Review: Warcry - The Heart of Ghur

Garage Reviews: There's a good bunch of people over on the Discord Community. Once in awhile a great review pops up. This is such a review, re-posted here on the blog as it deserves to be seen by others. 

Written by - Peter Dyring of Dyrings Dark Dreams. 

Warcry - The Heart of Ghur mini review. 

I am writing this review before actually trying the new version. But, as we shall get to shortly, it is essentially the same rules system with minor (but significant changes), so I feel that I can write a somewhat nuanced review. I'll divide it into these sections: 1) Overall impressions 2) Rules 3) Minis, tearrain, counters etc. 4) Lore 5) Value.

1) Overall impressions

The Heart of Ghur is a BIG box filled to the brim with content. Seriously, this is kilos of stuff. It includes two softcover books (rules and a campaign book), a double sided playing board, 20 minis (two warbands), loads of plastic terrain, dice, counters and cards. When it says that it includes everything to play Warcry, it's really not kidding. Of course you can always extend your collection (and GW clearly wants you to), but this is plenty of stuff to keep you occupied and engaged for months (if not more).

The artwork has a decidedly digital style - it is clearly painted in Photoshop or similar and it lacks the different personalities of old GW. Writing that, I realize that I'm an old fart. GW in the 80's and early 90's was way less corporate and allowed for official material to be more diverse in style and tone. Not so anymore, which I can understand from a commercial standpoint but still makes me miss the "good old days". 

It's all pretty pro, though - I tend to not like the painted style of artwork they employ, but it's very atmospheric and pretty well done. There are LOTS of great photos of amazingly painted minis. GW surely has some great photographers on staff. 

4/5 stars (my gripes are basically just an expression of my particular taste in game art).

2) Rules

I love the Warcry rules. They fall right at my personal sweet spot between simplistic and detailed. Some people will find it too random and might miss e.g. armor saves, but I find great joy in a robust and simple basic rules engine that allows for fast and cinematic gameplay. All my games so far have been gripping and exciting and even losing has felt good. 

The main rules addition is Reactions which are kinda like a specialized Overwatch. I like the rule in principle but need to try it out before I come to any conclusions. For now, it reads as if the Reactions are a tad overpowered compared to the regular actions, but that totally may not be true. Another change is a new and improved campaign mode that just had me drooling. 

This is where Warcry enters into pesudo-RPGs and also shows off the heritage from good old Mordheim. Based on my reading, it even seems as if Warcry solves the issue Mordheim had with winning warbands getting overpowered when playing against warbands that had had a less lucky fortune. For me, this is close to the perfect skirmish ruleset. 

I can't really find significant problems with it, so I'll award it the full 5/5

3) Minis, terrain, counters etc.

Let's not kid ourselves: this category is primarily about the minis and then probably terrain comes in as a close second. What can I say about the minis? There are 20 in all, 10 in each warband, and the design and production quality is just the best out there. We can argue about style, (too many) details, size etc. all we want, but I have yet to see commercially available minis of a higher quality than GWs. They are market leaders for sure. Little to no flash or mold lines. 

Assembling took a bit of time but was overall pretty straightforward. Many in this group will probably not like that they are not very good for conversions or for extra parts for other models and while I sympathize with the sentiment, the quality is plain for all to see. I've written about my preference for the Rotmire Creed warband elsewhere - and that still holds true. 

The other warband, the Horns of Hashut, is simply more generic GW chaos. That being said, the quality is top notch. For me, the big selling point was actually the terrain (that I still have to assemble). And boy oh boy, it really delivers. This set of terrain is simply in top three of any commercially available terrain sets I've ever seen. It's pretty original and doesn't look like all the other terrain sets (which, to be fair, you could have said about some of the other Warcry terrain sets out there). 

For me, it carries a clear Zelda: Breath of the Wild vibe, which I really appreciate. I have heard some gripes online about the paper stock of the included cards but I have no issue with this. The printing is crisp, the card stock ok without being flashy. The counters are great although I fear that there aren't enough wounded counters. The playing board is of high quality although one side is a bit bland. 

This category should be a 5/5 but I'll take one point off because of the lackluster design of the Horns of Hashut. 4/5 (redigeret)

4) Lore. 

Now we are entering a territory where I'm decidedly less enthusiastic. To understand my thinking here, we need to divide lore into two parts: A) Overall AOS-lore and B) Lore directly about the Heart of Ghur. 

I am NOT a fan of the AOS lore overall. There are is lot of writing about gods and realms and it totally misses the much more grounded old Warhammer feel to me. The writing in this part is also weirdly unengaging to me. I simply don't care about the gods and their realms and it feels too video-gamey and not very believable to me. I know this is a weird complaint because what part of Warhammer is believable? 

But personally, this really doesn't speak to me. When the writing then goes into the B-part, there is a clear raise in quality to me. I love, love, love the idea of a Slann spaceship having crashed in the area and creating all sorts of weird changes because of their advanced tech - and the wreckage functioning as a weird and wondrous dungeon that adventurers and treasure hunters come from afar to check out and loot. 

Although not very original, this really speaks to me and is much more grounded (it probably also hits my RPG-spot). That the Slann-tech also shows its face in the terrain is just an added bonus. 

So, overall Lore gets a 3/5, which is 1/5 for the AOS-lore and 4/5 for the Heart of Ghur lore.

5) Let's talk about value, price and moneyz. 

The official GW price for The Heart of Ghur is 1400 kroner. I paid 1200 kroner for mine. Now, is that a lot of money for some dolls and a couple of books? Of course it is. Is it expensive, though? That depends on what you value, I think. Breaking down the contents and what they would be priced individually, it becomes clear that the box is a good deal. The price point IS pretty high, though, and there are much cheaper ways of getting into fantasy skirmish games. 

My other favourite skirmish game, Relicblade, cost me around 500 kr (excluding tax and customs which became it's own little nightmare. Not the games' fault, though). Relicblade included 8 metal minis, a rules manual (hardcover, smaller format) and a softcover booklet with the campaign rules. On top of that, it also included some counters and a measuring gauge. 

No terrain, though. No dice. No cards (there are a LOT of cards in Warcry) and less than half the amount of minis (although they were metal and thus more expensive to produce). Looking at it this way, I have no good way of gauging whether Warcry is expensive. I strongly feel that I got my money's worth. I don't need to buy more stuff (apart from paint but since that's a common feature of all mini games, I'll ignore that). In order to play Relicblade, 

I actually invested in some Warcry terrain (which was pricey ;)) - and a gaming mat. Of course, it is quite possible to make one's own terrain DYI-style. But part of the price for Warcry is that you pay NOT to have to do that. Convenience is part of the price. Now, I love creator-owned content to no end. And although I am no GW-hater and I appreciate a lot of commercial work out there (comics, animation, movies etc.), I'm no fan of their more corporate identity (I think it's sucky of them not to include names of their artists and writers, for instance). Where does all this land on?

I look at it this way: Warcry will most likely see much more play than either Relicblade or Sludge for me. Why? Simply put: I know more people who would play Warcry than Relicblade or Sludge. Warcry is a great pick up and play game - so is Relicblade, but not Sludge in my humble opinion. 

By buying this box, I in one fell swoop have all I need for TWO people to play Warcry. And the stuff inside is excellent. In that context, I'm OK with parts of the price of the box going to a large staff of marketing, management etc. I fully understand the reality of that big an organization. And to be honest, I actually think it's a good deal if you can afford it. If not, or if parts of the game is offputting, there are so many other options out there.

Overall, Warcry is a great, modern skirmish game that does away with some of the broken parts of older GW games. It's exciting, fun and looks great on the tabletop. If you want crunch, the special abilities of each wargame might be just what you are looking for.

Overall rating 4/5

Dice bag from Cupias Craft and a bunch of tokens

I've bought myself a cool dicebag from Cupias Craft. Cupias Craft is by Anna Olivia and she makes awesome dice bags. They'll be made in whatever colors and fabric the customer wants. I went for some mat fabric. It's green on the outside and red on the inside, made in the same colors as my Rangers for RoSD. 

The build in dice tray is matt black, to remove any shine when being used in streaming og youtube videos. 

The coolest thing about the bag is the eight small pockets inside. I've got my Nightwatch diceset, Guilders set and the Frostgrave d20 in it. The remaining rooms have my Guilders tokens and Frostgrave tokens. 

I'm very happy with this dicebag, it's a treat to myself. And buying an item crafted by someone is cool. 

I did a video when I got the bag, check it out here. 

Direct link: https://youtu.be/J5DasNkhO_c

Tokens

Everybody should know about Game-Icons. This is an interactive page with thausands of different icons. Easy to search for different themes. Each symbol can be changed around, colors, backgrounds, text etc. It's great! So as I've been going through Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow Deep, I've always made tokens for my spells and effects. 

Guilders a Life in Shadows

Is my own game. It's a skirmish campaign game about thief guilds. As I've been coming up with skills and scenarios, I've made all the tokens needed on the go. So anyone wanting to try out Guilders can print and get going straight away. 

If you have any interest in miniature skirmish gaming or tabletop RPGs, you should check out Guilders. Any feedback is much appreciated. 

For all Guilders material go to the Google Drive folder. 

Frostgrave and Rangers tokens

Just a few examples of the tokens made for the d20 games, 

As always

Please consider helping out my bloggerverse and its reach.

Like, follow, share - and all that stuff. And check out Guilders - A Life in Shadows (the game I'm writing!)

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Join the Discord. It's an excellent com

Preview: Dunkeldorf 3 - The Kingpin of Dunkeldorf

King Games was kind enough to send me a couple of preview miniatures from the upcoming kickstarter The Kingpin of Dunkeldorf - launching June 2021.

 

You can mark the KS now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kinggames/the-kingpin-of-dunkeldorf

A final word

Please consider helping out my bloggerverse and its reach.
Like, follow, share - and all that stuff.

Facebook.com/BloodbeardsGarage/
Instagram: Bloodbeads_Garage
Twitter: @Blodskaeg
Twitch: twitch.tv/bloodbeards_garage
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/bloodbeardsgarage
Podcast: https://anchor.fm/bloodbeardsgarage


Join the Discord. It's an excellent community with lots of hobby stuff (not just mine): https://discord.gg/xwcRSs7

Unboxing: Endure The Stars 1.5 - some kickstarter stuff

 A big part of my hobby stuff comes from cheap and lucky auctions. Either kickstarter boardgames or huge lots of used models. I've become quite good at figuring out, the rough price of reselling stuff. 

I got a super cheap deal on an Endure The Stars kickstarter pledge - like super cheap. I know nothing about the game and have zero interest in playing it. 

But it does come with a bunch of miniatures useable for both scifi, cyberpunk and horror gaming. 

Lots of duplicate models here for reselling. After resell auctions, I managed to break even on the investment. Only sold a few of the miniatures, but the boards and tokens went for a good price. So! Free models! Yeah. Love it when a plan like that comes together. 

And there's still plenty of models left to resell or give away. Gonna give away a box of miniatures for the Discord birthday in 21st March. 

Full unboxing video is below, looking a quality of the models, details comparing scale on so on. 

Unboxing: CP Models

 CP Models have a ton of stuff, the webstore is huge and the price on most models is excellent. Recently I found myself needing some Vapor Snakes for Frostgrave and decided to get some from CP models. And while doing that ordering myself a bunch of other models. 

Found some for cyberpunk, scifi and through the wastes Rangers of Shadowdeep. 

Anyway: I turned on the camera while unpacking the models and filmed an unboxing. 

You can check out all my different preview / review / unboxings here. 

Review: Oathmark - Oathbreakers

Oathbreakers is out, the second expansion for Osprey Games fantasy battle game Oathmark. After reading the expansion a couple of times, here's my initial thoughts on it - it's a review. 

This expansion has a lots of goods in it, real heavy matter. We get

• Undead Armies
• Ledendary Heroes
• Military Expeditions - campaigns

Setup and artwork

The book is setup as we know it from the core book and the first expansion, so we're not gonna spend time on that. One of the things I was missing in the first expansion was new photos of all the units North Star has been bringing out - and more original artwork. 

We've probably all seen the amazing North Star skeletons and metal miniatures released. These models are not in the book. But as we've learned from talking to multible Osprey authors, there's almost a 2 year release time on these book. So as the series go we'll see more and more different miniatures in them. 

So no skeletons in the book, but light elves, heavy dwarf and goblin wolf riders. All in all that makes for a much more interesting book. 

And then there's the art! Woop! A ton of new pieces of original artwork - many centered around the undead theme. I think the art is amazing. It shows a kind of undead fitting for the dark ages fantasy, not too evil or doomy. It sends a good old school fantasy vibe. Take your time and really look at the art, 

there's lots of stories told in those pieces. 

Undead Armies

This is a major expansion to the Oathmark game bringing in a full new faction. A pretty detailed faction as well. The army is primarily made up from two things: skeletons and revenants. 

The skeletons is your classic fantasy minions, cheap, not too good a fighting. Then there's the revenants - making me thinks of Skyrims Daugr. Soldiers laid to rest, kind of mummified, raised to fight again. Skeleton are obviously raised by death magic and necromancers. Revenants are raised in part from still clinging to the oaths they've sworn in life. And that angle fits really well with the story of The Marches. 

Revenants are good soldiers, hard hitting. A revenant cavalry miniatures is 70 points and a chariot is 150 points. So they're elite units. 

Oathbreakers doesn't bring rules for using chariots in other armies. That is yet to come - perhaps in Bane of Kings. The undead faction is described as bronze age (vs Oathmark iron age) - so that also explains the lack of war chariots (from a historical perspective at least). 

Leaders

An undead force will be lead either by a Revenant King (his army serving him in death through oaths sworn) or a high level Necromancer. A powerful necromancer will never follow a king, he'll raise and lead an army of his own. So there's two different leader types, and it's interesting to see a spell casting leader. 

The necromancers know all the right tricks, classic death magic, leading my thoughts to old editions of Warhammer. He'll steal health and raise more troops for his units. 

Mixing races and units is a key part of the Oathmark army system and anybody will be able to use undead units (if you build the new undead territories in your kingdom). Nothing stopping you there, but living races have penalties. It's not inspiring for morale to work under an undead king and along side dead things - so no morale or activation bonus. 

Special rules

There's a bunch of special rules in place to make the undead unique. Undead and uncaring will make undead harder to kill with shooting attacks and prevent them from breaking due to morale. But they will take damage when failing morale. Classic undead. 

For skeletons it further goes that they are harder to activate (rolling only one dice, unless close to a commander) and the only work with a spellcaster in the army. No friendly spellcaster on the table and all skeltons are removed as casualties. 

Legendary Heroes

Battlesworn gave us simple rules for elite units. That's already been covered in a previous review and the rules were fairly simple. Keep the game running smooth. Oathbreakers make similar rules for heroes (commanders and champions), but with some more depth. 

Any army can include 1 legendary hero at a time (unless you agree on more with the opponent). You create a legendary hero by paying regular point cost + 30 points. The hero get to choose 1 heroic ability (there's 24 to choose from). I really like this mechanic, as you can add some really good tricks to your army. Making deadlier warriors, better commanders, more effective spellcasters. For 30 points, some tricks can be pretty good. Like in Rangers of Shadow Deep all the heroic abilities can only be used once pr game - so choose and use them wisely. 

Experience

This system is new, and I quite like it. A legendary hero will gain experience from each game they participate in and depending on how well they do. The XP needed to level up and gain a new heroic ability is the point cost of the model. So a king being really expensive (with 30 points already added) will need many XP to gain a second heroic trait. After that his point cost goes up by 30 again, and he needs to reach the limit again (starting from scratch in XP). So champions with multible abilities will be rare and super expensive. 

Injury and death

Should a legendary hero die in battle or flee, you roll on an injury table. This can see the hero having to skip next battle (or battles) from wounds, die completely or be captured. The captured result is really funny, as the ransom will be adding extra points to the opponent next game. 

The hero system adds a lot to Oathmark, without breaking anything. It's much more detailed and fleshed out than the battle honors system. And since heroes will only have one or two - one-use tricks, it's not gonna drag things down. 

Military Expeditions

A great way to make an expansion worth it is by adding these mini campaign. Special connected scenarios, with a story and consequences for winning and losing battles. The book contains three missions, with three scenarios each. All centered around part of The Marches with lots of undead activity. 

Even without the the campaign element, nine new scenarios is a good amount of game time to get through.

There's 13 new territories (not adding units, but having other effects on the Kingdom), some are unique and can only be acquired through playing the military expeditions. 

Final thoughts

I really like Oathbreakers, it's a great expansion and it adds good solid chunks to the Oathmark game. I hope this is the level of material we'll see in the future expansion. Not only a few units here and there, but huge gameplay expansions. 

It'll be really good to see which kits North Star brings out - especially how they plan to do revenant kits. And with even more kits, we'll see even better photos in the future books. Overall the artwork and miniature shots is much higher in quality and diversity now, than be the release of the core book. 

If you need to get only one expansion for Oathmark, you should go with this one over Battlesworn. Oathbreakers is really good.

I'm still hoping to see some siege rules for the game. Let that be an expansion after Bane of Kings. And some fleshing out the campaign for multiplayer is needed, as it's worded towards a war between two kinggoms now (with occupying territories etc). 

Review: Gamma Wolves - Post-Apocalyptic Mecha Warfare

 Hello wargamers and thanks for checking in. 

It's time to write a few words about Gamma Wolves - a game of post-apocalyptic mecha warfare. Osprey Games has been kind enough to send me a PDF version of the book, to have a look at it. So let's do that! 

Gamma Wolves will officially be released on November 24th. 

So what is Gamma Wolves? 

Humans build big robots, genetically engineered people and AI automatons. Then they blew up the Earth and turned it into a wasteland 'The Sea of Destruction'. Now only a few large archologies and smaller free stations exist. 

Wikipedia describes an archology like this: Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats.

In the game players control up to six mech units in various sizes, they fight for salvage and old tech in the wasteland - hoping to bring great stuff back to their archology. 

How's the review?

I've asked in the official Facebook group, if there was any questions. We'll try to answer those. And the review will then feature five sections, three inspired by the book. 

1. Art and editing
2. Assembling your crew
3. Playing the game - mechanics
4. Campaigning
5. My final thoughts

Art and editing

I've come to expect a lot by the art and setup in Osprey Games hardback rule books. Gamma Wolves feature nice graphics, a good table of contents (book is easy to get around in). There's plenty of examples throughout the book of how rules work. Where needed there's top down photos / diagrams of mechs for showing rules. All this is very good. 

Photos of mechs. There's some decent photos, showing some differently painted frames and warbands. Ash Barker does good painting and has a nice collection of miniatures. Not too many actions shots, but good photos of crews. 

There does however seem to be a disconnection between the miniature photos and the mech artwork. The book has some nice paintings of frames - and most look really post-apocalyptic. Scrapped, junkers, graffiti or clunky military. Where the photo of miniatures are more clean sci-fi in look. 

For me it creates a bit of an unbalance in the look shown in the book. And I'm really missing the artwork telling stories. Frostgrave, Zona Alfa, Last Days - the artwork is amazing. So many stories told in those photos. My imagination is running wild after seeing artwork like that.

Unfortunately Gamma Wolves doesn't have it. Give my artwork of the veteran crew members hanging out (not a human in sight in the book), the crawler base mech bay or the archology sending off a team. Give me art of a battle raging. But there's nothing like it. 

And to me that's disappointing, because reading through the book I didn't get the story hype I'm used to. Good craftsmanship, well written rules. But it's missing something in the art - for me at least. 

Assembling your crew - models needed

In Gamma Wolves each team has a base, a crawler. This base doesn't take part in the game, but it can hold a maximum of six mech units. Mechs come in three different sizes, based on different base size. 

Small frames: 2-3 meters high, 40-50mm base. Think of a heavy power armor suit. 

Medium frames: 3-4 meters high, 75-100mm bases. Dreadnought, Matrix Revolutions, Avatar sized mechs. 

Heavy frames: bigger yet, 125mm-150mm bases. Huge, heavily armored mech units.

Depending on your archology choice, there's some min-max you can choose of the different frames and pilot types. Small frames are cheaper to arm, quicker and easier to hide. Heavy frames can carry more stuff, are slow and heavily armed. 

You pick out 6 cool mech / robots / tanks for your team. Then you hire on some crew members. These come in rookie, trained and veteran. Better crew, have better stats for doing dice tests. You don't have enough resources to bring an all veteran crew. 

There's a huge list of weapons to chose from, covering all from projectile weapons over laser lances. You can WYSIWYG arm whatever mech model you come across really. 

The crawler

Your base is a high tech machine, able to recycle lots of stuff. So between missions you can freely rearm, change gear etc on your mechs - it's not like you need to buy something for weapon locker. You always have a 500 credit pile to equip you mechs with standard stuff. 

Arcologies

There's some different factions to choose from, with a bit of fluff. Continuation of Government north america types, AI robots from space, genetically enhanced clones from South Africa, Soviet style faction, feudal types from Mt. Fuji and the ronin warriors of free stations. All have different quirks. ... For my test crews I picked ronin - to have fitting models. 

And it's an interesting choice, making very distinct and described factions - instead of going more general like 'militaristic dictatorship', 'science enclave', 'communist regime', 'AI overlords' (and having the others as examples).

The list of weapons you can chose for your light frames. There's similar list for medium and large frames. These will mostly be the same types of weapons, but have different stats. 

A character sheet for a medium frame. We'll get back to this one later. But the lighter frame has fewer boxes for damage and fewer hardpoints for installing gear. Heavier frames have even more.

Playing the game - key mechanics

I'm no rules expert, and will not go into too much detail on rules. I will however try and list some of the key mechanics in the game. 

Dice mechanics

Shooting, evading and other actions all start with a dice pool of 3d6. Then dice are added for weapon bonus or skills. So you end up with a handful of dice. The target number to beat will often be your pilot's skill level (that's depending on experience level). Then there will be modifiers to your roll. 

A mech will be vulnerable if shot in the side of back for example. 

Setup and initiative

When setting up a game, you roll a dice to decide the type of battlefield. All various versions of wasteland, with the rolled scenario describing if you're playing amongst broken sky scrapers or on the flat wasteland with low cover. 

When setting up your force, you start by placing only a base in the correct size (and imagine a box with height equal to your model). The miniature remains hidden until an enemy 'base' is placed with line of sight. Then both models are set on the table. 

So when playing with lots of big ruins, you can end up the a mostly secret deployment. You even move the flat bases around until there's Line of Sight to an enemy. To represent fog of war. 

Pilot stress, reactor stress and war clock

This is one of the main things to stick out of these rules. And they are directly affecting the turn phases that we'll get into in a bit. 

Whenever a pilot fires weapons, maneuvers or evades, he'll get stressed. It's hard to steer a big mech. If he ever reaches maximum stress he is out for the round and can't do anymore. 

Same goes for the reactor in the mech. Some weapons are putting strain on the reactor (lasers and plasma), when the mech moves around or takes damage. If it's stressed enough, it's out for the turn. 

At the end of each turn, players roll some dice and can remove that much stress from their frame and pilots. So it's not guaranteed that a mechs reactor is completely cooled down by the next turn.

The war clock defines how much time the warband has in the Sea of Destruction. The size of the war clock is determined at the start of the game. When the war clock is empty, the warband has to redraw to their crawler - to refuel, reload, etc (they're out of resources for a field trip). Whenever you remove a reactor stress token on a mech, you remove a token from the war clock. This is a super interesting mechanic. 

The more you use your mechs be it movement or firing - the quicker your war clock will empty and you will have to leave the field of battle (letting the opponent claim the rest of the salvage, win if your objectives are not complete etc). 

So there's a real essence of resource management in the strategy here. The more you move around (do unnecessary movement) or the more mechs you field - the quicker the war clock will empty. You need to have a strategy. 

Phases

The game turn has three phases (moving, shooting, end phase). For each phase, the player with the least amount of frames on the table gets an amount of 'passes' equal to the difference. 

Movement

In this phase the players alternate moving their mech. Each mech has to activate once, but a mech can chose to do nothing and end its part in the phase. Mechs can't shuffle around on the spot and there's rules in place that movement will always force a mech to end up in a new position. 

Here's the kicker of the system - a mech can activate more than once! As long as it can still take the stress. That's why 'passes' are really important. You can stress the reactor to reach an objective or get into cover. But that will leave less reactor power for shooting. 

'Overwatch'. If moving into Line of Sight of an enemy - they can take a hasty shot. It's harder to hit shooting like this - but it can prevent an enemy from getting into cover. Taking these shots of opportunity also puts more stress on the firing pilot - so perhaps it's better to wait for the shooting phase. 

Shooting

Much like the previous phase. Players alternate firing a weapon from a mech, but can end up activating more than once - if they can take the stress. So a light frame will only have one or two weapons - but a rookie in here. Lots of movement and a single shot. 

A heavy frame will carry a ton of weapons - you need a pilot able to handle a lot of stress (a veteran). Because you want to be able to fire lots of weapons. And perhaps save on the movement. 

Whenever a mech is hit by damage, you roll to see which part is hit (and tick off boxes on the mech sheet). So weapons will end up broken, movement and shooting will be hard from destroyed legs or sensors. And the body will take damage. 

The campaign

What I love about all skirmish games is the campaign. I never really plan on one-off games. I always do warbands with campaigning in mind. And the campaign section for Gamma Wolves takes up a lot of the book. 

When running a campaign a crew will pick six frames and a crew of pilots. You'll rarely have enough pilots (some will be banged up in the infirmary) to deploy all your mechs (and some might be needing repairs). So you basically start by building your toolbox - and then bring tools for missions from what's available, but never using all. 

In campaigns your crew will get experience and injuries. The mechs will need constant repairing. A crew goes into the wasteland (there's 6 different scenarios, many with attacker / defender) in hunting for salvage (catch-all for money, repair and upgrade ressources) or valuable old-tech (special weapons and loadouts for mechs). 

As you play through a campaign your pilots gain new skills and better abilities and your mechs will get better armaments from the old tech. Depending on the status of the crew, they can either visit a free station - to sell salvage and buy special items. Or they can be forced to return to the archology. This is if they can't field enough frames (from damage or being completely lost after a fight) or having to hire new crew members. This will be really expensive - as an archology leadership demands tribute in old-tech! 

This is also the goal of the campaign, for the crew to successfully return home with a ton of technology. Freely paid technology that is (not the tribute paid for new frames). ... this means you have to return home with you best gear to get campaign points - the longer you use it in the field, the higher the chance it's blown off your mech. So decisions - decisions. 

So what do I think?

It wouldn't be much of a review without giving a few thoughts back. 

Rules

I really like the mechanics of stress and war clock. First it's fitting for the mech genre, pilots flat lining from neural feedback and mech frames overheating from getting off that extra shot. I love mech combat from Matrix to Pacific Rim. And the mechanics goes to show this. 

I haven't played a real game yet (only trying mechanics while reading), but it does seem like there's a fair amount of stuff to remember. Stress on pilot and frames. Debuffs depending on which areas are broken (small laminated sheets would be good for this, to place on the chart when relevant). It's a bit hard to tell. The rules seem pretty straight forward. But the management part might slow if down - at least until you get a real good hang of it. 

Mechs and frames

The game is obviously written for a love of big robots and those Gundam bots. And the game embraces both full sci-fi AI controlled robots and Soviet dieselpunk clankers. But for me at least it's hard to wrap my head around the size needed for the minis. 

I get the small size. 40 - 50 mm base. I can use space terminator marines, deadzone Mantic peace keeper enforcers, Dust Tactics soldiers. 

Medium sized is just a bit bigger. So I would go for dreadnaughts, Dust tactics walkers or the Reich Busters mech suits or Deadzone striders. I have all these and they could work on a 75mm base. 

Large frames... no idea. The height is unlimited (could be a crawler tank). But I have no models fitting that size. A 125mm base is huge (I'll be using CDs though they're only 120mm). 

So in the end I might go full post apocalypse on my builds. Not going for a clear style. But make scrap build robots - from Ramshackle Games bits, scrap material etc. And go for a Ronin crew or Soviet style clankers. And that might be the way I go for large frames. I have enough stuff for medium and light frames.

I'm also considering going 15mm scale for this. The game seems perfect for it. But I have no terrain for it and lots of wasteland terrain for 28mm. ... it'll be up to whatever opponents I end up with.

Ash Barker is pretty much up front about (with multiple mentions in the book) - this is your (the readers) game. Do as you want. That being said I'm going 40mm, 60mm and 120 mm (CDs) for my bases. There's some good photos in the book, but some photos with rulers would have been good. Side-by-side miniatures with height measured - to get a better feel of the intended range in light, medium and large frames. As an inspiration for the gamers.

What's the verdict?

Gamma Wolves is a nice book and the rules seem very solid. I like that the mechanics work to build the theme. The rules are tailored around getting a feel of mechs fighting. And it does a good job at that. The post apoc / scifi mix, seems a bit off for me as mentioned above.

Am I up for playing Gamma Wolves? Sure. Most likely in 28mm. Looking past the scifi part. And going full on diesel, scrap, Mortal Engines - post apocalypse. Build some crazy conversions with some magnetized weapon systems. Build some models working around the look of my This Is Not A Test warbands.

Will it work for fans of the pure sci-fi gundam mech fights? Sure it will. The rulebook has another kind of look (toned down colors, scrap mech artwork), but the rules sure make it possible - no doubt. 

I'm really looking forward to following the Facebook community on this one and seeing what builds people come up with. 

Last words

Thanks for reading this review of Gamma Wolves. If you enjoy this read or other like it. Please take a moment to help my bloggerverse. Share the review around (they're best when read). 

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Review: Frostgrave - Wizard Eye

Disclaimer: I've been send a review copy of Frostgrave: The Wizards Eye by Osprey Games

Frostgrave 1st edition is concluded! Long live 2nd edition! 

... not that any of the old expansions are now invalid, no no. But the artwork will now be made by aRu-Mor and no longer Dmitry and Kate Burmak. 

Wizard Eye is a collection of every single piece of artwork done from every released piece of Frostgrave up until 2nd edition. It's a mighty hardback tome of 256 pages a4 size - it's huge.

I've never been one for special editions of PC games and that's what I think of when thinking artwork books. I've ordered my share of special collectors editions. The Witcher, Elder Scrolls, Duke Nukem. I've gotten some artwork books from various kickstarters. They've all been given away or sold. Not enough content or depth for me. I love The Elder Scrolls series to death, Morrowind is still the most atmospheric fantasy game I've been in. But artbooks... nah, no need.

But I really wanted this book, the Wizard Eye. Why? Because I love Frostgrave, I have all the expansions and the novels. I've spend countless hours of my life in this game. And the artwork is amazing - having it all collected in one place is awesome. But this book not only has all the art. 

All the pieces comes with text, explanations of the art. There's thoughts from Joseph McCullough and words from Dmitry or Kate. This book offers a way to look at the cooperation between writer and artist. A thing Joseph mentions in the intro "I get all the credit, my name is on the book - but the success is from the entire team. The feel comes from art, editing and miniatures as well". 

I've spend time now, looking through the book twice. Just flipping through. Reading some of the pieces, not reading from cover to cover. I want to take my time. And you know what? I see new stuff, stuff I've missed despite having flipped through the rule books a hundred times.

This photo right here - the sigilist. It's the cover of The Grimoire, the spell card box and it's in one of the books. I've never once noticed the Witch in the background. And the Wizard Eye will do that, let you see new stuff.

All the double pages in the book contains art, describing a piece, showing the finished one and concept sketches. The book starts with the rulebook and each chapter will then cover an expansion. I'm in awe of this book, it shows just how big Frostgrave really is - how fleshed out the system and setting is (despite not having too much fluff written). 

I love these characters, I think it's a great strength that Dmitry and Kate have reused the wizards from the schools, seeing them again through many different situations. 

This is another kind of review than normally. There's no rules, campaign, updates or mechanics to go into. Should you get this book as a fan of Frostgrave? If you enjoy the full aspect of the hobby then yes. It's great, perfect for fans. Even if you're not into the miniature game itself, the book is just smack full of inspiration for RPGs. 

The Wizard Eye is going to live on my bedside table along some good picture books from Simon Stålenhag (Tales from the Loop etc). 

Thank you Kate and Dmitry for your contributions to this amazing setting. Thank you Osprey Games for making a collection of the art, in a publication that acknowledge and focus on this awesome amount of work. 

It's gonna be fun to see in four years where Frostgrave is and which characters aRu-Mor will have added to the universe. 

Book flipthrough
Also flipped through the book, talking some Frostgrave, showing off some miniatures and talking campaigns. 

Unboxing: Reichbusters - kickstarter pledge

A big part of my hobby stuff comes from cheap and lucky auctions. Either kickstarter board games or huge lots of used models. I've become quite good at figuring out, the rough price of reselling stuff. 

I got lucky on an auction for a Reichbusters: Project Vril kickstarter pledge with an extra expansion. I've already bought two sets of the 3d doors from the kickstarter, but didn't follow it otherwise. 

I don't have any plans of actually playing the board game itself, I just wanted cool miniatures. 

Below is a video where I unbox the models, check the quality and talk about which games I want to use them for. There's cool models for pretty much all my games. Cyberpunk games, post apocalypse. Great stuff. 

My plan of 'free models' didn't pay off on this one, yet. After the initial resell auctions, I managed to get half the price back. The initial PPM (price pr model) was 0,4 euros - good for biggies and heroes. After resale that price is now 0,15 euro PPM. But I have around 40 miniatures still to flip. So hoping that I can unload them over time and have free models left for myself. 

Review: Oathmark - Battlesworn

 Disclaimer: I was sent a review copy of Battlesworn by Osprey Publishing. 

The first expansion for Oathmark, has been out for awhile now. And the next one is already visible on the horizon. Recently Joseph mcCullough visited us at Bloodbeard's Garage hobby Discord, you can listen to the podcast version here. 

For Oathmark we learned that:

• the first three expansions were written at the same time. Battlesworn, Oathbreakers and Bane of Kings.
• the release order was messed up by Covid19, Oathbreakers should have been first.

From the text on the back of the book, this expansion should contain:

1. elite units, unit progression from battle to battle
2. rivers and boats
3. mini campaigns

In this review, I'll be getting a look at the three things promised. When I first flipped through the book, I turned on the camera. So you can see that here, before reading the actual review below. 

Setup, editing, artwork

We're not going to spend a lot of time on this bit. The book is well edited, the table of contents shows everything in it and where to look. Super easy and done in the same style as the core rulebook. 

There's a few new art pieces in this expansion, they look good. Same artist as the core book, so it's all familiar. Nice and old school looking stuff. Check the video above for a good look at it all.

Everything has been slowed down from Covid. North Star has multiple new plastic kits planned, metal miniatures for specialist units and monsters. There's a lot of Oathmark stuff coming. I think it'll be interesting to see future supplements containing photos of it all. Frostgrave 2nd edition has so many different photos and art work - collected over the years. 

And this will be good for Oathmark as well, as the photos and art doesn't bring a lot of new stuff in this expansion. Goes to show the timeline for releases on these books. There's not a single shot of dwarf heavy infantry or elf light infantry in the book, and those kits have been out for some time now. 

Anyway. .. if you want more words on layout and such, go check out the core book review. Same good work in this expansion. 

1. Battle Honours

This is the part I was most excited about with this expansion. I had a very clear idea and expectation of what this should be like. Classic skirmish style XP, levels, skill gains and injuries - like in so many skirmish games. Play long enough and you'll hit a point going 'this dude has so many cool skills, but he's missing an eye, a toe and is shell shocked - do I keep him?' 

This is what I expected from the text. This is not what we got. 

Battle honours are a set of pretty simple rules. Standard units (not monsters, slaves or militia) can receive battle honors. At the end of each battle you fight, you can chose to award one surviving unit battle honours. Consider this unit an option for future battles (you don't have to include it in your army - it's just part of your kingdom). 

This unit will have a single re-roll on a morale or activation test during the game, and the unit cost goes up 10%. I've not played Oathmark enough, but it seems pretty expensive for one reroll, especially if it's already an expensive linebreaker unit. 

If the unit ever dies in battle, you roll to see if they lose the battle honours or can still be recruited. After each battle you can award a new unit battle honours or give even more rerolls to a veteran unit. You can only bring one battle honoured unit to the table, so consider having multiple units tools in your kingdom tool box. 

I asked Joseph about this rule - and he said it's simple on purpose. Use it or don't, it won't break the game and add a ton of record keeping. And the 'normal character progression' thing I was hoping for, will be in Oathbreakers for heroes. 

2a. Engineers

These are not mentioned on the back of the book. But all armies can now bring engineers onto the table. Engineers are small units, that can make or break battlefield cover during the game. Fairly simple. I'm not sure how it's gonna work, with moving around and activation. But for attacker / defender scenarios it might be fun, adding a few barricades during the game. 

Perhaps engineers will get a bigger role in a future (crossing my fingers) siege expansion. But for now, they seem... not that useful. But they play a part in the mini campaign included, and it's a good reason to convert some cool miniatures. 

2b. Rivers and Boats

Of all the things that could be brought out first, this seems a bit weird (again, give me siege rules) - but Joseph writes the rules he has ideas for and the release order was messed up. 

The game Oathmark takes place in The Marches, so it makes sense that there's a lot of water around. In the book are simple rules for small and large boats. I like that the rules are simple. Boats themselves are free, but you must pay a cost for some crew. Players are encouraged to agree upon using boats, when setting up a scenario with enough water. 

The rules are super simple and that's good. River move the boats automatically because the river has a current. Then a boat can move as normal with activation. Archers can shoot from and at boats, which provides cover. If boats ram each other the units in the boats have to fight. A small boat can have 1 unit and a large boat can have 2. No model count, no need to place then on the boat. One or two units - done. That keeps things simple. 

The rules for boats and rivers are nice to have, to spice up a scenario. And should be considered as such, another tool for the sandbox of Oathmark. 

There's new water based spells for each army as well. 

3. Military Expeditions

This part is really what makes the book worth getting. Just like I've come to expect from Frostgrave expansions. In Oathbreakers you get three small mini campaign military expeditions to play out. Connected scenarios, that carries small consequence from one game to the next. 

So there's 10 new scenario in the book (four, two and four). And they're all centered around the rules for engineers and boats. All the military expeditions have the possibility of adding new special territories (in the outer ring) to you kingdom. Unique ones being an abandoned temple, island of flowers or gold mine.

For me at least, that's a lot of extra gameplay for a few buck. And the scenarios can probably be played fine as one offs as well.

Should you get the book - is it worth it?

Battlesworn is a neat little expansion and it's not that expensive. Is it a must have for Oathmark? No - it isn't. Battlesworn is a small expansion of the sandbox. If you're in a group and want to build cool ships - then get yourself battlesworn. Make a hobby project to all build some ships for the campaign. 

The battle honours thing might be fun for some, it adds options. Nothing game breaking or must have. I would still have liked more comprehensive 'battle honours' and tracking of progress for units. Never mind the extra bookkeeping if you're not playing competitive gaming. It could have added a lot to the story of an army.

But nothing that fundamentally change the core rules or gameplay. I like that about an expansion. It doesn't break the core game, it doesn't add anything in terms of unfair advantage. 

Any last words ... punk?! 

Yes, please. If you enjoy reviews like this or the book flipping above, please consider helping out the blog. I enjoy the hobby immensely, also this entire 'news' angle to it. You can help this be dropping some follows on the below social media. 

It's not like I'm ever gonna make money of the bloggeverse, and I'm not aiming for it. But exposure is cool and it drops of a few extra books for me. Cheers, 

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Unboxing: UrbanMatz pre-painted terrain

 As part of the preparation for Horisont Con (that Covid19 have now moved to May 2021), we got a good deal on mats from UrbanMatz. A discount for all participants in a bulk order. And we ordered a huge lot of mats from them. 

As a thank you for organizing that order, putting a bunch of money down (and it turns out eat a rather large Paypal exchange rate... damn those guys must be rich) - Urbanmatz send a long what Martin described as 'pieces unfit for sale due to damage or misproduciton'. 

I've never before played around with pre-painted and finished terrain. And I decided to make an unboxing video of the pieces. 

We cover some desert terrain, fantasy ruins, cliffs, sci barracks. Lots of cool stuff. Some I'll use directly in my games and other stuff will get a few easy upgrades. 

Check it out here.