X-Wing battle report - by Gargamel

Last night I had a few games of X-Wing with Will from Will's Ramblings. They were basically my first 3 proper games, not counting a few basic intro rounds a while back. I lost 2 and won 1, so a handful of rebel pilots can hold their heads high while the majority of their colleagues float in bite sized chunks above an unnamed ice planet.

Lessons learned so far:
1. Don't bump into stuff all the time
2. Ten Numb in a B-Wing with autolasers is a TIE-killing machine
3. I should try to resist sinking too many points into elite pilots who can't dish out enough damage
4. Ion cannons are a massive annoyance
5. Let your opponent drink more beers than you do


Game 1

I had an A-Wing, a B-Wing, two X-Wings and the Millenium Falcon, all with the cheapest possible pilots, and Will had 4 TIEs, a TIE Interceptor and Darth Vader himself in a TIE Advance.

 My pilots spent a lot of time crashing into things and forfeiting their actions. I needed to pay more attention to the order the pilots move in. My forces quickly got picked off, leaving a hardy but largely toothless Millennium Falcon to be ganged up on and destroyed. Lessons learned (kind of). Next.

 Game 2

This time I had a tricked out squad of named characters in an A-Wing, a B-Wing and an X-Wing while Will had 3 TIEs, a TIE Interceptor and an Imperial Shuttle.

My B-Wing took care of a few TIEs early on which made me think I was doing pretty well. Wrong. The Ion cannon on the shuttle, plus the Rebel Hostage aboard it limited my maneuverability severely, so I was wiped out again pretty easily.

[Intermission for beer and pizza]

Game 3

I modified my previous list, keeping my tricked out B-Wing, but downgrading my A-Wing and taking two vanilla X-Wings in an effort to get more guns on the table.

The beers and fatigue were taking their toll on poor Will, who began making some tactical errors - not as many as me, but enough that I managed to squeeze in a win. Of course, due to the previous bitter defeats, I hadn't bothered to take any photos of this game, so I have no proof, but I totally did win. I promise! 

Orruk "mysterious landscape" scenery - by Gargamel

On the rules sheet for Age of Sigmar there is a table of effects that can be applied to scenery. I personally don't like attaching random rules to scenery because I'm usually too dumb to remember what's supposed to do what in the heat of battle. For that reason I've been making some specific terrain for some of the effects on the random table.


The "Damned" rule allows a player to sacrifice wounds from a nearby unit in exchange for giving the rest of that unit a bonus on to-hit rolls that turn.
Here's a "Damned" altar I made out of leftover bits from an Arachnarok Spider kit. It's the catapult and bits of excess platform, plus the goblin being attacked by a spider. I figured the sacrifices serve the added purpose of convincing the Arachnarok to continue fighting for the Orruks and not go on a rampage.

The "Sinister" rule gives a fear effect to units nearby during the Hero phase. To represent this, I've made a bunch of heads on sticks. I still have a few heads left to mount, and I'm trying to scrounge them off my friends so I can humiliate their armies on the battlefield at all times, even when my own orruks are getting brutalised.

The "Deadly" rule means that when a unit charges through that terrain feature, each model in the unit has a chance of being killed.
To represent this, I made some punji stake pits out of modelling clay and toothpicks.

Age of Sigmar Orruk watchtower pt1 - by Gargamel

Here's a progress report on an Orc watchtower I'm scratch-building for Age of Sigmar.

The materials I've been using are:
PVA
Ice-cream sticks
Wooden skewers
Jenga blocks
MDF place mat

The platforms are made from ice-cream sticks with the rounded ends cut off. I've kept the ends rough and uneven because Orcs are idiots. Also, I'm lazy.

The central shaft of the tower is made of cheap counterfeit Jenga blocks which I've PVA'd together. At this point they're exposed, but I'm thinking of cladding them in more ice-cream sticks.

The ladders are made from an ice-cream stick with some one inch sections of wooden skewer glued to it for rungs.

The (mostly) finished product, assembled with PVA and mounted on an MDF place mat I got from Spotlight. The base is too big for the model, so I'm going to have to come up with some extra detail stuff to base it with.

What's next?
I'm going to paint up some of the boards in an Orcish fashion, and apply some flock and whatnot to the base. I'll post some more photos when it's done.

MARZ - by Gargamel

If you're into horror and sci-fi, this website is a great resource for finding new stuff. It's a curated collection of short films and trailers, broken up into the broad categories of Monsters, Aliens, Robots and Zombies. I've spent hours exploring here and hardly scratched the surface.

http://www.monstersaliensrobotszombies.com/

I personally recommend clicking on the "list view" icon to the right of the four monster head icons (the three horizontal lines), as the default mosaic view tends to show multiple instances of each item which gets on my nerves.