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Terriffic looking group their Sigur. OH, and happy birthday!

@Dr H: Thanks very much!

@GiraffeX: Hope to be able to deliver with those pictures soon!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers and thank you.

So yesterday I spent all day shopping, preparing and - indeed - baking scones. :p




On Thursday I took the night off to play with toy soldiers. I played Sharp Practice! W00t! Sharp Practice is Too Fat Lardies' popular Napoleonic skirmish game. One might say that it's their flagship game, at least it feels like that to me.

As a very quick run-down, here's how it works (if you're familiar with any Lardies games you'll feel right at home with this one as well): This game is about command and control as depicted by leaders (a.k.a. Big Men), basically a series of bits of crisis management as our host and umpire Frank Shandy (not his real name. The real name's Butch Steele.) put it so very well. Activation is based on a deck of cards and Big Men. There's one card in the deck for each Big Man, one 'Tiffin' card that ends the turn (the turn's over, the deck gets reshuffled and activation starts anew), one or two Random Event cards (a thing, usually bad, happens to the next Big Man drawn), Bonus Cards (the player controlling the next Big Man drawn gets a bonus card he can use at any point, giving a little bonus or counters a bad event) and if you want a few more which aren't that essential.



So if one of your Big Men's card gets drawn you can use him to activate his troops (or the troops of a lower-ranking Big Man), change their formation, rally his troops to reduce Shock on them, move around on his own or do more swanky stuff depending on the scenario, but usually he'll activate troops and, increasingly so as the game proceeds, is busy keeping his troops in order. Each Big Man has a rank of between 1 and 4. This doesn't just indicate their rank in the chain of command (in this game my Level IV Big Man was a Major with 4 command points, a Level I Big Man being a Sergeant with 1 command point). All these above actions a Big Man carries out (activate troops, change formation, move around, rally) costs them command points.

If a formation of men is activated they may carry out two actions which usually are: fire, reload or move 1d6 inches. So each time a group is activated they may do stuff like fire and reload (this being muskets reloading takes quite a while and has to be done each time after a unit had fired their muskets) or move and fire, move 2d6 inches or other combinations of the actions above. Infantry fire is pretty straightforward: Two range bands (and a third for Baker rifles), you roll 1d6 for each model firing plus bonus die for troops quality and command ability of the officer ordering the fire, targets within the first range band are hit on a 5+, target within the second range band on a 6+ (groups firing in Line formation get a bonus on their to-hit rolls, but may only fire in a straight corridor). Each hit is rolled for on an Effect table resulting either in a kill or points of Shock. The Shock mechanic combines morale, disorder and fatigue. Points of shock reduce a unit's ability to move, hampers their fire and if shock points exceed the number of models in the group they start retreating.

So one Big Man after another is activated via card draw. This of course means that maybe your opponent gets to activate all his dudes before you can even do a thing that turn. On top of that, there's the Tiffin card which ends the turn (often prematurely, very often met with the gnashing of teeth). So it can happen that you get to activate all your troops this turn and then it's over via Tiffin card. This depicts your force's tactical momentum and that they just were able to seize the moment while the enemy is somewhat hampered/surprised or otherwise occupied. This of course isn't to the liking of the kind of players who like to have 100% control over their troops and like to be assured that they will get to move each of their units once per turn. This is nice in a game like chess or Kings of War, but to me this makes little sense in a wargame.


Friction!

What you need to play Sharp Practice is two or more players, an umpire (not 100% required, but an umpire makes things oh so much easier), a bunch of six-sided dice and a tape measure. Sharp Practice works best on a big table (with 30 to 100 miniatures a side). There is no points system, the whole game is built on scenarios.

Now for the game we had on Thursday. It was set during the time of the Haitian Revolution. French colony, slave uprising (inspired in part by the French Revolution), French troops are hopelessly outnumbered, free a few slaves themselves to help them (European troops NOT dealing well with the enviroment, huge losses due to sickness), also sent a bunch of additional troops (amongst them Polish troops who, looking at the situation of the rebels, realize that they are much closer to their own mindset than the French troops and many of the Polish defected to the rebels' side), British send troops to support the rebels but with the ultimate goal to take the colony for themselves. The recently independent United States of America don't like the idea of the British sphere of influence expanding in the carribean again, support the French cause more or less covertly.



A very interesting and rarely done setting for Napoleonic conflicts. We played with 15mm figures (mostly Minifigs, some Peter Pig and others) on a ca. 80cm by 120cm table. Distances used were 1inch = 2cm (so effectively reducing the ranges a little due to 15mm figures and the smaller table. Distances looked entirely credible this way.)

Our scenario played depicts a group of US sailors landing at the beach with a stash of weapons, French and Haitian troops escort a cart to pick up the goods and get it off the table along the road on their table edge. British troops were to stop them from doing just that. Frank Shandy umpired (and explained the rules to us), virago played the French while I had the honour to play the British side.



I had three Big Men on my side. Unfortunately I forgot their names. One Major (level IV, I think his nickname was 'Tipsy'), one Lieutenant (level III) and one Sergeant (level I). I put the Major with the two groups of regulars, and the Sergeant and Lieutenant with the black troops to have a keen eye on them. The French had one level III big man, a Lady (level II), a leader for the Maroon troops (level III I think) and another Big Man to lead the US sailors.

The British free slaves troops have a special rule to help them move through difficult terrain more easily, the French Maroons an improved version of that and are Aggressive troops (bonus dice in mêlée). The French and British regular troops are Good quality and the British troops, ravaged by disease and the climate, get a disadvantage in mêlée.

The French troops, as full of élan as ever, drove their cart down the road, dedicated to getting this deal over as quickly as possible. As an early on random event one of the Maroon groups' ammo had gone bad (good reason to pick up new from the Americans) and they would have to rely on big, nasty hatchets and machetes for the rest of the game.




My own British troops almost completely refused to move altogether. Even the skirmishers were only very slow to get out of the jungle.




The black troops commanded by the British Lieutenant (green jackets) didn't do much ; they probably had to get their training straight first, while the Sergeant's troop of redjacket haiti troops got to activate quite often, but only really managed to turn themselves into a bit of a laughingstock, getting tangled up in the jungle, then losing their nerve and unloading their muskets at imaginary enemies (due to random event Poor Fire Discipline).

In the meantime the French advanced down the road and set up the regulars to the left of the small hill to keep my British troops from interfering.



The British regulars had advanced at this point and had formed line to unload deadly volley fire at the French. Much to my discomfort though the hugely enthusiastic French black troops had run up to their flank and, knowing about the mêlée weakness of my troops) charged their flank without even considering firing first. A dogged combat ensued, lasting several rounds, grinding away at both sides. After a lot of back and forth the French auxiliaries fled, but had achieved their goal of breaking up the British firing line and battered one of the British groups of regulars quite badly.



Unfortunately at this point the camera crapped out. I had left my cam at home too. Here's what happened: The green jackets on the British auxiliary troops worked their magic and in two salvos they did huge amounts of damage to French troops. Spurred on by this the rest of the British took up steam as well. In short: I started rolling really well. This allowed my guys to kick the French off the hill, running after the cart which had picked up the supplies and made for the table edge. The French troops retreating along with it. My guys, despite valiant efforts, didn't manage to stop the shady deal.



So yeah, I finally got to play Sharp Practice. Had the rulebook for quite a while, finally played it now. And it was fun. Very playable and as with all Lardies games referring to the rulebook is barely required after you got the basic rules down. Of course it helped that we had an umpire who is extremely familiar with the rules (Sharp Practice is his favourite set of rules). This was great, especially as the rulebook is written or laid out in a way that sometimes makes the rules a bit hard to understand.. Especially for modern sensibilities it may be a tough nut to crack, but it's such a brilliant set of rules.

Too Fat Lardies also produced a series of three videos in which the rules are explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhhsFI_CuBo

It surely isn't for everybody, but for me, as with most Lardie things, it hits the mark. Highly recommended and the go-to thing for Napoleonic skirmishing.


Hope you like the report.

Great report Sigur, looked like a lot of fun. Too bad about the camera.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. Yeah, but at least we got the most important pictures.



Okay, by to serious sports. Here are the BloodBowl dudes finished. The whole crew:




....and with a white background:


Slayers:





Sideline personnel:





Fans:





Star Players:




The dude who's going to get those minis for his wedding is a big fan of Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, hence the 12 and the colour scheme. I also converted the model to hold a tiny replica of the Vince Lombardi trophy in his hand rather than the blood bowl cup the model originally comes with (had to replace the hand, sculpted the trophy including the ball).

Hope you like them.

It's been a while since I've done Malifaux minis.




But now I'm back, with a band of Arcanists!



Very interesting things, these plastics. I'll write up a review of those, but first I gotta paint them!

I like Malifaux as well. You are getting lots of interesting minis to paint at the moment.

@GiraffeX: Yeah, it certainly is popular. Interesting minis indeed. And it doesn't stop there!


Guildball Morticians WIP:

Very nice models! I love the way the purple, teal and black come together. That was pulled off very nicely indeed!

wow the Morticians are looking really great, you are making me want to buy models I don't need

Man, both Guildball teams are amazing! Love the Butchers as well as the new Morticians

 Sigur wrote:
Guildball Butchers!



Only lacking the mascot now. Hope you like them.

Nice NMM on the Morticians.

@Wehrkind: Cheers. Yeah, the teal was just a necessity. I hope the customer will be okay with it.

@GiraffeX: Welcome to my world. In the not to distant future I will announce what models I just bought pretty much out of nowhere.

@RTides: Hehe, thanks very much. Glad you like them!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, mate.



...aaaand we're done!


Mortician's Guild:













Butcher's Guild:














What do you think, Sirs?

Very nice indeed Sigur, they were the two guilds I was interested in starting with so its extra nice seeing them painted so well.

The Fisherman guild look nice as well.

@GiraffeX: Cheers. On a German forum I post on there's a guy painting really really cool Fisherman's Guild dudes (http://www.tabletopwelt.de/index.php?/topic/150187-guild-ball-alle-teams/)

Malifaux things:



I'd say they're finished (MAYBE the big elemental dude gets some more shading here and there), but there'll be snow and such on the bases too in the end. Possibly some dead grass.

What do you think, Sirs?

Awwww the kitties are so cute! I want one

Ice monsters look good, but I could go for a bit more shading on the biggun. He looks just a little light and airy now.

Thanks for the link his Fisherman's Guild look really nice.

Malifaux minis are looking nice especially those cats.

Stellar work on the Guildball teams, as Gitsplitta commented the NMM is especially impressive.

Are the Malifaux miniatures for personal use rather than a commission? I really must dig around in my Malifaux collection, and probably buy the Ironsides crew as well.

@Wehrkind: Yeah, right. They're called "Hoarcats" for a reason. (also: look up the older models for them. Very, very funny. )

@GiraffeX: Sure thing, you're welcome. The guy does pretty nice stuff.

@Thraxas of Turai: Thanks very much. Oh yes, that NMM. Bloody heck, I should have charged more for that. The Malifaux stuff is commission stuff. Malifaux is one of those games of which I like some minis (not that much any more for some reasons I will get into when I do the review), but I really don't think I'd like to play with those. To play with minis I want to be able to emphasize with the minis at hand or at least have sympathy for them. I don't see that with Malifaux minis. I think that's just one of those basic things. On the other hand, I like those games which are about, as someone of a different school of thought put it, "just soldiers". I like historical stuff. I can deal with "classic fantasy" stuff too. But the spindly comicbook fantasy stuff some of the newer games use just doesn't do anything for me. I'm also not much into naval, aerial and space ship games. I like things to have faces and be in a way relatable to me. But then again, I'm a big hyprocrite, as shown in the following example:



So my gaming pal drew artist pal into a game they both could agree on - Dystopian Wars. I had painted a fleet for that game before if you remember...



...but never had much of an inclination to get into the game myself, given my reluctance to like cad-designed models too much, given my preference for historical stuff for my own private gaming (because I get my sci-fi/fantasy kicks from doing commission work), my misgivings about steampunk in general and the fact that I have SOOOOOOOO much stuff unpainted and no time to even begin considering doing my own minis in the forseeable future.

So when another friend announced that he has a ton of DW stuff to sell of course I jumped on the occasion. :p Now I own ... let me check...



I now own a Naval Battle Group, a Naval Support Group and a Dreadnought Fortress of the Chinese Federation. They look cute and the rules are said to be good too. No problems there. NO idea when I'll get to do the minis. But I do want that giant robot chinese dragon too. :p

Anybody here got experience with playing Dystopian Wars and could give me some pointers? Today I read half of the rulebook. I'm such a noob, I didn't even know there were cards involved in DW!

Malifaux update:


Sorry for the lack of updates over the past two days or so. I've been painting things, but they're super secret. :/ Gooooooooood, I wish I could paint my own minis. I know, this sounds ridiculous, but especially now with these many tiny projects I seem to get a lot done, but really I don't. In mid-September I'll start doing old-school Napoleonics again which, according to the dreadful plan, will take up all my time if I want to get them done within the prospected time. Until then I have to finish the Malifaux minis, the super-secret ones and a bunch of Space Marines. And Freebooter's Fate minis some time between that too.

I envy your skills and the amount of painting you get to do, but not the amount of painting you have to do :(

Good luck to you sir!

@Wehrkind: Thanks very much. It's all just non-problems really. It's really all these tiny projects, getting them done within a few days, but the workload just doesn't get less, but the smaller projects require more communication and administration and all of that. You know, all the stuff I don't get paid for. But I'll shut up now. I'm very happy where I am, this all is much nicer than I could have ever imagined.

Done!












Here's hopin' y'all like them figures.

They all look really nice, although captain duster there has a lot of very similar color, which is a little dull.

Speaking of whom, what exactly is going on with the cat monster thing on him? Is it choking him? Overly affectionate? I can't quite tell what the model is supposed to be, or which part is the character and what is elaborate terrain

Wow... those are really fantastic paint jobs on excellent and creative figures. Really cool stuff.

 Wehrkind wrote:


Speaking of whom, what exactly is going on with the cat monster thing on him? Is it choking him? Overly affectionate? I can't quite tell what the model is supposed to be, or which part is the character and what is elaborate terrain

The cat thing is the actual mini and the Guild guy is the scenery.

Great painting Sigur, your ice colours on the golem and little dudes is lovely.

@Wehrkind: Thanks. Yeah, the creature attacking that cowboy dude is the actual model. This is a very, very weird model to begin with (I wrote about it in my review which is up and coming): That cowboy is incredibly tall. Much, much taller than any other human. It almost seems like they saw the CAD-design (and I blame this on cad-designs entirely because I can ) and said "that's a really cute scenic piece, but people won't know what the actual model on there is. Maybe if we scale it up just a little...?". And now we still don't know which one the actual model is and are stuck with a gigantic cowboy. That dude looks the way he does due to three reasons: First, I wanted to have him be pretty brown as an homage to the Guild Warband I did in 2011. Purely for egotistical, nostalgic reasons. Second, I wanted him to be pretty plain looking compared to the Wendigo, so I tried to kind of making him blend and blur with the ground or background or whatever. Third, I wanted to keep the Wendigo in line with the colour scheme of the rest of the gang and have him contrast with the warmer, organic colours on captain duster.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much.

@GiraffeX: Cheers, thanks for commenting!


Here are Dystopian Wars Chinese! A Naval Battle Group, a Naval Support Group(?) and a Dreadnought Fortress (I'll leave it up to you to guess which one that is):





I bought all of these second hand (you can see that a few of the cruisers have been painted), so all I did on those so far was put together the flying fortres and the other flying structures and prime them.

I also quickly tried to figure out a colour scheme, just painted straight over black primer, so it looks a bit crap, but it's good for getting an idea. I mean if these were Prussians, Russians or Brits the colour scheme would be much easier to figure out, but with Chinese it's much, much more iffy an issue.

So, any ideas?

I believe I like the one in the lower right the best.

Middle gets my vote!

Middle for sure!

I also like the middle option!

Also, sent you a PM with a separate question from what we were discussing before

Those Malifaux minis are stunning! Which faction are they?