40K - Eldar Striking Scorpions & Warlock

 

 

It's been a quiet month on this blog, but that's not because I've not been painting, but because I've had many projects on the go all of which are nearing completion at the same time.  This first finished project is this squad of striking scorpions and a warlock for my eldar army.

Ice Flow - A Boardgame Review

Yet again I've fallen for a cheap board game that I've seen in 'The Works' and thought I'd share my view on it.

This game is called 'Ice Flow' and is I suppose a Euro-Game, with the somewhat inspired theme of trying to cross the bearing straight on foot from Alaska to Russia by clambering over ice, taking short swims and avoiding polar bears.  That's basically all the box said and it was enough to part me with my fiver.

 

Lets start, as always, with the components, which are all really rather good for a cheap board game.  The box is well made, and the board is a standard board game board with nice artwork.  the rules booklet is A4 in size and in full colour, what I did like was that it contained three separate booklets for English, German and French, which allowed me to bin the ones I didn't need and not have to wade through a book looking for the English bit (something I hate).  Game cards keep up the nice artwork, but are oddly square not normal card sized, not a problem as such, but means you can add card protectors to them.  The playing pieces are all coloured wood Meeples, standard stuff, for some reason I find the polar bear ones really quite cool.  And last but not least are the rather nifty hexagonal ice counters made from a clear blue plastic with cuts and cracks moulded into them.

Gameplay is pretty simple, but full of choices.  On each player turn you can take one player action and must take one ice flow action, you may do these in any order you like.  Ice flow actions involve moving or rotating or adding a new ice flow piece, thus allowing you to aid your movement, or, which is often more fun, to impede the movement of other players.  The ice flow pieces can only move in certain directions, which helps planning, but most have one or more cliff edges that you need rope to cross.  Player actions simply allow you to move one of your three pieces as far as you can before being stopped by an obstacle that you don't have the equipment to cross, or when you choose to stop. This is also a resource management game, you can carry up to 3 rope and/or fish in your backpack.  These both do very useful things, fish allow you to distract a polar bear or swim across a hex of open sea, rope allows you to cross ice cliffs, or go fishing for 2 fish (replaces your player action).  The first player to get all 3 of his meeples to different Russian settlements wins.  The game is designed for 2-4 players, and whilst it will work for any of these levels, 3 players probably works best, as you can still plan a bit in advance, but there is enough trying to screw the others over to make it fun.

So in summary we have a nice game here, with tactical depth, yet easy to learn, family friendly and well made and presented, recommended.

Dreadball - Female Corporation Team, Helder and Rico

Another Dreadball team is now finished, this time the Female Corp team, which represent a different 'style' of human team, which has less guards and relies more on the jacks.  I've yet to have a game with them, but on paper the standard male team looks more to my liking, but we will see.  As always with my Dreadball figures these have been given a coat of varnish to help them survive being handled during play.

Also I've finished the last two MVP's from the season two package, Rico van Dien and Anne-Marie Helder.

Dreadball Third Shipment - Mantic Drops The Ball

I've finally received my final package from the Dreadball Kickstarter run by Mantic Games, and well I'm afraid I have to report a lot of problems.

I received a letter with my package explaining that my season 3 rulebook and season two upgrades had been delayed due to them being more popular than expected.  Mantic seemed to imply it didn't matter as I had an electric copy of the rules that I could use, besides the fact that I had ordered the physical book right at the start of the campaign as I don't like electronic rulebooks.  It's a let down not to get something I ordered and paid for over a year ago.

My missing Z'zor jack.... 5 months later.

 

Then on top of this one of the extra MVP's that I'd ordered that wasn't highlighted as missing, in fact was missing.  I tried messaging mantic via kickstarter a couple of days ago and no-one has as yet bothered to respond.  I had missing pieces from my last shipment too and it's getting frustrating now.

A few of the new MVP's

 

In the end all this adds up to the fact that receiving the packing just left me feeling annoyed, and didn't leave me that that happy feeling that a large box of minis is supposed to leave you with.  I begrudge Mantic for taking this from me.

It's not all doom and gloom though, at least a lot of what I have got is very good.  First off the biggest item in the package is the new 'Ultimate' board which is a kind of giant mouse mat.  It looks and feel fantastic and I'm now very excited about the deadzone mat made from the same material. 

On the whole the miniatures are much better this time as well, sharpness has gone up and flash has gone down.  There's still a couple of duds but overall the sculpting quality has improved as well, with the Teratons easily stealing the show,  I can't wait to get them painted and playing Dreadball.  The nameless team are interesting as well, although their inability to stand unaided proves that the optional bases weren't really optional. 

Dreadball is still a great game, and I've got around 60 new figures to paint, I just wish Mantic would get their act together a bit more and actually send me what I've ordered.

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Republic

 The Collection - Click to Enlarge

 

A quick look at another part of my star wars miniatures collection today, this time the army of the republic from the time of the prequel trilogy, concentrating mainly on the clone wars.  This is an army of three parts; The Jedi, the Clones and native troops (wookies, gungans, etc). 

 

The Jedi are clearly the coolest part, with many named Jedi all with unique special rules, but also some non-uniques you can field many of, including the awesome Jedi weapon masters.  The basic clones unfortunately are not good to play with, way overcosted for their 10HP and def13, which is a real shame.  Not all clones are created equal however and the clone commandoes are very powerful and for a while were a very successful tournament squad for me.

One disappointment with the Republic army is the lack of interesting large pieces, the couple of small skimmers are just dull and a bit ineffective.  In the end though it's really all about playing with the Jedi, and that's always fun.

 The many faces of the Jedi

Beware the Wookies

40K: Sternguard Veterans & Plague Marines

With all the new Space Marines goodies coming out I couldn't resist adding a new squad to my army.  After much deliberation I bought a box of the new Sternguard Veterans.  It's a really great box with lots and lots of extra pieces that you won't be able to use on this squad alone, but will be great for blinging up a lot of other squads in your army.  It's still a little bit overpriced, but the models are nice.

I've also got my hands on the new Codex: Space Marines, which I'm very, very, impressed with.  It's the best codex I've ever seen (and I have quite an extensive collection)  The background section really looks at the space marines as a whole for the first time and the new rules are interesting as well, I love the idea of chapter tactics and need to decide which of the first founding chapters my chapter will be descended from.

I've also finished a squad of 6 plague marines for my chaos space marine army.  These are older versions of the models I think and the squad comes with two plasma guns.  I've been a bit scared of painting them, but I think they've come out OK in the end.  These are also the first non-Alpha Legion troops in my chaos space marine army.

Dreadball: Robot Team, MVP's and Coaches

With season 3 of Dreadball due to drop through the mailbox any day now I decided it was about time I got a move on and did some more work on some of the season 2 teams.  What we have here is the robot team which I'm looking forward to playing.  The team starts the game as 6 jacks, but can transform into strikers and guards as the game goes on, it's an interesting sounding mechanic.  I've painted the team in a basic bronze scheme that was quick and easy to do and I think gives a nice almost 'steampunky' feel.

Below we have two of the MVP's from season 2, on the left is 'Gabe' who is from penny arcade and the robot 'Firewall'.

 

 

And finally 4 coaches.  This is a great pack with 4 really characterful models, 'Orcy' is my favourite.  Unfortunately the coat of varnish that I apply to all my Dreadball minis to help them survive the rigours of play has spoilt the paint job's slightly.

 

Airfix 1:76 WW2 German Reconnaissance Set

 

I was off work sick last week and wanted a quick little project to keep myself busy, I came back from the model shop with this WW2 1:76 scale German Reconnaissance set from Airfix.  The set contains 3 infantry figures, two of which are unfortunately the same and two vehicles.  The vehicles are a Kubelwagen car and the highlight of the set which is a SD.KFZ.222 armoured car.  It's a good little set and I enjoyed assembling and painting it.

 

40K - Space Marine Land Raider & Techmarine

A couple of new additions to my space marine army today, a Land Raider and an attendant techmarine.  My copy of the new Codex: Space Marines arrived yesterday as well, obviously I've not managed to read it all yet, but it looks really good, possibly the best codex yet produced, in terms of the production values, art, background and what seems to be an interesting, yet still balanced, army list.  It wasn't cheap, but I'm really impressed.  Hopefully I'll post some more detailed thoughts in a couple of days.

 

I'm A Winner!

There's been quite a few competitions going on recently around the blogosphere, and after having entered a lot of them I've finally won one.  I'm now the proud owner of 'The British airship at war, 1914-1918'.  I've only had a quick flick through so far but it looks really interesting.

I've been interested in airships as long as I can remember, which is probably due to having lived in the shadow of the old Royal Airships Works, near Cardington, Bedford, for most of my life.  These two 'sheds' are absolutely huge and dominate the countryside for miles around.  The famous R101 airship was built there.

Anyway thanks to Edwin at Thoughts of a Depressive Diplomatist and a recommendation that you check put his blog too.

The hangars at Cardington as seen from my village