25mm Wild West Stagecoach for What a Cowboy games

This is a 3d print kit off ebay, really nice model. Paints up easily, and big thanks to Steve K for doing the basing, and the reins, which finish off the whole thing.

Finally giving the new Warhammer Underworlds a try

Tonight we had a game of Underworlds at the club. We took it nice and easy and used the Embergard warbands from the box and took it nice and slowly. I liked the new format and the distinct amount of table clutter was reduced (which was nice). As far as game night games go, it makes a lovely addition to the list of played games. Being nice and simple to set-up, play (mostly) and a 5 minute tidy up time being big bonuses.

P.S Zikkit won 10-6

How to build a Mordheim board (and in a lot of ways, how NOT to build a Mordheim board)

*starts by blowing the dust off of the blog site and checks it still works (just 😬)

So, as the title suggests we've gone a bit Mordheim crazy down at the club. We're hoping to start a campaign in January 2026 and we've all had our paints out to slap some colour on our warbands. We've even gone as far as to make an entire board and terrain (mainly thanks to Ray) to play on, we even made a trip to FIASCO in Leeds for a demo game with it. Hurrah we said (insert picture of table, not the hurrah).

After the congratulations and well deserved back slapping had lapsed a rather grim thought reared it's ugly head. Will we not need multiple boards to play a fun, yet efficient campaign? The answer dear viewer is "yes" and we tried to think long and hard about cases for the answer not to be yes, but alas we failed. This now means we need to knock out at least 2 more boards and the use of blogger seems a good way of doing it, whilst tracking our progress. So sit back and let me tell you a story about how I'd go about building a board for Mordheim (or other tabletop game for that matter). Some of the practices you're about to see have never seen a Health and Safety audit or in some cases common sense.....so don't blame me if they don't work 😉 

I'm using 50mm deep, 1200mm long and 600mm wide XPS foam for my boards. I like XPS for it's ability to hold texture more than anything and I find it reasonably strong in most cases.

My plan is to texture the boards with a generic cobblestone pattern with two rollers I picked up from Mirfield Miniatures a while back. The rollers work really well, but a note of caution is to wear some work gloves while you roll them. You have to press down pretty hard to get a deep enough texture, hard enough to bruise your palm as I found out 😆

Once I'd textured the boards I chose to both prime and strength them. Using skills I'd picked up in primary school and using cheap toilet paper, ironically found only in school toilets for some reason, I proceeded to papier-mâchè the boards. I split the toilet paper down in to single ply sheets in avoid obscuring the imprinted detail. The glue mix is roughly a third of each PVA, Black Primer with added green and blue craft paint and water. It was then time for a big ol' brush and some year 4 creativity! A side note on drying times and seasonal weather. Huddersfield in October probably isn't an ideal time to try this type of thing in your garage, it really slows the drying time down. Hopefully the next post will show how the boards have fared.

Until next time,

Cheers.

25mm Cowboy Gang: "The Blues Brothers"

 

***STOP**PRESS*** Union Army forces Confederate Army off ridge to win game ACW

 The Union and Confederate forces clashed to take control of a ridge between their two armies.

Although equal in size, the Union force was mostly 'green' and was outnumbered by the Reb shock cavalry.

The Union cavalry were eventually forced off the table, but succeeded in their mission to draw the Reb cavalry away from the main objective, that of taking and keeping the ridge.

The Reb infantry occupied the ridge first, as it was closer to their base edge, but in the last move of the game the Union infantry did their job against all the odds and secured the ridge, leading to a Union victory (based upon taking the ridge objective, not the amount of troops lost).

Wars of the Roses Club Demo Game at Fiasco 2023

 A successful War of the Roses club demo game put on at Fiasco 2023 at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. Congratulations to all those involved in managing the project, supplying and painting units, and building the terrain. Fingers crossed for a new club member (or two).

ACW 28mm Game using simpler-faster rules from Osprey.

 Steve, Ray and Bob set up an ACW 28mm game with roughly equal sides facing each other, although with differing troop compositions. Ian, Norman and Guy joined in too.

The Osprey rules are pretty simple and fun to play (if you activate your battalions).

The Rebs went on the attack immediately, sending in their two regiments of shock cavalry to destroy a Union artillery piece before it got a chance to fire, and also taking out an infantry battalion. Both cavalry units were shot into retreat, but they'd done their job.

The two sides' infantry faced-off and commenced firing, pretty much even-Stevens in the Union centre and right flank, but the Rebs fell back on the Union left flank.

Overall a marginal Union victory. 

Look forward to another game soon. Thanks to Bob for the photos.

A trip to the "Darkside" (which turns out is a lot of fun!)

So I had the pleasure of going to Warhammerfest-2023 over the last weekend and seeing some of the world's best painters work up close and personal in the Golden Demon cabinets. There was some absolutely mind blowing stuff in those cabinets, and some very talented people to talk to. Everyone was really happy to stand and chat about their experiences in the build up to the event and discuss how they had gone about their projects. I think the overriding thing that stayed with me from the weekend was the community and openness to celebrate our niche little hobby, I would recommend it to anyone.

I also entered Golden Demon and came away with a finalist pin, which I was ecstatic about. I came away forming ideas for next years competition. I best put a picture up hadn't I.

Completion of WOTR Bow and Bill unit

 Both bow and bill figures are completed, should have the artillery stand done shortly.

Club demo game for 2023 'War of the Roses' initial games for learning the rules

Our club moves forward with this year's planned demo game from the War of the Roses, using new to us rules called 'Never Mind The Billhooks', we set off playing simple scenarios until we're all conversant with this set of rules. 

 

More speed painting refinement

Today I put the speed painting process to the batch painting challenge. I tried to paint the remaining 5 bow men as quickly as possible and it took just under 4 hours. Add in the other bow man from last night we end up with 6 miniatures in 5 hours or 50 minutes per figure. That said doing all six at once would of saved at least 30 minutes and if I stopped looking for videos on YouTube and making cups of coffee, I reckon another 30 minutes would of been saved. Splitting that difference I think it's fair to say each figure will take 45 minutes to paint. I've not added in for building, priming and basing as each one will be done in bulk and probably take a full day for each (or a good portion). So these are the results for my 45 minute bowmen.

On mass I think they'll look pretty effective and will look very unified when all based up.

A foray into simple speed painting and the War of the Roses

I made the first tentative steps into trying to understand and refine a speedy painting process for our War of the Roses demo game.  Below are the results of a Yorkist archer (28mm Perry miniatures). Total paint time of about an hour, 8 paints and two washes. There's a argument that you could do it with only one wash and lose one of the three neutral colours. The red and blue make for the most detailed and time consuming part which is to be expected. If they were to be batch painted and with some sense of repetition, I'm pretty sure they could be done at 30 minutes a figure. Over the coming week I'll have a few more goes at refining the techniques required and stream lining the whole process. I shall return with those results.

First contact! Stargrave

A few pictures of last night's game of Stargrave. As it was the first game we stuck to the very base mechanics and we'll add the more complex features as we progress. Great fun was had and unusually for a new game, we all seemed to agree that it was a good ruleset and something to be added to the game rotation at the club.