Getting back in the saddle

For many very dull reasons, mostly related to a promotion at work and all the extra work that that entails, I've not been doing much painting or gaming in the last six months. That's changed a little, as work gets a bit easier and also I have been re-invigorated by a boy's gaming weekend and doing some gaming, especially with the Lord of the Rings LCG with my son (and solo- but that's not as good).

When I'm re-energised for gaming I always get painting, even when the games don't necessarily use miniatures. So for your delectation I present:

Some Lord of the Rings Wood Elves, which are quite nice, but they do suffer from the same problems as all of those LotR scale plastics, namely that the faces are a little bland in the sculpt.

LotR Wood Elves

Then Gildor Inglorion, who wasn't quite finished in the photo above. If you don't recognise him from the film, he should have rescued the Hobbits while they were leaving The Shire, but he got cut. Also if you don't recognise him, then you should read the book. I believe that the miniature might be singing ;)

Gildor Inglorion

And finally some good old Space Marines that have been sitting on my workbench for ages. These Vanguard Veterans suffer from the same problem that the Sternguard do in that they are a bit too busy for their own good. They are also the final miniatures that were bought for me by Mrs. Holdenstein at the launch of the last Space Marine Codex. My Hall of Shame has resisted the particular indignity of not having been painted while an entire edition goes by. The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice a slight painting error that I only noticed in the picture, and which I am repairing at the moment.

Vanguard Veterans

Once again, I hope that it won't be too long again between updates.

Middle Earth

Well you might not be, but I'm pretty excited about the upcoming Hobbit release. Prices are the only thing that is slowing me up slightly, but it's payday today and GW will probably get their man. I've bee doing some painting inspired by Hobbit related stuff...

Rangers of Middle Earth

Shadewraith and Grimnir's Thunder

Two more ships for Dreadfleet now.

First up the Shadewraith. Simple paint scheme: Celestra Grey base, Green Wash, Celestra grey layer and white extreme Highlight. Then there's a few splodges of very thin green/grey paint wash, to break it up and give a bit more variation. Done, and easily used on any other ghostly model you might see.

Bloody Reaver and Skabrus

I've finished the Bloody Reaver, which was a bit of a pain in the arse, due to being a cut and shut of three ships and a castle.

Gary Mawlock

I've had a week off work, so managed to finish my Mawlock in between the weather being good enough to lay Mrs. H's Patio. Basing was a bit of a brain ache, as it would have eaten anything organic, so I've gone for something quite minimal. I call him Gary. Gary Mawlock.

Sloan's Rangers (Gun Mages)

Here's a little more painting for you, this time of a Warmachine bent. I'm pretty happy with how these all turned out, but the pictures are actually nicer than the models in real life. Which is nice

Back in Black 13th

Love these models and the normal gun mages. Great concept well executed. Oddly small, but we'll get on to that in a minute...

Relic entertainment

I had a game of 6^th Edition 40K last night down at the Wakefield Warriors club. It was a marine on marine affair, but very much livened up by playing a mission that’s new to sixth. We were playing relic, with the short table edge deployment type, which was nice and new. Both my opponent and I were getting a bit more confident with the rule set now, and although we forgot to roll for night fighting in the first turn and got thoroughly confused about vehicle and transport moving, the rules galloped along at a fair old lick. I’m pretty sure that unless you play two armies with mixed saves in every single unit (Space Wolves I’m looking at you) then they play a little faster than the 5^th edition rule set. In the end I think that I lost the mission (5 points to 1) due to not combat squadding my tactical squads and feeding the little combat squads to his Deathstar unit. This thing was a destructive force of nature, featuring 5 lightning claw terminators, a chaplain and Pedro Kantor, from Land Raider Crusader. That’s +1A, Re-roll hits and Wounds at AP3 on the turn that they charged. The Lightning Claws guys delivered 16 Wounds on to my tactical squad. Ouch. What I should have done (and normally do) is split the squads, leave the heavy weapons at the back and feed the terminators half a squad at a time, to keep them away from the relic. 

The other mistake I made was that I deployed my Sternguard in drop pod badly, to take out one of my opponent’s scoring units. Not sure what I should have done, but I definitely didn’t do it right. Perhaps I should have dropped them further to one flank, so that they dragged more of my opponent’s units out of position.

Relic was fun and the secondary objectives work nicely, and the deployment style was fine too. It gives a narrow front and deep deployment zone, although you can’t get too far away from the enemy, especially now that all vehicles can go 18” in a turn if they want to. That gap is very easily closed in just two turns for assault armies.

Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Not that one

I had a cunning plan the other day. Holdenstein Jr. is terrible at reading, and really terrible at reading aloud to me. It's not that he's actually bad at reading, he's quite good, he just hates it. Then while trundling around blogs followed by blogs that I follow I came across an interesting genre. The Fighting Fantasy playthrough blog. Honestly I don't know who came up with the idea first, but it is both simultaneously genius and the saddest thing I have ever seen.

That gave me an idea: I have a box full of game books upstairs and a son who won't read to me, so I embarked on playing Warlock of Firetop Mountain with Holdenstein Jr. The rules were simple. No cheating (except in the annoying Maze of Zagor- and only then to ignore irritating repositions), re-roll on skill of 7 or 8, Holdenstein Jr. gets to roll the dice for us in combat, and every couple of entries we swap reading duties. I'll also make the map. Thus the project is both entertaining and informative. I make him add up his attack strength too- that's maths covered as well as English.

And a bit more painting

The release of 6th Ed. 40k has been positive in  that it's persuaded me to paint. Here are some pics!

Brother-Sergeant Chronus

 So first up we have Chronus, who was a bit fiddly, but ultimately quite a nice job, after removing all his Ultramarines insignia.

Aegis Defence Line

 Next, another 40K painting job, the Aegis defence lines, which can be used as a fortification in the new edition. Don't know if I will, but of course they can go in normal terrain.

Gobber Bodger

And finally a Gobber Bodger. I love this model dearly. Would love to know who sculpted him, but PP don't seem to want you to know who sculpts their models. Nice though. It was painted using the new GW ork triad of paints, which are very nice indeed.

Next up, Kara Slone from Warmachine and some Vanguard Vets for 40K

Finally some painting!

Those twin perils that stalk most wargamers over thirty have well and truly struck over the last couple of months. I speak of course of work and family. Still I managed to do a couple of things. Firstly get a little (with the emphasis on little) painting done and secondly I managed to meet up with my old school chums Dave and Duncan for a little bit of 40K at Dave's parents house (Yes we are all nearly 40 and none of us live any where near Dave's parents). I'm sorry to say that I had a few bad matchups, with my Nids taking on Space Wolves and Dark Eldar (which was utterly soul destroying) and my cleansing Flames marines (that's vanilla to you) taking on some Thousand Son's. Twinned with some poor tactics I got 3 losses. Still. The games the thing and everyone had a very good time.

So on with the pics.

 A Gimli painted by Holdenstein Jr

 A Trygon that's nearly done - any thoughts on basing well received

And a finished Heldenhammer. I might just love this model more than my children...

WIP 'em out

In the absence of proper updates, here's a bit of what they call hobby progress. Although if it's not finished it's not progressed that well.
Starting off with a few 40K models, here's Sargent Chronos, with all his Ultramarine bit removed. The bit in the middle of his chest Aquilla is a Maltese Cross from the Venerable Dreadnought loincloth. He's probably the closest to being fininshed.

Also We have the Heldenhammer

And Bloody Reaver from Dreadfleet. Nice models, but hard work and fiddly!

Back (in denim)

First post in a little while. I would like to say how I've been off doing very interesting things like going to the Arctic with Helen Skelligton off Blue Peter or been abducted by aliens but the truth is that I've been busy with work and Christmas and so haven't been gaming much and certainly haven't had any time to write. This isn't the only game that we played over this period. We payed at least a couple of games of Space Hulk, a bit of summoner Wars, Monopoly Deal (which is an excellent game for a fiver) and various other kids games. This is the first that I've had some time to blog about though.

The other day Holdenstein Jr asked if we could play a game of Warmachine, so I ventured out to the shed to get a board and some scenery and we did. Stryker vs Kreoss again, this time with Junior bagsying Stryker, so I took the partially painted Kreoss and got first turn. We set up across from each other and advanced.

Junior's Cygnar

My Menoth

In my second turn I misjudged some distances which left me in no-man's land with my melee jacks, but able to get first blood by setting Junior's Charger on fire

First Blood

Junior then returned the complement by charging his Ironclad and Lancer in and shooting the Charger at the Revenger. He also disrupted the with Stryker's gun. The Ironclad managed to get a bit of damage done before getting pushed away from the Revenger by its repulsor shield.

Stryker about to pounce

That was a bit of a pain, as it meant no boosting for my best 'jack even though it was in range. I just had to settle for meandering in and trying to hit the Lancer with the Crusader and the flail on the Repenter. Unsurprisingly not much damage was done. Kreoss advanced and set Stryker on fire with Immolation which was nice, although not for Stryker. I also forgot to use my feat, which at the time was a terrible thing.

Junior went for the kill this round. He put a point of focus on the Charger to move round and boost against Kreoss (with some success) put the Ironclad back into combat with the Revenger, and finally charged Kreoss with Stryker, popping Stryker's feat just in case. Junior should have done me then, but fluffed his last two hit rolls and left Kreoss on two wounds. This is where forgetting to use my feat on the previous turn was lucky. I knocked Stryker over and gave him the sort of pummelling that even +5 Arm can't help.

Ooops

So a win for me, but what did we learn? Well Junior prefers Warmachine to Space Hulk, because you can do almost anything, and I enjoyed myself and I think have worked out why I don't like Warmachine. Wait I hear you say, you just said you enjoyed yourself, what's all this about not enjoying Warmachine. That's correct. I enjoyed this game and I have enjoyed all the other games that I have played at this size. What I have never enjoyed is 25 to 35 point games. I think that it's a combination of ever increasing numbers of special rules, totally optimised lists and the Caster kill end to the game that do it. It's a lot of effort for a game that might last a turn and a half or five, and a small mistake or not understanding all of your opponents abilities can easily lead to the end of the game. I would rather have a game that lasts for a relatively predictable time, which Warmachine is at this level.

I hope to be updating the blog fairly regularly now, so check back soon!

Battle Boxing

Holdenstein jr. and I had a simple game of Warmachine yesterday, pitching Stryker's battle box against Kreoss'. I took Kreoss, which put me at two disadvantages. Firstly the Menoth box isn't painted yet and secondly I judge that Stryker's Battlebox is somewhat more effective in 'jack on 'jack action than Kreoss'.

My Revenger was taken out early on with some boosted shots from Junior's Charger, followed up by the Ironclad smashing it up. Subsequently, the Lancer was set on fire by the Repenter and broken up by the Crusader. I had lost the advantage, however and had to move Kreoss up as all my wrajqcks were either disrupted or had knocked out corteces. I set Stryker on fire and knocked off a half his damage, but a charge from Stryker with boosted attacks and damage killed Kreoss.

Junior got the basics down pretty easily, and some of the metal arithmetic was challenging, but I judge that to be a good thing. Junior's pretty good at maths and giving him something challenging that's relevant can be quite tricky. Overall, this was a success. As long as we stay away from things like soul token mechanics, small Warmachine games are a decent option.

Warmachine mkII

Another game last night, again my pStryker against Alan's Phinneus Shae theme list, but this time a 35 point match. I'm happy to report that my army works better at 35 than it does at 25. I'm not sure why, but I would suggest that the two decent infantry units are better enhanced (I hate that Buff/Debuff crap) by Stryker through spells and his Feat than a single one.

I took an Ironclad and lancer in Stryker's Battlegroup, with a small Trencher unit, UA and Grenadier, and a gun mage unit plus UA and Hunter jack. I would have preferred to squeeze in my Defender over the Lancer, but you can't have everything.

Team Photo

We played  with the two central objective zones. Over on my right the Trenchers squared up to Sea-dogs with Mr. Walls and the Commodore cannon and deck gun, while on the left my gun mages went for the objective, up against a Mariner, a Freebooter and Press Gangers, with both Warcasters in the centre, which had a wood blocking line of sight in the middle of the table.

To cut a long story short, the zone on the right dragged in my Lancer and First Mate Hawk, and we ended up with the Lancer, Grenadier, Hawk and the cannons not doing much to each other, with a lot of dead trenchers and pirates.
On the left, Stryker, the Ironclad, Shae, grog spar, Doc Killingsworth and dirty Meg all got dragged in to the scrap. My gun mages acquitted themselves very well, with their high def plus blur making them very difficult to hit, and them slowly whittling down the Freebooter jack and Press Gang, even with 4+ tough rolls and no knockdown. When push came to shove though, Stryker had to disrupt the Mariner to prevent it destroying the Ironclad and in doing so put himself in range of Shae, who was just able to kill him with a couple of fully boosted attacks with slightly better than average rolls.

Oh well c'est la vie, as they say in Barnsley. Lessons learned- Jack Marshall does not let you use power attacks, but does get transferred from the officer to the unit leader. Blur is ace on ATGM units and PStryker works better wi two units.
Oh, and Arcane Shield Stryker instead of camping on 2 focus. That extra point of ARM might just have made a difference.
Here's a little bigger photo of the Hunter, who I have finished since last week with his forest base.

Warmachine

This is one just for me. With Holdenstein Jr's. health improving and work getting a little easier I went out to play last night for the first time in around 3-4 months. Leeds Games Club still meets on a Thursday night in Headingly, but it seems that it is increasingly going towards board and card games, and the Thursday wargaming has moved to the Leeds Wargaming Centre on Meanwood Rd, where the Leeds Night Owls now meet on a Sunday.

I played Warmachine last night. That James Rhodes is one mean miniature games player. Only joking, I played a chap called Alan, with my Stryker lead Cygnar taking on his Phinneus Shae theme list. Phineus Shae's theme list is one mean mother, with the excellent pirate solos coming in a point cheaper and getting the frickin' massive cannon, not to mention some really nasty movement spells and feat. It didn't help that my armies main trick is knockdowns, and just about everyone in his army was immune to being knocked down. Anyway I lost, due to not seeing a caster kill run coming from First Mate Hawk, who went from being out of range to all too close to Stryker after a quick cast of Coup de Main. Same old problem for me, not keeping the caster safe enough.

The other thing that I got up to was buying some of Alan's forest bases. Alan casts up bases and buildings from resin under the moniker Fat Spider. I had been looking for some cut tree trunks for a little while, in order to nicely base my Hunter warjack, and this was an easy way to do it. The bases are nice and uncluttered.

Fat Spider bases

Anyway it was an excellent night, and hopefully the start of weekly/biweekly gaming once more.

What we've been painting

A bit of a family painting session here. I have been painting Tyranids and I am currently working on a magnetised Hive Tyrant. These are my last efforts...

Holdenstein Jr. fancied a go at a Moria goblin, and it worked pretty well..

And finally Holdenstein Mk III wanted a go too. For you Tommy, this war is over. This is what happens to the enemies of the Imperium.

MkIII is only four, so give him some slack

Good News

We are playing again, today going through the Mines of Moria missions once more. This time a complete clean sweep for Holdenstein jr. First two missions as discussed below. I was actually pretty impressed with the way that Holdenstein Jr. approached the first mission, using Gandalf, Boromir and Gimli, who are basically impervious to missile fire to shield the hobbits (who are most definitely not impervious to bow fire).

The initial move

Just about to get the win

The third mission was a bit of a free for all, involving everything apart from the Cave Troll. Lots of goblins at the start with most of the Fellowship apart from Aragorn. The Fellowship have to close two trap doors at either end on the board, with goblins coming in as reinforcements through the traps and Aragorn arriving on the roll of a 6 at the end of each turn. Trapdoors are closed by a member of the fellowship standing on them at the end of the turn.

I originally thought that Holdenstein Jr. had made a mistake. He went in both directions, and tried to thin the goblins out as soon as possible. I would have gone for one trap door and then the other. Fortune favoured the brave, however, and he was able to attack the goblins at each of the choke points. He was also lucky that Aragorn turned up at the end of the first turn and immediately set about the goblins with extreme prejudice.

Boromir is about to lock the final trap door

So it all worked out in the end despite me taking out two of the hobbits on the final turn, and failing to wound Legolas, which would have bought me and unlikely win.

I am afraid to say there was much gloating from the boy. I am currently gluing model railway ballast to the bases of the unpainted models in preparation for undercoating.

The Second Game

Woah there! What happened to the first game I hear you cry (I'm good me and I can receive messages from the future). Well the first game didn't go exactly to plan and there was a certain amount of bad temper after Holdenstein jr. lost the first game with both good and evil sides. Not ideal stuff for a blog post.

This went much better, and was at junior's suggestion. After a short renewal with the basic rules we were off with Scenario one from the Mines of Moria book, which only allows shooting in a mad dash to a doorway. I was pleasantly surprised by two things. Firstly Junior was able to remember most of the things he needed to, like movement distances, without any prompting, and despite losing both with good and evil again, wanted to play some more. He was particularly unlucky the second time too, with my Moria goblins just hitting and wounding constantly and killing Legolas. Junior is far to smart to allow me to throw the game too, in case you're wondering.

We racked the figures up again and played Scenario two, where Aragorn has to again make his way to the door, while getting through Moria goblins, this time only using his sword. Junior won using both forces this time. 

 Aragorn lays the smack down on Moria gobins

I was more impressed with the combat mechanic than the shooting one. Junior got the hang of them seamlessly and really got in the swing (and stab) of things. It really was impressive the way that heroes can take on one or two enemies with a high degree of confidence, but quickly find themselves at a disadvantage once they get surrounded, due to taking double strikes (wound rolls) when they can't retreat.

Overall this time: Great success

The Table

I've been wargaming for over twenty years now and I have a confession to make. A dirty little secret if you like. Listen closely, because it's just between you and me. Up until the start of this project, I have never owned a gaming table. Why? Well I have always been in the fortunate position of having very good friends with tables or been in close proximity to a very good club at which to play. If I have needed to play at my home, then it was a case of getting out some gaming mats and playing on the floor. In short, I have never needed one, or had the space to store the board and terrain.
That changed about a week ago. We have a kitchen table, which is three feet by five feet so all I needed was a board to put on the top and away we go. With this in mind, my initial plan was to buy an 8x4' piece of chipboard and get it sawn in half, to make two 4x4 boards, which would work nicely individually for LotR, or Warmachine. The boards could also be put together for larger games of 40K or similar, with a line drawn on them to make a 6x4 for standard games. Great plan, and off I trotted to B&Q (if you're in the UK, it is just the larger stores that have the cutting service).
Here's my first cautionary tale from this blog. A 4x4 board is quite a lot bigger and more difficult to get into a car than you would first think. No matter which combination of doors and hatch I used it just wouldn't go. And when I say just wouldn't go, I really mean just. By about a centimetre. Just enough to keep me trying to get the piece of timber into the car for about 15 minutes, scratching the interior in the process. So do measure up first. 
I did seriously consider abandoning the chipboard there and then in the car park, but instead made my way, shamefully, back into the store to get a bit more cut of each end. Now I have a pair of boards measuring 3 x 4', so they will still go together for a game of 40K, but aren't quite as convenient for LotR or Warmachine. The other cautionary note, is that the cutting process produces quite a bit more dust than expected, so don't do on the way back from work in your suit. Fortunately that suit did need a dry clean in any case.

I also picked up a tin of Dulux "Urban Obsession" for painting the Mines of Moria/ City fight side of the board, which is an amazing colour for a gaming table with a great name (almost as if they had an eye on the gaming market). So Junior and I had an afternoon painting the surface of the table together. I also had to make a difficult decision to not cover the table with sand. This was due to wanting to use both sides, one green and one grey and not wanting to risk the ire of Mrs Holdenstein when her kitchen table ends up with sandy divots in it.
The table is now complete. Time to get some games in!

The Plan

My boy, henceforth known as Holdenstein jr. Has been bugging me to play and model with my toy soldiers for quite some time. We've been playing some of the more simple board games, such as Carcassonne and Summoner Wars for a little while and I've decided that it's time to take the plunge and introduce him to a little light war-gaming, which will have the added benefit of giving us a bit more quality time together.
As an introduction to wargaming, I had two main considerations; a suitable theme and a simple ruleset. So firstly an odd question: What is a suitable theme for a wargame?
This is a question that has puzzled war gamers for years. Wargaming is a simulation of killing people using toy soldiers. There's no getting away from that slightly uncomfortable fact. In fantasy settings people never existed and so therefore there's no problems over "real" morality getting in the way, but anything historical will have moral baggage coming along with it. Why are the forces fighting? Who is right? What happens if the bad guys win? Couldn't they just have talked it over and come to some arrangement? These are all good questions, and ones that I can't be bothered to answer, so I'm going to go for a fictional gaming setting to begin with (although I note that Holdenstein jr.s next school project is about Vikings so that might be a chance to try out some ancient wargaming)

So a fictional setting- great, I have a massive amount of 40K stuff and quite a bit of Warmachine. Well, straight away  we've hit a problem. That problem is that in their quest for a "mature" edgy seeding there's quite a bit in those settings, especially Warmachine's, that isn't really suitable for a young 'un. Both games have their sadomachochist faction, and a general grim dark mentality. Plus Warmachine has too much cleavage. I won't get into whether or not this approach is actually mature, or rather childish in it's own way, but suffice to say I won't be going there yet, and don't get me started on Malifaux. Plus their rules are too difficult to simplify. 

That leads me to where I am going: Lord of the Rings, the Strategy Battle Game. This is a new game to me. The imagery is uncontroversial, the rules are pretty simple and the bad guys are obviously bad, but not in a sadistic way. Hurray. I am actually in two minds about whether to stick with the rules as supplied, or go for the "Song of Blades and Heroes" rules, which are simple but effective. We will try both for a few games each and then make a decision. That's the plan anyway.