Spring Projects

 Since the end of the challenge I’ve really gotten behind on posting on the blog. That doesn’t mean my painting has been idle. In fact, I’be been painting quite a bit. Much of it were odds and ends left over from various other projects. The most prominent one has been a return to the Executioners Space Marine chapter. I painted a test squad before the painting challenge, but hadn’t been able to work on them again until recently. I’ve painted up the command squad, terminator squad and a second tactical squad. 

Apothecary and veteran 

Champion and veteran

Standard Bearer and Captain

The chapter decals all came from Fallout Hobbies. They have a big range of space marine chapter decals for all the various Badab War factions. The quality of the decals is quite high and shipping is pretty fast (and expensive to Canada). He also has flash sales on a fairly regular basis with 15% off.

In between each squad I would also paint a vehicle for Gaslands. I’ve added three so far using this strategy!

The first one drops oil slick and glue. The second one drops mines and caltrops and the third is a ramming specialist.

Hopefully I can stay motivated to keep posting in a more timely manner.

Thanks for visiting!

This was PrairieCon 2022!

So this past weekend, Conscript Mike F and I travelled to Brandon to attend and run games at PrairieCon XLI, the 2022 iteration of, as an old program wonderfully put it, "Western Manitoba's Only Gaming Convention." :-)

I ran the old reliable Gaslands (twice) and my Battle of Hoth game with Star Wars: Legion models and using the Bolt Action rules. First up - Gaslands. I ran a game on Saturday morning with two players and me, and it was fun - but I think the early hour (first slot of the convention, 9am) maybe trimmed off some participants.

 

Anyway at 2pm I ran the game again with 5 players, mostly all buddies. Each player picked a pre-generated 2-car team, put them on the table and blazed away. Here's some photos from the games...

In game 1 the new player picked up the rules very quickly and was executing tricky maneuvers in no time. 

Rear-facing rocket launchers on the buggy made short work of a biker!

The brown buggy took a lap around the table staying out of trouble.

With only one hull point left the driver lined up his opposite number for a head one crash.

KABOOM!

In game 2 the group of friends picked things up fast as well.

Collisions and carnage definitely abounded.

On Sunday morning I ran my Battle of Hoth game. Rich and Darryl took control of the Imperial forces. Their objective was mainly to enter the Rebel deployment zone (behind their trench line) with secondary objectives to destroy Rebel units.

The Rebels deployed in the trench line mostly, prepared to repel the Imperial assault.

The Imperials were pretty disciplined and engaged Run orders to move across the table. The Snowtroopers had the "Recycle" special rule and when a unit was destroyed, it reappeared 18" behind its point of furthest advance. 

Luke appeared from Reserve on the Imperial table edge, trying to make it back to Echo Base after crashing his snowspeeder and destroying an AT-AT off table. He used the Force to put Pin markers on the Imperial E-Web Blaster but ran into a squad of elite Imperial Naval Troopers - it did not end well.

Luke never got a chance to charge in with his lightsaber - the Naval Troopers activated first and even though Luke deflected most of their blaster bolts, he ultimately failed a Deflect roll and was... "defeated". 

On one flank the Imperials continued the advance.

Meanwhile on the other Rebel flank, Vader ran ahead of his snowtroopers and engaged a heavily Pinned Rebel squad all by hisself. This almost ended badly as well, because although Vader cut down a bunch of Rebels, one trooper managed to roll "6 followed by 6" to wound! Vader only escaped defeat by using his Parry rule to make the trooper reroll that successful wound, and sadly another 6 failed to come up. 

Way to go, Dark Lord of the Sith - you defeated three Rebel soldiers. Good for you!

The game concluded with the Imperials having destroyed four Rebel units (4 VPs) and managing to get one unit in the Rebel zone (2VPs). The Rebels destroyed four Imperial units (including the mighty AT-ST!) and didn't exit any units of their own in the six turns we played. A really fun game and I have to give props once again to Jay of  Jay's Wargaming Madness for the basis of the Bolt Action conversion I used for the game. I did make a few more changes to Jay's original mods but I think it worked out great for a convention game.

Pretty cool right? That's some commitment to cosplay right there... 

PrairieCon was a great time as always. Getting to see my old gaming buddies again (after three years away!) was amazing, and running games and auctioneering at the world-famous game auction was a blast as always. I did make one big purchase at the auction too - a large cardboard "mystery box" full of about 10lbs of old lead figures, for which, after hotly contested bidding, I paid a sum that was significant. Suffice to say that the product boxes in the big box weren't exactly 100% accurate as to their contents, but I figure I did OK, as the lot game with a full boxed set of Eldar Harlequins from the Rogue Trader era, most of the box of Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers, plus a LOAD of original plastic and metal Squats, and some RT Imperial Guard, RT Chaos Space Marines, RT Space Orks, etc.... so we'll call that fair. I have a feeling it'll be a "tale that grows in the telling" though, as the day after the auction I was told that I'd actually spent DOUBLE what I paid for the lot. By next PrairieCon I'm sure I'll be said to have spent five thousand dollars on them or something. 

Mad Maximillian 1934 - Gaslands in the Jazz Age!

Well, maybe it's a little after the Jazz Age per se, but close enough... Mad Max 1934 is a Gaslands/Car Wars type game set in the Dystopian 1930s, and is played with 1/43 cars and heroic 28mm miniatures. When founding Conscript Curt told me about this game a couple months ago, it sounded like an awesome project to have a go at! So I did!

 

First off, I fired up eBay and ordered some suitable diecast 1/43 model cars from Brumm, then headed over to Eureka to get crew models and bits. First up was this 1928 4 1/2 litre Bentley. I weathered it a bit with some steel wool (made necessary because the plastic hood straps broke and my attempts to glue 'em back on marred the paintwork), followed by an allover wash of Nuln Oil and a targeted wash of Agrax Earthshade over the lower part of the car. I also rusted up the exhaust system.

I painted this suitably mad-looking driver from Eureka and secured him in place. The Eureka drivers come with steering wheels so I cut the wheel off the Bentley.

The gunner is from the same pack. I used a gun mount from the Eureka accessories pack and a length of wire to mount it to the car. The "flimsy" petrol can is also from Eureka.

Looks pretty cool I think.

Next up is a 1936 Auto Union Type C Grand Prix car, in dual-wheel "hillclimb" configuration. This was a bit more involved as a conversion because I wanted the model to be displayable without the machinegun as a legit historical racer. What to do? 

Well, magnets to the rescue of course... I attached an ammo box from the spares bin to the Eureka MG and sculpted the cartridge belt from greenstuff. A 5mm disc magnet was attached to the bottom of the mount before painting. I took the car apart and superglued two more 5mm magnets in series to the underside of the front of the car so the MG magnet would adhere to the outside. Sorted!

Paintwork was as per Bentley - Nuln wash followed by Agrax. I think it looks suitably road-worn.

The Auto Union cars were the apex predators of pre-war motor racing... mid-engined like modern race cars, but with antiquated suspension and tire technology... the hillclimb cars needed four rear wheels as those rear tires took so much punishment from the 520 horsepower V16 powertrain they needed to be doubled up. 

Here's Hans Stuck madly sawing away at the wheel of his Auto Union in the 1938 Deutsches Bergmeisterschaft (German Hill-Climb Championship)... sadly machineguns were not permitted. In any case the cars went up the course one at a time anyway.

Lastly here's a 1939 Bugatti Type 59 Grand Prix car with a fetching female driver, also from Eureka. Not so successful as a racer, it looks great in French racing blue and brings some heat with twin Lewis guns.

The paintjobs on these Brumm models looked so good I couldn't bear to repaint them, so I used the Nuln/Agrax formula on all three. 

The Lewis guns were mounted to the car via a plasticard cross-piece (connecting the guns) and a short length of wire. I made a small round mount out of greenstuff and stuck that to the car hood, and glued the MG wire mount onto that.

Looking appropriately deadly, no? While I haven't picked up a copy of the MM34 rules, they look pretty fun and I love the setting and working on the models. Hopefully we can give it a go someday but even if not, it was a fun little project and I think the cars turned out nicely.

Gaslands Subaru Impreza 22B and Ford GT40

Picking up the brushes for the first time in awhile with a couple of cars acquired for use in the excellent "Gaslands" vehicle combat game. As I am a motor racing enthusiast, most of the cars I paint have their basis in current or historical motorsport competition, and these are no exception.

Enthusiasts of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) will recognize this car as one driven by one of rallying's GOATs... the late Colin McRae.

While this WRC Impreza is resplendent in the Subaru team's iconic "555" cigarette livery, Colin and his co-driver Nicky Grist never had twin machine guns to assist them.

The model is from Hot Wheels and is really quite good. I repainted it in Kantor Blue (analog to Subaru's "World Rally Blue") with 555 livery freehanded. I just got some new Kolinsky Sable brushes from Rosemary & Co and they seem to be working pretty well.

The other car to be painted is supposed to be a Ford GT40, also from Hot Wheels. While the body shape is "GT40-like" for sure, it's not quite right for the GT40 I remember best. In any case, it could only be painted in Gulf Oil livery, of course.

This GT40 is also equipped with twin MGs but also carries a mine/oil dropper out back. I thought it made sense to have a rear-facing weapon since this car will probably be out front anyway. All of the weapons added to these cars are from the superlative "Implements of Carnage" sprues from North Star.

Again, detail work is freehanded.

A good view here of the weapons.

One more pic of the Impreza. I didn't do much (any) weathering on these cars as I wanted to focus on the livery, but it's not out of the question that I may go back and do some.

Anyway there's two more cars painted for what that's worth... hopefully we can get together to play later this year but the numbers here in Manitoba are dire, so that ain't happening anytime soon.

Stay safe everyone...