Friday, February 24, 2012

Feeling Good

So I've gotten some of my 25/28mm painting practice figures done or near-done, and I'm feeling pretty good about them - sometimes I need to remember to "trust the technique" and not look at them from 2 inches away.

So here's the royal guardsmen, only needing some touch-ups:
A couple of elves (75% done) and a human prophet (done) in the middle:
My old dog Webster (done), in 25mm, Ordant of the Five Hands (done), and the lizard king (done):
The lizard king in close-up, need to get some vegetation between his toes later, but the painting's been wrapped up for a while:
He's in the background above, but here's a giant I've had around for 25+ years:

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

New Dossouye Novel by Charles Saunders

The next installment in the adventures of Dossouye, that war-bull riding heroine of Charles Saunders, is now available at Lulu. This is a full novel, rather than the collection of short stories of the first installment (also available at Lulu).

Here's the sweet cover art:Although technically her world is different than Imaro's, I'm going by the 1970's map and keeping them together for my 2mm and 10mm fantasy Africa projects. 2mm is my mass battles project using Advanced Legendary Battles, 10mm is my skirmish project using Eureka's cool figures (including war-bulls!). I just need Eureka to come up with more stuff (rhino riders, etc.).

I ordered my copy of Dossouye II last week, it should be here today or tomorrow. I'll let you know what I think. Charles' website is: here

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Painting Table Update

This is the second of two belated blog updates I'm posting, although this one is doubly belated as I was defeated in an effort to post it yesterday. These are some photos, already somewhat out of date, of my ongoing practice painting in 25/28mm.

Some of my old D&D heroes, including Ordant of the Five Hands (second from left) and Swerlin the Magician on the right. The lizard king's been finished now, with some nice yellow eyes and dirty toenails.

Three dwarves:

A couple of elves centering a bike-riding ape. For some sort of sci-fi or post-apoc gaming, haven't quite decided what to do with my monkeys, particularly as I'm doing more in 15mm now. So post-apoc is in the lead at the moment. Plus they're fun!

And here's another shot of my practice Earthman on Mars figure. I need to work on the flesh a bit more, but I'm happy with it so far. Eyes, not so much. In fact, that's one reason I've been avoiding painting, I really hate doing the eyes!

In terms of my New Year's resolution, I'm still obviously working on 25/28mm painting before finishing up the 6mm that's on the table. I hope to only spend another couple of weeks on these test projects.

I'm supposed to be wrapping up cardboard terrain, and should in the next day or so. I gave myself a bit more time since for most of January I was only home to sleep, shower, and change clothes. Next up on the B table is prepping aircraft.

Blasters and Bulkheads Game 3 - Raid on the Rabid

Hmmm, this took longer than I had planned, but I have a couple of back to back blog updates that have been sitting on my camera for over a month. January is a busy month for travel for me in the real world, so the last few weeks of not much happening in terms of painting etc. wasn't surprising, but this game of Blasters & Bulkheads is from early in the new year.

As you'll recall, in the first game Chewbacca was a casualty and captured by the Imps. In the second game, the rebels successfully captured documents telling them where Chewbacca was being held. So in this third game two task forces, one under Luke, one under Han, raided the Imperial frigate the Rabid to rescue Chewie.

The ship tiles are from Fat Dragon, and most of the 3D props are too, though some are from WorldWorks and others from Micro Tactix. One of my goals in this game was to try out the Essence (aka Force) rules, using Luke. I also gave the rebels a randomly determined secondary goal of having R2D2 download data from one of the computer terminals throughout the ship. Other possible secondary missions included rescuing the other prisoner, capturing an officer, stealing a shuttle, and disabling the engines.

This first pic is from the end of the first turn, the rebels have entered the Rabid at two (randomly determined) points, on the left is Team Skywalker, working towards the engine room, on the right is Team Solo, working towards the prison cells. The Imperial patrols' direction had been randomly determined, and they were programmed to move in that direction until an alert had been given.


A close-up of Team Skywalker - Luke, R2D2, C3PO, another wookie, and a team of troopers:
Team Solo - Han, Leia, and a team of commandos:
By the end of the second turn both rebel teams have been spotted, and the rebel troopers have been whittled down in Team Skywalker. Han did a good job wiping out most of the Imperial naval troopers guarding the bridge, but there are a team of stormtroopers still coming up behind them and cutting off Leia.

At the end of turn 3, things are getting worse for the rebels. The stormtroopers won their showdown with the rebel commandos, and two patrolling stormtrooper NCO's finished off the rebel troopers in Team Skywalker. Somehow the wookie in Team Skywalker was unable to do anything to a simple naval tech in hand to hand combat!

Things are pretty much done for the rebels now, despite Han wiping out another naval patrol. The wookie is down, and R2 and C3PO have retreated back to their ships, and Luke is just finishing off his combat before retreating too.
So the rebels are in deep trouble now, the heroes barely got off ship before it entered hyperspace, and Chewie is still a prisoner.

I think I made a few mistakes in setting the game up. Because I hadn't statted up individual stormtroopers, the stormtrooper patrol consisted of two NCO's, who are better quality than typical stormtroopers should be. The techs in engineering were in the same boat, they should have been done up as henchmen. The end result was there were way too many Fate Dice in play for the Imperials.

I haven't figured out what my next game will be, I'm moving towards playing some Songs of Blades & Heroes fantasy next, and need to spend some time building some more cardboard terrain. But somehow, Chewbacca must be rescued!