More Grand Fleets and some Nuts!

After reading through the rulebook for Grand Fleets I decided to pick up the first supplement King and Kaiser. 

For a 64 page supplement it's a little light on the scenarios, only having 6, but it does have around 10 pages of introductory material before all the scenarios that would allow players to expand on the scenarios presented.  To be fair though most scenarios are quite large with anything from 20-60 ships on the table so most scenarios will take up an evening.  So around 6 evenings worth of play for $11AUS is pretty good value if you ask me.  The rest of the book is 26 pages of ship data cards which makes the scenarios easier to just print and play.

Conclusion
I'm pretty happy with what I got.  Production quality is right where you want it with a pdf, nice layout and photos where needed but nothing that will hurt your printer.

My second purchase (third actually as I haven't got More Drums and Shakos in my inbox yet) was the Nuts! supplement The Big Hurt.

For $14US you get around 47 pages (the pdf comes with the maps in a seperate file) and contains 21 linked scenarios.  The book is intended for you to play the US forces and use the Nuts! system to manage the Germans.  However it does make note of how to play both sides if you so wish.  The book follows an unnamed US squad from September 1944 through to February 1945 during their attempt to take and secure the Hϋrtgen forest.  The layout is pretty much what you'd expect from any of the newer Two Hour Wargames publications, the books look sparse and the lack of artwork does make the book a bit of a drudge to read.  But!  The the important thing to remember here is that it's a scenario book.  You read it once and refer to it often.  More importantly is that it's printer friendly.

As for the scenarios themselves they are friendly to 28mm gamers with most scenarios only requiring a few squads aside.  The ctach here though is the reinforcements and the fact that most if not all of the German forces are determined randomly.  My only concern here is that I don't own a lot of vehicles and in the US case alone there is a 50% chance of a vehicle being rolled when determining reinforcements.  I can see a lot of proxies being used in these games.

The maps are probably where this scenario book improves over many of the books I've seen.  They're laid out on a grid and the terrain is labeled... thank you Darby, thank you.  There is nothing more frustrating than having to flip back to a map legend to work out what "white circles on a black background" represents on a map.

Conclusion
Another great Nuts! supplement that I'll be playing for sure.  Well... as soon as I finish my terrain, and finish painting the Germans... and start painting the US troops.  OK it'll probably be a while before I get this on the table.  But if you do have the miniatures painted then I'd recommend you pick this up.  Especially if you're a solo wargamer.

Grand Fleets Second Edition

Wargame Vault is having a bit of a sale at the moment and I decided to splash out and get another naval miniatures game.  This time is was Majestic XII's Grand Fleets Second Edition. 

It basically came down to this or Mongoose Publishing's Victory at Sea: Age of Dreadnoughts.  Grand Fleets won out for a few reasons:

1. Hexes: Grand Fleets can be played using hexes or not.  Hexes make for a fast game with little to no... shall we say "discussions" over rules or ranges.
2. Flexability: It has a lot of optional rules covering things such as flotillas (one miniature representing multiple ships), simultanious or turn based movement and so on.
3. Price: At only $11AUS what was I going to lose in picking up a copy?

I'm looking at possibly getting some Navwar 1:3000 scale ships, they should go nicely with the 5" Hotz Matt... if I get around to ordering it that is.

Great War German Infantry

I've had Too Fat Lardie's Through the Mud and the Blood for a while now and haven't done much more than a few test games using my WW2 minis. I've really been too busy with all my WW2 stuff to really consider starting another army in another period.

I've been toying with the idea of using Pendraken 10mm but I'm just not sold on the idea... yet. At that scale I'd have to go 4-5 per base and I'd really like to keep it 1:1 if possible. S0 when I saw these in the local games shop I just had to grab a box. $8 for a box of 48 miniatures isn't too shabby and the mix of poses is pretty good and the inclusion of specialist such as flame throwers and a MMG means that you can get a good platoon out of a box. The only complain I have with these is that the plastic is just a little too soft, but then again I was expecting that.

I'll give these a coat of paint and see how they come up before I make any decisions about buying more or not. I also notice that Rich at Too Fat Lardies has just ordered some of the Pendraken so I'll wait and see what magic he can do with those.

Action Stations!

I picked up a copy of Action Stations! from A and A Games today and the rules look good from my first read through. The main attraction to me for these rules is that they cover aircraft, boats, submarines and shore defences all on the table at the same time.

I'm still undecided if I'll got 1/600 for the sea craft or if I'll go down to 1/1200 or 1/2400. I think I'll play a few bigger games of Bag the Hun and see how a 6x4 table feels with that before I make any big decisions. Besides I still have more than a few 1/600 aircraft to paint.

Stout Hearts & Iron Troopers

Stout Hearts and Iron Troopers is the first supplement from Too Fat Lardies for their WW1 rule set Through The Mud & The Blood.


After a quick read through today all I can say is wow. The content is top notch as ever but the layout and design of this book really stands above their other offerings. The scenario maps are the most improved part of the book and they look fantastic. The colours and are nice and vibrant and all of the terrain, objectives and setup markers are clearly defined.

As for the scenarios themselves there are 20 scenarios spanning the entire war, but the most interesting part of the book, for me at least is the first six scenarios. These scenarios have been taken right from the pages of historical training manuals and also provide the "text book solutions". This is just fantastic for someone (like myself) who is keen on playing the period but knows only a little outside of what I've seen in movies and on the History Channel. This is something that should be done more often with historical games.

I also have to give Rich a big "beauty mate" for the rather nice surprise on page 78: a scenario with Australian troops (Tasmanians to boot!). No, not just a scenario with Aussie troops thrown in the mix but a real true-blue bloody-dinkum case of the boys from Oz mixing it up with Jerry. This will be the first scenario I play.

Also the title of scenario 17 is just great (sorry to just leave everyone hanging but you'll just have to buy the book).

I have to say that the guys at Lard Island have done it again, a great supplement for a great game and the training scenarios are almost worth the cover charge on their own.

So if you're looking for a WW1 rule set then forget about all that historical hammer stuff (you know what I mean) and have to have a look at Mud and Blood I promise you won't regret it. Oh and tell Rich that Tim sent you.

It's been a while between drinks

Well it's been a while since I updated this blog, family life and work have been the main reason for lack of updates... well that and I'm lazy.

I've managed to base most of my Black Tree order, there's about a dozen or so figures that are damaged or miscast to the point of being unusable so I might try to make casualty markers out of them. I'm on holidays for the next week with the kids so I'm hoping to get myself geared up to finish a platoon or two and maybe even have an actual game in a fortnight.

Things haven't been entirely quiet on the hobby front though I've made some progress on the model kits and I'll try to get some photos up over during the week.

I just love how publishers are now releasing so many books in PDF format. Cheaper prices (printing costs aside) and being searchable make them my now preferred format.


First up I bought two of the Vehicle Compendium books for World at War. Around $18 each for 60ish pages of vehicles raginf from soft top trucks right up the German Maus. New rules allow for AFV only armies and you can also play using captured vehicles, which is great news for my German KV-2 kit.


I've hearing good things about a company called Too Fat Lardies and after reading a review of their WW2 scenario book called "All American" I just had to take a closer look at their stuff. All I can say is WOW. Most scenario books I've seen have been simply here's a map and a list of two forces, now have at it. These books give you a map (generally in both topographical and gaming table formats), a detailed list of forces (right down to the names of the leaders, big men as they're called in I Ain't Been Shot Mum) but what really impressed me is the detailed histroical account that comes with each scenario. The Anzio book for example is 21 scenarios and 201 pages long! If you play any non-points based WW2 games (IABSM, Nuts etc) then you need these books.


Well after being so impressed with the scenario books I just had to have a look at the rules. The card activation system seems to have most reviews split 50/50 for love hate but really this doesn't worry me (maybe after a few games I'll have a better opinion). What I do like is the use of blinds or tokens to represent units on the table. When a blind is spotted by an enemy unit then the token is removed from the table and replaced with the miniatures representing that unit. What makes things interesting is that there are generally more blinds on the table than there are units in the game. This represents the fog of war, conflicting intelligence reports and the ability of some troops to use stealth tactics. The rest of the rules look good from a cursory read though but I'll comment more after I've played a game or two


While in my purchasing frenzy I also grabbed Through the Mud and the Blood, a set rules for the Great War. I'm so keen to play these but the lack of any miniatures is a bit of a stumbling block. I'm thinking of using 10-20mm minis for this one. It should keep the price down but also allow me to field large forces. I mean how can you play trench warfare without being able to mow down row after row of charging infantry with machine gun fire?