X-wing Saturday

A lazy Saturday afternoon and the boys wanted a game of X-wing.
So they had one.
Skywalker's X-wing and Y-wing versus Vader and a Tie over the shifting sands of Tatooine

Didn't manage to get to a finish as we had to go out, but a fun hour or so was had by all

 The Rebels spot the approaching Imperials

 The Tie fighter breaks left...

 ...with Vader close behind

 Luke gets on the tail of the Tie

The Sith lord tries to vapourise the Y-wing

 

The Tie and Luke close on one another.

Lion Rampant Retinue (7)

I slapped some paint on the first horse. Not sure about the yellow, the wash will dull it down a bit, but we will have to see when the horse flesh and other details are finished.

Musketeer Late Romans

After quite some time forlornly staring at me from the fringes of my painting area I finally cracked and picked up some of the Musketeer Late Romans and applied a little pigment.
Quite pleased with them.

Wonder if I'll finish the unit before I get distracted..?

Peter Cushing Wargamer

Top thesp Peter Cushing demonstrates the fine art of Toy Soldiering


That's quite an impressive man cave he has there.

Orcs and Goblins versus Nurgle Chaos Legion a Warhammer Battle report

After a considerable hiatus, bought about by our hectic international jet set lifestyles Stephen and I convened for another game of Warhammer.
He's been very busy assembling and painting all manner of putrid Nurgle models to use under the End Times rules (see here and here). And I've painted a whole load of random nonsense not suitable for Warhammer games at all (see the last two month's posts on this blog).

We rolled up a scenario and it was the diagonal deployment one. I set up first, the hideous forces of corruption then deployed and failed to steal the first turn, so we were off.

 Deployment

 Gruzzkup and Da Lads

 Stinky Chaos Mens

Animosity failed to take hold of my forces, but a vanguarding unit of horsemen ejected a couple of fanatics earlier than I might have liked. I tried to charge the horsemen with the squig herd, but they wisely fled. The rest of the Orc forces pushed forward and some ineffectual magic and bowfire saw the end of my turn.

 'Ere we go

 Get 'em

The Chaos forces advanced, menacingly (and a bit smelly too I expect). The warriors failed to charge home and the dogs started to sweep around my right flank. Over on the left the Foresaken hurled themselves at the giant. The winds of magic blew weakly, although the Chaos Warrior champion almost lost his life as a result.
In the combat phase the Foresaken powered up and caused four wounds on the giant. However in return the big fella jumped up and down and wiped them all out.

 Behold my freshly painted might!

 Jump, squish, jump, squish, jump, squish, ju...

In my turn I again survived animosityless and elected to do quite a bit of charging.
Trolls and Big Uns piled into the warriors, both chariots smashed into the blight warriors and I threw the Arrer boys into the dogs.
In the magic phase I managed to get Gork'll Fix It off on the Blightkings and the spiders managed to shot a marauder from his horse.
In combat the Arrer boys didn't fair as well as I hoped against the dogs, them being Nurgle and having a higher weapon skill and everything - but didn't actually run away. The Boys and trolls found the Nurgle guys quite a tough nut as well, though flaming banners on both sides meant anything wounded stayed wounded. I took hits, but numbers were on my side.
Over on my left the chariots piled into the Chaos Beasties and to my astonishment managed to do enough damage to make them flee and run them down. The curse of newly painted models strikes again!

 Waaaagh! Crunch!

In return the Marauder Horse charged into the flank of the Trolls, hoping to save the warriors from being crushed and the stone thrower creature thingy (I think that's it's proper name) advanced toward the Squig herd. Magic blew powerfully and sole wizard was snatched off into the void. The Nurgle warriors received a poison boost before a Total power result  saw the rest of the magic pool vanish before more damage could be done.
The stonethrower creature prepared to spit flies and death at the squigs but something went wrong (perhaps a fly got swallowed and went down the wrong way) and the whole hideous creature collapsed and died on the spot!

In combat the dogs finished off the Arrer boys before the Orc boys laid waste to the remaining chaos warriors, leaving just a flag bearer standing.
And with that the game was up.

A victory, but one more reliant on luck and dice than skillful tactical mastery on my part.
But a good fun game nevertheless.
Steve was particularly unlucky that Bloab Rotspawned misfired and rolled a one, resulting in 400+ points of newly pained awesomeness was simply removed from the bard. But that is how the rues have been written. Although I believe Stephen is now attempting to use his inside contacts to ensure an Errata will be shortly forthcoming.

Please go at once and read Steve's version of events over on his blog

Lion Rampant Retinue (6)

So I dug out the knights and assembled a couple of horses.
But I've hit a snag of sorts.

These old Bretonnians are obviously fantasy knights (although influenced by real medieaval knights). But I really want to build a plausibly historical retinue. I can overlook the helmets with brims on the archers, but I'm in a quandry about the knights.
The horses are relatively early in their long flowing dresses (that's the technical term). However the knights themselves are in full plate, placing them rather later in the period. Also the helmets are clearly fantastical and more typical of what might have been worn for a joust than going to war.
So that's my dilemma.
My choices are

• Ignore it all and just paint them and use them
• Replace the helmets with Agincourt or earlier period ones (Mirliton do some)
• Replace the helmets with later period ones (there are some WFB Empire ones that might suit , or I could see if any of my chums have spare Perry WotR ones). But this would make the horses wrong.
•  Buy some metal riders from Front Rank.

I'm broadly thinking Agincourt era 100 years war is the retinue I'd like to build - a small raiding party chevauchéeing their way around France. If I wanted to do a WotR retinue I think I'd just go and buy two boxes of Perry plastics and be done - and probably not have any horsemen in any case.

So, any thoughts?

In the meantime I think I'll get on and paint the horses.

Nelly (3)

I repainted the elephant.

I gave the whole thing a coat of grey (obviously) primer, then painted the body with Adeptus Battlegrey, gave it a Badab Black wash then drybrushed with Adeptus and then Astronomican grey.
The tusks were painted with Snakebite Leather, then Bone and white and the toenails given a similar treatment. The eyes I painted Scorched Brown. Then he was based to match my 28mm Darkest Africa tribesmen.

 Yikes!

 Comparison shot with Foundry Tribesman

Not bad for a quid.

Chaos and Dark Elves - a Song of Blades and Heroes battle report

The smallest boy and I set up another game of Song of Blades and Heroes. He used his usual Chaos Warriors with a Dragon list, whereas I wanted to build a new warband around the recently painted Dark Elf sorceress. In the end I couldn't squeeze in the Witch Elf I wanted to take and settled on a hydra instead, along with two warriors, a crossbow elf and a leader to accompany the sorceress.

There were three possible treasure locations on the board, one on the central hill, one in the swamp and one in the patch of jungle undergrowth.

The Dark Elves advanced across the board, whilst the Chaos warriors surged toward the jungle, leaving the dragon to investigate the treasure on the hill. Sadly the winged lizard was unable to find the riches.

 I smell gold. Oh.

The spear elves located the cache in the swamp but before they could uncover its value they were set upon by the dragon.

 Lets just have a look under...OMFG!

The crossbow armed warrior bravely launched himself into the jungle and discovered that was the true location of the treasure.

 Mine.all mine!

Foolishly the sorceress raced ahead of the rest of the Dark Elves and was caught in the open by the Chaos warrior leader who duly hacked her down.

Thwack, thud, oof!

In an attempt to prevent the dragon dispatching both spear elves the hydra lumbered into the attack, but a powerful blow from the dragon knocked it to the ground.

 Raaaaargh!

 Bugger.

Over on the left the crossbow elf was hunted down by rampaging Chaos warriors and despite his best efforts was eventually hacked to the ground.

 Kick his ears off!

Desperately the dark Elf leader raced toward the Chaos threat to try to retrieve the treasure but was met by a lone chaos warrior.

 Lets DO THIS!

Meanwhile the hydra hauled itself upright and lent its weight to the spearmen who managed to find a chink in the dragons scales and brought the creature crashing to earth.

 I hope we're not too late...

Held up by the first Chaos Warrior the Dark Elf leader soon found himself surrounded and was swiftly knocked to the ground. Bravely he hauled himself back to his feet, only for a final furious onslaught from the servants of the Dark Powers to leave him face down on the ground his lifeblood soaking into the dirt.

 Hit him again

 Shoe him!

With that the Chaos warrior Leader made good his escape as the last of the Dark Elves fled.

Games Workshop Fans All Right Wing Ed Sheeran Lovers Shocker

Official data released by the UK Government reveals today that Games Workshop fans are all extremely right-wing lawyers and financiers who drive Citroens, listen to Ed Sheeran and keep birds as pets.

UKIP voting, I'm a Celebrity watching weirdo.

Examine the poll results (and lose several hours looking up other hilarious data) here

Staffordshire Hoard

On Saturday I took the two boys on a Magical Mystery Tour to Britain's second city and home of my alma mater Birmingham.
Our destination was Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for a look at the recently openend Stafordshire Hoard gallery.
I've been fascinated by the hoard since it's discovery, and recent activity on Twitter reminded me it was now installed in a gallery at the museum, so the weekend provided a great oportunity for me to take a peek and, hopefully, show the boys something a bit unusual.

We went by train and passed the time playing the card game Guillotine.
Pro-parenting tip: Guillotine is great for on a train with kids as the row of nobles awaiting execution will just fit on one of those small train tables.

We arived in a Brum much changed from my student days, to find the "traditional" German Market that seems to have sprung up in most cities over the last five years or so, in full swing. The boys were amused to note the women mostly sipping from small ceramic mugs, whilst their menfolk swilled from oversize Beer Steins.

I'd kept the destination secret from the boys in order to prevent them mithering for the two hour journey, but they were both actually quite excited by the huge images of ferocious looking Saxon warrior.

We headed straight for the hoard and after queuing for about five minutes (they restrict numbers so there's plenty of space to look at the exhibits) we were allowed in.

Now I am a cynical bugger and not easily impressed but I found the whole thing genuinely astonishing. There are several cases all packed with beautiful pieces of intricate gold and silver work. The hoard contained over 11lbs of gold (about the weight of your head I informed eldest boy) and 3lbs of silver, most of it beautifully worked. It appears to have been either stolen treasure, or possibly a ransom (for a king, presumably) and most of the pieces were damaged before the hoard was buried. It was found nowhere near any known Saxon settlement, so was presumably buried to keep it safe or hidden.

I duly took loads of pictures, here's a few:

There were two large cabinets absolutely packed with items displayed like this

There's also a special gallery within the exhibition with some of the more precious pieces, including a (folded up) cross and a simply jaw-dropping sword pommel.

This was moving, so the pictures are a bit blurry

 Fantastically detailed work

 This is a reconstruction of the "folded up" cross

 And this is the orginal

 This mysterious strip had (misspelled) biblical quotes engraved on it

 A pair of "eyes" the backs of the centre mounts were silvered to reflect light through the missing jewels

The interpretation is also really well done, videos of battles, plentiful explanation boards, dressing up opportunities and the option to play Nine Men's Morris. The boys were especially pleased with a couple of big screen/tables - like something out of CSI - where you could move images of the items around, expand them and play videos to see what they would have looked like originally.

In addition there were recordings of people speaking Old English and even a little diorama for the toy soldier buffs.

 Just ripe for a quick game of SAGA.

We were in there for over an hour, and I culd have spent much longer. The delicacy and craftsmenship of some of the items was absolutely stunning - and all done by people without (as far as we know) access to much in the way of magnification.

Here's way more pictures:

 These two eagles were tiny - look at the detail.

 I loved the beautifuly intricate work on this

 Stunning gold work

Seax pommel

The whole thing is fantastically well done and I'd recommend anyone who can to get along and have a look at this unique and fascinating exhibition. One that really challenges our pre-conceptions of the "Dark Ages". And, its all completely free - well done to Birmingham and all concerned.

If you'd like to see better quality pictures there's quite a few in the gallery on the Hoard website

The rest of the museum is non too shabby either, we had a great time in the history of Birmingham section, and finished off in the rather more antiquated, but still fascinating Greek, Roman and Egyptian exhibitions.

 This Egyptian canopic jar loked like it had been made by the work experience lad

The well known Egyptian children's toy Tomtut the Tank engine