I always tire of typing it, but it has been a while. I’ve been distracted towards the end of last year, not so much from hobbying, but more from keeping the blog up to date. Daily life and writing have been getting in the way, though I have been able to use painting and building minis as a stress reliever.
The last couple of months, I’ve been looking into skirmish gaming, looking to do more with the collection of minis in my cabinet. I was looking into Assassins & Templars: A Ruckus Game, from Wargames Illustrated’s November issue, as I really liked the models that were being used to show off the game. These are from Gripping Beast, which has a lot of very cool pieces in their shop. I had to show some proper restraint; I started with a small retinue of assassins, which draw in part from their Arab military kit, as well as a few standalone metal minis. Pictured below are two assassins, a long range character, as well as a priest mini I was using as an imam.
I have also been working on some fantasy minis, including my Lord of the Rings models, and finishing up work on this proxy mini of Buhdur the troll cheiftain. I had recently acquired a pot of AK Interactive’s snow terrain mixture, having really enjoyed their battlefield mud tub, and used it on our wholesome troll here; my plan is to use him as a random encounter in Frostgrave, which is another skirmish game I have been diving into.
My son recently showed an interest in Mordheim and Frostgrave, and I have been grouping many of my minis into warbands with a new spark of excitement. I also picked up a few sprues from the Frostgrave kits and began kitbashing every manner of unit I was planning, including many Mordheim warbands. Pictured below are a Grave Robber warband, the rules of which I found on the Mordheimer site. These include a lookout, a graver, a junior medic, a couple of grave diggers, and a thug.
Trench Crusade remains in my brain also, and I have been chipping away at the remaining minis that are grey, of which there are few. The Observer has been relatively straightforward to paint, sticking with the colour scheme from the rulebook, as I liked the contrast between the red and gold.
Finally, I have been painting up a warband for Frostgrave, as my son has also been showing an interest in playing the game, mainly due to the wizard creation system. I’m helping to paint a warband of his own so we can play together, as well as some terrain. There are many scenarios in the rulebook that we’re keen to try, and I’d like to write about these as I go.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and I wish you all the best for 2026.
The round off the minis I got painted this weekend past (I did say it was a weirdly productive one), I present the deathclaw. This beauty was included in the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare starter box, and is an absolute bonus. When you consider the crux of the box to be survivors vs super mutants, having a huge deathclaw in there too adds insane amounts of value to the box, in my opinion.
I took more than a few cues from Sonic Sledgehammer’s YouTube channel in the painting of this creature, though mine did turn out much darker than expected. I used a lot of drybrushing to build up the armoured sections, and dappled on the paint on the soft tissue areas, like the belly and the undersides of the arms. It was all tied together with a wash of Reikland Fleshshade
In gaming terms, the deathclaw is a brute (which is likely expected). I started the series at Fallout 3, so my own experience of these terrors only goes back that far, but the first time I ran into one in Old Olney still haunts me. Just seeing this hulking mound of muscle for a few seconds before it pounces is a gaming memory I can’t shake. In Wasteland Warfare, they are listed with 11 Strength and 12 Endurance, which is the attribute their health points are linked to. The rest of their stats are lacklustre, but the abilities that the deathclaw brings to the table give it a boost.
With Barge, the deathclaw can move through smaller enemy bases, meaning he can’t really be bottlenecked by tiny foes. Unnerving applies a -2 for all skill rolls that are not attacks on the deathclaw itself, within a presence range of blue . The deathclaw swipe and crush are its two attacks, dealing 2 or 3 damage respectively, with chances to potentially stun and throw opponents.
I am yet to use the deathclaw in a match, still working my way through the scenarios in the starter box which happen to be mostly super mutant-based. I’m keen to see how long a deathclaw can hold out against Nora and a posse, having recently tried this with Lorenzo Cabot. (Spoiler: Lorenzo won).
I also started painting my ghoul remnants. This kit is made up of ferals in various workday uniforms, and includes a police officer, soldier with comms backpack, an armoured trooper and a fireman, etc. After painting Reilly’s Rangers and being super accurate with my painting for once, I wanted to slap some grime and ink on a unit of troops. And with the deathclaw finished, I can add these ghouls to a little Creatures force when they are done, and have them assault a team of survivors in the near future.
Currently, I still have 3 of the 6 ghouls to base, and I have already begun on painting the forces of the Institute. More on them later.
So it’s been a little a while. With the summer holidays kicking off in Scotland towards the end of June, it’s been a surprisingly busy period. We were away on holiday (an actual trip) recently too, so my painting chances have been extremely slim, coupled with just feeling like garbage from not sleeping too well. I don’t handle the heat well at this time of year!
I managed to get some work done on my Atalan Jackals since returning. I have finished up two of them so far, and they are just awaiting basing. The third (pictured) has had their colours blocked in and an ink wash applied, and there are two more to do; one of the remaining bikers is the wolfquad, so I am taking some extra care with that rider.
In terms of colour palette, I am sticking with the 10 or so colours that make up the basis of my Blessed Wormlings cult. Priming them in grey has worked wonders for the bikes, as I am really only needing to do slight corrections wherever I make a mistake, and though I am occasionally throwing some green on there (like a racing stripe or whatever), these details merge into the paintwork after a good wash.
My Kill-Team also saw a little boost this week. I finished off the bases of the three guardsmen pictured above, and finalised some of the detail on their eyes and emblems. This leaves just two miniatures left for the squad, so I’ll be sure to get a pic when they are all completed.
I’m hoping to post and paint more now that we are in the home stretch of summer. I say “home stretch”, but there’s still what? Two and a half weeks to go? Did we ever get this long when we were kids?!
Thanks for reading, and if you’re on your holidays also- have a good one.
Looking back through my older posts, I realised it’s been nearly three years since I did a gaming post, and while these weren’t reviews by any stretch, I did at least enjoy getting my thoughts down on what I’ve been playing.
Lately, this has been a few Pokémon games as my kids have been diving into instalments from the last few years. Being an old gen 1 & 2 salt, I wanted to play alongside them (and teach them a lesson in training haha), as it’s been a while. Some months back, I did another playthrough of Leaf Green and Fire Red (which I would have argued to be the best games), but one of the cartridges decided to wipe my save file and left me with one of those existential crisis moments when you realise you’ve sunk 30+ hours into a video game when you could have done literally anything else.
So anyways, we’re out of my comfort zone with the remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, updated versions of the gen 4 games. I’ve been playing Pearl, while my lad has been on Diamond. Coming at this from the position of an older player, I found it quite a comfortable game, in a sense that you are doing a lot of what you did in the older titles; choose from fire, water or grass Pokémon, then start bludgeoning and capturing the local animal population. Some might argue this is what every Pokémon game is essentially like, and…. yes, that seems to be the formula.
After discovering a suitcase with three Pokéballs in the field, you are thrust into a journey of leaving home and wandering the world, as every 10-year-old seems to be set on. Your best buddy (I called mine Silver, as I was Gold) becomes over-excited at their new Pokémon and instantly becomes a dick, and your rival trainer in the process. Also, Team Galactic, an evil organisation, are trying their best to harness the power of ancient Pokémon in order to control the world. And Professor Rowan, whose suitcase you found in the field, wants you to catalogue the local beasties in Sinnoh. Sounds simple, right?
I didn’t bother to read into these games much beforehand, other than the version exclusive creatures. I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a traditional Pokémon experience hidden under the layers of new paint; these are remakes of games from 2006/07, which were out long after I’d stopped playing the series or attending tournaments etc. You set out from home, going from town to town and battling the eight gym leaders, all of whom use a particular type of Pokémon, which can either spell disaster or make for an easy battle, depending on the elemental type of the creatures involved. Travels between towns involve exploration, battling trainers and wild monsters, and capturing more creatures for your own team.
There are obviously quality of life improvements (again, I’m talking as an older player), such as being able to access your storage boxes anywhere; as you can only carry 6 Pokémon at a time, you used to have to attend the PC in the Poké Centres to get a creature out of storage, which seems pretty archaic by today’s standards, so this was handy. There are also heaps of different Pokéballs to help your collection efforts, such as quick balls for swift capturing, dusk balls for catching at night or in caves, or net balls to help with catching bugs or water types.
There is also a gadget called the Poketch, which is a watch with several apps to help you on your way. One of these stores hidden moves, which, in the older titles, you needed to navigate the world, by cutting down path-blocking trees or illuminating dark caves, or by flying to and from previously visited towns. This in itself is useful as there is no need for each of these moves to take up one of your Pokémon’s valuable moves, of which there are four slots per creature.
In terms of gameplay, it’s standard RPG fare, as before. Combat is turn-based and useful for levelling your Pokémon, and they will learn new moves at various levels, and can be taught optional moves through the use of technical machines (or TMs) in-game. Healing items for health points and statuses are kept in your inventory, along with treasures and key items, and each town and gym leader bestows new challenges and discoveries on the player as you progress.
Some of the aspects I enjoy are the trading; I like being able to trade Pokémon with my kids so we can either evolve certain creatures, or I can help them if I have managed to catch a creature that was proving difficult for them to. I enjoy how Shining Pearl still feels like an older title, giving me that hit of nostalgia. Even as a player who was mortified they ever dared to introduce more than 151 Pokémon in the early 2000s, I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things with this instalment.
The art style in these remakes is pleasant too, with my eldest initially thinking the game was Animal Crossing. The Pokémon themselves look great with their 3D models, and the battle animations are either hard-hitting or humorous, depending on the move. Saying that, some Pokémon look better than others, with varying levels of detail, and there are a couple of monsters that look as if they have had their eyes painted on.
A couple of things I didn’t enjoy: first, the difficulty. This seems to be a bugbear for many players, and while these are generally meant to be kids’ games, I feel they could have benefitted from adding a hard mode. Pokémon has been around for nearly 30 years, and there is a fanbase that grew up with the franchise, who still play the games. Even adding a level-scaling feature so the wild Pokémon maintain a level to match the average of your team would do something, because after maybe five gym badges, it becomes easy to feel like an overpowered god.
I thought the story was alright, starting with two friends looking for a rare red Gyarados in the local lake, and eventually becoming entangled in the apocalyptic plot of Team Galactic. The antagonists felt genuinely threatening this time around (to an extent), though I wish the creators would move away from the whole ‘Team ____’ dynamic and just introduce a brand new catastrophic death cult, instead of trying to replicate Team Rocket over and over.
At the end of the day though, Pokémon is still a kids’ game, and it keeps the kids entertained. I enjoyed getting back into a world I hadn’t spent much time in since the early 2000s, and being able to experience that with my own children this time around has been great fun. Catching and levelling a team of badasses has never felt more addictive, and I would be keen to try other games in the series that I’ve missed throughout my late teens/20s.
Dreadaxe Games 