Enfilade 2018 - Hotwheels HMGs & Human Games by Bruce Smith

I honestly can't add much to the pictures from this game. Table was rich with character and terrain, yet was still highly playable. This was probably helped by the rules being a bit loosy goosy, but it worked very well this group of gamers.

We all had slightly different objectives, all the broken cars could be searched, occupying buildings had a point advantage at the end. Wrecks might be booby trapped or worse (a ufo disgorged a melee monster, and then detonated it's power source later, a few cars exploded, 20ft shipping boxes disgorged zombies). The semi truck was the government who could only attack once fired up. There was a plane bombing (with rockets, bombs, and gas weapons) by request and beer bribery.

My team was the railroaders who cruised across the board painfully slowly. Our objective was to find a critical item in the railyards. Our first major firefight and the train caught on fire and we lost control....it drifted, burning, till it left the board. The crew all hopped ship(train) at the railyards and gave up their itinerant lifestyle.


More pics after the break....

French Gendarme D'Elite & Grenadier A Cheval - Perry Miniatures

Looking to fill out my French troops for a Waterloo campaign, I need 3 elements/units/bases of Imperial guard heavy Cavalry. I figured nothing says guard like bearskins, so I selected the Grenadier a cheval (the obvious choice) and the Gendarme D'Elite.

These latter guys sound like pretty tough customers in a non frontline setting. I guess non civil policing can be pretty rough at times. They were fun to paint up (as most perry metals are), but their outfits are so similar I'm sure I'll forget which ones are which. Grenadiers have the yellow trim.

Enfilade 2018 - French troops marching...

I'm happy to report I'm completely my troops for the convention (almost a whole week before needed!). Doug (dots of paint) is hosting Eylau this year and has once more parceled out commands to encourage us layabouts to paint up troops for his gaming system.

I selected the Imperial guard which required a massive amount of paints (*sarcasm on*).

Bessieres  5 elements

1  Gd. HC, 2 Gd.Infantry , 1 FA@ 2, 1 HA@2

An element is 1 base. Infantry bases have 8-10 guys. Cavalry is 3. Artillery is 1 gun and crew (usually 4 from most manufacturers). Plus you need a leader (1-2 figs). So total count was about 38 figures (for a CORP). 

There was a bit of nervousness about all this as I finally placed my Perry order January 25, and didn't get them till March 14th. I painted my entire order at the same time as I dislike small batch painting. Nine weeks to bang out 9 cavalry, 4 cannon + 16 crew, and 6 command. This is a good clip for me, especially in spring with all the yard and garden work happening.

Napoleon's Battles: Austerlitz AAR

One of the local-ish gamers, Murdock, (*only* 90-120 min away) hosted Austerlitz. We managed to line up a local gaming space and a long weekend were we could get enough people together. This was previously done many years ago, and in fact we used the same set of figs, although I understand that it's a legacy set with the original owner having since passed away.


The night before a set of players did some lite role-playing (the briefings are hilariously prejudiced against one another on the same side) and determined the plan of attack. It was largely historical, although the timing of some of the reinforcements changed.

A roof over your head: Renedra Tents and GameCraft Afghan Homes

Renedra has put out some plastic tents that I see popping up in a lot of photos. I quite liked them and grabbed some for my cowboy town (I reckon before you even get a stick frame up, you're going to be tenting it). Truly tents have a lot of use in terms of age and setting. I'll probably grab the round ones at some point too.



These buildings were from a rather large order I made in 2012. I think I was inspired by ambush alley and wanted a great table to play on. 6 years later I've painted 3 of them. Booo. I struggled for a long time trying to decide how to 'rough them up' and make them look stoney/plaster covered/whatever.

These two guys were painted with the same craft paint colour and washed with two different ink mixes. I *think* I like the more yellow one, but I suspect it's more because I spread the ink better and ended up with less of that crappy rinse streak effect at the bottom. Variety is important in a table that will host these things, so either way it's a bit of a success.

15mm XCOM: Advent troops inbound

Loyal Citizens, I stand truly humbled.Today our struggle Ends.

Advent are the superficially virtuous state apparatus that the remnants of XCOM are resisting. They preach a brotherhood with their alien benefactors, but secretly are just liquidating humanity for their genetic code and use as cannon fodder.

In an excellent decision for a computer game, each type of trooper is colour coded. You know what else this would work well for? table top games!!

With only a vague inkling of a ruleset I will hack up one day, I've been slowly chipping away at building the troops required. Today, the (advent) struggle ends.

These folks are 15mm figs from rebel minis. Titan Marines I believe. While the sculpts are too close, they do have enough similarity that with a similar point job and a psychological suggest (IT'S XCOM PEOPLE) I think it will pass muster. For whatever reason, these guys were painfully slow to finish and lots of things got worked on between each small step of progress. At last this particular struggle ends.....you know, except for the basing (AH!)

28mm Sci Fi Cars: Marx Future Cars

Inspired by Cheetor at sho3box blog  I tracked down some of these fine 'marx future cars' in order to add some much needed street traffic to my 28mm sci fi terrain boards. They've been a easy item to bang out when taking breaks from batch painting other things. I have to say I'm slightly embarrassed to realize I used a green paint scheme on the SAME CAR as Cheetor. Perhaps the sculpt just screams green in a subconscious way. 

The windows remain to be done......in some way. I contacted Roebeast to see about some sweet vaccum made ones, but apparantly you can't track down the clear sheets of vacuum forming plastic anymore. Alas. Some of the hard clear plastic on almost any toy packaging was suggested to me which I will eventually get around to attempting.