Comrade's Wargames

Saga: Age of Magic Game Day

Posted by Comrade on March 14, 2020

Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, army, club, fantasy, game night, saga, wargames. 5 Comments

The stars aligned last month, and our game group was able to come together for a Saga: Age of Magic game day. We had six players and managed to play five games over the course of about five hours. Not bad at all!

This game day provided a great opportunity to get some armies onto the battlefield, many of which haven’t yet seen action in their current incarnation. I wasn’t able to get play-by-play photos of the games themselves, so here’s a look at some of the matchups as they unfolded throughout the day.

Lawrence’s Otherworld Daemons vs. Vincent’s Great Kingdoms

Lawrence loves big centerpiece models and it shows in this Nurgle daemon army! He played against Vince’s Great Kingdoms army in the first pairing. Here’s a look at their clash.

See below: There’s nothing like a wedge of knights charging into a knot of foul daemons. Did they win the day or did they get wiped out in a flurry of hooves and lances? I honestly can’t remember. Maybe Vince or Lawrence will chime in with a comment and fill in the blanks.

Lawrence’s Daemons vs. Pat’s Undead

This second game was more like half a game, against my undead. We were pressed for time so we played a few turns and called it a draw. It was a beautiful game featuring several newly completed pieces of terrain — that autumn forest piece from me and the big Ophidian Archway from Lawrence! Here are a few photos.

Hmmm…12 foot tall dragon ogres appearing behind your archers is not where you want them to be. Lawrence was playing the Otherworld army list, and he made great use of the teleport ability to move his units around the battlefield.

The photo below shows the proper arrangement, with the targets in front of the archers.

This was yet another game session where I misused my Black Knight (the special lieutenant character for the Undead army list). He just looks so badass! Who wouldn’t want to send that grim reaper charging into a unit of warriors? Turns out, that’s not a very good tactic. Oh well, live and learn (or not, if you’re undead).

Paul’s Beastmen

I confess I only got one photo of Paul’s nascent Beastmen army. He had been working diligently on it over the last couple of months and brought a batch of nifty beastmen and minotaurs to the table. I think Paul has finally discovered the pure, unadulterated joy that comes with painting BROWN. I say this as a Skaven player who has literally dozens of shades of browns in my paint collection.

Anyway, we added some units of basic fighter-types from various collections to bulk out the army to fit the games. I’m really excited to watch this army develop!

John’s Great Kingdoms vs. Mark’s Lords of the Wild

John’s GHA (Generic Human Army) has come into focus over the last few months. The army was developed specifically for use with Saga and Dragon Rampant, using miniatures from a variety of manufacturers. He’s tied it closely to the homebrew fantasy setting we developed a couple years ago using Microsope.

These photos show John’s Great Kingdoms battling Mark’s Lords of the Wild. I’ll have more photos from Mark’s army in a moment; he and I got in a game vs. my undead as well.

John also debuted a few new units, including this batch of crossbowmen and a cool new trebuchet catapult thingy. His army is really loaded for bear! It will give me no pleasure to swarm his defensive positions with tides of foul ratmen and monstrous abominations from the pits. No pleasure at all.

Mark’s Lords of the Wild vs. Pat’s Undead

I ended up with several photos from this game because, well, it featured my army, and I was standing nearby for most of the game.

Alas, it was not my best showing. The Lords of the Wild list is a real tough nut to crack, particularly for my slow-moving undead. Mark made great use of his creatures to outflank and destroy my key units that generated Saga dice, leaving me with few resources as the game reached its later turns.

His army was led by this brutal giant gorilla who, as you can clearly see, is wearing a T. Rex as a headdress. That should have been my first tip-off that Mark would be pulling no punches this game.

Actually, I had a decent opportunity to take out his warlord, during a turn when I was able to pile on enough to fatigue to exhaust him for a turn. Alas, my dice rolls betrayed me in spectacular fashion, allowing his leader to retreat to the rear and rest up to remove some fatigue. I can definitely chalk up this defeat to statistically poor dice results — c’est la vie!

Anyway, T. Rex showed up shortly thereafter and ate everyone. The end.

This session solidified the ascent of Saga: Age of Magic as our group’s default choice for “big skirmish” scale fantasy gaming. It is a fantastic and flexible system that provides a lot of strategic and tactical depth in both gameplay and list-building.

The “use whatever you want” philosophy for building armies also suits our group very well. We have some players like Lawrence and Paul, who have armies drawn from Age of Sigmar, and other players like me and Vincent and John, who have cobbled-together armies featuring a miniatures from many different sources, and players like Mark, who custom-printed quite a few miniatures for his army.

Saga: Age of Magic welcomes all!

Starting an All-Metal Skaven Army, Part III

Posted by Comrade on February 28, 2020

Posted in: Posts. Tagged: army, fantasy, painting, project, skaven, vintage, warhammer. 10 Comments

It’s time for another check-in on my project (announced in 2018, gagh!) to build an all-metal Skaven army featuring some of the vintage models that captured my imagination as a youngster.

I’m averaging about a year between updates; here’s a link to Part I and Part II. I can also happily report that, even though this army is very much a work in progress, I’m getting it onto the battlefield on a regular basis in games like Open Combat, Dragon Rampant, and most recently Saga: Age of Magic.

I’ll open with the figures that I’m the most excited about: these old-school metal Poison Wind Globadiers!

Their bases aren’t quite complete; I’ve got some tufts and clump foliage to stick on there.

I remember seeing these exact models in the pages of White Dwarf and thinking how awesome and utterly unique they were. Rats with gas masks and stink bombs! And weird, steampunk backpacks! Seeing units like this really elevated the Skaven from mere dungeon-dwelling ratmen to a zany, unique army that I wanted to collect.

As I understand it (from someone who does not play Age of Sigmar and is not up on the current range of plastic Skaven models) Poison Wind Globadiers are still playable, but have not been released in a plastic kit. So these old metal models are fairly sought after, since you need a big group to field them in Age of Sigmar. I’ll most likely run them as a two-person demolition team in Saga.

Anyway, these guys were a joy to paint, and I’ll be getting them on the table for a game of Warcry later this weekend.

In general, this army is designed to be playable in some of the “big skirmish” style games that have been released in recent years, like Saga or Dragon Rampant. Both of those games require about 40 or so models per side (a bit more if you’re aiming for a horde army, which the Skaven surely are).

Most of my recent work has focused painting stuff in small, manageable chunks. Last year I knocked out a handful of units, including this Doomwheel (rescued from the good folks at Mindtaker Miniatures).

I also tackled a 12-rat unit of Skaven Slaves using some of the glorious Middlehammer sculpts that I acquired for cheap in a big bulk purchase. These figures are almost stupidly expensive if one were to chase them down as individual models. They’ll make great levies for Saga, or light foot for Dragon Rampant.

After a summer spent working on my 40k Night Lords army, I pivoted to fantasy last December and returned to this project in earnest. I had a list of units yet to paint, and near the top of the list was a unit of Gutter Runners. I’ve always loved the “cloaked assassin” look of these figures, as well as the poison dripping off some of their blades.

They look pretty cool in a group, too.

They can’t take to the battlefield without their leader, though. Here’s the new (still metal, though) version of Deathmaster Snikch. I acquired him gently used and missing both of his hands. That’s no problem — he got a pair of new hands, new weapons, and a new perspective on life, courtesy of some spare resin crates I had sitting around on my workbench.

Lastly, I wanted to share a photo of this nifty vinyl banner I had custom printed for my Plague Monks by a guy on Facebook. I gave him an idea of what I was looking for and he produced the end product. I particularly like the small metal loops that fit over the figure’s banner pole!

I’ve still got a few units left to go, but the end is definitely in sight for this army project. Along the way, I’ve also made a tidy chunk of cash by selling off some of the duplicate or unneeded figures that I had acquired along the way. At the very least, it’s given me a little spare funding to plow back into buying rats!

Undead Reinforcements: Skeletons and a Wight Lord

Posted by Comrade on February 14, 2020

Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, army, fantasy, painting, saga, undead. 7 Comments

I got in a game of Saga: Age of Magic last weekend, and as often happens in the aftermath of a game, I found myself evaluating my army (undead, in this case) to figure out what I’m missing.

For Saga, I determined that I needed more basic warrior units. These are the core of the Undead Legions army and figure prominently into several of the most potent Saga abilities on the battle board. They’re commonly represented by skeletons with hand weapons or spears. I’ve got 25 or so skeletons in my army already, but I wanted more, to give myself some additional flexibility when building an army.

So I set about rescuing a batch of 10 plastic skeletons I had acquired secondhand from Mindtaker Miniatures a few months ago. I got them unpainted and poorly assembled for a real bargain. After a little cleanup, I gave them a quick, cohesive paintjob. For the bone bits, I used the new Skeleton Horde contrast paint, and I was really pleased with how it turned out. I’ll be using contrast paint again on my next batch of skeletons, for sure!

I painted up another new model for my undead army this month as well. Or maybe I should say “old model” — it’s an ancient metal wight lord on a skeletal steed from the glory days of the Middlehammer era.

I remember seeing this figure in someone’s army back in 1997, when I made my first visit to a game store to watch a game of Warhammer in action. The figure was fantastic and grim and iconic, and I resolved that one day I would own it. THAT DAY IS TODAY!

This guy will be a mounted warlord for Saga, though I should admit that I think warlords are better on foot for the Undead Legions army. So this guy may instead see action as my lieutenant (or black knight, in the parlance of Age of Magic). Either way, he’ll hit the battlefield soon!

The steed is actually a metal model from Reaper’s Warlord model line. He’s a bit more dynamic and detailed than the basic plastic horse that the Wight Lord typically uses. Here again I used the Skeleton Horde contrast paint on the steed, to great effect.

Lastly, a word on the basing on the skeletons and the wight lord. I have found that I just love a nicely flocked base, with turf and clump foliage and maybe a few tufts of fake grass. I know the current hotness is focused on basing with technical paints, and/or plastic bases with molded scenic items, but the nostalgic wargamer in me just loves to sprinkle on some flock and bring your vision to life.

We’ve got another big Saga: Age of Magic game coming up later this month, so I’ll be sure to use these two units in the game. Stay tuned for more!

Zona Alfa: Kicking the Hornet’s Nest

Posted by Comrade on January 31, 2020

Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, battle report, post-apoc, sci-fi, skirmish, zona alfa. 1 Comment

The gang got together earlier this month for our first game of Zona Alfa, the new Stalker-inspired post-apocalyptic skirmish game from Osprey. (Click here to read my review of Zona Alfa.)

What started out as a simple introductory game quickly swelled to a two-on-two team slugfest, as players signed on with their scrappy crews, lured by the promise of illicit salvage in the eponymous Exclusion Zone. I rode herd on this motley assemblage as impartial (some would say sinister) gamemaster. I was pleased to get such a robust turnout for this game. Here’s a goofy photo as we prepared to brave the dangers of the Zone.

Zona Alfa draws inspiration from the crumbling, abandoned Cold War industrial heaps that you might find in the hinterlands of Eastern Europe. Players muster crews of stalkers, scavengers, and mercenaries and pit them against similarly motivated bands on the battlefield. But the Zone itself plays a huge role in each game … Zone hostiles can appear at any moment, and the very environment itself can suddenly erupt in violent fashion.

Narrative gaming is the heart and soul of Zona Alfa. For our games, we decided that the crews had heard a rumor of an abandoned supply truck parked in the shadow of the Khimbruk Electrochemical Combine, located about a mile inside the perimeter of the Zone. Surrounded by the decaying detritus of the derelict factory, the cargo truck promised a payday of salvage, loot, and more. Here’s a look at the objective.

It’s just right there, for the taking. Yeah, right…

I created some basic starting crews for the players, and then we got started. We set up a 4×4 foot table, slightly larger than the 3×3 size recommended in the rulebook, due to our surplus of players. Each side alternated by activating one figure, performing actions, and then passing play to the opposing team. The first couple of turns were focused on learning the basic game system and moving out of our deployment areas. But before too long, the players got close enough to begin exchanging some ranging volleys of automatic rifle fire as they slipped through the ruins.

We placed three hot spots on the battlefield, in addition to the main mission objective, for a total of four focal points for game action. Hot spots (and the mission objective) trigger Zone hostiles when figures get close enough (typically within 6 inches), but Zona Alfa includes a mechanic to allow players to toss bolts or rocks to trigger hot spots from up to 18 inches away. This is a mechanic that come straight out of the Stalker video game, and it gives players the chance to exploit hot spots from afar and then watch gleefully as their opponent dealt with the ensuing bad guys.

The first hot spot yielded a pack of wild dogs that had spent a little too much time digging through the radioactive slag pile behind the electrochemical plant. They were a ghastly bunch, snarling and covered in bleeding sores. Dan’s troopers paused in their advance and expertly gunned them down.

From there, the game developed into a series of running gun battles as the players lobbed grenades and laid down overlapping fire to cover their advance. John’s crew triggered the next hot spot and was able to take cover in a ruined building as a mob of giant rats scampered toward them.

Here’s another look at the battlefield a couple turns into the game.

Lawrence found himself pinned down by accurate fire from Mark’s band of mostly rookie snipers. He kept his guys in cover and advanced slowly, but Mark was able to toss a bolt and trigger a hot spot, which sent a mob of horrifying zombies shambling down the street towards Lawrence’s dangerously exposed leader.

We found that the rules for Zone hostiles were satisfying but not overly oppressive. This was probably because we were playing at Zone Threat Level 1, the “easiest” setting in the game. As you get closer to the Zone’s enigmatic center, the threats become much more dangerous. Near the perimeter, the Zone hostiles were just a nuisance. But those zombies definitely tied up Lawrence’s leader for a good portion of the game!

Elsewhere on the battlefield, savvy players were using the distraction provided by the Zone hostiles to move forward and secure other objectives. When a figure searches a hot spot, the player rolls randomly to see what has been uncovered. Often it’s salvage worth cold, hard cash outside the Zone, but occasionally you’ll run across equipment or other gear.

Here’s John’s hardened scavenger moving in to search a decommissioned air compressor next to a derelict pumping station.

Likewise, Dan wisely looted this rusted generator, stripping off any useable parts and bagging them up to be hauled back to civilization. His exploration roll resulted in an anomaly — a strange electromagnetic (or was it supernatural?) disturbance that, in this case, disintegrated his hapless trooper. Better luck next time, comrade.

The final clash of the game came when Dan’s crew approached the supply truck during a lull in the fighting. As his poor (doomed) trooper crept closer, the bandits that had been hiding in the rear of the truck sprang their trap, dropping the tailgate and coming out with AK-74s blazing. This was the result of a particularly potent roll on the Zone hostiles table. The bandits took out the trooper, then began blasting in all directions as the other crews closed in.

As the players began to strategize a way to neutralize the scavengers, Dan took it upon himself to deliver the coup de grace. His leader climbed onto the catwalk of the nearby electrochemical factory and tossed a grenade right into the midst of the bandits. Problem solved, comrade.

After that, we tallied up our loot totals and performed the after-action stuff for crew members who had been knocked out during the game. Zona Alfa has a nicely developed campaign system where players can track the acquisition of loot as well as the inevitable degradation of your crew, as repeated forays into the Zone start to take their toll on even the hardest soldier. Best to dismiss such unfortunate souls from your crew and bring on fresh recruits, if you want my advice.

The gameplay of Zona Alfa was easy to pick up after a couple turns. We loved the simplicity of the activation system, and how the Zone hostiles system scales with the overall Threat Level of the game. Basically, those same zombies will be a lot more menacing when you encounter them at Threat Level 3, instead of Threat Level 1. Overall, the mechanics were best described by one of the players as a “toolkit approach,” where the author provides a solid core rules engine with the implicit idea that players will tack on house rules and put their own spin on the game as time goes on. Despite being a casual playgroup, we were still able to punch a few holes in the rules as written and find some loopholes that could be exploited. Again, that’s easy enough handle, but groups should discuss their expectations and approach at the outset, to ensure a fun experience for everyone.

We all agreed that Zona Alfa is a superb catalyst for building terrain, painting up some fun, tacti-cool squads of Cold War antiheroes, and playing out some pitch-perfect adventures in the Zone. We’ll play this one again soon!

ZONA ALFA Review: Get in the Zone, Comrade

Posted by Comrade on January 7, 2020

Posted in: Posts. Tagged: post-apoc, review, sci-fi, skirmish, stalker, zona alfa. 2 Comments

ZONA ALFA, the new skirmish wargame written by Patrick Todoroff and published by Osprey’s beloved “blue book” imprint, is a peculiar and delicious take on post-apocalyptic tabletop gaming. Inspired by the crumbling visuals and moody storytelling in video games like STALKER and Metro 2033, ZONA ALFA provides a toolkit for players who want to recruit a crew of men and women forged in the crucible of the Cold War, equip them to explore the enigmatic Exclusion Zone — braving the otherworldly anomalies and inhuman adversaries therein — and hopefully see them return to their favorite watering hole with riches and stories to tell.

Osprey has kindly provided Comrade’s Wargames with an advance copy of ZONA ALFA, which will be published in late January 2020. This review will touch on what you can expect in terms of tone, setting, and gameplay. I’ll also sprinkle in some photos of games I’ve played in the Zone over the years.

On a personal level, I’ve been enamored with STALKER-inspired wargaming for more than a decade. I’ve followed Todoroff’s blog, the aptly-named Stalker7, for most of that time. The unique aesthetic of this style of gaming is inspired by the decaying urban and industrial landscape you can find in real-life places like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where detritus from half-remembered Eastern Bloc facilities and bunkers lies abandoned, often reclaimed by vegetation and punctuated by supply caches and cast-off military equipment. Tabletop games set in the Zone are heavy on exploration and risk-taking, and you can be assured that the places you choose to send your crew will certainly be populated by horrific things that need to be dispatched with terrible prejudice. The rulebook is peppered with short, two-sentence lore snippets, dripping with Soviet fatalism, that hint at the dangers and wonders of the Zone.

Truly, the milieu that Todoroff has captured in ZONA ALFA fires the imagination in a way that few other post-apoc settings do.

It’s also a hobbyists’ dream. I’ve spent the last decade gleefully collecting any 28mm figure wearing a gas mask, reasoning that it will be only a matter of time before they, too, get tapped to go on a Zone run. ZONA ALFA doesn’t have a dedicated miniatures line, and Todoroff encourages you to use whatever figures you wish in your games. Personally, I’m enamored with the pitch-perfect offerings from Lead Adventure Miniatures’ The Last Project line of post-apoc scavengers, as well as the gritty near-future troopers available from Pig Iron Productions. Likewise, the Zone offers an opportunity to tackle all manner of terrain projects, from crashed helicopters to ruined buildings to rusted machinery.

From a gameplay perspective, ZONA ALFA offers a toolkit approach best suited to friendly, narrative-style skirmish games on a 3×3 foot table (or 4×4 for larger games). Players build “crews” composed of scavengers, trespassers, adventurers, loners, killers, explorers, and robbers and then send them on daring runs into the Zone. They’re nominally opposed by one or more competing players, but more often than not the players will find themselves squaring off against “zone hostiles” — NPC enemies spawned at various points on the battlefield and controlled by a basic AI system. Avoiding, defeating, or exploiting these roving packs of horrors create some of the more innovative gameplay elements in ZONA ALFA.

For your crew, individual models are rated based on their experience level: rookie, hardened, or veteran. Obviously you’ll pay more to recruit a crew member with more skill, but in general players should expect to field between 5 and 10 figures in a typical crew. ZONA ALFA is meant to be played WYSIWYG (“what you see if what you get”), and the wargear rules are streamlined to support this — no fiddly point costs for red dot sights or climbing ropes. Just choose your figure, note his experience level, and fill out your (initially limited) slots for weapons, gear, and skills.

On the battlefield, players are encouraged to develop scenarios that challenge their crews to accomplish specific goals on the tabletop, rather than simply doing the default “kill ’em all” scenario that plague so many wargames. Example scenarios might include crossing the map to reach a crippled truck, going door-to-door in an abandoned village searching for survivors, or fueling up a generator so your crew can activate a pressure hatch and descend into a subterranean bunker.

While ZONA ALFA probably qualifies as “rules lite” (and thus, by default, wins endorsement from Comrade’s Wargames), this ruleset definitely features some crunch. With a relatively low number of figures and a fairly dangerous tabletop environment to explore, ZONA ALFA goes all in on the tactical options. Most figures have just a handful of stats, but the tabletop itself adds quite a few options to the mix. For example, there are four different levels of cover provided by terrain, plus another modifier for being elevated, plus (usually) a modifier if the model has some basic camouflage. That’s quite a bit to keep in your head, and it’s a good reminder that terrain matters in this game — a lot!

Likewise, ZONA ALFA provides rules for things that I would otherwise handwave away in a typical skirmish game. Things like climbing and jumping rarely matter much in my games, but they’re described in detail in the rulebook.

Lastly, the gear list tends toward the “tacticool,” with more than a few options that are straight out of popular video games. Again, this is understandable given the subject matter that Todoroff is exploring.

Combat is d10-based and features familiar mechanics like attacks rolls and armor saves. But ZONA ALFA takes this one step farther by adding a tier of outcomes for attacks that wound but don’t kill. The “pin” mechanic is simple but dangerous…pump a few rounds into that low concrete wall, and even if you don’t hit the guy behind it, he’s liable to hunker down for a turn or two and try to crawl into his helmet.

Taken together, you’re left with a rules lite game that nonetheless packs a lot of options into the nooks and crannies. Players who want to try out real-world tactics like moving through cover and blind-tossing grenades through doorways will find a lot to chew on. I’m looking forward to exploring the game system in more detail in our first play-through.

So far, we’ve discussed the basics of a solid near-future skirmish wargame. Where ZONA ALFA really shines, however, is how it models the Zone and its savage inhabitants. Before each game, the players jointly describe the overall Mission Objective and the Zone Threat Level, then they place one or more “hot spots” on the battlefield. These are locations outside of the scenario’s Mission Objective that provide additional opportunities for exploration and salvage. As an example: in our game, we decide that we’re going to see who can retrieve the crate of grenades from the abandoned military outpot. The crate of grenades is the Mission Objective, but we put down two additional “hot spots” which represent additional areas to explore, if the players are feeling brave.

Exploring both Mission Objectives and hot spots always triggers “zone hostiles” — everything from rabid dogs to howling mutants. To see what you get, you’ll need to roll on the table that corresponds to the Zone Threat Level of your battlefield. Once spawned, zone hostiles are controlled using a basic AI system to direct their movement and attacks. Savvy players will find ways to steer these baddies toward their opponent, leaving them free to ransack the battlefield while their opponents are blasting away at zombies and radioactive centipedes.

After a few Zone runs, you may find your guys acquiring loot and improving their equipment. The game has a well developed campaign system … with an actual victory condition for your crew! Accumulate the equivalent of 10,000 bucks, and your guys can retire to a dacha in the countryside. How about that?! Of course, a grisly demise in a forgotten patch of forest is a much more likely outcome…

In conclusion, this game is a really remarkable example of one author’s singular creative vision and his ability to bring that vision to a wider audience. I shouldn’t be surprised, really, because Todoroff is also a speculative fiction author, so he’s well versed in both creating content and hitting deadlines. Just reading the rulebook has got me fired up to build terrain (good thing, because there’s a terrain-making competition running this month over on the ZONA ALFA Facebook group).

Well, that’s my report. It’s getting late and I can hear thunder in the distance. Lean in close while the fire’s still warm, comrade. I’ll take first watch tonight.