Look what came in the post today!

A week or so ago Spinning Dice Games were running a little competition via facebook and twitter, you can see their blog post about it here with the two prizes of tickets to Salute up for grabs, along with a sprue of Mantic Games' minis.

I retweeted the competition and even threw one of my own hats in the ring too with an entry via twitter.

Well... a few days later I received a DM on twitter from the Dave Chung, the founder and manager of Spinning Dice Games saying that I'd won one of the prizes.

A Snoopy Happy Dance ensued on my part.

:-)

I even got a sprue of the Mantic Games Orcs in there too (I like these models) - bonus! A friend of mine has an army built with Mantic Orcs and they look very cool indeed.

In other news...

I've completed my Anglo Danes for Saga now which means I have a fully painted 6pt force to use - I'll do a separate post about them another time.

I've also been working my way through my Sedition Wars minis, cleaning and putting them together.

Plus,  a bit out of nowhere I've somehow ended up building a German Flames of War force for use in Eastern Front battles. I currently have just about 750pts available so will be getting that to the table in 2-3 weeks time.

Miniature Painting 2012 - bit of a plan

Over on the Meeples and Miniatures blog Neil has recently published a plan of the miniatures he wishes to paint this year. (If you pop over to take a look at his post you'll see that it's pretty ambitious!)

Neil's post gave me a bit of a mental prod so I thought I'd put an outline of a plan together myself.

Like many miniature gamers I've got a large collection of unpainted minis and accessories (along with many 'Works in Progress') and I'm determined to actually put a bit of a dent in the masses this year.

With this in mind I'm attempting to complete my Anglo-Danes for use with Gripping Beast's SAGA Dark Ages game in January. It's going pretty well at the moment as, at the time of writing, I've got 24 out of the 37 minis finished to a reasonable tabletop standard.

Here's a WIP group shot - note I'll be doing the bases once I've got all of the miniatures painted.

Back left: Warriors. Back Right & Front: Hearthguard

I've added a little list of my painting output at the top of the right-hand column of the blog to show progress as I go through the year.

Anyway, back to the plan.

Here's my rough and ready list for the next few months - I'm not specifying what will be first, it's more a pick and mix list as the whim takes me:

• SAGA Anglo Danes
• Malifaux Gremlins - So'mer Starter & Mosquito (starting from bare metal)
• World of Twilight Devanu (finishing a current work in progress)
• Studio McVey Strain (starting from bare resin)
• Studio McVey Vanguard Troops (starting from bare metal)
• 40k Blood Angels Scouts (finishing a current work in progress)
• 40k Blood Angels Tactical Squad (finishing a current work in progress)
• 40k Ork Runtherd & 10 Grots (finishing a current work in progress)
• 15mm Classical Indian FOG Command Elephant (finishing a current work in progress)
• 6mm Ancient Briton Warriors WMA Unit (finishing a current work in progress)

I'll be having another look at the options once we get to March/April and I know what I've actually completed (and if any new things that have grabbed my attention).

It's been a funny old year...

Well, we're nearly at the end of the year and it was February when I last posted to this blog. Back then I was posting to say that I was about to post more content. Obviously that didn't work out too well - doh!

I've had a busy, if funny (as in strange), old year.

On the non-gaming front I've been ruminating about changing the direction of my career and, when there's bills to pay and family commitments to consider, this takes up quite a lot of brain space. I now know how I'm going to progress things so next year is looking to be a year of transition for me. More on that later on.

The past twelve months have been pretty good on the gaming side of things. The first half of the year saw me playing lots of games on a weekly basis but this burst of activity tailed off in the autumn to fortnightly games and I'm currently in a bit of a 2-3 week rate at the moment. The main reason for this is that I've been juggling some pretty extensive home improvements with working for myself (and family stuff) in the latter part of the year so time has been in very short supply. We're having a pause in the home improvements over winter so I'm expecting to get back to more regular gaming in Jan/Feb.

What have I been playing this year?

Mostly Warhammer 40k, Warmaster Ancients, Kings of War and lately SAGA. Along with the miniatures based games I've played a whole raft of board games too.

Games not played properly yet (just a few test games with them) but I'm planning on getting to the table more regularly next year include Secrets of the Third Reich, Cutlass and FOG ancients. I'll also be playing a lot more board games, dice games and card games as they seem to be being released at an ever increasing rate - which is great!

Looking ahead into next year...

The big thing for me in gaming next year will be a project I've been kicking around for quite some time now. I'll talk more about it in a separate post but it's something myself, my brother and a chap you might know are working on - we're aiming at a spring launch.

Next year should be a lot of fun.

I've not heard that name in a long time, a long time...

I've not posted on here for nearly a year and that's pretty feeble by any stretch of the writers block.

So consider this a small rumble of distant thunder before I actually come back and post some 'proper' content.

I've been playing a lot of games (40k, Warmaster Ancients and lots of board games) over the past 12 months, painted some minis and pushed a couple of game designs closer to completion. So I've got a fair bit to talk about, I just need to get some sort of rhythm going with regards sitting down and writing it all up.

Back Soon.

Setting up terrain & objectives in games of 40k (or any other wargame)

Over on Ron's 40k fromthewarp blog he's recently posted a piece about using area terrain features without a clearly defined area (no base/hard edges).

It's an interesting approach more akin to True Line of Sight (TLOS) skirmish gaming than the competitive mass combat game that 40k has become over recent years. (Yes 40k uses TLOS but it's a bit of hybrid in practice).

He also brushes on another topic which is a bit of a pet niggle of mine in 40k - that of setting up the terrain before a game.

I see many people place terrain in a strategic fashion, taking it in turns to lay pieces on the board, trying to ensure they're in useful/advantageous positions once the game gets going. This procedure results in an uninspired table layout IMHO.

I much prefer to set the terrain up as though it is a real place. Ruins are arranged so that they look like they form part of a big building complex. Craters are positioned to look like the were part of a bombardment on the buildings and other features are placed in appropriate places as if it were 'real'. It helps to think of the story of the region to guide you when placing the terrain - even for one-off games.

For me this makes the games much more visually pleasing and also forces players to use their forces differently than if they'd purposefully positioned the perfect firebase building/s in a deployment zone and forceably created clear corridors of fire for their mass shooty force etc.

I can understand that some players might see this as part of the game, but for me it's just not as engaging.

In a similar vein the positioning of objectives is often seen as a strategic part of the game - I can understand that, I just don't find that way of positioning objectives very entertaining.

I often find myself thinking why would that bare piece ground in the far corner of the tabletop (in a deployment area) be important when that whacking great tower dominating the centre of the table isn't? It jars with my sense of the 'reality' of the game, sure it's just a game of toy soldiers, but for me the story unfolding on the tabletop is half the fun and that story needs some sense of reality.

I prefer to see objective markers placed onto a feature that would be captured on the battlefield rather than on a tiny spot that just makes things awkward from a 'gamey' point of view.

What do you think?