From the Archives 1

The other day, I was digging through old cases and boxes of long-neglected miniatures. And I came across a couple of highlights from the past that I thought I'd share.

My hobby youth was spent in Games Workshop, primarily playing Warhammer 40,000. When I went to University, the local GW was a pokey little place and unwelcoming to slightly more mature gamers as well as being away from my close-knit group of gaming friends. The Uni gaming club wasn't appealing either, they seemed to solely play 40K, often unpainted and on ramshackle terrain while I've always been one for the spectacle of fully-painted forces and nice terrain.

I eventually stumbled across the excellent Patriot Games in Sheffield, who were starting to stock some exciting new wargames ranges. I was most taken with the awesome sculpts of the fantasy skirmish game Confrontation by a French company, Rackham. I could have been tempted by half of the numerous  factions and spent hours agonising over the well-stocked ranges. Eventually, I went very out of character and bought the Orcs faction. This was quite a step outside of my comfort zone, having played Imperial Guard and Empire in Warhammer (looking back, I probably always was going to end up a historical gamer...).

This is my version of Dayak, one of the commanders from the Trackers of Bran-o-Kor box. While most people were following the Rackham style and experimenting with non-metallic metal, I stuck with my trusty metallics.





As well as a growing group in Patriot Games, Conf had a great community setup around a number of national 'confederations', including the UKCORD, which is still going in a different form.

Rackham also did inventive miniatures like Samurai goblins and Roman Orcs. On the latter, I did a few conversions of other orcs to Roman-ise them. This is one of the ones that came out best: a Brontops rider with a head swap and additional shield, sourced from a 54mm plastic legionary.

Sadly, both of these have taken a few knocks to their paintwork.

Of course Conf went the way of the dodo due to the baffling actions of Rackham, which is sad as some of its iterations were great systems and the miniatures were excellent. The Orcs were a riot to play too, while there was nothing subtle about them, but they were surprisingly competitive given their skills tended to be restricted to hitting things really hard. Eventually, I dabbled in Infinity, Gharak and I dabbled in some short-lived historical projects and more recently I've focused pretty much entirely on historical gaming. But while GW leaves me completely cold, I do still look back on Confrontation with nostalgia.

That's enough nostalgia. Over a family weekend, Gharak and I squeezed in a couple of games of Angels 20, as he's picked up a starter and booster of the second set, Bandits High. This adds the pacific theatre to the original set and here my nippy Japanese duel with his hardy US squadron over a Pacific island.



Sadly, the fragility of the Jap fighters was their downfall, but one again Angels 20 was great fun and perfect for late evening when you've just a little time for something light.

Normal service to be resumed soon - another ten Mahdists have just come off the painting table and another batch on. With Samulus over for a game next weekend, I'm trying to get as much of the Sudan project ready as possible for my first small game of Black Powder. 

Board Game Weekend

Just back from a delightful, if chilly, weekend with the brother. Oddly, we hadn't scheduled any of our usual miniature games, mostly as I was on the train so transporting the necessaries was an issue.

Instead we busted out some board games. The first actually being a miniatures game: Angels 20. Dogfighting with pre-painted 1:150 planes. Its actually really good, a notch or two easier than Wings of War/Glory, but really fun and quick to play through. I liked the hex-based movement and the alternating turn order mean you had to predict where an opponent would end up to line up your shots. Although similar to many Pre-painted plastics, (the rules are almost identical to War at Sea), we agreed it is visually an tactical superior to all the others we've dabbled in.

 We got three games in a couple of hours. So I'd recommend it for something you can pick up and play or for less experienced gamers. Gharak has changed the flight stands to be telescopic, (read more in one of his rare blog posts), which looked ace and meant you could easily tell the altitude level of each plane. 

This poor German fighter actually survived unscathed

Next up was Caylus, a relatively complex Euro game. The theme was building a town and castle and competing for royal favour. It reminded me a lot of Agricola a it has similar man-placement and resource mechanisms. I found it less frustrating than Agricola, I think because you have 6 meeples rather than 2. But I think Agricola is perhaps a slightly better game, due to the challenge (and resulting satisfaction) and the choice of card decks perhaps making it more replayable.

Looks complicated, but surprisingly easy to pick up. 

Finally, a quick one from my collection: Braggart. A quick, humorous card game where you compete to make the most impressive boast of fantasy-world achievements. The art on the cards is good quality and the 'Liar' feature adds fun sabotage to turn great boasts into something quite bizarre and oft hilarious. 

One of my...less impressive feats

Id recommend it fr something quick and fun, but as all of these things I think the replay value is limited. I think D&D players would enjoy it in particular, perfect to start and evening off (or write some quick back story!)

All in all a fun weekend's gaming. At Christmas we hope to resurrect an old
project: side-stepping our Pulp game to a couple of quick weird World War scenarios. The best bit is I've already got all the minis for that and most of them are painted!