Note to self...

... strong alcohol plus failing light does NOT make for well-painted miniatures.

Now, where did I leave that bottle of nitromors?

A spot of DIY

As the long summer holidays drift into their final week, I'm getting round to a couple of niggly little jobs that have been cluttering up my painting/modelling corner.

For the few of you who don't know, 'Sharp Practice' is a Too Fat Lardies game that allows one to play out the adventures of small groups of men and their charismatic or nefarious officers during the Napoleonic era. I really like the hinterland they occupy between skirmish gaming and roleplaying, and the game mechanics are satisfying. There is a strong card-driven mechanic which provides 'friction' in that your Groups may be able to act exactly as you wish, or, if the Turn ends before you get to them, they only have limited actions available. Do give them a try if you haven't yet. They're cheap, too! I've only played solo with chits so far, but hope to correct that at some point in the next eighteen months; the locals seem more interested than in Impetus, so I'm hopeful.

Anyway, this thread on TMP reminded me I had bought some printable perforated cards from plaincards.com to make my own Sharp Practice and Bonus Card decks.



The sheets are a good thickness of card, very close to standard playing cards, and are US letter size. They fed through my Canon Inkjet MP800 with absolutely problems at all, but I did take care to print just one side at a time, then feed them back through as I thought them being bent over for duplex printing might make the cards pop out.

plaincards have their own design software on their site, but I was too stingy for that (the demos don't allow you print) so made my own template in MS Publisher, filled it in with the text I needed, and Robert's your mother's brother!

The printed cards popped out very easily with a little back-and-forth bending along the perforations:



I was very pleased, but then realised I should go the whole hog and make boxes for each deck. So I did! I found this nifty site which allows you to enter the dimensions of your deck of cards and then print off a pdf of the 'net' to make an appropriately sized box. Simply cut, fold and stick, and taa-daa!



I may yet make some stickers to go on the outside of the boxes to label them up. Finisher-completer characteristics to the fore! I also made a box to hold my fan-made BloodBowl cards, which are in the completed box above.

Hope that's of use to someone.

Elfball - Bedford 2011

Summer holidays are here again... :)

I've been mostly (geek-wise) tidying up, flogging off some of the lead-pile on eBay, and mulling over the rules for the chivalric quest game I'm slowly writing.

I did also go to the Elfball tournament organised by Chris last Saturday. I had a whale of a time, but only managed two draws and two losses. I'd like to blame the fact I've not played elfball for about three months, but I suspect it's just as much that I'm not that good at the game, even though I really like it.

There are photos taken by Steven at this link.

..and here's the terribly unflattering one of yours truly:

First foes finished

A very quick update to show you the first batches of goblins (from Rhoninstorm Miniatures) and skeletons (from Mantic Games) that I've tested colour schemes on. I'm pretty pleased with them and will be continuing the theme through the remaining ones in my plasti-lead pile.

MORE gaming with #1 Son

#1 Son - "Daddy, can we play with knights in a dungeon?"
Me (pleasantly surprised) - "Of course!"

Now, it turns out that Sophie the cat had got lost in the dungeons under King Dougal's castle and the knight and guards had to go looking for her, especially as the king had already been looking for ages:



Some of the doors in the dungeon were closed, and creaked heavily when opened (he did the noises unprompted):


You'll be pleased to know that both cat and king were found safely in time to get back to the kitchen for marzipan cake.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures, derring do... and cake!

Gaming with #1 Son

Well, I finally did it - #1 Son and I had our first 'geek game' last night, and repeated it this evening. He's a mean dice-roller, far luckier than I am; I may have to take him with me to roll my dice on future geek-days!

I've made some custom dice with either swords or shields on them (to help with his numeracy, you understand - he has to count up the totals and we're working on subtracting). I placed the two knights in May's posts toe-to-toe in the middle of a large dungeon room tile and we both rolled attack and defence dice, the loser being pushed back the resultant number of spaces. You won the 'tournament' if you pushed the other fellow to the back wall. He loved it, and forewent a story tonight to play again, but this time with his knights that go with his huge wooden castle:

Giant and knight

On a roll! A couple more fantasy figs to continue my project; a Metal Magic giant and another 5th Ed. Bretonnian knight:

Knight and Dragon

Not dead and not given up gaming, but having two little 'uns is proving fairly all consuming...

Anyway, here's the first painting I managed this year (!) - I've been drawn irresistably towards 'old skool' medieval fantasy figures of late so I'm painting what I want. So there!



The knight is actually a conversion - the head of an old Bretonnian knight on a Black Tree Design figure from their early HYW range. The dragon is a lovely old Citadel figure marked 1984, and by the wonderful Tom Meier. Nostalgic goodness :)

Blood on the streets of Thorncreek

Alright, alright, one last time for the latecomers and then I'm a-headin' for mah bed. Summa this Ah had to git from the Sheriff, 'cuz it happened after Ah got plugged in the shoulder here, but this is how it went when those darn cowpokes turned nasty....

The streets of Thorncreek were deserted after word had spread that some of the ranch-hands taken on by the Claytons were heading into town with mischief on their mind.


It wasn't long, however, before the Civic Patrol were out in force and ready to defend their town.


Sheriff Nathaniel Crawcrook and the Harris boys (Joshua and Daniel) headed North up Main Street, while Johan 'Jonah' Meier edged off round through the trees, and Deputy Jeremiah Ainsworthy led Patrick Flannegan and Charles Vickers over the fences and round to the West of the row of shops.

Up at the other end of Main Street, the cowboys were starting to throw their weight around, whoopin' and hollerin' and shootin' into the air.


Heading straight at them, and cursin' at them to mend their ways and clear out of town, the Sheriff and the Harris boys showed no fear.


Gunfire broke out along the side streets now, as it became clear that the trailboss and his nastier cronies were trying to outflank the Patrol. Yellin' and cursin', and then quiet told Sheriff Crawcrook that at least some men were down - he hoped they weren't his. "Joshua, Daniel; you boys go and see if Jonah's gone and got hisself killed. I'll be fine here with Ainsworthy over there" With that he calmly gunned down a cowboy with a fine piece of rifle-shootin'. He spat. "Lawbreakers. They sure do vex me somethin' dreadful."


Through the heat-haze of midday, and the lingering gunsmoke, the Sheriff could see his Deputy charge into two of the uninvited visitors and start layin' into them with his fists and the butt of his rifle. Crawcrook grunted in approval and then, cold as a mountian stream in spring, put a second cowboy out of the fight with a bullet in the gut that would prove fatal.

Round in the East, the Harris' had found Johan hurt but alive, and closed in on the culprit, gunning her down in a hail of lead.


They then headed over to Main Street, just as the rest of the cowboys did the same after dealing with Patrick and Charles. The Deputy was down in a crumpled heap and Sheriff Crawcrook was sluggin' it out with two ne'er-do-wells. As they rushed in to help him, the trailboss stepped out from behind the scrap and shot Joshua right between the eyes. Screaming in fury and loss, Daniel ran at him, but the man in the long pale coat calmly clubbed him to the floor and turned on the Sheriff.


Nathaniel did not have his reputation for nothin', however, and soon it was just him and Joshua's killer left standing. Toe-to-toe, and blow for blow they fought.


Neither giving way, battered and bruised, it was many minutes before the Sheriff finally toppled his foe with a blow that would have poleaxed a steer. Save fer burryin' the dead, it was over.


Post-game chatter
Phew! It came really close at the end with each of us (Me and Chris) gritting our teeth on every Head for the Hills check, but our posse's leaders were just too stubborn. In the end it came down to the Sheriff having a second attack that swung it, and it seemed fitting that it was the two bosses who faced off at the finale.

That was our first game of LotOW, despite it having been ages since I started on this project, but we'd both played GW's Lord of the Rings game in the past, and Chris has done a fair bit of Necromunda gaming, so the rules were familiar. I did nearly blow it early on by forgetting the Heroic Actions that could be called, and did lose two of the posse as a result on the left of the board.

We thoroughly enjoyed it, though, and I think the bad blood between the posse's after Daniel's death will add a certain frisson. Joshua was raised to Hero status for taking out two cowboys, and this seemed fitting. The Sheriff picked up two new skills (Trick Shooter and Pistolier), but we didn't get enough loot to replace the dead vigilante. Chris has his boss out for two games, and couldn't afford to retain his Gunslinger or replace his dead chap, so I reckon the Civic Patrol came out on top. Don't mess with Thorncreek!


PS
I'm not going to mention the game of Elfball we had after lunch, except to say I was outplayed by Chris and destroyed by the dice. Yikes!

Back... with a win!

Hello again. Life with the (generally wonderful, if somewhat tiring) baby Edmund is now reaching the point of a stable routine, and the geeking may begin again, albeit at an even lower level than usual.

A couple of weeks ago I got a Full Day Pass (!) to go and play silly games. My good friend Chris had organised the second ever Elfball tournament in the UK at a nice pub just down the road, so it would have been rude not to go along. I elected to take Thunder Hammer Dwarves as my team, which I finished painting, oooh, hours before the first dice were due to be rolled. I haven't taken a picture of them myself, yet, but here is one that I found among the photos posted by other attendees:

The team ('The Iron Bruisers') before their first game
Photo by 'spikey'

There was also a beautiful custom board that served as top table for the day's four games:

The day was great fun with plenty of banter (geeking, family, random stuff) and a couple of beers. Even better, I won my first two games which bumped me up to first table, then won game three against Chris (who had a moment of abysmal luck which allowed me to waltz in for the winning score in a very short game). Game four was against Mike from the Swindon lot who came up for the day. He'd won the first tournament and was good. He knew the newly released 2nd Ed. rules better than me and completely flummoxed me at one point with a change I'd not noticed to the Dash rules. Still, I ground it out for a draw........

..... and finished the day as Champion!



A particularly fetching picture of yours truly on the left, there - holding a pose reduces my photogenic-ness even further!

There are further pictures at Dan's album and Spikey's album, and always loads of stuff over at the Impact forum.

TTFN