May The What?

Incident at Hab Zone 161

May the Fourth Be With You. It's a thing, apparently.

I am not really much of a Star Wars fan, but I do like a good pun. To celebrate this great day for geeks everywhere, I put my sci fi collection together with my newly painted  rocky outcrops for this little image which I have grandly titled Incident at Hab Zone 161.

The figures are from the (long forgotten?) Sedition Wars range. They painted up really nicely and would make a great little force for a skirmish game. I really should get some more of them painted.

This is the kind of sci fi look I prefer, less Star Wars or 40K, more Moon Base Alpha.* The base in the background is the start, potentially, of a little side project, just primed at the moment. I really should not get distracted, this is what happens when you tidy your garage!

*from the series Space 1999, with hair styles courtesy of UFO

Review of the Year

It's traditional at the start of a new year to take a look back at the preceding twelve months, so here's my highs and lows of 2013.

The year started on a very promising note. I was determined to continue trying new games and quickly got some Sedition Wars figures painted up. Well, the painting was quick enough, the cleaning and prep work on the plastic resin mix was more work than usual. The final painted result was worth the hassle. Rather than just get stuck into a game, I checked the forums on a few rules queries and found there were lots of issues with the gameplay, confusion and lack of balance. There was a promise to get everything sorted, but it seemed to drag on and my initial enthusiasm drained away. I started to look into alternative rules sets but didn't get very far. In the end, about mid way through the year, the second consignment of figures arrived along with new cards and new rules. However, these seemed just as unbalanced as the first set and I was really put off even trying the game, which is pretty stupid really when you think about it. Maybe I should just give them a whirl in the new year.

Saga proved to be a far better gaming experience. I have played many a game over the year and while the newness has worn off a little, I still feel that the system has much to offer. I have tried roughly half of the available factions and maybe need to look into new scenarios, but still like the game enough to invest time and money into building my collection of dark ages warbands. The miniatures leave me less excited, I feel that most historical miniatures are adequate and not much more, but am pleased to now have two starter warbands fully painted.

Lord of the Rings was probably the biggest revelation for me this year. It's a decent set of rules with fairly quick gameplay, heavily reliant on the scenarios and background. It works well with about 30 or so miniatures per side, but starts to break down after that as it handles every combat singly. If you are using orcs and have over 60 combats to roll, it can get a bit tedious. While the game is decent I find the minis to be excellent, I can't understand why they are not more popular. I have a sizeable collection of orcs painted and a reasonable Isengard force started, with a Rohan contingent waiting for paint.

The only thing that tops Lord of the Rings figures, for me at least, is my Warhammer fantasy collection. While the official figures have got steadily worse in my eyes, I have enjoyed finding and painting alternatives. My top highlight of the year was adding a unit of grave guard (built from Lord of the Rings figures!) and a varghulf to my Vampire Counts army, though I only got to use them once in a game. I also added a few chaos characters to my army and played a few games with my daemons, but overall it was a very quiet year for the game that was once all engrossing.

When I look at my painting list for the year, it's quite impressive compared to previous years. Most of it is shown here in this review, though I have also pretty much finished a unit of marauders for my chaos army too. I have spent less time on painting individual models, though I do have something nice to post in the new year. I have also managed to add a fair few bits to my terrain collection, so it's been a good year for my wargaming collection.

My highlights for the year then would have to be painting the Vampire Counts, playing Saga and discovering the quality of the Lords of the Rings figures. If only there was some way to combine the Saga rules with the Lord of the Rings figures. Well actually, there is, but I will come back to that in a future post. The low points were probably failing to find decent dark ages figures and my declining interest in playing WHFB. If only I could use my fantasy collection without having to rely on the actual rulebooks. Again, that's something I will be looking into next year. I have some interesting plans and ideas for 2014 and will post about them in the next few days. Happy new year folks!

Sedition Wars Vanguard Painted

Red Squadron, checking in.

The first five of the Vanguard for Sedition Wars, painted fairly quickly over the weekend. I intend to paint each squad of five with an identifying shoulder pad colour. I am also on the lookout for some decals to number the troopers.

Some close-ups, showing the fine details on the figures. A base colour and a glaze or two is all I have done here, the sculpt does the hard work for you.

Sedition Wars Strain Painted

I have painted the first batch of Sedition Wars figures, eight of the Strain figures. This is the minimum figures I need for the first scenario in the game (along with five Vanguard, which I hope to paint in the next couple of weeks).

The Strain are created when lifeforms are infected by nano-virus. In this case, human subjects have been infected. The figures go through several stages of enhancement, starting quite human-like and evolving into machine/flesh constructs. In the early scenarios there are just phase 1 and phase 2 Strain, so the human elements are still pretty obvious.

When it came to painting I wanted to avoid a zombie rotted flesh look and aim more for a cool skin contrasting with dark weapons aesthetic. However, in the early stages there is a lot of ripped skin, exposed muscle, broken bones and the like, so the sleek futuristic look is only hinted at. The models are very detailed so there is a danger that the colour scheme will be very confusing. I tried to keep it coherent by sticking to black weapons, white skin, red flesh and blood. I wish I had stuck to cool colours on the trousers, the browns and greens don't work as well. I am also unsure about the boils being a garish yellow, maybe I should have made them a purple (as in bruised skin).

Here are a couple of close-ups, showing phase 2 models in the two palettes, cool on the left, warm on the right. The cool palette definitely works better for me.

Next in line are five Vanguard models. I will be much bolder with these figures, sticking with a very stark black and white scheme. As I said, I hope to have them finished by month end, so I can get to play the first scenario. However, I also have a single figure competing for painting time, so it's going to be a tight fit in the schedule.

Vikings, Space Pods and Steam Tanks

Over the weekend I visited the historic city of York to attend the wargames show, Vapnartak. There was plenty to see and do, I went with no real agenda, just to wander round and see if I could unearth anything unusual. I did think beforehand that, in this day of information overload on the internet, there would be no surprises, but I was wrong.

Let's start with the vikings. York was a big viking settlement in the 9th and 10th century, known as Jorvik. There is an excellent tourist attraction in the town, with a recreated section of the settlement, complete with sights, sounds and smells, well worth a visit if you like your viking history. I was chatting to a viking whilst there, trying to gain some snippets of information to help me with colours should I ever get round to building a viking warband for Saga. His advice for historical accuracy was a little surprising. He suggested that much of the cloth worn would have been pink; red dye was made from the shells of insects, but it faded easily to a pale red or pink. Looking at pictures on their website you can see much of the clothing was indeed like this. Another little snippet was that they were very clean, washing daily and even setting aside one day per week as washing day (Saturday, as it happens). Many of the artifacts found are related to hygiene or grooming, such as hair combs, tweezers and even ear spoons. The soap they used stripped the colour from their hair, possibly accounting for their idealisation as blonde-haired warriors. So, that's my Saga viking warband planned - pink tunics and blonde hair, very intimidating.

At the show I had a good look at the Sarissa Precision range of mdf buildings. I have seen them on the website and reviewed on blogs, but there's nothing like seeing them in real life to really appreciate how good they are. I wanted a small selection to give me some options when it comes to gaming with my Sedition Wars figures, so they put together a small bundle of a trio of buildings at a discounted price. I want to get them painted up as soon as possible, hopefully within the next few months. More on Sedition Wars in the very near future, as I started painting my first batch of figures just today.

One of the big pleasures of the day was coming across some completely new (to my eyes) figures. The pick of the bunch for me was a company called Ironclad Miniatures. They make a range of figures, different scales and genres, but I was drawn to their Victoriana/steampunk items. There were some nice oddball figures in the mix, a cook armed with a rolling pin, a shotgun wielding butler, that sort of thing. The thing that really caught my eye was the range of steam tanks. There were about a dozen or so of these which I have absolutely no use whatsoever for in gaming terms, so I bought two of them, just to paint up. They would probably fit right into a game of Dystopian Legions if ever I go down that route, or any other steampunk type game. Another little project to plan for, maybe later in the year.

There were dozens of traders at the the show, from big names to little fish, each selling a huge range of figures, from the bland to the brilliant. From the sheer variety I would hazard a guess that gamers have never had so much choice. It's hard to choose which genre to play, let alone which rules set. But these are very pleasant problems to ponder.

Sedition Wars mini comparison

My copy of Sedition Wars Battle for Alabaster arrived in the post yesterday. This is the game developed by Studio McVey that I supported on kickstarter last year. I am trying hard to not get distracted from my other projects, but I could not resist lining up some figures for a comparison shot. It's a big picture so that you can see all the detail, a little grainy because of the darkness of a northern hemsiphere winter, but clear enough. Click on the photo for the bigger version.

The game comes complete with dozens of minis, with a good number of extra ones thrown in for kickstarter supporters. I bought the game for two reasons. Firstly, as a complete game that hopefully will be fast, easy to learn and interesting to play. Secondly, and more importantly for me, was the opportunity to pick up some quality sci-fi minis at a reasonable cost. I have a few ideas for what I will do with the minis in the future, but that's still under research.

Looking at the photo, you can see that the scale is similar in height to the Dark Vengeance cultist and chaos marauder. The Gondor soldier is a fair bit shorter. The plastic of the Sedition Wars figures is different to the Dark Vengeance items, a plastic-resin mix maybe? It is quite hard, slightly harder to clean mold lines, but holds lots of detail (check the big photo for this). As I said, I don't want to get too distracted from current projects, but will try to get a few samples painted in the near future and post the results.

Pledges

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past month, you will no doubt have seen the buzz on the web about various pledge programs. I mentioned a couple that were of interest to me in previous posts (here and here if you were not paying attention). Well, the end of the month has arrived and I have made my choices. It's a shame that these projects all seemed to kick off at once, otherwise I might have been able to offer more support.

My biggest spend was Sedition Wars, biohazard level. This started out a decent deal, even with overseas shipping to contend with. But as the month went by, it just got better and better, with absolutely stacks of add-ons. The fact that Studio McVey were able to step in and handle import concerns was a massive plus point for me, it showed what a decent company ethic they have. And the product looks top notch. Even if the game turns out to be average or poor, the sheer amount and quality of the minis alone is well worth the cost. All this for just $100? SOLD!

My other pledge was for  the Avatars of War dwarf project. When this was announced I was very excited, I love the dwarf range by these guys. I have a handful of their metal models and the plastic dwarf berserkers were probably the highlight of 2011 for me. In fact, I even said in a post back then that if they ever released a dwarf range I would bin my GW models and start again from scratch with AOW models! However, when it came to putting my money where my mouth was, I fell flat on my face. I pledged just $15 for the exclusive army standard bearer (even though I have no idea what it will look like). My wallet is exhausted after all the recent hobby purchases. There's a very good chance that I will end up buying most of the new dwarfs when they are released, after I have saved up some hobby funds. Like I said, it's a shame they both came along at once.

Sedition Wars

Sedition Wars, by Studio McVey, is available for pre-orders on the kickstarter site. Go check it out, if you haven't already! For those who have never heard of kickstarter, it's a communal pledge website to help small companies raise money to fund projects. Customers pledge an amount (in US dollars) and if the target amount is reached by the cutoff date, the product is financed. Then the company gets to work to produce the product and ships out in a few months' time.

It's a beautiful little system. No marketing, no middle men, no big company price gouging. Just a fine product being developed for discerning customers, if the target amount is reached. Of course, there was never any doubt about this product given the McVey connection! The target amount was reached within 6 hours, so now there are further targets set to improve the package (more variety in the miniatures, etc).

Even if you are not that interested in the boardgame, the minis are well worth looking at. I would enjoy painting these minis without a doubt, even if I never played the game. There's little detail on the actual gameplay, so by pledging you are taking a leap in the dark, but with the figures this good I reckon it's a good deal. For US gamers it's especially good, they get the game for just $80. Anyone outside the US has to fork out an extra $25 for shipping. Still, at current exchange rates that's £67, which compares favourably with big box miniature games.

So, so tempting for me. There is another big release coming up soon which is also making my wallet twitch. I need to raise some hobby cash to pay for all this goodness. I wonder if anybody would buy my dreadfleet from me?