RFCM

Quote from: martin goddard on January 10, 2025, 08:23:43 PMAre they from the old renaissance range? What headgear do they have?
I vaguely remember them. There was a chap biting his thumb a  la Romeo and Juliet.

martin

They have almost Norman-style early medieval helmets. There's the Mooner, the guy doing the thumb-biting and a third "giving it the finger" (which is what made me expect to find them in the WotR range.

Can't see them anywhere on the site though

I've been looking, but I can't seem to find the near-legendary PP "men being rude" pack anymore?

Has it been censored 

This week the podcast that recently triggered a discussion on some forums about how much 15mm wargame figures should cost shamelessly gives PP an honourable mention during it's attempt to trigger another discussion about the wild inconsistencies of wargames "scales", this time as part of our new regular weekly (tongue firmly in cheek) feature "I'm Sorry, I  Think You're an Ar**" featuring a fully motivated Adam who approaches the delicate subject of "wargames figure scales" with much the same finesse as a WW2-vintage quad 20mm AA half track might bring to the art of making an omlette.

There is also a whole slew of actual proper wargaming podcast-type content, including a discussion about how to cheat when painting tartan, Danish infantry coat colours, whether hobbits featured in the ACW, as well as a first look at the new O Group rules, a quick flirt with how to make money selling rats on eBay, what basing might look like in ADLG v4, the merits of waterslide vs LBMS transfers, and a chat about how big Victrix horses (and specifically their ar**s) actually are.

Normal service is resumed too as we get onto the topic of identifying suspicious badgers when they are in ambush, in a section in which Adam uses his newfound knowledge of honey badgers to make his pitch to replace David Attenborough in the BBC presenter roster. We also discuss gearing up for competitions again, how to buy cycle wheels succesfully, whether "Tirpitzness" is best as an adjective or an adverb, and how to paint eyes on small scale figures.

The aftermath of ISITYAA this week rather leaves Andy's Quiz somewhat floundering as a quivering wreck on the floor, with Andy barely capable of coming up with a subject matter for this week's question. Instead he simply mutters the gnomic phrase "Words" before sloping off back into his techno dungeon in the heart of the French undergound Le Disco scene once again.

Podbean Link: https://madaxeman.podbean.com/e/episode-69-1614855787/

Or, search for the Madaxeman Podcast anywhere you normally get your podcasts from

Quote from: Leslie BT on December 10, 2020, 07:53:14 PM
So its that time of year again when WI will issue the results from its survey.

Who's getting the top kudos for the industry?

Some mathematical formula involving a combination of "which systems/figures are most popular/highly regared" + "which publisher/manufacturer has the most active social media presence and actually cares enough to try and leverage that to whip up votes"

Quote from: John Watson on December 09, 2020, 11:05:01 PM
Without wishing to comment on the whole price/quality thing I would point out that the prices Tim has quoted as most/least expensive are incorrect. My recent internet searches has shown that Eureka's AB range come out at 65p per figure and Warrior Miniatures are 21p a figure. Both are metal. 120 AB figures = £78. 120 Warrior = £25.20. Which figures you prefer is, of course, personal choice and there are some manufacturers and some ranges that I wouldn't use even if they were free.
John

I'd forgotten AB - but then again, they are a real outlier in price, and for us they only have limited 'ancients' ranges. Technically the most expensive figures are actually Lurkio's 4-packs. They normally sell in bigger packs, but do have some 4-packs available which come in at 75p each... even more amazing when you think the same figures in resin are 31p! 

Warrior - yeah - at one time they were Gallia I think, and were local to where I grew up. That's a cheap price for some long in the tooth models!

We (sort of) just did a podcast which touched on the slightly broader subject of "price vs quality" that migjht be of interest.

Martin I believe may already have listened to it, and has already commented on another forum (which shall not be named) ...

The core premise of the discussion was that for the rules we all play, a typical 15mm army comes in at 120-odd figures.

That means the price difference between buying an army of the most expensive figures on the market today (50p each = £60) vs the cheapest (31p each = £37.80) is a mere £22.80. 

For reference, the cheapest is the PSC army bags packs - so, to reference an earlier post in this thread, despite the hype the grab bags are  a very long way off being '1/3" of the price of even the most expensive metal figures, and some metals are pretty much the same price or even less if you pick them up in a sale.

Given figures are at the heart of everything we do as gamers – playing, painting, collecting – and we all keep our collections for years (decades even), we spend loads on paint, terrain, gaming mats (heck, even box sets of naval games from Warlord Games that we've still not assembled and which we all know that we'll be lucky to play even once) – in what part of our collective psyche does it make sense to spend ages calculating how to 'save' £22 on 120 figures we'll spend months painting and play with many times if that means we are compromising on "quality" by not just buying the figures we like the most? Why don't we instead spend the same time simply choosing the figures we like the best and then buying them, whether they are 31p, 40p or 50p a pop?

Podcast Link to Podbean , or search for "Madaxeman Podcast" using any of your usual podcast providers.

The "price vs quality" chat starts around 43:30 if you want to skip the rest. If not, there is also some painting, gaming and Gallic techno-driven military themed obscure general knowledge to fill your early December weekends and evenings as well as a quick diversion into airbrushing, a cough-assessment section (no, not like that..), a fairly comprehensive listing of those world museums displaying collections of "stand alone" military legs, many admissions of accidental purchasing, and a lengthy almost-feature on how to make an old rusty skip look like an old rusty skip using hairspray and fake rubble.

Quote from: GrahamC on September 03, 2020, 08:54:05 PM
Martin,
You have picked up that Salute is now 10th April, cutting it pretty fine with the decommissioning of the Nightingale
Let's see!

The Nightingale at ExCeL was decommissioned many, many months ago, and now only about 10% or less of the entire venue is being 'held' for the NHS as a storage facility for the beds and other medical equipment should they ever need to spin it up again at reasonably short notice.

Personally I still think April will prove to be too soon, on the basis that the restrictions against Trade Shows announced in October were due to be in place until at least April. All current experience suggests that any announcements about lifting restrictions are only being made at the last minute, and there are often extensions. That puts Salute! in a tricky position as they won't know if the show can go ahead (or not) until probably only a matter of days before its due to open... a scenario which makes taking bookings from traders very difficult, which in turn means getting punters to commit up front will also be very difficult.

It may come down to how / if the venue have rolled forward the 2020 booking to 2021, how they might treat a situation in which the show is legally able to open but that announcement comes too late to give Warlords time to organise and promote the event, and - possibly - whether Warlords are sensible and have built up a contingency fund sufficient to insulate them from the losses of a cancelled edition of the show.

Taking that all into account, and without even pretending I know anything at all about vacine roll-out schedules  (which I don't!), my bet would be it gets postponed to later in the year ... !

Friday & Saturday look do-able.   Bringing some PBI stuff to join in is a definate, and maybe also wheeling out some 10mm to try a refreshed BKC game at some point as well with my mate Adam (who's now local to Entoyment) sounds like a plan..  once the PBI schedule is naied down I can work around that I think.   

Quote from: Sean Clark on March 13, 2019, 06:02:10 PM
Can any one remember the Market Garden game put on by I think the Ponders End group using an older version of PBI. Martin took part I think. XXX corps being passed from table to table aiming to get the end table where Arnhem bridge was. I think there was a problem with the amount of terrain on each table.

Yep, I've done it as well on a couple of occasions https://www.madaxeman.com/10mm/arnhem.php being one.

The basic gist was:
- 3 or 4 tables, one is Arnhem with the bridge at one side of it, the others are the Road to Arnhem with a transverse road, usually a bank either side of it as the main bit of terrain and a river across it to make life interesting. 
- XXXCorps is a non-player character that moves along the central road each turn (with basic dice rolls) unless the Germans are within 1 square of their route. If the Germans are that close the tanks then come under the control of the Allied player on that table.
- The mission of the allies is to keep the Germans at least 1 square away from the road at all times so the tanks move forwards

- On the "Arnhem" table you have an initial 'assault" scenario with teh Paras going in, and then a series of German counterattacks with increasing quality of opposition.

- Over the course of 2-4 games the Paras simply still have to be alive and holding the bridgehead when XXX Corps makes it to them. This means that the first and second tables probably end up not being fought over in the 2nd and 3rd (or even 4th) round of games as XXX Corps is through them (ideally!) by then.

You could therefore do a 'lite' version with 3 tables and 6 players initially, reducing to 4 players in the 2nd and 3rd games.

I think I should be able to make this one ... Ive got both British and US infantry companies, and a load of Germans (a few platoons in zeltbahn) avaialable to join in with any games going on..

Indeed. I've never played it myself, but FoW did have a very intense competition scene, to the point at which (as an  outsider) I could imagine Battlefront thinking that they had "lost control" of the development of the game to a core of highly active competition players who were driving a lot of what went on. 

BFs answer appeared to be to crash the bus (I guess copying GW with their Sigmar reboot of the fantasy game) to shed all of the old players and redesign the game away from competitions - the timing seemed to coincide with a natural point in time when the competition circuit kinda ran out of steam with (re) playing the same armies and opponents under v3 of the rules, so they couldn't really go back but also didn't want go forward as the game design had evolved in a way they didn't like, possibly with the specific intention of not taking them forward with it..... !

Interesting stuff indeed - however I'm not sure I;d extrapolate the state of teh industry from one ebay auction... 

The price is probably more a reflection of my painting skills, a slightly unusual mix of vehicles in the bundle, the relatively unique PBI basing standard and (most importantly) what is almost certainly an over-saturated 15mm WW2 2nd hand market right now, with a flood of "I don't like FOW v4" stuff coming onto the market all at once and depressing prices as a result.

(10 years ago I funded a holiday in the states by speed-painting 15mm WW2 stuff and selling it on eBay, as the demand was huge at the time)

£87.

Less than the cost of lead, but about the same more than the cost of plastic figures I think - but for something I've not used in maybe a decade (https://www.madaxeman.com/reports/PBI_2009.php) I'm not too upset. .

Up to £51 now... starting to creep towards "almost-acceptable-price" territory (if I squint...)

Quote from: martin goddard on January 15, 2019, 12:58:11 PM
They seem far too cheap Tim!!

At the moment I tend to agree... I think the technical term is "priced for sale" 

Seriously though, it will be interesting to see where they end up - a lot of my competition-going mates who used to play FOW have all been scathing about the new v4 and have largely stopped playing, however local shops still seem to be carrying lots of their (sub par compared to PP of course...) product, so its hard to see if this edition has just shed the competition gamers or has hit the wider WW2 market as well.  Any thoughts from Piggy Towers? 

I of course have never deviated from the one true religion of PBI for my 15mm WW2 gaming, and do still have British, Germans, Americans and Belgians for PBI, so I'm hardly missing out by freeing up storage space by letting these guys go.