Roman Scorpio

 Its not really, in fact its probably too big to be honest. Its actually an old dwarven bolt thrower, I think it may be a Marauder Miniatures one,  I'm not sure. 

I had to build the stand out of balsa wood and I'll have to modify a couple of legionaries to act as crew but I think it looks ok!

Jomsvikings for Saga

Saga has been a little neglected in my gaming world of late, however local gamer Joe decided that it might be fun to put on a Saga tournament at Wellington Warlords annual Call to Arms event. So in the interewsts of being an active participant in this little hobby of ours I signed up to roll dice for a weekend (with the agreement of my wife obviously!).

However this then begs the question 'What force to play?' I've always played Saga with Anglo Saxons, there something about the plucky Fyrd kicking some Viking butt that has always appealed to me however I thought I'd be a little silly and play Jomsvikings. Why Jomsvikings, well because they're completely nuts, have a weird battle board, can only have hearthguard and warriors and cannot take any allies or mercenaries. So it should prove challenging.

Oh did I forget to say that I'd only painted 4 of them at this point? Tournaments are always good motivation for getting something finished aren't they!

I needed 7 pts of Joms, we would only be playing with 6 pts with the 7th being an option should we choose to mess with our lists a little. This didn't really help me as I couldn't have anything but Jomsvikings so it would just have to be a bucket of hearthguard and warriors. So here we have my 6 pts of Jomsvikings (the 7th being some beserkers I heard kicking about thai never got used).

6x Hearthguard

6x Hearthguard

8x Warriors

8x Warriors

8x Warriors

Warlord

Almost all the models are Gripping Beast, I picked these up second hand and have been meaning to paint them for a while. I've also thrown in a few Footsore models too (I think they're from the Goths range) and added a casualty to the Jomsviking Warlords base, its one of the terrible Wargames Factory plastics that I dragged from the bits box!

The tournament was a blast, I went in to it with a master plan, try and get my warlord into combat with my opponents warlord as much as possible. And guess what, it worked as I managed to get my warlord killed the most times out of the six games. I didn't take many pics,  however here's two of my games:

Here my Joms valiantly try and defeat Alix's Norman's (I lost!).

Reg's Vikings try to steal my livestock! Turns out they wanted to be stolen as the cow killed two of my warriors and the sheep beat my hearthguard in melee!

I didn't place anywhere, but then I never expected to, it takes a deft hand to make Jomsvikings effective in Saga v2, and a deft hand I am not!

Joe is planning an Age of Crusades tournament next year, I think I may have to take part, simply to make some connections and promote the hobby. 

More Romans - SPQR Maybe?

I've kind of got into painting Romans, there's something to be said for factory painting, especially when you get into a groove.

These are the same as previous, I think I must have about 60 of these from one of those Warlord Games Roman starter sets, I've also got some cavalry to do too along with a batch of Celts, which may just end up being some local auxiliaries or I may have to do a full ancient celtic force. Those Victrix chariots are just lovely!

Kids are the future, of gaming!

Like many people I have kids, two boys to be precise,  and I'm guessing some of your kids like playing with daddy or mummy's toy soldiers. 

Well below is the outcome of a pleasant sunday afternoon diversion with my 9 and 11 year old where a small Panzer company and a US Recon patrol clash over a crossroads somewhere in Normandy.

The two forces move onto the field of battle

Operation capture the crossroads, who will get there first,  the Jagdpanther or two M8s?

M3 vs PzIV, oh no!

Meanwhile panzergrenadiers try to slow down the two speeding M8

The second squad of grenadiers capture the crossroads and dig in while a jeep patrol sprays them with machine guns. To the south an airborne squad threatens the Stugs

The final outcome turn 6, both sides claim the objective,  this sector of the Normandy campaign is in stalemate!

Both my boys had fun, I adapted Bolt Action and Flames Of War, managed to get the rules onto a single A4, made everything generic (tanks, vehicles and infantry).

Maybe I'll refine and publish on here at some point for feedback.

Space Toys are Fun

I'm busy working on painting my Jomsvikings but there's only so much pastel shades and axes you can paint before you implode, so for a fun deviation I decided to paint up an old toy I managed to recycle from my boys toy box. 

It's supposed to be a Y-Wing but I moved the engines forward and then started kit bashing from my bits box. 

I figured that it would work well for both Star Wars Legion and 40k, I've added a few old 40k decals but kept it neutral so it doesn't place it in a genre.

Random Interlude - Bismarck

Sometimes I forget that my youngest son (9) has a superpower (Autism), until he does something like this. 

 

The Bismarck, in Lego, from memory.

Apparently he wants to build the Hood now,  so watch this space. 

The results of my molding attempts

Not too shabby! Its a little light on the detail around the tracks and the rear looks scruffy. But thats what weathering and mud effects are for!

I could probably have paid for another set for the cost of the craft supplies I used to create this.  However I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and sometimes that's what this hobby is about. Or maybe my focus is changing and I'm getting more pleasure out of the hobby side these days than I am out of the gaming side. 

Who knows!

First attempt at molding

Last post I talked about the great Rubicon Firefly kitand how it came with an extra hull and turret. This got me to thinking could I get another tank out of this? My wife used to be a professional cake decorator and still had a couple of unused silicon mold kits left which she kindly donated to my crazy idea.  I managed to make a decent mold of both track sections and chassis,  but when it came to casting I made a right mess ad I foolishly used plaster of paris which is not the best material to get out of flexible silicon molds.
So back to the drawing board, and something a bit more sturdy, milliput!

Unfortunately I didn't have enough to build the whole chassis so I had to be creative and after casting only the front and rear I had to build the rest of the chassis from scratch.

Its not the prettiest model but should be passable once painted and weathered. 

Not Lockdown Anymore - Sherman Firefly

A few months ago I added a very nice Rubicon Sherman Firefly to the lead pile and with the lockdown here in NZ coming to an end I thought why not celebrate by painting a tank! Makes a change from 28mm!

This kit was a dream to put together, which agrees with everything I've ever heard about Rubicon. Even better you get an extra hull and turret so you can build a regular 75mm and swap them if needed (its built so you don't have to glue the hull and chassis!)

The trickiest part was painting the camo on the barrel. Panzer crews quickly raised how deadly the 17 pdr was and would target the firefly in each tank troop first, so the crew camo'd the end of the barrel with a disruption pattern to make it look like the 75mm.

I'm looking forward to trying this bad boy out, i'm sure it'll suffer from the newly painted curse and explode in the first couple of turns.

Lockdown Post 20 - Random 40k Ork

Ever feel the urge to just paint something different? I've been cracking on with my Early Imperial Romans' and just felt the need for a change so grabbed the first thing that looked different from the pile! And what's more different from historical Romans' than a fantastical space ork. 

I'm not sure why I even have this model, its the only one in my collection. It did however give me the opportunity to test my green shading and check patterns. 

And I thoroughly enjoyed painting it,  it made a fun diversion and sometimes that's all you need to feel refreshed.

Right, back to historical I guess!

Lockdown Post 19 - Cruel Seas Scratch Build Merchant Ship

Its really hard to sink a ship with torpedoes in Cruel Seas when almost all the boats we play with are unaffected by torpedoes.  This is one of the very quick realisations you come to when playing the game,  in fact it's quite terrifying if you just happen to be playing the side that has a single large ship! 

Also the game gets a little tiresome if you don't play some different scenarios every now and then,  so to keep things interesting I thought I'd have a crack at scratch building myself a freighter! So, where to start? Well what better place than the hull, and in the interests of not making something that looks like utter crap I copied the hull from the Kreigsmarine Flakboot. To start with I cut a base from foam board by simply drawing round the flakboot as a template and cutting at a slight angle with a sharp craft knife. Then I placed some plain paper over the hull of the Flakboot and with a pencil did a rubbing to get the right outline.  You see I'm a major cheap skate and was planning to build the entire thing from scrap materials,  the hull would be card!

Once done I then went and laid the rubbing outline onto a piece of card and drew round it heavily with a hard pencil to press the shape into the card,  then using a sharp craft knife I cut out the hull and compared to the flakboot floor accuracy.  As it looked fine I flipped it,  as a template for the other side of the hull and hey presto,  I had the makings of a ship!

The superstructure I simply constructed out of foamboard rectangles stacked on each other  there was very little planning, I simply messed with random bits until I got something that looked right.

The canvas cargo cover is a plastic Warlord Games Hanomag crew cover,  there's an mg at the bow from an old 1/72 kit I had lying around the windows are simply cut out card. I should really try and build another one so we can have some convoy battles!

Lockdown Post 18 - Cruel Seas Kreigsmarine

S- boats,  Minesweeper and Flakboot, that's the German fleet,  although it also comes with a Stuka which is quite nice but not really required in the game as aircraft attacks could easily be represented with a counter.

I've gone for a few different camo schemes,  simply because I seem too have loads of e-boats to play with. These stress the s-100 with armored wheelhouse.

I think this is my favorite one,  a lot of sponging and stippling to get this effect. 

These are the s-38 type which I prefer to the s-100, they just look nicer!

A flakboot, and yes that's an 88mm on the front, pretty scary really although terribly slow in the game and vulnerable to torpedoes.

I foolishly asked my son what camo scheme I should paint the minesweeper and his reply was "Bismarck", so I valiantly tried to paint straight lines on the damn thing which was no easy task

Turned out ok I reckon. 

The combined Kreigsmarine fleet.  A much scarier proposition than my Royal Navy, at least until I finish my Fairmiles

In the Cruel Seas starter set you also got a half submerged sub, not tried to user it yet I just enjoyed painting it.