Antwon does Antwerp - Crisis 2014

Getting a day "off" for a gaming show can be tricky...

Getting a whole weekend "off" was going to be challenging!

This is a sizable blog post so bang that kettle on and enjoy!!

The usual finishing off odds and sods prevailed the week before the show, however this time I was weathering the T-55 ARV before being picked up by Lee! 

nice simple paint job, modelled by Phil lovely to paint as usual!

getting down to Dover, and the famous white cliffs looking lovely in the sunshine,

The landing commences....

and after a couple of hours and some awesome directions by yours truly we hit Antwerp,

after we checked in, food was required and speaking zero dutch I did the English thing of pointing at stuff and giving the chap euros!

and as we were waiting for the rest of the chaps to arrive we had a few jars!

and a lovely view in the morning,

so in record time the yom kippar board was set up for the last time,

and it wasn't long before we were starting to gain interest from the punters,

Meanwhile I decided to have a mooch about and found a stall that was 3D printing!

and they had some lovely models,

I then went to find Prodos and they had the prototype bits out for AVP, and it was looking really good, I'm very happy with what I'm seeing so far and the wait will be well worth it,

so I tried to get round all the tables that were at the show and I'll apologise in advance as I didn't get game names or clubs that had made the tables,

A lovely 15mm Russian front board

Gripping beast Crescent and Cross board, I like this one a lot and the models are painted superb!

Lee discovering he's been used a box cover art!

28mm Japan, I think the models are either perry or wargames factory? the River was really well done and the all look was cracking,

The First room of the show, the second room was the same size,

28mm Bolt Action, really simple but excellent work

some MDF stuff that'd I'd not seen before, really well done and perfect for drop zone commander,

at this point some of the lights went off in the hall, so I used the flash on my phone which washed out some of the pictures, but you get the general look and feel

loads of demos were going on and the participation of the punters was great,

I spent a while chatting to the chap at warmill and they have a new set of security walls to replace the previous ones, really well designed and the can transform from a pillbox type configuration into a 2 level firing platform, very clever stuff and will be hitting there website soon.

 
Nick gave me the heads up about this board by stronghold terrain, some of the best terrain for dark ages I've ever seen, painted superbly and loads of detail

More of the same stuff

Freebooters fate board pirate cove, all the monster tentacles were custom made and I spent a while chatting to the chaps about the system as this one has interested me for a while and one that will be on my 2015 pick up list once we've made some progress on the TWO salute boards!

London warlords 28mm WW2 bold action board,

More Demo's going on!

At first I thought it was a show piece of terrain and then I spotted the infantry where the stone road meets the dirt road at the bottom of the picture!

A great looking Castle and it turns out that it was the castle in the town where these guys live, great touch and a great scratch build

Even the Newark Irregulars rocked up with the mountain board which is featured in this months wargames Illustrated, 

Chain of command, I think?

28mm ACW

only one of 2 GW themed boards I spotted,

15mm Flames of war

more 15mm Flames

28mm WW1 board

Pirate monkeys and pig crew, superb models!

A dragon type game, and certainly looks better that the new car crash that is dragon attack wing!

The worsung board, I didn't realise that you could opt to pick up at Crisis, so all the stuff was sitting there, the models are lovely looking and the paint is mind blowing!

stumbled across the ProTools stand, very impressive selection of modelling stuff,

A cracking warmachine board, the snow effect really made it stand out and the conversion on the khador model is lovely,

WW1 28mm,

some of the boards that even though they could be perceived as "simple" I really liked as it shows what can be done depending on your skill set and budget, proving that you don't need a micro detail board to gain some interest,

28mm darkages?

these made me smile, nice conversions,

So I've snapped quite a few pics of the board that we took as it was the last outing for it, the armour will be reused for future projects, and the board and terrain will be recycled for something else,

note Nick's catalogue pose....

So after we broke the board down and got changed back into "normal" clothes we went back to the venue as they had and after party, this was quite surreal but also a good laugh.

The Phat cats demo team earning a well deserved rest!

the buffet was awesome for 15 euro's,

and they threw a live band on that played some very interesting 80's rock....

the Prodos boys mooched with us for the evening and much fun was had mainly at Rob's expense

So the next day it was operation get back to blighty, however it didn't quite go to plan as we missed the 10 am ferry, throwing the whole plan into contingency mode,

ready to engage the FTL drive....

As we got closer to Dover the weather took a turn for the worst and people were throwing up all around us!

so after bouncing around outside for a while we managed to make port,

this kept us delayed for an hour, but also has given me some inspiration for a spectre board!

Overall the Crisis show that is hosted by the tin soldiers of Antwerp is a superb show and weirdly enough alot of uk traders do attend however the European guys also show in force and I found some real gems.

Size wise its quite reasonable and certainly has enough to keep you occupied throughout the day but not too much that you miss stuff like you would at salute, the amount of attendees was a fair few and the time that we spent talking to the punters about the 3rd generation system that we play with took up most of the day and even got a few guys to join in and roll some dice,

as a demo team we felt very welcome and the language barrier that I though we might encounter wasn't a problem as most people spoke good English and I even managed to teach a couple of guys some slang and typical insults that we use! 


Assuming that we are accepted for the show next year we have a much better plan of the travel factor as the journey over was about 12 hours and due to some adjustments so that Lee could zap off and meet up with his lovely wife and go up to Manchester myself and Phil were effectively travelling for about 15 hours but did mong it in a pub for about 3 of those hours!

I have to say a huge thanks to the Demo team that is Nick, Lee, Phil and Ed cracking weekend and had great fun! 

So onto the "loot"

Yep thats it!! some flock and "minions" from great escape games they are for Isla so that I can do a tongue in cheek micky take of some club members that Isla has painted more models than them!

And talking of Isla, I decided to get a club shirt for the "gc" so that next year I'll be taking her to local shows and start her on the dark path of gaming, some might call it child labour, I call its Daddy & Daughter time! LOL

Anyway if you've made it this far well done and a huge thanks for the continued support for all the readers and commenters of my random whaffling. 

Terrain-tastic!

Recently I've been on a mission to finish off projects that have been kicking around for a while, So this is what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks,

So starting off with some cacti that I picked up at the derby show from great escape games, dead simple and nicely sized as you can see with the warzone brotherhood chap.

Talking about brotherhood I did some objective markers,

And some legion markers for good measure!

I picked up some teleport homers online and based them up for objective type markers for either warzone, dystopian legions or any other sci fi steampunky type game,

Trees as you can never have enough trees! these are from ebay and found them in the model railway section, not crazy expensive and certainly different to the usual GW type trees that you see kicking around,

a generic barn from the perry brothers, with PVA still drying!

and the farm house, both really nice models and lovely to paint up,

the usual size type comparison, designed for 28mm historical rather than space marine and the like!

I picked up a sarrissa train station a while back when I was planning my WWX, deadmans hand board and this was fairly simple to put together and not over hard to paint, I've not painted an MDF building before that has as much detail with the wood panelling and the like and it was quite easy once you understand the material.

I was worried that I'd hide the detail but it wasn't to be the case!

I dig out a bit of track and a carriage to see how it looked against the station, and its a really good match,

I'm hoping to get the train finished in the next couple of weeks and that'll be the wwx/wild west board done, I'm on the look out for some teepee type buildings for something different.

I've gone for a green type board though as I can reuse the battlemat that I picked up and use the buildings for various other systems.

I couldn't go the whole month without some actual figures and I finally got the last of the previous tor gaming kickstarter finished in the form of the wound markers which I'll be using as objective markers for the orcnar.

I increased the amount of unmann that I've got and with the nappa's they can turn into unmann! so more the merrier!

And finally a bunch of BTR-50's 20mm scale for the Crisis show in Antwerp this weekend, This will be first time that I've been abroad purely for a gaming show and really looking forward to it, expect plenty of pictures from that one next week once I've recovered!

If your over at Crisis come and look for us playing on the huge Yom Kippur board.

The pledge is still on hold as I've not picked up a new rig and probably won't until after the new year due to home improvements, Christmas and all that jazz!

Megacon Games Myth - Kickstarter arrives at the Anarchy!

So after a "significant" wait Myth finally lands on the doorstep of Fort Anton with an all mighty thud!

Lovely box art and the actual box is very sturdy and should last a while, so onto the heroes...

In all honestly I've no idea who is who as I've only looked at the models and flicked though the rule book and had a quick glance at the cardboard tiles. However these are pre-assembled and over all not too bad some hot water bending is required as well as clearing some flash away, but to simply play straight out the box these are spot on, far better compared to super dungeon explore.

these will be great to paint up and have loads of uses if you play various D&D type games

So onto the bad guys, I've grouped these into what I think are the right "types" but I'm not 100%,

so skeleton type dudes, the cannon fodder and boss type chap.

Orc type guys, with some medium chaps and a big chap looking angry!

The critter crew, one of the small critters is missing an head, but I'm too fussed as I've so many extra models!

Rat men, armed with catapults and crossbows! the boss type figure has loads of rats crawling all over him and is a cracking model.

some cyclops type guys and weird looking circular disc armed guys,

A collection of stuff that was left over, I'm sure that they should be grouped with the guys above, I'm liking the wizard type chaps on the right, not sure what I'm gonna do with four though!

Object type markers I'm assuming, would work brilliantly for relics and other weird type games.

Loads of cards and other odds and sods!

Now these metal inserts really impressed me, lovely touch by megacon games, not sure if these are available after they hit retail?

One of the many cardboard punch out sheets, really nice art work and very nice quality,

Nice and thick fnar fnar!

So my over all impressions with the models and components is really good, has a super dungeon explore feel to it but with out the pain in the arse of gluing the stuff together. the sheer amount of models that I got was beyond mental and the likely hood of any paint touching them is slim to none! After all its a board game not a wargame!

Since the kickstarter finished they have been a couple of updates that I need to track down and suss out what have been changed which is a pain in the arse but hopefully not a massive problem.

As I tend to learn games quicker by watching Beasts of war are going to be doing a myth week, so I'll be keeping my eye out for that!

So for all you guys and girls that are waiting on your package for the last god knows how many months, its worth it!

Deadzone - Asterians spotted

After getting very excited about plastic squares and little connectors, I actually started looking at the models that came in the wave 2 care package,

I'm not going to fill the blog up with pictures of the models as various other blogs on the net are doing a great job of showing these off,

The models that caught my eye were the Asterians which is a bit of a surprise and normally I avoid skinny elven types, however for what ever reason I really like them and the rules for the faction/army are really nice, So I decided to get these sorted out for the campaign that I'm running at the Phat Cats,

So in about a week or so I've managed to get the following done, 

5 cypher's with noh rifles, 5 with charge gloves, 1 force rifle, 2 black talons, 1 sky razor, 1 missile launcher, 1 fission beam, overseer, prime and 2 drones with options for shield generator, plasma vortex and fission beam. Including the Asterian merc I've the best part of 300 points and as deadzone is based around 70 point missions its a tad overkill as usual!

5 cyphers with noh rifles one of the troops that you can take,

5 cyphers with charge gloves, the other troop type, combat specialist but with a 5+ combat stat and a 3+ shooting stat I don't see these being much use on the table top once they go toe to toe with plague dogs, swarms and stage 2's. Shame really as the poses are very dynamic

the black talons, a rare choice and with some very funky rules

The specialists, Missile launcher with AP4, force rifle designed for suppression and a fission beam which it it hits with a 3+ shoot stat is very dirty!

On the right you have the overseer which to date is the only leader model that the Asterians can field and at 25 points its a big point sink at 70 point unless your playing the larger point games, he has no real shooting weapons it all about buffing the force with his command points and can activate a whopping 7 models a turn!

The other guy is the prime, a pure close combat chap with an energy shield,

The sky razor, one of the coolest looking models that mantic have done personally, and I was expecting it to be aright pain in the arse to put together but to my surprise it went together with not major issues what so ever!

These are the cheapest models in the army at a mere 8 points so I'm hoping that mantic release these as single models as you can only get them in the reinforcement pack at the moment,

and finally onto the drones, I've also painted the fission beam turret I simply forgot to snap a pic.

these guys are interesting that the survive is 6+ so not particular good, and the various weapons that they are able to take gives you a nice bit of variation, the rules that these guys run with are quite nice with the gun platforms getting sentry which after reading the rules is a great rule and the shield generator seems to be a mastercard unit for keeping your firebase alive from all the gunfire.

Asterians look like a tricky force to play with the high points cost of the models you'll always be outnumbered unless its enforcers in peacekeeper armour!

The other thing I've noticed is that as they have construct they are always classed as alert so carn't be pinned however they are not able to go engraged and don't have brawler so if you fluff your roll the combat based guys are only on base dice after the first round of combat.

Add vulnerable into the mix where you only have to do one damage point rather than 2 to drop them they could become a very hard force to play if the enemy are totting lots of AP2 weapons.

The actual models themselves are quite nice, and the clean up wasn't too bad compared to some of the other mantic stuff in the past, when warpath goes live then I'll be having to make a hard choice of what faction to focus on as the Asterians are at the top of the rule of cool list.