Skirmish on Viridia II

Hi!

I managed to play a quick game of Song of Blasters a couple of days ago featuring the forces of the Imperium being charged with driving a mercenary unit away from a strategic bunker on Viridia II.

 Imperial patrol

The best thing about playing games in 15mm scale is that it is really quick and easy, not to mention cheap to throw together a couple of small forces! My Imperials cost about £5 and my Mercs even less!

Mercenary Outfit

The Imperials were at a real disadvantage with only a single heavy bolter and a couple of grenade launchers as well as a heavy rifle and would struggle against the mechanised Mercs. The Imperial Sentinel with a multilaser would prove vital in laying down enough fire to keep the mercenary mechs from dominating the battlefield.

 Imperial heavy weapon squad

The Imperials won initiative repeatedly throughout the game and opened up with their heavy bolter on the larger mech and managed to scratch the paint on the beast before it opened up with two missile pods and blew the whole squad up.

 Mercenary Mech advances

Supremely confident in it's heavy armour protecting it, the heavy mech advances on the Imperial lines firing as it goes.

Sentinel and Battlesuit exchange fire.

Meanwhile on the other flank, the Sentinel and Battlesuit repeatedly exchanged fire but the multilaser's high rate of fire told and succeeded in riddling the mercenary machine sending it crashing to the ground.

Fire from the Mech hits the Heavy Weapons squad.

Things were looking grim for the Imperials as the heavy mech gunned down the Sentinel and approached the second infantry squad who hurled everything they could at the rampaging machine. Fortunately a well placed barrage of grenades and heavy rifle fire finally brought down the beast and the Imperial command squad droid called down an artillery barrage that spooked the mercenaries and forced them to withdraw.

End of Play

The Imperium lost three dead and five wounded whilst their Sentinel was recovered but would be in the shop for some time being repaired.

The Mercenaries lost two dead and three wounded whilst both mechs were damaged beyond repair and had to be abandoned on the battlefield.

Apologies for the ropey pics but I used my phone to take all the shots so it's a little bit fuzzy but a lot quicker to put together a quick report!

Hopefully I'll get chance to play some more games in the next couple of weeks so watch this space!

Tiny Infantry

Hi!

Here's a quick update showing my tiny Dwarven infantry brigade for Land Ironclads, Aeroth:

Dwarf Infantry on maneuvers with Land Ironclad support

I actually painted these little guys last month but hadn't had chance to get any pics till now. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out but need to paint a second brigade with command stands to give me a full regiment but I am really chuffed with the little guys and want to crack on with some Land Ironclads gaming soon but really need to finish work on the assorted gubbins I have first!

Speaking of which, here's a quick preview of my L4 Dwarven Ironclad formation:

L5 Ironclad's in front of 2 L4 Anvil's and a L4 Thunderdrake

The new Anvil class is somewhat bigger and more heavily armed than the basic Ironclad with a single heavy gun mounted in a turret and side sponsons with forward firing medium guns and rear firing light guns. Intended as an infantry support tank, they are slow moving but very hard to stop. 

The specialist tank is a Thunderdrake, an artillery modification to the normal Anvil which replaces it's turret with a rocket battery giving the formation a fearsome long range punch.

Hopefully I'll get the little vehicles painted alongside my Thunderhammer tank squadrons that I made last year and then I will need to build a L3 command tank to loom over the battlefield...

In the meantime, All the best!

Painters Progress

Hi!

I've got my table set up again and have managed to get a couple of quick shots of my latest painting output!

First up, here's a half Orc I've had for a while now. He's originally from Grenadier but I picked him up from EM4 Miniatures a while back. He's been sat unpainted for ages but I finally got round to finishing him!

Half Orc

He will be incorporated into my Leviathan project and I've been trying to push my NMM style painting with all my stuff and I must admit that I am quite pleased with how he's turned out!

Next up, here's one of the skeletal ghosty chaps from issue 1 of the Mortal Realms magazine. At £2.99 I figured I couldn't go wrong and quite like how he turned out:

Gribbly Undead

Next up, I've got a couple of Barbarians, again originally from Grenadier, I picked them up about 10 years ago from Targe or Skelp (I can't remember which!).

Barbarians

Again, they will be incorporated into Leviathan!

I've also been painting up lots of my 15mm leadpile and have worked on my Wood Wode warriors:

 Wood Wodes

They are Peter Pig figures that I've had for goodness knows how long and they were really good for cleansing my painting palette when I start flagging with 28mm!

I spent ages working on teeny tiny shields which I am really pleased with:

Shield Detail

While not painted this year, late last year I got a few 15mm scale Dwarves done too for a bit of a Smallhammer project:

Dwarf Troops

I also found an old Mordheim Gargoyle which got turned into a 15mm scale beastie:

Gargoyle

It's been great to get so much painting done so early on in the year. I've also got to get some pics of my 2mm infantry that I've been working on but that's a post for another day!

Hopefully I'll have more pics in the next few days but in the meantime, All the best!

A Man With (a slightly lunatic) Plan

Hi!

Well I seem to have come up with a bit of a plan about my hobby for 2020 and a fair sized chunk of it is going to revolve around getting my long lamented Leviathan project done.

I've reactivated my old Leviathan blog with a bit of a rambling breakdown of what I hope to achieve with it but it basically involves me painting some small warbands using classic Leviathan or other Oldish School figures to finally get a few games using the proper figures and blog about the process.

That's not to say I won't be busy here with 2mm/6mm/15mm stuff or over on Somewhere on the Border with my SD gubbins. I seem to have supercharged myself with creative zeal with over a dozen things painted within the first two weeks of 2020. I've also been working on some illustrations for a new warband for my SD project which will be getting showcased once I have the last couple finished.

I must say that I am hoping that I can keep this enthusiasm going by swapping regularly between scales so that I don't suffer the loss of hobby mojo that has assailed me over the last few years and thus far it seems to be working as I am even enjoying painting 28mm!

But what about my assorted sci-fi stuff that I have worked on over the years, specifically 15mm Rogue Trader? Well I hope to keep working on it and play some games too. I have also a vague plan to incorporate some Megacorporate forces based on Warzone but in 15mm and using whatever suitable figures I have to hand...

As we have my father in law visiting for the next few weeks, I don't have access to my mancave so can't get pictures of my progress till the end of January but my amazing wife has bought me a hobby tray thingy from Hobbycraft which allows me to paint in the living room and even comes with a handy LED light so I can continue with the drawing and figure painting HUZZAH!

Hopefully by the end of January my figure tally will have continued to rise and I will have lots of stuff to show when I finally get my room back and I plan to celebrate with some much needed battle reports too but in the meantime All the best!

The Siren Call of Old Games

Hi!

I've spent most of this week painting my way through some Wood Wodes in 15mm scale but I've been finding myself drawn back to an old project, namely Leviathan.

Approximately once a year I get to wailing and gnashing my teeth about the game which has obsessed me down the years but that I have only played a handful of times and even then I've been reduced to using cardboard counters for the most part as I don't have the space for the suggested 8'x4' board or indeed the 28mm scale figures required.

Titanosaur

Looking back through my blog, there's a constant train of posts where Leviathan is mentioned, referenced and projects started and then stalled but why does this one game which I never played when it was originally released still attract me so much? Why after repeated failures over the last ten or so years do I still look at it and go Hmm...?

 Lesser Goblin Wartower

Is it the rules, the setting, the chunky resin figures or something about reclaiming my youth (I originally picked up the rulebook in the mid 90's whilst at high school) Whatever the reason, I cannot seem to shake the attraction to the game and over the last few years have even managed to play the odd game or so but I never seem to be able to fully succeed with the thing or indeed finally shake my hankering after it.

My previous post listed a few of my successes from last year hobbywise and listed a few of the games that I had been pondering trying my hand at this year and it has got me to thinking about how best to combine this all into some sort of semi coherent plan rather than merely wishlishting.

Necrosaur Wartower

With that in mind, I think I am going to approach the issue from a bit of a tangent. I have a hankering for some skirmish gaming in the world of Aeroth with it's post apocalyptic awesomeness but also the need to play out some of the mass battles I've always imagined with vast machines and titanic monsters fighting alongside hordes of infantry and cavalry.

15mm scale Skirmishes!

 6mm Armies!

SD Scale Boar Company

Now the second part is easy enough to do now I have been working on my 2mm stuff and I figure I should have a decent sized army put together for all four of the original races by the end of the year but the skirmishes are a different manner.

As I see it, I have three options, 1) Buy 28mm stuff and use it to represent disperate warbands of survivors, 2) Use 15mm scale to do much the same and 3) Sculpt my own SD scale stuff.

15mm scale Warbeast

We shall see how I get on but the idea has come to me to use the Aeroth setting as the backdrop for trying out rules from several different games. For example I could run a campaign in one of the ruined megacities of the pre Death Elven civilisation using Mordheim rules and sculpt my own small warbands to duke it out. Similarly, Crucible and Chronopia have great, thematic forces that would make interesting additions to Aeroth so there's the option of mashing several elements together into one mega madness project...

We shall have to see how things progress but I hope it's going to be a year full of hobby shenanigans!

In the meantime, All the best!

2019 Reviewed

Hi!

It's 2020, a new year and a new decade so I thought I'd take a peek back at what I got done during 2019:

First up, I managed to paint 108 things ranging from 2mm up to 28mm in scale.

The Tally

5x 2mm Orc Wartowers

6x 2mm Infantry Companies

9x 28mm Deadloque Undead

3x Flintloque Objective Markers

1x 28mm Undead

1x SD Scale Minion

4x 15mm Dwarves

3x 2mm Dwarf Ironclads

4x 6mm Ultramarine Stands

2x 6mm Goff Ork Stands

6x Rocky Terrain

2x 6mm Eldar Stands

22x 15mm Cowboys

6x 15mm Daleks

7x 15mm Salvage Crew

2x 15mm Boglins

3x 15mm WW2 American Infantry

6x 15mm Steampunk Armoured Suits

1x 28mm Resin Scenic Item

1x SD Scale Battlemech

1x 6mm Goblin Stand

1x 15mm Gargoyle

1x 15mm Man at Arms

1x Teeny Biplane

 Leviathan 2mm Orcs

28mm Flintloque Undead

 15mm Cowboys 

15mm Ironclad Infantry

15mm Homicidal Pepperpots

Oddly I seem to have painted up several decent little warbands in 15mm and 28mm and even fleshed out some smaller scale gubbins too!

On the wargaming front, I managed to play 14 games using 5 different rule systems which is better than the previous year's tally but I really want to expand the odd skirmish into a campaign or two!

 Epic Eldar vs Ultramarines

Boar Company vs Marik Goldhelm's Renegades

Looking forward, I've been planning to work my way through my leadpile, which was depleted somewhat last year, balanced out by picking up a few odds and ends but have a hankering to flesh out the projects I have started and maybe try one or two new ones that have been bubbling under over the last couple of years.

Whilst most of these will be towards the smaller end of the scale, I do have a hankering towards some long term temptations and one or two newer ones.

Oh Which to Choose!

These are the systems that have been interesting me over the last few years that have got me wondering about turning 2020 into an opportunity to put together a warband for at least one or two of them. Now at this point, I'm not sure what scale said force will be as it is entirely conceivable they could be anywhere between 2mm and 28mm.

Over the years I've picked up tons of rulesets and I think 2020 would be a nice opportunity to look back over the last 25 or so years of my hobby obsession!

Looking at the list, some of the options will be easier to put together than others. Whilst some of the miniatures are readily available or at least easily proxied, others such as Chronopia will be a bit more of a challenge to get hold of but we shall see what I can do...

In the meantime, all the best and hope you all have a fab 2020!

Land Ironclads: Leviathan Edition

Hi!

I've spent the last few days pondering my Land Ironclads project with the aim of bringing it to the setting of Leviathan, a project I started late last year and actually got some gubbins painted too before I drifted off on other stuff.

But here we are in December of 2019 and I'm hoping to round out the year by getting the last of the bits and bobs I have painted up and making a start on bringing the other forces and units to life in my alternate post apocalyptic/steampunk/magitech setting.

28mm vs 2mm

The first issue I need to cover is how to translate the units and assorted armies from 28mm into microscale 2mm. Leviathan has lots of big war engines and beasties but I want to really push the envelope a bit to bring in some properly vast stuff the give a sense of scale to my games which will pit teeny tiny infantry and cavalry against battletanks, warbeasts and larger colossal devices of destruction. 

Similarly, I will need to incorporate magic and elemental summoning into my games but Land Ironclads is a pretty flexible system so I'm sure with a bit of bodging it will be ok! 

Thunderhammer battletank

My initial plan is to design and build units representing all the Dwarf and Orc forces available in the book and add my own twist to it and then add the larger stuff, such as the bigger level of Land Ironclads before having a bash at a game or two.

With this in mind, I've ordered some MDF bases so I can crack on with the smaller stuff just now and hope to place a small order with Irregular Miniatures for some 2mm infantry, cavalry and artillery in the next month or so. Hopefully as things progress I will be able to add the Barbarians and Elves before moving onto the other races that inhabit Aeroth as well as building some more 2mm suitable terrain for them all to fight over. 

I must admit that the prospect of finally getting the image I've had in my head out onto the gaming table is rather exciting and I'm hoping to post an assortment of doodles on the blog as I slowly design up the redesigned units and set about sculpting them.

Sadly the closer we get to Christmas, the busier I am at work but fingers crossed I'll be able to grab a few moments to work on my miniproject!

In the meantime, All the best!