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 (Part 1)

Some time ago I reviewed Tabletop Gaming’s first issue of its magazine and whilst discussing this review with Hairy Gamer Tris we decided that an article about gaming on a budget would be a great idea.  Tabletop Gaming hadn’t done it so we resolved to set a budget and start a new project.

I had also spoken to some old LARPer friends of mine Andy Bridgwater and Andy Thomas who had just invested in Guildball from Steamforged Games.  This game appealed to me because it was a low fantasy american football style game.  It was to Fantasy Football as Game of Thrones is to Fantasy Fiction….no Elves, no Dwarves, no Orcs or Goblins.  It also fit quite nicely with my project to game on a budget as it wouldnt take a huge investment to get involved.  With all this in mind I asked around on the Guild Ball Supporters (Gu.B.S) page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/669287583117414/) and spoke to the Andy’s and took advice from Alex Cairns who all affirmed my belief that it might be the project I was looking for.

Andy Thomas was kind enough to write a review to give me some idea what it was all about:-

“So it’s Sunday, I’m sitting at a table and looking back is my best mate and we are about to kick the living bejesus out of each other!

I’ll explain… At the UK Expo we met up with the creators of a fantasy football game called Guildball and we liked what we saw. I really wanted Dreadball but when we asked for a demo… Mantis weren’t keen so we decided to go back and chat a little further… £60 each later and 4 of us now have full teams and a rule book.

Forward wind to our first game, a 3 on 3 between the Brewers guild and my Butchers! I’m having a strange feeling like I’ve been here before and it’s awesome, but ask me what the something is… I have no idea. I’ve read the rules to death and been mostly confused, tried to learn what my players can do and chosen the three that I’m sure can get me to the 6 victories points I need for a win! At this point I’m still confused how stuff works but armed with my rule book and cheat sheets… I’m ready as I will ever be! 6 points later, I’ve put his leader off the board and his quick player off twice and it’s taken around 30 minutes of non stop action where neither of us had to watch the other move 11 players, resolve 11 actions…fall asleep.

The rules I thought were complicated are actually streamlined and easy to follow, allowing the game to flow like a game should. Because of the turn system where 1 player activates a model then it switches to player 2, you never feel like you are in downtime and for someone with the attention span of a gnat, this rocks!

The players I chose had abilities that complimented each other and by knowing what each could do and how that can buff my other guys or rebuff the opposition I had a range of interesting plays I could bring to the table. Again, my non existent attention span is pleased that it has lots to do but at the same time not get overwhelmed. Then it hit me… That feeling I had been here before, I recognise it as the first time I played Bloodbowl. That little child inside me who loves the idea of fantasy football but doesn’t have 2 hours to play a game just got the cake and ate it.

That cake is called Guildball and if you love Bloodbowl or Dungeonbowl, there’s a new cake you should buy and eat…. It’s called Guildball”

 

Well anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Blood Bowl and have done since it was first released by Games Workshop many many years ago.  I have complete and untouched copies of 1st Ed, 2nd and 3rd ed plus multiple teams.  I also all love all things contact sports.  This sounded just like the game for me.  Having spent many years playing Blood Bowl and primarily the Humans, Skaven and Elf teams I knew I’d favour a team that were fast and agile and quick to score.  I’m not so much of a bash’em’up sort and like flair and speed.  Reading some reviews online and the article in Tabletop Gaming it sounded like the Fishermens Guild would be the guys for me.  So it would be my “gaming on a budget” project.

Fishermen Guild

Having made the decision I went to my FLGS in Coventry to grab a Starter set.  When I enquired the store volunteer hadn’t ever heard of the game and had no idea what I was talking about, which left me rather at a loss.  I would have to go online to try and find what I was looking for.  I try to support my FLGS whenever I can but on this occasion the Internet would need to come to my rescue.  I asked the members of the Gu.B.S. group on Facebook about where was best to buy from and the general concensus seemed to be Element Games, based in Stockport and the same building as Steamforged Games:-

http://elementgames.co.uk/wargames-and-miniatures/cult-steampunk-other-miniatures-games/guild-ball

Looking at the website I had a budget of £30 a month which I would need to buy at least a Starter set.  So I picked up:-

Fishermens Starter Set Season 1 (Shark, Siren & Angel) – £19.76

Fishermans Guild Starter Set.

Shark, Angel & Siren.

Kraken – £12.10

Kraken

Total – £31.86

I was a little over my original intended budget but I figured I could recoup this next month by spending less.  Once shipping of £2.95 was factored in then I was at a total of £34.81.

For a similar price I could invest in many similar skirmish level games that I had considered in the past such as Judge Dredd by Warlord Games, Batman by Knight Models, a new Corporation for Warzone Resurrection (I already have Cybertronic, Imperial and Mishima) by PRODOS Games Ltd.  I was happy with my final choice.  Now all that remains is for the postie to drop a box of goodies from Element Games through my letter box and for me to get them assembled and painted ready to bring some fishy hurt to the Andys (Thomas and Bridgwater), Pam aka Mrs Andy B and Jason W who had all invested at UK Games Expo.

I should only ever need 7 models to play the Fishermens Guild and once my package arrives I will have 4 of those so I’m a happy, little, lazy painting, budget gamer!

Im now off to download the free Rules PDF so I can read up before my team arrives.  That was another selling point.  Whilst I like a glossy shiny looking rulebook on the shelf in the Mancave the fact that I can get free rules and put off that purchase for another month was a huge advantage for me.

http://guildball.com/Guildball_QPR_Public1.0.pdf

I can also go onto the Guildball Forums to pick up tactics and general Guildball advice.  Here is a link:-

http://guildball.com/forums/index.php?/index

Thats about all for now.  Thanks to the Gu.B.S guys on Facebook, Alex Cairns, Andy B & Andy T for the inspiration and ideas.

Jase