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!

Willpower?? What's that?

It's been quite a week since my last post ... during which my willpower to resist new "shinies" seems to have evaporated completely :(

Having read a post ( planning-winter-war ) on Steve Blease's blog, I caved in and have backed the Baker Company Winter War Kickstarter.  This conflict is one that I've long wanted to game, so although slightly guilty about the expense (I've gone for the £120 'Border Assault' pledge) I'm happy to have done it.

(This pledge level will give me Finnish and Soviet Platoons and includes access to all stretch-goals - currently upto 19! - and free limited figures.)

Also, on Saturday just gone, I went to Newcastle to attend my younger sister's 40th birthday do (gawd do I feel old ... my little sister is 40!).  Anyway, I decided to visit Wargames Emporium in Sheffield on my way, so browsed their website to see what they had ...

After discovering their Hydra Miniatures' War Rocket pages, and then reading this detailed review of the game, I decided to shell out for the game and some miniatures. Needless to say, I got carried away and bought too much :(

Apart from increasing my lead & resin mountains, I'm still working on the rebasing of my 6mm zombie game figures. Despite what I said in my last post - 6mm-zombies - I've gone for 5 military or police on a base, 6 civilians and 8 zombies. I'll take some pics soon and post them here ...

New Shop and New Terrain

Andy had mentioned to me that there was a model shop close to me that I knew nothing about, so Saturday saw me in the new(ish) realworld presence of the webstore SnM Stuff.  Despite the myriad numbers of goodies sold by Sean (the proprietor), I was able to discover some self-control and spend less than £15! You can see to the right what I purchased - some red(ish) flock, orange scatter stuff (both for bases of my mars figures), 1mm drills, slottabase pack, a new pin-vice and a large plastic sheet with moulded brickwork on it. A very nice haul, I thought, and I'm already planning what to get next time!

Something I will definitely be getting again is the brick-sheeting, as I've already used most of it in my first piece of terrain for the game of IHMN this Friday. I'm planning to get at least one wall of a Martian fort on the table - here's a WIP photo of it:

I took that pic on Saturday and it's moved on considerably since then - it's almost ready for undercoating now ...

In other news:

• An informative (as usual!) post on the evil mastermind Colgar6's blog may well see me making first  mail order to Japan in the near future!
• It seems that Wilkinsons' have tiles that are useful for IHMN - as seen in this post
• Still trying to get the latest issue of 'Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy', but it's not in WHSmiths (where it normally is) nor can I get the pdf yet :(
• Vampifan's condition seems worse than I had at first thought :(  Vampi's brother (Mikie) is keeping us up to date via comments on the latest post on Vampi's blog here; thanks to him for doing that! Get well soon Vampi!

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.

Just arrived - "A World Aflame" and WarThunder

from Osprey site

Only a small update today ...  due to returning an unsatisfactory birthday present, I had a credit on my amazon account, and decided (eventually) to buy the "A World Aflame" wargame rules by Osprey Publishing.  (Note they are much cheaper from Amazon though!)

This won't be a review as I've not played them (or even read it all!) as yet, but from what I have read, I think that they would be ideal for my VBCW 15mm stuff that I'm intending to paint, and for the 20mm WW2 Norway game I want to do ...

As an example, units only have a limited amount of ammunition, but it can be resupplied in game and the rules use chance cards, both things that I like. They were written by Paul Eaglestone of Empress Miniatures with the Spanish Civil War and VBCW in mind, and I am very much looking forward to trying them out, although, unfortunately, I doubt that it will be any time soon :(

Also, some colleagues on World Of Tanks recommended "War Thunder" a free MMO WW2 airplane game. I've tried it, and thought it was damn fine, but I can't get on with flight simulators, so have given up on it :(  If flight sims are your thing though, you should give it a try!

New Arrivals at my Hovel 01

I'm sure I posted somewhere about these impending arrivals, but can I find where it was now I'm posting about them? can I f**k!

Anyway, back on the 8th October, I stumbled across the Warmacre website (can't remember how!) and browsed their modern miniatures range, as always looking for my mini's for my British zed-a-lypse

Thhe miniatures looked pretty good to me (and the prices even better!), so after an email to Warmacre to check the contents, I ordered the "No-Go-Zone ‘Friday Night’ Miniatures & Rulebook" pack, plus No-Go-Zone Hooligans/Rioters pack. With the ridiculous postage charge (i.e. a flat £1 to the UK!) that totalled £31 for 30 miniatures (each with slotta base & metal scenic top!) plus a rulebook.

Yes, that's right. £31 for 30 28mm miniatures.  Bargain!

The package arrived on the following saturday, IIRC, and here's a pic of the contents:

As I said above, each miniature has a 20mm slottabase plus one of a variety of scenic metal tops. The tops themselves have a tab moulded on the base to fit in the slottabase's slot, and they seem to me to be pretty well sculpted.  Unfortunately, all my mini's are on 2ps or 25mm slotta's so although I won't use the slotta's (I do use 20mm's for kids, small animals, etc, so they won't be wasted), I intend to use the tops on the larger slotta's. As you can see to the left, each top has a hole for the peg that is on each mini's foot.

And speaking of the miniatures, following are front and back pictures of the contents of each pack. First is No-Go-Zone Police 1 which has 5 PCs and a WPC. There is no flash on the figs (the pic is straight from the pack) but mould lines are visible. The sculpts are good, but not excellent.

Next up is No-Go-Zone Police 2. This time, there are 3 PCs, 1 WPC and 2 Paramedics. The same comments for Police 1, above, apply here for flash, mouldlines and sculpts.

Now the No-Go-Zone Chaos pack, which holds 6 criminals, including 2 prostitutes. There is nothing specifically criminal about them to my eyes though, so they'll make great civvies/survivors in the zed-a-lypse. Again, no flash, mouldlines and good sculpts.

The final pack in the 'Friday-Night' set is No-Go-Zone Citizens. I especially like the figure eating crisps and the woman searching in her bag - for zed-repellent perhaps?

Finally, the extra pack that I got, No-Go-Zone Hooligans/Rioters. A nice variety of poses here, obviously designed to be taunting a line of police, and I think they'll do excellently for zed-gaming. The only bit of flash in 30 figs is here, attached to the bottom left mini's index finger.

I am very, very pleased with my purchase, and I would have been had the figures been twice the price I paid for them.  I may not have been flattering about the sculpts but they are very acceptable and a damned sight better than I could manage. The only thing that I haven't done yet is compare them size-wise with other figures, but they 'look' the right size to me.

All-in-all they are very welcome additions to my lead mountain, and the police especially are essential for anyone setting a zed-game (or any other kind) in modern Britain (yes, I'm looking at you m'lud Siwoc!)

PS - this post is number 01 as my Mantic Games parcel arrived yesterday, so will post on that soon!

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!