The Finale

                                   
It's the final round of the Covid Cup here in lockdown and it's still all to play for. The current ranks show Abe in first place with 2 wins, myself in second with 1 and Paggy limping along with zero. But this final game will shake things up a bit as we introduce the Planet-Smasher. That's right, for the final round I've brought in a forth player whose soul objective is to trash everyone else at all costs. In other words,  I persuaded my partner, who also lives with me, to get involved with the promise of petty revenge on the boys for such crimes as talking during movie night or changing the toilet roll tube. So there's some rage there.

For this round, it's highest score takes the over all victory. Points are awarded for;
Clearing any gate that isn't a player's own starting gate. 2pts
Wrecking another player's car. 2pts
Crabbing a Loot Crate. 1pt

Further more, the Planet-Smasher doesn't award points for being wrecked, but can score points to trade-in for Audience Tokens.

So the game is set, mine and Abe's previous winnings were converted into points for this game, giving us a 3 and 6 point head start respectively.

Abe to the high speed, performance car, Red Streak.

I had tricky, Silver Skull

Paggy took the All-rounder, Beaster

And the house car, Planet-Smasher

Red Streak made a quick start at scoring, turning into the outer ring of the arena, hoping score some quick points before the other cars can get their weapons activated.

Rather than risking a head-on collision with Planet-Smasher, Silver Skull turns towards Beaster's starting gate, out maneuvering the ram fitted red tank and clearing the gate.

Beaster, having missed Silver Skull, barrels forward and clears the opposite gate. Red Streak has driven around the out side of the gates grabbing a few cheeky loot crates before trying for a gate.

But isn't going to be easy.

Red Streak gets side swiped by the Planet-Smasher...

...as Beaster closes in for the kill.

Red Streak gets shunted through the gate only to get smashed to bits by a charging Beaster.

As the Red Streak goes up in smoke, Planet-Smasher powers through the wreckage and destroys itself and Beaster in one fell hit!

Silver Skull clears the far gate, grabs a few crates and then turns back towards the action.

Red Streak re-spawns only to stair down the arena at all three adversaries charging towards him.

Red Streak chose it's end, deciding to ram Silver Skull rather than tackle the two ram fitted cars.

With Red Streak knocked back to his re-spawn gate, Silver Skull was left to take on Beaster.

At this point, despite being wrecked twice, Red Streak still held the lead with 11 points, Silver Skull 8 and Beaster holding it's own with 6 points. Back in the game, Red Streak took off away from the smash party that was every other player on the board. Planet-Smasher went on the prowl for more carnage.

At this point in the game, Red Streak was getting totaled at every turn, either by bad luck or the relentless pursuit the Planet-Smasher. Regardless of this fact, Red Streak was still holding on to the lead with Silver Skull always close behind.

Beaster continues to make solid efforts, but Planet-Smasher is always there to wreck the day....

...or is it? By a near miss, Beaster sets it's sites on Red Streak.

Aaah, the ballet.

Silver Skull claims a few more points at the gate, closing the lead on Red Streak.

Red Streak re-spawns and sets itself up as bait for Beaster.

Once!

Twice! And the guns blaze away, taking out Beaster to score the last few points.

And there you have it! Red Streak takes the win. Final scores;
Red Streak 20
Silver Skull 16
Beaster 12

So ends the final round of the Covid Cup with Abe taking the trophy through sheer dumb luck. This was a lot of fun and a great way to kill time during lock down. to anyone who hasn't tried Gaslands, I can't recommend it enough as a quick pick up play set of rules or even a narrative campaign for wasteland warfare. A few toy cars and some dice and you're practically good to go. I plan to get my own back on Abe next time with Kill Team. That'll teach 'im.

Bored oh the Rings? NEVER

I've been working on these on and off since lockdown started and I'm pleased to have finished the Fellowship of the Ring.

Ok, sure I still have to finish the display base, but that's for another day.

Right now however, I'm re-reading the Two Towers and for the first time ever I feel the urge to paint a Rohan army. Up to now I've never had any desire as I found the colour schemes earthy and a bit dull, which is perfect for style and matches the movies wonderfully. The description for the people of Rohan in the book however speaks of glittering mail and shining spears, red and green shields, honestly this sounds like a much more interesting project.

So an hour, a couple of scraped knuckles and a fair bit of swearing later I've managed to salvage a bunch of battered riders from a job lot I had lying around. Most of the grunt work was getting the riders off the horses for ease of painting, cleaning and weapon repairs will be a much easier task.

Dwarves, Elves, Ponies and TASKS!

Not a lot completed this week. I've been doing some house work plus actual work so I've been occupied. That isn't to say I've suddenly lost all my lockdown awarded free time, I still managed to do some creative bits.

First up was a little drawing for my Niece's birthday. She's a big fan of My Little Pony so I drew this on my sister's request.

Ain't it cute.

So to cleanse myself of the this wholesomeness that had began to infect my otherwise curmudgeonous demeanor, I went and built some gun turrets for a couple of looted Chimera tanks.

 I've had these lying around for ages. They were going to count as trukks, but felt too big so I decided to play around with some plasticard and see what I could do about chunking them up a bit. Since starting these, I'm keen to try my hand building some other stuff for myself. These still need rivets and some minor details added, but as prototypes for what I have in mind next they're a success.

Finally for this week, I finished off another 2 members of The Fellowship. Gimli and his side-kick, Legolas.

All I got left is the hobbits. Looking forward to them actually. It will be great to finish these off after so long.

Chugging Along

Not much to say this week. I finished of Aragorn and Boromir for the Fellowship. Just as a quick palette cleanser really. I forgot how much detail these first run LOTR models had. I'm kicking myself though as I only spotted the mold line on Aragorn once I'd started. Now it's there forever driving me nuts!

I also finished painting Nigel. He's the old man from my comic available from Deadstar Publishing and he's now available in resin from me.

I'm holding on to him at the moment as I want to sell him with his giant mechanized grand daughter, Beki. A friend his helping me out with that at the moment using a 3D sculpting tool. Due to Beki being largely made of geometric shapes and smooth surfaces, I thought computer sculpting may hold better results as trying the sculpt something like that and keep it symmetrical would be a nightmare for me.

Still, it's great to see progress during these times. On the topic of comics, I've painted 2 more pages for the upcoming Age of Savagery vol 2. I've no clue what the plan at the moment is with this during the current happenings, but here's a sneaky preview anyways.

Until next time!

A Zamboni?!!

Welcome back race fans to the third installment of the Covid Cup. (yes, after this long the name has stuck) and once again it's more destruction than we know what to do with. For this event, a simple lap around the track, standard figure 8 with four gates. First car to clear all the gates in order and clear the finish line WINS!

Cars take the starting grid. From left to right, Thunder Wasp, Silver Skull and the Crushinator.

The engines rev, the buzzer sounds and the the racers are off. Silver Skull speeds past the Crushinator to clear the first gate, but the motorized battering ram catches the lead car and pile drives Silver Skull into the barriers.

 Thunder Wasp uses the collision as a destraction to sneak through the first gate and take the lead.

The Crushinator, smells blood & oil and charges in for the kill....

...missjudging the turn and crashing past the crates and into the arena walls...

...as Silver Skull dodges the the attack, but skids into mangled crates.

Thunder Wasp clears the second gate and has a clear run to the next gate.

The other racers have settled their feud and make to tackle Thunder Wasp's lead.

Thunder Wasp powers through the third gate, but bodges the turn, spinning out metres from the finish line!

Silver Skull clears the second gate hoping to close the gap while Thunder Wasp corrects his mistake.

The Crushinator has given up on the race and has decided to go for pure destruction, Gunning the engine, the battering ram heads back towards the start line hoping to catch Thunder Wasp before he can get back on track.

Risking an collision with Silver Skull in the process.

But the rampaging Zamboni is too slow, Thunder Wasp clears the finish line and takes the win.

I had won a race! Third time lucky. Abe, with his 2 wins, had decided to take the Crushinator and cause damage rather than actually race, it was just a shame that Paggy took the early brunt of his attacks and was paying for it until the end of the race. After I cleared the first gate there was no one around to stop me so the next race will probably see Abe hunting me around the track to avoid a draw. It will be interesting.

Procrastination With Paint

I spent some of this week having a bit of a clear out. I went through my storage cases of finished models and other bits and pieces and decided to downside a bunch of stuff I no longer wanted. (They'll be put on eBay in the future) Whilst tiding away I started labeling the cases.... and then thought of something better. I'd always wanted to spruce up these old cases and now I had some time to play with I thought I'd give it a go.

And here's the results. The designs were marked out with bits of masking tape and then sprayed in stages to get results. First are my Warcry and Goblin stuff.

Next are my Mordheim and Ork cases. These were a bit more involved as I'd decided to try different ideas.

Finally my Lord of the Rings collection. This lot will likely spill over into another case in the future, but I did something different with this one. I found a tin of chrome car spray in my cupboard so I went a bit swanky for the Tolkien logo which I cut out a stencil for. In hind sight I should have used card instead of printer paper for the stencil, but I'm happy with the results.