More Battle of Hoth figures

At Christmas, I ran across a discounted copy of the Battle of Hoth and picked it up for the extra figures and so that I could play the giant-sized scenario (that requires two sets). I spent one of the cold snap in January painting these guys up.

Having painted this set once, I was able to knock out a duplicate a lot faster.

To help me keep the sets straight, I went with a plain white base instead of the light blue base I did on the first set.

I found some AT-ST minis that are roughly in scale with the AT-ATs and will paint those up shortly to add a unit type for the Imperials. I am hopeful that the success of this game will mean future release for, say, the Battle of Endor.

 Up next: Probably some 15mm sci-fi terrain.

The Battle of Hoth

For my birthday, my wife got me the new Battle of Hoth game. This is basically a reskin of Memoir 44 and comes with miniatures.

The bulk of the miniatures are Imperial Snowtroopers, which I promptly painted up.

The snow troopers are okay figures. This was a quick prime, detail and wash. I see the bases may need some more work.

The best part about them is that they more or less match the 25mm West End Games figures I have from the 1980s. The WEG figure is slightly beefier and is on a washer but otherwise, these are a good match. It is wild how long it has taken for a Star Wars game token to match the old WEG figures!

There are also some probe droids that match the WEG ones pretty closely.

There are also a bunch of Rebel Hoth Troopers.

These are pretty nice figures that paint up well.

The rest of the minis have variable scales. The snow speeders are maybe 5-6mm sized.

The AT-ATs are very small (2mm?), the turrets are more like 10mm, and I've no sense of the ion cannon or the shield generators.

Once put on the game board, the effect is awesome and I cannot wait to play a game as well as the two campaigns the box comes with.

2mm towns

I've been prepping a Rommel game and looking at what I have for 2mm terrain. I decided I would pick up a few more pieces to mark urban areas from Irregular Miniatures to match a couple of pieces I already have.

Right out of the bag, they don't look like much. But a quick painting and they quickly take on the look of a European village.

I also got a few city pieces, which can be connected together to make a larger piece.

Since these are mostly viewed from above, the lack of detail on the buildings isn't apparent.

The fellow I bought them from also threw in a few small pieces (like finger nail small).

Overall, these were a quick paint and a fun project. My next terrain task is to do some 2mm forest sections.

2mm prepared positions for Rommel

Bruce and I have been playing a fair bit of Rommel this summer and, in prepping to get my 2mm tanks on the table, I needed to create some markers for prepared positions. I could have used counters but it has been forever since I have modelled anything.

We play Rommel on a hex grid and my hexes at 4" across so the prepared position indicator needed to fit along with up to three bases and some terrain. I decided on a 2.0" by 0.5" base and that I'd just model some barbed wire coils.

The base was grid plasticard that I had (which is easy to cut into square sections). I use plastic toothpicks to make the posts. Overall, this is a bit out of scale (more 6mm) but it creates the impression I wanted at a size I could still see and work with. Then I textured the base and tried to match the colour scheme from several years ago (a struggle since I never write this stuff down). The colour palette is a vague khaki colour that can do for the desert (if you squint), Italy, or Europe.

The upshot is not bad. The posts are too thick and the coil is a bit big but good enough for my purposes.

I ended up making 12, which is likely way more than I will ever need, but since I was doing it, knocking off a few extra was no big deal.

My next task is to look at doing some markers to denote a forest that I can set atop a green piece of felt.

2mm terrain and 28mm pulp

Apologies for forgetting to post last week; work was nuts and blogging just completely escaped my mind. So a double-post this week!

I finished off a couple of packs of Pulp Figures miniatures. Above, we have some random pulp heroes and below a group of scientists.

Bruce recently purchased some 2mm terrain for a project and slightly over-ordered towns so kindly dropped off the excess. I knocked of about 10 towns like this.

I love 2mm terrain. I'm not sure why, but it is just so cool. These villages from Irregular Miniatures would do for North Africa, the Middle East, or Central America in almost any era. If you can overlook the trees, they'd also do for your favourite hive of scum and villainy.

I put a 1/72-scale armoured car in to indicate the size of the buildings. I also dug out two European towns that I painted awhile ago.

Up next: No idea. I have one pack of 28mm pulp left, some larger Harry Potter figures, and some even larger Star Trek.

EWG club night November 6

We had about 12 guys out last night to the club, with three games and our autumn auction running. Dave hosted Guy, Scott, Terry and Justin in a WW2 game using A Fist Full of TOWs.

British versus Italians using 3mm picoarmour. I think the base below is 1 inch square. Lovely figures, a quick game and the British managed to pull off a win.

Will brought out a scaled down version of Dux Britainium in 28mm with Chen and Neil playing.

And Kevin and Elliot played a game of Warmachine in prep for a weekend tournament. The auction brought in just of $300 (good job guys) which will help keep us solvent for another while!

Up next: I have some LotR armies to sell and am working on some 25mm medievals and 15mm cavalry.

Club Night November 15

We had about 10 guys out last night with three games running for our last evening at the Warriors of Time.

Bruce hosted me in a game of A Few Acres of Snow, wherein the British and the French compete with each other to colonize the New World during the 18th century.

This is a card-driven game where you build your hand in an attempt to advance your strategy. The French chose a settlement strategy and eventually figured out how to make the fur trade work for them to help offset the British financial advantage. The British adopted a military strategy (eventually taking Louisburg) but it was too late to stop the French from winning.

Jason ran a game of I Ain't been Shot Mum for Jonathan but I did not get a good picture of that.

Dave hosted Chen and Scott in a game of Blitzkreig Commander, using his new Picoarmour to recreate the great battles of the desert.

Up next: I'm away for a few days and then will have more 10mm AWI to post.

FS 2mm terrain

I have a bunch of painted 2mm (yes, two millimeter) terrain that I would like to move on. It is lovely, great for air games and works well to represent terrain with larger scale figures. But it hasn't been out of its box in two years so it needs to go! Proceeds will help fund my sabbatical to New Zealand in 2013!

First up are some three large villages and three small ones. All of these are made by Irregular Miniatures.

As you can see, there is quite a lot of detail here.

There are also three towns, another small village and a windmill.

The painting includes a nice wash. If you don't like the sheen, you can give it a quick hit of dullcoat.

And there are 23 sections of trees. I'd like to sell at the cost of the unpainted metal as well as postage. That comes to $40 OBO plus $15 postage in Canada or the US (if postage is more, I will eat the cost and if it is less, I will refund the difference). Each piece will be wrapped in bubble. Offers to bob.barnetson@shaw.ca.

Age of Sail Ships

About four (?) years ago, I picked up a bunch of collectable ships (sold like baseball cards and then built) for the Pirates of the Spanish Main game. I ended up with about 45 ships that look like these.

Towards the end of my interest, several new varieties of ships (like the schooner below) also became available.

I based these up on steel. I gave several rule sets a try (including Bruce's homebrew "Steady as She Goes") but none quite recreate the fleet action that I wanted so I put these on a shelf. Rather unexpectedly, I came across another lot of about 45 ships and bought them on impulse. Many are similar to those above but some are from newer expansions to the game.

There are a couple of galleys with oars (pirate ships, by the look of them!). There are also a couple of junks (aptly named given the construction difficulties they pose).

Then there are some outriggers. And then things get pretty weird. For example, there are various sea monsters and ships with Captain Nemo-like inventions such as the "pincer" ship below with claws to hold its prey.

I built all of my new ships last night while watching the election results. While basing will take some time, it re-interested me in naval combat so I'm looking for a set of rules that would allow me to fight fleet actions. Suggestions most welcomed! I have downloaded GMT's Flying Colours rules to have a look through.

Up next: Some 28mm DBA/HoTT camps are done and drying. And I have a 15mm AWI DBHx army on the painting table (lord it is big!). And tonight is the club and our auction.