Last Week of June 2013 Update.

Hello again Folks,

I'm yet again slowly mumbling along with exisiting projects - such as Kings of War and Bolt Action.

At the moment however, I have decided not to paint any Bolt Action Commandos as I have not got the correct Vajello green paint for their Berets. A trip to Hereford still not sourcing - some internet shopping may be in order!

I have been building more Dwarves for my Kings of War army, namely adding to the Bulwarkers horde - which when completed will be 40 strong. I played a game at Dice and Decks Gaming Club and again lost to Undead, albeit with a better effort than last time, with the Bulwarkers taking turn after turn of damage and then hitting the enemy back. Unfortunately, my Bulwarker Musician has mysteriously dissappeared after the game! So I need to build the rest of the unit, and then either find or build a new musician for them, much to my great irritation. *Update - whilst writing this post, I found the Musician had his spear lodged in the underside of the foam tray he was under, and so has been found and rescued.

Bulwarkers holding the centre against the undead menace! Well, at least until the final turns of the match.

My Riflemen Ironwatch horde takes to melee combat, The single skeleton in front of them is a Liche King.

Meanwhile, in Sci-Fi related wargaming, I am in the process of building an homage to one of my favourite films of all time - Aliens (well, the series in general). This involves models, scenery and rules! I have the option of either using Tomorrow's War, developed by Ambush Alley Games, the same team that made Force on Force or alternatively, using some homebrew rules solely for the Aliens universe I am in the process of writing. They are quite detailed and allow for 4 forces in my mind so far; Colonial Marines, Aliens, Colonists/Civilians and Weyland-Yutani/Company Mercenaries.

I have already started writing the rules, and have models and scenery in the creation stage (sourced from various locations). The vehicle so far is a 28mm scale Colony Vehicle I found on Ebay, which is nearly painted. I also have started building scenery for a colony; starting with a sign to be placed on the outskirts of any colony terrain.

The vehicle as it is being basecoated, from the end of last week.

The vehicle in it;s finished colours, I feel the colour scheme matches that of vehicles from the films.

I have manged to do my first playtest game for my rules last night, and dare I say - it went rather well in terms of popularity with my volunteer playtesters at Dice and Decks. Who took on the role of the Aliens for the game, and promptly won against a team of 5 Colonial Marines (who were represented by my Viridians for Urban Mammoth's Urban War game). The rules were very basic at this early stage, and are still missing some vital elements that I wish to unclude - such as faction lists, vehicles, terrain, and some form of rules around crawlways and vents!

The Viridians representing the Colonial Marines in the first playtesting game.

The battlefield for the first game, I felt the lack of terrain, both in volume and suitability made the game alot simpler than it should have been.

However, I felt the game showed and/or added several key points;
- the basic rules around moving, shooting and close quarters combat are working
- the addition of little extra rules to do with the unique acidic blood of the Aliens is a nice feature (which we implemented, with the option of exploding Aliens being a possibility if not instantly killed during shooting, and the option of the Aliens wounding their attacker in close combat when they themselves are injured).
- Terrain heavy games will add a real tactical element to the rules, we didn't have enough for much of a game in my opinion, and as I have not written the full terrain rules, this made sense at the time.
- My playtesters wanted me to include additional factions, such as generic mercenaries, Genetically modified Aliens and the United Systems Military - all elements from the 4th film in the Aliens franchise.

I hope to continue writing the rules up, and hopefully continue improving and continue playing a game of my own making!
 
Well, that sums up events in the Wargaming hobby world of mine for the end of June. Until next time then folks!

Updates on projects and Kings of War Battle Number 3

Hello once again folks,

I've finished University and am back at home and still assembling Dwarves for Kings of War, and a variety of other stuff as usual.

The Dwarves have been slowly cracked on with, with my first Ironclad unit now completely assembled, my big horde of 40 Riflemen is near completion and I've started assembling my Phalanx of 40 Bulwarkers, which are proving to be far more interesting than originally planned.

The unit is on a 10 wide x 4 deep movement tray, so it's a traditional looking wide frontage unit for spearmen, the spears are metal and come from Ebay, I have chopped them down so each comes out at about 5cm including the held section. The front two ranks are holding spears out to hold off attackers, and the back two are holding their spears up in the air.

The rest of the force still need to be assembled, two more units of 20 Ironclad or possibly a horde of 40, another cannon and then I'll need to start painting the whole force, which currently stands at around 150 dwarves (I think, having lost track somewhere last week).

Last night (24th May) I once again played Kings of War, against an Undead army consisting of a horde of 40 Skeleton Spearmen, 2 units of 20 Skeletons, 3 Units of Revenants, 3 Catapults and 3 Liche Kings. I was resoundly beaten this time, making my current tally, 2 victories to 1 loss. Which isn't overly bad, yet. The horde of 40 Spearmen really trashed my army, and nothing in my army seemed to be having a good day, as the dice weren't rolling the needed rolls, and so Cannons were missing, melee attacks were fluffed, and rifles were rubbish. A combination of bad deployment, regenerating Undead, and sheer volume of enemies with bad dice rolling on my part and good dice rolling on my opponent's part led to that disaster.

However, I continue to paint and assemble, hopefully having a fully painted and assembled force will lead to better luck on the tabletop, I have started painting more of the assembled Dwarves, including the now fully assembled Ironclad unit's champion, who unlike the rest of my painted Dwarves (which is around 4 or 5 at the moment), is Blonde, not Ginger/Brown as background describes, although I may Ginger-ise it a tad to fit in more later on.

However, as is standard practice with me, I have another project or several on the go at once, and this time I've actually planned what my next is going to be: 28mm Halo (based off the video games and sorrounding fiction - big fan of all). My inspiration came when I got some Mantic Enforcers from the open day two weeks ago, and found the armour seemed very similar except for the head area, but this has been rectified, Defiance Games USMC Marines look exactly like Halo UNSC Marines except for some very minor differences. 

They also come with enclosed helmets as well as open faced ones, and these enclosed ones are going to be used on the Enforcers to make 28mm Spartan IVs (since in Halo background fiction these are the most numerous and varied of the Spartan Supersoldiers and still have a future in the games, but the Enforcers look like Spartan IIs in term of height and bulk, much like the main character from the games, who is the last one in the fiction that the player has seen).
I have also ordered some extra Halo-style heads from Pig Iron Productions that I feel are suitable, which arrived a few days ago and so I have put one test model together:

Very Halo-esque, these will be mixed in theory to generate a more unique feel to each of the models

Bad focus, but you get the idea of what I'm aiming for

 So watch this space, I'm planning to have some fun with this one.....

Kings of War 2nd Battle and Mantic Games' Open Day

Hello again Folks,
Been a busy few days, revision for Univeristy exams has taken up my time, but I have been able to do some more work towards my Dwarf army for Kings of War by Mantic Games.
On Friday night at Dice and Decks weekly meeting I played my 2nd game of Kings of War - 1500pts of Dwarves against Elves, wielded by Neal.
My force consisted of a force similar to that I utilised last week in my first game; lots of ranged units; Ironwatch, and a battery of 4 Cannons. The elves were almost entirely Spearmen and Bowmen, with a few scout units and a bolt thrower.
The battle was a much more close run thing compared with last week, with my particular highlights being;
A multi-melee being fought around a ruin in the centre of the board, assisted by my Dwarf King. I lost several units including my Shieldbreakers.
My best and rather surprising highlight was finding out that Dwarf Ironwatch - a range specific unit, meant for ranged attacks, is actually better than dedicated melee units at fighting in melees, and so when charged bya  unit of 40 Elf spearmen, survived and beat them back. Although both units were damaged by previous attacks.
Pictures from the night shown below;

The two forces face each other

One battery of cannons, the two units in front need to be fully assembled, but the movement trays allow the size of the unit to be determined and so it doesn't affect the game

The other battery of Cannons, along with the remainder of my force

My biggest worry during the battle, 2 units of 20 Spearmen, and a horde of 40 Spearmen behind, these units threatened my right flank, and nearly suceeded in conquering it

My left flank was threatened by three units; 2 of Bowmen and 1 of Scouts

And on Saturday (yesterday), I went to the Mantic Open Day in Nottingham. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, and it was filled with all sorts of events. Arrival was greeted with a goody bag; of which contained within was a Raptor quad bike for the Marauders in Warpath, a sprue of Goblins for Kings of War and a Orc command sprue for Kings of War.
The first thing I attended was a small seminar on Deadzone and it's place in the Warpath Universe, the role of the Corporation(s) and the Enforcers, and the development and stages of the Plague faction that forms part of Deadzone. A question and answer session then took place, and it sounds like Mantic has plans for each of it's games and a promising future.
Inside the door was a Dreadball league, and a massive 32000pt participation game of Kings of War; shown in the pictures below;

A massive table and a massive battle

Elves take on the Undead

Dwarves take on Orcs

More Dwarves take on yet more Orcs

A Giant Elf on the field, representing a regiment, there was also a giant Mantic Dwarf on the table, there were two Giant Elves and a giant Dwarf. They were of great interest to me, but seemed to be a one off thing.

The Giant Mantic Dwarf takes on a Undead Mammoth

One section of the "good" side of the table

Close-up of the Dwarves

Me and Neal (who was driving up to the event) also had the great joy of having a demo of Deadzone with Jake Thornton, the game's designer. The game was very quick to get the hang of, and we were left to our own devices, we only played the Alpha game rules, so there were some rules missing that feature in the main game.

The display version of Deadzone, featuring the models and terrain for the actual release version

Enforcer sniper on a Deadzone snap-fit scenery tower

Deadzone demo game's table in full swing

Plague models facing an Enforcer Captain

 We also played a game of Warpath, Enforcers vs Corporation at apparently 1000pts, although the game seemed extremely one sided, with Enforcers being able to jump terrain and move incredibly fast. 

The Warpath board, with giant fortress

Enforcers sneaking around the Fortress

Enforcers storm the Fortress

Corportation attempt to retake the Fortress

The opposing side from the Fortress

I bought myself yet more Mantic products, a team of 10 Enforcers, which is due to the fact they are needed for Deadzone, and are inter-useable in Warpath as well, and they resemble, in my eyes, Spartans from Halo 4, which gives me an interesting idea for paint schemes and conversion ideas.
Also I bought 40 Dwarf Shieldbreakers for Kings of War, who will end up being Bulwarkers, Dwarf Phalanx.
And that's another blog post wrapped up, I have exams for University this coming week, so updates will probably be after next weekend. Until then folks....

Kings of War - 1st Impressions and Battle - Dwarves vs Twilight Kin

Hello once again folks, I've been busy, building Dwarves, and last night played a game of Kings of War against a new member of Dice and Decks Gaming Club using his Dark Elves from Games Workshop as Twilight Kin.This was my first game of Kings of War, and I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although as with any first try, there was alot of special rules to be looked up, but the game isn't very difficult to learn as the rules are designed to be simple.

Due to my inability to assemble 85 Dwarves in a week, I had to borrow some from another fellow Dice and Decks gamer, so I borrowed a horde (of 40) rifle-armed Ironwatch, and two regiments of 20 Shieldbreakers, along with an additional pair of Ironbelcher cannons.

The horde of 40 Riflemen I borrowed for the game, and has inspired me to get a unit just like them, but perhaps with musician and banner to keep them going in a fight.

Two units of Shieldbreakers, also borrowed, behind a unit of Games Workshop Thunderers from Battle for Skull Pass, which are being used as Ironwatch armed with rifles

My own models were a mixture of those Mantic dwarves and some Games Workshop dwarves from the Battle for Skull Pass boxed set from 7 years ago (the models for which we guessed I painted when I was 14!), I shall be repainting or at the very least touching these models up for use in the future. This was my force including those I borrowed from Paul at Dice and Decks:

- Dwarf King (Dwarf Lord from Battle for Skull Pass)
- Warsmith (Made from a cloaked Scibor Miniatures model I got last year)
- Warsmith (A runesmith from Games Workshop's Dwarf Warhammer Fantasy range)
- 4 Ironbelcher Cannons (1 Mantic, my own one, A Cannon from Battle for Skull Pass and two more borrowed)
- 10 Crossbow-armed Ironwatch (My Mantic Dwarves)
- 10 Rifle-armed Ironwatch (Battle for Skull Pass Thunderers)
- 10 Ironclad (Games Workshop Battle for Skull Pass Warriors)
- 20 Ironclad (My Mantic Dwarves)
- 40 Rifle-armed Ironwatch (Mantic, borrowed from Paul C at Dice and Decks)
- 10 Shieldbreakers (A mix of Mantic and Games Workshop Dwarf Miners from Battle for Skull Pass)
- 20 Shieldbreakers (Mantic, borrowed from Paul C)
- 20 Shieldbreakers (Mantic, borrowed from Paul C)

Picture of the force;

1500pts of Kings of War Dwarves....

My many many cannons for the game

 

The game started well, with my cannons opening up, needing 6's at the ranges across the board for the first turns, and I rolled them often enough to do some serious damage to a few of my opponents units, starting with a regiment of elves threatening my left flank and scoring 9 points of damage to the unit, which promptly failed it's nerve check and routed off the board. 
This tread continued pretty much throughout the game, although less often for the last two or so turns, but the cannons proved their worth, being the bane of my opponent throughout the entire game, helped by the close supervision of the Warsmiths, which enabled a re-roll for missed shots each time a cannon fired. My major losses were a the unit of 40 rifle-armed Ironwatch, who were routed by a unit of 10 elves that survived a pair of cannons and a unit of crossbows firing on them. I had several units routed (mainly the rifle-armed Ironwatch and the 10-strong Ironclad) or wavering (A unit of 20 Shieldbreakers and a Cannon at least to my memory) by the end of the game, not helped by me forgetting the Dwarves Headstrong rule (ignoring Wavering results of a nerve test on a 4+ on the start of the turn it affects), but not as many as my opponent, who lost 65% of his entire force by the end of the game, although this was not enough for outright victory for me (70% was the agreed value at the start of the game), the advantage was clearly mine when the game drew to a close.

On a modelling note, I have been assembing more of the Dwarves, and my Dwarf King ordered on Ebay from a Scibor Miniatures stockist has arrived. It has been assembled and undercoated, and I have since then started the first stages of painting. As with my previous Scibor Miniatures, the Dwarf King is amazing quality and a little larger than most 28mm miniatures, which for a General or army leader is exactly what I wanted. A model which stands out from the rest of the force.

A newly painted Dwarf Ironclad!

 Another post of assembly/painting progress will come later this week... till then Folks!

Hail Caesar Roman Updates and Kings of War - Dwarves muster.....

Hello again folks,

I have been busy assembling and painting as usual. I have continued to construct Caesarian/Civil War era Romans for Hail Caesar, for the cohort I was building last time I posted, I have mixed together the altered Montifortino Helmets from the sprues as they come from Warlord Games, and additionally, a few spare Auxilary helmets to make the force look more towards the Civil Wars and thus less Republican Roman. As always, pictures of progress so far are displayed below;

My completed Roman officer representing Julius Caesar from the Civil War era

A completed Legionary in a Montefortino helmet without crest and a second Legionary with an Auxilary helmet representing a Coolus pattern Roman helmet

The Cohort so far

As always, something new to indulge in, a visit from Square Orange Games has left me with a huge Dwarf army to assemble from Mantic Games for their Kings of War range.  I am quite keen to get this force on the table, and have through pure lack of thinking ended up with a rival dwarf collector at Dice and Decks. I intend to mix the Dwarves from the Battle for Skull Pass Games Workshop Fantasy range I got years ago into this force to kickstart it into a force to be reckoned with. Progress so far is detailed in the pictures below:

A large and daunting box of 85 Dwarves

The box's contents, although the Shieldbreakers number 15 in the box, they come in units of 10, 20 or 40, so the box is slightly out of date in terms of "game legal" units

My first Ironwatch, this is part of one of three units, this unit will remain un-upgraded with crossbows, the other two will have rifles for extra punch

This colour scheme has changed to blue, but the face and armour remains the same as shown, along with the gloves and the weapon

The whole of my first Ironwatch unit assembled

The repainted Ironwatch shown above in red, the blue is my final colour scheme for the whole force

The first of my Ironclad units, the Champion, Musician and Standard Bearer are assembled but missing from this picture

The first member of the unit to be painted

The unit champion assembled

Two dead Dwarves that are part of the sprues provided, I haven't planned out what I'm going to do with these yet

Crew for the Ironbelcher warmachines, these will be assembled as Cannons rather than Organ Guns, since I trust my Ironwatch to take out infantry, leaving bigger stuff for the warmachines

A Scibor model I got hold of last year without ordering it, I have repainted part of the base and intend to use this fellow as a Warsmith in my force

 In addition to this, I have also purchased the following Dwarf model from Scibor Miniatures to serve as my dwarf king in Kings of War.
http://www.sciborminiatures.com/pow.php?absol=1&co=i/lato_2009/big/dwarf_horns_01.jpg
Hopefully this will make the force a bit more unique.  

Until next time then folks, enjoy the pictures! I will have made more progress by the next time I post.