View From The Window - Not Really A Gaming Post

I have had an easy day. The house was empty and aside from a load of little jobs, I have only a little time to do some gaming stuff. By he time I had done everything I was to tired to paint anything so I sat down and took a look out the window. Oddly there was a pheasant on the fence staring at me.

A bit more interesting that the usual squirrels.

Inspectors

I am on a roll again. Well no, not really. I finished this off last year and I am just now getting round to posting the picture. I got these last year, so not the oldest figures I have but at least it goes to show I am painting what I buy. I say that and try not to think about the boxful if dark age lead I have floating about.

I got these last year when Heresy were having a sale. I am getting better at not doing the "shiny" I must buy it thing. Age brings patience I guess. There were a few minis that I wanted from them so I took advantage of the sale.There is another one somewhere but I couldn't find it when I got round to basing it so I suspect that it will get painted  up as something else.

Je Suis Charlie

Having lived through one terrorist bombing and came seriously close to another, I am not  a big fan of people who try to use terror to try to get their own way. I have been watching the news unfold much of the day. I hope they get what they deserve and I am pretty sure that this does not involve any number of virgins.

What worries me more is that people will act on this. I can see UKIP having a field day. The more reactionary we get, the more reactionary the terrorists will become. I also feel for those who will suffer because of the actions of a tiny minority of Muslims.

Religion should not be used as an excuse to do these sort of things to people. It makes me question the merits of religion at all.

My thoughts are with the victims and all those who are suffering because of it. So what else is there to say. Je suis Charlie.

Space 1889

I guess I am getting carried away with the new year. It's given me the urge to do something on my blog. I hope to at least achieve as much this year as I did last year. Maybe I'll even break to 200k barrier. I am not going to get very far if I don't actually post something.

So, I was at the gaming club I go to on a Monday night this week. New Year, New Season, etc. So I have started playing Space 1889 again. I have always liked the background and I guess I am getting into Victorian Science Fiction again. 

The game is set on Mars and this time we had a wedding ceremony to go to. Nobody happened to mention that the ceremony involves the groom and eight of his chums battling through a maze filled with monsters to prove that the groom, who seemed a little on the fragile side, was worthy enough to marry a Martian princess.

It started with a dead end. I don't think the figures were meant to be wolves but some Martian equivalent. As well as being quite handy, they were also infected with foaming dog fever (it may have actually been something else but foaming dog fever was about the size of it).

My character is quite gun focused. He is an older chap and whilst he is okay at fighting, shooting is what he does best. when we entered the arena, our guns were taken off us. So I was a little aggrieved that not only did the bad guys in the next encounter have guns but that I didn't get one. Not that martian muskets are much good.

The next thing we found was I think the wirst of the lot. Apparently it was actually a tamed down version of what it is in the book. It somehow has a phase shiftt thing around it making it difficult to see. One of the other players had gone in the wrong direction when the fighting started. When we had killed all the guys with guns, I ran to help him out. That's my character in the background.

 

We did eventually manage to kill it. I was fascinated by the model and kept thinking I want some of these.

 

The last battle was the hardest. I actually had more fun in some of the other battles but I guess this was the hardest. Three big beasties and a bigger, faster beastie as well. The bigger beastie was very fast and equally unpleasant.

Big Beastie

A fun evening out. I just have my eye on buying some new toys.

Pirates - Arrrrrrh

Just before Christmas I finished playing a Savage Worlds game of Pirates of the Spanish Main. I really enjoyed the game. I had played in it the camapign previously for one session and enjoyed it so much I decided to join the game for this run.

This the fnal session and the big battle. I think we had naffed off the Spanish a bit. It might be something to do with the fact we kept sinking their ships and stealing their gold. It was a bit of overkill to send out half their fleet after us. I guess it was the way the Spanish were back then. Big ships, big guns and all the machismo of being a sailor. Ahem.

It was a good game and we gave the bad guys a bit of a drubbing. Aside from enjoying the game as played, I was reminded what a flexible system Savage Worlds actually is. You can pull in whatever you want from the gaming world, like the cardboard ships, and make it work for you.

Demons

Just a quick post really. I got a few foundry demons last year. I liked them enough that when I saw some more on eBay before Christmas that I thought I'd get some more.

One them is bigger than the others which I think fits the range and might be the same as one of the ones I did a while back.

Whilst I was having a search round for stuff to paint I found this. I think it's an old GW night horrors mini. As I had the red paint out, I thought I might as well give this a whirl. Not my best work and I really struggled with this one.

Finally some more demons. I need to have a look at the teeth and eyes before I spray them with some varnish and do the basing.

Clearing Up

I haven't done much painting. I will rephrase that, I haven't done much painting that didn't involve a roller. Some might say, uncharitably, that this does not end up much different result than usual. Still the desk clean up continues.

I am mucking about with some stuff I started many years ago and never finished. Then I restarted them when I didn't have a magnifying lamp. My only real mission at the moment is to clear the desk and I guess these show that I am getting a little bit closer. Some bits in the picture below have already made their way back into long term storage.

This is what the work bench looked like at the beginning of December. The only stuff that is finished are the alien eggs  (which are a little too dull to post) and the half-orcs. The Alien eggs date back to the late eighties I think.I suspect that they would be worth quite a bit of money on eBay, for the lead rather than the paint job.  I was well into doing stuff for Summerland/Scavenge, Skirmish, Survive/Death By Trees at the time and they were all that I could find that I wanted to paint.

These are some gangers which I think I got from EM4. A lot of them got converted into zombies a long time ago. They got picked up when I was short pf something to do in November. On the plus side I think these have been in the queue for about ten years.

These are some modern soldiers that I got about twelve years ago. The idea was to use them for a post apocalyptic game probably involving zombies. Now I am considering using them in a Very American Civil War game that I have been planning for a number of years. They are British SAS and American Marines.

I hope that I will finish them off in the next week.

Bad Guys + A Happy New Year

Well despite he odd bit of urgent action last night, the New Year arrived as expected. Happy new year to you all. Hope you had fun and your hangovers are now forgotten. No Mayan's to ruin it this year. This post is a bit of a cheat as I finished these a few days ago and have just  got round to posting the pictures of them.

I am always looking for bad guys for games. It's one thing giving the players a choice of characters, it's another giving them a range of bad guys to fight. I seem to be doing a lot of antagonists at the moment. I wanted a villain and the Mordred character miniature from West Wind fitted the picture nicely. I doubt the character I use will be called Mordred but I am pretty sure he will have most of the same characteristics. I have a female magic user that I plan to use as Morgan le Fey esque character from Mirliton which I have also been working on along with a necromancer type from West Wind.

Mordered

In my head, I see the character from the Merlin mini series rather than the more recent Merlin series. I guess I would be happy if the players felt that I had built up something like the mini series.

I am not a big fan of painting figures in black but what other colour can you paint a bad guy who has everything else. I haven't been too confident painting a lot of black on a mini but these haven't turned out to bad. After painting some GW ringwraiths, I kind of got some confidence to do something a bit more intense.

When I started painting the Mordred figure, he came with a few others that I thought would fit in nicely and one from another pack that also seem to fit the plan. So some more got painted black just to fit in well. Every bad guy needs henchmen after all. For some reason a mash up between the Talon Company from Fallout and various characters in Skyrim also came to mind. I'm not sure where a Private Military Company would fit into the ninth centuary but it's high fantasy after all.  I then started thinking that they might do for something like the Night's Watch. Sometimes good guys wear black. I might just have to paint some more.

I am hoping to do a bit more work in Janaury so there should be a few more posts coming soon.