Year End Review

Well we are just about getting to the end of the year, so I decided it would be a good idea to look back on the year and see what got done, were goals met ect.. So first up what were the things I said I wanted to paint.

1. Teutonic Knights - Painted a SAGA army of these guys so call it a success
2. Crusader Army - No such luck, stuck on the shelf of shame
3. WW1 British Flames of War - No progress, stuck on shelf of shame
4. Some kind of Fantasy stuff - Ended up doing a Dungeon Saga, and a bit of frostgrave

So I will call that 50%, not bad really. But hopefully I can do better this year.

Numbers wise I have ended up with 216 models getting painted which is quite allot for me, 35% more then previous years or there about. Of course 266 models bought so that is also quite allot, giving a net of 16 which is not to bad. I am planning to try and not buy any new stuff, except for perhaps a few bits for Team Yankee. I also want to focus a bit more on terrain, my plan is to do a tables worth for Frostgrave.

In addition to the raw numbers I thought it would be fun to throw up a few pictures of some of the stuff which got painted this year. A bit repetitive maybe, but still kind of fun, but I am only going to put the main things and not every little item.

First thing was some Teutonic Knights:

Then Pagan Rus:

And Rus Princes: I don't have a good group shot of these for some reason

Old West Stuff:

And Finally Dungeon Saga:

There were various other odds and ends of course, but those were the memorable things for me. So not a bad year I would say.

In terms of next year, I would like to focus on terrain a bit more. Also I am thinking to not buy anything new until after cangames, except maybe some Team Yankee stuff as there is allot of interest in that, but we shall see.

In terms of new goals we have discussed a bit some ideas for Cangames which are Frostgrave, and a Crusades game. So I would like to do the following:

1. Templar SAGA army
2. Crusader SAGA Army
3. Team Yankee
4. By Fire and Sword Skirmish Force

So those are my rough goals to start so we shall see how that goes!

Thanks;

Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga - Infernal Crypts

Well been working hard trying to get as much of the Infernal Crypts expansion done as I can before Christmas. My experience with these kinds of projects is telling me that if I have a break of a few weeks in the middle there is a decent chance that it won't get picked up again! But if I can get close enough to the end then there is usually a good incentive in finishing it off.

So I have been painting lots of demons! Or I guess they are calling them abyssals technically.

Succubus:

Tortured Soul:

My idea here was to make them look like burned zombies basically. This was not super successful, they are a bit weak it seems. But I guess you don['t want something like that to look super realistic! It annoys me a bit that they are tossing fire balls at the ground. In real life I find the shiny chains and the fire stands out allot more so they look a bit better.

Efreets:

These are my favorites of this set so far. The fire came out pretty good and all the bright colors are nice.

Lesser Abyssal, Fireball guy:

Then we have the lesser abyssals, here is the fire ball one. There is another 6 with various kind of melee weapons. Then I just have 2 big demons, and the demon prince to finish the set. But there is only a few days left so I don't imagine I will get much more done with this. My plan is to assemble some Abrams tanks for cold war gone hot, so I an paint them over the break. Then get back to finishing off all the Dungeon Saga stuff in the new year. The bulk of it is pretty much done, mainly character models, extras, and the dragon left after the demons.

Here is a shot of the total progress:

I really hope they do some new expansions sooner rather then later, painting these 2 off fantasy guys is really fun actually. Apparently it has been selling well despite the kickstarter, they have stated that the base game and I think something else has sold out.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 266
Painted: 216 
Total: -50

Thanks;
Mike

Hobby Article - Plastic Glue

Hello Folks,

Recently I started using a new type of plastic glue which I read about on the internet and I have been finding it pretty good so I thought it might be a decent idea to have a post about it. Maybe everyone has already heard of this, but it's new to me so I thought with all the plastic stuff people are getting it can't be all bad. Before this I was always stuck with the Testor plastic cement, which you can get the toothpaste tube one which is super thick and leave strands, or the black liquid bottle, which is super hard to get stuff out of after the first use.

So this is the stuff we are talking about. I ordered it from their website, along with this long glass pipette type thinger. Seems that is works the same way as the testors stuff but is just allot easier to use with this set up, you have the jar so easy to open.

I figured that a good way to prove this works well is to assemble a helicopter from the new cold war sets, as I thought that would have a bunch of small parts, and also big flat parts that have to go together nicely.

So first you prep the parts same as before, make sure to have the instructions handy. I thing the kit has the parts to make a few different variant of this helicopter as there are some different missiles, and rotor holding things in there, but currently just this on in the game.

When you are ready to glue something you put the pipette thing in the glue with the metal bit up. This will fill it up with glue, then you take it out and turn it over quickly. because the metal bit is so small it won't just run everywhere. Then I take a paper towel and wipe the excess off the outside of the glass tube.

Then lay it on a pepsi cap so it doesn't roll around or spill everywhere. You can kind of see that it is full to just before the cap.

Now you just hold together the parts you want to glue, and run the metal tip along the seam. Some glue will flow out into the joint by capillary action and in a few seconds it will set. The small tip gives you allot of control, and how vertical you hold it controls how fast it comes out, but if you are to vertical there will be a drip on the tip which is not good, as this stuff leaves marks where it touches.

Also you have to be very careful that the glue doesn't touch your finger or you will leave a finger print!

I couldn't get a good picture of this process due to only having 2 hands, but I hope you get the idea.

So just hold the parts in place and run around the glue and soon you will have a very neatly done model with no glue strands or finger prints, and hardly any curses.

You have to be very careful sniping out the parts for this as some are very very thin and might snap, especially the tail rotar which is tiny. To glue in the big rotar which has magnets, I found you had to glue a piece of sprue in the socket cut to the right length so it would be flush, as it looks in the pictures I found of this chopper. Also be careful of magnet polarity, I had to reglue mine with epoxy (can't use plastic cement on magnets), as the super glue kept failing, and put the bottom one on upside down, so it won't stay on the flight stand now!

So hope you found this useful, I think it's worth giving this glue a rry if you do allot of plastic stuff.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga - Infernal Crypts

So I have moved on to painting the second dungeon Saga expansion. I was thinking to skip it and go to some of the other ones which are smaller, but since I am finding painting these things to be fun I figured might as well just get on with it.

So as usual first up I painted the 2 new heroes for this one, which are a cleric and a fish woman, I think they are using the term Naiad, or something like that.

These heroes were allot more bent so I decided I should try to fix them. The cleric had one foot not touching the ground, and trident was really bent. I read online that you need to have really hot water and go to ice water for it to really work, so I did it with almost boiling water this time. Seems to have held better so hopefully that works.

I quite like the fish person, something a bit unusual again. Not super keen on the cleric as the weapon just seems odd, but it is not bad.

Also got the first couple of monster finished. These guys are all demons from some kind of fiery realm.

A couple of 3 headed dogs. I am not sure what to do with the eyes, so for now I just left them black. For the basing I decided to change it up and try to make a lava type theme. So I painted the cracks orange with a little line of yellow. I thought that turned out pretty cool, but it doesn't show that super well in the picture I guess. Working on some tortured souls now hah.

Edit: Almost forgot to put the numbers.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 266
Painted: 208 
Total: -58

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - SAGA - Rus Princes vs Moors

So I was on the fence about making a post on this since Duncan already did, but eh whatever sometimes it is interesting to read both viewpoints.

Here is the Moor POV:

http://intermittentre.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/saga-moors-vs-rus.html


So we decided to meet this past Saturday to play some games, one of which was Saga. I decided to bring along the Fancy Russians (Rus Princes), because I have only gotten to play a couple of games with them, and they seem kind of fun. The Fancy Rus army is really all about the Mounted Durzhina, their hearthguard unit, which has to be mounted, and you can upgrade up to 8 of them to maliali (forgot how to spell, but basically it means senior I guess) Durzhina and they can some special powers. They have a bow, don't reduce their armor, generate 2 saga dice and can ignore a hit. But if they die all Rus units get a fatigue (good luck!).

So I took 8 of those guys a warlord, 3 points of warriors in 2 units of 12, and levy as we played 7 points.

Moors had a Black Guard unit (super foot), some camels, white horse men and a special hero.

I was a bit concerned about the black guard and camels, so I thought it would be good to beat up everyone else first. We agreed to play the river crossing scenario since I had never done that one that I can remember and thought it would be cool. Basically you have an impassable river with only 2 crossings, so whoever can cross the most stuff wins! Easy.

Here is the initial set up, I kept my mounted guys way back so they wouldn't get charged right off, and lined up a bunch of infantry guys along the ridge, with the bows in the middle hopping they could shoot the camels no matter what ford they went for.

In the first turn we both just moved up, I had to be a bit careful with the warlord as units that moved far from him gave him fatigues due to a moor ability. But I was able to advance, and move up with the mounted to fire on the white horse men and retreat using the parting shot ability. So I got one kill out of that.

The white horsemen then decided to charge my Durzhina before anymore got shot, but my big special unit was a bit to much for them, and thanks to resilience they fell back after loosing 4, with no dead for me. Meanwhile the Blackguard took up position in the other ford, I gave up on that ford about now, hah.

On my turn I had my Durzhina finish off the pesky horse men, or was it the warriors I forget. Anyway I was able to use the parting shot again and took out half of the camels! Added to that my levy killed one of the Blackguard, and I got my warriors to try and block the camels from charging. So a real lucky turn for me there.

In retaliation the camels charged my Durzhina, but they were to small to be real effective against such a large hearthguard unit now, even with their bonus of halving my dice I still had 8. So I was able to weather another storm. But the Blackguard tenderized my unit of 12 warriors as well which was not as ideal. They are pretty good with the right abilities.

At this point I had more points of guys around then the Moors so I decided to leave my militia bow men to die and ran everyone else across the river. I figure that the main use of peasants to to have them go die somewhere so this seemed ok.

In the final turn the Moors massacred my levy, and I lined up my veteran Durzhina in a fancy formation along the river (they are the fancy rus after all).

So at the final tally we had like 19 points for me across, and  12 for the Moors. We both had a bunch of hearthguard and a warlord, but I also had a bunch of warriors. I retrospect Duncan could ahve put his cavalry against my much easier to kill warriors and it would have been allot closer probably, so good thing he never thought of that!

Really enjoyed this game, always fun to play saga, and I think including the special units makes it more fun as well.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga

So a bit more painting stuff. I finished off the last 2 models for the Warlord of Galahir expansion, so I wanted to put them up, and do a group shot of all that stuff so here is that.

Orclings:

So the last thing to get painted was the orclings, These little guys are pretty funny, with the guy trying to pull a big sword, and one standing on anothers shoulders. It kind of sucked that they came pre glued on the base, as I could have done allot better otherwise, but oh well.

Group Shot:

And of course here is a group shot of all these guys together:

Quite happy with this lot overall, on to the demons of the Infernal Crypt's expansion now I guess. Original plan was to skip over and do the dragon, but now I want to keep up this good progress!

Now I am at the point where I need to figure out the best way to magnatize them for storage. I think just gluing the right magnet in the bottom will do it thou.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 266 (8 Frostgrave guys, 8 Team Yankee) 
Painted: 204 
Total: -62

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Infinity WW2 Mod

So this past Friday I decided to try out something that I have been thinking about for awhile. Which is to try using the Infinity Rules for a WW2 Skirmish. Allot of people are not familiar with that game perhaps but it is a skirmish came set 175 years in the future where you have small spec ops battles basically. My thought was that it could be a fun system to do really small WW2 games where you have maybe 10 or so guys per side.

The game is meant to be played in 32mm, but I just used the inch ranges as centimeters to convert down to 15mm, to match what I had. The big change is that rifles can't go on suppressive fire which they normally can, so you need automatic weapons for that. A few other changes but mainly just not including things that aren't appropriate to the theme. I wrote the stats and such in a small PDF which is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pnk4tb7bmmxz9mx/infinity%20WW2.pdf?dl=0

I set up a small set of terrain which was around 48cm square. The allies had to detonate a German artillery gun, and the Germans had to retrieve important papers from a cart. Additionally both sides had a secondary objective of stealing valuable art from the Mayor's mansion.

So I got to test it out twice which was good. In the first game I took the SS and fought some Canadians.

Game 2:

I deployed along the road ready to move up to some objectives, the 2 man team is a MG42, and the guy in the far left building is a sniper. The Canadians had 2 guys with Bren Guns, and both sides had a SMG or 2. The Canadians started with a Bren gun in the shell hole on the road, but the distance was a bit to far to be effective so he was eventually killed by the sniper. Not much else of note happened.

On my turn I advanced up the MG to take cover behind the mansion, and brought in a couple of rifles to watch his back.

But the Canadians were able to sneak a few guys up through the woods and toss grenades over the hedge, which took out both of those rifles. He then managed to kill the MG loader, but eventually died.

I used my next set of moves to get my LT up into the mansion to grav some loot, and try to get a position to protect the gun.

But the Canadians managed to knock out my MG and avoid my sniper line of fire and get some demo charges onto the gun. So they achieved the primary, and I got the secondary. Was a fun game and I think showed that this can work pretty well.

Game 2:

So for game 2 I was not a player and just acted as a GM. Again the SS would face the Canadians in the same mission, now on opposite sides. Apparently I just got 1 picture this time. But basically the SS aggressively crossed the hedge on mass, and despite a great effort the Canadians were never able to make any inroads there. So this time we had a victory for the SS.

Big thanks to the Infinity crowd for helping me to test this out, was really fun I thought. Planning to give it another shot for sure. I think there is tons of opportunities for cool scenarios, and it is really cheap to make such small 15mm armies, and fun to!

But you do have to be careful about who gets what weapons and the terrain. There were some thoughts that maybe the Sniper was a bit to good.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga + WW2

Well got a bit more painting done. I finished off the Orc Warlord, so only have 2 more models to go to finish off that expansion.

This model is pretty good, but I think it suffers a bit from forcing it to be a 1 piece cast. But considering what it is you can't ask for much more then this. He dos look cool with the axes and wolf head! Just about done with the orc expansion now and starting to look forward to painting the next bit of this set hah.

In addition to that I also took a small break from the fantasy stuff to paint a small amount of WW2 stuff. I am planning an experiment to try out a skirmish game I like with a WW2 theme, so I decided to a a few bit to what I have single based. So I painted a squad of Panzer Grenadiers and a single half track. I already have some SS and Canadians, and I will do 1 more Allied option. If it turns out to be fun today my plan si to run it at the club next week.

These are all from plastic soldier company. I bought a Panzer army a year or more ago when they had a big sale so I had some stuff sitting around in a box. So good excuse to paint a bit of it. Painting large amounts of 15mm infantry is not really my thing lately, but doing 10 or so is just right.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 250 
Painted: 202 
Total: -48

Thanks;
Mike

Gaming - Old West

Well bit of a short one today. Yesterday evening Stan came over to play some old west games with dead man's hand. I decided that he should be the chief archivist, so I only took a couple of pictures. But I decided that I would toss them up anyway, because why not.

We played the scenario 'The good the lead and the Ugly', or something like that. Basically there is a stranger in town (Clint) and he stirs up allot of trouble. The first scene has the stranger acting for the good guys against 3 bad guy who try to gun him down. Then scene 3 the bad guys move into the streets and a small skirmish occurs as they have a gun battle. First side to loose a few men looses. And finally a big show down occurs with the stranger the boss and another good guy facing down the street against all the bad guys hoping to hold out until help arrives.

I was only rolling 15s and above so that resulted in allot of dead bad guys. I took the out laws, and Stan had some desperado's. His boss had a more round hat so clearly is the bad guy!

Anyway here are a couple of street level pics which I thought were pretty cool.

Red shirt and fancy hat strolling to the bar about to get jumped by the bad guys. You can see the undertaker heading to the Hardware Store, I think he is expecting in uptick in the coffin business!

Start of scene 3. The bad guys have a showdown with Clint, the Boss, and Dead eye joe the riflemen. Directly after this the Rifleman puts one right between the eyes of Killer the best shot for the desperado, and Clint and the Boss run for cover.

Time to think about expanding town now I guess, will likely do that early in the new year. The sheriff office, bank, and train station are all tempting!

Deadmans Hand is a fun light game, but it can almost be just to fast at times. So will will probably give something else a go next time just for variety. Legends of the Old West is good also, and it lets you have a bit more fun with the army building bit as you can get a much bigger variety of guys in your gang. Perhaps the 3 or 4 of us with gangs can get a bit of a micro campaign going there. Maybe a new gang in the works who knows...

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga - Orcs & Trolls

Hello,

Seems like it is taking me a bit longer then I had hoped to get through the painting of the first Dungeon Saga expansion. Orcs take a bit longer to paint then undead I guess. But still making good progress, only the warlord and the 2 orcling bases are left so the end is in sight.

First up here are my Orcs:

Two great axe, 2 moar axe, and 2 archers. They re pretty cool I think, not sure if light leather was the best way to go for the tunic, but they look better in real life I would say. The eye were even harder to paint than for humans as it's really suken in behind a brow ridge.

Alive Trolls!:

The base game had some undead trolls, but now we can add some live ones into the mix. Seems oddly like they are set up to fight stuff allot bigger then them which seems odd as they are so big. But the armor is mostly on top and the weapons are huge. Not sure what that leg bone is from! These guys were fun to paint but it kind of took awhile...

So ya just the Orc commander and 2 bases of tiny orcs left to paint for this expansion so shouldn't have to much trouble to get that done this week. I also want to paint a couple of sets of 10 15mm WW2 guys. I have some Panzergrenadiers and a half track ready to start. But 10 15s should be super fast also.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 250 
Painted: 197 
Total: -53

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Dungeon Saga - Warlord of Galahir

So got a fair bit of painting done over the last week, still working through Dungeon Saga stuff. I have the first expansion about half way done now. This one features Orcs and Goblins instead of Undead which is pretty cool.

Heroes:

First up are the 2 new heroes for this set, a Salamander Fighter, and a Dryad or some kind of tree man Druid. I forget what exactly the book calls that race.

I painted the dragon guy the colors of a salamander which seemed cool, and he has a leather harness which I decided must be to hold some armor in place, so I did a few bits as metal that could as easily been more scales. The druid is just basically 2 different wood colors. I really liked these guys they are a bit different the the usual heroes so I thought that was cool.

Goblins:

Then I painted the 6 goblins in the set. The plastic in this lot was a good bit harder then with the undead, so I liked these models allot better. Much less issues with bent weapons and such, but maybe that is just because they are not just bones. A few places where the detail is a bit thin but they are struggling to get some cool stuff with a single piece cast I am sure.

So there is that lots, the green skin is a mix of Caliban Green and Snot Green, with Caliban as the base and more and more Snot added in. The other stuff is mainly normal leather and rusty metal colors.

Mawbeast:

Finally I have a pair of big steroid dogs called Mawbeast.

These guys are kind of static, but the big toothy grins are cool so I think they are alright. Need a few different looking things to break up all the green skins anyway.

I am about half done with the set now just have 6 Orcs, 2 Trolls, 2 Orcling bases and the boss to go. Hopefully should ahve that done in a week or 2.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 250 (Frostgrave)
Painted: 187 
Total: -59

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Dungeon Saga

Hello Folks,

So something a bit different today, I am not sure if this technically counts as a battle report but I am going to toss up some pictures and such anyway because I feel like it! We got together yesterday and decided to try out a few games of Dungeon Saga, on account of I had the base set painted. The plan was to try an Old West game, with Warhammer: Legends of the Old, as Serge had some cow girls painted to try out, but there wasn't time so will go for that next time.

Game 1:

Well we went for the first 3 scenarios, the first 2 of which are introductory ones to teach the mechanics fast and get used to the characters and all of that. The basic story is that there is a Dwarf Hold which has become filled with undead for reasons I can't recall and the heroes have to go beat them up. There are 2 ways in so the 4 split. In this first mission we have the Dwarf Fighter, and the human Barbarian, who just have to barge down this hall and smash down a door to break in. There is just a few skeletons to stop them.

They move and attack on there turn, and then there is an overlord turn, I was the Overlord this time, and he gets to make a few commands to move and attack or raise skeletons from the bone piles. You also get a few cards with different abilities, here they were just more raises or commands, but there are more interesting ones later. In this mission the heros only loose if one of them is crippled and win if they beat in the door, but in other missions the cards are also a time limit. Depending on how bad the skeletons get beat they either become bone piles again, or are just removed.

In the end they fight down the hall and kick in the door no problem.

Game 2:

This one is a bit blurry sorry.

For the second game we have a Mage and an Elf Ranger sneaking in the other entrance to the hold. There is a bit more exploring in this mission and now the door is magically locked so the mage has to use a spell to open it. These characters are easier to wound, but have strong long ranged attacks. To start the mage has opened the first door and the Ranger has crossed over to fire some arrows.

I made more skeletons and moved them up to keep on the pressure. But they were able to open the door without any problems.

These games were pretty fast, around 30 mins I would say. But they introduce all the rules and get you playing fast.

Game 3:

Then we moved on to the first of the real missions. A much bigger place this time as the 2 sets of heroes try to meet up and push further in. Now I have all the skeletons to use and there is a treasure. This mission has a time limit also so there is only 12 or 15 turns I forget and the heros need to open the last door before it runs out. They have no idea how far in that might be and only get to see more of the dungeon as doors are unlocked.

Right from the start the fighters start to get bogged down fighting all the skeletons in the big room, but the Mage and Ranger are making good progress.

I was able to get a bunch of skeletons to surround the Barbarian and the Dwarf. The Dwarf has high armor so is really hard to hit, but with the outnumber and from the rear bonuses I was able to start putting some wounds on the Barbarian. But the Range and Mage team were rushing around to give some support. I was mostly shooting the archers at these heros and got a lucky hit every now and then.

Another blurry pictures but all the heroes are rushing for the door now, the fighters had to give up on killing all those skeletons and the Barbarian is starting to have a bunch of wounds.

The mage opens a chest and get a healing potion to keep the barbarian alive and some magic armor for the elf. But when they open up the next room it's full of Zombies!

The zombies can't come back but they are a bit harder to kill and get bonuses for mobbing people. The heroes are able to kill them and delay them, using the 'feet to stone' spell to keep the Armored Zombie from having to much fun. On their very last turn with 2 heroes 1 wound away from being crippled the Mage breaks last arcane lock on the door and win.


In the end I found this to be a fairly simple but quite fun game. The heroes have to battle down and fight some cool monsters. It was better then I was expecting. Have played the DnD Castle Ravenloft game a few times which is similar, but I think I like this better. So quite happy with Dungeon Saga in the end, the models are fun to paint, and the game is fun to play too. Quite good to change thigns up from the usual once in awhile.

But obviously I need to to better with the pictures. My new phone has a flip case, so I find it allot harder to hold to take clear pictures.

Thanks;
Mike