WarHed!

One of my goals over my deployment is during my downtime to work on my sculpting a bit.  I’m starting small, I purchased some of Reapers sculpting dollies:

http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/Accessories/latest

I chose something that might match up with my post apoc minis.  Recently I’ve been playing this game called Bulletstorm on my PS3.  It’s got ok game play but the story line is fun and the scenery is fantastic.  I decided to attempt to sculpt a couple of characters from the game first, starting with the main character Greyson Hunt:

Anyway, here’s where I am so far:

It’s not much to look at.  My primary goal is basically just to do, to completion, my first real sculpt.  It won’t be pretty but it will get me moving in the right direction and ultimately, completing it will motivate me to do another and another and so on.  I’m doing this model in layers since the digital sculpt also appears in layers.  There’s the basic first layer, pants, shirt, boots and so on.  Over that goes protective armor and clothing.  finally, he’s wearing a distinctive backpack of some sort that I’ll add.  Once the torso is done, or close to done, I’ll reposition the arms so he’ll be holding his weapon, basically in a similar pose to the action figure above.

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hey all, looking for some help in identifying some minis I own in my apocolyptic line:

I’m primarily trying to identify what manufacturers so any help would be appreciated!

Played some uncharted Seas again this sunday, had a good time.  Iron Dwarves Against Orcs as usual (being the only two fleets we have currently!).  Laid a couple of islands out diagonally to keep things interesting and as it turned out, it was!  I didn’t take notes but took some pictures and can provide some highlights.  This was also the “first edition” of the rules, don’t have the second edition yet.  There’s apparently some concern over the way the orcs play in this edition, while they do toss out a lot of shots from the prow I’ve yet to see a battle that wasn’t close.  Regardless, we’ll move to the new rules soon as we get them!

(Sorry for the blurriness, still working on my picture taking.)

Above would be about Turn 2 or so.  He’s forming up lines between two of the islands, smart on his part.  My initial plan was to make like I was going to drive all my capital ships up the center, then duck the battleship around the left side, hopefully using the island until I could swing around and catch his battleship in RB1 or 2.  Unfortunately the beginning wind roll was only one point away from being against me and he amanged to play a change wind card right away forcing me to mostly move at high speed and limiting my ability to get around.  You can see frigates on the left side, one of my squadrons managed to go up against two of his for a few turns, doing some serious damage.

A shot of the dwarven battleline.  He had it setup nicely and was picking apart my cruisers one at a time as I came around the island.  I also manage to use this tactic against him, but with less success!

A shot of my cruisers and battleship trying desperately to get around the intervening island and get at some dwarves.  Moving half speed was literally killing me lol.  In a very unorky like manner I spent most of this battle not ramming but engaging at range.

At this point it’s actually looking good for the Orcs.  I’ve managed to get most of his frigates by ramming and combined fire from my own frigates and I’ve managed to kill two of his frigates for the loss of one of mine.  Problem was he mostly had a full broadside on me the entire time I moved around that damned island while I had to spend most of my precious movement trying to get into position for some prow shots.

A shot of the frigate battle. We exchanged a lot of shots here but my ramming and boarding is what really took its toll, as it should be.

Still looking good for the Orcs but sluggish movement around the island is allowing him to pick me apart slowly but surely.  Eventually he manages to destroy both my cruisers while and severely damaging my battleship while retaining his battleship and a cruiser, both only slightly damaged (thanks to some well timed repair cards).

The final few turns saw my lone battleship facing off against his battleship and a cruiser.  The wind had finally turned my direction but too late for me to utilize it to full effectiveness.  I played an elite gunners card to put the hurt on his battleship, missing the chance to put two critical hits on it by only a couple of hits!  he followed up by lighting my battleship on fire with hot shot and repairing most of the damage done to his battleship.  I fixed the fire first oppurtunity with a lucky roll and managed to close in for the kill, ramming his cruiser.  By that time I was down to something like 2 hull left, and 9 crew, plus I was missing some port side guns.  As it should be I took out his cruiser with boarding but he managed to swing his battleship around for a point blank shot, I believe rolling enough hits to get two critical hits with the first one being enough to destroy my ship!

All in all a good game.  fighting the wind the whole time sucked that’s fo sho.  his ability to keep me mostly in his broadsides was withering and for whatever reason, though I went through quite a few cards I only managed to pull a single wind change card, too late to provide much real use.

We’re learning alot about the game, for me it’s mostly about the elegance and timing of the activations.  The order of activation is definitely key and I believe this game really showed it as my opponent put it to good use.

Next weekend we’re going to try Dystopian Wars!

So a week or two ago I ordered my first Dystopian Wars fleet.  I’d decided on Brittania and Prussia as my first two fleets and purchased Brittania.  I ordered from the Warstore.  They didn’t have the actual fleet deal but I ordered all the ships in the fleet deal plus the card deck and rules set.  When I can’t get something locally I alwasy go to the Warstore first.  Neil’s a freindly and approachable owner who offers great discounts.  I also tend to get my orders really quick, even here in Alaska.  I believe I ordered on friday, got an email saying my order had shipped saturday and recieved my order the following thursday.  The Rule book was packed in a plastic bag, and everything else came in it’s own plastic packaging surrounding lovingly by packing peanuts.

Of course I ripped everything out of the box asap!  Here’s what I recieved:

Not pictured is the cards in their packaging.  They come in a rigid plastic pack similar to the ships.

Looking at the ships you can see there’s an incredible amount of detail.  That’s the thing I love about resin, everything is crisp.  The ships themselves have a lot of detail and I’ll get to that in more detail in an upcoming “unpacking/cleaning” post.  Here are some shots of the fleet in their packs:

Ships from Spartan games are generally well packed.  There doesn’t seem to be any parts missing or broken, always a plus with resin.

I’ll get to the models in more detail later.  The big surprise was the rule book!  You can tell Spartan is learning as they go developing their rules.  Uncharted Seas was solidly put together and I’m betting their second edition rulebook is probably even better.  The quality of this rulebook is fantastic.  The cover is thick and glossy, and the inside is full color also semi glossy.  The colors are rich and there’s more art than in the US book I own.

The first 12 pages is background.  I was hoping for a little more but there’s enough to keep it interesting, and the art in this section is fantastic:

There’s a shot of an individual in uniform for each faction, plus a few more pictures.  I like the overall feel, and concept work done on this game.  The overall feel is consistant and whimsical.

The following 64 pages involve the rules in some aspect or another.  The lions share of this section involves the basic rules, such as movement, firing, ramming and so on.  Lots of colorful diagrams for examples of play:

This section also includes little tidbits of art, both drawn/painted and model shots.  The rules also includes sections on aircraft, Generators (an aspect of the game I was unfamiliar with until I got the rules.  Basically these are victorian scifi contraptions that can be both offensive or defensive.), MARs – Model Assigned Rules, these are basically specific rules given to models to give them flavor.  Finally Optional rules are included to give some flavor such as energy vortexes, and fortresses to spice up games.

Finally the last few pages includes a section on each fleet with stats for vehicles.  This section has some preview CGI art for some of the upcoming units.

One thing I hadn’t realized was included in Dystopian wars was a ground finding aspect.  I first discovered this while flipping through the book to get an overview for myself when I saw the Blazing Suns faction Heavy Walker!  There are a few shots of landships and tank models that are pretty cool and I think overall it adds some depth to the game.

My first impressions are that Dystopian Wars is slightly more complex than Uncharted Seas.  A Necessity considering it includes sea, air and land units.  The basic mechanics are the same as US though there is some more depth to most of them, again necessary for the higher level of technology involved.  As I haven’t read the rules thouroughly yet I can’t provide more detail but will do so in a later post.

Overall I’m pleased with my pruchase.  The models are crisp and finally detailed and the overall production of the rulebook and cards are excellent.  Unfortunately with my pending deployment I probably won’t get to play the game for close to a year.  It’ll give me time to collect my fleets, get them painted and hopefully get some terrain made so when I get back I can hit the ground running!

I’ll close with some shots of the cards for Dystopian Wars.  They’re slightly different than my Uncharted Seas Cards, squared off corners and other small details, but overall the quality is equal to or better than the US cards:

Hey all, this is a long time coming.  Uncharted Seas has been out a few years now, plus Spartan Games has managed to release two more games based on the same basic system.

Regardless, after spending this past Sunday introducing the game to some friends I thought I’d post a review and overview of the game.

First, I’d like to say that Uncharted Seas was one of those pearls I’m glad I came across and took the chance on buying into.  I’m a gamers gamer.  I say that because I’ll play anything lol and I constantly juggle gaming projects with no end in site to most of the.  I play a lot of games, and this one would go in my top ten, possibly my top 5 most fun games to play.

It’s relatively cheap to buy into.  Starter fleets run about 50$ and include a battleship, 3 cruisers and 6 frigates and I believe the fleet deck for that race.  The rulebook itself is 25$.  Single ships or squadrons run between 5$ and 20$ with most running around 10$.  The rulebook is A4 size, glossy full color pages with a small section for background, a section for rules and a section for each of the original fleets.

My Orc Fleet:

My Dwarf Fleet:

The ships themselves are mostly resin with some odd bits of metal.  The casting quality is solid though as with most resin products you may occasionally have to fix some small bits that break off.  My Orc fleet has some pointy bits that snapped off here and there but it doesn’t actually affect the overall look of the fleet lol.  My dwarves had little to no bubbles and no broken bits.  Below is an example, the spine circled in red was snapped off when I recieved my fleet deal.  (I could have fixed it easily enough but figure it gives the ship some character!):

The game itself is simple and easy to learn.  Competitive players should be warned, while Spartan has released some rules to provide more strict guidelines for competitive play, the game itself isn’t really designed as a “tourney” game per se and is described by Spartan as more of a “beer and pretzels” game.  You can run competitive events and some do, but it’s not really what the game is about.

Movement is in inches, and some fleets are affected by the direction of the wind, which can change due to magic cards or by the roll of a die in the beginning of each turn.  Ships use various sized arcs for turning, typically based on the size of the ship, smaller ships use smaller arcs.

Combat is easy.  Ships have firing arcs for each broadside, sometimes these can be combined, as in the case of Orc Capital ships, while some ships have turrets not limited to one or two arcs, like dwarf frigates. 

Each broadside is a number the player rolls in D6, depending on what range band the target is in, with farther range bands using less dice.  When dice are rolled, generally 4+ hits while 6’s count as two hits, plus you get to reroll to see if you can cascade more hits.  The one “odd” mechanic is that while you may score a lot of “hits” you may only do 1 pt of damage!  Each ship has a DR or Damage Rating, and a Critical Rating or CR.  Hits equal to the DR of the ship causes a single point of damage.  Hits exceeding the CR of the ship (typically higher than the DR) cause critical hits.  If you roll enough hits to exceed the CR of a ship more than once (for example, a target has a CR of 6 and I roll 12 hits) than you cause more critical hits.  Critical hits typically cause a couple of points of damage and may have special effects that may or may not be able to be repaired later in the game.  Ships in a squadron can combine broadsides against targets or the player can elect to fire each ships broadsides separately.

Ships can Ram and perform boarding actions.  In a ram, the ramming ship risks causing damage to itself, you roll the ramming ships Ram rating while the target ship rolls its Hull rating.  This means you might want to consider carefully ramming that Hull 8 Battleship with a frigate!  Boarding actions are simple, each ship involved in the boarding action rolls its crew rating and applies hits to your opponents ship’s crew.  Multiple ships can combine their crew to make boarding attacks.  Boarding actions can be by far the bloodiest of combats in Uncharted Seas!

Finally, each race has a deck of cards that players cycle through as they play the game.  Some cards are generic to all fleets and decks while each fleet deck has cards that cater to the feel and play style of each fleet.

This of course is just a small overview of the game, there’s more to it but in general the mechanics are consistent and I’m confident I can, and have, taught players to play the game in about 5-10 minutes.  Games generally take about an hour to an hour and a half to play.  The mechanics allow for some crazy stuff to happen on occasion.  For example, in the last battle I fought, a squadron of Dwarf frigates managed to win a game the dwarves appeared to be losing.  They fought almost by themselves against a slightly damaged battleship and some Orc frigates!

So got together with a like minded gamer who likes “small press” games.  In this case I introduced him to Uncharted Seas!  Hadn’t played in about a year and forgot how enjoyable a game it is.  I managed to snap a few pictures with my new camera but didn’t have a memory card so couldn’t get as much as I wanted.

The Dwarven Fleet arrayed for battle!:The Orc Fleet arrayed Likewise:

Scenes of Battle:

Pictures arent’ the best, I’m still learning to use the new camera. 

The first game went well, took about an hour and a half using the fleet deal sets.  The second game went much more smoothly.  First turn saw me blasting his battleship and a cruiser to bits, making the game lopsided.  As this game sometimes go, he managed to pull a surprising victory in the end when my badly damaged battleship was slowly picked apart by a squadron of three frigates!  The last three turns I’d though for sure that I had the game inthe bag but a couple of low rolls on my part, and some cascading 6′s on his saw a lonely dwarf frigate finishing off a battleship and a croc frigate winning him the game!

That in my opinion is the sign of a game designed to be fun to play.  Uncharted Seas often seas some funny results.  Could be frustrating for the more competitive types but for those looking for a fun game, this is one of those systems that accomplishes that mission.

With my deployment coming up soon I’m in sort of a holding pattern on projects.  I’ve decided to skip the big game projects for now, 40K, Warmachine and so on and work on some small things here and there.

As part of the hobby I love the modelling and painting aspects as much as the gaming aspect.  the problem most often is I always seem to be catching up on bigger projects – I hate to game with unpainted models.  I do it, but I try not to when possible.  This adds pressure to get projects like big game armies done.  I’m starting to get to the point where I have an army painted for the big systems I play and I can take some time to paint some other stuff.

I’ve decided to work on some Reaper and hasslefree miniatures for a bit.  I’ve chosen a couple of models for various reasons.  The first is this Reaper model:

I’ve had it for a while and decided now was the time to paint it.  I chose this one because it shows a lot of flesh, and that’s something I really need to work on.  Right now I’m studying to models on Cool Mini Or Not’s gallery and trying to decide what tones I want to go with.

I’m also working on a basing concept.  She’ll be standing on two hands that are rising from the earth and holding her up.  Here’s a pic of the wip of the first hand:

Not much to look at at the moment but I should basically be done with it tomorrow.

The second mini I’m working on is a Hasslefree miniature.  It’s part of a larger but still small project for a post apocolypse game.  I haven’t settled on rules yet so suggestion would be appreciated!

This mini has a lot of potential:

It’s a great mini!  I’ve made some modifications to the tribarrelled weapon.  The original was just three smooth barrels sticking out of the end.  I decided to add a little texture by adding a ring around them, plus drilling them out and adding some thinner wire at the ends of the barrels.  I may decide to loose the ring, and go with some drilled out holes along the length of the barrel, haven’t decided yet.

The base it’s on currently isn’t the base I’m going with, I’ll be going with a round base, about 40mm but I need to purchase on in a day or two.

As for paint, I’ll be doing the muscle-like areas in a deep red, and I may use a gloss coat on them once the whole thing has been base coated with flat overcoat.  Most of it will be a metal color and there will be several spots incliding the neck collar where a green glow will eminate from the armor.

WIP pictures for both miniatures to come over the next few days as I begin work!

Sneak peak of the Retributions Arcantrix Force Generator here: http://privateerpress.com/community/privateer-insider

Overall, I’m much more impressed with this than the Khador Gun Carriage.  It looks like it’s going to support a Retribution Army well, and doesn’t appear to have any abilities that will force you to play too aggressively with it.

My hope is that the other Engines for Warmachines and Hordes will look more like this.  Since Khador is my favorite Faction I’m a little dissapointed since the Gun Carriage is a pretty cool looking model but atleast my second faction will be getting a model I’ll be more apt to use!