9 months later...

... Nope, not what you were expecting from the title! The 'firm clashing of two bricks' saw to that possibility being negated, many moons ago... ;-)

No, in this case, a combined 9 months of waiting, for an order, never to arrive from MaelstromGames, and then never to be honoured by the new company set up from the ashes of the old; Maunsfeld Gaming...

... and then trying to explain the whole farce to my bank; ANZ, and VISA...

ANZ bank

 ...about a whole pile of Flames of War goodies that never materialized...

Flames of War

...even after getting a nudge from Ian at the Blog with No Name, who called at the store, on my behalf to see what was going on... only to be 'fobbed off' ? Thanks again to Ian for his help.

But in one form, my persistence paid off ... I at least got my money back from VISA today... NZ$216 back in my account today! :-)

Now, what to spend it on! ;-)

Seriously though, some interesting lessons were learned, and cautions raised about ordering goods online, even from companies that you had dealt with successfully over a long period of time...

I am just grateful ANZ/VISA came through...

Still, I will also most certainly be intrigued to hear what eventually happens to the chap behind Maelstrom/Maunsfeld that allowed all the shenanigans to happen...

The good thing for me now is, the items I had been waiting for, and delayed buying in the meantime, in case they turned up after all, I can now confidently get on with sourcing... the 88's were the first of these...

An Unexpected Journey... back to LOTR gaming

Well its been a while since I blogged here... I've been putting a lot of work into the KapitiFowGamers blog recently which has taken up some of my time from here...

I have also been very busy with more Wehrmacht forces, which many of which are on the cusp of finishing, either just awaiting decals, final varnish or basing... so there will be a splurge here shortly of recent output...

Some new acquisitions were made during the recent Maelstromgames discount sale, and arrived safe and sound, not only Flames of War goodies but some characters for my Empire of the Dead gaming. Again these are near finished too.

Sadly it does appear I have been stung now by Maelstrom, as being unable to resist, I went back and ordered more, only to have this latest round of purchases just sit 'processing' on their website... Whether these will be honoured or not I cannot tell but with the recent rumour and gossip flying round the web, I am beginning to doubt it very much.

I have been in touch with my bank and credit card, and have a form to lodge my claim for unreceived goods/services. I have to make the claim within 30 days of items appearing on my statement, so if nothing happens over the weekend from Maelstrom, then I will lodge my claim.

Shame really as I have had good service from Maelstrom over the years and to be fair I have probably quite literally saved $100s, if not $1000s on goods purchased from them, compared to what I would have paid for same goods here in NZ...   

But if the rumour proves true, then the "King is Dead... Long live the King"... there are other online suppliers who will no doubt be happy for the increased trade they will be receiving....

Before Maelstrom went tits up, I did manage to place an order for the new Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Books. Although the evil empire (Games Workshop, not Sauron et al) had put the block on them sending their products to overseas customers, I was able to find a loophole by ordering via my father in the UK... even with him shipping the goods to me, it still worked out cheaper than buying them here...

So with the new books I was just waiting to give them a try out. Its been a long time since I played LOTR SBG, my most recent LOTR gaming was with the now apparently defunct War of the Ring game.... this game, whilst it had potential, had several issues that knackered it in my mind. It probably just needed a v1.1 rewrite but I doubt that will happen... plus with the evil empires pricing policy I can't see any new players having the funds to buy enough LOTR models to make a decent size WOTR army now anyway...

But with The Hobbit's immanent movie release, my Middle-Earth juices are starting to flow... so I thought it was time to give the new SBG rules, involving Warband army composition and new missions, a whirl.

I had heard rumblings that a little bit of LOTR gaming had been going on at the local club (KWC), so I made contact through their Facebook page and organised a game.

Sorry no pictures from game - I didn't want camera action to interfere with a game with a player I was meeting for the first time.

[The Hobbit - I can't wait! We'll hopefully being going to the parade of stars in Wellington and then seeing the opening night viewing!]

The game was 750pts per side.

I took a Dol Guldur list. I love the idea of this place... dark brooding menace full of orcs, spooks and other nasty beasties!... Allows for a fair variety in your army list.

I took:
The Mouth of Sauron, leading 6 Morgul Knights, one with banner and one with Warhorn.
Kardush the FireCaller, leading 11 orcs; 5 shields, 5 spears and one banner.
An Orc Captain leading 8 orcs; 4 shields, 4 spears.
SpiderQueen leading 6 giant spiders and 3 spectres.

Sol, a pleasant young chap I met for the first time, took a Gondor force:
Aragorn the King, leading Knights of Minas Tirith
A Gondor Captain leading some foot Warriors of Minas Tirith, a mix of sword-and-shield and spear-and-shield.
The King of the Dead leading some Warriors of the Dead and a Gondor Ballista and crew.

I set the terrain up depicting a ruined mixed countryside, of woods, hedges, scrub, marsh,  rocks and ruins...

We rolled off a mission and got "Hold Ground!" - This mission starts with all forces off the table and they come onto board from various edges. The objective is to hold the centre point of the battlefield.

Sol got the roll off to start. He managed to get  both Aragron's cavalry and his foot WoMT on his long edge of the board, but the ghosties and ballista failed to show...

In my turn, I got my two blocks of orcs on my long edge of board, but Morgul knights and spiders failed to show.

In next turn Sol advanced his troops towards centre of board, and managed to get his ghosts and ballista on. Now at this point he made a gamble, and deployed these to my flank, angling to get flank shots at my orcs with the ballista, itself protected by his ghosts.

However in my subsequent move, both Morgul knights and Spiders arrived, and I quickly deployed them surrounding this flank group, knights behind and spiders in front. I also used the spectres special ability to draw his ballista crew away from the machine, rendering it inoperable and exposing the crew...

Over the next couple of combat phases, the Morgul knights and Spiders slaughtered the crew and ghosts, the King of the Dead the last to succumb, surrounded on all sides ...

Meanwhile in centre of board, Sol continued his advance on the objective, as I advanced my orcs to meet him forming them together in a large mass to withstand Aragorns inevitable cavalry charge.

Again this central scrap lasted a couple of turns, and my orcs held against the knights charge, whilst my own knights and spiders raced to get into the action from the flank quarter.

My orcs were steadily beaten down but they were taking a heavy toll of the Knights of MT too. Finally my own knights and spiders got into the action from the flank, with the spectres again doing their spooky thing, drawing supporting spear armed troops to their doom under Morgul knight lances and spider fangs...

But the battle had to come to an end early, Sol had a long drive home so we called the game at 9.15pm. At this point Sols forces were shattered, with only Aragorn left of his cavalry, and 4 foot warriors of MT, 3 of which were crucially standing on the objective.

I had lost a couple of Knights, half dozen orcs or so and had 2 wounded spiders.

When we counted up the VPs, Sol scored 3 for 3 models on the objective, and I scored 3 for breaking Sols force and being unbroken myself. So the game ended a draw.

Had the game continued for one more turn, I think it likely the forces of Gondor would have gone under completely, possibly with Aragorn hanging on for a couple of turns more till he ran out of Might and Fate, being utterly surrounded at the last...

A great game and thoroughly enjoyable and a nice format to meet a new player.

It was good to get back to the game again, remember the rules, and we each learned a few things that we had played differently in the past.

Of course I'll probably get all fired up to paint my massive outstanding LOTR figure haul that I have, I've probably got enough to open a small store! And make some more LOTR terrain...

But I have just placed an order for some Tigers for my FoW forces, and a whole pile of 'backstory' civilians for Empire of the Dead... and I still have to  make a Victorian city!

It never rains but it pours... so please excuse me if my blogging is somewhat erratic... I am likely to be very busy in months to come!

As always thanks for reading.

Regards, Scott

LOTR vs FoW, or Games Workshop vs Battlefront?

A recent post on the One-Ring forum got me all worked up and I had to reply, and vent my own frustrations...

"Mor-galad of Greenwood wrote:...this whole thing: the move the Failcast, the drop in quality, the increase in price, the change to the pricing and quantity in the plastic model kits ---- I've had it with GW. They are so full of themselves and they don't give a sh!t about us loyal fans. They have shown no respect for the LotR cannon, neither have they shown any real dedication in putting out a superior product. They're raping us and laughing their @sses off about it all the way to the bank because we keep forking over the cash and saying dumb stuff like: "this stuff isn't so bad, you have have to warm it up for a bit to get it to fit together."

Get a grip people, they are ripping us off at every turn and it's only going to get worse until we do something about it. I, for one, and refusing to buy anymore of their tripe until they smarten up and quit producing a substandard product. And it pains me so much because I am such a student of the JRRT world, at one point I could've been convince that the backstory writers at LotR SBG cared as much about the minutia of Middle Earth backstory as I do.... I've come to see that all they care about is profit and I can, no longer in good conscience continue to feed their greed."

I hear your frustrations…
I lost interest in the ‘GW Hobby’ many many years ago, and only stuck with GW for their licence on the LOTR range and to be fair they made good models that represented the movie depictions.
But recently, with ongoing price increases, and drops in quality and the FineCost fiasco,

a picture of Finecast 'quality' or lack thereof from another poster to one-ring forum, and remember you are paying premium prices for this new wonder material, thats so hyped as the best quality ever...

 ...and a poor performing WOTR, AND the fact that they stopped my access to fairly priced stock via Maelstrom Games for us poor sods in Australasia. That’s my biggest beef with them!

For those not happy paying 44 quid for a Beast of Gorgoroth, whether the Finecost sculpt quality is worth it or not, just have a thought for us down under who are getting stung $140NZ for it. At current exchange rates that makes it about 70quid. Now how do you feel?
Yeah , Ive only really bought from Ebay and Trademe over the years , but as others have said you can’t always rely on this to get what you want, especially new releases…

Despite a true love for the movies, books, ethos and mythology… GW’s recent actions have put the knife in it, for me, and I doubt I’ll be doing much directly with them again.

I do have an ‘out’, as I can still probably source via Maelstrom via friends and family in UK, and even having them ship to me here in NZ, its still cheaper than paying direct from stores here.

It’s just that my motivation for their game and figures has been seriously sapped by recent events.

Whilst the SBG is fun, for me LOTR should be big battles and I had high hopes for WOTR, but that failed to hit the mark, and seems likely now to go the way of the dodo… perhaps it was one revision away from being corrected, but that doesn’t seem likely now. With current figure prices who could afford to build a sizeable WOTR army anyway?

 My current obsession is Flames of War (I’ve always been a WW2 nut too), not having played LOTR now for over a year at least…, and GW could learn a thing or two from this company – they release an updated and improved version of the rules, and anyone who has a copy of the current version of the rules gets a FREE small format version of the entire new rulebook. Now how good is that to keep current players happy???

Now I know Battlefront have had their issues, and quality control of missing and miscast bits and pieces is another frustration with some of their stuff, but they, and to be fair GW too have decent customer services and replace missing or defective parts quite well.

But Battlefronts recent stance on the new rulebook, and GWs draconian stance on sales via MaesltromGames and other online sellers, really made me stop and think.

Come on GW, wake up and see what you're standing in…

...enough said!