Still mostly out...

 

As the end of the summer means I finish up a bunch of my commitments, the hobby desk is still looking a bit dry, and the blog a little sparse. I've been slowly assembling Maximus in my free time, just so I can throw the box away. He's a little further advanced than this now, but I'm not going to get up and show you an updated photo just yet...

I've not had time to write up the Red Star Blues tournament games just yet, but I won the best player / best sports award, which is obviously the best award. I picked the exclusive edition Samsa model, which isn't something I've had the opportunity to do before.

From the general prize pool I grabbed a donated Morat Vanguard with Combi Rifle who I suspect is about to be the subject of some paint scheme testing...

Apart from a book and a couple of cans of undercoat, I only grabbed these two miniature blisters at the club bring and buy. I think if I'm going to justify to myself having gotten them, I should really get them assembled sooner rather than later... The plan is to use them as NPCs for fantasy roleplaying games like D&D and Pathfinder.

And finally, my Warcrow pre-order arrived, so I've got a few more miniatures to get assembled. It's about to be another busy week, so I'll be writing about things I've done rather than completed hobby, but I hope to have a slightly more regular blog schedule moving forward...

UK Games Expo - Miniatures

 

I tried not to go too mad with getting miniatures at UK Games Expo, as its not like I have a shortage of miniatures to paint right now... First up are the multi-part Battlemechs from Catalyst, a I can't really get them from anywhere else...

The Phoenix Hawk and the Wolverine both work as Lyran Guards, so that's nice and simple. The Eris and the Rifleman are both not really suited to the Lyrans, so I'm thinking they'll join my militia force.

Finally, the Stormcrow and Vulture, which are Clan Omni-Mechs. While I'm not against playing my Lyrans in the "ilClan era" (the modern setting), both of these mechs aren't quite right for that either. So, its likely I'll pick a Clan paint scheme for a few Mechs. I'm a bit torn between Sea Fox and Jade Falcon, and will probably end up picking based on a paint scheme I like.

There are a couple of freebies I picked up, which is definitely guilt free. First up is this lich for Necropolis 28. He was being given out loose, and that pointing figure was definitely making me anxious...

I also had a good chat with the person behind Fauxhammer. He had a bunch of painted power armoured figures with his face on it. It was good to chat with him, and I'm sure I'll find a use for this.

I grabbed some filament printed scenery from Crafted Campaigns. I picked these because they were really nice practical pieces that weren't so specific you won't get much use out of it, and they were robust looking scatter of rocks and vegetation that looked pretty easy to paint. I'm not sure where they are on the website, sadly.

I had to pick up the latest miniatures from Bad Squiddo. She's got four halfling adventurers, which given I'm currently painting a few halflings at the moment, I really wanted to grab. These ones have some more obvious spellcasting types, which are good options to have available.

Finally, another freebie, but the miniature I'm most excited about of everything here. This is a Bucklerman for Warcrow, Corvus Belli's new game. If I was some kind of professional, I'd be assembling and painting this as a massive priority for the internet traffic from being early to publish... But I'm busy tidying the hobby space and have a LARP to go to right now, and then have a bunch of stuff I'm in the middle of painting that I want to finish...

What I got up to in October

 

It's been a busy October, although not one with much in the way of my getting my paint brushes out. I did manage to get the Gator TAG assembled to get some games in with it.

I've also had a ton of painted models back from commission painters. Between that and unpacking TAG Raid, a bunch of hobby time ended up being used in sorting those out. I've still not finished photoing all the different minis I've got in, and they'll be going up on the blog over the next few weeks.

I did make it over to SELWG Show and got in a demo game of Warcrow. I was very impressed and it's definitely something I'll be looking into in future.

I've also played quite a few games with my Nomads. I'm still learning them at this stage, but I'm having fun working out how they play and which of their unit combinations work well for my play style.

So, a productive hobby month all told, even if I myself didn't end up finishing painting any figures. It's definitely a priority for November to bring that balance back a bit, I think!

Warcrow Demo Game

 

Corvus Belli has been promoting Warcrow quite a bit as they develop their foray into fantasy wargaming. But is it any good? Hearing that the first demos in the UK would be at SELWG, which is just up the road from me, I decided to go on an expedition to find out...

The demo set wasn't painted yet, having only arrived on the Wednesday before the show! They were lovely crisp sculpts with plenty of detail and looked like they'd be great to paint. These models are the ones intended for the starter set. I picked the northern tribe faction which is a mix of orcs and elves.

The other side of the starter set are the Embersig faction - which is a human, elf and dwarf faction. The orc faction played with tougher fighters, while Embersig had troops with more morale and discipline.

The demo game was around the control of the central objective. It's alternating activations, but with a mechanic where a unit can push itself to act twice. Embersig took initiative, and headed for the objective.

I used my wizard to buff the orc fighters, over-powering the spell by taking "Stain" on the caster. The demo game has this risk causing you damage, but the wider game is likely to have a more variable mechanic.

The orcs were charged by the humans and took some damage but didn't fall back. When they fought back, they won the fight without causing any casualties, the fear they were causing pushed the Embersig unit back away from the objective.

The Embersig wizard then used a spell to push the orcs off the objective. Rude!

While the northern tribe wizard tried to claim the objective at the end of the turn, the Embersig leader took control of the objective by being better at claiming objectives than the wizard.

I started the last turn by having the orc leader charge in and smush the Embersig leader into the ground. Can't claim an objective when you're cut down, can you?

I was really worried about the Embersig wizard repeating their clever push spell losing me the game, so I reasoned that a northern tribes wizard would punch better than an Embersig wizard. This proved correct and a surprised Embersig wizard fell to the bludgeoning of the northern tribes wizard.

Now the orcs charged into the Embersig Infantry and cut several of them down. It seems that models are more powerful on the charge, so moving so that you get the charge is a big deal!

Cutting down several Embersig solders, the couple of survivors fled the combat, leaving the field in the hands of the northern tribes! Victory for the orcs and their allies!

The game is currently in beta, and the game mechanics may change before publication. That said, the game as it currently stands seems really promising. You get extra move and better attacks if you charge, so there's a motivation to take initiative and manoeuvre to get the charge.

Add to that the ability to push your troops at the risk of them getting exhausted, an over-cast mechanic for magicians, and a morale system that causes you to retreat a significant distance if you fail a morale check in combat. This adds up to me as a game where movement and positioning are going to be incredibly important. I can already see how different factions might focus on different aspects of the game for their strengths and weaknesses. I'm watching with deep interest as to what comes next...

An outing to SELWG Show 2023

 

Sunday was the SELWG Show 2023. It's held in East London, and was about an hour's trip each way for me to get to. It has a Bring and Buy, that I took a bag full of stuff along to, and managed to clear out a few bits and pieces I wasn't using.

My main reason for attending the show was that I'd seen an announcement that there would be demos of Warcrow. This is the new fantasy wargame from Corvus Belli. I had a great demo game that I'll write more about later, but I'm now even more excited by the potential of it.

The focus of SELWG seems to be around historical gamers, both in terms of the demo games and sellers. There was a good bit of Games Workshop stuff, a few other big names (Warlord, a shop with Mantic, etc) and D&D bits and pieces too, but it was probably a little under half of what was there.

There were several impressive and fancy participation games. I've seen quite a lot of them at Salute before, but that's kind of fine from my point of view. Salute is a busy day - a smaller, quieter show is a good time to get more time to play some different games.

Participation games are not really my thing, but if you like them, there were plenty of options to try out at SELWG. I don't think it's a show I'd travel hugely far for, but as I'm in London and its in London, it's a good option for me.

I failed to get any photos of the traders, but there's two I would like to call out. Disain Studio does a bunch of 3D printed models, particularly animals and so on, so plenty of options for fantasy RPGs and wargames that use them. Meanwhile, Rok Minis do some nice small scale boxed sets that are a good self contained hobby project and game. It's also stuff that's suitable for smaller scale games - Epic, Battletech, Warmaster and so on...

My only big purchase at the show was an extra KR Multicase, which isn't very photogenic, so I guess this post ends here?

How do you end blog posts? I've never quite got the hang of it. I just run out of words.