The Warlock goes historical…sorta

Greetings weary internet travelers!

Not much in the way of hobby content has happened of late, mostly due to a certain lemon-hander-outerer known as "Life" getting in the way. No matter though as sleep deprivation = lack of judgement = me finally getting into the largely historical WWII game Flames of War. Spoiler alert: The Allies win.

The ACHTUNG! starter set (if my German is any good, it translates to Attention! or Caution!) comes with three M4A1 Sherman tanks, two Stug G assault guns, 5 dice -3 green, 2 grey. Battlefront miniatures also is generous enough to hand out half a dozen Neodymium magnets (Nd- 60...possibly galvanised as it tarnishes in oxygen *googlefu* Yep, it's an alloy- NeFeB. Ooh boron!) as well as an intro pamphlet (see below) and an actual copy of the full rules. It's handy as the pamphlet refers to the rules, while also giving a basic rundown of how to play.

There's a spider on your shoulder, quick I'm gonna shoot it off

I must say this starter is friggin' sweet and is easily affordable to us Aussies (I got it for $45 at my "local" game store). Essentially it's about $20 each if you split with a friend, which will leave you both more money for drinks of a moderately alcoholic nature.

Mmmm...neuroinhibitor

While this post was in the works for a while now and even more so since Tuesday, it's kinda topical (in the blogosphere corner I visit) as over at the HoP, where I am frequently a bloody nuisance :P there was discussion about cheap entry costs into a tabletop war-game and how there should be ways to gradually introduce people to the aforementioned game. I think Battlefront does this nicely with ACHTUNG! as it's small, introduces the game and setting, without being too overwhelming to paint, etc.

Open Fire! and Firestorm Campaign are other starter sets/sets in general and the latter is about $90 at my FLGS so it's still very cheap as an entry point into the game for what you get. What do you get? Value, definitely value. V for Victory Value ;)

A5, full colour and full o' rules. What's not to love?

On the rules side of things FoW looks quite interesting and Battlefront has put in the effort to make it as historically accurate as possible. The platoon rules sound cool and make sense as do the other real-world situations (ie: bogging down, bailing out). I can see this system becoming the new hotness for me if I can get a few opponents, which hopefully should be easy.

I should be able to get my older bro to play the part of the Stugs, as he's usually a 'bad guy' supporter. He even plays the Germans in Company of Heroes, which from reading the rules for FoW looks like the RTS equivalent. Just gotta sneakily bring this stuff over to his place when I go to visit him next...which will be soon as he's gotten his hands on a discworld board-game *rubs hands together and laughs maniacally*

Woo! Bitz! Accessories! Tanks!

Next week I hopefully will have assembled the shermans and stugs and can get on to painting. Yes, there's a painting guide in the back of the pamphlet and although it doesn't show you how to paint American shermans, they do tell you what colours you need. Without having to pay for a painting guide. I'm loving this game already :D



The Warlock

Edit: Oh and I'm over 1000 page views. Thanks all :D