Fantasy Gaming... Deep Thoughts...

This is like as not to be a fairly long winded post so keep that in mind as you begin reading.  That and I will likely cover this on the next podcast but your looking at a couple weeks before that gets recorded and released.

Taking stock of my fantasy gaming career is a simple matter.  I've been alive for 33 years now and for at least 19 of that I've been playing tabletop miniatures games.  Thats a lot.  Now, I don't claim to be a game designer or the best strategist, no, none of that would be accurate at all.  I however feel that I have played enough games to be able to pin down whether a game will be successful over a long haul.  Sadly, I believe AoS is not going to be that game.  I don't think it will die off, nor do I believe that you'll never see a tournament for it.  I do however believe that they will be fewer and farther between than WHFB tournaments were and I don't think you'll be finding them around my area.

Episode #83: Age of Sigmar Rules

Hello everybody!

Thanks for joining us again for Episode #83.  I'm joined in this episode by friend of the show Chuck  to finally sit down and talk more in depth about Warhammer: Age of Sigmar!  I must say its really nice to sit down for a full length show with an old friend and discuss the new game.  Chuck and I break into this show going through the 4 pager of rules and giving our thoughts and opinions on it as we go over those rules talking about how to play the game.

We wrap up the show discussing what we've done lately and kind of where we are at personally in the hobby right now.  We also mention the future of the show which we're not 100% on the direction of at this moment but I can certainly assure you we'll be working diligently on continuing everything as it is to the end of 2015 at which point I think we'll have had more than enough time to decide on exactly what the future of the hobby will be for ourselves and consequently the show itself.

Thanks for joining us and as always if you have any questions, comments, etc... please let us know by e-mailing us at: waaagh.cast.jf@gmail.com

Links to the Waaagh Cast Quarterly e-Zines:
Issue #1
Issue #2
Issue #3

Download the show directly from this link: Episode #83
Run Time: 1 Hour 48 Minutes 35 Seconds

Episode #82: Opinion on Age of Sigmar

Hello everybody,


Episode #82 is not only here, it is short.  I basically just wanted to get something out after a two month hiatus and get some talk in about Age of Sigmar and where I stand on the hobby at the moment.  To me it isn't dead and I'm actually hoping this will reinvigorate me into my podcasting.  So its only abot 25 minutes that I recorded on my lunch at work today, listen to it and I hope maybe you get something from it.  I used my mobile recorder for this episode too, so the quality is kind of rough.  Sorry about that ahead of time.

We hope you enjoy the show, and if you have any comments, questions, etc please feel free to e-mail us and leave comments on the blog or i-Tunes!  Thanks for listening.

Download the show directly from this link: Episode #82
Run Time: 0 Hour 21 Minutes 21Seconds

Age of Sigmar - Thoughts After Two Games

Holy hell the world has officially ended.  I mean, I know that the WHFB world technically ended when the last End Times book came out but wow does it seem like it has ended now.  Yet, reborn it is as “The Age of SIgmar” heralds in a new era of peace and prosperity.  Well, not really…  Wow was the internet a crazy thing to check out over the last two weeks as not only more and more rumors, pictures and theories flooded but as the rules were eventually released.  The amount of blind hate spewed from people who play and love Warhammer was unreal.  It literally hurt me a little inside seeing the community fracture like it has which is really quite unfortunate as that will probably be the worst thing to come out of Age of Sigmar while some would argue that the worst thing is Age of Sigmar itself.

I’ve now played two games of Age of Sigmar (AoS) and while I have begun to form many opinions, each time I play something a changes a little bit.  Here and there I see pieces of strategy and planning come into it.  Then it will do a 180 on me and I’ll simply be left wondering what on earth GW was thinking.  I get the need for a reset, I really do.  WHFB was a flagging game system.  It wasn’t pulling its weight and that has a lot to do with many customers including myself.  Many of us who have been in the hobby for years own so many armies that we don’t buy a lot of new stuff.  Those of us who do keep building armies tend to go and find it second hand, often as not.  Personally I do a little of both new and used.  When kids (I know people are railing against this whole kid’s thing right now) come into the store they see WHFB and 40K and think they both look amazing.  The whole barrier to entry through money thing exists in both systems although I do agree that 40K is probably slightly less.  Something had to be done to get people to walk in, see this and say “I must play that!”.  Now whether Age of Sigmar achieves this goal or not will remain to be seen but GW has gone a long way towards giving it the college try.

Age of Sigmar : Death of Warhammer

Welcome to the Age of Sigmar...

Or so it is told.  Here I am on June 30th writing this post looking at the pictures, rules and warscrolls (I.E. Army Book) of the new starter set.  As told currently Warhammer Fantasy Battles is dead.  The books have all been pulled and are no longer for sale.  White Dwarf is touting this new game as an entirely new system and for the most part it is indeed quite new.  It seems to me that it is pulling mechanics from damned near every current game system out there.  We've got skirmishing models, simplified rules, rules in box with models, on-line .pdf's containing rules which can be updated when desired.  Sure we've still got plenty of what were used to with GW as well.  That is to say amazing models, poor customer communication and an utter lack of answers to any of our questions.

The Waaagh Cast Quarterly: Issue #3

Hi everybody!

We're here with Issue #3 of The Waaagh Cast Quarterly!  I'm thrilled to have managed to get 3 of these magazines put together and with the help of friends perhaps we'll do more.  Truth be told, we only have at this moment the slightest idea of where Warhammer is heading or where it will end up when the Age of Sigmar launches in just 10 days.  Hopefully we'll all still be playing but good gracious, the lord only knows.

In this issue you get to see some Dwarfs, hear about some Empire VS. Warriors of Chaos, learn a bit about Blood in the Snow and find out how to make flowering trees.  Along with anything else that you may find of interest and we hope you do; please enjoy the 3rd quarters issue.  Hopefully we'll be back in Q4!

Download The Waaagh Cast Quarterly Issue #3 HERE!

If your new to the e-zine and would like to go backwards to check out our first issue then you can visit the blog at [url]http://www.waaaghcast.net[/url] and find the tag section looking for WCQ.

Wild West Exodues Terrain Projects...

Just for archiving basically. :)

Episode #81: WHFB Malaise & Wild West Exodus

Hello everybody,


Episode #81 is up and running where friend of the show Dave and I discuss our current state of malaise on the WHFB game that not only ourselves but many others are currently feeling and then have a discussion on Wild West Exodus as our new hobby hotness.  So if your interested in a new game and the Wild West sounds good give it a listen.  We had some recording issues during the show, some background noise and echo.  One of my microphones is getting pretty worn out and needs replacing so I apologize for the less than stellar audio quality for this show.

We hope you enjoy the show, and if you have any comments, questions, etc please feel free to e-mail us and leave comments on the blog or i-Tunes!  Thanks for listening.

Download the show directly from this link: Episode #81
Run Time: 1 Hour 08 Minutes 41Seconds

You feelin lucky punk?

So I'm back, and quite recently after the previous post to look at some of the models.  Now that all of our stuff has come in we can discuss a little bit of the size and quality that we found in the 2 Player Starter Box (Outlaws VS. Lawmen).  The models that are plastic are highly detailed and very nice.  There are definite mold lines on them which you get with plastic tooling, but GW has learned how to hide them quite well.  I actually don't think that’s quite as possible with the WWX models as they come in so many pieces.  Where most GW models are 5/6 pieces a model for WWX is closer to 10 in some cases.  This I believe probably aids in the higher detail of the models but also make the mold lines that are there almost impossible to hide.

Going through the rest of the box we have the mini rulebook which is very nice for what it is.  It lacks the background of the game but has a short blurb on each of the original factions in the game.  It also only contains the 3 tournament style scenarios and not the 10 narrative scenarios in the larger book.  The box set also came with a single set of templates which are nice with raised edges, numbers and hard plastic.  It came with 4 D10 dice which are nice enough for dice but I think they really could've came with more; 4 seems like a minimum, especially considering one of the models has the ability to fire 6 times per action.  Finally it came with a counter set to mark statuses and activations of models on the board which comparative to the rest of the box seemed very cheaply made and was the only really disappointing part of the box.

The single models we ordered all came in clamshell plastic and were cast in resin.  The models seem quite nice and are no less detailed than the plastics as far as I can see.  There is some mold line and flashing that will need to be cleaned up but nothing that isn't expected and of course I assume that there is probably release agent on them so they'll need a warm bath before assembly and painting.

Speaking of painting.  With the models coming in so many pieces and some of which are quite tiny and fiddly I think they would really benefit from being painted prior to assembly which doesn't suit my style (or patience) but I feel that it should be said.  The cards are nice thick stock and the instructions are extremely nice.  Not only are the parts on the sprues numbered and the instructions tell you the number but the instructions also contain pictures of the sprues themselves highlighting the parts for each model in red so that they are even easier to find; really makes finding the parts and getting your models assembled a snap.

After getting a couple of models assembled I realized that the scratch building I was making is a fair bit too large; apparently the Battletech models I was using as an assumptive scale are slightly larger than the WWX models themselves.  That said I'm still going to finish it and I'll make it work for me.  Until I get some more stuff built though we're going to be playing games on a fantasy table.  Maybe we're making our way out west and this is us crossing the Great Plains.  We'll get to the west eventually.  As for that building; I've lowered the roof.  I feel it looks much better now and not so overly large.

 

Theres a new game in my town...

Well it finally happened.  GW has gone and broke us down with their... well, everything.  Interest in Fantasy was super high when the End Times started coming out and over the last couple books it has dropped as the power levels and storyline have continued.  Never have I heard so many Fantasy players discuss other game systems and switching out of GW to other companies games and while many of us tried to corral people into the GW Specialist lines that they no longer support it was only a matter of time before the bell rang and rang it has for my local friends and I.

Rang high noon at that.  After much discussion over the course of a couple months and some play testing of various game systems we have settled on picking up Wild West Exodus produced by Outlaw Miniatures which is a creation of the company Battlefoam.  It takes on an alternate version of history branching off just after the Civil War when a fantastic new technology is discovered which catapults the Wild West into a very Steampunk modern era of warfare.  Suddenly the pony express is riding hover bikes, driving buggies and flying in gyrocopters.  The old fashioned 6 shooter exists but it now fires explosive ammunition and rifles shoot lasers and plasma.  Cybernetic enhancements and body armor protect some from the worst of the weaponry but it truly is wild!

Adepticon 2015 - The Aftermath...

So it’s now April and its been a couple of weeks since Adepticon ended.  What a glorious time it was for me and everyone else involved.  While I'll obviously talk plenty about Adepticon on the podcast I thought I'd make a post here on the blog and stick all of my battle reports on here, since I imagine I won’t cover them too much on the show.

Showed up Thursday morning and played in both of the 1,000 Point How You Use It Tournaments.  Skaven in the AM and my Dwarfs in the PM.  Helped staff during the Team Tournament on Friday, played Regiments of Renown that evening.  Staffed the Championships on Saturday, played Warbands Saturday night and finally helped staff on Sunday.

I can without question attest that I am indeed getting older as on Saturday I was feeling super worn down and tired.  It didn't get much better from there with me becoming physically ill on Sunday afternoon.  I blame the hotel food, but it may have just been that combined with lack of sleep.  It’s really quite difficult to say.  I really enjoyed the vendor hall this year as the new venue provided a larger space than the previous hotel. That isn't to say that I liked this hotel better overall as I think I actually prefer the Weston.

I want to take a moment to sum up my overall thoughts on Adepticon as a whole and I think the best or at least easiest way to get that information across is simply in a list.

Hotel: Was ok, it’s a give or take.  Bigger, brighter, slightly more expensive.  I did hear some complaints about uncourteous or unhelpful staff, but did not experience these things for myself.

Food: Overpriced hotel food; Weston gets the 1 up on this for Target and the mall food court being in walking distance providing more options.

Cost: Slightly more expensive as I said, but not enough to stop me from attending again, maybe at most like $20 total more.

Vendors: To me it seemed like there were a lot more vendors although I distinctly noticed the lack of a couple long time vendors, Armorcast and Sabol Designs.  There were however quite a few new vendors, and a lot of new miniature games being shown, which is cool.

Attendance: I don't have the actual numbers information for the con, but overall it really appeared that attendance was hurt this year across the board as far as Games Workshop events were concerned.  There are a myriad of factors that could be to blame for this.  New editions, rule sets, venue, time of year, cost, etc...  It’s hard to really point the finger at one thing and say that it was at fault.

Swag: The con is still throwing good swag your way just for showing up to the event and Privateer Press continues to knock it out of the park throwing starter boxes in and this year giving out a free rulebook of your choice, either Hordes or War Machine.  Talk about trying to convert you, but still you have to appreciate the effort.

Prize Support: For the winners of the tournaments I heard that the prizes were quite nice this year as far as product was concerned.  Other than that the customary plaques and this year certificates for a myriad of smaller events in small frames.  They seemed a bit cheap but I'm happy with something rather than nothing.  Also it should be stated that even with small certificate in frame you still got good product for prizes as I'll discuss later.

Episode #80: Adepticon 2015 Wrap-up

Good day everyone,


Here we are with Episode #80 of The Waaagh Cast!  Joined this episode by friend of the show Ryan G. we go over our 2015 Adepticon experience much like I said you could expect at the end of the last show that Chuck and I recorded.  A great time was had, a new venue was explored and we discuss our games of course.  If you've still never attended Adepticon it is still a convention that comes highly recommended by all of us here.

We hope you enjoy the show, and if you have any comments, questions, etc please feel free to e-mail us and leave comments on the blog or i-Tunes!  Thanks for listening.

Download the show directly from this link: Episode #80
Run Time: 1 Hour 41 Minutes 39Seconds

The Waaagh Cast Quarterly: Issue #2

Hello everyone,

I'm happy to announce and provide you with Issue #2 of our Quarterly e-zine: The Waaagh Cast Quarterly!

Its quite exciting to have issue #2 finally up and available to download.  The feedback for our first issue was great and I'm very happy with the response we received and the number of downloads it garnered.  I know it doesn't quite scratch everyone's itch but much like the podcast I've hosted for years, you just can't be everything to everyone.

Anyway I hope you all enjoy the e-zine for what it is.  You can click the image or the link below to download the e-zine in convenient PDF format.

The Waaagh Cast Quarterly: Issue #2

If your new to the e-zine and would like to go backwards to check out our first issue then you can visit the blog at http://www.waaaghcast.net or click the link below.

The Waaagh Cast Quarterly: Issue #1

The Road to Adepticon

So, I'm certain most of the miniature community; at least in the US but most likely also abroad as we've had a lot of people from across the world attend are aware, Adepticon is just over the horizon.  As I type this I am only 3 days away from leaving my wife and children for 4 days of glorious gaming, drinking, eating and hanging out with friends and like minded individuals whom I often see only once a year.  To say that I am looking forward to it would be understatement.

When my friends and I originally signed up for Adepticon this year I was pretty trepidacious about it.  After having skipped last year to attend my first board game convention with my wife (Geekway to the West) and with The End Times upon us my fantasy mojo has been pretty sapped.  That's not to say I don't like fantasy still, but the competitive side, the tournament play has pretty much been ruined for me.  So while I wanted to play in the 2 day championships I decided to forgo that and play in the events that the End Times rules will likely effect the least.  I'll be participating in both of the 1,000 point How You Use It tournaments, the 100 point Regiments of Renown and the 500 point Warbands.

Episode #79: Nagash & Glotkin Narrative Rules

Hello everyone,

Excitedly trying to get back to the reason I'd restarted the show which is discussion and playing of campaigns and narrative rules.  I'm happy to be joined by our old friend Chuck this episode to discuss the Darkest Depths, Haunted Terrain and Streets of Death rules from the Nagash and Glotkin books.  While we haven't tried these rules yet I'm looking forward to trying to incorporate some things into a small 10 player tournament I'll be running this summer in my basement.

Hopefully you enjoy everything.  If you have any questions, comments or such please remember to e-mail us!

Link to the Waaagh Cast Quarterly Issue #1 PDF mentioned towards the end of the show:
http://home.comcast.net/~fleschjosephp/WCQ/wcq1.pdf

Download the show directly from this link: Episode #79
Run Time: 1 Hour 28 Minutes 12 Seconds

Legit Update

Okay, okay, I admit my last post was pretty trash.  Had no real content, and not that many of my posts do, but I actually have some time to sit down and throw something together and I actually have a little something to talk about.  In case the picture didn't give it away I'm going to be talking about Gorkamorka at some point in this post, but for now let's hit some basics first and check out the New Years Resolution update and head them down one at a time.

Complete 5 Tables of Terrain
Hard at work while I type with tree discs and area pieces drying with their first flock on them.  Painting tomorrow, then assembling tree's.

Run 10 Player Tournament
Still waiting on the terrain thing, although I did begin assembling rules, scenario sheets and scoring information.  So again, I'm working.

Going once, twice, sold!

Just a hobby update today, particularly since I'm trying to keep to some of my resolutions which should be nearly impossible to screw up.  Namely, keep up on the blog with a minimum of one post a month.

So I sold the Lizardmen Army I had sitting now that I have my Tomb Kings army.  That's one resolution down for 2015 as I've cut myself back to 4 armies again.

The other goals are so lofty that I may not see a lot of progress on them for many months.  I have however been quite busy updating my Tomb King army's paint job.   If your interested in those pictures you can either check out our Flickr feed or head over to the Tomb Kings forum and see the threat here.

Not much of a post today, but just excited to have any hobby progress.

Also I'm looking into Gorkamorka.  More on that some other time.

Episode #78: The Ramblin Man...

Howdy ya'll,

Good lord its been a hot minute since we've managed to settle down enough to record a show.  Roughly 4 months in fact.  Sorry about that.  The end of the year is always a hectic time for everyone.  Anyway, my buddy Dave and I finally had some time to just sit and BS and that is literally what we did.  Didn't really discuss what we've done lately, but we did get up to just talking about End Times for a solid hour plus.  I can't say your guarantee'd to get anyithg out of this show but who knows; give a listen and you might.

As always, don't hesitate to send e-mails, or contact us through any of ht eother methods availalbe; Twitter, Facebook, etc... with questions or comments.

Download the show directly from this link: Episode #78
Run Time: 1 Hour 23 Minutes 15 Seconds

2014 - By The Numbers

Every year I stop to take a look at my numbers with just to see how my performance was over the year in Warhammer.

Every year I try to get 52 games in which would account for 1 game a week.  This is how I try to justify the cost of my hobby. I figure if I were to actually get a game in a week then the massive amount of cash I’ve dropped into this hobby over the years I will not have gone too far afoul.  Now, that said this never happens.  I’ve been keeping track for 5 years and only once have I actually hit the 52.  That said this is actually the furthest year I’ve been from the number with only 40 games played.

I also like to keep track of my overall Win/Loss/Draw percentages.  This is the first year that my Win percentage has fallen under my Loss 21 games of my 40 games resulting in a loss.  Only a single Draw, and then 18 games in the Win category.  That’s 45% Win, 53% Loss and 3% Drawn.  The only other year that my games resulted in a lower than 50% Win rate was back in 2011 when I actually had a tie between my Win/Loss at 17 games apiece.  So this tells me that I played less and apparently got worse.

I also keep track of this all by armies that I played.  This year I played:
12 games with Dwarfs
4 with Skaven
20 with Empire
4 with Orcs & Goblins

Having played ½ of my games with my Empire army I’m not super shocked that my win percentage with them was over 50% of their own games with 11 wins, 8 losses and my single draw of the year.  I lost 3 of my 4 games with Skaven, 8 of 12 with Dwarfs and 2 of the 4 with O&G. 
Two of my Skaven games were lost in Triumph & Treachery games of Warhammer which makes me feel a little better as T&T really has the ability to mess with an army by making things work so differently from a standard game of Warhammer.  The Dwarf book I never really did get a good grasp on and the O&G I only played for a mini campaign that Chuck and I did and right afterward sold the army.

2015 - The Resolutions!

Oh dear it’s the time of year again; the time when we evaluate the failed resolutions of the previous year and come up with some more for ourselves to probably fail at.  It seems a grim outlook on the situation but it often is the correct one.  I don't think I've ever in my life managed to nail all of my resolutions and I assume I will continue that streak into 2016, but for now let's look back on the successes and failures from 2014.

First let us take a moment to go over my 2014 resolutions.

-Buy no more than 5 new Board Games-
I bought 4 games.  I also traded for 2 more but since trading involves getting rid of a game I won’t be counting that against me.  Only 4 is a success for me and even more so the fact that the games I did get seem to be a hit with everyone who has played them.

-Participate in the local X-Wing League or run Season 3 of The Waaagh Cast Cup Blood Bowl League-
Our local X-Wing league died pretty much as soon as the last one ended resulting in no 2nd season of the league.  It sucks, but I take consolation hat I didn’t invest further than Wave 3 at least.  I've debated selling my stuff but I think it’s still a worthwhile game to keep at the level I have for random one off games.  The Blood Bowl League also did not make it back into rotation this year.  I enjoyed running the League but my old PC, while it can run the game is getting awfully sluggish and out of date.  I’d like to say maybe I’ll get a new one and run the league but honestly I don’t have a whole lot of motivation to play Blood Bowl right now so running it is even less likely.

-Play four games of Warhammer using supplemental rules-
I'd like to say with certainty that this was completed.  I know for a fact I've played at least four games using Triumph & Treachery and I know also that I've squeezed in at least two or so using Storm of Magic (at least the Scrolls of Binding part).  Heck, Chuck and I played a game just a few weeks ago using the Legions of Chaos and Lore of Undeath rules which I'm going to go ahead and put under the supplemental category.

-Complete my Skaven Army-
Well I made a very specific list of models I wanted to complete for this last year and out of those models I failed to complete only 1.  However! I also added a model that wasn't on the list and required a lot more effort on my part in both the converting and painting.  I dropped the Ratling Gun and added a Verminlord.  Not to mention I painted up the Bell and Rat Ogre pieces and got my Plague Furnace worked up to the point where I can swap in and out as I want.  I count this as a successful completion of a goal.

New Year - New Frontier!

New year and new project!

I’m so excited today to announce the release of Issue #1 of The Waaagh Cast Quarterly!

This is something I’d started working on in the new year of 2014 but after two months of work with layout programs and everything else I finally gave up on.  However towards the end of 2014 my interest in the project was renewed and I slapped it together and forced my way through it.  Of course it was created primarily in Microsoft Word which is not a layout program and so it unquestionably has a more newsletter look than magazine look but it definitely has everything I wanted in it.

I feel at just shy of 30 pages it definitely has some good weight to it for a fan produced e-zine.  Battle Reports, Army Displays, Terrain Build and my personal favorite piece is the cardboard punch-out type article.  I really missed the days when White Dwarfs included add-ons for your games in the form of punch out rules/tokens/buildings and absolutely had a vision of using this stuff when I started working on it so long ago.

I hope that you all enjoy the magazine and encourage you to spread it around your army forums that your part of, or amongst your friends and e-mail circles.  Hopefully it will receive a good reception and I’ll have plenty of people help put the next and future issues together.  The goal is to release an issue quarterly and since I managed to get this out on the 1st of January I’ll be aiming for April 1st.  If you want to help make sure to get into contact with me!

Download the .pdf at the link below!

The Waaagh Cast Quarterly .pdf 5.46MB