Dice Not Included

The Battle for the Gateway of Lost Souls

2009-07-29T21:01:00.002Z

"Oathbreakers" cursed Gromnir under his breath as the Elves advanced through the morning's mist. The War had dragged on for as long as anyone cared to remember and many Elves and Dwarves had perished. This meeting under truce had the potential to begin to bring the War to an end.

The two sides drew up in parallel opposite each other. With a melodic voice the Elven emmisary began to address the Dwarves in an almost patronising tone.

"The Phoenix King salutes the proud, heroic and honourable Dwarves and is pleased to listen to a request for a cessation of hostilities."

With that, two bolts swept out the mist and scythed into the Dragon Princes and Dwarves marched on the rear of the Elf column.

"Truce breakers!" sang the Elves as they charged the Dwarf lines. The Dwarves, surprised by the actions of the Elves broke and fled. The Dwarves, surprised and shocked levelled their crossbows at the Elves only to catch a glimpse of the Dwarves that had ambushed the Elves. The large pointed hats and style of beard were unmistakable. The Fallen Kin!

The crossbows found their mark and the Chaos Dwarves cried out. But the quarrellers were not enough to slow the advance of the Chaos Dwarves and they withdrew to tell the main force of the day's events. The Elves decided too to withdraw but as they did, the Chaos Dwarf sorceror took out a vial that pulsated with dark magic from within his robes. Speaking words in a dark and evil tongue, dark energy flowed involuntary out of the Elf Emissary's mouth to the vial. The Emissary dropped, lifeless. The Elves cried out in anguish and fled, leaving the field to the Chaos Dwarves.

"We have work to do". hissed the Chaos Dwarf sorceror.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Chaos Dwarves approached the ancient and crumbling temple.

"Hurry! We must not displease the Dark One."

Dust was rising on both horizon to the front and rear of the temple. The Elves and Weaklings would be here soon thought the Sorceror. They would surely know what we mean to do to the Elf-souls. We must not disappoint them as he glanced over his force within the temple.

Slowly and trance-like the Sorceror began the chanting that would allow the sacrifice of souls to Hashut. The runes of the Gateway began to glow and pulsate.

Shots sounded from Earthshaker and Stone Throwers alike. The Chaos forces deployed around the temple charged out to meet the Elf and Dwarf lines. Above the din, the chanting resonated and dark clouds began to swirl around the Gateway.

The Phoenix King and Dwarf High King had sent their best warriors to combat this mortal and spiritual threat. Suddenly the Chaos line gave way to the Elves. The White Lions dashed like quicksilver into the Chaos artillery within the Temple.

For a split second, the Sorceror became aware of his mortal situation and lost concentration. Sparks flew from the Gateway and shocked the Sorceror. Stunned and mentally drained from his exertions, the Sorceror stumbled to the crest of the ruins, gasping out as he felt his body start to solidify. Seizing the opportunity, the Dwarf artillery rang out and an Organ Gun founds its mark. The Sorceror exploded in a shower of crystal rock.

As the last pockets of Chaos resistance were surrounded and destroyed the bloodied armies of Elf and Dwarf drew up against each other once again. This War would continue, but not today. Today's blood reaving was over and the horrors witnessed that day would not easily be forgotten.

Altrincham Altercation Event Writeup Thing

2009-07-09T18:26:00.001Z

Good evening. Matt and Chris have been good enough to let me abuse their portion of the Internet and spew forth vaguely informative words about what we get up to at Dice Not Included and why it's fun. I do this against my better judgment - not because I don't love the sound of my own cybernetic voice, because I do, but because every time I talk about the games I/we play I am revealing myself to be an absent-minded prematurely-senile balding duffer with only the vaguest grasp of strategy or, for that matter, basic mathematics.

So, the Altrincham Assault. 750 points, three games, Steamroller 4 scenarios: Mosh Pit, the one with the four vertical strips that I can't remember the name of, and the one with the six quadrants between the deployment zones that I really can't remember the name of. I feel this indicates the amount of prep work I'd put in to the tournament - rather than thinking about what would suit the scenarios or the likely opponents like some sort of sensible person, I just brought along my regular "lots of helljacks that hit you in the face" list and my regular "go ahead and kill all my steam-driven doom zombies, they'll only come back as ghosts and rip your face off" list, neither of which exactly excels at taking and holding areas of the table.

Game one was against a pleasant chap called Rick who'd brought a Privateer army. First time I'd seen one of those since the book came out, and Rick claimed he'd be riding on the fact that nobody ever seemed to play against Pirates that often or have the faintest idea what they did. It was a disappointing game - not because of Rick, but because of my seeming inability to remember either what my army did or how to win the scenario. I shan't bore you with the details (because they would bore you) but suffice to say that I got two turns, Rick got three, and we both spent half an hour sitting around not doing very much instead of having the hilarious punch-up that the two armies could have accomplished. It left something of a bad taste in my mouth, and I really hope Rick shows up to the next event so we can have a proper barney.

Lunch, cups of tea all round (Chris, bless him, spent most of the day running around with mugs of precious, life-giving warmed caffeine), and a quick conference with the other Dice Not lads revealed that none of us had done that well. Rick's club, who play a lot of these land-grab scenarios in a league context where winning matters (as opposed to the pick-up games we play, which usually end on a warcaster kill and don't have much in the way of context), had conversely done rather well.

The generally poor Dice Not Included performance meant I was facing our local boy Tom 'The Quiet Digressor' Kinsey and his meticulously planned Cryx army. I'd planned on the prospect of facing at least one Cryx opponent and felt I could have a good go of it even if my opponent hadn't been so good as to feed me souls and new recruits by bringing living troops of their own. Alas for my brilliant planning, I was bitten on the bum by the scenario again - one of those ones where your army has to spread out and have things right across the board. I have a peculiar horror of doing this (years of playing Warhammer Undead where you have to huddle around your army general if you want to ever make it even halfway across the board, maybe?), especially when my army has things that have to hide behind other things and things that need to be near other things to serve their purpose. The Quiet Digressor was able to creep ahead on points by holding the one area I hadn't been able to spare anything to hold. This game left an even worse taste in my mouth, mostly because I lost the ability to add up numbers on dice about halfway through and didn't/couldn't really handle the scenario, and thus felt like an even bigger idiot than I had in the last one.

At this stage I was honestly thinking about dropping out. Ben applied his unorthodox motivational technique and convinced me to stick around for the third game, and I'm glad he did because the third game was bally good fun and reminded me why I come to these things in the first place. Ruth and her Circle army gave me the best game of the day - something like her fourth or fifth game ever and she fought me to a draw. Mistakes were made by both players but they weren't the sort that loses you the game before you've started because of invisible lines on the table. Moments of genuine miniaturised excitement were had. It was a slow game (neither of us really knowing what Ruth's army was capable of) but it was thoroughly enjoyable and our armies actually got their teeth into one another, which is always nice.

Onwards, then, to the award ceremony, in which visiting gamers took away almost every award and left the Dice Not crew (those who'd not scarpered home to their infernal lightnin' boxes at the end of the third round) very much in the loyal applause category. In fact, the only one of our regulars who left with anything prize-shaped was, rather surprisingly, me. I ended up taking home a rather snazzily top-hatted rubber duck (the ~~Pretentious Twonk Who Turned Up In A Waistcoat~~ Best Dressed Gamer Award) and a £20 gift voucher for painting my army and being lucky enough to have my name tugged out of a hat.

Despite having had a rather poor time of it on the table, I'm looking forward to the next event. One or two alterations to the format spring to mind (at least one game that doesn't revolve around occupying imaginary zones of increasingly abstract construction and timed turns spring to mind), but the essential goal of the events - bringing in some new people and introducing some variety into the club's games - is being achieved. Long may it continue to be so. I may even have decided what to spend the twenty quid on before the next one.

Altercation Results

2009-06-21T23:26:00.000Z

1. Jamie Perkins
2. Darran Palmer
3. Alex Smith
4. Rich Paget
5. Rich Loxam
6. David Holliday
7. Nathan Hoole
8. Austin Pickles
9. Jason Denton
10. Rich Jennings
11. James Johnson
12. Ian Adams
13. Ben Josling
14. Jonthan Taylor-York
15. Tom Frith
16. Tom Kinsey
17. Jon Garrad
18. Ruth Pape
19. Steve Bowden
20. Lee Yates (Webb's Wooden Spoon award)

Fully painted army: John Garrad

Best-dressed gamer: John Garrad
Coolest gamer: Alex Smith
Most nautically-themed army: Rick Jennings

Altrincham Altercation Announced!

2009-04-29T21:11:00.011Z

Dice Not Included is pleased to announce its second tournament of the year - the Altrincham Altercation.

This is a Warmachine and Hordes tournament for Sunday,the 21st June. Enjoy 3 games of 750 points with other tournament going types; no real Warmachine knowledge necessary.

Download the rather loose rulespack and an entry form here.

Entry is strictly limited to 24 places (6 more than last time!) so get your entries in now!

The current list of confirmed entrants is:

Austin Pickles
Steve Bowden
Rich Paget
Jonathan Taylor-Yorke
Nathan Hoole
Will Booker
Ben Josling
Tom Kinsey
David Holliday
Alex Smith
Chris Messer
Jon Garrad
Jason Denton
Ruth Pape
Ian Adams
Darran Palmer
Rich Loxam
Rick Jennings
James Johnson
Jamie Perkins

Assault Results

2009-03-30T12:18:00.005Z

Gather round my children, for a tale of focussed fury and furious focus, of beasts and machines of war...

At the risk of sounding knowledgeable about Warmachine and Hordes and not the least bit creepy I’m going to stop with that prologue.

Firstly, a few thanks are in order. Will, Hey Steve! and Chris played a blinder helping me to organise and orchestrate what proved to be a highly successful event; The Gaming Crypt for agreeing to host the event and extending the opening hours to accommodate everyone and of not least the gamers, who without would not have made such an event possible.

The Dice Not Included events team enjoy a brew round.

But enough of all that! What people want to read about is the event! So without further ado let’s get on with it!

Set Up and Round 1

The appetite for a Warmachine event was quite evident in that the Assault quickly sold out after it was advertised, so much so that some of our more lethargic club members ended up not having a place. In the end, we took the hard decision after much bribery with tea and biscuits to add a ninth table.

Gamers started arriving just before 10:00 and as is customary were greeted by the sweatiest of donuts. Yes, that is sweatiest, not sweetest. A quick brew round was made and as the first round had already been drawn players were directed to their tables to the sound of Han Zimmer’s awesome score from the motion picture Gladiator; winner of no less than five Academy Awards. The first round had been engineered to make sure that club members didn’t play each other and same faction games were avoided.

The first round started a little after 10:30 due to a latecomer (there’s always someone isn’t there?) and the gamers made it their business to show that they did indeed ‘have a pair’ . The first scenario was enthusiastically titled ‘Mosh Pit’. I didn’t see much moshing or an awful lot of headbanging but it did appear that models were congregating in a circle in the centre of the board and bashing into each other. Turns out the objective of the scenario was to be as close to the centre board as possible. After a slight overrun on the schedule games were mostly wrapped up by 12.45. As the gamers took a break for lunch the table stood like so:

Entrant Result Points

1 Tony Moore 3 26
2 Jamie Perkins 3 25
3 Neal Barton 3 20
4 James Johnson 3 18
5 Tom Kinsey 3 15
6 David Holliday 3 12
7 Craig Macinnes 3 10
8 Adam Brown 3 8
9 Nathan Hoole 3 3
10 Jason Denton 0 17
11 Dan Melia 0 14
12 Tom Whittaker 0 10
13 Ben Josling 0 8
14 Chris Webb 0 6
15 Adam Dennett 0 4
16 Steve Bowden 0 3
17 Glenn Lloyd 0 3
18 Alex Smith 0 3

The tournament in full-swing, with young Mr. Dare giving the thumbs up.

Many gamers took full advantage of the KFC vouchers set aside for them and the fact KFC was opposite the Gaming Crypt to tuck into chicken fried the Kentucky way. The Colonel would have been proud.

Round 2

Once everyone had had their fill, they returned to discover their next opponent. Pairings were made using the Swiss pairing system to be as neutral as that nation that makes clocks and chocolate and knives.

The scenario was Break the Line and the players quickly got cracking, this time to the Medieval II: Total War score, some cracking tunes on there and the game is even better – though not as good as their new Empire game.

]

More slaughter occurred and lines were broken and as the second round came to an end the standings were as follows:

Entrant Result Points

1 Craig Macinnes 6 38
2 Tom Kinsey 6 34
3 Tony Moore 6 30
4 James Johnson 4 36
5 Neal Barton 4 23
6 Nathan Hoole 4 12
7 Jamie Perkins 3 28
8 Ben Josling 3 22
9 Adam Dennett 3 17
10 David Holliday 3 16
11 Dan Melia 3 16
12 Adam Brown 3 13
13 Alex Smith 3 7
14 Jason Denton 1 24
15 Steve Bowden 0 13
16 Tom Whittaker 0 12
17 Chris Webb 0 6
18 Glenn Lloyd 0 4

Round 3

With 3 people duking it out for maximum points and 4 others for wooden spoon the scene was set for the final round which was (adopt deep and booming voice) Process of Elimination!

Hey Steve!’s rather large and pointy horn was blown to announce the start of the final round and the players engaged with each other ferociously.

The results began to trickle in and the tension mounted as everyone became eager to establish who the victor was.

The Result

The players gathered around as our resident Dwarf player sounded his horn once more – drum roll please.....

The final result was incredibly close. So close in fact that the winner had to be decided on the total number of victory points conceded. Craig had conceded 9 victory points whereas Tony had conceded 27. Craig was declared the winner of the first ever Altrincham Assault!

Prizes were awarded for those that had finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd so congratulations to Craig, Tony and Nathan who all thoroughly deserved the praise and adulation of their fellow competitors.

Reflections

It was brilliant to see such so many turn out and I think it’s a strength of Warmachine that there was a healthy mix of factures and no one faction dominated either the list of entrants or the top quartile.

Looking to the future I’d really enjoy running another event and feedback suggested that everyone really enjoyed themselves. It was hard work and little brain melting and that was just trying to get the lookup formulae to work on Hey Steve!’s fake excel open office spreadsheet!
Stay tuned for the next Altrincham Assault!

Regards,

Matt

Full gallery here.

Warmachine Tournament - Sunday 29th March

2009-02-05T19:16:00.010Z

In case you've been wondering why all the delay in the latest post, well the wait is finally here- Dice Not Included's first Warmachine/Hordes tournament of 2009!

You should be able to see both the entry form and the schedule for the day.

It promises to be great fun and is limited to 16 places so send your entry form as soon as you can.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF ENTRY FORM HERE.

Current entrants are:

- Darren Palmer
- Adam Brown
- Tony Moore
- Jamie Perkins
- David Holliday
- Rich Paget
- Steve Bowden
- Neal Barton
- Alex Smith
- Dan Melia
- Chris Webb
- Ben Josling
- Daniel Dare
- Nathan Hoole
- Glenn Lloyd
- Tom Kinsey

I look forward to seeing you on the day!

The club can be contacted at dicenotincluded@hotmail.co.uk

Fanmail

2008-12-03T11:55:00.001Z

We've got some fanmail at DNI, from Games Workshop's very own Mark Wells. He sent us a battlemat, and this postcard...

Cheers Mark!

Relocation Relocation Relocation

2008-11-24T13:17:00.007Z

As if the title of this post didn't quite get the message, the Gaming Crypt (and consequently the club) has now relocated.

Where to? I hear you cry. Is it Piccadilly Gardens, London's Oxford Street, New York's Times Square or Dubai's Giant Palm Leaf Island of Pointlessness? No. It's still gorgeous Altrincham.

What's new? Not a lot really, apart from the fact that it's bigger, it's brighter (on account of actual natural light!) and DRIER!!! Gone is the fish smell, to be replaced by the kind of scents that wargamers (and card players for that matter) across the world can naturally relate to (actually they were there in the last place, just that the fish smell was so prevailing it masked even bad body odour). Gone are the spiders, slugs and woodlice to be replaced by probably just smaller and less intimidating spiders. Gone is the scenery and soul destroying damp - this presents an opportunity to build scenery out of cardboard and expect it to last more than a week.

What else? Well the store is a lot bigger. A LOT bigger. The floor area is probably more than twice what the previous floor area. Which means an expanded stock range plus other things that could be introduced. This is a good thing although I'm not too sure what the owner will stock on the miniatures side of things. Maybe just an expanded range of GW and PP. The FoW range is quite extensive.

The gaming area is now upstairs so we can all produce a bit of vitamin D during the summer months thanks to the natural light that can shine through the window. It's amazing what natural light does for a wargame - I always thought that games at WHW were a bit fuzzy and yellow on account of the artificial lighting. I think it contributes to giving me a headache whenever I play there. I think that there is enough space upstairs to squeeze in 8 tables, although this will have to be trialled. It does open up many opportunities to host tournaments - something that the club has been threatening to do for a long time.

Anyway, I hope to get a few pictures this Wednesday and post them on here so everyone who still reads this blog can have a look for themselves. It really is a lot better than what we used to have...

Oh and I noticed on The Warhammer Forum that Chris has posted the new address of the WPS website. He asked forum regulars if they could name the wargaming celebrities on the bar effort across the top (which kindly points out everytime I am there that I am some sort of neanderthal chum?!?!). Someone foolishly guessed Conrad Gonsalves. I know that one is Italian Rob (who really should have a shave) and the other Hey! Steve. Points for me. No points for anyone else.

Still Here, Still Gaming

2008-10-11T16:11:00.002Z

Numbers have been low in recent weeks, with a stubborn core of 3 gamers carrying on regular gaming at the club. This is disappointing to say the least, however those that have carried on attending are having loads of fun and the game of choice is still Warhammer.

Hey Steve! and I are still duking it out and last Wednesday saw a 5000 point game take place. An alliance of Men and Dwarves fought the Elves which ran quite close until the final turn. The Emperor Karl Franz turned up but failed to make any impact and Korhil was swiftly dispatched by a Dwarf Lord who was then butchered by an Elf Prince on a Griffon. Hey Steve! was pleasantly surprised by the lack of dragons but this meant that the Elf army had more a lot more bodies. The Elf army played to frustrate with a central force of Spears stubbornly refusing to yield ground while Dragon Knights and White Lions broke through and flanked the Dwarves. A large unit of Silver Helms (yes, real life, actual Silver Helms! Not ones proxying as Dragon Princes) charged a unit of Inner Circle Knights and drove them from the field in an epic clash of cavalry.

This game was good fun for both sides and having such large battles allows gamers to take more interesting choices that are not usually viable to take. In 2000 point battles, choices are more limited as players have to make decisions on what special choices to take and often sacrifice the enjoyment of the models for game winning ability. Throw in Lord level characters and expanded magical capabilities and players can easily spend a quarter of their points allowance on characters. It would be interesting to play a game of 1,999 points to restrict the number of characters and special and rare choices. This should allow for fewer magic items and more bodies in the game. I will suggest this some time to Hey Steve! and see what it is like.

Looking to the future of the club, we had two new gamers down last week (well one was someone who hasn't been down in a very long time) and they too played Warhammer. It will be nice to play something other than Dwarves for once (and I'm sure Hey Steve! will echo that sentiment with regards to High Elves). I have just bought a grass mat that I will use to create some Blood Bowl pitches so I hope to run a small league at the club over the next couple of months. Stay tuned folks.

2008-08-09T17:27:00.004Z

While the Warmachine Summer Campaign has been rampaging on, the GW fanboyz of the club have stubbornly failed to move with the times and have continued to play the grandfather of modern wargames - Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

For those of you too young to remember, Warhammer, the game of Fantasy Battles, allows you to command a force of mighty warriors. With armies of Citadel miniatures wage war over a tabletop battlefield using tactics and ingenuity to achieve victory. That previous sentence doesn't make an awful lot of sense does it? Meh, I only quoted GW direct from the back of the WFB rulesbook.

Anyhow, Hey Steve! and myself are the resident WFB gamers and recently we have been battling it out against each other on a weekly basis as neither of us have the acumen to understand, play and master Privateer Press's Warmachine. Warhammer allows many models to die all at once with minimal book keeping - which is just the kind of carnage we enjoy.

Hey Steve! is a Dwarf player and his throng regularly sallies forth from its hold to keep the decadent and cowardly High Elves at bay. I am that High Elf player and quite regularly receive a beating from the Dwarves. Without making too many excuses, my Elves struggle to beat the high toughness and generous armour saves of the Dwarves. All that said, things are fairly even between us and for every grudge that is settled, another one quickly replaces it!

Here are some photos of our previous game (which I might add I won). As for those pictures I promised of 12,000 points of High Elves, well, you can't have them. I've just stripped a load of paint off some of them so that I could repaint them. Maybe in the future. If you ask nicely. And send me some cake. And also some pizza.

Pie.

-Matt

2008-08-04T00:01:00.004Z

The DNI Summer Warmachine campaign is building up steam like a juggernaut. A steam-powered Juggernaut. A steam-powered Juggernaut that's been allocated a lot of Focus to boost its attacks. Boosting its attacks to kill the blue team. And there we reach the end of my demonstration of Warmachine knowledge. Now have some pictures of Ben's blue men.

Anway, that's quite enough of us flashing our indy-gaming credentials.

Matt and I represented DNI at Toy Soldier VII last week with Eldar and Squats respectively. We bumbled along merrily in Fourth Edition's last dying days. There was even late-night Poker after. Genuine card games trump indie-wargaming.

Here we can see the two of us, putting on our serious competitive faces.

Here's Flame On's own Bennitio celebrating nothing in particular with a giant chocolate cake.

Here's Mike Boulton rubbing shoulders with the famous Liam Neeson.

And finally, here's Gary Marsh defeating my Squats despite them all standing around in heroic poses on my home objective.

- Chris

Winning on a whole new scale

2008-07-19T12:19:00.003Z

Well, we won the WPS Club Challenge. That makes our club the Manchester United of the wargaming world until next year.

The shield has been added to the Crypt's trophy cabinet. But only just, as it's a colossal shield. It had to go in at an odd angle, and it's not actually stood up, it's just wedged in.

Sadly, it's a returnable trophy. But we've had it engraved so that future Club Challenge champions will always know who we are, and in thousands of years time when we've all been wiped out by a comet/nuclear war/aliens the Universe will have an artefact to remember us by.

(And hey, there's some of Stu's Cryx there on the shelf above. He's got more Cryx painted than I have. Not for long. Grrr.)

One Great Summer

2008-07-14T18:14:00.005Z

Summer's here! That means the rain seeping into the Crypt isn't as bitterly cold.

That also means the Summer Warmachine campaign is kicking off! Look at all these dynamic young people flail their arms around in barely-contained excitement at the prospect of all that steam-powered combat:

Well, Tom's smiling. I think it's because he's the only person in the room who can't see Terminus' face. Seriously, what's going on with that model?

I've even painted an entire model. It's amazing!

- Chris

To 5th Ed or Not to 5th Ed?

2008-06-29T15:49:00.004Z

There really is no question. A couple of weeks ago, the local Games Workshop manager very kindly offered to run an intro night for the brand spanking new edition of Warhammer 40K. Dubbed 5th Ed as it is the fifth iteration of the rulebook, 5th Ed has been for months debated and derided on many internet forums.

We at the club decided to put 5th Ed to the test and see whether the rumours, the gossip and indeed the outrages were well founded.

For the most part, the rumourmill was correct, if not exactly honest to detail. In light of all the so called outrages percieved by a vocal internet minority, I have decided to highlight a few key changes to 40K and review them for one and all.

Normally I try to stay out of petty internet flaming and keep my thoughts and opinions to myself, but I think it's high time that someone waves the flag for the games designers and indeed Games Workshop.

Let us start with True Line of Sight (TLoS). TLoS is quite literally as it sounds. If your model can see the enemy model, it can shoot it. Fair dos I hear you cry, but not from the net community. You see, in the process of doing this, area terrain rules no longer exist. They believe that as the old seeing 6" into and out of terrain no longer applies, the rule is silly and will inevitably lead to arguing. Truth of it though, I have seen many gamers argue over whether the model is within 6" of the terrain as the two gamers desperately attempt to negotiate the tape measure through a ruined window and around a mound of rubble. How simple is the adage, "You can either see it, or you can't". A victory for common sense on that subject methinks. GW 1 Vocal Minority 0.

Moving vehicles and defensive weapons. The latest edition of 40K has seen the amount of weapons a vehicle can move and fire with greatly diminished. To place it briefly, if a vehicle wishes to fire with all of its weapons it must remain stationary. The previous edition saw vehicles laying down a withering hail of fire as the methodically advanced. In reality, tanks would come to a halt before firing on the enemy. This increased accuracy and rate of fire. There are plenty of other games, such as Flames of War that require vehicles remain stationary to produce optimum rates of fire. Indeed, 3rd Edition 40K stated that a moving vehicle could only fire one weapon (regardless of strength). To backtrack on a rule that was previously overpowerful (let's face it, a falcon zooming around the battlefield loosing 2 S8 and 7 S6 shots was a bit good) is the signs of a good games design department that can admit to have introduced a rule that unbalanced a game but an even better games design department that can backtrack and change the rule for the better. If that means you're going to tear off your shuriken cannons and put back the twin catapults to regain optimum efficiency then that is your problem. Sorry but it's GW 2 Vocal Minority 0.

Next on the hit list is Skimmers Moving Fast. For the past two editions, a skimmer moving more that 6" would only suffer glancing hits from enemy fire. To be frank, and this is coming from a veteran Eldar player, was too good. Combined with vehicle upgrades such as Extra Armour and Holofields, this rule was amazing. There is no two ways about it, the Moving Fast rule was just too effective. Eldar tanks became nigh unkillable. Other skimmers could be relied on surviving the enemy shooting phase to zoom off and fulfill some mission purpose. Changing the rule so that Skimmers Moving Fast ie 18" means that the vehicle can no longer shoot but any hits scored against the vehicle are ignored on a 4+. This trade off as opposed to having it all offers the gamer the choice and a game is all about choice. Another point to GW, 3-0.

My final two points lie with the physical game itself. These are both to do with ensuring victory. The first is all games are now objective based as opposed to securing victory through victory points. Three games, each with 3 scenarios offers 9 indivdual games that can be played regardless of the battlefield. Reliance on victory points was often a poor way of deciding victory, especially at tournaments, where gamers would often pause mid game to determine what they should now target in order to maximise their victory point yield. Again we can draw parallels to reality over the changes, modern battles are not so much about slaughtering the enemy but achieving tactical objectives to win the war; seizing ammo and fuel dumps, headquarters, comms lines and other ideas offer gamers the chance to add a narrative to the game. A variable game length also ensures that there isn't a last turn objective grab. The second point is that only troops choices can capture objectives. While this is intially confusing to understand, a quick scan of the top tables at a tournament will help the concerned gamer to understand why only troops can capture objectives. Eldar armies with 2 units of 3 jetbikes; Tau and Necrons with their two, minimum sized Troops choices, the same is seen across the spectrum. What this rule actually prompts players to do, is to increase the number of Troops choices in their army and to encourage thought and diversity in other choices, rather than spamming the same, overly effective combination (carnifex with twin devourers spring to mind). Small units are out as well with the Annihilate mission allowing a player to score 1 point for every enemy unit destroyed. It is also important to highlight that while only Troops choices can secure objectives, all other units can contest. This ensures that Troop spamming armies will not be overly comfortable. GW 5 Vocal Minority 0.

Five points to nothing demonstrates that this edition of 40K is and will be the best yet. Given that it builds on the progress the previous four have made ensures this fact. If 5th Ed has to be summarised in 3 words, it would have to be A Gamer's Game. I would have to say that 4th Ed with strict rulings, varying levels of games with differing special rules and the introduction of new game spanning concepts (eg rending) made 4th Ed feel more like a tournament rules pack as opposed to game. Don't get me wrong, 40K will still have a strong tournament presence and I would still go to a 40K tournament (have to retake the Club Challenge Shield you see) but it's just that the 40K rules are no longer written with tournaments in mind. And to be honest, tournament players must be an absolute minority in the Games Workshop community (say less than 5%) so to have an edition that is written with all types of gamers in mind must be the best yet. I congratulate GW.

Am I right or am I wrong? I know what I think and at the end of the day this is only my opinion but this isn't the doom and gloom predicted on the forums. What I will say is that this edition of 40K will last a lot longer than the naysaying and arguments will on the forums.

Tune in for next time when we will be running a showcase of people's armies, starting with my very own High Elves, a collection 12,000 points big (yes that is 12,000 points and not 1,200) and still going strong.

- Matt

Victory! Victory! Ohohohoh!

2008-05-26T19:55:00.002Z

Blimey. Bet you've been reading the blog and thinking we've all given up gaming. No updates, no pics, no nothing. But no, oh no no no. Instead, we have been busy training and preparing for the Warhammer Players Society Club Challenge 2008. Getting up before dawn, drinking raw eggs and chasing chickens around the mean streets of Philadelphia.

We annexed another local gaming group, the legendary Flame On, and hired a mercenary to swell our numbers to the size we needed to compete on a club level. And compete we did. And to our utter surprise not only did we win a few games, but we won the enitre event! We got the shield!

And that's not the only trophy we came home with, oh no. Jason's Nurgle Ork Deff Koptas won Best Vehicle in the painting competition. And I got Best Painted 40K Army with my Ork/Genestealer Hybridz.

We rocked. And we also rocked in another way, managing two consecutive nights out on the town, which gathering from the photos, involved lots of gurning.

Phwoar. Expect lots more updates and a touch of gloating in the near future.

March Divided, Fight United

2008-03-02T13:02:00.002Z

Games continue down at the club at a steady frequency, with 4 games played last Wednesday. Space Crusade made its first appearance and many club members revelled in the nostalgia such an appearance heralded. While this game isn't featuring at the Club Challenge in May, it is nice to play a game that has no meaning and can be enjoyed at a pace and level that is comfortable to everyone involved.

Matt played Jason at 40K in a hard fought game. It was Matt's first game against the new Orks and the game saw both players make mistakes. In the end though the Eldar triumphed after a hard fought brawl in the centre of the battlefield between two large units of shoota boyz and guardians.

The other game was a game of WFB between John and the new Games Workshop manager. Both brought the Undead to do battle with and both decided to ue the new Vampire Counts army book. The game looked to be quite a brawl with neither side breaking through the other (thanks to a large number of successful raise dead spells).

On the club front, the inaugural Altrincham Ass-Whoop has been given the green light. Keep the Saturday 5th of April free so that you can join in. The tournament will be a 3 game, 1500pt 40K tournament and there are 12 places up for grabs. We hope to see as many faces as possible so keep posted for more details of the Ass-Whoop.

Money is the Sinews of War

2008-02-17T17:47:00.003Z

The Club Challenge is fast approaching and that has meant a flurry of new armies and games down at the Crypt. We have a sizeable team going this year with around 10 club members signing up. The majority are 40K although I believe John and Tom will be flying the flag in Fantasy.

All that said though, the mix of 40K armies is not massively eclectic. We have 3 Eldar armies, 2 Tyranid and 2 Ork (and a new Necron army). It would appear that our choice of armies would be quite reflective of what is happening on the tournament scene at the minute, with Tau, Eldar and Tyranids dominating. The Orks are the latest army to be released in 40K so they could appear in numbers. What is extremely interesting is the total lack of Space Marine armies. Last year, 3 out of 4 of the people playing 40K had armies wearing power armour. This appears to be in line with the tournament scene also, with few Space Marine armies appearing regularly in the top 10.

Now as any fan boy of GW will tell you, Space Marines are the bread and butter of the GW juggernaut and nearly everyone will have had an army of them in one shape or another down the years. It is interesting to see how the tournament scene is totally disjoint to GW sales. Maybe it isn't but I reckon that Battlezones:Drop Zone will change all that. The impending release of not just a plastic Thunderhawk but a plastic Drop Pod will reinvigorate many collections to include several of these. At the moment, the typical tournament player is in thrall to the up-turned plant pod which, let's face it is quite poor.

Enough of the rambling speculation, the Club is enjoying the 40K at the minute. Our new moon board is now finished, with a crashed Aquila lander and craters to be strategically be placed as size 3 terrain. In the meantime, the Altrincham Ass-Whoop is expected to be a good CC warm up for all of those 40K armies seeking to conquer all. It should be a good one. Stay tuned.

Dice Not Doubling

2008-01-19T12:26:00.000Z

What happens when you combine the two of the most tactically ferocious minds in the Dice Not comunity? What if you could find two players with complementary approaches to the battlefield and allow them to team up? Well, we don't know, but Matt and I teamed to to create Team Dice Not Included to go to Games Workshop's 40K Doubles. And we placed a respectable 27th of the 116 attending teams. Pretty good huh?

In other news, the team in gearing up en masse for the WPS's CC. We're in that relaxed phase of army painting where 1500/2000 points of models doesn't seem like too much work or too urgent a task. How that will change as the May Bank Holiday approaches.

In other news, we're also preparing for a bit of a nostalgiafest with Warhammer 40,000's second edition ("sekondedd"). We're trying to fish out all the old Dark Millennium gubbins needed to resurrect this piece of gaming history. The nice thing we can use our existing 4th edition ("forthedd") miniatures to jump straight in. Keep tuned for a series of articles showing how much the game's evolved with the passing of decades.

Happy Christmas!

2007-12-26T10:01:00.001Z

Ok so I'm a day late in making that proclamation but I haven't had any time until now to make it. To be honest I've been very busy trying to work out what happened in the Doctor Who Christmas Special to have been doing much else. I found it very difficult to get into what with various family members interrupting and requests from people to do things meant that as far as I understood the story went like this:

Doctor onboard some space age Titanic.
Kylie Minogue.
Doctor visits London.
Asteroids hit ship.
Kylie Minogue.
Weird Robot Angels that if they were wearing power armour instead of robes would look like the old Blood Angels Captain try to kill everyone.
Doctor runs around.
Fat person falls down lift shaft.
Kylie Minogue.
Doctor finds bad guy.
Doctor talks to bad guy.
Kylie Minogue.
Bad guy gets killed by Kylie.
Doctor shouts NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Doctor stops ship hitting Buckingham Palace.
Doctor saves day.
Dead Kylie (in Star Wars dead person mode) talks to Doctor.
Other people talk.
The End.

All in all it was a strange fusion of popular films such as Titanic, The Poseidon Adventure and maybe even Speed. I'm sure this episode would have been good had I had the chance to watch it properly but by the end I didn't really care whether on not the Titanic hit Buckingham Palace.

Anyhow, this is not some aspiring amatuer film critic blog but the highly Dice Not Included blog - the blog that tells the World what is going on and who is doing it.

Last Wednesday was to be the last meeting before Christmas so a small amount of Christmas fun was organised by Matt. The inaugural Dice Not Included:Christmas Fun Quiz was held. There were 50 questions to be answered and cunningly all of the answers were on the posters that are not decorating the walls of the club. Each person was given 5 minutes to answer as many of the questions as possible. In the event of a tie, everyone was asked to answer the tie breaker question.

In the end, Will Booker won the quiz with 14 questions correctly answered. Ben and John came joint second with 10 questions answered correctly. Tom managed to win the tie breaker (although it was of no consequence but it was worth mentioning). The tie breaker question - for thsoe of you desperate to know was; How many square inches of poster are now covering the walls? The answer was 21112. That's around 15% of downstairs completed. Keep those boxes coming people!

So Will won himself the Empire Generals box set - congratulations to Will.

That night a total of 4 games were played which is good. A warm welcome is to be extended to the 3 lads that have started to join us. Your names escape me once again however you are most welcome to play. I understand that they are travelling from Northwich and are here because they are home from university - let's make sure that they keep on coming back.

An important point to note that because today is Boxing Day, the kind folk at the Gaming Crypt have decided to open tomorrow night (Thursday) as the gaming night. So DNI meet tomorrow and what with it being a holiday i would expect most of us to be there at some point during the day and looking to try out all of the new toys we got for Christmas. Come on down and give us a try.

And while we're here, it's time for Magic Superhero of the Week!

Magic Superhero of the Week!

2007-12-13T06:40:00.000Z

It's that time again folks, yes indeed. Number 2 in our ongoing series of customised Magic celebrities. This week, with Christmas fast approaching, we proudly present...

Apocalypse Wow

2007-12-10T16:19:00.000Z

Last Saturday saw the first Apocalypse battle held at the club. The action began at 1pm due to a misunderstanding but in no time at all, over 16,000 points of models had been deployed on the club's lovely boards.

The scenario had been set, with it being late in the Gothic War and the war going against Abaddon, the forces of Chaos decided for one final push. If Chaos could drive the Imperials from the city then the planet would fall to Chaos and Abaddon's crusade could push on. Should the Imperials contain the Chaos forces then it would buy the Imperial fleet time to land fresh reinforcements.

With plenty of cans of beer to hand, the advance was sounded. Tanks were destroyed, infantry slaughtered and even mighty daemon princes were felled.

The Imperial Baneblade was dominating the battlefield until Abaddon (with permission from Ben first, of course) deployed his (not so) secret weapon (well, it has stood in the shop window for the best part of two years).

In a desparate attempt to stop the Warhound, Warmaster Gorun, Commander of the Squat Legions, Hero of the Imperium, Scourge of anything smaller than Him, disembarked from his Mole transport and stepped up to do his duty for the Emperor....

..... and promptly disappeared into the Vortex created by his own grenade! To which end, hordes of Daemons poured out of the Vortex.

The vortex subsequently went on a bit of a killing spree sucking whole buildings into another dimension. It even decided to disappear of the edge of one side of the board and reappear from the opposite edge, Pac-Man style.

More carnage was to be had and much fun was had by all. By the end of it, the Imperials had succeeded on holding onto the city (despite taking an absolute beating) and the club members gave a big thumbs up to Apocalypse. Jervis, have a pint on us. Everyone else, enjoy these pictures.

Deck the Walls With Yet More Posters (Tra la la la la la la la la)

2007-12-03T12:47:00.000Z

Christmas is upon us once more and this year at the club it has been decided that the festive season should be celebrated with a bit more style. The Apocalypse has been scheduled for this Saturday (8th) at 12:00pm, so you since you aren't going to make it to Christmas anyway you may as well bring either Imperials or Chaos and join in. There is a planned post-Apocalypse pint in the pub afterwards in you fancy joining in.

A little competition is being created with a small prize up for grabs so to participate come on down for the clubnight on the 19th of December. Details of how to win this small prize will be given out on the night so be there, or be square.

Yet more posters are going onto the walls. By my reckoning, around a quarter of the back room is now covered, which is good progress, however we need as many boxes as possible so keep on bringing them down.

There are plans for yet another board - details of which are being kept under wraps for the time being. It is planned to do a scenery blitz on Tuesday 11th and Wednesday 12th so if you fancy helping out give us a shout. As ever if you fancy coming down the club meets every Wednesday evening 4pm onwards.

Magic Superhero of the Week!

2007-11-29T13:08:00.000Z

We collect Magic Cards at the Crypt. Those little runty ones of the celebrity players that the actual Magic players so casually discard. We've got a bit of a gallery going.

Here's this week's.

Club Challenge - so it begins

2007-11-15T00:25:00.000Z

It's the WPS's, nay, the hobby's premier event - the Club Challenge! (Well, the WPS's only event these days - bah.) Teams competing across 5 systems mano-a-mano to win the coveted Club Shield. We're going to hack and slash our way to not-worst-club with a combination of clever tactics, gorgeous painting and smelly farting. Craig's really good at all three.

So far, the Dice Not members confirmed are:

Me
Matt
Hemmingway
Booker

There'll be a slew of entry forms and rulespacks at the Crypt next week for everyone to fill in and send off. And by golly there'll even be a chequebook so if you bring cash we can write cheques for your entry fee.

24th - 25th May 2008 in Nottingham.

In other news: the adornment of the walls in Matt's wargaming collages continues unabated. Bring down all your empty boxes and posters for cannibalising into fine geek wallart. Rocking. We want it floor to ceiling.

Aclockalypse

2007-11-09T13:19:00.000Z

The large Apocalypse blast has the numbers 1-12 on it for scatter.

Well, we're using one to tell the time.

Apocalypse Please

2007-10-28T19:47:00.000Z

Haha! Another reference to Apocalypse that is also a pop culture reference. Matt's not the only one versed in film, music and all things cool. Damned trendy we two. Though I edge ahead in the cool race as I wear a tie while gaming.

The afore-mentioned Cityfight box has been split in two, with Matt taking all the Ecclesiastical buildings and me taking all the Adeptus Mechanicesque bits. I've been beavering away this weekend building a building I hope will dominate the skyline of our Imperial city, and provide enough cover to hide a Warhound Titan behind. Here's a sneaky peek.

The club members have a suitably large collection of armies to create some suitably themed and characterful large battles. There have been a few test games played to get a hang of the assets rules, but I don't think the superheavies have yet been sighted on the war-torn battlefields in in the Crypt's sprawling subterranean dungeon network. Big day-long 6-way narrative orgies will be a great to spend an entire Saturday, broken up with a hearty pub lunch and followed by after-battle drinks. On of the many perks of the Crypt is the always-stocked soft drink and chocolate fridge. It's an ideal venue for Apocalypse silliness.

Apocalypse Soon

2007-10-14T14:03:00.001Z

The cityfight board is finally complete and I must say it looks rather spiffy. The mass of buildings really affects your normal game plan and forces you to think of new and cunning ways with which to kill your enemy. My Eldar were given a run out against Chris' squat legion and suffered. I would normally think that Eldar would do well in a cityfight situation, what with plenty of cover and kill zones with which to use, however the mission was escalation which meant that my force advanced in an ad-hoc fashion. The result was that I was forced into a brutal meat grinder which saw each player removing at least one unit a turn. Predictably, my Eldar quickly lost this when against the numbers of Imperial Guard and the result was a minor loss. However, my Farseer had obviously forseen this as the best possible result for the future of the Eldar race and so it really had to be a moral victory to the Eldar. All that said, my first defeat under the current incarnation of my Eldar taught me some important lessons, including to stop infiltrating my Pathfinders so close to something with a flamethrower.

Plans have been unveiled by myself and approved by Chris to extend the cityfight board so that we can have large apocalyptic battles on it. The board will be extended by a further three 4x2 boards so that we can either have a board that is 8x6 or 12x4. Chris and I have ordered in an Imperial City box for the occasion. The idea being that we want quality over quantity, with the city having some open spaces such as plazas (and maybe a park), leaving us the option to build some very large buildings. The extended board has also been designed so that, should we need, we can have two standard 6x4 cityfight boards. We want to see some large buildings so that we have games of Necromunda with some very interesting buildings to fight over.

In the meantime, I've put some thought into how downstairs can become more interesting and welcoming, not just to new club members but also to any people who come to play from other clubs in tournaments and the likes. Since my Mum was most insistent at me cleaning out my old room now that I have left home, I discovered that I have a large amount of empty packaging left over from when I bought some models. As such, I came up with the idea of cutting the artwork off the boxes and mounting it onto cardboard, like a collage. These posters can then be mounted onto the walls of the Gaming Crypt and lend a bit of colour to the place. This should make the Crypt look more appealing. At the time of this message going to press I have completed 4 such posters with scope for plenty more. I have sent out appeals to my fellow club members that they save the boxes from their new purchases and give them to me so that I can create more of these posters. It will take a long time for me to cover all of the walls in the Crypt but I think that it can be done in around a year.

On the gaming side of things, there were plenty of games played last week with a total of 6 games played in one evening. I think that was the best week yet in our 2 year history, with 4 games of 40K played, 1 FoW and 1 Warmachine game. I played against our resident assault cannon army and came out tops, in part thanks to a few pivotal dice rolls, but I am undeterred, much rather preferring to sticking to the old saying 'luck is the residue of design' than blaming dice rolls that go against me.

Looking to the future then, I am in the process of organising our first Apocalypse battle which looks like will be a big participation battle between the Imperials and Chaos. Hopefully we will be able to collate around 15,000 points a side. Keep your eyes peeled for a battle report with maybe a few twists incorporated into it.

As a final note worth mentioning, Dice Not Included is two years old this month. Can I just say, as one of the founding members, that it has been a fantastic two years with some amazing contributions made by all who have helped these past two years. From that first month that we spent in the community centre to the 23 months we have been residing in the Gaming Crypt. Also a big thank you to Jason and Dave for allowing us to move into the Gaming Crypt, without whom I doubt the club would have survived for even half the time we have now been running.

Keep reading and stay tuned.

D-Lay

2007-08-25T18:57:00.000Z

I've finally brought myself round to posting another section on this fabled blog. Has anyone been upset at the total lack of anything new on this blog? If there are any regular viewers (or were but gave up reading since nothing new has been posted in around 3 months) give us a shout, send a message or just start reading it again.

So then, I bet that you're all dying to find out what is new, what amazing and eventful events have happened since our last meeting in May. Well, not a lot. 3 of us now have regular and somewhat demanding jobs and 2 have since left home for newer and more exciting things. That is probably why no one has bothered to post an update. It's not that we can't be bothered, oh wait, yes it is.

Well now that I'm bothered about not being bothered to bother about bothering to post a new post, I guess I should bother to bother you about what has been happening at club. Since the last post, several clubmates went to the WPS Club Challenge and despite ranking a not too bad 4th out of 12 on the Saturday night, we subsequently found ourselves much lower down the rankings (however we did not finish last). Team captain Curis Webbl conducted the organisation of the team with the kind of cool logic that only a cucumber can display and managed to succeed with 7 out 9 joker points.

Chris has since enjoyed the delights of Poland during his attempt at being the best Squat player in Europe and we are delighted to announce that Chris has now been annointed the title 'Mr Squat - Europe' for his efforts and are as a result awaiting an invitation to an audience with the Queen with much anticipation.

Not only this but the guys have found the time to take part in the Warmachine summer campaign and this has seen many a steam powered combat take place. Ben has since emerged victorious having played and won the most games. A blue Warmachine badge is on its way in the post to him.

Disappointingly, the imminent arrival of Apocalypse has failed to grasp the imagination of many of our resident 40K players, however Chris and I are undeterred and are beginning to plan the expansion of our existing armies in order to play apocalyptic sized battles. A little canvassing from myself has seen some show of interest in taking part from others and hopefully we should have some large games organised. Chris and I are concocting some interesting ideas to tempt others to join in, stay tuned to find out more.

Admittedly, my Eldar force is coming together rather slowly but I do have an excuse. I've been painting the cityfight scenery for the club. All ten pieces are now complete and a completed 4'x4' board was host to a battle between my Eldar and Will's Space Marines. A glorious victory was mine to be had and many a picture was taken of the completed board. Unfortunately the pictures are on my phone and being a bit of a technophobe means that I have no idea of how to upload them to this post. All that remains for the cityfight board is for the last section of board to be painted and some barricades to be built, or is it?.......

FoW has taken a bit of a backseat since the Warmachine campaign took off and due to a technicality the D-Day board failed to materialise before the 6th of June. While the board itself had been painted a very nice beach colour, the resin that had been bought to create the sea had managed to escape from the confines of the scratch built dam designed to hold it place while it dried and consequently dribbled an icky sticky liquid all over Chris' garage floor. This liquid never dried and gave off a somewhat toxic stench. The garage has now since been demolished.

The board however has been salvaged and an attempt was made to make good the damage the resin wrought. D-Day has been postponed for a year so this project is to take a backstep in terms of priority. Never fear though, I have a feeling that it will make a triumphal entry when it is completed and FoW would appear to be picking up interest now that the Warmachine campaign has ended.

Well, that's it for now. The X Factor has finished so I dare to return downstairs. Who knows when the next post will be, but I have feeling it won't be too long. Stay tuned and thanks for watching.

We Shall Fight Them On The Beaches...

2007-05-03T21:35:00.000Z

Now that D-Day is fast approaching the beach board is in full production. We are going to attach it to the end of our green boards and fight length ways. It should be good fun once it is completed. This is a camera shot of the length of the board.

The only problem is creating the water. Ideally we would have liked to use water effects that most good model shops supply but these come in such small quantities that it would end up costing us around £80 to do the sea.

We still have plenty of games going on, in particular 40K and WFB so if you're up for a challenge come on down and give us a try.

Can't See the Wood for The Trees

2007-04-19T18:56:00.000Z

Many things have been happening at the club recently. Loads of games have been played which is always nice to see, 40K seems to be making a comeback and with the Club Challenge fast approaching I reckon we will see many more played. (Table featuring some of our new trees)

We've also had a game or two of Confrontation being played. Here's Hey! Steve and Tom confronting each other in a confrontational manner.

Terrain production has been moving along nicely with the addition of the rail tracks and the completed rock spires (featured).

We also have an interesting trench system courtesy of our master artificer Craig (and co-painted by yours truly)

Work is underway designing and planning our Normandy landings board, things are going to have to move pretty quickly if we want it ready in time for the big day...stay tuned.

Fanning the Flames of War

2007-04-05T00:46:00.000Z

Now that we've started to seriously flesh out the club's terrain collection we're attracting more players. Gone are the days when new members ventured into the depths of 'Cheddar Gorge' to be met with a clique half-dozen people sat about eating take-out off bare plywood boards and moaning. As a club we're preparing for our D-Day tournament, which will showcase the best aspects of our organisation and also tempt even more players into membership.

Here's a selection of our current gamers...

Rock Spires and Shelves

2007-04-01T10:41:00.000Z

Some rocky spires for the desert board. Made GW style, just a question of what colour to paint them now. Dark red bown I think.

And here's some of our lovely new shelves. No longer do we stack terrain on the bath.

The Desert Board is Born

2007-03-22T01:16:00.000Z

And here's a game of Confrontation being fought over its lovely textured light brown surface. It deserves some beautiful model railway palm trees and not the cartoony 40k jungle trees we have in abundance.

And here's my first Flames of War game being fought over a fully-terrained board, with armies that were partially painted.

I lost. But I learnt. Mainly not to use a camera phone to take photos of models.

New board colour

2007-03-17T18:50:00.000Z

We've changed the top coat colour on our boards to a much brighter green. At the moment we're unsure of whether we like it or not. Let us know what you think in comparison to the old colour. Featuring Matt's germans.

Objective Marker for FOW

2007-03-17T18:41:00.000Z

The Germans Are Coming

2007-03-15T22:44:00.000Z

Looks like Craig gets the wooden spoon...

Just a sneak peek at my very close to completion Grenadier Kompanie. Just the Stugs to complete and they won't take much. Would like to get a couple of Tigers some time in the future.

On the terrain side of things, I've measured out about 10' of train track plus a station and a bridge but am a little sceptical as to how the bridge will turn out. Will give it a go and let the public decide.

Desert

2007-03-15T13:26:00.001Z

Buttloads of sand. Proper coral sand, made from coral. Exactly the same type GW sell for £5 a teeny tiny tub. Five kilos. Plus a further two and a half kilos of grit. That's seven and a half kilos of basing material for our boards. How much for all this?

£4.20

First of the Yanks

2007-03-11T22:24:00.000Z

In keeping with the release of the D-Day book from Battlefront we're all making sure we've got forces that can be used around that time. Putting my beloved Russians to one side I decided to put together a US Armoured Rifle Company. They may not be ruskies, but they make up for it with lots of machine guns! Here's the first compleatly finished model.

Flames of War

2007-03-11T22:06:00.000Z

Some close up shots of Le Haye Saint and one of our road signs.

Flames of War

2007-03-11T21:54:00.000Z

Here's the first of out Flames of War boards. It's not quite finished yet, but it's good enough to be photographed. The farm (Le Haye Saint) needs a bit more work doing on the detail, namely where the brickwork shows through the rendering and on any sections of wood. The line of telegraph poles is also unfinished, needing their bases and tops painting. Finally we want to give the actual board another coat to make it a lighter green. Even so, it's looking good so far!

2007-03-10T18:55:00.000Z

Talk to the hand

2007-03-04T19:31:00.000Z

As the face is covered in spots.

no more baths

2007-03-04T17:53:00.000Z

Lots less rubble. Hopefully less of a smell as well as we got a buttload of stinky mould timber out from the bath and carted it off.

Before

2007-03-02T16:41:00.001Z