Does your mother stitch?

Malcolm had seen it all before.

Once he sounded his horn the war band rushed forward to engage the enemy. Conn & Diarmuid had applied the body paint and would soon be wailing on some unsuspecting Roman. Finn had taken on the leadership duties and his stature encouraged him to use the double handed axe, his favorite toy. Fergal was more traditionally equipped and Fiacha was deploying his usual 'Does your mother stitch?' tactic.

Fiacha lowers his body position and charges forward. The confused opponent not sure how to defend would move his shield to the side expecting a crazy slash from his sword but at the last minute would find himself impaled on Fiacha's helmet.

'Stitch that!!' would be the shout.

Hail hail the Celts are here

And so it was that the word got out ...... some short arsed, pizza eating, ice cream licking, garlic smelling premadonnas were in town. The boys put on some colour and came down from the hills.....

'Hail, hail the celts are here, what the hell do we care, what the hell do we care'

The druids spoke to the winds and called for the aid of the gods. The Morrigan roused and cast her gaze to earth. A flock of crows gathered in the trees their cries loud for all to here.

The Morrigan was here and there could only be one outcome!!

The Spartans are coming

I enjoyed assembling the Salute 'give away' model. He has some excellent detail. I thought he looked a bit lonely on the painting tray and so went online to find him some buddies.

They turned up yesterday.

He has his own gang now :-)

The models seem to suit him fairly well and I have not had problems fitting the weapons which seems common with the 28mm stuff I have had to date.

I need to choose a colour scheme and I am wondering if my green stuff skills would be good enough to try and mould the rams head onto the shield. Emmm.

Salute 2013

We visited Salute 2013 at the weekend and it was really great. So much variety and the really large crowd appeared to be spending lots of money. Great for the hobby.

As part of the handout pack we received a 28mm model with 2 possible assemblies. Earlier in the week I assembled mine (didn't look at the pictures or the instructions obviously) and this resulted. I think we can call it the third way.

I really liked it, but I had lots of bits left over. Yesterday I went to the car and took out the magazine that came with the pack and a very different assembly emerged.

I had missed putting the head under the mask and didn't realise that the figure should be standing on statue.

Its funny what happens when you actually consult the instructions. My DIY has always had similar problems ;-)

Tribesmen of Germania

So I have had a look around to get some inspiration for the painting.

This seems to be the direction that should be taken. I think they look good. I like the bright colours and the use of stripes is cool.

After a few hours this is how my guys are looking. Still plenty to do - but coming along nicely.

Something New!!

The Dark Templar is visiting this weekend and has a 'new and secret' project that he is working on.

In preparation I was required to delve into the world of 28mm models and so I have made my purchase and they arrived yesterday afternoon. Germanic Tribesmen.

OMG - have my fingers suddenly grown or could it be that they are soooo small!! How does anyone work at this scale. Just assembling them was scary.

I purchased 8 metal figures from Warlord Games. I am short 4 shields so I will work on the 4 that are complete with a view to having them to a playing standard for tomorrow. I have just assembled and based them. Waiting on the glue to dry and then I can base coat. I have a few hours of painting ahead of me and then I will be ready.

I am excited to learn of the 'new and secret' project - what can the Dark Templar be up to? Check out his recent activity for more clues the-dark-templar

Star Wars X-wing

A great afternoon yesterday and an introduction to a new game X-wing. Thank you Dark Templar.

It was really good fun. We played a few games in short, dynamic bursts. It really is all action, easy to get your head around and packed full of good 'gaming' moments.

We played Luke Skywalker v's a couple of imperial fighters. The field of vision is the 2 lines at 45 degrees on the base - red for Luke and green for the imperial fighters.

The game is very much about trying to predict your opponents move and getting into a great position to shoot. Here the 2 imperial Tie-fighters have got into a great position behind Luke. You can only fire in front so in this situation both imperial fighters are firing away and Luke is dodging and weaving like crazy.

Another example of an ambush and this time the Tie-fighters had stayed together. You get bonus for being up close i.e. an additional attack. Shouts of 'use the force Luke' seemed to help the dice ;-)

Here Luke has got a good position and has avoided the line of sight of the first fighter and has got sufficiently close to get the additional attack. Luke will be attracting shots from the second fighter but not at close range.

We had a fab afternoon and there is much more to the game than the basic version that we played. Looking forward to figuring it all out - and not a paint brush in sight!!