So here is Steamroller 2012!

http://privateerpress.com/files/SR2012Final.pdf

This is a new year however and I want to turn over a new leaf with more blogging, painting and playing.

Last year I attempted to play 111 games. I failed however only managing a meagre 61! So in 2012 I will try again, however to keep thing thematic I’m going to try and play “112 in 2012″. My main aim is to blog about it every month which should motivate me to complete the challenge.

In addition to this I NEED to have two fully painted armies by the summer. This isn’t about just wanting to get more stuff painted. I will be taking part in the Hordes & Warmachine ETC and hopefully the UK Hardcore Series, both of which require a fully painted army. As both events require 50 point armies I could just use the same two. I have a feeling though that the nature of the events will require two very different forces. Although the two forces I plan to run will have a degree of crossover there is still a lot to get done. Hopefully I should be able to blog about my progress in this endeavour too!

Even though the year is young I have been doing quite well so far. Over the past four nights I’ve played two games and spent two nights painting my Warpwolf Stalker whilst chatting on Skype. If I keep this up I’m sure I’ll complete my two main goals for this year.

So for now I’ll leave you with a picture of my progress on the Stalker…

Thanks for reading.

After picking up all four Bushido starters at the UK Games Expo I am determined to get them painted. Now painting isn’t something I really manage to do very often, with having a full time job, wife and three kids. However I love the Bushido models and I really want to get some nice looking forces together.

Hopefully through the blog I should be able to keep myself motivated to post pictures of my progress painting the mini’s and hopefully making some terrain too.

The going has been a little slow so far but I have made a start on the Prefecture of Ryu starter. So far I have cleaned built and made bases for three of the models, Hiro, Hanso and Jin. Today I managed to prime and ink these three and paint Hanso’s base (more of a test than anything else) I won’t bore you with a picture of some grey miniatures but here is a shot of Hanso’s base,

Hanso, Ashigaru Sargeant

Let me know what you think and whether I should forge ahead with these bases for the rest of the starter set.

Thanks for reading.

Last weekend I took part in the UK Hordes & Warmachine Masters held at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. Although my gaming left a little to be desired (I retired with a record of 2 wins and 3 losses after 5 games) I wanted to put a post up about the great game I discovered at the Expo. 

The game in question is Bushido! Produced by GCT Studios.

Set on the Jwar Isles it is a fantasy oriental skirmish game for 32mm miniatures.

Now first things first I LOVE everything ancient Japan, or for that matter anything with the feel of ancient Japan.

In gaming terms there isn’t that much out there other than historical stuff. There is Legend of the Five Rings, not much RPG’ing or CCG’s near us, and although I still have a load of the Japanese style goblins that Rackham made for Confrontation they went to pre-painted plastics soon afterwards and we all know what happened next.

So with these lovely oriental miniatures in front of me I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. However I resolved to do what any good gamer in my position would do…

Buy the shinies!

This didn’t happen straight away though , mainly because I couldn’t decide which faction to go for, but after a quick demo (just a run through of the basic rules) and a lengthy discussion with one of the games designers I plumped for The Prefecture of Ryu and The Temple of Ro-Kan.

What do these names mean though? I hear you cry!

Well here is a first impression run down of the four factions that are currently released for the game.

The Prefecture of Ryu – Samurai, plain and simple.  The starter set consists of one samurai, in full armour wielding a Katana, and his merry band of ashigaru (foot soldiers) one of them a sargeant wielding a massive no-dachi (a two handed sword as long as a man is tall) .

Temple of Ro-Kan – Shaolin monks. Their starter set consists of an elderly monk sat atop a giant tortoise. Yep tortoise! He is acompanied by a couple of bad ass looking monks with rules such as Fists of Iron and Body of Oak and two lowly peasents who look to be there just to carry luggage.

The Cult of Yurei – Undead puppet masters. These look to be the real bad guys of the game. In the starter you have an evil puppet master who seemingly controls the rest of the force, a ghostly geisha, an undead ashigaru (complete with two katanas) and two undead peasants. From speaking to the guys at GCT they have a cool little fluff point that they are all controlled through the masks that they wear and the puppet master can essentially put a mask on one of your guys to gain control of him!

The Savage Wave – Giant oni and there goblin friends.  As I have said giant oni (demons of ancient Japan) and their goblin friends, also known as bakemono. The starter set for The Savage Wave consists of an oni wielding a massive hammer and six bakemono, carrying an assortment of arms. From the look of things these guys are the obligitory horde faction.

So there I stand with my Samurai and Monks. I love what I have but for some reason I’m still not content. Anyway this is Saturday lunch and I have another game to play.

Sunday comes and so does the afore mentioned dropping out of the Masters. Without much else to do I go back to take another quick look at the Bushido stand, this time however I stop for a full demo using all the rules for each of the miniatures. After which I realise why I am not content with my previous days purchase.

You see there is something of a problem with this game. I love all of the factions! Accordingly I picked up the last two starters and I now have all four. I have come up with paint schemes for each of the factions so hopefully I will be able to put brush to miniature sooner rather than later.

In summary, there are many good things I could say in praise of the game but I’ll try to keep it brief…

The demo boards. Wow! Both the 2×2 boards looked excellent and even before I knew what the game was I wanted to have a demo, just to play on the excellent terrain.

The mini’s are all excellent sculpts with  superb paint jobs, not only on the studio models, but the demo minis too and lastly fantastic casting quality too.

Finally the rules. Intuitive, free flowing, quick to learn and most of all fun! 

I would like to pass special thanks to Toby who took the time to talk me through the game, it’s background and show me some pictures on his iPhone of up coming releases. Also to Carlos who spent the time late on Sunday to give me an excellent demo game.

Here is the link to the games website where you will find out more information about each faction, quickstart rules and stats (that are all free to download) and the forum, that so far looks to be quite a hive of activity.

Thanks a lot for reading and let me know what you think of the game.

To be honest this is a result of not much actually happening in a wargaming sense.

We’ll start first of all with an update to 111 in 2011. In February and March I played a paltry 8 games over the two months, of which 6 were in Febraury! We’ll look at stats first then I’ll explain the reasons for my lack of games.

In 3 of the 8 games I used a Rasheth theme force, two of these games I won and the other was a draw.

I played one game on Vassal and 4 at our weekly club meeting.

I have won 5, drawn 1, and lost 2.

As with January both losses were to ‘caster kills.

“Why so few games?” I hear you ask…

Well February wasn’t so bad, with 6 games played, however I have really struggled to get a game in March. I think there are a few factors contributing to this. First and foremost is the state of the club I attend on a weekly basis. Over the past year or so almost all of our Hordes & Warmachine have moved away, be it through university, work or some other reason. Combine with this that my regular opponent has become dis-enfranchised with his current faction and is in the process of switching to Skorne.

However not all is lost! We have had a couple of other club members show an interest in Hordes & Warmachine and both have started to pick up a few bits. Hopefully they will fall in love with Hordes & Warmachine and we can start getting in some games on a regular basis.

In other news I have fallen hook, line and sinker for the fantastic looking sci-fi miniature game Infinity by the Spanish company Corvus Belli. Beasts of War recently held an “Infinity Week” where they paired up with the guys from Corvus Belli to deliver a week long of cracking content that I think has drawn in a large volume of new interest to the game. I will include below some links that you may find interesting if you like the sound of this cracking game.

I have yet to play a game but have had some stuff for the Pan-Oceania faction for ages. As part of “Infinity Week” Corvus Belli offered 50% off certain army deals and I took advantage of this picking up some Ariadna minis. As such I will soon have two fairly equal pointed forces that I can hopefully run some demos with.

Links

Infinity

Beasts of War Infinity Week

Anyway that’s it for now. So until next time…

Thanks for reading!

Arguably the “Premier” event in the UK is the Masters, normally held at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham.

Recently there has been a interesting discussion on The Warhammer Forum re The UK Masters in 2011 – the thread can be found here.

However if you don’t want to trawl through the whole thread here is what we know so far…

The UK masters Event is set for UK Games Expo again this year.

The player limit has increased to 100 players

To fit that many players in, there will be a new location within the venue for hosting the event, so everyone will be in the same room.

It will, most likely, follow the official Privateer Press Masters rules state the following

Format: 50 pt. Army Lists
3 Lists Required Steamroller Variant: Players must bring exactly 3 army lists and must field each army list at least once during the event. Each list requires a different warcaster or warlock.
Standard Steamroller Scenarios
Baseline Steamroller Variants

Pre-registration of army lists will be required a week before the event.

Looks like it should be a good weekend again!

As with last year I will be hosting the Pre-Masters Mash Up, two weeks before the big event.

I cannot remember who posted it originally but there have been a few blog posts flying round about people setting themselves targets of X amount of games to play this year. Be it 100, 150 or even 200!

I am jumping upon this bandwagon and have decided to try and play 111 in 2011! Kinda catchy ain’t it…

So here we are on 1st Feb, one month into 2011. How many games have you played I hear you ask. Well the answer to that question is 8.

I’m not going to give a run down of each game but here are some stats for you to digest…

Over the 8 games I have used 3 different casters over 2 factions.

Played 6 tournament games, gave one demo and had a game on Vassal.

I have won 3, drawn 1, and lost 4.

Of those 4 losses all were as a result of my ‘caster being killed.

So that’s it for now. I have my usual club night tonight and aim to play two games at 25 pts. If I remember I may even try and write up a bit of a battle report and post it up here. Maybe…

Anyway thanks for reading!

The plan was to play that night, however things don’t always go to plan! Last week I was foiled by our clubs AGM, which wasn’t supposed to last long but in the end took up most of our time at the club. The Thursday after my wife and I fell foul to sickness bug that seems to be doing the rounds. As such the game I had planned with a buddy, who has moved away and was back for the weekend, had to be cancelled. Foiled again!

However, as the more astute of you in the audience will realise, I am now writing this post on a Wednesday. What does this mean I hear you ask…

Well last night I finally managed my first proper game in ages!

Cue general fanfare and streamers…

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures, as I was playing against a heavily proxied “Skorne” army.

Here’s what I took.

pIrusk
Devastator
Spriggan

10 Winterguard Infantry & UA
6 Iron Fang Pikemen & UA

Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich

My opponent, Steve, took.

Dominar Rasheth
Bronzeback Titan
Titan Gladiator
Titan Cannoneer
Cyclops Shaman

4 Paingiver Beast Handlers

Agonizer
Extoller Soulward
Void Spirit

I’m not going to go into a full blow-by-blow report but I will say that the game was closely fought.

I was nearly handed victory by Steve who forgot that we were playing a scenario, Convergence. Once Steve had realised his error he had to run his beasts into the “pit” as opposed to hold of for a charge the next turn. His saving grace however was the agonizer who managed to stop my jacks getting focus for three straight rounds.

I managed to win the game by scenario after grinding down his beasts and actually managed to take Rasheth down to one hit box!

In retrospect I made a few mistakes, most of which I’m going to blame on my lack of games though. One mistake that does keep haunting me however is deployment.

I deployed my Winterguard just behind a woods which meant they had a long slog to get to the fight. In the end this resulted in them having very little effect on the game as a whole.

I really need to work on deployment in future games if I am to challenge for tournament wins next year.

Thanks for reading!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it. Nearly 14 weeks since my last post!

Just to put all your minds at rest I am not dead.

The last 14 weeks however have been interesting to say the least.

It all started shortly after my trip to the UK Nationals. As you may recall, from my post Dude Where’s My Car… Key, I wasn’t able to finish that tournament which, as it turns out, was the last tournament I will have/be attending for 2010 (the reasons behind this will be explained later) I am referring back to this because I love playing in tournaments and knowing that I wasn’t going to be taking part in any more kinda made me a bit low. I felt generally burnt out and lacked a sense of direction within the hobby.

I tried to remedy this with my Time for a Change posts, with little success. Xerxis now lies half painted on my desk, longing for some attention. I just couldn’t find motivation to get him finished.

Around the same sort of time I found out I would be taking part in a work function, providing an element of entertainment to my colleagues. It’s a long story, for another time! As the pace grew on this “special project” it took up more and more of my personal time. Namely Tuesday nights which is the night that my local club, the Winsford Warhawks meet. As such not only did I not have chance to attend any tournaments I was no longer able to attend my club!

Just a week after the culmination of my “special project” a long awaited package arrived. My second daughter and third child Freya was born. This obviously, and quite happily, further side tracked the hobby.

That was four weeks ago and I have now been granted an evening release, on a Tuesday of all days. So that means back to the club an my first proper game, on a real table, since longer ago than I can remember.

Hopefully this will re-ignite my passion and I can start painting and blogging again.

Thanks for reading, until next time!

I haven’t had chance to properly read through yet but take a look!