Wednesday 16 October 2013

Laser Cut 1:20 Scale Terraced House

Three or four years ago I built this 1:20 scale house for my students to use as the basis for a project.

It was a fairly simple model (I didn't want to attract attention away from the students additions to it) and was built using traditional workshop machines, table saw, band saw, scroll saw, belt sander etc.
The model has been used each year as the basis for a student project, and with a few minor repairs has survived very well.

This year we decided to give the students a second model, so that they had some choice to work with. This gave me an opportunity to build a second house and utilize the laser cutter (I didn't have it when I built the first one). This meant I could add a little more detail, without much extra work. Hence the window frames and brickwork.

This is the result:-




 

Here are the two model, side by side!



Thursday 10 October 2013

The Song of Blades and Heroes Campaign moves on...

I played my third game in our revised Song of Blades and Heroes (SoBH) campaign last night.

We had originally started the campaign using the basic campaign rules in the main rulebook, but soon after I bought the Song of Deeds and Glory book with the expanded campaign system, so we decided to restart from scratch.

The table layout, the third river section was designated as a ford.
I had my Dark Elf Warband facing off against Jeff's Orc. I have won all my games so far, and Jeff has been struggling to get the Orc to work effectively and has lost all his games. Still I never going expecting to win, as I am prone to a severe lack of strategic thinking and also make the odd silly mistake that usually lands me right in it!

However, the gods were certainly on my side last night. We were playing a take and hold scenario, there were three objectives and we got victory points each round for holding them (uncontested). The game would be over when either of us held all three objectives or when one of us wiped the other out...

I advanced across the field and soon had two of the three objectives and was advancing on the third. One of my crossbowmen landed a bolt in one of Jeff's Orc, it knocked him down and more importantly reduced his quality by 1 (sneaky Dark Elves and their poisoned weapons). Then I charged my Dark Elf Lizard Rider into a group of three Orcs that Jeff had sent to push me back.

My Goblin Sneak guards the first objective.

Now, my Lizard Rider had proved to be totally useless in previous games either standing their doing nothing or running in and getting killed, so I didn't hold out much hope for this tactic this time. How wrong I was. In the first round of combat he pushed one Orc back and then ripped a second one to pieces (a Gruesome Kill in game terms). This forced Jeff's whole force to take morale checks, of which half of them failed, and as we were quite close to Jeff's edge of the table they ran right off it...

The next round of combat proved just as successful. Jeff's fallen Orc failed to get up and my Lizard Rider finished him off in similar fashion to the first one, causing another morale check which drove the rest of Jeff's force from the table!
Red "Splat" Markers indicate Gruesome Kills...

So effectively I had completely routed Jeff's entire warband with just the one miniature. Now I must say that on the whole I was extremely lucky with this one, and Jeff made some very poor dice rolls just at the wrong time. However, my Dark Elves struted off the field with suitably smug looks on their faces!

The after battle campaign resolution went fairly well too. I managed to aquire a small cash reward of 25 gold pieces, taking my purse up to 54. I decided not to spend any on adding new equipment or a new recruit to my warband, prefering to save the cash for a expensive purchase later on! I did however have some experience point to use. I upped the quality of a few of my characters and decided to take a risk and let two crossbowmen attempt a Quest. To have a successful quest the figures sacrifice three XPs and then roll on a D6. If they get a 6 they can roll to see what reward (usually an improvement to the figures abilities in some way) they get. My first attempt failed, but I got very lucky with the second attempt and one of my crossbowman aquired the Leader special ability (giving me two leaders and a hero now)...

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Miniature Bids, a new venue for moving on some of that lead pile that you're never going to paint!

Miniature Bids is a new auction site that has been set up exclusively to support the wargames and more general gaming community.
As a publicity generating promotion they have just launched a competition.
In their own words:-

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Miniature Bids: Oh boy, we have a cracking competition for you guys, and thanks goes to Wargames Emporium in Sheffield (UK) for sponsoring it!
So, do you fancy of the games shown in this picture? One lucky winner will get to choose one of them as their prize! How do you enter? There are a few things you need to do… Nothing major…
That will get you one entry into the draw. Want to get more? For each of the following you get an additional entry by spreading the word about MiniatureBids.com. This can be any of the following:
  • A blog post about Miniature Bids on a tabletop hobby related blog.
  • A post about Miniature Bids on a tabletop hobby forum (Please ensure you stick to the forum rules when doing this!). The forum post must be viewable to the public as we will check!
If you opt to get your extra entry as above, post a comment on this Facebook post with links to the blog/forum posts. And you’re done! Good luck!!! The competition closes at 9pm (UTC) 2nd October 2013. The winner will be announced within 24hours of the competition closing.
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