X-Wing - Game 1 - Political escort

Hot on the heels of the Battle Cry game, my son asked to play X-Wing. We decided (or was that I decided) to play the first mission in the back of the rule book, but using the very basic quick start rules.

Here's how it went.

It was over fairly fast. My son flew in with the Ties and broke up my formation, but tail gated the shuttle. In my reading of the rules you can't take a shot if you are in base to base contact. I tried to persuade him to ease up on the accelerator. There were many tears after I shot down the one TIE. I'm not totally sure why as I thought we were passed the "it's only fun if I win" stage. So it may be some solo X-Wing in my future.

Battle Cry - Game 1 - Pea Ridge

Well I finally went and did it. I played my first game of the 10 games 10 times challenge. It was the second scenario from the rule book, Pea Ridge. The ccbattlecry.net version is here. It surprised me that I hadn't played Battle Cry since Oct 8th, 2012. That post did remind me of a bunch of links for playing the game solo. I ended up playing the way Barks did here. One thing I added, albeit midway through the game, was a rule for those cards that talk about ordering the number of units equal to the cards in your hand. Since this solo version only ever has you draw two cards at most, use the commanders rating (ie how many cards they can hold) for this number.

(Well shit. I wrote the rest of this post from here and then it wouldn't publish. Apparently it didn't save either. Thanks blogger.)

It took me a couple of days to put this together, my notes were lacking and memory faded so hopefully this makes sense. As always, it will take me a few tries to hit the sweet spot.

Welcome to Darcy Perry of Hits to Kill, who has some awesome Oldhammer chaos on the page right now. I love the Slaanesh champion. He also writes several music blogs, but I can barely keep up with the hobby stuff right now.

More to come soon.

Painting supplies and a Welcome

Well... my back is pretty jacked up. I finally went in to the chiropractor and he said I had strained the Psoas, Quadratus Lumborum and Gluteus Medius as well as caused some disc irritation. You haven't lived until you've had someone dig their fingers into your abdomen while you try to raise your leg behind you. Good times.

In the interim I've ordered and put together a nail polish rack to hold my paints. I believe I first heard about this from Big Lee, it's only taken a year or so to implement. Interestingly enough the craft paint bottles appear to be similar in size to nail polish bottles, so I can fit 60 of them in the rack. I got mine on Amazon here.

I should have bought two.

I also decided to buy some of the Nail Polish agitator beads after watching Les Bursley's video on stirring paint. I got them here, 100 ball bearings don't seem like a whole lot when you get them in.

I haven't tried it yet, but I have had paint gush out of the dropper bottles on me so I wanted to try this. I also haven't put the dropper bottle in my drill chuck yet.

I'm also excited to try my Rosemary & Co. Series 33 brushes, once I can sit in a chair with out passing out from pain.

Good service and I had no problem with customs.  These are short handle, pointed.

Before I go I'd like to welcome Faux Gamer of Nerdus Interruptus. Some interesting thoughts on movies etc.

Instead of bombarding you with a stream of consciousness, I'm going to try and keep things around a single theme. Perhaps reigning it in in this way will help me to regulate posting more effectively.

10 games, 10 times. The 10 x 10 challenge.

Since I've been bed ridden the last two days with a bad back, I thought I'd take some time to think about the 10 x 10 challenge.

I believe I first read about it here on the Itinerant Gamer and then here on Tabletop Diversions.

I don't believe I'll bother with posting it to Board Game Geek, or worry about getting 100 games in over the next five months, but just try to select games that I want to play and play them. So while I was lying down and trying not to have a back spasm, I came up with the following list:

• Battle Cry
• X-Wing
• Death Angel
• Machinas
• Roman Seas
• Armor Grid
• Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Ed.
• Squad Leader
• King Maker 
• Swordplay

So lets break these down a little.

Table top games:

X-Wing, Machinas, WFB 3rd Ed, and Swordplay all fall into this. Roman Seas and Armor Grid could also fall into this category or be their own category since they are both print and play.

Board Games:

Although Kingmaker and Squad Leader are what I would call "War Games" they are from the subset of games that were played on solid game boards with cardboard chits. As opposed to other games that had folded paper maps. Battle Cry has more of a parlor game feel to it, like Risk but is still fairly nuanced.

Card Games:

Death Angel was, surprisingly, the only card game on the list. We have played a fair amount of Munchkin around the house, so that may be why I didn't think to include it.

So I'm hoping to play some new games and break out some old ones that haven't seen the light of day in a long time.

And if you think to try this out for yourself, let me know how it goes.

I'll try to get the ball rolling this week.

Finished figures, Pine Bark, Magnets, and a new lens.

Hi All,

I've been rushing to get these figures finished and realized a few omissions late in the game. I won't dwell on the half empty aspect.

I give you the Blood Moon Boyz:

At first I wanted to paint them for Orctober 2013. This then got pushed back to Curt's challenge and they were supposed to be the first unit I painted for that. They sat there about 80% as i tried to meet the bonus rounds and never got done. As is usual for me they don't rank up perfectly. I tried to vary the shield position to make it more visually interesting. I thought I had some fluff already written for them, but all I found were notes.

"The Blood Moon Boyz are the militant wing of the Orcish Revolutionary Council (O.R.C.), not to be confused with the Orcish Revolutionary Coalition. Splitters! They are part of an Anarcho-Syndacalist commune that allies with other groups of Orcs to kill things and spread the words of Karl Orx and Froedrich Mangels. They have no banner, as that is a trapping of the self perpetuating autocracy, and they have no permanent leaders but rather appoint a rotating executive officer for the week."

On these guys I used my usual method of block color, grunge wash, drybrush highlight and then a few spot details. The bases are my current method with the clay, texture gel and sand followed by flock and static grass.

Next up is my Roman command:

Thentuwion! Thwike him vewy wuffly!

These guys are okay. I got into get it done mode and now see how I could have made them better.Oh well. The only thing I really worked highlights on was the lion pelt worn by the Signifer. These guys are 1/72 Italeri plastics from the Roman Infantry Set 6021.

My new strategy is to try and work on 4-5 figures at a time and get them done. That way I can stop playing with half painted armies.

Here's that pine bark I picked up near Echo Summit:

Although I already have a ton of stuff for making rocks, I couldn't resist.

Magnets:

I hadd been looking for the push pin magnets for some time and finally found them at Staples. Each pack cost me $3 and some change.

My plan is to use the push pin ones for mounting a wire to hold banners and/ or markers. We'll see how that works.

Bob Cordery showed how you could use these to hold metal base figures for painting. I read about it here, but he also wrote about it here. Or it could just be a floating disc for your wizard.

Lastly, I bought a new lens for the camera, all these pictures have been taken with it. While on vacation I got an email about an Amazon warehouse sale. One of the things thy had was camera lenses.  I found an 18 - 300 for $100 less than retail and became enamored with the idea of having one lens for all occasions when I am travelling or taking pictures at Football games and changing lenses is inconvenient. So far so good, although I still have a ways to go in learning how to use it, or the camera for that matter.

I'll leave you with a parting shot illustrating the one new cool feature. You can dial in depth of field.

For some reason I couldn't do it quite as well on the finished figures.

What's on the horizon.

Hi All,

Been back from vacation for a couple of days and just trying to get back into the swing of things. Here's a few pictures.

Looking North to Lake Tahoe from the head of the Desolation Wilderness trail near Echo Lake.

One of the parental Chipmunks that live in front of the cabin.

Three baby Chipmunks playing near their den outside the front window.

A Stellar's or 'Western' Blue Jay.

The house on the Eastern shore of Lake Tahoe, purportedly built by Adnan Khashoggi.

Site of some free pine bark for modelling terrain.

Back in the valley, 2 of the 3 Peacocks and a Peahen.

A cliff swallow peaking out. (Very lucky shot.)

So I only took 189 photos for this trip. As usual you get the scenic ones, as I am forbidden by SWMBO to show her or the kids.

Anyway we had a nice time.

I have to run off and prepare dinner as we have another online gaming session tonight on Roll20. Steve will be the GM tonight and we'll be playing Dungeon World. I had hoped to edit all my stuff from our Call of Cthulhu sessions already, but it hasn't happened.

I'm also intrigued by the concept of playing 10 games 10 times (the 10 x 10 challenge). We'll see if I have the gusto.

Oh! And check out the Google+ Oldhammer community. If you're into that sort of thing.

New Talomir Tales post and Welcome.

Got in another Talomir Tales battle here.

It went pretty quick, you'll see why.

Also a quick welcome to Geordie an Exiled Fog of Geordie's Big Battles I found his blog through some links to painting up WW2 Russians. Nice stuff.

And I found out why my flight was probably canceled. Here's a picture of one of the last flights getting out of Phoenix on Thursday night.

There's no Boob like Haboob.

Have a good one.

Sending Curt's Entry Fee

I finally finished those late war Germans! Here they are in all their glory.

Sorry for the shadows, I only had one overhead lamp handy and the light from outside was pretty weak and indirect. I also used flash and just the Macro (Flower) setting on the camera.

I like how they came out in the main, particularly the camo. I think the build up of grey was a nice technique, I will continue to explore the idea of shade, mid and highlight. To me the wash is still what made it come together. I used my grunge wash recipe (4 Raw Umber : 2 Burnt Umber : 1 Black) all over and just Burnt Umber on the flesh. I also mixed black into my ancient Boltgun Metal, because I wanted to be black but more metallic looking. I do have a metallic black but this came out better. I had difficulty with the hair on Steiner and Meyer. It wasn't really sculpted and I'm not sure my dabbed on highlights were totally successful. Schnurrbart's mustache may be a tad too subtle with the highlights in raw and burnt umber. Stransky's eyes were also a tad problematic, I'm worried that he looks a little too Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture show. The only other thing I did was use Vallejo Matte Varnish everywhere except on the Schmeissers, there I used the Liquitex Matte Varnish as it always comes off with a slight shine. This is something I wanted to try after dulling down all the armor on the Treyine figures. This seems to be a workable solution to "too matte" on metal.

These guys were fun to do and I learned a lot. Most important lesson? Get some decent brushes. I think this is probably the thing that is making my life the most miserable when I paint at the moment.

I will endeavor to keep doing some painting every day so I can whittle away at my pile and actually have nice looking, finished, stuff to game with.