Things

So in the month since I last posted, I've been to Tunisia (hot, dry, amazing), and amicably split from S.

Both of which have pretty much killed my modelling and painting. I've still managed to get a few games in, and there's a new shop opened in Leamington Spa called BAM! Comics, which is very friendly and deserves your support.

As to what I have been up to, well...

I've played a few games of X-Wing, losing some and winning some, played Firefly: the game (and lost), won a game of Talisman, and joined a games club in Coventry with my friend JY (his uncle and two lecturers from his college attend, and he had no idea, which is pretty funny).

Oh, and I finally got some Germans to paint up as Division Azul troops to fight my Soviets. Except, as I discovered, 30 figures isn't quite enough to represent a full-strength Wehrmacht-organised infantry platoon from 1942. I need another 19 figures for that - another 10 man squad, a platoon CO, platoon sergeant, three runners (one with a sniper rifle), a sanitats, and a 5cm mortar team of three. Ah well, it's a start!

Anyway, here's some pictures:

 A game of X-Wing against JY, early on, before I lost both TIE bombers by being run over by the Dodonna's Pride (the big bloody thing on the right!), and before my Lambda managed to pop Wedge(?) with its heavy laser cannon. My interceptors are busy looking cool and dishing out the pain.

Arrrgh! The death of Iorek the Shamed, my Dragon Age pen-and-paper RPG character, to a Shade, on the road from the Lothering graveyard. Poor sod. He slaughtered his way through a graveyard full of demon-possessed skeletons, only to run up against this thing against whom his battle axe was not effective and his mighty armour useless. So he fought, and died, after realising he couldn't escape. Still, it means I get to make a new character! Happy days!

 Setting up a game of X-Wing at BAM! Comics (£2.50 an hour to use a table, not each, per table. Jolly reasonably priced and you can play anything you want; there was a game of Magic going on behind us and then that turned into Conquistador). Me with Obsidian Squadron and JY flailing about trying to write a list.

 The forces. Seven TIE/ln versus two X-Wings and two A-Wings.

 Setup. Two flights ('A' on the right, with the blank space behind O2, and 'B' on the left, O4-O7) against one. Prepare to die, Rebel scum!

 End turn one. Moving in for the kill.

 End turn two. At this point I've lost O4 to X-Wing fire, while the A-Wings' assault missiles both missed, doing (thankfully) no damage at all to my closely packed TIE swarm.

 End turn three. One A-Wing downed, a few bumps as my 'A' flight run into the X-Wings which are now neatly on the tail of 'B' flight who had run into them earlier on, trapping them into facing the wrong way... aiee!

 End turn four. Bloody asteroids! Amazingly I've only lost one other TIE but I don't like these odds of 5:3...

 End turn five. I'm facing the wrong way with everything, and his X-Wings... aren't. Curses!

 End turn six. Predictable results really. Now one-on-one with TIEs against barely damaged Rebel ships; there's no way out for the remains of Obsidian Squadron now!

 End turn seven. Another TIE's bitten the dust. Still three rebel ships. The end is nigh.

And that's that! Taken milliseconds before the surviving TIE disintegrates under a hail of cannon fire from the X-Wings. A well-flown victory for JY, helped enormously by bad positioning and terrible dice rolls from me.

 Rematch. I got my own back in a 150 point game immediately afterwards where I took two Black Squadron pilots, Vader, and three Interceptors led by Baron Fel. This is the point at which JY gave up, having had all his X-Wings destroyed for the loss of one TIE, and the Falcon about to go down under a hail of fire.

A game of Talisman with CH! He took a monk who became EEEEEEVILLLL really early on (and became massively strong, a base attack of 22!), and I ended up with a thief who snuck into the Valley of Fear and seized the Crown of Command despite nearly dying along the way. Yipes! I love this game and really must get some of the expansions. And paint the figures. Must paint the figures.

And a game of Firefly in progress with SB, NR, NV, and AC. AC won, damn his eyes, but at least I got to fly in the 'verse and I was very nearly the winner. Very nearly. I just misjudged things a teeny weeny bit and ended up having to sack Inara from my crew! Sad times!

I have done some other bits and pieces, like some work on an Eversor assassin, starting to repaint the Rhino from the Aderaband Home Defence Militia, and that sort of thing, but really since I got back from North Africa I've just been gaming.