Fasico 2013 - Demo'ing Fanticide

Myself and Nick wandered up to Fiasco at Leeds Royal Armoury on Sunday to roll some dice and spread the word on Fanticide.

we had a fairly good spot being in the corner near warbases and some other traders that the name escapes me!

The show started very well with lots of foot traffic coming though the hall, and lots of nice comments about the board and the models, not sure if it was me but the punters seemed more willing to chat and not as much hard work, Might be the fact that we were in the north of the country? who knows!!


Throughout the day myself and nick played a very slow game as we put the gaming world to rights with subjects ranging from plastic resin to the lack of support for the secondary systems by GW, I also discovered that Nick has a lot of experience in the gaming industry and this made for some very interesting conversations so I actually learnt quite a bit though out the day.

Whilst Nick was demoing a game to two lads who actually hunted the table down I zapped round and snapped some pic of the tables,

the table next to us a rowing boat type thing looked really good, and the use of the fabric for the water is spot on!

some 6mm loving, the square removable areas for terrain was interesting some thing to remember.

some warmachine action,

and Mantic being demo'd but on one really selling it?

as usual I'm a sucker for teddy bear fur and this was a cracking table,

Bit of the old desert in 20mm

and I managed to just snap a quick pic of LRDG raid on an Italian/German air field, I would have liked to give this a crack and will keep my eye out for this at other shows.

A lovely looking mad max/freeway fighter game, models were really well made and looked great!

Overall not a bad show, quite a few traders and the venue was fairly good, the 2 hourish drive wasn't too bad going up but coming down I was nearly falling asleep and responding with grunts to Nick as he was talking to me.  I didn't manage to get to wander into the actual armouries though but I'm sure when Isla is a little older then we'll be going up to look at the cool stuff.


one of the trade stand that caught my eye was zinge industries, and the bendy resin that they on show, some great bits for conversions, and with bendy resin bullet belts the mexican orks can be done!

zinge.co.uk

So as its nearly the end of the month lets look at the "pledge"

Bought - 29
Painted - 92
Difference + 63

Well this is going well, I'm not including the kickstarter stuff that I got from Warzone yet as I need to finish sticking them together and do a body count so these will be slotted onto Novembers "bought" as well as the Wild Wext Exodus which should be on its way soon and end of November for Deadzone.

It looks like its gonna be a busy end of year gaming and painting wise,

I'm off to the Prodos/Warzone Convention/Open Day on the 2nd November with Rob from Hinckley so that should be a laugh as he's more mental than me when it come to gaming, and I'm sure his wife will relish the fact that she gets rid of him for the day ;)

So pictures and the like will follow on that one. 

Getting prepped for Fiasco or Fly my pretties!

Back at the Deby show I was talking to Nick who was running the Fanticide demo table and the Leeds show of Fiasco came up,

This is one that I didn't know about and after finding out that it was in the royal armouries I was very intrested as I'd been to the Royal Armouries about 10ish years ago and throughly enjoyed it at the time,

you know when you getting old when you get excited by this kinda thing! 

It started as a bit of a road trip to have a wander around and look at cool stuff as you do, and an excuse to plan my next lot of purchases. however a suggestion of running a demo board cropped up in conversation and after a quick email a spot came up!

as this all happened in a couple of days I was a tad surpised to say the least and then the golden question of "can you get your army painted" presented itself!

Now not one to back off from a challange the bar was set and off I went, so with brew in hand and conversations via messageme the idea came up for the flying monkeys from the wizard of oz, so after some google image searching I found this to be my favourite,

now with the Fanticide models the wings were more leather/bat type wings rather than the feathers, the black and red on the waist coat and hat looked nice, but at 28mm I'll be honest I couldn't be arsed to do that for the 35 odd models that I had to crack out.

Rather than painting units I decided to do the whole army production style, so after the initial undercoat

and some well used time on lunch at work,

the monkeys were coming along nicely,

and within a weekish I'm managed to get the whole lot done, all I need to do now is read the rules and I'm set for the day!

so if you up at Fiasco ( linky link) then pop on over and say hello!

First Look : Dead Mans Hand & 4ground buildings

So after picking up Dead Man's Hand from Partizan a couple of months ago I've finally got round to getting a game sorted out with Coops at the club,

In the traditional manner I painted up the desperados and also managed to get some more scatter type terrain done that I've had kicking about for a while,

as both me and Coops had got a demo in when we were at the Derby wargames show last month we simply dived in and went for it,

We played the scene of the good the lead and the ugly,

The opening scene was over fairly quick as I managed to roll fairly well and blew the stranger away with the under fire markers stacking on him,

its the law gun him down!

We then swiftly moved onto the second scene and after a real tight shoot out coops and his infamous D20 rolling got that one in the bag,

it looked grin for sleeping with donkeys, until I pulled a card that let him have an extra movement action so made like a ninja and "regrouped" with the boss!

 In the mean time the gangs killer, was sneaking around and being a really naughty boy shooting people in the back.



Time was ticking and we decided to give the final scene a crap and it was all out war, we'd managed to drop two guys each and went on the next kill wins, which I managed to nip in a cheeky gang up attack on a single dude,

only two of them! charge!! 

and the mayhem begins when the lead starts flying.

 it looks grim for the boss, the model with the bullet token, which is a reload has a double barrelled shot gun and we discovered quite quickly that they are rock hard!


So the actual system then -

Game play:

You have a set of mini playing cards that you get with the main rule book for a mere 20 quid, depending on your gang you'll use a certain suit and the bigger the game you'll use a bigger hand, the cards are used to determine model initiative starting with ace down to joker so a real nice touch that gets rid of the usual I go you go rules that you see now days,

the cards also give you benefits and you'll start with a certain number in your hand and these can be used within your activation or your opponents activation to boost shooting and the like or hinder actions, but if your opponent has the same number card in his hand then your can counter it! so if your like me and pants at poker the cheesy smile will give away that fact that I've a great card or have I.....

models get 3 activations and you have to declare what you do before any dice are rolled so move shoot move and so on. Shooting is dead easy its all D20 with modifiers for range,  cover etc. the thing I like is a natural roll of a 1 means you've ran out of ammo so you need to spend one of your next activations reloading unless your a killer with 2 pistols.

you also don't need a great deal of room to play myself and coops managed to play on a 2x2, it was a tad tight but not too stupid, 3x3 is recommended but I'll no doubt do a 4x4 so I can use the edge of the table for the "admin" zone,

overall the mechanics of the system work really well and the game is very fast once you get going.

Lastability:

Its a good game to play for 3 - 4 weeks on the go then I'd need to give something else a crack, but when I was talking to the chaps from Great Escape Games they have a supplement coming out either end of this year early next year that'll have more gangs and hopefully a campaign system so you can link your games together after all every one loves a cool campaign that they can dip in and out when ever they like.

with the system being quite simple and the stats for the weapons very generic you could easily adapt this to a ultra modern system and clear the embassy with the SAS back in the 80's or rescuing poor souls that have been captured by modern day pirates or even making a table that represents a modern warfare map!

Models:

Great Escape do a box set for each gang, costs 20 quid for 7 guys so a reasonable £2.85ish a model and because the box is like a video cassette case it doubles as a mini carry case all you need to do is add bubble wrap to stop them bouncing around.

as its based in the old west you can get shed loads of models from all over the shop and some are great some are not so great but its what ever floats your boat and what change you have in your pocket!

if you want to know more head over to the great escape website and check out the bits and bobs you can get for the system,

www.greatescapegames.co.uk

and this nicely brings me on to the 4ground stuff that I picked up from Derby, Ive looked at this stuff for ages now and could never justify why I should pic up the terrain until now!

so I got a wagon and a being built building,

the wagon was really simple to build and looks really nice, only negative thing I can is that if it was a tad wider then your 25 mm base models could stand inside no worries.

the building went together like a dream, the only tricky part was the roof but once I'd got it under way it wasn't a problem, only down side to this kit is you don't get a base plate with the side walks compared to the other buildings that they do.

I'm definitely going to be getting more of the 4ground range when all depends on how much the roof on the house costs to repair as my better half discovered a pool of water in the bath room last week and after some mooching about in the attic we've a couple of slipped tiles some where so hoping its a cheap fix!

Warzone Resurrection Kickstarter arrives!

This is one of the Kickstater packages that I've been looking forward to hitting my door step, and Prodos games did not disappoint!

So being work up at about half 10 for this didn't bother me at all, well packed and stuffed with models!

I got dice, templates and some cards in the box but who wants to see those! after all is the toys we're intrested in!

So the Cybertronic stuff first,

The chasseurs on the sprue,

 The Cuirassier Attila on the sprue

The Enhanced Machinators on the sprue

The Immortal on the sprue

So initial impressions are simply WOW! great detail and really well cast, hardly any flash to get rid of and the actual resin material is pretty good with a bit of bend in it so that swords and the like wont snap when you look at them! 

So I decided to sick one of each together for a better look at the model

the Cuirassier Attila or now to be known as attila can with two head options, a metal skull type head or the helmet version, the chasseur was a bit of a bugger to stick together as I went down the route of the left arm holding the gun pose and couldn't get a gun arm and support arm to fit to my pose so as the resin is very easy to work with I cut some of it away and job is a good un! It will need a bit of green stuff but that's a 2 minute job.

the Enhanced Machinators are massive models and I really like them, with the assembly no worries simply banged them together in a matter of minutes, The immortal was even easier a 4 piece model! not sure if you can have more than one in your force so an alternative sculpt would be nice but not essential

So then it was the Dark Legion, 

Undead Legionaires on the sprue

Golgotha on the sprue

and the other side

Razide on the sprue

Praetorian Stalkers on the sprue

So again I put some together for a better look, 

with the undead legionaire again no issues and as its a zombie troop type the pose of the gun fits well with the feel of the model, the stalker has some great detail but I had trouble with getting the weapon and support arms to meet up, not sure if that was me being special though but with enough super glue and swearing you can stick anything together!

the Razide went together quite easily match up the muscle structure and away you go, a bit of green stuff for the gaps and that's sorted!

now this bad boy Alakhai the Cunning not sure why he's cunning I can see exactly what hes going to do! is a four piece model two arms head and body, boom done!!

I'll get round to Golotha when I have sorted out some space and finished off various bits for up and coming shows and tournaments.

So lets get down to the nitty gritty..

Comparing this to the previous kick starters that I've pledged to its been a fairly smooth one, had a delay with various odds and sods but nothing major and the communication from Prodos has been consistent and honest which I like.


The models exceed my personal expectations on what I was going to have turn up in the post, comparing it to dreadball these are far superior and only a few tweaks need to be made and they are as good as GW stuff. The tweaks would be assembly of the actual models you might get instructions or a guide on the site at some point say x arm goes with y arm but if that's all I can criticise on then its not bad at all!

The material is nice to work with and the assembly was easy enough the bond time with super glue is seconds but I discovered that if your quick enough and putt the joint off then as you have a bit of super glue on both sides it goes to the usual 5-10 seconds bonding time.

My only regret is not pledging more on this stuff as the quality is fantastic, I like the look and feel of what I've bought and can't wait to get some paint splashed on this lot. 

now if you want to get in on the action Prodos are offering 10% discount on pre-orders but as people are now starting to get the kickstarters come though now is the time to decide if you want to take advantage of this pre-order deal, I'm going to get some more odds and sods as I went with the "rule of cool" for what I ordered so now its time to make a playable force!

 warzonegame.com

I'm off to the open day on the 3rd November so I'm going to get the rest of my order books and stuff then, can I get some bits painted for the open day yea I'm sure I can god knows what though as its all so nice!