A quiet day's gaming

A bit of  a cool day here in Auckland... perfect for a few games.

Quite a good turn out too, as Lee & Paul had also popped along. It was good to catch-up with everyone.

Not too much in regards to a game report this week. It's been a long week and next week is looking just as busy...

On arrival, a game of Bolt Action was underway with Rob & Paul running Russian's vs. Mark & Lee who were fielding British.... although in a less than united manner :-)

The game was also being played on Mark's recently prepared teddy bear fur gaming mat. It looks pretty awesome.

I think it was a pretty convincing win for the Russian's in the end, but here's a few pics:

Just what is Lee thinking...!?

 

 

How close to the edge!?

Great table to play on. Just not so good for dice rolling! Am looking forward to seeing the finished desert version that Mark is currently working on.

I didn't get a game of Bolt Action, but did introduce Lee & Paul to Incursion.

Lee & I played first. I would be the German commander again and decided to play mission 3 (following on from my last games with Mark).

Blitzhund's leg it with the objective - boy can they move fast! :-)

A bomberzombie ready and waiting to go kaboom!

This mission ended up being pretty easy with the Blitzhunds movement rules. I was able to race up to the objective with them, grab it and get back before the Allies could do much. Lee had got into a good position to get reaction fire, but a few well placed zombies made that a little hard. We got a few rules wrong that may have also played into my favour..... :-)

Paul & Lee played next and they played mission 2. Paul would command the German's and decided to field Ilsa...

This was the first time one of the German special characters has been used. She proved to be the crucial factor in what was a very tense game! I think I may need to start using her or Greta in my games....

The zombies move in for the final kill...

Although the game ended pretty quickly upon the discovery of grenades!! They quickly whittled numbers on both sides, but the Allies just had too few troops to stem the tide.

Overall, I'm really enjoying Incursion and am glad I backed it. Most of us have played Space Hulk previously and all seem to agree that this is the weird war 2 version.... just on steroids and cooler :-)

Thanks for reading. Until next time.

Incursion!

As Saturday's are now my rest day from training, I was lured down to the South Auckland Wargames club by Mark with promises of a game of Bolt Action.

I arrived only to discover that someone hadn't bothered to bring his Bolt Action models and was currently engrossed in a rather large game of Star Trek. One with some giant cube thing.....

A sizable Borg fleet was facing a combined Federation and Klingon force. I've no idea of the end result, but I am sure Rob will post some detail on his blog.

More promises were made in between facebooking and questions about whether it was someones turn again in Star Trek.... which meant a little boy waited ;-)

Whilst waiting, I took the oppourtunity to check out the other game in action at the club. A 28nm Napoleonic's game. I'm not sure what ruleset was being used. The forces looked nice though.

Eventually I got a game of Incursion organised against Mark. We played the first two missions in game to get the hang of the rules.

The quality of everything is awesome. From the models through to the cards and counters etc.

I'd play the Sturmzombies and Mark fielded the Americans on this occasion. The first game was brutally quick as the American's pretty much walked through my zombies to escape the board winning the game.

The game itself played very well and it is pretty simple. It's basically weird war 2 space hulk, but more awesome and with more character. Time will tell, but I also think there are more tactical options with being able to select forces and being able to use event cards.

Into the second game we went. This time we could choose our forces. Time to try out some Bomberzombies (think running bombs!). In the end they didn't do much.... but my Blitzhounds were brutally effective....

They won the game after tearing the American troops to pieces.

So 1 win each.

I'm definitely keen to play more of this game. It was worth the wait.

Thanks for reading.

It's Arrived

Finally! A big box was sitting at the doorstep waiting patiently for me to get home from work today.

I've been looking forward to this for some time... ever since backing the kickstarter way back in 2013!

What am I on about... well this - Incursion!

It's been quite a journey for the guys @ Grindhouse, but fair play to them. They stuck to it and ensured that all us backers were well updated with what was happening.

All that matters though is it is here and it looks awesome. The quality of everything is also top notch, so I'm pretty happy with the extra wait that came with Grindhouse going with the best. I'm pretty happy and I think it looks a lot better than my previous kickstarter experience....

But I'm not very happy with certain postal services. On waking up one morning and checking the tracking info.... I found my package was tantalising close to being delivered.... only to then to see it cruelly snatched away and head on a journey that I'd be quite happy with as a holiday...

There were some nervous moments when I saw the departed Auckland for the second time, but it seems that must be how it records it going through into our local post system.

Still it's here and I'm happy. I'll spend some more time looking through it over the weekend and, with any luck, we might get a chance to try out a game :-)

Learning an arcane art

I've always been a little in awe of those who have mastered Photoshop and it's magical abilities.

For me though, it's always been this confusing jumble of weird names and tools, so it has always gone into the too hard basket.

Until this week.

The Warbird open day on Sunday was a great day, but the weather was crap. It meant most of the photos were like this....

Just flat and white due to the cloud and glare. Normally there is little I could do to tidy these up even with the skills I have picked up in Lightroom.

Luckily though, I have a good mate who is a Photoshop wizard. He is well versed in its mystical ways..... Lee has spent a lot of time using Photoshop and was more than willing to provide some tutelage. (He's actually since posted the process on his blog here - check it out!)

So after a few emails with some detailed steps... I was able to create this:

Not perfect, but pretty cool none the less. I'm really happy with the result (and am also glad I shot in RAW format instead of Jpeg!).

Once I got the hang of a few of the details around layers etc, I found it wasn't that hard or time consuming after all. Something I should definitely try again.

Thanks for the help Lee! :-)

The Longest Day

But it almost didn't happen. Just like the real thing really although not quite on the same scale!

I woke to a pretty wet and miserable day yesterday morning, so things weren't looking good for the D-Day themed Warbirds open day at Ardmore airport.

After checking in with Mark G, the weather was currently looking okay down Ardmore way, but it changed pretty quick.

The volunteers on the gate were looking pretty wet and despondent in the rain. They also advised that not much was likely to happen. Still, I was here and it's always good to have a wonder. A chance to photograph the static displays and re-enactors in a different light so that's what I mostly focused on throughout the day.

But low and behold, just like D-Day, the weather cleared allowing the full show to go ahead! With the rain earlier on, I had decided not to bother carrying my Sigma around. I mostly just used my 55 - 250mm lens during the displays, but even then I didn't take a lot of shots. The cloud cover meant it was pretty pointless, so I tried to focus on a few different shots/angles. Suffice to say there are not many photos of planes flying from yesterday!

You'll also notice I've now watermarked my photos (thanks for the design Lee! :-) ). A number of my photos have been downloaded and I've noticed a few pop up without being credited to me. I don't mind people downloading the photos, but please credit them to me if displaying them somewhere else.

Anyway, here's my selection from the day...

Ping!

Waiting for the war to start....

Whoops... mind the gap!

The Mk14 Spitfire was still up at Ardmore, but unfortunately technical trouble meant it was unable to fly. It was still displayed on the flight line, but with engine covers off... made for some pretty cool photos.

There was one final surprise during the day though.

Not 1...

Not 2...

But 3 Strikemasters! First time in over 20yrs.

A pretty cool sight and a good day overall in the end.

Didn't get any more rain until I got home :-)

Thanks for looking.