I got my Battletech Mercenaries box. Finally

Mar 24 2023 received February 17 2025. As far as I can tell, I did get everything.

 

Took nearly two years!

 

Do Not Order Anything Direct from Catalyst Games Labs. 

Two Matties put together. A review of Warlord Games Australian Matilda II (resin)

I've always liked the Matilda II from my days in World War II Online. Big green slow and armored. 

I put together the 2  Matilda II Australian Army resin kits I got from Warlord games. It was not a happy experience :(

 

The resin on the front does not go well with each other, there appears to be large gaps either side of the front part. 

I lost two different headlights :(

I put the commanders cupola lid on upside down. Twice. 

The sand shields inside the tracks are metal and all bent :(

Now putting it together IS easy, at least the 4 resin parts. The rest of the tank, no so much. It does not come with instructions and I could not find them - I had to ask on r/boltaction where they are. The one picture is not clear and includes items like mud guards I didn't get(!).

But there were quick to put together. However, they are nearly $20 more expensive than the plastic one on warlordgames.com. They do have a lot of nice detail on them, but I wish the little parts were also part of the resin kit.

I can use them through the entire war - The Russians even had 200 or so left by the time Berlin fell! 

I give it a 5/10. 

Left one will be the command tank. It does show how small these turrets were, no wonder they couldn't get a bigger gun in there.

Note the large gaps in the front

Crate review system for wargames

 There is a very old review system that says the sooner you see a crate in a game, the worse it is.

Game developers have known the answer to the first question since the early 1980's: ammo and health can be hidden inside crates or sometimes barrels.  As often happens, the answer to the second question was hidden in plain sight within the answer to the first.   All games contain crates, therefore all games can be judged empirically on those crates.    

Once we came up with that insight, the actual formula for the world's first completely unbiased review methodology was a trivial matter of applying our many hours spent watching actors portray scientists on television to our hatred of crates.  Games can be rated and compared based on the shortest amount of time it takes a player to reach the first crate, which represents the point where the developers ran out of ideas.  This number is measured in seconds and is called "Start to Crate" or "StC".  The smaller the StC, the worse the game.

Crates!

These came from https://www.battlefieldaccessories.com.au/ where I bought some backgrounds...which I cannot find now :(

They were stupidly hard to put together. I went through 4(!) tubes of old and blocked up superglue bottles to do them. I tried wood glue but that was a complete failure.My fingers are covered in superglue.

One of them (the top one) is not square and I couldn't get the lid on correctly, but it does add some character.

I would rate these 3/10 of to put together and  8/10 for looks once done. 

Putting together the Warlord Games Large Paint Rack, a review. The instructions missed a bit!

Many years ago I got the Warlord Large Paint Rack. Now I need somewhere to keep all my paints and brushes instead of an old GW citadel project box. The GW one seems to no longer exist, or at least the horrible no good bad GW web site (which is impossible to navigate) seems to no longer list it. It IS handy as it's portable but won't fit all the army painter paints I have currently.

I just needed wood glue and some tissues to remove excess glue.

One piece broke off that didn't matter, and I broke one of the side brush stations but it's connected in many places so should be OK. I broke it when I was test fitting a piece and stopped trying to fit things. Uh oh.

The big mistake I made was the instructions say the BOTTOM level is blank, but does not say the TOP one is blank too. So I glued the wrong one right at the top. It shouldn't matter much though, but it was annoying to find that out at the end.

Review: 

The instructions weren't clear at the start and I put one part in the wrong place. Beyond that it's ok. I just hope it's strong enough for all my Army Painter paints.

 

Apart from breaking 2 pieces and the one unclear instruction, it was fun to put together and a lot easier than trying to get plastic (or oh god metal) figures together. I would like to get some MDF North Africa campaign buildings and do them too. 

8/10.

Tipped sideways. The bottom most layer is the wrong one and should have been the 2nd blank one.

The very top one should have been swapped with the 2nd top one. The top one has two notches for the base plate with holes in it, but I missed that in the diagram :(

So I saw Napoleon, the movie

So I saw a comedy called Napoleon. Seriously, there are many many scenes that end like they are missing a laugh track. The final shot of him in a chair needs a looney tunes gag sound like its Wile E Coyote hitting the dirt.

And they change so many little things like adding enough entrenchments at Waterloo to make you think it's WW2, including a scoped sniper rifle with a 1000 yard range. It didn't add anything! The British march OUT of them for a cavalry charge! There's no urgency or tension about any of the battle scenes either.

Meanwhile the entire first half of the movie is spending all it's time trying to be a love story between two people who have zero charisma with each other. He keeps frowning and she keeps rolling her eyes. I can completely get it was supposed to be about those two and not the battles, but the second half of the movie is all about battles and no love story.

Was she poisoned bu the Czar of Russia using Polonium? I think that's what the movie was saying? It sure spent a lot of scenes with the Czar without any other pay off. There's a lot of that sort of thing happening. Everyone speaks English (which is fine) except *one* scene were two ambassadors change to sub titles..to make a joke I think?


Someone get James Cameron to make a sequel called Wellington. He made superior sequels to Scott's work.

What's interesting about Glory is Fleeting?

Can you tell us a bit more about it? What's interesting about it?

It's a game to play table top miniature battles set in the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. What more can you want??


I know, I know, there's 100's of rules that do the same thing out there. Here's why I've been playing it:

- It's played a lot in AU and NZ (the writers come from there) at clubs. Rule #1 of wargaming - Play the game someone else locally plays to actually get a game of it.

- The rules and army lists are free in PDF, or you can buy it from Amazon.

- It's played at the brigade/division level. Each player controls 1 corps sized army, of 3-5 divisions with each unit being a brigade of 2-6 bases of troops. A typical game for 2 players will be done in less than 3 hours, which makes it fast and easy to play at a club.

- The 160 army lists cover everyone that I see. What to play a US 1812 army from the Canadian front that's fighting a Hyderabad Army 1790-1805 army? Now you can, with one rulebook and one book of army lists. Creating an  army from the excel spreadsheet provided is quick and easy. The army lists themselves just limit you to what you can choose, but the major powers all have variants for any strategy. This is the French Army lists (1st number is page number):

139 FRE92A French Armies on the Northern Front 1792-93
140 FRE93A French Armies on the Northern Front 1793-94
141 FRE93B French Army of the Pyrenees 1793-95
142 FRE93C French Republican Forces at Toulon 1793
143 FRE95A French Armies in Germany 1795-97
144 FRE96A French Army of Italy 1796-97
145 FRE98A French Army of the Orient 1798-1801
146 FRE99A French Army of Italy 1799
147 FRE99B French Army of the Danube 1799
148 FRE99C Franco-Batavian Army in the Netherlands 1799
149 FRE99D French Army of the Rhine 1799-1800
150 FRE00A French Army of Italy 1800
151 FRE05A French Infantry Corps d’Armée 1805-07
153 FRE05B French Cavalry Reserve 1805-07
154 FRE05C French Allied Contingents 1805-07
156 FRE05D French Army of Italy 1805
157 FRE08A Bernadotte’s Army of Denmark and Sweden 1808
159 FRE08B French Corps d’Observation and Army of Portugal 1808
161 FRE08C French Army in Spain 1808-12
163 FRE09A French Infantry Corps d’Armée 1809
164 FRE09B French Imperial Guard 1809
165 FRE09C French Reserve Cavalry Corps 1809
166 FRE09D Army of Italy 1809
167 FRE10A Suchet’s Army of Catalonia and Valencia 1810-14
168 FRE12A French Infantry Corps d’Armée 1812
169 FRE12B French Cavalry Reserve Corps 1812
170 FRE12C French Imperial Guard 1812
171 FRE12D French 9th Infantry Reserve Corps 1812
172 FRE12E French 11th Infantry Reserve Corps 1812
173 FRE12F French Army at Berezina 1812
174 FRE13A French Infantry Corps d’Armée Spring 1813
176 FRE13B French Cavalry Corps Spring 1813
177 FRE13C French Imperial Guard Spring 1813
178 FRE13D French Infantry Corps d’Armée Autumn 1813
180 FRE13E French Cavalry Corps Autumn 1813
181 FRE13F French Imperial Guard Autumn 1813
182 FRE13G Davout’s 13th Corps 1813
183 FRE13H French Army in Spain and Southern France 1813-14
184 FRE14A French Infantry Corps 1814
186 FRE14B French Cavalry Corps 1814
187 FRE15A French Infantry Corps, Armée du Nord 1815
188 FRE15B French Reserve Heavy Cavalry Corps, Armée du Nord 1815
189 FRE15C French Imperial Guard, Armée du Nord 1815
190 FRE15D French Armies of the Rhine and the Alps 1815

Granted the units themselves work out to be very close to each other - units have a type, size, elan and training level, but French Guard Infantry brigade works the same way as a Late War Prussian Guard brigade, but the army lists themselves all are subtly different, and you can make dozens of different armies with each single list, but still have the flavor of the era and country.  A early war British army will be different from one in the Peninsular and one again at Waterloo.

- It's also very easy to make a historical army list for a real battle, based on the ease of getting OOB's from the internet for most battles and each player would control 2-5 divisions per battle, easily doable in a day.

- Playing with someone who knows the rules, turns are quick and meaningful. Units can double (or force march triple) move early on, but slow down once within cannon and skirmish range, so you don't spend 2/3's of the game marching across the table first. Dice rolls per unit are low (generally 1-5d6 per brigade) hitting on 4+ or 5+ without many modifiers to keep track of.  

Though having the QRS is still needed for recalling what moves cost command points to do, the pursuit rules need to be checked every time as it's one of the only flowchart to follow, and modifiers for melee combat with cavalry are a bit too much to remember off the top of my head.  

- Terrain placement and choosing your initial strategy are both part of the strategy of setting up. You can pay more points for a better general who is better at position the terrain to their advantage  and blocking the enemy general's approaches,  but only to some extent. But good general's can cost as much as a division of troops by themselves.

- The battles flow like Napoleonic battles- you might be surprised by the enemy generals out flanking movement, maybe his attack will get bogged down attacking a strongpoint town, but eventually the lines will close, there will be close order fire in line, a cavalry charge or two, and  the side with better morale (and luck!) rolls and able to converse a reserve for the decisive point of the battle, will probably win. But it can be a damm close thing sometimes. Other-times I lose and feel like some enemy General engaging Napoleon for the first time as my entire army disintegrates around me.

- Scale doesn't matter if both sides are the same base size, the rules are written for 15mm but work for 5/15/28mm. This is not a skirmish game - brigades fight as brigades and there's only a few formations to choose from (March, line and square). Armies tend to around 30-70 unit bases, so an entire corps fits in one toolbox at 15mm scale.


Did I mention The rules and army lists are free in PDF so you can check it out yourself if you want.

State of FOGN 3rd edition draft rules after 1 battles experience

As an aside, are those Scenics.co.uk hills and rough ground?  Have you found a way to stop bases sliding off the hills? It sounds like a fun battle - do you have any comment on the mechanics of FOG:N? It's not a ruleset I've come across before.

I think so, I didn't provide them. The hills didn't cause a problem, but the only troops on them didn't move either, we're only using 15mm.

This was played with the 3rd edition draft rules - I expect the rules will be out later this year. The 1st edition was based I believe on the FOG: Ancient rules. The 2nd ed was converted by a few lawyers so it was very precise but had some flaws - skirmishers weren't their own thing which has now been fixed, so combat now goes much more smoothly but also more Napoleonic, and a lot of the edge case rules have been removed as have a lot of the "dodgying out of arc of fire" that makes sense at the company or battalion level but are stupid at the brigade level. I've been told the 3rd ed will get an index that the 2nd ed really needed and did not have. The 3rd ed is much improved over the (current) 2nd ed.

The game is written for club and tournament play so games typically only got for 2-3 hours (this game took about 3.5, and it was my first one). The army lists are flavorful and cover everyone from the French Royalist rebel's in the Verdee to the War of 1812.

You have 2-6 divisions of a corps, each div and corps commander based on their skill has ADC's you can use for complex movement (like double move, form square when charged, or limber up artillery) and units are based on weapon and size/ability/elan/training/guard at the brigade scale (so one unit is 4-6 battalions moved as a brigade- each stand represents a battalion). Some armies can attach brilliant battalion commanders (Sharpe for example), artillery batteries, extra skirmisher companies or a cavalry squadron. 2-4 people can play a historical battle (we did 3 a side for Taravala), each with 1-4 divisions under their control. It's designed for a 6x4 foot table and 15mm armies, but you could play with bigger or smaller.

Both players get to choose some terrain but the dice roll (and if your army won the dice roll for what part of the world you're fighting in) works out where on the table it is, with some placement based on the mission each player chooses. There's 6 missions: Positional defence/Mobile defence/Probe/Flank attack/Deliberate attack/Frontal attack and if you're got a good corps commander you can prevent your opponent taking some of them. Once you choose it dictates who deploys what where and you You Go-I Go movement but both sides shoot each turn, but the active player gets to go first and assault too.

Each turn the active player allocates ADC command points, and you'll want to save some for counter chargers and if you need to form square unexpectedly.  Then both players fire their artillery (corps level artillery brigades have to limber/unlimber but brigade attached guns don't) and try and degrade the enemy (or force them to flee if you can do enough hits to a wavering unit). Then both sides do a skirmish phase and try to win the skirmish battle -if you do you get a point of skirmishes on the enemy that also degrades their firing and end of turn morale. Finally if you're at close range you do a round of volley fire and try and break the enemy.

You then go to the assault/movement phase, declare and move into charges and move your units. If you're outside skirmish range you can do double moves or even a 3rd or 4th forced march, but if you fail a command test the unit gets disrupted.  This makes the early maneuvers relativity fast before the battle slows down to gunfire range which is good. The non-active player can make counter chargers and form square if they pass a command test.

Then the non-active player gets some defensive fire first (I hope you degraded them first with bombards or skirmishers first!) and then both sides fight at the same time. The attacker might bounce, fall back, keep fighting or break and purse the enemy. Assaulting an enemy line that has not been disrupted by bombarding it, or winning the skirmish battle or hitting already degraded units will mean you probably won't be able to charge home, but high elan/large units/Guards have a better chance. Heavy cav will win vs lighter cav, but the light cav will probably have better flank and rear support.

Finally you move commanders, take a morale test if you're still under skirmish fire and use your corps and division commander to rally a single unit from their division (corps do one in the army). Units go from Fine->Disrupted->Wavering and then break, with drops in combat ability at each level. Once a unit breaks it will make other friendly units make a test which of course can cause a cascade route of an army. Army's can break at 50% or less if they haven't done a comparable amount of damage to the enemy.

So the battle starts with both commanders trying to pick the terrain they prefer to fight on but not being able to ensure it's going to work. Then you choose a mission based on the terrain and you're army (which you've chosen via point buy in an excel spreadsheet) and go each turn, moving brigades and divisions into position. if you can  get the better position or ground you then maneuver in closer to first bombard the enemy and/or try and win the skirmish fight and then go in close for a volley and if needed then charge in. Weaken the enemy first and if done across a front you can cause a chain route of weary troops, but a better general will have reserves to throw in at the right time and place. If you can break the enemies Line of Control you still have to cause damage but it becomes much harder for them to rally.

I have the rules for Grande Army/Grande Brigade/Black Powder that I have yet to play, and I'm now much more familiar with FOG:N after a dozen games or so, but reading the rules now it's much clearer than the other books. It IS more complicated than the old rules I have from the '70's that removed figures but I think the rules have much improved in both a readability and Napoleonic feel compared to the 2nd edition too.

The game will need some YouTube video's later I think to better explain some of the rules (like 2nd ed has), but the firing and combat is easier to work through now, and I still have trouble working out where to put my ADC"s - much like a real battle, a good general will be 1-3 moves ahead. Pursuit after combat still uses a flow chart to work out though. 

The amount of things you can do that count as a "complex move" that needs a ADC command point is also...a lot. Not many per phase, but the table takes up an entire page of things you can do you might need a command point for.


Also, it's the most popular game in the gaming clubs in AUS and NZ (where the authors live)...and getting a chance to play against lots of different players and armies is the key thing.  The disadvantage of that is that a lot of the guys have years of experience and can pull you into a trap that Napoleon would approve of. I should make an Austrian army for the the full Napoleonic experience of that....

3rd edition of Field of Glory: Napoleonic being worked on

Field of Glory: Napoleonic is getting a 3rd edition. There is a lot of changes that make the game clearer,faster and more Napoleonic (skirmishing now actually is a thing as opposed to giving your units but I note the rules now fix the nearly all the issues I have complained about.

 
Troops can now leave entrenchments! You can get cheap crappy commanders who need to be kicked by their corps commander to do something. Skirmish troops now act in their own little shooting round and the winner of that combat gets an advantage in closing on the enemy. Artillery also has it's own shooting round to provide support for the infantry moving up. Probe missions give intelligence that allow you to have knowledge of the enemies strategy. Entrenchments can be used on the attack (I imagine for placing artillery or defenders of your Line of Communications). Lancers are both more dangerous but also more fragile. There's about 20 pages of designer's notes on what and why they changed things.

The firing table is now looking worse and is as clear as the smoke of a battalion of infantry firing all weapons, but otherwise the rules look a lot better. .


Hopefully I can get a game of it and give a battle report.

Review: Battle Systems: Village Ruins

 I've finished putting together the Battle Systems: Village Ruins.

 

 I did not follow the suggested guide on building them, but made my own ruins. You get 5 pieces of thick cardboard that allows to make them as you see fit - 3 are the same and 2 the other type.

Some trees from Amazon: OrgMemory Mixed Model Trees with Base. Ok for 18mm but too short for 28mm

 I got some cheap model railway trees from Amazon

OrgMemory Mixed Model Trees with Base, Diorama Supplies, Model Train Scenery, Woodland Scenics, (19pcs, 2-6 inch /5-15 cm), Ho Scale Trees, Miniature Trees with Base:

 They are a bit...smaller than I expected.

Review of Battle Systems: Bridge (updated with comparions to rubber 15mm bridges)

The second item I put together from Battle Systems is the Bridge. This involved...some gluing. 

Bridge and broken rowboat over Battle Systems Road & River, being crossed by some Elven Bowmen and hero.

Review of Battle Systems: Roads & Rivers (updated with sizes and comparisons)

With nearly all the terrain I need to start doing solo play FOGN and Rangers of Shadowdeep, it's time to start some reviews of the terrain I have acquired. First is Battle Systems: Roads & Rivers

Battlesystems Bridge, and Road & Rivers. The blue plastic is a river mat from a Kickstarter I will review in future.

Boycotting Games Workshop

Following Games Workshop banning of all Fan animations and video's, I have logged a complaint with GW and advised them I will not being buying any of their product at this time.

 

I advise everyone else to do the same.

Completed a Lockdown wish off my to-do list

Battletech Campaign Completed on IRONMAN

One thing that was on my COVID Lockdown To-Do list. The queen finished the final battle by doing an Alpha Strike from her ATLAS II at max overheat, into the back of the last and most evil traitor.  Very thematic.

I would give Battletech a 8/10. It's lacking combined arms/infantry/aerospace fighters and the "Mercenary Commander" is lacking "if I fire a 20 rack LRM, it's going to cost 15 more credits than that target is worth". But otherwise it's quite good. I need to do the FLASHPOINT missions but I'm not sure if I can bothered using a Stiener Scout Lance every time. Recommended for any fan of Battletech or turn based wargames. 

Not much news on the tabletop wargaming front. I have acquired enough terrain for a FOGN battle, and more than enough rough fabric to cover an entire table. I also have cardboard buildings, ruins and roads  and rivers for 28mm Oathmark and Rangers of Shadowdeep, though I need to put them together.

Next up, as it looks like LOCKDOWN is here to continue, would be to play some solo games of  Rangers of Shadowdeep. None of the figures would be painted, but we'll see.