Malifaux, Continuing Beginnings

Just a quick post. I have sprayed and washed some of the figures and begun to make a start on painting them.

Edit: Sorry the pics are so blurry!

Terrain Painting 4

I finished the lava/skull cracks. Was surprisingly time consuming, There is a lot of little skulls in there!! Just need to give it a protective varnish and it is all done.

Malifaux - The Beginning

Duncan, the Dell's and I are starting off with Malifaux. It was all Duncan's idea, but it seems to be a good one so we all bought a crew (actually I have bought two, but one is currently out of stock. I have assembled and based the figures for all the guys and then will spray them all and paint my crew and Chris' Arcanists.

Dystopian Prussians - Finishing Touches

I gave the Prussians their anti-shine varnish and I am really pleased with the finish. Hopefully I will get them out and use them soon.

Above: Cruisers and Frigates,
Below: battleship and Frigates

Above: Sky Fortress and Scout Ships,
Below: Bombers and Tiny Flyers

Club Night 13th May

Robin came up the club and bought his Salute Terrain for us to try out a full game of Gruntz. Me and Ben took some New Israelis and Luke took the Kra'vak. Benm and I split our forces, Ben took the majority of the infantry, the APC and the large walker to move through the built up area on one side of river. I took the heavy armour, flyer with power armoured infantry and the jet-bikes on the more open side.

Luke started with most of his force on my side of the river and had to take a power generator on the opposite side and the town, so he would be moving away from me and the objectives where near to him.

I closed as quickly as possible and started engaging the aliens, destroying the skimmer droid quickly and closing my bikes to the infantry sheltering behind the walls, while the alien heavy tanks used their anti-grav mobility to rush over the other side.

I moved my flyer into the middle of the bridge and de-bused and laid down heavy fire in all directions and inflicted heavy damage and destroyed one of the tanks that had moved to engage my armour, but in return they came under heavy fire and were almost wiped out.

Ben was making good progress on the other side, especially under the devastating cover fire of the walker, while my dice rolling was poor, and Luke's was very good, so I lost my armour and my jet-bikes, but on the other side Ben had driven them back and the aliens had no choice but to withdraw from their invasion.

Terrain Painting 3

I finished off the small scatter items tonight. There are a couple of burning braziers, a well, the weapons and fire from the LotR set, two signs and a skeletal signpost. I just followed the same basic colours as the main boards and think they are nice little additions to the scenery. Just have to finish the skulls on the last two boards and I am done (for now!)...

Club Night 6th March

Duncan and I had a practice game for the upcoming club league. Duncan wanted some more practice of 8th edition and we both wanted to try out our armies, although the lists have been submitted already so we can't change them now.

We rolled up the battle of the pass so deployed our forces in a nice tight formation and I rushed forward. It was in this enthusiasm I made my first mistake, casting bestial surge I rushed forward, but opened up some gaps that enabled Duncan to move his fiends through and position them ready to attack the rear of my units.

I continued to charge forward, but my Minotaurs fell short, although my Gor and Ungor herds got in against the Daemonettes in what would be a prolonged combat as I desperately, and just about, held on turn after turn. The Minotaurs where charged by the Fleshhounds and the Horrors, who turned out to have the changeling leading them who is a horrible unit champion against unit like this. They promptly lost and fled only to rally in time to get wiped out by a second hound charge. My Giant had seen off one fiend and was now in combat with the hounds and had started jumping up and down on them

In the centre my shaman was desperately trying to avoid the other fiend, while on my left I had chased off the furies with one chariot and then attacked the other horror unit with all three and the Beastlord. They then turned and one engaged the fiend and the other two attacked and destroyed the bloodletters.

The giant had felled a number of the flesh hounds but this lack of armour bought him down. As my Beastlord in his chariot charged and despatched the enemy Battle Standard bearer on his disc he overran into the Daemonettes. And here he met his end, using the shadow spell mindrazor, Duncan made their strength equal to their leadership so they were striking at S8 and I was quickly chopped into bits ending the game.

It was a good game and Duncan's army is really tough. I made some mistakes, such as putting my general off to one side and not using my infantry blocks to support my chariots properly. I will need to learn from these error before the league roper starts.

Terrain Painting 2

I continued on with the terrain painting to try and get it finished this weekend, which I have almost achieved. I added some bright yellow over the orange between the skulls and then washed it with Baal Red to tie it together and give a nice glow. I then painted the skulls here, and elsewhere on the board Scorched Brown.
The trees were drybrushed Chardonite Granite.
And then brushed over that with Khemri brown.
The ruins where drybrushed bleached bone and then the edges highlighted with white
All the bones where overpainted with Dheneb Stone.
All the rest of the bones except in the glowing cracks where painted bleached bone, washed with Devlan Mud and highlighted with white, completing all the other boards
The trees were given a final highlight of white and the rope wrapped around some of them painted Khemri Brown, washed with Devaln Mud and highlighted with white to complete the woods.All that is left now is to finished the skulls in the glowing lava areas, and finish some scatter bits, then varnish all of it with some hard wearing, probably brush on varnish to protect it.

Dystopian Prussians - Decals

I have finally prepared my decals for my Prussians. I drew them up in AutoCAD as I use this professionally, so although it may not be designed for graphics I know I could draw them accurately and size them precisely. I then printed these out at best quality and had them copied onto white laser decal paper. I chose white as I needed the trim to the crosses and though it would be easier to cut them accurate than have to paint on the trim. I used laser paper since I managed to order the wrong stuff! However this worked out well as copying was cheap and I didn't need to use any kind of fixative spray.
I applied them using both Micro Set and Micro Sol to get these tiny decals into place accurately. They all went on perfect with the exception of one of the crosses on the cruisers which took three attempts, but that is exactly why I printed more then I needed. Just need to anti-shine spray these and they are all finished.

Above: The decals, Below: The fleet with decals applied

Club 29th Apil

As Friday was the Royal wedding and we had no interest in watching we headed up the club early for a full day gaming. We started off with some games for our Operation Crusader Campaign. While Rick defended with Ariete against Steve D's British I was to fight another defensive action with my RECAFM (an Italian reconnaissance formation) against a British attempt to break through towards a break out from Tobruk which if successful would open a route to through to Tobruk.

While Rick was successful and even managed to destroy the supporting Infantry tank formation I was ruthlessly crushed very quickly as my armoured car formation where held back in reserve, the supporting fusileri where ruthlessly cut down by the machine gunned on the British Crusader tanks.

Next we set out to prevent the British attack out Tobruk. Having fallen back to opposite this break out we had re-enforced the defenders so we had a good numerical superiority, and with engineers even managed to out out some Barbed wire.As the British moved forward under cover of darkness with supporting infantry tanks we launched our platoon of L6/40 light tanks down the exposed flank and begun to attack their machine guns and mortars. This forced them to turn their tanks around and by some miracle we survived their gun fire. This brave attack was enough to distract the advance and prevent British victory.

The Axis then had an opportunity to launch an exploitation attack which I did, launching the victorious Ariete south at a battered British armoured regiment trying to break a weak pint in the British lines and isolate the forces attacking towards Tobruk. This should have been an easy victory as we had a major numerical advantage. However the ability of the British tanks to move and fire was decisive and they destroyed many of the Italian tanks. However while they were doing this the motociclisti platoons had moved on from their flanking manoeuvre and taken the objective to claim victory.

Above: The Italian armour advance.
Below: Italian air-power attacks (unsuccessfully) the British armour

This means the Axis have now made a another major thrust south which the Allies will have to respond to as we start turn 5 and the penultimate turn.

After all these games in the evening I was joined by Mike to take on Ian and Colin with my Eldar against the ongoing raids of Colin's Dark Eldar. This was a thoroughly enjoyable and close game. With three objectives evenly spaced along the table we had a firebase of Guardians and Dire Avengers with harlequin and war walker support on one flank and a mobile force of primarily Warp Spiders and Jetbikes on the other flank.

But it stared going wrong from the start when they stole the initiative and went first avoiding out heavy fore and destroying the warwalkers, and most importantly getting their raiders a lot closer to our lines. However we started to pull it back as we used our manoeuvrability to hit and destroy units were we wanted.

As the game progressed casualties mounted on both sides. In the games clear highlight my Farseer found himself in combat with a Talos, but somehow managed not only to survive, but to destroy it! By the end of the game all that was left were our two generals, a single harlequin, the second Talos and an immobilised Raider. With no troops to take objectives and both sides virtually wiped out it was a clear draw!

Terrain Painting

Over the Bank Holiday weekend I though I would finally get round to painting my GW Realm of Battle and all the matching terrain, primarily intended for my Helldorado games. I took advantage of the nice weather to spray it with some brown acrylic paint. I then drybrushed it all with Daler-Rowney System 3 Yellow Ochre which is a good match for GW bubonic brown which I use on my desert bases,
I then used Dark Flesh to shade the rocks and other areas
I then overbrushed all the rocks with a Codex Grey-Graveyard Earth mix to give a warm grey base.
This was then highlighted with Fortress Grey
A final light highlight was applied with Daler-Rowner System 3 Buff Titanium which is a close match for Bleached Bone
A red wash was applied to the skull areas and over the edge of the rocks surrounding them
The whole boards were then drybrushed with the Buff Titanium
Then a final highlight of the Buff Titanium and white
The skulls had blazing orange added between the skulls as the start of a glow to appear below them.
The arcane ruins were then drybrushed with Graveyard Earth
And then with Bubonic Brown
So I have made some good progress but need to make sure I give it some time to finish.