7 Days and Counting!

Battlecry 2013 is on in 7 days. For those not in the know (and if your not in NZ why would you) is the only competition in the top of the north Island that runs a FOG tournament. I generally find traveling down the line to other comps either too expensive or too hard to organise around work and family. In past years work has also got in the way of me being able to participate at Battlecry but not this year!

Finally the army which i built and painted over a year and a half ago will get to see the light of day on a tournament table. Finally the Kyreanian Greeks will test their Heavy Chariots and Phalanx’s against different types of armies than what they are used to playing.

The event for FOG is small (only 8 players) but is growing and with my help getting some new lads into the game. I'm hoping next year for the comp to be at least 12 players or more which is a good number for a to get.

One of the issues FOG has is that it is a slower game to play. A full 800 point game really needs 3 odd hours to knock out and at least 15-20 minutes for rolling for terrain and set up. (these are important parts of the game and there is a level of strategy involved).  This more than anything else puts people off FOG. However if you give it the time it deserves it is a wonderful game.  It is however not great for a tournament as the number of rounds you can play in a day is limited.  I've been pushing for the tournament to be only 600 points for the last couple of years and i think for BC 2014 Kevin (the FOG event organiser at the South Auckland club) may try it out.  At 600 points you can fit in an extra game in each day and as the points are lower Armies as smaller meaning less painting which makes it easier for newer players to give it a go.  As an owner of 5 800pt forces i can say that much as i love painting them they are a pile of work!.

On Thursday we were sent out the list of who would be playing who in the first round and what armies were in the comp. as you can see I'm up against a Western Han Chinese force. (Should be interesting!!)

I see a few Elephant armies in there – and why not at 3 attack dice on impact they sure do hit harder these days.

For anyone who cares here is my list for the weekend:

now all i have to do is finish up all of my new terrain before next Saturday and I'm set.

2013 and Field of Glory

Well the post title says it all. 2013 is going to be what I will call the year of Field of Glory gaming.

Last Month Slithering released Field of Glory 2.0 in a proper physical book format.  Months earlier (Mid 2012 they had originally announced that the new version would be digital only (and worse yet only on Apple and PC, not Android). Public outcry followed and so they finally realized that they were being silly trying to push a digital only format and at the end of December released a Print on Demand copy of the rules.  My copy of these rules arrived a couple of weeks ago in the post and since then I’ve pumped out 7 games of various sizes and am finally getting the hang of the changes – all of which I’ve decided are the best (Even though 2 of my armies suffered a little due to the changes in the POA rules for better armour rules.

Just lately I’ve been consolidating my model collections and have been selling of some Flames of war armies as well as some War machine and Hordes and other odd bits and pieces.  This isn’t because I don’t like the games (certainly not the case for Flames of war) but I do find myself with far too many models that I just don’t get to use. Rather than having them take up space in figure cases I’ve decided that if I’m not playing at least one game with it every few months it needs to find a new home where it will get used as was intended.  This also clears the way for new armies and projects that I’ve wanted to get and start for several years now.   The projects I’m referring to will be revealed in future posts but the first one is a new FOG army that I’ve had in a box for a whole year now - “Classical Indians”.

- this picture is what inspired my army.

The Classical Indian army is one I’ve always liked the look of and wanted to paint up. I like Elephants and the list allows for lots of them (12 in total).  When my friend Jason went out and brought a Macedonian army I decided it was time to get the Indians as a nice themed army to counter his wall of spiky death.   I was very keen, I placed my order with old glory received it – thought my oh my that’s a lot of bowmen!!! And then got very, very busy with work and as a project it just kept slipping back further and further down the list of things to start working on. (This is sadly something that happens far too often – hence the clean out.)  
Now fast forward to 2 weeks ago on the day of arrival of my copy of FOG 2.0.  Having a read through I discovered two things MF bow got better with their second rank of shooting in Impact and Elephants now have 3 dice each at impact instead of 2.  “Wow” I thought to myself Elephant/Bow armies just got a lot better.  Then I remembered that I had just such army sitting in a box. With work projects finally out of the way I can start working on the force.  Last week I managed to clean up and assemble 12 Elephants and crew and 4 battle groups of bowmen. (it’s obviously much bigger than this but it’s a good amount to start working on.) This week I’ve managed to get paint onto models and have the Elephants in a half finished state and am just starting on the skin for the bowmen. Pictures to follow once I get my camera set up.

Wow no posting for two months and then suddenly a whole page.!!!

New FOW Work

More Battle of the Buldge theemed stuff ive painted up on the Battlefront website this week.

3.7cm FlaK43 Platoon (Winter) (GE549)

 

 

As always more pictures can be found on the Flames of war website.