2011 Already? Time to Check In

Hey everyone, Pete here. I’ve been pretty busy, working hard on my frugal plans for the new year.

As some of you may remember, I made some resolutions for the first time last year and it worked fairly well, so I’ve decided to make some this year too. I found that they work best when there are targets, limits and tangible goals.

It’s taken me a little while to work out exactly what my goals should be for this year. I want to write at least once a month for this blog (whoops…), and I definitely want to spend less on gaming stuff. I was on a bit of an eBay splurge last year, and over Christmas I was sorely tempted by many shiny new things. Luckily, I kept away from them, but I can think of a few poor spending decisions I made over the year.

To achieve the frugal goal then, I have four measurable objectives this year.

Firstly, I will spend no more than £5 a month on games or gaming things. This is especially severe since I realised just how many models are boxed up in my study, and how many Dark Elves I failed to paint last year. Buying new things before old things are painted is a major sin, and this will help me limit my guilt. The other big reason for this is the expected arrival of my second child in June (hooray!) and attendant budget reduction. Small children reduce the time available to play now, but when they grow older the plan is to mould them into mini-gamers (mini-miniature-gamers, or mini-mini-gamers?). I always loved slow-burn strategy, playing the long game.

Secondly, I will be aiming to have a day of wargaming at least once a month. I had a nice day of Gorkamorka last month (a fantastic game, and still keeping the interest after all this time), and I’m going to try and schedule a game of Warhammer with a friend who got me into the whole hobby later this month. That’ll be a nice nostalgia moment.

Thirdly, I’ll be aiming to write on this blog at least once a month. I got a bit side-tracked by other things last year, but with better time-management I’m sure that I can keep it organised. A side effect of this will probably be more games nights (to make use of games already paid for) to help me find something to write about!

So that’s my ‘quick, you lost January already!’ catch-up post. We’ll see how well this plan works out. Expect to see insightful, detailed, analytical posts about gaming if I can organise my time better, or about carpet shopping for the nursery if my wife organises it instead. Fingers crossed, frugal gamers!

War for Edadh review

This week I’ve got quite a bit of gaming and painting done, but I’m not going to be writing about those, instead I’ve got a review of a card game; ‘The War for Edadh’...

The War for Edadh
First things first, it’s pronounced ‘Ed-ath’, the War for Ed-ath, the War for Edath, got it? Good stuff. I had this game sent through from Nigel Pyne of WarriorElite Ltd and when the parcel arrived, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, as I’d only had a quick look at the website. When I opened the packaging a huge smile spread across my face, the box looks like a DVD boxset from some forgotten 1980s cartoon TV series, one that actually turns out to be as good, if not better than you remember. The cover art shows an armour clad warrior firing a multi-barreled weapon at an unseen enemy and it just screams ‘This Game Is Cool!’. The game is set in the World of Edadh, and recreates the war between a number of factions. The two that are included in the box are the Angueth and the Huaos-Dzaa, though others are soon to be available.

The box comes stuffed with all the bits and pieces you need to play; two rulebooks, record cards, beautiful plastic tokens and two decks of cards in very nice resealable bags. I picked up the first rulebook, started reading and soon had the cards laid out for a game.

The boring mechanics bit
I don’t like writing reviews which are just summaries of the rulebook, so I’ll just say here that the game plays by maneuvering your units (represented by cards) laid out across a randomly selected terrain card which affects the way conflict is resolved. Conflict is driven by a selection of numbered cards (1-12) you have in your hand and which you use to try and beat your opponent, with the highest card winning. However, it’s not that simple as there is an element of ‘Paper-Scissors-Stone’ with some of the lower scoring cards always beating the higher cards. The game overcomes the randomness associated with the P-S-S mechanic by assigning points costs to each cards and giving extra values such as ‘Guarding’ on certain cards. This greatly helps the game along as you can have a rough idea of what your opponent will play and can use this to your advantage; of course your opponent knows that you know this, but you know that, but does he know that you know that he knows you know... and so on. To cut a long story short, the main conflict resolution mechanic is very well thought out, the designers have taken a classic, fundamental game mechanism and, I would argue, removed the faults associated with it. There are also layers of additional mechanics introduced, such as playing a card which brings on your ‘Combat Master’ or ‘Battle Master’ during a round of combat to significantly alter your result in battle.

The two rulebooks included in the box are; ‘The Art of the Apprentice’ and ‘The Art of the Warrior’. The ‘Warrior’ book is the main rulebook and the ‘Apprentice’ book serves as an introduction to the game, introducing the main conflict resolution mechanic and then adding on the various additional rules, one at a time.

It can’t all be fantastic though?
Unfortunately, the effort that has gone into the gameplay is let down by the colour scheme of the cards, box and artwork. Some would say the colours are ‘subtle’, ‘muted’ or ‘understated’ but to my eye they just look dull. I’m obviously no judge of colour, as anyone who’s seen the palette of my blog would agree, but the delicate scheme of the cards really doesn’t do justice to the excellent artwork and can make the cards difficult to easily recognise.
The shortfalls in presentation also carry across into the rulebooks which are perfectly functional and very well laid out. The problem is that the game is intended to introduce gamers to the world of Edadh, and there is a lot mentioned on the website about forthcoming games and products linked together by the same universe. So really, the rulebooks should have a lot more ‘fluff’ and background in them and a bit more art. Sure, art and colour printing aren’t cheap, but this is a great product and the creators obviously have big plans. Putting more information and eye-catching art out there now would whip the public up into a frenzy. We’ve had too many triumphs of style over substance and it would be great to see a game succeed for fantastic gameplay, but neglecting the ‘chrome’ is doing a brilliant game an injustice.

The Frugal Judgment
Overall, this game is easy to learn when taken step by step. Unlike many games which you’ve learnt by the end of your first turn and go downhill from then on, this is a game that rewards continued play. The game has the scope to be a quick ‘pick up and play’ 15 min game or an in depth 90 minute battle game, and all levels in between. The representation of combat via simple cards with no need to reference charts or tables is incredible and has to be a contender for the game that provides the most fun in the smallest simplest package.

I really like the idea of creating a linked universe with a number of products, and I’m going to keep an eye on this company, the website has a huge (and I mean huge) range of upcoming products and ideas and I hope they all come to fruition. The products that caught my eye included rules for guerrilla warfare, tunnel warfare, aerial combat and even an exploration game and a separate RPG set in the same world!

But of course, the question is; is this a game for the Frugal Gamer? As you may have already guessed, I can say a definite YES. The game costs £17.99 and will give you plenty of hours of play.
The Small Print
Thanks to Nigel Pyne at WarriorElite Ltd for accepting The Frugal Challenge and sending though a copy of his wonderful game for review. If you have a product you would like to have reviewed, click on the ‘You want to know more?’ link on the right and take up the Frugal Challenge.

A Day of Frugal Trading

Hello all, and if this is the first time you've visited my blog, Welcome.

I always appreciate new readers and I've hopefully gained a few more after handing out dozens of flyers this weekend. The reason for all this, as you probably know, is my visit to the Lincombe Barn Wargamers Table Top Sale yesterday. One of the aspects of my Year of Frugal Gaming was to see if I could raise money with my hobby. Not huge amounts, but enough so that my gaming, painting and modeling came close to paying for itself and my trip to Lincombe Barn was my first try at running a small stall to sell gaming items. I'd decided to try and sell some of my hand made terrain, as it's something that I've always enjoyed doing and I think that it's an area of the hobby that I'm reasonably good at. The past few weeks have been spent cutting, gluing and painting to get plenty of pieces ready, and yesterday my girlfriend and I loaded up the car and set off to Bristol.
To cut a long story short, I didn't sell as much as I'd hoped, but I had a great day. I made enough to cover my travel and entrance costs and had enough left over for a couple of cups of coffee!

Everyone I spoke to seemed really friendly and a few had even been following the blog, which was great, I spoke to a few other traders, including a house husband who makes trees whilst the kids are asleep! I think he was doing about as much trade as I was, but he seemed remarkably philosophical about the whole business. If you're out there Mystery Tree Man, drop me a line and I'll 'big-up' your products. I also spoke to Mike from the Plymouth Association of Wargamers (those guys get everywhere..) who was also selling some pieces of terrain and some minis. He was really promoting the club, so I really can't excuse not getting along there in the next couple of weeks...

So, as mentioned above, at the end of the day I had a few more pieces left than I'd thought, which means that I'll be selling them off on ebay (with some remarkably cheap postage), so I've added a link to the auctions on the right hand side of the page (over there somewhere --->). The items up for sale will be changing over the next few days, so keep checking back.

This made a bit of a mess of the sidebar so I've had a of a tidy up, adding an FAQ which gives my contact details and the information on the ongoing 'Frugal Challenge' to game and figure manufacturers. Click the link and have a look.

Remember that as well as any comments you may have on the content of the site, I'm always happy to receive comment on the layout and style of the blog as well. Though if you want me to change my background to the generic brown wargamer map style, often used in blogs, then I'm sorry, but I'm sticking with my neons!

See you next week, happy gaming!

Heresy Miniatures Review - Painless Joe

After the excitement of Salute has finally died down, it’s back to actually painting the lead that I bought. The Frugal Gamer always paints or plays what he buys, remember? I’m keen to start playing blood bowl so I want to get my Dwarf team painted up, but of course this means getting my backlog of Necromunda figures cleared.
Here they are in all their glory:

From the left they are: A converted Gripping Beast Celtic warrior, Kallistra Fantasy Zombie, EM4 savage with autogun and a converted Games Workshop Empire Flagellant.
I’m quite pleased with the neon colour effects I achieved on the autogun gang member. I deliberately tried some bright colours on this mini as I want to have some bright colours on my dwarf team. So expect to see lots of trendy dwarfs in the coming weeks.

Painless Joe
The other miniature I’ve recently got painted is ‘Painless Joe’ from Heresy miniatures, which I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I picked this mini up at Salute after seeing it on the Heresy website and thought it would make a fantastic Heavy armed with heavy stubber.

In my opinion Heresy produce some of the best miniatures on the market and Joe is no exception. The moulding is crisp with little flash or mould lines to be removed, though any present are easily cleaned off in the usual manner.

Many of Heresy’s Miniatures are multipart and Joe comes in 5 parts; main body and right leg, left leg and concrete block, minigun and hands, ammunition pack and feed belt.
Whenever I put together any multipart miniature, I always pin the joints for extra strength, which is what I did on Joe. Due to the number of parts there is a lots of pinning required; this should only be attempted by those with a little modelling experience, especially as some of the pieces are quite narrow. The only problem I encountered was fitting the feed mechanism from the ammo pack to the gun, trying to bend both ends to line up while maintaining a natural curve was tricky and took a frustrating 10 minutes.
It’s well worth the effort to get Joe assembled; he’s in an amazing dynamic pose, his trenchcoat billows naturally and the gun looks very mean. The level of detail is amazing and the sculptor has done a fantastic job giving a determined look on the face and even the sunglasses are of a modern square framed type.

The only fault I have is the lack of detail on the ammo backpack, It may have been left blank for people to add their own designs, but I would have preferred a small amount of detail to break up the expanse. Maybe two packs could be be included with the miniature, one blank and one detailed? Though that would, of course, increase the cost

When it comes to painting Joe, there is plenty to get done. I chose three main colours (purple, yellow and green - strange, I know) and stuck to them. It would be tempting to add too much colour and make to look messy. If was a little tricky accessing all parts of the miniature for painting, as the ammo belt and weapon are in the way a lot of the time, this is not a major hassle, but in future I would paint these seperately and add them on later.

I’m happy with the overall result, but this isn’t a review of my painting, it’s a review of the miniature, so lets go to the frugal conclusion...

The Frugal Conclusion
Painless Joe is an excellent example of Frugal gaming. I could have bought half a dozen cheap miniatures for the same money as for Joe, but would I have painted them all, and would they have looked as good on the table? I’m pretty certain that the answer to both these questions would be NO.

Joe costs £5, or £4 each if you buy two or more, this is not cheap, but the quality is excellent and you’ll be admiring this miniature for years to come, not bad for a fiver. I highly recommend this to anyone involved in sci-fi or modern gaming, or anyone who wants a fantastic display model. Get over there and buy one... go... go now!

It you are a manufacturer or supplier who would like to have a product reviewed, click the link on the right hand side of the page for more details on ‘The Frugal Challenge’, or send me an e-mail via my profile page.

Yet another Salute review...

Hello hello!

It feels like I haven’t posted for ages, last week’s post was a couple of days early as I was off to London for Salute. I had a really good time and it was worth the trip. I managed to hand out lots of flyers for for the ‘Frugal Challenge’ so hopefully I’ll be able to post some reviews in the near future. If you have a product that you want reviewing to bring to a wider audience (this site gets a couple of thousand hits a month) send me an email by clicking on my profile link.

Anyway, back in London I ran into an old friend of mine, Phil, who runs Forge Games, selling all sort of gaming resources, so please go over and check out his site.


I also managed to meet Neil Schuck from the Meeples and Miniatures podcast, I’m a big fan of the show and Neil was really friendly. I didn’t have much time to chat to him unfortunately and missed him later on. He was there with the Scimitar games club and their ‘Awful Green Things from Outer Space’ demo game which looked mightily impressive!



Offensive Miniatures had a fantastic range of new paras and street gangs and riot cops coming out soon that look amazing. So keep an eye out for those.



There were a wide range of display games on show, one of my particular favourites was a scenario from the second Russo-Japanese War (Summer 1939) presented by The Escape Committee the layout was mainly created by Neil who trades as The Troop of Shrewe. I had a good chat with Neil and picked up some good terrain making tips!



The British Model Soldier Society had a very nice set up, with some larger scale miniatures.

I must also mention the Combat Stress charity who were also present. For any who don’t now, I used to be in the British Army so I know people that have been affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Whatever your opinion of current (or past) conflicts, I strongly urge you to support this charity. I had a good chat with the lady on the stand and grabbed a couple of leaflets on their work. Again get over to their site, check them out and donate a few pounds.

Of course, no matter how frugal I was trying to be I still had to do some shopping! Most of the bits and pieces I picked up were for Necromunda or Bloodbowl. I was very happy to finally get my hands on some D3 (a D6 numbered 1-3 twice) as I need to roll these a lot for Necromunda and It’s not easy to use D6 and divide by two if you’re having to roll ten at a time! These were sourced from Chessex, who are an excellent company I’ve met at numerous tournaments. You can’t miss them, their tables are stacked with boxes and boxes full of every dice you can possibly imagine, even some specialist dice, not list listed on their website. So if you need a dice for a specific game, give them a call and they may be able to help you out!

I also got some fantastic minis from Heresy including a mini gun wielding maniac which is so good it deserves a blog post all of its own!

Overall, all went well on the Frugal front. I went with a list (all items I would have mail ordered over the last couple of months anyway) and pretty much stuck within my budget. Pretty much...

Introducing The Frugal Challenge

It's been a busy week for gaming (surely the best kind of week?), I’ve been building, painting, converting and I’ve spent so much time adding static grass to things I’m completely flocked!
I’ve done a little bit more work on my Blood Bowl pitch, which should be finished in the next couple of weeks, so expect some photos soon.

I also added my blog to the miniwargaming 'Site Rater' engine so go over and give me a thumbs up to help raise the profile of your favourite frugal blog.

Last week I posted about the modular terrain boards I’ve been working on for Necromunda and I’ve had a few requests for better photos of the detail pieces I made, so here you go (on a 1cm grid):

The pieces from top left to bottom right are:

• 2 x Columns
• Shield Plaque
• Window Corner
• Vent
• Plaque/Street Sign
• Half Barrel
• Column Base
• 2 x Windowsill
• Small Odd Decoration

Here they are in situ:




In other news I’m looking forward to my trip to Salute next week, which brings me on to the subject of the Frugal Challenge.

The Frugal Challenge
I’ve decided to issue a challenge to all manufacturers and suppliers involved in the hobby, whether they produce boardgames, miniatures, card games, terrain or anything else for that matter. What I’m asking is;

Do your products offer high quality and good value for money?

I’ve added a ‘Frugal Challenge’ logo to the right of this page which you can click for more information.

I hope to get a good response and I’ll be talking directly to traders at Salute and trying to convince them to send through their wares so they can be exposed to a wide range of gamers (you lot!).

I’ll also be looking for people to review the products I get sent, but I’ll let you all know when I need a little help.

That’s enough for this week, happy gaming!

The Frugal Challenge!

So what is the The Frugal Challenge?

The Frugal Challenge is a way that Traders can inform readers of this blog of the fantastic range of products out there. This will be done by this site posting reviews of products and services and letting the public know if products offer high quality and value for money.

What's all this 'Frugal Gaming' business Anyway?

Frugal Gaming is an approach to gaming where gamers examine their spending habits and ensure that they are buying good quality products that they will both use (not stick in the back of the cupboard), and enjoy using.

What are the benefits?

As a trader of manufacturer you'll be sending me your merchandise (be it boardgames, trading cards, paints, scenics, miniatures, rule sets or reference books) for review on a website read by all aspects of the gaming fraternity.

Whatever wargaming or boardgaming product you have, let me know and we can arrange a review for you. This site has a diverse readership and we cater for all aspects of the hobby.

So what do I do?

Firstly send me an email (by clicking my profile link on the right hand side of the page) stating your interest and I'll get back in touch.

I look forward to hearing from you!