A Tale of VIII Painters - Ray Part 4: Crimson Hunter

Painting vehicles is, I find, a challenging task; getting a consistent finish over large textured surfaces and (since most vehicles benefit from being constructed and painted in sections) ensuring the colours look the same for each part (especially when blending or mixing comes into play) is difficult. As a result, when I end up buying vehicles I try to get them painted in as few sessions as possible.

We will fight them on the beaches!- Flames of War

The Second World War has been done to death in modern media, from video games such as the the excellent Company Of Heroes series that has recently got its second installment, TV series like the equally good Band of Brothers and of course the plentiful supply of movies like Saving Private Ryan. Its easy to say that World War 2 still has a significant place in modern culture. Flames of War draws on this wealth of material to create a game that is enormously simple to play but rewards tactical thinking over all else.

Creating Other Worlds: Affordable wargames terrain

Disclaimer: There are many companies out there making terrain for modelmakers and wargamers. Those I have listed are only some of those available and relate to my own personal experience. The best thing to do is to shop around!

For those of us lucky enough to have the space at home to have our own table suitable for gaming, whether that involves a permanent fixture or something that can be put up and taken down before your partner goes really mad, there is an embarrassment of riches out there to fill the table up with. Resin terrain both painted and unpainted, sculpted battleboards, townscapes, mountains, dense woods and cultivated farmland. There is one great limiting factor though (isn't there always?) and that is of course price.

For those of you who grew up in scouts and watching Blue Peter it might be possible to make it all from scratch. Sculpting magnificent terrain from dense insulation foam, filler and household objects is well within the capabilities of some hobbyists. If that is you then I am in awe of your work but that is not always within the grasp of us mere mortals, who have to look at commercially available options if we want to avoid going back to the days of stacked books under a tablecloth.

Once More into the Breach - Getting Back into Wargaming after 16 Years.

Like McBegbie’s midlife crisis, I could lay the blame, albeit indirectly, at Cyanide’s release of Blood Bowl on the PC, although it actually it started with my housemate and me playing Space Marine on the PS3. It was fun for a while: brought back a few memories, it had the cool looking models, fun online gameplay, the excellent customisation, the paint colours with the real GW names! But it wasn't enough, he went deeper, and these occasional games of Space Marine led to Cyanide and the world of Nuffle, and the beginning of the inevitable.

I watched him play for a while, totally lost in a world of block dice, blitzing and bludweiser babes. All pretty unfathomable to me. Beyond my ken. Easy to resist. But then he asked, innocently, innocently asked, if I had any of my old GW models to spare, just so he could, you know, "look" at them. And I said, "Yeah, sure I do, they're in a box somewhere. I’ll dig them out for you".

Warmachine- arcana and steamworks

Ah Warmachine. Currently my favourite and most played wargame, those familiar with 40K and other Games Workshop systems will be relatively intimidated by the apparent complexity of Warmachine. In this article I will be looking to cut through some of this complexity and go over the basics including a brief introduction to the factions and a brief synopsis of how a game will generally go.

The beauty of Warmachine is its scalability, it is entirely possible to play the game using nothing more than the contents of the £35 faction boxes which generally contain a Warcaster, Warjack and some heavy infantry, typically these games will work out at approximately 15 points, with games typically going up in increments of 15, 20, 35 and 50+ as your model collection grows and the more experienced you get. The small 'battlebox' games will take anything from 30 to 45mins while larger games can take several hours.

By Jingo! An Introduction to 'In Her Majesty's Name' by Osprey.

Many moons ago a collection of Warhammer 40k gamers created their own homebrew set of rules called 'In the Emperor's Name' as a way of creating narrative games in the 40k universe. It was played in a skirmish scale and covered a multitude of troop types including those long abandoned by GW. It allowed for flavourful games and even covered action on abandoned floating space hulks as well as more traditional battlefield settings. The game has garnered a community of players, playtesters and game designers through the 'Forge of War Development Group' and the game, now in its third edition, can be obtained free and legally here: http://iten-game.org/ . Although the game I am looking at in this article has moved far beyond its ITEN origins it is worth mentioning as the hobbyist approach runs right through this new product. 

One of the original authors of ITEN is Craig Cartmell. He was approached by the good people at Osprey Publishing to write a Steampunk skirmish game for their burgeoning range of wargames rules. The outcome of which is 'In Her Majesty's Name' a skirmish game that pits adventuring companies of Victorians armed with suitably outlandish weapons (as well as more familiar period weapons that can still be just as deadly) against each other in a wide range of scenario types and settings. The list of antagonists run from the humble Metropolitan Bobbie (armed with the English electric truncheon!) to re-animated, mummified Egyptian priests, abominable Yetis, fiendish magic users and a certain consulting detective...

Historical Wargaming for the Fantasy Gamer.

Wargaming has a long and illustrious history. From the studies of Prussian Officers to the state rooms of Versaille it can trace its evolution from the period of European empire making where military men, when they weren't killing each other all over the known world, would re-fight famous or hypothetical engagements at their leisure. 

Fantasy and Sci-fi wargaming is the veritable baby of the wargames family, however, it has become a very vocal and influential baby. Since its emergence from the boom of pen and paper RPG's in the 1970's,  fantasy wargaming has swiftly emerged as the most visible of wargame strands, from the high street presence of the big brother of them all, Games Workshop (Stop the family analogies- Ed.) to tie in games of successful movie, TV and computer games franchises such as Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Starship Troopers, Star Wars and others. As such it has become the gateway to wargaming for many impressionable young minds over the last 30 years. And I am no different.

Featherstone: The start of it all for me. 

My Mid Life Crisis - Impressions of a n00b

It's Cyanide's fault really.  Well, perhaps not completely but I think they can take a fair portion of the blame.  Along with the other contributors on this site and my friend Andrew.

During the 80's I was heavily in to the tabletop RPG scene.  AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller and countless others.  Three or four nights a week I'd be involved in some game or another.  I dabbled in some wargaming, Warhammer fantasy, Ancients, Napoleonic and Micro Modern.  As the decade wore on I drifted away and by the early nineties I'd more or less lost interest.

Jump forward to 2009 and Cyanide released their pc version of Bloodbowl.  It sparked my interest, partly thanks to a number of regulars on the Guardian Gamesblog site and awakened memories of some fun evenings in the dim and distant past.  After taking the plunge I began participating in regular leagues.  It was all downhill from there.