Who are you calling a chicken?

Um, the chickens, actually.

Don't worry, I'm not going all surreal on you, and this isn't going to become a farming blog, but we've finally got some chickens. Three, in fact. They are ISA Browns and came from a battery-farm rescue run on Saturday. It was all very cloak-and-dagger, with texts telling me where to meet and when (the Carphone Warehouse car park at 1pm, in case you're interested), and what car they'd be driving. When I got there, there were little huddles of vaguely do-gooder looking middle-class folks (me included, despite the new thug look - see photo later) who would glance at each other and mutter "Chickens?" before the groups would coalesce.

Got my three 'girls', all moth-eaten from the cages, and brought them home to their new and freshly finished palace. They settled in straight away and have given us our first two eggs. I'm a happy hen-keeper :)

The palace, inhabited at last, and all my own work

Me (newly and mistakenly shaven-headed) introducing son and heir to layers

The first egg; beautiful, isn't it?

No rest for the geeky

Just added my 'Unfinished Projects' list to the sidebar on the right. Blimey - that's a lot of painting still to do!

I have to get that one remaining pesky skaven finished by the Blood Bowl Grand Tournament (BBGT) on the final weekend of May, and really want to get Mike's stuff finished by then as well.

I think I'll add a 'Painted Mininatures' bit as well to cheer me up!

Carcassone

I managed to get a full refund in vouchers for a duplicate copy of The Great Warbow by Robert Hardy that I got as a present, so today I snapped up a copy of the award-winning Carcassone. It's been like one of those films you know you must see, but never have: a game I've never played and always felt I should.

It looks really good. Lots of beautiful tiles, and on a first read-through it would appear to have fairly simple gameplay, but room for cunning thought.

Cheesemongering vermin

Before I start, apologies that there are no photos of the games for this entry - I forgot my camera.

The day began dark and wet, but thanks to Chris', erm, "assertive" driving we were soon over at Dan's for a hot breakfast to set us up for Fenbowl II - a full day of league Bloodbowl play. We're running the league standings on percentage win, with a draw counting as half a win, and a minimum number of games having to be played to be in for a chance at the league title.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I missed the first league date because of my mother's 60th, so I was keen to get a couple of good results under my belt to catch me up. Having chosen the speedy but fragile Skaven (think bad-tempered, short rat-men), I was also hoping not to lose too many players. I was successful on all counts :)

Game 1:

I drew Dan's Wood Elf team first up. I knew this would be a potentially high-scoring game, with both our teams being quick and designed for ball-handling, not bashing. Dan's also got plenty of Woody experience. I was glad I'd chosen all four available Gutter Runners (the fastest players in the whole game) to boost my attack as it was end-to-end play for the whole match, with me edging the win at 4-3 by pulling off a ridiculous move that involved about twenty dodge rolls, picking up the ball in a tackle zone, passing the longest pass possible needing a 5+ (on a d6), catching, dodging a bit more and then having to Go For It (sort of like an afterburner that lets you go up to two extra squares dependent on a dice roll) to score. I like speed, especially after playing a couple of slow teams recently.

Game 2:

Mike's Humans. Mike plays a determined, driving game; a bit like a rolling maul in rugby union. I knew this would be tricky, and after I lost the ball immediately after having been kicked off to, I figured I'd thrown it away. Fortunately, by continuously chucking expendable linerats under the feet of his maul for the remaining seven turns of the first half I managed to shut him out. 0-0 at the half. I kicked to him at the beginning of the 2nd half, and prepared for another desperate 8 turns of defence. Luckily, forcing Mike to pass from an awkward position spilled the ball for me to very quickly counter and score. It's what Skaven do. Lots and lots more defence later, and a bit of unlucky dice for the Humans kept it at 1-0. Phew!

Game 3:

Chris and his Amazons. An unusual team in that they all have the same basic stats, all can Dodge but only have average Agility, are all moderately fragile, none are particularly quick. I've only played against them once before. It was at a tournament, when I smashed them, so was feeling fairly confident. It started evenly enough, but a couple of turns it all went my way, dice-wise. I didn't really have to do anything tactical - just pounce whenever the ball came loose, rely on being able to pull off ridiculous strings of dice-rolls to dodge anywhere I chose, and then score. 4-0. 

So, I now have a 100% win record which puts me top of the table and two of my gutter runners rolled Movement stat increases, making them MA=10. Nice!

The only downside to the whole day was giving myself mild concussion getting back into the car by smacking the back of my head into the door-frame hard enough to make the whole vehicle rock noticeably. I've never been concussed before and it was a bit like being seventeen again and trying desperately to hide from my parents that I had been to the pub on the way home from school for a beer, only without the pleasure of drinking the beer. Ouch!

Team (very small) update

Okay, not so much an update on more painting, but slightly better photos:

Real life, plus a bit of geeking

Been quiet on here for several days for a whole raft of reasons: work, ebaying a bunch of stuff, my wife's birthday (lots of chef-ing gained me many brownie points), and some 1:1 scale construction -

The peaked frame you can see buried at the back of my landlord's untidy barn will soon be a palatial residence for some ex-battery hens that we're getting just after Easter. Eggs/Easter, it all seems pretty apt. I'd also be a smallholder if it were financially viable, so this is at least a step in that direction!

In amongst all that more important stuff, I've also managed to finish off Mike's Trollslayer miniature that he needs for the BloodBowl Grand Tournament in May. It's being held at GW's fascist looking headquarters (all those giant eagles!), and they're pretty unforgiving if you use any other company's miniatures, so I painted this up to fill the spiked 28mm boots of his usual, (gasp!) non-GW positional player.



I'm pretty pleased with him, and using the new lamp has given me plenty more light to take the photo with. I think it's an improvement, but my photos still aren't quite what I'm after; perhaps I will have to make a light-box after all. He's standing on the beginning of the other thing that's been getting in the way of my painting - the start of my town buildings for Legends of the Old West. I'm basically using the method shown at Gugnir's site, along with inspiration from Geektactica, and Imelda. I've got the first floor/base built and will be getting started on the walls as soon as I finish this post.

Love is a magnifier light

As alluded to at the end of a previous entry, I've got a new light:


It was my Valentine's Day present. None of your overpriced set-menus or cliched roses - a present with real affection, especially as now my dear lady will be in danger of becoming a painting widow again.

Hopefully it will also give me the eextra light needed to take some decent photos. I used it to snap some shots of the OOP early '90s warhammer dwarfs from my parents' attic to illustrate my ebay auctions. Why not check them out for a bargain. And to help me fund the Old West project that is taking shape?

Treasure!

Having resigned myself to missing out on the new BB season opener to go to Mum's 60th (which was great and she really enjoyed it), I was geekily rewarded. She and Dad gave me a bin bag of my old gaming stuff from the loft that had been up there for over ten years. It was full of nostalgic gaming treasure from the early '90s:

- Talisman (main game plus four expansions)

- TSR's War of the Ring (the one with millions of tiny card counters and the massive map of Middle Earth)

- 4th Edition Warhammer and Battle Magic (pretty much pristine and complete except for the miniatures)

- some early '90s dwarfs, including a few cannons and two gyrocopters

- a D&D starter box from about 1990

- and (my favourite!) Man O' War (again pristine but without the starter ships)

- seven Dwarf ships for MOW

My wife was fairly kind in how little she laughed at me in my unrestrained boyish delight. Now I just have to decide whether it all goes on Ebay, as I have no storage space or finances for another gaming system. Although selling MOW would be a wrench....

Finally - dice rolling in 2009!

Woohoo! I got my first games of 2009 in today over at Chris' place. His wife and baby were away so Malc and I went over for a few hours for a bit of BloodBowl. We actually played a variant called StreetBowl which I'd heard of but never played before. It's a streamlined version of the game with fewer players on a smaller pitch, set in the narrow alleyways of a crowded city rather than a proper stadium. The random events of the game are a little more low rent and humourous - we had three kick-offs during the day that were interrupted by donkeys runnning through the line of scrimmage!

Game 1:

 

This was me against Chris (I'm at the near end with my Nurgle team against his Humans). We were (okay, I was) a little slow getting on top of all the little differences with the usual game, but the increased level of anarchy and violence was entertaining. It ended with me snatching a last minute equaliser with Chris' team reduced to a mere three - the others either having been injured or snuck off to the local tavern (no, really!).

Game 2:

Here's Malc's Lizardmen team in all their purple glory. A combination of heavy-hitting from the larger ones and incredible dodging ability from the little ones (and a small imbalance in dice rolling) led to my team rolling over for a soft 1-0 defeat. I was very good and only sulked a little bit.

Game 3:

Malc and Chris faced off. I was kinda distracted during this game reading through Chris' Legends of the High Seas rulebook and planning a Naval crew, but I think it ended with Chris delivering a bit of a kicking to Malc. Served him right :)

Game 4:

Me and Chris again. We were playing a bit quicker by this point, and the game became a lot more violent. This was partly due to some extremely jammy dice rolling from yours truly, but also because we were getting the hang of lining opposing players up for a good smash against the alleyway walls. Like I said, my dice were good, and it was a bit one-sided (although games against Chris are never that one-sided as he's quite the veteran). Full time saw me win 2-0, having caused twice as many Casualties (not a random capitalisation, an in-game term) as him.

All in all, a good fun day's gaming. Nice to be doing more social geeking again.

Ah-harr, pardner!

So, there's this friend of mine, Chris, who basically lured me back into gaming a few years back after a decade or so on the wagon. Anyway, he's usually the one to find new projects that he tries to get us involved in, and yes, I'm usually the first to submit (which is why I have a bunch of Aeronautica Imperialis planes sitting half-painted in a box somewhere). He has been trying to get games of Legends of the High Seas going - "It's only a few miniatures", "Pirates are cool", "You can borrow my figures to begin with". I swear he'd have been a fantastic crack-dealer in another life!

With a few extra quid in my pocket this month, and with a bunch of stuff about to get flogged on ebay, I thought I'd take a look at the Warhammer Historical site and see what the fuss was about. Looks ok. So I had a look at the Black Scorpion site as I'd heard they make nice pirates. Big mistake. They do make nice pirates, but they also make luvverly cowboys, varmints and lawmen. Instantly I think "If I get some gunslingers and Legends of the Old West as well as the pirates I won't have to pay shipping; that would save me money!"

"Hi, my name is Rab, and I'm a miniatures addict...."