Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all. I hope you got a lot of gaming toys this year.

Welcome to Shaun of Shaun's Wargaming with Miniatures. An interesting blog that I had stumbled upon and recently re-found. I like the idea of comparing rule systems with set battles from history. I look forward to looking back at his posts during some holiday down time.

Unfortunately it looks like my big gaming plans with my brother have come to naught, but I suppose that is pretty minor. At least we got in one game. It will give me more drive to actually learn all these rules I have in the coming year.

Zombies!!! again.

Got a chance to play Zombies!!! again, this time with my brother as well as the kids. The mechanics are pretty simple, but having another adult there helped to smooth things out. I forgot steps a whole lot less this time around.

As per last time I only took a picture of the endgame (sorry for the crap pic, it's from my cellphone).

Final positions. Light green at top (me), blue near top (my daughter), red near bottom right (my son), black near bottom right (my brother). So the game went similarly to the previous. My daughter puttered around killing zombies with no discernable plan. My son similar but once the Lawn & Garden center was revealed he went there as he had the Chainsaw card. My brother went towards the bottom and right and had some success killing zombies. I headed up to the Police station at top left, where after initial success I rolled a series of one's and was overwhelmed by zombies. So after losing half my kills and being thrown back to the town square I moved to the Fire Sation (top center) which had been cleared of zombies by my son, to try and get some extra lives to the max of 5. That's when the helicopter pad came into play and it was up to me, with the lowest kill total to place it. As you can see I placed it farthest from me but at the time it was also farthest from everyone else. (Although perhaps I should have played it on the extreme left). My brother seemed poised for the win. My daughter ambled back to where you see her near the town square and I proceeded to roll one's for movement, shuffling along like a zombie, it seemed all too familiar. So the action came down to my son and brother. My son had "The keys are still in it!" card which gives you a move of ten spaces. He started in the Lawn & Garden Center at the top right and stormed down the boulevard to where you see him. My brother played the "We're Screwed!" card and placed 10 zombies directly in my son's path down the street. Now normally one would think he might be upset at being blocked from the goal of the heli-pad, but he loves killing zombies so much he was happy to wade through them. Sure enough he rolled mostly fives and cleared the street. In retrospect my son should have also played his "Chainsaw" card but it made little difference. It was at this point we realized that my son had killed 25 zombies and won the game.

Good fun but I sense a pattern here for my performance.

Well we're baking and preparing for Christmas with the in-laws tomorrow and hopefully getting in some Warrior Heroes from THW today.

Oh! The big green space man is Major Tom. My son thought he should be on the board.

The greatest quote never said.

After my last post and musing on the term bloggering I thought I'd do a search for a family favorite quote about the traditions of the Royal Navy. What I found here surprised me. To quote the article "According to Montague-Browne, Churchill responded: “I never said it. I wish I had.”"


I could not however resist adding a subtitle to my blog. I must say my Rum consumption is down but that can change.


Anyhow I've contacted my brother and he is up for some serious gaming, so I should have something to share from the holidays.


And a hearty welcome to Tim (the Enchanter?) of Fidus et Audax (sorry to include you in the post about bloggery). He is a fellow 1/72nder and is a quite good painter.


Off to finish some chores and teach my last class of the year.

1500 Views

Well, despite not really posting much I have made it to 1500 views. So here is an image of a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle of the map of Middle Earth. I think this would drive one insane faster than painting 2mm figures.

Unfortunately, what with the Holidays and all, gaming has been zero. For some reason I have been husbanding my posts (or post ideas) and then not committing them them to the blog. Bad blogmanship. Or is that bloggering?

So my immediate plan is to take some Two Hour Wargames stuff and try to press my brother into service. My folks still have all my old Army Men so they can be pressed into service like the old days, German paratroopers for Orcs etc.

I have a lot of notes for a Talomir campaign and am planning to do a combined RRtK (Rally Round the King)/ WHAA (Warrior Heroes: Armies & Adventures) campaign following the exploits of a dispossessed (wouldn't you know there were five s' in that) Mirholme (read Viking) noble. Most of this is not really my idea but following the lead of Ruaridh over at Talomir Tales.

Also plenty of reading to do on all those THW titles I purchased.

Oh yeah, I'm also coming up on 6 months since I started this thing and so would be eligible to list to Table Top Gaming News Blog Network. Which is of course where I first got sucked into reading blogs. Actually that isn't wholly true. I think the one that started it all for me was An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields.

Reading Update

So the first casualty of my attention deficit was my “now reading” list. I have now updated it with what I am currently reading (Fiasco by Thomas Ricks).

In the interim I read, or rather skimmed How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery and another book in the series about modeling cities.

I then also read the Dark Horse edition of Conan: Free Companions

 and started reading a used copy of Conan: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Most Savage Barbarian by Roy Thomas.

The railroad modeling books are good, but you can get a lot of this info on youtube I think. So definitely a good library borrow.

Free Companions was a fun read, covering the story starting at the end of Conan's run as a mercenary captain in the service of Kjoth to the destruction of his Zaporazian (sp?) Cossack band just before the story where he ends up on the island in the Vilayet Sea (the name of that story is not coming to me right now.

The Roy Thomas book has lots of cool art and is thematically arranged, sort of like an encyclopedia. Fun stuff.

I bought the Ricks book awhile back and I guess it is fitting to read it now as the US prepares to pull out of Iraq.  

Fabulous maps of Greyhawk

In an effort to avoid household chores and external Christmas lighting I thought I'd post about a site that I can't say enough about.

That site is Atlas of the Flanaess by Anna B Meyer. These maps are simply stunning and she has really put a lot of work into them. They seem to show the continent after the Greyhawk Wars, something that completely passed me by when it came out.

They come complete with heraldry and fairly detailed settlements, roads and borders. You can also check her group out on facebook.

Here is a low res image of her latest release:

Enjoy!

Inspiration Pad Pro 2.0 name generators

As I mentioned in the last post, I have been working on a few name generator files in the Inspiration pad pro 2.0 .ipt format.

The coding is fairly simple, I'm still working on how to weight the table entries but it is not hard to get something workable.

I've loaded the first three here.

The one I finished first was the Mighty Empires Goblinoid and Skaven name generator. As an example the first five returned just now: Durthhog, Bul, Narburg, But, Ungol, Gogbref.

Not bad, pretty Orky. Obvioulsy you can pick and choose the best ones and leave out But etc.

Next was the Mighty Empires Empire Names:

Mundrew, Norman, Waldaltenmarkden, Gradrew, Brukoc

These tend to be a little weird. I think we took to making the long ones into surnames so Waldalten Markden. This sample seems to be more acceptable than the last one I ran. I like Brukoc, is that the beer drinkers analog to whiskey dick?

Lastly I completed the tria nomina (Roman three names) which I just copied from lists in wikipedia and then finagled into usable tables.

Marcus Vagnius Vatia, Manius Caerellius Regillus, Septimus Carius Grumio, Lars Aufidius Martyrius, Quintus Loreius Durus

Seem pretty good. I might weight it so that Lars comes up less, it may be too common an occurrence right now.

I hope you enjoy and are able to make some use of these. I intend to do more in the near future, most likely Age of Blood Norse and some derivatives.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi All,

Thanksgiving here in the US. Ready for an orgy of eating and watching football. Just wanted to update on a few projects in the works. Been looking into Inspiration Pad Pro from NBOS and made a quick Goblinoid naming list ala Mighty Empires (link to original rules pdf file).

Looking into making a map and gaming RRtK in middle earth after someone on the THW forums put up a list for LOTR using WHAA.

And of course I need to get back to making that darn map of Talomir.

Welcome to StuG of Armored Fighting Vehicle, a really nice site about modelling. I liked the Speeder model.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.

That's a whole lot of plastic!

This passed me by the other day and I thought it was worthy of a re-post. I'm not into gaming large battles 1:1, but I appreciate the effort.

Welcome to Uncle Brian of A Fistful of Plastic, I saw a link to you on Paul's Bods and I like what your doing. Very interesting 1/72 modelling and gaming. The Jawa army in particular had me sold.

Age Of Blood Fate Cards V.2

Just an update on the fate cards. Following Dan's suggestion, and my own leanings, I added the background to the face of all cards. I then also separated and emboldened the effects of the card from the introductory text.

I decided to leave the full, verbatim, text on all the cards for now. Let me know if it is too hard to read. The only editing I did was to fix my mistyping of some of the game conventions (ie Hand-to-Hand instead of hand to hand) and the spelling Valkaries to Valkyries. Otherwise I have left the non US spellings as is.

You can find the file here.

Still working on a cheat sheet and actually playing the game.

Painted Zombies!!!

In a comment on my last post Dan had asked about what those zombies might look like painted up. I found some mixed in to the horde from this ATZ game.

You can see the male zombie clearly interspersed with the 28mm figs. I think they blend in pretty well at 28mm if a little spindly by comparison. Like I said, a tad large for 1/72 but would work in a pinch.

By the way that game looked like a lot of fun. I am totally on board with letting characters jump back in after getting killed. There is no end to the zombie horde, so why not let people keep on swinging away.

Zombies!!! review and AAR

So I played a game of Zombies!!! with my kids the other day and I have to say it was fun. I had seen reviews of it at Zombie Place, Board Game Geek, and The Man Cave; and I really wanted to try it out myself. I also wanted to have a look at the figures for possible use in an ATZ campaign.

I paid about $26 after taxes and a member discount from Barnes & Noble. The box is small, but it comes with a fair amount of stuff. Map tile cards, event cards, dice, counters and figures. The rules are fairly simple. Roll to move and kill zombies on a 4+ roll.

The tiles consist of streets and buildings, but you can only enter named buildings to search for lives or ammo. Your ultimate goal is to make it to the helicopter pad and safety. Each turn consists of drawing and placing a map tile, rolling to move, combating any zombies you share a square with, rolling for the number of zombies you can move. At any time during your turn you can play an event card, each player starts with and maintains a hand of three.

I played this game with my son (almost 6) and daughter (8) so we had to fudge a few things to keep the game moving. First off we displayed our event cards. My son can't really read yet and I knew that if I played any zombie attack or disadvantage type cards on him he would get upset. So the upshot was that my daughter was the only one who played event cards and she only really used the chainsaw. We also allowed players to keep their zombie kill total even if they got killed and had to return to the town square.

Being the youngest, my son went first. He immediately took off for the nearest building, intent on slaying zombies. My daughter sort of ambled around and I went for the ammo in the police station. I won't give you the blow by blow, partly because I can't remember it, but just the flavor of the game progress. My son basically just wanted to kill zombies. Being in his misogynistic phase (boys vs. girls) he wanted to kill female zombies so that dictated his movements somewhat. My daughter seemed to be wandering aimlessly around, but she did enter the lawn and garden shop with the express purpose of getting and using the chainsaw. I made quick work of the zombies in the police station and then headed toward the buildings in the upper left, mostly looking for more ammo. Zombie movement was not really an issue. I moved zombies out of my way, my son wanted to only move male zombies and it seemed completely random, and my daughter moved zombies in ways that baffled me but seemed to make sense to her.

So when the helicopter pad was finally played, wouldn't you know it, I was on the complete opposite side of the table. We all headed in that direction, me shuffling along like a zombie with a succession of 1's, my son getting killed because he wasted his ammo on crap rolls instead of losing a life, and my daughter pretty much unscathed all the way to the pad. The long and short of it is my daughter got killed fighting a zombie on the pad, my son had also been sent back to the main square a couple of times, and the old man got hot on the dice and strolled into the center square of the helicopter pad winning the game. There were a few tears, so we placed everyone at the pad and then commenced the body count. Daughter: 20, Son: 19, Me: 8.

Personally I think that zombie avoidance is the way to go. And lastly I broke out a scale comparison chart and put the zombie figures next to some IMEX WW2 figures from the Billy V set. As you can see the US Rifleman stands at 25mm and the zombies appear to be about 27mm. So apparently the zombie virus causes gigantism before it animates your corpse. So not perfect, but it'll do.

So I'd give the game overall a thumbs up. Easy rules, fairly quick to play and a decent value. You can get 100 zombies for $10 but I feel like the extra $15-$20 for the game is worth it. And the plus side is I don't have to play Monopoly ad nauseum with the kids.

Test fate cards for Age of Blood

Hi all,

I wanted to have something else to post but I finished this first. After what seemed like an eternity I created a google site to host this PDF file.

My website is Hohum on the Web and you can get it on the Files page or try the direct download link here.

The two main questions I have are, should the face of the card have the parchment graphic? Should I use the full verbatim text to describe the card, put the effects in bold or just list the effects by themselves?

Of course any general comments and criticism would be appreciated as well as letting me know if you would prefer A4 over letter. Right now there are eight 3.5" x 2.5" cards per 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper.

I also just quickly printed these out on card stock and, except for some how feeding the sheet crooked when the backs were printed, I think they look okay.

Typing it all in took the most time.

Orgy of rules purchases

Hi all,

I have a back log on posts. I played an actual game of Zombies last weekend and will write up my AAR and review. I also still need to give my 2 cents on the paper figures and terrain I bought awhile back.

In the mean time I splurged on rule sets and purchased All Things Zombie (ATZ), NUTS!, Red Sand Blue Sky (RSBS) and Six Gun Sound (SGS) from Two Hour Wargames (THW). I am kicking myself for now for not also puchasing 5150: Star Army as I see now that I can get a whole bunch of 20mm sci -fi from RHModels and Reviresco and their Star Guard line.

The thought is ATZ will set up for the Post apocalypse, because of course society will collapse after the zombie plague. NUTS! will see the return of my Squad leader campaign character "Leonid Brezhnev" (or however you spell his name.) RSBS can tie in to RRtK Talomir campaign, Gladiators of the Topilium Imperium. And SGS can see the return of my only memorable Boot Hill character Whitey Jesus Ochoa Ford.

Sounds good on paper, we'll see if I can make it happen.

Be Ready Etc, Book Review

Now I must admit that this was a total impulse buy because of the cover and excerpts on the back. I was also, at the time, heavily into post apocalypse material.

I will say that I find Forrest funny and appreciate his quirkiness, but at times the book gets a bit much. Many dick jokes and overall locker room humor. While I have a high tolerance for this others may not be able to get past it. I would also say that the synopsis and pitch he gives to the publisher are probably more what I was looking for. Stretching it out into a book just made me want to put it down more than keep reading.

So from the back cover:

1. Have you dug up your wife's rose garden and built a fallout shelter, equipped with a prison where you can lock up annoying family members?

2. Have you mapped out an escape route to your safe zone?

3. Is there a vehicle of death siting in your garage?

4. Have you filled your go bag with all the needed instruments, including waterproof matches, postapocalyptic goggles, and at least one sexual party favor?

5. Have you learned how to milk various types of animals, including a giraffe?

You get the idea. So you have tips on how to survive, signs of a variety of coming apocalypti and tips for how to set up your own post A society (with you on top of course). There are also several side bars with interesting stores by Forrest and friends such as "Naked Etiquette" and my favorite "Ways to know if you are a F***ing fighter" especially #2 - You might be a fighter if you've ever given a stripper ringworm.

So in conclusion I would say this book is more like a limerick book. Better to pick and choose your way through than a straight sit down and read through.

1000 page views.

Well I'm up to 1000 page views, hopefully not too many of them are me checking in from my smart phone. Since I love maps I thought it would be fitting to have this image of Europe in 1000AD.

Welcome to Vladdd309 from Just too much free time, he has reviews and news about GW, Privateer Press and Osprey/Warlord Games stuff on his page.

A Conan Skirmish Game?

I had this strange feeling of Veja Du, you know that feeling that I had never seen this before. I was looking at the blog roll for Tabletop Gaming News and stumbled upon this post http://tinysolitarysoldiers.blogspot.com/2011/10/moar-crommmm.html so I looked around and realized that Matakishi had done it again and made up a Conan game. It looks like it could be fun and of course he has set it up in his inimitable style. I would also like to draw attention to the "Otherworld" idol.

This scenery is just fantastic. As a boy I spent countless hours looking at and through my AD&D books, but the Players Handbook was, to me, the most iconic.

Fantastic! Really takes me back.

Anyhow, welcome to R.gers and his Company of Heroes blog. I must profess that I am completely ignorant of this game but his blog looks like it has quite a bit of info on computer gaming.

Welcome Ambassador, I don't see a link to your blog but I see you also follow THW and Akula. Good stuff.

Welcome Scottsz, you seem to have several now defunct blogs about writing and developing adventure backgrounds. http://coldtextfiles.blogspot.com/ seems to still be up and looks interesting for D&D players. If you have a link to your webzine please let me know and I'll post it.

Welcome Big Lee of http://bigleesminipaintingblog.blogspot.com/ I am familiar with your work. Another top notch painter and member of the Posties Rejects.

And finally welcome Kriz of http://kriz-kreativemindz.blogspot.com/. I have no idea what GUNPLA is but that damaged building diorama is quite impressive. Good luck with it.

I have to rush off and meet the kids at the bus stop. Cheers!

Post Apocalypse 28mm

Andrea posted something about a Ganesha Games Post Apocalypse rule set based on the figures from lead-adventure.com

This is like kryptonite to my stance against 28mm. I probably still won't cave, but these minis are definitely cool. What is particularly cool is the Matakishi mini:

So if you can't game with him in the flesh, you can game with him by proxy. Pretty sweet.

Zombies Anyone?

I am on the Zombie bandwagon, watched "The Walking Dead" last season and the premier of Season 2 this past Sunday. Just did a search for Free Zombie Game Rules and came up with this post: http://www.zombieplace.com/7-free-zombie-board-games and it looks like there may be something to work with there. At the bottom of the post they have a link back to a review of Zombie games you can buy. I've also been considering buying Two Hour Wargames title "All things zombie". The Angry Lurker also pointed out that in addition to WW2 and Samurai (you should check those out) he played some zombie stuff using rules from Akula. I haven't had a chance to check them out yet, but the game TAL had looked pretty cool and it made me wonder if Shelldrake isn't using these rules for his Play By Blog game as well. Mainly due to the reference to Zombie Spawn points.

I also did some searchifiying yesterday for 20mm (1/72) zombies and it looks like Elhiem has the best stuff (or the only really). It turns out that 20mm is a better search term for figures than 1/72 which tends to be broader. I also found Stan Johansen Minatures when doing this search. The Road warrior figures and Road Rage rules, as well as kits for turning Hotwheels cars into wasteland death mobiles, all look neat. For me Post -Apocalypse and Zombie Apocalypse go hand in hand.

Enjoy.

How could I resist?

Do not taunt Hemming! (Rolled it on the Age of Blood naming table). "I'll smash your face for you!"
I got it from Col Shofer.

Welcome to The Angry Lurker. A pal of Ray from Don't Throw a One. His site has great photos of his games with the Posties rejects as well as movie reviews and inspirational photos. Good stuff. The main thrust seems to be WW2, or at least the most labelled.

Welcome to Scotty. If you have a blog please let me know and I'll post a link.

A Viking we shall go

I'm getting closer to some actual gaming. This weekend I downloaded some paper figs and terrain from RPG Now in a hope to jump start the gaming process. I'll give a review of the products when I have more time. Weekend Flag Football and landscaping (it's finally below 100F in Phoenix) took up all of my time this weekend, so I'll just have to push to get in a game this week. I may go with unpainted plastics and paper terrain, just to get the ball rolling.

Paul of the mancave has inspired me to make an Age of Blood cheat sheet and deck of fate cards. So Paul I may require a thumbs up or down on the design. Hopefully you will be able to use them for your games.

Welcome to Col Shofer of Colonel Schofer's Mild OCD Model Blog. Mild is putting it mildly. But all kidding aside it is a useful if not overwhelming repository of gaming goodness. I particularly liked the recent viking post here.

And lastly, although it has nothing to do with vikings I thought that Dale's post here required a plug. An interesting adaptation of Command and Colors (or colours) to miniature gaming.

Blood Bowl 7s

As I was reading through my blog list I came upon this post from Paul of the mancave. Blood Bowl 7s seems to be a fast play variant with a smaller pitch and fewer players. Sounds perfect for my Quis Sanguinis idea. Also perhaps better suited to solo play THW style. The rules can be found here.

Boardgame resource

Hi All,

I forget what I was initially searching for but http://www.headlesshollow.com/freebies_games.html has a ton of game reviews and cheat sheets for various board/ big box games. I snagged the Man O' War stuff as I actually have that game.

Welcome to Alanus of Dux Homunculorum lots of good DBA stuff in 1/72. I like the dice blessing ceremony.

Welcome to Damon of Everything you Need looks like a good film review site, ones that could be turned into some good THW skirmish scenarios. I don't see you in the public followers list, but no worries. Thanks for stopping by.

Welcome Followers

Some of the blogs I follow have a nice feature where they say hello to new followers and plug that followers blog at the end of their posts. I do not have many followers, or posts, but I have been remiss in extending this courtesy and would like to take this opportunity to make ammends.

Dan from The Command Tent has a nice blog which has focused on Dark Age skirmish gaming of late. Dan and I seem to share a lot of interests and after reading his blog I decided to start collecting 1/72 and blogging about it. This in turn led to Dan switching to 28mm (Doh!).

Paul of Paul's Bods needs no introduction. His site is full of fantastic painting, modeling and photography. I find myself ever excited by the possibilities and humbled by the skill that he presents on his page.

Ray of Don't Throw a 1 throws in a lot of history with his posts. His tastes are very ecclectic and his painting is also top notch. He also posts some very nice battle flags. I like the viking ones especially.

Paul of the Man Cave first caught my interest with his Dark Age campaign. I found the Age of Blood rule set through him and have attempted to start my own campaign. He also is currently playing a lot of Blood Bowl, which has piqued my interest. He is also a fellow brewer. Skal!

Dale of Dale's Wargames has several blogs but this one has a lot of interesting game theory and batrep analysis. He got me dangerously close to playing Flames of War but I still can't take the plunge.

Rodger of Rebel Barracks captured my interest with photos of his Viking Raid game and I've stayed because of the great painting and scenery he posts.

Wardy-La of Gjallarhorn offers more great Dark Age inspiration. I love his Viking horde.

Lorenzo Calvi just recently joined. I'm afraid I don't see your blog. I too did not, and may still not, have google friend connect setup to show my blog. I may need to send you an email to find out yours. His blog is Zerloon Place. He has some good painting tips and lots of photos. It seems that the Two Hour Wargames bug has bitten him as well, an interesting looking Zombie game. I need to play with the other titles some more first, but ATZ is on my list.

Peter Bonami also just recently joined. I am also not sure if you have a blog. I see you are friends with Paul of Paul's Bods, could you be from Peter's Cave? Yes I see that is the case. Another great site. Fantastic painting and very original figures.

Well that's all for now. Welcome all, and I hope to have posts that are worthy of a following. In the future I will acknowledge followers as I see them.

*[Edited to look like I can complete a thought, and again to add Lorenzo's blog]

Quis Sanguinis

(This cool picture is from http://withfriendship.com/user/sathvi/blood-bowl.php)

All the posts of late about Blood Bowl posted on http://corblogme.blogspot.com/ and http://tasmancave.blogspot.com/ have got me thinking about playing this game. I highly recommend these two blogs, but specifically Captain Arjun's post http://corblogme.blogspot.com/2011/09/getting-started-with-blood-bowl-on.html

He has lots of good suggestions for making pitches, dugouts and figures inexpensively. This got me thinking, why couldn't I convert 1/72 figs just as easily as 28mm? I believe you could keep all the dimensions the same, you would just have smaller figures on slightly smaller bases.

Mind you, I have never been great at conversions and have never even painted let alone converted a 1/72 fig. But I think it might be worth a try.

So I'm going to call this project Quis Sanguinis or blood bowl in Google Translate from English to Latin. Note: Google Translate did not like capitals at all.

I got the rules from here http://www.bloodbowlonline.com/Rules.shtml on that site version 5 was the latest.

Soft Apocalypse

Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh

 I have been on something of a post apocalypse kick lately, watching Blood of Heroes, The Book of Eli and the Road. This last Sunday while in LA I picked up this book and finished it this morning. I would have finished it sooner, but I ran out of light on the drive home and had to force myself to go to bed last night so I could get 5 hours of sleep.

 The story is very engaging and takes you along with Jasper as he tries to survive in the world slowly falling apart. It starts in 2023 and jumps varying amounts of time to the conclusion in 2033. There is a little bit of sci fi future stuff, but mostly it seems very current. The best way I can describe it is sort of like the prequel to Mad Max. Society is still functioning but there is 40% unemployment and gangs and tribes of the dispossessed.

 It seems like a great atmosphere to game. You're just trying to survive. Police, Fireman (which are now just another armed gang), thugs, Jumpy-Jumps (some kind of anarchistic group that wear random uniforms [Priest, Mailman, Milkman etc] and wantonly kill, Civil Defense and Army are all a potential threat. Not to mention being killed by people who think you are trying to rob them or bring disease to there community.

  Did I forget to mention eco-terrorists and designer viruses like Polio-X and flesh eating bacteria? Any way it seems like Two Hour Wargames would fit the bill nicely, perhaps the Zombie titles have all of those various ingredients in them already. Take out the zombies and you have it.

Anyhow here's the link to amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Apocalypse-Will-McIntosh/dp/159780276X

and to a more coherent review: http://escapepod.org/2011/03/30/book-review-soft-apocalypse-by-will-mcintosh/

I liked it, but then I also liked the Conan movie.

No more theoretical gaming!

As the years go by I find myself being more of a theoretician. By that I mean that I copiously read books and the internet, dreaming up campaigns and house rules and then never actually gaming. Part of it is time, part of it is snobbery (must have fully painted figs and terrain), and part of it is fear (there are some amazing figures and terrain out there).

But enough is enough. I need to get to some actual gaming and stop dragging my feet. Life is too short not to spend time "pushing little men around a table" as my wife would say.

This is only a test!

I thought I'd test out my photography skills so I printed out some backgrounds and dug up the only two buildings I ever finished. These are 28mm scale from some GW templates I got from somewhere. They are pretty dusty and as you can see I never sprayed them with anything to tack down the loose bits. My hope is that, once I actually start building again, my models at least won't be worse than this.

Map Of Talomir Project

So to add to my gaming ADD I've begun a mapping project for Talomir, the world of WHAA and RRtK from Two Hour Wargames.

I'm not sure how hush hush it is, but there is some stuff in the works. Right now it is building off of existing maps that can be found in the THW yahoo groups.

Ordnance Maps of Roman Britain

Awhile back Paul (of the mancave) posted this link to a campaign for wargaming in Arthurian Dark Age Britian http://darkagewargaming.wordpress.com/category/age-of-arthur/

In reading through one of the posts, which are extremely interesting, the author made mention of using ordnance maps if you chose to do a map based campaign. So I thought I'd do a little search and found this site http://www.bibliographics.com/MAPS/BRITAIN/BRIT-MAP-FRAME-LOOK.htm

I'm trying not to let this lead me too far astray for now, but for me the tug of maps is almost irresistable. At some point I may take these and grid them further.

Enjoy.

Sean

PS- I was away on vacation for the last few weeks and found no time for posting. I hope to be posting again more regularly once my kids are in school.

Scale Rulers

I saw this on the bloglist for http://paulsbods.blogspot.com/ which had this post http://colshofer.blogspot.com/2011/07/rule-them-in.html which linked to this http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/2011/05/scale-rulers.html

So the upshot is if you want scale rulers buy them from here http://www.rulers-of-the-world.com/index.html

I think I will since I seem to be having some kind of issue with how big to make terrain for 1/72 scale.

The Hamlet of Eadagbrycg

As I flail about, trying to play my first raid, I made this map. As usual I am trying to learn several things at once and not fully accomplishing any.

Eorund had decided that in order to test the mettle of his band he would perform a raid along the coast of England.

So the trip is successful on a roll of 3+ and I rolled 3 (+1for Norse sailing, +1 for Gautar's Navigating skill. The trip thus costs 25, 1 for each man and so the band has 44 left in it's coffers.

They will attack the sleepy Saxon hamlet of Eadagbrycg (to me sounds like Eat a Brick).

The idea is to be representing a 3' x 3' table (bounded by cobblestones). The rough patch at top right is a hill and the river is fordable at the road. I used THW (Two Hour Wargames) terrain table to roll it up and then added the two buildings. Each square in the grid represents an inch of table top.

Generic Age of Blood Campaign Map

As requested by Paul from the mancave, here is a generic version of my Age of Blood Campaign map. Feel free to use it for your own campaigns. It is still a little rough but not too bad if you don't look too carefully.

Skal!

Happy Independence Day

Hi all,

Got back from LA last night with an interesting drive. Hit a small dust storm with about 15ft visibility and some rain which dropped the temp from 103F to 80F by the time we hit Phoenix. The West bound I-10 was not as uneventful. Saw two big rigs overturned and another that had rear ended a tanker.

So have a happy and safe 4th.

Sean

Must have!!!!

Seeing Paul from the Mancave's post about GB resin ships got me thinking I should do a search. This came up and I must have it.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=1/72+ship+models&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=np&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=10441054807715254359&sa=X&ei=FooMTuiCIaTs0gGQ6ZS5Dg&ved=0CIABEPICMAY

Eorund's map

Here is a map I whipped up (actually a couple of hours) to give a rough lay of the land for my campaign.

Eorund, Hersir from Odolfrlundr

Eorund¹, Hersir from Odolfrlundr²

Now a discussion of the warband I created for my Age of Blood Campaign.

Hersir: Eorund (Sword, Axe, Shield, Chain Hauberk, Helm) Cost: 79 Upkeep: 8

Champion: Gautar (Axe, Spear, Shield, Chain Hauberk, Helm) Cost: 150 Upkeep: 6

Champion: Canute (Broad Axe, Bow, Chain Hauberk, Helm) Cost: 154 Upkeep: 6

Berserk: Ottar (Broad Axe, Axe, Sax) Cost: 69 Upkeep: 8

Berserk: Haddings (Sword, Axe, Shield) Cost:74 Upkeep: 8

5 Huscarls: Jorund Hothbrodsson³, Kyi, Stakard Haraldson, Randver Sigarson, Haakon

(Axe, Bow, L. Jerkin, Shield) Cost: 190 Upkeep: 10

5 Huscarls: Jorund Hognason, Hysing, Haki, Rorek, Khoriv

(Axe, Spear, L. Jerkin, Shield) Cost: 175 Upkeep: 10

5 Carls: Hogni, Stakard Svendson, Askold, Edda, Thrand

(Axe, Shield) Cost: 20 Upkeep: 0

5 Carls: Olof, Kjotve, Magnus, Gautrek, Randver Hvitserkson

(Axe, Shield) Cost: 20 Upkeep: 0

Totals: Men 25 Cost 931 Upkeep 56

Remaining Funds: 69

Vessel: Lt Drakkar.

Since the group is from Norway they have Sailing as their special trait, and Carls cost 20 instead of 25. For Eorund himself I rolled a 5-Renowned, so he started with a Renown of 11 instead of 10.

Notes:

1. Although I did not like the name Eorund, it is apparently a variant of Jorund. I found a link here (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&u=http://web.comhem.se/jh_genealogy/p7d24147b.html&ei=e-wJTtK2E6mp0AHf9vFq&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CEUQ7gEwCA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DEorund%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26channel%3Dnp%26nfpr%3D1%26biw%3D1920%26bih%3D933%26prmd%3Divnsb)
2. I felt like the characters needed to be from somewhere, besides just Norway, so I generated 10 names of Norse towns on (http://donjon.bin.sh/name/#norse_town) and then rolled a die to select. (1) Beinilundr, (2) Kinnbholm, (3) Olfrvik, (4) Odolfrlundr, (5) Arunlundr, (6) Arnlavklif, (7) Tirrbekkr, (8) Horgudrsetr, (9) Frostitoft, (10) Molfnbyr.
3. Because I was ending up with several repeats I decided to add some Patronymic surnames. For help with form I used (http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ONNames.shtml) as a guide.

Eorund's Saga

For my first foray back into gaming I thought a good old Dark Age skirmish campaign would be in order. I was inspired mainly by the posts over at the Man Cave (http://tasmancave.blogspot.com/) and totally sold when The Command Tent (http://thecommandtent.blogspot.com/) talked about making the plunge.

As per the suggestions on the Man Cave I look up the Age of Blood rules. You can find a link to Versions 1 and two at (http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/medieval.html). You need V1 for the fate cards.

Now there are two immediate problems. I don't have any figs painted up, and I am intending to play solo. I purchased the IMEX Vikings and Saxons, Pegasus farm animals and Russian farm houses for starters. I need to get started painting and figure out if my old 28mm terrain will work for 1/72 scale. To get started sooner I thought I might use a Virtual Table Top (VTT) like maptool (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads#MapTool). Of course I need to figure out how to set that up as well. For the solo aspect I am thinking of incorporating Warrior Heroes Armies & Adventures (WHAA) from Two Hour Wargames to help with the NPC (Saxon) mechanics. My thought was to stick with the d10 and use what ever stat seems applicable for “passing dice” in lieu of REP.

I have prepared a 25 man raiding party lead by the Hersar Eorund. I'll detail that, and my thoughts on naming people and places in a later post.

Sean

Into the breach!!

Well here goes my foray into gaming blogging. I hope to use this blog to add to the conversation somewhat, but mostly to shame myself into some actual play rather than vicariously living through others on the internet.

Here goes nothing.