Saturday 2 March 2024

Fun in a Dungeon

 No, not that sort!

I had the youngsters around for a few games (well, they are both around 40). Mark was up for his annual gaming weekend away from the kids and I've known Ross for 20+ years, as a teen he was one of the regular customers in my games shop.

We tried out Corey Burger's fantastic dungeon adaptation for Sellswords and Spellslingers using some of my Tenfold Dungeons kit, a mix of the Castle and Dungeons and Sewers. 

This is the layout we used. Mark and I were exploring a goblin infested dungeon (with assorted bigger beasties wandering about). On Friday we got bogged down after just two rooms and decided to bail as most of the party were severely injured and there were a mass of assorted gribblies coming down the next corridor. 

Our party of heroes entering the dungeon.

We tried again Saturday morning and managed to fight our way through to the end, just! Thanks to a good supply of healing potions and my wizard's Heal spell.

When Ross came after lunch we played through some catacombes, over-run with undead. Again we got out the end inalmost one piece, one PC was carried out comatose and most of the others had come near to death at some point or another.

Great fun was had and beer was drunk. Here are a few action shots of the proceedings.







Thursday 29 February 2024

New Gaming Mat

 I was browsing the internet the other day (as you do) when I came across an artificial moss mat/roll. It looked interesting and the supplier sold them in various sizes, including 1 metre squares, idea size for skirmish gaming! It wasn't too expensive, so I decided to give one a go and it turned up in todays post.

It is on some foam-like backing, quite thick (1 cm or so) but it looks like it will roll up nicely. The green is a little bright, but not unbearable, and as I envisioned this for a water-logged moor type environment, that's fine.


Minis work fine on it, human sized plastic minis on plastic bases are a little unstable in places, but bigger minis and metal minis (or plastic on metal bases) all stand up OK.

Here are some shots of various minis trying the new surface out!








I don't think this will be replacing my fabric gaming mats, but I can see it getting some use for historical and fantasy gaming. Hobbits scurrying around the Barrow Downs or Gothic Horror, hunting the creature over the moors!!!

Friday 23 February 2024

Terrain for Fantasy and Post Apocalyptic

 I have just taken delivery of a batch of new terrain items from Wargames Terrain Workshop link

Dave's a good guy to buy from, great communication and very prompt service, given it was being painted to order. His resin scenery is nice and sold at a very good price. He sells it unpainted, but I thought his painted prices were reasonable so, as painting time has been curtailed of late, I decided to get my terrain ready-painted.

I'd gone to the website to pick up some bits for my Post Apocalyptic games, but who doesn't browse a website first, and I found some really nice fantasy bits for dungeon/urban/Frostgrave settings.


It all arrived well packed and damage-free, which is always nice.
First a ceremonial/magical/sacrificial pool.


And three creepy mirrors. I love the spooky "reflections" Dave has put in the glass, very effective.
As an example of cost, the set of mirrors is just £4 unpainted. The painted set cost me £8.50.

Now on to the Post Apocalyptic stuff I went for in the first place.

I'd previously bought the toxic pools, but I don't think I've posted a proper picture of them.

Two sets of barrels, complete and squashed, with a couple of 28mm minis for scale.

And a squashed car!

Loads of use for all this in my Mutants and Death Ray Guns games.

I am running a Sellswords and Spellslingers dungeon crawl next weekend, so I already have some ideas for the mirrors!


Monday 12 February 2024

Tenfold Dungeon - The Facility Sci-Fi

 Although I have had this set longer than my fantasy sets, and I have used it for photographs, I had not actually posted a review of the full set yet!!! Very remiss of me.

So here it is...

So what do you get in the set?

2 large rooms, 4 medium rooms, 3 small rooms and 3 corridors, various dividing walls, stairs and clips, plus 13 double-sided doors.

I picked up a couple of sets of card terrain for Core Space to equip the base with panels, consoles and assorted scatter. Here are images of the various rooms.







Intruder Alert, Intruder Alert!!!

This is going to get a lot of use for Sci-fi and Post Apocalypse, maybe even some VSF with a change of scatter.


Tuesday 30 January 2024

More Cheap Dungeon Minions

 

I painted up a few more 1/72 plastics for my dungeon gaming, as well as the Anubis Army pack I now have some Caesar Orcs to use as goblin-type foes. 


First up- 3 more Anubis warriors.

Then the Caesar orcs, which were also very quick to paint up with contrast paints.

A couple of in-game shots.

And a size comparison shot, L-R Oathmark Elf, Caesar Orc, Dark Alliance Anubis Warrior.





Saturday 27 January 2024

VSF Ottomans on land and sea!

 I picked up a couple more of the PMC VSF resin kits on Ebay, another tracked steam tractor and a steam landing craft. Sadly all the VSF kits in the range are still OOP, but I keep my fingers crossed that Minifigs might get around to restoring them to production at some point.

Of course, I needed some crew (and I still had an Ironclad electric cannon that required manning), so when my sister-in-law asked what I wanted for Christmas, I gave her a small list from the Tiger Miniatures Balkans Ware ranges!

Taking a break from fantasy I decided to to get my new Ottoman kit table-ready!

First up the PMC steam landing craft. I couldn't see me having a lot of use for a landing craft, so decided to make it an armed barge instead. I'd got a deck gun in my Christmas gift package, but unfortunately the gun's barrel came just below the top of the barge's side. I made a gun platform from a couple of circular mdf bases I had to hand and now the gun can be fired without fear a blowing a hole in the barge's side!!!

I can always take the gun and platform out if I need a troop transporter at any time for a game.


Now the crew for the two steam tractors and the electric cannon.



A useful bunch of additions to my VSF forces for the Balkans. I'm looking forward to getting them on the table now!

Thursday 25 January 2024

Cheap Dungeon Minions - 1/72 plastics

 I have been playing a lot more Sellswords dungeon-type scenarios recently, so I have been painting up my Blacklist Games Fantasy kickstarter with grey bases to use in these games. The problem is that for these sort of games you need a lot of low-level minion types (orcs/goblins sort of thing). I literally have hundreds of orcs and goblins in my Tolkien armies, but they are all based for outside terrain. It doesn't look right to me for minis in a dungeon to have grass and tufts in earth bases. So I need a bunch of low-level monsters that will be quick to paint and cheap. I thought about getting a box or two of the various multi-part critters for Oathmark or similar, but I don't like sticking all the bit together. 

 

Browsing the net, I came across a review of these on the Plastic Soldier Review site. I have already got some of the 1/72 monsters from this manufacturer in my 28mm collection, the War Trolls and Cyclops sets, so I knew that the quality should be acceptable.

The review stated the height as 29mm, so I thought they might be worth a look. Shopping around I found a box for a tenner including postage (40 figures at 25p each!).

In the box you get 4 identical sprues, so 10 poses.

Here are the first minis with a quick paint job and some in-game shots with a Blacklist Games human and an Oathmark elf.


I am quite happy with the results, so I'll get a bunch painted up for my next dungeon games. I may also have a look at some more of the 1/72 plastics now.