Ozball: Masons's Guide

I'm having difficulties utilising the Masons at the moment.  In truth I'm pretty crap gamer.  Though recently I came across the OzBall webpage.  I've heard of them before though never visited their site. I came across their site by looking for tips on the Masons.

The following guide was written up by Simon OzBall Masons' Guide. It's a very comprehensive guide for each of the Masons players.  Having read through it, it does give you a general idea of how to maximise specific players, when to play ball and when play rough.  Hopefully I can get some wins in! 

Guild Ball on Vassal Engine

I recently played a game of Guild Ball on the Vassal Engine.  Being completely new to the wargaming experience and wanting to play more GB, outside of my gaming club and when people have time, was to playing remotely online. 

The Vassal Engine is a system which allow users to create specific rules to play certain games i.e Warmachine, Malifaux.  It's a basic dice rolling system and depending what gaming module you have installed it will have the contents of models, their stats, templates and in-game modifiers.  I assume these modules take a great deal of time from dedicated fans to make it to work.

So being grateful something like this exist to play more games.  I got myself involved and downloaded the GB module.  There are groups available for people to arrange games most of these groups are either from forums or Facebook page (which I have listed below).   I was lucky enough to have a GB Pundit (Dave) giving me a guided tour of the system but also some ingame guidance of GB, which I really need at the moment.   

The user interface is really easy to follow, though it's worth memorising the short-keys for ease of use.  The layout is quite straight forward, you select your team via the roster which includes all teams and players, and also Unions players are included in their respective secondary teams.

You play the game as you normally do with the Initiative, Maintenance, Active and End Phase.  The dice rolls are triggered by the column next to the pitch depending how many dice you have, you click on the respective dice you have available. All measurements are made easy with the tools available, players range and radius can be selected using the number keys, so no crappy tape measurers.   

This app is really worth getting if you cannot find a local game and want to play with other people globally.  Ideally it's worth having Skype as well so you can communicate with the other player and throw couple of insults when things aren't going your way.  I really enjoyed this app, though it can't beat playing with the real thing, you can use this to get some match practice.

You can find the Vassal FB group here https://www.facebook.com/groups/901202099948458/.
Follow Dave on https://minimusingofabear.wordpress.com/
He's also got a podcast which is pretty good! https://flockandawepodcast.wordpress.com/

Guild Balling 2016

I have recently ventured into the world of tabletop gaming and into the world of Guild Ball.  I've always wanted to get into tabletop gaming with Warhammer but never got round to settling down with the rules.  Though back in December I was somehow lured into the world of Guild Ball.  I think I was attracted to the models and wanted to paint couple of them as individual display pieces.  I managed to win an auction from an ebay seller from Spain, quite a good deal for the full Masons and Mortician teams, including the rulebook.

The day I got the models and rulebook, I started flicking through the rules and fluff.  I was intrigued by it all and did more reading via the Steamforge website and FB pages.  I managed to find out two of my local gaming clubs were playing GB, hence that's when I started getting into the tabletop gaming. 

With the two teams I had available I decided to go with the Masons, I think my reason for going with the Masons was the mandrill in the team, Marbles. What a whacky mascot to have, but also a player with good perks that contribute to the team, even in death!

I still need to paint up the full team.  The good thing with Guild Ball is you only need a max of 6 models to play the game, which means you can spend some time on each model.  My colour scheme will be close to the official one.  Also another thing I need to do is creating a goal, which I'm having trouble thinking one up.
 
So far I played couple of intro games and one of the local clubs has a GB pundit who's pretty much whizzed up with the rules.