Sunday Meeting Roundup

Well, the meeting on Sunday went very well considering that four of our stalwarts were suffering from wargames burnout from Vermintide last weekend!

Our club was graced this week with two new members - young James returned (he's not that young, but he's younger then me, so as long as I'm doing the blog posts he'll be " young James"!), and a new chap Alex came along with his Warhammer Dwarf army.

The games on the day were quite varied - Alex and Aaron had a large game of Warhammer (Ogres vs Dwarfs), which ended with the Ogres making a meal of shorties.  Craig bought his Napoleon's Battles collection along (a very impressive collection of fully painted, 25mm leads) and him and Harley recreated a slice of musket-era warfare.  Jake brought along a bit of a treat with his Battletech boxed set, and him Ross and James bashed seven kinds of hell out of each other with walking tanks.  James won with a lucky laser shot that punctured Jake's armour, setting off a catastrophic chain reaction of unfired auto- cannon ammo.

Everyone had a great day, and it's always great to see people trying out new games.  I'll have to see if Jake can make it with Battletech next time.....I do have a thing for stomp mechs!

James

Marauders off to the Masters!

Our very own Peter and Neil Williamson are off to the Masters in December!  This will cap off a very good year for these two guys, and I'm sure that you will all join me in congratulating them on qualifying for this prestigious, invite only event, and also in wishing them the best of luck!

No word yet on whether they'll  be showing their allegiances with matching tattoos of The Gentleman Wargamer (our mascot), but I'll keep everyone filled in as news comes to hand!

Thanks to Slave to Painting!

This is just a quick post to thank the great website Slave to Painting (www.slavetopainting.co.nz) for their recent sponsorship of the Vermintide tournament.  Not only did they post the info on their Facebook page to drum up some more interest, but they also gave every participant a $10 voucher for their webstore!  Thanks again, Chief Slave!

I'll be following this post up with a more detailed post on Vermintide (just this weekend gone) once I get some photos (and a bit more time!)

James

Monthly Review - October

Notice the misleading title - it suggests that we often do these reviews, and perhaps you have simply missed all the previous ones.  What it really means, is that Vince has been busy the last couple of meetings, and I've been to busy in-between to write up a report on them!

Our Friday meeting this month was fairly exciting for me - I finally got a chance to test out the Kings of War rulebook that has been sitting on my bookshelf for the last few months.  Kings of War is a fantasy, massed battle game, by Mantic Games.  It's written by Alessio Cavatore (some of our older members may remember his name from the glory days of Games Workshop), and is described as "Warhammer-lite" on a lot of on-line forums.  This epithet is usually bandied about by people who haven't actually played it, because it is a very different beast to Warhammer.  Yes, they both use 28mm miniatures, both are a "compnay-level" game, but they play very differently.  I won't go into too many more details here, suffice it to say that Harley and I (Kingdoms of Men and Undead respectively) had a very fun game (the men trouncing the hordes of the undying) and are looking forward to more.

On the other table, Peter and Ben had some games of Warmachine, with Ben pitting the iron of Khador against the armour of Skorne.  I'm not sure of the score, but Ben was crowing to me about his first Warmachine victory, so obviously fun was had.  We also had a couple of other guys popping in for a visit and a chat, so a nice night in all.

The Sunday games this month was a relatively quiet affair - with Peter, Neil and Simon off at a weekend tournament for Warhammer, we were missing some of the usual suspects.  Craig had bought along some older boardgames (Kingmaker, a game I have fond memories of playing with Harley, and Temple of the Beastmen.  Not sure about this one myself, but Craig said it had been released along with Space 1889 (a Victorian speculative-fiction wargame about wars between Earth and Mars) and had some rather spiffing miniatures with it.) and so the lads settled down for an afternoon.  I had a trailer load of topsoil to unload, so had to leave for a while, but when I came back Ross and James H. had played the Temple of the Beastmen, and Aaron, Craig and Harley were engaged in a battle to get their particular King on the British throne.  I spent the afternoon gluing miniatures together while talking to James H. about starting out in wargames, and Jacob gave Ross an impromptu sword-fighting lesson.

James.

Sunday September 30

As reported by Simon.

Craig brought along boxes of his Hordes of The Things (HoTT) armies. HoTT is a simple system for fun fantasy and science fiction games. They're here as a free download, scroll down to the bit about HOTT for the link: http://www.wargamesresearchgroup.net/WRG.net/History/wrg.html

Simon used Tomb Kings, Craig used French Napolenic and 1930s American Gangsters, Ross used Generic Fantasy, Ross' frend (sorry, Simon didn't get his name) used Orcs, and Aaron ued Goblins.  Lots of fun was had over several games trough the afternoon.

Aaron and James also played Warmachine.

Various others dropped in through the day to catch up with buddies, see what was happening and talk toy soldiers.

Rundown of the last Friday meeting

Hey chaps, how goes it?  Our last Friday meeting went quite well, with five of us gaming, plus a couple of bystanders.  Neil and Simon had a good, old-fashioned beat down between Dwarfs (Simon) and Warriors of Chaos (Neil), with both of them trying out rather savage armies in preperation for the Warhammer Fantasy tournament season.  The Dwarfs were soundly thrashed, thanks to some rather clever tricks in Neils army list, good tabletop tactics, and terrible dice rolling on Simons part.

On the other table, we were having a War machine/Hordes smash-fest.  After hearing that Peter had assembled a Skorne army, I quickly (and rashly) dusted off my Menoth starter box and challenged him to a game.  Ben has also been thinking about Warmachine for some time, and decided to get a Khador army.

The first fight between me and Ben was looking pretty bad for me, until Ben got his general a bit too close to mine - with a cry to Menoth, Kreoss knocked Sorscha to the ground and gave her a good stomping, leaving me with a victory.  I then took on Peter, and had the ignominy of watching the mighty Kreoss have his battle group dismantled, and then get nickel-and-dimed to death by Morghul and his special ability - even if he can't beat his opponents armour he still
causes a single point of damage. Very nasty!  Then Ben and Peter played, adding a few more models to their armies.  Peter showed the tabletop skill that put him in 4th place at Call to Arms in the WarmaHordes tourney knocking Bens army around the table, but like any good game it could have gone either way up until the last turns when Peter managed assassinations on Sorscha, Bens battlegroup commander.

A good night had by all!

New goodies for Dystopian Wars

It seems that Spartan Games are at it again. Some of you may have seen Craig's tiny steam punk ships at previous games days, and some of us have been lucky enough to play with them, and fall in love with the Dystopian Wars naval combat (my Covenant of Antarctica fleet is sitting on the painting table now!).

Anyway, I spotted this on TMP this morning - looks like Spartan aren't content with the plundering of my wallet so far! I present to you, Victorian SciFi in 28mm:http://www.spartangames.co.uk/games/dystopian-legions

Wargaming in Italy

Photos from Lorenzo Mele's excellent websitehttp://www.tagmata.it/ Wargaming has quite a following in Italy. Italian wargamers don't react like Anglo Saxons! LOL

The Tide is Turning!

Ladies and Gentlemen - consider this your official invite to Vermintide!  This great annual little tourney is organised by our own Neil Williamson, and this year is being co-hosted by the Masterton Marauders!  As you can tell, I'm a little excited about this.

Anyway, the gist follows:
- November 17th
- 1200pts Warhammer Fantasy
- Pure Awesome.

Here's a link to the players pack

There's a limit of 20 people, hope to see you there!

Team Wairarapa at Call to Arms

Call to Arms is the Wellington Warlords annual convention. This year it was also the club's 40th anniversary. Fittingly, it was held at St Patrick's College, Wellington. The first meeting was on St Patrick's Day, 1972. At that first meeting eight people played an American Civil War game, using several boxes of Airfix toy soldiers. This year on August 18-19, 158 people took part at Call to Arms. Among the 158 was the eight-strong Team Wairarapa (go team!). It was fantastic weekend - well done the organisers. Here is a selection of photos from the weekend.

Warlords club president, Michail Woolf, (left) and Alastair Duncan opened the convention with the traditional reading from Harry Pearson's delightful autobiography of himself as a wargamer "Achtung Schweinehund". 

Seven members of Team Wairarapa: Vince, Neil, Peter, Simon, Aaron, David and Phil.

The eighth man, Stuart.

 A view across the St Patrick's College school hall. My brother's name is on the honours boards  you can see in the background but, sadly, mine is not.

Among the visitors were the Perry twins of GW, Foundry and Perry Miniatures fame  http://www.perry-miniatures.com/  .  They are in Wellington working with Weta Studios on merchandise for the Hobbit movies. Details are all highly commercially sensitive. If they told us any more Sir Peter Jackson would have had to shoot them and bury them in the backyard. From left, Alan Perry, Alastair Duncan and Michael Perry check out Hinton Hunt figures from the 1970's.

Team Wairarapa's David Kinzett in action. David used Anglo Danes in the 25mm Ancient tournament and finished second.

Team Wairarapa's Phil Gates ponders "what the ---- is Dirk doing?" Phil used Polybian Romans and  Dirk used  "Astrerixian Romans". That is, the whole army is made up of figures from the Asterix books - very cute and winner of the best army.  

Simon is pondering what those nasties are going to do to his Dwarfs! Not only did Simon score two 20-0 wins but at the barbecue on Sunday he scored five sausages wrapped in bread, two steaks, onions and coleslaw. Clearly he is deprived and starved at home.

Stuart's beastmen are things of beauty - in a beastly sort of way!

A German armoured train from the Flames of War competition. A very useful engine, peep, pip, peep!

Part of a large Dystopian Wars demo game. 

Somewhere in the Middle East.

 Vince posted this commentary and pictures.

News media coverage of Call to Arms, August 18-19

Attached are links to three news stories about Call to Arms. I will post some pictures and my commentary about the convention soon. The Warlords did a great job - I had an excellent weekend. 

Team Wairarapa (there were eight of us there) did okay. David Kinzett got the best result. He was second in the 25mm Ancients tournament. He was using Anglo Danes (AD 1030).  Peter Williamson was fourth in the Warmachine tournament.

TV3 News, Sunday August 19, http://www.3news.co.nz/War-gamers-battle-to-death-in-Wellington/tabid/418/articleID/265971/Default.aspx

Dominin Post, Mopnday August 20, https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/7507177/Wargamers-celebrate-with-battles&sa=U&ei=uVcxUNTPCeXAmQXBgoGgDw&ved=0CAYQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNGr_Bqo7TLePZwrka1dq4i9Iey1-w 

Radio New Zealand, Morning Report Monday August 20, http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2528616/wellington-warlords-mark-40-years-of-playing-with-toy-soldiers.asx

Vince 

Friday August 10

It was a small meeting on Friday night with two tables being used. Harley (Normans) and James (Anglo Danes) brought along their Saga rules for Dark Ages skirmish games. Simon watched the first game and then joined in the second with Harley kindly lending him the Normans. Simon stumbled on the tactic of massing all the Norman knights in one block with their leader and hurling them at the Anglo Danes! It worked.

Jonathan (Chaos Warriors) and Neil (Bretonnians) played fantasy battle. Neil was practicing for Call to Arms at St Patrick's College, Wellington August 18-19.

A sadly out of focus shot of Neil's observatory. The camera on my phone does not do the excellent work Neil has done justice. Be at Call to Arms to check it out!

Vince

Sunday July 29

Today's meeting was an afternoon for the short, fat, bearded dudes with axes and beer, and for tree huggers - Dwarfs and Wood Elves rocked! There were also games of Dystopian Wars and Ancients.

Simon (Dwarfs) played Neil (Warriors of Chaos) and Wills (Dwarfs) played Jacob (also Dwarfs). The short, fat, bearded dudes with axes and beer won both games. The other Fantasy Battle game was Gavin (Wood Elves) vs Aaron (Ogres). Yep, the tree huggers won.


Craig and Ross played Dystopian wars, a steam punk game of navies and fliers. Craig (Federated States of America) let his son, Ross (Republique d'France), win.


Vince (Early Imperial Romans) and Phil (Polybian Romans) tried DBMM 200, a half-sized variant of the DBMM Ancient rules played in 25mm on a 6'x 4'tble. The game was quick, it was finished in two and a quarter hours including the time it took to unpack the car, and fun. Highly recommended as a smaller scale game. Yes, the Romans won.


Vince

Wings of War

You may be aware that over the past 18 months or so there has been little activity in the 'Wings of War' arena, primarily because the European company that published the games (Nexus) curled up its toes some time ago due to the global recession.

In more recent times a new company (Ares) has taken over the publishing role for these games and minis, and we're at the stage where the first new items have started to reach New Zealand's shores -- a great day for aviation gamers!! For your reference the game ranges have now been renamed 'Wings Of Glory'.

We at the Historical Aviation Film Unit have decided that we will continue to provide a local New Zealand on-line source for these Wings Of Glory items, as a service to those enthusiasts who are interested in playing the games and/or collecting the miniatures as they're released.

With that in mind we've just spent a couple of days updating the Wings Of Glory parts of our on-line store, updating it with new details, adding new pricing information, and also linking back to the New Zealand importers website so that you can check on the local availability of any items with a couple of mouse clicks -- gone are the days when you need to ask us if we have stock, and then we need to chase up the importers (PixelPark) to find out if they have any.

You can find the World War One items here:

      http://www.aviationfilm.com/shop/games/wog_ww1.shtml

And we're now going to offer the WW2 items as well:

      http://www.aviationfilm.com/shop/games/wog_ww2.shtml

For those of you who have only previously used one or the other, please note that the game mechanisms vary somewhat between the WW1 and WW2 versions. They're not interchangable.

Here are a few other things you need to be aware of:

* We've dropped the per unit pricing of almost all the items as we no longer build the shipping component into the individual prices.

* There will now be an additional one-off  shipping charge of NZ$11.50 for any order containing Wings of Glory items from our website. Sorry folks, but shipping costs just keep going up and we can't absorb all of them.  This charge will be added to your order whether you select the appropriate shipping method on the checkout page of our store or not!

* Because of the cost of these items, and the small number of customers purchasing them, we're not going to be keeping a large amount of stock on hand.  Rather we'll generally be purchasing it from the NZ Importers on an as-needed basis.

* The individual page for each item (e.g. http://www.aviationfilm.com/shop/games/ww2_items/hurricane_kuznestov.shtml) now has a direct  clickable link so that you can "Click here to double-check current NZ stock levels".  That is you can use this facility to double-check and see if there is stock on hand with the NZ Importer -- if there is, there shouldn't be a problem filling your order.  If there's not, then you may want to check with us first and see if we have any stock left.

* Please bear in mind that we're not selling these items to make a lot of money. In fact one of our partners keeps asking why we're selling them at all as the profit margins are so negligible. The reason we're offering this service to NZ gamers who live outside of the range of any brick and mortar stores selling WoG items is because we're passionate about aviation and gaming, and we want to be able to offer this as a service so you have a local online source for these items.  Some of our prices may be a little more expensive than brick and mortar retailers who do nothing but sell toys and games, but we hope you will support us anyway.

Best regards,
Allan Udy

Historical Aviation Film Unit:  http://www.aviationfilm.com/
Find our YouTube Channel at:  http://www.youtube.com/HAFUVideo#g/p
A Division of  Golden Micro Solutions Ltd,
Box 590,  Blenheim,  New Zealand  http://www.golden.co.nz/

June 8 meeting - it's a sign!

At the Friday June 8 meeting Harley (King Arthur) and I (Saxons) played DBA. In the first game the Saxons attacked a wider British line at a disadvantage and I promptly rolled my first three combat dice, 6, 6, 6 . It's a sign! Once the warbands are that fired up it's hard to hold them.

Harley, son of Uther, ponders the battlefield.

In the foreground the British are forming their battle line. Arthur has the Red Dragon.

The view from the Saxon side.

We used the very easy to learn DBA rules. If you would like to learn get in touch with me. I can provide dozens of armies in 15mm, which Harley and I played, and 25mm. My contacts are 379 6107, 027 344 1073 and vincecholewa@yahoo.com

There were also two games of Fantasy Battle and one of 40K, with a surprising number of people dropping in to see what was going on and to talk toy soldiers.

Callan's Space Marines were fueled by "Demon" and chocolate (not in the picture) as they took on Ben's Blood Angels. Was that a wargamer's dinner?

James used his new Mantic Games Vampire Counts against Jonathon's Chaos Warriors.

Gavin (Wood Elves), sporting an unseasonably short new hair cut, took exception to Simon's  Dwarfs. They had axes (aaaaaargh). In the end, the tree huggers prevailed.

Vince

Sunday, May 27

Three tables were being used, all for multi-player games. 

 Whatever happened on the Fantasy Battle table it was all Wills' fault!

Jacob and Wills used Dwarfs against

Aaron's Ogres and Jonathan's Chaos Warriors.

The other tables had a Dystopian Wars "steam punk" game and the board game Game of Thrones.

Craig brought along his Dystopian Wars rules and very cute models.

James and Harley (Federated States of America) played Ross and Craig (Empire of the Blazing Sun).

Neil brought along Game of Thrones and, he, Peter, Simon, Gary and Vince played. Peter was summoned away by a telephone call and Neil cunningly exploited the power vacuum left to win!

Vince

For your listening pleasure

Hey guys, just thought I'd share with you something I've been listening to a lot lately - The Meeples and Miniatures podcast.  This is a really good podcast, covering all aspects of the wargaming hobby from historic to boardgames.  He doesn't really touch on Warmachine and GW too often (or at all), but there are plenty of dedicated podcasts for both of those!  What Neil does is cover all the other parts of our hobby - my favourite so far is Episodes #24 and #25 where he interviews the owners of Hasslefree miniatures (http://www.hfminis.co.uk/), a husband and wife team who make some fantastic minis, and an interview that also manages to cover the business side of miniature making.  Anyway, at over 100 episodes now, Meeples and Miniatures is worth having a browse - I'm sure you'll find something interesting!

http://www.meeplesandminiatures.co.uk/

Also available on iTunes, which is where I discovered it.

James

Models need painting? Call Sam!

Heaps of models lying around?  Painting queue taking over your house?  Sam Whitt from over the hill has set himself up as a painting mercenary!  Just drop him a line on  bungdoc@hotmail.com to find out prices etc.

Warhammer Achievements - A Skaven Tail

Hey guys, this post is to give you all the heads up about a very exciting tournament coming up in June.

 

Its a one day, 3 game, 1600 point tourny, where there are many different ways to "win". Very much suited to the more casual gamers and those new to tournaments. Basically you get pints for achieving certain things in your army list design (e.g. including a monster), in the play (e.g.failing a stupidity test, charging a solo character into a large unit), scratch built models, converted models etc.

 

That combined with fun scenarios will cause lots of upsets to throw the more experienced players off their stride.  It's ideal for people new to tournaments, or those of us not of the straight-up competitive bent.

All the information can be found here: http://www.thefieldsofblood.com/2012/04/warhammer-achievements-new-hobby-event.html#links

James

Saturday, May 19, Simon and Gavin playing Fantasy Battle

What better way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon than playing with toy soldiers?

Gavin come to Simon's place and played Fantasy Battle.

Wood Elves vs

Tui-fueled Dwarfs.

Hutt Club 12 May 2012: Welcome to FoW 3

Simon McBeth organised a "welcome to Flames of War 3" day at the Hutt Valley Wargaming Club meeting yesterday. It was a roaring success with 10 tables of FoW involving about 25 people. Less experienced players and newbies were mentored by Simon and other experienced gamers. A top effort, many thanks Simon ;-)

Simon explaining niceties of the rules to Ben.

Six of us made the trip from over the hills and far away (i.e. the sunny Wairarapa): Scott, Craig, Ross, Harley, Simon and me.

Harley, unknown onlooker (my apologies), and Simon are instructed by Nick.


It wasn't just FoW, there were also three tables of 25mm Ancients, several Hordes and Warmachine league games, Malifaux, Infinity, and Dystopian Wars (Craig's very cute "Steam Punk" game). As you can imagine, the hall was full and I apologise if I have missed anyone's game.

Craig brought his Teutonic Knights and played John who used Russians.

My opponent, Doug, with his Lancastrians. I used the mighty Thracians! I have been fascinated by the Thracian tribes since I first read about them but it is an army made up mostly of light infantry and light horse.I got it just for fun but after four games it is still unbeaten - go figure.
Michail and Tim were promoting Call to Arms, which, this year, will be the Wellington Warlords 40th anniversary. Be there guys, August 18-19 at St Patrick's College, Wellington. It will be a most excellent event.

Vince

Congratulations, Peter!

Breaking news!  Mastertons very own Peter Williamson is now ranked New Zealands number 1 Warhammer player on rankingshq.com!  Peters performance at the recent Horned Gobbo tournament (held in Wellington) has bumped him all the way up to the top, and I'm sure you will all join with me in congratulating Peter on this excellent achievement!

For those who haven't attended a Warhammer tournament before, the points earned are not just for winning games, but also painting, army composition and general sportsmanship.  Those of us who have been lucky enough to game against Peter will be able to confirm that not only is he an excellent tabletop general, but also a dab hand with a paint brush and a gentleman whether in victory or defeat.

Again, well done mate!

Sunday April 29

There was an excellent turnout for today's meeting, as the team photo shows. Many thanks to (from right) Tom Dunn, Mike King and Peter Dunn for coming out from Wellington to play Warhammer Fantasy.

A long table was set up for a series of doubles Fantasy games. Tom Dunn and Neil (Chaos Warriors and Demons) beat Aaron and Sophie (Ogres and Beastmen), and Peter Williamson and James (Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings) beat Mike and Raynor (Lizardmen and Wood Elves).

Simon (Dwarfs) and Peter Dunn (Ogres) played a 1 on 1 game of Fantasy, with Peter winning. Simon then went on to play Wills (both using Dwarfs) with Simon winning.

Callan, Ross, Wills and Tom played 40K

Ben, Harley, Craig, Alexander and Vince (taking the pictures) played Wings of War and

 Harley brought his very cool Dreadnaught.

April 13 meeting

Three tables were in action on Friday night and a good number of people dropped by to see what was happening.

Simon and Neil played Fantasy Battle using Dwarfs (what else would Simon use?) and Warriors of Chaos. Benedykt and Callan played 40K using Blood Angels and Ultramarines. Vince and Harley played two games of 15mm DBA Ancients using Early Anglo Saxons and Early Byzantines.

Johns Rhinos

Hey guys, had an email from John the other day - he doesn't get down to the club very often, but really enjoys the modelling side of our hobby. He just wanted to show off his two completed Blood Angels Rhinos, so I thought I'd put it up where everyone can enjoy it!

A very nice start to a Space Marines army, John! If anyone else has pictures of models or armies, or battle reports they'd like to put up on the blog, simply contact James or Vince on masterton.marauders@gmail.com.

March 25 meeting

A gorgeous, autumn day in Masterton - we left the big, sliding doors open at the croquet club to let the balmy, breeze blow! I would love to post some photos from the meeting and of the autumnal shades across Queen Elizabeth Park but I (Vince) forgot to bring my camera, again ;-(

Craig brought his growing collection of World War 1 and World War 2 planes including the colossal Handley Paige, biplane bomber. Craig, Ross and James played several games of Wings of War.

James brought along his "SS" Celtiberians. They are black undercoated, Ancient Spanish, LOL. He, Ben and I played 15mm DBA. Ben used one of my Greek hoplite armies while he is painting his Aetolian League army. Thracians were also in action.

Simon, Ross and Calan played 40K using Necrons and Space Marines. Calan also spent some time assembling his new Space Marine scouts. Sniff that glue!

Playing Fantasy Battle were William (Dwarfs) vs Raynor (Wood Elves), and Aaron (Ogres) vs Sophie (Beastmen).

Assorted others dropped in during the afternoon and a good time was had by all.

See you at the next Friday meeting and diary Sunday, April 28 for a Fantasy Battle event at the club. Watch this space for more details.

WarmaHordes hits Masterton!

Hey guys, James here. Just doing an update on the big visit from Chris and Sean. First of all, I would like to thank both of those guys for taking out their Sunday afternoon to play some massively violent wargames with us!

The lads bought up a selection of battleboxes for both Warmachine and Hordes, to help introduce us to the games.

WarmaHordes is quite a different system to those of us who are used to venerable tomes of GW. For starters you can play a game with as few as 3 models (the starter sets come with between 3 and 6), making it far cheaper to get into then most of the other games out there, and both Chris and Sean assure me that there is quite a sizeable community in NZ, meaning that tournaments and people to play against are pretty common.

The meat of the system is pretty straight forward - you have your Warcaster or Warlock (who is both your strongest model and also the most important - think Vampire General in your VC army important!), and then several Warjacks or Warbeasts. You can also grow your army with infantry etc., but that's a bit beyond our level at the mo! Play alternates in a simple I Go-You Go system (much like 40K or Fantasy) and involves each player doing his damndest to smash the opposing players leader. Combat is a simple matter of rolling 2D6 and adding the relevant statistic, and comparing them against your opponents - Privateer Press has nicely supplied handy reference cards to make it easy for you. This is also where the Warcaster/lock comes in, allowing you to boost the attack or the damage. This is brilliant, allowing even smaller 'jacks and 'beasts to nail the big ones, with some cleverly applied focus/fury at the right time and place.

Everyone seemed to have a good time (I played against Peter in Hordes and Chris in Warmachine, got my bottom savagely beaten twice), and I was inspired to glue up my Protectorate boys! Now I just need some people to play against.....

Date Change for Next Meeting

Hey guys, we'll be having the next meeting on FRIDAY the 9th rather than Thursday. The reason? The Thursday nights were not really popular with people gaming, and as table fees are the only way that the club pays the bill to keep the lights on, I was more often then not having to shell out of my own pocket to pay the shortfall. We're going to try Fridays for a little while to see if we get any more people coming along.

James

Warmachine and Hordes at February 26 meeting

Chris Otton and Sean Lincoln came over from Wellington with several boxes of Warmachine and Hordes to put on participation games. Sadly, I forgot my camera and these photos are from my cellphone. Don't ever believe anybody who tells you a cellphone takes pictures just as good as an SLR ;-( Sophie, Peter and Sean playing Hordes .

The models and terrain looked great.












As well as the two Warmachine and Hordes tables, Vince and Harley played some games of DBA, Wargames Research Group's quick play Ancients rules. Harley had his first win! Didn't he do well? (Yay! crowd goes wild!)














Simon and Neil played Warhammer Fantasy, getting in some practice for Runefang in Wellington next weekend.














Callan and William played 40K, and Jacob and Raynor played Warmachine with Sean.


James was of course at the meeting and played Warmachine and Hordes, and a good number came through during the afternoon to see what was happening and to talk toy soldiers.

Many thanks to Sean and Chris for making the trip over the hill to the sunny Wairarapa. We had a great time ;-)

Vince