It's steam, punk!

(Sorry for the bad pun in the title.)

I've been looking to get into some skirmish steampunk gaming for a while now. Nefarious villains, rooftop chases in the fog and weird inventions – what's not to like? It would be cool with a small scale game, say about 4–8 miniatures a side, maybe with some crazy machinery added. I've never taken the plunge though. Until now.

As I'm sure you're aware there are two Kickstarters (or rather one Kickstarter and one "Nickstarter") going on right now: West Wind Miniatures is doing one for the expansion to their game Empire of the Dead, and Northstar Miniatures is doing a special preorder campaign for the official miniatures for the upcoming Osprey game In Her Majesty's Name.

I'm certainly going to order the IHMN book when it is released, but I must admit the current factions and miniatures left me a bit cold. No "Nickstarter" for me then.

Before Empire of the Dead was launched last year, I was very interested in the game, but in the end I held off on investing in it due to the miniatures. While they looked good, they were too much horror oriented and "rural looking" for my taste. Vampires and werewolves didn't do it for me, as I wanted something less supernatural and more urban. However, the Kickstarter seems to address just that issue: many of the miniatures are less horror and more neutral looking. Although admittedly, there are still quite a lot of  supernatural and horror stuff in there – but this time I like it!

So as an early birthday present I splashed out on one of the medium pledge levels, which should give me more than enough models for a couple of smallish forces and some fun extras.

I envision this as a fun little diversion from my usual stuff, were I paint a miniature or two in-between projects. As such it's certainly a long term plan – if I have enough miniatures for a game at the end of the year I'm very happy, otherwise they'll be finished when they're finished, no hurry.

I've also read rumours that some manufacturers of pre-cut mdf terrain are looking into this period, which should solve the problem of how to get an entire board covered in Victorian buildings. Still, it'll be a while before I have to worry about that.

Two Dux in a Row

 It surely is great time to be a Dark Ages player these days. Not only does SAGA continue to be much played and talked about, but there are two upcoming rules for the time period slightly before the one SAGA covers (the so called "Age of Arthur") – Dux Britanniarum by Too Fat Lardies and Osprey's Dux Bellorum.


I really liked my first game of SAGA, but at times it felt somewhat "abstract" (which is both a good thing and a bad thing depending on my particular mood). The more detailed, roleplaying elements of Dux Brit intrigues me, as does the campaign system – something I find sorely missing in SAGA.

Dux Bellorum on the other hand, is aimed at larger battles than both SAGA and Dux Brit handles (both of them being large scale skirmish games) which is also something I'm keen to try out.

I have preordered both of these rules and look forward to get some more Dark Ages gaming going. Of course I have to (yes, yes I know) paint up a new army as my vikings and anglo-saxons are for a later time period, but I have devised a cunning plan that will get me a force to use in all the three games mentioned above. More on this later ...