Friday, 22 May 2015

Return to Infinity...and a dwarf

So for the last few weeks I've been concentrating on Guildball, but now I've pretty much finished all the models I have I've picked up a commission from the Ratboy himself - Stuart Cain. He's a pretty good painter, himself but with young kids, etc, he asked me to paint up his crew and here are the results:



Some of these I enjoyed doing but a number had been undercoated in black primer, which I'm not a fan of. Stu had a colour scheme in mind which limited the palette and then wanted an 'offworld jungle' effect for the bases. Hopefully I've acheived that. Anyway he seemed happy with the results.

What I don't like about the Infinity models is that they are a pain to put together. You don't get instructions and its a matter of matching the pictures to the pieces to decide where they go.

We'll be looking at version 3 of the rules later this year. I've got some of my one to complete to fill out my own faction.


And here's the dwarf:



I've got a number of these Westwind models that I picked up 2nd hand a few years ago. I do like the detail and its nice to mix it up a bit.

With no more large armies to work through I'm finding I can flit from one thing to another which keeps things interesting.

Tuesday, 5 May 2015

Guildball, an overview

So, I posted some pictures last week about a new game - Guildball.

I've now played a few games and demoed a few others and wanted to give my impression.

Guildball is a fantasy football games set in a medieval time period. Each team is associated with a guild, such as the Butchers, the Fishermen, the Morticians, etc.

Each team has a different flavour, and so far they all have their own distinct styles.

A team is made up of 6 players - a captain, a mascot and four other players. All are named and hold different positions, skill sets.

The aim of the game is to gain 12 victory points. You get 4 points for a goal and 2 points for taking out a player.

Each round all players get one activation and during that activation they can make one move and a number of actions based on the number of influence tokens they are assigned at the beginning of each round. These actions range from attacking an opposing player, kicking the ball to casting a spell.

As I said, you win by scoring goals and taking players out. Taking a player out is fairly straight forward. Keep hitting him until he falls over and won't get up again. Scoring a goal requires the other game resource - momentum. Momentum is generated by passing the ball and selecting certain results when attacking players and can be spent on a number of actions such as healing, removing some negative conditions, dodging and, importantly, taking a shot a goal. Momentum is also used to help determine who goes first each round and is reset to 0 at the end of each round. This makes scoring a goal a little more difficult than just activating the player with the ball and taking a shot. Something I forgot to do in the last game I played - Doh!


The above are the basics. We've found, after playing a single game, you grasp the flow of the gameplay and quickly learn the strengths of your team. The I go, you go mechanic forces you to plan the order of player activation and the synergy between players allows for powerful combinations to be set up.

Overall this is a great game. One that I see has a bright future and a clear view for expansion.

If you get a chance give it a go.