Plenty of time to game but not enough to Post

 Things have been sufficiently 'full on' that I haven't quite been able to keep up with everything. Army progress has been slow and blogging even more so - but I've kept up the fun bit! I'm in this hobby for the gaming, I like things to look good but 'how it all works' (rather than how it appears) has always been what engaged my attention.

To the left is one from a fair while back. this is Lionel's (Dad of 'Josh', who has been playing at the Cavs for a while) new 600pt Brits on their first outing.

Now I've been watching the long drawn out (even though often 600pt!) games of flames going on around me for weeks at the Cavs. However, I feel a good game is a short game so rather than doing the war of attrition around the one obj that seems to be typical - I smashed my Grens up into Lionel's infantry and saw off both platoons over a few turns. Interlocked defenses, Lionel!

 In addition to the ongoing BFG Starwars campaign, Jason was also dead keen to make up some proper Starwars ships using a points-calculator and some house rules. So to the right you see two very souped up Star Destroyers, with an actual Interdictor Star-Destroyer (range 45cm, no disengages!) and some powered up multi-hp Nebulon Bs. It was awesome, the Mon Cal Cruiser got nailed early on and then couldn't jump into Hyperspace because of the Interdictor. Meanwhile, the two meanest assault Frigates ever poured insane quanities of short-range fire into the two Star Destroyers but Bracing saved me.

 And here are the new stats. See that? Massive shooting to the front of the ISDs and they cost a heap to pay for it all.

The Rebel fighters were all extra tough, but waves of TIEs from the ISDs managed to cope (just). I think he did a good job with the balancing. I managed to smash my way through only because I got the good timing. The ISDs hit first and then got a second round of locked-on shooting to nail the Mon Cal ship and then got to brace vs the Rebel Assault Frigates that hit following that.

Jason had his revenge the following week though. He is using my LW Grenadiers to defend in a Cauldron vs my LW Strelkovy. I had four SU-100s (from the Pdf) just for laughs. They are awesome by the way. Here you see my army looking good before several turns of off-board (our house rule to balance Cauldron for the defender) Panzerwefers combine with fire from the Grenadiers to break the initial attack. I had more following up but just ran out of time in the end. I recommend Grenadiers as a starting army for anyone getting into FOW and they did well here.
Then it went from bad to worse for me! After staging a strategic withdrawal vs John in our BFG Starwars campaign, I was up against Chris and his Vagaari (Space Marines). Luckily for me, this was just a Raid, since it occurred at my key world of Csilla. And to the left you see the Imperial Navy reserves: Republic Dreadnought and two Venators, running like scared children from the Vagaari onslaught. We were playing boarding torpedoes wrong, but still. So that capped off a pretty poor turn for me. The only saving grace is that I was up against superior points so didn't slip in Renown. Here is where the campaign sits so far.



To cheer us all up, here is some LOTR: Not just one game but two games of SBG at the Cavs last week.














Some of those armies look pretty large guys, what say you try some WOTR? Speaking of Which.









Here Ray shows a potential recruit the ropes using his Easterlings. The new guys gets to use Elves and the after-game discussion suggests to me that perhaps this was not the best advertisement for the play-balance of WOTR, d'oh! The game looked cool though and I like the look of that Elven force. Were I better organised, I would almost borrow and learn to use it before Tempest, I think the proposed guidelines help Elves just enough, though the House rules are better still for them.

Here Martin takes someone on using the Grey clad legions (on left of pic on left) of Kings of War. I gave this a try last year, when it was in Beta, and actually quite liked it. There is no doubt that it is far superior as a balanced and tactical game than WHFB. However, unfortunately for KOW, I then gave Impetvs a try and that game is better still! What they have here looks pretty cool though. In a different world, with more money and free time, I'd probably build a Fantasy army for KOW.

However, it is more 'modest' projects for me. 28mm maybe where the future is headed, and I really think it is, but 6mm Sci Fi has been on my 'to play' list for ages. Here is the Vanguard of my new Epic Armageddon Atriedes vs Jason's Orks last Monday. The Ornithopters were pretty cool and I could get to like this game - a bit worrying vs the huge hordes of my enemies at the start but the Space Marines seem to hang around pretty well and even the fragile Ornithopters managed to 'not die' despite my aggressive handling of them and Jason's aggressive attempts to stamp my meager forces out. We ran out of time on that one but I can see the potential - opponent's units do break and then can be picked off and there is a certain fun in the (potentially futile, though the Fedaykin were gathering...) exercise of big Gargant hunting. 
I just shudder when I see the likes of the Imperial Guard list in this game though, the Leman Russ based armies are just mean.

Hopefully I can get in some more WOTR (and so a proper batrep) in the near future and have been furiously assembling the rest of my Romans so I can field two armies worth to show Keith H the ropes at Impetvs on Sunday. Competition from 28mm  Lassalle is stiff but the more 28mm historicals, the better, in my book.  Thanks for reading.