Cracking the W.I.P. (1)

There's trouble in the wilderness around the peaceful farmlands of the halflings and the braver sort must ensure their borders are carefully patrolled.

These are the little fellows I mentioned over the last couple of posts, a mixture of grenadier (I think) figures carried by, among others, em-4 miniatures (based on old Copplestone sculpts) and some OOP figures direct from Mark Copplestone. If there are any of his old figures that you're after, it may well be cheaper to drop him an email and see if he still has the moulds and would cast some specially for you using his whizzy new desktop casting machine.

I have another bunch (slingers, archers and a couple of mail-clad veterans) that will be needed to round out my Song of Blades and Heroes warband. I stuck with the list as published for my first outing but really suffered the lack of a Leader to coordinate my archers, particularly against high Quality dwarves, so will probably tweak the stats and swap Hero for Leader as the head honcho's characteristic. Any SoBaH players are welcome to comment on that, or on my list below, in fact please do!

Priority for completion: moderate - I'm enjoying painting them

***

SoBaH Warband list - Border March Wardens

Clovis Holdwine - Q3+  C3  Hero, Mounted  Pts72
Halfed Brockhouse - Q4+  C3  Mounted  Pts32

Bert Lightfoot - Q4+  C3  Short Move  Pts18
Wilcome Brownlock - Q4+  C3  Short Move  Pts18

5 x Sword and Buckler fellows - Q4+  C2  Short Move  Pts11
5 x Archer fellows - Q4+  C2  Short Move, Shooter:Medium  Pts17
2 x Sling fellows - Q4+  C1  Short Mover, Shooter:Medium  Pts9

Dirty washing

What a thoroughly unsatisfactory evening's painting. Just as the first bunch of the previously mentioned halflings were reaching a stage when they'd get their own photo shoot, I've screwed them up with an unwise wash or two. Start again, Rab, start again :(

Child labour

With darling wife out at the cinema today for a friend's birthday, I had the boys. Not one to waste an opportunity or resources, I put the little blighters to work! E is still a little young (and just coming down with german measles/rubella) so wasn't as much help as I'd have liked, but C put his back into it like a good 'un :-

Between us we played our parts well (E didn't injure himself, C mostly followed instructions and I kept my temper!) and made two almost square-cornered 2-foot by 4-foot frames of 1" by 1/2" pine with a 3mm hardboard cover. We quit while we were ahead so, another day, I'll coat the hardboard in spray-mount and then attach a bog-standard GW grass mat I was given a couple of years back (which I only unwrapped for the first time last week!).

Anyway, for now this is what we have (snazzy underside view coming up):

If anyone has any pointers for the last stage, or for weathering a grass mat so it doesn't look entirely like a bowling green, please do leave a comment.

Happy geeking,
Rab

After-school gaming 1

Last night I hosted the second of what is turning into a half-termly gaming evening at school for some of the 6th formers I teach. Their enthusiasm for the gaming was only matched by their desire not to be noticed geeking away as the Battle of the Bands was also taking place and there were plenty of 'cool kids' mooching about. Window blinds down and the glass pane by the door covered, and we were good to go!

We started with three side-by-side games of Songs of Blades and Heroes (SBH) by Ganesha Games. It was the first time I'd played and brought out my very newly acquired Copplestone halflings (still only undercoated, so no pictures to show the shame of playing with unpainted figures).

I, um, borrowed, the pictures below from the prolific and well-written A League of Ordinary Gamers blog but they're the same lovely figures. I filled out the ranks with the old Grenadier models carried by em4 miniatures and also sculpted by Mark Copplestone.

As for the game, I got utterly massacred by a small but deadly dwarf warband being run by a sixteen year old. The shame! I realised a bit too late in the game (first game, remember?!) that, with so many of the halflings needing to be in the same place to have a chance, I should have done all my initial manoeuvring using single dice activations. I ended up spread thinly and thereby chopped into small pieces by the high Quality and Combat dwarfs. Lesson learned. I did enjoy the quickness of the game and the simplicity of it and it's resparked my interest in fantasy skirmish gaming. Simple without being simplistic - I'll definitely play again :)

We then played the second chapter of Quest as the snow fell outside, but I'll save that for the next post.

Happy geeking,
Rab

Progress! But no pictures...

I've been painting, which is nice, and I'm not too disappointed by the outcome, which is even nicer.

The problem is that I'm being tempted to compete in the Lead Painter's League Season 6 (LPL6) over on the Lead Adventure Forum. The idea behind it is fabulous for someone like me in that it gives a structure and deadlines for reducing the mound of unpainted lead. There are ten rounds and each round requires  a coherent team of five painted figures. At least the first three must be 'new' teams, and there are bonus rounds as well:

Round 1 - Pre-1991 figures
Round 5 - Tolkein
Round 10 - nautical

I was delighted when I saw the bonus rounds as Rnd1 would be served by my old terminators that I wanted to paint anyway for Space Hulk, rnd5 gave me an excuse to buy the Mark Copplestone hobbits halflings (OOP, but I sent him an email and some paypal and I now have a warband's worth of the little chaps for Song of Blades and Heroes) and rnd10 goes perfectly with the VSF sailors I'm well underway with.

So, I have to have 15 figures painted by 27th Feb if I want to enter, then five a week from mid-March. And I can't post them here (or anywhere) until they've had their debut on LAF in the LPL. If I can get the first three rounds sorted then I'll enter, if not I'll have several pictures to share on here as I've got a reasonable head of steam up.

Oh, and I've 'printed' off the deck for my first aether-flyer on the laser printer at school. 'tis cool!

Happy new year

It seems traditional to begin the new year with an outline of the plans ahead, and for geek blogs this is no different. Not being one to break from tradition, here goes, although the list is somewhat aspirational:

Ongoing Projects

Quest

• Finish Bestiary and get some play-testing in
• Paint up knights, dogs, brigands, trolls, giant, gryphon, demons, human guardsmen...

Bloodbowl

• Paint the rest of my Chaos Pact team for the NAF Cup in Nottingham at the end of May  
• Completed 14/5/2012

Elfball

• Finish rebasing and touching up my valkyrie team  (low priority, more of an optional extra)
  

New Projects

VSF
How awesome is Victorian Science Fiction, eh? Now I've gone and bought the GASLIGHT rules and a few packs of figures to get stuck in...

• Finish naval landing party unit
• Design and build a 28mm scale aeronef (or two!)
• Paint a unit of redcoats
• Paint Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria (Gawd bless 'er) and other civilians
• Paint some period policemen
• Convert and paint three mechanised walkers

Space Hulk 

• Paint marines
• Paint genestealers and broodlord

Now, that's a heck of a lot for me, especially considering my low output last year. However, my overall resolution is to paint at least one figure per week on average, ie have 52 figures painted by 31/12/12. Wish me luck...

The Quest begins

Evening Blog-readers! I've been very busy, geek-wise (as my wonderful and long-suffering wife will attest), over the last few weeks, but I will plead guilty to neglecting this blog. I have been keeping track of my progress in this thread over on the Lead Adventure Forum which is a great forum for those of you not yet members.

The main focus has been my high-medieval, low-fantasy project, Quest. The basic idea is a sort of Arthurian take on a modular 'dungeon crawl', although that dungeon may sometimes be a forest if you see what I mean. My rules have now had their first ever playtest, and much fun was had by all.

The quest the four squires had to undertake was the simple task of escorting Lady Eleanor, along with her two faithful hounds and her maidservant Ceridwin, to her wedding. The sun glinted through the trees, warming their backs and their spirits as they talked of love and honour, walking to spare their horses and to prolong the pleasure of the journey... Then the brigands ambushed them, slaying the groom and whisking their horses away into the forest and then trying to steal away the ladies as well:

The squires hurled themselves against the cowardly ruffians...

... and made reasonably short work of them, suffering only a few flesh wounds (and some embarrassment at their comically bad swordplay).

Horseless and tired they set off into the woods to find somewhere they could stay for the night to rest, only to encounter a knight undertaking a pas d'armes - "None shall pass". Desperate to prove himself, squire Barnabus (responsible for the best one-liners of the evening, including some genuinely witty running jokes about the likely political affiliations of the bandits) took up the challenge to fight until one was knocked down. If he won, the pas d'armes knight would guide them to a nearby castle. Barnabus was promptly killed outright in a freak dice result that made me wonder if I should have some kind of divine intervention. I chose not to, partly because it seemed so Mallory-esque, but mainly to give the rules a proper test before tweaking them.

Ashamed, the knight showed them the way where they were welcomed by a beautiful woman in red and feasted before retiring a little drunk to their chambers. Awoken by screams, and finding the door of them chamber locked they armed themselves, the door was opened by Ceridwin; Eleanor had been taken. They followed the dogs who were on her scent, encountered the lady in red (cue for a song?) who explained that the castle had fallen under the control of a giant who would take any noble woman who stayed there. These women were never seen again.

Hurrying after the frantic dogs, they came face to face with the giant. Squire Eridor charged the giant, increasing his chivalry as he did so, and with astonishing dice knocked the monster off his feet with his first attack. Squire Eenit kept on after the dogs and went to break down the door that they were howling at:

Sadly for the game, the parent who was giving them lifts arrived at this point and we had to break off.

Thoughts on the game
For a first test it went really well. The combat system in particular went just as I hoped, with each fight bringing the risk of ignominious death, but the heroes having the slight upper hand. I found I was horribly rusty as a DM, and made the storyline so linear as not to give much opportunity for them to wander off into the forest etc, but they hugely enjoyed themselves and want to make it a weekly event. While I can't spare the time for that, I took it as an endorsement.

Everything is better with lasers...

... right? I was admiring the laser-cut buildings from the likes of Sarissa when I had a thought (it happens occasionally) - we have a laser-plotter in the technology department at my school. So, a little playing with 2d Designer later, and I had a virtual copy of an earlier building I'd made (very slowly!) from foam-core and balsa splints.

Then I wandered over to the technology dept. and, ten minutes later (okay, thirty - I screwed up the measurements for the joints on the first trial) I had this in my excited little paws:

It went together pretty well:

The best bit about the whole thing was my Cunning Plan (TM) 8) I run the science/tech club so I'm going to get the kids to build lots more (for their own good, you understand) so that they build a whole town. This will allow me to indulge in a bit of geek-design, and a little bit of subtle evangelising about gaming.

And if they don't want to keep their creations, I'll look after them. It would be rude not to, eh?

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.