Westwind Productions Sale

I guess the title is a dead giveaway however Westwind are having a sale. Now its not on everything, particularly both EOTD and Forged in Battle are excluded (darn), however Berlin or Bust is included and the savings are pretty darn good = 25% off.

So I’ve ordered my vehicles for my DAK motorised column for the upcoming Bolt Action day in Manchester. My list is rubbish so I won’t do very well however it’s the force I want to collect and once complete I’ll start my 2nd NZEF to oppose them. I’ve always wanted play out some games in North Africa and this will satisfy my skirmish scale gaming itch.

Head on over to Westwind for a great deal. 

Fences for IHMN

Another quick project completed over the Christmas break. It’s hard to find time over the holidays for hobby stuff, as you entertain young children during the day and crash out exhausted at night (not to say it isn’t fun!).

So inspired by http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/ and http://londonbymidnight.blogspot.co.uk/ I decided to bash out some fences to support my slowly growing VSF town. I think they came out rather well however I foolishly used superglue to glue them to the base and obviously this has clouded the clear plastic (doh!). Now if I hadn’t been in such a hurry I’d have used some contact adhesive to glue them down properly!

I may go back and redo them depending on how they look with my other terrain. They’re just a few bits of spare balsa wood with coffee stirrers as the frame (provides strength!). Gave the whole thing a watered down Vallejo black wash followed by Vallejo Heavy Sienna and Neutral Grey dry brush.

Ere, Sarge, do you think we gave him the slip?

2014 Resolutions and The Three Kings of the Lost World!

It’s the New Year and everyone seems to be blogging about their hobby resolutions. I have to say I’ve never been one to make (or keep) resolutions, they’re a nice idea however its so easy to lose focus as everyday life takes over. However I decided to make two this year:

1. Quit coffee (I drink to much and I’m sure its given me an ulcer!)
2. Do not buy any more figures until the lead/plastic pile is gone!

So how am I doing? Well it’s the 8th January and I am typing this blog post while sipping on a lovely cup of ……….coffee!

Arghhhh - yes I’ve failed however I’m trying to achieve this resolution by slowly weaning myself off the dreaded black stuff rather than cold turkey (its fairer on my family this way!).

So that’s my first resolution broken however I am winning on my second one……..NOT!

As many of you lovely blog readers do I follow a wide range of blogs, one of which is the rather splendid Colonel of Truths Miniature Issues who manages to do amazing things with bits of tat and bargain store buys. So inspired by this and whilst wandering through Boyes Department store in Ilkley (looking for a toy car I’d promised my youngest!) I picked up 3 plastic dinosaurs for £2.97 with the thought that they would make a rather characterful addition to our Darkest Africa games of IHMN.

Now as soon as I’d purchased the aforementioned I thought “oh no I’ve broken my resolution” and so with a guilty conscience I set to getting them gaming ready whilst said youngest offspring enjoyed his favourite movie (58 mins of Thomas King of the Railway!). Below is the result of my efforts!

These shall be gracing the table tonight when Lt Col Johnsons company attempts to wrangle the beasts whilst being attacked by that barbarian Tarzan and his native allies! An update shall follow!

Note: As they never hit the lead/plastic pile technically I didn’t breach the resolution *cough* honest!

In the Fields of Joy

All you music aficionados out there willl have linked the title of this post to the rather nifty song by Lenny Kravitz however this post is (unfortunately) not about music but rather about terrain. Now for some time I have been meaning to set up a gaming board at home, and in a previous post you will have seen my efforts to that effect. Well no board is worth playing on without the addition of representative terrain (unless you play 8th WFB!) and therefore I have been beavering away with bits of tat picked up over the years and stashed in a box.

So without further ado I give you - Fields!

 These are the most ridiculously simple things to make, in fact I’ve kind of overdone mine a little. All you need is a cheap ribbed door mat or coir door mat (no I don’t own shares in Wilko’s before you ask!)

Then just go wild with a sharp craft knife and hey presto instant fields. I took it a step further to give some durability and based them on hardboard, textured the edges and added flock. I also gave the ploughed field a dry brush of various browns.

I’m quite happy with the results. As I’ll be playing on a tiled board I needed to provide a textured edge to each field as the roads are created by blocking out the tiling and on occasion my fields may not have hedges or fences surrounding them (therefore they all have a dirt verge!).

I’ll pop up some pics of the board with fields once I’ve finished dulling it down a little (see previous post on tiles!)

And finally - A popcorn Frog Dog!

Next up - Lord of the Rings SBG!

Quick update, I played with my fantasy army on a budget at our club tournie and ended up in the middle of the board as far as results go. However on a massive plus side out of 16 players I won most popular army.

Woohoo, not bad for an army that was painted in a week and cost £11.09!

Well now that the silly plastic Warhammer army is out of the way I guess I should crack on with the next silly project, and that project is Lord of the Rings SBG on a budget. Now this one is going to be a problem as I want to do two things, skirmish games using the main rules and then mass battles using War of the Ring. Now I know that WotR is broken however I intend to play at my club with like minded individuals so hopefully we can house rule out the silly bits.

Now the main problem with doing it on a budget is that I really like the imagery of the films and therefore I’ll be using the “official” miniature range produced by Games Workshop. However therein lies the problem as I refuse to give them any more of my hard earned and as far as I’m aware there are no other miniature companies licensed to produce models at the scale that I want.

So I’m stuck with GW figures, now how to do this on a budget? Well the basic premise is to beg, borrow, plead, trade for mini’s from friends, enemies or the good readership of this blog. Additionally I'll be looking to the lovely world of second hand online, currently my favourite seller is this one - http://allhistoric.co.uk/index.html

I’ve already started the scoring off by buying some metal Khazad Guard  and assorted plastics off a chap at the club for £10 however this isn’t the force I want to collect so I’ll be doing a gaming quality paint job on them to fund part of this project.

Now then, what do I want to collect? And their in lies the rub. I love the films (I watch them through maybe 3 times a month) and read the books at least once a year so I'm pretty keen on story style game play therefore I think I'll be throwing together the fellowship to begin with. Now luckily included in my £10 bargain box was most of the fellowship in plastic so I'm part way their, just Aragorn, Boromir and pretty little Orlando with long blonde hair to go (and their's my other sourcing route - come on blog readers if you've got some scrap in your bitz box let me know?). Also to ensure that I have a gaming partner in all this I'll have to collect up some Moria Goblins as they were the first main battle opponents for the Fellowship. I already have the Cave Troll (see pic above - sorry Pete but its too good a model to leave as a trophy) so am just looking for some more plastics.

Now on the back of this I need a War of the Ring force as well. Now I always loved the Isengard Uruk Hai, so brutal and aggressive and kind of unique in the fantasy genre. Ok so that’s the baddies covered, what next. Well the obvious (and quite satisfying answer) is Rohan. Oh no not just any Rohan army but Eomer’s Rohirrim, “why” I hear you ask, well because they are supremely cool.

So the target is to acquire these forces as cheaply as possible in comparison to their actual cost. I’m going to start off with the Rohirrim based on the below list:

Eomer	£    8.20
Rider of Rohan Captain	£   12.30
7x Riders of Rohan	£   90.00
7x Riders of Rohan
6x Riders of Rohan
4x Riders of Rohan
4x Riders of Rohan
Total	£ 110.50

So there’s my starting point and I’m already -£10 due to the dwarves. So first task is to paint up the dwarves and get them sold (via a mate on ebay as I don’t do ebay). This should hopefully fund the rest of the purchases through various second hand sources to see how cheap I can get it. Obviously it’ll take some time so I’ll update everyone periodically.

Now I’m off to paint Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson for IHMN - See ya!