A MIGHTY TALE OF WIZARDS, GOBLINS and DRAGONS.

It was a cold dark night. Lightning crashed against the mountain peaks. Then out of the darkness came a hideous site. "OK River it's your turn"..

I've been promising my daughter River a game of "soldiers" for a few weeks now. Finally with Xmas over with I could get the kitchen table cleaned and make a battle field.

I decided to give Bob's rules a go as he kindly sent me a copy to look at. All I can say is we both had a lot of fun. The rules played smoothly and I believe another game or 2 and River should know the rules off by heart.

I started to use a tape measure but soon made a wicky* stick which was a lot easier for River to manage.

So now onto the battle.

The evil Goblin Warlord musters her minions.

Neil's Project Page: The Holy Land - part 2

The Holy land - part 2

This week I thought I would talk more about my basing decision and what effect it has on the gaming value of this army.

When looking in a rule book one of the first things it will tell you is the basing conventions for the rules. This depends a lot on what the rules are trying to represent. Is the set a skirmish set with 10 to 40 figures a side, or is it a battle set with many hundreds a side? This can lead to different basing requirements, but with a little thought and planning figures can be based for both systems.

Let's take the figures of my first unit as an example. The first set of rules I'm going to use will be Lion Rampant. This is a skirmish style set of rules and I will have a force of about 40 figures when I'm finished. The rules recommend that your figures are based individually and formed into a clump around the command figure. Notice that I said recommend. Most modern sets of rules are normally very flexible with basing requirements, and as long as you and your opponent agree most figure basing can be accommodated. I decided to base my figures on 20mm square bases. This allows my to move as a clump for more skirmish style games, but also allows me to rank up for bigger games. Also by using a movement tray when ranked up it aids in movement.

Neil's Project Page: The Holy Land- part 1

The Holy Land - part 1

(Ed. Note: Neil, long time blogger and participant of our PAINT & CHATS, has volunteered to write up a series of articles - Neil's Project Page - where he describes how he goes about tackling new miniatures projects. Everything from force and miniatures selection, basing, and painting, along with all the considerations involved. Here is part one where Neil goes in to the details of his newest project - The Holy Land.)

Starting a new project can be a daunting prospect and also an expensive one. So in the following weeks and months I thought I would go through my projects as I start them (and hopefully) finish them, and share some of my research and the choices I make.

My first project actually happened by chance. The last night at the club I had my first game of Lion Rampant. I had a fun game and agreed to take part in the campaign set in the Holy land in the new year. So here we have 2 ingredients to start our project. 1 a game system I enjoyed, and 2 a campaign setting that sparked my interest. These I believe are the most important points for this project. The rest as we shall see adds more value and sustainability.

So we had a start. Next we needed some miniatures. These came from one of my favourite miniature company's Gripping Beast.