Newest GNW Russian Unit

Last night, I finished the first unit of Russian infantry suitable for use as Byelgorodski or Astrakhanski regiments:

The usual blurry photo apologies apply!

I'm not totally happy with my painting of the facing on the coats, but at a wargaming distance, they look fine.

The figures are 1/72 Zvezda.

As a side note, this puts me 2/3s of the way to completing my December goals. Next up is to update the card-based dungeon generator with some changes for room dimensions, and then make it into a PDF. 

November Review and December Goals

Friday night, I had hoped to complete my painting goal for November, but, alas, young Lord Shadowmoss had other plans for me. Still I managed to sneak in some time Saturday and Sunday, and I have nearly completed the next unit of Russians for the Great Northern War project.

My big November goal, to create a game for NaGa DeMon was a success, as I noted previously. The files have been backed up and it's resting quietly so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes in early 2013.

I finished reading A Wizard of Earthsea, and though I plan to do a post about that, it keeps slipping my mind. In addition to my USE ME WWII game, I also played a solitaire Tunnels & Trolls adventure with my character, "Crazy" Joe as planned, using the Sideshow module from Tavernmaster Games (which he survived thank-you-very-much).

December's goals are minimal as there are family and social obligations and celebrations to be enjoyed:

• Finish up the unit of Russians I started in November.
• Play at least one solo game, both for my sanity and for meeting my goals for 2012.
• Create the PDF version of the new dungeon generator I posted Friday.

Finally, I will be working on my 2013 goals and hope to have them sorted out by the time the 31st rolls around.

October Wrap-up and Looking To November

Happy Halloween! 

I hesitate to call it a treat, but here for your viewing pleasure (?) the results of my October painting:

Two Brigade Games G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. 15mm figures:

The completed 15mm Khurasan Salamen archers and shaman (1 of them fell behind the table before this photo was taken. Rest assured, he's painted):

And finally, two units of GNW Russians suitable for use as Pskovski (Osprey), Smolenski (Osprey), and Belgorodski (Condray). This is also the color scheme I think of for this period, but of course, I'm probably a victim of marketing, as it's the color scheme used on the Zvezda box:

Basing won' be done until all the units are complete. That's just my preference.

I also managed to get in a few wargames and even advanced my Tunnels & Trolls warrior, "Crazy" Joe (cut me some slack, he was like the tenth character I  sent through the The Blood War of Saxon adventure and by then, I had run out of name ideas!) to 2nd level.You'd think I'd bump up his DEX of 5 to 6, but I decided instead to bump his strength from 12 to 14.

For November:

• Finish reading A Wizard of Earthsea
• Paint one 12-figure unit GNW (red facings, leather breeches) 
• Play another T&T solitaire using "Crazy" Joe or a wargame
• Design and play a complete game from start to finish, and blog about the experience,for NaGa DeMon

NaGa DeMon Approaches!

In less than 48 hours, NaGa DeMon 2012 kicks off. 

I've settled on which game I'm going to try and build - it's neither rpg nor wargame, but a good time waster game (I hope). Details will follow but it's one I think I can bring to completion in the allotted time of 30 days. 

Of course, given it takes place in November, which means Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and for Team Shadowmoss, a week visiting my parents as a result, I really have about 22 days to work on this.

In order to be a little more realistic about what I'll get done then, in addition to the solitaire gaming and weekly working on rules/scenery/etc., I'm going to shoot for just 1 more unit of 12 GNW Russians and the Irregular Miniatures Dark Elf melee troops (they are not getting done in the next 30 or so hours, as I'm busy cranking out the 2nd GNW unit).

October Goals - Belated Just Like September's!

Well once again, the first of the month came and went, and I failed to take a look at my goals. Better late than never and all that.

2012 Goals:

I'm still on track to reach the goals I set for the year and barring any unforeseen circumstances, I can pretty much coast until 2013. 

I met the blog post goal months ago, and in fact, I've tried to reduce the frequency of posting a bit (with limited success).

I've already gotten in my solo gaming this month with Tunnels & Trolls and I feel a tabletop miniatures battle is imminent as well. It seems like I'm always thinking about something gaming related, whether it's planning, research, reading rules, writing rules, daydreaming, etc. so that box is checked.

Monthly Goals:

Top on my list for what I want to accomplish in October is to decide on a basing scheme for the Great Northern War project. I started out inspired by Morschauser's How to Play War Games in Miniature and the multi-figure to a base approach, but then, persuaded by some posts from the "old school" wargaming blog community of their various battles, I thought about individually basing the figures.

Indeed, I was firmly decided to do just that, but then I re-read Morschauser (plus these posts of some of his writing), and now I'm not so inclined towards individually based figures. Decisions decisions. (As the meme goes ,"Can't decide to base miniatures individually or multi-figures per base. First world problems.")

Painting-wise, I'll finish up the Khurasan Salamen, Irregular Dark Elves, and some oddball figures (two Brigade Games G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. and one Irregular Western Gentleman) then turn to the Zvezda GNW Russian infantry. I'll shoot for 24 figures this month for the GNW.

My prep work is largely done until we play again, so, my Labyrinth Lord game needs nothing from me other than keeping track of ideas I have. Instead, I will play at least one more T & T solitaire module to scratch my fantasy RPG itch.

So that's October. Like September, I'm keeping my list pretty unambitious. 

September Goals (belated)

Fourteen days into the month, it seems like cheating to post this so late!

My focus has been on getting the Labyrinth Lord campaign setup enough that I'll have little preparation to do for awhile. It is at least in part a hex-crawl and my players have full agency to go wherever they want and do what they want. Hence the heavy front end prep (most of which is the village they will, *I hope*, journey to next). 

There is no overarching story or conflict that they must be a part of and consequently nowhere they must go by way of a railroad. They just happen to have chosen to let some crazed demon back into the material plane. Presumably, they'll stick with that plan for awhile at least.

As an aside, I've also decided to drop the "b/x" when describing this game, since my players have access to the free LL downloads, not the b/x books (my precious-es, i do not loan them out). 

In any case, both of my players are away at a LARP event, so I have another week to work on it.

We also have another person interested in joining the game from time to time. My hope is to run another session this month for the original two players to get them to a point where I could introduce a new PC in a logical fashion.

Already this month, I've played some solo games - a replay of "Pacific Island Assault" and some quick small-scale skirmishes,- so that goal is well met. Still, I am itching for a solo game of something. I'm not sure what - maybe try out the Nuts! vehicle rules? a solo dungeon crawl? Play around with some Story Cubes? Pacific Theater by G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.? Regardless, this weekend looks like an opportunity for this.

Hurricon is in two weeks and I'm tempted to make the drive to Orlando (about 8 hours), but we'll see. The rooms are not totally unreasonable, but gas is a definite wallet killer. I'll have to think about this more.

I'm going to leave my goals for September at that. There are a lot of things I'd like to do, including:

• Prep and prime the 1st box of infantry for GNW (this is dependent on the temp and humidity, which is really finally easing into reasonable levels)
• Research uniforms for GNW
• Prep and prime some 15mm figures

I suspect those will mostly have to wait until October.

Yet Another Monthly Goal Post

June was somewhat laid back compared to prior months. In addition to several solo games and an excessive number of posts here, I completed the following:

My goal was 14 15mm figures, and I did 13 (although several not among those I intended):

The expedition

The Russian priest, Fr. Alexi and the British explorer, Sir Harry

This guy is itching for a fight. You don't want to scratch that itch.

I was shooting for one dozen palm trees, and I finished with nine, although many of these still need paint on the leaves/fronds:

A view of several palm trees - completed and not quite.

 More 15s:

 Commander Kropotkin (one figure, many uses) leading a squad of Sepulvedan Resistance fighters.

 1/72 scale paper Shermans - I only need four and not the six I thought:

 

The Japanese artillery:

 

A camouflaged Japanese bunker:

USMC Artillery:

For July, I'm going to try to post just 10 times (so 9 more), which will put me over my goal of 100 for the year. 

I started a 10 figure French Zouave unit for G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. in June but I'm finishing those up over the next day or so and they'll count towards July. I'd like to get my Khurasan salamander unit painted, maybe the remaining Zouaves (many of them have broken bayonets which I'm not sure how to fix well) too, but if not then at the very least the 3 remaining porters and the 2 British soldiers - I'm gearing up for a return to Jimland (probably the first set of "wargame" rules I really loved).

Finally, I have a couple of paper pill boxes to finish up and then I can play the Pacific Assault game as described in Lone Warrior #172. I'm sure I'll also play out the next game in my Helvetica campaign and Goldielocks scenario, and do some solo RPGing, either with the Annwyn Investigations campaign or a pre-written dungeon crawl with Mythic to throw me curves.

And what the heck, for wishful thinking, cleaning and priming the first box of figures for the Great Northern War project.

The Marines Have Landed!

First, welcome to those of you coming for a visit from the Two Hour Wargames Yahoo group! I am always surprised when someone stumbles on my blog, let alone posts a link to it.

Second, as the subject of the post says, the first of my 1:72 WWII USMC have landed!

And in sunny tropic scenes;

You will find us always on the job

The United States Marines.

I know my color choices may not suit the purists, but I like how they came out. Especially as I had meant to grab the Sea Foam and instead grabbed the Stonewedge Green. I'll probably paint some with Sea Foam simply because of the variety of shades the marine uniforms took on in the harsh conditions of the Pacific.

Colors:
Uniform - Ceramcoat Stonewedge Green
Web Kit - Americana Desert Sand
Helmet -Jo-Ann Craft Essentials Olive
Boots - Americana Honey Brown
Rifle and Scabbard - Ceramcoat Dark Brown
Flesh - Ceramcoat AC Flesh

Obviously, the basing needs to be finished and of course, there are 45 more to paint, but this is a start!

A Progress Update

I realize many people don't particularly enjoy posts about goals but I have found that posting publicly about my progress/lack thereof motivates me to get up off the couch after a long day at work and, instead, paint some minis or play a game. Two things which I find infinitely more rewarding in the end than staring blankly at the unblinking eye of the television.


And so, with May upon us, and April put to rest,  it's time for me to look back at my projects/goals declared in those heady days of late 2011when I was awash with enthusiasm and chocolate mint coconut milk nog to see just where I stand.


My original goal list  for 2012 was rather modest compared to some others I have seen, but it may still have been a bit eager.


The main goals: 100 blog posts, weekly work on terrain, rules, etc. and gaming 1x a month are all well met (I played 1 wargame scenario with 7different rule sets! never mind the dungeon crawls )and so there I feel no sense of needing to adjust targets or prune away a goal or two.

Of the three bigger projects I hoped to make progress on, I think it is time I admit that, as much as I'd like to do 2mm Napoleonics, I'm going to declare that they won't even touched this year. If I do, well, it will surprise me.


As for the Great Northern War/Morschauser project, given that April was a terribly slow painting month (although still infinitely more figures than I painted in 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined) which means this project still sits in boxes. I will, I believe, make progress on this by year's end - in fact, I plan to be able to field at least a small force for both Russia and Sweden to use with Bob Cordery's Memoir of Battle rules well before then. I'm thinking maybe 12 stands per side (something like 36 infantry figures, 4 cavalry and one gun with crew each) to play on an 8x8 grid.


My WWII Pacific Theater project, though delayed, moves ever forward. In addition to finishing the Japanese in March, I have assembled a nice little collection of Osprey titles and the Red Sun, Red Death supplement for Disposable Heroes. 


I managed to get the USMC primed just under the wire for April. Painting will commence this week and I see no reason why I can't finish them all by the end of the month. Given that Lady Shadowmoss and young Lord Shadowmoss will be taking a trip out West to visit her father, I will have several evenings where my only responsibility will be to spend time with the cats. They, as it turns out, seem to like when I paint and take the opportunity to sleep on the sofa in the man-cave.


After that, I will only need to acquire and paint a few Shermans and if possible a 105mm howitzer, which I just can not seem to find cheaply in 1:72!


One project not on the original list, Kursk in 6mm per a JuniiorGeneral scenario requires some 15 tanks to be complete. Money for this will become available later in the year and so for now, it remains static.


I also have a pile of 15mm figures I acquired for SciFi/VSF/Fantasy and painted 15 of those in April. I have no particular time frame for these. They, along with some 16 or so 28mm figures that I just ordered at discount prices, will receive paint as a break from painting masses of uniformly attired armies and whenever else I'm inclined.


In the short term then, for May:

• Paint 50 1:72 USMC
• Play 1 solo game - possibly for my Helvetica Campaign
• Post at least 2 x each week.
• Clean up the d12 Dungeon Generator - there's some formatting issues I've found

How are you doing with your 2012 goals?

A lot of us started 2012 bright-eyed and full of wonder and anticipation. Giddy with the blank slate ahead of us, we made all sorts of promises to ourselves (aka goals)- some realistic and some pie-in-the-sky.

Well, here we are, 25% of the year is gone and it's time to assess how we're doing before it gets too late to do anything about it. 

 

Me?

 
2012 Goals Recap

I had 3 main goals that I posted about back in December:

• Weekly painting/terrain making/scenery construction/etc.
• Monthly solo gaming
• 100 posts to this blog

 and three bigger projects I hoped to complete:

• 1/72 WWII Pacific Island Assault
• 54mm 1/72 Morschauser Horse and Musket
• 2mm Napoleonics

Assessment

Overall I feel pretty good about my progress - my imagi-nation campaign on the fictitious island of Helvetica has provided more than ample fodder for contemplating rules, campaign and solo mechanisms and constructing terrain and scenery.

I've fought a number of solo battles - both for my campaign and one-offs.

I've also squeezed in a decent amount of painting  including 48 figures for the 1/72 WWII Pacific Island Assault.

And of course, all of the above has provided me with blog posts to the tune of 40% of my 100 post goal.

Changes?

I may not attempt the 2mm project this year. It's tempting for playing games in limited space at work, but the Morschauser project featuring the Great Northern War is going to require substantial painting effort - 8 boxes of figures in total. Never mind that the USMC and armor for the Pacific Theater have yet to be started (I don't even own the armor yet!).

April's Goals

• Prepare, prime and start painting the USMC - I'd like at least 15-20 done, with an eye towards finishing them by the end of May
• Game at least 1x
• Write 2 entries a week.

So, how are you doing with your goals?

Pumpkin wants to know.

March Goals Update

The impossible has happened.

I finished the remaining twenty-four 1/72 Waterloo Japanese infantry with almost two weeks left in the month! w00t!

The establishing shot.

A close(er) up

This puts me 1/2 way towards fielding forces for Pacific island battles - one of my 3 bigger projects this year. It's also either tied with or is a close second for the largest force I've ever painted - the 1st is my lizard folk (either 48 or 50 strong, I can't recall).


I've got some Khurasan 15mm sci-fi minis primed and ready to paint. So they're probably next for completion.  In between, I'll be prepping my USMC for priming.

Painting Progress for February

Completed in February:

• 24 1/72 Waterloo Japanese infantry for the WWII Pacific project- the intent, again, is to assemble forces to play out the scenario and rules presented in Lone Warrior #172. However, I also plan to play various historical encounters from Guadalcanal, Tarawa, etc. as well as semi-historical encounters and undoubtedly totally implausible ones as well.

Banzai!

A close(er) up.

• 8 15mm Khurasan mantis-men.

The females not only eat the males,  they eat humans too.

• 3 15mm Khurasan Mystri Island characters

Lord  Chadwick, Oberst Neubauten, Lady Penelope Devane

• 1 15mm Brigade Games G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. character - I'm counting this, although I really am not happy with this one, I've repainted it multiple times and multiple ways. I just don't like the sculpt of the head, although he kind of looks like Ronald Reagan (Lady Shadowmoss agrees, so I'm not totally off on this), if the former president were cast as a rifle-toting Han Solo. At the moment he's covered in Sculpey to make a rocketeer, but that may change as I reconsider the possibility of Reagan-inspired scenarios.

There was a failed attempt at sculpting a 15mm one-off miniature from Sculpey without an armature.  Lesson learned. Green stuff has been ordered and I've downloaded more than one set of instructions for making armatures. The goal is to make my own photographer figure similar to the one in this set from Bluemoon. I really want the 1st figure in the second row, but I have no need for the entire set at this time.

Planned for March:

• Finish the remaining 24 1/72 Japanese - they're already primed and ready to go.

Blue Moon Over Kentucky and February Game Ideas

This entry is coming to you from the middle of nowhere in northern Kentucky where we're visiting Lady Shadowmoss's mother for a much delayed Christmas celebration. Unfortunately, Young Lord Shadowmoss has been having more than a bit of trouble falling asleep here and so most of today was spent napping - both us and the baby. He appears to finally be down for the night tonight however, and, as it's extremely late and there's little socializing to do at this hour, I've had a little time to think about wargaming related topics.

Primarily, I've been thinking about what game I'd like to play in February(assuming I can only get in one solo game). 

My initial inclination was to set up a Franco-Prussian encounter with Foreign Legion and my recently completed Prussian infantry. As I mentioned previously, I'm considering a VSF campaign involving these same armies. This would just be a one-off game not part of that campaign since I haven't yet created a satisfying map or settled upon campaign mechanism. It would also be a chance to try out my "flavor" rules for both armies.

The top challenger is a game or two of the old Six Gun Sound (THW) rules for some shoot 'em up fun with my recently completed Old West miniatures. The benefit is that games are quick and require little preparation which allow for some "instant wargaming" (to borrow a phrase from Featherstone). I can play an entire game to completion including setup and cleanup in under an hour. Given the limited free time I (and most of us) have, that's certainly an attractive idea.

I'm sure I'll continue to think on this over the next few week.

The Japanese Troops are on the Table

Well I didn't have time to get them primed but I did get them prepped, cleaned and mounted to their painting sticks:

Princess Pumpkin, guest of the Emperor, surveys the troops  as they prepare for priming and painting.

So I pretty much got everything done for December I wanted to do. These guys will be first up for completion in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Los Pistoleros

My girlfriend returned from her business trip and since then I've been painting in my free time at a furious pace (well, furious for me), The result of which is that I finally managed to complete (sans basing) the remaining pistoleros:

I tried to stain paint him entirely with Citadel washes, save the hat and flesh. I probably should have gone for something more colorful than 2 shades of brown.

Two variations of face painting.

The hombre on the left was stain painted with Citadel washes - save the flesh and hat- much better than the first  figure, in my opinion.

This sets me up for the possibility of an Old West skirmish game/campaign in 2012. For that, I'll need to finally put my Whitewash City CD to good use.
I'm still hoping to get some game playing in before 2011's end.  I recently converted an Elves Under Hoof scenario to make it suitable for WWII in a pulp-ish fashion with the miniatures and terrain/scenery I have at my disposal.

Finally, speaking of miniatures, after I went crazy late last week from the stress of being the sole care giver for my son, I placed an order with Khurasan Miniatures for a small pile of 15mm science fiction goodies. While some of them will be useful in my VSF games (e.g. http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/myst1.jpg) others will function in a more pure science fiction game (e.g. http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/t2200.jpg) which is something new for me.

Oh, and I'm still thinking about my goals for 2012 (hobby and other wise) and hope to have that nailed down and posted sooner rather than later.

December Goals

One of my big take-aways from Solo Tabletop Gaming Appreciation Month is the value of publicly declaring my goal.

I've seen this on a number of productivity sites (I read a lot of them, which, ironically and not surprisingly, reduces my productivity) but hadn't really given it much of a try. The idea is that, by declaring a goal publicly, we motivate ourselves to achieve it for fear of falling short in the eyes of others. 

If I can consistently get results like last month, I'll consider it a surprisingly worthwhile technique.

So, for December, my figure preparation goals are:

• Paint five 25mm pistoleros - this will complete the Monday Knight Productions Wild West figures I got for Christmas some 5 years or so ago.
• Prep and prime box of Waterloo WWII Japanese
• Print and assemble two paper-flat fantasy war bands to try out Song of Blades and Heroes

 

Because I spent nearly all of my hobby time painting last month, this month, I want to also include learning some new rules:

• Read and play a few test games of SBH
• Learn the core rules and play a test game or two for Heroclix (thanks JF at SoloNexus for getting me started on what looks to become a new addiction!)

This might be rather ambitious for me ordinarily, but it turns out I'll have nearly two weeks off from work thanks to the upcoming holidays. Which means, all told, I should get in at least16 hours of hobby time between now and January.

Hopefully, I'll also get in a VSF game, WWII, and dungeon crawling too.