Zulu!

Well after a very crappy couple of weeks (my car's engine died and need replaced) I'm back and I've been painting up a storm

First thing's first is The Hero's of Rourke's Drift set from Warlord Games.  My mum bought these for my dad's birthday and got me to paint them.  I have a set of my own that I bought along with Warlord's Rourke's Drift set a couple of years ago that I've never got around to painting but I had so much fun painting these that I've set myself a challenge.  To finish painting all my Anglo-Zulu war stuff by the end of the year.  For those of you familiar with the film Zulu (I watch it several times each year) you will recognize these four.  Starting on the left we have colour sergeant Bourne (Nigel Green), private Henry Hook (James Booth), Lieutenant John Chard (Stanley Baker) and Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead (Michael Caine).

And back to my dungeon delving usual

some more old school night goblin netter clubbers

some plastic grave guard.  These will serve a dual purpose, wights for warhammer quest and grave guard for my vampire counts army.

and some plague censer bearers.  Again these will serve a dual purpose of being both adventurer fodder and elite (if you can call any Skaven elite) troops in my Skaven army.

I've also taken on a painting commission for my cousin. 

I'm painting all his space hulk genestealers.  Here's the first four.  I think they've turned up quite nicely.

I'm going to get onto the next batch of genestealers so until next time happy wargaming.

Gotham takes shape

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a good festive season.  I certainly did.  Here's my Christmas gaming haul.

Gears of War, Firefy, Star Munchkin, Munchkin Pathfinder, 2 x-wings, and some bull centaurs.

But that's enough of that for now.  Now onto the meat (actually wood) of the article.  I've been building terrain for the Batman miniatures game.  I got myself the Cityscape starter set from Sarissa Precision.  Its a set of 6 HDF buildings.  I ordered 6 of the small ones.

The buildings come in nice neat individual bags.  There aren't any instructions, only a diagram of the completed building.  However they're really self explanatory.  There's 5 different fronts available.  I got one of each and a duplicates of the one above.

A few shots of the bits.

A completed building.  I've built 4 so far.

Deathstroke added for scale.

I didn't glue the floors together with the thought in mind that I could add the upper floors from some of them to make larger and smaller buildings.

These kits are amazing.  They're very robust.  I dropped one and it didn't even shoogle.  The parts fit very snuggly, however unlike other buildings from similar companies these do need to be glued together.  Another plus of these kits is they smell of burnt wood (mmmm).  I would highly rate these to anyone who wants to play in a modern or futuristic urban setting.

Well that's it from me for now.  Until next happy wargaming.

Slade

Yes Slade.  No not the band, Slade Wilson a.k.a Deathstroke.  This guy.

Deathstroke here is from Knight Models Batman the Miniatures Game line.  And I have to say his sculpt is a work of art.  There where some pretty serious mould lines on him but I managed to get rid of those without damaging any of the stunning details on him.  Although I did accidentally snap the hilt off his sword. 

I picked up Deathstroke at my local gaming store, Games Without Borders (shameless plug).  I originally went in for a new paint brush and ended up playing a demo game of Batman.  Its a fantastic little skirmish game.  I'm totally going to start the Joker's crew.

Gaming Club related news.  I killed my warhammer quest party off with a horde on skeletons.  I've converted a whole bunch of the guys over to play x-wing and we're going to get some Deathwatch on the go.  I'm an iron hands techmarine.  I won another game of Munchkin through dirty elven bastardry.  And we finally won a game of Pandemic.   However we've broken up for the festive season and wont reconvene until January the 9th. 

Well that's it from me for now, and if I don't get another post up before Christmas then I shall wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy wargaming.

40k losing its appeal

Ok guys this isn't a rant about the prices of games workshop, even if they are getting ridiculous. This is my thoughts on the game in general. 

I love 40k, I've played it for years and have numerous armies.  But lately you could say that I'm all 40ked out.  Pick up games down my club or organized games against my friends have really lost all appeal to me.  Playing against the same people all the time has become repetitive, facing the same list week after week.  Not only that but its become an arms race.  One guy will get a bad assed new unit, and another guy will get one to counter it, then the first guy gets a new unit to counter that.  Now that gets expensive.  This just encourages power gaming.  Now there's a time in a place for power gaming its called a tournament.  If I want to try a new unit or army for that matter I don't want to be steamrolled off the board because I brought a weaker list.  Not that I have a problem with losing, I just don't like battles to be completely one sided.  The close games are always the more fun.

A lot of the guys from the club are feeling the same way.  We've been diversifying into other games.  Bolt Action and Malifaux are on the rise.  There's a bunch of us wanting to get into Dropzone Commander.  And everyone who has played the X-Wing games I've demoed have really enjoyed and have shown an interest in getting their own squadrons.  Actually there was one guy last night who played two games of X-Wing who then proclaimed that it was quickly becoming his favourite game.  Despite the rise of these other games increasing popularity I don't want to give up on 40k.

So how to make 40k more fun?  Well I reckon the key lies in narrative games.  Throw all the power gaming, all the arms races, all the poor sportsmanship out the window.  Make a narrative scenario with themed forces that's the key to unlocking the full fun potential of 40k.  Last year my cousin and I came up with a scenario called Ork's Drift, which we loosely based on the battle of Rourke's Drift.  The scenario involved my entire space wolves army manning a central fortification and he attacked it with his entire ork army.  He rolled a d6 for each of his units to represent the turn upon which they arrived.  His stompa was due to arrive on turn 10.  His units could arrive from any table edge of our 12' by 5' board.  If an ork unit was destroyed it would come back on the board the following turn.  In order for the orks to win they had to wipe out the entire space wolf force.  For the space wolves to win they had to hold out until the end of turn 15.  I lasted until turn 15.  I had one grey hunter left who was desperately trying to out run a stompa.  He addmitedly got squished.  The game came right down to the wire and had some great moments. 

I challenge any of you reading this to give a narrative game a shot.  They're a lot of fun.  In fact I might post a battle report or two of them in the future.  That's it for me for just now.  I'm off to plan my next narrative game, I've got a dark eldar slave raid in mind.  So until next time, happy wargaming.

Finially painted something

Well I'm back.  Haven't done a whole lot of painting recently, but I think I've rectified that over the past week or so.  On other news I passed my driving test, on my third attempt.  I also ran a Halloween game of Call of Cthulhu at my club, which was a lot of fun and went down really well, so we will be playing that again at some point.  Also on club news a lot of us are getting into Bolt Action.  So expect some pictures of my Germans sometime in the near future.  Now on to the pictures

The fourth proper monster to grace my dungeon, the dreaded cockatrice.  These things are deadly, although a bit delicate.  I think this is the number one contender for killing Pete's priest.  It was quite fun to paint, lots of dry brushing involved.  Behold the chicken-snake of doom... kwaaw!

Well if that fails send in the Deathmaster.  Deathmaster Sniktch.  Don't really have to say anything else, his title is Deeathmaster.  Dead priest... or party on the way.  I'm saving him as a last resort.  I'll also use him in my Skaven army.

More mummies.  That puts me up to six.  

And finally Queen Neferata.  I plan on using her as a homebrew Lamhia vampire character, but I could also use her as a vampire bad guy.  She might also find her way into my Vampire Counts army.

That's it for this installment. So until next time happy wargaming.

I need a hero

Welcome back to the Halls of the Damned.  As the title might imply I've been painting heroes of late.  And they see to all follow the same view point of armour if is for pussies. So without further a do on to the heroes.

First up is the wardancer.  This is an original GW Warhammer Quest wardancer.  I picked him up from ebay surprisingly cheaply.  I have to say I've always liked this miniature and when I think of wardancers my mind automatically goes to this guy, which is quite weird  considering he's not posed in any way to suggest that he dances.  I've done him up in old school would elf colours, green and yellow.

Another old school miniature.  Here is a Warhammer Quest pit fighter.  A very brutal looking chap.  I painted him to be quite spartan, very little bright colours.  He's a fighter, raised in the arena, finery isn't something that he should really concern himself with.  I really enjoyed painting both of these figures.  The next one not so much.

The last of this installments adventurers is an amazon serpent priestess from Games Workshop's Mordheim range.  I believe this miniature, like most of the specialist games miniatures, is now out of production.  I love model, but hated painting her.  I went for a jaguar hide cloak and red feathers (there's a bald parrot out there somewhere).  I think she turned out ok.

Now how about some bad guys?

Here we have the wight brothers... ha ha I'm hilarious.  But seriously they are wights.  The two on the outside are old school gw wights and the one in the middle is a plastic grave guard.  I painted them up to match my vampire counts army and I think they're looking al-wight...

This in old gw night goblin shaman.  Not much to say about him really.  Bizarrely the only greenskins my party have encountered have been snotlings.

Finally we have a tomb king.  A formidable opponent indeed.  I've done his dessicated carcass in a dark grey like real life mummies.  I can't wait for the party to stumble into this guy.

I've got a couple of mummies in a vat of fairy power spray, should get the paint stripped off them in the next couple of days.  I've also got some plague censer bearers that are needing painted.  And I've got a Lahmian vampire on the painting block.  Well that's it from me, until next time happy wargaming.

My dundeon's gone a bit creepy crawly

Good evening and welcome to another Warhammer Quest update.  Since the last update I've been mostly painting gribblies (although I've started a wood elf wardancer, whom you will be seeing hopefully in the next update).  On to the stuff.

SPIDERS!!!! You'll recognize the blue veined one from last time.  These spiders  are from Heresy Miniatures.  They're a bit of a pain in the arse to assemble, but go together well if you take you're time with them.  I painted them all to look fleshy and corrupted, I use the same scheme on my Nurgle daemons and plague marines.  I've painted the veins on each one in different colours to help identify each individual at a glance.  Go my pretties feasty on those interfering adventurers.

Here we have some goblins from Reaper's bones range.  I'm using these as hobgoblins.  I'm not going to lie, I did not enjoy painting them.  I painted them quick and dirty, since they're going to die pretty quickly no-one is  really going to pay them too much attention.  But still I don't think they came out too bad.  Now whats that in the background?

The Giants of Albion.  An nice little... erm big find on ebay.  They need a bit of TLC, but some green stuff and lick of paint and they'll be right as rain... which is a strangely appropriate turn of phrase given they're from Albion.
 And finally

A Dark Emissary.  I painted him ages ago, but he's been sting on my desk for ages so I thought I'd put him to good use as a chaos sorcerer.

Well that's it for today.  In the next installment expect some more heroes.  So until next time happy wargaming.