Lestrades_Game

 My posts fell off in the latter part of the year. So here are some end of year posts   The year in historical games   Blackpowder (Epic Waterloo set & some 28mm Zulu wars) This is probably my game of the year. A new fella started attending our club and had painted his entire starter set +. I felt I should play a game with him and that spiralled into about 10. This isn’t the Napoleonic simulation to end all others. Warlord games are action orientated and use the mechanics you know and love with a few twists. It does perform quite well despite all that, skirmishers are required for screening French columns, big cav charges are a huge gamble and the command and control mechanics make coordinating attacks challenging. If I was to critique its historical qualities I could argue with some aspects of the randomness but I think the bigger thing is reserves. I am not sure holding reserves helps much in this game. As a game this rocks. I have ME/CFS and sometimes w...

  The year in Sci-Fi and Fantasy Games   Battletech Classic and Alphastrike This is mostly workshop games through most of the year but for me Battletech beat the evil empire out in 2025. I only played three games of Battletech and one of Alpha Strike, all were a good time. Battletech has all the box checking appeal of naval games with Sci Fi trimmings. Classic is a little slow but has the major advantage of being very different from most modern skirmish games. In an era saturated with entertainment being different matters. Both forms of Battletech emphasize facing which is also unusual in modern games. Somethings were better in the 80s.   Warhammer the Old World I have played around 20-25 games of Old World. I really loved my first ten games and since then have soured on it a lot. The start of 2025 patch was much needed and definitely improved the game. I think I have realised a few things about myself playing Old World. I enjoy crunchy games but I hate having...

I've been slowly building up a Russian fleet using Three Decks 1/2400 miniatures. I've had most of the Japanese fleet for some time, but used them against the Chinese for Sino-Japanese war or against my French fleet for no compelling historical reason. I picked up Broadside And Salvo from Long Face Games (David Manley) as a shorter form quicker rule set. The other rules I have copies of (Tsushima A&A rules designs) and Fire When Ready (also David Manley) require quite a lot of prep getting together box checking sheets for each ship.  Typically this is 20-120mins work depending on whether I've got the research done. For Broadside and Salvo a battleship is a battleship, an armoured cruiser an armoured cruiser. All ships of a class have identical stats and no box checking sheet. Damage is split into four grades which ships move up or down with repair and damage.   This means I only need an ORBAT for my scenario, and a few markers.   Hopefully we will return to...

I have complained on a few occasions about the random movement in TooFatLardies games and the die roll for actions mechanics in DBX style games. It's not that I think that random movement is wrong or bad or that random activations are bad but in both cases the range of results can seem to wild. In Chain of Command vehicles can sometimes seem like they are driven by learner drivers, surging forward one turn, stalling out the next. In DBA Hannibal can have a brain wave one turn and forget to move both flanks on the next. The story of the battle in my mind hits the record player stopping sound effect and I feel irritated on these occasions. With that in mind I want to talk about Winter Hammer. I played a Winter Hammer scenario at Ferret Con in Sheffield a few weeks back. This is a ruleset by Nordic Weasel for the Finnish - Soviet Winter War. I have not read the rules, only played Tom's excelent game set in a ~brigade level action south of Lake Lagoda in the intitial soviet of...

 I painted up a 28mm collection of Late Romans and Goths / Early Saxons a year or two ago for Saga. Having played about 5 games of Saga I realised I hated it. It is a very clever and imaginative ruleset, but far to gamey and historically dubious for my tastes so onto eBay those books and fancy dice go. The armies assemble either side of a stream I had picked up Dan Mersey's Osprey rule set Dux Bellorum on the cheap some time ago, so I decided to upscale my armies and sabot base them for some rank and flank. The Goth infantry line My Romans army is roughly 100 figures from a mix of manufacturers. In metal I have Footsore cavalry, some Gripping beast characters and some Foundry manabalistas. In plastic they are gripping beast and Victrix. The Victrix are more detailed and more dynamic and I like the Victrix heads alot. But they break really easily and are hard to rank up because they are all flailing their limbs around. The Gripping Beast and exaggerated sculpts, not quite heroic sca...

  I’ve not successfully blogged in a while, mostly due to excessive miniature painting. I will post some of the years progress in a post soon.   Generally speaking I have not had much luck with 3d prints. Some have had poor detail, others wrong scale, others rather fragile. The only 3d prints I’ve bought that have been great was my Man-O-War fleet. It cost me £30 off Ebay for a 1000pt dark elf fleet and it’s been a blast to play with. The perfidious Brets approach my glorious dragon fleet   Man-O-War was released by GW in the 1990s, it was one of their shorter run base game plus a few expansions then done products and it is very much a game of its time. Its best and worst features are typical of 80s and 90s games.   Avast ye surly dogs!   Broad brush Man-O-War is a very traditional naval game. Your fleet will have 5-10 ships in a typical game, you have a basic system for determining wind direction, which influences sail movement. Your ships have tu...