Rubicon Panzer III

Posted by Ste

Although Ash, Bryan and I are busy beavering away with our Saga campaign I keep getting the urge to return to North Africa so here I present a rather significant reinforcement for my motorised column - a Rubicon Panzer III.

I have to say this was my first Rubicon kit and it was a pure pleasure to put together. It only had about 10 parts in total with almost all the joins cleverly hidden. the plastic is very sturdy and overall I was very impressed. The kits comes with  couple of options, I've chosen the ausf G with 50mm gun and external mantlet.

I have a Rubicon Hanomag to build which I'm looking forward to now as these kits are just superb.

Laters
Ste

Back to Afrika - DAK Motorbike and sidecar

Posted by Ste
My DAK force continues to grow with the addition of this Bolt Action motorbike and sidecar. This was a complete pain to build, my superglue refused to stick it together, I've pinned it and propped it and it's fallen to bits several times.

However it does look cool! In Bolt Action these guys are normally part of a Kradschutzen platoon however there is an option to have a single one operating in recce mode. However it normally mounts an MG34 which I couldn't be bothered to model on to this one.

Hey ho, it still looks cool and as I don't play in tournaments I don't have to worry about it as my regular gaming opponents will be fine with a "counts as" model.

Now on to my Rubicon Panzer iii

Infinity Scatter Terrain

Posted by Ste

I don;t recall where I found it but I remember a website where some dude made a bunch of Infinity/Sci-Fi terrain from junk he found in his house. So I can't claim credit for this as an original idea however mine do look pretty cool! So after rummaging in the kids craft supplies I pulled out all the old milk carton tops I could find and sat one night sticking them together with contact adhesive. I also managed to find some petrol pumps in the toy car box! So here we have the bottle tops and pumps stuck together.

I slathered them all with the first cheapo artists acrylic to come to hand, mixed up some dirty wash out of old black gw ink, green and brown paint and some dirty dish water and let it dry. Then I printed out some warning signs that had been suitably shrunk down and hey presto - fuel and chemical containers

And here they to scale with the recent completed building (ooh look there's another building in the back, I told you I had more on the way).

Infinity terrain from junk

Posted by Ste

Long time readers of this blog will have become familiar with my obsession for gaming on a budget and the "stuff from junk" theme is still alive and strong. Whilst decorating our bedroom (the missus and I) I pulled down a long broken and useless alarm sensor that was gathering dust in a corner. Being a bloke I swiftly stashed it in the garage in the box titled "might come in handy one day, hide from the wife", and continued with the decorating.

Fast forward a few months and I had finished my first Infinity building when I remembered this useless item and thought "Hmm what could I make from this?" Scavenging through my junk box I pulled together various bottle tops, plastic pipes, bits of wood and cardboard and fashioned this:

Looks kind funky and out of theme however with a little paint and imagination it ended up as this:

Not bad from some scrap really! Next up will be some scatter terrain involving bottle tops!

Ste

Grrrrrr - Beware the full moon!

Posted by Ste

Its funny how a game can have great miniatures but terrible rules! This cheerful chappy is a Schreckwulfen from Warlord Games/Clockwork Goblin's Konflikt 47. I have 6 of them in total however this is the only one to have made it to the (almost) complete stage. The other 5 are in various stages of disarray and may never make an appearance.

Hans the wolfie here is actually a pretty nice sculpt and was very easy to paint, however not having a reason to paint him (cos I don't like the game) made him a bit of a chore. On the bright side though he does look the part if I wanted to do some gothis horror gaming (if you ignore the cargo paints).

Maybe one day the rest of his pack will make an appearance.

We'll see.

Ste

Infinity Terrain

Posted by Ste

Ash and I have been doing a lot of reading up on how to play Infinity, not the rules type reading which looks pretty straight forward, no I mean the practical reading of other people’s blogs and forums. We’ve basically been looking for hints and tips from people that have already learnt the game as one of the things we don’t want to do is get put off in our first few games because we get it wrong!

So the first thing we learnt (and the subject of this post) is that you need terrain and lots of it. Now that’s something we both have in abundance, however I’m not sure the hyper stylized sci-fi manga look will work with our existing WW2 or dark ages stuff so we’ve both been on a terrain binge. I’ll let Ash fill you in on his exploits however mine are below:

These are all made from cardboard gift boxes from a bargain store and as you can see I’m leaning more toward the gritty Bladerunner/Aliens view of the future rather than bright and perky!

I downloaded a couple of appropriate themed signs off the web and printed them out, stuck them on and grittied them up, just to give them a little life and also help give a sense of scale.

I've got more boxes waiting in the wings, I'm pretty happy how these turned out so I should be able to crank out quite a few scenery pieces over the next few weeks (time permitting).

Ste

Infinity - Ste's First Attempt at Painting

Posted by Ste
Damn these figures are detailed! Both Ash and I fancied a change from WW2 or dark ages and have decided to delve into the sci-fi/Manga world of Infinity. One of the major draws for this are the fact the rule book is free, however the other key attraction is how pretty the darned models are. Some of the earlier sculpts are a bit weird but in the main they’re all damn fine and interesting.

Now one of the not so good things about infinity is that it seems to attract people that can paint. I mean really paint. After trawling the web I can’t seem to find an averagely painted model nevermind a badly painted one.

So here’s my first attempt at a Nomad sniper (I don’t recall the detailed name!). All the colours are three layers (base, mid and highlight) and I’ve tried to some blending as well. My only downfall is I tend to paint mini’s with realistic shadows and highlights which doesn’t seem to work very well for Infinity.

Oh well, I’ll just have to get better at painting I guess!.

Frostgrave and Warband Management

Posted by Ash

Some time ago, myself and Ste got into Frostgrave. It's a great little skirmish game with a low entry fee. All you need is the rulebook - which very reasonably priced and about 10 generic fantasy miniatures. I cobbled together a few dudes with swords and such like (mainly thanks to Ste for donating a sweet GW necromancer looking wizard and some wargames factory saxons). We ferverishly built some appropriate scenery and played a few games but then shinier stuff came along and we haven't played for a while. I really do like the concept of the game though and the rules are streamlined and easy.

One thing that niggled me was the management of the warband. Frostgrave offers a persistent campaign system so your wizard and warband improve over time (or sustain permanent injuries!) and this creates accounting hell. Due to the paperwork involved and my lazyness I decided to create some sort of online tool for managing my warband. This tool took a fair amount of time and I eventually offered its use for free to anyone who plays Frostgrave.

If you're a fan of Frostgrave then I urge you and your friends to use the tool. If you haven't played Frostgrave then go and get it now, you won't regret it.

The online tool is available from the link below. Note that you must have a Google account to use it.

Frostgrave Warband Manager

The artwork in Frostgrave by Dmitry Burmak is superb.

The Normans are coming! (and some Anglo-Danes)

Posted by Ash

My small casual group of gamers are about to start a SAGA age of the wolf campaign and this inspired me to add some more units to my small collection of dark age warriors. I tend to use Vikings or Anglo-Dane warbands as the minis are generally interchangeable apart from a couple of Hearthguard units - Dane axes for the Anglo-Danes, Berserkers for the Vikings.

One thing I am currently lacking is any kind of Levy unit. I tend to shy away from these as they are pretty poor in combat but I've decided to give them a try to see how ranged attacks work out in SAGA. My new levy unit will also be usable in my in progress Norman warband. Normans gain some advantages with ranged attacked if the SAGA dice gods favour you!

Gripping beast are a great source of dark age miniatures which they sell to compliment the SAGA rules. They also sell Shieldwall miniatures which are a nice alternative to the gripping beast range. Shieldwall miniatures are slightly cheaper but do not come with bases and the sculpts are marginally poorer than Gripping beasts own line. I picked up 3 lots of shieldwall archers, Hereward the Wake (a named hero for the Anglo-Dane faction), a Pagan priest (simply because he's kewl) and a bard. Gripping beast also slipped in a free miniature as the order was delayed by a week or so. Hats off to Gripping beast for the ongoing excellent customer service. They have always been pleasant to deal with.

All the metal minis I ordered from Gripping beast.

Crazy Man McShaman-face the pagan priest.

The bard. This chap follows your warlord around in SAGA
and provides you with additional victory points.

The free guy given by Gripping beast. I LOVE YOU GB!

Hereward the Wake. He means business.

For the Normans, I decided to pick up a pack of Conquest Games Norman knights. This boxed set provides you with 15 knights on horseback which will give you 3 units of Hearthguard and a warlord in SAGA currency. I've also ordered some extra sprues from Conquest games so that I can get another unit of Hearthguard on horseback, 1 unit of Hearthguard on foot and 2 warrior units. I'm quite impressed with the Conquest games models for the price. Some of the horses heads are a little tricky to attach but other than that they look great.

I've already assembled the Norman knights, based them and airbrushed the base colours for the various horses with Tamiya paints - the king of airbrush paint.

3 Units of SAGA Hearthguard.

An unwell looking Norman knight. This will look nice as scatter scenery.

William the Bar Steward. My Norman warlord.

William the Bar Steward - When it comes to weaponry, he likes to branch out...

The horses heads didn't quite sit right for me.

I bet those spears become a sore point further down the road
as they will bend and snap, which is why I only added them to
 4 of the little chaps

UPDATE
William and the bard - now known as gheylord are done (apart from basing).

K47 - Oberleutnant and Staff Car

So, when you’re an aspiring evil baddie you have many items on your wishlist – evil sidekick, funny skin colour and some kind of super weapon. However one of the key bits of evil baddie equipment is …….A COOL CAR!

This chap is a Bolt Action German Officer painted in a suitably evil pallete to represent a member of the nazi occult society, The Order of The Black Sun. And as both an officer and senior member of said society he gets to ride around in a rather spiffy staff car which is simply a 1/48 toy car that I picked up on Trademe (NZ eBay) for about $7.

And here’s the gang all together!

K47 - Spinne Mech

So it turns out that Konflikt 47 is crap! 

Well ok that may be a little harsh, what I meant to say is that Konflikt 47 is crap!

Arghh it seems I just can't help myself, maybe its my own fault for getting a little too hyped up for it and  expected something really, really good. But I just can't bring myself to like it. Its got bolted on rules (see what I did there?) that just don't feel right for the mechanic, there are holes and inconsistencies throughout and it could very easily have been a pdf add on to Bolt Action. 

The introduction of reactions is a nice idea but it doesn't feel right in the flow of the game, close quarters combat is different now, with a more complicated set up to it and the whole idea of choosing between point blank shooting or close quarters is counter to the idea of close quarters (where shooting was incorporated in the roll to kill!). Walkers are under powered and its unclear what they are (vehicles or infantry), they can fight if they assault but not if they're assaulted?

However it feels like Warlord and Osprey saw an opportunity to get more mileage (and money) out of Bolt Action v1 from us dumb gamers and so of they went.

One positive thing it did do is allow Clockwork Goblin to get their pretty cool 15mm miniatures into 28mm scale (a proper gaming scale) and therefore here is my most recent offering - a German Spinne Mech light walker.

Not sure when I'll get to play with this fella, maybe when an errata comes out fixing the problems with K47 or someone updates it to BAv2. I'll probably get lambasted for voicing my opinion of this game rather the gushing like a teenage Beiber fan but thats the internet for ya!

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly

Nope, still very much alive, just busy with life and stuff. Normal service will resume shortly.