A restrained few bits and pieces

 

I had a pretty restrained Salute this year, due to the upcoming move and not wanting to buy things that would just get packed up to come to a new house. Still, I got a nice few bits and pieces that are making me happy.

There were a few freebies in the bag.  There's the metal show mini, which is some historical Napoleonic figure. I'm unsure if I'll convert it for Turnip 28 or eBay it. I can make the decision later. There's a sprue of Quar by Wargames Atlantic, which I will probably make up for Last War. Finally, there's a 3D print of a dwarf or something that should be a good Pathfinder NPC.

I also picked up a couple of freebies off stalls. I got the Baron's War show miniature, which is a plate armoured knight with a mitre, who will make an excellent cleric or paladin for RPGs. The 3D print was to show off YS Masterpieces' sculpting and casting services.

Finally, in one of the shop bargain bins, I found these half price rat swarms. They're meant for Kings of War: Vanguard, but again, I plan on using them for RPGs. I think there's something excellently low fantasy about rat swarms. I have some old GW ones somewhere, and a spare set of the Cursed City set, which I got from a bits seller. That's probably enough rat swarms on balance.

So, all in all, an achievable amount to paint, with only one thing Bought With My Own Money, so I did pretty well on the restraint front.

Acceptance

 

This is primarily a blog about my silly little hobbies, but I am, I suppose "The Responsible One", so I guess I need to be Responsible. There's a whole bunch of people being awful in the world right now, and a bunch of my readership are directly affected.

Unless everyone has rights, no-one really has rights. Rights are universal. They cannot, and should not be "granted" by a government or other authority. Anything that is granted can be taken away. If you think "some people" should have less rights, one day, authority may decide you are "some people".

Authoritarians around the world are trying to divide people, to set up "other people" to hate, be that the immigrant, another nation, the "lazy", or trans people. They are doing this to retain power. They are doing this to shore themselves up.

We play silly games with toy soldiers. It may feel like there's nothing you can do. In the big scheme of things, everyone can do things that make a small difference individually - writing to elected representatives, and attending protests. But there's also smaller things you can do that are still important.

There's this myth that the way to a good community is to let people be. But really, a healthy community has rules. If you let people intimidate, bully and make people unwelcome, then people will leave, and you will be left with nothing but toxic bullies. The bullies have to go.

Whether it's an online community or your local gaming club - make folk who might feel vulnerable or unsafe welcome. Make an effort, and, most importantly, if someone does or says something inappropriate - do  something. Tell them that's not OK. Tell your club organiser. Remove them from groups you organise.

If someone you know says that something you said was hurtful or not OK, say sorry, and most importantly do everything you can to not do that again. Move on from it at the time - long rambling apologies or explanations make it worse. What's important is putting in the work to avoid doing it again. Making mistakes happens - but repeatedly being careless about things that matter to someone shows them that you don't care that you're hurting them. That you're not safe.

Fiddler: Infinity Canon Trans Icon

Please be kind to one another.

Trans rights are human rights.

Two events in a weekend

So, many of the people who follow this blog will be aware of Salute, the UK's biggest wargaming trade show. It was last Saturday, and as usual I went along. But it wasn't the only nerd hobby event going on at the Excel Centre! The Flesh and Blood London Pro Tour was running from Thursday to Sunday in the hall next to Salute. And I went to that as well.

I am very tired.

One of the great things about Salute is meeting a lot of friends from the wargaming hobby. I wasn't buying much, but I saw a bunch of folk, had a nose at various stalls, and saw some pretty cool gaming boards.

The Flesh and Blood Pro Tour had a lot of advertising around the Excel. I'm not sure how many Salute attendees went to get a demo game to see what it was about... I played games there on Friday and Sunday, as well as after Salute on the Saturday, too. I may ramble more about this later, but for now, I'm going to go and have a nap...

Wizkids Pathfinder Leshy Window Box Set Review

Recently arrived after a bit of a delay is this box of Leshy miniatures for Pathfinder. It's classic Wizkids pre-painted stuff, but at the higher end of that scale. You're getting eight miniatures, which are all based on the book art of the Leshy, a popular PC option in Pathfinder.

The Leshy are spirits inhabiting small plant bodies. With the recent Pathfinder Remaster they moved from an "Uncommon" player option to a "Common" player option, essentially becoming a comparable player option to Humans, Dwarves and Elves. That said, they gain their sustenance from sunlight, with their "rations" being very pricey, so they're not well suited to underground campaigns.

(There's a weird point on this one, where Fungus Leshy are mentioned a living in the Darklands, Pathfinder's Underdark, but the PC Fungus Leshy still need sunlight by the book. Still, this is a weird little side annoyance for me, and not super important.)

Here, left to right, we have a Lotus Leshy, a Seaweed Leshy and a Flytrap Leshy. Flytrap Leshy aren't a specific PC option (though there's a monster stat block), but mechanically they work just fine using the Cactus Leshy options.

The great thing about Leshy, being spirits inhabiting humanoid shaped plant matter is that you can really have a wide range of different themes or vibes.

Next up we have the Gourd Leshy, the Sunflower Leshy and the Fruit Leshy. Sunflower Leshy are another "monster option" that fits into other character classes just fine.

The paint jobs on these models are at the higher end of the Wizkids pre-painted scale, and really quite fancy. They've gone with brighter colours, which suits the general feel of Leshy in general, but there's a couple of spots, such as on the Gourd Leshy, where a little more shading would have probably brought them up an extra notch.

Finally, we have a Cactus Leshy and a Fungus Leshy. They're all very distinct with individual silhouettes so easy to tell which is which. All the sculpts are oozing character.

Leshy are small in the rules, and here you can see one being a little shorter than an Aenor goblin who was what I had around to compare them to.

The recent NPC Core book introduced an NPC profile for a "Gourd Witch", which is a pumpkin headed Leshy with a witches hat and witch spells. I'm only shocked I hadn't thought of it myself before now.

As a few Leshy face off against some marauding goblins - would I recommend buying this box? It is really pricey for what it is, but the quality is at the top end of what Wizkids do. For me, it was a must buy because getting the 'official sculpts' and not adding to my painting queue was an easy choice. There aren't many other good options for small plant folk right now outside of 3D printing. It's not going to be everyone's aesthetic, but if you've got the budget as a Pathfinder GM who uses miniatures, I'd recommend them.

Infinity Battle Report: Shasvastii vs O-12: Frontline

 

Continuing my attempts to practice with my Shasvastii, I had another practice game at the club. My opponent brought his O-12, and the mission was Frontline. I decided to try a list that leaned heavily into Infiltrating and Forward Deployed models

I had a good number of camo tokens scattered across the midfield - I had a couple of Shrouded, a Malignos Killer Hacker, and a Caliban Spitfire. I had a classified mission involving a visor and my opponent's HVT, so I held back the Caliban Spitfire so it could make the run early and didn't have too far to go.

This took a few orders, but a Taigha cleared a mine, the Caliban cleared the reaction remote, then camoed up to get past another model, got the classified then re-camoed to provide him a little protection in my opponent's turn.

With my handful of remaining orders, I moved a Taigha up to annoy an errant camo token.

Sadly, the camo state didn't help the Caliban much. It got discovered and taken out pretty swiftly.

My right flank got thoroughly attacked and the pieces there were put unconscious.

Focusing my efforts on classifieds, my Speculo needed to pass a WIP roll in base to base contact with an opposing remote. It succeeded at this, then chopped the remote in half.

The Speculo then went on to try and take out an O-12 hacker, but didn't manage to get a killing blow.

The Malignos also went up to take out some model or other, but ran out of orders to recamo. This was a definite mistake as it got swiftly taken out.

A Varangian ran over to try and rescue the Hacker, but also managed to fail to land a kill - but this stalemate locked in out of the scoring zones, so we were both stuck!

At this point the Zeta came out and just started deleting stuff. I tried to use my Shrouded to Posses it as my opponent was out of Command Tokens, but I couldn't land a hit and ran out of orders.

With a Crusher having joined the attack on my right flank and having scored a classified on the building, I took my Obsidon Medchanoid around to try and fire a Gizmokit at an enemy troop. Sadly, he lost the face to face and exploded.

I moved a few troops into zones, but I was heavily down points, and my opponent was easily able to move troops between zones to get a solid win.

On reflection, I needed more punch in the list. I didn't have enough firepower to deal with some of the threats I was up against. I like a lot of the tools I used, but putting all of the finesse tools into a list can really fall over in the face of even quite moderate violence. Putting in more of a mix of troops may be a better solution.

Comm-link Guard, More Sorting, and Finding More Work

 

I've finished assembling the comm-link troops I need for my Imperial Guard update. I'm not painting these immediately as I've got Too Much On right now, but they'll be an easy quick paint job in a free moment.

While searching my boxes for plasma gunners I found that I actually had one more than I thought I had. After I'd bought a metal Cadian plasma gunner from eBay as an inferior substitute, obviously. At least it was before I'd painted things.

As a first pass of getting these ready for undercoat, I dropped them into a sonic cleaner bath with hot water and washing up liquid. This didn't get much paint off, but did clear off the basing sand and broke down the basing glue enough to get them separated easily. Next step will be an acetone bath, but I need to find a good container for that so awful fumes and stuff don't make my tiny flat sad.

On the subject of making me sad, I found three more baskets of part finished projects that need sorting. Oh bother. I haven't even fully gone through this basket. There's a couple of Inquisitors in Terminator armour that need a little more assembly and can then go in a box, much like the Comm-link Guard I just finished.

There's a bunch of Deathwatch repairs in another tray. This should be one of the easier jobs on the "to do" list.

There's also a tray of "stuff that's difficult to fit in things" that need putting away. I should do that. I have put away two trays of minis already, but that heart warming feeling of tidying up isn't particularly photogenic for blogging purposes.

I got a little more base coating done on the Conquest Druid. It's not a finished thing, but it's progress.

In the coming week I have my Infinity campaign game and the finale of our 40K campaign as well. That might mean I don't get a huge amount of hobby done, but we'll see how it goes.

Infinity Battle Report: Mindwipe, Shasvastii vs Ramah Task Force

 

This week's Shasvastii practice game pulled up "Mindwipe" on the random generator. This isn't a popular mission, but I was up for giving it a go. My opponent was bringing Ramah Task Force.

I'd won the first turn, so wanted to set up pressing the button on a console securely. I had my fancy hacker (a Shrouded Killer Hacker) hiding near the button, with a Speculo Killer tucked into a nook where she could see the console as well.

This plan worked very clearly. The Speculo threw smoke over the console then re-impersonated, then the Killer Hacker came up, pushed the button within the smoke, then re-camoed and headed off to a new hiding spot.

The rogue AI was hiding in the most defended console, in the centre of my opponent's deployment. I used my remaining orders to walk up the Speculo Minelayer to drop another mine in the most awkward spot possible, then again re-camoed.

My opponent sensibly and efficiently cleared the mine, discovered and killed the Shrouded Minelayer, then went to focus on the mission. He brought up a Hunzakut who cleared a Taigha creature before making his way to the console, crawling the last part of the way to stay out of sight of the mine laid on the other side of it, while smoke kept my Q-Drone from impeding the button pushing.

Leila Sharif decided that E/M mining the entire console building was a reasonable and proportionate thing to do. It was a good way of stopping any sneaky rush for the server.

I decided to send my Paramedic Seed Soldier to do my classified with my opponent's HVT. Pesky repeaters got him targeted, then I just couldn't pass a WIP check! At the time, I thought I'd got my classified, but as I was heading home, I realised I'd counted an order in the wrong pool, so texted my opponent to Correct the Record.

I sent my Uberhacker to try and get the console, but hadn't noticed a model who could discover them, which proceeded to leave him sitting in the Repeater network. Checking the Mindwipe special hacking programme, it's burst 1 and D/A, so I was certain it would be multiple orders to clear it - so I went after the hackers first, and the Shrouded got melted.

My opponent made some consolidating moves, then brought on a Hakim, who was able to take out the Q drone, but there weren't quite enough orders for him to get back anywhere safe, or reach the console. That said, it took me some orders to bring my Mentor around to clear the Hakim and for my Med Tech to repair the Q Drone.

I sent Sheskiin in to try and score some servers. Not able to fight through to the main server, I decided on taking out one of the others - I did so, but she got Flash Pulsed as she did, meaning I put my remaining orders into defending my own servers.

The Ramah fireteam was able to make their way up and destroy my centre server, which was also a decoy. My opponent had gotten muddled after picking the server to my left, but we looked back and determined that he wouldn't have had the orders to successfully hit the Rogue AI server.

With my classified actually unscored, this left us both scored with one console and one decoy server apiece. This felt right for such a close, cagey game. I don't hate this mission, but can see how you need to design your list a lot for it, and it favours the player going first heavily. In particular, locking out a console for your opponent is incredibly tough on whoever is going second.

Still, I feel like I'm getting a good cross section of Shasvastii units, and am starting to get a good idea of what I get on with running in this edition.

An elegant handbrake turn

 

There's nothing new on the paint table this week. For once, this is mostly deliberate-ish. We've started planning our upcoming house move. Looking at the time we have left before I need to pack up the hobby station, it's not long. There's a whole pile of part assembled things I could really do with finishing up before I pack them.

I'm keeping the Templar for Frostgrave out in case I get a moment, but I'd rather complete the Druids and the assembly as a priority. But no paint was applied this week, as packing up the eBay sales took up a whole chunk of my free time.

The long delayed "Leshy Window Box" for Pathfinder Battles finally made it to the UK, which I'm very pleased to have picked up. I'll hopefully get some proper pictures and maybe a review done in the next week or two.

My mini Guard project has been going well. I've picked up two plasma gunners from eBay, and need to dig one existing plasma gunner I have out from the cases and get it paint stripped. There's one last comm link trooper to go. Then it's just a case of some basing paste and some undercoating. Properly painting them can wait to the new place.

This tray of "ready to paint" miniatures just needs to go back into cases. These are still good models if I want to do a casual paint alongside a project, but that can be a new house problem.

The Bretonnian Men at Arms need to get done. Right now their sprues are sitting loose without a box and I really don't fancy sorting that out at the other end of a house move. This is probably the biggest job that needs doing in terms of straight up time, though it's mostly pretty simple.

The Exrah from the Combined Army Reinforcement Box, however, are the exact opposite of simple. These are absolute bastards to put together, and I've been putting them off. But I got them all out of their packaging so it's essential they are together and in a KR case before the move.

Various repairs and half painted models are on this tray. There's a couple of "to be painted" models also sculling about on this tray too, so I need to grab those and put them away. Going through this tray will probably have a bunch of "quick wins" where a little work will get a miniature to the point where I can put it away...

Considerably more cursed is this box of Infinity bits - whether repairs or miniatures that need assembly. These are more "transportable" than the Exrah, so are a lower priority, but ideally I'd like to get them done before we pack.

With all this catalogued, it's pretty clear why I need to park things in the interest of getting things transportable. Wish me luck...