Tomorrow is April Fool's day to you...

Our Cake Topper.

...whereas to my beloved Wolfy and I, it's our wedding day!

Beer snobs have no appreciation of rum...

Thus, amused that my rum runners were a lovely shade of pink, the gang asked if the bartender could make my drinks look any more 'girly'. Aaaaaaand, here ya go:

Oh and yes, there was a cherry too. 

lol, but damn they tasted good (as did the rest of my dinner)! Still, I don't drink much so I was nicely buzzed when we got to the FLGS after four rum runners, and a shot o' fireball (diluted according to my detractors) in a hard cider. Our game of Bolt Action was a 2v2 with Bob and Screech fielding Germans, and I was paired with Mike who had some wily Muricans to fight alongside my Russian Quar.

The only (blurry) photo I bothered to take during the game...

The game was was a straight up kill each other and I'm not sure who won as casualties were horrific on all sides (except for the Muricans...I think they fared the best). I sobered up over the course of the game, and rather than go drinking again, I was hungry again and so we opted for 'breakfast' at Waffle House instead.

My bachelor party was a good time and much fun was had! Many thanks to the gang and Screech especially for footing what I'm sure was a considerably large bill for my food and drinks.

Only 5 days to go...

Prepping for my Bolt Action bachelor party!

Yes, I'm a geek I know. Rather than wasting $$$ at a seedy strip club (I don't know if the last locally remaining one is even in business anymore...), we're turning this week's gaming night at the FLGS into my bachelor party (following dinner).

Yes, the alcohol will be flowing (in my case at the least) meaning my game play will be questionable at best (which in all honesty, is pretty much the norm). Not that it matters I suppose, I haven't played Bolt Action in so long that I'm not sure I remember any but the most basic of it's rules.

X-Wing is my usual 'go to' game, but currently at the FLGS (a place I've had little chance to visit), Bolt Action is the favorite. Fine by me, because that means I get to play with my Quar, and any chance to do that makes me happy! I was rummaging thru my mini cases trying to figure out what I have in my collection and, it turns out more than I thought.

Thus far, as Russians my Quar have one spectacular win and two crushing losses  to their credit. That averages out to equal: 'meh'. Oh well, at least they look cool!

The plan is to get everyone together for a mega-battle of some sort...don't know the plans exactly and its possible that I may be too inebriated to ever even figure the particulars out, lol. I'll try to take some pics for a Monday post, but no promises...

My 1st Pyg Bushwhacker is complete

o/

Just a quick post showing my latest completed mini. This actually isn't the same Pyg in my previous post, as it already had been finished for a little while. However the hospital nightmare ensued and it was forgotten about for a bit. That and I figured some WIP pics were better posted before any finished minis for the same unit were.

Shoot that guy over there!

This was a fun and relatively quick mini to paint. 

I have 4 Pygs primed now and ready to be painted. Hopefully I can spare some time for that here soon, although Billy's been asking for his YT-1300 conversion that I've been neglecting for awhile now, so I may work on that a bit instead.

Basing the Pygs...

Okay seriously, WTF? 

Having the mini's tab stick out of the bottom of its base by close to a 16th of an inch is just poor design. Having to trim that off of the bottom is never a fun job, nor is having non-jetpack equipped minis look like they're hovering above the ground pleasing to the eye either! Privateer Press is anything but an amateur establishment, and the excuse of 'it allows you to get creative with basing your miniatures' is unacceptable (if entirely accurate in this particular case).

No I will not use green stuff! Green stuff is my enemy!

That said, this design failure just so happens to be irrelevant in my case as I'm basing my Pyg Bushwhackers in the same manner as I did Captain Gunnbjorn, on a bricked base. Rather than lurking in the trees as in their (usual) fluff, these guys are taking the fight directly into one of the Iron Kingdoms!

(probably Khador judging by the shoddy brickwork, lol)

The Bushwhacker box contains a squad of 10 Pygs. Three each of three different poses, with a squad leader in a unique sculpt. I'm saving that mini for last, but was able to base a few of my Pygs, and as stated above, I had to get a bit creative with that.

Conveniently for me, Secret Weapon Miniatures bricks equal the size differential between the mini's tab and base depths exactly. Thus I put a cut into the top of the tab, and positioned the actual bricks around the base's slot to look like the tab is just a part of the brickwork. Once painted, I think they'll look just fine and not be noticeable.

That works.

For the lying down bushwhacker, I had to position the mini over top of the slot best I could (to hide it), and then pile the bricks up around the mini like he's crawling thru the rubble of a ruined building. I guess in hindsight I could have just bricked over the whole base first, covering the slot. Oh well, I have two more to go so will try that with on a later mini. For now I'll try to squeeze in some time to paint these guys first.

Without the bricks, this mini would require rocks or something!

The squad so far...

Trying to get back the elusive 'normal' routine...

o/

As you have probably noticed, I had no blog posts last week. This was because my beloved Wolfy came down with a really bad stomach bug (or so we thought...). So bad in fact that what we thought would be a quick trip to the ER for a bag or two of fluids to stave off dehydration, turned into a 5-day stay as her body (and the medical staff) fought off the nightmare combination of ills that had beset her.

As I'm sure you can imagine, there was no hobbying time to be had as I stayed with her in the hospital the whole time aside from a few quick trips home to shower, feed the kitties, and grab the occasional fast-food dinner.

You can tell she was still feeling under the weather by the TIE fighter traffic jam...

She's back home and feeling much better now, but was still weak for a few days so we skipped Friday Night Gaming at the FLGS. We tried to play a quick game of X-Wing using her 'Hit and Run' scenario, but about midway thru she was fading fast. Down one ship each, and neither side's killing fighter yet able to escape the board and we called it a draw.

Moving forward, we're down to the final few weeks before our wedding, and in the interim we have another wedding to attend in Florida. As such, my posts on here may become a bit...sporadic over the course of the next few weeks.

Ontos WIP

o/

One of my favorite Battletech tanks is the Ontos, the original version. Death by a thousand (mostly short ranged) paper cuts, woefully inadequate armor for a beast of it's size (due to the inefficiency of an ICE power plant and a bucket load of laser weapons) and mud slow, or in other words: 95 tons of pure mediocrity! As everyone knows, mediocrity is usually what I strive for in my gaming armies. In all honesty, the original artwork is how this tank first caught my eye because…well, it use looks cool!

Image is the copyright of Wizkids. 

That said, the miniature which closely mimicked that artwork (something Battletech isn't always good at) is a piece of garbage! Or rather was. The 3050 redesign on the tank I think had more to do with the shitty mini than it did fluff. 

Ya see, that angled up and raised rear deck, and matching turret, they look great visually, but in reality…when swiveled to the sides, or worse yet to the rear, the turret rides right up that incline and falls off of the model. Being  a heavy block of pewter means that in most cases, the lasers glued to the front of the turret invariably snap off as a result (on the redesigned mini its a 1-piece turret).

As such when you find used Ontos minis on ebay, they tend to look like this one:

I doubt Noble Knight will ever sell these junkers...

Well, aside from being painted by the visually impaired they look like that, i.e.: at least one laser broken off and missing (but plenty of gunked up glue remaining to show of the protracted battle was fought to prevent that from occurring). 

I've proxies other tanks for the Ontos in the past, but have never been happy with them visually.  My latest try is using converted Oro heavy tanks which are the same approximate size of the Ontos mini. The original dorsal laser was removed, and the AC20 covered up with a bit to represent the 8 medium lasers. I also added a missile launcher bit to the top to serve as the twin LRM 5s, though I've yet to drill the missile tube holes at this point. I also added a strip of plasti-card to the top to clean it up, as well as a small piece to the front to cover up where the hull mounted laser was.

Scale, never one of Battletech's strongpoints is obvious here as the SRM carriers just behind these 2 conversions are supposed to be of the same approximate size, but side-by-side they are anything but!

Hopefully once painted, these will work for me, though in hindsight I ought to have converted them to look like the LRM Ontos, as that is the best of the original variants. Oh well, perhaps I'll do that if I get some more in the future...