A Rookie's Road to Regionals

Time for a bold bomb: Star Wars Armada is the best miniatures game I've played in years. The setting is amazing, of course, but I'm not even that much of a Star Wars fan. The rules are tight, the game is relatively balanced, and the actual gameplay requires strategic planning. Plus, there is a well-supported tournament system in place, which is important for gamers like myself who enjoy the competition.

That's why I was excited to hear that FFG chose my FLGS to host an Armada Regional Tournament. I have no illusions of getting the overall win (especially with the IFF crew making the trip) but I set a goal to at least win one of my games.

The problem, so far, has simply been a lack of time to get in some real practice. I've spent more time painting my ships than I have playing with them! Some of that was self-imposed, since I have other gaming obligations, but with Regionals scant weeks away I'm committed to getting better at this game and achieving my goal at the tournament. This mini-series of articles will focus on my preparations, and hopefully offer some insight for fellow new players who are diving into the deep end for Armada.

(the deep end)

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Bolt Action - Armies of the Community - Hungarians

By Anfernee and Bryan

Hi guys! Something a little different for today's article. Turns out, Anfernee and I are not the only ones who have taken up the challenge to convert and paint up a Royal Hungarian army in 28mm. Here we present a collection of Hungarian armies from across the global Bolt Action community. With no infantry models available, these are all a labour of love, so we thought it would be great to show them off.

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Star Wars Armada - Ship Review: The Victory Star Destroyer

As I continue my look at ships and how they fit into Armada in the current wave 2 world, I decided to go chronologically. The Victory Star Destroyer was initially the beast of the core set, and the bane of many Rebels who hadn't yet learned how to out maneuver the monster. In Wave 2, the ship has largely been left by the way side for it's big brother the Imperial Star Destroyer. But is it still viable? Is there still room in your fleet for the aging capital ship?

I think the short answer is "yes", but the ship is not a no-brainer like it was in the Wave 1 days. On paper, the Victory Star Destroyer (VSD) is great! 8 hull, 3 shields on the front and sides with 2 redirects and a brace. It can take hits with the best of them. It's front arc is massive (even wider than an ISD), and it chucks a solid amount of dice. The cheaper variant (The Victory I) sports 3 red 3 black out of the front, and 2 red, 1 back out of the side. For 73 points, that's a lot of damage! You pay 13 points to upgrade to the Victory II, which swaps the black dice with blues. That extra reach is nice, but at 85 points the ROI for expected damage on both Victory variants is actually quite low.

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Hero Soviet Tankovy Versus US 80th Infantry Division

By Luke Melia

Andy and I are at it again. This time he wanted to try out his late war Soviets against me.  We did not know what each other was playing and I actually thought he would be bringing Germans to the table.  This was a big surprise for me!  We had decided to play Late War at 1420 points and we set the table to not have a ton of linear obstacles, but we did use a lot of wheat fields.  We rolled for the mission and we played no retreat.  The 80th was the defender.


Andy's List Fearless Trained
Hero Tankovy from Red Bear
Command T-34/85
3 Platoons of 3x T-34/85s
1 Rota Platoon
3x BA-64 Recon
1 Platoon Heavy Mortars

We have all seen a horde of Soviet tanks staring down at us and for me this scene always fills me with a sense of dread.

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Bolt Action - Community listing with the new Australian Army Supplement

By Patch

Last week the new Australian Army Supplement (can be found here or in our downloads section) was released by Warlord Games with an extremely positive reception. It was written and designed by Bryan, with my meager assistance, along with some fantastic input from other members of the community and given the official stamp of approval by Alessio himself.

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Another Review of Warhammer Quest by Fantasy Flight Games

Though it's been out for a while (See Scott's previous review!), I only recently managed to get my mitts on a copy of Warhammer Quest The Adventure Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games. As many of you reading this will remember, I am a big fan of both card games and cooperative games. My favorite card game is hands down the Lord of the Rings card game, and this game seemed to share a similar concept. Because I am so well versed in the Lord of the Rings LCG, my review of this game will be colored largely by that. Spoiler alert: This game is very very good!

The Concept
Warhammer Quest is a cooperative dungeon crawler card game. Unlike Fantasy Flight's Living Card Game. the game is meant for 2-4 players, and scales accordingly by ensuring the heroes always have 4 actions between them. Unlike a bulky board game, the entire game is done through cards which makes setup relatively simple, and the playing space relatively small. Still, the game feels like an epic dungeon crawler complete with everything you'd hope to experience: loot, leveling up, and glorious combat.

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Netrunner: Democracy and Dogma Review

Hello All

Following on the AAR I posted up a week or so ago, today I have review of the latest data pack Democracy and Dogma. Myself and Maz give our thoughts on the cards in the pack, look at a few combos and options on how to use the cards.

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MW Panzer Company vs U.S. Infantry

By Luke Melia

The board before deployment. 

Andy and I wanted to get a practice game in before the tournament at the Williamsburg Muster so we decided to face off with our lists.  The tournament was 1500 points, in an open format.   Guess what I was playing?  That's right folks, Americans.  I know that comes as a shock to many of you, regardless despite my misgivings I made the sacrifice to play the old US of A.  Andy ran a Panzer Company out of North Africa.  The mission was Counterattack.  I used to absolutely hate this mission, but it is steadily growing on me the more I play and develop strategies for it.

My basic list is
2 Infantry Platoons
4 Lees
4 105mm Howitzers
4 155mm Howitzers
AA Platoon with 2 Bofors and 2 dismounted .50 cals
Recon Platoon
3 57mm AT Guns with 2 attached bazookas

Andy's List (please forgive me I am going off memory here so it may not be 100% accurate)

2 Command Stugs
3 Stugs
3 Panzer MKIV
1 Panzer Grenadier Platoon

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Bolt Action - My LRDG project comes to a conclusion, well sort of!

By Patch

Earlier this year I was fortunate to receive some of the new Warlord Games  Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) Chevrolet trucks and one of their Jeeps to review. I found them to be amazing and I was bitten by the LRDG bug. Something about their roguish appearance and mish-mash of vehicles made them truly appear like pirates of the desert and had me hooked. I reviewed those vehicles and provided a painting guide here.

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LRDG (Off Topic) - Episode 28

LRDG (Off Topic) - Episode 28

WARNING THIS PODCAST CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND ADULT CONTENT!!!

Greetings one and all, the LRDG is back in the studio. In this "special" episode the guys are joined for serious game discussion, karaoke singing and puns galore by the the former member of the Dweller's Below Podcast, the Kraken/ That Ol' Egg himself...  Chris Cousins! 

We briefly discuss "Magical Cards," gaming companies that actually support events based around their games and 80's music before getting into our main topics. We mourn the death of Warhammer Fantasy and talk about one of its successors... Kings Of Wars. Of course, the Turkey is flowing sooooo...  these discussion take some time and might be prone to occasional entertaining, digressions about... Well... lots of things.

Buckle up and enjoy! This one goes old school! 

WARNING THIS PODCAST CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND ADULT CONTENT!!!

If you would like to let the guys know about how much you hated (or loved) this episode, you can now find, and contact, us on Facebook under: LRDG Podcast. 

You can find this fine episode in the iTunes store or your can directly download it to your digital device HERE.

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