Category Archives: Firelock Games

Saturday Morning Musings

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I was browsing YouTube and came across videos about Bolt Action v3, a World War II tabletop miniatures wargame, which I’ve seen before, and went into a deep dive on how to play, what you need, and what’s in the starter box.

I eventually found myself searching for the starter set, along with US Marines and Imperial Japanese Army  sets, since my interest lies more in the Pacific than the European front.

As I was searching for those, other products appeared, specifically Firelock Games’ Blood & Plunder.

Which made me stop looking for Bolt Action stuff, since I still hadn’t finished building/painting my various factions for that game.

I then remembered that if I really need to scratch that World War II itch, I do have Firelock Games’ War Stories, which is a WWII RPG, and the Pacific expansion that I pledged on Kickstarter will be coming out at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I may create a small squad/warband based in post D-Day France, or use the pregenerated characters and try playing solo at some point soon.

I’ll probably spend some time with Blood & Plunder as well, as they’re starting their ‘Summer of Plunder 2025’ event this weekend.

Don’t touch that dial!

Catching Up

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Ha.  Never will.

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Basically I come up with great ideas but fail to execute.  Just ask my gaming group(s) who are still waiting on me to start up a D&D campaign here or a sci-fi campaign there, or all of the various unplayed/unread RPG systems or solo boardgames that are sitting around in various boxes and shelves.

And don’t even mention the multitude of sports game projects/replays that I’ve had lined up for the last decade or so.

But I digress.

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My latest idea was for the War Stories RPG from Firelock games.  It’s based on post-D-Day World War II, European Theatre, and I was thinking about playing a soldier from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American army unit based in Europe.  Through research I found that they mostly operated on the Italian/French border, so perhaps one soldier got separated from the main unit and ended up in the small group that I was planning to create.

I went back and forth with this idea, because the main archetypes for the game primarily come from British, US or Canadian nationalities but using the lifepath method for character creation has ‘Commonwealth (Anzac, African, Indian, etc)’ as an option, so maybe my Japanese-American could start from there.

I thought about how this character would interact with the rest of the squad, and whether his race would be an issue (of course it would) or would I just ignore that aspect, which wouldn’t feel right either.  Or I can create a small group all from the 442nd but once again I would end up addressing/not addressing their place in the game, and finally realized that I would just be doing it as a gimmick or novelty and it would take away too much from just playing the game.

In the end I’ve decided to shelve this concept and move on to trying to figure out how to play yet another soccer game that I haven’t tried to play yet.

Upcoming and Incoming

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I seriously think I have too many options for gaming, resulting in executive indecision.

I’m reading up on that and may ask my doctor about it during my next annual visit.

In the meantime, I hope to finally get around to playing something more consistently in the next few weeks.

I’ve neglected all of the solo RPGs as I’ve been hopping around reading up different systems, when I should just focus on continuing the adventures of the Excalibur.

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Meanwhile, I’ve been preparing for a couple of games that should be arriving in the next month or so, both from Firelock Games.

Oak and Iron is a tabletop naval game in the age of sail.  They have a second edition coming out soon, so I decided to pick this one up since I finally watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.  Ships are in 1:600 scale, and I found a few on MyMiniFactory that I’d like to have included in my games, including the HMS Surprise from the aforementioned M&C movie, and the USS Enterprise , from the late 18th century.

The core set comes with 6 smaller ships, but I did pick up a couple of expansions which contain much larger ships, including 1st/2nd/3rd rate Ships of the Line.

There was a Kickstarter for this last summer, which I backed.

This is basically a smaller scale skirmish version of Blood and Plunder from Firelock, based in the Jamaican city of Port Royal after the earthquake in 1692.

The miniature count for squads average about 6 models, and while I already have models for English, Spanish, Native Americans, and pirates, the core set contains15 models that will represent the French, and I included an add-on of the new Native American set with multi-pose plastic models that I will build as a Maroon (escaped African slaves) faction.

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And of course, I have my sports games to play, but that’s another story.

Stand by!

Been a while, hasn’t it?

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So, what’s been going on since last year?

I managed to start that Legendary Kingdoms solo game, but haven’t gotten very far.  I hope to continue playing fairly soon.

My crew for Five Parsecs from Home got a little boring, so I’m going to restart the game with a new campaign and a new crew.

I’ve sold off practically all of my Warhammer 40K armies (Guard, Ork, Necron, Marines) to an online store, I have maybe a handful of figures for Kill Team, or…

I’m looking into a newer, miniatures-agnostic system called Fistful of Lead, specifically the Galactic Heroes version, from Wiley Games.  This new system will allow me to use whatever miniatures I have laying around and finally have those battles we’ve always wanted to see, like Federation crew vs. Mandalorians.

Okay, maybe battles that *I’ve* wanted to see.

Speaking of miniatures, I’ve been printing them out on my resin printer and have way more than I need for any system.

I’ve also shelved a few games (Car Wars, Battletech, Blood & Plunder, etc) while I try to focus on what I actually want to play between these types and my sports games…

I’ll have it all figured out by the time we reach the Frontier.

*klaxon alert*

What’s that?

The Frontier.

Stand by!