The Mayans couldn't help him, Ash will face 40k soon

So the geese are getting fat etc blah blah blah, get over it. Bigger things are afoot tbh. Ash said, i guess hoping the Mayans were right (about the end of the world, not magic numbers, although he may, hope that too.) and that when he stated he would play 40k in the new year, it was an empty promise, well my friend, no erm .......  i'll insert a new word here later, lol. its nearly that time, to dust off yr Nids, if u have any left, or more likely, your nasty Blood Angels  or Grey Knights.

For i foresee a great happening and some $)k 101s happening on or around the 1st of jan  or it will wait  till my boss says i can have "...insert later.." round to play toy soldiers. it will be fun to rediscover the world of 40k  in the new edition as i still have had only 2 games, i cant believe it  but new shiny games have had my eye, so Mr Ash its Bolters and/or claws at dawn

EN GUARD

Beards 2nd take on 40k rulebook, after gaming.

Ok so i now have a copy of the 40k rulebook (thankyou ebay seller for not knowing the value of your item ;-P) its a mini rulebook with most of the errata in it. Ok the fluff is missing, who care i know the fluff , unless they have decided they are going to rewrite history again but i think the Horus Heresy books will see this stupidity off.

I have read rules, page by page making notes. then read again looking at my notes and making adjustments, I then would like to say i asked Ash to go through them, he is very anti 40k atm.to gain his thoughts on bits i was wanting to confirm understanding. it went as follows ...................................................
Me - "I doing a blog about new rule book"
Ash - "so u have new rule book"
Me - "yes"
Ash - frowns / screws face up

Also I have got quite a few games under my belt. So here is my take on 40k and the changes to its rules, how it will effect MY gaming in reference to how i play etc. This will be in 3 parts, this being the first, to follow will be a look at my Chaos Space Marines of the sonic weapon variety, then my Imperial Guard tank list.

THE RULEBOOK AS AN ENTITY

As i said in my first look at the rules etc, its a tidy book as in its laid out very well, no really, honest. if you are looking at a rules & references a 2nd rule, it says (2nd rule, page 32) for ease of finding, OMG finally GW is organised.

MOVEMENT
* Models with HVY WPNS can move & shoot at reduced effectiveness, makes sense, more about that later.

SHOOTING
* Overwatch is back, YEY, at a reduced rate see below.

* Snapshots - in certain senarios you fire less effectively, you hit on 6s
* Wound allocation - on paper it looks broken but i will explain this below.

in old 40k if i hit you 10 times u shared the hits out equally amongst your squad, and then rolled each group of saves, obviously u got rid of "clappers" first (spare models in units that are there just to soak up fire). In new 40k, the nearest model is hit, Now this creates 2 casualty senarios,

i) a sqd with all the armour save the same, if i hit you 10 times , u roll yr saves first, so u save 4 models, leaving 6 dead, new way is the 6 nearest models are removed, or if multi-wounds you remove models taking as many wounds needed on one model till its dead, then move to next model,easy and brilliant.

ii) a sqd with multiple save or characters, this is the worrying thing for me, time will tell, you roll one wound at a time the front model tries to save it, u keep doing this till the front model has failed enough saves to lose all its wounds, sounds simple, but look at this, a character at front of unit, has a 2+ inv save mayb "eternal warrior" or "feel no pain", i hit you 10 times, said character with 4 wounds will suck up all of those hits and leave entire unit unharmed ??!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?, ok your character may lose 1 or 2 wounds, but hello!! SPACE MARINES DONT FIGHT WARS IN CONGA LINES, it just dont happen, i feel it should be case as soon as character / front model. take its first wound it moves on to the 2nd nearest model. now maybe this rule on paper this looks bad, maybe on tabletop its ok. i guess u just flank these conga lines?

*** This will only be a problem if you are low on units towards end of game, or yr opponent takes multiple HQ choices because of 2 forces organisation lists, but I guess more conga lines means smaller army, means, easier to kill,  for now I haven't had a problem with this like I thought I would. But as yet played no full on CHEESE OR BEARDY players yet.

COMBAT

I am unsure still of random charge distance, atm, but combat works well,  including over watch, hitting on 6s as per snapshots.  I like new initiative order, and moving in.  The new way combat wpns, well power wpns are classified, as in different types of perks for sword, axe etc.

So all in I am liking my venture into 40k again, Ash has also made rumours about Tau,  soooooo, let's see what happens I guess.

Star Wars X-Wing!

I picked up Star Wars X-Wing by Fantasy Flight Games earlier. Not had a chance to play it yet but having read through the rules and gone through the contents of the box I am very, very impressed! It's been a while since I last posted, but I've been inspired, so I'm going to a first impressions post do!

The box is actually quite nice - FFG do nice boxes. The outer is a nicely printed cardboard which is thick enough to do it's job, but not the strongest - mine has a pair of rips in it that look like it's been grabbed by the cut-out that allows you to see the three included minis and then mishandled before it was shrink-wrapped. Inside is a vacuum formed plastic tray with three partitions, two to hold the various cards, dice and cardboard tokens and templates that come with the game, with the third partition dedicated to the two-part plastic box containing the miniatures. It's the usual thin, almost flimsy plastic that we all expect, but it's fit for purpose, combined with the cardboard outer I'd have no worries about anything inside getting damaged were I to drop it into my bag before making the epic journey across the road to the cave of the local miniature giant space dwarf we call the Beard.


Anybody that has played any of the Wings of War/Wings of Glory (which I'm told is Wings of War WWII edition after FFG lost the publishing rights, and so will write as though it is) games will be able to pick this up with very little effort - certain core mechanics are very similar but the game as a whole is different enough that the games are not the same. Jason Little, the writer of X-Wing has done a fantastic job of creating an even more streamlined, faster-paced game than those it bares a similarity to, and has at the same time addressed some of my own issues with those games. FFG has a nice set of tutorial videos here that cover pretty much everything about the game. Go watch them. For those that can't or don't want to, I'll go over some of the things I've seen that I like so far.

With the Wings of War/Glory games mentioned above, players can simply use cards instead of miniatures - this is how I have always played it, as it was one of those games that while I was eager to play it, I was also the only person eager to play it, so I couldn't bring myself to sink money into miniatures that wouldn't see much use. Cards are also used for controlling the movement of your aircraft. It provides plenty of flexibility, but I find in some circumstances it can be quite fiddly and awkward - you'll put the maneuver card in place, reposition your aircraft, slide the maneuver template away and either nudge your aircraft as you do, or nudge it as you lift your finger off of it, or somebody else will nudge it. A minor issue, I know, but when everybody is in the same area and overlapping each other during play, cards get jostled, millimetres are lost and gained, angles are changed, and what was a range band one shot on the enemy becomes range band two and out of arc. X-Wing gives you no choice in the matter of minis and comes with them pre-painted and ready to play with. It then does away with maneuver cards and replaces them with simple maneuver dials and templates that fit in between two notches on the forward and rear faces of the miniatures bases - no fiddly arrows to line up! The maneuver dials also mean you aren't shuffling through a deck of cards looking for the right card and can't accidentally set yourself the wrong speed token for the maneuver you want to perform.

With Wings of War/Glory, everybody moves and shoots simultaneously in the respective movement and shooting phases. It does work, and is part of what makes them fun and interesting games, but in X-Wing there is a clearly defined initiative system that I've not seen anywhere else before. Every pilot has an initiative rating, and during the movement phase, each pilot moves in turn, starting from the lowest initiative to the highest, and any situations of two players having matching initiative is simple to solve - Imperial craft have priority over Rebel craft. In the shooting phase the higher a pilots initiative is, the sooner they shoot, which I think will give an overall feel of more experience, higher initiative pilots being able to react to the movements of less experienced, lower initiative pilots and being able to fire upon them first.

Something else that really excites me about this game is the list building, in that it has it. All the various aerial combat games I've seen before either completely ignore the concept, saying play whatever fighter you like against whatever fighter your opponent likes and have fun with it, or they provide scenarios, saying player 1 will use A, B and C while player 2 will use X, Y and Z. The only exceptions to this I've found so far are Forge World's Aeronautica Imperialis and Star Wars X-Wing. A Pilot and his craft have their own points value, and icons on the card representing what upgrades are available to them, such as extra weapons, Astromechs or actual talents applied to the pilot themselves, and these too have their own points cost. Imperials will just about always have a numerical advantage over Rebels, but Rebels will generally have better ships and pilots. There's also character pilots - you can play Luke Skywalker if you want to! This also leads us to my only gripe with the game - and it's not actually with the game itself. With the exception of Darth Vader, there are no Imperial pilots of note like there are for the Rebels, so they've been made up like call-signs, and it's the call-signs chosen I don't like, Mauler Mithel, Dark Curse and Night Beast. They're all a bit dark sounding. All a bit evil. Good and Evil are points of view. We can see the original Star Wars trilogy as the tale of Luke Skywalker leaving home to join the Alliance and fight against the Empire because we see it from the Alliance viewpoint. What if the story was told from the Imperial point of view? Would we have a story about the noble Darth Vader and his mission to save the Empire from the terrorism of the Rebel Alliance? Or to put it in a Wings of War/Glory point of view, do you think Adolf Hitler thought of himself as evil?

X-Wing uses a d8 system, the faces of which are above. The dice-based system allows the player to roll extra dice to their attack or defence rolls based on events in the game, or count certain die faces that would normally be considered a failure as a success. It's more interactive than Wings of War/Glory where if you fired upon the enemy plane, the opposing player simply drew damage tokens from a pile and applied any effect necessary. Damage itself is also simplified, which I like. Upon taking damage, you take a card from the pile and it counts as a simple +1 damage, and if it's a critical hit, you take into account the text on the card, which I think will keep things like mathematics to a minimum and game play fast and fluid.

The only problem with semi-proprietary dice is if you lose them, right? Pretty much. It looks like FFG thought about that ahead of time though. While they sell additional/replacement dice, they also have a smart phone app available for Android and iOS. It features dice for X-Wing, FFG's Star Wars RPG series and also has the option to roll common polyhedral dice too. It's easy to use, very pretty to look at, has nicely themed audio and supports up to twenty dice at a time. It seems to be a little power thirsty, but not terribly so - using the app for around 5 minutes near constantly resulted in around 1% to 2% use of battery. It is a purchased app, but for £3.20 I'm quite pleased with it, especially when you consider that the RRP on a pack of the six dice in the image above is £6.99! I can, already have, and will spend silly amounts of money on dice, and I'm really liking what I've seen of the game so far, but I'm not going to spend £1.16 and a half pence on dice for it when the phone app costs less than half a pack of six and will provide me with all the dice I'll ever need for it - the only thing I can see using twenty dice is a Star Destroyer!

The last thing to talk about is the miniatures. They are nicely detailed, but I'm not sure about the paint job on them. I know that with pre-painted minis the quality is never going to be fantastic, but I look at them and can't help but think they look a bit rushed. The painting around the cockpits and red markings on the X-Wing are well done, but the actual bodywork looks rushed and lacking in effort. I'm no painting expert though, and I'm not used to seeing this sort of thing at this sort of scale either, so I'm going to ask the Beard for his opinion when I get chance, since painting is his area of experience! Maybe I shouldn't complain - this is the only game I have where everything is fully painted!

I've spent much of this post comparing Star Wars X-Wing to Wings of War/Glory, which isn't fair.

Star Wars X-Wing is not Wings of War or Wings of Glory.

Star Wars X-Wing is better!

TODAY I WISH PAINTBRUSHES HADN'T BEEN INVENTED

     So I was painting today some of Mr Ashs British Dystopian Wars Fleet, when he spookily phoned me, wanting to chew the fat to burn time.

     Now what I should of done is put the brush down, knowing that its tempting fate to do two things at once. But guess what, I didn't, because I am stooooopid. So after chat with Ash I carried on painting, Only after 1 hour and 15 minutes, did I look at models, to pat myself on back.

   Only to have a weird sensation nag at me, it was then it twigged the oh so simple camo scheme of green grey green, had become grey green grey, the horror, curse the inability of humans to truly "multi-task".

God knows how long it will take to undo, now its not Ashs fault, at all, but he is still gonna suffer ear ache while I moan about it over the next decade or two.

NOT SURE IF POSTING THIS RANT BLOG

WHY O WHY O WHY ETC ETC

can't rules writers ,when writing a rulebook place everything relevant to each other together. Its bad enough struggling with a new rule set, or a newer version of one you know ,with out looking in 15 places to peice together a paragraph of writing to tell you what to do.

This blog is being written because of not one rulebook but many, its just the Dystopian wars rulebook, is the straw that broke the camels back. Why the rant? You ask. Let me explain.

  I want to know if a flight of tiny flyers; Dive bombers, to be exact. Can split its fire, between to targets. In a well laid out rulebook, this would be easy. But in the Dystopian Wars book ooooooo no, let me talk you through this , to show you why I am raged.

  If you have the rulebook, I will drop page numbers in so you can follow my rantings, I am using the ver1.1, the rules for tiny flyers are on page 48, it talks about them being set up, landing taking off etc. But nothing about how they attack or defend, even though they attack and defend different to other things. Tiny flyers are able to combine attack rather than link, this is on page 62; it states and I quote, "tiny flyer CAN - COMBINE FIRE with ORDANANCE with stands in their wing". This to me says they can , but don't have to, my problem with this is, does this mean if they don't COMBINE they can hit a different target to the others in base contact ?

Next is SPLIT FIRE on page 49, again I quote "ORDANANCE and AUX weapons can SPLIT FIRE to allocate any available attack dice (AD) amongst VALID TARGETS". Now to see what is VALID for a TINY FLYER, we have to look to page 64. Again here I will quote, " a tiny flyer dive bomber wing uses BOMB ORDANANCE.it does NOT use RANGE BANDS, it has a RANGE of 0inch, the wing MUST be in contact with the MODEL, BASE or STAND of the target". Now this is a problem if I have a wing making contact with 2 vessels technically they are both VALID, technically then I can COMBINE and/or SPLIT my ATTACK DICE (AD) between 1 or both of these 2 vessels

OR CAN I, I don't frigging know do you? 

So I return to my first point why is this not all in one section why do I need to search for 30 minutes to piece together a paragraph or sentences that allow me to work out if I can or can't attack something. Worse still because I am having to piece together this its open to interpretation of the reader or readers, see I think I can split fire as you can see by my musing, I concur with my thoughts during the last game I had with ASH. he was unsure either wat and said, err on side of caution till we knew, hence why I tried to suss it out.

So can I or can't I.

The adventures/misadventures of Chezhinka

Where O where to begin, I have decided to go a bit curve ball, ok a lot 'curve ball', with my Russian Confederate fleet carriers. As in I am going for slabs of ice fitted together for runway rather than wood, Crazy huh, lol.

Let me explain in very cold places they clear snow, to smooth ice, so planes can land. The carriers make icebergs. Wooden runways on ships, in real world, need replacing loads. So the carrier can resupply its runway whenever it wants using its generators.
  Ash likes the scheme, but as we like to pull each others pigtails, he called my mighty carrier, SNOWFLAKE. This translated into Russian is..........

Chezhinka

I like it, it's catchy, so I am taking ownership of the insult. It's staying as the carrier's name, Now what to call the other one, hmmmmmmmmm.

Iceberg = Aysberg, not sure

Trial paint scheme for Dystopian Wars, Covenant of the Antarctic

So I said to ash, if I do your CoA black,like you wanted it will be to much like your Dropzone forces. I said as a 'off the cuff' idea, military use camouflage & your guys are surrounded by ICE, it make sense to paint them like icebergs / ice flows or whatever the proper term is. So here goes a trial scheme. The first photo is of my Russian carriers icebergs, they are deliberately over blued, otherwise if I did them realistic they would be WHIIIIITE, so artistic licence was used, my hope is his ships will look similar to this, in photo 1, you can see the carrier's icebergs.

Well as you can see the blue/white is done now, in photos 2 & 3. The guns and engine/moving parts are yet to be done, I'm thinking I will go copper for archimedes' screw. Guns I thinking leave alone on smaller vessels.

The forth photo is of the vessel with metal parts done, only thing left outstanding is the archimedes' screw device.

Beards first look at the new Warhammer 40,000 6th edition rules

EDIT:  IT SEEMS THE PERSON WHO TALKED ME THROUGH IT WAS STILL NEW TO THE RULES

As the title suggested, after delaying the inevitable first game of 40k, it has happened, so here are my thoughts.

First off let's start with the book itself; it looks amazing and for the first time in ages it seems to be put together in the right order, I know, I know, but it does on first glance seem to be the case.

Secondly, let's get to, for me what I think was going to be, the "elephant in the room", the main thing to scare me was the psychic phase. At first glance it appears that there isn't one, but it's carried out during the other phases of the game. Is it over powered? I have no idea, at all. Time will, as they say, tell.

Thirdly, and and this is after only 2 games of it being played, mind you, it seems the "beer and pretzels" tag is GW way to do away with loop holes and streamlining the game. ie, vehicles just have to be behind cover, and not 50% covered, and yes its silly that a "supermodel" can give cover to a "lemon fresh" Russ. But how many times have you or a player kicked off about the precise amount of the%. If - "that's 40.5% so u ain't in cover" or "my tank is 50.1% in cover" sounds like you, well done, you are why Kate Moss gives cover to my Tank, so "tank you". While on the subject of cover, it appears that some/most levels of cover have been reduced by one, on the surface, this appears bad, but, now instead of taking the best of 2 or 3 covers you could use, you add +1 to your base cover save, for every extra piece it goes through. Ie, you hide behind a wall, that's a 5+ cover but another wall is between you and the firers. Old rules would make you choose a 5+ or a 5+, under new rules, you get a 4+ cover save.

EDIT: OK HAVING NOW GOT MY HANDS ON A BOOK THEY MODELS HAVE TO BE 25% COVERED NOT JUST BEHIND IT. SECOND, IT APPEARS THE COVER SAVES DONT STACK,UST THROUGH MY FIRST READ THROUGH OF RULES, I MAY BE BACK TO RE-EDIT THIS.

Forth there will be always rules we hate, like or think are stooooopid, I am the same so I can't moan about peeps who do, I think we all do. It's human nature I think or at least a British one, lol. But the new rules I have seen don't fill me with dread, the one about your main guy getting a super perk is cool, its random, so no cheese festing, the replacement psychic powers are random and there fore maybe not over powered (maybe we will see), wounds taken of front I like, not from clappers at the back. Whether I like the rule of rolling on front person till a wound is taken, I am unsure of, as said it's only 2 games. But, I didn't come across anything rules wise, that made me want to invade a small country. That's gotta be a good thing, right?

EDIT: THE FRONT MAIN ON MULTIPLE SAVES TYPE IS WORRYING ME, A CHARACTER WITH A 2+ BASIC 3+ INV WITH 4 WOUNDS CUD SWALLOW 10 20 30 HITS ON A UNIT THAT WOULD OTHER WISE WIPE OUT A UNIT, HMMM OVER BOARD MUCH I THINK.

So I can only say as my fifth point I am not done with the the new 40k, as I have had said, it's only been 2 games, I think the game deserves a few more play throughs for me to fully absorb it all
Hopefully I haven't bored you with my ramblings, drop a comment. Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts or have something to add,

EDIT: AGAIN PLEASE COMMENT ON MY EDIT MUSINGS, AM I MISSING SOMETHING????

Of Wargaming and Music.

Dropzone Commander unboxing blog has yet to materialise, but until I get that done, I've been thinking about music one can wargame to - the Beard has a CD player in the same room as his gaming table, and the Outpost often had music playing in the background. The Beards CD player had as yet gone unused, but the Outpost often plays discs I assume are brought in by members of staff, who fortunately have a better taste in music than the drivel usually played on local radio stations.

It doesn't really set much of an atmosphere though, so I've been wondering what sort of music would? Would classical music be suitable for the epic naval battles of Dystopian Wars or the titanic clashes of Warmachine? Would the Halo soundtrack add that little extra something to a game of Dropzone Commander? I don't know, but I'm going to find out!

http://www.realmwargames.com/

Our friend Peter has started his own online wargaming shop at http://www.realmwargames.com/. As of this post he only has the Mantic range in stock, but he's going to expand into Magic: the Gathering, Anima Tactics, Dystopian Wars and more very soon!

As much as we've only been blogging a couple of days ourselves and probably don't have any regular readers yet, we wanted to do our bit to help!

Dropzone Commander Get!

Dropzone Commander from Hawk Wargames has just landed at our local gaming shop The Outpost and has literally flown off the shelves in a matter of days, and I am, fortunately, now out of terrible puns! Dropzone Commander is a 10mm science fiction tabletop wargame featuring ground infantry, mechanised armour and futuristic aircraft, which is enough to make it relevant to my interests!

I picked up a rulebook and the Premium United Colonies of Mankind Starter Army. The UCM are similar in design to the USMC of the Halo series of videogames (no seven-foot soldiers in powered armour though) which is why I chose them - I like the idea that even though some of the technology in use on these vehicles does not and may not ever exist, it wouldn't be a great leap of the imagination to believe that the vehicles of the USMC Halo or the UCM of Dropzone Commander is the shape they would take if it did!

The premium packages are a winning touch as far as the Beard and I are concerned. We're already fans of KR Multicase, but to get a case already filled with custom cut foam trays specifically for the package you buy is pure excellence!

During the next week I'm going to put together a post going through the contents of the UCM premium starter set with lots of pictures provided my camera is up for it. That's all I wanted to say really, I'm just not very good at doing short, to the point blogs.

THIS... IS... STUDIO SPARTA!!!

Spartan Games has recently revealed Studio Sparta!

The best way I can see of describing it using as few words as possible is this: If Spartan Games was Games Workshop, Studio Sparta would be Forge World, but without the incredibly expensive prices.

Having had a look on the website, it seems like it may be a selling point for stuff that hasn't made it into one of Spartan Games other systems, but that people may be interested in having - it could even be a testing ground of sorts to see how well stuff sells before it gets put into or sold along side Spartan Games other systems, checking how much interest there is before making it available for retailers to stock.

Fortunately, Spartan Games is not Games Workshop, so prices are good, matching those of Spartan Games own retail products. The most expensive is the Goliath Giant at £30, but it does look to be a huge model, and does come with an alternate pair of arms. They also link back to the Spartan Games website where rules for using the Goliath in games of Uncharted Seas are available. The Invaders look like they could have come straight from War of the Worlds and look like they would go great in Dystopian Wars, so hopefully we'll see some naval and aerial themed models soon - it seems they don't come with any stat cards but I'm sure the Spartan Games forum will quickly create stats for them! Lastly is the Firestorm Armarda inspired Firestorm Invasion, a 10mm mechanised ground warfare game. I don't know anything about Firestorm Armarda other than it's a science fiction based space combat game, but what I do find interesting about Firestorm Invasion is that you can only get the rules by buying a kickstart pack. Given its current popularity, I can't help but wonder if Spartan Games are trying to emulate Kickstarter and just weren't very imaginative with the name!

Spartan Games announces Dystopian Legions!

Spartan Games have announced Dystopian Legions, a 28mm tabletop wargame based on Dystopian Wars!

Since pretty much all my previous wargaming experience has taken place at this sort of scale I'm quite excited about it, especially considering how much I like the Dystopian Wars setting - I like, and consider myself a bit of a Steampunk, so I like stuff like Dystopian Wars and Warmachine, wargames that employ a new take on what these days would be considered a more antique technology.

From what images Spartan Games have teased us with so far and from what I know of the Dystopian Wars rules I've had a few thoughts on what we could get:

Infantry: I can see these working like small and medium squadrons, with models having a single health point, with dice being rolled to overcome an armour value/damage rating to inflict death upon a model, in a similar way to how combat works in Dystopian Wars. Likewise, I imagine models will have the same sort of firing options available to them as models in Dystopian Wars do, such as being able to link fire to take down larger, heavier infantry targets, or being able to use something similar to the indirect fire option to represent firing while hiding in cover and not aiming properly. Likewise I could see cover either increasing the armour rating/damage rating, or making it harder for the opponent to hit, such as going from 4's to 5's perhaps. Squads would have a couple of models that carry more specialist weaponry such as flame throwers and rocket launchers and sniper rifles.

Heavy Infantry: I see these being similar to infantry but tougher, capable of taking multiple hits, and carrying much bigger guns. Things like the Teutonic Knights of the Prussian Empire. I imagine they'd have a firing option equivalent of split fire, allowing them to use their big guns' high rate of fire to attack multiple models.

Tanks: I've not really played Dystopian Wars from a land perspective so can't really draw any comparison to them there, but I imagine they would be like the equivelant of a Dreadnought or a Battleship at sea - big, tough, scary and nasty. Like the Landships perhaps?

Tiny Fliers: Except they wouldn't be so tiny. They'd be fast, strong, and cost a fair chunk of points out of your list. They'd probably also be quite fragile, but would be a real terror to tanks and infantry alike while on the table.

Commanders/Generals: I imagine these would act in a similar manner as a fleet commodore, being able to buff allied squads and such while on the table, while also being able to take part in battle itself as well! When I first saw the image of Oberleutnant Lily Reitsch in the Dystopian Wars 1.1 rulebook, my first thought was that at some point Character Commodores were going to be introduced that would have individual Command Abilities and/or would allow players to use themed lists similar to those found in Warmachine, allowing for new and different fleets to be played by doing things such as increasing the maximum size of a squad or decreasing the points cost of a model, or that some sort of larger-scale wargame was in the works.

Dystopian Legions wont be released until October, but if the prices of things are anywhere near as cheap as what those for Dystopian Wars are, I can see it becoming quite popular rather quickly!

So the table is assembled finally

As stated after much deliberation of how to make the table a fold away, we have a mission complete status.

Originally we were gonna go for a 2 sided board one side green and the other blue, obviously for land and sea.  We were going to achieve this by having 2 panels of 6'x2' and counter sinking the hinges so the 2 panels would make a 6x4' board but fold nicely away, easy I hear you say.

Well very early on we decided, well tbh, I decided sod it, we will use cloth mats. But the idea of counter sinking the hinges never got altered.

Any ways to cut a long boring story down into a short boring one, some idiot went and bought hinges without fully checking they open through basically 360°, (that'll be me. So that when we looked to fix them onto said wood they wouldn't close / open as planned.

This caused much debate on whether to try and alter hinges to work or to buy more. This is promise is very near the end now.
At about 11.30pm tonight, well yesterday now.  I had a "MOMENT OF CLARITY" realising that A) we didn't need to counter sinking hinges and 2) (yes A&2, done deliberately, all you grammar nazi types out there) if we used only 2 hinges separated just far enough apart the dining table would slot between them. Just not having a 3rd in the middle of the panels, creating a ramp effect with a gap in it. Seeing as they are door hinges, there should be enough strength to carry the weight, while its opened up and placed down.

Hoorah table is now sorted, next for me to sort is hills,trees, buildings, rivers and roads etc.

Atm my painting station is more a painting table, on the go i have

i) 2 of my khador jacks, Widows that are all under way
ii) my Russian Dystopian wars naval fleet
iii) Ashs British naval fleet of 1000pts

I have waiting to be under coated my assassin sqd for my khador, Sorcha, and 1 more jack. My FoW Russian horde is never ending be it infantry or tanks, boy do I love tanks,  my 40K imperial guard army has 21 Leman Russes, but I digress, lol. Ash is waiting to chuck me his Antarctic naval fleet, his Khador, Cygnar and Mercs.  It's a gd job I have a hobby room, the other half, bless her, calls it a "dining room" to fit it all in. Will I ever clear my paint station, NO. Will anyone painter ever have an empty station, I DOUBT IT. Notice Ash is said painters not hobbyist, so no need to cherp in with what you think is a clever comment. 

A Post by the Other Guy!

As the Beard so eloquently put it in his introduction post, I am Atomic Ash, and I will also be posting to this blog.  The Beard claims his moniker comes from him having a bushy beard and is not because he's a beardy player. Some people would say that is a lie.

He is right when he says that our opinions do not reflect those of the owners of blogger. We'd probably be a horrible PR team for google to hire!

The games systems I'm playing at the minute are Warmachine, in which I'm playing Khador, Cygnar and Mercenaries, and Dystopian Wars, in which I'm playing the Covenant of Antarctica and Kingdom of Britannia. I do have a some Royal Marines for Flames of War, but the game has yet to really grab me. I enjoy World War II from an aviation perspective, but the infantry side of it does nothing for me. The Beard tends to lean towards any Russian themed faction going, so you can most likely guess who he plays in Warmachine/Dystopian Wars/Flames of War.

I can't paint for toffee (or coconut macaroons, a culinary speciality of the Beard) so I probably won't make many hobby based posts, those will be the responsibility of the Beard. Instead, my posts will lean more towards game mechanics, list building, tactics and battle reports. As for the 'why' of doing a blog in the first place? It gives me something to do on the long night shifts at work. As for the Beard, I suspects he just wants to bombard one of our wargaming friends with spam tweets about it whenever a new post goes up to see how he likes it, I just hope he'll wait while we've got some actual content up!

The first post of WHO ROLLS WINS

this will b the ramblings of 2 table top gamers, me "The Beard" and "Atomic Ash". I would like to point out my nickname comes from my bushy beard,  not coz i am a beardy/beardie!?! player, just so u know the opinions expressed here by us 2, may not be the opinions of the owners of this blog.......
Oops wait Erm
So we both play warmachine, both of us are just starting out with dystopian wars. I myself dabble heavily with FoW, I am trying to get Ash excited about it but hmmmmm.

I am just building my first gaming table, as I have just recently moved into a place big enough to house one. Expect photos of scenery etc to follow. As well as painted stuff from WM and DW. Also expect rants about victories, boasting about losses and all sorts. Some maybe about wargaming who knows lol.