Mid-August 2014 - Storming ahead into the Gates of Antares!

Hello again folks,

I have some interesting stuff to mention!

I didn't manage to have a game last week at Dice and Decks Gaming Club, much to my dissappointment, as my new Bolt Action book, the Tank War supplement, which I ordered earlier in the week arrived, along with, my playtester exclusive Algoryn AI Squad for Beyond the Gates of Antares, which is also currently in production and development by Warlord Games, it consists of 5 models, a squad leader, two troopers with different weapons and two regular armed troops. They are fairly big, much bigger than any Infantry seen in Bolt Action, and are very well cast.

I have also been working on 1 of 3 Cromwell tanks for Bolt Action: Tank War, which combined with my Sherman Firefly will form my basic platoon for any Tank War games in Bolt Action.

The first Cromwell is nearly assembled and ready for painting

However, after another day of Airsoft at C3 Tactical, I have had a game of Hail Caesar organised at Pegasus Hobbies and Games in Monmouth, using my Caesar's Legions Roman Army, which I spent a few days between Sunday and Thursday building as many extra troops as I could manage in time for the game. The invitation for a game of Hail Caesar came as a pleasant surprise as I've been waiting for a chance to throw my in progress legion onto a table and have a game! It plays in quite a similar fashion to Kings of War, I managed to play through 2 games, losing both! I didn't have enough infantry to hold off flank and rear charges, although I got my charging hits in first in the 1st game, before waiting for an advance in the 2nd game.

Archer Unit 1

Archers 2

My Light Artillery - Roman Scorpions!

My first game of Hail Caesar - Romans vs Romans, this shows the battle lines meeting each other.

Cohort matches Cohort blow for blow!

Veteran Cohort vs Veteran Cohort

My end game in the 1st match, a single cohort vs two warbands of Celts and a cohort of romans (on the left)

My battleline ready for game 2

During my time at Pegasus Hobbies and Games in Monmouth for the Hail Caesar game, I also got myself a box of Warlord Games Napoleonic Penisular War British Line Infantry, so I'm assembling these for the future, as Black Powder, if anywhere near Hail Caesar, will be something I fancy playing! Although in both Hail Caesar and Black Powder, I use whole boxed sets for 1 unit (well, I decided to use 32 men for a standard unit in Black Powder), so it'll be some time before my force is useable for this, unless I motivate myself to assemble them.

I have also assembled and painted a Sergeant made from the Eisenkern Stormtroopers I bought off Ebay, made by Dreamforge Games, this was for a Dice and Decks Painting Competition, and is painted as an Imperial Stormtrooper Sandtrooper Sergeant from Star Wars, the below pictures show work from assembly through to fully painted (fully painted picture in my next post):

2 of my other Stormtroopers, an officer and another Sergeant, this picture shows up the armour plates well

Nearly finished, as each plate was blacklined this process of painting each armour plate white took its time!

The finished product - one battle damaged Sergeant of Stormtroopers

Rear view of the finished Stromtrooper

I have also had another game of Bolt Action last Friday (29th August), which ended with three models on my opponent's side left, and me with two, a 20mm AA gun and 1 Panzer IV. So it was a very brutal and very close run game! Germans vs Germans, most of my infantry was lost in close combat with enemy infantry squads attacking my transports, which forces the transported unit to disembark and fight, which meant they were attacked by my opponent first, so I lost attacks, which combined with bad dice rolls led to me barely landing a hit back. This led to me losing the combats, which lost the squad. This meant my only successes were by unusual combats, my favourites being a Hanomag belonging to the enemy being assaulted by my two-man sniper team, only to find a single Lieutenant in it, who was promptly killed! Even more amusing was the 5 man assault-rifle armed squad that was in the same transport but had disembarked previously, assaulted my 5 man heavy howitzer crew, and somehow lost, without scoring a hit on the crew! All in all, one of my more memorable games of Bolt Action.

Panzer IV, Spotter for the Howitzer and 20mm AA Gun. The squad behind is a destroyed unit, due to an assault on their Hanomag transport.

Middle of the table, a sort of No-Man's Land, where any unit that entered was destroyed by its opposition

My Artillery, and Sniper Team, next to an enemy Hanomag, which was carrying an Assault Rifle armed 5-man squad, and an SMG Lieutenant, both destroyed by the crew and the sniper team respectively

This Friday just passed, I played another game of Bolt Action, but we only succeeded in getting through around two turns, but it was a large points scale game. Germans vs British. We still managed to have some great moments, which the game allows, a Dingo Scout Car tried to ram my Howitzer, but we interpreted the rules to allow a reaction shot from said Artillery piece, which fired a direct shot which landed a huge number of hits and destroyed the vehicle just shy of hitting the artillery unit!

My Left flank, a 150mm Howitzer, Tiger I and 20mm AA Gun.

Tanks take aim at each other, the destroyed Churchill took a direct massive damage hit off my Tiger I, which is just to the left of the picture!

Mechanised Germans (my force) advance

In Airsoft news, my new boots arrived, but I'm not sure they fit or not, I can wear them, but they aren't at present, the most comfortable things around. I have also got a rubber bayonet knife for my loadout, and a new M16A3 from G+P, which was tested yesterday at C3 tactical airsoft. Here's some pictures of my new kit before I leave you till next time!

My boots, based on Vietnam era jungle boots!

Rubber bayonet attached to my older M16VN

My new Airsoft M16A3 - I like this one, although it did seem a bit iffy at first test, although this was with one of my grey 20 round BB magazines, not the metal 130 round magazine that came with the Airsoft gun.  

Updates for August 2013

Hello again folks,

I really must apologise this time, this post has been put off for too long. A side effect is of course I have more to blog about!

On Friday and Saturday the 2nd and 3rd of August respectively, I've once again been beavering away on Romans, and on Saturday, I decided to build some Warmachine models so I could lend my unit of Knights Exemplar to Neal at Dice and Decks Gaming Club.

I completed the assembly of my unit of Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth Knights Exemplar, one of which was completely finished and was featured on this blog some time ago, another is mid-way through painting. The unit was successfully lent out and was used in the Midlands Steamroller Warmachine Tournament on Sunday at the Ross-on-Wye scout hut.

Fully Assembled Knights Exemplar (at last)

In the process I built the rest of my Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth Exemplar Cinerators, and I have been painting the unit champion. My colour scheme for my Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth force, as a reminder, since it's been a while since I last posted about Warmachine on this blog; white armour, with crimson cloaks and crimson/red and gold edging, eyes are predominately yellow. I have also restarted doing my Judicator Collossal for my force, which is also shown below.

In other news, I've been convinced, mainly by the quality of the models, to start collecting a few models for the Batman Arkham City Miniatures Game by Knight Miniatures. The models are 35mm tall on average, with various models being slightly above or below this due to their comparative heights. I have ordered the following miniatures to test; Batman - the Dark Knight movie versions, and Ra's Al Ghul and the League of Shadows.

Batman - Dark Knight movie version - images from the Knight Miniatures site

 

Ra's Al Ghul and League of Shadows - movie version

The rules and some scenarios along with stat cards for some of the models are all available for free, but the rules are badly traslated from the designer's native Spanish. Miniatures vary, a mixture of Batman's, currently 3, a Frank Miller version, a Arkham City video game version, and the Dark Knight movie version. There are a Dark Knight movie Joker and the one from the Arkham City game, along with gang members and Harley Quinn. Penguin and his gang, generic Inmates. Heroes and villains also include; Deathstroke, Green Arrow, Robin, Nightwing, Talia Al Ghul and Catwoman. Others appear all the time and so this list isn't to be considered up to date.

The models arrived for the aforementioned game yesterday, and I have started assembling and painting the League of Shadows and Ra's Al Ghul, the Batman model is a different story however. The company I ordered from has sent me the wrong Batman! They sent me the Arkham City Video Game version, not the Dark Knight Movie version I asked for. So I had to wait until this morning for the correct one to arrive, during which time I have assembled all of the League of Shadows boxed set and started painting Ra's Al Ghul and one ninja.

The models are nice quality and I am quite chuffed with them.The current models I ordered are all going to be an interesting challenge for me to paint and try to do some more techniques than normal for me on. I have already started trying a few of these on Ra's Al Ghul as he is sculpted in the gear he was wearing for the final scenes of Batman Begins; namely black suit, with black shirt, tie and gloves, so it's an interesting challenge to show different shades of black material on the model. Above here is the finished result, where I hope the camera shows the differences.

One of the Ninjas - Lotus on the stat card, is sculpted so as to be jumping whilst throwing a morning star, and so I clipped the tab off the feet, and pinned the foot to a metal pin. When in Hereford I bought a urban basing kit from the Games Workshop there, and some various Vajello and GW paints in various shades of blue and black for the Ninjas and Batman.

I have also started working on my Judicator for my Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth again, with the torso now glued and pinned to the bottom half. The left arm has also been mostly painted, bar a few minor details and has been attached to the torso. With the rocket pods that mount on the shoulders going to be painted seperately before being glued on, otherwise it'll be a pain not to spoil the already painted sections of the Judicator.

As I have for the last two weeks been going back and painting models that I have had lying around on my painting desk, I have also in addition to those mentioned above, been painting more of my 32mm tall Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittannia force. At this moment I am working on the HMG team for my second squad, focussing first on the loader. The work so far is detailed in the pictures below.

As I keep adding to this post before I actually add pictures and such, which then leads to it being published, I'll state another piece of Wargaming news, I've ordered the rulebook and one ship for Mongoose Publishings' A Call to Arms: Star Fleet. A game based in the Original Series era of the Star Trek universe. I went to just order a single ship - a Constitution Class Cruiser, the same type as the original USS Enterprise, so I could try and make a ship at a manageable size and then paint it. The rules were ordered just for me to have a nose at to begin with, I'll report my opinions in a future blog post.
I have assembled the Consitution with minimal effort, although a bit of bad casting on the smooth sections at the front of the nacelles involved smoothing and filling in with Green Stuff. A slight issue is that the stand fits into the body of the model at the bottom of the hull, but the hole is not the correct size and so has had to be corrected using a rotary tool before being pinned so it can be removed from the base for painting etc. In terms of painting I have started so that I can attempt to enter it in Dice And Decks Gaming Club's painting competition this coming Friday (30th August). Here's the result so far:

Main colour is done, now the details!

In other important news, Dice and Decks Gaming Club's charity event for this year had to be cancelled due to various circumstances, a great shame, but it is hoping to run more events for next year.

End of July 2013 - Ave Romans!

Hello again Folks!

My preparations for Warlord Games attendance at my local Dice and Decks Gaming Club's charity event on the 17th August are proceeding well. I intend to have at least one side of a Hail Caesar game with me - which will be my army of the Late Roman Republic/Civil Wars and the First Emperor - Augustus. 

To this end as you will have seen on my last post I have already assembled one century and started painting it. Converting the helmets of the troops to not have a top-knot on them, and thus make them more realistic to a war/battle scenario and less like a parade ground army. 

I bought 2 more boxes of legionaries, one with Gladius and the other with Pilum on Wednesday, and my 3 boxes (2 with Pilum and another with Gladius - which is to be my first century - and thus get to keep their helmet crests) plus the Heroes of Rome; Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus blister pack of metal characters from the HBO series of Rome ordered from Warlord Games have also arrived to make 6 units for my army, taking it up to the size needed for a game (I hope!). I have commanders from the Foundry set of Tribunes I found on Ebay a while ago.

One century with Pilum have been partially assembled and Vorenus and Pullo have also been assembled and started to be painted. I have yet to decide whether to give the first century cloaks to go with those found on the Vorenus and Pullo miniatures. 

Pictures as always are included here: 

Pullo and Vorenus undercoated

 

Vorenus as of this evening

Conicern from my first century

My mega box of Romans from Warlord Games - taking my army to 144 Romans plus Commanders

The first century in the background, and the second in the foreground  - the one I am currently constructing

One of my Tribunes - the commanders of my Hail Caesar divisions

And there we are for this week once again folks. Dice and Decks has a normal club night on Friday where I shall be building yet more Romans. This is complemented by a all day gaming session at the Ross-on-Wye scout hut this Saturday will allow me to make even more Romans for the army whereby hopefully I'll be right on track to having an army by the 17th August.