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.

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.

Early July 2013 update

Hello once again folks,

I apologise for once again neglecting to post as often as I should. But graduating university and job searching occupy my time a tad. Plus my phone has started playing up when it comes to uploading pictures, which is something I always do before publishing my blog posts.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff, what have I been doing in the hobby world since last time I posted?

Well, I've been delving into both the fictional, and the non-fictional worlds of wargaming. Working mainly in the non-fictional realm of history - by working on my 28mm Caesarian era Roman Soldiers from Warlord Games. I have been trying to get the whole box built, and try to paint and finish a few more. I have gotten close to doing so at the moment; finishing on of my slightly converted Romans - I used a head from the Auxilary sprue to represent a Coolus pattern helmet - which were used in conjunction with the Montefortino helmets in the time period I am basing my Romans from. Plus it adds a nice bit of variety to a rather same-looking unit, which despite the general representation of Romans - there were variations in colour of tunics, shields and types of armour/helmets. 

My latest finished unit member

"Command section" - the Centurion

The whole unit  - front two ranks carry swords, back rank carries slings to add a bit of variety.

I also have a set of 48 from Wargames Factory, which whilst being slightly smaller than the Warlord figures, I intended to have to quickly and cheaply bulk up the Legion's numbers. 

Two of the Wargames Factory Caesar's Legions - bad quality and will not be ordered again, the feet sort of melt into the base and have no definition to them

As well as this, I have been taking advantage of July's free postage from Warlord Games, where I ordered their 3 box set of Caesar's Legions for £48 and Pullo and Vorenus (in approriate military garb), the Heroes from the now slightly older HBO TV series of Rome.

My aim is to have as many Romans as possible ready for Dice and Decks Gaming Club's charity event on the 17th August at the Larrapez centre in Ross-on-Wye, which I've been helping to organise. All persons welcome (shameless advertising!) and we have a selection of tournaments, retailers and demo games going on from 0900-1700.

In other news, my Defiance Games UAMC infantry arrived last week and I am beginning to build and convert them into Colonial Marines for my home-grown Aliens rules. I have started painting one, but realised a large number of marines in the film actually have shoulder guards, which these models do not - time to go searching through my bits boxes! I have built three of the marines, although one with a helmet and arms from a Games Workshop Imperial Guard Cadian aren't quite right - coming in at slightly larger than the Defiance Games Marines. Pulse rifles are from Hasslefree Miniatures, and are just about the right size.

Defiance Games Marines, nice models

Out of the box - the contents

The first painted Marine so far, I have added camouflage since this picture was taken.

My latest playtest board, we tried more scenery and it seemed to help the rules balance out

 So there we have it, another update, prepare for another, hopefully this coming week. Until then folks....

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!