Off the Painting Table (Jan 2018)

I have managed to finish my 1914 French army, in possibly record time. I really got into a production line system for painting these figures, but I must admit they are fairly boring to do. The photo shows them just before completion of the basing, because the white base shows the figures better. They are also on my painting ‘trays’ which I find useful to keep my various projects manageable and easy to pack away. The Lancashire figures are fine, not the best but cheap compared to my favourite Peter Pig figures. Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting them on the table soon.

Boardgame session: 14Jan18

A very quick report. We started with a couple of games of Azul, and as expected the game scales well from our previous 2 player games to a 4 player count. All the challenges remain, the game play is still fast, the only change is that tiles re-circulate more often. Interestingly, we did manage to get the +10 point bonus for having 5 identical tiles a number of times, which did not seem likely when only 2 players are playing.

  

We went on to play 2 games of Citadels. This is a classic game which I had never played before, but I found a copy in a charity shop and this was its first outing. The rules are so simple and the objectives equally simple. The ‘twist’ is the character selection phase when you need to plan for your turn. The highest ranked character is the Assassin, which is a mean card potentially eliminating another player from the round. I seemed to be hit with this many times! The Robber also seems mean, but players rarely held significant money for it to be effective. I don’t think any of us fully utilised the Warlord card, paying hard earned cash to remove another players property with no benefit to the Warlord himself does not feel like value. The King can be useful, and I was always seemed to be to the right of the player choosing this role, which meant that when my character choice came round, I only had 2 to choose from (a bad situation). The games flowed well, we did not find it slow, and the results were close. We did not use the expansions which swop characters and add special buildings. I think all players enjoyed the game and character selection mechanism. We all felt there were further un-explored depths to this game. Maybe it deserves further outings, and it was certainly worth the couple of pounds I paid for it.

Review of the painting year, 2017

The year of 2017 has come to an end and I can look back on what I have managed to paint. I am a ‘sad’ gamer who logs all the items painted, generally in chronological order, so here is my 2017 list:

Number	Scale	Period	Manufacturer	Notes:
100	20mm	WW2 Japanese	Lancashire
3	20mm	WW2 Pacific AFVs	Airfix	Chi-Ha, Buffalo, Higgins
60	20mm	WW2 Pacific USMC	Lancashire/Brittania
16	15mm	SciFi	GZG Figures
90	10mm	C19: Prus,French,Aust	Pendraken
75	10mm	WW2 Italians	Pendraken
24	28mm	Sudan British Colonials	Perry
2	28mm	Salute freebies
92	15mm	WW2 French Infantry	Peter Pig
8	15mm	WW2 French Tanks	Peter Pig
85	15mm	WW2 German Infantry	Peter Pig
10	15mm	WW2 German Tanks	Peter Pig
120+	10mm	WW2 Desert Troops	Pendraken
32	28mm	Naval (Napoleonic)	Newline Design
24	28mm	Gladiators	Black Tree Studio
74	n/a	Battlelore Undead	Fantasy Flight
50	15mm	WW1 French	Lancashire Games

 

The year started with my WW2 Pacific Bolt Action forces. They have seen some action on the table, but not as much as I would have liked. My 10mm late 19^th century armies were boosted and I consider them now to be complete. I next returned to WW2 by selling my 6mm 1940 armies and replacing them with 15mm versions, at this scale I can actually see the detail and recognise different tank variants! I intend using these with BKC rules (I still use the older 2^nd edition, rather than the problematic new 3^rd edition). I really like the quirky early war period, particularly the French, and I think they provide good opposition (tactically) for the blitzkrieg Germans. For the same rules, I boosted my WW2 desert forces by adding more infantry figures, plus some Italians.

I have not painted many 28mm figures this year. The naval figures provided another force to use in potential pirate themed games, whilst the gladiators were too good a bargain not to buy!

A major project was the completion of my Battlelore armies with the painting of the purple, undead force. I really enjoyed doing this because it allowed me to use different wash techniques, plus the figures are nicely sculpted. Additionally this painting project encouraged me to get the game on the table again.

Finally I have just started my 1914 French army, and there will be many more to come next year.