Work in Progress Wednesday: Bad Squiddo Games

In between my bigger projects, I picked up an assortment of recent miniatures from Bad Squiddo Games to paint up.

These are a champion and standard bearer from the Amazons range. I originally picked up their Kickstarter, but these models came out since.

Most of them are single piece, and came with an integral metal base. You can still see it here where I've not built up the basing texture smoothly enough. I'll get that corrected before I get her painted. This model is a berserker, also from the Amazon range.

These two are Amazon princesses, but they would work well as fantasy civilians in a lot of settings. There was only minimal mould lines, and hardly any clean up was needed. The castings were really high quality.

The beer maiden and scholar were released around the same time and I picked them up as well. There's been a few miniatures that have come out since these ones. Sadly, those ones will have to wait, because lockdown and my wife being allergic to the nickel in metal miniatures means I won't be able to get any more assembly done until I've got somewhere outside the flat to do assembly.

Here's "Secret Agent Annie" - a model that hasn't come out yet but was included as a freebie with my order. She's from the recent Women of World War II Kickstarter that Bad Squiddo completed. Those pledges are currently being fulfilled, despite global pandemics, and I'm expecting mine through soon...

Club Scatter Terrain

Last year, one of Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts passed away. Their family asked that we arrange a charity sale of their gaming collection, and I picked up a whole pile of crates to use as scatter terrain for the club Infinity tables.

I originally thought they were from Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, but an astute reader has corrected me that they're actually from a Mantic Games kit. A few of them had some small casting defects, but nothing major.

I did make a poor life choice and try and paint the entire lot as a single batch which meant I ended up spending a week burnt out and doing no painting at all. Still, they're done now, and it brings my total for the year up to 30 models painted. Halfway to the year's target, and it's only April!

As a side note - why is my camera going all "soft focus" on the shots in my light box? I know I'm missing the light strip due to a missing cable, but as you can see from this photo taken on my painting table, it's focusing just fine there!

If anyone knows anything about iPhone phone cameras and their mysteries, please do get in touch.

Work in Progress Wednesday: All Sorts

The HATE club Battlemasters project chaos archers are now all undercoated and ready for paint.

I still have three of the Shasvastii from Operation Wildfire to get painted. They're the more elite, detailed models, and I think I'm a little intimidated.

I have the Mordheim Pit Fighter to do at some point as a little quick paint job when something else is making me want a change.

I also have a classic Skaven Warlord all undercoated and ready to go, and will probably paint him as I start getting into the Skaven line infantry assembly...

Bank Holiday Hobby Halflings

Before I start on the main topic of the post, may I direct you to the Support Small Hobby Companies link at the top of my blog. In these trying times, there's a few suggestions of small companies you could support with a few hobby purchases if you have the spare funds. I'm also open to suggestions for additions, or corrections if they end up suspending deliveries.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I've managed to finish up the Wargames Atlantic Halflings that I've been pottering along with for a good while. I'm still relying on natural sunlight in my photo box because I can't find the cable for the lights.

 I still feel last week's photos came out better. Need to work out what I did differently!

Well, really, I need to just work out what type of connection it is and order a new one from the Internet, let's be honest.

In short - fun little break, gave me a good insight into how I'll need to stay sane while painting my Skaven. If you want cheap models that will give you solid rank and file Halfling infantry, they're a good pick. The detail is soft in areas and there's a very limited weapon selection - you won't be able to buy a box and make all archers or pikemen, for example. They're still quite characterful and I do rather like them.

I fixed the base edge of the undead satyr familiar from Diehard Miniatures, so I can take a photo of this side of him now!

This isn't everything I got done over the long weekend, but as I'm now out of battle reports, I'm going to space things out a little more through the week in the hope of starting to be able to schedule posts in advance again.

I now leave you with some glamour shots of the individual Halflings.

Infinity Tournament Practice Game: Custom Mission - Dahshat vs Spiral Corps

The last game I managed to get in before it All Went Wrong was a tournament practice game with Riker. The tournament he was going to was using the Halloween zombie mission Corvus Belli put out a while ago (with the exception that no, you do not get a free Avatar).

I was running my Dahshat Company, while my opponent was running Spiral Corps. You had to kill the zombies, who you could only harm in close combat.

My early move was to have my Zuyong move up and shoot at the "Chaksa" that supposedly only had a Heavy Flamethrower, sitting in a sniper nest linked to two other Chaksa. Unsurprisingly, it was a Taagma Schemer with a Viral Sniper rifle using a Holoprojector to pretend to be another unit.

("Unsurprisingly" because you need a Taagma to create the link in the first place, and there's not really a profile worse for putting in a sniper tower than a Heavy Flamerthrower!)

I then tried moving McMurrough up through smoke to try and take out some units, but I was already a few orders down and I couldn't quite get anything effective off, and pulled him back so he didn't get easily killed off next turn.

Unfortunately, doing that had left my Zuyong Haris a little over-exposed instead. First the Rui Shi, got hit (and shot again to make it stay dead given it was about two inches from an Engineer).

And then the rest of the link was picked off one by one from the left, leaving them out of cover. After that, I couldn't manage to get back into the game. McMurrough suffered from it being just a bit too long a run in the open to get a good hit in, but was successful in his more rarely used role of "being a terrifying order sync as you try and kill him".

In the end, I just couldn't get enough zombies killed. I brought out Saito Togan in the last round, but my troops had been positioned such that most of the zombies had ended up running away from him rather than past him. It meant he had too far to go and just couldn't get the kills in.

All in all, it was a fun, pretty balanced scenario. I could see that playing it a couple of times before the tournament would definitely help out a whole bunch as you avoided mistakes like "set up ambush for zombies and forget to bait it".

As I mentioned before, this is the last game I had before lockdown. I'm having a look at Tabletop Simulator, and may get in some games there - but I'm also kind of enjoying being able to focus on the painting!

Fancy Photos and a New Plan

I spent a bit of the weekend tidying the hobby area rather than painting, so I only managed to get the Shasvastii Mentor finished up. Various new projects have been undercoated and prepped, but I'm not showing all of those just yet.

I also found my light box, so took some slightly fancier photos than you'll have seen before. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found the cable to my light box, so the photos had to rely on natural sunlight, and are thus varied in quality.

The Mentor, I photographed with the Nox Troopers I've already done, and the look of them all together has made me very happy that the look of the force is coming together.

The Inquisition Cherub got a coat of varnish before he goes away, as I remain cautious about Contrast paint's durability without it.

My Diehard Miniatures skeleton also gets a nice photo rather than something weird taken on my parents' kitchen work bench.

The skeletal satyr, I sadly realised had taken a spilled wash to the base rim, hence the slightly weird angle. I've since patched it up, and I might keep him out to take another photo with the next batch of finished models.

The creepy scarecrow remains creepy.

I'm plugging through the Wargames Atlantic Halflings. They're not the most detailed of sculpts, but are fine for line troops. I'm really hoping to get these finished up this week.

My local wargaming club, HATE (Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts) has decided on a lock down project of painting up a copy of the old Battlemasters game. I enthusiastically volunteered to paint a unit of the Chaos Archers, because I've always liked them.

What I'm not loving is the 90s mould line that's very close to being an out and out mould slip. The line runs right down the face and over several key details, so it's pretty annoying to deal with. I'm currently at 3 down, with 2 to go.

In a fit of enthusiasm, the goal is to try and get these all assembled and ready to undercoat by next week...

In a second fit of enthusiasm (uh oh) I put in a small order to Bad Squiddo Games, run by my friend Annie Norman. The idea is I'm going to put in little orders for models to various small miniature companies that might be struggling in the current climate, then immediately assemble and paint whatever I bought.

I mean, it doesn't help that getting little parcels also helps boost my morale at the same time.

Here's what I picked up. Other than the amazing free colouring sheets that were a "must add" to the order as a present for my wife.

I've picked up the new "Amazons" as well as the more generic fantasy civilian types. Sadly, I put in the order before the amazing Dwarf shield-maidens came out, or I "might" have started stretching the definition of a 'small' order.

But what's this, a free gift?

Annie also sent me an early sculpt of "SOE Annie" from her Women of WWII Kickstarter. I think I've already ordered her in the Kickstarter itself, but I'm not complaining. She's cool and getting painted up!

So, the goal here is that these also get assembled this week ready to finish painting by the end of next week.

Have I succumbed to hubris?

Tune in next week to find out...

Monster Fight Club Pre-Painted Scenery

Back in May 2019, I signed up for a pre-painted terrain Kickstarter by "Monster Fight Club". It was delivered on time back in March. I was particularly excited to get terrain I felt was suitable for Infinity that was pre-painted and didn't need any assembly.

I was a bit worried about the size of the box. I was sure I hadn't ordered all that much!

Reader, I had not ordered that much. It seems they didn't have much variance in the available size of boxes, so there was a lot of air in my box.

The main part of my order, in the second level.

While everything arrived safely, I did think they could have probably managed to fit it into a slightly smaller box. This is everything I ordered, repacked. That's a lot of unused box!

So, here's one of the "rough ground" mats with rocks and fallen trees. The base is mouse mat material, and the trees and rocks pre painted plastic.

Here's a look underneath the rock so you can see how robust this is.

I also got three autumn trees in my order. The base is double sided and has a pond on the other side.

The trees come in two parts with a usable barren tree underneath them.

Overall, my order was this big rock outcrop, the three trees and two bases worth of scatter terrain (rocks and fallen trees). Now all I need to do is wait to find out how terrain rules work in the new edition of Infinity!

HATE Infinity League: Acquisition: Nomads vs Haqqislam

In the before times, when Outside could be visited freely, I managed to get my second game in for the HATE Infinity League. The mission was Acquisition, and my opponent was running vanilla Haqqislam.

Also, I can actually remembered what happened in this game, which helps.

I'd left a Reaktion Zond out to hold up the advance and hopefully pick off a few warbands as they tried to advance. While it did a little, it was quickly taken out by the classic Multispectral Visor Level 2 shooting through Smoke trick that Total Reaction remotes have always been weak to. I'd hoped to delay him a little more, but no such luck...

His Namurr, a relatively new unit and a pretty solid attack piece, ran all over causing me a lot of problems. It was a pretty cagey battle with both of us losing key positioned pieces as we went, but having a lot of pieces further back able to feed orders in while little able to directly assist themselves.

I used a Hollow Man Spitfire to clear out a lot of the Haqq offensive pieces on one side, but left it over-extended for the counter attack.

Meanwhile the Libertos had a go at make a run for the Haqq Datatracker, but couldn't quite make it and died to a volley of defensive fire.

My Datatracker, a Taskmaster, spent far too many orders on my second turn taking out ARO pieces, and more importantly, taking a wound. The Namurr had encountered a similar problem, and was in "No Wound Incapacitation" state, meaning he'd die to a particularly aggressive sneeze.

He managed to duck in behind the centre console, as well defended as he could be, waiting for my last turn to try and take it off him.

The Taskmaster started making his run, dealing with a couple of weak ARO pieces who'd been left out to try and stop him.

But I'd not been able to clear a Repeater hidden in a nearby building and as I tried to clear the Namurr, the Hacker landed a successful attack and immobilised him in place in full view of the Namurr!

I didn't have enough orders left to unstick him and make the short distance to the centre console, leaving Haqq with a 7 - 2 victory, in a really fun game that could have gone either way for most of the action!

Writing the report up has reminded me how much fun I have playing Infinity, so here's hoping I can get back to playing it safely soon.