Gears of War the board game via skype

Well last night I played a game of GOW via Skype with some mate that live 4 hours away in Bundaberg.  We used 2 boards and John sets up the board and I copy his layout.  He then controls the cards etc (it is easier for him to do this as his tablet has front and back cameras so it makes it easier for me to see what cards I have ‘drawn’ without the others seeing them).  Basically John will draw my cards and then he holds it up to the camera and I just look through my deck for the appropriate card/s.

Anyway we had 4 players: John was Baird, James was Marcus, Adam was Dom and I was Cole ‘'the Cole Train’.  I have labelled my minis with the first letter of the figures name (hopefully I have them correct as my only criticism of the game as that the COG minis can be hard to tell apart, mainly Cole and Dom).

We played for about 4 hours and played the mission – The belly of the beast.  We needed to explore 3 levels and if we completed it we would then set off a bomb that would scan the tunnel system.  Anyway as it turned out after 4 hours and midnight approaching we had only managed to explore into the second level.  We were discussing wether we would ‘save’ the game but due to the ‘xbox crashing’, we didn’t save (we needed my table for family dinners etc and John’s table would be needed for next week for when we play a Rally Round the King game when I am back in Bundy for the weekend.)

The highlights of the game were that once again I ran out of ammo and was never able to replenish any as Baird tended to ‘hog’ all the ammo, the group being stuck in the first 2 board sections for a ridiculously long time as Locusts spawned continuously from a continuing appearance of emergence holes and the death corridor of level 2.

Anyway on to some photos.  In the first photo you can see my tablet with the map in Bundaberg.  We are currently on level 1.

Another closer photo of Skype.

 

We now manage to clear a path to the 3rd board section.

Next up is Baird being attacked by a Theron Guard and going down to an absolutely horrible die roll (next photo).

The Theron managed to roll 7/8 possible hits with Baird only being able to roll 1 defence die.

The next photo shows Dom making a break for the door (at the beginning of his turn the board was empty and in his locust activation 6 lambent wretches spawned).

We have made our way up and like all good horror movies, I open the door for level 2 before we have cleared the section we are on.

This next photo shows Cole going down from shots from Drones at the other end of the corridor of death.  These drones are visible on the left hand side of the above photo.

Drones POV

This is how the game ended, Baird and Dom down (again due to the corridor and open LOS) with Cole preparing to make a run for the troika that Dom was going to use before he was bleeding out and our fearless (or more to the point fearful) leader Marcus hiding at the back.

All in all a great game.  I really do like how this game captures the feel of the Xbox game with intelligent locust AI that reflects the game.

Latest editions to my British

I have now managed to finish the full unit of cavalry (4 bases and still have 1 unit to go) and the foot artillery for my Napoleon at War British army.  My British and French infantry boxes arrived today and the British have been based, ready to undercoat.  I intend to buy 1 more British infantry box and horse artillery when I can and this will give me a good start on an army.

I will probably base up the French but not sure when I will paint  them, as this will allow me to play my Napoleonic version of Rally Round the King.  I have managed to get up some basic rules that will allow me to have a test game soon.  I have used the cunning name of Rally Round Napoleon as my working title.

An way on to some photos.

Enjoy and happy new year all.

My final, final post for 2011

I forgot to add in my photos of my eagle riders (also from Splintered Light), so these should have been included in the previous post.

My final post for 2011

Well another year nearly over and I have a few new miniatures etc that I have managed to finish in the last couple of days.  I have started to paint up my British forces for use in Napoleon at War, Lasalle and my eventual home brew of a Nap version of Rally Round the King and my wood elf army has had some new additions as well.  Unfortunately my last decent brush has now died so painting has stalled.

Any way on to the pictures:

The first are some new 15mm hulk pieces, mainly more corridors, a room and some x-roads again with the alien hive on some of them.  I have combined the pieces when I took the photos so the below will show all the current pieces.

The next photos are of my Wood Elf Cavalry from Splintered Light miniatures.  They give the option of having the elves ride horses or elks, so this time I thought that I would go for something different and go with the Elks.

The last set of photos are of my British cavalry.  I only have 2 out of the 8 bases painted.

Well that concludes tonight’s presentation and I hope that everyone has a great 2012.

More 15mm scenery

Having started work at a PCYC vacation centre (during the school holidays), the last 2 weeks have just disappeared.  I went from working 24hrs for the fortnight up to 75+ hours so I have had very little enthusiasm to do anything but now that I have some holidays, I thought I would post up some scenery that I have been working on (unfortunately no gaming so far) and just haven’t had a chance to post up.

The first series of photos are my 15mm hulk/base.  I have purchased a large force of Khurasan Space demons so I can use them to play alien hulk with them.  I was hoping that my order would have arrived before Christmas but Santa must have placed them at the bottom of his sack.  I have also taken the opportunity to increase my Felid army as well so I will post photos when they arrive.

I will at some point paint more details on the consoles etc.

The second are bases that I have made up for Lasalle (15mm Napoleonic game) and will be used as town bases.  I like them so much they will probably be my default town pieces for most games.  They are 4inches (10cm) square.

Apologies for the crappy photos but the living room has way to many lights and no matter how I try,, I can’t remove the shadows.  I have started to add alien hive to the pieces and will also place it on the space demons’ bases.  This was inspired by the bases the Mr. Bug Man has used on his bases.

Here are a couple of comparison shots of my 15mm and 28mm hulk pieces.  The 28mm piece in the photo is not yet fully painted.

While I really like the larger versions, the smaller one is quicker and simpler to make, so I will end up making the official Space Hulk version (see earlier posts) as well as the 15mm version.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas too you all.

Return of the forgotten project

It has been nearly 2 years since I worked on my Space Hulk project.  I managed to make and paint enough sections to play the first mission with and then moved on to other projects.  As I haven’t been able to get the time in to play my first game of Rally Round the King, I have been able to revisit this project while some renewed enthusiasm hit.  Unfortunately I have run out of hydrocal so it cannot go any further until I get some more.

Before I ran out though, I have managed to make enough pieces to make up floor pieces for the latest edition of the game as well as having enough industrial and pipe pieces to edge the board sections.  I have managed to make up a number of complete sections mainly t-intersections and other corridor pieces  but I have also managed to make up all but 2 of the rooms.

Here are some photos of a couple of the rooms that have been built and painted.

The first room is my version of the 4 x 3 room.  I have designed it as a teleporter room and you can see the two teleporting pads.

This picture is obviously the completed picture and then a close up of the energy cells.

This is first time that I have tried to paint this sort of effect.  Not too bad for a first attempt.

This next room I have made 2 of the walls as barricades as I envisage that the room is larger and that some unknown defenders hastily built up these barricades to help defend themselves.  You can see 3 sentry guns that were also used in the defence.

Enjoy