Holiday Zombie Infestation

Hoi,

Huzzah it's Christmas Holiday over here, two weeks of no school. Yesterday we had a Christmas celebration of sorts at the school where Mark and I work and it included a round of workshops provided by teachers in which they presented their non-school-related hobbies to the pupils. Naturally Mark and myself hosted a wargame: due to the easy to learn rules and the all-round appeal of the Zombie theme we went for ATZ.

Here you can see the two tables we set up:

- Capture Doctor Z:

- Search and Rescue:

Since I hosted the Doctor Z scenario, capture the evil Doctor who unleashed the Zed virus) I have taken more pictures of that game then the other one hosted by Mark.  

Deployment:

The Special Forces team had to search each building in order to find the Doctor.

Mostly the buildings contained...zombies:

Resulting in two troopers getting knocked down and eaten..

Meanwhile more and more Zeds gathered outside; when you go down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise because there's a Zombie-picknick!

As happens in games of ATZ pretty much everybody gets eaten in the end so...

Meanwhile in the city things were heating up too!

Finally the bell sounded indicating the end of the Celebrations and some pupils went home accordingly, a lot of the other players remained behind to finish the game. Because I had to do some other school-related chores Mark took over and we merged the two player groups on the wood table. Stupidly I forgot to ask how the game ended and whether the Doctor was captured. But regarding the way things stood when I left, I gather everybody ended up in the Zombie's pick-nick basket :-)

I totally forgot to mention that most of the zombies were painted by the kids of the school-mini-painting-club. They also got the chance to play with their mini's against the survivors.

That makes an end to this episode watch out for any Zeds threatening you're Holidays and take the warnings of the instructional video below to heart!

Cheers Sander,

Listening to: "Industrial Silence" by Madrugada

Civilians

Hoi,

For some time I've had a lot of 20mm white metal civilian figures lying around. Some of these are from CPmodels others are from Elhiem. The civilians are mostly WW2 civies but mainly I am going to use them for my Great War games as scenery or scenario objectives. Their first outing however will be a participation game of All Things Zombie this Friday at the school where Mark and I work. There's a Christmas celebration of sorts in which teachers give "workshops" featuring their, non-school related hobbies" and so we decided to host two tables of ATZ games. The rules are easy to learn and will make for great fun!

Here are the pictures:

Male refugees:

Women and children:

Henchmen (these are really Gestapo officers but I will use them as henchmen for...)

The Doctor :

An as of yet still un-named hero...

Hope you like them!


Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Dance of Death" by Iron Maiden

Reall Compagnia Irlandesa

Hoi,

After a long absence I am more or less back. Here are some pictures of the last of my HäT Spanish testshots. I have painted these as a fictional regiment featured in the popular Sharpe series: the Real Compagnia Irlandesa. So yes I know these are not historically accurate but like them all the same. I hope to use them in some Sharpe inspired skirmish games in the future.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Re-Machined, a tribute to Deep Purple" by various artists

Over the Hills...

Hoi,

Work and family leave pretty little hobby-time for me lately. Yet in between serious stuff I've managed to paint up one of my Amera Plastics hills. This one I did up to use as mountain with Dystopian Wars or as regular hill with 20mm games.

Several more of these await painting, some I will paint up to represent arid terrain, like this one, and some more will be done to resemble more Northern terrain with snow-covered tops.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Good morning Saigon" by several artists

Blogger Awards!

Hoi,

Huzzah! I got nominated for the Liebster Blogger Award by Monsieur Rosbif at his fabulous blog. Thanks heaps my friend!

Rules for this stylish affair are:
Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.

1. Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.
2. Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!
3. There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do. 

Well, the less then 200 followers is a bit of a poser but here are my five nominees:

1) Number one should absolutely be Uwe from history in 1:72.I really like it when people try to contribute to the hobby by actually making a difference Uwe is one such person. He has provided countless of hobby-friends with colourplates on the most exotic uniforms and has started his own line of white metal figures of unavailable troops and periods. Big tumbs up!
2) Jan-Willem from Pijlie's Wargames Blog is one of my great gaming friends and is a true all-rounder, never seen someone who can host about ANY game, using truly ANY ruleset!
3) Peter from Peter's Cave is always inspiring and seems to eternally optimistic and good humoured!
4) Stefan from Monty's Caravan has a great little blog too and just reached 100 followers, congrats!
5) I also like to put in front of the Jury Matt from "Waterloo to Mons" who has been an inspiration and fun read as well for quite some time!

Enjoy these blogs and vote for your own favourites,

Cheers Sander

Lest we forget!

Title says it all really...

Crisis Antwerp 2012, a short story

Hoi,

Last Saturday, the highlight of my hobby-year came round: the Crisis Convention at the Waagnatie Hall in Antwerp. It was in several ways a "first-time" experience; for one the convention moved from a one hall exhibit to a big two hall location. Secondly we were travelling in a larger company then last year since apart from my brother Lars, our designated driver, and Mark, both of whom joined me last year, we were accompanied by Albert-Martijn from Groningen who had come to stay with us for the weekend.

Before I start with a smallish report of how the visit went, I'll start with my goals for the day. Did I have any? Yes I did, they were rather Limited but all the same here they are:
- I wanted to get some new brushes preferably  Kolinsky's
- I hoped to pick up the Freebooter 2012 Limited edition figure
- I wanted some MicroArt Discworld figures
- Don't shoot me but some GW space marines to finish off my DA's were on the list as well
-I secretly hoped to be able to get a box of Zombicide as well...

We set out around half past nine o' clock in the morning and arrived around eleven, Lars was able to park the car literally in front of the hall's entrance. I can still kick myself in the head for forgetting to make a group-photo of the four of us but what's done is done. We entered the hall and I must say I was caught up in the buzz of the event right away. Orientation was rather difficult because the traders were situated around the demotables and therefore I got distracted immediately when I was at a vendor's booth by a table or vice versa. I started of by going to the Crush The Kaiser table to say Hi to Paul and Ian and see the Marines I painted for them in action in the flesh. Lars kindly made a picture of the 3 of us and I made some shots of the marines in action.

                                                 3 poppies in a row ;-)

That's when the batteries of my camera decided to quit on me and none of the others had taken a camera along so for a picture report I have to refer to others Pijlie and Peter have some up on their blogs.

Paul and Ian did a tremendous job on the scenery as you can see and I think the marines are not too shabby themselves so one hell of a great table to see in the flesh. Supplied with a signed edition of the new ruleset I went on to see the rest of the hall. The first purchase I did almost set me off in the wrong direction: I own the Italeri Norman Church and want to use it for the Peninsular War, the biggest conversion I need to do to be able to use it hence, is to replace the slate shingles for Normandy with Spanish tiles. At a French-speaking vendor I found sheets of plastic with the right scale of tiles. Due to my poor abilities regarding the French Language I ended up paying €24,- for 6 measly sheets of the stuff...

Oh well onto the rest of the show. At most of these conventions the diorama's and demo-tables are of varied quality, let's be honest we all know this to be true. But this year at the Crisis all tables were at least of a very high average quality at the least. While I saw some shabby ones last year still, now everything was in very good order indeed. But there was nothing there, apart for the mentioned Dixmuide table, that really got to me like the Abyssinia table or the Nosferatu game did in recent years. 
That brings me to another point, upon completing 3 rounds of the two halls, we all felt we were ready to go home, it was by then 14.30. A very surprising fact considering we did 5 rounds last year and stayed till closing time... I have had the pleasure to speak to loads of hobby-friends while at the Crisis loved some of the games and demo's, for instance I now know that while I love the appearance of the new X-wing game, I will not start playing it because there's way too much paperwork involved, yet still I was completely happy to leave before time. The atmosphere of the new hall just was not cosy enough I guess.
I missed out on seeing some friends I knew would or should be there as well, Peter should have been around but I didn't see him, Sidney was sadly missing and I missed Tom (of CW toys) who should have been there with a stand as well completely I hope to see you next time mates!

What did I buy in the end?

- Four Kolinsky brushes: two 3 x 0 and two 5 x 0
- 6 sheets of overpriced plasticcard
- a spray can of brown basecoat
- a combat squad of space marines (in the secondhand fair for €10,-)
- 3 Discworld mini's: Granny Wheaterwax, the luggage and Death (who was missing his scythe, Micro Art has been mailed)
- the Freebooter Limited edition mini W00T!
- some 20mm WW1 Frenchies
- a KR Kaiser 1 bag with content foam.
- Opsprey's MAA ANZACS for WW1

Quite a nice haul I'd say and I am happy at that.

I will try the Crisis next year round and try to get more accustomed to the new setting.

Cheers Sander

P.S. Oh yeah I almost forgot: since my brother is not really in the hobby and was only there for the enjoyment of the trip it's not surprising he didn't buy anything, but Mark on the other hand did not, I repeat NOT buy ANYTHING! What wrong with you my friend? :-P You thought I'd forget to mention it right?

Listening to: "History Lessens" by Skyclad