ASOIAF: Finnish Nationals for Song of Ice and Fire - Tabletop Miniatures Game 2023

 Winter War 2023

Nopat & Taktiikka Wargaming Club, Helsinki, organizes the traditional and annual major wargaming event every winter since many, many years. For a couple of years Song has been one of the seven or so different tournaments in the event. This time we agreed with CMON to have the Finnish Nationals status and this boosted our tournament to a new record in players (26, 18 last year) and broiught a flux of players from abroad too! We also received a generous prize support from CMON - THANK YOU!

Tournament in action

Turning 50 and celebrating 35 years in the hobby with a BANG!!!

 Seven tables set for my gaming mates

Yes, I turned 50 this Summer and held several parties to my friends and family.

I also painted my first wargaming miniature some 35 years ago (I think it was a Chaos Dwarf of a Dark Elf that we used playing role playing games), so I wanted to set up a special event to celebrate these milestones with my wargaming mates. So on I went and decided to organize a (demo) games day at our Nopat & Taktiikka club here in Helsinki.

I brought miniatures and some terrain too, to set up 7 different games, recruited fellow gamers to run the demos and invited 20+ mates to come and play. Read on to find out what was on the menu!

ASOIAF: First ever 2 day tournament @ Winter War event 5.-6.3.2022 and talking Stats

Clash of 18 Commanders

Winter War tournament has for many many years been the largest wargaming event in Finland, organized by our club Nopat & Taktiikka. It caters tournaments for many games including The 9th Age, Flames of War, MESBG, Bolt Action and this year for the first time ASOIAF TMG. I was organizing this tournament with my mate Jaakko as the second TO. Read all about it!

Hobby year 2021 in retrospect and plans for 2022

A good wargaming year

Looking back at 2021... we learned to cope with Covid-19 and with 2 vaccinations at least my hobby life was pretty normal, excluding large tournaments. Read on to learn about my wargaming and it's high lights.

ASOIAF: Elocup Tournament Battles 3. & 4.

 More Lannisters - Winds of Winter

After two rounds I had a minor loss and a crushing victory under my belt and needed to win this battle to seriously compete for victory in this tournament. Facing Lannisters again I decided to go again with my MOD -list.

Pasi played his Tywin Lannister list:

Combat Units

• House Bolton Blackguards (6) (proxyed by Lannister Guardsmen)

Tywin Lannister - Lord of Casterly Rock (0)

• Stormcrow Archers (6)

Bronn - The Sellsword (1)

• Red Cloaks (6)

• Poor Fellows (4)

Champion of the Faith (1)

• Gregor Clegane - The Mountain That Rides (4)

Non Combat Units

• Pycelle (4)

• Cersei Lannister (4)

• Joffrey Baratheon (4)

View this list at

asoiaf-stats.com/builder/PLAYEReu-west-2:71d3085a-6ea2-4235-bd0d-4716d48b651eLISTe7073c20-ee1f-11eb-aab0-9f515de3ad7d

Sengoku-jidai Map Based Campaign Started - First Battle

 Six Daimyo / Sohei Abbots fight for POWER!

If you've followed my Instagram account at "Wanhaherrat" you've seen "Samurai era" miniatures painted and Test of Honour games played. We'll, this is the reason. You can read about the campaign and follow my Warband's campaign progress here. Read on to see how my first battle went down. 

Avengers assemble! - Updated 16th of Jan 2021

 Diving headlong into Marvel Crisis Protocol

My first born daughter is a big time Marvel fan and I've tried to get her into painting miniatures and gaming with me. She has artistic drives, but miniatures have not ignited her interest, to my disappointment. Late 2019 I bought the MCP starter set from our FLGS and we did some painting and gaming in early 2020, but then her interest dropped and my focus went elsewhere, as there was also nobody else at our club playing this. As I was finishing my 2020 painting projects in December 2020 I also finished starter set models and of course I had to get a game with them - I don't think I have any painted miniatures, that haven't seen the battle field. Soon I had ran couple demos with my mates and several guys were buying and ordering starter sets and reinforcements - community was born!  

Hobby Year 2020 in retrospect and prospects for 2021

 A weird year

I guess we all know, why 2020 was so different, so I'll focus on this blogpost in analysing how it impacted my hobby life...

War of the Five Kings - Fall Season - two first rounds

 What!?!?! Nigthswatch are messing with  politics and wars of seven kingdoms...

As reported we started a new campaign with 12 aspiring lordlings striving for the coveted Iron Throne.

I'm running Nightswatch. In the spring I played with Targaryens and did ok, but KNOWING what is coming for Targs, I chose to field the Brothers in black. They certainly have a tool kit to tailor a list for any occasion and against any opponent. 

First go with Sharp Practise 2.

Revisiting Retreat from Moscow 1812

My club mate Jaakko ( @jamopower in IG) has been slowly building a napoleonic Russian force and we’ve been pondering which of the many available, skirmish level, rulesets we would use.

We’ve been playing napoleonics with Black Powder, Muskets & Tomahawks (were waiting for the napoleonic supplement to be released for the 2nd edition), Rebels and Patriots, but as Jaakko wanted to play with a smaller number of miniatures we decided to give Sharp Practise a go. Eventually Jaakko painted 30 more miniatures for the game, so the argument for a smaller amount of minis sort of flew out of the window, but who cares!

August ASOIAF-tournament part 1/2

 Our community is growing!

I / we have organized many a tournaments at our wargaming club Nopat ja Taktiikka in Helsinki. I believe this was the first time we had eight players. This is a two part tournament with 2 X three games. Second part will be played in two week's time (23rd of August 2020). At least 5 of today's participants will play at the second part too - there we have 10 players enrolled.

Nightswatch reinforcements I worked on while preparing for the tournament (a bit WIP)

Introduction video to Bolt Action

In a starring role!

Our Nopat Taktiikka Club's awesome video team has made an another great video: 

I'm the dude with the machine gun!

Hobby Year 2019 in retrospect and prospects for 2020

Year of the Song and Fantasy

That's the only way to put it, really. When I think of 2019, it is really dictated by a new game, The Song of Ice and Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game. I played lots of other games too, but this was a clear number one on my agenda, on any metric. Read on to learn how my hobby year 2019 was!

Warhammer 40K: Map based Campaign started!

Prima Artania!

Last 10 or so years I have not played 40k very actively. Editions have come and gone and I stopped wasting money on Codexes.

For the 8th edition I bought couple of Index books and eventually also the Harlequins Codex as I really wanted to deep dive into them.

So far I had  played a few games (first one took like 3 hours for completing 1 or two rounds), so I needed to get more games to get the game flowing and hence get a good experience. So when my long time gaming friend Jussi suggested, that we could organise a fluffy (not HC competitive min max), map based campaign, I was all in and helped him to draft the Campaign doc. Then it took some promotion to get enough players to join in, but eventually we had 8 players, including my oldest wargaming buddy Pave, joining, whom all seem to have same expectation more or less: narrative, fluffy armies and relaxed gaming! And now there is only war!

First ever ASOIAF Tournament in Finland

COMMUNITY BUILDING

Song of Ice and Fire by CMON Games is a rather young game combining elements of modern board games and unit based & skirmish wargaming.

About a year ago we bought the starter set with a mate from our Nopat & Takriikka Club and I’ve been sold ever since! Number of players in Finland is not yet great, some 15 maybe, but the number is growing. In order to “build the community” I decided to organise a tournament for the game. Read on to learn how it all went down...

Saga tournament - tactics analyzed

Not your typical Battle Report 

I ran a small one day Saga Tournament (Age of Crusades) last Sunday 

with three games and 4 players. Saga is a good game for tournament playing and

couple of us are preparing / trying to qualify for Saga World Cup, to be played in London

in August this year.

 In this blogpost you won't find a typical battle report, but rather an analysis how did we fare tactically in our games.

Bolt Action Campaign started - Ostfront!

Firestorm Bagration 

in new clothes

Many wargamers and readers of wargames magazine readers might now Firestorm Bagration Campaign from Flame of War scene and it has also been played at our club. Jaakko got a great idea to convert the campaign to Bolt Action (not that much to convert really). Soon we had about 10 people joining the campaign, choosing to play either fascist or communists. This week's Wed we had a first game night and generals gathered around the campaign map... 

 Jaakko and other commanders discussing the campaign dynamics

Finland's biggest miniature wargaming event...

...is probably Nopat & Taktiikka Club's annual

aka Winter War

As I was spending my winter vacation in Lapland with my family, I missed the opportunity to play this year, but arrived to the scene of more than 140 wargamers from Finland and abroad rolling it away in following games: Warhammer 40K, 9th Age, Infinity, Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, Bolt Action and Flames of War. See my reportage from the fields of battle below!

My favorite way of Wargaming - Campaigning

Campaign gaming and gamers

Campaigns have been my favorite way of gaming since I quit active tournament gaming about 10 years ago. Gaming fuels my imagination and what would be better, than a narrative campaign setting with different levels in the game (strategic, tactical etc.). Campaigns are also good for escalation in terms of painting miniatures: last year we first plyed a Saga Age of the Wolf campaign set in the east (Eastern Princes, Saracens, Mongols…) and then continued to escalate our armies to for a continuation campaign  with larger games and rule sets like Swordpoint, Deus Vult and Hail Caesar. Read on to learn about my experiences in campaigning .

Celebrating the launch of Rebels and Patriots by Osprley Wargames

AWI AND BATTLE OF VAASA 1808

Several of us had had the opportunity to do play testing for this new set of rules coming from Osprey Wargames tomorrow! So we clearly had invented a way to travel to future!
Besides us play testers three more mates from club joined in to learn about the game.
Juha and Kalle hosted an AWI battle with and The Lament Ridge scenario from the book.
Me and Marko hosted a Russo-Swedish War 1808-1809 battle of Vaasa, that took place 25th of June 1808. This was also the next battle in our related campaign, which has been on hold for a while.

We started the event by distributing recently arrived rulebooks for play testers and then having a video call with Michael Leck (aka Dalauppror), co-author of the rules. He was at their club in Stockholm. We showed our tables and club and expressed our congrats on the publishing of the game.