Not What I Expected

Once again, I am compelled to say why I have not posted in awhile. Believe it or not, I have had a little more time to work on hobby stuff, but taking pictures and posting for me takes longer than I think it will. I'm this close (putting two fingers together) to starting the campaign between Bovatopia and Lavonia. The armies are build and I am finishing up slapping together terrain.

The main topic of this post is to briefly mention my latest purchases. I've hit a few duds recently. I am so disappointed that the first two don't even get a photo included in this post. I suppose the phrase, "buyer beware" applies, but I still think that I am not 100% to blame.

1. British Battleships of the Victorian Era by Norman Friedman
You may or may not be familiar with Mr. Friedman's work on various warships. The ones I have are really good references, and for folks like me who are crazy about deck plans and line drawings of warship and are incredibly useful for building models of them, they are chocked full of them. Photos just don't do it compared to a good side view and top view of a ship. I bought his British Cruisers of the Victorian Era and was pretty happy with it. So, I expected this to be the same with this one...WRONG! There are just two line drawings in the whole book. There are lots of the original deck plans included, many are fold outs, but to me, these are a pain in the ass to figure out what is going with them. Plus, these are photos of the originals....time is never kind to illustrations like these. Was Friedman in a rush to publish this book? Was A. D. Baker not available (is he still alive)? If not, there are a now a gazillion illustrators who could have done the work for pennies. He just had to go onto something like Deviantart.com to find someone. I do have Baker's British Battleships, 1889-1904, so I have a good reference of illustrations.

2. Bug Hunts: Surviving and Combating the Alien Menace (Dark Osprey) by Mark Latham
OK, I guess this one is my fault for not carefully reading description of this book. For some reason, I thought this was a rulebook with a lot of background fluff. The reviews of it seem to point that way. Nope. I am not sure what its supposed to be exactly. It rips off the Aliens and Starship Trooper franchises to describe a future history of various alien bugs and the human fight against them. Its nicely illustrated being an Osprey book. Had I known that it wasn't a set of rules, I wouldn't have gotten it. To this day, I still kick myself for not getting 2-Hour Wargames' Bug Hunt back in the day. It was cheap and probably worth the price.

3. Hail Caesar by Rick Priestley
This one is probably the best of the three. I kept hearing about how great these rules were, so I thought I'd get them and see if I can modify them for fantasy.  Being that I grew up on WRG ancient rules, I am all OK about stats being somewhat generic. If Greek hoplites want to fight dark age Vikings, I'm OK with that.

The rules aren't bad, just sort of "meh," particularly for the price. There wasn't anything in the mechanics that really stood out as new or interesting. Give me good rules over pretty pictures anytime. I also ordered the army list supplement for late antiquity to early medieval. That made up for it a little. I'm not sure if I will keep them or put them up for sale on Facebook.