Medusa, The Gorgons and Some Centaurs

I've painted the first two of my Greek mythology packs that I recently bought from wargames foundry.  They paint up nicely and I'm particulary pleased with how the Gorgons came out.  I need to find a Persesus model from somewhere now, I'm looking at possibly getting the version from reaper minis.  Although from foundry's Tribes of Legend ranges the Gorgons currently don't feature in either of the two games in the tribes of legend book.  The centaurs conversely are favoured and are featured in both games, although with only 3, at the moment I'll only be using them in ancient heroes.

The Gorgons Stheno, Euryale and of course Medusa.

Two unfortunate victims

Medusa's deadly petrifying stare!

My three armoured Centaurs

Ancient Greek Peltasts

A few more ancient Greeks today for my tribes of legend city state army.  These are Peltasts from black tree design.  They're light skirmish and missile troops, the very opposite to the Hoplites that form the core of the force.  These are the first models that I've ever bought from black tree design and I'm happy enough with them, the service was pretty good too.  They didn't come with bases, but I've mounted them on Renedra bases to match my hoplites.

Smart Ass - The Ultimate Trivia Boardgame

I picked this up in a sale a few weeks ago (cost £8) .  I like trivia board games and this claims to be 'the ulitimate trivia boardgame' so even though this is clearly a bold claim at that price it was hard to resist.

The game contents are simple enough, a large folding board, 4 packs of question cards (quite flimsy unfortunately), 8 playing pieces which are card donkeys pushed into little plastic holders and 2 dice, one with numbers for moving and one with colours on to slect category.  Like the cards the dice are lightweight and don't have that quality feel to them.  Nonetheless it all does its job.

The gameplay is very simple, players take it in turn to be the reader and select a card from a randomly determined category.  Each card contains 10 progressivly easier clues to a what? where? or who? and the other players can shout out an answer at any time and if they have it right get to roll a dice and move that many squares forward.  If nobody gets it the reader gets to move forward.  The clever bit is that each player only gets one chance to guess per card.  This means that the smart asses often guess to early and can trip up, leaving less knowlegdable players a chance to win the round.  It can be a art in picking exactly when to guess and knowing your opponents helps!   The first person to make it round the board and get into the donkeys arse wins!  Games take around 30mins, which is a good length and does make this game an alternative to the more serious and lengthy trivia games out there.

The game is described as a 2-8 player game, but this isn't really true, you need at least 3 players and preferably 4 or more.  This is because the game really works when you have poeple competing as you read down the clues.  In a 2 player game one person will always be reading and the other person effectivly gets all the clues before they have to say an answer, which makes it very easy.  In a 3 player game this is better as you normally have two poeple competing with the clues, but missing a round is quite common and you still often revert to someone getting all the clues before having to comit to an answer.

So in conclusion this is good fun, although I doubt it has that much longevity.  The 'ultimate trivia boardgame' it isn't (it will take something special to convince me away from genus edition trivial pursuit), but still worth a look if you like that kind of thing.

WW2 Revell 1:72 German Nashorn Tank Destroyer

As part of my recent conversion to Revell when it comes to tracked scale models I've just finished painting and assembling the Nashorn tank destroyer you can see below.  For its size its a complicated kit due to the open topped gun compartment, but it all went to together easily enough.  I really enjoyed making and am struggling to resist the urge to go and order a bunch more Revell tanks.

Firepower! The Royal Artillery Museum

On my recent day out in London after visiting the national maritime museum we then popped over to woolwich and went to Firepower! The Royal Artillery Museum.  The museum is on the site of the old Woolwich Arsenal on the south bank of the thames.  Most of the old munitions factory has been demolished, but the gate and a few origanal buildings survive, they seem to be building flats on the rest of it.  The site is also covered with cannon of various types and even this self propelled gun:

there wasn't any info on what this is, but it looks cool, I'd be grateful if anyone does know if they drop a comment below.

The museum tells the story of the use of artillery in the British army all the way from the days of Henry VII to the present day.  It contains 5 galleries, the main hall 20th century artillery, the 'history' gallery on the upper floor (medieval to colonial), a large exhibits display/theatre and the smaller medals and modern warefare galleries.
The largest gallery is the 20th century gallery featuring guns from WW1 and WW2, plus cold war missle launchers, also a small section of the history of the royal artillery in WW2.  This is a good gallery, but for me the highlight gallery is the history gallery on the upper floor.  This contains a history of artillery and the Royal Artillery Regiment from the medieval chinese, through the campaigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, the civil war, the Napoleonic wars, the Crimea and into the late Victorian colonial conflicts.  There is a lot of different cannons, including some really interesting types I'd not seen before including a cannon whose job it was to target indiviual people and a colonial screw gun, plus many more.  The information boards are well done as well and I found them interesting and not to basic.

The main hall

The modern warefare gallery described some of the ways the Royal artillery regiment has fought in recent conflicts.  The medals gallery unsurprisingly has a collection of medals from former members of the Royal Artillery Regiment, it's well done with information about each person next to their medals.  The final gallery is a theatre that shows a film about artillery (which alas we didn't have time to watch) and round the edge has some seriously large artillery peices.

Colonial Screw Gun

Civil war sniper cannon

WW2 self propelled gun

Entry cost for an adult was £5.30, which was more than fair, I really enjoyed my visit here and highly recommend it. 

Warhammer 40K Eldar Wave Serpent

The latest addition to my eldar army today a Wave Serpent transporter, and I'm pretty pleased with it to be honest, but as usual have a look for yourselves;

My First Package From Foundry

My first ever miniatures from wargames foundry arrived this morning, and consisted of 4 packs from their Greek Mythology range that I'm planning on using with Tribes of Legend.  The order arrived well packaged and very quickly, no issuse with the service.  I ordered the greek heroes, trojan heroes, gorgons and a pack of centaurs.

My new packs of figures

They come in old style blister packs complete with a little bit of foam and contain bases, although I got a bit confused here.  The infantry comes with different bases, my greek hero and gorgon packs came with circular bases, but the trojan hero pack came with square bases, a very odd policy that I can't fathom.  The other thing is that none of the models come with spears, which is rather odd, foundry sell spears seperately, which again seems like a crazy policy, my plan is to use spare spears from my plastic hoplites on the 5 models I have that need them.

Whats in the packs

Another thing to be aware of is that I saved my self over £4 simply by ordering from http://www.foundryfantasy.com/ rather than from http://wargamesfoundry.com/ as the main foundry sites charges a flat £8! postage on any order under £80.  Still for all my whinging I like what I've bought, am looking forward to painting them and would be suprised if these are the last figures I buy from foundry.

Achillies & Ajax assembled, although I've gone with square bases.

Immortal Miniatures Ancient Greek Hoplites

I've decided to collect a city states army for the new greek mythology game 'tribes of legend' by wargames foundy.  To form the core of this new force I've gone and purchased a box of ancient hoplites from Immortal miniatures.  And I have to say that I'm rather glad that I did, this has turned out to be a quality product at a great price.  The box contains 36 (although it says 34 on the box, I'm not sure if getting two command sprues was a mistake) multipart hard plastic 28mm Greek hoplites.  It also contains a sprue of renedra bases, a sheet of sheild transfers and a little booklet describing all the different options and how you should use them to represent phalanxes from different eras.  The box is even of the right type to hold assembled and painted miniatures.  All of which I paid £16 for from an ebay seller (I'm unsure what the RRP is, but if it's around the £20 mark this is still a good deal).  Compared to the sci-fi/fantasy stuff I usually buy I'm very happy with the quailty:cost ratio here, and just the fact they seem to have thought about the whole package.

In Tribes of Legend hoplite units come as a group of 16 models, that means this box will provide me with two complete units and still leave me with a couple of spare guys.  I plan to convert one of the spares into a standard bearer so these guys can make do as a stand in pikeman unit in my warhammer dogs of war army as well as fulfilling their primary purpose.

I've painted my first unit of 16, plus a musician and one of the spare guys.  I've decided to go for a uniform look without any sheild designs, which isn't really accurate, but it's my army and I like it!  I've also painted the skin slighty darker than I usually do to try give the army a mediteranian feel.

The National Maritime Museum

I paid a trip to the National Maritime Museum in london yesterday, it's not somewhere I've been before and I've been looking forward to it for a while.  The museum is about Britian's seafaring past and features galleries on exploration, trade (including slavery and empire) and warfare.  It's housed in grand buildings in Greenwich Park, London and there is no charge for entry.

There are lots of interesting artifacts, lots of weapons, old maps (I love old maps), navigation instruments and ship models amongst others.  There's a few larger items as well including an anchor from HMS Ark Royal, the Royal barge of Frederick, Prince of Wales and the back of the Napoleonic era ship of the line HMS Implacable.  There is also a small dsiplay focusing on Nelson and includes the uniform he was wearing at Trafalagar.

My favorite gallery was hidden away up on the second floor and was full of historic model ships of the kind presented to the admilralty when they were considering buying new ships.

It appears to have been refurbished recently and there is a lot of open plan areas, bright lights and oddly designed galleries, maybe it does help some poeple engage with the subject, but I prefer my museums old style, and although it's a large building a lot of it seemed quite empty.  Still even with my moaning it was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

On the same site there is also the Queens House which shows some of the museums art collection, but the poeple I was with didn't fancy that, so it'll have to remain on the 'to do' list.

Behind the museaum up the hill is the Greenwich Royal Observatory, we didnt have the time to look round the observatory, but did climb the hill which has a great view from the top.

Tribes of Legend - A Book Review

I love greek mythology, I always have, I love reading the epics and I love many of the movies based on it (and am still firmly of the opinion that clash of the titans didn't need a remake) so as soon as I heard Jake Thornton (ex white dwraf editor and author of the dwarf kings hold series, which I like rather a lot) was writing a book allowing you to wargame the 'period' I knew it was inevitable that I was going to get it.

The book is published by wargames foundry and is just over a 100 pages long, has a nice hardcover and is in full colour throughout.  It's fully illustrated with lots of photographs of the new tribes of legend range from foundry, and there are several pieces of full page full colour artwork which I think are rather good.  It's a good high quailty production product.

The book contains 3 games, a mass battle game called 'tribes of legend', a skirmish game called 'ancient heroes' and a solo game, 'trials of a demi god'.  The book also has a lot of hobby material including painting guides for most of the range of models, a guide to making rivers and a guide to the greek gods.

The first game is the game of mass battles called 'tribes of legend' from which the book takes it name.  As a mass battle fantasy game I think it falls somewhere between warhammer and kings of war, I say this due to the way units work, you remove figures until half of them are dead and then remove the rest, no two men units left wondering around.  All measurement is taken from the unit's leader which makes things nice and simple, in fact I think the movement rules are really quite elegant.  One major difference between this and the other games I've mentioned is that tribes of legend works on an alternative unit activation rather than moving all your forces at once, this is something I really approve of, and it actually makes the game feel different from warhammer/kings of war.  The game comes with army lists for city states, amazons, hillmen, satyrs and centaurs.  This is the weakness of this game, whilst 5 lists sounds quite good they only contain 3 entries each which really limits the possibilites, also the game features none of the heores or monsters from the model range.  The core rules seem solid, but the lack of army options lets it down a bit, the amazons seem espeically odd as the chariot and cavalry feature in the book but there are no rules for their use.  Still it's fun enough and I have a city state army being painted up at the moment.

Ancient Heroes is a skirmish game where you take a group of 5 heroes and try to take control of a temple against other poeples bands of heroes.  It's a small sacle skirmish game that uses a deck of cards to resolve combat.  It's really innovative and different and works really well, although it does take a while which means that this game isn't scalable, you're not going to want more than 20-30 models on the table, this isn't a bad thing though and allows you to pick up a couple of packs of figures from foundry and get gaming striaght away.  Again the weakness is the variety in choice of heroes, you can only pick man, harpy, stayr, centaur and minotaur.  None of the bigger monsters or even cyclopes (which get a detailed painting guide in the book) or gorgons can be used which I feel is a big shame.  Even with that I like this game a lot and feel it's the best part of the book.

The final game is called trials of a demi god, which is a 'solo' game that you play on your own, trying to complete the labours of herakles, its the first time I've had a go at anything like this and to be honest it didn't grab me.  Without an opponent to beat it just didn't inspire me, it also takes up quite a large page count which I feel would have been better used on expanding on the previous two games.

All the hobby sections are ratehr good and i like the fact they've bothered to suggest paint schemes for the entire range and there are a couple of more in depth painting guides that are quite good as well.  The making rivers section seems a bit random, but is making me thing about actually giving it a go, my scenary collection could really use a river.  I didn't really need or learn anything from the guide to the gods, but it does help set the scene.

So in conclusion we have a great guide to the foundry greek mythology range, which contains the core of a couple of good games and allows you to get fighting with ancient greeks straight away, it's just a shame the range hasn't been utilised in full.

Flames of War British Sherman Firefly & Company Command

The latest couple of additions to my small late war British Flames of war army today.  First is the impressive looking Sherman Firefly to join my Sherman platoon.

and also a company command and second in command bases, I've gone for the scottish command bases as I'm planning on using the scottish battalion list from the flames of war website as a base for my force.

I need get one more infantry platoon and will then have a 1000pt force, unfortunately the person I was going to start playing against has had to move away so now I need to try and find an opponent as well, still I like the little tanks so even if they end up just siting on the shelf it won't be a total loss.

I bought these from wayland games and got a free mini 3rd edition rulebook for my troubles as well, which was really rather cool! not sure if this offer is still on, but it did make my day.