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!

DarkOps townhouse build and review

Hi gang! As I said in my last post I ordered the What a Tanker! dashboard from DarkOps. Now they have a lot of MDF buildings as well, so I thought I'd try one out as I hadn't heard of them previously.

All the parts for the house except the base (which didn't fit into the picture).

The townhouse comes on 7 sheets of MDF, one of which is the base. Four are 2mm MDF and three are 3mm thick; upon closer inspection the base and outer walls (and the inside partitioning wall) are all on the thicker sheets. Now, here's the first drawback: there weren't any instructions included! I searched on the DarkOps site but couldn't find any downloads. But how hard can it be? I decided to crack on.

A mousterious package arrives...

So this package landed on my doorstep. Or in my mailbox, but you get the meaning.

Nice little Thank you sticker inside the lid, and lots of bubble wrap! Weeee!

It turned out to be that Oathsworn Burrows and Badgers kickstarter I backed. Oathsworn did a royal screw-up and delivered all the stuff one month before the planned completion date. Those guys must be amateurs. (Real pros like Flying Frog Production let their customers wait more than three years for their stuff.)

But what's inside?

Bases and blisters

This blog post feels like it has been a thousand years in the making...

 A couple of days weeks months ago I reviewed the Age of Sigmar Hero Bases, and now the time has come to take a look at the Warhammer 40k Hero Bases. I bought them shortly after the AoS ones, now that the 8th edition of 40k is looming around the corner I was reminded about these bases and dug up the photos I took back then.

The first sprue with some large pieces on it. Is that a Leman Russ turret? (Yes it is...)

The second sprue also has a bunch of large stuff on it, although not as large as the first.

Unlike the AoS set there are no single piece bases in this set. There are also only eight bases compared to the eleven in the AoS set.

All your base are belong to... swine?

I was not much impressed by the scenic bases GW had released before christmas, but the hero bases recently released piqued my interest. As my FLGS was out of the 40k one I bought the Fantasy version to review.

(Note: the sprues are really the same size, some sort of trickery with the photographs have ensued.)

The first sprue. Some interesting stuff, lots of skulls.

Second sprue. The giant sarcophagus lid on the right was what drew my eye originally.

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.

Welcome to the jungle

This year's Chain of Command game at Gothcon will be (a small part of) the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Indochina. This is a prelude to the Vietnam war of which I know next to nothing about, but my mates Thomas and Koen are well versed in both relevant history and tactics used. As such my role is relegated to terrain making. With mostly Vietnam war movies in my mind I ordered a bunch of cheap but useful items from eBay.

I can imagine the customs' dissappointment when they realised the contents were all plastic.

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.

Monday MDF Madness

(Well, it's still Monday somewhere in the world...)

So I recently happened to aquire a couple of small MDF kits, but I hadn't had time to build any of them.

An Upright Piano from 4Ground and a nice little Village Fountain from Sarissa Precision.

I decided to build the Piano first.

All the parts for the piano. 

Starting with the stool, It's tiny! All those blobs of glue will disappear when it dries though.

Some of the sheets were a bit warped or bent, so the keys needed pressure while drying...

...and dry. All good.

The sides also needed some pressure. Note I have fixed part I in this step contrary to the instructions.

Front pieces glued in place. More pressure needed.

The outer sides and backpiece hides all the ugly joins. And needs pressure, you guessed it.

And last of all the lid. Which was bent as a banana and needed pressure.

The finished instrument is liberated by a German soldier.

Although the kit was a bit fiddly and the piano is quite petite, it was pretty straight forward to assemble. The end result is certainly worth the effort.It was about time I aquired this essential piece of WW2 terrain; every modern war film has a piano in it it seems.

Happy gaming!

Building Brutish British

Confession time: I hate painting.

No, no, no I don't, actually. But I like building more. I love building. Converting, carving, glueing, trying out different poses on miniatures, adding details like stowage or battle damage on vehicles. So when I bought the first box of Perry desert rats I quickly built all of the figures, and then painted a handful of them. And lost interest. Same thing with the Deutsche Afrika Korps; built every figure; painted five or six of them, and lost interest. By juggling painting projects around, switching between different subject I can usually keep my interest up a bit, but then another problem appears.

I was so bored painting figures I bought a Tamiya model kit. Of course, now that it's built I have to paint it. Doh!

When I'm steaming ahead I usually manage to build the figures to the wrong organisation, with too many submachine guns per platoon, or not enough light machine guns, or just plain using the wrong bases. With the desert rats I built two figures per squad with tommy guns but Chain of Command specifies only the NCO has one, and I have realised that not every player can discern big men by their equipment, so I needed to rebase the leaders on hex bases. So I ordered another box, of course. I can use the extra figures for dismounted scout squads and crew figures for support weapons.

Is it just me, or do they look like badly shaved gorillas? They look better IRL though.

At the same time I ordered a box of Bolt Action late war British Infantry. Since the Perry box is quite low on extra equipment I'm going to nick a few weapons and backpacks from the Warlord box, and I have plans for a special character using parts from both boxes. Although I already have a platoon of late war brits from Crusader Miniatures it's the bare minimum of figures, so the rest of the Bolt Action figures will be reinforcements for them.

But I have painted some stuff, among others the 2-pounder I bought from Perrys.

Mean green grassing machine

Being at home with man-flu (mucus seeping from my skull) gave me a chance to try out my new static grass applicator without endangering any other family members. Since this is a highly advanced electrical device, deadly in the wrong hands and not to be used by or on children and those of frail health, you can understand my worries.

No Beatles were harmed while testing the device.

The design is simple: the static grass is electrically charged by an electric source, one pole connected to the grass container, the other pole connected to surface you want to glue the grass to. In the old days you put the grass in a plastic container and shook it violently before pouring the grass out hoping that it would generate some static electricity. Another way which functioned marginally better was a "puffer bottle"; same thing, you shook the bottle and then pressed on it to blow the grass out. Anyway, the electricity makes the grass fibers stand on end while the glue dries and thus looking more realistic.

The wire inside the container is also connected to the metal mesh, charging the grass as it passes through.

A couple of years ago Noch unleashed their electronic grass applicator on the model railway market for a cost of about a couple of hundred euros or about hundred and fifty pounds. Other companies quickly followed suit, but the more ingenious railway modellers made their own from electric flyswatters. Now the fad has reached the wargames market. There are several different designs, but they all work on the same principle and yes, you can build your own, just google it. Being somewhat lazy I decided to buy a cheap Chinese version on eBay for 25 dollars including shipping.

It even has a "NO" switch. Luckily I'm a highly trained engineer with a specialty in "engrish".

A closer inspection revealed that it was indeed, a rebuilt electric fly swatter. No worries, it's not as if I paid a hundred pounds for it. I even got a small bag of unrealistically green static grass. So did it work? Read on to find out.

The other side of the fence

I guess everybody has noticed I'm a big fan of Renedra's wargames accessories. I use their different sized bases for most stuff nowadays, from 6mm tanks to 28mm figures. I also like their scenic range and earlier I reviewed their wattle fences which I liked very much. This time I'm taking a closer look at their Wargaming Fences designed by Tim Adcock.

Wargaming fences from Renedra. Two sprues for £6.00