20 February 2012

Dirty washing

What a thoroughly unsatisfactory evening's painting. Just as the first bunch of the previously mentioned halflings were reaching a stage when they'd get their own photo shoot, I've screwed them up with an unwise wash or two. Start again, Rab, start again :(

15 February 2012

Child labour

With darling wife out at the cinema today for a friend's birthday, I had the boys. Not one to waste an opportunity or resources, I put the little blighters to work! E is still a little young (and just coming down with german measles/rubella) so wasn't as much help as I'd have liked, but C put his back into it like a good 'un :-


Between us we played our parts well (E didn't injure himself, C mostly followed instructions and I kept my temper!) and made two almost square-cornered 2-foot by 4-foot frames of 1" by 1/2" pine with a 3mm hardboard cover. We quit while we were ahead so, another day, I'll coat the hardboard in spray-mount and then attach a bog-standard GW grass mat I was given a couple of years back (which I only unwrapped for the first time last week!).

Anyway, for now this is what we have (snazzy underside view coming up):


If anyone has any pointers for the last stage, or for weathering a grass mat so it doesn't look entirely like a bowling green, please do leave a comment.

Happy geeking,
Rab

10 February 2012

After-school gaming 1

Last night I hosted the second of what is turning into a half-termly gaming evening at school for some of the 6th formers I teach. Their enthusiasm for the gaming was only matched by their desire not to be noticed geeking away as the Battle of the Bands was also taking place and there were plenty of 'cool kids' mooching about. Window blinds down and the glass pane by the door covered, and we were good to go!

We started with three side-by-side games of Songs of Blades and Heroes (SBH) by Ganesha Games. It was the first time I'd played and brought out my very newly acquired Copplestone halflings (still only undercoated, so no pictures to show the shame of playing with unpainted figures).

I, um, borrowed, the pictures below from the prolific and well-written A League of Ordinary Gamers blog but they're the same lovely figures. I filled out the ranks with the old Grenadier models carried by em4 miniatures and also sculpted by Mark Copplestone.








As for the game, I got utterly massacred by a small but deadly dwarf warband being run by a sixteen year old. The shame! I realised a bit too late in the game (first game, remember?!) that, with so many of the halflings needing to be in the same place to have a chance, I should have done all my initial manoeuvring using single dice activations. I ended up spread thinly and thereby chopped into small pieces by the high Quality and Combat dwarfs. Lesson learned. I did enjoy the quickness of the game and the simplicity of it and it's resparked my interest in fantasy skirmish gaming. Simple without being simplistic - I'll definitely play again :)

We then played the second chapter of Quest as the snow fell outside, but I'll save that for the next post.

Happy geeking,
Rab

6 February 2012

Progress! But no pictures...

I've been painting, which is nice, and I'm not too disappointed by the outcome, which is even nicer.

The problem is that I'm being tempted to compete in the Lead Painter's League Season 6 (LPL6) over on the Lead Adventure Forum. The idea behind it is fabulous for someone like me in that it gives a structure and deadlines for reducing the mound of unpainted lead. There are ten rounds and each round requires  a coherent team of five painted figures. At least the first three must be 'new' teams, and there are bonus rounds as well:

Round 1 - Pre-1991 figures
Round 5 - Tolkein
Round 10 - nautical

I was delighted when I saw the bonus rounds as Rnd1 would be served by my old terminators that I wanted to paint anyway for Space Hulk, rnd5 gave me an excuse to buy the Mark Copplestone hobbits halflings (OOP, but I sent him an email and some paypal and I now have a warband's worth of the little chaps for Song of Blades and Heroes) and rnd10 goes perfectly with the VSF sailors I'm well underway with.

So, I have to have 15 figures painted by 27th Feb if I want to enter, then five a week from mid-March. And I can't post them here (or anywhere) until they've had their debut on LAF in the LPL. If I can get the first three rounds sorted then I'll enter, if not I'll have several pictures to share on here as I've got a reasonable head of steam up.

Oh, and I've 'printed' off the deck for my first aether-flyer on the laser printer at school. 'tis cool!