Star Wars Armada

This being Gencon time, game companies need to have new games, and Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is no exception to this rule:

And they seem to have a humdinger here with Star Wars Armada, a new fleet level Star Wars game.  Expected to ring in at $100 MSRP, this will have prepainted ships (Victory class, a Nebulon B, and a Corvette) with a wealth of accessories, chits, and cards.

So... tentatively excited about this, since big ship battles are even more interesting to me than fighter skirmishes, and it seems to have some interesting mechanics to make the ships seem slow and lumbering (stacked orders, slow movements with the ruler).  The components should be high quality, and may help with the "paperwork" of fleet battles with all the integrated little dials and stats.

However, the cost, and obvious scale issues are things to keep aware of, so let us wait and see what happens and what is released.

Very compelling indeed...

Warmaster Army Selector

Whilst browsing the Rick's Warmaster site today, I saw in the "what is new" section, that there was a link to a handy automatic army selector for Warmaster.

Created by Dave Susco, the army selector actually helps to build armies for Warmaster, Warmaster Trial Armies, Warmaster Ancients, and a few of the Warmaster Ancients Army book armies.

Not only does it have the rules for army building, and the upgrades, and various alerts about having 1 of x per 1000 points, it also has the ability to save and print lists, and when you print out a list, it has options to include all the stats, special rules or just the ones used, rules for magic items used, and spells (provided you are playing Warmaster Fantasy!).

It does not appear to have the additional special units added to Warmaster Fantasty, such as elite handgunners, or the Swordmasters of Hoeth, but considering those are both rare and OOP, it is to be understood.

Anyway, this Warmaster Army Selector is pretty handy if you are into any of the official Warmaster variants, or just like to play around with list making.

10mm Pendraken Great War

As it seems to be the season for it, I have been interested in putting together a small Great War collection of 10mm figures, aiming at a company for each of the major combatants in the West, some regimental or divisional support weapons, and a few "fun" bits like tanks and trucks and what not that give a good period flavor. 

I have had a surprising amount of trouble finding online breakdowns of the composition of battalions during this period, with most of it being for 1914, and therefore not accounting for all the technological and structural developments that occurred as the war went on.  When I was doing similar research for WWII I found tons of information.  I guess since most of the battles were such large scale, that people must be ignoring the company/platoon level combat?  To me anyway, the tactical aspects of running a company or battalion seems far more interesting than the more meat grinder aspects of clashing divisions together.

I priced out a couple of companies (at roughly 1:1) from Pendraken directly, and the Warstore as an importer.  Interestingly, the Warstore comes out significantly cheaper, partly due to shipping (£19 from the UK, or $7 from NY), but each pack is cheaper as well.

The general idea is to "upsize" skirmish rules and have a 28mm figure replaced by a half squad/section base of 10mm figures.  Obviously this will need some modifications, particularly with regard to "wounds" or movement ranges, but I think it will generally work well, and with some trench terrain, will look quite nice as well.

Over on TMP I saw a thread about WWI using Rapid Fire, and found this interesting basing system, where infantry figures are mounted in strips 15mm deep, and special weapons are mounted on 25mm rounds, which seems like it would work out pretty nicely.