Crisis 2011- Part I

Hoi,

Yesterday I had the privilege to visit the Crisis 2011 in Antwerp together with my Brother and Mark. I think I can talk for all of us when I say we had a blast! Attendance seemed to be even more then last year and the guys from TSOA were telling us all they will have to move to a larger venue next time. Now that's saying something about how big this event has become and for me it's the best show on the continent at this moment in time. Well I'm being a bit narrow-minded here since I have only visited two others (DUZI and Action) but it's pretty great anyway! Crisis is probably also very much the only event I will be visiting any time soon due to the birth of our son...

In this post I'll give you the more boring info first and I'll update an all picture extravaganza later this week. The first thing I'd like to mention here is that pretty much all of my regular gaming buddies were present at this event here in Antwerp; Koen and Michiel came with a group of friends, Jan-Willem (Pijlie) and his lovely wife Emmy were present and I also met up with others like Tom and Bert who I have seen last time at Crisis.As well as Johan, Toby and his lovely wife Baukje, about all the in-crowd was there :-)

Pretty much every time I visit an event like this I bring a shopping list along, this is just about the first time that I actually got most that was on the list and did not buy much more then intended. Even so I was able to blast most of my budget in one go.

So what did I buy?

Since Pijlie published his Dystopian Wars stuff on his blog I knew I was going to get hooked as well since who else to play these games with rather then him? So I got myself the core rulebook, a Britanian Naval- and Land battle group. Let's see when I get time to get cracking on them. I bought some Pegasus craters for my TGW games, for €15,- they are great value for money as opposed to GW craters. I also got the following:

- an Early War Miniatures WW1 AAgun on truck
- a set of armylists by "Crush the Kaiser"
- a box of GW Goblin Wolf Riders
- a Wargames Illustrated Special featuring all kinds of great eye candy.
- 2 casualty counters with numbers on a turntable.
- From Tom's own produced line some Roman dancers and a winged Amazonian figure

Well that's p[retty much all I got but it will get me going the next few months.

For now I'll just mention two more things about yesterday's event:
1) there were some great games the gents (and lady) from "Crush The Kaiser" did a humongous and well build 20mm plastic Great War demo and I got to talk to them at length about their rules, mini's and terrain/ vehicles which was great.

 I have rotated this image in my photobucket and own harddisk folder I swear it, but it won't come up right here, it's not my fault (as Han and Lando would say).

nother demo table was entirely build up of 20mm plastics. It was a game showing a battle of the South American Wars of Independence

ARGH! This one I rotated as well!

2) the second remark I'd like to make is that at the Crisis, Belgians, Dutch, French, German and people of the British Isles come together to re-fight the wars of their forebears against each other, in the most companionable way possible, politicians all over the world should take note of this! And those people telling us figure enthusiasts are warmongers should come and see for themsleves!



cheers Sander

E20 is here!

Hoi,

Today my order of HäT E20 releases came in and I am quite happy with them. What did I get? Well I'll tell you. First off are a box of these two sets:
8191 Zulu Warriors and 8271 Dervish Warrior, I have no intentions of building huge armies for them but I do have Colonial British troops and would like to use these for skirmish games in the jungles or desert. 

To top this of I got two sets each of 8235 WWI Highlanders and the 8236 WWI Indian Infantry.  

Now let's analyse these sets. The Zulu Warriors and Dervishes are both part of an ongoing series, there are Dervish camel-riders and NNC troops to accompany them. Therefore it's no problem to me that both these sets only include 8 poses. They'll suffice for my purposes. The Zulu's are armed pretty much as expected with assegai's and clubs coupled with shields. The Dervishes present a decent mix of rifle armed and close-combat armed individuals including Kiplings famous "Fuzzy-Wuzzies". I can supplement them with ESCI command figures and so create a little warband to attack my British skirmish patrols. A set of British Colonial infantry is in the works so we'll be having heaps of fun in Darkest Africa in time. 


The Great War sets are a great bunch too. Both sets feature subjects unseen before in the hobby. The Indian troops can be used for a nigh uncountable amount of theatres of war and are thus very useful. The Highlanders are dressed in mid war Western Font gear and while I have enough chaps for an elite company in the Great War game now, I'll probably end up doing an entire battalion in the end. Some conversions are needed though, both sets lack officers so I'm going to have to create those from other sets. Some head-swaps will probably be enough. But the helmets of the Scots I would like to feature pompoms and covering so that'll mean I have to get out the green stuff...


I'll keep you posted on any developments...


Cheers Sander,

Listening to: "Passchendaele" by Iron Maiden

Avatar

Hoi,

When Arthur was born the nice chaps at HäT provided me with an all-new avatar for their forum:

I really like this one, as it seems it's rather hard to get hold of... Anyway it fits in nicely with all the avatars down below on my blog. It would actually be a great idea to turn them into sew-on patches for my HäT gear but it's simply too expensive...

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "The Black Album  by Metallica

'Ello short stuff!

Hoi,

A few months ago I ordered some much needed Dwarf characters for my WFB Dwarf army from Scibor Miniatures. I finished painting these long before the birth of our son but never came around to photographing them and posting them here, so here they are:

A Dwarf Lord

Thane

Female Thane

These very nice resin figures come complete with weapons options and a resin scenic base. The latter I omitted since the dress of the figures would obscure most of the detail and therefore the bases are of better use with figures of a different stature.


Cheers Sander

Listening to: "To Mega Therion" by Therion

Dutch Blue Guards

Hoi,

As said elsewhere in this blog I received a parcel of white metal samples a while ago. Part of these were some 1680's figures. Uwe left me free to decide how to paint them so inspired by Ray's Dutch Blue Guards I came up with these:

Cheers Sander

Listening to: Far Far From Ypres Songs of the Great War

Anamites

Hoi

A while ago my dear friend Uwe send me some sample figure of some of his new 20mm white metal figures. Since I caught some painting time yesterday I managed to paint a series of his Anamites (don't ask something to do with the French in Indo-China) and some 1688 Dutch Blue Guards. The latter will feature in a later update, for now the Anamites will have to sate your thirst for miniatures.

Cheers Sander

Listening to "Over the Hills and Far Away" the Sharpe Series Soundtrack

Excellent service!

Hoi,

Today I'd like to bring you news of two companies who provide excellent service. First off is Wargames Illustrated.

I love the fact that I get a glossy magazine filled to the brim with wargames and related stuff. The only problem was that for several months on row the magazine failed to arrive at my home address. After an email from me to WI subscriptions officer Robert Townsend I got the missing issues resent each time, but the mags kept on disappearing, I really started to suspect someone at the postal distributions-centre here t-in the Netherlands of  nicking my stuff (other parcels failed to arrive as well) I rang the Dutch postal services and they blew me off. So in the end Robert suggested sending the latest missing issues in the most secure way possible and to a different address which worked out fine. It took us an enormous amount of e-mails and quite some time but just last week the mag arrivd here fine at my home address so I hope the trouble is now behind us...

Another excellent company is Avatars of War in Spain. From them I ordered a box of plastic Dwarf Slayers  and some characters amongst which is their newest Vermin Lord for my gaming buddy Mark! The last batch of figures I ordered (including Mark's birthday prezzie) was overdue and I was stressing whether the stuff was going to get here in time to be gift-wrapped and handed to the birthday-boy. I mailed Johanna of AoW and she told me she had been in hospital and recovering over the last month and would sent the order asap, 3 days later it arrived on my doorstep! Great Service that!

Well just wanted to share this with you all and assure you I am still active on the hobby-front be it a bit less then usual...

Cheers Sander

Listening to: still the Baby-monitor I'm afraid...