Gangs of Rome - Twice!

 I took Friday off work, and drove up to Niagara Falls to meet up with my friend Chris - he was on vacation all this week and hoping someone would be available for a game or two, and I was more than happy to take a day off work. He was gracious enough to reserve a room at the local library and set up to teach me Footsore Games' Gangs of Rome. 

For those unfamiliar, Gangs of Rome is a game of... well, exactly what it says on the tin! Players take on the role of gang-leaders in Ancient Rome, sending henchmen out to engage in various crimes and rumble with rivals to ensure their own gang's status and influence. It is, as Chris explained, a game that truly shines in scenario play, and games go quickly enough that you could probably run a decent campaign of linked games over the course of a single day. We played two games in slightly under three hours. 

The first game was the basic "here's how to play" scenario; Chris and I each took control of a small gang and tried to claim as many (out of three) objective tokens before the game ended; every game of Gangs of Rome is a strict five turns, encouraging you to get a move on and engage instead of faffing about! 

The game swung pretty wildly, and ended with me in control of one objective token and Chris taking two; I'd had two, but in the last turn he managed to off my gang-member who was carrying the second one and jumped on the token! One of the entertaining points was I had a character trying to climb the side of a building to get the token on the roof; she kept failing her activation rolls, meaning she sat at the foot of the wall getting more and more stressed about it! 

The second game was a scenario involving a smuggling run - my gang started the gang moving contraband through the city, and Chris' gang had to seize the goods from me. Again, I held on to my objective tokens pretty well until turn 4, and suddenly Chris was taking them from me right and left. Ultimately he managed to seize all three objectives and wipe out my entire gang. 

Best part of the second game was making good use of the game's rules for crowds. Rome is, of course, a crowded city, and the scenarios call for multiple crowds (five civilian figures in a group sabot base) to be on the table. They move around and react to the gangs fighting, which is very cool. At one point, two of Chris' figures attacked one of mine to seize a token (see above); I got the opportunity to activate a crowd and got it to attack Chris' gangsters, killing one and giving my guy an opportunity to run away, buying him a little bit of time. 

I had a great time, and we're discussing our next meet-up - somewhere closer to me, and maybe playing A Fistful of Kung Fu. We were thinking maybe hitting up Casual Dragon (less than ten minutes from my house) and seeing if we can reserve a table. I paid them a visit today, but the guy manning the front counter was a new employee and seemed a little overwhelmed so I didn't ask about table reservations. I did clear out some vintage "Clan War" samurai figures that Reaper made 24 years ago that they had marked down. I maybe feel a little guilty about that, given how little I've accomplished in terms of painting this month, but not so guilty that I didn't buy them, you know?

Miniatures Acquired: 121

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Faffing About

 I've been puttering away at plenty of things, and not completing hardly any of them. I did finish the jungle terrain with the Olmec head:

I'm pretty well pleased with how it turned out. 

In other news...

My friend Chris sent me an early birthday present. I'd enthused on BlueSky about the old I-Kore "Celtos" line of Celtic fantasy miniatures, having discovered it's still in production through Brigade Models. I'd been eyeing these models since the early 2000s, but never had a good justification for buying them (and especially back then, when I was in my late teens and didn't have meaningful money coming in). Chris pulled a whopping collection of Celtos Sidhe figures (basically elves) out of his own pile of shame, including archers, swordsmen, mages and dragon riders. 

I may or may not rebase them, but either way I'm overwhelmed by the generosity! 

Besides that...

I found out a local friend of mine has a Wargods of Olympus army from Crocodile Games, which inspired me to dig out the Wargods of AEgyptus army I painted most of back in 2020; the two games are cross-compatible so it's entirely possible I might actually get a game of Wargods in without having to drive to Historicon or Adepticon for it. 

Having been dissatisfied with the contrast paints I used on the Basti Archers (leading them, and the army, to be left unfinished back then), I stripped the paint off them to start fresh, and I cleaned up one of the chariots I'd bought and built some sub-assemblies for painting. 

Once painted, the horses will have their tabs trimmed off and the entire assembly glued just to the 50x100 chariot base. I've misplaced one of the chariot runners in the past six years, which is annoying but not insurmountable. 

I'll do these with contrast paints to match the rest of the army, though the Basti will be getting a blue and white color scheme instead of the turquoise and red look I tried in 2020, and probably some more variety in their fur colors. Also, all of the bases in the army are getting redone to replace the awful "baking soda and superglue painted as sand" thing I tried to do back then. 

So let's update that tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 116

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Mesoamerican Terrain

 I have quite a stack of Mesoamerican terrain, both resin and MDF, to chip away at getting painted if I want to put on a Maya game at Wargames Among the Warplanes in September; as is, I think I'm going strictly as a player to the June show to save my energy for September. 

I've finished the first two pieces, a pair of resin buildings from Acheson Creations:

These were kept pretty basic - primed a dark brown, the stones are drybrushed with successive layers of Raw Sienna, a medium gray and a paler gray. I used cheap craft paint for all of it, and mostly stuck to the color scheme Mark Morin used when he was painting this model. His blog tracking his own Aztec project has been a huge inspiration for me with my own Mesoamerican project. 

Unlike my modern buildings, I glued the roofs down rather than worrying about drilling the resin and adding magnets to try and hold them in place. 

Up next I've got another four buildings, these with thatched roofs. They've been primed (dark brown for the stone, a yellowy tan for the thatch), and I should be able to complete them this week.

I'm also beginning work on another set of jungle terrain pieces, including a couple with incorporated Olmec heads:

Unfortunately I ran into some trouble with those yesterday - I used torn pieces of cork sheets to add some elevation to a few MDF bases, only to discover the PVA glue didn't bind the cork to the MDF, so the cork is now just sliding right off. Superglue it is then! 

Miniatures Acquired: 97

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 4

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Elric of Melnibone

 I had to put the Warhammer Orcs aside; I got hit with a bad case of painter's block and just couldn't keep going on them. Instead, I pulled out some Sword & Sorcery (and Sword & Planet, it's interstellar cousin) figures from Bronze Age Miniatures and got them cleaned up, glued to bases and primed; I've been eyeing Bronze Age's figures for a very long time - since the days when about half their catalogue was "blank" figures intended for you to sculpt your own hair and clothing on to, but it took me quite a while to pull the trigger.

Last night, I pulled one of them and set to work. Bronze Age lists this figure as "Grey Elf Wolf Lord with Rune Sword" but he's pretty immediately identifiable as Elric of Melnibone, a creation of British author Michael Moorcock. First appearing in print in 1961, Elric was conceived as something of an anti-Conan; instead of being a big beefy barbarian who eventually makes himself king, Elric is a sickly albino sorcerer-king, ruler of a cruel race, too conscientious and empathetic to be loved by his subjects, and kept alive by the vampiric powers of his demonic sword Stormbringer. He's doomed to bring about the end of the world, a fate he struggles to free himself from. 

Elric's story continues on in music and roleplaying games, and has served as inspiration for later characters across a variety of media. My introduction to him actually came in the form of the Blue Oyster Cult song "Black Blade," which Moorcock had collaborated on with the band to develop the lyrics. 

Outside of his eyes and the gems on his sword, I tried to sticker to cooler and neutral tones as much as possible for the color palette; I do intend to go back and add some snow to his base to "chill" the composition further, I just didn't have the time to do so tonight.

I've also had some fun stuff arrive today - Forge of Ice is taking over production and sale of Barbaric Splendour's "Ophidian Menace" figures as Kevin from Barbaric Splendour has had to step back from the business for health reasons, and Alex was kind enough to send me a set of figures since I'm doing some freelance writing for him.

As well as a spectacular piece of resin-cast terrain:

This gateway is part of a set of crumbling stone walls and towers he's been working with Ian at Fenris Games to develop, which will hopefully be going on sale later this year. Part of why he sent this to me is because I'm one of the people who made this piece possible; the battling monitor lizards design on the doors was based on a drawing done to illustrate an RPG scenario I wrote for Alex, set in his Bronze Age Lost World setting of Azor. 

Gina also ordered me some more Bronze Age Miniatures figures, and I placed an order with Gringo 40s, so it's time to update the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 97

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4