4 things I've been up to

1.

I’ve finished another one of my Imperial Assault miniatures, specifically Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Here are a few photos of him.   

I’m really happy with how he turned out and he makes a fine addition to my collection.   I’m hoping to get some more games of IA in soon as it’s a game which I have neglected of late, and with the new expansion coming out soon I’d like to get some more experience of playing. 

2.

I recently purchased the Gaslands rulebook with the aim of playing the game very soon.    In the run up to this however I’ve been converting up some Hotwheels by putting some weapons on them.  Having read the rulebook whilst I was away in Manchester I’ve concluded that it looks like a really fun (and cheap) game to get into,  sort of a cross between X-Wing and Necromunda.  So far I think I’ve spent around £30 on it, including the rulebook and plastic templates.  Now to find some time to play it. 

My Gaslands collection.  The cars I picked up from Poundland whilst the plastic templates came of eBay and the dice from my own collection. 

Work has begun on converting up the cars.  

3.

Last weekend I played in a local Shadespire tournament .  I decided to use my Stormcast warband from the core game (As I’ve had the most experience with them and more importantly they’re fully painted).  Regrettably Shadespire has been another game which I’ve not had much time to play, and this showed as I had forgotten half the rules and my deck build wasn’t very good.  As a result I lost my first 3 games.  Fortunately we were playing a swiss round tournament so my games got more evenly matched as I progressed and in the end I managed to win my final two games (although they were very close) and ended up coming 6^th, which is more impressive than it sounds as there were only 8 people in the tournament.  Still I got some cool prizes out of it.

I also purchased the new  Farstriders warband  (Which I have now finished painting) I’m hoping to get some more games in with them soon, so I can see what they are like.  

I've finished painting these now and at some point I will upload some photos of them.

4.

Today I assembled my new Choas Blood Bowl team.  Having just finished the Rygas League with my Lizardmen I’d been thinking of a new team to try out and I really liked the look of the new Chaos team so opted for them.  I think I’m going to paint them as a Tzeentch team, especially as I’ve converted up Ogroid Thaumaturge to be my Minotaur.   I’m hoping to get them painted up relatively soon, though I have a lot of other projects to finish as I’ve been finding it hard to stay motivated recently so who knows how much progress I will make. 

More Imperial Assault miniatures, Firefly Adventures and YouTube update

I recently completed two more IA miniatures, specifically Emperor Palpatine and Chewbacca.  I finished both in a couple of hours, which means I now have time to try an finish my Orc Blood Bowl team. 

The Emperor (You'll have to imagine the force lightning)

Chewie!

In other news I’ve been trying to create some videos for my Keep Calm & ReRoll YouTube channel, however my computer has decided to have other plans and doesn’t want to run the trim tool on Windows Media player without freezing, so it looks like I’m going to have to update my hardware in order to start producing content.   This is very frustrating but in truth it’s probably about time I got a new laptop as this one is starting to get old.  So bare with me folks video content is very much on its way! 

I’ve recently purchased the new Firefly Adventures game by GaleForce9 (The first video I tried to make for my channel was an unboxing of it).  I played it on Tuesday and I have to say that I really enjoyed it.  The game perfectly captures the spirit of the TV series (Much like Firefly the board game does) and can be played as a cooperative game or competitive (1 player is the goons the rest are the crew).  For those of you not familiar with it Firefly Adventures is a skirmish game where you play the crew of the Serenity Mal, Jayne, Kaylee, Wash and Zoe (with the rest coming as expansions later in the year) trying to complete various jobs.  We played 2 cooperative games, mainly to try and learn the rules and get familiar with the mechanics. 

The only issue I have with the game is how the rule book is laid out as it took us ages to figure out how to play it (about 2 hours) and even when we had the basics locked down we still spent a lot of time trying to find out specific rules, such as how do you move a body.  Mainly because there not bloody reference in the book!   Apart from this small gripe I really loved the game and I’m looking forwarded to playing it some more.  If you’re a Firefly fan I’d strongly recommend considering it as a purchase.

Well that’s about it for now.  Keep an eye out for my next post. 

Blood Angel Inceptors, Stormtroopers and general musings

I’ve been told to rest up by my GP as I’ve pulled some muscles in my stomach which have been causing me a lot of pain, which has meant I’ve not been able to get up to much recently (No final trip to Purple Rain at the Bikeshed ☹, and  there goes my plan to start C25K this week!) It’s not all bad news however as this rest  has given me the opportunity to get a few hobby things completed, in particular my Blood Angel Inceptor Squad and more IA stuff.

Here’s the end results….

Inceptor Squad, ready for action

The squad sergeant, I just need to add some transfers to their shoulder pads!  

I played another game of Imperial Assault using the App recently and I have to say I’m starting to really enjoy it.  The campaign mode is so different to Skirmish (which I have played most of my IA games as so far) and has a lot more depth to it. The app itself is fairly easy to use, though I wish it had an option to record the upgrades you’ve purchased to your characters so you can keep track of them.  I guess it reminds me most of games like Warhammer Quest and Heroquest and the fact it can be played as a 1 player game means that if you’re bored you’ve got something to whip out and play.

Playing the game more has also motivated me on to get more of the miniatures painted, and recently I painted up 3 Stromtroopers.  This was also a bit of an experiment to test out a paint scheme for Legion.  

Stromtroopers? Here? I must warn the others! 

I’m not sure what I’ll start working on next.  I have an Orc Blood Bowl team which I am keen to paint but equally I really want to paint up some of the new Necromumda miniatures, and there are always IA to paint as well. 

What's on my painting table Part 2 - Luke Skywalker & Imperial Officers

“Everything has happened as I have for seen!” as the Emperor may say.  As predicted the snow fell today so I managed to get some more painting done.  I haven’t quite finished my Blood Angel squad (just some highlighting to go) but I did get 3 more Imperial Assault miniatures finished.

Luke Skywalker, farmboy and future Jedi Knight

Father & Son

Imperial Officers 

What's on my painting table? - Vader and the Grand Inquisitor

For the first time in a while I’ve managed to have a free Saturday to myself, which meant I could get some hobby stuff done.

I’m currently working through a back log of miniatures I need to finish painting so decided to focus on them.  Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a lot completed today but I did get a good start on a Blood Angels Inceptor squad.  I was however able to finish a few Imperial Assault miniatures, in particular Darth Vader and the Grand Inquisitor (see below).  

As snow is currently forecast for tomorrow I hope to finish off the Blood Angels squad, so unless anything else pops up I should be able to cross a few more units off my list.

I used a gloss coat on the armor of both miniatures to make it look more like plastic.

Vader can be a challenge to paint, being all black in colour.  The trick is to use grey shade to add subtle highlights to the armour to help it to stand out and add depth to the miniature.  This can be very tricky to do on a small figure such as Vader. 

I decided to paint Vader’s eyes red after his appearance in Rogue One and Rebels.  

I finished  Bossk  a few weeks ago but didn’t get round to photographing him until today.