Painting Competition - end of month 2 roundup

Another wintery month plods on by and I've managed to remain pretty productive by my standards. I'm currently sat at 350 points with 4 weeks to go, so it would seem i am well on on the way to reaching the 500 point target I set myself.

My big problem at the moment, well 2 problems are; I've purchased far more than I'm going to get painted in this competition, I got excited by too many miniatures and tried to plug too many gaps mainly in my pulp collection and Napoleonics. Its likely I will have several units of French light infantry and dismounted dragoons, plus an odd assortment of pulp and the saga miniatures that never made it out of the box. My bother distraction is terrain, I have loads of ideas for new pulp terrain and have picked up plenty of supplies over winter I am just really keen to get building, in the last few years I've certainly preferred building terrain to painting miniature, clearly I missed my calling in life.

Anyhow, enough of the waffle I hear you cry, I'll get on with showing you all, what I've painted.

First up are some additions to my wild west Mexican gang, 5 figures are from the new blackwater gulch range and the others from black scorpion.

Swiftly followed by some perry napoleonics, a mounted infantry colonel and another artillery piece.

Some more Athenians for my Aegeus game, wargames factory plastics some with javelins and others spear and shields. Transfers are from little big men studios.

Finally some weird world war 2 miniatures in the form of some warlord games plastic American infantry and an AE-WW2 captain to lead them.

Finally some terrain bits, 2 experimental cloning tanks from west wind productions with their grizzly contents.

I make that 34 miniatures in month 2 slightly up on month 1, it would be nice to hit 40 miniatures in month 3 but sustaining 10 miniatures a week may be hard going as I don't have many free weekends coming up.

Butch Sullivan in Escape from the Lair

With my wife out at a works do and my daughter safely tucked up in bed rather than crack on with more painting I decided to have another run through of Pulp Alley and try and figure out some more of the rules. 

I plucked out another pre-rolled scenario from my stash and set out to play a Race Against Time scenario. The background is as follows:

Our heroes are stuck deep within the secret lair of Oberst von Klinkerhoffen and disaster has struck, it would appear that utility station 42 has been destroyed, this station controls the main hanger doors and without it our heroes cannot escape.  One of the electrical conduits is damaged and requires replacing, looking about it would appear that all the parts our heroes require may be available in the immediate area. 

The Major Objective for this scenario is repairing Utility Station 42.

The minor objectives of which our heroes require any 3 are; A pile of electrical conduits, electrical blueprints, some machine parts and an abandoned generator.

The initial setup with out heroes in the center around the Utility Station and the forces of Oberst von Klinkerhoffen coming in from the higher level. 

Our heroes quickly spread out in the first couple of turns making a dash to look for the equipment they need.

Meanwhile the Germans advance, Lauren Stone and the vicious hound Indiana move into a position to cut them off, Indiana leaps straight into the action and mauls one of the German guards.

Kazim makes a move to engage the German guards but under the watchful eye of Klinkerhoffen he is gunned down by the German guards.

Butch rummages through the paperwork in one of the offices and comes up trumps, it would appear he's found a set of electrical blueprints for the utility station.

Markus has made his way back to the utility station with a set of electrical conduits but he is ambushed by Hans Gruber, in the resulting firefight Markus goes down whilst the sly German officer keeps himself in cover around these large pipes.

Lauren moves into a better position and takes out one of the guards whilst Indiana is taken down by another guard with the help of Klinkerhoffen. Kazim meanwhile appears to have crawled off and fallen unconsious from the loss of blood.

Butch manages to start up an old generator  which can be hooked up to the doors and help get them moving.

 With everything they need in their control it would appear that our heroes can make their escape. Klinkerhoffen vows that revenge shall be his our Butch and co disappear into the night.

Again I ended the game a little early as I'd been at it on and off for a couple of hours and wanted to get cleared up as it was getting a little late.


End of Game Debrief.
Overall it ran smoother this time, I'm still getting my head around the flow of the rules, at one point I completely forgot who had the initiative and essentially had to roll off again to allocate it.

Low level characters appeared to get up an awful lot, this contributed to a bit of a bottle neck at the bottom of the stairs which lasted several turns with the 2 groups trading shots and melee and then recovering.

In the end it was enjoyable and I picked up on a few mistakes I'd been making by not reading the rules properly. Another game or two and I should have this down.