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Who Asked This JokerParticipantI think it would take more than 20 hours to become a chess champion but learning the rules can be a few minutes.
The speaker agrees with you. A chess champion has mastered his skills at playing chess. The speaker said that in order to get to master level at anything, you have to put in 10,000+ hours. In 20 hours, you could play a solid game of chess. You might not be the best strategist but you would be OK and would know every rule. If you (or anyone) have not looked at the video, I encourage you to do so. The form your opinion.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantLearn the techniques of miniature painting and the practice for 20 hours. If someone paints for 3 hours a day for a week, that would be enough to become a proficient miniatures painter.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantFabric colours also varied according to the strength of the dye (and the fabric, but we’ll go with woolen cloth) – madder red could be anything from deep pink to dark maroon straight from the vat. Obviously different batches would have different hues, so your red clad legions wouldn’t look very uniform anyway
Earthy colors would be inexpensive. They would not be stark even brand new. Madder red and pastel blue if you wanted some color on your tunic. Bleached tan if it was not dyed. Purple was very expensive to obtain which is why it associated with (rich) Senators and Emperors.
Colors would indeed vary by region. Color tone is subject to the eye of the creator as well as the availability of materials to make the color. This sort of thing existed right up through WW2. Canadian uniforms, for example, were supposed to be the same color as other British infantry uniforms.
My 2 cents.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantDBA has long been touted as a simple wargame but the movement rules are ambiguous at best.
How are the DBA movement rules ambiguous, do tell? All the best, John.
Ask 10 people online how to handle how groups move into contact. I’d bet you will get 3+ conflicting answers.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantAs the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race. I am assuming these are character models.
First order of business is to set the speed down to quite slow. 20 to 25mms is about all you can manage for small scale prints. This will likely mean that a single model is going to take 1-2 hours to print.
As mentioned above, the resolution should be set to “best.” Usually this is .1mm. You can actually get about .08mm resolution on some printers like the Ender-3.
When was the last time you tuned up your printer. Going through and leveling the bed as well as tightening belts after 25 hours of actual print time is a great idea. FDM printers have a way of shaking themselves loose over time.
A thick layer of primer will help dull the lines before painting.
Finally, you can google the Fat Dragon Games 3D printer settings. These will have some tweaks especially for Cura Slicer.
Hope that helps!
John
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantEver played Shock of Impact/Challenger/Harpoon/Empire/To the Sound of the Guns/WRG7?
Played 2nd ed Empire switching (rather unwisely!) from System 7/Fire and steel. We never finished a game. I noted that playing Empire as a division scale game was not so unwieldy. Ultimately, it is complex in the name of realism.
A friend of mine bought harpoon and we tried to learn the rules. The rules are the very definition of impenetrable. He then discovered the Harpoon computer game and never looked back. That speaks volumes to the complexity of Harpoon.
GW started the ball rolling back to simplicity. I do fear the pendulum is swinging back toward complex though this time by layering many, many simple mechanisms on top of one another.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantIt plays into my argument that rules these days are too complex/fiddly. A simple set of rules have fewer moving parts and are less likely to be “rules lawyered.” Most actions should be allowed unless that action would violate one of the few rules a simple set would provide.
For example, Niel Thomas’ OHW provides simple movement rules. You can make a turn before and after movement but you must move directly forward. If you ask if you can make a sideways move, the answer would be “no”. However, you could make a turn, move in that sideways direction and then turn again to face, presumably, the enemy. It really simplifies how movement works and leaves little to ambiguity.
DBA has long been touted as a simple wargame but the movement rules are ambiguous at best. However, if you play it on a grid, the game becomes truly simple!
Most authors who make these high polish and highly detailed rules could learn something from designers of simple wargame rules. You go through many, many more iterations to get to the same result.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI love the look of these Elves. What an Elf is supposed to look like in my mind anyway. None of this GW or Mantic high fantasy stuff.
You did a beautiful job painting them!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI am interested! Now if I can only remember this in 2 weeks. 😁
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantNope! No way! Not gonna believe it! Those look too wooden. you carved them. Fess up, Patrick! 😉
Those do look quite nice! I’ll circle back around when I have time to read the post and ask more informed questions.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantThe only thing I got out of it was “this podcast isn’t for me.” though, yes, he could have and should have said it better.
It is only about as useful as someone leaving 1 star (or 5 stars!) and not saying why they did or did not like the item or publication.
I would not get too bent out of shape about all this. Haters will always hate. Or as Mike said above, maybe there is something going on with the individual and maybe he couldn’t put his best foot forward.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantC’mon John, tell us how you really feel
I’M JUST GETTING STARTED! 😀
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantIt’s marketing buzzwords. I see it a lot in the IT world. I suppose our little hobby is no different.
“You can use any miniature line” is marketing speak in its truest form. A grand statement that has little or no value.
“Any basing system.” is useful. It lets you know that you can use your WRG bases, 2×2 bases or your singly based models.
“Innovative game mechanics.” lets me know that you went out of your way to make the game more fiddly.
“Innovative command and control system” lets me know that you went to great lengths to make it so a player will have a very hard time moving their units. Often times, it is not command and control but rather a friction generation system based on no real world model.
“Faction” is an annoying term. In historical terms you simply collect and paint an army…or two.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantHi Patrick,
Have you considered a numeric counter? Just place it under the base. When you need to see or change it, just pick up the base and read/remove the counter and replace it with the appropriate number. That will probably be the best, non-roster solution. Otherwise, I think you are doomed to a roster or some ugly counters.
John
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantFirst off, small scale detail is always exaggerated so these are in line with other small scale models. The detail looks quite good on these. The proof will be when you paint them up. I suspect they wil look better than “just OK” but probably great!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantWell Vincent, this one was a big hit back in the 90s. I think my friend had the West End version on the game. At the time he lived in a group house with 3 other people. Occasionally we’d gather there and play Junta with our own little happy hour. Two of his room mates were non-gamer girls. They both agreed to play one night as a 6th and 7th player. Both absolutely loved the game and joined in on several other occasions. So to say the game is accessible is an understatement. Great design and nothing was quite like it at the time.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantLove these! Very sharp and crisp paint jobs!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantWell, there is Junta. But I think you already know about that one. 😉
Have you checked out Table Top Simulator on Steam? It does look promising. I’ve played around with it. There are plenty of free modules to run on that platform so not only could you find a game to play but you could also get a miniatures game going. Everyone wanting to play would have to have a copy of TTS and a computer to run it.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantVery nicely done! I have painted the basic set and found the figures to be really fun to paint. Lots of exaggerated detail is always a plus. Mine were Elves and Orcs.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantComparing <fill in your favorite issue here> to the holocaust in NAZI Germany will never end well. Ms Carano reinforced that axiom.
That said, the character will live on. I think the series based on Cara Dune is also going to go forward as well or at least, that’s what Disney hinted at.
Back on topic. A quick search of “Cara Dune” only revealed a blaster and a few other items associated with her. The closest figure is a kind of a “Nativity scene” with the main characters in it including what is apparently Cara Dune sitting on the ground with a storm trooper helmet on.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantThe model is very nicely done. How on earth do you “forget” you built something like that!? 😉
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipant
I take no chances.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipant6CM bases is fine for element based gaming. They don’t seem to have any cavalry yet. You’d be pretty hard pressed to find cavalry that fit that size. Maybe some old (c1978) minifigs perhaps. They look fine but you have to base them as they want them. A definite pass. Thanks for posting the report and comparison, Guy.
John
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantShame they went “off scale/size”. 2400 soldiers for $120 is a steal. Even the brigade boxes would have been a decent price. I have too many Old North State miniatures supplemented with Cracker Line. So I am set. If ever they do 30YW/ECW in that size/scale, I might just give them, a little business.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantMetal Magic figures are still quite nice by today’s standards. I just finished painting a Dwarf fighter. I had bought the 25 character pack from Mega Miniatures a years ago who acquired the range.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantVery impressive! Well done!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantSeriously though, the idea behind TWW is to create and foster a place of positivity. It is about the sharing of ideas and to discuss what we like, not to bash that which we don’t. Hopefully we can move on?
Well, a positive answer to express a dislike might be, “Wargames magazines are really not my thing. Good luck with the article though!”
I mean seriously. I left a certain other website that I’d been supporting for about 15 years because attitudes were just getting ridiculous. I came here because folks are generally quite nice!
Anyway, I do read Miniature Wargames. I find usually 1 quarter to 1 half of the articles have at least some interest to me. I usually read through the whole thing whether I am directly interested or not. I am looking forward to your article, Mike.
John
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI’ve walked the Bull Run battlefields many times, in particular the 1st Bull Run loop. After gaming the battle in Ultimate General Civil War computer game, I paid particular attention to the features. Usually computer programs exaggerate terrain features. The hill s surrounding Rte 29 are not insignificant. It’s a wonder McDowell did not use the hill above Stone house to deploy Rickets battery and support the attack on Henry hill that way. The distance is less than a mile so the rifles would easily have been in range.
Regarding muskets: It is a forgone conclusion that the Mk-I eyeball is the limiting factor here. Firefights develop at 300 yards. This is actually a modern axiom. Back in the day, the rifled musket could shoot accurately up to 500 yards but was rarely employed at ranges greater than 300 yards. The smooth bore musket of the time was somewhat more accurate than the earlier ones. Maximum effective range is probably about 150 yards. The practical range is probably closer to 100 yards. Regardless of accuracy of the rifle, single shot weapons are slow to reload and the officers wanted every shot to count so 200 yards and closer was probably the Civil War fire fight range.
Similarly, smooth bore artillery can hit a target at out to 1500 yards but these were much more effective at firing shell and canister so were rarely employed at ranges greater than 1000 yards. Rifled artillery, on the other hand, could easily hit a target at ranges out to a mile with a trained crew. So artillery was often employed at ranges over 1000 yards from the front line, usually on an elevated position.
Thank you for the pointing out the book. I will probably check it out at some point.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantThat’s a lot of followers. Which one is Frank?
Very nice brushwork!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantThe biggest problem for me was the way artillery was handled. It is hard to call in artillery and hard to make it accurate and it takes too long in game terms. On top of that, the way the game calculates artillery, the more units in a hex, the better the defense. That, of course, makes no sense. There are 4 “spaces” in each hex. Artillery should be quartered and each unit in a hex attacked individually. Just dispense with the whole whigum “call in artillery” roll. Here was my post on BGG. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1778800/artillery-again
Quite a wonderful game series despite the warts.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantThe very old molds seem to be close to “true 25” don’t they! I always wondered about that. They do look pretty good against the Caesar hero in one of your pictures. I don’t know that home casting is in the cards for me. It would be fun to do, but I barely have enough time to paint what I have!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI buy what interests me, which isn’t much. I have plenty to paint, plenty to build and plenty of rules to game with. I also have plenty of board games. Not much in the way of rules sets really interests me anyway. So, my budget is open ended because there just isn’t much I need or even want right now.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantMy son and I played Frostgrave a bit. We liked it a lot but ultimately we did not like that everything revolved around Wizards. For instance, what if you wanted to play a Great Warrior? We did like that loot mattered and that you could get magical items, weapons and armor.
Our go to when we hit the table top is still Sellswords and Spellslingers by Ganesha Games. It is a cooperative game which suits us just fine for campaigning in a mythical world. The one thing I don’t like much is that the magic and special items and such are somewhat abstracted into the system. For instance, if your guy finds a magic sword, it gives him +1 fight but that has to be incorporated into the cost of the character and you still can’t go above +5.
I’ve not played Ghost Archipelago or Rangers of Shadow Deep. My limited understanding of the games makes them both also specialized in their own way. I think Rangers is the most appealing but it is limited by how the content is run. I suppose you could bulk lift the game engine onto a Frostgrave scenario and have at it.
Frostgrave 2, I don’t own or plane to own. I am sure it is an improvement over the first as the designer seems to take feedback to heart but, like I said, playing a wizard all the time is not really my thing.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI would expect those rates if they were shipping to the east coast, USA. You, I presume, are in the UK. Often, here, you get about double the actual postage rate to cover packaging and handling for domestic service. I would expect the same over there. Personally, I just wouldn’t order from that business anymore.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI wanted to use it for Star Wars. It is pretty well put together as a Role Playing Lite system but ultimately was not what I was looking for. I want something that has less wound tracking so as to use many figures (20+ or so) and this one is really for small amounts of figures.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantOverly ambitious? Welcome back to normalcy! 😉
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantBrunswickers. Often called the easiest army to paint. Black with a whisp of gray and then the fine details like cuffs. It actually takes a bit of skill to get them to look right. You did a fine job on these guys!
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantAny of the Tank battles in Miniature series from the History of Wargaming will have a lot of information. The ones by Don Featherstone are great reads!
Mecano magazine had a series of articles by Charles Grant for simple wargame rules for WW2. The game is called “Battle” and has been subsequently published as a book and then reprinted recently with some extra material. They used to be downloadable but apparently these were illegal scans of the magazine articles and I doubt you can find them right now. Caliver Books republished Battle.
Finally, Airfix Magazine guide #15 features some wargaming rules by Bruce Quarrie. OOP but can sometimes be found for a reasonable price.
I suspect there is not too much from the early days of wargaming (1960s) because many of the early gamers were also veterans of WW2. The era may not have piqued their interest because they lived it. It wasn’t much of a game to them.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantI buy based on project. I have no need for new projects. I just buy miniatures that help enhance current projects. Even better is when I have miniature armies nearly built and a fine rules set like Never Mind the Billhook’s comes along, I am almost ready to go. I’ve actually filled in the extras with stuff I have rummaged from other projects. A bad ebay purchase of a Welsh army helped fill in levies and some gifted bare metal of Late Medieval miniatures helped with a couple of units of men-at-arms and a unit of longbows came from a bag of old glory longbowmen that I grabbed from the flea market at Cold Wars. A great feeling when you can actually complete a stalled project. That is the motivation for self control.
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
Who Asked This JokerParticipantGood presentation and nice video. I think this will make a wonderful series for those getting into the hobby.
John
John
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln
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