Terrain - Blackberry Keep

It's been a while since I worked on any terrain. I usually travel for gaming, and my gaming pals have way nicer terrain sets then I do. However, having some friends over for games over the last few weeks has made me look at my own set again.

This old Battle Masters tower has been sat in a wardrobe half finished for years. Every time I opened said wardrobe I would see it and resolve to paint it soon. Years pass. Game systems rose and fell and still the tower lay unfinished.

This particular time when I looked up at it I just took at down and put it on my painting desk. Two sessions later, done. I no longer have that particular mind-worm nibbling at me, and I get a new big terrain piece. Decisiveness, that's the ticket!

There is some slightly ropey milliput work I did on it back in the day, but not so much that I felt the need to spend hours fixing it. It adds to the tumbledown charm. YES IT DOES. Typhus Corrosion once again did it's magic on the weathering. Is there nothing that can't be made look better with a dab of this magical sauce?

I'm trying to tart up my gaming mats at the moment too, which suffer a bit from bowling green-itis. You can see my efforts here. I've added watered down washes, more types of flock and some torn up grass matting all bedded down with pva glue. A little basing scatter here and there and it's getting there. The first mat look a while to get to a point where I was happy, and I still need to work the edges a little, but it's looking like I'll then have a process for upgrading the other mats.

Then I'll be happy.

BastardCon 7 - LoB Invitational Post Mortem

Battling across the road.

 Well, that was fun. I arrived down at the venue Saturday morning and the set-up began. We had eight tables, (thanks to everyone who brought terrain) and with the arrival of the Last Chancers and a sprinkling of the Limerick Dice Chuckers we were off, close on twenty players in all. It was a very laid back affair, though we did keep a loose record of battle points. We had two rounds, and both my games were extremely enjoyable, despite the fact I lost both!

 Nigel of the Last Chancers (my round one opponent) wrote up a review on Wargaming Ireland which you can read here. His daemons list was quite lean and hungry, and despite some really sterling service from my artillery and sorcerer (LOVE the lore of Hashut, praise his name), the game ended in 18-2 once adjusted for SCALE. Nigel is an excellent and amiable player who knows just how to lead a K'daai destroyer on a merry dance, and I look forward to playing him again.

Paul's Bretonnians vs John's Empire

Round two saw my playing Dave Holohan of the Last Chancers and his dark elves. We drew the watchtower scenario, which is not my favourite as it requires me to advance when all I want to do is sit back and blow my opponent to paste and then pound the remains into pate with my counter-chargers. But then, battles were rarely fought in ideal locations. My destroyer performed well, rampaging through a horde of corsairs before almost sealing the deal by charging the rear of the sorceress' unit and mashing an ungodly amount of them. The iron daemon not so much, getting purple sunned as it was lining up to charge. This can't be complained about too much, as out of seven suns cast at me over two games only two caused damage, but boy, the damage. My wolf lads managed to take out a bolt thrower before being nailed to the earth by the crossbowmen. Some sneaky shades did a number on a unit of hobgoblin archers before taking out a shrieker, but my infernal guard did well, destroying a unit of black guard and almost finishing the hydra. Ash storm was again my friend in this game, what a spell.

Dave Leahy's wondrous Warriors of Chaos

With all this carnage, I couldn't make it to the tower, which was manned by a unit of crossbowmen who racked up quite a tally. I wish I hadn't forgotten my daemonsmith's look out sir from war machines. Bah! At the end, between SCALE and the points for the tower it was 15 -5, so it was back home to Zharr Naggrund for my lads to stitch up the wounds and beat the dents out of the destroyer. Many thanks to Dave for a great game.

Once round two was over, and I was the last game to finish both times, (must speed the old turns up a tad) most of the TLC had to pack for the road, but a goodly crew remained behind to talk, drink and game some more. This continued on until breakfast the next morning. Some of the events that occurred during this time must be closed to history. I just hope John's foot feels better.

Good times.

I'll be attending NWG in August, where I'm sure another grand time shall be had. I'll be shelving the sons of Hashut for that, to make way for the début of the baleful fimir of the Fir Domhan!

Boy do I have some painting to do.

So, A big thanks to everyone who came down, we had a blast!

Review - Ramshackle Games

I'm quite a fan of the proliferation of smaller companies we're all spoiled with these days. Microart studios, Greebo, Puppet War, Gribbly Miniatures, Raging Heroes, Base-X-of-War, Otherworld Miniatures, Avatars of War, Scibor, (sharp intake of breath) and so on, there's a huge amount of choice out there these days. Today I'll shine the beady eye on one such company, Ramshackle Games.

Ramshackle have a fairly huge range of figures, bases and vehicles in both resin and metal. Most of the range is geared toward post apocalyptic models for their game Nuclear Renaissance, which is available free as a download, here. This range is enormous, and has a massive collection of vehicles which would not look out of place in a plethora of other gaming systems. (I'm thinking of some buggies and such for my genestealer coven here, ah, pipe dreams.)


They also have a pretty interesting range of fantasy orcs, including the hilarious dungers. I love these lads, I was tempted to use them as hobgoblin wolf riders. Again, the range is quite big, with war giants right down to orc archers. Other ranges include animals, scenery, heads, vehicle components among others. The other thing about Ramshackle is how good the price is. Everything ranges from very reasonable to very cheap indeed.

I recently ordered some bits and pieces from Ramshackle, namely the Brass Coffin (left) and Gilgamesh (below right). After looking at the prices for an iron daemon for my chaos dwarves, I went looking for an alternative model. Plus, there's something about the iron daemon model...

Anyhow, I was also looking for an interesting model to lead my k'daai fireborn. Gilgamesh here, at just under 75mm tall, fit the bill nicely, especially with the dwarf-like skull. Both will need conversion, but I pressed the add to cart and waited under by the letterbox. The models when they arrived were splendidly large, the brass coffin certainly big enough to make a fine iron daemon. The detail was crisp, but get ready for a bit of clean up. Any resin model needs a fair bit of filing and sanding, with the models I received needing just a tad more than usual. Not enough to put me off though. The brass coffin is only £9! Now, I did order a separate turret for it as well, but £9!?

Looking more closely, there was a bit of deformity on the back of the Gilgamesh model. After some mailing to Ramshackle they sent me out a new model and all was well. I'm a big fan of good customer service, especially from companies I may not have heard of before, so I was glad it was dealt with as I'd be more than inclined to buy from them again.

So, all in all, a big thumbs up for Ramshackle Games, adopt a dunger today!

Ramshackle Website

Fantasy MathHammer - Android App

My good pal RedCraig over at the Blog of Grudges has been beavering away on a little project he'd now like to share with you all. You can check it out here.

As the man says: I MADE A THING. Fantasy MathHammer, an android app. Get it here. It's free, and has no annoying pop up advertisements. It simulates combat between units of your choice, and lets you know the result of 10 repeated combats.

Give er a whirl.