Iron Dwarves - Bellows Class Airship

The Bellows class airship for the Iron Dwarves brings air power to their faction in the Uncharted Seas game. Although a large class ship, it is only as tough as a Hammer cruiser but a little faster. It has decent broadsides but its bomb is what is dangerous, with everything within 4" of its flight peg taking a ten dice attack once per game. It has a higher critical rating from attacks made by non-flying models at short and medium range, although is easier to be hit by non-flying models by one. It will also explode if reduced to zero hull and has one or more fire markers on it plus if it loses all of its crew it will drift with the wind until it leaves the table. It is the cheapest large model in the Iron Dwarf arsenal, costing the same points as a heavy cruiser.

It was painted the same way as my other Iron Dwarf models, except for the air bladders and top fin, which was painted by the person I bought this from. Therefore colours used are...unknown.

Iron Dwarves - Guardian Class Floating Citadel

The Guardian is a tough Iron Dwarf lumbering floating fortress for the Uncharted Seas game. I comes with battleship quality bulwark guns (firing from any two of the four points) and effective fortress guns (firing from between the points). To repel boarders it uses four dice against assaulting crew before they roll to attack. It also has sharpshooters that can take a pot shot each turn in short range in order to take out a crew point. Event though its slow it can move in any direction each turn.

It was painted the same way as my other models.

Iron Dwarves - Piston Ram Cruiser

The Piston Cruisers are a force to be reckoned with for the Iron Dwarf faction in the Uncharted Seas game. It is a little tougher and faster than other cruisers, has a dedicated ram (of course), can bulldoze rammed targets to push them along its path, and reduces the attack dice against it during a ram by half. It also has less damaging broadsides than the Hammer cruiser but does have fore guns.

It is painted the same way as my other Iron Dwarf ships.

Iron Dwarves - Chisel Destroyer

The Iron Dwarf Chisel Destroyer, for Uncharted Seas, is quite nasty for its points. With extreme long range rockets that can take out extra crew, deadly short range fore guns, and weak broadside, this is a ship for going in straight to the enemy and following it up with a boarding action. They are fragile so do not go in alone.

They were painted the way I painted the other Iron Dwarves.

Gaia Project

Gaia Project is a successor to Terra Mystica. In Gaia Project you are one of fourteen factions (races), each with special abilities, that are attempting to colonize planets and expand your race's potential. Each faction has a particular type of planet that is easily colonized with others that require more resources to colonize. There is no conflict in this game beyond which faction claims actions in the shared action pool first and who colonizes/terraforms the planets first. It is a very different game than I have played before with lots that you can do. The strategy is in which pathways to success you will take, which are affected by what other players do.

This game plays well in solo or automa mode and up to four players. Here is how it looks after a game ended, which I lost by just a few points. Each colour can be one of two separate races. I was red or the Hadsch Hallas, a race of traders. From left to right and clockwise is the research board, space sectors, scoring board, round boosters, and faction board.

Each faction board has resources indicated with markers at the top (credits, ore, and knowledge). below that is the power cycle area, with the purple markers. Power can be added, prepped, charged, or used and is how you do many extra actions in the game. to the right of that is the tokens from the two federations I created in the game, which give bonuses when a federation is completed and token selected. To the right of that is the starting bonus, which was one tech advance, and three green AI cubes that are needed for other bonus actions including making planets hospitable for your faction. Just below that are the three Gaia Formers which I did not use. On the lower left side of the faction board are the structures you can build and upgrade to, and also determine what resources you get at the start of each turn plus special actions with the Planetary Institute. There are finite buildings and require a good balance in deciding which ones you require for the next turn when upgrading. To the right of that is the planet type terraforming index indicating how difficult it is to colonize planets, from top easiest to most difficult bottom. Finally to the right of that is a list of free actions that can be taken and what is required to do that action.

Here is the board at the end of the game. It is made up of tiles that can be reconfigured randomly, but was set up for a starting game. The cubes indicate which planets are linked in a federation.

The research board allows actions to be cheaper or more resources to be gained (once or each turn). At the bottom of the board are the special tiles you can get for upgrading from a trading station to an research station or a research station to an academy. There are also advanced tech tiles if you meet certain criteria.

The round boosters are chosen by the first player to pass in a turn and then the round booster they had is placed in the pool. It can sometimes be important to pass early to gain an advantage in the next turn. There are ten of them in the game but they are randomly determined at the start of the game, with three more than the number of players drawn.

The here is scoring board for the six turns. Each turn has one of ten scoring tiles placed on it which gives the bonus victory points gained for certain activities. There are also two of the six final scoring tiles on the board, also drawn randomly at the start of the game, with a handy gradient. 

With 14 factions and random space sectors/advanced tech tiles/round boosters/scoring tiles/final scoring tiles this game can be played again and again with no duplications. I like the different paths you can take to try to achieve victory. Its also nice to have a space game about expanding factions without conflict. I'd like to play this more and with other people. There is also a version on Steam that I will pick up when it is on sale.

Armorcast Fuel Containers

I picked up these classic Armorcast fuel containers almost a couple of decades ago. I got it for GW 40k games but since I do not play that at this time I can use it for a variety of games. The kit had the resin base and tops for the cans, you just had to provide the cans themselves. I used tall cans.

I painted the base and tops of the cans with various dollarstore paints. The cans themselves were primed black and sprayed silver. 

After the silver, I put marmite in streaks then sprayed with either the white, red, or blue spray. I then used a toothbrush to gently scrub the marmite off. Now it looks aged and well used. After that it just needed black numbering and a wash of 5:1 water and wood stain.

I also glued metal disks on the bottom and glued magnets on the bottom of the cans to hold them on the base a bit more securely. Now this project is done.

Hardwar

 The miniature rules for Hardwar were made from the Horizon Wars rules by Robey Jenkins and added/changed by Strato Minis personages Rafal Zerych and Krzysztof Raczynski by license. Although Robey Jenkins will eventually be coming out with a 2.0 version of his Horizon Wars rules, the Hardwar ruleset is an incredible successor. Especially for under $20 Canadian funds!

The rules have been tweeked/added to with:

1. First initiative being bid upon with action tokens and by lowest action tokens available after the first turn; 

2. Electronic Warfare turn which creates an interesting game within a game that can disable special actions for the turn, as well as calling in reserves and strategic assets;

3. Deployment and deep deployment changes; 

4. Additional actions including aimed shoot, guard (for later reaction), duck & move for walkers, area bombardment, suppressive fire and special actions (combat drop, relay coordinates, reload, and embarking/disembarking);

5. More robust Close combat including nearby walker/vehicle charge interception;

6. Aircraft rule changes/additions;

7. Lots more terrain and environment options and rules;

8. Decision based tree based mission paths or use missions randomly;

9. Incredibly robust infantry/vehicle/walker/aircraft creation rules and can incorporate pretty much anything you can think of for future combat units. For organic models, the "Over the Horizon" Horizon Wars expansion can fit the bill for kaiju and gribblies with slight modifications.

The models that Strato minis makes are quite nice if you do not have any small scale models. They do terrain too.

I am amazingly happy with this Hardwar next generation ruleset based on the Horizon Wars ruleset. The options will make the United, Insurgency, and Sovereignty factions play differently beyond the basic units. It will also enable me to use other models for different eras and flavors of future combat so I can use my Monsterpocalypse, Robotech, Dropzone Commander, etc models using this ruleset. Even 15-32 mm models could use this ruleset with some creative design creation. Time to finish painting my basic factions, play some games with this ruleset, and start on other models for different themes/genres.

Enlightened - Diogenes Torpedo Sub

For my new Dystopian Wars faction, the Enlightened, I chose the Diogenes Torpedo Sub. The rights are now owned by Warcradle but in the previous edition, owned by Spartan Games, the faction was called the Covenant of Antarctica and the model was called the Diogenes Frigate. I wanted to use this model to try a paint scheme on for size. 

It was painted with a black primer, rough drybrushed with dollarstore Craftsmart gunmetal, drybrushed with dollarstore Silver, and lightly drybrushed with Privateer Press Radiant Platinum. For the WW1 dazzle camouflage I used Craftsmart Teal Sea and Craftsmart Sailing Sky. The bronze parts were painted PP Rhulic Gold, model washed with GW Nuln Oil, and yellow on dome and turret energy projectors painted PP Cygnar Yellow.

The dazzle camouflage is doing its job by breaking up the silhouette. In WW1 it was used to confuse gunners for range finding. I used a different dazzle camouflage on my Britannia ships. 

I had 22 of these subs and like the look. I look forward to using this paint scheme on all my Enlightened navy ships.

GW Craters

These out of print craters from Games Workshop have been calling to me to finish.  Painted with dollarstore paints: primed black, dark brown rough drybrush, brown drybrush, light brown/white drybrush. They are useful for a variety of scales.

Here they are with my 8mm Horizon Wars models.

Here they are with 32mm scale Star Wars Legion figs. 

Gaslands Car Barriers

I had some spare crunched cars from my car barrier project three years ago. I wanted to make long and thin barriers so made these ten ones. They are the length of a long straight template and should make good lanes for vehicles to drive down in a race or demolition.

I cut the bases out of plasticard, as I already had the bashed cars. I did rough them up for painting ith a scrubby pad.

I used my dremel tool with rotary end.

It came out really good but I had to give it up because...

...I noticed small things hitting my safety glasses. They were the metal bristles!

I then used my mini grinder.

Here is a closeup of a car with the mini grinder.

I painted the plasticard with dark brown and swirled around lightly a lighter brown.

After I used Gorilla glue to put three to a strip, then came the wood stain mixed with water 5:1.

You saw the results in the first pic and here is a closeup. Do this outdoors and in the open air. Give a few days for the stain to dry and stop giving off fumes.

Terraforming Mars Big Box

I received my Terraforming Mars big box kickstarter! It ended July of 2020 so it only took a year to be designed, made, and shipped which is quite good. Below you see the base game and all the expansions that will fit inside.

It also came with 3D tiles for the game! What you see in the picture fits into the top two tiers of the box.

Here is a closeup of the tiles.

The greenery 3D tiles.

Here is the bottom two tiers holding all the other parts.

The Turmoil political boards as well as the indented player boards, Colony boards, player cubes, metal cubes, corporation cards and box, project cards with sleeves, miscellaneous tokens and first player token.

Here is a closeup of the first player token, the Pathfinder rover.

The metal cubes for keeping track of megacredits and recourses have a good weight.

Here are the trade fleets and turmoil expansion chairman seat.

I am looking forward to playing more of the expansions and regular games in solo mode or with friends.

Armorcast Japanese Wooden Bridge

I bought this over ten years ago and felt it could use some paint. It is an old Armorcast design when they used to do all kinds of terrain for different eras and generes. Its a Japanese wooden bridge and was painted with dollarstore paints (dark brown rough drybrush, brown drybrush, brown with yellow light drybrush, brown with more yellow lighter drybrush). Its made for 25-28mm scale but good for smaller scales.