Eventful

Still quite sombre I'm afraid. I felt a lot of pressure to provide updates to this blog, whilst also feeling a lot of the time like I was talking to myself. On top of some recent things that have happened, this wasn't really helping.

Going forward there wont be any structure to posts, I'll just add something when I feel it's worth writing about.

I'm attending two events in May:
Infinity - Northern open 13 in Leeds May 19th.
Dark Age Nationals at Element Games May 12th.

I'm going to be focused on getting both painted and ready for the events and will share progress here when I have it/feel like I can share. I've set up a Trello board to try and use my time better and plan out the painting required etc.

Dark Age is a game I've admired the miniatures for for a very long time, but my gaming buddy of nearly 3 decades has 'only got room in his life for one skirmish game'. It's also not something my wife is really interested in, and none of the guys at work really need a second game whilst they are getting into Infinity.

Anyway, I decided to do something other than regret never playing this game, even if it is only a few games a year or something. I reached out to the community on Facebook, and there is a decent player base in the UK but the play space is being refurbed at the moment. The UK rep for the game got in touch and told me about the Nationals event in May, and that new players would be welcome, and I wouldn't be the only one with few to no games played before then. It took me a long while to get off the fence and sign up after deliberating transport and model costs. The Event organiser said I would be able to borrow models for the event but I decided to spend some of my recent pay rise backdate pay and grab everything I would need to play, which is hopefully coming before the event from Element games! There are some issues with EU supply of the models i'm told.

I chose the Kukulkani (K3) as my faction after spending a lot of time considering the Prevailers/Forsaken. The models are really nice, and distinct, and some of you may know how much i hate playing human races in fantasy/sci-fi/roleplay. I'm already a human, where is the fun?!
The list I have is below.

Kukulkani Faction Starter
- War Captain
- Honor Guard
- Warrior*3
- Harvester *3
- Ah'Chu'Kuk
Cabrakan
Devoted Priest

I fully intend to expand this force eventually so that I'm not reliant on one powerful model, but playing a few games at the event will help me decide what I would like/need next.

I'm hoping to put my airbrush to good use here but after recent experiences i'm a bit skeptical. I will probably end up buying airbrush dedicated paints at least to rule out my own thinning methods as a problem causer.

The Cabrakan is a large 80mm base model centerpiece, and also handily 200 points which allows me to get to the 750 point requirement a bit more easily with the 500point starter and ironically more cost effective than buying unit boxes of lower point value.

The infinity event came about after some coercing from my friend at work, and I decided 'why the hell not', as it will be a day of games even if I place poorly, I enjoy the game and seeing other peoples models, and it will be a great learning curve.

Below is the list of models I will be using and want to be fully done by the event. There may be some extras done alongside these, but at a lesser priority.

Lastly I have assembled my Orlock gang and have started teaching my friends the rules in preparation for our campaign. I'm also looking forward to the new Forgeworld extras for gangs and will be expanding my crew in the future.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Wednesday Warzone

This is it, what we've (I've) all been waiting for.
300 points of Infinity. A full game.

We are playing at the house of the chap that is teaching everyone at the moment after work tomorrow, and my friend who recently picked up nomads is joining us as spectator to hopefully learn something :)

We decided on Frontline as a mission, as it's relatively straightforward and kill based, but also has the simple extra of controlling zones further up the board. I ended up with the below list after some feedback and further tweaking:

The second group will be relatively autonomous due to all the orders they are generating between impetuous and irregular, and the other combat group will have a Morat link for order efficiency, allowing the TAG to rambo a bit more.

It was a whole lot of fun. I did a lot of second guessing myself during deployment etc. I ended up deploying my Hungries link in a good position only to have an MSV Nisse sniper staring down at them, I should have picked deployment order better. Needless to say, as smoke couldn't save them they got picked off before being in anyway effective.

Raicho and Dr Worm were MVP by a long way, the former for being an all round tank/damage dealer and the latter for stitching his arms back on! I didn't use the Kurgat at all, which is annoying as he is an expensive order generator, and the link team didn't achieve much due to my lack of ability to utilise cover effectively.

All in all it was a very fun first game, and not as one sided as I anticipated that it might be!
Here's to many more

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Air of Authority

Had some more mixed airbrush results recently. I was working from home on Friday so I had some time after logging off and chose to get as much of my Combined Army as possible undercoated with the blue colour I've chosen to start from.

No matter how thick I had the paint mix, it seemed to not be sticking, and pooling on the miniatures... This of course was after I filled the reservoir with a whole heap of blue, only to realise that it was the wrong blue... I persevered, thinking maybe another coat would do the trick once the first was dry but it didn't seem to help at all.

Later that night I tried to salvage some of the models with a mix of the blue base coat and Lahmian medium to attempt to make the finish a bit more matte.
In the cold light of morning the next day, the salvaged models looked fine. Great news. So did all the others though, so they never needed salvaging in the first place.
There are a number of things I think that went wrong here -
Poor light while airbrushing
Wrong temperature - I had the window open to vent the airbrush booth, maybe too cold
No glasses - They don't fit on my face with the respirator mask

I was completely downtrodden when I packed everything up on Friday night, but seeing the basecoat dried on those models I managed to undercoat makes me feel like I will do this again at some point to get everything undercoated, and some blending on larger models too perhaps, and OSL

We played our weekly Malifaux game on Sunday, and I think Titania finally clicked for me. Supporting Barbaros and Nekima is easy! They both had Fears Given Form which i felt a little bad a bout. At one point poor Cojo had to test for Titania's friendly scheme marker rule, and two lots of fears. He didn't make it...
We played Mark of authority, which was a lot of fun as well. Good game all around, including a couple of new scenery pieces :)

I'm currently planning out 300 points of Morats for a game after work on Wednesday so watch this space!

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Thursday Throwdown

Infinity Thursdays is turning into a regular thing at work, which is great. Today we are using smaller lists ~100 points in order to get more turns completed and to fit into the hour better. Also, one of our spectators from last week's game has just invested in a decent amount of Aleph and is getting his intro game today as well :D

Yes, I lost (yes again shutup), but it's always fun. I should have taken an extra body instead of a HMG, or maybe a raktorak. Hey ho

There is talk of sorting out a proper escalation league at work during lunches/after hours as well which will be great once all interested parties are ready to start playing.

I want to get a blue basecoat done this weekend by hook or by crook as I keep ending up with other things to do when  plan that in. Once the blue is done, the rest of the paint scheme is simple enough so this will help a lot with getting things table ready :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Sunday Showdown - Gaining Grounds

We threw down again on the tabletop this weekend, just my wife and I though.

We played GG18 for the first time in order to try and start getting used to the schemes & strats. I took Titania again in order to further cement the rules and intricacies in my head. I was facing down Marcus in a (shockingly) beast heavy list.

I thought I was being clever taking a Waldgeist in order to slow the progress of the supply wagon, only to later realise that it is unaffected by terrain. This did however allow me to clog the path of the wagon with the Waldgeist's extended melee range when in contact with his germinate markers.

Barbaros once again earned his keep, with his challenge aura and Fears Given Form, but it's still Titania I feel that I'm not getting maximum use out of really. Practice makes perfect and all that :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Drop it like its hot

We played our second Lunchtime session on Tuesday, but this time it was me versus the spectator from last week, who has since gone on to buy the Nomad starter set! I'm obviously such a great opponent, how could anyone resist getting into the game after that :p

The formats were repeated from the previous game with one round of three v three which I lost, and one round of 6 or so guys versus the same. I used the Morat starter set plus a Fraacta drop troop as I had just finished and based it to bring. The drop troop did very well, and I like the model to boot so this was great. I lost heavily to a Morlock rampaging down one side of the board and chain rifling with abandon, and my Morats were lined up along the back of the building just asking to be template weaponed to death :(

I really need to think about deployments, I could have been prone on top of the building that I was hiding behind. I don't really mind for starter games where I tend to play 'in character' for the Morats anyway, but this will really hurt me when I start playing 'real games'.

The game ended with a nice cinematic of my Sogarat shrugging off ARO fire to climb the steps of the objective building, missing all his HMG shots and getting pretty much cut in half by a Brigada with boarding shotgun (he needed 19s to hit me at that range!)

I'm going to keep on reading the Infinity wiki to learn more rules, and I've started ordering the rest of the tokens I want in lieu of payday tomorrow :)

Lastly, and with no small amount of shame I'll admit to dropping my entire box of models (all my assembled Infinity mans that I'd taken to choose from that day) on it's top when I was taking it back upstairs to the study/game room :(
I was very nervous of opening it to check the damage, but more than luckily the only damage was a few chips to basecoats.
The irony though is that the Fraacta that I was so impressed with in the game took a real beating to it's wing/drop pack and this needed snapping off , filing down and pinning...
All's well that ends well I suppose, but I feel beyond stupid!

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Sunday Showdown - First of Many

We christened our gaming room this Sunday when our friends came over to play Malifaux :)

I faced off against Kirai while my friend and my wife played Mcmourning into Marcus respectively. The strategy was Extraction and I took Dig Their Graves and Quick Murder.
My list was:
Titania
-6cache
-Aether connection
-An audience with the queen
-Behold my Glory
Barbaros
-Malifaux Provides
Nekima
-Fears Given Form
Thorn
Tooth
Primordial magic
Mysterious effigy

Barbaros and Nekima were definitely MVP in this one, challenge Aura sitting in the middle of the board can ruin a lot of plans. I didn't manage to combo it with Titania's Behold upgrade, but having it next to Fears Given Form was a good stack. Nekima did cause more points of damage to friendly models than I care to admit if I'm honest :p especially Titania herself.
I scored full for quick murdering Izamu, full for dig and dropped a point in turn 5 when I moved Titania to stop scoring from Claim Jump. The final score was 9-7, I struggled vs accusation as I don't really know how to prevent it happening to be honest. I still feel i'm under utilising Titania herself, but feel like I'm getting the hang of it, and feel like this crew was very well suited to the strategy and was succesful to boot.

Lots of fun and a great way to start with the new gaming space :)
My (Mcmourning) friend was also very interested in my Infinity models in a strange turn of events and was asking about game play and mentioned Nomads, so who knows what will happen there. I'm going to plan out some scenery/gamemat purchases so that my work friends can come over to play eventually, as well as it being usable for both Necromunda and 40k at a push :) I also want a few more pieces of Malifaux scenery as well to fill out both boards.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Morat Supremacy

We had our first lunchtime games today as a (re)introduction to the game. It was a load of fun, but I forgot to get any photos :(

The first game was just 3 grunts v 3 grunts on the Mototronica scenery from Icestorm. I took the first turn and managed to knock out two Fusiliers, leaving me an easy win on my second turn.

The system & rules started coming back to me quickly, so the second game we did 6v6 using my Morat starter versus 6 PanO guys, which I think is the vanilla starter set for them.

The second game we added an objective which was to control the building in the centre with the most points by the end of the third turn. I chose to take the second turn, and had some helpful tips for altering my deployment so as to use cover and not lose too many models.

I managed to stand my ground, and then in my turn use my Oznat to good effect, as well as my Sogarat soaking some sniper shots with his high Armour and 2 wounds. I got into the habit of making shots with AROs instead of dodging with the Morats high Phys stat which wouldn't be modified... I got a bit carried away/trigger happy but learned a valuable lesson :)

PanO turn two saw a couple of vanguard go down, and the drop troop came down on the side that my Oznat had made a brave advance down and unfortunately subsequently be sniped off with MSV.

the drop troop didn't last long after taking a heavy flamethrower to the face. I have to admit i made some remarkable dice rolls in this game, frequently declaring 'Super Morats!'

I decided to go hell for leather with my Sogarat on my second turn and diced down the lieutenant and a fusilier, leaving me able to claim the objective with my Raktorak and Sogarat. The Sogarat went down to the irregular sniper but was saved by his auto med kit in the last turn as I finished his forces off :)

I had a massive amount of fun, even though I stumbled over the plus/minus to rolls quite a bit, but we are definitely going to play some more intro missions with different troop types, and arrange a 300pt game for after work at some point.

I'm very motivated to get some painting done on these guys now and get some more troops ready for the table.

I also bought some order tokens, and will try and work out what other types of tokens are necessary for the models I have/like/will use and order those too :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Femme Fatales

My wife and I christened our new Gaming table setup over the holidays as well, and I had finished putting together/magnetising/undercoating my Titania crew on Xmas day so I decided to use them in our game.

Titania was a lot of fun, and very different to any of the other masters I play for any faction. I can't help but feel that I would have fared a lot better if I had read the cards for new models & upgrades before playing though...

In general, I seem to not have strats/schemes in mind when I'm picking a crew, rather just picking what I want to use, so there is often a bit of square peg round hole feel to my play. I also struggle to think what my opponent might be trying to achieve whilst also trying to achieve my own poorly understood objectives. We are hoping to play a lot more games though. It was certainly a lot less fuss setting up/packing away having everything all in one place and the table already sorted and ready to go.

I look forward to more games with Titania, and might pick up a couple of the newer models to use with her once I work out what will suit her well.

Xmas day evening was also the first day in a long time that I have felt like painting. I decided to make a start on Titania after enjoying the game with her, and wanted to include at least one of the Infinity models I need to get ready for the first game, so I picked the only one who probably doesn't need a second coat of blue armour which is the Oznat.

I've been heavily inspired by a thread on the Infinity Forums, as well as a blog on the Combined Army, and I wanted to try and include the dark purple from the Umbra Samaritan, and some of the colour choices/recipes from the Morat blog.
I'm not the biggest fan of the outcome of my own painting but I think that's relatively common amongst gamers. I think I have a tendency to overcomplicate things and could probably get some decent results by following the example of the 'Games Workshop method' of basecoat wash highlight, instead of trying to emulate people like Dr Faust who I never get as good results as despite trying different things to get thin layers.. This all depends on neatness though and it isn't something I'm good at. Painting more can only help this so hopefully this year will see some improvements :)

Thanks for Stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Carbon Dated

I've set a date with the guy at work for our first lunchtime intro/refresher game. This means that I need to get some specific models ready by then, which helps me focus rather than doing random bits of random miniatures when I sit at my desk :)

January 4th

I'm pretty much going to be taking the starter set for the first couple of games, with hacker/TAG added later as these each have specific rules to learn in addition to the standard stuff required to play the game.
All that is left to do currently to get them playable is to pin the weapons onto the Vanguard models. Hopefully though, I can get some paint on them before starting to play. I've been thinking alot about a colour scheme, and I think it will look good, close to the stock scheme seen in this picture:

I want to go with the grey and dark blue, but without the red accents. I like the stripe detailing and I'll use Orange for that. As for the glowing orbs on the armour (energy source? no idea really) I'm looking forward to some Airbrush OSL. To be honest, if I can get the grey/blue done with the airbrush, the rest of it should come along poretty quickly :)

I broke apart the Raicho the other night and started scraping out all the olkd superglue from joins and removing mold lines. I will be re-pinning and airbrushing in separate parts, so hopefully the airbrush is easy ebnough to use under the skylight in the new attic study, with the booth hose venting out of there :p

I managed to salvage the old wooden boards from our old makeshift gaming surface, and it'll certainly work as a game table until I have the money/time/motivation to sort something nicer/more permanent.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Back in action

We managed to get a game night on Thursday :D

I played Hoffman because my friend hadn't even seen my completed models, so it was a good excuse/reason :) It was pretty difficult playing with Hoffman who I'm not very familiar with, after a while of not playing, against Kirai who I'm also not familiar with, 8-10 though so it could have been a lot worse!

Once we have a working 'study' again I want to try and get the rest of my guild collection table ready and get some games going with Perdita & Rollins Black ASAP. As well as a lot more games in general.

Hopefully going to have the room move done this weekend, so no hobby updates incoming for a few days, unless its a pic of the new layout (minus gaming table so probably not!), but will be picking up table soon and get some pictures up :)

Hoping that the Ethernet cables we have currently are long enough to reach their new destination, but Screwfix is close enough to get new stuff at any rate :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Preparation

Saturday yielded some pretty good progress, with 4 Guild Hounds, Kamaitachi, & 3 Terracota Warriors assembled & based (except for sand/texture paste). The hounds bases needed a 'lever' in the same way as the watcher/Guardians for Hoffman due to tiny contact points on the base. The levers are more subtle, with bits of broken fence/building rather than full on sewer pipes as the models are pretty agnostic of any of my guild crews at the moment, and 'McCabe' is primarily desert/wasteland based. I didn't really have an opportunity to airbrush on Saturday. My wife was busy preparing for a stall on Sunday and the cats were shut out of the kitchen, so I didn't want to stress them out any more by making weird noises and smells whilst they sat in the study with me.

All models for the guild apart from Lucius & lawyers, Nino, Governers proxy, Mounted Rollins Black, Iggy Pup & the Ramone sisters are also now pinned to (magnetised) bases ready to hit the table. I got pretty sick of all the new stuff I had bought just sitting in a drawer waiting to be painted, and having so little time recently. The Wild Ones models need a little bit of paint on what will be impossible to reach places once they are based, but after that I'm happy to continue painting them once they are based. Nino also has a pose which creates impossible to reach areas once based, so he needs a little work before basing. The other models simply aren't a priority right now so don't have a base ready to go on.

We have a holiday coming up from 21st September - 2nd October, so in and between sorting things out for that, I will be continuing to prep models for table time, and maybe even get some painting done during any longer times I find myself with for hobbying :)

Lists are definitely the devil it seems, having good intentions is one thing but listing what I aim to get done seems to invite something to crop up and prevent me from having the time. I need to rethink this idea for the blog, as I still want to list progress & what's on the table so to speak but it isn't working out brilliantly in its current format.

Malifaux bootcamp was cancelled due to dates confusion, but I'm still taking my guild to play this Saturday evening for a couple of games, so the expanded collection will be good to have for that.

I was thinking about what I could do to get better at the game, and thought that having cards models in deck boxes makes it a real faff to look through and read abilities etc, so I had a look on Amazon for a card binder and ended up with an A4 and A5 one of these which I really like, and enables me to flick through and ready cards easily, and see upgrades at the same time too.

The City Of The Damned

It's so hard not to just hop on a computer game after getting home from work, and then it being nearly 9pm by the time we have cooked, eaten, watched this week's TV Show (Preacher), washed up, prepared food for tomorrow. A shorter commute would be amazing, but having the money to move house isn't realistic right now.

It's not all doom & gloom, just a commentary on life as-is. The stag weekend last weekend allowed me to catch up with a high school friend who lives a couple of hours away, who also happened to come 14/200 odd in a Malifaux tournament with Yan Lo. We got to chatting about wave 5 releases and GG18 being tricky for guild. The Hen weekend for the same wedding is next weekend so Mr Yan Lo, the stag and I are all at a loose end next weekend. The stag has to work on Saturday so we have a Malifaux boot camp planned for Saturday. Mr Yan Lo usually drubs me pretty badly but in a well meaning friendly kind of way :p so there should be a lot for me to learn.

Which (finally) leads on to the main point here, which is that I have a target to aim for to get some models ready. Hopefully Tomorrow night, Friday and most of Saturday will allow some painting time to get progress made on the Ortegas & DM recruiters et al. Maybe even some more airbrushing on Saturday. Some planning/prioritising will be needed to make sure I get the models ready that are most wanted on the table top. Maybe even a current state of affairs for the guild/each project is a good idea to see what needs doing versus how much it's needed. Maybe this would fit well into the project pages, but it would also benefit from a post in itself.

Long and rambling seems to be the standard these days, apologies. Hopefully a bit of planning/structure will allow a bit of motivation, even without a lot of time so it doesn't feel like 'not enough time'

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

First Blood

My friend and I managed to get in our first game over the weekend, only a small 1,000 point game and with lots of mistakes :)

The new system is very fun to play, very fluid while being very familiar. hte new 'to wound' table is pretty much like the old one, but it has far less values resulting in pretty much the same results as the last one. Always being able to wound on a 6 makes sure everything is on an even footing, presumable representing a knife to the eye or something lucky. It also removes effective invincibility from some units, and allows the 'underdog' to always have a fighting chance.

Tactically, lots of mistakes were made including but not limited to:
-Only using one round of shooting with shuricannon jetbiked before tring to tie upa unit of chaos spawn. These guys should be hard to catch whilst throwing out 3 shots a piece...
-Striking scorpions popping up from the shadows too early and not really doing anything good :(
- Waveserpent was clogged up in combat after disgorging fire dragons, effectively wasting three cannons :(

We each made a few mistakes with the new rules like damage being after failed saves, rather than generating more armour saves. Falling back/out of combat is something that wasn't used at all really but could have been pretty handy for me at least.

MVP by far was the mounted Autarch. Laser Lances on the charge are pretty terrifying!..

All in all, a lot of fun and I look forward to tweaking my list and trying again against those Thousand Sons :)

I have another game tonight against a different friend, one whom I've faced before with Exodites, from 6th edition I believe. This time though, I've swapped out Striking Scorpions for Howling Banshees, although I'm now not sure that the power swords are worth losing the strength from attacks of Striking Scorpions... Lets's see :)

I also have a lot of irons in the fire conversions/ideas wise so if/when I get time in the next few weeks I will hopefully be able to post something interesting.
Not only is it birthday season, but I'm also far more heavily involved with a theatre production than I had originally planned/volunteered for so it's taking up a lot of time as well.

That's all for now, hopefully more soon!
Lofty

Best Month of the Year

It's birthday season. My two friends and I all have a birthday within a week of each other in July, and with that come a lot of social activities, and busy weekends, so everything is going to be a little quieter on the blog until at least the weekend of the 21st.

Don't despair though as I have lots to write about and some progress photos to share either before then when I get a spare moment or on that weekend. I'll hopefully be able to do a couple of text based blogs in lunchtimes at work with game write up & lessons learned, or ideas & what's in progress :)

Recently I completed the unit of ten banshees I've been working on and got some basing material on then, I also made an Archon from a metal Incubi model, made a start on what will be Ranger proxies, struggled to work out what to do for a warlock, and decided how to approach Shining spears.
Also, the chap below took a lot of work (Autarch with draconic wings) and just needs some greenstuff to fill the gaps in the backpack.

Airbrushing this weekend was out prioritised by a great day out in the sun at Kirkstall Abbey (not religious, it's just a great ruins to walk around and we've never been) and lunch with my wife, and today playing an inaugural game of 8th with my gaming friend which I will have some thoughts to write up on in the coming week.

Lastly, after my wife exceeded her bandwidth on Photobucket and was asked for a stupid sum of money to host her photos 'for commercial blogging' or have the links killed (she earns nothing from the blog so this is extortion really), Photos here will be hosted throughy the blogger album default. A conscious decision was made to move a way from this to Photobucket a few years into the blog, but it seems pretty much a muchness as to where they live, however having the same happen here, and having to re-host photos would be a complete pain