The Boneyard

Welcome

2012-01-30T14:08:00.003Z

I'd like to welcome Hendybadger as my newest follower, I hope you enjoy the random banter and occasional pictures found within these posts.

Check out his blog over at http://pressganger.blogspot.com/ for much Pulp City fun along with other gaming goodness.

I'm slowly getting some minis done for the D&D campaign as well as more of Charlie and Rich's commission pieces, hopefully I'll have a full update soon.

J

Necromunda Gang

2012-01-28T14:34:00.005Z

A little later than I'd intended, but here are the first set of minis completed this year. They're for my Cawdor gang that I'm using in the current club Necromunda campaign:

My leader and 2 heavies (W/Heavy Stubber & Grenade Launcher)

Gangers

Juves...

and the gangers they'll grow in to.

Finally a Bounty Hunter made from my bits-box and some greestuff who joins the gang when they can afford him.

I kept the colour scheme pretty simple out of necessity as I only had a short time to get them done before I needed to use them.

The bases are all made using embossed plasticard, bits from my bits-box and a couple of signs/posters from some old GW pdf's for City Fight terrain.

I like how they turned out, need to get a few more though as at the moment the small number of models I've got means I'm on break tests in a couple of turns if the dice go against me (and they're dice, so they usually go against me;).

More soon

J

Welcome to Someday

2012-01-22T11:56:00.004Z

Happy new year everyone, hope it's going well for you so far.

First off I'd like to welcome wargamer as my newest follower, I hope you like what you see and read here.

Now, no pictures this post, though I have completed 11 mini's that comprise a Cawdor gang for the Necromunda campaign that kicked off last Tuesday at the club. I should be getting round to photographing them this week sometime, so look out for them during the week.

Now, onto the main subject of this post: Someday.

Not being Mayan I can't say I'm overly worried that this is the last year for the world, but it has made me think about that perpetual problem that a lot of us gamers have, all those projects we want to do but end up continually putting off until "Someday" as we get caught up in some other aspect of the hobby.

So, I have decided that in between commission work and any roleplaying minis I need to throw at the guys in my D&D game I want to designate this "The Year of Someday", and do some of the projects that I've been putting off, usually for no other reason than I've got no immediate use for them.

So here is the list of projects I'd like to complete this year.

Mini related:

Starship Troopers - The Mongoose mini's for the mobile infantry.
Epic: Armageddon - My Imperial Guard army needs a lot of TLC.
Mordheim Terrain - I've had plans for this for years, it's about time I got it sorted.
Pulp City & Malifaux boards - I have very definite ideas for both.
15mm Sci-fi - Time to get this sorted out too.

Gaming related:

.45 Adventures - I want to get my pulp gaming going this year.
Fantasy solo gaming: using Two Hour Wargames Warrior Heroes rules.
All Things Zombie solo campaign.

Other possibilities are:

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer for 7TV (probably using the 7ombieTV spinoff set).
Crimson Skies - I need to get a job and start earning before this is a reality though.
Ork army for 40k - I've had a load of stuff sitting around for this for years and I don't have the heart to get rid of any of it.

So, those are my main goals to get done this year, of course there are many others I would like to do as well, but I've focused on the main ones.

I also still intend to paint up the rest of my Malifaux minis (which are also something of a Someday project as well considering how long I've had them sitting around), there are a few bits I'd like to get for Pulp City and the new Reaver Lords mini's look like they are going to make great figures to paint when they come out.

So, there is a lot to look forward to this year so keep checking in to see how I do.

Take care.

Welcome, Plus End of Year Review

2011-12-31T16:16:00.007Z

First up a somewhat belated welcome to shadoblade to the group, a long time gaming opponent better known around here as the Richard for whom I am painting the Thousands Son's CSM and Devourer's of Vile-Tis minis seen regularly on these pages.

Now, onto the final 2011 mini's I've completed, first off is the latest of Charlie's Dystopian Wars mini's:

Kingdom of Brittania Carrier

The accompanying flight of fighters, painted up in Supermarine Seafire colours from WWII just for a different look to the other planes in the force.

I also got this chap done pretty quickly for the Mordheim campaign we recently had at the club:

Considering it was a quick and easy scheme I'm pleased he came out as well as he did, I think I'm getting the balance between speed and quality in my painting now, which bodes well for the future.

And finally for the new stuff this year, I've painted up the rest of one of my Malifaux Crews, McMourning's Resurectionists:

Sebastian, Morgue Assistant.

Nurse #1.

Nurse #2.

Flesh Construct.

Group Shot, everyone smile for the camera :)

All great characterful models, I need to save up and expand the crew out a bit.

Like I said, that's the last of the new stuff for the year, but I have finally managed to get some varnish on some terrain pieces I've had lying around for a couple of years now:

They're GW barricades that came out around the time of City Fight, I've been coming back to them on and off for a ridiculously long time. It's nice to finally have them done, and just in time for a Necromunda campaign at the club too, which is handy.

Anyway, that's my 2011 done mini-wise at least. Definitely my most productive year to-date on the painting front. I'm hoping that next year will continue along similar lines, but with more updates to this blog once my final real life issues have been sorted out.

I hope you all have a good new year and I'll see you all in 2012.

Take care.

J

A Welcome and a Whole bunch of Pictures

2011-11-16T14:06:00.010Z

Long time no update, sorry about that, real life issues have kept me away.

Thankfully I have not been kept away from my minis though. But before I show you my latest pieces I'd like to welcome my latest follower, wardy-la, who almost has more blogs under his belt than I've updated this one all year, I salute you sir and I'll try and do better :)

Right, rambling done, now for my latest pieces. First up other people's bits:

Charlie's Kingdom of Britannia Fleet for Dystopian Wars.

Frigates

Cruisers

Battleship

Doncaster Bombers

Fighters

Less individuality than the Japanese fleet, partially because I found the model lent themselves to it less, plus the Brits have a more traditional approach to colour schemes (when I did a bit of research I discovered the Japanese had 5 shipyard building their vessels during WWII and the paint used in each was slightly different which I used as an excuse to give the somewhat varied look I did with their DW fleet).

Next up is the latest in Richard C's Thousand Sons and Devourer's of Vile-Tis minis.

In Rich's quest to have every CSM hero leading a unit of his Thousand Sons here's Khan the Betrayer in full livery.

Zeiren

Master of Carnage

Both of these guys have been almost done for about a year now and it's nice to finally get them completed, just five more to go .

Now onto my stuff, starting with the last of my Pulp City minis:

Twilight, from The Coven faction

Trail, Master of Mesmerism

Elder Grimm

First two minis have taken me ages to paint, just couldn't get a colour scheme I liked for either of them, still not entirely sure about Trail but at least he's done. The Grimm was a fun and quick job and I enjoyed doing it.

Next a random monster:

He's called a Warwolf, from the now defunct Ilyad Games.

And finally, with the recent arrival of a gentleman by the name of Ed to the club I actually have someone to play Malifaux against so I have begun to get my crews painted, starting with the leaders:

Perdita Ortega of the Guild.

Ramos, Arcanist.

And a reverse shot to see the cat's face (he's from the Victorian Bases-Accessories pack Wyrd do).

Dr Douglas McMourning, Resurrectionist.

I currently have the rest of McMourning's crew on the workbench along with some more of Charlie's DW mini's and a couple of Richard C's as well, so hopefully I'll have even more for you all sooner rather than later.

So 'til next time, take care.

J

While Rome Burns

2011-08-10T11:36:00.005+01:00

Whilst the world goes crazy around us I'll just post up the final pictures of Charlie's Empire of the Blazing Sun naval fleet for Dystopian Wars:

Frigates.

Cruisers.

Battleship, (still missing the shield & disruption generators that were both missing parts).

Small flyers, (I don't think there are Kamikaze rules in the game, but they're Japanese so it seemed fitting to go with the white colour scheme for some of them).

Bombers.

And finally, here's the next fleet of Charlie's, the Kingdom of Brittania:

This is the Naval fleet group box and the ridiculously large fleet carrier (basically 2 battleships with a huge flight deck on top.

Hope you like.

'Til next time, take care.

J

Quick Update

2011-08-05T15:00:00.005+01:00

Just a quick update to show the progress of Charlie's first Dystopian Wars fleet:

8 of the 9 Frigates completed, the final one is cleaned up and the undercoat is drying as I type.

The 3 Cruisers finished about an hour ago.

I've got 1 of the bombers partway painted and I'll be starting on the Battleship a bit later today so should have another update for Sunday.

'Til then, take care.

J

A Different Path

2011-07-31T18:14:00.009+01:00

So, we have ourselves another update, and we will begin with the latest finished minis, beginning with Rich C's latest batch of Thousand Sons:

Rich isn't overly fond of the Chaos Raptor models GW produce, so asked me to slap some Assault Marine jump packs on a box of Thousand Sons, I think it works well, though you can't get too creative with poses as the heads and packs will only fit together one way and I had to cut down the edges of some of the shoulder pads to make it work, all in all though I think they came out really well.

Next completed minis are for Pulp City, Red Riding Hoodoo and Zombie Wolf:

And I also have a resource and some minions for the game as well:

Gentleman's sniper rifle.

A trio of spybots.

On the WiP front I'm trying to figure out the colour scheme for Rich C's Anubis figure, (from this post), the main problem is that Rich wants to use him with both his Devourer's and his Thousand Sons and combine both schemes which means reds, blues, greens and yellows coming together and not looking jarring, something that is causing me a few issues at the moment.

However, I do have an alternate commission to get me away from my Anubis problems as at Thursday's Star Wars RPG session Charlie gave me a big box filled with 4 smaller boxes:

For a while now Ian's been bringing Spartan Games' latest offering, Dystopian Wars, to the club along with his Prussian and American naval and land fleets. Charlie's been enjoying playing and so has invested in the British and Japanese fleets for land and sea, and he's asked me to paint them for him, starting with the Japanese fleet.

Figuring I could probably do a good job fairly quickly I've spent the weekend getting them sorted and ready for paint, here's a shot of them Saturday morning after some priming:

The 10 small flyer bases and one of the frigates needed a bit more work on them before I can undercoat them, but the rest of the box was straight forward to do, although the battleship was missing the correct parts for both the shield generator and the disruption generator which was somewhat inconvenient. Also some of the cleanup was a pain, lumps of resin in annoying places mainly, which was a shame as otherwise the quality of the resin casting is very good.

Anyway, here's a pic of the current state of play:

The four frigates on the left are done, the four on the right need a bit of red on the noses and then a Gryphonne Sepia wash before highlighting begins. The first four took a little longer than I'd have liked, but I was figuring out the colour scheme as I went. Now I know what I'm doing I expect the rest of the figures to go a lot quicker.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll post a few more updated on the fleet painting soon.

Stay tuned.

J

Rainy Days and Sundays

2011-07-17T19:49:00.009+01:00

Not a lot of talking this update, just some nice shiny new pictures to show you.

First we have the next batch of Rich C's Thousand Sons:

Huron Blackheart and pet lizardy thing

Obliterator #1 (I ran out of bits that fit on him so improvised the eye out of greenstuff)

Obliterator #2 (something of a Wolverine fan I'm guessing :)

And the Bruise Brothers together

Next is a model I've had finished for a little while now, the final player for my Blood Bowl team:

Based on an Otherworld Miniatures Werewolf with a greenstuff uniform added plus a Kroot shoulder pad and some change this guy finally means I've filled all the available slots for my team. Now I just have to get the last few bits and bobs and I'll actually have a completely finished project...which'll be nice :)

Next is a 1970's police car from Ainsty Castings:

And the last of the new pictures, the latest model for Pulp City, Dr. Red:

Lastly for this update, as promised, some better pictures of the Last Night on Earth figures and my 7TV tongs:

That's all for now, I hope you like the pictures.

Until next time, take care.

J

7TV Review

2011-06-24T15:07:00.003+01:00

I know there are a few people interested in 7TV out there, so I thought I'd have a go at writing another review to try and give you an idea of what the game is like.

First up there are 2 things you should know.

First, if you want to see how the rules work then head over to the Crooked- Dice site and download the free Dr Who Miniatures Game rules {Here}, both DWMG & 7TV share the action:engine rules so basics are exactly the same.

Second, since the rulebook was published the rules have had the odd tweek/rewrite (most noticeably with the Damage table) so if you get the rules then head on over to the Crooked-Dice forum {Here} to check out the latest suggestions/changes.

Right, on with the Review.

Background

In the '60s maverick millionaire Sidney Barron created 7TV Studios as a TV production company. During the '60s and the '70s it produced contemporary, fantastic, action adventure serials.

When Barron mysteriously disappeared from his Monaco yacht his TV empire quickly crumbled and all the un-aired shows and pilots were thought lost, that is until the archive was recently rediscovered.

Basically the idea behind the game is that players put together a “cast” from one of 7TV's old shows and recreate episodes from them.

It's a good, fun concept that harkens back to the old playground days when you'd recreate scenes from your favorite show that had been on TV the night before. It helps if you remember the shows from those periods (or at least seen some of the re-runs that are all over the likes of ITV4 these days), but it's a fun concept anyway and fires up my imagination no end.

Rulebook

184 pages, full colour, hardback, split into 45 pages of rules, 71 pages of cast creation (including Special Effects descriptions and pre-generated casts), 30 pages of episodes and episode creation rules with the rest of the book being appendices (including Event and Gadget cards, tokens and reference sheets).

If you want to see a sneak peek of what you get in the rulebook go {Here} and check out the preview pdf.

The book looks great and the little touches like script pages and Radio Times snippets really give a nice flavor to the overall feel of the book. The in-game photos are great, but it's the internal artwork I like best. It's all silhouettes like on the front cover and really works well IMO and helps make the book feel unique.

Rules

The game is in the I-go-you-go format and uses d6s for all dice rolls.

Models are split into Stars, Co-Stars and Extras. All models have a profile that lists their stats, special rules (called Special Effects and Star Qualities in the game) and attack/weapon info. Go {Here} and check out the stats for Group Captain Jim to see how they are laid out in the book. The stats go from 0-10 and are Movement; Defence; Hits; Strength; Agility; Intelligence and Morale.

Each game turn is split into 4 phases: Initiative & Audience Appreciation; First Player Actions; Second Player Actions; End Phase.

Initiative is a straight d6 roll with the highest roll winning. However initiative also serves a second purpose, to determine Audience Appreciation Points for the turn.

AAP is worked out by taking the difference between the winning and losing Initiative roll (between 1 & 5), the winner gets half this number (rounded up if necessary) and the loser getting the rest if there is any. (eg the Initiative rolls are 2 & 5, the resulting AAP would be 2 to the winner and 1 to the loser).

AAP can be used in 2 ways. Either to activate an additional model in the turn (2AAP) or each token equals a +1/-1 to any of your dice rolls (you may use more than one token on a roll if desired).

In the Action Phases players activate their models and perform actions, however this is a TV show and the camera cannot be on all the cast at the same time, in game terms this means that you may only activate ½ the models you have on the table at the beginning of the turn (rounded up).

Each model has 2 actions they can perform in the turn, these can be move; melee; shoot; aim prior to shooting; perform a special action; perform an heroic action (Stars and Co-Stars only).

Shooting can only be done once per turn and only one of your Stars/Co-Stars can use an heroic action in a turn, but otherwise actions may be repeated. Also, if you end a movement in base-to-base with an opposing model you may perform a melee attack immediately as part of the same action.

Combat is handled simply with a target number system (eg. 4+) that can be found in the Hit section of the Attacks part of the models profile, (melee and ranged attacks are all placed in this section).

Get equal to or better and you've hit.

Working out damage is similar to the way things were done in AT-43, you work out the difference between the attacker's physical/weapon strength and the defender's Defence stat and find the result on the Damage Table, you then read down and find the target number you need to equal or better to cause damage.

Any other stat tests you need to make use the Statistic/Morale Test Table and is simply finding the relevant stat number on the table and reading off the target number associated with it.

Occasionally an opposed roll is needed, this is handled by both players rolling 1d6 and adding the result to the relevant stat, whoever rolls highest wins.

Certain attacks and abilities will bestow a Status on the target model, the one you'll see the most is Stunned, which is the usual result of a melee attack (which can only Stun unless the attacker's Strength is higher than the target's Defence). Other status' include Confused, Dominated, Captured, ect. Amongst other things status' can affect whether or not a model counts toward Activations so can effect how many models can activate in a turn. Models may have more than 1 type of status on them at any one time.

The End Phase is when you try and remove status' (roll a number of d6 equal to model's current Hits and any 6s remove a status), check to see if Morale checks are needed for 50%+ losses and perform any functions that need to be done (i.e. advance a countdown etc.)

To create a cast, you first decide if you're playing as heroes or villains and then pick the type of show they are from (Law & Order; Action; Tomorrow's World; Madmen & Miscreants; Crime Does Pay; The Outer Limits), each of which has certain archetypes suggested for it.

Next you decide on a Ratings total for the cast, (ranging from 50 -500 points, Stars and Co-stars range in cost from 25 points up to 60 points, extras are a lot cheaper with costs dependent on whether you're playing heroes or villains), I think around 200/250 points per side is around a standard size for a game that takes about 1 - 1 ½ hours to play, (the campaign day mentioned in an earlier post was 200 points with an extra 50 points to swap out if needed, that gave me 12 models in total, 1 star, 2 co-stars and 9 extras, however I only used 9 of the models throughout the day).

Then you pick your cast. The nice thing with 7TV is that there is an element of customisation available with the Stars & Co-stars. When you choose the archetype you want you get a basic template for them and the option to alter stats (except Hits) and choose some of the characters Special Effects, you get a basic number of options and can add more if you want, but that will add to the cost of the figure. Extras are less customisable, but you can still do a few tweaks to them as well. This means that although you potentially could have 2 cast with exactly the same archetypes facing off against each other you'll actually likely to still have completely different forces.

The book also includes pre-generated show casts from some of 7TV's better known shows, like The Man From 2000 and Department X which give a nice idea of the type of things you can do with your casts.

In 7TV scenarios are called Episodes and the book provides a number of individual episodes as well as a 4 episode linked campaign with an escalating ratings total which looks like a lot of fun to play through.

One thing all episodes have in common is the Prelude section, this is where 7TV's other nice touch comes into play, Event and Gadget cards.

All players start with at least 4 Event cards which allow you to do certain things during the game, the events are a nice addition and can make for much entertainment during a game. Some cards can also act in the same way as the Luck special effect and can allow one dice roll that affects a model to be re-rolled (this can be a roll by either player).

Gadgets are “bought” via a Think Tank roll, basically you get 1d6 per star and anyone with the Gadget &/or Boffin special effect, add the totals up and that gives you an number of points to spend on gadgets that can be assigned to your stars and co-stars. Again, like the event cards, gadgets are a characterful addition to the game and can make for some entertaining moments in play.

The rules work well to provide a fun game that moves along at a steady clip. Only being able to activate ½ the models on your side a turn really adds a tactical element to the game as well.

The Event and Gadget cards are something that really can make a fun difference and some of them are rather entertaining.

To get the best out of the game though you really need to play the character of your cast. Play them as if it were a TV episode, be the dastardly villain or the stalwart hero, don't just play to win the game and you will have a great time whatever the outcome.

Overall

It's a great game to play and have fun with. Although I have to admit that when I first played it I wasn't overly fond of the melee rules (they seemed very one sided), however when I mentioned this to Rich he pointed out that this is a game based around TV shows, and usually if you get hit on TV you usually stay hit & one punch knock downs are exactly what should happen. Once I got my head around that it made me realise that to get the most out of this game you have got to play it like a TV episode as much as a wargame. At the club, when we've played our casts as if they really were in a episode of one of our favorite TV shows we've got a lot more out of the experience than if we just played it for the win.

It's not an expensive game to get into, £25 for the rulebook and if you've got access to a photocopier or scanner and printer then everything you need is in the book apart from miniatures and scenery. However Crooked Dice do do a very nice set of Event/Gadget cards as well as tokens for only around £4 each so it shouldn't break the bank to get them as well.

Models wise you need from as little a 2 models a side to start playing and you can use any appropriate looking figure you have, (the Tongs I used for the campaign day were my Pulp Figures Chinese which I got for playing '20s era pulp games, but I just picked out the ones that looked the most contemporary and used them).

I can highly recommend 7TV and I think that it's a game that, if there's any justice in the world, deserves to be a big success. So go check it out and start re-living though hazy playground days once more :)

Well, I hope you like the review, as you can tell I'm somewhat partial to the game. I think that this game, along with Pulp City really fires up my imagination on every level, from the gaming itself, to the terrain and scenario design through to the models to be used. It's nice to know there are games out there that can still do that.

Anyway, normal bloging service will be resumed next time, so 'til then, take care.

Coming Soon

2011-06-12T19:32:00.010+01:00

First up, I'd like to welcome my newest follower Dark Templar, who's blog has rekindled my desire to get my Malifaux mini's painted up in the near future and actually get a game in.

Next up, I've had a bit of time off from mini's for a little while after the 7TV day last week to recover a little, mainly because the week before the day I'd been printing, cutting and gluing Worldworks terrain in case we needed an extra table, today was the first time I actually put all the stuff together and these are the results:

The full 4'x4' layout.

Warehouse.

Garage & train station.

Police station.

Inside the warehouse.

Police Station, ground floor.

Police Station, 1st floor.

The warehouse and police station still need internal props, and I want to add some external bits to the police station as well and there are a few other places that need props as well on the board, but I finally have a modern 4'x4' playing area that I've wanted for a while now and I'm really pleased with the results so far.

I've been doing a little painting this weekend, though nothing has been completed just yet I have got some work done on Dr Red, for Pulp City:

And made a start on the first 7 zombies from Last Night on Earth:

7TV hasn't completely left my head yet either, Rich J is running a Dr. Who 7TV episode on Tuesday that I'm looking forward to participating in and I'm putting together ideas for my 3 shows that I mentioned last week.

So first out of the 7TV archives is:

Cast:

(Goodies)
Lance Hardwood as Agent Larry Drebin
Kylie Dodds as Lady Tara Rigg
&
Montague Chambers as Professor Hans Sturgeon

(Baddies)
Orson Willis as Tolivar Badman
Madeline Kane as Lucrecia
Henry Nails as Karl Masterson

Agents of A.U.N.T.I.E. follows the daring exploits of former New York detective "Filthy" Larry Derbin, booted out of the force on trumped up charges of illegal dealings whilst investigating international millionaire businessman Tolivar Badman.

Drebin is approached by the shadowy Mr. E, head of A.U.N.T.I.E. (Allied United Nations Tactical Intelligence Experts), and recruited into their ranks to battle Badman and his sinister group, Badman's Anarchistic Soldiers of Tyranny Against Right and Decency (B.A.S.T.A.R.D.) and stop the man from bringing the world into chaos.

To help him in his efforts Drebin is teamed with tough talking, gun toting English socialite Lady Tara Rigg and Swiss inventor Professor Hans Sturgeon and together they are the first line of defense against B.A.S.T.A.R.D.s evil schemes.

The A.U.N.T.I.E. cast awaiting hair, makeup and wardrobe.

It will probably be a little while yet before any of the casts are done, but the idea is fun (basically the mutant offspring of The Avengers, Man From UNCLE and Dempsey & Makepeace...if you can imagine that)

As you can see I've got the heroes sorted and I want to add more Hasslefree figures to back them up in games (looking at the human faction adventures with SMGs at the moment), but as HF is shut whilst they get themselves sorted out I'll leave t till they re-open before I pick any up.

Not sure what I want to do about the villains cast yet, but Artizan Designs may provide me with the figures I need, I'll see.

Well, that's all for now, I will hopefully have more for you next week, I'll see how my week progresses.

So until then, take care everyone.

J

Aaaand, we're back in the room

2011-06-05T21:42:00.008+01:00

Sorry once again for the lack of updates, motivation has been lacking in that department recently, but at least my painting motivation hasn't diminished.

Right, so straight into it, lots of Richard's Thousand Sons painted as you can see:

The observant amongst you may have noticed a lack of arms on a couple of the fellows in the second pic, Richard has now provided them and so they won't be armless for long.

As far as personal projects go I'm slowly working through my plastic & pewter mountain, recently I started painting up my Last Night on Earth minis, so far I've done the survivor minis from the main game and expansion:

I intend to take better pics at a later date, now I just have 21 Zombies to paint :)

As far as gaming goes, Rich J recently introduced me to 7TV, it's a rule set I'd been looking at for a while and he really got into it after picking it up at Salute back in April. So much so in fact that he organised a campaign day at the club yesterday and it was attended by Crooked Dice Games, Ainsty Castings and Kevin Dallimore.

It was a great day and a lot of fun was had by all and although I placed 6th out of 8 in the campaign (still a lot better than I usually do at these things), I had the pleasant surprise of winning the Best Dressed Cast award (basically best painted minis), an achievement made the more special by the fact that Mr Dallimore himself picked the winner!

Go check out Rich J's Blog for the day here and marvel at my checked shirt...oh and the fantastic scenery as well ;)

Here are a some pics of the swag I purchased on the day:

Rules, Tokens and Event/Gadget Cards...no more need to nick Rich's stuff any more.

My prize for winning the Best Dressed Cast award and the purchases I made with it.

Which then allowed me to spent even more money on the Ainsty stand :)

And finally a pic of my award winning cast:

The insidious oriental menace Hang Man Chan (Sinister Mystic), his evil Daughter Wu Wu Chan aka The Manchurian Mantis (Nasty Piece of Work) and Faithful Lackey Po Kynii (Faithful Lackey), accompanied by some of Hang Man Chan's Frenzied Tongs (in game terms 2 'Eavies and 4 Security Guards)

Better pictures are coming soon.

7TV is a good, fun skirmish game that lets you create a "cast" from a 70's/80's TV show to do battle over the airwaves and for me half the fun is coming up with the shows to populate the cast's with as much playing the game.

So look out for these shows straight from the 7TV archives soon:

Agents of A.U.N.T.I.E.
The Adventures of Shelton Blake
and Unidentified.

That's all for now, I think I've got a few more posts in me this month so hopefully I'll post again soon as I should have a few more things to show you :)

Take care

J

Welcome, Welcome & Finally an Update

2011-04-03T15:37:00.008+01:00

First off I'd (slightly belatedly) like to welcome my 2 newest followers SR and Rich Jones.

SR is the man behind the Cut into the Earth blog which has got me all excited about the idea of terrain making again, a lot of really inspirational stuff there (his circus board for Eden is feckin' awesome).

Mr Jones is a man I know well as he's been attending my local gaming club for a good few years now and is man of many talents, including rules writing, having written Flying Lead for Ganesha Games, The Beautiful Game for Two Hour Wargames as well as his self published oriental skirmish rules Bushi No Yume. He's also had a hand in the development of the rules used by Spartan Games and is a throughly good chap to boot, so go check his blog out and see what he's up to.

Now, as you may have noticed, I failed quite epically to post an update when I said I would last month, sorry for that, I seem to have had a slight motivational block going on as far as the blog is concerned lately, but I think it's departed now so hopefully my updates should become more frequent from now on.

So, what am I up to I hear you ask? Well, Rich C (aka shadoblade) from my gaming club asked me to paint up some more of his Thousand Sons squads (some of which are for an upcoming Apocalypse game), so far I've completed 2 Havok squads with a Lightning Claw armed Terminator squad just needing flocking and varnishing and Abadon himself 3/4 finished to go with the squad.

Here are the 2 completed squads:

I should have a couple more squads finished by next week.

I've also been getting to paint some of my own stuff in between being given new 1000 Sons squads to paint & I do a little bit of my own projects on the weekends as well. So far I've painted up some more Hasslefree Grymn + Powered Armour Libby for a 5150 campaign Rich J ran at the beginning of the year:

As well as most recently finishing off the last few models I needed for my Mordheim Possessed Warband:

The first 2 chaps are Darksouls, while the rest should be self explanatory. With these guys done I can now field every choice in the rulebook.

And finally, I got round to completely finishing off my Star Wars RPG character Zhaan Kor just in time for the restart of Steve campaign, not enough to get me any painting points but I thought I'd show him off anyway:

Right, so that's all for now, I should be back next week with a few more pics and a lot more babbling incoherence (i.e. normal service will be resumed ;0)

So until then, take care.

J

Welcome

2011-03-03T13:40:00.002Z

Just a quick post to say welcome to CC, my newest follower.

I hope you enjoy the blog, I know I've not updated for a bit but I've not had much to post. That should change soon as I've got a commission on the go and am doing a few of my own bits as well on the weekends so I'll do my very best to update on Sunday if possible.

Until next time.

J

A Slow Start

2011-01-16T18:32:00.003Z

Well I hope you all had a good New Year and all that, welcome to 2011 (however you may be pronouncing it).

My hobby life has started slowly this year with the first week and a bit devoted to clearing all the flat surfaces in my room of all the miniatures, scenic bits and various scratch building elements that had taken over the area over the last 6 months or so of last year, as well as that I reorganised my bookshelves so that I can actually find things now, which should help somewhat, and I also needed to replace a few paints and washes that had run out as well.

As for actual miniatures, no painting has been done to date, but I have got a lot of prep work done on the Devourers that I will be painting for Richard for the next 6 or so weeks. I've also undercoated some more Grymn models from Hasslefree as I need to get them painted for a 5150 campaign that Rich J is running at the club, (check out the campaign blog here).

I do have a picture for you as well, it's another miniature for Richard's forces:

He's from Kabuki Models' Dark Messiah range and he's a big ol' boy, but not as tricky to put together as I had at first feared. The only real problem I had was with the smaller of the 2 sets of arms, (the ones holding the halbardy weapon), as the shaft of the weapon had snapped off at the left hand, so a bit of delicate pinning was called for, but it all seemed to go well and he just needs a bit of Green Stuff in a couple of places and he's ready for undercoating.
As Richard wants to use him with his Devourers as well as as a Demon Prince in his 40k Thousand Sons army he's asked me to combine the colours I use for both armies when I paint him...which are Claret and Blue basically, so I'll have to be careful I don't make him look like he plays for West Ham, (I may not know much about Football, but I do know basic strip colours :).

So, that's all for now, if all goes well then I'll be getting the brushes out this week and I should have my first painted models of the year to show you next week.

Till next time.

J

End of Year Review

2010-12-31T19:55:00.005Z

Well, this is my last post for 2010 and I have actually managed to complete a few more minis for your delectation:

Hasslefree Kat and Dionne

Hasslefree Amoy and Amoy (b)

Hasslefree Sadie and Giles

Rackham Tiger of Dirz

I'm really happy with how they have all come out and I'm glad I managed to get them done before the new year.

So, not quite as many mini's painted as last year, but not as bad as I feared it was going to be at one point, plus I'm pretty happy with things at the moment and feel like I have some good momentum going into 2011 which will hopefully see me painting a fair bit.

On the non-mini side of the hobby I've been busy putting together a few downloads for Pulp City, some Agenda cards and Tokens, a Quick Reference Sheet and today I put up some Resource Cards from the Pulp City Guide. They're currently on Google Docs, but I may try and put together a little website at some point next year, I'll see how things go.

Here's a link to the page, I'll also add it to the right hand menu to make it easy to find.

As far as my plans for next year, my 15mm sci-fi army has begun:

Very impressed with the postal service from the US this time of year, they turned up from Khurasan Miniatures within two weeks of the order being shipped, and before Christmas too which was a nice little pick-me-up at the time. Very nice sculpts on the Not-Spartans Federation Infantry, and the APC's are very nice too (very Not-Aliens). I'll definitely be getting more from Khurasan in the future, I just wish they'd hurry up and get more Federation models out.

Tomorrow I plan on getting out all of the Devourers of Vile Tis that I have of Richards and start prepping them for painting, then I'll just have to see what the weather decides to do in the next week or so before I get them undercoated, you never know I may even have some WiP shots to show next week sometime.

Now the Pulp City Shop is back up and running I may well get round to picking up some villains soon as well, if I do I'll try and fit the painting in and around the Devourers.

So that's all from me for 2010, have a happy and safe New Years and I'll see you all again in 2011.

Take care

J

(Hassle)Free Time

2010-12-06T14:02:00.004Z

As I said a couple of posts ago I recently felt like a change of pace painting-wise and having read the Invasion scenario in the Pulp City Guide decided to get out the six Hasslefree and 1 Heresy/Spyglass zombie I undercoated ages ago. While I was there I also decided to get out my bag of Hasslefree miniatures and get a few more of them based and undercoated.

I've liked Hasslefree's minis since they started and I have enjoyed painting them a lot so it was well past time I did a few more.

Well, after 3 days I got all the zombies painted up, which is something of a record for me, and I'm really happy with the way they turned out, here are the pics:

HF Zombie #4, #2, #3, #1 and #5.

HF Zombie Surfer, HF Zombie Suzi, Spyglass (via Heresy) Bud.

The horde begins to advance.

I intend to pick up a couple more Hasslefree Zeds and then I think I'll try out a couple of Studio Miniatures zombie packs as I think they are the best I've seen to date.

I also need to pick up some uber-zombie types, probably use a couple of HF minis as well as the Boss Zombies from Tengu Models will do nicely I think.

On the Wip front I have 4 minis currently on the go:

HF Kat and HF Dionne.

HF Amoy and HF Amoy(b).

As you can see I'm using a fairly limited pallet on these four. Kat and Dionne are an exercise in learning to paint different materials, in this case I really wanted to try and get the PVC/leather look from the Underworld movies, Kat's almost done, I need to do the leather on Dionne.

The Yin Yang look of the Amoys is an idea I had ages ago but have only just got round to, almost got them done, only a bit more to do and then some tidying up as the eyes on all for minis has caused me a fair bit of trouble for some reason.

So there you have it then, the latest additions to my figure collection, hope you like.

More soon.

J

Planning Ahead

2010-12-05T13:48:00.002Z

I won't be taking photos of my newly painted mini's till tomorrow, but I felt like blogging something today and after a week of freezing temperatures and snow we now have an almost Springlike day outside and it has made me think ahead to the soon to be arriving new year and the projects I'd like to have a crack at.

Now anyone that has read this blog over the last couple of years will know I always have numerous and wonderful plans each year, the majority of which never see the light of day in the end, so this coming year I will try to be a bit (read: a lot) more focused on completing only a few definite projects with any others that spring up being added on at various points during the year.

I also intend to look at having some ongoing projects that will run through the whole year, these will be done in between other projects as time permits.

So these are the definite plans I've come up with so far:

Ongoing Projects

1 - Pulp City. This is a game I thoroughly enjoy on every level of the hobby: painting; terrain making; playing; character building and interacting with other fans of the game. Pulp City will be an ongoing project for a long time to come.

2 - 15mm Sci-Fi. Recently Rich at the club pointed us all to the FUBAR 1 page wargames rules found on the Forge of War yahoo group. They've become popular with a number of the guys and a few of them have been picking up some 15mm sci-fi forces to use with them and the Tomorrows War rules from Ambush Alley Games. With space and time being limited, 15mm (and 6mm) are scales I've been looking at for a while for doing large battles with. 28mm is just too time consuming to do those size of games these days as far as I'm concerned and is a scale I find much more fun to use for skirmish size games. Anyway, I've already placed an order for some figures from Khurasan Miniatures which will probably become the first personal project I'll have a crack at in the new year.

Other Projects:

1 - Richard's Devourers. When people ask me why I don't start painting models for a living I point them towards this project. I've had these figures from Richard for over two years now and I'm still only 1/3 of the way through them and quite frankly I'm annoyed at myself for not getting them finished for him. So, first project of the year will be these guys, with the last part of this year prepping all of them for painting.

2 - Malifaux Board. Those of you that remember this building I made earlier in the year will remember I mentioned I was going to use it for Malifaux, well I came up with a plan for a 4'x4' board shortly after I completed the build and I intend to get it put together sometime this year, hopefully with the intention of actually getting some games of Malifaux played on it as well.

3 - Crimson Skies. Yes I know this has been on my to-do list since forever, but the original FASA game is still one of my favorites. So, if I can get myself a job before my redundancy money runs out I intend to spend some of that money over a Ral Partha Europe's store buying up an number of planes to play the game with.

Potential Projects:

1 - Reaverlords. Currently just a tantalizing ad in the back of the Pulp City Guide I'm curious to see what this game is. The ad appears to indicate a fantasy game and I'm interested in getting back into fantasy gaming as currently the majority of the wargames we play at the club are either modern or sci-fi based, (fantasy only seems to appear in games like Blood Bowl or Warhammer Quest), so I'll be interested in seeing what this turns out to be.

2 - Vor 2.0. My favorite Sci-fi rules were the origional Vor: The Maelstrom rules from FASA. Since FASA's demise Mike "Skuzzy" Nelson, the writer of the rules, has been trying to get Vor 2.0 up and running, hopefully 2011 will see that happen, and if it does then I'll be one of the first in line to pick up a copy and start playing.

So, these are the few definite/possible plans I have, I wouldn't mind getting a House Cawdor gang put together for Necromunda as well, but I have very specific ideas for how I want them to look so that may take me some time as a fair bit of conversion work would be needed, but we'll see.

Anyway, come back tomorrow and I'll show off my newest batch of painted miniatures and WiPs.

Till then.

J

2010-11-28T15:12:00.007Z

Quite a few mini's finished this past week or so. To start with the Pulp City models finished recently number 7 and for the sake of space I'll just link to the PC Forum post they're in (5th post down):

Here you go, enjoy.

One thing I have noticed about my current PC selection is that I am lacking a decent number of outright villains, so once the store reopens I intend to correct that oversight on my part.

On the roleplay front I've completed the models I need to complete the adventure now, first up are a group of Gnolls from Otherworld Miniatures:

The leader of the pack

The rank and file

All 7 were painted using the speed painting method I mentioned before and I am really happy with the way they turned out.

Also finished are the 6 Heresy Blights:

For my first attempts at speed painting I think these guy's were perfect. nothing too intricate on them and lots of light and dark areas that came out nicely. I liked these models a lot before I bought them and if I can figure out a use for them I'll definitely be picking up some more.

Also finished are my 2 other demons:

Minor Fallen One - Heresy Miniatures

Type I Demon - Otherworld Miniatures

I really like how both have come out though I wish I'd been a little more adventurous with the wings on the Otherworld mini, maybe next time.

So, that's a fair bit finished with more to come. It's going to be interesting to see how many figures I get finished before the end of the year.

Onto the WiP stuff now, currently getting painted up (in no particular order) are:

Trail - Pulp City.

Pulse Emitter, Teleport Anchor and Spy Bot's - Pulp City resources.

Two old Rackham mini's that may see action in the finale of my current DnD adventure.

Trail may look like I had no idea what I was doing colour-wise when I started painting him...and you'd be right, however, bearing in mind the game is currently set in the '80s and Trail's something of a media celebrity I decided that he has fallen into the fashion trap that a lot of celebrities fell into in the '80s, thinking they looked fantastic no matter what they wore...he can regret it in the '90s, for now though he thinks he's pretty fly ;)

The resources are coming along nicely, I need to start coming up with ideas for the others in the book now.

The two Rackham models have been sitting around for ages and it's nice to get some paint on them (or repaint in the Aberrations case), hoping these two will be finished by the end of the week.

I also decided I needed a change in my painting subjects for a little bit so I dug out my Hasslefree Miniatures bag yesterday and stuck a few of their adventures onto bases and dug out the 7 HF zombies I base coated ages ago in order to try and paint them up over the next couple of weeks, watch this space.

Anyway, that's all for now, hope to have more soon.

Take care.

J

Rainy Days

2010-11-08T13:33:00.006Z

It is really rather unpleasant outside today, so I thought I'd get some photos taken of the latest work I've done.

First up the two latest Pulp City figures to be painted, Kitty Cheshire and Vector:

Both are done bar a couple of coats of varnish, though Kitty may get her teeth redone as I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with them. Vector's come out great, I really wanted to go for the Tron/Automan look and I think it's come out well.

I've also got the first of my resources done, Gentleman's sniper rifle:

A quick and simple job that I'm really happy with.

And I've got a bit more done on my Spybots as well:

Still not entirely sure how I'm going to finish them off, but they're coming along nicely.

Finally on the PC front is Skyline and his base:

As I said last time, the base he comes with (a Gargoyle) doesn't really fit in with my other PC bases so I wanted to do something a little different. I actually got the idea before I read the Rooftop Vigilante card that comes with him and Jade Hawk and it happily turns out that there is a special rule that allows them both to voluntarily fall onto someone and get bonuses on their attack. So the idea is that Skyline has landed on this poor unfortunate thug (styling the landing of course ;) before getting up to deal with any accomplices.

Here's a top-down view of the base to give you a better view:

And here's a close up of the face, just to prove that crime doesn't pay (and can hurt like hell as well):

The cape actually covers the open eye so that won't be seen on the finished piece.

The mini I used for the thug is from Hasslefree miniatures and I only needed to cut the legs at the waist to get the position I wanted and fill with greenstuff, fate smiled on me again and the cape folds naturally around the guy as if they were made for each other.

Painting Skyline's been a struggle but I'm finally happy with the colour scheme so he should be finished soon.

I've also nearly finished repainting the worst affected PC models from the varnish reaction I mentioned a little while age, so as soon as the weather decides to behave itself I'll get them all out and (re)varnished.

More soon.

J

A Little Redecorating

2010-11-02T17:27:00.002Z

Trying a new look for the Blog, about time I spruced it up a little I think.

Thought, comments, critique welcome but I'm fairly happy with it at the moment, I'll see how it goes.

Proper post coming soon.

J

Eventually

2010-10-25T13:11:00.007+01:00

A day later than planned but I had a bit of a hiccup in my plans and I didn't get all the photo's I wanted, but I do have plenty to keep you all going.

So, what have I been up to? As I mentioned in my last post I've been struggling with some Gaming ADD and have been flitting between numerous projects not getting too far with any of them before deciding I had to do something else.

First up I bought my first Miniature Mentor video, "Speed Painting: The Art of Tomas David", a very nice download in high def where Mr David (the painter behind Hell Dorado's amazing looking official figures) shows off his speed painting technique, something he calls Zenithal Highlighting.

The video is very good and whilst his method uses a airbrush he also shows you how to achieve the same sort of effect with normal spray cans, an approach I decided to try a variation on on some of my latest purchases.

The basic idea behind the method is that you use your undercoating to define your highlights and shadows on the miniature, then use washes to paint on top, saving you the hassle of shading and highlighting as it's already done for you in the undercoat.

Allow me to demonstrate using some Heresy Blights I'm going to be using in the D&D campaign soon (all spray paints are from Halfords btw):

First up undercoat with black spray, once dry I used a gray spray at a downward angle (45 degreesish to the model) to start the definition of light and shade and whilst this layer is still wet I spayed white straight down onto the top of the miniature until I was happy with the effect (if you wanted an even lighter highlight then you could repeat the last part again when the paint had dried).

Above are the next 3 stages, 1st is 2 washes of the base flesh colour, 2nd is a slightly lighter wash to redefine the highlights a little more and finally the finished look complete. All in all about 2 hours for all 3 to be completely painted, maybe not fast by some people's standards, but for me amazingly quick.

I've added the intermediate stage of gray between the black layer and the white as I prefer a more gradual change from shade to highlight and spraying the white onto the gray whilst it is still wet gives a smoother blend (IMO anyway).

Here are the finished 6 Blights, just awaiting a decision to be made on their basing:

I've also got 2 demons & 6 Gnolls on the go with the same technique, but they've suffered from by ADD the most and still need work to get them finished:

The Horned Demon is also from Heresy whilst the winged fellow and the gnolls are all from Otherworld Miniatures.

I have got one project almost completed, thanks to my friend Rob who asked to play another game of Pulp City this past Tuesday (21st October).

I introduced the game to Rob last month where we ended up playing a 3-way game due to adverse traffic affecting one of the other games that night. We all had fun and Rob was eager to try out the rules again this month so I decided to use that as an excuse to try and get my Worldworks Games terrain sorted out after I realised I nearly had enough to do a 28"x28" board with what I had.

So with a concerted effort I set to work printing, cutting and gluing the few bits I needed to complete the board.

I put together these four ages ago, I just had to add the roof and graffiti to the boarded up store on the far right.

I wanted an alleyway and figured out a simple way of doing it. Bud's Tattoo Parlour has been a store I wanted to do for a while, finally decided to do it for this project.

These are the interiors for the apartment above Bud's and Bud's itself, yes I really am that fussy that I found tattoo magazine covers to print up and put on the table for the punters to read :)

Bud's still needs a little work to finish and I'd like to add a stairway up to the apartment at some point, but as I probably wont need the interiors until I do my All Things Zombie campaign I don't need to worry just yet.

To go with the buildings I also sorted out some street furniture to go with it:

Phonebooth and newspaper vending machine are from Worldworks, the lamp posts are from Fenris Games.

Yellow bin and rubbish pile are from Old Crow (from the Ainsty range), blue and green bins are from Antenociti's Workshop, Planters are from Fenris.

For a look at the board in action, scroll down to the bottom of this post on the Enfield Gamers site to check out the game in progress.

I also managed to get 2 more minis painted for the game, Harrier and Virus, unfortunately the bad run of luck I've been having with varnish lately kicked in again so I haven't been able to take decent pics of them, but here's a shot of them as they are currently:

The wolf is a companion for Charlie's Ranger in the D&D campaign and another sufferer of the bad varnish karma, I've managed to save them I think thanks to some brush on varnish, but all three will need a bit more TLC before I can claim them as finished.

Also on the PC front I have started putting together some markers to represent various resources in the game:

L-R Teleport Homer (courtesy of GW), Sniper Rife (Heresy, Fenris base), 3 Spy Bots (Ground Zero Games), and a Pulse Emitter (again from GW).

On other fronts, I've picked up this from Thomarillion for my park board:

The main statue is magnetised and I was going to do the gargoyles as well, but quite frankly trying to do it was beginning to drive me a little loopy so in the end I just glued them down.

on the WiP front I have this guy:

Who is going to be my second werewolf in my Blood Bowl team (another Otherworld mini).

And these two gentle-um-persons:

Dr. Red and Skyline for Pulp City, both put together, just need their bases doing. Whilst I like the bases they came with, neither really fit in with the rest of my stuff so I'm doing them new ones, I've only just figured out Dr. Red's, so that will take a bit of time, but Skyline's base is just awaiting a bit more greenstuff and I can start painting. Watch this space.

Anyway, I've taken up enough of your time so I'll let you get back to your daily lives again and I'll see you all next time.

Take care

J

And Hello to you.

2010-10-21T13:43:00.002+01:00

Welcome to my newest follower, S.

Hope you like the blog, I have been suffering from gaming ADD recently and have been struggling to focus on one project longer than a couple of days which is why I've not had anything solid to post for a while.

I have managed to get some stuff finished now though so expect photos and probably quite a long post to accompany it, hopefully before the end of Sunday at the latest.

Anyway, enjoy your stay and feel free to comment on anything you see.

J

Welcome and Hobby Highs and Lows

2010-09-19T17:49:00.004+01:00

First up another welcome along to my newest follower, Andrath. I hope you like what you see, feel free to comment on anything you see herein.

So recently my hobby time has been affected somewhat by illness, but that seems to be past so I have been getting back to Pulp City and I will be demoing the game at the club this Tuesday when I'll be giving Rob a game.

With that in mind I've spent part of the week getting my Pulp City house in order (as it were), I've put together a reference sheet that includes the new rules, printed out all the cards that I downloaded some time ago and got them all cut out and laminated and finally went back over the rules and popped onto the PC forum to clarify a few things (thanks again for your help Leon).

I was feeling a quite pleased with myself and really looking forward to Tuesday, then this morning I went to put my finished cards in the box with my models and discovered that all the minis had got a dirty yellow tint to them, most notable on Gentleman and Solar as they are both predominantly white, but all of them have been affected to a greater or lesser extent.

It appears that for some reason that the varnish has reacted with the corrugated plastic of the box they were in (a Figures in Comfort Company Box which I picked up a little while ago), the plastic of the box has discoloured in a similar way to the models and unfortunately having tried a suggestion given to me over on Lead Adventure Forum to try and clean it off that didn't work it looks like I've got a bit of repainting to do in my future :(

Still, I'm not going to let it get me down, I still get to play my first game proper on Tuesday and I'm excited about it, plus I've almost got a couple more figures ready to go.

First up is Apebot:

The big lad is basically done, finally. This is the 3rd lot of paint I've put on him now and whilst I'm still not 100% sure I like it, I'm a lot happier than I was with the last two attempts. The lamppost is from Fenris Games. I just need to get him varnished (though I may re-highlight the red first...I haven't decided yet).

On the painting table at the moment is the chap that started this whole trip to Pulp City in the first place, Guerilla:

I'm really happy with the way he's coming along and I reckon a couple of more hours work should see him done plus an hour or so for the base, hopefully I'll be able to field him Tuesday night, we shall see.

Anyway, that's it for now, I do have a few more thing bubbling away but more on them next time.

Take care.

J

Hello, Good Evening and Welcome

2010-09-18T17:00:00.002+01:00

I'd like to extend a welcome to my newest follower Dr. Willett's Workshop.

I hope you enjoy my little corner of the web and don't mind my occasionally, (ok, mostly), random mumblings on this hobby of ours :)

My posting drought is nearing an end as I'm finally over the lurgy that's been plaguing me for most of the month, so expect more content very soon, mostly Pulp City related at the moment, but there should be some variation in topics soon as well.

Watch this space.

J

All by Myself

2010-09-01T12:11:00.008+01:00

As we're roleplaying from Thursdays from now on I decided last night to break out one of my 2'x2' boards and get to grips with the basics of Pulp City so that when I take it down the club the games should run somewhat smoothly.

The main thing I wanted to accomplish was to understand the bare bones of the rules at first, I'll add in agendas, minions etc. at a later date.

So, I decided to do a little level 3 encounter using Solar and Jade Hawk as the heroes with Rook and the Gentleman acting as their opponents, I dug out my AT-43 scenery box and set up accordingly:

Over the next 5 turns the game went fairly quickly, just over an hour and 15 minutes, which wasn't bad for a learner, though I did occasionally get old and new rules muddled, I was pretty much on top of it by the end, here are some more pics from the game and some of the thing I learned:

End of turn 1. Jade Hawk has learned that charging Rook may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but his high Defense compared to her Strength means she needed to use her Trump roll to even scratch him and he can take a lot of damage.

Turn 2. Whilst Solar has fun hurling a concrete barrier at Gentleman, Jade Hawk learns to use the right power for the job and uses Wing Sweep that targets Rooks lower Agility score to get the hit and move to get closer to the now very wounded Gentleman, unfortunately Rook's next go involved him getting up and firing off a Sink Hole at Jade to put her flat on her back to see how she liked it and reduce her health alarmingly.

Turn 3. Solar and Rook took to beating 7 shades of whatsit out of each other rolling 6's all round to keep canceling each other out, Solar's origin allowing him to get a slight advantage over Rook and injured him a little more.

Jade Hawk goes to finish off Gentleman only for the dice to fail her completely allowing the Gentleman to Point Blank her out of the game on his next activation...ouch, that's no way to treat a lady.

Turn 4. Solar breaks off from Rook and gets revenge for Jade Hawk by taking down Gentleman only for Rook to charge and get a great attack roll result which is as impressive as how bad Solar's defense roll is. Solar is not looking well.

Turn 5. Solar tries to get some distance between himself and Rook so he can hit him with Sun Ray, but more bad rolls allow Rook to get in and land the finishing blow with a certain amount of ease...Villains win.

All in all I rather enjoyed myself, the new rules have definitely streamlined the ease of play and I like the Power-up dice pool idea, it came in handy in a couple of places (though not handy enough for the heroes unfortunately).

The Action Points and the way you activate models is quite different from any other game I've played, but is a very nice way of doing it, being able to activate models more than once until they've used their AP allowance makes choices of action critical and in larger games should see some interesting tactical decisions being made, and only being able to do 1 action per activation (or 2 if it's a move or hold action) makes you think about things differently than other games, I like it.

The new way Trump traits work if great and a lot more straight forward than in the original rules, a lot less to remember and also the new abilities Trump Traits give are a lot more likely to be used.

Things I learned: Lvl 1 Supremes going up against Lvl 2 ones really isn't a good idea, but once that lesson was learned (the hard way:), things got easier.

Scenery manipulation is fun, I need to get a street board done so that cars and lamp posts can go a-flying :)

I NEED the rulebook to be out soon, as fun as I hoped it would be, from the sound of it the rest of the new stuff is going to knock this game out of the park (if you forgive the analogy).

Hopefully I'll get another practice game soon to try out the parts of the rules I didn't use yesterday, then I think it's time to unleash the game on the club, can't wait :)

More soon.

J

The Vagaries of Inspiration

2010-08-24T18:25:00.004+01:00

Recently I've been getting a lot of ideas for gaming, some from simply seeing something and wanting to emulate it, some from somewhat more obscure places.

On the obscure front I've come up with a new villain for Pulp City after listening to a song on a Bad Religion album, not sure exactly what to do with him yet, I think I'll wait to see what Supreme Genesis 4 is looking for before deciding.

In slightly more ordinary terms thanks to a video game I've come up with the main McGuffin for the 3rd D&D adventure that I can start seeding ideas for inro the current one I'm running.

And on a terrain front seeing the pictures from Gencon showing the Pulp City games I was hit by the revelation that 2'x 2' board is all I need to play the game, (not sure why it didn't occur to me before, but it didn't), and I already have 2 boards that size I made up when AT-43 came out as 4'x2' is the Rackham official tournament table size. Of course I only used them twice I think (maybe 3 times) as the size of our armies at the club quickly expanded far beyond them.

As you can see, they're perfect for secret military bases, evil lairs and Danger Rooms. And as both boards are only painted on the one side it means I can paint up the other sides to represent other environments.

So a trip to Homebase and 4 coats of green woodstain later I now have a green board that I intend to add the following scenic elements to.

The rubbish bins on the right are from Antenociti's Workshop whilst the planters and park benches are from Fenris Games, here are a couple of close up shot of the benches:

And yes, they are as finicky as they look to put together, though definitely worth it IMO.

All I need to do now is make up some pathways and order a centerpiece for the board from Thomarillion and hope the weather sorts itself out long enough for me to undercoat everything and get the board varnished.

Should have more soon.

J

2010-08-15T13:51:00.009+01:00

Right as promised I'm back with a bunch of pics.

First up is the finished vehicle: a Warthog from Antenociti's Workshop.

I got it to go with the Infinity models that I'm using for Flying Lead but I think it would work well for other games, might even use it for Pulp City as something the Mysterious Man has created for his minions to travel in, we will see.

As for the horny monster, get your minds out of the gutter people, I'm talking about this guy:

Finally finished him (although I have realised that I forgot to add static grass to the base but that will be soon remedied). And just in time for Tuesday's D&D session >:)

I've also been starting a fair few minis as I said yesterday, here are a lovely group of ladies who are hopefully being finished soon:

L-R we have 2 models from Piazo's Ptolus range that are destined for the D&D campaign, (though thet're for the adventure after the one I'm running now), and 3 models for Malfaux.

Dr Warlock has mentioned on his blog that his Malifaux mini's seem to take longer to paint than the PC ones and I can definitely agree with that. The models are great but they do seem to take that bit longer to paint up, they seem more finikity and it takes that bit longer to get them finished. Still I will keep soldiering on.

As for my Pulp City stuff there's quite a bit on the go:

June Summers is the closest to completion, she just need a bit of attention to her base and right eye and she's done.

Jade Hawk's the next closest, an absolute joy to paint I'm really happy with the way she's turning out. She only took around 1 day to get her to this point and now I just need to finish the base to complete her.

These four are at least part way to completion, Ace of Wraiths of the left is coming along very nicely, (one of these day's I'll actually paint an ACW Union army and not just use the colour scheme for other projects...no really I will...probably :)

Finally we have the silhouette brigade here that I just need to start, I think Kitty Cheshire (2nd from left) will be the next as I have a pretty good idea what I want to do with her.

I've also made up some Pixel tokens for Vector (2nd from right) to call on in battle:

They're made from 2mm Foamed PVC, something I found on Antenociti's Workshop (I believe he used it for a lot of the buildings on his Salute table this year), it is to Plasticard what Foamcore is to cereal packet card and the 2mm stuff is exactly the right size to fit the slots in PC bases hence the tabs I added to the bottom of each pixel, (I slightly screwed up the Mega Pixel as you can see, but it was an easy fix and a bit of greenstuff will hide the join), now I just need to pick up some bases to put them on.

Other than these I still have to figure out Dr Red's base as well as Skyline's, finish Virus and I still have a complete block on how to paint Apebot, I think I just have to strip off what I've done and start again from scratch unfortunately.

I thought it would be nice to put all my completed PC min's together to show what I've got so far:

First up the Villains

Next the Heroes/Villains

And finally the Hero(es)

Another reason why I want to get Jade Hawk and AoW painted, poor old Solar's feeling a little lonely fighting the good fight on his own, and Howler and Chimp Chi need their leader to turn up soon as well.

I think my next PC buy will need to be from the Heavy Metal group, not sure who yet, will make a decision soon though.

Anyway, just one more thing to show you this time, and that's the Malifaux building I was working on:

Just need to paint this sucker up and it's ready to go, I've also worked out a plan for the next building I want to make to go with this as well as a plan for the board I want to put them on, but more on that next time I think.

Right, I've rambled on far longer than I'd originally intended so I'll stop wasting your time now.

So until next time, stay safe.

J

The Empire Strikes First

2010-08-14T18:32:00.002+01:00

So, long time no update, sorry 'bout that just haven't had anything to post for a while, I seemed to start a lot of stuff and be unable to finish it or get it to a point that it was even WiPable really.

I've finally managed to get a few things done enough to show, but I won't be able to get photo's up till tomorrow. Still I felt like bloging something today just to prove to myself I still can if nothing else.

So tomorrow, prepare to see a vehicle completed, a horny monster and some more Pulp City mini's in various states of paintedness (and possibly a few less words being made up by me :)

On some non-mini related news, saw the announcement trailer for Bioshock Infinite today...so ridiculously excited about this I'm positively giddy, can it be 2012 already?

'Till tomorrow

J

I See You

2010-07-11T17:48:00.005+01:00

Thankfully my hayfever has let up quite considerably of late so my eyes have been a lot better, it's just been the heat and humidity that have made doing anything hobby related a pain...oh well, c'est la vie.

I have made some progress on one front, I've completed the first of my homemade Pulp City Supreme write-ups, I've posted the finished background and rules over at the PC forums, here: http://forum.pulp-city.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1348

Go have a read and feel free to comment on any of the rules you think might need tweaking.

I restarted running my D&D campaign on Tuesday last, first time DMing in Steve's Gaming shed. I'm using a version of D&D 3.5 coupled with some of the parts of 4th edition that I actually liked and it seemed to go well, a lot more enjoyable than 4th ed. as far as I'm concerned, (I actually want to play it now rather than feel like I have to slog through it for the sake of the group like I did with 4th). I'm using the Tunderspire Labyrinth adventure as a template, but changing things toward the end to go my own way with it.

The guy's all seemed happy and the only thing I might go back and look at is how tough some of the basic enemies are, as they seemed a little too easy for the party to defeat leaving the leader somewhat exposed quite quickly, still it's a learning experience for me so we'll have to see what happens in 2 weeks.

Despite the weather I have done a few hobby related bits , the main one being a spot of terrain building inspired by an article in Privateer Press' No Quarter magazine. Now I don't play Warmachine, Hordes or Monsterpocalypse but I have found the painting and hobby articles in NQ to be very good, so with some money saved up I took a trip to Leisuregames in Finchley last Wednesday and amongst other things picked up some copies I was missing. I one of them had an article on making Cryxian buildings in it and it looked mighty fine indeed, in fact I realised that it would actually make a good building for Malifaux, (when I actually get round to playing it that is), and as I had a number of the bits required, it only took a quick walk to my local Hobby Stores shop to get some styrene bits-and-bobs and I was off.

Here's a pic of the build so far:

Most of my day today has been spent in front of the TV watching the F1 British Grand Prix cutting and gluing rivets into place, I still have the back of the building to rivet and I'm trying to work out how I want to do the chimney I want to put on the left end of the building, then I need to sort out the base and add the steps up to the front door.

I'm really happy with the result so far and I'm really looking forward to making more scenery and terrain soon.

I have also been putting paint on a few more Pulp City models, but the pics I took today were so blurry you couldn't make anything out properly...oh well, you'll just have to wait a bit longer to see them.

Lastly, Spartan Games have finally released some new Uncharted Seas models, in the form of Destroyers, I've picked up a pack to see how they play, here's a quick pic of them "in the nude" as it were:

Not sure if I have enough green stuff to get the bases done before Tuesday, but we'll have a go and see what happens.

Not sure how they'll work, but the Reassignment & Recycle rules make them quite an interesting prospect. My only issue is that squadrons are fielded in sizes between 2 and 4, and Spartan have blistered them up in packs of 3 , meaning if you want to use full strength squadrons you're either going to have spare ships to find something to do with, or you have to buy 4 blisters and play large enough games to be able to field them all.

Anyway, that's all for now, take care.

J

Stay Lucky

2010-06-30T20:07:00.003+01:00

Played my first couple of games of Flying Lead last night in Rich's tournament. My usual luck with the dice held true as I lost both games, with the second game ending in the ignominious sight of my entire force pegging it off the table in turn 3 after a couple of bad activation rolls meant I hardly moved onto the table & then put my leader FAR too far out in front of his men and saw him first get stunned and then capped as he lay on the floor.

Still we live and learn I suppose. I enjoyed myself and whilst they may have come last at least they looked good doing it, even if I do say so myself :)

And a shot of the group I used in the tourney:

I will expand the force over time, next purchases will probably be a couple of bikes, an LMG and maybe a couple of flamethrower armed troops.

Only a quick update tonight, as I am prepping for the re-start of my D&D roleplay campaign and getting Rich C's Devourers ready to paint, although with the weather the way it is currently the paint acts very strangely and I end up covered in sweat after 30 seconds of sitting down, so I may leave it a bit and see if the weather breaks any time soon first.

More soon-ish

J

And the Beat Goes On

2010-06-23T18:27:00.007+01:00

Grass is evil...or at least it's pollen is.

Hayfever has me in it's harsh grip and despite being medicated to the eyeballs, iroically I still seem to end up with itching eyes which can make concentrating on painting a little tricky at times, still I persevere, I will not let the oppressive pollen beat me down! ;)

Right, now that's off my chest, back to the point of this blog.

First off I'd like to welcome Doctor Warlock as my newest follower. A fellow Pulp Cityite and creator of some really cool bases for his really cool mini's, I hope my somewhat erratic updates will keep you interested sir.

First up I have finished up my Solar mini:

I decided on a slightly different take on his colour scheme, taking inspiration from from cover art I'd seen for the new Mark Millar (creator of Wanted & Kick-Ass) comic Nemesis.

The all white outfit really struck me as a cool idea, but I thought on a mini it'd be a little dull, so I decided to give him the red cape after seeing the advert art for Nemesis that had him with blood on his face in a sudo-Joker smile (the idea of the comic is "What if the world's greatest superbeing was evil", the tagline for the adds was "What if Batman was The Joker"). I thought the contrast between the two colours was pretty striking.

I'm really happy with the way he has come out even with the matte varnish crazing a little on the back of the cape, I think it adds a clothy texture that I actually quite like.

Ive also painted up these two guys:

They're Bonni & Klyde from Hasslefree's Grymn range and have been prepped and ready for paint for the last couple of years. I decided to pant them as I am going to take the Grymn I have painted to the club next week as an extra force that anyone can use in the Flying Lead tourney.

Here are the rest of the Grymn I have painted:

And the obligatory group shot:

I've always like Hassslefree's ranges and the Grymn are one of the standout lines they do, I really should paint the rest of the ones I've got up.

Still to do are the final 5 Infinity mini's I need for the tourney, which should be finished before the end of the week, here's a WiP:

Not much left to do on them now, and the Warthog vehicle is just waiting for some decals and then that will also be finished, so all-in-all it should be a good week painting wise.

Should have more for you soon, so take care & I'll speak to you all soon.

J

Great Expectations

2010-06-03T17:27:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm officially unemployed as of last Friday.

Bit of a strange last few months, so I decided that I'd take a week off before starting the job search, just take some time and recharge the batteries before getting into it next week.

No painting as yet as I have some things to sort out around the house first, but I do have a couple of little projects to try and get done quickly before I do Richard's Devourers which I'll try and finish in the next week or so. Rich at the club is going to use his Flying Lead rules for a small tourney on 29th (they're a very nice set of modern skirmish rules based on Songs of Blades and Heroes that can be purchased, among other place, here for a very reasonable sum if you're interested...right if that plug doesn't get me some leeway in the tourney then nothing will :0)

Anyway, as I was saying, I want to put together a force to participate and as I only need 8 figures I should have a fully painted group to use if I get on with it, especially as I was doing a bit here and there before the redundancy, as you can see here:

The 5 figures are all from Corvus Belli's Infinity game, the vehicle (which wont see action in the tourney as I only need a 600pts force) is a Warthog from Antenociti's Workshop's Governance of Technology range. None are completed yet, but they're all close, which leaves me with 3 more figures to paint, everything to varnish and the force is done...skirmish games are soooooo much easier to get forces done for, no wonder hardly anyone at the club plays big army games anymore.

I also want to get Apebot and Virus finished for Pulp City (and I may sneak Solar in there as well and I have an idea for a colour scheme that I really want to try for him).

Also on the Pulp City front I'm also trying to get some home-brewed heroes written up that I started for Supreme Genesis 3 last year. My main problem up to now has always been the fact that whilst I love coming up with the background and origins for the characters, (something that I've always enjoyed, as many of my old D&D and Marvel Superheroes RPG characters will attest to), but the rules side of thing has flummoxed me somewhat. So I thanked the gaming gods when I came across this post on the Pulp City forum which lays it a nice set of guidelines that even a dunce like me can understand...now to try and pull it all together.

So that's all for now, take care, hopefully more soon.

J

R.I.P. Matt Randy

2010-05-22T20:26:00.002+01:00

Matt Randy (aka Invader Larb), a near constant presence on the Pulp City Forums sadly took his own life sometime between this past Wednesday & Friday.

A friendly guy, he was always quick to welcome newcomers, help out with questions about the game and offer encouragement to all the painters showing off their newly painted wonders.

I only had the briefest of correspondence's with him, but he was a good guy and a true gamer. His loss is a tragedy and my thought's and prayer's go out to his family.

Rest in Peace Matt, you will be missed.

J

Almost nearly

2010-05-02T14:38:00.004+01:00

Almost managed three weeks in a row, unfortunately the weather last week prevented me from finishing up Howler & Frances Gator, and then I got a little distracted by a few things so didn't really have anything to post for last week.

Anyway, Howler & Frances are now done & pics can be found here & here for your perusal, (the pics are on p.2 of the forum link).

I have started a couple of more PC figures, in the form of A.R.C.s very own Dynamic Duo, Apebot & Virus

I think Apebot's going to get a bit of colour added to him somewhere, but I haven't quite worked out where exactly that's going to be yet, possibly the knees & elbows, maybe the chest as well, I'll see where the moment takes me when I do it.

Virus needs some highlighting done and the glove sorted out, but he's coming along nicely.

However, they will have to wait a little bit longer to be completed as Richard has asked me to try & finish up his Devourers of Vile-Tis minis for Confrontation. Now as I've had them for about 2 years now I think it's a fair request, & it seems Malk, who comes to the club to play Uncharted Seas, wants a game of Confrontation v.3 against Richard at some point soon, so I will have to try and get the remaining 9 mini's finished, (If you're interested, the seven completed minis from the set can be viewed here, scroll down almost to the bottom of the page).

As you can see from the above pic, the 2 minis on the lower-right are getting there, & have been for about a year. At least I've got the rest of them stuck together now, (or at least all-bar-one. As with all Rackham's metal minis, they look fantastic, but for some reason they can be Soooooo frustrating to put together, I don't know why it is,but I advise against sticking/pinning Rackham's stuff together around young children, they may learn words you don't want them too ;)

Anyway, should have new pics of these guys a little further along the path to completion next week.

Take it easy & enjoy the bank holiday (if you're in the UK).

J

Two in a Row

2010-04-18T20:34:00.004+01:00

Well I managed to get back here to post for a second week in a row so I think the muse is well & truly back with me, and it appears to be named Pulp City, as having finished Rook off I had the urge to paint more and ended up finishing Chimp Chi & Nuke this week as well.

I've already put the finished pictures up over on my Displaced Miniatures page (link in the right-hand margin) and you can also see them over on the Pulp City Forum &/or Lead Adventures Forum threads.

I really enjoyed painting Nuke especially & it really fired me up to get more done, so I've already moved onto the next two PC minis, Howler & Francis Gator:

As well as these two, I've also prepped the next three PC figures to undercoat, Virus, Apebot & Guerilla:

The Lamppost on Apebot's base is from Fenris Games Street Furniture range (the same company provided all the base insert for my PC minis.

All this has meant that the Minotaur that I originally began to break my block with hasn't been finished yet, but I'm still doing bits on him here & there as you can see below:

I've still got to figure out what I'm doing with his snout, but everything else is pretty much sorted & hopefully the next week or so should see him completed.

Anyway, the important thing is 4 more completed minis to add to my yearly tally, with a fair few more on the horizon Woo-and indeed-Hoo :)

Should have more for you all next week.

J

Breaking the Block

2010-04-11T18:07:00.004+01:00

Apologies to everybody for the extended period of inactivity on the blog for the last couple of months, especially to my latest follower Peter W who unfortunately began following me just at the point I got hit with a serious case of Painters Block.

In the past I've had periods where I haven't had much inspiration with models I'm painting, but never the sort of complete lack of ideas that hit me this last couple of months, even painting islands for the Uncharted Seas League I'm running at the club had me drawing a blank.

Any time I tried to sit down to paint I'd end up just having no idea what I wanted to do and if I made myself paint something I couldn't stand whatever I ended up doing. All VERY frustrating.

Thanks to leonmallett for some words of encouragement and ideas to help me out. In the end though it all came down to needing to find something to spark an idea in my daft brain.

In this case it was sorting out what the guys I roleplay with wanted to do once Steve's Star Wars game comes to a the end of "Episode 1". Once they'd decided they wanted me to run D&D again I started planning the adventure and whilst I was sorting out the overall story I suddenly got hit with the idea of having the main bad guy have a Minotaur bodyguard/Right-Hand-Man (or creature) and having had a Rackham Minotaur sitting based & ready for paint in my lead mountain for about 3 years now I got going almost without thinking about it.

So after a week of fitting in a bit of painting around coursework I've got him to the following point:

Still a ways to go, but the main thing is that it's working out well and I'm enjoying the process again, so much so in fact that on Friday I started planning out the board I want to use when I start playing Pulp City at the club. That in turn led me to finish off Rook today whilst I was waiting on a couple of bits to dry on the Minotaur.

Literally just finished sticking the grass tufts to the base before I took the photo, now all he, (along with The Gentleman), needs is some varnish, which now the weather appears to be behaving itself again I might actually get done this week. I feel the need to get some members of ARC done now to balance things up a bit.

It's good to be back, and I hope to have more photo's next week, fingers crossed.

J

Musings About Muses Pt1

2010-01-31T18:52:00.002Z

No painting this week, there was a Blood Bowl 7's tournament held at the club yesterday and I spent a fair bit of time sorting out how the boards would be got to the right size. In the end a simple solution involving cardboard boxes cut into a "mask" to cover up the unused squares and thin card used to mark out the end zones and lines of scrimmage completed the whole thing rather well as it turned out.

My run of consistency at club events continued as I "won" the wooden spoon for coming last again...still, it was an enjoyable day and I think I came away with the most casualties caused over the day, (mainly due to the beat-down I gave Ian's female Norse team...though with 3 turns left of the game & all his team off the pitch injured or unconscious I still couldn't pick up the ball for the win Grrrr), so at least my team was good at something :)

So, as I have nothing to show or talk about regarding my painting projects but still trying to keep regular postings going I thought I'd wax a little lyrical about the people that have inspired me to do this hobby, the sculptor and painters that I admire.

Sculptors first. It's the mini's that get me hooked into a game or company, I don't think I've ever had a set of game rules because they were good, it's always the look of the miniatures that grabs my attention, the rules are a secondary concern.

Over the years I've come to own far more models than games system I've played & I've come to appreciate certain sculptors styles over others and will gladly pick up mini's by them even if I don't necessarily have a use for them at the time, (though I am trying to stop that these days, I really do need to work on the stuff I've got as much as possible without ading to it).

Thinking it over I've got a list of sculptor whose styles I really like and in no particular order they are:

Werner Klocke - turns out I have a few of Mr Klocke mini's, long before I put a name to the work I kept seeing mini's that I really wanted from a number of different companies & quite a lot of them turned out to be his. All 4 of my oft-mentioned fantasy heroes group are Werner Klocke sculpts.

Edgar Ramos - Love his H.O.S.T range and the self-sculpted Ramos model for Malifaux is one of my faves of the whole range.

Kev White - Mr Hasslefree has managed to get a fair bit of money out of me over the last few of years with no real use for any of the models, but damn if they don't paint up pretty fantasticly, I may not always have a use for them, but Hasslefree is the only exception I have to buying mini's don't have a definitive use for .

Steve Buddle - Eolith's founder is the 2nd of the sculptors on this list that frequent the Forum of Doom, one of my regular online hangouts (I tend to lurk rather than post, but every now and again I'll pop my head up). 54mm is a scale I have no experience with, no use for other than the love of painting, but still I return again & again and almost own the whole range, keep your eyes n the blog as I intend to get as many as possible painted this year.

Felix Paniagua - I really like the Trollblood faction for Hordes, in fact when Hordes Mk II comes out later this year I'll probably start a small force of them for the game. Mr Paniagua is the guy that sculpts most of them & his own miniatures over at Avatars of War are awsome.

Juan Diaz - Love or hate GW you have got to admit Juan Diaz is a great sculptor, he's responcible for some of the best mini's GW produce.

Brian Nelson - GW sculptor #2 and the man that re-defined what Space Orks were supposed to look like, since he's over at Forgeworld I've have to fight the urge to spend a horrendus amount of money there. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up.

Adam Clarke - FOD sculptor #3 on the list, Black Scorpion do make some fantastic mini's, the Fantasy Pirate range is probably my favorite, that Giant is brilliant.

Paul Muller - It's not just because he sculpted 2 of my favorite Pulp City A.R.C. mini's, although they did firmly cement his place on the list :) Paul Muller does muscle tone like no-one else, the Ghouls he did for Heresy were a great evolution to the ones he did for GW, and his Not-Frankenstein's Monster model is one that I have to find a use for soon.

Andy Foster - To round off the list we have the 4th and final member of the FOD sculptors, the man that does some of the finest gribblies around, as well as some great characters as well. The Dragon he's working on looks amazing.

OK, so those are the guy's who produce the mini's I really like & tend to be the ones I gravitate to if I see their work on a game or for a company.

Next time I'll talk about some of the painters that have inspired me to improve my skills.

'Till next Time

J

2010-01-24T18:48:00.003Z

I'm officially up and running for the year now. I've handed over the last of the 1000 Sons to Richard and I've started painting some of my own minis up again :)

So I get to put 10 points toward the painting tally, technically it should be 15, but as 10 of the marines were almost done before the new year I didn't think they could count completely, so 1/2 & 1/2 seemed right.

They came up pretty well I think, quite glad to see the back of them though...there's only so much blue & green a person can paint before you'd rather never see those colours in proximity to one another for a quite while.

Anyway, now onto the new stuff:

Here we have Morgue Master McMourning for Malifaux alongside a Werner Klocke sculpted Dwarven thief from Reapers Warlord range who is going to be one of my fantasy game heroes. I'm enjoying McMourning, though I think the eyes & teeth are probably going to be a little tricky to paint with that hand there, but so far he's been great fun to do. Haven't got too far with the dwarf, I've been a little stuck on a choice of colour scheme for him & it's a fantastic sculpt so I want do it justice, watch this space to see how he develops.

And here we have my first 3 Pulp City minis, The Gentleman; Rook; & Howler.

I think The Gentleman is done now, just got to get him varnished, it took me a little while to work out what I wanted to do with the severed robot head he's got his foot on, and I think it's turned out ok, really nice model to paint. Rooks armour's now almost done, I need to highlight all the metal areas & the hair, then get the base done. He looks so shiny because I've used a Tamiya Clear Red wash to make the red really pop, varnishing will get rid of it. Howler's a major '80s action movie fan and has based his look on Stallone in Cobra so who was I to argue, a quick Google image search later & I had my basic colour scheme. I still have to highlight the flesh & paint the belts, buckles, gun & base but again a really fun sculpt to paint, I'm looking forward to getting all 3 done very soon.

Hopefully I'll have proper pictures of all these guys within the next couple of weeks.

More soon

J

2010-01-10T14:12:00.002Z

Ok, here we go with the first proper blog of the new year.

First up, work is progressing nicely with the final set of 1000 Sons.

As you can see 4 of the 5 are on course for finishing soon, 1 however did take a header off the undercoating tray I've got and needed redoing and with the snow we've had I only got it done yesterday.

However, I decided as I was going to undercoat anyway I'd get a few more models done as well and they can sit and wait for me to paint them, hopefully keeping me from buying too many new minis (I've decided to try and not buy anything unnecessary this year if I can help it - Roleplaying, games I'm actually playing and my solo fantasy campaign are the only things I'm going to buy as required, the Smartmax stuff might get a look in, but I need to paint up my Eolith mini's before I can justify the expense).

Very blacked up at the moment so not much detail on view, but in order from L-R: Nuke; Francis Gator and Chimp-Chi from Pulp City; The Harbinger of Justice from the old Harbinger mag; a Bantam Class Battleship for Iron Stars; Dr. McMourning; Sebastian; Ramos and Steampunk Arachnid from Malifaux; Forsaken St. Mark and Huntress from Dark Age.

I've also got the last 2 members of my hero group for my solo fantasy campaign primed as well and the 4 of them will be first on my list to paint once the 1000 Sons are done. They'll be making their first appearance on this blog next week all being well.

One more pic for this week, another Pulp City model I've started doing bits to whist waiting for Chaos Marines to dry, the bad guy Rook:

No prizes for guessing where my inspiration for his colour scheme came from:) I still a lot of work to do on him though. The armour on the torso needs another highlight and wash, the halberd needs doing and the base hasn't even been started yet, but I think he's coming along nicely.

Right, well that's all for this week, I'm going to try and post every Sunday, at least for this month, so next week should see the completion of the 1000 Sons and the beginnings of my fantasy hero group, so more soon :)

J

Merry New Year and Whatnot

2010-01-01T18:28:00.003Z

So, what with the weather being cold & wet recently I didn't get a chance to finish off any of the last few 1000 Sons, leaving my painting points at 80 for the year, not as much as I'd have liked , but still a good total for me.

I have finally managed to get the last 5 1000 Sons undercoated yesterday so they will be the first mini's to get painted this year and I've now got the last 2 models I need for my solo fantasy campaign hero group stuck on bases so they will follow shortly after I've finished the Sons, more on them next time (hopefully with pictures).

Had a good Christmas, despite being on anti-biotics. I didn't get anything toy related, (unless you count GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra on Blu Ray), but I did spend some time contemplating the coming year and I think the plan I put up here last time should be fine, I may add some 54mm models from Eolith and Smartmax into the mix as well, though the Smartmax stuff will have to wait until after I get my car serviced & MOTed this month before I'll know if I can afford any toys for a few months & of course the redundancy is coming up fast, so I'll have to manage my money a bit better for a while until I know that I've got a steady income again.

Anyway, more soon, should have photos next time as well.

J

2009-12-20T14:15:00.005Z

Sorry it's been quiet for so long, not really had much to blog about recently.

Anyway I finished off the Terminators for Richard's 1000 Sons, so that's another 19 points to ad for the year.

Currently I have the final 10 Chaos Marines close to being finished, just need to finish some highlighting and black lining, and then I just have to paint a Icon bearer and 4 Lascannon wielding Havoks and I'll be finished.

In between finishing the Terminators and getting the final 15 CSM from Richard I was planning to paint up a few of my Pulp City figures during a week off from work that I'd booked. Unfortunately I ended up feeling pretty crappy for most of the week so only got a little work done on one model, The Gentleman.

He's not completely finished yet, but I only need to do some work on the guns and the base & he'll be done. I'm really happy with the way he's turning out, I've tried to give him a darker complexion that I normally paint to give him a more Latino look to match his background and I've probably got more layers painted onto the suit than any model I've ever painted. I think it's come out pretty well, don't you think?

Right, so with 2009 almost done, now my thoughts turn to 2010, and plans for painting are getting laid down. Obviously I'm virtually incapable of actually seeing most of my plans through, as the past 2 years worth of blogs will attest to, however, I'm not going to let that stop me from trying again:)

Currently my plans are as follows:

1 - Finish Richard's Devourers for Confrontation
2 - Paint Rob's Dark Elf Warhammer Fantasy army
3 - Paint up and start my solo fantasy campaign using Two Hour Wargames' Warrior Heroes rules
4 - Pulp City
5 - Malifaux

I may also pick up a few more bits for my 40k Red Scorpions Marines so that I can play some games at the club with a balanced force at around the 2000 points mark. Crimson Skies is always a possibility as well, along with some models for roleplaying with if I run another adventure, I don't know what yet, that will wait until Steve's run us through his Star Wars campaign to a natural break point and I'll poll the guys then to see what they want to do.

Well that's all for now, I hope you all have a good Christmas and get all the pewter & plastic that you asked for.

More soon.

J

2009-11-01T11:01:00.007Z

I hate the internet, it keeps throwing up far too many tempting things for me to want to do hobbywise...

Case in point, I'd resigned myself to not doing any of my origional ideas for pulp gaming till next year, then I came across this post on The Lead Adventures forum and suddenly I have a major craving to invest heavily in Crimson Skies again.

Case 2, I pop over to Worldworks & lo-and-behold they've released the next two sets for their new Terrainlinx system, they both look stunning and now I want to go build Himmelveil and play around in it.

Also, I went and picked up Wolfenstein for my 360 on Friday and Wierd War 2 gaming is also festering in the back of my mind as a fun thing to get into, especially as I've been reading the rulebook for Exile Studios excellent RPG Hollow Earth Expedition and the idea seeds of occult Nazi's and pulp adventure are definitely putting down roots in my brain.

Anyway, Pulp city is up next whatever else I decide to do, I've almost completed Richard's 1000 Sons, and I intend to get a few PC figures done before I get the last 14 figures from Richard to paint, so hopefully next week there'll actually be some pics of new stuff up here and not just me babbling on incessantly ;)

More soon

J

2009-10-25T15:46:00.002Z

Good progress has been made lately on Richard's 1000 Sons. With 9 more completed and handed over I now have 10 Terminators waiting on basing and varnishing and the final 9 Terminators outside with their undercoats drying, so all being equal I should have everything that was given to me completed by the first club night of November. That'll leave just 14 figures for him to find & put together and handed over for painting and his big Apocalypse game against Mike will finally be on.

Once the 1000 Sons are done I'm going to move on and get Pulp City up sorted to demo at the club, it's a game I really want to play and along with Malifaux is a game I really want to focus on next year.

On the Malifaux front I've gone ahead and ordered 2 new starter sets, The Ortegas and Som'er Teeth Jones' Gremlin gang. There is some method to my madness for buying these. Looking at the 2 starter crews I had I realised they were both entirely close combat orientated and I don't think that's a good idea for demoing the rules to people. The 2 new starters are much more balanced with range as well as CC capabilities. it should make for a fun demo, plus the gremlins and their wild pigs should provide some comedy value :)

After that I'm still a little undecided, I haven't focused on Pulp gaming as I'd intended this year, (Pulp City not withstanding), and Crimson Skies is still a project I want to pursue, but I doubt I'll get to it this year, we'll see how things go.

That's all for this update.

More Soon

J

Malifaux Review

2009-09-29T14:07:00.012+01:00

Ok, something a little different this time out.

I thought I'd try and write a review of the new skirmish game Malifaux by Wyrd Miniatures, never done anything like this before so lets see if I ramble on half as much as I think I may :)

The Miniatures

Ok, so the reason I play a game or a faction/army within a game is because the shiny miniatures attract my attention and get me all excited and buying a game faction/army in the first place.

Wyrd Miniatures have been producing a range of very cool mini's for a couple of years before they had a ruleset to go with them and were a range I kept looking at. At the time however they weren't easy to get in this country so I resisted. Until Malifaux was announced that is, at which point I promptly ordered a fair few: for the Resurrectionists I got Morgue Master McMourning; Sebastian, his assistant; a number of Flesh Constructs; and a couple of Nurses. For the Arcanists I got Ramos; a couple of Steampunk Arachnid Swarms; and an Executioner Class Steamborg.

The models maketh the game in my mind and I do like the models produced so far, if I have one niggling issue it is the fact that some of the models look a little cartoonish, whilst others far more realistic (or as realistic as you can get when you're dealing with a steampunk game), the looks of Ramos & McMourning are a good example of this difference in style.

Still, as I say, it's only a minor niggle and quite frankly the models are very well done, so I can't bitch too loudly as they all have endearing qualities that I like a lot.

Also, Wyrd make a number of metal base inserts & accessories, I've used the Victorian sets for the Arcanists, that are designed to be inserted into the 30-50mm bases that every new game coming out seem to use now. These inserts look fantastic & I really like them, especially as they give some nice weight to the bases that resin ones don't, (having said that, the resin ones I'm using for the Resurrectionists are from Dragonforge & are very good as well. You just don't get the weight that I like to feel on my models...more proof that I'm getting older I guess ;)

The Rulebook

Next up, we have the very nice 212 page, full colour, soft cover rulebook.

Of the 212 pages, about 88 pages hold the rules, 81 pages are faction lists and the rest is background and a thoroughly entertaining story that runs through the book introducing the world and some of the main players in the universe.

Background

After the miniatures, the thing that really gets me into a game is the background. I'm a sucker for a good alternate history, and whilst Malifaux doesn't have the most detailed alt-history out there I think it works nicely.

The game is set in an alternate reality where magic is real and anyone on Earth can use it to some degree.

By the late 1700's however magic power was on the decline and desperate steps were being taken to try and discover new sources of magical power. Soon they found another world just outside our existence that radiated vast amounts of magical energy, this world was only separated from ours by a thin veil of reality, one which was breached by the most powerful spell ever cast, one that killed a vast number of lesser magic users helping the casting.

On the other side of the breach they discovered the abandoned city of Malifaux and soon after they discovered Soulstone, the source of the magical energy. This substance boosted the users magic powers, but got depleted over time, however, it got it's name from it's ability to be recharged by being close to a person when they died.

Malifaux was colonised, but after only 10 years an unknown enemy attacked Malifaux, brutally killed everyone there and sealed the breach to our world in the space of one night.
100 years to the hour later the breach mysteriously reopened and soon Malifaux and its environs around it were once again being colonised & the mining of Soulstone begun once again.

It is now 1901, 4 years after the breach reopened & Malfaux is populated by convict labor and numerous individuals looking to gain power by/through Soulstone, leading to numerous factions vying for control of the city & the Soulstone mining operations, not to mention the re-emergence of The Neverborn, creatures from our very nightmares that claim the World of Malifaux as their own.

The Rules

Right, now onto the Nitty-Gritty part, the rules themselves.

The first big difference between Malifaux and other games is that there are no dice involved in the game at all. Instead the game used a Fate Deck of 54 cards (a standard deck of cards, including Jokers, can be used. However, Wyrd produce Fate decks that are definitely worth picking up IMO).

The deck has 4 suits: Rams; Crows; Masks; & Tomes. Numbered 1 (ace) to 13 with 2 Jokers, Black and Red (Black is the worst card in the game = 0, has no suit and must be used if drawn, Red is the best card in the game = 14 and can be any suit)

Turn sequence:

Each turn is split up a follows.

1- Draw Phase - Each player has their own Fate deck to use and every round you draw a Control Hand of up to 6 or 7 cards, (depending on size of the game), that can be used to help your crew Cheat Fate in Duels.

2- Activation Phase – The game uses an I-go-you-go structure with each player activating 1 model at a time, then passing play to their opponent and so on until each model has been activated.

Every model comes with a 4-sided stat card:

On the front you get the models name, cost and suit that the model is associated with (each of the 4 main factions are associated with a specific suit in the Fate Deck). On the back you have the models stats, special rules and wound markers. In the center of the card you get a detailed description of the various Actions & Triggers that model has access to.

Each model has 2 Action Points to spend in a round and all actions have a cost associated with it (0,1 or 2pts usually), there are universal actions that anyone can use and model also has specific actions that only they can do that are listed on it's card.

Any check is made during a models activation is accomplished via a Duel, all types of which involve the same basic procedure:

1-Activating model flips the top card of their Fate Deck revealing a card, adds it's value and suit to the relevant Stat, add any modifiers and get a total.
2- The model may then either Cheat Fate, by changing the flipped Fate Card with one of his/her Control Hand cards, or Use a Soulstone (if they have the ability) to flip a second Fate Card adding it's value and suit to the first card (you may do both the above if you wish)
3-Calculate final total, if you scored higher than the Target Number then you succeed. Whether you win of loose you may activate 1 triggered effect if you meet all the requirements for it.

For combat, casting spells or any opposed action, both the attacking and defending players perform the above procedures and try to score higher than each other.

3- Closing Phase – various effects wear off during this phase and you re-shuffle your Fate Deck.

Thoughts:

I have to say I really like the way the rules read and work. I think this is the first time I've ever read a set of rules where I've made educated guesses on how various aspects of the game work and actually been proved right. I really like the Fate Decks too, they bring a nicely different feel to proceedings and God knows, any game where I don't have to roll dice has got to be good (I might as well be known as “Anything-But-a-1-Jon” with some of my dice rolling).

I also really like the fact that even damage is random, you flip a Fate Card to determine the amount of damage you do to your opponent, which will be either Weak, Moderate or Severe depending on the card. I think that will lend itself to some tense battles where one side will need to kill a opponents character before their next turn only to inflict a flesh-wound on them instead and such like.

The Factions

There are 5 faction in the game, 4 main ones and The Outcasts who are mainly mercenaries, individuals looking to make a quick buck and Gremlins that live in the Bayou that surrounds Malifaux.

The 4 main Factions are:

The Guild, rulers of Malifaux who try to control the supply of Soulstone back to Earth. The faction can be split further into groups that specialise against each of the other factions (The Ortegas are Neverborn hunters, Lady Justice's crew tackle the Resurrectionists and Sonnia Criid acts against the Arcanists);

The Resurrectionists, master of Necromancy and surgical re-animation, they are individuals who hear the whispers of Malifaux's dark past guiding them in their depraved art;

The Arcanists, rogue magicians who have an underground movement smuggling Soulstone out of Malifaux under The Guild's nose;

The Neverborn, creatures from our very nightmares given form and purpose, to kill everyone in Malifaux.

To create a crew you first choose a faction and then a Soulstone value for the game (Soulstones are used to buy your force), Scraps are between 1-45 Soulstones and use only 1 Master per Crew, whereas a Brawl is between 30-70 Soulstones and you have 2 Masters per crew. A basic starter set battle would be a 25 Soulstone Scrap.

Like with the new Warmachine MkII rules you don't pay for your Master to lead the crew, you get him/her for free. The rest of your crew are bought using the Soulstones decided upon with any unspent Soulstones being added to the Soulstone Cache that your Master has to give you your crew's starting Soulstone pool which can be used to help you Cheat Fate during duels. And there you have it, it's as simple as that. Your not limited to just your own faction though, Mercenary's can be hired by anyone (up to a maximum of 2) but they cost a little more to hire than their card indicates.

Before battle commences you can also choose Strategy's and Schemes. Both give games more of an edge, with each giving Victory Points for succeeding in them. Strategy's are public knowledge, whereas Schemes are kept private.

Thoughts:

I really like the factions, they have a nice and distinct difference between them and they are each full of interesting characters and minions. The Strategy's and Schemes are a nice touch and I think they'll add another level to the games...providing of course the urge to kill the entire enemy crew off in a bloody orgy of carnage can be overcome to actually remember that you have Strategy's and Schemes to achieve in the first place :)

Final Thoughts:

All in all I'm really looking forward to trying this game out soon. The rules are very well put together, look fantastic and will hopefully play as well as I think they will. The models are full of character and the background in the book provides a lot of them with a genuine personality to go along with the look...like the front cover says, this is a “Character-driven skirmish game” and I think the battles fought with these guys will indeed become stories in the overarching tale of Malifaux.

I recommend these rules and the miniatures to anyone. It's a relatively cheap game to get into, only a starter set (around £18-£23), deck of cards (a cheap set from a corner store will do to get you started) and the Rules (£23ish) are needed to play, obviously a friend to play against will help, (and you could always go halves on the rulebook), but that's it. Not bad really considering the cost of a lot of games out there now.

Anyway, this is way longer than I expected it to be, but I'm pretty happy with the result. I hope I didn't bore you too much with it ;)

More soon

J

This one's for you Steve :)

2009-09-25T13:02:00.004+01:00

Right here we are again, a quick blog this time round, possibly followed by a somewhat rambling one in a day or so maybe, so lets get going with the one that may make sense then shall we?

Leading off today with the first of Richard's 1000 Son's Terminators.

I've started on the metal one first as they're the most finicky of the models left, with a lot of detail that I generally hate to paint but usually looks pretty cool when done. Since this pic was taken I've actually finished them completely and will take new pictures when I've got a few other bits done.

I've also decided to change the way I do my painting points, from now on, rather than keeping track of what type of model it is I'll assign points based on the model being painted as follows:

15mm-20mm = 0.5pts/25mm-32mm = 1pt/40mm+ = 2-3pts (depending on model). Vehicles will be based on size up to a total of 5pts (unless it's frickin' huge, then I'll rethink)

So, with my uncharted Seas stuff giving me 15 points, (3 for the Battleship, 2 for each Cruiser & 1 each for the Frigates), and the 8 completed Terminators gives me 23 points in total to add on to what's already been done.

I've also added a running total of my points over to the right underneath my Gamer Card so I don't have to keep going back to the last post I remembered to add the totals to to find the bloody thing :)

Anyway, on with the blog

WIPs

Next up are the current WIP bits and pieces I've started, beginning with a bit of work on a couple of small islands for Uncharted Seas.

Unfortunately those are the only 2 pictures that have come out properly so the rest of my WiPs will be text only.

I've stuck together my first Malifaux starter set, The Miners and Steamfitters crew and have received my Dragonforge bases so will be able to get the second set put together before I go back to work next Wednesday.

I've also done a bit more for my solo fantasy game that I will do at some point in the future, in this case getting the final 2 models for my hero team sorted out. I've decided to go with a unified look to the team & to this end I've decided to use models sculpted by Werner Klocke, a couple of his sculpts from Reaper's Warlord range & a couple from his own Freebooter Miniatures (with 1 minor conversion, but still using parts from one of his miniatures).

Right, that's all for now, will try to blog again before I go back to work, but I need to get my thoughts in order first.

More Soon

J

Uncharted Seas Conclusion

2009-08-09T16:00:00.003+01:00

And so I have finally finished my Orc fleet, final WiP shots below:

Ships completed, sails almost done, bases still to do.

All done, just needs the sails glued to the ships and a spray of varnish.

The bases were a bit of a headache, one of those "Seemed like a good idea at the time" things for a while, but at the second time of asking I think I nailed it, really happy with the way it all panned out in the end and I have to admit they work a lot better than I thought they would.

I've taken some proper shots of the fleet and put them up in there own gallery over at my Displaced Miniatures site: http://www.displacedminiatures.com/undead_jon/gallery/2908/

So with that project out of the way I now intend to get the remaining squads for Richards Thousand Sons finished, then I will move onto Pulp City & Malifaux, 2 new skirmish games that I'm keen to demo down the club.

More on all these projects soon.

Till next time

J

Uncharted Seas Update pt.3

2009-07-19T21:08:00.003+01:00

3 updates in 3 weeks, I think that may be a record for me :)

Anyway, here's the next set of pictures of my starter fleet:

Here's the fleet after undercoating & drybrushing of the bare wooden parts, canvas on the white sails painted.

Green parts painted & drybrushed, some of the bare wood re-highlighted and the 1st stage of the metal painted. Black sail painted & 1st coat of Spearshaft Brown painted on masts.

Next up I'll apply a wash to the metal & then work on the rusty parts and the prows, also need to do 2 more coats on the masts.

More next time

J

Uncharted Seas Continues

2009-07-11T14:47:00.004+01:00

Well, Here we are, back again.

All the basing has now been done for my fleet, just got to get the painting started now.

Final 3 Frigates

The Remaining Cruisers & Group Shot

And finally, the Battleship

I'll be getting them undercoated tomorrow hopefully and I'll start painting next weekend as I've decided to study my Proofreading course for the next couple of weeks to try & get closer to getting completing it and starting to work freelance.

In other miniatures news, I've finally settled on doing some solo gaming adventures using Two Hour Wargames rules primarily, although I have plan to do some Pulp games using Rattrap Productions .45 Adventures rules set, but thats a way off for now.

I'll be starting with a fantasy based adventure using THW Warrior Heroes rules and an adventure set in a world of my own creation that I started working on many years ago but have recently come back to and focused on, re-jigged and, hopefully, improved upon. More on that in the coming months as I prepare for it.

In the gaming front, US isn't the only new game I'm looking at getting into.

Pulp City is a game of Superhero skirmishes that I've been a fan of since I saw the first model they released,(well, it was a gorilla with a chaingun :), & I have now finally ordered my first models from them, the Ape Revolution Committee members Guerilla, Chimp Chi, Ape Bot & Virus.

I'm also going to get into Wyrd Miniatures' Malifaux skirmish game. I really like the setting and the miniatures and I am intriged about the rules as they promise something different. I currently have 2 Crews, one from the Arcanist Faction (Miners & Steamfitters Union) & one from the Resurrectionists (Morgue Master McMourning & co.).

More on all of these as we go.

till next time...

J

Uncharted Seas

2009-07-04T14:02:00.006+01:00

So, the club seems to have adopted the Uncharted Seas rules by Spartan Games as it's newest obsession. We haven't really had a game where the majority of the club were interested in playing since Warmachine came out back in 2003, so it's nice to have that enthusiasm in the club again, it's been a while.

Anyway, I've picked up an Orc fleet starter set:

Spartan have changed a few of the things about the game and box contents so I ended up waiting about a month for the set to come through, but the wait was worth it and getting the templates and tokens in the box now is a help (although the Turning Templates are missing the Arc of Fire arrows so I'll have to draw them on myself).

The resin on the ships is nice an crisply cast, the detail is very clear with not too much flash and very easy to clean up. The metal sails were a little more of a problem, with a rather annoying mold line right at the bottom of all the sails with some quite thick flash on a couple of them that obscured some of the detailing that I had to use my files to re-carve into the metal, but overall it's an impressive little set.

DAY 1:

Cleaned up all the models & washed the ships themselves in warm, soapy water.

Cut bases for the ships and glued ships in place.

DAY 2:

Began making waves using greenstuff on the bases on 3 of the frigates, used some Woodland Scenics Water Effects to create rough water around the paddle wheels.

So far so good, I wasn't sure about the greenstuff waves at first, but I think they'll be OK. Just got to do the rest of them now :)

More soon.

J

2009-06-28T15:44:00.002+01:00

OK, I have now made purchase of 2 new desk lamps to replace the ones I broke so hopefully next time I'll actually have some photos to show off.

I have updated my Displaced Miniatures page with some of the old pictures from the club, (Man, how did I get by without Dullcote :), go check them out.

More next week hopefully

J

2009-06-28T10:12:00.002+01:00

Well, I've finally got the first 2 units for Richard's 1000 Sons completed and handed over.

They came out looking good, though I do need to stop having bright ideas like putting squad symbols on shoulder pads and then using authentic Egyptian symbol...I should know better by now. Still, I don't think they look too bad, at least the most complicated symbol, (the Scarab), has been done, the rest are all pretty simple from now on.

Still no photos, but I'll be popping over the Argos in a few minutes to pick up a couple of new lights, so hopefully I'll be able to start getting photos taken soon. Plus, the club that was once PEWC has officially now become Enfield Gamers and the old site taken down, so I now have a copy of all the old pictures from the site which I'll try and get uploaded to my Displaced Miniatures page today as well.

On other news, I've noticed a new Pulp era board game coming out in October which I'm definitely going to pick up when it comes out, The Adventurers. Looks a lot of fun & the character model look fabulous :)

anyway, hopefully should post again later with some pictures and whatnot so speak to you then.

Painted to date: 27 (26 infantry/1 mount)

J

2009-05-09T20:53:00.002+01:00

Another 2 months & no update, sorry about that.

Still no pictures, but things a re progressing.

It took me a while (6 weeks) to paint the first 9 models for Richard's Thousand Son's (well, technically 4 weeks painting time, 2 weeks I couldn't hold anything in my left hand so that stopped me doing anything), but thankfully I've got back into the swing of things now and, with the help of my new P3 Wet Pallet (which is a godsend ) I've got the 2nd full unit of 9 done in about 10-11 days all told & I've got the 8 remaining Chaos space marines from the 2 incomplete squads almost sorted.

I've still got to decide on the symbols that will be painted on the shoulder pads and bases and pick up some flock to base them with, but the bulk of it's all done.

Anyway, that's all for now, so till next time.

J

Painting Update

2009-03-08T14:14:00.002Z

Well, I've begun to paint things up for people, unfortunately I haven't got photos yet, but I need to pick up some new lights as the 2 I currently have have snapped off their bases. Next time I won't bother to secure them I'll use the lamps they come with.

Anyway, to kick things off, and to get used to painting multiple mini's at one time, I painted up 9 Dark Elf mini's for Rob to use in the Song of Blades & Heros campaign...just at the point they finished it...Doh, will try to do better next time, still need to do the rider for the Cold One though, but I need to sort out a new undercoating stand first.

I have also begun work on Richard's, (shadoblade), Thousand Son's. Which are taking a little longer than I'd hoped, but I am only on the first sqaud so all the little bit's I'm finding out about and having to redo/correct should mean I'll be able to blast through the rest at a relatively decent pace.

I used the GW Spray gun for the first time on the squad...not greatly impressed by the whole process, but I think it'll get better, it's not like I've invested in an airbrush set or anything, you get what you pay for.

Painted to date: 9 (8 infantry/1 mount)

Hopefully more soon, J

First Proper update of 2009

2009-02-01T11:20:00.003Z

Right, January is now but a memory, and we're beginning February waiting for a heavy snowfall to begin any time today & all day tomorrow, with the temperature suitably chilly and dropping rapidly, I think it's time to stay in and get some painting done.

Most of January I spent faffing about painting a little bit, building a little bit, planning a little bit & basically getting absolutely nothing completed whilst I was waiting for Richard to put together the Thousand Sons models he wants me to paint for him.

He got them, (or at least the bulk of them), to me last Tuesday & today is the day I start the prep-work.

Here's what I've got to work with so far:

From top to bottom: 1 unit Chaos Space Marines; 1 unit Thousand Sons (6 to come); 1 unit CSM (4 to come); 1 Havok unit (3 to come + 1 l. arm for Las Gunner); 1 unit CSM; 3 units Chaos Terminators. Currently missing the above mentioned minis, plus 1 more 9-man unit, (another Havok unit I think).

As you can see most have had some kind of paint on them, (from the look of some of them, quite a few coats of paint, the detail on a few is almost nonexistent), so a few will need stripping before I can get ant paint on them, but I'm hoping to get that all sorted this week, then next week I start the painting proper.

Right, so the first project of the year is now officially underway, so hopefully regular updates will now follow.

Oh, and here comes the snow I mentioned earlier...oh joy, time to wrap up warm folks :)

More soon.

J

Back Again pt. 2 - The Year Ahead

2009-01-11T13:34:00.002Z

So this year I'm not planning on being quite as specific about what personal projects I undertake.
My brain doesn't work that way, so it'll be better for me if I have a few ideas I want to do and pick the one that's most interesting to me at the time of starting.

So, "What do I have lined up then?" I hear you ask.

Well here are some of the ideas I have currently:
1- Pulp, pulp & more pulp. I really want to get a lot of pulp models painted & I want to use the .45 Adventures rules I've been picking up over the last year or more as well.
2- Crimson Skies. This is the one project I'm determined to complete, I have always loved FASA's old Crimson Skies rules, but I've only ever had 6 planes to use , so I intend to invest in a lot more planes as well as getting them painted up.
3 - Confrontation Goblins. I picked up a few of the old Rackham metal Samurai-inspired Goblins shortly before ver. 4 came out & I recently bought some more at a ridiculously low price, so I'd like to get them painted up as they're lovely models, plus Scrollmaster wants a game of Confrontation ver. 3 at some point and I can also use them for Songs of Blades & Heroes that we've started playing down the club quite a lot lately.
4 - Terrain. Various ideas crop up here and there for cool looking terrain, but I'm usually hopeless at sticking to one genre for too long, so I'll do bits and pieces as I feel the urge.
5 - Zombies & Survivors. I've had Two-Hour Wargames All Things Zombie rules for about the same length of time as .45 Adventures, and it's about time I used them as well, so I'll be looking to pick up some zombies to go with the Hasslefree Survivors I've had sitting in my lead mountain for ages. Only now I want to get them painted up and used.

I'm sure there'll be other tings that crop up, I have a vague Idea for a Cawdor gang for Necromunda, but I haven't really found any models that I want to use as the basis for them yet & having now found my Starship Troopers rulebooks and figures again I may try to do something with them, we'll see.

I still have to complete Richard's Devourers & Rob's Dark Elves ( well, actually I still have to actually start Rob's Dark Elves, but that's just semantics). Plus on Tuesday I'll be getting another painting order from Richard that should see my yearly total get off to a good start, 81 (9 squads of 9) Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines (including 1 squad of Terminators), these guy are the priority at the moment as they're needed for an Apocalypse game in the near future, so they will be my focus once I get hold of them, (both painting-wise and for the blog), I'm going to attempt to do 1 squad a week, with 1 week for prepping & undercoating everything, but as I haven't speed painted a force this size before I'm not sure if that's realistic or not. I've invested in one of the new GW Spray Guns and have all the paint I think I'll need, but I guess it'll really be a case of the proof of the pudding will be in the eating...watch this space.

So, that's basically the rough plan at the moment, but don't forget it could change at any time. Hopefully though most of the things I want to do will get done, we'll all just have to wait & see.

More soon.

J

Back Again pt. 1 - The Year in Review

2008-12-28T19:19:00.007Z

So...That wasn't as successful year as I'd hoped for painting wise.

The Xbox did take over my life for a while, but mainly I just lost the drive to paint for some reason. It took until I got convinced to run a DnD campaign in August/September that I finally started to get things going again and now I'm back into it quite well.

So, first up here's a picture of my Bloodbowl team that I said was coming about 9 months ago now:

I like how they came out a lot, shame they didn't perform as well on the pitch...

After that, I didn't actually finish any of the projects that I had left, however, I did finish some others.

First up was a commissioned Mordheim Skaven Warband for Richard, (shadoblade...and yes he is still waiting for me to finish his Devourers...), The X Rats:

Front row l-r: Wolverine; Storm; Cyclops; Gambit; Beast; Colossus
Second Row l-r: Psylocke; Warpath; Lockheed
Back: Juggernaught

I also managed to put together a Mordheim Warband of my own, The Cabal of the Dessicated Crow, (the next generation of the group I formed for Scrollmaster's Realms of Chaos campaign from a couple of years ago):

Other than these guy's I have also managed to paint up a fair few mini's (both figures & scenery) for use in the DnD campaign:

I even managed to finish 3 more Devourers & start another couple, but those pictures will have to wait a little bit.

I'm happy with what I got done, which I just discovered when I added it all up was actually quite a lot.

So without further ado, here's the important bit:

Tally:
Miniatures Painted to date (28/12/08) = 123
Projects completed = 1/5 + 3 unintended projects completed.

All in all I'm really quite happy with the end result, I was surprised by the number of models I actually managed to paint, which for me was a hell of a lot, it will be interesting to see what 2009 has in store for me, but more on that next time.

J

One down, four to go.

2008-03-24T21:21:00.002Z

Just a quick update, and no pictures yet, but, I have finally, (with a little help from the weather finally letting up), managed to complete my Blood Bowl team. The head coach, 2 assistant coaches, 2 cheerleaders, 3 Re-Roll tokens & 1 Score token are all done , varnished & 5 minutes ago I put them in my case for tomorrow night, so, Project 1 is officially done & I've even got started on the next model for Richard's Devourers, so Project 2 is officially go as well.

I have to warn you though, I did purchase an Xbox 360 last Thursday with Mass Effect so my postings may become even more erratic :)

As for points I'm only counting the tokens I did for my BB team as 1/2 point each as they don't really count as full figures (you'll see what I mean when I get the photo's done).

So, until next time.

Tally:

Miniatures Painted to date (24/03/08) = 24
Projects completed = 1/5.

2008-02-24T14:39:00.002Z

I'm Ba-aack!

Well, did you miss me? No, I didn't think so ;)

So, for the last week I've been going through a period of painting apathy, I just haven't wanted to pick up a brush at all, so no progress on anything this past week, until yesterday when I decided to get the bases for the 1st 3 Devourers for Richard sorted out, and I'm pleased to say that they're almost ready for flocking, so hopefully by the end of the day I should have the models stuck onto them.

As for my Blood Bowl stuff, I've kinda lost interest a little, I'm so close to finishing them though that I should get my arse in gear & do it, but I have a tendency to do this every now & again, whenever I get near completing a project I just loose interest & I start looking for the next thing to start on.

This time round I got caught up in terrain fever after seeing this post on a Infinity fansite, it's in Spanish, but with a little help from Altavista Babelfish I've figured out most of the bits that I couldn't get just from looking at the pictures.

And then, just when I thought the terrain fever had passed, I see a link to a report from the Tactica show in Hamburg this weekend. Here's the link, the Mordheim board has really got me going as I've been thinking about running a Mordheim campaign for ages now & it's given me ideas for scenery like you wouldn't believe.

Anyway, back to the painting news. Before the apathy hit I'd managed to paint my head coach, one of my assistant coached & 2 of the team-specific markers I want to use, they just need varnishing, (after I've gone over the assistant coaches feet where I've got a little careless painting the base), to be completed & on the list, whether I'll get that done today or not I don't know, but I wouldn't be holding my breath if I were you as I'm focusing on the Devourers right now.

So that's all for now, hopefully I'll be back next week with news of actual progress on the painting front, but until then TTFN.

J

2008-02-03T19:31:00.000Z

So, I kinda skipped a week there, wasn't intentional, but finishing the 10 zombie repaints took a little longer than I'd anticipated.

Anyway, they're all done now & you can check them out in they're new Displaced Miniatures Gallery.

The Mousillon Bodysnatchers had their first game last Tuesday & as with any BB team I've fielded they managed to loose their opening game, this was partly down to the Harbinger of Nurgle, (also known as Steve), distracting me by coughing his lurgie over every square inch of the playing surface, minis & indeed me, he also cheated for the first few turns as he conveniently "forgot" that the pictures on he dice represented 1's & not 6's as he'd been claiming...so moral victory to me then :0), in the end though my dice rolls let me down when it came to scoring chances, though not, I'm pleased to say when it came to beating up on Steve's team, I actually won the beat down 5-3 which was nice.

I also made a couple of tactical mistakes...namely setting up an offence when I was defending & then setting up a defence when I actually had the ball. Still, you live & learn, next time it'll be different (probably 'cause I'll end up against Ian & get completely dismantled...but it will be different :0)

Anyway, only the 1 mini in the WiP pic tonight, Head coach of the Mousillon Bodysnatchers Atticus Van Garrett:

New Tally:

Miniatures Painted to date (03/02/08) = 17
Projects completed = 0/5.

Bloody weather, an explanation & a change of plans

2008-01-20T20:15:00.001Z

It’s been a really good week painting-wise, I’ve completed the 10 Zombie players for the team (Damn! 2 minutes after typing that sentence I went & got them in & discovered that due to the crappy weather today the varnish has gone a little cloudyL, should be able to sort it out for next week though, hopefully if I go over it with paint-on varnish instead of spray-on it’ll bring the colour back, it has done in the past anyway, figures crossed, unfortunately it means that they can’t go on the completed list just yet. Bugger!!!), today I’ve managed to get a good head start on the final 5 players for the team & with a bit of luck I may even get the Head Coach painted for the start of the season on 29^th January.

If you’re wondering why I’ve apparently abandoned the Devourers I’m supposed to be painting for Richard, the reason is pretty simple. I had hoped to get a fair bit of his army done over the xmas period as I’d have the time to get them done, unfortunately the fates conspired against me & were aided-& -abetted by my own silliness.

The first problem occurred when my own hopeless ability at brush care meant that both the brushes I use to paint the fur effect on the Devourers got pretty ruined & splayed, making them un-useable for the job. If there’s one thing I need to start paying attention to this year it’s to start to look after my brushes better & to clean them more regularly when I’m painting, not letting the paint dry out or clog up the brush too much, they’ll last a lot longer.

The second problem was that my last 0.8mm drill bit broke off in a model while I was drilling a pin hole, it’s really annoying when that happens, especially when it occurs at a time of year when it is a pain to get anything posted in a reasonable timeframe. It didn’t help that shortly after the drill bit broke the half-elf I’d started painting for the Devourers (no fur needed) decided that it was going to snap it’s leg off due to the thinness off the sculpt in that area, (Rackham & Privateer Press have nice sculpts, but my god they can be frustratingly fragile at times!!!), which meant I had to wait for the new year before the required supplies turned up.

Anyway, in the mean time I decided I may as well have a go at the BB team as it had been sitting around for an age & once I started I really started enjoying myself, I haven’t painted & force/team/gang for myself in quite a while & I really want to have a painted team for the start of the “Balls of Iron” League. Plus it’s the shortest project on the list & the easiest to complete & once it’s done (hopefully no later than the second week of February) it’ll set me up well for the painting year ahead..that’s the theory at least J

So, there you have it, that’s my reasoning behind putting the Devourer on the back burner for about a month, though I have got a fair few undercoated & ready to go when I do start it up again.

As for the change of plans, that revolves around the Project: Build & paint a Warhammer 40,000 Ork army (1500 points minimum).

After thinking about it (& buying an Ogre Battalion Box set off of Shaun) I’ve decided not to do that one but instead Build a Warhammer Fantasy Ogre Kingdoms Army (2000 point minimum) and if I want to use a larger 40k army I can finish the vehicles & units that I started for my Red Scorpions army 2 years ago, I’ll look at doing the Orks next year.

This week’s photos (unfortunately now minus the 10 slightly fogged zombies):

First up a closer look at the first two completed models for the year, Kronos & Methos, Wight players for the Mousillon Bodysnatchers.

And next up, the current work in progress (L to R: Steve; Adam; Silas; Caspian; & "Fangs" McGinty).

New Tally:

Miniatures Painted to date (20/01/08) = 2
Projects completed = 0/5.

Hopefully I can salvage the zombies for next week, if not I'll just have to do the best I can & re-paint the sections that the obscured, C'est la Vie.

more soon.

J

2 down, umpteen to go

2008-01-14T20:25:00.000Z

Ok, a little later than I'd originally intended to update, but a bout of man flu put something of spanner in those works.

Still better late than never, and I can happily report I have actually completed 2 minis...the first 2 minis for my Necromancer Bloodbowl team to be exact & I've also made headway on 10 zombies for the team as well, all going well I should have them finished by Sunday.

OK, so I have managed to take a photo of my current Work in Progress:

The front 3 rows (all on the table) are all for my Blood Bowl team, as are the 2 Wraiths at the front of my spraying stand (the completed miniatures mentioned earlier) & the book-holding angel back-left of the pic (it'll be added to the Head coach base when completed).

The final 4 miniatures are for Richard's Devourers army, they just need bases done for them & a few bloody splatters on weaponry & whatnot to be finished.

So, for the first time this year I can update my tally (not quite up the Shaun's standards admittedly, but I'm happy with it as I probably painted only 15-20 last year all told).

Miniatures Painted to date (14/01/08) = 2
Projects completed = 0/5.

Hopefully much more to come soon.

And so it begins again.

2008-01-01T12:20:00.001Z

Well, it's been a little over a year since I last had a blog due to the fact that my old PC died December 2006. But now, thanks to a little help from my dad & a promotion at work I'm back online again...hopefully for good.

The point of this blog is the help me to keep motivated with my miniature painting & army building. And with that in mind & given that it's 1st January 2008 I will hereby commit for perpetuity my "New Years Painting Resolution"

I resolve to complete the following 5 projects by 31st December 2008 (in no particular order):

Complete Richard's (shadoblade) Confrontation Devourers commission.
Complete Rob's (bigrob) Warhammer Fantasy Battles Dark Elves commission.
Complete & paint my Necromancer Bloodbowl team.
Build & paint a Warhammer 40,000 Ork army (1500 points minimum).
Complete my Sci-fi terrain project.

I'd also like to make a dent of some kind in my large pile of unpainted miniatures as well, but that'll be tough considering I know that the above list will take a while to sort out & there may be other commissions coming in as well, but we'll see, fingers crossed & all that :)

So, guess I should start the tally now then.

Miniatures Painted to date (01/01/08) = 0
Projects completed = 0/5.

More soon