Magua

Forgot to post my Magua pics!

He was actually completed last month but I never took a picture of him.

I was going to add it to this month's update but I almost forgot him again! And he would have been doomed to obscurity in my display case, never achieving internet fame :)

I based his color scheme loosely on the Last of the Mohicans movie costume, but I only did a yellow edging instead of all the stripes....

June terrain

Well it was not a bumper month for painting, but I did get some good terrain done so I won't beat myself up too much... out of the 4 buildings I started this month, I completed 3 of them.

There are 3 houses by Bachmann from their Plasticville line (O-scale model train buildings). These are pretty good for 28mm. One is a house under construction, and the other two are pretty much identical houses. They all have removable roofs.

You can see from the model in the last 2 pics that the doors might be a tad big for true 28mms, but it doesn't look bad. 

I also finished another log cabin, also from Bachmann Plasticville. You can see from the comparison shot with the Pegasus cabin the difference between the O-scale and 1/72 scale... they look a little silly next to each other on the same board, but each can work with 28mm on their own.

So there we are... 4 new buildings done this month. The cabins will be used for the frontier, and the finished houses will be used to represent the suburbs of Quebec if I ever get to play the Montcalm vs. Wolfe campaign!

June painting totals

This month was the toughest yet to finish my goal of 10 painted models. However, I am going to count it as "done" with the minor caveat that I cheated!

First up: Here are 4 legit models, British Regulars to bolster my French & Indian War troops.

This brings my British up to a nice round 16, with 2 NCOs and one Officer:

I still have to complete the drummer and two flag bearers, and I also have a company of Grenadiers to add to the unit.

For now I think I will just do the drummer and flag bearers though, since I need to switch back to French for a couple of reasons.

First off, I was lucky enough to get a few of my buddies to dive in to the period with me. However, they all chose to collect British forces! Which means that in order for us to have enough troops to field big armies against each other, I need to have as many French and Indians painted as all 3 of their armies. The good news is that we all chose to paint different regiments for the British, so they look pretty cool when they are all arrayed together with the various facing colors.

Secondly, since June is over, this is the point where I begin getting depressed about how much I am likely to finish by year end. The year is half over! Since there's no chance of me finishing my Brits or Indians, I would like to give it the "old college try" as far as getting my French done. As of right now, the French have the smallest number of troops left in the Lead Pile.

Anyway, back to this month's progress... you may have noticed that in my Muskets & Tomahawks game there was an unsightly white blob next to my officer. This a Reaper Bones treasure chest, and was his "precious item" as rolled up in the subplots. It bothered me that an item so precious was unpainted!

As luck would have it I played Mordheim the following weekend and needed a similar item. Yikes! More white blobs in my Mordheim battle pictures....

I took it as a sign that I needed to paint some objectives, Frostgrave, which comes out next month and is definitely on my list of games to try, actually requires that each player have 6 treasure tokens.

So... Voila! In addition to my 4 British Regulars, I got my 6 treasure tokens painted up for Frostgrave, Mordheim, M&T, or whatever game I might need them for.

Here they are with my officer for scale.

Now, that looks more precious! And it brings my painting total up to 10 models for this month to boot ;)

dun dun DUNNN......

Less than a week to go until the end of June.

This is where the rubber meets the road, and I have to say that I am greatly disappointed in this month's progress so far!

I think this may be the first month that I miss my goal of 10 finished models per month.

It's not for lack of having anything in progress....

As you can see, there's plenty of stuff in the works. I just haven't had time to finish anything.

This month was a busy one with traveling for work and a bunch of family things on the weekends, plus I spent a whole Saturday at a convention.

The panic set in last weekend, and I even started feverishly drybrushing a few Bones models I had in the hopper:

They were going to be an Ice Troll, Apothecary, Thaumaturge, and Thug for Frostgrave.

Ahh! Can I ever salvage them now? I'm particularly angry that I went and defiled these two; they would have been nice character models.

Oh well. I can always go back and buy the "real" metal versions if I want to do a real paint job on them. Not likely though, considering the amount of models in the lead pile!

My only hope is to finish off the 4 British Regulars in progress (they are the closest on the desk to being complete), and then pull 6 rabbits out of my hat this weekend. I have a plan... I will keep it secret until then.

At least someone got some painting done this weekend... 

Also got some good gaming in with my son this month. We have been playing a Mordheim campaign, and getting in a quick game almost every weekend. This past weekend we called it quits. He won, of course!

Notice how he cunningly places his Skink warriors up on top of buildings, where it will be difficult for my Orcs to climb up, rather than face them in a fair fight.

He learned this underhanded tactic from my friend James, who also likes to cheat with Lizardmen.

Dastardly!

Muskets & Tomahawks game

Well it was quite a weekend, because not only did I get to a convention but managed to sneak in a quick game of Muskets & Tomahawks too!

We tried to go "by the book" and rolled for everything; scenario, weather, etc. We actually got no crazy weather, and both got standard "engagement" as our mission... oh well, so much for twists!

The twists would come once we started the game though. Scott won the roll off to pick a deployment zone, and since one edge of the board had convenient walls all across it he wisely chose that side. However - when we rolled for our officer's side plots, it turned out that my officer's goal was to protect a valuable item that could not be moved from it's deployment spot on my edge - and his objective was to keep me from achieving MY objective!

So after he had lined up all his redcoats nicely behind the walls, he had to come get me anyway :)

The rangers moved up along the river bank while the regulars came up in two groups. My regulars stood in line to wait for them, while the marines took to the woods on my right.

It was a game of long range musketry pot shots at each other as Scott moved in. At one point, he was very close to winning, having shot me up and only needing to get one 3 on a handful of dice (muskets kill on a 3+)... I took a picture of the die roll he got (he must be the only wargamer friend I have that rolls worse than I do).

In the end - it all came down to one heroic charge between French and British Regulars, and the French and Brits BOTH fell below 1/3 of their army in the same turn. It was a close run game; a draw really, but technically I "won" because he did not have any troops capture my item.

Fun game and quite different than the last few we played, with less irregular troops and less terrain. We actually did not have a single area of heavy woods! Definitely fun and something I'd like to try again.