Return to Curwen

This last Saturday Matt and I picked up our ongoing Aeronautica Imperialis Campaign (http://anotherslipperyslope.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Curwen%20Incident) during a day of frantic gaming at Warhammer World in Nottingham.

Just to recap, after two games Matt was ahead by one campaign point, having won the first game, an ambush, pretty convincingly (even tough I was the one doing the ambushing), although I'd pulled back some honour with a victory when he tried to intercept a bombing raid (although I'd then had to spend one of my campaign points buying two new Thunderbolt fighters).

As the new campaign turn started, my roster looked like this:



Although worried by my fighter losses I decided to take an offensive stance this turn, while Matt went defensive. The mission rolled was a Combat Air Patrol, to be carried out at night. Matt would be able to field more, and better nightfighting equipped aircraft than me, and it was a mission his Tau Barracudas have done well with in the past. This was going to be tense...

Heavy Flak Ahead

My mate Matt and I are about to pick up our Aeronautica Imperialis campaign, and I've got the bug to make some more scenery. Having made tank scrapes for my Hydra Flak Tanks (http://anotherslipperyslope.blogspot.com/2008/11/ai-ground-defences.html) I thought I'd do something similar for my heavy Forge World AA guns (basically Flak 88s). My original plan was for prepared, concrete bunker type defences but, after watching the D Day episode of Band of Brothers, decided to go for something a bit more of a halfway house.

I started by making a hexagonal template, slightly larger than the baseplate of the guns i'd be using. I used this to cut a suitable hole into slices of Pink Insulation foam (about 6-7mm thick, although it varied as I was using offcuts from another project), which were glued to artist's mounting card with PVA glue. The outside was shaped into a slope and the inside faced with thin balsa that had lines scored into it with a pin.




Th next step was to coat all areas except the balsa with PVA and cover it in sand. In all this stage took a couple of hours (including getting distracted by the telly). It was then left overnight to dry. Once set I started with a basecoat of burnt umber acrylic, the drybrushed up with various lighter browns and khakis (I used slightly different shades on the wood to help differentiate it) and finally glued on some static grass.




Overall I'm pretty pleased with how they've come out for very little work, so I've decided I'm going to do some connecting trench sections. As well as using these for AI and Epic, they'll also come in handy for my Great 6mm Game-in-a-Box experiment, more of which in another post sometime...

Do not return once lit.

The first of a few updates that will come over the next few days...

I've finally finished my Ogre for the Sheffield Irregulars painting challenge. I really enjoyed painting this chap. I made much more use of washes and highlighting than normal, and I'm pretty pleased with the result, especially on the face, which I think is quite expressive!







The challenge for next month is 'weathering', suggestions on a postcard please...

FAD 4.0 Arrives

The latest version of my favourite platoon-level SF skirmish rules has now arrived! Fast and Dirty is an excellent set of absolutely free web-based rules written by Ivan Sorenson. They have a lot of the flavour of another favourite of mine, Stargrunt (focus on squad level fire, effects of coming under fire and pinning et), but are aimed to play a lot quicker. Now before I go any further I'd better admit to a little bias, as Ivan was kind enough to let me input some ideas into this latest version (most of which than had to be turned into something more workable!), as well as some of the artwork.

One of its best features is that they are incredibly easy to customise. A series of 'traits' allow you to tailor forces to create just about any SF archetype you can imagine, from soulless killer robots to zombie hordes, through bugs and genetically engineered supersoldiers. With the addition now of things like psionics, more detailed vehicle rules, and a task system to allow more of a role-play element.

There's even a basic campaign system included!

I'd heartily recommend it to anyone after a simple, yet comprehensive, set of rules for anything from WWII to hard SF style games.

You can download the rules here: http://www.freewebs.com/weaselfierce/

There's also a Yahoo group here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fastanddirty

It points which way?

Almost done, I just need a good idea for the base now. And a name, yes, this guy definitely needs a name...

BANG! "Hur, hur hur..."

Undercoat, basecoats and drybrushing on gun barrel complete.





Normally I work on one area until I'm satisfied, so it's been quite interesting disciplining myself to completing the base coat before going on to the next stage.

March Painting Challenge

Been a while since I posted with one thing and another (including loss of broadband and incompetence on the part of my provider), so there may be a few one after the other!

The Sheffield Irregulars have now launched their painting challenge for March, which is to paint a model from a manufacturer you've not done before.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/topic.php?uid=38067875833&topic=7803

I wasn't keen on buying anything new (already have too large a mountain of unpainted lead and plastic), so I had a search through to see what I already had. In the end I turned up a couple of Ogres from the short-lived Marauder Miniatures. This was the company set up by (then) ex GW designers Trish and Aly Morrison. Although I'm going more by the spirit than the letter of the challenge here, as it certainly won't be the first ogre I've painted!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_grey_area/tags/ogre/

Anyway, here are a couple of pics of the basic model before I got started: