Scenery building day

It is Christmas and the last couple of years I planned a day of building scenery mostly for Mordheim, but now more and more for all our games. THe turnout was a bit less then last years: we were with the 2 of us! Some people have these activities called work they want to attend rather then spend a day with us with our favorite past time: the miniature war-game hobby!
Anyhow we were with the 2 of us and started with a visit to the local garden centre where now all Christmas scenery was for half price! We bought a pile of trees and a great looking harbor deck!
The place was swarming with guys wanting to expand their christmas scenery, but we were looking for war-games terrain. This resulted in some interesting discussion you can imagine. How can you use a set of christmas singers in the scenery? Of how to put the whales blowing water in the harbour of the city of Mordheim? :)
After that we went to the local hardware store for MDF sheets that act as a base. We found out that professional sawing the sheets is for free if you have a customer card. So we asked the guy to make us as much 20x30cm pieces (since these are the "house" measurements of our scenery) and we got a pile cut with so much accuracy it was too much to bear. All these time we were sawing ourselves and always have some half centimeter off here and there and now a nice pile of 12 sheets with exact measurements for only 4 euros! What a bargain!
Off we went to start building. We both stockpiled cast plaster stones and pieces to build some real buildings! We also drink the white stuff as you can see!


Arjan built a nice piece for his dungeon and an intricate piece of "arch"work! I made a quirky building with a lot of tower add ons and stairway pieces. Also built me 4 pieces of water with the wooden docks fitting to a stone part with a nice ramp and stairs. Also one plaza was made as well. Still some painting to do now, but the black and grey highlighting always goes quite fast. This should be possible to finish this holiday week.

Progress: Carpathia warband, werewolves

Christmas updates, this time of year is great for painting progress. I've actually planned days to do painting and in between the loose hours as well. This should be great for showing progress as well, expect some multiple posts between christmas and new year.
For now I was busy with the Chaos in Carpathia war band, my werewolves. The 2 ladies were already up here but now they have bases and the werewolves and henchie wolves are done.



2 victorian ladies are up next. One with a rapier and one with a hand gun. Should fit in nicely with the victorian scify setting!

painting progress

Once in a while all parallel running painting projects are finished. At that point I start up new projects and maybe a little more then I can chew. On the other hand there is always time needed to dry or get more inspiration and then it is good to have a couple of projects running. For example painting a dark elf sorceress on a cold one next to a regiment of dwarf warriors. SOmetimes ideas from painting one follow up in the other painting scheme or whatnot. In the case of dwarfs and dark elfs it is maybe a bit hard to stomach but still.

Ok what is the status?! 16 dwarfs put together and have their base. THey are awaiting a black spray base coat. Next to that I am painting a dark elf sorceress on a cold one as already mentioned. The cold ones are a bit of a new "collection" so to say. I started painting my second and got the idea of painting only cold ones with dark elves on them. Maybe starting a Mordheim war band with them, maybe painting a couple more dark elfs and waddayaknow?! a dark elf army is born. :)

For some of the other games we bought some rules for at twohourwargames I'm painting a werewolf war band and related henchem. First up painted and done are two ladies that will join my werewolf gang. They are a bit dark gothic and just the style we want for Chaos in carpathia. Sort of a scifi victorian style setting and this will just fit the bill.

The werewolves are already undercoated and a couple of regular wolves were ordered and in. This war band will soon be born since the war band does not contain a lot of members.

They only need a base and they are done. Still looking for the right base. Maybe I'll just go with the bricks my dwarfs are set upon. Fits the scenery nicely for one.

Mordheim still going strong

We are still playing the game. The blog might tell you otherwise but last weekend we had a good old fashioned game of Mordheim. Three war bands battling it out in the city of Mordheim searching for treasure.

Actually this was a scenario we already played a while ago. Then we had the Luggage (disc world) also attending. This time it was plain and simple searching the treasure and killing each other.
In the field were my trusty dwarfs, some halflings and a new kid on the block: Inquisitors!
The game started with the Dwarfs and the inquisitors squaring of in a narrow alleyway. Massacre commenced and in the meantime the halflings were prying open the treasure chests. That is not that easy when you are as small and a little weak.

The inquisitors were taking the upper hand at the start, but my sturdy dwarfs proved their hard heads worthy and they stood fast battling it out. The pesky Inquisitors were dropping like flies all of a sudden and the first route test took them running of the battlefield!
The halflings (cowards as they are!) were shooting their arrows at the dwarfs. This was no worthy foe to loose more men against in such a way and the dwarfs took of as well. They already had found some treasure and were happy as they are.

The 2 thunderers proved worthy of their guns this battle, shooting at very long range with one shot an inquisitor to death. What a marksmen they are!

Planes! Wings of War here we come

And now for something completely different. Since we are moving towards a new phase in hobby life I too got hooked on some good old WWII stuff. In this case it's the planes! We were busy looking out for the game Wings of War I got my hands on a 1:144 messerschmitt on ebay. Not knowing what I know now: 1:144 early war WWII planes are not to be found! The scale is just not made anymore! They can be found but very difficult! They have to be out there!
Her for some results on the painting of the first plane!


And the plane belly-up! I painted the plane in the camp scheme with the yellow nose and wingtips. The decals were so old it took a full day to get them from the papers.

When looking for planes in the 1:144 scale (early WWI) I stumbled upon the reveal mini kits. Fun kit that is put together in no time and preprinted. Only it is very basic preprinted and only just the correct scale. Actually I can't find the scale but compared it to the 1:44 messerschmitt and it compares.
For the mini kit I bought a Fokker DRI triplane, not really early WWI but a fun plane. Also found the Hindenburg out there. Scale does totally not compare but again fun as a background. I might paint them to give them a more detailed look as opposed to the plastic shiny look they have now. But for a couple of eures nice to give them a try.
Now where are them 1:144 early WWI planes when you need em!

First game with samurais

In between Mordheim games and WHFB's we decided to plan an evening playing a new game. After we went to Crisis'11 in Antwerp, new games, war bands and miniatures we were inspired. Now it was time to play Red Sand Blue Sky the Samurai version. After reading some posts on this blog we took up the idea as well. RSBS lends itself perfectly for converting it to a samurai version.

We played this game for the first time and we were with the three of us. All having one samurai in the field to make it less confusing.
The Japanese garden I made was of perfect size. With small stones we denoted the different zones of the RSBS arena. We chose to make a simple samurai based on the two sworded gladiator. Now all samurais were quite similar only difference in weapon being 2 swords or a 2-handed sword. Furthermore the difference was in the dice rolls and division of attribute points of course. This was for us enough for now since we were learning the rules of the game as well.
I think it worked out well actually. It took us 2 hours to play this version the first time including making the samurai rosters. No campaign just a simple fight to the death. Good for the first time.
I think we will be creating our own samurai rosters and the major change in the rules being the fighting styles. We just have to create some fighting styles for samurai and the game is as good as converted. Campaigns can be played just the same not having gladiator schools but samurai families/schools and we're off! Next games will be play testing our own created samurai fighting styles which of course will be posted here.
Good fun this new game and when more familiar with rules can be a quick game to start or finish a gaming evening!

A gobbo worth more than it's weight in stones...

My former neighbor is a dental technician by trade and offered me to cast (heaps and heaps of) stones using my Hirst molds. As a 'thank you' I built a small watch tower using some of these nerd bricks, manned by this Goblin.