Spooky Trees...

 I took these photos on a morning walk up Padley Gorge from Grindleford Station just before Christmas... I love these trees!

Zombicide - Characters

I painted the characters from the original Zombicide boardgame. I based them so they are compatible with my Walking Dead All Out War miniatures, and I can use them as potential extra characters in that game too. They're pretty good minis with some nice details considering they are designed as boardgame pieces...

WINTERS END - The Walking Dead Tournament...

 

Last weekend I drove over to Stockport to take part in the Winters End tournament at Element Games. Organised by Paul from "Weight of Fire", it was a thematic 4 round tournament for the Walking Dead All Out War miniatures skirmish game from Mantic Games. There were 16 players.

 

WEIGHT OF FIRE - WINTERS END

 

Participants had to design their own 250 point team - plus a 50 point mysterious survivor who would join their group at some point during the competition. Paul introduced some limitations on team building to try and level the playing field - weapons & armour items could only be taken once across the team - I thought this was a great idea, and it led to some interesting teams. You can download the PDF of the tournament rules etc from the link below:

 

WINTERS END SCENARIO BOOKLET

 

 

My Team - Sandra, Derek, The Survivor, Greg and Charlie

 

This was my team (including survivor) - I didn't have a particular strategy in mind, I wanted to try out the new "Hunters" faction that has just come out, and my thinking was to try and get a mix of skills across the team. My team was 4 people plus the survivor. It turned out that the most popular team size was 5 plus survivor. The extra person giving more actions. I spent the equivalent in points of an extra person on a couple of the new Veteran skill cards for my team - which I didn't really get much of an advantage from.

 The Hunters are interesting characters, but I couldn't use their special rules to any advantage in any of the games I played. They have cool benefits whilst in area terrain, but there wasn't any area terrain on any of the tables. The "Pick them off" skill never came into play - 8" is quite a large distance on a 24"x24" table, and when opponents are aware that you have it, they don't let you get the chance!

The 4 new scenarios that had been designed by Paul and Daniel were very very cool... (they are all in the booklet pdf - see link above). There have only been a handful of official player vs player balanced scenarios suitable for tournaments from Mantic (I'm not including the many scenarios in the expansions in this - they are for playing through scenes from the comics - and are great... but not designed for tournament style play) - so this has really opened up the game for me.

GAME 1 - (pic from Weight of Fire)

GAME 2

GAME 3

 

(pic from Weight of Fire)

GAME 4

(pic from Weight of Fire)

Some of my loot... in addition to this all players got two booster packs (one signed my Mark Latham the game designer)

I came 15th out of 16.... but I won the "BEST PAINTED" mug!!!
 

(pic from Weight of Fire)



Andy from the BLACKJACK LEGACY Youtube Channel was taking part in the competition, and he was live streaming on the day... Here's a link to the coverage of the top table in the final round (you can find the 1st 3 rounds plus a load of other gaming content on his youtube page)...

What a fantastic day out. Congratulations to Paul (and Daniel) for such a well organised event.  Everyone was really friendly and helpful. I learned a lot from the experience, and I can't wait for the next one!!

Scenery for DBA 3.0

DBA is played on 24" x 24" battlefield... and various bits of scenery are needed... I've been making various bits over the last few months. I've made two MDF boards - one for Desert, and one for all other battles.

 

24 x 24 MDF Board... covered with PVA glue and sand... and dry brushed with cheap tester pots of house paint...

PLOUGHED FIELDS... house filler on MDF boards covered in PVA and sand, then painted...

MARSH... polystyrene pizza base, PVA and sand... plus some resin water effect and a few basing tufts...

ROAD.... 3 x 8" straight pieces of thin MDF, PVA and sand... and painted to look like roads..

RIVER... 3 x 8" pieces of thin MDF... sand and PVA just along the edges and painted to look like a river...

A RIVER / ROAD crossing place - I made one of these 8" x 8" sections with a bridge from Leven miniatures...

WATERWAY - 2 x 12" pieces of thin MDF, with PVA and sand beach/edge...

A selection of HILLS - Pizza bases with PVA and Sand...

I made a few plain one level bases like the hills -
to put different removable items on to represent different things -
here we have a stone circle EDIFACE for the Ancient British.

WOODS with removable trees..

SCRUB - small pieces of green scouring pads chopped up and covered in PVA before painting...

A FORT for the Ancient British. Huts from Leven Miniatures... fencing from coffee stirrers.

A CITY for the Romans. Buildings from Leven Miniatures... wall and gatehouse made from thick cardboard.

A FORT for the Romans. Tents from Leven Miniatures. Coffee stirrer fences...

The Roman CAMP.

The Ancient British CAMP.

An example of the board set up and ready to play..
 

24" x 24" MDF Desert board

Desert CITY - a couple of bits from Leven Miniatures - the rest made from cardboard...

OASIS with removable trees...

ROCKY ground...

DUNES / DIFFICULT HILLS made from polystyrene pizza bases...covered in sand and PVA...

Derbyshire... morning walk above Edale...

 

 

Yesterday morning I had the day off work. I always try and get a few days to myself around my Birthday. I dropped the family off at school and work, and I was off to Derbyshire. I got out to Edale carpark for 8.45am... it was a very nice 7 mile walk up and around the hills, I only met a couple of people up there, there was some light snow on the ground and it was a bit slippery in places, but at around 4 centigrade - not too cold. Visibility got better as I got up out of the valley, but unfortunately the views were a bit limited... I was back down in Edale again a couple of hours later, and back home for lunch. A really nice morning out.