31st July - Star Wars X-wing game, more papercraft building and WIP Dreadball Robots

The title says it all really. Still slotting in the hobby where I can. Still madly focusing on the light at the end of the tunnel even though the blighter keeps moving further off each time I think I'm getting closer.

Had the guys round for a games night back on the 21st. The Daughters had received many new X wing ships for Christmas presents last year (The Millennium Falcon, an A wing and a B wing for The Youngest and The Slave 1, a Tie Interceptor and a Tie Bomber for The Eldest) but we'd yet had a chance to get them out on a table. A quick family pre-games night discussion and we decided it was the perfect time for Toby's second game of Star Wars X wing Miniatures and to introduce John to the delights of the game and House Rules (chu chu laser noises and ship engine noises). We ended up with the Falcon piloted by Chewie (Youngest) supported by the A wing with a mid range pilot (Toby) vs the Slave 1 piloted by Boba Fett himself (Eldest) with a Interceptor again with a mid range pilot (John) along for the ride.

I gave them two options for victory, they could either blast each other out of the sky or they had to shoot a canister filled with vital..... nope I can't remember but it was vital to the rebel movement I swear off their starting board edge, all tractor beams being on the fritz.

Everyone enjoyed themselves but victory ended up on the side of the Imperials. Some of the highlights were Chewie heading in the opposite direction to everyone and hitting not one, not two but three asteroids on the way around; the A wing getting flanked and blasted out of the sky; the canister resisting almost every shot fired at it except for two which landed it exactly back to where it started thanks to amazing similar rolls and exact opposite lines of fire; the Falcon doing a U turn just before flying off the board to then turn around and crash into the Interceptor and then you guessed it another asteroid before finally after narrowly missing one final asteroid being passed over to Toby with 2 points of hull and no shield left because The Youngest was suddenly "It's late, I'm tired Toby can finish". He heroically took a laser blast to the rear and blew up in the very next turn.

Hobbywise I've finished another one of the paper craft buildings from the Ravenfell Kickstarter I backed at the start of the year. This time it was the Dragonshire Guard Post and Armoury bonus building. Went together quite easily although I'm pretty sure practice helped (along with some scoring before folding etc). I've placed a few of my Saga Vikings around for a sense of scale.

Currently on the painting table I've got another Dreadball team on the go. This time it's the Robots. I haven't got a lot of work done of them so far, but I'm leaning towards a darker blue on the armoured areas, finishing with an almost black or black on the guards third layer of armor. The movement points (springs, coils and shoulder joints etc) I'm firmly settled on copper, which gives me another named team the "Cyberdyne Copperpots"

Finally if anyone's interested in a steampunk miniatures game I recommend taking a look at the Infamy: Welcome to the Big Smoke campaign currently running on Kickstarter. I'm in for a Full English Breakfast pledge although if I had the funds I'd be upgrading to the Insider pledge when it comes out but it's a little out of my range at the moment. I'm also pre-ordering the new Infinity: OperationIcestorm two player box set. If your interested in checking out I recommend the current week worth of videos on Beasts of War at the moment.

20th July - Corporation team finished and various terrain pieces

Apart from a game of Ticket to Ride I haven't got a lot of gaming in this week.



That being said I've knocked over my Corporation team from start to finish. I doubt I'll ever use them myself as a team, but I'm about half way through my Dreadball teams so we'll have a bunch of free agents for the league once I manage to fit it around everyone's schedules.

Myself and the Wife bought a new printer and with our Fat Dragon Games Ravenfell Kickstarter mostly delivered we figured it was time to print one out and get it together. We may have rushed it a little so some of the seams aren't folded as hard as they should be but it looks damn good finished, so we're quite happy with it.







As I mention last post, my level of assembled Deadzone terrain was leaving my poor Marauders rather exposed to Toby's Plague grenade launcher so over the course of a couple of nights after work I put together the battlezone sprues from the starter set and setup a much more filled and roofed board for my next game. The Eldest has yet to play so we're trying to fit in a game around her school and my work. She leaning toward the rebels at the moment so if both her and the youngest decided that's their faction looks like there'll be another parcel winging it's way to the household soonish.


Not sure what to put on the painting table next. I'm wanting to keep the momentum up on the Dreadball teams which would mean the Robot team next, but I've got a bit of an urge to start up on the Deadzone Marauders....

15th July - Games, Terrain and Painting

All things considered I've squeezed quite a bit into this week gaming wise. Friday morning I started a game of Dreadball against The Wife (Forge Fathers) that saw my Veer-myn victorious on Saturday morning when we finished it off. She kept the score line fairly close for most of the game but a few unlucky dice rolls against some fairly lucky ones of mine saw me get ahead for a 6-0 victory.

Saturday night I got a game of Elder Sign in with my nephews down from Rockhampton and my daughters. It was looking dicey but we managed to seal Yog'Sothoth away without losing anyone to madness or physical trauma.

Monday night my mate Toby came round for a game of Dreadball Ultimate with myself and both daughters. We setup his Go-Pro to test it out but didn't quite get around to seeing how it worked. The game had some fairly intense moments and some funny ones. At one stage Toby had only 3 players on the pitch none of who were standing which gave myself and the Youngest a bit of room to edge ahead on the scoreboard but ultimately (see what I did there) she snatched the victory with a cheeky turn 7 landslide with a rather impressive run of evading, free actions and dashing.









That over I packed the kids into bed and setup Deadzone my Mauraders Vs Toby's Plague. This was Toby's first game and my first one in a while so it took my a few turns to dredge the rules up in the old grey matter properly but by the end everything was flowing smoothly and we finished up with another happy Deadzone player. Didn't quite remember to take photos but managed to learn that I need more buildings (specifically roofs) as I spent most of the game dodging around so I didn't present too many tempting targets for his Stage 3 mutant with the grenade launcher. Finally result went to me with a fairly commanding VP total but I was getting a bit worried until I managed to kill his Stage 2 then everything fell into place for me.

I've also managed a bit of a push on terrain this week, getting some clay hill started, finally getting my Valentines day trees and getting all of the base sprues of Deadzone Battlezone terrain undercoated.

Also I've backed a new Kickstarter I believe is worth checking out Infamy: Welcome to the Big Smoke, a steampunk miniatures game. Even if your not a gamer check it out just for the quality of the minis on offer.

8th July - Saga Vikings Finished

....well the first 4 points worth anyway :). The Wife got shuffled round at work onto the early shift so after making her lunch, breakfast and cuppa then seeing her off I was left with nothing but time on my hands until the kids woke up (having just got back from my.... their ten day holiday out west with my mother). So I figured "Bugger it! I'll finish the Vikings off". Three and a bit hours later and the kids up, fed and doing their own thing (The Youngest grabbing her Irish out and painting a few cloaks on her warriors) saw me finally finished.

So without further ado:

Warlord Left View

Warlord Right View

Warlord Front View

My first Bondi Unit and the Hirdman

The Warlord, his Hirdman and Beserkers

The Completed Warband

Now to form up the raiding party and head for other shores (i.e. Sorting out a game with my Brother, Uncle and others)

6th July - The week with no children

The school holidays started with the kids heading off on a ten day holiday with their Nan (my Mum). While I couldn't managed to organize any games in around work (both mine and my potential opponents) it did free up some extra time for painting. I've now finished the Hearthguard component of my initial Saga force. Both the Beserkers and the ordinary Hirdmen. Along with my Bondi (Warriors) and the yet to be finished Warlord this is it until I purchase another 2 points worth of troops. At the moment I'm considering a unit of Thralls and another selection of Hirdmen, of course this may change once I get a few games in and see how things go.

Once I complete the Warlord I'm thinking I'll be back to painting my remaining Dreadball teams and MVPs before moving on to the next larger project.

Beserkers

Close up Beserkers

Hirdmen Unit

The Warband waiting for their Warlord to lead them to victory

24th June - Progress and Games

Still on a rather time hungry work roster at the moment, but I keep telling myself it'll be back to normal soon. Continuing with the Saturday night family gaming we've played Pandemic and Elder Sign these past two weeks and managed a victory in both of these co-op games (admittedly Elder Sign was a just and the Youngest did end up a gibbering madwoman).

The Wife's Forge Fathers

My painting regime has been compromised with a six day week and some rather poor painting weather, but today I persevered and managed to  finish off my second warrior unit for my Saga war band (only badly smudging one eye which I was willing to count as a win) and I finally got around to putting the decals on the Wife's finally finished and as yet unnamed Dreadball Forge Father team. She did have them almost finished about two months back but decided she didn't like the paint scheme and redid them.

Had the gaming group round on Monday for our fortnightly games night and pulled out Munchkin this week. As you'd expect chaos ensued and I emerged from the fray victorious after the usual betrayal, last minute cursing and modifier pile ons (I believe one combat ended up with a player strength of 53 to the monsters 55). For me (and the group I'm fairly certain) the highlight was when the Wife bowed out early to sleep (being on a night shift and wanting an hour or two before work) I moved next to the Eldest and proceeded to bear hug her saying "Friend" over and over again. She blindly reached out till she found the dice and rolled to escape failing the first attempt but succeeding on her second try (for those who haven't played if you find yourself unable to win a combat you try to run needing a 5 or 6 otherwise you suffer from the Bad Stuff listed on the monsters card).

Not much else happening on the gaming front at the moment. Fingers crossed work settles down soon and I can manage to push some tiny metal men around on a table again soon and get the painting backlog on track again before my next deluge of said metal men begins to arrive.

8th June - Teaching the girls Stargrunt among other things

Well once again the regular gaming schedule is thrown out of whack. Had another chef at work leave on Friday, then just to make it interesting another one (who is also part of my gaming group) managed to get hit by a car on his bike on Tuesday. Luckily nothing too serious, cracked ribs etc but it means I'm back to 5 days for the moment. I'll give you a minute to share in my suffering....

Ok so pushing on I've managed to still get quite a few things in, playing a Capture the Flag scenario of Stargrunt with my daughters, a couple of games of Warage (a new dueling card game I backed on kickstarter last year) with my youngest and finally cracking the Settlers of Catan: Traders and Barbarians box. The only thing that's suffered has been my painting so my second group of warriors for Saga has been sitting surround by the paints they require to be finished... I can feel their bitter and judging glare on my back as I type.

So to Stargrunt. I managed to get a game in against my Uncle a week or so ago (no photos we were re-familiarizing ourselves with the rules) and decided to introduce the kids to it. Borrowing some terrain as I left we proceeded to setup the board after a breakfast run to Mount Tamborine while their mum was sleeping before her night shift. I knocked together a quick capture the flag scenario.

We were involved in a training exercise in a secret NSL location bring up the latest group of recruits to the require level of skill. Each side would consist of two 6 man squads all outfitted the same. Quality and Leadership value was deteremined by two die rolls, 1 - 2 Green Squad 3 - 5 Regular 6 Veteran. My daughters rolled a Green (my poor eldest) and Veteran (the lucky youngest), I got a Green and Regular squad. The leadership rolls followed with the Eldest rolling a lv 3 Ldr (my poor poor girl) and a lv 1 from the youngest (did I mention the luck?) I got a lv 1 for the Regs and a 2 for the Green. I just managed to beat the Youngest on a quick initiative roll so I began the game. I'd giving the girls a couple of basic ideas on how to go about getting the flag and getting it off the board and gave them a few minutes to discuss tactics.

The game went well. Both picking up the rules and had a good time. Unfortunately for my Eldest as they got to the point where they had the flag well covered, I manage to get the Younger suppressed and she proceeded to leg it into a nearby forest leaving the poor Green squad in the open where they proceeded to get cut to pieces and ended up breaking two turns later. The Younger eventually came out after skirmishing along the edge and refusing to break even unto "death" (Training excerise, dummy rounds, rigged armour etc). Her last two troopers proceeding to charge my Green unit killing two and driving them off, gaining the flag for one precious moment before being cut down by me Regs positioned just behind her.

They both enjoyed themselves though and the youngest has been scanning various sites trying to work out which faction she's going to buy once she finishes her Saga Irish.