Harry Potter Studio Tour

This Easter we had a short holiday away... the highlight of which was a tour around the Warner Bros Harry Potter Studios. It was fantastic. As a family we have enjoyed all the novels and films, and it was great to see behind the scenes and get too look at some of the props, scenery, models, sets, costumes and special effects. The model they made of Hogwarts is very impressive. Here are just a few of the pictures I took. It is quite an expensive day out (which is why we had such a short holiday!)... but well worth it If you love the Harry Potter films...

 

 

Gaslands - My vehicles so far....

There is a lot of satisfaction to be had in modifying Hotwheels / Matchbox cars!

Here are some of the things I've used:

 

Plasticard sheet 1mm thickness

Plastic Rod 1mm thickness

Textured plastic card (from a model railway shop)

Wire mesh (for car body repairs - from Halfords)

Electrical Fuses (for explosive rams)

Various bits from my bits box (mainly old plastic 40k Ork weapons)
Some special conversion bits from Autokill and Ramshackle Games

 

Crew from Ramshackle Games...

H/O scale bus from a model railway shop...

Gaslands - the new hotness!!

   I've been swept along by the excitement of the latest tabletop skirmish racing game by Osprey Games.... GASLANDS. I played a lot of CARWARS in my youth (a very complex and fiddley, strategic post-apocalyptic car racing battle game with small paper tokens... which I really enjoyed)... Gaslands has the same Mad-Max style theme as Car-Wars... but introduces much simpler mechanics... has a bit of an X-Wing feel with movement templates...and most importantly is played with MATCHBOX CARS!!! It is chaotic fun.

   The accessability of this game is great.. all you really need is the rulebook, some dice and a few kids cars. The templates are all in the back of the book to photocopy (or you can download a pdf from the Gaslands website and print them out)...

   People are getting into this game at various levels - from using unadulterated Matchbox and Hotwheels cars and photocopied templates.... to kitbashed and modified models, fancy scenery, 3D printed accessories and laser cut templates... (there is a whole Gaslands related cottage industry springing up around the game at the moment). There is a very friendly and helpful Facebook group - where you can see thousands of pics of peoples cars and gameplays to get some inspiration).
   I've played a handful of games with some friends now, and I've got a small box of Hotwheels and Matchbox cars that I've made a start on modifying and painting... There are various themed teams in the game, so I'm going to try and make a team for each one.. Here are my first attempts:

My first 3 car attempts... turned out ok!

Team Miyazaki (Racing theme)

Team Rutherford (Military theme)

Team Warden (Prison theme)

 

This was the set up for an introductory game with my 2 Kids - we all had the same car stats...

I've played a few games with 2 friends from my local gaming group  -  I haven't won yet... but lots of chaotic fun was had.... (In the following pics most of the fantastic scenery was made by my friend Kes... and he painted all the other cars - he did a great job on the Mad-Max themed police cars especially)..

Frostgrave - First actual game!

 Warband - check!... Scenery - check!... A substantial amount of monsters and creatures to randomly appear on the table and cause havoc - check!... an opponent also with a painted warband ready to duel over the scattered magical remnants of the frozen city - check!

At last - it was time to have our first FROSTGRAVE battle... I had a Warband with an Orc Witch as my Wizard, who managed to summon a Bear to accompany him and his merry band of Orc and Goblin cronies... Lizzy my opponent had a Human Enchanter with a bunch of swarthy Dwarves.

This was a basic learning game, neither of us had played before, so we were getting to grips with the turn structure and game mechanics, but it was good fun! We didn't end up with any wandering monsters, I only managed to get one of the treasure tokens off the board, Lizzy got the other 5.... we're going to carry on in a loose campaign format so we can level up our wizards, improve and learn our spells and get some crazy magical items...

Next game we're going to play one of the scenarios from the book which guarantees some wandering monster action...

My team with bear just about to enter the city...

Lizzy's Wizard making a run for the tower...

Lizzy's Wizard raining down magical chaos from his advantage point...