Napoleonic's: Sound of the Gun

It looks like the next game we start playing after the summer holidays have been taken is going to be Shakos & Bayonets by Studio Tomahawk. I'd decided it would be nice to have a cannon as an objective for the game so picked one up from Perry miniatures. The rules do cover artillery so it could be used in a game so I went for a Spanish crew who could fight on either side. 

The models are all metal and fit well with the Spanish I already have though these being regular troops they are in a uniform. The Spanish artillery wore a rather fetching blue with red facings uniform so they look rather dashing. If my memory isn't failing me then I think the artillery was the bravest/best arm of the Spanish army so these chaps would fight to the last man.

I also realised I didn't have a leader for my 5th Batt. 60th Regiment troops so I purchased a rifles command pack at the same time.

I painted up the bugler and two NCO's to add to the riflemen I already have which takes me up to fifteen riflemen in total. I'm not sure how good rifles are in the rules but with so many of them I should be able to field a decent contingent.

We also got a last game of Carnevale in with Mr T once more fielding the Strigoi and I had a go with The Guild. I think it's the first time I've played them and I went with a decent shooting group and then a good melee group.

The shooters proved to be pretty effective and they forced the Vampires into making charges they didn't want to take. This let the melee group pick off the Vampires and The Guild ran out winners.

Bardsung: More Monsters

More of the models from Bardsung this week as I've been working on some more of the monsters that the adventurers face up against. 

The first model is some sort of plant(?) beast, I'm not sure as I can't find any information on it on the game website and I've still opened up the cards for the game with the stats on. In any event it looks rather nasty and has spiders hatching out of it, which can't be good news for the adventurers.

Then we have the Ogre who's a mini-boss, I wanted a different look for this chap so I went blue instead of a more standard flesh colour, that and his size should make him easy to pick out.

Cave Shark! It's shark, with legs, that seems to have a tough stone-like skin, that should send shivers down anyone's spine. I wanted him to have a stone look but not to be just one colour so he ended up a blue/grey which seemed to work out ok.

I've also done some smaller based monsters with the Old Crone leading the way. It looks like she is a spell caster which I think is the first caster type I've painted up for the game. The adventurers have a couple of casters so hopefully there should be some fun spells being flung about.

The Last Vanguard is a magically animated set of armour that roams the dungeon after it's master perished. Presumably as well as it's guard duties it also doubles as a mobile light source with it's burning head and multiple candles.

Last up we have The Forsaken, who was in line to become a hero in the Kickstarter but missed out twice in the votes the game maker ran. In response to this rejection he was introduced instead as a anti-paladin type villain, hopefully to wreak his revenge on the adventurers. 

We played some Strigoi on Strigoi action last night with my friend choosing his force and then I made a list from the kids left against the wall.

It was a predictably brutal fight with both sides being good on the offence and low on the defence. I lost my Hulk early on when he almost killed the Noble Strigoi and things went rapidly down hill from that point on.

Bardsung: Monsters and Machines

As well as working on my Deadzone models I've also been painting up some more of the models from the Bardsung dungeon crawler I backed on Kickstarter. The box comes with a good number of unique models as well as the rank and file so to keep things interesting I picked out a few of the unique models to paint up.

I picked out a hobgoblin riding a giant spider, an ettin, a giant rat and some sort of ooze. The rat and the ooze where pretty straight forwards to paint but the hobgoblin and it's spider took more effort.

As most of the wargames we play involve painting up lots of models with similar paint schemes it's nice to get into a few models who are one offs as you don't need to worry about producing anything coherant.

The second set I've painted up are from an expansion call The Lost Levels. The models consist of mechanical beings, possibly like the Warforged from D&D. You get a good range of models from the aptly named Colossus to dangerous looking Predator, who probably isn't much of a tank.

I opted to work pretty much entirely with dry brushed metallic paint for these models which allowed me to work through them pretty quickly. The models have loads of little details which the dry brushing picks out so even a quick job looks good.

As well as the boss/leader models you get some rank and file with some hefty looking sword and shield types, and some semi-levitating blaster models. 

The specialists come in two flavours with some extra hefty tank models.

And some deadly assassin types with twin blades.

At some point I need to break the seals on all the card packs and have a look at the actual stats for all the models, but that's one for the future at the moment.

Deadzone: GCPS Update

Painting and playing have been at a low ebb over the last couple of weeks as I suffered with and then recovered from my first plague infection. I have however worked through some extra options for my GCPS force for Deadzone. One thing the original force lacked was some models for close up work so I decided to add a couple of Riot Troopers to the force. I bought some shields and hammers from Anvil Industries and using some more of the Iron Core models put together a couple of serious looking troopers.

The Riot Troopers carry defender shields which increase their armour value by 1 (up to 2) and also the armour value of any size 1 or 2 models in the same cube by 1. With the general reduction in armour piercing in Deadzone v3, having a armour 2 model means they should be pretty durable. 

They have a useful range 4 gun and the Smash(1) rule means they always get an extra dice in melee (up from the base of 3), that all looks pretty good value for 18 points.

As I had some models left over I also put together some Recruit's which can be used to bulk out an force with cheap models. These recruit's are pretty poor at everything but they don't give your opponent any victory points when killed so can be handy as a throw-away unit.

I also built up a couple of grenade launcher users in case I wanted to drop the mortar at any point. I'm not sure that will happen very often as I really like the model I put together for the mortar team.

With the extra Riot Troopers needing to be incorporated into my Strike Team I went back to have a look at the Ranger based list I had originally drawn up an decided it would be best to replace the rangers with veterans instead. The basic ranger is 3 points more than their veteran counterpart so dropping down allowed me to fit the riot troopers in fairly easily.

In fact it allowed me to go from 12 models up to 13 and reduced the VP value of the team from 27 down to 20. Of course you do lose the ability to aerially deploy all the ranger models and 1 armour but it feels like a fair enough trade to me.

Mr T and I also managed our first game in a fair few weeks, and we opted to play some more Carnevale.

I went with the Rashaar and Mr T branched out into the Strigoi for the first time.

The battle was pretty quick and brutal with Mr T's first introduction into playing the Strigoi being a steep learning curve. They aren't an easy faction to play as you are generally short on command points and need to trade life for extra dice to roll.

The result was a lot of dead vampires as the Cult Enforcer and Demagogue dished out the pain.

I also picked up some new terrain from Warbases, the first of their full colour MDF terrain range. They do three different versions of the set and the option I chose came with 5 ponds in it. Some of them are quite small but the two large ones are good for Kings of War.

The colour printing is good quality and these can be used without any further work than popping them out of the frame. You could add some flock and gloss gel medium to further pimp them up if you wanted.