Medieval houses set review

Roughly two months ago I ran across Urbanmatz, a retailer of prepainted terrain and gaming mats. I saw that they were taking pre-orders for some painted terrain. As soon as the set became available I purchased one to add to my terrain collection. 

The set arrived last weekend and I've taken a closer look, do the pre-paint and house quality hold up?

What you get in the set is 6 buildings and a bridge. You get 3 copies of a large dwelling, 2 copies of a smaller dwelling, 1 blacksmith and the stone bridge which is a huge terrain piece. The price at 119Euro for 7 pieces of solid terrain is fair with an average price of 17Euro per model. No assembly required and they come prepainted.

The quality of the castings is good, and the sculpts themselves are imo very nice, especially the smaller buildings with the more intricate wooden framing. They look very medieval/European. The blacksmith is my favorite piece, and it the largest building.

The bridge is also nice, and it is large enough to allow you to put the popular "Battlefield in a box"/Flames of War river terrain below.

But the main reason I purchased the prepainted buildings was that the paintjob looked very promising on the pictures up on the retailers homepage. Having received the buildings and having inspected them up close I admit that the paintjob was not as good as I had hoped. The buildings are tabletop quality and still look great at an arm's length, but for a neat freak like me there were mainly issues with paint splotches on some of the walls and such that lowered the general impression. 

This does not mean that the paintjob is awful, but I wish it was a bit more tidy. This however prompted be to try to repaint one of the buildings just to see how that would work. I did that grom scratch, by undercoating the building with black primer, then drybrushing and washing the stonework, repainting the wooden framing and drybrushing the roof.

 I'm in the process of repainting one of the smaller buildings, and this time I tried to do that without any black undercoat, and it worked equally well - you will be able to see some WIP pictures of that on my facebook page.

The paintjob took about 2 hours, which is good enough for me to get a slightly cleaner result.

Overall, I still recommend the buildings for the sculpts themselves. They look great, and the material is some kind of durable plastic/resin that does not chip. So if you need to add some stone buildings to your collection of fantasy or historical terrain, these are great.

Repainted example

Getting into By Fire & Sword: part 3 Rules overview

Part 3 of my video series about the historical wargame By Fire & Sword. In part 3 I give you a general overview of the rules and the command, movement and combat phase. There are also some examples of game play situations and how combat is resolved.

I had a lot of trouble with this video, my camera messed up a large chunk in the middle of my material so I had to do what I could with the beginning and the end of my shooting session. I think this part could have been a bit better, but I hope to fix that in upcoming parts.

Many of the special rules will be explained in the next part where I talk about the different unit types and equipment rules.

 

As always, feel free to ask questions and give comments, I may include answers to those in future parts of this series.

  

Mansions of Madness 2nd edition: Sanctum of Twilight review

The favorite board game in my collection, Mansions of Madness 2nd edition, recently received a new expansion "Sanctum of Twilight". It was a no brainer decision to purchase it since both Caroline and I are big fans of the game and so far the scenarios and gameplay has given us dozens of hours of fun.

I will need to make an overview and talk about this series in the future, but for now I will focus on another review for the expansion alone.  I will try to keep this short and without spoilers as always when it comes to this game.

Let's start with the bad first. This is the third "new content" boxed expansion for the 2nd edition of the game, not counting the two expansion boxes that included conversion kits for all the stuff from the base game and expansions for the 1st edition.

The core game Mansions of Madness 2nd edition was a huge box, and very expensive, but it included a lot of value for money. The first expansion, "Beyond the Threshold" was really good and included a bunch of new stuff and was decent value for money. The "Streets of Arkham" expansion, which was the biggest expansion to date had a lot of components but was pricey. This expansion, the third one, feels like the least value for money in terms of components in relation to the price you pay.

Getting into By Fire & Sword: part 2 Army lists

Second part of my series teaching you the historical wargame "By Fire & Sword". In part two I talk about how the army lists work on a skirmish and division level. I also take a quick look at the online army building tool.

 

Interview about Anno Domini 1666 with Konrad Sosinski

Anno Domini 1666 is an upcoming board game / skirmish game by the Polish game company Wargamer.pl. I had the pleasure to make an interview with the company manager Konrad Sosinski about their new project and the ongoing Kickstarter campaign for their game Anno Domini 1666.

You may reach the ongoing campaign HERE or by following the banner at the very bottom of this interview where crucial information will be displayed.

  
"In Anno Domini 1666 players control competing bands - featuring the protagonists of Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy and the musketeers from the novels of Alexander Dumas. Consisting of between 5 and 12 models each, these bands try to achieve objectives presented to them by one of many scenarios. These objectives include overcoming the enemy in combat, recovering a letter, escorting a hostage, or a chase. Unlike other games, relying on brute force may not be enough to achieve victory. Often, the imposing might of Longinus Podbipięta or D’Artagnan’s unrivaled fencing skills may prove less effective than Zagłoba’s quick wits and silver tongue. Depending on the chosen scenario and the number of characters involved, the game may take from 30 to 120 minutes."