And the month's winner is . . .

Terrain

After looking through the images of Infinity terrain on google, terrain is the project for the month. Rock outcroppings and pillars, a raised walkway/roadway, and multilevel hab buildings. It's probably a bit ambitious for a month's work, but if the bug bites I may get through a fair bit.

Another extended silence broken

I'm still as hopeless as ever. Ten months of silence isn't good.

Anyway, in the time since my last post I have put in a great deal of time DMing 2nd edition AD&D. It started off with a pair of wild boars (juveniles) almost taking the party out on their way to their first mission. The same mission also created the famous shit-on-a-stick first aid approach to stabilizing fallen party members. Along the way one of the party members got taken out by another when affected by bloodrage. It finished with the group's mage (and budding arsonist) gaining access to what he needed to become one of the most powerful mages on my world.

I'm grateful to the guys of the group as they helped me explore the world I've been creating for the last four years.

Since the campaign wound up at the end of January, Owen has taken the reins of the group, and we are know in the Iron Kingdoms. This meant miniatures, and when Owen put an order away to Privateer Press, I asked for the Bastian Kinnet model. During march I worked on this mini, and made a start on a possible backup character for Owen's campaign. I believe I did a pretty good job of painting the mini (unfortunately I have not been able to take a decent photo of it yet, pics will follow when I do get some good shots), and didn't want to go with simple base. Searching the rulebook, I found the symbol of Morrow (my character is Knight, and priest of Morrow), and fashioned a flagstone base from plasticard. I etched the symbol into the flagstone, then painted it in grey, with a black wash in the carved area to bring out the symbol.

To try and get some motivation for painting I have decided the work on different armies each month. March was IK Minis. April is .... not sure yet.

Meantime, I'm looking at getting two more armies started:- A Dystopian Wars fleet, maybe Prussian; and an Infinity force, that is seriously looking like PanOceania military orders (Knights, backed by order sergeants and fusiliers).

Almost a year of silence

I've been silent for almost a year on this blog, and even though I haven't done lot in that time I have managed a few things.

With my interest in the Ambush Alley family of games I have mostly been working on projects for this. As I already have a set of buildings and a board for desert action I decided to make a modular board for urban warfare. So far it stands at 9 30 x30 cm sections, all double sided.

To go with this, I've started making some buildings.

After a trip to Christchurch in April I have also added modern British infantry, and Modern Russian paratroops.

More recent is a foray back into role-playing, as we put a new group together. I agreed to DM this group for a start, and as a result have returned to the design of an RPG world that has been brewing in my mind for years. Trying to find a time period for this, I started thinking about how things could have come about for my world (A fantasy version of the Roman Empire rules most of the world). retreating almost a thousand years from that time I was able to co-opt an idea from the series I was reading. So many thanks got to Anne McCaffrey for creating Pern, and both Anne and Todd for the plagues that ravaged Pern. Therefore, a Plague had ravaged my world, changing borders, reducing the size of nations, and allowing an obscure nation to profit from the disaster, and expand to become a mighty empire. The setting for the campaign is a recovering kingdom, that is finally able to reclaim lost areas, and the PC's are right in the middle of it.

More will follow on  the D&D campaign, and some of the events that occur, along with some notes on my world design process.

Second Fire team ready for action

Finished painting the second of three fire teams tonight. They didn't take as long as the first as I just followed my notes from last time.

From my reading list i have discovered the name of the condition that I (and many other gamers) suffer from.It is Gamer Distraction Syndrome. More information on it can be found here. To fight this I am going to take a leaf out of  The Man Cave and have a focus for each month, which obviously makes this month Ambush Alley (and its variations).

Further the Ambush Alley group of games, my Bag O Zombie Babes arrived today. I'm not sure if it's a day late or 19 days early, as Amazon kept sending me delay notification emails for a bout 4 days, with the last saying arrival on the 8th (today is the 9th), and the email telling me it had shipped saying the arrival date was expected to be the 28th.

The Zombie babes are a nice looking miniature. Unfortunately, they only come in a single pose, but as there are 100 of them in the bag, I expect I will be doing a spot of conversion work.

Fire team 1 painted

Over  the last two nights I've been painting the first of my fire teams for Ambush Alley. I've only been able to put in an hour a night, so it works out that it takes about two hours to paint a fire team. They are only painted with basic colours, no highlighting or shading. I may dip them later, when all the figures I'm painting are at this standard. 

I'm still not sure what I am going to do with the bases of these figures, as I want to leave the counter (or at least some of it) showing to separate the teams/types. If anybody is reading this I would welcome suggestions for the bases.

I've also sorted through my Airfix WWII ground crew sets to find figures suitable for civilians so I can make some civilian mobs as well. To go with that, My first Bag O Zombies (Babes) should arrive by the end of the week.

Back to AA terrain tomorrow night.

Ambush Alley miniatures

Spent part of tonight basing the figures I'm using for Ambush Alley. They are (from left to right and from the back) Insurgents with small arms, Insurgent leaders, Insurgent RPGs, Insurgent Machine guns. All insurgents are played by Esci Vietcong. Next are Marines/Us Army. 3 x fire teams, and squad leaders. Represented by Modern US infantry. In front of them are a sniper team and two missile teams.Some random figures to represent civilian contractors, and similar. Panzer grenadiers are up next, 3 gruppes, and a sniper and missile team (all there just for Nigel).Finally, playing the role of various organizations are US special forces from Vietnam.

Last week I added Ambush Z to my AA collection, and realised that I needed Zombies in 1:72 scale to go with it. As there are very few available in this scale I ordered a Bag  Zombies babes from Amazon (as Nigel has Zombies and Zombie dogs from the Zombies board game already). Later I will add a Bag O Zombies, and  a Bag O Zombies Dogs and maybe a Bag O Skeletons as well

AA building updates

I've begun to texture the buildings, by first adding pieces of the card shown in a previous post, then coating the walls in plaster. Once the plaster dried the first building was given a coat of Vallejo Iraqi Sand. I followed that with a heavy dry brush of white poster paint, so that some of the Iraqi sand shows through in the recesses.

The two pictures below show this. One is taken with the flash on, and the other under normal lighting. I'm not sure which is better as the flash shows the white as very bright.

I put the fire team in front to show the building size. The figures are modern US soldiers in 1:72 scale.

I've still got to plaster the roof, which I think I will require mixing the plaster rather than using a premixed tub. Also on the list of things to do on the building is painting the roof trapdoor, and adding texture to, and painting the base.