Reading Warfare 2013

So this weekend Oscar and I attended Warfare 2013 at Reading, with the principle purpose of running a few demo games of FSA v2.0 (with SG's permission), and having a bit of fun. We ran a 1200 point game on Saturday after a slightly tardy star due to delays setting off, but Sunday we went for a couple of side-by-side 800 point games - Flamebeast's Relthoza vs Kaptain Krys' Dindrenzi, and Oscar's Aquans vs my Directorate (I should say KK's Dindrenzi weren't played by him, but his brother, as he was whizzing about checking tournament games of BM37k). Here's set up of the forces in progress...

Our game was pretty brutal, Oscar eradicating my Executioners before they'd really done anything, whilst I hosed biohazardous plasma liberally over his fishies. We were playing a "Recover Resources" mission, and Oscar was pretty unlucky with his rolls, lots of Aquans dying to radiation leaks (reducing a Barracuda and a Snapper to 0CP). We both managed to snake-eyes crit a Destroyer each, and Oscar managed a box-car crit on my other destroyer immediately afterwards! However, as it's my blog, here's Oscar's Stingray exploding and critting it's neighbour fo good measure (taking out its weapon systems as it did so....);

We did manage to get a look around the tournaments, other demo games and the trade show, where a few things caught our eye. The first of these were the 15mm figures by Ground Zero Games, which looked quite nice and are pretty reasonably priced - a starter set weighing in at £36 at containing between 60-80 figures plus support stuff - I bought a set of "crusties", some District-9 inspired aliens wich contained 66 figures plus 4 armoured suits very similar to that in the movie - you can see them in the centre of the first picture below. Here's some shots of their stand (I'll do a separate blog entry on the figures I bought another time I think).

As well as the figures are various vehicles at varying tech levels...

Some of the models are not the most refined, but in general they look pretty good, and there are some nice designs in there. They're pretty reasonable, so might be an option in the future - we'll have to see what Spartan come up with for the 15mm Planetfall line to see if there's any mileage here - I imagine some of the stuff will be good as scenary etc even if not for general play use....time will tell!

GZG also do some ships - most of these I've seen online before and not been terribly inspired by, but there are a couple of designs that are quite nice, especially in the civilian line...again, for scenarios and campaigns these could well find a way into our systems....

For me, most of these designs are OK - these being some of the better ones from my POV, but don't really stack up to the FSA ships I'm used to. Of course, having said that, most of the fighters/bombers/interceptors we have are already from these lines!

The civilian lines, however, I quite like - they're what I imagine civvy ships of the future would be like - very functional, no frills where unnecessary. Look at modern day cargo ships, fishermen etc - none of them is going to win the "pretty design" or "cool ship" of the year award!

These ships I do like, however...they look mean!

I also really liked the way GZG had the free figure box (as you can see above) - 15mm figures that failed QC for one reason or another (though no by much, judging by the ones I got), help yourself to try the range. It's a nice departure fom the likes of GW, and shows how business in our industry (IMO) should be done - working WITH your customers, not seeing them as something to be raped of money and left for dead.

Another stand that caught our eye was that of Dark Realm Miniatures - particularly this rather gorgeous drop ship (which is about FSA cruiser size...). Turns out to be from their 6mm Seeds of War game, and it has some interesting minis and scenary.

Some interesting litle ships here, and at reasonable prices - certainly something to bear in mind to add some variety if needed into some future campaigns...

We were hoping to see some demo games of Dropzone Commander, but sadl there didn't seem to be anyone playing it there, but we did find a stand in the trade are selling 2-player starter sets at a discount...that's one Christmas present sorted!

After this, we did a last round of the trade show to finally find some FSA minis...sadly there were only a few at one stand, residing in the "Now half price" bucket, which was a bit sad. On the other hand, it meant Oscar and I both got new Heavy cruisers for less than a fiver each :-).

Overall, had a good weekend, was a great opportunity to meet some of the FSA community in the flesh, and introduce (in many cases, re-introduce) FSA to the gaming community. Now, when's the next show???

Dindrenzi Dreadnought "The Destroying Angel"

I like to name my ships, it gives more of a narrative for the games Oscar and I play - we always come up with a back-story to our games too. My Dindrenzi dreadnought has been around for a while, but I've not really used it properly yet, and I thought I'd better get something done with it to field it properly. I fancied something different with it, but also wanted it to fit with the overall theme of my fleet. In the end I decided on linking the paint scheme with the name, and so the Destroying Angel was born. For those of you who know about fungi, the Destroying Angel is a name given to several all-white (even their spores are white), deadly poisonous fungi belonging to the Amanita genus. They contain amanatins, which are very powerful poisons with few effective treatment regimes.

The name and scheme thus seem perfect for the cream of Dindrenzi fleet aggression, and an all-white ship will not be out of place with the others, and will stand out as the flagship in being a little different. Of course the trick here is to successfully bring out the detail in the model without it looking just dull.

So, as my ship was already primed in white, the first thing to do was to paint the engine and cooling areas in metal, before giving it an overall coat of Klear/Future. This helps the next stage (the Paynes Grey wash) flow into recesses and stay off the main panels. Further work was then down to detailing and now I just have to touch up and weather. Here she is in the current almost-done state before tidy-up and weathering.

Painting the Pathogen

So the SG Community has been offline for well over a week now...just a very blank holding screen in place, saying "We are currently performing some necessary improvements and upgrades"

Unfortunately I'm not confident that's the reason, since the forum crash earlier this year. Taking any site offline to do upgrades shouldn't take more than 24 hours - ideally you have the coding etc done in Parallel and it's just a migration thing - SG seem to actually develop their sites in a serial manner, taking the server offline and writing the code on that one!

Anyway, whilst the community's offline I've been doing other things, notably our bathroom, and painting the Pathogen X9-V battleship I started in the last post. I've also been coding the v2 MotR Army Builder files, which has been a bit of a task and a half. Still, on to the Pathogen...

So I painted the non-transformed parts of the ship in my standard District-9 inspired Dindrenzi theme, and gave it a quick wash with Paynes Grey. I then basecoated the transformed areas in a medium-dark green base, followed by a Devlan Mud wash and drybrushing in various greens, yellows, and reds. I then picked out details in purples and pinks, then went on to add the infection tendrils and veins. I still need to do a couple of bits, most notably the engine exhausts, but minor stuff.

I'm reasonably happy with the way it cam out, and am looking forward to playing my new, infectious threat on the tabletop soon...

WiP - District 9 Themed Dindrenzi

So thought I should post some work in progress shots of my District 9 themed Dindrenzi fleet. I love the film, the colours and imagery of the alien hardware is very striking, and the blocky, angular look of the Dindrenzi fleet ships seems to lend itself to it nicely. Of course, this could be just me, but thought I'd share some of where it's up to. Of course, I have limited time (don't we all), plus a million other things to spend it on, and hence progress is slow. I'm terrible for starting things, getting enthused by something new, then quickly being distracted by something else. Hopefully my FSA fleets are small enough that they can get at least some level of completion (and Oscar is good at spurring me on, especially as he's fielding a fully painted fleet himself!).

Here's the "concept prototype" - a Fury-class cruiser;

Others in process...a Hammer class Frigate

Conqueror class Battleship

Gladius Gunship

Victory class

anyway, you get the idea....

So, these are all very early WiPs, I'll update the post as I progress on them. Next I need to add a similar post for my Relthoza...

Post Number One

So, finally gave into the tempation to start a blog...essentially because it was easier to set up than a website!

I used to have a website on my modelling activities "way back in the day" before I was married and the dot com bubble had burst, but as the hosting service I used packed in, and more of my time was taken up with work followed firstly by marriage and then children, it got lost in the dust of the web.

I still spend quite a bit of my "free" time doing various model-related things, most recently gaming with my son, Oscar. As he's now getting into using the web as a platform for telling others what we're up to, I thought it a good excuse to get back into this medium.

Oscar and I have been playing 40K together for about 5 years now. Last year we tried a bit of WWII wargaming and since January, we've also started playing Firestorm Armada (FSA for short). This last one is a game of starship battles in the far future, and is a great starting point for any gamer as it requires a minimal outlay, is easy to get into yet has some depth too. It's not perfect, but it is playable and fun! We're currently in the middle of a ~1,000 point game which started last week, and we get 40-60 minutes on every couple of days. In the FSA universe I currently play "the bad guys" - The Dindrenzi Federation (a splinter group of humans) and the Relthoza (arachnids in space - think Starship Troopers with technology), whilst my son plays The Terran Alliance (the original, nice, humans) and Aquans (fish people)...more on them in future blogs.