Shed Gaming aka Wargaming in the shed: 12/01/2015

We're back...well sort off... and Oh, there was also Phalanx

Hi All
It has been a while but I am almost back up and running. I have spent several months sorting and selling Stevens' stuff and slowly selling it off, but I still have a very untidy shed 1/3rd full of his stuff. So more sorting to do.

In the mean time I have steadily been acquiring new things which I will show off below and there is also a show report below.

Firstly to some new purchases, besides the numerous Star Trek Attack Wing ships which are steadily increasing in numbers (A later report to follow) I have been acquiring rules to play with some of the minis Stephen left me. So after a hunt round I purchased several of the USE ME rules. This small but neat rules are on the surface very very simple. They come in a A6 size booklet which is quite handy to throw into your army boxes or a pocket. Although if you are like me slightly older or have eye sight trouble you may want to purchase the PDF version and print it out in A4 so it will be easier to read.
If you search the internet you will find plenty of in-depth reviews of these rules so I will not at this moment go into them to deeply. Basically they are a Elan Rating system or Initiative rating, the highest rated unit goes first followed then by the next highest and carries on until all units have moved. Each Unit or Character have Two actions per activation and can perform various tasks from Move to Hunkering down. The Rules are D6 based and it becomes apparent that they are very limited in what the rules can do, although how complicated do you want a set of fast play rules? Even though these rules are simple and fast to play in some respects they are TOO simple. In that they do not cover all situations, and sometimes the rules fall down, but you can simply make some house rules amendments to fix that.


5 of the different USE ME rules I purchased.

The USE ME rules cover virtually every genre of Gaming: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Star ships, WW2, Modern, Zombie, Post Nuclear and even Wild West, but I may have missed the odd one.
Each set of USE ME rules in the main are the same and only slightly differ from book to book depending on the genre. These differences are mainly the Army lists which are basic, no fancy stuff here, and the special actions/skills that can be allocated to a character or unit. Vehicles are also covered and can be killed by almost anything on the table. You can have from simple transports to super heavy armoured beasts, all have their weaknesses.
Personally I think the rules should be one Book covering all the different genres with a comprehensive list of special skills and army lists. Especially in PDF format this would be great.
I know this would increase the cost of these rules but they are individually quite inexpensive to purchase. They are well worth checking out. More at a later date.

The Next new purchase I have made is the Battlegroup Blitzkrieg supplement which I love. I do like these publications and will in the near future start playing some games. The only issue I have is the infantry units and the sort of games I seem to play may more suit TFL Chain of Command rules as the army lists are very very similar. Again more on this at a later date.


Battlegroup Blitzkrieg and some Polish yet to painted and converted for use with the rules.

Now on to PHALANX 2015 which was held at the Leeds Armouries, in, well, Leeds of all places. The real upside to this event was the bonus of being able to look around Leeds Armouries, although the venue is now not in the museum but in the exhibition hall opposite. Although the museum is free to enter and the show was cheap enough the Parking is, well a bit steep.

I found as usual that the event was lacking the atmosphere of old. There was no general hum to the place that you usually got at the shows in the 1990's, no sweaty person to push past, no nothing like the old days.
What we did notice was that you could easily browse a stall without someone crowding you or even shoving you aside. Most of the stall holders were even happy to be engaged in conversation and were very happy to talk at length about products, maybe this was an actual sigh to how busy the show was.

I have also notice the decline of manufacturers attending shows and a lot of same products stocked by multiple stalls. This lack of traders may well be down to shows being more one day events and that the internet has provided a revenue of income missing from the 1990's. And they say that it is getting too costly to attend shows for the amount of money that they make. These excuses to me makes very little sense as the idea of a show is, well yes to make money whilst there but also to showcase your products. I like to see what I am buying not guess from a website without pictures. I also like to see stuff that inspires me and sometimes that impulse purchase paves the way to further purchases.
Any how I digress, on with the show.

My show purchases were well down on what used to be and to be honest nothing grabbed my attention. Pendraken seems to draw me towards there stand at every show yet I have not had any need to buy something, may be another time? I ended up spending very little and I had only purchased 2 booklets which contained colour plates on the Saxony army from the Napoleonic war.
We then had a food break, and was stitched up on the cost of the grub that was only eaten because we were hungry. And I then ventured back in to the hall for a one last quick look round and ended up buying the re-released Stephen Jackson game, Car Wars. Now I need some one to play this with.

Phalanx purchases.

The display games were interesting and there were some unique games on display, again the participants of these games were happy to talk to you. Now for the Pictures.

Battle of Kursk

This game looked impressive due to its great terrain, although it also mad the game look too busy and you could not easily make out what was going on.