After finishing all the Cold War Americans, this F-86 Sabre from Airfix was sticking out its tail right from the top of the pile of shame. According to plan it was supposed to be finished druring the last summer holidays. Now, last Sunday, after getting to it, it went rather quickly. However, I didn’t bother much with painting details. Maybe I will add some more later. Major work was putting on the decals, what was like open-heart surgery at some points.
This also completes the display in my glass cabinet with the Airfix Mig-15 and the 1/200th counterparts from the Mig Alley! box for Blood Red Skies.
Hobby time during the last three days was spent completely on Kill Team scenery. Everything I own, besides of the items from the Kill Team Arena box, was still on sprue, left to build and paint in the boxes: buildings and ruins from the Sector Fronteris box, the Servo Haulers from the Ork starter box, Krogskull’s Boys, and (Surprise! Surprise!) a Wall of Martyrs from the Tau starter box, Advance Team Starpulse.
The Sector Fronteris worked out quite nicely and will also be useful in Star Wars: Legion games. I like especially the rusty main colour, originally Army Painter Fur Brown spray.
The Servo Haulers are not finished yet. They were given only a black primer with another basecoat of Team Yankee Chieftain Green. I guess I will take my time to paint these because I really started to like them while building. With some special rules they can bring a lot of fun in scenarios. But why did I use this colour?
Unfortunately I had two cans of the Chieftain Green and both are leaky as you can see from the pictures.
I already had this problem with other brands and it’s not a question of age. I have much older cans which are still tight. Whatever, I have to use them up as quickly as possible and so I used the spray on the haulers and the wall. In the end, I think, the colour is not bad at all as it brings a dirty look of decay with it
The Wall of Martyrs is not a piece that I fancy at all. Too many skeletons and awkward iconography that are so… well, 40K! But someone left that literally at my door step and ran away. I thought about selling or just dumping it but in the end I decided otherwise. Let see what I can make of it.
And so it ended yesterday without much ado and applause. Not even from my girl-friend! 😉 I finished the last of the vehicles for my US Cold War army, including all the gunner and commander figures. For today spraying varnish was the last thing to be done.
Waiting for their turn to get varnished.
And then to arrange them a nice little box until it’s time for action.
Only the ground forces.
After seeing this, I guess, I will need some more infantry later. How did evil Lord Merrick say: „I’m not that easily defeated!“ I guess, this is also true for most painting projects.
The last pieces yesterday were the M35 trucks and M151 jeeps.
All metal models from Skytrex from their Vietnam range.
During a night shift I also finished all the gunner and commander figures for all of the vehicles – another 13 figures. Some were easily done with plain NATO olive. Others needed the woodland camouflage pattern, like the gunners in the Humvees and the ones in the MUTTs.
With this the main force of my American 15mm Cold War army is done. Helicopters and planes did I already finish last year. I still have two platoons of infantry and a few helicopters on the pile but these are for a later date. With this ends one of my biggest painting projects ever!
From all over the world I read gamers‘ stories on the net how they keep up their hobbies in times of containment. Yesterday, a mate of mine and I, we wrote our own chapter into that book: Playing Descent via Skype.
The scenario map at my place and a hundred kilometers away on screen.
We both had a map layout of the scenario on our tables and turned our webcams on them at our places. This way we could see our’s and the opponent’s setup.
A new way to play is about to begin.
The whole thing needed some preparation because I don’t own a copy of the game. We decided on a scenario. My mate scanned all the tiles and cards and sent them online. I printed them, glued them on cardboard and cut them out. Alternative figures weren’t a problem to find among my myriad of boxes of gaming stuff.
From analogue to digital to analogue.
We thought about how to improvise the dice but Descent uses a lot of different dice with complicated layouts and so we decided that my mate, the Overlord, would do all the rolling at his place in front of the camera.
Roll the dice only in front of the camera… just to be sure 😉
While my mate was the Overlord, I played Grisban the dwarf and Avric Albright the cleric. The scenario was from the 2nd edition starter box (german title: Der Kardinal in Not, first scene). We started that campaign some three or four years ago but never managed to play much as we live more than an hour driving time from each other.
The complete setup. Two small tiles are omitted, character sheets and cards laminated.
For miniatures I used some older Ral Partha figures for heroes and cultists and some Zombicide undeads for zombies and spiders. The role of evil Lord Merick (With a fire aura!) went to a Games Workshop Boromir.
Fire aura or not! When he has hitpoints, he can die.
To conclude, this was great fun! Not only in times of containment is this a good way to play but also in the future when time is scarce and driving not always fun. We didn’t have any technical problems and after a short while the flow of the game felt completely natural. Maybe this way we will play more often now than in the past. By the way, Lord Merick is history now (But hey, didn’t he say something like he’s not so easily defeated?) but the Cardinal is still in need. So, hurry up, guys!
