D&D Minis - A Strange Assortment

 

I picked up a few bits and pieces of pre-painted Wizkids models again. Across the back, left to right - Thri-Kreen are hard to find outside of official miniatures, and as a potential player species now, it's a solid thing to pick up. The Wereraven is a good NPC option to have available as they have a good spooky aesthetic. Finally, the Galeb Duhr are smaller earth elementals, which adds some variety to weird magical summoned creatures or other fights. Of course, I noticed since I bought it that they can animate two buddies who look identical, so I should have grabbed three...

In front is a Pathfinder "Ant Gnoll", which I picked up as smaller gnolls are otherwise hard to find, and a Deep Dragon Wyrmling. I really wanted a Young Deep Dragon, but I failed to pick one up before they went out of stock in the shops I regularly check, so now I'll be keeping my eye out.

At the other end of the scale, here's a Mamlambo for Pathfinder. It's from the Mwangi Expanse part of the setting, which is their African inspired setting. It's a huge river monster which is a "Creature 9" encounter. I'm probably not going to get to use it for a good while yet, but it felt like something that would be quite hard to find from elsewhere.

Just to give an idea of the sheer size of the Mamlambo, here it is next to a couple of human sized and smaller figures. It's a really large model that will make an excellent centrepiece fight or big reveal. One day, I guess . . . 

Infinity Remotes and a little delivery

 

I got the second box of Nomad Zond remotes assembled. The one without a gun on the right is a Transductor Zond, a cheap remote with a Flash Pulse and Repeater that can act as a low powered ARO piece, or just a cheap order, depending on what you need.

The remote with the gun is the Vertigo Zond - the slightly infamous Guided Missile Launcher Remote profile available to every faction in Infinity. It is allowed to shoot models out of its line of sight if they've been Targeted by either a Hacker or Forward Observer. This is a strong but situational attack that Nomads are well placed to utilise due to their strong hacking coverage.

Quite a few players think Guided Missiles are one of the stronger plays in the game. I don't fully agree - I think they can easily catch out a newer player, but it can be quite order intensive compared to other plays. Robert Shepherd on YouTube has also done an excellent video tutorial about how to defend against it.

I've had a delivery from Fist in the Eye Miniatures, which is the miniature line associated with 28 Mag. That aside, I'm really looking to slow down my miniature purchasing to something that I'm likely to be able to actually keep up with, painting wise. That probably means selling a few more things as well, which I'll likely get to soon enough.

Infinity: Learning Nomads: Capture and Protect

Last week I headed down to Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts (HATE) at Bethnal Green to take my Nomads on their first N4 outing. I was facing one of the club who was running his Bakunin to practice for an Infinity Tournament at Troll Trader Bromley. I took a relatively generic Nomad list to start getting a handle on what's good.

The mission was Capture and Protect to help practice for the tournament. It was an odd Bakunin list - designed more for the mission than the strengths of Bakunin, without a link team. It ran one of the new profiles for the Lizard TAG, using my opponent's very well painted Iguana miniature.

My Intruder Sniper was a terror but was able to be mostly moved around until it could be neutralised. To make space for other things, my "big gun" was only a Mobile Brigada. It performed OK, but when it went to make a run for the box, ended up getting hacked and immobilised.

In the third turn, I didn't have the ability to catch up in points and win, but I had a chance of scoring some points. My Zero Minelayer did a complicated run utilising its camo to get to the box and pick it up, surviving some unopposed shots from the Lizard.

All in all, it was a fun game, and while I lost heavily, I was really happy to get back to my Nomads, and I really enjoyed using the different profiles. I've got a bunch of ideas for things I'd like to try, but it's reinvigorated my love of Infinity.

Work in Progress Wednesday: A little O-12 Support

 

I got a handful more of my O-12 models ready for paint recently. Pandora is a very tough doctor and engineer who a lot of people are very complimentary about. There's then a Flash Pulse remote and Agnes, who just got some interesting new rules with the Reinforcements rules.

Looking at my painting list and my upcoming focus on my Nomads, I've decided I'm likely to commission out my O-12 painting rather than doing them myself. This takes a whole bunch of pressure off my painting queue, but means this is probably the last "Work in Progress" O-12 post you'll see...

Zonds and Thoughts

 

After I wrote last week's blog post, I managed to get two of the four Zond Remotes in my assembly queue finished and assembled. To start off, I went with the Stempler Zond and Reaktion Zond, as those are the ones I've found with a lot of utility - I can always take another Morlock rather than a Transductor Zond if I need another cheap model.

Much of the past week has been spent pretty flat as work has gotten rather busy. I did manage to get a game in at the club - expect a battle report on that subject later this week! I've spent much of the weekend either napping or catching up on tidying the flat. A whole bunch of D&D miniatures and some painted commissions turned up which will need photographing and putting away, too.

None of this is bad - it's all stuff that needs doing and will be good for my hobby in the long run. But right now I want to be assembling and painting and things are in the way again. I expect that once the final LARP of the year runs in early September, my calendar is going to start freeing up for more of this hobby...

Runewars Tree Monsters

 

These miniatures are from the now discontinued Runewars game. I assembled them a while ago and rebased them onto round bases for D&D, then ended up getting distracted by other projects. After Brushchewer did such a good job on my Terrain Crate stuff, these were sitting on a shelf looking sad and unpainted when I was looking around for the next job for her to do - and she's knocked it out of the park.

I let her pick her own paint scheme on these ones, and I'm really happy with this grimy, threatening look she's gone for rather than something brighter and cheerier.

These could easily be used as evil Treants or Tree Blights in D&D. There's a lot of flexibility to them, too - they could be a magical experiment gone awry, evil magic blighting the land, or animated by some evil wizard or druid. With quite a few different "large killer plant" stat blocks in D&D at different levels, there's some solid options at different party levels to pick from.

How I started my weekend

Gleeful that it was finally the weekend, I headed into the hobby room to be confronted by a massive pile of Infinity purchases that had arrived earlier in the week. It turned out that The Games Table in Norwich had a short (now finished) sale to clear space to transition from shop to more of a venue focus. Half off Infinity prices was too good to pass up, and the last of my July hobby budget vanished immediately. With the Action Pack being a duplicate I'd picked up for some, but not all of the sculpts, I then listed the models I didn't want on my eBay, and put the rest away.

Next up was a box from Blood Medusa Paints containing some Tanares miniatures she'd painted for me for D&D. So these were unpacked, photographed, and put on the tray for being put away. There will be a blog post in a couple of weeks showing them off.

Next up, a handful of O-12 miniatures I finished undercoating on a lunchbreak earlier this week but hadn't had time to take off their box. So they got photoed and added to the tray of things to be put away.

The next pile is all my Siocast Infinity. I've managed to schedule a game on Wednesday, so the rest of my hobby focus for the weekend will be getting as many of these as possible cleaned up and assembled so I have the option of playing my Nomads.

If it wasn't for the upcoming Infinity game, the goal would be working on reducing my "work in progress" - finishing up what's on my paint table, maybe starting my next big paint project, and finding something half assembled to get ready for undercoating. I'm also considering digging into my boxes to find some new things to send off to my commission painters as I've had a few things back recently. I may still do some of these things in between scraping mould lines any time my back needs a break...

Infinity Tournament: Troll Trader Bromley July Tournament

 

I popped down to Troll Trader Bromley in July for their regular Infinity tournament. Unfortunately, some last minute drop outs and illnesses meant that there were only three of us, but we all got a game in with each other anyway.

First up was Chappers Invincible Army, playing Power Pack.

I had a cunning plan and it did not survive getting shot in the face. I managed to get a Kunai right into his back line troops, but ran out of orders before I could do a lot of damage. An earlier attack with a Tiger Soldier had similarly bounced off.  All in all, it ended up with an 8-0 loss.

After a nice long lunch while I took a bye, I got in a game against Yashar's Acontecimento force in Quadrant Control. 

I did not have the tools to deal with two TAGs, and it all went horribly wrong. I managed to grab a couple of points, but still ended it on a 6-2 loss.

While I had two losses on the day, it was good to get out and get some games in with friends. The Bromley Troll Trader store is really quite nice, and I'd recommend going to any events they're running there.

Taking stock at the end of July

 

I've had a productive month all told, despite having wandered off LARPing during it. I'm kind of most happy about the Reaper Bones Wolves, because they're something I bought, assembled and painted pretty much straight through. This is much more the sort of thing I want to be doing - not working through backlogs from years ago.

On the subject of backlogs from years ago, the third of the four Oathsworn dwarfs I was given as a present are now finished. It's a good feeling to have older stuff finished. I'm probably going to take a pass of all the things I've got assembled and ready to paint and see what I'm still emotionally invested in doing. Things that I'm more keen on being done than doing myself, I'll get out to one of my commission painters.

I also got this Urbanmech done. There's a whole bunch of games I've got lined up that I want to play but haven't made the time to. I'm probably going to have a bit of a think by the end of the year about how many games I can realistically play, and move a few games to either "I'll paint a few of their minis for fun" or "admire from afar rather than collect" to have a bit more of a realistic attitude to what I'll actually get done.

Infinity remains my favourite game to play, and I'm now keen to get to my first faction love - Nomads. I do need to take a mature and sensible approach to that project, though, and make sure I've got rid of enough clutter that I can properly dedicate time to them, rather than get frustrated that I'm not getting anywhere with them because things are in the way...

Work in Progress Wednesday: A little O-12

 

These O-12 have been sitting around waiting for me to finish their undercoat for ages, so I decided it was high time to get them ready for paint so they can be put away and stop cluttering up my hobby desk... Left to right, we have two Nyoka, a Bronze, and a Psi-Cop.

The Nyoka will likely see more use in Starmada, as they can form fireteams with an assortment of other models. The Bronze is a reliable heavy attack piece, and the Psi-Cop is a really solid second line attack piece whose marksman rifle and visor can solve problems you might otherwise struggle with.