We Don't Need No Stinkin' Paintbrushes

One of the things that I have often thought was that the wargaming industry was ripe for some company to create a line of prepainted miniatures. Prepainted plastics have so far been the realm of clicky games and the quality is, at times, questionable. Yet, I think games like Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars got many people (myself included) to buy clicky miniatures to be used with other tabletop rules. Well, based on this annoucement Mongoose Publishing is going to try and harvest this fruit.

According to Mongoose they will be releasing and Ultra-modern game in which the figures and vehicles will come prepainted. Mongoose will also be modifying their Starship Troopers game to use different mechanics and they will be selling prepainted miniatures for this game as well. To top it all off Mongoose says the price will be the same as people currently pay for unpainted miniatures. This is news indeed and we will need to wait until next year to see if the reality lives up to the hype.

I would be interested to know and encourage you to leave comments regarding what types of miniatures you would buy pre-painted. For me, I would love to see a line of prepainted 25mm Napoleonics (especially line troops) followed by 25mm WWII, 15mm WWII, and 25mm Ancients/Medieval.

I have a Dream...blade

Believe it or not, The General used to be a very big Magic: the Gathering player. The card sets that I collected in my day were Beta, Unlimited, and Antiquty just to name a few. At some point, probably when Wizards of the Coast started making sets tournament ILLEGAL, I came to the realization that the game was changing merely to separate me from my money. So I sold all of my cards and bought new computer with the proceeds. Some time later I returned to Magic but only for sealed deck tournaments which, to me, maintain what the game was supposed to be about: deck construction with limited resources and not a race to spend the most to get the best cards. I actually LOVED it when the tournaments would play for ante.

Anyway, about a week ago someone introduced me to Wizards' new "clicky" (Collectible Miniatures) game Dreamblade. For whatever reason I found the game to be fascinating and reminded me a lot of Magic with miniatures. In this game, which is played on a 5x5 grid, the object is to maintain control of scoring squares. To make life interesting the scoring squares worth the most points are closer to the enemy side of the table. Each turn you generate spawn points and put monsters into play. These monsters can then ALL MOVE or ALL FIGHT so you are presented with some interesting tactical challenges: do I move, to score or fight the enemy in order to deny their score, etc.

Wizards is putting a lot of money behind the tournament scene with a $20,000 prize tournament at Gen Con and many regional $1,000 tournaments. In these days where the market is saturated with clicky games will this one survive? That I do not know but the concept is unique and the game has lots of strategic play. Given the fact that I like this game and I normally HATE clicky games, this one might actually have a modicum of success.

For me, I purchased two starters and two boosters (equivalent to two "sealed deck" style sets) and, while, I won't play in open or constructed format tournaments I would certainly consider playing in sealed tournaments that are in my area.

AllAboutMiniatures podcast now live!

The General's new monthly miniatures wargaming podcast has just gone live. Please check out the first fruits of labor at allaboutminiatures.libsyn.com/

Feel free to send comments about the show to allaboutminiatures@wi.rr.com

Something Audio This Way Comes

The General has been having so much fun blogging that I’m going to try podcasting. I’ve got the equipment and will be recording the podcast as part of this weekend’s gaming session. The podcast will be about miniatures wargaming and, hopefully, I will maintain enough dedication for a monthly show. After recording I’ll need to do post-production so the podcast should be ready sometime next week. The podcast will have its own site but I will use this blog to announce podcast shows as well as continuing my daily ramblings.

OMG! I’ve actually finished painting something

This week The General got serious about painting. After not doing anything for two months I’ve managed to finish a pack of Reaper Miniatures Skeleton Breakers for their Warlord Skirmish game. I also started painting my first Starship Troopers Exo-suit squad and hope to finish that within a week.

As you may recall, I previously wrote that I purchased a Rippler Bug Mega Swam. I spent a good part of last Sunday and Monday evening assembling all nine bugs. The assembly of these models was rather easy and the time needed was mainly due to there being nine models. Some people have reported problems assembling the Starship Troopers plastic. I’ve never had a problem using Testors Liquid Cement.

To assemble the ripplers, I first began with the one piece abdomen, the two thorax halves and the little bit to which the legs connect. The leg bit and the abdomen have plugs which are held in by thorax sockets. I laid down a thorax half, but the other pieces in their sockets and then snapped the other thorax half in place and applied liquid cement to the joints. At this point the model looks like a prawn almost good enough to eat. Set it aside and do not eat. Next, I put the head pieces together (two parts) and after a few hours went back and glued the heads to the bodies.

On the second day I glued on all the legs and mandibles making sure the legs did not interfere with the bases. After a few hours I put on the wings and the job was complete. All I have to do now is paint them.

Lack of Progress Syndrome

Comments on my previous post got me to thinking about the “Lack of progress syndrome” phrase that I coined for some games. As kids, remember the game Sorry? Were your pawns always being moved back to the starting square? For me it always seemed like the other kids were ganging up on me. Strangely, there are games we play as adults that lead to the same feelings.

Two games that I mentioned as having Lack of Progress Syndrome (LOPS) are Fantasy Flight’s DOOM boardgame and Alien Menace’s Sucking Vacuum. Interestingly, both of these games are board games and multi player competitive board games at that. I think if there is a game that will suffer from LOPS it will be a Euro style multi player competitive game.

Sucking Vacuum suffers the most from LOPS and I think this is due to the premise of the game. The players are a bunch of scientists stuck on a space station that is losing air. There are a limited number of resources the players can use to reach safety; and, just when you think you’ve made it a desperate player comes along and steals your stuff, who then has his stuff stolen and so on. Beating up your friends and taking their stuff is fun and all, I guess it just happens too often so the game doesn’t move along.

I can’t think of any miniatures games that suffer from LOPS and welcome comments on anyone who might know of any such games. I guess role playing games can suffer from LOPS if the game master is running a low power campaign and is too stingy with treasure but the opposite problem is Too Much Progress Syndrome which might be a topic of its own someday.

Wargame or Death March?

I’ve had a long held belief that the perfect convention wargame lasts four hours and has six participants. You would not believe the number of times I’ve seen 12 hour games with 15+ participants in an events listing only to walk by later and see half of the players sitting around chatting or looking bored. I fully appreciate that the “mega-game” looks great and is a testament to the judge’s effort; but, in my experience, these games are rarely as much fun to play as they are to look at.

At home I find myself appreciating the game that lasts two hours or less. I may have been influenced by too many years of Warhammer 40K or Fantasy (both of which take about two hours) or it might be that I have developed Adult ADD over the years. Another possibility is that my wargaming tastes have expanded beyond one or two systems and short games allow me to play multiple games in one gaming day. Whatever the reason, I can’t be alone since one company has even dedicated itself to making two hour wargames.

I’ve also decided that this topic would be a nice one to introduce a new feature here on MiniatureGeneral. I’ve added a polling feature in order to give YOU a chance to respond to The General’s questions. You can find the poll at the bottom of the side bar and I welcome your input.

Attention Deficit Gaming

Today was my monthly trip to the local gaming store and subsequent day of gaming with the club. I had a short list of things I wanted to buy: Rezolution, if they had it, or Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games. I noticed that Puerto Rico was rated #1 on BoardGameGeek and thought it would be a nice Euro game my wife and I could enjoy. In the end I wasn’t able to make either purchase but I did find the Rippler Bug mega swarm for Starship Troopers and the Legions of Middle Earth supplement for Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings game.

Club day saw us playing Descent which I mentioned in a previous blog post. This was our second playing of the game and we used some Descent Campaign rules I found at BoardgameGeek so we could keep improving our characters from game to game. Descent games do not take too terribly long so we ended the day with a Lord of the Rings scenario. I predict the club will be focused on Descent for the next few months; we tend to stay with games like this. Previously we did the Klendathu campaign from Startship Troopers and Legends of the Old West before that. Basically, some game will get into “heavy rotation” at the club for several months while other games languish.

Now, if you’ve been reading carefully you’ve noticed I mentioned many different games and that doesn’t include the games for which I’m painting figures! I’m sure many of you are like me while others can stay focused. If you can stay focused on one project, I’d love to read comments on how you do it. To try and keep playing all of my favorite games, I’m going to put a list of games I’ve played in the sidebar. The most recent game will be on top and the order will, hopefully, change.

Painting Days of Summer

For some reason I have always had a hard time keeping up painting production during the summer months. I think this is because there are too many outdoor chores that need to be done and the weather is nice enough for a family outing almost every weekend. Since conventions usually recharge my "painting batteries" (so to speak), Gen Con falls at the perfect time of the year. When the convention moved away from Wisconsin, however, I lost a lot of my inspiration.

I think archeologists could date projects on my painting area like sedimentary rock: the ones farthest from the front are the oldest! Just the other day I was looking at some of my unfinished projects:

• I’ve started painting a 25mm Post-Mongol Russian DBA army from Molniya Miniatures


• Before that I was working on a Langton 1:1200 scale frigate to fight the USS Constitution I’ve already finished. Unfortunately, once I get to the rigging, it’s like hitting a brick wall.


• After Little Wars last March I came home with Corvus Belli Early Imperial Roman and Hundred Years War English DBA armies. Four elements of the Romans are nearly done; the rest are still in their boxes.


• Taking up the most space on the painting area are some Old Glory 10mm New Kingdom Egyptians for Warmaster Ancients.

Now I know I’m not alone, just take a look at this desk and there are lots of others out there just like it; maybe even yours! If you have managed to stay on track, or know of good techniques for staying focused on painting during the summer, please feel free to comment. In the meantime, here is a picture of some of my work to prove that there really are times when I do paint.

Let’s get the warband back together

A while ago I mentioned that warband style games are perfect for people who like to paint. At that time I said I was going to look at warband games a little closer and now seems like the perfect time. Warband games have the following properties:

1. Your table top army consists of a small number of individual models (rarely over 25)


2. The models in your army are usually free to act as individuals (true skirmish) or they may be placed into a handful of units (squad skirmish)


3. As part of a campaign, each player is expected to have their own warband and members of a gaming group will play each other in short games resulting in multiple games per session.


4. The game’s results have an effect on the campaign or the focus of the campaign is the warband itself in which models can gain new skills or abilities, etc.

So with those criteria, what are some Warband games on the market? Well some obvious choices are Games Workshop’s Necromunda game set in the 40K universe and Mordheim which is set in the Warhammer fantasy universe. These two games are similar and share many of the same warband creation mechanics. The historical Legends of the Old West also uses these same mechanics; this is likely due to the same corporate parentage.

Outside the Games Workshop hobby you have Reaper’s Warlord which doesn’t have the RPG like skill increases of the Games Workshop offerings but does have a campaign in the rules. Another game is Rackham’s Confrontation but I admit to not being familiar with the product. I will also include Warmachine and Hordes from Privateer Press. You can start playing these last two games with as little as 4 or 5 models and even at typical engagement sizes the army size is still reasonable.

A game that get’s overlooked mainly because of the company’s checkered financial past is Urban Mammoth’s Urban War. The Japanese Samurai and Roman Gladiator inspired factions are cleverly done; so much so, I’ve slowly started to collect a VASA gang. Also in the cyberpunk/ ruined industrial genre is a game I have been watching with some enthusiasm: Aberrant Games’ Rezolution. Some of the early sculpts were not to my liking but the range is expanding and I think I could get a decent force together while still avoiding the ugly models. I have not played the game and would welcome comments from anyone who has.

A2 + B2 = Complexity2

The second game of the day, which lies at the opposite end of the complexity spectrum from Flames of War was Saganami Island Tactical Simulator by Ad Astra Games. The fact that this “game” uses the word simulation in the title says a lot. This space combat game uses Newtonian physics, vector movement and all 3 dimensions. It sounds daunting but the designers have done a great job putting the most complicated bits into a handful of charts to ease play. That said, if you have a hard time thinking spatially then you probably won’t like this game given that you will likely never be in the correct orientation to fire.

In the background for the game, ships behave a lot like Napoleonic sailing ships in that your broadside (of missiles typically) is the most powerful and crossing the T is the most deadly. The game is also reminds me a bit of Harpoon in that the target of your missile salvo attempts to shoot down the incoming missiles: first with anti-missiles, then point defense, and so on. Ships have defensive layers much like an onion. The ships are cylindrical and it is quite common to blow completely through a section of the ship thereby wasting a portion of the damage…and remember cylinders are thinnest “side on” so to speak.

In terms of complexity, this game ranks up there with Starfleet Battles with fewer rules. While I find Starfleet Battles mind numbingly dull (20 minutes just to do energy allocation? Get real!) this game seems to have plenty of action to keep you busy during the turn. As the ships start flipping and spinning, you really need to think about where you will be a move or two from now and what the orientation of the enemy will be from your ship. As a normal fan of 2 to 3 hours games, our first game went 4 hours to conclusion and I didn’t mind that one bit.

The only part of the game that seems to drag is damage allocation. The game also cries out for some kind of computer assistance program that could make record keeping even easier. In these days of automation, this is certainly a possibility.

So, if you’re a member of Mensa or just want to lament skipping Geometry class, give this a game try. I heartily recommend it and give it two (my only two) thumbs up!

Gaming Saturday with Flames of War

Unlike last week, this Saturday was a full day of gaming. I got two games in today which is quite an accomplishment. I’ve decided to write about each game separately in case anyone wants to comment on a particular game. The first game was Flames of War which I have been anxious to play since the release of second edition.

Rather than play a standard even points tournament mission, I decided to create a scenario because I was recently musing about how tournament games often do not produce games that feel “historical”. This scenario is adapted a Combat Interactive article from the September, 2006 issue of Armchair General magazine. Combat Interactive articles describe a situation and then ask the reader to choose a course of action after which the article goes on to describe what the proper choice was.

In this scenario a Tiger tank and some supporting infantry must stop over 10 T-34 tanks. I wanted to create a scenario that was smaller than “average size” (1,500 points in Flames of War) because I thought it would be a nice scenario for those who are just starting to build armies. Which, in the case of the Soviets, includes me! I only have one infantry company painted and you normally need two in an army.

The game lasted a little under two hours and was very close. The Soviets managed to capture the objective and it was physically impossible for the Germans to contest it during their turn to the only hope the Germans had was to kill enough to force the Soviets into a company morale check which they would hopefully fail…WHICH THEY DID! Resulting in a narrow victory for the Germans.

You can download the PDF of the mission and give it a try. Let me know what you think.

I miss my GenCon

When GenCon was held in Milwaukee, I went every year; and, being that I lived only 50 miles away and needed no hotel, why not? Well, 2002 was the last GenCon in Milwaukee and, after four years, I really miss the old girl. Yet, I never seem to be able to commit to going since traveling to GenCon would now be an actual trip. Going to GenCon these days involves hotels, meals and packing up the family for four days of daddy’s “fun.”

Given the money spent, I often think that traveling to a historical miniature based convention like Historicon would make more sense and be more enjoyable. Traveling to a convention requires planning several months (if not a year) in advance to ensure a good hotel room. The next convention I plan on attending is Fall-In which is 3 months away!

My goal for the upcoming year is to attend more conventions and develop a sort of routine. I’d like to go to one convention each season: Little Wars in spring, Historicon in summer, and so on. I don’t know if I will meet my goal; but, keep reading as I plan on doing convention reports from the conventions that I do attend.

Lilliputians need love too

Maksim-Smelchak was kind enough to give me a link to his 6mm blog and this got me thinking about 6mm miniatures in general. As you know, I am a self described painter. This means I tend to go for larger 25mm or even 40mm figures. I’ve tried painting 6mm figures but I was never happy with the results. I think this is because I end up looking at the individual figures rather than the massed effect. Yet, when I’m at conventions and see a table covered in 6mm Napoleonic units in which the battalions have 48+ figures I always marvel at how nice the battle looks.

One of the most stunning uses I’ve seen for 6mm figures is basing them for DBA as if they were 25mm figures. As you can tell from this picture you definitely get something that looks like an ancient army. If this interests you, Baccus 6mm Ltd. will even sell you ready made army packs just for this purpose.

I’ve often wanted to make armies like this, yet in the end I buy a pack or two and paint up a stand and then look at in the light and all I see is something like this and think how horrible it looks. It must be a personal problem because this is also an issue for me regarding 1/6000 and 1/2400 scale naval ships. Lots of people like 6mm wargaming and I like how the battles look, just not my paint jobs. Perhaps someone could tell me what I’m doing “wrong.”

Great day of not gaming

Saturday is usually gaming day; but, not this Saturday. I guess, if I can’t game at least I can be productive and update ACWarmaster. So, short of gaming, what could be better than sitting on the deck with your laptop, wireless connection, and Microsoft Word? Wargaming on your laptop, I suppose. The board gaming community has adopted technology and there are a fair number of web sites that allow you to play board games on line. That’s great for board gamers, but what are the miniature gamers to do?

There is at least one miniatures game that is playable on line and luckily the game is also a favorite of mine: De Bellis Antiquitatis. Some enterprising folks have taken DBA and created DBA Online which allows players to play games of DBA (and Big Battle DBA) using the computer. While the games are hosted on the server, moves are sent to each player in a format resembling PBEM. DBA Online uses version 1.1 rules and there is a fee for the service; but, when family duties prevent you from getting in a day of gaming, it can be the next best thing.

The only other product I am aware of for online miniatures gaming is VASSAL I know, you’re thinking VASSAL is for board game play but it appears that there are modules for several miniatures games. I do not have any experience with this product and welcome comments from those who have tried it.

The first play test of the updated ACWarmaster rules is scheduled for next Saturday. That is, if I stop blogging and start updating the rules.

Games for Painters

I’ve always described myself as more of a painter (or modeler) than a player. This means that, while I enjoy playing, in many ways the game merely gives me something to do with my painted models. Many “massed combat” games like those in the ancient or Napoleonic era can require 150 or more figures per army! Even if you like modeling and painting, several hundred figures all in similar poses and uniform crush even the stout of heart. One thing I am always looking for are games that are designed with painters in mind. These games typically have only a few models per army and a good opportunity for individualism of the models within the army. Listed below are some of my most favorite games for painters.

WWII Skirmish. There are many WWII skirmish rule sets on the market set at the platoon level (about 40 figures per side) with a tank or two. My personal favorites are Baptism of Fire and Operation Overlord.

Legends of the Old West. This game is produced by Warhammer Historical Wargames and is in a category of games I call “warband” style (a topic for another day). This game allows you to start with a posse of less than 10 models and fight out games after which you grieve the loss of the dead and the survivors' abilities grow in roleplaying style.

De Bellis Antiquitatas (DBA). Not all games for painters need to be man on man skirmishes. DBA allows players to fight ancient and medieval battles with less than 48 models per side. Some may debate the “realism” but it has always seemed close enough for the hobby we call war gaming.

Wooden Ships & Iron Men. The 18th and 19th century is filled with naval encounters involving a handful of ships. If the movie Master and Commander or the Horatio Hornblower novels fascinate you, consider buying 1/1200 scale ships and installing the standing and running rigging (now that’s a modeling project!)