Got some Cryx painted tonight

I was able to get in gear for the new year and paint some figures. Tomorrow is a Warmachine game night at one of the local games stores. I really prefer to use my own figures for army build type games, so I've been working at getting my Cryx faction built up and painted as quickly as possible. I started some figures earlier today and finished them this evening. Finished in this case meaning good enough for the game table. I have to return to finish up the Sea Witch and all the figures will need some base beautification and a top coat of matte acrylic. Here they are:



Back row left to right are Reaver Helljack, Brute Thrall, Helljack wreck, Bonejack wreck. Bottom left to right are the Revenant Unit and the Sea Witch.

Unless I get something done on the weekend I think this may be the only painting I get done this week.

Post-Christmas Goodies..

I did rather well for gaming related Christmas presents this year. I received some Cryx miniatures for the Warmachine game and the AT-43 Accessory set. I don't play AT-43 but the intermodal containers in the accessory set are very highly detailed, I'd almost say accurate. My plan with those is to collect more and make some manner of post-apocalyptic survivalist town out of containers and wrecked vehicles. I'll post pics when I eventually get started on that terrain project.

Also in the terrain department I received 3 plastic Pegasus Hobbies/Imex kits- Large Platformer, Large Hexagon, and the Chemical Plant. These are simply amazing resources for those who like to build Sci-fi terrain. There are so many possibilities I think I'll be delayed in using these in part by having to choose what to build.

The downside to the holiday season for me is always time. I'm no longer young and without responsibilities. The time between Christmas and New Years used to be open time. Not so these days. I'm a little bummed because this weekend a lot of my gaming buddies will be playing games. Oh well.

Still, I can't complain. I went to 4 game conventions this year, played in roughly 1 game every 1-3 weeks, and bought a lot of stuff. I'd call 2007 a successful year.

In my next post I will try and lay out my master plan for my gaming activities in 2008. Like all plans it is often useless after first contact with the enemy. The enemy being time and money..

This Blog is Alive Again!

So much has been going on since my last post in July. I probably already mentioned it but if not, I had a blast at Dexcon.

Then I went to GenCon in August. A bunch of us went out together in a rental van. I'll call my fellow travellers Mr. N, Mr. J, Mr. S, Mr. K., Mr. K2 and Mr. H. Originally we were going to take turns at the helm of the van however in discussions on how to occupy our time I'd offered to run a good ol game of D&D 3.0. I'd generated most of their characters based on their preferences, so it was easy for everyone to just jump into the game. They apparently had a great time as it occupied the entire trip there and back in the van. Mr. J was killed by a Hill Giant but brought back from the dead. At the very end, Mr. K was turned to stone by a magical trap but they carried his statue and the treasure back to civilization. We've actually continued to play, picked up a few players and it looks like I'm back to running a D&D campaign.

Of course we also had a great time at the convention. I went crazy spending money on discounted Starship Troopers. Hey, it was buy 1 get 3 free. You don't see that often. I also took the opportunity to try out a game of AEWII, the pulp style weird WWII miniatures game. I enjoyed myself although I got whooped playing the already losing side in a continuation of a campaign style scenario. I was a speed bump essentially. I did pick up some of their miniatures and also added some more Heresy and Hasslefree minis from the Fantization booth to my collection. Towards the end I finally broke down and bought some Alpha Forge Mephalians and Hydrissians. I also picked up the new B5ACTA book and new Conan RPG rules from Mongoose Publishing. And some figures from Wyrd miniatures, and some other stuff here and there..

And then there was the SPAM carving contest by the makers of the Redneck Life boardgame. Gret game by the way.. So I entered on a whim and came in 4th place with my SPAM Sphinx. I'm guessing I may have placed higher if it had been in Redneck theme. In hindsight I should have made it a miniature golf course sphinx. Still very funny. Here is a pic:



So in September my gaming crew also got me to take the plunge into Warmachine. In addition to some local gaming store purchases to paint myself, I went in on a group order for a painting service to get us the figures and paint them. Very reasonable price and they came back looking great. They arrive the beginning of November and I think I've played 3 games with them so far. I'm a dirty Cryx player. I've got the reputation now for using the Warcaster Deneghra and stealing other players units with her Dark Seduction power. I've gotten quite good at that.

And back in October I ran another big Starship Troopers game with a fellow GM. We combined miniatures and terrain for 20,000 points of SST stuff in the game. I posted some pics and a battle report on the Mongoose forum

So many other things in gaming to talk about. More about that stuff another night.

Bug Canyon Battle Report

Dexcon two weeks ago was a blast.

I'm a bit late in posting my battle reports, but real life often gets in the way of a good time :)

I did post game 1 with pics and a link to a slideshow over on the Mongoose Forum HERE

I haven't had time to post my second Starship Troopers game yet. Here are a few pics from the second game. The Mobile Infantry had a more difficult game. There were Bugs everywhere and the Plasma Bugs game objectives were never in any real threat.





















I also ran a 28mm Weird World War Two game with Victory Force miniatures. Below are some pictures from that game. I'd post more but my camera settings were off. I should spend the time to read the manual...

The Americans got shot up pretty bad by German mortars but the Germans had some unfortunate dice rolls which included their elite night fighting squad routing in the face of an American tank, and later an explosive dog caught in a mortar attack blew up causing a chain reaction in the special canine squad that resulted ina a blown up halftrack nearby..in the end the Americans were flanking the Germans making their defensive line untenable.

























The second game of Weird WWII didn't get run but I liked the terrain placement better:














I also had planned to run a ShockForce game on that Sunday. It was setup along with two of the eight factions I planned to use shown- JC Figures' New Eden Militia and Spriggan's Spugs with some old school 40K Zoats as mercenary allies. But sadly the game was not run due to lack of players on a Sunday morning.


































So I packed up my Shockforce game and I got into an afternoon game of B5:ACtA and had a great time maneuvering 2 Whitestar ships around against 4 other players and their 2 ships each in a last player standing game. I made a non-aggression pact with another player and it came down to the two of us dueling it out in the end. My dice finally failed and my last ship was vaporized but I had a great time. Sorry no pictures of that..

Tonight's Mission and other Stuff

I'm still getting last minute items ready for the convention. Tonight I'm painting 4 Stalwart Bug Field Generators and 4 Mobile Infantry. I actually have enough Mobile Infantry but I've got more than one color scheme. Rather than mix my brown armored troopers into my green armored Roughneck platoon, I'm making up 4 new troopers to fill out that platoon. Some of my brown "veterans" will be staying home. Then I've got to sort out into containers the separate forces with their unit cards.

Ebay has been a recent boon. I've got 2 more box sets of the SST game headed my way for about $35 each with shipping. Not bad considering that works out to less than a dollar a figure, plus the rulebook and some more dice. One can never have enough 6 and 10 sided dice and black is one of my favorite die colors. I also got a good deal on the Mobile Infantry Micro Platforms set. I had already bought the weapons separate from the crew as a bits order from Mongoose last year, so I didn't really need them but I decided I wanted to have the kneeling pose variety of the gunners. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on some other auctions..

Something else I won recently were some old Prince August molds for French and British Napoleonic cannon. They were about $8 each. I plan to attempt making naval gun carriages and using the barrels from the molds to make ship guns for a scratch built 25mm pirate ship. This probably won't be until Fall. I've also got ot get my 25mm Foundry Pirates painted. And of course any number of more attractive projects could come along and scuttle the whole idea..

Crunch time!!

This past week has flown by. I got a few more things done. Wednesday night I took a break to hand out with some gaming buddies at The Only Game in Town, aka TOGIT. I showed up early and ran a playtest of my Starship Troopers WASP platoon. It was a quick game and then everyone broke out into 1 on 1 games of Warmachine. I spent the time BS-ing with some of the other guys and before I knew it.. it was time to go home. One of my buddies gave me a nice resin Sci-fi dropship that is just perfect for some 15mm Sci-fi figures I've got. I'll showcase those in some later post when I have time to take some good pictures.

This past week I also went about laminating some unit cards for my Starship Troopers games. I might be wasting my time ultimately since the new version of the game is due out sometime August or later. They will still serve me well for the time being..

Dexcon is next weekend. That means I'm busy putting all my stuff together for the convention. I'm running 3 different types of games across 4 days so I have to plan my packing strategy. Thursday and Friday night's Weird WWII game items are for the most part already packed. I did that earlier today. I was also reviewing my SST stuff and found some things that need to be touched up or repaired. Not a big deal. I also picked up extra tote bins for some of the terrain pieces for my Bug Canyon boards. I still need to gather all my factions for the Shockforce game. All in all I think I'm on track to be ready.

I also got some painting done today. It was scenery, not miniatures. Crescent Root Studios makes awesome 25/28mm scale resin Middle Eastern buildings.

http://www.crescent-root.com/

I have 4 buildings, 2 towers, and an assortment of walls and gates to use for fantasy gaming. My Blackblood Orcs and Goblins will have a nice fortified village or I can use it as a desert town for a Pulp style adventure skirmish game.

June Accomplishments, July Plans

Well, I've got a far lot more accomplished than I thought I would in terms of painting and making terrain. Quite a bit more of Starship Troopers collection is painted now. Stuff I painted was all Starship Troopers related. What is shown are the support missile set of 2.




6 Reliant weapon platforms with 6 crews as well as the 8 Roughnecks from the CGI series.










8 female troopers, 4 Heroes of the Federation, and a CHAS unit.












15 WASP Troopers.













..and 20 Arachnid Warriors. That's 70 figures plus others I started that aren't shown.





All in all not a bad month. I really needed to get a lot of this done for the big convention game. Making a commitment to run a game is a great motivator for getting a lot of gaming projects completed.

My plans for July are just as ambition. I've already got a few things done which I'll try to share later this week. They include Mobile Infantry on quad ATVs and some alternate history WWII Germans. I have to touch up more figures that I started in June such as some Arachnid Mantis Hunters and Hopper Bugs. I'm also going to quickly paint up some Middle Eastern style village terrain from Crescent Root Studios. And I recently starting on a sculpting/conversion contest to make my likeness into a WWII figure from Victory Force. I'm a bit behind on the that. The good news is my green stuff from last year isn't all dried out.