Weathering the storm

Yep I survived the storm of snot yesterday and managed not to drown in the stuff last night. I did manage to do a bit of painting yesterday when I wasn't crawling around with a raging headache.

I tried out using an oil paint wash and busted out my Vallejo Pigments again. The oil wash works really well, once you have you oil paint and turps mix right. I still need more practice as I haven't got the hang of it quite right. The two things I did discover was that having a small fan beside your work area is awesome. I set it up to push the fumes from the turps out the window (not that I could smell shit away) but found it also sped up the drying time of the turps, making it evaporate much faster, thus revealing the true wash effect nice and quick. The second thing I found was that you can correct mistakes easily, by just using a cotton bud or even your finger to wipe off areas that were over done with the wash. (Not rocket science if you think about it, since oil paint takes hours to dry). Any way here how it turn out so far.

SSU IS-5 Stat Cards

Stuck at home with a head cold and a thumping head ache, while on holiday really sucks. So I’ve been killing time making up some new stat cards for the IS-5 tanks and trying not to snot my keyboard in the process. I couldn’t find any updated ones online, or even the originals. But I downloaded the stat cards a few months back and it included the Photoshop template so here’s the two I’ve done this morning.

The Year that was…2012

What a crazy year it has been. So many games, lot’s of new board games appearing on the seen, and I even went into two competitions.

I managed to destroy my entire blog and all of its history and then recover some of it. (A work in progress, as I’ve still got lots to restore). Work wise it has been insane this year, so busy and next year starts out just as mad. But on the bright side it means more toys.

Hell Dorado, Dark Age and Heavy Gear are still on the shelf to be played and for most of them, they are still on the to be painted list. I’ve also added Uncharted Sea’s which I’ve got a fully painted army, but yet to play.

The new editions to my gaming collection this year were Firestorm Armada, X-Wing and Dust Warfare. The biggest jump has been in board games, were I’ve managed to get my wife into playing regularly. So the future in board games in my house is looking very bright.

I’ve tried to keep my gaming record up to date over the year, I know I’ve missed several sessions, but below is what I ended up recording. Safe to say I’m better at board games, or more to the point, anything that doesn’t involve dice…LOL

FOG took top spot for the most played, which surprised me at first (Gotta love those Vikings). Followed by Infinity which I thought would have come in first.

So the plan for 2013 … for what it’s worth…
I’m going to try not buying any new miniature games and finish painting what I already own, and/or add to the existing games, if I really need to….LOL

(yes I know I’m weak and pathetic when it comes to shiny new toys, but I can always pretend to stick to my plan)

As for the gaming side of thing, it’s play, play, play. Especially some of the games that missed out making it to the table this year.

Rock on 2013

Zverograd Building

Finished off my Dust Build today, the salt chip effect worked nicely, once I got the hang of it and didn’t put to much salt on there. I then found some great old Russian posters from WWII and went nuts.

Here’s a closer look at some of them.

Spitfire

We went out to Ardmore Airport this morning to photograph Will’s acrobatic flight in a Spitfire. It was pretty awesome to get up close and have a look.

A little Photoshop magic to blur the blades.

 

Pre-flight with spunky parachute and all.

Underway with a roar, the engine definitely sounded the part.

Hard lighting conditions made it difficult to shoot, going from open blue sky to dark grey rain clouds, but thankfully the rain held off.

Down safe and sound with the stomach on the right place

Heavy Tanks Rock

The fist day of holiday gaming was a pretty laid back affair. I pulled out Elder Signs, and we played a 6 player game. Which changes the dynamics quite a bit, in a good way from the one and two player games that I had played. We picked up a couple of things I was doing wrong in the first few games, one which made the game harder, and the other made it easier. Either way the game is still brutal.

We then played a four player game of Dominion. I don't think the game changed to much between playing 2 players and 4 players. But I think it would play better with more options that mess with other players, especially with the guys.

Then Will and I pulled out a 300 point game of Dust Warfare. We were both rather rusty on the rules, but think we got most of them right. My IS-5 Heavy tank is a beast, especially when I'm actually rolling well. I know we both missed out on some of the extra character rules. The game started with Will having 12 squads (I think) to my 9, so I thought I'd be in for another walloping. But as it happened I destroyed his light walker in one go from my IS-5 and things just rolled from there. I won only just in the end.

Painting Day

  Had a fun day painting and playing around with my airbrush. Trying out the salt chip effect on some of my Dust Tactics buildings. Also used the micro mask again on the Attack helicopter, which is working well. 

Even got in another game of Elder Signs which we won. Really enjoying playing this game, now that we are remove the insanely hard adventure cards from the fist draw if we get them. 

 

I'm thinking of making up a playing mat for the game, that has placement locations for all the cards, along with a track for the elder sign tokens etc. Will see if that comes about or not. 

Also scored some good Boxing Day sales, got Mansion of Madness game and an expansion for half price. 

SSU Heavy Tank IS-5

The first of my Christmas holiday projects is well under way. Starting on my IS-5 tank, with a couple of base coats and then a gloss varnish so she's ready for inking. I actually got my Micro Mask liquid out and used that for only the second time. This time it was very successful. I did a couple of coats over the star transfers which were on the model out of the box, and let it well and truly dry. Then just air brushed it as if they weren’t there. Left it over night to dry and then pealed off the the mask. The outcome was far better than expected, so I’ll be making use of the Micro mask alot more in my other project,  that's for sure

Merry Christmas

May you be blessed with Games of every type and description you wished for.

And if you didn’t get what you wanted…
… Screw ‘em All and go buy them yourself, cos your worth it

 

Merry Christmas

Tanks on the doorstep

My SSU tank finally arrived today on the doorstep just in time for Christmas. I was starting to wonder if I'd ever get it, but I guess it was just the time of year for the post departments around the world.

Safe to say I'm impressed with the model, not only with the size which is well matched to the soldier models, but the details a are also impressive. This is now on the top of my painting list for the holidays. time to bust out the airbrush again.

Terror

Yes, we'll,... Ahhrrrrr..
That's me pulling out what was left of the little hair I have. My third game of Elder Signs was just insane. The game is so...so cruel. You think it can't get any worse, then it does.

This game is not for the mild hearted or those sorts that can't handle losing. We ended up wining the game but only after cheating a small bit by removing one of the adventure cards from the first starting six. It killed four of the investigators and would have ended the game, so we choose to remove it rather than start over. Even with that it came down to the wire again, almost a repeat of our first game. Six characters died in the game, a gruelling battle and dice laughing at us.

The draw of the adventure cards in this game can really make and break the game, which gives it a very terrifying edge, even the easy stuff isn't easy to do when the dice are out to get you.

We used some of my Wild West miniatures rather than the little character tokens, which made it a lot easier to keep track of who was where.

I'm looking forward to trying it out with a few more players and see what they think. I've really enjoyed it so far, even in the frustration of those damn terror dice showing up (6 on a normal dice)

Two more days of work to survive until holidays ... Yo ho ho and several bottles of scotch.