Recon 2016

Recon has always been one of my favourite shows.  I remember on of the very early ones in a church hall in Headingley with about five stalls.  It's grown quite a bit since then.
I met good friend 'Merlin' there and we had a good look around.
There were some impressive demonstration and participation games going on.

This WWII game featured the Home Guard of Walmington-on-Sea.  The REdcar Ironbeards were responsible.

I've always admired these guys (Sheffield and Rotherham Wargames Society, I think).

 Their teddy bear western games look great fun, if nothing else the minis and the terrain are excellent.

Dragon Rampant by the East Leeds Militaria.  I play this in 15mm, their 28mm game looked splendid.

Witch racing anyone?  I would have happily tried this, but I think I got there at lunch time.

Purchase-wise it was a slow day for me; just a couple of packs of Reaper Bones, a pot of paint and some clear bases from Sally 4th.  Usefully, the proprietor of Sally 4th is experimenting with ways of multi basing for clear bases; very useful for Warpath.

We also several boxes of the new Dr Who miniatures game from Warlord.  There were Judoon, Xygons and a box containing the 10th Doctor with four companions (seriously, Wilf?).  Nice, if a bit spindly to my eyes.  No rules though, so I'll wait.

I think there might have been another box of aliens, but I can't remember what.  Also I seem to have lots of tick marks drawn on my arms.

Mantic Open Day part three

A final look at the odd bits and pieces.
One of the highlights for me was the tour of the workshop.
In previous years Mantic have provided a 'show special' miniature as part of the admission price.
This year they ran tours of the workshop, demonstrating how the models are developed from artist's drafts to molds to minis.  We then chose one of several minis to take, and watched the process of casting.

No sign of any chocolate rivers though

We also saw some painted masters of the main Star Saga minis.  I am looking forward to this, not least because many of the minis will do very nicely for Deadzone.

If you liked this, check out T'Other One's blog as he has more pictures, especially of anything zombie related.

Mantic Open Day take two

As the game is soon to be released, The Walking Dead was noticeable by its presence.
There were some nice painted versions of the wave two minis.

I particularly like the new Rick figure to the left near the back (Spoilers!)
There were participation games running all day as well;

The bit I enjoyed the most was the table with undercoated Walkers and appropriate Army painter paints. 

Both T'Other One and I had a go and managed a good tabletop standard in under 15 minutes.

A blurred T'Other One inspects his Walker 

Out efforts near the centre of the picture with the gray bases.

But the really impressive painting was on the big display boards;

There are lots of little story vignettes if you look closely, such as Rick and Glen with the bag of guns.

Mantic Open Day

Last Saturday was the Mantic Open Day.  I managed to get there with good friend T'Other One, and we had a great time.
As there was quite a lot going on, I'll cover different topics in different posts.
Firstly there was Kings of War.  You couldn't miss the huge display game put on by COGS.

A lot of very nicely painted and models troops and terrain, the windmill sails even turned, and apparently there was a light inside the church (though it was too bright to see).

I don't know how it turned out, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, and it demonstrated one of the strengths of Kings of War; being able to play massive games.

There was also a participation game involving flying creatures.

I've certainly never seen this done before.  It looks great fun.  Sadly I never got the chance to join in.

Also for KoW, one of the rules committee was running a tactics seminar.

Finally, I managed to bag a troop of Orc Gore Riders in a bargain bag; excellent value.

Crafting Fungi

I promised you an amusing fellow, here he is.

The party met him in the same wizard's tower they met the various monstrous plants.  For some reason he got called 'Bob', which seems to be the group's stock 'silly NPC' name.  As only the party wizard could understand him, via Comprehend Languages', there were lots of 'I am Bob' jokes.

Bob is a Reaper Miniatures mushroom person I painted especially for the adventure.  He was so much fun that I will get teh other tow minis in teh set done soon.

Bob wasn't alone; there were lots of other fungi in the chamber and I made these myself.

The main material for all these was that rubbery foam that packs some electrical goods.  I thought the large pores in it worked well as the holes the fungi use to distribute spores (or something, O Level Biology was a long time ago).

The stalks were cocktail or barbeque sticks, and the smoother texture on the caps was DIY filler.  The branches on the Violet Fungus was taken from a plastic coral from a pet shop.  Extra shaping, e.g. the stalks, is hot glue.

Everything was hot glued to washers and painted.

I made four of each kind, so I have plenty to use in the future.

Quick Update:

Bob came second in an online painting competition on the DMs Craft forum.

(O.K, there may only have been six entries, but even so)

Ideal Halloween plus more from the garden

With perfect timing Mantic's The Walking Dead: All Out War arrived today.
I've tried the playtest version already and enjoyed it, so I am looking forward to playing the full version.

Nice box art

Plenty of minis. this is the Kickstarter edition, so includes quite a bit more, I especially like the Walker Ronnie figure.

The components are good, and the resin crashed cars are extra fun.

A little while ago I showed an in game shot of my latest modelling, some less than peaceful plants for D&D games.  Here are some better shots, including the Ambush Vines T'Otherone mentioned.  All are made using DM Scotty's techniques.  They were fun to build, and looked good on table.

Two hungry Ambush Vines

Two (hopefully) less vicious plants.

Next time I'll show you some more of my crafting to demonstrate what an amusing fellow I can be, and I'll get some comparative shots of the Walking Dead and Conan minis.

Garden Crafting

Here is a quick picture of some of my more recent crafts for RPG.

You can't see much in terms of individual crafts, but the overall effect of a chamber full of tropical vegetation comes across nicely (I hope).

The pieces were simple to do, merely pieces of plastic plants hot glued to washers and textured.

  

I'll put up more detail, as well as some better pics if anyone is interested.

Orc Krudger

The first 'Orc tober' post, a Krudger I painted for a local painting competition.

The mini is the orc warlord from 'The Warlord of Galahir' expansion for Dungeon Saga; actually the resin collector's version.

The figure is very nice, and (confession time) the first resin miniature I have ever painted.  I wish now that I had got more of the resin specials for dungeon Saga.

I went for muted 'naturalistic' tones, and he is based on broken pillars to fit in with my Kings of War orc army.

Sadly he didn't win, though gaming group honour is preserved, as that category was won by T'Other One.

A Big Box of Hyborian Goodness

Well two actually.

This is the long awaited Conan Boardgame Kickstarter. Finally. 

The two boxes contain the game and the stretch goals.  I didn't go for any add-ons, just as well as they are being released later.

 Box 1, the game itself.  A nice bit of artwork that would look good on the cover of any Conan book.

A rough idea of the contents.  Remember this is only one box out of two.

At first sight not very impressive.

But there are two trays of minis, jsut drink in all their plastic glory

O.K. lots of identical poses, but they will come in very useful I'm sure.

Box two, our hero in a more contemplative mood.

I hope that gribbly thing is inside.

Rules and cards

Another two trays of minis, plus some bigger bits at the top

Second tray, including the furniture.

At first glance I'm very impressed.  I should confess that I got this lot more for the minis than the game, however, I'm sure we can have a fun game or two as well.

I will comment more on the quality of the minis in a later post when I have had time to fully inspect them.  My initial thoughts are that they are of good boardgame standard.  They are the equal of the Dungeon Saga minis, if not slightly better, and easily better than many of the D&D prepaints.  The only disappointment is the furniture, which has plain surfaces rather than textured to represent wood etc.  Dungeon Saga scores far higher on that.

Long Time, No See

"Meesa Back"

After a while of sorting things out and trying to find the inspiration to post again I thought I ought to get back online.  (No it's not just the excuse to start an 'Orc-tober' thread).

I haven't been idle with crafting and painting, including a lot of bits for both my D&D groups.  Yes I now run two groups, as my daughter asked me if I could introduce her and a group of her friends to the hobby.  I have been building floor plans and some furniture ans similar to use in the games, more on that as and when I get round to posting the pics.

Whilst I have your attention, I should mention Mantic's latest Kickstarter (yes, thats a surprise).
Star Saga, or Dungeon Saga in Space.  

July Already, Round-up and Tidy Up

This month will be dedicated to tidying up and finishing off various projects (not that an army is ever really finished).

First up is a re-basing project I have mentioned before, my 15mm Rat-men.

I have had these for many years, originally painted up for Hordes of the Things, then Warhammer in 15mm. I tried them last year for Warband, now I'm getting them ready for Dragon Rampant.

This is a 24 pt force, the difficulty was more what to class things as than do I have enough.  I hope to try them against Merlin's armies soon so I can decide what makes a balanced and effective force.  As a contrast to my orcs I wanted to go for a big army, it's only one unit short of the maximum allowed.

The minis are very old Pendrakken figures (technically 10mm), also available in strips from Kallistra, and the paint job is pretty old too.  I certainly wouldn't paint them like that if I were starting them now, fortunately they are mostly painted already, just a bit of basing to sort out.

I'll try and get round to showing what I got done in Deadzone June tomorrow, and maybe more on what I have planned for this month's stuff.

Plague Progress

There was a break in the weather so I was able to spray the Plague and I have just based them.

The 'General' and his specialist weapons (I used the mortar crew for the general, I think with his greatcoat and binoculars he looks much more important than any of the others).

Rank and file (rank in more ways than one)

Plague Dogs.

Painting was pretty much as standard.  I'm not completely happy with the skin tones, I don't like the official pink but I wanted to go for some sort of 'off flesh' colouration.  I played around with various combinations of flesh base coat and washes, then I hit the least garish one with Army Painter Softtone wash (the same colour as the lightest dip).  This pretty much gave me what I wanted, but meant that if I was using the softtone dip rather than strongtone I would have to wash some areas before the dip.

The dogs have different base coats, one is a light grey, the other bone white.

Clear bases again, and I had a few minor issues with smearing superglue.  I will see what can be done (very little I suspect), but they don't look too bad.