Slitherine

Hello all new here and to FoG but I have a few questions...

Firstly I'm trying to pick a starter army. I've read the rule book but have yet to get a companion army guide. I was would like to get an ancient british army but I have feeling they would be some what difficult for a beginner?

As such I'm thinking about either a Macedonian force (alexander the great) or a Carthiginian army. Are these good armies for a beginner. I like the idea of the Carthaginians as I could use their gallic allies to start up the ancient british once I get going.

Also I'd be very interested in any advice of where to get some nice 15mm figures. At present I quite like these guys but they have a fairly small choice of figures http://www.corvusbelli.com/en/02_tiendacorvus.asp

Oh and if anyone knows of a club in South London I might be able to come along to and check out a few games please let me know.

Thanks for any and all info

Welcome to the forum

I have to admit that I wouldn't recommend Ancient Britons to a new player. They are fun but if Simon struggles to do well with them they are not easy to use.

Carthaginians are interesting and have a good selection of troops but the core of the army doesn't really lend itself to being used for other lists.
Macedonian is more flexible but you are really tied to pikes which take a bit of using too. If you have any interest in Hannibal I would go for Carthos.

South London is a pretty big place. There is a Central London club who meet in a pub in central London and the Reigate club who meet in Reigate. Both have a decent number of FoG players.

Hello Weavil.

I bought my EI Romans from Corvus Belli and am well pleased with them. They also shipped really fast. They stand up well alongside Magister Militum and Essex too.

Hammy, Thanks for the info.
I really would like a Ancient British army but it seems they aren't the way to go to start with so will be putting that idea on hold for now. I've ordered the 'immortal fire' companion book so I can have a look at a Alexandrian Mac army or and Early Carthaginian (will that cover Hannibal?).

Do you have details for the central london club? I'm in Crystal Palace so Reigate is a bit far south for me...

Spartacus, good to know the Corvus Belli figures are good. I really like the look of them but I may be sold on the nice paint jobs.

Hannibal is covered in the Rise of Rome book by the later Carthos.

(Speaking as someone who started ancients wargaming with an Ancient British army in DBM) I would say if you have non-game reasons to do the Ancient British then do the Ancient British.

Whatever army you start with, you will probably not get good results against more experienced players, so , as the saying goes, start with an army you can like even when it loses.

The troops in the army are not very good, you can't just charge and let the troops win the game for you, so you will be getting a very hard training course in the tactics of the game . When you eventually get yourself an army that you have optimised for its fighting ability, you will find yourself having a very easy time. It's a bit like a runner carrying weight while training. When you do it without the weight, it's like running on air.

Looking forward to seeing you in the 2012 Olympics Mr. Greaves !

The Central London Club website is: http://www.clwc.org.uk/

weavil wrote:Hello all new here and to FoG but I have a few questions...

Also I'd be very interested in any advice of where to get some nice 15mm figures. At present I quite like these guys but they have a fairly small choice of figures http://www.corvusbelli.com/en/02_tiendacorvus.asp

I have a full list of 15mm suppliers here :
http://www.madaxeman.com/main/15mm_anci ... pliers.php

There are pictures of quite a few of them here :
http://www.madaxeman.com/15mm/index.php

and I'm gradually building a detailed army-by-army listing here :
http://www.madaxeman.com/wiki2/tiki-index.php

Oh, and I'm also a contact for Central London club

Next meetings are on Tuesday & Wednesday this week. Tuesday in Euston, Wednesday in Marylebone/Edgware Road

tim

I checked out Corvus Belli for some fill in HYW figures I am after, very nice pics but they charge a hell of a lot to post them to OZ. I was looking at 5 packets of infantry and they were going charge an extra 70% for postage to Australia. I think I will wait and see what Donnington release in March.

Keith

BlackPrince wrote:I checked out Corvus Belli for some fill in HYW figures I am after, very nice pics but they charge a hell of a lot to post them to OZ. I was looking at 5 packets of infantry and they were going charge an extra 70% for postage to Australia. I think I will wait and see what Donnington release in March.

Keith

Man, oh man, that's outrageous! I notice a lot of this postage/shipping gouging lately. Shipping rates went sky-high when gas prices hit $5 a gallon, and now gas is back down to 1/3 of that, the shipping rates are not going back down. It seems that with times being hard, many companies are porking it up on the inflated shipping.

But such abuse of customers by a business always comes back to bite them in the butt eventually

**edit**

As a pleasant contrast, note that Alain Touller charges an entirely reasonable flat rate for shipping.

6 euros in France, 10 euros in europe or "Dom-Tom" (what the hell is that anyways?) and 20 euros for the rest of the world. Sure, it discourages small orders, but it's way cheap on a huge order. And you know up front exactly what you will be charged.

***edit 2***

Dom-Tom is "Départements d'Outre Mer - Territoires d'Outre Mer" i.e. French overseas posessions. I love the Web

Thank you all for the info. Although I'm probably even more undecided now

BlackPrince wrote:I checked out Corvus Belli for some fill in HYW figures I am after, very nice pics but they charge a hell of a lot to post them to OZ. I was looking at 5 packets of infantry and they were going charge an extra 70% for postage to Australia. I think I will wait and see what Donnington release in March.

Alternatively, you could order Corvus Belli figs from Australian supplier Gamelords: http://users.bigpond.net.au/gamelords/.
I imagine that the postage would be considerably less than having them shipped all the way from Spain.

possum wrote:As a pleasant contrast, note that Alain Touller charges an entirely reasonable flat rate for shipping.

6 euros in France, 10 euros in europe or "Dom-Tom" (what the hell is that anyways?) and 20 euros for the rest of the world. Sure, it discourages small orders, but it's way cheap on a huge order. And you know up front exactly what you will be charged.

Hmmm... 40 infantry figures from Alain Touller (the equivalent of five packs from Corvus Belli) at €0,30 per figure = €12.
€20 postage for "the rest of the world" would be an additional 166.5%.
Not so reasonable, when one compares like with like.

Cheers,
Scott

OK, Scott, you gots me there

ars_belli wrote:
Hmmm... 40 infantry figures from Alain Touller (the equivalent of five packs from Corvus Belli) at 0,30€ per figure = 12€.
20€ postage for "the rest of the world" would be an additional 166.5%.
Not so reasonable, when one compares like with like.

Cheers,
Scott

Seemingly excessive shipping charges is the main reason I've confined myself to buying domestically this past year, which, in my case means in the U.S. A few years ago I purchased a large number of 10mm figures from the U.K. and don't recall the shipping being nearly as high then.

Dale

Seriously, I hear you.

I think I'm going to wind up just ordering all Old Glory from WarWeb. As much as I might love to have an eclectic mix, there's no money in the pot for that.

Here are useful pages about the 3 armies you're investigating.
http://www.miniatures4wargamers.com/dat ... donian.php
http://www.miniatures4wargamers.com/dat ... ginian.php
http://www.miniatures4wargamers.com/dat ... ritish.php

You may search for other armies visiting my homepage

I would recommend Xyston figures for Macedonian, and they look to be finishing their gaul line so hopefully there will be an ancient Brit army there too.

http://www.xyston.com/

Will

Frederic - I had already found you fantastic site thanks. It's a great help and I've been busy looking at it and recommending it to others.

will05 - The Xyston figures are nice, very detailed. They are deffinitley on my my list. I'm just waiting for the immortal fire book to arrive so I can be sure of what units to buy.

I'm pretty set on getting a macedonian army under alexander now. I've been doing a bit of reading about his campaign so quite interested in it all. The ancient brits will have to wait...

weavil wrote:Frederic - I had already found you fantastic site thanks. It's a great help and I've been busy looking at it and recommending it to others.

will05 - The Xyston figures are nice, very detailed. They are deffinitley on my my list. I'm just waiting for the immortal fire book to arrive so I can be sure of what units to buy.

I'm pretty set on getting a macedonian army under alexander now. I've been doing a bit of reading about his campaign so quite interested in it all. The ancient brits will have to wait...

Weavil, I'm just a n00b as well, so I can't say from personal experience. But I seem to remember several people saying that one of the Diadochi armies would be a more competitive choice than Alex Mac.

Perhaps one of the Tournament Tigers will either confirm this or inform us that Possum is, once again, full of it