16th June - Finished UCM Starter

Slow week gaming wise for me. Got a game of Cthulhu Wars in with The Wife and The Daughters on the weekend. All of us were playing a faction we hadn't yet which was a bit of a challenge in swapping play styles. The Youngest took the win finishing a point behind The Eldest after revealing her Elder Sign points but snatching it as her sister hadn't managed to get her sixth spell book allowing her to win. The Daughters and I also managed a game of Dominion which I took the win in with a eclectic set of action cards making for a rather fun game.

Hobby wise I've been bouncing between a few projects. I recently bought some of the new 4Ground trees which I'm very happy with. I've got the willows (Mature and Young) and the Chestnuts (Young) finished off with static grass and just have my two sets of orchard trees to go. Painting wise I've finished off the UCM for Dropzone Commander that came in the two player starter set, made a little more progress on the Traders Caravan for Anyaral and over the course of today working around chores I've all but finished my Doctor/Engineer for my Combined Army force for Infinity which will finish off my first three hundred points.

I've got some pics of the finished UCM. They're not the best thing I've ever painted but for what they are (spare faction for guest to play with) I'm happy with where they've ended up. You'll notice the 4Ground Young Chestnuts in corner of a few of the photos.

Colonial Legionnaires

Sabre Main Battle Tanks

Rapier AA Tanks

Bear APCs

Condor Medium Dropships

Finished UCM starter set

Back to work tomorrow, but with The Wife on days I'll have a few hours each morning before taking The Daughters to school and heading in myself so hopefully I'll get the Infinity Medic finished off in the next couple of days and get a quick post up.

9th June - 8th June Public Holiday Dreadball Games

There's been a delay between my last post and this one, not that I haven't been getting anything done, I'm just having a small argument with the weather whenever I go to take a few photos of what I've finished off. I'm thinking once I finish off my UCM starter for Dropzone Commander that's on the table at the moment if it's not willing to compromise I'll just pull out the Foldio and take a few shots in it to get something up :).

Having a public holiday yesterday meant I could catch up with Toby and Mr Anon for a game during the day with The Wife and The Daughters, so we decided to play a mini Dreadball tournament. Looks like we're going to get the league off the ground in the next month too, hopefully with eight to ten players so not too bad for the beginning.

Competitors/Teams

The Wife - Brokkrs

The Youngest - Female Corporation

The Eldest - Teratons

Toby - Hobgoblins

Mr Anon - Robots

Me - Veer-myn

Round One

The first round saw The Wife vs The Eldest game finish with a narrow victory to the Teratons in a very bloody match up with three of the Brokkrs ending up dead in the 0 - 1 win after the full fourteen turns.

The Youngest held off the Mr Anon for almost the full game finally loosing to a landslide victory in turn fourteen. This is quite the achievement against him as most of his games are over fairly quickly so she's showing some promise there.

My game gave also ended in a landslide but turn twelve with my Veer-myn strikers finally managing to get the last three pointer I needed for the game. I also managed to put the Hulk off the board twice which I was happy with and as usual my rats danced around most of the offensive plays by Toby with only a couple hitting the injury bench for a turn or two.

Round 2

The Eldest squared off against Mr Anon. She went down in a landslide during rush eleven but managed to do a fair amount of damage against the bots, but was out maneuvered around the strike zones

Toby managed a win against The Wife but it was a hard fought game with both sides dishing out the damage.

I faced The Youngest but was unable to manage more than one point strikes for the entire game with the final score being 4 - 0 to me at the end of the final rush. I wasn't an overly bloody game but I did manage to kill one of her strikers early on. If it wasn't for the clumsiness of her team for this game it could have been a far different result.

Unfortunately The Youngest had some homework she had to get onto so we had to call it then with Mr Anon taking a technical victory for the day with the two landslide victories, though I like to think I would have taken him out in the final round had we got a chance to square off.

15th March - Making Tables and Hobby Progress

It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks. Toby and myself got my tables built for my hobby area. One 1.7m and one 2.25m long, which took up most of last weekend. Pretty happy with the way they've turned out and I'm going to use a similar plan to build some gaming tables next. The only difference will be some shelving underneath. There'll also be a few shelves going in on the wall and I'll be investing in some paint stands so it'll end up more organised. I've also got a few chairs on the way.

Didn't get a huge amount of gaming in, but The Wife and I put our starter armies together for Dropzone Commander. She's playing Shaltari while I've gone for the Scourge. Have to say I really enjoyed my first game, so it's now on the painting table. It seems to be fate as I've just received notification that my 10mm scale games and gears cityscape battleboards are on their way. So I'm looking forward to getting some more games in. The Youngest has expressed interest in the UCM left over from the two player starter set my Scourge came from.

I also had the first wave of Cthulhu Wars turn up this week. So far we've got two games in, one with The Daughters and a second one with The Wife as well. It's incredibly intuitive, with the girls realising their mistakes from the first game before it finished, and the second game The Eldest doing far better, but The Youngest came from behind with some rather aggressive Elder Sign collecting as the Yellow Sign faction and taking the win out from under me. Going to get a few more games in tonight at the weekly board games night. Definitely hanging out for wave two to come out with more factions and Great old ones.




 I've also got a fair amount of progress done one my entry for the Across the Dead Earth base camp competition on Facebook. It's pretty much done apart from some detailing work and I've ordered a couple of bits of pieces for finishing.









I'll put up a couple of WIP pics of my scourge as well, the quality of photo is average but I'll put up some nicer ones when they're done.

4th March - 2nd March Bolt Action vs Toby

It's been a while since I'd got a game of Bolt Action and Toby was keen, so Monday morning saw me head over there for a game. He's got a few more bits and pieces than I do when it comes to troop options so I figured I'd have a play with veteran units this time. I kept full ten man squads for this one, but I'm thinking I may drop the numbers down and run some slightly different load out on the units and add a little more support into the platoon.

We played the grab the intel mission as it plays from the rule book. Some poor morale roles for his US marines left his centre a little lacking and my Hetzer managed to shutdown his entire left flank on the approach to the objective.









Once I got to the centre the veteran status paid off. It's amazing how much different a target number one higher can make to the casualty role. Then the following turn a series of hand offs down the line saw the germans secure the intel without any real dramas.






I have to say after a week or so of not getting much in it was good to cram in a large amount of hobby on the days off. The Wife and myself managed to get in a game of our latest kickstarter delivery Dawn: Rise of the Occulites which was a lot of fun so I'm looking forward to getting in a few more games in and trying out the advanced/campaign rules for it.

On the kickstarter note I'm currently backing a couple that may be of interest to people or maybe not. Toby was keen to get into Wild West Exodus, so after watching the Beasts of War week on the game I'm liking the way it appears to play so I've gone in on the Unfinished Business kickstarter they're running. Also keeping on the skirmish level I've backed Warbands as well which sounds interesting with your group being made up of any combination of the ten fantasy races and various classes.

Starting work on the hobby/gaming area next week hopefully. Aiming to get the hobby/painting station built and setup, then if the tables seem sturdy enough I'll be using the same materials/plan to get some proper gaming tables built and free up the dining table so it can be used solely for it's intended purpose again.

23rd Quick update and Ticket to Ride 10th Anniversary Unboxing

Been a bit hectic lately with work and getting ready for Christmas, so while I've got a few quick games in here and there I haven't got around to updating much lately.

I'm hoping to get some form of game in on Christmas day depending on what everyone else feels like, otherwise normal gaming and blogging shall resume come the new year.

It doesn't feel right updating the blog without a few photos, so I did an un-boxing of The Wife's birthday present yesterday. Ticket to Ride 10th Anniversary edition.

Modelling the box with style

Lovely giant size board to fit the...

...wait for it....

.....much larger sized carriage  pieces.

 Now when we play a game I'm always red so I was lucky and got the circus cars, complete with two giraffes sticking their heads up for a peek.

I've also managed to run my nephews through the first scenario in Operation:Icestorm as well as sit down with the five year old and get some painting done (I'll post a pic of his mini once it's done, I think it's a great effort for some one his age) he was doing one of my deadzone ork flamers though I managed to lose it's hat and forearm and I'm making a push on the Nomads from the Icestorm box.

Toby and myself also had our first game of Dreadball Xtreme, although we used his Orks vs my Veer-myn rather than the new teams. I have to say it's definitely a game where your going to want to mix and match your team (hell if you can why not) but it is playable with a solo faction if you know how to play to your strengths (although you can say that about almost anything really). Final result saw myself claw back from a 0 - 2 score line to win with a 5 - 0. The exploding crates are a great little feature, although they stalled Toby's Orks more than my nimble little rats and it was one amazing set of dice rolls that nailed the game down for me. It's not often a Veer-myn striker  can double up picking up a ball, then nail a 3 point strike with one dice with their skill of 5+, but good old Scamper not only did it he did it with his eyes closed (apparently it's easier to roll 5s on a d6 with your eyes shut, ask Toby I managed it every time I needed a 5 once I realised).

Anyway I'll leave it at that and wish you all a Merry Christmas or a what ever your particular poison is this time of year.

8th December - Bolt Action Game, Dreadball Match and the Return of Games Night

Quite the week for gaming this week. Left to our own devices on Sunday myself and The Youngest got a game of Dreadball in, no photos I'm afraid but a rather nail biting match with my Veer-myn managing to score the winning three point strike on the last action of the last turn of the match after failing to score for the three previous turns beating her Female Corp team two nil.

I've just finished packing up the first games night in two weeks after a work enforced hiatus and it was a great game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. A full six player game with the Haunt not triggering until after a massive nine omen rooms and another haunt that we hadn't seen before (no spoilers here but Haunt 32 for those that have the game).

Sunday night also saw The Wife's first game of Bolt Action with my
Germans and her Japanese teaming up against Toby's Americans and Mr Anon's Soviets. We called the game around 11:30pm deciding that next time if we attempt such an undertaking we'll begin early or limit the order dice per side to 50% of their total units to speed things up (We had 38 order dice in the bag each round :) ). The Allies got of to a reasonable start, but I think we'd evened up the odds by the end of the third turn and it was called amicably a draw. Not a proper AAR this time as I was helping The Wife with the rules and a bit of tactical advice, though she had the basics down by the second turn and made some decent calls herself tearing up Toby's US when the opportunities arose. It was also the first game on Toby's newly built table and terrain. I have to say it's pretty impressive consider the speed in which he's organised it all, not as impressive as I hope my tables to be once I get the gaming area setup early next year, but damn good regardless.

 View's of the table as we setup

The Wife's Chi-Ha takes out Toby's M3A1

View of the table after first round Axis side

Allied side after round one

The Sherman advances and fires in retaliation

Aaannnd the Chi-Ha is dead

After my Germans kill a squad and the supposed medic the Soviet's retaliate.
The unit of four is in the building I just didn't feel like fiddling with the floors

And we called it, the final move would be my HQ taking a shot at the exposed
Soviet squad and killing another three of them

Really good game I felt and I'd like to have another crack at it when we have more time at our disposal now we've got the base platoon's sorted we've got armour platoons on the back burner at the moment though we're all concentrating on catching up with what we have, though some of us with slight Kickstarter addictions have slightly more than others.