A couple of finished projects

Heres a couple of projects ive finially finished.

Legends of the High Seas - the ship

For a month or so now my friend Rob has been trying to get me keen on playing a pirates miniature game. Of course he never needs to try too hard to convince me to play a new game system as i love toy soldiers. Legends of the High Seas not ony allows you to create a pirate crew and fight it out on land but also on the sea.

This of course means that you need a ship. this means build one or buy one, building a ship from scratch seamed a tad time sapping and buying a ship that would work for 28mm figs looked expensive. wondering which way i should proceed i found some posts on TMP;the miniatures page talking about people using the pyrate range of mega blok ships and converting them. Now a few years back i remembered seeing some of these ships in local toy stores so i decided to take a trip and see if i could find any. As is often the way when you really want something i coulldnt find any. Next i checked e-bay - lots of choices but once you add in shipping well over $150 a ship (which is a little much for a plastic ship im going to have to pull apart and refit to make it work for gaming). Feeling a tad down and thinking i was going to have to part with some serious wargaming spending money i looked at Trademe (New Zealands version of E-bay) and found one ship. It was a cool looking undead ship covered in bone and with broken decking and three huge silly looking cannons - oh yeah and it lighted up when you pressed a button - it wasnt perfect but it was only $40. I went and picked it up this morning.

The first thing i did was strip back all of the unnecessary pieces (bones ect). This left me with this nice hull. Lots of work to do but a nice starting point. I need to buy some cannons, no idea where ill get them from at the moment, im thinking 6 per side in two bays of 3 - obviously ill need to rebuild the areas where these are mounted but im looking forward to this piece. I have a plan of allowing areas of the ship to be removable so that fights on the ship can take place in several locations and not just on the main deck. I plan to have the Captains cabin, the cannon hold and a section of the brig (this may end up being impractical but time will tell). Im also going to have to make new masts and a new crows nest - its impossible to get rid of the skeleton bone pieces from these pieces without destroying them in the process. This probally sounds like a pile of work and it may be but as i wont have a pirate crew till the end of the year i have time to work on it. :)

If anyone out there reading this has tried a similar conversion of a Mega Blok ship id love to hear from you about how you went about it.



the pieces removed:

More Lord of the rings fun

This morning Rob came over and we played a game of Lord of the rings. Points wernt considered, we just set up a nice looking board and came up with two forces. Rob took control of my Isenguard force contining ome berserkers, some normal uruks and a couple of trolls with a uruk Shaman and a uruk Hero.

I used a small contingent of Rohan riders Lead by Eomer, another small contingent of ferlong the fat and some axeman and then my min force was Faramir with a Captain and a fair sized force of warriors.

In the end i managed to break the Isenguard force but only after Faramir fell to one of the trolls.

Here is some pics of some of the action:

Dark Menoth Project

 Ever since i first went through the Menoth background and looked at their models i knew that they cried out for a Dark Knight look. Not evil but just not pure looking, Something like a Death Knight from World of Warcraft, or a Knight of Solimina from Dragonlance . For months now ive been thinking about a scheme that would work. The first thing i did was scour the internet looking to see what others have done - there are lots of good ideas out there and i didnt want to copy anyone elses.

In the end i was inspired by a coulple of old school GW Chaos Space marine themes blended together. (at least thats the idea)

The overall concept is a extreme dark blue (almost black) armour with brass edging and metal rivets and spikes. Any cloth is black with grey highlights. The eyes and any venting lighting ect is to be glowing bright blue. (in the pic you may see some red as i tried that first for the eyes but it made them look evil.)

I have no idea on a basing scheme (any ideas greatly appreciated). I know the Menoth come from a desert area but im not sure desert basing will look very good with the all blue/black scheme.

Anyways onto the picture. There is a heap of work to go on them but i think the basic idea is starting to come through. keen to know what everyone thinks.

No battle plan survives first contact

well my plan was good get something finished every day of the school holidays. seamed simple enough. Unfortunatly things havent worked out as i wanted them to so far. The girls decided that they wnted me to watch DVD's and play Lord of the rings with them. below is a few pics from one of our games. Uruk-Hai crushing their way over top of some poor men of Minis tirith desperatly trying to hold a bridge and old garrison tower. As you can probally tell from the photos it went badly for the Humans.

School holidays = a week of hobby fun

Its the second week of the holidays and that means i get to do my Dad duty and take a week off to look after my girls. Whilst my eldest is 13 and able to look after herself my youngest is only 9 and needs an eye kept on her from time to time to keep her out of trouble. This  means that although i need to be home i actually get a reasonble amount of time to spend on my hobbies amongst watching DVD's and playing games with the girls.

My plan is to devote one day to each of the game systems i am working on and hopfully by the end of the week i will have compleated a couple of projects that have been crying out to be finished.

Here is my basic breakdown:

Day 1 Warmachine - 25pt Menoth starter force (undercoated)
Day 2 Legends of the old west - 10 Mexican outlaws (half compleate)
Day 3 Battletech - 2 Mechs and 3 Burke tanks (half compleate)
Day 4 Gladiators - 8 various Gladiators (almost finished), do more work on the Arena im constructing.
Day 5 Legends of the high seas - Work on my chinese junk (project unstarted)

Every day i will post something new showing my progress - hopefully this will encourace me to finish some of these projects.

Lunchtime fun

I managed to get in another 30 mins of painting at lunch. I almost got the shields finished - just a few more highlights to go.

More progress

I managed to get in half an hours painting this mornning on the savage orcs. Added in details on the skin teeth and armour. Hopefully at lunchtime I can work on the shields.

15mm fantasy savage orcs

Just a quick project post tonight. Work progresses slowly on the savage orcs. (I'm only working on these during my lunch break so after eating I only have about 15 minutes a day.)

Even so I'm finding these little guys a lot of fun to paint.

15mm fantasy savage orcs

Something a little different this Morning. These little guys are from the demonworld range. I'm not 100% certain what I'm going to do with them yet but when I pay lien I knew I had to paint up some.

Another Battletech Game

Yet another weekend of Battletech gaming. Rob, Kevin, Byran and Arthur come over this morning for another epic Battletech game. This time we opted for a 4'x4' city table with an objective of a powerstation right in the centre of the table.

The Forces:

House Steiner/House Kurita alliance

Commanded by Arthur
Warhamer
Rifleman
Wolverine

Commanded by me
3x Burke Tanks
Awesome
Grand Dragon
IS standard Battle Armour x1
Clan Jade Falcon

Commanded by Rob
Vulture
Clan Elemental Salamanders x2

Commanded by Kevin
Catapult
Madcat

Commanded by Byran
Quckdraw
Loki

It was an awesome game. It finially ended with Clan Jade Falcon retreating leaving the IS houses holding the powerstation.

Here's a few pics of some of the action.