Bushido: Wu-Zang Father of Shadows

One more Bushido miniature finished, another Bakemono character called Wu-Zang, Father of Shadows

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I really had to work hard at doing this little fellow to complete him. He has so much detail on him I was struggling to work out what was going on in places. That thing on his shoulder is a bat, there are two more on his back as well. I *think* that is a monkey skin on his head but don't quote me on it

That leaves three Bakemono left to complete all of the Bushido project. I'm going to paint something different first though, need to get away from green skin for a bit

Mid-Somerset Wargames Club 14/2/2013

Here's the usual photo report of the games that were happening at the Wells club last week. It was quite a quiet night, due to the date that it fell on I suspect a lot of club members thought it wise to stay at home :)

Steve Jones rolled out another playtest of his XCom game this week. Following the previous game, we decided to try a few rules changes. It followed the same format of a group of grunts (six this time) investigating the area and clearing it of any extraterrestrial activity

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The 4 foot by 4 foot table set-up this time included a small fuel refinery and pumping area

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The soldiers entered the table and split into two man fireteams, with a pair heading up onto a roof to snipe at anything seen. This proved very useful as they picked off multiple targets including Insectoids & Thin Men

The bad news came when a pair of scuttling Chrysalids appeared and proceeded to rip their way through two troopers. Only with concentrated fire & were they brought down and the soldiers decided to fall back to the evac with their wounded

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One thing we found in this test was opportunity fire had become too powerful, troopers could easily take down normal targets before they did anything. We will revert back to the original rules for the next game

The only other game that was being played this night was a Warhammer battle. This has to be the first time I've seen Warhammer played in a long time

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I unfortunately can't make the club this week so there won't be another photo report for two weeks

More Odds & Ends

I'm still trying to stick to my plan for February, painting odds & ends to clear a few projects. I probably spent a week just assembling, cleaning and undercoating quite a few figures, including ones I'm not likely to get onto painting this month :/

So, with the project clearing in mind, to start with I painted these four 'eavies from Crooked Dice that finishes off the last of their figures. These are obviously inspired from characters from the film, A Clockwork Orange

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Next, I painted up another one of the Bushido Savage Wave figures I have. Kano is a smaller oni, standing on a 40mm base this time. Finishing him leaves me just four more Bakemono to clear that project as well

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Bushido: Bobata the Bell Ringer

With February marked as my 'paint odds & ends' month, I've been busily working away assembling & undercoating figures in the background, hence the lack of newly painted figures for a few days

However, the first one was completed last night and it was a biggie! Having only six figures to paint to clear all of the Bushido figures I decided that was something to target this month

So, here is my second oni, Bobata the Bell Ringer. Armed with a massive temple bell and sitting on a 50mm base, he is a brute of a figure. Assembly was a bit tricky, the arms & head were easy enough but the bell, coin & chain required a bit of careful pinning & gluing to get them in place as strongly as I could make them

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Painted over a black undercoat using old Citadel Foundation Mephiston Red as a base, P3 Khador red & highlight to build up his skin colour

Mid-Somerset Wargames Club 7/2/2013

This week saw the first outing of Firestorm Invasion for myself. The forces were painted as January's pledge target for both myself & Steve Jones and we wanted to try a really simple game just to get the way the rules worked

Taking a squadron of each of the different vehicles available it was simple stand up and fight game. Things started well for my Terrans when I eliminated the Dindrenzi tank hunter squad on the first turn. However, that's as far as my luck went, I never won a round of initiative and several rounds of in-effective game card drawing meant I was shot to pieces across the table. It was a lot of fun though and looks likely to be a 'pick-up and play game' for us

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We have quite a few players of Warmachine/Hordes at the club (myself included) and this evening saw the first couple of games this year being played. They were both 1 on 1 games and featured some weird & wonderful figures (especially Rich's converted Cryx Deathjack below!) 

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This week the organised game was a 15mm colonial affair. A thin blue line of French legionnaires tried to hold off waves of Zulu warriors. From what I heard afterwards, the Zulus won by chasing the French from the table, but took heavy casualties

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Mid-Somerset Wargames Club 31/1/2013

Following the non event of the previous week due to snow, there were no less than five games occurring at the club this evening

Steve Jones has been working on a set of rules & figures to be able to play miniatures games based on the XCom computer games. This was the first outing and really just a playtest of the rules to see how they worked. Once again I supplied the scenery from my collection whilst Steve supplied the figures that he has been building up

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As this point things were going OK for the grunts as they just had insectoids and floaters to deal with. When the Mutoids made an appearance things dramatically changed with only one figure making it off the table (only because I turned and ran!) We discussed the rules afterwards and following that Steve has done a few little tweaks that we will try out again in a few weeks time

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On the 'big table' there was an impressive ancients battle taking place with lots of cavalry dominating proceedings

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On a more skirmish scale, there were a couple games of SAGA from Gripping Beast being played. I don't know much about these rules but they do seem quite popular, using only a small number of figures to play out a game (a bit of a trend now a days)

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Changing scales and setting, on another table there was a WW2 try out of the latest version of I Ain't Been Shot Mum from Too Fat Lardies using 20mm figures. I must have a closer look at these rules sometime myself .. 

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Mid-Somerset Wargames Club 17/1/2013

For this week, I wanted to try a game using a set of rules I had previously used for a large scale zombie game a few years ago. These were written to handle ten or more players but, for this game, only three players took part on a table roughly 3ft square. We had previously run games based on the Left4Dead computer game using Crooked Dice's 7TV rules but wanted to try these rules to see if they would give us a fast paced game. They did work but we felt they need a bit of work to tweak them to give a bit more of a challenge to the players

The scenery was from my modern building collection of Bachmann houses, self built tenements and printed & based roads from World Works Games that seem to get a lot of use

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The game was a simple affair, search the buildings to find the safe house. As usually happens this turned out to be the last one they went to!

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Whilst this was playing out, a historical skirmish game was playing on another table. I believe they were using the Muskets & Tomahawks rules but forgot to ask ..

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There were some lovely painted figures on show, I wish I'd taken more pictures

Mid-Somerset Wargames Club 10/1/2013

I thought I would post a few pictures of games that have happened at my local club over the past month or so. These are from the night of Thursday the 10th of January

Starting off with the first week of gaming (the first club night of the year is always the AGM) two separate games were played. A group of six of us played a game of Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. This was a simple throw down of three Imperials facing off against three Rebels. As there were two players who hadn't played before I spent 20 minutes before the game running through the rules whilst Steve sorted out somewhat balanced sides. The game flowed really well with the two new players knowing the rules well enough after a couple of turns to be able to work things out for themselves. Due to some atrocious defence dice rolling, the game resulted in a major victory to the Rebels. Still, a highly enjoyable game

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This Imperial TIE pilot found himself in all sorts of trouble after powering up the table he got hit by a torpedo from the Y-Wing that knocked out his controls for the following turn. The result on the next turn wasn't very pleasant ..

 

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Whilst this game was happening, a large multiplayer 28mm Wild West shoot out was playing on the large organised game table. This was played using a set of club created Old West Skirmish rules. As a club, we have one of these games every other week to give members and visitors something to play

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Firestorm Invasion: Terran Alliance

Well, they took me an extra day into February to finish but the Terran Alliance starter box for Studio Sparta's Firestorm Invasion is now complete. That hits the first target of 2013's pledge, hurrah!

The plan was to get these done ready for a planned game at Wells next Thursday. Steve Jones is painting his Dindrenzi force and I'm matching it with these Terrans. Nothing like a deadline to focus the mind ..

Anyhow, enough rambling, here are the pictures for proof. These are 10mm scale miniatures, the vehicles are resin whilst the armoured infantry and odds & ends like turrets are metal. All of the turrets have magnets added for transportation and just to look cool on the table top :)

Painting was straight forward, black undercoat, dark grey base, light grey drybrush working on the panel edges. The tyres are black lightened with Vallejo German grey and the tracks the same with a third slightly lighter grey. The bases are done following my usual technique

First up are three squads of Valenfyre main battle tanks. I've used the time-honoured barrel stripes to differentiate the squadrons

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Next we have two squadrons of Tryptich APCs that can call in turret support that is dropped from orbit

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These are the turrets that can be dropped, dual M54 autocannons and quad 90mm cannons

 

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These are two squads of Goliath MAU armoured infantry. So far, FI doesn't have ordinary infantry and these are the closest it gets to them

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For air support, there is this Shikra assault gunship. Handy for popping up from behind cover and shooting up the enemy. Quite fragile though ..

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And finally, to complete the set, here is the objective that it comes with. Obviously handy as either scenery or something to build a scenario around

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So, that's all completed and ready for the game next week!