First Play of War of the Ring Collector's Edition

A couple of months ago, Fantasy Flight Games announced that they had a limited number of War of the Ring Collector's Edition available at the nominal list price of $400. Since this is going for about $1000 on Amazon or eBay, I decided to snap one up. I had a chance to play it for the first time today. We made it through about 3/4 of the game with the shadow player (me) about to win. We played for 5 hours, but setup and takedown took about 1 hour each. I don't think we did much wrong, but I was certainly scrambling through the rules looking up small details. I hope it will be better next time.

Compared to the regular edition of the game, the Collector's Edition is marvelous! The figures look outstanding and because they're painted, it's easier to see which figures belong to a certain nation. The larger board is also very nice, allowing you plenty of room to stack figures without crowding.

Ankle Deep in Lead (uh) Pewter

I recently saw a series of posts on The Miniatures Page where someone was selling their GHQ WWII micro-armor collection. In total, they were selling about 500 vehicles, and I snatched it up for $200 including shipping. And, the sweetest part is that these are already nicely painted. I already have a sizable collection of GHQ modern vehicles (mostly spray-painted medium green with a few details), so this complements my existing collection quite nicely.

Now I'm reading through my entire collection of WWII miniatures rules trying to decide which one to play and find some scenarios. I'm looking at games like Spearhead, Crossfire, Blitzkrieg Commander (a Warmaster derivative), and Look Sarge, No Charts WWII amongst others as well as trying to look at more grand-tactical games where a stand is a company, battalion, or regiment.