The boot up screens for the game are plentiful as they hide a long loading process. Take the time to watch the cinematics as they are nicely done. Once you get into the game, things work smoothly if your machine is up to more than the minimum snuff. I have a 3.2 Ghz proceser and 2 Gigs of RAM and am running Media Center XP 2005 (my machine is about 6 years old and seems sluggish now). Even so, I get through the game well and the only issues I have are when there are multiple people in combats. I have been using a trackball to play the game as a mouse causes me some pain in my right hand.

I have never played an online massive game like this, so I am coming at this from the standpoint of a complete newb.

Most of the game I have played solo. I have ocasionally gone off and participated in some of the realm versus realm combats, especially the Mourkain Temple one. In this scenario, two groups fight over the control of an artifact which can be picked up and moved back to a home area. The temple lies on a hill surrounded by swamps and rocky areas and the players start on high steep hills opposite each other. My experience has been that there are three areas where combat takes place on the board — on the flat, granite areas in front of the temple, on a hill in front of the Destruction entry area, and in the swamp in front of the Order area.

I have found that I am outclassed by most of the characters in the scenario, especially in the first few times at it. I am now level 14 and am the lowest of the levels of the participants. I find that my best tactic is to put my little gun turret in place, move away from it a good distance, and then start sniping with my rifle. When the fighting moves back to the swamp, I can snipe from the ridge in front of the deployment area and not get pummeled by hand to hand fighters as only wizards and archers can reachme.

All in all, I think the game flows well and is loyal to the Warhammer milieu. There is a lot to explore and do and I have spent *way* too much time on already. I don’t watch much TV any more, nor do I attend many movies, so the monthly payment of $14.95 is not a drain on the entertainment budget. I don’t know how higher levels play so I can’t say how long I’ll continue to be involved, but it will be good for another several months and I’ve gotten more gaming out of it than other computer games I have purchased. Highly Recommended!

Hmmm, I seem to have only taken a single shot of this one, how awkward! I’ll just add two shots of the dwarf warrior from the Skull Pass set.

The unit standard is from the Dwarf Battalion box set. I chose to use a simple flag with the rune that stands for “W”. I’ll use the “I” and “L” for the Ironbreakers and Longbeards. I’ve color coded the units and the common color between them will be the GW foundation color.

Here’s a group shot.

I placed these on magnetic bases so they would travel easier. Since I had some room on the cannon base, I added the optical surveying device and the shells. Although the crewmen are probably pretty interchangeable between the Cannon and Organ Gun, I figured they’d look better crewing this piece.

I am relatively pleased with my camera and lighting setup. The only thing I *don’t* like is the poor depth of field I am getting. This kind of photography requires long exposure times and large f-stops and I can’t seem to get it set up on my Nikon. Back to the manual, I guess!

This gentleman will be the champion for my unit of Longbeards which the general will accompany, thus the gold and green to match the general shown below. I like the West Wind dwarves, 10 metal figures in a box, *every* pose is different!

This is a Reaper miniature sculpted by Werner Klocke … aka “The Man”. I like his sculpting and what he does. I have three other characters in the army and two of them will come from the Warlord line. The other will be a GW plastic figure as I need a Battle Standard Bearer. One dwarf warrior unit will be Dwarf Wars figures by West Wind. The others likely a mix of Reaper grunts, Heartbreaker (now that’s an old line….) and GW. The army will be 2250 so that I can use it in Indy tournaments and I hope to have it finished by the Lonewolf in August.

The second photo above shows another view of the eyes and a better view of the facial features. You can also see the serpent’s features better.

The photos above were taken with different camera settings. I used a higher resolution and did not modify the pictures other than to crop them. If you have any comments on which set looks better, I’d like to hear them….

The first is a two story ruin mounted on Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). I generally try to put all of my terrain pieces on MDF as it makes them more sturdy and customizable. The floor on the first story is cut up cardboard square, the second is styrene sheeting gridded in 1/4 inch squares available from the hobby shop.

The second piece uses sections that were initially twelve inches long and as high as shown in the picture. I broke the segments up so they would fit on a smaller base. This is roughly nine by six inches. The floor is parakeet gravel available from discount stores.