2nd Annual 6 month mountain reduction and painting challenge (6MMRPC)

The pre-season has begun! David at Spiderweb of History has taken the lead on burnishing the rules and started the collective dash of lemmings towards the mountains of lead.

 6MMRPC was a GREAT boon to my productivity last year (and this for that matter). It was quite fun to see fellow painters projects (or randomness) proceed and wonderful to have folks commenting with encouragement and suggestions.

While it may seem difficult, it's a very chill group and very few people managed to fulfill all the requirements (weekly postings were pretty hard). Even if it *reduces* your rate of miniature gain, you are ahead. It would be lovely to have more company, so any readers are welcome.

Actual rules (copied/pasted from David's post) posted after the break....

Playtesting Vietnam Cordon & Search

I was very fortunate recently to join in a game that Thomas hosted at his buildings activity room. Thomas is a fan of the Vietnam era, and has some lovely kit to game with, but has found that there isn't a rule-set that really resonates with him. Cribbing from a number of other games and synthesizing, he has been working on a set for the reinforced platoon/company level.






The rules largely use squads as the maneuver unit, but they can be broken down into fire teams. Activations are rolled at the beginning of the turn and allotted to units (pips essentially).  Units that become pinned/suppressed are *very* difficult to re-motivate. Army morale degrades by (semi) random value chit pulls after losing units. There are also some non-onerous spotting rules for effective (non suppressing) fire that make sense in the jungles.

More eye candy after the jump.....

Vancouver Salute 2015

The local game convention(perhaps THE local game convention) 'Trumpeter Salute" happened this last weekend. There was a bit of a scramble to find extra hosts for games (as the numbers were down a month or so ago), so Bryan and I decided to host a game of axles and alloys. Borrowing some of Cameron's gear, we proceeded to add more cars, add game play assists (white board, rules QRS, a spinner for direction when you lost control, a stack of pre generated car rosters) and some terrain.

We hosted saturday night, and managed to get 8 of our 12 spots filled. Based on Doug's report from Salute (HERE) most games were struggling to get enough players, so I think we did quite well. The players seemed to have a blast, it appeared that many of them were friends to good natured razzing and grudge kills were the order of the day.

We had a rolling entry, so if you died, you grabbed another car and rolled in off the edge of the board the next turn. Points were given for kills (2 points, and steal half of the dead players points), and deaths and kills were tracked. We ran through about 20 cars in just over 2 hours before everyone petered out from a long day of gaming. Everyone was pretty happy to get out a bit early, as some people had been going since Friday night, and others had a long game session to host on Sunday.

Reaper Bones: Pirate Team including Gruff Grim Cleaver & Hajad

I fell off my posting scheme to get through these guys this week (the dangers of stretching out your progress). The last two figs are definitely a bit weaker, mostly due to painting, but I'm not super impressed with the sculpting of the treasure chest toting fellow. Perhaps it's more realistic proportions vs 'heroic' models that are so prevalent.

Hajad, the treasure bearer, I think had some fairly decent skin tones done. I painted his eyes which were okay, but I don't think the brown spot of colour for the iris was the right decision. Too similar to the skin, it seems to detract from the eyes. Perhaps no iris would have been better. 
The metallics on the chest edging could benefit from a highlight as well.

Grim could have had some colourful food splatter put on his chest. He also has a small apron I left black (behind the pouch on his belt). I was a little out to sea (haha) on what to do with it. The wood stock on the gun is so large, I'm not too happy with the uniform brown I ended up with. And the dew-rag could pop a bit more with some highlighting.

All 4 figs were completed on a pretty tight schedule considering I had family staying here for most the week/weekend. Once again, they are bones, so I'm happy to consider them good enough.

Reaper Bones: Muriel Twinspar

Yet another Bones miniature. I have to say, I appreciate the monday deadline to get these things done. I obviously work better with deadlines.

My wife was a bit disappointed in this mini, as it's a typical under dressed, over busty, unbelievable body shape, female fantasy trope. Can't say I really disagree. Her generous endowment did allow me to practice my skin tones however.

I was hoping for a more rosy/ruddy colour, but I used reapers flesh was and was quite unhappy with the results. I will stick with vallejo sepia, or GW devlan mud in the future (mind you, I really like reapers paints). As a result, I needed to work hard getting back to a reasonable skin tone, which brought the tone too light.

I ended up preping and priming all 4 pirate figures (that I noticed) from Bones 1. So this is why there's a run of these figures. I tried to match up the colours a bit to make them appear to belong together. Unfortunately the bases are quite different, so the effect is lessened. We shall see this next weekend.

Reaper Bones: Barnabus

I've decided to try working back in time to the caffeine forge blog reaper bones painting schedule (hopefully that makes sense). I'm trying to keep up with the weekly fig, but I decided to start catching up with the other folks by going back and doing what I've missed.

My first hop backwards (skipping one fig for now) is Barnabus. Obviously a pirate sea captain of some means. What the heck are the bevy of skeleton keys for? There's also a hint of a leather jacket under his coat to help him survive those pressing melee's on the high seas.

I rather like the sculpt of his sea coat and it turned out quite well. I passed up white and red striped pantaloons, but it was probably the right decision. I was undecided about leaving his hair black with no highlights, but I think it turned out well enough....a young and hungry captain this.

I think my biggest disappointment was his hand gun. The molding was a little wonky, and the colours didn't turn out super great.  Also the basing as stone instead of wood decking, for such an obvious naval man, was a bit weird. Oh well.

Reaper Bones: Ghoul Queen

I managed to while away most of my time this week fairly unproductively painting wise (Video games and roleplaying games were pretty successful though). At the end of the weekend, racing a deadline of getting enough sleep for monday (and losing an hour by the time switch thief!), I managed to bang out this mini.



 I did some editing of the figure, as I didn't like her floating sword behind her, nor the strange whispy things coming off her back. I suppose it was supposed to be a floating sword of something, but I lopped it all off, and the head of the sword as well, and firmly jammed it into the scabbard.

I took out her little horns as well, but left the strange bony mantle thing. I suppose it appeals to me from a warcraft esthetic.

I'm fairly happy with how the skin tones came out. I think the model looks a bit better in person than in these pictures. I ran out of time to make the back look better (a simple wash would have helped, and I feel now I should have highlighted the leather, and put a dot of colour in her eyes. Maybe even some colour to the lips. It's possible I'll go back.....but more likely I will keep forging ahead. There are a LOT of bones I need to do.