Wednesday, January 25, 2012

FOW 3.0 photos from WI292

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WI 292 arrived in the mail yesterday. I snapped photos of some of the pages that caught my attention.

Here's the breakdown of the 3 books.

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What snippets they showed of the 13 lists leaves me to believe they are very rudimentary and scaled down FE2 lists with much reduced support options. It's hard to though.

It also get the impression the small rule book will be Core only, with no Hobby or Lists included.

Click below to see more pics of the rules and diagrams.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Greatest Tank Battles II

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New episodes began airing this month. Nobody told me!

Keep in mind that "new" means shows produced in 2011 are finally being shown on The Military Channel. I already missed the Battle of Stalingrad that aired a couple of weeks ago and another episode on the Six Day War.

This Wednesday the Battle of Tunisia is up, with Tank Battles of Korea and the Battle of France scheduled for Saturday (1/28).

Check your local listings if you're a fan of the show.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Panthers

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PSC updated their site and the long awaited and hoped for Panther will be here very soon.

The price is quoted at £17.95, which equates to almost $27.50 before shipping. Depending on where you buy your PSC goods, you're probaby looking at roughly $6.50 per tank. In case you're keeping score that's half the price of a Battlefront Panther.

What I particularly like is the late G model with the chin mantlet. It's my favorite version of the Panther.

I can't tell though if the hull and turret are sculpted with zimmerit paste. The assembly instructions below don't hint at zimmerit, though the box art does show the paste. Wait and see, I guess.

I'm really curious how BF is going to respond to PSC plastic kits that are roughly half the price of bisters and also Zvezda with their line of snap-together Barbarossa kits. Otherwise, a big chunk of their sales is going to further erode. If a newbie came to me about FOW, I'd point them to PSC where he can get his basic Sherman, half-tracks, T-34's, Panzer IV, Panther and you know PSC is going to do Tigers and other of the more commonly used WWII vehicles.

Anywho, I'm very excited to see this update. There's already 16 responses on the WWPD forum.

In other news, I played two games yesterday! The mind boggles. I actually won one of them! Inconceivable. AAR's to be posted once I sort through 70+ pics. I think I'll try StevieMac's Batrepper.

PSC Panther assembly guide below---

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Bring on the Bad Guys...

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I've been on a Black Library tear lately. I find myself drawn to stories that give more detail and background about the villains in the 40K universe. i want to know about their motivations. I want to see that they are more than cardboard characters who curse and rage at the world and only serve to show how awesome and righteous the "good guys" are in the story.

This isn't a book review post. I'm not going to talk about the plots in any of the books. I want to talk about the villains.

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I just finished Blood Pact by the best Black Library author, Dan Abnett. It's the first book in Abnett's new story arc about Kommisar Ibrahim Gaunt and his Ghosts. Interestingly enough, I found the latest installment to be boring. The book is really a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a tinge of intrigue thrown in. Forget the intrigue. Anytime a person is revealed to be a bad guy - BLAM! Oh ho, that character is working for his own purposes - BLAM!

I wished the Blood Pact could be "fleshed" out more. I wanted to know more about their command structure, their training, how they are chosen, and what life is like serving the Arch Enemy. I know they are an elite squad and the equivalent of the Ghosts.

The story was over before their background story. I urge Abnett to forsake the Imperium and write a story about the "other side". He created and added to the 40K universe with his Sabbat World series. He can and could do the same for villains.

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Okay, I'm about 100 pages into the Omnibus. Thus far the Word Bearers scream and shout and kill. Standard Chaos Space Marine modus operandi. I'm hoping I learn more about their motivations that goes beyond screaming, shouting and killing.

Marduk, the Dark Alcolyte, is boring. I like the Dreadnought, the Warmonger. A philosophical dreadnought? Sign me up!

There's another 700+ pages left in the omnibus so we'll see how things develop.

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This book started s-l-o-w-l-y. I have 200+ pages left and it's the best part of the book. Wanna know why? The bad guys!

The bad guys just broke out of that big, prison mountain beneath the palace or near the palace or whatever, I don't know. The Crusader Host - the champions of the various legions. Who do they lock up because Horus went bad? The 1000 Son guy, the 3 Worldeaters (they're crazy and I'd lock them up out of principal too), the Sons of Horus, the Emperor's Children and the guy with the Primarch that begins with M and isn't Magnus.

The most interesting of these gents is the 1000 Sons. He's called a warrior-scholar. How cool is that? The escape wouldn't succeed without him. He uses what the miliary would call the "indirect method" to get things done. The raw power of the Worldeaters is important too, but this 1000 Sons character is just great. If a new Chaos SM book is out, I may have to get a look at these guys because of this one character.

I know they are all likely to die horrible deaths. Here is to hoping they look cool doing stuff while dying.

Until next time...

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Achtung Panzer: Operation Star







This game looks very cool. I like the guys on fire running away from their burning tanks in the second video.