Tuesday 30 October 2012

MODheim: Birdmen (WIP) Update

Another 2 birdmen to add to the clan, both these guys have been converted to running poses with some bending / strategic leg re-positioning



Parts list on these guys is exactly the same as the last 2 (GW kroot, wood elf bow and OOP skeleton spear bits).

Sunday 28 October 2012

Mordheim Vampire Hunters: Campaign Master forces


Here we have either one of the big bad's mistresses or a lesser vampire... i'm leaning towards one of the mistresses as I think this conversion turned out cooler than the CMON vampire I was going to use.

This conversion uses the (IMO) extremely ugly Games workshop vampire on the left as a basis, cutting off her short torso, ludicrously long neck and ugly face (sorry to the sculptor but the anatomy is waaaay off).

I replaced the torso with one of the torsos and heads from the coven throne kit. The arms and weapons came from a dark elf corsair set, she needs a tiny bit of filling in the join of her right arm.

Well we've had the clocks go back now in the UK so the odds of me taking photos during the week are now very slim, so although i've taken a number of photos this weekend they will be posted throughout the week in order that i'll actually have some content to share!!, also i'm going to start posting up some of the pictures and posts I get inspired by so you can check them out too, there are a lot of talented people out there and if YOU the reader know of some excellent modelling logs please feel free to add a comment below :).


Cheers for reading (extra cheers to any comments :P)

Maxxev


Friday 26 October 2012

Some old Warmachine Warjack piccies


Well i'm in the UK and Winter is very definitely coming... this means that there is no light to take photos of anything when I get home, not that I've achieved a whole greal deal of anything to take photos of.

I didn't manage to find any archive conversions to post up so instead here are my old merc jacks, I got as far as below on these and then haven;t touched them since. They are presently sitting in some foam wondering if they will ever see the light of day again (if I will ever use my non-dwarf mercs again). They certainly haven't been out for any excursions since MK2 hit the shelves (long before then in fact).

 
Talon light warjack (the only good thing about this jack is how cheap it is lol).

Mule Heavy warjack that steam cannon can cause havoc for the enemy should the mule role up a critical hit, that mace isn't particularily friendly either.....

Vanguard "light" warjack, this alrounder jack excels at defence but with a cannon in it's sheild and that massive pole weapon it's not too shaby at attacking either given the right support.

I painted them green and white to go with my Ashlyn who I think i've used maybe twice. I  then picked up the pirate captain Bart who I think i've used... erm once. Then I got the mustache... sorry I mean Drake Macbain, who i've still yet to use.... so my non-dwarf mercs don't get a lot of love basically...

Monday 22 October 2012

MODheim: Terrortoise Group shot

So a little late, but as pomised the group shot for the terrortoise. I did actually convert up another vampire over the weekend but the lighting was rubbish and compiled with the new camera's batteries dying I haven't taken a photo yet! Again, I appologise for the out of focus shots.


More terrortoise in the works (yes I do intend to convert some of the heads, i'm not after an army of clones (though paint variations helps a lot),

Saturday 20 October 2012

MODheim: Bloodcap Gnome Group shot

Sorry it's mostly out of focus, my fiancee has gone up north for her uncle's retirement do and she stole my OLD camaera... and I haven't quite figured out all the buttons on the new one yet.....

I took a group shot of the Gnomes, the only thing I've done to them since the individual shots is black out their bases ready for whatever I decide to do to them.

I'm going to put the warband on hold for a while as I figured out what to do about ranged weapons... basically I am going to put mushroom men in the warband. I figure you don't expect a mushroom man to be too tough in combat so they'd make perfect troops for ranged support :).

I was going to get the Hasslefree miniatures which are great, BUT they don't fall into my budget and I really need to stick to it because my fiancee is going to be out of work again very soon.

Anyway, I also took a group shot of the terrortoise which I will put up tomorrow (as I doubt I will have anything else finished this weekend).

Thanks for reading :).

Friday 19 October 2012

Mordheim Vampire Hunters: Campaign Master forces

A Very minor update here with a WIP lesser vampire for the campaign.


I purchased a Mordheim vampire from ebay. When he arrived I couldn't believe how tiny he was, the figure is very definitely a 25mm figure with a massive head rather than a 28mm figure. Due to the fact that the figures I've created so far are closer to 30-32mm he wouldn't have fitted in at all. 

Originally I considered getting rid of him, but then I decided to just go to town on him with the (fake) dremmel... lol. So off came his legs to be replaced by some GW empire militia legs and I elongated the torso and arm with pro-create putty.

He just needs a pouch and a sword hand to finish him off and I'll have my first lesser vampire for the campaign :).

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Necromunda: Mutie Brawler (Archive conversion)



The figure is converted out of OOP Gorkamorka orc legs and a OOP Mutie raider top half, his weapon head was removed previously for another conversion and a plastic OOP skeleton weapon used instead. 

Another archive conversion (I need to get somethings finished i'm running out of archive conversions!! (or at least photos of them)).
Another figure created for Fringe Wars for the mutant warband I was working on.
The model would also work in a carnival of chaos warband for necromunda... which I have only just thought of.... . I have some plague bearers kicking around too.... damn that means another warband......


Sunday 14 October 2012

MODheim: Birdmen (WIP)

Well I promised some Kroot and here we are, 2 new kroot to join the other guy (all now waiting on the modelling table for some greenstuff).

I decided that presuming the kroot have similar stats to their 40k counter parts (and their stats do make sense due to their size) then they would be glass hammers, fast and strong but not very tough. Therefore the obvious choice for me is the spear, for those that have not played Mordheim it allows them to get a hit in before the attacker gets to strike, taking advantage of their higher strength to hopefully bring down the attacker before they get to hit.

The guy on the right will have something under his foot....

The parts used for the conversion so far are:
GW Kroot (bodies, arms, heads, legs)
GW OOP skeleton spear
GW Wood elf glade guard or riders bow (the archer will have a cloak from the same kit before he's done too)

The Kroot have 4 "fingers" which means their hands are symmetrical, this makes it possible to use left hands on the right and vice verse (thankfully as there aren't that many different hand options in the kroot kit!).

I generally do all my gluing with superglue, I prefer the speed at which it sets , the fact it doesn't leave and obvious "film" over the model if you spill it and the fact that you can snap parts apart if its in the wrong place or you decide to change the hands. For these guys however I have started to use plastic glue, for the legs and weapons, there are just too many tiny joins here and the plastic glues ability to melt the parts together does help add strength to the figures.

Saturday 13 October 2012

Modheim Building 2 WIP again...


A Quick update today showing the progress i've made on the 2 story building.... yeah it's not a great deal of progress is it.... The black paint didn't cover very well and i've only covered 2 of the 2nd storey walls in the coffee stirrers so far... still some progress is better than none right!



Wednesday 10 October 2012

Necromunda: Sci-Fi Demi-Warrior (archive conversion)

The lighting is crud at the moment so you'll have to wait if you wanted some more Kroot conversion piccies.


The parts used in the conversion are:
2x pairs of necron legs. 
1x Necron warrior torso. 
1x Necron spine + pelvic region. 
1x Terminator helmet front. 
1x Defiler wavy attacky flail thingy. 
6x Dwarf helmet horns. 
A weapon cut off an old Eldar titan (a titan that would now be worth a lot of money... oh well).
Some greenstuff and a 25mm base.
So this guy is another archive conversion from my abandoned "Fringe Wars" Necromunda conversion. I dubbed him a "demi-warrior".. can't really explain why.... the idea behind the conversion is that there is a snake type of creature inside the suit.

The fluff in my head is that the "Ichar" a race of highly evolved sentient lizardmen were extremely advanced before their race's demise at the hands of the imperium. The Demi-warriors are an example of the pinnacle of their technology, allowing the otherwise relatively harmless sentient race of serpents that co-inhabited their world to perform functions that they have only ever dreamed of.
Although much of the technology from their home world could not be saved the Demi-warriors were capable of evacuating themselves and thus able to escape their world's demise with their Ichar allies.

Anyway, I didn't really go far enough to distinguish this from a Necron model, though a paint job would help, it's origins are immediately obvious. Also the underslung gun looks pretty rubbish and I never finished the tail.

Sunday 7 October 2012

MODheim: Birdmen (WIP)

Ok, so I'm sure I said I was planning on finishing something, like the dwarf warband, or the gnomes maybe... oh well....



Yes I have started on the NEXT warband, the birdmen. 
Fantasy kroot is not an original idea by any means a google search will bring you a fair few hits for fantasy armies with kroot bits. The "inspiration" (read: rip off) for the conversion above is actually a 40k kroot conversion I found on said google search by a forum member from Dakka Dakka called "J-Paint" from his thread here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/410809.page.

There will be a fair amount of Greenstuff work on him before he's finished though. I have made a start on a couple more guys so should have some more progress shots at or before next weekend depending on the weather (read: light source).

The parts for the above conversion are:
Games workshop Kroot legs, body, head, arms and hands.
Games workshop Wood elf glade guard bow and cloak.
Games workshop empire militia archers arm (which I removed the arrow from).
And a 30mm "DS Style" base of course.

Thursday 4 October 2012

Battlestar Galactica the board game, thoughts



So I played a game of Battlestar Galactica the board game on Tuesday night, all around I thought it was a lot of fun.


Rules summary

The aim of the game is to get to 9+ in total distance (this brings the fleet to the new earth basically).

Loyalty cards are dealt at the beginning of the game. The loyalty cards have 3 options, not a cylon, you are a cylon or you are a cylon sympathiser.


A sympathiser must reveal themselves immediately and depending on the direness of the Battlestars damage (loyalty cards are also dealt halfway through the game) will either end up in the brig (if Galactica is badly damaged) or immediately moves to the Cylon Resurrection ship. 

A Cylon can remain hidden, but if they choose to reveal themselves they get a "super crisis" card (basically and even the crew can try to avoid or something nasty happens) If found out some other way then they loose the chance to gain a super crisis card (this as far as I can tell is the only way to get one).









Players can perform one action every turn, either on one of the rooms on Galactica (or the presidents ship) a also characters have other actions they can perform, e.g. Pilot can fly a Vyper, the Admiral can fire nukes, and other such special actions. 
 Players also draw ability cards to keep in their hand (which you pick every turn based on you specialities and skill levels (e.g. Adama takes 3 leadership and 2 tactics cards per turn)). These cards have a number in the top left corner which is used to "bid" against crises and a colour which denotes their speciality (e.g. purple = tactics cards, blue = engineering, etc.) Some ability cards are actions, others can be used to positively affect actions or perform other tasks (e.g. repair damaged rooms on the ship or help when bidding against crises).
 








Crises befall the crew after every player turn, these have a difficulty number that must be equalled or beaten to avoid the crisis. Some crises also have tiers of negative effects based on what was scored, or another option (e.g. roll a dice on a 4+ this happens instead). Each crisis card has specific skill colours which denotes the types of ability cards which players can bid to defeat the crisis (by adding up the number in the top of the ability cards). Colours NOT on the card instead add to the difficulty level of the crisis (or deduct from the total of all the positive skill cards, however you want to look at it).

When a crisis occurs the first thing that happens is 2 cards are drawn from a randomly created "destiny deck" of ability cards (which are discarded into the standard decks of ability cards and then replaced whenever the deck gets empty) which adds to the random element (and helps disguise the cylons (or the number of them at least). All players then bid up to 2 action cards from their hand face down. All cards are then shuffled and then the totals are calculated.If the crisis is not avoided then you must suffer the penalties.

Just to add insult to injury however, weather avoided or not the effects indicated by icons on the bottom of the crisis card take place..... These effects will either be cylon fleet related (e.g. move raiders on the board or attack with the base stars) or will further the Galactica's jump track (once this gets to 5 Galactica jumps automatically, which is one way to gain distance cards).

When the Glactica's distance card total has reached 4 (distance cards are numbered 1-2 I think (certainly that's all we got)). Another round of loyalty cards are dealt.

Our play though

Misgivings
Initially it seemed really harsh to me, loads of cylons on the board and the vypers were not getting anywhere fast enough to do much, the ships guns fired so few shots, etc. However by the time we had got to the 1st jump we had only taken a -1 population (I could have prevented it but the crisis target looked too high to me so I strategically had hung onto my cards (The benefit of hindsight...), I was beginning to think it was all a bit too easy (but then of course we didn't know that we had no cylons in play then).

Things quickly started to go wrong with 2 crises in a row where we had no option to bid against them at all, both of them large quantities of Cylons, in fact I believe we had every cylon model and base star provided in the initial boxed set in play.... O.O we quickly started taking hits to food, pop, morale and fuel

Panic
Panic started to set in as Galactica took a pounding. By the time we reached distance 4 for the second round of loyalty cards we were near the red on a couple of things Morale and Food in particular.

Cylons
On the 2nd round of loyalty cards I ended up being a sympathiser and immediately moved to the Cylon Resurrection ship (I assume someone found Colonel Tigh out (my character) and quickly dispatched him. Only one other Cylon was dealt we found out at the end (there were 5 players so potentially there could have been 2 Cylons and me as a sympathiser in play).






Once you are "outed" as a cylon you only get 2 ability cards a turn to attempt to sabotage the crisis bidding with. I didn't get to have a major impact on the crises as the ones that came up after I got the card were mostly cards in Tigh's skills (leadership and tactics), meaning if I bid I would have been helping, however I made good use of the actions the cylons can perform to cause some damage (one option is to look at a players hand and then steal a card, on a 5+ you also damage Galactica, the only other option as a sympathiser I could perform was to take 2 crises and then play one on the Galactica discarding the other).




As a Sympathiser I didn't get to do a lot actually which is a little disappointing, I'm very glad I wasn't one right at the beginning of the game as only 2 possible actions would have made for a very limited game for whoever was the sympathiser.


Suspicion and finger pointing
The Cylon player (using the character Helo) on the other hand managed to stay hidden until nearing the 4th jump, sabotaging the bidding where possible, after trying to send the wrong player to the brig the humans finally sent the Cylon player to the brig HOWEVER they did not out him before he revealed himself and went to the Resurrection ship with a super crisis card. 



As there were no Cylon ships in play between jump 3-4 the Cylon player didn't use the Cylon fleet action we both used the action allowing us to pick the crises facing the galactica to throw the worst of the crises at them. 

Between us we managed to reduce all of the damage tracks to the red and get the food and morale down to 1, however the Galactica's had made it's 4th jump and the jump track was 1 away from giving them the opportunity to risk an early 5th jump and they had just enough population left for it not to loose the game....

At this point I managed to get a crisis that couldn't be bid on, one of the cylon attack cards and the the next crisis ended up being base star attack (meaning the base stars roll a D8, on a 5+ they damage galatica and a random token is picked for the damage)..... there were 2 base stars on the board by this point so that meant two attacks, and BOTH ROLLED A HIT!!!

Suspense
... So this could be the end of the game, we only needed to get food or morale down one point.... so of course the first damage token picked was fuel lol. The next one however was the FTL drive!!, we took out the jump drive, buying us a bit more time....

The engine was of course fixed in the next play but the following crisis wasn't a jump.... the play was handed over to the cylon player who finally played his super crisis card, which was (among other things) -1 food, the crisis was not avoided so we finished off the galactica for good.

Conclusion
It ended up being a long session with 5 players not knowing what we were doing we were there for 3+ hours until the end of the game, We didn't have to look up the rules much but there are a lot of cards to layout when you haven't the faintest idea what to do with them all LOL.



I really enjoyed the game, the whole "who is, who isn't" guessing game meant that we had NO idea there wasn't a cylon in play at the begining and, as I said one failed attempt to put an innocent human into the brig (by another human (it was Bathasar though so very fitting considering LOL)).

Anyway, overall great game, re-playability looks good too seeing as we barely made it past half way on the crises, there are a LOT more super crises cards to suffer (plus of course 2 expansions, though I hear one isn't really worth picking up).

This isn't going to turn into a review site, but I would definitely give it a 7/10

Anyway, have you played Battlestar Galactica the board game, with or without expansions?, did you enjoy it? any thoughts on the expansions? 

Cheers

Me :)



Wednesday 3 October 2012

MODheim: Terrortoise Update (PIP) last one (for a while)

And here he is, the last one from this batch, the "Bonehead" (one of the heroes) 

The reason I put the ridges on his head is the push cast of this one didn't come out so well compared to the others, he actually had a recess in his head, so I set about filling it and partway through decided the ridges in the putty looked cool... so I made more them :).

I ended up using the wrong orange on this guy, so he's actually had a wash of P3 red ink which has given him a far darker skin tone compared to the rest, but I think it works well on him and come off prery cool. I also toned down the markings on this one, he still has the spots on the shoulder, neck and legs that the rest of them have, just not as many. Again the eyes still need finishing.

Well that brings me up to four terrortoise, I have the parts ready for another 4 more, but I really must tone down the sunburn on my Dwarves first.... assuming I don't get carried away with another race i'm working on lol.

Monday 1 October 2012

MODheim: Terrortoise Update (PIP) again....

Another one for you (again eyes yet to be done), just one more to go from this batch! This one will have a shield at some point....