Back from AdeptiCon - Loads of Crowdfunding!

Well, AdeptiCon 2015 was fantastic! Such a massive and exhausting weekend that I am still getting settled back into the swing of things after returning home on Sunday night. I'll post a few photos later in the week, as well as a review and some information from my painting classes.

Until then, however, I thought I'd take a few minutes to show you a handful of crowdfunding projects that friends of mine have running at the moment. They're all for different genres of games/toy soldiers, and all seem like a lot of fun.

First up, my friends at Soda Pop Miniatures have launched a Kickstarter for their new chibi-style ninja board game, Ninja All Stars! In the game you get to play rival ninja clans that are sneaking around outside a Japanese cast in the middle of the night. It's a simple KS, with only a single pledge level and lots of scope for masses of models as stretch goals are crushed. As I type, it is about 160% funded and still has 27 days to go.

The next one to show off is much smaller in scope, and is from a regular reader of this blog. Nick Baran is taking some of his first steps towards building a miniatures line for a game he has been developing over the last couple of years, Broken Contract. He has developed the rules for the small-scale, underground mining, skirmish game and has those available now as a free download on his Broken Contract blog. Nick's Kickstarter is to fund the first eight miniatures from the range (enough for the initial game), and at the time of typing he's at 75% funding with 18 days to go. Nick is also pushing to build his Facebook presence, so if you are on the Facebooks, I suggest you go show him some love (and help unlock a few models along the way).

Another old colleague of mine, Joe Krone, and his Watchful I Studio have launched a Kickstarter for their first miniatures range, the Chinese Warring States. The primary goal is to get a line of historical miniatures into production, with stretch goals looking to add some more "fantastic" elements into the mix, such as Terracotta Soldiers and Temple Dogs. Where were these guys when I was building my Cathay army back in the day? At the time of typing, the Chinese Warring States project is 65% funded with 29 days to go.

And finally, my friends over at Mantic are running their next Kickstarter in order to help expand their range of miniatures for the Deadzone game/Warpath world. With essentially two simple pledge levels, you can start to get your hands on not only the elite of the Pathfinders and the hordes of chittering Veer-myn, but some of the cool new industrial sector scenery from their Battlezones range. I'll be putting some of the standard range together in the coming weeks for my work on a host of Relic Knights articles. Should be fun : ) At the time of typing, this one is 360% funded, with 13 days to go.

Cheers
Dave

Finally, I have some Morr!

Well, with most of my Guns Of April commitments behind me (just casualty and disruption markers, and objectives, and the table, and a few horses here and there to go) I figured it was time to get back to the Procession Of Morr.

I've still not heard any confirmation of the Empire rumors that are doing the rounds, so I thought it best to get stuck into units that won't be changing in any way - the flagellants and spearmen. Above you can see the next eleven flagellants underway, I hope to have them finished by this time next week (he says with fingers firmly crossed).

Above you can see my start on sculpting the heads/masks for my spearmen and artillery crew. From left to right we have: the beginnings of three Venetian-style masks that will have hooked noses and exposed mouths and chins, the start of three Plague Doctor-style masks (primarily for the artillery crews and attendants), and two new heads that will probably be split in their treatment. Looking good so far, but a bit of work to go.

Mantic's Corporation!

I have ten of these models sitting here to the side of my desk, just waiting to be painted. Please offer up some color scheme suggestions in the comments and we'll see what happens to them ; )

Cheers
Dave

Busy, but not much to show for it.

I've busy, very busy, these past two weeks. Busy with work, travel, illness, children with illness, etc etc. I've still managed to squeeze in some painting time, and you can see the figures I've finished over on the Guns Of April blog ; )

In addition, here are a few cool things that have entered my house since the Cold Wars convention last weekend:

• Marshal Ney, the free figure from the Cold Wars show.

• Lots of fun reference material from those chaps at Osprey. Take particular note of the two on the right.

• Eight models from the "Napoleon in Egypt" range from Brigade Games. They are all members of the French Dromedary Corps, two mounted and six dismounted. I'm really looking forward to painting these up for some fun "Rosetta Stone" period skirmish gaming!

Earlier this week a package of Mantic's Corporation troopers arrived on my doorstep. I was originally under the impression that the Corporation models would be plastic, but these are the plastic resin. I've not worked with it yet, so I'm curious how things will turn out. I must say the figures look great, possibly the best from Mantic this far. A solid mix of contemporary and near-future aesthetics.

Finally, my Scenic Express order arrived with some more Late Summer Buffalo Grass tufts (I use these all the time). I added a few items I haven't used before that you'll get to see added to models over the coming months. The package at the front has four separate sheets of meadow flowers, each with different colors (yellow/white, red/white, purple/white, and brown/white). Should be fun to try these things out.

Until next time.

Cheers
Dave

What's in the box?

One of the fun things about being a toy soldier hobbyist that a) works from home for a toy soldier hobby magazine and b) has quite a few friends with great toy soldier businesses, is that a really cool box of goodies turns up on my doorstep two or three times a week.

Over the past few weeks there've been some great boxes indeed.

Just last week I received a lovely box from Jim and John Bailey at Grindhouse Games. It was the freshly printed copy of Incursion that I pre-ordered back in November. The reason for the delay? The guys had to establish a significant commitment from their customers before laying down the vast amounts of cash needed to get a board game of this quality printed and assembled. I know the Baileys do good work, so I was more than happy to pledge my support for this project.

I've seen lots of great pictures of their Incursion range of minis online, so I order the complete package which included two of their limited edition tins, the Allies (US Ape-suited raiders) and the Germans (exciting characters and Nazi ZOMBIES!). Very cool. Go and check out their stuff here.

My friend Ronnie Renton, the driving force behind Mantic Games, sent me a little package after I asked a couple of questions about their new ghouls. In the package were two sprues of the new Skeletons (which you can use to build 20 Skellies). While I wasn't too keen on the styling of their Elves, I am loving the look of these undead warriors. Loads more detail and clever ways of assembling the models (usually tricky with Skeletons) make these very impressive.

Ronnie has always been a big fan of big armies and big games. These Mantic miniatures seem like the way to achieve that consistently.

Here's a back and front shot of the ghoul sprue. With two leg parts, two torsos, three heads, and three alternate hands you can build ghouls 36 different ways, although I'd recommend some more extensive conversions (arm repositioning would be best). Apart from using them as ghouls in an undead army, you could easily see these models serving as Battle Psykers in an Imperial Guard or Traitor Guard army, particularly using the two bald heads (one of which is somewhat bulbous).

Every month or so I place an order with Jeff Wilhelm at Dragon Forge Designs. He makes some great resin bases and is close to adding some great new products to his line (keep an eye out just after Adepticon). This box was full of bases for me and just a couple for some commissions I'm finishing up.

About a month ago I received my order from Romeo at Battlefoam. I tried out their funky little design app, and created this custom tray for my Napoleonic British, each tray will fit roughly one division or support brigade, so I should be good for a while with the four trays I ordered.

I should fit roughly 140 models per tray, not bad.

And one of the boxes that arrived recently contained my "staff samples" of the first six packs from our Wargames Illustrated Exclusive "Moments In History" vignettes. If you click on the link you'll get to see the six sets, sculpted by Gary Morley, assembled and painted by Matt Parkes, in their full glory. Each set is available for sale, but we're also giving you your choice of two sets when you order a one year subscription!

As I said at the start though, it's pretty cool to have lovely free toy soldiers land on your doorstep!

So, let's wrap up with some models that will soon be heading back into a box and out my door. The Pre-Heresy Emperor's Children army I started showing you last post has reached it's conclusion. 50 Tactical Marines, 6 Rhinos, 9 Phoenix Guard, 1 Sorcerer/Librarian, and 1 Land Raider, all done now.

My client sent me a Forgeworld Pre-Heresy Land Raider Kit to assemble and embellish a bit. I usually love Forgeworld's kit (see the Hellblade I assembled in less than 30 minutes), but I'm yet to find a MkI Land Raider kit that hasn't had problems.

This particular kit was a real doozy. The front section (sits above the assault ramp doors) and the rear section (replaces the standard engine pieces) were a full 2mm slimmer than the standard pieces. This meant they could only be used if I was willing to trim 2mm off the width of the floor, the lower assault ramp, the upper assault ramp, the internal bracing piece, and the top (which straddles both track sections, requiring it to be trimmed from the center of the piece). I decided not to go down that path, instead choosing to adapt the standard pieces.

I created a new housing for the heavy bolters, and a new set of panels for the rear section so that I could still mount the two large exhausts that come with the FW kit. In addition I added plasticard trim around the side and top panels. When my client paints the Land Raider in the Pre-Heresy purple, this trim will be painted gold and add really rich, detailed look to the tank. This was topped off with the Legion number (III) and the Legion symbol (the winged claw) tying it back in with the Rhinos.

And finally, here's the Librarian. He's a fairly simple conversion, tied in with the rest of the army, but pushing the styling progression. When I decided to use the High Elf banner for the Phoenix Guard, I thought this guy could also use a piece from the High Elf sprues I had. Hence the phoenix familiar perched on his backpack. He'll look great painted gold.

Until next time, have fun!

A mixed bag...

THE TABLE

So, all my plans for painting, modeling, blogging etc. went out the window this weekend when I was asked by some friends of mine in the UK to paint up a Citadel Realm of Battle gameboard from Games Workshop so they could take it to GenCon this week to show off some of their new miniatures.

I picked up the board on Friday night, primed it then, and got it painted on Saturday (around a great afternoon of grilling with old friends). On Sunday I was able to get it flocked and ready for pick-up today.

This board has come under varying levels of flak from across the hobby spectrum, primarily for the wildly increasing price on its release (originally slated at $175 before release it went through two price rises and is now $290). Due to my "change of employment" situation I never picked one up until Friday, and I must say it's a nice piece of kit.

Painting and flocking a 6' x 4' table in such a short period of time - while looking after my daughter, preparing for and hosting a party for 12 people, and attending a local production of Hamlet (thanks for a great show Phil) - was pretty amazing. The only things that weren't too smooth were the pits of skulls (cool but time-consuming) and the darker flock from the GW Terrain kit (VERY clumpy, it required several sifts through a kitchen strainer to get most of the flock to separate, again time-consuming). All in all though, this is a very cool table with a lot of potential.

The friends who'll be using it are the guys from Mantic Games. You can check out their website here and their blog here. Not too much info right now, but I'm sure they'll be flooded the interwebs after GenCon. I'll be painting some of their Elves soon.

THE LIST

I mentioned I would post a copy of the Blood Pact list I intend to take to the Battlefoam Wild West Shootout in October. Well here goes:

Blood Pact (IG) list - 1750 points

HQ

• Company Command, plasma pistol, Regimental Standard, vox caster, 2 Plasmas - 100

Elites

• Psyker Battle Squad, Chimera - 165

Troops

• Infantry Platoon

- Platoon command, vox caster, 2 flamers, platoon standard – 60

- Infantry Squad, plasma gun, vox caster, - 70

- Infantry Squad, plasma gun, vox caster, - 70

- Infantry Squad, meltagun, vox caster, - 70

- Infantry Squad, meltagun, vox caster, - 70

- Heavy Weapons Squad, 3 autocannons, - 75

- Heavy Weapons Squad, 3 missile launchers, - 90

• Penal Legion Squad – 80

• Penal Legion Squad – 80

Fast Attack

• Hellhound, - 130

Heavy Support

• 2 Medusas – 270

• Leman Russ, lascannon, heavy bolters – 185

• Leman Russ, lascannon, heavy bolters - 185

Feel free to have at it. Please remember, however, I build lists with models I like, not necessarily with those that'll kick some butt for me. I'm not in it to win, just to put in a good showing.

THE TRUCK

The arrival of the PDF is imminent. Thomas is in Arizona as I type. He'll send me the PDF once he's back in town (this weekend) then I can get it to you, faithful reader, at some stage next week.

EVENTS

It is less than two weeks til BoLScon, do you have your tickets yet?

Cheers

Dave