Tuesday 24 November 2015

Space wolf lord on thunderwolf scratch built custom sculpt commission

This is my first sculpted commission piece I ever done. It took me a full 12 months to complete... but I was not very focused on it due to school. Even so the guy who asked for it has been a diamond, full of patience and encouragement the whole time.




 I think i have finally corrected my work life balance and time management so hopefully in the future i can do more of this kind of stuff for people. The torso of the marine is magnetized to allow for head swaps of which i am providing 3 individual heads all magnetized aswell. The dude comes off of the wolf too by a magnet so that the customer can always put the rider on another wolf or another rider on the wolf I did.


Mice and mystics heroes painted ....squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

So much kawaiiieee right here. Love this game and have great fun playing it with the Missus and painting these up was well fun. I don't like to do official paintschemes with wargames but. These are not armies but characters with stories in the story book (rule book source book) and artwork on their character cards. I like the artwork so much and I couldn't think of better colours for the minis anyway so I just went ahead and painted them to the standard.




Thursday 24 September 2015

onepagerules deathball!

Okay so I have a problem, a problem alot of us wargamers have...too many games! I like onepagerules because they are simple yet balanced, tactical and fun (being free doesn't hurt). The non onepagerules games that I play are: Gruntz15mm, LegendsOfTheOldWest and Dreadball. I recently sold all my dreadball stuff as I have mice and mystics on its way in the post and plan to play tail feathers (another plaid hat games product set in the mice and mystics realm). I felt the need to have a fantasy game in the traditional vibe (orcs,elves and dwarves) in that rotation to scratch that particular sculpting and visual gaming itch. The pics of the elf interspersed in this kind-of-review are my first attempt at NMM which was a good first attempt but clearly is not very good relative to what it should look like. He has no name yet but I simply call him MVP as he always seems to score and gets the ball in the right place every time, so I had to paint him first.


Having thoroughly enjoyed onepagerules killteam for several months now I had total faith in the dude and decided to download deathball  https://onepagerules.wordpress.com/portfolio/deathball/
This game is so much fun! like the other games from this guy it is literally a pdf of 1 single page and yet completely balanced, tatical (way more tatical than any GW game lol). So this game is played on a 2 foot by 3 foot table which is the exact measurements of my desk. I used an old bed sheet and marker pen to draw out the pitch which is basically a footy pitch with a line drawn down the middle, a small circle through the middle of that and a goal either end (upright sort of quidditch hoop, can't believe I just wrote 'quidditch'). The cool thing about this game is that there are no squares or hexes or hex bases just a designated area and players move in inches. Players have a control zone of an inch which also obstructs throws for shooting or passing aswell as players moving past them.




The key thing that makes this game fun in my mind is the activation: Players take turns having a chance to activate all of their minis, rolling 1, 2 or 3 dice. If they roll their activation stat say 4+ on any of the dice they choose to roll they receive an action. You may be asking "why not always roll 3 dice?" well the reason is because as soon as you roll 2 fails you turn is over and activation goes to your opponent. This makes the game interesting as 1 die rolled is the safe bet, a conservative approach would be to roll 1 die for all your minis untill your final mini who you roll 3 for as if he rolls 2 fails for instance it doesn't matter as the mini that fails twice still gets to carry out any successes so as long as this many dice are rolled for your 5th dude it has no downside. Say if you were down 2-0 however (first to 3 goals wins) it might be worth risking rolling for 2 activations instead of 1 for a few of your players and maybe 3 for your players with a 3+ activation stat. The game has a nice mix of player types and you can take any combination of them for your 5 man team. Balance is not an issue as all teams are the same statistically so the aesthetics are purely that but you could always take more heavies and blockers say if you were playing with orc figures and dodgers and runners if you were using elf minis.

The Goblin was my opponents MVP during our first game of deathball, my elf here scored 3 goals and this goblin scored 1, he should have scored about 5 though but kept fumbling the ball but for a scoring type of class he seemed very cack-handed yet good at punching elves in the face (I guess it was the way I modelled him !) The game makes use of terrain of varying types and a member on the forums has put forth experimental league play rules. The main rulebook itself is in a beta stage so lots of players and input will make this game even better.

Sunday 13 September 2015

Nuthin' but net 3 on 3 fantasy basketball miniatures tabletop boardgame

Yes you read that right! No it is not bloodbowl, or dreadball, or elfball or even guildball. I have discovered a game based on my favourite game ...basketball :)
Obviously the guy who wrote this game was my brother from another mother as we both love tabletop gaming and basketball. The game is quite old now and was never a hugely supported thing, it started off as a "two hour wargames" ruleset and uses their chain of reaction mechanics nicely. It was purchased by Impact Miniatures.com who now sell it but I think you can buy the PDF elsewhere as I did from some random website.
Basically it is played on a hex grid the size of a sheet of A4 paper (that is like the size or smaller than a text book for any americans reading) which you can print off from the pdF the rule book also has tokens and bits and bobs you can print off which represent players for all 9 factions, however it is clearly better to use miniatures. Impact miniatures sell a single team for this game but no other mini companies that I know of sell fantasy b-ball minis but bloodbowl type minis for fantasy american football wargames are easily converted (as are any minis tbh). I have not procured or produced any suitable minis yet but am slowly reading the rules and pushing about nightgoblins and headless orc minis etc to get to grips with the game. I have printed off the court and stapled it to card and built myself a little basketball hoop to make it look better. The board has a hoop drawn on to it but I wanted a 3d one.
I am liking the sound of the reaction system as it makes the game very involved and both players are always rolling there are almost no roll that goes unopposed so it keeps everyone engaged and thinking about what is going on. The teams all play slightly differently due to having different stats and I have found the 2 rule expansions which the creator put out freely for anyone online. These add ons allow for league play and extra rules like legendary characters and league play. I can't remember The teams off of my head by rote but include all your usual fantasy fare such as elves(great shooters) dwarves(hard as nails) orcs (strong) beastmen(strong and smelly) goblins(weak as, but they get an ogre who can dunk on fools) humans (jack of all trades but good at jack 'ish)  and my 2 teams I have claimed ratmen because I love GW's skaven and mantics veermyn and the kermetians who are...frogs lol. Yes it appears this guy writing this really is my long lost twin he also has a weird obsession with frogs... I bloody love frogs heh heh. So as I am a glutton for punishment I have added yet another game to my list of games i 'play' (talk about playing and build/paint minis for) and am planning to sculpt some frogs. There are some great frog minis out there but as I am an aspiring sculptor of sorts and love basketball I just had all these images of frogs doing stereotypical basketball poses and stances. I want this to be a real showcase type game that doesn't just shout "fantasy warriors like skeletons and all that crap but ...oh wait they are playing cricket and badmington" that is silly. This is incredbily silly but I want it to look unique and so I am going all out. Here is my design for a frog point guard (not really postitions so to speak in this game but that is what he clearly will look like) I drew it really quick and rough and then penned it in to look a bit less shoddy. Leuca "the dart" Bentley!
because he is based on a dart frog I can paint him crazy colours when I'm done sculpting it and hopefully it will be insanely good (if I ever do it/pull it off!) I'll let you know if the game is as good as I hope it is. Goodbye :)

Saturday 12 September 2015

One page rules killteam Work in progress Astra militarum(?SP??) Imperial Guard.

My opponent is promising to start a mechanicum killteam. I purchased her some ruststalkers and have built her a load of Imperial allies and a kastellan robot from a mantic dreadball giant robot, a third party space ork gun and some greenstuff.
The ruststalkers will be painted by her but I cannot resist the urge to paint this dude. The fact that I posed this robot so that he is charging makes me laugh but also looks menacing somehow...this will be fun. The imperial guard/AM are mostly finished, I'm running the metal sniper mini as a ratling! I love the monkey on his shoulder. The ogryn is nearly done but needs alot of finessing, the stormtrooper with melta fun is w.i.p aswell but the vet with sniper rifle and the powerfist stormtrooper are both complete. I used procreate to sculpt the aquila on the fist. 

I have purchased another mini for her http://wargameexclusive.com/shop/imperial-soldiers-miniatures/female-commissar-power-fist/
to lead these AstraMilitarum guardsmen or ally with the clankers/cogworshippers.

Thursday 10 September 2015

One page rules kill team custom scenario.

So I have been spending time on building and painting and not gaming much when it comes to the hobby. But we got in a game of onepage rules kill team! My favourite game to play at the moment. Funnily enough, having just painted all of my Tau I decided to field my fully built yet fully unpainted chaos killteam lol. Truth be told having just finished a 5 game campaign which ended in a draw (I'm sure there is some kind of tie breaking mechanic but we happy with a draw and wanted to use the updated army lists.)I felt I wanted to play a different faction. My chaos faced up againts Tyranids in a A-symmetrical combat, her nids stood at 450 points my chaos at 275! We designed a quick scenario for this one off game, the game would end at turn 4's completion with whoever had the most models (minis not units) present in my "base" an A4 paper sized flat rectangle elevated 2 inches from the table. This was placed in my deployment zone bang in the middle, this was a really fluffy scenario with the Nids totally outnumbering the defenders and swarming over and past them.
The defenders comprised of 2 units of cultists with autoguns and the machine gun upgrade, a unit of zombies, a daemon prince with wings and mark of slaneesh and a chaos raptor with twinlinked lightning claws mark of slaneesh aswell as meltagun. The enemy consisted of hive tyrant with heavy venom cannon, broodlord, 2 or 3 genestealers, 2 units of homagaunts, unit of gargoyles, warrior with death spitter, and I think that was i. I deployed my cultists on top of my base my zombies in some area of terrain rocky environment on my right flank and my daemon prince on my left behind a wall. My raptor stayed in reserve to come in via deepstrike.
One squad of cultists left the base climbing down and walking out into the open they kept the nids at bay and managed to bounce a few assualts by homagaunts (termies standing in for homagaunts) even though they were not hand to hand profecient they seemed blessed by their tainted gods.
The Daemon prince (primed black mini shown here) flew across the battlefield attacking groups of tyranids but got bogged down by overwhelming numbers and retreated then seeing a flock of gargoyles heading for the chaos stronghold he turned back wheeling around on his wings and sword over to engage them aerially. He did not kill any but managed to ground them stunning one and smashing another against the wall as it tried to fly over. 
The chaos raptor with his melta pistols inbuilt to his lightning claws expertly deep striked firing his melta at the tyranid hive tyrant in a gambit to weaken the assual from behind the enemies lines. He hit the tyrant square in the back but must have been too far away as the chitin mearly crisped with an awful stench. 
In all the confusion the chaos didn't notice or were unable to stop the tyranid warrior breaking through the outer perimeter and heading for the base, he was close to his objective.
The raptor tried firing at the tyrant(large black broodlord proxy) and failed to kill him again but then assualted later and was killed in the attempt. The tyranid rushed the base but were held back by the cultists with a barrage of gunfire. The daemon prince game to the aid of the cultists and killed the broodlord.
At the end of turn 4 the nids had overwhelmed the defenders but it was a close call!Lotsoffun

Mice and mystics and juggling life

Summer marches on and I begin my undergraduate honours project (dissertation but with more sun burn/tired legs and less carpal tunnel) The thunderwolf goes well and is nearing the finesse stages but I will post on that seperately soon. In the meantime I will show one of my side projects Brodie for mice and mystics.

Well basically, I purchased the game believing there to be a miniature for the games bad guy. This is not the case as is with several boss type characters and the like which are sometimes represented by tokens or cards. Seeing as the heroes and the majority of evil minions such as the rat guards are represented though some people have made their own versions of Brodie, it was one of these images that I mistakenly believed to be an official part of the board game as it looked so good. No stranger to sculpting and converting miniatures I purchased a papo 12 cm cat figure for about 4 quid on amazon and converted him. 




My game is winging its way to me in the post and I can't wait to get adventuring with Prince Robin the rest of his entourage who have been magicked into mice by an evil soceress. I have heard nothing but rave reviews of this game which has been out for several years now and plan to get all the expansions aswell. I am keenly keeping my eye on the progress of tail feathers aswell which has been described as xwing/attack wing meets mice and mystics (but looking at plaid hat games blog posts on mechanics it appears to me to be much more than x wing with mice, one to watch)