31 December 2013

Last post of 2013

Well what a year it has been, family,  friends and fun all round. So many great memories and several great trips, along with quite a few epic losses on the gaming table, as well as a couple of Epic wins.

With out a dought the most memorable  thing of 2013 has to be seeing the Komodo dragons in the wild. The largest venomous creature in the world. I’m a luck man, in that I get to cross the #1 thing on my bucket list off. (I've got the best wife ever)

Seeing the Komodo dragons in the wild …. freaking awesome.

Here’s two of my favourite wildlife photos of the year, a 2 meter long Komodo Dragon eating a grub or something. I was on the ground eye level with it and about 4 meters away from it when I took this photo…..  living dinosaur for sure.Komodo Dragon - Rinca Island - eating bugs 

Then there is this Brahminy Kite fishing beside the boat on our way to Komodo Island.Brahminy Kite hunting on the sea near komodo Island

Then of course there were several great photo trips with the lads, all of which produced some great photos and great times. The WWI planes we watched at Omaka were just mind boggling. This shot from Omaka is one of my favourites.

_MG_7342

Gaming wise the board games made a huge appearance, especially at home with my wife, who is now a convert to board games. blar, blar , blar …

So time to empty that bottle of scotch and watch 2013 disappear into history.

Happy New Year

May the Dice God’s favour you all.

Except when playing me :-)

20 December 2013

Merry Christmas


Merry Christmas 
Bought to you by the Merry Christmas Google image search



18 December 2013

C-130 Hercules




I had my camera in the car today and just had good timing so managed to snap these shots on my way home today of the Hercules taking off from Whenuapai Air base.


14 December 2013

Games and Planes

Today was the last club day of the year, and what a cracking day it was, both the gaming and the weather. With only a few of us able to make it this month it was pretty quite. Mike and Jason played out a game of FOG (I didn't catch how that ended) and I rolled out my Vikings against Kevin with his Celts. I could only make it for the morning as I had planned to go out and watch Lee's Harvard flight.

So at another 600 point game, I just went with what I used last week, 2 Battle groups of Huscarls and 6 Battle groups of Freemen. It was very much out numbered but in most cases was better equipped for the melee. Without to much detail, It was a similar game to last week. Kevin managed to get around the side of my battle line and outflank me, but not before I had destroyed several of his battle groups. It literally came down to one dice roll. Either Kevin makes his morale check and then starts his turn by taking my camp and winning the game on points, or he fails it and I win on point..... Kevin fails the morale check and the Vikings win. So another blood thirsty battle right down to the wire. The best kind of gaming in my opinion.

The after lunch I headed out to Ardmore to shoot Lee going for a flight in the Harvard. The weather behaved and put on a great day, with lots of nice clouds about and blue blue sky.



 I played around with my camera remote and a tiny tripod I got for Christmas a few years back, placing the camera right on the side of the taxi way as the Harvard taxied out and back in again. It worked a teat.

 













Somehow I think Lee enjoyed himself.




12 December 2013

King Fisher

King Fisher

I shot this King Fisher feeding it's baby on my neighbours TV aerial early this week.Very cool to watch, shame I couldn't get any closer as they are pretty jumper birds at the best of times.
LOL ... just read what I wrote .. I shot the King Fisher ... with a camera, not a gun.

10 December 2013

The usual slaughter

On Sunday we had another clammy hot and humid, raining and sunny day in Auckland as we headed to Marks for the usual slaughter. With Christmas closing fast and Battlecry tournament coming up in February. I wanted to roll out a few games of Field of Glory and get back into the swing and also figure out if I really wanted to take my New Kingdom Egyptians to the tournament or just stick to my trusty beat stick of Vikings.

The tournament is moving down to a 600 point games and being played on a 5x3 table to help speed up play and get in a few more games. I expected the smaller table size to destroy any possibility of using my Egyptians to any success as they need the space to manoeuvre all those Light Chariots that they have. So I through them at Phil's Spartans. And yes as expected it was a slaughter, with the table size so much smaller and small changes in the 2.0 rules set. The shoot and evade tactics of the Egyptians was broken from the start as I had no where to retreat to. I just didn't have the space or time to soften up the Spartan’s before they got to me. I did however make Phil work for it, as we managed to get ourselves into some interesting situations and needed to consult the rules a few times. Even with being rusty on the rules we managed to get through the game in about 2.5 hours.

 
Phil's Spartans are coming along nicely, but he's still got a long way to go to finishing them, that said my Egyptians have alot more work to go as well. (one of the many projects on the go)




So it will be the Vikings at the Tournament again next year.

So for the second game the Gippo’s went back in there box and the mighty Viking horde strode back onto the table to square off against the Spartan’s. This was a much closer match up, with both armies being so similar. The game started up pretty even and we smashed into each other in the middle of the table. My right flank started off really well with the Huscarls dealing out the pain…. until they ran into some light foot, yep, light foot. who had been caught by one of my Freemen battle groups breaking through. They managed to stand there ground for about 4 turns. (stupidly bad rolling on my part). The middle of my line failed badly as Phil broken through slaughtering two of my Freeman battle groups and proceeded to head straight for my camp. The rest of the centre had an epic slugfest that lasted right to the end of the game with me managing to finally take the win, by the skin of my teeth as one of my Freeman battle groups managed to score the final point right before Phil would have sacked my camp for the win. So an extremely close game.




Also got more work done on my Dark Elf kit last night. I was surprised how much the tiny little bubble holes in the model showed up when I air brushed on the skin colour (The ones I had missed filling). I also learnt that my sanding needs more attention, as I have a few lines showing where I had done some filling. (Bugger!!) Though about sanding it back and starting again, but they aren't that bad when you look at the whole model, and being my fist go at this type of modelling I’ve decided to leave it, and work improving my mistakes on the next model.





 

05 December 2013

Yet another Christmas Project

I decided that I didn't have enough projects on the go all at once and so started another one. Yep, what the hell it's Christmas, so I finally dusted of the garage kit I bought last year or maybe the year before...it's been awhile, So out comes the Lineage Dark Elf.


First up was to finish cleaning the parts and start fitting them using sand paper, needle files and my dremel. Found that my air brushing of the Tiger tank had really dealt to my filters in my mask. Amazing amount of crap on the filters, it always surprises me when I change them out just how much stuff they filter out, from dust and paint particles to resin dust.
 
Better on the filters than in my lungs.

 


 
So this is what she is meant to end up looking like, so I've got a long way to go. Not sure if I'll just try and replicate the same paint scheme or try something different.


 




01 December 2013

Stompy Stompy

As per usual I headed over to Mark’s for some gaming today. I took my RC tank to have a bit of a play with. I’m definitely going to have to get another one, and upgrade them to the infrared battle system. (When the budget allows of course) 
 
First game up was a 300 point Infinity game, using the YAMS system for objectives. Phil and I changed the allocation of them to make things a bit more interesting. Instead of drawing six and discarding two, so you start with knowing your four objectives.

We draw three to start with and discard one, then on turn three, we draw another 3 and discard one. So you have two objectives to concentrate on for the first 2 turns before the next two objectives (basically thinking of it as you get assigned more objectives from HQ during the mission). The only other addition rule was that you couldn't fulfil an objective you get in turn 3 before you actually get the objective. Oh yeah, and if you cant meet one of the object cards you draw because it’s impossible, just draw another card.


I ran an old Combined Army list I had printed up, that just happened to be in my game bag. I choose it simply because it had the Cascuda in it and I want to use him. So my list was
First Group
Aswange  Lieutenant – Adhesive Launcher
Caskuda
Iskaller  - Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun
Speculo Killer
T-Drone
2x Seed Soldiers
Second Group
2x Preta
2x Gaki
So here’s a rough run down of the game. Phil was using his ALEPH. I ended up with first deployment and first turn, keeping the Cascuda and Iskaller off the table to use there combat jump ability later on in the turn to go for two objectives. The first beginning search an unconscious/dead enemy for documents, followed by placing a beacon in the enemies deployment zone 10’ or less from a corner.

First I ran my Preta’s and Gaki’s up the left flank to cause some chaos (think I killed a couple of models and lost one Preta). I then walked the Cascuda on, right up by Phils deployment zone on the right flank. Simple plan… kill everything in site that could shoot back, which was only one model as it turned out, achieved that then moved in and scored my first objective by searching the body.

Phil then moved up and killed some more of my Gaki and Preta’s in a shootout on the left flank. He then proceed to kill my Cascuda with a damn combi rifle after I failed a bunch of saves really badly. Thankfully the heavy flamer of the Cascuda managed to kill his model as well. (cant recall what it was).

A bunch more shenanigans happened over the next turns as Phil killed off my remaining Gaki’s. I then walked on the Iskaller onto the board in the same place as my Cascuda did and he then proceed to slaughter the other two models that were there, a Netrod and some small harmless bot. I then placed the beacon  and setup the Iskaller up for defence of the beacon.

Turn thee and I get a mixed bag of objectives, one simple one and a choice of two hard ones. I opt for the easy one of course, which was sabotage a terrain piece and the second much hard one of “Hold” which is not be in retreat at the end of the game. (at that point I need to keep all my models on the board alive.)

So my turn three is all about getting the sabotage done and scoring my third objective, and what I hope is good placement of my models to make Phil think twice about coming to close. Thankfully Phil goes for his objectives and scores one of them. My fourth turn I get all my guys as far away and well hidden as possible. Which turned out to be just far enough to stay alive as Phil runs one of his models into my DZ to score another one of his objectives.

So I actually win 4/2 on objectives, think that's my first win against Phil using the Combined Army.

After lunch I played Will at Malifuax, and tried out the Pandora starter box, using proxies as I’m thinking of getting the starter box to expand my Neverborn crew. So with Will also using proxies as his gang hasn't shipped from Wayland yet. The photos are not what they seem.

Talk about mess with your mind, as a last minute decision, it wasn't a good one. Read the cards once, pop the models on the table and start playing. It messed with the brain a little as I tried to figure out the best way to use them and combine the abilities.

The play style is quite different from the Guild gang I’ve been playing, but still fun. So I’m definitely going to have to do some reading and searching on how to use them more effectively. Safe to say Will pretty well stomped me. He was using Seamus and kept bring back corpses. (a rather annoying ability)

 Looking forward to playing more Malifaux, I really like the cheating fate mechanic.