Board Games – Lair of the Lagomorph

Blogomorph no.4

In which we discover what holidays really are for, I attempt to take over the galaxy, and we observe some dwarven progress.

Holiday Snaps

My hobby time this week has been severely impacted by some very nice family holidays up in Broome, all the way at the north of Western Australia (~1700kms as the crow flies from Perth, 2200 if driving). Broome is a really nice small town which is a somewhat renowned tourist spot, if you go in the right season (May to October).

Beyond providing a great excuse for my lack of progress this week, the reason I bring this up is because, Broome has this amazing red dirt all through it, much darker than the red dirt we get around Perth. If you’re a follower of the blog you know I love a red dirt base (see amongst others: Chaos Guy from last week, my Orcs and Goblins army), and Broome offers some great inspiration for those really saturated red dirt bases.

I personally really like the look of those dark rocks peeking out of the red dirt, and that is what I’m going for with the bases on that chaos model I showed in the last post. Hopefully you can find some basing ideas out of these photos so I can tell myself the weird looks I got from other tourists as I took photos of dirt were worth it.

As a bonus here is some inspiration for those of you that enjoy broken rock bases!

Imperial Ambitions

Barely back from holidays we made use of a long weekend here to play the longest game of them all: Twilight Imperium 4 (I know, there’s plenty of longer games — see this crazed attempt!, but this is as long as I’m willing to go!).

*And this is just the component for 5 players! We usually play with 6, and the game goes up to 8 players!*

For those of you not in the know, Twilight Imperium 4 is a game of galactic conquest/politics/trade where all the players attempt to become the ones that rule the galaxy. They do this by amassing victory points which can be obtained in a variety of ways, mostly dictated by cards that get revealed as the game goes on. This generally means you can’t really know ahead of time how you’ll need to contort your game plan to fit the objectives. Add to that the limitation that you can generally only score one one of these objectives per turn (you can also score secret objectives but I won’t go into too much detail), and you end up being dragged pillar to post from turn to turn, being forced to shatter alliances or forge new bonds with old enemies as you try to accomplish objectives. This makes the game very political and you need to spend a lot of time discussing options with other players, smoothing over perceived slights, allying against a more powerful opponent, or simply trading commodities to make a bit of money. The game is extremely fun and tense, as you constantly need to be keeping an eye on what is going on around you while formulating your own plan.

*Close to the end of the game, the board is packed!*

As a result of all this, the game is long, we generally finish in 10ish hours so a solid day’s gaming. This was a five-player affair, and it took us close to 13 hours (including a dinner break). Why the extra time? Well in this game we ended up with two players (pink and blue) in a position to win in the next turn, so the rest of us (yellow, red, black) formulated a complex plan to try to stop them. This effectively meant throwing all our forces against these two players to try and drag the game into an extra turn which would see us get into a position to win ourselves.

We succeeded in dragging the galaxy into bloody war (extending the game into roughly two more hours of game time in the process!), and effectively crushed the fleets of both players, but in the end it was too little too late, both players cleverly hanging on to or aiming for objectives they could score even when the table turned against them. The game has an initiative system each turn which dictates the order turns are played and points are scored. The pink player (my lovely wife) managed to both hold on to a safe objective and pick an early turn order so she was able to score out before the blue player could score his. The game is brutal this way, first to score wins.

For three of the five of us it was the first time playing the first expansion of the game, Prophecy of Kings. This adds some more mechanics to the game which I really enjoyed, including amongst other things rewarding exploration and also adding some faction goals that let you unlock some powerful abilities.

On the Painting Table

As you might expect from all this activity, I didn’t get much painting done this week. I did manage to get my batch of Longbeards to the wash stage so I should be able to get them finished soon.

The Galleon’s Graveyard: Dreadfleet Terrain

Board Games

I’ve been busy building and painting a big unit for my Orcs and Goblins Old World army and needed a change of pace (read: a smaller project!). I had a look around my hobby room and my eyes stopped on my Dreadfleet box. I’ve used the game as a palette cleanser in the past (Back in April 2022!), and it delivered once again. At the pace I’m painting it I should expect to be able to play a game in 2040 or thereabouts.

Rather than paint more ships, this time I decided to tackle the terrain pieces in the box. These are nicely varied and hold a ton of detail given the scale they’re representing. They also had the advantage of being mostly rocks and therefore were nice and quick to paint, which fit my purposes perfectly.

Painting them was quite relaxing, and apart from painting the water, they were really straightforward. The water was an issue for two reasons: 1) unlike the ships which have separate bases, this terrain has the water attached and mixed into all that detail I was talking about before, and 2) I never wrote down how I painted the water the first time around!

Considering “the first time around” was close to two years ago I was preparing myself for some hard trial and error. However I got extremely lucky there, and as I was painting remembered how I’d done it, as well as picking the right paint to use on the first try. I am preparing for the next long break between painting this set this time, and writing things down! So here goes:

Rocks:
1. VGA Dark Fleshtone [Airbrush] – All over
2. VGA Beasty Brown [Airbrush] – In generous patches
3. VGA Cold Grey [Airbrush] – Smaller patches, picked out some rocks entirely
4. VMC Stone Grey [Drybrush] – All over
5. MIG Panel Line Wash Deep Brown [Wash] – All over
6. AK Slimy Grime Dark [Stipple] – On the base of the rocks to add green algae
Wood:
1. VMC English Uniform [Basecoat]
2. VMC Stone Grey [Drybrush] – All over
3. MIG Panel Line Wash Deep Brown [Wash] – All over
4. AK Slimy Grime Dark [Stipple] – On the base to add green algae
Sails:
- VGC Black [Basecoat]
- VMC Dark Sea Blue [Highlight]
Bones:
- VGC Bonewhite [Basecoat]
- MIG Panel Line Wash Deep Brown [Wash] – All over
- VGC Bonewhite [Highlight]
- AK Slimy Grime Dark [Stipple] – On the base to add green algae
Castle Walls:
1. VGC Black [Basecoat]
2. 50/50 AP Kraken Skin / VMC Dark Sea Blue [Line Highlight]
Castle Roof:
- VMC Dark Sea Blue [Basecoat]
- 70/30 AP Kraken Skin / VMC Dark Sea Blue [Line Highlight]
Lava:
- PA Titanium White [Underpaint – Brush] – Painted the lava areas in pure white
- VMA White [Underpaint – Airbrush] – Painted next to the lava areas to create a glow
- VGA Moon Yellow [Airbrush] – Center of the lava areas
- VGA Orange Fire [Airbrush] – Outer areas
- VGA Gory Red [Highlight] – Picked out the raised areas to make “cold” lava crust
- VMC Black [Highlight] – Picked out raised areas within the red
Water:
1. Light Grey [Basecoat] – This was a mix to match the undercoat I used on the rest of the models in the set, a just off-white straying into grey.
2. GW Contrast Akhelian Green [Contrast]
3. VMC Light Sea Grey [Highlight]
4. GW Contrast Akhelian Green [Contrast] – Slightly watered down
5. VMC Light Sea Grey with a dash of GW Contrast Akhelian Green [Highlight]

Manufacturer codes: VGA – Vallejo Game Air, VMA – Vallejo Model Air, VMC – Vallejo Model Color, VGC – Vallejo Game Color, PA – ProAcryl, GW – Citadel/Games Workshop, AP – Army Painter, MIG – Ammo Mig, AK – AK Interactive

Here’s some detail shots of the terrain pieces. They’re all named in the rulebook so I’ve reproduced those in the captions.

Castle Island
Castle Island

Corpseface Cliff
Corpseface Cliff

Shipwrecks

Volcano Island
Volcano Island

Leviathan Island and Skull Island
Leviathan Island

Finally here’s a shot of the terrain with the ships I painted earlier. Really gives you an idea of the fantastical scale the game’s ships are!

It was nice to have a small project to tackle, gave me a sense of having accomplished something after a few months of working away at a bigger project without results I can show! What is true is that the pandemic days are truly over, I have to get used to hobby productivity levels that are much reduced when compared to the enforced downtime we had in the early 2020s. One thing I promised myself when I started this blog is that painting is meant to be my fun time, and should never feel like a chore. That means posting to the blog is secondary to that, and even if I feel it’s been too long between posts (which I’ve felt all of last year and this year), life and fun comes first, and I’m not going to make myself paint just to post something.

Sailing on the High Seas, Sweltering in the Desert

Board Games, Bolt Action, Terrain

This week saw me paint a few odd things, starting with a sudden urge to paint models from Dreadfleet, a 10 and a bit year old standalone naval game from Games Workshop, set in the old Warhammer universe. I bought my set upon release, built all the models and then never painted any. Never too late to get to that though, just had to wait for inspiration to strike! There are quite a few ships and its of terrain in the game, so plenty more to paint before I can call it done, hopefully I won’t wait 10 years to paint the next batch!

First up we have Grimnir’s Thunder, the dwarven ship. Some ships in the game have small pieces they can send out, and in this case this is a dirigeable. You can barely see another ready to launch peeking out of the deck.

The second one I tackled was Seadrake, the high elf ship. This one has dragons!

These are very cool models, if a bit challenging to paint as they have a lot of overlapping pieces and are a smaller scale than I’m used to painting. They have however been quite enjoyable to paint! The mat that comes with the game also provides a really nice backdrop for photos!

This week also marked my first foray into painting terrain for my North Africa WW2 project, with these two houses. I printed these on my 3d printer (you can find the files I used here) and based them on pieces of MDF. The palm tree is a cheap plastic model I found on eBay. I have a whole batch of these so expect to see them on other terrain pieces in the future!

I painted them with craft paints using a series of progressively brighter dry brushes, nothing fancy but it looks ok.

I used a lot of cream grout to make the sand on the base. This ended up being far too bright for my desert mat so I airbrushed some warmer tones to get it closer to where it needed to be. It’s quite a bit brighter but looks reasonable to me now.

As a parting note I played in a Star Wars Legion tournament over the weekend with my Galactic Empire army. This was my first attempt at playing the game (nothing quite like diving in head first!), and I really enjoyed myself. I didn’t do particularly well (won one of my three games so not all bad!), but I did manage to leave with the best painted army award so am happy with that!