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(I'm not sure if this is in the correct thread, please feel free to move it if it's not)

Inspired by an article I read in White Dwarf a while ago, I am going to attempt to play 52 games over the next year. Why? Well, firstly because I don't play enough. Life has a tendency to get in the way and in an attempt to counter this I'm going to try and play to a schedule, just to remind my self to roll more dice.
Secondly; I'm not very good. I rarely win any wargame and I dearly want to change this. Practice make not make perfect but I'm hoping to get my win@loose ratio up out of single figures.
Thirdly; most of my models are unpainted. When ever I play a game I have a breif period of enthusiasm in painting and modelling, thus if I play more I should paint more.
Forthly; I've got quite a few rules systems I've never used. If I'm playing regularly then warhammer won't feel jealous when I get Contemptable Little Armies out.

So that's my aim. Hopefully I will be able to put up a battle report for each game and maybe even a few photos.

Wish me luck.

Hmm, best of British to you indeed. I hope it goes well.

I totally get you about the short burst of enthusiasm for painting when you play.

We expect loads of pics.

Good luck with this idea.

I guess you may need a list of oppos !

Only 52?

Good luck! I bet you can't go 52 weeks without buying a few more models

I doubt I will be able to go two weeks with out buying any more models.

Game 1. Week 1. Bloodbowl.
Castlebridge Crusaders (Dwarfs) Vs Dexy's Midnight Maulers (Humans).

I thought I would start myself off gently with an old favourite. Actually we were supposed to be playing WAB but my brother and regular opponant, Edward, hadn't got all his Vikings stuck to bases yet, so that will have to wait for a future game. The only other wargame that he plays is Bloodbowl (though I'm sure I can change that over the cause of this year).

One of the purposes of this exercise was highlighted when I came to dig out my models. Most of them seem to have gone awol and the starting line out looked rather odd with Warhammer Fantasy dwarfs standing in for their Bloodbowl brethren. (Luckily my star player Norman Thorg was still lurking in my 'Other Models' draw, and yes I know I'm not supposed to be using an Ogre in a Dwarf team, but it's a house rule).

Of the three games that the Crusaders have played against DMM in their current incarnation (ie since I last lost my team roster) they have failed to win, drawing the first and loosing the other two, the last one by a crushing 3-0. So I wasn't too hopeful. True to form after four turns I only had 9 players on the pitch and only one sub on the bench. One of the casualties was fan favourite Norman Thorg who, much to my dismay, was carried off the pitch in a casket.

I did manage to score a minor victory when my star linesman, Reggie Shrimp sent the Mauler Alexander Morville into the injury box, though his Apothacry managed to patch him up and put him back on the bench.
This seemed to turn the tide a little and I managed a quick turn around just my side of the half way line followed by a quick break. Unfortunately I broke with the wrong player. In the following Maulers' turn they spent all their energy on a player in the line, it wasn't until I realised that I had run an empty handed player upfield that I knew what they were doing.

Luckily man-of-the-match Reggie Shrimp was on hand to rescue the ball and, after successfully going for it twice, scored a Touch Down in turn 8.

Going into the second half 1-0 up I knew I had to close the game down and though most of the action was in my half I left enough players back to keep my TD line safe. Reggie proved his worth once again when he finished the job on Alexander Morville, this time sending him away with a smashed ankle.

On turn seven I made another break with the ball, this time with Blitzer Hans Orff. He was clear from all the opposition but would have to make four ‘go for it’s over two turns and sadly got a face full of dirt on his first roll.

But one nil was enough, my team had been hit and my team worth will no doubt go down with Norman removed, but a win is a win and over all it was a positive, and very fun, start to my year of gaming.

Let's see if this works.

it has not

I can see it now.

Great idea. I just made a spreadsheet (nerdy I know) of all the games I've played since Jan 1st and realized I've played 32 games in 28 weeks. And I'm off to a 3 game tournament in about an hour and another 3 game tourny planned for Tuesday pm. I've realized you learn rules really fast!

Well, this is definitely working to a certain extent. While I've had to cancel two games this week due to Mrs. P. being ill I haven't wasted the time on useless things like gardening and food shopping. No, I’ve done more painting this week than at any time since the run up to the Dakka tournament.

I have promised myself that I won’t buy any more models until August and that is getting daily more difficult.

Going to miss Uni when i finish :(

We play about 3+ games a week.

And now im home for summer i've played once in 2 months!

Good luck!

Feeling pretty bad that I've set TP back a little tonight. Myself and some others arranged to get to his house for an evening of small point gaming to help us learn the new WHFB battles. We only managed to get 1 1000 point game in, and it took us nearly 4 hours. Not only that, it want TP playing. I feel bad.

Sorry dude!

And so you should feel bad. I was hoping to get ahead of my self this week before harvest kicked in. Hey ho, the best laid plans of mice and men.

For those of you that were at the Canterbury Dakka tournament Leggy is the really slow (and bald) player and he was playing Jordan who is even slower.

As Leggy said, what was supposed to have been a small round robin of three 1000 point battles turned into a epic, slog and my dwarfs never even saw the light of day.
To be far I think I confused the matter somewhat by coming up with rules that weren't a part of any known edition of Warhammer fantasy but may possibly be Warhammer Ancients, that's what happens if you try and learn new editions of two diferent but very similar games at the same time.

So I still haven't played a game of 8th edition yet, but I have seen one and I must say I like it. As a dwarf player I really like it but beyond that a lot of the changes make it flow better, or will when the players know the rules.

Shown below is Leggy playing the first and only game of the night. Note this isn't a photo but is actually a video of him in real time.

(This isn't my house by the way as Mrs P was still busy being ill in there, this is in one of the farm sheds.)

tp_1983 wrote:
For those of you that were at the Canterbury Dakka tournament Leggy is the really slow (and bald) player and he was playing Jordan who is even slower.

In my defense I was clearly quite irritated by people (jordan) not getting a move on. Having a 5 minute rules check every time the dice are rolled is not good for fast play. The fact that the first hour was spent rearranging everything for his laptop didn't help.

Then again learning new rules is always gonna take longer than a game you're comfy with.

tp_1983 wrote:
As Leggy said, what was supposed to have been a small round robin of three 1000 point battles turned into a epic, slog and my dwarfs never even saw the light of day.
To be far I think I confused the matter somewhat by coming up with rules that weren't a part of any known edition of Warhammer fantasy but may possibly be Warhammer Ancients, that's what happens if you try and learn new editions of two diferent but very similar games at the same time..

"you can fast march"

"What? no you can't"

"I think you'll find you can"

"Seriously, you can't"

"Well you used to be able to"

"No you didn't!"

"I think you did, In a previous edition"

"Tom, I've never even HEARD of that rule"

"Oh, maybe that's Ancients then...."

This type of conversation happens regularly in our group.

So I still haven't played a game of 8th edition yet, but I have seen one and I must say I like it. As a dwarf player I really like it but beyond that a lot of the changes make it flow better, or will when the players know the rules.

Dude, if I can beat a Skaven army with a Wood Elf one that had about a quarter of the model count, I can beat your dwarfs even easier. I'll simply remember to use my Waywatchers in more than half the turns

Shown below is Leggy playing the first and only game of the night. Note this isn't a photo but is actually a video of him in real time.

He made me pose like that! I'm much sexier from the front!

I think i should try aiming for something like this, as i too don't play much...

Game 2. Week 2. Warhammer Ancients.
Saxons vs. Vikings

Having fallen behind in my schedule I fell back on Edward and our first game of Warhammer Ancients. We only had a small force each, but as it was this 500 point battle took about three hours, so maybe I should be so hard on Leggy and Jordan.

My plan was to lure the Vikings forward with my Geburs whilst I got behind them with the Theigns, and used the supporting fire from my bow armed Geburs and my Bradwr (Welsh Bowmen).

WAB recommends using secret deployment so this is what we did, using maps to mark our units. After set up I was mildly encouraged as the Viking deployment seemed to fall into my plan.



However two factors set pay to my plans. The first was that there wasn’t one single musician on the field. This made it a very slow game and Edward had plenty of time to react to my approaching units.

The second factor was the Warband rule, which every unit in my army suffered from and which I seemed to roll an inordinate number of ones for. For those of you not familiar with it one of the Warband rule’s effects is that you roll a die at the beginning of the turn if you get a 1 they must charge the nearest visible unit if they can, otherwise they move at least their basic movement towards them.

url=http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/123323-Saxons%2C%20Vikings%2C%20Wab.html][/url]

This meant by the time our armies met my line had been pulled out of shape. In turn seven all four of my units that weren’t fleeing rolled a 1. The Bradwr broke at the hands of the Viking hirdmen, and once they are broke they can not reform.

On my left hand flank the battle did sort of go to plan, my Geburs suffered a lot of casualties die to me not managing to get in the charge or form a shieldwall. How ever when my Theigns did manage to get behind his line they did a little bit of damage, but it was too late but then form them to turn the tide of the battle and the Viking hirdmen claimed a table quarter leaving the final score 250-105 in favour of the Danes.

It was a fun battle, but I don’t think the rules are particularly suited to such a small game. There are a few scenarios specifically for 500 point armies in the Siege and Conquest book, and now we’ve played one straight battle I think it would be better to move onto these.

As far as my army goes, when I expand it I shall be filling out my shield wall, probably with Coerls and expanding my Theigns to 10.

So, this should really be in a battle reports section.

In any case, good luck. During my big bout of playing in 2007 I managed 52 games in a year, but then collapsed in horrible burnout (I was also doing battle reports and was running an online magazine at the time as well).

Ailaros wrote:So, this should really be in a battle reports section.

Yes, but which one, as I shall be playing a variaty of systems.

I'd love to play that much. The last year I've gotten sucked back into WoW and it seriously hurt my Warhammer time. Now I'm spending 7 months in OEF where the closest thing only warhammer activity will be buying the new 8 Ed box and learning the rules.

I plan on getting in more then a few games when I get home next year though. It will be nice.

Game 3. Week 6. Golden Goal.
Me Vs George

I've been wanting to try this game out for a while, but a long with my other gaming, it has had to wait while work takes precident.
Golden Goal is a free rule system for for an Association Football game, put out by Mega Minis to support thier range of football players.
It is still in an early test version and there were quite a few changes we needed to make to it to play.
The most important one is that in the current rules each turn represents a minute. Thinking a 90+ turn game (you also allow extra turns for injury time) might take a tad too long we made each turn represent 2D6 minutes.
We also shrunk the pitch down so it would fit on the table. This actually played better I think than the rules as they stand as passing distances are woefully short.

So how did the game play? Well it was alright. I can't really say any more than that for it at the moment. I think the rules as they are written are concentrating too much on an accurate portrayal of a football match. This is something that can not be acheived in a turn based game, so I think they would be better off with more mechanics to make it a fun aproximation of football.

The rules are currently being updated so I'll have a look when they are done and maybe play another game but I don't think Golden Goal will be goin on my list of regularly played wargames.

Picture to follow.

Week 6 tp and you've only got 3 games in the bag? Best get yer skates on to catch up.

Yeah, harvest is getting in the way of real life, I mean wargaming.

I'm getting so far behind with this project I don't even want to count up the weeks. But just to let you good Dakkites know that I haven't been slacking here's a pic of the latest unit I have painted.

Keep it going- this thread got me to start keeping track & I'm up to 53 since Jan. 1st.

53 since 1st Jan?! I have only one thing to say to you sir, but the moderators won't let me.

My secret weapon:

http://www.whiznet.com/Events.htm

Tuesday night tournaments can become 4 game nights if people get there early, play one free game, then roll dice for the tournament on time. As long as you have a strong core (5-6 people who can listen) and one serious organizer who can concisely bark out information, you can have 4 game nights.

Eventually, we had 12+ regulars, paying $10 each, and getting it all back in prizes. I highly advise anyone who can do this, try it.

Oh dear, I am getting rather behind...

Game 4. Week 13. Bloodbowl.
Castlebridge Crusaders (Dwarfs) Vs Dexy's Midnight Maulers (Humans).

The was a very exciting , if rather frustrating game. I kicked in the first half but soon turned the ball over and slowly mauled my way towards Edward's TD line.
By turn eight I only had one square to move to score. I won't risk anything I thought and didn't atttemp to make any tackles or even move any other model before I ran Ernie Gitt into the End Zone. Unfortunatly I didn't move the turn marker either and as my hand touched the model Edward called out Illeagle Proceedure and the half was all over (me not having any rerolls left.)
I received in the second half and after a good push, in which Jergan Elkman, a Blocker who had done nothing in the previous five games pushed three players into the crowd were they were mauled under foot and taken off on stretchers (one in a coffin).
Ernie Gitt again mader a break for the End Zone but failed his roll dodging out of a tackle zone.
To Edward's credit he made a quick turnaround and by turn 6 of the second half he finished only two or three sqaures from my end zone, with me having no one anywhere near him still on thier feet.
Edward did remember to move his turn counter along but couldn't resist kicking one of my players before he scored. Of course he rolled a double which meant a red card and a turnover. In my next turn I got someone down to tackle the rogue catcher and the game finished 0-0. (But did have an impressive 9 casualties, including two deaths.)

Oi! Where's the battle report from saturday (to include pictures of you in your golfing/tailors outfit)