Weekender: Marvelous Mechanical Dice Towers & Own The Biggest Miniature In The World!
July 29, 2017 by lancorz
Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly dosage of expertly medicated Tabletop News and what we've been up to this week at Beasts of War. Are you settled? Lets get stuck in!
Weekender Podcast Episode
Prize Winners Announced
During Infinity week we had a few prizes to give away, those include the Operation Ice Storm Two Player Starter Set & N3 Rulebook Set, which goes out to Haleysredcomet from BoW. An operation Red Veil Two Player starter Set & N3 Rulebook Set to Adam OPin from Youtube. Plus three copies of the Human Sphere N3 Rulebook Sets which go out to Michael Matthews from Youtube, Fred David from Facebook and Superfurrymaniac from BoW.
Congratulations to you guys, make sure to claim your prize here.
An Update To Rorke's Drift
Gerry has joined us in the studio this week to provide some historical accuracy since Ben's left us to our own devices. Although that's not the only thing Gerry's been working on, he's been tinkering away at an update to an old Rorke's Drift game that Justin, and Lloyd were also involved in. Cleaning up some rules, reducing British fire and improving Zulu's is only a small portion of what's to come.
In The News
- Battleboards show off some fantastic Orc goodness in the form of custom created terrain, if you have some expendable income and fancy owning some prestine boards, these guys are the company for you!
- Victoria Miniatures create new Fury Matilda Tanks, who would have thought adding some Sci Fi weapons to a tank would make it perfectly suitable for 40k?
- Steamforged tag along the heated Smithing faction for Guild Ball.
- Hobby Hoard introduce a Monthly subscription service for painting and updating your hobby time.
Terrain Made For Dice
We have had some amazing deliveries land in our doorstep a few weeks ago, these are the new Mechanical and portable Dice Towers from Black Thumb Creations. These inventive little dice towers are perfect for maintaining those rogue dice that like to roam the tabletop, plus with pull down levers and internal cogs, what's not to love about introducing something that's not completely stationary to your terrain and scenery.
What's New In Kickstarter?
Hand of Glory: Modular Magnetic Gaming Miniatures rise to the top of our lists quickly with their custom miniatures with magnetic hands and arms. These custom designs are perfect for those gamers who love to delve deep into the dungeons and avoid fights but aim for the loot instead!
Dead Days: A Cooperative Zombie Survival Game, 99% of the world's population has fallen to a virus turning everyone into the undead flesh eating vermin. You play as the 1% who are immune to the virus and your sole obective? Survive...
Own the Biggest Miniature in the World!
Lastly in this show we have Dave from Hawk Wargames in the studio to discuss some updates and things happening in the world of Dropzone Commander, Dropfleet Commander, Gen Con 2017 and your chance to get your hands on the epic masterpiece that has been shown off at many events in the past... That's right, they're auctioning off the 3 Meter long Avenger!
Have a great Weekend Beasts!
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Goooood morning All, have a great weekend.
Why resultion only 360, am i that early ??
Even weirder – getting format not supported on my usua! tablet for embedded video on this page (HTML5) – no probs through YouTube app. Someone want to check the tags?
LotR:FotR released 2001… 2001!! Production started a few years before. They always knew they were going to have this challenging mix of CGI (for mas battle etc) and cool props, scale scenery.
Say what you will about some of the scripting and acting, but technically it was a game changer and deserved all the accolades.
that’s the only format they can show my face in, any higher res and people would run screaming.
I think it screwed upbecause you said that Man who might be King was a 28mm game.
* Shakes head in disappointment*
that makes sense mea culpa
I’d make an offer on the avenger, but I think the missus would have a problem with a 10 foot long “miniature” in the living room lol.
No kidding. Mine is very patient and supportive if the hobby, but that would be pushing it.
TGIW…Thank God its the Weekender
It’s the Weekend! I really must find hobby time!
The Avenger’s made of resin? Don’t let Warren near it – you know he’ll only drop it!
Warren looking at that thing is so disturbing ha ha ha
Guys video saying it won’t play but all your others do. Has it been loaded differently?
ok i really really love the rules for that miniature
I’m getting browser does not recognise any of the video formats
On Chrome
I suspect this is a bug maybe out of our control. Any ideas @nakchak?
Works on Puffin though
He is enormous.
Can still play last Weekender so just this week’s has an issue. Watched on YouTube
I’m getting”Your browser does not currently recognise any of the video formats available” message here and on YouTube on my mobile on Chrome as well. Going to try my laptop.
That ship looks wicked
Plays OK on Windows laptop through Chrome here and on YouTube but only at 360p.
My browser doesn’t recognise the video format. Fun times.
Too bad the Avenger is UCM – Had it been PHR. ..
Here’s to a great weekend everyone.
Fantastic show. The Avenger is just massive and the rules, so much fun. But what really caught my eye this time was the dice towers. Here I’d promised myself not to spend any more money, after dropping in heavy on the Carnevale kickstarter. And then this comes along!!! I need to find some stuff I can sell…do I really need 6 dining chairs? And who needs a couch anyway…
maybe some cushions and you could sit on the Avenger
Whoever has seen the Avenger will now be looking into remortgaging their homes..
I hope Dave will get what he has in mind for it as it will be absolutely worth it and still a bargain.
This must be one of the most awesome models on the planet.
I’m continually impressed with the ingenuity of MDF kits, but the dice towers are another level entirely. I am utterly amazed at these.
now if I can find one that negates my bad luck
That would really take some ingenuity.
The five towers are a nice construction. I don’t like dice towers being used in a game as the slow everything down sound awful but the design of these in themselves are nice though would never use one
*dice not five towers
Hi everyone, currently the Weekender is only available at 360p. Looks like YouTube has had a video processing problem with this video last night. At the moment we are working to replace it with a new upload but we have a few hoops to jump through to make this happen and it’s going to take a few hours to complete with a video of this size.
On the Avanger, it was definitely the star of the UK Games Expo for me. It’s astonishing in the flesh (the resin? the foamcore?).
I love that they’ve done rules to include it in a game of Dropzone. Goodonyer Hawk Wargames. Goodonyer!
Great show guys.
I think @avernos touched on a great strength of Historical gaming. You have your minis for Zulu (Rorkes Drift) and haven’t really been hooked by Zulu Dawn but if you do get the urge to play it in the future you can just put your stuff down and play. Maybe you need to pick up some Lancers and a few cannon but your core stuff is done and that’s the stuff that can really derail a project when you look at the hordes of sprues.
If you want to play Black Powder, Sharp Practice or any other game from the period you can, even if it’s a basing issue you can just pick up some movement trays. As much as I like 40K your only real options are Shadow War or 40K and that can get repetitive.
The list of games you can play with WW2 Germans or Ancient Celts is almost endless and if you’re a butterfly that loves a genre it makes it very easy.
I’m a massive fan of various games and genres and this hits the nail on the head, I hoard rule sets like a dragon hoards gold.
Being able to grab a german FoW army from Battlefront and play FoW, or Battlegroup or Panzer Grenadier Deluxe, where each set offers unique game play and changes the experience is key.
Or even picking up a Durnford model based on Burt Lancaster and thinking “actually maybe Isandlwana isn’t that bad after all.
I will say though that you’re wrong about 40K, there are a host of sci-fi games out there as well that you can recycle your GW minis into, Osprey’s rogue stars and GZG’s Star Grunts come to mind and I know there are others.
Stargrunt is an excellent game. We even played about with Crossfire ( great WW2 game) and used it for sci-fi using some very old 40k models
I like the look of the Hand of glory Kickstarter. I plan on doing this when I receive my Kingdom Death Monster pledge.
Dave is building drop fleet fleet in drop zone scale as balloons, fill with helium to have at shows 🙂
On you tube, the stream is is back at 1080 p , Great job guys, I can finaly watch the rest in 1080,
Working on the site down now as well
Uh . . . @avernos . . . what’s that I see at 32:25? 😀 😀 😀 😀
Seriously, though, great show. I can’t wait to see how Rourke’s Drift v2.0 comes out. 😀 The Zulu wave mechanic seems like a great way to replicate the sheer mass of Zulu warriors without crushing out 4100+ miniatures. 😀 Also, replicates the tactical “Achilles’ heel” of really large armies like this . . . No matter how many men you have, you can only send in so many at a time.
do you mean my disbelief at being labelled an expert? 😉
depending on time and how things pan out we may try to do a quick Vlog of the game, if it doesn’t work out then the idea is to possible do a lets play on it instead. Time will tell.
I’ll be looking out for it. The figures and terrain look amazing! 😀
I was trying to find it online but I’m sure the descendants of Hook were going to sue Stanley Baker and the studio for the portrayal of him in the film
As he was a preacher and awarded good conduct pay just before the battle
I don’t know if they were going to sue, but I do know they didn’t like the portrayal of him, free Presbyterian and teetotal so the persona onscreen bore little resemblance but it did give the audience someone to relate to. Such is holywood I suppose
I wanna see @warzan‘s monkey! 😉
Fun show guys! And a great interview with Dave at the end there. Exciting times for Dropzone Commander!
Justin will be at Gencon? I will find you and I will hug you!
Dont just hug him – make sure you lick his baldyhead.. he likes that 😉
If you want a good read about the whole Zulu war get’ The washing of the Spears’ by Donald R Morris. It covers everything including islandhwana and Rorkes drift a great source of info.
Also Hooks relatives were upset about him being portrayed as a drunk malingerer when in fact he was not in the hospital as a patient but as a cook/ guard of the 30 patients during the action.
His daughters walked out of the premiere when shown as they were unhappy about the way he was portrayed.
OMG that ship is awesome, looks like im going to Vegas to win some money!
happy weekend!
Lol, that new segment of ” @warzan meets dice towers ” was really fun 😉
a fantastic show guys love the dice towers & good luck to the person that may win the Avenger.
I think the Hand of Glory KS looks really cool – even if I am one of those strange RPG players that doesn’t use minis :). Depending on the options, I could see this kind of thing being very helpful for my AoW minis.
More Rorke’s drift please right up my street!!
it may be coming up as a Vlog in the not to distant future, “fingers crossed”
@avernos – I meant to ask earlier . . . just asking here . . . if I remember from the movie, there was a semi-intentional cattle stampede set loose that helped run over a big part of an attacking Zulu contingent. Just wondering if you have any 28mm cattle on the table or if there’s a mechanic for this episode to unfold from the movie / battle.
we have had cattle in the past, although not today as they appeared to have wondered off. But as yet no stampede rules, something to think about in the future though
I only mention it, @avernos , because after this Weekender I found myself “inspired” to watch the movie again on Sunday – while painting a box’s worth of American Iroquois Confederacy natives. Seemed vaguely appropriate.
One last thing I meant to ask – did you make those playing card sheets for the different characters as well? 😀
Alas I am not that clever, one of the club members knocked them up to my specifications and then went over the top with the framed pictures and backgrounds. Tony really elevated the look of it all.
@avernos The Rorke’s Drift game looks fantastic. This is something I have always wanted to play. I have a couple of Qs for Gerry if he doesn’t mind. I really can’t see me getting this done in 28mm in any reasonable time frame, plus the cost and effort vs the number of times the minis will get used really makes it a tough choice in 28mm. Therefore, do you think TMWWBK rules would convert down to 6mm? Also, do you think it would work as well with Black Powder (have you used these)? Thanks
I never mind answering my fans 😉 TMWWBK will easily reduce down to 6mm, you may want to convert the range down to cm from inches. Although to be perfectly honest the ground scale would be more accurate in 6mm than it is in 28mm.
For basing you just have to work out a way you’re happy to represent the forces. the unit sizes are quite small for the British and while the Zulus have large numbers the actual units are less than double the British sizes.
I have Black powder and I know they do a Zulu War book, to be honest I never even picked it up. Black Powder works really well in replicating Isandlwana but the type of fight I wanted for Rorke’s Drift just doesn’t suit the mechanics as far as I was concerned. But I would like to make it clear that I was attempting to recreate the action via the film, and secondly it was designed as a convention game which I could run for people who have no knowledge of the system without bogging them down.
For the price I would definitely recommend picking up TMWWBKs. If you already have BP and are familar and happy with the system you may want to just stick with that.
@lloyd and @dignity did some filming while we played, so it may be popping up on the site, any questions I’m more than happy to answer.
Oh I am a fan?! Right, well I expect a signed photo in the post forthwith! :p
I agree with your comments on BP. It would not have the same feel as this action requires. Given the very rigid scenario and the fact it wont be played very regularly, the easy rules for multiple players makes a lot of sense. Later on, it will be easy to expand the armies to Isandlwanda or other battles.
I was also taken by your idea of naming all the British soldiers and found the roll online. In 6mm the number is easily achieved but actually marking them will be a challenge! :p
Fantastic Show, loved that Dave has written some truly classic rules for his big baby and had such fun with it. Amazing and wish it all the best in its new home!
Really curious to see where the Avenger will end up. I hope the new owner will do a Let’s Play video once they’ve got it set up. And if they can’t do it themselves, maybe BoW can help them.