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!

General Gaming Update/Name and Shame

Its been about a week or so since my last update and whilst nothing of earth shattering importance has occurred I feel I should still do a bit of an update to keep people up-to-date with where we are.

You could also view this as a bit of a warning…..of late I’ve bought lots of stuff and some online retailers are very suspect in their service and ability to do simple things….name and shame time.

Warzone – well Wayland Games messed up my Armoured Chasseurs order sending me two boxes of the Old Version rather than two boxes of the New Version (released 31-01-15).  So I contacted them and they insisted i raise a Helpdesk ticket to resolve their mistake.  So now they’ve contacted PRODOS and advised them to ship some new ones to me.  Well despite having a very clear order and the information in front of them they only advised PRODOS to ship 1 set so yet another helpdesk ticket and another phonecall later and they have asked PRODOS to send another set. *sigh*

I did manage to pick up two squads of Mirrormen to join Pieter Diamond so lots of models for assembly.  Thank you Black Dragon Miniatures

Lastly I ordered a Mishima Starter Box force from Wargames Miniatures on EBay, who seem to have the same service team as Wayland and have, since 2nd February, failed to dispatch my order despite two messages requesting they do.  They have until the close of play today for it to arrive or I will be raising a dispute against them and using Paypal to get my money back.

Allan Powell and I will be attending Overlord Gaming Convention/Show on March 1st in Abingdon to run some Warzone Demo’s so please do come along and grab a game with us.  It would be great to expand the community and get others interested in what is an excellent product.

I’ll also be going over to Leicester on Wednesday evening to join Anthony Evans as he demos Warzone Resurrection at Tabletop Tyrant/Gifts for Geeks.  Im looking forward to getting some more WZR gaming time.  I may even have to book some tickets for the UK Games EXPO Warzone Resurrection tournament (sadly I fear it clashes with Empire 1 2015)

Lastly in WZR I bought some excellent resin bases for my WZR models from bases4war (http://www.bases4war.com/).  I went with the Battlefield Debris range and picked up 40 small (30mm lipped) and 10 medium (40mm lipped) for basing my Cybertronic on.  These are excellent bases and will really unify my Cybertronic forces.

http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-attacking-wing-kazon-ogla-razik-expansion-pack

http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-attack-wing-wave-12-tholia-one

Star Trek Attack Wing – The previews for the new Wave 12 ships begin to find their way online so its time for an update.  Well my Wave 11 ships arrived quickly and reasonably cheaply from Chaos Cards without issue.  I *think* they worked out as £9-95 per ship, which was cheaper than using one of the American traders and cheaper than most if not all of the FLGS.  Looking forward to another Romulan ship in Wave 12 which sadly hasn’t been previewed yet…..the IRW Haakona.

Taken from Memory-Alpha:-

“The IRW Haakona was a Romulan D’deridex-class warbird that was in service with the Romulan military in the mid-24th century.

In 2365, Subcommander Taris was the commanding officer of this ship. In that year, the Haakona covertly downloaded logs from USS Yamato and then followed the USS Enterprise-D to the planet Iconia. However, the warbird had acquired the same malevolent Iconian software transmission in the download as the Enterprise-D, and was experiencing similar system malfunctions, which Taris blamed on Starfleet sabotage. Nevertheless, on the warnings from the Enterprise-D the Haakona destroyed an Iconian probe before it could make a scan, prolonging its survival.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard escaped from the surface of Iconia onto the Haakona using an Iconian gateway, and was shortly after beamed back to the Enterprise-D. By that time, the program had activated the Haakona’s self-destruct sequence. The Enterprise-D transmitted instructions on neutralizing the Iconian program to the Haakona before its departure, saving the Romulan vessel. (TNG: “Contagion“)”

Speculation abounds as to what we’ll be seeing on the Haakona but I’m going to go with a Subcommander Taris card, maybe a CS6 or 7?  An Iconian Gateway/Probe?  A Romulan version of Self Destruct perhaps?  Maybe some generic Romulan Security Officers as many were used in this TNG epsiode (and later went on to become named STTNG CCG characters/cards.  Lets hope for a decent ship for the Empire this time around!

Star Wars X-Wing – Due to a recent expansion at NAGA I now find myself on the Star Wars X-Wing Club League table in a lowly 7th position.  I’ve made an official challenge for the 5th place position after the forthcoming game between Alan Mathieson and Mithell Dunton, so we’ll see how that goes.  It could be my usual list or I could mix it up and go with dual Phantoms.  This depends on whether my second Phantom arrives in time. *crosses fingers*

So Bases4War, Chaos Cards and Black Dragon Miniatures all get the thumbs up from me this week but sadly Wayland Games and Wargames.Miniatures both need to seriously up their game or risk further naming and shamings and loss of custom.