Saturday, 27 January 2018

Castles and more castles

Not posted for a while due to illness but will hopefully post a few times over the nest few days and  get back to sheffield wargames society to start gaming again this week . We have just spent a week in Wales the land of Castles (we even stayed in one ,although it was a victorian one ) so below are a few we visited .Caernarfon is home to the Welch fusiliers museum which I will cover in aleter post .
Denbigh Castle

Beaumaris ,one of Edwards big 4 in Wales





Conwy another of the big 4 




Caernarfon my favourite of the big 4 





Harlech ,last of the Edwards main 4 strongholds and the inspiration for the famous song 






Rhuddian

Bodalwyddan ,our home for the week 


Bodalwyddan was home to a training trench system during WW1 which has been rebuilt but was sadly closed during our visit 

Wednesday, 27 December 2017

Dr Who Exterminate -review





Each Christmas my partner Elaine always surprises me with a new game or army ,this year she has bought me the Warlord Games /BBC Dr Who game and a few add on boxes as well. I have always collectd the various un licensed Dr Who figures the best coming from crooked dice games and Heresey miniatures in my opinion .Earlier this year Warlord game purchsed the license for a miniatures game and most of the unlicensed stuff dispered under threat of legal action I guess as the license must have cost fortune, also Warlord have gone to 32mm size so you cant mix in the other ranges.

So the game itself ,comes in a sturdy colourful box with all the tokens ,dice etc plus a paper 3ft x 3ft double sided play mat and 24 plastic figures ,12 Daleks and 12 cyber men ,the first down side is no major characters ,yes no Doctors. The plastic figures though are nice and do snap together and come off the sprues very easily . Three books are included ,the basic rules covering the 2 starter sides , the guide to the time vortex which has guides tocreating factions plus a number of scenarios ,finally the adventures bookwhich brings into play the Doctor his companions and allies. This is a card driven game so coomes with adventure cards ,recruitment (stat) cards and combat cards ,there are also cards for races that are not included with the bsic game (see below)
all the goodies i received

the sprues in the main game

I also rrcieved 2 large expansion sets , Davros and the Daleks and Missy and the cybermen .Basically in each box you get the relevent sprues repeated from the main game plus Missy or Davros depending on the set plus some more faction cards .The Missy and Davros are white metal and are quite nice .


Now for the Doctors I recieved 2 5 figure box sets ,one for the 10th Doctor and 4 of his companions ,Rose ,Wilfred ,Donna and Martha . Then a similier set for the 12th Doctor ,Capladis pose is a bit strange apparently based on a poster the companions are clara , Madam Vastra ,Jenny & strax. The quality of these metal miniatures is bit hit and miss and lots of flash which I don't think is acceptable these days .Next were 2 more boxes of Dr Who's this time in resin and the quality is great first set includes the 1st 4th and repeat of the 10th (different pose) the 2nd box includes the 5th ,11th and 12th Drs ( aggain adifferent much better pose) .There was also aresin K-9 .No cards come with these ,some are in the main box others are down loadable from the warlord site. Another gripe is the fact that the metal figures come on a rather nice mtal base with the name of the character on it ,the plastic and resin come with flatplastic bases so tghe metals are slightly taller. The packagingof these sets is very nice and includes auseful blue box for the figures to stay in.




The interior packing case 

Some of the excess flash can be seen on the 12th Doc





The last 2 packs were sets of 3 of each of Zygons and Judoon , overall everything looks ok quite different standard between sets .I will post more after my first game and after painting some of these.




Thursday, 14 December 2017

Sheffield Wargames Society

Managed to get out last night and had a game of the Battle of Britain board game ,real fun ,this time I played the luftwaffe made the same mistakes as John did last time and was blown out of the sky .A few weeks ago ,the club had its AGM where all the committee were re-elected with out challenge a sign I think that the club is now settled and happy after a very bad period in our history .There was great turn out for the AGM with a little arguing and some very strange requests and a few heated debates but that shows people want to take part , and it all ended very friendly .we have getting on 50 members now and a good weekly turn out ,at one point last night there was 28 people involved in 9 games ,not bad so close to christmas in bad weather as well .We meet at Woodseats Working Mens club , the Dale S8 0PS we meet every wednesday and also put on some full day games the next one is the 27th Dec starting at 12 noon ,pop in and see why we are back at the top again .
The Luftwaffe come to a sticky end over England -Tally Ho Bandits and all that

come and join us 

Saturday, 2 December 2017

York Army Museum

I have not done much gaming or painting over the last few weeks due to the loss of my Brother and now an awful eye infection ,however did get chance to visit this lovely little museum in York , Dedicated to the Royal dragoon Guards and the Yorkshire Regiment its a well laid out and informative place to visit ,highly reccomended.








Wednesday, 8 November 2017

Battle of Britain board game -first game

If you have read my earlier posts about the disgusting kickstarter run by plasticsoldier company you will not be surprised that things have got worse ,the non exsitant quality control used on this game continues as anumber of errors in the rule book have now surfaced and to show utter contempt for their backers PSC have now released the game at retail cheaper than backers paid for it with all the "exclusive kickstarter only items" thrown in for free ?.

Having eventually recieved the game I ran it out at Sheffield Wargames Society last night and it is very good ,nice easy game play ,fun but with a lot of tension we played 2 player and got to a finish in 3 hours , a definate 10 out of 10 for game play .Im not sure it will last many outings the quality of some of the card items is doubtful .The game recieved a lot of comments and interest from SWGS members with lots of interest in the game but disgust at the quality of the plastic aircraft ,such a shame really this could have been a fantastic product .Playing again next week now we have the rules under our belt so a more in depth game report to follow.
the shape of things to come -the dice were not kind to the RAF

John rejoices in the Luftwaffe victory 

Saturday, 4 November 2017

Cheap Acrylic Paints

Called in at the Range today and always on the look out for cheap supplies saw a range of Acrylic paint so bought four and just tried them they are very good ,I have used them on top of Vallejo and then used a army painter ink wash on top with no issues , not a massive range but at £1.25 for a 59ml bottle ( the vallejo size bottle is 17ml ) you make quite a saving on your basic colours .well worth a look

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

AVP

Another game of AVP ,really great fun with the tension high till thelast turn ,brilliant fun but tactical and easy to pick up great club game .




ooops