Meeples & Miniatures Podcast – The Other Partizan 2009

Download ‘The Other Partizan 2009 ‘Episode

This show is a bonus episode of the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast, recorded at ‘The Other Partizan’ wargames show 2009.

It includes interviews with Scarab Miniatures, Hasslefree Miniatures, Musketeer Miniatures, Gripping Beast, Empress Miniatures, West Wind Productions and Baccus Miniatures.

I hope you enjoy the show!

The Other Partizan

I had a good day out at ‘The Other Partizan’ yesterday – a pretty decent show, although it did seem somewhat down on numbers this year…or perhaps this was just my impression.

The display games were dominated by 28mm – and though I completely failed to take any pictures, you can find some nice pictures of the games that were there on Shadowkings Blog.

I did, however, remember to get my portable recorder out, and so managed to grab several interviews with traders that were there. I’ll be editing these together this week, so look out for a Meeples & Miniatures ‘The Other Partizan’ Special episode towards the end of the week.

Thanks to everyone who chatted and said “Hi” – it was especially nice to meet Mike (regular commenter on this blog) and Mark…a new podcast listener who cornered me for a while to chat about C&C Ancients, Fantasy games and Zombies!

Going to ‘The Other Partizan’?

It’s that time of the year again…

The Other Partizan show is on this Sunday (6th September) at Kelham Hall, just outside Newark. This is a really good show, and one that I always try to get to.

I will be there, so look out for me lumbering around in my Meeples & Miniatures polo shirt and come and say ‘Hello’ if you spot me.

I will be trying to record several interviews at the show (always a challenge, given the acoustics) – hopefully I will get a special ‘news’ show out following this event.

See you there…

SOA Battle Day 2010 – An alternative approach

As The Other Partizan draws closer, and the time for putting in my order for my 6mm Republican Romans approaches, I have a sudden urge for a reality check (maybe the continued daily victory of not pre-ordering the new Space Hulk is having other effects…)

You see, the trouble is that, as always, my annual painting output is far exceeded by my ambition. This year I have painted a couple of Uncharted Seas fleets and 3/4 of a Command Horizon army -  yet I have bought in addition to this a 28mm WW1 German Army, a 1/600th Scale British Cold War battlegroup and over 100 aircraft for a Battle of Britain game – all these lie patiently in they boxes and jiffy bags, awaiting to see the light of day.

And I haven’t even mentioned the 3 other 6mm armies that are still awaiting painting (amongst the many other items of unpainted lead).

Adding 2 more 6mm armies to this is just ridiculous isn’t it?

However, all may not be lost, as I have just been sent the new Battleground Historical Warfare game from Your Move Games to review.  This is the historical version of YMG’s fantastic Battleground Fantasy Warfare game, which has the interesting distinction of being an element based miniature wargame, which doesn’t use miniatures.

BGHW follows the same path – each unit consists of a card containing a top-down piece of artwork, and is completed by a set of unit stats, an order box and a health track. They are designed to be used in conjunction with a dry-wipe pen which records various information straight on the card.

The initial rule set has gone through several ‘tweaks’ as new units have been introduced in the fantasy game, and now this latest historical version really does look very impressive.

And of course, what makes it more relevant to this thread is the fact that this new release covers the Second Punic War, so all the units that I require for the SOA Battle Day are in the game – what is more, the game even includes a ready made scenario for Zama (and it’s huge…the ’standard’ game of BGHW is for armies of about 2000 points. The epic Zama scenario is 7000+ points a side)

So, does this game suddenly provide me with a get-out-of-jail plan for my over ambitious dreams?

Maybe – though I think I shall have to drop Richard Lockwood a line to check if he would be happy with it.

Meeples & Miniatures – Episode 52

Download Episode 52

Can you believe the summer is almost at an end? Everyone is planning for ‘going back to school’, England are preparing to finally lose the Ashes series – and I finally get to go away on holiday!

However, as a parting summer gift, I’ve uploaded Episode 52 of the Meeples & Miniatures podcast. This is a look back at what I’ve been doing over the summer – the UK Games Expo and Manorcon mainly – but with a bit of extra chat about my favourite Gen Con highlights (I almost felt like I was there) and even some chat about a computer game that would make a great miniatures game.

I hope you enjoy the show, and look out for lots of new content coming in September.

Show Details

00:00 – Intro

03:15 – Podcast news

13:55 – The UK Games Expo…a look back at the 2009 event

39:25 – X-Com: UFO Defence

49:55 – Manorcon 2009

61:20 – Shiny new stuff from Gen Con…and Space Hulk!

71:00 – Closing Comments

SOA Battle Day 2010 – The Roman Forces

So, time to think about how many figures I need for this game of Zama for next year.

This may seem strange, but since I’m recently new to massed battle games (being a skirmish game junkie) I’ve never actually put an army together before based on the historical forces – it’s all a but of a new experience.

First things first – basing conventions.

I’m using the Impetus rules, plus 6mm figures (Baccus) and so I will be using the ’standard’ Polemos 60mm x 30mm basing, which seems to work well for Impetus.

In order to differentiate troop types, I’ve come up with the following convention when it comes to the amount of troops that I put on a base:

• FP (Heavy Infantry) – 4 ranks (usually 12 strips of 6mm figures – 48 troops)
• FL (Mediuym/Light Infantry) – 3 Ranks (Usually 9 strips of 6mm figures – 36 troops)
• S (Skirmishers) – Randomly placed troops on the base  (Usually 12 troops)
• CM (Medium Cavalry) – 1 Rank, 9 figures in line.
• CL (Light Cavalry) – Randomly placed, 6 figures.

But what does a base represent in Impetus? Well, according to the rules…

• Heavy Infantry – 1 base = 600 – 1200 men
• Light Infantry or Medium/Heavy Cavalry – 1 base = 400 – 800 men
• Skirmishers or Light Cavalry – 1 base = 200 – 300 men

So, now that’s sorted out my basing convention and approximate figure ratios, how many figures do I actually need?

Making life easy for myself, I’ll start with the Romans.

According to most sources, the Romans had approximately 24,000 infantry at Zama, plus 1,500 Cavalry. They were complemented by an allied force of 10,000 Numidians (6,000 Infantry and 4,000 Cavalry)

Taking the Roman contingent – according to the Impetus army list, a Republican Roman legion consists of 1 unit each of Velites, Hastati, Princeps and Triarii, or 3 x FP + 1 x S = approx.  3,900 men…except that wasn’t a Republican legion supposed to number about 5,000?

A (very) rough piece of arthimetic means that, allowing for a little margin of error, the Roman Infantry contingent consists of 6 Impetus ‘Legions’.

However, this doesn’t take into account the fact that Triarii units were smaller that the Princeps & Hastati, so maybe I should up the count to 7 ‘Legions’ instead? And for that matter, were all the Roman troops in legions, or did they have accompanying Italian allies, for example? Just how many Legions were with Scipio at Zama?

I’m not sure, and I think I should remember throughout this project to ‘keep it simple’.

So, 6 legions of Roman infantry it is.

The Cavalry, by comparison, is relatively easy. 1,500 Italian Cavalry can be represented by 3 units of Medium Cavalry (1 base = 500 men)

Now, Baccuas do not produce seperate figures for Hastati or Princeps, so they can be bought together.

• 6 Units of Triarii = 6 x 48 = 288 figures (72 strips)
• 12 Units of Hastati/Princeps = 12 x 48 =  576 figures (144 strips)
• 6 Units of Velites = 6 x 12 = 72 figures (18 strips)
• 3 Units of Cavalry = 3 x 9 = 27 Figures (9 strips)

Onto the Numidian allies. Whilst the Cavalry don’t really cause an issue (though there are going to be a lot of them!) the only Numidian infantry in the Impetus army list are Skirmishers. However, I can’t believe that the Numidians fielded an army of 6,000 skirmishers, so I’m going to take some licence and treat 2/3 of this allied contigent as Light Infantry (FL) with the rest as Skirmishers.

This means that the Numidian Infantry can be represented 9 bases of Infantry – 6 Light Infanty and 3 Skirmishers.

As I said, the cavalry are much more straight forward. Assuming that Light Cavalry use a base size of 1 base = 250 men, this gives us 16 bases of Cavalry – certainly a rather large horde for one flank!

So, my Numidian allied contigent:

• 6 Units of Light Infanty -6 x 27 = 162 figures (54 strips)
• 3 Units of Skirmishers – 3 x 12 = 36 figures (9 strips)
• 16 units of Light Cavalry – 16 x 6 = 96 figures (32 strips)

So, that gives us a grand total of 52 bases for the Roman army, 33 of Infantry and 19 of Cavalry, with a total of 1134 Infantry figures and 123 Cavalry.

That’s quite a few, and I haven’t even started on the Cartheginians yet!

Manorcon XXVII – Best and worst

So now that Manorcon has ended, what were my own highs and lows?

Well, my favourite games of the weekend both revolve around Feudal Japan, which is one of my favourite periods of history to game in. Both Senji and Shogun were great fun to play, but are very different games.

Shogun is very much a traditional area control game, and is a classic game of strategy and resource management. I haven’t played it for quite some time, but it still remains my all time favourite game.

Senji on the other hand, although including aspects of area control and resource management is actually primarily a game about diplomacy. Politics and Diplomacy went hand-in-hand with military conquest in Feudal Japan, so it’s great to have two games with the overall theme, but approach the subject from two completely different angles.

The worst – well, sorry to say that it has to be Tulipmaina 1637. Nice bits and board (though horrid paper money) but game play that I found to be somewhat dry and, for want of a better word, slightly boring. Painted on theme for a stock game – not impressed (sorry).

My greatest disappointment was not playing either Brass, Automobile or Perikles during the weekend. I wanted to play all three – and they all stayed firmly in the box (despite me seeing several games of both Brass and Automobile taking place during the weekend…I always just missed getting involved.) I have become a firm fan of Martin Wallace games in recent months, but many of the more involved ones definitely need a 3 hour window to play – something we don’t get that often at Scimitar.

Manorcon is a great place simply to meet up with fellow gamers. I think it’s a credit to the hobby that you can meet new people and have a great time playing games without ever seeing them before – a boardgame is always a great place for a social gathering, and I hope to keep in touch with the people I met this weekend.

If you’re in the East Midlands in the third weekend of July next year, why not schedule a day or two at Manorcon next year – I can assure you that you will not regret it.

Manorcon XXVII – Day 3

After two days of fairly intensive gaming, Sunday was a little more laid back – though we did manage to get several good games in.

We started off with a couple of game so of Dominion, just to get ourselves back into the swing of things (the game had worked it’s magic on the subconcious overnight and everyone now seemed to like it!)

Time for a new game (at least to me), so we decided to have a quick game of Moto GP. This game has some interesting pieces, and it comes with plastic motorbike pieces that actually lean over! Having said that, it’s basically a roll-and-move race game with several bells and whistles. OK for a quick blast.

Then a game I’d been looking forward to for ages. Before the con we had promised ourselves to have a game of Shogun – which is probably my all time favourite game. It was great to have time to spend to really think about what we were doing, rather than having to rush through turns. As a result, the game lasted almost 3 1/2 hours (including lunch) but was full of incident and the result (a win for me!) was in the balance and decided pretty much on the final two combats of the game. Awesome stuff, and I really hope we can get this out more often.

Following that marathon, everyone decided that they needed to give their brain a rest and get another Dominion fix.

Now the time was past 5pm, and people were starting to think about how long we had left in playing time. Dave had about 90 minutes, so we plumbed for a quick game of El Grande. I’ve only played this once before, but I was soon reminded of how much I liked it. A great, light area control game with enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Several years old now, but still well worth a look if you have never played it.

Finally, with only a couple of hours of playing time left, I got another Martin Wallace game out on the table. It’s exactly a year since I last played Tinners’ Trail, and now that we’ve played it again I have remembered just how good a game this is. Simple, elegant mechanics with a great look and theme…and lots of wooden bits. Fantastic game to end the ‘Con with.

And that was that. 35 hours of gaming, 23 games played (16 different). I can’t think of too many better ways to spend the weekend.

Looking forward to Manorcon XXVIII already.

Manorcon XXVII – Day 2

Day 2 of Manorcon was a 15 hour gaming marathon…

It all started gently enough – another play of 2-player Race for the Galaxy whilst I was waiting for the rest of the Scimitar lads to turn up for the day. I was well beaten, but I’ve now remembered why I like this game so much.

Dave, Bob, Jere & Martin arrived and we continued our mild start to the day with a quick game of Bunte Runde. Now, this is a kids game, and the abundance of large coloured shapes on the board did invite some comment from those around us, but mention of Mr Kinizia sent those doubters away with a knowing look…a fun little game with a twist in scoring that makes it interesting.

After that it was time for something with a little more meat, and since I hadn’t played it before I suggested Small World. I’ve not played Vinci, so I cannot compare this game to that, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. A light, fun area control wargame with some depth and very nice production. Not sure if it’s worth being as high as it is on BGG as it is very light, but I’d happily play it again.

Time for a new game, and several of us were keen to play Senji – a game I’ve owned for a while but not managed to get out onto the table. This is quite a different game in some ways, and it took a while for us to get into the game mechanics – but the game wonderfully depicts the political and military double dealing of feudal Japan and I really enjoyed it. However, we did have a discussion at the end of the game about whether or not the game suffered some problems due to ‘run away leader’ issues and the fact that the end areas of the island won the game by a long way. Opinion was mixed, but I think that the discussion raised some of the subtleties of the game strategy, plus a flaw in our game as no-one used the option of putting to sea to attack people – were were all very land focused. I think a second play of the game will see a totally different playing experience and I must admit I am really looking forward to it.

Next up was Cosmic Encounter, which despite the fact that it’s been around for a while, I have never played. Mind you, by the time that the game was half way through I’d come to realise that I hadn’t missed much. I know many people like this game, but it really isn’t for me I’m afraid – still, you never know until you play these games…

You may be shocked to discover that there are several people in our gaming club that have yet to play Dominion, so I taught the guys the game at this point. Some differing opinions surrounded the game (not helped by Markus from JKLM heckling from beside me “Multi-player solitare!“) but this may be more popular than I first thought. Most people seemed to think that it was somewhat over-priced though.

Whilst most of the guys then disappeared off to play Age of Conan (a real game of endurance – 4 hours!) Dave & I decided to see if we could actually finish a game of Waterloo. This we duly did, and even completed the game in under 3 hours – though that was mainly because I (playing the French) got distracted by the arrival of the Prussians and lost several valuable units for no victory point gain (I gain no VPs for killing Prussians). This is still a great game, and I want to play this again soon – juts to avenge my loss, if nothing else!

I was keen to play several of my Martin Wallace games throughout the weekend – strange that the first one I did play was a 2 player game…

Since Age of Conan was still on-going, I thought I’d teach Dave Sumeria – unfortunately he didn’t like it, so we ended up finishing the day off with another game of Dominion.

9 different games in a day…wow. Very enjoyable, but my brain was starting to hurt, so decided to adjourn until Sunday.

Manorcon XXVII – Day 1

Well, Manorcon has started, and I attended Day 1 (Friday) for the first time – sliding myself gently into the convention with a mere 8 hours of gaming on the first day.

It was funny actually – looking around as I arrived it was funny just how many people were playing their first game…it was almost without fail either Dominion or Race For The Galaxy.

I started my convention off with a barnd new game – Tulipmania 1637, by Scott Nicholsen (he of Boardgames with Scott fame). This game was hot off the presses, and I got to play with Markus from JKLM games.

It is a stock trading game, with a theme of Tulip trading. To be honest, although tulips feature fairly heavily in the artwork and pieces, the theme is actually somewhat pasted on, as the game is all about trading stock – the commodity isn’t really important.

I wasn’t overly impressed by this game – I’m not sure if it was because the mechanics didn’t ‘click’, or the fact that I didn’t find the game mechanics and/or theme compelling enough to pull me in, but it didn’t do anything for me.

The second game was Stone Age. Now this is one of my favourite games of recent times, despite the fact that I haven’t been able to play it very often. We had a 4 player game, and it soon became apparent that I was in trouble, as I was playing with 3 veterans. Not surprisingly, I came last (though actually joint last) as my late charge on scoring cards did not make up for my lack of points scored during the game – however, this wasn’t helped by me making some fairly fundamental mistakes early in the game as I tried to remember how to play!

Next up, I finally got to get Sumeria to the table. As I’ve already said, this was my favourite game from the UK Games Expo, and it was great to finally play it again. It’s as good as I remember – loads of strategy with almost perfect information…and it still makes your head hurt! My only reservation at the moment is that the mechanic for determining the start player of each round does seem to favour whoever won that round – but that could be easily ‘fixed’ with a house rule if needed…more plays required first though.

Then, inevitably, I managed to get a game of Race for the Galaxy – another game which I really like, but have rarely got to play over recent months. A two player game, complete with both expansions (though we didn’t play the new takeover rules). Amazingly I won this one (not my usual RftG result) – but what was immediately apparent was how some of the new cards work. Thoroughly enjoyed this, and I’m hoping to play more games during the weekend.

Finally, I played Saint Petersburg. Now this a game that I have only played once before (on-line) and completely failed to grasp, so I had reservations about playing. However, playing this face to face with a group of players who were quite happy to explain exactly what was going on, and also what some of your strategies needed to be , was a completely different experience and not only did I enjoy the game – but I think I finally twigged how to play it. OK, I came last, but at least I saw why I came last and where some of my mistakes were made. I’m actually looking forward to playing this again.

That was the final game of the night, and I headed home at just after 10pm…early I know, but breaking myself in gently. Tomorrow will be more of a marathon!

Finally, what convention would be complete without a games store? JKLM were selling some games, and I happened to spot a copy of Steel Driver. Now, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to buy any games this weekend, but to spot this one – which is out of print – at 20% off, especially when I own all the other Treefrog games…well, the temptation was too much. Another game to play during my proposed ‘Wallace-a-thon’ sometime over the coming couple of days.

A great start to the weekend – looking forward to Saturday’s gaming!