Unblocking the pipe - some new games

Ok, that about does it. I think that's clear now.

You see, since my last post about a month ago (whoops) there's been a problem here - my spectacular thoughts have, of course, been studiously collated, and then I've put in the effort to polish them into the little pieces of poetry that you're used to finding here. Then, as usual, I've chucked them into the blog receptacle and pulled the chain, heard the satisfying "whoosh" as they disappear from sight, and then assumed that they were appearing here.

But no, as it turns out, there's been a severe blockage in my blogtube, and nothing's been getting through! I only discovered the problem when I tried to flush the latest offering and ended up with a backflow, getting pithy photo comments and bits of painted model scores all over my shoes.

So, I've been at it with a plunger and I think everything's back to normal now, so I'll carefully recreate the stuff that got stuck and get that posted. I'd hate you all to think that I just didn't bother to post for a month and then tried to excuse myself with a nonsensical cover story!

Right then, here we go.

A couple of new games have popped onto the radar for our merry group recently. I've played "a few" of each so here are my thoughts.

Dropzone Commander
This is the first "proper" wargame I've started for a while. If you don't know, DzC is a 10mm scale sci-fi game, which relies heavily on the use of big flying dropships to move troops and vehicles around.

I don't have pictures of our games, so let's say they look like this.

It's actually a really nice game to play! The rules are simple, but different enough from anything else I've played to be interesting, and the need to use dropships makes for some interesting challenges - units just don't move fast enough on their own to be able to achieve much, so you have to keep an eye on where your transports are and decide when to forgo shooting in favour of being flown off to a better location.

I've played 4 games so far and only won one of them, but I'm still enjoying it, which must be a good sign. I'm playing the Shaltari, on which more will follow in a future post.

It is also quite nice that we're all just starting with this. Pete and Mike have put more time and effort in than the rest of us, but generally no one is miles ahead in terms of what they can field.

Frostgrave
This one is pretty much completely different to Dropzone Commander. Frostgrave is a fantasy skirmish thing, in which you control a warband based around a wizard, trying to find artefacts and wield bigger and more powerful spells.

I've played this three times, and won each time, so that's nice. It's also a very simple game to pick up, with everything resolved on single d20 rolls.

We've yet to start a campaign for this, and that's something I want to do soon - the "starter" games, especially with more than two players, are perhaps a bit too random and just descend into battering each other quite quickly. The campaign rules seem to me to add a lot more depth, so I'm keen to have a go with that soon.

I have played a couple of two player games with Wes, ensuring we had a lot of terrain, and that seemed to work better.

Ok, we were using "whatever is lying around" as terrain. Clearly, this needs work.

I really want to build some nice terrain for this game, and I have a few bits already that will fit the bill. At the moment though, DzC is winning the popularity contest for us, so that's likely to be the focus, at least for a while...

Right, onto the next post! See you there!