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Friday 11 February 2011

Back from holiday

I have been on holiday during the past 10 days. I went home, to Hungary, to see my family and friends and be away from the usual everyday things, including gaming. Despite this I managed to buy a Feldherr case, pick up a new game system and my best friend who still lives there and is a gamer too has introduced me to a fairly new club and shop. I thought this lot, and the club in particular, is worth posting about. It is called Gólem Művek (Golem Works).

Although it is located a few streets off the avenue and the busy shopping areas of Pest it is not difficult to find. The reason why the caught my attention is the fact that they do almost exclusively small skirmish games instead of the good ol' gw-and-a-few-bits-and-pieces.


Entering Golem Művek you will find a small staircase with displays on both sides, leading to the shop. Further down on one side there is a separate painting area where they hold their weekly painting school. On the other side there are some displays with gorgeous painted minis and 7 smallish, skirmish size (4' x 4') tables with loads of great terrain for fantasy, modern and sci-fi settings alike.
Then there are more shelves with some popular rpg rulebooks, boardgames and whatnot. Even further in there is another room that hosts a coffee shop and another entrance for that. This is one of the great things about the club; no membership fee, there is only 500 Forints (~£1.50) booking fee for the table that can be used as a voucher in the coffee shop.

On their shelves you'll find Alkemy, Corvus Belli & Infinity, Eden, Malifaux, Mindstalkers, Urban Mammoth's Urban War & Metropolis, Uncharted Seas, Warheadz and more, along with Army Painter products and Feldherr cases and trays.


If you happen to be in Budapest, be sure to check them out!
Website (unfortunately only in Hungarian but it's not very cryptic)

Although I did not want to spend on mini stuff while on holiday I couldn't resist to pick up a Feldherr Mini Plus case with some trays for my infinity crew. This was the exact case I was after and because they had a lot of different trays to choose from it seemed like a good opportunity / excuse to break my vow. :)

I also got two books from my friend as a present. They are about building dioramas and wargaming terrain from household materials. The guy who wrote them won many competitions and awards and browsing through the book I shortly understood why. Liberal use of the plainest materials through the easiest (but not most obvious) procedures with great sense of colour and weathering, resulting in such a perfect piece that you cannot tell it is not real, would you only see the photo. I shall be using a few of his techniques in my future products hopefully for better results.

I got introduced to a new historical WWII Skirmish game called 1-48 Combat. As you can guess the game uses 1:48 scale miniatures. The rules are fairly simple but still make for an interesting gameplay.  Gaming area of 2' x 2' is ideal and everything you need for the game is included in the blisters. One character comes with a 60mm round terrain element that can be used as terrain and is slotted for a 25mm round base so works as a beautiful mini-diorama on the shelf. There are also 5 pewter tokens in every blister, a wound marker, a suppression fire marker, a target marker and two command counters. The characters have stat cards that have all their abilities, equipment and statistics written on both sides; one unharmed and one wounded side. Some effects (such as head-shot on two sixes rolled, or a grenade exploding in their face) kill characters out right, others (shooting, or hand to hand combat) only cause the model to be wounded. In this case you just turn the card and use those stats. At the moment there are only two factions, Russians and Germans with 6-6 characters each. And, as it is so common nowadays, you can download all rules and stat cards for free on their website.

Hopefully no one will read this down the club, or else there might be a danger of a new system eating up my savings account...

3 comments:

  1. Are those books only in Hungarian or can you get the English equivalent?

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  2. Only Hungarian I'm afraid, but the Terrainthralls have loads of useful tutorials in English on their blog. Also this guy uses quite a few materials that you won't find in the UK such as plants and mosses local to Hungary.
    ps. Link for Terrainthralls in the inspiration section on the right.

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  3. ANOTHER game system Ish? really, it is not good. Don't show it to me at the club, I cant handle it

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