Reforging a piece of my Gaming History

This upcoming weekend I will be refurbishing this ancient terrain piece from my Pop's original modular 3D terrain set back in 1983. We have always referred to it as the "Rock".

I will be removing it from the warped MDF base board, clean off the foliage on it, retexture the bare Styrofoam and remount it on a new base board that is more form fitting as a stand alone terrain piece needs.

Here are a few pictures of the whole terrain set back in the day.

Pictures of the reforging as they happen over the weekend will follow.

Until next time.
Big Jim

Welcome Mike to the Blog as a Content Contributor

I’d like to welcome my good friend Mike aboard, as a new content contributor to Galaxy in Flames.

He originally played Warzone back in the 90's when the first editions were out and new, that eventually brought him to play other games as will happen. However the release of Warzone Resurrection has reignited a passion for gaming that had been dulled in him for quite some time.

I am going to let Mike introduce himself in his own words:

“Well hello out there, thanks Jim for asking me to contribute to your blog.

Well I’ve been demoing for Prodos Games as a Crusader now for about five months, in that time I appear to have become possessed, I have produced a ton of scenery to add to the demos we have been running, a jungle based table to represent Venus, including habitation, disused landing pads, containers and lots of scatter pieces.

Warzone Resurrection benefits from a mass of terrain, bring an element of realism to the environments the forces fight over, long gone are the open field for combat that the medieval to American civil war. These fights take place up close and personal.

Cheers, Mike”

As you might have guessed he is a keen terrain builder as well and will be sharing plenty of awesome hobby content with us here. He is currently working on a war torn cityscape for Warzone Resurrection.

He currently plays Capitol, Cybertronic and Mishima as his factions for Warzone Resurrection. He has quite a sizable Capitol force!

Everyone please give Mike a warm welcome!

Until next time keep your powder dry and lead flying!

The importance of terrain in skirmish games

What makes skirmish games different from other miniature tabletop games is the way your models interact with the terrain on the tabletop. Experienced skirmish gamers know that terrain is an extremely important part of having a successful game. It is important to have multiple levels of terrain and having places to hide are both very important; it also adds a very realistic feeling.

Battlesystems starship or military complex table

Your strategy should evolve from the terrain present in your game. Having multiple levels of terrain makes the game interesting and adds to your strategy. There is nothing more realistic and evocative than placing a sniper on the highest point on the board with a good viewpoint of the tabletop. Plus from this vantage point he may be able to ignore some terrain since at this elevation the terrain may be too low to affect the snipers shots as you are looking at your target from above. 

City fight table from the Grunts website

My general rule of thumb when setting up a skirmish gaming table it to make sure that at least 60% of the surface area is covered in terrain of some sort! With this terrain density you can get a really great tactically deep game.

Infinity demo table from the interwebz

No matter in what kind of terrain your game is taking place on you should always have plenty of cover. If you are playing on ruined city streets you should be able to gain cover peeking around corners or hiding behind piles of rubble. Realistically you want to have protection for incoming fire. It is almost always better to get your models into cover suffering any movement penalties than to stay out in the open to move at your full move rate. In my opinion it is better to play smart using every ounce of cover to your advantage than to rush in and get your units killed.

Another fantastic thing about skirmish gaming terrain is that if you are a clever modeler you can have close quarters firefights within buildings. Fighting room by room is a fantastically tense and fun thing to do in skirmish gaming. It can be done with battle level games but is not very practical to do well above the skirmish level.

Until next time, keep your powder dry and lead flying!

CelestiCon Terrain: new building ruins

I am working on some ruined buildings for the CelestiCon Narrative event. I like my buildings to be on the more realistic looking side. Festooned with lots of rubble and debris, it looks fantastic on the tabletop. Problem is most gamers go bonkers due to functionality with miniatures in game.

So I am debating a compromise, strew sand all over the interior with minimal debris near the actual walls, but then make rubble inserts to place in the buildings for when infantry and tanks are not inside. Similar to what we do with removable trees for forests.

What do y’all think, should I compromise to cater to everyone or should I just go nuts and go old school then say the heck with playability since it will look Kool!?!

Terrain WIP for the Bay Area Open Narrative event.

So the battle on Delis is raging over three distinct battlezones. These are two buildings we are working on for the Desert city battlezone. For inspiration we have looked too the modern middle east, ancient Egypt and everyone's favorite "retched hive of scum and villainy" Mos Eisley.

We have also decided to do something I rarely if ever see on a 40k tabletop. At least half of the buildings on the table will be intact with little to no battle damage on them; while the other half will be divided between ruins and battle damaged buildings.

As you can see they are not finished yet, but are shaping up nicely. Over the next few days I will walk you through the completion of these buildings. We will be adding pipes, cables, more trim and other interesting little details to these before they are textured then painted.

We do have about 6 finished buildings already, but no pics until right before the event. I know I am a tease!

Realm of Battle board project part 1

My long time followers will know I won a Real of Battle board from my local GW back in December. I am now trying to decided on a theme for the board. I am unsure whether to make it a verdant flocked greenish brown to match the balance of my terrain or if I want to do it an arid desert like wasteland. I have flocked felt mats for both already purchased ages ago from Monday Knight Productions.

So I really have a tough choice to make as either would service my gaming and terrain just fine. Although I would have to make or purchase a larger variety of desert terrain, as more than half of my existing stuff it small scale for Flames of War.

I did find the TerranScapes line of terrain yesterday from a post on TKE's blog Mind War FTW. There desert Buttes are fantastic looking!



A desert wasteland would be a great excuse to get a bunch!

Plus B.smove did a fantastic series of posts on A Gentleman's Ones, when he did his arid wasteland RoBB. I think it turned out very nice with a depth of color I have not seen before on a RoBB.

The only issue I have with a flocked verdant board is determining how hard it will be to keep the flock on the plastic beast during transport.

Ah, hell I just convinced myself to do the desert wasteland while typing this post! If you have a valid nifty idea or reason you think I should do the Verdant board by all means tell me!

Cheers,
Jim

Tales from the Soapbox episode II NETS edition

Ok guys, it’s time for another NETS (Not Enough Terrain Syndrome) post. The Wild West Shootout happened almost 2 weeks ago in Arizona sponsored by Battlefoam. I’d like to give props to Blackmoor for winning the event with footsloggin’ shooty Eldar (OMG!!!), and to the rest of the participants for enduring through a severe outbreak of NETS, plus surviving the worst mission in the history of 40k during which all terrain was removed from the table. Yes, you read that right round 4 of the event was played out on terrain-less tables; what the Hell?

Blackmoors battle reports and pics that speak volumes about the tables.
Wild West Shootout game #1
Wild West Shootout game #2
Wild West Shootout game #3
Wild West Shootout game #4
Wild West Shootout game #5

People paid money to participate in and travel to this event and they get this crap dropped on them. It’s just shameful, that the organizers thought that this was acceptable. The community at large really need to put tournament organizers to task, and stop laying down to be walked upon just to have someone run an event.

I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate all the effort that goes into running an event, because I have first hand knowledge from running my own. I’m saying that is someone is running an event, either do it right or don’t do it at all; especially if you are running an event that is geared for people to travel to it.

I know that sounds harsh and it’s meant to, but 40k has enough problems rules wise in a tournament environment that they should not be compounded by other factors. Never male a paying participant feel cheated by an issue the can be solved through proper planning.

As I said before, I know it’s not cheap to buy and time consuming to build terrain, but being silent about the issue is not going to make the problem better.

Organizers need to man up and ask for help if they need it. If you are light on terrain ask for people to bring some and offer prizes for best table or terrain piece.

It is time for the gamers to make a stand and speak up. Demand better terrain on your tables and make sure that it’s placed well, so every piece of terrain is not on the edges.

You can blame TastyTaste at Blood of Kittens for the proceeding post. He brings up this event in his post about when TO's should release the missions for an event.

Not Enough Terrain Syndrome or NETS

Disclaimer: the table pictured above as an example has about 30% terrain on it, if you remove two of the forest sections then it would be close to 25%.

I’ve been planing to do this article for a while now, I’d like to thank Magilla over at The Art of 40K War for re-igniting the fire with his excellent post on terrain.

Do you feel that if you lose the first turn you are at a disadvantage?

Are you constantly fielding transports that you never deploy from, because the troops inside will just disappear if they don’t have the armored shell?

Do those Assault troops ever make it into combat or are they shot to pieces before they get to turn two?

Are those long ranged support units shooting you with clear shots to most of your deployment zone, while sitting at the back edge of theirs?


If you answered yes to more than one of these questions then your gaming group may be suffering from a severe case of Not Enough Terrain Syndrome or NETS?

Are you sure that you are using the amount of terrain suggested on page 88 of the MRB? The MRB suggest that roughly twenty five percent of the table should be covered in terrain.

Next time you go for a game try filling a quarter of the playing surface with varied terrain pieces. Then spread them out one at a time with your opponent. Then if the table looks like it does any other game you play congratulations you have been adhering to the rules suggested in the MRB.

If it feels like too much terrain then you my friend have a severe case of NETS. Don’t feel bad though because you are not alone. I’d venture to say that 85 percent of tournaments and gaming stores get it wrong all the time. I don’t completely begrudge them for creating this problem, as terrain is expensive to by and time consuming to build.

It still doesn’t change the fact that they are skewing how the game is played. My suggestion is to do what I am doing locally, ask for more terrain on the tables. There are a few ways to accomplish this, first offer to help organize a terrain building day to get more available. Second get the local guys to help out by bringing in a single tables worth of terrain to be used in the events of the day.

Trust me it is worth the effort to get the proper amount of terrain on the table. It helps bring better tactics into the game and it might just convince you to change up your list a little.

Chaos in the Woods

Here are some better detail shots of the terrain I recently acquired from my Father. I've placed some of my Soul Reapers Chaos marines in the pics for scale.

My new terrain and a tribute to my Father

I just inherited my Fathers LotR terrain, he's moving outta the area and doesn't feel like hauling it with him. Win for me, I can now cover 5 feet of table in forest! It needs some small fixes, but I think it is still fantastic looking stuff. Here is a sampling of the pieces.






A little back ground on my Father. He has been gaming since the mid 70's with a passion for the ancient world. During the 80's when gamers were still playing on bare tabletops with some colored felt scattered about for terrain. He undertook the task of creating 2x2 ft modular terrain using the same techniques that model railroaders use. Since that time he has won multiple awards for his fantastic layouts. Here are some scanned pics of that first terrain layout.



Happy Fathers Day Pop and thanks for all the wonderful years of gaming!