Sails of Glory Unboxing

Last week, Sails of Glory finally hit the high seas after 2 years of development and a highly successfully Kickstarter campaign (of which I was a backer!). My Kickstarter fullfilment actually arrived last August, but given that I was on deployment at the time I am only now getting the chance to dig in to all of my new Age of sail Goodies. So, without further ado, here is what you can expect to find in the starter set. Continue reading

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Pirate Attack!

Pirate Attack!

The merchant ship SS Kiel plowed through the Baltic, en route to her home port as part of Prussian convoy PC-63. Her captain nervously paced the bridge; though the transit had been mostly uneventful, the convoy escorts had peeled off about an hour ago to investigate a possible Britaninan submarine sighting. This made him feel especially vulnerable, as the merchant ships were essentially on their own for the time being. Suddenly, one of the other ships in the convoy exploded! Looking to the north, the captain suddenly spotted several low, sinister shapes. Through his telescope, those shapes resolved into a sight that made his blood run cold: Pirates! The wireless then crackled to life with the words no merchant captain that has been part of a convoy ever wants to hear: “Enemy attack! All vessels, scatter!” Convoy PC=63 had ceased to exist as an organized formation, and its component ships and their crews were now in a fight for their lives.

Major McNichol, one of our members, recently started kitbashing some models and making some custom rules for a DW pirate faction. Last weekend, he and I had an opportunity to take them out for a test-drive.

Continue reading

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2013 Painting Contest

2013 Painting Contest

Man Battlestations recently ran a painting contest to celebrate our first anniversary of being online! We had a great response, with many talented painters contributing some truly beautiful work to the contest. In the end, we had a tie for first place!

The two first place finishers were Danaussie with his USS Montana, and Shades with his Uncarted Seas Orc fleet:

 

Rounding out the top 3 was Andrewchristlieb’s Tau Squadron:

Congratulations to our winners! Be sure to check out the rest of the entries below:

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Display Base Tutorial

Stitch_Reloaded, who recently joined the Man Battlestations forums, has posted a very nice tutorial on the construction of Display Boards. Be sure to take a look!

http://manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?topic=296.0

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Quantum Expanse Unboxing

Quantum Expanse Unboxing

As I mentioned on the forums, I recently backed a Kickstarter for a new sci-fi miniatures game called Quantum Expanse, made by Forge Craft Games. The rules for the game have some interesting features, such as “hidden” deployment that provides an interesting fog of war element to thegame. Last week, I finally got my hands on the box of goodies I ordered, so I thought I would share!

The main box contains all of the ship miniatures, as well as a few additional goodies like some faction themed dice and the cardboard counters needed to play the game. The two separate blisters contain resin versions of some of those cardboard counters, namely the fighter wing tokens and the stealth counters that can be used to obscure the real location of a ship.

Here are the contents of the box. Lots of minis! Included here are a variety of ship classes, including dreadnoughts, carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. As you might be able to see from this pic, all of the models are fairly flat in profile. This was a conscious decision on the part of Forgecraft, to allow them to sit flat on the table if the players decide not to use flight stands. Speaking of which, the models do not come with flight stands, thought the models do have a small hole on their undersides to allow mounting if desired.

Here is one of the Dreadnoughts, which makes it one of the larger models in the range. As you can see, the detail quality is quite nice; I would put it at about the level of the first round of models Spartan Games put out for the launch of Firestorm Armada. The material itself is very nice, too; the resin is very dry, and feels quite rigid. I would say it is denser overall than the resins I’ve seen from Spartan or GW/Forge World, and is more in line with some of the resin model kits I’ve built.

Here are the resin fighter tokens that I picked up to replace the cardboard counters that are included with the game. These are quite nice, easily on par with the tiny flyer tokens that Spartan has made for DW. The fighters themselves are very reminiscent of the Vipers from Battlestar Galactica, which is pretty neat!

Here are the faction dice. This game is interesting in that the various factions in the game all use the same models; part of the fluff is that all the factions buy their ships from the same private companies. So, I thought it would be fun to have the dice to help differentiate the sides during the game. I only got 2 of each, as the rules never require more than 2D6 to be rolled at one time.

Overall, I’m very happy with my purchase! I’ve got a boatload of nice, new sci fi models to paint, and the game rules themselves look very interesting. I’ll post more when I’ve had more time with the rules!

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X-Wing Miniatures Game

Landlubber recently posted this battle report on the forums, and given the popularity of X-Wing, I thought you all might enjoy it! – Ruckdog

Played my first full game of X-Wing tonight at Gamer’s Haven in Colorado Springs.  First time playing in this store, actually, and it is quite nice.

Continue reading

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Dystopian Wars: Rof Vs The Russian Coalition, 1225 Points

Dystopian Wars: Rof Vs The Russian Coalition, 1225 Points

Hey everyone! It has been far to long since we’ve had a full battle report posted here on the blog, and this time around it is on a large 1,225 point game that I and MajorMcNicol (aka Ian) played yesterday at Atlantis Games and Comics in Norfolk, VA. I was running my French, while Ian had is Russians out in full force. There were no special circumstances for this fight; it was a knock-down, drag ’em out slug fest!

Read on to see how it turned out! Continue reading

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Announcing the First Annual MBS Painting Contest!

Announcing the First Annual MBS Painting Contest!

It’s hard to believe, but Man Battlestations has been online for almost a year already! To celebrate, we’ve decided to host a naval miniature painting contest. Any naval miniature, from any game system, is eligible for submission. First prize is a $50 gift certificate to The War Store. The deadline for all submissions is 15 April 2013, so get painting! The sub-forum for the contest can be found here:

http://manbattlestations.com/forum/index.php?board=23.0

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Line Ahead: What makes a Naval Game?

Line Ahead: What makes a Naval Game?

Welcome to the second installment of Line Ahead! During the first post of this series, I mentioned that one of my entering assumptions was that naval gaming is a unique sub-genre of war gaming. At the time, I was willing to leave it at that, but now I would like to explore that assumption a little more deeply. In my mind, there are two basic categories that tend to distinguish naval games from land or air based games. The first category thematic, those characteristics that give a game a naval feel. The second category is mechanical, or those features that tend to make naval games play differently than others. Continue reading

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Checking In

Hello fellow gamers! I apologize for not posting much recently, I’ve been very busy with my new assignment and so I have not had as much time for the blog. Never fear, though, MBS is not going anywhere. I just wanted to take a moment to  chime in and say I also had a good time at the Williamsburg Muster; it was fun to meet a number of new people and play some games to boot! bellow you will find a gallery of the pictures I took during the event.

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