A quick update. …

Sorry it’s been a quiet month on Tales From The Mancave….the girls have been excitedly preparing for Christmas and I’ve been kept busy with shopping, wrapping, chopping, cooking and playing games that sadly aren’t the kind I’d usually post about. So I’m going to give a quick update to keep your all advised of what’s been going down.  Let’s keep this simple. ….

I managed to grab three Star Trek Attack Wing Reinforcement Blind Booster Bricks for the forthcoming Temporal Cold War OP Series. I’ll be trying to post about each vessel and stick some pictures up as soon as I can.

Sticking with a space theme I’ll move next onto Star Wars.  I managed to grab a viewing of The Force Awakens on opening day and was like a child in a sweetshop with Daddy’s credit card!  Lol. Gaming wise I managed to pick up the last remaining ship I required to complete my Star Wars X-Wing collection. …the Tantive 4. Now onto Wave 8.  Being a massive Imperial fan I also wanted to get my dirty hands on the impressive Gozanti class Imperial Assault Carrier to swell the ranks of my Imperial Fleet.  I grabbed one for a very good deal of £39.67 (including P&P) from boardgameprices.co.uk which I was very happy about!

Sticking with Star Wars Christmas was very kind to me and I managed to get a whole heap of Star Wars Imperial Assault goodies from my girls.  I received Dengar to add to my wretched hive of scum in IG-88 & Boba Fett. I’m aiming to put together the whole line up of Bounty Hunters from The Empire Strikes Back. …so I need 4-Lom, Zuckuss and Bossk.  Then I’ll have then go toe to toe with my other games worth of hunters….the Predators from Prodos’ AvP.  I also got a copy of the latest expansion for SW:IA Return to Hoth. Finally I was given a load of Villain and Ally packs to build my SW:IA forces; – a Royal Guard Champion,  Kayn Samos, Chewbacca, Han Solo, R2-D2 & C-3PO and Princess Leia. So I can now assemble the whole gang from the films.  Happy gamer!

I did post a while ago about me returning to the Judge Dredd fold at NAGA to have some games with Brent Jay and Co. Well I was watching some very good deals on EBay and add luck would have it I did manage to scoop up the whole lot for a very decent price of £37 (including P&P). I ended up winning auctions for gangs for Judge Cals Personal Retinue, Justice Dept. Mega City Judges and Specialist Judges. So they’ll go onto the gaming table for use at some point in January against Brent.

The Hairy Gamers (me and Tris) took a little road trip to Dragonmeet in London during December to collect our AvP Wave 2 pledges and boy was there a whole load to struggle through a busy convention with.  I now have 3x Alien Warriors, 2x Alien Queens, 2x Royal Guards, 2x Alien Crushers, 2x Predaliens, 2x Alien Eggs, 2x Berserker Predators, 2x Predator HellHounds, 2x USCM Powerloaders and 1x each set of Dice (USCM, Aliens & Predators). I also bought an extra two boxes of Alien Warriors from Asylum Wargames Online Shop for a great price of £10 each. You can grab some too by visiting them on http://asylumwargaming.tictail.com/ . These guys have great deals on all sorts of goodies residual if you’re interested in Macrocosm or AvP.

This takes me neatly onto Macrocosm. Despite the awesome Chris Nicholls being very busy with his adventure into fatherhood for the second time he managed to go above and beyond to send out my Macrocosm Malignancy pledge.  Once the chaos of Christmas has subdued I’ll try to take some pictures and post more about this! Thanks Chris.  If you too are interested in Macrocosm then you can find more details on the website at http://www.macrocosm.co.uk/

Whilst we were on our road trip I managed to teach Tris the rules for The Devils Run and we even managed to grab a couple of demo games on the stand the Word Forge Games team were using.  Both of us are mad keen for this game and with any luck I’ll be able to help Mark Rapson with some more play testing and reviewing of the game in the build up to shipping.  With so many ideas for this game, with me posting regular bat-reps and reviews and with Mad Max Fury Road available on Blu-Ray and DVD it was inevitable that others would be drawn into the TDR:R666 game. Recently Tris and I expanded the Hairy Gamers family by inviting Gareth Mosley and James Hall to join our ranks. Both have the R666 bug and are busy trash-bashing and scheming for when R666 drops.  James has been busy using any and all HotWheels and Matchbox cars he can get his busy hands on to bash together some cars to use.  I myself am waiting until my pledge drops to see what gaps I have in my collection before getting too busy with trash-bashing. My ideas are mainly for scenery and game tiles based on British Roads rather than the American ones in the game.

Guildball now. ….as some of my regular readers will recall I play in a local Guildhall league at Black Dragon Games in Hinckley. Sadlt this has not been going to we’ll for my Fishermen who have lost their opening two encounters against Craigs Mort-Union team (12-8) & Andy T’s murderous Butchers (12-4). This week I have a double header of games planned against David Mustin and Mark Southerd in store on Tuesday so watch this space for that.  I’ve gone in half’s on a Union Starter with David to get me a copy of Avarisse and Greede to add to my Union Starter of Blackheath, Decimate and Gutter. I also added a Harry “The Hat” Hallahan to my Union line-up this month as well as hopefully getting the miniatures I’m owed by Jay Finnegan in the form of Fangtooth and Hemlocke. At some point I’ll have to grab me a copy of Coin,  the Union Mascot, so I can play Union too. I’ll do a “Gaming on a Budget” post later to cover my Guildball activities.  Having seen a couple of demo’s at Dragonmeet and spoken to one of the brains behind Guildball, Rich, Hairy Gamer Tris had also picked up a great deal on a Masons team for Guildball so we’ll probably throw down at some point even if it’s just to teach him the rules.

Lastly im going to talk about Frostgrave. Not the game or any bat-reps or warband stuff but mostly terrain.  I managed to grab myself two of the old Games Workshop Mighty Fortress plastic kits from EBay as a starter for my planned scenery. I wanted to build the walls of Felstadt. I also picked up 84 Lemax Snow Covered Wintery Pine Trees, a Garden of Morr kit from GW and some rather large Amera plastic moulded kits for their F204 Large Hill Top Ruin (Fantasy Realms page) & Z236 Corner Ruined Building  (Future Zone page). You can take a closer look at thier range on the link below;-

http://www.amera.co.uk/product.php?range=f

Once I get the chance to do anything with any of the above I’ll post something.

Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all!

Gaming on a budget – The Challenge (Month 3 – Part 6)

Happy nearly weekend Mancavers!  Its Friday and some geek time approaches!

In the latest in my series of articles on gaming on a budget we approach Month 3.  To recap, the aim is to spend no more than £30 a month on a single game or items related to that game.  Looking at all the available options I decided to invest in Guildball, a low fantasy game of brutal football.  Some LARPing friends had already gotten into it and it was new.  I had previously played Blood Bowl before and based on Andy Thomas’ review and Alex Cairns hard selling of how awesome this game was I was hooked.

In Month 1 I bought the Fishermens Starter Set for Guildball by Steamforged Games plus Kraken.  I was slightly over budget at about £34.  Month two saw me buy some new players in Jac and Greyscales and invest in some nice thematic resin bases to base my team on.  Now we’re in Month 3…..what to get?

Well looking at what I may need or want I could have purchased the Season 1 Rulebook but part of the charm for this game is the availability of downloadable free rules so we can wait for that.  The Rules retail for £21-95 in the webstore but you can grab a bargain on eBay for around £19-20.

Fishermens Guild Rules – Season 1 – http://guildball.com/downloads/FishermanGuild_Season01.pdf

Guildball Rules – Season 1 – http://guildball.com/downloads/GuildBall_Season01.pdf

Quickstart Rules – http://guildball.com/ratty-images/GuildBall-QuickStart.pdf

Paper Templates for Playing – http://guildball.com/downloads/GuildBall_Templates_Tokens_Season01.zip

Guildball Rules

Guildball Season 1 Rulebook

Other options included special Fishermen dice to play the game, again these are more of a luxury item as they are only “pimped” d6.  Again they can wait for another day.   They’re £17-95 from the webstore but cheaper via eBay or other retailers.

Fishermens Dice for Guildball

The game uses a lot of tokens and token sets for each team have been produced.  Again this wasn’t considered a necessity for me as I can print and play some tokens to keep this game as budget as possible.  I may pick them up in later months and you need not buy team specific tokens either, generic ones are available in the webstore.

Guildball Bleed Tokens

Guildball Burning Tokens

Guildball Icy Sponge Tokens

Guildball Knocked Down Tokens

Guildball Plot Cards and Tokens

Guildball Poison Tokens

Fishermens tokens from Guildball

Fishermen tokens for Guildball

There was also the possibility of getting a shiny gold embossed card for my Fishermens captain Shark.  I think that would defeat the object of “gaming on a budget” as that goes beyond the realms of luxury item.

Oooooo….shiny gold embossed Shark card

So what could I get this month?  Well there was still the small mater of something to play the game on, a pitch.  One of the guys from Bristol Vanguard Gaming Club had produced a really good tiff file for the pitch and engaged a company called Pixelart printing to produce cheap vinyl pitches.  Once my pitch arrived I was very happy with the final results.  It was a great deal too at only £13!!!!  Details to order one for yourselves are shown below:-

Vinyl Guildball pitch

So for those that wish to use this and get one printed themselves, here are a few instructions for you 🙂

Dropbox link to image –https://www.dropbox.com/s/wk9ir8j1abxqm0c/Guild%20Ball%20Grass%20Mat.tif?dl=0

Link to order – http://www.pixartprinting.co.uk/wide-format/printing-banners-mesh/pvc-banner/

Options you will need to change:

• Quantity – 1 or higher
• Width – 91.44
• Height – 91.44
• Delivery window – For cheapest price select the right hand most option (Cheapest option) Will arrive in around 10 days

Once you order you will need to upload the artwork to them, you will need to download the above .tiff file and upload it using their tool.

A few things to note. Although this is a UK company, it is printed and posted from Italy via courier (I believe it’s TNT, so don’t be surprised when you suddenly get a shipping notification from Italy). The mats will be pretty slippery for the first few uses. The more you use them the less slippery they become.

Now I have a playing surface I may need to actually move miniatures around on it, play the game, scatter the ball and do all sorts of things that game templates are used for and to do this I will need to grab me a set of templates.  They are available via the webstore for £10-95 plus around £2-80 postage and packing.  I managed to grab a deal on eBay that saved me a pound and a bit.  It was £9-85 plus P&P.

eBay Guildball Templates

Webstore Guildball Templates

Lastly I wanted to invest in the final missing player for my Guildball team, Salt, the team mascot.  I hunted around and found a deal on eBay for him.  You can also buy from Steamforged directly on the link below:-

http://store.guildball.com/

Fishermen Team Mascot, Salt.

So without buying some rather un-budget items I pretty much stayed around my budget of £30.  If you made a pitch rather than using a vinyl printing service you would save money.  Ive seen some very good pitches made for a few quid and a few hours work.  Its very easy to keep costs down here.  I may make a pitch eventually so will share some ideas etc.  What was this months total spend?

Salt – £6-85 (including delivery)

Guildball Pitch – £13 (including delivery)

Guildball templates – £12-65

Total – £32-50

So again a little overspend caused by delivery charges.  Next month might see me purchase a token set but for now I’ll keep using print and play tokens.

Im off now to trawl through some bins and my bits box to find some decent bits to make myself some goals for my Fishermen team.  I’ll be hunting around at boot fairs etc for piratey bits and models ships to make some scenery for my Fishermen inspired pitch and scenery.  Despite having laughed off the pirate theme previously I think it may work for my team so we’ll go with it.  It may also help me to come up with a name for my team.

Over and out for now!  Happy gaming Mancavers!