Settlers & Stargrunt

I played a game of Settlers of America on Friday.  Pretty good game for a Euro.  It's a lot longer than regular Settlers of Catan. It probably took us close to 2 hours to play.  The game has the usual collection of nice wooden bits although the board itself could be a bit bigger. Once you get your cities and rails and trains all on the board it can be a bit cluttered.

Last night Chris and I tried out a game of Stargrunt 2. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics.  As we had never played before and our game was a decent size, it took us probably about 5 hours to play.  Overall, I think this is the ruleset I want to use.  Once we got going it became easier and easier.  I didn't really find that the board got cluttered with tons of chits, which I think is a common complaint about these rules.  I've got an idea to partially aid in keeping the board relatively tidy, I'll post up a pic once I create it.  I can see how Tomorrow's War borrowed a lot from Stargrunt.  Too bad they didn't borrow how to organize a ruleset.  There are a couple wonky things in the rules, namely vehicle weapon ranges are crazy short, vehicles forbidden from certain terrain and the lack of reaction rules.  Not sure about fixing reaction but the others are dead easy to change.

Also a couple weeks ago, a couple friends and I went to Mecca, I mean the Sentry Box.  Picked up a pile of 15mm Ancient Egyptians for when I start building my Impetus NKE army. I also picked up a couple pieces of terrain and two boardgames: Hellenes by GMT and Inca Empire by Z-Man Games.

On my painting table is a pile of stuff: a unit of Nurgle Plaguebearers, a Nurgle character and a bunch of buildings (ruined and intact).

Happy Canada Day!

Teppo

Tonight I finally finished 2 bases of Teppo (Ashigaru with arquebus'). These figs are from Kingston Miniatures.

Also tonight I got some more tree bases finished and I'm presently working on a large unit of Plaguebearers for Warhamster that I won on Ebay.  After that, I've got some Daemon characters for Warhamster and maybe some more Plaguebearers that I have on the way.

Model Show!

This past Saturday I went down to the Alberta Aviation Museum to see the 17th Annual Western Canadian Regional Model Contest. Here is some of the pics I took:

There was quite a number of model cars & trucks but they weren't of any interest to me so I didn't get any pics of them unfortunately.

There's going to be a more local model show on August 25, 2012 with a focus on wheeled vehicles. Here's the website addy if you're interested: http://www.aafvms.ca/.

Rex: Final Days of an Empire

Last night I had some friends over for a couple games of Rex: Final Days of an Empire by Fantasy Flight Games. This game is set 3000 years before Twilight Imperium (another game I'd like to some day play). This game is a reimagined version of an old Avalon Hill game, Dune. The players assume 1of 6 races vying for control of the Imperial capital. The goal is to assume control of a number of key city sectors.  At it's heart it's essentially a game of conquest.  The game is pretty simple and can be explained adequately in a couple minutes even if one of your players is drunk. The game is made for 3-6 players, we had 4.  I really would like to try it with 6 as I think it should be played with 6.

Later.

Been a while...

It's been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd post up something. Work has been insane crazy busy so I haven't got almost anything done in regards of miniature painting.  I also haven't got much accomplished in the way of board gaming either. I think I'm in a bit of a gaming funk or maybe it's more of a milieu funk as I can't seem to read anything either. Oh well... . Looking back on my New Years resolutions, I had set myself a target of getting 350 figs painted this year. It's been 5 1/2 months and I barely have a quarter done, so I think I can safely say I've blown that resolution.

Here's my present state of gaming:
I am slowly working on a couple bases of Teppo for my Samurai army.  When I'm done these two bases I might take a break and shift to something else for a little bit. Not sure yet. Maybe I'll knock off some Full Thrust ships or start on my 15mm sci-fi alien faction.

Earlier this month we had our club's annual convention, MayDay. I ran a game of War Rocket, pitting a Galacteer force on a mission to destroy an Imperial asteroid base.

The game generally went off without a hitch and ended in an Imperial victory due to some odd decisions on the part of the Galacteer player. I like this ruleset as it's quick and easy to explain/learn.

Yesterday Chris and I gave a run through of a 15mm sci-fi battle using FUBAR.  We used the basic rule sheet and the Armored Vehicle rules from the Imperial Commander sheet. The rules were okay I guess, there's a lot they didn't have. The vehicle combat rules from the IC sheet are an utter disaster as they make a vehicle virtually unkillable. Our game was almost finished when we switched back to the basic vehicle rules. Overall we weren't impressed. And it uses d6 and you know how I looooove d6's! We're going to try Stargrunt II next. Chris is reading the rules and I'm on chit duty.

For boardgaming I haven't played nearly enough and I think I'm suffering from board game withdrawal.  Our Descent campaign isn't going very well and I honestly don't think it's going to end very nicely. We'll see.

Later.

Tomorrow's War

Tonight Chris and I ran through a couple games of Tomorrow's War. The last game was an armour and infantry assault through a small village populated by some militia and a few vehicles in support.

I'm not really sold on the rules.  The rulebook is not that great as things tend to be scattered all over the book. I'd like to give Stargrunt 2 a run-through to see if I like that better.

Samurai Part 2

Due to work being extremely busy these past few weeks, I haven't been able to get much in the way of painting done. Regardless, tonight I finished a couple more bases for my Impetus Samurai army. These figs are all from Kingston Miniatures. First up is my third base of Ashigaru with yari.

Also completed is a base of sohei (warrior monks) that I'll use as heavy infantry. I really liked painting these figs.

Next up is a couple bases of Teppo (Ashigaru with arquebus). Hopefully I can get them done before the end of the month.