Silversand – The City-state and the Neighbouring States

In my previous post about Inkarnate, I mentioned Silversand, the fictional realm where my D&D campaign takes place. It’s in Faerun but not part of the official canon, it’s my creation for a low fantasy D&D 5e setting, inspired by the medieval Italian city-states and the Mediterranean region.

Silversand is a city-state on the Sword Coast, with a seaport and trade routes to the continent, named after its white sand of the seaside that sparkles like silver in the moonlight. It’s not as big and famous as Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter, but prosperous, wealthy, relatively safe and well organized.

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Summer Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt Goes On

This quarter has been busier than expected, practically I haven’t painted anything but have luckily had very good RPG (Cepheus Light and D&D) and wargame (Stargrunt II) sessions. COVID-19 is still around, so there was no wargame show to report about and the games I played were online, not face to face. But there is something reassuring about buying hobby stuff. This time it wasn’t panic buying like it was in the spring, but a more methodical one.

Let’s start with Patrick Todoroff’s Hardwired rulebook and The Tsim Sha Tsui expansion: these are both short, fifty-page black and white booklets with a bit of background, complete rules, list of equipment and a handful of missions for cybernetically enhanced agents. Sounds familiar? There’s a good reason: Syndicate, the old PC game was one of the inspirations for this game. The subtitle “Cyberpunk espionage and mayhem” refers to a cyberpunk setting, but it’s very adaptable – you can swap the agents with a black ops team, a commando unit, a squad of mercenaries, a recon or a SWAT team and swap the opposing security forces to insurgents, alien bugs, zombies, rogue AI robots, vicious gangs, or your favourite villains.

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Maps of Impossible Worlds – Inkarnate Review

After years of hiatus, in early 2019 I decided to get back to running RPG campaigns as a DM and I wanted to run a one-off DnD session just to refresh my storytelling skills. I had been preparing for these gaming session a lot, and I knew that there was a bit more in the story; it could even be a mini-campaign of three or four sessions and I started to called it The Tales of Silversand. After three completed adventures, I realised that I had enough ideas for dozens of run-on stories and by now we have had more than twenty sessions – many of them proper, full-day sessions – full of adventures, laughter and drama, memorable and heroic moments. Then came the pandemic, and the lockdown made face to face meetings impossible, and after a couple of online sessions -where I couldn’t use my miniature and map collections- I started to feel that I failed to deliver the same level of gaming experience, so decided to put the campaign on hold and do some research.

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Assassins of Allansia: Hungarian Edition – Review and Comparison with the Original

I received a copy of the Hungarian edition of Assassins of Allansia from Chameleon Comix for review a few months ago. It is a very neatly designed book, with the look and feel of the classic softcover Fighting Fantasy series, using the same artwork that’s visible on the hardcover edition. It immediately triggered a wave of nostalgia in me.

But why did it took me so long to write this review? Reading Fighting Fantasy books was one of my treasured childhood memories and I got paralyzed, and started wondering if I still enjoy them as much as I used to. Are they still as good as I remember they used to be? Does this book meet the standards that I expect, or is it just exploiting nostalgia? Luckily, I had no reason to worry: twentyfive years have passed since I last read an FF book and this was just as immersive and gripping as I remembered.

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Spring Haul Report 2020 – aka The Big Spring Treasure Hunt

In a previous post about the cancelled wargaming show, I suggested checking the manufacturers and traders online and spending your show budget on games and minis. Well, I did walk the walk. I have had a proper shopping spree this spring…

On one hand, it was a kind of a panic buying: having an incomplete collection is somehow deeply disturbing for me. On the other hand, I found massive discounts! Most of the things I bought were on my wishlist anyway, so sooner or later, I would have ended up buying them.

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The More the Merrier

After finishing the first three squads of the 15mm OutRim Coalition Infantry , there was no turning back. I had to go on.

I have painted standard troopers, medics, squad leaders and SAW gunners so far, but I decided to add more support weapons (plasma guns and two different missile launchers), snipers and two assaults squads. I used the SG15-RC09 and SG15-RC04 sets from Ground Zero Games’ OutRim Coalition range.

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The Show Must Go On

This one was supposed to be my report about Salute 2020 . Under normal circumstances, you could be reading about London’s biggest wargaming show, the participation games, the traders, the new games presented and all the amazing stuff I bought. But we have this COVID-19 situation and Salute is postponed to 2021.

This must have been a very difficult decision for the organizers, as I’m sure they have invested a lot into the show already and they came up with an great theme (Battle of Britain 1940). This must also be painful for the traders who are relying on the sales revenue and the game developers who wanted to present their new products. It’s a loss for us, gamers too.

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My First Steps in the 15mm Universe

Though I haven’t planned starting a new army or collecting anything in 15 mm scale (all my minis are in 28mm), I knew there’s no turning back and decided to buy some minis from Ground Zero Games, after reading the Stargrunt II rules. The range is surprisingly huge, there are many factions with distinct appearances, units and equipment. After carefully considering, I chose the OutRim Coalition and ordered a starter pack and a few vehicles.

The figures are very neatly detailed, there is no real sign of mould lines and they are full of character. All the figures are in power armour (no skin to paint! 😊 ), and there are marine assault troops, command and comms squad, anti-armour and light anti-armour support squads, three different heavy weapon teams, a heavy power armour squad and grav bikes in the pack. That is almost 100 figures in total.

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Winter Haul Report 2019-2020

The winter was long and busy, full of unexpected events, but if you are into the same hobby as I am, you know you can bet on one thing: you will surely end up buying new games and minis.

After my New Year’s post, where I wrote about my backlog and about not buying too much new stuff, writing a haul report might look controversial, so it’s worth mentioning that I bought most of the stuff I’m covering here before the end of 2019.

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Soldiers of Fortune

If you’ve been following this blog, you might be wondering why haven’t I posted anything since the beginning of 2020. The end of 2019 and early this year was extremely busy with a lot of work, studying for exams, and visiting family (which also means that we’ll soon have a new entry in the “Painting with my nieces” section too). I also spent a significant amount of time with building and painting my brother’s Christmas gift in December, which is what this post is about.

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