I've worked with him on the basics, moving guys, counting pips on dice, that sort of thing.  He needs practice, but he's getting there.

SWMBO brought this haul home last night.  I'm so excited.  For the boys, of course.  Not me.  That would be silly.

He also loves the minis.  Sadly, he likes to play with them like he does with his Legos, which is bad for the minis, to say the least.   Two years ago the manager of the shop gave me some Celtos minis which weren't leaving the shelves.  They were, explicitly, for Rhys to paint.

He's a fairly splendid sculpt.  I hope he appreciates the sacrifice he is about to make.

This year he has finally decided that he is interested in painting.  He has been badgering me to let him help me when I am painting.  Nothing presentable would come of that, but there are other answers.  I remembered the Celtos models and pulled them out for him.  He was very excited by that, but saw the flaw, in that they weren't based.  All models have bases of course.

The "Master".  I went with a lighter primer so he could see the detail more easily.

Rhys first had to pick a model to be the "Master", (he loves him some Star Wars).  Once he had that task completed it was just a matter of prepping the model.  I glued it to the base, then I helped him get the mold lines off.  He missed a couple, but I left them so he could see exactly why "flash sucks".  I primed it for him yesterday.  This weekend we are going to set up a small painting station for him, next to mine.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does with this, and to spending the time with him.

Monthly Retrospective 4

Another month is done.  I'm still having a hard time keeping up with how quickly this year is going.  It's time for my obsessive compulsive side to kick in and take stock of May.  Considering I was on vacation for two weeks, with no internet or hobby access, I'm pleased with how it went.

Deals and Specials

There are a lot of sales and deals going on in the brave new age of wargaming that we are living in.  The 15mm Sci/Fi manufacturers often have nice sales.  "Tuition is due for my daughter, 20% off on everything."  It's nice doing business with a small company.

This is what twenty random sprues look like.  Awesome.

Then you have the big players.  Not GW big, but second tier big.  Folks like Mantic.  They recently had one of their wacky sales; for twenty five pounds you got twenty random sprues and a messenger bag.  That is a heck of a deal in my book.