September 2013

Hello again folks,

I've beavered away over the last few weekends, athough this week has been a bit slower and so will most weeks now as I am now employed from around 8.30am till 4, and tend to be a bit tired when I come back. This unfortunately impacts on my speed of posting on here.

Anyway, Dice and Decks has said it's goodbyes to Neal, who has moved to Australia, he will be missed. As a Mantic pathfinder, Neal introduced Kings of War and Dreadball to the club, as well as Privateer Press' Warmachine and Hordes. Kings of War is a major part of this week's update here on my blog.

A visit from Square Orange Games on the last friday of august has resulted in me spending money, as always, on more new stuff, including; what was meant to be a single 6-man box of Kings of War Ogres, but turned into the box of 6 Ogres and 25 more in an army deal box, giving me a roughly 1000pt Ogre army for Kings of War as well as my Dwarves. I have constructed three of these; two basic melee Ogres and the Captain, which are shown as always with my blog posts in the pictures below:

On the 6th Sept I played another game of Kings of War using my Dwarves, but also including two Ogres I had managed to assemble in time for the game. I managed to draw with my opponent, but on the higher number of points killed, just not enough for a outright win. This was despite several times during the game where things most definately were not in my favour, such as unit of "counts as" Werewolves tearing through my flanks, and were only stopped by the game's end.

The two sides face-off early in the battle

A small unit of warriors attempts to block some undead calvary from flanking my army, they succeeded for a time, but were destroyed by the Werewolves, represented by the three larger creatures behind the calvary!

My cannon is attacked!

Dwarves with Ogre backup go all out to clear some wraiths, only to find themselves attacked by the Werewolves, which tore up my right hand flank!

A brave Ogre attempts to halt the undead advance

My Dwarf Bulwarkers, with phalanx, block the route of advance for a unit of Goblin Spearmen, who also have the phalanx special rule, so it was unit quality which won this part of the battle, in my favour....

In addition to this, I also got a General Conveyor APC and a new Sergeant and Officer for my Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittania force. This makes my Dystopian Legions force a very respectable size and I'm hoping to get a few of these painted and into action in the near future. Having won the two games I played a while back, i'm interested to see how the addition of tougher vehicle units changes the way the games play.
So I have been beavering away on my Dystopian Legions - the new officer is nearly completed, along with some more work being done on a few of the basic infantry, my HMG team and the General Conveyor, which is being built and painted in sections before being fully assembled as I find painting some areas of vehicles beyond difficult after assembly. 

In other news, I've been painting a SWAT police team member from The Assault Group that I have had on my desk for a while. He is part of a pack of 4 that I've left for far too long, along with most of my painting table. 

Last Friday (20th September) I had a 4 player light-hearted game of Bolt Action, with me using my Commandos and the other players scrabbling together some small forces from British Infantry. The game was played on a 6'x4' table, with each player starting in a 12" curve from each corner of the board. The game didn't last long once combat began as each player had very few actual models on the table, although some interesting dice rolls led to some great war stories. 

The table at the start of the game, my force is closest, I advanced to the right, basically causing a pair of small skirmishes on one table.

My main squad of Commandos prepares to advance.

My British regulars, used by another player, they guarded this small farmhouse until the end of the game, taking on a patrol that tried to take it with little effort.

My main enemy in the battle, a small British force, inlcuding a PIAT, Vickers Medium Machine Gun and Sniper!

Another of the four players in the game, this force stayed out of the way until the more adventurous had finished each other off, before swooping in.

The Commandos which survived the advance begin to take revenge on the entrenched enemy force.

The terrain my Commando force advanced through to attack the enemy, as SMGs in Bolt Action only have a 12" range.

My British sniper team, so far they've succeeded in being worth their weight in my box, taking kills in every game I've used them in.

My lone Commando captain advances, showing the grit of british soldiers in the face of a rubbish set of enemy shooting rolls!

This Friday just gone, I deployed my forces back onto the (model) battlefields of World War 2, having started assembling my WW2 late war Germans. I took the Germans and my Sherman Firefly (which I've now named Cecil, after the character in the new World War 1 comedy show, Chickens), the Germans were a small Grenadier squad, and two different ranked officers with SMGs - one being a model of Oberststurmfuhrer Otto Skorzeny, the free metal model you get from Warlord Games when you order the Armies of Germany army book directly from them, whom I am using as a Colonel (which in terms of actual Bolt Action counts as a Veteran Major) armed with an SMG. Josh, another member of Dice and Decks Gaming Club, was on my side with my British under his command allied with my Germans against another British force (thus why I am quickly getting my Germans done - stops us having to use British against British). He had two officers, a Lieutenant (for my Veteran Infantry) and a Captain (made from a Commando, for use with my soon to be assembled Commando platoon, of which five and the Captain are built so far), oddly only two pin markers resulted during the game on the Captain, and led to 2 Fubar! results on a morale test, meaning the Captain spent the game running along the table edge furthest from the action as cowardice took over! (highly comical for a Commando Captain to do compared with a Lieutenant - who charged into combat with revolver in hand, again! Despite last time he did so ending badly). 

My Germans as of last Friday (27th Sept, a Lieutenant on the left, a squad at the sandbags and my Colonel, using Veteran Major's stats from the rulebook supervises them!

My force ready for the off, you can see my Sherman VC Firefly in the centre, with Germans in the foreground and supporting British infantry around the tank and in the background woodland.

The right flank, you can see part of a Churchill tank that was the main worry in this game, the infantry were shredded due to lucky shooting dice rolling.

The left flank was guarded by this small platoon, with Bren Carrier support, my Sherman destroyed the Carrier having shot and disabled a Churchill on the right flank the previous turn.

 My Colonel for my Germans has been painted, and I have assembled more Germans for Bolt Action since that battle. I have also been painting my British Sniper. Below are a few work in progress shot from this last week;

My German Colonel, the model is actually a named character from WW2 which is provided free to people who order Bolt Action: The Armies of Germany directly from Warlord Games. They also provide free characters for other nations if the army book for that nation is bought direct from them.

My Colonel with some of my other German soldiers mid-way through their own painting. The one to the left of the Colonel is my Lieutenant, to the right is an NCO with cap and STG44 Assault Rifle, with an MG42 Light Machine Gunner to the far right.

A few of my Brits, including my Sniper (centre, painted, kneeling whilst aiming soldier), and also my Germans so far.

Thanks for the patience if you've been waiting for a new post, I've spent far too long with this one and will try to update more frequently (at least one post per weekend) if I can. Until next time, folks!.....

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.

New Year update - Additions, Games and Painting Updates

Hello folks, hope you had a good new year. This is going to be a reasonably long article, I hope, and one which will be interesting.

I have made some substantial progress in several new wargaming areas, and a slightly older one.

The first of these is Dystopian Legions, I have finished two standard troopers and my musician (if you have any knowledge the one in question is the one in a flat cap with a more intact uniform). I have also started painting the two characters from the starter set, my Lieutenant and the special character; Captain Smethington II, who I will be using the rules as him, but am painting him as a character from my own Dystopian Legions background. The Lieutenant wears virtually the same uniform as the main troopers, with more armour on the legs, a stripe on the trousers, and goggles. I have also started painting the rather exotic Sky Hussars, posh-dressed soliders armed with flamethrower pistols and equipped with jet packs, and the models come with a rather well made resin jet plume to give the impression of flight. I have painted one plume, but have made little progress on the accompanying trooper bar the black undercoat.

The finished Troopers and Musician

Carrying on with Dystopian Legions I have also played two games of it with a fellow member of Dice and Decks Gaming Club, I may have mentioned the first game and the start of the painting on some of these models in my Pre-Christmas update post. The second game (which took place on 28th December) was a much more comfortable game than the starting game, with rules knowledge needing less help from the actual book, although my game cards were being slightly less friendly than before, but they still proved useful. The game also included the Musicians for my British, whilst the Prussians used their Medics, and we each had an additional rifle squad. The game included three objectives, one of which my Lieutenant ended up guarding by the end of the game, as my riflemen from squad 1 were forced to move up to a flat-topped hill in order to contest another objective, half-way up this hill, they fired a full volley and virtually annihilated an opposing Prussian rifleman squad, leaving two from the full sized squad, and forcing them back, only my opponent’s cunning saved him from leaving me with the objective; he had hidden his own Lieutenant at the bottom of the hill (a Games Workshop terrain piece called the Temple of Skulls). Another Prussian rifle squad was also suffering due to constant shooting attacks from my other riflemen throughout the game, although they also managed to cause a few casualties to my own troops. I believe that the game was in my favour due to my opponent making a tactical error and hiding his Teutonic Knights (Super-sized and heavily armoured troops armed with machine  guns) in a wood, and then, in my opinion, not using them to full effectiveness, using them to cause minor damage to the squad that took the hill. As a whole, I can so far state in fair confidence, that Dystopian Legions is a very good game that I highly recommend to fellow war-gamers.

My Dystopian Legions force for the second game, comprising everything I have collected for the game so far. You can see some of the finished model in the foreground, and the partially completed Lieutenant.

In other news, I have finally finished assembling my Huey for 28mm Vietnam War-gaming, using the Force on Force rules, with their Ambush Valley expansion. The only disappointment was that due to the quality of the plastic used in making the model, the model doesn’t fit properly under the chassis. Additionally, due to a cleaning error, I misplaced a component, leading to the Huey missing the rocket pods and machine guns from the mountings under the doors. However, the main purpose of the vehicle is as a transport, which is still possible. I am currently painting the model, and I am currently painting the model, and you can view my progress below.

In more 28mm Vietnam war-gaming news, I have now got both US and North Vietnamese Army models to use, and have finished some of them, although there are plenty more to paint before their finished. I have finished three US Army troopers; A Sergeant, shown in my previous post, the Commanding Officer, and a Soldier armed with the M14, which was phased out in favour of the M16, so I have a few M14s, but many more with M16s. I felt the M14s add a bit of variety to the otherwise rather same looking force. The North Vietnamese have Mat49 SMGs, RPGs and AK-47s, compared with the more various US weapons such as; M14s, M16s, M79 Blooper Grenade Launchers, and M60 support weapons. I have finished one NVA trooper so far, armed with an AK-47 and a grenade. The pictures of the finished models are displayed below as per usual.

The three completed US Army troopers and an NVA trooper

The UH-1 mid-way through painting, I have left the rotor blades seperate for ease of painting and for safe transporting around.

In Warmachine, I have now got my hands on a Choir of Menoth, which little progress has been made on due to the other new addition, a Judicator colossal. This model is turning out to be large group of medium paintjobs, as I have made most the parts into sub-assemblies for “easy” painting. So the head is one (finished, I would like to add) part, then the main torso, the rocket pods are two sub-assemblies, the engine pack, the shoulders, and arms, then the groin, and finally the two legs. This is partially due to me having to paint white, which as most war-gamers would attest, is a evil colour to try and paint in a smooth coat, and the Judicator is covered in large flat armour plates, all of which need to be white for my colours. Below are a few photos of progress on the model so far:

The finished Collossal's head

The left leg, with the grey on-top-of-black undercoat I use before I add the white colour, shown on the foot.

The completed forearm guard plate

The mid-complete forearm and hand

Hopefully I can complete or at least assemble the new Warmachine, so that I can get back into the action as part of the Warmachine Journeyman  League at Dice and Decks.

And that concludes my latest blog update; hopefully some more progress will have been made by the next update. Till then, have fun folks....

Some Recent Updates.

Well, it's been two weeks since I last updated, and so what has happened?

Well, I have been working on a miniature for Dice and Decks "secret santa" style swap. Which I cannot name or provide pictures for until after the 21st of December.
I have however, got pictures of a Sniper for Secrets of the Third Reich that I finished last week, I just need to varnish it and it's completely finished.

Front View

Back View

I used a Forge-World Warhammer 40k Horus Heresy Great Crusade Army list in a game against a fellow Dice and Decks gaming club member and lost, due to 6th Edition's killpoint system, but I did have the joy of deploying my Warhound Titan for the first time since I bought it nearly a year ago. It ended the game with some damage, but did cause mayhem amongst my opponents troops when it did get them, as it spent the first few turns sniping his tanks. He did try assaulting the Titan with his Chaos Lord and a squad of Chaos Marines, but they failed to do anything but hold it still for a turn or so...

The Titan with a squad of Chaos Marines attacking it.

The Chaos Lord tries to strike something important....

On Friday Square Orange Games once again honored Dice and Decks Club with it's presence, and I managed to get my hands on the box-set of Mantic Zombie Marines, which I have built a few of already, and have nearly managed to finish one of them;

One nearly-finished Zombie, ready to terrorise the table-top.

My birthday has passed, and one gift was a Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittania Infantry Section, which enabled me to have a proper look at the models for the first time. I am very impressed, the models are closer to 32mm Bushido models than they are 28mm models, and are highly detailed. There are 6 such models in the box, and I am highly anticipating this coming Friday when Square Orange once again visits to provide an order of the Firestorm Armada rulebook and a Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittania Starter Set and a set of Kingdom of Brittania Musicians.

The Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittania Infantry Section as it comes out of the box.

And for now this concludes my updates, but I imagine by the end of this coming weekend there will be more to post about, such as some 28mm Vietnam US Army Models I have finally got my hands on, but have not unboxed yet. Till next week readers....