Blackeyed Betty

I will say this now - I really dislike trying to paint Anime style eyes. 💀💀💀

And, as you'll see below it shows. So apologies right up front for the shitty effort at painting them, I do very much intend to return to fix them at a later date when I am not nearing the urge to just feed her to an effin' blender.

Here's Betty, partner to previously shown Lug. She's a mechanic and Pit Boss to a racing team in the Relic Knights setting.That big yellow and grey gun thing she's toting is also some sort of future-tech wrench I believe. I tried to stick with the studio scheme to match Lug's paintjob and the illustration above. Painting chequers is a pain in the arse by the way when your brushpoints are all shot to bollocks.

*edit* I just realised that I forgot to paint the lenses of her goggles! 

Also picked up very affordably a Reaper Bones "Pillar of Evil", which was a stupid quick paintjob. Wanted it to look a bit like alabaster or some such. It has three sides, but all are identical. Wanted to test out Reaper's claim that their Bones plastic "needs no primer prior to painting", guess they were correct, at least on this piece. Very cool. Will make a nice rpg item of interest or something I can stick in photos of minis as background decor.

Also, after Simon posted up his lovely Dark Ages sheep at his blog from www.war-bases.co.uk, I just had to get a set. And I got a set of geese. and a wee pack of wolves. And a pair of Highland coos and their coo calf. Blame Simon and visit his blog - he churns out a lot of cool stuff and it's a varied so there'll be something for everyone's gaming blog tastes!

No zombies yet

Wasn't enthused all that much to get painting zombies this week so far, but that could change between now and Sunday when my Week 3 post is supposed to be up.

Instead, I've been inspired by Rich Barnes' rpg scenery pieces and so got some done for my own game.

First up, an old out-of-print Forge World (I think) "Shrine". Quick and dirty paint job with some cheeky leaves to make it look a lot better than it actually is. The sculpt is pretty cool, but in true GW fashion, the Skull-a-plenty really does make the piece a little silly. Still, it'll add some extra visual fun to my settings and can be used in tabletop skirmish games too!

Then I went and painted up a Reaper bones Altar and pair of candelabras.

My Heroquest Sorcerer holds mass for the evil folk out there.

Seeing the hollow back of this altar makes me think of the Police Academy films.... Humm.....

Also to do for scenery are a Pegasus Hobbies Gothic church looking thing and an MDF lasercut ruined building from Techtonic Studios (That I got from the first Kickstarter I supported.). 

AND - these!

Some more cheesy skulls-on-skulls GW scenery pieces from their fantasy line - Garden of Morr cemetery set and their Chapel. Originally I was planning to get rid of all of those skulls, but only had energy for the Chapel - the cemetery will be painted up as is, I have too much other stuff to be getting on with. 

And to prove I have indeed been working on my ACW confederates, here's a wee WIP picture of the progress thus far.

And now for something completely different...

Sometime later this year I plan to run the 4th Chapter in my roleplay group's long running Barbarian rpg (Using the Pathfinder rules set). It all started with fellow group member Frank having a hankering to get in some Conan/Frazetta-esque type escapades for a few game sessions that turned into a campaign. We then played something else that escapes my memory and he ran Chapter 2 in the same setting, only with younger characters (Mine was the son of my original character.) in a modified version of the Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign. Once we finished off that part, then Gregg took the helm and swung the whole story away from the Kingmaker campaign and sent us into an equally exciting storyline with invading forces from the East and betrayals at the highest echelons of society.

Now in my own campaign, I intend to fast forward the storyline once more by 30 or so years and set it in a part of the Kingmaker map that had yet to be explored. For this, there will be many miniatures required (Because fights in rpg's this day and age are easier to keep track of that way) for npc's, bad guys and also the player characters (That I intend to pre-generate to keep them in line with my planned story.) and that means I get to make an earnest effort into chipping away at the unpainted mountain.

For starters, here are some Goblins and Hobgoblins. I'm not that much of a fan of the green-skin look to my Goblinoids, so I went with an older orange and brown (Respectively) colour for these.

Gob's in the front rank, Hob's in the rear. (Don't read too deeply into that)

Goblins are from an 1980's TSR Monster Tribes set put out for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

I tried to make all the fur look like it's the pelt from some sort of spotted predator.

The Hobgoblins are a mix of actual Hobgob's from the same boxed set and some 1987 Ral Partha (I think) Orcs. They were all similar in size so I felt they could all mix in quite easily.

To show they are from the same unit as the Goblins, these have the same Red shields with Crescent/Spot designs clumsily slapped on. Hashuuk the White Crescent is their boss and will feature in a later post.

Whilst I was working on the above, my son was doing his usual and working wonders with Fimo, creating this Plague Bearer to look like the old 80's/90's  style. :)

Also, yesterday I finally bashed out these two Ruins terrain pieces for my 15mm wargames!

Excuse the ugly burner things - these pics were taken late last night and the cooker hadn't been properly cleaned.

I am Denzo the Harpist!

In my last post I wrote a little about this month's Flames of War tournament here in Norcal, held at Gamescape North in San Rafael. 1250 points Mid War and in an Urban setting with 4'x4' playing areas packed with buildings. I took a list out of North Africa, 8th Army Rifles from the early Italy campaign:

HQ
2 Platoons of Rifle/MG + Light Mortar & Piat
1 Platoon of 4 Heavy Machine Guns
1 Platoon of 4 3" Mortars
1 Platoon of 6pdr Portee trucks
1 Platoon of Commandos
1 Platoon of 2 Bofors AA guns
1 Platoon of Univeral Carriers

It's a well  rounded list, though made more for facing infantry, rather than tanks. Luckily I didn't see more than 6 tanks between all 3 of my games.

18 players turned up on a disgustingly hot day, bringing an overwhelming majority of infantry lists. The competition was pretty tough and people went all out trying to come up with some whacky lists (And others not so whacky - am looking at all you oodles of Grenadier Players... *yawn*). In the end, the event was won by Brad Feliz and his nuts Soviet Tank list (One of only two Tank lists submitted that day.), second place awarded to my mate Joe Harney who played... Grenadiers. *yawn again* :P

Once again, I was super lucky to be awarded Best Presentation. Originally it was a tied result for this award, as both Devin Moore and myself had equal votes from the tourney attendees.This lead to us having to have a "Rock-Paper-Scissors Best of Three-Off" to sort it all out. My keen strategy of paper versus rock won the day though and I took home the award! Along with my playing record of 1 win (Against Densmol), 1 draw (Against Richard Gagliasso) and 1 loss (Against brand new player Pablo Miron), not a bad result at all for the day.

Here's a selection of pics from the day - please excuse the lighting, Gamescape seems to have lighting more suited to a romantic dinner than wargaming if you ask me.

Dave Partak's Soviets

Can't remember who's Yanks these were but they were really well done.

Rich Gagliasso's German Grenadiers painted up by CGR painting service. Very nicely done too.

Brad's Soviet tanks that ran rampant. KV2's! O_o

Russ Moore's beautifully painted and based Italians.

Dave Ripperda's Grenadiers with 4 Brumbars! (I got to practice against this list pre-tourney - very nasty.) Love those flame thrower effects.

Mason Partak (Our youngest player at 11 or 12 I think) ran his Dad's Brit Commandos.

Devin's Soviets really were some pretty tanks!

Crap picture of Joe's Grenadiers. These look great when not all blurred up...

Mike's Romanian masses. Please note the TWELVE FULLY PAINTED ARTILLERY PIECES!!! Crazy bastitch...

One of only two pics that I managed to take of my actual games during the day. This was against my good mate Densmol's SS-PanzerGrenadiers. I eventually won 4-3, but he really deserved the game as I was scrambling about in the end.

My poor 6-pounder Portees went for the early turn 2 alpha strike on Densmol's Panzer III's.... and paid dearly for my shite dice rolls.

A prize was also given for the best looking table. Really, Brad won, but as he also won Best General, he passed and let the 2nd place table take the honours (Dave Partak's super full Stalingrad effort.). Still though, Brad put a LOT of effort into his buildings and even wrote a history piece to base it on.

Snow is evil and makes poor vehicles run s-l-o-w...

Some hard work went into these buildings. The snow effects were impressive just by themselves.

Lastly, I got a little hobby work done too. After reading Mad Padre's swift review of the Italerie 1/72 bridge he had purchased for his 20mm project, I went and bought one for my own gaming table. This model is a lovely sculpt of only 6 pieces and went together like a dream. I really wasn't all that worried about making it look super special seeing as it's no diorama piece so just primed black, based in a P3 Cryx light grey-type colour on the cobbles and Spacewolf Grey on the larger flagstones, then went to town with my collection of washes - Devlan Mud, old GW green (Who's name I can't remember), Griffon Sepia, P3 Armour wash and SecretWeaponMiniatures dark black wash (Again can't remember the name.). The end result is fine by me for gaming, just needs a thorough coating of first Gloss Varnish (To protect the paintjob.) and then one or two of Matt, so it won't look all goofy and shiny.

Here's some last minute before bedtime pics from last night:

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*Again, props for any who can get the post-title's quote*