Spanish Village

Painted this resin village. Nice models that were fun to paint, though not mine, unfortunately. I believe most of the pieces are from Grand Manner.

Plastic Flags

I've been wondering how I was going to do the flags for my Arabs. I'm not a huge fan of paper ones, so decided to have a go at making some plastic ones. Nearly everything else in the army is plastic so it makes sense to have plastic flags, too. If you want to make these at home you will have to ask an adult to help you.

I cut out 30mm squares of 1mm plastic sheeting. In order for them to keep their shape, they need to be heated, and any thinner than 1mm and it will be difficult not to over-heat them. I stick them in the oven at about 160C for a little bit. You need to keep an eye on them the whole time, and take them out and bend them a little as soon as they start to look warm. If you leave them too long they will just curl up and die.

Bending them just a little bit and then putting them back in the oven for a few moments seems to work well. And it takes about 4 or 5 iterations to get a nice clear shape. Be careful to make sure one of the edges of the flag is still very straight, so you will get a decent contact when gluing them to the pole. When they feel about right, put them in some cold water and they should keep their shape.

The original plan was to paint a load of fake Arabic writing on the flags, but not sure I want to risk that, atm. Might have to work up the courage for that.

Birthday Game Day

We had a day-long session at the club in celebration of the birthdays of two of the grognardiest members. The cake says 60 on it, but there seems to be some disagreement over their actual ages.

Sharp Practice was the flavour of the week. It's pretty new at the club, but like buses, three games happened to turn up at once. Two of them went Napoleonic, while the third went with the American Civil War. I brought my Aliens on the Front Line game.

After some great food and a stupid amount of cake, we had a half-time interlude of some sort of parlour game where everyone got eaten by werewolves.

In the afternoon I found myself inadvertently in charge of some Roman legions in a game of To The Strongest. There was also some Kings of War, a game of AK-47, and there was the boardgame RoboRally.

All in all a fun, game-filled day at the club. I haven't really been going to the club that long, but I've been made very welcome there. It's a nice friendly club who are welcoming to new members.

Aliens on the Front Line 2

Played a convention-y game of Aliens on the Front Line. There were four groups of survivors starting from each corner of the board, and I played a shed load of aliens. The idea was to take one of the 6 seats left on the helicopter, before it escaped after an hour of in-game time. The players got to choose the quality of their force, with an appropriate number of figures, 6 Elites, 8 Veterans, 10 Trained, and 12 Militia. As it happened, everyone chose veterans, except the most successful group, 10 trained police officers.

I was expecting it to be a bit of a massacre with very few survivors making it through, so I gave the aliens only 1 set of activation tokens, even though they were effectively fighting 4 games simultaneously. I randomised who the aliens attacked based on how much noise and aggravation the survivors were causing.

Turns out, we probably got the balance about right, with the survivors being successful enough that they had to turn on each other as they got near the helicopter. And just enough survivors making it to the helicopter to fill all the seats, with one bloke hanging from the skids.

The survivors also managed to down two flying saucers, even though they were usually damaging them on a d4 vs a d8.