June 2025 review
Half time for 2025! And it is time for a recap of June.
Even with the few holidays and bridging days, it was quite busy. Especially in combination with heat since the mid of the month. My son and I did a trip to the Limes Fortlet and Watchtower in Pohl. You can find the visit on the blog, and it will certainly not be the last trip report you'll see here this year. Looking forward with the kids getting older, to check out some sights like Teutoburger Wald, Niederwalddenkmal and Völkerschlachtdenkmal.
One activity was clearing out my studio. Sorting items and projects that I no longer follow and mostly reducing my terrain collection. Among those items for example is the Pegasus Hobbies Gothic City, of which I have five sets here. I'll publish a trade post on here, with various bundles and lots, as I want to free up space.
Limes fortlet and watch tower Pohl
Last weekend, we took a short trip to the Taunus mountains in glorious weather to visit Pohl and the Limeskastell. This is a replica of a Roman wooden fort with a watchtower, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site for 20 years.
Here, the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes (ORL) around 100 AD is recreated on the border with the Germanic tribal areas. The site was built in 2011 according to the latest research and is located near the site of a small fort.
The fort is open during the main season (March to October) from Friday to Sunday, usually from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Please check before your visit to see if there are any special closing days or other events taking place there. Admission is €5 for adults/young people and €2.50 for children aged 7 to 14. Younger children are admitted free of charge.
Parking is available directly at the fort, which is located on the B260 between Nassau and Naststätten. We encountered a colourful mix of visitors, and the taverna, which offers reasonably priced drinks and food (including hot meals and cakes), makes it a great place to stop off as part of a day trip.
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.
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