June Recap

Despite my yearly family vacation eating up two of my weekends during June, I did manage to get respectable amount of games in as well as getting a full 1000 pts painted in time for the Bolt Action D-Day game (albeit a sub-optimal 1000 pts).  I had two normal games of Bolt Action, at 1000 pts, for the month.  In addition, I was one of 5 allied players that participated in the D-Day game.  Unfortunately, we had 7 axis players show up.  The reality is that we would probably have needed 4x the numbers as the Axis team.

Beautiful beach landing area for D-Day.

The nearby town, center board.

The nearby rural area.

Via roll-off, I ended up being the top allied player coming in at 8th place.  In case you have already forgotten, there were 7 axis players...  It was not a good day for the allies.

In other gaming news, it turned out that the Guild Ball group on the other side of town that I had never been able to make it out to had mostly fallen apart.  In an effort to rebuild the community, the organizer moved it over to my side of town at Lucky Dice Cafe and changed the night to one that I happen to be available for (at least for the summer).  So I jumped in on that twice in June, the first time just playing a small 4v4 to shake the dust off and introduce a new guy to the game.  The second game was a full game against an experienced and returning player.  I still want to really like this game but I'm just not sure about the game length and the intimate knowledge of your opponents team that is really required.  Ok, it is not really "required" but I don't respond well when I am caught off guard by something I flat out did not know my opponents guy could do, it doesn't make for a good play experience for me and can cause an entire turn of Guild Ball to collapse.  Anyway, I'll keep trying to give it a go as long as my schedule permits.

While on vacation, I also had a chance to duck into Mrytle Beach Games, which was a nice little game store.  They had a good selection of board games and as well as your typical Magic the Gathering selection/support.  They had a smattering of Warmachine, Guild Ball and Reaper Bones miniatures as well as selection of hobby supplies.  Nice clean store and bit spacious.  I don't know the history of the place (new?) but it did seem like they were still in the process of figuring out how to utilize their space.  I think I will definitely swing by there again next year to see how it is coming along.

Lastly, right before my vacation I linked up with a local guy I had spotted on facebook that was doing incredible stuff for Gaslands.  I tied him in with some others I knew were interested, a bingo they all hit the ground running.  And I subsequently missed 2 games of Gaslands while I was on vacation!  I did eventually get a game in but technically that was in July, so more on that next month.

Bolt Action - Americans

Mentioned in previous posts, I jumped in on a Bolt Action escalation league a few months ago.  The scale (as in the number of figures) and subject matter (WW2) is not the most appealing to me but I really wanted to support some kind of miniature league at Huntsville's new gaming store, Lucky Dice Cafe.  Bolt Action was the first opportunity and I decided to roll with it.  In retrospect, I am really glad I did because it has turned out very well and has been a lot of fun.

Rolling through the first month, I left myself in a bit of bind for trying to get my painting points in for the month.  I managed to get 250 pts of veterans assembled very quickly so I could play but before I knew it I only had one week left to paint them.  So a very interesting challenge presented itself to me:  14 figures in 7 days, something I have never even come close to accomplishing.

The first batch, 14 figs in 7 days.

I'm not really the biggest fan of Warlord's miniatures, so this left me a lot of freedom to really try to push my painting speed since I was not overly concerned how good the final product looked.  I just wanted them painted.  It also forced me to really see how much "messiness" Army Painter's strong tone was could cover up.  Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the results given the time investment.  The figures above eventually had some weathering powder applied to the base to shift the color a little bit.  I also placed the weathering powder randomly to knees and elbows, as well as some other areas that "seemed" to make sense.  All in all it was pretty interesting exercise but was a bit of painful, especially since my sweet spot for batch painting to be limited to just 3 figures!  

I also tracked the actual hours for the figures above.  All said, from not primed to sealed each model came in at about 2 hours.  I was really hoping for a sub 1 hour mark.

Between the initial 250 pt mark for the league and the 1000 pt mark for the D-Day game, I really only managed to paint my Chaffee light tank and get some more guys assembled.  This caused me to not get my painting points for the league for a couple of months.

I may have over chipped it.

While I did not completely rectify the previous mistake of waiting till the last minute, I did at least realize more than week before I needed to knock out another significant batch of models.  And my Greyhound scout car.  So I didn't have 14 models to paint this time, I had 19!  Plus the Greyhound!  And only 2 weeks to do so.

Ugh, so many!

We'll skip an up close shot of the Greyhound as I am not pleased with it currently.  Like the Chaffee, it is also not completely "done."  I'll eventually post some stuff up for them when I wrap them up.

Most interestingly, here I am at basically the half way point of the year and I've painted up 33 Bolt Action infantry figures.  Combine that with the Menoth models I painted for Company of Iron and I'm at 43.  My total for all of last year was just 36, so that has me feeling pretty good.  That is until I  think about all the other projects in the queue...

Anyway, the paints used for these guys:

• Pants:  RMS Worn Olive (Base); No highlights
• Jacket:  RMS Faded Khaki (Base); 1:1 RMS Faded Khaki:Bronzed Highlight (Highlight)
• Webbing:  RMS Terran Khaki (Base); RMS Kahki Highlight (Highlight)
• Rifle-Steel:  1:1 RMS Pure Black:AP Gun Metal (Base); AP Shinning Silver (Highlight)
• Rifle-Stock:  RMS Blackened Brown (Base); RMS Intense Brown (Highlight)
• Skin:  
• Batch 1:  RMS Bronzed Highlight (Base)
• Batch 2:  RMS Bronzed Skin (Base)
• Helmet:  RMS Olive Green (Base); 1:1 RMS Olive Green:RMS Pale Olive
• All shading was with diluted AP Strong Tone all over the model, some wiped away on highlight areas of the pants.  A second application was done (after the first dried) in select/deeper areas.

Overall, pretty happy with how they turned out.  The highlight's on the helmets are sometimes really off and also do not transition well but I'll try to correct that on subsequent figures.  I should have been more careful in applying the Strong Tone wash.  But, they are done.  Eventually I will need to add my MMG teams and 1-2 squads to have a more robust 1000 pt list but I can at least move on to other things now and revisit this at a more relaxed pace.