We finally played "1066, Tears To Many Mothers" last night and it was good! It'd work well as an introductory wargame (it's really a very interactive tableau building card game).
The artwork is amazing on the cards too, though some of the noble folks look a bit too clean & modern for the 11th century. I'm sure the artist based some of the characters on moderns actors too, Harold Godwinson looks suspiciously like Russell Crowe! :D
You start off with the appearance of Halley's Comet & progress through several objectives to get to the Battle of Hastings (strangely the Saxons took the comet as a bad omen, and the Normans took it as a good omen. Not sure how that's decided!). While you're doing that you can pick off/damage units that are being build in your opponent's tableau, move your cards around, & do other actions. The resources to buy cards are very tight in this game & it seems that it's best to get the resource generating cards out there as early as possible - otherwise you need to spend cards from your hand as resources & it's easy to run out of cards there! You're also somewhat at the mercy of the random draw to determine what is available on a turn - at the end I had some very high cost units in my hand that I had no way to pay for and put in play!
I started off pretty well as the Saxons, fending off Vikings in the north and then tromping down to the south of England to face the Normans. But I got stuck on later objectives as I didn't have a lot of cards with Zeal and so the Normans beat me to the Hastings objective and got a headstart attacking the wedges there. By the time I caught up I was already demoralised and I hadn't really arranged my units in the wedges very well - in the end the Normans took two wedges and won. I almost killed William with my archers earlier but he managed to shrug off all his wounds with a timely "heal one character" card!
It's a fun, clever, thematic game with lots of interesting decisions - worth checking out! #wargaming
The original game Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All (or just Fantasy Wargaming in some editions) was a 1981 book by Bruce Galloway, a clear variation on Dungeons and Dragons, based on Galloway’s home rules. Unlike it’s competition it was not afraid of using actual historical concepts like astrology and occultism in it’s descriptions, although it also was written so densely it was hard to make sense of it in any shape or form by someone not already familiar with roleplaying games. And, well, it was called Fantasy Wargaming.
Which made this a problem, as the game was published both in the UK and the US by mainstream publishers obviously trying to break into the nascent TTRPG market. The most available version was most likely the one published by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, which made the game available to many people who did not have any experience with roleplaying games before.
Unfortunately one has to say, as the game’s size (300pgs) and conceptual denseness made parsing the book quite a feat, meaning if people used this as an introduction to roleplaying, it might not have been very successful.
The Story of Fantasy Wargaming goes into this, and into the development of the game. It could have been a bit more thorough and a bit more critical, but for what it is it’s a nice look into the environment that created it. And well, it’s free.
(I learned about this book from an episode of the Vintage RPG Podcast which had the author on and talked about this project. Well worth a listen)
Little palate cleanser figure before I dive into heresy ultramarines. A Stormcast Eternal with badly chipped enamelled armour and an opalescent prismatic sword.
Don't know what army I want to do for 4th edition AoS but I loved painting this woman in a way I wasn't expecting and it's nice to do a more grounded, weathered armour for a change.
I have finally finished the first marginalia model from the upcoming Hypersteel Nightmare range. Concept based on one of the illustrations by @CITIZEN_OCHOA, sculpted and painted by me.
Forgive me I'm not a BGG power user, but did someone really give this person $420 for their stupid comment in the Charles S. Roberts Awards thread? #Wargames#BoardGames#Wargaming#HexAndCounter
These are my most played with monsters for RPGs, but never got painted. They're Reaper Bones, the white material, and cleaning them up sucked! I ended up slicing as much of the mold lines as I could, then I covered the rest with some thick layers of primer. I took this opportunity to try some speed painting techniques. I used contrast paints (xpress) and oils, but also traditional acrilycs as a final step. Despite my frustrations with the material, I'm very happy with the result (for the time it took) so I think I might try to replicate this process on some other appropriate models (plague bearers??)
Where my #miniature#wargaming friends at!?!
This table really is to die for.
Sadly, it's a display and not a campaign.
Check it out in the Medieval Museum
The first Hypersteel Nightmare mini prototype has some paint on it now! Based on one of the internal illustrations by @CITIZEN_OCHOA, very happy with how it’s coming out.
Fun #game my child came up with: Toy cars on a hex grid, but they are "#tanks". Cars arranged in strata on map from worst to best, but there are exceptions. Your goal is to go through all the strata, conquer and steal tanks by a) spotting the weaker ones you have a chance of defeating (trial and error) b) roll below x on d20 to shoot, d6 to d12 dmg, game involves positioning, cover, turning c) roleplaying to leave tank and trick other crew to let you in, h2h combat (1) #Wargaming#pnpde