Here are some pictures of the new Deformable LED light I installed over my upstairs game table. One lamp provides more than enough light to illuminate my 58" x 72" games table. It was only $14 from Lee Valley, is easy to install, removable / portable, uses very little electricity and relatively inconspicuous. It also required a hanging socket with hooks and a long cord from Amazon.
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| The Lamp suspended to the season |
Having slipped on some back ice just before Christmas my back was not up to bending over the standard 29" high folding / banquet table I use for miniature games. If yo think about it these 29 to 30 inch tables are designed for sitting at for dinning. A more appropriate height would be that of kitchen or bathroom counters designed for standing at which are around 34" to 35" high. The early proponents of modern day wargaming like Donald Featherstone and Terence Wise advocated higher tables between 36" and 42" high in their books. So I tested a 37.5" high table for my first Fantastic Battles 1.2 game of 2023 (see separate post in my blog).
The experiment worked well, the table was stable, the risers did not get in the way and there was less bending. The only minor downside was it does limit how far across the table you can reach, a small price to pay for less back discomfort.
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| Table extender & riser combination used to achieve 37.5" height. |
Below is a picture of the activation tiles / counters I use for Fantastic Battles 1.2. I bought them from the Dollar Tree, they costed only $1 plus tax for a packet of 26 in 4 colours (medium royal blue, green, purple, fuchsia) and measure 20mm x 18mm x 5mm.. They are marketed by Craft Medley and I have also seen them in black and white.. I add number stickers to them to keep track of the number on the table but this is not essential. You can of course paint them, and I have painted some of the fushia counters dark red. Sadly I did not see any on my last visit to the Dollar Tree, but they may have just been put in storage to make room for seasonal decorations.
https://www.dollartreecanada.com/
However if you can't find them at the Dollar Tree you can buy a pack of 100 from Amazon for a higher price, but with a different mix of colours (red, orange, white, green and light blue), see link the below.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09MZGVSRB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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| Tiles by Craft Medly from the Dollar Tree |
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| Tiles sold by Amazon |
A belated Merry Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year - 2023.
Picture above of part of my SAGA Age of Magic (AoM) Warband, I will be posting an AAR of the 4 player Christmas SAGA AoM game we played on December 27, 2022 soon.
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| Overview turn 1 SAGA AoM |
This Christmas I hosted a 4 player game of SAGA age of Magic n December 27, 2022 with our forth playing being John was visiting over the holiday. This is something we had not done since John's departure and the onset of the pandemic. Once again I used the SAGA AoM Battle Royal scenario.
As a follow on from my discussion about a Kings of War (KoW) campaign (see blog entry) and discussions with friends in June 2020 I had been thinking of setting up a SAGA Age of Magic campaign using the Might Empires (ME) campaign rules. However more recently (2022) I think an even better rule set to use for this would be Fantastic Battles (FB) l.2, and it has its own campaign rules.
Alternatively the Mighty Empires campaign rules can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L_5kUsTuwlADt99VXN5-hD3MxPejhbHS/view?fbclid=IwAR36QepvlSigFF_IgO3NDWuEexC98iCewMythS2dmjZOiBGe6YzCXfc8Vbc
The campaign I envisage will be for 4 to 6 players as anything larger has the potential to breakdown if players don't contribute in a timely manner. .
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| From the old Avalon Hill board game Wizard Quest |
I found this a plaster Egyptian monolith for $4 at a local Dollarama store. It looks similar to the statues that would be found in the Valley of the Kings. It should work well as Egyptian themed background in a Pulp game set in Egypt.
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| Egyptian monolith with two 28mm Dark Fable Egyptian figures |
It will need some painting, possibly with the Woodland Scenics Yellow Ocher stain that will create a naturalistic sand stone look.
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| Woodland Scenics Yellow Ocher stain |
I have had bout 17 of these OOP Wizkids Horror Clix Vlad the Impaler 32mm figures sitting around since I bought them some years ago at the local Comic Book Store in a bin sale. I had been planning to convert them to Impalers for a Vampire based fantasy army by replacing the end of the spear with just a point rather than an impaled victim, as a regiment of 16 would just look too weird, one victim as a standard is sufficient.
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| Wizkids HorrorClix Vlad the Impaler |
Accordingly I cut off the victim on all but 1 figure and planned to put spear tips on the end of the poles. After the figures sat around for a few years I finally got around to it yesterday. This was partly inspired by the new Fantastic Battles 1.2 rules that has
a Night Stalker army list that will work perfectly for my Vampire War
figures and these Impalers. They will be an elite Regiment called Vlad's Carpathian Impalers with 3 companies with the traits: Feast, Pikes, Highlanders and Doughty.
Below are some of the various spear options I experimented with:
Picked up this Flying Saucer based on the one in Plan 9 from Outer Space at my favourite Hobby Shop in Ottawa, Hobby House. I hesitated to buy it at first as there was no scale on the box and I figured it was likely 1/72, but some online research revealed it is 1/48. This means it should fit in with my heroic scale 28/32mm Martians from the Mars Attacks game.
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| Polar Lights Plan 9 Saucer kit 1/48 |
I believe this was originally a Linberg kit and was reissued by various companies including Atlantis and Polar Lights.
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| Tomb King's Army |
After many delays due to scheduling conflicts and weather we finally got another 28mm game of Fantastic Battle, this time with my newly based Dwarf Army fighting the High Elves. While some of the Dwarfs need further painting I think they are battlefield ready. This was my 8th game of Fantastic Battles that we played over two days, August 1st and 12th. I still need to do AARs of some of the earlier games, although they are outlined briefly in an earlier blog.
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| Turn 4 action |
In my 2022 New Year's message I had mentioned I was very interested in and had started playing the Fantastic Battles (FB) rules system by Nicholas Wright, for mass battles for both historical and Fantasy genre for a range of scales (2mm-28mm). The rules allow you to customize and build armies based on a tool kit approach of different traits added to company types including: Elite, Formed Irregular, Fantastic Beast, Vehicle and Giant. There is a separate system for characters that makes them significant but not exaggerated in power. FB is also well supported by the author and members on the Fantastic Battles Face Book Page.
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| Cover |
