A few things for the New Year

In between Christmas and New Year, I have had a little bit of time to do some painting. So I finally finished off the last of the rescue Lord of the Rings miniatures - this time Aragorn from the warg attack. 

Another arm from the Gripping Beast Vikings. Not a bad effort on this one - I didn’t quite get the gauntlet right on the replacement arm. Interestingly the sword does seem to be the right size for the miniature. 

The other miniatures completed are 2 versions of Æthelflæd, the lady of Mercia (bad squiddo) and a non winged Valkyrie by Shield Wolf.

Again quite pleased with these ladies. So these will be available for SAGA and KoW and Rampant games.

Happy New Year  

Morts 

Glorfindel - a hero of middle earth - the Christmas Elf!

In the push to complete stuff already to go - a GW Glorfindel foot and mounted version has been completed before Christmas - which means i might have forced this one a bit, as I’m not sure I have got the paint job quite right. I was keen to paint this chap, as I liked the figure and he will be used as an elf hero in more than one game system (Dragon Rampant, KoW, MENSG). 

But I’m not sure that I have got it right - I was hoping to get the painting done before Christmas and rushed some bits. I will have to sleep on it for a few days. 

If I don’t post for a few days - Happy Christmas!

Morts

Pre Christmas games and some Greeks

So last night Steedo, DK and Chris (from next door) came around for a couple of pre Christmas games - the rest of the collective were invited, but declined … some stuff about being busy. Initially I was thinking about a full on miniatures game such as Xenos Rampant, Kill Team or Blackstone - but then thought I would invite “The Boy Next Door” (TBND) over (already a bit of a gamer - has the reissue of Heroquest), so went for a couple of lighter games, starting with Raiders of the North Sea. This is a really nice place and pick up mechanic game, which Steedo won by screwing over DK and myself a couple of times - Git! We then moved on to Ticket to Ride Europe - another simple pick one action game. This time DK spent the first part of the game just collecting tickets (claiming it was his colour blind-ness), and ending up with about half the deck at one point. Then he placed and shot into the lead - however he didn’t complete any of his routes, so at the end was pulled back. I had a mare of a game - just couldn’t get the colours needed to complete my big route, so this time TBND won, as he had collected some more routes. A good evening with plenty of beer, cheese and beige snacks. 

I have also been working on the stuff on the painting queue - aka what is prepared and undercoated. This time it is some Greek Archers by 1st Corps (with some little shields to make them Cretan Archers). 

Pretty happy with these - would like 6 of the little chaps - not sure what happened to the spares. These will no doubt be used in Dragon Rampant, Kings of War and Of Gods and Mortals … at some point. 

What will be next onto the painting schedule?

Morts

Some 15mm Saxons and Russians

 The continued push to finish what is in the painting queue - I completed a unit of Russian infantry, mainly because I had 3 painted pikemen from a reorganisation years ago, so it was only 9 figures to do. 

I’m not sure if they are participating accurate, I did have a quick look in the Osprey Peter the Great’s Army. So the flag and cuffs might be off a bit - but it’s not end of the world.

I also finished a Saxon unit - again 5 of the marching troops were part of the first Saxon unit I painted years and years ago. I have to finish the final at the top and the turn the flag up the right way.

So a bit of work still to do - d’oh. 

Morts

A little ballista and humans for fantasy games

In my current drive to finish stuff that I have … and I have been looking around eBay for things … slightly tempted by some 40k terminators or sternguard, but not enough to sound with cash. Anyway I did a couple of conversions on some Fireforge medievals I have had lying around as crew for a ballista for the human Kings of War army. 

Obviously this needs basing and a little something to balance the piece on the left of the ballista - not sure what but the space needs something there. 

While i was painting these I took the opportunity to paint a couple more of the Order of the Dragon support troops - well thugs or something similar in terms of Frostgrave/Sellwords etc.

These are ok - the conquest miniatures Norman head on the swordsman is a little bit soft in terms of details. But these are just support for the knights. I would like to get a couple more figures for this little warband - which now stands at 10 - 4 knights (including the leader), 2 crossbow men and 2 spearmen. I was thinking a ranger type and another appropriate henchman type - but I’m not sure and I only have Celt or Barbarian sprues about at the moment. I glad I painted these as I need to up my game in painting small units, individuals as I have a number of these in the to do … ready to paint queue.

Morts

Saxon Artillery and other things

After possibly 12 months plus of sitting on sticks ready for painting (and multiple years of sitting in bags and boxes), I have finally found the time to paint the Savon Artillery for the Great Northern War army. 

3 medium/heavy guns and a very light gun - apparently the Saxon guns had black carriages with yellow metal work - the crews have got red hat lace, although I found source which said it is white - but I had already painted them by then. Painting this lot has encouraged me to try and finish off the rest of the army - so along with the already prepped Guard du Corps and Cuirassiers, there are now 2 line infantry units and the “light” infantry for Maurice prepped too. While fiddling about a few painted pike men were found, so another Russian foot regiment is in the works. I have also got out the Bavarian units to ready for completion. Might try a game of Maurice in the near future - want to get (at least) one in before Christmas (but realistically one with be a good effort as things get busy).

On to the other things, while browsing eBay I came across a Mythic Battle Pantheon Aphrodite model for a bargain price, but I wasn’t sure of the size. 

As you can see - a nice model but she does tower above the Croc Games Athena demigod miniature. Part of me is not sure if I missed out on getting Hermes and the Persephone models, as I waited for her arrival - anyway she can still be used in Of Gods and Mortals.  

Morts

Napoleon - the movie - what I thought

The good lady and myself went to see the Ridley Scott movie Napoleon. I had only seen one review on YouTube (Kermode and Mayo) and seen some headlines about the historical accuracy or otherwise of the film. 

So what did I think? Well I quite enjoyed it, not brilliant, but I wasn’t bored by it. It was interesting to see a portrayal of the man and his relationship with Josephine - perhaps it would have been better if her name was in the title. The acting was good although I’m not sure I really understood the toxic, love/hate relationship the film was focusing on or it wasn’t fully developed. The script didn’t show Napoleon’s drive/ambition and need for Josephine in his life - perhaps the time jumps were too much … for example the scene ending the Retreat from Moscow (1812/3), jumped straight to the abdication in 1814 (not even a sniff of the battle of the Nations). 

The pictures on the screen were great and the battle scenes were grim - really showing some blood and guts. But there were lots of liberties taken. There were lots of flags and camps both at Austerlitz and Waterloo, big flags so you could see who was where. For me the most jarring were those about Waterloo - no reverse slope, La Haye Saint or Hougoumont - the French cavalry charging around the British squares were good, unfortunately the rest was a bit like the awful The Hobbit - Battle of Five Armies for not following the source material or in this case the know historical facts (which is probably worse). 

Probably best to watch the 1970s Waterloo film - I always liked it - got the Airfix battleset for Christmas one year on the back of that.

I suppose I would rate as 3 out of 5 - I would have to say as a positive my better half and Thing 1 both liked it, so for introducing some Napoleonic history (which isn’t Jane Austen based - they used some of the same music from the Kiera Knightly movie as well) is probably a good thing. If I get hold of Apple TV I will probably watch the 4 1/2 hour version, which will hopefully fill the gaps - perhaps it was planned as a miniseries or two films and they decided to put it out as a single movie - which would explain some of the jumps and details in the relationship, which weren’t quite there in the cut at the cinema. 

Morts

Some games over the weekend - Munchkin and Blackstone Fortress

Steedo and my wives were away for the weekend, so the collective got together for a few games. On Friday evening virtually a full turn out descended on Steedo’s to play - Munchkin. I thought we were going to play a new game - such as Descent, Hansa Teutonica .. or a classic  like Eclipse, Ticket to Ride Europe, Powergrid or Nine Worlds - but I think Steedo was fussed on learning rules, so when I suggested (half jokingly) Munchkin, he went for that. The game played fairly quickly, but did end up being the usual backstabbing, trying to stop others winning affair all of the competitive games are reduced to. I think Snake-eyes, went for the win first only to be thwarted and killed and reduced to level 1 (the starting point of the game about 2 hours earlier) - DK would have flipped the table if he could of (but Steedo’s dining room table is pretty heavy), so threw dice at Steedo instead, when his character was killed and back to the beginning… he was not happy. Then as usual Steedo went in for the win - which Sylon and myself were unable to prevent as we had used up cards block the others attempts. The overall consensus (although to be fair Sylon was not too keen on the game - but I think it grew on him) was that Munchkin was a light and vicious little game which shouldn’t be taken too seriously - there was plenty of banter around the table and once we were sorted on the rules, it was pretty quick. Good with drink and plenty of beige snacks. I think we will play again when there is a few of us and we don’t want to much AP.

On Saturday evening DK and Steedo turned up at mine and played Blackstone Fortress. This was the second game in the campaign that Tiger-King and I started months ago (possibly last year). I have to say the game did actually zip long pretty well. The explorers this time were Taddeus (the priest), Pious Vorne (Queen of the flames), Dahyak (the groot) and UR-025 - which turned out to be a pretty balanced team. 

We whipped our way through 6 out of 8 possible encounters, before calling it quits (2 characters had taken some serious damage at this point) and returning to Precipice, with plenty of arcotech to spend and enough clues to attack at stronghold - I am not sure the team is buffed enough for this yet, but on the next session we will have to decide. We did have a couple of rules issues - we had a couple of combat encounters with just Spindle Droids (the other combat was just Negavolt Cultists), and not enough models to fight (I suppose we could have proxied/counts as), who we cleared out pretty quick. And once we had wiped everything out, but the event roll hadn’t produced the exit point, we just called those after doing a round of reinforcement rolls. I think we were lucky not to be hit with the Traitor Guard, who can mob your explorers - I think Tiger-King and I suffered with that last time out. 

We now have a couple of inspired characters, but the threat level is 1 and we now have to roll to end a session. Next time we have to get the navigator out - I’m not sure that he has been used. 

A couple of good evenings of games. 

Farseer for …

For the reason I thought it would be cool I picked up and painted an Eldar Farseer miniature off eBay. 

The colour match those of the Dire Avengers and Rangers that I have - he can’t be used in Kill Team, but I think could be used in One Page Rules Firefight and with the right traits Xenos Rampant. Happy with this one. 

Busy this week with mock marking and a couple of games at the weekend - so a few more posts coming soon… ish. 

Morts 

Kill Team - Death in the Ruins

The good lady pop out for a couple of hours to do some singing practice, so I thought it would be a good idea to have Steedo over for a game. I thought I should play Kill Team, because I keep painting stuff and don’t actually get many games in. 

We used a couple of existing lists I had done on BattleScribe - to save time as I on,y decide on Kill Team with about 30mins before Steedo arrived (SAGA, Kings of War and other games ran through my head as well). 

The forces on the board were Ad Mech and the Craftworlds - Steedo decide to give the Ad Mech a go. 

We set up diagonally opposite. For some reason I don’t have an initial position photo- d’oh. Any way it was a fairly brutal first round with two dire avengers and three(?)Ad mech being taken out early on. With plenty of damage being done to the surviving Ad mech - however Steedo ended the round 2 nil up on victory points. The rangers doing rather well being concealed, but being able to shot with the silent rule. We also happen on the fact that the rangers could “dash” and shoot (they can’t move and shot because of the heavy rule). Picture below shows the end of turn 1, start of turn 2.

Turn 1 picked up from turn - the Eldar rangers just peppering the Ad Mech with hits - reducing then down a two minis - a ruststalker and ranger diktat. Some quality shooting going on. However Steedo was still leading on the victory points 3-2. 

The start of turn 3 is above - here the elder went all engage order as Steedo only had one figure with ranged weapons - so the team’s job was to take out the shooter, avoid the ruststalker while trying to shoot it. Something they were able to do!

End of game - total team kill. A grim day for the Ad Mech victory points were 5-3 (might have been 4) to the Craftworlders and we didn’t have to play turn 4.

A really brutal game for Steedo - I would like to play this again with teams reversed. Was I just lucky with the dice this time? But it was nice to have a win. 

Kill Team can be very tough - the last time out with the Eldar I was well beaten (I think by DK and a Chaos warband) and Steedo smashed me up in our last game when I was using the Blooded Traitor Guard.

After Kill Team we had couple of games of Odin’s Ravens, which resulted in a win for me and a draw as we didn’t check the victory conditions for first game.

Steedo also brought over the new edition of Kings of War over - he picked it up at Essen. Certainly I want to have a go at the Ambush rules. He also has lent me his copy of Osprey Games, General Orders - which looks interesting. 

Anyway pleasant distraction today. 

Morts

Some more Adeptus Mechanicus

With the week off nearly over I managed to sit down and paint the last Ad Mech miniatures I had picked up. I think the plan is to play some One Page Rules Grim Dark with them - as I am too tight to get 40k (although I believe the rules etc are available for free online), there is also Xenos Rampant to use as well. 

None of these can be used in Kill Team - so bigger games are needed. 

First up the Tech-Priest Dominus. 

He has got greener robes in comparison to the rest of the army - I should have mixed in more of the standard green with the scaley green. But it looks pretty good. I picked up the model assembled from eBay - I have to say that with this model and the Kataphrons to follow they can be a little challenging to get to all of the model with the poses they are in. 

The Kataphrons;

No 1 - Heavy Arc Rifle and Hydraulic Claw

No 2 - Heavy Arc Rifle and Arc Claw

No 3 - Torsion Cannon and Arc Claw

I went for a mixed load out on these, as I don’t think I will get anymore and it seemed to be more interesting - I imagine in games (unless skirmish type) they would all count as the same for ease of play.

These were assembled and painted with the tractor unit and torso separately - which I think worked ok.

All I have left on the 40k front is a farseer to paint for the Eldar and when I get them for Christmas Voidscarred Kill Team.

In between jobs I painted an eBay rescue - Theoden King - from Lord of the Rings. 

He arrived missing his sword arm - fortunately on of the Gripping Beast plastic sets does have left handed sword arm, so with a little carving and paint he was repaired - it’s only taken about 5-10 years to finish him - ridiculous! 

I have been stalking eBay and Etsy recently to see if there is anything I might want and sadly there isn’t, which is probably a good thing as I will hopefully get on with working through the metal/plastic back log.

Morts

Done some painting

So will a little break from work I have settled down and done a bit of painting. 

Actually completely finished - some grooty Treemen types. 

Done with speed paints and with a little dry brush - should be useful for many game settings. Nice quick job. 

Not painted, but assembled some Valkyries by shield wolf miniatures - picked up on a kickstarter a while ago - not totally sure why I assembled these. I have a few wings and bodies spare - but am short of left arms. They aren’t high on the get painted queue. But I think the assembly process helped get the mind to the painting space. 

The tractor units for the Kataphrons are painted and I have started on the bodies. 

I’m not sure if I’m going to do some chipping on these or not. I might wait until they are fully assembled. 

Some not brilliantly done 15mm civilians for the age of reason. 

Done with speed paints - just to get the job done. The top row are clutter for battlefields. The priests can actually be used in games of Maurice - with an effect on your troops - which is why I got them, can’t remember the rule now. 

So some stuff done. 

Morts 

Runebound - DK’s birthday game.

On Saturday some of the collective turned up at DK’s for his birthday games day - Present were Snake-Eyes, myself and DK obviously, those with notes from there mum’s Sylon (jet lag - returned from Canada the day before), Steedo (been away all week with work and wanted to spend some time with Mrs Steedo (might also been too soon after the Essen trip)), Tiger-King (apparently “sick” again). I was only available for the afternoon session 1pm to 6pm ish (more of that later). So after about an hour’s discussion about Essen and the adventures they had were were ready to start the rule’s explanation.

Due to the excuses DK decided that we would play Runebound (a game that he has had for a while, but due to the ridiculous number of games, has never got to a table) , which is a sort of RPG lite board game hybrid. We chose a character each - DK the “noble“ knight, Snake-eyes a Wizard and myself an Elf Ranger. The game is basically explore the board doing various events, to obtain money, equipment, weapons so that you can defeat the big bad at the end of the game. The game is semi cooperative in that if the big bad get to the middle of the board, you all lose - but if you defeat the big bad you win!

The starting point of the game - each character has three actions. Movement costs 1 action and you role 3 dice and then can move on the terrain types rolled (unless on road). Training - getting more skills cards, Healing and something else cost one action. To activate an encounter (the gems on the board) costs 2 actions. There are 3 types of encounters; Yellow combat; Green exploration/quest; Purple social interaction. Each successful encounter would gain, you money, lore and the encounter token - which could  be collected up and spent to improve stats or gain skills , from the skills cards.

The game moves along quite nicely - the combat was fun (in the early part of the game) - involving casting (throwing/dropping) 2 sided counters which could be then used to activate abilities or attack you opponent. This worked well in the first half of the game, but as we gained more skills and weapons we gained more counters and the combat slowed things down quite a lot (although this was probably because I was running rather late by the end of game and wanted things to end …).

The boss monster is revealed - it’s a dragon - run for the hills. He only needs to move 5 or 6 hexes to the city (picture on the right) in the centre to win the game and for us to be losers. It this point i was running about trying to get money to buy some armour to take into the boss fight, but virtually every encounter was a bloody quest (l think that I had about 5/6 active quests) on the other side of the board! About 5 turns was spent trying to get the money together to be in with a chance in the boss fight. Snake-eyes did roughly the same - but trying to get lore. DK was trying to buff himself and we were fortunate that for three turns the big bad didn’t move, then he did. At this point DK’s noble knight stepped up - I say noble, but on three occasions during encounters DK had the opportunity to do the right thing and … on the first DK’s character punched an old woman in the face and stole her money. Then he encountered a refugee camp and could have helped them, but chose to loot the place instead … I can’t recall what the final “Murder Hobo” act he perpetrated, but Snake-eyes and I were thinking that the population of the world were probably safer with  a dragon overlord.

The final boss fight between DK and the Dragon King - Snake-eyes and I were ready to step up, when DK was defeated … but after two combats DK prevailed and won the game! The combat was close and we suggested that he retreated from the first combat, which I think he was about to lose. We were luck that the Dragon didn’t move after this as well - well DK was as I was rooting for the Dragon at this point. In the second combat if the dragon king wasn’t killed DK would have been - a damn close run thing. The combat  in the boss fight was a bit protracted in the boss fight - the token flipping things loses something with lots of tokens and isn’t as much fun.

Well done DK on  a Birthday win of Runebound (and thanks for the Somerset Cider Pork Casserole) - I enjoyed the game and would play again, even though it took 7 hours with 3 players - apparently it should be 3 hours with 3 players according to BBG! I thought we were playing fairly quickly - obviously we had some AP issues (again).

Morts

A Proper Ramble … for charity

The gaming and miniature modelling front has been quiet for a few weeks due to most of the collective heading off to Essen and work being a bit mental and tiring at the moment - also the Kataphrons aren’t really making me want to finish them at the moment - perhaps I will get some mojo back in the next week when I am off work. I am catching up with some of the collective at the weekend, so might see some of their booty and hear stories of their adventures in Germany. 

So what have I been up to? 

Well last weekend I was involved in a monster (well a 32 mile overnight) charity walk across Dartmoor, with 4 colleagues (Gavlar, Guy, Padders and Carlos). So prepare to be slightly bored by my adventure - with pictures. After a day of work we headed off to Okey for a 4:30pm start on the Friday night.

We started at Okehampton station - well Youth Hostel (but they are at the same place), headed across the A30 and onto the moor, heading for Culiver’s Steps - I should say that it was raining when we started out. 

The path down to Culiver’s was more like a river …

The East Okement River was definitely full - this might cause a few problems at a crossing later on …

The weather had started to clear as we head towards Oke Tor. 

The crossing at Knack Mine was not possible, so with a bit of ferreting about we did find somewhere to cross - but it was a bit dodgy. We would have looked a bit foolish if someone had gone in the water - we did loss a water bottle to the rain gods. 

Heading towards Hangingstone Hill - the planned campsite. Although I can’t remember what tors are in the background here. 

The sleeping arrangements for me in a beautiful red light - I made a mistake by letting myself get cold on Friday night and then not being able warm myself up (I should know better - I just done a course on this!). We shared a Chilli and some under cooked rice (which gave a few of us a dodgy tummy a couple of days later). Obviously I survived the night - we had covered 6 of our 32 miles planned - Ivybridge Station was still some distance away. 

Saturday morning at Hangingstone - still a bit dark, well it is 6:40am. 

Looking better on the way to Quentin Man’s - looking over towards Fernworthy and Sitaford. 

Following the walls to Sitaford Tor. 

The Grey Wethers stone circles.

Postbridge … bridge - about 10am. 

Here we were treated to a breakfast bap and cuppa tea by the support team - it was very welcome. After a slightly longer than anticipated stop we headed on - only 20 miles to go. 

The Trig point on Bellever Tor.

A herd of horses or are they Dartmoor ponies on the way down. 

The West Dart River at Hexworthy - after Bellever we had done a fair few miles on the road at about 6km/h, as it had been decided to avoid the stepping stones (due to the dodgy crossing last night). We then head up to the Forest Inn for a well earned pint at 12:30pm. 

The next part of the walk from Hexworthy was tough - the walk up Ryders Hill is not something I plan to repeat - long, draining and dull. The picture above shows Redlake spoil heap as we headed down to Huntingdon Warren. 

The view back back towards Avon Dam reservoir after the climb up from the clapper bridge. Looking nice. By this time 3pm we were starting to flag. Still quite away to go, but we had been walking since 7:30am. 

The over towards Plymouth Sound (but could be Bigbury bay) as we plod along the Two Moors way. This was the worse part of the along the walk - it seemed to go on for ever along the old tramway and my body seemed to be collecting aches and pains all over the place! With about 2 miles left my right Achilles started hurting … but we all pushed on and completed the walk at Ivybridge Station. 

So in total we covered 32 miles over the 2 days and 26 miles on the Saturday - raising about £2500 for new kit for the Ten Tors and DofE. 

I have to say I have never been so knackered - on Saturday evening my leg muscles and shoulders were burning! I’m pleased to have done it (carrying full kit), but I’m not planning to do a walk that long again.

Morts

Been quiet recently

After a fairly productive summer I had planned to get some painting and playing done - especially with 66% of the collective heading off to Essen Spiel at the beginning of October - but not me. The joys of work getting in the way. Talking of work it has been pretty full on this month and on top of that I did a camping course a couple of weeks ago - I am now qualified to take people wild camping on the moor. We have also been preparing for Thing 2 to return to university for her final year and Thing 1 to go on another year out - I think the itinerary is Bali, Vietnam, Thailand, then work in Australia … all of which is quite stressful and worrying. Both Things have now headed off to where they are supposed to be. 

So not much has happened on the gaming and painting front - to be honest not much happens on the gaming front … I really must work on this aspect of the hobby. 

So what little I have done is the start on tractor units for the Kataphron Breachers - just the details to go on these. I have to say while I was base coating the red for torsos I thought these are going to be a fiddle to paint. I also have to paint the magnetised weapons, which I think will be a bit of a pain to paint as well. I a moment of madness I picked up (cheaply - as always) an Eldar Farseer and another Tech Priest - undercoating him made me think that painting him will be an right faff - lots leaning over, difficult to reach bits. 

Not sure when I am going to get time for some painting etc. as I am pretty stacked with things on the calendar for the next fortnight. I would like to get some stuff done, so I have something to put on three blog. 

Morts 

Some Saxons

So after the visit to Corfu and seeing Schulenburg’s statue I thought I might do some more Saxon for the Great Northern War. So I did. 

A couple of units in firing line - paper flags. The texture on the bases will be done when all the units are painted. Got some artillery, a couple of cavalry and infantry to do. Roundway minis are pretty easy to paint quickly. 

Must have a game of Maurice soon. 

Morts

What’s on the painting table …

Well after the trip away I thought some Saxons for the Great Northern War or some Greeks, but what did I actually paint? A couple of Valkyries of course - why wouldn’t I? These have been knocking about for a while - bought ages ago for Of Gods and Mortals,

The Reaper bones miniature with a press moulded shield from an Odin miniature I have. 

The North Star miniature (again with a press moulded shield) from the official range. I have to say I quite enjoyed painting these ladies, something a bit different. Just need to paint one of the gods some I can have a force (as the vikings are already done for Saga). Of course I need to paint a Greek god so that there is somebody to fight. 

Before the escape to Corfu I prepped some treemen types - "Groots” for Kings of War type games. I picked these 3D prints up fairly cheaply of Etsy. 

The bottom picture shows them with a 28mm wizard (so they are big enough - I thought they would be a little bigger) and what will be a Treeheader (in KoW), an old Citadel Treeman - which turned up in the McDeath scenario pack as Klinty. I am debating whether to get some leaf stuff to put on them. 

I also made and magnetised (weapons only) the Breachers for the Ad Mech.

As alway plenty to do.

Morts