30 December 2017

One Last MIni for Deadcember '17



Skeletal dragon from Reaper.




And a pic for scale. Dragon's on a 50mm square base. Small dragon, obviously.



29 December 2017

Oldhammer Legacy Crew '17 (40k)

I previously posted the underhive gang member painted for the annual Oldhammer forum legacy crew. I had trouble deciding what to send for the other (Inquisitorial) faction, which had a black & white theme (vs. the gang's rainbow scheme.) I figured I'd paint two, and pick the better and/or more appropriate one to send...


...and I still can't decide which to send, although I'm leaning towards shipping the commissarial looking lady on the left.  I'd better decide soon -- I'm already late in sending these out.




26 December 2017

Christmas 2017



Merry Christmas, again!

I actually got some gaming stuff for Christmas this year, thanks in part to Netflix.


(Mini photographed on top of a Moorcok book for added oldschool gaming cred -- even if it's not one of his tradtional/pulpy fantasy books.)

To be honest, the mini was of no interest to me until Stranger Things. I've been wanting one since that first episode. And now I have it. Also have an old '80s Ral Partha hydra that was sold with it.


For Christmas, I usually buy one or two "from Santa" gifts for the whole family. This year I had the urge to pick up this...



...which I did. When I was a kid, a friend down the street had the original and I remember enjoying it. It wasn't exactly a gateway into D&D for me, but I enjoyed board games in general, and it predated my being introduced to RPGs.

For various reasons, I backed out on actually wrapping it & gifting it to the family and will probably return it to the store in a few days.


On the other hand, I have been considering picking up something for myself for solo play. I don't have the space for solo miniatures gaming any more, and I think I am close to admitting defeat in trying to force myself back into the hobby of playing games with other humans. (Same time & scheduling problems, etc.) So I've started looking into computer games and solo board games. Some of the modern D&D board games are supposed to be decent for solo dungeon crawls.


I'm torn, though. I like the idea of getting away from digital screens. And although they are board games, they still have a tangible element, including miniatures. Not wargames or battle games, though.

Computer games seem like they offer more in terms of depth & responsive AI, and I can find some larger tactical battle games. I'd rather reduce my time in front of a screen than increase it, though.

I guess each option has its pros & cons.


22 December 2017

Mercenary Undead


Combining my fondness for the undead, and skeletal undead in particular, with the desire to create a larger pool of "regiments of renown" style mercenaries, I started working a few initial figures as a sort-of proof of concept...



The Tilean city-states are well known for the rising and falling nature of the many fortune seekers looking to profit from the unending intrigue and war.  Maurice Dellamorte is an unusual product of that environment. A mage of middling abilities, he spent nearly two decades employed in both courts and battlefields. A practical man, what Maurice lacks in arcane talent and social skills, he makes up for in shrewd tactical creativity.

After failing to rise through the ranks of either social and military circles, and meeting failure at his initial attempts to found a mercenary company of his own, he turned to darker methods. Although he did find some employment, desperate use of his company of "skeletal commandos" was viewed with distaste by most of the populous -- friend or foe.

Having worn out his welcome in Tilea, Maurice has taken his company on the road. His travels have recently taken north to the Wasteland, advertising his services with progressive slogans as, "Mo' Death for your Money" and "Silent But Deadly." 


---

I like the way these Maurice and the two test skeletons turned out. So I plan on painting the rest of the unit like this. It's a long lingering idea I've had for a necromancer who paints his skeletons black an uses them for night raids.

In practical game terms, I'm thinking about making them something like scouts or flanking unis. Or, obviously, scenarios involving night time raids.

I think I need to come up with my own catchy alternative to "Regiments of Renown."

Mercenaries of Murderous Machinations?

Sell-Swords of Sinister Services?

Uh... maybe I need to work on that a bit.


17 December 2017

Mounted Necromancer (Wraith)

Mounted necromancers are hard to come by. Even then, I want something less human, more undead. Like a "lesser liche" or some other alternate. Basically just an undead thing, mounted on an undead riding thing, who summons & controls the other undead things. So here's the first that I've been able to come up with...



Mounted wraith from Celtos.

My last planned Deadcember project is some more non-human skeletons to bump a smaller unit up to a larger horde, but for whatever reason I'm just not feeling it right now. In fact, I'm not really in the mood to paint up much of the undead I already have. I think the major factor in play is that I don't really feel like cleaning & assembling a bunch of minis. Everything requires a bunch of pre-painting work, and I'm just not in the mood. I'm sort of wishing I had a big model to work on, or something(s) already prepped and ready to paint. Or a pile or rank & file already prepped. I'm completely in painting mode!


Only half way through Deadcember, though. Even though I'm prep-impaired, I'm still motivated to get a big heaping pile of undead done by the end of the month, so maybe I just need a day or two to relax & think about what to tackle next.


16 December 2017

Skeletons


Done with the latest batch of skeletons. I ended up putting two on individual bases, since I had some trouble fitting 4 on every 40mm base. So I end up with more "footprint" than planned, the regiments will still look full, and I have a start on my "singles." So it's a win/win/win.



Deadcember Progress... and Beyond




Finished painting some more of the second gen. Citadel plastic skeletons. Still need to base them, probably going with the 40x40 group bases I've used previously -- though I feel I should have at least a few individual 20x20 skeletons...


I'm still daydreaming about a crew of Eclectic Meat-hating Robot Pirates. So, to that end, I am very excited to have acquired...



My plan is to paint The Dead through Deadcember, work on some High Elves for a friend in January, and then in February... Febrobtary...? Febotary? Whatever. Paint some bots.

11 December 2017

Skeletal Cavalry Standards



I finally got my hands on some more of the old Citadel plastic cavalry. They were painted, and in slightly rough shape. But definitely something I can work with. The minis below were partially disassembled, reassembled, added banners, and repainted.



(EDIT: Photo size/quality fixed... maybe?)

When playing KoW recently, I learned how awful undead standard bearers on foot are. They just can't keep up with the rest of the army. So next time I will try mounted standard bearers. Alternately, they can just go in regular units of cavalry. In fact, I can add these to my previous 8 re-paints for a nice, round unit of 10.

10 December 2017

Background Musings


Been busy lately but finally got a minute or two to start hitting the Deadcember minis. Just a start...


Skeletons to round off another horde, and a couple of mounted standard bearers.


I've been thinking a lot about the back-story for my campaign ideas and I think it would really be fun to run with a certain degree of mystery. At least on the undead side. Maybe something that floats back and forth between an RPG and a miniatures battle game. I really need to find some players! (And time... and gaming space...)

On the other end of things, I've been putting more thought into the Jackrabbit Trading Company, and have developed the idea behind the Boar Cleavers further, to the point that there is now a second "named" regiment in the company, the Deep Root Guard, aka "the Deep Roots." I've sketched out an outline, and will write out more later. The latter unit will be getting painted in early 2018.



03 December 2017

Armo(u)red Skeletons

Finished the skeletons. I started them early, in November, but completed in Deadcember. Close enough for me. Mostly old Citadel, a few Black Tree Design mixed in.



26 November 2017

Armored Skeletons and some Characters

I managed to squeak out some painting over the holiday, mostly sneaking off a few minutes at a time.

About 80% done with the batch of "armored skeletons". I still need to do some highlighting, patch & paint the shields, glue them on, and flock the bases.




I also painted a couple of characters. Summoners, champions, whatever -- the guys who summon & control the huge units/legions. They'll fill the space of 4 regular rank & file.




At this rate, I'll have nothing left to paint for Deadcember.

25 November 2017

Deadcember Dreaming


The "Age of Zogmar" page header got old. It was just a bit of a joke to begin with, and I've just been too lazy to change it until now. Even before the approach of Deadcember, I've been back on the undead track.

I thought the holiday (Thanksgiving) weekend and my recovering eyes would mean more painting time, and I've had just a little so far. But I was playing around with the Prisma photo app again, and took a few pics of my older skeletons. So new header pic, it is!

I did get a sneaky head start on a few minis for Deadcember, but nothing worth photographing yet.



I've had my eye open for good miniatures/gaming related Black Friday sales. But I didn't buy anything today. There were a few temptations... But I'm trying to stick with painting what I've already got here.

19 November 2017

DeadPrepCember



Starting to get those skeletal minis ready. Pic of what I've got painted already, plus the minis I've prepped for painting so far. Still need to clean & assemble about a dozen more plastic skeletons on the left, and another 8+/- with beastly heads on the right. Decided to put some "summoners" (the liche & the reaper) on 40x40 bases to include in these big hordes.


Thinking a lot about an order to Black Tree some armoured skeletons to mix with the unit in the middle, and some other  regular skeltons for future units... plus the wraiths... hobbits... more "half-orcs"...


16 November 2017

Post Fest & Pre Deadcember



Forgot to post a few more things I picked up while I was gaming at the FLGS.



Fairly inexpensive, thought they would be good additions for theoretical future gaming.

The other thing I was checking out was board games suitable for solo play. I'm going to drop some heavy hints for Christmas. I'm leaning towards trying the D&D Temple of Elemental Evil board game as an entry level game. Open to other suggestions.


Deadcember and My Bleeding Eyes

Not much painting going on. Eyes are still having some problems, but hoping that I can start seeing clearly, and painting again by the end of the month. That brings me to Deadcember. I have some skeletal units started, I'd like to finish them, plus a few "wishlist" items that I'm not sure how to proceed with (don't have the figures!) Here's my plan for that...

Horde (40) of old plastic Citadel skeletons.
Regiment (20) of old Citadel & Black Tree armoured skeletons.
Horde (40-ish) of non-human humanoid skeletons (mixed manufacturers)

(...plus wishlist...)

2 really old plastic citadel skeleton cavalry (have 8, need 2 more)
2 skeleton standard bearers on skeletal steeds
2 skeletal characters ("lesser liches" or skeletal necromancers) on skeletal steeds

I wouldn't mind painting up a skeletal monster too, but I don't really have anything on hand at the moment.


12 November 2017

Slaughter Fest 2017 (KoW) Part 2


Back in the day, I would post detailed battle reports of each game after events, whether tournaments, convention or demo games, etc. Sadly, this is no longer "the day." So it will just be brief summaries this time around, with just photos from the start & end of the games.

Slaughter Fest was a 2000 pt. Kings of War tournament held at Recess Games and, if I understand correctly, associated with and/or organized by members of Ohio War Kings.

It's been over a year since I last played KoW, I only had something like 6 or 7 games under my belt, and I've been suffering from some rare (for me) pounding headaches the past few days... so it was going to be a rough return to gaming. But I managed to play by something pretty closely resembling the rules.

I had an all skeleton Undead army. I had to fake it a little bit, since my skeletal ogres were proxies for zombie trolls, the black knights were proxies for soul reaver knights, and my "lesser liches" were necromancers. But it worked. I took an allied horde of skeletons from the Empire of Dust so I could add an undead giant to my list. Lord (of undeath) knows I've got enough of those things painted, I wanted to use at least one!

Game 1

My boney undead against John's fleshy undead. Same army list, completely different composition.


The scenario involved killing the three highest point units in your opponents army. I completely blew the deployment as I was just dropping units without paying attention to what John was doing until the very end. He's got a bunch of zombies on my right, and heavy hitters on my left. I managed to redeploy some of my faster troops, and nearly pulled off a draw (botched the last dice roll of the game, which would have given me a draw.) But really, even that depended on the solidity of the soul reavers and some lucky dice rolling. Except nerve rolls. I couldn't even route small unit of zombies, or more importantly the last unit of lycans I needed to destroy.

Given that the table looks like some sort of lava field, I will blame my loss on the lack of a "fleshy & hairy troops burst into flame" rule, and dodge personal responsibility.



Game 2

Second game was against Grace's elves, which was four hordes of archers in the center, drakon hordes on each flank, supported by a drakon hero on one side, and giant tree/ent thing on the other.



The scenario was Plunder, with 5 objectives. We sort of botched that and started picking them up and carrying them around when they should have remained stationary. We "reset" the objectives in the second to last turn of the game, and ended up with a draw. Our attrition scores were almost equal as well. Again, I've got to credit some lucky dice to me even doing as well as I did.

Grace said the army was borrowed, so I don't know who gets credit for the figures and movement trays, but they were very nice.



The game ended with a big rumble on top of one of the objectives -- which went very poorly for Team Undead.




Game 3

Third round was against Felix & his Herd. Beast pack speedbumps, some sort of badass guardian things, more lycans (which I faced in three of the 4 games I played) and a stampede horde.


Again, I just sort of dropped everything on the table, only slightly paying attention to my opponent's deployment. This was made more apparent when Felix moved everything (they moved fast) on my left across his deployment zone on the first turn. I was mostly able to manage this, as my own left was fast moving as well (soul reavers and wraiths), and ended up turning the flank. He did the same with his "freight train" on the other side, so the whole battle sort of rotated clockwise. I forget what the scenario was, but in essence it could probably be called "bloodbath." There was a scenario point awarded for yelling "_______ for the ________ god" at some point in the battle. It could only be earned once, but that didn't stop me from yelling various iterations several times throughout the game, including when my own troops were being ground into dust by massive elephants.

Another draw. By this point I think I was starting to get a grasp on the rules again.




Game 4

Last game of the day was against Kim's dwarfs. A lot of berzerker brock riders, more lycans & beast pack speedbumps, and a couple of flame cannons.


The scenario was dominate -- so we had to hold the center. For most of the game we both completely forgot that, only racing to the center at the very end. Again, it ended in a close game, both in terms of attrition and the final victory. As much as we tried getting everything back to the center, only one single unit (my wraiths) made it entirely there. If we had rolled for a 7th turn (which we didn't) I probably would have had one more unit there, but Kim probably would have managed at least two -- so possibly a draw or a victory for her if the game had gone on longer.

So I managed to barely squeak out a victory in the last game -- no final photo, unfortunately. At this point I was a bit out of it, between the headache and being tired. Apparently grandpa ZeroTwentythree can't handle his tournaments like he used to.



End

I finished 14th out of 20 players. All things considered, I'm OK with that. A far cry from my somewhat more competitive days of playing WFB or WAB. But I had a lot of fun, enjoyed meeting some new people (including some locals, it appears) and getting reacquainted with the Kings of War rules. I am completely sold on KoW. I think I already was, but now I'm even more certain. It's got a lot going for it. Simple rules that are easy to pick up, without getting bogged down in redundant detail or rules-lawyering. The end result is that it plays in a satisfying way. It feels like a wargame, rewards good tactical decisions, and has a nice degree of balance. While not 100% balanced (and what game is...) it still doesn't feel like there are any overwhelmingly bad or broken units or armies that I have seen so far. But at the same time, it's not a completely random dice-fest. Good tactics go a long way.

There were a lot of prizes that were raffled off, plus some give-aways. No one else seemed to be interested, so I eagerly snatched up the large sheet of brown/green "teddy bear fur" for some terrain projects. I had looked at buying some online before, but never did -- so now I've got some to experiment with. It honestly looks large enough to work as a full battle-mat! Or, as I joked at the event, I could cut a couple of holes in it and wear it to the next one...



I took a bunch of photos of the armies at the event, but a lot of them didn't turn out well -- either blurry or too dark to see. Below are those that turned out OK. Check out those LED lit golems! (Or elementals -- whatever they are.) (Click to gigantisize. They're straight from my phone, no editing or resizing...)












11 November 2017

Slaughter Fest 2017 (KoW)



I'm tired and have had a wicked headache running for most of the day, but I still had fun playing Kings of War at Slaughter Fest. I will post more pics & comments tomorrow. But for now...

Not only did I finish the 13 Nightmare Legion troopers an hour and a half before the tournament started, but I also painted up a skeletal standard bearer in the last 24 hours before the event as well. I forgot I had an army standard bearer in my list! As it turns out, it's a really bad choice anyway. At the very least it needs to be on a horse. A lone shambling walker will be left behind and out of the short range of his Inspiring ability -- the only reason for including him in the first place! Now I need to find a mounted skeletal standard bearer...




Photo of the army at the event...



08 November 2017

Last Push for KoW Slaughter Fest


Trying to wrap up the last of the Nightmare Legion to form a horde for Slaughter Fest this weekend. (KoW tournament.) Need some highlighting, rust, and the shields. Just tonight and two more evenings to finish...



Unfortunately, I haven't been painting much, as my eyes are bleeding...


...literally.

I've also been finishing a couple of custom resin toys for an exhibit at Designer Con...









31 October 2017

Halloween 2017



I should be playing KoW in a couple weeks. This is what I'm thinking of taking, nothing but bones. I needed to start sorting out figures anyway, and thought it was a good way to pass the time while waiting for trick-or-treaters who never showed up. (On the plus side, there's a full bowl of candy left for me!) I still have to finish 13 more Nightmare Legion to finish the horde. If I don't get them done in time, I will swap that unit out for some other skeletons.




Halloween craftiness below. I've been sick the past few days, but enjoyed a little bit of the holiday spirit. Made the mask but didn't really wear it other than for a quick photo.