Salute the Cavalry!

For once a couple of things have happened that are worth blogging about. Try not to be too shocked.

First of all, I've painted more things!

Not big things, admittedly, but still, here they are...

Some dismounted Union cavalry! These match to the mounted versions I already have painted, so now, should I ever keep my cavalry around long enough to allow them to dismount, I'll be able to represent that clearly. So that's nice.

Next, I went to Salute! We seem to instituted a weird system where someone chaperones Kieron on his birthday trip down to London, and this year it was my turn. We arrived after only a short delay due to an accident on the M1, and a shorter one as we drove somewhat randomly around residential streets to find the parking space I'd booked. 

It was worth the wait though! I picked up several things:

Stuff!

I got the Salute free mini (a Russian standard bearer that might work for VBCW at some point), a free Wild West Exodus thing (might work as a wizard for Kings of War), two free Mantic zombies (which will presumably work as zombies), a painting guide for multicam from Spectre (useful if I ever get around to painting my US army), a free die (for rolling things), and a free sweet (for eating).

I also spent some money, and got a pack of seven defensive cloches that I'll use for Bolt Action, an MDF fountain, some small scale flexible roads, and the pre-release Shaltari command cards for Dropfleet Commander.

So, more work for myself there. Still, I was more restrained than I might have been, so, just barely, I avoided increasing the lead pile more than my painting had reduced it - I painted 12 tiny models but acquired 11 of various sizes on the day.

So watch out for something happening with all of this stuff! And now, numbers.

Painted: 81

Acquired: 78

On the right track

I've been painting again! There's absolutely no way that anyone could find this to be less than entirely thrilling.

Admittedly, I haven't done a lot of painting. But I do at least have something to show for it, which is this...

Choo choo!

Train tracks! I got these a while ago when the trend in our group was for 6mm American Civil War, and we needed terrain. And, you know, "terrain" = "train", maybe, or something.

Wow, that was terrible. I feel bad for you having read it.

Anyway... last weekend, our ACW campaign led to the battle of Vicksburg. The campaign rules generated a battlefield based on the map, and that had a railway line running into it. Kieron casually mentioned a couple of days before the game that we could ignore the railroad, which for some reason made me incredibly determined to paint one before the game.

So, you know, I did that.

The best part, of course, is that the track comes as two dozen separate pieces. Therefore, I'm counting it as 24 models towards my tally of painting for the year. This might be a bit of a stretch, but the key thing is that it'll bother Pete, which is an excellent reason to do more or less anything.

Here's the tally, increased by 24 on the "painted" side...


Painted: 69

Aquired: 67

This puts me over the top! Choo choo!

Small Guns Go For It

I've been quiet here for a while, but in an unusual move I've actually painted more than one or two models - although admittedly they are all pretty small. Let's have a look at my tiny achievements...

First off, some ACW artillery.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! 

We need these for the first battle in a campaign that we started a couple of weeks ago. These are actually Parrott rifles, so would normally qualify for extra range in Black Powder. I suspect they won't have that ability in the campaign game, but it's nice to have these available in any case, since it increases my options for future games.

Next, some casualty markers!

Captions about dead horses. Errr.... something about glue?

These have been sat amongst my painting stuff for months, but needed finishing off, so I finally did that as I was in an ACW mood. My experience of Black Powder is that most of my units take damage (and then I lose) so it's worth having more of these ready.

Speaking of things that needed finishing off...

Legs are overrated!

It's a terminator crawler. This was sat on my desk in need of a base, so adding one lets me finish it and add to my painted tally...


Painted: 45

Aquired: 67

See? 

Another Spaceship

The title says it all really.

Yes, I've added another ship to my Shaltari fleet for Dropfleet Commander.

To make it even less interesting, it's a repeat of a model I've already done!

Here it is. I can only apologise.

It's an emerald mothership. The Shaltari need these to land troops, which is basically the whole point of DfC. That means that you can almost certainly look forward to further posts about these babies in future.

Still, it's not all bad, at least these numbers will change! Here we go...


Painted: 20

Aquired: 67

Admittedly they haven't changed much. I'll try harder next time.

Things are being painted!

I haven't posted for a while. In my defence, this is mainly because I haven't done anything worth posting about, but I've also just not got around to writing anything.

But I've now turned that around, by both painting some models and also turning up here to tell everyone about it! So prepare yourself, here come some photos.

First up, yet another tiny spaceship for Dropfleet Commander.

A Shaltari frigate! Don't worry, I've done other stuff...

I've been doing almost embarrassingly well at Dropfleet Commander, leading of course to insistent claims from other players that the Shaltari starter fleet is overpowered. Clearly that's nonsense, I'm just a tactical genius.

Next up, terminators!

To the left...

To the right...

And now try it without legs

These are from the basic Terminator Genesys game, so I've got the same to do again (and actually I have one more crawler that needs to go on a base) but these were, as you can probably guess, very easy to paint.

Just need to actually play the game now!

It's all good, so I have to temper that slightly - I did by a staff car from Vapnartak. Pretty restrained, but I did intend to paint it quickly and just didn't.

So, what's happened to the scores?

Painted: 19

Aquired: 67

Additional Tiny Spaceships

Well, we're gathered here once again, so let's list off what I've painted recently. It won't take long.

First off, an Amber cruiser...

Yep, that's what one of those looks like.

And then, two more Voidgates, to enable further Shaltari cheating.

Floaty!

That completes the Shaltari starter fleet from my enormous Dropfleet Commander pledge. We've been playing a few games using just the starter fleets, and so far I've beaten everyone but Pete and his confounded UCM. 

Next step is to get to 750 points with these. I don't actually know what I'm going to add to get there, but I suppose it would be prudent to include a second mothership. So maybe I'll do that. 

But maybe not!

Anyway, how's the 2017 painting tally looking now, with a month basically down?

Painted: 4

Aquired: 66

Ah.

Well, that might look better next time I suppose...

Progess! And then... not that.

After my somewhat rocky start the other day in which I acquired 57 models without yet having painted any, my quest to take more models off the lead pile than I add to it in 2017 seemed under threat.

But then, I managed this!

Spaceship!

That's a Shaltari Emerald Mothership, part of my new Dropfleet Commander force. Given my self -imposed rules, it's fortunate that my pledge actually arrived in December, so I don't have to count lots of extra spaceships against my tally.

I've played two games of Dropfleet now, and it seems like a really interesting game. The orbital combat mechanics make for something with more meat to it than other space combat games I've tried, and dropping troops onto the surface from orbit is an extra added challenge. I have loads of models for this to go at, so you can expect more posts about this game to turn up.

Unfortunately, however, Kieron's pledge has also arrived, and so when I played him last night, he gave me his Shaltari sprues... which adds 8 models to the "acquired" column.

Also, just to nudge things just a touch further in the wrong direction, I need to complete the tale of Warlord Games orders. If you're following all of this very closely (and I can't think why you wouldn't be), then you'll know that my mother-in-law gave me £100 of Warlord vouchers for Christmas.

For some reason though, she wasn't confident that the voucher would work when she gave me the code. Don't know why, since she's given me the same vouchers before, but she emailed Warlord to check, and for reasons I don't really follow, got more confused and ended up calling them, at which point she was assured that all was fine. There it would have ended, but on boxing day she checked her email to find an apology from Warlord for the confusion, and an extra £20 voucher as a goodwill gesture - which she also passed onto me, since my mother-in-law unaccountably doesn't buy much from Warlord herself.

So, kudos to Warlord Games for their customer service, but all of this is a long-winded way of saying that I need to add yet another model to the pile, as I used the voucher to get a Char B1 bis to add to my Bolt Action French.

Mmmm... unassembled...

 So, I am at least off the mark in terms of painting, giving me a new tally of:

Painted: 1
Acquired: 66

My birthday is in two weeks. I fear the worst.