Warhammer Age of Sigmar Skirmish
Almost a year ago, in June 2017, Games Workshop has released an expansion for skirmish games, a band-oriented approach to playing Age of Sigmar, with just a handful of models. This scaling preserves the simplicity of Age of Sigmar's original framework and breaks the games playtime down to 30 to 60 minutes.
What is it about?
The rules of AoS Skirmish aim at building small, thematic warbands. Choosing your warband is limited only within the grand alliance, not within a specific battletome. The size of the warbands is estimated throughout a points value called "renown" and is usually between 25 and 100 renown large. From there on, the game takes on a size that is already sufficient for regular Age of Sigmar games. The gangs clash in different scenarios, half of which are designed for a balanced game, while the other half contains a certain imbalance. All six scenarios can be played as a linked sequential campaign.
Bolt Action German Infantry (Winter)
After starting the themed week with the supplement The Road to Berlin itself, and covering several tanks as well, it is time to review the matching infantry kit of the Germans in winter gear. Last year, along with the The Battle of the Bulge, Warlord Games supplied the Germans with an extensive range of winter troops made from metal. Around the end of April, for the Salute, a new plastic kit for the "Winter Germans" was introduced, to cover the fights on both, Western and Eastern front during the winter.
This box contains 30 miniatures in 28mm scale made from hard plastic. The price is set at 26 GBP. As you can see from the classification on the cover, these can be used for early, mid and late war settings.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar Malign Sorcery
With the second edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar the magic "came back" to Warhammer. With Malign Sorcery Games Workshop released the first full magic supplement for Age of Sigmar and the latest since the 4th/5th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Let me show you the contents of this box in this unboxing review.
Malign Sorcery was released along the Soul Wars and is 60 EUR. The box is rather huge, as you can see from the comparison to a Primaris Space Marine. Inside the huge card board box is a sealed bag, which contains the sprues, the rule set for Malign Sorcery, the assembly instructions and the magic cards.
Bolt Action King Tiger with Zimmerit plastic kit
The King Tiger is in a couple of variants available at Warlord Games, with the plastic kit in cooperation with Italeri being the youngest incarnation of the German heavy battle tank.
The King Tiger, or sometimes called Royal Tiger, has the internal designation of Sd.Kfz. 182 or Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf. B Tiger II. Ausführung B and Tiger II showing it as a derivate of the Tiger I tank, but improved with sloped armour that made more use of the thick armour plates of the Tiger tanks. After initial problems with the reliability, it proved to be a remarkable battle tank towards the very last month of the war. The Tiger II was the pinnacle of the heavy tank series that actually got into production, unlike the Panzer VII Löwe or Panzer VIII Maus that never really left the drawing board (or in case of the Maus just had some mock-ups or prototypes).
Bolt Action IS-2 Heavy Tank
The heaviest plastic tank kit Warlord Games offers for the soviet forces is the IS-2 heavy tank - a perfect match for the Bolt Action campaign supplement The Road to Berlin and worthy enemy for the King Tiger. Time to honour it with a review on its own.
The IS-2 (Iosef Stalin, in Wnglisch often called JS-2 for Joseph Stalin) was the successor of the IS series heavy tank and counts as one of the most powerful tanks of World War 2. It was developed to withstand the German 8,8 cm guns and to counter Tiger and Panther tanks with the 122mm gun. It went into service in April 1944 and was used in the final offensive of the Red Army towards Berlin. Of the IS-2 were 3.850 units built between 1943 and 45, making it the most numerous tank of the IS series and triple the number of produced Tiger I. Besides being field by the Red Army / soviet forces, the IS-2 was part of the Polish and Czechoslovakian tank forces towards the end of the war. To the end of the war, the IS-3 was introduced as a derivative of the IS-2. IS-2s often would carry soviet soldiers into battle, offering valuable protection from enemy infantry. Warlord pays respect to this and adds a sprue of plastic infantry to this kit.
Bolt Action King Tiger with Henschel Turret
Another iconic tank from the late war period is the PzKpfw VI Tiger II, in this review we're looking at the resin kit by Warlord Games picturing the Ausf. B without Zimmerit and a Henschel turret.
The Tiger II, also known as King Tiger or Royal Tiger, was the derivate of the Tiger I, and combined the thick armour of the predecessor and the sloped armour of the Panther medium tank. The pattern was the pinnacle of German tank development and production, and after initial problems with reliability it proved to be a remarkable battle tank. The Tiger II first saw service in summer of 1944, at the Invasion of Normandy by the Allies, and was issued to the Wehrmacht as well as to the Waffen-SS heavy tank battalions. A total number of just below 500 units was produced until March '45, of these the first 50 were issued with the Porsche turret due to bottlenecks in production of the Henschel turret. In the first months of the productions, both variants of the Tiger (I and II) were build simultaneously.
Bolt Action Campaign The Road to Berlin
With the Ostfront supplement for Bolt Action, the campaign covered the "entire" activities that involved the Russian armies, beginning with the Winter war and Khalkin Gol. But this new supplement, Campaign The Road to Berlin, covers the very last years, from June 1944 until the crossing of the Spree.
Warlord Games goes into the detail on these years of the late war. Very much into detail indeed, with 148 pages this campaign supplement is the biggest so far. Campaign New Guinea is a couple of pages short with 132 pages, followed by Battle of the Bulge and Duel in the Sun both with 124 pages. So you get quite the bang for your 19.99 GBP or 30 USD. Shown above as first images of this review are the two covers, with the final cover (left) and the early cover (right), presented by Osprey in one of their product catalogues. This happens quite often, to promote an upcoming book, before the final decision on the artwork is done. We have already seen this with Duel in the Sun and Campaign New Guinea.
A Warhammer store on my doorstep
Earlier this year I saw an unexpected advertisment by Warhammer Recruiting on my facebook feed. They are looking for a Store Manager in Koblenz. Wait a minute? Koblenz? That's my (former) home town. That would mean ... that can't be ... a "real" Warhammer Store right on my doorstep?
I've lived in Koblenz, the beautiful city at Rhine and Mosel, for 7 years and if you would have told me, we would get a Games Workshop store in our city, I'd laughed and said no way. But on August 4th Warhammer Koblenz will open up. A bit strange feeling for me, the last time I've been to a Games Workshop Store Opening was almost 20 years ago. That was the Games Workshop in Darmstadt on June 26th 1999! I was there with my oldest friend, with whom I started wargaming back in the day.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar Shattered Dominion Objectives
Usually Christmas or the turn of the year is the time for terrain with Games Workshop. But with the new Age of Sigmar edition just released there is a new set of objective markers available, the Shattered Dominion Objectives.
Of the new terrain sets, many have their own rules of how they affect the game play and benefit a certain faction (you remember the Shipwreck I covered earlier on this blog). Yes, this is technically terrain, but not really, they have names but no special rules (but hey, nobody is forcing you to not use your own house rules to change that). I am really interested in this - as it is a fantasy set - that will make good use with a broad variety of fantasy rules. So let's see in this review what is in the box.
Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire – Ironskull’s Boyz
Where there is chaos and destruction, Orruks cannot be far away. Somewhat close to the Khorne Bloodbound warbands (Reavers and Fiends) in their intention / motivation, we see what separates the Green from the Red, in this review on the Shadespire warband of Ironskull's Boyz.
Earlier this week, I started the coverage on the Shadespire warbands with the Sepulchral Guard.
Ironskull's Boyz is a 4 Orruk strong warband expansion for Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire and costs 22.50 EUR. It comes with the pre-coloured two sprues (in matching orcish green!), a card deck and brief instructions on the assembly.
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