28mm Zombie Hunters

My Southcon fleet has been finished, but Spartan have taken me up on my offer of putting some of my doodles and random writings for their own website. So, the fleet will be up on there soon, so I apologize but you will have to wait!

To distract you then from the fact that I am not showing off the French just yet, here are some Zombie Hunters from Hasslefree Miniatures that I finished up last night.



These two guys, are obviously based off of these two guys...



Once I saw that Hasslefree sold these minis, I just knew I had to have them! One of my favourite movies, represented in 28mm? Perfect. Here they are close up.





The bases were made from Grey Stuff (my sculpting material of choice),carved into having some paving stone-esque designs, with some spent shotgun shells from a cut up paper clip. Finishing touches are the blood stains, simply a dry brush of a dark red, then smudged with my finger.

The third Z-Hunter is a wonderfully stereotypical fire axe wielding maniac!



I had to use the flash, otherwise you would have seen none of the detail! This guy has some sweet cammies. The axe, is a traditional fire axe, borrowed from an abandoned fire truck probably! He has a jacket borrowed off of some unfortunate member of the CDC (Centre for Disease Control), or maybe, just maybe he was one of the ones tasked with saving the world from the disease in the first place?



So, my plan is to buy some of the Wargames Factory zombies, a couple more Z Hunters and use the Iron Ivan (No More Room in Hell) rules for some Zombie Skirmishes.

But, that is off in the future, with the French finished it is time for me to decide what is next up on my painting table. Romans? 28mm Moderns? 28mm WW2? Greeks? Flames of War?

No idea. Tune back in later in the week, I might have made a decision. Or maybe not. But something will be here.....

CP

Impetvs Ancients- Romans Part Three!

So, we return back to our scheduled programming with another collection of Imperial Romans!



Three more bases of Legionaries done, again all miniatures from Warlord Games.



Here is another command base, the Primus Pilus (First Centurion) is at the front, a metal miniature, the Vexillarius (banner bearer) is another metal figure. These legionaries all have the plastic Veteran arms (armoured right arms), just to make them look a bit cooler! Game wise, these will probably in all likelyhood be just another normal base of Legionary.





Two more bases of stock standard Legionaries.

Apologies for the super grainy pictures, I took them before the sun came up and had to be done before I went to work this morning. So, sorry about that! Once I have done the whole lot, I will endeavor to do some better pictures of the whole army.

Well, the next lot of Romans are on the painting table, the main issue is that my army is not legal yet! So more painting for me...

Number of Figures: 74 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Points Total: 291 Points
Maximus Level: 1 Maximus

The problem of having no bases will rear it's ugly head when I finish Part Four, hopefully I will have sorted that before then!

More Romans to paint, so back to it!

CP

Southcon 2012- And now for something completely different!

Well Southcon 2012 is almost upon us, or at least registrations for it are closing soon. I have played Flames of War in a couple of Southcons, played 40k in one and have missed a few due to hockey.

This year, I have decided to play Dystopian Wars! Now it was a tough call, but I decided on DW because I haven't really had that much enthusiasm for FOW lately; and I do really like DW, and it would be very cool to get a tournament of it going.

So, in honour of my new decision, there was clearly only one thing to do. Buy a new fleet!

After much deliberation, I decided upon none other than the Brittanian's greatest nemesis, those dastardly French. With their cool looking ships, heat rays (ala War of the Worlds) and the ability for one of their battleships to fly (awesome!), I was sold.

Plus, I can do this...

So, all in all? I was sold.

So with the fleet currently on it's way to me today (hopefully), I took a little time to think of a colour scheme.

Current plan is to copy the French Tank camo scheme from WW2, seen here modelled on a Char B...



With the addition of a dark red waterline for the flying vessels. Plan is for the steampunky details to either be in gold (probably) or silver (unlikely). I like the idea of the scheme, because a) it looks cool, and b) is completely impractical! Why would a ship have green camo? Because it does dammit!

Well, looks like I failed at not spending money buying more miniatures. Although, I did say I was allowed to if I had finished a project, so it could count because I have finished my Brittanians?

More Romans hopefully finished tonight, I would like to keep going with my roll on painting them! Up coming problem is going to be running out of bases, hopefully I will get it sorted today tho....

CP

Impetvs Ancients- Romans Part Two

In addition to playing big games of SAGA, I have been busy beavering away at painting more Romans.

Finished now are two bases of Auxiliary Infantry





These bases will represent my FL Auxiliary units in Impetvs, and are looking pretty nice I think! Miniatures are Warlord Games plastics, with the shield decals from the same kit. The shield decals are... fiddly to say the least. I am happy with how they turned out, but they do seem excessively fiddly for a pretty alright result.

Next up, we have a unit of FP Gladiators!





The miniatures come from Crusader, and represent some of the heavily equipped Gladiators, the Murmillo. Known for their massive helmets, these guys were a sort of gladiatorial representation of Legionaries. Armed with a gladius and shield, they would often be pitted against lightly equipped gladiators such as the Retiarius, to provide the greatest sport.

And of course, what unit of Gladiators is complete without this guy?



When I saw that Crusader had a miniature of him, I just had to get him, too cool not to! So my army now has 1 Maximus!

Another 66 points painted for Impetvs.

Number of Figures: 51 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Points Total: 207 Points
Maximus Level: 1 Maximus!

Next up, talk of Southcon and more Romans.

CP

SAGA Dark Ages: Alliances formed and treaties broken...

On Thursday Night, we scrounged up a few locals for a 4 way game of SAGA. We decided to run the scenario from the Northern Fury book, where there is changing alliances and general mayhem! So the game starts out as 2 v 2. Then, at the end of turn one, people choose a colour of card (red or black). For the next turn, it is Red Team against Black Team, with casualties counting for the respective teams. At the end of that turn it repeats, until Turn 4, when the choices are permanent! Team with the most kills at the end of the game, wins!

So to the fight, I brought Cu Eion and his Irish lads and lasses, but we also had the Rus (Vikings), some Anglo Danish and the dreaded Jomsvikings! How these four armies got to the same battlefield, I have no idea. But since they did, it only seemed right to have a scrap!

The Irish and the Rus began allied for turn 1. This is what the game looked like at turn one....


Anglo Danish archers holding a wood


The Rus (with their pretty shields) storming out from the ruined castle


Some of Cu's warband


Cu Eion himself, directing the warriors

Turn one was markedly uneventful. We were all a long way from each other, so no shooting, no nothing really. Only thing to happen was the Jomsvikings began increasing their level of wrath.....

Turn Two.



So I chose black. What colour did everyone else choose? Red. So it is now 3 v 1 for a turn. Good....

But the only thing in my favour is that I got initiative! So, without any adieu I began to storm the castle...


Charge!


The castle is ours!

Unfortunately, revenge was swift in it's retribution, coming in the form of Varangian Guard equipped with very large axes and lots of armour. So... the opposite of my Irish! Luckily they could only kill so many warriors, and I managed to kill a couple of them too.

On the other side of the board, not much was happening. Or at least there was a hill in the way so I couldn't see anything going on. Perhaps they weren't even moving at all?


Formation dancing. That's what that is.

Turn 3 began with the royal placing of the cards. I chose black (again), and was rewarded with an ally! This time some Jomsvikings were on my side.

Which was really handy, because those Russians were not on my side, and the Jomsvikings could help with that!


Cu eyeing up some Russkis

So the plan? Simple. Take and hold the castle! Oh and clear out the Russians.

How did that go? Well, it went alright. Killed a few more with Javelins, but it was really helped by this happening on the other side of the castle...


Jomsvikings Charge!

Unfortunatly for the Joms, they bit off a bit more than they could chew! The Russian Warlord was seen to cut down the Joms' leader, as well as a score of his followers.

The other flank saw the Anglo Danish finally leave their dancing formation, and actually engage in combat! They charged the women and children, thinking that they would be easy prey. Not so for the Irish! More than a few Danish ended up on the wrong side of an mad Irishwoman's frying pan....


The Anglo Danish lads finally get involved....

Turn 4 rolled around, time for another card! What did I choose? Black. So the Anglo Danish are my allies now?

But I have a plan, after seeing the Jomsvikings get so badly decimated by the Rus, surely I could do the same thing to them, but with Javelins?


Ignore the Russians, throw spears at the Northmen!


Ok, so we killed the Northmen, but the Russians and the Danish are slaughtering us!

It was at this time that the leader of the Rus with his retainers charged Cu Eion himself. Fighting to defend his country, his fallen childhood friend, his fallen pet, his homeland, with a broken axe AND with the sun in his eyes, Cu Eion sadly fell to the Russian invader, but not before taking many of the invaders with him (two, probably two).

Turn Five. What card did I choose? Black (see a theme here?) What card did everyone else choose? Black. So the victory conditions now were having the most stuff left on the battlefield!

Turns 5 and 6 were all kinds of not good for the Irish. Cu had fallen to the Rus, my warriors on the hill had been slaughtered by probability-defying bow fire from the Anglo Danish and my left flank was being accosted by many many more Anglo Danes.


"Anglo Danes, yes, we have a reservation. Here to accost we are, thank you"

The brave levies fought on, but without being able to generate many activation dice (at this point, 3), I was very much hamstrung by not being able to roll a 6 for extra dice!


Just throw more things at them! Stones, frying pans, goats!

The levies did eventually fall before the Anglo Danish, leaving even fewer alive to call the land Irish.


Dogs can't call the land anything... Run dogs run!

The rest of the battlefield saw the Jomsvikings and the Anglo Danish finally meet combat, although it was too little, too late for the Joms, the Anglo Danish were just too fresh an army to be able to fight it in two turns.

The final act was the Rus Warlord storming across the battlefield in an attempt to slay the Anglo Danish Warlord, thus claiming his right as ruler of the land. But, by the time he covered the ground, he was tired, but to his honour, he cut down two vassals to get to the enemy Warlord, only to be cut down as he swung his axe....

So ended the great 4 way game of SAGA. It was.... enlightening! I was probably too bold with my attacks, SAGA has a way of making you pay for killing enemy troops (usually at the cost of a similar number of your own), and so while the Rus and the Irish destroyed themselves and each other, the Joms took a while to arrive, but arrived piecemeal and so were slaughtered. The Anglo Danish held back, waiting for the battlefield to clear and then claimed it as their own. I could call it cowardly, but to be fair, there really isn't anyone left to make that smart remark!

There was one positive of the battle, the castle was still mine!



Look for some reports from the other protagonists, I will link them on here once I have them.

The Russian "opinion" of the battle is here

Up next? Romans. I have some to finish basing, and some on the painting table.

CP

100 Posts....

Hey look, 100 posts!



Now that is a war pooch!

It seemed an appropriate milestone to stop and have a wee muse about blogging, and what it really seems to be to me.

I started this blog almost a year ago, to document my Napoleonic British Army. Part of the idea was that I would actually write up how I did it, so I could remember the stages! But since then, the topics have been as varied as my attention span would allow, ranging in period, scale, theme, from battle reports to essays on Greek Heroes.

Honestly, I find blogging strange. It is in a way a very personal thing, through a totally impersonal medium. I share my intellectual property with the internet, sharing ideas, concepts, plans and dreams. Is it good or bad? I don't know. It has certainly made me want to paint better- challenges such as the Analogue Painting Challenge have been great for my productivity! In addition it has brought me into contact with people all over the world, some leaving comments of encouragement or perhaps even passing the information on. I do like comments, to be honest it makes me feel important! If there are things you think I should look at, historical inaccuracies, miniature companies, new paint techniques, new armies, units or anything else; feel free to pipe up and comment. I like hearing peoples thoughts and ideas!

To those who read and enjoy my posts regularly, thank you. Part of me always looks at the number of people who read what I write and thinks "its just one person, with internet issues refreshing the page lots of times to see a photo". I hope that what I write is as interesting to you as it was to me when I wrote it, and that you find something that might inspire you to want to look into something completely new, that you hadn't thought of before. I know that is how I feel after seeing things like Curt's (Analogue Hobbies) idea of making grey scale armies for WW1 gaming. So thematic, and (I think) will be so cool!

In spite of all the self serving gratification, ego boosting and general peacock-like behaviour that blogging provides for me, I hope that what I produce/write/make/spill out has something of interest, although I suppose if it didn't, you wouldn't be reading this?

Perhaps you are only in it for the pictures. If so, then google images has far less words than this, and is much easier to use to.

More Romans painted tomorrow I think. Then a game of SAGA, the Irish are back to war!

Thanks for reading,

CP

Impetvs Ancients- Romans Part One!

Well, over the weekend I managed to finish off my first few stands of my forthcoming Imperial Roman Army for Impetvs. All miniatures at this stage are from Warlord Games, from their range of plastics. I accept that I could find prettier Romans in metals no doubt, but I actually don't mind the Warlord Games ones. I have been very vocal about their WW2 Germans, but I am quite happy with their Romans! Which is good, because I have a lot of them....

For starters, here are 3 bases of Legion, all Warlord Games plastics.





All pretty stock standard paintjobs, these are more or less my benchmark now for how my Romans will look. I decided that I wanted to have a different colour of grass for a change, the last few armies have all been green! So, out came the basing I used for my Flames of War Germans, with some Army Painter grassy tufts. The shields are the decals from the Warlord Games pack and are... fiddly. They have a nasty wee habit of curling away from the shield, which means much to my suprise some of them had lifted half off! But, after some decal softener, a matt varnish, brown ink and another matt varnish, they are there to stay, and I am happy with the effect.

Next up, 8 Warlord Games Western Archers, split into bases for Impetvs.





Nice, simple paint jobs, nothing too extraordinary there.

Last up, a Scorpion artillery piece.



And that is all I have painted as yet for my Roman Army.

Number of Figures: 34 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Points Total: 141 Points
Maximus Level: 0 Maximus

Like I seem to usually do, I have bought lots and lots of stuff, which really means I need to get myself into gear with my painting. So, my plan then is to BUY NO MORE MINIATURES UNTIL I PAINT OTHER ONES! So, that means that I have to finish an army, before I can start something else. Which I hope will make me actually finish some projects which I am half way through working on. And I expect this plan to fall apart shortly when I see something bright and shiny. Shiiiiney......

Back to painting, these Romans don't paint themselves (sadly)

CP

SAGA Dark Ages: Cu Eion defending the Shores of Eire

So, I managed to get in a couple of games of SAGA last night, where the mighty Irish were defending the shores of Eire against the rampaging Anglo-Danish!

In true style, the Irish turned up late, so missed the chance to attack the enemy at their beach head, so instead had to make do with a pitched battle further inland.

The Irish formed up in their battlelines, wary of the opposing forces. Hearthguard took the flanks, warriors in the centre with Cu Eion himself, with a protective screen of women and children (that sounds a bit bad actually...)



But the cunning Anglo-Danish were lurking in the trees...



Darn cunning!

But, both armies surged forward, eventually meeting at the crest of a hill...



And, in true SAGA style, proceeded to beat the snot out of each other. SAGA has had an incredible body count in my games so far, and this was no exception. But, the Irish were able to hold their own, the game being decided in single combat between each of the Warlords with their retainers...



Where ultimatly Cu Eion was victorious! Well, more that his 4 Hearthguard with Dane Axes and a whole combo of extra dice were victorious!

So, with the lead army crushed and leaderless, Cu Eion set about catching up with the remainder of the invading force....

This game did not go as much according to plan! The Anglo-Danish were able to roll very, very useful dice, gaining the right abilities at the right time. To be on the recieving end of at least +3 fatigue for each of my units was a real, real pain!

So, at one stage my army looked like this...



Why yes, that is the entire army fatigued to the point of exhaustion! Which is a real problem in SAGA, and something I was very, very lucky to counteract!

But, the Irish did as Irishmen do, and they killed everyone. In spite of being fatigued, they managed to do the business!


"I thought I had friends... like a unit or something? Guys? Hello...?"


"There they are, get them!"

So, in spite of my massive fatigue, I was able to scrounge another win. So the Irish go 3-0! Must be some luck there. Still liking SAGA, nice and simple, easy and enjoyable to play.

Must get back to painting, plus some more gaming I hope!

Next up? 28mm historicals I hope!

CP