Tag Archives: Miniatures Gaming
News! Airfix Battles Coming Soon
Check out the latest from Modiphiüs ~
GrogHeads Newsdesk, 10 April 2016
Whether it’s British commandos, US Marines or Germany’s Afrika Korps, Airfix’s 1/72 scale soldiers have been fighting their wars across carpets, dining tables and gardens for decades.
Airfix is a fondly remembered part of everyone’s childhood and the company are famous for their line of injection-moulded plastic aircraft, tanks and soldiers. The Airfix brand has been synonymous with model kits for years and now it’s back with a vengeance, with Airfix Battles bringing those adventures to life and its campaigns to a tabletop near you.
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #90
What’s up for preorder in March? Space wars, dice, castles, and WAR! ~
GrogHeads Staff, 25 March 2016
Hull Breach!: In Defiance of Dictators Card Game (Not-So-Broken Games)
$10k of $33k, ends 17 April 2016
We’ve been tracking the Hull Breach gang for a while, going back to 2013 (http://grogheads.com/?p=3199), so now that their new release is hitting Kickstarter, of course we’re going to throw them some love! It’s a deck-builder type of game, with tactical gameplay that depends on how well you can structure and deploy your assets. Your home base (“station”) needs your protection, and you attack with all variety of ships, marines, and special weapons. Mixing and matching with other boxes lets you customize your deck; fret not, though, as it’s not a collectible game, just a customizable one. The new box includes enhanced rules for team play, new victory conditions, and a streamlined rulebook, to go with a truckload of new cards. Launch for their Kickstarter page and fire off your pledge.
Tracer Rounds: Origins Events!
Here’s what’s coming at the GrogHeads Central Command at Origins ~
Several years ago, we approached Origins with a simple idea: bring wargaming back to the convention. It had been withering on the vine for a while. The first year I attended as BayonetGames was in 2005. We were across the aisle from MMP (who said about 4 total words to us the entire show), next to Columbia (where Ferkin said about 4 words to us every other second), and within sight of Avalanche Press, GMT Games, and Matrix Games, with Decision Games, and others, all in the hall as well. By 2010, there were almost no wargamers left in the building. There were some folks playing over in the CABS Board Room (after its consolidation with the War Room), but wargaming had evaporated, not out of malice, but out of neglect. So I called GAMA. I talked to them and asked what sort of parameters they had for us to operate within if we wanted to try and bring the wargamers back to the show. And thus the GrogHeads Central Command was born. We were able to bring some wargaming companies in that hadn’t been there before, as well as bringing back some others. And now we’re getting ready to launch our third year working with Origins, and here’s what we’ve got in store for you:
- Enterprise Games, a retailer out of Indiana, will be the official rep/sponsor of our GMT events. That’s right, for the first time, the Central Command will include official GMT events – we’ve got scheduled events for both COIN series games and Wing Leader, as well as the opportunity for some pick-up games of other titles, like Combat Commander and Command & Colors.
- Lock ‘n Load Publishing is coming in. Since the ownership change, they’ve not come back to Origins, until this year. David is planning on bringing in a (literal) boat-load of new games off the press, and we’ll be running events for LNLT, World at War, and Nations at War.
- Lost Battalion Games is back! They’re the only company that’s joined forces with us every year of the GrogHeads Central Command, so we probably ought to get them some t-shirts to celebrate or something. They’re going to be running some large ‘rolling’ events for both Sergeants – Hell on Wheels! and Rally Round the Flag that’ll permanently occupy a pair of our tables for the entire show.
- Flying Pig Games is making their Origins debut. Mark has committed to the show and we’ll be running events for both Night of Man and Old School Tactical.
- Proving Ground Games is bringing back their Origins Award-winning minis rules, and taking over a table of their own with their snazzy terrain boards for a weekend of minis-based wargaming, both WWII and modern.
- The ever-enjoyable Command Post Wargaming, wherein you and the rest of the participants get a quick primer on military planning, and then get to develop your own plan for keeping the red horde from rolling over the inter-German border. And then you get to execute your plan and watch it fall to pieces in the first 10 minutes as you scramble to adjust while the war goes on! Seriously, though, it’s an exercise in wargaming with a far more realistic approach to planning, intel, and logistics than you get out of any other tabletop experience. If we get enough participants, we sometimes run this one head-to-head, so bring your friends!
- For those that want the Command Post Wargaming experience, but are short on time, we also have the more scaled-back Command Post Chess events, where the principles of planning, intel, and execution are very similar, but with a simplified game that everyone already knows – Chess!
- Because I’m the guy that puts all this together, I also sneak in a few events of my own, so we’re going to make sure that BayonetGames‘ long-discussed-and-eventually-to-be-published game about modern-day war in Ukraine hits the table (Orange Crush) as well as one of BayonetGames’ Warfighter-series games, Asian Thunder.
We’ve got over 50 wargaming events spread across 5 days, including some drop-in game times and a stray seminar here and there. There’s something for everyone, so come join us this summer at Origins. Detailed day-by-day schedule breakdowns are below –
Mercs: Recon Kickstarter – First Look!
The Mercs: Recon Kickstarter campaign is now shipping, in waves. What’s inside? ~
Vance Strickland, 10 February 2015
Megacon’s Mercs: Recon Kickstarter package. 1st of 2 waves of stuff. Each box is a stand alone game, but you can mix and match most all of the parts to extend the replayability.
Brand spanking new, just outta the shipping box!
GrogHeads Reviews the Feldherr Travel Case
Feldherr MAXI Star Wars X-Wing Rebel Set 1 / Tantive, Falcon, YT-2400, 15 Ships ~
Michael Eckenfels, 18 November 2015
INTRODUCTION
A habit of epic proportions formed with me some years ago when the first Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Core Set hit stores. The Core set, I bought for myself, though I had nobody else to play the game with. I was immediately smitten by the mini-figures of the one X-Wing and the two TIE Fighters that come with that Core set, and was hooked.
That Core set because an extra ship here and another one there, and soon enough my collection of X-Wing Miniatures makes it look like I could film my own Abrams-worthy battle scenes for the next Star Wars movie. The problem is, while these things are beautiful to look at, they’re fragile. I feel like even lustful glances, let alone wonton groping, would cause them to break into pieces.
While the store I bought my Core set hosts an X-Wing Minis game night every Tuesday evening, I never went by, because I had nothing to really store my pieces in, much less transport them. I did some searching and found a few solutions online – some do-it-yourself, others more expensive off-the-shelf stuff – and finally fell on a line of cases by a company called Feldherr.
Feldherr is a company based in Berlin but has a worldwide reach, providing figure cases for not just Star Wars but a wide variety of miniatures. Their cases are on the pricey side, so it took me a few months before I finally pulled the trigger and bought one after much deliberation and research. I am now the owner of a Feldherr MAXI case, and have had it for a couple of months now. What’s the verdict?
IMPRESSIONS
Out of the box.
The Feldherr case I purchased is, specifically, the Rebel Set 1, which holds the Tantive IV, the Millennium Falcon, and the YT-2400, as well as fifteen other ships (the latter category is the smaller ships, such as the X-Wing, A-Wing, TIE Fighters, and so on). At $70, this was something of a steep investment, but I really wanted a case to carry my components in so I could FINALLY visit the game store and play with the figures that I’ve spent two years collecting.
