Lord of the Rings SBG Ruins

Posted by Ste

You know how sometimes you feel the urge to complete something but you don’t want to put loads of effort in, well I had that urge the other night. My painting queue is huge and hasn’t noticeably reduced over recent months. In addition I’m in a bit of funk as well and am struggling to muster up the energy to get stuck in to anything. So I figured that these would give me a much needed boost without too much effort.

They’re the ruins that came with the Mines of Moria LoTR Strategy Battle Game published by GW (and now obsolete!). I picked these up off Trademe (NZ eBay) a while ago for peanuts, they hard plastic and very easy to paint. They were based on hard card for durability and then given some texture and a grey undercoat. A few dry brushes and some flock, grass and flowers later and voila, the ruins of Ithilien!

Quite happy with these, just need some proper building ruins to complement them now.

Walmington on Sea Part 2 – Jettys and a Boat

Posted by Ste

It’s not really a seatown without a boat of some kind and as I mentioned in the first part of this post that I’d be making a boat I’d better show you what I achieved. It was surprising simple really, cut a base shape out of 5mm foam board, stick some card sides on and leave to dry for about 4 days (just to make sure they don’t pop off). Then build various bits that make it look boaty (Cabin, mast type thing, maybe a hold). Mine looks a little like a boat/barge more than anything so I’m gonna say that it’s an inshore freighter that can travel upriver.

I may have to give it another go and make something a bit bigger.

So where can you board this wonderful contraption, why at the jetty of course. These were easy and annoying at the same time, the usual materials were used of coffee stirrers, some balsawood and pva. I quickly realised that to get the strength whilst meeting my need for speed (CTA was coming up fast at this point) I’d have to use the trusty glue gun for the framework. Don’t you just love all the blisters you get from burning yourself on hot glue? Such fun.

Walmington on Sea Part 1 – Building the Docks

Posted by Ste

When we decided to put on another Bolt Action demo game at Call To Arms 2017 we had a robust discussion about what the theme should be. I did my usual and stuck to my North Africa, desert obsession (one track mind!) however both Ash and Bryan were keen on exploring something a little bit sillier and we settled on Dads Army. Coincidentally Warlord Games had just published the Sealion campaign book so it was definitely a timely choice. In addition Bryan does a rather amusing range of Dads Army impressions and so the mood of the game was very quickly given a comedic feel.

First things first, roles? I volunteered to be Gamesmaster and generate the scenario with Ash opting for the dastardly Hun and Bryan the plucky homeguard. Now as GM I quickly realised that Walmington on Sea is just that, on sea and as such it would need a seafront.

So rolling up my sleeves I set to trying to build what could convincingly pass for a seafront/wharf/docks.

Ok, so the first task was to build the sea wall, luckily I had recently acquired a bunch of scrap polystyrene sheets, and with judicious application of pen and ruler could pass for a wall of sorts. Topped with thick card embossed with a biro to look like paving and I had a wall

Next was to get some water made. Not being familiar with all the plethora of fake water products and also being a complete cheapskate I opted for texturing a board and painting/varnishing to achieve the effect. So in steps Mr Polyfilla and Mrs Acrylic paint, liberally applied and then using a straight bit of sponge to stipple waves at the diagonal.

  

I’ve noticed now that we live next to the sea that generally waves roll in at an angel to the shore so that’s what I opted for. I mixed the polyfilla and paint before application so I wouldn’t have to paint the waves. Once dry it was a pretty straight forward thing highlight the waves with white and then slap three coats of water based gloss varnish on.

Next up, jettys and a boat!

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

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

Demo Game at Call To Arms

Call To Arms (CTA) is the annual Wellington gaming event, many dice are rolled, distances measured and cups of tea/coffee drunk. To fit my very busy personal life, Mrs Off t'Club and I have an agreement that once a year I can devote a weekend to my hobby and this year it was going to be Panzerschreck, unfortunately my health disagreed this year and both mine and teammate Ashley's work diaries decided to get rammed and therefore we had to bow out this year (and my 4th Indian were coming along so nicely!)
So at quite short notice we both decided to devote a day to demoing Bolt Action and therefore booked ourselves a table at CTA (we also thought it may help out mate Scott's sales of hobby related crack!).

So we rolled up early to set up in the drizzling sleet with our bundles of terrain. For anyone that didn't know Bolt Action is Warlord Games WW2 game and has been instrumental in attracting whole swathes of 40k players from the ranks of the evil empire across to historical gaming due to its neat, clean mechanic and competitive army lists (of which I am not a big fan). BA is commonly referred to as WW2 lite primarily because of the aforementioned competitive army lists that don't necessarily reflect the historical reality.
However if you play a game that feels like WW2 and if you don't obsess over the minutia of points values and damage points, then it gives quite a satisfying game. I must say that Chain of Command is probably a better game for the period, but it just doesn't gel well with my neanderthal brain!

Anyway we demoed BA for the day playing 3 games with pretty equal forces (we didn't use points values) and managed to garner a reasonable amount of interest.

Below is a pic dump of our table to give you a feel for what went down! 
Ash provided the German forces, I the Brits. All vehicles were Ash's (he's so much better than me at painting tanks!) and he also provided the ruined buildings and base boards. All other terrain came from my collection (yayy I finished my Sarissa buildings).

Unfortunately I didn't get much chance to take photos of any of the other splendid display games that were there however I shall endeavour to rectify that next year. There was however a very nice demo game of Sharp Practice 2 being played next to us, which almost convinced Ash to enter the wonderful world of Napoleonic's (I'll keep working on him), for an entertaining write up (with pics) head on over to von Peter Himself.