31 March 2011

Flash Back

image

Battletech: Holy cow, talk about a flash back to my childhood. I just saw this on a news letter I get.

Found a couple of a run downs/reviews on the box sets at
http://critical-hits.com/
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/

Hell.. I can see another game joining my ever increasing list. Smile

24 March 2011

Woodland Throne of Dr Arkadius

After a long day causing chaos and death the Farrow pitch camp and the War hog hacks a make shift throne for Dr Arkadius to ponder his next creation.

Minions_Dr_Arkadius1 Minions - Dr Arkadius

I’ve also been sculpting a bit more. In keeping with my current binge on sculpting tree’s and logs, I thought I’d add a little something different to Dr Arkadius base. I had a old wine bottle cork lying around that I had been using to test some tree sculpting on. One particular angle made it look like stairs, which was ho hmm .. normal. Then looking at another angle it looked a bit like a seat, so after a little bit of carving and some more putty, A throne was born.

Egyptian Camp

Camp1

I couldn’t resist starting something out of my Egyptians, even thought I’ve still got a few Vikings to go. So I put together the camp, using a few models from the command pack and then the three models from Reaper.

22 March 2011

Geek out on the Future

  This is a cool video I found today on the future devices..

Very cool.

20 March 2011

Goreshade & Deathwalker bases

I’ve been doing a little sculpting over the last few days, in spits and sprits in-between everything else. I tried out an idea from the picture of Goreshade the Bastard in the Cryx Forces book. The tree trunk and roots with skulls around it. I decided to go for just sculpting up a nice base rather than doing any conversions on the models themselves. I’ve done the base tree trunk, I’ll eventually get around to adding more tree roots and skulls once I practice a bit to get them looking right. My first attempt at a skull was very feeble and looked more like pumpkin lantern than a skull.

Cryx Gorshade the BastardCryx Gorshade the Bastard

After starting on both models I found this really nice sculpting job on the PP forums, (I've got plenty of room for improvement) http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?49050-Goreshade-The-Cursed-Finished

With the Deathwalker I thought I’d carry on the theme and try out making a dead tree. I did the base first and let that dry over a few days, then came back to it and ended up running out of green stuff and moved onto using the grey stuff I had. I’m semi happy with the outcome,  I still haven’t learnt to keep my finger prints completely out of it.

Cryx DeathwalkerCryx DeathwalkerCryx Deathwalker

19 March 2011

Vikings vs Carthaginians

I managed to finally square my Vikings off against Marks Carthaginian's this morning. We played a 600 point game, my 8 battle groups vs. 10 of Marks. I lost the initiative, so Mark choose a “Developed” terrain layout and to my luck I managed to get most of the terrain off to the sides so not to imped all my slow moving heavy foot. My deployment was pretty straight forward (normally is for Vikings). Having to face Elephants and a battle group of mounted Swords I was a little worried about one flank but was confident on the rest of my troops, I just had to hold them back from charging in too early.

Again I forgot my camera, so these pictures are from my iphone.. hence they are not great but give a bit of a feel to how the game ran it’s bloody course.

Mark deploys one battle group in the Village, and I deploy around the enclosed field, the only piece of terrain that really gets in the way in this game for the Vikings. I pop my Archers out in front to do a little bit of teasing. Mark’s battle line ends up with his skirmishers out on the right flank in front of the Elephants. I knew this was gonna be a bit of praying to the Dice god’s to get thought on that flank.

Vikings vs Cathaginians Vikings vs Cathaginians

The light foot troops force my battle line out after I fail a check not to charge, which ultimately ends in there destruction as the Elephants show how effective they can be. The dice God’s deserting my today.

Vikings vs Cathaginians Vikings vs Cathaginians

Vikings vs Cathaginians

One the left flank I move my Freemen up along with my Archers and try a few shots but nothing comes of it. Mark sits back and waits in the Village.

Moving up slowly I decide to split my battle line a little to give me an option to turn my Huscarls into the Elephants, which ends up to be a waste as my battle group of Freeman gets routed and flees, with the Elephants in hot pursuit charging right past the waiting Huscarls. The battle lines then clash and we get into some serious overlaps of battle groups. Taking our time we work through it, the Huscarl heavy weapons doing there work. Mark charges in his Horsemen against my Offensive Spear Freeman on an overlap, which end’s in them breaking and fleeing into my second group  Huscarls that I managed to get around to the back after missing the Elephants. At this point the Carthaginian's have destroyed my right flank and Mark is well ahead with 6 points only needing 8 for the win, and I only had 4 points needing 10.

Vikings vs Cathaginians Vikings vs Cathaginians

Vikings vs Cathaginians

My Viking Thralls stand to protect the camp, I’m hoping they will be a speed bump and maybe allow me to pull back into the game being down in points and Mark only needing one more for the win. Amazingly the Thralls stand proud and strong and deflect the initial impact against the charge.(impact foot troops). But it wasn’t long after this my army fell, the win going to the Carthaginian's.

It was a really close game, the match up of troops was very much even for the most part, alot of straight dice rolling with no Point of advantage to either side. And now I think about it, this was very evident in the actual dice rolls as well. Many times did the middle of the battle field come up even.

The two things that really lost me the game were. Losing control of one battle group on my right flank which charged forward and broke my battle line, this allowed Marks Elephants to crush them and that pretty much cascaded through that flank. Then the second thing that after thinking about it was the time it took for my Huscarls to break the centre battle groups. That gave Mark time to break my left flank as well and I couldn’t catch up in points quick enough. Great game.

16 March 2011

Random YouTube surfing

What do you do while waiting for servers to reboot after working far to many hours… random YouTube surfing of course

The funny

The slightly strange

The disturbing .. things you can’t un-see …goggle cake farts….(at your own risk)

Some sweet tunes

13 March 2011

Not so small dragon

Dragon sceneryDragon scenery

Having spent the past few weeks on 15mm Vikings, I was needing a distraction.. something larger. Well I found it. Being a rather large dragon fan, (just one or two tattoos) I was given this Dragon by my wife a long time ago. It was actually a toilet roll holder, but in our new house it just didn’t fit the style. So it’s sat collecting dusty for many years. Until the other day when I uncovered it in the annual garage clean up. It sits perfectly upright by itself , it’s wings supporting it exceptionally well. So I don't need to mount it onto anything.  After removing the roll holder and screws, then green stuffing in the holes, then a little black paint, it’s now ready for a good bash with the air brush. Not sure what sort of colours I’ll use, I think I’ll just stick with the grey/black of stone and maybe add in dome colour for it’s eye’s.  It’s a superb piece for the table, towering over most miniatures, sitting next to the Gale Force Nine scenery it fits in magnificently.

12 March 2011

It’s a crazy World out there.

imageHere is me watching the move “2012” about the end of the world, and then see the earthquake in in Japan, watching the chaos on TV, talk about freaky.

There are some things in life that there are few words for, “scary” 

First Christchurch and now Japan,

It’ s crazy world and we are only along for the ride.

06 March 2011

The Vikings Honour the Mighty Thor

Vikings vs Ottoman - Field of Gory Vikings vs Ottoman - Field of GoryVikings vs Ottoman - Field of Gory Vikings vs Ottoman - Field of Gory

With Mike turning up yesterday morning (a veteran player) so we had great help with learning the rules, and got some good clarification on a few things as well. The game started out with me taking the initiative and choosing a Mountain battle field with lots of terrain. I started up with my usual huge battle line, but staggered them a little to account for the terrain I was in, so after the second turn I should end up about even across the line.

As the Vikings squared off against Chris's Ottomans. The mighty Thor looked down apon his noble and courageous warriors , blessing them with the luck of the God’s in there battle against their Ottoman foe’s. Yes, my dice rolling in this game was just outrageous, with over 75% of rolls hitting. I’ve never, ever, rolled this well in any game. With that sort of dice rolling it is no surprise it was a bit of a slaughter. With the Viking only losing a few bases and no battle group breaking or even making it to fragmented, it was a complete victory.

If I had rolled on average, it would have been a much closer battle. On the rules side of things, I’m struggling to get my head around them, with the rule book being so hard to navigate. (Not saying I could do any better mind you) I’ve got a plan to try and fix that. It’s to focus on my two armies, being the Vikings and Egyptians, and go though the rule book writing up a spread sheet on the rules that apply to my armies and to each battle group. Fingers crossed this will help. I’m hoping that the new version that’s being worked on at the moment will result in a far superior formatted and index rule book. It’s still a great game, it’s just got lots of room to improve.

03 March 2011

Viking Camp – Stave Church

I’ve just finished off a few more detail's on my Viking camp, the main thing being the rock wall. I had good intensions of using some green stuff to sculpt out the stone wall, then decided to just try and paint it instead. Then if it didn’t work, go back and sculpt over  it. As it turns out the stone wall came out looking rather good. So I stayed with it and added in the flocking. So I’m left with just the few Viking models to paint up and stand around the Church.

Field of Glory Viking Camp - Stave Church Field of Glory Viking Camp - Stave ChurchField of Glory Viking Camp - Stave Church

02 March 2011

Egyptians

Having painted a huge amount of Vikings in the last couple of weeks, I was nicely surprised today when some models turned up from Reaper, which of course got me side tracked from my Vikings. Just gotta play with the new toys. :-) Talk about impressive, I ordered them straight from the www.reapermini.com  web site, they got shipped the following day and arrived 12 days later. Which is super fast since the shipping was only $8. They were well packed in a box with foam chips.

image image image

So these little beauties are all 35mm but are going to create my Base Camp for my Egyptian FOG army, I’m going with a temple entrance type theme The column is actually really nice, the photo above (from Reapers web site) doesn’t do it justice at all. It has Egyptian writing all around the bottom half, which I’m look forward to painting up…..after I finish my Vikings…..(Yeah right)

Egyptians

Having painted a huge amount of Vikings in the last couple of weeks, I was nicely surprised today when some models turned up from Reaper, which of course got me side tracked from my Vikings. Just gotta play with the new toys. :-) Talk about impressive, I ordered them straight from the www.reapermini.com  web site, they got shipped the following day and arrived 12 days later. Which is super fast since the shipping was only $8. They were well packed in a box with foam chips.

image image image

So these little beauties are all 35mm but are going to create my Base Camp for my Egyptian FOG army, I’m going with a temple entrance type theme The column is actually really nice, the photo above (from Reapers web site) doesn’t do it justice at all. It has Egyptian writing all around the bottom half, which I’m look forward to painting up…..after I finish my Vikings…..(Yeah right)