May 02, 2007
Games Workshop new Foundation Paint
I just picked up the newly released GW Foundation paint which is touted as "best coverage" in the industry, and can cover over black primer even with the likes of yellow and red. At $48 a box for the entire range (individual colors will be available later) it may seem steep, but with 18 colors the price worked out to be about the same as Vallejo.
Other told me that this kinda paint is using a liquid pigment instead of the normal powdery stuff. An additional benefit is that being liquid it won't separate from the solvent, so should stay "evenly mixed" even if it's sitting on the shelf. It's also implied that it won't dry out as much but that remains to be seen.
On the painting table now is 4 of the Fellowship figures from the original Fellowship of the Ring boxset (I am just painting the warlike folks, so just Gandolf, Gimli, Legolas, & Aragorn. Boromir has already been painted and hobbits are useless for puting together Legions of Middleearth games). I used the light grey color from the new set (called Astronomican Grey, don't ask me, perhaps some 40k player can enlighten me on what that means) to do Gandolf's beard...
Since I do not do black prime (never liked it), I am not really testing the coverage, but rather just to try it out. The texture of paint is very different from "normal" acrylic paint (Normal are stuff like Vallejo, regular GW, Ral Partha, & Howard Hues. paints I have used in the past). It's a lot more "goo-y", "plastic-y". It doesn't flow as much (by adding similar amount of flow agent), so one gets better control, but will take used to if you are into a much more "water-y" consistency like stains and inks (which is my regular painting MO). So I think these paint will not be my mainstay paints, but rather used for specific purposes that requires coverage (i.e. painting spearshafts, faces on some dark background, or highlights).
Another comment, they smell like acrylic house paints (maybe the liquid pigment is something used in that medium?)
Lastly, WARNING! These guys drys very fast. I found out the hardway when I finished the color, wet my brush like I normally do (didn't thoroughly clean it), next thing I know the brushhead is caked up and turning plastic. I suspect these paints will be much harder on your brushes than normal stuff so be careful.
Off to vacation next week so likely no hobby update. Hopefully get the fellowship figures done before I leave...
Posted by msoong at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 15, 2007
The (next) grand rebase project has begun
In other parts of this blog I have alluded to my first "real" miniature army being a matched pair of Early Ottoman Turks & Timurid Mongols in 25mm (designed to recreate the battle of Ankara in a grand scale). I have worked on these folks on and off since 1985 or so. Figures are either Ral Partha, Essex, or later on, Old Glory, along with some Foundry Huns disguised as general steppe nomads which probably remained unchanged in appearance in the one thousand years between Attila and Tamerlain.
Recently I am on a Ancient/Medieval kick again, so I went back through the boxes to look at these long neglected figures. The first thing I noticed is that since I started these armies so long ago, all my changes in painting style are reflected in the different units. You can clearly see the Ral Partha painted in "Duke's Stain painting method" (white prime, a stain of the main color, a wash of a darker shade of the same color, then high light), then next came the black primed unit (just one, since they look terrible), then there's the change to using ink stains following reading Ed Allen's inspirational painting article on his now defunct website. None of those are painted in my "current style" (really back to the 3 layer style, except with more inks used in the staining stage and the wash is invariably a FW Sepia Ink Wash, but I already have some unit lined up.
The other thing that strikes me besides the changes in painting style is the changes in basing style. I started out with balsa wood painted green then dipped in green flock with not much variation. The sizes also went all over the place since the DBx standard of 60x40 is no longer deep enough to contain the larger horses such as Essex and Old Glory. So half way through the army many stands changed to 60mm x 50mm. The visual effect when all this is laid out on the table is a hodge-podge effect that looks pretty bad.
The current order of business is to:
1- Rebase all of these figures onto Warhammer Ancient style (that seems to be the stand in this part when it comes to 25/28 figs).
2- ANy touchup as needed (many of the older figures will benefit with a simple ink wash or even a DIP in a Minwax stain.
3- Terrain up the bases to my latest "Soong Standard bases". (a layer of Liquitex Stucco, liberally doused with fine+coarse ballast. Then the entire base is painted with Vallejo US Tan Earth, then dry brushg with 2 layers of successively lighter shade of US Tan Earth + Dark Sand. Finish with flocks of green static grass.
4- Replace all flags with my latest purchase from "The Flag Dude".
At that point I should have enough for some VERY large (I suspect 4000 pt+) per side battle using WAB (or some other ancient set that happens to strike my fancy at the time).
I promise to put up some in progress pictures in the near future...
Posted by msoong at 03:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 21, 2007
Painting Update
I have been very productive lately when it comes to painting (seems like after I get home, I am so brain dead that neither watching tv/movie nor reading are within my mental capabilities, but painting miniatures I can still do!)
Will put up some pics of stuff I painted in the last few months, they include an entire Flames of War US Mech Infantry 1500 force (I did everything except the tanks), a Perry Sudan range rifle unit, a Perry Fuzzy Wuzzie unit, a couple of Stug III tanks, and I am currently in the middle of finishing some Fantasy Warrior plastic dwarves.
As part of this painting frenzy I have been experimenting with the "dip" method (more specifically using Minwax woodstain product to create shading with minimal effort). That is probably a blog entry on its own, but the short of it is that it takes a lot of experimentation to figure out the right color combo (i.e. not all minwax shade will work with all troop type). It gives a realistic "dirty" look if you are into that. I think it's perfectly passable solution for things like WW2 infantry (khaki/tan/fieldgrau are all colors that stains well), colonial natives (darker skin color works better than fair skin troops), and orcs (dirty and grungie look is a good fit for them). If you want parade ground uniform than this technique is probably not the right fit.
One more thing: I REALLY HATE BLACK PRIMING! When I started on my dwarves I observed that most of the body was covered in armor, which I always paint by having a black undercoat followed by successive layers of metalic hi-lights. I found that to cover the black undercoat I either have to do multiple layers (too time consuming), or use very heavy layer (obscure detail). I think I'll stick with white undies->main color->ink wash->high light which for me gives a more pleasing result.
Posted by msoong at 01:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2007
State of the Hobby
Sorry about the lack of updates. Plenty of stuff going on in real life, (mostly progress I guess). As busy as I am with work, cleaning out old hobby stuff for sale, and dealing with the new house, I am actually getting plenty done hobbywise, in brief:
LOTR- A lot of my buddies are into this system, and eventhough I do not collect I tend to just show up and play when I have the time. Recently after about 18 months of painting, Chris has finally finished his Mumak (horay!) So we decided to give it an outing.
The scenario chosen is the one in the Two Towers movie where Frodo and Sam spotted the column of evil troops moving down the road, subsequently getting ambushed by Faramir and his rangers. It's a typical "stealthy foe ambushing a convey moving down the road" scenario (now how many time have I gamed that in Colonials?) As trite as it sounded, it's actually a good scenario with a lot of tension built in to the scenario rules.
The evil (convey) enters the board in 3 different waves. They went from the least powerful wave first (Easterling foot), to the Cavalry (commanded by yours truly), followed by the ultimate weapon of the Mumak coming on last. Each wave is only triggered if the previous wave either reaches far enough on the road, or gets wiped out. Thus the evil folks have an incentive to hurry along and I am always of the opinion that scenario that forces you to rush along produces tense games. All in all, the most enjoyable LOTR game I had in a long time. Some exellent pictures here.
Flames of War- I have found a regular opponent in the local FoW scene. We are both casual gamer who's keen on the rules, but not fanatical about it (as some in the store can be quite intense). It's a good crowd who's knowledgeable and helpful to newbies like myself (even the "intense" ones are fine compare to some of the problem players I have encountered in the past).
I have now built (pretty much from scratch) a 1500 point US Mech Infantry force. Looking back on my 20+ years of miniature gaming, this is actually the very first time I got into the "using equal point forces , line up and play" style of games. Previous I was always in the more scenario based mode of playing where in a majority of cases I am the game master putting on a game. It's quite a refreshing change actually. I suspect that I am seeing the "good" side of the scene due to the folks I am playing with, and I suspect that my attitude might change if I ever meet a rules lawyer/power gamer type mentioned in legend.
Hordes- Now here's a fine game system that I tried to get into but failed, so the figures have found a new home. I have been observing Privateer Press in the last year or so and I think they are the closest thing that's giving GW a run for its money (at least here in the US). I am seeing a lot of league play in the local stores, the games are well supported with a nice forum and an in house full color magazine, they have an interesting setting, and the game play is full of tactical depth (I equate it with a fusion of miniatures and Magic the Gathering). So what is the problem? For me anyway, the problems are as follows:
1. The cost- I like nice figs, and Hordes figures are nice in their own right, but they are in the same league if not more expensive in some cases compare to GW. Granted total outlay is probably same or smaller compare to 40k or WHFB since games tend to be smaller in size, but I still have a problem paying >$5.00 for a single humanoid size figures.
2. The Assembly- Privateer figures all come in blisters that contains multiple small parts, and requires some serious assembly before one can get down to business of painting them. I like playing and painting, but hated glueing (or in this case pinning since these are pewter figs which are hard to work with). Doing this for the entire army is becoming a serious pain.
3. The Style- I liked the rules a lot (reminded me of a MtG dual done in miniatures), but I am not in general a fan of "big shoulder pad" scifi/Fantasy (in case of Warmachine which is the dominant game in the store I frequent), or "strange mutant-y looking creatures" (In case of Hordes). The Circle of Oberos faction is pretty cool (having a more natural motif of wolves and such) and that was what I went with, but was never IN LOVE with the figures like that of a Thunderbolt Mountain Fantasy, or even a LOTR figure from GW.
Oh well, at least I got most of my money back. I did keep one figure, a Circle Warcaster that I painted myself which can be used as some generic combat mage type in any fantasy setting.
Waken The Storm- Speaking of generic fantasy setting, I pop the $ and got this set of rules from my buddy Patrick Wilson from TVAG. It's a Fantasy adaptation of The Sword and the Flame (probably the most popular set of non-fantasy rules ever published). In my mind it's a good fit, since the loosy goosy feel that's always associated with TSATF is something I associate with classical fantasy setting which one shouldn't take too seriously anyway. Given that TSATF is "Colonial goes Hollywood", Waken the Storm will probably play more like "The Beastmaster" than "Lord of the Ring" if I may use a movie analogy. And that's probably not a bad thing. Will give it a test drive soon (will be Thunderbolt Wood Elves vs some LOTR Orcs and Easterlings).
More Selling- Packaging up my 25mm Carthaginians for sale as both Jeff and I agreed to get rid of our compatible armies (Jeff is going into small scale, and I am getting out of Ancients for now, but might be back later in plastics). We had a last hurrah last week by having a last game with them, using PIQUET's latest supplement: Archon 2.
It did not turn out well. when it counted I was initiative starved (a frequent complaint about these rules, and we are using straight D20 roll off which didn't help). when I start to get the pips I am dashing my crappy stuff on to his triarii. Very ugly.
We have not played this set of rules for so long that we spend a lot of the game looking things up. After a long exposure of the excellent C&C:Ancient I find this quite tedious. Plus given all that extra rules I don't think this game is any more "realistic" than C&C. I think my project of using massed plastics to do a scaled up C&C:A will probably be my next ancient project (if it ever gets off the ground). Pictures of the battle can be found here.
Posted by msoong at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2007
House Cleaning
As the house remodel project continues (this is the real house, not another rebasing project), the reality of penury has finally struck home. So no more outsourced miniature painting (I am actually getting a kick out of painting my Perry Sudan figs and my FoW Americans), no more new periods, and need to examine existing project commitment to see what I can get rid of in terms of fund raising (my resolution is that anything hobby related from now on has to be funded by selling off stuff I already have).
So on to the sell list (yes, if anything interests you please send me an email at msoong@yahoo.com...)
In general things that I painted with my own hands prob have a good chance of staying put, all the outsourced paint jobs are fair game...
DEFINITE GONER:
1. (Painted) 25mm Old Glory Carthaginians- These are a pretty good sized army (along with about 6 war elephants). Since I painted none of it, and that Old Glory figures aren't really all that hot means this is definitely on the sell block.
2. (Painted) Crapload of 4" Armies of Middle Earth These aren't really miniatures of course, rather fully articulated and painted figs that comes out to be about $3.50 ea. (therefore cheaper than GW LOTR figures, and therefore a good buy, and therefore a worthy project for a skirmish game). Turns out these guys are extremely bulky and a pain to store. Definitely on the goner list if a buyer can be found.
3. (Unpainted) 28mm Blacktree Saracen army. Got it on a BlackTree army deal, but is never likely to see the wet side of a paint brush. Gone.
4. Misc (Unpainted) Old Glory Samurai & Assyrians. The Assyrians are some of the best OG figs out there. Since I am getting out of 25mm Ancients for good these (I don't have that many, just a few packs) are gone.
BORDERLINE:
1. (unpainted) 10mm OG Dark Ages- The blood was hot and Jeff and I ended up with a full Warmaster army. I picked up the Byzantines. This is a worthy project until I found out that none of the spears are cast on (i.e. drill for spears for 10mm figures), and that the basing of Warmaster doesn;t jive well with OG base size. I will finish one unit to see how it goes, and if I can convince Jeff to move to a larger base size then this has a chance of staying.
2. (Painted) B5 Call to Arms scifi ships. This is a tough one, since I painstakingly painted all these critters. Mongoose's rule ultimately turned out unsatisfying but one can always use the ship for something else. I might be tempted to get rid of it if I can have someone taking the entire collection off my hand at a good price, else it'll prob stick around.
That's it for now, there's also more Nappy rebase trying to tempt me but that urge has been fought off, for now...
Posted by msoong at 06:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 02, 2007
Holiday Update
Sorry about the lack of update throughout the holiday, here's a quick one...
Miniature game wise there hasn't been much. Freddy and I broke out my 25mm Sudan figures for a quick testdrive of Dave Waxtell's Sudan quick play rule (to be featured in one of the UK glossy mags). It's fast, and it plays like colonial. All in all I would term a "conventional set of rules that gives you pretty realistic results without a lot of fiddly bits".
I also sat in one of Chris' Lord of the Ring game where I control bands of Goblins trying to stop the Fellowship from reaching Rivendale. Since I am not an expert at these rules I let others do the general-ing, and I'll just stick to rolling to kill (and rolled badly).
BattleLore has been getting a lot of play lately (it's not strictly miniature gaming but a good argument can be made). It's the latest in the Richard Borg C&C lineage of games. The Lore (magic) system is especially elegant, and can be rationalized as "tactical advantage on a battlefield" if one doesn't ask too many questions. Basically the Lore system consists of a player building up Lore Points (or tactical advantage, or Mana). One can gain Lore Points either through a regular schedule (one gets 1 or 2 every turn), or through the vagaries of fate (rolling certain symbols on a die during a battle, this part it a bit more dodgy in my mind). One can then use these build up lore points to cast spells (ahem, strategems), where each spell has a cost in lore points (the more expensive the spell in terms of lore points, the more powerful it is). A simple and elegant system to add some unpredictability to your IGO-UGO predictable game.
My latest rules project (there's always one on the burner) is to adapt the BattleLore system to the colonial period. Stay tuned for more info.
On the miniature painting front I finally finished my 1500 pts. US Armor company for Flames of War. The bad news is that all of my FoW opponents are out for the holidays so it's likely that I won't see any action until later this Jan. I'll try to upload some photos here soon. I am currently working on my first unit of Perry Sudan figures (trying to look like these here). I haven't painted any Perry figures in a long while, and I have to say that they have improved a lot (if that can be imagined) since the last time my brush touched one of their figures (I think was their Chasseur D'Afrique from the Franco-Prussian war from Foundry). They probably have the best "balance" of any figures out there, and by balance I mean between the "ultra-realistic but hard to paint" style (such as Tom Meier's current THunderbolt Mountain stuff), and the "easy to paint but highly stylized/caricatured" style (Copplestone being the best of that lot). They aren't cheap, but given that I do not have THAT MANY Dervishes and almost no Brits dressed for the Sudan, (besides a unit of Castaway Art Camel Corps unit) I'll be slowly building up this range.
So in the near future: finishing my BattleLore Colonial rules variant, getting ready to play some FoW using my American Armor unit (their first performance will probably mirror the real American experience at Tunisia), and getting ready for out first play of Field of Battle using Freddies' 25mm ACW figures...
Posted by msoong at 04:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 21, 2006
How to Create a Successful Miniature Franchise
Since I came from the old school of Historical miniature gaming, the "miniature Franchise" phenom is not something I was exposed to until quite recently. Some might ask what is the difference between a "Franchise" (My term, no company actually calls their product that) and non-franchise? By extension, what distinquishes a successful franchise? and by successful I mean commercial success, not just artistic merit...
1) A Rules System as well as figures
A Franchise have to have their own rules systems as well as their own figure line. The traditionalists are used to picking out their own favorite ruleset (if not creating a set of rules from scratch), and then go about shopping for figures from different vendors. A franchise appeals to a more "one-stop shop" mentality. A buyer will usually buy the rules, and use the official figures that goes along with it. A Franchise can enforce that in a few different ways as follows...
2) A Unique background
This usually applies to Fantasy/Sci-fi genre gaming (it's hard to comeup with a unique historical background and ensure uniqueness). The franchise has to have a compelling background, cool story, nice characters, etc in order to suck people in. Many times they'll license media from print or screen to get that recognition (i.e. Lord of the Ring, Starship Trooper, Star Wars all comes to mind). Failing that they need to come up with something different than the usual Tolkienesque knock-offs. So now we have Steam-punk fantasy, Anime influenced post modern skirmish, Fantasy Pirates, what have you. An example of a more successful background is that of Iron Kingdom from Privateer Press (A Steampunk Fantasy setting where "technology" is like another school of magic).
3) Expansive Gaming Opportunity
A healthy and successful franchise must have many areas it can expand into, be it a different rules set of rules focused on a different level of gaming (i.e. GW have Warhammer for skirmishy type of battles, and then Warmaster for "army" level mass battle), or even a differnet branch of service (i.e. WH40k land game leads to Battlefleet Gothic if you want to do space ship combat). One successful setting serves as a hook to another one to keep player's interests fresh. In the Fantasy/Sci-fi world one can also have a associated RPG setting with your miniature gaming to generate interesting background. Note that's been a successful ploy for both Warhammer and Privateer's Iron Kingdom setting.
In the historical front this is slightly different. Today the only successful franchise IMO is Flames of War. They treat the Mid war years (~1943) as the base game. Then they are coming out with Late War expansion, early war expansion, etc. It serves the same purpose as its fantasy brethren in the sense of keeping the game fresh.
4) Cool Minis
Afterall this is a miniature game, so the miniature better look cool. Being a Franchise means that usually the customer has to pay a premium for the figures (nobody pays higher than Games Workshop, but other Franchises also have figures that usually cost more than its non-franchise alternative).
In the fantasy world, this is a given, since figures are often very specific to the setting and designer can always make sure that there are no ready alternatives out there (Look at Privateer's Steam Powered fantasy robots, hard to find compatible figures). In the historical world this is less of a stranglehold, since a Tiger tank in 15mm is a Tiger in 15mm, one can easily use models from anybody, and the fantasy world's tournament motto of "official figures only" has not caught on in the historical world, yet.
One other tool in the arsenal of the franchise is to sculpt figures with a slightly different size than alternatives, thus ensuring imcompatibility. New Battlefront 15mm WW2 are just that much larger than the alternatives. When Warhammer Historical wants to do a "army scale" game called Warmaster, instead of using the defacto standard size for ancients (15mm), it went to a brand new scale (10mm). GW Orcs are constantly getting supersized so they are that much larger than generic 25mm figures. One also wonders if the growing "heroic scale" (30mm) game has the same underlying reason to lock in its customers.
5) Timeliness
Many a successful franchise (e.g. GW's LOTR before 2006) was doing fine until they become tardy in keeping up with new releases. In fact GW made a cardinal error of not releasing any Return of the King tie-ins while the movie hit the theater, which ensured that the game would do poorly (they even blamed their poor financial results on "the waning interests in LOTR", which is complete bullcrap. It's really caused by "no interest in LOTR because there's no new release to spend my $$$ on...".
In this day and age of short attention span and instant gratification, it's paramount for a franchise to have new stuff coming out EVERY MONTH. Gotta have new toys for people to buy and gawk at. Even if someone is not buying those specfic model (maybe because they are not the clan/nationality/period you are working on), the release will keep up the interest, and reaffirm the faithful that "the system is healthy as we continue the release". Any slow down results in forum posts such as "XYZ game system is not being supported", which invariably cause people to bail to some other franchise.
6) Prepainted minis or not?
Wizkid came up with the brilliant idea that a game might catch on more if they come with reasonably priced prepainted figures. This works to an extend when the game launches (i.e. Mageknight, Mechwarrior, Heroclix, etc. were all considered successful when they launched), however I would not call any of them a successful franchise since they all have passed on (even Heroclix which is probably the most successful of the bunch, has pretty much died off).
Other than Wizkid, WOTC is the other big prepainted mini provider. They seems to be doing better: Their D&D mini and Starwars mini all have a dedicated following. The lone exception maybe A&A:Minaitures which I do not know ANYONE in this area who plays it.
My theory is that prepainted minis let people start playing faster, but since it doesn't have the "total hobby" aspect of miniature assembly/painting aspect, people are much less attached to them, so might abandon the game much sooner than if they spend hours painting their little masterpiece. An additional reason may be that so far the prepainted game SYSTEM all seems to be simpler games geared toward getting casual gamers (instead of the miniature grognards) to play, they usually lack the strategic/tactical depth of its more involved brethrens. This means players may "crack the system", then grew tired of it and move on.
7) Availability
The grognards might search through eBay or Bartertown to look for that obscure British Postoffice Rifle unit who participated in the Gordon Relief Expedition, but your regular gamer who's the target audience must be able to find his monthly fix from the local hobby/comic store. That means the franchise material (rules, figures) must be available for the local game store to carry, and that means they must be well packaged in boxes or blisters that screams "paint me!" (not just 50 lead figures inside of a plastic bag which hangs on a peg board and expect anyone to pay money for that).
8) Online support
In this day and age of internet, a franchise must have a nice website. The website must have online store so you can buy their stuff, The website MUST have nice pictures of the figures, it must have a responsive Q&A page where reader's questions can be answered within days (if not hours). It SHOULD also have tons of freebies (like painting demo, free scenarios) for downloading.
A Bad Example
One example of what NOT to do in terms of starting a franchise is provided by Old Glory. A few years ago they tried to launch a fantasy line (that's where the money is right?) SO with much fanfare, Dwarf Wars is born.
The rules are designed by industry veteran (Frank Chadwick's miniature rules are always interesting), the figures looks cool (very animated fantasy figures, much better than run of the mill Old GLory sculpts). I saw the figures at Historicon, and they do look cool indeed.
Then I found out that the rules are expensive at ~$40 a pop. Now as franchise rules go that;s not expensive (FoW and WH both have rules in that range), but these do NOT coming with any color pages, have poor layout, badly edited rules with tons of errors and spelling problems even worse than this blog. Only pictures are hand drawn b/w line drawings which seems to be done by high school kids.
They tried all the points I listed above, but just did them in such a half ass way that it looks like the people doing it just lost interest. They have expansions coming out, but they are just expensive books with the same b/w drawings in them. The rules are in the local hobby store, but none of the figures are. They have a Yahoo group for discussion, but there's hardly any traffic. There's no industry buzz in any of the print/web publications. If I didn't attend Historicon that year I'd swear that this is just vaporware.
Folks, if you want to launch a franchise, launch it like you mean it...
Conclusion
So if you are thinking of launching a successful miniature franchise, make sure you have an interesting background, have nice miniatures, interesting set of rules that provides some depth, and make sure you constantly expand the game play by introducing new theaters and nationality/races, and most important of all, make sure you have new stuff coming out frequently that can be found in many local stores. A piece of cake...
Posted by msoong at 09:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 01, 2006
Books on Ancients
I am currently on an Ancient kick, reading books, playing boardgames, painting up miniatures, etc. and even (ahem) thinking about new periods (Note that I am using Ancients in a miniature wargamer sense, and that means anything pre-gunpowder, unlike sane people who refers to the Ancient period to something really... ancient like Rome and before).
Books
The current run started with Adrian Goldsworthy's "In the Name of Rome", which is a survey of great generals throughout Roman history. It is more of a intro book, but for Roman neophytes like me who knows about Scipio, Caesar, Pompee and that's about it, it's got enough new stuff to be informative. Sure there are entries that aren't all that interesting, but then there are facinating figure like Sertorius (a General Kurtz-like character who gone native in Spain, raised a guerrilla army and held off the Romans for years) who I would like to read more about. Mr. Goldsworthy is a rare military historian who can present academic history in highly readble form (he's also rumored to be a Warhammer Historical player), it is not surprising that the book is full of info that would be "wargamer friendly" (troop dispositions, campaign maps, plans of battle, etc. Highly recommended.
For my beach reading during vacation I got "A War Like No Other" by Victor Davis Hanson. This one covers the Peloponnesian War, another area I know hardly anything about. Instead of a straight narrative history, the book only follows in chronological order in broad strokes. Instead each section follows a theme. So there are chapters on irregular warfare, naval warfare, hoplite battle, etc. The material and the way it's presented is very absorbing, although in places his turn of phrase can be awkward. It's surprising how some of the material is relevant to today's events (Athens gets into an intractable war by trying to spread its idea of democracy on the tip of of a hoplon, sounds familiar?) Highly recommended.
Halfway through my vacation I finished all the books I brought so I have to make an emergency run to the local Borders (other books I brought besides "A War Like No Others" are all junk Scifi novels I am too embarrased to list here.. books like Eric Flints' "1632"). I got Tom Holland's "Persian Fire". It's on the rise of Persia and the Persian/Greek War that follows. I just finished the battle of Marathon and still working my way through it. It's a conventional narrative history that's not big on nitty gritty details, but it's an enjoyable read and Holland's writing style flows well with a touch of the poetic. Another 40% to go but so far so good.
Posted by msoong at 03:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 19, 2005
Taking Stock
In case you haven't noticed by now, I am one of those hobbyist with a wide interest, and therefore jump from genre to genre, and from game to game. A pattern seems to be that I'll be in a long running acquisition mode, buying up all kinds of stuff with accompanying grandiose plans to paint/play/assemble/read/write the figures/games/models/books/rules. Pretty soon it goes out of control, and then I proceed to have a minor breakdown, followed by a period of resolution and retrenchment.
Since we moved into our new house in June I've been better in the acquisition part of this equation (since I am on a budget now), I've even sold off stuff I know I won't play anymore (here's the list of stuff sold since:)
- Redoubt 28mm Rorke's Drift Buildings
- Painted Black Tree Zulu War (Brits & Zulus)
- Bunch of ASL stuff on eBay (these are my 2nd set of ASL stuff, the great come back did not stick).
I still have tons of stuff to clear through though, so here's a list of hobby todos for the near future:
1. Mystery Playtest for Arty Conliff: I've signed up to try out Arty's new (yet undisclosed at Arty's request) miniature game. I have enough figures to give it a go so will hopefully get to it on a weeknight (it's quick playing so not a hardship).
2. Empire of the Sun '42-'43 Scenario: Chris and I had a run through with the 1.2 version of the rules. We both had a good time but thought that the Americans had no chance of conquering Japan (meaning that they can only win the game if two specific cards comes out in the correct order). We thought this might be a better game if we just concentrate on the '42-'43 period, which sees the most interesting choices on both sides, and the scenario might be even doable on a weeknight (the full game took us an entire saturday).
3. Fire in the Sky: The other Pacific War design that's looks minimalist and interesting (though the initial word is that it's not doable on a weeknight though). It took me a while to get my p500 copy since I forgot to inform MMP re my address change but I finally got it today).
4. WW2 Miniature gaming: Have to run through a game using Blitzkrieg Commander and Division Commander (or play some scenario using our default set of Flames of War).
5. The Grand Rebase Project: I am fit all my colonials who are currently on pennies to a magnetic base so they won't flop around when they are moved. Probably 25% of the way through. Another 1,000 figures to go....
That's it for now. We can revisit in a few months to see if I am getting closer (or god forbid, if the list have gotten longer...)
Posted by msoong at 03:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2005
Mini Magic Booster Tourney
Having been a Magic addict for about 3 years, I am glad that I got out when I did (I started playing when Arabian Nights is still easy to find, and most stopped after Ice Age). Once in a while though I got hooked on their prebuild theme decks, and look forward to their quarterly release to keep tabs on what the design team is up to.
I am happy to say that this low level engagement of Magic has kept me interested all these times. I play only once in a blue moon so I am not overexposed, and am usually playing against sharks or otherwise friend's kids. This is the kind of financial and time outlay that I can afford...
After obtaining a bunch of trade credit from the local card store, I bought a bunch of booster packs from the latest Kamigawa block. I think this is an especially well designed block with many interesting mechanism.
Our friends and I then decided to have a mini booster tourney with 4 of us (2 practicing MtG player, and two of us ex-players). For those of you not familiar with booster draft, it's a format that's fun and cheap, all you need is 3 packs for each participating player. Every player would open one pack, pick a card from the stack in hand, then pass the stack to the right/left, then repeat. So the drafting metagame is an important element of the game. After that's done, you can then add as many basic land as you want to make a 40 card deck (the rest of the cards are your sideboard), then you are ready for some league play. We opted for a best 2 of 3 match between ea. players to arrive at a winner.
I have never played booster draft back in the day, so am surprise how much fun it is. I am looking for a regularly scheduled mini-tourney to spice up the old gaming life here...
Posted by msoong at 03:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 31, 2005
Buying Spree
I've been on a spending spree lately, and since X-mas have bought the following:
1. 7 Ages
2. 2x Babylon 5 Fleets (Minbari & Centauri) for the Call to Arms miniature game.
3. Bunch of Euros (Camelot Legends)
4. Angel RPG (first RPG product I bought in about 15 years).
5. Preorder of Fire in the Sky (from MMP)
6. Preorder of Devil's Cauldron (from MMP)
7. Friedrich
It's a sickness that's got to stop. Help!
Posted by msoong at 03:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 01, 2004
Thoughts on RPG
Miniature Wargaming: Astounding Tales Test Drive I haven't done any "proper" RPG gaming since college, my interest having moved on to other things. This coming weekend I am putting on a Darkest Afrika multiplayer miniature game which is really kind of a "RPG-lite" game. This rekindled my interest in the current state of RPG, and so I've started a search for a set of rules I can use for my game...
My first discovery is that there's a heck of a lot of RPG system out there that I am not familiar with. Now I've heard of D&D 3.0 (and how it even came out with a point release of 3.5), I have heard of the whole White Wolf studio product line and their unique "play-acting" aspect, then there's the rest...
So I laid out my criteria for an ideal RPG so I can go about searching for a ruleset that matches my style:
1) Rules-lite: I don't want to look up books and tables for some obscure statistics, a simple, clean, and extensible system is a must
2) Story driven: As oppose to mechanics driven. The plot and the story telling should be what important, the rules should not get in the way.
3) Miniature game friendly: Since I am approaching this from a miniature centric pov, the combat subsystem should make for a good miniature game.
4) Short: I no longer have the luxury of devouting an entire weekend to RPG sessions. An encounter that provides a good story and some meaty miniature battle should be able to reach a conclusion in a single evening.
5) Multi-era: I have interest in running Fantasy to High Colonial to Pulp adventure, so the system has to be able to handle all of them.
So the candidates I came up with are:
A) D&D Miniature system: Afterall, I can use the most popular RPG system in the world, and they can convert that into a miniature game even! THis one came close, although I thought D20 system is a bit too heavy weight in terms of process, so the search continued:
B) Savage World: Another low weight miniature system that handles multiple period, and has a pretty interesting mechanism to boot (raises and bennies are cool idea, although not original to SW as far as I can tell). They also have a miniature centric subgame that one can download for free. This one shows promise, and I intend to give it a shot (maybe start out by running a skirmish game)...
C) Lastly, I decided to base my convention game on Howard Whitehouse's Astounding Adventure. Another D6 based low mechanics RPG that's targeting the Pulp genre, but can be easily converted to a colonial setting. The rules are much simpler than SW so I chose it instead.
Will have a writeup of my convention game next week...
Posted by msoong at 04:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 02, 2004
FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH
Who would of guessed it? There's another Flashman novel coming! The next Instalment of the Flashman Papers is coming in April 2005, and this is a preorder for me!
In case you are not familiar with the Flashman novels, it's a series that started all the way back in the 60's by George Macdonald Fraser. It chronicles the adventure of a cad/coward/scoundrel back in the 1800's. He's also a lucky bastard who happened to survive almost every major disaster of the century: Rorke's Drift, Little Big Horn, the Indian Mutiny, Peking (twice), founght on both side of the civil war, etc.
The book is written as Flashy's own memoire, as it was recalled when he's in his twilight years. It's a very funny read, with loads of historical details and background (Mr. Fraser did hid research). One thing for this sanitized day and age though is that it's VERY un-pc, so prepare to be offended if are so inclined (Flashy is both a racist and a sexist).
For those of you wanting to start in the series, I recommend reading them in the order they were published, NOT in the narrative chronological order. The reason is that in the later works Flashy will often recall incidents that occured in previously WRITTEN volume. The first one (titled simply Flashman) is also the best in the series IMO.
Posted by msoong at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 26, 2003
Arts and Crafts night
I find that for people like me that has different interests flaring up all the time, it's good to have regular peer reinforcement to focus our enthusiasm. I know for a fact that everytime we have a new miniature game, our faith is reaffirmed.
We organized a regular weekly gathering on tuesday nights (3 core members, with 2 others that comes when they can) where we do our "arts and crafts": i.e. painting, organizing, basing, doing research on up and coming projects, etc. I find this support group concept useful in focusing the mind so we can get our projects completed. There's nothing like seeing other people's good results in inspiring your own efforts.
Last night the routine went like this: Freddy was painting his khaki hordes (he specializes in WWI), Jeff was basing/terraining his Republican Romans (getting ready to combat my Carthaginians), and I spend the night going through inventory of the painted figures I got back from the painting service (they got all my Napoleonic cannons painted the wrong color, urrr).
Posted by msoong at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2003
Free Time
I frequently hear other people talk about their long vacations or sabbaticals like "I ran out of things to do..." at that time I always look at them thinking "Are you out of your mind?"
I seem to be one of those types that picks up hobbies at the drop of a hat. Old interests might wane temporarily, but all it takes is a good book on the subject, a good movie, an article in the paper, or a good link online, the interest would flare up again.
Everynight I come home at about 7:30 or so, and after dinner I am faced with the agonizing choice of "what do I do now?" Do I read that book(s)? Do I whip out those figures I've been painting, or finish rebasing those other figures? Or maybe I better finish that ACTS game online I've been playing for about 4 months now... You get the picture. No matter what I choose, a little voice would be going off in my head, giving me the idea that I am missing out on something cool.
Now I thought hobbies are suppose to calm us down? Sigh
Posted by msoong at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)
List of current activities
Here's a list of things that's competing for my time
1. messing around with this blog.
2. All my miniatures stuff (I need a separate entry to catelog that)
3. Reading "Gettysberg-A Test of Courage" by Noah Trudeau (a very good book BTW)
4. Getting ready for my TCS Leros game
5. Reading rules to Lock and Load that my buddy Chris says it's a good ASL-lite tactical game
6. Ripping all my CD's stored at work (about 100 or so more disks to go)
7. In search of a set of battalion level Napoleonic boardgame system
8. Re-org my Mandarin's Corner pictures website
9. Re-org my Savage and Soldier website
Posted by msoong at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
List of my current miniatures activity
1. Finish printing/cutting my custom PIQUET deck for the Pathans
2. Finish basing all my Darkest Africa figures (100's more to go, gag...)
3. Finish painting my 28mm Foundry Huns (one unit of 8 figures, the horses are mostly done).
4. Begin basing by 12mm WW2 stuff
5. Finish basing the last of my 15mm Napoleonic so I'll finally have enough figures for a game of Grande Armee rules
6. Get ready to start organizing for my next major project: Rorke's Drift in 25mm (The plan is to run a game at the local con next year: the 125th Anniversary of the battle)
7. Start on some misc terrain items needed for my 15mm Nappy game (same terrain will be used for my 12mm WW2 game).
Posted by msoong at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack