COVID cupdate 4

In all honesty, there were updates ready for last week, but due to a number of factors I didn't manage to get a blog post up.

Slugs!

So convincingly gross they icked out the the COVID cup whatsapp group! More nasties for fantasy and post apocalyptic adventurers.

Mortar!

This is my entry for the Rare bonus round. Now I can already hear what you're thinking. Sebastian, how is a metal Catachan Imperial Guard mortar from the early to mid nineties count as rare? There must by thousands of these bastards around. Oldhammer doesn't necessarily mean rare! And you'd be right. But this figure is perhaps the rarest figure of all. Each wargamer will only have one of these, and that is the first figure they ever had, and this is mine, the one that started it all, gifted to me on a birthday and - probably not starting but - crystalising the start of a life long love of wargaming.

In retrospect, I should have taken a picture of the "before" model, before I stripped it of all its glossy, thickly applied citadel paint glory and repainted in a more "realistic" style, but here we are.

This is because, this is also a Dynasty model!

***

As if the prominent winged skulls on the mortar and the flak jacket pauldrons weren't enough, the extremely large caliber of this mortar instantly marks it out as a 2N6 ultra-heavy infantry mortar, produced and used exclusively by the forces of "General" Zattomir, one of the pre-eminent warlords during the middle-Warlord era

The 2N6 traded range, portability and supportability for an extremely impactful kinetic effect, able to ruin emplacements and troop concentrations and was produced to pacify the Moscow metropolitan area and urban areas inn Eastern Europe, and in the run up to Zattomirs abandoned invasion of coastal China (abandoned due to his alignment with Gao).

In the swirling, chaotic fights that took place with Solarin motorised raiders on the central steps, however, it proved to be utterly worthless, and large stocks were captured (and converted into more generically useful materiel.

A number of examples still exist; 1 in the Imperial Arms Museum in Dhaka, 1 in the Martian Mons Collection (not currently on display) and at least 4 in the hands of private collectors.

COVID cup update 2

Alright, more painting done!

Not as much as I was expecting again, but I think being introduced to multiplayer Hearts of Iron 4 might be bad for my productivity...

The latest British Flames of War book has allowed each platoon to take 2 PIATs, so I made a few more, and converted the now obsolete infantry spotters to PIATs as well.

Also 2 regular rifle teams to convert a newly obsolete Airlanding Assault Platoon into a regular Airlanding Platoon.
 

Giant leaches! Inspired by this scene, and once destined for Darwin's World or Pathfinder before I caught the Pawns bug.
 

The bear, again, destined for RPGs before I fell hard for Pawns.

Gaming Roundup

The whole damn army (minus newly supercilious command teams)

Plus the French

TwiceLord Jadhak and company take care of a rogue druid (while accidentally leaving a man to die)

A weird collection of ancient people gather for a scrap on a ping-pong table

 

The Welsh make things tasty after spending the entire game frustrating their opponents

A mammoth leads a hoard of barbarians against the wastes' favourite drinking establishment

 

But is more or less instantly killed by a floating octopus robot

 

Sinister gunmen await the horde

 

Crush your foes, drive them before you, and hear the bitching of their women :P

After action look at the control board for Urban Nightmare in Chipenham (the giant green blob in the lower is my massive troop buildup)

Jono's super huge Soviet tank spam rocks up to Tanksgiving

My force from round 1 of out de-escalation tournament.

Things get weird for the Desert Rats as Soviet armour dashes down the board to protect them from Axis aligned Hungarians

Thing a Week 24

We discovered that one of our Pathfinder witch's go to spells required secure anchor points to stick it to, so I knocked out some markers.

Couldn't really think of a fourth though, suggestions welcome

Thing a Week 22

Greetings inkeep! My name is Twicelord Quell Osman Urth Jadhak. No, no. No need to bow. I and my companions merely wish to sample your wine, and maybe cast our eyes over your menu. Just stew? Well, I'm sure that will be lovely. Oh, a very strange land, a very long way from here, why don't you get yourself a glass and let me tell you about the Great Spindle of the Airwise Nepf.

This is my character in the game of Pathfinder I'm currently playing. I think this might be a rare case of the figure looking better in the photo than in reality. My attempt at blending didn't really work in my opinion, and my attempt at non-metalic metals in red on the shin guards and (hidden) chestplate (not really visible) didn't really work. It's also the first time I've made an attempt at doing eyes, and he looks a bit maddened. 

I had to extend the cobbling around his base so if fit properly on a 25mm base and it works well enough if you dont look too closely.

I realized half way through him that it's been a while since I did 28mm painting.

In the end, it's good enough for my purposes.

Gaming and painting roundup

I've finally completed decaling my Cromwell/Challenger/Firefly spam just in time for me to realise that 4th ed. is out and the units will probably change once the relevant books are published.

I decided to stay away from unit markings despite this being the reason I started decaling them up (a regular opponent was frustrated at not being able to tell units apart) as they pull double duty in different formations depending on the source book. I'll just use tiddlywinks or something to mark units when the time comes.

All in all, a fairly frustrating process, due to incomplete marking guides in battlefronts books, and little easily accessible information online.

At least I haven't buggered it up like the Char B1's this time (AFAIK)

Here's a photo of the fiddly little bastards - I'll be damned if they don't get some airtime.

I've had a reasonable amount of game time as well with a fairly tasty game of BFG

Not pictured: me helping!

and some "quick" games of Flames 4th ed.

Tetrarchs and Paras try to hold back the Soviet party bus

Significantly less gribbly panzergrenadiers try to turf paras out of their new digs

But mostly, quite a lot of Pathfinder run by Peter of Lead Rising, having wrapped up my own campaign. It's quite liberating to be a player again, although I already have ideas for my future campaigns.

Things go badly wrong for ambushing bandits as their best fighter takes a cheetah to the rear while their caster is cut down by an invisible bastard.