Song of Blades and Heroes - sort of

Yesterday morning I managed to get my children to play a battle. I went at them with an army of skeletons, and they each chose a figure from my stash. Middle child specifically asked for a warrior who is a girl. The Boy went for the coolest looking armoured dude. Oldest used the figure she painted herself. It was lovely. They trounced my skeletons...but it was always going to be that way.

 

A Poor Man's A Billion Suns - New Ships

 I have been plugging away at a few new ships for my clothes peg fleet. I find it oddly relaxing, just trying to work out the best shapes etc. I love it. I hope one day to actually use them! 

I have also been painting these guys up. My X-Com team. I love that game. I wish I could play it more.

Modular Magnetic Interior Terrain

 This was an idea that I took from the Facebook group "Super Cheap Wargaming." Someone had printed out these terrain tiles, stuck them to flexible magnetic sheet and then used a metal surface to keep the tiles from moving around. It looked amazing. I decided to try it, but have had a few issues with it which I will document here.

As you can see I had to shrink them down. I essentially screen-clipped the PDF images onto a Word document. I did my best to make sure I kept them all roughly the same scale and this was largely successful. If there is an easier way to shrink them all down 80% then I would like to know. I think they have scaled down quite well. If I were to do it again I would make them slightly larger so the bases fit exactly within each square. 

I am lazy. I wanted the most straightforward, least time consuming method of creating these terrain tiles. First I spent an evening chopping out the tiles. It was lovely, I put on a WW2 documentary and had a blast. Then I realised I would need to attach them to the white side of the magnetic sheet. I would either have to make exact cuts on the magnetic sheet or cover the white. I decided to cover the white with black paper - this happened. This will not do.

After some reflection I decided to reprint the tiles on card, cut them out, and stick them on squares of magnetic sheet. The magnetic sheet does not need to be the same size as the tiles as they are thick enough to hold miniatures. 

This is a seamless edit as I have at this point completed some tiles.

Well it turned out that the white side of the magnetic sheet was something you peel off to reveal a self-adhesive layer! Thus, I haven't needed glue or double sided tape. It has been a dream. See below.

Each tile has a strip of magnetic strip. Smaller than the size of the tile, cut roughly. They hold miniatures well enough. It will just be a bit time consuming cutting it all out and sticking strips of magnet on the back. I am excited about this though. 

I should also at some point buy a non-used baking tray to use exclusively for magnetic terrain.

April Board Game Night

 I made it to another board game night! It was great. I met some cool people and got to play a couple of games. Coatl - I had never heard of this before. Wingspan - I had wanted to play this for a while.

In Coatl you need to build three Aztecish snakes. It is pretty great to be honest. I will be trying to play it again. I had a great start but got caught out at the end and lost.

Wingspan is one of my sister's favourites. I played it and to be honest it was a lovely game. I loved it. The theme is just pleasant, threre is no combat as such. There is just something about it. I was relaxed the entire time playing it.

Blockhouses

 A while back I painted a bunch of wooden building blocks grey. The idea was I could use them as modular buildings, and possibly internal walls. Then nothing happened. 

The other day I had this idea though: the blocks are square. Why can't i just turn them into buildings by sticking greeblies on them?

The doors, fan and ladder are all Iliada Game Studios extras. Then I just stuck a bunch of random bits to them. I intend to prime and paint these this week, but to be honest I feel like they could actually be passable as they are?

If they work out okay I will probably build an entire town of these.

BGG - One Game Per Page - My top games from the top 600

This is a post I made over on Board Game Geek in an attempt to use their blog function. It was less user friendly than Blogger. I was inspired by another blog post to pick my favourite game from each page (one page being 100 games) in the top game rankings. I was surprised at how many I had actually played, but a little sad that some of my favourite games weren't in the top 600. It was meant to be the top 10 pages but I had none from pages 7-9 and stopped looking.

Page 1
Games Played:
6 Terraforming Mars
17 Castles of Burgundy
45 Agricola
62 Star Wars Imperial Assault
71 Eclipse
84 Seven Wonders
93 Battlestar Galactica The Game
100 Dominion Intigue

I am actually quite surprised by how many games in the top 100 I have played. Aside from Dominion and Terraforming Mars I have only played the others once. Also, many of them were played between 5 and 10 years ago.

Terraforming Mars is perhaps my all time favourite game right now. Everything about it is fun, but for me the concept of terraforming Mars as a game just gets me interested. It is like a game version of the Red Planet books.

Page 2
114 Dominion
116 Codenames
119 Pandemic Iberia
159 War of the Ring
160 Chaos in the Old World
168 Memoir 44
170 Cosmic Encounter

I guess Dominion is my favourite from this group. Memoir 44 is a superb game, and I am glad to have it, but it doesn't see much use as it is only two player. With Dominion I like the imagined kingdom in my head. I like the deck building element, which hopefully allows you to create an engine to score points. This is what I love about Terraforming Mars also - playing those cards to build a VP machine on the table. The theme of Dominion is part of what I love, even though some say it is paper thin. If the cards were to represent stocks or military units, or zombie things I don't think I would be as interested. I love my little kingdom and the ...dominion... I have over it.

Page 3
202 Carcassonne
210 Ticket to Ride
230 Taverns of Tiefenthal
263 Dixit: Odyssey
286 Telestrations

It probably has to be Carcassonne from this list. I have played it a lot, picked up the Big Box at GenCon 2012, and recently played it with my children, although I don't play many games with them. I like the tile laying aspect, and that you build a little world on the table. I have never actually played with all of the expansions I own.

Page 4
310 Survive: Escape from Atlantis!
316 Small World
337 Dixit
339 Mysterium
341 Takenoko

I found it odd that so many games, that I love, are on page 4. Small World is likely my favourite here, but Dixit and Mysterium are family favourites. They are games that my wife will actually play with me. In fact, I am going to go with Dixit as my top here, because I have had many a great time laughing about the images and our interpretations of them with many family and friends.

Page 5
401 Love Letter
417 Mice and Mystics
466 Forbidden Desert
467 Colt Express
471 Citadels
490 Catan

The bottom three on this list are the games I most remember. Catan was one of the first games to broaden my mind from Risk and Monopoly. Colt Express was a laugh whenever I played it. Citadels is a useful small game, that is filler with two people, but can last a good hour plus with more. I love the card laying, and small scale empire building with it. Citadels is my top game.

Page 6
510 Time's Up Title Recall
520 Alhambra
527 Sentinals of the Multiverse

Time's Up Title Recall has to be my favourite here. I love the game, many family memories, and the other two I barely remember. I think I liked Alhambra, but I honestly couldn't tell you a single thing about Sentinals. Time's Up is just a lovely, standard family party game that if I owned would be out every Christmas.

Beyond page 6 I moved three more pages and there were no games I remembered having played. As such I am calling it here. A little sad that my old favourites Star Wars Miniatures (WotC) and Marvel Dice Masters haven't made it.

Well, that is that. I hope you like it, and I will see what happens. Game night on Friday... maybe a new favourite emerges.

Star Wars PocketModels

 Here is my collection of Star Wars PocketModels. I keep them largely constructed, but have a lot of un punched plates. I genuinely wish I had the time and desire to play this game. I haven't played it since perhaps 2013? 

Why did I get this out? We emptied our attic and I found a stray box of mostly Seperatist vehicles that I managed to fit in with the rest of my collection.

February 17th - Boardgame Night

 Remember when I attended the fledgeling local boardgame group in Jan 2022? I had a blast, and planned on making it a regular thing. Then my wife got pregnant and fell really sick with it (partially my fault I admit), and I was in a situation where I was needed at home to watch the children, and felt bad getting a babysitter if I wanted to go out, while my wife was esentially bed-ridden. 

Well, she recovered, baby arrived, life got busy again, until I finally managed to go this month. Signs for March look good also. 

I arrived and sat with three first-timers. We played two and a half games. 

Game 1: Taverns of Tiefenthal

What a fun game! I loved the mechanic of rolling dice and then passing them along. I love the theme of an old-timey, tropey, fantasy tavern. I love the deck building element. I am not sure it grabbed me entirely, but I will definitely want to play this game again. I got my butt handed to me though. The components are lovely, the art is great. I genuinely really enjoyed it.

Here are my victory points. The best way to win seems to be to upgrade everything in the tavern, because you get a Noble for your deck, which is worth 10 victory points.

Game 2: Citadels

First time playing this with more than two people. It lasted a lot longer than I am used to, as there were five of us. I kept messing it up as the king. For me, there is something about fantasy sort of games that  I love. I also love card games, especially card games that involve deck building and creating some kind of empire, corporation or whatever with cards laid out in front of you. 

Game 2.5: Pandemic Iberia

We played 30 minutes of this and it went okay. I played normal Pandemic ages ago and I think we lost. I felt very lost in the game and didn't really enjoy it.

Here is to next month. I will read the rules of Revolution I think, then offer it to play.

Paizo Goblins - definitely NOT Kobolds.

 It turns out a Kobold is a skinny lizardy humanoid. I had it in my head, maybe thanks to these miniatures, that they are little comical mini-goblins. These miniatures are the official Paizo (Pathfinder RPG) goblins. I thought they were just random Reaper Bones miniatures. 

These guys have been sitting around for a while. My issue is, I am used to painting 6mm figures, where you need the following: skin, max 2 colours of clothes (one if it is body armour), 1 colour for belts if you feel like it, a weapon, maybe hair. With 28mm I find you need so many different things that I get painting paralysis. 

Take this guy for example: steel for weapons and some bits of armour, orange skin, bone for teeth and skull, wood, leather, tongue,  a couple for clothes. It is just so many colours, and in such small amounts that I can't be bothered half the time.

This one is my favourite. I love the expression, the covered eye. In weapons terms - the point is better than the edge. I like the poked out tongue. The only thing I haven't done is eyes.

I went for green skin for the archer. No real reason other than that I was sick of painting green skinned things - orcs and some goblins. 

Unsure about this guy. I felt like his head was a skull, but his fingers looked finger-like enough. Leather gauntlets...problem solved. Armour was this annoying bronze colour that didn't paint properly and ended up being sticky. I can still tell it is a bit off. I am tempted to go back to him and rust up his armour a little bit. The liklihood though, is that he will stay in my carry case for ages now, until I play a game of Song of Blades and Heroes. Or one day fulfil my dream of being in an RPG group.

Of the Internet and Disappearing Memories.

 Upon receiving a new laptop for work, I decided to sync my bookmarks. I mistakenly thought that the bookmarks on my old laptop were synced with my Google account. This was incorrect. It turned out that the last device on which I linked my bookmarks to my Google account was my gaming computer, which I hadn't used seriously in many years, and got rid of in 2017. I found lists of bookmarks that looked like they had last been updated in 2013 or something. I got really excited about this and was looking forward to a trip down memory lane of old WW2 wargaming pages, blogs and other interesting things. Unfortunately what I got was very different. 

I had a link to a database of Marvel Dice Masters. I used it for squad/deck building. It was a really great resource. Of course, I haven't really played this game since probably 2015, have never seen any of the other sets, the DC sets, DnD sets and sets from other IPs. I likely will never play any of them, other than my current collection. Much like my attitude, the link to that website was dead. 

Back in 2013 I spent a great summer playing Planetside 2. I researched how to maximise my own playing experience, and one of the suggestions was to join a platoon. I followed a page that was devoted to getting the most out of playing in a platoon, how to team up, how to best distribute classes. It was such a great resource.

Gone now.

Star Wars Pocketmodels. A classic game that I collected between 2007 and 2010 probably. It is really fun, it is Star Wars. It is constructible. It is fighting. 

There was a moderately active community that I watched slowly peter out until there were only a couple of people posting on the forum every now and then. Then the site shut down. Sad times. The links in my bookmarks are dead.

The Guild was a forum run probably by Piers Brand. It was the best resource for anything BattleGroup back in the day. At some point, though, it just shut down. Many of the posters there migrated to the Facebook page. Dead link.

Back in 2011 someone created a mod for Arma III, named it DayZ and let it loose. It was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. I dual-screened and had a map on the other screen, which helped me navigate around. "Anyone in Cherno?" Such memories. Spawning by the coast with literally nothing, trying to survive longer than 10 minutes. It was amazing. That map? Dead link. That game? Gone. They tried to create it as a stand-alone game and it was apparently disasterous. 

Back in the early 2000s I had given up wargaming and miniature painting. When the internet really came to life I stumbled across this website. It is by someone called Andy Watkins. He played in 15mm. He had some great terrain, figures and battle reports. Unfortunately he used a lot of Adobe Flash Player to run links to navigate the website. I happened to bookmark one Stalingrad battle so can see these photos. But I can't get to my favourite battle reports. I literally can't access them, even though they likely still exist online. Shame. 

There are a number of other blogs and sites that are no longer functioning. A Yahoo Group for the Crossfire WW2 rules - dead because Yahoo Groups died. A set of wargame rules called Point Blank, with a couple of battle reports - gone. That site is the site that showed me now necessary it is to attach figures to bases. I even contacted the author - Scott Clinton - over on Board Game Geek about if his rules ever got published. They didn't.

I wonder how many other websites are just gone. Along with the dreams and inspiration that they facilitated. How many periods of our lives were based around a thing that no longer exists anymore? 

There was a game a while ago called Star Wars Uprising. I got to travel around, shooting, levelling up. Then the game got shut down. Just like that. The same goes for the failed Command and Conquer reboot. It was meant to be free to play, there are a few games YouTube to watch, I even downloaded the game, but didn't get a chance to play it as I was living abroad and didn't have a good enough computer. When I returned home the game had been cancelled.

Just a whole world of "what-ifs?"