Tony_Tarantula on 12/6/2017 at 17:41

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2017 has been an eventful year so far.....new career path, new family on the way, big other family events, wrapping up my grad school....and so on.

One of the more fun changes is a smaller one. Over the winter break I got to play some old games from franchises I'd forgotten about. That reminded me that I had a few boxes of old figures sitting in my closet.

I decided to strip one of them and repaint it:

http://imgur.com/a/3T3SF

What you're looking at is an Atlas from the old Battletech/Mechwarrior series.

I decided to add my favorite mech from Mechwarrior Online to the collection. My first attempt was a disaster so I had to relearn from scratch so I could paint at a level better than a 12 year old:
http://i.imgur.com/YRco0Ls.jpg


During the process of getting the supplies I need I found out that a local group meets for Battletech at one of the games hops. That led to me redoing the rest of my collection with few new additions:http://i.imgur.com/6I6R35U.jpg

What you're looking at here is a selection of Inner Sphere mechs painted in House Marik (basically space EU) colors with some Steiner colored mechs on the right. It's not quite fully in-frame on the right, but there's a blue/copper crab that is my personal favorite: the top of it is dry-brushed to give it a smooth color shading with a good wash that darkened the cracks and makes the texture pop. It's packed now but I'll have more pictures after tonight.



Eventually I started looking for other miniature games that might be good to get into as the population of Battletech is both small and graying. I tried X-wing miniatures and have enough for some fun friends/family games but it's missing something without the craft aspect.

I eventually settled into this game:http://i.imgur.com/K1Vu6lu.jpg

If you haven't seen it before, it's a game called Warmachine that also has a cross-compatible ruleset called Hordes. It's a turn based, 2-player skirmish sized miniature game where the defining mechanics revolve around the large "warjack" units and "warcasters" that control the warjacks to include allocating their "focus" to use abilities and boost warjack's power (in practice by using their mana-equivalent to add extra dice to attack and damage rolls). Similar mechanics are used for Hordes players with the major difference being that their leader pulls another resource called "rage" that is generated by warbeast units. There's some rudimentary similarities to Warhammer but a number of factors stand out: it's focused for smaller armies, each model handles its rolls independently (although "grunts" receive orders as part of unit), it's more designed for competitive play, and it has a unique mechanic where killing the other player's warcaster (or warlock of they have a Hordes faction).

Basically, games play like a cross between Chess and Warhammer....except this is much cheaper to get into than Warhammer because of smaller Armies and all special rules being on cards that come with the units when you buy them.

My army in this game is a faction called the "Protectorate of Menoth". Basically they're a fantasy version of Crusader knights except far more fanatical, and their playstyle is focused on strategically using defensive buffs to deny the other player full use of their army's strengths and offensive buffs to crack tough defenses. What you're seeing in that picture is my first win where I was able to successfully get a nasty agility unit (can't be targeted at range, can vault over friendly models, and has a double melee attack) at the Khador (Fantasy Russia) player's warcaster and end the game with an assassination run.



Of course not every game goes so well
http://i.imgur.com/rKY6JBm.jpg

That match was a wipe against me: I hadn't brought enough ranged capability, and as a result my force was extremely vulnerable to his team's knockdown abilities that allowed my force to receive a devastating charge attack.




Has anyone else on here gotten into this kind of thing?

Tony_Tarantula on 12/6/2017 at 20:50

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Usual way is to show up at your friendly local game store and ask the staff if there's any groups that play. You can find a group for most popular games that way.

SubJeff on 12/6/2017 at 21:46

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I used to play Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy. This was 20 years ago. I had Nurgle armies.

The only tabletop wargame I play these days is the occasional Risk.

But the game I love the most is Shogun.

catbarf on 13/6/2017 at 22:22

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Necromunda is a pretty cool game. The game itself is actually fairly cheap, but an elaborate board like you said can get expensive.

I was really big on miniatures wargaming in high school and college. At various times I played Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40k, Battlefleet Gothic, Warmachine, Starship Troopers, AT-43, Dust, and OGRE. I spent a lot of time meticulously painting figures and it was a decent hobby when I had a lot of free time, but gradually I came to realize that I'm more interested in the gaming than the spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours on collecting and painting, so I've largely switched to traditional hex-and-counter wargames. Over the past few years I've gotten into writing my own wargames and it's been an interesting experience.

icemann on 14/6/2017 at 04:02

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Even in my circles back in the 90s I only had one friend that played it. But that was enough to enable battling.