Graveyard Shift - Strange Aeons AAR

Last week, I decided I needed a break from Kings of War, and instead played a few games of Strange Aeons with Carl and Kevyn using the 2nd Edition demo kit. 

Carl and I played the first game, and Carl and Kevyn played the second. The last game, between Kevyn and I, was probably the one where we had the strongest grasp on the rules, so I decided to take pictures then. 

Apologies for the unpainted terrain and miniatures. The recent weather hasn't been conducive to getting any priming/painting done. 

The table setup was the same for all three games. The Threshold agents and the Lurkers came on the short table edges and the objective was to fight until the last enemy was dead.

The Threshold agents consisted of: 

James Blackwood (Character) - Tommy Gun, .45 Pistol, Cleaver

Hazel Ashton (Agent) - Double-Barreled Shotgun, Knife

Howard Philip (Civilian) - .22 Pistol, Knife

And on the Lurker side:
Cult Leader - Doubled Barreled Shotgun, Cleaver
Cultist - .22 Pistol
Cultist - Knife
Fishman

Having realized just how powerful the Fishman could be (he's a monster in close combat, and can cause humans to go insane just by standing next to them), James and Howard focused their fire on the shambling creature. The briny-smelling body quickly collapsed to the floor, riddled with bullet holes.

Things didn't go nearly as well for Hazel. She had tried moving up behind one of the smaller tombs to ready her shotgun for when the Lurkers got closer.

Suddenly, the knife-wielding Cultist appeared at her side and shanked her before she could let out a cry of alarm.

The fearless Agent Blackwood leaped over the tombstones and fired two bursts from his Tommy Gun on automatic at the pistol-armed Cultist and the Cult Leader.

The gunfire easily cut down the hapless cultist, but went right over the head of the diminutive Leader!

A malicious smile on his face, the Leader pulled one trigger on his Double-Barreled Shotgun, hitting James and putting him on his back.

And the second barrel left a red smear on the damp grass of the graveyard's grounds.

Too far away to realize that both of the Threshold agents assigned to this mission were dead, Howard took aim at the last Cultist, and put him down.

Emboldened by his own actions, H.P. decided to then charge the Cult Leader, thinking he could handled the dwarf.

But the civilian went down with a cleaver in his head. The Lurkers (what remained of them, anyway) survived to perform whatever dark ritual that brought them to the graveyard in the first place.

Were this a real campaign for Strange Aeons, now would be the point at which we'd figure out what injuries/rewards the Threshold agents would get (probably not much on the latter, and a whole lot of the former!).

Strange Aeons is definitely a bloody, fast game, with humans able to die very quickly, especially if they've gone insane and have either fallen to the ground or panicked and fled.

I'm hoping that we'll see more releases for the game in the future.

Painting Update - Wargods of Aegyptus, Guild Ball, European Village

Here's another update from the painting table. 

I completed another unit from my Wargods of Aegyptus project. 

This is technically an 11-strong unit of Asar Warriors with hand weapons, shields, and medium armor. The unit Champion, which is bought independently, is equipped in the same way and is placed in between the Musician and the Standard Bearer.

This is the second unit in my small warband of Dispossessed (followers of Osiris and Isis) for Wargods. I know just have to paint the characters - the Harbinger, Hero, Master of Words, and Priestess of Isis - and that'll be the core done. From there, I'll move onto some units and characters from other races. Probably Tethru and Sebeki.

I'm also pretty pleased with the blue/bronze color scheme. I've been considering doing the same for the other races, but decided against it. I think it'll look better if each race has their own scheme. For the Tethru, I'm thinking of using gold and purple, and green and tan for the Sebeki.

I also worked on my Union team for Guild Ball. Including Mist, this puts me at seven Union players - just shy of the eight player limit for tournaments. I'm going to be using this team for the foreseeable future, as I'm planning on running them in a tournament later in April.

One of these players - Decimate, on the right in the back row - can play for the Masons, so that gives me more options for my original team. Gutter, Fangtooth, and Rage (front-left, back-left, and back-middle, respectively) can't play for the Masons. They can, however, all play for the Brewers, as can Hemlocke, the other Union player I'm considering picking up as my eighth. I wonder if that's a sign as to what my third Guild Ball team should be, sometime in the future...

When I put up my blog post about painting Mist, I complained about the quality of the paints I used - Privateer Press' "Beaten Purple" and Citadel's Blood Red. To replace these, I used Vallejo's Game Model "Hexed Lichen" and Citadel's "Wazdakka Red." While the Hexed Lichen is great, I wouldn't want to use Wazdakka Red any more than necessary.

Additionally; back in August of last year, I talked about a few buildings I was working on for some WWII terrain. While other projects have taken up most of my painting time, I have been working on the buildings on and off, and finally managed to finish them.

The fence came together nicely, with some simple painting and washes.

The miscasting is still noticeable on some pieces, however. But it's easy to miss at arm's length.

The Barn House looks great, although I did skip painting the interior.

The same goes for the battle-damaged Continental House.

And a Western European Barn. 

These buildings ended up being pretty great, and I'm looking into picking up at least the rest of the buildings in the series, either whole or battle-damaged. This comes at the cost of realizing that the Battlefront building I bought is far bigger than the MkIV buildings - it's so large, I need to remove the top floor just to get in into scale!

Local Trouble - Heroes of the Aturi Cluster AAR

There's been some interest in trying out the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign for X-Wing. Kevyn had the chance to try out the rules solo during the recent blizzard, and had some pretty positive things to say about it. So last week he set up the introductory scenario.

Rebel Command: "Welcome to the Outer Rim, pilots. Our convoy is currently en route to a hidden Rebel Base in the Parmel Sector, and you'll be on escort duty until we arrive.  

We've picked up a group of enemy signals in the nearby asteroid field; likely an Imperial patrol. Intercept these those ships, and keep them away from the convoy until we can execute a hyperspace jump to ensure our base remains hidden. 

Good luck!"

Raider Squadron

Raider One: X-Wing

Pilot: Kevyn

Callsign: Catalyst

Raider Two: Y-Wing

Pilot: Brian

Callsign: Brick

Raider One: "Heads up, Two; I've got three Eyeballs coming in fast."

Raider Two: "I seem 'em, One. Shields up and engines hot."

Raider One: "I'll take the two on the right."

Raider Two: "Leaves one for me. Hey, that one Eyeball's kinda funny looking..."

Raider Two: "One, I've got another guest at this party! And my shields are taking hits from these damn rocks!" 

Raider One: "Keep flying, Brick. I'll handle my Imp and get back over to you."

Raider Two: "Squint! Cat, you've got a Squint in your six!"

Raider One: "Damn! Command, we're going to need some backup here. We've got more Imperials than we can handle."

Raider One: "How're you doing, Two? I've got two Eyeballs wrapped up."

Raider Two: "I've gotten out of the fire. Going after the Squint."

Raider Two: "Who put all these rocks in the way?!"

Raider One: "Two, we've got another Tie coming in."

Raider Two: "I'm already up to my eyeballs in Eyeballs here, Cat!"

Raider Two: "In the clear!"

Raider One: "Careful, Brick. You've got a furball going on behind you. Don't get caught up in that."

Raider Two: "Good shooting, One! Scratch one Eyeball."

Raider One: "Two, you've got two Imps on you. Get out of there!"

Raider Two: "I can't! Too many rocks! I can't shak-AAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!"

Raider One: "Two? Two?!"

Rebel Command: "Brick's down, Catalyst. Reinforcements are on the way."

Raider One: "Just need to keep them off of me..."

Raider One: "Ha! One more Eyeball down!"

Sword One: "Raider, this is Sword. Get out of here - we'll take care of the rest of these Imperials."

Rebel Command: "Great work pilots! Our convoy is safe from harm. Now we can begun operation against the Empire in this star system. 

Raider One, we've homed in on Raider Two's emergency beacon. We'll pick him up and bring him back to base."

So, Kevyn managed to score 4 experience points over the course of the game, while I lost the Munitions Failsafe modification I had bought in the hopes of getting some torpedoes. Oh well - there's always next time!

Painting Update - Kings of War, Guildball

As before, I'm continuing to work on my Kings of War project. 

I finished four bases of swordsmen, enough to combine into two Regiments or a single Horde in the Kingdoms of Men list.

Alternatively, these can be used as the back half of Citizen Militia units in the League of Rhordia list. The front half will be occupied by Halberdiers, as the Citizen Militia have the Crushing Strength (1) rule. These Halberdiers are assembled and sticky-tacked to their bases, so they're the next ones on the list that need to be worked on.

I should note that I actually had to re-base these models, along with the Arquebusier/Musket Block units shown previously. I had thought that the models would be able to withstand handling glued down only to the spackle that makes up the top layer of the base. That turned out to be a big mistake, as only after a couple games, many of the miniatures were tearing free.

The solution was to purposefully rip the miniatures from the base, cut off the hardened glue and trapped flocking, and then drilled down to the plastic underneath the exposed spackle. Then I glued the miniature back down - a much stronger bond formed with the plastic of the base - and touched up the base so that no white was showing.

Although time intensive, I think it worked pretty well.

After acquiring Mist after Snow Ball and playing him in a game (10-12 against Kevyn's Alchemists; Mist did score a goal, however), I painted him over the past weekend.

I'm not totally happy with the paint job - the Citadel Blood Red and the P3 Beaten Purple don't have enough pigment for my taste. So I'll look into replacing them with Vallejo equivalents (Vermilion and Royal Purple, respectively).

This scheme is what I plan on using for my Union. Boring, I know, but it works!

Painting Update - Guild Ball Terrain

My recent experience with terrain in Guild Ball really has me fired up to get some of my own terrain for use with the local players. So, after making sure I knew what the official terrain rules were, I headed out to one of the local craft stores to peruse their shelves and see what I could find. 

I found a baggie of thin wooden shapes - the last one! - and found, after some measuring, that the circles were perfect for what I needed. This gave me four 4.5" circles, four 2.5" circles, and six 2" circles. That's enough to cover two Guild Ball pitches in the maximum allowed amount of terrain (seven pieces). 

So, I planned to have:

1 Forest (restricted to one, maximum 6" area)

3 Rough Ground (maximum 6" area)

1 Barrier (restricted to one, maximum 3" area)

3 Fast Ground (maximum 3" area)

6 Obstacles (maximum 2" area)

The Barrier started pretty simply, with blocks of sticky-tack glued together to form a wall. Mist is here to show the height.

In the next step, I coated the sticky-tack with Citadel's gloss varnish. As the varnish dried, it hardened, making the sticky-tack less malleable. The base was then covered in spackle.

Here's the result after painting, basing, and varnishing. It's not perfect, but it'll work. The sticky-tack has also become much less malleable during the process.

The Rough Ground each had pieces of styrofoam glued down.

And then spackle was applied. I was aiming to show that there's uneven ground in these terrain pieces, while still allowing models to be places anywhere without falling over.

I did take a risk while priming these, knowing that the spray primer I was using wasn't water-based. The resulting melting, however, gave the styrofoam a much more natural look with less sharp edges.

For the Forest, I decided I could spare some trees from my collection, and added these to the base. They won't be glued down, however, so that way the trees can be removed in case a model needs to move into that particular section of the terrain. 

The layer of spackle went on around the trees, leaving holes where they would go afterwards.

Some painting, flocking, and varnishing later, the trees still fit in place!

The Fast Ground pieces were probably the easiest to get ready. They just needed a layer of spackle to start.

And to finish, they were painted, washed, and then covered in a layer of Citadel's gloss varnish (I've used that varnish more times in this project than I had in the past year).

I actually forgot to take mid-build pictures of the Obstacles, but here's the end result - cubes painted to look like crates, and thread spools that (hopefully) look like barrels.

And here's the final result. Compared to the original image, I'd say it's a half-decent turn out for a couple nights worth of work.

Now I can finally get back to painting miniatures.