Pirate Gun Crew [4]

I had a bit of a blitz on the pirate gun crew tonight and got quite a lot done. I used various Foundry shades with a few GW colours added in for good measure. The photos are a bit dodgy but you get the general idea. I'm out until late tomorrow night due to work but hope to add at least one or two more layers if I have the time. The belts and gun barrels are probably the next things I'll tackle.

Bag The Hun 2 'Bandits' Game

Andy and I had a cracking game of BTH2 this evening which, as usual, ended in a drubbing for the Luftwaffe in the skies of North Africa. We played out the 'Bandits' introductory scenario with Andy's Kittyhawks against my Bf109F Trops. Although I managed to explode one of Andy's fighters in mid-air, he shot down, blew up and forced off three of mine, leaving the schwarm leader to high tail it back to Benghazi.

The rules were very smooth and although we were picking things up as we went along, everything seemed to flow very well and better than the original rules which were a bit vague in places. The bogeys were also an improvement on the old blinds system and much easier to use. A quick reference sheet would have been handy but the rules are so well written and laid out that's it's not really necessary.

I'm really enthused by the new rules and will definately be painting up some new aircraft for another game in the next few weeks. In the meantime I'm thinking of ways to make some sort of desert hex cloth out to use instead of the blue one in an attempt to make things a little less monotone and a bit more atmospheric. I also have to figures out how to make some mid-air explosion markers!

Bag The Hun 2 Bandits! Cards

I knocked up some cards for the BTH2 game this evening using the template that I produced for the various games of the original BTH that we've played at the club. They're pretty simple and were created in WORD to save time but I quite like them that way to be honest.

I did produce some flashy ones for a North Africa game a couple of years ago with profiles of the aircraft pinched from Wings Palette.  However this time round, I re-formatted the cards from a 'Channel Dash' Battle of Britain scenario that I wrote to keep things relatively straightforward. The originals can be found here:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Toofatlardies/files/Bag%20The%20Hun/Battle%20of%20Britain%20Channel%20Dash/

I'm really looking forward to trying out the new rules at last and my Bf109F Trops! I'll take the camera along a write up an after action briefing tomorrow evening. It should be fast but fun, so we'll probably have time for a game and a re-match to fully road test the rules.

October Review

Well, that was a pretty hopeless month in painting and gaming terms, despite my best efforts to crack on with the backlog of stuff to do. My only real achievement was to build the pirate sloop from scratch. Other than that, I singularly failed to finish anything that I set out to do at the start of the month.

On a more positive note, I have started the pirate gun crew which hasn't made much progress yet but has to be finished for the 9th. I don't think the holiday painting plans were very realistic but I now know that it's feasible to paint away from home without too much hassle, although decent lighting is essential. I'll take some figures to France at Xmas to continue the experiment.

It looks like November is going to be pretty busy at work, to say the least, but I'm definately going to finish off the pirate gun crew and try to start and finish the Rapid Fire! Tommies by the end of the month. I also have several games lined up so at least I'll get to enjoy a few evenings out instead of marking!

Pendraken Norse

I arrived home a couple of hours ago to find a little parcel from Pendraken on the doorstep containing the 10mm Norse 500 point (ish) army that I ordered a while back for WMA. The figures are great although the variety of poses leaves something to be desired and I'm going to have to do a bit of arm bending and leg twisting to create a bit of variety in the units.

Nonetheless, I am suitably encouraged so will be adding a 10mm Norse / Early Danish army to the ever expanding list of things to do next year. That's assuming that we don't end up doing Romano-British stuff instead? I'm going to take the figures along to the club on Tuesday which might drum up some further interest in mid-Saxon era armies for WMA.

Bag The Doodlebug!

I've been flicking through the Bag The Hun 2 rules today in preparation for the game against Andy on Tuesday. I'm a bit worried about the firepower of my Me109F's against his Kittyhawks but, other than that, I think we'll be fairly well matched, at least in aircraft performance terms.

We're playing the introductory scenario which is very straightforward so I'm hoping  it won't be too much of a steep learning curve? It can't be that different from the original rules so I'm fairly optimistic that we'll get at least two games in to the evening.

I also re-discovered another scenario in the rules as a 'game within a game' which I'd completely overlooked the first time I read through the rules. It's a Bag The Doodlebug mini-game, pitting RAF fighters against low flying V1's in 1944. The V1's are controlled by the dice whilst the lone fighters are flown by the players.

It looks like great fun and cheap to set up, so I've ordered a couple of Tempests and Spitfire XIVc's together with the eponymous doodlebugs from Raiden. It shouldn't take long to paint them up and so yet another mini-project is on the cards for 2011.

Pirate Ship Plans Update

A bit of a disaster this evening as the youngest decided to stick a toy bead up her left nostril half an hour before the guests were scheduled to arrive for dinner. A few hurried and apologetic phone calls later and we were on a forty mile round trip to Accident and Emergency in Plymouth. We finally got back home three hours later having failed to locate the bead despite the best efforts of the very nice NHS people.

Anyway, no painting of any sort tonight as I still haven't had my supper. However, on the plus side, I did find a copy of this paperback in a second hand book shop for a measly three quid. It's packed full of line drawings of rigging and fittings with explanations for the construction of everything from belayign pins to cat heads. I'm no ship modeller, so this will come in very handy for the pirate ship scratchbuild. 

Pirate Ship Ideas

I enjoyed making the pirate sloop so I've been thinking about scratchbuilding a larger vessel to use either as opposition for my pirates or as their next part exchange trade in, assuming they move up in the world of skullduggery.

I have the Gary Chalk plans for a pirate frigate type ship in the Foundry Compendium and probably in my stack of old wargames magazines somewhere. It's a good looking model as you can see:

http://www.madponies.net/pub/FoundryShips/GARYSHIP.pdf

However, whilst I may follow some of the excellent guidelines, especially for rigging and sails, I may try to do my own hull design and construction using the balsa sandwich method that worked on the sloop. I already have some medium sized cannon from Crusader, so that bit's sorted but I'm on the lookout for other useful bits and bobs.

I thought I might use some old  long handled paint brushes for masts, so those are on the list of things to pick up, preferably for free or for next to nothing. I also need something to make railings out of and some small scale cannon barrels for swivel guns, plus anything else that might be useful.

Pirate Gun Crew [3]

I painted the first stages of the skin shades on the pirates this evening, using GW Dark Flesh as a base then Foundry Flesh Shade as a first layer. The two black figures were given a basecoat of Foundry Bay Brown Shade followed by Bay Brown highlights. It doesn't look great but it never does at this stage anyway! 

If I have some time I'll finish off the flesh shades tomorrow, although we're busy all day and have some friends over for dinner as well, so painting is going to have to be squeezed in as and when. The lighting in the kitchen, where I'm exiled for painting purposes, is pretty rubbish so I may have to find another venue.

Pirate Gun Crew [2]

I finally got around to cleaning up and basing the gun crew and extra pirate figures this afternoon, in between running around all over the place on various family related missions. As you can see, I based up the gun crew on 1p coins with stripwood planking so that they fit onto the limited deck space of the sloop. I won't be using them ashore so this made sense and looks quite good I think. 

I also added a fourth crewman, using a Foundry figure with his rammer cut down (ooh er) to match the one carried by the Crusader figure. This makes it possible for a full two gun broadside to be fired, assuming two crewman per light cannon as a basic mimimum. I need to undercoat this lot but otherwise they're ready to go.

I'll pack up some paints, brushes and so on tonight and hopefully find the time over the next few days to get some painting done. I have the other two pirate figures that I've already started to add to the new ones, so there's nine figures in total, which shouldn't be too much to handle?