From the Shed: A bit more terrain.

First up is the compound that I made with the parts from Maenoferren which he had 3D printed. I’m really pleased with how this one turned out. Should get lots of use from Colonial through to 21st century. A big thanks to him again.

I also got some paint on the last bits of Ainsty Casting‘s Sewer section that I had sat about undercoated for at least a couple of years.

It is a nice system don’t get me wrong but it has been a bit of a white elephant costs wise. Today, knowing what I now know I’d go for printed mats but there is still an tangible tactile fun manipulating the resin blocks, not dissimilar to Lego really.

 

For a couple of things I’ve done in the past with it see here and here.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

From the Shed: African Huts.

A fellow member of The Wargamers Forum had put up some pictures of the 1/72nd/ 20mm African themed terrain he was working on. Some of this scratchbuilt stuff he cast in resin for himself, I sent him a cheeky message seeing if he was willing to sell a few castings.

 

A week later, after money was sent via paypal, these arrived in the post:

Here they are finished:

I gave them a very quick paint job, the cast texture really took to the sponge, wash and drybrush techniques I used. They shall be very useful for my long running Rhodesian Bush War games.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Necromunda Campaign 2: Game 3

 

After the last, rather disastrous, game I needed to rebuild my gang and get it back up to strength. In the campaign game most fighters who ‘die’ in the game tend to miss the next game, each fighter that is taken out during the game has to roll on an injuries table, very few results are beneficial, most result in missing the next game or worse, ability losses…. In the campaign that we are playing in you are allowed to challenge that cycle’s GM once every 2 games either to have a quick game getting out early to rebuild your gang or to push your luck and try to get a win.

I was going for the former option. I was going to play until the earliest opportunity to quit came up then flee the battlefield, I told J this, so he wasn’t expecting a long game- he had already thought as much and has arranged another game for the evening.

For a bit of a change we played on a different set of boards made up of tight corridors; the scenario was a simple one too, I just had to defile a shrine belong to his Cawdor gang.

I set up as close as I could, I wanted to get a few shots in for dignity’s sake if nothing else but the dice really favoured me. J’s men dropped quite quickly or else ran around on fire due to my flamer whilst my guys stayed on their feet. His leader tried to sneak up on mine to take him out in close combat but some judicious card play and a melta blast put paid to that.

Although I never came close to the shrine objective it ended up taking me a full 7 turns to lose the game. So much so that J didn’t have time for his other game.

It was a pretty tense game, I wasn’t having it easy, and didn’t expect to, so tried to give as good as I got. It was a close fought game, helped that I managed to redirect some of J’s reinforcements but most importantly it was great fun.

Even though I lost (a tactical decision if you will) it set me up nicely for the next campaign game.

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: US Rangers and Special Operations Forces.

I’ve just finished up some quick US Speical Operation Forces types.

First up we have 4 men armed with MP7 Personal Defence Weapons (the fancy new name for SMGs that fire modern body armour defeating ammunition), great for clearing buildings .

We have a 2 man command team for the Rangers: a soldier with a map and a radioman. Useful for bringing in off- table assests.

Finally a pair of snipers manning the huge .50 Barrett sniper rifle. Witha massive range (and massive weight to go with it) it is an immensly powerful weapon.

Again Elhiem figures were the manufacturer of these figures; can’t wait to get them into a game of Black Ops or similar soon. All of the figures were painted in the latest multicam cammo pattern uniforms.

 

Gifts from Gamers.

One of the best things about being a gamer is the real sense of community that there is, one of the best things about the internet is that it connects people together who share interests but otherwise wouldn’t meet due to geographical separation. Thanks to the generosity of two bloggers I’ve got some more goodies to play with.

 

Man of Tin was kind enough me a sheet of stickers that I was unable to locate in my home town. These will be turned into signs for Zombie apocalypse games as soon as I’ve stocked back up on plasticard.

Maenoferren generously gave me some bits that he has made with his 3D printer that he has no use for.

 

I had some spare foamcore and an MDF base lying around so knocked up this quick compound with the two houses.

I also put some paint on the Sci Fi terrain bits, specifically the chemical tank too.

These sorts of gestures really are the best and both brightened my day immeasurably when they arrived- many thanks to both bloggers, It is something I fully intend to pay forward.

 

As an aside the quality of the prints is really good, far better than the stuff I bought from Shapeways some years ago. So good in fact that I’m going to save up for my own printer- I really think it will be the future of the hobby (amongst other things) so it will be good to get in early for once I think.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Necromunda Campaign 2: Games 1 and 2.

The next Necromunda campaign has started at the club, I decided to build on what I learnt from the previous campaign and run a Van Saar gang again. I decided to go with a completely new gang rather than bring anyone over from the last one so it is a case of good- bye Tech Noir, hello Korova… Based upon how the previous games went down I decided to buy more hard hitting short ranged weapons, lasguns are cheap and I could get a lot of gangers with them but I struggled to covert the hits I got with them into damage given the low weapon strength. Also, anything with the blaze trait is worth taking so my gang has both a hand flamer and a standard flamer in it. Having been on the receiving end of flame- based weapons many times myself I wanted to dish it back out this time.

This time there are 9 of us in the campaign so it will take longer to play out, I expect it will last almost until xmas time. Each cycle I’ll be paired off with another gang to fight out that cycle’s scenario; every other cycle you will be allowed to fight a challenge game, useful to build your gang back up if you need to after a defeat. The difference between this campaign and the last one is that each cycle a different player will take the lead and decide upon the scenario everyone will play, this stops one person just running the whole thing and missing out on the chance to run a gang too.

Game 1:

Mark was the first up to decide the scenario and given the campaign was kicking off just after Easter he came up with an appropriate game: an egg hunt. The board was set up with three clusters of xenos eggs which we were to collect for the cash as a researcher wants them. Obviously, it wouldn’t be as straight forward as that. Every time a figure approached within 2” of the egg cluster they had a 50/50 chance of getting an egg or of being attacked (1-6 attacks of low strength), this also applied to everyone within the 2” radius too.

I was drawn against Jonathan for my first match again, he was running House Cawdor this campaign rather than the Goliaths he ran last time. In the rules Cawdor gangers are cheap, very cheap so even his starting gang had 16 gangers against my 10. I fully expected to be on the receiving end of a lot of autogun hits this game.

Fortunately, my opponent got greedy and thought with his massive gang he would be able to grab a large amount of eggs… this didn’t work out well. Whilst his gangers collected 12 eggs or so far more were felled by their attacks, I think 10 in all. Accordingly, I stood back and shot him up as he ran to the eggs, right at the end of the end of the game I rushed forward a few of my well armoured gangers to grab a few eggs, after seeing the unarmoured Cawdor fall like flies I learnt from this and sent the heavies to grab them.

With all these losses the Cawdor gang bottled and gave me the win, picking up a nice bone shrine territory. I spent my earnings of a pair of extra gangers and awaited the next game.

 

Game 2:

Now it was the turn of Jonathan to be the arbitrator of the campaign, his scenario was for one gang to be tasked with escorting a group of pilgrims through the hive whilst another gang attacked them.

I was drawn against Joe and his Ork Venators gang, you may remember was my nemesis in the last campaign, we randomly determined who the attacker would be and who would escort the pilgrims. I drew the short straw and had to escort the party of 5 religious zealots from one edge of the board to the others. The game started badly when Joe played a tactics card and sent my Leader home, missing the fight completely.

I set up either side of the pilgrims with a pair of lasgun armed gangers above on a walkway to provide some covering fire, Joe then set up very close in ambush positions, which made me little nervous as I knew he be going straight into close combat which isn’t a Van Saar specialty.

The first turn was little short of a massacre with his gangers outshooting me and slaughtering me in the melee combats. The second turn was worse, and all my best gangers and champions were down, so when I ended the turn with only 3 men of the starting 9 still standing I voluntarily bottled as it was the sensible thing to do.

Interestingly when the other gamers were played the defender escorting the pilgrims only won once, with the longest game only go 3 turns… The scenario in all honesty needed some fine tuning but at least it was unfair to everyone.

With so few gangers I quickly arranged a challenge game with Jonathan to rebuild my gang….

Cheers,

 

Pete.