The production quality of these books is simply excellent. Full colour, beautiful photos, nice characterful touches and lots of tidbits of history to accompany the rules.

I love the Legends of the Old West books which are, again, beautiful (I love the playing cards for page numbers) but also full of personality and historical context. The same goes for Legends of the High Seas and Gladiator.

I’ve not been able to play any yet, but I’m already happy with my purchases. I do think though that Games Workshop needs to ask the people producing their Historical books to take on their Sci-Fi and Fantasy offerings as the quality of these books is just far beyond what they are producing for their core games.

More as I get the chance to really delve into these books.

Having just talked about it the other day, I put in an order for Legends of the Old West and it’s supplements. I also took advantage of the low, low prices to get myself Legends of the High Seas (a skirmish game based around pirates) and Gladiator (an arena combat game), as well as the newer edition of Warhammer Ancient Battles.

If you’ve any interest in playing in one of the period that Warhammer Historical covers, then now really is the time to take the plunge and pick up all the books you need, whether you’re starting off with one of the core books or are expanding your experience with a new supplement or two.

Some of my enduring memories of childhood are of sitting with my grandfather as he watched classic western films and serials in black and white or, a real treat, glorious technicolour. I remember raking through the shelves of the local library finding western books  for him too. I was brought up with John Wayne and Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes and Hoot Gibson.

This August I attended the Claymore show in Edinburgh and got a pretty good deal on a big box of Foundry cowboys – about 50 in all. The models are lovely, though I’ve had little time to do more than strip the paint from a few of them. It’s something to look forward to.

One thing I’m still unsure of however, is what ruleset to use with my desperadoes. Do I go with the dedicated ruleset, Legends of the Old West (with which I have no experience), or go down the route of re-enacting the classic serials with Crooked Dice’s 7TV? I’ve also heard good things about other, independent rules such as The Rules With No Name.

Whatever I decide on, I’m going to need a suitable board on which to play. At the moment, I’m thinking of going with a desert, dotted with clumps of foliage and a selection of western buildings to act as the town. I’d like to be more ambitious, but I’ve never really done much with terrain and I’m not entirely confident. There are some pretty nice laser-cut MDF buildings available though.

One of the major attractions of taking on such a project would be the versatility of such a board. I could play cowboy games, maybe some 7TV or some themed Doctor Who scenarios. I could also use the western board to play more unusual games such as Wyrd’s Malifaux, which is set in a skewed, fantasy-horror, wild west setting and Hell Dorado which uses a similar setting. Flexibility is a real selling point here.

So, going forward, what do I need?

• MDF board
• Appropriately coloured spray paint
• Sand
• Scatter foliage
• MDF buildings
• Scatter terrain (e.g. wells, fences, etc.)
• Painted miniatures

I’m not entirely sure when I’ll be able to start working on this, but I’m looking forward to it and hopefully more updates will be forthcoming. Today I leave you with the stylings of Mr. Will Smith:

DotA Allstars

In the dominant version of the original DotA, DotA Allstars, the players are divided into two teams and each choose a character from a roster of 104 heroes.

The game starts and the teams are set against one-another and are accompanied by constantly spawning waves of weaker, AI-controlled units. The players must fight their way past these units, opposing players and defensive towers, towards the opposing base and destroy the enemy’s main building or ‘ancient’.

Each player levels up as the game continues, becoming more powerful as they kill enemy players, units and towers. With each level, they can buy access to or improvements to their hero’s four unique abilities.

The gameplay is quite straightforward, though like any heavily PVP-based game, there are a lot of tactical decisions effective hero combinations and meta-game theories to take into consideration. In a single cliché, it is easy to learn, but difficult to master.

Variations on a Theme

Whilst DotA met with largely positive feedback, it was merely a mod for an existing game, Warcraft III. Since 2005, we have seen the launch of a number of independent DotA-esque games, each hoping to capitalise on the success of the model and monetise a community driven game which, given that it was an addon for another company’s product, had little scope for commercialisation.

Demigod

The first DotA clone (I use this term reluctantly) I played was Demigod, developed by Gas Powered Games. I was looking forward to this game long before it was released, and had my collector’s edition preordered well in advance. The first thing to say is that this game is beautiful. DotA Allstars was released back in 2002 and is understandably a little dated looking (though the stylised graphics help to keep it looking quite good), but Demigod is a high-polygon, high-resolution visual treat with gorgeous arenas and very good character designs.

The gameplay sticks pretty closely to the DotA formula with player-controlled heroes, AI-controlled units, purchasable items and a target building that the other team must destroy. One of the twists in this game are the capturable points or flags which grant bonuses such as extra experience, gold, unit spawning or healing. These flags are visible in the screenshot. below The upgrade trees are also more complex, offering more choice than merely the four abilities available in DotA.

One further important difference is the split between two forms of Demigod. One may play as either an ‘Assassin’ type, who deals directly with his enemies, or a ‘General’ type who manages a small cadre of personal, controllable units. These two types of Demigod appeal to two different playstyles and offer a degree of versatility in a game which, by it’s nature, can seem a bit samey from round to round.

If I were to offer my biggest criticism of this game, it would be lack of playable characters. With only eight available at launch, and only a further two added in the two years since, the choice available to players is rather more limited than the 104 DotA Heroes or the 83 (at the time of writing) Champions in Riot Games’ League of Legends.

League of Legends

League of Legends is, far more so than Demigod, an unashamedly blatant DotA clone developed by Riot Games with the DotA developers themselves. Rather than link to the front page of their website, I am going to give this link which embeds my referral code. If you do decide to sign up for a free account, please use this link as I will get some credit for the referral and advance toward one of the rewards.

I tried this game early on and although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t something I really stuck with. More recently, I returned to the game and was hooked pretty much instantly. The game is far closer to the original DotA than Demigod. Character advancement is again limited to four abilities per champion, though there is an interesting and in-depth web of item combinations and upgrades. Basic items and equipment may be purchased and combined to produce more powerful items in higher tiers. Each character has a recommended item configuration, but there are so many possible combinations that you really can tailor a champion to fit different situations and playstyles.

One significant feature of this game is in the large selection of playable characters. There are 83 at the time of writing with a rotating selection of free champions and a microtransaction system to purchase access to the others. In addition, skins for each champion may be purchased to further personalise the game. The fact that this is a free game, and that it is supported financially by these microtransactions, ensures that fresh content is produced regularly and added to the game both to keep things fresh and to drive new sales. This addresses the key criticism I had of Demigod which, as a traditional retail game, is paid for at the point of purchase with no framework for generating revenue thereafter and, as a result, few real incentives beyond community building for the development of new content.

Simply put, at this time, League of Legends is the best available, independent variation of the DotA formula. They do, however, have competition, both currently and in the near future.

Rise of Immortals

This new MOBA game is developed by Petroglyph, a development house which I consider to be very “hit or miss”. I loved their Star Wars title, Empire at War, but despised and begrudged my purchase of their RTS title, Universe at War. Their DotA clone, Rise of Immortals was released in September and is currently being promoted on Steam. Like League of Legends, RoI is free to play and will be supported by microtransactions. I downloaded this today to give it a whirl.

First impressions were not good. Graphically, the game eschews the cartoony style of DotA and LoL but doesn’t reach the levels of gloss or realism  of Demigod. The character designs are rather bland and the up-close views you get of them in the menu are just hideous. Don’t get me started on the horrible skins, so far removed from the charming, funny offering from League of Legends. The game also has upgradable items, but not the complexity of LoL’s web of combined items. Each purchasable item has a basic, linear upgrade path.

Expectations were low, but when it came to playing the game itself, it was actually pretty good. The game is smooth and intuitive and the characters who look clunky and awkward up close, look a lot better from a distance in the actual gameplay. Not great, but decent, and certainly not the jarring awkwardness I’d expected.

It might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but I would definitely return to this game and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.

DOTA 2

Valve are currently producing DOTA 2 and have recently hosted a major international tournament event using their beta code. Given the title they have chosen, Valve intend this to be seen as the natural successor to the original game. What I’ve seen looks good, but with no concrete release date as far as I’m aware, and Valve’s reputation for lengthy delays, I’m not holding my breath for this one to come out. I believe that this iteration of the DotA formula might be the biggest threat to Riot Games and the rapidly expanding uptake of League of Legends as the successor to the original DotA.

Blizzard DOTA

At around the same as Valve announced DOTA 2, Blizzard announced their own offering to be released as a mod for their excellent Starcraft 2. Although, I am looking forward to this title and the innovation I hope Blizzard will bring to the formula, I’m worried that it is still merely a mod for another of Blizzard’s games. In this respect, I suppose it does capture the spirit of the original, but limits the uptake to fans of Starcraft 2. Much like Valve, Blizzard is a company with a reputation for taking their time and as far as I’m aware, there’s no solid release date yet.

Signing Off

These have been my experiences with DotA and the various clones that have emerged thus far. There are others that I’ve not mentioned, including Heroes of Newarth, which I have little experience of, and certain modes in Monday Night Combat, which combine elements of DotA-esque gameplay with elements of team-based first-person shooters such as Team Fortress 2.

I would recommend that anyone reading this who has not tried any flavour of DotA clone, signs up for and downloads League of Legends. Drop me a line, we’ll try a couple of rounds together.

I should be back with more tabletop gaming posts soon, but in the meantime I leave you, as ever, with Basshunter:

Wings of War

Played a fair few rounds (somewhere between 6 and 10) of this great aerial warfare game. I love movement system for this game, in which you plop down a card with a manoeuvre drawn on it and follow the card’s line. I’ve put an example to the right.

Results have been mixed with a few wins and a couple of losses. We have been mainly playing the 2D version and I’m hoping to get to grips with the optional altitude rules in the near future.

Warhammer 40,000

I got to play another match with my Grey Knights against Julian’s Imperial Guard on Wednesday. As usual, my Strike Squads and Dreadnoughts did very well and my Interceptors were predictably useless. The Paladin Terminators were a bit iffy too. They took a lot of damage early on but managed to take out a lot of enemy kit and survive (just!) to the end. The lead went back and forth several times throughout the match but ended with a narrow victory to myself.

Warhammer

Today I played my first match with my Vampire Counts against a friend’s Lizardmen. I made a lot bad decisions with my deployment, early movement and magic that really set me up for a tough game. I fielded an army centred around three blocks of infantry, a small unit of Blood Knights and a bigger unit of Black Knights. I also tried a Varghulf, since it was one of the models I had painted. That was a novelty!

The game went quite badly for me with very few spells getting through and awful jams in my movement. It ended with a narrow victory to my scaly opponent that did not really reflect his domination of the board.

Monopoly

When visiting my family, I was surprised at my mother’s suggestion to break out the Monopoly board and so I ended up playing a game with her and my sister. After a bad start where she ended up in jail no less than four times during her first go round the board, my mother did not last long in the game. My sister and I played on for a while and although I had a nice portfolio and quite a few hotels, I just continuously landed on her one hotel. Unfortunately, this was on Mayfair. My consolation was that this was the first time she’d ever won a game of Monopoly, so at least a cheered her up!

Blood Bowl

I went back to SESWC for the first time in about a month. I tend to find games there against the members of the 40K For Old Men forum and when I arrived they were playing Blood Bowl. By happy coincedence I had a board in the car and joined them, adding a third board to our table.

My match, Skaven vs. Wood Elves, started well for me when one of my Linerats scored an early touchdown, but this was quickly turned around and the Woodies scored two TDs to take the match.

It was nice to see some enthusiasm for Blood Bowl and it was especially cool to have three games going on side by side. Looking forward to hopefully getting some more games in soon.

What Next?

After the past couple of days, I must say I feel a bit let down by how little of what I used was actually painted. The undead were about half done though, so they might be a good target for the slightly dusty paintbrush.

I bought a large Mantic Undead army and promptly stuck them in a drawer for months and months and months. I’ve only recently dragged them back out and taken a spray can to them. It will take a while to work through them all, but I’ve started on a mix of GW and Mantic models to use in both Warhammer and, now that I have found potential opponents, Kings of War.

The game itself was fun, though initially quite complicated. The guys running the game were very good at explaining it though, so we got the hang of it pretty quickly. I liked the system, particularly the system of writing down movement orders before the turn starts, forcing you to commit to your movement beforehand.

In the end, my friend and I won by taking down the target, a disabled battleship the enemy was tasked with defending.

I’ve attached a number of photographs of the game in progress, so take a peek. The rules are free so whap the name into Google and see what you think.

There were two games running throughout the day with myself and Tam playing Warhammer and Julian, Richard and Sean playing a few Cityfight Killteam games of Warhammer 40K. By a fluke double booking of the venue, we were also joined by a troupe of local singers practicing for an upcoming gala.

Our Fantasy game went quite well, with us both trying some new things. Tam was trying some new lores (Light and Shadow) with his Empire army, as well as a rather terrifying horde of Greatswords, whilst I was experimenting with a Plague Priest and some Gutter Runners. The game went back and forth a lot but I eventually managed a narrow victory after turning Tam’s Halberdiers into Clanrats using the 13th Spell and running down his Greatsword horde with my much-depleted Screaming Bell unit.

By the time we finished our match, the others had completed two Killteam games, so we joined them for the third. Tam used some of Richard’s Necrons, whilst I used 15 of my Deathguard as vanilla Chaos Space Marines. Originally, I had used them as actual Plague Marines, but I faced a choice between fielding just 9 Plague Marines or a full 15 Chaos Marines. No contest really.

The game was fast paced and bloody, with five of us fighting over two objectives. By the second last turn, I had a presense on both objectives. I managed to keep one, but was chased out of the other by those pesky Tau, resulting in a tie between my Chaos and Richard’s Tau. For the greater good, indeed.

I need to start taking pictures as these games go on so I can scramble actual battle reports, but it really seems like too much effort. It was a great day, and it’s nice to do well!

Katelyn offered to run a Changeling: The Lost game, so she sat down with five of us to thrash out some characters and start our campaign. It took us quite a while to get our characters sorted out, but we did make a good start on the game itself. I’m going to share some of my first impressions from this session.

In terms of setting, Changeling seems interesting, with a fair amount of depth and a very wide scope for creating characters. I had intended to do some reading up before the game, but didn’t quite find the time. Before out next session, I really want to have a good read at the basic concepts so I’m a bit clearer on some of the terminology, motivations and details of the characters and settings in this game.

Character creation is fun and very diverse. If we took a long time deciding on our characters, this is merely due to the sheer number of different options, from the makeup of out stats, to our skills, merits and contracts (spells). This variety means that you can really create exactly the character you want, and there were some interesting concepts being thrown around the table this afternoon.

Gameplay was quite smooth once we understood the basics. The mechanic for taking the various tests (perception, athletic, dexterity, etc.) was actually quite simple and is applied to a number of different situations. One thing I personally need to improve, is remembering to use my character’s Willpower to bolster important rolls. I fluffed quite a few rolls I could have passed if I had used some of my willpower points to give me three extra dice. I blame this on my unfamiliarity with the system and reckon I’ll be more aware of this for next time.

The mechanics I’m less familiar with are those for combat, as we have not yet encountered a situation that would see us engaging in fisticuffs.

Our GM was quite experienced, but was nervous about running a game for people she didn’t know as well as her regular players. Despite this, she did very well, giving excellent description of our surroundings, actions and consequences. If there was anything lacking, it was that four of the five players were new to roleplaying and so did not really know how to approach the game. We largely looked to Keith for guidance on how to interact with the GM and each other, but weren’t always confident in contributing as much as we might, had we been a little more experienced.

The game was a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to continuing our campaign in the future, now that we have character creation out of the way and are getting a better understanding of how to approach the game. I think we will enjoy the next session even more with this in mind.

Here’s the trailer, then I’ll type more words and whatnot afterwards:

I think that, if successful (for a given value of success – this is a truly independant film without a distributor or any real chance of getting played in many cinemas), this film could really revive the old fashioned pulpy sci-fi stories, at least in the independant scene.

It certainly gives a lot of inspiration for those of us who like wargames, with a style that could easily be adapted, at least from what we’ve seen in teasers, to the tabletop. This could take the form of a naval/aerial combat game, or something ground based. I don’t know, but I do see potential at this early stage.

Also, space nazis.

Of course, This should have been expected, with the wonderful Neil Gaiman penning the script – I am quite the fanboy when it comes to American Gods, Coraline and his short stories. It’s always nice when one’s fandoms collide.

Without giving too much away, it was awesome to hear the Tardis talk with the Doctor and develop as a real character. This was the first episode in quite a while that I found genuinely touching, and genuinely sad.

Suranne Jones was definitely the highlight of the episode as she played a role unlike any I’ve seen her in before and her portrayal of one of the oldest Doctor Who “characters” was really quite amazing.

Now looking forward to seeing the update to the Doctor Who Miniatures Game that Crooked Dice put out. They’re doing updates episode by episode and I’m curious to see how they represent the human Tardis and the malevolent House.

As usual, click the image to go to the page.

New page uploaded with lots of lovely, crusty, plaguey goodness. Click the image below to take a peek:

I am, however, kicking myself. I dutifully placed my camera’s battery in the charger on Friday night and then promptly forgot to actually put it on. Yeah, fail. There are some great pics here and here, though.

The show was brilliant though. I got to play in a few Demo and Participation games, try some new things, and pick up some great deals.

Amongst the participation games, there were a few amazing tables. The big Great Escape table really earned the Best Participation Game award. I was a little surprised that given the scale of other tables, such as the wonderful My Kingdom for a Norse, that Bathgate’s Doctor Who Dinosaur Hunting game won second place. Talking to the guys at that table though, it did seem a very good game. There was also a Warhammer table with a wonderful, pink Bretonnian army.

I stopped by the Stirling table to get a demo of LoTR from Woostie, some Aerial combat from the Blue Bear homebrew game The Man from Delmonte, and tried out Urban War. I was particularly impressed with Urban War and picked up a strikeforce and some other bits and bobs.

My other purchases included two fleets for Uncharted Seas, a Land Raider, some victorian/pulp minis from Ironclad Miniatures, the latest Mantic Journal and the new, short-form Malifaux rulebook.

I also met up with some gamers I knew from Falkirk and Stirling and some of the club members from Haddington. Lots of game, lots of laughs and lunch from the school canteen was suitably grim!

Overall, had a great day and a great first show. I’m really looking forward to attending more in the near future.

You can find some info about the show here.

I’m not really sure what to expect from the show, but I’m looking forward to it and will post some pics tonight or tomorrow.