Grunt!

Painted up this Vietnam US Grunt from TAG yesterday, as a tester for an 8 man squad. I quite like the period and actually the simplicity of the paint job was quite relaxing and quick to paint.

Pulpy goodness!

My wife and I played our first wargame together today! I have been badgering my good lady, who always goes on about us "doing more together", for some time to have a go at wargaming as she said the pictures from the last big game looked like good fun.

So having done a fair bit of research I thought Strange Aeon's would be a good game for us as theres lots of variety in models, and scenarios. I downloaded the demo rules which only requires 5 models to have at each other with.

I played the goodies, threshold agents out to save the world, and the wife played the baddies, lurkers who are cultists and demons trying to undertake nefarious plan's and so forth. The demo is a straight up fight between a quite tough threshold agent and a slightly weaker counterpart, versus a cult leader, minion and a zombie! I didn't have any zombie models so the GW skeleton had to stand in.

The game started quite slowly with us both starting on the furthest table edges from each other. We spent a couple of turns moving towards each other before clashing by the T junction in the centre of the table, near the old barn.

This was my first rules challenge, the demo rules don't have rules for climbing and my missus wanted to pop one of her chaps onto the roof of the barn, after a quick think I decided we would just role a d6 and she would have to get 4 or more to succeed, with 1 being a fumble resulting in a fall from height. Rolling a 2 the evil cultist neither climbed nor fell and instead spent a turn studying the side of the building and its interesting cracks!

Meanwhile I maneuvered my lead character round the side of the building and blazed away at the cultist, after 2 turns of shooting I couldn't seem to hit the bugger and the return fire was equally in effective. However I failed to notice that my wife's zombie had stumbled up behind me. Despite being able to fend him off in hand to hand combat, the horror of being faced with the undead was to much and my glorious leader failed his resolve test and collapsed catatonic at the zombies feet. This resulted in him taking a major injury and being removed from play.

Down to one model I moved round the side of the barn and manged to cut down my wife's cult leader and minion in a couple of turns of hand to hand combat. All the time with the zombie shuffling closer, I moved my last man towards the zombie and combat was joined!

Again though my chap couldn't stand the horrors of the undead and turned and fled an inch in the opposite direction, what a wimp! My wife had the next go and walked her zombie back into hand to hand combat, this threw up another rules question, I felt that as my guy was being hit from behind and running from the undead that he wouldn't be as able to defend himself so decided the zombie should get +1 in combat. Despite this the undead  seemed unable to hit my stumbling model, I presume a lack of eyes was proving troublesome, however as I was back in hand to hand I had to take another resolve test, which of course I failed, so my last guy collapsed catatonic at the feet of the zombie and took a major injury.

Victory for the wife. All in all a fun game and quite quick as well. I very much look forward to trying out the full rules when they appear in the post. Most importantly the wife also enjoyed herself, so an all round success.

The Good Reverend

I spent this evening changing and painting this top model from Artizan Designs.

Originally the model was brandishing a cross in the outstretched hand and nothing in the hand by his side. So I carefully snipped the cross from the outstretched hand and placed in the fist by the models side. I then cut down and popped a pistol in the outstretched hand.

I really like the results, and am very pleased with my paint job, as the wife put it "very van helsing". This chap will probably be used in Pulp games, or might galvanise me to start a small Anglican League force for VBCW.

Another gentleman flyer

Just finished off this model to accompany Biggles in to battle, think he's more Bertie than ginger. Another nice model from Artizan Designs and I like how he turned out.

Biggles

This mornings relaxation involved painting this fine gentleman flyer, another Artizan Design's model. I love the model and am very pleased with my paint job, particularly the leather coat with the furry trim!

More Militia

Just finished painting these guys, there's actually seven of them. Its not a weird photo quiz or something. I forgot to photograph one of the models and can't be bothered working out which one I didn't photograph.
They are from the Artizan Design "A Very Private Army" range, I really like the models, although a couple of them have pretty large mould seams which were tough to remove. All in all though they are very nice and I really like how they turned out.

These seven will be joining the officer, SMG and Lewis gunner I painted earlier in the week to make another 10 man squad for my VBCW force.

No 1 Uniform

Another of this weekends painting triumphs (at least in my mind). This is one of Warlord's 28mm Crimean War British Officers. The hand holding the pistol originally held the officers hat, but I wanted to use the model as my CO for a royalist VBCW force.

So with the seed of an idea in my brain I hacked off the hat and popped a pistol in his hand. At some point I will have to add 4 or 5 bodyguards otherwise the poor old sod will get himself shot, far to early in proceedings to be heroic!

I'm very pleased with how he turned out particularly as I don't have much experience painting horses.

Smoke em if you got em

Just finished painting up this Lewis Gunner from one of the Artizan Design sets. I'm really pleased with how he turned out, particularly the flame on the lighter, which was a tad fiddly given how small it is and how shaky my hands are! Another top sculpt from Artizan.

Blaze away

Just finished painting this chap up as a militia Sergeant for my VBCW force. Had a bit of a struggle getting a decent picture, it didn't seem to matter what I did just looks a bit shadowy, but ho hum good enough for the moment. This is another Artizan Designs miniature.

Stand Easy

Just started painting up another 10 guys for a militia squad. They will be fairly generic and fit into any Royal or LDV VBCW force. This particular model is from Artizan Designs "A Very Private Army" range.

B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Foot

Having painted up a left over Bren Gunner in colours similar to the Thin Red line of 1879, I decided I liked the "what if" colour scheme so painted up a 10 man squad to match.

I really quite like the results and might have to paint up another two squads to support these chaps. I've got a mounted figure in mind which I'm going to use as the commander for this lot, all in all I like paint scheme and its fun to paint. These guys will, of course, be royalists in my VBCW force.

Staff Car

Just finished painting up this Tamiya 1:48 Citroen 11CV which I think looks quite snazzy as a royalist staff car. I couldn't be bothered messing around with transfers for the car's number plate so just chucked some letters and numbers on free hand. Turned out not to badly if I do say so myself. Figure for scale is a Musketeer British officer, looks pretty much bang on scale wise.