Workbench 2.0

I typed that title and had a little moment of 90's Amiga nostalgia.

Anyway, the last two weekends have been pretty DIY centred, so not much painting going on. My Wednesday game was postponed, so no wargaming either! However, I have managed to revamp my workbench, which was very satisfying. 

I'm very fortunate to have an area in the house where I can paint and leave stuff out, but it does get very very cold in the winter. So last weekend I insulated the external wall, and this weekend I extended and raised my desk to give more workspace and hopefully less back-ache.

It doesn't look pretty, but it's functional and was made entirely from bits of wood I had lying around.

Now it's time to make it untidy by covering it in models in various states of completion!

Gondor and mutants

It's been a crazy few weeks with the start of term. I've not managed to play any games but am planning a game of SBG with Josh in the very near future. In preparation I've been finishing off my Gondorian Knights which have been sat on my painting desk for all of this year. I cannot stand painting horses so always find excuses to avoid cavalry. That's probably why my Rohan army is so underwhelming! Anyway, Faramir can now lead a detachment of 9 knights. The one behind Faramir (with the white banner on his lance) is a captain. All of my Minas Tirith captains have white tunics under their armour to make them easier to spot.

I recently won a lot of 100 heroclix on eBay, so the superhero project continues. Most recent completions are Bishop, Shadowcat, Psylocke and Prof X. Some of these are pretty poor sculpts, but you can't have enough X-men!

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In other news I've been painting Gondorian cavalry and more heroclix. Pics to come soon.

6mm Germans

The summer is always a no-show for me in terms of painting and gaming. However, having got back from our family holiday I got a chance to paint a bit and finished off some 6mm PzIV that have been sitting around for a while.

6mm is becoming quite a draw to me, quick to paint, easy to have large games and cheap to buy. What's not to love? I had a fun game of Dirtside with a friend at the start of the holidays and now have the bug for 6mm sci-fi too!

Anyway, here are the Panzers:

Evil mutants

More reprinted heroclix for you today. First up the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants:

Secondly, two more X-men in Storm and Angel to foil Magneto's evil plans:

The rule set is coming along, and will start play testing soon. 

I also managed to get some games of Avalon in this weekend. it went down real well and we had a lot of fun. It certainly breeds distrust though!

More superheroes

I'm thoroughly enjoying painting these superhero models. I've just finished some more heroes:

I'm in the middle of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and then I still have all of these to paint:

In other hobby news I've just got into the D6 generation podcast. I really recommend it (other than their dislike of Agricola). I've also just bought the new version of The Resistance which is called Avalon and is based in King Arthur's realm, and a second copy of X-Wing. Hoping to get some games in next weekend.

Superheroes

Lack of any gaming has seen enthusiasm waning for painting Lord of the Rings miniatures, so I've had a change of direction and started repainting some heroclix minis.

They've been a lot of fun to paint, although the sculpt quality is very variable.

So far I've finished Cyclops, Beast and Daredevil, and Dr Doom with some minor villains. More on the way soon. Sorry about the photo quality, I'm still getting used to my new ipad.

Painting update - new phone too!

So I've got a new phone! Finally I've moved to become a smart phone user, which suddenly means that uploading stuff to this blog will become easier!

So, here we go with a mix of stuff from my desk at the moment...

The fantastic original Bilbo sculpt - I'm also painting the new plastic one, but this one is just a joy to paint.

I got Bolg from my wife for Christmas - he is massive! He's also been fun to paint so far, although the skin has been tricky and I'm not 100% happy with it.

I'm painting these guys for the One-Ring.co.uk painting challenge. The topic is warbands, so I have a warband of citadel guard led by Beregond. Lots of black and silver to paint - can't wait!

I've painted 7 of the Dwarven company so far, here is the current progress on Oin:

So, a whole lot of stuff on the desk at the moment, with a few other side projects developing too. I'll try and keep this updated more now.

I actually managed a game of Strategy Battle Game!

So Josh and I managed to get a game in on Saturday. We were keen to try the new Hobbit rules (and in fact it's only the 2nd or 3rd game we've managed using the warbands system!).
Josh chose Dwarves, although eneded up allying in some Rohan as he forgot all his plastic miniatures. I went for a Goblin alliance (Moria and Misty Mountains) as it gave me a chance to field a whole load of newly painted miniatures. Each army was 1000 points.

The scenario we rolled for was domination and it gave us a chance to use my new river pieces and the bridge as an objective.

The only photos I managed are of the board immediately after set up:

The goblin hoard had 91 miniatures to the Dwarf 56, and the numbers certainly had an impact. The end result was a clear victory for the Goblins who brought the dwarf army to 25% with a loss of only 20 something minis. The Spider Queen made her debut and was amazing taking down a number of grunts plus Balin (original rules), a Dwarf King and a Rohan Captain. She suffered no wounds.
I have to put it down to Josh not having his whole army with him (particularly bows) as we normally have very close games.

Afterwards we discussed the new rules and concluded the following:

• Monsters are now very powerful - should they be easier to target when shooting?
• We don't like the new shooting rules - particularly for throwing weapons. We will probably ignore the -1 modifier in the future.
• The hand weapons gave some good variety, but would be tricky in the bigger games we also like to play.
• The new rules for spear support seemed good, but they took a while to think through -  calls for more games I think.

In other news I have started playing the new Fantasy Flight Games X Wing Miniatures Game and it is brilliant. I'm sure it will feature at some point soon.