Friday 29 April 2011

On the painting table

After all the words of the SSL Battle Report (and all the other wordy bits I've been posting), I thought it would be nice to demonstrate some more colouring in, wargaming, for the purposes of.

So, here's some of the current WIP.

First up is the Musketeer Miniatures early Saxons. Bill Thornhill's sculpting - bloody lovely, way above what one would reasonably expect for figures which are basically aimed at the WAB market. I've got rather a lot of these, and very slowly working through them. Great figures to paint, although I've learnt the hard way about the steel spears. One day I'll finish all 140 of them and get a Romano-British from Musketeer army to play against.

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Cyning/Atheling, and his Champion - the General, basically

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Armoured Cavalry - a points sink, but pretty.

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Geoguth Command - veteran warriors.

Also on the table are Red Box Games adventurers.
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Veteran Dwarf type... Accident with the brown ink means I'll have to redo his hands. The green came out really chalky too.

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Elf Archer - really struggled with her, specifically the colour of the boots. Camera doesn't show it under this light, but the cloak is fully highlighted, as is her face.

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A Njorn - again, struggling to get the palette right on this one.

Lastly we have some Splintered Light Miniatures Druid's Children Rebels - these are my mate's figures from the Batrep below. I've got fed up with playing against unpainted figs, so I've put some paint on them for him over the last two days.

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A Pine Marten, and three Foxes.

Alongside this lot there is around a dozen 15mm Splintered Light Saxons, the rest of the SLM warband, a dirty great 15mm Samurai army, two 28mm Cromwell tanks, eight more commissioned tanks, etc etc.

Wednesday 27 April 2011

SSL: A Fistful of Badgers

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One of the many points I like about Songs is the ease at which you can get a game in. Last night Oli and myself elected to play a 450pt Song of Splintered Lands game at about 7.30pm. Convened for battle at 8.30pm, placed some scenery on the table, had a smoke, lined up the little animals, and off we went. Here's how it happened;

Forces;
Druid's Children - Brace Badgerlord (146pts!), 4 x Badgers, 1 x Hare Spear, 1 x Squirrel Sword
The Rebels - Wolverine Hero, Rat Warlord, Rat Sorcerer, 2 x Fox Archers, 1 x Stoat Brigand, 5 x Rats
Scenery;
Two Celtic round huts borrowed from Arthurian 15mm in the middle, seven trees dotted around them.

Set-up
The Druid's Children got to deploy first - not much imagination required with seven troops; line up Badgers with Lord in the middle, Squirrel to the left, Hare to the right. The Rebels formed an inverted wedge of rats with their warlord and sorceror at the back, the Wolverine in front of them, Foxes lurked to their left, and the Stoat hung around on the right.

Turn 1;
Druid's Children moved steadily up; Badger line advanced up the clearing in the middle, Hare bounded off to the right to lurk around one of the huts, ready to spring forward and take out the pesky Fox archers. Squirrel moved to the left into the trees.

The Rebel's also advanced steadily through the trees, Wolverine and Stoat hung back, with Rats surged forward in formation. The Fox archers moved to their left to find a firing position. A couple of arrows flew towards the Badgers but failed to find their mark.

Turn 2;
The Badgers considered charging the mass of Rats now immediately to their front, but decided it was too far - started the advance from the left of the line and the second Badger rolled double 1. Turnover.

The Rats saw their chance with a disjointed Badger line to make a mess of things, but they too had an attack of indecision and rolled a double failure.

Turn 3;
A sigh of relief! The Badgers consolidated their line and continued the advance - wary of the tactical consequences of a failure, the approaching Sorceror and Wolverine, they played safe and moved up. The intention was to charge the Fox Archers with the Hare, but first the Squirrel decided the Rat Sorceror was a tempting target - another activation failure, but did get to move into contact.

The wily Sorceror used his free disengage to step away from the Squirrel, and the Rat warlord detached himself from the back of his gang and charged in, making short work of the Squirrel for the first casualty. The Fox archers found their mark on the Hare and knocked him down. The Rats moved en masse into the Badger line, but to no real effect, the Stoat moved in behind the Rats, and the Wolverine (bizarrely) moved across to engage the fallen Hare

Turn 4;
Things had begun to look grim for the Druid's Children - Badgers returned the combat but only succeeded in pushing the Rats back before yet another activation failure cursed them to hand the proceedings back to The Rebels - Hare remained on the floor.

The Rebels seized on the opportunity to splatter the hapless Hare spear all over the hut. The Stoat moved around the Rats onto the end of the Badger line and pushed one back. The Rat Sorceror transfixed one of the Badgers, but the Rats were unable to capitalise on that dazed Mustelid. The Fox Archers pushed back the Badger on the right of the line. The Rat warlord rounded off the turn by moving into the dazed Badger

Turn 5;
Having survived what could have been a disasterous combat, the Badgers finally got their act together. The Stoat on their left fell, as did the Rat next to him. The Badger on the right moved in and squashed a lone rat, and the Badger Lord moved to the right to engage the Wolverine but combat ended in a draw. The transfixed Badger came to his senses to hand play to The Rebels.

The Wolverine-Badger Lord Combat resulted in the Badger being pushed back. The Rat Warlord knocked down a Badger, but the rat next to him failed his activation for an immediate turnover!

Turn 6;
The Badger Lord hurled himself at the Wolverine, and killed him. The remaining Rat Brigand also died to a Badger to take The Rebels to below 50% - amazingly all passed the morale check with only a Fox wavering. The Rat Warlord continued to hold off the various Badgers - knocking two down in the process, but with the death of the Wolverine, Stoat, and all bar one of the Rats, the Rebels called it a day.

Victory for the Druid's Children after 25 minutes of gameplay, for the loss of just the Squirrel and Hare.

Post game summary - the Druid's Children (me) were exceptionally nerfed with 5 Badgers. I don't normally deploy such a one-sided force, preferring a big mass of Mouse Spears. The Rebels did suffer from some unlucky dice - especially the Wolverine rolling a 1 (+5) to the Badger Lords 6 (+7) in Turn 6.

Moving the Wolverine into the usually ineffectual Hare was probably a mistake too, retrospectively. However, the Rats did a surprisingly good job holding up the four Badgers.

I think the critical moment was the Squirrel Sword dropping out of the tree into contact with the Sorceror. Although he paid for this move with his life, it detached the Rat Warlord from the back of the Rat Brigands, and their loss of Group activation against the Badgers meant that their poor Quality caused a turnover just when it wasn't needed.

Monday 25 April 2011

It's my Birthday, and I'll...

...buy toy soldiers if I want to. Or, I might not actually; even though it was my Birthday and everything on Friday.

I have a bit over £50 lurking in paypal. Have had for weeks. Normally this would be gone, instantly, but this particular fifty quid is proving strangely difficult to spend. There's plenty I want, need, or fancy, for painting or gaming; there's Otherworld's outstanding range of D&D beasties. There's some Heresy bits I fancy. There's Red Box Games' Goblins. There's Splintered Light - as I'll buy just about anything David sells. I even went to Hotz Matz and Terrain Mat to look at 2' square gaming mats... every single time I put stuff in the Cart, but get to checkout and think 'nah' and close the windo.

Curious really - for as long as I can remember I've always wanted something, and never has cash lurked in paypal for such an extended period. It's also the same with Amazon - normally I have no trouble spending money there on books. Now got £70 in vouchers in the account - again, for weeks - but can't bring myself to click 'Order' at the checkout.

Painting-wise I'm not at a block - at a rough guess I've put paint on around 200 miniatures this year if I include finishing off stuff with has been WIP since forever. Indeed, in such a painting groove at the moment, that when I couldn't get on with the 15mm Samurai today, instead of doing the usual thing and packing it all away again, I got stuck straight into the 15mm Saxons.

It did briefly occur to me that I might be going off being a wargamer - I've started to finish projects, which is uncharacteristic, and I've not butterflied into a new period/scale/genre since Brytenwalda some six months back.

Odd

Wednesday 20 April 2011

More 15mm Dark Ages

Some more shots of the Romano-British warband - finished the Cavalry, so they're largely complete/fightable at around 1000 Solidus in Brytenwalda, or a huge Song of Blades and Heroes (Song of Arthur and Merlin variant) warband. I'll also be buying some Sabots so that they (and others) can be adapted to Impetus or whatever else we end up arguing about.

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Saturday 16 April 2011

Red Box Games for Labyrinth Lord

Today was to be all about 15mm Samurai, but the black spray paint had gone all wonky. So decided to carry on with three Red Box Games Dwarfs, in the end concentrated entirely on just one.

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These things are beautifully sculpted, with astounding attention to detail and dynamics - especially the Njorn range. He's come out okay, but I'm just not good enough to do him justice.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Painted some stuff

Some photos of finished things;
BEF tanks for customer - cheapo job this lot... which ended up more or less finished to a high standard as I couldn't stop mucking about with them. Especially happy with the A13.
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And I've more or less finished my Splintered Light 15mm Romano-British warband for Brytenwalda. Tiny little gits - based on pennies.
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Finally, a Heresy Giant Scorpion - gloss varnished the bugger, but that upsets the camera. Not my finest hour, but first 'bug' I've painted in as long as I can remember. Looks better in the metal.

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Sunday 3 April 2011

Stay on target

Back at the start of January, I posted my gaming/painting plans for 2011

Three months in, I thought I'd see how much I've veered off target.

Beginning with other people's stuff; Customer A's Cromwells are basically complete. Customer B's Cruisers and Lights are in progress - although the A13 hulls are consuming drill bits far too frequently. Customer C's are complete, just waiting matt varnish.

All good so far.

Now my stuff; 28mm Saxons - not even looked at them, and not been paid for any of the above, so thankfully no cash to buy a hundred 28mm Romano-British to go with them. Still, no increase in the leadpile is as good as a decrease.

The 15mm Romano-British warband are now completed, with the exception of half a dozen Cavalry (on the painting bench) and around a dozen other various infantry. So a reduction the leadpile here - big tick in the box.

28mm BEF, 10mm Napoleonic, 6mm Ancients - again, nothing happened here, but applying the same perverse logic as the Dark Ages stuff equals a tick in the box.

All the good then?

Not quite - in the meantime I've managed to buy an entire 15mm Samurai army, a handful of RBG adventurers, bought and completed a Heresy Giant Scorpion, and been given a Heresy Werewolf and Yeti.

All of which means my lead mountain has grown by approximately 50 miniatures net.

Bloody hobby.