Empire of the Dead

A quite days gaming today, with just three of us usual suspects around at Marks. Well maybe it was more like two and half, with Mark' current bad back, he was hobbling around in quite a bit of pain. Fingers crossed the next round of treatment starts to get him some relief.

So we busted out our first couple of games of Empire of the Dead. I've had Captain Nemo and his crew for quite some time, when I got them off Will's fanatical purchase of the Kickstarter. Now Will had gotten into the kickstarter and also got a bunch of buildings at the same time. We didnt actually realize how much he had. So when Will unboxed it all onto the table that already had my City Block buildings on it ...(Holy crap)  we now have a full city table and then some, just needs a bit of paint on some buildings. Even without paint it looked awesome.

First game was all three of us playing with our chosen factions on the table as we went through the rules and found our feet with the game. Then Mark was off getting his Werewolf geek on ( Mark had gone with the Werewolf pack) and helping with the rules as Will and I had another game ... very short game it was as I found out how effective rifles and a little good rolling can do, as Will utterly annihilated me... A little adjustment of my list is in order. But still its a good way to learn the rules.

Some more discussion and  a bit more planning and we are going to roll out a small campaign over the Christmas break.

The Project Pile

Are yes, the ever increasing list of gaming projects, which I just added some more buildings to last week from Sarrisa. Every year I add more and more little projects and sometimes large projects to the ever increasing number of games. So this Christmas holidays, (Last week doesn't count cos  I'm still working) I’ve decided to stomp on that habit, and actually pick up a bunch of those projects that have been sitting around half finished for months and even years in some cases.

 The other reason is that I’m getting Mark to paint my ACW, so my gaming funds are all going into that. My list of projects could be very long and depressing, so I’ve gone with just a few that I’m likely to get finished and should also be fun. First up is a nice easy one to finish off, my Japanese 4ground buildings, which I have two still in the unopened bags and one half built. These can be used for a bunch of games, including Bushido, which Mark and I haven’t gotten around to playing yet.

The main project I want to finish is my Pirate Ship which I got a few years back after having a blast playing Jason in a few games of Pirates of the High Sea’s.

After that I have three units of 15mm Japanese Samurai for FOG Renaissance in the basing stage, so should be another quick easy one to complete…. God knows how many other units for this army I still have in the draw. If I get the three finished I may be inspired to complete my Egyptian army that I’m meant to use in next years Battlecry, so that’s going to be my forth project to try and complete.

Beyond that I'm not holding my breath on what I'll get done.

So far this week I have managed to complete another unit of my Greeks for Hail Cesar as there were almost finished anyway.

And I've already got alot more done on the Pirate ship this week, deck is down and mast's in. Still alot to do, but its now table worthy. Pictures have a few models for Empire of the Dead which we are playing for the first time on Sunday. 

 

Great start to the Year

With 2014 well under way, I've just registered for the Battle Cry Tournament in February. The Vikings will be putting in another appearance, with the smaller 600 point games this year instead of 800 points, my Egyptians are definitely staying on the shelf. With smaller battle fields they have no room to manoeuvre and would just get squashed way to easily. (as proven in previous games late last year). My army list is really simple… lots and lots of sharp pointy sticks.

I've already played a game of X-Wing with my 11 year old nephew, which was alot of fun and the little bugger managed to win as well. Also got a second game of Mice and Mystic’s under out belts. It was alot easier this time, after we realized a mistake in the way we were playing… making it a gazillion times harder for ourselves in the first game.

Painting wise I got stuck into the models for Mice and Mystics over the last couple of nights. A few people online have done some really nice paint jobs on these models, so I had plenty of inspiration. Here's what I've done so far.

I'm now working on the Cockroach's.

Today I got stuck into cleaning up and basing a bunch of models, the first 10 were my Captain Nemo gang for Empire of the Dead. I've removed the slot base tabs and put them all onto some dragon Forge bases. Pinning them all as well. It was actually really easy with a metal cutting disc on the Dremal.

After that I found some old Samurai models in one of my boxes and realized I can use them for Ronin.  They were a bit more work, removing the old school metal bases, repairing a let or two and mounting them on 25 mm bases. It's a bit of an odd ball bunch, but I'll see if I can use them in Ronin.

Also my first garage kit is coming along. I've made several big mistakes, but it's all a learning curve. I think the next one will be much easy, as the casting is so much better than this one, and it's also slightly larger scale which will help. The chalk pastel technique was really interesting to try out. I found the Army painter varnish dulled it down quite a bit, so next time I'll be using about double the shading I think.