It's Been Awhile

Yes it has been awhile and I am sure I will be forgetting some of the activities. It has been fairly active in both the gaming and modeling front.

After a prolonged halt with my painting my son wanted to paint some of his Malifaux figures so we both sat down to paint. He finished off his Marcus figure while I worked on some of my Resurectionists and I am continuing to paint so I have some crew choices before the Malifaux weekend in June.

Flesh Construct

Canine Remains

More Canine Remains

Marcus, painted by Tristan

 I have also been playing around with the Terraclips to see how I might put a board together for the Malifaux weekend.

The overall view, I have also placed some trees in the center unoccupied area to cut down LOS.

A close up showing the under pass, there are stairs up on the other side.

So as you can tell there is going to be another Malifaux weekend. I was thinking of making it larger and renting a hall but the Malifaux community around here just isn't quite there yet so I will be keeping it at roughly the same size but with some different players. So maybe next year the player base will be big enough to warrant renting a hall and all that entails. And if that happens I can plan for a regional event and get the guys down from New Brunswick again. This upcoming weekend will be sort of a test run for a tournament setting as I will be setting this up as a tournament using the Gaining Grounds rules from Wyrd Miniatures.

Now in terms of gaming I know I will forget stuff and in no particular order:

• 2 games of Dust Tactics from Fantasy Flight games with my son. We are on scenario 6 of 8 from the Blue Thunder scenario book. Tristan won both games so I will have to win the next 2.
• A game of Descent also by FFG. My friend Shawn is going to run a campaign and it's been awhile since any of us played so we played a refresher game. It was a fun game and after the players pulled out a strong lead Shawn managed to reel it in towards the end but not enough and we pulled out a win from the evil overlord.
• A few games of WWI Wings of War, again by FFG. Another one I haven't played in awhile but lots of fun. I taught the game to a couple of players and gave a refresher  for another gamer who has lots of stuff but had only played a few times. We had a few 2 on 2 games in which I was shot down twice(who shuffled that damage deck anyways!)

A view of the 1st air battle, just before I got shot down.

The players for Wings of War WWI

The second fight with a 2 seater.

One of the Germans down.

•  I also just finished up running a D&D session for Tristan and a couple of his friends. .It looked like it was heading for a possible TPK but they managed to get through and then wisely decided to rest for the night. I think they had fun and they should be able to wrap up the adventure in 1 or 2 more sessions.

Well I think that's about it for now unless you include a fair bit of online play with the 360 with Black Ops and Battlefield 3.

Thanks for reading.

Painting and a Fight in the Sewers

Despite a car accident (which is still being sorted out though we know the car is a write off) and a family wide sickness which took all 4 of us out of action for the better part of a week I did get some gaming and modeling in.

On the modeling front I finished off my first batch of Elhiem miniatures, the USMC 2009+. I will be using these in conjunction with  Ambush Alley Games Force on Force rules. I painted up a squad to play out the first scenario in the Road to Baghdad book. Yes I know the scenario takes place in 2003 and the Marines are wearing the armour plates of a few years on but I am going to let this pass as I am sure these fellows are going to make their way to Afghanistan as well.

I also managed to get in a game of Malifaux at A Few Glued Men meet up vs. my usual opponent, Shawn. This was are first game using the Terra Clips terrain. Shawn had used two Sewers of Malifaux sets to come up with the board and it was pretty cool to play on. It makes some nice 3D terrain but the clips that hold it together do stand out quite a bit and the squares make range estimating easier though I found this didn't make a big difference in play. The game was my Perdita crew vs. Shawn's Leviticus crew. We had shared Contain Power which is hard to pull off against Leviticus and Shawn received an early 2pts by fulfilling Kill Protegee against Taelor which I had wanted to use to cleave through his minions. After that I started to hold back to try to get two points from my unannounced schemes, Hold Out and Stake a Claim. We both pulled out some good and bad luck during card draws and neither of us could fulfill the shared strategy. The game ended in a draw which I thought was good for Perdita after being down 2 points early on. It was a fun game, looked good on the Terra Clips board and was a fairly tense second half of the game.

Elhiem miniatures USMC 2009+

The Lt.

One of the Riflemen

Taelor on the left just before Leviticus killed her. Nino in position.

Sewer level view.

Perdita holding the bridge.

Perdita and Leviticus stare each other down.

 

A Slow Few Weeks

Well I haven't been doing a lot, gaming wise, recently but I have done some modeling at least.

I've been getting some paint on my 20mm Elhiem modern USMC to get ready for some battles of Force on Force. The gear they are wearing (2009+) is a little too modern for some of the scenarios (2003) but I'm sure the players will let this pass. I'm painting them as described in the Force on Force Afghanistan scenario book with a few paint substitutions for colours I don't have and they are coming out pretty good and are quite easy to do.

I am also working on the Napoleonic 1/1200 ships and currently have all the French ships painted and ready to rig.

Gaming has been fairly slow though but I have been working on a WHFRP (Warehammer Fantasy Roleplay) campaign that will hopefully kick off soon. I've been wanting to give this a really good try and though I have played a few sessions not really enough to really get into it. I have been listening to a podcast called the  Reckless Dice and it is quite good to listen to their advice and the live roleplay sessions to get a good idea how to use the dice pool mechanic.

I've also been wasting too much time playing Battlefield 3 on the xbox but I won't talk about that here!

See you later.

Elhiem 20mm 2009+ USMC

Front fireteam awaiting detail, center fireteam and Lt. with basic uniform colour applied and back fireteam primed. 

center-awaiting detail, left-basic uniform done, right-primed.

Holiday Gaming

Happy New Year everyone.

The house received a few games over Christmas. Tristan got Merchants and Marauders(Z-Man Games), Michelle got Dixit(Libellud) and I received Warhammer Invasion(Fantasy Flight Games). And all seem to be fun games having got in one game of each so far, well not a complete game of Warhammer Invasion but enough to know we will break it out again soon for a complete game.

Tristan and I continued our Dust Tactics game completing 4 of the 8 scenarios before we took down the game table so it is "to be continued" with the Axis in a precarious position.

I also played a few solo games of Elder Sign and Death Angel which are fun to play but I think I prefer Eldar Sign.

Pierre and I also replayed the infantry scenario in Force On Force, correcting rules mistakes from the first game(and adding some different ones). We have the rules pretty much down now and are ready to move on to the next scenarios from Road to Baghdad. This time the game ended very differently with the American forces barely getting off the start line due to some early casualties and losing the initiative early on.

I missed the first A Few Glued Men game night  but hope to get there for the next one.

Tristan and I are also planning on giving The One Ring RPG a try to see how it plays. It's a RPG set Middle Earth in the time between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Flames of War has been put on hold till my opponent returns to the area so I that's it for now.

I also picked up an Xbox 360 over the holidays so that I can join the online mayhem with some of my friends, a few that are spread out across the country (at least as far as Ontario) and other more local friends who I just don't get to see that often. 

The field of battle from the Insurgent side. The red markers were to indicate hidden status.

From the American side. End of turn one.

End of turn two. Note the red bead on the American team represents a severe wound.

Note all the wounded Americans, apparently they skipped the medic training.

It was all down hill besides a stellar performance from my AT-4 which took out a couple of buildings. The Insurgent medics were much better though.

The Allies storming the Axis facility.

The Allies won breaching the wall in one spot.

Merry Christmas and Happy Gaming

I've actually done quite a bit of gaming and modelling since the last post but because of the busy season this will be a relatively short entry.

I've started the Christmas gaming season with a bang. Ian and Julian came down from Yarmouth for the day while Shawn came in from the city and we played some Malifaux using the Christmas scenario's from the Wyrd web site. Julian, Tristan and I also played a game of Blood Bowl Team Manager by Fantasy Flight Games while Ian and Shawn played out their epic game.

I also finished painting a few figures for Ian so that he could take them home with him. I'll post those pictures on the commission page.

Ian and his stat card.

Ian thinking?

And Julian with a stat card!

Perdita's crew trying to spread Christmas cheer to Malifaux.

The Peacekeeper after singing a lovely coral.

The epic battle to collect presents continues...and continues...

Tristan and I have also started our Dust Tactics campaign which is even after the first two scenarios of the Blue Thunder scenario book.

In the midst of the second battle.

Earlier Chet and I got in a game of Flames of War, starting a small trial Infantry Aces campaign before we drag in more players for a full scale one.

The Germans held out in a building just out of view and could not be dislodged.

I have also started to run a D&D game for Tristan and a couple of his friends. They seemed to have enjoyed the first two sessions and we are planning another one over the break.

The PC's entering the night's climatic conclusion, it ended well.

I forgot to mention in my last post that my wife found a great find at Frenchies, a used "stuff" store. It was a old Avalon Hill game and the pieces were still unpunched!

Well that's it till the New Year. I plan on finishing the Dust Tactics campaign and hope to get in a few other games over the Holidays. So cheers to all and enjoy yourselves. See you in the new year.

Rob

Games and Christmas Preparations

Christmas season is approaching and it is getting time to plan the annual Christmas game that Tristan and I usually wage. In the past we have always played a large Lord of the Rings miniature game but we might mix it up this year and play a series of connected scenarios of a different skirmish game possibly Malifaux or Dust Tactics. 

I have been able to get some hobby in, working on some terrain and figures. I have started to paint up some Malifaux figures for a friend of mine and plan on finishing those this week. I also started working on about 7' of river sections which I have made wide enough that it should be usable in all the scales I use from 15mm to 28mm. Of course I will have to build different bridges which I will make as I need them.

I also got in a number of games. At A Few Glued Men(Superstore group) I played a game of Warmachine using my Cygnar Battlebox set and a 600pt game of Flames of War. I pulled out a win with both these games. The Flames of War game was more of a refresher game as I haven't played in quite some time but it came back to me fairly quickly. We are planning on trying the Infantry Aces campaign once we gather enough interested parties and to this end one of the guys and I are going to run through a shortened version to try it out first.

At Shawn's place four of us got in a game of Ravenloft which was fun as this was the first time I have played the game with more than two players before and we were victorious defeating the Dracolich.

I also played a solo game of Force on Force to refresh the rules in my head and to play the intro scenario again before I get the game group together to give it another go. The first time we played we had interpreted a number of the rules wrong. The game played fast enough and this time instead of changing the measurements to match the 20mm scale (which we had done last time) I increased the number of turns and kept all measurements the same while playing on a slightly larger board than that given in the book. I liked this method better as there was no measurement conversion. I also used the Fog of War events deck removing any cards related to vehicles and air assets.

The beginning of the river sections. They are 6" wide and 2' long. I have marked 1" along each side for the river banks. I also primed them to reduce warping when I add the river banks and paint.

The river banks getting built up.

The end of turn 1. The US army has moved into the lower buildings before pushing into town. The burning HMMWV's are terrain pieces only.

Turn 2. The first US sections move up under cover of the other 2 sections. The US has already taken a KIA due to some lucky shots on one of the overwatch teams. (which were not very alert)

An Iraqi sniper wounds 2 Americans. This entire team became lightly wounded with one KIA.

 

The US are still pushing forward though the amount of fire is slowing the advance.

A look up the street to the objective building on the left.

The end of the battle. The US advance was held up short of the objective and some very lucky last turn fire takes down a US section(lower left) while concentrated fire also downed the US section in the upper triangular building with the 2nd section trying to get to them to apply some 1st Aid. Note: the Iraqi soldiers in the upper right are actually dead soldiers I removed from the building to reduce clutter.

Distractions and Halcon

The problem with this hobby, which many of us suffer from, are the many distractions that come along the way and direct our hobby energies from one focus to another. Then some event pops up and we realize all the projects that are just hanging around.

Lately I've been distracted by the Dust Tactics models that for some reason I decided all needed to be painted. Originally my thought was to paint the flesh and then just put a wash over the whole figure because they come pre-primed anyways, all the Axis are grey and all the Allies are green. The detail is reasonably good so I thought the wash would be good enough to bring out the details but of course once I started my thought was, "well if I'm putting paint on them I might as well add some color".  So as it turned out I painted them up so each unit looked a little different than the others that way they would be easy to distinguish and though I didn't give them the full paint treatment I did more than I was planning. The sculpts look good and with a little effort they look pretty nice. I painted them all in about 2 weeks and am pleased with the way they look.

So then I wanted to do some prep to get a demo game of Malifaux ready for Halcon, a sci-fi/fan convention held in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And though I really like the ease of storage and transport of foam army cases the down side is, if I don't see the unpainted models I'm a lot less likely to paint them until I open the case and go "oh that's not painted yet". Anyways with all the Dust painting I've been doing I had no time to paint up any of the Malifaux figures that I probably should have been doing.

But Halcon went well. We ran two 4 hour demo sessions which seemed to go well with new players trying it out the whole time and the Saturday session probably could have gone for twice the time. The crews were kept small and simple but we did make some minor adjustments as we went to even the crew match ups a bit better for new players. We had two of us running the demos, me and Ian from the The Aether Vox, which worked out well as we always had someone available to explain game mechanics and also the abilities and possible tactics with the crews we were familiar with.

A couple of the guys from New Brunswick, Jordan and Tyler that had come down for my Malifaux weekend earlier this year were down for Halcon and even though I didn't get a game in with then it was good to see them and Tyler helped out a bit at the demo as well.

I also managed to get in a number of games in the last few weeks,  two games of Dust, the Strategy Game with my son, which is a fun and quick world conquest game.  I lost both of these games but in my defense the second game I gave Tristan some last turn advice which turned a potential tie to a win for him, but a well played game by him all around. I also played three games of Warmachine at the Superstore game night which was a lot of fun. I played two battle box games and one larger 25 pt game with 2 wins and 1 loss.  The next Superstore night I am getting in a game of Flames of War which I haven't played in some time so I am looking forward to that. There seems to be a number of players in the area so we might see if we can get an Infantry Aces campaign under way.

I guess that's it for now, see you in a few weeks. Oh ya, of course my Flames of War Germans aren't quite finished because they've been packed away!

Some of the costumes at Halcon.

The Stormtroopers looked great, better than the originals which I've seen at the Smithsonian.

The games room at Halcon.

The Malifaux demo table.

Demos in action, everyone seemed to enjoy it, Tyler's standing to the left.

Ian, offering sagely advice.

The Axis, Dust Tactics.

The Allies, Dust Tactics.