IHMN - The Casebook of Inspector Johnson 1

I do enjoy a good AAR for any game system and as such I thought it might be fun to do my own. However I've come to the realisation that there are a lot of AAR's out there that are significantly better than what I can do.

So in that vein I've decided to give it my own spin.

So what follows is my literary account of the activities of Chief Inspector Johnson of Scotland Yard and his attempts to foil various nefarious schemes of evil doers in the setting of In Her Majesty's Name!

So click the pic to view this literary masterpiece!

I hope you enjoy.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Official Teaser Trailer [HD]

Nifty, I have to say I'm really rather excited to see this, the trailer looks great. And there's a first glimpse of Smaug at the end of the trailer, which unfortunately doesn't look that great. However I have a sneaking suspicion that he'll be a lot better animated in the final film (after all Gollum wasn't even designed when the Fellowship was released).

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!

Warlord Games - FREE INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING!

Yes that’s right, for all you no UK gamers Warlord Games have decided to do free international shipping for all purchase through their webstore. Pretty good huh!

My most recent experience of Warlords web store was one of shock, nay horror at the ridiculous customer service levels they ascribe to. Now before you run screaming to the hills let me outline what happened: 

1. I ordered a sprue of Zulu wars British Rifles for my In Her Majesty's Name company and also a copy of The Battle of Salisbury - graphic novel.
2. Two days following my order I receive an email from my Pay-pal account saying that I have received a refund from Warlord due to a product being out of stock. The same day I get an email from Warlord with confirmation of the refund and that they were sorry but The Battle of Salisbury - graphic novel is out of stock
3. A day later my sprue arrives with a hand written note inside from Dom (presumably one of their mail order operatives!) apologising for the out of stock and because of this they have added an extra sprue to say sorry.

That’s right!

I had no issue with the product going out of stock and will happily wait for it to come back in however Warlord decided that its unacceptable and “gave” me an extra product, something they didn’t need to do. Now you may think this is a one off however I suggest that you pop on over to their discussion forum where you will find many tales of exceptional customer service that unfortunately is not duplicated with many other companies.

So if you want good value products, delivered in a timely fashion and with excellent customer service then I suggest you dip your feet in the Warlord sea - its lovely and warm!

Really, really small print disclaimer thingy: Off T’Club  is not sponsored, affiliated, funded, tickled, or provided with tea and biscuits by Warlord Games. Any reference to Warlord Games, their products or personnel is made because I think they’re a top notch company with snazzy products and a nice attitude.

Warhammer On A Budget - where I got the bugs!

After posting the pics of the last project I've been bombarded with requests for clarification on the actual toys I used.  So in true open source, free IP, no copyright and careing and sharing fashion here's a pic of the offending article sat on the shelf in Poundland.

Enjoy!

Warhammer On A Budget Part 2

So after much tinkering, messing and gluing and the occasional splash of paint I have now completed my little Warhammer Fantasy army on a budget (barring two character models which my mate Chris is buying for the princely sum of £0.48p each from the museum giftshop).

I began this in part as a giant screw you to GW (which is kind of pointless as they couldn’t care less) but also to see if I could do it to any level of acceptable quality. I did preview these lovely little creepy crawlies at the club last week as they shall be my Daemons of Chaos army for the tournament this coming Sunday and I was a little shocked at the response:

“So guys what do you think” says I all innocent like

“What are they“ says one, “What do they represent” says another.

“Oh that’s a plague bearer unit, that’s a Beast of Nurgle and they’re Furies”

Choruses of “I’d think they were all swarms, I don’t get it” and “where’s the champion and standard bearer” and “you can’t tell what they are”, oh and this was the best “I wouldn’t play it because they aren’t WYSIWYG!”

So it would seem that there’s a lack of imagination at my club. I did explain that each unit would have a nice little label on the base identifying the unit choice, but that was ignored in favour of the general reply of “it’s not GW”.

Huh?

I really did think this hobby was about imagination however it would seem that there’s a group out there that don’t want to use it but would rather have the “official” imagination foisted on us by a corporate entity aimed at maximising profits for shareholders……….rant rant rant.

Sorry got sidetracked, so without further ado here’s the finished article

The full 1500 pts Daemons of Chaos

Plaguebearers

Ooh look - Standard!

Plaguebearers again

And another Standard!

Beasts of Nurgle

Fleshounds of Khorne

Second unit of Fleshounds

Furies of Nurgle

Nurglings

Sorry for the pics, took them on my phone.

And for reference here's the costs:

6 x pack of childrens toy insects  - £6

Sheet of 3mm balsa wood - £2.10

Mixed sand - Free

Twigs, moss and flock - Free

2 x Auto spray paint - £2

Uhu adhesive - £0.99p

Old GW paints that had dried up - As I was throwing them I’ll say free.

So that’s a grand total of £11.09

Whats on the painting table?

There are always too many projects on the go, its quite shameful how much of a gaming butterfly I am and may of you out there can probably relate to this. So in the interests of shifting some of this pile I’m going to name and shame myself, put it all in order and set a deadline for everything. So here goes:

Warhammer on the cheap - I need to finish this by the 9th June for the Pennine Pillage so about 6 days and counting (argh)

Bolt Action British - This is ongoing however I still have the following to complete:

Tamiya Cromwell

Rifle Section (10 men)

MMG & 3” mortar

Airborne Section (half painted so I’m getting there)

Airborne HQ (as above)

Airborne PIAT and MMG (as above (blimey there’s a theme here))

In Her Majesty’s Name

Scotland Yard (they’re base coated so I’m nearly there J)

British Rifle Company & Native Natal Contingent (still on sprues, arghhhh)

English Civil War

3 x Pike Blocks and musket wings

Parliamentary cavalry (trotters)

Mounted Dragoons

Characters (General, Colours and Second)

Firelocks

Forlorn Hope

Mortar

WW2 Naval

HMS Hood, Prince of Wales, Suffolk, Norfolk

Bismarck, Prinz Eugen

Dark Ages

Gedricht/Thegns (2 units to paint)

Duguth/Thegns (lovely Musketeer miniatures models)

Geoguth/Geburs (one unit and still need to order some more)

Vikings (wargames factory - awful figures but I shall make them look acceptable).

Bolt Action German Heer

3 x 8 Man squads (not even started)

81mm mortar and MMG

Early Imperial Roman

4 units of legionaires

A unit of praetorians

Auxillary Cavalry

Auxiliary infantry

German Allies

3 units of skirmishers

WW2 15mm (because I’m not sure what system to use yet)

10 x Sdkfz 251

10 infantry stands

Ancient Greeks

Still in boxes (doh)

So there’s my shame, the current sum of my painting mountain and I shall endeavour to complete this chunk of stuff before the end of 2013. That’s a grand total of 692 to paint.

Now where did I put my time machine?