So where are they now? 9 Years War edition.

Last seen without a stand to stand on, do you ever wonder what became of those lovely Front Rank commissions I painted for Geoff? Well, wonder no longer, as by the magic of the interwebz, they have shared some of their most recent selfies!
First up - Hastings' regiment:

 Followed by the stalwart boys in grey - the De La Meloniere Regiment!

Geoff has done a fantastic job of flagging them, and I believe it was Rodger that based them - so well done Team-Nine-Years-War! I really look forward to seeing them get into action. A few more figures to paint first though I believe.

Nate

WWI rules borne from the sickbed

The quack gave me the green light to take a day at home from work, and so I have used it wisely, reading through some old back issues of Practical Wargamer. And yes, I realise the purpose of a day off is to rest, but I have been stirred to action away from my sick bed and into the computer chair. You see, I was re-reading the very first wargames magazine that I ever bought, Practical Wargamer Vol.11 No.1 from 1997 and within a few seconds came across David Ruck's article, Hold the bridge. 

Ahhh... nostalgia. I really regret ripping the cover when I pulled off the free game that came with this issue.

I remember reading this article 19 years ago and being completely entranced with the Foundry figures that illustrated the article. Remember that this was pre-internet, and so it was really a window onto another world. My wargaming had been all 1/72 plastics, and while as of 1996 I had begun to play Warhammer 40,000, I had very little knowledge of what was available on the other side of the world when it came to historics.

So when I reread the article it was with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. Then I re-read the rules. They seemed very simple when I first read them, and as a result were a bit confusing. 19 years later I realise the confusion comes from the fact that some of the factors were transcribed wrong, and that with experience it was possible to fill in the blanks. They actually looked perfect for my 18mm 1914 project. So I sat down this morning and reworked them, changing a few things here and there (there is no evidence that German machine guns should be inherently superior to any other, for instance, which was reflected in the rules), making them suit my collection as it stands. I'm really happy with the result and look forward to a playtest, although this will have to be with unpainted figures because 1914 isn't on the painting radar until 2017!

I've put them up on their own page. Have a look and see what you think.

'This way boys! We have our own rules now! Urrah!'

Nate

My Wargaming Week 8

I managed to pick up some sort of gastro-bug this week, and it has progressively worsened. A trip to the quack today confirmed my worst fears - it is a virus and can't be fixed with antibiotics! I just have to take anti-nausea tablets and wait until it decides it is more sick of me than I am of it. Needless to say that as a result my output has been greatly reduced this week. I did however, manage to finish off Mr Anarchy's punks:

The Punks are the henchmen for Mr Anarchy, and I've used the Warlord Games Judge Dredd juve gang as the source of the figures. I tried to keep to a theme with Mr Anarchy's colours, while making sure they were all still individuals. I'm looking forward to taking them for a run with Clobberin' Time sometime soon.

I also painted five Old Glory Confederate generals for John, but haven't finished basing them yet.

Stonewall Jackson

Lee and his old war-horse, Longstreet.

Hill and Stuart.
The figures were all quite nice and characterful except Hill whose casting was quite rough, with holes and seam lines everywhere. I thought I'd got them all, but this photo proves me wrong.

The payment for painting John's British cavalry last week, these generals and the upcoming German cavalry is the return of several DBA armies that I painted and that ended up on John's shelves. This week, the Philistines were the first to come home:

Back in the promised land waiting for the Hebrews to arrive...

Next week I want to get Craig's 105mm battery and PaK 40s painted so that he can get them before NICon. Then I have John's Renegade German WWI cavalry to paint the following week, followed by some figures for Geoff, followed by some more Japanese tanks for Craig. Things are pretty full on, on the painting front over the next couple of months!

Nate

My Wargaming Week 7

Yep, up to number 7 already, although number 6 mysteriously disappeared into the aether...

So this week we managed to get some historics painted for other people and finished off Mothron for the superheroes project. I also managed to complete my city terrain board for the superheroes:

There is still a bit of work to do on the wrecked building tile, but everything else is pretty much complete.

Looking down Shortland street towards the junction with Sesame Street. Yes. You read that right. The streets are named after TV programmes. One is for infantile minds and the other has muppets...

Looking down Sesame Street.

Along with the terrain to fight over, a couple more characters and some henchmen were completed:

Mr Anarchy is a combination of Mr Mxyptlk's head and Shade's body. This close up reveals the trouble I am having with painting eyes at the moment.

 Mr Anarchy is Baz Burp from the future of Earth-C. He is the heir of the 'Big Family' Corporation  Burp Burger. On Earth-C libertarians won the Congress and Presidency of the USA in 2016, and within 6 months the country had collapsed into total anarchy. The rest of the world soon followed as the economic repercussions echoed around the globe. Out of the anarchy, several super-rich businessmen managed to carve their own fiefdoms. Eventually the remaining governments became summit meetings for representatives of the corporations. The world was effectively run by the 'Big Families'. Outside of the gated communities of workers that they provide protection to, chaos reigns. The Burps are one of the biggest families, and with their scientists discovering trans-dimensional travel, they are looking to expand. Particularly as there are very few resources available on their Earth anymore. Mr Anarchy's goal is to plunge this world into the same state of chaos his own went through, in order to make sure he carves out a new kingdom here and gets to exploit its resources.

Scarlet Rose was Malice

 A beautiful and deadly dagger for hire, the Scarlet Rose is a mysterious martial artist who specialises in the use of throwing knives. Sometimes she is on the good guys' side, and sometimes she is against them. It depends who is paying. The Malice figure that she comes from had a big hole in the back of her head when I removed the cape, and I had no green stuff. Enter the trusty blu-tak, which I sculpted and then covered in superglue. Yes - it works!

I inherited a number of Imperial Blood Beret Warzone figures which were already painted a while back. A quick repaint of the base and I figured that they would do a good job as some henchmen. Originally I thought they might fit with Mr Anarchy, but they don't look very anarchic, so these are now the Mothmen - Mothron's goons.

One last thing this week - although it didn't get painted this week, but a while back - is a clix that I converted up for Tim over at the Heropress blog. He represents a character Tim invented for his RPGs a number of years ago, and I thought he might appreciate a miniature of him.

The Acrobatic Flea - ready for action!

So another week down, and plenty accomplished. I now have to paint up Mr Anarchy's punks as the next step in the Supers collection.

Nate

Historics come galloping back in

If you began to frequent this blog to look at things to do with historical wargaming you might be a bit bemused by the rash of posts featuring superheroes lately. 'He's gone a bit nuts', you might say. 'He'll be painting that bizarre warhammer stuff next.' Well, fear not fellow lovers of historical lead, here is this week's painting, and it is satisfyingly not composed of Orks, Orcs or Awcks.
First up, a dozen 28mm Renegade Great War British cavalry for John:

Followed by a couple of Magachs and 4 anti-tank jeeps for Craig.

But what did I paint for myself, you might ask? You've already seen him:

I just had to post him again!

This week I have a dozen 28mm Renegade Great War German cavalry to paint for John. These will be followed by 15mm Japanese tanks for Craig, and by that time I will probably have Geoff's next batch of 28mm figures to paint after which I'll be painting 15mm British paras for Craig. Dan might have sent me the 10mm ACW he wants me to paint by then, and when that is all finished it will probably be Christmas! Somewhere in there I aim to paint up a few more homegrown heroes and villains. In fact, there are a couple sitting on the painting tray for tonight.

Nate

Mothron!

The Mothron of Earth-D* is one of Delta Wave's Rogues. His real name is Ron Mothman, and he used to be a parking attendant. Bored with his everyday grind of a job, Ron started designing a suit of armour, but realised he did not have the money to pursue his dream. He also didn't have the intelligence to build it. So he put on a balaclava and got away with a bank robbery, before kidnapping Dr Karl Schuster, a world class mechanical engineer. Schuster was forced to build the armour Ron had designed. He then couldn't bare how bad it was, and decided to make it much better than the original drawings. The new Mothron armour was state of the art, and Schuster decided that he would stay on as Mothron's accomplice. It has actually turned out that the nefarious Dr Schuster is the real brains behind Mothron's operations, but it is Mothron who keeps getting defeated by Delta Wave and thrown in prison!

'I am the Mighty Mothron! Bow before my mothiness!'

Mothron's armour allows him to fly, provides armoured protection and allows him to shoot small round projectiles from his wrist gauntlets, known as 'mothballs'. These have been known to contain gas, acid, explosives and EMP pulses amongst other devices.

Mothron frequently has a gang of henchmen, the Mothmen, who aid him in his schemes. They have weapons that fire 'mothballs', but have not been given full suits of armour because Dr Schuster is worried that if anyone more intelligent than Mothron got hold of the tech they would go off and work solo.

'Aquaria - watch out for his tiny mothballs!'

* He is not to be confused with the Mothron of Earth-N, who is a hero and a member of the Alliance of Awesomeness.

By the way, here are the latest photos of the cty terrain:

The pavement needs painting, as do the road markings and signage. 

An alternative view

The buildings as viewed from behind. They are basically stage scenery with no backs to them. The idea is that the roofs are removed and the two buildings nestle into each other, reducing the need for storage space.

Nate

Captain Kiwi and friends

Some more Heroclix repaints last night as I wander through the misty halls of nostalgia and recreate the heroes of my youth. Not that I'm that old - certainly not in the sense that I'm mature in any way!

First up, Captain Kiwi himself. Designed to be a crime-fighter in the image of Batman, Daredevil or Spiderman  -that is a street level superhero - there was only one certainty about Captain Kiwi - he would not have the power to fly! But what power would he have? The ability to grow his nose and root out tasty grubs? It was basically decided that like Captain America or Batman, Captain Kiwi would have no real super-powers; he would be a man in peak physical perfection, with a steel trap mind and an unshakable sense of duty.

Captain Kiwi is Captain America without his shield.

Early concept art

Later developments, but I've decided against the shoulder pads - they are so 90s! The power sword didn't survive either.

Rounding out the superhero team Delta Wave, we have the following heroes:

Spectra used to be Triplicate Girl

A quick google search revealed that there is a superheroine called Spectra in published comics now. But not when I invented this lass there wasn't! Spectra does shiny light things, the exact nature of which is still a bit obscure, but basically my conception of her is that she is like Dazzler in her powers. I have an original concept sketch of her, but I'm pretty sure I was trying to create the world's skimpiest costume at the time and I find it a bit embarrassing now I'm older and wiser (but still not mature). She's much more covered up in this version, while still being attired completely impractically for fighting supervillains, in a minidress and high heels!

Aura was Marvel Nightshade

You caught a glimpse of Aura in the last post. She is Aphid's girlfriend. She also has a force-field. And she's brainy. I was really drawn to this figure because of the headband. Check out the last post to see what I'm talking about. I love the 'fro too. I had to paint some more clothes on her though. How many wardrobe malfunctions would happen fighting evil wearing a bikini? Still got high heels for maximum impracticality!

Speed was Northstar

And the final member of Delta Wave is Speed. Speed is super-fast (well, duh), like the Flash. Whose colours are on his costume. That is truly, honestly, cross my heart and hope to die, a co-incidence. We were thinking of a hero with powers more like Northstar from Alpha Flight (whose figure I've used for him), and all the sketches of Speed have him flying. I guess there is something about red and yellow that just yells speedster. As 12 year olds, we were totally unaware that we were naming a superhero after a class B drug. The fact that Speed got his powers from a speed serum just makes that even worse now. In the last post it is Speed that Aphid is timing when he says from 0- 100 in 4 seconds. That was meant to be .4, which makes things much more impressive...

Reimagining the whole team of Delta Wave, I've had a few thoughts. The first is that you can't have two people on the team named Ore and Aura. That is just inviting miscommunication. So Ore will once more become - Dustmaster! Set vacuums to stun! I've also been thinking about the team name. Delta Wave was supposed to refer to the mysterious delta waves that irradiated our heroes and gave them their powers. This was a good cover story for what was a rip-off of Alpha Flight (take another Greek letter and add second random word - they could have been Delta Broccoli). But over the years there have been other names: Photon Force (not to be confused with the riders of the magic couch - Futon Force); The Liberators (unspecific what they were liberating); and the Protectorate (they protect the Earth, so pretty obvious, right - all connections to the Christian Fundamentalist government of Oliver Cromwell to be ignored). So I will ask you, faithful readers, to help me out. Please leave a comment below answering this question:

'Delta - WAVE!' OK, not the most impressive battlecry ever.

Which team name should these Superheroes have?
a. Delta Wave
b. Photon Force
c. The Liberators
d. The Protectorate

Whichever is chosen will stick, and then I will use the other names for other teams...