September's Targets

I just realised that August is over and that I have not set any targets for September. Eek! Time really does fly by, doesn't it. Anyway, looking at what I need to get finished and how much time I actually have spare for doing it at the moment, I am rather concerned that painting will have to go by the board for a bit. Still, I need some kind of distraction and there is the big Wargods tournament in Canterbury in November. As the reigning champion I must attend and ignominiously lose my title to some young whippersnapper. I have had an idea for a warband for the tournament but will not announce it here just yet. Suffice to say that it is a rather silly idea that has tremendous potential for amusement rather than for winning games. I look forward to seeing my opponents' faces when I lay out my army. Mind you, I did the same last year and won the tournament by accident. Oops! What I am trying to say here, in my usual, rather rambling manner is that my target for September and probably October will be to paint the additional elements I need for my warband. Pictures will follow as and when pieces are completed.

I have begun fettling my GHQ Terrainmaker hexes. Many have been damaged in the years since I first started collecting them. I am also not too keen on the shade of scatter material I used on them, because it is too dark. Given that I have a load of this scatter material left, I have mixed it with a lighter 'spring mix' and am much happier with the new colour. So, a secondary objective will be to fettle the rest of my hexes and finish the terrain for Helsingborg since I already have the armies. I am also planning to build more hexes, especially with a view to creating some pieces specifically designed for modern and future wars games in 6mm. The hex-fettling will also include additional detailing on all the hexes and finally getting around to texturing and finishing off the roads. The rivers need some additional work too, so they will receive a new coat of paint and probably a colour change. I just need to decide what colour to use for them. At least the blue indicates 'river' to people. Were I to go for a more realistic hue there is no telling what people would think my rivers were, especially given my inability to mix colours properly.

Old style hexes on the left, new style on the right (click for a bigger picture)


With the hexes fettled properly, I plan to use them a lot more for our games. I have more than enough to cover my 6' by 4' table and the addition of new hexes will help ensure that I have enough pieces to provide plenty of variety.

And finally, the other project is the Towton project. I shall continue with that over the next year. It will certainly be part of every month's project for the next year or so to complete several stands for this project each month, and it may well actually be a whole month's project in its own right.

But first, before I can properly begin on these, I need to complete the unit of Demonworld Elves that are sitting on the painting table taunting me at the moment. The figures are absolutely gorgeous, but I am really not enjoying painting them so they are taking an awful lot longer than they should.

August's Objectives

My loyal followers will have noticed that I have not yet posted anything about objectives for August. That is because I have none. By the end of this month I have to get the next chapter of my PhD into a highly polished format for submission to my supervisor. Therefore, rather than balancing my painting and my coursework (usually in favour of painting!), I shall instead be focusing on writing stuff about Vikings. If I were to set myself any gaming objectives, I would be driven to complete them first, so I shall not do so.

This does not mean that I shall be idle on the gaming front. I am currently clearing the decks for a rather large long term project, so I do have a bunch of figures to paint, but I am not going to pressure myself into completing them yet.

We expect to resume normal service in September though.

The Month of the Goat

This month's target was to paint my Khemru for Wargods of Aegyptus. The Khemru are the children of Khanum, an Aegyptian god of life. It was Khanum that created people, spinning them out of clay on his potter's wheel and then holding them up for Ra to cast his life-giving rays onto them, before Khanum placed them in the womb to be born. The Khemru are cast in the image of Khanum, being goat-headed, and revere life. They abhor spilling blood and will only use blunt weapons as a result.

So far this month I have painted one unit of Khemru slingers, two harbingers of Khanum, one priestess of Khanum, one Khemru hero, one Khemru Master of Words (wizard), one Khemru beast-master, one lion and one undead Khemru Crypt Lord. This amounts to the twenty figures I needed for the monthly target of 2 Victory Points. I have a unit of Khemru warriors on my painting desk at the moment and I hope to complete them this month to earn a bonus victory point.

When painting these figures, I used a simple technique of washing the mid colour over a white undercoat. This gives natural highlighting as the pigment settles in the folds and the white undercoat naturally highlights the raised areas. To further enhance the effect, I then used a magic wash coloured with Windsor and Newton Peat Brown ink. While it will not win any painting competitions, this technique is quick and effective. It leads to wargames standard figures that I shall not be embarrassed to place on the games table.

In addition to getting the figures painted, I decided to tart up their movement trays. Someone had commented that they did not like the black movement trays that I used at a demo game at Salute last year. Personally, I do like them. With slottabased figures, I always go back over the edges of the base with black to make the figure stand out from the table a bit. I also paint my movement trays black, so that they are like a display plinth for my figures. It is simple, quick and defines the unit. One thing that I had always intended to do, though, was texture the spacers in my skirmish units, so I have done that. I have also painted the base of the movement tray sand coloured so that it does not jar as much when casualties are removed. However, I have still retained the black sides of the tray. It may not be to everyone's taste, but it suits mine.

Click on the pictures below for a larger picture.

Movement tray

Khemru slingers on movement tray.

Khemru harbinger

Asar harbinger of Khanum

Khemru priestess

Khemru master of words

Khemru hero

Khemru beastmaster with lioness (I have two more lions ready and painted but they were not part of this month's project. The beastmaster is allowed up to four lions, so I already have one more lion on the shopping list)

Khemru crypt lord (I was pleased with the way his cloak came out so I have included front and back shots of this chap)

The good thing about the Khemru is that they actually have a multiplicity of uses. They can be Broo in Runequest, Beastmen in Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, or Beastmen in any other system that uses Beastmen. These particular figures will feature in our Wargods games, and will almost certainly make an appearance in our pulp games too. I can envisage using them in Larger than Life, possibly featuring as the villains on my Larger than Life blog at some point, or as a lost tribe in .45 Adventures, or even in Broadsword Adventures. Perhaps I need to give some of them ray-guns so that they can feature in a Fantastic Worlds game too. Now there's a thought ...

Aieee Shub-Niggurath

Sorry, not a Cthulhu project, but May is the month of the goat.


We have agreed to spend May painting Wargods of Aegyptus figures. This does not really fit with our stated aim of painting armies and then playing games that we have not previously played, because we have played rather a lot of Wargods before. I am, after all, the current pan-European champion! Still, that does mean that we have loads of unpainted figures for Wargods, which we can use them for other projects too.


I am planning to start with a couple of units of Khemru (goat-headed critters) and some characters to go with them. These will double as beastmen for Warrior Heroes Armies and Adventures, and I suspect that I can use them as monsters in Broadsword Adventures too. I probably have other games that will suit them too and just need to think about it a bit. For variety, I have added a couple of undead Khemru to the mix. One is the limited edition Undead Beastmaster found in the Eater of the Dead starter set. The other is a Khemru Crypt Lord.


So, on with the challenge. In May I shall not be aiming to award myself 2VPs for completing the challenge. Instead I shall award myself 1VP for each unit of 10 figures or equivalent that I complete. Hopefully I shall manage at least 2VPs worth of figures, but I hope that I can manage more than that. After all, I have the Khemru warband to paint as well as half a Totanem warband, an Eater of the Dead force, a Tethru starter set, some Heru, a dozen or so Basti camp-followers, a unit of Sebeki and the rest of my Olympus warband. So, with all that ahead of me, I had better get myself ready for the challenge!

Busy Weekend

I have had a very busy geekly weekend. M'buddy, Derek, came to stay on Friday for a spot of intense Advanced Squad Leader activity. Most excellent. We agreed to play scenario RB1 One Down, Two to Go from the Red Barricades historical module. This module is set in Stalingrad in October and November 1942 and represents the German attempts to capture the Barrikady factories. The scenario sees the Germans renewing their assault immediately after the capture of the Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory. Part of the board is in flames (determined randomly) and the Russian forward positions have suffered early bombardment, represented by the front rows having to take a morale test before the game begins.

I was the Russians, while Derek was the Germans. The scenario began well for me. My off-board artillery pasted his left flank and my minefields slowed down his assault sufficiently for me to blast his troops. The crowning moment for me was when my battalion mortars stonked his 10-2 leader (second best quality leader possible in the game) and associated kill stack by dropping a building on them. As you can see in the picture below, the fires around that area were quite severe too. The grave of the 10-2 leader is the rubble counter near the centre.



Unfortunately, my luck did not continue. On my left flank, Derek was able to mass his reinforcements and drive a wedge down my left flank while my reinforcements were still advancing northwards to try to block them. Unfortunately, by this time I had broken most of my machine-guns and my reinforcements were mainly conscripts. Eek!



And then the final end came when a Stuka (did I mention the level of air support available to the Germans?) scored a critical hit on my second last heavy machine-gun. Boom! It rubbled the building, set it alight and killed everything in there. It was about this time that my personal morale broke.



The end game was then characterised by me trying to get my reinforcements into place and Derek shooting them to pieces as I did so. We played it through to the final turn, but that only emphasised the kicking that I received. It was a great scenario and I did scare Derek by having read and learnt the tunnel rules and cellar rules. That caught him out at the start!

On Saturday afternoon, Steve dropped by and we were able to play Midgard, Eketorp and Chez Geek. Derek won both games of Midgard, which is a game of Viking expansion and death, by a significant margin in both games. He clearly understood the metagame better than Steve or me. Nevertheless, the game was brilliant fun and has a lot to recommend it. The card draft forces you to make difficult decisions, knowing what you are handing on to your opponents to choose from. The game also does not reward a lot of tit-for-tat playing. The moment you start having a go at someone, the pair of you fall behind in the points, or at least make no progress. I look forward to playing this with more people.

After that we played two games of Eketorp, which is a game of Viking fort building. This game has some of the feel of Settlers or any other resource management game. You have to fight for and gather materials with which to build your fort. The game ends after ten turns or when the first fort is completed, at which point you add up the points you have gained. Steve won one game of this and Derek won the other, but these games were much closer than the games of Midgard. This is another excellent game that I shall seek to play again.

Finally, we played Chez Geek. This is a classic card game from Steve Jackson Games with excellent artwork by John Kovalic. The goal is to accumulate Slack, while preventing your opponents from doing the same. You gain Slack by buying things, doing activities and having the right people show up in your room. The card play is fun and I really enjoy the game. Steve won this game.

So, I managed to play six games over the weekend and lost them all. It has certainly been a thrifty weekend because I have not spent any money on games and have played four games that I already own. I have also had a lot of fun. Sounds like a good result to me!

April Objectives

April looks like being a trying time for me, what with my mother going into hospital, the search for a new job and university deadlines looming. Nevertheless, I shall still try to stick to my objectives.

In April I shall try to paint a 15mm sci-fi force. I have a ton or two of Laserburn figures in the attic, providing effective radiation shielding. Some of them were painted by me in the eighties back when gloss varnish was in vogue and no one had heard of layering. I have designed a 1500 point Imperial Commander force to paint for an Imperial Lord Knight on a Feudal Outworld.

This force uses figures I already have and consists of:

1 Imperial Lord Knight

1 squad of Knights

1 platoon of Men at Arms

1 Men at Arms heavy weapons squad

1 platoon of Local Levy

2 Glaive class APCs

1 Scythe class squad jetcopter

For the sake of symmetry I could do with a couple more APCs, but I cannot afford them at the moment. Some of these figures will only require a little fettling to get them ready to be fielded, while others require painting from scratch. Of course, the next question is what colour to paint them. Should I go for a standard green camouflage, or should I paint them in the Lord Knight's livery colours instead?

I like the idea of the livery colours but camouflage just seems more sensible to me. If I opt for the livery colours, then I also need to decide what those colours should be. It is almost tempting to paint them in a futuristic version of an 18th century uniform. Oh well, I shall dither over that for the next few days.

The Russians are coming!

My newly enforced increased-leisure lifestyle has resulted in a number of changes around here. Thrift is no longer just a good idea; it is now the law. Therefore, my expenditure on anything has gone right down, but my productivity has increased commensurately. My latest oeuvre is a 15mm Russian force for the PBI rules from Peter Pig. I really like the Peter Pig figures because they paint up well and easily. I doubt that my efforts really do justice to Mr Goddard's figures, but here are some photos anyway. As usual, click on the pictures for larger versions.

The whole force

Company command

The PBI, backbone of the force

HMG team

Tanks ... you're welcome

76mm anti-tank guns with crew and tow


Extras - the army pack came with quite a few extra figures, partly because it is provided with whole packs of figures, rather than just those needed for the basic force, but also probably because I have not followed the layout as they thought I should. I shall never know because it does not tell you how to field the force, just what force they expect the pack to be able to field. These extras will permit some variation in force design anyway, which is good.

Mission: Ooh Shiny - Month 2

"Commander, primary objective achieved, sir!"
"Very good, Captain. Proceed with the next phase of the plan."
"Yes, sir!"

With 2VPs in the bag, we now need to defend Mars from the invaders. The primary objective for February will be painting two companies of Black Hat 15mm Martians for a game of Soldier's Companion. Soldier's Companion is the miniatures game from GDW's Space 1889 setting. It is essentially a set of colonial rules with extras for adding in various staples of Victorian Sci-Fi, including walkers, Martians, Venusians, etc. The whole Space 1889 setting is a rich and fertile playground for gaming and the role-playing game supplements can be adapted to create miniatures games. It is our intention to play a game involving the British colonial powers from Syrtis Major on Mars versus my Shastapshian Martians, so we need painted figures. Steve is producing the Brits, while I work on the Martians. Here are some Martians I painted earlier to whet your appetite:

This is the Black Hat character pack that includes a servant, a scholar, a Martian warrior, not-Dejah Thoris, not-John Carter and a big game hunter. I plan to use these figures as the basis of a Fantastic Worlds game, as well as providing characters for Soldier's Companion. The figures I plan to paint for February are shown below. The first picture shows the battalion command, while the second picture shows the two companies that form the basis of this month's mission.



This mission is also worth 2VPs. I have not defined a secondary objective for this month. It is likely that I shall probably focus on more 6mm Great Northern War activity, possibly continuing to rebase my figures, and making sure that, whatever I do, we get on and play games with those same figures.

"Cover me, chaps, I'm going in."

Back to basics

Today we played a game of Laserburn. It is a long time since I have played Laserburn, probably about 12 years now that I think about it. I chose to umpire Assault on Bunker 17, which is the first Laserburn scenario that I ever bought. Steve was the unfortunate rebel stooge, who had to enter the bunker, kill General Yates, reprogram the sector computer and rescue the traitor from the bunker. Steve supplied four character figures for his side. I supplied all the other figures.

I have had these figures for more than twenty years now and the whole game was really nostalgia-filled for me. The rules held up well, although both of our brains hurt by the end with all the maths. Laserburn is the predecessor of the game that became 40K and its age shows in some respects, but it is still fun to play. So, how did the game go? Well, to be honest, rather poorly for Steve. His troops entered the bunker successfully and dealt very quickly with the door guards. They then advanced into the bunker and were forced to fight their way through the garrison's quarters to the computer and security areas. Unfortunately, about half way through the traitor was spotted doing something odd by the chief security officer. He managed to fake a systems malfunction but that meant he could not monitor his rescuers any more and open the bunker doors for them. With casualties mounting the rebel forces managed to reach the computer room but were forced to retreat before they could achieve their objectives. The elite assassins they had escorted in were dead or captured, the rebel troops were dead, one of the characters was dead and one had been captured. Steve chose wisely and his two remaining figures scarpered, leaving their companions to their fates. We did find that most of our shots actually hit characters in the legs, which is fairly typical. We get the same in .45 Adventures. This game was also characterised by a high number of guns that got hit and destroyed. Half the figures in the game had two-piece guns by the end!

This game of Laserburn was good on several levels.

1. It embodied the spirit of thrifty gaming because we already had the figures and used a cheap-to-build terrain set
2. It did not require purchase of anything that we did not already have
3. It was great fun to play

We both already had all the figures that would be needed. Although we had planned this game for some time, it used figures that I had bought in the eighties and that had remained unpainted until now. I could have used already painted figures for the whole game but chose to use the game to spur me on and clear up a bit of the old lead mountain. The floor plan used for the bunker is a scaled down print-out of the WorldWorksGames Mars Station set. The doors come from Ebbles Miniatures' Guncrawl set. If you are interested, there are more pictures of this game in my Photobucket album, some of which have added commentary. The only disappointment about the game was that I had hoped to make a lot of paper furniture for the set too. Unfortunately that fell victim to a lack of desire to make much paper terrain. Still, we plan to play more Laserburn in the future, which will lead to more of my old Laserburn figures getting painted.

Regarding Mission: Ooh Shiny, we have now decided what our January project will be. [pause for drum roll and blow the fanfare. January will be WHAA month. I bought Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures when it first came out. Since then I have played a couple of solo games with my Vikings versus a variety of D&D miniatures and Steve bought some Teutonic Knights with a view to using them in it. I bought some Normans from Black Tree Designs that I planned to use with it (May they rot in the bog of eternal stench for taking 3 months to send me half my order and never having sent the rest 6 months later). I also supplemented my D&D miniatures with some Chronopia goblins. These goblins are sold as Blackbloods and I really liked the idea of giving my goblins giant chickens to ride instead of the more usual wolves. Unfortunately, as so often before, I prepped and undercoated the goblins and Normans but never got any further. So, we have the first scenario for Mission: Ooh Shiny.

Primary Objective: Goblins on Ripper Beasts and Chariot drawn by Ripper Beasts (2 VPs)

Secondary Objective: Norman Soldiers and Knights (1VP)

I am not certain how much time I shall have to paint figures in January, so I have set myself two objectives. The primary objective (Goblins) is the one that I must achieve. That should be fairly manageable (did I mention that I paint slowly?). The secondary objective is one that would be nice to achieve, but I shall not be overly disappointed if I do not manage it. Still, it would be nice to have the VPs for achieving it. I am not sure what the VPs will translate into when the year is over, but I suspect that Steve and I shall decide on a system for rewarding ourselves by the end.

I am looking forward to playing WHAA in February.