Played My First Warmachine/Hordes Game Last Night...

My Skorne under the fearless leadership of Baron Harkonnen Dominar Rasheth made their debut last night in what was also my first time ever playing WarmaHordes.

(Yes, I'm the sort of weirdo who paints up a bunch of miniatures before playing a game and seeing if I like it; I had faith in this system, and besides, if I didn't like it I'd have a bunch of painted minis to sell and use that money towards projects I knew I'd actually be into. But it all worked out in the end.)

Although I had faith in the game itself, I wasn't sure going in if I'd made the right choice with my faction or my caster, so I'm somewhat elated today, looking back on last night's game, to realize that I made the perfect choice in both regards. Rasheth is essentially a Titan rancher, and I love me some Titans. In particular, this is because I'm finding (or rather remembering) that I really enjoy running factions that glory in close-up, bloody carnage. Even if I lose, it's still a lot of fun to watch. My Space Orks for Epic 40K, my Outcast crew for Malifaux, and now my Skorne - they're all focused around, to quote Royal Tenenbaum, "Scrapping and yelling and mixing it up." I'm also a big fan of stuff that denies or nullifies the other guy (back in my M:tG days I used to run Blue and White decks and piss off all my friends), and Skorne definitely has that in spades as well.

I lost, of course, but I gave my opponent a good run for his money, taking out his heavy Warjack and doing serious damage to another 'Jack, even with my multitude of tactical and systemic mistakes. I also learned a lot about the subtleties of the game and where I want to put my focus going forward. So I'm going to be tweaking my lists a bit, picking up some new figures (but not too many - I'm mostly where I want to be), and, mostly, looking forward to our next game.

Here are some quick snapshots from the course of the evening's action:

Blob Rasheth meets his end.

Keen observers may recognize the table layout as being eerily similar to my recent Malifaux games. This is largely due to the fact I'm "in transition" between terrain systems right now. That's all I'll say about for the moment, but hopefully I'll have some lovely pics to share soon of my new "secret weapon" in my never-ending quest for visually-appealing terrain...

I won! I won!

Holy crap, I totally won that prize draw I posted about in a previous entry! This is an especially soothing balm since just yesterday I got effing sniped on an eBay auction I thought I was going to win, a set of Citadel giaks from their "Giak Attack" boxed set, part of the limited Lone Wolf range put out in conjunction with the game books. I've been after those figures for a couple years now, and for once the rate on the auction was reasonable enough that I could put in a bid without having to take out a personal loan from my bank first. And then some jackass came in at literally the last second (damn you, eSnipe!) and stole my precious giaks out from under me.

Ah, but now I have an even bigger pile of vintage Citadel goodness coming my way! And I'll get those giaks one day. One day...

And...we're back

I've been giving a lot of thought to the state of my miniatures hobby and the state of miniatures gaming as a subset of tabletop gaming in general. This merits a much wordier post of its own. (Please save your groans for after the show.) In the meantime, I thought that I'd reactivate this blog. ::waves at the two followers I've somehow retained:: This was my first gaming-related blog and I have fond memories of it. Plus, I think having a blog devoted exclusively to my miniatures hobby (as opposed to making it a subset of my RPG blog - I've migrated the last three years of miniatures-related posts [all 12 of them!] that I made over there back over here) will be a nice tonic for a sadly atrophied element of my overall gaming endeavors.

I want to make 2013 a year for reconnecting with the gaming part of my miniatures gaming hobby. In other words, I intend to actually play as many games as I can. Thanks to Two Hour Wargames and their solo-friendly rules, I think I can make this happen even if I'm still sniffing around for worthy opponents in my local area. And I'll still be keeping my expectations low. If I can get in a game every couple months, I'll count myself satisfied with a hopeful start.

Last year, I did clock one major milestone in this regard: my long-delayed samurai project finally resulted in some gaming! I'm nothing if not persistant, it seems. In the end, I ditched all the period-specific rules and simply based some of my samurai for DBA, using a rules mod I found online (scroll down to "Battle Phase"). Des and I got in two games of Takeda vs. Uesugi, all in a couple hours, and had lots of fun. If I can rustle up another interested opponent or two, I'd give some serious thought to running a campaign; that old Milton Bradley game Shogun (also called Samurai Swords) was a great favorite of mine in high school, and goodness knows I've got enough spare figures to put together a couple more clans plus some ikko-ikki. At any rate, enough talk. Here are some pics from our games! (I think we each won a game.)

July 4th Memories

I am 16 years old, sitting at the desk in my bedroom as my Dad works the grill outside. I've got the Twilight Zone marathon playing on my six-inch black and white on KTLA (this is back before SciFi/SyFy/PsiPhy/whatever bought up the rights) and I'm working on some 15mm Napoleonic Prussians (the first of many forays into historical miniatures - this one didn't work out too well in the end). It's a sweltering L.A. day but I've got my desk lamp on and I'm painting.

Ever since then, despite the heat, summer always puts me in the mood to paint miniatures.

Why I'll Always Love Miniatures Gaming

The RPG side of my gaming hobby has been experiencing a sort of golden age of late. I'm currently involved in...let's see, four campaigns, easily a lifetime high. (It's one of the reasons posts around here have gotten a bit thin on the ground--been too busy gaming to write about it!) But I've also been thinking a lot about the other side of my gaming hobby: miniatures wargames.

I've talked in the past about how that side has been subject to increasing atrophy over the years. Back in high school I'd say I was involved in minis wargaming at least as as much as RPGs. Nowadays I'm lucky if I can get in a game every six months. Most of my hobby today consists of painting figures. (Still gotta post pics of my Germanic Space Ork army that I put together last year...). Although this is partly down to a question of lack of time (viz. the "four campaigns" mentioned above, ahem), I also feel this is due to the wargaming and RPG hobbies going their separate ways over the last 10-15 years. There just simply aren't as many RPGers who play minis games as there used to be, it seems.

There are a variety of causes behind this, I think. Certainly, Games Workshop played its part by very much intentionally nurturing the perception of miniatures wargaming as its own thing (or, as GW calls it, The Hobby). I also think the emergence of pre-painted figures played a major role; people who were reluctant or indifferent towards painting no longer had to. The irony, of course, is that over the same span of time, D&D's various successive editions have become evermore miniatures-centric. Pre-painted figures enabled the quick and easy acquisition of lots of single models or small groups of models. But the idea of building and painting a large army and making the terrain to go with it? I've shown my miniatures cabinet to about a half-dozen gamers, ranging from total noobs to old grognards like me, over the last year. To a person, they have reacted with a sort of ambivalent amazement. The overall impression was summed up by one of their words: "I'd never have the patience to paint all those figures!" As if I did it all in a week of cocaine-fueled frenzy.

A while back I saw someone post some provocative words online. (Just the once?) The words were to the effect of, "Miniatures painting is a craft. It's not an art. Get off your high horse." I was a little taken aback at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I tended to agree. But I'd add a corrolary: done right, playing a miniatures game is where the art comes in. The sight of a table full of lovingly-crafted terrain and hand-painted miniatures is something to truly give one pause, to remind one of the beauty of human endeavor and creativity, hours of work simply for the sake of having a fun afternoon in the company of a few friends. I was reminded of all this today when I followed a link from the always-excellent World War 20mm blog to a series of pictures taken at a recent club game. Here's a selection of my favorites; the rest can be found here.

Those are pictures taken from the game in progress, not just posed to look pretty. That organic, almost alchemical process of figures interacting with terrain to create spontaneous vignettes...if that's not art, I don't know what art is. Aside from my own selfish reasons, I really wish more RPGers were also miniatures wargaming enthusiasts. It's such a rewarding aspect of the gaming hobby, and it's because of pictures like those above that, as much as my participation might have shrunken over the years, I'll never truly walk away from miniatures gaming.