Finally it happened, I finally managed to find some time and a place to put my gameboard and place all the units on it.

Well you know how these things go, you get this game and are keen to give it a go, but suddenly everybody seems to need you. Suddenly all sorts of things have to be done and when you think you have some time, something new and unexpected needs your attention.

But today I finally found a quiet corner and put my stuff on the board. So now I can try and learn the game when I find a quiet moment.

Quite an impressive number of figures I must say. When you put them all on there the board is full and leaves little room for movement. And here I was allready planning to buy, almost, every expansion. But now I'm not so sure, as (as said) the board is allready full with what I've got. Am I right in assuming that you only use a limited number, wich are named in scenarioes, and you'll never ever use it all? Somehow that sounds a bit disappointing. But than again with this games system, where you have to conquer a number of banners, it's likely the game is over before you've even mover every units.

Also. looking at the armies, I've discovered one thing I don't like about the miniatures wich is the difference in scale.

No I'm not bother by enormous creatures, I think it is fully acceptable they are larger than human figures. But I do find it a bit annoying that the red sword and archer units are so muc larger then the other sword units. Oh sorry I'm talking about them ugly critters, what are they orcs? It jus doesn't seem right, it looks akward to me. Surely it can't have been so much trouble to get them in the same scale. Afterall the did manage to get all the mounted unit on the same scale.

Same thing with the human, the archers and red sword units are much larger than the other troops. Oh wait, can it be that they did this on purpose to indicate these units are stronger? Still I don't like it, to me it looks akward.

No such problems with the dwarfs, they all are the same size, so there goes my theory about the red swordsmen out of the window. Allthough ofcourse it than again collides with my sens for scale that the dwarves are actually the largest footsoldier figures on the field. Now I don't know why but for some reason I had expected dwarves to be small.

If anyone can explain the logic of the different scales, please do, I'm allways eager to learn.

The Goblinoids (the ones on green bases) are actually supposed to be different sizes, believe it or not. The blue and green banner swordsmen are Goblins , where the Archers, red swordsmen, and lizard riders are Hobgoblins ; their bigger cousins.

I don't really notice the bit of scale issue between the humans, and I'm an avid wargamer. In this scale, it just doesn't seem to be an issue with me.

Thanks.

Yeah I know I'm probably being to difficult again. I suffer from a disturbing eye for detail (allthough I still can't find where I put things) and such little things can at times annoy me.

As for the units filling the board, are there actually scenarioes for wich we can use everything? I could imagine even an epic map being to small if you use all the expansions.

Truth be told I was rather keen on buying everything, but if I won't be using most stuff I buy extra, unless mentioned, it sort of seems a bit pointless to me, or am I see-ing this whole wrong?

In my box there are also a number of spare banners. I reckon this is nice in case you breaks something, but is there a logical reason why one army would have more banners than the other?

sagitar said:

For European orders, these banners were supposed to be random. In North American orders, there was a set number of them. Why they choose which ones, I do not know. Perhaps they though that made an interesting mix or would cover some future scenarios they had planned.

It seemd to me, however, that the Call to Arms distribution complimented the base game and whatever we were "short" in the base box appeared in the CtA package. That way we should have a mirror image for each side. I never actually looked into this though but those were my intiial impressions.

I also noticed this... however, it isn't really noticable when playing (except the dwarves!). Painting the smaller minatures in more vivid colours helps them look larger as well. Finally, I submit that if the dwarves were to scale they would be this tall ___ and therefore extremely fiddly.

Yeah not very locical.

There's 10 banners for one army and only 5 for the other. So this is just extra, like the 2 ugly little sword waving critters (goblins?) I found in the box. Two don't make a unit, but wo knows, I may find too many in an expansion some day.

Indeed I too could only explain this as maybe you needed them in some scenarios, where mabye some units needed up or down grading by use of banners.

You're right Zurgling, about them dwarfs needing to be microscopic and it just doesn't really bother me. It was just an observation.

I'm more 'disturbed' by creatures of the same race, being of different sizes. I'll try your painting advise, if I ever get lucky and find all I'll need for that.

sagitar said:

With my second game, I got another 2 figures and was able to make a full unit!

The two extra Goblin figures will come in handy, just like I found out in my set. If / when you get one of the Gobbo expansions, they both come with Drummers you can imbed in a Goblin unit to make them Bold. They replace a figure other than the Standard Bearer.

So by embedding two of the three Drummers, you will have two extra Goblin figures to add to the ones you already have to make a full unit. Then you only have to stick in an extra Green or Blue banner to one of them, and you have a spare unit!

Aegis said:

Muahahaha, I got a FULL unit! Then again, I bought in the UK. And paid more because there was only one.lousy.gamestore.on.the.whole.island.

Looks like I paid 20$ for those two!

Lucky you, coltsfan, was this an expansion or did you buy the base game twice?

Good to hear those extras may come in handy later on.

sagitar said:

I bought the base game twice - and in the process got 2 free Hill Giants and Earth elementals because of it. They also sent me Epic for free as well (had to pay shipping though).

I choose to do this because I have almost 2 of everything for Memoir and wanted the flexibility for Epic games if it ever came up. But based on what they did with the expansions, I choose to just stick with single copies there.

i used the extra gobbos to test my primer and painting technique.

The Expansion Figs are Specalist Units mostly you plug them to replace "Regular Units & a few do get added into your Army.The Specialist Unit Card gives the directions for its use.We use Call to Arms as our Army Generation System & even with Epic Mode it won't generate you every Unit in the Base Game.

I also got 2 copies of the Base Game before the Epic Rules & Call to Arms came out & it appeared that you would need 2 Games to get the Boards & enough Units to play Epic( Fooled me }.I think a couple of Epic Scenario Games may include more Units than 1 base set but as its a Board Game only so much room is available.

OD