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