Sunday, April 27, 2014

More Miniatures

The next few posts including this one are going to be a little different than my usual in that I am going to post the (hopefully) weekly work on the two projects I have going on, Muskets and Tomahawks and Saga. For M&T I am painting up two 200pt armies, one French and one English and for Saga I am working on a Viking 4pt starter army. 

I am hoping that by doing a weekly post then I will continue painting until the units are done and I won't drift off to another project. Then I can get the armies to the table reasonably quick and fight a few battles with them.

I managed to finish off a unit of Rangers for M&T and started work on some of the Saga miniatures.

The unit of Rangers.


And the start of my Vikings.
My Warlord, Berserkers and Hearthguard units prepped and on their bases.

And here they are with the painting started.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Painting Some Miniatures for Muskets & Tomahawks

I didn't get any gaming in since the last post but I have managed to get my first unit painted for Muskets & Tomahawks. I painted up 6 figures from the Woodland Indians set from Conquest Miniatures. These were really nicely detailed miniatures and a joy to paint up. The fact that I won't be needing as many figures to play the game as some games require means I can spend a little more time painting them than I usually do. I haven't based them yet as I am going to order some plastic bases from Renedra.

The full unit.

And there they are individually.

Next I will start to paint up a unit of Rangers for Muskets & Tomahawks and some figures from my Vikings for Saga.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Bolt Action and More Projects

I have been continuing  to paint up a few more Canadians for Bolt Action including a Daimler armoured car from Warlord Games. This was the first model I have put together from Warlord and it was pretty good. My other vehicles have come from Die Waffenkammer and I think they are slightly better models. The detail is a little more crisper and there is less (if any) metal parts, well parts period, with Die Waffenkammer. That being said I would not hesitate to purchase the Warlord vehicles if Die Waffenkammer did not have the model I needed.

This weekend I played another game of Bolt Action. This time we played a 1500 point battle. The game played well enough but I think we both agreed that 1000 points makes for a better game. I started off missing my pre game bombardment by rolling a 1. I also failed to take out a Panther with a Sherman, a Firefly and a PIAT team.  I managed to put pressure on both the German flanks but could not create a breakthrough to push through to the objectives. We found that 1500 points was too much for a reasonably paced game as well as not leaving enough room to maneuver units on a 4 by 6 foot table. 

I have started to paint my starter armies for Muskets & Tomahawks and I really like the detail of the Conquest Miniature figures. Little to no flash on the figures and nice crisp details. I am looking forward to see how these figures turn out.

Next up will be Vikings for Saga as my son received the base game and the Anglo Danish 4pt warband for his birthday. I ordered the Vikings to play against him and also if any of his friends want to give it a try there will be two armies on hand. Tristan's arrived in time for his birthday which was great though I am still waiting for mine to arrive which is coming from a different source.

I have also been playing some rpg's getting in a game of Call of Cthulhu as a player and Dragon Age as a GM. Cthulhu is always fun to play and I started my new character for this campaign hopefully creating a character that will fill in some of the gaps in our party. The character is sort of an Indiana Jones type. Dragon Age was my second session of this campaign with two new players joining the game. One player joining in on Google Hangouts and the other two at the table with me. The game seems pretty fun to run and I am interested to see how it plays over a few sessions and levels. So we have an Antivan rogue, a Fereldan warrior and a Fereldan apostate.

I have also been playing The Last Of Us on the PS3. This was another great rpg game on the console. I found the voice acting and the digital acting to be fantastic and the story was also very good. The only down side was that you had no control over the story, you were just there to fight through the bad guys. It was like watching a good movie and I wanted to know what would happen next even though I knew I was having no effect on the way the story played out. But that is the nature of most console rpg games and I still enjoyed the play through very much.

This is the Daimler kit from Warlord Games.

Here is the kit put together and awaiting paint.

Here is the packages from Conquest Miniatures for the French & Indian Wars using Muskets and Tomahawks.

Thee first 2 units underway. 6 Rangers(in the back) and 6 Woodland Indians.

A close up of the skin so far. I will add some highlights next and maybe some war paint.

Here is my 1500 points of Canadians, a mix of regulars and veterans.

Here is the battlefield with the Germans defending the left side. There are some forces on the table while a Panther and 3infantry squads are in reserve. All the Canadians are off board awaiting turn 1 with a Sherman, a PIAT team and a squad coming on in reserve on my right flank.

My right flank. I was planning on going for the objective in this flank(white disk) as well as the centre objective.

The German centre around objective 2. The German sniper took out the spotter for my off board artillery, good job he was zero point cost for the Canadians.

My flanking reserves have arrived by the German Panther. My Sherman missed a point blank shot and then got brewed up while my Firefly stays hunkered down afraid to fire apparently. The infantry lines close up along the front.

Crossing the fields.

The infantry lines close up on either side of the road.

The other end of the road.

The Daimler is trying to get to the other flank were it will be a little more useful.

The casualties along the road mount up on both sides. The Daimler tries to threaten the objective before I checked the rules and found out that the armoured car cannot claim objectives, only infantry and artillery can. Oh well there goes my only hope for some points.

My first lieutenant holding his own!

The end of the battle on my right flank, not much left on either side.

And the middle where the Germans still held strong positions.