A Bigger Than Typical Post

 Ye olde multi-topic post here, so get your notepad and pen ready.

Those of you who have been reading for any period of time may remember my adventures with luthier-ing which I posted about at least once. Well, during March and April I put together a new axe. I present you with The Green Monster.

Plays well, stays in tune. What more can you ask for? It was a lot of fun and did a passable job of keeping my off the streets.

On to actual game-related activity. I painted up a handful of minis quickly this week, a couple Bones Undead and some 15mm moderns.

The Undead are specifically for Mantic's Vanguard Fantasy skirmish game that I came across a couple weeks ago. They have a free basic rules and army lists for 15 or so various typical fantasy factions. Glancing through the rules, it's pretty close to what I've been after for many years - simple enough, small enough and generic enough. Since my 28mm Undead are mostly Ghouls and Skeletons, I figured some variety wouldn't be the worst thing. They were an easy distraction from the Infinity stuff I've been working on recently.

The 15mm are for my modern skirmish game I've featured on the blog a few times, SKIrmish. Those games have often featured the X-Files crew and space aliens, although I've got plenty of Army guys, zombies, nuts with guns and cultists to go around. My wife and I love the TV show Supernatural, so I whipped up some statlines for Sam and Dean (the two on the right) and more typical Hunters. I even found a suitable toy car for them which of course I forgot to take a picture of this morning. They'll be a fun addition to that game for sure! The models are Rebel Minis, and I ended up with 20+ extras who'll make great gangsters, thugs, etc.

I did get an opportunity to test out Vanguard last evening with my 14-year-old. It was a pretty straightforward Orcs vs. Humans affair with three objectives to control / fight over.

No full AAR, but a few pics.

I quickly noticed that my Troll was the fastest thing on the table and he bee-lined it towards the enemy!

Mister Troll gets jumped by a Halfling! Try as I might, I was unable to golf-ball the little runt off the battlefield!

A broad shot of the fight

The Halfling gets by with a little help from her friends. Mister T is taken down!

The offensive on my left is going well.

But as time ran out, the score was tied at six, each of us controlling an objective on the wing and neither of us ever able to gain control of the center point long enough to really claim it.

I like the game and it's passed my test. If you have a collection of fantasy minis and don't have a go-to game system, Kings of War Vanguard is worth a look. Although it does require some special "power dice" you could easily replicate their function with playing cards and about 2 minutes of effort.