Rapid Fire Review: All The King's Men 18th Century Playing Cards

"Annnd coming out from the left wing, a strange and what would appear to be out of place review of non-wargaming material..."

Ah, but you see, that would be completely incorrect.  Yes, a slightly out of the blue sort of blog post, but I need to get back into the swing of things somehow.

Last weekend I drove the 1,800 kms down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA to attend HistoriCon 2012 and came back across the border with a lot less money and a lot more toys.  One of the items I purchased was a deck of playing cards.  Playing cards? What kind of connection do they have with wargaming?  Well, its a rather simple answer, not all rulesets employ a IgoUgo system or even dice for that matter (read: Malifaux).

So, wandering around the dealer hall at HistoriCon, I dropped by Ken Cliffe's booth All the King's Men.  Ken is a friend of a friend and I had not meet him until the event itself.  My "mentor and patron" Dave Hoyt of much ado about nothing blogging fame is a good friend of Ken and usually helps him out with running his booth at the major historical wargaming conventions (Cold Wars, Fall-In and HistoriCon).  Ken is a transplanted Canadian and was born in my hometown of the GTA.  Anyway, All The King's Men produces a line of drop-dead fantastic 54mm War of 1812 figures and terrain.  He is actually expanding into the Napoleonic range.  Not that I need another scale or project... but very tempting is his wares.

His ruleset (All the King's Men) uses a card deck system to activate units and while he has another FANTASTIC set of War of 1812 themed playing cards that include historical tidbits and interesting facts, I think the real jewel in the rough are these 18th Century replica cards.

Anyway, on to the rapid fire review of the cards themselves.  They cost 10$ a set and come in a nice canvas bag.  Printed on what I would imagine to be paper that would have been used in the 18th Century, they are very high quality and very professionally done.

I'm not exactly sure what I can use these for (other then Ken's ruleset of course), but its a nice little addition to my collection and lets face it, Cons are terrible for spur of the moment purchases...

These cards will fit in quite nicely with my 18th Century ImagiNation project and are just darn cool to have.

Would I buy these cards again if I had to order them online from ATKM?  You are damn sure I would do such a thing.  Not only is it supporting a small company, but they are also just plan neat.

If you want to order yourself a set, they can be purchased from All the King's Men and if you have any interest at all in historical things or know someone who does, they make perfect stocking stuffers. 

Summer Update #1: Back in Action

Well, it has been a long time since my last blog post and prior to dropping off the face of the wargaming blog world, I had quite a good run of posts going.  Cause of my disappearance? I was posted since the 5th of June to a Head Quarters unit within the Canadian Forces as a Signals (communications) Officer.  After two months of sitting in front of a computer for seven hours a day, five days a week, I had some trouble summoning the willpower to do anything other then rest my eyes, read and enjoy the company of my better half.  I guess it does not help that the temperature in Kingston has be rather nasty from May onward, humidity standing in the mid-70s to 90% and the lowest its has been in terms of temperature is 23*C.

The high humidity and heat has not made it easy for painting as well.  Even with over-soaking my wet palette with to much water, the paint was drying to fast to effectively use.  My bottle of flow improver is almost empty as I have had to save most of my paint collection from drying out in bottle (fuck you GW and your crappy designs).

Anyway, I plan on posting at a more regular pace and maybe increasing my follower count past the seven that have added me to their reading list.  In the next week or so I will be posting up pictures from my trip last week to HistoriCon in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

To end this report, I shall add in some pictures of my current paint station layout and the models I have managed to finish over the last calendar year!

The set of cards for the Maurice ruleset can be seen at the bottom of the picture, I hope to get some games and battle reports done over the next month.

Duchy of Libations in the back, Malifaux in the middle-front and some newly completed models for my line infantry regiment can be seen unbased (I can't find my wood filler :-/ )

Want to win a free copy of Sedition Wars?

The fine chap over at Frontline Gamer is already on the fifth of his birthday blog give aways and this time around its a copy of the awesome board game Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster by Studio McVey.  Fantastic timing on the part of both of our blogs as just yesterday I posted up about this upcoming product.

So, what exactly do you need to do to be elegible for the prize draw?

1. Be a public follower of the Frontline Gamer blog. At the top of the right hand column you'll see a black box entitled Ghosts without a shell, there should be a blue button saying 'join this Blog'... or something like that. Click on it and follow the instructions. I'm going to reemphasize the point that you need to be a public follower of his Blog to be eligible for entry. The last few prize draws people have 'entered' without being followers, and I'm sorry but your names haven't been put in the hat.
2. Place a comment in the comments section of the linked article indicating that you would very much like to win a copy of the Sedition Wars game thank you very much.
3. You need to have followed the Blog AND written a comment before the 11th June 2012, 12:00PM GMT. Because that's when I'll be picking a winner at random out of the hat.

Not exactly very difficult or painful of a procedure to undertake in order to toss your name in for a chance to win a fine product.

In other news, Sedition Wars has now passed 131k$, only 9,000$ away from reaching the sixth stretch goal of the campaign!

Crowd funding update: Sedition Wars

Welcome to another crowd funding update!  This time I am going to be pimping the ongoing campaign on Kickstarter by Studio McVey / Cool Mini or Not.  Named Seditions Wars: Battle of Alabaster, the campaign is not actually for a miniatures wargame, but for a board game that uses some of the best sculpted models this blogger has laid eyes upon (through the dirty screen of his Macbook Pro that is...).  The rumour mill has it that once the campaign has been successfully funded (more on that later),  Sedition Wars will be slowly evolved into a skirmish level wargame (my new favorite crack).

In any case, the campaign has been live for about 5 days now and has ever so slightly surpassed its initial goal of 20,000$ for the campaign to be successful.  I say slightly surpassed the goal with quite a lot of sarcasm as the current amount of money pledged to this campaign is sitting at just under 129,000$!!!

Every stretch goal has been met to date and Studio McVey has been forced to add on another one at 140k.  With 26 days do go, I can see many, many more stretch goals being met.  The overall speed of the pledges has slowed down, but with the current insane value for price point that supporters will be getting, I can see many, many more backers joining in before the end of the campaign (myself included once the funds are available).

So what do I think is the best monetary amount to support in order to get the best perks?  Well, for 100$ + 25$ for shipping to Canada you get the full boxed game and currently 76 models with scenic sculpted bases!  This is pretty insane of a good deal and will be very very hard to pass up.  Because of all the stretch goals being met, the game itself will be... even more complete upon it's release.  Injection moulded plastic counters will replace the paper ones, giving the game a much longer life span, especially if the ruleset turns out to be as good as all those lucky enough to play test have raved about.

Personally, I'm not a huge board gamer.  I can't really explain it, I've never really enjoyed it all that much. It probably stems down from actually dropping sizeable amounts of cash in my younger days on different games and then having them sit, gathering dust in a closet because nobody would play with me.

Seditions Wars: Battle of Alabaster on the other hand is something I would most definitely drop some hard earned cash on, if not just to say that I have supported a good cause that will hopefully one day aid in breaking GW's monopoly over the public and introductory class of wargamer society.

Crowd Funding Update: Bushido!

Just another small update for today.

Kickstarter and Indigogo are both "crowd / public funding" websites and as of late have seen a rather large influx of wargaming companies hoping to find the monetary backing to expand ether the company, the range of miniatures or their whole game system.  One of the companies whose Indigogo campaigns I have been following with great interest is Bushido.

Later on this week I hope to have an entry done for Bushido in my ongoing "Games that interest me / project primer" as it has been on my radar for many a few months now.  What with the superb perks available to the backers for their campaign to introduce a new faction, the Ito, I have been sucked in and in the future will be receiving the Ito and Prefecture of Ryu starter sets (plus some extra models thanks to the stretch goals having been met).

In any case, the original goal of 5,000$ to launch the new faction has been completely smashed and now stands at a couple hundred over 25,000$.  With still over 60 hours left in the campaign, there is still time to support it and have access to the advantages.  Who knows, they might even add another small stretch goal that will give the supporters ever MORE freebies!

And now I must fix my personal blogging peeve of too much writing and not enough pictures by showing off some of the AWESOME artwork of the now officially upcoming Ito Clan done up by the crew over at GCT Studio (the producers of Bushido)

Happy birthday Frontline Gamer!

A couple of weeks ago the totally awesome blog Frontline Gamer celebrated its first birthday!  In an effort to boost the number of followers to his blog, Frontline is running a series of giveaways.  To be eligible, its quite easy, just publicly follow his his blog like all seven of my followers do and post a comment in the comment section for the various giveaway posts.

Not only is he giving away a LOT of very cool stuff, but the content on the blog is absolutely fantastic.  Covering many of the games that intrigue me, the evil (and I put this lightly) that is Frontline Gamer has started me down the path of many a few projects over the last couple of months.  Give it a read, you won't be disappointed.

RayCon 2012

For the second year running, I have been graced with an invitation to a weekend of gaming and drinking up at a cottage on the base of the Bruce Peninsula, just off of Lake Huron.  Last year I had but a smattering of figures with me, a little bit of ImagiNation, two sections of WW1 French and finally some spaceships for a game that was never played.

This year on the other hand, I arrived with a large enough army of ImagiNation figures to finally play a game.  Prior to leaving for the "'Con" I made sure to get in touch with Dave Hoyt of Much Ado About Nothing fame and to set up a game.  On the lovely Saturday early afternoon, the tables of conquest would see the forces of the Duchy of Libations (yours truly's) boosted by a regiment of grenadiers from Das Kaiserreich (one of Dave's two armies) facing off against the might of the army of Le Grand-Duc de Gourmandie.  I will not actually write a battle report for this match, as the Duchy of Libations were massacred, but pictures will be posted later on down the post.

Fantastic morning shot of the bird sanctuary island across from the patio of the cottage.

A nice 20mm North Africa game was the first to be set up and played.  I had slept poorly and on my left shoulder the night before and was not feeling particularly inclined to play a game in the morning, so I sat off to the side in the sun and watched.

Dave and I only had access to a smaller 6' by 4' table as the other two were being used by his son Mike (my standard gaming partner).  Coupled with the fact that we were going to be trying out a new ruleset with the help of his friend Vidal, we kept the terrain simple.

The forces of Libations and Das Kaiserreich form-up for battle.  Note:  I have 7 less units then Dave according to his "all painted models on the table" philosophy.

The mass of cheese-reeking men form-up on the opposite side of the table.

A couple hours later and a sound trouncing (which incidentally only gave Dave one more Epic Point then I according to the campaigning ruleset of Maurice), I decided to get in on a game of 20mm Egyptians vs Hittites.  Having never played an age prior to gunpowder games, I was very much interested in getting one in.  An hour and a bit later, the dinner bell rang and we decided to call the game.  My first victory of the weekend!

Finally the last game of the weekend took place on Sunday morning and was put on by the duo of Dave and Vidal featuring Dave's fantastic early WW2 collection.  I was placed in command of the French side and while we would sustain horrific casualties, we managed to stave of the advancing Germans long enough for the bridge to be blown, thus ending the weekend with another victory!

Overall, this was a much needed weekend, both to get some gaming in with my ImagiNation project and to get away from the supercharged nature of RMC.  The weather held off for most of the weekend and Saturday, when most of the gaming takes place, was perfect.

I came away from this weekend with a massive amount of new idea's to add to my current project and after asking Dave if he had any spare artillery bases I could borrow and replace, I walked away with the bases and about 30+ pounds of Napoleonic figures, some of which I will be stripping and repainting.  I have plans for a "Sharp" based skirmish game for Peninsular War gaming.