Best of the Hail Caesar Yahoo Group, October 2012

A busy month both on the Hail Caesar Yahoo group, with new members looking for advice on basing for 10mm ("do what looks good to you!"), joining the Society of Ancients (it's not just for DBX anymore!), and some niggling rules discussion regarding cavalry charging with supports and follow up victory moves if the supports never actually made it into combat ("the rules are unclear. Make a decision at the table").

There was a succinct rules clarification I found useful,

"When evading you roll to see how many moves the evading unit can make and then it moves as far as possible. If the evade move will not allow them to clear an intervening unit, then it stops its move immediately in front of the intervening unit because that is as far as it could possibly move. 

[Horse archers] could not countercharge Roman [cavalry] because it is a unit in Open Order and the Roman cavalry are a formed unit (see Units Not Allowed To Charge on page 55)."

Also a cryptic tease from Craig Woodfield regarding some HC skirmish rules his group has put together that may see print!

"Song of Blades and Heroes" Halloween Brawl

I've been trying to pull off a Halloween themed game night for years, but never managed to get my act together. I was determined to finish up a final Flocktober project in time to run a Halloween themed monster bash using "Song of Blades and Heroes" this year. All of the spooky carnage after the jump.

Flocktober! Polishing off some lingering terrain projects

It may not seem impressive, but I managed to finish off a pair of half completed terrain projects that have been nearly complete for years.

A roof for a Mordheim building

Flocked bases and drybrushing for some telephone poles.

I also made a lot of progress on a much bigger terrain project that I'm hoping to complete this week.

Battle of Hastings Reenactment

I don't quite know the full story behind these photos that popped up on reddit earlier this week, but I was still fascinated by this reenactment of the Battle of Hastings.

I love that shot of the archers loosing arrows. Lots more snapshots posted by the photographer on imgur.

Rome Total War II Update: Gameplay Video

Been tremendously busy the last few weeks, but hoping to make some progress on my Flocktober terrain projects this weekend. I just discovered a new gameplay video for Rome Total War 2 which I'm taking as a good omen for the historical wargaming work I'm hoping to accomplish this weekend!

I've Got Robots on the Brain: My Review of Mechwarrior Online.

Some of my mechs, painted up about 15 years ago.

I concentrate on miniatures and wargaming on this blog, but like most gamers I've got a wide array of interests. Typically when I get wrapped up in some non-table top pursuit in ends up influencing the figures I paint and the games I play. My interest in World of Tanks this past summer rekindled my desire to do some WWII gaming and I expect my latest video game pursuit to generate a few new figure and terrain projects as well.

One of my first true wargames (as opposed to board or RPGs) was Battletech. I was hopelessly addicted to the Mechwarrior 2 PC game, and got heavily into the tabletop game in the late 90. I painted up a ton of mechs, collected various supplements and terrible Battletech novels, but over time my group realized that playing a game of Battletech typically took us longer than we had time allotted, and we gradually drifted away into other games that could be wrapped up more quickly. I dabbled with other mech games like Heavy Gear and Gear Krieg, but I always had a soft spot in my heart for Battletech's giant stompy robots, crummy tech that had weapon ranges more in line with black powder weapons, and tactically interesting heat balancing mechanic.


A few weeks ago I managed to get into the new Mechwarrior Online Closed Beta. Now that the NDA has been dropped I can talk about it in detail. I was a big fan of World of Tanks and still enjoy the game, but I've found that Mechwarrior Online (MWO) has been drawing more of my interest lately. Even while I was falling in love with World of Tanks I felt the various tank "roles", equipment loads, and XP trees would have been suited better to Battletech or another sci-fi game. And seeing how WoT is introducing a bunch of ahistorical French armored nonsense, it sounds like they agree. /rimshot. My full review after the jump.

Flocktober! Improving Wargame Trees Tutorial

After figuring out how to improve my wargame trees last year, I didn't employ those techniques to bring the rest of my wargame trees up to par. To kick off Flocktober I decided to try using those same methods to improve some rather wimpy Woodland Scenics trees and document the process in case anyone else is interested. All my tips for building wargame trees after the jump.

Flocktober!

I'm hoping to put all of this to good use this month

I spend all year painting up figures and learning rules and then they wind up fighting over some pretty mediocre terrain. It's become intolerable. I've got a number of terrain projects lingering in limbo that I'm going to try and get finished off to bring the table top up to closer to the standard set by so many of the gorgeous games I see online and at shows. To keep me on task I've decided to christen this month as "Flocktober" (named after the bits of green flock that represent grass in these terrain projects, and God did my wife make fun of me for that) and work on terrain projects only. No buying figures, no painting figures, no basing figures. It's just trees and hills and grass from now until Halloween.

Hopefully between sticking to projects already in the house and selling off old bits that have overstayed their welcome I'll be able to keep the lead pile neat and tidy.