19 May 2015

The Judge is in the House

Whaooo….my birthday present to myself turned up today. The starter box for Judge Dredd. I was nicely surprised to see that it actually came in a nice large box, I had thought it was just the advertising image. So thumbs up for the box,it will make a nice transport for the models and it also has a nice tray to hold the rule book.

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The book and starter pamphlet is on the top compartment, with the models in boxes below. Add some foam to the base and the transport box will be sweet..

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The rule book is a nice, well bound hard back. With some nice artwork and lots of cool inspiration for painting models. There are lots of shots of painted figures in the book, but you cant go past the comics for real inspiration

The actual models are the usual standard from Warlord, nice one piece models, all metal so no crazy building and gluing on arms etc. They will also be great for some other games.

I think my Bolt Action Russians may end up taking a back seat for awhile.

17 May 2015

From ancients to fantasy future

Jeepers, its been awhile since I did a blog post. You know, the usual life getting in the way along with other hobbies.

Last Saturday it was the South Auckland gaming club day. Another round of Hail Caesar and my Greeks hitting the table again. This time around I was up against Bryan with his Egyptian’s in the desert. (those Greeks of mine sure get around)

This time around I changed my army list about with having acquired a few more models….. none of which have seen paint. My enthusiasm for painting has evaporated at the moment.

So the battle line up was pretty simple, with my light troops around the flanks and the heavy hitters in the middle. Bryan’s chariots were always going to be hard to catch if he was going to play the hit and run game, so I blasted across the battlefield as fast as I could. Well, that was my intention, what actually happened is half my army did that and the other half decided to dribble their way forward like a pack of mindless zombies.

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The battle began on the left flank with the light skirmishers exchanging blows and my guys retreating back, which bought the heavy foot and Chariots together. Alas, my dice were very average and Bryans were not. So my hoplites took casualties and retreated causing a bit of chaos among my other units on that flank. I managed to hold them in place,  just long enough for the other half of my army to finally wake from there slumber and advance across the field. I ended up getting in a sneaky flank change on the chariots that had been tied up on the left flank. With that the chariots fell as my last unit on that flank went into the shaken status. So with four units all shaken in the same division, I had one chance to rally them or lose the game. …. Box cars … Rallied and the game continued.

After a couple more battles I culled a few more units from the Egyptian ranks and we then ran long on the time so called the game at a draw.  Great game, where the dice were average on both sides. Looking forward to more Hail Caesar later on in the year.

As there was only 7 of us at the club I played just the one game in the morning and took the afternoon to go shopping for more toys…. yep, I made it to 5 months into the year before buying into a new game…… what can I say, I’m an addict who is surrounded by other addicts. End result is an insane amount of games and miniatures.

So with some closet Judge Dredd fans in at the club, a discussion about the game started and then quickly progressed onto who was going to get which faction. So I’ve gone for the Judges and the starter box.

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The other fronts, good news is that the people that have taken over the hall where the club meet, seem to be fine with us still using the hall. (Long may that continue)

With my painting completely stopped last month, I thought a change from Greeks would be good. So I’ve started on my Bolt Action Russians, which I’ve had in the cupboard since about the middle of last year. Back to building models has been rather enjoyable. I’m already about half way through assembling all the troops and ended up spending some time today painting some of them.

I had also order in a Russian B-4 203mm Howitzer as a bit of a birthday present to myself. I saw it in the Wargames Soldier and Strategies magazine a few weeks back and thought it would be a nice model for the game and something a bit different.

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From http://www.heer46shop.de/ , the delivery was fast, with just over a week, and they gave me a bonus with throwing in the “Offizier Winter” model, which is perfect for my Russian Lieutenant. Both models have tones of detail and I know I’m gonna have fun painting them.