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DBA makes my brain turn inside out. Plus the basing is awful and I wish ancients players weren’t so glued to it. I’m generally a scenario/storytelling orientated gamer, so I always err towards simpler rules that either come with interesting scenarios or that I can easily make my own for without worrying too much that I’m treading on the game’s toes or unbalancing it horribly. I really like Blood Eagle, for example.
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Oct 28, 2022 12:15
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Endman posted:DBA makes my brain turn inside out. Plus the basing is awful and I wish ancients players weren’t so glued to it. DBA is pretty straight forward and I liked playing it. The catch is just that you need a real human person to teach it to you, preferrably through playing it. I can't imagine learning it based on the actual official rulebook.
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Oct 28, 2022 13:05
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DBA is so bad that his own wife wrote a book that was essentially "here's how to play my husband's dumb game" and a French guy said what if I made this game but made it legible? and then everyone loved ADLG.
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Oct 28, 2022 14:06
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Springfield Fatts posted:DBA is so bad that his own wife wrote a book that was essentially "here's how to play my husband's dumb game" and a French guy said what if I made this game but made it legible? and then everyone loved ADLG. Yeah I've dabbled in both and ADLG is a way more legible game.
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Oct 28, 2022 14:22
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DBA made perfect sense to me when I read it first, and then when I tried it out with someone who had played it lots my read of it seemingly worked fine. I think there's definitely a particular style of gamer it was written for though, so I get why people recommend reading the other versions of the rules.
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Oct 28, 2022 17:23
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It's a shame, because TFL/Reisswitz put out some banger games. Chain of Command is hands down my favorite tabletop wargame, but it could absolutely do with a hard-core editing pass. Just the inconsistency in terminology (unit, team, squad, section, etc) can be maddening. Is a Senior Leader all by himself a "unit?" For some rules yes, for some no. That said, when you actually get to playing the game, most of the ambiguity shakes out and it's clear what the intent is.
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Oct 28, 2022 21:40
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Speaking of Ancients, I just painted some of these 15mm 3rd century Roman legionaries from Forged in Battle: I'm really impressed with these sculpts, they've got a lot of character for this scale. I was going to buy more 3rd century figures, but I accidentally tripped over and ordered an army of Gauls and one of Caesarian Romans, and an entire Gallic village, some villagers and some chickens and geese. Whoops!
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Oct 30, 2022 08:39
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 Working on some priests for Saga Age of Vikings and not really sold on these two mounted priests, but I'm not sure what alternate color schemes would look good and be accurate for the period
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Nov 6, 2022 15:13
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For clergy of this period you’re basically looking at drab colours; browns, greys, black, etc. White with a red cowl could work if you want to nod towards their more formal, ceremonial dress. Not sure if they’d wear that to a battlefield though.
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Nov 7, 2022 01:42
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So I recently found out how cute 15mm tanks are, and I wanted to try them out with Flames of War. 1. Is there any mod for Flames of War to play it on a smaller scale - say a few tanks and 1-2 platoons of infantry? My impression of the army creation rules is that it appears to favour larger formations, and even if I play at lower points the small formations will tend to run away? Am I mistaken? I quite like the intermediate simplicity of the FOW rules - not as heavily abstracted as Blitzkrieg Commander and yet does not require looking up tables in stuff like Chain of Command. 2. I want to construct 2 forces as an excuse to paint tanks, and maybe use them as a self-contained set to play against each other if I find a willing Germans Panzer IV Company - 2x Panzer IV HQ - 3x Panzer IV - 3x Panzer IV - 4x StuG III - 2x 8.8cm AA - 3x Tiger III Americans Veteran Sherman Company - 2x M4A1 HQ - 5x M4A1 76mm - 5x M4A1 - 5x M4A1 - 2x M4A1 105mm I'll have a bunch of Panzergrenadiers and Paratroopers from Hit the Beach as well. Would these be balanced against each other?
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Nov 10, 2022 00:03
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Honestly just play at 50 points rather than 100 and only take minimum sized units.
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Nov 10, 2022 00:10
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Endman posted:Honestly just play at 50 points rather than 100 and only take minimum sized units. The other idea I'm considering is Bolt Action with the 15mm figures instead. What's the general opinion on of as a ruleset?
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Nov 10, 2022 00:23
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Z the IVth posted:So I recently found out how cute 15mm tanks are, and I wanted to try them out with Flames of War. I am a relatively new player of FoW, but my perspective is you could, as stated above, just play 50 pt games. The rules for unit and formation last stands affect both players equally and stop games turning into a slogging match of mopping up remnants. Alternatively you could just play games and ignore the formation last stand rules. For the lists, one thing that surprised me is how AT guns are represented. I believe those late model Tigers are literally immune to all the direct fire guns in the american force? I don't know about the 105mm as I haven't seen their stats. But there's a very marked difference between the 'normal' tank guns, eg on Shermans and Panzer IVs, and the really big stuff like 88s, British 17 pdrs, that sort of thing. Normal tank guns are a credible threat to Shermans, Panzers etc but an 88 will just wreck what it hits. And to scratch the front armour of some late war tanks you need that sort of firepower. I mean, a lot of our games so far have been decided by manoeuvre rather than anti-tank firepower but it won't feel very good for the American player if the German plunks down some invincible tanks. I also found the game a lot more interesting with infantry and other unit types running around, with just tanks, so no assaulting etc, it feels a bit simplistic.
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Nov 10, 2022 00:26
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Genghis Cohen posted:I am a relatively new player of FoW, but my perspective is you could, as stated above, just play 50 pt games. The rules for unit and formation last stands affect both players equally and stop games turning into a slogging match of mopping up remnants. Alternatively you could just play games and ignore the formation last stand rules. From my understanding the regular Sherman guns can get through the sides of a Tiger and force a bail from the front if lucky. The Sherman 76s can penetrate the front armour. I figure the Panzer IVs and Stugs are about on par with the Shermans and there's twice as many of them on the field. Only reason I don't fancy doing much infantry is I dread the thought of painting them all. Maybe a platoon a side but that's about the most I can stomach.
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Nov 10, 2022 00:37
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Infantry at 15mm are crazy easy to paint. You are basically just basecoating them the relevant national colour, picking out the details, then hitting the lot with a wash and calling it done. Just don't bother trying to do camo on your nazis and it'll be fine.
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Nov 10, 2022 00:45
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The thing about German super heavies in FoW is that they look scary on paper, but their utility isn’t actually that great when you consider that that 8.8cm super high velocity gun can only fire a maximum of twice a turn and then only if it stays put. That and you’ve paid the same price for it as six T-34/85s or something similar.
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Nov 10, 2022 01:37
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Arquinsiel posted:Infantry at 15mm are crazy easy to paint. You are basically just basecoating them the relevant national colour, picking out the details, then hitting the lot with a wash and calling it done. Just don't bother trying to do camo on your nazis and it'll be fine. How well do contrast/speedpaint type paints work on smaller scales?
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Nov 10, 2022 01:54
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Arquinsiel posted:Infantry at 15mm are crazy easy to paint. And then I crank out some sub 15 platoons in the same time it'd take me to do a fireteam of 28s. Except for horses. gently caress horses. Mine never look right at any scale.
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Nov 10, 2022 02:03
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Pierzak posted:How well do contrast/speedpaint type paints work on smaller scales?
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Nov 10, 2022 02:53
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Z the IVth posted:The other idea I'm considering is Bolt Action with the 15mm figures instead. What's the general opinion on of as a ruleset? It's the perfect game to transition from something like 40k, with many mechanics that'll be familiar and a gimmick turn sequence that sells the whole package. The beauty of historicals is that an army for Bolt Action will mean you can then play any other platoon+ scale game with the exact same models if you want to try other stuff down the road. If you want more details check these guys out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdS4-NRFZwg
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Nov 10, 2022 02:58
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Bolt Action is a very fun rule set but if you do it in 15mm you'll only be able to play with friends. Everyone else uses 28mm. Also it's not really a tank game, it's an infantry game that sometimes includes a tank.
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Nov 10, 2022 03:13
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Class Warcraft posted:Bolt Action is a very fun rule set but if you do it in 15mm you'll only be able to play with friends. Everyone else uses 28mm. Hey now, it's also a tankette game, if like me, you can't help but bring a horde of Italian L3 tankettes  (I think I have six, now)
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Nov 10, 2022 03:22
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If you just want to go pew-pew with up to about five tanks per side, What a Tanker is a beer-and-pretzel option.
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Nov 10, 2022 08:55
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I haven't played much Flames in a while (Not for lack of desire, mind you), but as others have mentioned, smaller games are going to be the best way to learn the system. The rules are mostly straightforward, but there is a decent amount of nuance and it'll be much easier to learn the system when you're dealing with five tanks and not twenty. As for using King Tigers, I would heavily discourage using those in an intro game. Big cats have a number of exploitable downsides (They're huge point sinks, they can be rendered irrelevant with proper positioning and flanking or through the use of smoke), but inexperienced players aren't going to know that—what they will know is that there's a huge brick that can kill them from halfway across the map that can't be killed itself unless you charge in close (And even then, the base M4A1 Shermans are gonna have a tough time getting through the side armor). And if the American player does kill them, then that's half of the German player's list gone right there. If you buy the Hit the Beach box (which you really should if you're starting out, it's a spectacularly good deal), it comes with relatively balanced ~50 point lists for each side—a pair of tank platoons and supporting infantry for the Americans, and a pair of tank platoons and anti-tank guns for the Germans. It's a really good place to start, and is ideal for teaching yourself and any new players the basics of the game and how it works.
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Nov 10, 2022 21:02
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I was wondering why people kept talking about King Tigers and I realised I'd typo-ed Tiger Is into Tiger IIIs (wouldn't that be a Leopard?) I'm going to stick to Tiger Is, even without playing a single game I figured the Tiger IIs would be about as useful ingame as they were in real life. I'm getting Hit the Beach, just wish the Germans were a tank force with some infantry like the US rather than an infantry force with tank support.
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Nov 10, 2022 21:10
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Z the IVth posted:I was wondering why people kept talking about King Tigers and I realised I'd typo-ed Tiger Is into Tiger IIIs (wouldn't that be a Leopard?) The closest thing to a Tiger III that was ever conceived of was the 75 ton vehicle in the Entwicklung series proposal I have 2 Hit the Beach boxes now, plus the very similar previous box Open Fire (same contents, but older and inferior tank sprues), great way to get a lot of little mans for cheap
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Nov 11, 2022 07:24
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Z the IVth posted:The other idea I'm considering is Bolt Action with the 15mm figures instead. What's the general opinion on of as a ruleset? My general idea is that it's better, unless you really want to 1:1 represent all the tanks of a specific model that Germans had on the entire front at the same time, in which case, FoW is better :v Of course, as the others have said, BA isn't really a tank game. Battlegroup is another 15mm game that's closer to FoW in scale and one I enjoy more. You can also go wildcard and try Blitzkrieg Commander. JcDent fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Nov 11, 2022 |
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Nov 11, 2022 07:59
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JcDent posted:My general idea is that it's better, unless you really want to 1:1 represent all the tanks of a specific model that Germans had on the entire front at the same time, in which case, FoW is better :v Bolt Action is a good game, but it's very different from Flames. Flames is a company level tank-focused game, Bolt Action is platoon level and infantry focused. If you want to recreate the end fight from Saving Private Ryan or any given scene from Band of Brothers, Bolt Action is a great game to do that with, but it struggles if you want to do anything bigger. It's like Company of Heroes versus, say, Steel Division — both are good games, both are WWII Real-Time strategy, but they are geared towards very different experiences. Going back to this post, though: Z the IVth posted:So I recently found out how cute 15mm tanks are, and I wanted to try them out with Flames of War. I looked a little more closely at these lists and they really aren't balanced against each other at all. Assuming you're using lists from the German and American D-Day books, the German list falls somewhere in the realm of 108 points, while the American list ends up at only 88 points. On top of that, the American list is going to struggle mightily against the Germans since everything in the German list can kill an American tank, and from further away than the Americans can shoot back from, but only the 76mm Shermans can realistically harm the Tigers, and the 105 Shermans aren't going to be able to do much with only a 2 gun bombardment. The way these lists are set up, it's a gunfight, and the Germans have more and better shots. My recommendation instead would be to try and create more balanced, combined arms forces. Use the infantry you have, get a box of artillery for both sides (Either field artillery or SPGs depending on your preference), maybe some light tanks, and go from there. There's an official listbuilder on the Flames site you can play around with as well (Though unfortunately you have to pay for it), and there's a few lists on Battlescribe as well.
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Nov 11, 2022 15:30
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Bolt Action is a good game, but it's very different from Flames. Flames is a company level tank-focused game, Bolt Action is platoon level and infantry focused. If you want to recreate the end fight from Saving Private Ryan or any given scene from Band of Brothers, Bolt Action is a great game to do that with, but it struggles if you want to do anything bigger. It's like Company of Heroes versus, say, Steel Division — both are good games, both are WWII Real-Time strategy, but they are geared towards very different experiences. Oh, I know that BA and FoW are of different... levels? That's what I described as the other scale. Funny enough, Battlegroup claims it can do platoon to battalion or something, which seems a little unlikely considering it's a game that tracks squad composition (sarge, rifle team, mg team)...
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Nov 11, 2022 15:47
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JcDent posted:Funny enough, Battlegroup claims it can do platoon to battalion or something, which seems a little unlikely considering it's a game that tracks squad composition (sarge, rifle team, mg team)... It CAN, it just makes for a long, dense game. A platoon game is good for a couple of hours, a battalion level game is a good way to spend a weekend. But it IS a very good game nonetheless. I highly recommend it.
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Nov 11, 2022 16:20
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I definitely want to try out Battlegroup at some point, it sounds right up my alley.
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Nov 12, 2022 05:58
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Is there a good source for 15mm decals in the UK? There's a decent selection for the Germans but Allied stars are non-existent and the average Sherman is supposed to have like 6 of them? I am so tempted to use my 40k decals on them.
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Nov 13, 2022 21:40
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I really enjoyed 6mm models on 15mm basing for chain of command- I only played a couple of games but it was really fun and so cheap! I can imagine that coc at true 15mm would be just as good.
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Nov 13, 2022 23:26
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Just finished Millennium Con today in Austin Texas. Any of y'all in the region, I highly recommend it. Austerlitz using Quelle Affaire  I'm a sucker for big Napoleonic tables. I sat in the wrong chair and wound up as French division commander Lannes, for which I apologize. We were ordered to take the hill between two roads in front of us. Infantry and artillery advanced straight forward in formation on the center and left flank, with the right taking the cavalry and swinging wide. The Russians, Bagration commanding, built a classic tiered defense on the hill covering it with cannons surrounded by infantry, with Cossacks and more infantry in reserve. The Russian cav ran in a large sweeping arm, looking for a lucky breakthrough vs the French cav. I think turn 3 was when we finally saw the effects of fire, artillery barrages placing fatigue and morale losses on the French center infantry. Turn 4 was when our right flank collapsed, getting trounced by the Russian cav, while the infantry went mostly ignored. Turn 5 was when both of those situations worsened, Russian cav breaking ours, running straight through and well behind our lines, which themselves now had a gap large enough our cannons could fire clear through as the Russian infantry kicked the living poo poo out our lines. Turn 6, we ran out of time, but it was agreed the French were about to get charged by heavy cav in the back while eating grapeshot in the front. I prefer the command system from Et Sans Resultat, but the combat resolution was infinitely better in Quelle Affaire. Much fun was had, despite the loss. Clash of Ironclads using A Game of Admirals  Slightly ahistorical ACW riverine game of ironclads. I took the CSS Patrick Henry and Tennessee, sailing up the James river to shell some union depots. I had fun with this game, but I've got more complaints than compliments. But they're all easily fixed and improved and I'd play it again next year and I expect the guy running it to fix most if not all and more of them by next year. There, caveat delivered, let the thrashing commence. T Y P O S, E V E R Y W H E R E. The presentation of information was frankly bad, with a mix of dumb typos and insidious typos all over the ship sheets and references. There were numbers with no explanation attached, constant flipping of pages to cross reference stuff, an order of operations to firing that seemed backwards, unclear modifiers, unclear classifications of ships and weapons. We could have fit 50% more turns in with clearer sheets, easily. The scenario was also immediately obviously a problem, and the guy running it realized this while setting up (after running back to find the dice and pencils he forgot to bring). The Confederate ships were slower than the Union ships by a good margin, sailing against a strong current. This meant we were moving at a snails pace towards our target. Meanwhile, the Union was barreling down river crossing a third of the map (and literally 4 times as many hexes as I did) in one turn. Our ships were so slow, we couldn't afford to waste speed on things like turning or maneuvering when we needed that for just getting up the river. Which combined with our weaker guns and rams to mean the most effective solution we had to the monstrous monitors the union had was virtually impossible to pull off. There was also some confusion regarding how movement resolution worked, but it disappeared into the other noise of the game. Again, fun, but needs to get its poo poo together. So I can play again next con. Cold War Gone Hot in '75, using Fistful of Tows 3  15mm mostly-tank battle, Britain vs the USSR over a German countryside. Smarting from my loss to the Russians at Austerlitz earlier that day, I wanted another crack at them. Heavily houseruled and simplified FFT3, with extremely homogeneous sides. There were a lot of changes to artillery and terrain to make them more simulation and less game-like, and it had the intended effect. It was a slaughter from turn 1. British started off having their asses handed to them, and the Russians never lost momentum, though they lost a few tanks. It was a simple overrun objective, and they did. There were so many tanks, and so little cover or concealment that it was basically a shooting gallery at front armor, and we were outnumbered 3-to-1 after the opening volley. Artillery being changed to not scatter also meant it pretty much guaranteed our infantry carriers were stuck sealed up and waiting ducks. I can't say I had that much fun with this one, and neither did my partner. We conceded before the 2 hour mark, with I think 6 tanks on the table and easily 20+ headed towards us. I feel like I still don't understand the game all that well after having played it, so I'm reserving judgment on FFT3, and writing this one off as a scenario that just wasn't as much fun as it was intended to be. It felt like an excuse to chuck dice, fill a table with tanks, and swap stories. But there wasn't much game to it, no interesting decisions to make. Perhaps an expectation mismatch. Battle of Phillora, IndoPak War 65' using Seven Days to the River Rhine  Another microarmor game, 100% 3D printed, and another heavily houseruled game with tons of tanks and little else. Just like the previous FFT3 game, it started out one sided and just got more lopsided as it went. Our Indian tanks had tabled the Pakistani forces by the 4th turn. Interestingly, the guy that ran that very same previous FFT3 game was across the table from me commanding the last holdout of Pakistani tanks. Again, the rules were so stripped down and units so homogenized that the game went by incredibly fast and I couldn't come to a clear a feeling about the ruleset. I won, massively, but it wasn't a very interesting victory. And then I had this huge gap in my schedule because this game was over in 90 minutes in a 210 minute slot. We drove forward. We rolled dice. There were more of us. The End. Played a bunch more games, but they were SF.
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Nov 14, 2022 00:36
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Slyphic posted:batreps These are rad, sounds like some good gaming. I have a question that there might not be a clear answer to. I'm playing a lot of SAGA Age of Vikings, and I'm thinking of making a Carolingian/Capetian army. No one really makes specific dark age foot/cavalry for this (which sort of makes sense, there wasn't a ton of difference afaik). If I were to get something, say, from victrix, which would serve me better for foot/cavalry? On one hand, Saxon ranges are what is oft recommended, but something like Normans seems closer since it's in Normandy and I'm pretty sure Capetians were based out of Paris? That said, kite shields don't seem overly Carolingian, but that might just be artist interpretation. Failing this, is there something that if you saw on a miniature, would just scream Frankish/Carolingian/Capetian to you? Something like kiteshields/conical helmets for Normans, or shirtless dudes in furs for Vikings but for Carolingians/Capetians. Thanks!
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Nov 14, 2022 02:56
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Despite the allure, I don't really think I've succeeded much at all with historical wargaming at all! My various efforts are chronicled in this thread, but to summarise: the only games I've managed were in 6mm - DBA Romans/Celts and 6mm Chain of Command based up as 15mm. In the intervening years I've attempted to restart my teenage affection for sci-fi but it's just not working - I keep coming back to the fantastic narratives of the ECW, Napoleonic War, WW1, etc. - so I bought the Warlord 10mm box, but with hundreds of identical miniatures I just found it completely overwhelming, and I failed pretty hardcore. I think no matter how good the deal is, my motivation is sapped easily when I've got a huge box of unpainted miniatures. I've seen some interesting 3mm with the Oddzial Osmy napoleonics and I'm curious but I think realistically I'm going to go with Bacchus or Commission Figures in 6mm and my gut is to go with the 60mm x 30mm bases they supply - but I only have a 900mm table width, is that going to be a problem? I've got nobody to play against and probably won't, so matching an existing basing pattern isn't crucial. And so, to that end it would make sense to try to limit how much lead I'm stocking up - but I'm not sure how to reconcile getting the smallest usable forces out of my initial foray, though: it seems that most Nappy games suggest four bases per battalion, which I'm fairly happy with as a rule visually - but it seems like in accepting that I'm immediately setting myself up for two huge armies. Lasalle's introductory scenario of Esel suggests a French force of 8 battalions of line infantry, 3 artillery and 2 hussars - which is 52 bases before we even talk about the other army! Here's some Saga tax for you for reading, thank you: 
Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Nov 14, 2022 |
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Nov 14, 2022 18:12
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I briefly poked around Milleniumcon on Friday and did some shopping. Managed to snag hard copies of Chain of Command and O Group, as well as some rivers and 15mm mdf stuff from the warlord booth. Definitely gonna make a real game plan for next year, I only heard about this year's from one of the local game shops about a week and a half ago.
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Nov 14, 2022 18:53
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SpaceViking posted:I briefly poked around Milleniumcon on Friday and did some shopping. Managed to snag hard copies of Chain of Command and O Group, as well as some rivers and 15mm mdf stuff from the warlord booth. Definitely gonna make a real game plan for next year, I only heard about this year's from one of the local game shops about a week and a half ago. It's only my second year, but it's easily my favorite gaming convention I've attended. Just the right size. It's not hard to schedule two and a half days full of games of a huge variety. At least as long you just want to play games. I've been to cons with more vendor areas, with panels and presentations, with lots of dioramas to gawk at and short demo games from vendors, and that's just not MCon. The Sunday flea market is also really special, I had to make two trips to my car with all the cool stuff I found.
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Nov 14, 2022 20:41
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Placentaur posted:These are rad, sounds like some good gaming. Gripping Beast makes a line in metals     So it does seem kinda Saxon. From a quick Google it looks like the unique pseudo-conquistador helmets are iconic but a little dubious, I think they're represented in contemporary art but it's unclear if they were actually used? They don't seem to have the iconic coif/helmet the Normans used, kite shields can be easily swapped out  Early Franks also have a distinctive haircut, these guys are basically just barely on the other side of Age of Invasions StashAugustine fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Nov 14, 2022 |
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Nov 14, 2022 21:27
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Those last dudes have a weirdly loose grip on their weapons 
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Nov 14, 2022 21:45
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