A Great Weekend of Gaming

 My younger mate Mark came over to stay for an annual gaming weekend this week.  We have been doing this for a few years now, Mark and his wife Kate, have two young daughters (now 5 and 7) and this provides an escape for gaming and adult company. To be fair, we have started a similar weekend escape for Kate. She is a history buff and enthusiastic about steam engineering. My sister Broni volunteers for our local heritage railway, so last year Kate came over for a couple of nights of drinking cocktails, then a day on the railway where Broni wangled her a private visit to the signal bow and a ride on the footplate of a steam locomotive.

Back to gaming, I had a packed schedule planned. 

Friday: Mark arrived, had a beer and settled in, followed by dinner, then beer and a game of Frostgrave.

Saturday: am Frostgrave, then Ian joined us for lunch, followed by more beer and a game of Zombie Stagecoach (wild west Zombie RV).

Sunday: More Frostgrave followed by lunch at a Turkish restaurant, before Mark headed home.

Great fun and a lot of laughs was had by all. Here are some photos of the games in no particular order.

Frostgrave first.

Mark's wizard channelling an ACW General. "Watch out for that crossbowman Master!". "Pah! he couldn't hit an elephant at that distance!"

Twang! Thunk! Ugh!

Three of Mark's warband close in on one of mine trying to collect a treasure.

But picking up the chest alerted the Giant Worm lurking beneath the surface. Guess who was closest?

Yep! That one's the starter!

and this one's the main course!

The Zombie Stagecoach. Mark and Ian each had a gang of survivors and I GM'ed the zombie.

The town looked quiet, too quiet!

It looks like Emily's in trouble!

Now is not the time for the shotgun to run out of ammo!

The melee just got bigger!

The reason there are noise markers next to the shed is that 3 of Ian's gang are hiding inside. "Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, we ain't hunting wabbits". 

They were hoping the zombies would follow little Timmy, who was running across the street screaming, after being startled out of his hiding place when one of Mark's gang searched the barn.

And it worked!

Ian's character Ol' George attracting the zombies attention before heroically leading them on a merry dance, allowing the rest of his gang to sneak up and search the last two buildings.

An excellent weekend. We are already planning the next one!

Terrain for Fantasy and Post Apocalyptic

 I have just taken delivery of a batch of new terrain items from Wargames Terrain Workshop link

Dave's a good guy to buy from, great communication and very prompt service, given it was being painted to order. His resin scenery is nice and sold at a very good price. He sells it unpainted, but I thought his painted prices were reasonable so, as painting time has been curtailed of late, I decided to get my terrain ready-painted.

I'd gone to the website to pick up some bits for my Post Apocalyptic games, but who doesn't browse a website first, and I found some really nice fantasy bits for dungeon/urban/Frostgrave settings.

It all arrived well packed and damage-free, which is always nice.

First a ceremonial/magical/sacrificial pool.

And three creepy mirrors. I love the spooky "reflections" Dave has put in the glass, very effective.

As an example of cost, the set of mirrors is just £4 unpainted. The painted set cost me £8.50.

Now on to the Post Apocalyptic stuff I went for in the first place.

I'd previously bought the toxic pools, but I don't think I've posted a proper picture of them.

Two sets of barrels, complete and squashed, with a couple of 28mm minis for scale.

And a squashed car!

Loads of use for all this in my Mutants and Death Ray Guns games.

I am running a Sellswords and Spellslingers dungeon crawl next weekend, so I already have some ideas for the mirrors!

Started painting my first Kickstarter minis

 I thought I'd better start putting some paint of the Blacklist Games minis from the Kickstarter boxes (that have been sitting on the side for a few weeks now!). I quite impressed with the plastic figures, most of them a good, usable poses and they take paint well.

First up, a troglodyte, giant worm and a gnoll 

A thief, ghoul and a construct

Dwarf wizard, inn keeper and giant rat

Finally a werewolf and a mummy.

I can see myself getting a lot of use from this set, the Dwarf wizard will be joining my Oathmark forces, the constructs will fit in nicely with my VSF stuff and the rest will get plenty of use in various Sellswords campaigns.

Just as well really, because I also bought into the Blacklist Games Fantasy 2 and Horror Kickstarters!

My First Kickstarter!

 I have finally taken delivery of my first Kickstarter project!

 It's Fantasy Series 1 from Blacklist Games, a staggering total of 201 fantasy minis, which should keep me going for a while! 

The box was delivered on Saturday, which was annoying because I was working, playing  medieval/tudor music around various sites in Aylesbury for Heritage Open Days, so I had to wait until Sunday to examine the contents.

Opening the box and sorting through the extensive packaging, some interesting comes into view.

Here's the goodies, the smaller is box is the original product of 70 minis and the larger one contains the stretch goals.

The contents of the original product, nicely packed for transit in trays that will also be very useful for storage.

And now the stretch goals, including some BIG minis.

So what are my first impressions? On the whole, I am very pleased, great value for money certainly. The quality of the plastic minis is good, not as crisp as some of the metal sculps I have, but no worse that a good number of minis in my collection. 

The humans are 28mm and seem to fit in with most of the stuff I already have. There are a few duff sculpts, the skeletons have either over-sized or shrunken heads for example, but mostly they are good poses.

It's a general fantasy collection, really intended for playing skirmish tabletop games in the style of D&D, rather than massed battles. There are minis I already have in my collection, skeletons/zombies/goblins, but some that I do not (and anyway you can never have enough zombies!).

Here's a close up of a robber, giant rat and zombie.

The troll from the larger beasties in the stretch goals.

One of the characters, a dwarf fighter.

Another character, a female half elf wizard.

Like I said, I am very please overall and can see most of the set being useful at some point, escpecially for things like Sellswords and Spellslingers.

It's just as well I like them, because I also bought into Blacklist games next two Kickstarters, Fantasy 2 and Horror!