The Kingdom of Rohan Army

I have now completed* my Rohan army.  Much of the hard work was done over a year ago, but true to form I had not quite finished it off.  The last few weeks have seen me get out the heroes and paint them up, complete the Royal Banner and finish a few troops needed to fill out the ranks.

*subject to one more banner bearer

The assembled army

There is still one more piece I need though, and that is a banner bearer to accompany Erkenbrand.  I had originally made this formation with Gandalf beside Erkenbrand, with an eye on a Helms Deep scenario.  But that only goes so far, and also magic in WOTR is a bit of a pain in my view.  Thus a space beside Erkenbrand for a banner bearer.  In the photos Erkenbrand has Eomer's banner bearer and Eomer has Gamling with Royal Banner (even though he is also in the Royal Guard formation).  

When I get around to a new painted banner bearer it will go to Erkenbrand's riders and Eomer will get his back.

The army is made up of:

1. Two companies of Royal Guard on foot, with banner, Hama, Gamling and Theoden.  See link and here.
2. Six companies of Erkenbrand's riders with banner.  See link here.
3. Four copanies of Grimbold's Helmingas
4. Two companies of archers.
5. Four companies of Riders led by Eomer.
6. Treebeard.
7. On the subs bench: Theoden mounted, Erkenbrand and Eomer on foot.

Grimbold's Helmingas I often put in the center with the Royal Guard to hold the middle:

Grimbold's Helmingas

Close up of Grimbold (center) Banner and Hornblower

 The archers pick somewhere with a vantage point and some cover:

The Captain of the Archers, who forgot his bow but brough his pet orc

Eomer on the right flank with his riders:

Eomer and his Rohirrim

Treebeard roams around making a mess:

Treebeard in mid battle contemplation pose

A couple more army shots:

Theres 80 foot and 20 mounted models + Treebeard there

Erkenbrand's Riders

Ever since he charged in with Gandalf beside him to lift the siege of Helms Deep in the nick of time, I have had a soft spot for old Erkies.  Sadly missing from the movies, he has been recreated by GW with his famous red shield, but otherwise looking pretty much like a Rohan Royal Guardsman.

Although Erkenbrand's riders are perhaps not the best use of points in WOTR, I didn't feel my army was quite right without him.  Here he is painted up and with his Rohirrim:

Would like to upgrade the banner bearer, but it is down the list of priorities right now.

Theoden and the Royal Guard

Next on the painting conveyor belt is Theoden foot and mounted.  I got both models (like a lot of my LOTR fellas) from ebay where they are nice and cheap.  Both are from the Two Towers Theoden models that were released.  The Theoden on foot is a superb model, except it seems strangely small alongside the other 28mm Rohan models.

Here is the mounted version:

Snowmane was a challenge with it being all white - I have now worked out a system for painting black, but still to get to grips with getting sufficient shadow into pure white.  Close up:

It is a little known fact that Theoden was actually cross-eyed

And Theoden on foot:

The hair blowing across the face gives this model a great heroic look, in my view:

I have two companies of Royal Guard on foot now.  With Gamling holding the Royal Banner, and Theoden and Hama beside him, I now have the full contingent for War of the Ring (not that I am likely to play it anytime soon!).  Here are the companies:

Next up will be Erkenbrand's riders.

Gamling and the Rohan Royal Banner

Yes, it is true - this is actually a wargaming post!  After weeks of sickness and prevarication, I have actually got into some meaningful hobby activity.  The lack of wargaming posts has been largely my fault with our gaming group going through a board game phase and my hobby output stopping with other things.

Without too much on the hobby table to paint I have decided to finally finish my Lord of the Rings Armies.

Gamling and the Rohan Royal Banner has sat on the shelf for perhaps a year, with the freehand work on the banner itself putting me off ever completing it.  Well complete it I finally did and I am reasonably happy with the banner:

I am now trying to complete the remainder of my Rohan heroes so stay posted for more pictures.

Xia: Legends of a Drift System - Kickstarter Campaign.

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last week. I was sick with hand foot and mouth disease, so the blisters over my hands made it hard to write up any posts. Although it was good for one thing, I managed to re-watch all of Firefly (it didn't take that long as Fox canceled it after 14 episodes), which happens to be one of the best shows in the 'verse. I was prompted to do this after finding out that Xia: Legends of a Drift System's Kickstarter page was live. Despite what it may sound, this is not a racing game, this is a sci-fi which board game designer Cody Miller has been working on for nine years!

Xia: Legends of a Drift System 

The game board after set up

Xia: is described as a 3-4 player sandbox game. It was inspired by the idea of being a small time captain of a small starship (aka: Serenity) and making your way in the universe. Here is the blurb from Board Game Geek:

Xia: Legends of a Drift System is a 3-5 player sandbox style competitive space adventure. Each player starts as a lowly but hopeful captain of a small starship. 

Players fly their ships about the system, completing a variety of missions, exploring new sectors and battling other ships. Navigating hazardous environments, players choose to mine, salvage, or trade valuable cargo. Captains vie with each other for Titles, riches, and most importantly Fame.  

The most adaptive, risk taking, and creative players will excel. One captain will rise above the others, surpassing mortality by becoming Legend!

The aim of the game is to get the most fame points (FP) thus becoming the most famous ship captain. The sandbox style means there is multiple ways of doing this. You can be a trader  become a pirate  an explorer, a minor, a bounty hunter, or a combination.

Drift Systems

The game is set in a 'drift system' which is some kind of outer rim world which has skewed gravity fields making planetary orbits random. The drift system is the only one habitable by man and is called Xia.

The spaceships

A spaceship trading with a planet in Xia

The game comes with 15 spaceship miniatures 3 which are NPC's and 12 which you can buy and use in Xia. There are 3 tiers of ships and all the players start with a tier one ship. These all have names such as the Puddle Jumper. The ship has a certain number of spaces which you can outfit with technology such as engines, guns, missiles and shields. The spaces remaining are used for transporting cargo. All in all this looks like a fun component of the game, designing and upgrading your spaceship.

Here are the components of the game

The Rules and Final thoughts

I have flicked through the PDF rules which you can get from the Kickstarter website. Well to be honest I am not 100% convinced, maybe about 70%. Why so? I guess flying round space, simply mining astroids or trading resources seems a little unexciting to me, although combat seems neat but not a major part. The setting is kind of fun however and the art pretty good but not amazing. I love the idea of piloting my own starship like Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. However in this game it seems that trading, mining etc. are just game mechanics and the theme may not quite overcome that. 

Well I am sceptical, so I won't invest in the Kickstarter. Maybe I will be better off Getting Firefly: the game when it is released. However I am keen to give the game a shot sometime and hopefully be convinced otherwise! 

One of the ships loaded up,
the orange objects are damage markers

Check out the Kickstarter website here. Photos taken from the Kickstarter site. 

Eclipse session - Playing Planta

Last two games nights we have got in two games of Eclipse. It goes along with the current sci-fi theme at the moment. Maybe if we were a more established blog we could call this sci-fi month. For most of the club this is a new game, however in this game we implemented Aliens. To do this fairly we handed out random diplomacy tokens at the start of the game then had the choice of the alien or Terran in that colour. It was a five player game and Chris and I chose the aliens, he got a bit of a doozy, Eridani Empire, and I got Planta. 

I like both these races. People seem to have there problems with both. I however like them because I like the feel of each of these races. The Eridani is the once powerful empire, however are now struggling and in decline. The start with some pretty sweet resources and starting research. However they have 2 less influence which hurts hard later on in the game. The Plantas play like a weed, they multiply fast, getting to explore up to 2 hexs a move, and have 4 rather that 3 colonist ships. However there ships are not very good with bad initiative and less customisable so easy to destroy.

The game in progress, round 4.
I am green.

I managed to secure a good position early on in the game. Spreading fast and I managed to secure a couple of good techs early; improved hull and plasma canon. I mostly had a cruiser heavy fleet, I feel cruisers have an advantage over dreadnoughts, cheeper so you can have better action density when you buy two ships and you can have 4 at a time. Plus there is less to upgrade to get them to a satisfactory level.

I managed to secure the centre hex early on in the game, nice. However for the rest of the game I defended my position rather than move out and attack. I had quite a few battles from those contesting for the centre hex. Some were quite large so we used the over flow tiles to battle on the side. However the lack of initiative was crippling causing some heavy losses before i could even shoot. The shields were very helpful as a protective measure. I managed to win most battles but not without some serious losses.

A middle hex combat pushed to the side.

Sadly we had to cut the game one round short (round 8) due to time constraints. This round was the hardest for me as my focus was mostly on defending the centre hex. Zac playing Terran got behind my only weak point and got a interceptor into my home hex. Perhaps if we played the next round it would have been the end for me and my weeds. I think if I had gone on more of an offensive after taking the middle hex I would have been better off as it would weaken the opponents. However then I would have been open for attack from others. 

Planta player board.

Over all I enjoyed playing Planta, although there lack of initiative and weak ships hurt later in the game. I feel that they probably are a better defensive specie so in that sense I played them ok. However I am sure there are much better strategies out there, 

Photos take from my iPad so not the best quality. See our Eclipse for the iPad review here. 

Star Trek: Attack Wing

I feel like we need to get back to more posts about miniatures. Although this post is not 100% about miniatures it is a step in the right direction. Lately at our games night we have been playing through a D&D campaign and interchanging with boardgames. Last night we played Eclipse, which was pretty darn awesome! So lets look into Star Trek: Attack Wing, WizKids new game using Fantasy Flight Games 'flight path' game mechanic from Star Wars X-Wing.

Star Trek: Attack Wing

I have known about this game for a little while however only just recently looked up the progress. It looks as if they will be able to release this game soon! However is it worth it? I am thinking maybe not. Attack Wing uses the 'Flight Path' game system which was created for Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, which is awesome! However now that I have a decent range of X-Wing models I am not sure spending more to get a game which is similar is a good idea.

Lets have a look at some of the ships!

The ships come pre-painted.

By looking at the bases they seem almost identical to the X-Wing ship design, at a guess I would say they are a similar size to. The Stats seem to be, well, attack, evade, hull and shields. Notice anything familiar to X-Wing?  

A giant pilot card,
over a giant ship!

Some of the symbols seem similar to X-Wing. Perhaps from left to right, evade or bost, target lock, not sure about this one, focus. 

Looks like you attach the captain to your ship

Jean-Luc Picard was an awesome character! 

As I said before, although this game looks pretty cool, I feel it won't have much more to offer than X-Wing. Although I do prefer Star Trek. It seems pretty similar so far. I also feel the other disadvantage is that Star Trek was more about Exploring New Worlds, rather than in space combat, although this does feature a little bit. Where as X-Wing uses specific fighter ships, the theme seems more appropriate. 

I think if I was to get a Star Trek game Star Trek: Fleet Captains (also by WizKids who have the Star Trek license) looks pretty sweet! 

A promo game in progress

It comes with a lot of ships! 

This game by the look of things has more of a Star Trek feel with specific agendas to match the different fleets. It also has a lot of space ships! Where the base set of Attack Wing comes with 3 ships then there are I believe 8 separate ship expansions worth about 20NZD each. 

However on the whole I am excited about trying out Attack Wing some time and maybe if I did not have X-Wing I would buy Attack Wing instead. I will leave you with some pictures of an Attack Wing game in action with a very large set... and my favorite Star Trek intro scene quote...

"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

Feel free to check out some of our X-Wing Miniatures game posts which uses the same 'flight path' game mechanic here.