Adventures on the Wargames Table

Sunday night is club night for the Bristol Big’Uns so Steve and I recently met up for a game of Kings of War. He very kindly loaned me the use of his splendid Ogre army whilst he fielded his Samurai themed Kingdoms of Men. Now, I’ve played a few games of ‘Kings’ over the last couple of years (may be half a dozen in total) and generally had quite a lot of fun, so I was looking forward to this game plus it’s always good to catch up with Steve, Rob, Alan, Simon, Dave, Nigel, etc. We rolled for the scenario and got ‘control’ whereby at the end of the game we would divide the table in to 2 foot squares and work out who had the most troops and thus controlled the area. Deployment was by alternating unit and was quite funny for me because I had very little idea of what my troops stats and abilities were, so I just deployed them to ‘look good’ :o) Steve got the first go and began a fairly cautious advance; he had plenty of missile troops so a few turns of bows, arquebus and cannon fire...

Sunday night is club night for the Bristol Big Uns and we really couldn't ask for a better venue than the superb Iron Acton village hall. We've recently splashed out on some of the new mouse pad style gaming mats and very good they are too. My visit on Sunday last was only a flying visit but it was still great to catch up with everyone and have a little natter. I couldn't resist taking a few pics to share. First we have a game of Lion Rampant between Mike and Simon. The figures are all Mike's (20mm Zvezda I think), I reckon they look splendid! The beauty of this game is that you don't need masses of figures and you can fit a couple of games in to an evening. This has rather caught my imagination :o) French vs English Both sides getting stuck in! What beautiful knights! Archers and billmen Next is a very characterful game of Kings of War between Dave S and Dave G. It's Forces of Nature trying to thwart the advance of the shambling Undead. ...

On Saturday I had the privilege of being invited to a day of gaming in the superb shed of Wargames Table chum Steve. Even better, he kindly set up a game of Kings of War, supplying both sides along with Easy Army lists! Thanks mate! :o) Armies drawn up for battle Steve offered me the choice of armies, Kingdoms of Men or Orcs & Goblins ... since my WFB days I've always had a soft spot for the gobboes so that was an easy choice! :o) Steve's Orc & Goblin army is made up mostly from GW Lord of the Rings figures and I think it looks marvellous! Send forth all legions!!! For the Kingdoms of Men, Steve used a combination of historical figures. Looking good eh!? Stand fast men! I haven't played that many games of KoW yet so I was a little apprehensive about muffing it all up, but Steve gave me a quick refresher of the key points and we set to. One of the great things about KoW is that the rules are very intuitive and elegant, but they're not so simple...

Every wargamer worth his salt should do a little re-basing from time to time ... Here I've started re-basing my Early Imperial Roman figures with view to multi-basing them to suit a range of rules. This is how I posed them to get an idea of how I wanted the finished unit to look. Then out came two pairs of pliers to try to 'pop' them off the bases by twisting opposite corners. Foolishly I had super-glued them to the bases (do not do this!) but with a little application they came off okay. Unpainted sand These 8 figures are actually taking up the space of 10 figures, but as I have 16 I'd like to use them as two "troops" of archers for my Kingdoms of Men "Kings of War" army. For historical games they would simply be two detachments from an Auxiliary cohort. My Romans were originally organised and based with a view to campaigning in the newly conquered province of Britannia, but I've decided to abandon it to the barbarians and hea...

I expect many of you will have already seen the Facebook advert from Gripping Beast about their forthcoming massed battle rules "Swordpoint" ... Well, I'm rather intrigued by this. Penned by Martin Gibbins etc along with all the creative input from the GB team, it has to be worth a look! There was a demo of it at Salute, but I couldn't make it along this year. There's also some vague info from Guy Bowers on the WSS blog here . In the FB comments/replies there's talk of books of lists, etc. They've supported SAGA very well so it looks promising for Swordpoint. Talking of SAGA ... The campaign supplement "Age of the Wolf" was previewed at Salute and will be available generally next month. I'm very excited about this too. SAGA has been crying out for a campaign system and if this review is anything to go by then it looks very promising indeed. Also, in the FB discussion were comments about a forthcoming Arthurian supplement for SAGA....

Well, "review" might be a bit of stretch as I’ve only played two games and ‘helped’ (in the loosest sense of the word) with a third game. Perhaps “first impressions” might be better? :o) A rulebook Kings of War (or KoW), from Mantic Games , is a fantasy themed massed battle rule set that seems to be pretty squarely aimed at those gamers who have boxes of GW figures stored in their lofts from those glory days of Warhammer yore. Mantic have their own range of figures but encourage players to dig out their old troops too. How refreshingly sensible. I’ve been an historical gamer for quite a few years now but as someone who got in to wargaming back in the 80’s through Warhammer, I cannot help but get a little misty-eyed when I think of my old Orc & Goblin horde (mainly Kevin Adams figures ... lovely!). Sadly, and perhaps foolishly, I sold those figures long ago. Anyway, enough nostalgia for the moment, back to the game. My impression of Colin from CFM .. ;o) It’s...