Ghouls & Goblins (and an elf)

Quick painting post today with lots of pictures. I got a pack of the new Warhammer Nighthaunts from that Mortal Realms magazine for £3. 10 spooky ghosts for £3 isn't a bad price, and I really like the sculpts of these ghosts. They remind me a lot of the wraiths from the Witcher 2.

I thought I'd do a test paint of one before doing the other nine, and followed the painting tutorial from Warhammer TV. I took pictures at each step for reference.

Based in Vallejo Primer and metals painted with Citadel Leadbelcher.

Quillons and pommel painted with P3 Blighted Gold.

Gravestone painted with Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey.

I used Citadel Ushabti Bone for the skull and arms.

Citadel Nihilakh Oxide over the robe, arms and face.

Citadel Nighthaunt Gloom over the cowl.

Citadel Agrax Earthshade over the metals and gravestone.

I still have basing to do on the miniature, and I need to drybrush the gravestone, but otherwise I'd say it's done for a quick battle-ready paintjob.

I also decided to get out my Warhammer Fantasy Battle 5th edition goblin (and orc) army. Looks like I only have a couple more models (& bases) to paint! Will this be my first ever completed army soon?

Finally I started work on Mordheim's Aenur - The Sword of Twilight. I've had this model since I was 14 or so, and thought I should probably get round to painting it up. Not quite done yet, but I'll finish it off this week I think.

Battletech Game

Recently I've been wanting to get into Battletech a bit more so I joined a Facebook group for UK players of the game and asked if anyone local to Leeds would be up for a game. I'm a non-competitive wargamer, which means I find it pretty hard to find people who I enjoy playing games with. I'm not interested in winning (although it can be fun), I'm more interested in creating a fun narrative and enjoying a shared story.

Luckily I found a fellow gamer who shared my enthusiasm for the fluff, so I went out to Bradford to play a quick 2v2 game of Battletech: Total Warfare with him at the local Geek Retreat.

My Mechs (Blue Centurion - left, and Red Griffin - right) use the local buildings as cover.

The container stack protected my Griffin from the Crab standing on the hilltop, allowing me to concentrate all my fire on the enemy Rifleman.

The deadly Crab, sitting on it's hilltop perch.

The Rifleman managed to survive numerous rounds of sustained fire from both my Centurion and Griffin.

My Centurion being sneaky and firing it's AC10 from behind cover.

My Centurion being less sneaky and falling over after suffering massive damage in one turn.

With the Centurion and Riflemen gone, the Griffin comes out to take on the Crab.

One of the Mech battlesheets. Lots of stat-tracking, but it makes for a very strong visual image of the events as they unfold.

Final battle between Griffin and Crab. It was a furious duel, but my Griffin struggled at such close range (even with the maneuverability afforded by it's jumpjets).

Eventually, my Griffin was beaten down by the Crab. It was a fun little game! Hopefully I'll get to meet up with Colin again for another game.

Battletech (6mm)

I own a small collection of plastic Battletech miniatures from the Alpha Strike lance sets that Catalyst produced a few years ago. I didn't have any rules for them but was on the lookout for the OOP Alpha Strike & Compendium.

Then, last year sometime, the new box sets were released and I saw the Beginner set at a local shop. I got it, of course, and secretly hoped that Battletech was as fun as I remembered.

I finally managed to get a game in yesterday, with my partner Laura.

It was the quick-start rules, using the cut-down mech sheets (no heat, no internals, no minimum ranges, etc.).

I piloted the Wolverine (green) and Laura piloted the Griffin (red).

It was a fairly simple game. We stomped around in some woods for cover, and I tried to get into her blind spot and shoot her at point-blank, but she used her jumpjets to get some distance on me and proceeded to annihilate me with her PPC.

The rules were simple and easy to pick up, and marking off damage and seeing limbs fall off was just as fun as I remember.

Altogether I'd say it's a good little game, and the starter box comes with a lot more variety than you'd think as it has cardboard cutout standees and stats for a number of other mech types, so you can even do full 4-mech lances against one another (just without the nice miniatures for 3 of them).

I'm looking forward to trying out some of my other mechs next game, but I'll stick with the quick-start rules until we've got them memorised.

Some of the mechs I've painted so far. 

28mm Battletech, Star Wars rebasing & Ardhammer!

Varied update today with some of my current projects.

28mm Battletech Project

I've got a large 28mm sci-fi project I've been working on for a while. The project started off being themed towards a sci-fi RPG campaign I ran for a few years, but I took a lot of inspiration from Battletech anyway in that campaign, so now it's just going to be for running Battletech miniatures campaigns where a mission calls for squad-level warfare instead of lances of Mechs.

I have a number of 28mm scale sci-fi tanks and cars - mostly from Antenocitis Workshop and Old Crow Models - and recently I got my first mech! 

It's a Robotech toy and I had to get it from America. It was a lot smaller than I expected and it looked like a cheap plastic toy, but now that I've started to paint it it looks a lot better.

Sedition Wars miniature for scale. 

I still have more painting to do on it but it's looking decent already. This is a 70t Warhammer mech. 

Star Wars Miniatures

I started collecting Star Wars WOTC miniatures quite a few years ago, and mostly used them in theme agnostic systems like Frostgrave or the "A Song of..." series. 

I'm not a fan of the plain black bases and they're sometimes warped so I thought I'd rebase them on clear acrylics. It's taking a LONG time though. Turns out I have a lot of Star Wars minis. 

The big blue beast on the right is actually a d&d ankheg but I thought he fit right in with Star Wars. I'm sure I can find some appropriate monster to cast him as in one of my Star Wars D20 books. 

Ardhammer

I also attended a North East UK buy & sell for tabletop games. I rented a table for the event and sold a bunch of stuff! I've been attempting to consolidate my hobby projects into just the things I'm really into. You can end up amassing quite a lot of different things in this hobby! Especially if you buy eBay lots for the one or two items you REALLY want, and a whole bunch of stuff you're not really into. 

I sold quite a bit, and then bought a few things because I couldn't resist! In my defence I bought far less than I sold and it was all painted so isn't adding onto my project pile at least.

I got some classic Chaos Warriors painted to a good standard, and a runic monolith which will be useful for mission objectives. I also got a badass officer holding a pistol, perfect for my sci-fi projects!

And as I was in the North East I took a detour to Fountain's Abbey with my partner Laura.