Warmachine Arrives at the Gate!

The time has come to throw open the Wargate and step through to a new world of battle and strife!  A new realm waits for us to conquer it - Immoren, the land of the Iron Kingdoms!  Yes folks - it's time to fire up those cortexes and link with your steel minions of doom to bring fire and death to your enemies!

For the last several months, we've had an initiative here at the Wargate to muster armies for more miniature games - new games to campaign in and collect models for!  Warmachine (sans Hordes) is the first of the games that the club has embraced to actually make it to a realized campaign, and to top it off it's the first of the Schedule 2 campaign games!  That's right - Warmachine will be played alongside Warhammer 40,000 during the summertime!

Warmachine (and it's brother in arms, Hordes) is published by a company known as Privateer Press.  Through great persistence and excellence of their product, they have brought Warmachine to a place where it is on the roster of the most high end war games clubs, and the Wargate is proud to join the battle in Immoren!


Warmachine is in it's second edition, called Prime Mk II, and Privateer Press is poised to drop more support on the game in the form of an expansion coming this summer and a steady stream of new models!  In addition, they have recently updated the sculpts of several popular sets, and the new sculpts are nothing short of awesome.  Add that to the fact that a great many of the models in the range are resin, the list of reasons to enjoy this great game add up to one sum: awesome.

I'm sorry sir, but you can't park here.

I know a lot of you are recalcitrant to start a new collection, what with so many other projects going on.  There are many reasons to go ahead and take the dive, and I'll take this opportunity to go over a few of them. 

The number one reason is that it's being played!  We have the material to play, and also the will - so it's a fact that the game is here to stay!  Warmachine will have the full support of the club, including prizes for campaign winners and a spot here on the blog.  It's one of the realms the Wargate leads to - since you're all enterprising dimensional warlords, you may as well make your bid for power there as well!

Another good reason is that the forces required are much smaller in scale than some other wargames, which require many, many models to field a comfortable size force.  You can't even really compare collecting a Warmachine force with say, an Warhammer army, simply because if you collected as many models for Warmachine as you need for a 750pt Warhammer army (generally at least 30, more likely 50 or more) - well lets just say most entry level are between five and nine models.  Some of those are large, but no single piece is going to cost you as much as many units for other games, capping out around $35 USD.

For the Wargate, Skim was quick to pledge his generalship to the Protectorate of Menoth!  Captain Video jumped ahead and formed a Cryx army before any of the rest of us had assembled our troops!  Dirty Greg will be marshaling the forces of the Mercenary Drake MacBain, and presumably he's not after Mendoza.

For myself, Cygnar.  I'm totally going to defend the civilization of the Iron Kingdoms with huge guns and extreme prejudice.  We start the campaign on the 1st!  Stay tuned for more info on the rules we'll be using!

On Sunday, dinner will be served by the Smith, who has slated Hot Wings as being on the menu!  Come early for battle, and be there around 5pm for dinner!  See you on Game Day!

The Smith's Palladium Log, Part Deux

The Smith is keeping a good log of the Palladium adventures, and is taking advantage of our blogspace here on the interweb!  He sent me a new passage to keep everyone updated on the happenings in the Dalelands!

Smith here with a word about this weeks Palladium FRPG!

We had a great time and everyone seems to be doing great playing in character and stopping any threats present in the dales. We all enjoyed food, drink and a great evening of high adventure.

This week our party made their way through Mistledale and the Dun Hills to arrive at a ruined temple to Tempus. The party found a dwarven town called Glen. The dwarves seemed happy to see travellers and treated the party well. They were bogged down at the crossroads by Senli, (a Druegar Mercenary Warrior) and his companion Thaum, a Drow Thief. It appears the enemy has placed a price on our heroes heads.

On the way to Battledale they found carnage at the temple of Chautea the Grainmother. A Zhentarim Palladin named Orskeli was intent on stealing the temples prize Chocobos. The party defeated Orskeli and rescued the Chocobos. The group was able to find their way through the wilderness and the Dun Hills of Battledale. After seeing the temple in ruins at the hands of the WarKingz the party felt obligated to make a large donation to improve the temple and it's defenses.

Next week our adventurers hop a ferry to Scarsdale and hopes bring some relief with a new batch of antidotes courtesy of Randal Morn. Thank you to everyone involved with my adventure. I feel more and more rust breaking off this old GM. I will be making barbacoa tacos next week and hope everyone can make it for another adventure in the Forgotten Realms.

Barbacoa Tacos???  Sounds awesome - all the other dinners have been!  Come early Sunday if you have games to fight in Wissenland, as the Spring campaign will be over on June 1st!

Dinner Time!

Greetings from the nether!

Today I'd like to talk about an important part of Schedule 1 games these days - I'm talking about the Wargate's Sunday dinners!

It's become apparent that during an all day gaming event like we have every Sunday leaves many a gamer haggard after about six or so hours - a little over halfway into the entire ordeal.  Add to that the fact that players that get here for the main event usually do so right before dinner time.  What that adds up to is a whole slew of hungry wargamers.

Pizza delivery has been our best friend the last few years, as we have several options in the town where we live.  We have traditionally put a huge pile in the center of the table for those who will pitch in to help buy dinner.  Usually, this is about $5 a person, and frankly I'm astonished at how much money we collectively spent on pizza delivery.

Why?  Pizza delivery.  It's delivered, man.

Just as pizza is easy to get (we can do it without talking to a living being), the bottom line is that we can't handle the red pie every week.  Enough pizza.  In recent weeks, we have been taking a collective leaning away from pizza delivery for dinner every Sunday.

No one wants to venture downtown for food, but we did have a few taco nights where an agent ventured forth to a taco place (again, several options) and returned bearing huge loads of lifesaving texmex.  However, it quickly became evident that catering in-house would be a better option than take-out every weekend.

We've had grilled hot dogs and chicken wings!  On the semi-annual Feast of Krampus, we gorged on bratwurst in a Germanic style cuisine.  We tried several things, but were unable to conceive of a system that would help support what we needed - dinner every Sunday.  As things wore on, dinner preparations became sporadic and random.

Eventually, we'd end up ordering pizza even amidst calls to figure out a different plan.  Get a party sub.  Many nights I was commanded to do something about it and help us get the food where we wanted it, when we wanted it!

Big Matt's a professional caterer and has surprised us by showing up with huge loads of awesome grub!  Recently, however, the Smith has been insisting on preparing an awesome dinner for every session of his game!  He and his wife have painstakingly prepared vast feasts for the warriors of the 'gate, which brings me to my point.

Give forth the clank!

While I hate asking anyone to contribute money, in this case I think it's less that I'm asking for contributions and more that I think we can put all that pizza money to better use and we would all be happier for it.  I think that the dinner time provided at the Wargate has been a fantastic addition to the gaming, providing a break from the game and a refreshing and invigorating repast when those of us who have been fighting all day really need it.

Moreover, many times in the past we have called for action like this.  I'm not going to say how much Smith's been spending on those dinners, but those of you who've taken a bite can tell that there was time and effort involved.  While no one asked for the money, I think it's just right that we not only reimburse him - but encourage this sort of thing all around!

So, we're going to start a catering fund.  Every week, we'll put the cash we normally spend on dinner to the week's caterer - for now that's the Smith!  Dinner will be prepared in advance by the Wargate (the Treasury has enough to cover plenty of incidentals) way more often going forward - we might even have to hire our own cook!

Many thanks to the Smith and family for their fantastic dinners!  Know that you've kept the armies going at the Wargate for a couple of delicious weeks now and we all appreciate it very much!

That's totally worth the money we squander on pizza!