Wednesday Night Musings IX

Plague Is Upon Us!
No, not really, but we are all sick. Like, really sick. So I haven't accomplished much this last week. We have been trying to have some family Frostgrave games since Sunday night, but none of us have felt well enough to actually bother playing. I also wanted to take pictures of some of my new acquisitions, refurbished miniatures, and finished scenery, but really did not feel motivated enough to do so. Maybe by my Satyrday posting. No promises, though.

The Pledge: January
As promised a few weeks ago, here is my January Pledge update:

Miniatures Purchased- 3 K'kree (16 dollars,) 1/50 1905 Adler (4.75 dollars,) 75mm cannon and 2 pedestal-mounted Maxim MGs (13.50 dollars.)
Miniatures Imported From Storage- 18 Frostgrave, 1 Ashigaru, 2 quadruped robots.
Miniatures Painted- 16 Ashigaru, 11 assorted Frostgrave.

Spent: 34.50 dollars total
Miniatures Added: 26 Miniatures total
Miniatures Painted: 27 Miniatures total

So I am ahead of the curve by a single miniature. This month I will be importing at least another 10 Japanese from Storage (4 gun crew for the cannon, a gunner for the Maxim that willmounted in the Adler, and 5 samurai leftovers as a second Ninja section) and a handful of sci-fi miniatures that need to be repainted for FiveCore. And, as I will have maybe an extra 50 dollars from tax refundage, I may well order odds and ends for a couple of projects in progress.

What They Are For
Of the miniatures I purchased this month, the K'kree are being added to my existing K'kree as a group for FiveCore. As well, the quadruped robots from Storage are part of the K'kree group. The 1/50 scale 1905 Adler will be repainted to be a part of my Japanese Colonial army, nominally as a tow vehicle for the cannon. One of the Maxim MGs will be mounted in the back of the Adler. The lone Ashigaru is actually a conversion built from a variety of miniatures to act as a driver figure for the Adler. Finally, I put together another Frostgrave warband from 9 Wargods of Aegyptus figures, this time human (I have a Basti cat-people warband that I haven't posted pics of yet also from the Wargods range,) I also found a couple more Basti that can be painted up and used as Thugs, and finally 7 little Wargods pieces to use as Frostgrave Treasure Tokens.

Obligatory Picture
Here is the 1905 Adler with my converted Ashigaru driver. It seems to have originally had a windshield, I may try to make one. The maxim is not ounted in the back yet, the whole car needs a good washing and a little repair work before I can start converting and painting it.

They really were this 
big compared to people. Huge cars

Punkrabbitt Over And Out!
That's it until Satyrday. I know this has been a little light on the content, but I do hope to feel well enough to at least take some picture over the next few days

Finally, A Game!

Finally, A Game!
That's right, I finally played a game of Frostgrave. Hosted by Steve From Alaska, moderated by Bashytubits, we gave the rules a try in a three-way game of just fighting and picking up treasure tokens. My ducks, Bashytubits Orcs with their Ogre Wizard, and Steve using more of Bashytubits orcs, we played on truly frozen-looking scenery. The walls were so high on most of the items that taking good pics was difficult, but here we go:

Steve looks on while Bashytubits researches some rules. Those are my ducks running up the front there.

My ducks have pounced on a treasure token, you can see Bashytubit's Orcs coming up on the right

The Duck paladin thought he tangle with a group of Orcs, at least he went down fighting, a Death Cultist of Hueymakt.

The great escape: my ducks are getting ready to get off the board with their meager two treasure tokens.

It was a really fun game, we spent some time hashing out what the rules said versus what was intended, we decided that if seemed complicated, we were doing it wrong. Steve and I both finished with two treasure tokens, Bashytubits finished with six which made him the winner. As we were not playing a campaign game, we did not roll for survival or injury or what the treasures are worth. 

The Satyrday Three Weeks Ago Frostgrave Post

I have posted at least once every Satyrday since I started this blog with Frostgrave-centric content, until the Satyrday three weeks ago (I did manage two Satyrdays ago.) I spent most of my day on those Satyrdays out gaming (see above and below) and just did not have it in me to finish up my post and publish it. So everything I was going to post on those either being posted here (as well as a few weeks worth of Wednesday Night Musings.) I apologize if anyone missed it. If you didn't miss it, why are you reading this?

Cat-astrophe! 
Ramses, my slowly expanding bundle of furry love and retractable claws, jumped on my miniatures shelves earlier this morning. He managed to knock most everything off of not one, but two shelves. Broken pieces everywhere! Four DBA armies, my Japanese Colonials, and several Frostgrave warbands took some bad hits. I haven't even started trying to assess the damage yet.

Bad kitty! Bad! Bad!

The Pledge
As I stated earlier, I have made a pledge to buy fewer miniatures than I paint, and to keep an accounting of my expenditures. I have four primary gaming interests, as follows: Frostgrave, FiveCore, VSF Colonials, and DBA 3.0, all in 28mm. So I have inventoried everything I had in my painting queue (not the Lead Mountain, as much of that I have no intention of ever painting) as of last Wednesday and it shakes out as follows:

Frostgrave: 68 unpainted miniatures
FiveCore: 12 unpainted miniatures
VSF Colonials: 56 unpainted miniatures
DBA 3.0: 62 unpainted miniatures
Total: 198 unpainted miniatures

Anytime I pull anything out of Storage that is not already included in those numbers, they will be added to those numbers. Moving forward, I will post the numbers of miniatures painted, the remaining number of figure unpainted,and the number of miniatures purchased for the month in the first Wednesday Night Musings of the following month. So the details for this month will be on the February 3 installment of this blog. And starting in March, there will also be a yearly summary.

Ashigaru
These are Ashigaru with a Samurai section leader for my Japanese Colonial project, I have another five painted but I ran out of Dullcote. So now I have a section of Ninjas, a section of Ashigaru, and a section of Maxim MGs.

The Big Hunt-Victorian Science Fiction Participation Game
On Satyrday, Feb 16 I played in the Las Vegas Wargamers annual Big Hunt VSF participation game. Everyone brought a leader and an escort, five models total or three models if cavalry.

So here are a bunch of random pictures without context:

That's It For This Satyrday!
Wednesday I will be returning to Wednesday Night Musings, with a recap of The Pledge for January, and hopefully some Colonial and FiveCore updates

Wednesday Night Musings VIII

Progress!
I had hit a nice rhythm for a few days in painting, and managed to complete a couple of outstanding projects. First up, everything for my wife's Egyptian Warband for Frostgrave is done. I added two Treasure Hunters, two Dogs, a small and a medium Construct, and a mummy to act as a Zombie. The Constructs and Zombie are "just in case" she wants to use the particular spells to create those types. The Treasure Hunters and Dogs are to give her more options than just Men-At-Arms/Knights and Archers/Rangers. I also finished my Duck Apprentice. This has the net effect of finishing up the personal warbands for everyone in our home (Ducks for me, Egyptians for my wife, and Elves for the kid to share.) Unfortunately, we have had rain and fog (fog in Las Vegas? Crazy, I know!) for the last few days so I have been unable to Dullcote anything, and hence no pictures are available of anything new.

The Pledge
I have seen any references to "The Pledge" over the years at TMP, but I never really bothered paying much attention to it. This year however, I am taking up The Pledge for myself.

I formally pledge to buy fewer miniatures than I paint.

At the end of each month, I will post how many miniatures I have bought, how many I have painted, and how many unpainted figures I have remaining. This last bit is a little wiggly, because I really have no idea how many unpainted miniatures I have. Many of them are in Storage. So I am going to inventory what I have on-hand here at the house unpainted, and sort them into "for a specific project" and "along for the ride" groups. If anything migrates from Storage to the house, it will be added to one of these two groups.

De Bellis Antiquitatis
I have been a big fan of DBA since I started playing the first edition back in 1993. It's a fun little historical game that has gone through a few revisions over the years. My first army for DBA was 15mmEarly Hebrews, which were haphazardly painted in a "I have no idea about researching historical outfits" kind of way and they were later cannibalized for a couple different Hordes of the Things armies. My second army was 15mm Aztecs, which was the whole reason I started doing DBA, and then I did a 15mm Scots-Irish army as sort of a "my history" project. I recently found both of these armies in storage, and did a little refurbishing to bring them into compliance with the DBA 3.0 army lists. I should have some pictures up next week.

These day, I am having some difficulty seeing the detail on 15mm models, even with reading glasses, and find myself a little too shaky most of the time to try painting them. Howver, last year I took a stab at starting some 28mm DBA armies, and my first completed army was an Amazon-themed Hoplite army that can be seen on my other blog. I am also working on New Kingdom Egyptians for my wife, and an Achaemenid Persian army for myself.

28mm New Kingdom Egyptian chariot frpm Black Tree Design

Within the context of my 28mm DBA armies, I am working on two different timeframes. The first is 1200 BC, which will include my wife's New Kingdom Egyptian, a more historically accurate Early Hebrews than the ones I did in 15mm, Early Libyans, and a Sea Peoples army based on some Mycenean figure range or another.  The second will be 500 BC, which will have the Hoplites and the Persians, and at least Meroitic Kushites. I may have a few others as well, but nothing planned solidly yet.

28mm Amazon Hoplites from Wargames Factory