Activities Day write up over on The Players' Aid

Here can be found my write up of activities week, my gaming extravaganza. I wrote a guest article for the website The Players' Aid. It is run by my bother, his brother in law and another friend. I highly recommend their other content if you are into wagames that are contained in a single box.

Operation Build a Village...almost done. Imperial Assault...

I love these MDF buildings from HACME, available over on Rapier Miniatures. They are a delight to put together and turn into terrain. I purchased two packets of the Normandy farm buildings at Colours 2016, and only now, nearly two years later are some of them pretty much table ready. I have two more stands not as ready as these, but I am confident that I will be setting up a WW2 game before the end of the year. They just needed a little bit of grass to make them pop. I now have dreams of making a small well and other random crap out of Green Stuff.

A few weeks ago my brother asked if I could paint some of his Imperial Assault miniatures from Fantasy Flight Games. I agreed as he gave me no time frame other than "take as long as you want". He also didn't offer to pay, nor did I ask him to. I love Star Wars and love painting. This will give me the chance to improve my 28mm (ish) skills with the benefit that I don't have to store them anywhere long term.

I am pleased with the stormtrooper so far. I need to highlight him. The rebel commando in the front also just needs a few highlights. The Wookiees and other rebels need to be washed then highlighted. Almost this convinces me to fork out cash for this game... or to just dust off my large collection of Reaper Bones miniatures, such as the dragon in the background which has been sitting around nearly finished for three or four years. Tonight I scraped off the cat litter from the base and textured it differently. The dragon will be finished next week and I keep threatening my wife to display it in our new display shelves in the lounge. More likely it will end up in my classroom.

Hedges and Normandy progress.

Tonight I painted the hedges on my Normandy dwellings to the point where I am happy with them. I also framed the windows and doors on these two buildings. I like the light contrast to the grey. 

I also based up 18 Colonial Marines to go bug hunting. Naturally they needed bugs to hunt so I based them also.

Rock and Roll

Tonight, I decided to rewatch Fast and Furious 5, even though I watched it the other day. While watching, however, I had a productive time finishing off these eight rock formations, and painting the hedges of my WW2 buildings. Those will just need a highlight and hopefully will be ready to use soon. I feel like I have neglected my WW2 project for a while and want to jump back on that as soon as I can.

Tedrion III part 3: The Airfield

See parts one and two for more information.

Tedrion City is besieged. The roads are locked down by PAC forces, the jungle too impassable for large scale escape. The troops of the Western Alliance are faced with defending to the last man, starving to death, or attempting to break out. The Alliance commanders have promised a supply drop to an airfield near the PAC lines. If it can be secured, supplies and reinforcements may be able to be dropped in to surprise the PAC attackers. It falls to a unit of Alliance regulars to attempt to secure this airfield.

 The control tower of the airfield on the right is an objective. Another objective is the backup generator over on the left.

 The airfield with it's four landing pads that needs to be secured.

 The Alliance mech fires on the advancing PAC mech dealing severe damage to its armour. First blood in this engagement is drawn.

 Further engagements around the generator. The fighting on the left flank is getting heavier and drawing in more of the Alliance mecha and tanks.

 Alliance infantry and armour advance on the airfield, setting up a battle line to wait for their mecha to clean up at the generator.

 More heavy fighting at the generator leads to the destruction of the PAC mech, blowing to pieces and damaging the generator.

 Advancing up the central road, a PAC tank falls under heavy fire from Alliance armour. The fighting over the generator is heating up and draws more armour from the Alliance in, leaving the infantry heavy battle line to go on the defensive.

Unfortunately for the Alliance, some PAC mecha advance along their flank and begin rolling it up, shattering dug in infantry and destroying armour. The remaining units retreat across the road towards the generator where the Alliance mecha and armour have mauled the PAC attackers.

Exhausted from the fighting each side begins digging in on opposite sides of the road to await reinforcements. If they come.

This is the second game of Horizon Wars I have ever played against an adult human. It was great fun, although I found it difficult to stick to the rules entirely as I am used to fudging things to help the narrative of the battle when I play solo.

I played my brother who is visiting from the States and he had been interested in trying my 6mm sci fi wargaming. It was a success and hopefully a seed has been planted.

I didn't take as many photos as normal because it seemed like a faff interrupting the game.

Discover: Lands Unknown

Today I saw a Reddit thread talking about the trailer from this new game by FFG. Discover: Unknown Lands. The idea is that no game box is the same so your copy will contain different cards from mine.  This mechanic seems interesting, but I am more interested in the premise: you wake up in a random wilderness and have to figure out why you are there and how to get home.

I will be following this closely.

Image from FFG website.

Link to website.