The Holy Rollers for Bolt Action

Earlier this month I took part in the 2nd annual Bass and Curry Bolt Action tournament at my LGS, Greenhouse Games. Since I've only ever played Konflikt 47 (and even then not much of it), I thought this would be an interesting event and give me a chance to get my head around the original game... not to mention it was part of a trade I made for a ridiculous number of painted US minis.

I'd been to the store often enough that I thought I had a good idea what they could field for terrain but I was really impressed by the six tables they laid out for the event.

From the Far East...

...to the snow fields of Russia...

...to the hedgerows of Western Europe, there was a great range of terrain types fight over.  Unfortunately luck of the draw meant that no one wound up playing on the snow board but all of the other boards had at least one game on them.

For this event, I threw together a list using Easyarmy.com which is a great resource for both Bolt Action and Konflikt 47 amongst other games.  I must admit that I had no idea what to expect so I went with a list that I was hoping would be able to effectively deal with a good range of different opponents.

Mobility was going to be the name of my game since I knew that the tournament would feature two different scenarios, breakout and sectors. By fielding two 6 man veteran squads, I could load both of them into my M3 to taxi them around quickly and provide some fire support. Next were two jeeps, one to carry my Chaplain (hence the Holy Rollers) and the other for my 2nd Lieutenant. Finally I put in a Sherman with a heavy AT gun and pintle mounted MMG. I felt like this was the riskiest part of the list since this put all my AT capabiliy into one unit but I was hoping it's armor would be enough to keep it alive.

 

For my first game I was paired off against Cameron, one of the various Soviet hordes at the event on the hill table.  I believe that the other lists fielded at least some cavalry but he decided to go with lots of troops, and a T-34.

 

 

This was an intense but fun game as things really went back and forth between the two armies.  The T-34 got my fully loaded M3 in its sights early in the game but my veteran soldiers were able to withstand even its withering hail of machine gun fire.  I thought my Sherman was doomed shortly after that as an inexperienced mob of tank hunters charged it but the dice gods were kind; not only did it survive unscathed but it was able to decimate the unit the following turn as I opened up with all the machine guns!  Ultimately we fought each other to a draw by victory conditions but Cameron scraped out the win based on casualties.

 

My second game was against my friend Chad with his dastardly Germans fighting on the hedgerow table!  In contrast to Cameron's list, Chad was fielding two platoons in his 750 point list with each platoon containing two minimum squads, an officer, a Panzer I, and a motorcycle with sidecar.  Just to round things out he also threw in a Hanomag as well.  This meant that not only was I facing 15 Panzerfausts but also seven medium machine guns and four light machine guns!  Talk about a pinning machine!

 

This game was a lot of fun with things really swinging back and forth through most of it.  In the end, Chad was able to get one of his Panzerfaust toting squads into point blank and blasted the Sherman apart.  At that point I didn't have a chance since both of his Panzer Is were still on the table and I'd already lost more than half of my meager infantry but even so it was a great way to wrap up the day. 

 

This tournament was a lot of fun and I'm really glad that Chad talked me into going.  While I think I still prefer the tweaks that were made for the Konflikt 47 rules set, it was good to be able to take part in this event with the rules still being familiar enough that I could get in a couple of good games.  That said, I do want to get back to the Greenhouse soon to push around some more Konflikt.  I just can't help it; I love the big, stompy robots!

Frostgrave: Initial Impressions of Ulterior Motives

My daughter and I went to our LGS for the reboot of the local Frostgrave campaign over the weekend and I was able to see Ulterior Motives in action.  I have to say that I really like the extra twist that it brings to the game though it was a little unclear how and if we were supposed to interact with some of the things that it added.

 

For example, my motive let me add a pit to the board that I would get a bonus from if no one interacted with it during the game plus two red herrings in the form of a gateway and a zombie.  The zombie was pretty straightforward (it wanders around and attacks things... go figure!) but the other two were less clear.  My gateway was one of two that were on the board while there were at least four pits scattered around.  During the game the only thing that people actually engaged were the two zombies roaming the board but we all just avoided the rest of the "items".



Here's a view of the board at the beginning of the game from my table edge. Whole lot of stuff going on out there!

Unfortunately I don't own a copy of Ulterior Motives (yet...) but this is something that I want to dig into to see if there are other actions that we could take with the various bits that were added and how it is handled.  I can see a lot of potential if these are things that we could all try to interact with.

 

It also really got me itching to make some terrain markers for all the various bits and bobs that you use to represent the objectives.  I've been in a bit of a hobby slump lately so its great to have something kick me back into gear again.  I haven't start working on these yet but I'll try to get up pictures as I work on them, plus my warband that I threw together is entirely made of painted minis!  Huzzah!  So there will be pics of them coming soon as well.  Until next time...

And Then It Got Really Quiet Around Here Again...

Ya know, things had been moving along at a pretty good clip between blogging and gaming for me again...  And then overtime happened.  Summer months = increased work load since its easier to build things in the northeast during the summer instead of the winter.  Go figure, right?  As a result my miniature gaming has been put on hold for a while though we are getting in some more board games as a family which is always nice.  In fact we recently stopped by a different game store that's a little closer than the one we usually go to and its really nice.  A growing selection of games, good amount of gaming space (mini, board, card, or rpg... take your pick!), and the craziest thing of all... they have natural light!  A game store with big, open windows along the front?  Now that's just pure madness!  As an added bonus they are talked about starting a board game day which would be a blast.  Its still in the works but hopefully soon they will be able to move forward with it.

As for my own hobby, things have gone onto hold.  Unfortunately the guy who was running Frostgrave and had gotten me into Konflikt 47 has dropped out of the hobby after a very bad experience at the game store.  I'd like to think that most gamers aren't bad but every now and then you find that power gamer who is just an ass.  Hopefully his hiatus is temporary but only time will tell whether he decides to continue.

This doesn't mean that I'm going to stop gaming though.  We are planning on moving within the next few months so I don't want to get stuck in the middle of anything but once we are situated I'm hoping to even be able to set up a small dedicated hobby space which would be amazing.  In the meantime, I want to run a number of short RPGs for my daughter over the summer break.  We had been playing an adventure based on the Secret of Bone Hill which unfortunately has fizzled for the moment so we are looking to do some quick solo adventures.  She's actually already started putting together her first character, a gnome bard armed with an ironwood lute.  That's right, she's a rock star that smashes peoples faces in with her guitar.  Can't wait to see what happens because it just sounds crazy!

Terminator Genisys: Looking Closer At Judgement Day

So a couple weeks ago I received an email from Warlord Games and I decided to see what was new and exciting.  I'm quite happy with my US Army force for Konflikt 47 for now so it was more out of curiosity than anything.  One of the first things that pops up is the Terminator Genisys miniature game.  Now, I was aware that this was a thing but I've never really given it any serious thought.  I enjoyed the first two movies but I haven't followed anything since then and I wasn't really interested in investing in another miniature game... and then I saw the price.  Only $16 for the normally $75 basic starter.

Here's the cover for the basic set

 

This piqued my interest but rather than blindly order some I decided to look at some reviews first.  After all it doesn't matter how cheap something is if its a pile of crap is, it's still a pile of crap.  I haven't heard anything about the game so I was surprised that the reviews that I found were quite positive and the mechanics sounded interesting too.  That combined with the ridiculously low price... well, I decided that I had to buy a couple to try it out.

Of course now I have to wait for it to arrive from Warlord so it might be a little bit (I've only ordered once before from them so I don't have a lot of experience with how long their shipping time is).  In the mean time I went ahead and started perusing the local Wally World for things to put into the post apocalyptic wasteland and stumbled on something that I think will work quite well.

In Terminator: Salvation they introduced moto-terminators.  I haven't seen the movie but I did find some images online.  This is something that has not been created for the miniature game but I found some Bat Pods from Hot Wheels and I'm going to use these as a stand in for them.  There are no official rules for them in the game but the system seems very straight forward so it should be easy to whip up some stats for them.


My moto-terminator proxies

Along the same vein I grabbed a few Hot Wheels Bats (apparently another of Bat-Man's many crazy vehicles) and I'm thinking of using these as proxies for Buzzer flying drones.  I've never seen the actual miniature but I'm thinking that these might be a bit on the large side.  Then again they only cost me a buck a piece so I'm okay with them not being quite to scale with the official miniature. (Since I ordered I've also heard that the game has been discontinued so I'm very happy to have my proxies to field).

Once I have the game I'm going to see if I can get my daughter to try it out with me.  She has been enjoying Frostgrave and she recently did an art project on a post-apocalyptic future where robots have "evolved" to the point that they have become a part of nature.  An interesting spin on the concept and who knows?  Maybe she'll enjoy playing this game as well.  Whether she's willing to be a guinea pig or not, I'll definitely share my thoughts on the game once I have given it a try.

Shadow War Armageddon: Send In The Clowns

Just like almost everyone my age that plays miniature games, one of the first games I played was Warhammer 40k.  Over the years its grown and changed but I've never really kept up with it, especially when they moved into the Apocalypse sized games.  I just don't have the time or money to invest in painting that many minis or playing a game that takes that long.  Smaller skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades and Heroes are much more my thing nowadays.  And then along comes Shadow War Armageddon.

 

A skirmish game set in the 40k universe?  Interesting.  And I already own minis for a few of the factions so it only makes sense to give it a try, right?  Sure... I'll keep telling myself that...

 

I have bits and pieces of a few different factions in my collection but the one that I decided to start with was the one that I fell in love with when it was released way back in White Dwarf 105... the Harlequins.  I bought the boxed set and its been laying around mostly untouched for all this time, so this was the perfect excuse to finally get some paint on these minis.



A Solitare plus a couple of troupe members

For their color scheme I even actually did a bit of planning.  Looking at my paints, I really love an old shade of purple that I've had for... well, longer than I'd like to admit.  Amazingly its one of a dozen of so of the original Citadel paints that I own that somehow are still usable.  Having this as my primary color, I decided to do something really extreme (at least for me anyway) and take a look at some color theory to see what combinations look the most striking.  Usually I just go with the contrasting color but I wanted more than one detail color on these so I went with a bright green and orange for the accents.  Really bright and gaudy which fits for them.  I'm also doing their face masks with a light blue and then picking out the accents with white to give them more of a porcelain look.  So far I'm liking with how they are turning out though I want to look for a purple shade to hit the base with to see if it gives them a little more depth.  Now to see what other minis I can scrounge up to make another kill team.  After all, it is good to have options.