June in Review

I can't believe June is already over. That means the year is half over too. I'll have a post about that, since goals and planning are as much a part of the hobby for me as anything else.

But I digress, how went June? 

Figure Painting: 

• Got a paint organizer for Father’s Day: 

  

  Absolute game changer. I no longer have to rummage around through a bin of paint bottles. The only paints not in the rack are my craft paints.

   
• Painted three Battle Sisters: 

  

  HMG, Fusion Rifle, and Standard.

  
  
• Painted Frog Mage:

  

  I based the color scheme for the mage on the Painted Dart Frog.

  

  In part due to the sand-colored base, and in part due to the starfish, I think has a real Shore/Florida knickknack shop vibe,

  
  
• Assembled and began painting two GW Space Marine Infernus (as Blood Ravens), four Wargames Atlantic  lizard warriors as tribal warriors, four Wargames Atlantic lizards using the gasmask heads and AK-ish rifles (to field as OPR Saurian Starhost) kitted out with additional gear from the Wargames Atlantic German and French WW1 sprues, and two GW Sisters Repentia:

  

  The rangers were started last month. Just very undecided about what the various bits are and what colors to paint.

  

  Close up of Saurian Starhost before priming. The officer's gun is from a WW1 German. It's a clunky hand swap - their arms aren't the same width, but close enough! Also, he has binoculars, but he clearly can't use them - so I just made up a story about how they are a trophy.

  
  
• Although it's not painting, I discovered that displaying some of my 54mm figures in little groupings around my apartment brings me joy:

  

  Seriously, I could look at that shelf for hours.

 Gaming:

• Wrote up a house rule set for element-based fantasy games - it's a Morschauser Shock meets HoTT mashup, for playing One Hour Wargame scenarios, without having to track hits at all. 
• Played a bunch of my fantasy modified Morschauser and the above mash up rules. Must have been a good 7 or 8 games. (no pictures, sorry)
• Joined a Discord group for One Page Rules and found my way to a group specific to my area. They play weekly on a night I can't do, but I've been able to instigate two Saturday afternoon meetups.
• I've played five games of Grim Dark Future:Firefight against another human as a result of those meetups(we got in three games the first time, two the second). My win-loss ratio points to an issue with command (one win, three losses, one draw) but it's a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again. 

• 

  Table from the 2nd meetup. My opponent supplied the terrain. In this game, it's my Plague Disciples vs ...

  

  ORKVADER!!! Also the Orkeror and Stormtrooper Orcs (he printed them, but you can buy them from people on Etsy if, like me, you don't have a 3D printer).

  
  
• Played two solo Grimdark Future: Firefight games to prepare for the above and refresh my understanding of some of the special rules:
•  

  

  I plan to make additional multi-level ruins, some walkways to connect them, and finally paint those craters! Bare wood works well enough as sand at home, but I will need a larger cloth/mat if I'm going to supply terrain for meetups. 4x4 is the standard for Firefight, and my sand colored felt is 3x3.

  

  Sisters special weapons advance using cover.

  

  Alien Hive shooter grunts do the same.

  

  Ambush! Alien Hive swarm appears behind the caster and make a nuisance of themselves.

  

  End game. Right after this, the Sisters took out the grunt that would have contested the final objective, giving the Sisters a win.

Terrain:

• Made a 2nd two-floor ruin, some additional walls and such.
• Painted most of my Mantic Industrial Scatter Terrain

  

  I just really like how rusty these luck.

  
  

  

  These too!

  
  

  

  Not much to say about this. It took less than 5 minutes: Burnt Umber (ground) and Gunmetal (wall), then dry brushed Desert Sand (ground) and Autumn Leaves for the rust.

RPG:

• Session 2 of my Episodic Basic Fantasy RPG campaign - The Purple Worm Graveyard. The party survived and made it out with four loads of the fabeled ivory. Story-wise, they are going back to town and next session - probably early August due to vacations - will be some admin (leveling up and shopping) and a short 5-Room Dungeon model adventure and then they'll pick the next module/adventure they want to try.

Weeding:

• Weeded out a lot of old brushes, paints, and other hobby related supplies, that were duplicates,no longer useful (dried paint for example), or had not been touched in years, if ever.
• Weeded out some hex and counter games.
• Weeded out some history books.
• Weeded out a bunch of terrain that was damaged, no longer suited to my needs,etc.
• Weeded out a bunch of painted and bare plastic 54mm figures and 1/72 figures.

 Acquisitions:

• 40K 10th ed. Starter Box - I got it for a delightfully reasonable price (I did a quick search and found I got it lower than anyone advertises, even Amazon) with the Make an Offer feature on eBay. I'll be able to fill my Alien Hive and Battle Brothers forces out to about 1800 points each. An APC for the Battle Brothers and a unit of Warriors for the Alien Hive and they'll both be at 2000 points for full games of Grim Dark Future.
• 3D print Repentia type - For my Blessed Sisters, she will serve as a High Sister armed with a two-handed chain sword - and as she's not GW, she'll be easy to ID.  I like the idea that the Fanatic leader would be at the tip of the spear, swinging her sword and cutting down heretics, not behind the fighters like some kind of NKVD officer, using whips to drive them forward. Of course, I have a Repentia Superior model already and when I buy a box of Repentia, I'll have a second one. They'll see use in Firefight, but probably not in the full army. 
• Some fancy paints (Citadel, Army Painter) and a small Army Painter dry brush. The paints were to replenish my dwindling paints needed for the above 10th ed. box, but primarily they were purchased to support the shop where I played GD:FF. Small price to pay for their hospitality (tables are free to use for gaming, purchasing something is just courteous).

Phew!

I'll be traveling most of July, so I expect that, with the exception of finishing the figures already in progress and possibly sitting in on a friend's D&D game, gaming activity will be substantially less!

May in Review

May saw a surprising increase in not only the number of games played, but I even picked up a paint brush!

Rules played in May:

1. Sword Weirdos 
2. My own modified version(s) of OHSW for melee heavy fantasy (so many cards to draw)
3. My own Sword Weirdos Lite
4. Portable Wargame-ish Ancients (using fantasy figures)
5. OHW Ancient/Dark Ages/Medieval for fantasy
6. My modified Morschauser Shock Period rules for fantasy
   

That's a lot of fantasy.

And it all owes to the arrival of my old school GW Black Orcs "regiment" (10 seems more like a company to me) which, as they provide an opponent for my lizards, sparked a renewed interest in figure gaming. A 24" square playing area, figures mounted 2 to a 3"x 2" rectangle, borrowing some orcs and goblins from my RPG minis to pad out the Orc army, and I was off to the races playing One Hour Wargames scenarios, using rules 4, 5, and 6 above.

Eventually I settled on number 6 as my preferred option for these "battle" sized games.

And there were many of them, but I took pictures only during a few:

Quite a mix here - SCS Direct, Reaper Bones, Reaper Dark Heaven, Games Workshop, and some random toy manufacturer.

Close up of the Black Orcs - GW metal sculpt. eBay purchase - painted by previous owner. I love them.

Reaper orcs in the foreground, GW orks in the middle.

The standard is so orc, it hurts!

The games themselves have been great fun and full of drama, but also the aesthetics of the games just make me happy. They remind me of Maudlin Jack Tar's games on Projects & Procrastinations and the potter bench games (i think that's what it's called) of Alan of the Duchy of Tradgardland, both of whom put on clean, uncluttered-looking games in small spaces. 

A thought on the Morschauser rules: Although the rules are simple, I find I am able to accommodate a variety of troop types, without adding innumerable special rules. Using One Hour Wargames as my reference, I decided "warband" type troops could be represented by increased movement, a front melee value of 4, with a rear melee of 1 (a combination Morschauser does not account for), for example. 

Admittedly, this can result in some imbalance when a force consisting mostly of archers (front 2/rear 1, long range missiles) and skirmishers (front 3/rear 1, short range missiles) run into a force consisting mostly of heavy infantry (front 4/rear 2), but I'm not worried about that. I play each army to their strengths and it works out in play.

The lizards are fast moving, light troops (a mix of skirmish, archers, and warband), with the possibility of long-range attacks and some tough, dangerous dinos (mostly treated as heavy cavalry with more strength points) in support. The Orc army is primarily slow-moving heavy infantry, supported with some warband and light infantry, and occasionally some dire wolves (with goblin handlers) (front 5, rear 3, but speed in the skirmisher/light infantry range).

I imagine it isn't too dissimilar to Celts vs Romans.

The joy of these games has led to a sudden burst in painting enthusiasm - more goblins to fill out the orc army, but also, additional undead to both bring up my RPG collection and to form a whole new army to field.  

Ever since I was a kid and had a set of D&D monster cards, I've thought goblins should be yellow/gold in color. You can see what I mean here: https://rollforcombat.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/27-DD-Monster-Cards-3.jpg

Homage to Spiderman's enemy, the Green Goblin.

Smurf-lins. I crack myself up.

Oh yeah! 54mm figures! I remember I used to paint a lot of them! These will function as skeletal giants.

Brains!

I think this is the Reaper mascot. I'm using this figure as the 2nd figure on the undead general's stand.

Just a bunch of giant rats. In addition to being super common for fantasy RPG adventures, I'm them as light cavalry for the undead army for now.

Some stuff just for RPGs:

Almost as ubiquitous as giant rats, large/giant/huge spiders.

I think I have a 2nd dwarf figure - if I paint it, I can field a base of Dwarves as allies for humans.

Continuing the superhero motif - his snarl and oversized muscles reminded me of the incredible Hulk.

And back to the wargaming, the human general has some furry friends:

I've had all three figures sitting in the pile of shame for well over 10 years, I think. Better late than never.

So now I have four forces that I can use. With the huge benefit that all figures can serve double-duty for RPGs.

Speaking of ....

We kicked off our Episodic Campaign in May, with the party adventuring to the Halfling House - an abandoned halfling farmstead deep in the woods. 

The party consisted of:

• Macho Man Randy Savage  (1st lvl. Barbarian with Monk quasi class)
• Morticia (1st lvl. Necromancer)
• The Chaplin (1st lvl, Paladin - playing as an anti-paladin - with Confessor quasi class)
• Clarence (gnome, 1st lvl Scout with Barbarian quasi class)
• Mustard (1st lvl Necromancer with Monk quasi class)

Quasi-classes are a Basic Fantasy RPG optional thing. They are sort of like templates that can be applied to certain other classes (I wave all limits like that though and let them apply whatever they want to whatever they want) to create particular kinds of characters - Archer" is a quasi-class for example. So you could take Thief as your base class, and apply Archer, and voila! Robin Hood.

Unlike multi-class, they just add XP required to advance to the character's base class, rather than splitting XP between two classes.

The entire party survived their first outing, although a TPK was a real possibility when they were attacked by a bunch of stirges and three of the five went down with 0 HP. We're playing with the "death save" option a la 5e, so that helped them out quite a bit in that fight.

They cleared the whole place of monsters and looted all the treasure, but they want to come back with a cart for the furniture, which is worth a few hundred gold, before proceeding to The Purple Worm Graveyard. Of course, if they're returning to a site, there's a greater than zero percent chance that something will have opportunistically moved in during their absence and/or they will be attacked on the way in or out.

Macho Man is now being followed by a giggling ghost child (it's not part of the adventure, it was just a thing i added to an empty room and he befriended it by returning its doll, found in a tree house. The doll is also something I added just to add some mystery to the tree house.) This is the kind of thing I love as a GM, and why I don't prep stories or plots. I like it to emerge at the table.

The party was curious about the intended recipient of some letters they found (an actual part of the adventure but with no intended significance that I'm aware of) and though he letters are decades old if not older, I'm going to turn the recipient into a recurring thread that I'll plant in the other adventures they go on, to help bring the game world to life. 

If the players express interest in something, I try to reward them for it.

So, while I'm not writing up adventures or building dungeons for this campaign, it's already taking on a life of its own beyond the pre-written adventures.

Finally, I have been jonesing to get my 40K figures on the table for some One Hour Skirmish Wargames, Space Weirdos, Planet 28, etc. but I really wanted suitable terrain that isn't just me digging through my son's old toys (actually, strike that...i love his old toys, but I want to repaint them to be more suitable for my vision. When he goes off to college in a few years maybe :D )

Enter "poorhammer" as it's called by some - most of us know it as DIY scenery and terrain. 

Cardboard, cereal boxes, card stock, sprue cuttings, canvas knitting mesh etc. I decided on a ruined/abandoned industrial-type site, rather than Grim Dark Gothic ruins, as the latter has a very specific look that I do not feel I could do justice with my "measure 30x-cut myself" crafting ability. 

Also, an industrial site seems to me to be more "universal" - good for battling troops but also for ragtag bands of scavengers and smugglers. Possibly even a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

 Here's where it stands as of now:

This was the first piece, and I sort of fumbled along with trial and error. It was supposed to be a proof of concept, and I ended up really liking it.

 

Occupied!

"Sheet metal" from the lining inside a can of Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies. This might be my favorite - works as an objective to capture, but also provides cover, and adds to the atmosphere. 

Clearly a piece of sprue, but it reminded me of an old antenna.

I love how corroded and rusted this looks. The texture of the corroded area was a happy accident of repeated hot glue mishaps.

The other side. I pictured this as having been a converted shipping container or makeshift foreperson's office

Oops! Missed aging the copper pipes!

This is the entire lining inside a can of Pirouette cookies. I was really sloppy gluing the dop disc to the cylinder, but I like how it made the rim look ragged and corroded once the paint was added. Another happy accident!

The aftermath (or as I like to say, "Genius at work!":

I did make a purchase on eBay of some scatter terrain to supplement my hand-made efforts. 

I picked up Mantic's Terrain Crate: Industrial Scatter Terrain to be precise. The pieces look great, and will add visual variety, act as objective markers, and provide substantial amounts of light cover. 

Finally, because one of my 2025 goals is to do more social gaming - well more social things generally even:

I joined the One Page Rules Discord server and once there was pointed to a group in North GA that meets for games regularly. They play at a game store a bit far away for their regular weeknight gaming - 30-90 minutes depending on traffic (Atlanta traffic is like that). Never mind that it's a night I can almost never make because I typically have a guitar student that night, but a bunch are open to weekend gaming with advance notice. 

So, I'm trying to arrange a meetup for mid-June. Wish me luck!

Ok, finally (this time for real), on May 4th a distortion pedal that I wanted way back in 2017, and which was discontinued, returned for a single day, and one now resides on my pedal board:

It's a good basic distortion - nothing fancy. I could have purchased cheaper used Boss DS-1 or something, but R5-D4! 

Until next month!