30th August - Dreadball Robots "Cyberdyne Copperpots"

Finished off my robot team for Dreadball. I decided to have a bit of a play and added magnets into the mix so I can "quick change" forms during the games. They're not a team I'm likely to play (I'm a dedicated Veer-myn man myself) but with them now finished it leaves four teams to go that I own and a fair chunk of the MVP range. Once Dreadball Extreme delivers at the end of the year I'll have another fourteen to go and plenty more MVPs but finishing off what I own will give me enough free agents for the league and I'll get things going.

Anyway without further ado the "Cyberdyne Copperpots"

24th August - Hobby

Just a couple of quick shots of some more hobby side things I've been up to rather than games.

I've been playing with some trees since watching the Beast of War Hobby Lab videos (part of the paid backstage access part of the website). It's rather simple to do using just a bit of garden wire, a broom head and some glue, spray paints and some spray adhesive. I got a little cocky on the third one and overstuffed it giving it an odd shape and I've since trimmed them up slightly. Before I start up on any more I'll be purchasing a medium size (or perhaps foliage specific) flock rather than the fine one I used but I think they look pretty good and took me all of maybe an 30 mins including drying time.

My other test project was some hedges. Again simple components, a door mat, some spray paints and weathering sprays. I'm holding off on this one as well while I get either a longer steel ruler or a piece of wood the length/width I want so I can keep them a uniform width. Next step for these will be some fields using carpet mats to use them to edge and that'll be a good portion of my WW2 board filled with terrain.



 My final project which I knocked over in the hour between The Wife leaving for work and the girls getting up for school before I went to work was The Wife's Bolt Action Japanese starter set, plus the Type 3 Ho Ni III tank destroyer I bought her at the same time. The two plates next to the Type 97 Chi-Ha I'll be gluing on after she's painted it up a little more as they cover a fair bit of the rear section but it's still visible and it'll be slightly annoying for her to paint around them.

And of course a family painting day or two

22nd August - 17th Aug Bolt Action Game vs Mr Anon (Toby's US)

Ok as promised second AAR from last weeks games. It was a bit of a strain fitting in games and hobby around work and a rather short sleeping pattern (combination of my late shifts and my wife's early shifts with my liking of making her lunch and having a cuppa before she leaves :) ).

This game saw my mate who prefers not to be named (no conspiracy theory's I'm afraid just a dislike of being prominent in most forms) so I'll refer to him as Mr Anon, get his first game of Warlord's Bolt Action. He's got his own force of Russians but as previous mentioned they aren't quite game ready yet, so Toby stepped in and lent his US force for the game.

We opted for the straight forward Maximum Attrition scenario from the book and setup to play. It was a close game for the first couple of turns with order dice being drawn rather evenly and the small amount of fire exchanged inconsequential.

Turn three saw the engagement escalate with the first real casualties of the game effecting both sides. I bought my Hetzer up onto a hill to give myself a nice firing position deciding to rely on my hefty armour and a decision to take out the opposing Sherman with my first shot. True to form my shot went well wild but some fire from my MMG managed to pick off a few infantry from a squad including the NCO. Two order dice later the Sherman returned fire, not to worry I thought he's got to roll fairly high to even pen..... F@#% three sixes in a row leaving me with a smoking wreck on top of a hill. I hate to say it but that was the flavour of the rest of his dice rolls for the game making it incredibly hard to me to do little more than begin to pull back and make him pay for the ground he was taking.

The remaining highlights for me were one of my panzerfaust armed troops taking out his M3s mobility and my one squad still at full strength charging it and taking it out and..... nope that was it. I declared victory his after that turn deciding it was more tactically sound to pull out and fight another day.

We're all madly gluing and painting now to get our forces finished as we're looking at a series of Ironman type challenge games with around 1500pts in the centre with around 750pts assulting from either side although the attackers will have a renewable supply of infantry units and possible one or two "lives" for armour units.

I've been getting a bit of hobby done the last few days as well to help populate my tables. Toby's been working on a bit his end too. I'll get a small update up in the next few days with a few pictures of what I've been playing with.

18th August - 11th Aug Saga vs The Youngest

It's been a rather productive week... fortnight since the last post. A bit of a painting day with The Eldest and The Youngest. This saw the completion (minus basing and shields) of The Youngest's four point Irish force for Saga and gave her the rights to the first family game against me.

Daddy/Daughter painting day

She picked the Kill the Warlord scenario and off we went

Adelbrand surveyed this new green land laid out before him. After crushing the pitiful Saxon warlord and surveying the land for future raids he'd loaded the men back into the ships and sailed on looking for more lands to plunder. Coming across another landmass he'd made land fall and headed inland. Once again across from him their was a foreign force, it almost felt familiar but they were lacking in the mail armour of his previous encounter and they'd brought their dogs to the battle. It was laughable. "Let's make quick work of these boys, there's more to do today!"

After a quick run through of the rules and placing terrain. We rolled for deployment and off we went. I'd won the first turn so began advancing toward her force. During her first turn she rolled incredibly well on for the order board and charged her dog unit (warriors with little armour but double the move of normal foot units) into my Beserkers. It was in this initial contact she discovered her make Dad's Beserkers incredibly average ability, limiting me to two attack dice per model this time. Fortunately for me my luck was in here and I managed to kill five of her unit while taking no casualties myself. The rest of her force went in the opposite direction after that. My second turn saw Beserkers charge the dogs finishing them off but not before my Bondi (warriors) on that flank had attacked and managed to lose two men to the tattered beasts forcing them to retreat to reform.



Her turn saw her start to get her actual human units (one Bonnacht (warriors) and one Fianna (hearthguard) into javelin range which was the beginning of the end for me. What happened over then next two turns saw me trying to hold on as long as I could against a series of almost perfect order rolls, not to take away from the fact that she has been watching me play for years and has some idea of what she's doing. She had wiped out my other group of Bondi and had taken a large chunk out of the Hirdmen I'd left with the Warlord as a bodyguard/"I'll save you my chief!" unit.

She put the final nail in the coffin when her two Curadh (champion Fianna basically mini Warlords) came out of the forest. The first one fell to the combined blows of my remaining Hirdman and the leader himself, but during her fourth and final turn of the game her remaining one rushed from the trees to avenge his fallen brother and manged to kill my Warlord even with the Hirdman jumping in front of one of the blows in an attempt to save him.

She really enjoyed the game and so did I. She has started researching some patterns for her shields and has been thinking about upgrading her force to a full six point force now.

Stay tuned I managed to get a game of Bolt Action in against another on of my mates who prefers anonymity using Toby's US troops (Mr Anon's Russians are still on the sprue I believe) vs my Germans including my now painted tanks (well my Hetzer the Tiger 2 would just be ridiculous in a 1000 point game), so I'll get an AAR up for that game soon, hopefully later this week.

6th August - Saga Vikings vs Anglo Saxons 4th Aug - AAR

So after finishing my Vikings off a few weeks ago I finally managed to organize a game of Saga against Toby with his recently finished Anglo Saxons. Both of us had picked up our respective four point starter boxes and wanted to get a game in before investing anything more in (for me my box included boxes of Anglo Danish for The Wife, Norse Gael for The Eldest, Irish for The Youngest [almost fully painted and game ready now] and all four rule books and faction dice for all). As this was our first game we decided to just play a simple kill the enemy warlord scenario. As stated above we had the starter box sets for our factions.

My force consisted of my warlord Adelbrand, two points of hirdmen (hearthguard) and two points of bondi (warrior). The hearthguard points consist of four models per point which I split into two units of four one of which I made beserkers as per the viking special rule. The warrior points are eight models a point and I left these as eight man units. Units must be between four to twelve men in size and of the same type. Toby took his warlord, one point of ealdormen (heathguard), two points of thegns (warriors) and one point of ceorls (levies). The levies are twelve models per point and work well with his factions abilities, a lot of which are dependent or gain bonuses for units of ten models or more. With this in mind he ran the four ealdormen, twelve levies and two units of warriors one of eleven models and one of five.

Our starting formations gave myself six dice for my order pool and gave Toby five dice (Two dice for the warlord, one dice per hearthguard or warrior unit, no dice for levies). These dice are then allocated to the order boards and used during your turn (or your opponents for reactives) to activate your units or to use racial abilities.

Adelbrand moved his men forward further inland. Today he may have only bought a handful but returning with a rich haul would allow him to bring more boats and more men, he just needed to find a rich town to plunder. Eric the Swift was suddenly back beside him. "The Saxons have got wind of us, they're mustered to meet just just between the hills up ahead". Sure enough the locals could be seen mustered just ahead on the edge of view. "Ready your weapons men, tonight we dine in their halls, or those of Vahalla!!"

Initial deployment, Vikings on the bottom edge Anglo Saxons on the top

I won the roll for initiative and began the staggered deployment and took the first turn. The scenario was for six turns a piece ending with a victory point total or killing the enemy warlord for an outright victory. I rolled well on my first turn and managed to move everyone up towards my opponent. Toby didn't do as well with his rolls but moved the bulk of his force towards me.

Berserkers destroying ealdormen

Bererkers going down in a pool of ceorl blood

Turn two saw the first combat of the game with my beserkers coming to grips with his ealdormen and tearing them to shreds (my dice pool of twenty with the use of a few abilities, against his of eight). Unfortunately for Toby even with my already low and then lowered armour value I was able to successful defend against two of his four hits compared to his managing to save against one of my ten hits. First blood to the Vikings. Apart from that I now had the center tile firmly under control and had my far left bondi unit up on the hill ready to smash into his larger thegn formation to remove any bonuses he was potentially going to get. His turn saw the ceorls charge into the remnants of the berserkers taking them out but losing five of their number breaking one of his large units and eliminating the need to worry about his Saxon Kingdom ability which would have allowed them to fight as a warrior unit. All in all it was a happy trade off for me.

Bondi break the large thegn unit but at a bloody cost

 The next turn saw my bondi on the left flank charging into Toby's larger thegn unit and thanks to my Thor ability fighting two rounds of combat before disengaging. This saw my unit reduced to three from eight but I managed to pull down six of his troops breaking his final large unit. My other bondi hit his ceorls and reduced them to three men at the cost of one. His retaliatory turn saw my tattered bondi unit finished off and his warlord burst forth killing three of my other bondi forcing them well back but leaving him out in the open.....

Final clash of the game

Thus began my fifth turn and the final for the game. A rather nice activation roll saw my hirdmen advancing on his warlord along with my own warlord. Njord removed everyone's fatigue then Determination combined with We Obey and Side by Side (all warlord special rules) allowed me to move my warlord and hirdmen into combat. Frigg removed my warlords fatigue and we both spent the remaining fatigue adjusting Toby's warlords armour leaving it where it began. The resulting combat saw my hirdmen saving against both of his two strikes but his warlord going pierced over and over by many blades.


Great game and I'll be purchasing some more options for my force soon as will I believe Toby. A thank you to my Uncle again for the loan of terrain it's come in handy many times and to my Brother for getting me interested in the game after his Welsh ebay purchase, we'll have to get a game in soon

Final table posistions

5th August - Completed Hills

Had the day off today so I decided to make a push and finish off my hills, having gained some motivation from watching Hobby Labs videos on Beasts of War thanks to my recently subscribed backstage pass (I cannot recommend this enough, those videos alone more than justify the roughly $7 a month fee) and playing my debut Saga game the night before (AAR to come in the next couple of days) only filling the table thanks to the terrain lent to me by my Uncle which some day in the future I shall have to return I figured I'd best get cracking on my own.

As I have previously mentioned The Wife and I had purchased some air dried clay and made some hills. Until today they've sat in pretty much the state we'd left them minus some cardboard bases I'd cut and glued them too.

I began with the same method I've been using for basing my miniatures. I painted PVA glue onto the hills and card base then dipped/sprinkled it with sand. Once dried I watered down some Army Painter Oak Brown paint and daubed it across them letting the sand soak in the paint and spread through. The hill on the right of the photo I've used a burnt umber acrylic tube paint (generic brand) as my Oak Brown was a little empty and with the left over paint on the palette I've splashed it across the one on the left also.

The next step was a dry bush of Army Painter Desert Yellow to add a bit of detail and contrast. This was followed by a watered down coating of PVA glue and then a coating of a green grass fine flock mixed with burnt grass and yellow grass coarse flock. After this had dried I hit it with a spray adhesive to help lock the flock on. The smaller hill I gave a full coating to and left as it landed, the larger once I purposely left areas bare of glue to so a little earth work.

After allowing the spray adhesive to dry I've super glued a few of my valentines day trees down for a bit of added effect/cover. I like them and I'm thinking there'll be another trip down to the craft store for some clay as well as some stryofoam so I can get out my new heat gun and make some asteroids for the X-wing miniature game....