The Painted Thumb

Flames of War progress report: I finished this small unit for my Mid-War list. The CO, the 2inC and some bazooka teams for escorts. These painted up quick and easy. I chose the two-toned colors for these guys instead of the later all-green uniforms. This army will be a mixed bag of old and new uniforms. I so wish I could have done the entire list in the same colors. Perhaps, I could have two lists, one for Mid-War and another for Late-War, each with the appropriate colored shirts and trousers!  Yes! That would be the ideal solution. But, time is my enemy right now and I'd just like to get an entire list completed.   My overall progress so far. I'll flock the bases after all the painting is done to ensure a consistent style. This past weekend, my good friend Dave held a clearance sale. His intentions are to pare down his lead pile. Going forward, he plans to stick with just a few game systems that he loves playing. Dave has a huge collection of painted and unpa...

Argh!  I hate it when the spears break off of the model especially on 10mm infantry stands.  It's especially bad on the Warmaster High Elf infantry. I just can't stand looking at a gorgeous line of elf warriors and seeing an missing spear.  What's worse is these elaborate Elvish spear points are uniquely detailed and barely wider than the narrow spear shafts. My current painting project is to rehab an old GW High Elf army and most of the elf spears are bent, broken or twisted.  Efforts to fix the bent and twisted spears have resulted in only more broken spears. Ugh! I searched on Google for others who may have run into the same issue and found a single article.  This player had decided to do away with the wonky spears altogether. He cut off all the original spears and replaced them with thick sewing needles. That seemed a bit crazy! Each stand had five sharp tiny daggers pointed skyward. I would need to take extra care when handling such models. If I weren't...

This past weekend we held our Winter is Coming!  Warmaster tournament.  We held a previous tournament back in 2012 where Mark R. won the tournament with his Dark Elf army. For anyone unfamiliar with Warmaster Fantasy Battles, this is an older Games Workshop game. The armies come from the Warhammer Fantasy setting. The figures are all 10mm and represent grand battles between two division-level armies. The figures from GW are out of print but they were of high quality and look really nice on the battlefield. There are variants of the rules for historical games (Ancients and Renaissance) and there are a few games that use similar mechanics (Blitzkrieg Commander, Future War Commander) This year we had good turnout of six players.  Not bad considering the age of the Warmaster rules. The selection of armies was very good as there were only two players (Chip and his son Alec) who both brought dwarf armies. We also had a great venue in Weyland Baptist university.  There...

Wow! I've been playing lots of games from different rules systems lately.   It's been difficult trying to remember how each one is played.  There comes a time when it all seems like a blur! At last Tuesday's club night, we had a game of Ganesha's Flying Lead . It is the same rules for Song of Blades and Heroes but modified for a modern genre with firearms and explosives as the main weapons. My squad leader realizes the point man is down and so is the Medic! The flamethrower getting ready to fire up some Soviets I enjoyed this game!  The only drawback was the activation mechanics don't necessarily fit with the kind of figures I was playing. I was given two squads of 'near-future' professional soldiers (figures from the AT-43 game), which I would imagine, should have no trouble moving across an open battlefield and staying in formation. But, the rules require activation rolls to move each soldier and after a few failures, my squads were horribly sp...

Local players have decided to start playing Warmaster again.  We setup a small battle for our Tuesday night game. This match involved two players on two teams with each player bringing one army of 1000 pts. Team ' Goodness and Light ' included me and Jake.  We both fielding 1000pts of High Elves.  I brought plenty of archers, two heroes and one wizard, which was probably more command strength than necessary. Jake brought a band of eagles and bolt throwers followed by lots of Silverhelms. Team ' Darkness and Stink ' included Dave with a Chaos army and Tony with Orcs, Goblins, and a Giant! The battle started with the elves successfully passing all the command rolls while the enemy struggled to get their units moving.  Jake sent the eagles around the right flank while the Silverhelms pushed the center.  Tony's night goblins and black orcs moved up to meet the elf cavalry. The Orcs an Gobbos were outmatched against four units of Silverhelms.  They w...

We held another Warmaster Game Day this past week. The AAR will be done by our guest poster DaBaron Aaron .  I've added some photos from the game. Quote from Da Baron: Warmaster was a blast on Sat. Leroux, Dave  Beeson and myself showed up and Dave took the side of Chaos and Leroux and I joined up to command the High Elves, 2000 pts split between the two of us, vs Daves 2000 pts of Chaos. I took most of the foot troops and Leroux took all the fast stuff and the flyers. Blake helped out while he was there - we set the forces up "double blind" with a board hiding the setup of both sides. The game came down to 2 Chaos charges, one with the Chaos mounted slamming into the High Elf mounted, and the Chaos Warriors attempting to break a block of High Elf infantry. The Chaos Chariots took care of a unit of Silver Helms, and whittled two more units down, but lost a unit of Chariots in the process, with the attack finally stalling. The Warriors, however, managed to...