A Long, Long Absence

So it has been a very long time since my last post, various other activities and responsibilities seemed to get in the way and then the habit of blogging was broken unfortunately. But I hadn't stopped gaming or modeling so here is an attempt to get back into the habit.

This is a very short recap of my gaming over the last little while followed by a brief battle report of my most recent game which was a modern game of Force on Force.

RPG's
I have been playing and running a fair number of rpg's including, as a player, a game of Vampire and the conclusion of a Call of Cthulhu (CoC) campaign. I have been running Star Wars quite regularly  and Dragon Age sporadically.
The CoC game group is going to switch over to Shadows of Esteren while the Star Wars group is going to take break to another system as yet to be determined before returning for the next chapter of their adventure.

I also was able to play in a couple of rpg's at Hal Con this year which was fun and the first time I have participated in a convention rpg, playing a couple of Star Wars scenarios run by the same game master and a CoC game. Both were very enjoyable.

Planning is underway for CottageQuest 3 in which a group of us rent a cottage for a weekend and play a variety of different rpg's.

Miniatures.
Seems like there is less going on here though I have recently started to paint again. Chet and I once again did game demos at Hal Con this time with Batman the Miniature Game and Star Wars Armada.
Games I have played in my spare time include Armada, an Imperial Assault campaign, some 15mm WWII with Battlegroup and recently Force on Force.

Board Games.
My birthday was another board games weekend with friends at the house and I have played a variety of games with the family. I finally played Cthulhu Wars which is impressive. Also I finally  made it into the Board Room Cafe in Halifax for a Shawn's Birthday.

There is probably stuff I missed but that is a brief overview of the last year and a bit!

So in rough chronological order the pictures!

The CottageQuest gang!

 Some of the games.

Armada at home. 

Hal Con 2015

Batman with demo Chet.

Birthday games.

Battlegroup.

My Germans vs Chet's Canadians.

The German's were triumphant!

 Force on Force

Road to Baghdad scenario 3

The Iraqis are in the buildings and surrounding terrain while the USMC must drive through.

The USMC enter the board. The bottom APC and infantry are not really there, they are waiting to come on.

M1's start leveling buildings even as the USMC loses an APC taking 2 KIA's on the left(out of the picture) to an rpg.

The M1's get called away and must exit as quickly as possible leaving the rest of the USMC forces to finish off.

At this point a sand storm blows in limiting visibility.

The tanks have left.

The Iraqis have disabled  2 Humvees, 1 AAV7 APC and caused 3 KIA as well as a number of lesser wounds.

The End. There is not much left of the Iraqi forces but they did enough damage to win the game.

Star Wars, Robotech, WWII Oh My!

The last while I have been getting in a fair bit of role playing games with Vampire the Masquerade, Star Wars Edge of the Empire, Dragon Age and Call of Cthulhu and seeing as I don't think anyone wants to read about these exploits suffice it to say that the games have been fun and the fact that I am a player in 2 and a gm of 2 has been keeping my free time fairly full.

The last few weeks or so though I have been getting in some board and miniature games. I started playing in an Imperial assault campaign which isn't going so well for us Rebels at the moment but I am sure things will turn around in the next few games.

My friend Chet came over recently and I tried a game of Armada, Fantasy Flight Games miniature game of large ship combat in the Star Wars universe as well as a game of Battlegroup a WWII miniature game.

Armada was fun but the game needs more variety in units which are due out soon anyways and that will make the play more interesting.

Battlegroup was a fairly quick game to play adding a few twists to a core of some fairly standard rules so there is nothing to throw you off. I liked the way friction of battle starts to wear down your effectiveness and that when firing you can choose to fire to pin or kill.

I have also got in some painting finishing off some figures for Batman the Miniature gane and Robotech RPG Tactics.

I am looking forward to our annual Free Comic Book Day outing in a few weeks as well as a board game weekend at a friend's cottage known as CottageCon and the second annual CottageQuest, a rpg weekend.

Armada Game

My Star Destroyer closes in as the TIE's engage.

The fur ball in the middle.

I quickly took care of one of the Rebel ships and now the other closes in.

Being harassed by the CR-90 and the last of the X-Wings. Shortly after this the X-Wings were destroyed but I flew off the edge of the board ending the game in defeat. 

Battlegroup

The Terrain.

Chet deep in thought! I had a more officers giving me more orders most of the time.

My troops had just been glued on bases about 30min before the game and were not painted. I am not sure what Chet's excuse was! 

Troop eye view. The game was very, very close. We were both about within a turn of causing each other to retreat but I broke first.

Batman the Miniature Game

Making bricks for the bases.

Applying the basing materials.

Batman

Talia Al-Ghul.

Ninjas

 Robotech RPG Tactics

Battlepods

One Veritech, 3 modes.

Imperial Assault, game 1.

Near the end as my Wookie breaks in but is ultimately blocked from achieving success.

Mid way as we storm the Imperial base.

Early game as we advance on the door.

Painting and Game Prep

I have been cracking out the paints and working on a variety of different miniatures for some vastly different games.

I finally decided to start on the Robotech miniatures. I find having to paint 3 Veritech models to represent 1 miniature a bit of a pain but it is also what makes them so cool so I guess I shouldn't complain unless they come out with a scale transforming Veritech! I also found to my surprise that I like painting up the Zentradi. It's nice to paint the high contrast colours though this may change by the time I paint 20 or so of them!

The Zentraedi and a UEDF Veritech in all three modes.

I am also starting to paint up some more miniatures for Muskets and Tomahawks which shouldn't be that hard as they are all units that I have painted before and I am now just expanding on the base units.  So more British infantry coming up.

British reinforcements.

I have also cracked into The Batman Miniature Game miniatures. These are nicely detailed 35mm scale miniatures that are sculpted in a more true proportions than most miniatures. The only problem I have found with painting them is that the details are quite fine and hard to pick out sometimes. So there will be a bit of a learning curve with these.

The League of Shadows and Batman with some of Gotham's finest.

League of Shadows assembled!

The Ninjas. Joints filled with green stuff.

Talia al Ghul, Ras al Ghul, and Bane.

Batman and police.

Talia finished.

As far as gaming goes I got in a game of Firefly the Boardgame with the Blue Sun expansion. It was a quick 2 player game with my son using the downloaded introduction story card. The game was very quick, probably less than an hour so I think I won't be using that story card any more unless I am introducing a new player. I never even got a picture of this in progress as it happened so fast!

I also played a game of Pokemon(I know!) with my youngest son. He was enthusiastic to play but after I won the game he hasn't played again. It was my first game of Pokemon and I didn't realize how hard it is to battle a evolved Pokemon, so I won't do that if there is another game in the future.

Pokemon with rules!

On the RPG front I ran another session of Dragon Age introducing a new player. My long time friend Pat is joining in via Google Hangouts from Ontario while my son has bowed out for now. Everyone seems to have enjoyed the session.

Next week I will be continuing my Star Wars Edge of the Empire game starting the session off with a starship chase and heading into the finale of the adventure.

And we will probably be starting the Vampire game next month. My character is made and I ordered the b&w POD(print on demand) book which arrived very quickly. 

Until next time then.