10 Jan 2017

Games 4 & 5 of 52

The second gaming night last week turned out to be a couple of games of Gorechosen at Urn’s gaff.
It’s such a jolly friendly little game. Simple premise: bash each other’s brains in.

Simple.

The game mechanic revolves around the hand of cards issued to the players each round with each card offering options to the player to either move, attack or do something else…….often quite tricksey! It is simple but provides an excellent level of tactical choice to the player.



In the first game, poor old Silverfox got bashed around by all of us before succumbing to his wounds. My fighter was clearly too busy laughing at his demise because he let his guard down enough to let Urn’s gladiator sneak up and do 28 points of damage in one attack! This amount would have one-shotted a fighter on full health let alone what it did to my poor old champion! Mincemeat!

The Silverbacks warrior used the moment to move into position to deliver the killing blow to Urn…..but was denied by one of the Silverfox’s fan who lobbed a spear through his back dropping him before he could strike! Gutted! Literally!



The second game went differently at first with Urn’s fighter being slashed, stabbed and eviscerated out of the game quite early on. That’s what you get if you go around doing 28 points of damage in one round!

The remaining three danced around whittling away at each other. Sadly the crowd didn’t seem to like this slow cautious approach as someone in the stand decided to launch a spear at the Silverback’s fighter, again, managing to stop him in his tracks,……..again.

It must have amused my champion as much as it amused me as it left him guffawing, flat footed and ill prepared to dodge when the Silverfox launched a thunderous blow which connected fully and sealed the Silverfox’s victory!

Cool game. Great laugh.

TTFN


9 Jan 2017

AoS Warhammer Dark Elf Executioners - painted!

It's great to be back in the AHPC and I realised in past challenges that the key is getting something quickly done first..... so I completely ignored my own advice and did a big unit in one go instead....!  Hence it's taken me nearly three weeks to make my first submission but the lure of the challenge has had me painting far more than I would have done previously.

But enough of my silliness, my first post consists of 30 Dark Elves, specifically Executioners.


Dark Elves are generally the bad guys and it's no exception with this lot.  These are the chaps who perform all sorts of horrible executions of the Dark Elves enemies, usually involving the ridiculously large double handed swords that they carry.



As you can see, they take being scary to another level by wearing skull faced helms.  I decided to paint these in a bone scheme to serve as lacquered armour.  The only one of these enigmatic fellows who doesn't wear such a helm is the leader.... Is this because he is the only one allowed to speak for the unit?  Is it because he has killed enough enemies that he is allowed to show his face to allow his reputation to scare the enemy?  Or is it because whilst clipping them off the sprue one helmet fell on the floor and no amount of crawling around on my hands and knees searching and cursing could find it?  I guess we'll never know....



I went with a relatively simple scheme of silver, red and gold to keep the focus on the helms and huge swords.


With regards to rules, we've started playing Age of Sigmar from Games Workshop...... a somewhat controversial game as, in a fashion all too familiar to GW watchers, they utterly botched the launch, succeeding in alienating almost all existing players and putting stupid rules in for some units (including such gems as "if you can get your opponent to look you in the eye during your turn, re-roll hits for your medusa" and "if you pretend to ride an imaginary horse during Magnus' turn, he gets +1 to hit").

Fortunately, they've rowed back from the silliness with further releases and it turns out there's a pretty fun game under it all.  It has it's problems, being essentially a first edition after all, but we're enjoying playing and it has our whole group energised and painting.  I've kept to square bases instead of the round bases GW now provide and recommend for the game as I'm old school and I can then more easily use these figures for other mass fantasy wargames rules.


I'm pleased with these guys and there are plenty more AoS figures to come if I can stick to my plan.  I've painted up the maximum sized unit because I owned this many from a bargain eBay auction win (still on sprue!) and then have options on how to use them.

5 Jan 2017

1, 2 & 3 of 52!

Last night saw the start of the 52 games in 52 weeks challenge that a few of us are trying to achieve.

I was a bit daunted by this part of this years gaming objectives as this would, being honest, be an unprecedented level of gaming for me. However we got off to a flying start......well with the long term target.......not so much with the Zombicide: Black Plague mission that Junt, Urn and I were trying to beat.

First attempt last night started okay but we got scuppered by the bleedin' Necromancers getting extra activations that meant they could scarper off of the board. Same with the second attempt. On the third game I sorely tried to lose it for us by nearly having King Mortimer and Gilbert the knight eaten alive but brave Xenia stormed to the rescue.......no....I'm serious.

It was still pretty touch and go with the heroes being chased off of the board by a ridiculous conga line of zombies that keep getting extra activations to bring them ever closer to us. However we did escaped along with all the objectives achieved and no heroes eaten.


Z: BP is a great game. It has a very different feel to the original Zombicide but is still pretty challenging at times. The clearness of the game lies in the built in experience and zombie escalation mechanism which builds the difficulty and tension very well.

All things being equal, Game 4 and possibly more will happen tonight with a round of Gorechosen at Urn's Gaff.

TTFN

Still Making Progress

Since I started my 365 challenge on the 10/12/17 I have been plugging away at the Seraphon Saurus Warriors. 36 of them takes a while especially with all the little bits of bronze on them let alone all the teeth!

They've been given their gloss varnish and their Matt coat but now need basing. I've got the 40+ skinks at the same point and on Tuesday night I spent several hours adding some jungle foliage to their bases. I didn't even add the stuff to all of them but it took ages!


Just texturing and painting to finish these now. I suspect that'll still take a while given that there's 80 odd of the little buggers to do! I usually try to get the slower elements of an army finished first and that is certainly true here but this does mean that I get to move onto the big Seraphon now! Yippee!!

One of which will be the recently finished Sammy the Dread Saurian.


Just a £15.99 T-Rex from Ebay with some modelling clay and Seraphon spares added on. He got an undercoat yesterday lunchtime and has now returned home to join the next wave of painting.

Most of the little Seraphon aren't particularly colourful so it will be good to move onto the larger ones as I'm planning to do more striking patterning on the big nasty beasts. I finished the Scar Warrior and I'm pretty pleased with how he has come out.


Still lots to do before the 10/02/16!

TTFN

15 Dec 2016

He looks a bit Goofy at the moment...

...but this bad boy is destined to become a DREAD SAURIAN!!!

Quake in fear!

Yeah. Looks a bit dum at this stage but there'll be modelling clay round the horns to merge them into the body and some extra armour plates. I'll be adding some harness straps to hang Seraphon-esque adornments from. Quietly hopeful on this one.


The Seraphon painting pile is also enjoying progress and the big infantry mob got their yellow wash last night. Now its the long task of picking out all the spears, jewelry, shields & claws etc etc. I really want to smash this job and have the lion share done before Xmas.


Lunchtime work is also coming along as I continue to prep other stuff for the 365 challenge. Firstly more Dystopian Legions.



A Kingdom of Britainnia Tank....



...and a Prussian Zappy Killy artillery thingy.


I nailed the last two Pulp City figures and also knocked together the free White Dwarf Gorechosen figure. Great game. Ask the Silverfox. He lost his head over it! Twice!  ;-)

TTFN

0 : 6/359






12 Dec 2016

And so it begins

Junt, Urn and I have been egging each other on quite a lot this year and the result seems to have manifested in to a challenge.

What challenge? To paint 365 figures in a year. This obviously equates to one a day which seems daunting but casting my eye back over the last year I seem to have painted well over 200+ items and that includes big scenery pieces that have taken more than a week for each one. I’ve also prepped and made lots of figures and scenery. Given that I often batch paint big groups of figures the target of 365 seems less scary.

A year dedicated to clearing some of the backlog of figures? Yeah I’m up for that.
Junt also mentioned that we should try and maintain momentum with the gaming itself and suggested 52 games in a year. Given how easily life distracts us from fun things, I think this is going to be HARD but hey…..I’m up for that challenge as well!

The 365 figures that I’m hoping to get done include:

40+        40K Eldar
140+      30K Marines, Mechanicum & Solar Auxilia
20+        Pulp City heroes and civilians
80+        Dystopian Wars for both the KoB and PE
70+        Seraphon
50+        Dystopian Legion for both KoB and PE
150+      Massive Darkness figures yet to arrive from a Kickstarter.

Okay, that actually total in excess of 550 figures which will be something of a reach to achieve but that’s the reason for the challenge. Soooooo many figures waiting to be painted. I wish it were all that is sat unpainted in my study. Gotta start somewhere I suspose!

I was planning to start on January 1st but I need to get cracking on the Seraphon for February and as such I’ve started the challenge already. 11th December 2016 is the day of commencement and by this time next year I want to have completed at least 365 figures from the list above. We shall see.

The GoGs are heading for Nottingham on 10/02/17 and I need to have an army ready. I have the BFG’s seraphon on loan under the condition that I paint it and this is a convenient starting point. I’ve got 2 months to paint 70+ figures and I’ll be happy to get 30+ figures done per month as it’ll show me how difficult it is to keep on track.
Now the Seraphon should be a quick paint….
  


…but as usual I find a way to complicate the process. I’ve gone for a wash effect for the main colour scheme but I wanted to have their armour plates in a different colour but also tonally similar to the main colour. This means adding a base colour to parts of the model prior to the quick wash. Probably doesn’t actually take much longer but just feels like it when you’re trying to do 37 in one batch! Probably will only take one more evening to finish the first stage and then onto applying the wash.

Only one thing left to say.
0 finished in 3/362 days
Gulp!

TTFN


8 Dec 2016

Slow to blog....

..but still plugging away.

I took a time out from painting terrain to put together some MKiii armour to make sure that they were ready in the wings for the 365 painting challenge.

A couple of Nights and some extra ebay'd heavy weapons and thirty more marines are ready to join Horus's forces. These are going to be Iron Warriors as that force needs bolstering.


Finished on the painting table were the containers from the TTCombat merchant ship set. Simple straight forward paint job. Photo doesn't show up the weathering particulary well but they've been suitably battered as is the life of one of these things.


There's been an increasing amount of AoS talk between the GoGs and it has reenergised me to get the Seraphon painted. The skinks are almost finished so I'm going to push to get them don. I had been saving the Saurus to be part of the 365 in 2017 but I have more than enough figures for that so it would be good to get them done in December if possible.


Since that photo they've had army painter dip applied and Matt varnish.


Quandary is now....do I finish the skinks bases off or paint the next tranche and base them all together. Hmmm...choices choices.

TTFN