US Forces Get Some Bods

Time for a quick post to catch up on some recently completed for my Konflikt '47 US Army. It's too late on a Sunday night to go into these in depth so I'll let the pics do the talking...

50 cal HMG and crew

Mudskipper Medium Jump Walker with Bazooka upgrade

And so you can get a sense of the size of the Mudskipper, here's a comparison shot with "Junior", my Coyote Light Walker from the US Starter Set. Disconcertingly, Junior is about twice as heavy as he has metal arms and legs as opposed to his big brother who is all resin.

That's enough show and tell for one night. Back to the AHPC IX prep!

Cheers,
Millsy

Kill Team - Heretic Astartes - Half-Dozen Second Cousins of Chaos

I've played a few games of the new Warhammer 40K Kill Team game of late, enough to convince me that it's worth me painting up a team or three.

My mate Pete kindly gave me a bunch of old plastic Chaos Marines he had scored off fleaBay a while back. They were in a pretty poor state paint-wise and a couple needed some repair and re-positioning of arms and weapons but they were certainly serviceable and most welcome. Last night and on and off today I have been speed painting five of them as Slaanesh to form the core of my team, somewhat tongue-in-cheek named the Half-Dozen Second Cousins of Chaos.

These guys were once members of other chapters but their particular perversions were simply to out there for them to be tolerated by proper wrong-thinking Slaaneshi so they were exiled, left to drift through space and time until they found each other.

From left to right we have Brother Click Bait, Brother Big Brother, Brother Dutch Oven, Brother Crocs (hence the horrid green feet) and Brother Coldplay.

I have a bunch of plastic Cultists assembled and ready for painting too. Those should go under the brush starting tomorrow night and will likely be finished next weekend. Suggestions for names are most welcome, and that means YOU Evan :-)

Cheers,
Millsy

I ATEN'T DEAD

HEAR, O MY PEOPLE, FOR I AM RETURNED...!

*crickets*

...where's everybody gone...?

Life has a habit of steamrollering you, and with assorted family health and work issues, it's been hard to find time to scratch myself, let alone paint, game, or blog. But we're out of the woods, for the moment at least, and I am determined to find time to stop and smell the flowers (or at least base a few flower tufts).

Just to show that I have not completely abandoned the path of hobby righteousness, here's my first project since March (yep, the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, no less!) this year.

A birthday was approaching, for a family member who loves unicorns, so here was an opportunity to make something she'd enjoy, as well as getting my hobby mojo back.

Here's the dry run for the design; a Secret Weapon circular resin base, with a rocky crag made from blue extruded foam, and a 'tree' harvested from my mother-in-law's garden (the roots of a woody weed). The Unicorn is a Wizkids figure from the 'Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures' range, and is quite a nice sculpt, with a good sense of dynamic movement.

The base was given a coat of sand and pebbles as groundwork, and sealed with a PVA/water mix. The tree and foam rocks had already been glued into place using the trusty hot glue gun.

The initial blocking out of the unicorn's colour scheme had Millsy and Russ calling him 'My Little Unicorn'. It's not finished yet, guys...! I dialled back the pink with a wash of purple ink, and the golden horn and hooves were inked with brown to tone them down a bit.

I then went to work on the base. I decided to use Milliput to texture the rocks and improve their durability. I hadn't used it before, but it works a treat. Extra twigs were used to make tree roots, snaking over and between the stones.

I hollowed out the top of the crag, and glued the figure into place, filling any gaps with Milliput. Once it had dried and been painted, it was time to dress things up a bit. Reindeer moss formed the foliage of the gnarled tree, while the ever-popular Tajima1 flower and grass tufts were put to good use to suggest a forest glade.

The vignette was attached to the wooden base of a cloche I picked up on eBay (since this is intended as a display piece), et voilà! 

Quite pleased with this one, and it's encouraged me to come up a few more vignette ideas for down the track.

And here is the completed piece, chilled to perfection and served under glass!

It's been good to get back into harness, and I'm glad to see that I can still work to a deadline when it comes to the crunch.

What's next? I'll be honest, I'm not completely sure, but there are some old Foundry figures which are piquing my interest in things Bronze Age, and monsters are always a good fallback when you want to go wild in the basing department. Or there's that half-finished Frostgrave warband left over from two Challenges ago...

Stay tuned!

Ev

Atteint! Fast-play Jousting Rules

Recently Kapatin Kobold a.k.a Alan Saunders posted a free set of fast-play jousting rules entitled Atteint! on his blog. Alan encouraged others gamers to give them a go and provide some feedback so that exactly what we did last night!

Four of us got together and matched off once each against all the other players. A match consists of three passes with the aim to hit or if possible unhorse your opponent. Here are our four protagonists, plucked from our Warhammer Fantasy armies:

Sir Bacon of Sandwich matched against Sir Croc of Dundee and...

... Sir Redback of Dunnyseat matched against Sir Groovy of Ghoulies.

Alan's rules have a nice elegance about them and seem very well balanced, giving a good Hollywood feel without sacrificing playability. They certainly play fast once you know what you are doing and we finished in under two hours.

As you progress towards your opponent you attempt to increase your three stats of Balance, Aim and Force, focusing on your preferred stat but trying to put enough increase into the other two to ensure that you a) strike your opponent and b) break your lance or even unhorse them when you do hit.

Sir Bacon of Sandwich (my guy) won the field on the day, unhorsing his opponent in all three matches, although we has himself unceremoniously dumped on his ass in the third match too!

Yep, that's a bacon-flavoured triple snake-eyes. Woot!

In summary Atteint! are a great little set, perfect for beer and pretzels gaming on a wet Friday night. Overall there is very little wrong with the rules that we could see. They could possibly do with a little re-work to make them a little clearer in intent in places I guess e.g. can you increase a stat multiple times in a turn?

Here's a few other suggestions for you Alan...

• With no customisation of your knight each protagonist feels a bit samey-samey. Perhaps adding a half-dozen low-impact "characteristics" that each player can choose one of to give each knight a little variety?
• Consider limiting the number of Favours as at one point we had 3 or 4 backed up. We did assume unused ones carried over from pass to pass (but not match to match).
• One thing we thought would be a cool tweak is to add +1 to Force if your knight moves 2 spaces on the turn they meet.

Thanks for these Alan, we had a blast and will definitely play them again!

Cheers,
Millsy

A Mudskipper and Walk

Some more goodness arrived in the post this week for my US Konflikt '47 force. Having already completed the starter set plus extras I'm now adding some flexibility and shininess to build things out to 1500 pts. Today I finished the painting on my Mudskipper Medium Walker, armed with a pair of light autocannons, a 30cal MG and a brace of bazookas. Another lovely kit and a joy to paint.

I've also got a 50cal MG team assembled and undercoated, plus a unit of ten Firefly Jump Infantry in the same state. This week should see those most completed I hope.

Given the weather is absolutely stunning at the moment (drought notwithstanding) I managed to convince myself to go for a decent walk just after lunch. It's been some time since I have been round the Shaw's Ridge / Blue Gum Swamp loop track near home so I tackled that, going clockwise which means I climbed up Shaw's Ridge instead of the easier downhill route. It's about a 10km loop and took me roughly 90 minutes with the odd stop for photos.

Eggs and bacon in full bloom

50m+ blue gum

Sydney sandstone slowly eroding away

Cheers,
Millsy