Better Loot Than Never...

Hello again.

Doesn't time fly when you get back into your work schedule and, as the annual peak period of the year builds, lose all track of time?

It has been almost two weeks since the Chillcon show in Derby, back on 22nd September. I was in two minds whether or not to go. I checked out the traders and, to be honest, whilst there were some gems, there were others I had not heard of or, on the face of things, was unlikely to be particularly interested in. Oathsworn would be there and there stuff is great, but I did have that feeling that I had probably done enough Burrows & Badgers stuff for now. Colonel Bill would be there too and there second hand options are always worth a look to find those hidden gems. Laser Cut Architect could tempt me with some more "Necromunda"-esque MDF terrain, but I have not painted a gang or built the stuff I have already yet. Crooked Dice were there and I had seen mention of a "Grandville" line of figures in honour of the graphic novels by Bryan Talbot, so I fancied a look at that. They might even convince me to add more to my B&B stuff. But there did not appear to be any real draw for me.

Of course, I did venture along to Derby and, in addition to what I had seen advertised, was pleasantly surprised to find Warlord there with a very full range and others too. And, as always, there was plenty to tempt me. Why would I doubt there would be? I think because, not having played anything for months and with my work/ life balance all out of kilter for a while now, I am struggling to get into anything. Quite simply, however, games or no games, time or no time, I realised again just what this hobby does for me, the release painting even a couple of miniatures provides.

So, where did I spend my hard-earned money?

Read on...

I did see this advertised and it appealed on a number of levels. To top it off, I got this for £31!!! It retails for £40!!! It ticks a number of boxes - limited figure requirement, an interesting period of history, expandable to other armies and not just Romans and Celts, simple rules. Only around a sixth of the rulebook is rules, the rest being scenarios, background, etc. I look forward to trying this rules set out and painting a few Celts. I would like to do some Roman Civil War stuff I think - Celts, Spanish, Numidians, Germans and Romans all freely mixed across the two "Roman" armies.
Thanks to "Mighty Lancer" game for this bargain!!!

I also had my eye on "A Dark And Bloody Ground", buying this from Warlord so I could get the "free" figure - a Woodland Indian peering over a large rock. This period is one for which I have some forces and was the subject of the last game I took out on the road at the Barrage show last year. I am still part way through painting the 35th Foot! The "Age Of Caesar" book I bought for some further background for "SPQR" really and the "free" figure is a Roman officer, so usable for that too.

I saw this on Nephew Nick's "Sleeping Dragon Hobby Shop" stand and immediately saw some potential for old mine works in my "Burrows & Badgers" games.

From "Laser Cut Architect" I acquired these sets to add some buildings to either my "Strontium Dog" set up or for "Necromunda"

Nephew Nick supplied this kit for two Biohazard tanks and, with two in the pack, it will be one each for "Strontium Dog" and "Necromunda". The other kit is a two tier medical block which will have to feature in one or the other game.

Pretensions towards using my Ancient Indians as a Great Kingdom in "SAGA: Age of Magic" saw me buy this figure from "Crooked Dice". Not cheap but, I am sure you will agree, very suitable for a fantasy Indian army!

These two "Crooked Dice" figures I had seen advertised and fancied as a crime-fighting duo for Scarsburgh, my fictional Burrows & Badgers town. "LeBrock" is a badger, but is rather smaller than the Oathsworn versions, so he will be painted as some other type of animal. "Ratzi" will do nicely as a rat, however! So, I give you Hemlock Holmes and Dr. John Ratson.

 A little, light, flavoursome reading from Oathsworn Miniatures is this small collection of newspaper-style articles and titbits. Having done a campaign newsletter or two in the past, I really appreciate this sort of thing.

Finally, I could not resist adding a few extras to my Burrows & Badgers collection. The main set will happily form part of my "Molegrew Haulage" company from the dockside area of Scarsburgh and you can never have too many wagons. The two ladies to the right I see as proprietrixes for a high-class/ lowlife nightclub in downtown Scarsburgh, with the odd talon or claw in the criminal underbelly of the town. The archer and fox figures will fit pretty much anywhere in my existing stuff.

So, a rewarding, if mildly expensive, visit and a most enjoyable one. How dare I think going to a show was not worth it!

G

Exclusive Residential Development

Hello again,

Having recently finished the figures from "The Good, The Bad and The Mutie", the starter set for Strontium Dog, published by Warlord Games/ Rebellion, it was high time I set to on the terrain that comes with the set too. I have some experience with MDF buildings, so was not concerned about the usual things you see on social media about the MDF soaking up paint, warping and so on. Thus, "set to" I have done!

In the set, you get a basic dwelling-cum-office, a generator and windmill to accompany the dwelling-cum-office, an observation tower and four solar panels, all in an easy-to-build mix of MDF and card. They are form the Sarissa Precision range of kits, which cover various eras and locales, and the wider range includes several other suitable kits in what is akin to their post-apocalyptic range. I will be adding a few in due course.

So, I sprayed on an undercoat, selected Army Painter Green as my basecoat and then weathered and highlighted up to taste. I wanted a dusty, arid environment for "Scum's World", my fictional planet on which to stage my SD games, so all effects and basing considerations were built around this. I am pretty happy with the results, but have a look and see what you think. All I need to do now is actually make some arid terrain tiles, or at least acquire a suitable cloth or something, as I have no other arid/ desert terrain on which to plonk these kits!

G

The base is 3mm MDF, not supplied with the kit but sourced from my stash. The texturing is small grade model railway ballast stuck down with PVA glue, painted and sparsely flocked.

I glazed the windows to give this palatial abode something like a civilised feel. The building may be from a post-apocalyptic range, but I did not want that for this use.

Four solar panels should be more than enough for the needs of a simple "shack".

I guess the watchtower is to look out for supply vehicles, dust storms, hostiles and anything else the occupants might desire/ fear.

New Loot

Hello again.

I had pondered for some time whether I was going to get the second edition of SAGA, having enjoyed the first one so much. I read reviews in magazines of what changes had occurred within the rules, but nothing really stood out. I saw the promises of various world books to come, with particular interest in the Age of Samurai option, as I felt that was a way to get some oriental stuff under my belt, but left it at that.

But then came "Age of Magic".

What was this? Did I want to spend £30 on another book, knowing I would also need the new rulebook to go with it? Did I want yet more faction dice, not to mention the magic dice to go with it?

Well, it turns out, yes I did!

The rules, the "Age of Magic" supplement and some Magic dice. I certainly hope they are "magic" when I come to roll them!

A set of each of the two faction dice, the magic dice again and some spell cards for those like me whose memory is not what it once was...

So, why did I succumb? Well, I blame Wargames Illustrated magazine. They ran a piece on this game a couple of months back and I was hooked.

• Being the owner of many fantasy figures, many of which are ready to go on the table any time soon, being painted and all, I quickly realised the outlay on this game would be limited to the rule books and dice if I wanted it to be.
• It was SAGA, right, so I was very likely to enjoy my games, just like I used to when thrashing Vikings and the like.
• It was easily and quickly expandable.
• It certainly looked the part from what I had read and seen in the aforementioned article.
• Within the six archetypal fantasy forces outlined in the book, there was massive flexibility to be able to create what you wanted to create, but sensibly bound by certain faction rules and constraints.

All good reasons, I think.

But, me being me, my thoughts turned to not just what I had, but what else I wanted.

I have a load of stuff I do not use, painted and unpainted. Hmm.

Those Ancient Indians would make a great "Great Kingdoms" force, especially with a multi-armed statue for some monstrous clout and perhaps a shape-shifting Rakhshasa or two. For "Great Kingdoms", think High Elves/ Empire/ Gondor.

Those Ancient Chinese would also make a suitable "Great Kingdoms" choice, especially with the addition of a Chinese dragon in the Monster category. The book's specialist option of "The Theocracy of Qwan T'ang" also fits well, but from the "Otherworld" faction, equipped with demon weapons and armour. Or perhaps I can have a terracotta warriors vibe with my monsters and creatures.

The "Undead Legions" specialist option of "The Royal Dynasty of Nephren-Ka" is a dead ringer (pardon the pun) for my once beloved Tomb Kings.

My Orcs fit neatly into "The Horde".

My Chaos forces can be split quite simply, with daemons going "Otherworld" and Chaos-worshipping humans going either Great Kingdoms, Horde if I make them hairy barbarian types or Otherworld too.

And that is before I drag the dwarves out of storage, the Skaven likewise, or think about anything else...

Highly recommended if you want some quick and easy fantasy games. The variety provided by the usual SAGA battle board system, together with the addition of a magic system allowing for the complexity of different spells cast at different power levels and you have a wealth of options. And who would not want to make some weird terrain to go with your imaginative use of old and tired forces?

Go for it!

G

"Kill the SD scum!"

Hello again.

What naughty, aggressive language the bad guys in Strontium Dog use! The Strontium Dogs only want to take them, dead or alive, to face the justice they deserve for their various crimes. Why get so heated about it?

Max Bubba and his gang come in the starter set "The Good, The Bad and The Mutie", so are the subject of my first set of recognisable criminals for the game. Having painted up Johnny Alpha and his two associates from the set, it was only right and proper that his opposition got the next nod. In short, with the terrain from the same set I have built and mostly completed, with photos to follow soon, I am almost ready for some SD action!!! The hardest part of the whole thing will be to get a couple of like-minded people in the same room at the same time to actually get a game in!

From the left of the photo, we have Skull, Impetigo Jones, Low-down O'Phee, Max Bubba and Brute Mosley.

Max Bubba, his indistinct features marking him out as a mutant.

The unfortunate Impetigo Jones. Unfortunate? Well, the clue is in the name...

Skull

Brute Mosley

Low-down O'Phee

 

 

And that is Max Bubba and his gang. I fully intend to get some more figures from the range, courtesy of Warlord Games, especially Middenface McNulty, who must be my favourite-named comic strip character ever! He is also someone I remember from all those years ago when I first encountered Johnny Alpha and the Strontium Dog concept in "Star Lords" comic.

 

Now to paint the remaining parts of the boxed set, build some terrain boards and crack on with something more/ different.

 

G

Strontium Dogs

Hello again.

I bought "The Good, The Bad & The Mutie" boxed set from Asgard Games on Walsall last year, fan as I was all those years ago in the late 1970's when a certain Johnny Alpha first appeared in a comic and introduced the world to the Strontium Dogs, mutant bounty hunters risking life and limb to take down the nefarious scum of the universe. Now, this was quite a lucky find, as I was never really one for comics, but I loved this strip the moment I saw it and picked it up again several years later when I happened upon an collected anthology or three in a well-known book store.

The aforementioned boxed set, available from the prolific Warlord Games, has a number of sets associated with it, so you can build up your cast of characters from various figures from within the strip over its long lifetime to date, both goodies and baddies. One of the attractions of the strip is that it is not always certain who is who in a universe of dark people and darker deeds...

The boxed set comes with three goodies (featured here), five baddies (to be featured soon, as I have painted them all), a series of cards and tokens used within the "Strontium Dog" game and some MDF terrain, most of which I built today. I hope my forthcoming week off work will see at least some of it painted, along with some other bits I bought off Ainsty years ago but never got around to. Cue Scumm's World, an arid, desolate, lawless place inhabited by hard men, harder women and whatever else the universe throws up, clawing an existence from an unforgiving rock that is home to the odd environmentalists nightmare (Ainsty's Toxicana range, bits of which I also purchased years ago!), some secret, corporation or government stuff long since forgotten (cue those old mutant apes I picked up cheaply, together with the odd sci-fi release from long ago), some disgruntled alien natives (I have to get those K'Hiff out some time!) and a storyline or two.

I need more games!

The Goodies.

Johnny Alpha, whose skills are the best in the game. Great shot, mutant eyes that enable him to see through rock and other matter and a range of kit tailor-made to give some bad guys an issue or two.

Wulf Sternhammer, close combat monster and as strong as an ox.

The Gronk. A brilliant medic. Even better at fainting when the going gets a tad stressful, like all his kind!

 

 

All I need now is to finish that terrain off, build myself some desert game boards, get some reinforcements to add to my SD numbers and get a few games in.

 

 

This is also one of my various boxed games nearly done in its starter format. Just the other 7/ 8/ 9/ ? to do and I will have called it all money well spent!!! I cannot decide which one should be next. I want to do "Blood Red Skies", but I also want to do "Cruel Seas". Then there is "Carnevale", but I also have all the "Necromunda" gangs to crack on with. And my 10mm Crimean War is not going to paint itself, nor is my Arab Conquest stuff. Hm.

 

G

What is red, ...

...doesn't suffer fools gladly, has an incendiary love interest, has horns he has to keep filed down to stumps and is supposed to be a secret?

HELLBOY, of course!!!

Hello again.

As part of my frenzy of boxed game purchasing, I simply could not resist something I found lying around in the "Board in Brum" shop in sunny Walsall recently.

This is a side on view of the box, which is seven inches deep!

A cornucopia of content.

 I was "lucky" enough to find an open example of the game at the aforementioned "Board in Brum", which meant I could examine the contents. There are over 120 figures in the box!!! These range from a couple of different versions of Hellboy himself to his various companions to Nazia to monsters of different sorts and even a turkey! I can only assume that is for some sort of Christmas game based in the old cartoon series, "Stop the Pigeon!", (i.e. "Stop the Turkey!") but I may be wrong. That is all in addition to the bits of scenery, cards for the game, floor plans and the like. All the figures come in storage trays too, which means they are all self-contained within the box and I do not have to buy extra boxes or files to keep things in, just remember where each figure goes!



Floor plans and such for various scenarios within the game.

The uppermost tray of figures contains our heroes, the five, large gribblies, Rasputin (!), a couple of Lamias and some other bits.

Oodles top ogle at!!!

 


Our prime hero in three guises, including Hellboy kid with ice cream!

The five chief gribblies - ape monster, tentacle horror, large grub, fanged amphibian and dragon

Our prime hero's friends.

And a novel little set of busts of the main protagonists.

I have not played the game yet, but I am impressed by the variety and quantity of the contents. There is a little bit of flash to remove, but I look forward to eventually getting some of these figures painted and trying things out. I especially like the fact that several of the figures are useable in other games - Nazis are Nazis, right? And those Lamia figures are crying out to oppose some errant Greek hero in some fabled land as he quests for an artefact to save his home city state from a gorgon or kraken or some such. Did I also mention there are harpies in the set? And how about getting Hellboy trapped in a time loop following some nefarious enemy scheme that sees him taking on Martian tripods, a resurrected terracotta army, a zombie plague or whatever? The game was not cheap, at a little over the £100 mark, but WOW! There is also a Batman game out now, so I must keep saving. My favourite superhero and all that.

And, to top it all, "Hellboy 2; The Golden Army" is on TV tonight, and I am in need of a way to avoid that utter drivel that is the Eurovision Song "Contest". Sky One at 2115hrs anyone?

G

Mollie McClobber

Hello again.

My Strath Clotans finally have a leader courtesy of one of Oathsworn's more recent releases, which Nephew Nick obtained for me at my request at a recent show. Who would not want a wildcat with axe and shield? The fact that wildcats are a tough option in the "Burrows & Badgers" game and that she more than adequately fits the bill for Strath Clota given her plaid and bonnet were enough for me! And Oathsworn supremo Michael Lovejoy has stated that there will be more Strath Clotans in the next batch of sculpts, which means the clan can keep growing too.

She was a joy to paint, even the plaid, which, though a little time-consuming, was easy enough with some patience, the right brush and suitably thinned paint to ease its flow, but not so much that it just runs everywhere...

I have more Oathsworn figures left on the to-do list, some of which are even undercoated ready to go, but my most recent activity has seen me add to my Russians for the Crimean War, with more infantry, of which there cannot be too many. I will one day get around to some British infantry to go with the Light Brigade and will finish the Light Brigade too once I have bought the necessary extras required. Again, the absence of a definitive project is seeing me get through bits of numerous different projects, which suits me in my "skirmish" mode,  and might just see me through a couple of the many boxed games I bought with the intention of getting some figures completed. However, numerous projects means I sometimes struggle to decide what to do next, so I might be painting, but I am also a tad adrift. The Crimean War project will be a continuous one for a while yet, especially as 10mm Russians are quick and easy to paint (I hope the British will be too, but doubt it somehow...), but where else should I venture? I have, by way of a quick count, the following boxed games all crying out for attention, in no particular order:

• Necromunda;
• Kill Team;
• Lord of The Rings: Battle of the Pelennor Fields;
• Gorechosen;
• Blood Red Skies;
• Cruel Seas;
• Carnavale;
• Judge Dredd;
• another I bought the other day and will save for a future post - it is big and the contents look amazing!

Still, this post was supposed to be about a certain wildcat, so here she is.

G

Mollie McClobber, with the target of one of her raids burning away in the background.

The artists' pens came in very useful again for the motto on the shield and also to draw in the characteristic cat's eye pupils.