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

Happy New Year!

Ermahgerd I Played A Game!
OK, so not a Frostgrave game, but a game nonetheless. A rather longish, but entirely fun game of modified Space Hulk. I was on the human side, Steve From Alaska was the other human player, Mike From Las Vegas was the bug player, and Bashytubits moderated. The bugs caught us early on and we lost an entire squad before we could even react, but after that we hit our stride and nearly got halfway into the complex looking for the Secret Target before we were all eaten by the bugs.

This what we started with, three squads of Defiance marines. We were down to just two squads very quickly.

See this guy? He had like five bugs surrounding him in the following turn, and I jokingly said, "Bugs, Mr. Rico!" He then went on to kill many, many bugs on his own, including several with jut his trusty combat knife. Sergeant Rico was my hero of the day.

Lieutenant Dan's last stand! That guy down at the bottom was Steve's officer. After the bugs ate the other two guys, Lieutenant Dan killed maybe 15 bugs all by his lonesome before they finally ate him. He was the other hero of the game.

I took a batch of pictures, but a long series of grey on grey on grey on green photos would get pretty boring pretty quickly. Bashytubits promised us painted miniatures for next time. And yes, he has many more Defiance marines. But not for sale.

VSF Japanese Colonial Forces
As I mentioned in my Wednesday Night Musings earlier this week, I am making some progress with my Japanese Colonial group. Since then, I have finished two Maxim machine gun teams. The remainder of my line infantry will be painted like the gunners here, all NCO's and Guard Infantry/Ronin will be individually painted Samurai like the NCO for this team. And I should get cracking on painting up some more of these, I need four infantry and a leader for next Satyrday's Big Hunt game at Empire Game Shop here in Sin City. That translates as four Ashigaru and one Samurai for those of you keeping score at home.

Again, wholly historically inaccurate, but damn are they stylish!

Frostgrave
This wouldn't be much of a Frostgrave blog if I didn't have any Frostgrave content, now would it? But, I haven't really finished anything for Frostgrave this week. I am in progress on the remaining figure for my wife's Egyptian warband, and I have started on the Apprentice for my Duck warband. Bases are in progress for many of the beasties and critters that are painted but need proper basing. If things go right, I should have a "metric crapton" of varied Frostgrave goodness by next weekend. Check back here in seven days!

Wednesday Night Musings VII

Victorian Science Fiction: Colonial Japanese Ninjas
As I mentioned last week, I am gearing up to play in a local Victorian Science Fiction/Colonial campaign. The group that does it has written a pretty extensive background to include Martians, Venusians, and all the Great Powers in the middle of the Northwest Frontier.

I have started to assemble and paint all the lovely models my wonderful and amazing wife gave me for Christmas, and I have completed my first section, composed of five Ninjas. They were made from Wargames Factory plastic Samurai and Ashigaru, with guns "donated" from my Tamiya 1/48 WW2 Russian Infantry (they also donated two Maxim machineguns as well.) I have had that kit floating around forever, I am clearly not going to ever build them, so I may as well start cannibalizing it for parts!

Ninjas with guns... almost as much fun as Nuns with guns

Quack!
Also something I mentioned last week, I am in the process of converting my Duck Wizard's Apprentice for Frostgrave. I have been actively participating in WizarDecember, but the Week 4 deadline was extended until the end of the month due to holiday craziness. And then it occurred to me: WizarDecember is running through the end of December. I am in the fifth week of December. I am working on a Duck Apprentice. If I can get the little guy done before the new year, I can actually have five entries for the WizarDecember painting challenge. Assuming I can step away from my Colonial Japanese and Boxer Rebellion miniatures, of course.


The Week
There is still holiday craziness happening. I am trying to make some evening time to do some online gaming with Bashytubits and Mike. I am really going to try to run a Frostgrave game with the kids before they go back to school. I am assembling and painting my Japanese Colonials, Boxers, and Frostgrave checklist. Maybe a trip to California for the New Year if we can hitch a ride (running out of time fast on that one!) Next week life returns to what passes as normal for us, so hopefully we will settle down and make some better progress instead of running around in circles.