Real Life intrudes

As to be expected, real life intrudes into our gaming hobby and stalls everything out periodically. Last weekend I attended the Rythmn City mess around (RCMA), a weekend long set of social dances and day time work shops. It was pretty amazing seeing all the great dancers, but it was also totally draining. I was a bit of a zombie through all this week.

I managed to get some videos of the the event. While the review videos might be of interest to those who do swing dance, the Jack and Jill competition videos are of much more entertainment value. Particularly the solos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ17IaDjFo


In other news, the Napoleonics online campaign I've been involved with has been on pause for just over a week now. There's a battle that needs to be gamed out. Many of us aren't in a position either with opponents or figs to play it. Gavin is planning to, but has started a new job so he's been a bit delayed as well. Apparently on Wednesday they managed to get a game in, but it was more of a rules refresher. They should be gaming it out within a week and we can resume the game. It's a good thing I keep extensive notes on what I'm doing....hopefully my marshals will be able to manage the break as well.

I've been inspired to resume the painting of my 15mm napoleonic french. It's terribly involved trying to get the uniforms correct. I remember being slightly at a loss when I first started painting ww2.....the pageantry of the napoleonic uniforms crushes the drab of later wars. It's a pain in the ass to create on figs though. More on that some other post.

Osric: Escape from the Crypt of Kas the bloody (5)

Well, this adventure log is finally up to speed with the start of my blog. I'm trying to spread out the posts to get regular updates but we played recently on a saturday morning via google hangouts.

Our party was recovering from being zapped by a goblin shaman and having an extended dungeon (re)clearing adventure. Dan, Renault, Jenks, Scabs and Chester had all survived but were in pretty sorry shape. Even after resting and burning through the few cure light wounds spells Jenks had we decided we needed to rest some more. Alas it was not to be.....

(It probably didn't help when I said no one can come through the wizard locked door unless they have the key, and what are the chances of that? *ahem*).

*Click* The door starts opening, Renault slams is shut on a goblins nose, thereby de-nosing him. The amusement of this act loses it's glow after a moment as the goblin is heard screaming and running to the west. Towards the (presumptive) orc hall. We skedaddle out of this deadend section of the dungeon and proceed to lock doors behind us. We hear clashing and alarms and yelling behind us, followed shortly by splintering doors.

We quickly reach the great hall with the massive table that the golbin tribe used to eat at. We dodge under the table and hide. We dont' wait long before we see two small sets of goblin legs leading a group of about a dozen... hobgoblins!

 They pass us by for about 10 or 15 minutes before a reduced group returns. Just as they are about to leave the room one stops, lays his shield down and stoops down to look under the table. Scabs stabs him to death through the eye (surprise backstab). The fight starts under the table, but their leader (of great strength) tosses the stone table aside and the fight continues till our victory.

After catching our breath we hear the rest of the group returning and we manage to ambush them entering the room. After some quick looting we hurry back to the staircase and head to level one. Right by the staircase there is a trapped room of crushing pillars (on a checkerboard pattern). We manage to jam one pillar so that the way to the stairs is blocked (later revealed to us by the GM as a party saving measure). We camp again and strangely find a mouse skull in the centre of our camp with a goblin symbol on it. We decide the cheeky goblin chief we left here is threatening us. 

As we move back to their throne room we find all our trap deactivation work has been undone. As well the doors are smeared with contact poison and dammit, it's pretty lethal around here. As we bash into the throne room (with Renault and Dan using a stone column as a battering ram) we find the chief is with a scary looking goblin assassin type.

After some near poisoning blows we manage to charm him and stop the fight. The chief is pissed that his demon deck of cards (a ply from a previous adventure) doesn't work. We manage to pump the two for information about downstairs and what's going on. Apparantly the skull was a safe passage token. And the traps are reactivated to try and prevent the level 2'ers from coming up. An unexplored room on this floor (the wax sealed one with the dead adventuring party and cleric outside of it) actually contains a liche that 'usually keeps the dueregar downstairs' by some sort of agreement. Man, has our group ever 'stepped in it'. We manage to negotiate a safe passage agreement for the future (to avoid the mistakes of last session) and pay off the chief and assassin (slay-gur). They plan on abducting goblin women and children to start the notched ear tribe. We are pretty okay with that. 

We head back to the Village of compliments, with the intention of improving the town a bit. The largest issues are shortage of housing and no skilled tradesmen. Scabs knows a dwarven blacksmith in shadowdeep which we plan to speak to. A shopping expedition is probably in order as well.

Blightstone Keep: Base coating the stonework (1)

I'm pretty happy with the amount of crafting nerdery I've been doing already this year. It's classic for me (and I assume other folks with lead mountains in their closets) to plan and buy and just not DO. I've been pretty decent about assembly and prepping, but actually pulling it together to get some painting done.....it's a hard start and it's a habit that easily gets broken. Things are looking positive this year so far though (Jan 24 hahahah).

The GW paintjob

Anyway, I've been working on this semi destroyed tower I bought about a year ago during boxing week (2011 Dec). Truth be known it's for a gaming project that may never see the light of day, so I will only talk about it as it gets more realized.

I like this piece because it's got hints of what disaster befell it. There is some sort of ritual magic circle (with all the colours of magic on it) and clockwork. Perhaps the user was attempting to combine the winds to create some sort of high magic? Or perhaps something more malevolent....there are hints of chaos in there too. I must saw that there are far too many skulls (grumble grumble GW). I can handle some architectural skulls, even ones in the walls (which I imagine might be carved stone, similar to the many gargoyles of various european cathedrals), but the scores of skulls in the foundation..BAH!. I meant to fill them in with some putty, but forgot before I had made some progress. Oh well......at least they are mostly hidden in shadow and I didn't pick them out in white, so they are hard to see.

Basic grey craft paint over black primer

Another angle

Post highlights after a black wash

another angle

Apparently I forgot to take photos of the tower after the black ink (I think it was 3 separate sessions to base coat, ink, and highlight). I ended up buying some new ink for this...it was plain artist black ink (Downer and Roley? Decent quality) and after inking it I think I was a bit worried it went too dark. It's possible not too clear in these photos, but it does definitely give more depth and grubbiness to the stone work.  I think it's a bit more obvious on the wood work (which I gave a layer of one of the brown GW inks).

CinC Lefebvre: Phase 2

The campaign kicked off on Saturday morning. True to form for these things there were some initial hiccups as we found a variety of bugs. Troops not moving due to missing paragraph marks in the code, headquarter units able to start sieges by themselves, a failure to mention what the movement rates for different units actually were, etc.

It seems to be running somewhat smoothly. Already on day 2 my fellow commanders have failed to write me about where they are. I can only hope they are roughly where I think they are supposed to be *SIGH*. I've requested updates from them, and I've been sending 3 of them daily updates of my own, so hopefully it catches on.

There really isn't much to report, but I thought that I'd post up the PHASE 2 map I made. All of the preplanning was essentially done on a single, long, night. I needed to send out briefs to all 8 other french players with detailed lines of march, which supply line is theirs, who is allowed to edit that supply line, whom they should be in daily communication with, as well as specify towns to avoid (as their neighbour will be using it).

It was a bit of a whirlwind. Considering the plan never survives contact with the enemy it's probably a bit useless too. Currently it gives me a vague idea where everyone is though, which is handy. More importantly I think supply and traffic issues would have been a disaster for us. There are minor and major roads with limits on men travelling down them, already it's a tight fit and corp are strung out over a few nodes (towns/cities/fortresses). I imagine if there wasn't a good plan everyone would have piled up on each other. A nice feature is more priority that sets which unit will have access to road space before another. I've assigned default priorities to corp to help with the elbow rubbing phenomena.

Phase 2: (IN THEORY)
Red/Rust takes Vallodid and prepares for the arrival of the British from Portugal. It's likely a bit of a foot race so Vallodid may not be captured.

Yellow, the reserve/me, moves to Burgos to wait and be helpful

Light blue, Ney pivots west as zaragoz falls and moves West to hit Madrid from the North......or as more likely will face the Brits as well.

Medium Blue, Augereu, will continue a straight drive on madrid. The Roads totally suck here so he could be stopped cold on the march.

Dark Blue, Moncey, has a tough job to do; swing deep south through the mountains and emerge on the plain south of madrid. I'm hoping that I'm totally prescient and he gets to hit something in the flank as

Augereu pins it in his drive on madrid. Otherwise he has a wide latitude in operations. i suggested he capture the approaches to Ciudad Real to help control the center and East of spain.

Pink, Bessieries, has the widest latitude of all. I basically won't hear anything from him due to communication lags. He is to Capture Catalonia and move toward Valencia. I've instructed him and Moncey to be read to assist one another in case there is a field army West of Valencia (They would need to guard each others flanks in some way.

More updates as they happen....

Lamenters: The story so far... (1)

The lamenters have been an on again off again project (like most of my projects).  I've had warhammer 40k marines for a while now, but was stumped on what chapter to do. I was going to do the mortifactors....

I planned on using bits from the legion of the damned, and plastic skeletons but finally decided against it when the price went through the sky and Bell of Lost souls did their Horus Heresy supplement. I divested myself of a lot of the bits and moved on...

I then thought I'd work a heresy force. I was tempted by the Luna wolves...but they switch paint schemes over to the sons of horus later. Also the difficulty in sourcing the beaky helmets and studded shoulder pads or the sheer amount of time to scratch build the amount you needed was a bit overwhelming. The moment passed. I divested myself of more bits....

Finally with the arrival of space hulk I decided on lamenters.

I hope my forces look even a fraction as good...

I remember staring at this pic and it didn't grab me, not until I saw some painted models did I fall in love with the Lamenters.

They are a successor chapter of the blood angels and I figured there wouldn't be many people who painted their space hulk figs this way. Well....not many but there are a few now.

Still, the lamenters are pretty cool in a doomed way. I first encountered them when I had advanced space crusade and they are one of the two chapters (the other the scythes of the emperor) to first encounter the galactic invasion (and almost totally wiped out).

While the Scythes were pretty cool the fluff has them reduced to a handful (literally less than 10 guys) of troops and some rescued gene seed fleeing ahead of the hive fleet to warn the imperium. I'd prefer something with a bit more numbers.....and more fluff. The lamenters are also participants (and villains of a type) in the Badab war. Bell of lost souls did a pretty wicked mini codex on the same (back when they were churning out original content rather then endless netlist analysis). I might even paint up my BFG ships someday for the lamenters. 

I've decided there are a number of miniatures an individual HAS to paint in this life. Marines are one of them (Orcs, dwarves, a dragon, elves, an a figure to represent a rpg character are a number of other ones I've come up with). This will be the start of a series documenting the growth of the lamenters.

Osric: The story so far pt 4 (Return to the dark crypt of kas the bloody)

We decide to return to the original dungeon of Kas the bloody. We decide to take some extra henchmen and cleverly clear out the town of the most bloody thirsty and sociopathic bandits at the same time (Compliments was another bandit village that we are cleaning up. Dungeons are a great way to thin the herd per Jenks reasoning). Scabs (Gnome Thief), Chester (Thief, son of chester but is dwarf sized), Renault (fighter henchman of scabs), Dan (fighter henchman of Jenks), Donna (Fighter 1 rescuee from the goblin tribe), Jenks (human druid) and his charmed jackals (killer and slaughter) and some random bandits head out. A week of snowy travel with a heavily burdened horse gets us back to the dungeon.

The tone was set early when the horse wasn't supported by the floor over the pit trap and his dying whinnies summoned some repopulating goblins. In the bandits old room we faced a tough fight and lost a bandit or two. Overall our second trip was less lethal, but we did need to contend with the henchmens evil stupid ways, and some repopulated areas (of goblins mostly) with the first and second level. The GM played the NPCs well and we needed to micromanage them and specifically mention traps that we knew about to not lose them to idiotic acts. There was also some obvious looting of bodies that the bandits would report as 'nothing of value'. We finally managed to clear out the second floor tribe, including their fungus farms.

The last room we found had a magically bound door. We were unable to pick the lock nor break it down, even after we removed the hinges. Using stone shape Jenks managed to open a hole in the wall and we immediately enter combat with a small group of goblins. The one of the surviving jackals that Jenks had races off to the east in the dark. As our group is slaughtering the goblins there is some chanting and a arch of lightning blasts through the room....and our group. Donna, Killer, the final bandits are all killed. Renault is nearly dead as well. The goblin fungus shaman from our previous visit has been rediscovered. We manage to down him, but our party is sorely hurt. Dan is saddened by the passing of Donna (who he had given a magic ring to earlier in the session). We decide it is fitting that she passed in wiping out the tribe that imprisoned her and ate her friends.

We decide to end our adventure here with resting, but we still have 4 major areas to investigate. 2 doors leading to a room with deeper more guttural voices in them (we think orcs). A cooridor with a floating skull that demands a magic item to pass. The door where a fireball trap was that leads to a dueregar area. A incredibly long corridor leading to the south that we suspect may lead to the dueregar area as well.

CinC Lefebvre

Sweet god what have I done. In the spirit of continually taking on things until it's too much I've volunteered to be CinC of the french forces in Gavin's campaign. I spent the last couple of hours planning out which corp/player starts where and giving them detailed directions.

It's all front loaded of course, with the fog of war, numerous days for couriers to race back and forth and the caveat 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' I won't have too much influence after the game progresses. The front loading is a bit intense though....

Here is the map I made up to help my fellow marshals:

 We can see there are 4 depots and a fairly broad advance. There are discreet task forces though. Pink should have fun with an highly independent command. I'm yellow so the chance of communication are slim.... couriers only run along supply lines and can 'see' three legs away from them to find their target.

Blue is tasked with moving through zaragoz and pivoting to hit madrid (I'll do up a phase 2 map soon),. Red/rust need to take vallodid. They also can expect the british to show up around the time they arrive at vallodid. Whoo hoo. I (yellow/reserve) am going to stay close to red/rust. Light blue picots west and comes at madrid from the north so we can expect some help there.

I actually ended up with the weakest/lamest corp of them all. Smallest and with 50% Militia I'm a bit hooped. Luckily Red, Rust and light blue are the largest corp i have. I really do hope I'm right and the brits come racing onto the teeth of my marshals.

Here is the intelligence we've been given for the entire operation:

Marshals of France,
You have been given the task of conquering Spain and Portugal. In their defence, the enemy can muster over 70k men in field armies. Additionally, you can expect every Fortress and regional capital to be strongly held by Garrisons.
Our spies have reported that the British army landed in Lisbon some days ago obviously in response to news of our own preparations. It is highly unlikely that they have moved from that area, although not impossible. We have had no word that they have entered Spain however.
The Spanish Army is in a state of disarray, and is unlikely to provide a long lived resistance. Its field armies whereabouts are unknown but we are pretty certain that the border regions of Aragon and Catalonia are undefended except for troops already mentioned.