Flames of War starter bundles from Waylands

Waylandgames.co.uk have announced Flames of War starter bundle deals for sale on their online store. Waylands are a great company with a good range and fine customer service. I've been very impressed by them in my dealings so far, not least because of the way in which they've gone out to bat for the Australasian gamer with Games Workshop over the international (outside of the EU) sales embargo. I plan on covering this issue in a future blog, but for now its very nice to see someone having the balls to stand up to GW. Importantly, for the island-dweller, waylands also ship for free on flames of war orders!

Now, they're selling bundles for most of the armies over the more common company types. To illustrate how good the deal is I'm going to run through the British Infantry bundle.

The bundle contains:

1x British Rifle Company box
1x Field Battery Royal Artillery box
1x 6pdrs AT gun platoon box
1x British late war paint set
1x Open Fire Rules starter box

All of this for the price of £129.60 or $250.55 NZD. This is a substantial saving, given that the rrp of the bundle is $342 NZD! (though to be fair, buying from the UK is always much cheaper with the strength of the NZD at present).

In addition to the great price, waylands will issue a £10 voucher to be spent on gale force 9 products so you will have everything you need to base your figures ready for the table.

So if you've been looking at getting into FoW or the missus is getting sick of you hanging around on weekends, you can't really go wrong with the waylands bundle as a cheap way of entering the hobby!

Infinity: Terraforming Bourak

I've aligned myself with Haqqislam in the world of Infinity; a combination of the low-tech miniatures with less of an anime aesthetic (in my opinion) and the background story of a "new islam" reverting to its humanist roots really appealed to me.  The happy coincidence of this choice is that the Haqqislam planet, Bourak, is a desert planet much like our middle east.  I see this as an opportunity to create a playing board a little bit different to the urban landscapes I've seen throughout the Infinity community, with (hopefully) some cross-over into terrain for the modern skirmish wargame "Force on Force" by Ambush Alley Games.  A multi-purpose board will save on storage, time, and money!

I see the Haqqislam faction as having been influenced by the Fremen of Frank Herbert's Dune in addition to the obvious contemporary middle-eastern and islamic cultures.  I've also looked at Tatooine from Star Wars for inspiration; its another well-known science fiction desert setting after all.  I've collected samples of the following art to try and get a feel for how desert settlements can be portrayed in Sci-Fi:

"Dune" by thegryph.deviantart.com.
A mixture of high-tech and desert hovels.

A scene influenced by a middle-eastern bazaar with high-tech elements

Tatooine: Rough structures with high-tech fixtures.
The design of the buildings seems subtly different to contemporary culture,
giving the landscape its own flavour.

I think that the above images will be useful.  I'm not sure that they're exactly what I'm going for here but they've given me a few ideas:

• Subtly changing the shapes and designs of buildings can make them seem both traditional and futuristic at the same time;
• It may not be flavourful enough to just "strap on" a few token high-tech items to traditional style buildings - they may look out of place, and I suspect that the lines of traditional buildings may not be crisp enough for the Infinity aesthetic;
• Deserts are dusty and dirty places - while Haqqislam are supposedly the masters of terraforming, I doubt they keep their landscapes spotlessly dusted; and
• I could recreate the traditional middle-eastern bazaar with an Infinity high-tech theme.  For awnings, perhaps suspended sails with crisp lines, or awnings made out of coloured perspex similar to the terrain pieces made by Micro Art Studios. 

My intentions at this stage are to create a desert themed board with buildings made out of apparently natural material (modelled stone and clay) that blend in and function well with the environment.  This could work with pre-made terrain designed for a contemporary setting, such as the resin pieces pictured below.  In terms of having a multi-purpose board these models would be ideal as with removable/interchangeable parts they could be appropriate for both settings.  My concerns are with this is that they won't quite be unique enough for Infinity in that they don't really fit with the "flavour" or aesthetic of the world so well, and they may not necessary fit in with the background of Haqqislam.  They're the leaders in the fields of medicine and terraforming, so they're hardly likely to be residing in mud-brick hovels.

A resin middle-eastern themed hovel
from www.colonialsteamboat.co.uk

A two story building (converts to ruin)
from the Miniature Building Authority

My favourite: A two-story hovel
from www.crescent-root.com

A single-story resin hovel
from www.thewarstore.com

All of these terrain pieces are fine.  Some better than others, and some certainly more worth the price tag.  I think they'd all be passable with some modification for an Infinity table.  However, they're an expensive option, especially given that they'd need to be shipped to New Zealand; in light of this is "passable" good enough?  I don't really think they fit too well with the infinity aesthetic - there is a bit much damage to the walls of the hovels for my taste, and I'm not too sure how old buildings in Infinity should look.  Bourak hasn't been colonised for that long, after all.

The other idea is to scratch-build buildings using foamboard and other materials.  This would allow me to design the buildings to have clean though subtly traditional lines more in line with the Infinity aesthetic, and would be significantly cheaper, though more time consuming, than using pre-made resin terrain.  Unfortunately, this would probably mean that the terrain wouldn't be appropriate for use with Force on Force.  There is of course a third option - paper terrain.  I suspect that I may utilise this while I am in the process of building more resilient terrain.  I'm not particularly "crafty" or creative-minded (years of doing language based stuff at university probably forced all of that out of me), so I expect that I'd find making buildings slow going.

What do you think?  Does anyone have any relevant experiences with making terrain for Infinity?  Any hints, tips, or favourite products that you could comment on?  Any help would be appreciated!

Introduction

Hi Everyone.

I suppose I should introduce myself since Mike has tried to mention me in every post he makes.

No I'm not imaginary and I did pretty much buy all that stuff on impulse (although most of it was while it was on a heavy discount.). It is as he said it is.

My name is Garth.

I have been interested in miniatures and gaming since my early years. Hell I think it was I who introduced it to our high school. Bringing in a Gamesworkshop catalogue that looked something akin to a newspaper crossed with a dirty magazine Passed from teenager to teenager until it was tattered and torn (it did the rounds like any 'forbidden' material would at a high school.). I never did get it back.

During these years Gamesworkshop's rules were the only ones that were featured in our lives. Everything else had no meaning. Any other games, rules or miniatures were unkown or ignored. Weekends were filled with sport and then an entire evening of dice/junk food fueled enjoyment

Warhammer ruled on high.

But eventually its hold began to wain. The influence of drinking, girls, tertiary education and paying off student loans took precedent.

All war gaming had to take a back seat when it came to setting your self up with a 'LIFE'.

5 or 6 years pass without even the thought of small miniature plastic soldiers battling for supremacy of a 6' x 4' piece of table.

Until, you finish study. You got the girl (or had...). You have a job nothing like you studied for. You've paid off a hefty chunk of your student loan and are somehow managing to save a little bit of money after spending the rest on booze and rent. But your life still feels hollow. Something is missing. Something you enjoyed for 5 solid years.

About a year ago Mike and I were contemplating on whether or not to get back into war gaming. We both have a very keen interest in Table top hobbies and we also share a love for military history ( particularly Napoleonics and WWII.). We decided to take a wide berth of GamesWorkshop rule sets (We both still both have soft spots for Warhammer and Mordheim but GODDAMN the stuff is so expensive in NZ!.) and focus on historical gaming. It was during our research into the various rule compilations and miniatures of the Napoleonic era that we stumbled across the Perry twins website http://www.perry-miniatures.com/. These guys are INCREDIBLE. It was their miniatures alone that started me collecting again. The sculpts are amazing! Each miniature is a work of ART. I promptly bought a box of Cuirassiers http://www.perry-miniatures.com/index2.html and have never looked back.

From there we moved into the WWII era. Flames of war being of particular interest to us since it has its origins in NZ (Mike had tried to introduce this to me in High school but it never really took off.). Mike had already bought some British miniatures a few years back off of a auction site, so with him going the Allies I went Axis. The Fallschirmjager to be precise. Our two chosen armies were the perfect historical combination. Throughout the war these two faced each other again and again in combat. Opening the way for us to have many re-enactments of their battles. Crete, Sicily, Cassino. It's all there. What more could a gamer want. I know have 2500 pts of Fallschirmjager to paint through (GULP...) as well as about another 1700pts of Panzer Lehr (which I picked up mighty cheap! ;) ).

I never have been much of a painter. Most of my Warhammer army back in the day was Unpainted and Unassembled. But I am definitely trying to make up for my 'laziness' at high school. I will post some pictures of my work once I figure out how to get my Camera working with my computer and would welcome and tips/ criticism on my painting.

Mike has also started on Infinity. A particular pet project of his. Although maybe not as keen in my approach to the Infinity game as he, I am still looking forward to giving this a whirl. I enjoyed the Mordheim skirmish game ALOT and this being a Sci-Fi skirmish game it can only bring great things. The Nomads models appeal to me the most out of all the available factions so I have decided to go with them. So far I have ordered but not yet received a starter set and also an Intruder to make up a 150pt list. Hopefully at some stage in the near future Mike and I will have the chance to have a game of this very compelling rule set.

I hope you will enjoy reading about our progress through this exciting and fascinating hobby and welcome any tips and suggestions that you would like to share.

Many thanks and happy gaming.

Garth

His Majesty's lead pile

The only truly tangible project I have on the go at the moment is in Flames of War, the miniatures game set in the Second World War.  Being a romantic chap and a sucker for the land of hope and glory I'm rolling with a late war British Rifle Company for the Italian Theatre, for use with the Fortress Europe and Cassino source books.

I may very well use these miniatures as New Zealanders which is perfectly acceptable given the identical colour schemes, though there are some very nice Commonwealth Infantry produced by Battlefront.  In terms of ease of painting I should perhaps have chosen the mid-war desert theatre or late war France for British Infantry, as those theatres would require a more limited palette and therefore require less of my very scarce painting time!

I picked up 1x Mortar Platoon and 1x HMG Platoon of late war Italian theatre British quite cheap on trademe.co.nz about 5 years back, so I've made a start on the Mortar Platoon as you can see below.

As you can see I need to practice photographing miniatures, and they could do with some matt varnish over the top of the gloss!  I'm pretty much block painting on bare colours and relying on the Army Painter Quick Shade "strong tone" to pick out the detail and provide shading (it also varnishes which is handy).  While I think that I could fairly be the target of criticism for my use of Quick Shade as a "cop out", at this early stage of my painting career I don't think I have the skill or the patience to shade/highlight manually, and I also have very little inclination to do so on 15mm miniatures!  I'll explain my reasons for this in a future blog post.

I'm actually pretty happy with the results and I think that the Quick Shade has worked quite well with the Italian theatre palette.  I'm hoping to pick up the pace with my painting a bit by batch painting larger groups at a time.  Fairly shortly I hope to have accumulated enough bottle caps to be able to "working base" a whole platoon at a time.  By utilising a wet palette successfully (I've found it to be a useful technique so far) I ought to always have something ready to paint without having to wait on an earlier coat or an adjacent colour to dry.

Reinforcements

With the pace I've been setting so far, the prospect of what I have left to paint for my British is quite daunting.  I have something in the order of 140x little men, 4x 25 pounders, 3x Churchills and 1-2 as yet unselected and unpurchased support options to go before I can field 1500 points in flames of war.  Italy may have to wait a season or two for liberation, I think...

His Majesty's obvious intention was for stiff upper lips when faced with a lead pile

Into the wormhole...

Even for a wargaming magpie such as myself, Infinity made an impression on me very, very fast.  I'd like to share what lead me to venture into the wormhole, never once considering how I was to get out again...

Earlier in the year Garth and I started looking into skirmish gaming; we'd realised that mass-battle wargaming was going to be a long-term investment, and decided to look for something with a significantly lower buy-in cost and figure number requirement so that we could get games on the table relatively quickly.  We'd played a lot of Mordheim "back in the day" so we started looking into picking it up again.  I soon "digressed" into looking at Necromunda, given a commonly-held opinion that it possessed a superior campaign system to Mordheim.  However, it didn't take us long to realise that there was little support for these games from GW other than an incomplete line of overpriced miniatures.  Given that none of the original rule-boxes were still in print and the original terrain was only available at huge prices on e-bay, we decided that there was no particular advantage to taking up GW games over any other systems, especially seeing as though they are essentially dead games from GW's perspective.

In the course of my search for a skirmish alternative I ventured onto various forums until I came to the Dakkadakka "Malifaux, Infinity and other skirmish games" (or some such) forum; it didn't take me long to find a link to the Infinity site.  I was thoroughly blown away; the Infinity website is incredibly professional, well designed and themed.  However, the website was a minor attraction compared to the impression left on me by the miniatures.  They were (are) beautiful, and very simply among the best miniature sculpts I have ever seen - and here a whole range of them.

I spent a week or two looking at the miniatures and reading reviews of the rules on the internet.  I sifted through the community forums and glanced through the free online rules.  Blown away by the miniature, I bought the Haqqislam Djanbazan sniper.  Not long after I bought the rules and really the rest is history.  It wasn't a flawless experience, but the rulebook did really cement my initial impression of the game and of Corvus Belli as a games company.

With my impulse purchases over the last six months I've read a lot of rules.  I have difficulty sitting down and reading rules books, I'm not entirely sure what the issue is!  It could be something to do with what I do for a living.  I read rules and other such dry material every day during my working week.  I also read and write a lot; my days are filled with letters, legislation, survey plans and planning documents.  It is perhaps because of this that I really struggle to read rules books; particularly if they're poorly laid out (sequentially and on each page), dry, overly complex with too many qualifications, or poorly illustrated.  Now, while the Infinity rules probably aren't perfect, for me they managed to largely avoid the above pitfalls, even with the obvious translation issues (which personally I think gives the language a unique style and isn't necessarily a flaw).

Unlike all of the other rules I've read recently, I really got the Infinity rules as I read through them.  Once the fundamental concepts of the opposed roles and ARO were established (both elegantly simplistic mechanisms in themselves and very well illustrated in the book) I could instantly see how other concepts fitted within that framework.  While I certainly haven't memorised the rules and I'm no where near having a full appreciation for their tactical nuances, I do feel as though I've got a grasp on how the game works after reading a little bit of the book every night.  This is much more than I can say for the other rules I've read, though to be fair they are of varying degrees of complexity given that they represent engagements between forces above the skirmish level.  I think that I can now conceptualise how most forseeable actions will work out within the rules mechanisms in a "cinematic" way; because of this the rules appear to me to be quite organic and logical, and I find this pretty valuable in a set of rules.

Not only has Corvus Belli produced a fine set of rules, but their approach to their product as a whole is well thought out and thorough (keeping in mind that I'm speaking five or so years after the rules' release, though they must have done something right to have survived this long).  Their production values across the board are top notch.  The website is well designed, the forums equally good looking and functional, and the rulebooks well bound in glossy hard back with good quality paper.  From what I've seen so far (on my one miniature in hand) the casting quality is high, though my sample was hardly comprehensive!

The key to it all, though, is the quality of the miniatures; they really sell themselves and the system.  I'm certain that Corvus Belli know this and have modelled their business appropriately.  They offer the basic rules for free, with the "extra" fluff to be obtained through purchase of the hard copies.  And once you've fallen in love with the miniatures you will want to have the fluff so as to place that beauty in context, trust me!  The added bonus is that because Corvus Belli have provided the basic rules and lists for free, they can provide a high quality, functional and free army building tool online.

Army Infinity v3.0 by Devil Team - and my Djanbazan sniper!

All of this goes to show that a company does not have to compromise its commercial viability in order to give the customer what they want, and it seems to me that a healthy business anticipates what the customer wants and evolves their business model accordingly.  The concessions made by Corvus Belli in making the rules available free really are an investment in the medium term I think - I've certainly bought the book and the miniatures!  Well done CB.

Incoming! Infinity campaign book?

This isn't fresh news, so I'm certainly not going to pretend as though I'm breaking it; however it is something that has already got me looking at where I'll get the money from, so I'll write about it anyway!

Our intel indicates that CB will be releasing a campaign and scenario book late this year. From a quick Google search I've found a couple of reports that do differ slightly. The sdtaylor blog suggests that it will be another expansion book along the lines of Human Sphere, but with a lot of campaign and scenario content. However, the poster at infinity-ireland.org reckons that CB will be releasing the campaign book and then another "human sphere" expansion. I'm pretty happy either way - either one big beautiful hardback or two slightly smaller ones; while I'd buy both, perhaps each topic would be given more thorough attention if the subject of its own volume. Then again, a campaign book placed in the context of an expansion might very well enhance the experience.

By the way, infinity-ireland attributed their information to a post from Janzerker on the infinity forums, so thanks for sharing with us. In his forum post Janzerker provided a link to the source of his information, an interview with CB on the website "Cargad" in the Spanish language (translated).

The first part of the interview was very interesting in that it was a brief conversation about the origins of corvus belli, the nature of the company and how they see themselves in the miniature wargames market. This was interesting to me as being a very recent follower of infinity I know very little about what the company is about. Having read this I can say that, on top of being producers of a fantastic product with quality subsidiary support services (free downloadable rules, an official army builder program and fine community forums), my impression is that they've made some very smart decisions with the direction they'be decided to pursue with Infinity. Very impressed!

I've digressed a little here. I'd like to finish by explaining why the idea of a campaign/scenario book appeals to me. Firstly, as Garth can attest to, I'm a real sucker for pretty hardcover rule books (and I must say that I'm very impressed with the Infinity core rulebook, even with the translated style - but enough, that's very definitely enough of a topic for its own post). I should probably put a "bookcase" sidebar on the blog to show the rulesystems I have. I've certainly bought a fair few in the last six months; I suspect I've spent my wargames money on rules out of a fear that I'll accumulate more models than I can paint. I'm very wary of the lead mountain, as I'm quite a slow painter!sidebar

The other reason is that I'd very much like to have the benefit of having designed balanced scenarios to start off my infinity games with. It's enough of a mission learning all of the rules, accumulating terrain (and learning how to set it up in a balanced way) and learning effective list strategies and tabletop tactics without the added complexity of designing scenarios. Time is very much a factor for me at the moment too. I'm also dead tired of the old "pitched battle" routine after years of WHFB and 40k back in my wargaming youth. I'd like my start with infinity to be as dynamic and themed as possible within my strict time limitations. Anyway, if anyone as any more up to date info on the campaign book, or has any corrections in respect of what I've said above, please let me know. Cheers!

Team Effort

It looks like Garth can't help himself and has "impulse bought" the job of contributing to this blog!  Expect updates and photos of the painting of his Flames of War Fallschirmjager and musings on his newly purchased Nomads for Infinity the game.