The Bearded Quail - A 3 Month Summary

It's now been 3 months since I started this blog.  I've not painted as many figures in that time as I wanted to, but I have been able to record all the stuff I've been playing and writing which is enjoyable.  (If nothing else, I do like the sound of my own voice, either in audio or electronic format.)

So for the perpetually bored, here's some stats on my blog so far:

"The Paradox Cannon": Doctor Who RPG Part 2

Allon-sy!

 
Wednesday night saw the second part of Doctor Who.  As well as the players from last time - Raj, Molly, Matthew and of course my missus Ailsa - we were also joined by Charles who had to be incorporated into the story mid-flow.  We had a Sontaran fleet, a captured TARDIS, a Paradox Cannon and an accidentally alive president to fix - all in three and a bit hours.  Oh, and I had to make it not suck to play.

No pressure, huh?

Exit Chaos Dwarfs, Enter Hobgoblins

The first casualty in war is innocence.  (Also ceiling tiles.)

My trusty palette!  An old ceiling tile, as given to me by my dad when I was painting.... er.... sometime as a teenager, finally left the world at this weekend when I was walking out to wash it after painting.  The end result: shattered into a few pieces and lost to the ages.  And as my Chaos Dwarfs were almost complete!

"I Play RPGs Now. RPGs Are Cool"

A big book of wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

  

RPG night this week was the start of a two session game of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space.  This is a game system I've ran twice before - once for my usual RPG group for one night, another time for a two session game with a different RPG group I colloquially called "The Anime Nerds".  That was a few years ago, though, and my regular group has cycled through a few faces since then.

Interestingly,  I used the same general plot in both previous games - an arcade game tournament held in Disney World in the 1990s turns out to be cover for an alien wanting to turn Earth's children into combat computers, in a twisted Last Starfighter sort of thing - but for some reason it worked much better with the Anime Nerds than it did with my standard group.  There are a few possible reasons for that - reasons I figured I could account for when I ran again on Wednesday night to win the team round.

Chaos Dwarf Blunderbuss - Base Colours Complete

Tbe base colours for my Chaos Dwarfs

Despite the posts about gaming recently, I have still been painting here and there.  Over the past week I've finally managed to get the base coats on my Chaos Dwarf Blunderbuss dudes done.

As per my original post on Chaos Dwarfs, I wanted to do a different colour scheme than the traditional primarily red scheme.  The end result is something that's principally dark green, but still uses a splash of red to tie it back to the traditional look.

One Week, Three Games: Dreadball

LET'S GET REAAAAAAADYYYYYYY TO RUMMMMMMMBLLLLLLLE

Sunday afternoon saw me meet up with Charles, a member of my regular RPG group and occasional Warhammer opponent, for two games of Dreadball.  I brought my Dreadball game and my case full o' miniatures to his house - he has a couple of teams himself and we had time for two games back to back.
First game, I made up a new Forge Father roster - the Ferrobeasts - and Charles brought out The Heralds, his Judwan team, for their first ever game.  Charles insists that I apologise because he's something of a painting perfectionist and his figures are in a somewhat erratic state as he experiments with paint schemes.

One Week, Three Games: 40K

The purple and pink horde advances once again

 
This week I have played three games away from home: one wee Warhammer 40K  game against Dave's sisters at his flat, and two Dreadball games where I pitted Forge Fathers against teams under Charles' control at his pad. 

Yes, that's right, I do play Dreadball against people that aren't Ailsa.  My win/loss record is better with them.  :-)

First, Warhammer.

Terror & Gunfire: Playing Dread and 3:16

I assure you, this picture is relevant to this post.

Right now we're playing short one or two sessions games in my RPG group.  I find these very enjoyable periodically to break up long campaigns - a sort of sherbert between courses to cleanse the pallete, and a way to scratch different genre itches without abandoning long-running games.  You can give horror, science fiction, police procedural or whatever a go for just a night or two, then go back to your long-running Fantasy or Steampunk or whatever game. The last two games have been a chance to try a little touch of modern-day horror and of military science fiction.

That and, as you may recall, I own rather a lot of RPGs so it's nice to get a chance to use some of the more obscure games in my collection.  Some one-off games are regular events for us - Ghostbusters has been ran several times - but I like to play at least one game per one-off block that's brand new to the group.

Take Me Out To The Dreadball Game...

One two three.... goooooooooo Omega!

Ailsa has been off work the past fortnight and I've been itching to use the time to play something with her.  Alas, she had sensible things that needed doing - revising for a course or  preparing for a job interview - which meant that my hoped-for game of Dreadball only occured on Sunday afternoon as she prepared to go back to work.

Ailsa chose her human team the Omega Raiders who have risen quite notably in strength: 4 coaching dice, 2 cards and five players at rank 2.  I would be once again taking Deimos Athletic and the Forge Fathers who are just under thirty mega-credits below the opposition but had a Keeper in their arsenal now - a muscley Guard who can also punt the ball down-field like a football goalkeeper. 

Starting layout showing Guards, Strikers, Jacks & the solitary Keeper.

 This matchup has occured twice before and The Streak has remained unbeaten - my strength may be better, but the Humans are faster.  Will things go different this time or will I once again slump off defeated?

Loading The Blunderbusses

George is in the kitchen, mixing up the medicine...

I've been at work again with my moulds, mixing up batches of resin and trying to pour Chaos Dwarfs and Hobgoblins for the core troops of my Warhammer Fantasy Battles army.  As you may recall I cast two figures before as a test run - they came out slightly air bubbly but the quality seemed good enough for play.

This time round I was going to cast several figures over a couple of days, using three different moulds.

On Scratchbuilding: Or, "An Ode To Krisken"

"If I have seen further than other men, it is only because I have been standing on the shoulders of giants."

One of the reasons I started this gaming blog at all, and specifically here on Blogger, was because I follow several Blogspot  blogs which were a big inspiration for me getting back into 40K.  One of those, Scratchbuilt 40K, was particularly useful  as a guide to experimenting with cardboard, plasticard & mould-making to create ones own product.  He's got a great selection of stuff and I'd highly reccomend reading his posts.

The chap who writes Scratchbuilt 40K, Krisken, is talking about putting his blog onto sabattical - he's not really into 40K much right now, having felt disenchanted with the latest rules-set and instead focusing his attention on other games like X-Wing.  I therefore thought I should take this point to show some stuff I made with the aid of his cracking website.