Project | Battle of Lake Erie (Part 6)

Well, that's it, I've done it. I started this whole thing back in March, and after a total of 6 posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5), the Battle of Lake Erie project is finished, at least from the hobby side of things. I haven't had the chance yet to play out the battle, which would require me to either find a pre-made scenario online or scrape together one myself. The version provided in the Hold Fast supplement is woefully inadequate. That may be the subject of a future post in this series, but for now lets get to some pretty pictures of boats in their natural habitat. 

Gaming | Barge Battle Royale Mordheim Battle Report

Mordheim has now taken to the high seas! Or to a nearby lake/river, I don't really know the geography of the area. Regardless, the warbands are all on barges now. The mission is simple; to be the last team floating. 

Project | Battle of Lake Erie (Part 5)

Ordinarily, I'd get a little bit more done before posting about this project, but I wanted to share this little American on the 4th of July. This is a cutter, the second I've done for this project. She'll be used to model the Trippe, the smallest ship present at the battle. 

Gaming | A Smattering of Deployments

Another day, another Mordheim game. Now that the warbands have made it inside the city, it's time to do some good ol'fashioned looting. Treasure tokens have been scattered across the face of the map, and so have all of the warbands. Each model had to be placed down one at a time, resulting in a very scattered deployment. Which made for some mayhem right from the start! 

Project | Battle of Lake Erie (Part 4)

Large amounts of overtime work have kept me fairly busy and away from the hobby (one of them at least). To make sure stuff still gets done, I try to do at least one thing a night, even if it's rigging a single thread. It's paid off, even if it can be quite slow at times. I've got two more schooners done for the United States, and the last sloop-of-war for the British, which also happens to be the last square-rigged ship in this project. 

Gaming | Mordheim Tunnel Escape

Now that my life has settled enough that I can venture out solo again, it's time for another round of Mordheim gaming. I'm trying out the Lizardmen warband this playthrough, which debuted in the Lustria setting for the game. Personally, they don't quite fit the vibe of Mordheim to me, but I wanted to try out one of the more esoteric warbands out there, plus I already had all the minis ready to go since Seraphon is my main Age of Sigmar army. 

Hobby | Black TIE Event

Thanks to Andor season 2 (seriously go watch it) I've had a strong desire to finish up my Star Wars backlog. One of those projects that's just been sitting there is this pile of First Order TIE Fighters (TIE/fo) that I've had lying around. I had a total of eight of them, which unless I'm going to play Epic (I'm not), is more than I'd ever need for a standard list which can only support a maximum of 8 models. However, I only have a single special forces TIE Fighter (TIE/sf). So I've been letting these guys sit while I waited for an idea to strike on how to achieve the conversion. I finally decided that there's not a whole lot I'd have to do to make them look the part, so I just went ahead and experimented with a couple of materials to make them into budget TIE/sf.

Hobby | Blue Squadron Standing By

I can't let Dave have all of the Star Wars fun. I was originally intending for this to coincide with May the 4th, but life being what it is I was a little late. I've had a great time with Andor Season 2 (seriously, go watch it), so I've been in the mood for all things Star Wars. I've hade these 3D prints for New Republic E-Wings laying around for a while, and I have a plethora of spare X-Wings, so I went ahead and started painting Blue Squadron. 

Hobby | Ye Olde Telegraph

Amazingly, somewhere in between Oblivion Remastered sessions and baby care, I've got some painting in. Not for the Battle of Lake Erie though; I've done so many schooners that I was in a mood to do something completely different. Something that's great about naval wargaming is that terrain isn't a necessity, other than an ocean mat. Staring at an empty ocean isn't all that fun either though. While I like what Warlord has on offer in terms of terrain, I've turned to Hagen Miniatures, a German company, for this particular venture. Their catalogue has a plethora of terrain, accessories, and even ships that are all in scale with the Warlord range. What we have here is a Chappe telegraph diorama. 

Project | Battle of Lake Erie (Part 3)

I've gone and painted perhaps the most famous participant of the whole battle, the brig Niagara. Depending on where you fall in the Ship of Theseus philosophical conundrum, she can still be found docked at the Erie Maritime Museum in Pennsylvania. That's the particular look I went with here, mostly because examples were readily available, and a small part because painting a black ship with white stripes gets repetitive after a time. Not to be completely forgotten, I also painted a schooner for the Royal Navy side of the conflict, and a little longboat, because you kinda need one if you're doing this battle.