Kill Team Surprise

So I got a surprise package from the mailman yesterday.

I spent some time assembling the small ruins from the 'C' sprues while the video was uploading.

All the "small" ruins from the box.

There were three of these sprues, allowing you to make all of the above. In the box their are five more sprues of three different types allowing you to build higher ruins with full height walls.

Happy gaming!

Fun with magnets!

I'm becoming more and more fond of converting stuff with magnets. It's partly because I can't make my mind up about the various options available, and with magnets you can swap around parts between games.

I do realise this increases the list or army building time since if I just build stuff to a fixed specification I can't change my force between games that much. On the other hand my games are few and far between so I usually don't remember how my figures are kitted out, this way I can do the army list first and then change the figures to suit.

Ghartastic!

As I've mentioned previously, our little gaming group has gotten into Beyond the Gates of Antares.

Or rather... we bought the rules about a year ago and have been slowly collecting figures... but never played the game. Until now! Assembling a 500 point scout force each we gathered at Mats' cat's house (Mats insists he's only the caretaker and pet slave) on Sunday to try this new malarkey.

Tectorist scouts. They use their scanners to point out targets to the other Ghar.

Ghar are bred for war, riding in giant three-legged battlesuits. Failure means you are relegated to outcast status and have to footslog it without the big suit, but still expected to do your bit and die for the Ghar Empire. As I play horde armies in 40k I didn't want another horde army for Gates of Antares, but only using battlesuits means I get few units and few activations, which limits my tactical flexibility (as if I had any tactics).

And the heavens will deliver our reward!

So Warhammer TV dropped another trailer...



OMG! OMG! OMG!

Horizon Wars and Polyversal stuff

Inspired by pictures in the Horizon Wars rulebook I decided to try out some of the new 6mm companies out there. Well, new since I last played any 6mm S/F game at least.

First I jumped onboard an order my mates Håkan and Mats placed to Vanguard Miniatures, sampling a couple of different ranges they carry. I ordered some vehicles and walkers from the Defeat in Detail range.

Top: Novan Scout buggies: Bottom Cybershadows Warcrabs.

I ordered some acrylic explosions and an MDF landing pad as well, but I don't have any good pictures of them yet.

In Horizon Wars the crabs will be P1 Mechs and the scout buggies will be Light Cavalry and Recon.

Size comparison with an EM-4 Mech

I then also placed a small order from Brigade Models to try out their stuff. I chose units from the Pacific Federation and the South African Confederation factions, because they looked very distinct from eachother. The PacFed uses gravtanks while the SAC uses lots of wheeled vehicles. I also ordered generic powered armour infantry.

PacFed infantry, 24 models, 6 diffrerent poses.

Power Armour infantry, 24 models, four different poses.

PacFed Cougar gravtank, Tanami SPG and Kakadu Rocket Artillery

SAC Wildebeest APC's. The middle has an AA turret and will function as a HQ element.

A closer shot of the Wildebeests.

If you compare the Defeat in Detail miniatures with the Brigade Models stuff, Defeat in Detail has more detailed sculpts. Yet I'm not sure that's a good thing, since it's 6mm after all and I want the models to be quick to paint. Lots of details will take more time. On the other hand, good relief will take washes better so it's a fine line to walk. But if we look at the wheels for example, I thought the Brigade Models APC's looked a bit boring with their smooth tires, but then I realised that at this scale you shouldn't be able to pick out any thread details. The scout cars also has a finely sculpted rear door with hinges and locks and stuff, but they are attached to the sprue right on that door, making it impossible to cut them loose from the sprue without damaging the details on the door.

Size comparisons. The Tamami gravtank is on a 40mm base, while the Warcrab is on a 60mm base!

By coincidence, right after I placed these orders the new Polyversal Kickstarter came live, and one of the battlegroups featured in the Kickstarter game uses models from the PacFed faction, but not any of the ones I ordered. The powered infantry is the same though, but that's ok, I was probably going to order more someday anyway.

One of the battlegroups in the Polyversal Kickstarter. Anything look familiar?

 Furthermore, a couple of freebies exclusive to the kickstarter are small walkers not yet relased from Brigade Models, and a Spaceport terrain piece that will go along nicely with the landing pad I ordered... it's almost as if I'm psychic.

A nice big chunk of resin... excellent. Looks big enough to hide a mech behind too!

I'm glad to say the kickstarter has funded now, so I will be able to slot those models right into my existing collection when they arrive sometime next year. (And if I don't like the game I can use the miniatures for Horizon Wars.)

Go check it out if you haven't done so yet, at the time of writing it's eight days left so plenty of time to throw some money at it. What are you waiting for?

Some thoughts about Horizon Wars

Horizon Wars by Robey Jenkins is the new set of wargames rules from Osprey publishing. This time it's all about big stompy robots and tanks in a not all too distant future -- albeit in 6mm or 1:285 scale. The game is designed to be generic which means you can use all the 6mm S/F stuff you already have, be it Battletech or Epic40k stuff, or maybe even Hammer's Slammers or other figures. [Edit: as someone pointed out you can use 10 or 15mm troops too!] There's a setting and a background included for those of us who need a little bit of inspiration for our games. It's quite funny actually. There's a Youtube video explaining how to play via a short battle report, I'm sure you can find it if you search on Youtube.

The pre-release blurb from Osprey

Before I go into the my thoughts about the game, lets take a detour shall we.

Life... and lots of things...

Hi gang.

First I'd like to apologize for my absence, it's been a long while since I wrote anything. This is because my personal life is going through some changes, and therefore my hobby time has been quite limited. When I have had some spare time I have used it for hobbying and to a some extent gaming, not writing on the blog.  Here, have a kitten as compensation.

Anyhoo, I'm still buying stuff in hope of better times to come. Here's what I have been up to, in no particular order.

Massive MDF Megalomania

A post, three days in a row? Yes it's true, and with even more MDF terrain! This time it's the Sarissa Precision Medium Stanchion Building for Beyond the Gates of Antares from Warlord Games. The building comes on three A4-sized sheets of 2mm thick MDF so is quite sturdy.

Fully half of the first sheet is taken up by the baseplate.

The pieces were cut through so thoroughly that a few pieces fell out of the sheets when I opened the package. At first I was afraid I had lost some parts, but they were all off-cuts from inside windows or door frames and not necessary for the finished building.

Second Sheet. Most of it is taken up by the floor (to the left) and the roof (to the right).

Last sheet. A lot of support struts and all the actual walls.

Two duros and a bothan walk into a bar

I can't be arsed to do a summary of 2015, I suspect I diverged from plan a lot, but the final tally is nevertheless quite impressive, at least by my standards. I painted solely 28mm figures this year, and I focused heavily on WW2. Still, some 40k and a lot of Star Wars models sneaked in there, and I even painted some Gates of Antares figures.

In total I painted seventeen fantasy figures and one monster, 43 WW2 figures, as well as five vehicles, four terrain pieces and two buildings, (I never put the last one up on the blog), and lastly 32 sci/fi figures of various sorts... that's almost a hundred figures. Not bad.

Roll on 2016! I started these figures sometime last year, can't really remember, but they proved a bit more complex to paint than I imagined so I switched to easier figures. But now their time had come.

A couple of rebel saboteurs.

Last Ditch Painting of 2015

...bring on 2016! But first, I had to finish a least some of the figures that I had lying about. These Imperial Assault figures were started months ago but somehow I got bored and painted other stuff. (Story of my life, basically.)

Three Imperial Officers...

...and three Rebel Troopers.

More pictures after the break.

Oooh, shiny!

It's almost Christmas, and I haven't written anything for more than a month. I had a slight burnout during november because of too many things going on at once, and then there was Star Wars. In order to avoid spoilers I didn't keep as much tabs on the online community as usual, instead I was following John Boyega on Instagram and other sites. I tell you right now, John Boyega seems like a very funny guy to be friends with.

But that's not what I wanted to show you today. Instead I have found some other new shinies.

"Mein Gott, was ist das? Essen mein flammenwerfer!"

Yes, it's a Ghar battlesuit from Beyond the Gates of Antares, Rick Priestley's new sci-fi game. "But what of Frostgrave" I hear you cry. Fear not, I'm plodding along with that one as well as all the WW2 and Star Wars stuff I have. It's just that a couple of my work mates go Gates of Antares crazy recently and I bought the Ghar stuff from the starter box off one of them.

Crimson Empire

Well, as I promised earlier, I have now painted my winning Imperial Assault team. It proved to be quite frustrating.

The winning team, in their winning colours.

I used some different techniques mostly because my GW Mephiston Red had dried in the pot. Damn Games Workshop, I almost think they do it on purpose with their crappy paint cans. I have other paints more than a decade old but GW paints seem to last a year at most.

Champion of the Force

By chance I happened to participate in a local game night tournament of Imperial Assault. I had only played the game with my kids previously and wanted to try it for real. At the last minute I threw a list together consisting of the Royal Guard Champion and two pairs of Royal Guard (one elite). They are all hard hitting close combat troops with the Royal Guard figures able to support each other when defending. I had five points left so I added an elite Probe Droid for some ranged support. Completely oblivious how command cards worked I selected all cards that had the keywords "brawler" and "guardian" as the Royal Guard and the Champion are both.

The furious six in all their unpainted glory... 

At first I was going to take as many painted figures as possible but that would have been a rebel list with many different characters and probably very hard to play. As it was my first proper game I thought it would be better to keep things simple.

Picking low hanging fruit.

I have been kind of unfocused lately, not really being in the mood for painting stuff. They new Basis base pads were fun to use, but then I had to put some figures on them. And paint them!

Last week's project.

So I did, but it was more or less a forced project to be able to show off the bases. And it got more complicated than I had anticipated. But then I saw this video:


If you don't have time to watch it he speaks about picking low hanging fruit when your mojo is down. That is, when you feel your motivation drop, finish those nearly completed figures you have had lying for a while. It might not be projects you need to finish the most, but you will accomplish something, and it will feel good, hopefully getting your motivation back. And if it doesn't work, at least you have finished some figures.

October is Orctober!

Wow, a month since the last update. Well, I have been busy, but for some reason I haven't completed anything until now.

Excuse me Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour Gork? Or was it Mork?

This is a trukk mob of Evil sunz made up of mostly Kromlech torsos and heads, as well as a lot of parts from GW Ork Bikerz. More pictures after the break.

 

More orks for da Whaaaaagh!

Hi gang, been painting orks for a while. I got the StormClaw boxed set with more nobs and I used the left over bits and bodies to upgrade the mono-pose Assault on Black Reach nobs. As I normally do not paint anything yellow I decided to paint up the extra nobs as Bad Moons.

The left Nob is from Assault on Black Reach with a leftover Big Choppa, the right one is a regular Nob.

More pictures after the break.

Da Deff Skull Deff Dread Done!

As I said last week I have a bit of an ork craze now, glueing and painting orks like a mad boy. But painting loads of boyz gets dull very soon, even if you vary the paint scheme between the mobs. So I decided to tackle the Deff Dread I bought at the same time as the Codex.

Bought on release day, June 28th.

So that is one built, painted, based and varnished Deff Dread in little over a month, must be some kind of record for me.

Boooh!

 More pictures after the break.

Systema Gaming Scenery Power generators assembly and review

I've got the power!

Impressed by the Storage Silo I reviewed previously, I bought a pair of Power Generators from Systema. A sheet of 5mm MDF and a small sheet of orange acrylic is enough to build two of these babies. The assembly was -- as with the Silo -- very straight forward. No instructions are included but it's hardly necessary. It would be nice though for the more inexperienced builder I think.

I used ordinary white wood glue thinned with a little bit water and applied with a brush. It gives you a little wiggle-room and enough time to pull the pieces apart if you make a mistake, but dries fast enough so you do not have to wait long periods. All parts can only fit in one way so if you have to shave or file down a lug to get it to fit, you are trying to assemble it wrong!

I did however hit a couple of snags. The first was that glueing the acrylic pieces was harder than I anticipated. The fit is not as good as with the MDF parts so they move around a bit, and trying to align eight pieces of plastic between to circles of MDF at the same time was quite interesting. I thought of using superglue to first glue them rigid to one MDF pieces, but then I wouldn't have been able to adjust any of them if they weren't glued on 100% straight.

The second problem was that when popping out the parts I ended up with a cog-wheel shape that was left over. It was simply superfluous material used between two other parts on the MDF sheet, but I thought it was used to align the acrylic beams. For half an hour I tried to get it to fit before I realised my mistake.



I did a time-lapse video of the assembly and you can see how I try to fit the part around the acrylic beams, and that I try different ways of holding the acrylic. In the end I just held and pressed them in one hand. The acrylic does not absorb the glue like the MDF, so I had to wait a while for the glue on them to dry before I dared touching them. While waiting I undercoated the base with white primer. The whole process took about two hours, including trying and refitting the acrylics, brewing coffee, talking to my wife on the phone and undercoating the base. Next time I will start with the acrylic beams and then I can do the base while the first parts dry, so it should take less than an hour. The "power" assembly can be removed so you can use the base as it is if you like, which gives you a bit more variety.

At 12 Euros for a pair they are very good value for money. As evidenced by the Plague Marine in the picture above they are quite large as well. While not exactly gothic they could be a piece of Eldar or Tau machinery and would also fit very nicely into a game of Infinity or Star Wars. Systema provides good service and are very nice to deal with.

I give the System Gaming Scenery Power Generators 4 out of 5.
Recommended and good value for your money.

Systema Gaming Scenery: Storage Silo review

Systema Gaming Scenery is another one of those small businesses that sprouts up here and there; one-man operations benefiting from the Internet making them easier to get noticed by potential customers and the world smaller. This is fortunate because there are lots of creative people out there with access to a stockpile of MDF board and a laser cutter making beautiful things. This one is located in Slovenia, a country I know very little about to be honest.

The Storage Silo in all it's glory.

System Gaming Scenery doesn't have a proper webshop, instead they have a blog with a catalog. If you want to order something you email them and you get a PayPal invoice back. Simple and efficient. Shipping to EU countries is free for orders above 50 Euros, to non-EU countries it's free above 70 euros, and to the rest of the world shipping is free on orders above 100 euros. Not bad considering that MDF board weighs quite a lot. This kit cost only 16 Euro which I think is a great price!

Project Pandora -- the shiny new Oh Shiny!

I have been eyeing Mantic Games' exploits for some time now. They are an interesting company, having set out to compete with GW on their own grounds it seems. They started with dirty-cheap but nice plastic Elves and Undead which looks suitably different but compatible enough for Warhammer Fantasy players to bulk out their GW armies.

A Mantic Dwarf.

In a smart move they released Abyssal Dwarves, evil dwarves or chaos dwarves if you like. Since GW haven't featured them for some odd ten years, and the last official Chaos Dwarves were butt ugly Mantic appealed to those Chaos Dwarf players that have longed for a return of their beloved faction. Mantic have also released Dark elves, Dwarves and Orcs and apparently their prices are very competetive, especially if you buy the big army deals. Unfortuneately I didn't like the look of their dwarves, otherwise I would have been sorely tempted to add even more plastic to the so-called lead mountain (tin- resin- and plastic mounds more like). I realize Mantic wanted (and needed) them to be different from GW dwarves, but the design of their armour just doesn't float my boat. Their berserkers which doesn't wear any armour are just fine though.