Reconqust: Phase 2 / UCM

I promised a post in a week or two. I got inspiration from somewhere and decided to make i straight away. How cool is that?

Reconquest: Phase 2 has been out for a while now. I want to talk about some of the changes that came with it. This time i will look into the UCM

The changes were these:

Flak teams

UCM Flak teams got their range extended by 6", both the R(c) and R(f). Personally i think this change was just the thing they needed. Before this almost no one played them for the simple reason that the range just was not enough for their points and the reason that they need to be transported with the bear and condor combo.

After the game i have played them in three or so games. Now i jsut love them. They wont cost much more than a squad of legionaires if you think the about the cost for a search roll. The range is good and a squad gives you 3+3 shots. Now if you couple of Minders or something like that floating too close you can happily take them out. Using a rapier to do this would be a waste. Also if you have something bigger comming, just fire both units at it. Or even better, becouse of the bear and condor combo, the other flak squad usually is not that far so you might get to fire it to the same target allso. What the Flak team gives you now is AA board control. Awesome.

Hazard suits

Hazard suits got hit by the nerf hammer. Twice.. Their points went up by three and their weapons got -1E. Well... i think we all knew that something would happen to them as they were just a tad too good. Do i agree with the double nerd? I do now. The -1E would have been enough. It lowers their damage output a little, but leaves them with enough power to do AT. I think more lists will use less of the Hazard suits now. My list will certainly go from two Hazard squads to one.

Retaliator

The new cool Retaliator fast mover got its Missile Cluster changed from L-2 to L-3 instead. This wont do much difference ans the Retaliotor suffers from the same problems as every other fast mover at the moment. They are too unreliable to show up for their points. The Retaliator suffers even more as it is not cheap.

Pheonix

The Pheonix Command gunship lost its Demolisher-2 from its missile battery. This is another thing i do not agree on. It was nice to have the ability to do building demo with the pheonix, as it is a little hard to get the Pheonix into a good position to do damage. The rather low range on the chainguns (12") coupled with even shorter MF makes it a little wonky (even more in bigger boards). The missile battery is nice, but its not great. Against skimmers it is good, but honestly when is the last time when you have got it to hit more than 2 skimmers at the time. People know how to face the Pheonix and wont make parking lots with their vehicles.

Thats it for the UCM changes in Phase 2. Feel free to comment.


-Nojis

Blowing away the dust

Its been over three months from the last update. I feel i need to fill you guys in on how things stand with this blog. Its not dead first of all, so Hurray for that.

What happened is that summer came, and so came my summer holiday. I got some painting done, travelled a little. I really didnt have time to blog. As things settled and i had more time to spare it was time to update the blog. Thats when i ran into major problems. My laptop broke so i had no way of getting pictures out of my camera. I also didnt have enough spare money to just walk into a store and pick up a new laptop. I wanted the next laptop to have enough juice to run couple of things more, so i needed to wait.

Now i have the new laptop, but now i have another problem... My camera is and old Canon, and it has issues with Windows 10. Windows 10 causes the camera to have a connection error if the camera has more than 1000 photos in its memory card. Well, i have little over 3000 on it and most of them are important for example of my children, so deleting down to 1000 is not an option. I also dont have a memory card reader or know of a place where i could use one. I need to come up to a solution soon.

What im going to now is to blog about subjects, that dont need photos or i can use them from the internet.

Thats pretty much it about the status of the blog.

Dropzone Commander

I ahve been playing quite much of dropzone commander lately. Actually it has been allmost the only game that i have been paying. Reconquest: Phase 2 book has now been out for some time. Alltough i dont own it, i have been playing scenarios from it and using the new units from it. This is one of the things im going to blog about later, so stay tuned.

Dropfleet commander

I pledged into the Dropfleet Commander kickstarter form Hawk wargames. The Kickstarter has beed delayed by a couple of months, but should be shipping soon. I will make a unboxing post when it arrives.

Painting

Remember a while back, i gave you a hint that im going to start a new painting project about modern warfare with 28mm miniatures? Well i did. And i have competed it! Now its just the camera problem to sort out and i can show it to you guys.

I have decided on the next painting project i will do and have ordered stuff for it from couple of shops. This time it wont be 28mm but smaller scale and from the game that i love. Stay tuned for posts about it.

Frostgrave campaing

 I made myself a frostgrave warband and played the first game in the campaing. Im affraid i just dont have the time to participate in it. I enjoyed the first game rather much, but still...

That is all for today. Expect a new update in a week or two.

-Nojis

Dropzone Commander: Reinforcements

Hello!

I just popped in to give you guys a quick update on what i have been doing. For start i had my first game of Frostgrave. My apperentice took a real beating from a skeleton... 3 of my warband members died, but i got some treasures in exhange. Its too bad i missed the second game of our campaing due to being really busy at work. It might be the same for game three also :(

Anyways. I've been using my childrens naptime to do some painting. Here are some Dropzone Commander miniatures i have finished:

Katanas

Fireblades

Gladius heavy tanks

Raven B's

 This model was painted for Asylum Wargames painting competition. This is the light dropship which will be the transport for my Preatorian elite infantry. I wanted to go out from the normal coloring of my army. This Raven A needed to have coloring suitable for night time operations while having something that brings out the eliteness of the preatorians. In my oppinion i achieved my goal or what do you think?

Here are couple norma Raven A's for comparison

Frostgrave: Living mausoleum statues

Hello!

Two more nap times well spent. I made statues for the Living mausoleum scenario. These are made from old empire halberdier models from my bits box and botle caps from pepsi bottles.

This is nothing too fancy, but quick and simple scenery that works on the tabletop.

-Nojis

Frostgrave treasure markers

Hello!

During yesterdays nap time for the kids i made some treasure tokens. I really like how these turned out. I used my new paint set for these (previous update on the main page). Those paints! and the new vallejo brushes too! Painting has nto been so easy in a long long time :)

-Nojis

PS. On monday its time to start the frostgrave campaing on our club

I love the smell of fresh paint in the morning

Previously i have told you that my paint situation has been bad. When i started doing miniatures again after my break from the hobby, i revived some of my old paints. Now those paints have reached the end of their life cycle. Some ran out and some dried up or have gone bad. I had my birhtday in april so my better half wanted to correct this problem, so as a gift i got to order myself some new painting equipment. Couple of days ago the postman arrived with this.

This is a set of 72 basic colors and three brushes from the Vallejo Model Air range. I have made some little experiments with these paints and i must say that i am really happy with the results. I can also use these with my airbrush. On the bad side... my airbrush broke down... I need to contact the seller in Germany about the guarantee and see what we can work out. My paint problem is now officially over! :)

-Nojis

Frostgrave warband done.

Hello all, its been a long time but i have completed my frostgrave warband. Its now time to show it to you guys!

My completed warband

Thief and warhound

Infantrymen

My ranged fighters

Thugs

My wizard Sofya and her apprentive Myriil

My warband consists of:

Wizard: Sofya (Enchanter) 
-Enchant weapon
-Strenght
-Telekinesis
-Elemental Hammer
-Absorb Knowledge
-Heal
-Combat awareness
-Poison Dart

Apprentice: Myriil

Archer
Crossbowman
2x Infantrymen
3x Thugs
Thief

Later on im going to add a warhoud.

Our club will start our campaing on next monday, so i still have time to make some changes. I will also try to get some treasure tokens or something like that done.

Feel free to comment.

-Nojis

Frostgrave warband wip

Hiya!

I have managed to get some painting done on my warband. I still need to do work on details and the bases. Sadly both of my children got sick so the tiny amount of painting time that i had goes to other things for now.

Anyways here are the pictures. Feel free to give feedback if you want!

PS. The skin looks more white in the pictures than it really is.

Towards Frostgrave

Hi all.

Today i have something different for you. Today we are talking abaut the icy cold, magical world of FROSTGRAVE. What is this Frostgave you may ask?

Frostgrave is a skirmish scale wargame, set in a world where you lead your wizard and his warband of merry folk into a frozen acient city. That city was once full of magic, gold and other valuables.  For some reason the city was abandoned and surrounded by ice an snow. Ice and snow made it impossible to travel to the city. Now some routes have opened up and wizards are racing there in the hopes of discovering more in the ways of magic and magical artefacts. On the way they recruit a warband of their own to help them on their journey.

So the thing is that i saw a facebook post about starting a Frosgrave campaing by one of my club mate. This year was suppose to be a year without starting new games for me (damm you Jamo)
I had taken couple of views about Frostgrave stuff before, but managed to resist the urge of starting. This time i werent that strong.

One of the great things About Frostgrave is that you can play it without official models, and it doesent specify races. Take a look into your drawers for those spare minis, you might have a warband ready and you dont even know it! Usually the warband consists of a wizard, an apprentice for the wizard and 8 other members which you buy with gold. These can be anything from lowly thieves and thugs to knights and paladins. You just need to have the gold.

My warband

Next we get to take a look at my warband. One of the main things for me starting this game was to keep the cost a low as possible. I took a look into my bits box and was happily surprised when this little gem showed up:

I bought this model used from Sotavasara website. The seller didnt know what this model really is. (If you do, please comment and tell me!) I think i paid something like 4 euros for this. So everyone, meet Sofya. Sofya will be the wizard of my warband. Sofya came into contact with her magical abilities when she was 13. She was sitting in dinner table with her family and was playing around with a fork. She consentrated her mind at the fork and went into a kind of transe. In this trance she were able to manipulate the abilities of the fork. She came out of the trance only to see the terrified looks of her family. It was at this point when she noticed that the fork was pushed halfway trough the thick wooden table. Sofya had somehow made the fork able to pierce objects with ease. A week later her parents kicked Sofya out of the house as they were terrified about what had happened and tought it was unnatural. After this Sofya has taken care of herselft. She has masterded more enchants and has even the knowledge of how to perform teleportation.

As you might have guessed, my wizard is going to be an Enchanter. I really have no idea how that will work out in the game but oh well... Its intresting to see how balanced Frostgrave is. The same goes with my warband. I have no idea what they will be. Prodably Thugs and thieves. Lets move on to the warband.

Warband

Most of my warband members are made of Mantic Basilean bodies. I bought 10 of these with the model for Sofya and paid 10 euros for the Basileans. I were suppose to convert an Empire army out of these, so i got a ton of empire bits with them for free. When i got these into my hands i had to abandon the idea tough. These need some serious knifing before you can even assemble them with their own parts and the quality is a litle Meh.. too. For a small scale warband they are ok tough. They mix good with GW empire bits and those are easier to modify as they are softer. The guy above has his proportions litle mixed up. For example the sword is way too big for the guy if you look for realism, but for me its ok. And with these the goal of keeping the cost down worked. 14 euros used so far.

Next we have a old GW greatsword model. Works for everything from a thug to knight. Good looking model which i really like.



















Time for a guy who can smash things! Armed with a mace, upgraded with a small bell. This will whack the life out of opposing wizards will keeping tune with his bell.

Moving on to my ranged power. An archer. I have done some paint cheme testing with this guy. Im prodably going to go for a rusty armor with blueish color for the main cloth. Im afraid that even painting (which in im no pro) the bad quatily of the basileans cant be rescued. Also my paint palette is rather limited at the moment as i havent use my paints in a long time, so i need to restock the dryed up ones.

One more thug / basic dude. I really like the pose of this guy. I used the same shield for allmost everyone in the warband to give them a unified look.

More ranged firepower. This time a crosbowman. I toyed with the idea of taking to crosbows, but as i dont know the rules for them i took an archer instead. Im guessing crosbows might be move or fire type of a weapon.



So now i have a Wizard and 6 members of the warband assembled. I have ordered a model for the Wizards apprentice. I also have a pretty good view for one more member of the group. He will be the guy whose responsibilities are to haul all the stuff for the warband.

Im really looking forward for our clubs campaing and how it wil turn out. I have more than month of time to complete this group. I hope that i will get it done, as i dont have that much of painting time nowadays.

If there are people in my readers who are also going to go and explore Frostgrave or joining the club campaing, feel free to comment below!