Tuesday, February 1, 2011

New purchase this evening.

I just bought into a new line of minis, well new to me at least.

I just ordered four of the family groups in the Border Reivers line from Sgt Major Miniatures (http://sgmm.biz/index.html). I really like the looks of these guys. They will make for some fun skirmish gaming with the Chain Reaction 3: Swordplay rules.

Now the hardest part of internet ordering... the waiting game...
I hate the waiting game, lets play checkers instead!

Monday, January 31, 2011

Starting new blog

I am going to start a new blog here for recording some of the different gaming that I do.

To start off with here are a few requested shots of the Technolog Castle Craft set I bought last week and had arrive on Saturday.

Here is a over all shot with the box top under it.


Here the first of two shots including the figures that came with the castle. Also there is a Island of Blood Sea Guard and a Clan Rat for size. The elf's spear point nearly reached the top of the wall.



Here is the second shot of the included figures and a Skull Pass goblin and Dragon Slayer for size.


Here is the elf and skaven standing behind the top of the central tower. As you can see the wall covers the entire elf's body but leaves the head exposed. The skaven can't even clear the top, just his spear tip is showing.


Here is a shot of the main keep. This thing was a nightmare to assemble. I will go into that in a second.


Here is a overhead shot with the skaven and slayer facing off on one of the walls. Also note the round tower that can only hold a single model.


Okay, so there is the castle. It has it's good points and bad points. On the one hand it is sort of small for 28mm gaming. Not very impressive for a castle. The walls are rather short but the walkways are deep. This means that 15mm and even 20mm figures will probably be too short to be used.

The assembly was tough. First off it is totally in Russian. I get that, it is for a Russian minis game and not generally aimed towards other countries getting it. But there are very nice diagrams to follow and you can figure out what goes where pretty easy. But what is not shown (it might have something written, but I don't know), is that you only get the diagrams for building the right half of the castle. You have to build the left half by mirroring the right. Now this might not sound too hard, and over all its not terrible, but it does mess with you a bit.
The toughest part is getting the left and right halves to meet. The keep for example is built half to the left and half to the right and you need to push the whole structure together during the final step.
Now I didn't use glue while I built mine, I wanted to test build it first. But now I wish I had. I am not sure I want to go back and redo the whole thing over again.
Also while building it, make sure you trim off all the little gates and spures left behind. These little things can cause a huge problem if the even slightly push a piece off center.
One of the real kickers though is the door handles... you have to put one ring on this little notched rectangle, slide the rectangle through a hole in the door, then put on the second ring. I thought this was totally unnecessary on a model this size. I only did a couple of them before deciding to skip that till a later date.

The figures are nice, but then I love the Technolog figure styles. You get four models of each of four poses for each of the three included factions. So that's sixteen figures for each of three factions, or forty eight total figures.

In the end I like the castle but it is not exactly what I had hoped for. I doubt I would buy another on in the series. But I will certainly get some use out of this one.