Works in Progress (2) - End of the Season Labors

 I decided to extend that "clean of the workbench" project a bit to the start of the AHPC. Here's a couple of things I've painted since then.

Hydra Miniatures Atomic tank. There's more coming on this but here's most of the robots

I also managed to finally finish one of the two forces for BLKOUT

Art the clown is nearly done, hes actually farther along than in this photo, the base is started i just need to do some washes and paint the "concrete" hes sitting on.I will probably finish this during the challenge even if it's not going to count for points.

AHPC starts tomorrow and I've done 0 prep. I'm going to try and paint in no particular order; The Dungeon, Some adventurers, BloodBowl Season 3 starter, The Chaos Dwarf Box, a proxy force for Shadow War Armageddon, Some Napoleonic British, More Atomic Tank, Breachers for my Word Bearers. Wish me Luck

Flintcon 2020

Each year in Flint Michigan, a friend of ours runs a nice little convention called FlintCon. Its a pretty short drive, there's usually a decent turn out for the flea market and the games are usually pretty good. I'm very much so a "convention-fan" so I don't usually miss an opportunity to go to a show more or less in my backyard.

Photos after the Jump

Punic Wars (1) - The First Batch of Romans

The long awaited Punic Wars project actually has some paint on it now! I've long had an interest in gaming the era and decided to liquidate my 28mm figures in favor of the smaller, more affordable, more "amass-able" 10mm ones. I talked about it during the challenge and mentioned it in the prep stages here but I picked a battle from the Age of Hannibal scenario book and finished purchasing everything for it.

Much like my English Civil War Collection, the entire collection is based on 40mm squares with 1 unit being one base in the Age of Hannibal rules.

First on the agenda is the Roman Army. I originally figured I'd paint a unit for each side and alternate back and forth to keep the project playable as I go but to be honest, I think seeing the roman army finished would be a better motivator than painting nearly 700 figures before calling anything "done"

And here is the first unit type. Velites for the Roman forces.

I don't have step by step photos but they are dead simple.

Prime black, paint the flesh with Pz Aces Flesh Base, paint the Red with Mephiston Red, Spear Shafts are Pz Aces Old Wood and the wolf pelts and shield backs are Leather Brown.
The trick with painting the 10mm figures quickly in my opinion is to prime black and leave a touch of black between colors. This makes them pop just a bit without feeling like I need to highlight. These aren't winning awards but the batch of 25 figures was painted and based in just under an hour and 20 minutes.

I also managed to crack out the first couple bases of Princepes. These figures are 2 strips to a base with a total of 10 figures. The scenario I'll be running calls for 7 bases of these. I have some Celts on the desk now but I think those will be a wip while I complete the first wave of Numidians.

So here we have everything done for the Romans so far. The bases are my usual fair though this time I used Woodland Scenics 2mm grass.

The usual things apply here, in that this is one of a great many projects i have in the works but seeing them come together for these photos I'm very happy with the track I'm on.

The Battle of Hoth Playtest

As part of the convention circuit this year. Dan and I are running a big 10mm Battle of Hoth scenario at FlintCon in February. This evening the normal group and I set up what is basically the first playtest game. After some deliberation we settled on trying out Future War Commander for the rules. 

Originally we were going to use Horizon Wars as a bit of an homage to an earlier episode in which we reviewed the rules but the more I thought about what I wanted from the game, the more we looked for something a little more streamlined.

I've rated the troops pretty much as such for the first game and like all my bright ideas, what is present on paper is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the ideas I have up top.

Storm Troopers
MV 10 ATTACKS 3/30 ASSAULT 3 HITS 4 SAVE 5
At-st
MV 15 ATTACKS 4/60 ASSAULT 4 HITS 4 SAVE 4
At-at
MV 10 ATTACKS 6/60 ASSAULT 4 HITS XX SAVE 3
Rebels
MV 10 ATTACKS 3/30 ASSAULT 3 HITS 4L SAVE 6 COST 20
Snow Speeders
MV 10/20 ATTACKS 4/30 ASSAULT 3 HITS 4 SAVE5/6 SEE NOTE
ATTACH TOW 4+ DROP SAVE TO 5 AND MOVE TO 10
Turrets
MV - ATTACKS 4/60 ASSAULT - HITS 5 SAVE 5

This was more or less my blind guess at what would work. The Rules state that troops in the open are hit on a 4 and troops in trenches on a 6 so my logic is "rebels will be hard to his but easy to kill. Stormtroopers will be hard to kill but easy to hit" We'll see how it pans out in subsequent tests. On to the Scenario

Rebels (Deployed in the Trench Lines)
XX x Stands of Infantry
5 x Gun Turrets
4 x Snow Speeders (Recyclable)(Start in Echo Base)

Empire (Deployed on the board edge)
15 x Stands of Infantry
4 x At-St
3 x AT-AT

And some eye candy from the Playtest game

Some thoughts. Most of the numbers worked really well, especially considering my lack of experience with the rules.The Snowspeeders however basically need an entire rewrite and after a lot of debate we decided to basically come up with a new system for them that would make it a little easier to attach but a little harder to kill. I think we'll be testing it once or twice more before the show but in general, it's almost there. Ill need to print the turrets and do a little more basing but otherwise I think we're just about ready. I have a page full of notes to tweak some stuff but its nothing major. We are on track for Flintcon