Flames of War - Overwhelmed By Overlord & Atlantik Wall

As anyone who pops by here regularly will know I've recently been painting a lot of tanks and other minis for flames of war.  I've played several small battles and have been expanding my mini collection in a quite random way.  I decided it was time for a bit of structure and managed to get the 'Overlord' and 'Atlantik Wall' sourcebooks on the Normandy invasion from ebay at a good price (£30 for the pair, when normal RRP is £30 each).

I was expecting something akin to a 40K codex book (which retail at the same price), but boy was I wrong!  Whilst these have the same RRP as a GW codex they completely blow them out of the water in sheer size of book and quantity of content.  The quality is pretty amazing too, each book contains many, many lists representing all the different formations that fought in the campaign as well as loads of historical detail on the formations and a whole bunch of historical figures that fought in Normandy.  The books are hardback, have a bigger footprint than a GW codex and come with a much more substantial page count (240 for Atlantik Wall and over 300 for Overlord).

The problem is it's almost too much information, I really don't know where to start.  It's difficult enough trying to find formations that work with what I've got, let alone thinking about future additions.  I can see why it's done this way, but part of me wants an all singing all dancing 40K style list which isn't based on any particular historical formation.  Hopefully a bit of time and a lot of flicking through will help me make sense of it all.

I'm In Shock - FREE Horus Heresy eBook from The Black Library

I got a rather shocking e-mail todays from Games Workshop's Black Library telling me they were offering a free horus heresy ebook to anyone that could be bothered to go here and download it.

I've never known GW to give anything away before, and even a little promotional short story seems to show that changes are afoot, or maybe I'm reading too much into it.  Still Graham Mcneill is one of my favourite BL authors and I love the horus heresy series so I'm rather chuffed about this.

Go grab it now, I don't know how long it'll be around for.

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.

Warhammer: Blood In The Badlands - A Review

So 'Blood in the Bandlands' is a new Warhammer book from Games Workshop, it's a bit different from their usual offerings, it's not an armies book nor a full blown rules supplement.  It's what they call a campaign book, which turns out to a mix of a giant white dwarf article with some new rules sprinkled across it.

The book itself is 96 pages long, is hardback and in full colour throughout, if you have storm of magic or one of the new army books you will know what to expect.  It's all very pretty, lots of model eyecandy and I really like the cover artwork too, I have no issues with the quality of the book itself and in fact am really pleased with it.

The book starts with an introduction (unsurprisingly) and then breifly moves on to the background for the campaign (a quest for a flying castle stuffed full of treasures essentially) and gives a couple of pages of info on the geography of the badlands themselves.

Then we have 8 pages that are the rules for the campaign.  They use a tiled mighty empires map, but any map with territories marked would work I think, they suggest buying mighty empires, but I don't think its nessacery.  Again the rules are designed for this specific camapaign, but could easily be transplanted into another setting.  The campaign resolves around seasons with a special scenario (in the campaign section of the book, coming up) at the end of each season, the winner of which gets special bonuses, and the winner of the winter scenario wins the whole campaign, this I think is a nice twist as it gives you 4 big event nights over the course of the campaign.  The campaign in the book had 8 players and I think you'd need at least 6 for it to work properly.

The main section of the book comes next describing the campaign as fought by the studio staff, it starts with a description of the armies and then moves through the story of the campaign.  The end of season scenarios are in this section and are each followed by a mini-battlereport describing how it went for the studio players.  This really is the bulk of the book, and is the sort of thing you'd find in white dwarf, whilst I quite liked it I can see some poeple being disapointed by the amount of space dedicated to it.

Towards the end of the campaign section are the new rules for underground battles, which to be honest aren't that different from normal battles, just with a couple of twists.  What is interesting is that it also features a mini-campaign with the skaven trying to take the dwarf hold of Barak Varr, and includes 5 scenarios with interesting set-up rules and odd table shapes.  I'm relaly hoping to get a chance to try these out.

Tucked away at the end are a few pages describing updated rules for playing seiges and using seige equiment.  They're a lot simpler than the last version of the seige rules and look a lot of fun.  I reckon that their inclusion will be a major selling point for a lot of players.

Mine was a gift but it clocks in at £20 at list price, I think it's a little steep, but not horrendus, I'd have liked to see it at the £15 mark really I think.

So how will I use this book? I'm unlikley to go for a full campaign, as I don't have enough regular opponents, but will definately be using the siege and underground rules, and I will probaly try some of the end of season scenarios as stand alone games as well.  Also it's a nice book to have on the shelf (the collector in me kicking in again).

So in conclusion, I think its a bit pricey, but I like it, although I don't think it will for everybody, but  conversly everybody ought to be able to take something from it, if you find this under the christmas tree I doubt you'll be too disappointed, but if you're going out to buy a rulebook be wary, there is more fluff than rules, if you like fluff however this is well done.

Codex: Craftworld Eldar & Warhammer Armies: Ogre Kingdoms

I am at heart a collector, I collect many things, and hate having gaps, one of the things I collect and like having are the codicies and army books from GW.  Unfortunatley the reality is that I can't afford to buy every book as it comes out, but I try and pick them up cheaply on ebay when I can, and have quite an extensive collection dating back to 3rd ed warhammer and 2nd ed 40K, a quick count reveals 34 army books and  22 codices, today I added another two to that total, both are second hand and cost around £3 each, which is cheaper than White Dwarf magazine.  Obviously the actual rules contained within these books aren't valid anymore, but I like reading the background sections and old rules and list structures can often give me ideas.

First off we have Codex: Craftworld Eldar, a small 24 page book that was a supplement to the 4th ed. codex eldar.  With 5 variant craftworld lists and a couple of new troops types.  Its only a little book though and the background info is limited.

And secondly Warhammer Armies: Ogre Kingdoms, the origanal version, going cheap presumably as the new version has just come out.  A suprisingly good read actually, its the first time I've ever had a proper read of the ogre backround.  It feels a bit different to the other warhammer armies background and you can tell that its been bolted on a later date (it doesn't feel integrated the way a lot of the other races histories are with one another), still i finally understand what the great maw is and what drives the current ogre theme.  Am I going to get an Ogre army? nope, asthetically I still prefer the old 3rd ed. ogres and these ones just don;t do it for me, but it looks like they're here to stay and I'm happy I understand them a bit better.

Why I Love The Works....

My local town is pretty rubbish for shopping, we have a Games Workshop, and a hardware shop that sells airfix models, but that's about it gaming wise, no decent proper bookshop or even a HMV or other DVD shop.  The shop I think I actually spend the most money in is the Works, which is a discount bookshop, but sells other bits and bobs as well.  A lot of my books, and in particular History and Nature books have come from here.  I popped in today as I was waiting for the bus, not especially expecting to find anything (the gems are always hidden behind piles of rubbish), but find stuff I did, I came out having spent £15 and feeling very happy.

The most exciting thing they had today was a pile of new board games, of what I believe are termed the 'eurogame' variety.  There were 4 games in all, all priced at £7.99, I only bought one, entiltled Ming Dynasty, a game of political intrigue in ancient china, it all looks very pretty, even if I would have prefered plastic sculpted pieces, these types of games traditionally have abstract wooden pieces.  No idea about gameplay yet, but will post on it when I get a game in (unfortunatly the way things are going that won't be to the new year, damn real life and a dull job in retail at christmas.)

I also got a pair of military history books, 'A Tidy Little War - The British Invasion of Egypt 1882', and 'Haigs Command - A reassessment'.  I'm particulary looking forward to ' a tidy little war', the egypt campaign is one I only know a little about, but almost preludes the Sudan campaign's that I've been painting models for, the danger is of course that this book might be the start of yet another painting project.

Overall I'm really chuffed with all of these, I'm trying to resist the urge to buy the other eurogames they have, but with the christmas season coming up I need to be good.  But I love this shop, I was only looking to waste 15mins but came out with some totally unexpected cheap little gems.

Been Shoping - Some New Books

A couple of days ago I went shoping with the aim of buying some christmas presents, and what always happens when I do this happened again, as well as buying presents for others I also can back with some presents for myself, this time 3 books.

Firstly a book on tanks called 'Tanks and Armoured Fighting Vehicles' by Robert Jackson.  I got this from the Works (a discount bookshop in the UK) for the princely sum of £2.99

The book is hardback and contains 93 full colour pages detailing tanks from the first world war upto the modern day.  I've been looking for something like this ever since I bought my first flames of war models as my knowlegde of WW2 tanks is pretty limited.  The book doesn't go into great detail, but it has a lot of pretty pictures and is ideal as an introduction to the subject, it was just what I was after at the price I wanted to pay.

Next we have 'Moses Pharaoh of Egypt: The Mystery of Akhenaten Resolved' by Ahmed Osman which I picked up very cheap in a charity 2nd hand bookshop.  I've spent most of the last couple of days reading it on and off and the theory it's proposing is really quite fascinating.  The book proposes that Akhenaten (the herectical pharoah who eschewed the old gods in favour of the worship of the one god, the Aten) wasn't killed when he fell from power but lead his followers out of egypt to establish the monotheistic faith that the most popular of the worlds current faiths are derived from, i.e. he was in fact Moses.  It's all very interesting, and he presents alot of evidence, to me a lot of it seems circumstanal, but I'm not a good enough egyptologist or biblical scholar to come down with a definate conclusion, it did convince me of a possible link between the worship of the Aten and the faith of the early Israelites however. 

And finally a Games Workshop Black Library publication 'Thanquols Doom' by CL Werner.  I've only just started reading it so can't give any meaningful thoughts as yet, but I like the rest of the Gotrek & Felix and Thanquol novels.  They're not the greatest works of literature I've ever read, but sometimes there is a place for a trashy fantasy adventure.