Frostgrave Figures

Been a while. Recently I finished a group of 4 figures to be used for Frostgrave. All figures are from Reaper Miniatures and are all metal. First batch is a group of 4 adventurers. The figure in the middle I'm using as a Knight, the one on the right is a Thief and the left one I don't have a roll for him yet. I thought he was neat so I picked him up. It wasn't till I got him almost finished that I realized I had glued the shield on incorrectly. Oh well.

Next up is a large frost giant. I'm not a big fan of the stance, but I see what they were getting at. The figure was nice to paint up though and came together rather nicely. Pictures are crap like usual.

Four figures for this month is rather dismal. So hopefully I can step my game up as I'm really not doing very well this year.

On my paint table is still a couple units of hoplites (still!), some skirmish archers (completed and just need to be based) and a bunch of figures for my Mayday Sci-fi game.

Valkeeri War Rockets

Been a rather slow month for painting unfortunately. I'll have to up my game. Regardless, this week I finished the last War Rocket fleet: the Valkeeri. These miniatures are from Hydra Miniatures and like their other War Rockets, are a breeze to paint. The Class 1 and 2 rockets are metal and the Class 3 and 4 are resin. Pictures will be in order of Class 1 to 4.

Next up on my paint table are a few figures for Frostgrave, some ancient bow armed skirmishers and some hoplites.

2015 Year in Review & 2016 Goals

Happy New Year! Now that 2015 is complete I can look back on what I accomplished and which of my goals I completed and which ones I failed at.

Miniatures

For my goals for 2015, I didn't do very good at all.

1. War Rocket - paint the Valkeeri. -> I just started this in the last few days.

2. 15mm Ancients - finish off my Hittites. -> never got to these.

3. Terrain - I've got a few more 15mm buildings to paint up. I've also got 11 28mm European buildings to paint up. -> never got to these.

4. 28mm Samurai - paint up 4 bases. -> complete 2 bases.

5. 54mm War of 1812 - finish off everything I have. -> didn't get to any of this.

6. Martian Front - I painted up a pile of these figures. On the downside it looks like the company that makes this game is now kaput so it doesn't look like I'm going to get the remained of my Kickstarter materials. Win some - lose some I guess.

7. 28mm World War II French - finish my French (at least what I have). -> I finished what I had but I've since purchased a bunch more vehicles.

I ended up painting a number of 15mm DBA armies, started a 28mm Carthaginian army and painted up a number of Retro Raygun figures instead. So for 2016, here are my goals:

1. War Rocket - paint the Valkeeri fleet (shouldn't be a problem as I've already started them).

2. 28mm Samurai - paint up 4 base of figures.

3. 28mm World War II French - complete the items I now have.

4. 28mm World War II Germans - start this force and get at least the started box completed.

5. Martian Front - complete my figures and paint up the remaining bulk of Terry's Martians.

6. Retro Raygun - paint up the new figures I do have on hand.

7. 28mm Carthaginians - complete this army and possible start on a period Roman army.

8. 54mm War of 1812 - paint up at least 1 unit.

9. Terrain - paint up at least half of my 28mm buildings.

These are pretty lofty goals but hopefully I can do better than the dismal showing I did in 2015.

Boardgames

This was another crazy year for boardgaming. Compared to 2014 where I played 144 matches of 36 different games, this year I played 143 matches of 50 different games. My top 3 games were:

#1 Carcassonne - 9 matches (a favourite of a friend of mine)

#2 & #3 Cosmic Encounter & Elder Sign tie - 8 matches

Hopefully this year will be a continuation of the past two years. I definitely need to get more board war-games in though as this year was lacking for those.

So good bye to 2015 and hello to 2016!

Carthaginian Libyan Spearmen Finally!

It's been a while since I've posted anything up. As I take all of December off work I was expecting to get a lot of painting done. Unfortunately the opposite was true and I got very little done. I did finally complete my Carthaginian Libyan spearmen as show below. Figures are all plastic Victrix from their excellent Warriors of Carthage boxed set. Shield transfers are predominantly Little Big Men Studios with a handful of Veni Vidi Vici thrown in. The LBMS are really nice but were a pain to put on the domed shields. My application of them was less than stellar but at arm distance they look good.

I also finished up an old GW terrain piece. I believe it's supposed to be some sort of crashed flyer/gunship thing. It can easily function as some sort of crashed spaceship.

Recently I picked up a copy of Amerigo from Queen Games.

I played this game at Fallcon last year, so I've had my eye on it to pick up for a while. In the game you have your goal is to establish trading posts and little colonies all over the randomly generated map. A turn is composed of a handful of phases in which you pick one action to carry out like: construct buildings or move your ships. What actions you can take and how many of them are defined by a neat mechanic of using a dice tower, or in this case a small cube tower. It was this mechanic which probably drew me to the game. I know they use it in one of their other games: Shogun. Overall, the game went pretty quickly and once you've played it for a few minutes, you'll have it mastered.

On my paint table right now is the last fleet for War Rocket, the Valkeeri. I was hoping to have these down this year but I doubt I'll get them down in the next day. After that I'll probably do some more ancients. And I'll have a 2015 review in a couple days.

Some Frostgrave Figs

Been a while since I've posted anything up. In fact it's been a while since I've really sat down and done a bunch of painting. Combination of a few things including starting a Federation Commander campaign with a couple friends which has been monopolizing my time a fair bit lately.

Regardless, these are some figures I painted up for Terry's Frostgrave game a few weeks ago. These figures are all from Reaper.

These figures are all metal. The iron golem in the back turned out really good. Same goes with the three wights in the middle. The ice toad in the bottom started out crappy but actually painted up rather nice. The paint job on the giant spiders and wind elemental are rather 'meh'.

These figures are all 'bones' figures with the exception of the two little ones in the foreground (and I see I've got the left one facing the camera). The stone golem turned out decent but the rest… . I can definitively say, I'm not a fan of the 'bones' material. If these were metal, I think they would've been much better figures. Can't beat the price though.  The aforementioned two figures in the front are a pair of old metal GW familiars.

These two metal figures were the ones I used for my wizard and apprentice. They were fun figures to paint and turned out really well.

Recently I got in a number of new board games. The two below were two I had picked up at Fallcon. First up is Flash Point: Fire Rescue by Indie Boards and Cards.

A friend of mine is a cop and isn't a big fan of firefighters. So naturally I had to pick this up. The game is a cooperative game in the vein of Pandemic. You have to go into a burning building and rescue a bunch of people before everyone burns or the building collapses.  The set I got came with a pile of expansions. The parts are high quality and with the expansions there's plenty of building layouts to play on.

The other game I've played recently is Chaos in the Old World from Fantasy Flight Games.

In this game each player is one of the four Chaos Gods and you're goal is to corrupt the Old World. It's a relatively fast playing game. After playing it I can see a fair bit of similarity to Cthulhu Wars. Parts are  a la FFG, so high quality.

As I mentioned at the start, I'm jumping back into the Star Fleet Universe and I'm now playing Federation Commander or as I like to call it: Star Fleet Battles Light.

Ship sheets are a lot nicer than the old SFB sheets were when I played it 15+ years ago!

On my paint table right now is some terrain, my Carthaginians spearmen (I hate painting linothorax) and I've primed up the last War Rocket fleet. It'll probably be well into December before I post again.

More Retro Raygun

Last night I finished some more figures for Retro Raygun. These figures are all metal (with the exception of the last one) and are produced by Hydra Miniatures. I have to say, I love painting these figures up, they're simple, clean and full of character. First up is a Galacteer Tactical squad.

Next is a group of Galacteer heroes. From left to right: Cadet Skippy, Comet the chimp sidekick, Jane Hunter and Dr. Zahn.

Finally is the Aquaclops. This figure is resin with a metal head.

Next on my paint table is a bunch of Carthaginian Libyan spearmen. Once these guys are completed, I'll have a solid core for the infantry. I'm planning on ordering some elephants from Aventine Miniatures but I'm also going to need a bunch of cavalry and it's a pity no one (to my knowledge anyway) makes 28mm plastic cavalry. Odd. If anyone has any good suggestions for assorted Carthaginian cavalry, I'm all ears. Top of my list so far is Foundry.

But before I get them completed I need to paint up a wizard and apprentice for Terry's Frostgrave campaign day on November 7th.

Robots and Javelins

This week saw me complete two batches of figures. First up are 4 bases of skirmish javelinmen for my Carthaginian army. These figures are plastic figures from Victrix.

Next is a batch of assorted Robot Legion figures for Retro Raygun. Figures are from Hydra Miniatures and are all metal. These figures are ridiculously quick and easy to paint. First is a group of 8 Minibots.

Next is a trio of Robot Legionnaires (from left to right): Heavy Support Legionnarie, Centurion, Optio (squad leader).

Last figure is Warbot Destroyer.

Here's a size comparison shot of the 3 sizes of robot figures.

Sitting on my paint table right now is some more Retryo Raygun Galacteer figures and some more Carthaginians. Next weekend is also Fallcon so I probably won't get anything else done this week.