Life among Heretics

I suppose that it was appropriate for me to be a guest of the kind folks at Screaming Heretic this weekend.  Since my painting philosophies are considered heretical and blasphemous! :-)

I had been burning disks the previous 16 hours.  All during out latest Memoir '44 "paint and play" session, files were prepared, disks were burned, more files prepped... rinse and repeat.

I was still burning the last of the 100 disk stack when it was time to do the final packing and get ready to be whisked away!

This is a very unorthodox setup, but it certainly kept the line moving.  With so many people switching to disks, I had to get cranking on burning new versions!

Time to meet the pets!!!  First, the doggie!

Then I was surprised to find myself wearing a set of earphones and sitting in on the 64th podcast by Screaming Heretic.  A wide variety of topics were discussed.

The discussion covered interesting kickstarters, what people were working on, a report from ACEN, Girls on Gaming, how to keep campaigns fun but challenging, and much more!

My Little Pony likes it hard...

Podcast finished... time for some 40K

  The full soundstage!  

Shelves of miniatures everywhere!!!!

And gaming tables.  A few of the blog readers will know exactly where these came from.

Setting up for some paint work and some demos.

Just about ready...

Time for a basing demo!!!  Tools, sculpey, cork, and samples!!

Later that night, it was time to meet the denizens of the above world...  the kitties!!! 

The Americans take revenge!

So, it was time for Rich and I to play the other half of his scenario.  And now, I would be playing the U.S.!  Rich sees just how precarious the Axis position is in his scenario :-)

By the way, if you are interesting in purchasing this game... just head over to the Wandering Dragon Shoppe in Plainfield!  It is a gaming palace, and Kevin and Laura are the best!!!

You can also test it out, as we did, with their 'open box games' section.

Here's my starting cards.  Idea for me, since killing off the Italians in the church and cemetery would be a huge path to victory.  You see all those order cards for the right flank, which means I can make a sustained push over there!

You can see that I am already shifting over as many units as I can with my other order cards.

Rich is desperately trying to move his heavy units out onto the road, so that he can 'rescue' the Italians.

Contact!  The Italians are already dying and retreating!

This is very bad for the Axis, since it is a certainty that all three Italian units will be killed, meaning that I only need to take out one more Axis unit to win.

I decided to feed some units to the Germans, to lure them out into the open road.  That way, I could pick off one exposed unit for the win.

That's exactly what happens, and we also learn how devastating fast infantry can be!  Those darn jeeps hit really hard!  Moving 4 spaces and pounding the enemy is very nasty indeed!

The Germans concentrate a lot of energy on a Sherman unit that I had replenished with my MASH card.  This was the ideal distraction.

Almost there!  The Italian artillery is completely surrounded!  Looks bad!

And now the unwitting Germans have fallen into the trap.  The unit of elite Waffen SS are cut down from all sides!  Just one more victory point to go!

After wiping out that last German unit with the fast infantry, it was time to make short work of the cowering Italian Artillerymen!  The Stars and Stripes are avenged!!!

A small collection

Every so often, I like to take some group shots of 'unrelated' miniatures.  In this case, it is almost entirely Reaper minis.

It's fun to see the color variety, and the different sculpting styles.

That is something that you don't often see within one miniature line these days... some variation between sculptors!

It's very cool to see the differences between these three... the way the faces are sculpted alone is fascinating. 

They all have a lot of dynamism to the poses.

These really cover the full gamut of colors... greens, yellows, blues, browns and reds.

Even the bases are fun to compare.

I especially wanted to see these, since they are all gone now... I will miss them!

Another group shot!

I hope you guys didn't mind seeing this latest 'mini' collection! :-)

Tiny terrain for tiny guys

War has returned!  Little war, that is, as we make the terrain tiles for Memoir '44.  As you have seen from previous posts, we did the standard terrain tiles.  

It did not take long to realize that we would need to make terrain specific tiles as well, since we had to lift up the hexes with the units on them to see what the actual terrain was!

Primarily, we would need Forests, Hills, Towns, and Hedgerows. 

Using some leftover pink foam from my previous projects, I made quick ruined wall to indicate a town.  I had to make sure to leave enough room for the unit, and to place a set of sandbags!

It was similar for the hills.  I have a lot of cork around, so I figured this would be the quickest method.

Some shots of the terrain pieces painted and flocked!

Oh yeah, and I painted the G.I.'s as well :-)

I really loved the ruined building terrain piece!

For as tiny as these guys are (you could nearly fit all 4 of them on a quarter!), there is so much fun detail.

This is what one of the 'standard' tiles looks like with paint and flock.

The forest tiles will be the same as these, with some trees on them.

A quick view of the three tiles I was working on.  Stay tuned for much more!!!

Setting up barriers

Another great product from Secret Weapon.  This time it is the damaged Jersey Barriers set.

You get these six pieces, which look really cool, and cover a lot of ground, as you will see later!

Remember, you don't have to wash these, since the mould release is not going to repel your primer or paint.

Speaking of paint...

Lots of fun opportunities here.  You could even have some graffiti sprayed onto them!

Look... they can even keep out a horde of zombies!!

Disco Stu and Ranger Rick are counting on the barriers so they can hold out a little longer.

Still holding!

Disco Stu takes them out one by one...

Oh no!  The brain eaters have gotten through!  It's looking bad for Stu...