Some more troops and a growing forest of alien flora

Finally I finished my fist Garn squad. Escpecially the skin was fun to paint, as drybrushing and a solid wash worked wonders. I still have 3 Garn left, but finally I can use them as a fireteam for AE Bounty Hunter or Tomorrow's War.

These are my favorite conversions in my whole collection. Battle robots from Thescene.uk with sculpted backpacks, visors and broader hips to look like Starcraft marines and a firebat. The visors are a pain in the neck to sculpt, but I think it was worth it. Still I don't feel the urge to make more than 5 of those ;)

Space Pals from Highlanders Studios: You should buy one of those sets, because it's for a good cause and you get three of the best space opera characters ever. The fury carpet got an bionic eye(-patch).

The big ass alien skeleton pieces are from a cheap magazin that came with a big lion skeleton. But even its size didn't protect it from the hordes of bugs....

That's it so far with my alien forest. Some exotic nuts, some dried plants and aquarium stuff. More to come, because I'm fed up with alien worlds that have earth-like vegetation (reason: Lazy gamers).

These are 6mm Demonscape buildings that are really cheap (sold on evilbay), but work as 15mm generators and stuff as well.

The red fat guy and hi unpainted friends are VOR/VOID growler pups. You can buy them from Ral Partha for a nice price and they make great local alien creatures. Sizewise I think they are perfect! I'm not sure which colour I will use on the unpainted ones.

The turquoise/yellow miniatures are Hunter Khans from Critical Mass Games. I'm really satisfied with the colour scheme, although I'm not sure how well it's gonna work on those Khurasan Felids.

Just another update..

Ahoy, in the picture below you can see another kind of "alien plant" I created. I have no idea, what kind of nuts these are, but I think they look great. The next batch will have red "grass" on top, to make them a bit more colourful.

Three finished Garn, one bounty hunter (Highlander Studios) and a Felid from Khurasan. I used this crew to attempt my first solo game. I used a mixture of Tomorrow's War and Ambush Alley. The Bugs activated like tougher zombies (longer detection range and faster) and were generated via hot spots.

Sorry for the blurred pictures....

I could acustomed to solo gaming, but I need to work on the rules. Too many overpowered Bugs (Troop Quality D8 - D10, 2D body armour, 5 dice in close combat per trio) meant that the games were very short ;) Still it kinda cool, when the Bugs came around the corner, spotted the group and rushed towards them.....and killed them in 1-2 turns.

The next game will have Bugs with TQ D8, 2 CC dice per figure, 1D body armour and a speed of 4" for the scorpions and 6" for the soldier bugs. The soldier bugs will keep their detection range of 8" (when not in LOS) and the blind scorpions 6".

I used 10 Khurasan Bugs, that I speedpainted with GW Tau Sept Ochre and some Dark Age scorpion thingies I painted some time ago. I'm thinking about changing the brown colour to the same yellow look.

"It's a trap!" That failed, as not a single bug fell...

I bought some new stuff. These are Felid Barons from Khurasan. I chipped the helmet off and one of the weapons, to make some power armoured elite soldiers. I'm quite pleased with the result. It just need some more greenstuff work.

 Below a Okami walker from Critical Mass Games, that I want to use as APC. Great kit, easy to clean and assemble. I also bought CMG Protolene Hunter Khans (name?), also great miniaturs, but I don't like the "brittle" pewter, because it makes bending the miniatures (to get more poses) quite difficult.

 Jetbikes from Khurasan. Very clean cast and gorgeous details, highly recommended.

Finished flora and two shuttles

 The finished flora! Plus two crab monsters!

 Two cheap Burger King Star Trek (2009?) toys, that I painted up for my Galactic Alliance. Really cheap on evil-bay and looking good enough.

Some alien flora for 15mm Scifi

As I'm not a huge fan of Near Future Scifi (20 - 50 from now on earth without aliens) and prefer "real" Scifi, as it provides a million more options and just is way more exciting to me: I tried to build some cheap nice looking alien flora for newly discovered worlds.

I saw those in a store for decoration stuff for 10 cents a piece and bought 15 pieces. Painted in vivid colours (inspired by Avatar's Pandora), I think they look rather nice. They can also double as spawning pods or tunnel entrances for local insectoids ("Bugs!").

From this angle you can se the orange drybrushing.

Those are pecan nuts that I grouped together in trios and painted them in the brightest yellow I could find.

A garn heavy weapon soldier makes his way through the exotic wilderness. I really like the blue tone.

But beware! A crab monster attacks.... (Khurasan sponk painted like an image of a bug I saw in one of my little sisters books about insects, very helpful!)

First Songs of Blades and Heroes battle

So I welcome you all to 2012, the year of the Zombie Apocalpyse, but I hope you are as prepared as I am (I recommend the Zombie Surival Guide and World War Z, both a blast to read).

Around the christmas holidays I had my first and probably last "Songs of Blades and Heroes" game. The rules really do have the advantage that army building goes fast and the rules are easy to explain. Still I really don't like the whole activation process, a random activation is okay, as long as it doesn't frustrate every player at least 2-3 times over the whole game. Some like the amount of luck involved, but I prefer e.g. a card activation system (every player draws cards, assigns them to units and has to activate them in this order), because it's a lot more tactical approach.

Now on to the game: First warband - "The heroes" after plundering another dungeon and freeing a village from untold evils, our heroes travel through the land of Bruendelheim. The gang includes a cleric (rules-wise: magician), a dwarf, an elvish druid and his two elementals, plus Bob the mule and a hunter (the heroes picked him up on the way).

The orcish warband in the front: Skullcracker the warboss, his loyal ogre Zurg, three savage orcs and three archers. The law keepers in the bottom picture are the trusted men of the sheriff. The sheriff decided that the heroes have not paid their "plunder tax". So he sent out his men to "deal" with them. They are led by Sir Wildwort, the 8th Knight (of the 10 most trusted knights of the king).

The heroes make their way through the dense forest.

The sheriffs men are waiting behind an old barrier to cut off the heroes retreat.

Ogre attack! The orcs break loose from their hiding in the forest and fiercely attack the knights/squires. The ogre and orc boss butchered a lone squite that was caught in the open.

Even the forest turns against the knights as a swarm of spider attacks the crossbow man, but he is able to kill them all.

Sir Peter tries to corner the heroes, but they get away. Instead he tries to increase his reputation by killing the orc warboss skullcracker.

The 8th knight charges in to save the day with the sherrif's cousin to his right. Still he is to late as the orc warboss cracks Sir Peters skull with one savage blow.

At last the knight flees the field and is cought by the pursuing orcs.

Although a fun game, the luck left me and another player at the end, so it became gruesomely one-sided. The warbands worked quite well, but I'm still switching to the Lord of the Rings ruleset from GW. Still one of the best skirmish rulesets I know. I recommend you to try it, even if you like GW bashing.

AE Bounty Hunter battle report

How I love my gaming matt! Some new terrain and bam, you a small Scifi outpost.

A small spaceport in Freedom City on Dschahanann (a swampy death world in the outer rim). This world is neutral territory as no force or race could keep possesion of it for long. The law is upkept (or not) by Marshalls and their crew. Both are paid by the governments of the different races or corporations. Contracts for law enforcement are signed for 5 years and a new Marshall is elected for each city or outpost.

Crazy Ivan is selling his wares.

Captain Neroth and his Black Sun Crew (name shamelessly stolen) sweep the city for the droids that escaped the estate of a powerful merchant (Jotan Saltare). The merchant pays for every droid captured, but the black market price is much higher.

The Felid government dispatched Baron K'orall to secure the droids, as they suspect the smuggling of Felid weapons with Saltare in the middle. A small elite team of the Keri'l House was chosen to compleze the mission.

The scouts of the pirate gang already secured a clear view on the battlefield.

Both crew make their way to the centre and search for the droids.

Nothing to see for the Felids except Dr. Zoidberg waiting for clients ;)

The scouts spring their trap and ambush the heavy weapons guy of the Felids and rip him apart with one salvo. A heavy blow the firepower of the assault team.

Captain Neroth decices to take the secure route (even in Power Armour).

Chainsaw attack! The corsais attack two Felids that tried to make a pincer move.
Every new pirate crew member has to prove himsel in one of the corsair squads. All corsairs are equipped with self-destruct mechanism, so failure at least serves some purpose. After 10 survived battles the explosive devices are taken off and the corsair joins the normal squads.

Seeing his fellow pack members die one by one, the Baron has to admit defeat and retreat to fight another day. The captain and his crew did not manage to get all the droids, but at least demonstrated, that they are a force to be reckoned with.

We used the AE Bounty Hunters ruleset, one of my all-time favorites. Great rules that really make it easy to create interesting scenarions. I used one elite gang with only 6 members and good equipment and one gang with 13 members. The large gang proved quite effective, because the Felid player didn't really use his advantages (e.g. he could have easily suppressed the low morale pirates, etc.).

Still a great game and I really love how my terrain fits the matt.