Happy Thanksgiving

So a Happy Thanksgiving to my friends, family and followers!

I hope the upcoming season is a safe one, with a chance to say thanks for the good things in your life, and hope to conquer the bad. Enjoy the time, the pause, the crisp fall evenings, and a great weekend of football.

All the best,

Lead Addict

28mm Samurai...reprise

I gotta break this stuff out again. It's been since 09. I have a this great set up and all the painted figs. I may have posted these a long time ago but ran across them in a folder the other day.

I have asked for the Osprey Ronin rules for xmas so maybe that gives me a chance to break it out. I have a bunch of painted units, but they are painted in my early stages(not great). Those are Old Glory mostly and a few L5R figs. I have all my classic Foundry and GW Oriental Heroes mounted on singles so maybe its time to dip and strip them and repaint them up to current standards. And I have a bunch of unpainted stuff of course. Including my pride and joy, Oriental Heroes Nippon Rocket Launchers.

Meanwhile here's some eye candy that makes me want to return to gaming on the Misty Isle. Terrain is scratchbuilt by me except the mountains, Torii gate and bridge, and rice paddys are by the Baron. :

Inspired? Maybe...Mayhem

My work load and coaching schedules really wreaked havoc on my interest in gaming this fall. And once you are out of it for a while, at least for me, it takes a bit to get back in. But I found myself with a few hours on sunday after the Chiefs game (I hate you crybaby Phillip Rivers), so I cleaned up the Workshop of Doom, it was an absolute mess, and thought about what to work on.

I have talked about scraping, gluing to paint sticks and priming figs as prep for when the weather turns. I am absolutely surrounded by primed and ready figs. So of course, I started a newish project.

28mm High Elves.

I had thought I would simply sell my GW 28mm stuff since I was doing big battles with Commands and Colors, and Hail Caesar! Fantasy in 15mm. Wasn't going to do anything but individually mounted warbands (30-40 figs) in 28mm. But then I played Mayhem at the Baron's Chateau and thought that I could paint about 60 figs and have a nice sized contingent for the game. Its a pretty fun game. Get it at Wargame Vault. A base is a unit. We use 60mm stands. That's up to 8 figs a stand depending on the size of the figs.

So I broke out that way to big and old High Elf army sitting in boxes and still shrink wrapped in many cases, and voila! I have on paint sticks 2 Units of Spear, 2 Units of Bow, 3 Units of Bolt Throwers, 1 Unit of Halberds, 1 Unit of Axes, 1 Unit of Great Swords, 1 Unit of Light Bow, 2 Units of Cav, 1 Dragon, General Stand, 1 Hero, 1 Magic User. That's a Total of 72 figs and its a complete faction.

GW house painted Phoenix Guard. Some of my favorite figs and a great paint job.

When we played the other night we had 6-7 units and a General stand. The above gives me 14 units and a General, Hero and Mage. So lots of options. And can also Double as 2 factions.

Not mine either, but very nice and clean. I like them.

I hope to get the basic units done over thanksgiving break. We shall see. My brother and sister in-law are coming for thanksgiving so, probably a lot of drinking and less painting.

Cavern Tiles - New Tiles

Since receiving the Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles last month, I have been looking in the Workshop of Doom for some previous Hirst Arts tile work I did last year. Well I found it and got kinda hooked again. I spent an evening pouring tiles so I could make a couple more large rooms and corridors.

The tiles are from the cavern molds series. These are perfectly sized for fitting with the Dwarven Forge tiles. So now I can have a regular dungeon, and a cavern labyrinth. Good for me.

Here's where I am at with the caverns:

Cavern Room or entry - 28mm fig for scale

Open 6x6 Tile

2nd Cavern Room, 2 Connecting Corridors

Cavern Walls - Loose so they can modify rooms and big tiles

Dungeon Accessories - Ruined columns, chests, boxes, sacks, barrels, fonts, and piles.

Here's a few things on the work bench:

Demonworld giant spider, Micropanzer Walkers, and a few Bones

And a pile of Bones. I am finding that the Bones need a lot of Tacky Glue on a stick to stay on for painting. Big pile of Orcs, Golems and a few monsters.

We are playtesting different takes on wargaming fantasy dungeon bashing, especially when you have 6-8 people playing. And we want to be able to play heroes and denizens.

Happy Halloween

Here's some pics of decay:

Gruntz 15mm...for Fantasy?

So the Baron and I have been musing of late about fantasy games. He picked up the MAyhem rules. I hope to play them soon. They have gotten good reviews. But he also mentioned something I had thought about before. Playing Fantasy warband skirmish with Gruntz - The 15mm Sci Fi game. What?

Not too far fetched really. From what the Propaganda Architect tells us, Gruntz is just a nicely modded version of Warmachine/Hordes. Really? Ok. Well then I am pretty sure its doable then.

You have a Shoot or Assault stats, plus Guard(to be hit = Agility) and Soak (to be wounded = armor).

thats pretty simple.

Roll 2d6 plus shoot to shoot your bows. Beat the targets Guard Skill. Then add weapon dmg to a 2d6 roll to beat the Soak(armor). Simple.

Now you could make numerous modifications to that basic formula and still maintain simplicity. Some things I always consider when we are doing Medieval/Fantasy stuff is:

Is the Target Mounted or dismounted?
Is the Attack missle fire or hand to hand?
Does the weapon have a special purpose for defeating armor?

The list can go on and on. The best thing would be to just give bonuses to the roll based on circumstance. i.e. Mounted, armored knights, being shot at by bodkin armed archers would get a +1 for shooting at mounted - (vs. guard stat), and +1 for bodkins - (vs. soak stat).

And the great thing about the rules is the builders for Units, Specialists, Mechs and Monsters can easily be used for fantasy opponents.

Its certainly worth a try in this gigantic Dwarven Forge Dungeon.

Come on Baby Light My Fire!

So the football teams' campaign has ended. Ground was lost. Time to head to winter quarters. We had a rough season. But huge strides were made by all. It was fun coaching those kids. And just like an athlete needs to work in the offseason to be a better player, I need to work to be a better coach. But, I enjoyed the ride. I may take the team and be head coach next year. We'll see.

I am working on a large downtown redevelopment master plan at work and it is taking all of my time and late nights. That ends in at the end of November. So, soon enough I will have time to work on getting some figs done. But the age old question looms...

WHAT WILL I DO?

Since I have been out of doing anything for a while, the muse has left me. I am ambivilent to painting anything right now. A real case of the blahs. Happens every year. What I need is a spark, and then a flame and then a fire to get me going. Just not sure what that is right now.

Things I am interested in:

Agis' new Planetfall (coming soon I hope) rules really lead me to painting 28mm Sci Fi Guys again. I have 3-4 forces painted. I have about 6 more I could do.

Spartans new 10mm Armored forces Sci Fi game Planetfall looks great. Love the figs. But that would be a brand new adventure. I need that like a hole in my head.

Yes I know they are both named Planetfall. I assume Agis will change his.

My Dwarven Forge prepainted dungeon tiles arrived last week. I have many monsters to paint. I have a good couple of dozen adventurers done.

And I love Paul Hicks Portuguese Nappies that Brigade has. I think I will be getting those for sure.

And as fall is covering us in her cold decaying embrace, my thoughts go to the apocalypse.

I think I feel the Winter 13/14 list coming on:

Basing for 28mm Napoleonics
-Spanish
-British

Napoleonic Portuguese - 4 Units

Fantasy 15mm - Undead

Post Apoc - Terrain
-3 buildings
-Giant Monsters
-Town Square

28mm Sci Fi
-Tau
-Orcs
-Pig Iron Kolony and Rebels

Fantasy 28mm