The Hunt Begins: Participants

The forces are now ready for the first scenario. Here are a couple of pics:

The Witch-king and two Ringwraiths approach the border of the Shire...


... and the Dunedain emerge from the forest to stop them.


Hopefully the next post will be the skirmish itself.

Next to paint: 5 more Nazgul so I have the full complement of 8 + the Witch-king (required for scenario 2) and Frodo, Sam and Pippin in preparation for scenario 3...

Next terrain: I need to prep some more trees. If I can get hold of some extruded polystyrene I will also be making some rocky outcrops.

LotR

Currently painting up 9 Dunedain for my latest project!

I have recently been building up my collection of Lord of the Rings figures and sourcebooks. My plan is to play though the 3 campaigns matching the books/films, painting the figures and making the terrain as I go. This should be an interesting project to undertake and also make for an interesting solo gaming experience, with an interesting narrative replacing repetative one-off battles.

Scenario 1: The Hunt Begins, takes place after Sauron has discovered from Gollum that the One Ring is in the possesion of a creature called 'Baggins' in a land called 'Shire'. He has dispatched the Ringwraiths, who have found out where the Shire is and are now approaching it's borders. But the Shire is not unprotected. The Rangers of Arnor have long protected this peaceful land and will sell their lives to prevent the Nazgul from crossing into the Shire.

The scenario sees 9 Dunedain (plus reinforcements as the game goes on) trying to prevent 3 Ringwraiths from getting two of their number off the board and into the Shire. Being this far from Sauron's influence, the Ringwraiths are relatively weak, but 3 of them are still a formidable force.

When the figures are all ready I hope to post a full report on the battle.

Time for an update

Time for an update... although in truth there is not a lot...

Painting!: Have been caught up with other things recently, so not had much time for painting. Various figures are in progress, but not fully complete. I am hoping for a burst of activity soon. I did undercoat 3 WW1 Brits though... Not very impressive.

Vikings!: A visit to York has caused me to succum to the lure of Vikings again. Finding out more about the larger battles they fought has banished all thoughts of 28mm from my mind and my Viking project will definately be in 15mm. Added to that is the fact that I found I can build 500 point blocks of Vikings and Saxons for WAB at not too great a cost thanks to Donnington Miniatures. Should be good as long as they are of similar standard to their Wallachians.

Battletech!: I dug out my Battletech box set the other day. Although not strictly speaking a miniatures game, I have a friend who may be interested in moving Mechs around large hexmaps, so it is probably worth painting some of the 25 plastic figures that come with the game. Should be quite easy to do.

Points:
This post: 3
June 2010: 16
May 2010: 17

Little progress

Don't seem to be getting much done on things at the moment. Finished the horses for the Cv General unit and undercoated the riders. Worked a bit on bases for the two 3Bw elements and also some 28mm Celts.

Still undecided about the WWI British colour scheme, although I have narrowed it down from 3 to 2... Ended up applying dip on the last two to see how they turn put when finished, even though I doubt I'll be able to repaint the one I like least. Not awarding points for these as they are just a test.

Points:
This post: 6
June 2010: 6
May 2010: 17

Project update: 15mm Wallachians

Finished painting the two stands of 3Bw for my Wallachians tonight. Getting somewhere slowly but surely.

Totals:
This post: 6
May 2010: 14

A Tale of 3 Rulebooks: Part I

Had an idea on the way into work today... I have recently played Star Wars wargames using The Great War by Warhammer Historical, with home-brew lists and additional rules. I have 2 other sets of rules which could be used for this, namely Star Grunt 2 and the original Star Wars Miniatures Battles by West End Games.

So what I plan on doing is this: I will create 2 forces and play the same battle with each of the above 3 sets of rules. I will type up AARs for each version of the battle and comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each rule set as I see them. At the end I hope to say with some certainly what rules I prefer for playing Star Wars.

At the moment I predict that The Great War will come last, mainly as it will suffer from similar flaws as 40K; Star Grunt will come second, due to being a great rules set but not quite capturing the feel of Star Wars; and Star Wars Miniatures Battles will be first, seeing as it is all Star Warsy and all... But you never know...

Not entirely sure when I will get the time to do this at the moment, but I'll do my best!

Painting points

Various wargames bloggers seem to be using the idea of 'painting points' to measure the progress of their projects. This seems like a good idea to me, so I'm going to use my own version. Measuring output in terms of points which can be compared over the months will probably be a good motivator.

Unlike others, though, I'm going to be breaking things down into steps, with each step being worth one or more points. This means that I will still feel some achievement when I undercoat some miniatures in a few spare minutes!

So I think I will use the following:

25/15mm undercoated - 1 pt
15mm painted - 1 pt
25/15mm based - 1 pt
25mm painted - 2 pts
6mm (one base or vehicle) fully painted and based - 1 pt

Cavalry count as double points. 1x for horse, 1x for rider.

So by this reckoning I earned myself 8 points last night for the basing of my 15mm Wallachian DBA elements. I'm not going to award points based on the number of figures on each stand as this would be blatantly cheating!

Project update: 15mm Wallachians

Feeling inspired by starting this blog, I set aside a few minutes this evening to work on the Wallachians. Managed to finish the bases on all the painted elements. So now I have completed 9 out of 12.

Project update: 15mm Late Medieval

May as well start with my top priority project. I have taken an inordinate amount of time to paint two 15mm DBA armies. In fact it must be some kind of record. Especially as the Wallachians are a Psiloi heavy army... This is where I am with the various elements:

1x3Cv (Gen): Still in their little plastic baggie, for shame!
3x2LH: All painted. Just need to finish off the bases
2x3Bw: Almost finished painting these, but they are the least complete aside from the Cv
5x2Ps: All painted. Just need to finish off the bases
1x5Wb: Painted, just need to finish of the base

So there is not a great deal to be done, to be honest. Other things just seem to get in the way all the time!

On the other hand, the Ottoman Turks have not even been looked at...

First Post

Welcome to my blog. This is an attempt to get myself into gear and really start working on all those wargames projects I have on the go. At the moment they are languishing at various states of incompleteness, but I hope that creating a record of my endeavours will help me to become more productive.

I will also blog about boardgames and give reports on gaming sessions. I might also post reviews of games I own or buy in the future. Aside from all the above, there might be the occasional rant or comment on the state of the gaming world in general. So keep checking back!

Below is a list of my current projects, with the ones nearer the top being of higher priority for me at the moment:

15mm Late Medieval
28mm WW1
28mm Ancients
28mm Pirates
28mm Victorian SF
28mm Steampunk
15mm Sci Fiction
15mm Colonial
6mm Sci Fiction
Sci Fi Space
28mm Vikings
15mm Africa
28mm Star Wars

As you can see I have a lot of ongoing things. My top priority is to complete two DBA armies, Wallachian and Ottoman Turks. Given that I have had these since my birthday last October, it is entirely shameful that I haven't finished them! Hopefully this blog will help put an end to that...

So that's a brief introduction. Hopefully I'll have more to post about soon.