Warfare 13

As promised in the last post, I went to the Warfare convention at the Rivermead Leisure Centre in Reading (for those unfamiliar with it, the town name is pronounced "Redding" not "Reeding"). As ususal, I'd placed a number of pre-orders and fell victim (unsurprisingly!) to 'ooh-shiny!' on the day ...

This pic shows what I arrived with when I got home. You can see I got a copy of "Bolt Action" - something I hadn't intended to get, but I'd been to my brother's recently and he had recommended the game, so I thought I'd give it a try. The figures in the bottom centre are a British unit for the Indian Mutiny from Mutineer Miniatures who had a '5 packs for the price of 4' show offer.

The bag on the left with the blue boxes contains stuff for 2 new projects ... oops!

Valhalla '13 Loot

Despite finishing last week with a migraine (wiped out Thurs & Fri, and made me feel grotty most of Sat), I made it to Valhalla 13 yesterday, and as it was Father's Day as well, I had my 12-yr old daughter in tow ...  I was very conscious of not getting her bored as I stood and gawped at eye-candy so I didn't take any piccies.

I did, however, bump into a gaming buddy that I don't think I've seen since before my daughter was born (!) although I might have slightly after that momentous day ...  anyway, the long and short of it is, he's intending to return to gaming and hopes to be able to make it to the Farnborough club! This is good news as one of the many reasons I stopped going was nobody was interested in the genres that I was, whereas my buddy - let's call him Andy* - was! So I hope to actually play some games soon! Woo-hoo!

*- well it is his name after all! ;)

I also, picked up some new toys and other bits that you can see in the pic. In the pic are (in no particular order):

• anti-shine matt varnish spray to finish off my 'magic' dipped miniatures
• half a dozen paints to replace some that dried up completely as my last painting break had been so long ...
• ODD07 Armed Staff from Ironclad Miniatures
• PR03 Prussian Jaegers from Ironclad Miniatures  and PR08 Prussian Officer from Ironclad Miniatures (to finish my Germans on Mars IHMN company)
• BR07 British Tank Commander from Ironclad Miniatures and a miscast figure John gave me to use the head from - very nice guy!
• From The Square [although existing, that website has nothing on it :) ] a hatch in the ground and some alien trees - again for Mars
• From Ainsty Castings, 5 Apes with SMG (Crooked Dice I believe) and their own AGG104 St Johns Ambulance or Traffic Wardens
• And a whole bunch of stuff from Products for Wargamers:
• plastic foliage to make Martian plants
• steel 6x6cm bases to finish my altitude stands after a successful post-salute 13 experiment
• steel 5x5 and 2x2 sm bases for basing my 2mm buildings
• two bags of hex bases for my cunning plan for VSF aerial combat ...

As always, it was a good, if somewhat cramped, show - well done to Farnborough Wargames Society!

In other news:

• I got the Osprey on the Balkan Wars for father's day - cool!
• Still not got the latest issue of 'Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy' :( will get the pdf in the next couple of days

Sa-Loot 13; part the third ...

Yet more pictures of the new toys I got at Salute '13.  In case you hadn't twigged yet, I did get a teeny-tiny bit carried away and increase my lead mountain by more than is really good for me ... Most of these photos include a 40mm Greek and Zed-Me as size indicators.

 So, first up this time, are the Argonauts from Crooked Dice mainly for 40mm Greek project, but who knows I may use them for 7TV at some point as well. I also got their March deal of the month - the Bionic Bordello but forgot to photo them ... oh well!

 To the left is a pic of the 2 figures that I got from Alternative Armies' Typhon range, the TY03 Hoplite and HE08 The Medusa (or as I think she should be called, "The fallen Medusa with the big boobies" ...). Again these are my 40mm Greek project

 And this one shows the Medusa assembled - which was really easy to do; just a dab of superglue and the arms went right on.

Next, are 2 figures from Fenris Games,on the left - FGGK01 Goatkin brute "Rocky" and on the right, a Bronze Age Miniatures FGBRZCNT4 - Mare Crustulam, centaur guard. I had wanted to get some other Bronze Age mini's figures as I'd read on the net that they were big enough to use with 40mil's, but they didn't work for me. They are almost tall enough, but the proportions are different - the heads and hands being too small are the most noticeable. I'm not entirely certain about the centaur, but I think I'll get away with it ...

Penultimately for today, is the Heresy mini's Sharclon Officer with Destructor Pistol. I had bought some Heresy stuff (in next post) in advance via PayPal, and when I did, it added postage automatically, which was wrong as I was going to collect them from Salute. I was told that the postage would be refunded, but it still hadn't been on the day, so when I asked for it at the stand, I was told I could have the £3.60 postage or a  £4 figure instead. Never one to turn down a chance of saving money, I went for the Sharclon (stands for SHort-Arsed-Clone, I was told) officer, as I had been thinking of buying it anyway. It comes with 4 heads and that's the one I'll use, although it's not glued on in this pic ...

Finally, as I'd got them out of the packets, I thought I'd show you some of the Otherworld Mini's monsters I got, and how they size up with 28mm and 40mm.  I'm really please with them; as well as being great casts, they're the right size for what I want, but they are really big against the 28mm!

Sa-Loot 13; part the second ...

First of all this time, a couple of apologies ... my last post should have been numbered as I've got loads'a'loot at Salute and it'll take three posts to show it all off. So I rectified that, and my last post now is appended 'part the first'

Secondly, I mentioned in my last post that I got blank dice from eM4 Miniatures, but didn't say why! They are for a print'n'play game from Dave's Games called Solid State War (I got it from Wargames Vault, but it's now longer listed there, but is still on Piazo.com).  It's a near future air combat game that uses custom dice - hence the purchase.

As I have Stoelzel's Structures excellent Church of the Faithful to build at some point, I thought I'd need an appropriate 'boss' for that magnificent structure, so I got the 'Bishop with Crozier' from eM4 that you can see to the right. He's been glued to a coin and polyfillaed to hide the figure's base. Next step is smooth the filler and uncover his feet before undercoating.

Note: The Bishop is hidden away in eM4's fantasy section, so it's not easy to find ...

Next up are some figures from Ironclad Miniatures that were new releases for Salute. I think SimonQ (aka Brummie) with his Empire of the Dead thing going on will be particularly interested in these VSF mini's.

The top pic is pack 'ODD08 Police armed with rifles' and the bottom pic is 'CH32 Sgt Barker' (left) with 'CH31 Inspector Corbitt' (right), none of which are listed on their webshop yet ...

Those with fond memories of a certain double act on UK TV in the 70's and 80's may well recognise the Sargeant and Inspector ... a certain 'Blower' from 'Olde London Towne' ?

Last for this post, are the 3 poses from the 15mm Peter Pig's 'Bayonet and Ideology' Spanish Civil War range pack 59 'Female militia in civilian dress'. I got these to add a bit of variety to my VBCW militia.The pack I got had 3 of each of the outside models and 2 of the centre figure.

That's it for this post. Next time (the last on Sa-Loot) we'll have the toys I got from Hasslefree and Fenris (and maybe some others that I can't remember right now!)

Sa-Loot 13; part the first ...

In my last post - salute-pics - I promised to post pics of the new toys that I got at Salute last weekend, and here they are.

First up is the 'Looters & Drunk' pack from Warm Acre. Back in October last year, I posted (here: new-arrivals-at-my-hovel-01) about the Warm Acre figures I'd bought online and described how they came with the metal slottabase top. Anyway, I didn't get around to using them between then and now, so I took them along to Salute, intending to return them to Warm Acre. When I got to them, I asked if I could exchange them (I had 30 of them) for the No Go Zone Drunk mini, and they gave me this pack with it in! Very nice people!




I've been looking at the Otherworld Miniatures website of and on for ages now, but had yet to take the plunge and actually buy something. I hoped that a lot of their stuff (which seems to be based on illustrations from the AD&D monster manual) would be compatible with my 40mm Greeks project, but wanted to see it 'in the metal', as it were, before buying. So I took one of my Greeks with me to compare ... and as you can see from the pics - it was and I bought a bunch of it!

So, there is the Dire Wolf Pack, Giant Boars, Giant Lizard, Giant Toad (which the website showed as being on sale - £6 not £9 - and although that was wrong, they let me have it at the sale price; more nice people!), Altar & Braziers set, Ogre Chieftain and Aspis Warriors.

Although I've not had any of them out of the packs to have a play with yet, I am very pleased with them and can easily see me getting more of these great figures.


Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy 61 had an article in it on using the SAGA rules for Colonial Warfare which I found very interesting. There was also a note (which I, typically, can't find now) saying that Warbases were selling dice to go with the variant, so I got a set of each side from them (pictured right) as well as a stack of their premium bases. This was the first time I'd got premium rather than standard (laser-cut versus sawn) and I'll be using them from now on.

Next up are some blank dice that I got from eM4 miniatures along with a bunch of bases, mainly for the 40mm Greeks. I'd also pre-ordered some transparent counters to use as hit markers - as per Colgar6's excellent 'how-to' post - but they weren't in the bag that I got from the stand! An email to them on Monday (IIRC) and they'll be with me soon.

Finally, for this time anyway ;) , is the 2mm desert village that I got from Brigade Models. I've already undercoated them as you can see, and I've included zed-me as a size guide for those unfamiliar with the teeny-tinies.

Salute Pics

[Is that a bandwagon driving by?!? I must jump on it!]

First of all apologies for yet another extended absence.  I've not been motivated to do much of anything lately, but having been to Salute last Saturday (and yet again missed the bloggers' meet), I'm feeling slightly more oomph to get things done.

So, as a first step, I thought I'd follow the latest trend in wargames blogs and post some pics I took on the big day and next time, I'll post some pics of my new toys (including what I got when I got just a teensy bit carried away at the Otherworld Miniatures stand); anyway, the pictures ...

As we all know, wargaming has its own fads - and judging by the games at Salute, it seems that the latest is Victorian Science Fiction.  As that is something that I'm very interested in, my pics are of those games as I'm sure there are better pics and reviews on other blogs ...

A non-VSF pic; the 36' monstrosity that was
the Warlords' Hammers' Slammers game ...

The "In Her Majesty's Name" (Osprey's forthcoming
Steampunk rules) game (IIRC!)

Detail shot of the IHMN game; this alley is
at the bottom centre of the previous  pic

Other than being VSF, I'm not sure what this game was ...
Wolsung (another steampunk skirmish game) I think ...
it didn't come across as particularly ... 'memorable' unfortunately ...

Or this might have been Wolsung ....

I don't know what this game was either, but it is much
more striking than the previous 2 games; the simple, but very
innovative terrain was very striking

close-up of the swan flying over the building
in the centre right of the above pic

This game really caught my eye just as I was leaving; this was a
Fantasy (not VSF) game by the Ilford club that used homegrown
rules and 'Uncharted Seas' ships - v.v. impressive 

One of the ships from the above game

Dragon ship from same game; in the background
is one of the floating islands that looked very good

Warfare

I  made it along to Warfare on Sunday (just gone) lunchtime with my new friend and had a stroll round the various stands.

I bought far less toys than I would normally have, but as I said in my last post, I am attempting to de-clutter somewhat; so what did I get?

Well, I succumbed to the 10% off offer and bought a copy of 'Empire of the Dead' and the Hansom Cab from Figures in Comfort, who are West Wind's show agents.

Then, as I was leaving, I saw a copy of 'Leviathans' by Catalyst Games, reduced from £70 to £50 and folded on that as well!  I like games involving flying ships as anyone who visits here regularly will know. Although the game includes miniatures, I'll probably use my aeronef models for it.

All in all, I had a great time at the show, but have yet to resume any hobby related stuff in my new place ...

New Toys

More new toys in this post. Two jumped off their table into my bag at Salute, which force me to buy them, and the others I got at Valhalla, my local convention.

In a vain attempt to tie this post into my last post, we'll start with a group shot of most of the new toys in front of the Stoelzel's Structures 7ombieTV Cabin that was the subject of my last post. It does give you a good idea of the size of some of these miniatures as well though, and there are a couple of my 28mm figures there as well - the omni-present Van Fampi and Zombie-Me.

Next, in a more convential size indicator shot, they're grouped with a ruler; not sure what happened to the genie ...

And onto individual shots. First is GMB4 Talos "The Man of Bronze" from Steve Barber Models' Greek Mythology range - listed on the website as £11. Clearly derived from the Harryhausen Argonaut movie, this is a really nice figure. The head and sword came as seperate items and were easy to glue onto the model. When I bought this it was with the intention of using with my 40mm Greek skirmish (unfinished!) project, but I'm thinking I might use it as an ornament when not gaming, and maybe even get one for my Dad as a pressie at some point - he loves Harryhausen movies.

Another model from Steve Barber Models, this time their Arabian Nights range, is next - SIN4 The Jinni of the Lamp, priced at £5.50. Another recruit for the Greek 40mm project, I really liked the character of this mini's face, and it was him and Talos that leapt into my bag at Salute.

Now the mini's that I got from Valhalla, first Pontoonier Miniatures' Old West Mythic Creatures range figures that I got from Newline Designs. Here are OWS001 Male Big Foot and OWS002 Male Big Foot II
These are pewter figures; I'm not sure that I have any other pewter figs and they have an 'unusual' feel compared to other figs - not that it detracts from them in any way.  They are nice minis and I'm looking forward to painting them; I'm thinking (atm) of using a normal flesh colour for their non-furry parts to make them look closer to humans ...

I had not planned to get the Bigfoots or the next mini, OWS008 Jersey Devil (from the same range as the Bigfoots), but I liked them a lot and 'ooh-shiny!' attacked at just the right wrong time so I got them. I think I'll get use of them with the Cabin from the last post in some 7TV Creature Feature games. Unfortunately, the Jersey Devil pic below doesn't really show that its head is shaped like a horse's. Follow the link before the Bigfoots pic to see a better pic on the Newline site

Finally for this post are the Hellhounds from Second City Games that were £2 each (that link takes you to the page they're on but there is a lot there!). There are 2 variants of the Hellhound and I got one of each. They're nice figs that remind me a bit of the hound monsters in Ghostbusters ... ok, not much, but a bit! Again, I had no plan to get them, but I've got a bunch of plastic dog-monster things for Witchfinder (28mm ECW supernatural skirmish) that I thought these would make good pack leaders for, so again I got them.

That's it for this post; next time, the post will be about one of the Stoelzel Structure's buildings I'm making - probably whichever I finish first!

New Toys from Salute 2012 - pt 3

So, the third part of my haul of new toys from Salute 2012.  This time, we have spaceships from the Iron Stars range by Brigade Models along with a few from their 'Cimexian' bug spaceships range.

I'm not entirely certain why I decided to paint these first, but I've now finished them, even getting the dip applied. Originally, I was going to follow the paint schemes from the Brigade site, but I decided to have something a bit more colourful in the end. So, for the Austro-Hungarians, I've used Burgundy with Pale Flesh (btw, that's my zombie skin colour!) for the ships themselves and Copper for their Cavorite sails:

Austro-Hungarian Empire

 And for the Russians, I've used Field Grey with Porcelain Blue for the hulls and Blue Steel for the sails:

Russian Empirs

While the bugs are quite a bit brighter as I wanted them to be markedly different, so they have Heather, Pink and Scarlet:

Bugs!!

One thing that I did not know until I had the ships is the amount of detail on the underside of the bug ships, so here's a shot of that:

Detail on underside of Bugs

I was very impressed by all these models, although getting the sails to stick on the Russian small ships was a real pain!

Next time: another Dave Graffam Model build which will be one of: 
a) The Cottage, b) 2 Low-Level Ruins, or c) Split Ruin
 - stay tuned to find out which!

New Toys from Salute 2012 - pt 2

Part 2 of my Salute acquisitions covers the rules that I bought at the con, but before I carry on with that, I thought I'd put a link to a blogger who has much more comprehensive posts on the event. So over at Big Lee's Miniature Adventures, you can find:

• Salute 2012 Video
• Salute 2012 Show Review part 1
• Salute 2012 Show Review part 2
• Salute 2012 Slideshow

The more I look at posts, etc, on Salute, the more I realise I didn't see! I completely missed the 28mm Corunna game, Scarlet Thunder and lots of others :( must do better next year ...

Anyway, more about me and what I bought! (None of the following piccies were taken by me, I've poached them from the worldwide-interweb)

 I didn't get tooo much rules-wise this year. 2 of the 3 rule-sets I got were based on fellow bloggers' posts. The first is 'Strange Aeons' which Shelldrake reviewed for me way back at the end of August last year. Well, I've finally got the rules based on his review, although I hope to use my 28mm VSF stuff and not the 1920's default setting. Have to read them first and then check out the available web resources to see if someone's already done this. Haven't checked for the presence of zombies in the rules yet, but I'm sure I'll manage to shoe-horn them in somehow!

Next up is '7TV' by Crooked Dice. I purchased this on the basis of Brummie's raving post when he got it, and the several other posts he's made about it over the past several months - so it's all his fault, and if I don't like it, I'll be invoicing him!  Actually, that's not entirely true... not even partially, tbh! A guy played a game at my local club and he raved about it as well, so it's on both of them! At the show Crooked Dice were doing an offer of rulebook, dice, cards and tokens for £40, so I got that, hence the multiple images to the left. Not read the book yet, but flicked through and first impression is good!

Finally, a set of zombie gaming rules that I saw while browsing Alternative Armies' sister site http://www.15mm.co.uk/. Started looking through this small (A6 I think) book and not very impressed so far :(  My over-riding impression of the first dozen-or-so pages is that a lot of text keeps telling you what you can do with the rules and not much tells you how to do it!

Once I've read them, I'll post a review. 

Next post will be about the Victorian Spaceships I got

New Toys from Salute 2012 - pt 1

So, as requested - nay, demanded! - here is the first part of my report on the new toys I got whilst at Salute.

To begin with, something that I found and had had no intention of getting - the first pack from Commando Miniatures 'End of Empire' range. These figures are designed for the various post-WW2 conflicts that the British Army was involved in - e.g. Aden, Indonesia, Malaya, etc. I succumbed to the temptation of them as this is another rarely gamed period/theatre (much like the 14th Army) and they had a launch offer of the 6 figure pack for £5 instead of £7. Now I've got the figures home and looked at them, I'm not ... overwhelmed with joy that I've got them ... the quality of the sculpts is not that brilliant - in particular, there is just something odd about the face of the guy in the middle of the first pic, and the left hand of the bren gunner is detached and just floating in the air beneath his gun ... but overall the figures are acceptable. When you buy the pack you get a choice of SLRs or Armalites as weapons - I went for SLRs, but forgot to include them in the photo - d'oh!  The final pic shows a couple of accessory packs I got - machetes and radios (£1/pack)

3 figs from pack - middle guy has Sterling SMG & odd face

other 3 figs in pack

accessory packs

Next up - Essex Miniatures Saxons (listed as 25mm, but matching my Gripping Beast 28mm plastics). I got these to add some variety to my Anglo-Saxon warband for SAGA. They are quite nice figures - nothing fancy, but nothing negative about them either. That said, they do have the smallest bases of any 28mm figure I've ever bought!

l - clubman, m+r - spearmen (spears are separate)

l-r - bowman, clubman, spearman, bowman (bows + spear separate)

Each faction is different in SAGA and has its own 'Heroes of the Viking Age' that it can select to give them a warlord with extra abilities, albeit at extra cost. The Anglo-Saxons can select "Aelfred the Great" for theirs who has several great abilities, but is weaker in combat than a 'normal' warlord. I'd like to try him out, so decided to get a mounted saxon to use for him (so he can runaway faster!). Surfing the net I found 'SK1 Mounted General' in Essex mini's list and the pic from their site (top left on page) looked perfect. However, when I collected him at Salute, I was more than disappointed with the 'variant' I'd got, and found that he didn't come with a horse! Anyway, the figure is in the pic below, along with the Gripping Beast plastic warlord I'm using. I intend to remove the metal figure's head and replace with a spare plastic head (from the GB box) identical to that on the plastic warlord below. I also have a horse I can use for him luckily. I'll put more pics up as the conversion progresses.

l - GB plastic Warlord; r - disappointing 'mounted general'

To round off the additions to my SAGA warband I also got the Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd box. Long-term followers of my blogging efforts will recall that I have had previous experience with Wargames Factory figures, specifically their Zombies which I was quite disappointed with, to the point where I used quite a few as corpses rather than Zeds.

    (There are some photos of the finished figures on my Zeds-n-Stuff Gallery page)

So, it was with some trepidation that I opened the Saxon Fyrd box, but I'm happy to report that these seem much better than the zeds, and I've already started putting them together and will put pictures of them in a later post.

Finally for this post, are some scenic items I got from S&A Scenics. I got 8 of these trees:

3 of the pools on the left (to indicate patches of marsh) and 6 of the rocks on the right (to indicate rough/broken ground).

Very nice pieces that I'm well pleased with!