Mantic Vanguard Game

Adrian, FG, and I got together for a game of Vanguard yesterday. We were hoping to get some sort of a campaign going, and decided to give the rules a try since they are available for free from Mantic. We played a three-sided game: Adrian fielding his dwarves, FG his Brotherhood (with the water elemental you see in the photo above), and me fielding ratkin/skavens.

We got most of the rules correct, but we played rather conservatively and none of us actually pushed our figures to gain Fatigue, so a large part of the game was not "utilised".

By and large the rules felt rather generic, which isn't really a criticism since it also means it's easy to learn and play.

At the end of the session, we decided we will instead give the new, second edition of Frostgrave a try instead. FG and I enjoyed playtesting the first edition, but never actually played a game after the rules were officially published; this will be a good opportunity to get back into the game.

Hot Wheels 2 Jet Z for Gaslands

Here is the Hot Wheels Jet 2 Z I bought a while back. I decided that I like the bare metal look of the body, and didn't want to actually paint it.

My concept for this vehicle is to use it as a buggy that races in front of the other cars and drop caltrops before them, so I did not give it any weapon. I did want to add some bits on it though, so I dug through my bits box and found some Ork bits that went with the "spikes" theme to this buggy.

Pendraken 10mm FPW Bavarians

A couple months ago I finally bit the bullet and sent out orders for two 10mm Arab Revolt armies to be painted. Shortly after that, I realised that I should have ordered some German Asian Corps figures too, but by then the figures had been sent to the painter. I decided I want them bad enough to buy a pack of the figures and paint them myself (30 figures - how hard can it be?), and since I was paying postage, I decided to get a pack of the Bavarians to add to my FPW army - ironically, when I bit the bullet and had my FPW armies painted years ago, I left the Bavarians out too.

The Germans were a breeze to paint - I will show them once I have done their bases - and I was beginning to think that 10mm wasn't really that difficult to paint... then I started on the Bavarians.

Compared to the relatively sparse WW1 figures, FPW figures had a lot of details on them. A lot of *fine* details. I mean, the figures had facial hair, and there were cockades on the helmets, and straps on the canteens on the backpacks!

I painted 18 of the figures as line infantry, and the remaining 12 as jaegers - this gives me a battalion of each under the rules. Ideally I should have an entire division of them, but I don't think I can summon up the energy to paint all those figures myself.

More Mad Robot Miniatures figures

While I await the delivery of the Imperium Immortalis kickstarter, I worked on increasing the types of troops I can field with my Warzone Imperial figures under the Trench Hammer rules.

The Trench Hammer rules recommend six figures to a squad, but based on what I have, I decided that I will field five-figure squads. The photo above shows the dismounted version of the cavalry squad I put together. 

The second photos show three "specialist" figures. Now under Trench Hammer, infantry squads come in different flavours, such as MG squad, Assault squad, Rifle-grenade squad, and Flamer squad. Since Trench Hammer does not use figure removal to mark casualty, I realised I could indicate which type a squad is by having four "standard" figures, plus one "specialist" figure. The three figures will therefore mark a squad as either a Flamer squad, an Assault squad, or a Rifle-grenade squad.

Minairons Miniatures 20mm Spanish Civil War Militia

The Minairons figures that Martin ordered finally arrived after being stuck at Spanish customs for weeks, and I managed to paint up my half of the militia last week.

The figures above comprise of a box of the militiamen (more or less - there is a missing MG gunner and a duplicate figure), and half box of the militiawomen. The figures have an AB aesthetics, and the women are even slimmer. I really enjoyed painting them, especially the more "civilian" looking ones.

I've kept to a limited palette, but there is still a rag-tag appearance to the force; this is something we predicted, and so we have decided to let Martin do all the basing work so the figures can have a coherent look. Hopefully I can post photos of these guys with their bases done soon.