Month: August 2012

A few months ago we were playing a GASLIGHT fantasy game, run by Dave Wood.  He had some tremendous figures that we all coveted.  They were orcs riding on dinosaur-looking creatures.  Dave had the stock number from an old Ral Partha catalog on the bottom of the bases.  We found that Iron Wind has all the old Ral Partha molds.  After a little work and a little luck, Jim Fox, the current owner of the molds, agreed to make a bunch of Death Jaws for us.  Most of us didn’t want the orcs.  I wanted mine for VSF games.  Anyway, Iron Wind made a bunch of them for us, and we were able to get our hands on a bunch of them at Historicon this Summer.

The figure came in five pieces:  central body, left body, right body, a bag of stuff, and the reins.  The bits went together, but green putty was needed to fill in some gaps.

Below is a picture of a Death Jaw after the first coat of paint.

They look even better after the second coat of dry brushing.

I plan to use them in a Mars or desert-based Victorian science fiction game, so I wanted them to have an orange hue to them.

The Death Jaws have skulls hanging from the back of the beast.  While they looked okay with orcs riding them, I didn’t think that my lady hussars would travel with skulls on their mounts.

To cover the hanging skulls, I made some boxes and bags from Fimo.  I molded them around the skulls and then carefully pealed them off.  After cooking, I primed and painted them.

Hinterland sells the mounted female hussars with or without horses.  I ordered a unit mounted on horses and another set without horses, specifically to mount on these Death Jaws.

At the same time I was painting two units of mounted female hussars, I painted a few dismounted ones to go with them.  I really like these figures.  They look like women without being pornographic.

A GASLIGHT unit consists of 10 figures.  This picture shows just four of them, but I have a full ten-man (or woman) unit.  I can’t wait to put them on the table.  They will be quite an imposing sight.

I highly recommend both the Death Jaw figure and the entire line of figures from Hinterland.

Yesterday, Chris, Dave, and I ran our first play test of Look, Sarge, No Charts: Fantasy, Ancients, and Medieval (LSNC: FAM) rules.  We were assisted by Tommy.  As this was our first test of the rules, we hadn’t even had time to affix the data labels to the bases.

I built a point system for the game.  We don’t intend these for tournament play; however, fantasy is so broad that we felt a point system was needed in order to give game masters a first-order approximation of the “value” of forces in order to help design interesting scenarios.  For this game, we basically just used the point system to total the points for the forces we have painted.  It turns out that a good player’s worth of figures was about 1000 points.  The play test helped us refine the point system a bit, but considering that this was our first game and the first use of the point system, the forces were surprisingly well balanced, and the scenario turned out to be very even.

Most of my forces are from two Games Workshop Battle of Five Armies sets.  Those two sets allow you to create a lot of units of Eagles.  I added a set of Eureka Miniatures elves riding on eagles.  It turned out to be a formidable force.  We are going to increase the point cost for flying units.  Despite their very light armor, and the fact that skeletons have better protection against edged weapons (like eagle talons), my eagles were able to defeat the skeletons after several turns of fighting.

For this first play test, we kept the group small.  This allowed us to stop and make changes along the way.  It worked well enough that we think our next game can be at a club meeting.  In early play tests in which you are making changes on the fly, it is counterproductive to have a large group.  Four players were the right amount.

We were happy with the overall look of the battle.  This picture is from near the beginning of the game.  While most of my figures are Battle of Five Armies, you can see my “tree trolls” from Eureka Miniatures in the foreground of this picture.  Eureka has some nice 10mm fantasy figures.

This picture is from late in the game when Tommy’s high elf cavalry had worked its way around the flank of the evil forces and were preparing to fall on their rear.

I am still working on getting the Napoleonic rules written and off to the publisher.  I have to be careful not to get too distracted by this new project.  I hope to have the Napoleonic book written by the end of September so they can be released in time for the HMGS East Fall In convention.  That means we’ll probably be ready to start public play tests of LSNC: FAM by Cold Wars in March 2013.  Keep your eyes out for them!

 

 

The HAWKs will host their annual gaming day, Barrage, on 15 September.

 

We’ve added even more games to an already packed event schedule for Barrage on 15 September. See link for details.

In past years, Barrage has been a tremendous one-day gaming event. This year promises to be even better with a larger venue, more games, and even a Flames of War tournament.

Come early. Stay all day. Bring some buddies.

Buck Surdu

I didn’t get much hobby work done this weekend, but I did manage to finish a handful of Hinterland figures.

I thought they would look good with blue skirts.  Many of the WWI uniform pictures I say had blue tunics but white trousers.  Then I found this picture of a WWII German sailor.

With the dry brushing, the blue on the females got too light.  I guess these women have been on active service too long, and their uniforms have faded.

I can’t wait for this unit to see action in an upcoming game.