The Factory Build

Some more pictures of my factory build in progress.I managed to get it all together after a few issues.The problems I had were caused by me undercoating the parts before putting them together. This caused them to swell a bit with the summer humidity and since they were a tight fit to start, this caused me issues. I ended up breaking a couple of pins that held the wheels on the crane.  Dremel to the rescue and a bit of copper wire and all sorted.

I'm really not impressed with the cardboard inserts for the windows and doors. The windows aren't an issue really, but the doors... freak-in useless. It's my only real grip with this building. It's the first time I've had a building with the cardboard insert details. The doors are so flimsy and easy to break off, they wont last long in the heat of battle that's for sure. I would have been happy to pay a little more to have the wooden doors. But overall I'm stoked with the building, its turning out better than I was expecting and it will work with several games I play.

Rendra ramshackle barn and Sarissa Factory - WIP

My terrain building has been going well over the past few weeks. I’ve been working on the Sarissa Factory over the past few days, in between finishing off the Rendra ramshackle barn.

The barn was actually very easy to put together and I enjoyed painting it. Now finished its ready for the gaming table.

For the Sarissa factory I had an old plastic diffuser from a florescent light fitting which was broken in the last work office fit out. I had grabbed it and was expecting to use it for some photography lighting, but the moment I saw the roof on the factory I knew I had to use it for the windows.

After a few attempts to cut the plastic using various tools and failing.  I ended up using my dermal and a cutting wheel which worked sweet. So here’s a quick snap or two the progress so far. I put in a few Japanese Bolt Action models for scale.

It should look awesome once I get it finished.

X-Wing

After our X-Wing game on Sunday, (Will did a nice post of the games on his blog) I got enthused again and finally got around to sorting out all the boxes, tokens and cards. So my collection has grown a little over Christmas with the additions of the Assault carrier, and now also the Imperial Raider. The tidy up was spurred on due to lack of space to store things my my garage..... I should end up with more space for one or two more ships ... :-)

Looking forward to some more games with the Raider.

The new year's resolution

The new year’s resolution… keeping it simple … have fun, enjoy life while I can.

So with that in mind we got to play our first games of Steam Punk Rally yesterday afternoon. Having a read of the rules and watching the online video on how to play, we had the rules sorted pretty quickly. The first game I managed to win with a sneaky boost card. The second game was much closer with Yvonne beating me in the final round. Both games took about an hour for the two of us, which I think will speed up as we play it more. The game will be great with four or more players, as there will be no chance of planning the drafting stage of the game, where you get to choose cards and pass them remainder on to the next player. The game mechanic is quite different from other games I have played, with dice pools, card drafting (selecting cards from a card hand),using the dice in your dice pool as resources to build, fix and move your invention around the race track.

On the war gaming front I’ve acquired the X-wing imperial assault carrier, which I’m looking forward to a few games in the coming week.

My modelling is coming along nicely as I’m almost finished the ramshackle barn and fences. As we  as having started building the Sarissa Factory building as well.

It's the end

With 2015 almost done and dusted, it’s the usual time to look back and see what you accomplished , or not as the case may be. And then  look forward to what is planned in 2016.

Looking back, the year has just flown by. Blog wise, I pretty much stopped blogging this year and focused on work and home life separation, as it had turned into a blurry mess of stress. Creating a work desk in the spare room was the game changer. Now I have a small room for hobby stuff …( no work aloud). Then separating my work email and personal email was also a huge help, so I couldn’t get distracted by work emails while talking to the lads and planning gaming session etc on the weekends. It took a few months of retraining myself and organizing the distinct separation of my work and personal stuff , but I’m a happier man  and thus wife is also happier. It’s not that easy to do when you spend quite a bit of time working from home. So all in all a very successful year on the work/home front.

Gaming wise, oh my god .. did I get a lot of plastic this year or what. Hail Caesar saw the table a lot and my army list expanded somewhat, followed by Pike and Shotte (Which I didn’t actually add to this year)

X-wing and Start Trek Attack Wing both saw some big epic scale games, which I think we will have to repeat in 2016. Judge Dread made a big impact at the South Auckland club as we all got into that for a small campaign.

I bought into Black Powder rule set with ACW army, and also ended up picking up boxes on a great sale for AWI and also Saga. So plenty or armies to build and paint in 2016.

Bolt Action was a  big hit this year seeing regular play and the usual Field of Glory was played a lot at the beginning of the year.

I did get a lot of painting done in the first half of the year and bugger all in the last half. My Greeks for Hail Caesar were the most fun to paint and I have half the army fully painted now.

Overall it was a quit year compared to previous years, which is a good thing,

Looking forward into 2016.

Gaming wise the goal is pretty simple, play the games I have.

Yep, I counted the rule sets I have, all 48 of them. Only nine of which I don’t have any models for….(yet)

A Fistful of Kung Fu

Anima Tactics

Battletech

Black Powder

Bolt Action

Bushido

Dark Age

Dr Who

DreadBall

Drop Zone

Dungeon and Dragons Attack Wing

Dust Tactics

Empire of the Dead

Field of Glory Ancients

Field of Glory Napoleonic

Field of Glory Renaissance

Firestorm Armada

Flames of War

Gladiators

Hail Caesar Army

Heavy Gear

Hell Dorado

Hordes

In Her Majesty’s Name

Infinity

Judge Dread

Kings of War

Legends of the High Seas

Legends of the Wild West

Malifaux

Mob Wars

Of Gods and Mortals

Pike and Shotte

Ronin

Saga

Start Trek Attack Wing

Trafalgar

Uncharted Seas

War Machine

War Master Ancients

Warhammer

Warhammer 40K

Warhammer Ancient Battles

Warhammer Chariot Wars

Waterloo

Wild West exodus

Wings of Glory

X-Wing

Now I realize that some of these games are dead or in the dying stages,  but as I’ve learnt over the years, these games have a surprising habit of re-surfing . First up is BattlteTech, I really want to get some games played in 2016, an all-time favorite of mine, a real time consumer for sure, but its always been fun to play. After that I think the long lost kin of Legends of the Wild west … Legends of the High Sea’s would be my next pick, really want to see my pirate ships in action. Ronin and Bushido are high on my play list for next year as well, with my Japanese terrain collection starting to grow these games will look awesome.

On the painting front, I just want to get into the grove and start painting a little every week.

Photography wise, that’s also simple, get out there and have fun shooting.

Oh yeah, and then there are the board games. 2015 was hugely lacking in board games, so revitalizing play is top of the list.

(Especially after today…got smashed by the wife at my new board game… twice)

and yes, proof I've actually being doing some modeling and building terrain :-)

The Christmas Loot.

Having a Norwegian Wife, we celebrate Christmas on the eve with her family, and then have Christmas day the following with my family, which works out rather well, as we never get any conflicts.

But this year with my family all over the place I got to spend Christmas at home, sleep in, open more presents, have an afternoon nap and put together some of my Xmas gifts.

The Christmas loot has been good this year, with a little help with from myself on a few extra things.

So gaming wise I got a new board game which looks like a good fun.

A 2-8 player game which is unusual for a board game to cover that many players.

My awesome wife got me some terrain from Renedra which will work perfectly for ACW and quite a few other games as well. The Ramshackle Barn along with the stone and cross fence. The barn is already built and on a base, undercoated and ready for painting.

I picked up the Kings of War supplement book “Uncharted Empires” along with finally getting around to acquiring a copy of the Saga rules, since I have two boxes of Vikings on my desk for this.

I’m pretty sure the Viking dice are the most expensive dice I’ve ever bought, but its Christmas, so whaooo.

 

Then our local suppler had started stocking some of the Plast Craft Pre-Cut buildings, so I picked up a Fukei Building for my Japanese terrain to try it out. They have some cool looking walls, what would add a lot to my terrain collection, so I’ll see how this first buiding goes before getting more.

Merry Christmas

The Merry Christmas blog post...

    bought to you by random google image searches

It's just wrong on so many levels..

Sugar High...

So it's definitely Christmas, ... how do I know...

1. finished work for the year

2. drinking scotch

3. making chocolate mouse

4. sugar hi kicking in ... :-)






With Star Wars the theme of everything at the moment I came across this on Facebook, which appealed to my old school metal days of when I had hair.

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.