Saturday, 17 September 2011

Current painted miniatures.

Hi there.

Thought I might put up some photos of the stuff that I have done so far.
This weekend I have managed to get about 4 teams of FJ infantry done in full including basing and 2 teams painted up but not yet based, so a pretty busy weekend for me.

Hope you like them. Please excuse the photo spam ;)



































Im happy with my efforts so far. I'll probably go back at some stage and do some more highlighting, particularly the German grey helmets.

Garth

Infinity reinforcements and a British mispurchase

Well it seems that Infinity products are back in stock at Maelstrom, as my last two orders have been combined and shipped after a delay of three weeks.  I wasn't at all worried as I have plenty to do in the painting department, though it's always nice to have a reason to check the mail in the morning.  Damned addictive internet purchasing.

Djanbazan with Heavy Machinegun
So a fair few Haqqislam reinforcements are winging their way towards me as I speak.  Once this order has deployed I'll have the following miniatures:

  • 3x Ghulam with Rifle and Light Shotgun;
  • 1x Jannissaire with AP Rifle;
  • 1x Naffatun with Rifle and Light Flamethrower;
  • 1x Hunzakut with Sniper Rifle;
  • 2x Naffatun with Rifle and Heavy Flamethrower;
  • 1x Djanbazan with Sniper Rifle; and
  • 1x Djanbazan with Heavy Machinegun.


Naffatun with Heavy Flamethrower
As a "WYSIWYG" list without any proxying, this comes to the following:

 HAQQISLAM
──────────────────

 GROUP 1 (Regs: 9/Irrs: 1):



  GHULAM Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (13)
    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube
    Lieutenant

  2x GHULAM Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (13)
    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  NAFFATÛN Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (10)
    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  2x NAFFATÛN Rifle + Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (12)
    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  HUNZAKUT  Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (25 | 0.5)
    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:12  WIP:14  ARM:0  BTS:0  W:1  
    Irregular, Not Impetuous, No Cube
    CH: Camouflage, Infiltration, Deployable Repeater

  JANISSARY AP Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, CCW (45)
    MOV:4-2  CC:15  BS:13  PH:14  WIP:14  ARM:4  BTS:-3  W:2  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube
    Religious Troop

  DJANBAZAN Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW (33 | 1)
    MOV:4-2  CC:14  BS:12  PH:11  WIP:14  ARM:2  BTS:0  W:1  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube
    Multiterrain, Regeneration, Multispectral Visor L2

  DJANBAZAN HMG / Pistol, CCW (36 | 1.5)
    MOV:4-2  CC:14  BS:12  PH:11  WIP:14  ARM:2  BTS:0  W:1  
    Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube
    Multiterrain, Regeneration, Multispectral Visor L2


 212 Points | SWC: 3

ARMY CODE: eNozMVQ1VbNQM6wxVTOAk4ZQ0hBBWkIoE4iMoZoRhAJCAOWYDnw=
Army Infinity v.3.0. - http://www.devilteam.com

Hassassin Fiday
I'm unlikely to play a game at 212 points and I want a little more flexibility in my  options for 200 points, so I think the above will give me plenty of options to try out for 150 points, which is the limit that Garth and I are looking at starting with.  I'm not really interested in fielding a Hunzakut with Sniper Rifle as I'd much prefer to go with the Light Grenade Launcher option which will be a proxy.  I also have little interest in fielding a Naffatun with Light Flamethrower as I'm told they're much less effective than a Heavy Flamethrower at a small increase in points cost.  However, it is a 10 point miniature that I could slot in as an afterthought if I have 10 points leftover sometime.  Its also a nice model, and I'd be comfortable proxying it for a Heavy and using it.

Hassassin Lasiq
As for additions from here, I'd like to add a Muyib with Light Grenade Launcher (for a regular replacement for the Hunzakut, with higher BS), a Fiday for the brilliantly nonchalant pose and the potential for some close combat fun, and a Lasiq for the great sculpt and the supposedly deadly Viral Sniper Rifle.  I will also pick up the Khawarij miniature as I absolutely love it; I understand that it isn't particularly effective in the game at the moment, but I'm willing to give it a try purely because of the aesthetics and the fluff behind them.

It will be quite some time before Garth and I manage to get some Infinity on the table; I doubt we'll have had a full game by the end of February judging by the way I've been going with getting my Flames of War army painted (though I'd like to try out the rules mechanics with unpainted miniatures and slapped together terrain much sooner than that).  It's not just the painting though, it'll take me quite some time to get sufficient terrain together.  I'm also a little worried about the quality of my painting when applied to such lovely sculpts; I very much want to do them justice, so I'd like to get this 15mm Flames of War army under my belt, and hopefully some other 28mm figures, before I slap anything onto these miniatures.  I'd be grateful if anyone could point me towards some painting tutorial resources!  I'd like to carefully plan how I'm going to paint my Haqqislam miniatures.

As for the other half of the title, I fear that I may have made a bit of a misjudgement in my Flames of War purchases.  You see, I ordered the British Late War Rifle Company box and the Royal Artillery Battery box as the basis for my British Rifles force in the Italian theatre for Cassino or Fortress Europe.  However, the Rifle Company sculpts really are intended for Normandy/France rather than for Italy.  Indeed, Battlefront do produce British infantry for the Italian theatre in blister.  I was prepared to paint them in the Italy colour-scheme and just live with it; however, given that Battlefront has announced the release of the book "Burning Empires" covering the early to mid war periods in the Mediterranean, I think that this theatre will become the main focus for Garth and I in Flames of War, so I'd like for things to look right.  I will be patient, though.  On the off chance that Battlefront will release new sculpts in support of this book, I'll paint my British (Italy) MG Platoon next and hold off on making a decision on the late war company box.

The Games of War website has the following product for the Burning Empires book:
Burning Empires, The Battle for The Mediterranean, is a 184 page hardback book that includes:
  • The history of the Early War battles in Greece, Crete and Syria;
  • Italian Briefing: Fucileri, Blackshirt and Alpini forces;
  • Greek Briefings: Mechanised Battalion and Infantry Company;
  • German Briefings: SS, Gebirgsjager, Fallschirmjager and Luftlandesturm forces;
  • French Briefing: Infantry force playable as either pro-Axis Vichy or pro-Allied Free French;
  • Rules for Airbourne Assaults;
  • British, Italian, French, German and American Raiding and Garrison Forces for Early and Mid War raiding battles;
  • Four Raiding Missions and the Seize Outpost Mission, featuring the new Desert Fort; and
  • Painting Guides and inspirational colour photographs.
I'm pretty excited!  I'll go into the reasons for my interest in this theatre in a future post, but suffice to say both Garth and I are very keen to take a look at this book, and fortunately it ought to pit my British/Commonwealth Infantry against his Fallschirmjager again!

In addition to this blog, I'm also considering starting up a google group for our gaming group so that we have somewhere that we can keep each other apprised of progress, have a yarn, and organise ourselves for games.    If anyone has experience with using google groups and has any comment as to whether this might be worthwhile, I'd appreciate a chat!

Lastly, you'll note that I've been a little bit more creative with the placement of pictures in this blog post.  With the consequence that some of the picture margins aren't quite right and are encroaching onto the text.  If anyone knows an easy way of fixing this, please let me know!  I'm new to blogging (indeed, I'm new to anything but reading webpages), so I'm willing to take all of the help that I can get!

Cheers!



Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Mediterranean Bases

Hi,

Just as an addendum to Mike's post below.

This is style I have chosen for the bases my FJ on.
I am wanting to go for a more Mediterranean colour than a pure Italy one. Mostly so I can use them for Crete aswell and at a pinch North Africa (all roughly similar) .
I have tried to go for colours that represent Limestone and Pumice. I have also tried to use Photo's from a family trip to Italy years ago to choose the right tones.

Please excuse the photo quality.

The White stones are meant to be strewn pieces of rubble, but I think I may just paint them as rocks...




I have gone with a base coat of Green Ochre with a good drybrush of Basic Skin tone (both from the Vallejo range).

Please let me know what you think and feel free to share your ideas.

Cheers
Garth

Painting progress and reconnoiterring the old boot

Well it seems that I made a bit of a boo-boo and the 30 strong mortar platoon of been grinding my way through is actually a fair bit less strong.  I checked the unit composition in the Cassino and Fortress Europe books today and my two-section mortar platoon blister pack has a total of 19 wee men.  The error stems from Garth and I proxying flames of war miniatures for moderns when we were having our first run through of the Force on Force rules.  Stupidly, I must have put the HQ blister and Mortar blister all back in the same bag.  I'm not particularly worried about it, and to be honest I feel like I've made a lot more progress with my painting now!  I wasn't intending to use the HQ blister as I have other miniatures for it.  It's also opened up the possibility of using the light mortars from the HQ blister as the third mortar section in my mortar platoon.  I'm in no hurry to use a third section yet, but the option is there (if you can comment on the appropriateness of using the light mortars in this way - they're slightly more slender - please do let me know).  

Once I've made the finishing touches to the 12 figures I started on the weekend it'll be time to move on to my first lot of basing.  I've obtained various shades of static grass (green, parched, dead/winter) and some medium basing grit of Gale Force 9 origins.  The next step will be to obtain some kind of filler to build up the bases with. If any of you kiwis have any product advice in this regard I would be very grateful!  The scheme that Garth has used for his bases so far (he's a fair bit ahead of me in painting) is a base of green ochre with a heavy dry-brush of the palest flesh tone on top.  Bearing in mind that this is for the Italian theatre, I'd also appreciate advice on base colour schemes or any sneaky tricks you've learned along the way!  Hopefully the basing that Garth has completed isn't too premature, given that we've yet to build our board.  I would like for my basing scheme to be consistent with his.

I'm going on a holiday to Vegas and Mexico in late October - early November so my funds will be fairly tied up until I get back.  I expect to have a fair bit of cash left over (with a couple of pay packets arriving with my bank while I'm away - the novelty of this pay thing really doesn't wear off!), so we're planning on making a start with our terrain board for Flames of War.  We've earmarked the following purchases:


  • A 6'x4' "Brown-Green" gaming mat from theterrainguy.  Described as a heavy duty flocked game mat, canvas based and rubber coated with permanent flocking embedded in the rubber.  I've read very good reviews of this product on TMP.  The "brown-green" option (picture below) should be suitable for a semi-arid Italy.  Alternatively we could go for the "Dryland" mat which is much more brown than green.  We will have a think about how arid Italy actually is, and go from there (an advantage being it might be usable for the Desert also).
The "Brown-Green" gaming mat
  • The Battlefield in a Box - River from Flames of War.  This box comes with 5x 30cm river sections, 2x 30cm river sections with fords, 1x wooden bridge and 1x stone bridge.  We should be able to get a hold of one at a price substantially lower than that on the Flames of War store.
Battlefield in a Box - Rivers
  • The Battlefield in a Box - Rural Roads from Flames of War.  This box comes with 6x road sections (I'm not entirely sure of the section lengths, Garth has this stuff noted down).  We may get two of these so as to get sufficient road sections for a 6'x4' board.
Battlefield in a Box - Rural Roads
  • The Battlefield in a Box - Italian Monastery from Gale Force 9.  This is reasonably priced and versatile, and we hope will provide a good objective on our gaming board!
Italian Monastery
  • Italian Buildings from Games of War.  These haven't been released yet, but going by the prices for other such products on their website, they will be very affordable!
  • Hills: for this we'll make our own out of some kind of polystyrene.  


And there we have it!  I think that these will make a pretty solid start to our gaming table.  Now, we could probably make many of these things ourselves, but as I have stated in an earlier post our aim is to have painted armies ready to go as soon as possible.  We're willing to fork out a bit of cash to get a playable table up and running in short order; I expect I'll be exhausted by the time I've finished painting the little men!

That said, we are very willing to take advice.  So if you have any product recommendations or comments as to how we could do things differently, please let us know!

Monday, 12 September 2011

Mustering the smart way

My life has changed a lot since I last took a look at wargaming; as a school kid I had plenty of time for painting, list building and playing, even around lessons and sport after school and on weekends (it helped that almost all of my gaming buddies were in the same football team!).  I even think that time moves slower the younger you are, perhaps something to do with the distance you are from the ground and the effect of gravity.  This theory is probably easily disproved given that I'm still the 5'6" I was 10 years ago!  

Fast-forward to 2011 and I have an 8-5 job (with roughly 40mins commuting each day), two football trainings a week for about 8 months of the year, a football game each Saturday afternoon (generally requiring from midday to 6pm) and a trip up to Auckland to spend time with my much better half.  With football and late nights, and an hour and a half drive back from Auckland on Monday mornings before work, I'm often too tired even within my time constraints to devote much time to painting or the idea of wargaming.

Thankfully, my HTC Desire HD smart phone has come to the rescue!  Having a smart phone has really changed the way in which I interact with technology, though I confess with both positive and negative consequences.  I do practically all of my web-browsing on my phone now, from anywhere I go.  

The HTC Desire HD for Android: a bit of a beast!

My computer at home is a desktop PC that I built for myself about 6 years ago.  While it's lasted the distance very well (it runs recent games such as Shogun 2 Total War just fine), I've been thinking about replacing it for quite some time now.  The first thought was to buy a laptop given that I'm far more mobile these days and it would be useful to be able to take my computer with me when I go places.  The other reasoning behind it was that I'm into computer gaming much less than I used to be, so I'm a little less concerned with the better price/performance ratio you can obtain with building a desktop PC.  If it wasn't already clear, my smart phone has turned all of this on its head.  

I use my phone for pretty much every purpose that I might have used a laptop for while travelling.  I don't really play enough games now to feel the need to play them when I go away, so the things that I might have needed a laptop for - browsing, communications, music, audiobooks, ebooks, even movies/tv shows in .avi format - I can now do on my phone.  Hell, if it wasn't for my 24/7 internet access, I certainly wouldn't have got into blogging.  The Google Reader app means that posts on all of the blogs I follow are delivered straight to the home screen of my phone in a low-data format.  Google Listen provides the same functionality for podcasts.  I even draft blog posts using the Blogger app, and monitor traffic using DroidAnalytics.

The flipside is that all of this functionality isn't great for my wargames addiction or my habit of digressing.  I have the maelstromgames.co.uk and waylandgames.co.uk websites available at my fingertips, as well as product reviews and the adventures of other bloggers introducing me to new products and ideas all of the time.  I probably wouldn't have it any other way, but I sure have had to work on my self control (this also isn't very good for garth, as I send him links daily with new and interesting wargames info that I know he won't be able to resist!).

But to get down to the real subject of this blog post - what the smart phone has done for me in wargaming.  As well as having all of the above functionality available wherever I go, the smart phone has definitely provided options for me in respect of wargaming.  I now have access to online resources such as forums and rules wikis (in particular the excellent InfinityWiki) as well as up to the minute news information for the diverse rule sets I'm interested in.  

The thing I'm most in love with, though, is online army generators.  These are nothing new; I used Army Builder a lot back in the early 00s.  It seems that since then the concept has really taken off with many systems supported.  While its probably not too good for my productivity, I can now theory-craft and tinker with my wargames interests wherever I go.  Since discovering these resources I've actually spent much more time looking at lists than I was before hand, largely due to my inability to sit down and look through rulebooks for any length of time at the moment.  I'm finding them a great aid to my re-entrance into wargaming, and they're certainly helping to keep my enthusiasm up.  I'll discuss the programs I'm using at the moment below!

As I've gushed about at length in an earlier post, Corvus Belli have produced an official army builder program for use with Infinity.  Infinity Army is a very slick program with great production values and aesthetics very much in keeping with the Infinity setting.  They've also made it available as a downloadable application for PC in addition to the browser version.  This is a good thing as the load time on the browser can be excruciating.

Infinity Army
  
A bit of digression: the thing that impresses me the most about it is the fact that the games company has produced this product as a player aid, an act made possible by the fact that they make the Infinity rules and army lists available for free on the internet.  Its a different business model to the one I'm used to from my teen wargaming days (Games Workshop), and it looks to me like it is quite successful.  It means that entry into the system is essentially effortless and they let the quality of their products do the real work in selling their miniatures.  Its nice to have the feeling that the games company isn't working against you, as is so often my impression with the business models and policies of other gaming companies (a not so veiled reference to an outdated business model (in my opinion) with consequently high pricing and an international sales embargo).

Unfortunately, the program doesn't appear to be fully functional with the Android operating system on my phone just yet.  I understand that this might have something to do with Adobe Air.  However, all is not lost!  A webpage army builder has been made by the folks at Infinity Pool for use with Infinity.  This army builder does work on my phone, and I've had quite a lot of use out of it.  It is slightly more cumbersome than Infinity Army, given that the page loads each time a change is made, but the interface is relatively straight forward and its pretty functional without being too clunky.


I've also found army builder programs to be useful for my other tangible wargaming interest of the moment, Flames of War.  This is another browser based army builder, available at easyarmy.com.  While it isn't particularly pretty to begin with, persevere with it.  The layout is detailed and very functional; in my opinion it gives a clearer indication of how the lists work than the rule books do!  Easyarmy provides quite an extensive collection of the flames of war lists for the periods and combatants, though I don't know that it's exhaustive.  Some of the newer lists are available after a "donation" of $1US is made to the website.  Personally I didn't have a problem with this as it's spare change and the advantage you gain from having all of the lists available online is huge.  I do wonder about the legality of such a site though, and whether there are copyright implications there.  I imagine that if there are they'll be caught up with eventually.  Until then, I think it's $1US well spent!

Easyarmy: I think I've spent more time creating lists from this
than I have from the hard copy books! Procrastination probably. 

Now, all of the above said, I do think there is still a place for rulebooks.  Firstly, I find reading things in print to be much, much more enjoyable than reading things on a computer or smart phone screen.  There is also the satisfaction of possessing a beautifully produced and bound book and being able to flick through it and enjoy it tangibly.  I love books far too much to ever really consider doing without them, and I think its important to purchase rulebooks from games companies even while these resources are available online.  They've produced a product and they deserve to be paid for it, after all.  For this reason I intend only to use Easyarmy (and any other army builder programs I might use in the future) for lists for which I actually own the print copy.  I think this is fair, and I don't think I'll have a problem with sticking to this rule given the quality products that many companies are producing these days.

If anyone has any suggestions for other army building programs, whether application or browser based, I'd be very interested to hear about them.  I'd be particularly interested in dedicated applications for use on the Android operating system.  While its great to have browser-based resources available, they do use data and I'd much prefer to be able to use them offline.

Cheers!

Saturday, 10 September 2011

The Infinity Aesthetic




The general consensus is that Infinity is heavily influenced by anime.  While I do agree with this I do think that it is an oversimplification or an overstatement.  

The art for Infinity is heavily influenced by anime; indeed most if not all of the illustrations in the core rulebook are in a heavy anime style.  Now personally I am not a huge fan of anime (or manga or however you wish to term it, I don't really understand the differences).  My appreciation hasn't gone further than Cowboy Bebop, which I love for the style, cinematography and the music rather than for the particular aesthetic of the animation.  I can comfortably say, then, that I would not really be interested in a game who's miniatures were wholly anime in style.

Infinity's anime art

In my opinion, anime is a subtle influence for the style of Infinity's miniatures.  The proportions are much more slender and lean than the "heroic scale" we are used to from other games, and it is perhaps arguable that some of the facial features are styled in a manner reminiscent of anime.  To me, the features and proportions of the miniatures have a "realistic" aesthetic rather than an anime one.  By this I mean that the forms are more directly proportional to real life than they are an abstraction of it.

Haqqislam Ghulam Infantry: realistic proportions and poses,
without an over-accentuation of the female form!

Ariadnan Zouave: fantastic pose with a gritty realism.

Haqqislam Naffatun: An example of Infinity's realistic proportions and dynamic poses.

I think that it is the technology in the game that shows its anime influences more apparently.  TAGs and Heavy Infantry from the Pan Oceania and Yu Jing factions are much more anime-inspired in appearance, for example (though obviously Yu Jing have an "asian" influence that is a part of and transcends anime!).  I think that it is for this reason that I don't hold a whole lot of affection for some of the miniatures for these factions; however, at the same time I love almost all of the miniatures in the Haqqislam range!  Certain miniatures also appear to me to be a bit more cartoon-ish than others, and I suspect that many of the earlier miniatures in the range might be slightly more abstracted in style.  These aren't really to my taste, but the position of the community seems to be that Infinity is a game where you aren't pigeon-holed into "must have" units.  This means that you can pick and choose your force based on the miniatures you like.  I can't think of any other game systems off the top of my head where this is viable!

Haqqislam Kum Motorised Troop:
A bit cheesy and not to my taste.

Nomad Daktari: Obviously anime-inspired,
but "taking the piss" a bit too!

Pan-Oceania Armoured Cavalry: I think that the technology of this faction
is heavily influenced by anime.


If you've dismissed Infinity outright for its "anime aesthetic", I challenge you to give it another look.  Take a look through the miniature range for each faction, you may be pleasantly surprised!