Horrendous Gaming

  It’s all about Swashbuckling Pirates today.  Above is the Harbour scene getting ready for a game.  Most of this is of course re-used from my Guards of Traitor’s Toll stuff.  The jetty is foam board with individual cardboard planks stuck on and dowel cut for the pilings. Simple but quite effective I think. I’ve also finished the rest of the Ghost Archipelago Crew kit.  I used the North Star conversion kit too for the tricorns, pistols and the blunderbuss. I was going to comment about how useful that was on their Facebook group but I noticed this morning that it’s no longer available! These will be thugs, guards, and another pirate crew. Oh and here’s the cover art.  The rules will be released on Wargame Vault around the end of the month.

  While I was waiting for my pirates to arrive I went through my leftovers to find things to do.  Then the pirate order arrived (thanks North Star for getting them out just before your move) so I moved over to that crew, but after that, as well as the remaining metal pirates, I got the other stuff finished. So above we have some Oathmark Dwarves.  When I was making Post Apocalypse figures with improvised weapons from Stargrave kits, I found a note by North Star suggesting the use of tools off the dwarf light infantry sprues.  I bought a single sprue from Wargames Emporium but of course there were five bodies and plenty of other arms.  So five random dwarves, including one as a civilian for Guards of Traitor’s Toll. Also in my spares box with that sprue was some leftover Orc Heavies bodies, and in Protect and Survive I have the concept of “scrap armour”.  Orc bodies, Stargrave arms and heads, perfect! Then back to the pirates.  The metal figures came in...

  I’ve started on my own crew for Plunder and Fighting.  I bought a mix of Copplestone, Artizan and Ghost Archipelago figures and am very pleased at how well they go together.  So the 10 character Pirate Crew are done, Adversaries and Bystanders in progress. Meanwhile, Game 4 of the Protect and Survive campaign is added to that page, here’s one of the photos.

  Game 2 of my Protect and Survive campaign is now posted to that page.  A pack of six big cats chased some people over the bridge and the Response Team had to go and deal with them.  Two of the team took a mauling, they broke another weapon, and they gained nothing at all.  Oh and they lost one of the civilians too, so not what you would call a resounding success! In the meantime as I’ve used 0200 Hours British as my Response Team, I painted up some 0200  Hours Germans as a Warlord and their Militia troops. I have also finished editing the game rules and am all set to publish, though probably waiting until next week. Plus, having been distracted for long enough, I’m all set up now for the Guards of Traitor’s Toll Mission 2.   Hope everyone else is having a good week.

  I’m building up my terrain for my Post Apocalypse games, starting with more woodland, hills and associated scatter Then moved on to ruins and some ‘urban’ scatter. I also finally got around to finishing these Black Knight tanners as a little side job after the sci fi minis and before more post apocalypse.

  Just about to kick off a full 15 turn campaign of Protect and Survive, which has its own page ( Protect and Survive ) to  tell the story, but meanwhile I’ve been kept busy populating the Space Station. The process for creating all the walls I need is in hand.  Here’s the way I set up the Crew Quarters for my first playtest followed by how it looks now. It definitely needed some walls.  I’m going to use cardboard ‘plates’ like the floor ‘tiles’ to give them a bit more interest.   I also used cardboard stuck to xps foam and spray painted to create a whole load of beds, cabinets, etc. for scatter.  Even some old tube top desiccant holders got the metallic spray treatment.  Bottom right below shows the two vending machines before painting further, and a finished one can be found in the photo above if you feel like playing “Where’s Wally”. The futuristic cargo containers are Headbunny Games again. I’ve finished the last of the Stargrave Scavengers sprues ...

Yesterday was officially my last day in my day job, so today I celebrated by publishing Call Security! up to Wargame Vault.  As I am a new publisher it might take a few days to clear, but it is done.  Life in early retirement will take a little getting used to, but thanks to my return to the hobby I feel like it’s going to be fine.  Certainly have plenty of projects in mind to keep me busy.  That said, here’s some progress updates: 1. Space Station build I felt like the board needed walls to define the layout properly and be clear about line of sight.  It also needs to be really flexible, so they need to be thick enough to be free-standing.  Continuing my work with recycling packing materials, I rigged up a jig for my hot wire cutter and hey presto. The old Space Hulk doors are in slots so I can pull them out when the door is open. I’m planning to leave the backs of rooms open for easier access.  Here’s a full layout for the VIP quarters. Next up will ...

  Next up as Adversaries for Call Security! are two sprues worth of the new Stargrave Automatons, looking very menacing.  Meanwhile, playtesting has moved on from Space to Post Apocalypse.  Our heroes are a Response Team outfitted from a stash of military gear they found.  The Bystanders in this mission are farmers who provide the community with some much needed fresh food, so definitely worth protecting from whatever is coming down the table at them. Playtesting in another setting should let me iron out any final wrinkles in the combat mechanics.  Working out how to explain the deployment of all the various things on the table proved more challenging than in a Space Station, so need to toy with that a bit, but on the whole it seems to hang together. I’m happy that I’ve made the second game feel different from the first despite all the mechanics for the actual battles being the same.  Every game is of course stand alone but I hope people will appreciate bei...

    Continuing on with the various Stargrave figures for Call Security!  Above are the Mercenary I and Mercenary II bodies with alternative heads from the Troopers, to represent an alien military unit. Below are another five Crew bodies, this time with melee weapons, and the two metal Psionic characters because I needed one for a special character and they are both great figures. The game itself is close to finished, publishing on August 1st is the current plan. I don’t need any further playtesting of that one, but the second game is almost ready for someone to start kicking the tires, so if anyone is interested, ping me an email (details here -  https://horrendousgaming.blogspot.com/p/horrendous-gamings-solo-tabletop.html ). As Post apocalyptic covers a variety of settings I should note that the inspiration here is more aligned with the idea of humans struggling to rebuild some measure of civilization against the horrors the apocalypse has brought. When I think post...

  There is now a complete draft of the Call Security! game, and in the rules there are Bystanders that serve to block line of sight while moving randomly.  So here’s another  set of figures created from Stargrave sprues.  The bodies are Scavengers, the heads and arms are random as I wanted all aliens and no weapons, so I picked what took my fancy off all the sprues. The pastel colours should also help visually during a game. I’ve also gone through the scatter I got from Headbunny, well the little stuff anyway. The game calls for markers until the badguys are actually spotted, and I’m hoping to encourage people to just knock stuff up, so these are just 25mm round bases with a simple paint job. Meanwhile I’ve continued creating the floor tiles I’m using for the space station and should have a good spread for most of the 10 sectors that battles will take place in by the end of the week. I’m dithering over walls and doors.

  A quick shout out to Wargames Emporium -  https://www.wargamesemporium.co.uk/   - and Headbunny Games -  https://headbunny.games/   - both based in the UK. The former do plastics by the Sprue, which really works for me.  For example, this squad of Security Officers are from two sprues of Stargrave Troopers.  I also got two of Crew 1, one of Crew 2, one each of the two Mercenary sprues and two of the new Automatons.  Those with the two full box sets of Scavenger 1 and 2 provide all I need for Call Security.   The latter do those lovely bases that I think work really well for this.  They also do sci-fi terrain and some fun robots, all of which is currently on the workbench.

  I’m going to ramble a bit I’m afraid, so here’s some pictures, feel free to stop reading after the sheep.  For Christmas I got this lovely pastoral set of 3D prints that I got around to painting as therapy while my brain was churning on the other stuff, hence the sheep. I also finished some more terrain pieces for post apocalypse.  The walls are printed card over foamboard again.  Renedra oil drums again.  And a fun kit of stuff for the tires. I also knocked this guy up from a Traitor’s Toll guard and an 0200 hours guard dog. You know how much I love playing with plastic kits, so the Stargrave Scavengers boxes 1 and 2 I got for my birthday have had 1 sprue from each turned into Nomads for 5Klicks. And finally … sheep! So what had me churning so much that I felt painting sheep was a good idea?  I was thinking through the different campaigns I have on the go at the moment and wondering why I wasn’t getting excited about which game to put on the table next. ...