Warmachine On The Cheap

A while ago now, arabianknight posted about his proxy Trenchers for Warmachine, and made a convincing case for the act of proxying the more generic-looking miniatures in a Warmahordes army.

Now, Warmahordes is my tournament game, insofar as I have one at all, and so the decision is largely made for me; whatever I want to take to an Official Event (TM) more or less has to be Official Miniatures (TM) as I can't rely on the discretion of the tournament organiser being in my favour.  Nevertheless, I understand the case for proxying and accept that if you're never going to play in an environment where officialdom matters, th'art free to do as thou wilt.

Aleister Crowley approves of proxying.
No wonder he's the Wickedest Man in the World.

This morning, I stumbled upon an idea for expanding a Warmahordes collection past the initial investment that seems to dovetail well with the proxy practice.  I'll link to it in a moment, but first I want to brief the non-Warmahordes readership about a few truths.  Those groin-yards among you who already know their Slaughterhousers from their Doom Reavers can feel free to skip a paragraph.

Warmahordes revolves around the one figure at the centre of your army; the warlock or warcaster.  Change that, and keep the rest of your army list the same, and you change the way the whole army list plays.  The pieces still do what they do, but they're supported differently and often take on different strategic and tactical roles (what was once a line-breaking destroyer of meat and metal alike can become a disposable beatstick, a screening piece or a tough objective taker, depending on context).  The game also incorporates a variety of mercenary troops which can either join armies from one or more other factions or do their own thing as 'contract' or 'pact' forces with their own agendas.  The nature of mercenaries is such that, barring a few excellent pieces, they tend to appear in armies of their own kind; it's very rare that you'll see a faction army including more than one or two mercenaries.


Which is odd, as Raptor of Spite for the Unblighted pointed out this morning.  Building a solid core of generic mercenaries or minions and then adding faction pieces - mainly warcasters/warlocks and the warjacks/warbeasts that they control - to that affords a similar kind of variety to the change-your-warcaster-change-your-army approach described above, just on a slightly grander scale.  It occurs to me that proxying that core of generic mercenaries and then adding small faction battlegroups - possibly even the discounted starter boxes, which tend to include something for free - would result in a satisfactory-if-not-brilliant Warmahordes army, certainly good enough to just play the game.


Warmachine probably affords the best opportunities for this, given the greater variety of mercenary troop types available to the steam-powered factions, and the fairly generic nature of those troops (there's not much demand for giant crocodile men or pig-headed rifle-blokes, you see, so cheap ranges are harder to find).  Units of dwarfs with whacking great hammers or rifles plus tower shields aren't that hard to come by; neither are armoured infantry with polearms or firearms, matching cavalry and a mounted officer; and while the specific characters belonging to Privateer's proprietary fantasy species might be a bit tricky, pirates with cutlasses, pistols and rifles, plus a few gentlemanly character-solo-ish types are less so.  Build a core of faux-Rhulfolk, Steelheads or Privateers, with all the rules synergies that having broadly the same sort of stuff implies, and then add the starter battlegroups to create up to six different armies (depending on whether you can get hold of the old Mercenary starter sets or not) sharing a core of cheap proxied troops.

Things might not match up perfectly in aesthetic terms and you'll get Privateer fanboys and tournament players looking at you strangely, but you can laugh them off as you go to sleep on your pile of scrupulously saved money.  Except me.  Don't laugh me off.  I did tell you how to do this, after all.  Just wish I'd thought of it first...


ADDITIONAL: for those who care about the viability of this approach in terms of rules, Raptor is currently running a faction-by-faction breakdown of the various mercenary options available.  Go and have a look.

The Lion Roars!

I've returned safe and well from my trip up to Edinburgh last weekend; Mrs Frugal and I had a great time.  Of course, being the frugal gamer that I am, I made sure not to go over my gaming budget for the month whilst I was up there.  However, as I was technically ‘on holiday’ I was entitled to spend some of my ‘holiday money’ and I decided that rather than buying Mrs Frugal something nice or taking her out for a meal, I would buy myself a souvenir to remind me of my time north of the border.

I’d done a bit of research before traveling away and identified ‘Black Lion Games’ as the premier games retailer in Edinburgh.  I left Mrs Frugal picking out boxes of shortbread and went looking for it. 

I finally found it, and it looked like the dodgiest shop I’ve ever seen, if I wasn’t actively looking for it I’d have probably walked right past it.  It looks, to be honest, like a sex shop.  Judge for yourself:

Its well worth the trip though.  It may not be the biggest shop in the world, but it’s got a huge range of stock (miniatures, RPGs, boardgames, cards) and very friendly staff.  If you’re around the Edinburgh area, seek it out and tell them the Frugal Gamer sent you.

Here’s what I found in my hand after I left the shop:

Yes, like so many before me I have fallen foul of the temptation that is Warmachine.  And before anyone starts telling me that Menoth are a rubbish choice (they may well be) I decided on them as a starter force as I fancied something nice and white to paint to give me a break from all the dark and grubby miniatures I’ve been working on recently.  My poor eyes could do with a break.

So there you go, I’ve got some more miniatures to add to the unpainted pile and another set of rules to learn.  Maybe I’ll win some games at this one...

Happy Gaming

"Why can't you just make do with what you've got?"

My grandmother's been asking me that for as long as I've been gaming, and in that decade and a half, I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.  Given that I've built Warriors of Chaos and Ork armies three times, and Undead, Dark Eldar and Chaos Space Marines twice each, with occasional dalliances off to the side, it's a valid question.  Why do I, and others, feel the need to swap all the time?

I blame Noel.  He hypnotises you into it.

Originally, I'd have said it was down to design limitations and boredom.  Particular factions in games have particular aesthetic and tactical styles, usually dictated by the game's background.  Chaos armies in Warhammer, for instance, tend to involve small units of armoured hardcases, covered in spiky metal trims, paired up with hordes of lesser minions, often under-armoured and fur-clad.  The army will feature only token ranged elements, top-end-of-middling magic, and overwhelming combat potential, and (if well designed in the particular edition) will have the mobility and control required to deliver it with some degree of effectiveness.


This is cool.  After a few years, though, it gets boring.  You end up playing essentially the same game all the time, which was the end result for my poor Vampires.  Some factions have more variety in them than others - a large collection of Dark Elves could play combat-heavy, range-heavy, magic-heavy, monster-and-chariot-heavy, skirmishy, hordey, anywhichwayyoulikey, but they'd still be M5, T3 and wear tinfoil armour painted in dark moody colours.  Eventually, you'll come up against the fundamental limitations the designers chose to place on the army, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that that will eventually become boring, although I suspect the game system itself may grow wearying and the player will either drift away or an edition change will occur before this boredom becomes truly endemic.

Historically, then, I've changed armies once I've become bored with the way they look and play.  Occasionally - more often in recent years - I've done so because they don't live up to my tabletop demands.  The problem is that changing armies doesn't help one escape from that - if anything, it exacarbates the issue, thanks to the inherent tactical limitations of small collections vs. large ones.

When you're starting out, you can lose during list-building, because you simply don't have the pieces available to engage meaningfully with what your opponent's bringing.  I'm finding that a lot with my Skorne - give them a target-light environment and they do all right, but give them a horde of stuff that they can't trample through or a small set of well-buffed targets and they flail horrendously.  I can tell what they require in order to do better, but it's quite a lot of stuff - more than I can afford to invest in, more than I'm able to prioritise effectively, and more than I want to paint (those uniforms are really starting to get to me).  Can I enjoy a game where it's possible for me to lose before I've even started, simply because I can't afford the variety of pieces to open up an interesting range of tactics?  Honestly, I have trouble giving a 'yes' to that one.

The issue is further raised by many game systems' privileging of expense.  40K5 likes high-cost low-value transports; WFB8 favours large units of increasingly-expensive plastic infantry (£15 for 10 Gor is bad enough, now factor in that it'll take 30 to make any sort of meaningful impact on the battlefield and you'll see why I don't play Beastmen), and Warmahordes has an internal kink that means units start to be a better buy than single models after the initial buy-in (it also has a bad habit of patching poor design choices with unit or weapon attachments, or solos that do the same job, which means your crap unit now 'needs' the new solo to make it worth the investment).  This may make sense for the companies, provided they don't go crazy with it (arbitrarily doubling the cost of Orc Boyz models that have been out for around ten years is my new benchmark for 'going crazy with pricing', in case you're wondering), but it's frustrating for the player who's trying to branch out.

Stelek said something about this recently, while exploring and justifying his own Skorne and explaining why he doesn't branch out into a third faction:

Also, I realized in my quest to figure out the kind of army I wanted to run in those other armies, that I could probably ‘make do’ with some upgrades to my Skorne.

Despite myself, I reckon I probably could have made do with my Cryx, very happily, especially if I hadn't been an idiot and sold off a good chunk of them during my Masters' year (to be fair, I did need the money...).  At the very least, I could have gotten by with just adding new pieces to the collection and extending what it could do.

The reason I didn't make do with what I had for Warmachine, is partly down to other people.  In the UK, the faction is both overplayed when compared to others, and annoying to many opponents because they don't 'play fair'. That combination of things tends to result in... not necessarily in butthurt, but just in a display of weariness from across the table as someone sees me unpacking the third Cryx army they've been 'cheated' by in one day.

You get used to these as a Cryx player.

What I'm trying to say is that I may not have taken up Skorne if a bout of frustration with my Cryx collection hadn't co-incided with frustration from others that there were too many Cryx players around the place.  Beyond that, I'm not sure I'd have taken up WFB again if Dave and Shiny hadn't been around, with their models going unused, or 40K again if I hadn't decided to run the school club and wanted to play the game the kids played.

If I didn't think about what other people play, and how they want to play it, I'd never get any games in, or at least not any fun ones. It can't be argued, though, that attempting to address the needs and goals of others does create additional opportunities to spend time, effort and money.  It's with that in mind that I'm refocusing my efforts onto one faction, and that faction is Cryx.  Other people's sensibilities are less important than my wallet, in the end.

Frugalist, Know Thyself

It happens to us all, at some time or another.

Sometimes we realise that our project has aspects that become a chore (working on lots of models that all look the same is a HUGE barrier for me, which is why my armies don't tend to wear uniforms or spam the same unit/model type), sometimes we come up against a strange quirk of game design that means our COOL PLAN can't work out, and sometimes it just turns out we've made sub-optimal choices early on and end up stuck between trying to use pieces that we either don't enjoy or that don't work (usually both), or selling them on at a loss shortly after purchase.


This makes starting new projects hard, as it's unlikely that a small, economically-manageable starter collection will include a wide range of tactical capabilities, and equally unlikely that you'll be equipped to make wise choices straight off the bat if you're coming into something that's new to you.

At this point in most blogs, the author would start listing resources that you can use to make wise choices. I'm not going to do that - I'm driving towards something a bit beyond recommending intelligent websites here. Y'see, most advice posts/blogs/sites tend to concentrate on the tactical opportunities and costs involved in selecting a force, and take a few important aspects of the choice as read. What I want to do today is to look at the questions that I think gamers should ask themselves before they even start thinking about collections, lists and tactics.

The first question to ask yourself when selecting a new force is the hardest one to answer: why do I want this?

Image taken from http://bluegroovecrafts.com

Allow me to illustrate with an example. I play Cryx in Warmachine. I like them, but the game designers made Choices when they created the faction, Choices with results including "it's not very tough" and "it needs to do tricksy things to be good". The net effect here is that whatever I do with this collection of figures, it will always operate within these limitations, which means I occasionally want a change. The fundamental nature of the faction, while certainly to my liking, occasionally frustrates other people: Cryx are tricksy and popular, and that tends to create a little tension when five or six Cryx players turn up to an event and proceed to debuff, deny and generally annoy their way through the proceedings.


I bought into Skorne as a second faction because the Skorne are very tough and tend to be more direct in their approach, hitting the enemy very hard and basically 'playing fair' in a way the Cryx simply don't. They are also very uniform, whereas my Cryx are more anarchic and colourful, and so I thought they'd provide aesthetic variety. Finally, they're a Hordes faction, and so they provide an alternative means of exploring the game's rules, which I wouldn't get if I picked up a second Warmachine faction.


Once you know why you want your new toys, you have another question to answer: why won't I want this in six months' time?

Image taken from http://sandalsandsocks.typepad.com

This is where self-knowledge comes in handy. If you know how you like to do something, you can try a spot of clairvoyance and ask yourself whether you'll be able to approach this project in a manner of your choosing.

For instance, I don't like painting the same models for any sort of extended period of time. Half a dozen of the same colour scheme and I'm bored - less, if it's at all intricate or complex.

My Cryx are fully painted primarily because I don't give a damn about making a 'uniform' army where everything looks the same, and have opted instead to paint each unit type in a different scheme, relying on bases to tie the whole lot together.

Skorne are very uniform - lacquered armour, metal trims and big shiny weapons. This is proving to be something of a deterrent; the Arcuarii have been used a lot, but I've been shying away from painting them because there's eight models there and they're not substantially different from the last models I painted, to whit the Skorne battle box. What else is on the hobby table at the moment? Warriors of Chaos - so that's more armour with trim details and big shiny weapons.

See where I've gone wrong here? I know I have a problem with painting the same thing for too long, and I've set myself up with nothing to paint but similar models across two projects. Regardless of how valid my reasons for choosing the two armies may have been, I've erected a barrier between myself and having fun.  Small wonder I've been making terrain and (re)painting Cryx instead.

A Tale Of N Gamers, Where N = Some

A long, long time ago, I can still remember, when White Dwarf didn't suck on chodes...

The Tale of Four Gamers is perhaps one of the most persistent memes that's ever done the rounds in the wargaming community, although I suspect FOOTDAR will give it a run for its money in time.  See, once upon a time, in the hallowed years of the mid-nineties, when 'Wiki' was just the Hawaiian word for 'quick' and Jervis Johnson was a pillar of the community instead of the laughing stock he's been made into by the kind, merciful kiss of the Internet, White Dwarf ran a series about four staff members who pledged to construct Warhammer Fantasy Battle armies to a budget which, all these years later, seems frankly laughable.  I recall those articles fondly, and still have a tendency to count meat-filled sandwich products as a gaming expenditure and refer to small children as Noise Familiars as a direct result of their influence on my unformed brain.

I was clearly not alone in being strongly influenced by the article - White Dwarf and, in later years, the GW website, counted it among their greatest successes, referring to the requests for a rerun, a 40K version, a follow-up on the armies, anything at all to do with it, on an increasingly exasperating basis.  I've never been active on a wargaming forum where there isn't some version of it on the go.  Privateer Press, as has long been their way, followed in GW's footsteps and recently got in on the act with their Studio Challenge articles, although these cheerfully omit the budgetary restrictions.  Only this morning, I came across The Western Immoren Economy Tours, a Warmachine blog which is pursuing the endeavour in the original spirit and style, with a tight £30 a month limitation on purchases.

All of this sets questions a-moving in my fragile, agile mind, chief among which is "why do I have neither pig-flesh nor baguettes in my house at this present moment?"  Hot on its heels, however, is a query more pertinent to people who aren't sufficiently fortunate to dwell in the House of Von, and this is it: "why is the Tale of N Gamers format so popular?"

Is it the sense of joy that comes from achieving a goal, in this case the construction of successful forces on a tight and inflexible budget?  Is it the sharing of your experiences with an audience?  Is it the slow pace of construction, which enables an emotional investment to be made in a force and a serious attempt at actually painting it all made?

I'm not sure.  It's possible to do all these things in isolation, although personally I fail badly at the first and third elements - whenever I've tried to set myself a monthly budget, it's exploded within the first two instalments, and when I'm set on a project all unfetteredly-like, I tend to rush forward, seeking broader and deeper gaming experiences than can be achieved at entry level.

I think it's the shame.  I think it's the knowledge that your fellow Gamers will rib you rotten if you go over budget, and rightly ridicule you for not managing to paint one lousy box of new models in twenty-eight days.

All right, there's a bit more to it than just humiliation.  I also think it's the guarantee of games against others who are similarly constrained by circumstances.  As recent events have reminded me, it's not always fun playing with people who can afford a more tactically viable force than you, and a player base that's subscribing to the same limitations levels off that playing field, especially when cheats will be punished by withdrawal of snack van privileges.

That said, recent 'official' Tales of Four Gamers have left me cold, and I believe the format may be dying a death as the realities of modern gaming hit home.  The truth is, games companies have a certain vested interest in sweeping the precise costs of new forces under the rug, particularly when their game doesn't scale down as well as it used to (I'm looking at WFB here, although I'll be following the Warmachine effort with interest, since the buy-in cost for that game is lower and it's the long-term maintenance of the army and expansion of its tactical portfolio that hurts, financially speaking).

This limitation was pretty obvious in the first ever instalment; Paul 'Fat Bloke' Sawyer's Beastmen, available only high-cost low-value combinations and yet requiring the second-highest model count of the forces involved, ended up as a small, top-heavy army, shackled to expensive point sinks and not necessarily equipped to handle its competitors.  Funnily enough, the Beastmen are in the same old predicament today, as I learned to my cost when I contemplated them as an army... so I suppose some things don't change.

Anyone for a bacon butty?

More Cygnar proxies

Way back in the sands of time (last November) I flung up a post about proxying Cygnar trenchers.

As promised (surprisingly) I managed to carve out a few more.

First off we have the Trencher Officer and Sharpshooter Unit attachment. Looking at it now I think the sniper scope is a tad long, but hopefully it'll look better once painted.

Next up in the Trencher Master Gunner. Blunderbus, knife and head from a GamesWorkshop Empire set.

 

And lastly the Trencher Rifle Grenadier.

All these figures came in at the spookily familiar price of 41 pence, totaling £1.64, instead of the retail of the official figures of £19.85. I think I've pretty much done the trenchers now with these plastics (barring repeats to take advantage of field allowance). 

Any further proxying will have to come from a different figure source. And be cheaper than the official figure price.

A Budget Battlefield

Evenin' all.

I recently acquired a digital camera, and intend to spend at least part of this weekend clearing the backlog of hobby posts I've been meaning to make since.. actually since I left Plymouth last year.  To start with, here's a series of reliable images of some terrain, which I'm having enormous fun building and which, through a combination of thrift, hoarding, careful selection of supplies, re-use of old project materials and above all getting someone else to spend money for me, I am not actually paying for.

This is what happens when two art-and-craft types move in together.

Allow me to explain.  Much of what you see on this board is being constructed not on my dime, for my own purposes, but for the greater good of Dice and Decks, proud hosts of (ahem)

and therefore being paid for by the club - that's the stuff that isn't made out of stuff I was hoarding anyway.

Joining a club is frankly great for this sort of thing; it's a way of doing something which I really enjoy (building terrain) without the usual opportunity cost (having to spend my miniatures/rules/entry-fee/bus fare on materials for it) - and there's a certain warm glowing feeling which comes from knowing that I'm making something which other people will play on and derive enjoyment from, even in my absence.

Taking a closer look at a few pieces now, we have the Troll-sized adobe huts -

Squint and you'll see the Trollblood I used to test the doors' scale.

- which are basically soup pots covered in modelling clay, which is pummelled into a suitable texture before a rim is added and carved into to create the appearance of crudely hewn stone blocks.  I bought the modelling clay from Hobbycraft, which was a mistake when there are places like the Gloucestershire Resource Centre in the world.  Incidentally, that's another great reason to join a club; a non-profit organisation running an all-in community activity is well positioned to take advantages of opportunities which simply aren't available to private individuals.

We also see the return of the Wire Trees, which I cover in a black-brown ink over the green-grey Milliput for a more sort of blighted, nasty, industrial-waste-tainted kind of look (seriously, brown trees always look like a children's drawing).  Witness these half-finished ones and marvel!

Hark textured one in the time it took me to do five.  She's a Proper Artist, you see...

I also have a collection of stirrers, which are going to be made into plank fences, and am under orders to produce some linear obstacles (that's 'lines of sandbags' to non-Warmachine types) out of more modelling clay when I can be bothered to pick some up.  Best get a move on - this is the last weekend before the tournament!

The Proxy Vote

No, not a mid-term election article, but an age old frugal debate.

First a bit of background. I generally play generic rulesets. I loath being tied into one particular range of minitures when there are so many lovely sculpts not attached to any game. Yes, yes I know that they tie in with the background fluff of the game and provide (can) provide a continuous feel across the army, but sometimes it feels that these factors are used to "extract the michael" somewhat whan it comes to pricing.

The past 6 months has seen me take up Warmachine, a game very much with it's own style. I've been happily collecting a small Cryx (undead) force, but for a few reasons have decided to expand to a small second force, Cygnar (tech humans). Now my main army is the Cryx force, which have very distinct figures, but the human Cygnar are slightly more generic. So to keep costs down I am going to find and use proxy miniatures in this army where possible.

This opens up the whole proxy debate:
PROS: Cost, choice, fun research
CONS: irregular force theme, wrong miniatures, difficult/irritating for some opponents, illegal for tournament play, in some cases quality of sculpt is worse.

As far as I'm concerned in this instance, as long as the replacement miniatures are reasonable representations of the official figures I'm good with it. As such, I don't plan to proxy the warjacks (robots) as they are very distinctive. I've bought some appropriate bases as well, as base size and position is important in Warmachine. I've already bought the Cygnar mkII Stat card pack.

Another good frugal reason to use proxies is that I already have some suitable minis waiting to be used. A few years ago I took advantage of a free postage offer from Prince August for their bag of 80 plastic Warzone figures - 40 Imperial, 40 Bauhaus. The Imperial Trenchers are WWI theme based and, to my eyes, ideal to replace the Cygnar Trenchers. I also have a load of them pose and customise, as the Cygnar forces have quite a few varying Trencher based troop types.

We'll start with the basic Cygnar Trencher. 5 Grunts and a squad Leader. I've snipped the gun slightly to make it less M16-esque and given a squad leader the head from the Warzone trencher heavy machine gunner to help him stand out. Cost per figure (inc full base cost) 41 pence - squad cost £2.46. Official squad RRP ~ £18.

Next is a proxy for the HMG wielding Captain Maxwell Finn. All I've done is take the Warzone HMG trencher and replaced the head (which is now on the Trencher squad leader) with a spare from an old, partially used GamesWorkshop Fantasy Empire militia boxset I had lying around. Figure cost 41 pence, Official figure RRP ~ £9.

Next is a Journeyman Warcaster. He is armed with a pistol and a sword, so I've given my Imperial Trencher Officer a spare GW sword and a spare GW head (both from the same box set as the Cpt Finn figure). Total figure cost 41p (can you see a pattern developing?), Official figure RRP ~ £6.

And Lastly I have clipped the weapons off of an unused Mage Knight Steam Golum to proxy as Squire. No idea what I paid for this (it was in a job lot years ago). Official RRP ~ £6.

Next proxies? Well it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see that the a carefully place bead or putty blob on the end of a rifle will make a Grenadier, and if I can find something to use as a sniper scope I'll have an officer/sniper Unit attachment (the peaked cap of the Warzone officer will come into play here), and perhaps even I'll manage a blunderbuss/sword conversion to make a Trencher Master Gunner. Moving away from the plastic trenchers, Void Viridian snipers could make a slightly cheaper alternative to Cygnar Rangers, and I'm toying with the idea of using ACW troops with their long muskets as Cygnar Long Gunners.

Any other suggestions are warmly accepted.

Von's Frugal Year: Months the Eighth and Ninth

Well now.  Here we all are.  It's been a while, hasn't it?

It turns out that getting a new job and moving house at extremely short notice to take up said job can occasionally lead to a mild case of No Blogging Time, especially when your home Internet isn't up and running, your place of work forbids access to blogging sites on principle, and every free WiFi sign you see transpires to be a Lie (I think my newfangled triple-layered security suite might be a bit too secure, since it doesn't want me to do ANYTHING on the Nets at all).  Naturally, I've coped with this reduced ability to read/write about gaming on the tubes by actually doing some gaming (shocking) and spending some of my brand new money (irresistible), so here's how it's been going on:

Spending Less - well, from late August to late September I had no time to really spend any money or, for that matter, money to spend.  October has, so far, been spent making up for that; I've shelled out a tenner on a trip to a Warmachine tournament up in Kidderminster, which you can read all about over on the other blog, and while I was up there I confess I spent another thirty quid on a Skorne starter box for that Hordes thing, fancying a change from my Cryx but not particularly wanting to give up the Warmachine/Hordes system entirely.  I've also been spending about six pounds a week on nights out at Dice and Decks, a gaming club in Ross-On-Wye run by some very nice lads who have just started playing Warmachine.

Gaming More - oh yes.  Weekly games of either Warmachine or Warhammer have become the norm; since most of my Warmachine opponents are brand new and still at the battlebox stage, switching to a new faction and relearning how Hordes works has been a nice levelling experience for our games.  I don't plan on starting an epic horde of Skorne or anything; just a nice little army that I can add odds and ends to as and when the fancy takes me.  I've been to one tournament, which was... an experience... and there's talk of doing some at the club as well (a battlebox round robin job in November, and a 25-pointer early in the New Year).

Fanboy Fights and Gaming Gear

There's an ongoing nerd fight between Warmachine/Hordes and Warhammer (40K) players - or more accurately, consumers of Privateer Press products and consumers of Games Workshop products - over which game works out cheaper in the long term.  It's pretty much a wash - you can play a Privateer game with less miniatures, but they're more expensive than the Workshop equivalents and the game pretty much requires you to own a variety of pieces to meet a variety of tactical needs if you want to do well.



Anyway, what with the new Warhammer coming out in July, and the new rulebook costing a hefty £45 (incidentally, I won't be buying one - it's more expensive than I need, too heavy to cycle around with on my back, and contains a lot of stuff that isn't game rules and so gets in the way of using it as a reference document.  It's a lovely looking book, but it's not appropriate to my needs), the battleground of the week has been start-up costs.  You can read the nerd fight that inspired this post over at Stelek's rather confrontational blog (probably not safe for work, or the thin-skinned - he swears a bit and doesn't suffer fools gladly).

Wargames do frequently have quite a steep start-up cost, but there are always going to be ways of mitigating it.  Privateer Press do half the work for us, printing the rules for the entry-level pieces in their games in the core rulebook and providing some easily-photocopied templates and markers in the back.

The nice chap who makes Forward Kommander does a bit more work, as the printouts from that will have the damage grids and tracks you'll need on it.

There are always cheap options for tokens and templates - I use a lot of Gale Force 9 and Litko tokens, for my sins, mostly because my clear glass stones didn't go down to well at the club I used to use in Manchester (it was a dark space and it was difficult to read my handwriting, it smudged all the time, and yes, some of the lads were part of the Cult of Official Supplies), and paper ones would have gone mouldy in that cellar full of fish that we played in.

I have made my own for other games, though, and most of the online communities for wargames have links to PDFs that helpful people have made that you can print off and stick onto card or spare bases or what-have-you.  (Da Waaagh do a nice set of very Orky 40K ones, for instance.)  My smoke templates are all cardboard (I need a lot of them for most of my armies, more than it would be reasonable to purchase plastic ones for) and my new spray template probably will be too.

As far as rules materials go, it's like roleplaying - you have to learn to spot the difference between an essential core rulebook and a frivolous supplement.  Once you have a set of rules once, there's no sense in buying them twice - which is, incidentally, what the local Workshop staff have been trying to persuade me to do (actually, three times - collector's edition for owning and cherishing, regular one for background and using until the book comes out, and the little one for actually lugging around and taking to games, once it's come out).  What kind of mug do they take me for, eh?

Lest it be thought that I'm taking sides here, I should add that we Frugalists are not biased towards any game system: we make our own terrain and try to keep it good for everything, we make our own tokens for PP games and our own movement trays for GW games.  We don't buy anybody's overpriced hobby products when there are art shops in the world, and the only thing we get into Internet Fights over is people spending more money than they need to.

That and Blogger's text wrapping and inexplicably adding extra blank lines to my posts every time I try and do something clever with images.  IT WOULD WORK IF YOU'D STOP ADDING EXTRA BITS, BLOGGER!  Tch.  Anyway, hope you enjoyed the accessory tips.

Von's Frugal Year: Month the Fifth

Written in mid-June, about May. Sigh. We're all falling behind a bit, mostly due to actually doing things instead of blogging about them.

Spending Less - well, I was mostly good. I did shell out £25 on a Cauldron of Blood (since my Dark Elf army needs one in order to destroy you), but that has brought the Dark Elves to a point at which I can say "these are done, I don't need more stuff to play them, have fun and do well".

I've been sticking my fingers in my ears and ignoring the Warmachine releases (although I am, at the very least, going to pick up the Cryx and Mercenary books, a Harrower helljack and a box of Steelhead Riflemen before the year is out), and bracing myself instead for the upcoming release of Warhammer's eighth edition.

Most of the stuff they're releasing around it looks like overpriced ephemera that's not actually massively useful to the practicing gamer, although I admit to quite liking the new template set - and I've paid more than that for plain templates in the past.

The rulebooks themselves are now verging on 'prohibitively expensive', and so I might be borrowing Dave's strategy of waiting until the boxed game comes out, taking out the templates and mini rulebook, and then flogging the rest. GW staff members will no doubt be wailing and gnashing their teeth at this, but the truth is that two hundred (or three hundred) pages of background is a) a luxury for which I'm not able or even willing to pay and b) bloody heavy to carry on your back when you cycle or walk everywhere.

It will mean I have to wait until whenever the box comes out to actually start playing eighth edition, but what the hell, I've still half a Dark Elf army to paint and a couple of Warcraft characters to level.

Ah yes. Warcraft. Let's talk about that in a bit.

Gaming More - I've had a couple of Warmachine knockabouts with the honourable Shiny, and plans for a decent-sized WFB game are in the works (is that this week, chaps?).

These games, and the one between Dave and Shiny the other day, are being recorded, nay, chronicled in fact, using BATTLE CHRONICLER! (yes, you have to shout it. It's the rules...) which is a rather nice and very free utility for making battle reports like they used to have in White Dwarf back in the day. It takes a while to get used to the controls, especially if you're trying to manipulate individual figures (facing in particular has a tendency to stray when a report is in progress and you're clicking and dragging your dudes about), but it looks quite nice when it's done. The first report (on a Warmachine game) will be up on either GAME OVER or Hand Cannon just as soon as the chap who's hosting them gets back to me with a merry "yes Von your stuff is online now". I have the notes together for Dave and Shiny's game, but... well, did I mention I'm qualifying as a teacher in the next few weeks and have rather a lot of paperwork to do? Well, I am, and I do, and my gaming time is being spent... elsewise.

I've started painting Dark Elves (the Executioners, Witch Elves, Shades and Assassins are all on the go and have all had something painted: skin and metal mostly). It seems like a slightly bitty way to get things done, but when you've mixed up too much flesh or metal you might as well use the paint, and it does mean there's a lot of variety on my painting desk (so if I feel like painting armour, I can do some work on Executioners; if cloth, Shades; if big Eighties hair, Witch Elves). I'd rather have the variety to inspire me than have one project on the go and then not advance it when I just don't feel like painting those minis right now.

Also, I've been playing World of Warcraft. Quite a bit. See, my guildmates have finally become frustrated with me for rolling low-level characters and never bothering to do much with them, and so I've pledged to concentrate on my two highest-level pixellated slayers of lesser beings and actually get them to the endgame before the next expansion comes out.

This is beginning to be problematic Serious Warcraft Business territory, and I'm having to remind myself that time, once spent, cannot be regained. With that in mind, I've been setting up both my characters to spend extended periods of time resting, gaining double experience points when played and therefore levelling at something like an efficient speed, getting more done in the time available. I've also been using profession levelling guides to cut down on the amount of faffing around a bit.

So far I've got one character parked at level 70 (I want to take my time a bit more with him, since it's the first time I've taken a wee dude to Northrend and I want to enjoy the scenery and story a bit) and a Death Knight busily mining and grinding and battlegrounding away, not gaining experience, Resting so that when I do start playing him properly he'll rocket through the levels like there's no tomorrow.

Oh, and the Dark Heresy's going well. We're three sessions in and the plot is slowly beginning to move: the lads have requested More Combat, and so next week's session ('The Killing Floor') will be an extended fight scene with tanks and rioters and aircraft and things so they can get the urge to roll dice and consult charts out of their systems.

This means I actually have to learn how combat in Dark Heresy works instead of fudging it as garishly as I have been. I'd, um, better get on that. And painting Dark Elves. And actually finishing my teacher training on time. It's possible that I need to look at my time management skills again... although I have cut right back on my blogging/foruming time, so that's a start.

Von's Frugal Year: Month The Fourth

Spend less?  Hahahaha NO.  I've shelled out £150 on a Dark Elf army (granted it's a Dark Elf army that would have cost about £330 at recommended retail price and probably about £270 with online discounts and stuff, so I think I came out fairly well there), £20 on extra models for my Satyxis Raiders (just so I can top the unit up and run them at full strength), £6 on a can of NitroMors for paint-stripping metal Dark Elves with, and £21 on turning the World of Warcraft subscription back on (I keep telling myself that if it entertains me for three hours a week it's more economical than, say, the cinema, which so often doesn't).  Going to have to keep that belt tight for a few months (although the ranks of unpainted Dark Elves, Trenchers and Satyxis are having the desired effect of putting me off buying any more stuff).

Game more? Hell yes.  Played a game of WFB against the ever-faithful Shiny (report here, as is the custom), and a few extended sessions of World of Warcraft (I've actually joined a guild now, fulfilling the originally planned function of 'game I can play with old gaming chums who are now scattered about the country', which means the social aspect of the game is finally being explored as much as it should be).  I've also been painting on my mornings and afternoons off this week, and have turned out fifty Dark Elf infantry, two Bolt Throwers and a Sorceress.  Apart from the Sorceress, they are what might politely be termed 'gaming standard' (four colours, basecoat-ink-highlight-done), but when I have close to a hundred models to paint for an army I'm not going to spend the time making each and every one a masterpiece.  Oh, and my Dark Heresy game finally lurched into life last week - it's going rather well, even if I say so myself.

Plans for next month: more painting, more WFB, more Dark Heresy, more making good on purchases made and less spending of money on new ones.  May need to look into a way of moving my models about that's cheaper than buying new case foam from Kaiser Rushforth - I wonder how much it'd cost for a metal toolbox and enough magnets for the Dark Elf army?

Wait A Second, That Looks Like Gaming!

Well, that "game more" part of the Mission seems to have lurched back into life of late. Since the last time we spoke, m'colleague Shiny and myself have presented ourselves at the hallowed gates of Frugal Towers and enjoyed a game or two of Space Hulk against our gracious host Dave.

Our first ever game, touted as a very difficult scenario for the Space Marines, proved to be a stealthy victory, with valiant rearguard Terminators and a suspiciously effective Sergeant holding up the oncoming alien hordes long enough for the last surviving Terminator to set fire to the room that needed setting fire to before turning, two heavy flamer shots left, to face the oncoming tide of Genestealers that had been boiling along the corridors after him.

The second proved rather less of a triumph for the valiant warriors of the Imperium - overestimating the efficacy of a Sergeant with thunder hammer slightly, we (by which I mean I) sent him off on his own, only for him to get scrobbled by the first Genestealer to look at him funny. Our 'castle up and let the assault cannon sort it out' strategy on the other side of the ship worked out okay, at least until the aforementioned cannon ran out of ammunition, at which point Dave's grobbly alien hordes were able to more or less surround us. A quick examination of the board afterwards revealed some more advisable choke points where we could have parked the Sergeant and let him hold up more of the Genestealers, allowing our other four Terminators to concentrate on eliminating the ones emerging from behind him.

Space Hulk. Good game. Nice pieces, too: the Terminators in particular are very characterful little blighters who could sidestep nicely into a Blood Angels army with nary a care. The Genestealers are a bit less flexible, given their highly thematic basing, but a patient modeller could base an entire Tyranid army like that and it'd look suitably post-apocalyptic industrial and smashing.

Anyway, Dave made the return trip to Castle von Von this Thursday to try out his Goblin army against Shiny's Skaven, dusted off after long disuses and empowered by their new book full of nasty things. Dave's Goblins pulled off a few successes - his Fanatics and Stone Thrower whacked a fair few rats in the early turns, his Spider Riders kept a Clanrat unit and Warlock out of the fight on one flank and his Giant successfully routed the Plague Monks without a single blow being struck (ah, Yell and Bawl, how elite troops loathe thee) - but unfortunately his line units started taking panic tests, and when Goblins start taking panic tests, they very seldom stop. Enough of them rallied for it not to be a total wash, but their turns of gibbering retreat had left the army strung out for Shiny's oncoming wall of fur to roll over unit by unit.

I really enjoyed watching this game - suitably anarchic and banter-filled, and we persuaded Dave to keep going after the Turn of Much Panicking (since, to my eye, it looked like the Giant's long lopey legs could carry him into the Plague Monks, and taking out one of Shiny's units was still better than none).

The next round will be after the Easter break, and probably involve Dark Elves in some capacity or other. I'm clearing the pewter backlog to make way for evil pointy spiky elves. My Warmachine Steelheads are finally painted, a trifling three months after purchase, which leaves six Revenant Crew ready to paint, six stripped Trenchers to reprime and paint, plus two Satyxis Raiders, four Trenchers and four Revenant Crew in various states of broken-with-bits-missing-ness to fix up and find bases for.

I suspect I'll buy those bases and top up the Satyxis Raider unit while I'm away in Manchester over the Easter vacation (Warmachine units come in either sixes or tens in the second edition, and I own eight models: not terribly helpful). That'll have to be it as far as away spending goes. I haven't spent any gaming money this month, and I won't be spending any in May (no, no matter how many nice new Cryx things come out: I still haven't fielded everything I own for that army, and I own plenty), so there's a financial buffer around the hearty expenditure I plan on making in mid-April.

What I Did On My Holidays

It's been two weeks and, as planned, the basics of the board are there and laid out.

I did end up spending about £24 on this, but I got significantly more for my money than I would have done if I'd been a fool and bought that GW kit. I ended up shelling out for a litre tin of mid-brown emulsion paint that's a close match for Vallejo Earth, 500 ml of sand base from an art shop and 300 ml of matte medium to make it go further (and I still have some left for making hills and suchlike, too). Flock was free, courtesy of our glorious host, and I still have half the tub left there as well.

I'm still sulking, though - partly because I didn't need QUITE that much paint (I was startled while calculating how much I'd need and misplaced the decimal point - at least I have enough for every terrain making project I'm likely to do, ever, and then some) and partly because while I was buying the paint I found an even more Frugal option that would have saved me a fair bit of time and money.

Homebase, bless them, sell a mid-brown textured spray paint at about £7.50 for a 400ml can. Having already bought and applied the sand base and matte medium, I didn't get the chance to play about with it, but I suspect two cans ought to be more than enough for a 4'x4' board... so if you want to texture and paint a board in one easy step and spend £10 less than I did, that might be the way to go. I think my Frugal Year might be turning into a "do as I say, not as I do" enterprise...

Trees! Made by our gracious host Dave's method, entirely out of stuff I found in the cupboard, where it had lingered for several years, unused and unremembered - thick card, florists' wire, Milliput, Windsor and Newton brown/black inks and the last of the matte medium (and some water). The only thing I bought new for these was the lichen - two bags of Landscape Scenics stuff, of which I still have about two-thirds of a bag left. Not sure what I'm going to do with that - maybe moss on the buildings when I get around to doing those, or a 10mm forest for Hordes of the Things.

River! I gave the entire board a wash of that W&N ink + matte medium + water mix to bring the texture back out after I'd emulsioned it, and the river is just PVA (we have a lot of PVA glue) layered over that. I'm not a hundred per cent happy with it, but not sure what to do about it either. I'm not going to just paint it blue (for the same reason that my treetrunks aren't plain brown), I know that much.

Game! Yes, I haven't forgotten about that essential 'spend less, game more' mission, even if I do spend half my time waffling about ephemera like 'emotional investment' - there is a point to all this scrimping and saving and building and painting, after all. Shiny's Warmachine army has finally arrived in strength and we played a couple of games yesterday afternoon to celebrate. I shan't bend anyone's ear about them here, but keep your eyes on my personal blog if you're interested.

Von's Frugal Year: Month The First

So, it's been a month: how's that Frugal thing goin'?

Financially: I've been very very good, staying under my £50 limit with a £45 trip to Clifton Road Games in Exeter to pick up some Warmachine minis. The financial side of the mission is going to have to tighten up a little bit, though (told you I'm not really rich): the WoW fees are going to start coming out of that fifty quid, and it really has to be seen as an upper limit, not a target.

Emotionally: I made it through the Hordes field test and didn't shout at anyone or get upset about any of it (certainly there are things that disappoint me, but I'm maintaining a state of cheerful indifference - it's still basically a decent game). I am having a bit of Gamer Angst now that the redraft of the rules has come out; I definitely want to do a Hordes force at some stage (next year, in all likelihood, once the new core rules are set in stone and actually out), but I'm not sure which. Got it down to two, and have a year to think about it.

Temporally: Okay, the last week's sort of broken this one a bit. I've had three days off work plus the weekend following a wee operation on my foot, and since I couldn't move about much at first I did spend a lot of time (about, ooh, four hours a day) playing WoW and quite a lot of time (again, about four hours a day) painting miniatures. It's not really being Frugal with my time, although I hope it's defensible (especially since I didn't really have a Christmas holiday this year and badly needed a few days R&R).


Looking forward, then: I've been shockingly lax on the whole finishing-the-battlefield-thing, so I think that's going to be next month's big hobby project. Much of the Nerd Money for the month will be going on one of those Scenery Painting Packs that Games Workshop makes; sure, it's £25, but it's a one-stop shop (better for time) and I won't have to buy tons more stuff than I need (which might end up happening if I pop down the hill to the builder's merchants and buy my paint from there). If I can shop around one afternoon and find all the stuff in that pack, in the quantities I need it, for less than £25, I'll skip it, but it looks like a reasonable investment in the here and now.

EDITED TO ADD: this is appallingly poor reasoning on my part. Anything purchased from a gaming company's hobby products line will come with a massive markup and it's a rare product indeed that's actually worth that (Citadel inks, and... umm... actually, that's about all I can think of). I should know better, in fact I usually do know better; it's been years since I bought so much as a GW brush. What I wrote this morning is a shame and embarrassment to the Frugal Mission. It is staying there so that I, and you, can learn from my mistakes.

In the interests of staying under budget, I'll try and stay off the new miniatures for the month - actual gaming time will probably be spent actually playing Dark Heresy, since I bought it last year and have yet to do much more than drool over it and have Shiny roll up his character. Maybe I'll write something about Frugal Roleplaying down the line (it's not as easy as it looks, you know), or maybe not. I already have a list of stuff I could bend your ears about, after all.

Further adventures in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future will naturally be chronicled over here, and with a bit of luck I'll be back in a couple of weeks with some sort of terrain progress. Bet you can't wait. Von out.