Category Archives: Gaming

Photos of games in action

Starting 2018 with some paint

Antares, Gaming

After the massive job of putting together 3 armies for Beyond the Gates of Antares, it was about time to test out some paint schemes. Nothing very original, but as always, they had to match my main objective of… can I paint them quickly.

First I had to let my fingers recover. 1600 points (roughly) of Ghar, Algoryn and Concord left my fingertips a little bereft of feeling as they were suffering from green stuff and superglue melded into my fingerprints. The plastics are well made and didn’t require as much mold line removal as GW plastic, or indeed Mantic Restic. Although I’m going to have a break from building now and get some painting done.

What got me wanting to play Antares initially was the cool looking scheme done on the great Algoryn models, along with the similarity to Bolt Action rules. So, I had to use a scheme similar to Warlord’s for the Algoryn. My wife who’s decided to adopt the Concord as her army, liked the bone/green standard so I stuck with that. As I wanted all 3 armies to look different, I didn’t want to have the Ghar in a grey/white that was similar to the Concord bone, so I tried out the Crystal Blue colour I’d used on my Deadzone Forgefathers. Although it looked ok, they were too similar to the Forgefathers. So in the end, I decided, to go with a really easy to paint metal scheme. All 3 different enough to see clearly on the table.

Sorry for the poor lighting on these photos…

Trial Algoryn Paint jobs

GoA-Algoryn-Trial

GoA-Algoryn-Trial2

Trial Concord Paint jobs

GoA-Concord-Trial

GoA-Concord-Trial2

 

Trial Ghar Paint jobs

Although I say “trial”. I’ve actually got a full unit of 3 of these painted now.

GoA-Ghar-Trial

 

Game On

As the armies were all built, we decided to try a small game out. Just 500 points of Ghar vs Concord. This was mainly to try out the rules, and for me,  to hope my wife found it as easy to play as Bolt Action.

Ghar Empire (497 points)

  • 2 Army Options: Block, Extra Shot
  • 5 Ghar Battle Squad (1 Leader, 4 troops)
  • 3 Ghar Battle Squad (1 Leader, 2 troops)

Concord (498 points)

  • 1 Army Options: Block
  • C3 Strike Command Squad (1 Leader, 4 Troops) with Spotter Drone
  • C3 Strike Squad (1 Leader, 3 Troops, 1 Troop with Plasma Lance) with Spotter Drone
  • C3 Strike Squad (1 Leader, 3 Troops, 1 Troop with Plasma Lance) with Spotter Drone
  • C3D1 Light Support Drone with Batter Drone

A great game with some real learning highlights. At one point the Concord managed to get a lucky shot on the large battle squad with 2 other hits. My wife put the lucky shot on my leader, not knowing he’d get a re-roll. He rolled a 10, and a 10 on the re-roll. Plasma explosion! One of the other Ghar died to the shot he took, and 2 others also died to plasma explosions. I feel my dice were rigged to get 10’s. All fun though and quite devastating to see a unit of 5 Ghar Battle troops drop to 1 in a single round of shots from the Concord. Hopefully, the gribbly little Ghar won’t see bad luck like that when we start the Battle for Xilos campaign games.

Poor lighting again, but we played mainly at the nearside of this setup. Next table will have to be a jungle table for the Battle of Xilos.

Game-GoA1

 

One thing I decided to do after the game was to knock up some cards to use for the Army Options. That way, we could have the cards on the table and discard them when they were used. All the info is on the cards, so no looking anything up.

I made 3 sets, which you get the idea of their looks from the pictures below.

Cards-Ghar

Cards-Concord

Cards-Algoryn

Below should be a link to a pdf with each of the files of 7 cards for the 3 factions shown. They are all sized to fit in standard card sleeves. I’ve printed mine on card and put them in Ultra-Pro card sleeves so they’re pretty solid things now.

GoA Ghar Army Cards

GoA Concord Army Cards

GoA Algoryn Army Cards

Till next update… Enjoy.

Work to blame?

Devil's Run, Gaming, X-Wing

I’ve been behind with my painting schedule recently. Work has been tough recently. 75 hours a week of work leaves little time for painting and spending time with the family. With a week off, I was expecting to get loads painted, however, my wife decided we did need to paint – 2 of the rooms in the house. Although she did all the fantastic hard work – I still had loads of ‘junk’ to sort out and clear. Then matters got worse because we bought a PS4 for me and the lad to play on… and then the week off had gone. 😦

I did manage to paint up 4 Viking Hearthguard for Saga, a couple of M10/Jackson tank destroyers for Tanks, 2 stage 3Z zombies and a Veer-myn crawler for Deadzone. I’ll get these and few other things from the last month photo’d better soon. At the moment, the space I’d use to take photos is taken up with junk from 2 other rooms.

I did manage to take a couple of pics of some of the vehicles I’d started on for Devil’s Run. I missed the first Kickstarter for this game due to lack of funds, but managed to join the second one. I also bought the original game I’d first missed. What a great game it is as well. Several weekends running have seen my wife’s Law Haulage take on (and defeat) my Haul’s Angels. A game I’d certainly recommend.

Haul’s Angels so far:

Law Haulage so far:

And a work in progress shot:

The top two left cars are conversions from a box of old cars I found when I cleared my Mum’s house out. They’ll do as Speedsters for the Haul’s Angels and I’ll get the Pursuer for the Law Haulage to give them another speed car.

Devil’s Run had a miss this weekend and we had a 3 way 100 point X-Wing game – trying to use some of the newest wave 9 ships. Great fun. Although the finishing order went Imperials, Scum & Villainy and the poor old Rebels last.

Till the junk is cleared and I get some photo’s done…

A real mix of photos

Deadzone, Gaming, Maelstrom's Edge, Saga

I had an hour peace and quiet this afternoon, so I decided to set up the kitchen table with some of the terrain I’d been putting together the last few weeks – mainly to see if it seemed to fit together in cohesion or look a state.

I don’t have room to store loads of bespoke terrain boards, so I rely on things such as the old GW cloth grass up to some of the newer pvc and mousemat style mats. Terrain has to be able to fit in storage boxes and be hidden away behind a curtain in my man cave.

Anyway, here’s a few photo’s – a shame the sun went in and the bulb in the kitchen isn’t bright enough, but they’re fairly clear.

Saga

As you know, I decided to go all in on Saga and bought myself a Viking warband and my lad an Anglo Saxon one. Although we’re yet to have a game – I still can’t find a rulebook for sale anywhere – I have enough terrain to make up a few tables of different themes.

And a close up of the 4ground cart I resprayed last night – full of Mantic dungeon saga barrels.

Vikings

Warlord and Hearthguard:

Viking Beserkers:

Warriors (2 units):

I decided to make warriors carry spears and hearthguard swords/axes so they can be differentiated on the table well enough.

And a pic of the whole 4 points together:

Maelstrom’s Edge

I know I haven’t put paintbrush to model yet for this, but I have been putting together a table for it. The photos only have the mat open at 4’x3′ but it’s 4’x4′ when opened fully – and soft and mousematty 🙂

The Landing pad and the containers on it are only base painted – enough for a game I suppose, but I need to add the rust effects, chips, sand etc.

The photo above had the palm trees – this one has a mix of some rather alien looking plants and different cargo containers.

Deadzone – Plague

It’s about 2 years since I painted my first Deadzone plague models. With the kickstarter goodies for Deadzone 2 arriving recently, I have a Plague abomination to paint up. I wanted it to match up with the others – and I think I managed it. Even if it did only take 10 minutes to paint up.

That’s about it for now. Still sitting on my paint table are a couple of Wells for Saga – one ruined, one working. There’s the Landing pad and containers to finish off and a Strider for Deadzone with a different weapon loadout.
So much to paint, so annoying that I have a couple of really tough weeks at work where I’ll be putting in 70+ hours – so painting’s a right off for a while 😦

They’re already painted…?

Gaming, X-Wing

So, I bought my lad the X-wing miniatures game starter set… and then another ship or 2, or 3…

We have enough to make a 100 point tournament squad each – with a load more figures on order like the Millenium Falcon and Slave I. My 10 year old has loved playing it – full rules with all the advanced rules and cards. Every waking minute he’s asked if we can have another game.

Great stuff.  A game I can get into with him. Mind you, I’m not sure whether to put stuff about it on this blog as the figures are already painted. #woohoo

Anyway, after playing on a 2′ x 2′ Deadzone mat, we progressed to a black tablecloth on the table. Now we’ve moved to a special 3′ x 3′ mousepad space mat. I’m really impressed with the quality of it and I’m now thinking of getting some 6′ by 4′ mousepad mats for some of the other mini games I play.

So… Roll on Easter holidays and all the other ships arriving through the post to play with.

Happy New Year!

Bolt Action, Gaming, Iron Cross, Paint Table

Happy new year!

Well, maybe a day early, but I doubt I’ll update again before January.

To finish the year off, here’s a pic of the M26 Pershing my wife bought me for my birthday. I had time on Boxing day and the day after to get it complete – although only managed one lousy photo of it on the gaming table – which has a pretty poor energy saving bulb above it 😦

I’ll take a better photo in the light box when I get chance.

US M26 Pershing Heavy Tank:

I’ve also put together the present I received for Christmas (thanks again to my fantastic wife), a Vampire Lord on a Zombie Dragon – this is the main boss for my Undead army.
I did rush to it though, and build it Boxing day and paint it the day after.
It’s still awaiting lighter highlights on the bone work, along with the stone it’s stood on and base painting. I’m waiting to put it on a decent sized piece of mdf, rather than the tabletop sized piece of plastic GW provided with it.

Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon – work in progress:

Finally today we managed to get a game of Iron Cross in. That’s a really nice simple(ish) set of rules that flows very fast. If Bolt Action is to 40K, then Iron Cross is to Kings of War. Iron Cross does have a fantastic action/reaction system.

Here’s a few pics from the dull lit game table.
Apologies that a few infantry models are only base-coated.
😦

The German Forces:

The US Forces:

Battle photos:

End of Turn 1

End of Turn 2

End of Turn 3

End of Turn 4

End of Turn 5

At the end of turn 6, the US forces (me) failed their break point roll as they’d taken a load of casualties and fled the table.
Iron Cross Game 1: Win to my wife with the Germans

And a couple of other photos I took:

PS: And if you noticed… yeah… Captain America was leading the US forces and Red Skull was leading the Germans. 🙂

Deadzone Gameboard

Deadzone, Gaming

Had to laugh… everytime I think of the phrase “Game board” it makes me think of Moss in the IT Crowd. 🙂

Anyway, I managed to take a photo of all the Deadzone scenery squeezed onto the game board. A little busy, but it is the full Deadzone box set along with a scenery upgrade kit doubling the number of building tiles.

I had to use the flash for the photo, so it’s not brill, but you can see how crowded it is. All ready for a Plague vs Enforcers game tonight. /Sigh. Saturday’s used to be about partying 😦