Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Home Alone, Aliens and Cake

Today myself and the small (my two youngest) went to Mareel to watch Home Alone on the big screen, they loved it. The actual high point for me was when a small child legged it onto the stage and ran backwards and forwards avoiding the angry parent 😂

After that we went to the club and the people that said they wanted to play Aliens failed to show so my youngest and I had a game. He ran the squad of Marines and I played the Xenomorphs. He managed to rescue all five scientists and escape the ship before the reactor went critical. He also managed to take out 15 of my nasties without losing a single man.

So onto home and as it is my school Christmas play tomorrow I needed to bake.

Flapjacks and Rocky Roads should show willing. I also remembered a raffle prize and flowers for the two people who helped me and the kids with it.

Today was photo competition day at the Sunday club, I wasn’t going to bother as in all honesty I paint for me, but a few people persuaded me to enter stuff. One set of Sci fi and a sci fi single…

One set of fantasy and a single

I entered to show willing. Not sure what the voting is like and when, but I will keep you posted.

Won’t have much time to do anything tomorrow as ai probably won’t be in until gone 10pm. But I might throw some paint on Harry or Ron to help my daughter out.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Hogwarts Mayhem

My daughter and I had a bash at making a Start on the Harry Potter Miniatures.

Somehow I had to do Hermione and she had a couple of Death Eaters. It’s a pretty naff photo but they have a dark purple top and will all have black cloaks. The Contrast paint is ideal fit her as she is able to get stuff painted and shaded all in one go. I decided to add white to the grey undercoat on the Baddies to add a highlight to the black cloaks.

I also had a quick test on a Hussar horse. The blue has helped me as I have now decided on colours for them…

Uniform jacket will be the same as the saddle cloth with the pelise likewise. I will probably go black fur on it too. Shako will be black with a blue top. I was thinking grey breeches with black boots.

Tomorrow Morning I evidently have to paint Ron and Harry, all before 11.00 am. Taking the youngest two to see the original home alone film tomorrow and then off to the club to play Aliens.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

Ostarian Hussars…Slapping the Paint About

Tonight I got a bit done on these…

I got them sprayed white and then made a start on the horses.

I decided that they would all be bays, as there are a lot of bay horses out there, I thought why not.

As you can see, not a huge amount done, but a start is a start.

My eldest daughter turned 14 today and as she likes gaming (she gets miffed when we don’t go to the wargames club) and Harry Potter, We got her this for her birthday present…

The miniatures are rather spiffy…

However I think Hermione looks a bit possessed in this pose! You get, Harry, Ron and Hermione as well as four Death Eaters and a big spider and three spider swarms, not to mention lots of cards, spells, potions, objective cards and all sorts of tokens too.

She did want everything painted by the club time this Sunday, I know I can be fast, but there is a limit. The Death Eaters will be ideal for her to paint with Contrast paints… tomorrow I spray them all white and then we can make a start.

Voice is still shot, which was a bit awkward teaching today and answering the phone was an absolute hoot!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 1 Comment

Ostarian Hussars… Making a Start

Just can’t be bothered to do the teeny hounds, so decided on some more Flintloque miniatures. This time I am going for half a dozen Ostarian Hussars armed with lances.

Again these are some lovely miniatures that I have had for a good old while. I have a real liking for the dog miniatures, of which I have a few.

I will have to get some bigger bases in the long run, but at least these will give me something to hang onto whilst I paint things.

I will get them sprayed white tomorrow and take it from there.

Tonight my voice has totally gone, I mean gone to the point where no sounds are coming out, but to be fair it will stop my kids hearing my bad language as the election results start to come in.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 10 Comments

Undead Guard Hussars… All Done

Tonight I decided enough was enough and got the bases done on these. They are finished now, with only a varnish layer or two and some dilute PVA on the bases.

I decided on a different approach to applying the flock to the bases.

I went for superglue…. This was for two reasons, one I didn’t have enough PVA inside the house and secondly the winds were up to 65mph and the rain drops were the size of marbles and the rest of the PVA was in the bottom shed.

I have never tried superglue as a basing glue before so who knows what it is going to look like in the long run.

Anyway the stuff has stuck, so here are another couple of photos from different angles…

And finally from the lance side…

You can just about see the sheepskin on the nearest one. It really has made them stable.

As I said in an earlier post I have missed off the wings and made these terrestrial cavalry.

I really do like the red on these, definitely different to most of the rest of the undead forces.

As I enjoyed painting these the. I might just have to make a start on the Ostarian Hussars. I am still miffed with the hellhounds (childish I know) but right now I really cannot be bothered to paint them.

I was thinking about it today and I have never seen a manufacturer photograph of the hounds near any other miniatures in the range. Scale creep is a thing, but this is the first time I have seen scale creep getting smaller.

Tomorrow I might get the doggies out and make a start on them.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 8 Comments

Predator Puppies and some Painting

So at last my Predator hounds came today. I excitedly opened them to find that I have been sent puppies that I need grow to make them into fully fledged hounds.

They are bloody tiny! So to make sure I hadn’t imagined it I just watched the scene on YouTube and although there is no direct comparison next to a human, they definitely look bigger on the screen.

Have a look and see what you think…

So to make sure it wasn’t the tall predator making them look small I put them next to a Wey Yu Commando…

Nope they still look small, both are in rearing poses so they look quite tall when stood on boxes etc.

As there is a dead Wey a Yu Commando on the base I thought I would compare him. I reckon Wey Yu are accepting child soldiers into the elite…

Just look at the difference between the two hands. The unpainted one is closer to the camera.

I managed to just about compare two heads, apologies for the naff photo, the Ipad was struggling.

I reckon there is near enough a 50% difference between the two.

All in all I am somewhat disappointed in these… I hadn’t realised that when I got them for half the average price that they would be half size! The only reason I got them is because they were cheap!

On a more positive note…

I finished the Hussars and the bases on the commandos.

Tomorrow I will clean up the hounds and get them painted, not that I want to, as they are evidently hunt chihuahua. Luckily they don’t appear in my Aliens RPG… knowing my players they would want to pet them and snuggle them.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

Aliens…Civilians

Well I just walked through the door 10 minutes ago. My plans for a sneaky painting session came to nothing as after my two youngest’s play, which was very funny .

I ended up being taxi for Eldest and Eldest’s friend. Not got a problem with that, but it was originally going to be my good lady doing the run, but as it was getting icy,. she asked me. Friend lived 15 miles beyond my house hence the late getting in…Therefore I haven’t the urge to paint anything. So instead I spent my 10 minutes hunting down some civilians in a brown box (which turned out to be white).

I got these a couple of years ago for an Aliens RPG using Savage Worlds. To be honest they are a teeny bit small(You can see the size compared to bishop), but they make some nice civilian scientists and security…Something the Wey Yu Commando might need to escort. This lot come from some Star Wars Game, apart from the winged beasties which are some kind of Heroclix monster. They were all really cheap, somewhere between 20p and 40p each. They will potentially get rebased sometime in the future.

Regarding the RPG

Having read the rules again last night a player doesn’t need to beat a score, they just need to roll at least one six.

So with a strength of 4 and stamina of 4 the player rolls 8 dice. If they get a six they succeed, any other sixes are bonuses and allows them to undertake stunts – basically bonuses based on their skill.

If they got no sixes they could push the roll, in other words roll all 8 again, but would then need to add one to their stress level and then roll a number of stress dice equal to their stress level.

Other players can lend a hand in a task, each giving one extra dice.

Group rolls are just that, one person makes the roll, with up to three others helping. Only one roll is made, not one from each player. Sneaking in a group is harsh… the player with the lowest rating makes the roll alone, which is, in reality, quite realistic.

The one thing it is very clear about in the game is that failure is failure, you don’t get another roll. You have to find another way.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

Unclean, Unclean

So today has mostly been spent in bed, with odd foray to the bathroom or kitchen. I slept until 13.45 and have somehow managed 1200 steps on my fit bit.

Luckily the 3D Printer was nearby, so it hasn’t been totally unproductive day.

Five done with the sixth on the way. These are going to be Christmas gifts for my class.

I also spent this afternoon reading the rules for this…

I am getting the hang of them apart from the unskilled roll rule…

As soon as I copied this it made sense… each skill is based on an attribute… so strength attribute has close combat, heavy machinery and stamina as skills. You have 14 attribute points to spend between 4 attributes and then 10 skill points to share between 12 skills. In the game you add base attribute and then skill level. This gives you the number of D6 you roll. So if you don’t have the skill you are reduced to the attribute alone.You are allowed to push you luck by rolling stress dice based on your stress level. This increases the the likelihood of succeeding, but also rolling one’s which is bad. Up side is you don’t need to roll a dice for mundane things. Field stripping an M41A prior to a drop is easy, doing the same thing whilst the barricades are being overrun by Xenomorphs is a totally different thing.

Having read a bit more, further into the book each time you roll a dice you add the stress level dice too, getting a one means there is chance that your character panics. The system here is add a d6 score to the stress level and read off the chart. This runs from no effect up to catatonic. Mostly this only lasts for a single round, but if the score is high enough then the results can permanent.

Reading the pre generated game (cinematic) chances of survival for the players is pretty slim! It starts off on a small moon LV-426 in the terraforming facility of Hadley’s hope… whatever can possibly go wrong!

I cracked open the card pack too

There are:

22 weapon cards,

20 Character cards,

3 vehicle cards

10 initiative cards.

The weapon cards do have multiples so a number of repeats in there. There seem to be 20 separate characters who are used in the 2 published adventure modules, but are also useful as NPC’s

Three vehicles are the Cheyenne dropship, the Apc and the Daihotai 8×8 civilian tractor.

The initiative cards are simply numbered 1-10 so you can see what order people go in.

I am toying with the idea of printing the troop APC as well as some civilian vehicles. I have some civilian ones already downloaded from Thingiverse and RPG now, these were going to be for Starship Troopers so useful for both…

The other thing I have already is a shuttle craft..civilian, but still something useful for both games…

Tomorrow is my two youngest children’s Christmas play, with my eldest having a bean feast soirée. Not sure how much I will get tomorrow.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

Undead Hussars…Almost Done

I managed to get some more done on these tonight.

I decided that one needed to be an officer, so one of the two with a sword got silver metalwork to show the difference.

A bit of tidying up and horse metalwork to do, along with the bases.

But this is what they look like so far….

I am going to try and get them all finished tomorrow.

Sadly my hounds didn’t turn up today, so not sure what I will paint next.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 8 Comments

Hussars…First one Finished

Huzzah! Progress has been made on the Hussars (sorry couldn’t help myself…overdosed on cold and flu plus).

But tonight before tea I managed to get some work done on both the horses and one of the riders.

The horses are pretty much all done apart from the metalwork on the bridles.

This handsome chippy is just about done too…

Still the base to do, but on the whole I am happy with how he looks. The rest of the riders only have their cloaks done so a fair old bit to do to get them finished.

As am still feeling ropey I am typing this from my bed. Me in bed by 20.00 hours totally unheard of 😂.

Hopefully I can get some more done in these tomorrow as I can enter them in a painting competition at the club. Not really one for competitions but I am trying to show willing as a new club member. Not to mention the fact that the Predator hounds should be here tomorrow.