Saturday is Game Day

This past Saturday we met up at my house aka the man cave and treehouse where we finally got to play on Dave's (aka Soldat) Capuan Arena. 

We populated it with my Gladiators, Dave's and Willy's. No actual spectator figures at the moment but maybe at a future date.

From left to right: Decimus Maximus the Spaniard (Dave's single combatant from Reaper) looking on as my lads (circular bases) and Willy's yet unnamed scoundrels (square bases) from a rival ludus mix it up. 

The home team is on the far end, the visitors in the foreground and the gallery is populated by another contingent of Willy's gladiators from the Heroscape line.  

Aside from the Arena fight, Willy brought along his Vikings again and I couldn't resist putting them on my Long Ship for a photo shoot.

On my table for some test shots. Notice Dave's Arena in the background.

Great detail shot of Willy's Vikings.

Big difference with blue backdrop...

and some cropping.

Another close up.

Sailing into fog.

A more appropriate backdrop for these marauding raiders!

Never walk
away from home
ahead of your axe and sword.
You can't feel a battle
in your bones
or foresee a fight.*

* from 'The Havamal' or Book of Viking Wisdom.

Fierce Gladiators of the House of Franciscus

With duplicate poses I had to paint them a little differently and use a variety of shield types and slight weapons modifications. Identification below will feature the Gladiator's name and type in parenthesis. So without further ado here's the lineup of the pride of my Ludus:  

From left to right: Priscus (Dimachaerus), Verus (Dimachaerus), Ajax (Hoplomachus), Montanus (Murmillo) 

From left to right: Crescens (Thracian), Pugnacious (Thracian), Attilius (Hoplomachus), Hilarius (Hoplomachus)

From left to right: Promiscuous (Retiarius), Dubious (Laquearius), Loquacious (Retiarius)

From left to right: Raucous (Hoplomachus), Caucus (Hoplomachus)

From left to right: Netflixos (Retiarius), Attalos (Venator) 

Rear shot to show off the fine detailing of armor and weaponry. And yes, Netflixos is holding a spike on his left.

Now on to the action. 

A deadly game of cutthroat where both Attilius the spear wielding Hoplomachus (left) and Montanus (Murmillo) has ganged up on lone Promiscuous (Retiarius), a hapless victim, or is he?

The crowd roars with anticipation of this match up: Hoplomachus vs Hoplomachus
Who will be victorious: sword wielding Ajax or spear thrusting Raucus? 
*Please pardon this unfocused shot. The photographer got jostled by the over zealous crowd.*

Head to head with Attalos the Goblin and Loquacious (Retiarius).

Pugnacious (Thracian) goes after Verus (Dimachaerus)

Another angle as Pugnacious and Verus circle each other.

The crowd screams with blood lust as Verus severes Pugnacious' sword arm! 

Meanwhile at the other end of the arena: will Netflixos (Retiarius) snag Priscus (Dimachaerus)? 

Another deadly game of cutthroat.
This time it's Dubious (Laquearius) versus a team up of Pugnacious the Thracian (top) and Hilarius (Hoplomachus).

After vanquishing Pugnacious (who is immediately replaced by Caucus), Dubious is still menaced by Hilarius whose approaching his blind side. No rest for the wicked!

Montanus the Murmillo now goes after Raucus.

The fight continues as Montanus parries a desperate spear thrust by Raucus on his shield.

Montanus makes quick work of Raucus and finally faces off with Hilarius.

WIP: Gladiators

All the furor surrounding the latest season of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena has got me fired up to finally start my Gladiators from Black Tree Design which have been sitting around for about a year now. 

Barca shown waiting for the killing stroke decision.

If you haven't seen the series, I highly recommend it for it's plethora of graphic images purely for visual reference and artistic inspiration, of course. 

Now how cool is this gladiator?

OK, fine, what's not to like: violence enhanced with CGXF, blood, action, gratuitous Tee and Ay and more violence!! All set in the ancient Roman Republic. If you're video streaming like me, they do warn you of the upcoming content:

Any living, breathing guy couldn't possibly resist these 'WARNINGS'. 
This is, like, a really good check list for any of my movies. 

 I especially like the standard and obligatory disclaimer at the beginning of each episode 
to supposedly warn off parents but definitely ensure the curiosity factor.

But this post is not a review of Spartacus the series. It's more grist for my mill to motivate me into delving in, yet, another genre for gaming. I originally acquired these bad boys for use with THW: Red Sand Blue Sky. I really love the sculpts that come out of Black Tree Design.

Dry brushed and ready for some color. Part of me would like to leave them in this state b/c it really shows off the detail of these beautiful sculpts.

The variety of poses feature some of the typical standbys (left to right): Murmillo or Samnite or Hoplomachus, Dimachaerus (two swords), Hoplomachus with sword, Retiarius with rope, and Hoplomachus with spear and buckler.

John at Black Tree Design threw in a couple of samples of Goblin Gladiators: Retiarius and generic swordsman.

The other poses (left to right): Retiarius with net, heavy Hoplomachus with spear and buckler, Goblins and Thracian.

Coming soon the Gladiators of my Ludus from the House of Franciscus!

Red Blok Unit from AT-43

I've always been intrigued with the human factions of AT-43. Namely the Red Blok and U.N.A. forces. Not so much the alien races. And what really caught my fancy were the mechs that the Red Blok units fielded. I think that my endless fascination with things Russian continues as my collection grows. Needless to say I finally got a hold of some and was pleasantly surprised. For prepainted miniatures Rackham has done an awesome job with applying enough weathering on their paint schemes to make their minis more battle ready as opposed to coming out fresh from the factory or parade ground. They're done with consistency as compared to the Star Wars and Hero Clix brands.

Here's a few shots of Red Blok unit out in the field as they deploy for a mission. Excuse the quality of some of the shots since the photographer had to get out of the way of the chaos of units getting ready for battle.

Spetnaz in the foreground with a Kossak mech in the background.

More Spetnaz interspersed with Kolossus min-mechs.

  

Nice detail shot of Kossak with medium missile launcher.

More Krashny Soldati with a Strielitz Kolossus with Col. Odin O-1 looking on.

Since I don't particularly like learning this rules set I'll be using these bad boys against my newly acquired Arachnids aka Bugs (from Starship Troopers) whenever I finish painting them and all other comers from various sci-fi game universes using the Chain Reaction system from THW.

Bugs for my BDay!

For my birthday I decided to buy a game that I've had my eye on forever. I finally bit the bullet yesterday and went to my local hobby slash game slash toy store in Houston. They had one box left on the shelf so I quickly snatched it. Good thing too because most of the sites are sold out of this out of print bad boy.


More than likely I'll be using THW's 5150 rules with some Nuts! and CR03 thrown in. Ya hear that, LTL Dad, we're gaming this next!

Box contents from a promo pic I got off the net.

First up are the bugs. They come in hard plastic and these Arachnids are pose-able to a certain extent.

Assembly line ready for production that'll yield 20 bugs in different poses.

Since my table was already set up with some urban ruins for a Nuts! game I played last weekend I couldn't wait and posed a few completed bugs attacking my strelkovy (Black Tree Design). I'll put the MI (Mobile Infantry) together after I get done with the bugs. They're not painted yet but the models looks cool.

"Comrade Captain, here they come!"

Strelkovy about to be OVERRUN! Dasbedanyah!!

Next up: Mobile Infantry