The Battles of the Three Plains

Seeing that this blog's favourite elderly person has escaped the terrible (yet oddly wine-filled) dungeons of the Lair  and is back in the land of the blogging, I thought I'd celebrate by writing something about wargames, thus reviving an almost forgotten Gnome's Lair tradition. Handily, it was only (very) recently that I ran into the pretty impressive and impressively free to grab Three Plains fantasy wargame too, which you dear and above all cunning reader can also grab by visiting the previous link and providing the site with your email. Haven't received any sort of spam myself just yet, so I do believe it's pretty safe.

Then again, such a tiny risk is definitely worth the enjoyment you'll be getting, especially considering this is a pretty lovely and obviously Warhammer inspired game that doesn't require miniatures, but appropriately demands a table to game on. Three Plains comes complete with all the soldiers, heroes, monsters, war machines, counters and bits of terrain required to play out some glorious battles in equally glorious PDF; all you have to do is print them, stick 'em to paper bases and avoid paying the exorbitant prices miniature manufacturers have been asking those past few years. Not that you -or for that matter I- can't use proper fantasy gaming miniatures should you so wish, but the papery ones do look surprisingly nice...

As for the game itself, well, it really feels quite a bit like Warhammer, meaning you'll have units (complete with flanks and rears) charging each other, heroes tipping the balance and a variety of magic users, fantasy races, mercenaries, magic items, exotic poisons and catapults to spice things up. Three Plains, you see, is already quite a rich game; the well-written main rulebook and more than a few expansions/armybooks such as the Orcs of the Blank Lands one are already available to download and are all that you'll need to start playing. Well, okay, some dice too.

Now, have a look, will you? I'll wait and open a champagne to further celebrate Elderly's return while you're reading and playing with them scissors.  

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• A glimpse at a gnomic train
• H.G. Wells: Little Wars
• Brikwars!
• Maziacs: The Boardgame