Painting Oak and Iron

I've had Oak and Iron sitting on my shelf since I backed it when it was first on Kickstarter. As I've started to return to painting and playing miniatures games I was roundly infected with the desire to get this out, blow off the layer of dust, and see about painting the ships and playing the game.

Oak and Iron - First Edition Boxed Set

The ships are multi-part models, that push together. One part is the hull of the ship, and then all of the sails push into their little slots. This has the advantage of making the models easy to set up and play with - you could put them together straight after opening the box, and play it within a couple of minutes. With the hulls in brown plastic, and the sails in a white plastic, they look good enough for a sort of board game/miniatures game hybrid model.

Some of the models from the base game.

Whatever advantages are gained by making the ship models like this, the flip side is that they lack some refinement in terms of their detail. However, at the scale of the models, and how good they look once painted on the table, I don't think it really matters - they are table quality models, and a good paint job really does make them pop.

The base game box includes six ships, and I had to use the handy PDF on the Firelock Games website to help me work out which was the brigantine, and which was the frigate, and so on. I decided to work through the base box, hopefully play a game or two, and then decide whether to continue with the other couple of boxes I've got for the game.

I have played a couple of games now, and I started on the Men of War box (includes 3 more ship models). Two of these are painted in the photos below. I'll review the game another day, but for now, here are all the painted ships...

The first model I painted was the sloop...

The Brigantine and the Corvette were next

Brigantine

Corvette

The Fluyt

The Petite Fregate

The Light Galleon

All six ships from the core box

The 6th Rate, from the 'Men of War' box

The 5th Rate, from the 'Men of War' box

Oak and Iron ships on my sea board, and with some terrain I had originally built for Dystopian Wars:

Full Circle - and Necromunda

It's been a hot minute since I posted to this site. In actual fact, it's been a hot seven years. In the intervening time I've changed careers, run eight successful Kickstarters, had nearly half a million words published by various game companies around the world, and self-published 7 RPG zines (see more on the Caradoc Games link at the top of the page).

The last few months though I've taken a hiatus from game design, and have been getting out the paints and brushes, dusting off miniature games I haven't played in some time, and generally doing other hobby things. It's been nice to come back to that side of the gaming hobby, and more and more I've felt like blogging about it. So here we are, full circle.

What got me back into miniatures gaming? A bit of uncertainty around what I was going to do next with Caradoc Games, and a desire to take some time. A good friend of mine had finished running a Necromunda campaign, and was talking about running another campaign later in the year. He asked if I wanted to join in; the bastard knew exactly what he was doing.

After some umming and ahhing, I finally gave in and thought to myself, 'yes, just a gang for Necromunda, that will be a nice distraction from my studies this year'. Six months later and I have a painted Necromunda gang, a fleet for Oak and Iron, a Gallic DBA army, and I have Bloodbowl sitting on a table nearby... I should have known this was how it would go.

Looking at the gangs that our local group had, and which miniatures I liked the look of, I ended up getting an Ash Wastes Nomad gang (cue the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme tune, and an episode titled: The Gang Does the Ash Wastes).

I don't think I've bought anything from Games Workshop since the late 90s. The model sprues were good quality, and the figures went together easily. I rather like these models, but boy are there a lot of layers, with bits of cloth and cowl hanging over parts of the figures here and there, chains, and cannisters and all manner of other details, which look wonderful once painted, but are sometimes tricky to get a brush to. If I had my time again, I'd almost elect to paint them on the sprues, but then again, just typing that gives me the shudders, so maybe not.

I was really happy with how these figures came out, the models are well posed and detailed, and I am pleased with the final product. According to my extensive research and exacting sources, most of dyes available in the Ashen Wastes are various shades of brown, so that's what I went with... 

My gang for Necromunda - The Ash Waste Nomads

The campaign started a couple of weeks ago, but I'll save posting about it for another day. So far it's been a lot of fun, and unusually for me, I'm actually playing with painted miniatures!

Best in Show...

Our little local convention, ShepparCon, entered its second year this year and it turned out to be a fantastic weekend of great games and more importantly, great people. I think I spent more time wandering around and chatting than I did actually sitting down to play, but I had a blast, the people make these events!

It was also the first year my son came with me for an extended time, and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to include him, we played a number of great games together and he was very excited to attend. A huge thanks to all those who gamed with us, my son and I had a great time, having the chance to play Hisss and Colt Express were his favourite experiences of the con (we may now have both in our collection).

So what were the standout experiences?

Colt Express

I played my first game of Colt Express, the 2015 winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award. I must say that I enjoyed my first game immensely, we played this game twice over the course of the weekend, bought a copy, and have played twice since. The game is all about outlaws trying to grab as much loot as they can during a train heist, while slipping away from one another, beating up one another, and avoiding the Marshall. It's a lot of fun, and the way the movement of all the players is programmed is a very clever and interesting mechanism I enjoy a lot.

Every turn players will have the chance to play a number of action cards from their hand, these cards are played into a single collective pile, sometimes face up (allowing you to see what everyone is doing), and sometimes, if the train is going through a dark tunnel, face down (meaning no-one knows what each other is doing). After the players have played their 4-5 cards each into this deck (usually one at a time), the deck is flipped over and the actions enacted. The actions allow you to move up onto the roof, left and right, collect loot, punch or shoot the other players and move the Marshall. The way some of the cards are face up, and some face down means that you can plan and program your own actions, but there are times when the actions of others will be a mystery. You may have started in a carriage with an outlaw you had planned to punch, but by the time your card is revealed, they may have already slipped away to the roof.

There is a good level of thought to be found in Colt Express, and whole lot of fun. Once the deck has been constructed it is always amusing to see what unfolds. Outlaws shooting thin air, swinging punches in an empty carriage, trying to collect loot from a carriage already emptied by a sneaky other outlaw. Your choices make a difference, but there is also a dose of second-guessing your opponents and luck involved. These things don't detract from the game, but enhance the experience in my view, and the whole is, simply put, a lot of fun.

Flamme Rouge

My other favourite game from the convention was Flamme Rouge, and I say this as a person who finds cycling about as interesting as performing surgery on myself with blunt kitchen items. If someone said, 'We're spending tonight watching cycling', I'd cast about for the nearest black hole to spaghettify myself in. If someone said, 'We're spending tonight playing Flamme Rouge." I'd be thrilled. It really is an excellent game. We played with the basic rules, the advanced rules, as I understand it, add some variety to the track, making for some added complexity in the planning and execution of the race, but aren't a huge step up.

In Flamme Rouge each player has two cyclists, the rouleur, who is the steady pace setter, and the sprinteur, who is generally slow, but capable of great bursts of speed. Each turn players will select a card to play from their hand for each of their cyclists, the card will dictate how many spaces forward the cyclist will move. Those at the head of a peloton will earn exhaustion cards, which dilute their deck (and therefore hand), those a space behind another cyclist will slipstream forward.

Simple rules, simple game, but it all comes together on the track. The game is all about second guessing what the other players will do, how to position your grinding rouleur with your short burst sprinteur, and positioning the sprinteur so they can make the final dash forward that will win you the race. The card play and movement system is really straightforward, but the game comes together as all elegance of clean design. It works, and it works really well. I even walked away with an increased interest in cycling, ye gads!

Wits and Wagers Evening

One of the great stand-outs of the event for me was the opportunity to host a large-scale Wits and Wagers game in the evening on the Saturday night. We used a variation of the Wits and Wagers Family rules, with each team having two meeples to place, and points earned each question for a) the winning answer, and b) for each meeple placed on the winning answer.

We had somewhere around 35 people playing in six teams, and all the questions were game related, things like: How many Elektros would you have if you had all the notes in a game of Powergrid? In what year was famed game designer and unicorn hunter Bruno Faidutti born? and so on.

These events, for me, are more about community building, the friendships and laughter, than the game itself, but Wits and Wagers is a great game that perfectly suits such an evening. I'm not sure about everyone else, but as the person trying to make jokes and ask the questions, I had an absolute blast. I'm hoping that everyone else who came along had as much fun as I did!

Next year we'll do our best to run this event again, with a new set of questions and some little tweaks to the rules. I also need to make sure my set of meeples for each team is easily visible (they had a tendency to blend in a little too well), and that I use velcro or something to attach them better (Blu-tack was merely ok). We were lucky enough to have prizes for all of the winners (thanks to the generosity of Grail Games), and hopefully we can provide similar going forward.

Prototypes

As a part of ShepparCon we also had a protospiel event organised by Karl Lange of Ark Angel Games. During this I had the chance to play two prototypes, one by game designers and all around great people Ben and Shae Boersma of Darwin Games, which was a lot of fun. It was a mix of die rolling, power activation, deduction and memory (time didn't permit us to play a second game, which I would have liked). The other was from Karl Lange, and was a roll and write game with a pirate theme, a game which I thoroughly enjoyed, ARRRR!!

Gaming with my Family

The best thing about this year was that my son was able to attend for a large portion of it. Being 8 he can't join in with all games, but I really appreciate those gamers at the event that were more than happy to include him in our games together. He had a great time, with Colt Express his clear favourite of the con. I also had my wife and daughters come in throughout the weekend, and the chance to play the Disney version of Codenames was a lot of fun.

He also had a great time playing Magic Maze, and with 7 or 8 players (I can't recall exactly), it was raucous and just plain hilarious. The fact you couldn't talk during while the game was 'active' was something he absolutely loved, though I could tell he was burning to talk throughout.

The red pawn piece used to alert other players that they had something they needed to do in the game put in some hefty overtime in this game!

A Friendly Community

One of the things I love most about this style of convention is that everyone is there to play some games and have some fun. I had the chance to walk around and speak to a lot of people, as well as play games with people I haven't gamed with before. Everywhere I looked people were inclusive and friendly, and that is exactly the sort of atmosphere I love most. It was also wonderful to catch up with friends I hadn't seen, in some cases, for many years.

Board gaming is a social hobby, with the opportunity to stretch our minds, but also the chance to talk and laugh with people that share our interests. Overall it was a great con experience for me, and I hope for all those who attended. It certainly energised our little local gaming group! As part of the organising committee we were extremely pleased with how it turned out, and are very much looking forward to 2019!

Gateway to Mayhem

I seem to have been on a theme recently, the last five posts from the Castle have all been about Gaslands. This is to make it six in a row...

The last little while I have been consumed by both getting some freelance work finished and completing my school reports, outside of that I managed to squirrel away a little time to finish off a set of four gates for my Gaslands table (I want to make some billboards next, and I think I'll be done). These gates are from an Australian company called Module-R Terrain, they went together very easily, and look great; you get six in a set (I have the last two near finished, but needed four done for an upcoming event). Well worth the price of admission!

The six gates from Module-R went together very easily. The car is to give an idea of the scale, you can comfortably fit three cars side by side within the gate.

With all of these I undercoated them with a silver metallic spray. After this I heavily dry-brushed with a lighter silver paint. The next step was to paint the black and yellow stripes. I used a piece of ragged foam to stipple on the red for the signs. Once all that was done I washed it heavily with a black wash (Dark Tone from Army Painter). Lastly, I dribbled a fair bit of brown wash over them to give them a rusted look. The tire marks and oil stains on some of the gates were made with pooled black wash - the Army Painter stuff from the tin is quite viscous, I watered it down when painting the gates, but used it straight for the tire marks etc.

So, four gates finished! All ready for an upcoming participation game I'll be running at the local game convention ShepparCon, which I am greatly looking forward to. I was also blown away that Sebastian of Module-R Terrain offered to support the event, and I'll have some packs to hand out for 'spectacular happenings' and 'ludicrous carnage' over the course of the weekend!

I also managed to finish off the cars I had on the workbench. One was a buggy, the other a monster truck...

With both of these I used plenty of Vallejo textured paint to make them look like they have a fair amount of mud caked to them. Other than that, I followed the same method as for the other cars I have completed: an undercoat of Indian red, water and salt in patches, an undercoat of the base colour, get rid of salt, detailing, wash, highlight, rust effect and finally varnish. I am fairly happy with how they've come out. Now I need to do a couple more cars for the participation game coming up, and I'll be fairly well done I think...

These are all the vehicles I have completed so far. I need to add a couple more cars, and I should be good to go... and paint the bikes I have... and do some billboards... and...

Lastly:

I managed a quick game of the Death Race scenario with my son and daughter the other day... It was hilarious. I was neck and neck with my son (who sped to top-gear and spent the rest of the game trying not to wipe out).

That is until an unfortunate slide had me going through a gate the wrong way, my son rammed me, and the results were not pretty. Straight after the ram my car flew forward, slid and flipped off the table.

A combination of high speed and being rammed got me in this pickle... My son won by technical knockout.

Well, those are my Gaslands travails till now. I am greatly looking forward to the upcoming participation game, and until then, I have a few more bits to do, and I should be done!

Well, I say done...