Couple of Random Figs and lots of cutting out

It's been a stormy day here and I've spent the last couple of hours cutting out floor plans for an Egyptian pyramid, bought from Drive Thru RPG at the suggestion of Michael Awdry. Very nice and only a couple of bucks in the sale. A trip to the art shop today and I bought some mounting boards in the sale at only a couple of quid each. So I've spent the last couple of hours cutting them out whilst watching the BBC original of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" with every decent British actor from the 1970' and 80' - great stuff. Will post them tomorrow or Saturday once the glue has set and I've cut them out.
Beautifully hot yesterday and as I was waiting for it to get cool enough to go to bed I painted a couple of figures, my first Landsknecht and a ninja. The former is OK but I'm really pleased with the ninja, the tricky blak shading and highlighting has worked beautifully.

Right back to George Smiley and glueing

Monster Hack

After a glorious day of sunshine and DIY I settled down to play the reverse side of the jungle hex tiles and have a modern type of adventure in a cave. Think Scooby Doo with extreme violence. I used a D10 random encounter chart for each tile entered, no ambushes from the jungle here.
The rules were simple, shooting 1st, 5 or 6 kills, automatics fire 2 shots and weapons in both hands fire equally. Hand to hand is simultaneous with highest score on D6 winning, if by 2 then a kill, chainsaws have 2 attacks with highest dice counting, again 2 weapons equals 2 attacks with highest counting. If one of our heroes is hit then roll D6 - 1,2 KO'd next turn, 3,4 broken arm, can't use 2 handed weapons or 2 weapons and -1 to hit in combat, 5,6 DEAD.
Game ends when heroes are dead or treasure is found (10 on D10 encounter roll)
Time to meet our heroes (actually heroines)

From left to right Alice (2 automatics and 2 Kukris), Pam (automatic), Lara (2 automatics) and Daisy (Chainsaw). They stand at the cave entrance and have 3 possible routes, Daisy and Pam  go left and Alice and Lara forwards.

Daisy and Pam find a dead end with 3 zombies. Pam fires her gold-plated automatic and kills a zombie (needs a 6 to get a head shot). Daisy swings her chainsaw and sparks fly as she catches the wall and misses the zombies. Pam shoots again and kills another zombie. Daisy gets her act together and decapitates the last zombie. Section cleared but nowhere to go 

Meanwhile in the other cave Lara and Alice are facing one of Frankenstein's monsters. Lara fires both her pistols and scores 2 hits but the monster just smiles. The monster charges and with 1 punch smashes her into the wall killing her instantly. A shocked Lara fires at the monster and kills it (it takes 3 hits to kill the monster)

Pam and Daisy retreat to the entrance and are charged by 2 skeletons. Pam fires and misses but Daisy steps up and grinds one of them to bone meal. "there will be flowers there next year" she quips. The second skeleton steps up and attacks Pam who cold cocks it with her pistol butt and it crumples to the ground

The 3 remaining adventurers advance into caves and face 2 zombies. Pam fires but only wings one. Lara pops round the corner and kills one but the other steps up and attacks Pam who spins and delivers a roundhouse kick to the Zombie's head sending it bouncing across the cave.

Further on into the dark and another of Frankenstein's creations appears. Pam fires over Daisy's head and scores a hit (it's a good job Daisy is short). Pam ducks and Lara fires and scores another hit but the monster is simply enraged and attacks Daisy but she rolls away and watches as Lara puts another round into the monster and it collapses dead (again?)

Further on, where is that treasure. Now its a werewolf and the girls have no silver bullets. "I've got this" says Daisy and she advances and sticks the chainsaw into the beasts gut. "Who needs silver when you have Husqvarna"

More zombies are quickly dispatched by Daisy and Pam

As they advance a mummy reaches out from around the corner and grabs Daisy round the neck, breaking it and killing her. The shocked Pam and Lara fill the mummy with lead. 2 down and no sign of the treasure. Will Pam and Lara make it.

"This is bad, very bad". 2 more of Victor's boys appear. Pam fires but her gun jams. Lara opens fire but only wings the front one. The 1st monster attacks Pam but misses. Pam fires again and again it jams "useless piece of crap". Lara fires again and scores another hit but the monster lurches forward and swings at Pam. It misses. Desperately Pam thrusts her gun into the monsters gun and pulls the trigger. It fires and 2 shots tear the monster apart. Lara immediately fires at the 2nd monster and hits it twice. But it reaches over, grabs Pam by the hair and throws her up into the roof and then smashes her down onto the ground killing her. 

Lara kills the monster with a shot to the head.

Lara is alone, that treasure had better be near. 2 skeletons A jittery Lara opens fire and misses. The skeleton attacks but Lara dodges and shoots the skeleton. The 2nd advances and Lara pistol whips it to the ground

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" 2 more monsters. Lara opens fire and misses. "How can you miss something so big" Could this be Lara's epitaph. The monster attacks but Lara is quick and dodges. In a panic she shoots again and hits only once. The monster lands a colossal uppercut which lifts Lara into the air and she falls to the ground dead.

This has been a really long post but I had a real blast playing this game. The rules were really close to being spot on, I could give the heroines some martial skills for example. The main problem was that the treasure was too hard to find - a 10 was needed on the encounter roll. Oh and the monsters were proper hard to kill, Maybe they should be

Pygmy Hack

With Blaxkleric getting out Lost Patrol I thought I'd have a go myself. The problem is I don't own the game, have no hex terrain tiles and no Sci Fi figs at all, never mind any 40K.
Still not to be deterred I made my own tiles with sides of 6cm, if you don't know how to cut hexes you need a compass. For 6cm sides make the circle 6cm radius. once you've drawn your circle move the compass to the circle edge and make a mark 6cm way on the circumference. move the compass to the new mark and make a new 6cm mark on circumference. Repeat until you have 6 markes and returned to the start Join the dots and cut out. I made my tiles out of thick card from the covers of ring binders.
Once cut out I painted them with Wilko tester pots and some poster paints. Leaf shapes were stamped on using a carved potato, I was channeling my 10 year old self with making shapes and potato printing.

Of course the genius thing is that tiles can have 2 sides so I painted the other side grey and drew rocks with a marker pen. DaDaah a cave system

I then lacquered both sides and left to dry for a couple of hours. This was not long enough and they stuck together, which was very very annoying and a schoolboy error. The tiles are ok but have plucked a little bit.

So the next move was to play. I decided to have a safari of 3 women - Hetty, Hilda and Helga - with a female scout, Hebe trying to find their way out a Pygmy "infested" Jungle.

Tiles would be drawn at random and visibility was a maximum of 2 tiles down a straight path but blocked by curves. Once a tile was out of sight it would be removed and added to the pile.

Everytime a European entered a tile or remained in one a D6 was rolled

1. Nothing

2. D3 arrow shots from Jungle but no visible Pygmies

3. D3 arrow shots from Jungle and the Pygmies appear

4. D3 Pygmies with spears ambush the Europeans

5. D6 Pygmies with spears ambush the Europeans

6. D6 Pygmies with spears ambush the Europeans. If Europeans have entered a new tile and it is not a dead end then roll again and if a 6 then this is the exit tile and if Europeans survive then they have won. Pygmies win if all Europeans are killed.

Order of combat is missle fire (3 to hit for the women and 4 for pygmies, 4 to kill for Europeans and 5 for Pygmies. Melee is simultaneous with +2 for Europeans and 5 to kill

The Europeans started in clearing with 2 exits

They advanced with some ineffective hidden arrow shots whizzing about their ears only to reach a dead end

They returned to the starting clearing only to find it was no longer there, damn jungle. As they advanced around a bend Hilda was faced with a belligerent Pygmy but their fight was a draw and this stalled the advance.

The next 2 turns saw Hilda still unable to kill the Pygmy and 3 archers and a spearman appeared to kill the Europeans. The Pygmies shooting was poor and the fights with Hilda and Hebe were again draws

eventually Hilda killed the Pygmy on the path and the other 3  killed 2 more and advanced past her as she fought the last Pygmy. Helga advanced further and Hilda was faced with 3 more Pygmies. The Europeans were now spread out over the path and were facing Pygmies everywhere. Hilda was in deep trouble out numbered 4 to 1. Helga, Hetty and Hebe killed their opponents and Hebe ran back to aid Hilda,

Hebe was killed but Hilda was still in their swinging.

Helga is downed by an arrow from a hidden archer

Hetty is then speared by a Pygmy and Hilda is finally overcome and falls to her knees with here arms reaching for the sky.

This was very enjoyable but needs tweaking. It was too hard to kill once you had one the combat and I will tweak that so that you can advance to the jungle faster.

I've Done a Bad Bad Thing

I have been inspired lately by becoming a character in Blaxkleric's latest adventure, I won't give away the plot but I rocked big style. I have done quite a lot, more of that in a later post.
As you may well know I have a a wide range of wargaming interests but I don't do Sci Fi, modern or Napoleonics, never really got into them.
Today I went down to Tynemouth flea market and bought a massive bargain, 4 boxes of Napoleonic British figures by Victrix for £45 (less than 1/2 price).

Stop laughing.

3 of the are unopened

The last box had been opened and some of the figures made and removed so their were only 35 figures on the sprues

Which was disappointing but there was a bonus as this box also contained 1/2 of box of highlanders

Overall that is 3 cannon and 166 infantry. I think my winter challenge plan is now sorted.

More Africans and Tales from my Holiday

Officially I'm on holiday, dreams of beaches, BBQs and power drinking. Instead I've spent 2 days rewriting a grant proposal and not being on holiday. I have done some DIY as well (damage it yourself) and best of all painted some more figs for the African Campaign. I now have a enough for the next scenario. These are all from the excellent Dahomey collection from Dixons and are really great.

First up are some female warriors, the elite of Dahomy warrior society.

Next we have some male warriors, I tried to make these as colourful as possible.

Finally their commander Admiral Joseph Limbani, who seems to have dressed in a hurry. He is the pompous leader of a band of slavers (Think African Mainwaring)

One of 3 things will happen now, I do more DIY, I watch the tennis or I get skullf...( I mean I have a pint or 4 )

Slaves and Bearers

Since the end of the Challenge I've dipped in and out of painting and finished quite a bit but I've started a lot more. My mojo has been somewhat ethereal. I, therefore, have quite a few unfinished figures which I am chipping away at. These are the 1st batch, African slaves and bearers. These will be used in the Africa campaign, which is on pause while I paint some more figs. Arab and African types are pro the slave trade and Europeans, in general, are anti. These will make great objectives.

Bearers, some ropey photography though

Slaves

Slave trader with slave

The figures are Eureka, Trent and Dixon. The Trent ones are a little small, slave with bowl of fruit. Otherwise I still can't fix the shed door which as a broken hinge and 70 years of paint and rust holding it in place, off to buy paint stripper if it ever stops raining

Posties Painted

I've started to ease into my month off. painted a radiator, fixed a light and failed to fix a door. However I have painted the Ebor Miniatures Belgians as postmen for VBCW. They were a joy to paint, nicely sculpted and moulded with very little flash and barely visible mould marks (only on the top of the hats). I've painted them to match the rest of my postmen in overcoats with Prussian Blue overcoats with red lining.

Colour a little washed out in photos.

The Hotchkiss MMGs with dog limbers are great. Basically I painted them black and then used Foundry metal to brush them all over (my Foundry metal paint has settled out somewhat and refused to mix back properly which actually works much better). I then painted the harnesses red leather. The dogs are Belgian Laekenois (I know absolutely nothing about dogs). Undecided on whether to buy the firing set to duplicate.

This is my total knowledge of Belgian Music, actually think this may be all of it.  Of the 21 most searched Belgian Music Stars on the internet I've never heard of any of them.