#Osprey Wargames

[crusabre96]

Finished the gate for Gaslands after, was a rushed job but I didn't feel like putting a lot of effort into it, given it would only come out for one scenario.

[corvidous]

Taught my roommate how to play Dragon Rampant last night! Dwarves vs undead, a real slugfest and down to the wire, but eventually his heavy cavalry were able to secure the evil Litch's phylactery and return it to its resting place within the ancient necropolis of White Mountain. (Mole of Ukkert scenario, which reskinned beautifully for this game.)

The undead rule of rounding up hits was very neatly cancelled out here by the fact that the undead have courage 0, his skeletons stayed up until it was time for them to rout, while my dwarves took a frankly embarrassing number of Battered markers. His Litch was a unit of heavy missiles with Enchanted weapons, which he did succeed the roll for, presumably with his phylactery under threat the evil lord of the dead was bringing his A game, and it did make a difference, hitting on 4s and rerolling misses meant his spells were truly fearsome. Since we were playing on the kitchen table which is like 5.5'x3.25' we reduced the distance between units to 1" and also we houseruled that you can ignore your first failed activation roll of the turn, which is a rule I've had recommended to me by knowledgeable friends and has proven quite a good one. Overall it was an excellent teaching game. Evenly matched, fairly diverse unit selection, swung significantly back and forth, and both of us got some really effective and some really ineffective moments with our units. Also overall I think I showed off one of the prime strengths of Dragon Rampant: the opportunity to come up with little story reasons for things. Your Lich didn't "fail his Shoot activation," he straight up cooked like 4 heavy infantry last turn, he needs to recharge! My light infantry are failing to move half the time because they're stupefied by the evil aura of this phylactery they're carrying. Your skeletons aren't routing, they're crumbling away as the magic animating them has taken too much stress at one time, presumably the last one crumbled just in time for my last dwarf's swing of his big two handed axe to miss so he did a comedic little spin from the momentum. Making it a fun story rather than a sheer mechanical "oh your guy failed to activate because you didn't roll a 6+ on 2d6." Turning what could be a system weakness into a strength solely based on approaching the game with a fun attitude.

[tzekkaz]

Unboxing: Various historical wargames

Recently I ordered a number of historical wargames as I figured it is my thing now, fantasy and science fiction wargaming just does not appeal to me now. Some of the rulebooks I ordered were updates or new editions of rulebooks I already own, these are Hail Caesar second edition, Saga 2.5 and Swordpoint. Others are rules completely new to me such as Lion Rampant, L'art de la Guerre and Milites Mundi. I will go into more detail about these games once I have had chance to read them and hopefully try them out.

Hail Caesar is produced by Warlord Games and came with a resin model of King Richard I 'the Lionheart' and a free sprue of Imperial Roman Auxiliaries. Of my numerous purchases of wargames Hail Caesar is probably my favourite for value for money as when I ordered it it was on sale and I had enough points from Warlord games' reward scheme to get a £35 game for less the £20. I already own a copy of first edition, second edition seemed like a natural choice, I had held off buying it for sometime

The second game on my recently bought list is Saga 2.5, from Studio Tomahawk, the book is an update of the second edition rulebook rather than a completely new edition. The FAQs have been folded into the rulebook thus taking away the need to carry a handful of printed pages.

The third rulebook in my list of new editions and updated rulebooks I needed was the Swordpoint from Gripping Beast. The second edition has been out for a while now and been on my to buy wishlist for nearly as long. When second edition was released Gripping Beast provided a free document that allowed players to carry on using their first edition rulebook, this document was very long with the adjustments to the rules, I caved in in the end and replaced my second edition document with a second edition rulebook.

The first of the completely new to me rulebooks is Lion Rampant. produced by Osprey Publishing. I ordered the book through Amazon and the book arrived through the letterbox with an ominous thud! Thank you amazon man for putting a dent in the back of my nice new hardback rulebook.

Next up is Onyx editions game L'art de la Guerre. The book has a nice piece of art on the cover and what I have read of it is a good solid ruleset.

The final rulebook is Gripping Beasts Milites Mundi which is designed for smaller scale models using the Swordpoint mechanics.

Anyway that is all for now, in the future I shall go into more detail with each one.

Stay safe

Happy hobbying!

[whovian223]

First Look - Undaunted: Normandy app on Steam

First Look - Undaunted: Normandy (Alpha) app on Steam by Bookmark Games @djackthompson @trevormbenjamin @OspreyGames

Undaunted: Normandy is a wargame/card game combination designed by the excellent designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin. It was published in 2019 by Osprey Games and I actually wrote about how excited I was when it was first announced. Then I never bought it. I think it was mostly the lack of opponents. During the pandemic lockdown, I went ahead and bought the second iteration, Undaunted:…

[oldschoolfrp]

"If you have any photographs of Orcs, Dragons, Monsters, or Dungeon Dwellers of any nation, particularly photos of Dungeon locations, why not share them with us and help make Squadron/Signal's books all the more interesting and complete in the future."

From Down in the Dungeon by Don Greer and Rob Stern, Squadron/Signal Publications, 1981. Squadron/Signal usually published books about historic military aircraft, ships, armored vehicles, or army units, many illustrated by Don Greer. Similar to Osprey Publishing's classic volumes, these were invaluable for history buffs, model builders and wargamers researching specific niche topics. Down in the Dungeon was presented as a similar nonfiction study of dungeon exploration, including that parody of the request for photos included at the beginning of all their historical volumes:

"If you have any photographs of aircraft, armor, soldiers or ships of any nation, particularly wartime snapshots, why not share them with us and help make Squadron/Signal's books all the more interesting and complete in the future."

[open-hearth-rpg]

#RPGCovers Week Ten Rolemaster series (1985 on) Angus McBride

In my youth, there was a cohort of players about five years older than me, some of them part of my sister’s crew and others just among the rabble at the game shop. There was a certain kind of “elitism” to what folks played. When Champions came along, Villains & Vigilantes became passe for example. Rolemaster, in its original incarnation of heavy stock parchment booklets and glossy magazine-style supplements, was one of those. It was the fantasy rpg the cool, older kids played. 

And throughout high school it was what I gravitated towards, giving up on AD&D entirely for the more rarified air of RM (ironically paired with Harn, but that’s another story). Rolemaster at that point was a weird set of printings and editions, a mess which looked incoherent and made it hard to tell folks exactly what they actually needed to buy.

Then in 1985 Iron Crown Enterprises consolidated everything into a set of books with a standard cover design and unified art. These became the standard for years (if you ignore the layout and design of the weird Rolemaster Companions). What really pull them together, beyond the book design, was McBride. 

Angus McBride had already been doing Middle Earth RPG covers for years. They were all great. Before that he’d been an illustrator for various Osprey Men-at-Arms series, bridging that gap between wargaming grognards and role-players. These RM were great because we got to see repeating, iconic characters– kind of a first I think. I don’t know that we’d had other games with recurring figures and an implied story. 

The first three books: Character Law & Campaign Law, Arms Law & Claw Law, and Spell Law used them effectively. Plus you could now buy a box that had all of them bundled together. Ten years later, ICE would reuse these images with a new cover design for their Rolemaster Standard System, with a few new books with new illustrations by McBride that sort of fit in with the existing story and sort of didn’t make any sense (see Creatures & Monsters). But as Rolemaster began to crash and go through multiple editions and changes, they lost control of their cover designs, leading to an absolute chaos that, ironically, felt more like first edition’s mess.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: Zombies and Interesting Reference Material

Okay. I’m going to blame the Sing Halloween short for this; I just ran across some clips on YT a few days ago.

But I really do think that the response to a zombie invasion - especially after all the books and movies that have been made! - would be a lot less panicked screaming, and a lot more, “Seriously...? Okay, time to break out the crazy.”

Because if you’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, it’s definitely time to get crazy.

Different people, of course, would break out Crazy in different ways. Preppers would be forting up, sniping, or both - and there are a surprising number of urban preppers. Enough for there to be a decent variety of books on it on Amazon!

SFF fans? A lot of them have or can improvise weapons, and going to conventions/ Pennsic-style events means plenty of people have a basic grasp on food, clothing, and shelter needs. And how and why barricades work.

And anyone who’s studied history at all is going to be opening an epic can of crazy, because we have millennia of humans trying everything from the mildly odd to the brain-breaking berserk to stay alive and in one piece.

The problem, for the writer, is digging deep into enough crazy to build your story, and move past the “OMG everyone’s going to die!” too many horror movies have inflicted on us. Because that is not how humans really act. Everyone is not going to die.

Which means you want the history of war. Something humans may have been practicing since the dawn of time, if we’ve read various Neolithic sites right. But most of us are writers, not historians. Sure, we can do research; but it takes a long, long time, knowing how to use the right keywords, and no little luck. (Especially if you’re trying to search for books on Amazon. I am still grumpy that searching for historical information on oni kept turning up Celtic fae romances.)

So how to get that history into useful, bite-sized chunks?

I’m going to recc’ one particular publisher as a place to start, because I have used their books a lot over the years. Osprey Publishing started out making info books for wargamers, which they still do, but they soon branched out into making more general books on specific bits of history, like a war, a vehicle, or a group of combatants. They’re short books, most under 50 pages, with plenty of full-color illustrations and no few maps and diagrams. They give you concise, interesting info on one limited subject. And that info has all kinds of names, dates, and other terms you can use to make more specific searches on your own. I wouldn’t use them as my sole history source. But if you need a general overview, or a place to start? Good books to check.

A few of the ones I found just recently:

Mukden 1905: Russia and Japan's Battle for Manchuria (Campaign, 413) by John Valitutto, Johnny Shumate.

I suspect this would be very helpful for cold-weather zombie battles, and how to handle rushes without heavy artillery backup.

Nile River Gunboats 1882–1918 (New Vanguard) by Angus Konstam.

...Yeah, I’m seeing how to handle zombies in the Mississippi, here. Or a lot of other rivers.

War Elephants (New Vanguard, 150) by Konstantin Nossov.

For when the zookeepers get in on the Crazy and try to survive.

Armored Trains (New Vanguard, 140).

AKA exactly what you’d need for fans of Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress to pull off their own brand of crazy.

Go forth, and break the zombie hordes!

[nightbringer24]

There’s a new Osprey Publishing Combat book coming out: Teutonic Knight vs Lithuanian Warrior during the Lithuanian Crusade 1283 to 1435. That’s a topic I’m quite interested in.

There’s also a new Weird World War One skirmish game coming out called A War Transformed. The tagline in the full page advert is:

As the Great War raged, the moon fell from it’s orbit...

And the subtitle is: WW1 on the Doggerland Front.

Out in August and that really has my interest, especially with the plastic WW1 German and French kits from Wargames Atlantic and their WW1 British kit that is supposed to be coming out at some point.

[kaxenart]

Kaxen and the Continued Mysteries of Blond-ness

@almhw85 replied to your post “@snowv88 replied to your post “For the purposes of...”:

If it can help, we use the word "châtain" in French for the mystery color which you marked with :??? 😉 There are of course different nuances from light to dark. It's also depending on personal appreciation whether someone can be called "blond" or "châtain clair". I'm in this annoying color zone myself 🤣

​....I find it very funny that one online dictionary translates chatain as blonde and another as brown... TRULY THE MYSTERY ZONE.

Though "chestnut" color also comes up and honestly now I am like..... does chestnut color refer to the outside of a chestnut or the inside?

Though since I am a Horse Person, the color of chestnut in my mind is a red-toned brown. Nowhere near Mystery Zone Blonde.

Châtain might cover Lejeune's hair since his hair does appear to have very light highlights to it sometimes, but I am thoroughly baffled the 2012 Versailles Exhibition calls him blonde-blonde.

The only person who draws him unambiguously blond is Patrice Courcelle (and wargame mini painters who copy from Osprey books) and as the man was not alive to see Lejeune in the flesh, it's not entirely useful.

Michel Martin Drolling drew a Lejeune in 1837 and it's not very blond looking either. Why is his hair so curly. IDK.

And now to swing back to Junot. None of these look like blonde to me. The first one being by Isabey circa 1805 means it was done by someone who saw him with his own two eyes.

And now Nic Rouleau. I think at one point someone called his hair a wheat field.

And now to look at hair color swatches for hairdressing.

All the chatain options look like brown to me.... hell, even some of the blond options in the first set of swatches look like brown to me.

DO FRENCH PEOPLE JUST CALL EVERYTHING EXCEPT DARKEST BROWN BLOND?!

And now Arsene.... is that dark blonde or light brown?

[ariesgamesandminis]

Huge restock from Iron Wind Metals for BattleTech is up!

20-235 Partisan Heavy Tank 20-254 Glory Fire Support Vehicle 20-278 Heavy Hover APC (Standard) (2) 20-302 Morrigu Fire Support Vehicle 20-310 Forestry / Forestry MOD Variants 20-333 Chaparral Missile Tank (2) 20-337 Thor "Summonor" Prime 20-344 Flashfire FLS-P5 20-382 Heavy LRM Carrier 20-403 JES II Strategic Missile Carrier 20-406 Preta C-PRT-O Invictus 20-411 Deva C-DVA-O Invictus 20-439 Dart DRT-3S / DRT-4S 20-444 Atlas II AS7-D-H 20-455 Plainsman Hover Tank (2) 20-459 Vedette Medium Tank (Ultra) (2) 20-5019 Kestrel VTOL 20-5028 Osprey OSP-26 20-5061 Osteon Prime 20-5082 Gyrfalcon (Standard) 20-5101 Gunsmith CH11-NG 20-5102 Eyrie (Standard) 20-5106 Tiburon 20-5111 Night Stalker NSR-K3 20-5150 Anubis ABS-5Y 20-5178 Quickdraw QDK-8P 20-5193 Hierofalcon Prime / A 20-5198 Atlas AS7-D-H / H2 20-5208 Amarok Standard 20-616 Grand Titan TIT-N10M 20-622 Nightsky NGS-4S 20-682 Komodo KIM-2 20-693 No-Dachi NKA-1K 20-713 Slayer Fighter SL-15 20-723 Warrior Helicopter H-7 20-727 Karnov UR Transport 20-749 Goblin Infantry Support Vehicle (2) 20-755 Spartan SPT-N2 20-761 Devastator DVS-2 20-763 Maelstrom MTR-5K 20-772 Caesar CES-3R 20-783 J. Edgar Hover Light Tank (2) 20-788 Sentinel STN-3L 20-800 Hex Bases (4) 20-822 Demolisher Tank 20-847 Awesome AWS-9Q 20-865 Commando COM-2D 20-872 Quickdraw QKD-4G 20-885 Hermes II HER-2S 20-901 Trebuchet TBT-5N 20-904 O-Bakemono OBK-M10 20-983 Mad Cat Mk II 99-201 Large Flat Top Hex Base #1 99-202 Large Flat Top Hex Base #2 99-203 Extra Large Flat Top Hex Base AC-006 Flight Base AC-011 Flight Base Thin Wire (.047) BT-001 Orc Protomech BT-004 Afreet Battle Armor BT-005 Grenadier Battle Armor BT-007 Rottweiler Battle Armor BT-008 Void Battle Armor BT-020 Leopard CV BT-023 Overlord BT-028 Cavalier Battle Armor BT-029 Sloth Battle Armor BT-030 Sylph Battle Armor BT-031 Infiltrator MK 2 BT-065 Minigun Cycle BT-068 Trinity (Asterion) Battle Armor BT-074 Corsair Micro Fighter BT-096 Stuka Micro Fighter BT-097 Chippewa Micro Fighter BT-110 Sholagar Micro Fighter BT-114 Sparrowhawk Micro Fighter BT-118 Shilone Micro Fighter BT-128 Tornado Battle Armor BT-133 Corona Battle Armor BT-134 Gray Death Legion Battle Armor BT-187 Djinn Battle Armor BT-189 Kobold Battle Armor BT-198 Tengu Battle Armor BT-199 Asura Md. Battle Armor BT-200 Shedu Assault Battle Armor BT-201 Nephilim Assault Battle Armor BT-207 Delphyne ProtoMech BT-209 Se'irim Medium Battle Armor BT-222 Tau Wraith BT-223 Tau Zombie BT-224 Heavy Jump Infantry BT-237 Recon Infantry BT-238 VTOL Infantry BT-239 Jump Support Infantry BT-245 Heavy Infantry - Firing BT-260 Sprint Scout VTOL BT-297 Ares ARS-V1A Hera BT-299 Ares ARS-V1C Aphrodite BT-320 Tracked APC BT-321 Hover APC BT-364 Gabriel Hovercraft BT-370 Kurita Infantry (3) BT-372 Savannah Master Hovercraft BT-373 Centaur Protomech BT-374 Roc Protomech BT-376 Minotaur Protomech BT-381 Basic Inner Sphere Battle Armor (3) BT-383 Longinus Battle Armor (3) BT-384 Achileus Battle Armor (3) BT-388 Salamander Battle Armor (3) BT-391 Fenrir Battle Armor (1) BT-408 Loki II A BT-413 Marauder Battle Armor BT-425 Uziel UZL-8S BT-427 Balac Strike VTOL (Standard) & (LRM) BT-436 Buraq (Standard) Battle Armor BT-460 Saxon APC Standard / Laser / HQ BT-470 Sojourner C BT-476 Ares ARS-V1E Apollo FT-015 Lynx LNX-9C OP-060 Masakari H Right Arm Tripod Six Pack

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[thegaminggang]

November Brings Battalion: War of the Ancients from Osprey Games - https://thegaminggang.com/game-news/november-brings-battalion-war-of-the-ancients-from-osprey-games/...

[crusabre96]

Decided to spend a few hours painting the two remaining Gaslands vehicles I had under my desk, felt like painting something to stressed and these two felt like the perfect things to work on, below is a photo of them prior to being painted and after.

[corvidous]

Anyway play Xenos Rampant, everybody. Play Frostgrave, play Forbidden Psalm, play The Doomed, play Rebels & Patriots, play Saga, play Swordpoint, play Dragon Rampant, play Planet28, OPR, Silver Bayonet, something, goddamn. I could keep listing more!

There are SO many good tabletop miniatures games out there that you could be playing, most of them even let you use your existing collections of GW minis if you want. Stop giving Games Workshop your fucking money.

[owlbear33]

Malifaux is very much still around, or at least the website and web store are still up, and I can find at least some stuff in UK online retailers

but as with so many games finding other people to play with may be a challenge unless you can get some friends into it at the same time

and ordering online may be the only way to get miniatures if there's no local local community

the big wargame outside of anything GW is Infinity (from Corvus Beli), it's very tournament-focused, crunchie (although they have released a new lighter ruleset - I've not read it), it's less wacky than 40k, more of a near future (though not that near) sci-fi

Frostgrave looks pretty cool, it's a game about wizards (with a band or mercenaries) exploring a frozen ruined city (Published by Osprey it's mini-agnostic ish, Northstar Minis does produce an official range) and Oprey publish a whole bunch of mostly Mini-agnostic games

TT Combat make a pair of wargames in a shared sci-fi setting, one (dropzone commander) is a 10mm scale big army game, the other a space fleet combat type game

what are the best tabletop wargames that are not warhammer/warhammer 40k? i played a bunch of warhammer 40k back in high school, and i'd like to get a feel for alternate approaches to the genre.

[dimestorehobby]

Change of Pace

Don't want to get too saturated with Dust.

It's been a minute since I played Dragon Rampant, so I'm going to slap together some forces over the next couple of days, hopefully get to play before the week is out.

[misternizz]

New Woodland Army for Oathmark

New Woodland Army for Oathmark

Fauns from Wargames Atlantic. Plastic, painted. My new Woodland Army for Oathmark and other fantasy mass combat games. I play Oathmark, not as much as I’d like, but I’m finding the stuff that I once considered useless detail — building armies and statting them and the point costs and such, are actually becoming interesting. I really wanted to balance the cooler armies (for me, Oathbreaker undead…