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

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.