JUNT is mad.

One of our followers on here is an old friend. He is mad. The photo is evidence enough as it depicts the first 19 of his buildings currently under construction.

Juntsville appears to be very close to the painting stage. This is good because I think some softly spoken gentlemen have turned up outside Junt's gaff with a sedative and a new long sleaved jacket for him!

;-)

Malifaux Scenery

Just a quick up date on my progress with my test house for Malifaux. Quite a simple one really but it has giving me the confidence to try adding extra details like loft windows etc on the next one.

The roof is time consuming but quite relaxing to do.

Just the windows to stick on and it will be ready to paint!

Another new gaming system? Yes please!

Quick update to show the Immortals that I got for the Hell Dorado game system at Colours. 10 figures for £15, as they were selling off the old French boxes so I decided that you couldn't really fall off!

Turns out the old boxes were set to be 200 points, which is the recommended size for the game, so looks like I'm all set and don't need to buy any more for it....... Reckon that'll stop me? ;)


Overall they're really nice little figures. True scale, so tiny little arms and hands which made some of the sticking fairly perilous, but hopefully the super glue will be super as pinning really wasn't an option for most of the joins.

Getting excited about buying these and sticking them together did mean the Pulp City heroes were put to one side, but I'll hopefully be going back to finish the first few of those this week, although I do now need to get some more of the GW wash now I got some good advice on doing the bases from Pulp Citizen.

The rulebook also looks very professional and with only 40 odd pages of actual rules, expect the Silverback and I to be getting in a game at some point.

On the Painting table this week!

Just a quick post to show what is on the table this week.

In no particular order are: 

16 Hell Dorado Figures
4 new Pulp City Heroes
6 pieces of wall terrain to supplement the Graveyard
9 smaller DW ships,
2 x Scout Flyers
and
the 2 mighty behemoths of the air and sea for the EoBS for DW.

I love Colours.....

...the wargaming show that is! I always find something new there every year. This year for me it was the laser etched scenery that seems to be sneaking into gaming more and more.

Is it a good thing? I had to find out. I got two 15mm kits from Warbases.com to try out. They were reasonably priced at £8 & £7 and I got started on the first on Saturday night. The first kit I did wasn't as precisly cut as I would have imagined but it went together after a bit of work. Thankfully the second, which I tackled today, went together like a charm. The 15mm kits are a little fiddly but not complicated. My overall thoughts on them?

CONS

Dirty. The laser etching leaves the edges of the HDF sooty. I assume this is from the heat of the laser. But they smell like lovely BBQs!!

A Fair bit of work. Whilst being quicker than a scratch build they are not a quick job to finish as the roof on each will take some time to fit the tiles. I suppose that it might be possible to find pasticard with a tile texture to speed this up but that will obviously add to the cost.

Detail. Resin cast stuff does have more detail but once painted I don't think there will be a great deal of difference.

PROS

Value. I enjoy puting things like this toether so I am more than happy with the price. For me it is almost like a double win as £7 or £8 seems like a good deal for a model kit that keeps me entertained for a few hours AND which I can then use again and again.

Weight. A good size building for the scale without the potential for many of them to turn into dead weight in a scenery box.

Robustness. I think the HDF will stand up well over time as it is pretty hard stuff. I don't know if paint will change this with the addition of moisture but I can't imagine it would make a great deal of difference.

I think I can safely say that I would be happy to buy HDF kits in future and having seen some nice ones already I think this is an area of the hobby that could expand quickly over the next year or so. With brands like Sarissa and Warbases generating new designs all the time, I will be keeping my eye out for any HDF releases.

I think I'm a convert. I also think Sarissa will be graced by my patronage in the not so distant future.

Malifaux - Branching Out 2

Finally, my ebay purchase of the Somer Teeth Jones crew has turned up.  I must admit I am truly dissappointed with the seller as they were all loose in a large jiffy bag, so they are pretty beat up.  It would also appear that in the absence of superglu, he has used plastic glue and blue tack to assemble all the figures.  So, this post is to show you a pic and let you see the transformation to them over the coming week or so.  The paint job is... adequate to be kind, so these are going for a dip in detol (other paint stripping products are available) once I have got the blu-tack out their little crevices.

Call me the Gok of Gaming !!!!

You can see the blu tack undercoated around the base of each piglet and the white on the back of the warpig.

The final throes

So, when we got back to the game we realised that we'd done more than we thought and we had only got two of my turns and 1 of Dave's to go! This was going to be close.

We started with my reserves rolls.... And I'm not sure why I bothered. One 6 out of 8 dice meant I had rolled a grand total of two 6s in 36 dice. I only needed 4 to have got all my reserves on as well! So sadly, this left my 4 Panzer IVs off the table just when I needed them most.... Undeterred, my lone platoon rushed towards the objective as the luftwaffe infantry platoon (too late to get near the objective now) sauntered on the edge of the table. The heroic observer called down a bombardment on the infantry platoon who were rushing towards the objective and killed one stand and more importantly, pinning them down......



After getting close enough to the infantry platoon defending the objective, they shot and assaulted.... And missed. The British swung back.... and missed. More Germans from the platoon piled in and assaulted and forced the British to fall back, but they passed their break test and so would be there to try to force the Germans off the objective next turn (pic below).

There were going to be some huge rolls this turn, starting with the pinned platoon rolling to unpin themselves on a 4+...... which they did! They then moved forward to get good firing positions on the Germans holding the objective. The British observer called in the Priests on the plucky platoon and spotted first time, hitting three. I then rolled my saves needing a 3+...... and got triple 1! There then followed a fusilade of shots from all the British, and making only 1 save out of 5 (again, on a 3+) the platoon was destroyed, leaving on the HQ to contest the objective. 3 shots from the AVRE later, only 1 hit and needing a 3+ to save.......I rolled a 1. I could see this turn wasn't going to go my way!

With the furthest objective taken, all eyes turned to the strongpoint Cod objective. Woud the plucky observer be enough to repel the might of the British army?

The pioneers managed to unpin themselves and storm towards the objective as fast as they could (bottom platoon). One British base from the infantry platoons trying to get into Cod managed to fight his way over the barbed wire and get into combat with the observer who was contesting the objective. We reckoned the Pioneers were probably out of claiming range of the objective and so this one base needed to kill the observer and occupy the house to get it.

My defensive fire hit... but the team saved it. This was it then, Dave's chance to get the win and all he needed was a 4+...... and rolled a 3! As he hadn't hit, my observer automatically counter-attacked and needed a 3+ to finish it...... and you won't be surprised to hear that I rolled a 1..... The British team then surged into the house again..... and rolled another 3! They must have over stretched themselves as the Observer then rolled a 5 to finish them in close combat and finish the game holding the objective!

............

.........Or so we thought...... I then thought I'd check the rules given we hadn't played in a while and there it was, independent teams could neither claim nor contest objectives and an observer was an independent team. So it all came down to how close the pioneer team at the bottom of the picture was from the objective!

After measuring it, they were in that area where there was only millimetres in it one way or the other, so we agreed that the British had shown enough pluck, vim and vigour to win the day and so the beach head was established and the kettles were put on for a brew by exhausted British infantry all along the beach....

A great game all told that really re-invigorated our interest in Flames of War and should catapault us nicely into the next stage of the landings - the battle for Caen and surroundings with a lot of the more esoteric stuff that we have in our collections for this very purpose.

Dave also has the US landing forces and so is keen to give Omaha beach a run, along with a couple of other beach landing scenarios from the books. There's also the chance to run a "what if" battle with the German operation Sea Lion not stopped by the weather this time around.....