27 April 2011

25 April 2011

Battletech – First Hitout

BattletechWith Mark’s Battletech Box turning up last week,  we cranked out our first game on Saturday.  Six of us taking one mech each and teaming up into three teams running a total of 75 tons per team.

The table layout was pretty simple, a wood,  couple of buildings, a hill and a lake. After a bit of fussing around to begin with since we forgot to print of the stat sheets we got under way.

Battletech

Mark and Me run up the guts to get into range, Jason and Lee take up position on the hill, while Chris and Dan take a swim in the lake to avoid the long range weapons.

Battletech

Mark charges up the middle towards the hill while taking obscene amounts of damage, as I head across to the lake to flush out the submerged mechs. This ends up with Chris and Dan pounding on every part of me, but nothing critical. Then  a few turns later I take out Dan’s mech as he kill’s me with a brutal head shot in the same turn.

Battletech

While I duke it out with Chris and Dan, Jason and Lee continue to obliterate Mark’s armour and finally cause him to fall over. At which point Mark spends a couple of turns spinning around on the ground trying to get back up, all the while taking a beating from Jason and Lee.

With Dan and me out of the game, and Mark pretty much crippled. Jason slings out a long range shot which lands straight in the cockpit of Chris’s undamaged mech ending the  game.

Overall, the game was great  fun and I enjoyed it, a little slow. But that’s expected for our first game and it wasn’t helped with not having the stat sheets organised to start with. We didn’t use any of the heat rules in the game to keep things simple so we could focus on getting to grips with the basic rules. The next few games will be alot faster once I laminate the stat sheets so we can use whiteboard markers on them. The box set is well worth the money, cant wait till mine arrives so I can get stuck and get some of them painted up.

20 April 2011

Egyptians on the Table

Field of Glory - Egyptian Nubian Archers Field of Glory - Egyptian Nubian Archers

I’ve started painting my Egyptians this week, after getting them all mounted. I started out with the Nubian archers and used a black undercoat on the first base, then swapped over to using a dark grey Vallejo Air undercoat for the rest. Painting black skin has been a bit different for me. My first attempt with black and dark greys wasn’t great, so I changed over to just using a Vallejo black shade, which has worked out much better and quicker when going over the dark grey undercoat. Although I think there must be a better way, so I think a little more web searching is in order.

Also today the tokens arrived from Litko. I order the set for Field of Glory a couple of weeks ago from the Litko web site, so delivery time was pretty good. The web site photo’s weren't that great as their isn’t anything to compare them with. So the picture below is of two of my Nubian Archer bases in various stages of painting. Both are light foot bases, so 20mm x 40mm with 15mm figures on them. I’m quite pleased with them, as they aren't to large , so they shouldn’t get in the way when moving the battle groups around on the table. Price wise, I think they are a smidge over priced for the amount of them, 35 in all in the packet. so that worked out at $1 each NZ including shipping. Price aside, still a great product.

Field of Glory - Litko tokens

14 April 2011

Mech Warrior revival

imageWith the upcoming Battletech resurgence I’ve got back into playing Mech Warrior 4. After playing for a couple of days from the keyboard, I was going a little insane, My keyboard skills suck and that's an understatement of the decade. So I splashed out and got myself a joystick. I had a look at a few around in the shops and read up on some reviews, I ended up going with the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. Nothing to fancy, pretty much middle of the road kind of thing since I don’t play to many PC games.

So after an hour getting the damn thing setup thanks to driver issues on my computer. I got some games in. It is so much smoother to play with a joystick, and a load more fun. I haven’t played with programing any of the extra buttons yet, but I think that will help alot with some of the other functions, like auto centre the torso on the Mech. As far as a joystick goes it’s all thumbs up for this one, although I’m comparing it to a keyboard. The base is nice and stable and the twist mechanism is really well suited to Mech Warrior. After a couple of hours of  play, my shoulder was a little sore, but that was more because of my sitting position. So loads more Mech Warrior on the cards for me in the coming weeks.

13 April 2011

Traveling Box

Army traveling box Army traveling box

Field of Glory - New Kingdom Egyptians

After finally starting to recover from this flu that I’ve had for the past 7 days, I got around to setting up my traveling and storage boxes for my Field of Glory armies. I’ve gone for the simple and rather effective A4 hard cover storage box that some of my mates put me onto. The kind that you can get from any half descent stationary shop. Then just lined it with some anti-slip rubber matts that only cost a couple of bucks, so all up I spent about $24 on each box. I also taped my standard army list on the inside of the box for easy reference. So my Vikings have a nice new home, as do my Egyptians which I’ve also spent a little bit of time getting them onto bases.

10 April 2011

Battletech mania

Clan_Jade_Falcon_Logo_by_PunakettuAfter yesterdays web surfing over Battletech stuff and then finding these videos, I’ve gone and ordered the box set. Even found my old Mechwarrior RPG book and a Technical readout book from the good old days.  So I’m on a complete Battletech buzz at  the moment.

So I’ve definitely decided to go with the Clan Jade Falcon, I found these pic’s online to get some idea’s. Really looking forward to the box arriving and getting a game or two in. I’m hoping that the game is good and as fun as I remember it.

turkina logomaddogjfrediter3d normal_rayarrastia-gentleman-01timba timbc3

On the new blog theme, I’ve just found that there is a problem with posting video links, for some reason it displays the html on the home page. Which is a bit of a bugger, will have to work that out at some point.

09 April 2011

Blog Theme Change

I got a little board today, being stuck at home with the flu, so I’ve been trolling though themes fro my blog and decided to change to this one. Had to do a little editing, as it had way to many options for what I need. So this is my first post on the new theme. Still working out how to change the scrolling images.

image

Thought I’d throw in a pic from Battletech, to get inspired. I’m looking at the Jade Falcons as my faction.

Malifaux - The Neverborn - Lilith Gang

Malifaux The Neverborn - Lilith Gang

I finished off my second Malifaux gang this morning. with the addition of Candy. Hoping to get a couple of games in tomorrow with them.

Malifaux The Neverborn - Adult Nephilim Malifaux The Neverborn - Candy

08 April 2011

The Viking Horde

The Viking Horde is complete. It’s finally done, a full year after I purchased them, all 800 points worth. They did spend a good 6 months in the cupboard while I was playing other war games. So I just spent the last  couple of days adding some shield transfers I got from littlebigmenstudios.com. They make a huge difference, even with having to retro fit them on, which took a bit of repainting. Really looking forward to rolling them out in a game now.

Field of Glory - Norse Vikings Field of Glory - Norse Vikings Field of Glory - Norse Vikings Field of Glory - Norse Vikings Field of Glory - Norse Vikings

05 April 2011

Happy Bacon

Hordes Minions - War Pig

Hordes Minions - War PigWell after several months of very slow painting, I’ve finally finished the War Hog, just the varnish to go and he will be waging war on the table. I’m rather happy with him, I' could do a little more on his arms and rust out the hands etc, but time to move on and get something else done, like the 20 odd Farrow to go with him.

  Happy Bacon all round.

03 April 2011

The Dice Mashing Machine Eats The Leper Toad

Yes, the good old dice mashing machine. Unfortunately I was in the mash machine. I rolled out my mighty Viking horde against Will’s Roman legion, in a small 600pt game and got totally mashed. A leper toad could have rolled better than me. Not only was I rolling obscene numbers of 1’s, but Will was throwing 6’s like a God. I lined up my battle groups with the Romans to make a pretty much even fight in most clashes. So in a battle of straight out dice rolling I got fully stomped on. I mean the game was done in a hour, which is the fasted game we have ever played. I couldn’t help but laugh at my pathetic rolling, a rather quick and fun game.

Viking_Vs_Romans_5 Viking_Vs_Romans_1

Here’s a few close up of Mark’s Roman's that Will was using in the game.

Viking_Vs_Romans_4Viking_Vs_Romans_3Viking_Vs_Romans_2