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@Camkierhi: Thanks very much. It was a class game. The fact that virago's daughters were playing along with great enthusiasm added to the whole thing.

Heyhey, peeps. Happy fourth advent Sunday. Here's some finished Dwarfs:




















...and that's it! Hope you like them. I'll see if I manage to get any army shots with some terrain done within the next few days. Either way, happy holidays!

Right guys, it's time!

Two-part recap of 2018 done, review of Northumbrian Tinsoldier minis in the can as well. Here's a nice photo (at least I think so):



Hope you like them as well!

Heyhey, I've got days off now. For some reason making or painting terrain has become my "i got time off and can't be bothered to do anything else" thing.

I got myself the Kill Team rulebook for christmas because virago said the rules were fun. Cpt.Shandy said he'd be interested in playing some Sci-fi skirmish game (not necessarily Kill Team) AND I got my sister's BF a squad of Blood Angels for christmas, so he may want to play Kill Team or other sci-fi squad-level things at some point in the future as well. So I painted some contemporary/sci-fi scatter terrain:



Ork for scale. :p Hope you like them!

So much beautiful work.

Somehow, I doubt the Ork is going to use the portable loo...

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much!

@Dysartes: I bet. He's just looking for a place to hide, because in the picture you can't see the 20 other guys who do their business behind the wood stacks and pipes to avoid the suspicious portable loos.


Well, I'm back. Hope you had a good start into 2019!

I'm currently working on some pirates for Pirates of the Dread Sea by Dead Earth Games. Here's a WIP of some Dwarfs:



These are from last year's Kickstarter. As far as I know the figures will be sent out to backers within the next few weeks.
Hope you like them so far!

Dwarf pirates , wonder if they scale well with the old GW pirates long drong.

@Theophony: Yeah, not well I'm afraid. These are from a pretty huge range. The pirates here measure 24-28mm foot to eye. They're said to go OK with GW's new dwarfs if that helps.


Another WIP shot:


Slowly slogging through these figures. But tonight I'm allowed to go out and play a game. That'll be fun.

Nice fish, Siggy - and the Dwarves aren't bad, either

@Dysartes: Yup, 'Make'em come for the fish and make'em stay for the Dwarves" my dad used to say. Once. He was kinda drunk.

Right, last night I had my first game of 2019!

Following the trend of last year it was another game of Sharp Practice with Cpt.Shandy's great 15mm ACW collection.

We used an Ambush scenario based on suggestions from Wargames Illustrated #365:



Ambushes are one of the very basics of warfare on a tactial level, but a bit problematic to depict on the tabletop. The worst case being that a player knows that at turn 3 exactly from the middle of the long table edge over there [x] units of type [y] will show up and attack me. This is quite contrary to every single principle of an ambush. The suggestions from the WI magazine come in very handy and are pretty cleverly thought out.

Basically the idea is that in this scenario neither of the players know WHO gets ambushed. Our forces start with the mission to secure and hold a crossroads in the middle of a small hamlet of buildings. For this each of us has 3 groups of line infantry and a group of Native American troops as irregular skirmishers.

At a certain point in time the additional forces lying in ambush spring into action. On whose side they fight will only be decided at this point, so until the very moment the ambush springs you don't know if you're the one getting ambushed of it it's the other guy. Either way, at this point the objective of the ambushed side changes to "get your troops off the table as safely and quickly as possible". OR of course try to be a hero and still fulfill the original mission. Which of course is tough.

Cpt.Shandy, my opponent in this game, has played such a scenario before. Here's his battle report: https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/ambush-a-sharp-practice-aar/


Another thing to me of course was the premier of indian troops in a game of Sharp Practice:


For more information on how the models were converted and about the role of native american troops in the Civil War, have a look at Cpt.Shandy's excellent article here: https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/native-americans-in-the-acw/


The Game

This is what the game looks like:


Once more I took the role of the Confederate commander, Cpt.Shandy played the Yankee troops. In the beginning each side has a Level 3 Leader, 3 groups of infantry and a group of Cherokee / Union Indian Brigade (classed as irregular skirmishers), each with a Level 1 leader. My infantry had the Rebel Yell special characteristic. I think the Union troops had the usual Stubborn characteristic. My Cherokee got Prominent Leader, Buck&Ball, Aggressive and something else. The Union Indian Brigade were less aggresssive and went out without a Prominent Leader. Instead they go rifled muskets whereas my native americans only had smoothbore muskets.

Controlling the objective provides a bonus to Force Morale, to give a bit of an incentive to players to take the objective.

I start the game by leading my infantry and skirmishers onto the table, line infantry in open column.




My opponent follows suit, albeit his troops seem to be able to advance much, much faster. His Indian Brigade group advances across a field and immediately opens fire at my skirmishers.



An overview of what happens during the first few turns:

The Yankee column svivels to the right and marches around the built up area. Union skirmishers take cover behind a fence and keep firing at my approaching force. Seeing as how the chaps in blue advances very quickly and my dudes being very slow thus far I have to act defensively. The plan is to have my commander take two groups, form line in front of the Union skirmishers and blast them to hell. Then I hop over the fence and take the crossroads while the Union line troops are being harassed and delayed by my own skirmishers and a single group of infantry. Once the crossroads is secure, the commander can rush over to help with that. IF I was to be ambushed I can still retreat along the road I came onto the table relatively unharmed, seeing as to my left there'd be forests and to my right LOS-blocking, high-standing crops. Perfect plan, what could go wrong?



Unfortunately my guys refuse to advance swiftly. At all. Appearantly they heard rumours of beastly Natives sitting behind every rock.
So my guys act all 'sticky' and time passes. Possibly sitting back is even to my advantage, as groups of figures appear on the hill across the table.



Two more groups of Native Americans in blue jackets enter the table, carrying all-new rifled muskets. Oh my.



In the photo above you can see what happens next: I proceed with my plan on the right flank. Present, Fire, Bang!, the Union skirmishers across the field take a fair amount of damage.

On my left I send my infantry into the cornfield. In the last game I've had good exeriences with single groups of infantry using the cover of cornfields to delay larger formations.

My Cherokee moved to the right to fill the gap in the centre. Their Prominent Leader, using dramatic gestures to encounrage his men, steps into Something Horrible. This effectively reduces his status (from 1 to 0), because his best mokassins are all messed up and his men are well amused. The leader would have to find a source of water to wash off the Horrifying Substance, otherwise it would be very, very hard to get the Cherokee to do anything at all. He considers the usual options: Church, stoup - impossible; the enemy's swarming all over the church. Trough in the pig pen - uuuuurgh. Not if this can't be avoided at all. Also, in direct line of fire of the slight decimated Union skirmishers. Then he gazes to his left and the problem is solved:



Through a coincidence only possible in Sharp Practice the whole affair took place right in front of a shoe store! The Cherokee decide to do a shopping tour.

At my left other remarkable things happen: The Union line troops are mighty unimpressed by the random shots my guys take at their column. They form up in close column (or rather attack column), lower bayonets and charge my line infantry!



My guys get beat up bad and retreat.

In the mean time the Cherokee shop for shoes and hats. Here and there one of them takes a shot at the union column, but due to lack of volume of fire the results are minimal.

At this point I decide to retire off the table. My officer has his line on the right turn around and - true to their form - they sloooooooooooowly start making their way back down the road. While doing so the rampaging Union infantry had made it through the cornfield to meet my infantry. During the whole chaos my officer accidently gets pitchforked into a ditch by the road. Lateron some men would claim (outside earshot) that he had dove there to take cover.

In this second bayonet charge carried out by the Union within a short timeframe they again prevail with minimal casualties. my infantry group gets routed off the table. My commander, once he looks up from his ditch screams at the remaining group of infantry to leg it and follows suit.

Now all I have left on the table is the Cherokee still sitting in the shoe store, but they realize that it's time to take off too. Again, very slowly. In war it is said that complicated things become very simple, but the simple things become very complicated. Like crossing a road in new, and not yet broken in pumps.

My stalking skirmishers get fired at from both sides (first time the union infantry fire this game, before that they've only used their bayonets), and THEN they get charged by Union Native troops and break. Bad, bad things.



To make their victory total the remaining union troops take out my deployment point and caputure the crossroads.


It's a Victory for the Union!




Debriefing

Another fun game. The ambush scenario is very, very interesting. We changed it a little, so it makes more sense (like making the ambushing force a fair bit larger). Of course adding another Sergeant (lvl1 leader) to each side would have made things easier. But you have to make do with what the scenario provides. Irregular skirmishers are fun to use. The rules never cease to provide a fun game with memorable moments and a good narrative. The shoe store I think made its debut in this game and already became somewhat of an MVP.

The subtle conversion work done by Cpt.Shandy on the native american troops are something behold; i strongly suggest looking at his article on his blog (link above). As always, fun was had and a good start into the gaming year 2019!

Great battle report Sigur! Loved it!

I'm not familiar with the rules you were using, Siggy - what was causing your troops to impersonate comatose snails when it came to movement?

@Gitsplitta: Glad you liked it!

@Dysartes: Here's a review of the Sharp Practice rules I wrote: http://skirmishwargaming.com/sharp-practice-rules-introduction-review/, and there are some youtube videos out there as well if that's your thing. Bascially what kept my troops from moving as fast as I wanted and much slower than my opponent's was bad luck. A combination of being a bit unlucky with activations (SP uses a card activation system which doesn't guarantee that all of your dudes may move/act each turn), and movement is rolled for with dice. If a unit is activated they basically have 2 actions. Each action they may spend on rolling 1d6 and move this distance in inches (they also may roll a third d6, but take some morale damage due to disorder and such). Almost all of these rolls I just didn't do well on. It happens. The game's whole focus is modelling command&control (and the problems thereof) and battlefield friction. So things can always go a bit wrong, and in this game quite a few things went wrong.

Right, I'm back.

They're still WIP at this point. The Dwarves are almost done now, the Elf is done, the Mermaids require a bit more work.



There's an Orc as well; I'll paint him once everything else is finished.

Hope you like the figures so far! KS pledges will be shipped over the next weeks, the figures will be available through DEG's online store in about 2 weeks. And there's another KS in the pipeline for more human pirates and more. I think that'll start in February.

Sigur,

Another great Civil War battle report.

Cheers,

CB

Very piratey...

@Captain Brown: Thanks, Sir! For some reason ACW (one of the periods I thought of as not interesting to me) is all I play these days.

@Gitsplitta: That was the general goal.


Hi peeps. Sorry, just another WIP shot, but tarted up to the max:



It's another Eisenhorn! This time I was asked to make the shoulder armour blue-ish grey instead of the regular turquoise. Hope you like him so far!

Indeed I do! Nice work as usual. I think that's a good color choice for the shoulders actually.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Very piratey...

Yes, they 'arr!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, much appreciated! The different colour on the shoulder armour instantly made him look like a "dark" colour variant on the same dude. Like when in Street Fighter you choose a different skin.

@Dysartes: Oh no you didn't.


Right peeps, the past days I've been preparing a whole lot of Infinity figures and finished Eisenhorn and the Mermaids. Oh, and I painted some Gloomhaven minis. No proper picture updates yet, but I did play things last night.



We decided to give Kill Team a go. So I wrote up a list, got out some minis and was off.




Death Skull Kommandos Nob (Power Klaw), 7 Death Skull Kommandos, 3 Gretchins, 1 Death Skull Loota




Virago played Blood Angels of course, and had chosen a Scouts Kill Team he'd painted recently.



Sergeant (Chainsword, Bolt Pistol), 2 Scouts with Shotguns, 2 Scouts with Boltguns, 2 Scouts with Bolt Pistol/Close Combat Weapons, 1 Scout with Sniper Rifle, 1 Scout with heavy Bolter



The scenario was "Cut Supply Lines", so my Kommandos were to get in there and capture or destroy three supply stashes. The Space Marines were to stop them from doing so.



In reality it looked like this:

(please excuse the horrible photos)





The Heavy Bolter scot and sniper took position on top of a building.


Here's the first and last picture of my beautiful Loota. He got shot by the sniper on turn #1:


Bascially I had my Orks run across the street while the Space Marines were firing at them:


At some point I made it into close combat, but the dice failed me:


In the end (at the point at which my whole Kill Team was killed or shaken) I had managed to blow up two out of three supply stashes. The Space Marines won with a score of 4-1.



Yupp, Kill Team. It's quick. Of course it doesn't look as impressive as 40k dows, but squad-level skirmishy things on small boards never look as impressive as ...larger skirmish things or battles. But it's fast.

These gimmicky strategy cards are pretty important to get, I'm afraid. The various abilities are spread across two to six different places in the rulebook, so I suggest either getting those or making them yourself and sleeving them. Makes life much easier and the game playable.

As a boiled down version of 40k these rules work well. So if you like playing 40k, but don't enjoy playing 40k Kill Team is your rules set of choice. Our game in particular was good fun. Pretty figures (very well fitting for Kill Teams), pretty terrain. I should familiarize myself with the rules a bit more and get some cards done.But yeah, good times. Thanks to virago for yet another nice game.


...and because Kill Team is so fast I was given a go at another condensed GW game:



Virago is a huge fan of BloodBowl and thus went on a journey to get this game. It's a bit of a weird release, because BlitzBowl is part of GW's thrust to get back into toy stores and the high street stores in general. Which is an incredibly clever and applaudable move, because that's where GW belong. If it wasn't for kids spotting the likes of Space Hulk, Space Crusade, HeroQuest, Battle Masters, or BloowBowl many of us wouldn't be here in wargaming and neither would be GW.


My Blood Bowl Team

Problem is that nowadays toy stores are in a problematic situation, so you have to find BlitzBowl in the first place. Apart from that it seems to really pay off to compare prices between possible sources. In the end virago found the game at Gamestop of all places. Yup, seems like going there is an option now, but only for boardgames. It's a complicated world we live in.

Judging from this release policy I also misjudged BlitzBowl. I had expected it to be a fun little board/card game, kinda like BB Team Manager. Couldn't be further from the truth. It bascially is half a Bloodbowl. Or Dungeonbowl with only one room and a fraction of the rules (and craziness). Apart from that it's same as always: Playing field, spaces, figures (albeit smaller teams with a set number and kinds of players).

Coincidently I had my BB team with me that night, the Orkakringer Schnittaz. They're an incredibly unsuccessful team.


So we did the classic Orcs vs. Humans match-up:


Each side has 3 Linemen, 1 Blitzer, 1 Thrower and a Catcher in case of the human team. The Orcs get a Black Orc instead of the catcher.

The twist to the game is the cards lying next to the board, which get replaced each turn. Touchdowns will get you 3 victory points, but the cards will also get you these. The cards lying out basically work a bit like achievements in video games. They'll ask players to do a successful pass, tackle down an opposing player, get two players into the endzone and so on. If a player manages to do what one of the cards lying out ask for they may take this card and get victory points. On top of that each of the cards has a little bonus on the backside and if you get one you can play it for that bonus later on. So that's another incentive to get these cards.

If the card deck is all played out or if one of the sides is more than 10 points ahead of the other the game ends.

The rules themselves are a bit different to regular Blood Bowl. Each player's turn encompasses 3 actions they may spread out across models or only use them on one model. This of course, along with the fact that the field is pretty small, makes touch-down potentially happen very often, but this won't be enough to win the game at all. It's all about incorporating these cards as well. Still feels like BloodBowl, just in a condensed form. Meaning I got smashed. In(to) a condensed form. :p

But it's a fun little game. I think it's very suited for not only when time's tight, but also for things such as taking the game with you on holidays.

Righty, yesterday the last two figures of the first batch of Pirates of the Dread Sea minis finally arrived. To help get over time time it would take me to get these done I threw together some improvised terrain for some scenic shots of the existing minis:



Problem is that I own zero maritime terrain, apart from that little rowing boat. So I had to improvise. First I laid out my Dreadfleet sea blanket and a land mat, then I cobbled together a simple landing stage and looked for some other bits and pieces to have in the scene.



Of course the shoreline is always a tricky thing to depict on a tabletop unless you have specific scenic item for that. So I boldly went with slightly exaggerated ocean spray. Quick, easy, improvised. And the minis are meant to be the focus of things anyway.




An Elven pirate, mesmerised by mermaids.


Mesmerized-face close-up.










Right, I hope you like the minis! Currently working on getting the last two done swiftly.

Those old skool Scouts are epic, haha

That's a cool piratey diorama there, too!

Top stuff as always, Siggy

Really nice pics of the pirates, Siggy.

@Cosmic: Yeah, they're pretty cool. Virago took care to make them look nice.

@Dysartes: Cheers!


Right, now for the last two dudes of this batch - a sort of prototype Dwarf, and the Orc:







Also, here's special edition Esters for Guild Ball:



As always, excellent quality from Steamforged, and they really have fun with those special edition figures. Good stuff.


Hope you like the minis!

I think the bar maid used to be a guy...

@Gitsplitta: What do you mean "used to be"?


Heyhey, I'm currently working on getting a TON of tiny little projects off the work schedule, which is incredibly time consuming in relation to actual outcomes, so bear with me if updates come a bit less swiftly these weeks. The past 10 days I've been working on Gloomhaven minis, Freebooter's Fate, Infinity and By Fire and Sword minis.

But currently I'm working on something else entirely - figures for the Grenadier Guards of the Guard Camel Regiment from 1885!



...with an entirely unfitting backdrop. But my photo table is currently made up like that and this is just a WIP shot.

28mm Perry miniatures. Until I started working on these I knew NOTHING about the Mahdist Uprising. Now I know a tiny little bit, and quite a bit about Grenadier Guards of the Guard Camel Regiment's uniforms. 8 camel-mounted dudes (the flag bearer preferred to stay back on the painting desk), and 4 more camels at the rest. In the future I'll also add a bunch of dismounted dudes.

Hope you like them so far!

Ah, the joy of camelry - I think I've got some Roman ones kicking around somewhere.

It does occur to me that the set needs a Guardsman dealing with having been spat at by one of the resting camels, though

Sigur,

Grenadier Guards of the Guard Camel Regiment.

Really liked your terrain pieces and the Kill Team battle report.

Cheers,

CB

Grenadiers look awesome.