Has it really been that long?

New year new you......

I have been distracted by social media the last year or so. As a platform for hobby content it has grown from strength to strength and is so easy to upload content to.

Around Christmas time I made a vow to update my blog a bit more frequently and to try and use it as a record of my hobby out put throughout the year. January really did not get off to a good start, but here we are in February and here is the first new post in quite a while.

So what is the plan for the coming year?

Top of the list is the Bloodbowl league that I am running. Throughout January I managed to get my team the Altdorf Gentrifiers painted up ready for the start of the league last week.

The starting line up for the Altdorf Gentrifiers

My Skaven team got off to a great start in the league and managed to lose their opening game 3-0 and have a thrower killed at the same time. This was against a human team as well!
Still at least one of my Blitzers has gone up by a point of Agility and I learnt a lot from this first game.

I also plan to get a couple more titans painted for my Adeptus Titanicus Battlegroup, I have done Legio Ignatum and so far painted a Warlord, Reaver and a pair of Warhounds. Plenty more to get on with.

These will go alongside my Epic 30K White Scars force. More on these in a future blog post.
Also more views of my titans on my Twitter: @chellicar and Instagram: b.ellicar

The other "big" project is to write a campaign for both Napoleon in Italy with my friend and use this system as a spring board for a campaign for an American Civil War Campaign.

So hopefully should be updating with a blog post once a week.

Its been a busy and hectic few months

Lack of updates as real life has gotten in the way. I hope to be able to update this blog a bit more frequently.

I have started work finally on my 30K Word Bearers force for the Horus Heresy. Completed one Tactical Marine as a test for the colour scheme. The scheme is quite interesting as it involves using a clear red over a metallic base coat. I am quite please with how the test figure came out and will post a picture in the next update. I have the rest of the 15 man squad ready to get started once the painting queue has shortened. Then I have a squad of Ashen Circle to paint which should be quite fun.


I managed to buy a new airbrush primarily for the Word Bearers but also for a bit more detail work ( with plenty of practice).

I am currently building and paining a British force for Battlegroup Overlord. There is a campaign weekend coming up at the wargames show in Bovington. This is at the beginning of July so I have lots to assemble and lots to get painted but hopefully the airbrush should speed things up a little. Just need to source some decals for the vehicles.

Big box of toys ready to assemble

 While out in London last weekend with a group of friends we made a stop at Darksphere games where I picked up this game in a moment of weakness and impulse. The models in the box are very nice and I am looking forward to finding time to paint them. I will most likely start with the Dwarf Slayer as a friend is going to be running a campaign using the experience from the original Warhammer Quest. Unfortunately somebody has already claimed the Elf spellcaster slot for our group of adventurers.  The future looks bright for playing Silver Tower in our group at least with talk of regular Thursday gaming taking place.

Impulse buy

More to come in the week hopefully as I get some paint applied to my British.

The Redcoats Are Coming

The first unit of my AWI project is now just about completed. The bulk of the painting has been done and just have the command and a few final touch ups to do.
Then it is the grass and tufts to complete the bases, but unsure if I will wait to get another unit done before this next step.

This unit has taken roughly a week of spare time to complete, which means it will most likely take me 3 - 4 months to get the British force all painted (10-12 battalions). This should be quite a bit for either Black Powder or Land of the Free.
The continentals will then be started and I hopeful these might be a bit quicker to paint as the scheme is a bit more rough and ready and less "crisp" white needed.

The unit nearly completed

This week I also got to play another act from Dead Mans Hand. Once again a lot of fun was had and the scenarios worked very well to produce a fun an engaging evening of games. The great thing with these scenarios is that you can replay them without them being exactly the same (aside from the set up). The more I play of Dead Mans Hand the more I want to get more figures painted to vary the weapons that I take as part of my Posse.

All in all it has been a productive week for hobby activity. Dead Man's Hand is fast becoming our game of choice, makes for an easy evenings gaming after a long day at work.
It will soon be time to head back to 1944 though as we have a few more Normandy based scenarios to play through and then some 1945 Eastern Front games to get in.

A Good Week for Hobby

This week has been a good week for hobby action. So far played a cracking game with my Eldar against a friends Dark Eldar. This was a standard 3K Epic Armageddon game, it was a very close and very fun. I didn't get any photos of the action as it was quite a fast paced game and we were both in the zone (that is what happens when the two armies are very closely matched in potential).
If people are interested I can post up my list that I have been using for my Ulthwe Eldar. As I have mentioned before it is a list that I enjoy using and it has potential.

The hardest part of the game for me was having such a fast and agile force, but nothing to target move against as most of the Dark Eldar force was off table and would deploy from the webway and the portable webway that the Dark Elder SC had. Added to this that the Dark Eldar are very fast and have a great chance of activating (even with blast markers).

It ended in a win for the Dark Eldar at the end of turn 4 ( I nearly had a chance of snatching a victory at the end of turn three with some marching Jetbikes but the objective was just out of reach).

The next game to be played this week was Dead Mans Hand. We played through the "Fistful of Lead" I believe. It is the second act in the main Dead Mans Hand rulebook.
It was a lot of fun and both James and I really enjoyed the scenes even though they did not appear very balanced on paper. We both really like this ruleset and have found the games to be very quick and a lot of thought needed for some of the scenes and definitely a poker face comes in handy. The first scene in the act is a standoff with both palyers waiting to "draw". Who draws first comes down to in game Blackjack with the initiative cards.

The Sheriff and his Lawmen

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After the action

 Also this week saw the start of painting on the AWI project for the year. The first of many Redcoats have been basecoated. So far the painting is coming along at a pace on the first unit. Importantly each step is quite straight forward and seems to work. The figures are based individually but will be on unit trays, so hopefully once all of the painting is done the units will look good and look the part.

Here is a quick picture of the unit having received the first messy stage with the red coats being done.

Dead Mans Hand

Wednesday saw James and I take a break from our usual WW2 gaming to give Dead Mans Hand a good testing. We had so far played one game and found it very enjoyable, so decided to play through the first act in the Dead Mans Hand rulebook. 

This was made up of three very simple scenarios that escalated from a game involving just four figures through to using a full posse each. 

Each game was very entertaining and provided quite a challenge for both players, this was even the case where the scenario seemed weighted to one side. The random card element for priority that each figure would activate meant that the games were very tense in places and gave a good Wild West feel. 

In the End James and his band of Outlaws managed to beat my Lawmen in two out of three scenes (scenarios). The highlight was a shotgun tooting outlaw blasting down two lawmen in rapid succession with the same activation. 

Next week we will be playing through the second act from the Dead Mans Hand rulebook. I will also try and take some more photos of the games. 

The Cemertary, soon to become a little larger

View down Main Street

The Sheriff gets cornered

Work on the American War of Independence project continues. Two battalions of Redcoats have now been assembled and two more to be completed shortly. Painting will start soon as well. Hopefully I can find a quick method for getting the masses painted.
Finally finished reading through the Rebellion supplement for Black Powder and this was a great read and I will be trying out a number of the scenarios once the figures are ready. 

This week I already have the Dead Mans Hand game lined up as well as a game of Epic Armageddon. I will probably be using my Eldar again as I have been enjoying learning to use them, there is also the fact that my Chaos are still not ready for action yet. 

It has been a while since the last post but never fear more updates are coming...hopefully

The last few months have been quite hectic with work and taking the wife on holiday. As such the gaming and painting side of things has been squeezed in where ever a bit of spare time was found. As such the blog suffered through lack of updates.

My Eldar have graced the gaming tables twice over the last few months and actually performed quite well in some areas and awful in others (so many failed activations). One thing the Eldar have taught me is the finer points of playing Epic, they are so different to using an Ork horde.
But what of the Chaos army that I was working on? Well that is going to be getting an injection of love in the new year. I have two warhounds to work on and some more infantry and the army should be ready to try out.

Vietnam has also taken a bit of a back seat for now but will be getting additions in the new year once I can find time to make more terrain. As ever there are more VC and US forces to paint including some Hueys.

I attended the Battlegroup Barbarossa weekend at the end of October and had a lot of fun and played three great opponents. There was an interesting mix of forces from all the players, all three of my opponents fielded very different forces which was nice as made the weekend interesting. I was using a PZ III heavy list with infantry in half tracks. This seemed to work well but the lack of mortar or artillery support was noticeable in the games. I hear next years event is to be Desert. James and I are already talking about getting stuff sorted well in advance (rather than the weeks before in my case). The other nice thing is that we will be starting this in 20mm rather than our usual 15mm and then having to do a separate force for the weekend in 20mm. The main reason for this is due to not having anything for the desert so terrain and forces will have to be made from scratch so why not do 20mm.

Finally James and I have been playing some scenarios that James has come up with based around key airborne actions in Normany (well the first week or two). We have played the scenario and then swtiched sides and made some modifications to make the game either flow or have a slightly better balance.

Below are a few of the pictures that I managed to get at the Battlegroup: Barbarossa weekend.

Here are some from our 15mm Normandy games. 

So I hope to have another update shortly with plans for the new year and can show off my gang that I painted for Deadmans Hand. I have also started the AWI in 28mm so this is going to be quite a pr0ject for 2016 and it would be nice to do regular updates on it.