A bit of this, A bit of that

So, its been a couple of weeks since my last post. So I thought I'd do a catch up.

I seem to be in the enviable position of not having to paint anything specific. So I've been flitting from one type of model to another.

This has helped with keeping my interest and seem to have made me more productive.

So here we go.

Frostgrave is the other new fantasy skirmish game I've picked up recently. It looks like its the successor to Mordheim, GW's fantasy skirmish game, avoiding some of the pitfalls of that game

Here's the first warband I've create, led by Rilkyn the Enchanter.



These, I've enjoyed doing and are the closest thing I've come to painting something needed for a game. I'll cover more on Frostgrave and its campaign system in a later post.


So once I'd finished those I fancied painting some dwarves:



Here we have a dwarf hero with the book of grudges, though I may use him as a cleric. Its an old GW model, though I'm not sure which one. I'm please with how this one turned out.

The unit was a purchase I made in France in a book shop in a medieval town. The things you find. These date back to the 90s and are very reminicent of Citadel sculpts. I'm not certain about the axes and may redo them at some point in the future. Again, not done for any particular game. Just fancied doing some dwarves.


So from there I went onto rebasing and finishing this troll:



This one has been sat in a cabinet, half finished for about 2 years. Now its finished it has been added to the evergrowing Otherworld Skrimish collection.

As have these:



4 giant centipedes from Otherworld miniatures.

And then I received these and had to do them all:



Kobolds!! These are also from Otherworld which I picked up withe the 20% discount I received as part of the rulebook deal. These I really like and were fun to do.


Once these were done I then decided I needed to do more heroes, so painted an elf fighter/thief, again from Otherworld Miniatures:



Again, I really like this model. I really like the action pose the sculptor has put into it.

Once that was done I decided to turn back to Guildball and finished Jac, the last of my Fishermen team:


This was another model I'd started a while ago but lost interest in. An hour or so's work, though, and I'd finished him and he fits nicely with the others.

From there I moved onto Hemlocke - a Union team player. This is one of my favourite models, along with Shark, the fishermen team captain. I'd already painted her once but that was sold with the Alchemists team to Mr Woodward.



And finally I completed work on The Comedian from the Watchmen.



This is the first model I've done for my Batman skirmish game force Kieron showed me a while back. Now that its finished I'll be picking up another to do.
The pictures have not come out that clear. Most of the model is wearing a black uniform/suit which needs highlighting with various greys. Not too much though, otherwise he starts to just look grey.


So that's it. Like I said, not having to concentrate on one set of models seems to have meant that I've got more done which is good for reducing the lead mountain.

Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish - the Game I've been looking for

So. First epic fail. Still not managing to do the regular posts I was going to. I'll have another go at committing myself. However, this post is about a new game.

Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish by Otherworld miniatures is a skirmish level battle system based on the Level 7 combat system.

This is something I've been looking for for a number of years. The system allows you to build warbands from pretty much any fantasy model you have and allows you to include monsters such as ogres, manticores, giants and owlbears. You can even build a warband led by a dragon!! The rulebook contains all the normal sections you'd expect with less emphasis on magic. Each round is a roll off to see who gets to activate first. You then get a number of activation tokens equal to half the number of figures on the board. So not all of your figures are going to activate in a round. Combat consists of reaching a to hit value and then a damage value, armour giving a saving throw. Most models will have a single wound with your more important champions and large monsters 2 or 3. Once a model is reduced to zero wounds he becomes incapacitated and if not healed by the end of the round then its removed as a casualty. To add a further complication there is an Adventure deck that the defending player creates but only the attacking player draws from. This deck will contain treasures or traps or wandering monsters that may be in the area. These are drawn when a model interacts with Adventure tokens scattered around the play area.

There are victory conditions based on the scenario to determines who won.
I've played through a basic game to get a feel for it which didn't include a lot of the abilities and am pleased both with how it plays and the balance that seems to have been built into the game.

Here is the game as I played it through.

The scenario:
The village, Bandville, has hired a band of heroes to put a stop to a band of fanatics who have been terrorising them for months. Rumours abound that the head of the cult has been making sacrifices to the dark gods and gone mad with infernal powers.

The heroes, led by the mercenary captain Rikyn Greed have tracked the cult to natural caverns in the hills surrounding the village and have just entered to confront the cultists.


The heroes found the leader of the cult exhorting to the dark gods in some sort of infernal ritual and were determined to put an end this evil.

The heroes were to have the first turn but still rolled for initiative to determine who would receive fate tokens. These are used to allow a side to make re-rolls or buy extra activations.

The captain also has the Leader (1) ability, allowing another activation token to be placed. This allowed five of the heroic band to move forward. Each model has two actions. The majority moved forward but the elf - Solan Brighteyes, moved and then fired his bow downing one of the fanatics.

The cult, led by the high-priest Ludo, then moved. Several of the cultists charged forward, stabbing with their daggers but ineffectually. Ludo, himself begins chanting but the dark powers don't answer.


At the end of the round, any models that are reduced to zero wounds are removed as casualties and a new round starts. The heroes, again win this, gaining a fate token. The elf bowman takes down another fanatic worshipper and Rilkyn dispatches a third. More actiavations allow for other member of the heroic party to move forward. The bandit, Julian Fairweather sneaks forward looking for opportunities.
Next, the cultists activate. Ludo, again exhorts the dark powers and this time he is answered. Two terrifying skeletons claw their way from the earth. Goblins armed with bows take up positions on the right shooting back at the adventurers.
Ludo has the Magic (1) ability with the Raise dead spell. Each point in magic allows you learn a spell and gives you a magic dice pool with which to cast a spell. When casting a spell you select a number of dice from the pool and add your intelligence to the result, needing to reach or exceed the target number.


At the end of the round another two cultists have been dispatched and the heroes look like they are to have an easy victory. However with the new round the cultists win the initiative and press forward their attack. The cultists activate a couple of the goblins, one of them striking true, wounding Rikyn. Rilkyn has two wounds so continues to fight on. There are no penalties to a wounded model. Ludo has the Leader (2) ability and this is used to activate the two, newly risen skeletons who charge the mercenary captain. The combined assault defeats the captain's defences and he falls to the stabbing undead. With the loss of the captain the adventurers no longer have access to extra activation tokens. However as their current number is still seven they still receive four. An innefectual round, though, see's them making little progress.


Winds of fate switch again, seeing the heroes take the initiative on the next round. Cultists have engaged the sneaky bandit. Solan moves and strikes from the rear dispatching another of the cultists, helping the beleaguered bandit. One of the fighters bravely engages the skeletons but to no avail and the dwarf continues to trade blows with one of the remaining fanatics.
The cultists strike down the bandit and Ludo charges and takes down the elf with a single blow from his infernal mace. Each weapon has its own profile. The mace has the brutal characteristic, allowing you to roll two dice for any damage rolls and choosing the higher.


The following round sees the heroes win the initiative again. Brock the dwarf finally smashes a skeleton with his heavy axe but one of the remaining cultists manages to stab one of the adventurers' archers in return.


At the end of this round both the attacking and defending warbands have both reached their break point - losing at least half of their models. Both need to make a Shaken roll against the highest morale remaining with the roll having a -1 modifier. Failure sees d3 models flees the table. The rolls see the cultists waver whilst the adventurers stay strong. Both remaining goblins and one of the fanatics break and flee through the right-hand tunnel.
The remaining two cultists and skeletons continue to fight on.


The tide had turned once again, in favour of the adventurers and with a combination of the final archer and the dwarf, defeated the high priest and his remaining undead skeleton, destroying the darkness enshrouding the village.


So, my thoughts.

Warband creation can take a while. This is because of the amount of customization options that are open to you. Playing the game is fast and brutal. I played without the adventure cards as I'd not received them yet, and with minions promoted to leaders rather than legends and companions. I also played at the lowest recoommended points level of approximately 100gp. The game is really designed best with scenarios, which is what I was looking for. This, together with the ability to create any type of scenario hits all the buttons for me as it scratches the roleplaying itch that originally got me into this hobby.

Return to Infinity...and a dwarf

So for the last few weeks I've been concentrating on Guildball, but now I've pretty much finished all the models I have I've picked up a commission from the Ratboy himself - Stuart Cain. He's a pretty good painter, himself but with young kids, etc, he asked me to paint up his crew and here are the results:



Some of these I enjoyed doing but a number had been undercoated in black primer, which I'm not a fan of. Stu had a colour scheme in mind which limited the palette and then wanted an 'offworld jungle' effect for the bases. Hopefully I've acheived that. Anyway he seemed happy with the results.

What I don't like about the Infinity models is that they are a pain to put together. You don't get instructions and its a matter of matching the pictures to the pieces to decide where they go.

We'll be looking at version 3 of the rules later this year. I've got some of my one to complete to fill out my own faction.


And here's the dwarf:



I've got a number of these Westwind models that I picked up 2nd hand a few years ago. I do like the detail and its nice to mix it up a bit.

With no more large armies to work through I'm finding I can flit from one thing to another which keeps things interesting.

Guildball, an overview

So, I posted some pictures last week about a new game - Guildball.

I've now played a few games and demoed a few others and wanted to give my impression.

Guildball is a fantasy football games set in a medieval time period. Each team is associated with a guild, such as the Butchers, the Fishermen, the Morticians, etc.

Each team has a different flavour, and so far they all have their own distinct styles.

A team is made up of 6 players - a captain, a mascot and four other players. All are named and hold different positions, skill sets.

The aim of the game is to gain 12 victory points. You get 4 points for a goal and 2 points for taking out a player.

Each round all players get one activation and during that activation they can make one move and a number of actions based on the number of influence tokens they are assigned at the beginning of each round. These actions range from attacking an opposing player, kicking the ball to casting a spell.

As I said, you win by scoring goals and taking players out. Taking a player out is fairly straight forward. Keep hitting him until he falls over and won't get up again. Scoring a goal requires the other game resource - momentum. Momentum is generated by passing the ball and selecting certain results when attacking players and can be spent on a number of actions such as healing, removing some negative conditions, dodging and, importantly, taking a shot a goal. Momentum is also used to help determine who goes first each round and is reset to 0 at the end of each round. This makes scoring a goal a little more difficult than just activating the player with the ball and taking a shot. Something I forgot to do in the last game I played - Doh!


The above are the basics. We've found, after playing a single game, you grasp the flow of the gameplay and quickly learn the strengths of your team. The I go, you go mechanic forces you to plan the order of player activation and the synergy between players allows for powerful combinations to be set up.

Overall this is a great game. One that I see has a bright future and a clear view for expansion.

If you get a chance give it a go.

Guildball - The beautiful game

So, I'm going to try this blogging thing again.

And I'll start with a new game - Guildball. What a fantastic game. Its the unnatural child of Bloodbowl and Malifaux. Two teams of six players meet on the field of battle to kick a ball about and beat the crap out of your rivals.

I backed this in the Kickstarter last year and I think its the best one I've been involved in. Its just demoed at Salute to great enthusiasm and looks like the team behind it have the right motivation and energy to make it a winner.

So, as this is mainly a painting blog here are my efforts:

I give you the Alchemists

And the Fishermen