Lurgy 1 Miniatures 2

Returning from Paris with somekind of Gallic lurgy I have been confined to barracks, annoyingly missing out at a music festival I had tickets for in Leicester yesterday and the Reveille wargames show in Bristol today...

However, in between horrendous bouts of sneezing, sniffing and coughing I have taken the opportunity to sneak out and do a little bit of painting for my forthcoming Judge Dredd project (the first boxes of which arrived on Friday).

The first figure is a Heroclix DC Super-Adaptoid converted to be Johnny Falcone from the 2000AD series Marauder (don't worry if you haven't heard of it, there was only one series back in 2009). It was a fairly simple conversion using a bit of Liquid Green Stuff and a pretty distinctive looking miniature.

The second is a female with gun which I think came from Alternative Armies in the eighties. I had planned to use her as the beautiful but deadly Angelina in some Stainless Steel Rat 28mm adventures but have never been really happy with the face. I added a Green Stuff mini-skirt and painted her up in a generic SF fashion so she can be anything from a gang member, some Mega-City socialite's bodyguard or Wally Squad Judge.

Hopefully I can see off this cough and finish some Zulus!

Back To The Trenches...

You may recall a couple of years ago that I painted up a battalion of the Corpo Expedicionário Português for Élan. Earlier this year I completed two battalions of German infantry which I forgot to photograph and post on the blog. Only another seven are needed to complete the brigade! :-)

The models are 6mm Irregular Miniatures, somewhat rough and ready but they paint up quickly and do look good en masse...

I found them doing a little bit of tidying in the games room (which still needs rescuing) which led to a bit of ill-considered navel gazing and the idea to plan 2013's painting activity out so I actually achieved something.

Given the relative success of dedicated project months you might well wonder why I said ill-considered? Well, sitting down and typing the projects and armies I could remember, I could plan out the next five years painting and still probably not be finished! (and this doesn't take into account painting anything for Wessex Games rules projects - AirWar 1918 and Tusk 2 glare accusingly at me!)

Clearly I am going to have to be much more focused going forward (attend less wargames shows and stop looking at TMP). I think I will continue the dedicated months as this gets things done but stops me getting bored, but aim to complete a number of the specific projects within the year so I have both sides finished and can actually use them in a game or two!

Ok, back to the IsAngqu and uMbonambi...

No Can Do...

Bit of a painting disaster today that has put a major crimp in Zulu month, I dropped the can of Army Painter Leather Brown spray and snapped the nozzle off! Well half off, but when I tried to use it I managed to totally snap it off covering my hands in brown undercoat in the process (hopefully I have got most of it off having to go to a parents' evening meeting at school in a little while).

I have order a replacement can (and some blue for the ACW Month) but it won't get to Blease Towers until I am off working away next week. :-(

Still I have managed to undercoat sixty Zulus, so I will have to crack on with them and I can still glue the remaining regiments together (and see if I can find the forty that appear to have gone AWOL in the Plastic Mountain...

Charge Of The Wolf Brigade!

Twenty-seven years after I bought them(!) I have now painted up 32 Citadel Goblin Wolf Riders - hurrah!

I'm not quite sure why they took so long as I have always liked the figures. 16 had been painted and seen action previously (when I was a mere Snaga Orc) but I chose to repaint them so they all looked the same. I will spilt them into two regiments for games.

The miniatures were some of the first Kev Adams sculpted Goblins and I especially like the wolves (IMHO Orcs and Goblins should ride wolves). I found I was short two riders so converted a couple of the plastic LOTR Moria Goblins. Hopefully I will find the original missing figures one day.

Zulus next, 48 of whom have been given a spray of brown undercoat this morning...

Lots of Minty Goodness...

No doubt the Judge Dredd fans amongst you will be aware of the Frother's Annual Charity Thingy and its Judge Minty miniature donation reward, but are you aware of the Judge Minty fanpic that is getting limited showings this month before being released on the web? Looks good...



On the painting frint today's rain has stopped play when t has come to undercoating the Zulus (tomorrow looks ok) but that means I can crack on with the Goblin Wolf Riders who are 75% finished...

Lest We Forget...

On a cold November morn,

A moments silence, from those who‘re born,

Red flowers laid at my feet,

Remembrance of sacrifice complete...

Seasons
Saul Blease

 

World War WTF?

Like many zombie fans I've been looking forward to World War Z being released at the cinemas. Having seen the trailer below I am now unsure...

BSG: Blood & Chrome Online This Week...

The 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica was generally regarded as hugely successful, producing an edgy politically savvy SF war series that ran for four seasons. It's prequel, Caprica, was interesting but distinctly different and only lasted one season, however BSG fans were excited when SyFy commissioned a pilot for Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, a return to the Cylon War background from the original series revolving around fighter pilot William Adama. Unfortunately SyFy have decided not to pick it up as a TV series (though there is the possibility it might see life as an internet series).

The pilot will be shown on TV next year, but will be debuted online in a series of twelve minute episodes from this Friday. The trailer does look quite good...

Ragnarok 59 Put To Bed...

I finally got Ragnarok 59 off to the printers today (only eleven months late!). I have edited the SFSFW journal for two stints previously and had no intention of ever doing so again due to real world time issues but with no one stepping up to the plate after Nick Whittock's editorship I have found the mantle thrust once again upon my shoulders!

The editing and typesetting was largely straight forward this time around and a great deal easier and better looking than the hand typed, Letraset titled first volume I started the thing with twenty years ago!

Unfortunately what seemed straight forward when creating the full colour PDF that will go to Wargame Vault, was problematical as I tried to convert it to an internal black and white print ready format for the printers due to Apple's wonderful Pages software not being a clone of Word and things I know how to do in seconds in Word took a bit of working out in Pages. But I got there eventually...

If you are interested in F'/SF wargaming I would encourage you to join (click here!).

Ragnarok is the longest running independent F/SF wargaming journal by a long stretch and most readers seem to think it is of interest. You will be able to buy the PDF in due course from Wargame Vault (or for a token charge if you are a SFSFW member and want a PDF to go on your iPad) but there is nothing like a paper journal to read down the shed/on the loo, is there?

So what is in it? Issue 59's contents are:

Aftermath - Fantasy Battle scenario
Burning Down The House - Dirtside II scenario
The Drake Incident - Star Trek battle
Messing About On The River - generic fantasy campaign
To Keep Man, Man - the Instrumentality of Mankind
The World Needs Heroes - superhero wargaming
Aeronef over Guahan - Aeronef scenario
Crush Your Enemies - Conan wargames
Assassination - Killzone scenario
Far Trader - Traveller ships in Full Thrust
Fantasy Air Wargames Rules Set - the winner of the 2011 SFSFW rules writing competition

Ok, on with issue 60, let's see if I can get that out before Christmas 2013! :-)

Some Interesting Reading...

I realised as I finished a book today that it is a little while since I posted any reviews on the blog, having  restricted myself to the little "What I'm Reading..." box on the right (and even that isn't 100% correct as I normally read one non-fiction and one fiction book concurrently).

My non-fiction reading has been a little varied of late and I have read some interesting books which may prove of interest to some of you...

Over the last couple of years SWMBO has had me watching the TV series The Borgias, knowing little about the historical period it is set it all I could do was tut at the costumes of the Papal and French armies and go with the flow in the knowledge that even a bad historical drama is better than the X-Factor. After series two I decided to find out a little bit more and picked up a copy of Christopher Hibbert's The Borgias (I'd read his Indian Muting history a number of years back and enjoyed that).

Overall it wasn't bad, though the final chapters were a bit rushed. The coverage of the Italian Wars is restricted to the Papal involvement and there are no detailed descriptions of the battles but as a basic overview it was ok and I now know that all the actors in the TV series are far too old, except Jeremy Irons who is not fat enough and doesn't have a big enough nose!

From a wargaming point of view the conflict is interesting and forces raised for it could also be used as and Estilian army or similar in WHFB...

Osprey have been busy re-releasing some OOP books in e-book format and I have recently read two, Will Fowler's Allies at Dieppe: 4 Commando and the US Rangers: 4 Commando and the US Rangers and Nicholas Best's Five Days that Shocked the World.

Fowler's book is an excellent history of the build up and execution of the raid by 4 Commando on the German gun batteries that threatened the Dieppe landing in 1942. Whilst the book was extremely enjoyable it suffered from some awful numerical typos (eg. having Churchill captured by the Boers between the two Boer wars and the Vikings land at Dieppe 900 hundred years before they actually did!).  I have noticed this in a number of Osprey e-books, having a proof reader is fine, but if they have no knowledge of history this sort of thing can creep in.

Despite this I still recommend the book although it could do with some maps (I don't feel Osprey yet understand what they can do with e-books and how they can be formatted without the restrictions of physical printing).

Best's book covers the last few days of the Second World War in Europe and is a collection of inter-woven eye-witness accounts from individuals, both civilian and military (a number famous such as Sophia Loren and the Pope!), that were caught up in the events that unfolded.

It must be hard to find anything new about WWII but Best has done and some of the events that occurred are not widely know and are quite enthralling. A good read that brings a detailed human perspective to horrors of the end of the conflict in Europe.

Finally there is Richard Holmes' Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket, a fascinating book covering all aspects of the army during the black powder from organisation to recruitment to discipline to supply to... well, you name it.

There are sections on all parts of the army, the infantry, cavalry and artillery getting excellent coverage but also the smaller parts which make for interesting reading (the section on medical care is particularly grim).

My only criticism of this book is that there is so much noteworthy information in it, it is hard to retain it all! As well as a fantastic book on the army, it also gives a revealing insight into civilian life during the period as well.

If you are a Horse and Musket gamer and haven't read this, make sure you do!

The FLGS is Dead! Long Live the FLGS!

As I had to take son and heir into town today I decided to pick up some paints from Cut and Thrust Wargaming, my FLGS. I say "my" very loosely as I've been there only twice and I suppose it was not a great surprise to find it was closed, shutters up and a 'To Let' sign up.

Why had I only been there twice? Well the main reason was the sucky parking, although today I found a useful free parking area nearby, and the limited ranges of wargames material they carried. Aside from the paints there was little of immediate interest to me and to be frank that which was there could be bought cheaper on the internet (I know I should support the FLGS but when you add on parking the difference in cost was starting to get silly and I haven't won the lottery yet).

They did have some excellent gaming facilities but with their no children rule precluding a sixteen year old six footer who is more mature than many gamers I've met it restricted any desire to go there more often for anything beyond shopping.

We then swung by the local model shop to pick up the paints to find they had one lonely bottle of red left in the Game Color rack - doesn't anyone at Antics understand the principles of restocking? Grrr...

Anyway whilst Cut and Thrust is no more it appears a new wargames shop (Vanguard Wargaming) is opening in Bristol in a couple of weeks in Hotwells. It will be interesting to check this out though given its location I suspect parking may be an issue again.

The location is a tad bitter sweet as it is the site of the old  Spring Gardens Tavern which had been a great little venue for new bands and musicians before it closed.

November is... Zulu Month!

Ok, as announced yesterday November is Zulu Month, when I am going to try and get as many of the 288 Warlord plastic Zulus I bought earlier this year with some birthday money (and subsequent eBay foraging).

I've decided to start with that I am going to use Bickley's Washing The Spears rules with Black Powder lurking in the background. With that in mind I have decided to base the figures up as elements rather than individually in sabots which was my first idea. Whilst individual based miniatures in sabots would extend their usefulness (thinking smaller scale games with The Sword and the Flame) I concluded that this was a lot of fuss for limited return and if I every really wanted individually based Zulus, the plastics are cheap enough to buy another box and and when...

So, this means that I will be basing five figures on an 80x40mm base (which sounds spacey but isn't) giving me 10 regiments, 8 with thirty figures and 2 with twenty-four. The regiments are split 50/50 between married and unmarried units. Whilst I will be posting photos of painted units etc here, I have set up a specific Zulu War blog to go into some more detail and not boring readers who don't care what the difference is betwen the uMbonambi and the IsAngqu regiments. So if you want more in depth Zulu war stuff please follow me there as well...

Painting is going to be (hopefully) quick and dirty using a brown undercoat and Army Painter dip so things should move quite speedily (famous last words?)

Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

We all know the oft quoted maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy and this is the case with my August plan for the remaining five months of the year. However all was not lost and whilst I had planned to finish the Athenians, some more Orcs and the Zulus by the end of October, I'm happy that the Athenians are finished and that I have two more Orc regiments finished (and 36 wolves painted awaiting riders). Ok, no Zulus but as Meat Loaf says two out of three ain't bad...

So the question is whether to stick with the plan and move onto the Persians next month and ACW the month after or push everything back? Given November is a strange month for me, with a week off and a week working in Paris, I think trying to deal with the fussy Persians would be setting myself up to fail so I have decided that November will be Zulu Month, as painting them should be fairly straight forward, and I'll leave December as the planned ACW Month. The Persians will be pushed back into 2013.

I also want to finish the wolf riders in November as they are well progressed so I will probably concentrate on them for the rest of this week before clearing the decks to concentrate on the Zulus.

Athenian Cavalry - An Army Finished!

At last an army finished!* :-)

I have just completed the last of the planned Athenian army for the Peloponnesian War project, sixteen Athenian cavalry from Foundry. I actually only wanted twelve, but they came as a job lot on eBay so I painted them all up in case the extra four found themselves needed at some stage in the future.

As with all previous Athenian posts, the figures were white undercoated, block painted and then dipped with Army Painter Soft Tone. I'm not 100% convinced the dip technique is appreciable quicker than my black undercoat technique, these certainly seem to take longer than the orcs but that might be because they are a much more stop and start approach waiting for the dip to dry, be matt varnished etc.

* Of course no army is every really finished and I am sure that there are many potential additions that could come along, but this was (by and large) the army I originally planned, therefore it is finished.

Just need to paint up the Spartans now...

Athenian painted running total: 

125/125 infantry
16/16 cavalry

In The Jungle...

October was supposed to be Zulu month under the August Plan but not an "uSuthu" has been murmured in Blease Towers so I will be revisiting the plan for November and December after some more ruminating...

In the meantime whilst trying to finish off the Athenian cavalry (almost done now) I took the opportunity to put the finishing touches to some jungle terrain I had been working on and off on for some time now.

Construction is really simple. A variety of tropical fish foliage pieces were hot glue gunned to some old CD-R's, the base area then sanded, painted and flocked (well two have, I noticed when taking the photos I have forgotten to do six of the eight!).

Originally I had in mind using them in some 28mm Darkest Africa and Warhammer Lustria games but realised they they are so non-scale specific that they could also be used for 15mm Tusk type games as well as 54mm Burma Firefight games.

Not My Fault!

It's not my fault! No, honest it's not! No, it's Boggler's, ALL his fault, yep, the blame is 100% his - entirely...

So there I was not even considering Normandy Firefight and not maybe, one day, considering some 54mm skirmishes set maybe in Italy or Burma, not in the slightest. Then was does Boggler do? The comments on yesterday's post with: "I have acquired all the requisite bits. The thing that puts me off is the terrain?"

Good point I think and go to bed. Then it starts niggling away...

On the school run I'm pondering whether 1/35th terrain like the Tamiya brick walls would work with 28mm as well as 54mm figures then having tea I had the 'eurkea' moment! Jungle terrain is generally non-scale specific, eBay and Burma here I come...

So now, thanks to Boggler and his conundrum(!) I now have bought some Airfix Multipose Japanese and British infantry (and some Afrika Korp, not sure why but 12 figures for £10 seemed good value when I watched the bidding war for the set one up explode on the list hitting £17 for just 6 in an old box!) and am spending too much time Googling photos of the 1944 Burma campaign - Thanks Boggler!!! ;-)

Normandy Firefight

A little while back I picked up a copy of Normandy Firefight, Warwick Kinrade's "detailed skirmish combat rules from WWII" from North Star. Like most wargamers I buy far more rules than I will ever play but the fact that these rules were designed for extremely small scale skirmishes of up to around five figures a side and used 1/35th miniatures, my interest was piqued.

The rules are very interesting using a two second action move, detailed wound location and recording of ammunition expenditure. This might sound a bit too much but I was extremely impressed how Warwick combined the to-hit, hit location and damaged caused in one D100 roll (and I love percentile dice). Overall the mechanisms seem quite elegant and simple for such a detailed game.

I do have some reservations such as the lack of an overwatch rule to allow opponents to shoot at miniatures running from behind one piece of hard cover to another (eg. from house to house) but I think that I'd really need to play the game before critiquing further.

Will I?

At this stage probably not. The concept intrigues me, I used to love sticking Airfix Multipose and Tamiya figures together (and there are some in the attic IIRC) but at the moment I don't want to slip into a new scale. The game can be played with 28mm miniature or even 20mm ones but I guess much of the fun is using the larger scale models.

Even with one part of my brain saying no, the creative part is pondering 54mm infantry combat in Italy or Burma!

Maybe a project for 2014? :-)

Red Orc Regiment

At last some painted miniatures! :-)

This is a regiment of old Grenadier UK Orcs sculpted by Nick Lund. I've always liked Nick's style, much more Tolkienesque than Kev Adams.

As I will be using both Adams and Lund Orcs (as well as some old FTO Perry ones) I decided to paint these up with a different skin colour, opting for a red-brown as a nod towards the Red Goblins of yore...

Painting was some rough heavy drybrushing and layering over a black undercoat with some Devlan Mud washes on anything that looked too bright. They are dirty and grubby, but to my mind that is what Orcs should look like.

Hopefully I can get on with the thirty Goblin wolf riders I've had sat around for a couple of decades next! :-)

Paint Comparison Chart

I've just used the final dregs from my last pot of the old GW Bestial Brown on the bases of my Orcs. With the continuing GW price rises and my love of Vajello I was wondering whether Vajello did a compatible colour that I could buy - they do, Beasty Brown!

How do I know? By using this Paint Comparison Chart on the Dakka Dakka forum which should be very useful (unless you use Foundry paints!).

Back To The Painting Bench...

I've just finished painting some Grenadier Orcs. This is the first time in a couple of weeks that I've managed to get some painting done due to the incessant demands of the 'Real World' and a stinking cold that still occasionally flares up (cough, cough, cough). Once dry I just need to sand, paint and flock the bases and they will be done (as will the Athenian cavalry who also just need basing).

Now October is supposed to be Zulu month but this will now probably be later in the month when I have a bit of holiday booked in (I'm planning a bit of a conveyor belt approach). In the meantime I will continue with the Orcs & Goblins as and when I can grab a few minutes here and there...

Whilst I haven't been doing much painting I have unfortunately been doing far too much spending...

First off I got hooked into the Judge Dredd Kickstarter. This wasn't a great surprise as I love Judge Dredd and have been meaning to get around to some serious Mega-City gaming for a long time now (I bought some of the Citadel figures decades back but that went nowhere...).

This will actually kill two birds with one stone as most of my 28mm SF 'Lead Mountain' will probably be easy enough to use in the Dredd background with minimal effort (after all a ganger is a ganger whether official or not).

So expect lots of 2000AD miniature loveliness in 2013AD! :-)

Judge Dredd was going to be my last Kickstarter for the year but Eli (I See Lead People) Arndt has launched his own game company in the form of Loud Ninja Games and launched a Kickstarter for 15mm Space Raptors (c'mon how great is that?). Seriously, apart from supporting Eli with his cool idea, I have had for a number of years a hankering to play a few games based on Harry Turledove's World War series, based around an alien invasion during WW2. As the lizards in the books are around four foot tall, I'm hoping the 15mm raptors will work well enough with my 20mm WW2 collection.

Before DreadBall...

Whilst there are some similarities between Blood Bowl and DreadBall, not helped by the cover for DreadBall - which bears a certain similarity to the Blood Bowl computer game... :-) there are more similarities with another, now OOP, game...

Before DreadBall there was another SF "American Football" style game around, Hasbro's Battle Ball. I picked up a copy when on holiday in Florida around a decade back and Saul and I played a few games, though I must confess it was not the most challenging of games. Sadly Hasbro (as is their wont, killed the game off rather than expanded it with new teams and advanced rules). There are some interesting fan produced advanced rules in this thread on the game here.

Having seen the DreadBall basic rules it clearly jumps up and down on Battle Ball and buries it deep, but it might be worth hunting Battle Ball down for the figures alone as they clearly will make useful DreadBall alternatives.

My Kickstarter Addiction?

Apparently idle hands are the devil's playthings and I think this must be the case with me. I haven't had much opportunity to hit the painting table and get on with the Blood Moon Orcs due to a mixture of real life work and a bad case of Manthrax causing me to cough and sneeze over everything in sight. However it hasn't stopped me adding to "Lead Mountain" after being seduced by Mantic's Kickstarter project for DreadBall.

DreadBall is a SF football type game and I must confess that the original plans for the game were to my mind pretty uninspiring with teams of humans, orcs, dwarves and rat-men. It smacked of being an SF rip off of Bloodbowl and Mantic do seem to be acquiring a bit of a reputation of being producing cheap GW-lite products rather than being particularly innovative themselves (their SF wargame Warpath is especially guilty of this background wise with its own versions of Orks, Squats and Hrud).

However (game designer) Jake Thornton's blog proved interesting reading, the game mechanics (see YouTube video above) and play were sufficiently different from Bloodbowl and his ideas for the future beyond the initial game release quite inspiring...

So I decided to take the plunge, the game would provide some fun over the Xmas period and I do like Jake's other Mantic game Dwarf King's Hold.

Then the addiction took hold...

As more money was pledged towards the project Mantic put up options for Seasons 2 and 3 with some new teams that are much more interesting than those in the initial Season 1 game, as well as some cool MVP's. There are things with lots of tentacles, robots, giant robots, teleporting dinosaur aliens (now that would be good in Warpath), damn, there was some good stuff being planned. Indeed out of the next eight teams only the SF Ape team didn't float my boat and they're still better than Space Dwarves.

Oh well, in for a penny and all that. The credit card has taken a bit of a hit but not as bad as I thought as the process is in US Dollars and the exchange rate a lot better than I mentally converted.

Coupled with the Reaper Bones Kickstarter I can see I need to recognise that this could be an expensive, if good value, element to my hobby and I should not be seduced into buying into every new shiny project that comes up.

That said the Judge Dredd Kickstarter looks interesting and there are some good deals there...

Red Dawn Rising...

Those of you of a certain generation may recall a slightly cheesy but quite fun film from 1984 called Red Dawn. It dealt with a Soviet invasion of the US and followed the story of a bunch of teenagers, called the 'Wolverines' after their school football team, who fought back against the invaders. Whilst not Oscar wining material it is a lot better than it has any reason to be...


Fast forward nearly thirty years and a remake (or revision) of the original is to be released in America this November. This version of the film has apparently been sat around since 2010 but with MGM in financial difficulty it was shelved until a deal was struck with an independent film company to release it.

Since initial filming the film's "bad guys" have been re-badged. Initially the invaders were the Chinese, but following adverse reaction in China and considering the potential loss of earnings from the Chinese box office, the Chinese were converted into North Koreans in post-production through some minimal re-shoots and CGI. Quite how realistic this makes the film is up to debate but I guess realism was never top of the filmaker's agenda.

Whatever, if it is half as good as the first it should still be worth watching for some light entertainment...

Happy Hobbit Day!

Following on from yesterday's 75th Anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit (did you have your second breakfast at 11am?), today is International Hobbit Day chosen as it is both Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday. A good excuse to have another second breakfast and watch the new trailer for the first of the fothcoming Hobbit films...


Wargames wise I am half way through painting a regiment of Red Orcs and have based/rebased and undercoated some 36 old Citadel Gobin Wolfriders. Hopefully I'll get these painted by the end of Orc Month.

Shiver Me Timbers Ye Damme Landlubbers!!!

Yep, it's the 10th International Talk Like A Pirate Day - so add an arrr to everything you say today and make someone smile (and if the lubber don't smile, the plank for he...).

Dance on a dead man's chest whilst swigging your grogge mateys...