Twilight updates, Gaming and the pledge!

Of Gaming...
Not content with Rolling dice on 3 different tables at Salute, I also played a little game at the GGC on Monday. Alsmost a repeat of my Salute WoT game, my Fubarnii militia and Herders, led by Commander Brenar faced off against 3 Devanu Jenta and 6 Grishak.

Despite having my head screwed on a bit better this time, and using my Herder Captain to his full potential, my Slingers too their new "Suicide Slingers" title a bit too litterally. Whether they were slinging playdough or simply drunk I dont know, but they failed to inflict damage on the encroaching grishak turn after turn. This left me with the Devanu on my doorstep at full strength. Delicate combat manouvering ensued.... in other words the Grishak ate everything in sight. Brenar and his militia did some fancy footwork however, and took down a Jenta and a fair few Grishak, but his sterling service was not to be repeated and they eventually fell trapped within an unstoppable wall of Devanu flesh.

A good game, and more to come - thank you Alex!

Of Painting...
I Painted in every spare second before Salute, including a fair few World of Twilight figures for my own collections. 6 herders, Commander Brenar, two Fubarnii Jenta, 3 Knights of Relan, and an Engineer saw me almost catch up entirely on my Fubarnii before buying plenty more at Salute. The results can be seen throughout this post, as well as in the Galleries right now - see below!

Of Updates...
The World of Twilight Fubarnii Gallery has been updated with 19 pictures of the latest additions, all noted above!

Totals: 
New Galleries: 0
New Pictures: 19

The Pledge:
Its been a long time since I made an update on the Pledge, but I still stick by it. Here's the progress report all up to date:
Models Bought: 77 (+40 at salute. More than Doubled my Purchases! Curse that show... )
Models Painted: 241 (+4 for 54mm crossbowman, 6 herders, engineer, 2 jenta, 6 for knights of Relan, and commander Brenar for a total of just 20 in 3 months :( )
Months into the Pledge: 11 - 1 important month to go!

Saluting waffle...

Of Salute....
 Well, That's Salute done with for another year!

I was painting a couple of commissions (no, I dont really do those....) for the show and also painting as much World of Twilight as I could squeeze in. I didn't want to be buying loads more when I still had a heap unpainted - that would be totally against the theory of the Pledge!

The day itself was another great one, full of catching up with old friends, making soem new ones, putting faces to well known names and talking all things model and paint. Whats more, I actually rolled a lot of dice without it being "work"! Amazing result! I played a few games of World of Twilight, had a great intro of Timeline 300, and even played a demo of Flames of War V3. More on the gaming later.

 The Shock of the show for everyone was Dropzone Commander. 10mm sci-fi with great sculpting and model design, and an impressively large range which nobody saw coming! I'm very much looking forward to putting brush to resin with these figures. Lots of pictures can be found in the thread on TacComms here.

Another highlight for myself was finally meeting Chris "Curis" from Ninjabread. I've watched his blog for years, and heard many a good report on the man himself from Epic Tournament goers. I popped by his stand to pick up a copy of his new book - punishment of the Dice Gods and ended up temporarily taking over his stall frontage whilst we talked epic and looked through a few epic bits from my miniatures case. The Book is great - I highly recommend it for anyone who's not adverse to laughter!

The Obligatory Purchase List: 
A Pile of World of Twilight figures. I'm not counting them. I dont want to. :p
Two Cans of Coat D'arms Matt Varnish - I love the stuff.
 Warhammer Historicals Legends of the Old West and Showdown - they had a sale one, couldn't resist!
Peter Pig Destroyed Sherman & Jeep markers / Objectives.
 Half a Flames of War Intro Box with my Mate Ed "The Fez" Turner - I get the Shermans... you can see where this is going!
Ninjabread, Punishment of the Dice Gods (Signed, no less!)

 Overall I think the show felt nice and busy, but still had plenty of space between the stalls and the games. The display games were as impressive as ever, and those hosting demo games were doing a great job of keeping the punters entertained. Beasts of War had put on a large Hobby Lab area which looked busy every time I passed it and the trade stands were uniformly Bustling. A success for all!

Of Salute Gaming...
I've actually got a bit to report! I played Timeline 300 at Salute. Its 10mm Victorian Sci-Fi, and is being made by Troublemaker Games. What sets this apart is that there's a Construction and resources back end to the game but it IS a miniatures wargame. You start with a number of Coal mines, and a construction unit. Every turn your mines generate coal, and you may use this to construct new fighting units from your mobile construction unit and bring new forces to bear. Do you save up your points for an enormous Landship, or flood the field with infantry quick & try to overrun your foe? Love it! The game mechanics themselves are quite simple, fast flowing and fun. There's ironing to do, but it certainly has some good concepts and I'd happily play it again. Oh, and if you're playing as the Martians, DONT run your construction unit forwards - you are restricted by soem killer minimum ranges as I found out myself!

 I Played Flames of War. First time in a few years, but it hasn't changed too much. It was just 3 shermans Vs 2 Stugs, and I got killed in the end, but I didn't take too much persuading, and now I'm looking into a small American force. Yes yes, I've only recently finished selling off my huge Soviet forces, but who cares, that's Hobby!

 I also played World of Twilight. I love the game, but dont get to play much so I took my collection to salute and saw them in action as demos as well as playing myself.
Thanks to Gekilian (Chris! or hereafter, the Tactical Prof. ) for a great game. I certainly didn't deserve to come out with a draw. My Slingers are now the SS - the elite "Suicide Slingers" unit. Herder Captains are great additions if you have your head screwed on (which I clearly didn't). I also take back any bad word I ever said against Commander Brenar's usefulness in smaller games. If he's that lucky next time I use him then he's a permanent addition to my forces. Having watched my own poor commandership see to the death of most of my forces and helping me out couple of pointers, Chris then had to watch as Brenar refused to die until the last moment, taking down 2 devanu and a small sea of Grishak with him, leaving an empty board at the end of a marathon game!

Return to usual stylings...

Its a return to usual stylings for me now, and hopefully if I can stay active, the 3 sections will all be regulars once again.

Of Gaming...

Finally put my dice back to good use last week, and had a great game of Blitzkreig Commander aganst Matt Arnold (aka "Rug"). We play so infrequently that every game is a learning experience, but its always good fun. (THat's a World of Twilight Fubarnii Jenta in the pic by the way - didn't get any pics of the game - he's on the workbench at the moment! )

A small game (1000 points), I started being plagued with bad command rolls. In the first 3 turns, I achieved just two successfull rolls between my Co AND HQ combined, and failed to make it to the positions I had hoped for by the time the German Iron tide washed upon my soviet shores.

However, I was saved by a couple of unlucky assaults in turn 3 on the part of my opponent and my infantry held out well. Turn 4 saw my tanks (6 T70's and an early T34)rumble into action at last, taking on the enemy assault guns in a forest to forest fire fight. T70's proved to be a fair old weapon at the given range and the enemy were wiped out in a couple of rounds of firing for the loss of a single tank to enemy reactive fire.

My infantry were feeling the brunt of the enemy force, being assailed by armoured mechanised infantry and the bulk of the enemy armour in the form of panzer II's and III's. As they started to pull back, they were saved by the soviet armour making their way back through the wood to front up to the enemy once again. Firing from the woods, against enemy armour clearly visible on the open face of a hill, they had the advantage. As the infantry faught a fighting withdrawl, the tanks took their toll on the enemy armour, pushing the Germans past their fragile break point.

In the end I won by numbers. I only had two formations which hindered me when bad command rolls struck, but when they came off, the sheer weight of fire and high break point meant even the fancy manouvres of the Germans didn't stand a chance.


Of Painting...
I've been on the Brushes every spare moment I can this week. Salute is presenting a good, rare, chance to play World of Twilight and it has spurred me to paint up the majority of my remaining collection.

I've got 6 hunters, an Engineer, 2 civilian youngsters, Commander Brenner, Captain Danomar and 2 knights of Relan on the workbench all at various stages. Fingers crossed, they'll all be ready for action on the 21st!

Of updates...
But, of course, the bit you really care about is the galleries and I've opened another classic today. My Epic "Agri-Guard" Imperial Guard forces became some of the first models I posted online which earned my painting a recognizable status. I collected three massive Imperial Guard armies at the time. I have sold most, but a valuable few will always remain in my collections. The pictures in this gallery vary from the antique to the relatively recent - please forgive the mass of varying quality!

Totals:
New Pics: 60
New Galleries: 1


remember to like us on facebook HERE!

The Twilight of Easter...

The Easter Bank Holiday weekend is coming to a close here in the UK and I'm finally on the Brushes!

I'm working on a few more of my Fubarnii for the World of Twilight. I've got 6 herders on the bench as I type and a host of others waiting to see some paint. In the mean time, I remembered that my current gallery isn't even up to date & that needs fixing!

I've posted these on the World of Twilight Forums previously, but for the first time on the HobbyBrush, Here's the full Militia and Knights contingent of my Fubarnii.

New Galleries: 0
New Pictures: 9

It might only 9 images, but it just put us over 3000 images on the HobbyBrush - Enjoy your browsing and thanks for looking!

Its not a guest gallery...

But its not my work either....

The latest update is something new for the HobbyBrush - its a show gallery! The Military in Miniature show on March 3rd, 2012, was my first experience in Miniatures shows, as opposed to wargames shows, and I was asked to take some photos at the event.

Unfortunately I spent far too much time enjoying the event, meeting people and learning a lot of painting tips and not a lot of time behind the camera, but it was a great experience and I'll strive to be more efficient next time!

Great level of painting and an incredible level of sculpting was on show as well.

New Galleries: 1
New Pictures: 72

Mid-week Malifaux...

I find myself with a spare moment or two, so another Guest Gallery is always the way to spend it!

Today I have the pleasure of presenting Jamie Mathews' Malifaux Gang, the Viktorias. (18 pictures)

Totals:
New Galleries: 1
New Pictures: 18

Roman additions...

Its a small update this week but there's plenty in the pipeline.

I've sorted and edited over 300 photos this weekend, whittling them down to a still impressive 60 photos ready to swell the site with yet more guest galleries in the weeks to come. I did, however, fail to get any notes from the painters so they're on hold until I have some text ready to accompany them!

In the mean time, I've still not had the chance to paint anything new myself so I'll continue to play catch up as best I can, and thus this week present an update to the 28mm Roman Gallery, adding the second formations of both auxillaries and Legioinaries to bring it up to date as well as the cabinet shot from the new year tour which shows it all together.

Totals:
New Galleries: 0
New images: 11

remember to like us on facebook HERE!