I've never been much of one to play with figures other people have painted. I've bought and used a handful of used units before, and I've sent a few units to Fernando Enterprises, and one thing is clear to me: I just don't enjoy my miniatures as much unless I have painted them. Plus, you tend to have the additional cost of painting labor on top of the figures themselves, making the whole thing more expensive. Yet I finally broke down and bought an entire army.
Our Trucidos campaign, like most campaigns, stalled and died. However, unlike most campaigns, where one or two players get tired and quit, we had one get fed up with the hobby altogether! He kept saying he was going to sell his army off, and I kept telling him not to, but to make sure and come to me first if he did. He had painted these figures in a burst of productivity (which maybe burned him out on it altogether) alongside us, and had done a really good job on the figures. After trying to get him back into it and letting him know I'd rather he kept them and played, he seemed insistent that he wanted to be rid of them, so I made an offer, and bought my first army.
It's around 1,500 points of 40k Imperial Guard. That's an army that has appealed to me, since the figures could be used for just about any Sci-Fi game, but it's one which requires a lot more figures than most, so I've never seriously considered it. I sat down and figured that if my 2009 painting rate persists, it would take me approximately 16 years to paint this much stuff.
Which, frankly, made me rethink my whole distaste with the idea of buying painted miniatures.
Maybe at this stage of my life, it's actually cheaper just to buy my way into a game. I mean, clearly, it's cheaper to buy the metal unfinished-- but not if I never finish them and never actually used them. Maybe just not buying unpainted figures and buying a painted army or two a year is a better way to go.
I'll be mulling this over for a while...and not buying any unpainted figures for a while as I horde my pennies...
Anyway, here are some pictures of my new IG army. It feels like it was worth the money right now.
A Year of Frugal Gaming has some quick ladder building tips. I've used HO scale model railroad tracks before. You just can't have enough ladders, especially if you play Necromunda...
Miniature Peddler has posted some pictures of upcoming figures from Darksun Designs, makers of AE-WWII. They could be interesting-- I think it depends on the rest of the figures. They do look a tad cartoony, but that's not necessarily bad. The same criticism could be leveled at the Spugs, and I really like them. So, something to keep an eye out for.
I just got an order in from em4. I ordered their Combat Zone rules, which I've had my eye on for a while. Since I was placing the order, I picked up a few of the old Grenadier Future Wars troopers, just to double check how they mixed with the newer Copplestone Castings troopers (just fine, which is what I suspected). Anyway, one I picked up was this cyborg. As I was forcing the figure into a slottabase, the whole figure broke at the waist! It was a thin part, certainly, but that's the only figure that has happened to in thirteen or so years of putting figures in slottabases. I wonder if the metal composition contributed?
You can see the hole I drilled to pin the figure, and it's based, primed and in the queue to be painted. I quite like it.
Another of the Copplestone Casting Future Wars Corporate Babes.
...and a broom handled Mauser... One of Copplestone's Future Wars Corporate Babes, looking not really that corporate, but very nice nonetheless.
Mik posted pictures and a report of our recent 5150 bug hunt game. I go back and forth over Two Hour Wargames rules-- there are some real golden nuggets inside the rules, but they are still annoyingly poorly edited. Still, we had a blast with this game. We didn't lose a man, but we did decide that prudence was the better part of valour...
Here's a couple of cool figures I picked up at Historicon in 2007, the Wargames Foundry limited edition "Father Eamon McSweeney & His Cousin, Elizabeth Ann McSweeny[sic]." I wanted these for a while, and wanted to paint them for a while since I had them, and finally got around to it. I feel like I need to buy Occult Wars now...
Castle Dracula background borrowed from here!
I painted my first 40k Squat! I picked this up cheap as part of a bundle of interesting stuff a while ago, and have been looking forward to painting it. Putting it up against modern 40k figures, you can really see the difference in quality. Its sculpting isn't anywhere as crisp. But it has a lot of something lacking in modern figures-- character. The GW suits may think of the Squats as a "joke" race, but that means they're taking seriously guys charging tanks with swords...
The Squats' backpactch-- "SQUATS 4 EVER!"
The spider web tattoo on his elbow shows he did time in the GW boardroom, while he also sports the common F.G.W. outlaw tattoo.
The teardrop under his eye shows he killed a GW middle manager.
I spent waaaaay too much time painting flame effects on the chopper's tank for them not to be visible. At all. I don't like the denim effect I tried on the pants...he looks like he's wearing light blue corduroy. The visor is pretty sloppy, seen close up. I went back and forth about how to paint the headlight, and I think I did it wrong-- the upper part should be more chrome, with a clear light below. Ah well, it was fun to paint.
On the other hand, the hair turned out really nicely, and I like the tattoos. That F.G.W. is tiny, let me tell you!
I got the second game of our Trucidos campaign finished tonight. It was a 750 point rematch between Chris and me, and a much harder fought battle. However, I managed through tactics and forgotten rules to wrangle out, in the end, a draw...
The table was fairly crowded, but everything on the table was painted and complete, and it looked pretty nice. We were playing for objectives out of opposite corners. I set up right outside the center circle, which was probably a mistake. I was trying to keep the objectives in reach, but Chris's 'nids were on me by the second turn.
My Necrons did much better in close combat this time. I made a lot of saves and a lot of We'll Be Back rolls. I tried to keep my two (yes, only two) units of Warriors supporting each other, and had cleared Chris's hormagaunts and rippers by turn 3-4.
Feeling cocky, I ran my Lord's unit over to the hive tyrant, hoping for a quick kill. I couldn't scratch this guy! I needed the Warscythe, but didn't take it this game. The Monolith was also pretty useless. It arrived on turn 2, but only every got off one Particle Whip shot, which scattered off into the boonies. The rest of the time, the carnifex and the tyrant were either too close to use the whip safely, or in close combat with my own units.
The game ended on turn 6, with neither of us holding any objectives! Oh well, a tie beats a loss...
This Dome on Terraforming Planet gallery on TerraGenesis is chock full of fascinating scratch built detail. I alse loved the ideas in the Lighted Figure Bases gallery. I'd love to make something half as nice.
These are the coolest Necron figures I've seen. Also, it includes some very interesting rust techniques I will have to try.
As I struggled against postprandial Thanksgiving sedation, I found the time to work on some new sculpting tools I got here. The first is ProCreate Epoxy Putty. I'm no expert on epoxy putties, although I've used most of them at some point, and ProCreate has immediately become my favorite. However, this may well be because of the new clay shapers I bought. Mine are a mixture of firm and extra firm, which is definitely better, but both are workable. Anyway, I wound up creating the new shoulder pads for my upcoming Space Marines. Pictures once I get back to my camera...
This Kevin Dalimore article on painting vehicles shows how soft edge camo should be done-- with an airbrush. That's why he's the man and I'm not!
Now these are some seriously awesome bugholes. From An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields.
I some how managed to miss the fact that Blue Moon Manufacturing now makes space men and aliens. They look very pulp oriented (Pulp being the new Zombies), but many of the aliens could serve outside the setting.
I've bought Tau off and on over the years, just because I liked the style of the figures. I've always wanted a Piranha, and with my recent success at painting some vehciles and a Hobbytown coupon, I went ahead and bought one
This was still something of an experiment for me. I've never done a lot of plastic kit modeling. I didn't take any pictures, but I dabbled around with some seam filling. I used epoxy putty because I had some, and wasn't really impressed with it for that purpose. Buying some purpose-made Green Squadron Putty really helped, and the long seams down the sides of the model really disappeared nicely.
I painted it somewhat similarly to the GZG hovercraft. My original plan was to do two toned striped camo with soft edges by laying paper masks like before. However, it became apparent that the model was too small and crammed, and the task too fiddly to mess with. So, I decided just to use hobby tac and get hard edges. Here, you can see the Piranha panted the brown stripe color, with the initial masks applied.
The outline color, a very light tan, is painted over it. I knew this was going to take a while, but it really took a while. Unlike the hovercraft which I could affix and ignore the bottom, the Piranha had to be turned over. I had seen plastic kit modelers mount their vehicles on a stick, and now I can see why. In order to turn it over, I had to handle it. In order to handle it, I had to let the paint dry at least six hours to keep from pulling the paint off. This typically meant one, or at best two, coats a day. That's if I'm staying on the ball and don't forget. This thing took me two weeks to finish.
Here I've got the brown stripes light tan outline masked.
The final coat applied. This looked really cool! Here's a simulation of me waiting for the paint to dry so I can do the next step.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
etc...
The mask removed. It's not bad, and I think it will end up looking good when I'm done. However, I'm just not a patient enough person to go through this again. I'll be looking for either an easier (I mean, shorter, really) camo scheme, or work in brush paints or something. Frankly, this was for the birds. However, I do look upon it as a learning process. I'd like to not be so intimidated from vehicles, which pretty much means I have to jump in and paint vehicles.
I also picked up a Devilfish at that sale...
I finished another piece of terrain yesterday, started alongside the CD case tower. It, too, had been sitting around a couple of years, assembled but unpainted. I'm glad to finally finish it!
The littlest tower is a small spray can cap. The two middle-sized grey towers are old vitamin bottles, and the tallest is a Glenfiddich sample canister. The machinery is a broken piece of computer equipment from my office, with old sprue as pipes. The ladders and fences are hardware cloth. The grating is more sculptor form mesh.
The liquid is epoxy resin mixed with GW Scorpion Green paint-- what a fun color! This worked really well, but I had to find the right epoxy. The DevCon 5 minute I normally used turned brown the next day. Not really a problem, considering it's supposed to be some sort of toxic sludge, but I wanted to try and keep the fresh green color. I wound up using DevCon High Strength epoxy, which had a 30 minute work time and specified it dried clear. My test piece worked well, and then I mixed an entire tube in a plastic cup to mix and pour from. I was mostly done and went back to my cup for a little more, only to find the whole thing had become this hot, green, spongy epoxy biscuit in the cup! My guess is that, concentrated in the bottom of the cup, the regular heat from the epoxy curing actually accelerated it's own curing process. Anyway, I got it out of the room as quickly as possible!
Wood glue. Glue for wood, not plastic. Who knew? Solved by using contact cement.
Woo! Posing for the camera!
While I'm on the picture kick, I might as well take some decent pictures of some things I have for sale. Here are the painted figures of my WarMachine Khador and some resin GZG vehicles I have available.
And the vehicles:
I retook some more pictures using these newfangled ideas...
U.S. Rocket Corps and Zeppelin crewmen.
Genestealer cult.
40mm Sash & Saber AWI/FIW Indians.
Okay. Well. I recently complained about how much I hated photography. I have taken some good pictures in the past, it's just always been a huge hassle-- set up a light tent, remember all the friggin' settings on my camera, muck about with lighting, loading each picture in some complicated program like GIMP, etc... It just wasn't worth it to me. However, reading that post from Wee Toy Soldiers, I really thought he made it sound manageable, so I took another crack at it-- and was suitably impressed. It's still a bit of a hassle, but something I'm willing to manage to get pictures that look like this. I think the key thing I brought away from the article was using Picasa. It was simple and had all the tools I needed ready and easily available, as well as letting me have quick access to all my different photographs. Win! So, I went ahead and took pictures of my Orlock Necromunda gang, something I've been wanting to do for a while.
First, here are the Goliaths and Ratskin brave again, in much better presentation. You can even see the eyes!
And now, on to my Orlocks. These guys have been painted over the span of 14-15 years or so, ever since Necromunda first came out. Thus, they are painted in a variety of styles.
The Ratskin Scouts.
The oldish (new at the time) metal Catachans made EXCELLENT Orlocks, many without any conversions!
The Heavies. The rocket launcher is a converted Catachan loader.
The Leaders. The Catachan officer was a later addition, with a lot of milliput work. He has rat skull insignia on his shoulder pads.
The Juves.
Close combat specialists.
Whew! The guy on the right needs some touching up.
Shooters. If I recall correctly, the boltgun on the right used to be a lasgun.
More Catachans.
Bounty Hunter, Scummer and a Warmaster Necromancer as a Weird. If you look, his shoulderpads are Scaly hands, and each skull is from a Scaly, including the little children Scaly skulls. I mean, this guys really hates Scalies.
Finished up some more figures I have been working on tonight-- some Necromunda figures and Pulp Figures U.S. Rocket Corps. I have also decided that I detest miniature photography more than anything else on the planet. I couldn't take a decent picture to save my life.
First up are some Necromunda figures I received in the process of trading up for the Warhammer: Legends of the Old West. Well, I admit it, I cheated on this after finding a cheapish copy on eBay. I don't know what I'll do with these figures. I've never liked the Goliaths...until I started painting them. These are really cool figures! Plus, they have the best eyes I have ever painted ever. When I sat down, it had been so long since I'd painted eyes, I couldn't even remember how I used to do it. Then the magic happened-- all in proportion, all fixed in the same direction, only a little touch up.
To Dr. Methuselah's Chronozeppelin-- and beyond! I've had most of these Rocket Corpsmen painted for a while now, but just got around to getting the last four off the painting table.
Jon Tuffley from Ground Zero Games, makers of Full Thrust, Dirtside 2, and Stargrunt 2, is working on a new set of rules called Stargrunt: Assault Company. They are geared to reside between Stargrunt and Dirtside in terms of scale, with multiple 15mm figures per base. I'm sure the rules will be great, just like all the other GZG rules, and I will probably buy them just to have them, but I just don't see myself playing them. I've never seen a single multi-figure base Sci-Fi game in the US. I've seen pictures of a few in the UK, so maybe they're more common there. Jon seems to be gearing rules towards his better selling 15mm line, and after 14+ years, FMA Skirmish seems to be officially Jon's lowest priority, which makes me quite sad and disappointed.
I've mentioned picking up 40k with Mik and some others, and we've bemoaned the fact they while we all (now) have fully painted and nice looking armies, we don't have the terrain to match. So, this is my first effort to try and bring the table up to speed with the figures.
I've had this piece mostly assembled and laying about for a couple of years. It was originally intended for Necromunda. You can probably recognize the CD tower it was originally. Hardware cloth makes the ladder and the railing around a spray can lid, with old glue bottle lid antennas. The Eagles were some decals I found on Bolter and Chainsword, which I printed onto cardstock and laboriously cut out with an X-acto knife. The terminal panel was put together using plasticard from a "Beware of Dog" sign (cheaper than the hobby stuff) and an artists' sculpting form screen.
I finally stumbled upon a very nice color combination for rust. 2 parts brown, 2 parts orange, and 1 part metallic brass. It was very satisfactory when thinned to a wash and let run down the sides of the tower.
I washed the entire thing with GW's Gryphonne Sepia. I like the color, but it was too thick. I tried to thin it and tone it down acceptably. The next one will be better.
The detritus on the ground consists of various Woodland Scenics ballasts and sands, mixed with ground up sprues and other bits of trash like small cut offs of plasticard and screens I've collected over the years. The large piece is actually part of a car stereo mount. They were drybrushed up from black, then washed with the above rust and GW washes. I've used a similar technique on some Necromunda terrain a while back. My thought was with the debris and the grass, it might fit in with either board.
Seen in action on Mik's battle report. I've got two more old towers of this size, plus one that's double the height. They will soon end up as matching pieces, I hope.
I spent some time tracking down this informative thread on Sci-Fi buildings and wanted to record it somewhere for posterity.
I got these 25mm Ground Zero Games Stargrunt vehicles in trade a while back. I had intended to trade them up for the 40k rules, but procrastinated-- a good thing, since the new version was coming out. Anyway, the main reason I held off painting them is because I just don't paint vehicles. I've never been any good at it, and was frankly hesitant to do it. I took them as a challenge, and I think that the results of my attempt are good. See for yourself how I did it.
First, I cleaned the vehicle and primed it. I actually dabbled with priming white or black, but the spray paint I used covered so well that I couldn't tell any difference. Thus, most are just primered white.
Next, I spray painted the vehicle a sold color-- in this case, Testor Model Master's Afrika Mustard. I then masked off large, irregular areas with torn pieces of card stock. Some are white and new, others have already been used and are thus olive drab.
With the masks applied, I painted the entire vehicle Testor Model Master's Olive Drab.
Here's what it looks like with the masks removed. Pretty nice!
Next, I hand painted additional details, like the hover skirt and the gun barrel.
I washed the entire vehicle with Games Workshop's Gryphonne Sepia wash. It was a fairly thick wash, and glazed the entire paint job quite nicely.
After drying, I finished up with some light drybrushing of tan for weathering and scratches, and viola!
My kids have been on a big Star Wars kick lately, and I've bought them some of the Collectible Miniatures. You may recall that I bought a bunch of these a while back. There is now a fixed Obi-Wan in a starter, so I picked that up, too. Well, my son got a Reek in his pack and was about to wet himself wanting to play with it, so I sat down and rumbled with my 7 year old son.
We ran through the starter's introductory game, with Obi-Wan and two rebels vs. Darth Vader and two stormtroopers. I played the rebels, and got beat.
So, for game two, we built our own 100 point forces. My son took the Reek, a Vornskr and a Dark Trooper Phase III. I took Obi-Wan, a Rebel Captain, a Rebel Heavy Gunner, and Elite Rebel Soldier, and Wookie Soldier and a Twi'lek Bodyguard.
I felt bad for the poor kid as I didn't take it easy on him. I set my Captain and my heavy gunner up at the end of a long hallway to take twin fire from both on the Reek as he turned the corner into to melee with Obi-Wan. The Reek was tough, though, killing the Wookie and with 200 HP, soaked up a lot of damage until the Dark Trooper could emerge halfway through the hallway the heavy gunner was shooting down. Again, my tactically poor son killed his own Reek by using missles against Obi-Wan-- which did damage to Obi-Wan and killed the Elite Rebel Trooper. Hmmm...maybe those tactics weren't so poor... The Dark Trooper then killed the Captain, depriving the Heavy Gunner of his Twin Attack. The Heavy Gunner managed a Critical hit, but couldn't stop the Dark Trooper before going down himself.
That left Obi-Wan and the Twi'lek! Hang on, I could still pull this out. They double-teamed the Vornskr as the Dark Trooper Crited Obi-Wan! The Twi'lek bodyguard valiantly through herself in front of Obi-Wan, saving him, and he had both the Vornskr and the Dark Trooper on the edge before going down himself to the Vornskr. Junior wins again!
I didn't think the CMG rules were that bad, really. I had fun playing. There was probably a bit more reading and math than my son could do and really have fun, but I helped him along and he enjoyed whipping his old man two games in a row.
I picked up the recently released Mutants and Death Ray Guns from Ganesha Games. It's a real beer and pretzels Gamma World-style post-apocalypse game. Plus, it includes rules for something I have absolutely no figures for-- mutant plants. So, I had to whip some up.
They're almost trivial to make. I used the "twisted wire" method you often see suggested for making trees (you can find a description here, although that's way over the top). I used the rule of thumb from the Osprey Terrain Modelling book that you should cut 9 wires at 2.5x the length you want the tree to be. Fold the wires in half and twist them. The "eye" where you bent them becomes the roots (after you cut the eye open) and the other end becomes the branches. After posing, I covered the armature with floral tape, and coated that with Elmer's/PVA glue to set it. When I epoxied the tree to a metal washer, I also used epoxy to cover up any big holes I had missed. I then sculpted a face onto the tree using green stuff.
After painting, I used Woodland Scenics Hob-E-Tac to adhere WS foliage of various types (I found that clump foliage, my favorite, once again looked best-- the brown trunk with green foliage). After drying a day, I sealed them extremely well to try and keep the foliage on.
I have made figures matching some plants I rolled up...a Big plant that causes Terror, two Humanoid plants, and one plant that fronts an '80s big hair tribute band.
Okay, here is a batch of stuff that I've finished lately and finally got around to photographing. They're a tad underexposed, but not too bad.
My 40mm AWI Grenadiers from Trident/MSC. These are really nice figures. I should go back and touch up a few of the eyes, but I'm pretty pleased with these. I'm looking forward to doing the rest of my militiamen, although I might wait until after I get the spare hands packs, just to see what I can do with that.
Zeppelin Troops from Bob Murch's Pulp Figures. I've had these and the US Rocketmen for about a year or so, but the .45 Adventures rules got me excited about them again. Plus, you can get started playing with just a few figures.
One of the things I was really looking forward to buying with my Old Glory Army discount was some Cobalt 1 Palansi. I love these guys! Well, of course West Wind discontinued the line right before I got my membership. I still managed to find some seriously discounted at Historicon last year.
SWAT teams. I got 20 painted up, 10 West Wind and 10 Wargames Foundry. They're both nice, although god forbid the US starts arming their SWAT teams with SAWs!
These have turned out to be some of my favorite figures of all time, my Genestealer Cult. I've had these figures for ages, and in fact, I remember starting the Ogryn hybrid at a place I haven't lived at for ten years, so it counts and the figure it has taken me the longest to complete! The robot is a TALOS unit from Kryomek. I tried to make him very weathered and rusty. The effect didn't really turn out that well, the rust looks like some sort of camo pattern to me, but he still looks good in general.
Superfigs! I got almost all of these at Historicon last year (although there's a power armor girl in there from VOID). I love these figures, really nice, lots of character.
As I mentioned, Mik and I played Necromunda last night. It was a fun game, as always. I managed to pull out two wins last night-- I barely scraped by in a Gang Fight, and then dominated a Shootout, despite losing my nerve.
It was my Hive Lords, a 1951 point Orlock gang, taking on Mik's Soul Crows, a 2355 point Ratskin gang.
Our first fight was a straight up Gang Fight. My main force of close combat guys and short range "combat" shooters tried to move en masse up the right flank of the table, covered by my leader, Gunk, and my backup sniper, Blondie. I threw one semi-chump out to the far left to try and tie some guys up there, but he went down quickly. Outnumbered as I was, I was soon enveloped and started taking some pretty bad casualties, and Mik had only one guy down.
It was indeed looking grim. I was down to three guys-- Hardcore, my chief CC guy, a new 50 point scrub Gunfighter down to one autogun, and Blondie, my backup sniper. However, I did manage to get the Ratskins taking bottle tests, and their Leader was out. That meant they were testing against a 7 and me a 9, so even though I was looking at some, uh, serious Serious Injury rolls, I held out. Plus, I was anxious to get Hardcore in a fight.
It wasn't long before the scrub Gunfighter was down, and soon out. Hardcore got jumped by three Ratskins while Blondie kept Odin, the big Ratskin, pinned. It took two turns and one of his three wounds, but Hardcore stomped the Ratskins with his Power Sword and Chain Sword. Then came Odin, the ST 4 bionic arm massive sword wielding Ratskin, braving Hardcore's Horrible Scars, and-- HE WENT DOWN! The Ratskins soon involuntarily bottled out, leaving me in control of the table with just two guys.
The after party went well. I had one of my mid-tier Gunfighters lose the rest of the fingers on one hand, but with a Medic, I rerolled a full recovery. My Ratskin scout Runs Like A Girl died, coincidentally enough the same day I had finished painting my new Ratskin scout, Rabid Millosaur.
We ran a Gunfight next, and time was short. I didn't pull any of my high end guys, but it worked out. We lost our nerve by one point, but my Gunfighter with the saved hand slapped leather and pinned two of the four opposing Ratskins, and my next guy took another one down. My Frenzied head wound guy, Rico, charged in, and it was soon just coup de grâces on Down Ratskins. Ugly.
Again, the after party went really well. I actually had ganger to work territories and get money, and two to send to the Trading Post. I wound up buying an Infra-Red Scope and TWO, count them, TWO more Power Swords, for a gang total of three!! They are currently sitting in my STASH! until I can figure out how I want to use them.
Here are some pictures from our 5150 Star Wars games last night. We're working on some rules we'll put out soon.
Game one, with the Rebels with just pistols, which I was assured was correct but which left the Rebels hideously outgunned (12" range vs. 24" for the Stormtroopers meant just about any time the Rebels were shot at, they Ducked Back). The Stars, since they couldn't really get any supporting fire, just got creamed in a two way crossfire.
In the second game, we gave the Rebels a 24" range (although I think we'll just do custom weapons and give them an 18" range). It went much better. We also closed down a couple of very open fire lanes. The Rebels were able to keep the Stormtroopers heads down (making a squad run away in the first turn and flee the table on their Recovery attempt!) The stormtroopes just didn't have much luck this game...one tried to throw a thermal detanator around a corner, fumbled it, and Obviously Deaded his squad leader!
Really, if we were able to look at the sales across all the pre-painted manufacturers, they may well dominate already, and here's why. For just over $100.00, I bought a substantial amount of figures, had them shipped to me, and will be running a game with them tomorrow. From purchase to play in about a week for about $1.00 a figure. You just can not beat that. I don't think they're going to drive the unpainted market out of business, as it certainly does not provide the same feeling of accomplishment or enjoyment that I get from painting and creating. However, considering it would have taken me, realistically, two years to have painted all these by myself, assuming I even finished, it opens up areas of marginal interest, like Star Wars for me. I would never have devoted the amount of time it would have taken to paint all these figures up, I'm just not that interested in Star Wars. But, hey, if $115.00 buys me enough figures to sit down and play with my son and my friends, who like Star Wars more than me, well, I'm going to do that.
I'll be running a 5150 game with these tonight. It probably will be an Imperial ambush. Leia et al. start in the middle and have to exit off either "short" edge. Imperials start on the short edges. On activation rolls of 7, reinforcements for the Imperials show up-- probably bounty hunters or even Darth Vader. I'm working up some 5150 rules for Star Wars, I'll post them here when they're done.
I really need to work on some terrain. That table just looks sad...
I bought some more Star Wars singles (PRE 10/1, of course) from Dragon Justice. They had good prices, cheap shipping and great service. Recommended.
A buddy and I had a quick little pick up game last night. We decided to try out Two Hour Wargames new Sci-Fi rules, 5150.
I'm not a THW rules expert, although I've fooled around with some of their older games like Chain Reaction and Muskets & Mohawks in the past. These rules are faily similar to Chain Reaction in their core mechanisms, but include a campaign system (something other THW rulesets have received a lot of praise for).
I am NOT one for lawyerly rules, and can't make it through three pages of most board (or, perhaps, BORED) games rule sets, but in the past, I have found THW rulesets to be too imprecise and poorly worded for me. I've had a hard time figuring out what the real intentions of the rules were, although I kept fooling around with them because there seemed to be some interesting concepts in the rules. 5150 is the best I have seen from them in this regard. They could still use some improvement, but I would call them of average clarity and after one quick read-through, I felt ready to try the rules. There was one subtle wording I found that I missed out on by reading the incredibly active Yahoo group (only inactive players make an In Sight test, a change from CR2).
We ran just two identical squads, a Rep 5 leader and four Rep 4 squaddies, all with Range 48" Targets 1 Impact 3 weapons. He ran figures from his Ratskins Necromunda gang, and I used my Superfigs G.U.A.R.D. Tac Team.
He immediately got three turns of unanswered movement, sending two squaddies up either flank and his leader up the middle. I finally got active, and shot up his left flank, taking one of his guys Out of the Fight, and leaving each of us with one figure Hunkered Down.
My Hunkered Down guy rallied, and I tried to finish his off but only drove him into the central building, where he Rallied and took up position in a high window. In the mean time, the guys on my right flank show up, shooting one of my squaddies out in the open. The Ratskins leader gets Knocked Down a couple of times, but is still okay.
I sprint for the central building and my leader gets Obviously Dead from the Ratskin in the window, and a lot of fire is exchanged, leaving him Hunkered Down.
One of my squaddies gets into the central building and makes it to the Hunkered Down ratskin. Reports differ on what happened next, but he wasn't heard from again. In the meantime, the Ratskin leader is behind the same building, waiting to make his move.
My squaddies have the front door covered, but the sneaky Ratskin leader Fast Moves through the back door and into combat! Unfortunately for him, he gets the worse of it. One of the last braves makes a move on my other squaddie, and goes down, too. The remaining Ratskins (or Ratskin) fail their morale and Go.
Yesterday was Necromundacon 2006! For a buddy's birthday, we got together four guys (three of which still play regularly) from our Necromunda league 10+ years ago, along with two others, and played sixteen games of Necromunda over about thirteen hours yesterday.
We voted for best painted gang and best terrain feature, and I won both. You can see them below, along with trophies the host made. There was also a top gang award, but I was well out of the running for that!
I came in with a Leader, two Heavies, four Gangers and four Juves. My theory was that given we would play all day, the Juves would develop quickly into Gangers and I would be set. However, in reality, two Juves got shot and in at least two games, I had every single Ganger go out of action, leaving me with no income. Plus, I lost two territories early-- one two losing a shootout, and another to a Hivequake. I was pretty much hamstrung then (max 30 credits of income, after taxes), but we all had fun.
I've been playing some Necromunda lately, and we decided we would all make a one foot square piece of terrain to represent one of our territories. I decided to do Vents, and here are some in-progress shots.
Last night, we played some old school 1st ed Gamma World, and I saw a buddy's Drinking Hole. It looked great!
A couple of buddies came over Tuesday night. We were planning to play some PKowboys. We had previously discussed doing something similar to Warhammer Quest, which we have been playing lately, with starship crews. I had written up some rules which we looked over and wound up playing.
I didn't keep notes, but here's pretty much how it went.
Both guys made a small, unarmed ship with four crew and set out to salvage. They got stopped by a government warship, but their papers checked out and they were sent on their way. They got lost, but working together, managed to get back on track without too much trouble. Finally, they found a derelict ship they decided to try and loot. We played out the tabletop using PKombat (playtest Sci-Fi rules based on PKowboys by Nick Hawkins).
Upon exiting the airlocks, they found the corridors covered with a secreted resin-- sure signs it was Infested (think aliens/genestealers). They ventured down a long corridor, with Mik's "scruffy female Engineer" leading far out in front.
They found several security rooms, and as the Engineer was searching one, a fire broke out and started to spread. Leaving the room, three "hatchlings" (Tyranid Rippers mounted individually) rounded the end of the hall and attacked. With a little help from the rest of Mik's away team and some of Chris's, they killed all of them.
However, as soon as things settled down, a "juvenile" (Tyranid gaunt) dropped from the ceiling, slicing into one of Chris's crew and taking him down. The lights went out on the ship, and a giant "adult" emerged from a darkened Security room.
Mik's two-gun blonde locked the door on the adult, grabbed Chris's down character and ran him back to his airlock, but in the ensuing melee, Mik's Engineer went down and was cut off by the juvenile. The adult muscled open the Security door, but Mik's captain Heroically hooked it with his axe and closed it again. One of Chris's crew grabbed the engineer and began to haul her the length of the corridor under they scything arms of the Infestations.
Mik's captain, in the meantime, was bound and determined that nothing would stop him from searching the Hydroponics bay and grabbing some equipment for his ship. Chris's character, having roused Mik's Engineer, decided he'd done his bit and beat his way back to the airlock. The Engineer was soon to follow, leaving Mik's captain rumaging through hydro tubing while the big nasties closed in on the only way out...
We called it at this point, it was 1:30 AM and everybody had work or school the next day. We actually felt Mik's captain had a better than even chance of getting out if he left right then, as the juvenile was wounded and the adult had to get the door open again.
All in all, everybody seemed to have fun with it. The biggest problem was the battlemat, which was a parting gift from our old RPG GM when he left town, and I ruined it by using Dry Erase markers on it!
Since I had the light tent out, I took some pictures of some Sci-Fi figures I hadn't yet.
First are some Copplestone Castings Future Wars Hunter Aliens.
Next, I'll show how I accidentally painted a Tyranid army! I always liked the Hormagaunts, and bought a "Gaunt" box to paint some up as generic slashy-type alien monsters.
Well, since I was at it, I also had a bunch of old Space Hulk Genestealers I'd never painted, so I got them out and painted a bunch of them up.
That was it for a while, then I thought, what the heck, I'll paint the rest of the Gaunt pack. I don't like the "meat guns," but I'll use them. Plus, I based the Rippers singly to use as face huggers.
I was in Memphis celebrating my tenth wedding anniversary this August, and visted the Games Workshop factory store, the Battle Bunker, there. I wanted to buy something game-related, but every game store I knew of in Memphis had shut down. Plus, the new Carnifex looked really appealing to me, so what the heck, I bought it plus some Warriors and Ravenors.
The Carnifex is big, beautiful and expensive, which for me typically means he sits in a box for several years before I do anything with him. However, I painted these figures "Aliens" style, which pretty much means black with lots of grey drybrushing. It's an easy, quick paint job which gets the job done but still looks good. I think they turned out pretty well, and I didn't spend much time at all on them.