Fred - 2017 Painting Diary

[fred.]

Here we go again! Bit earlier than usual due to a slight technical hitch with the old thread.

The last year of gaming and painting could probably be defined by 3 several main themes:
* Epic - the year of the Banana Marines and the Bright Green Squats
* Renaissance - through Irregular Wars rules
* Fantasy - some painting lots of playing with our home brew rules following a major re-working to cut them down (Hordes of War)
* mini Epic - back to epic figures but with cut down rules
* Williamitte Wars - the excellent League of Augsburg figures, mainly painting, rather than gaming


Home brew rules dominated the year, with a strong preference for simplification and activation rolls - but activation rolls that succeed nearly all the time, rather than 50 or 60% of the time.

Two key achievements were getting my Araby Heavy cavalry painted, and a brigade of WWI British. Both of which had been sitting in the To Do list for far too long. One thing I said I would try to do, but didn't really, was to take proper photographs of finished stuff.

The painting thread was very successful (even if cut short in its 11th month ) with 883 posts and nearly 32000 page views. By far the biggest of my annual threads.

As to this year's aims. Well I'm not certain, 6mm sci fi and LoA should continue. More terrain feels sensible. But there are a lot of unpainted figures sitting around.

Links to the previous years

2016  http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,13401.0.html
2015  http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,11148.0.html
2014  http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,9178.0.html
2013  http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,6626.0.html
2012  http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,4379.0.html

[fred.]

As to working out what I have and what I should get on with I did a bit of sorting this afternoon.

I gathered the combined boxes of (most of) the lead/plastic pile together (there is a drawer each of Orcs and of Empire / Landsknechts that stayed put)



Then spent a while sorting them out - fortunately within each box the trays are fairly well organised. It was a strange mix of interesting and overwhelming!

Not quite finished - as it got quite cold in the conservatory - but basically there is a stack of 28mm, a stack of 10mm historical, and stack of 10mm Fantasy / Sci Fi
The historical stack is certainly the heaviest. One thing that is deceptive about the RUBs is that they can seem quite full, but actually not have that much stuff in (by weight)

[fred.]

The contents of the lead mountain (possible undiscovered peaks may exist)

28mm Sprues
* Perry WoTR (armoured foot, bill and bow, cavalry)
* Fireforge - Foot Sergeants
* Frostgrave adventurers
* Gripping Beast Un-armoured Dark Ages Infantry
* Ancient Greek Infantry
* Mantic KoW Salamanders

And on its way is the Reaper Bones III KS...

28mm in Progress
* Fireforge Crusaders
* Perry 8th Army and DAK

10mm Historical
* WWII - lots of 6mm aircraft, and early war troops (German Paras, French Infantry, and British tanks)
* WWI early - French Infantry
* WWI late - British Infantry, Tanks, and Guns. German Infantry and Guns
* Jacobites - a part painted deal - still loads of Scots to paint
* LoA - Lots of troops!! Some of my most recent purchases were additions to this, towards building the forces for the Battle of the Boyne.
* Renaissance - Lots of bits to make more units for Irregular Wars, including various Irish troops and lots of pikes
* Renaissance Meso-American - Conquistadors and Aztecs (not Pendraken) these are probably 12mm
* Mongols - still about half of these to paint
* Late Romans - loads and loads - these really are struggling to make it up the painting queue - probably due to lack of gaming opportunities for them

10mm Fantasy
* Empire / Landsknechts - loads of these to paint (even though I have loads painted). Might even build a second pure Landsknecht army.
* Orcs - loads. Kind of happy to sit on these as two gaming mates have Orc / Goblin armies
* Elves - only a small tub of these to paint - put I have so many painted, I'm not sure if these are needed - and several sprues of BoFA plastics
* Araby - still quite a lot of these to paint, although I have a pretty good army painted.
* Evil Men - from the KS - with extra ogres and giants. These would be nice to paint, but need to decide a theme
* Dwarves - copplestone - they were on sale! - getting these painted would give me an army as I already have cannon and gyrocopters painted (need some shooters)
* Beastmen - only a small army and lots of them undercoated - bought to extend the Centaurs and Minotaurs to make a full Taurian army
* Lizardmen - only a few left to paint, mainly infantry and a few flyers
* Dungeon Critters - lots painted, but even more still to paint

6mm Sci Fi
* Marines - a few bits and pieces to finish off
* Squats - several infantry formations to paint, and various vehicles
* Tyranids - various bits left to paint including the big bio-titans

[d_Guy]

The contents of the lead mountain (possible undiscovered peaks may exist)

A prudent but probably unnesseccary qualifier considering your audience. 

[fred.]

A prudent but probably unnesseccary qualifier considering your audience.  

Well, better safe than sorry. Its as much a note to myself that there might be bits I've not really worked through yet.

More Banana Marines - 30k vehicles


A bunch of Vanguard miniatures tanks, in various stages of painting.
These are good models, delivered very quickly, and the initial painting has been quick too. This Imperial Fists army was supposed to be a small army to play a bit of Epic, a handful of painted units bought off eBay. It really has taken on a life of its own!

[fred.]

more yellow, and some dark grey

[Techno]

Looking good, Forbes !

Cheers - Phil

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Definitely different

[fred.]

As may gaming buds were all busy with family Xmas stuff tonight (and my missus had gone to the theatre with eldest daughter), I decided to give Dragon Rampant a solo play through, using 10mm figures of course. I went with a High Elf and a Men of the West (aka Empire) battle. I had been planning on using 4, 40x20mm stands for a unit, but after doing the army lists and seeing how few units were on each side (4 Elves, 6 Men) I went with 6 stands per unit. For infantry each stand was worth 2 Strength Points.

The Men definitely had the numerical edge. Deploying in a long line from the centre to the left table edge. The Elves deploying second went to the opposite side, deploying their Elite Rider leader on the right, the archers next, and their Elite Infantry in the middle. The Elves rolled double 1 for their first command, so decided to see what the Men would do - not much, they only passed a couple of commands. Back to the Elves who managed to move everyone forward, and next turn for the men was similar. Both forces facing off against each other.



The Elven bows started firing - chipping off a couple of stands from the Men's Riders (blue knights). The Elven Leader's cavalry made their way around the wood, and where in position to get a Wild Charge into the Men's Spearmen, who hadn't been able to form a Wall of Spears. A Wild Charge is a bit of a mixed blessing, it is good as failing it doesn't end your turn. But you tend to end up having to repeatedly charge each turn.


The Elven knights charge home, both sides rolling 12 dice, the elves needing 3s to hit, the spearmen on the defence needing 4s. But the Elves have much better armour so need 4 hits to score a wound on them, whereas the spearmen suffer a wound for each 2 hits. 5 v 1 to the elves - ouch! The Spearmen fail their courage test, but just retreat, as they got a +1 for being near their leader.


Just after the above combat, the blue knights have been forced to retreat by shooting. The Men have struggled to get their infantry moving on the left, while the Elite Elven foot are stomping forwards.  After this it became quite random with lots of failed activations. The two leaders and their Cavalry ended up in repeated wild charges against each other, often getting a counter charge in. The Elite Elven foot stomped into the village, and smashed the crossbows, the other unit of crossbows tried to shoot them in the flank, but they had effective armour of 5 in the village, so shrugged this off, and stomped through the village to finally catch the Men's Leader's Elite Cavalry and cut them down.

While I liked the subtle differences in the stats, with different attack and defence values, and the differences between infantry and cavalry due to the different Strength values and Courage values. What really controlled the whole game, and made it very random and reactive is the activation mechanism. You are typically attempting to roll 6+ on 2d6 to activate a unit this means you fail a lot. And not only does that unit fail to activate, you turn ends, so quite often you activate 0 or 1 units. Or sometimes you are lucky and activate the whole army.

It feels that this random factor is far more important to the outcome of the game than anything else. The smaller elven army was favoured as it had to make fewer activation rolls. I think the Men would have been better sitting together in a big blob to absorb any attacks that came their way.

I don't think DR was in any danger of becoming our main rules - but I did want to see how it plays. I'm now a little concerned about how The Men Who Would Be Kings will play as it is from the same stable as DR. I think my main change to DR would be that when an activation is failed, play switches sides, but can switch back again when the second player fails (or activates all their units) so both players get a chance to activate all their units each turn.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Cracking game and report sir!

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Is that all ?!

IanS

[Steve J]

Lovely looking game and you certainly have a lead mountain that will strike a chord with quite a few of us I'm sure .

[Techno]

 

Cheers - Phil

[fred.]

Is that all ?!

Well I do try to keep it under control - and paint as much as possible.

Lovely looking game and you certainly have a lead mountain that will strike a chord with quite a few of us I'm sure .

Thanks. And yes I think we all find it quicker and easier to buy than to paint!

[petercooman]

Been reading up on the men who should be kings, and there you just go to your next unit if you fail, there is no turn end.