FoG 15mm first steps = Peoni Civil Unrest

Evening all, I hope this post finds you well.

Since FoG is the main motivating factor for this blog I figured it would be a good place to start, so here we go. Recently I joined the Field of Glory Forums, my handle is JackfromVancouver, and set about trying to find a game. One of the things that I did was start a poll to see which scale was more popular (first in my area then later worldwide) thinking that even though I want to build armies in both (and have some 28mm models) I should likely lean on the more popular one first, as it offers a higher chance of getting a game in sooner. After a while it became abundantly clear that 15mm is more popular, so I started looking at manufacturers, at which point I fell in love with Old Glory 15s. I like their uniformity of scale, their good balance of fine and blunt detail, and most of all their excellent pricing.

So I called all the hobby shops in my area, and found out that Imperial Hobbies on number 3 road in Richmond carried them. This isn't a huge shock, I have been a customer of Imperial since grade 4 (30 in two months if your wondering), and their selection is just mindblowing. Not even taking into account their gaming section its an awesome comic shop. So I wandered on down with two ideas in my mind......

Fluff is a term that is tossed around in 40k circles of the sense of interest in the story of one particular army, often this is a primary motivation in army selection. Not really sure whether or not this term even applies in the realm of FoG, but since this blog will deal with both FoG and 40k and I am not mood to resort to Jargonism, it will do for now.

There are a few armies in this ruleset that really catch my eye; Principate Roman, Syracusan, Huns, Pictish, Caledonian and Norse among them. But the lead goes to a neck and neck tie between Marian Roman Legions and Carthage. So my intent was to head on down to Imperial and grab a bag or two of whichever was better represented in their stock, some magnetic bases and then start stumbling through this game on my own. Oddly enough there wasn't a late Republican bronze helmet anywhere in the head count but their was a bucket of Carthaginians, so I picked up a bag of their Command and a bag of African Spearmen and enough magnetic bases to field them.

I had initially budgeted more for this and expected the bags to contain the same quanities as Old Glory has on their online store, however the bags where double the amount (or more) and the bases came in packs of 5 for less than a dollar. I was shocked, for 40 or 42 odd bucks I got 2 battlegroups of 6 bases, 4 complete Command bases (with a mounted officer and a complete infantry command a piece), and enough NCOs, Hornblowers and Standard bearers to make 4 infantry command upgrades. Taking into account the extra two spearmen I got in that bag, and making 4 man Heavy Foot bases with 2 of the infantry command squads, and I think I can make one BG 6 bases and another 8 !!!! My math might be wrong on this however as I couldn't sleep and decided to blog with the time. My math being rather suspect at the best of times.

Seriously for someone that has been wargaming for as long as I have, the sheer value of this purchase staggered me. I could have bought more, but its Christmas and that would have felt like selling out my nephew. That money is going to a certain 8 month old kids drumset, eat that older sister.

Took me a couple days to get my hands on them due to general adult life busyness (why can't I just play with my toys?) but tonight I got in there a bit. I started shaving and filling the flash and mold lines, but my lighting was bad and I wasn't sure that I was seeing it all, there seemed to be so little. This would be awesome if true but I am going to wait until daylight to see for sure, and pull a nice lamp out of the bedroom to set up for this weekends modelling mission. Once they are cleaned up I intend to paint them with my Citidel paints and inks, base them on the magnets and then ponder flocking in this scale. But their is a couple sweet hockey games on tomorrow night, made a chili tonight (with ground beef, bacon and steak. Yup, really all 3), and have a buddy coming over to eat it and watch with me, so we will see how far I can get into that. I am worrying that my usual fine sand flocking technique might result in over sized granuales, but we will capture that bridge once our feet reach it.

Not wanting to waste my motivation I promptly mack-tacked them to the bases and started to initiate some form of Poeni Civil unrest. Yes playing alone is lame, and my cat was laughing the whole time but I honestly haven't gamed in either FoG or 40k in over a year, and my FoG experiences solely consisted of me and a buddy pushing pieces of paper around over beers. I seem to have gotten the Close Combat mechanics down, and am stumbling through the finer points of movement, but definately have a long way to go before I decide to make my ignorance public and hunt down a game.

Just made me want to play it even more though.....