You Little Rat(s)

Well, I may have missed the Painting Competition deadline, but here are my Dungeon Dwelling Pendraken 10mm Ratmen. Painted in red livery to match with my ratmen warband used in my first Songs Of Blades and Heroes Campaign.

Mantic Warpath Box Arrives

After all my strong willpower over the last couple of months I've fallen foul of that classic downfall - the Ebay bargain impulse buy. In this case the Mantic Games Warpath starter box "Fate Of The Forge Star" for £26. For an early game play review I will point you at this good review .

At the risk of being mocked , I'll just go over my initial reactions to what is in the box.

Opening the [flimsy] cardboard box the first reaction was "Holy Plastic Sprues, Batman". It also looked very thrown in the box, especially as Mantic always list their practical packaging/storage in the selling points of their units.

Orc Sprue #1 (x 10)

Orc Sprue #2 (x5)

Dwarf Sprue (x 8)

Plastic bags with Orc Trike (Raptor), Dwarf Cannon platform (Hailstorm)
and Dwarf Heavy weapons team (5 figures)

Also included are 10 10mm dice an A5 scenario & stat sheet and an A5 fold out rule sheet./book. To be honest the impression of the production is "cheap". However, it is the actual content that interests me, not the packaging so lets move on.

The detail on the figures is nice a crisp with next to no mould lines/flash. The Dwarf sprue has two lower body options (with cape or without cape) and two upper body options. One of the upper body options is ready moulded with head and weapon, the other is customisable with parts on the sprue - 3 head options, and standard gun or a pistol and open hand/hammer combo. This mean that around half your standard grunt soldiers will have capes and half won't, which is a bit strange (and not evident on the site pictures). The Heavy weapons team are all full torso sculpts with separate arms.

I quickly made up the two most basic constructions of either side so you can see them. The attempt at adding a scale ruler at the back hasn't quite worked, but is pretty close for comparison. The toe to eye measurement of the (slightly hunched) Orc is 25mm, which is probably a good bit shorter than their Games Workshop equivalents.

So what's the opinion? The orcs do look very fantasy with sci-fi guns but should look in a mob (which is how they appear organised), but the dwarfs look a better squat army. With all those 60+ figures and 2 vehicles it good value at it's full price (~£50 RRP). At the half price I managed - even more so, consider the conscience clear!

Campaign reboot - and then there were 3

The "First Contact" battle that was posted was meant to be the first battle in a new Dwarves vs Beastmen Songs Of Blades and Heroes campaign. But a mutual friend, Paul, had expressed an interest in the playing the game, so was invited in. As we only meet every fortnight this did leave us the quandary of how to play a campaign with 3 players, but we've decided to have a go at running a series of 3 way battles and see how it gets on. We are social gamers after all!

Now some of the scenarios in the "Songs of Deeds and Glory" campaign are not compatible with a multiplayer battle, so I've been looking at adapting or changing them so that we still have a random table to roll on. Still using the table from Songs of Deeds and Glory I've made a few alterations (in red):


Scenario Table (Roll Two Dice)

Dice Roll	Scenario Played
2	Ambush - Presplit each force into 2 groups, each group must be at least a third of the warband points total. Instead of 2 counters per figure just have 3 counters per side. One Dummy, Two real. As per Ambush instructions. Player gets to choose which warband segment is revealed if it is not the dummy
3	Treasure Hunt
4	Place of Power
5	On Difficult Ground
6	Seize the flag. Each warband has a home base with a "flag". First warband to seize and carry anothers flag off their table edge wins. Mounted figures can't carry flags. Flag carriers fight as per standard bearers.
7	Burn Them Out. - Still to be finalised
8	Assassination - All figures are numbered. Each player randomly selects (and secretly notes) one figure in each opposing warband. Winner is the player who has killed the most of their appointed secret targets. In a tie, point victory point per 20pts killed forces. If an opposition force kills your target - tough! - you can't claim for it.
9	Seize the High Ground
10	Accidental Meeting - Set up a per ambush, except that players don't know which counters represent which force. Players can position counters as per rulebook scenario. In 3 player each player can position one of their own and one from each of the other two forces. Must be more than long from another counter. Pre-split the forces with one force being as close as possible to a third of the warband size. WHen counter activates roll a die. 1 or 2, false alarm; 3 or 4 smaller group; 5 or 6 larger group
11	Take the Land
12	Holdout : organise armies as per rules. 3 VP for routing/killing an initial force before reinforcements arrive. Otherwise 1VP per 20pts

10mm Painting Comp Entry

Here's my first (rather optimistically indicating there may be a late second one) entry to the Pendraken 2012 Painting Competition. The standard of painting really makes a mockery of the scale. I'm not expecting to win anything, but am using the comp as a bit of motivation to get some painted. My ratmen, however, may be a bit too late to get finished in time, but I will get them done at least...