FOW Gaming

Managed to get in a game of FOW last night. Darren brought over his Russian force (based on the lists in the new Za Stalina army book so it had a lot of tanks) and we had a 1500 point game as a training match for the upcoming FOW tournament in February.

What an utter bloodbath. We managed to forget a few rules. Natural since its been a while since either of us had played but we still managed to have a good time. Darren took a few pictures with his new digital and once he sends them I'll post them but here are some I snapped for his first assault against my German infantry.





I was unable to do a lot of damage to him while he approached with his wall of infantry, mostly due to bad placement on my part and also the row of hedges on the opposite side of the road, and he was able to get in an assault. I actually did nine hits on him with Defensive fire but that was still one shy of pinning him. I managed to do that twice in the evening :-)

Here is a longer shot of the table. The roads are the RVT plastic roads from JR Miniatures. You can't see it in the picture but his T-34s are hiding from a Tiger I had popped into some cover. And it was a good thing they were hiding since the Tiger eventually took out most of the platoon.



What ultimately saved me was his inability to do anything to my tanks. His T-34s couldn't scratch the Tiger and my StuGs dealt with his T-70s and SU-122s.

I won the game by making his fail a Company Morale check but I really think that it was a draw based on the huge casualties I took.

Painting

So I am currently finishing up some FOW German transports for my AT and Infantry gun sections. Pictures will be posted once I get the transports based. We've been playing a bit fast and loose with the rules and allowing people to set up on board without transports but since we have a tourney coming up I want to make sure that my force is strictly legal. After that I am going to paint a section of 88s and then probably put away the FOW figs for a while as its been a bit difficult to get any games locally.

The 6mm Warmaster Ancients army progresses. I recently finished three units of Hasatii and have two units of Heavy Cavalry on the table. My aim is to get a 1500 point force painted and based (as soon as Canada Post finishes dicking around with all my parcels and delivers that damned things...including my Litko bases) and then play a few games to get a better idea of what additional units I want to paint to expand the army to 2000 points.

And then there are the Tyranids. I have a Battleforce on hold and will be picking that up on Friday. Given my luck that is when the horde of GHQ and CnC micro armour will arrive :-)

Mind you...

My small mini-rant about pricing aside I have still picked up a *lot* of GW figs in the last while.

I have a mass of WFB Dwarf figures on my table ready to paint. That may take a while to produce though as I am going to start a 40K version of the Army Builder campaign that our local WFB gamers recently participated in. The starting level is 400 points (enough to play 40K in 40 minutes) and I will be playing Tyranids. Not only because the models are just freaking amazing (and more "portable" to other systems that other 40K figs) but also because they don't have any vehicles.

I was considering putting together a Marine force that was reliant on small vehicles like Land Speeders and the odd Razorback but Tyranids won me over.

So there is an excessive amount of painting on the horizon.

Now I would like to have purchased those figs online and saved myself some cash but I can't bring myself to do it. My FLGS does a lot of work supporting local gamers including having game space that is often the only gaming areas available to some people so it seems a rather shitty thing to then purchase a few hundred bucks worth of figs from some company in Ontario that doesn't do anything to support local gaming.

GW Canadian prices

When is GW going to stop gouging Canadian consumers?

The current exchange rate that is used to determine Canadian prices is seriously out of whack.

Examples

Black Templars Chaplain Grimaldus And Retinue
US Price: $30
Canadian Price: $40
Converted US Price: $35 Cdn
Difference: 114%

White Dwarf
US Price: $6
Canadian Price: $10
Converted US Price: $7 Cdn
Difference: 142%

Warhammer Boxed game
US Price: $80
Canadian Price: $110
Converted US Price: $93 Cdn
Difference: 118%

Warhammer 40K rulebook
US Price: $50
Canadian Price: $70
Converted US Price: $58 Cdn
Difference: 120%

In general Canadians are paying a 15-20% premium simply for the benefit of purchasing GW merchandise. And who suffers in all of this? Mostly local retailers. Any savvy GW gamer will know that online merchants give a discount but especially savvy gamers will know that discounted US prices mean even bigger savings. A discounted US price can mean a difference of anywhere from 35% - 40% percent off the Canadian list price.

ACTA ship cards coming

The ACTA ship cards are still in the works. Due to some work obligations I don't have as much free time as previously planned. And I can't justify not working if I'm in front of the computer :-)

John is also having some added work obligations so I also am still waiting on the data for the cards.

Once I get to work I will be producing the Earth Alliance cards first and then perhaps one of the League fleets.

6mm painting

Recently a few of the local Warmaster gamers decided to take the plunge into 6mm Ancients using Baccus figs and the Warmaster Ancients rulebook. A few of us have been talking about doing Ancients for a few years but one of the main problems has been rules. To be blunt most of them have really looked to be of poor quality (productionwise) and its really quite disheartening to be asked to spend $25+ on a rulebook that looks like it was printed off as a pre-school art project.

Since we're all familiar with Warmaster the WMA rules were a bit of a no-brainer.

What is turning out to be quite refreshing is the speed at which the Ancients figs are getting painted. I'm not unfamiliar with smaller scales. I've painted at least five Epic armies (one Chaos, three Marines and one Ork) for myself and am planning another (Black Templars) but the figs from Baccus are a breeze to paint (even to a high standard) and its no problem to knock off two units of troops in four hours. Even though my Republican Roman army has 13 units at 1000 points I am looking forward to being able to field a fully painted force before February.

Certainly nothing I am going to be able to do with the Dwarves I am getting :-)

Awash in figs

Or I will soon be.

I recently purchased an immense amount of 1/285th scale Micro Armour from GHQ and CnC. Both Russian and German troops. I also have some bases on order from Litko. Both for the Micro Armour as well as the 6mm Warmaster Ancients army I am painting (pictures coming soon).

Then there is the Warhammer Dwarf army I am picking up on Sunday and the Vampire Counts army I am buying hopefully next week.

Did I mention the Babylon 5 figures? ;-)

FOW Germans

So some quick photos of the entirety of my painted FOW German force.

Currently there are

2 Infantry Companies
1 Mortar section
1 HMG section
Command section
Infantry Gun section
1 AT gun sections
1 Tiger
3 StuGs
2 StuIg33B
4 Pz IIIs
3 Stukas (which are plastic models)

Main FOW troops finished

So I have finally finished the core 1500 points of my German Flames of War army.

I managed to get my mortar section finished this week and its on the painting table waiting for the glue to dry (from flocking) so I can matte coat them.

I'll try to get some pictures posted as soon as I can of the entire force. I actually have more than 1500 points painted but I was concentrating, lately, on getting a solid base of troops done before I went off and did things like recon troops and more tanks.