Give Fire!!

Hello people.

After too many abortive attempts, my fault entirely, Rich dropped round Thursday night and, suitably equipped with tea and biscuits, ran me through a game of Muskets and Tomahawks. As usual I'm not going to provide and in-depth review but link you to that of Mike Hobbs who has already done so and particularly well at that. I am however going to provide you with my more impressionistic approach.

I'd heard lots of good things about T&M, and not just from Rich. I was aware of it's randomly drawn card activation system, always one I've liked, and its Sideplots adding plenty of extra pith to the scenarios.

Taking the Brits I rolled up a Scout mission, needing to visit each quarter of the board and then exit, whilst Rich's French rolled up Slaughter, charged with objectionable task of wiping out a local farmstead thought to be less than keen on frogslegs.

Fortuitously I had already laid out one of St Peyetrsburg's outlying farmsteads with civilians and livestock in attendance so with fresh brews to hand the game commenced.

A few French activation cards came up first and Rich wasted no time in marching straight towards it hollering all the way. The locals quickly took flight though the farmers wife insisted on fetching her prize china first whilst Grandad marshaled the kids to drive the pigs.

The British and their Indian allies arrive by line and blind marker respectively. Marching to the sounds of commotion their scouting mission quickly becomes one of rescue. No Jonny Foreigner will be allowed to sully the King's new territories!

Advancing in the British line deliberately draw the fire of their French counterparts. The Frog militia had already set about their grisly work but a strong Redcoat volley from their unsighted flank sends them fleeing back into the woods.

Despicable Frog that he so obviously is the French Captain steps away from the line and takes aim at the fleeing back of Sara, the Negro housemaid............and shoots her down in cold blood!

A failed thrust by the Brits Indian allies sees the French Militia chase after them only for them to run into the rifles sights of the Indian sharpshooters. Morale is well modelled within M&T giving regular line plenty of staying power whilst leaving Militia decidedly fickle all through one simple mechanic.

Meanwhile the remaining civilians, and their pigs continue their headlong charge for safety. The British delaying action was working and in fact repulsing the French. Rich was having to take further risks to chase his scenario objectives. With neither sideplot looking likely to be fulfilled, they can modify the scale of any victory, it was turning into winner takes all!


Virtuous as the day is long Captain Horatio Long-Bottom had stood mortified by the casual slaughter of he house-maid and as such determined that the rules of gentlemanly conduct no longer applied.

Continuing to loudly exhort his men to hold their rapidly reducing line, one of his randomly determined traits that had previously held his men fast in the face of the French fusillade, he calmly drew his pistol and shot that dastard Frenchman in the head!

A lucky shot no doubt but one that seemed almost karmic given his actions. As the only French officer the Morale card was now added to the French deck. When it next came up all French units would be subject to an immediate Morale check. Mon Dur!!

Whilst Grandad lead his charges deeper into the woods the Morale came up for Rich causing his remaining Militia to flee the field leaving just a few true born Frenchmen to carry the fight to the hated John Bull.

Said Frenchmen were quickly set upon by the Indian Braves, who despite being outnumbered 2 to 1 routed their foes leaving all but three of their number with a new haircut! Major British victory in the offing one feels!

A quick game played in a few hours there was nothing too difficult to learn but plenty to admire. A simple set of rules that plays well and allows the scenarios and subplots to shine through, I enjoyed it immensely. Post game chatter turned to how well it would work for my St Peytersburg gothic horror setting just using stat and abilities already laid out. The supernatural could be easily run as a third force by either a third player or by scenario / automatic / random very easily.

In short this is a game that WILL motivate me out of my current painting slump........it's really that good, give it a go :)

Camping it up!

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 :)

Sunday Worship

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 :)

Whether the Weather

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............ 

That which CREEPS through the night.....

.....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!!!

Vive La Diff-er-ance II

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) ;)

Law and Disorder

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

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??

Pure FANTASY

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!!

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!

Raising the Roof

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 :)