A New Game

19/08/2014 2 Comments

Note, this is a Gratuitous Cat Post

Now, as previously posted, every morning when I walk across to the Post Office, the two Cats do NOT follow me. They are never there waiting at the end of the drive when I return to the house.

Now, Spades and I have invented a New Game. As you can see, along the side of my drive is a series of brick pillars that are my neighbour’s boundary. Some of these are almost head high.

Clever cats, have decided it would be really good to jump up on them and demand fusses when I walk back up the drive.

This is so much fun, they’ve done it every day for the last week. 😉

But this is very tiring, so both of them, have to have a nap. Funny that.

Filed under Cats

WHFB: Ruins

18/08/2014 2 Comments

Recently I’d noticed in the last few games that my scenery options have become a bit stale, with only about 6 or so options to roll out, so a quick rummage around in the Play Room and I found some old GW LOTR ruins that I’d put together but never painted – ideal to spice up the battlefield. (Along with more stuff to come)

There are two main sections each about 7 inches long.

They’re made out of quite thick slabs of plastic as you can see. Thought there is some warpage of the pieces, nothing too much to worry about.

So I used some spare movement tray sections as the paving to place them on.

I added some of the bricks/stones I’d bought years ago to act as the rubble along with some other offcuts. I left the main pieces separate so I could paint the internal surfaces.

I painted them up to a lighter grey to reflect the LOTR heritage, then did the usual washes of brown and green to weather them. Add on some bushes and ivy and hey presto should be done.

Second piece to come in the next few days.

Filed under Scenery, Warhammer Tagged with , , ,

WHFB: Dark Elves cause Carnage – Conclusion

15/08/2014

Gav called it a day at about 9.30pm, so we’d actually been playing for about 8 hours and still only managed 3 turns.

We surveyed the scene:

  • Several of his key units such as the Black Orcs were gone.
  • He had lost his General and BSB.
  • Half of his Shaman had also been lost.
  • All three of his Cavalry units were gone, along with his trolls.
  • I had smashed the centre of his line, and still had all my key units intact.
  • The dice were really against him in every single phase.
  • I had had a lot of luck, bar a few failed Stupidity tests.
  • I now dominated the magic phase by quite some way – Blade Wind is a really horrible spell to use against Orcs & Goblins in their massed rank units.
  • His remaining units were scattered (and leaderless(), whereas mine were relatively still concentrated.
  • He had little that could take down the remaining Hydra and Eric, and nothing that could stop the CoK units.

Gav concluded that most of his army had been trashed even before the real hard units of mine had engaged properly.

Still at least we’d had some nice pizza and an Indian take out and had an enjoyable day. 🙂

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with , , , , ,

WHFB: Dark Elves cause Carnage – Part 2

15/08/2014 2 Comments

So at the end of turn one, we’d had a lot of combat and it was pretty close, probably just in my favour.

I charged my Silver Talons and Breathy the Hydra into Eega Ugezod’s Black Orcs, and also launched a Blade Wind attack beforehand to whittle down their numbers.

The wolf riders got a flank attack from a CoK Chariot. In fact, this game consisted of lots of flank attacks from units, which meant we rarely had the issue of numbers of ranks and associated steadfastness coming up.

The Spider Riders and Trolls got wiped out, and Spitty and Redark (Hunter in the dark) [cue twlight theme music for this very very scary name] my General followed up (Mengil’s couldn’t as they are reavers and spent time tearing up the corpses of their victims).

ASnd another one bites the dust, the Warlocks defeated the Wyvern and rider and moved on to another bolt thrower crew (all too easy).

Another flank attack, as Gav pushed the Orcs forward along with the Goblin horde !

End of turn 2, and its all a mess with so many units in combat. Great fun !

Well it was for me, as I had the Orcs for lunch, allowing my General to run them down, and Spitty turned to face the goblins.

The Orc Arrer boys did however over-run the Shades, but ended up pursuing them into the realms of nowhere they could do anything useful for the game as my CoK cavalry bypassed them. As I had no static units they didn’t get back into the game.

Gav’s right flank were similarly out of the game, having spent a couple of turns squabbling and then trying to move towards the middle of the battlefield.

the Night Goblin bowmen rounded the ruins, released the fanatics, who failed to make contact with my one unit of 10 RXBs and again were effectivelly out of the game.

The Orc Arrer Boyz (second unit) finally got into a scrap with the Spearmen, but Faygin Cheapsoul (my bargain basement hero with SFA) saw them off, moments after the goblin horde had received its own flank charge from Mengils who carved a path of destruction through them (again, unable to follow up).

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with , , , ,

WHFB: Dark Elves cause Carnage – Part 1

14/08/2014

On Saturday, Byakhee Gavin A and I had a big game of WHFB – 5k per side – as he was able to game well into the evening as it was one of his respite days. A battle at 5k points value is quite large, so we were filling the entire table when deploying armies.

Of course the first thing I always have to do, is ensure his troops asre properly based. After 25+ years I am still doing this as he manages to find figures unbased or on the wrong bases.

Fixed !

I started out well, winning both the choice of table edge, then who did vanguard movement first, then who went first !

I deployed my scouts well forward.

Then the vanguard as far as I could forward – which resulted in me blocking Gav’s Wolf and Spider Riders being able to make a vanguard move.

Except, for the second set of Spider riders which moved into the middle of the table.

Entertainingly, Gav had put the Savage Orcs on the table, facing backwards – a prescient move as it turned out. he turned them round to face the enemy forces before we started. 🙂

My Dark Riders, were unable to resist temptation and charged them in the first turn.

And the second Dark Riders, and Warlocks also charged in the first turn – I have said previously that the rules for WHFB reward aggression, and that is doubled down in the DE rules. My army as a whole advanced rapidly.

The Warlocks broke the Savage Orcs much to my surprise, whilst the two sets of Dark Riders were held by the Wolf Riders (on the flank), and the Spider Riders in the centre.

Gavin then brought up his Trolls in a flank attack (there were a lot of these in this game, and we rarely had to worry about counting ranks in combat resolution).

His Lord on Wyvern moved in to support the beleagured Shaman and bolt thrower crew.

And his Orc Arrer Boyz flank attacked what remained of the Dark Riders – luckily I’d augmented them with Blades of Aiban so they were doing ok, but…

The Dark Riders were wiped out, and the Trolls and Spider Riders followed up into Spitty the Hydra, and Mengil Manhides’ troops, which was a mistake on their behalf.

Whilst the other Dark Riders were similarly despatched, with the Wolf Riders following up into my Shades.

Fortunately the Warlocks killed the Shaman, destroyed the bolt thrower crew and wounded the hero on Wyvern, winning the combat so they reformed to face the Wyvern and rider…

And this was all in the first turn !

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with , , , ,

Goblins, Gremlins, BT and the Bolshevik Internet Revolution

13/08/2014

Yes, the Internet Gremlins have been round again, with my phone line being AWOL for 7 days (and broadband AWOL for 3 days pretty much). BT pulled their finger out today after an irate phone call.

The engineer turned up and gave me loads of tips on how to speed up my internet access, ahead of the superfast broad band our county is about to receive in the next few months.

Whilst he was fixing my connection which involved several trips to the Exchange, which I knew was the source of the problem much like any server room, I managed to find and build a load of Goblins for my mate Gavin.

And finally, I photo’d the Red Mounted Command I did on Friday. Another high five commander, but at least the Whites will get a variant !

Tomorrow, I should have uploaded all the ~30 photos of the WHFB game Gavin and I had on Saturday.

Filed under RCW / BoB, Warhammer

WHFB: Eric & Co

12/08/2014

Finally, I finished off the Beastmasters (the & Co) for Eric, and finished off this model.

The two Beastmaster’s are now integral to the base of the Hydra/Khyrbdris. I painted the female’s hair pale blue, to match in with the rest of the army, and the monster’s pale belly.

One is perched on a rock, which is hollow, so this was filled to help weigh the figure down.

The second is much more 3-D, wielding a chained halberd.

I had a really good think and asked Byakhee Gavin about the quality of the figures. Compared to the metal beastmasters these two plastic figures are very “flat”. They are more dynamic, but at the same time more boring and I think that’s why they took 3 months to paint simply because they were simply boring. GW need to think about what they are doing – plastic gives a wider range of options of fantastic poses, yet at the same time they can be very boring.

Filed under Painting, Warhammer Tagged with ,

Hanging on the Telephone

08/08/2014

Well a week’s hiatus broken.

The bust ankle turned out to be the worst problem. Not just a twisted ankle, an infected one that got really bad. The doctor concluded it wasn’t gout but the result of a blood infection from an insect bite I’d had last week. Cue swollen ankle on one side, and swollen foot for much of the week.

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So I’ve spent much of the week doped up on anti-inflammatory painkillers, and then anti-biotics that the doctor prescribed.

Now the phone is up the spout with random phone calls coming in saying someone can’t take my call. Somehow, I think BT will get an earful shortly.

On the upside, as well as the BoB Russians painted posted previously, I have a Red Command group finished, more sandbag emplacements finished, Eric and his handlers finished, and a WHFB game lined up tomorrow so there should be a resumption of normal posting rates over the next week. Plus a few more surprises.

Chin, chin. 😉

Filed under Uncategorized

BoB: Russians in German kit

08/08/2014

Finally, I got the squad of Russians in Stahlheims painted:

These were the Copplestone Ragged White Russians, with Great War Miniatures German heads that my mate Richard had pinned for me. They got painted half with German feld grau (Foundry WW2 Early German Grey), half with Russian khaki (Foundry Moss).

They can represent the Western White Russian Army raised in 1919, especially the Lieven troops that had as many (if not more) ex German troops as Russians in them operating in the Baltic and Byelorussian regions. They used Russian and German kit interchangeably, and later some of them used British kit as well.

They could also do as Red Internationalist troops – freed German/Austrian POWs at a pinch, though these would arguably just hav had access to Russian kit alone.

I figure I can field this unit of 10 troops, alongside each of 10 Russians, and 10 Germans to make a proper western or Baltic White Russian force easily enough. This would give me the generic 30 Infantry we use in most of our games, with each unit being distinctive. Of course it also means I use up all the off cut pieces created in the process of making the mortars and crew seen elsewhere.

So, as I have the 10 Russians done elsewhere, now I have to paint up the German unit, along with some suitable command group figures.

Filed under Painting, RCW / BoB

Computer Says No

02/08/2014

New posts might be a bit irregular in the next week !

Yesterday my iMac account melted down and refused to let me access it, and hence I lost access to all my files. So I set up a new account, and went to retrieve my files from my back up system. Only to find the back up system had failed to do its (automated) job properly.

Much gnashing of teeth, rending of hair and wailing later I went to bed.

Fortunately, with my Admin account I have now got access to my files and am busy retrieving them for my new account. In the process, I will be making a few changes, sanitising the files, weeding them and generally tightening things up. I’ve also got to go and find all my favourite sites on the web and re-bookmark them unless I can find an admin function to copy them from the noew defunct account profile.

Due to the volume of data I’ve accummulated over the last 10+ years this involves large chunks of data being moved around so I might be able to post some photos of the latest painting I’ve been doing.

Trouble comes in threes they say and after this week I agree: flu; bust ankle; and computer failure.

Filed under Uncategorized

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