Mortal Gods – Defenders of Plataiai
Now that the Thebans have been expanded for larger demo games as part of club presentations, it's the Plataians' turn today. These have now also reached their standard size of 300 points.
As before, the challenge was to design the two armies on an equal footing for demo games. While the Thebans had been given more of the same, I opted for a more defensive character for the Plataians due to their historical background.
The Plataians were enhanced with a hero and a few archers. The veteran archer was supposed to ensure that the Plataians could rather hold off, which underlined the overall concept.
Black Seas – Master & Commander Starter Set
Warlord Games is establishing itself as a major player in the world of naval wargaming. It started with Cruel Seas, which covers the coastal battles of World War II at a scale of 1:300, and has expanded to include the Age of Sail with Black Seas, which is also at a scale of 1:700 and accompanies Black Powder.
What better way to introduce someone to these new systems than with a proper starter set? They did just that with Strike Fast, Strike Hard! for Cruel Seas, and have now done the same with Master & Commander for Black Seas.
This box can be used as a two-player starter kit or as a large starter fleet for one player, as the ships are generic and can be used by any nation. The set includes the 96-page rulebook, nine vessels and lots of gaming material, which we will take a closer look at below. The Master & Commander starter set has an RRP of £59.
May 2025 review
Wow, okay, I felt like I just had written the April review and now I'm already writing the next recap.
Another busy but very entertaining month. In May we've been to CONflict Rhineland, and had a blast! I played multiple games, had fun in ancient greece as well as on the high seas, and of course with Deth Wizards.
It was great to see everybody again and it is sad, that it'll probably take at least until September for the next gaming meetup.
CONflict Rhineland 2025
We've been looking forward to this! CONflict Rheinland took place again last weekend, and we once again hosted our own table with Deth Wizards this time.
To put this event into context, CONflict used to be a public event with traders until 2019, but it switched to a closed format when it was relaunched in 2022, and we've been going ever since. We've had tables of our own for the last three years. So, we packed the car with some essentials and headed for Langenfeld, near Leverkusen.
The event runs from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, with some people only staying for Saturday. As we have shown you the car park so many times over the last few years, we skipped it this time. I know, I know — traditions with our event coverage — but unnecessary repetition is wasteful.
As everyday life caught up with some of the participants, there were some last-minute changes to the hosted games. But don't worry — the replacements and other options were colourful too.
Throwback – RPC 2011 Cologne Tabletop Demo Area
With the concept of the Role Play Convention returning in a re-boot as the Role Play Verse, it is a good opportunity to cover the Tabletop Demo Area of 2011 and 2012.
I went into detail about the beginnings of the T3G (TabletopTestGelände, German for Tabletop Demo Area) in the Throwback of the 2010 show, but to sum it up briefly, the Role Play Convention (RPC) was a show in Cologne (the first two years in Münster) covering various role playing contents, from video games, to LARP/cosplay and tabletop games (board, role playing and miniature based). In this wild mix, we had the great opportunity to introduce people to our hobby. We had a large area of 400m² / ~4,300 sqft area for our tabletop area and I coordinated various clubs, traders and manufacturers for the event.
Mortal Gods – Athenians
Athens. What do you immediately think of when you hear this name? The Parthenon? The goddess of wisdom and strategy from ancient greek mythology? Well, when you play Mortal Gods, you probably think of arrows. Many, many arrows…
Since I would like to use them, I treated myself with the additional card set of the Athenians from Footsore Miniatures and will take a closer look at it for you along the way.
The set is currently available for between €11 and €15, depending on the retailer, and comes with a booklet as well as the cards. The cards include the Athenian troop types, named heroes, new equipment cards and additional omen cards.
April 2025 review
In April happened a bit more than I anticipated. So let us do a recap.
I got lucky on one of my shopping trips and managed to get my hands on the 500E, which is quite sought after. This is not a treasure hunt and as I intend to repaint it for Gaslands, I don't mind the heavy glitter on this kit. I am just happy to have a more recent oldtimer for my German Gang in the game.
Right in the beginning of the month, we managed to squeeze in another event, that was not on our schedule at the start of the year. We did a family trip and went for Intermodellbau, the largest model building tradeshow. Our event coverage is split across two articles as we took a lot of pictures. Enjoy!
Mortal Gods – Army of Thebes
Who would have known? Originally I only wanted to paint a small group of Thebans for demo purposes, but after the “small” demo was so successful and a demo in full game size was also well received during my visit to the Rhein Main Tabletopclub e.V., I decided to bring both, the Thebans and the Plataians, to full size.
In fact, not much was missing from both armies, because I had already increased the size of both factions by another unit.
The former size of the army
The challenge was not only to make them visually fit into a theme, but also to make them fit into the game in such a way that they have their own character. In the case of the Thebans, a little more punch seemed like the right choice, so I added another troop of slingers, a veteran hoplite and a new model for the Lochagos. The original leader has moved into the role of a regular captain and, in the form of a Promachos, now represents the smaller of the two melee heroes.
Mortal Gods – More Games!
Originally, I had only written this article as a post on the hobby forum tabletopwelt.de, but Dennis thought it would be a good idea to show that we don't just write articles, but also actually play!
So please bear with me for the amateurish presentation, I will make the next summaries of the games a bit more interesting. My opponent was none other than Martin, whom I've known for over 20 years and our paths have crossed many times at the gaming table.
First game – Scenario „The Price“
I was once again a guest at the Rhein Main Tabletopclub e.V. in Nidderau and, as mentioned, played against Martin. He had so much fun with the extended demo last time that he bought the whole game in pieces and brought his recently painted Athenians to the table. Martin painted like a machine and I don't want to keep the snapshot of his Athenians from you, which he painted in less than a month:
Athenians…assemble!
Intermodellbau 2025 Part 1
Last week, from Thursday to Sunday, the Intermodellbau in Dortmund was held. The World's largest trade fair for model building & model sports.
The Intermodellbau is a show, that covers various aspects of the model building hobby, from RC cars to model trains, model kits build from paper, plastic or metal, in all different scales from z-scale to full-scale replicas. It is not a wargaming event but due to the proximity with building models and painting them, we want to give it a try and show you our event coverage on here.
The venue, the trade halls and Westfalenhalle (often used for concerts and other cultural events), are located next to the football stadium Westfalenstadion (home of Borussia Dortmund) and the ice sport centre, and sport a large area for parking as well a good connection towards the highway. The show itself spreads out across six of the eight halls of the venue.
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