Playing Games

 Currently any bobby-related activites have been put on holdf everything and I can't get into my games room without a struggle. The problem is that my time has beentaken upp conforming to the wishes of SWIMBO and we have had to go out, select new living room furniture then removing the old pieces until they can be whisked away, Un addition tto this, newflooring, carpets, lino etc. are being laid meaning that entire rooms and hallways have had to be emptied of everything (guess where to!).

 Nevertheless I have had access to sdome spacec in the living room and during the Easter school holidays had the delightful grandfatherly duty of keeping two of my older granchildren amused.
First up was the game "Mastermind" by Invictus, which plays a lot like 'Wordle', but with eight colours rather than letters.

We started with five coloured pegs from the eight available, but reduced it to four for simplicity. Once they had the idea of the game and had both played against me, they wished to play against each other, which suited mefine.

Two hours of bliss later they discovered they couldn't score properly.But a great time was had by all.

 

 

 I had another opportunity to play a game with my #1 grandson after an emergency at his mum's work meant we could have another game of somehting. I settled for The old classic "Space Hulk", my version being the orignal v1,0. Whilst the Terminators were nothing to write home about, the genestealers were excellent and I had them, undercoated and painted (with inks) in no time flat.

We played the first game in the mission book, he being the Marines first time around and we then swapped around for the second game. Needless to say I spanked his bottom both times, but he'll learn.

On the other gaming front with my console, I'm still playing Bannerlord, my Character is now 66 years old and his marriage has been childless, but I am the Khan and have around 5 million gold in the bank.

So, whilst surfing the online store, and with the happy memories of Space hulk playing in my mind, I came across this:

A console game, costing around a fiver, it was worth a punt.
The game is clunky, showing a lot of age and should b re-done, but for all its faults it's a decent enough game and far better then the "Amiga" version I wowned all thise years ago (Space Hulk came out about 1990 iirc). 

Here's a couple of screen shots:

Your initial squad

The initial campaign map

The "normal" viewfor playing - you can zoom in and out - the detail is excellent.

You can also go into a first person mode - scary as feck.

I had no photographs of my own for this post, as my camera is safely tucked away in my games room whist the various work activities are carried out (next up is decorating - ^Yay^) 

But that's it then for another month, hopefully I'll remember  it's a Monday next time, before our evening meal !.
Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always, your comments are both welcomed and truly appreciated.

Painting

 So, feeling slightly guilty of not doing anything wargame related for at least a month, I decided toget my arched building (for my Magnificent7 project) out of storage and paint it. Well that was the original intention,until I got the big boy paint brushed outs (size 2's and over) as this is a big model some 18" long, 12" deep and  6" high (45cm x 30cm x 15cm).

Before I'd even sorted out the paints and brushes I was going to use,  the photograph on the right shows some of the tools I used first.

Filler for the small surround wall at the base of the building that hadn't been done. 

Scissors to cut card for key stones that I'd just spotted when checking colours.

Door frame support/bollard things, has also been missed.

Two sets of matche, used as bricks had also to be sawn off

Finally a lot of filing of excess plaster had to be undertaken.

The door's key stone (left) and the door bollard things (right)

The photograph above I was using for colour reference when I spotted the omitted features and note the lower wall of dark stones that surrounds this building, that had to be plastered too.

Doors, now with the relevant additions.

One of two sets ofMatch sticks that had to be sawed off

Once all the 'extra; bits of work had been done and dried out overnight I started on a quick paintjob, that took 2hours or so a day for three days,

This was only the base colours that will have two more colours added, a lighter wash and finally highlighting.
Here's how the model looks with all the base colours done (very similar to the way I painted my Sudan builings).

The building with all its base colours more or less finished,

Rear of the building (pretty boring huh?)

The roof  (equally boring)

Well, what I thought would be an easy job has turned out to be just the start of a marathon painting and modelling seeion. Hopefully I'll find the enthusiasm to continue and try to finish it off before its once more put into storage.

That's it then for another month and just in case you think I was having fun, just to be clear - I wasn't !

Thanks for taking the time to visit and of course your comments are still welcomed and appreciuated.

Bannerlord

 Well, February came and went, I'm another year older and I attended four hospital and clinic appointments rather than the three I had anticipated, but all went well.
So I hear you ask, what have I been doing with the rest of my time since my last post ?

Well, I've been almost continually playing 'wargames' on my game console, namely "Bannerlord" or to give it its proper name "Mount and Blade II, Bannerlord", a fantasy medieval-type fictional world.

As I have a games console, rather than a PC, I've had to wait two years for it to appear, but it was, imho, well worth the wait, 

Like any cross-over from PC to any games console there are still minor bugs to be sorted, all of which have taken hours of downloading 'patches',    

So what exactly is "Bannerlord" ?

Here's a look at the world and bit of what goes on in it.

The huge world map on which your character will interact

A zoomed-in image on the map above, beautiful terrain imo,...

...and zoomed in even more. The single horsemen are 'armies', the chap across the river has 263 men

The action leaves the main map to fight on a large version of the terrain your force is in

Infantry, cavalry and your character fight as individuals, man to man (and it's brutal)

It's not all open field battles either...

..and all the towns and castles aren't all made from wood.

It's not all fighting and sieges, you can take a stroll around the streets too...

...or maybe take your chances in the arena.

There is so mych more to the game than just fighting, there are bandits camps to attack, looters to ride down and a whole economy you can interact with and of course any castleor towns you own , have to be run too. The whole world is alive with activity and there are a lot of villages that feature on the map along with all the activty of the villagers, the trader caravans etc - it just goes on,

 

Battles take on average about about 3 to 5 minutes, but are generally very bloody and over fairly quick, so much so that you can fight many of them in single hour long session. (or you can just sned your troops in without your character and watch the casualty count come in, in table form.

 

And this is what has been occupying my time over the last month or so (and probably much of the next month too). 

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit  and of course your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Holiday Games

Once more I was in the wilds of Cumberland with several friends and relatives to have a leisurely soujourn with good food, drink and playing games sat the top of the agenda.
The photograph on the right shows someof the games we took with us though there were more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Planet

 Red planet, is a great game  the objective being to get your astronauts to the richest areas of the Red Planet, though I didn't win any of the games we played !

Seven Wonders

Another great game, but one I didn't play this time around.

Sheriff of Nottingham

This is basically a game of bluff, trying to smuggle illicit goods past customs (the Sheriff); the theme has been slapped on and could apply to any period of history.

A GM's screen for DnD

The new addition of a 'white board'

DnD has become almost mandatory in our gaming, this being our third venture with my Paladin being the same pain in the backside to all the other characters as usual.

My 1974 version of Kingmaker

Our kingmaker game had eight players, which was too much and the king being killed in the first round without anyone able to crown another until very late i the game meant it went on forever. It may not have been a success but many said they'd play again.

A world-wide game of beat the disease

Reverse of Box (padding -Ed.)

Pandemic is a cooperative game of curing diseases across the world. I normally don't like this type of game normally, but this was highly entertaining,

Blood on the Clocktower

Blood on the Clocktower is a very innovative take on the "Werewolf/Mafia" genre. We had 15 or 16   on our first game and it did go very smoothly. (and we the villagers wone against the demon)

Witches

Witches, based on Terry Pratchet's Discworld iirc is a very good game of beating the baddies for points and though I didn't play in this one there was a lot cackling and jollity from those that did play. 

Escape from Colditz (newer version)

My 1973 version of this newer version of the game seems very similar as far as I could tell, but it still made for a great game.

There were probably a couple of other games that we played, but I didn't take photographs of them, one of them, 'Masquerade' being amongst my favourites.

That's it then for this month, goodness knows what I'll be writing about next onth, maybe my three hospital appointments? There has howver been somemovement on the gladiator front, so it may be that I'll have something to report there.

Happy New Year

Hi all, just a quick post to wish you all out there a Happy New Year and hoping this ine is better than last year.

On a personal note, I've been unwell since Christmas Eve, I suspect, with another bout of bronchitis and haven't managed to look at any posts on other blogs, a situation I'll try and remedy as I'm fit enough.

in other news, as I cannot see myself playing any games in the near future, save for those I'll be playing at thn end of January when I'm on holiday, nor will I be making any scenery etc. My aid in the  playtesting of the Gladiator rules "Blood on the Sands", has also seemed to have run its course, as I haven't had replies to my latest emails, many weeks ago. With all this in mind, my blog is going monthly as of this year, and I'll be endeavouring to post something on the first Monday of each Month.

So that's it from me, I hope you all have a Happy New Year.

Happy Mithrasmas

Yes, it's that time of year once more when we celebrate the birth of Mithras.

Where we dress in our finest clothes, visit one another and exchange presents whether over the time of the winter celebrations of Mithras or the feasting at the Roman celebration of Saturnalia.
So, raise a glass, slaughter your bull, put a Druidic Log on your Yuletide fire, imbibe some strong drink and enerally have a good time.
The photograph shows a small part of my gladiator collection wondering why there is a snow-laden fir tree in the arena.

From all of us here at the Ludus of Josephus have a merry Mithrasmas.

P.S. Sorry for the day's delay in posting, but I was poorly yesterday after a visit to the hospital where I found my appointment had been cancelled!

Gladiator - Summary.

We concluded our last Munus (games) of the first year, with three of us participating in just two games. The game I played in, I lost, but my gladiator survived and got only 1 less fame point than the winner, because my gladiator was two tiers (levels) below my opponent and gained credit for that. 

The other game played was a match between a Retiarius and a Secutor, for which I took a prefuse number of photographs - nearly fifty photographs overall.

I took photographs further out than normal, trying to keep the large iron gate in each photo. The first photograph shows the intial set-up (as always), Secutor on the left and the Retiarius (net man) on the right.
I've ony selected the first two  moves worth of photographs, but it does show just how much movement there is in a game.

Turn 1, after two attacks the secutor hasn't hurt the Retiarius.

 Turn 1 (still), the Retiarius throws his net, misses, then puts in a driven attack against the retiarius.

Turn 2, the Retiarius (wins the initiative) and attempts to recieve his net

The retiarius has retreaved his net and succesfaully throws it at the Secutor

The retiarius fails to wound the Secutor with a special attack...

The Secutor falls back, and removes one of the two action dice lost

So, six photographs show most of the too and fro of just two turns of the game. Each turn there are a lot of decisions for a player to make, mostly surround the roll of his six action dice.

This game went on for 11 turns with neither gladiator striking a telling wound on his opponent, Eventually the retiarius' dice rolling finally let him down and he had to appeal to the crowd for mercy.

After quite a tense run through the "appeal to the crowd " table, the decision was passed on to the editor (organiser) of the game (another table). Eventually after a songle recount, the retiarus was granted meryc and he would live to fight another day, 

There was a little more paperwork to do, as this was the final munus of the year, crowns of Laurelswere awarded, champions decided and fame alloted.

We're giving it a rest this week, but playing the boardgame "Spartacus" instead.

That's it for another week hopefully you found something of interest and as always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.