Greetings all. Still Alive and hobbying!

 Greetings all. Long time no speak. Certainly no posts on here that's for sure. Its been a bit of a stressful real life time the past few years and blogging has taken a bit of a back burner unfortunately. I've still been dipping my toes into the hobby however. Managed to attend a single 7TV event and the Games Expo last year but painted barely anything. 

Now one of my sort of promises I made to myself was to be more productive painting miniatures wise this year. I was just cleaning/,assembling and sometimes priming and then getting no further.

So I decided to try and get to as many gaming events as I could this year as well as try and paint at least a 1 figure a week. Now that doesn't mean 1 each week per say but by the end of the year I hope to have painted 52 miniatures in total

So far I am nearly on target. I have a been to two 7TV events and have a third one this month and I am working on two casts for it. Some will be existing models already painted.  But I plan on adding miniatures from the to paint pile for it for both casts. Anyway this is the what I've manage to get done so far this year.

So January and February I started myself gently back in with some lovely Burrows and Badgers miniatures mainly because I am still getting used to painting with glasses as these have more chunkier/simpler sculpts they were easier to paint. Various Guard beasts a Squirrel, Chihuahua, Yorkshire Terrier and a mole with a Border Terrier Knight in the centre.

This was an easy win as mostly it was just repainting his suit as I wasn't to happy with how he had turned out previously. This is a Copplestone castings KKBB not Red Grant.

Now in March I went to my first 7TV Event of 2025 and this was title Robot Revolution 2078 where all the players had to create a team of Robot Hunters and fight against the Hosts hordes of robots throughout the day. I though to myself who is an infamous Robot Hunter? Yep Sarah Connor! So this is my cast I took on the day formed around Terminator Dark Fate. So you have Left to Right Grace the augmented freedom fighter from the future (Spec Ops) Sarah Connor (Hardened Grunt), Danni (Everyman well Woman!) and of course 'Karl'  (Cybernetic Construct).

Mini's are Copplestone Future Wars female trooper with a head swap, Hasslefree Elite Sadie with the shotgun trimmed down. The last two are both Crooked Dice a Survivor and Cybernetic Organism.

Also whilst painting the Dark Fate cast I had a play around with the Crooked Dice Xenos Fighter B aimed at being a not Ripley. However I already have a nice Hasslefree sculpt for this purpose so I decided to have a play around doing a unnamed Colonial marine to test out the colour scheme. I'm quite pleased with how she turned out. 

May had my second 7TV event 'If you go down to the Woods today' This time the theme was Fantasy as this had just had a reprint and update to the latest edition. I wanted to do an evil themed undead/chaos cast but to make it would of having to spend a load of cash. So instead I decided to run my Dwarves again. I had a rummage in the todo pile and found a bunch that had been primed but not started. 

So on the left we have Hasslefree Dynamic Armoured Kayden. In the middle another Hasslefree Ari Wilhelmson (I think a Tre Manor sculpt) then the king on the right and two guards at the back are all Ral Partha Europe. They are a little on the shorter side but mix ok imo.

Ari was a bit of a challenge. It is a gorgeous sculpt but there was a lot of detail and a lot of different layers of clothing, furs, armour etc.

Dwarven King and his guards. Though I think I am missing a shield for the king. which I can't find anywhere.

My cast for the day a mixture of Ral Partha Europe and Hasslefree miniatures. It was a great days gaming and I got to play 4 games against some great people. Karl Perrotton being one who at the event playing!

Yesterday saw me attend the UKGE at the NEC it was even bigger this year with tons great stuff on display. Caught up with lots of gaming chums and spent a bit of cash.  Very much Fantasy minded this year. Though the Demon can be used for all sorts of gaming really. The Red box is to store all my 7TV cards in. I am missing having the boxed sets to contain everything in!

Crooked Dice Esoteric Agent 1

Greetings all man its been a long time posting on here. I think I underestimated how much time the extension and consequent refurb was going to take and the impact that it was going to have on hobby and especially my inclination to paint anything! I seem to assemble clean up and assemble a fair bit of stuff. But then have no mojo to actually paint any of it!

I've been doing a little bit of reading lately mostly Damien Lewis books about the SOE/SAS in WW2 so I've had a yearning to something from that period. I had a mooch through my to do pile and came across the Esoteric Agents by Crooked Dice. I'd started bits from this set of minis a while back mainly working on the Not Peggy and Not Nick Fury.

The Peggy from the set only need a bit of tidying up and few highlights and so was a quick win. I think she would make a good SOE agent beside being Peggy Carter in fact I watched The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare recently and she would work as Marjorie Stewart.

7TV Post Apocalypse Road Warrior Day

       

So 18th March I went to Board in Brum for a 7TV Apocalypse day. We played 3 games throughout the day. Following a narrative set by the organiser Wayne Bollands the 3 games had extra rules or slightly modified scenarios from the Producer guides.


Casts and Crews

So it was only a small event with just 8 players which was a shame really. However it was great meeting up with the regulars to roll dice and chat geek stuff :)

My hastily put together cast the night before. The building work going on has just disrupted my hobby time to much to get anything done. Its nearing completion in the next few weeks or so. I used my Across the Dead Earth 'State' theme miniatures with some vehicles I already had done plus a random HF Survivor as my leader.

This was probably my favourite and I think nearly everyone's cast of the day. Themed around the various Mad Max Villains. The vehicles with their lighting effects it was an awesome looking cast.

Shaun and his Heaven and Hell themed cast.

Kirsten had a super Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast with customised profile cards.

James had this brilliant cyberpunk type cast of which I think the War Machine steals the show. Though I love the racer and bikers

David Brown's Survivor cast

Tavis's Scavenger cast. With mounted and dismounted bikers.

The boards that people bought in to game on. 


Tavis Hill as usually brought along an amazing looking board!

A Wasteland Bazaar

Ruined town. I think this was a store board. 

Shaun Pike's fab ruined town board.

David Brown's Wasteland Scrap Yard

Game 1
This was against David Brown's Survivor Cast It had a truck a group of survivors and gang of bikers. The objective was to loot as many tokens as possible with destroyed vehicles/vehicles also being able to be looted.

The Cast consisted of a Monster Hunter, Bad Lieutenant(maybe wrong on he co star) Survivor Unit, Biker Unit and a truck

My Scout deploys on his own on the left flank with the intention of grabbing the loot and sniping at the survivors in the scrap yard ahead

The monster hunter and Survivor band scout through the ruins snatching up loot. The Biker gang whizzed down the board coming to a stop near the right hand building. The Truck pulled upto the central building the Bad Lieutenant jumped out and snapped up some loot.



My Truck stalled (countdown card disabled it and all its occupants for a turn)
The attack buggy whizzed forward and let rip with its Heavy machine gun. Killing several bikers and wounding the biker boss


The truck rammed into the buggy causing minor damage.


 The Biker Boss left his bike and ran in to the building snatching up some loot



Finally getting the engine going my Truck rammed into the enemy truck destroying it and injuring most of the occupants. My Grunts and Natural Leader disembarked. My Scout picks off one of the survivors who was peeking next to a barricade.

My Grunts open fire and gun down the Bad Lieutenant. My Leader loots the destroyed truck. The buggy drives over to the destroyed and abandoned bikes the Grizzled Veteran and Gunner loot the bikes.


A Survivor runs out to retrieve his wounded comrade but its a trap and is also sniped by my Scout. The Grizzled veteran charges into the building and cuts down the biker boss with his combat knife. The remaining bike is looted. Dave failed his ax test and his band retreated to lick their wounds. 

Dave managed to grab 4 out of the 5 objectives however I managed to kill his co star, ax his cast and loot the 4 bikes and truck. Resulting in a win for me. I had some extremely good dice in ths game when I need to. The loss of truck ended being a boon as the plot points I gained from all the models affected boosted my dice rolls in the following turns.

Game 2
This Episode was simple. Your band was out for revenge or wanted to settle the score with a rival gang. It was all out attack on the Fury Road. This was against Tavis's band of marauders/survivors

Our bands deployed in opposite corners from one another.

My Bugg whizzed over and let rip with the HMG at the bikers. Killing a few riders. The Scrounger leapt onto a now spare bike and the bikers all roared off attacking the aggressive little buggy. There sawn off shotguns proved to be quite brutal killing the my Grizzled Veteran and the gunner and wounding the driver.

A biker swung his bike chain as he drove past ignite some leaking fuel which caused the buggy to explode and kill the passenger. The bikers ducked and weaved away from the explosion.

A massive explosion rocked the truck. Killing several occupants. The Scavenger truck whizzed forward letting rip at my truck blowing it up and further wounding the occupants.
The Bikers drove up the flank and picked off the survivors.

Games 3 
This was an escape episode. My cast deployed in one corner of the board and had to escape off the opposite corner. This was again Mark and his fab Marauder Band. In the first turn you could only make a single move action and you couldn't steal the scene. 




Both Mark's vehicles roared onto the board. Both letting rip with their rocket launchers. Heavily damaging the truck and killing several occupants. Fortunately the buggy survived unscathed.


The buggy sped off across the board. Its ability to ignore terrain and a massive 18 inch move meant after stealing the scene it left off the opposite board edge in 3 turns. The Truck block the path and everyone disembarked and took some shots at the pursuing racers prepared to sell their lives dearly.

I think this game may perhaps of been better if everyone had been on foot. Perhaps in corners on the same side the board. Then had the vehicles nearby that then had to be mounted etc. The Rockets where quite nasty and I was glad when they missed the buggy as the truck received a proper pasting from just one salvo. With the blast effect hitting occupants on a 5+ and causing d6 damage it nearly cost me a two thirds of my cast in one shot.

It was another great day playing 7TV and having a good natter amongst friends. Kirsten and Mark both won prizes for their casts voted on by members of the 7TV Facebook group. The next 7TV is in June in Nottingham and will be a Pulp/Spyfi themed sci fi event. We all had to pick a miniature out of a bag and depending on who got which figure will influence certain parts of the next event.