Exiles Wargames Prize Give Away

James over at "Exiles Wargames Painter" blog has succumbed to the raffle virus that is infecting the blog world lately and has organized an impressive prize set.  He's also one of the leaders of the Bloggers for Charity event so his blog is even more worthwhile

Go take a look, and if you mention you came from here I think pretty sure to be guaranteed to win something.  Yup, I'm almost completely sure that you should be able to maybe kinda, sorta win something.  It might not be an actual tangible item but....  Oh hell, here's the link:

Exiles Fantastic Give Away

ACW Photo Dump: Historicon Forces

 Outside of a few flags and a few more dismounted calvary figs for both sides the Union and Confederate forces I need for the two games Mike and I will be putting on at Historicon (F-295 and S-296) are ready.  With six or so weeks to go this is a rare "early completion" for me.  These forces will be supplemented by some more form both Mikes and Ernies collection so the saturday game will be very big.  The first shot shows the Confederate forces: 10 infantry regiments, 4 artillery batteries, 2 calvary regiments and command.  The collection is made up entirely of 28mm Perry figures.

 The Confederate calvary - I'll borrow some more dismounted figs from Ernie for the game.

 Some Artillery and command figures.  I use base size to denote rank for command figures.  The smaller ones (in the back) are brigade level and the larger squares are divisional commanders.  Corps commanders (not pictured) will be on large circular bases.

 4 regiments of confederate infantry.

 5 more regiments of Confederate Infantry.

 And last, but not least the 10th regiment of Confederate Infantry - The Louisiana Tigers!  My games will be set in 1863 and I have no idea if the Tigers still wore the gaudy Zouave uniforms and I don't care - they look cool and that's good enough for me!

 The last 2 Confederate artillery batteries

 To oppose the Confederates is a similarly sized Union force.

 The first 5 Infantry regiments (flags have yet to be attached)

 The second five infantry regiments outfitted as the NY Irish Brigade.

5 Batteries of Union artillery.  The gun on the left looks really big.  I wonder what's it's doing there?

2 Regiments of Union calvary.  Like the confederates, I need to borrow some dismounted figures from Ernie's collection.

Memorial Day Sculpture

One of my neighbors like to do big sculptures for different holidays.  When I say big, I mean life sized but this year's Memorial Day tribute is pretty darn big as it includes (from right to left) an M1 Tank, a Huey Chopper (Gunship or "Hog" configuration), a civil war Napoleon cannon and a Nuclear Submarine surfacing.  I especially like how the sub's tail is smashing through his fence.

There's a bunch a soldier statures to round out the whole thing - Pretty damn impressive.  Some of his other stunts can be found is some older posts:

Christmas 2011 (My favorite - where the hell do you find a F-105?)

July 4th 2012

Blogger's for Charity

Several prominent UK gaming bloggers (Loki, James and Kev) has come up with a capital idea of doing a game for charity and trying involve as many of us as they can.

The concept is to have a large number of gaming bloggers paint some figs for a large Muskets and Tomahawks game in 2014 and then auction of the figs to raise fund to support some very good causes.

I think it's a grans idea and will be helping out where I can - go take a look and think about pitching in.  Your painting's bound to be better than mine!

Bloggers for Charity

All Quiet on the Martian Front Playtest

 I had an opportunity to play test Alien Dungeon's new game "All Quiet on the Martian Front" tonight.  As you may have seen from the kickstarted this is a 15mm scale game of a second Martian invasion - take a look at the Kick-Starter here.  Gameplay is best described as "A BLAST".

The first picture shows a the imposing line of martian Tripods approaching the outskirts of Memphis.  The next picture show the human forces.

The humans spring a trap with a clamp tank and the Tripod antitank gun.  We succeeded in damaging the tripod but didn't kill it.  The Anti-Tripod gun was very effective and will be added to my human force list when the game comes out.

 The martians continue to close on the city....

 Success! the first tripod kill - from a the Anti-Tripod gun

 Carnage in the city!

 The game ended in a human victory but it was very close

 I'll post a better AAR in a few days but wanted to get some pictures up of the game

Historicon Games F-295 and S-296

The Historicon PEL is up and the two games that Mike and I will be putting on for Architects of War are listed as F-295 (Friday at 6:00pm) "Sink the Tennessee" and S-296 (Saturday at 1:00pm) "Prelude to Vicksburg"

The first game F-295 is a ACW skirmish game using the new "Uncivil War" ruleset and will be based on a Union calvary and amphibious raid to sink a confederate ironclad.  Oh yes the game will feature a 28mm scale model of the CSS Tennessee, complete with interior to fight over!

The second game on Saturday (S-296) will be a large ACW battle using 28mm figures and the Black Powder ruleset.  You may have seen some posts of me painting some Rebs and Yanks for that game on this site.  The battle will be directly influenced by the results of the raid game on Friday night. I wonder if that mean old ironclad will make an appearance?.....

Take a look and register - the games will be fun and there'll be beer!

Basing 28mm ACW & 300 Posts!

 It's a rainy and gloomy day here in Maryland - that's perfect weather for painting and basing mini's!  I made some good progress today and finished all my painting and then turned to basing the units.  Pictured are 2 calvary and 3 infantry regiments in the process of having their bases sceniced.

I use a very simple 4 step process from bases:

(1) Paint the base and sides a medium brown
(2) Dip in fine play ground sand
(3) Add a few drops of diluted matt medium
(4) add ground foam or turf tufts

Here's a shot of the rest of the armies - there are 20 x 24 fig infantry regiments, 4 x12 calvary (with dismounts and horse holders), 9 artillery batteries and 12 command stands.  I still have to finish basing 9 Union infantry units (center right of the photo).

By the way - I just noticed this was my 300th pos here at the Lair of the Uber Geek!

All Quiet On the Martian Front Preview

 Yesterday afternoon I got to spend sometime previewing the new game "All Quiet on the Martian Front" (AQMF) with Ernie over at the Alien Dungeon HQ.  Alien Dungeon is the sister company of Architects of War and is focused on Fantasy and Sci-Fi products.  The theme of AQMF is the Martians have returned and in greater numbers in 1910 and the world fights back with pre-WW1 weapons PLUS some things that have been reverse engineered from the previous invasion.  The game is available now via Kickstarter: AQMF Kickstarter.  The first picture shows a column of US Mark II tanks rumbling past their trench lines to engage the dreaded invaders.

 

 Here's a closer shot of the Mark II tanks.  These are resin models and have A LOT of customization options.  The game scale is 15mm but some of the vehicles are very large (bigger than 28mm Tiger tanks!

 A close up of one of the Martian Assault tripods, which are the mainstay of there forces.  They can be armed with a heat ray, green gas and a black dust dispensers.  The Martians are a rather nasty lost but a hoot to play.  Other Martian units consist of scout, grenadier and harvester tripods, drones and human cadaver slaves (a form of infantry used to dig human infantry out of trenches and buildings).  The tripods will be available as plastic kits which is one of the reasons for the kickstarter to raise capital for the tooling.

 This picture features two of my favorite US units the Mark IV Monitor tank (center) and the Tesla Lighting Gun (middle right).  The Mark IV is a beast of a model and is much bigger than a Tiger 1 in 28mm.

We did play a few turns yesterday to refine another favorite unit of mine - the "clamp" tank.  The clamp tank is a single purpose vehicle that's engineered to rush out and clamp onto the leg of a tripod and immobilize it.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't....but in either case it's a lot of fun.

I'm really excited about this game and the miniatures.  The game play is very well thought out and, well, just plain fun.  Ernie will be revealing more about it during the Kickstarter so I can't really go into details here.  All I can say is you should get this game 'cause it's a blast!  Please go check out the AQMF kickstarter!

Confederate Army Review

 Historicon is only 2 months away so it's probably time to take stock where my preparations are for the two ACW games that Mike M and I will be GM'ng.  First up is the Confederate army, which is pictured to the left.  There are 8 completed infantry regiments (out of a planned 10) and 4 artillery batteries (more on the last two infantry regiments in a bit).

A closer look at one brigade that has it's flags attached.  All of the figures are either Perry plastic or metals.  I made a decision for my ACW project to use only Perry Miniatures - they have a very large ACW range and I find the Perrys to have the best quality overall.

 Here's a shot of my Confederate Zouaves - it's a really big unit (36 figs vs 24 for a normal regiment) and will feature prominently in the big battle game at Historicon - more on that in another post.

The last two regiments are still on the work bench.  The one in the back is completely painted and I just need to scenic the bases.  The one in the foreground is 20% painted and will get down over the course of next weekend.

What about the Union?  Well, I cheated there and ordered a bunch of figs from MMPS - they arrived a few weeks ago and all I need to do is base them - 10 full regiments and two calvary.  They are hiding in the white boxes in the upper left of the first picture in this post.

I'll need to turn my attention to some confederate calvary, union artillery and command stands for both sides, which should get done over the next 4 weeks.

All Quite on the Martian Front Kickstarter GOES LIVE May 7th!!!!!!

Hold the Presses!  Big news from the Lair of the Uber Geek.  I've just learned that the Kickstarter for Alien Dungeon's new game "All Quite on the Martian Front" is going live tomorrow (may 7th) at noon Eastern Standard Time!!!!

There's been A LOT of buzz about this game and I can tell you that buzz is well deserved.  I've seen the mini's and may have some knowledge of how the games plays.  Without violating any confidentiality agreements, lets just say this game and the mini's ROCK!

I'm very much looking forward to this game!!!

Wooooo-Hoooooo!!!!!!!