Like a leaf on the wind

 What else does a ship need other than a Captain? A Pilot, of course:

This is my not-Wash, who may well end up named Alan after Alan Tudyk. He’s not as direct a likelness to his inspiration as the Captain is, but I’m more than happy to run on vibes for this project if needs be.

I painted him like he’s wearing overalls under his vest, as I figure he’s also going to have to get his hands dirty with ship maintenance until the crew can hire a dedicated engineer…

He’s going to be a Pilot Expert from the Bold Endeavour expansion, as I feel like a bunch of random events happening between fights sounds like a lot of fun! Still no name for the ship yet though…

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

4 vs 2 = +2

What’s next? Well, I actually finished the Pilot last weekend, and at the same time got a little side tracked and finished something else that’s not for the Firefly project…

Take my love, take my land…

Take me where I cannot stand /

I don’t care, I’m still free /

You can’t take the sky from me:

Or more specifically, you can’t take the sky from Captain Tim Reynolds, ‘ex’- Browncoat, who found himself on the losing side of a war but still isn’t convinced that it was necessarily the wrong side. 

As I’ve alluded to, my Stargrave by way of Firefly game is going to be inspired by rather than a direct recreation of Firefly and Serenity, and so we have a Captain called Tim, spiritual successor to a beloved Necromancer, leader of a rag-tag band of misfits and ne’erdowells that I’ll talk about more as soon as I get round to painting them.

He’s a Heresy mini that I’ve had tucked away for at least a decade, and possible even two, so happy to finally get some paint on him. The painting process was a little fraught, with a few things going wrong like going far too heavy on highlights on the face and then having to try and knock it back with glazes, but as always, there comes a point where done is done and he’s definitely good enough to see some table time! 

I also painted the back, because this is no catalogue shoot - I wanted his brown coat to look absolutely battered, as if it’s literally been through a war - I might have gone a bit heavy handed and had the weathering end up too light, but as always, he’ll look fine at arms length on the table.

Finishing him brings the Tally to: 

3 vs 2 = +1

Next: more crew of the spaceship… wait, I haven’t chosen a name yet! More crew, and a name hopefully then for the next post…

Last Days Seasons campaign: November

Another month, another game of Last Days! This month I played the scenario ‘No One Left Behind’ from the Seasons book:

Leaving Jess behind to look after the bedridden members of the group and try to harvest some more medicinal herbs from the gardens, Dionne Kev and Cece once again venture into the city looking for useful supplies. Instead, they’ve found a lost member of another group who promises them a reward if they can escort her back home. While initially cautious (as she’s clearly carrying a severed head), the gang decide that it’s the right thing to do, and anyway, it might be good to establish good relations with Ella other group who might be a possible trading partner with winter ever looming…

The board I set up looked like this:

Two parallel streets with plenty of ruined buildings, rubble and fences. The weather result i rolled was light rain, which reduced the maximum visibility for survivors (but didn’t affect any zombies, as they have other ways of finding prey). 

As the group enter the area (new friend in tow), they see that it’s especially dense with zombies, so decide to go as quietly as possible. Due to their stealthy approach, only a handful of zombies actually noticed them and started to shuffle towards them.

Kev, actually getting to utilise his full skill set, silently sprints and parkours his way up the rubble strewn street towards a cache of supplies hiding in a ruined building’s fenced off yard.

Cece follows after him more cautiously, with Dionne bringing up the rear to try and quietly pick off any zombies that get too close with her crossbow, which she does as a zombie shambles around the corner of a collapsing fence.

Side note - I finally made some proper Last Days tokens! Shout out to the Files section of the Last Days Facebook group and my wife’s laminator:

Cece decides against firing just yet, feeling that stealth might still be a better option than her hugely noisy military sniper rifle.

More zombies pile into the area, but luckily very few can lay eyes on the survivors and so largely stand like rotting scarecrows. When I built the board for this game, I made a couple of streets that I envisioned having to fight across the width of, then decided to follow the rules of the scenario and randomly determined a starting edge, leaving the group with a relatively straight shot up one of the streets, trying to jump from cover to cover to avoid being spotted by the horde the next street over - especially  important as I was playing on a 2.5 by 2.5 rather than 3 foot playing area.

Kev grabs the supplies then pressed himself flat against the wall of a ruined building, steeling himself for a dash to freedom through the closing net of zombies.

Cece and Dionne follow after him, hoping to also take cover in Kev’s safe spot. Dionne reloads her crossbow and attempts to take out another zombie, but unfortunately the combination of intervening terrain and her eye injury mean that she just narrowly misses, the bolt clattering away uselessly.

Cece again abstains from firing, knowing that if she does she’ll bring an even bigger horde down on their heads.

The exhausted survivor trails after them, struggling to keep up despite Dionne’s frantic hand signals.

As more and more zombies wander onto the board. A critical mass seems to be forming behind the garages:

They seem fairly placid for now, but all it would take would be a single gunshot or car alarm to go off for them to surge out onto the adjacent streets…

Also, Kev’s hiding place was mostly solid, except for from the POV of one particular distant zombie who looked up and started to lurch towards him:

Kev continues his advance through the ruined building, his eyes nervously scanning the groups of zombies clumped together ahead of him, looking for a gap through which he could make his escape.

Cece and Dionne scrabbled after him, Dionne starting to look a bit worried at just how many zombies were bearing down on her as she clambered over a heap of rubble.

She then unloads another crossbow bolt at an advancing zombie, but despite getting a hit fails to make a kill. She rapidly double taps the zombie, taking it out, but as she does so dislodges a brick in the rubble pile she is standing on which noisily clatters away down the street. Uh-oh…

Hearing this (and realising that shit is about to hit the fan) Cece and Kev both open fire with their firearms. Cece blows the head off of a zombie that was closing on Dionne, as Kev blasts the closest zombie to him with his magnum. Again, I remember too late that I probably should have had my stealth team swap out their incredibly noisy hand cannons for something a little more suited to stealth missions… ah well, the cat’s well and truly out of the bag now!

Presumably summoned by this row, two more zombies emerge from the garages, only a short distance away from the survivors trying to make their escape…

In a rare turn of luck though, no other zombies seem to have heard this (beyond the handful that appear on the board every turn regardless due to the rules of the scenario). Speaking of which, every zombie on the board surged towards the sound of gunshots, as both Cece and Dionne found their weapons empty. While most of them were still a safe distance away, one actually managed to get within grabbing distance of Dionne!

Kev was torn - he could see a gap through which he could possibly sprint to freedom, but he didn’t want to abandon Cece and Dionne. “Go, get the supplies out of here, we’re right behind you!” called Cece, so Kev nodded, vaulted the low wall beside him, and ran off the table.

“Right behind you” said Cece again, as much to herself as anyone else.

Dionne reloaded her crossbow and strode round the corner to the street Kev had sprinted down, readying herself for a run of her own. Cece didn’t have time to reload her sniper rifle as she scrambled through a hole in the wall into the same street, almost into the arms of a waiting zombie - if not for the crossbow bolt that seemed to suddenly sprout from it’s forehead.

Although the group had returned to their previous method of stealthy maneuvering, enough zombies now had eyes on them that everyone (new survivor included) was swiftly engaged by the hungry dead. Although Dionne was able to duck out of reach, Cece and the survivor they were escorting were not so lucky, a d had to fight for their lives. As Dionne coolly took down the zombie she’d just ducked under the arms of, Cece hacked with her knife at the three zombies surrounding her, but wasn’t able to take any of them out.

In return, one of the zombies manages to catch Cece a glancing blow, and the escorted survivor fares similarly in her fight. Even as this happens, four more zombies pour out of the comic book store to join the fray.

Spurred on by her potential impending demise, the survivor manages to break away from the zombies grasping at her and stumbles up to join Dionne in the street.

Sucking under the swinging arm of a zombie in a hospital gown, Cece put her head down and sprinted towards the end of the street, no other thought but escape in her mind. Seeing this, Dionne had a decision to make - and she couldn’t just sprint after Cece, as her way was blocked by too many zombies. “Quick, follow me!” she hissed to the survivor, before cutting across into a side street and breaking into a run to try and get around the group of zombies blocking her path to freedom.

The survivor, however, was too exhausted to manage a run, and unable to keep pace with Dionne was surrounded by zombies once more.

As did Dionne and Cece, admittedly, but to a lesser extent. Dionne keeps pace ahead of her pursuers and continues to run down the street, all hope of protecting the survivor they were escorting lost in favour of self-preservation:

while Cece scrambles through a broken window to evade her attackers, before also losing her nerve and sprinting off the table.

The survivor, unable to escape the grasping claws of five zombies  is dragged down screaming as Cece and Dionne exit the board.

Post-game:

Not a lot of experience gained this month, but Kev learns The skill Sprinter (after having plenty of practice!). Cece learns the skill Agriculturalist, presumably where Jess is up and about again she’s been showing Cece the basics of running the farm. 

As the survivor didn’t make it (which seems to be a recurring theme whenever this group meets a new friend, despite their best efforts), they get no reward from the other group, and Kev’s supply cache only yields one unit of Fuel and one Scavenge.

(Brief aside - it’s really tricky to lead out the survivor in this scenario! It’s a bit like in a video game where you have to lead out an AI companion, and they walk very slowly and stupidly, and you have to stop in weird places to try and lure them after you)

Everyone bedridden Rests this month, and the group gives the leader Devon the last of their medicine in the hopes of getting him back on his feet, but alas it has no effect (slightly annoying, as there was a 5 in 6 chance he’d be able to get out of bed, but I rolled a 1!). The fireman also remains bedridden, but Lynn starts feeling a bit better and is able to get out of bed. Everyone else works on gathering supplies, with Jess harvesting medicine in the garden, Dionne and Cece gathering food, and Kev working on building up their stockpile of Fuel before winter hits.

I agonised over whether Kev should Guard the group (as there are so many people bedridden) instead of gathering fuel, but went with banking on the farm’s remote location being defence enough!

Once this was all done, there was enough food that no one had to go hungry (with one excess meal even wasted, as there was no one free to preserve it on the cold cellar). Luckily Kev and Dionne didn’t catch any sickness from Cece who had been feeling a bit under the weather during their excursion, but unfortunately both Jess and Lynn then fell bedridden again. Looks like it’s going to be a tricky winter - will the groups stockpile of supplies be enough to keep them alive with most of the group unable to get out of bed?

As well as playing a game, I’ve also been receiving some parcels:

CP Models had a Halloween discount code, so I grabbed a few bits there including a sprue of fungus faces for some conversions planned for the Ronin of Shadow Deep project.

My Heresy order placed over the summer arrived, with some Doctor Who adjacent bits that I’d been missing from my collection.

I ordered a box of cowboy bits from https://wynfordia.co.uk/, a website I’d never come across before but randomly stumbled over, which was handy as I was able to get some Dead Man’s Hand plastic gunfighters and Artizan sculpts (as well as a larger than my usual paint brush), all at a discounted price and with free shipping! 

Side note - I’ve had the urge for cowboys all of a sudden after years of the genre not really holding any appeal. I think it’s a combination of listening to Old Gods of Appalacia, then reading A War Transformed - originally I had visions of doing magical duelling cowboys (and wven bought a copy of the Dracula’s America rulebook!) but I think now I’m leaning towards doing vanilla cowboys using Legends of the Old West. I watched Tombstone too, which was grand - what’s not to love about Kurt Russell in a fancy moustache stomping around pistol whipping people while Val Kilmer had me googling Doc Holliday miniatures half way through the film?)

This does however mean that the Tally now stands at:

33 vs 150 = -117

So, yeah, probably not going to get back into the black before the New Year. 

Especially as it looks like we might now be moving house in three weeks, so some of these minis will have to go straight into a moving box…

Mayday! Mayday! Is there a doctor in the house?

 So, in between my laser focus in painting Skaven and making scenery for my year-long zombie campaign, I’ve recently dug this mini out of the painting queue to finish:

It’s Heresy’s version of John Hurt’s War Doctor, and I think it might be Andy Foster’s best sculpt, the likeness is just brilliant. I didn’t paint it his eyes, as I liked the grumpy squinty scowl he has going on…

To get myself prepped for painting him, I listened to the audiobook ‘The Innocent’, which I think I got as a freebie when we went into lockdown, and I highly recommend, even if only to spend an hour of your life going ‘wow, John Hurt really as brilliant wasn’t he?’.

One lesson from painting this mini - I really need to make sure I pin everything! Apparently I didn’t pin his hand when I built him (way back in the mists of time when he was originally available), as I discovered when he took a tumble off my painting tile and there was a horrible five minutes when I couldn’t find his missing hand - thankfully my wife was able to spot it, and I was able to glue it back on!

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

12 vs 41 = -29

Grotty goblins

Or ghouls, more specifically:

Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow Deep use Gnolls extensively as their proprietary monster type, but in my games I’m using goblins (I blame the manga/anime Goblin Slayer, primarily), using the LoTR Moria goblins I painted ages ago. Needing some ghouls, I figured that the Hobbit Goblin town minis would fit in my world, as goblins that have become diseased cannibals and look a bit gnarly and gribbly. 

I converted a couple to have shoulder armour to make them stand out of the crowd for RoSD scenarios requiring a ghoul champion:

Or is it chieftain? I can’t remember off the top of my head, and my book is in the other room, but you know what I mean.

I also fished this lovely Heresy Miniatures sculpt out of the painting queue where it had languished undercoated for many (many!) years, swapped it into a non-lipped base, and painted him up with the rest to use as a ghoul king (there’s a Frostgrave scenario somewhere with one of those right?)

Such a beautifully detailed sculpt, although I did paint his sculpted testicles as though they were part of his loincloth (which I’m not entirely sure how it stays affixed, it looks like it’s pierced onto his waist…)

And here’s the rest:

Lots of fun painting such a sickly unhealthy skin tone, and then going over with crimson and green washes to make their books and sores look really unpleasant.

I probably didn’t need to paint so many, as I’m likely to encounter somewhere between two and four in my games, but this was the number that came in the lot I bought on eBay so I figured I’d do them all at the same time just in case, and all else failing that’s a ready to go warband for another game.

As ever, here’s a terribly out of focus posed shot of my Frostgrave Knight having a very bad day:

And some behind the scenes shots showing that I’ve largely sub-contracted set dressing and posing for these things:

Painting these beings the Tally to:

65 vs 47 = +18

Or at least it would have, if not for the postman…

I forget how I found myself thinking about Warmachine, but several weeks before they announced MKIV, I decided to go back and continue my read through of all the books and issues of No Quarter that I had stalled on somewhere around 2019, as I think the fluff and lore of that game is simply outstanding. 

Idly browsing the internet, I realised that I was only one rule book short of a complete collection (not counting the campaign pack that is apparently silly money), so I had a nose on eBay. ‘I’ll put on a lowball bid which won’t win, get it out of my system’ I thought to myself. And then I won it, of course:

As is often the case, I found myself thinking ‘ah, I could just do a small scale project, paint up the equivalent of a battle box, that’s what four minis at most? I’ll squeeze that in between Skaven units, just like they were a somewhat chunkier than usual palette cleanser’.

And while I do have two battle groups sat in various stages of painting in the painting queue, I had a hankering for the original Sorscha sculpt, as when the game was first launched I played a demo game where I had Sorscha, which is what first got me interested in the game (brief aside - this was either in Westgate Games in Canterbury or… Fantasy Workshop in Ashford?)

And since she’d have been lonely on her own, I grabbed her a couple of jacks too. 

And some Cryx bits, because they’re cool, and I’ve got Asphyxious and Cankerworm sat undercoated too.

Which leaves the Tally at:

65 vs 55 = +10

There are more bits on the way, of course - the Withershadow Combine I bought had unfortunately had the little skeleton puppet filed off which I couldn’t see in the listing’s pictures, but the seller kindly offered to swap the set I had for another, but to make the postage worth it I bought some more things, including a model for a faction that I have no other miniatures for, but he was cheap and looked cool so…

A necromancer walks into a bar…

Preparing for the project after Rangers of Shadow Deep, I’ve finished another three miniatures for my Frostgrave warband:

First, the most evil wizard I could find in my lead mountain to represent my necromancer:

Tim the Enchanter expy, bought at Salute many moons ago from Studio miniatures I believe?

A lovely little sculpt, detailed but not overly fussy, which made him a pleasure to paint.

Next is his apprentice, who is a sculpt from Heresy that I’ve had for absolutely years that I hadn’t thus far built due to option paralysis (as there’s a choice of 3 heads, and a Black Mage esque hat, any of which I’d have happily painted), but the need for an emo looking apprentice wizard expedited my choice!

You can’t really see it from this angle, but I’ve even given him a little smudge of eyeliner, as this is clearly the wannabe goth student that my necromancer has picked up from the local wizard college to do his bidding (largely lighting candles and carrying things so far, but I’m sure unleashing the mighty energies of death is just around the corner…)

I used Mephiston Red as a unifying colour across the pair - while the Necromancer has his fancy red cape and cloak (accessorised with a black tabard, for maximum gothic street cred) he’s just given his apprentice a matching capelet that he has to wear over his otherwise quite austere robes.

Proving that there’s someone on an even lower rung than the Apprentice, the final figure for this post is a zombie:

The zombie, whilst not technically a member of the warband, and will instead be summoned into play each game, on the other hand is literally just a corpse they found and have tied a matching red cloth around his waist to denote ownership:

And when we say ‘found’, it’s probably a warband member that didn’t survive until payday, and is now doing some involuntary pro bono work for the Necromancer, probably not best to ask too many questions…

The model is a plastic Frostgrave figure with a metal zombie head (from Westwind, if memory serves). I gave him a sack and a grasping hand (converted from an archer arm, I seem to recall) as I imagine him being like the butter passing robot in Rick&Morty - they reanimate him, hand him a sack, and say ‘you fetch the treasure. That’s your purpose, now go fetch some treasure’ as my plan for him is largely that (well, and being a speed bump to throw in the path of marauding monsters, but he doesn’t need to know that). I know I could have used any of the hundreds of zombies I’ve already got painted, but I wanted one that looked slightly more controlled and purposeful than the usual wobbly biter.

Tally: 

42 vs 23 = +19

Next, who knows? I had started prepping some figures that were easy wins to get my numbers up, but seeing as I’m only 10 away from my target of averaging one a week I might just dabble in whatever odd single figures take my fancy, probably including some more figures for the Frostgrave warband so that I can be ready for some solo play in the New Year! On that front, I have something of a dilemma - when I first selected my warband, I chose an Apprentice, as it’s just good sense to take one. Then I decided to play Dark Alchemy, during which you don’t get to take an Apprentice if you have one, leaving me torn between leaving the warband as-is, or taking a Captain instead and buying an Apprentice once I finish the solo campaign, which feels a little meta. I already have my Captain picked out, and have vague plans to play through one of the solo scenarios from Spellcaster magazine with the Captain, leaving me unsure which choice to make…

May the Shiny be with you...

Thus begins the mad dash to get my average painted figures up to one per week before the end of the year! This lady is a Heresy sculpt that was originally purchased to be a Kayleigh-expy in my Firefly project, and then sat in a drawer for a few years, but only got started when I watched The Last Jedi and thought she could pull double duty as a Rebel / Resistance engineer of some sort after seeing Rose Tico banging around in a jumpsuit!

She’s been mostly painted for at least a year, I’m fairly sure, so it only took a couple of touches to finish her off. Her face isn’t great - it looks like I’m having an off year for painting faces! 

Finishing her brings the Tally to:

29 vs 27 = +2

Post-Salute 2018 post

Only a week after the actual event - did I mention that I'm not a fan of the Blogger app being killed off?

The night before Salute, I made a meme after seeing that Troll Trader were running their usual 'first 50 people spending over a certain amount get a goody bag':

My first stop at the show was their stand, where I bought the Collector's Edition of The Walking Dead game from Mantic, so I guess Dark Side Kermit won there...

Ah, early morning starts, everyone's favourite, but a pilgrimage requires sacrifice:

(I think at this point I'd already been ignoring my alarm for twenty minutes)

The usual Salute outfit of Jayne hat - this year was unseasonably warm though, so it spent most of the day in my bag, leading to complaints from my companions that they then couldn't find me.

My phone is alas on the way out, and doesn't hold charge as well as it used to, so less photos than usual, presented in almost no order:

[Obligatory queueing shot]

Modiphius Fallout miniatures: 

I like them, but at a larger scale than my existing stuff, I'm not sure if I'll get any (he says, setting up for future 'well, although last year I said...' posts. Wait, didn't I say last year that I wasn't going to get The Walking Dead?)

One of the thing's I was most excited to see was Mantic's upcoming Hellboy kickstarter - alas, there was only a handful of preview miniatures, and no game content, but look how pretty they are!

Particularlyexciting is that it looks like there's a mechanic for the frog monsters to evolve from little swarms up to big gribblies...

There was a rather large and nice Star Wars Legion table:

(read again my comments about the Fallout game re: larger scale, me not investing)

Mantic were running a paint and take table, so I tried my hand at knocking out a Star Saga Scientist:

Not bad for half hour with a large brush!

I'm not going to count him as painted for the Tally just yet, as I think I'll repaint his face (as it took a couple of goes with the brush I had to get it to this state of acceptability, but could definitely be improved), as well as potentially changing the colours of some things like his kneepads, maybe adding a Vault number to the back of his suit so that I can use him for Fallout, as well as rebasing him!

I managed to snap some pictures of Fireforge Games' upcoming Fantasy Northern troops, and they're rather lovely:

I wasn't sure how they'd look in the flesh, as pre-production renders seen online can hide a multitude of sins (Wargame Factory zombies being one of the most well-known examples of this) but they look like they take paint pretty well:

I think with some custom shields they'll make ideal House Bolton troops for my Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire project, as well as providing some additional bits for House Stark kitbashes...

I took this photo of a Bad Squiddo table to use as an inspirational image for future scatter terrain building, as I think that those rubble and broken pipe pieces look great!

This is an awful picture of a lovely Crooked Dice Post-Apocalyptic table - I think they were running two games on the same table, one with plant zombies and one with dune buggies?

Got to see Angel Giraldez painting again - insert the now traditional 'so handsome, so talented, it just isn't fair' comment!

Joe, our DM, is a feeder. This is fine with me. Picnic lunch with some old friends that I hadn't seen in a while, including Ciarron, who long-time followers may remember from a Salute post a few years back where we both got super excited about the Batman Miniatures game, bought a bunch of stuff and vowed to play. We still haven't.

Someone had painted up their Westfalia Northern Mercenaries kickstarter and entered it in the painting competition! I really should paint mine...

Now, the real meat of any Salute post - the loot!

• Rogue Stars Psions (because one looks like farmboy Luke with a lightsaber, and the other is a froggy looking alien)
• Frostgrave Barbarian Tracker (to fill out the kitbashed Wildlings that have been sat on my hobby desk since last summer)
• Rumbleslam goblin & Kromlech orc pilot from my Troll Trader goody bag
• Assorted dice and badges
• Heresy Ebric the Doomed (as I try to always buy something from Heresy - support the companies you love or they might not still be around next year!)
• 2 Crooked Dice Wasteland Warriors (to add some greater female representation to my Survivors collection)
• '!' tokens from Fenris, to use with the set of zombie rules I'm working on
• Some Hasslefree Survivors
• An assortment of Wargames Illustrated Giants in Miniature models, to get the show-exclusive Druid
• [heavily inspired by] Fallout / Mass Effect / Star Wars miniatures from Brother Vinni 
• This year's show mini

Also, the Mantic Walking Dead game, plus a selection of bits from my goody bag, like a couple of rulebooks, a cardboard building that is the perfect size for 1/144 Gundam models, a stencil, some weathering powder, a bunch of beer mats and a handful of sweets!

Fun fact - after Salute, I went for dinner at my Mother-in-Law's, where I showed my daughter the miniature that I had painted that day, which then vanished without a trace. Several days later, he turned up in grandma's bag...

Adding everything up (and factoring in the things that sold on eBay just before the show) brings the Tally to:

9 vs -36 = +27

I'm thinking that I might have to reconsider my 'board game pieces don't count towards the Tally for acquisition' when some of the games come with what are clearly miniatures, as they Tally would look a lot less robust after buying The Walking Dead game! I'm selling some more bits on eBay in preparation for the aforementioned Hellboy Kickstarter, so expect to see the Tally distort even further...

In other news, the sun briefly came out in the UK, and the sound of rattle cans resounded across the land as we had that perfect combination, a warm day with no wind. Not me though, as by the time everything was sorted and my daughter was settled in bed it was ten at night, but I'm not one to let something like that stop me so I set about getting a bunch more odds and ends into the painting queue:

Top Tip: though you might think you've been very careful with your spraying box, in the cold light of day it usually turns out you've sprayed a black line onto the paving slabs in the garden.