Tag Archives: 2011

A 2011 Review

Happy New Year! Just back from a week away from my computer and my workbench, spent visiting the folks inland, and counting down the hours until it’s back to work and such.

Although this website has been around on various hosts and under other names since 1998, 2011 was our first full year in this relaunched blog format, powered by the awesome WordPress and a renewed and expanding interest in wargaming! So how did that first year go, anyway?

Random Stats of Possible Interest

We started rebuilding the site back in September 2010, officially relaunched in January 2011, and we’ve been going steadily since then! According to the web statistics package we run, there were just under 17,000 visits to the site, with just over 20,000 pageviews (just over 1 page per visit, in other words). Most of our visitors are from (top 5, in order) the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany.

April 2011 was the busiest month we’ve had so far, with just under 2,000 visits.

In terms of posting, this post is the 149th posted to Warbard, with the vast majority — roughly 130 — being from 2011, giving us a rough average time between posts of under 3 days. Not bad!

The most popular single article was the review of .45 Adventure 2nd Edition, with various terrain articles and gallery posts filling most of the rest of the top ten. We talked about Inkscape quite a bit, lots of pulp adventure, and more recently the Russian Civil War.

Going into 2012, expect more RCW, more pulp, more terrain & buildings, and of course the two main gaming conventions locally are rapidly approaching in February and March/April 2012! 2011 was a great year, and I expect 2012 to be even better!

Trumpeter Salute 2011 Photos & More!

Took a fair number of photos while having a great time attending Trumpeter Salute 2011 this last weekend, and a surprising number of them actually turned out good!

Here’s a narrated photo tour of Trumpeter Salute from my point of view.

Trumpeter Salute 2011: Lego Wars
“Zombies vs Ninjas vs Robots vs Pirates” — what’s not to love? I have to admit I missed this one, but just the title alone is a hoot. The Lego Wars guys are awesome.

Trumpeter Salute 2011: Darkest Africa I
Darkest Africa, in a very pulpish scenario: Col. Kurtz of the Belgian Force Publique has gone insane and is attempting, with some allied/coerced native tribal allies, to invade the rest of Africa. The British with Zanzibari & Masai allies move in to attempt to put him down. I played one of the Belgian tribal allies – the one who survived the game, as the allied tribe on the Belgian’s other flank got shot to pieces by the Brits then chopped up by the Masai before the Belgians broke the British and Masai with rifle fire. The Zanzibari spent most of the game hacking through the jungle on a long flank march, and arrived just in time to let the Belgians and my tribe march off in exchange for being allowed to loot the battlefield!

Trumpeter Salute 2011: Darkest Africa V
The climax of the Darkest Africa game – the outnumbered Belgians, one flanking allied tribe destroyed, form “knot” (like a square, but tiny) to fend off a whole heap of swarming Masai. It’s touch and go for two turns of desperate combat as the Masai swarm the knot, but they’re fended off long enough for the Belgian unit to re-form a firing line and blow the Masai back into the jungle with rifle fire…

Trumpeter Salute 2011: WW2 in 15mm I
This awesome harbour was part of a WW2 15mm game that I didn’t play, but it was too good not to get photos of. The flaklighter ship was out cruising up and down the beach during the game, too, attempting to fend off the Allied attack coming from the land side.

Trumpeter Salute 2011: Strange Aeons!
Another eye-catching game I didn’t play, just got this nice shot of. It’s Uncle Mike’s Strange Aeons horror/pulp/Cthulhu adventure skirmish game, on his very nice (and double-sided!) portable 2’x3′ gaming board.

Trumpeter Salute 2011: The Amulet of Fire I
Finally, one last shot of my own Amulet of Fire game! This is the river end of the 2’x4′ jungle board for Chapter One of Amulet, with Corey’s steamship alongside my dock, and jungle tracks leading off to the mission station and further into the jungle! The Amulet game went well, despite not having the time to get over to Chapter Two on the mesa itself. The 2nd Edition of .45 Adventures is a good bit faster and more streamlined than 1st Edition was, especially with things like vehicles on the table.

All of my Trumpeter Salute 2011 photos, lots more than I posted here, are over on Flickr for your viewing enjoyment!

I’ll be rewriting Amulet’s characters again, both for slight balance tweaks and because in last week’s hasty pre-con conversion of 1st Ed characters over to 2nd I flat-out copy-n-pasted several characters around, changing only names, and the scenario deserves better than that!

Already looking forward to Trumpeter Salute 2012! Perhaps I’ll do a pulpish end of the world type scenario, to go along with all the 2012 End Times horsecrap?

Back From Trumpeter Salute!

Just a very short post to say Trumpeter Salute was awesome, lots of fun games and great people. Good to see friends and regulars again, and meet new people.

I ran Amulet for a full group of six players, using the .45 Adventure 2nd Edition demo rules. The game went well but we never actually got near the mesa (Chapter Two) because although 2nd Ed does flow faster than 1st did, I put too many figures on the table.

Sorting photos now, will have a longer post tomorrow probably with lots and lots of photos, a list of my goodie haul (extensive!) and more!

Photos from the Amulet of Fire game at Dak’Kon

I have finally got the pictures from the Amulet of Fire game at Dak’Kon. This is the second time the game has been run (the first was GottaCon in February, the third will be this weekend at Trumpeter Salute) and the last time we will likely run .45 Adventures 1st edition. The con itself was great and I have also posted some images from the Savage Worlds Tournament in another flickr set.

The three players, British, Red Russian, and White Russian
The three players, British, Red Russian, and White Russian

Continue reading Photos from the Amulet of Fire game at Dak’Kon

Trumpeter Salute Countdown II

Amulet of Fire characters all converted to .45A 2nd Edition. With a certain amount of cut’n’paste magic in Open Office, but whatever. Grade One mooks & goons are all alike anyway, right?

I usually try not to do this, but lack of time has forced my hand. I’m planning on re-re-building all the cut’n’paste victims at leisure post-Trumpeter, though. Needs must when working seven day weeks, attempting to keep up with LPL, and getting ready for a convention!

Beer. Bed. Work tomorrow, then packing for Trumpeter, then Trumpeter starting Friday afternoon.

Prepping For Trumpeter Salute 2011

aof_ts2011
Trumpeter Salute 2011 will feature the Saturday Matinée Special .45 Adventure 2nd Edition version of Amulet of Fire! Click for full-size image.

Alongside the Lead Painters League over on LAF, the other thing keeping me amused this week is getting ready for Trumpeter Salute 2011 over in Vancouver (well, Burnaby, really, but close enough…) this weekend! Trumpeter is the region’s “big” gaming convention, really, at least on the Canadian side of the border. This will be my third visit in four years, and it’s always a highlight of my gaming year!

I’ll be running Amulet of Fire again, going over with a friend who has space in his car for the mesa and other stuff needed for it.

I’ve (possibly foolishly…) promised to run Amulet in the barely-just-released 2nd Edition of .45 Adventures, so I’m busy tonight rebuilding all 30 or so characters for all six teams of Amulet. I’d say “converting”, but really 45A 2nd Ed has a different enough character & skill system that I’m rebuilding! Some interesting differences between the new and old versions; must do a full review here of 2nd Ed after Trumpeter!

There will be a bit of a Lead Adventure West Coast meet-up, partly over my Amulet game on Saturday. Always nice to see some of the Vancouver-area folks again, throw more money at Bob Murch & Imperial Hobbies, loose at games, and all the other traditional convention activities!

GottaCon Gone

AoF Title
The Amulet of Fire poster
I only made it to Saturday’s sessions at GottaCon – busy Friday night and working Sunday – but it was good. Had a decent RPG session Saturday morning (I’m not much of a convention RPGer, but it was OK) and Saturday afternoon was my big one, the first outing of the “Amulet of Fire” scenario!

I got five players, four of whom were among my regular 45A crowd and one friend who’d never made it to our previous pulp games. We got set up, factions picked and off and running on the 1st Act, “The Missionary Position”.

Random highlights – the two Russian factions (White & Red Air Pirate) immediately started a brawl that lasted the whole Act and resulted in some sword wounds, lots of wasted lead, and one Red shot in the head. The British and the White Russians stitched up some sort of truce, based mostly on a mutual distaste for Bolshies.
Continue reading GottaCon Gone