Double Header! Gaming nights 14th & 21st Sept

I had planned to post last weeks gaming report last week but the world conspired to strip internet away from my computer and halt any attempt to do so.

It has become a little bit of a tradition to cook steaks before the gaming begins and I might have gone a little overboard this time around...  As per usual now it rained rather heavily (it seems Kingston has been transplanted into England by our rather poor weather), so cooking on the BBQ was a pain in the rear.

My attempt at homemade "Steak Frite".

On the 14th we had to play indoors as the heavens opened up and hammered Kingston with thunderstorms and heavy rains.  Not a huge deal as we had decided upon playing some spaceships, but space was limited and a bit uncomfortable to work around.  This game saw Federation vs Federation in an alternate storyline civil war to Star Trek.  One side was using more advanced ships, but only four of them while their opponents had 14, but lower quality.  In the end I made a silly mistake and this cost us the game.  Having rather brittle, but powerful ships give little to no wiggle room.

Shoddy pictures are due to the horrible lighting in the living room... we could have set up some spot lights, but toughed through it instead.

The weather report for the 21st was just as grim as on the 14th so our glorious host Mike Hoyt decided to sign out a MOD Tent from supply and we set it up prior to the arrival of our gaming buddies.  In the end... the stopped raining just as we finished setting the tent up and the weather was rather nice for the rest of the night... go figure...

We learned our lesson from the gaming night of the 7th and made sure to have spot lights so that we could see what we were doing when the sun set.  The bonus of these 500W lights are they heat up a space pretty well, which means we might not need a space heater when the snow starts falling and we set up a more permanent tent.

The game on the 21st was a continuation of the storyline from our first BattleTech game.  The goal is to slowly introduce new elements to each game, preventing the newer players from getting swamped with new and increasingly complicated rules.  This time around we added in infantry and IFVs.

On my end, I quit smoking and have been on the patch + gum for a bit over a week now, but I was instructed by the Military Health Care worker that I need to treat myself once a week to something, just as a "good job" sort of thing, so this week was a small cigar.  I did little to no wargaming for the first hour and a half of the game, content with sitting in a fantastically comfortable chair, listing to some golden age jazz, slowly enjoying my cigar and top shelf VQA wine.  After about 3 glasses of Burning Kiln wine (absolutely smashing beverage) it became a little difficult to take a steady picture....

2011 in review

I know its 29 days since the beginning of 2012, but it is high time that I sat down and looked at what I have actually done over the last 365 days.

1. Started an ImagiNation army: This was the major project for the year. As it stands right now, I have painted up 23 infantry and 10 cavalry. Not that much I know, but considering I only began the project in ernest six months ago and four of those six were spent in a funk, its not toooooo terrible in terms of production..

Goal for 2012: I have ether on hand or ordered 95% of the models I need to complete this project. I hope to finish 100% the whole army and once it suits my needs, add on new units here and there.

2. Custom space fleet: It took me about 3 weeks to sculpt and paint 53 ships. Production tapered off rather quickly after that surprising outburst of painting, but it still stands now that I have a rather large fleet in which to play with. I still have to sit down and actually design the load outs for each ship class, but since I have had a bit of a personal lul in space ship gaming, its not high on my priority list.

Goal for 2012: I have the material to produce another dozen of ships, so once my attention inevitably shifts back to painting spaceships, I will have some more models to build. Also as a goal is to design each ship class and play at least half a dozen games with them by years end.

3. 15mm Continuation War: Almost like my spaceships, I had a huge outburst of creative power and painted up a huge number of figures. Then again, its not all that difficult considering the scale in which the models are. After some wheeling and dealing with other members of my wargaming group, I have traded for 15mm Finns and Germans to face my hoard as well as some terrain on which to play.

Goal for 2012: Paint the German complement to my project, build some more terrain and get at least a few games in. Secondary goal is to look into a new ruleset to use as the current one is only alright at best.

Looking back on previous posts, my readers might be wondering what happened to all the other projects I had ongoing during 2011. Well to be honest, as I'm graduating soon enough and will have to make the move west to British Columbia, I went through a period of wholesale consolidation. In order to further higher priority projects, I traded away many of my projects.

More Ships for The One

Having no exams for five days strait allowed me to work quite a bit on my wargaming projects. I still have 18 or so more ships to do, but overall, the project has been advancing at a blistering pace, considering I started working on all of this less then three weeks ago and had to contend with six of the most difficult exams university can throw at you.

New Ships for The One

Since I had a five day lull between exams, I've been very productive on the painting and modeling front. After spending countless hours at my painting desk, I've managed to produce quite a few different ship designs for my personal bio fleet.

Names of classes are pending revisal. They all have to do with computer stuff.

Omniflash Class Destroyer:

Xilinx Class Light Cruiser




Sensor Node Class Electronic Warfare Heavy Cruiser




Coprocessor Class Escort Drone Cruiser




Trojan Wave Class Light Stealth Cruiser




Systolix Class Heavy Cruiser




Bitstream Class Heavy Destroyer Leader




Deltar Class Heavy Missile Cruiser




Gun Data Class Battleship




As it stands, right now I have 38 ships built and waiting for sculpting, 21 painted and 1 still to be constructed. As last picture of each ship class for size comparison.

Introducing "The One"

Been a long time since I posted up some of my spaceship models. Mike Hoyt of http://amerematterofpainting.blogspot.com/ and myself are in the process of creating our own galaxy and setting for the custom fleets we have been building for while now. Having finally filled out the fluff or back story for my race I am proud to present "The One"":


The One in essence is nothing other then a multiple planet sized super computer that has attained sentience beyond its programing. Created by The First, the oldest known race in the galaxy, it was programed to be benevolent and handle all of the mundane tasks of the whole race, allowing them to concentrate on culture and technology. After The First was wiped from the galaxy during a century long civil war, The One gained a valuable lesson: War and conflict are not to be tolerated. While The One had eventually taken over the whole planet with storage space, it had spent little time developing space flight, as it had carried out the goal of the First, focusing on culture. The thirst for information lead The One to begin searching the void of space around The Core, it home world, for a method of travel. The First, having limited space flight capabilities, allowed the One to find in its home system a species of semi-sentient organisms residing in a nebula. Fearing their extinction, The One bio-engineered this race to give them a new lease on life. Naming them The Circuits, by implanting a control center into their hive mind, The One was able to direct their actions as if they were part of his mainframe.

The One is the most technologically advanced race in the Galaxy and instead of colonizing a new planet for its resources or population development, it simply builds more servers and memory to handle its ever expanding need for information. Having programmed itself to be non-violent, The One only enters into conflict when two of the younger races are fighting, attempting to separate the two sides by disabling their ships.

Right now, the fully painted fleet stands at 1 battleship, 2 Destroyer Leaders and 2 Destroyers. I have over 40 ships waiting for sculpting and painting...

A few small updates

Its been a long time since my last post, almost a year to be exact, but in that time I've done quite a bit of painting. On the table right now are the 15mm Russians, 1/2400 Japanese and finishing a few 1/6000 space ships.

Here is what my 1/2400 Coral Sea Japanese looks like right now. I'm still missing the Zuikaku and Haguro to finish up the core of the fast carrier battlegroup. Bases are simply card stock with magnetic sheeting.


















Next is the 1/6000 (Games Workshop Battlefleet Gothic figures) Chaos ships. Its a mix of Chaos cruisers and heavily modified Space Marine escorts. The whole fleet is set up to play in Full Thrust rule set, not the GW one. Not in pictures are 6 stands worth of mines and a space station. This one is pretty much done, I just need to order some flight stands from Litko for my fighters and everything is done.



















No pics of the 15mm Russians right now as most of them are over at my friends place. I am working on finished up the vehicles right now and will update when they are done.