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

Gods And Monsters

Two Weeks? Two Weeks!
It appears I have missed an entire two weeks of blog postings. Two Wednesday Night Musings and last Satyrday's Frostgrave posting. To be honest, it has been a rough two weeks. Kids were sick last week, I went gaming last Satyrday and did not get home until late, and this last week was absolutely awful, full of a variety of dramas. Now i understand why some animals eat their young.

Ducks!
As I have been hinting at for a while, I have re-tooled my Duck miniatures for Frostgrave. This mostly involved converting an already-converted Spearduck into an Apprentice, but he turned out so mighty looking he might become my Wizard. Except for the big ol' backpack, he has that and it is really for the Apprentice to carry.

The new Apprentice is second from the left.

Monsters Of The Frozen City
I have been painting up the various critters for random encounters in my Frostgrave games. First up is skeletons, wolves, a boar, a frost giant, and an ape. The skeletons and wolves are not new paint jobs, but I did re-base them to match the rest of my Frostgrave figures. The frost giant was also re-based, and I repainted the skin to a more natural humanoid tone that the previous tree leaf green when she was a faerie giant for a D&D game. The boar and the ape are totally fresh paint jobs.

Skeletons and wolves. The skeletons with shields are the "armoured skeletons" from the rules.

A boar, an ape, and a frost giantess. I think the frost giantess has a real "Alice the Goon" look from the old Popeye cartoons.

New Kingdom Egyptians In Frostgrave
Once upon a time, I painted up ten Egyptian miniatures as a small warband for Song of Blades and Heroes. They were immediately declared Household Egyptian Decor, placed on a shelf, and were forbidden from gaming. Fast forward five years, and she has agreed they can be used for Frostgrave, along with two miniatures I had painted up for her to play D&D with. The only condition was, I could not modify any of the existing miniatures. Chipped paint and unmatched bases not withstanding. Naturally I wanted her to have more options than just archers, men at arms, and a large construct, so I converted and painted some treasure hunters, added some dogs (jackals, really,) a small and medium construct, and a mummy to use as a zombie if she goes that way with her spells. Then I was looking through my big bag o' plastic animals, and she said she wanted a lion in her warband as well when she was looking over my shoulder and saw the big pile o' lions. For reference, her main character in World of Warcraft has a black lion as a pet, so the opportunity to have a black lion in her warband could not be passed up.

Apprentice and Wizard

Archers and Men-At-Arms

Treasure Hunters and Dogs

Mummy (as Zombie) and three different sizes of Constructs

The black Lion (as Summoned Snow Leopard) and a Knight

I should have taken a group shot! Maybe next week...

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

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.

Death Cult of Hueymakt, Part 1

This was going to be a post back in May 2015 on my El Principado de la Comadreja blog. I did all this writing and didn't want to just abandon it, so it is an extra here on Tumbahelada De Punkrabbitt.

Once upon a time, I thought I was going to be playing Brink of Battle, and wanted a new Warband. I was also pursuing a solitaire Glorantha/Runequest project. I decided to combine the two and start a Duck Warband. There are a few figure manufacturers out there that make anthropomorphic ducks, but they are mostly very comical. Not so from Rebel Miniatures, who produces some wickedly mean looking ducks.

So, I ordered the ducks from Rebel during their Spring Sale. The box contained ten of them, broken down as a wizard, two archers, two with clubs, two with spears, and three with sword and shield. They were very clearly meant to be Adventurer ducks and not soldier ducks, as they mostly had backpacks, pouches, and even unlit torches with their gear as well. But I wanted some kick-ass Bronze Age Soldier Durulz to fulfil the visions in my head about Glorantha. Clearly, this was going to take some work.

I have been saving spare parts from my various hobby endeavours for years, and a quick check showed that I had quite a few leftover parts from my plastic Amazons and Persians. In particular, I had hoplite helmets, swords, hoods, spears, and some nice crescent shields. So I attacked my fledgling Durulz with clippers and putty, then attaching all of the necessary pieces to realize my vision of Warrior Ducks.

Now, when it came to painting these guys, I did not want typical duck colors. No white with orange bills, no black with orange bills, no green heads with yellow bills... I wanted duck colors that challenged the stereotypes. So I Googled "duck head" and went through several pages of images. The most unusual that would translate well to my tiny models was brown feathers and a blue-grey bill. A similar search for duck feet revealed that mostly, ducks have orange or yellow feet. How boring! And so, armed with this zoological knowledge, I set out to paint my feathered pinions. Minions. I meant feathered minions.

The three archer ducks (yes, three, Rebel Mike was good to me) got basic green clothing because they are hunters for their village. The warriors I tried to tie together thematically with black greaves, bracers, and shoulder wraps, but I wanted them to have individual colors for the rest of their outfits. The leader was assigned yellow, which is sadly a pain in the ass to paint, but when paired with black is associated with suicide in Freudian psychology. So, he is wearing suicide colors and has a glowing Death rune on his shield (interesting thing about Gloranthan runes, the Death rune is a cross.)

So that is the story of how I became the proud owner of a 28mm duck warband for fantasy wargaming.

Wednesday Night Musings V

Stupid Wind!
Really, all I wanted was to be able to Dullcote my WizarDecember Week 2 entry... 25 mile per hour winds,with gusts up to 35 mph since last Friday has kept me from being able to do so until this afternoon. I haven't had time to do any pictures yet, but since I finished my Week 3 entry today I expect to be doing pictures tomorrow.

Glorantha Again
Last week, I posted a bit about Glorantha and my Ducks and my plans and all that good jazz. As I was looking through my various Warbands, I noticed that first one I did last month would work well as a Gloranthan Warband. It really does have "Lunar" written all over it, doesn't it? Greek helmets, red shields, spears... and a perfect first opponent for my Ducks. Hmmm... now I need to actually finish my Ducks! Really, only a Wizard and Apprentice, but still...

Also, I have started conversion work on my Morokanth Wizard, for painting next week as my WizarDecember entry.

Scenery
How much scenery is too much? I have enough to cover my 2'x2' board twice over, and still have plenty left over to build. I've been a bit busy this week, so no new terrain this week. But here is what's in the cardstock queue...

Not only a LOT of cardstock projects, but arranged in an attractive pattern.

Best Wife Ever
A few years back, I painted up a semi-historical New Kingdom Egyptian warband statted for Song of Blades and Heroes as a gift to my wife, with the cunning plan that she would actually play the game with me. As it turned out, she wanted to put them on display with the rest of her Egyptian display items, and forbade them from being used for gaming. Since we have moved to our smaller home, these miniatures have been living in a box in the closet due to lack of shelf space. In any event, I recently pulled them out and asked her if she would like to try playing a game of Frostgrave with them. She quickly agreed, but did not want me to touch up any of the chipped paint nor re-base the one model that had been for D&D. I want her to have a little more in the way of Warband options than is currently finished, so I have a few more models to finish for her and we will be playing a game!

She and I also  recently did some re-arranging of furniture and re-organizing of the bedroom. In her infinite wisdom and general goodness, she designated a shelving unit to be solely for my hobby stuff. I don't have too many finished miniatures here at the house, so the top shelf is currently DBA and Frostgrave forces, the next two shelves are scenery (at least until I need the shelf space for finished miniatures,) and finally books on the bottom shelf. You can also see some of my model airplanes hanging from the ceiling (another one of her suggestions.)

Best. Wife. Ever.

Future Plans
I've got four Warbands for Frostgrave finished, four more in the works, and I am still rolling hot on wanting to get them done. But I know I am going to want a change of pace soon. I have been feeling the urge to start painting my DBA Persians again, and a local gaming group has invited me to play VSF Colonials with them. So, while this blog will remain Tumbhelada de Punkrabbitt, in January I will be posting occasional forays into other genres. You have been warned!