Dis May

 Not so many battle reports from me lately. That's not because I'm not fighting them!

Time Commanders - Resurrected!

The most popular post (over 4 views!) of our humble blog is the one that references War Games on The Telly (nice to see those hours of painting eyeballs is going unappreciated).

So when I saw the series had been revived after a decade, I thought I'd take another look at Time Commanders!

I said TIME, damnit!

Extreme Dwarven Makeover - III

Chaos. The big end game threat in the campaign.

Northmen? Check. Snowstorm? Check. Five bloated novels and no sign of any plot threads being tied up? Check.
It's official, Winter is Coomin. 

Bring it.

Extreme Dwarven Makeover - II

Ah. The dead have risen against us, and the von Carsteins are here. My joy knows no bounds.

At least it's not all bad news, right?

Extreme Dwarven Makeover - I

Invigorated by my thorough rinsing, I had a second crack at the Karaks.

A New Dawn. Dwarf Dawn. Dwawn.

Dwarven Total Warhammer, round two!

The Dwarves, Abridged - IV

Grudges, grudges. So many grudges, so little time.

A Short Dwarven History - III

Our holds are attacked!

Drums! Drums in the deep! We cannot get out! Etc!

A Short History of the Dwarves - II

Look for the Silver Mining

Part two of a blogged description of my first Total War: Warhammer campaign, playing as the Dwarfs!

The grudge has been called, the grobi scum must die. Fight time!

A Short History of the Dwarven Kingdoms - I

Total Warhammer!

Finally, after what seemed like the whole of my adult life, the computer game adaptation of Fantasy battles 8th ed has arrived. Painting commissions have netted me the High King edition, that comes with a whole bunch of bonus nonsense. So sitting next to my faux pewter Dwarven Tankard and wearing a Grudge Ring on a leather thong round my neck, I immediately got stuck in.

They're making a what now?

Well now this is interesting.

Even if I wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool computer game addict, I think my other hobby fanaticism would be stoked by this recent announcement.

It's got rats!

It's got men!

It's got rat-on-man action! Hot hot hot!

A Canadian company are making a Mordheim game for the PC, is the gist of what I learned on PC Gamer's website earlier tonight. It will be turn-based and tactical and seems to promise to stick to the source material quite closely. This seems to be in keeping with most of the recent GW translations to game, actually, I suspect they stipulate the terms of the game to be made very closely so they don't lose control of the IP.

All of GW's titles are going to end up on PC sooner or later, I suspect, but I suppose their deceased back catalogue of specialist games will make it there sooner. As Space Hulk (solid but dull), Talisman (why?), Warhammer Quest (for tablet, so I haven't played it, but supposed to be excellent) and Bloodbowl (actually surprisingly good if graphically and sonically irritating) already have. Necromunda still remains my greatest hope as I liked the game and the fluff better, but this, well, this could certainly fill some holes in the meantime.

Such as a running online Woffenheim that I wouldn't need to pay airfares to get to, for example...

A Song of Tea and Sushi 4 - A Dance of Daimyos

It Checks Out

After the last battle, Clan Hatano immediately offers peace. So do my old foes the Hatakayama, who have never bothered to try and reclaim the territory I stole from them. And then a few other clans unexpectedly cave in to my wearily repeated trade offers. I've proved my worth as an opponent, the other clans are starting to take me seriously, maybe. Or they're bored, or perhaps desperate for cash themselves.

My stealth bastard fleet is already on its way by this time.

A Song of Tea and Sushi 3 - A Klash of Katanas

All Alone in Feudal Japan

Tactical analysis suggests I'm going to lose in the long run. Tom has secured a powerful base to the extreme West, out of my reach. Nobody I can get on the diplomacy phone will listen to my offers of coin or military aid to attack him. Nor will anyone consider being my pal. I can probably hold tight where I am, I'm a wily enough general and still have some fairly experienced and powerful armies that can hold what I've taken so far. But I'm not going to get any further without cash.

So my plan is to put all my eggs in one basket, and let tactical analysis go and suck on them.

Like this, but with bow-armed fanatics. 

The scout ship that's been looking over General Hunt's Otomo forces has shown me one critical weakness. His capital province, Bungo, isn't on any of his front lines. It looks like he's spent all his cash on large armies, rather than investing heavily in infrastructure like I have. Bungo is held only by a pretty basic castle and a couple of units of Ashigaru spearmen.

If I stop any attempts at expansion back home and cull my two armies down to two smallish defence forces, I can put together a decent invasion force full of elite monks. Led by my Shogun and a decent-sized fleet, I may just be able to launch a cowardly surprise attack and take that one crucial province from my rival.

It's a long shot, but it just might work.

A Song of Tea and Sushi 2 - A Feast on Futons

The Early Ikko Years

I begin my plan for domination by making polite overtures to the clans to my West. They're all very rude back, but at least none of them actually attack me. This is the softly-softly approach, be all sweet so they suspect nothing then just as they're BAM invasion hah surprised you.

To the East, I do the opposite. I crush the minor clan Jinbo and turn them into a vassal state. They occupy a province that blocks advances from two of my more powerful neighbours - the horse-crazy Takeda and the buddhist nutters of Uesugi. As a vassal, they have to trade with me, and they'll act as a handy early warning system if either of the bigger clans starts expanding.

My other neighbours are the Hatakeyama. They're a minor clan, but a fairly big and powerful one. Luckily, their other provinces are all on the other side of the map. Poor planning on their part - it means I can grab this one and hope they get wiped out before their revenge armies can reach me.

All these gambits work pretty well. My home territories sprout new harbours and larger castles, and within three years I'm on my way to getting the monks trained up. I've doubled my starting holdings without any major setbacks.

Except one.

A Song of Tea and Sushi 1 - A Game of Folding Stools

I've been re-reading George MaR.R.R.tin's epic saga after the conclusion of series 3 of the TV adaptation, and it got me hankering for an epic saga of my own. Luckily, the excellent General Hunt was also spoiling for a sweeping tale of war, betrayal and conquest. This being the age it is, a fine one to be a nerd in, we turned to Shogun 2: Total War, the most recent in the splendid series of games that inspired this campaign in a previous post.

Nothing Warhammery or miniaturey in this tale, be warned. My painting hand is on break until it stops shading goblins in its sleep.


The Setting

Shogun 2 allows you to take the role of a warlord in 16th century Japan. It is the Sengoku Jidai, The Warring States Era. This was an age of civil war, when the old and corrupt Emperor struggled to keep order over restless and power-hungry clans. Bristling with period-appropriate art and detail, the game gives you control of diplomacy, espionage, armies, navies and fortresses. And most importantly, ninjas.

Tom and I decide to play a head-to-head campaign. This means that the victory conditions aren't quite the same as the full campaign. There, you need to overthrow the Emperor for victory, usually standing against everyone else in the realm when they realise you mean to take over.

Here's what we're fighting over. 

For us, victory will be given to the last man standing. You lose if your opponent can take your home territory whilst still controlling his own, or if the many computer opponents wipe you out. Simple survival, more or less.

War Games On t'Telly

No project updates, as I've been busily painting all week (the boring kind, that involves walls and stepping in paint trays). But Kraken's mention of how BBC 2 once tried to make Total War into a viable gameshow got me thinking about the few and failed attempts to put games on the gogglebox.

Game of War

A Channel 4 pilot series. Broadcast in 1997, with the production values of 1970s Open University and the strategic insight of Hungry Hunrgy Hippos.

It was hosted by Angela Rippon, whose main qualification for the job was that she could look directly at the camera and say, clearly and loudly, at the beginning and end of each episode, "It was just ... a GAME of war!"

She didn't even do that thing where she kicks her legs
and sings about facing the music.

The premise of this show was an interesting one (certainly enough to draw in a War Studies undergraduate): two opposing commanders (actual ex-military officers), each supported by a pair of advisers (usually military historians) would re-fight historical battles: Balaklava, Naseby and Waterloo.

To recreate the 'fog of war', each team would be sequestered into different rooms with two different tabletops. They knew where their own armies were moving, but they could only guess (or find out, from reconnaissance, or people shooting at them) where the enemy were.

... because if you're going to recreate history, it's important to be as boring as possible.
And also to wear a tie.

In a central room was Ms Rippon and a third tabletop, where the 'true' battle was taking place. This was monitored by a pair of gamemasters – straight out of geek central casting – who made the decisions, and rolled the dice, and whose word was law.

For they wore the Cardigans of Authority.

Empire in Flames

Well, I took the only advice to hand and started up a campaign as one of the Empire states.

Lots of excellent detail in this mod, even on the loading screens.

I decided to play as Ostland. Four small provinces on the eastern fringes of the Empire, along the Kislev border. My capitol is Wolfenburg, I've got a pair of castles (Lenster and Bosenfels), I'm led by Count Valmir and his family.

I'm informed of my background fluff as I chose. Ostland has good all-round armies,
but their heavy infantry isn't much compared to other, non-human factions.

The mechanics for the game are fairly simple - each province has a main city. Capture it and you hold the province, gaining the income from whatever is built in the city and allowing you to recruit troops there too. Who you can recruit depends on what buildings you've got too, so in Wolfenburg (which starts off very well-developed) I've got a temple of Morr that allows me to train the Black Guard of Morr, for example. Castles don't create as much money but can train troops faster. You can still hold a castle even if you've lost the rest of the province, and your oppressor can't get money from it until he's ousted you. So cities are the core tax earner, castles are military defenders, in short.

Total Waargh

I already miss the Woffboot, I truly do. Perhaps it's the separation anxiety of any ex-pat, or perhaps it's just the prospect of the long and assuredly gameless months ahead of me. Either way, I wasn't just content with deciding to build a Chaos Host (it's not going to be just a warband at the rate I'm trawling through Ebay). None of my ordered models have arrived across the Poisoned Sea yet. A partly-used box of Marauders is probably going to get here by the end of the week, but I'm nothing if not horrifically impatient.

This is what you find when you type random words like
'poisoned sea' into Google Images.
It's a sea cucumber. Who knew they were so terrifying? 

I already feel the need to recreate those epic clashes in the privacy of my own bedroom.

I therefore turned to Russians on the internet.

Heard of the Total War series? No? Well, you're losing out. Gaining in terms of life achievement, of course, but still, losing out. They're the cream of all tactical computer games. There were even TV shows based on the original release of Rome: Total War.

Fully painted armies and scenery - all included in the buying price.
Damn you, GW, why won't you learn?

Dwarves of Yore

Nobody else here plays Dwarf Fortress, do they? Didn't think so. There's no pressing reason to do so unless you really like free ridiculously complicated strategic simulations that automatically generate a complete and unique fantasy world for every player. I spent a bit of time with it a few years back and was fondly reminded of it recently by the news that a manual has recently been published (see http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/26/dwarf-fortress-gets-238-page-illustrated-getting-started-guide/ for more info, plus links to hilarious comics).

It's the work of some dedicated nerd geniuses. On start up, if you let the program run for a while, it randomly generates the auto-computer-monkey equivalent of a Tolkein epic. If you let it run long enough, it can create  a detailed history of your new world over 1 gig in size, complete with epic duels between champions and demons, rise and fall of nations and empires, etc etc.

Mostly it's fun because it's nearly impossible, and if you can be bothered to learn the infamously difficult interfaces enough to control it, then it's hilarious fun. The game details the attempts of your group of seven dwarves as they attempt to start their own fortress in the wilds of the world. It's beyond ludicrous in its detail - dwarves have complex psychology and personalities, accurately simulated physiology, your town has illness, elections, realistic geology with aquifers and seasonal weather - but is nearly impossible to play. The interface uses ASCII graphics, so you can get an idea of how the game looks by animating an eighties telephone directory on a ZX Spectrum. Remember Granny's Garden? Well, like that but without the whistles and bells.