EW French Infantry

Spent a little time over the weekend putting together a test stand for my EW French Infantry list. The plan is to take it along to Battlecry early next year so I need to get it knocked our pretty quickly. I'm very happy with how 95% of the model turned out, I just need to re-do the faces as I took a few too many shortcuts. Basically used the new German Armour (desert) spray can, painted the bags, helmet, weapons, webbing etc as per Blitzkriegs paint guide, then a predominantly brown magic wash, quick highlight and done!

Also managed to mix up a flock combination that I am happy with (2x GF9 Winter/Dead Static grass, 1x Spring Undergrowth, 1x Meadow Blend) so I now need to mix up a whole tub of it!

Kampfgruppe Bäke vs Grey Wolf

Earlier in the year Victor needed some white-washed tanks for the Kampfgruppe Bäke section of Grey Wolf but unfortunately we did not have anything suitable already painted. Luckily Victor is very good at taking photos and managed to make my old KG Bäke army look pretty damn nice (if I do say so myself).

There are more photos of the force, plus a tournament report from when the army went to Panzerschrek in 2009 (that weekend was so cold it made me feel right at home with an army of white washed tanks!) on the Flames of War website.

Christmas is coming...

With Christmas just around the corner a wargamer turns to such thoughts as.... so what projects will I start over this holiday and not get finished! At least I do anyway. Its been a long year and I am really looking forward to Christmas as an opportunity to (hopefully) finish off some projects that have been sitting in my WIP list for way too long and with three weeks off this could be my chance.

Top of the list has to be my Dystopian Wars Prussian fleet. I made such great progress on them earlier in the year (and they are easy to paint), but they have been a challenge to find the enthusiasm to kick start again. Worst of all Spartan Games keep putting out more great looking ships (oh the hardship).

Next is my French EW Compagnie de Chasseurs Portes. These are Confident Trained guys running round in armoured halftracks and they look super cool. I've got a pile of Evan's new sculpts (which are perfect for these guys as they don't have the greatcoats) and I am working on a test stand now. Of course I have to have the army finished for Battlecry in February 2012.

I've signed up to do an article for the website looking at how to enhance the new range of Desert Buildings, so now that its in print I guess I had better make sure I get that done over the break. Mike put together an awesome article for WI about the tweaks you can make to really make the Desert Terrain range pop, so I plan on stealing a few of his ideas. As a bonus the terrain will work well for Force on Force too!

Speaking of Force on Force... I'd really like to finish my US Marines. Now that I have a paint scheme I am happy with, and know I can knock them out really quickly I would like to put a tick in that box.

Next up... eBaldur for Warmachine. Sean, Victor and I have to defend out Warmachine Teams Tournament record (last.... but we did it in the nicest possible way) and we are all bringing along Hordes forces this year. There is a great article about converting Megalith (eBaldur's best friend) and making him look a little more natural so I am guessing I'll need to take a look at that. I'll be using Equinox in mid March as my test event prior to the teams tourney.

Last project on the list is to finish assembling and painting some Perry Miniatures American Civil War buildings. These look great (although can be a little fiddly to put together) and will do nicely for some Wild West action next year. I've got plenty of barrels and fences as well so we should be able to have a good gun fight or two, with plenty of obstacles to hide behind.

Phew.... that's a lot of stuff! And of course somewhere in there I need to fit in all the chores around the house that my wife will be expecting. Thank goodness I managed to resist purchasing The Old Republic or I would have never gotten anything done.

And on the lighter side, looks like Sean has been up to his old tricks again...

Lazy Sunday Gaming Club

On Sunday I got together with some friends and had a quiet afternoon of gaming. It was nice to get out of the house for a little while in the weekend and have some "bonus" gaming. Managed to fit in two games before I got a call from my wife telling me that power to our house had been lose and that power lines were down (Sunday afternoon callout.... so much for this months gaming budget!).

Anyway.... had a quick intro game of Legends of the Old West (LotOW) with Victor, more to give him a basic idea of the rules rather than anything else. This game ROCKS! and despite having not played it in a few years, I remembered some of the rules - thats a good sign in my opinion that the rules are fun. Victor's band of four guns managed to run me out of town (beginners luck). I would have taken some pictures but we were using 15mm European Buildings as stand-ins whilst I build me Perry's plastic buildings.

We then switched over for a 25 point Warmachine game. Victor put his Skorne on hold and pulled out his Dwarves: Gorton, Steinhammer, 4 Gun Bunnies (2 marshalled by Thor), a Driller and Brun and Lug. I put the Butcher on the table for the first time (he is pretty awesome), two Juggers, 5 Demo Korps, 2 Manhunters and Widowmakers. The game was heaps of fun with Victor putting me under early pressure cleaning out alot of my figures for just the loss of Steinhammer, but on the feat turn I was able to put down the Driller, Brun & Lug and a Gun Bunny (with 1 and bit Juggers and Butcher), essentially leaving Gorton with no choice but to go in and try and finish off the two damaged Juggers.... it did not end well for him!

Demo Korps and Manhunters lead the charge

The battle lines hit each other

The demise of Gorton!

Sadly the efforts on Sunday have now given me another Christmas project to do - put together my Wild West houses and put together a small town for some gaming fun!

P.S. - Congrats to Dave Taylor for adding another future gamer to this world!

Iron Painter 2011: The Aftermath

I've been a bit quiet this last month or so... I think it is due to a little bit of burnout and having a pile of work on my plate. 

/World smallest violin?

But I did manage to get an almost solid 24 hours of painting in over FlamesCon a couple of weeks ago and it was a blast. I attempted to paint up a Raiding Aces force for our upcoming Studio games - not wanting to spoil it but I did not quite make it, although I definitely had a blast!

AS37 Autosahariana Platoon

75mm Artillery Battery

Mitraglieri Platoon (almost)

The unfinished.....

For more check out the post match comments on the Flames of War site or Episode 19 of Radio Free Battlefront (which is all about FlamesCon 2011).

I also managed to finally beat Victor's Skorne list (with Zaal ad his Ancestral Guardians)... its been an unstopable juggernaught over the past few weeks but Sorscha and her Death Star of Winter Guard (and Kovnik Joe) were up to the task.

Iron Painter 2011

This weekend (in fact right now even) a few of us from the office are doing a 24 hour painting challenge to paint a 500 point Raiding (or Garrison) Force from Burning Empires. I'm doing a Compagnia Mitraglieri which has a couple of platoons of infantry, a platoon of artillery and some AS37 Autosaharianas. 16 hours in (almost 4 in the morning) and its not looking too flash I have to say... I have 20 stands of infantry or guns to knock out by midday....

Here is a before shot of the AS37 platoon - an after shot will be up later in the week. For more info check out the Flames of War website though.

And for something a little lighter.... Sean was clearly having a bad afternoon on Friday. Although the other guy in the comic looks particularly charming! 

Rasputina and Friends: Family Portrait

This week sees Rasputina and her gang finished, crystals included! Sadly though her win record is less than impressive going 0-2 against Phils Viktorias list... need to work on my anti-assassination plan. Perhaps it is time to hit the Malifaux forum and look for the newbie guides.

This weekend though I'll be putting putty on a pile of Italian infantry in preparation for the Iron Painter Event at FlamesCon next weekend (more on that next week).

In the meantime - Raspy and friends...

Now I guess its time to add C. Hoffman and co. to my WIP list....

Rasputina and friends.... Done!

Finally managed to finish my December Acolyte - could not get the eyes looking anywhere near right so I have to admit I gave up a little, but I am happy with the overall finished result.

I also managed to base up my GF9 Crystals - these will be used as Ice Pillars for Rasputina to drop down in the game. I still have a couple more at home, I just need to scrounge up a couple of 40mm bases to put them on... perhaps I should hunt through my Warmachine stuff as I am bound to have a couple spare in one of those boxes.

I'll endevour to bring the whole gang into work tomorrow so I can take a nice "family" shot of them finished.

Next question is what to add to the painting table as the replacement for these guys.... I am thinking a C. Hoffman or Kaeris gang would be quite a bit of fun....

WIP Week - The Results

So last week I made an effort to look through all my "In progress" projects and see if I could push each one of the forward and reignite the interest that made me start them in the first place. Surprisingly it was a success... so much so that I think next year I will do it again. Whilst some may say that splitting my attention over a bunch of projects meant that nothing with finished, to my mind it meant that something got done, and in a couple of cases I either came dangerously close to finishing the projects, or found the impetus to push on with them in the near future.

I thought I would show off two of my "successful" WIP Week projects:

Rasputina and her Malifaux gang - I've previously shown photos of her "friends" and over the weekend I finished the lady herself. I have 1 figure left to do and then 100% of my Malifaux stuff is painted. With a bit of luck I'll get that done over this coming long weekend.

Force on Force US Marines - as I mentioned before I have some cool 20mm figures from Elheim and thanks to the painting guide in one of their books, I managed to knock this test Fire Team out in an hour or two over the course of a couple of nights. They are a little rough in places but they are perfectly good for my needs... and given I need to paint another 30-40 Marines and a bunch of opposition guys I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Where too from here? I need to work on an Italian Garrison force for our Iron Painter event at FlamesCon 2011 in a month, so I need to get them cleaned up and based over the next few weeks. I am going to order the rest of my Marines today or tomorrow... and now that I know how quickly I can do them I am pretty inspired. Lastly I am going to make some Ice Columns for Rasputina, I just need to buy a set of the GF9 Battlefield in a Box Ice Crystals and away we go!

WIP Week - Force on Force: US Marines

I've been sitting on these really nice figures from Elheim for a couple of months now and slowly amassing some diecast 1/72 pre-painted vehicles that I thought it was about time to put some paint on the figures and check out how hard they would be to paint. One of the Force on Force books has a quick method for painting them that I am trying out this weekend, just need to pick up some GW Devlan Mud tomorrow (why is it that every paint guide you read these days recommends Devlan Mud... is it this decades GW Chestnut Ink?) and give the figures a quick wash before moving on to some of the detail work.

The figures themselves are really nice (although the editing of this photo is a bit rubbish) and I have mounted them on small washers, with rare earth magnets glued in the hole of the washer, to make storage and transport a little easier.

Marine Fire Team ready for undercoating.

Mike has set me the task of getting Rasputina and the December Acolyte ready for a game at lunch on Monday, and I would like to get this first team finished as well. Normally this would not be a big problem but I understand that there is a 5x XP weekend on World of Tanks... :)

WIP Week - Rasputina and friends

A few of the guys at work have been playing a bit of Malifaux and whilst I am not sure if its quite my thing, who can pass up on some interesting figures.... I picked up a Cult of December box set, and a few extra bits and a pieces. All the finished items were quite quick to paint, only taking a couple of hours as they were very drybrush-able, with a little work to do some extra highlights etc. I've got Rasputina and the December Acolyte still to go - that might be a weekend job for when I have a little more time on my hands.

Without further ado, Rasputina and friends...


December Acolyte and Rasputina (undercoated and magic washed)



Ice Golem and three Ice Gamins

 

Three Hoarcat Prides and a Wendigo



WIP Week - The Prussians

So I am starting with my Dystopian Wars stuff, mainly because I have the largest percentage of it painted over all my projects, however with the arrival of reinforcements my painted vs unpainted is sitting around 40/60, but a concentrated effort will get the rest finished quickly.

Sitting on the painting table are a couple of Dreadnoughts, a Battleship, three crusiers and a small pile of destroyers (plus some robots, planes and other odds and ends). Other than adding magnets to my growing stash of turrets and fixing a couple of broken guns on a Metzger, the lot is ready for undercoating..

Ready for magnets

I've also finished a prototype paint job on an island I bought from the guys at Ameria Plastic Mouldings. These things are super cheap Vac Form plastic islands that make our games a little more fun as ships will be able to use some terrain to get away and hide...

Pflicht Class Scout ships check out the new island

Last but not least my swanky new decals from Dom's Decals arrived yesterday - tiny Maltese German crosses for my destroyers and aircraft.

WIP Week...and a Coin

This week I have decided that I will review all of my projects that I have underway and try to determine a plan for what I want to achieve by the end of the Christmas break..

The current short list has the following items on it... of course I very much doubt that I'll get any more than a few of these things done.

• Dystopian Wars - Prussian Fleet
• Dystopian Wars - Islands
• Malifaux Gang - Cult of December
• Force on Force - Marines & Opposition
• Force on Force - Built Up Area Terrain Squares (12"x12" bits of MDF with buildings permanently mounted on them)
• D&D - new figure for Tabitha Jones
• Flames of War - US LW Tank Company
• Flames of War - finish off my Hungarians (Hetzer and German PzIV L/70 platoons)
• Flames of War - French EW Mechanised Infantry Company
• Napoleonics - 15mm Prussian Brigade
• Warmachine - this is the longest list and somewhat depends on Domination brings, but I see eBaldur and Harkovich (plus friends) in my future

and

• Flames of War - Italian Garrison force from Burning Empires (for the FlamesCon GT in a month)

Phew...

Last, but not least... Chris (our organiser from GuardCon last weekend) had our coins... this will probably be my one and only Steamroller coin... but its still very cool!

Guardcon Day 2

Day two of Guardcon started off well. Since we were playing a Battlebox event and got through 6 rounds on day one, we had a late start (which was a new thing to me... a nice cooked breakfast and a sleep in whilst friends playing Warhammer and Flames of War had a much earlier start!) and a relaxed morning.

I played Gorton, Madrak and Gorton. Each of the games were great fun, but I was putting myself under some pressure as I was floating near the top at the start of the day. In the first game I made a couple of reasonably crucial mistakes resulting in three Gunners turning Sorsha into a fine mist. Against Madrak it was a more even contest (although Chris B did have to point out that we had misread the mission).... Madrak found himself on the end of a Wind Rushing Sorsha who put him down with her last attack. The last game of the day was against my old nemesis Victor who had already mentioned that his weekend would be complete if he could beat me! We had a fantastic game where once again Chris needed to point some obvious parts of the scenario... This time Sorsha made her Wind Rush but fell 1 point short of killing Gorton (that will teach me for leaving my dice at home and borrowing Victors!). Gorton tried to put Sorsha down and failed, however a lone Gunner casually wandered over to the flag and scored the final point required for a scenario win!

In the final wash up though I managed a very respectable third which was significantly higher than my placings in the previous four events I'd played.... mind you top half would have been significantly higher too!

Check out ThrallBlacks for more photos.

Sorsha Wind Rushing fake Sorsha on Day 1 (thanks to Chris B for the photo)

Guardcon Day 1... and the People of Southreach

Its been a great day at Guardcon with Sorsha and her two friends coming out with more wins than losses! Thats a new experience for me at a tournament... With one loss to Lylith, but wins against Sorsha (obviously not the real one), Kaya, Stryker and Gorton (thanks to some tips from Victor who is also running Gorton this weekend).

On an unrelated note, we had a great DnD session this week with our characters taking a short break since James is off in Australia (hopefully winning a Golden Daemon), instead taking over a group of people in the town of Southreach during a zombie attack. Barman Humphrey was particularly adept with a frying pan!

Sean (our DM) also has a cool online comic where he showed off our characters this week.... (check it out... its pretty awesome!)

Sorsha goes to Guardcon?

Okay, so many many weeks ago I thought I would paint up a Menoth Battlebox to take to Guardcon (which is a Battlebox tournament) but things conspired against me and a general lack of enthusiasm on the brushes (at least for anything bigger than very small ships - more on that later) resulted in the Kreoss and his boys being assembled, undercoated, and some base colours put on before I decided to call it quits. So up stepped Sorsha.... given the fact that I have a Juggernaut and Destroyer already done this was definitely the easy option and I completed her over the course of a weekend. I'm not happy with how the face turned out so I will have another crack at that next week, but for now she is heading to Guardcon.

Sorsha in her natural environment

Meanwhile I have also been distracted by a pile of little ships (although this turned up in the post today!). I am just waiting for some decals to arrive from Dom's Decals so I can finish off my first batch of Dystopian Wars ships (that an I need a favour from a friend with a laser cutting machine!), but I'll have pictures of them up next week assuming the decals arrive. 

Metzger Class Robot

I also played a very quick test game of Force on Force yesterday. Predictably the US Marines played by Phil managed to clean up the small unit of insurgents hiding in the town, but a lucky burst of fire caught one fire team moving in the open, killing 1 marine and heavily wounding another. It was a good lesson in how quick and nasty the game can be... definitely enthused to get some figures painted over the Christmas break - although there are way too many things that I am planning to paint over this period already so it might be a bit of a rough time on the paint brushes.

Pictures from Call To Arms 2011

Scott (over at Thrallblacks) put up some great photos from Call to Arms 2011... and I shamelessly stole the "best" ones.

Kara lines up a shot, trying to kill Thyra with a little help from Reinholt.

Triumph introduces Haley to his little friend (sadly my only caster kill of the weekend).

Possibly the words coolest Warmachine trophies!



Prussian Fleet WIP

I've been a bit behind on painting since the run up to Call to Arms, but I managed to get some test models completed over the weekend for my Prussian Empire Fleet (for Dystopian Wars). Pretty happy with how they turned out, although I need to put them on the back burner for a few weeks whilst I paint up my Menoth starter box for GuardCon in a few weeks time.

Battleship

Cruiser

Frigate

Still trying to work out a good plan for how to base them, although I think I have an idea, I just need to get a little help from the crayon wielding team at work....