Guess – a charity quiz

29/11/2012 4 Comments

Well with 10,000 visits and 300+ posts, I’m feeling all philanthropic whilst basking in the unwarranted glow of 15 minutes of fame.

So in today’s postal delivery I got a figure. A rather special figure:

It’s nominally 28mm scale. And from the rear:

So being a jolly soul, post your guess as to what the figure is here on this blog below, first person to get it right and I’ll donate £10 to the charity of your choice.

(NB: Employees of the producing company are not eligible for this quiz)

The winner will:

  • Name the Figure
  • Name the Sculptor
  • Describe its production background
  • And for extra kudos provide a scan of the relevant game book.

Meanwhile, the Sun Has Got His Hat On again, and I need to finish off my White Russian Lancers in Chinese Service and you may get an update later on !

Another feline casualty of a sun beam.

Filed under Welcome

10,000 Sheep on Drugs

28/11/2012 1 Comment

Thanks people, 10,000 Visitors in 7 months to this blog.

This is post 303. Is this my 15 Minutes of Fame ?

Oh well, let’s take a ride:

More Gonzoid filth, broken dreams and madness:

Oh well.
More to come.

Filed under Film, Welcome

Special Guest Superstar DJ: Witch Hunters

28/11/2012

A unit Byakhee Rich has been building, lots of conversions and general insanity – a Witch Hunter unit…

Aeterna Specula – “The Eternal Watchtower”

The pictures don’t do them justice !

The Brotherhood of the Eternal Watchtower scour Middenheim and the surrounding area looking for signs of heresy; for the Witch, the Beastman, the Skaven, the Goblin, the lawless, and bring them to Sigmar’s justice. They are a mixed bunch with varied backgrounds – some are devote Sigmarites, some follow Ulric; some are driven by a desire to do good, some by vengeance, some by their own personal daemons (not literally of course!). There are professional soldiers, former woodsmen, farmers, and bandits, and keen amateurs, drawn from near and far by the charisma of their founder and his lieutenants. All over the Drakwald their battle cry, “Nos sumos Aeterna Speculam!” will strike fear into the followers of Chaos.

The leader and founder of the Aeterna Speculam is Agis Wachturm, a stern, devout man with a steely gaze. He has been a Witch Hunter for 20 years or more, but he never talks about his previous life… As a young man, Agis was on watch duty in the rickety watch tower guarding his home village. It was a bitter cold night, and he had a little too much warming brandy, which meant he was asleep when Beastmen raided the village, razing it to the ground with as the militia stumbled half awake and unarmed from their beds. Agis was awakened by fire and screams, and watched the whole thing unfold from the burning tower. When the Beasts had left, he stumbled half-mad from the ruins and somehow made it to the next village where the local priest took him in. When he finally recovered his senses and confessed his guilt, he found himself filled with the courage to seek vengeance on all of Chaos’ followers…

Adan Dammerung was a novice priest when he heard one of Luthor Huss’ fiery sermons. With a sudden certainty he knew he wanted to follow a similar path. Indeed, such is his unbridled fury and faith in the face of Chaos that he causes them to flee before him! Unusually for a Sigmarite priest, he wields a sword along with the typical Warhammer. “Sometimes Chaos must be crushed outright, sometimes it is a canker that can be cut away from the soul”. Dammerung acts as confessor for the Brotherhood, and as such is party to all Agis’ secrets.

Warmund Kurz is a professional soldier who fought in the armies of Middenland. He joined up with the Aeterna Speculam after his regiment was all but wiped out in battle with Orc raiders. The battle was turned when the Brotherhood arrived on the scene, Agis shooting down the Orc Shaman with a runic bullet in each eye. Kurz had no qualms in signing up immediately, bringing a couple of experienced men with him. Kurz is certainly driven, but not a fanatic, and his cool head and military training have become a key to the ongoing success of the Aeterna Speculam as a genuine battlefield force rather than a rag tag band. Kurz likes to take the fight to an enemies’ champions, and eschews either helmet or Witch Hunter hat, after he almost lost a duel with a very tall Chaos Warrior because he couldn’t see his overhead blows coming down!

The Brotherhood has many other notable individuals:

  • Von Halbling, possibly the Empire’s only Halfling Witch Hunter
  • Rolf, Master of Hounds
  • Faustmann Kantor, the standard bearer who can recite hours of Sigmarite litany from memory
  • Hartwig and Horst, the slightly unhinged flagellant brothers
  • “Skully” Johannes, the alcoholic one-man-armoury who is never separated from his precious skull…

Bloddie Firestarterer, Dwarf Quartermaster, responsible for the two important resources of fire and gunpowder. Which is why he has a lamp, not a naked flame…

Filed under Mordheim, Painting, Warhammer Tagged with , , ,

Mordheim – Part Two

25/11/2012 4 Comments

Game 2:

So after my game aganist Anthony, he took on Jim who was fielding a Skaven warband. Skaven are quite tricky to deal with when you have new warbands as they often come en-masse. (Apologies for the quality or lack there of, of the photos, light levels remain terrible here needing lights on almost all day round at the moment)

And so it proved. Anthony set up a firing line high up in the buildings, and advanced his warriors and Warlock into the centre of the board.

Only for the Skaven to come at them from both sides, and cause a lot of casualties. His archers not having good lines of sight as they were too far back.

And so Anthony did a quick sharp exit. And found that his Captain would be missing for the next three games, so went back to the start and set up a new warband – Dwarves.

Game 3:

Jim and I next had a game – and I tried to learn from Anthony’s mistakes. So I sent four combat guys rounds the edges of buildings, whilst my archers (all two of them tred to get a bit further foward to target the Skaven.

Only to find that one of Jim’s Heroes had got the Sprint skill, giving him a charge range of 18″ meaning he got into combat with my centre group…whilst the rest of his warband mobbed my combat guys. I came away relatively unscathed.

Three games, and its 4pm, so Anthony and I gang up on the ascendant Skaven in a roughly evenly matched game…

Game 4:

We set up on the raised area of the board:

Yet again, we were encircled and picked off by the Skaven and their pesky slings. Even before we could react, I’d lost 4 men, and utterly failed my bottle test.

The Dwarves (mostly Long Drong’s Slayer Pirate figures, plus an antique Grenadier model) decided to cut and run shortly afterwards.

Summary:

  • We had forgotten most of the rules !
  • …and the tactics…
  • What we did remember was used in good stead
  • Skaven are very good when it is low level warbands
  • They won’t get away with that again !
  • Its still a really fun game and you can pack loads of jokes into your warbands and their names.

Filed under Mordheim Tagged with , , , ,

Mordheim – Part One

25/11/2012

Before I moved to my current location (Carcosa), the Byakhees and I had regular, weekly games of Mordheim and Necromunda. However, in the past 6 years we haven’t played these games at all !

So after Anthony suggested we have a game or two, we set a date, and I found and (sort of) dusted off the scenery I’d built about ten years ago. As you can see, its made up from the original boxed set scenery (which was pre printed card scenery with plastic corner walls and other items), the expansion pack and even a ruin from Warhammer a boxed set. Then I got some 5mm foamboard, a lot of balsa wood, more of the plastic scenery sprues and a 10litre tub of textured masonry paint and went and build the rest of the ruins myself.

Jim was a bit late arriving, and had to finalise his Warband. So Anthony & I started off a game with Jim reffing. It was amazing we had forgotten so many rules in the intervening years. As a cut down version of Warhammer from several editions ago, it still adheres to many of the older rules.

I chose my flamboyant Marienburgers to play as an antidote to all the balck and dark colours of Dark Elves and BUF that I’ve been deploying recently. Mordheim is great for picking out all the odd and random figures you have. So we often dig out figures from the Golden Age. In fact whilst my heroes were all the official Marienburger figures, the supporting warriors and marksmen were old Citadel C series fighters, and the marksmen were Foundry Picts.

WE remembered that it was always wise to keep groups of figures close by each other – one of the special rules in Mordheim means an isolated fighter often will run for it when confronted by the enemy. Also getting up into the upper storey’s of buildings is good for shooting.

Not that it helped me much, having got some Wyrdstone, I had my hero, champion and two warriors put out of action/stunned by SAnthony’s Reiklanders and so bottled it and ended the game after a mere 3 turns ! All over in less than an hour. But it was good fun and I came away with a nice set of loot.

So began the adventures of: Captain von Geld’s League of Extraordinary Adventurers and the Crimson Permanent Assurance

Filed under Cats, Mordheim, Painting, Rules, Scenery Tagged with , ,

And Now for Something Completely Different: Mordheim

24/11/2012

Yup we had a few games of Mordheim today:

Byakhee Anthony had expressed a desire to do some Mordheim when we went to Colours.

So In had a quick rummage and found all the scenery I’d made 10 years ago.

Byakhee Jim joined us, and we had four games….

Loads of photos, so will be editting them tonight and publishing tomorrow. 🙂

Filed under Uncategorized, Warhammer Tagged with , , , , ,

Laserburn: Command & Control and ‘Bots

23/11/2012

Some more GZG items that In have unearthed in the Playroom, or bought at Colours:

I envisage this as the Command & Control vehicle for an Imperial Police unit controlling some drones and robots.

Foundry Arctic Grey, with white highlight. Windows GW foundation blue, and the lighter blue Fundry Deep Blue. Yellow for lights.

They come armed with different weapons on the underside – though both of these are the same, and I have a heavier drone stacked up ready for assembly:

Here are some small wheeled ‘bots which I imagine would be the eyes and ears of the Imperial Police, going forward and spotting the ne’er do wells:

Filed under 15mm Sci-Fi, Painting Tagged with , , , ,

The Sun has got his hat on….

23/11/2012 1 Comment

At last, a day when the sun is out and I am not hosting a game !

Finally some more painting, photos and varnishing.

Oh, and cats going out so they don’t wreck the place.

Even though they did like the fire last night.

I took natural light for granted until setting up this blog.

Some WIP.

Filed under Cats Tagged with ,

Special Guest Superstar DJ: High Elves

22/11/2012 2 Comments

Here’s Stuart’s latest efforts – High Elves.

But they’re RED !

Stuart’s rationale:

Yes, the red scheme was because this is my third High Elf army I’ve painted and I couldn’t face all that blue and white again. I wanted to do something different and the same applies for the desert bases, I simply did them to match my tomb kings.

This army is a fund raiser for ebay so I can finally buy a ‘realm of battle’ gameboard but in the event that it does not sell I will find myself lumbered with another army (one I think my daughter has designs on) – so I might as well have one that matches my other collection.

I tried to paint this quickly and started in August. Always looking for a short cut I chose to sort out all the armour by use of a silver acrylic spray (Humbrol I think). This was then ‘hit’ with a black wash and a few highlights of mithril (or whatever it is called these days).

For the red I jumped with both feet on the GW ‘brand new paint range’ bandwagon and used Khorne Red (base), Carroburg Crimson (wash), Wazdakka red (layer 1) and good old Blood Red for the final highligh (layer 2). In some places where extra contrast was needed I mixed in a little orange for the brightest highlights.

The turquoise accent came from nowhere really. I originally thought about a green but it hurt my eyes! so turquoise it was. Nothing clever just Hawk Turqouise mixed with a little white.

Most of what you see is done with a GW large brush. It’s quick and I find if looked after that they hold their point quite well. As I was told at art college many years ago it is not the size of your brush that counts its the quality of the point – I am sure I have heard a similar quote elsewhere about something else somewhere…

A bit blurry this last picture, but it shows the same sort of ruined Arabyan head on the base, which as Stuart comments, helps tie it in thematically to his Tomb Kings.

There are some more pictures on Stuart’s Flikr account including the finished swordmasters

Filed under Painting, Warhammer Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

BoB/RCW: Terek Cossacks

21/11/2012

Here are my Terek Cossacks. They are Copplestone Caucasian Cossacks (BU35):

In the RCW, the Terek Cosack host mostly supported the White cause, but was relatively reluctant to move far from its homelands, as were the Kuban and Don Cossacks which caused a lot of problems for the AFSR.

I chose to paint the models as Tereks, because of the blue colour of this host, which fits in well with my Colourful White Russian Army. Though I used a charcoal grey for their clothing to make them very different.

Modern day Cossacks in uniform. As usual, in the RCW it would be doubtful they’d have been so uniformly and so well attired, but for the table top we can do a bit of “what if”…and make a nice colourful unit that isn’t dressed in khakhi, more of which later.

All 15 in the unit.

These will go well with the Terek standard bearer I did earlier. I’m also getting better and more confidant painting horses, having done 30+ Cossacks, and well on the way to another 15+ Cavalry recently.

Luckily the sun has turned up this afternoon to allow these photos – it started out lashing down with rain, leading to flooding on roads nearby. Maybe tomorrow some more photos, who knows ?

Filed under Painting, RCW / BoB Tagged with , , , , , ,

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