28 October 2007

More Enfilade 2006 pics

Here are some more pics from the last convention I attended - Enfilade 2006...

Setting: France during the Hundred Year's War

Rules: Medieval Tactica Siege

Scale: 28mm

Scenario: The French are defending a strategic river crossing at Pont du Merde; the English must take it.



Pont du Merde, being defended by none other than Taeklonn!



The start - the English forces: 'Wes' on the English right (left of pic); the empty chair is my position in the center; and Feawin holds the English left flank. You will also note the French defenders in the keep. Also shown is the Reviresco vendor stand.



Charge!


And that is where the photocommentary runs dry...

I was too busy having fun (and taunting my son with terrible Monty Python quotes) to take many pics. It was a great game, with the issue in doubt until the end. The fine English forces were able (albeit with heavy losses) to take possession of the crossing from the French. Our thanks to gamemaster Kevin Smythe!


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21 October 2007

Yet more blogs...

Since I'm away from my usual computer I'll just fill in some space with a few more links to other interesting blogs:

Tyler's blog at: The General's Tent - info on Warmaster, Heavy Gear, and War of 1812.

Peter's blog at: My Wonder World of Gaming - AT-43 and WW2 among others

Hyun's blog at: WeeToySoldiers - sci-fi gaming and trains, with lots of pics


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18 October 2007

Wargaming Tekumel

A couple of questions were asked in various Comments about wargaming Tekumel, and I thought it would just be easier to answer them with a proper post than in the comments sections...

Mike C asked about Tekumel rulesets - I have not played any of the official Tekumel wargaming rules. There are three that I know of: Missum, Qadardalikoi, and Legions of the Petal Throne. Copies of these rules can be found at Tita's House of Games - or at Noble Knight Games. Also, Hordes of The Things has army lists for Tsolyanu and Yan Kor armies. One of these days I will get copies of all of these sets, for yet more background info and maybe some information on how the magic system 'should' work on Tekumel.

Maksim asked about the army books - these can be found at Tita's House of Games - or at Noble Knight Games.

The 'official' rules, for which the army books are written seem a bit complex. Each legion is broken down into components - cohorts if you will - and each cohort of a given legion can have completely different stats from each other. In the highly organized Tsolyanu and Mu'ugalavyani empires, the legions are homogeneous and will have only one type of troop in them, be it heavy, medium, or light infantry. Yan Kor 'legions' tend to have a great mix of units together. Throw in the non-human troops and it can be very complicated!


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14 October 2007

MMORPG, part 2

Just a brief bit about World of Warcraft...

We moved to a different realm, Feathermoon. I made the same chr, Troll hunter; he is not as far along as he could have been if we stayed on Doomhammer, but that is not a problem to me.


He is now lvl 11, with his new pet boar, Rosebud. He is working on being an engineer also. Engineers in WoW get to tinker up some useful equipment, like grenades, goggles, and other 'interesting' items.

I also made another chr, a Tauren shaman:


This is my solo chr that I play when Feawin is grinding her main chr (a Blood Elf) up in levels. We play our troll chrs together; she has a mage at the same level as my hunter.


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Legion of Ever Present Glory, part 1

I'm slowly painting up this legion for my Tekumel project:


The blue is Delta Ceramcoat Mediterranean, the skin colors are Reaper Master Tanned Shadow and Reaper Master Tanned Skin. At this moment I'm just slopping on the base colors, and thinking about how I'm going to complete the figures. I could go by the scheme used by the painter for Eureka, as seen here - link - OR I could try to imitate the 'canon' scheme from the Armies of Tekumel book for Tsolyanu troops, which is a bit different from the scheme on the Eureka site, and is a bit hard to translate from a simple line drawing and a brief description in the book. I will most likely pick a middle ground, without so much red as compared to the Eureka painter. I will use red along the edges of the scale armor and other trim pieces, and preserve more of the blue in my scheme.

Here is a close-up of one of the officers:


In all, I find these to be very interesting minis, and will look terrific once they are on the gaming table.

This is the book that I mentioned:


Six books were produced, one for each of the five Empires: Tsolyanu, Yan Kor, Mu'ugalavya, Salarvya, and Livyanu, and a book on the largest of the non-human groups, the reptilian Shen. Each book lists the major units of each empire, with game stats for the Missum rules and a brief description of each unit. Also included are line drawing of selected legions and a color guide.


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13 October 2007

Two years on

This blog is two years old today!

I am only slightly surprised that it has made it this far, since I do like to share info with fellow gamers. I am surprised, however, that it does seem to have a small but faithful readership. To those of you that visit on a regular basis, Thank You. Not too many locals show up here, but that is par for the course with the Internet.

What, you may ask, do I have planned for the future? More pics, of course. I have many packets of old photos from gaming days long past, and I hope to slowly scan those pics in and post them here. I will also continue to post work-in-progress shots from the latest projects.

Next year I am looking forward to finally getting my Renaissance project rolling. I am still stumbling over the rules, but I am certain that the right set will be found. Along with the idea of posting photos from old games, I am considering starting a separate blog for the historical stuff and preserving this one for fantasy/sci-fi themes, but that is still on the horizon at this time.

Other projects:

I was recently spurred on to pick up the pace with my Tekumel project. For the time being, I am going to concentrate on skirmish-scale actions, just to get the minis on the table. Eventually I will want to do mass battles.

My Empire force for Warhammer is rolling right along. Originally I had planned to use historical minis as proxies, but I think that it might be a good idea to keep this as a separate force from my Renaissance project. I know that Taeklonn would greatly enjoy seeing me play at one of the GW events some day, and the proxy army would make that difficult. So far, it is the least expensive army I have ever worked on, thanks to all of those raffle wins!

The Tau for 40K are still sitting, for the most part, in their boxes from the move early this year. More and more, I am finding them very uninteresting. I am considering the abandonment of that project.

Reptus for Warlord: I like these minis, but they are now far too expensive to buy many more. If I can find some on sale, fine, but I think that I have enough for now.


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12 October 2007

More blogs...

Here are a couple of links to blogs I like...

Howard's blog at Here Goes Nuttin' should be good especially when he gets some Tekumel pics up.

Steve's blog at Steve The Wargamer is one of my regular stops, and he is a Rush fan!


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08 October 2007

Empire handgunners, part 2

I was able to finish assembling the first unit of handgunners yesterday, and the unit looks nice:



I raided one of the boxes of state troops for extra heads so each handgunner has the same style of hat within the unit. This might cause some problems later when I assemble the swordsmen but it should not be a big issue. On the recommendations of the handgunner expert (Taeklonn), I did not equip the unit with a banner; there is a fifer however.

Other than the head swap with the swordsmen box, these have very little modifications. The leader (equipped with the long rifle) has a plume added to his hat; one gent has his ramrod in the ground in front of him; and two of the handgunners have some extra ammo on their belts.

I was even able to get the handgunners to rank up reasonably well:


Only 7 more units of troops to assemble now!


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Another Empire addition

My son Taeklonn has brought me another piece for my Empire army. His local GW store had yet another raffle, and he won another Empire box, which he very kindly gave to me.


At this rate, I might not need to buy any GW models for my Empire army! This has two options within the box: Helblaster organ gun or rocket battery. I intend to go with the organ gun.



Lot of parts, and lots of interesting bits: several head choices for the crew, a sword rack, a brazier of hot coals (for heated shot???), a shovel, and of course all of those rockets that will find another use beyond this set.

Although I'm sorely tempted to start working on the organ gun immediately, I do need to finish off some other units of the Empire army first.


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07 October 2007

Taeklonn's Book o' Grudges

My son has started his own blog: Taeklonn's Book o' Grudges - a showcase of his involvement in miniature wargaming.


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