Derby Wargames Show 1st Oct 2011 Photos and Report

Up at 5.30am. Picked up club mates at 7.00am. Picked up another club mate at 8am and on our way to Derby. Roads clear, sunny hot day, and so got to venue for 9.00am.
Not allowed in this year till 9.30am. (Previousl years been allowed to get food, in cafe, but not this year).

The main hall lower area.

The show layout was the usual. Though this year they had some demo games in a hall to the rear of the main one. Which had to be accessed from the out side. This was poorly sign posted really and I think a lot of people didn't realise they were there at all. Assuming it was part of the competition.

Main hall ramp way. Offensive miniatures on left.

Demo game. The churches on this board were scratch built. Lovely!

There were some lovely demonstration games and even some participation games. This one above had some stunning scratch build scenery.

The table was very nice. Infact I thought was the nicest there.

A scratch build, that was very very nicely done.

Ainsty has a new range of 28mm figures. Inc Captain Scarlet!

Ainsty Casting were back and with a range of new releases from Pirate ships to Captain Scarlet figures and mad scientists. Some lovely pieces and I can see a few winding their way into my collection at a later date. The pirate ships were impressive lumps of resin and with nice white metal detailing.

New Pirate Ship models from Ainsty. These are lovely.

Ainsty sewer setup.

28mm Captain Scarlet figures and scientists. Nice.

Captain Scarlet - had to ressist very hard, from buying these.

Ainsty have some new released out and their range is still expanding.

Warlord Games Operation Squad Demo Game

I was keen to see Operation Squad, being played. As warlord had dumped "Rules of Engagement" it seems in favour of their own rule set. Not seen it played and so watched with interest. My first impressions I have to say, was not good. The game seemed too complex, and it did not grab me. I had a quick flick through the rule book (see photo below). Production wise I was, dissapointed. Its not perfect bound, the ink was rubbing off several pages from use and, though there are images etc in side. I was not impressed enough to buy it. I think I will stick with RoE for my platoon games and our home rules for squad ones.

Warlord Games Operation Squad Demo Game

Warlord Games Operation Squad Rule Book - Tokens etc.

The Operation Squad Rule book and a few tokens. See comment above.

28mm Romans Game. Nice!

On a up point, I did like this Roman 28mm game. The table was nice and I could feel myself thinking it would be nice to do ancients. But not this year.. thats one for about 2020 at my current rate.

6mm Gettysburg Game - Impressive as it was about 2x2' in size.

Now for something tiny.. 6mm.. The gettysberg game was impressive for the tables detailing and miniatures. Though the table is more like 2mm scale. The chap running it was very helpfull and enthusiastic and i can see a lot of effort went into it. I know very little on ACW. Its like ancients a period I would like to game but not yet. He obviously loved the period and was well read on the subject. And won the friendliest demo game award from me, for theshow.

Desert WW2 game. No one would tell me what it was about.

In complete contrast is this WW2 game. I stood and watched and tried to find out what it was about. The two chaps I saw playing it, ignored me! So I carried on. Table looked interesting, but if you are not prepared to talk to show-goers why are you there?

Nice board, not the most forthcoming demonstration.

Nice board, again no info easy to find.

OK, I couldn't find any info on this game, and I must have cought them at lunch or something. See empty chairs.

See above.

Like the models and terrain.

I did like the figures and scenery. Some nice work.

The roman game. Hmmm tempting.

Nice Roman Game in 28mm

ECW game in 28mm

A very nice ECW game. Another period I know little on and hold little interest at the moment. But hats off to them for a nice table and lovely figures.

Middle floor area in Main Hall

Some 28mm / 1:48 scale resin terrain.

Field Works no longer do their 28mm items any more. Shame.

Tomorrow's War by Ambush Alley on Caliver Books Stand along with Ambush Valley for Force on Force.

I thought Tomorrow's War was not out yet or Ambush Valley for Force on Force. But there were copies for sale from Caliver. I did not indulge, as I have the original Ambush Valley.

So over all a fun day out with friends. The lack of personal hygene issues were evident again. I had to vacate the bring and buy on two occasions. . The rugby fans were screaming when England Won, wathcing the tele in the main hall a trader I presume had brought.

The food and drink in the cafe was ok. Not too pricy. The living history and re-enactors were present, and had some nice bits to see and talk about.

My overall spend was about £21 on four books and a pot of basetex paint from colourparty. So not the biggest shopping trip, but a fun and relaxing day out. Weather was a definite benefit.

So thats it, I think for the year, show wise now!

Off to Derby World Wargames - As sponsored by Warlord Games.. caaaatchiiing!

Well it is not too often I feel the thrumb of excitement, but it feels like an age since Triples earlier this year. And so am off to Derby University this weekend for the World Wargames Show.. as sponsored by Warlord Games..

Usually Derby is one of the last events for the year, though we have been to Pudsey in the past. This year however, with the fact I have limited my gaming projects and am currently out of work.
Derby is a walk in, wander around, see what bits I sell on the bring and buy, and if I find anything of interest within my price range.

I usually grab a few bits off the "Tree Fellas" as they make great scenery for 28mm and at good prices. I have a been grabbing four or five packs at each show for a couple of years and so have a fairly large assortment of walls and hedges  and may start to look at the trees they do.

Apart from that, its bargain hunting and generally browsing for me. I don't have much space spare, for books so I don't plan to buy any. I haven't read nearly a quarter of my current collection properly. So they need working through first.

Will be nice to just bimble and see. Will be taking the camera to try and actually take some photos. I did one year,, all of about 4 if I recall. lol

So, about to clamber into the attic and delve through my collection for a few things to put on the bring and buy.

28mm Hard Plastic Marines - By Defiance Games

I spotted this thread today on TMP about these;

Defiance Games not so long ago released some fluff on their gaming system/brackground etc. It got a rough reception, firstly as it contain a lot of proffanity and possible racist comments about the Chinese. I think it was more a poor choice of "slang", rather than an actual attempt to be racist in publishing. That aside, they have been promising a range of figures.

And here is the first. Apparently going to be a hard plastic miniature range. So interesting to see how they do, how tricky they are to build and how they match with other gaming systems.

On the whole I like the figure. Its got a look, and much will depend on the factors I mentioned previously. So its one for the sci-fi fans to keep an eye out for. If I learn anything new, I will keep you informed.

Aliens versus Ninja.. Epic!

I have to say, this made me laugh when I stumbled across it.

So we have Aliens v Predator, Aliens v Cowboys, and Aliens v Ninja.
I wonder whats next??

Club Gaming Weekend - 24th and 25th Sept 2011 - Spacehulking

Firstly apologies for the delay in progress on my other projects. One excuse has been the prep for a club weekend gaming session. Our gaming club is very fortunate to have access to a large hall where why usually run our annual gaming show "Gauntlet".
And a few weeks ago a few club members mentioned, wanting a weekend to run larger games that ordinarily couldn't get run in a club night. So we booked the hall and I sorted the tables and whalla. A two day gaming session was at hand.

I decided for ease and with a lack of time etc to run a game of my Spacehulk 3rd Edition the RGP I have been working on. So with four willing victims, sorry players. Two of my own sets of space hulk and one on loan. I built up a three level space hulk.

My Space Hulk Table during Saturday Break, exuse the clutter.

Each player had a single squad of five terminators. Their mission was to recover the CAT from where it had become stranded on the third level as its datacore contained vital mission data.

Each level contained a "nest", which as a secondary objective the marines were tasked with retrieving a bio sample from. Not an easy task.

Each squad contained one character, and four marines. Either a captain, an inquisitor, librarian, techmarine, apothocary or chaplain. The four players chose the captain, techmarine, librarian and inquisitor.
It was chaotic and mad fun. To say the least. 

Tyranid Nest Tile in centre ground on 2nd Level as terminators try and hold their bridge head on the level.

Ambush! The genestealers launch an ambush on the second level!

A Warrior about to give a terminator some grief!

One of the Fields of Glory Games

Warrior Heroes Game

Pony Wars - Cavalry on the move!

Indians in the hills

The cavalry preparing to ride out from the fort.

Butch and Sundance in sight of the Fort.

The Pony Express reaches Custer at the Outpost.

Having ignored the nest on the first level the marines decide to go back and finnish it off!

Troll minders keeping the wolf riders going the right way!

I didn't get any photos of the Flames of War games or the Blackpowder game that were run sorry.

Over all a great weekend. Drank copious cups of coffee and tea, the bar down stairs did excellent food at lunch time and ate far too much junk food. I don't think I have laughed quite so much during a game and usually at Tom's exspence of rolling doubles or unable to roll higher than 3 on 2D6. Despite that, my players all said they had a great time and that really is what its all about.
Might try and organise another for the spring!

Bugs - Got to love internet humour.

Though I have never to date, uploaded any kind of video to YouTube, I do trawl through it from time to time. And today I was looking for an battle report, I spotted, posted on you tube for Starship Troopers game. Somewhere at a convention in the USA, if I recall.

Anyhow, I completely failed to find it. I thought I had book marked it, but nope. Anways, I found this instead..

I commend the editor.. it seriously made me laugh!

Gifted Painters - The boundary between gaming and modelling

If you have never come across this gentleman's work before, and you are a particularly a fan of WW2 period. Then do take a moment to have flick through his blog and pictures.

Using a lot of static modelling techniques, he is able to get some outstanding finishes on what are pretty ordinary wargames models. Also he does a fair bit of alterations, such as extra stowage etc.

Now I my own painting, has improved over the years. My first ever miniatures were some dark angel beaky marines from the original platoon box set of plastics around 1990's or there abouts. They are over done, not undercoated and my brush control was dire.

Over the years, despite the periods away from the hobby, I have managed to learn a few things here and there and have even taken on the dreaded airbrush. A handy tool for bigger projects but one I am still mastering for the smaller individual pieces.

But I know, that though my painting is OK, to "table standard" as I like to refer to it. And a few people have said its better. The compliments I accept kindly. I know there are some who, through hard work and talent, do get results that are just stunning.

So have a look through the blog here. http://troopofshewe.blogspot.com/
And see what you think.

Getting side tracked. The perils of gaming.

So its Sunday night and I am looking back at what I have achieved this week. Or that should really be, what I haven't achieved this week.

Alas, the usual story struck, where I meant to do a few certain things. Not much I was thinking, but they would help keep progression with regards to my Vietnam and Starship Troopers projects. But nope. A complete fail.

Oh I can blame it on many things, and some of them are even quite legitimate excuses. But they won't change a thing. So this week I am going to try a big harder.

But I have a club gaming weekend at the end of it, and I have some figures I need to get assembled and base coated for it. I won't have time to get them completely painted, but as its a giant game of space hulk I am planning, its not a worry.

It is more board game than wargames, but as we have all weekend to play it. It should be quite fun. Will be using my home brew skirmish rule set, which contains a few RPG type elements.

Will hopefully get a few photos and get them posted up.

However, this lack of progress did get my thinking. Which is dangerous some would say.
Firstly, I am not sure if I am alone, but going by a few friends, I am not; In being unable to get regular progress made on projects. I definitely fall into the "sporadic" category.

So anyhow, before I bore you to death. Keep and eye out this week for a few posts as I try and get things rolling once more.

Enjoy!

Nerds Rule!

There are times when you see things that just make you laugh. Not because they happen to be funny, but because, they are, and more, they fit you very well.



I have to say I laughed out loud at this parody. Its so true in so many ways. If I were to count the evenings I have spent with friends and strangers around a dinning room table, gathered on the floor of a room in university hall of accomodation, roleplaying and rolling dice, it would be embarrising. So here is to all the nerds and geeks, who keep the world going and will save the day when the zombies rise!



28mm Vietnam Project - Part 5 - Basing Texture

Well, I managed to find an hour to apply some basing texture.
Having mounted the figures onto 2pence pieces like so;

FoA Vietnam Figures Mounted on 2pence pieces before texture

Now this is where personal preference tends to come in. I know many painters who do their basing texture last. However I choose to apply it now and then undercoat the figures with black or white spray depending.

For these Force of Arms Vietnam 28mm figures I am sticking to my usual texturing medium, of Basetex paint. Its a paint with grit in it basically. Now it comes in varying size pots, from 200ml size, upto 0.5ltr size. I buy the big pots for a simple reason. They have better lids and they don't dry out. Also its handy stuff and lasts a long time if sealed.
But the smaller pots I found to be a false economy if you like it. So by all means grab a small pot to try, but if you like it, make sure you use that small pot up quick. Basetex paint is made by Colourparty, here in the UK.

Now the one thing you have to note, with basetex. The consistency does not always come out the same. I mean, i have bought two pots of brown. One has come out quite viscous and easily spatulared on. And a second pot from the same batch has come out, very runny.
Now this really isn't a problem, either leave the lid off the runny stuff for a few mins and watch the liquid evaporate, or do as i have done to sometimes extend a pots life, by adding some sand. Now in the brown, you will not notice it. The brown will take extra sand, and gravel and not discolour. Lighter colours of course, may tint slightly in shade.

Now, I like it quite thick, as I use a stiff long bristle cheap nylon brush to apply it. Working the brush like a spatula. Applying the first off around the feet/centre of the model and working outwards. The liquids surface tension is pretty good, but it will settle out, and so if you have a raised area, like the base of a figure, then you need to add a little more here, to compensate.

Once I have applied enough basetex and covered the base, you could leave it like that and let is set/dry. If you do, you get a nice caked mud type finish, with drying type cracks in the odd places. Don't worry the basetex, sets like concrete!  So it really is tough stuff.

Now my preference, is to add a pinch of model railway ballast or sand/fine grit mix, here and there to break up the texture and ensure i have some areas when i come to dry brush the model bas, will pick up paint and leave a nice effect.

By sprinkling the gravel onto the wet basetext paint the majority of the gravel will sink in a little and remain well glued down. I do however, rub each figure base with my thumb, to remove and weakly bonded gravel prior to base coating, to avoid you getting "bright spots" when some comes away after base coating, as Murphy's law states it will do in the most obvious place..

So here is what they look like once textured;

Basetex Paint by colour party as base texture medium

As you can see, there are some gravel pieces near the edges and these i tend to ping out, to ensure there are non over hanging. But even as yet unpainted, the bases look pretty reasonable.
So the next step with these will be give them each a rub over, and remove the loosely bonded bits. And glue on a single M79 weapon, that comes as a separate item on one of the figures. Oh and then try and sort the lost gun barrels on a couple. Now I probably should have fixed those earlier, before mounting, but my brain was saying.. " you will have more to hold onto after basing".. time will soon tell whether my brain was right or not.

So here is a close up for those who like detail..

Close up of the textured base.

So the next step, will be glue on the M79 and sort the snapped M16 barrels and then undercoat them. However these are not my only US figures by a long shot. See some of my earlier posts and I have realised some of those were not textured either. So it looks like I might be spending a further night or two prepping before I can get around to base coating.

But will keep you in touch with progress as it occurs.  So stay tuned for the next progress report..

28mm Vietnam Project - Part 4 - Basing Begins

Ok, so firstly apologies for the lack of any substantial progress of late. But life has conspired to keep my rather busy and away from the painting table. However in a sudden fit of energy last night. I dug out my pot of 2pence pieces and my batch of Force of Arms 28mm Vietnam figures and started on the basing.

The first step was, simply to go through cleaning up the figures, trimming off flash and vent tags from the moulding. There was not a great deal, mostly vent tags, which are easy to snip off, cut off or file off, depending on your chosen technique.

There were remarkably few bits of flash to deal with. That was the good news. The bad news, was. The FoA metal is not the most bendy. I found several figures with bent gun barrels and two or three snapped upon straightening. Now this is annoying. But I have had it with other makers.

From a recent comment by John Bruce (FoA) with regards to his latest ANZACS release on TMP, I noted he has now moved to a softer metal. So obviously I was not the only one notice how brittle it could be.

Anyhow, I will try and pin those, to give a gun barrel of sorts. And it probably won't be too obvious. As these are gaming and not display models, I am not too worried. It is just slightly frustrating.

So, first step was the clean them up.. now.. a quick note on tools. A while ago I bought a seam scraper from Micromark tools over in the USA. Its a triangular shaped cutter. Its have a double ended bit and can be extended and retracted as required. And its sharp!

It flies through flash at a rate of knots. The only issue is, they are not cheap to buy, having to order from across the pond.

The postage was pretty high and I managed to avoid the tax threshold just. So quite happy with it. I spotted the tool being demoed on YouTube;

This is not the one I original spotted but that has been removed. However this one shows the tool in use. The one thing I will issue a WARNING!! about is, the point is sharp. It is very, I stress very easy to slip and jab your self with this tool. Just like hobby knives. Best treated with respect or the blood will flow! The video also shows some other tools in use.

So.. once the figures were cleaned up, it was just a case of digging out the two part, 5-minute epoxy. I use Devcon, as its never let me down in the past.

Some care needs to be taken. The inbuilt figure bases/tags with some of John's miniatures are quite small and their poses make the figure top heavy. So you have to ensure you have a pretty flat working area, or you get them toppling, whilst the glue dries. This happened to one and I have to quickly remove the still curing semi rigid epoxy with a knife and re glue it. Nothing too serious.

I mix about two penny sized blobs of resin and harnder in each batch and use a cocktail stick to mix the two, thoroughly. You can tell when it is well mixed, as the liquid will take on a frosted haze, that will clear as it sets. This is usually enough to do about 6-9 figures, depending on base size. Its easy to try and do too many in one go. And before you know it, the epoxy will begin to setup/harden and you will have fine stringers of glue, everywhere and then wham! All of a sudden its hard,, and you find your cocktail stick is now, going to have to be come part of your base.

So, small batches. It also means if you get a figure suddenly fall off the desk, or get interrupted by the phone, the cat, the dog, family etc, and you have to leave it, you only loose a little. I mix the liquids on old business cards, as they are a good size and can be scrapped off, before the excess sets, to get more than one use out of them. Be careful mind with tossing setting epoxy about the place. Its exothermic, meaning it generates some heat depending on brands/chemicals, and so can cause melting/fires in large quantities. Also don't get it on your carpet!

Right, OK here they are.. the 34 odd or so.. stuck and firmly glued.. next step will be the texturing.. which I hope to get done this evening.

Force of Arms 28mm Vietnam based on 2pence pieces

If you look carefully you will see some US infantry, including some special forces and a few VC figures in the set. These figures are nicely styled, and have some real character to them. Each figure is an individual and I do think many gamers interested in 28mm Vietnam, over look John Bruces - Junction City Range.