Some Recently Painteds

I put my nose to the grindstone and knocked out eight more cavalry stands from Maurice and two cannons this week. I haven't had a lot of painting time and these little blighters took all of it. That gives me 5 cavalry, 5 infantry and four artillery for my "European Army of Reason" for Maurice which, without "Elite" upgrades comes to 70 points. Add a couple of upgrades and they should be good to go. I think I have enough infantry figures to put together one additional unit and I do have two more cannons too.

Like my other Maurie guys, nothing too fancy, just a "quick" block coloring. I find that if they are all they same, they look great from three feet away on a game table.

We're a week out from Memorial Day weekend! I'm looking forward to it - I'm going to try to go fishing with my dad and kids next Saturday morning, get in a game of StarDust maybe in the evening and on Sunday it's Check Your 6 Jet Age  until I can't stand it any longer.

Have a good weekend!

Recently Painted

I finished up a few things this weekend. I'm trying to be good and put a dent in the lead pile before I start on something new (the WW2 micro armor that showed up Thursday).

First up are some 6mm "Turks" for Maurice.

They're on an old pizza box I use for spray-painting. The models are Baccus SYW (I think) Ottoman Levant Musketeers. Nothing fancy, and since they're technically an Imagi-nation army, I'm not all all concerned with the correctness of their uniforms. In fact, my primary concern with the "Easterners" is that they be colorful and very mish-mash. The banners are made from aluminum foil.

Next up is the battleship for my Dystopian Wars Blazing Sun fleet.

She turned out nicely. I don't have a lot more to go on this project! Three gunships, five corvettes and five escorts. I may not do all the escorts since they rarely get used and I never use more than two in a game. Time will tell.

In the queue I've got eight stands of "European" cavalry and two cannons for Maurice. That will hopefully give me enough for two 100-point armies, though I may need to double-check the math. Once they're done, my second batch if WW2 micro armor will probably have arrived and I'll have a long run of painting Canadians and Germans for that project. The only thing I still need to pay for is infantry - I've gotten the tanks and ordered the other stuff (guns, jeeps, prime movers, etc.). If anyone has any good sources for discounted GHQ minis, please leave a note!

Check Your 6 - Gulf of Sidra 1989

Since I'm planning to host a few games of CY6:JA at our little Memorial Day get-together in a few weeks, I thought a rules refresher was in order. Zig obliged and we played the 2nd Gulf of Sidra incident Saturday afternoon. I took the Libyans while Zig handled the F-14s.

Maverick and Goose

Mohammed and Ishmael

My MiGs streaked up the right-hand edge of the map at top speed and the lowest available altitude, only slowing when it looked like the Tomcats were ready to engage. The USN couldn't fire first unless they'd gotten within 6 hexes of a  Libyan plane, and then they had to wait until the following turn to fire.

Mohammed hooks out wide, while Ish pulls a tighter turn. Mav and Ish end up in the same hex. Sadly, no gunfire is permitted at range "0."

The Tomcats are now clear to engage though!

The following turn, Mohammed got a great position on Goose and loosed an R-23R (AA-7B). I got the hit, no malfunction! The only sound in the room was Ziggy's sphincter tightening. Zig rolled the robustness dice, needing a 10+ on 2d6 and got a 10. Gah! You've got to be kidding me! Shots like that are few and far between for the Libs.

The lucky bastard celebrates.

A turn later and Maverick reverses the situation on Ishmael and fires off a Sidewinder. Mohammed and Goose trade gunshots but do not hit eachother.

Ish's MiG explodes but ejects safely into the waiting jaws of the sharks below.

Mo' briefly considered running for home, but a quick review of the victory conditions revealed that there was no glory to be had by chickening out. Maverick loosed his second Sidewinder which Mo' skillfully evaded. Huzzah!

Goose sends a Sparrow towards my MiG but it missed wide. I'm hanging by the skin of my teeth now!

After a few moments of twisting and edging for position, Mav hollers "Too close for missiles, switching to guns" into his mic and give Mohammed both barrels. The MiG suffers engine damage and is in big trouble now. I think everyone did either an Immelman or Split-S to reverse this turn!

A close-up of the action

A turn later (turn 12 for those of you at home) Goose finds himself with a good gunshot at the MiG and fires, destroying it. 'Merica, for the win!

Oh well, it wasn't exactly a fair fight but it was fun! I'm still bummed about missing that kill early in the game, any damage by the Libyan is an automatic "win" for this scenario and a kill is major bragging rights. I'm glad we played - we needed the refresher course. I'm looking forward to the 24th!

The Beat Goes On

Knocked out some more Blazing Sun DW ships last evening. That's 10 in just a few days.

Three support cruisers, five frigates and two destroyers.

I think my ink to media ratio was too low this time around because the brown wash ended up a bit light. No matter, this is an exercise in efficiency and they look fine next to their compadres.


You may also notice that yesterday I added labels to all of my posts to make things more easily searchable on the ol' blog. Thanks Gonsalvo for the suggestion!

Empire of the Blazing Paint Job

Knocked out four more ships today. The Dystopian Wars Japanese fleet overhaul is going well. As I was blasting these with some Testor's Dullcote I pulled three Arashi support cruisers, two destroyers and five frigates from the pile and did the black bits of them (step 1 of the process and possibly the most tedious).

 The Big Orange and three light cruisers

 It won't win any painting contests but it looks nice and the fleet will have a unique but strong uniform look.

The Nakatsu cruisers. They aren't heavy hitters on the tabletop but I do have a soft spot for them.

Weekend Update

No gaming this weekend - we were / are busy with other things. I did make some painting progress yesterday on more of those fabulous orange DW ships.

I mentioned going down the WW2 micro-armor rabbit-hole a few posts back. I found some rather inexpensive basing material on Amazon a couple weeks ago which showed up yesterday.

Boom! 175 1 x 1 x 1/8 plastic squares for about $8.00. Not shabby. They are made of hard plastic.

A 6mm M48 Patton for size reference.

And a 15mm dude. You can see that the tiles have a bit of a lip around the edge. I sanded that down to be a bit less obtrusive. The lip may actually end up being a nice little "frame" on the finished minis. Time will tell. Flock covers everything.

I dug these up a couple of weeks ago.

If anyone wants them for the cost of shipping only, let me know. They are in very good condition. I do not know where the third book (army lists and unit stats) is.

Recently Completed - Dystopian Wars Eclipse Company

I put the wraps on the Eclipse Company box set the other day, as I was getting underway with the Blazing Sun fleet overhaul. I'm really happy with the results and look forward to giving them a try in-game.

 

The entire group. Ooooh. Natural light.

 The pair of bombers

 

 

 The base, or "Dr. Evil's Lair"

Itsy bitsy boats

 Itsy bitsy submarines

Two submarine hangars

The photos are harsh on my painted-on wakes on the small craft. They look fabulous without your glasses on.

And now some other things...

I put some paint on an X-Wing ship that cam in the Scum and Villainy pack from last weekend.

A flame job and shark mouth! I also hit the nacelles with some gold. One of the pilot cards that comes with the box has this same thing going on and I liked it a lot.

Fifty-four windows on each of these. I think Nakatsu translates to "crazy-maker."

The first four complete. I did these to work out colors and technique. From back to front they are a frigate, destroyer, corvette and escort.

I'm quite happy with the finished result. They are much more eye-catching than the old scheme. Who says bright orange can't be used as a base coat? I also toyed with chocolate brown before jumping in to the orange side of the pool. I've got their carrier better than halfway done and the cruisers are getting close too. More updates as they occur.

Be well and good gaming!

Memorial Day 2015

This Memorial Day weekend, I'm helping organize a game day at Morningstar Games in Savannah, GA. This will be Sunday May 24th beginning at 12:00 noon and lasting until we get kicked out.

All games will be 'Merica!-themed, so it's the USA versus the world for all games.

I'm going to be demoing Check Your 6! Jet Age all day, featuring Vietnam War and Gulf War air battles. I may, interest and time permitting, also run a Top Gun tournament for as many as 10 players. It'll be a "last plane standing" free-for-all.

Mike Baker is going to put together a Squad Leader Miniatures World War II game and Alan Sheridan will probably bring a Flames of War matchup.

Since we just got approval for this yesterday, we're just starting to get some traction so hopefully we'll get a few more games on the slate. If you're local or even local-ish, I hope you can make it by!

Mid Week Update

This started out as a Dystopian Wars AAR but after a few days, the novelty was wearing off so I've decided to can it. Zig and I DID play a 1000-pointer Saturday, Brits and French, in the water. Zig put a lot of submarines on the table and I fielded a pretty standard mix of things.

The table setup. We had a lot more terrain than is usual for us. The reefs made a re-appearance, as did the adorable little lighthouses that came with the Eclipse Co. set.

Traffic management was a thing for me. I used a lot of mines early in the game to irritate the British subs.

Zig had typical bouts of terrible luck.

One of his freshly painted subs. Of course, it was the first to die. It's a tradition with our games that the most recently painted thing must die first.

In the end, we fought to a miserable draw. I caused more damage but neither of us could complete our missions. It was a fun game regardless of the outcome.

In other news, my Blazing Sun fleet for Dystopian Wars is in drydock. I decided I was not happy with their colors and painting style so they're being re-done. Here are some shots of the progress:

Original colors. It looks OK, but it is chunky and un-imaginative. They aren't eye-catching.

Into the dip! That's Pine Sol. 

After some tooth-brushing I hit them with some lovely dark orange spray paint.

At this point ALL of the surface ships have been stripped and blasted orange. The planking on the carrier was a real mother...

 On Sunday, a group of us met at Morningstar for some X-Wing. I had not played in a while and also convinced Junior to join us! I picked up the "Scum and Villainy" box when we got there and we played a very solid 3-sided game. Each side was 100 points and it was every faction for itself. The Rebels were led by David and Mike. The kids, Christian 2 and Anson took control of the Empire's ships. I slapped together a group of Scum and we duked it out among the asteroids.

Some serious bumper-ships early in the proceedings.

The game went along very well especially considering it was a three-sided game which usually devolve into a 2v1 gang-up. There was a fair amount of "pick on the nastiest ship" so the TIE Defender, E-Wing and Wedge Antilles got an inordinate amount of attention. My Firespray got picked on early, but due to some crap maneuvering it was out of the action for a few turns while the other ships fought it out. Everyone involved had a good time and I really like the S&V guys. Its surprising that they've kept the game fresh this long after its release.

Be well and good gaming!