31 July 2014

Sad Face

Warlord Games web site is down … (sad face)

Cant spend money and buy more toys… how depressing

Oh well … must be time for a scotch

 

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27 July 2014

Cuirassiers – Pike and Shotte

So after completing the assembly line of all my Pike and Shotte, and also having almost recovered fully from my cold and bronchitis I had a quite day at home painting.

Pike and Shotte Parliament Cuirassiers Warlord Games

So I started with my Cuirassiers as they were going to be pretty easy with all that Armour which was pretty much already done after my air brushing, just an ink wash over it. I’m sticking to my speed painting, not stopping to do all the details and just keep things simple. As I had run out of black undercoat the other day, I had used a brown that I had in the garage on the horses, which was a gloss finish, so all these horses are still a little glossy in places as I’m waiting for the PVA glue to dry on the grass. Then a matt varnish tomorrow, a few spots of static grass and the flag and they will be done.

Pike and Shotte Parliament Cuirassiers Warlord GamesPike and Shotte Parliament Cuirassiers Warlord Games


Pike and Shotte Parliament Cuirassiers Warlord GamesPike and Shotte Parliament Cuirassiers Warlord Games


Pike and Shotte Parliament Cuirassiers Warlord Games

As I was basing them I remembered I have a bunch of pigment powders in the draw, so I tried out mixing them in with my Polly filler for the dirt. It worked rather well. I like it so much i think I have found my new way of basing my models.

I’m really looking forward to the big Pike and Shotte game at the Club in a few weeks.

25 July 2014

Plague and Shop

Ding….
Ding…..
Ding ….
Bring out ya dead …
Yes I feel pretty much like the walking dead, having managed to get myself a rather nasty dose of Bronchitis,  I’ve been off all week. Working a little from home when the brain registers enough for such tasks and the coughing fits stop long enough to think.
Plague and Shop you say, well that’s what my iPhone Siri translation came up with as I tested out using it for audio translation for a blog entry. Kinda funny since I actually said “Pike and Shotte” and that period in time saw real plagues, add to that my own current health..I had to laugh .. then try and cough my lungs up for 2 minutes.
I’ve been slowly chipping away at my Parliamentary army and I'm now down to putting the final few models together for my last infantry unit.
I’ve ended up with a few more models than I originally anticipated.
3 Generals (2 Mounted 1 foot)
1 Mortar (6 models)
3 Medium Canons (16 models)
1 Firelock Storming Party (20 models)
1 Dragoon Unit (12 Mounted and 12 Foot)
2 Cavalry Units  (24 Mounted Models)
1 Cuirassier Cavalry Unit (12 Mounted models)
4 Infantry Units (160 models)
1 group of dead guys (13 models)
So 278 models all up, 50 of which are mounted. I plan on getting them all undercoated and with a base coat of colour on them before the big game at our next club day.
2014-07-24 20.32.42
On other things, I started watching the TV series called “Orphan Black” after hearing of it on the D6G pod cast. By the third episode it starts getting really good, I’m hooked.
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An excerpt from Wikipedia does a good summary
“Orphan Black is a Canadian science fiction television series created by screenwriter Graeme Manson and director John Fawcett, starring Tatiana Maslany as several identical people who are revealed to be clones. The series focuses on Sarah Manning, a woman who assumes the identity of one of her clones, Elizabeth Childs, after witnessing Childs' suicide. The series raises issues about the moral and ethical implications of human cloning and its effect on issues of personal identity.”
imageI also started listening to an audio book of Larry Correia, Monster Hunter International. Gun’s, gore and monsters, what more could you want … oh yeah,  girls with guns of course.
An excerpt from Amazons web page. Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a fourteenth story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Officially secret, some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. On the other side are the people who kill monsters for a living. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business
It’s rather entertaining and the narrator is really good so very easy to listen to it while trying to put together models and not super glue ones fingers together.

15 July 2014

Pike and Shotte progress

So with the huge game of Pike and Shotte scheduled in for next months South Auckland club meeting, I've been busy putting together all my troops and getting some paint on them as well. I think the table size is planned to be 8 foot x 16 foot or larger. 

My biggest problem so far was finding a way to transport them all. With the pikes standing at 100mm tall, it ruled out a lot of my transport cases I have. So a trip to the local plastic box store sorted that out. Add some Flames of War magnetic stick on bases to them and that will keep them from moving about while in transit.


I'm sticking with my speed painting technique like I did on my Bolt Action Japnese. Black undercoat, white top down overspray, then a base colour to start with. (Gives a nice fast and easy base to work from) I'm not expecting to have everything painted by next month, but at least I'll have them all with a base colour on them, so it will be nice and easy to tell the units apart. The yellow worked really well with the black, the purple has worked ok. I think another wash of purple ink over the top should bring the shadows detail back out.



 Now back to putting more troops together... I'm not even half way yet ... 

14 July 2014

Bolt Action fun

Jeepers the days are flying past, another month already. Winter is cursing past at a wet and wild pace. Managed to get my fence fixed without to much cost, or drama, so gaming on Sunday saw another club meeting down south. Bolt Action and FOW were flavors of the day.

Brian turned up with some of his old terrain boards for his FOW game. Even though they were in the so called old and damage camp, they looked pretty awesome and really suited the FOW game they played out.






I rolled out a couple more games with my Japanese infantry list for Bolt Action. First up I was up against Jason with his British and those damn evil Gurkha. At least I knew what to expect this time round. We choose the demolition scenario as I hadn't played it before and setup the table. We housed ruled the jungle side of the table with visibility of 6 inches. Yep,  6 inches, no snipers in this jungle.







Once the camps were places, we went to deployment and with my revamped list it was at odds with myself. Go heavy on the defense or heavy on the attack. I ended up with going heavy on the attack, and leaving two small units and the flame thrower defending the camp. 

The game went right down to the wire with my large 15 man squad doing the business on the attacking flank and my flame throwing causing Jason to dilly dally on attacking my camp, which gave just enough time to take out his camp before his Gurkha slaughter what little defense I had. It was a fantastic game, with about average dice rolling on both sides. Although Jason's 25 pounder couldn't hit the side of a building it was parked beside ... Literary didn't hit a single thing.

The second game was a different story completely, Kevin bought out French conscripts so it was my 11 squads vs 18 French. Which turned into 8 vs 18 very quickly. A dumb mistake by me saw my flame thrower taken out very early on, then charging my 15 man squad out after a vehicle... Only to find out its a recon vehicle and it runs away... Oh bugger... Dread men standing in the open... Lots of artillery rolling lots of high dice.... Splat. Nothing I did was right, even my dice starting laughing at me.  I did get to chase lots of the French conscripts around as the fled from me crazy Japs. I was left wth 4 men on the table at the end of turn 5. Well played by Kevin, and some dumb mistakes by me, but I did learn, I'm always going to be checking the vehicles for the recon rules before charging them.






A great day of gaming, really enjoying Bolt Action and looking forward to some more jap craziness. 


06 July 2014

Banzai

Bonsai .... No... Banzai ..... Yes we rolled out a couple more games of Bolt Action yesterday. This time Will had got his Germans put together and he squared off against my Japs in his first game. Mark gave him a helping hand as I charged in and sent the Germans packing in the first game. Mainly due to it being Will's first game and that fact I had some idea of how to use my Japanese. We got several rules wrong and learnt them pretty quickly. My adjusted army list from last week worked quite well, but I'll need to tweak it a bit further, and I defenatly need to mark up my bases to help separate the squads.

 The kamazai suiside guys with the lunge mines worked well for me in the first game, destroying Will's tank, but as inexperience troops they are a little fradgile ... Go figure ... How does one become a veteran suiside dude? 

Second game Will was getting the hang of things and made me work hard to try and take the objects of the mission. Unfortunately we ran out of time, as I had to depart and go try and save the fence at home... Good old winter weather taking it toll. 

On the painting side of things I'm well into my Pike and Shotte cavalry now, having put together 40 foot and 24 horse for the cavelry horses. 


01 July 2014

Pike & Shotte

After finishing up my Japanese for Bolt Action and still being on the painting buzz, i've jumped games for a change ... LOL .. And started working on my Pike and Shotte models from Warlord games. Having enjoyed painting the Japs from Warlord,  I decided to leave all those Russian and there plain greens and go with painting something a bit more colourful. Pike & Shotte fits that bill nicely.

No idea how I'm going to speed paint these guys, so I started with the horses. At least I have a pretty good idea how to paint up the horses fast.