Xmas games

Some games I got for Christmas:

Back to Posting

Let's try and start this blog again.

I held my annual gaming party last week, and I'd say it was pretty successful. I am glad it's over since it's a fair amount of work putting it together, mainly because I ran a game of Carnage and Glory and that required a lot of miniature painting. Speaking of which, here are some photos:









I plan on taking a break from ECW for a bit. Next I'm going to assemble and paint up some modern vehicles to use with the Force on Force reprinted rules from Ambush Alley and Osprey.

Is it 1988?

When I was 16 I had a friend named David who both really smart (his SAT scores were like the 4th highest in the state of MD) and had all kinds of cool stuff, probably due to the fact that his parents were divorced. I was very envious of him since he had a computer and a cd-changer, the kind that had a magazine that you loaded. I can still picture him playing The Bard's Tale while listening to Love and Rockets. You see, I loved computer games long before I ever owned a computer, and only had a cd player, that, you know, didn't have a bad-ass magazine that you could load with 6 cd's. (Speaking of computer games, I used to drool over this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpBoI9r5e1k at this computer store in Reisterstown)

Anyway, I've been checking out the site http://www.gog.com/ for awhile now, and I finally downloaded something, Ultima IV. Mainly because it was free. I won't go into my experience with this game here, but it really got me thinking about Dave and his cd-changer. Well, wouldn't you know that Amazon.com had a Pioneer 6-disc magazine changer in stock. I came SO CLOSE to buying it, but in the end I couldn't justify spending $100 more than the Sony carousel model just to get the magazine. Especially since I wasn't even sure if the Pioneer had an optical output (from what I read the model was designed in 1997).

So here I sit listening to my Sony 5 disc cd-changer, feeling very early 90's, and loving every minute of it. And no, I'm not listening to Loverboy. Right now these are the discs I have loaded:

Carcass - Symphones of Sickness (2008 reissue)
Dio - The Last in Line
Immmortal - Battles in the North
Rush - Moving Pictures
Motorhead - Ace of Spades

ECW

Here's some photos of my Warlord plastic ECW minis.

Plastics!

I bought the Battalia starter set for the English Civil War thing that Warlord makes about a year ago and it sat. When Wargames Factory put out their War of the Spanish Succession plastic set I bought that too and painted up 16 of the figures right away. So, that got me motivated to crack open the ECW figures and start painting.

I painted up 16 of those 5 pikemen or so and the rest matchlocks. I wrestled with the decision of how many figures would make up a battalion for awhile, but finally decided to base them 6 figures (or so) to a stand, and a minimum of 3 stands for one battalion. Sooooo, that means each battalion will require at least 18 figures. Basically (hah!) I'm using the basing system for the Beneath the Lily Banners rules. So right now I'm going to paint up a bunch of figures to fill out the ranks of the first battalion and make another one.

But the way the sprues are laid out is confusing me. It seems that maybe there are extra torsos. I just cut and filed enough figures to make 16 matchlocks, and there was one more armless figure than there were left arms. (If this doesn't sound like it makes sense, keep in mind I just drank a Guiness). On the command sprue there was a left arm that kinda matched the rank and file infantry, though it has a fist instead of a "nub" which is what I needed. I'll post a picture once I have them glued so whoever is actually reading this will understand what I mean.

Anyway, I love plastics because they're cheap, but I HATE putting them together. Painting them is much more fun. Back to work.

War of the Spanish Succession

I bought a box of the new plastic WSS figures manufactured by Wargames Factory. Over a year ago I bought the Beneath the Lily Banners ruleset, and was very interested in gaming this period. However, a couple of things were holding me back, namely the lack of inexpensive miniatures and my lack of knowledge. The scenarios included in the rules are from conflicts that I was pretty clueless about.

Anyway, a number of things have come together, one of them being the release of the above named miniatures range, and I am not only painting these but I've also finally started painting my English Civil War plastics. Right now my plan is to switch back and forth between ECW and WSS, using the plastic figures for the bulk of the armies but rounding things out with metals from the Perry and Copplestone ranges.

As for my ignorance of the late 17th century, I'm reading The Williamite Wars by John Childs and this great book is enlightening me.

Here's the first battalion of the WSS figures:

April 2011

Just a quick note to say I intend to start updating this blog again. Been busy with the normal stuff, but I've been doing a fair bit of gaming and hobby as well. More to come.