Oddleg's Enterprises

Mobbing Up

2012-02-07T12:41:00.001Z

Waaagghhh.........I have finally finished the remaining 25 boyz to complete the first block of 30.

To be honest all the non front rankers got for highlights, post Devlan Mud, was a drybrush across the face followed by teeth and bone bits. Definitely more than happy with the result for a paint to sell job. Other than the front rank I wouldn't dare to try and claim 2 PPs a piece. 35 PPs for the remaining 25 boyz seems just about right :)

Can't tell you how glad I am to see the ladz finished. As a break I've already been working on the Warlord and BSB and quickly got them through to the standard wash of Devlan Mud. A happy diversion but now I'm on a bit of a roll the remaining block of 30 WILL be next pretty much breaking the back of the project.
Waaagghhh.........

Pieces of Eight

2012-02-04T14:44:00.001Z

D&D Thursday night and Aaron got to flex most of his piratical muscles as we took to the river last night. What we later discovered was has inability to either swim or sail! Apparently its more about skills with a cutlass and the grog bottle.

Having brought home our recently acquired column of refugees / life-contracted employees / indentured slaves we blagged some expenses form the Laird and then boarded our lift the south, The Salty Seaman.......ahem!

Settling in with the Seaman's three man crew our thoughts turned to.....well not so much mutiny more just outright theft. This was when the sailing credentials of our resident salty seadog came under s withering appraisal. So much so that we barely noticed the gale that suddenly blew up the river or the other sailing barge that suddenly veered across from the other bank and straight into our starboard side.

Picking ourselves up off of the deck we stood by to repel our demonic borders finding ourselves bereft of our regular formations, magical buffs and structure. It was a proper old scrap and as such probably one of most enjoyable and edgy dust-ups that we've had a for a while.

In amongst it all a bit of a kills competition developed a la Legolas and Gimli. Originally between the unholy sworded Pirate and the holy sworded Paladin as the prime beef of the party. Mr Paladin bereft of his normal pack of buff spells, his 'roid rage, was struggling a bit while Captain Cutlass was having an easier time relying on his abilities as a purer warrior.

What wasn't expected was my Halfling Rogue getting in on the act but swinging amongst the rigging the broken nature of the combat allowed for plentiful backstab opportunities. A few decent dice later it was a run for the line between the Pirate and the Rogue with the Paladin having a bit of a lower lip wobble amongst allegations of kill steals. All good banter.

With the tide turned against the Rutter-Kin it was their winged herald that had been causing us most concern tying up the attentions of the Dwarven Priest and Elven Ranger. Hard pressed the herald dipped into his sack magic and pulled out Mirror Image which caught us flat footed at a critical juncture.

Much like Jon's Jedi Rob then checked his list of miracles and pulled out Dispel Magic which after a quick reference to the rulebook did the job. I couldn't resist highlighting the parallel as the Ranger belt fed arrows into the understandably piqued herald who suddenly found himself reeling and Rob with the chance of a major kill-steal. The roll came up a point short, despite Rob's search for every bonus possible only for the Elf to finish the job he started.

With both sloops rapidly taking on water we quickly boarded our opponent's vessel, looted it's hold and walked the water to the bank courtesy of the Cleric.

Final scores on the doors; Pirate 3, Rogue 3, Paladin 1/2 :)

Tough at the Top

2012-02-02T16:26:00.000Z

Tuesday night was another dive back into the hive and it was raid-tastic as I took on Jon's Cawdor twice.

Attacking his water-still I found myself setting up on the far side of the table from the objective and, more importantly, once again not taking the time to fully understand the scenario.

As such I quickly went for the less than stealthy firepower option, rolled a bunch of ones, a common theme for the evening, set off the alarm and got shot in the face by Jon's reinforcements. Taking a pasting, outnumbered, failing ammo rolls and half a table from the objective I quickly bottled.

In a bizarre twist the one Cawdor nutter I managed to drop, the stubber toting heavy, I captured whilst the Juve who dropped him almost died but, using his own Medic ability, ended up with a survived against the odds and extra D6 experience. Mental.

Feeling guilty via the turn of events I didn't want to just sell him into slavery and nick his stuff, a possibly crippling blow to Jon's gang so early in the campaign so he launched a rescue mission.

With just 3 sentries against his entire gang I was up against it form the start even before the dice and Jon's greater appreciation of he scenario rules took effect. His Bounty Hunter also did the business capturing two of my gangers. So despite forcing Jon to bottle he got his guys back and then traded me back my guys for his kit plus 35 creds.

So after an entertaining evenings battles we were pretty much even stevens plus some experience, in Jon's case plenty of experience so I guess he won. More than happy to do it again :)

Tiny Tales

2012-01-31T14:51:00.000Z

Scarily I've had a thought .....but just a little one!

A few of us have been playing a fair bit of SAGA converted for a Samurai campaign in 15mm and there's now talk of up-scaling to the intended 28mm Dark Ages, possibly as everyone likes to paint a bushy beard.

As documented Skyrim has been eating into my painting progress.

IDEA: Skyrim SAGA in 15mm

WHY: Relatively cheap and easy with plenty of figure options about the place. SAGA dice effects effectively work as spells and magic items. Blinding!

WHY NOT: Little bit too much / sad / worrying etc

And I'm done!

Playing Nicely??

2012-01-30T12:54:00.001Z

Hello all, very busy at work including this weekend so no brushtime, though the odd hour of Skyrim to keep me sane(ish).

Following that vein of escapism Stewart dropped round Friday night for another evening of Warhammer Invasion. I put myself together a Chaos deck which also featured some Skaven, Undead units and some Neutral Buildings / resource cards.

Some of this was necessity rather than design, given the cards I currently have, but being a mixed deck I was interested to see how it might affect the resource curve and if the potential lack of loyalty would be a problem especially against Stewart's more experienced decks. In short I expected a wooping.

Game 1 was exactly that as his Dark Elf denial deck pinned me down and slowly pulled my legs off as if I was a spider. Eventually he put me out of my misery. After that, bar one other game, it was all one way traffic in my direction.

An undoubted bits and pieces deck I stuck to building my resources first and with Chaos having access to a number of cheap multiple power, minimal hit point units the curve was steep. I kept on pulling Marauder Chieftain and Warpstone Excavation in my opening hand which meant that on turn two I was pulling 2 cards on 4 resource whilst doing 1 indirect damage to his capital per turn. For the uninitiated it was AWESOME!!

Knowing Stewart well enough to give some friendly "banter" I did so until through the laughs the retort came back "So when are you going to stop being a c*ck?". Taken as meant we fell about and carried on as before before eventually calling the night slightly before Saturday.

All good clean fun but it did make me think how with different opponents the line is drawn differently. Plenty of advice / stories etc are written and given in terms of how to play at tournament but that's not the same as playing with your mates or at your local club......but, especially with the latter, should it be?

At the Enfield Gamers most of us have been playing together for a VERY long time. The social element is very strong and as a result there's often plenty of banter about. We're aware that it can be daunting and even off putting for someone new to walk into, especially given the social skills of many of our ilk. I've visited clubs that I've been put off for a number of reasons, normally the members, but each to their own. We want to be welcoming and inclusive but people need to fit with us to. A balance thing then.

Elsewhere I've got Wednesday off work and have it earmarked for painting Orcs, especially as I've just ordered my latest cycle of WI cards. I intend to be in front of the paint station by mid-day and then crack on. No skyrim until I'm finished, if I get finished.....honest!

Front Row Union

2012-01-24T12:28:00.001Z

Just a quick post as I've finally made some, minor, progress on the Orc Boyz unit as part of the remains of the army to be painted and sold to fund / subsidise my previous and ongoing investment into Warhammer Invasion.

More specifically I've finished off the front rank who, as their status befits, have likely received a little more TLC than their rank bonus colleagues (do Orcs have colleagues?) are likely to receive. I'm happy enough with the furs and though the skintone looked rather too dark for a while detailing has provided a better balance.

Another 10 PPs in the bag to clear target for the month, not that I'm taking that as an excuse to disappear into Skyrim for he rest of the week.

There's also the oblique reference to the upcoming Six Nations during which I expect to paint a bit more with the non England games in the background. Somehow appropriate really.

Club tonight and Rich's Samurai SAGA campaign. As a gaming night isn't strictly a hobby night, at least in my head, and given that I painted last night does that mean the Wednesday is a 'Rim night??

Answers on a post should you so wish :)

It's a SIZE thing!!

2012-01-23T13:14:00.000Z

So, Thursday night's roleplay saw our return to Jon's D&D campaign and the welcome return of Aaron to the group. Having previously preferred just to play Star Wars Mr T hooped across the genre divide to add a Pirate, Warrior sub-class to the group.

That means that both GM's have six players to contend with which I'm aware is considered pretty BIG by most players. With introductions, recap and re-introduction we spent most of the session talking (debating / arguing) various courses of action to take in view of the scene laid before us.

This scene involved the laying to waste of a small highland town, with whose burgers we had lodged 30,000 gold in the form of a solid gold idol's head. The intent was to "invest" (acquire / enslave) said town BUT, strangely, after the marauder's attack it was not to be found!

Cue great debate as to our purpose, motivation and proposed actions. With six of us we cover a wide range of options boasting as we do a Human Paladin, Teifling Warlock, Dwarven Cleric, Elven Ranger (plus wolf), Halfing Rogue and now a Human Pirate. There's very little eventuality that we can't have a go at. Problem is we all want to have a got at them in our own way!

Eventually we did STUFF. Myself, Rogue, and the Ranger went out and tracked the Vampire led marauder band to a rock amphitheatre where thei tracks disappeared (planal transportation spell). The Cleric spoke to the dead for clues and the Warlock researched various magical glyphs. The Paladin healed people and touseled hair while the Pirate dug graves,.......it's a plunder thing apparently.

Stopping relatively early, at a convenient point, Aaron was slightly put out that he hadn't got to hit anyone. This was often the case with Star Wars, lots of planing the action often go in the way of the action!

Meanwhile I spent a bit more time on Skyrim last night, this time with my Steel Clad Orc Brute rather than my more delicate Khajit Rogue. Running through a relatively well known Vampiric hold I actively had a go at sneaking about and taking a number of pot-shots from the shadows realising that he was somewhat deficient in this respect and the practice would improve him significantly.

That's right, a hulking beast of a hack and smash specialist, in the making, sneaking around in full plate! He did rather well at it and then had the superior cleave and clear ability to back it up as required. The head Vamp chap died SO much easier this time, though not before applying a certain little kiss on the cheek.

A couple of hours later I was sufficiently impressed to cough up for a particularly keen magical Orc Bow to go with the Greatsword of Frost and the Orc Sword of Stamina eating / Mace of Shock combo that I'd tried out dual wielding (not as easy as I'd hoped). With good Heavy Armour and reasonable block, I learn!, he's quite the fearsome prospect in most situations and running a reasonable favourite.

I do however realise that picking either locks or a pocket is likely to end up with any number of breaks, locks, pockets......arms!

Tangenting to another part of my, eventual, point SIZE is such an issue with the hobby and not only just scale. BIG games become BIGGER with small figures and similar budgets. There does seem to be more of a trend for skirmish over the more recent years but even skirmish games go BIG when played with action men. Bigger still seems to be perceived as better.

Thought: isn't it more a question of PROPORTION???

The Unusual Suspects

2012-01-20T16:15:00.000Z

Tuesday night Lewis' Necromunda campaign kicked off at Enfield Gamers and I for one had been looking forward to this one as Necromunda gives me a direct link back to when GW was COOL!!

I wanted to use my Copplestone / Rogue Trooper figures and reviewing what I had it quickly became clear that close combat was the far lesser option and as such it was a toss up between going for Van Saar or Delaque. With the Genetic Infantry being high end bio-technology in themselves Van Saar tipped the balance.

As such greet the gang, Rogue's Rejects;

Alpha Team: Gunnar (Ganger w Lasgun); Rogue (Leader w Plasma Gun); Bagman (Ganger w Lasgun);

Bravo Team: Venus (Ganger w Lasgun); Eight-Ball (Ganger w Lasgun); Lulu (Ganger w Lasgun)

Charlie Team: Bo (Juve w A Pistol); Franky (Heavy w Flamer); Luke (Juve w A Pistol)

Delta Team: Jym (Juve w A Pistol); Benny (Heavy w Flamer); Bexley (Juve w A Pistol)

So two games on the night, each with a bonus campaign territory on offer, plenty to play for.

Despite best intentions I hadn't managed any practice games and so was a bit rusty when facing Stewart's Escher. Based on Dark Eldar Wyches his gang looks very dynamic and soon launched a concerted frontal assault against my slightly skewed deployment.

To be honest he totally got the drop on me and it was only luck that saved me, his being significantly worse than mine. Somehow coming out of this mis-match with only one fighter downed I countered up the left flank with a flamer and the Juves flooring three.

Stewart duly failed the very first bottle-roll of both the game and his campaign to leave me with the win. To rub in salt one of his girls was killed while I didn't have to make a single injury roll. Karma then settled things with me as I got greedy with my Archeotech Horde and ruined it, literally! Fair enough really.

Second game was against Lewis' Goliaths. We were both toting a pair of flamer heavies which saw some serious cat and mouse. Reacting to Lewis' two sets of tunnels I set up on either flank but quickly realised that I had OVER-reacted.

As Lewis shifted his focus to my right flank I raced across the high ground, losing one of my GI's to a fall, until Lewis made the early campaign Death or Glory charge which left me with a third of the gang down or out of action.

Faced with stacking odds I decided to concentrate on another day and gave up the game along with the bonus territory. Karma once again rode in as I had 4 serious injury rolls to make......a full recovery and various scarring resulting in a LD 9 heavy and two Juves that cause fear.

Post game was even better with an Isotropic Fuel Rod to convert my new Ruin into a Homestead and a Hot-shot Power Pack for one of my couple of gangers who picked up BS advances. Three Juves all picked up Techno skills. Not too shabby despite mis-deploying twice.

NEVER split the party! :)

Dust-Off

2012-01-16T15:47:00.000Z

So tearing myself away from forging a matching set of of Nordic Steel Plate for my Orc beserker type, he's level 11 now don't you know and getting rather tasty with has magic greatsword, I've finished off the Star Wars Gunship.

As well as accidentally breaking off the laser cannons I also managed to break the flying stand. In repairing it I unavoidably adjusted the Gunship's positioning, slightly pitched forwards and nose down. To me it looks like it's just making dust-off, much like a helicopter. Two happy accidents then.

I do just need to gloss varnish the canopies and sight lenses, didn't realise I didn't have any until I looked for it, but I'm claiming the PPs now, all 10 of them. So that's 15 for the month and 5 more required with 15 days to go..........maybe just forge a dagger or two first :)

Flights of Fantasy

2012-01-12T12:08:00.000Z

Continuing my, unpaid and unofficial, promotional drive for Fantasy Flight games I ran Shaun and a couple of the boys through Warhammer Invasion at the club Tuesday night.

In response Shaun then ran us through a four way game of Blood Bowl Team Manager. Generally speaking it was good fun and learning as we went quickly ate a couple of entertaining hours. Given the game time length I did at one point find myself wondering why we weren't just playing a four-way game of Blood Bowl but that was missing the point!

Basically, we played five rounds of upto five games. Within each game you only play the Highlights, one-on-one with a variety of different spoils and resources available to the winner of each game. As such you resource manage to build your team, both players, coaching and support staff, in the chase for as much Fan Factor as possible, which decides who wins.

So what I didn't cotton onto immediately is that you're playing through a five round league in an evening, rather than a single game! Probably best that I don't take anymore bangs to the head then :)

I think I still prefer Warhammer Invasion as it replaces a game that I don't want to play anymore with one that I do. I still WANT to play Blood Bowl, not that I dislike or wouldn't play BBTM again.

What it has made me think it that you could play your classic Warhammer Fantasy Campaign, be it league, map, Mighty Empires or whatever you fancy, just replacing the tabletop battles with Warhammer Invasion. Maybe best of three hands to win the battle? Something I could see me and people / gamers like me (the disenchanted whinger ones) going for. Just a thought??

Meanwhile I am struggling not to let Skyrim dominate my hobby time. Currently running two characters, a Khajit Rogue (a transfer of my D&D Halfling) and an Orc Warrior (another Warhammer replacement) I'm just enjoying myself far too much.

The plan was to try and limit myself to every other hobby evening. I managed an early finish yesterday and needed to get various domestics done so ear-marked it as a Skyrim night. I made the mistake of turning the X-Box on first and suddenly it was bedtime before I'd done a stroke of flat-work. Domestics tonight then which means I'm unlikely to get more than an hour or two with the brushes.......

I'll just play a bit more Skyrim then, especially as I'm halfway through clearing out a Vampiric keep! Friday night for brushes whilst I watch the rugby :)

As I've never been more than a casual gamer I can't really manage to feel too guilty for the distraction, especially as I'm running anything for the foreseeable, .......at least not for a while yet anyway. To keep me honest I'll keep my previous monthly Painting Point target of 20 and see where I get to!

January.........15 PPs to find :)

Horde of Things

2012-01-08T18:46:00.001Z

So as threatened / promised I've picked up my first tranche of Warhammer Invasion cards, being the Core, Legends and Iron Rock sets, along with the necessary sleeves, deck boxes and storage.

Working through the cards placing them in sleeves and sorting them by race / type was useful, rather than just necessary, as I ended up reading through them all as I was doing so and made note of a few that caught my interest.

Running across the top l-r: Orcs, Elves, Empire, Dwarves, Dark Elves and Chaos, the main 6 races in the game. I've got more Orcs than anything else, by design, along with plenty of Empire, Dwarf and Chaos. Orcs will be my primary deck for a while, Empire secondary and Chaos sometime later.

Second row l-r: Buildings (neutral), Skaven, Undead, Lizardmen, Wood Elves and Bretonnian (Neutral) as the support races. Lovely way of including more of the races and expanding the options, especially as you start out.

Bottom row: some neutral tactic cards and Alliance resource / loyalty cards.

Stewart did me the favour of turning me onto the Deckbox website which allows you to set up an online inventory and decklists. I've also had a browse around the forums to find my feet a little. As mentioned, this is my initial tranche, I'm very sure that I'll be picking up a few extra packs with each pay-day, or maybe even a bit more regularly than that!

So a good solid start that we'll keep me plenty entertained for some time to come and all for less the the average GW Battalion! Deal me in :)

Camping it up!

2012-01-04T09:34:00.001Z

First result of 2012 and not proper figure in sight :)

More plastics from Renedra for The Camp With No Name, located just to the north of St Peytersburg for the miners, navvies, soldiers or any other vaguely undesirable working class types to be exploited by the local gentry. With a few modern crates, barrels and maybe a jalopy or two it's fit for Rick Grimes and his compadres.

The Renedra sprue is another high quality production. Nothing to flash but very well done and highly effective.

To keep its various inhabitants company and / or fed I've also painted up a pack of Gripping Beast's sheep. A little flashy but very nice sculpts and casts. Its a pack of six, though only five feature below as one made a brief break for freedom from the photo shoot.

A nice easy little project to kick off the year, 15 small pieces totalling 5 Painting Points, a starter for 5 if you will :)

End of the year SHOW

2012-01-01T23:27:00.001Z

Merry New Year to you all and I hope that you all got plenty of Toys gifts a week ago.

This was one of my better ones, or at least one of those that I didn't buy myself. Being 3+ assembly shouldn't be too terrible but planking and detailing it up looks formidable time-wise. A slow burner then though I'm keen to get this done for St Peytersburg which will be a priority for 2012.

Doing the typical end of year stuff I managed 362 Painting Points last year against a barely registered target of 240 (150%). That's an equivalent of 181 28mm figures at 15 a month. Hopefully that equals at least one decent army, depending on what anyone might play.

I've documented this for "posterity", apparently, with with 128 post at 10.6666667 a month, which maybe doubly evil, with 5847 pageviews whilst doubling my followers.

As referred to in my most personally satifying post HERE none of the above means a thing!

Moving into 2012 I wish to concentrate on the following over the next six months;

1. Get St Peytersburg / Zom-Heim somewhere decent. For this I need to get back to painting figures rather than scenery.....just once I've done a bit more scenery.

2. Sell off the last of the Orcs & Goblins and trade them in for Warhammer Invasion, which I hope to introduce to my wider gaming group. For this I need to get back to painting figures, spot the theme! I'm also going to reinvest prior to sale but then we've ALL done that!

3. Just play games and campaigns for a bit without running one, which I've always enjoyed, but need to do to focus elsewhere.

Hardly life-changing stuff, or is it? Probably more accurate to say life-enhancing as surely that's why we all bother in the first place. Hopefully so!

The main threat to the above is Skyrim, which I may have problems dominating my spare time once I'm back to work on Tuesday! Just a quick half hour eh?

MERRY NEW YEAR!!!

Back-Seat Gaming

2011-12-30T00:19:00.000Z

Yesterday a few of the boys dropped round for an afternoon and evening of general nerdiness.

Big Rob and Mr Christian were first through the door and after various bits of chatter we found ourselves playing through a bit of Skyrim, an x-mas present to myself!

What eventually....er...evolved was me playing under their advice Rob having played previous editions of The Elder Scrolls, unlike myself, and both of my compatriots seasoned WoWers, unlike myself once again.

Slightly Big Bang style Mr C was browsing the net for forum and wiki advice to fuel our three way voyage of discovery. The depths of my ignorance were quickly plumbed, they are deep!

Throughout there were many cries of "Heal! Heal!" and various other such advices that I'm sure that the majority of us have received and proffered at various times during our gaming.....erm...careers.

This set me to thinking that back-seat gaming comes in many forms but tends to only ever be either genuine advice or one-up-manship especially in the virtual forum....and forums! Unfortunately the latter seems to be more prevalent than the former.

Roleplaying, as a group activity, is an obvious breeding ground, as such, given that even the best groups will plan things on the fly out of character and remind each other of various required actions, especially as each group will have its natural leader and pecking order.

Once Stewart rolled in we cracked out War On Terror followed by a bit of Munchkin Impossible. Stewart hadn't played either and it was only WOT's 4th ever outing so it was Learn With Mother for a turn or three. Another example?

Back at WOT, Mr C went aggressive as early as possible, nuking Stewart on turn 2, and as such setting himself up as Target 1. With the other 3 of us playing nicely we actually got our first proper win out of WOT on Liberation Points. I came close building up through the lower, more minor, continents only to be hauled down allowing Rob to steal in by controlling Asia, always difficult in RISK, and maxing out on cities.

Lots of group feedback and game strategy chat as we played through as we all learnt together, finding out a good few things that we had previously been doing wrong along the way.

Back-seat gaming?

Sunday Worship

2011-12-25T18:13:00.002Z

Hallelujah!! I've finally finished St Peytersburg's first house of worship, hopefully to stand and serve the residents ecumenical needs for many years, decades and genres to come!

Somwwthing of an off and on project, and scratchbuilt to boot, I reckon its worth at least a Land Raider. 12 PPs? Lets call it 13 just to be sacriligous on today of all days.

Happy holidays...pagan or otherwise :)

Swords to Ploughshares??

2011-12-25T00:56:00.000Z

Stuart dropped round Friday night and before you knew it we'd played through 3 or so hours of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer Invasion. The phrase I kept on using was "Just one more game"!

I've blogged about how much I've enjoyed playing this game previously. My second proper session just drove home the subtlety of the varied strategies and tactics within the game, each faction and even each deck. I'm sold!

As such I've re-found my motivation to paint-up and sell-off the last of my WH Orcs and Gobs.......to reinvest in WI Orcs and Gobs....Chaos...Empire....and a game the I WILL actually play and WILL enjoy. I'll likely have some change as well :)

Merry Chrimble!

This lot shall be painted and sold....

....to purchase a fair old lump of this!

Rat Stat Attack

2011-12-22T16:22:00.001Z

Tuesday night the Enfield Gamers played throught he final round of the Mordheim wilderness campaign, the Grimoire of Grunburg and it was time for the ANCIENT RITUAL to locate the Grimoire.

My Orcs were in the driving seat having gained possession of the relevant old hermit who knew too much and Ed's Skaven were the obvious protagonists being the campaign's top ranked warband by some margin.

Turn 1

With an odd number of players the Orcs employed Jon's Possessed band and their shaman to conduct the ANCIENT RITUAL, as the Orc shaman didn’t understand anything non fungal, whilst the Skaven attempted to stop them or even hijack the ANCIENT RITUAL via a Hold the Find scenario.

Everyone else played linked games feeding into the final result. In short the Skaven overwhelmed us in 4 turns taking out both the possessed and orc shamans just as the ANCIENT RITUAL was reaching its conclusion and as such were able to complete the ritual and claim the Grimoire of Grunwald.

Turn 2

Highlights included Ed taking out 7 of our combined number before we even got a turn and my troll ALMOST taking down the frenzied death-sword wielding Skaven sorcerer by vomiting on him repeatedly and making disgusting number of regeneration rolls. It was actually fairly close ritual wise, Jon just needed to roll a 5 plus in our final turn to complet the ANCIENT RITUAL but his shaman got pinned to the back of the troll by a critical spear hit and it was all to much for him!

I'd set it all up using the relevant warband ratings which are, like any such systemm far from infallible. The rating takes most things into account, equipment through cost, skills via experience. What it CAN'T take into account, no whinge implied, is well worked combinations.

Turn 3

Ed's sorceror has been a campaign wide terror with access to the Black Fury spell being frenzied with a pair of +1 swords and the support of a Witch to potentially Scry him D3 re-roll.

His warband also totes a number of lucky charm re-rolls helping exploration. Again, no whinge just a very well managed warband, the experience to know the combos that he wants to set up and then doing it. Good dice are less necessary at that point :)

You can use statistics to prove anything you like.....74% of people know that one :)

What the skaven now do with the Grimoire and any attempt by THE COUNT to reclaim it, he did stitch the Skaven up on this one, could be played out sometime next year if we fancied another campaign. Thanks to all who took part, I really enjoyed running it though I would definately keep things a bit simpler next time round though!

Whether the Weather

2011-12-20T16:42:00.000Z

Brace yourself it's ANOTHER post where I've actually painted something.....at least partially.

Having sprayed St Peytersburg's church brown and then drift-sprayed it white I was wanting to dirty it up a bit and as such out came a virgin pot of Devlan Brown and a distinctly less than virgin brush. I targeted eves, windows, nooks, crannies and areas of obvious run off. Having dappled one in three of the roof slates I'd previously performed the same process with a mix of blue, purple and black wash.

This gave me a VERY worn and dilapidated church that looked like The Munsters had moved in!

Moving on I first drybrushed a highlight of Bleached Bone, including the rooves, to give some warm and wear before moving onto Space Wolf Grey and and dusting of Skull White staying away from edges of certain areas to leave more wear at the edges and at ground level.

Overall I'm very pleased, especially as it's been a while since I've tried my hand at this. Some of the windows need a little bit of work, as does the front some metalwork and the interior but I think that I've achieved a sort of weather worn feel of understated detail. Just what I was looking for in fact.

With a few weeknights available to me this week I reckon I can get the whole thing wrapped up by Chrimble (Ho, Ho, Ho!) before more distractions are unwrapped to test my Orc painting resolve, which has pretty much crumbled entirely.

Meanwhile, for something relatively similar please feel free to check out the WIP page.

Jingle Bells, Batman smell, Robin laid and egg............

It's what he would have wanted!

2011-12-16T21:42:00.001Z

It's one of those little issues relatively particular to roleplay groups; How many players have to be missing for the group not to play?

For us the rule of thumb is that if two or more of our number can't make it then we scrub the session, maybe just cracking out a board or card game.

A couple of weeks ago lurgy and work commitments meant that we scrubbed. This week Charlie had the lurgy but everyone else was good to go so we got the session in.

Looking to finish off the Deadlands intro scenario we've been playing through I ended up "looking after" Chaz's character Doc Lightning; mad engineer with lightening gun and voices in his head!

Something of a responsibility that I'm sure that many of us have shoulder over the sessions and once the standard "first through the doors" and wind up texts had been dealt with it was down to business. In all honesty it wasn't too difficult a task as we've all been playing together long enough to know each others' default responses and traits fairly well.

This, quite obviously, hasn't always been the case and I'm sure that any group would work to manage the situation as best as they can. We always look to minimise the use of a missing character. Thankfully I've never been in a group where someone's missed a session only to return to find their character horribly messed up. Again, a decision for each group to take themselves.

Picking the adventure thread back up we went back to chasing after our recently identified sabatoeur abnd after almost commiting the ultimate sin of SPLITTING THE PARTY we spent a while employing investigative guile and intelligence. Not too much for me to cover there really :)

Moving on to the final showdown things got a bit busier for me, especially as we each suddenly had an ally / hired hand type to look after. So that's Doc Lightning and TWO blatant red shirtsto look after then....
Temptation or what!?

Aforementioned showdown involved a horde-ette of zombie lumberjacks around a cart-load of high flammable ghost-rock. So....acting as Doc L / Charlie would have I lightning-blasted said cart-load of high flammable ghost-rock at the earliest opportunity.

The result was, without a SINGLE roll made by the DM, the horses pulling said cart-load of high flammable ghost-rock spooked careering into the forest which spontaneously set itself alight. More importantly this was all a result of Doc L / Charlie's action, or what would have been, so wasn't MY fault in the slightest. It also gave me something to do while may character took a photo of the action and then ran off for help.........heroically :)

Elsewhere, we took care of the zombies and marshalled the un-undead lumberjacks to cut enough fire-breaks to prevent the CLEARING OF EVIL being touched, which would have released the evil spirit, before the Weird West MIB turned up to designate the whole wood a national park and protected from logging.

The 'Injuns will be pleased!

Back in the Saddle

2011-12-13T09:15:00.000Z

Well EVENTUALLY a post that involves some actual painting!

Over a number of recent evenings I've resurrected a very old painting technique to get the camo done on the Gunship. Previously I would have used a tank brush and freehanded it on but I wondered if the blu-tak method would get me better and or quicker results.

Quicker? Definitely not, though I was brushing and then dry-brushing each stage before moving on with plenty of drying time allowed. Possibly quicker if you used an airbrush but just applying the B-T seemed to take forever, though I was generally sat in front of the telly with a head-cold for company.

I get the feeling this was also something to do with the scale of the vehicle. On a 15mm version I'm sure the task wouldn't have been nearly so arduous but hey there are far worse things that I waste time on.......

Better? As I first started the peeling process I was initially quite disappointed. I felt that the finish wasn't great and that maybe I'd got the blob proportions wrong. The more that came off the happier I thankfully became. There are some little ridges between colours that I didn't expect, brush vs spray, and close up its just not that clean a finish BUT as an overall effect I feel its pretty much what I was looking for.

I have to remember which painting stage its at! I'm sure that shade, highlight, decals and weathering will have a big effect. With the amount of time put in it just feels like everything should be further along.

The belly and undersides of the wings will be painted light grey and I need to replace the laser barrels with pins at the least. Being very thin plastic I broke the one at the rear and then chopped the rest as it would just be a matter of time otherwise. I'm halfway tempted to pick up some Forge-World bits including some missile pods but that would probably triple or quadruple the total kit cost.

So......to date, points for effort but none yet that count :)

Grim Reading?

2011-12-09T22:39:00.000Z

Skull Bra?

Tuesday night saw the penultimate round of the Mordheim campaign.

Making a change it was randomly generated one on one games, simple as you like, with two rounds squeezed in. All the results were anonymously allocated to the two leading factions to set up next sessions finale.

Tallying up, my Orc Warband will attempt to perform the ARCANE RITUAL to secure The Grimoire of Grunburg.

So back to the phrase "simple as you like". In all honesty it hasn't always been that way and at time it has detracted a touch to the point where I have to take various steps to try and redress the odd imbalance.

Revisiting the original format it was for one standard one-on-one game and then a multi-player "pit-fight" with reduced warbands. The pit-fights provided double experience and extra cash.

The idea was that this would guarantee two different games a night and allow warbands to develop and progress quicker across the 6 campaign sessions available. What actually happened was that 3 of the 10 warbands, including mine, pulling of mini runs of good early results established an early dominance that then restricted the other guys.

I suppose this can often be a risk with a more narrative campaign, though on the flip-side it does leave you with more room for manoeuvre, but I feel like I tried a little too much. The pit-fights weren't any quicker than a standard game, as Tuesday proved, and often left someone with less of a game.

HOT-dogs! Get you're fresh HOT-dogs!

Now admittedly this could all have been avoided by playtesting.....several weeks worth probably or just by limiting one's ambition but .....who would honestly have done any of that?

Experience is the only thing that would have avoided the, thankfully, rather minor problems that were unintentionally caused. As far as I'm aware nobody playing had a horrific time of it and much fun and hilarity was generated. But it goes to show that KISS is often a good starting point.

Keep It Simple Stupid!

It's a MINI adventure!

2011-12-04T22:11:00.001Z

I dropped round to Rich's yesterday afternoon for a couple of games of Warlord's SAGA suitably converted for 15mm Samurai prior to Rich's mini-campaign at the club.

As per usual I'm not going to offer an in-depth review of SAGA, as I'm sure a quick google search will give you plenty to choose from, but, as per usual, offer a more impressionistic view. A few more of these and maybe I can refer to them as being trademark?

Having spent 45 mins or so watching a demo game at Warfare I'd found the battle-board element an interesting take on resource management but in all honesty, as a observer with no knowledge of the game, I felt that there was lot going on for "just" a skirmish game. It probably didn't help that it was, quite rightly for a demo game, a simple "kill the warlord" scenario.

Having played through twice, I'm fairly convinced that SAGA isn't really a skirmish game and definitely not "just" another game at all. The battle-board is quite simply inspired and is almost a game in itself, its mastery is surely the key to the game.

The rest of the game mechanic is pretty simple other than Fatigue, which is another mini blinder. Each time a unit fights a combat and / or performs an action past the first it gains a point of Fatigue. Fatigue can be spent by your opponent to reduce your defence or raise his, though you can Rest a unit, as an action to drop them.

First game was learning, thus "kill the warlord, whilst for the second I chose the one where one side ambushes the others baggage train who are attempting to cross the board, I forget the name, as a deliberate attempt to push those rules within my tenuous grasp. All worked intuitively. Good stuff.
SO....back at my main point it didn't feel like a skirmish game. A standard 6pt game is six UNITS which, unless I've missed a bit, adhere to coherency. To ME that's not a skirmish game, though thats not a criticism of the game at all. To ME it feels much more like a medium sized game of Warhammer, historical or otherwise, .........but much, much, much, MUCH...better!

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, its off to battle we go!

5s required to hit!

None shall pass!

The baggage goes by a more circuitous route....

Zom-Heim 1.1

2011-12-02T22:37:00.000Z

Stuart dropped round on Tuesday night for another run out for Zom-Heim and a few games of Fantasy Flight's Living Card Game Warhammer Invasion.

This time with Z-H we used a deck of cards for activation / initiative, mainly as I'd remembered to find a deck. It worked just as well as we remembered, though in honesty not really better than a D6, and added the little touch of tension that I was looking for to give the feel of the horror genre.

I ran out the Undead zombie horde again, though this time limited to a LEGAL 15 figures, of a vampire, necromancer, dreg and a dozen shamblers to check the balance.

Running out against them was a Witch Hunter list representing the local nobility and their tenants consisting of maxed out heroes, inc priest, all toting sword and braces of pistols plus 7 zealots with bows and hammers as yokels with worn out muskets and staves.

Two games and one win a piece, playing both sides I lost twice (as gracious host obviously). Between games I had a blinding idea to balance costs as continuing at 600 GC as the Undead were under pointed. Basically, spend the extra cash on stat upgrades for the heroes. We gave this a go for the second game and it wasn't overpowered.

Now I just need to work through some more lists and look at national characteristics. 1.2 shouldn't be too far away :)

We also ran through four games of Warhammer Invasion which were games 2 to 5 for me. I played Magic many years ago and had a quick look again a few months ago but didn't for a number of reasons. Hardly an objective review but I LIKE WI.

Nice bit of resource management and plenty of different strategies sat on top of a deceptively simple mechanic. You also get your junkie hit of GW lustrous imagery and background without having to invest a small fortune and hundreds of brush hours only to be let down by the actual game and a number of its players. Just my tuppence you understand ;)

Another possible distraction!

We got a great big Zom-voy!

Child labour? Witch Hunter vs Dreg

The Battle for the Bacon

Diving charge gone horribly, horribly wrong!

Welcome to St Peytersburg

The town welcome commitee turn out....

....only to become a light snack!

Discipline

2011-11-27T21:29:00.000Z

Afternoon all.

Wasps lost away to London Irish this afternoon. Apparently it was a rather lacklustre game. We did at least score the only try of the game but gave away SEVEN kickable penalties. We did the same against Newcastle a couple of months back and the talk then was all about indiscipline. Boring but important.

I KNOW that most gamers have the same issue when sticking to planned projects. I've been experiencing a reasonable bout myself recently coupled with a fairly busy real life.

Having picked up a few other bits recently and selling the painted O&G's last weekend has taken the steam out of that particular project. The 30 strong block of boyz has been stared at a few times but that's been it!

This weekend I've finally got to grips with various bits lying around the place, cleared the decks and had a bit of a word with myself.... I've also done a deal for a bit of variation.

Well it is Christmas......almost!

The church has had a dust of white spray over the brown and all the tiled sections blacked in. The plan is to Devlan Mud everything and then drybrush back up to white. With the rooves I want to try the multi-shaded tiles technique that I've seen used to good effect elsewhere.

With my unexpected success in the Mordheim campaign I'm in need of some Orcs and these Rackham Samadat armoured Goblins will do well for them. Armed with swords and axes I need to source some axes, possibly Marauder ones which will be the full extent of any conversion work. Paint jobs as before.

The Gunship has had its based gravelled and a coat of black undercoat. Intention is to go for a hard edge blu-tack blob camo working through dark green, mid green to dark sand using foundation paints. Had thought of picking up some sprays for that but will give the tank brush a go first.

A quick 90 minute job in between the other bits to put some points on the board for the month...all three of them!

Tough at the Top??

2011-11-24T16:35:00.001Z

The latest session of Enfield Gamers Mordheim campaign, run by yours truly took place on Tuesday night and my incredible run of luck reached new heights as, despite my best efforts the Oriental O&G's triumphed again.

Going for a bit of multi-player action the two prime warbands, myself and Ed's Skaven, were both entrusted by The Count escort his personal seer to an Arcane Fulcrum outside of Grunburg to perform an ANCIENT RITUAL to locate the Grimoire of Grunburg. Scene-stealing stuff!!
Using the Breakthrough scenario, with a few minor tweeks, the other warbands lay in ambush. Three sets of human Mercs and the Undead jumped Ed whilst both Dwarf bands and the Possessed blocked my path.

Both myself and Ed had what we both believed to be a real seer and a decoy, not being aware of each other's mission, thus only one of the four was the real deal and one of us had been double crossed by The Count.

Even with rout tests at 50% I honestly expected niether of us to make it through and as such have the ambushing warbands squabble amongst themselves. This was not to be the case.

I'll assume that Ed used superior cunning, skill and application of force. I happen to know that I rolled a horrific number of 6s on casualty rolls which quickly saw Rob's Dwarves routed and my right flank open for a bunch of gobbos to leg it down with my non-decoy seer. Even despite my Troll failing repeated Stupidity tests I fought Jon's Possessed to Rout only to be hammered, literally, by Ian's slower Dwarven reserve who didn't take a single casualty.

With both apparently kosher Seers kept safe an odds-evens roll would decide which band had been double crossed.........it wasn't me.

So next time out it's ANCIENT RITUAL time with the the bloke whose running he campaign in the boss seat........move along, move along, nohing to see here ;)

The Road To Hell??

The Dwarves routed left an open flank

Mopping up on the left

The Lone Troll drools on!

SHOW-time!!

2011-11-19T21:41:00.000Z

Big toys, BIG boys!

No jazz hands but plenty of the usual, though Warfare was only my second show of the year and it's not fair to compare to Salute. Well attended by traders, gamers, games and the general "fraternity" it was a good day out.

Scarily all of the O&Gs bar the Giant sold, because he's a monster of colour?, putting £120 into my pocket.

The obvious question is could I therefore have got more on E-Bay? Answer; don't know and not bothered. The extra expense was well worth the day out and I picked everything up when I still had a staff discount.

Being disturbingly restrained I picked up a few bits of scenery for CURRENT projects only so Renedra's Tent Camp and Barrel packs, some wooden crates and a small flock of sheep.

Think of me what you will!

Products For Wargamers produce a range of laser cut self assembly MDF buildings, of which I have a couple, and had an excellent new part built building frame. They sold out so I'll order from the site, should be up on Tuesday

Write your own SAGA

We spent a fair bit of time early on taking in a demo game of Gripping Beast's SAGA, of which I have sent plenty blogged about. Some really nice ideas in there for what looks like a simple skirmish game with resource management and everything! We bought a set with intent to try them out Romans vs Gladiators in time for the next series of Spartacus.

LEGO Dr Who vs the Daleks

There was some nice games about but not too many that I hadn't seen before other than this one. Apparently it cost a small fortune in LEGO and Daleks. Great idea though.

Ta-Daa!!

Very, very multi-part :(

Some time later

Some more big ol' boys!

Rich picked up Soda Pop's Super Dungeon Explore and we found a spare table and cups of tea to crack on with a game only to find that the figures were very, very multi-part. 90 minutes and much "commentary" later we played the 30 minute tutorial....for about an hour. Since then we've worked out what we were doing wrong :)

Good game, good game!!

Cocked and Loaded....

2011-11-18T13:10:00.001Z

....or should that be the other way around?

Got another Deadlands session in last night and not a single shot was fired by us or even at us as we went around Investigatin' the sabotage of an experimental, ghost rock powered, mechanical saw mill.

This mainly involved ROLE-playing and some rather satisfying Cthulu-esque Notice and Persuasion roles on locals and Injun's alike. Flattering said redskins with school supplies we chatted to their crazy ol' medicine man for a number of hours before visiting their Sacred Grove, without managing to desecrate it.

Wonders might never cease and seemed unlikely at the beginning of the evening whilst upskilling when Charlie's Mad Scientist with Big Gun added Schizophrenia to his Paranoia only to re-roll the result for something less entertaining.

The sabotage of the second psyco saw-mill, at a rival camp, injected such much missing mayhem providing a number of leads for us to argue over. Next session may well se the conclusion of our mini campaign but I'd definately be keen to play again or even just continue on from where we are!

Elsewhere, I'm off to Warfare tomorrow with Shaun and Craig mainly just cos' its been a while since Salute and I fancy it as a day out. Not looking for anything in particular but always a show I've enjoyed previously so will see what finds me.

Very tempted to put the painted O&G's on the Bring and Buy while I'm there to start the increasingly obvious process of recycling them. Previously I've always priced to sell but with E-Bay as a back up I'm interested to experiment and see what market conditions may or may not support.

Thinking that I'd price at retail, so a free paintjob!, I've hit the GW site for a little research and come back a little shocked;

Boss on Wyvern; £40 in Finecast, mine's metal so £25 is a steal isn't it??
20 Big Uns; would be £51 worth of GW plastic so £40 and they'll fly off the table.....won't they?
3 Wolf Chariots; based on the Orc variant at £16.50 a piece. £12 as singles?
10 Wolf Riders; will now set you back £20.....apparantly.
1 Giant; at £31 in plastic, mine's the old metal version so £20 is a good deal?

So, IF everything goes at my less than retail, except the wolves, fully painted super bargain prices that'll be about £140, after B&B fees, for recycling AND i've apprarantly done my potential purchasers a massive favour.......

No wonder I don't want to play Warhammer any more....

Zom-Heim 1.0: Not awful!!

2011-11-16T14:10:00.000Z

Following previous posts HERE and HERE, last night at the club I roped Charlie, Lewis ans Stuart into playtesting Zom-Heim 1.0 with me. Cheers lads!

We played through the Defend the Find scenario a couple of times, playing once with each side. On all occasions it was the the Undead as attacker with either Sharpe's 95th or Rogers' Rangers defending.

From the start things looked stacked against the defenders, especially against the zombie horde list. In the end it was a 3-1 victory count to the Undead with the two games involving the Ghoul family being very close run.

The zombie horde games were rather one sided but, as we later discovered, that was mainly because I failed to notice that the Undead can have a max of 15 warband members .....rather than 22!

Otherwise, the initiative thing worked well, adding an extra element of Horror-ific tension, though having to constantly reload handguns did a lot of that! A few little things came up which were all dealt with comfortably by common sense, which was rather pleasing.

Two ad-hoc revisions were allowed along the way;
- Overwatch, lifted straight from Necromunda, which worked seamlessly.
- All handgun equipped models gained a "free" spear to represent a bayonet. It just seemed necessary to give balance......it even managed to take out a charging Ghoul Lord (Vampire), much to my personal disappointment.

So all in all pretty good, definitely not awful which was my fear. The whole idea definitely seems to have legs. I think I next need to work up some warband variant and having already been thinking about how to work in National Characteristics that seem de-rigour for the period.

To Excel!! :)

The Army Painter

2011-11-14T16:17:00.000Z

The past week, mainly the end part, has finally witnessed some brushtime all of which has been devoted to my first block of 30 Orc Boyz, see updated WIP page.

I'm sure that we've all experienced the vaguely numbing pain of block painting a large regiment. For Fantasy stuff I often spray black and then Ogre Flesh, followed by drybrushes up through the browns to get the leatherwork done early and key the majority of colours. Then comes near instant descent into Oh My Dear God (OMDG) as I begin basecoating in all of the block colours...... until about three or fours colours things seem to pull together a bit.

By comparison detail work is a relative breeze and wash-work strangely staisying before realising that I'm only half-way and higlighting is required. Enter my friend OMDG

In preparation for said roller-coaster ride I've recently laid in some supplies and filled a few holes in my hobby supplies. I've been aware of The Army Painter range for a while now but have been vaguely put off by their promotion of dip-shading, about which I harbour dark age atitudes (though I admit it could be a useful tool).

Anyway, back at the point, primarily due to cost I dropped a couple of their sprays and glues into my virtual basket and needing some brushes decided to continue with the theme. I like the way that they name their brushes with their intent in mind and so picked up the above.

Shaped more chunkily, somewhat pen-like, than GW's offerings I've fond them to be very comfortable in the hand delivering a high degree of control. I really like them and wiould recommend them highly.

Always happy to be wrong, just as well given how often it happens!!

Don't roll a 1......or loose your Lunch!!

2011-11-09T15:04:00.001Z

Last night at Enfield Gamers it was the third campaign turn for the Mordheim campaign.

My oriental Orcs & Goblins have been doing worryingly well and started the evening ranked 2nd of 10 with my newly recruited troll amongst their poorly washed midst.

The brief for the evening was Top Dog with the two Skaven, Greenskin and Dwarf warbands set to take each other on with a 3 way fight for top Reikland contender and a Possessed / Undead encounter rounding out the first round of the evening.

Unfortunately real world lurgy saw a bit of a reshuffle and I ended up in the middle of a Reikland sandwich.

Part of the reason I love O&G's is the random element that they bring but last night was a bit extreme.

My gobbo squig handler, on the right next to the die, failed animosity on a number of occasions attacking his apparent warband rivals three times, stunning one and taking another two out of action.

Sneaky little git! Must have been that Special Brew fungus he had for lunch. Rab C Goblin?

Ghu-Ankh (Gonk), my troll, spent several turns stupidly drooling before rushing in to a mass combat at which point he became a lean, mean vomit machine. Blowing chunks over all comers he regenerated 5 separate wounds whilst taking out the same number of warriors, killing Charlie's Captain and Champion in the process to leave his two youngblood's squabbling to leave his warband!

The Dwarf warbands just barrelled in to each other, Slayers to the fore, and proceeded to hack chunks from each other with just the odd black powder blast to interrupt proceedings.

The Skaven fight was between the campaign's two leading warbands with Veskit on one side and a home-weened Shaman of unholy destruction on the other. Veskit proved his fee as his employers just shaded a close encounter.

Now that we've established something of a pecking order I intend to get a bit more narra-tastic with events weaving things around the leading warbands and the fabled Grimoire of Grunburg. So that will be a Skaven tale then!

You dirty rats!

It's ALIVE.... Franken-Leg?!!

2011-11-07T21:49:00.006Z

As previously metioned I recently picked up Dashing Dice Games' halloween released Witchfinder General: Days of Revolution. It turned up last week and I've slowly been reading through.

For being home published it's another perfect bind quality product and there are some nice ideas within the mechanics, though I am only about halfway through.

Alternate activation within the turn is a personal favourite and there are some interesting ideas for terrain, gloomy conditions, cavalry and artillery as well as looting livestock.

Other bits just feel different rather than better than other stuff but I should reseve judgement until I play a game.

Scenarios are there but not any army list type stuff or a campaign system and I do want that. It can all be added in but if I'm doing that then why not reverse the process into a system that I'm more familiar with and am already thinking of using?

Having read a few more pages on the train home INSPIRATION struck on the wander home and the bolt has sparked a birth;

Oddleg’s Enterprises in Association with Angry Productions proudly presents;

Zom-Heim 1.0

This a WIP set of “conversion” rules for Mordheim intended to sit alongside and be played in conjunction with the Empire In Flames wilderness campaign rules supplement available for download from the Games Workshop website.

Just in case it needs saying everything presented here is entirely unofficial and all my fault!

Format:

Play Mordheim but with the following additions / adaptions;

Turn Sequence / Priority;

Use a standard deck of cards with the Jokers removed. Deal 12 cards to each player.

At the beginning of each turn each player “bids” a card from his hand, both playing them face up simultaneously. Highest card gains priority Ace high suited Diamond, Heart, Club, Spade low to high.

Starting with the player who won priority each player activates either one Hero or a group of up to three Henchmen who are within 4” coherency and runs through the full turn sequence with the activated figure(s). Continue to activate back and forth until ALL figures have been at which point the turn ends.

Once all 12 cards in each player’s hands have been played discard them and deal 6 new cards to each player. Should insufficient cards remain in the deck for all players to receive 6 cards reshuffle the full deck and repeat the 6 card deal.

So, not a lot so far but on top of the previous Zom-Heim army lists it feels like a decent start. I'm tagetting a couple of games on the Club's next Open Gaming night and I'll see where it goes from there.

All feedback welcome!

What a difference a crowd makes

2011-11-06T19:40:00.000Z

WARNING: This is a sports based post.....

Haven't touched the brushes at all this week for a number of reasons. One of them was that I went to Wembley on Sunday, in the company of the Dawes, to watch a double header of Four Nations International Rugby League.

Now League isn't MY version of rugby and is often viewed, by union fans, as the poorer relation for and played by northerners and big girl's blouses.

The first game was Wales vs New Zealand was a massive non event with the Haka being the most entertaining moment of an utter mis-match whitewash. You could visibly see the Kiwis coast through the last quarter whilst the crowd entertained itself with an obligatory mexican wave.

England vs Australia was an absolute stormer. England went hard down route 1 for the whistle and the crowd reaction was fervent to the point of outright hostility. Now I shout my head off at a Wasps game but it's WHAT I, and my fellow supporters of both sides, shout that's somewhat different. I've NEVER booed or whistled an opposition kicker either.

Nothing as bad as a football match but it was a level that I'm not used to or more to the point was expectant of, not that I'm looking to exacerbate the North - South divide you understand!

It was a quality game with plenty of conviction form both sides. The mood of the crowd was not helped by a number of crucial ref decisions going against England and the Kangaroos eventually ran out as winners. Interesting to see how England went with Bash whilst the Aussies looked to move the ball a lot more, much like their Union reputations!

Rugby League; played and supported by Northerners, no big girl's blouses. Personally I'll be sticking to scrums, rucks and mauls.

OGGY OGGGY OGGY!! :)

Dyin' Ain't Much of a Livin'

2011-11-05T22:49:00.000Z

And yes I do fully intend to work through the whole of the album for titles :)

Another session of Deadlands Thursday night and I'm really enjoying the system and setting. Having got a better hold on how to play the rolls we got some work in on playing the roles!

Despite each of us receiving a random pre-generated character most of us seem to be continuing a previous theme.
- Charlie has a / another amoral wilderness warrior with a penchant for large guns and an overwhelming urge to deploy massive firepower. D&D: Elven Ranger bow-master. Star Wars: Human Mercenary.
- Rob has a / another man of god. The current one was "inspired" to liberate a gatling shotgun and employ it to do "Good". Shame about the bounty on his head! D&D: Dwarven Cleric. Star Wars: Mon Calamari Sniper / Field Medic
- Myself, I've picked up an investigative reporter surviving on persuasion and smarts whilst avoiding a stand-up fight at all cost. D&D: Halfing Rogue

Only Mr Christian has had a major change picking up a Card-Shark Mage against his D&D Paladin and Star Wars close combat Quarren soldier.

Nothing wrong with any of that, just an observation.

Moving on from Tree-Ville with met up with our new employer to whom we are to act as bodygaurd while he picks up and delivers a steam-punk super-valve to a lumber camp. We had the evening to ourselves and Mr C's card-shark set to work cheating the locals out of the majority of their earnings ably assisted by Rob's "prayers". Their prior Paladanic / Clerical combo would be turning in their cots!

Next morning we went to catch the train only to be desperado'd on the crowded platform. I dived for cover, taking our employer with him, whilst the other boys opened up with maximum effect! The local Marshall prevented me from liberating and newly unwanted items to sell on. Old habits!

Delivering the valve it turned out to be for a new ghost-rock powered mechanical logging machine. With a number of dignitaries in camp the Prof spooled it up for the first time only for my Danger Sense to kick off. KA-BOOM!!!

Previously we'd done a bit of investigative groundwork and any possible sabotage could come down to a number of factors. The rival camp down the road has a similar machine being built by the Prof's ex partner. The local Indians have asked both camps to leave their sacred trees in the vertical position and a number of parties of logging scouts (ahem) have gone missing!

That would be my bit then!

The Three Amigos!

2011-11-02T10:40:00.001Z

Shaun and rich popped round last night for a veritable riot of Musketeer.

Despite a few games with Ganesha's recently released Flashing Steel, Rich ran us through a free set, "And One For All!" from Eureka. Download and examples of play HERE.

The first thing that made me sit up and realise that this was something DIFFERENT was the declaration that "you don't measure movement". It turns out that you move, and interact, between terrain and playing figures. Not SO new to me then!

I'll let the Eureka site explain the mechanics to you but basically you get the chance to make multiple actions, successively gaining a die per action attempted to test against that action with. Just don't roll a 1 at any point as that's when you loose initiative and your run of actions ends. SIMPLES!

In short, once we'd spent a couple of turns learning it all became very intuitive. The mechanics actually encourage HEROIC play and I soon found myself looking for any possible flourish which really suits and brings alive the swash in one's buckle.

Relaxing HEROICALLY after another successful sourjon in the name of her majesty the Musketeers slake their hard won first at the local hostelry unaware that Rochefort and the Cardinal's guards stand ready to enter, stage left!

Rudely interupted from his third horse-pie Porthos intercepts Rochefort's diversionary rowing boat borne amphibious assault!

Rochefort shows his true quality, as cad and bounder, by holding the serving wench, Yvette, as a human shield. Booo, hisss, booo!

Porthos sees off the less the crack Carmine Marine division by employing, empty, beer barrel artillery but puts his trick back out in the process!!

Aramis and d'Artagnan rush to Yvette's aid but so keen to impress her they fail to deal with Rochefort!
Note - to generate a decent dice pool to take on Rochefort I attempted many witty retorts and manly postures only to continually roll 1's ending the activation prematurely.

Milady De Winter gets in on the act attempting to Seduce / Distract d'Artagnan. Failing, he only had eyes for Yvette, the green headed monster reared with Milady resorting to dagger play and a whirling kick to his nethers!

The remaining Cardinels Gaurds storm into the beer garden whilst d'Artagnan takes Milady roughly in hand much to her continuing fury.

Whilst his fellows remember the scenario objective of escaping, rather than chatting up the bar maid, Aramis duels with Rochefort moustache-o, moustache-o!!

Pulling hard on the oars the d'Artagnan and the Musketeers slip from the Cardinal's clutches once again bidding sweet adieu to Yvette, who remains entirely unmoved by their attentions!

Despite Shaun's general take on board / bored games we quite happily ran through 3 games of The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Pendants from which all of the above figures were sourced.

Run on card activation its a good fun game. A trifle stacked towards the Musketeers and it probably doesn't hold up well to repeated play but it kept us well entertained for an hour or so.

Shaun and Rich have both picked up copies primarily for the figures, counters and all important activation deck which at £30 is a pretty good deal.

As is often the case, talk soon turned to how both games could be turned to other genres / theatres with particular talk of 70s Action Movies and Matrix style stuff for "And One For All!".

I know Kung-Fu!!

Big 'Ol Lumps

2011-10-31T21:54:00.001Z

This is Gu-Ankh (Gonk), the latest addition to the Warband with No Name. Another stunning OOP Confrontation figure, he'll, hopefully fairly obviously,be representing my Troll.

I could have added a group of Orcs for the same price but they're still in the blister and one Stupidity check probably balances another four Animosity tests. More importantly there's always the unbridled joy of a vomit attack :)
Painted him a while ago, just had to re-base him!

Another big lump, I've built the Easykit Republic Gunship. Not so easy I have to admit, plenty of taping required to hold bits in place (as per instructions!). A little superglue helped out.

She's going to get a full re-paint to fit in with my Genetic Infantry. I love cold war Russian kit and one reason for the initial purchase was its similarity to a Mil Hind so that's where the paint scheme will be falling towards......at some point!

Meanwhile this is the big 'ol lump that I SHOULD be painting. Highly doubt that the army will get done for the New Year but we'll see where we get and the left overs can become a resolution.

Just 8 weeks to go..... I think!!!

I'll make you famous!!

2011-10-29T12:56:00.000+01:00

Shot DOWWNNNN in a blaze of GLORY.

Thursday night' roleplay was a little taster of the Weird West as Jon ran us through an intro game of Deadlands. I'd played before, quite some years ago, and always liked the setting. Couldn't remember how to play but then for me it's always about the role, not the roll!

With six pre-gen'd characters on offer the four of us who had made it were happy for fate to decide and I "became" Devlin Dewitt. He's a softpaw, greenhorn reporter from back east with no right to survive the Wierd West other than an impressive Danger Sense.

His strengths lie in investigation and with two of my companions being gun-nuts and the other a spell slinging card-shark I quickly assumed the mantle of spokesman.

This struck everyone as rather similar to my Halfling Thief. The fact that I then went on to try and strike any deal going, and several that weren't, whilst demonstrating the odd light finger merely served to reinforce the feeling. The fact that I plan on never engaging in a fair fight if I can help it probably won't help.

The evening's scenario involved investigating a number the mysterious hangings of a number of local ranchers. Forcibly taken from their prairie homes they had been found hanging from THE OL' HANGING TREE a mile from town.

Robbery obviously wasn't a motive as nothing was taken, at least until I got there but that was mainly to find a more useful weapon with which to defend myself!

Heading back to town we were attacked in the middle of the night by THE OL' HANGING TREE itself! It wasn't alone though, having raised the recently hung as a posse of the undead.

My compatriot's heavy artillery made short work of them whilst THE OL' HANGING TREE lassoed the bar-keep making to hang him.

Against my better judgement I charge after him shotgunning the rope, burning through all mt re-roll chips in one go, and dragging him to safety where I then hid. Aforementioned artillery then went to work pruning back every branch in sight. Cue a grateful backwater hick town :)

A highly enjoyable evening. Deadlands is a setting that I like with a nice balance of Cthulu investigation and big guns / explosions. I look forward to next weeks session. It's also pay-day on Monday and those Malifaux figure would do awfully well :)

Cue Bon Jovi soundtrack!!

Tooth and Claw plus a side order of Wings

2011-10-27T18:24:00.001+01:00

Bit of classic the Orc Wyvern I've never disliked any of the figures over the years other than maybe the posing of the current Azhag. Never as cool, or as much table-power, as a dragon but not bad for a race that grow under rocks!

I've gone for what I see as a more "realistic" / less cartoon paint scheme keeping with the slightly darker look to the larger army and units painted so far. A fairly basic warlord but I used the main bits of the original rider to make a more impressive warlord on boar. He'll be along later!

Drybrush and washes have done pretty well to be honest. 5 PPs is a fair result. Next up is a block of 30 boyz..... deep JOY!! ;)

Mash up Yo Self...

2011-10-26T23:22:00.000+01:00

....and other youth phrases that I don't understand or want to for a number of reasons.

Second round of the Mordheim wilderness campaign last night and the Boyz got through their fresh coat of varnish surprisingly well.

Playing a 3 way Hidden Treasure game the treasure went to Rich pretty quick and then he legged so myself and Jon let him, getting stuck into each other instead.

The "Pit-Fight" mini multi-player saw 4 of us fighting out a loot laden Breakthrough and I ended up with quite a haul for zero casualties. Result!

As a result I spent my lunchbreak today working out a couple of possible lists for the possible Mordheim - Zombie Village, or Zom-Heim as I've branded it (sounds like a cold war Russian research facility), at around the 600 point / crown mark.
Thinking of an elite unit of skirmishers a la Sharpe's 95th, using the Reiklander list for the BS 4Marksmen;
- 1 Captain (Sharpe / Roger) with handgun and sword

- 1 Champion (Sgt Harper) with handgun

- 7 Marksmen (Chosen Men / Rangers) with handgun

Protagonist wise using the Undead list in two different ways;

Classic Vampiric types;

- 1 Vampire (Bitey Von Big-Teeth) with sword

- 1 Necromancer (Rasputin)

- 1 Dreg (Igor)

- 15 Zombies (The Risen)

- 4 Dire Wolves (Hell-Hounds)

The Ghoul Family Stinkerson

- 1 Vampire (Mr Stinkerson) with sword as Ghoul King
- 1 Necromancer (Mrs Stinkerson)
- 1 Dreg (Master Stinkerson)
- 6 Ghouls (The Disturbed)
- 3 Dire Wolves (Family pets)

The human mercenary list is a bit limited unless everyone has a handgun, though I can see the Witch hunter list working well for mobs of locals on their way to the castle-burning social. The Elven lists may do the job for the Ranger and Indian types better.

The only other thing might be the "National Characteristics" that always come along with these things i.e. British / American / French / Hessian etc. That Tabletop Geeks downloads pages is going to get some serious abuse!

Tooth and Claw

2011-10-23T22:14:00.001+01:00

A unit of 10 Wolf Riders added to the ranks of the painted following close behind the chariots. Technically these should be 4 PPs per figure but that's far too much for effort expended. 20 for the lot feels right.

I really need to crack on with the two big 30 Boy blocks to break the back of the job. I have now settled on red as the main scheme along with black, yellow and grey accents.

Meanwhile, the more I think about it, the more E-Bay seems a likely destination but that's some way off yet. We shall see!!

P.S: yet another WIP update on the WIP page, shocker!!

That which CREEPS through the night.....

2011-10-19T17:59:00.001+01:00

.....is often otherwise known to me as INSPIRATION.

As previously mentioned I've just started running a Mordheim wilderness campaign at the Enfield Gamers otherwise known as The Grimoire of Grunwald (page plug).

With six gaming nights on the slate at just over 3 hours of actual gaming time each night I've used a slightly alternative format.

The first game of the night is a standard one on one using one of the many GW published scenarios. Once completed the warbands tally experience gained, but DON'T make advance rolls, roll injuries sustained and make their exploration rolls, just noting what they scavange but NOT trading anything in, buying , recruiting etc.

I see this as representing the warbands being out and about around Grunburg and doing their thing, mainly to each other.

The second game of the night is an Oddleg written multi-player "pit-fight" style encounter hosted back in Grunburg's keep by THE COUNT (mysterious jingle). Each warband enters a number of fighters upto a maximum rating, to keep the games fast and frantic, with double experience and extra loot on offer, to accelerate advancement over the six sessions. There's even some, rudimentary, first aid on offer to encourage a heroic combat or two!

After the pit fight total experience is tallied and advancements are rolled along with pit fight injuries. Any further exploration is rolled at which point total shards are traded in and people can go recruiting / shopping. To me this represents the warbands rolling back into town, getting their gladiator bit on and then resting up with their loot. Each game night is roughly a week of "adventuring".

As such we're going to get through quite a few scenarios and I've been looking out for ideas. One of the boys, Ed, pointed me to Tabletop Geeks Mordheim downloads section which is packed to the rafters. I shall be abusing the work printer sometime soon!

....

All of this feeds into ideas for St Peytersburg / Zombie Village. TGN also pointed me toward Dashing Dice Games' upcoming release Witchfinder General as another POTENTIAL ruleset. I also really lie the idea of releasing it at sundown on Halloween. Class touch!

As much as I like Fear and Faith / Drums and Shakos I was having trouble working out where / how I'd recreate Sleepy Hollow, which is my aim. I like a lot of the basic mechanics, especially rolling for number of actions as I feel it adds more tension a lot easier. Mordheim feels like it will deal with the supernatural so much better and the campaign system is an added bonus BUT it could be a lot more predictable.

While I'm running the campaign I'm going to work up a Mordheim version of St Peytersburg and play through a few scenarios, solo if necessary (eeek!). I can always try a few ideas out in the pit-fights! I shall report back.

Ah the power of the GM, how easily it can be abused ;) Bwaa ha ha ha haaa haaa haaaaaaaa!!!

The Fungal Suspects

2011-10-16T11:35:00.000+01:00

Flicking back through my rather dusty Orc & Goblin Armybook it would seem the GW has dropped the whole idea of greenskins growing under rocks. I like the grit that has been added to their "feel" but it seems a shame somehow. I was never the greatest fan of super-comedy greenskins but I'm sure a balance could be found. Each to their own though.

More to the point I've finished my multi-colour Kabuki inspires Mordheim warband. They've made a nice change for my the much darker look of the army and I've enjoyed expanding my normal O&G palette.

The Bash Trust. I've not gone for more detail on the Warboss' coat as he was already looking quite busy. Pretty much the same with the Big Un's. Some black Ogre style tatts were a possibility but it felt like it would just be a bit too much all around.

Still only henchmen but beautifully detailed figures for Goblin, as were all Confrontation figures. It's a shame that they don't / can't make them anymore but there you go!

With the whole warband I only added a few necessary GW bits and they've all blended in pretty well despite the odd swollen hand. Must be a fungal growth thing!

The Shaman and Squig-prodders add my necessary touch of alternative. I almost painted the bow pink but left that for the Shaman who as with the others I've kept simpler rather than busier.

Another 22 PPs and some of my most pleasing. Now I just need to weather their new painted status the next time they hit the tabletop :)

Bandit Country

2011-10-13T15:49:00.000+01:00

This week saw the Enfield Gamers return to its first organised quarterly campaign in a while, namely Mordheim.

I'm running it and have, as usual, gone alternative using the Empire in Flames wilderness campaign rules. As much as anything the scenery requirements are easier to fulfil though I want to get as many of the club's many building on the tables as possible.

Set in and around the town of Grunwald (see the NEW dedicated blog page) and with six gaming nights available the format is one "normal" game followed by a round of multi-player pit-fights with each warband entering a limited number of fighters.

Each gaming night represents a campaign week. The main scenario is the warband being out and about on their nefarious business. The pit fight represents The Count of Grunwald's gladiatorial games which bonus experience and loot on offer along with some battlefield medicine!

First night was particularly rural with everyone playing the Bounty Hunting scenario, competing to bring in the heads of various bands of ruffians who have fallen out with The Count!

Not being entirely sure of numbers I set up 4 table to get 10 players, so two tables were a three-way which the scenario insisted wouldn't be a problem. The main problem for most was that the various bandits didn't fancy being taken in and caused more casualties amongst the players than any of the actual players!

I faced off against Rob's incredibly small band of 5 Dwarves and Charlie's more sizable band of Reiklanders. With 15 Orcs, Goblins and Squigs I foolhardily split my force and went after both warbands. Hmmm.... classic Orc if you ask me!

Rob lost two of his number to Bandit crossbow fire almost immediatelyely only to rout once he had met me in combat. Charlie meanwhile hid behind a wood which then became the scene for a Tex-Mex standoff before time forced his hand. Brief and bloody tooth vs shield action saw me fail my first rout check, as my boss had been Bandited into unconsciousness, to hand him a cowardly, cowardly victory.

The pit fight was set in The Count's Keep's garden, quite the mouthful, with bonus exploration rolls for tagging and controlling the central tree. Taking on Rich's Orcs and Stuart's Reilklanders, Rich charged for the tree with a single Orc and then hid leaving myself and Stuart to battle for the tree.

Numbers told as I'd taken in just one Orc hero backed by Gobbos and Squigs. Victory was mine!! All good fun for everyone on the night I can see that I'm going to enjoy this one enormously :)

It's already occured that Mordheim may work as an ideal ruleset for Zombie Village, so this will be an excellent bit of additional playtest! Work, work, work ;)

Big Pointy Teeth...

2011-10-09T18:55:00.000+01:00

.....and vicious streaks a mile wide!

Quiet weekend watching excessive amounts of rugby to varying degrees of satisfaction. The Mordheim goblins are coming on well, just waiting for higlight work, but their Squig pets are all ready for action on Tuesday night. 5 painting points seem about right.

WIP shots of the Gobbos and the fully detailed Church on the relevant page :)

Master-Blaster!!

2011-10-07T13:53:00.002+01:00

WANTED; for pie-o-cide!

FINALLY we got back to Star Wars RPG last night and finished off the current mission which had gone oh so wrong pretty much from the word go!

Killing the party has always been a gnarly old can-o-worms for many a DM that produces mixed reactions amongst players. Mr Christian, who's character spent the ENTIRE evening unconscious, made his feelings felt by putting my facebook photo through his lard-boy app. Best 69p he's ever spent apparently!

We all had a good laugh though, my motivation as a GM, and despite his obvious feelings it was never my INTENTION to kill off the party. I just wasn't going to give them an easy time if they gave the adventure the opportunity.

Picking up where we left off, running away in leaky spacesuits through a hard vacuum, it took a couple of crucial turns for the lads to get a plan together.

Said plan was to mag boot the rapidly increasing pile of unconscious bodies onto the 3 escapee cargo crates and send them down the rappel line back to the ship. The combat-suited Big-Bad continued with his hit and run tactics, popping out of cover to lay down some blaster fire before dodging back behind cover via thruster jets.

Big-Bad was expending his last few Force Points (dark and light) to do this, not that the lads knew how many he had, against their purely defensive tactics which coupled with a poor Perception roll after covering the wrong angle saw only Jon's Jedi and Ian's Scoundrel on their feet. The Jedi, ALWAYS the poxy Jedi to frustrate my plans!

Last Men Standing - but for how long!?

Except this time there was no Force Stun in the rush to get everyone away, with the last to walkers clinging on to the final crate as it flew along the rappel line. The group sigh of relief was audible, at least until Big-Bad went space-side after them. Why on earth wouldn't he!
Jon's Force Push bounced him back off the shuttle hull while Ian just shot him! Recovering, Big-Bad finished off Jon whilst closing on Ian at which point Ian's randomly pre-determined air supply finally exited his suit!

Passing the Constitution check Ian squeezed off another blast of laser fire just as all "cargo" reached their ship's external airlock. He missed! Big-Bad didn't. Lights out lads, have a nice sleep!!

So TOTAL PARTY KILL then! Not had one of those in quite some time, not sure I can remember the last one. Chatting it through it was a close run thing all the way through. Big-Bad had just 13 hit points on Ian's last shot, 3D8+4 damage, and back down in the hold they could have chased him down and finished him off but chose to regroup, a 50-50 call in all honesty.

More than anything was a lack of group tactics. Rule 1: NEVER split the party!!

Fading back from black each of the lads found themselves floating in a Bacta tank, many with new cybernetic bits and all with a shiny new bio-ware unit grafted into the center of their chests! A com-link cut in and an oriental voice welcomed them as new employees of Hiyabusa Intergalactic Heavy Industries (HI-HI) outlining something of the nature of their new Healthcare Plan :)

Next time out it'll be time to live the meet the bosses, sing the company song and live the company motto; Service for a Lifetime. Seems like a good time to close a chapter and take a break!

Roleplay will see some bits and bobs until the new year and then it'll be back to D&D. It'll also give me the chance to be working on Zombie Village!!

BRAINS, BRAINS, who's got some BRAINS!!! ;)

Multi-stringed bow

2011-10-03T16:26:00.000+01:00

Is that a harp then!??

I played football again this afternoon which is nothing new as Sunday afternoon footy has become a regular fixture, despite a jippy right knee and the fact that I haven't followed the game since I was at primary school.
Due to jippy knee I play at the back, in the center or on the left, and am, apparently, rather difficult to get around and don't mind a bit of shoulder action. I rarely get picked last anymore, which is nice.

I've been slowly getting more into it and have even picked up an older Fulham shirt, £10 from flea bay, due to their rep for hard defensive play. I've even been watching the odd half of a game during the post game pint of coke. This week we kicked off early to accommodate the Spurs / Arsenal game which I actually watched the majority of at home.

It was at least in the background whilst I did some STUFF, though I did catch all 3 goals, and watched the Wasps score live-fed on the laptop grind to a loss away to Newcastle! BAH!!!!

So in the vein of trying new things here's my Mordheim Boss and Shaman basecoated and washed. Rarely have I painted any greenskin so brightly but I'm very encouraged with my work to date. Still keen to add some pea-dot fauna!

Did I also mention that I'm also known on the pitch for my luminous yellow boots?? :)

Crack the WIP!!

2011-09-30T14:02:00.001+01:00

I've realised that I've barely been updating the WIP page much, if it all, recently and briefly thought that I might delete but have instead decided to self-enforce a bi-weekly post, on a Sunday when possible.

Despite a bit of random lurgy this week I've managed a decent-ish amount of work on the Mordheim warband. Progress has been deliberately slow and steady whilst I work the final colour combinations to emulate my Kabuki / Samurai-esque aspirations.

Much like the Sci-Fi Triads I painted some time ago it'll be primarily yellow on blue with red and white for accents and smaller details. Everyone gets white hair and "stone" furs.

Just the main man has seen much attention from the command section. His overcoat will be blue, with possible orange 3-dot flower detailing, whilst the padded plates will be yellow with bone/white splint pieces.
Should keep the yellow in check. Not sure about the back banner yet, that'll bringing up the rear!

Not much going on with the Big Uns just yet other than a few random thoughts about possible tatts. Dags and the like most probably, if at all.

Just skin, spear tips and red bows for the Spear-bow-gits so far. I want to stear clear of metallic armour as much as possible and go for the lacquered look especially as game-wise they're unarmoured. Blue with yellow accents one feels.

A blue robe for the shaman, though this is likely to change as I feel the need to mark his status as "ghost-whisperer". A very light, ethereal blue seems right, possibly with some pink accents, maybe some more 3-dot flowers.

Just base blues for the squigs so far. Red-spot patterning along the spines most likely blending into the maws and flesh-tone bellys.

Elsewhere, my church windows have arrived so a bit more construction / detailing there and it's painting by spray-can and house-brush.

Otherwise it's payday and the weekend awaits...... rugby and painting!!!

What's that coming over the hill!?

2011-09-26T11:24:00.000+01:00

Yes, it is indeed a MONSTER, more specifically Giant 1 otherwise recently christened as "Mr G" for reasons that are, hopefully, fairly obvious.

GW's most recent tin/pewter incarnation he's had a few bits and bobs plus some green stuff attached to him for variation. Another dark skin-tone as part of my equal opportunities campaign that came about as I was dry-brushing up through various browns.

I thought it would be easier and save me some time given my lack of skill with Caucasian tones. I was correct though highlights were still required post wash that enhanced greatly.

He looked suitably dirty after washes and I thought I might be on for another ugly win but the extra time and effort was well worth it. A dirty finish to a paint-job, however apt, is still a dirty finish!!

I pity the fool who settles for a dirty paint-job!!

Big but simple that's 5 PPs sucker! Next up on the O&G conveyor are the Mordheim warband. Meanwhile, much like a certain Romanian prop, I ain't getting on no plane!! :)

Evil Empire(s)

2011-09-23T12:51:00.000+01:00

Wanted in 3 countries for crime against Salsa!

No, for once that's not a reference to Games Workshop! ;)

With last night's planned Star Wars RPG session postponed six of us cracked out War on Terror for it's second outing. As expected play was much slicker with prior experience and a few more facets of the game surfaced as a a result.

With less territory for each of us to grab people actually developed their Empires with towns ad cities springing up all over. There was even some co-operation..... SOME!!

We were also less blase about deploying terrorist, for a while, though everyone quickly set up a training camp in a mutual threat sort of way!

With six players Oil Revenues, roll for at the end of each player's turn and effectively everyone, became significant and as such quickly focussed attentions to the best producing territories and their exploitation.

Once the inevitable hostilities opened individual fortunes quickly mimicked the Greek stock market and many carefully expanded Empires shrank significantly. A big loser here was Charlie who had spread his initial deployment quite wide, unlike the rest of, and as such made a quick expansion early on.

Pushed to the brink and beyond Charlie was the first to turn terrorist quickly followed by myself as my two remaining cities were turned terrorist by Mr Christian's play of a certain game-card, to much exasperation by all! At that time I was cash and event card rich which paid for an American, North and South, Jihad securing a number of significant Oil Fields which quite literally poured more fuel upon the fire!

With events and time turning against the remaining Empire players they launched a combined War on Terror, going Nuclear than G-Dubya could ever dream before Global Peace was declared before the school-night hour became too advanced.

This game is rapidly becoming the best £25 I've spent in quite some time....... praise ALLAH!!!

Late night, poor lighting, shifty characters...GO!

Jon builds a Can-European Empire....EH!?

Black Gold, Texas T. Oil Revenue a go go!!

The NUKES rain down on the terrorist Americas!!

Furry Dice??

2011-09-22T15:21:00.002+01:00

Clean and simple all round I've finished the O&G Goblin Wolf Chariots and feel rather pleased with their finish as fast and brutal as the brushwork was, much like the chariots themselves, though nowhere near as fragile.

15 PPs for the "squadron" seems about right with the first Giant following close behind them.

Elsewhere a couple of the lads tried out Kings of War 2nd Edition at the club last night and reported back that other than tidying a few bits up and introducing meaningful scenery rules there weren't any major revelations.

The 2nd Ed rulebook does however contain a full set of army lists including the new Kingdom of Man which I had a browse through. Warlord's English Civil or Thirty Year Wars ranges would seem to be a good option there?

I played a run through game of Mordheim against Rich's Ninjas, using the Skaven list, with an unlikely number of critical wounds scored by my Goblin spearmen.

Post Giant they'll be getting some dedicated brush-time with a little more TLC applied.

Swing with CLUB!!

Many ways to skin a wallet

2011-09-20T11:44:00.000+01:00

Despite my many faceted (personal) issues with Games Workshop (£9.50 for a spray!!!) I still wander past their website on a regular basis to press my nose to their virtual shop window to ogle the eye-candy before turning away with a slight sigh.

Two recent releases have caught my attention as a deviation from the norm the less obvious one being from Black Library;

The forces of Chaos are moving against the Imperium once more, and only YOU can stop them! The first in a new series of Warhammer 40,000 adventure game books, Hive of the Dead casts you in the role of an Imperial Guardsman, fighting for survival upon the plague-ridden world of Subiaco Diablo at the beginning of the Thirteenth Black Crusade.

So a 40K Fighting Fantasy book then. An interesting development, but as a "print on demand" release the £13 price sticker is a little hefty for its 288 soft-bound pages. Brings back memories of Kai Wolf - for those of you that remember those, well done!

The more obvious release is Dreadfleet that I originally thought was a re-release of Man-O-War, which it isn't, and might have been prompted by Spartan's seafaring successes, which given lead time is somewhat unlikely.

A splash release in the same way as Space Hulk its a stand alone game for the princely sum of £70 with, one assumes, correspondingly high production values. Fair enough, I was one of the ones who threw the credit card at Space Hulk with wild abandon, don't remember the price tag - didn't care, and was deliriously happy to do so.

This was mainly because the immense gaming gaming joy that Space Hulk had previously provided. I can't say the same for Dreadfleet. As I sat and watched the intro vid on GW's site I tried my best to keep an open, un-biased mind but the more I watched the less I liked.

I had an overwhelming feeling of the whole game being EPICLY EPIC for no other reason the 'cos rather like Storm of Magic. Most race's are represented, in a piecemeal way, which is an understandable option for a one-of boxed game but it seems an attempt to offer something to too many and not enough to all. Seriously, what's wrong with turning out a nice game that actually works these days!

That's what Space Hulk was / is and that's why I was so keen to part with my hard earned. But then, relatively speaking, I'm a Old Git in that respect, or so it seems.

I could be wrong, I often am, and feel that I should at least offer some admiration for effort applied but if I was going to pick up either of these releases I'm sure you can guess which one I'd be going for.

Bloody kids these day, don't know that they're born!! ;)

The Green Ripple

2011-09-17T22:06:00.000+01:00

No not a third-rate comic book character or a massively out of date chocolate bar but the first painted O&G unit, the Black Orcs.

Following on from Tuesday's post I've highlighted the obvious front rank details "properly". Otherwise all of the weapon-heads have had a drybrush highlight as have the bare faces. I'm more than happy with the result but feel the need to acknowledge this within the Painting Points.

1.5 points a piece seems fair as I've still done all the construction work, even if previously even balanced against block painting techniques. These lads just happen to be 75% armour. So that's 30 PPs on the sheet!

Meanwhile I've completed all the construction for my Mordhiem warband, all based on Rackham Confrontation figures that have been squirreled away for far too long.

The Boss and his two Big Un lieutenants. Given the oriental look of all the figures I'll going for a kabuki inspired paint scheme with plenty of savage-esque blue and white tattoos, especially for the Big Uns.

I only had a goblin shaman so he'll have to do the job. These two gobbos will be my squig herders one utilising music to soothe the savage beasts, the other a big pointy stick!

The squigs! Based on tuppences like the rest I just feel that skirmish figures look a lot better based that way. I was thinking of rainbowing them but will have blue as a base colour for all of them to tie them in to the rest of the warband.

And finally, but not least, the goblin archer-bowmen. Excellent figures, I've not added more GW parts than I've needed to. I've also got a number of fully armoured ninja goblins that will work well as Orc Boyz, should I actually recruit any!

WAAAAGGHHHH!!

On the Offensive

2011-09-16T22:10:00.000+01:00

Dateline: Tuesday night..... Location: Enfield Gamers.....Engagement: Kings of War;

Second run out, this time with my Orcs. I found a bit more tactical depth, though I'm not sure there's any left, and worked a few things out. There are some nice simple mechanics, emphasis on simple, but you do just line up and, placing a big emphasis on deployment. Possibly somewhat abusable by those that do.

Overall I haven't changed my "window dressing" opinion. There's nothing offensive about them as a ruleset but also nothing to get excited about. Very vanilla but I'd still be prepared to have a go at the updated version....... at least once!

Inoffensive in extremis

Dateline: Thursday night..... Location: my place.....Engagement: War on Terror;

With Aaron still holidaying in the land of the 5-Oh a few of us had a first run out with War on Terror, a game which doesn't pull any punches and as a result is extremely entertaining to those with an actual sense of humour. Its also easy to pick up with plenty of game options.

World Domination is the name of the game through a number of options including sponsorship of terrorists to unleash on your enemies. As a first game this is what we concentrated on and quickly engaged in tit for tat hostilities..... much as expected!

Close to every knuckle you've got

Terrorist Africa

By sheer luck Charlie was the first of us to become EVIL and mad quick use of his access to the TERRORIST deck to lay some serious slap-down on the rest of us.

Given that we hadn't really bothered with building our EMPIREs, preferring to attack each other things soon deteriorated with terrorist cells popping up worldwide!

With my EMPIRE being rolled back on all fronts and rapidly approaching bankruptcy I did what any good tin-pot dictator would i.e. risked everything on one roll of the dice and upon its failure immediately turned terrorist, establishing Africa as an entire rogue continent :)

I was feeling quite smug and was thinking of which horribly non PC outrageous accent to adopt which, unsurprisingly, only invited disaster!

With World Peace rapidly approaching, otherwise known as home-time and an everyone's-a-winner draw, all the big hitter cards were played including BOTH of Rob's Nuclear Strikes. So good-bye to Charlie's nefariously evil South America and my newly established terrorist continent.

All good clean riotous fun :)

Rob blows up 1/3 of the known world

Winning UGLY

2011-09-13T13:06:00.001+01:00

Mike's nose needs a little support!

So England scraped an ugly win over Argentina on Saturday but, as with all professional sport, its the result that counts and topping the group, thus avoiding the All Blacks in the quarters, SHOULD be on the cards.
Wasps meanwhile turned on the style to take a deserved bonus point win from Leicester in a stunner of a game. A hat-trick from winger Christian Wade also sees me shooting up the Fantasy Rugby league.

Once again it's about the will to grind out a victory at all costs, primarily that of entertainment. Fan's might bemoan it but they all prefer it to a loss!

Wargames can be like that sometimes but if you've read a post or two of mine you know that I prefer entertainment.

Thankfully that's where this particular post makes its tangential turn towards a current painting project as I've based up the Black Orc regiment prior to highlights.

Well past the three colour minimum it's back to the old trade-off of time vs result which always seems more prevalent with ranked Warhammer regiments. Looking at the shots below the banner is an obvious priority 1 followed up by the musician's drum and the shield details of the Boss.

I COULD highlight the ork-hide, there's not even that much of it, but do I NEED to? I COULD just highlight the hide of the front rank! Who would ever notice? they're good enough as they are aren't they?? Nothing wrong with a "Table-top Paint-job" whatever we each define that as???

Previously I've always gone for the Full Monty but with a litteral army to follow and given my most finite resource, time, I find myself questioning the practice. So other than the obvious I'm going to just highlight heads and see how that works out as the majority is armour and I'm more than happy with the finish post-wash.

Winning UGLY??

Fancy a Ruck?

2011-09-09T09:55:00.000+01:00

Well I couldn't not mention Rugby Union's showpiece event now then could I!?

Myself and the Dawes went to the Premiership Double Header last week and I remembered just how much I LOVE rugby. Wasps took a deserved win from Saracens and I've been hoarse all week from shouting my lungs out.

Thankfully all of England's game are Saturday and Sunday mornings, two are 7am. So to be honest the next few weekends have early starts and heavy bacon sarnies as a major feature :)

You'll suffer no significant punditry from me but I expect Johnson's men to top the group and make the semis. Knockout competitions of any kind are all about one-off performance and England can honestly beat anyone on the right day. Thankfully, they've got a decent army list :)

To drag things a little more on track here's a WIP shot of the Black Orcs post base colours and standard Devlan Mud wash. The flesh needs a green wash and a few bits could do with a little black glaze but after that it'll be the bases so that I can work the highlights out to balance everything up.

Next Tuesday they're scheduled for some table time and should whiff heavily of varnish!!

The Spice of Life

2011-09-06T13:15:00.002+01:00

Despite making great gains by sticking to the Hobby PLAN I've decided that I need a bit of a break form it as it's caused a touch of burnout.No big deal, the whole process has been somewhat organic and it's just time for me to acknowledge it.

So, to clarify, this is a strangely cathartic project update post :)

Zombie Village (current); has done pretty well this year with a good scenery set and plenty of protagonists. The church awaits some windows, which are finally on their way to me, and the French have gone no father than previously posted. These WILL be finished by the end of the year along with a few outstanding British.
To feature in my autumn / winter gaming.

Star Wars RPG (current); doesn't need any figures / scenery working on but simply takes up time & effort, all unbegrudged as it's highly enjoyable. The current story arc is coming to a conclusion an it'll be nice to be a player again. GM duties will be redirected towards Zombie Village.

Having said that whilst on Amazon the other day buying presents, something Pink for the girlie's B-Day and War on Terror for me (photo on the right) I came across this for £8. £8 vs £41 for a Valkyrie, no contest!

Mordheim Orcs (new); are at the construction stage as I hope to be running a wilderness-ish campaign at the club from October through to the end of the year. The fluff is in my head and just needs to be put onto paper. I also need to source some squigs and am currently begrudging GW's price of £3 a piece though I can feel the cave-in approaching.

There's a bit of over-lap here with Zombie Village as possible ruleset that I feel would cover the supernatural element rather well. We shall see.

Orcs & Goblins (new); as previously mentioned with a bit of Kings of War at the club, and now work started on a club-brew fantasy ruleset, I've dug these boys out of the case that they've languished in for so long. Repaired and primed I spent last night dry-brushing up a couple of units.

Even though they're earmarked for possible E-Baying I'm really looking forward to the process as painting an actual army is something that I haven't done in too long. Just the change of pace / focus that I need.

All of the above is making me feel a lot more positive about MY hobby. Variety and all that :)

Pure Dumb Luck

2011-09-04T23:09:00.002+01:00

A couple of days later than billed, my apologies.

Two nights gaming last week Wednesday at Rich's for a bit more Napoleon at War and another Star Wars RPG session at mine. There was plenty of PDL on both occasions though Rich has this habit as an over gracious host of plying me with tea, biscuits and the rub of his dice in my favour.

So Wednesday was my second run out with NAW and even after the usual "what we did wrong last time" bit with any new set of rules things chugged along that bit quicker this time. As a reversal of last time out Rich took the French attacking the thin red line as to "show me what they can do".

Prophetic words as with Rich's usual home disadvantage my dice simply shot his attack columns to pieces. On my weaker left Rich did manage to press his cavalry home only for them to bounce off a couple of regiments, one of which was in line!

After my reinforcements arrived it was pretty much mopping up, both the French and the digestives! Still liking so many of the game mechanics, some really nice original ones in there, and more than happy to get some regular games in. Maybe a run out at mine next time!

All of which neatly set the scene for Thursday night with Charlie providing both chocolate digestives AND hob-nobs. Well done that man!

Despite missing two of the boys we cracked on. A quick refresh established the groups rather worn status having driven off Big-Bad. Preferring not to chase him down the lads healed up as best they could and secured the two crates that they.

Looking for extras a medical crate was identified from the manifest and it was duly summoned from the automated cargo system. Big fat 1, she go bang! Crate spat out but the already weakened cargo pod finally lets go a begins to break up.

Legging it with the crates up the one functioning lift leads back to our recent favourite of splitting the party!

Our next big hit was being surprised when the droids that weren't cleared out from the upper level made an appearance with a healthy dose of auto-fire! Continuing the "tactical withdrawal" at an impressive rate of knots left the walking wounded tail-end charlies for the last couple of Roger-Roger's.

On this occasion Pure Dumb Luck saved their arse, at least briefly!

Approaching the hard-vacuumed shuttle that provided an entry point some several sessions ago I made a DM call and ruled that given the amount of fire received each players space-suit will survive for D8+2 rounds of hard vacuum pre self-inflating head.

Unsurprisingly it was heads down and pump those legs! Unfortunately this left Rob at the end of a corridor with a virtual target pasted across him. Big-Bad took his chance and floored him, joining Mr C who was in the process of regaining consciousness.

Quickly running through possible "so you all bought it" scenarios I offered an early finish to the session given the missing players, including Jon whose Jedi powers could prove immensely crucial. Cliffhanger called!

We did have a little debrief as I wanted to canvas opinion as to wether I had made the mission to difficult. The general answer was no, though there ws some discussion about the constant use of autofire, but that things had gone wrong from the start and snowballed.

From my perspective that seemed about right but that when things first went wrong there was no re-group just a constant push at already thinning luck. I, as GM, simply took advantage.

Maybe the point about PDL, good or bad, is how you deal with it when it happens 'cos we all know that it will sooner or later!

Competitive blogging??

2011-08-31T13:45:00.001+01:00

I actually had a fairly decent weekend hobby-wise repairing and spray basecoating up all of the Orcs and Goblins prior to drybrushing the be-Jesus out of them but that's not massively exciting so you get this instead.

So what is this post? Labeled as "Musings" is it just a filler post designed to pad my hit-count?

Despite being at this for best part of two years now I've only recently succumbed to "stat-fever" and I know that I'm far from being the only sufferer.

I love to wander this hobby's blog-o-sphere as it provides plenty of ideas, inspiration and motivation. Over time my reading list of followed blogs has steadily increased. I've noticed a number of blogs have large followings (I have seven and I treasure each of you) and boast massive hit counts and page views (I have 4500 total page views, last month's 685 was a new record) and some blogs have been voted for various awards (well done them).

Not that this was ever an issue for me but these blogs seem to be no different to my own other than their stat....why? Not in a bad way, just out of interest.

Being a regular reader of Tabletop Gaming News I recently joined it's blog network and unsurprisingly my stats increased greatly and I naturally felt rather chuffed at the apparent compliment. But soon I was checking my stats on a more than daily basis and in the push for another record month scouring my brain for potential post ideas.

Stimulating creativity? Maybe. Massaging ego? More than likely.

I've never blogged on a daily basis. It's a lot of effort and I'm sure that I don't have enough relevant, interesting stuff to say. Some guys do and it'll mean that they're constantly visible in other people's sidebars and blog lists which strikes as self-perpetuating.
This briefly seemed like "the next logical step" until I stepped in and hard a word with myself.

To be a little harsh many daily posters regularly have to resort to filler (filler is for cracks!) that I'll quickly glance at and then move on as I always prefer to have a thought or two provoked. I'd prefer to do the same myself if at all possible.

Each to thier own though as taste is an individual thing.

Sometime ago I just looked at my stats occasionally and wondered why the interest from Iran or South Korea. All of my most popular posts were from back when I was making up my converted Chaos Dwarf Blood-Bowl team with a lot of interest from those BB crazy Dutch dudes.

As on the table-top I've always wanted to be competitive enough to provide all involved with a worthwhile experience. The occasional win always helps but I'd never want that to become my sole motivation!.

Anyway, I've vented without ranting too much so I shall thank you for your time! Playing Naps with Rich tonight before a Star Wars RPG session tomorrow evening so grab your place early Friday 'cos that post will be a doozy!

Happy blogging :)

Club vs Country

2011-08-26T14:18:00.002+01:00

WARNING: Sports related post!

Well, it has been quite sometime and there's a toys twist a few paras in at least ;)

This is Joe Simpson, live-wire scrum half for my beloved London Wasps, one of the club's star players. On the fringe of the full England squad for a while now, the foot injury to Danny Care has seen him included in the World Cup squad.

Good for him, well deserved BUT this means that Wasps will be without him for the new season's start and with a lot of new faces and many other big names already injured pre-season. As effectively 3rd choice how much meaningful game time will he get? What will be the knock on when he returns to the club?

This is nothing new amongst any team sport, all standard stuff, but it did set my mind wandering to nerdy wargames comparisons and the best inter-dynamic I could come up with was Game vs Company i.e. games, figures, genre that you like / dislike versus their manufacturer that you may like / dislike...... bear with me?

GW has to be the obvious first "hit". I love the figures, the settings and artwork. Once upon a time I played (and worked) it all. Now it's Blood Bowl, Necromunda and Mordheim. As much as it would be cool to dive into a new Ogre army the horrific cost and ropey ruleset just stops me dead.

I've previously got in on the ground floor of a number of big hitters in the form of Flames of War (Battlefield) and Warmachine (Privateer Press) back when artwork was black and white the books fell apart and their forums were almost just one big FAQ but the game, the community and the company were bending over backwards to be fun and accessible.

I suppose that with success comes inevitable change to what is labelled as a GW-centric business model. Having recycled sometime ago I'd now be looking at a £200 / £300 layout to get back in bed with either of them! Maybe I'm just whinging again??

Two Hour Wargames churn out great PDF rules that are just that, you sort out the rest. No problem with that as me and my lot are long enough in the tooth to do so but many aren't. Love them but hate that they're so limited.

Finally Spartan Games. Still got my Uncharted Seas, resisted Firestorm Armada, sorely tempted by Dystopian Wars. Wasn't bothered by non-digitally mastered figures a version 1.5 reprint or a relatively slow release schedule. Loved the fast, fun, simple skirmish level games that they are. WIN - WIN.

My ramble has become a rant, I'll stop :)

P.S: just for the record for me this is never about expenditure of time / money / effort only ever about RETURN!

Out with the old?

2011-08-24T14:38:00.000+01:00

....possibly! In with the new... more than likely!!

When first discovering GW / Wargaming (delete as applicable) it was Warhammer Fantasy (1st Edition) that first gave me the itch via Greenskins. I can remember sitting on a south-coast family beach holiday wearing out the army-list with my eyeballs.

Much later in life Orcs and Goblins became my first proper army and somehow fittingly they remain the last vestage of that "other hobby" within my possession. So on Monday night, with a bout of hayfever preventing any brush-time, I dug out what remains to work out what to do with it.

So after loosing various bits along the way I have two units of 30 boyz "static-furred", 20 black orcs, 8 boar boyz, 3 wolf chariots (sans crew), 10 wolfboyz, 2 pump wagons (sans crew), 2 bolt throwers, 2 giants, boss on wyvern and the characters below in various states of salvageable repair.

Thought 1 had been recycling via E-Bay as is but wasn't sure I'd get much. Thought 2 was to repair, spray and basecoat prior to thought 1, possibly painting the characters below properly, to hopefully improve return?

Thought 3 occurred after a few more lads at the club played Kings of War last night and at lunch today I've established that the Orc element = 1300 points of KoW. Interesting!?

So for the moment I'm going with thought 2 whilst remaining open to thought 3 i.e. prevarication!!

Meanwhile the new is represented by the possibility of an end of year Mordheim campaign at the club and a number of OOP Confrontation O&G's that I've had hiding away for in excess of two years for just that very purpose. Actually they were acquired for a Songs of Blades campaign that I missed but its all skirmish at the end of the day.

A little more armoured than necessary but a little conversion will be necessary to give the goblin contingent short-bows. Really love the oriental feel and detailing so keen to crack on!

I'm not just ignoring "The Plan" but I can do all the repair / construction whilst the hayfever relents. I really want to finish the church but I'm still waiting for the last few windows to be delivered.

Sarah Beeny eat your heart out!

Lost in Translation?

2011-08-23T13:58:00.000+01:00

Not a lot of posts recently, which I'm sure you've lamented at great length but this has been for too main reasons.

Firstly my laptop's power lead has died. Maplins want £65 for a new one, thanks for that but I think I'll pass. The little repair place can do £35 but not for a couple of weeks. Must be cheaper online, if only I could access it!!

I've also been to Brighton for the weekend and spotted this! The shop to the right was full of spangly accessories and as such bought me some drooling time.

MG42. I tried to explain the significance but quickly gave up recognising that initial error in record time and thankfully didn't try comparing my fascination to that of the afore mentioned shop next door. Learning!

I was intrigued by the stamping near the stock and wondered if it was original not expecting anyone to ruin it's market value intentionally. I had thought that it might have been made by a satellite state, maybe the Czechs, but a colleague of mine who's just been there on a family holiday says not and that bottom line looks Russian to just about everyone.

Possibly a captured piece, there must have been plenty, that ended up in a museum in and eventually onto a gun shop in Brighton? Operation Sealion the long route??

Answers on a comment!

Bored Games

2011-08-17T13:39:00.001+01:00

A phrase coined by Shaun, though it didn't stop him attempting to thrash all comers at Carcassonne the other week.

On one of those quiet August club-nights Jon ran a few of us through A Touch of Evil describing it as Sleepy Hollow meets Munchkin, which was all that I needed to hear!

Good game, enjoyed it. Described as non-cooperative we didn't really have too much interaction with each other focusing more on our own build-up to taking on our randomly determined night-terror a Demonic Scarecrow.

Mr S Crow went down surprisingly easily at the first attempt to Jon though Mr Crow did (through me) roll some seriously poor dice. I'd definitely play again!

As some of my recent blog posts / whinges have alluded to I've been in a bit of a gaming malaise recently and have felt the pull of various board-games. this particular evening's entertainments helped here as despite having a good time I also found myself looking at the majority of the board locations taking inspiration for further St Peytersburg real estate developments.

Having not yet finished the Church I went home thinking of windmills and a quick google search gave me this for a mere tenner. About the right scale but possibly a bit big it would need detailing up but how could I possibly loose. Added to wish list!

Back at the original point I've run through a thought process;
1. Wargames wise I want to play skirmish
2. The main con for boardgames (for me) is the lack of "proper" figures. I want to wield a brush!
3. Thusly I'm looking for boardgames with figures.
4. Why aren't I playing Space Hulk more?
5. For playing at the club I'd like to involve us many of us as possible.

So to satisfy points 2 and 3 I'm looking at such offerings as Incursion and Dust Tactics.

But that's potentially an awful lot of time / effort / money. So, really that brings me back to Touch of Evil and an offering from the same stable Last Night on Earth. But we've already got Zombies!!
Picky aren't I!?

One particular board-game that I've had my eye on for quite some-time is War on Terror and not just for the balaclava, it just appeals..... the balaclava is simply a bonus! I saw it released at Salute a few years back but at the time board-games weren't good enough for my cash. Saw a copy this year early on but went back for it too late!

Now that's regime change in action!

So, in eventual conclusion what I really want to do is play games with my mates. Either skirmish wargames that I already know / play and have figures for or board and card games that we can all join in on. Everything else can, to be blunt, take a number and form a queue at the local cliff.

Rather simple really but also incredibly cathartic, thanks for hanging on in there.

Now to make things happen, which has probably been the root of my recent malaise / frustration. Sort out some skirmish gaming down the club that we can all get in on, Mordheim or Necromunda possibly / probably. Also, buy War on Terror....... and a windmill!!!

P.S: Many thanks to boardgamegeek.com for all their links. For those interested here's their Top 100 Board Games. I own two and have played a few more..... room for improvement :)

Vive La Diff-er-ance II

2011-08-16T12:58:00.000+01:00

It would seem that I've used this title before, thus the numerals, but I'm fairly sure that the content will differ some what, at least in the specifics.

This is my current read and it's very entertaining. I've breezed through the first 250 pages, going out of my way to find the time, chortling regularly. A random find via a Waterstones 3 for 2 with a similar-ish book about Germany (which I had to put down after struggling through to a low triple figure of pages) and something else even more eclectic.

Stephen Clarke has a number of similar offerings; Talk to the Snail, A Year in the Merde, Paris Revealed and the intriguingly titled A Brief History of the Future. As well as knowing his material he, more importantly, also knows how to entertain with such material. More offerings for the Amazon wishlist, heartily recommended!

The main relevance to the remainder of this post is that with my Church windows still consigned to Royal Mail purgatory and Sunday evening spent at a loose end failing to watch The Expendables with due attention (a £5 Tesco impulse buy) I've started work on painting my AWI French. Merde!

So, WHITE uniforms with specific detail then. Not beyond my ability but a relatively challenging return to figures since my last painted figures some 5 weeks ago of St Peytersburg supernaturals and civilians.

To matters a little more interesting I've decided to run a little experiment with this one undercoating half of the figures, there's a dozen, black, half white and comparing results at the end of the process.

Starting with the whites I've applied a Sepia wash to add a dirty shade and bring out all of the detail. Flesh and muskets have been base coated along with tricorns and boots / gaiters. Brow has been crossed and end of brush chewed.

Just need to re find / hit my rhythm....... apparently its a method (childish snigger) ;)

A LIFE less ordinary

2011-08-12T12:06:00.004+01:00

Whilst surfing around the blog-o-sphere yesterday I stumbled across some chaps discussing their roleplaying groups and whether some were too chatty / social and not getting enough actual gaming in.

Interesting, as it was Star Wars again last night and I felt the need to raise the point that we'd been back to it for 6 months now and did the group feel that it was time for a change?

The chatter moved onto to the fact that it didn't feel like we'd got much actual adventuring done, almost two longer missions. General opinion was that start times had slipped a bit, mission planning often involved plenty of discussion (still roleplaying!) which could be done in between sessions via e-mail and generally ballsing things up on a regular basis.

No great problem for anyone but we'll finish this mission and then review. More than likely we'll return to D&D or maybe find a bit of filler with something else, mini-campaigns / board games etc.

I often Google up some images for these posts, being a very visual type, and "Roleplaying" brought up some interesting results including various Basket Ball references that were a long way beyond me.

With my my interest piqued, especially with Aaron's recent tropes offering, I did a quick wiki-search through a wry smile: RESULT

I've had a go at everything on that page in the last 20 years and had great fun doing it but with reference to the top image it's possible that I've gained a cumulative +/- 1 bonus every few years. Now there's a can of worms!!

I've also played rather a lot of Magic / Tragic prior to getting into wargaming though as previously alluded to here I've recently found myself more and more drawn to the recent slew of miniature based boardgames.

Meanwhile, last night the chaps finally cleared the cold, airless, zero-G cargo pod that they recently blundered there way into and started to get on with actually locating the crates that they'd been sent after.

With Star Wars all enemies come rated by Challenge Level (CL). Six level 4 players gives me a total CL of 36 to play with. So far I've gone for an even spread as with some of the big-bads I loose track of all their skills / abilities too quickly. This time its CL 1 and 2 battle-droids plus one CL 8 bad-ass based on a Bounty Hunter profile.

At the relevant point, droid goons dispatched and the lights still off, Big-Bad struck, randomly going after one of the more isolated chaps. Once again, Mr C came up trumps and was soon sucking deck having dropped down the Condition Track a couple of steps.

I was actually remembering rules, feats and abilities and deploying them effectively. Next came a Stun Grenade welcoming Aaron and Ian to unconsciousness whilst they attempted to shutdown the droid server. TACTICS!!! Eyebrows were raised by all, the group were tightening sphincters. Good stuff :)

Thinking that I might need to back down a bit Jon's Jedi once again stepped forward. I braced.

Jedi action 1: new feat giving him Damage Reduction of 10 - sensible / fair enough
Jedi action 2: lift and slam large cargo container into Big-Bad - minimal damage / felt like a let off
Jedi action 3: Force Stun on a natural 20 - Big-Bad drops down the CD like a stone - feck, Feck, FECK

Big-Bad is still going but is now at minus 10 to everything including his defense. He unleashes a bit, spending Dark Side force Points liberally and even with the Jedi spent and battered eyes the situation as the other lads suddenly find a bit more courage.

Tactical withdrawal thanks! Jon gets his powers refreshed but so can Big-Bad and they've still got to find what they're after and make a getaway........................ poxy Jedi ;)

Ding ding, round two!!

The thin Blue line

2011-08-10T13:22:00.001+01:00

An instant classic of a sit-com for Rowan Atkinson from some years back that rather glibly sprang to mind last night on the way to the club.

After settling in amongst the odd siren and a bit of copper spotting Rich ran me through Man at War's Naps offering. Possibly following the Battlefront model they're also offering a range of 18mm figures boxed by the Brigade. As anybody could we played in 10mm with a converted ground-scale.

This was a proper test game for both of us and having dabble d unsuccessfully on a number of occasions I would have cheerfully ticked the sceptically open-minded box (WTF?) if asked.

I'm sure there are proper reviews out there and the following won't join them being more of an impressionistic ramble. In short, after a bit of bodging / learning on the hoof I like them enough to play another game. High praise indeed!!

Despite not being anything of an aficionado of the period, though I do claim more knowledge than the average Sharpe viewer, the mechanics had the right feel to me with more emphasis on manoeuvre, strategy and tactics than hot lead and cold steel.

The reserve move mechanic allowed my light cav to get in around Rich's right wing, whilst my march attack columns pinned his infantry on that flank, and cause a suitable amount of havoc before expending themselves and retiring suitably. Regiments, as the lowest element, "wear" suitably and provided a feel of diminishing returns that quickly plummets if you push your luck too far.

My French reserves turning up quicker than Rich's Brits helped greatly in my securing 1 of 2 objectives a la refused flank but still left us having a decent tussle in the dying light.

After 150 minutes of learning the game we were through our 6 turns for what felt like a draw only to see a British victory as I simply hadn't pushed hard enough, partly at least as I hadn't really paid attention to victory conditions, preferring to learn as many rules as possible. I did feel that as nominal attacker I would have had a hard time given my limited understanding of the scenario and all.

So coming from my Sci-Fi / Fantasy-centric fun-first(good game, good game!!) stance I honestly feel that the fact that I'd play another game is reasonalbe praise at the very least. I even suggested that a few other guys at the club would do the same.

Next up for the rules is Shaun. Shaun knows Naps, Shaun is a Rules-Breaker!!
Napoleon at War, you have been warned :)

Law and Disorder

2011-08-09T13:56:00.004+01:00

Be warned.....rather a bits and bobs post!

By combination of the Enfield riot knocking out the early morning train and a slightly sore knee *cough* flaring up *cough* I got to spend yesterday at home tying up loose ends.

I got a fair bit of work done on the church tiling all the roofs and adding a number of windows and doors. I'll put some pics on the WIP page tomorrow as that's actually what its there for!

For background I watched T3: Rise of the Machines which I'd recorded the other night, whilst cutting up card strip tiling, promptly deleting it, realising how relatively poor it was.

I also caught up on a couple of episodes of Big Bang Theory and the first series finale of Spartacus which has been excellent throughout.

Previously on Oddleg's Enterprises Mr Aaron Tunney had donated a small pile of Warhammer building scenery bits. A door and a number of windows have made it onto the church. A touch too Gothic in all honesty but a job well done and suitably cinematic a la Sleepy Hollow which is the where I want the project to go.

The only problem was not having enough windows so I trawled the internet. Proper model-making sites offering where, unsurprisingly, too modern so it was a quick click to E-Bay. Duly located the law of "shiny, shiny, shiny, now, now ,now" kicked in and I've paid £16 (inc P&P) for 5 various sized windows.

EDIT: I've since been refunded the best part of a fiver from the seller as I failed to sort out the combined postage for myself. Thank you Battleforge, kudos!

Only since have I questioned the price or whether I could have found them cheaper but that's the nature of the beast. Bought from an E-Store I wondered about the moral side but supply and demand it is and The Itch demanded so I supplied (Eh??).

Feeling slightly sullied now, I'll be as happy as Larry (I amuse even myself!) once they're in place ready for paint.

I'm also grateful to Aaron for the following blog-post. I've banged on about the Star Wars group repeatedly constantly trying to give enough background / detail without trying to confuse. Aaron has achieved this, not sure I have!

Club tonight, despite our location being adjacent to various riot sites. the plan is to "play it by ear" i.e. wait for the sirens and then leg it!

Kneel before Z-Odd

2011-08-06T22:55:00.000+01:00

Please forgive the vague Superman / Zombie / Me reference but I've spent the afternoon building St Peytersburg's church and the spray mount fumes have gone to my head a bit. I also watched England edge out the Taffs which was just as euphoric!

I've managed to incorporate a stage / pulpit as well as the standard spire / bell tower, even though it seems a little large, with steps up to what will be the main entrance.

Detailing is still required, mainly doors and windows, and I've decided that these will be almost exclusively external. The internal foam-card finish is good enough to just paint over and as much as I want to do a good job I also feel the need to draw a line.

I've got a handful of donated Warhammer windows and bits plus there's a proper architect's supply shop, 4D Models, up the road from work so I'll take a wander Monday lunchtime. Meanwhile I get to tiling the roofs.

More tea vicar??

Don't split the party. NEVER split the party - DOH!!

2011-08-05T14:30:00.000+01:00

To be honest we're all old hands at this roleplay thing. We're well equipped with a myriad of many coloured die of various sidage. We have a regular night, reminder texts and an informal biscuit rota.

We're also well practised with the rules, both written and unwritten. Never use the phrase "anything but a 1", don't nark of the GM too much, never ever split the party.

But rules, as the saying goes are made to be broken!

Whilst most of the lads looting the scragged shuttle (see 3 posts down) Rob and Charlie as Scout and Bounty Hunter bravely / moronically moved into the cold, dark zero-G Trade Federation transport.

They left the maintenance "scutter" bots to their own devices, locating and taking out a lone B2 Battle-Droid, in zero-G Jon Woo stylee, at which point their Noble leader (Aaron) joined them.

After best guessing the layout Aaron tried the keypad to what they believed was Engineering. Natural 1. "Your password had failed and your account been locked. Please call the service centre during office hours".

Undeterred the next nearest door was tried to reveal a repulsorlift to a lower level, most likely the cargo pod.

What to do? Inform the others and wait for them? Check the other doors on this level? NO..... pile into the lift and over-ride the controls OBVIOUSLY!!
Natural 1 :)

Not being one to look a gift horse inb the mouth the lift crashed down to the cold, dark , zero-G lower level disabling itself. Welcome to the self sealing cargo pod with minimal signal strength and a roving crew of battle-droids!!

Suddenly the spare room had an extra use and I spent the rest of the evening gleefully shuttling between one and the other with hand written comms transmissions in hand. Some made it, some didn't, many were partial. I was having a blast!

So whilst our three intrepid explorers were battling barely seen auto-firing battle-droids in the dark, taking steady hits and covering behind barrels the fetch and carry chaps were left to wonder where they'd got to.

Full marks to the lads for roleplaying the whole thing exceptionally well (experience counts apparently) with the would be rescuers locating the second repulsorlift. They did however arrive danger close to a couple of droids who immediately hosed them with fire to reasonable effect.

Ian rode his newly acquired salvage droid into battle and despite not yet naming him had already started planning the upgrades. Notan issue now as one of the Roger-Rogers rolled a natural 20 and blew "Wodger" into so much smeg!

Reunited in mortal danger seemed like a classic cliffhanger (it was also getting late) so that's where they are til the same time next week. So far from the original plan it's untrue.

AWESOME :)

Pure FANTASY

2011-08-04T13:28:00.001+01:00

As I'm sure I've mentioned previously back in the not so dim or distant I spent some, not lots, years working for the big bad Gee-Dub as a store manager. About 7 years ago I left, for a variety of semi-obvious reasons, and redicovered MY hobby, which oh so quickly only vaguely fraternised with GW's.

I do Blood Bowl and Space Hulk whilst occasionally hankering for Mordheim and Necromunda. I still own a large unpainted Orc & Goblin army mainly because I haven't yet been bothered enough to E-Bay it. I'm very committed to this stance for a number of reasons; time / money / effort /poor rules / poor players :(

I still surf Warseer on occasion but mainly for wicked amusement (you know what I mean) and re-confirmation that I've done the right thing, for me anyways!

This state of affairs does not stop me having "shiny" issues, the latest bout of which was brought on by this chap and his mates. Yesterday afternoons "but I could....." and flick round E-Bay quickly gave way to last night's "but I wouldn't......" and eyeing up Toy Mountain in the spare room.

In truth I don't really have the time for everything that I'm trying to squeeze in right now. I've recently given in to the fact that whilst I'm running the current Star Wars roleplay arc, which I'm LOVING, I won't be able to devote the writing / playtest time to St Peytersburg that it needs to be a quality item.

I'll keep working on the scenery and figures, hopefully host the odd game, maybe even do a bit of solo-play (that's a new one on me a feels somehow taboo / icky) but that'll be it for a Little while yet.

Star Wars will have to "feed the need" for a while so unless I write in a high gravity feral moon visit any Ogre figures are off limits. What is within remit are some of the new Dark Eldar, especially chaps like this who will easily fit in with all of the Oni, which figure heavily sometime real soon :)

I just need to solidify the relevant parts of the story arc , currently written in crayon on rice-paper, and actually get the chaps to it, though they're not that far away (Bwaa haa ha ha).

So, more writing, less painting. BUGGER! Need to order up some more paint anyway!

Maybe just one Talos, just to see what I could do with the kit! ;)

I'll put a SPELL on you!!

2011-08-02T09:48:00.001+01:00

Or at least a Hex sign, or two, on my barn as a finishing touch.

Otherwise it's all done and I'm rather pleased. Possibly a bit chunky but hat just means that its not going to blow down to easily though I'm equally sure that I wouldn't have liked to have helped to raise it.

I'll colour photocopy / print a couple of hex signs so feel happy to award myself the first PPs of the month. Extras for construction obviously but a very simple paint job. I reckon I could have painted 4 or 5 figures in otherwise so 8 PPs seems about right.

Doing some wiki-research I didn't realise there was so much controversy involved:

There are two opposing schools of belief regarding the derivation of the name. Those who support the occult nature of the signs assert that the term hex derives from the Pennsylvanian German word "hex" (German "Hexe", Dutch "Heks"), meaning "witch". By contrast, supporters of the folk-art theory point out that the most popular hex signs were brightly colored geometric designs that were six-sided, or hexagrams, from the Greek root hex- meaning "six". It has also been suggested that the German "sechs" (six) was transformed into "hex".

In recent years, hex signs have come to be used by non-Pennsylvania Dutch persons as talismans for folk magic rather than as items of decoration. Some view the designs as decorative symbols of ethnic identification, possibly originating in reaction to 19th century attempts made by the government to suppress the Pennsylvania German language.[4] Anabaptist sects (like the Amish and Mennonites) in the region have a negative view of hex signs. It is not surprising that hex signs are rarely, and perhaps never, seen on an Amish or Mennonite household or farm.[1] John Joseph Stoudt, a folk art scholar, challenges the view that hex signs, as a part of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, have had any magical significance.

I get the feeling that they might be a bit early for AWI but aren't too bothered given my multi-period intentions and they just fit too well with the Sleep Hollow inspiration.

Next up is a church. Same basic kit but with a solid floor, windows, steps etc plus the obligatory spire. I'm just wondering if I should detail the interior walls as painted wood or painted plaster. I'll just have to watch Sleepy Hollow again!

The Farce Strikes Back

2011-07-29T11:27:00.002+01:00

Similar title, similar-ish set of events during last nights Star Wars RPG session. Same major commodity i.e. LUCK.

The evening commenced my presentation of the serious injury system that I previously threatened and finally done something about. Well done me....... eventually.

A quick bit of retroactive playtest later and we have a system that we're all happy with to replace the rulebook character death system that would have seen us two down already!

Basically, anytime one of the chaps goes unconscious, due to zero hit points or GM ruling, they make a Constitution check. Base DC (Difficulty Check) is 10 with +5 if the hit was greater than Threshold and +5 if the event is deemed severe (crashing a speeder bike at 300 kmph) on a cumulative basis.

Pass, dust yourself off and keep going. Fail by graduations of 5 to receive a Stun, Light, Heavy or Severe wound each with their own effects. Fail by more than 20 or a natural 1 is a death. Force Point expenditure is allowed except for the natural 1. I want to encourage proper ROLE-play rather than character generation!

So recapping form last time its a semi salvage mission of a Trade Federation transport which has someone else's wrecked / holed shuttle docked to it. It was wrecked / holed from the inside!

Plan A: Swing in close to allow and EVA recon of the scragged shuttle and then move up alongside the transport's bridge pod. Cut into bridge pod, eliminate resistance, power up various systems, use the computer to search the manifest for the target cargo and anything else high value, grab the above and leg it.

What happened next: Pilot / Co-Pilot checks for flying in danger close. Fail the first. Check again to correct / avoid collision. Fail. One more time to minimise impact. Natural 1s from both pilot and co-pilot. Oh dear! At least they weren't serious injury checks!!

We then spent a good 5-10 mins working out how to calculate the collision damage bearing in mind that the ships has just over 30 HPs total and we are talking low speed. A few bulkheads buckled and the ship is firmly wedged into the transport.

Plan B: EVA to the scragged shuttle, lightsaber out a bigger hole and do the job the hard way.

Long story short Plan B was a relative success. I had some fun making the boys take plenty of Perception checks for operating in their EVA suits and the hard vacuum where no-one can hear you scream as long as they turn the comm-link down!

A random Roger-Roger droid floated out form underneath the transport and I only sent notes to those who passed Perception being interested to see what they'd do. Charlie just tracked his, saying nothing, then lost it on a natural 1. Mr Christian was a tad more trigger happy shooting it and then Ian in the back for max damage.

The droid never fired. Was it taken out before it could fire or already decommissioned? I know but the boys never will including Ian who was mighty vexed, especially as he had to quickly repair his newly leaking space-suit. All good fun!

Edging into the shuttle's cold, dark, zero G cargo hold I adopted a similar approach. Four floating humanoid shapes turned out to be two dead crew and a couple of battle droids. The first one got hammered twice over due to paranoid fervour and then whacked with a stick for good measure by the increasingly jumpy Mr C. It probably didn't help him that everytime the droids randomised for a target they chose him!

Rounding out events Aaron overrode the door-lock to get into the cockpit, probably looking for somewhere to hide, which vented its minimal atmosphere to find the shuttle's recently deceased pilot in his seat helmet-less due to bingo air in his suit. How recently dead?

Once again, all good fun, .....especially for me :)

7TV Strikes Back

2011-07-28T11:59:00.001+01:00

At the club this week myself and Rich played out our follow up game of 7TV Star Wars following the Empire's comprehensive victory a couple of weeks ago in capturing everyone except Luke.

Back to Tatooine the heroes are being held in a Hutt controlled enclave that happens to have a handy carbonation facility, doubtless for flash-freezing those who fail to make their interest payments on time!

Empire forces of Vader plus Stormtroopers in the enclave, Rebel Rescue Force stage right featuring Luke, Leia, Lando and Golden-Rod himself!

Said facility is in the compound on the top left of the above shot. As long as its manned I'd add D6 to its countdown track each turn looking for the magic number of 25. I'd even practised a number of evil chuckles to accompany!

The local Overlord and his many minions look on. As the Empire player I was earning VPs for carbonation and also interrogating as many of the locals as possible in the never ending quest for "Rebel Scum".

Qui-Gon Jinn adopts the default Jedi cunning disguise of a hooded cloak and infiltrates the enclave and locates the target compound. Has Rich learnt from last time out?

Vader rolls well for his Cameo and appears on Turn 1, though in his haste to gloat over his captives brushes aside the old hermit in his not at all suspicious brown robes that no-one of any interest anywhere in the galaxy ever wears......

Hypnotise Jedi mind tricks at the gate and on one of the patrols do the job. Just another couple of happy newlyweds honey-mooning on Tatooine with their protocol droid. Ahhh!

Qui-Gon quaffs his Invisibility Serum (Gadget) which just about takes effect after a Dodgy Gadget event card and a far bit of Luck is expended. Potentially and early game-changer!

Left to their own devices the Rebel Troopers storm through the main gates somewhat ineffectually only to be shot to pieces and then run-over by a Dewback. Cue evil grin :)

Back at the compound its all kicked off. With the Carbonator running at 19 points Vader is too little to handle all the Rebel stars by himself and Han's freezing is stopped in its tracks.

Despite using Telekinesis to throw a crate through Luke and Lando he's forced to withdraw whilst taking a quick swipe at Leia on the way out. Even with all of his Luck and Heroic Surge spent he's still dangerous but can't stop the inevitable. The captives are released!

Despite mounting Rebel casualties the released prisoners keep them from having to take Morale checks and the game is swinging one way.

The Empire changes tactics concentrating on taking down the remaining Rebel Troopers and their transports. Vader's Telekinesis is useful once again being used to smash Luke's speeder into a wall quickly destroying it!

The blood-lusted Dewback Rams Lando's speeder damaging it heavily but taking itself and its rider out in the process though thankfully modern stunt-trickery ensures that no animals were actually harmed. Shame about the stunt-man though!

In vicious display of squeaky balloons Qui-Gon and Luke gang up on a rapidly wearing Vader for an inevitable result though as always He'll Return!

In the closing scenes Lando crashes his speeder which is quickly Stormtroopered taking out the last few Rebel Troopers and dragging off Lando. Hopefully he's got a decent agent!

With both sides on Morale checks we called it as I doubted the Stormtroopers would last too long without Vader. The Rebellion have done the job at a high cost, though get a Solid Victory on VPs 10 - 5.

Post game analysis centred around the cast lists. I had fun as the Empire and have learned to co-ordinate the use of Minions to make them much more effective. I pushed Rich hard, wiping out his Rebel Trooper Minions, Shaking his cast into taking Morale checks and capturing a Co-Star, Lando.

But with only one Star myself in Vader it was always and uphill struggle without the Luck, Gadgets and Skills at my disposable to have a decent crack at his big names. Vader has 2 Luck, Leia 5 to herself! Once Vader was down and the captives released I was facing 8 Stars and Co-Stars including 3 Jedi. Even with the released captives unable to attack they were still impossible for Stormtroopers to take down.

Just a matter of balance and as we discussed there aren't that many named Empire characters. There is the Coruscant Gaurd and a number of Commando types as well as any number of Bounty Hunters other than Mr Fett.

For a mutil-player campaign you each pick a faction and then generate your own charcaters. Each episode Luke / Vader et al can make various Cameo appearances on either side fitting in with campaign results to date to provide a central narrative.

Wookiepedia to the fore!

Raising the Roof

2011-07-24T23:09:00.000+01:00

As I type i'm sat watching the Wallabies tearing the Boks apart in the first Tri-Nations test that I recorded from yesterday.

After playing a few hours of football this afternoon, more impressive to those who know me, I've watched the last 90 minutes of today's cricket and the F1 highlights, which made it seem like the most action packed race so far this season.

All this sports viewing has been the background to putting the final construction touches to the barn. Rather pleased!

Whilst playing around with Google Images fro reference material I've come across Pennsylvania Dutch barn hex signs which all lends very well to St Peytersburg and as usual I had no idea what-so-ever!!

All my scenario-writing efforts and time have been Star Wars focused recently as the new gaming chapter opens up and as such nothing has really happened on that score for St P. To be honest it isn't likely to for a while and so I've decided to concentrate on sorting out the figures and scenery until I can devote the proper time to get back to gaming it.

It might be a while and with a good hobby start to the year I'm happier with a more relaxed pace for a while. Aiming at the autumn with the nights drawing in and a bit of a nip in the air seems to fit all to well :)

The Emperor's New Clothes

2011-07-21T00:08:00.068+01:00

So Tuesday night at the club I got in my first game of of Mantic Games' Kings of War. Very much a learning game with Shaun's placcy-grey horde of Dwarves against Stuart's somewhat less grey Undead.

My pre-game impression / belief / assumption was that the, admittedly free, rules were likely to be little more than window dressing to Mantic's apparent "play Warhammer at half the price" business model.

Having played through a single game my impression / belief / assumption seems to have been vindicated.

Don't get me wrong it was enjoyable enough and did a job but just left me feeling like there should have been MORE. It felt like playing a re-worked version of Warhammer but super stripped down.

I liked a lot of the mechanisms and apparent ethos of the game. Even the unit removal, rather than figure removal, casualty system didn't freak me too massively.

The whole game just seemed too limited and a couple of days later I think its just a shame as with a bit more put into it it could be so much better / rewarding to play.

But it is what it is and shouldn't have to apologise for being so. It was just the way that the post game chat turned so quickly to how certain tweaks could give so much more.

It felt, to me, that I was playing a higher level game, Mantic themselves suggest that its a big battles game, but as such it should be played at 15 or 10 mil?

The idea of playing fantasy Impetus was discussed. Basic Impetus is another free rule-set but with a lot more completeness to it!

Elsewhere, I have raised and clad my barn, sans roof, and it's become quite a chunky beast.

I tried Spray Mount to apply the pre-planked balsa to good effect at a rate of knots, definitely worth the relative expensive. All the wall sections were then glue-gunned together at which point I noticed just how thick the walls were! As a bonus I don't think I necessarily need to base it.

Just doors, a bit of strip detailing and a removable roof to go which is all quite pleasing.

Pretty happy to build the Church in the same way when the time comes, just adding a built in floor with maybe a little stage / lectern, cross etc. Need to think a bit about windows with that one. A google image search should do the job.

Illuminating?? :)

Born in a Barn??

2011-07-17T21:51:00.002+01:00

Back in the good / bad old days of working for the big dad Gee-Dub-Ya a major personal highlight was getting to build loads of scenery. As it was for the shop I could experiment as I went and rarely planned that much.

So this time round its the same enjoyment but a good deal more fore-thought. Initially looking to build a barn I've knocked up a taped together shell with dimensions based on a 28mm figure.

To check size I've lined it up against Mr Peyterson, his store, stables, coach and employee. It was looking a bit too tall until compared to the coach at which point I felt much happier. Maybe its a bit pointy but I want that Dutch / Sleep Hollow look. I think I'll go with what I've got, ......suck it and see!

Next stage is detailing, internal as well as external. I've got sections of balsa to provide a veneer of planking, pre-biro'd, to then add doors, windows etc etc.

Tomorrow I need to go and pick up some card mount for basing and roofs. I could also do with a bit more foam-card because I've made up a second shell, realising that the same dimensionscould work for a local church, I just need to make up the requisite bell tower.

Nerd me up Mr Stationer!! :)

Gunboat Diplomacy

2011-07-15T22:19:00.000+01:00

Thank Thrud it's Friday!

Going back to work, early mornings in the gym and life in general has been utterly knackering. I have at least got two gaming nights in but nothing else hobby wise though that's not too much of a worry after last week.

Tuesday night at the club I has a go at Spartan Games latest offering Distopian Wars. Having played quite a bit of Uncharted Seas it was pretty much the same game with a bit more going on.

Supposedly Steam-Punk its only really the models and boarding actions with rocket troops that begin to convey this. Otherwise it seems to be a simple WWI / WWII naval game.

The soon to be released Antarctican faction looks nice and we didn't really use the full air or any of the land forces so maybe I'm wrong but I find it relatively unlikely that I am. One to wonder about.

Thursday night was a bit more Star Wars RPG and after a bit of internal tension last time out. A few of the lads have privately informed me of their reservations as to their bosses actions last week and made it clear where their own moral line in the sand was drawn. More importantly they were prepared to back it up with action!

In the end everything pretty much diffused itself as when returning to the scene they discovered that the salvage crew had abandoned ship, disengaging their cockpit escape shuttle and heading for the closest chance of help.

Slight tension as everyone looks at each other for a lead on what to do. Hunt them down or let them go. Let them go,...for now!

Boarding the remainder of the spaced shuttle they had to deal with the lack of atmosphere, gravity or illumination plus an older model salvage droid left to fire foot long pitons at them. Said conditions made it an interesting encounter with the turning being the sudden restoration of the gravity.

Just about everyone hit the floor hard, including the Salvage Droid, for Mormar to administer the cou de grace despite leading from the rear again!

Looting just about everything in sight it soon became clear that all the best salvage gear had been taken and that there used to be a deep space sked on board. Taking on board the remains of the recently downed Salvage Droid and another model that had been in mid-repair the same choice came up....Hunt them down or let them go.

Let them go,...for now!

Rainbow Nations

2011-07-12T13:47:00.000+01:00

Now don't worry I'm not about to get all PC or controversial on yo' ass, or at least I don't intend to.

More, this is recounting a train of thought I had recently whilst finishing off the St Peytersburg civilians and supernaturals.

I'm not very good / confident with Caucasian skin-tone, never have been. I'm much better / more confident with dark (African / South American) skin-tones.

So why don't I paint more of my figures with darker skin-tones?

Okay, so with historical figures these things are pretty much set for you and figures are scultped to reflect racial characteristics, i.e. the choice is taken away from you

So what about fantasy / sci-fi figures / armies? Why are Space Marines / Imperial Gaurd / Empire / Bretons etc 99% Caucasian? Is it because the gaming community itself is 99% Caucasian? Does that make it uncomfortable for said community to paint dark skin-tones by choice?

With my Mantic Zombies for alternative AWI I painted roughly a third as Negros. My mate Shaun commented that it made them look like emaciated slaves. Another mate of mine once did a USMC themed Imperial Guard army with an all Negro conscript platoon based on "Operation: Get Behind the Darkies" from South Park complete with a converted "Chef" and two lady-friends. Right / wrong / funny / inappropriate. What would have happened if he took the army to an event and a person of colour made a complaint?

So, back at the point, when I was recently struggling with the Ghoul Family why didn't I turn to a strength rather than continue with a known weakness? I could provide multiple answers but the most honest one would be that I didn't feel "comfortable".

WTF???

Commentary, preferably balanced, welcome :)

The Week Off - Epilogue

2011-07-10T20:59:00.000+01:00

Huzzah and hoorah!!

I have FINALLY finished of the St Peytersburg civilians. Poor little peeps they've already suffered my ignorance just to become scenario objectives and / or zombie fodder. 14 PPs I thank you.

But no scenery and no scenarios which need to become my immediate focus along with a longer Star Wars story arc. Hmmm, best get on really. Ready yourself for a few filler posts!

Only joking ?? :)

The Week Off - Day 5

2011-07-08T21:50:00.000+01:00

The Friday feeling is a bit different as I wonder where the week has gone and then don't really give a monkey's as I've greatly enjoyed being busy doing very little.

I have finished off the St Peytersburg supernaturals. Mr and Mrs Coven have proved quite taxing to paint due to their very simplicity and the fact that I'm not very good with flat detail. She's modelled on Nanny Ogg and I wanted something other than black robes for him though as I type I wonder if a flat brown set of monk's robes would have worked? Oh well, 4 PPs for the lot.

Meanwhile the civilians are almost done but I've had enough for the day and am feeling the pull of the X-Box. An easy finish at some point over the weekend!

Meanwhile here's some other shots of my previous offerings, hopefully they're somewhat better / clearer. I really should sort out a proper setup. Anyway, GTA IV awaits!

The Week Off - Day 4 - Prt III

2011-07-08T00:01:00.000+01:00

As threatened we round out the day with another space based session of Star Wars RPG.

Having recently pinged up a level we had the usual housekeeping to complete as well as refreshing the current plot position i.e. having just arrived at the asteroid mining facility Persephony in the ship that they've spent blood and tears having repaired seriously shot up! Deja-vu?

To gain a berth at Persephony our band must carry out a shady salvage operation on a re-directed Trade Federation transport. They're not the first group employed for the job but the first lot didn't come back and other salvagers may now be on the trail.

After a quick bit of trade and repair the lads limped off and soon snuck up on a set of real salvagers and engaged in their favourite past time of heavily debating courses of action, much to my amusement.

Having had a go at stealth they lost their bottle and switched to a poor line in bluff swiftly moving on to all out attack. With rules, supplements, I-Pads and a laptop all brought to bear we worked our way through the combat which was quickly brought to a close by two concussion missiles fired into their unsuspecting foe.

Disabling their unsuspecting competitors things turned nasty with Mormar, their glorious leader, continuing to hammer fire into them trying to demand a surrender whilst not fancying the risk of a boarding action. Opinions were genuinely split amongst the party with the Jedi about to act as with engines and weapons further disabled they boys moved off. Still some talk of coming back for afters!

Locating the Trade Federation transport it was quickly established that all power, life support, gravity and atmosphere was at a likely nil. More worrying was the shuttle moored to it's port side, heavily damaged and breached, seemingly form the inside.

From the engineering and command sections all of these functions could be restored but that would be the long way round. If only they had access to proper salvage gear......

Oh, hang on a minute!? :)

The Week Off - Day 4 - Prt II

2011-07-07T18:16:00.001+01:00

Progress Report:

Meet the Ghoul family, your friendly local Necromancer and the terror of your nearest deep dark wood. 10 PPs I thank you but a major decision to make for tomorrow, paint the civvies or build a barn?? Hmm

The Week Off - Day 4 - Prt I

2011-07-07T13:53:00.000+01:00

Right, so it's just coming up on 2 pm and I'm finally about to pick up a brush. I'll be shouldering arms by half 6 prior to this evening's Star Wars RPG session.

Here's the state of play. I just need to make a mug of tea and then good to go!

The Week Off - Days 2 & 3

2011-07-06T23:50:00.000+01:00

So basically I've done VERY little re THE PLAN. Basically I did a bit of work yesterday morning on the Supernaturals before disappearing off until late this afternoon.

I need to crack on somewhat tomorrow otherwise something is going to fall of the wagon but I don't really mind if it does as I've already got one full time job!

First game of the week was trying out 7TV: Star Wars with Rich tonight. Good game, it works! Roleplay tomorrow eve and I need to do some prep which means a bit less time with the brushes. Oh well!

Aren't you a little Clone Wars for a Stormtrooper? Luke disguises himself to infiltrate the Imperial ranks but seems to have trouble with the seals maintaining the ruse for almost the entire game!

Roll R2-D2, roll! Using the standard Escape 7TV scenario the rebels must retrieve the Millennium Falcon from the Death Star hanger......... again!

Yoda vs Stormtrooper minion. Not much of a fight really even despite the armour. This is one game where lightsabers really do live up to the films!

Playing a Cameo role (Disadvantage) Vader arrives at the appropriate moment but fails to spot his own son. Fatherhood in a galaxy far, far away.

Chewy falls to massed Stormtrooper fire, finished off by Vader a la Force Lightning. Burnt hair smell all over the hanger deck!

Bobba Fett drops in on Han shooting him in the back with a stun shot and slapping on the binders. R2-D2 came to the rescue but was then Stormtroopered to pieces. Bring on the carbonite!

It wasn't like this in the movies! After a momentous clash of squeaky balloons Yoda eats floor. The power of the dark side!

Finally making his presence known Luke roles only 6s and 1s, slaughtering a Trooper and then reuniting with dear old dad. It didn't go well!

Next game will be the count-down to carbination whilst Luke returns with Leia, C3-P0 and as many rebel troopers as Ackbar can spare. No Bothans were hurt during this transmission :)

The Week Off - Day 1

2011-07-04T21:55:00.000+01:00

Hola peeps

After a particularly busy fortnight at the work-face I have a week off to bum around and we all know what comes next. Yes that's it, grand intentions that will never be fully realised! As a veteran of such events I've finally given in to sensible realism. Shameful I know but I clocked up another year on Sunday and now exist within the late-mid-thirty bracket and such things seem inevitable :(

So, my strictly limited goals are to clear my workbench and build, but not paint, some St Peytersburg scenery.

The workbench currently features the St P civilians, which have been waiting very patiently for highlights, plus the current batch of supernaturals. Buildings wise it's a barn plus some fences or a small church. I SHOULD also put some scenario ideas onto paper!

Today's progress has mainly involved the completion of various necessary chores, "clearing the decks", plus some work on the St P supernaturals. Tomorrow's will be minimal as i'll be spending most of the day with the missus getting beaten at tennis desite my recently purchased £10 racket!

Gaming wise some Dr Who 7TV is lined up for Wednesday eve plus a Star Wars session Thursday. So basically I've done very little and have 3 days remaining.

Inevitability don't you know but still better than going to work :)

SPACE: Above and Beyond

2011-07-02T16:01:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I remember it fondly to despite a few gaping plot holes and the need to suspend belief. With all of that I never understood why the Yank audience doomed it to just one series. Cest la vie.

The Star Wars boys finally made it "into the black" this week after FINALLY liberated the Centennial Sparrow from Black Rock Spaceport. In fact they swept aside my final flourish with insulting ease, despite having to physically drag half of thier number aboard :)

So the remainder of the evening was spent exploring space combat against a blockade of 2 Vulture droid fighters.

Having had a bit of a read through I wasn't sure that there was enough on offer to keep the whole group engaged / occupied / interested. Our 2 I-Padded members had the above book on PDF which has a sectione entitled "Making Space Combat Interesting"..... hmmm

Working through the apparantly basic / easy combat things soon hotted up in line with the vaguries of the dice and the two Vultures were only just dispatched with the Sparrow creaking ominously with 4 of its 120 hit points remaining.

Lessons learnt??

Bingo, Bango, Bongo

2011-06-26T12:00:00.001+01:00

Mornin' all!

A quick update before I disappear to the land of no I-Phone connectivity for another couple of days. As I'm sure everyone already new I haven't achieved as much as I might have liked to but I have achieved SOMETHING.

Specifically I've done an amount of work for the next stage of the Star Wars RPG, the star system and detailing a new "hub" location.

Plenty more to do but I've got a dozen good adventure hooks surfacing and as long as I stay one session ahead I'll be fine :)

With a bit of unexpected brushtime yesterday I also finished off the Ghouls and Ghasts to add and extra 10 PPs to the months tally.

Actually painted the skintones properly, or as well as I can (not my strongest point), rather than trying another drybrushed short-cut.

Next week I'll see if I can't work up a few St Peytersburg scenarios. Wish me luck!

Business Un-usual

2011-06-19T22:31:00.000+01:00

As I prepare for an enforced fortnight away from the brushes courtesy of a two week residential training course (which should actually be pretty good) so a quick WIP post, despite the relevant page's recent existence!

Pretty much straight copies of the Wights on Otherworld's site (if you can't beat them join them!) about half-way done. Need to bring the skin up and blend in the purple hands and feet. Maybe some blood splatters?

Wanting to use the Ghouls as Leaders for the Zombies I've gone for the same dark / medium / light skin-tones. Dark is just about there but the others need a bit more work. Drybrush and wash so far and I probably need to stop trying the shortcuts and paint them properly. I'm just not that great with human skin-tones. Challenge time!

I'm not going to try to take any paints and figures away with me but a pad / pen / laptop combo to work on some St Peytersburg and Star Wars background and scenarios.

Probably can't do better than I-Phone posts for a while so you'll just have to settle for that. Always leave them wanting more :)

Pocket Battleship

2011-06-17T21:15:00.000+01:00

No, not the Graf Spee more Corellian Cruiser.

Before Star Wars the other night there was a bit of a group effort to finish off building all of the Pocket Model ships that I picked up form flea-bay. I'd made most of the fighters, being easier, but charlie noticed the slot / peg coding which finished the job. Well done that man!

No PPs but a job well done, sometime soon we might just get to use them!