Yearly Archives: 2014

War Room – The Grand Opening and some games got played!

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It’s been quiet on the blogging front for a few weeks now. While other lucky gamers around the world have been at Adepticon and Salute, I’ve been working on the room, which was all but complete by last Saturday, and had the electrician in again yesterday for the final touches (installing a second flouro light and some spotlights, as well as cabling the alarm and some other stuff). Now all that’s really left is a bit more clean-up, some blinds, and perhaps even a split system aircon/heater (at my awesome wife’s suggestion!)   So just shy of the lights being installed, some friends came over for a gaming night on Saturday. We started with a big game of KoW where I GMed/refereed the three players per side (I only remembered to take one pic, so no battle report unfortunately). Three of the six players had never played anything like this before, and so it was good to see just how easily non-wargamers could pick up the basics of the rules. They all had lots of RPG experience, so it wasn’t incredibly difficult.

The grand battle begins!

A 600-pt Pan-Elven force of Blood Elves (GW High Elves) and Dark Elves (GW) using the Twilight Kin list ally with 600 pts of Basileans (hastily assembled using Rackham Confrontation Lions pre-paints) and a small 300-pt contingent of Gondor/Kingdoms of Men infantry (GW) square off against 1200pts of Ogres (old GW & Mantic) and 300pts of “nature” (GW Wolves and GW Ent using the KoW Goblin rules for a Giant and Wolfriders). Through a combination of superior manoeuvre, the main ogre general being distracted the whole time, and some eagle-eyed sharpshooting and resilient defence from the Gondor contingent, the humand and elves carried the day in the end. The Ogre Warlord’s final devastating rampage through the Elven/Human lines not being enough to carry the day before he too was pulled down under weight of numbers. After that, we ate pizza and pasta, played a couple of games of SJG Frag!, and then finished up.   The following day, my 74-year old Mum came over for a visit. She ended up playing a game of KoW against my wife, while I once again refereed and offered advice to both sides.

The setup – Basileans vs Elves.

Allies just the previous night, the Elves and Basileans turned on one another and met across a green hilly field. My mum took the Basileans and my wife took on the Elves this time.

The armies clash!

Once again I forgot to take a lot of pictures, but the final outcome was a close one. It basically came down to a single (un?)lucky dice roll where the Elven Halberd (spear) phalanx survived a final round of shooting and magic from the Basileans, leaving the Elves with enough troops to declare the day victorious. If the Halberds had broken, it would have essentially been a drawn game. Which is not too shabby for a 74-year-old woman’s first wargaming experience. Once again, both sides enjoyed the game, which is what it’s all about for me. I also got all the bits of the “box” part of a light box sorted, so now I just need to pick up a (couple of) lamps tomorrow, and I’ll be good for photographing figures again – and at a higher quality (hopefully)!

Deathworld Fauna – Vote Now!

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While I haven’t posted in what feels like forever, it’s only been a little more than a week in actuality. I’ve finished quite a lot more random bits of scenery, somewhat following-up from my last post which dealt with a similar theme (at least in the pictures). I’ve just got to take some photos, and hopefully tomorrow will be the day!

In the meantime, I’ve been rooting around in my resin bits boxes for more stuff I can knock out quickly, and found these two little beasties. I must have had them for 10 years or more, and in all that time they’ve done nothing but sit inside a few boxes. Time for some paint, then. I figure I’ll treat them much like Bones critters and resin scenery, in that good enough will be good enough – but I’m just not sure on how to paint them yet. I figure I’ll post them here, and in a day or two I’ll have them based properly and can then knock them out reasonably quickly once I see what feedback and ideas people have.

Looks like these are also from Grendel – as so much of my old resin stuff is – These are two of the three critters from the Dungeon Crawlers kit. Giant Centipede and “Leech”. I kinda prefer my own names though. I don’t know where the third one of the trio has disappeared to. I’m sure I’ll find it one day.

Millipede and um.. some other kind of beastie.

This is also my first use of Polls on this thing, though it’s not why I’m writing this post. Naturally, I reserve the right to ignore any results or change my mind on how I paint these little buggers. I’ll also be taking feedback from Dakka and any other forums I post on into consideration besides the feedback here.

For the Yellow/Black and Black/Yellow, I’m thinking of a pattern inspired by this sort of thing, with the emphasis either on the yellow or the black.

Yellowjacket.

For the slimy green on Froggie, I’m thinking something like the out-of-focus bits of this pic:

Slimy Frog.

The red would be more akin to:

Shiny Red Frog

Assuming I finally get some photos taken tomorrow, I should have some more substantive posts up in a day or three.