State of the Game and Zombie progress

Well the blog might itself might have seen a bit zombie-like for most of this year. I have been quite busy and I do have some posts to finish on Cangames and my trip to Louisburg and some other odd games but I thought I would just post on what I am working on right now.

I have been very busy with work this year and my painting has been a bit start and stop but I have made some progress on painting my Franks for Saga -- I was slightly disheartened by reading the strategy discussion on the Muskets and Tomahawks forum which suggests the Franks are among the weakest factions but I still like the idea of them (and especially the special rules around Roland).

I have had 2 games in with them (and anyone who knows my Saga playing habits, 2 games with any one faction is almost a record) and I think I am getting a sense for how they work. (Not taking any Levy until the Saga dice are maxed out seems to be a key to the strategy so painting the Levy first was probably not the smartest thing to do)

Frostgrave is also high on my gaming schedule and I have started quite a few figures for it but never seem to get any finished.

I had bought the starter bundle for Warlord games Project Z in the spring and in attempt to get it actually painted and ready, I have committed to running a game in November. Although I was working for a large part of this weekend, Ed came up on Saturday afternoon and I managed to glue together all the figures from the basic box plus the Special Ops and Ed was very excited to see the Z-Mart terrain from Sarrisa Precision so he did quite a good job in getting that together and painted.

There are somethings that I had planned to paint but haven't -- My US forces for Team Yankee are still mostly sitting in their shrink wrapped boxes. I was going to buy an infantry force for my Italians for the upcoming campaign at the club and I decided I didn't really want to paint that much 15mm infantry so I didn't even buy them -- I do have some tanks that I didn't get painted last time that I will paint up and I have been sort of looking at ebay to see if there is a painted Fucilere force since I would like to have one even if I don't want to paint one.

Hopefully the blog will get updated much more often with some progress on these projects (and the backlog games as well)

2016 Plans for the New Year

With being sick and being very busy with my new job I haven't had a lot of time yet this month for the blog or for gaming (though hopefully there will be gaming on Sunday) In an effort to kick-start some progress I will set down my plans and goals for this year.

Team Yankee

This is going to dominate my painting time (and hopefully, at least to some extent, my gaming time) for the first part of the year. I put together 2 starter boxes of Soviets when I got back from Halifax and a handful of Americans and have been planning to start painting them since then. With any luck that will get started this weeekend -- the Soviets should go quickly since they are one colour (I plan to try a bit of "colour modulation" with the airbrush to give them some depth) and then I will follow up with the US. I plan to get enough of both forces so I can do both a mechanized and a tank force. The real test here will be to actually get the infantry done.

SAGA / Dragon Rampant
Here I want to get the rest of the Islamic forces from the SAGA starter boxes painted up. After we play a few games of Dragon Rampant I will get a better idea of how many I HAVE to paint but to be honest, I enjoy painting these. Once they get done I do have some plastic cavalry to paint up but they are not currently in the "official queue". I also want to play more games with the 3 SAGA factions and get good at at least one of them!

I am also going to paint up a force for Nick's Trojan War campaign but it will likely be the smallest force possible i.e. all hearthguard.  I think I will go with Foundry Greeks for this but I haven't decided yet.

Frostgrave
I want to have two relatively coherent warbands for this and paint up most of the stuff I got from the Nickstarter. I foresee this being a useful break from the Team Yankee painting.

Bolt Action
I would like to paint my Canadians but my only real goal is to finish the basing of the Germans and to play a game with them.

Hail Caesar
It didn't look like there would be any Romans in my immediate future but Ed want's to try out his siege rules that he developed for the French and Indian war in a (much) earlier period so we are dusting off our plans to do some Dacian war battles. I am planning to paint up 4-5 Roman siege engines for this and maybe a unit or 2 with some Aventine figures (since I have to get the set that has Trajan and Decadulus' head)

Terrain
Weirdly, the terrain I most want to do is for my Ortona campaign for 28mm WWII for which I don't have any inspiration to paint the figures! I want to do a river bank type terrain, a piece with the gully and a cityscape.

I have some ideas for Frostgrave and Team Yankee terrain and I should probably get more 28mm terrain suitable for SAGA.

I think that should keep me busy for the rest of the year and I am going to make a real effort not to get anything that is not on this list

2015: The Year in Review

Looking back over my blog posts for this year it was a pretty good year for playing games but it wasn't all that great for painting (but it wasn't really terrible for that either). I will divide the year up by game rather than time and take a look at what was (and wasn't accomplished)

Descent 2nd Edition:
After having this game for over a year (and buying more expansions than I would care to admit) I started playing this in the summer (we are about halfway through the Heir of Blood campaign now). When I bought this my plan was to paint all the plastic figures and that way I would get something out if it even if I didn't play that much. I did manage to get a reasonable chunk of the base set done when I first got it and I thought that once I started playing it, I would be frantically painting but the reality is that nothing got done (but the game is a lot of fun!)

Flames of War:
We played 2 campaigns at the club in 2015: Firestorm Lorraine and a Fate of the Nation Escalation campaign. Both were a lot of fun and I did a fair bit of painting for both.

For the Fate of a Nation, I painted a bunch of T-55s, SU-100s, PT-76 and and IS-3s for the Egyptians and some Ishermans and AMX-13s for the Israelis. On the downside I bought some M48s and Sho'ts as well as infantry for both sides that didn't get painted (though some of the infantry is primed!)

For Firestorm Lorraine, I had posted my painting goals here and I think I did a pretty good job of getting through that stuff. The PZ IV/70s, the PZ IVs and the Panthers all saw action during the campaign and I think the halftracks got assembled. I also didn't buy anything new during the campaign which is a victory of sorts.

I might as well mention my Vietnam stuff here as well-- there was almost no progress. I based some and primed some infantry but nothing that really gets me close to a game. Again I resisted buying anything new (especially the Riverine stuff  which I am still tempted by)

Hail Caesar:
The beginning of the year was good for Hail Caesar as I painted a bunch of Roman Legion as well as archers and slingers for the game I ran at Cangames in 2015.  The Romans are still my favourite army to paint. I had plans to paint up zombies, skeletons and Beastmen for a Hail Caesar Fantasy game based on the Teutoburg Forest to run at Cangames this year (I had a weeks vacation in September where I was going to paint up a large chunk of it and ended up playing Destiny on the PS4). I would still like to do this  but it is on the back burner.

Frostgrave:
This got played a few times and up to the end of the year, I managed to keep to my plan to play this with the figures I already had. Then this happened. I didn't plan to paint these this year so I don't consider that a negative (yet!).

Bolt Action :
This has been my painting millstone around my neck. I have a lot of good ideas for games based on the Canadians fighting in and around Ortona at the end of 1943. I have discussed terrain with Ed and he has even made me an Italian Farmhouse to try and get me inspired. The idea of running and playing the games is very appealing and even making the terrain should be fun but I just can't get myself to paint the figures.

The number of pieces for each figure in the Warlord Games army box was daunting to start with so I put off putting them together. Then once I had them together I really didn't want to paint them. I wanted to get them painted so I kept them on the painting table and put off starting other projects just so I wouldn't be distracted (the result of which was that nothing got painted for several months). With some prodding from Ed the Germans are mostly painted (but they all need their bases worked up and the halftracks need some weathering and decals.

For the Canadians, I have put together a mortar, a vickers MG and an AT gun and maybe 5 other guys. I am not thrilled with this but I pushed them aside to paint SAGA stuff and hopefully when I come back to them I will be more inspired.

SAGA:
The year did not begin well for SAGA. I had bought a Frankish Starter army and the Gripping Beast plastic medieval guys to paint over the Christmas holidays and I ended up being sick so they are still in their boxes.

When the Saracen set came out for Crescent and Cross as I was pretty good and got that painted up quickly and played a few games with Mike but then the Bolt Action block got in the way. I have managed to catch up and have played with both a Mutatawwi'a warband and and Moorish one but there is still a lot unpainted (my ultimate goal is to have a genericish Arab/Islamic army for Hail Caesar).

I did also pick up the SAGA revenant army in the thought it could also be used in my Hail Caesar Fantasy game and I have done nothing with it.

Other:
I played some Fistful of Kung Fu this year and finished painting the figures I had for that (well, to be honest, Ed painted most of them). I based and primed a Transylvanian army for By Fire and Sword. And I bought a lot of stuff for Team Yankee at the end of the year but that is definitely a 2016 project.

A review (of sorts) of the Games & Gears D6 Generation brush set

I am calling this a review of sorts because I am in no way qualified to judge higher end paintbrushes but I do want to talk about why I bought them and how I feel about them now that they have arrived.

For the past month or so I have been painting quite a bit after a long dry spell over the summer and I was considering getting one or two good brushes. I had my eye on the Winsor Newton System 7 brushes because I had heard good things about them and they carry them at the local art supply store so I could see them in person before buying them.

Shortly after I had begun considering this purchase, I head on the D6G podcast that were promoting a set of brushes from Games & Gears. At 45 pounds for 5 brushes they were a little bit less than the cost per brush for the Winsor Newton ones but I was really only considering getting 2 of those (one around size 2 and one around 0 or 00). I did a bit more research and was leaning towards the Games and Gears brushes and then figured that if it was a limited run of 250 it wasn't really worth the effort of the hosts of the D6G to completely sell out for such a small gain so they probably could be trusted on this one!

I finally decided to go for it and just when I was about place the order, I got a call from my Mum saying she was going to send me some money for Christmas and coincidentally it was almost exactly the amount that the set with the D6G Brushes and the DLB technicals was going for. So in a moment of madness I bought that.

About a week and half ago the brushes arrived. They looked really good and the feel and weight of them was good and they went together well when you took them apart for storage.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started to use them (to be honest, I was dreading that there would be a huge moment of buyers remorse) but they are very good. I don't know that I could say that they make my painting that much better (though I think they do a little bit) but they do make the experience of painting much better, the brushes keep their point much better and for longer than the brushes I was using before and they hold the paint better. When I paint with very watery paint it "stays" in the brush better. I can paint for longer without getting annoyed and frustrated.

The 0 00 and 000 are much more useful than I would  have imagined. Although they come to a very fine point there is still enough "bristle mass" to hold a decent amount of paint so you don't feel that you are painting with a toothpick. If these brushes last for a good long time (and I have no reason to think that they won't) I will be very happy with this purchase.

I haven't done anything with the Technical set of brushes yet, I will likely give the drybrush brushes a go soon and will try the "katana" on some free hand shield work (not really much hope of success there since my drawing is awful with a pencil and I don't think there is any reason to think I will do any better even with the best of brushes).

So the final word is that I have come to realize that having better brushes will make my painting more fun (and perhaps a little better) and that these are definitely better brushes. I can't say that they are better (or worse) than other higher end brushes but I can say I am quite happy with them and would recommend them to anyone looking to move up in the brush world.

The State of the Moors

This is the follow on to my post from earlier in the weekend about painting my Moors.

So it didn't turn out to be the non-stop painting marathon I imagined on Friday evening but I got a good few hours in and it is the longest stretch of painting I have done since the summer.

Priming the hoses in light grey and then painting the horse dark grey and bringing it back up to white seems a bit of a waste of time but I think it does give some depth. I am hoping it will look pretty good once the rider and all the tack get painted.

I picked at everything else so they move forward a little bit.

Most importantly, I enjoyed the painting and I am looking forward to getting more done on these guys through the week.

Yusuf ibn Tashin and his merry band of Moors (The Beginning)

I was sure there was another faction that could take the camels and looking through the Crusade and Crescent book I discovered this was the case!

If the Moors take Ben Yousef (Yusuf ibn Tashin) as their Warlord they can do all sorts of interesting things:  They can dismount up to 8 Hearthguard as the Black Guard, they can declare up to 8 Hearthguard as Senegalese on white horses and they can exchange up to 8 mounted warriors for 8 Tuareg on Camels.

As luck would have it, I have 8 camels from my Mutatawwi'a force (though I think the Tuaregs would have less ornate harnesses and would probably be less colourful). I also have some Black Guard that are partly painted from when Ed and I were planning to do an El Cid campaign (originally for WAB and then Hail Caesar) that kept getting pushed aside. From the same project I also have a figure for Yusuf himself partly painted (and currently sharing a base with an Imam who will also come in handy for Saga. I have 4 Hearthguard cavalry from the Mutatawwi'a box and 4 from the Moors box so it looks like I am ready to go.

In an effort to provide some accountability I will post the state of the Warband now and then see how much I can get done in a weekend!

There are 4 Black Guard that are pretty much done so I only need to finish up another 4. Yusuf and the Imam need to be rebased individually and have some details done. (The remaining Black Guard will have to wait a little longer)

The Cavalry has the furthest to go (the ones in front don't even have the riders glued on yet)

The camels need detail work and shading (and everybody needs basing work done).

The first step is to find some spears for the Black Guard...

Stay tuned for more postings (or a shameful silence...)

A visit from Ed

Ed came up from Kingston a week or so back to help motivate me to get my Germans finished and also to drop off the container ship for our upcoming Force on Force game.

It is quite an impressive model!

With a cat for scale purposes

With a Tiger for scale purposes

Covered in containers (which I should be painting!)

The name of the ship may bring back some traumatic gaming memories!

Lifeboats

A selection of anti-piracy equipment.


While I was painting my Germans, Ed painted "Inspector Magnum":

As well as touching up my other cops:

And painting the two freebies I got with my last Warlord order:

Mad Jack Churchill, who should go in every scenario possible.

And the downed British airman who looks completely awesome.

(And soon I will put the finishing touches on my Germans and post pictures of them!!!)

Cangames Recap and the Big Brush

Cangames was this past weekend and I am posting my summary of how it went for me this year (as well as some pictures of Eds "Big Brush" 15mm tank technique). I will post more detailed AARs of all my games (as well as the most recent club game) in the next week or so.

This was the first year in quite a while that I managed to make it for the Friday. I played in Mike's Rus game and it was quite a lot of fun. The modified Lord of The Rings system makes for a good skirmish game without being to complicated. There wasn't too much else going on on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday I ran my Hail Caesar "Stop the Romans" game and it went very well. The game came down to wire with the Romans finally emerging victorious. In the afternoon I played in Ed's Louisburg game and it also was a lot of fun and came down to the wire (and was very good looking).

Sunday I ran Force on Force "Elements of Destruction". That was its usual blend of chaos and mayhem.

Overall I had a good time and it was nice to play some games, I think for the last 2 I have only run games and not played in them. The selection of games was good (but seemed to be really concentrated on Saturday) and they all looked good. There didn't seem to be much Fantasy and Sci-Fi this year.

The dealers area was not really all that exciting for me. I was looking to satisfy my completist bent for Descent but no one had anything for that and my painting queue is full up so I wasn't really looking to get any minis. The guys selling the laser cut stuff looked interesting (though I have forgotten their name!)

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On Friday evening after the con, Ed demonstrated his "Big Brush" tank painting technique. This is basically taking a really big brush and painting and highlighting a base colour and then inking or washing. The results are very good for the effort involved.

 It only took a few minutes to get these 14 tanks to this level. The German tanks were painted the yellow-tan and then inked with yellow and the Sherman Crabs were painted brown and then inked green.

I used this technique for my Fate of a Nation tanks and was pleased with the results but it is hard (for me at least) to get the colour correct.

With some detail work these will be ready for the table in no time.


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Update: Here are the brushes that were used for this: