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.

New boards

Following on from my last post, and my desire to return to Ambush Alley on a 3 x 3 board, I dug out a 3mm MDF sheet (Of which I have a large number) with the intention of painting it on both sides. The Idea behind this was to have a reversible board which could be used for both Ambush Alley, and Firestorm Armada.

Both sides were base-coated, one with black, the other with brown.

On the black side I followed it with a splatter effect of white (shake the brush at the board). This produced some streaks in places, rather than the straight spotting I wanted, so I had to go over the streaks with black to eliminate them. I was happy with the final result, as seen below

The other side I attacked with a sandy colour obtained from Resene ($2.00 Obsolete test pot), using the brush with a rough approach so that the paint was smeared, leaving traces of the basecoat showing. I hope this makes it look like windblown sand, and not just  mess, but it should look better with terrain on it.

Hajjis 2, Marines nil

Played another 2 games of Ambush Alley last night. Neither of us could figure out what went wrong as the marines fell to the insurgents in both games

The First game was over in less than half an hour, as one of my marines fire teams got shredded after cleaning out a hotspot, and the second team started taking casualties shortly after. Of course it was Nigel having incredible luck with the insurgent dice rolls.

Reset, and after slow start I was getting good rolls with the insurgents, but not great. Fortunately, Nigel started rolling badly with the marines on defense, with one team getting cut down one move short of the contractors. RPG fire on the overwatch team began to take it's toll, and Nigel also conceded.

One of the problems with the game may have been the size of the board we were using, as it was a 4 x 4, rather than a 3 x 3. The terrain being more open than it would have on a smaller board seemed to favour the insurgents. Next time round we'll go back to the 3 x 3, as I will take a board of my own, instead of using a club board.