Let’s start, covering the 21st of August through to the 27th of August.
BLOG STUFF
Battle report week! It wasn’t quite the game I was planning when I wrote out the scenario but it still ended up being great fun. It was also an exercise in speed writing as I managed to have the report written and released in just over 12 hours after finishing playing it. Which I’ll be repeating again this week.
Coming up on Wednesday is a quick overview of the last set of Empress releases and on Friday is another battle report. I’ll talk more about that in the gaming section
As a bit of an update for the blog, this month’s view count broke the 3000 mark, giving me an average views per day of more than 100. I can think of several reasons why this month got so many views (the 5 articles that made up the Cardiff update, the extra post weeks and the popularity of battle reports) but I’m really happy that people are reading my stuff.
GAMING
Last week I finally managed to play a game. The original plan was to run a massive 7 person game complete with factions backstabbing each other but I forgot the important wargaming rule – everyone is busy in summer. I still want to run the giant version but the little scenario I threw together ended up being quite fun. My opponent setup the US Army as a security element (just as planned) while the SF did the hard work. There were lots of places where if things had gone wrong, the US would have been slaughtered by HMGs and weapons of the militia. Getting my technicals blocked into the compound and the mercs fleeing before getting stuck in sadly lost me the game.
This coming week is going to see another incident in Bazistan. Pioneer Painting is looking to get his christmas presents on the table and who am I to not throw another scenario together. It’s going to be another game of Spectre so we can get a lot of toys on the table. I also don’t think I have too much to paint to get ready for it. Although I can think of two armoured things it would be cool to put on the table for the Kiwi’s to be rolling around in. Especially as I have a literal pile of RPGs to use. After all, the Geordiestan Ambassador needs fireworks to welcome him to the country.
PURCHASES
Nothing this week. The Empress figures arrived but expect more information on them in this Wednesday’s post
HOBBY
As I was running a game, it basically meant the week was spent frantically painting things to be ready for it. The big thing was actually pushing me into finishing off the pile of SUVs and Civilian cars that I had bought from Spectre a while ago and never actually finished painting. Luckily big brushes, solid colours and a lunch break or two finished it off. Still not happy with how I paint vehicles, I’m thinking of doing a complete repaint after I get an airbrush (hopefully after Christmas).
Needing some technicals for this week’s game, and with a pile of new weapons to build for the SF guys, I decided to do a rebasing spree. My original technicals were mounted on quite thin plastic sheets and so were starting to buckle under the weight. A second delivery of plasticard had given me one slightly thicker sheet and so, one lazy sunday afternoon, I got to work cutting it up into the irregular I-shapes that form the basis of my hot-swappable weapons. From this, I rebased all of my militia weapons. More details on the exact layouts will be coming in my SF technical article.
Speaking of technicals, I also got the first of the SF vehicles done. It performed admirably for its first game, not even blowing up. As I say above, I really don’t like painting vehicles. This was originally going to be plain black until I decided to “desert it up”. More details will be in the article on building all of my SF vehicles.
If you follow the Facebook page you might have seen a little melt down earlier this week regarding the Day of the Rangers models. I bought these guys in the kickstarter that ran last year but hadn’t got round to painting them. Deciding that I needed some guys for the pirates and Bazi Army, I decided to work on the Somalis and the US Rangers. On the positive side, the proportions on the models are fantastic – they look like tiny human beings. There is also a lot of fine detail in them, especially in the Somalis. But the more I worked on them, the more I got annoyed. Some of the posing is a little off, the guns are huge on them, there are giant (and very visible) mould lines including some across the face and the amount of flash that needed tidying up was ridiculous. However, I pushed on and got the Somalis painted. Thanks to them, I’ve found a recipe for painting African skin I’m a fan of and got to use some colours for a change. However, I was starting to get annoyed. I then started on the Rangers. Again, more flash to clean up. Then I applied the base colour for camo and noticed the rather terrible texture on many of the trousers. If one or two of the issues had been present, I’d have gritted my teeth and dealt without. With all of them, and experiencing the issue at 1am, I decided to cut my losses. The US Army replaced the Bazi in the game and the offending figures were put onto eBay. Someone will have a good time with them but I was so frustrated with them that I can’t keep them. The Bazi Army is going to be built from Empress’s Universal range (similar to the Bazi Police but in camo instead) and I’ll be going to either Spectre or Eureka for my African militia/pirate models. I’m sure many people would think these models are perfectly useable but they were just not for me.
Finally, I spent my saturday evening (in between blog writing) playing with green stuff. The main task was adding shemaghs to some of my Brits. The beret wearing squad needed to look a bit more ally and one or two specialists reccived some scrim. The biggest job is the gunner for the minigun. I want to be able to use him for some contracting shenanigans so I’m in the process of replacing the helmet with a baseball cap. It may not look great but I want to give it a go.
That’s it for this update, expect more updates next week!