Blackthorn's World of Adventure
A small blog discussing my adventures in gaming.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Werewolves and Vampires, Oh My!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Mysterious German U-Boat
I found a cool website (http://www.uboataces.com/) that lists a whole bunch of information about various U-Boats used during WWII, but I couldn't find any pictures of anything that resembled my boat. After a failed trip to the library and multiple failed online searches, I did what I had to do and turned to my gaming buds for help. John happily found a picture of the iconic WWII U-Boat, completely missing that mine resembled nothing like the picture. The rest of the group came up empty, when my main black belt search-fu master Nils came up with a picture from the original manufacturer of the sub (http://www.brigadegames.com/U-Boat-waterline-submarine-model--156_p_1689.html). She's a WWI sub. Doh! No wonder I was coming up empty. I was stuck looking for a WWII U-Boat.
Looking at the picture from Brigade Games, I noticed that there model has a deck gun. Feeling lucky, I sent them an email asking if I could purchase the deck gun from them. Being the top-notch lads that they are, the offered to send me the deck gun for just the cost of postage. Talk about great customer service! Of course, they also pointed out that they have several sets of U-Boat crew as well....Just when I thought I was done getting Germans....
http://www.brigadegames.com/U-Boat-Ships-Crew-5_p_356.html
http://www.brigadegames.com/U-Boat-Ships-Crew-I--WW2-5_p_358.html
http://www.brigadegames.com/U-Boat-Ships-Crew-II--WW2-5_p_359.html
Oh and they have the merchant sailors I've been looking for as well....Sigh....It looks like I might as well pull together a full order to properly outfit my sub.
The only part of my sub that I don't have down in my head yet is the railing around the conning tower. I'm still mulling over how to pull that off. Feel free to post any suggestions below.
Oh, here are some pictures of my sub. Do note that she's not assembled in the slightest.
I'm also still trying to figure out where to put the dive planes as this is a waterline model. I'm not totally convinced that I need to put them on. Thoughts?
Monday, October 3, 2011
Darryl's World
My buddy Daryl finally joined the modern age & started his own blog. Darryl's one amazing terrain builder, gamer & all around swell guy.
Go check it out.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Savage Worlds / Savage Showdown Game
I hosted a small Savage Worlds / Showdown game last Saturday as part of my birthday. We had three heroes (wildcards in Savage parlance) looking for their friend, Dr. Zachariah Smith an eccentric inventor. Dr. Smith had moved his lab to the outskirts of town after his last experiment heavily damaged the Little Italy part of town. No one had heard from the good doctor for several weeks, so his closest friends set out to check up on him.
Unfortunately for our heroes, Archon Voss had heard of the doctor's accomplishments & decided to recruit the doctor to the Third Reich's cause. Archon Voss & his party arrived at the north end of the factory complex just as the heroes arrived to the South. A bloody gun battle ensued. Robots ran amuck. Heros dived through windows. Tennessee Buck & Archon Voss held a long pugilist competition, which ended with the Archon being shot & captured by our intrepid heroes.
It was a fun game. I learned a few lessons.
1. Massed rifle fire can be very nasty.
2. Cover is very important.
3. I need to remember to have heroes use their wild die when needed.
4. Bennies work nicely to correct problems.
5. I need to remember to do morale checks starting when a unit goes under 25% casualties.
6. I need to read through the weird science & spell rules a bit more.
My overall impression of the game is that it plays well & pretty quickly. Aron & I were the only two who had ever played. Al & Carl had never played & picked it up very quickly.
I had two sides & one rogue force with a total of 20 models on a 30" x 30" board. The game felt like it moved pretty well & by the end it was really humming along. Now that I have a better feel for the rules, I'm pretty sure I could have more models on the board & not have the game bog down. All in all, I think I'm going to stay with Savage for now as it seems to meet what I'm looking for in pulp rules.
I have picked up a copy of Thrilling Tales, which has even more pulp goodness that I'm going to inflict. I also have some Mayan/Aztec paper buildings that are going to come in handy soon. I'm looking for some appropriate cars & trucks to round things out.
I'm going to work on a combat summary doc & rework the character & unit cards as well as plan the next episode.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Pirates! Pacificon 2011 Pictures
Here is a shot from the start of the game.
Here is another shot
The Eye preparing to receive the dwarf assault.
Goblin captains plot their approach.
A brief break in the action. A young captain in training checks on the goblin deployment.
Another shot of the table, this time focused on the dwarf ships steaming to meet the goblin relief forces.
The dwarves have finally hit the beach.
Hard to port! Oops hard to starboard! Too late. All hands brace for impact! Two goblin captains make errant turns into each other or had the referee been paid off by the dwarves to slow the goblin advance?
What happend to all the of the dwarves and goblins on the island? A pile of bodies tells a sad tale.
Goblins prepare to leave the mother ship and row to shore to the island.
The S.S. Iron Pants steams past one goblin gunship. The dwarf galleas plots its bow cannon shot.
S.S Iron Pants lines up it's next shots, while two goblin subs slip past.
Oh no a squid! Who brought squid to this fight?
An ironclad steams to stop the green menace!
Ack another squid and two menacing pencils!
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Goblin Pirates
I've been working on a bunch of goblins for the Pirates! game I'm running with Stanley & Thomas on Saturday. Here's one of the units that I picked up on ebay.
This unit was mostly painted. I've only had to give them a thorough ink washing & a bit of drybrushing. They aren't quite done yet, but they are close.
Monday, August 22, 2011
10mm Orc Fort---Part II
Thanks to some help from Thomas, the fort has gone from this:
To this:
Well, OK I did paint the rock wall black, but the real magic was done by Thomas using modeling paste for the dirt and mud sections and coarse pumice gel for the the grassy sections. That's all that's been done between those two photos. It's almost good enough to toss on the table, but not quite....
Here's a close up of the top hill and you can really see the texture Thomas added. Nice work Thomas and I've picked up a couple of tricks while watching the master at work in his workshop.
In this shot, I've painted the stakes around the perimeter and added a bit flocking to cover up the large gap between the two halves on the top hill. I've also started working up the stone wall a bit. The brave lads of Local 3255 are marching around the interior perimeter looking for interlopers.
Here's a close up shot.
Sunday afternoon was such a nice day out that I took the fort outside for some finishing touches, that and I'm still picking rocks out of the carpet in the family room from when I built the rock wall and decided that I had generated enough domestic issues for one week. :-)
I've worked up the grass colors, added some static grass and repainted for the third time the fighting step. I took some advice from Aron and I like how it's turned out. I'll leave you with two last shots of the fort. All that's left is to build a gatehouse, which will be a stand alone piece, and she's ready to go for the next round of fighting.