Great Northern War: Second wave soon to be ready

More Ebor and Warfare Miniatures being painted...

It seems that a GNW-fever has struck me. Last night I painted until 2 AM, even if I had some work to do today. I also started the lamination of the activation cards for the Muskets & Tomahawks variant for GNW (while I was actually playing a game of LOTR at the Nopat-club, something else for a change).

Here are few WIP  -pics. Painting continues...

My light box

Gå på!!!

Hurrah Carl (Charles) XII!

Great Northern War Swedes: Storming Party by Ebor Miniatures

More Swedish troops finalized

3.12. Edit more pictures added

See them from my One Drive;

These minis are from Ebor's Kickstarter last year and should soon be available in their webstore.

Merry Christmas!

To all you gamers out there!

Great Northern War - an adaption for Muskets & Tomahawks -ruleset

I'm currently working on adaptation of rules and activation cards for M&T for Great Northern War. Let's call it "Muskets & Pikes".

Here's an example of the cards I'm working on:

Here are the rules adaptations etc., that I've so far planned:

Great Northern War Project - Update 18.12.2015

Great Northern War

I got back to this project, since the big Mare Nostrum campaign is over and there nothing "dead lined" to paint. I also got in touch with Nick from Ebor Miniatures and am painting some minis to take pictures for him.

Few pictures on my progress:

Ebor miniatures

 Cavalry and officers by Warfare Miniatures. Horses by WLG (Pike & Shotte plastic cav.) - WIP

 Leibsgaard by by Warfare Miniatures - WIP

 Cavalry by Wargames Factory (only horse from them on the left)

Charles XII himself by Ebor - WIP

Updated: Testing testing - Mongols Beta Army list for Deus Vult

Novgorod stands firm against the Golden Horde

Today we finally gave the mongol beta army list a go,  kindly received from Fireforge Games.

Mare Nostrum: Final Game

Ptolemy & Rome vs. Antagonids & Sparta

Sixth and final round of our Campaign was to be played in 4 player team games. I wanted to have a grande finale with bigger battles!

My ally was Risto's Rome and our adversaries were Marko's Antagonids and Mikko's Sparta. I had to use all of my cunning to get Marko, whom was leading the campaign with a very tight margin, to play against me. Even the pre-game was already furious so the game was loaded with high stakes: should either me, Marko or Mikko win with 4 campaign points, we could win the campaign (= have the largest empire).

My army arrayed for battle

Read on...

Nopat & Taktiikka - House Warming and Club "Christmas" Party

 A FULL HOUSE OF GAMERS & FRIENDS!

Our new Clubhouse in  Northern Helsinki (Malminkartano) was official inaugurated yesterday as some 50 gamers & friends gathered there during the day.

Read more for more pics and report on the day!

Mare Nostrum battle report: Macedonian Successors vs. Carthago (Hail Caesar)

Former allies turned against each other!

Political life in ancient Mediterranean can be treacherous! Once all other challenges for our Mare Nostrum Campaign were done, I was left only one option: to challenge my former ally Carthago!

(The word on the street was saying, that maybe Ptolemy wasn't happy with the performance of this ally, or even, that being allied had only been a smoke screen..., who knows?)

 The game we played was a cityfight. Read more to find out how it went? (WIP)

Nopat & Taktiikka house warming & game demo event 21.11.2015

We're hosting a house warming -party on 21st of Nov.

Find out more and enroll here:

Plenty of game demos for you to try with:

- Warmachine / Hordes
- Infinity
- Bolt Action
- Saga
- Flames of War
- Warhammer 40k
- Warhammer Fantasy
- Age of Sigmar

- Hail Caesar

- Black Powder

- Etc.

New Premises for our Gaming Club - Nopat & Taktiikka

Today we moved!

Our Helsinki based gaming club "Nopat & Taktiikka" (= Dice & tactics) moved to new premises in to a suburb (Malminkartano) in northern Helsinki.

Key benefits of the new premises are:

• Our own entrance - no running up & down to let people in
• One open space
• Working air conditioning and window, that can be opened
• Full 4G coverage in the area
• Very near to a local train stop - some 15 min. from down town Helsinki

See more pictures from below

Mare Nostrum - Armies on Parade

Mare Nostrum - Armies on Parade

Our Campaign's winners are decided as follows:

First place: the player that had most fun (since, that's hard to measure, I think I'll convert that to the most pleasant opponent to play with and the most easiest participant to organize a campaign with)

Second place:  the player that painted most new miniatures for the campaign

Third place: the player, that has the biggest empire in the end of the campaign

Here's a link ty my onedrive with images of stuff I've buildt & painted for the campaign:



Comments are most welcome!

Mare Nostrum: 5th round completed, final round starting...

Four Empires within reach...

Of GREAT GLORY and VICTORY!!!

See further details of the situation and about the final round.

Unboxing Victrix's Warriors of Carthage

Victrix recently had a 30% discount on their website and I couldn't resist anymore...

So here's the unboxing and some excuses...

More terrain for Mare Nostrum

Pantheon of Gods and Hoplite Statue

Our Mare Nostrum HC-Campaign is running it's 5th round and designing a "city fight" -scenario for it got me inspired to produce some more terrain. See the pics...

Mare Nostrum Battle Report: Macedonian Successors vs. Late Hoplite

Battle of Giants

Mikko and I were on the top 3 of our Mare Nostrum campaign and he was expanding strongly in North Africa, despite the best efforts of my Cathagenian allies:

Even if I knew I'd be facing a tough and slightly larger Spartan Army -  I just had to put an end to this expansion! Read on to learn, how it all went down...

Mare Nostrum: Heavy hitters fine tuned for my Macedonian Successors

I have a game against Campaign leading Sparta tonight and thought, that I need some extra punch to even have a fighting chance against those 300...

So I've been painting a one more heavy scythed chariot (from Gripping Beast) and fine tuning my Agema Heavy Cavalry and their horses. Looks pretty decent now...

Mare Nostrum: Seleucid vs. Rome (1st campaign round game finally played)

Secure the strongpoints!

One of our campaign players (Risto) had missed his first round game due to busy workschedules. Since I didn't have any games scheduled for this week, I suggested we play a game. It was nice to play a game without any pressure, due to the fact that game didn't have any impact on my campaign game. It was also Risto's first HC Game. He's a keen DBM player and had played few Black Powder games though.

Game was good and quite close fought... read on!

Unboxing Blood Rage -kickstarter box

Blood Rage!

I was truly and positively surprised, when UPS delivered a huge box to my door last night: Blood Rage -Kickstarter set! I've been involved in some 5 Kickstarters and this was second of them to be delivered in time. Delivery costs rose to much more than expected - which created quite an upheaval on Kickstarter site, but receiving all this goodiness on schedule kinda makes me forget that...

Read more to see what was in!

Mare Nostrum Hail Caesae Campaign: Round 3. completed, Round 4 started!

Status after Round 3.

Player	Tiles	Buildings etc.	Total	Note!
Gusse	7	1	8
Joonas	7	2	9
Tuomas	7	4	11
Risto***	8	0	8
Mikko L	8	3	11
Ludde	8	2	10
Marko	10	5	15	Ilmainen Diplomatia
Teemu	10	3	13	Haaste yhtä aikaisemmin
Kalle	11	4	15
Mikko K.	11	7	18

Battle reports:

http://25yearsofminis.blogspot.fi/2015/09/mare-nostrum-most-boring-hc-game-ever.html

http://napoleon-complex-gaming.blogspot.fi/2015/09/hail-caesar-battle-of-pydna-168-bc.html

Events and Challenges for Round 4.

Haasteet ja eventit, kierros 4.
Kustaa	Tiedustelijat	Tuomas	Kaikki tai ei mitään
Risto	???	Ludde (Hawkeye)	???
Mikko L.	???	Joonas	Great Leader
Kalle	Veteraanit	Marko	Rakennusbuumi
Teemu	Maan nappaus	Mikko K.	???

KITBASH! Building Thorakitai for Successors

Thorakitai shall rule the battlefields of Mare Nostrum!

I wanted to build some more Thorakitai for my Alexander's Successors army for our Mare Nostrum Hail Caesar Campaign. I would have build them from Victrix very nice Carthagenians, but they weren't available in our local games store :-(, hence I bought a package WLG's Caesar's Legions and started kitbashin' them with bits from different hellenistic sets. Read on!

Mare Nostrum: The Most Boring HC-game ever.

Long run  for nothing

Our Mare Nostrum Campaign is running it's third round and I had challenged my neighbors and arc enemies aka K's Persians.

Game itself was actually pretty ok, it just ended way too soon. Hence I'm going to write this report so, that it includes both the actual 6 rounds (too few!) played and "what if 7th round). Not surprisingly that will lead to a conclusion, where my heroic army finally wins the somewhat cowardly Persians (dressed as Romans) after a hard fight...

Mare Nostrum Campaign page updated

Mare Nostrum Campaign page updated

Campaign's 3rd round is starting. New rules and order of challenges updated here

Mare Nostrum Campaign 2nd Game: Ptolemian vs. Seleucid

Fighting my neighbour

My dear neighbour decided to throw a challenge at me so off to war we went - pikes against pikes!
The game was played with Hail Caesar -rules from Warlord Games

Read all about it!

Something for the barbarians to fight for (or over)

A Holy Place?

Of course I had to make a shrine for the barbarians as well, since the scenario of the  second round of our Mare Nostrum Campaign  is about protecting / capturing holy places. 

See more "production" pictures in this blogpost.

Mare Nostrum Campaign - Building Greek temples

Making of NOT RUINED Greek buildings

Our Mare Nostrum Campaign got me started on producing more terrain, mainly building for our games. This included putting together two resin temples from Scotia Grendel and upgrading one of them and an earlier production (Hirst blocks) with a roofs and fronts with reliefs.

Mare Nostrum Campaign started - Battle report: Macedonian - Successors vs. Gauls

Finally our long prepared campaign started (see a separate project page for backround info)!

Two games were played in the opening sessions: My Ptolemians faced an angry mob of Gauls from Riihimäki and Marko gave an introductory game for a new HC-player: Hoplite Greeks vs. EIR,

Mare Nostrum Hail Caesar Campaign - first trial game played

Classic Battle: 

Macedonian (successors) vrs. Late Ach. Persians!

After two weeks of traveling with family in search of VIKINGS, I was itching to get back into painting and gaming! Reading the latest WI had heated me up for the coming Club Hail Caesar Campaign: Mare Nostrum (in Finnish) and for putting together some figures for the Three Musketeers (see a separate post / project page for that).

beating retreating French in Denmark

A few days back, I had the nice opportunity to visit a fellow blogger Kaspar in Struer Denmark. We had fast Paced game of his adapted version of Muskets & Tomahawks: 1812 Retreat from Moscow.

Since I'm traveling with family, I'll link Kaspar's report here:

http://londonbymidnight.blogspot.fi/2015/07/1812-retreat-from-moscow-battle-report.html

Saga: Crescent & Cross - Siege scenario & battle reports

Saga SIEGE!

We've now played siege twice with simple enough scenario and few extra rules. Read further to learn how it worked out. You're most welcome to copy the concept of course!

Crescent & Cross campaign to be concluded today!

Siege!

Fire!!!

This is  something I've been planning to do for a long time: fire and smoke for our battle fields

"Building" a demolished castle wall section

As part of our excellent Saga: Crescent & Cross -campaign we played a big team game last weekend in Ropecon. The game was a team game of 2 vs. 2, where us, the attacking saracens had 2 X 6 point Saga-warbands and the defenders had 2 X 4 point armies - and the castle.

It was really a great game (see plenty of pictures in Mika's blog here) and since we demolished a wall section in it, I just had to build (= demolish) one. Now I'm hoping to be able to use it soon.

I'll probably write a report about the game as well, but this blog is about constructing that piece of scenery.

Brother in arms has fallen

This week a truly sad message reached our Nopat-gaming community. Sami K., one of our most active club members and a true wargaming enthusiast had suddenly died on a heart failure in his home. Sami was only around 30 years and we all find it so hard to believe his gone. In this post is a mortuar that I wrote for him to our club's website. It's in Finnish.

Rest in Peace Sami

1812 Retreat from Moscow - first game played!

This was truly a white death...

My White Death 1812 project (see the relevant project page) reached it's first climax as a first demo game was played tonight at our gaming club. Since my Russians and father winter brutally crushed the hapless French, my always so cunning friend and opponent Jaakko made sure that his version was the first to be published: http://napoleon-complex-gaming.blogspot.fi/2015/05/1812-white-death.html

The actual PRAVDA is now broadcasted on this channel... read on!

First Retreat from Moscow to be played tonight!

Ladies and gentleman, this is the moment you've all... I mean I have waited for!

First game will be played tonight. This has meant frantic painting for the last week, since I'm providing almost all minis for the game, Then again, painting these beautiful minis has truly been a pleasure!

Russian forces as far as they got by 1 AM last night

Unboxing Gripping Beasts new plastic Saracen / Arabic Cavalry

Christmas came once again... 

...and my gaming buddy Herkko acted as the Santa by bringing me one box each of the new plastic sets from Salute - THANKS HERKKO! (and your wife)

So let's see what I got...

Something else for a change - Sengogu period japanese peasants

My rather large Sengogu period japanese army (for Hail Caesar / Pike & Shotte / Ronin) has been on waiting mode for a while, but a Bolt Action -game (played yesterday) got me painting these peasants. In the game I had two units of 10 sharpened bamboo spear armed green troops. All of them duly died in the game, but both made it to melee and this unit in the pic even held an objective for moment - before being shot to pieces by concentrated fire from Mikko's Chindits.

Even if these minis were rather quickly painted, I think they came out quite ok. I'm specially pleased with the fresh cut bamboo spears, made from plastic pikes. Inspiration was found here.

Miniatures are from Perry and Museum Miniatures.

1812 Demo - scenario and OOB

OOB & Scenario 1812 Demo for 7.5.2015

First Retreat from Moscow 1812 -miniatures almost ready!

First demo on our club will be played in less than two weeks and my painting has now focused on producing suitable troops for both the Russians and the Grand Army of Napoleon!

Here's the first pic of some french voltigeurs / light infantry and miscellaneous other troops from Perry Miniatures:

These figures are being finalized today and soon after I will finish some on foot cossacks! Stay tuned.

Crusades campaign: Battle of Hattin (Deus Vult -rules), report by Mentor on Miniatures

Last Saturday we played a rather huge battle as part of our Crusades Campaign.

Juha was faster than me in writing a report, so let's utilize that:

Mentor on Miniatures: Deus Vult - Battle of Hattin: Last weekend we had one of the main battles of our Holy Land Crescent & Cross campaign. The battle of Hattin 1187 which sealed the fai...

Saga: Cross & Crescent campaign round 4: Teaching Crusaders a lesson

So round 4 started and I was eager to keep playing!

I wanted to play the scenario Assault at Dawn (C&C page 112) and got Mikko (a rather newbie on Saga) and his crusaders as my opponent. 

Table is set and unit counters deployed - good to go! (Myself on the left)

GNW project update - which rules to use?

Which rule sets could be used?

The obvious choice is Black Powder; it has army lists and even special rules for Charles XII and Peter The Great... But since my collection of painted miniatures is still quite far from what is needed, I'm planning to start playing with Muskets & Tomahawk -ruleset. This was further encouraged since I found Kaspar's blog on 1812 - retreat from Moscow, where he uses adapted rules for napoleonic war gaming.

Third interesting set of rules is "Gå På" made by a Swede Thomas Arnfelt. Thomas runs a blog here and the ruleset can be bought from www.lulu.com here.

I also bought Lace Wars rule set since it had a supplement with OOB and scenarios for several battles of GNW.

But as said I haven't played any games on GNW just yet...! So any comments on these rule set would be moct welcome!

Saga: Cross & Crescent campaign round 3: tight victory to my saracens

Battle at the Jordan river (ford)

Third round continued on a second evening of gaming. Our muslim side had been so cunning that no muslim armies arrived for the game night and we got the christians to fight amongst themselves (as they historically also did).
Last night it was the right time for the saracens to make their moves as me (aka Mullah Nicodemus ibn Yahia ibn Aymaan al-Zugag) and Kalle (aka Amir Azad ibn Aijaz ibn Arman al-Manna or Kallah in short) moved to encounter Aleksis' (aka Baron Alexis du Rich d’Ibelin, le seigneur de Nablus) crusaders and Sami's (aka Hochmeister Samuel von Hauck von Der Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus Sankt Mariens in Jerusalem) Milites Christi. Yes we have cool thematic campaign alter egos ;-)

Deployment done

Crescent & Cross Campaign in full swing!

Story so far...

So far our campaign has seen the big battle  of Kerak (Deus Vult -rules) - see report here and two rounds of Saga: Cross & Crescent. See summary reports of the games below. Some pondering on Saracen factions potential included...