2014.... a review.

As is customery at this time of year I have decided to sit down and try to review my first year back in tabletop wargaming...... and what a first year!

First the good news;

Within 12 months my painting has gone from this.......

to something like this.......

Thats all free hand!

1st Corps casting. American Civil War Dismounted Cavalry in Slouch hats

Yesterday I was given the greatest Christmas present of all by the misses. "I'm taking the kids out all day so the house is yours! I'll be back at 4pm!"

It was really hard not to dance a little jig as they walked out the door.

First thing I did was run up stairs and grab these blokes for undercoating.....

Knocked out in under 2 Hours. I LOVE having the house to myself!

They are from a company called 1st Corps casting I bought this lot from their Ebay Shop

Christmas, it's for the kids really!

yer 40 year odd man kids!

Thank you Secret Santa!

A painted Bloodbowl game 26 years in the making!

So 26 years after buying Blood bowl my Brother and I finally got round to playing a game with two fully painted teams!

Unfortunately it looks like the camera lens got condensation or turkey fat, or double cream etc on it as most of the photos are out of focus or whited out or just plain crap

I think my brother took the term "28mm photo porn" too literally and smeared the lens in vaseline for a classic 70's soft porn effect.

Thankfully there were two decent photos to record the event!

The Mauraders line up for the kick off

An action shot just before "the Gentlemen of the Realm" send one over the top to equalise.

The game ended one all and it seems my brothers fiance is a much better player then he is!

Hopefully we will get another game in before going back to work as he is starting to construct his own stadium and it is a sterling effort for his first attempt!

My brother's dice tower as a WIP. A cracking effort.

Peace on Earth and good will to all men.... unless your a bloody Anglo Dane!!!

With the lull between Black Friday and Manic Monday and "Oh fuck it's Tuesday (!)" Al and I managed to sneak in a game of SAGA.

I decided Al's present (as well as some Anglo Dane Saga Die), should be a sound whooping at the hands of my maurading Vikings!

Seasons Beatings from Riotville!

Seasons greetings to one and all.

Just thought I had to share this with you........

I'm walking down the stairs with some minis to prime for the festive painting seasons when the misses pipes up with..

"Don't forget you have to put the Kids Trampoline together (their christmas present) so they can see it Christmas morning"

"Ok I can prime the minis during the Tea breaks no worries"....

And then the construction begins......

Hour and thirty minutes later I end up with this

 yep its a 10 foot Trampoline in a 12 foot garden!!!!!!

Introducing "Her Majesties Gentlemen of the Realm" Blood bowl Team. Victorian Human Blood bowl Team.

My Saga begins!

Once again Al and I managed to meet up for a game of little soldiers. With us both being destroyed for work the next day after our last game of Warmachine we decided we needed a change.

Al had been on Ebay and snapped up various armies of Gripping beast Saga miniatures so 4 points of Saga it is!

They are in your face aggression. I have to play Vikings!

Warhammer Fantasy Battle; Lore of Shadows

So as many WHF generals have had to do, I have played through most of the different spell decks with regards to my WHF wizards.

First it was “Well you only have 15 models so you should play “Lore of Life”

Then it was “Well you do not have any ranged attacks so you should play “Lore of Fire”

Then it was “Well you have a cavalry force so it has to be “Lore of Beasts”

And finally I think I have found the motherload “Lore of Muther F*@king Shadows!” the one Jiri and Lano love to hate!

9000 hits

9000 hits since starting this blog (including over 1000 hits from America!).

Blimey might make 10, 000 hits in a year. That would be someting.

Black Friday Wargaming

This Friday I played Jiri and his Skaven at 1000 points.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera but I can summerise Jiri's misery as;

a) Shooty Shooty = mostly miss.

b) Shooty shooty = Flame throwers missfire and blow up, killing 8 Skaven.

c) Magic = Rubbish.

d) Get Gutter runners gunned down by Outriders, runaway.

e) More shooty shooty = the other flame thrower blows up killing 9 Skaven

f) Jiri chases down and shreds one of my wizards with 2 useless spells (awaking of the woods and there is no bloody trees on the field!).

g) Whats left of Jiri's Clan rats get charged and trampled.

h) Jiri ends the battle with 5 Gutter runners. I end the battle with 15 of my original 20 figures still standing.

It ended as a very black Friday for Jiri and the poor fella suffered the worse rolling I have EVER witnessed.

Although it was very entertaining for the other fellas present to witness the self destruction and utter failure of Jiri's Skaven to do anything useful I had to feel for the fella!

Warmachine and the witching hour

Things you should never have to say on a weeknight................. "Mate its 2am, just roll the die. I have to be up for work in 4 hours!"

Painting my brother's malformed Willy ............................................................ (minatures)!

It's been a crap week and I am just desperate to paint something to get into a Zen state.

I don't have much spare time and

1) I don't want to batch paint
2) I don't have access to any Reaper Bones so I'm stuck for options.

That is until I spot these on the window ledge (I keep hoping they will get the message and jump).

Abominations and not of the Chaos sort! 

My brothers Malformed Willy .......... minatures!

He bought them just on the basis of the web site pictures and the abominations which turned up leave a lot to be desired.

Web pic

reality

Willy hang your head in shame!

The good news is it does not matter what kind of half arsed, speed paint job I do on these it can only make them look better.

So an hour of slopping about with paint and..................

 I decided to make the middle fella look like the Joker from Batman and it seemed to work well.

The thing on the left reminded me of the awful Prince August abominations of my childhood.

At least I felt I had blown out the painting cob webs.

Say what you want about GW but these pieces for crap would never have been released if GW still held the reins of Blood Bowl.

Goblin Porn. Warhammer Fantasy battle

As a kid "Goblin porn" was the name we gave to discarded pages of a certain type of "Gentleman's magazine" we found in the bushes while playing at the local park, but now after todays game against Tookey and his Goblin horde "Goblin Porn" has a whole new meaning for me!

Goruks Leatherheads. Vulture warriors from dimension X

Unit two of Algae worlds Garrison for Vulture Warriors from Dimension X.............. Goruk's Leatherheads.

"All present and correct Guv"

Have been working on these lads through Orctober but time and tides got in the way and never got to post them in time

Space Hulk. Mission one

Al and I are really on a roll and once again the shiny, shiny box was opened,

Having played the prequel published it White Dwarf and "suicide mission" (it was quick to set up) it made sense to start at mission one rather then dip in and out of the missions.

Fear the puppet princess of rebuke!

I suppose playing in a toy shop it had to happen.

Big kids start playing with the toys!

Once again Ed was "thinking through his turn" (i.e. taking bloody ages to roll a die) when Macca reached for this......................

"One is bored"

FEAR THE YAWNING PUPPET PRINCESS OF REBUKE !!!!!!!!!

I love painting days like this!

With all the bulk painting going on at the moment I do love painting days like this,

a wide variety of mini's on the table and lots of open pots of paint.

8000 hits!

could I reach 10,000 hits before the end of the year?

Denzark's Hammer. Speed painting Ultramarines.

So I set myself the Half term challenge of painting 20 Space Marines in 7 days.......

Knocked out 17 in two hours!

Not bad for two hours!

How did this happen?

See below.

Gorka Morka. The Rioteers get mobile and hostile!

The idea was a simple one.

Hey Lano lets play Gorka Morka for Orctober.

Then the Warmachine Journey man league kicked in and sucked up all my hobby time (and any enjoyment I actually got from the game!).

But I have perservered and the Rioteers are now Mobile and Hostile.

Keelz on wheelz

"Nar Guv, we 'Borrowed' it

FOC you Lano!

I HIT SOMETHING!!!!!!!

I ACTUALLY HIT SOMETHING IN WARMACHINE!!!!!!

Eat my sixes bitch!

Still lost, having left Lylyth on one health point, and forgetting the long gunners get two shots if they don't move probably lost me the game but hey......... I actually hit something.........small victories!

For a much better battle report please visit Lan's site here.

Denzark's Hammer. The prelude

This post is very much inspired by Asslessman's blog leadplague which I cannot recommend enough!

"You called for us Commander Denzark?"

"Yes, come in Sergeants, I have a mission for you both".

"You are to teleport onto a Genestealer infested Tug and then crash it into a Genestealer infested planet! So it's a sucicidal, one way only, no hope of return mission!  Any questions?"

Smash mouth Warmachine

Once again Al and I meet up for a game.

Then the words I dread to hear "I'm a little Space Hulked out, We haven't played Warmachine for ages, What do you think?"

What do I think?

If I hate Warmachine, it's time to pass on the hate to someone else!

It's still all FOC'ed up. 25 point taster vs Ed

This Sunday Ed and I decided to try out our 25 point lists before next Fridays league games.

Why do I put my self through this misery?

It's all FOC'ed up! Journeyman league games 3 and 4.

Week two of the Journeyman league and it's 15 points of Heavy metal chaos at the Armoury gaming club!

And the photo porn is in full effect!

Wee Machine.

So after the misery that was my Journey man league experiences last night I needed a game of Wee Machine!

What is Wee Machine?


Basically it is Warmachine I play with my kids.

"A (Space Hulk) bridge too far?"

Al and I are on a roll and have once again managed to meet up for a third consecutive Thursday.

Once again Al breaks open the Shiny, shiny box ...................... and I get my first suprise of the evening!

Roaring heroically, or screaming like a big girl....... you decide!

Warhammer Ahoy WIP photos

Just a quick post of some photos for a potential Warhammer Ahoy event next year (fingers crossed).

7000 hits

wow 1000 hits in under 30 days.

Thats a first!

Saga on the super cheap!

So I am skint at the moment and I mean really skint!

Summer is a crappy time for toy sales at the shop before the Christmas rush, we have had a MASSIVE amount of building work done on the house and the summer was spent at several holiday camps due to the profusion of dust, builders and disruption at the house.

All this comes at a time when Jesus George introduces us all to Saga. Typical!

I want in but as you can see from this post I cannot excuse buying another load of miniatures! This has to be cheap and I mean SUPER CHEAP.

SAGA DICE

First things first SAGA dice.

I would love to support Gripping beast on this one but there is no way I can excuse £12 for some die.

I quick trip to ebay and thats 10 blank die for £2.10 !

The Gripping Beast forums provide printable sheets where you can cut and stick the symbols on but I found these tend to fall off mid - game ("of course I rolled 6 rares! Honest Guv."), which is far from ideal.

In the end I pull out the brushes and 15 min later, voila!

thats £2.10 baby!

The hardest thing about this is not painting extra "rare" symbols on to give my self an unfair advantage. One spray of varnish and their all done.

8 Saga die plus two spares for £2.10. RESULT!

FIGURES

Next figures.

Journey man league. Game two

I was loving the league, lots of players in attendance, the games are fast and furious and the swap around times were minimal as no one could spent 45 minutes perusing over a huge stack of cards thinking about what they were going to field next (you know who you are!)

Did everyone buy purple paint in the Mini Empire closing down sale?

Blue on Blue. The Armoury Journey man league begins

10th of October the official start of the Armoury Journey man league witnessed a full house at 51 Station Rd and a cracking set of fast paced games to boot.

It's Blue on Blue mental action to the last roll of the die!

As soon as I saw Anthony was in attendance I know who I wanted my first opponent to be!

Space Hulk or England Vs San Marino?

It's Thursday and I have two choices; Playing Space Hulk with Al or watching England Vs San Marino!

15 min later I am in the car and on the way to the shop......... No contest really!

"Insert Heroic, Xenophobic saying here"

Orctober. The Green streak 'ooligans

So its ORCTOBER a celebration of all thats green and good!

It starts innocently enough. If I have a bloodbowl team, I need some bloodbowl fans, Right!

It also gives me the chance to buy any miniatures I find interesting which I would not have an excuse to buy otherwise.

I LOVE ORCS!!!!

Barn Dance anyone? 30 points of Warmachine

After a long hiatus Al and I finally get to lock horns again via Warmachine.

30 points of heavy metal action.

Rebel vs Traitor the eternal struggle between Al and I

White Dwarf - Have you lost weight?

During the summer I picked up a load of old White Dwarfs for 50p each at a hobby shop in Clacton on Sea.

Look at all the old skool goodness!

All this old skool goodness for £6. RESULT!

I also acquired a recent issue of White Dwarf (which thankfully I did not have to pay for).

Look at the shiny, shiny

I know it's now a weekly, but seriously, I flicked through several times  but it reminds me of a lot of the women I dated in my 20's; slim and pretty but not much going on upstairs.