Scifi buildings from Fantasy Forge

In 1992, on a trip to European Gencon in Camber Sands, England, I bought a new ruleset for Scifi skirmish games called Kryomek. It seemed like the next big thing to me, and so I eagerly bought a number of figures, and from the same company (Fantasy Forge) also a resin sci building - a dome with a heavy cannon.

Needless to say, we never played Kryomek, but the dome-shaped building featured frequently in many scifi games we played during the past 25 years. It was always my intention to buy more of these buildingsdue to their nice modular design, but that plan never materialized.

A few months ago, at the Bring&Buy at  CRISIS, there was a fellow wargamer selling a few more of these building modules. Of course, I needed to have them.

So, here they are. I tried to paint them in the same shade of green as I did the original 25 years ago, but that was more difficult than I thought. Probably also because the original colours have faded over the years.

Two hobbit houses

I painted two hobbit houses today. As explained in a previous blogpost, these are a piece of Belgian wargaming history, since they were made by Gedemco.

The models were quite easy to paint, and adding some flock and other tufts was an easy afterthought. The largest hobbit house needed a green door, obviously.

The models shown for size comparison are Mithril Lord of the Rings figures, Gandalf, Frodo and Sam (from MB237, boxed Lord of the Rings set).

Some thoughts on the turn sequence

A new entry on our Wargaming Mechanics blog:

https://wargaming-mechanics.blogspot.be/2017/07/some-thoughts-on-turn-sequence.html

If you missed out on the previous posts, be sure to check them out!

A quick paint job

I managed some time today to finish some figures I started several months ago.

The firsr are 3 Oldhammer militia figures. These are late eighties GW figures. I used painted shields I still had lying around.

Next are 5 "blue worms", Ainsty figures I acquired last year at CRISIS.

"Fast play rules" again?

Just a quick rant:

I recently saw an advert for a new set of rules: "Fast Play Rules for the <insert period here>".

It reminded me of notorious rulesets of the past that were also labeled as "Fast Play Rules". Just do a Google search on "fast play wargaming rules", and you get a whole series of results.

Now, according the the designer, the rules might actually be fast to play. But that's as seen from his point of view. Other players might not think the rules are fast at all, and might consider them a terribly slow and painful exercise. Actually, the whole adjective of "fast play" is meaningless, if you lack a common fame of reference.

Would any ruleset ever advertise itself as "Slow and tedious rules for ... "? Sure they are all fast play? Or do some wargame designers specifically aim for slow play?

It also reminds me of academic papers that list the advantages of certain algorithms (I am a computer scientist working in academics, so I know a thing or two about academic publishing). The adjectives are hyped up with each consecutive paper: "fast" , "really fast", "extremely fast" - or in the case of computer graphics "interactive" or "real time". In most cases - unless actual timings are given on specific machines - meaningless.

And on another note: I managed to clean up my painting desk a bit, so I might actually get some painting done during the next couple of weeks after a hiatus of several months.

I want my mojo back!

I just counted the miniature wargaming games we played since January. Exactly one! Shame on us!

Now, there are more important things in life than playing games, but still, it's a bit of a sad affair. There is of a course a good explanation. In our gaming group, there are 2 of us that host the games at their houses. If these 2 persons simultaneously experience some kind of slump due to real life, job pressure, a slight lack of motivation, ... then things start falling apart quite rapidly.

Also on the painting desk things have grinded to a halt. The figures sitting there right now have been undercoated the week after Crisis in november. Since then, no action whatsoever.

However, I have to admit I did write a few things for the Wargaming Mechanics blog.

I am not panicking. Not yet. But clutter starts to pile up on the gaming table as well as the painting desk, and that makes it hard to get things moving again. It's a sort of psychological barrier that becomes harder and harder to overcome.

Perhaps the upcoming summer months will bring some fresh mojo!

Magazine Index now contains 3600 article entries

Almost 2 years ago I started the Wargames Magazine Index.

So far, each magazine had its own tab in the overall data sheet, but a few week ago, I added a compiled list (all entries in one big sheet), which greatly facilitates searching. This single sheet is updated automatically once every week.

Currently, this are the number of articles entries, counted by magazine. Multi-part articles usually have a single entry.

wargamesillustrated	1711
miniaturewargames	422
practicalwargamer	372
miniaturewargames w battlegames	272
wss	236
battlegames	232
wargannual	163
wargamesworld	56
vae victis thématiques	40
classicwj	38
secrets of wargame design	25
wargamersnotes	12
wargamesjournal	8

Visualized in a pie chart: