Friday, January 25, 2013

US ARMY APACHE SCOUT


Hello everyone, my latest offering is an add on for my 15/18mm US Cavalry troop, he is an Apache US Army scout, recruited for his specialist skill in tracking and spotting, he is dressed in standard US Army gear, Blue army jacket and red bandanna, he also wears his traditional Apache gear from the waist down, this scout is armed with a big bore Buffalo rifle.




The miniature is from MiniFigs (UK), he is 15mm in scale which actually makes him a touch smaller than the rest of the crew, but it wasn't enough to bother me, I think he fits in just fine with the rest of the troop, painting wise he was a little challenging as the detail levels were quite shallow, but I think he turned out really well.


Just as a side note I will be jetting off on holidays for two weeks, my next post will be in mid February, for those who are curious I will be landing in Bali for a week and then off to Thailand for another week before returning back to Australia, are there any gamers in Bali or Thailand ???


Sunday, January 20, 2013

OUTLAWS

 
These latest figures are an off shoot of my American Indian Plains War Project, they are basically going to be Wild West Cowboys of differing types, that I will use in various scenarios for my Plains War Project, so, first off the production line are an outlaw gang and or bank robbers, maybe even stage coach robbers.... either way they will be used with or in addition to my US Cav, I will also paint up some Lawmen, Mexicans (if I can find anymore), a gang of Johnny Rebs, Bounty Killers (hunters), Ranchers and of course regular Cowboys as well as more outlaws, hope you like...  
 
 


The miniatures are 15/18mm in scale and are from Bluemoon, they are lovely miniatures that are sculpted well with a good amount of detail, they are easy enough to paint and have come up real nice me thinks, there wasn't much prep work needed, this is always a bonus, there is nothing worse than having to continually clean up mold lines and flash, really hate that, the only thing that was a downer for me was that some of the sculpts were out of proportion, therefor resulting in me not using some of the miniatures, very disappointing as some of the out of proportion miniatures were really nice sculpts.



 
 
 

 
 
 

Sunday, January 6, 2013

BORDER SKIRMISH




Angles on the Left and the Saxons on the Right

England C. 590AD
The South Angles and the Middle Saxons of the South West of England began to dispute over the borders of their respective kingdoms, so it was decided that these matters would be settled in the old ways...
 
Turn 1 to Turn 3
Saw the skirmishers of both sides move out and take shots at one another, the Saxon Skirmisher (top most) takes an arrow to the abdomen (non fatal) from the Angle Archer, the Angle Archer in turn also takes a arrow to the abdomen (again non fatal), courtesy of the Saxon archer, the skirmishers with Javelins from both sides move even closer to one another and exchange deadly missile fire, the injured Saxon skirmisher already physically disadvantaged takes another hit to the abdomen area, this time with a javelin, this shot still doesn't kill him but the combined effects of both injuries put him out of the fight, he lies there with his life draining from him and wonders what could have been... meanwhile the other two skirmishers with javelins (two bottom guys) exchange fire and this time its the Angle skirmisher that takes a shot to the abdomen (non fatal) from the Saxon skirmisher, the Saxon seeing that he injured the Angle, draws his Seax from his belt and starts to rush the injured Angle, hoping to finish him off in an act of bravery.
 


 
Turn 4 to Turn 6

These turns see both warbands start to move towards one another while the skirmishers attempt to finish each other off, the Angle skirmisher (top of pic) sees the Saxon warband move slowly forward and decides to retreat a little, while the archers turn their attention to the incoming warbands, the Angle archer fires at the Saxon warband, bypassing a ceorl's shield and penetrating his right thigh, this injury slows the Saxon down to half speed, as he winces in pain, the Saxon archer also fires but into the oncoming Angle warband, unfortunately not getting any further than the fronts of their shields, in the meanwhile the Saxon skirmisher (bottom of pic) with seax in hand is charging the injured Angle skirmisher, he finally gets to his intended target, and in the ensuing struggle he manages to add another abdominal wound to the Angle, but it seems that he just doesn't want to die... 
 
 
 
 
 Turn 7 to Turn 9
 
The inevitable finally happens, both warbands finally clash in a violent bloody mess, in one round alone 7 people were either killed in action or were put out of the fight, some notable deaths include a spear to the throat, a hand axe to the head and an axe to the collar bone, slowly but surely the Angles start to run out of troops, by turn 9 the Angle standard bearer takes a two handed axe to the shoulder which collapes him to the ground in a bloody mess, the two Local Lords finally face off but come out evenly matched and the Angle Lord then looks around him and of his 6 men that still were standing 3 of them were heavily injured, so he calls a retreat, and gives the victory to the Saxons.
 
 
 
 
 
The Saxons managed to capture the Angle battle standard and either kill or injury most of the Angles, it wasn't all bad for the Angles though, as one of their Thegns killed three Saxons all by himself, it was a fun little encounter and a good way to test the core combat mechanics of my homegrown rule set, there were no formations used, or any battle tactics that resembled how they fought in the Dark Ages, it was purely a test to see how realistic the projectile and hand to hand combat felt, it turned out ok, it was fast, bloody and fairly well balanced, but there is still much tweaking to be done, thats all for now, more later. 
 
 End Results:  Saxon Victory
 
Middle Saxons
2 KIA
3 Wounded (2 died later from their wounds)
 
South Angles
4 KIA
8 Wounded (2 died later from their wounds)
 
 

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR



Hi Everyone, Firstly I just want to say HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone, and a big thanks to everyone that follows, reads and or comments on my blog, I've had a bit of a break from the hobby as i'm sure you'll have noticed, life kinda got in the way there for a few months, ah well what can you do but roll with it, i've been on holidays for the last two weeks (nothing like a break to recharge your batteries), and of course I got the urge to get stuck back into the hobby, so I took the opportunity to finish off my 7th Cav troop, basically I based them and sealed them, In my last post concerning them I had only painted them but not based or sealed them, (Old Post) I'm not that into the complex basing I much prefer my bases to be plain, as you can see, hope you all like them.

So, 2013... what plans do I have? well thats an easy one for me, I have so many projects on the go that one of my aims will be to not start any more new ones ! and to try my best to finish some of my exsisting projects, my main focus being my Dark ages project, Tusk Project and my American Indian Plains war project, I want to finish one or more of those projects, my other goal for this year is to have my friends over more often for some gaming, this is a must, this is why we labour for so long painting and prepping our projects right? my final goal is to play a few solo games and get some more batreps up on this blog.

GOAL RECAP
1) Start NO new projects, but finish one or more exsisting projects.
2) Have friends over for more gaming nights.
3) Play and blog some solo games.