Tabletop wargaming - nerdlinging to the max...
and other sundry models
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Do you play tabletop wargames?
No, of course not. Tabletop wargamers are so nerdy they make PC fanboys look cool and studly.  34%  [ 25 ]
Yes. I love my little painted figures. I give them all names and stroke them every night. I live for weapons damage charts.  5%  [ 4 ]
I used to, but discovered girls.  52%  [ 38 ]
What are you talking about?  6%  [ 5 ]
Total votes : 72
I'm sure that if I went back to my mothers, I could find an epic collection of Squats and Skaven.

Mostly looked appaling due to being painted by 6-8 year olds.
Rodafowa wrote:
Dimrill wrote:
I lurve the Chaos chapters. Big pointy fuck daemons rot and bile for the FUCKING win. My local book emporium is selling the Warhammer novels for 2spond fiddy each, bostin.

We (as in, my wife and I) have still got both of the Realm Of Chaos sourcebooks. They're excellently grundy, especially the Nurgle-Carrot one.


I've got the Khorne - Slaaaaaaaaaaaaanesh one. Got it a carboot for an quid about 20 years ago :S
Rodafowa wrote:
Morte wrote:
So what is your stance on Blood bowl then (the bestest of all GW's games for minis)? Answer me that! :nerd:

Which version of Blood Bowl are we talking about? The Warhammer-with-a-ball first edition, the second edition with the polystyrene pitch that always ended up in just one massive ruck in the middle, or the much-closer-to-American-Football third edition?

:nerd: :nerd: :nerd:


All of them...It's a much better game now with the Living Rulebook and can be played online with the java version of the game.
Also - PC / XBox / PS3 version of Blood Bowl out soonish from the Chaos League chaps.

Not sure how excited to be about it - Chaos League left me seriously ambivilent.
Zio wrote:
And yet the swine has the gall to call me a geek for loving my shooty shooty video games!


Was it good-humoured or said with malice? Everyone has something which A N Other could consider 'nerdy'. Even Max Mosley. Part of being an adult is to accept that fact, laugh about it, and shrug it off. I used to be a pompous arse about many things* - these days I'm happy to accept that not everyone likes what I do, and vice-versa.

I like to play board games, but never got into wargaming. Lack the patient to paint the models, for starters.

* Ok, I probably still am. But in a better, more excellent kind of way
Warhammer online is coming out soon, and I was genuinely disappointed to find out that they had left out the Skaven.

Also, there's a Blood Bowl flash game and stuff which has been mentioned on the internet spaceships forum, so go looky, or I might post a link later.
EDIT: Warhammer fantasy and dark elves all the way.
I used to play Warhammer40k.

We had big battles on many weekends (we being my brother, his mate, and I). I'm not sure if we ever finished one, as we both played far too cagey, and he used very sneaky tactics.

In the end I found it was often useful to equip half of my army with slingshots, since you could lob very powerful grenades for miles quite easily. Retro FTW!
The biggest nerds in the world are sports fans.

*Stupid costume: check.
*Obsessive knowledge of all things related to their team. check
*Ability to participate in fucking pointless arguments till the cows come home, die and rot to the bone: check.

Anyway, used to play 40k, a little fantasy battle, Epic, Necromunda, a bit of Bloodbowl dabbled in Man'O'War...

I popped into a GW shop for the first time in 10 years the other day, and on seeing how much the models have improved since then... I am tempted to start painting again. as it was something I really used to enjoy, but gave up because I had no money. I have a bit more disposable income now, so why not give it a go again? see if I've still got it! I don't think I'll bother to collect an army, just get models that appeal to me (but who knows?)
Anyone remember Dark Future? All the thrills and excitement of post-apocalypse road warrior combat condensed into a tedious boardgame.

Well, I say "tedious"; I never found anyone else willing to play it. I still tried learning the rules though and failed miserably; this can only be because the rulebook was crap, and is nothing at all to do with my pathetic memory.

I never managed to get anyone to play Paranoia either, but at least that rulebook was entertaining.
Paranoia was awesome. A cross-between a sci-fi and a slapstick comedy RPG.
Pundabaya wrote:
Paranoia was awesome. A cross-between a sci-fi and a slapstick comedy RPG.


I played a few missions of that, both as a gamesmaster and a player. It was terribly fun to trick players into revealing more information than they should have known, and thusly getting them summarily executed.

And I still can't hear 'that' song without thinking, "Glory, glory, hail computer!"
Used to dabble a bit but then got into videogames more. At school there was a wargames club which I went along to a few times but usually ended up watching, not understanding half the rules. Battlecars looked the most interesting of the stuff that was played - more my kinda thing compared to the likes of Diplomacy.

Hero Quest and Space Crusade had their place though as I think they were good intros to tabletop games without blitzing players with overcomplicated rules. Speaking of which, I remember buying a couple of duffers in that sense - Battle of the Halji and some game involving dragons flying at various heights to attack each other.. never finished a game of either.
tossrStu wrote:
Anyone remember Dark Future? All the thrills and excitement of post-apocalypse road warrior combat condensed into a tedious boardgame.

Well, I say "tedious"; I never found anyone else willing to play it. I still tried learning the rules though and failed miserably; this can only be because the rulebook was crap, and is nothing at all to do with my pathetic memory.


I used to love the look of that game - I had some of the expansion rules in copies of White Dwarf and it sounded ace. Also - you could use matchbox cars and stick guns on them. How cool is that?

The only problem was that the action was stuck to the road and moving a set number of squares - a mate and I designed a game that was the same basic concept of cars having a barney but played out on a tabletop and used inches rather than boxes for movement. And went into damage right down to having fucked suspension. It was great.

@SinisterMinister - YES! NetEpic is the fossilisation of the last decent set of rules. It went inexplicably wank after that version.

You're rapidly becoming my favourite BETEOer.

The most recent set is thoroughly dreadful, although free, seeing as GW have killed off all the "niche" games.
I was never really into wargaming, although I did have a smallish Ultramarine army. RPGs where my thing. I ran Shadowrun campaigns for nearly ten years -- I think I have every single sourcebook between the release of second edition and the release of third edition (roughly 50 books), all still stashed away in my attic.

I played tons of different RPGs: AD&D (Planescape, Spelljammer (I had loads of this), Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms), whatever the GURPS fantasy one was called, Earthdawn, Chronicles of Amber, etc etc. I'd consider reffing some Shadowrun now if I thought I could get a group together. Every so often one my mates brings it up. Did anyone ever play Feng Shui? That game kicks ass.
I think I was scarred for life after reading / playing those DIY 'choose your own adventure' books as a child. They put you right off Role Playing.

You know the drill; "all you need is a coin, a pencil and paper"*

"You approach a door. From beyond it you hear a monstrous howl. If you leg it, please turn to page 87. If you barrel through the door for a bout of decimal coinage based slaughter, please turn to page 145"**

Really, really put me off RPGs in all their guises.


*Make your stats up, naturally.
** Go to both pages to see what the more favourable outcome was.
richardgaywood wrote:
I was never really into wargaming, although I did have a smallish Ultramarine army. RPGs where my thing. I ran Shadowrun campaigns for nearly ten years -- I think I have every single sourcebook between the release of second edition and the release of third edition (roughly 50 books), all still stashed away in my attic.

I played tons of different RPGs: AD&D (Planescape, Spelljammer (I had loads of this), Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms), whatever the GURPS fantasy one was called, Earthdawn, Chronicles of Amber, etc etc. I'd consider reffing some Shadowrun now if I thought I could get a group together. Every so often one my mates brings it up. Did anyone ever play Feng Shui? That game kicks ass.

Trufax - My wife and I got together over Shadowrun. I'll never forgive it It'll always have a special place in my heart for that.

We're mainly playing World Of Darkness systems at the moment - Elaine's running a Dark Ages Vampire campaign then when she fancies a break we'll probably be on to my Werewolf game, but Shamblerun always calls us back eventually.

We played some Feng Shui and Paranoia from time to time as change-of-pace one-shot comedy games (top Paranoia tip for maximum entertainment with minimum effort - get your characters together. Make sure they've all had their secret society and service group missions. Have them all get on the same large elevator to the briefing room. Have all the lights go out. Hang a sign over the edge of your GM's screen saying "NOW ACCEPTING NOTES". Smile and wait. God, I love Paranoia).
richardgaywood wrote:
Did anyone ever play Feng Shui? That game kicks ass.


Took ages to get the board set up just right.
I never played anything much more complicated than Hero Quest, and Risk. I tried to play Star Wars Risk with some friends a few years back and our brains melted at the rule complexity, so we gave up.

Tabletop games proper though, are cool purely because of those little figurines/models. I have a mate who obsesses over them, painting them just right, mixing colours, and they do indeed look aces.
There's a World of Darkness MMO in the works, apparently.
It'll be "new" (ie, "rubbish") World Of Darkness, though.
Sinister Minister wrote:
"You approach a door. From beyond it you hear a monstrous howl. If you leg it, please turn to page 87. If you barrel through the door for a bout of decimal coinage based slaughter, please turn to page 145"**

*Make your stats up, naturally.
** Go to both pages to see what the more favourable outcome was.

You are in fact me, that's exactly what I did. I must have had 15 or 20 Fighting Fantasy books, and a good odd few CYOA ones too. Strangely I always won every fight, mostly because I recognised that rolling a dice for 5 minutes at a time in between reading wasn't what I wanted to do.

Sold the lot of 'em on eBay about a year ago. No regrets though, they hold no interest for me now :)
richardgaywood wrote:
I was never really into wargaming, although I did have a smallish Ultramarine army. RPGs where my thing. I ran Shadowrun campaigns for nearly ten years -- I think I have every single sourcebook between the release of second edition and the release of third edition (roughly 50 books), all still stashed away in my attic.

I played tons of different RPGs: AD&D (Planescape, Spelljammer (I had loads of this), Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms), whatever the GURPS fantasy one was called, Earthdawn, Chronicles of Amber, etc etc. I'd consider reffing some Shadowrun now if I thought I could get a group together.


RPGing now made even easier! An excellent tool for playing proper pen and paper RPGs over the internet with your mates. I mention this just by way of information.

Craster and I are going to start playing D20 Modern again using this. When we finally get our shizzle together. I absolutely love writing and DMing games.

Oh - Planescape was, without question, the best D&D setting. Closely followed by Forgotten Realms (Elminster FTW!).
Quick question for all those who have played WWII / Napoleonic wargames - do "real life" methods work in them? In virtually all of the PC games I've played, doing things like outflanking or surrounding you enemy hardly helps at all, let alone stuff like skirmishing or using terrain. The best strategy is always to either just slam everything into attack at a single point, or suss out the rules the computer plays too and just exploit them.
Squirt wrote:
Quick question for all those who have played WWII / Napoleonic wargames - do "real life" methods work in them? In virtually all of the PC games I've played, doing things like outflanking or surrounding you enemy hardly helps at all, let alone stuff like skirmishing or using terrain. The best strategy is always to either just slam everything into attack at a single point, or suss out the rules the computer plays too and just exploit them.

Very much depends on the ruleset, that. Is the boring and unhelpful answer.
Mr Chris wrote:
Oh - Planescape was, without question, the best D&D setting. Closely followed by Forgotten Realms (Elminster FTW!).

Dark Sun, man.

The story that defined the setting for me - for reasons too convoluted to go into, our party found ourselves making an unplanned trip into the desert half a step ahead of a bunch of very hacked off evil clerics/secret policemen. A few days into the journey we were getting desperately short of provisions but, spotting a caravan making its way down a trade route a few miles away two of our characters left the group to see if we could nick anything useful from them. On approaching, a guy appeared on the caravan's upper deck and hailed us. We explained that we were lost and needed water, and the bloke shouted down that we were welcome to join the caravan if we wanted.

I looked at the other player. He looked at me. And almost as one, we turned to the DM and said "I'm legging it".

The way we saw it, anyone in Dark Sun who offered to help you for no reason was obviously a wrong 'un.
Mr Chris wrote:
RPGing now made even easier! An excellent tool for playing proper pen and paper RPGs over the internet with your mates. I mention this just by way of information.
Any hands on experience with that? I'd have my doubts I think -- I'm a hop-around-the-room kinda guy. But I could see how something like that could work very well. Perhaps I should try and assemble a few of my mates for a few rounds of Shadowrun.

Quote:
Oh - Planescape was, without question, the best D&D setting. Closely followed by Forgotten Realms
I always rated Dark Sun (cannibal halflings!) and Spelljammer (sheer weirdness!) above either of those.

Rodafowa's story is great.
richardgaywood wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
RPGing now made even easier! An excellent tool for playing proper pen and paper RPGs over the internet with your mates. I mention this just by way of information.
Any hands on experience with that? I'd have my doubts I think -- I'm a hop-around-the-room kinda guy. But I could see how something like that could work very well. Perhaps I should try and assemble a few of my mates for a few rounds of Shadowrun.


Cras and I have had a fiddle individually, and it seems pretty handy, but we've not tried running a game on it yet as we're waiting for the third member of our little group to get his internet sorted out.

The lack of proper voice interaction may cause it to suffer a bit, but given how crap my accents are it may actually be a blessing... :)
Mr Chris wrote:
@SinisterMinister - YES! NetEpic is the fossilisation of the last decent set of rules. It went inexplicably wank after that version.

You're rapidly becoming my favourite BETEOer.

The most recent set is thoroughly dreadful, although free, seeing as GW have killed off all the "niche" games.


I used to play epic about - ooh, Jebus! - 14 years ago. What did they do to it? How did they mess it up?
Mr Chris wrote:
Very much depends on the ruleset, that. Is the boring and unhelpful answer.


Yeah, makes sense. I've always wondered how someone like Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn would do in some of these games. Would their natural talent shine through, or would they lose because they keep forgetting to align their units at the end of the movement phase, or whatever.
Mr Chris wrote:
richardgaywood wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
RPGing now made even easier! An excellent tool for playing proper pen and paper RPGs over the internet with your mates. I mention this just by way of information.
Any hands on experience with that? I'd have my doubts I think -- I'm a hop-around-the-room kinda guy. But I could see how something like that could work very well. Perhaps I should try and assemble a few of my mates for a few rounds of Shadowrun.


Cras and I have had a fiddle individually, and it seems pretty handy, but we've not tried running a game on it yet as we're waiting for the third member of our little group to get his internet sorted out.

The lack of proper voice interaction may cause it to suffer a bit, but given how crap my accents are it may actually be a blessing... :)


Voice comms will be easy enough to sort out.
nervouspete wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
@SinisterMinister - YES! NetEpic is the fossilisation of the last decent set of rules. It went inexplicably wank after that version.

You're rapidly becoming my favourite BETEOer.

The most recent set is thoroughly dreadful, although free, seeing as GW have killed off all the "niche" games.


I used to play epic about - ooh, Jebus! - 14 years ago. What did they do to it? How did they mess it up?

Hard to explain, but they fuckled about with the whole combat system to make it a lot less interesting and more generic (little difference between weapons), and inserted a shitty morale system using blast markers.

I wanted to kill them when I discovered they reduced the Ork vehicles down to broad categories like "Battlewagon" rather than the 10 different variaties available previously, which had excellent names like "Gibletgrinda" and "Skullcrusha".
Mr Chris wrote:
I wanted to kill them when I discovered they reduced the Ork vehicles down to broad categories like "Battlewagon" rather than the 10 different variaties available previously, which had excellent names like "Gibletgrinda" and "Skullcrusha".


They got rid of the Skullcrusha?! But that was my flagship! 8)
Squirt wrote:
I've always wondered how someone like Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn would do in some of these games.
I believe the ancient Greeks used wargames as military training for their soldiers, so Alexander the Great would have played them. Can't remember where I read this. Does anyone know?
ComicalGnomes wrote:
Sinister Minister wrote:
"You approach a door. From beyond it you hear a monstrous howl. If you leg it, please turn to page 87. If you barrel through the door for a bout of decimal coinage based slaughter, please turn to page 145"**

*Make your stats up, naturally.
** Go to both pages to see what the more favourable outcome was.

You are in fact me, that's exactly what I did. I must have had 15 or 20 Fighting Fantasy books, and a good odd few CYOA ones too. Strangely I always won every fight, mostly because I recognised that rolling a dice for 5 minutes at a time in between reading wasn't what I wanted to do.

Sold the lot of 'em on eBay about a year ago. No regrets though, they hold no interest for me now :)


I loved Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. I used to set my alarm for 6.30am and sit there in bed reading them until it was time to get up for school (oh for the days of youth when waking up was easy). But also like you, I couldn't really be arsed with the combat, testing my luck etc. I've still got all of mine stowed away in my parents' shed and there's no way I'll be getting rid of them. They're worth keeping for the illustrations alone, and I do intend to play through them again at some point. When no one's looking.
richardgaywood wrote:
Squirt wrote:
I've always wondered how someone like Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn would do in some of these games.
I believe the ancient Greeks used wargames as military training for their soldiers, so Alexander the Great would have played them. Can't remember where I read this. Does anyone know?


Athenian: "Right, your unit attacks my hoplites. What have you rolled?"

Spartan: "Err, 38."

Athenian: "38?! How many dice are you using?"

Spartan: "Three D20, of course."

Athenian: "But you're only supposed to use 1 D6!"

Spartan: "Look at my Codex. It says here I use 3D20 to attack. And my saving throw is..."

Athenian: "Two? Pissing two? Fuck off. Listen, we're sharing codex. This is retarded."

Spartan: "No! We're superwarriors, dedicated to a life of warfare, we're uberleet! The codex stays..."

Athenian: "No it fucking doesn't!" (Lunges over table knocking over figures in attempt to grab codex off Spartan.)

Spartan: "Be like that! See if I care! I'm off down the road to play with those Persians that have moved in. And I bet they smell better than you do, ner!"

etc.
Bought the figures, got a friend to paint them. Played regularly for a while but due to distance from fellow wargaming friend I stopped. He's close by again these days but we don't have enough room anymore. We still play D+D though.

Dark Eldar were my army of choice. My leader was called Frank.
Oh and it's surely worth mentioning DM Of the Rings here right?

Image
DM Of The Rings rocks my face. As does Pete's post. Although you did miss the bit where the Athenian starts complaining that the Spartan's miniatures aren't even painted.
Nirejhenge wrote:
Bought the figures, got a friend to paint them. Played regularly for a while but due to distance from fellow wargaming friend I stopped. He's close by again these days but we don't have enough room anymore. We still play D+D though.

Dark Eldar were my army of choice. My leader was called Frank.


Stop making me feel old. I gave up on the hobby before Dark Eldar officially existed! The (stupid metal skeleton things) Necrons were only just coming out. Mind you I did start when I was twelve (when you weren't supposed to because of the lead in the minis, they wouldn't sell them to you till you were 14, except I was always big for my age.) and gave up at 18ish (due to lack of funds coupled with GW putting their prices up 60-100% overnight) rather than the the usual 14ish-21ish span that was usual at the time.
Rodafowa wrote:
DM Of The Rings rocks my face. As does Pete's post. Although you did miss the bit where the Athenian starts complaining that the Spartan's miniatures aren't even painted.


Nah, the Athenian starts complaining that the Spartan's miniatures are painted wrong. According to the Codex, Spartan units have dark red lining to their cloaks, rather than the black lining present on the Spartan's minis. And since when have Spartan's had silver armour? These minis aren't painted up to Codex standards, so the Spartan isn't allowed to use them.
Uh oh, I appear to have some new Space Marines in my possession. Plus glue and paint and stuff. Damn you, Games Workshop. And Dimrill. I blame Dimrill too. His nerdlinger conversation has worn down my resolve.

Bloody hell, these plastic space marines are the dogs. Seriously. Purity seals, all the different special weapons, 4 or 5 different torsos, at least 5 different heads. banner pole, chainswords, pistols. All sorts of stuff. I'm really impressed. (Though I should be, at 18 quid for 10)
Stop stop stop! You're going to make me cave in too.



How'd the interview go?
Dimrill wrote:
Stop stop stop! You're going to make me cave in too.


I walked past GW in town today and had impure thoughts.

No. I can't.
So, when's the first Official BeeX WH40k Meet?

*digs around in old house for his set of Eldar Harlequins*
Zardoz wrote:
Dimrill wrote:
Stop stop stop! You're going to make me cave in too.


I walked past GW in town today and had impure thoughts.

No. I can't.

*says nothing*
Dimrill wrote:
How'd the interview go?


Not sure, pretty well, I think. It was one of those 'give us an example of a time when you fucked a customer in the botty for fun and profit' (I think this was a trick question!) you know, no wrong answers, that sort of thing.

Hmmm, I'm thinking bone white above the belt, and dark purple legs, and trim. Must work out an easy to paint chapter symbol too... Along with assembling the things, undercoating (the old school way! A young lad was shocked when I explained to the GW Store Troll that I didn't want undercoat spray) and painting the blasted things.

Oh, and the new Eldar Harleys are awesome. As are the new Aspect Warriors. And the Tau intrigue me. Nooooooooooooooooo! It Begins....... Again!
OH YOU FUCKING PIG PUNDY! YOU UTTER FUCKING FUCK PIG BASTARD!

Image
Actually the new undercoat sprays are brilliant, and give better coverage than undercoating by brush.
Man, that's awesome :D
markg wrote:
*says nothing*


I know, I know.

Still, easier to hide than aeroplanes.

I think I'll order a Gundam kit instead. With extra guns.
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