The Hairy Kraken Sails Again

Yesterday I played my first game in a long time. I was invited to play a pirate game. The club that I attend use to put on a massive pirate game every year at the end of September called Pirates in September. I played a major role in several of the events but gave it up a few years back. But I was invited to yesterdays game and I had a great time.

The event has been scaled down quite dramatically in recent years from about 40 odd captains and crew to just a few friends. But there was enough for a good game and plenty of laughter.

I reverted to my old captain persona of Don h'Emmingo - the Spanish scourge of the seven table-tops (my surname is Hemmings). I gave my ship and pirates to a friend a few years back so I only have a bunch of marines but I didn't have any pirate crew so I had to borrow some for my basic crewmen. My ship is The Hairy Kraken and I got to use it again.

The Kraken Archipelago: Where every scurvy dog that ever sailed on top of a billiard table will eventually meet his fate.

The view from the crow's nest.

Captain Don h'Emmingo once again, strides around the poop deck.

My mission for the game was to rescue Capt, Johnny Finch from Turtle Island (far left) and sail off the edge of the table. Unfortunately, I was to start on the opposite table edge.

Below is Peter's ship. He doesn't know it yet, but he's not about to have a good game. 

As well as other pirates to contend with there were other hazards that could pop up depending on the dice roll. One of these was The Kraken, which could erupt out of the sea and randomly attack any ship.

I drew first blood for the game when my lookout in the crows nest took careful aim and shot one of Peter's crewmen as we sailed past. The first of many he was to lose during the course of the day.

When sailing between the islands the walkways were ignored by ships although figures could walk over them.

I managed to sail past a couple of pirates and only lost one crew member to shooting (even though I was the main instigator of most of the violence). I got into the archipelago and was on my way to an easy win.

L - R: Peter, Robin, John, Gary, and Steve (Darryl is off camera).

As I was about to sail to victory I was hit by the other peril of the game: The Maelstrom. After three turns of floundering my ship was turned 180degrees and headed back in to the archipelago and I had to navigate a new rout to Turtle Island.

I eventually got to Turtle Island after my journey across the table.

The elusive Darryl watches on. His ship started out, sailed a bit, got hit by the maelstrom, spun around, sailed again, got hit by another maelstrom and spun around again and finished the game about half a move from where he started.

I rescued the stranded Captain Finch and... Robin's ship sailed off the opposite table edge and he won the game. In the next turn The Hairy Kraken sailed off the table and I came in at a close second. 

Below is Peters ship and his remaining crew. His crew got to the island, found the buried treasure, and got it back onboard ship. He was shot at with musket and canon, The Kraken attacked him twice and by the end of the game only the captain was left standing, stranded on his half sunken ship.

It was a great game and I'm glad I took part. It was great to get back to flexing the tape measure and rolling some dice. I was invited by my friend Michael who organised and umpired the whole event.

Terrain Time

I'm continuing on my mission to finish off things that I left sitting around prior to my sabbatical. This time I decided to complete some terrain pieces. I have plenty more to do but taking things one small project at a time will see me get through the backlog pretty quickly.

First up is some 6mm buildings to go with my 10mm Marlburian troops. I decided to go for the smaller scale because I prefer the smaller footprint of the town tiles. They don't look too weird next to the 10mm battalions. All the buildings are from Total War Miniatures and I still have more to paint up.

This is a small village tile based, I think, on one of the hamlets around the Waterloo or Ligny battlefields. The buildings are resin and the tile is made of latex.

This is Papelotte Farm from the 100 Days range. It's a nice little self contained model. It sits in the palm of my hand pretty comfortably. I also have Le Hay Sainte and I'll paint that one up soon.

This one is Ligny Chateaux from the 100 Days range. This came in 3 parts and looks fantastic. Its footprint will make it a nice fortified village to be fought over (hopefully many times).

Attack of the 50' Woman!! 

Just for scale, here they are with a 28mm figure.

I also finished this small forest. These are 3d printed spooky trees. I got them as a set from Temu. From memory I got them from a dealer in Queensland. They look great and I think I might get another set. They are mounted on some mdf blast-crater-marker templates that I found. The shapes are nice an irregular so they work well. If I get more trees I might have to try and find some more of these templates.

The canopy was made with some cheapo artificial moss that I got from Amazon. It came as a 100 gram pack which was vacuum packed and quite small. However, once I opened it it started to expand and due to the very light weight of the material I ended up up with quite a quantity and I ended up using less than half of the pack. Even better... I ordered in in the morning and it arrived around dinner time.

And here they are with some of my forest dwellers, all ready to defend their new woodland abode.

Thanks for reading and I'll post some more as soon as I can.

Cheers.

I'm Alive! I'm Alive!

Or Maybe...

I've had a long sabbatical away from wargaming (about 18 months at a guess). I completely lost my mojo and retreated into music. As a result I wrote, rehearsed and recorded an album of original songs, to which I'm currently putting the finishing touches. It will will be out in a few weeks. If you want you can listen to a single right here: Atom Bomb by The Voodoo Dudes.

Anyway, enough of my carry on... I'm back at the modelling workbench and gearing up to get myself back to the wargaming table. I initially started with a continuation of my 10mm War of Spanish Succession but soon reverted to a project that I left sitting around when I stopped dead! And that project was basing my Army of The Dead for Midgard. This was a project that totally baffled me when I started so many months ago. However, looking at it with fresh eyes made the whole project fall into place.

These figures are a collection of anything that fits the theme. There's a whole bunch of cheap Warhammer skellington things, Oathmark revenants, Mantic figures made from that horrible plastic stuff that they use, el-cheapo Wizkids D&D figures, Reaper Miniatures, and other bits.

This army is large enough that it can be reasonably be considered to be called an army. On the wing are the Ghost Riders (but they're not in the sky). I'm pretty certain that these are from the Mantic, Kings of War range. For what they are they're pretty good but they don't have tails and that make them look odd. I need to rebase the commander on a round/oval base.

These ghostly skeleton guys are GW. I got a couple of cheap sprues of them at a swap-meet along with the rider and other matching figures. A few years back GW released a magazine that came with a sprue of these critters for $5.00. So I bought a whole bunch of them. I still have a couple of sprues waiting to be made.

More from Mantic - The army has a lovely swarm of graveyard rats to act as a skirmish screen. I'm not sure if I'll give them a pseudo shooting attack or just make them fast and worthless just for the purpose of swamping the enemy to cause manoeuvrability problems.

For big hitters I have a giant skellington which came in the same swap-meet bundle mentioned above. It's a cheap toy but it painted up okay and works with the army. The Bone Dragon is a Reaper Bones figure. Looks good and intimidating.

The figures at the front are Reaper Bones. I think they are wights or maybe Death Knights(?)... I can't recall. As it is these are my Not-Ringwraiths. They came in two 3-packs. The figure at the centre, I made into a leader/general by adding a big sword and mounting it taller. The others will be heroes or lesser command figures. The ghosts behind where the next release by GW and came with another magazine. I think they're supposed to be banshees, but I'm just calling them ghosts. Very nice figures.

Oathmark Revenants are great undead figures. I have another box waiting to be made up. The two bases of archers at the front were made by kitbashing with bows and bits from the plastic Wargames Atlantic Goblin set. I want to make at least two more bases of these. I only made 12 so each base has an axe weilder as a stand in for the time being.

The army has a flying contingent made up of gargoyles. These too are Mantic. Nice figures with a lot of character. Three bases of these creatures swooping down should be enough to intimidate most enemies. In the photo below is another aspect of the flying corps (pun intended). A bat swarm. I'm pretty certain that these are Reaper bones. Sort of a flying version of the rat swarms.

Undead knights. I don't know where came from. If you know please tell me in the comments because I'd like to get more. Great looking figures.

Two of my commanders. The skeleton knight is a great figure and is large and intimidating enough to make a great general. He came in the swap-meet deal. The figure next to him (below) is a resin figure that I found at another swap-meet. I don't know where this figure comes from. It looks good though.

A mood shot. This is how the whole army should appear. Dark and frightening...

Their opponents will just have to use their imaginations in order to scare themselves.

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And that's it for my first post-sabbatical blog post. I hope to start posting a regularly again. I think I need to play a couple of games and then do a battle report sometime in the near future. 

Thanks for reading.