August Recap

I really should have written this before the NOVA Open, everything is a bit fuzzy now.  Anyway, fairly decent month of gaming for August.  As part of running the Konflikt 47 league, I managed to play two games at the monthly point level of 500 pts.  I also showed a new player Bolt Action with a small 500 pt game.

The rest of the month was pretty much consumed with painting.  From recent posts, you can see I knocked out a Firefly Jump Infantry squad for Konflikt 47, 2 new cars for Gaslands and a few Guild Ball Mason models.  I technically achieved my goals of having Guild Ball and Konflikt painted up for the NOVA Open, but with very limited selections for both.  Still, a win is a win.

Moving on to the NOVA Open, I'll go ahead and include that in this post while it is fresh in my mind.  Returning to the NOVA Open after a multi-year absence was pretty good.  It was really good to see many familiar faces and spend time with some great people.

Thursday was a pretty slow day for me.  I was registered to play in the Konflikt 47 tournament but multiple factors convinced me to bail on it.  I spent most of the day just wondering around and catching up with people.  For my taste and interest, the vendor hall did not offer much of a distraction and I ended the convention only spending $40 on the new Warlord US Infantry box (different sculpts that, hopefully, will help me get over the hump of not wanting to paint any more infantry units).  Mostly though, I just harassed my buddy John from the 40k Hobby blog.  This included Dave Taylor and I jumping into the photo shoot for John's amazing titan that was part of the charity auction.

Shamelessly stolen photo.

Friday I was scheduled for a Falconer's flight for Guild Ball, but again I let multiple factors convince me to bail on it.  Mostly because I am not sure I completely like Guild Ball and did not want to suffer through multiple rounds of it.  Instead, John's buddy Brian left a beautiful 4x4 terrain board in the dedicated hobby area that only had basic priming done to it.  He had hoped to have it completely finished by Sunday for a game, so John and I decided to surprise him while he was downstairs playing 30k.

On the left is basically what we started with, the right is
what we got done Friday in about 6 hours.

While we did have an airbrush to paint the crashed ship, our other
"tools" were pretty limited.

Aside from the ship and the scattered structures, this was
pretty much the definition of "finger" painting.

We rounded out Friday night with Brian buying us an awesome dinner for all of our work.  Later we managed to find a secluded corner of the hotel bar and were joined by several more awesome people.

Saturday saw the arrival of my wife and kids early that morning (their Friday night flight having been cancelled).  I met them at the nearby airport and helped them get the rental car loaded up and squared away, before being dropped back off at the hotel for my first event I would actually attend:  A seminar by Vince Venturella.  I've never taken a class with Vince but turns out he does a really nice job with his classes and, much like his "Hobby Cheating" series on YouTube, focused very precisely on the seminar topic of Battle Damage.  Having taken other vehicle based weathering classes this class was a very good compliment (for me) focusing on smaller scale damage (such as space marines).  Vince does a great job with his classes and I'm glad I took this one.

Saturday night was a Wrath of Kings narrative event I had signed up for.  It was 3 vs 3 player game, having the Hadross defending their home from a multi-faction invasion hell bent on stealing Hadross's latest genetic manipulation feat.  I played as one of the 3 Hadross players who successfully fended off werewolves, celestial animals, and mask wearing demon women.

Another shameless stolen photo.

It was a fun game on a beautiful board.  The scenario ended up being a little lopsided for the other team, even as we made adjustments on the fly to let them bring reinforcements back on.  Still though, I think everyone ended up having a good time.  Along with my 2 teammates, I walked away with WoK two player starter box.  The event reminded me of just how great of a game Wrath of Kings is,  to bad it appears CMON is letting it atrophy and die a slow death.  I wrapped up the evening talking with Todd, from the weekly hobby hangout, while he waited for his dinner and ate.

That pretty much wrapped up the NOVA Open for me.  While I did not fly back till late Monday afternoon, the conclusion of Saturday night had me back on family duty.  Sunday morning we met our close friends and their kids at the national zoo and had fun catching up.  That night, I just hung out with Alex while the girls went to the spa.

Anyway, that's it with August and with the NOVA Open behind me time to move on to:  more K47 stuff, more BA stuff, wrapping odds-n-ends up, and new projects.

Returning to Guild Ball - Masons

Continuing to resurrect old projects, I decided I needed to finish painting my Guild Ball Masons team since I've been playing it a bit lately.  Plus, I'm signed up for an event at the NOVA Open so I wanted to have them wrapped up for that.  Here is where I left off 2 years (oh my) ago:

I did finally do the basing on these guys.  Recently...

Wow, that was awhile ago.  And look, all boys...  Not sure that was a conscience decision or not.  One thing I do remember though is those models seemed to have taken me forever.  By contrast, these seemed to fly by at a pretty decent pace (for me):

They didn't really turn out the way I hoped.  Honour (middle) and Harmony (right) experienced some pretty bad texture on the facial skin (not really visible in these photos).  And I happened to save that part for last!  Anyway, I was not going to strip everything down just to try it again, so I pretty much just decided to accept it and didn't put in a lot more work after that.  Just want some respectable on the tabletop and at tabletop distances.  Speaking of which, I still don't feel like I'm pushing my contrast far enough.  *sigh*

These are same colors I used on that original batch, so for my reference they are:  Masons Basecoat, Shade, and Highlight.  The hair was done differently than the first batch, but I didn't take notes.  From memory though:

• Chisel (left):  Very dark dark blue base, highlighted first pass with Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber, second pass with Light Rubber.  Shadows with VMC Black.
• Honour (middle):  Pretty much RMS Blonde Triad
• Harmony (right):  Very similar to Brick from the first batch, although a stronger highlight was added with something...

While doing the basing and sealing for these, I actually knocked out Marbles but I'll post that up with next group:  Wrecker, Granite, Hammer.

Vehicular Combat - Resurrecting the Forgotten

Once upon I time, I had embarked on a special project to build some vehicles for some (previously unidentified) vehicular combat game.  You can find the beginnings of that project and the first completed car build here.  Recently Gaslands has gained a bit of traction locally, so I've dusted this abandoned project off (I never got around to finishing the 3 other cars shown/mentioned in that post).

Two new cars join the original (left most)

The El Camino on the left got updated with some weathering powders while I was doing that work on the 2 new cars.  Pretty happy with how these turned out.  I regretted doing a chop top on the taxi (middle) for the longest time.  It really turned into a nightmare, but it finally came together and I'm happy with it (other than the window plates on the taxi).  I also dreaded the painting the white on the old school ambulance, but I think it turned out ok.  Just one more car to do to finish leg 1 on the grander project.  With Gaslands being a pretty good ruleset, maybe I can get motivated to to finish this leg up and tackle the next leg.  Anyway, here are more shots of the new cars:

Paints used on the Taxi:

• RMS Marigold Yellow (Shade), RMS Sunlight Yellow (Base), RMS Lemon Yellow (Highlight)
• Who knows what for the steel plates.
• Misc weathering stuff.

Paints used on the Ambulance:

• RMS Creamy Ivory (Shade), RMS Creamy Ivory + VMA White 1:1 (Base), VMA White (Highlight with excessive overspray)
• Bars and plates, no idea
• The red was just some random red I grabbed, should have probably been a brighter red...
• Misc weather stuff.

Konflikt 47 - American Firefly Jump Infantry

Leveraging off my existing Bolt Action American forces allowed me to jump straight to some of the "toys" that K47 introduces.  Since I knew even my BA American's were short on infantry squads (I just haven't had a desire to paint up more), I knew I needed my first K47 project to be an infantry squad and the Firefly Jump Infantry were the obvious choice (to me at least).  Truth be told, I actually did start first on some walkers before I realized that they were not what I should be focusing on.

Anyway, here they are:

Photo is a little washed out.

Not completely satisfied, but I called them done.  After all, I have another box of these guys.  I like these models and they were pretty fun to paint.  Except for the webbing, those details are not very pronounced and having to go over them 2-3 times (my color choice does not have the best single pass coverage) was excruciating.  Maybe hard to tell from the photo but the glow on the jet packs also did not turn out as well as I had hoped.  Still, good enough to move on, except some additional matte coat is needed in a few spots.

I painted these very similar to my American Bolt action infantry.  Instead of the RMS Worn Olive and RMS Faded Khaki (for the pants and jacket respectively), I used RMS Olive Drab instead for the jump suits.  I also limited the dust/mud weathering to just the boots given their nature on the battlefield and also because the knee pads already provide some visual interest in that area of the figures.

July Recap

Another good month of gaming goodness.  I kicked off July with a game of Gaslands at the local tap room.  We had two tables going with incredible tables by Darren over at Broken Sword Studios.

Table 1 is simply stunning.

Table 2 is not shabby either.

Both tables played Death Race with 5 players per table (a really great turn out).  Everyone had a really great time, although I believe both games were called not long after cars finally got past the first gate.  The game bogs down a bit in death race, esp with that many players.  Plus pretty much everyone was new to the game.  A week or two later, I got in another game of Gaslands where we played the zombie scenario, again with 5 players.  Definitely a much better scenario for that many players but it does still take a while to play.  All that being said, the abstractions of the game are simply amazing.  For me, it gives just the right balance of simulation and simplification.  Not only can I not wait to play again, I can't wait to see what Mike Hutchinson does for his next game.

With the Bolt Action league having concluded, we have transitioned to open play and gearing up for a short Konflikt '47 escalation league.  Having shown up one day to work on Konflikt league rules, I got pulled into playing Bolt Action with a perspective player.  I borrowed a 1250 pt Finnish tournament list (he wanted the "full" experience) and showed him the ropes.  He was sold, so we added another to our ranks.  I also ran another person through a 500 pt Konflikt game to acquaint her with the rules and to sate her excitement for the upcoming league.

Rounding things out, I squeezed a game of Guild Ball in on the very last day of July.  I really want to love Guild Ball, but I'm just not sold.  It definitely is not a bad game, although I think it should be "quicker."  It's just that the game requires very good knowledge of your opponents models and requires/rewards excessive pre-measuring.  Still, I will continue to give it a go a bit longer and finish up painting the models I have.

That pretty much rounds out July.  I made some really good progress on painting and I will post that up soon.  I'm not sure I will make either of my painting goals for the NOVA Open but I'm not sure the two events I am painting for are even going to happen due to low registration numbers.  We'll see.  Also August sees the kick off of two new leagues:  the Konflikt '47 league I'm running and a Gaslands league.  Feast or famine.  lol

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.