Rapiercon 2019 - Friday

Last weekend I made the short trek south to Jacksonville for the 2019 iteration of Rapier game convention. All said, it was a terrific two days of gaming and hanging out with friends.

Your truly and Mark J (driving) on Friday morning. There's a lot to be said for driving to a game convention on a Friday morning and not being at work!

My plans for the weekend were pretty loose - only two commitments - a Blood and Plunder tournament on Friday afternoon and running a Star Fleet Battles game on Saturday afternoon.

Interesting development... the Firelock Games folks are working on a Great War skirmish game that uses some of the B&P mechanics. I'd keep any eye out for this if it's your cuppa... the company is top-notch and I'm very impressed with their product thusfar.

An interesting swashbuckling affair with a very nice layout.

My favorite layout of the weekend was this darkest Africa table. Forty-eight square feet of AWESOME! Sadly, they were playing during my B&P games so I couldn't join.

Blood and Plunder began at 2:00pm. There were only four of us playing which made for a really tidy three-game tournament! My first game was with Mark.

Belloq makes his tabletop debut! 

This dice roll neatly sums up the game. It was a one-sided slaughter in favor of me. We both learned a bit and it was on to the next round!

I didn't take many pictures of my second game. I played against a fellow named Joe who did nothing but complain about how unbalanced my chosen army was and that he was doomed and complain complain complain. I made the foolish mistake of electing to attack in a scenario that forces the attacker to rush across the battle field. As it was, we both dealt significant casualties to eachother's force and I failed to pass nearly every morale test I was required to take. In the end, I lost a close affair. The melee in the "Corral with No Gate" was a highlight.

Game three's opponent was Damien who was running a Canadian Milita force. We played a Control The Field scenario. The primary goal was to take possession of two of the three objectives to score points. One was in the plaza of the hacienda.

The Green Macaw boys went over the wall and were met by a hail of shot. It was as ugly as you think. We fought a bit more for a few turns. Eventually my Hovitos quit the field since failing morale tests was just what I was doing Friday afternoon!

Some of the fellas. Complaining Joe is wearing the red shirt behind Mark. All said and done, I came in third out of four... not great but it was a great way to kick off the con for me!

Meanwhile, Mike ponders his next move in the ACW game he was involved with across the room.

An impressive amount of lead is piled upon a table for a big Napoleonic battle.

A bit later, the other half arrived and it was quite a battle!

Some gorgeous 40mm FIW. They were playing Musket and Tomahawk using Sash and Saber Minis.

Mark had gotten involved with that during the evening session.

While Mark was skirmishing in the 18th century, Mike and I took to the skies over England for some Blood Red Skies!

Mike's been playing the game in Waycross for a few weeks and got me sufficiently educated to play a proper bombing run. I ran the evil Germans while Mike defended. I apologize for the unpainted plastic, but it was a new game, fresh out of the box! 

A Spitfire claims one of my bomb trucks.

It wasn't long before the RAF had taken out another. A Pyrrhic victory for the Brits! I actually did a remarkable job killing Spitfires. We did a few things wrong since multi-engine planes behave differently that single-engine ones, but had a great time either way. The game is very peculiar but I enjoyed it and it elegantly delivers the difficult-to-achieve goal of being able to manage a full squadron of planes without having to "manage" things.

It was about 11:30PM so we all went off to catch some sleep to be ready for gaming in the morning!

Two Boats and Rapier Teaser

I obviously haven't posted any Rapier Con stuff yet. I haven't had the time to sit down and put it all together. Maybe today or tomorrow... In the meantime though, I painted up a couple of Blood and Plunder ship's boats last evening.

Nothing terribly fancy, but they'll be a fun addition to the B&P games for sure!

And when I do get around to posting about Rapier, these questions and others will be answered!

Why is this man so focused and unhappy looking?

Why is is ork so dadgummed tough?

The Bell-oq of the Ball

He's a wrap! The relatively low resolution print created a lot of striping on the model, but from 2 feet away, he's gorgeous!

He'll be a fun addition to the tribe!

Belloq... in 3D!

OK, so step two of the 3D printing adventure is complete. My brother in law fought with it a bit because apparently printing extended arms and such are a bit challenging for the technology. He gave me all the scraps which was was able to Frankenstein together into this!

So the model on the right is the finished product and will work very nicely. Certainly not the highest-res print, but, oh wow, yes! I'll take it!

He's scaled perfectly with the Blood and Plunder minis. He's about to get a quick cleaning and then a blast of primer.

Gaming Con! *Rapier 2019*

     February 8th and 9th I'll be heading down to Jacksonville, Florida for Rapier 2019. It's a fun little gaming con that I've been attending for a few years now. I'll be heading down early on Friday to play in the Blood and Plunder tournament Friday afternoon and will be hosting a Star Fleet Battles game Saturday afternoon.

     For B&P I'll use my South Americans (Hovitos). There's a lot to be said for simplicity and the way I set them up, they'll be easy for my old brain to manage in a tournament situation. I tend to put tournament X-Wing lists together in a similar fashion. The less I have to remember, the better off I am. Either way, it should be fun!

     The SFB scenario will be one I came up with a few years ago that we played in December of 2015. It's low-powered and doesn't require a lot of game experience so casual players won't have too much difficulty joining in.

     We may also play Frostgrave on Saturday morning if we can find a spot. If that doesn't pan out, it'll be Battletech for me!

My brother in law is printing this Belloq miniature for me. The Hovitos will have a proper leader!

Gotham By Night - Batman Miniatures AAR

It was a quiet Saturday night in Gotham... quiet for Gotham City anyway. Rose and Digger had just found what they were after in the Mercy Pharmaceuticals building when the alarm sirens started blaring. That could only mean that the cops weren't far behind.

It WAS a quiet Saturday night...

Ravager and Captain Boomerang had to get out of the building, past the SWAT team. The SWAT team had to stop them.

Four GCPD are in.

.

Boomerang knocks down the SWAT guy with a lucky hit! He's down but not out though.

Rose Wilson darts around the corner and gets the drop on officer Rob.

They didn't train for boomerangs in Riot Shield 101!

Ravager is having a very tough time with Rob in the hallway.

Bill surprises Boomerang with a blast from his shotgun! a lot of drywall is wrecked but the Captain is unhit!

He takes the opportunity.

Meanwhile, Jose has caught up with Rob and Ravager.

Bill is in hot pursuit!

Rose finally lands a telling blow. Officer Down!

Digger's got nine lives!

Ravager starts to live up to her reputation and deals a nasty injury to Jose.

Boomerang darts through the door to the sound of the shotgun clicking on empty.

Rose, realizing how much time's been wasted, makes a run for it.

Only to run into a very irritated Officer Bill!

Jose catches back up with the sociopath.

And quickly regrets his action. As he starts to fade out, he can hear more sirens outside.

That was a damn fine game. Capn'n B got away and Rose is in for a bad time. Maybe we should follow this up with a mission to bust her out?

Next time, on Gotham By Night....

Some Minis and Furniture

Two weeks later he gets around to posting again....

I've been busy with other things and haven't done a tremendous amount of gaming and painting. Yesterday was a good painting day and I got a few things added to the "done" stack.

First up are these three. Two Frostgrave characters that have been on my painting table for roughly a year. They'd been half-done and yesterday got their walking papers. Catwoman, who was a Christmas gift, also gets to join her completed Gothamites in the BMG box.

Proving I didn't only paint the front halves. Catwoman's got a got a lot of very fine lines and was deceptively daunting for such a small model.

I also finished up some furniture for these guys. Most of it's laser cut MDF straight out of an old west saloon - tables, bar, piano and chairs. The sofas were appropriately-sized dollhouse furniture from Michael's craft store with a proper paint job.

Some nice additions to the collection. I'm itching to get in a game... maybe this afternoon?

Yesterday's Work

Yesterday I began working on a facade. Yes, both meanings of the word. Months ago I made some interior hallways and rooms for Batman/Infinity. Haven't used them yet but that's beside the point. I've envisaged a scenario involving going in and out of a high-tech lab or similar and wanted the indoor and outdoor worlds to mesh. Thus, the facade.

It's 18 inches wide and 6 high. Suitably sized to indicate a larger edifice. I struggled with finding a proper way to decorate the front but as I'm typing this I came up with an idea, so that's good. Awnings are always nice, so I've included one. We've got a 32mm Rick Flagg there to put things into proportion a bit for you.

Here's a sample of what the interior looks like. Yup, it's flat, but terribly practical from a gaming and storage standpoint, not to mention they can be re-arranged into whatever layout is necessary. They're made of 12" vinyl flooring squares, cut to shape on my bandsaw. The notable missing pieces of this puzzle are 1) interior doors and 2) furniture. I'm working on doors that are just simple drop-ons. They'll be quite necessary for blocking hallways lines of sight. Furniture is a work in progress. I got those cool medical research tables for Christmas and will be collecting more "stuff" for sure!

Very Brief AARs - Blood and Plunder

The first of my 2019 gaming got underway last evening with some Blood and Plunder. I had put two 100-point groups together as a training game. There may also be a B&P tournament in my future so I thought it prudent to test out the viability of the Indians.Pictures were few and far between as this was very much a learning session.

The first battle we played was "Raid." I was the attacker and had to get troops next to one of the two objectives in an expedient fashion while running off the defenders.

Our deployments. The French control the far left quarter of the battlefield and were protecting two boxes of loot.

My warriors got to embarrass themselves in close combat with some French sailors.

My chief's unit (lower left) pelted the Boucaniers (green circle) relentlessly reducing them till they were combat ineffective. Zig redeployed his Filbustiers to support them and when he did, I moved a unit of warriors up to threaten the rear objective.

A turn later, that group of warriors was on top of the back objective and all the French could do was watch. Game 1 - a handy win for the tribe!

After dinner, we played a second game, this time "Control the Field." There were three objectives and to score, you had to control two at the the end of a turn.

The coca plantation was a killing field. My arrows were terrifically lethal and Z's big unit was decimated in short order. From that point, it was essentially a game of hang-out and wait.I won the second game handily, causing over 50% casualties while only losing two my own.


I know dice rolls are what they are but I was damn impressed by the performance of my Native American rabble. They were fun to use and quite effective considering their primitive equipment. I'll almost certainly use the same group at Rapier. My mind can't handle lots of special rules and having three identical squads makes it easy on me.

A Few More Scenery Bits

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your NYE was fun and drama-free. Mine was nice and relaxing.

I picked up a few scenery odds and ends on Miniature Market a week or so ago and painted them up over the weekend. They'll be useful additions for both Infinity and Batman.

Some creepy high-tech OR tables. Good atmospheric pickups for scientific research facilities.

 Some generic power generators or what have you. They'll be good for any scale.

And some "futuristic" 55 gallon drums. The green markings on the narrow sides are molded in. I added the yellow markings on the wide sides. They're inverted 14th Panzer Division markings to add a bit of visual interest.

With all the new bobbins, the next skirmish game should have a nice look to it. Be well!