It will be jst like starting over.

Hello hello, is there anybody out there ?  Ok that's enough with taking lines for songs, is blog is about movies but how I would do a musical I have no idea :)

So what has happened to Nickel & Dime you ask ? or maybe you don't & that's ok but if you decide to read this post I'm going to tell you, so you can't say I didn't warn you. A couple of years back the good lady wife & I decided we would leave one Ireland for another island, that other island been Lanzarote. Now the complete telling of that tale I'm not going to tell, but all did not go as should have & it meant we didn't make the move until about a year after we had planned.

Now as everybody knows in this hobby you accumulate a lot of stuff over the years & moving from a 3 bed house to a, what was at the time meant to be a 1 bed apartment meant some hard choices had to be made & were, so while some of the stars of N&D were kept under contract others  were not, but the same could not be said for the sets needed for making movies, so they didn't make the trip sadly.

Something I found is this hobby over the years, is you sometimes will be cash rich & time poor, or cash poor & time rich, as I have now retired from stealing a living (working might be to strong a word :) I now find myself in the cash poor time rich stage. What that means is that Nickel & Dime from this point on is very much going to live up to its name, but who doesn't like a challenge ?

What lies ahead ? well N&D is a long way from making movies that for sure, it does have to make sets & hopefully you good folk will follow a long as we set about the rebuild & who knows ( I don't ) but you might even learn something useful along the way. Also as it turns out we got a 2 bed apartment so that gives a bit more room for my hobby, now if only I'd known that would be the case, but as the song goes sara sara what will be will be :) & there I will leave it for this post.

As always my thanks for dropping in & if you would care to leave a comment it would be welcomed.

Breaking Ice a Planet 28 game

 Pixie Stum aka Ice had raised to be the ganger leader of the Glam Chics, but lately was finding that it wasn't what she wanted. There had to be more to life she thought then all the endless fighting & killing just to make more coin for the Guilders. Not that killing ever bothered Ice, so cold was she about it that it was said she must have ice in her veins, which is how she got the name Ice.

Okay the idea of the game is for Ice & the construct PB96 to get from one corner of the board to the opposite one to reach a hanger where a cargo shuttle will soon be lifting off. The game will last for 16 turns, how a game length is decided in Planet 28 is you roll a D10 & add 6 to the score, which means a game will last for somewhere between 7 to 16 turns. Luckily I rolled a 10 as I don't think 7 turns would have been enough here, but it all adds to the excitement I guess.  The blacked out  areas on the board are walls, the green areas are hazardous terrain, to move in hazardous you need to make an agility test, if you pass you treat it as rough terrain, if you fail you take D10 damage - your armour roll. if in rough terrain you make a roll against your agility, pass you move as normal, fail you move half speed. Movement effects shooting, so if a character moved once this turn & was shot at by another who had also moved, the shooters shooting would be reduced by 2. 

The doors may or may not be locked, this is decided on the roll of a D6, with a 6 meaning that the door is locked, an unlocked door will open automatically as a character approaches it, a locked door will require an agility test, but instead of rolling under the agility score I decided that to make it differently, so a D10 will be rolled & the character's agility added to it needing a 10 or more to open it & will cost an action to do so, door maybe shot or attacked in close combat to destroy them & have 6 hit points & armour of 1D10. The above rules are my own as the game its self has no rules for such things.  

The agility roll for the AI warband was 2 meaning my characters would act first, as Ice moves up to the first door, it open but she finds the second one locked,as it took part of her second move to reach it she can't try opening it turn. 

For the AI warband I decided random deployment, I first rolled to see which one would deploy & then rolled to see where, the table is made up of  9 tiles, which meat if I took away the tile where my warband had deployed I was left with 10 possibile places so a D10 roll would decide where they entered, again these are rules of my own making, the game does give rules for deploying warbands but they didn't suit my needs. As my idea was that they had discovered that Ice was taking off & were out searching for her. 

Hylda deployed in the tile above Ice, Flori deployed in the top right hand corner, Lacey in the bottom middle & Trinie & Maxi in the bottom left. Hylda move towards Ice & RB96 but finds the door locked.

The rest of the gang all double move.  (I forgot to make Lacey test moving through the sludge)

Turn 2 AI warband Agility role is 1. Ice opens the door by passing the test & moves up behind cover Followed by RB96,  who shoots at Lacey & misses.  Lacey fires twice at Ice missing, Hylda still can't open the door & the others move double.

Turn 3 AI agility roll is 2, RB96 fires twice at Lacey missing, Ice then rushes Lacey to get into close combat, ( if a character who has not activated is attacked in close combat, they can decide to attack back) both hit but do no damage.Lacey attacks Ice with her second action but misses, 

 Hylda passes the test to open the door & moves.

Trinie & Maxie come to a locked door & Flori moves twice.

Turn 4 AI agility roll 4, Ice & Lacey continue to slug it out to no effect, RB96  shoots at Hylda twice hits once & does a whooping 16 points of damage, Hylda has to take a break test as she has lost over half her starting hit points (to pass the test you must roll under your remaining hit points on a D10) .  

Hylda fails & flees off the board

Flori shoots at RB96 & misses, Trinie & Maxi can't open the door.

Turn 5 AI agility roll 10, Lacey attacks Ice, both hit Lacey takes 1 damage, Lacey attack Ice with her second action & hits but does no damage, Ice decides not to strike back. Flori fires twice at RB96 doing 1 damage, Trinie, & Maxi open the door & move, (under the rules I'd made up their test to open the door would be an auto pass as this turn their agility 10). Ice breaks off  from combat, ( doing so give Lacey a free attack that she misses.

RB96, rushes Lacey, hits her, does 1 damage

& push her back into the sludge, breaking the combat, if a character is successful in hand to hand combat & by successful I take it as meaning hits & does damage, while not been hit themselves, they can decide to push the character directly backwards 3cm. The rules are a bit vague on this as on one or two other things,so you to go with what you think works best.   

Turn 6, IA agility roll 9. Lacey is now in hazardous terrain, so if she wants to move would need to to take an agility test, which she does & fails, which results in her taking 3 points of damage.

I think I've cover most of the rules by now for you guys, so I'll just add a few things & give you my thoughts on the game from here on out, the rubble in the picture would be rough terrain, now another unclear thing I noticed was if your in hazardous terrain & pass the agility test, the rules state the you then treat it as rough terrain, I take this as meaning you would then have to take another agilely test. 

Planet 28 is available as a PDF from The Gaming Vault for a little over 5 dollars US, that give you the main rules, if you wanted to play solo you would then also need to pick up Death on the Periphery, which is around the same price, that as well as having the rules for solo play & has a little campaign. There is also another PDF coving the use vehicles, that about 10 dollars US.  

My thoughts on Planet 28 ? overall it a simple little game that gives a lot of freedom as to what you want from it, building a warband is straightforward & again gives a lot of freedom, with been able to build your own weapons & the differant, Traits,Abilities & Arcana powers, you really can build it as you like.

As I said the rules are light, but imo very easy to add to to create whatever its is your looking for.

For solo play the AI warband rules could do with some fleshing out, but again due to how light the rules are that shouldn't be any problem.

Back to the game & ice has reached the exit point on turn 14, to get off the board she will need to pass two door opening tests.

My over all view of how this game work for me, keeping in mind this is my first time, using it I got something's very wrong, RB96 build meant there was very little that had a real chance of doing damage to him.

Also when making up the AI Warband I added the in their agility to the cost, which I don't think you're meant to do, but as I've already said I think the extra points you spend on the AI warband needs to be scaled to your own warbands points, so I don't think it was a problem.

Although Hylda didn't last long I don't thing some of her abilities would have been of use, luckily for me her roll on the table at the end of the game seen her die. 

Turn 16, ice opens the door & enters the shuttle bay just in the nick of time, 

Leaving RB96 behind, which solves another problem for me as he won't now be in the next episode.

Yes this is going to be a little campaign, I'll cover the rewards each character got in another post, & hope you found this one interesting. 
As always my thanks for dropping in and if you'd like to leave a comment it would be welcomed 😊

Plant 28

This is for a solo game of Planet 28,  Called Breaking Ice (that hopefully I'll be posting soon) a rules light skirmish game by Nicolas Evens, were you build a small warband or in the case of solo play two warbands. Now I've been wanting to do something Sci/fi for a long time & had looked at Planet 28 a few time  as a rules set to use. So why Planet 28 ? well as I posted above its rules light & I believe flexible enough to be able to add to, there is also the fact that there are no set models so you can use whatever you like.

In the picture below is Ice & PB96, my warband.

                                         

Ice has the following stats, Fighting 6, Shooting 6, Agility 6, Speed 10cm ( about 4") Hit Points 20. She has 2 Traits, Inspiring ( which increase any friendly characters stats within 10cm by 1) & Unshakable ( which means she never takes a break test) her weapons are a Powered Sword, one handed Damage 2D6 & a Heavy Pistol one handed, Range 25cm, Damage 1D10+2 & Medium Armour 1D10+3 & cost 232 Points.

RB96 has the following stats Fighting 4, Shooting 5, Agility 5, Speed 10cm-1D6, Hit Points 20, It has 3 Traits, Iron Skin (+D4 to Armour save) Slow (-1D6 to Speed included above) & Unsshakable (See Ice above) It's weapons are a custom gun (you can make your own) one handed, Damage D20+5, Range 30cm & a Power Fist, one handed, Damage 1D10+5, & Heavy Armour 1D12+6 -1 to Agility, & cost 222 Points

Trying to stop Ice from breaking are 5 members of the Glam Chic's, from left to right we have

Hylda, Fighting 3, Shooting 3, Agility 3, Speed 10cm +1D6, Hit Points 20, She has 3 Traits, Fast(+1D6 move included above) Brawler, when unarmed fist count as 1D4=2 close combat weapons, Berserker, will never break from close combat & will fight until death or opponent flees. Weapons custom pistol, one handed, Damage 1D20, Range 15cm, Volatile (on roll of 10 shooter takes damage)

Dagger one handed, Damage 1D4+3, dagger is poisonous (Characters wounded by this weapon take an additional D6 damage for D8 rounds)  & Light Armour 1D8 cost 172 Points

Lacey, Fighting 4, Shooting 4, Agility 4, Speed 10cm, Hit Points 20, Weapons, Laser Pistol, one handed, Damage 1D8, Range 20cm, Powered Blade one handed, Damage 2D6, Light Armour  1D8, cost 123 Points.

Trinie, Fight 4, Shooting 4, Agility 4, Speed 4, Speed 10cm, Hit Points 20, Weapons, custom gun, two handed Range 20cm, Damage 1D12+6, Knockback (Targets hit by this weapon are thrown backwards 1D12cm) Light Armour 1D8, cost 138 Points

Flori, Fighting 4, Shooting 4, Agility 4, Speed 10cm, Hit Points 20, Weapons Laser Rifle two handed, Damage 2D8, Range40cm, Light Armour 1D8, cost 130 Points.

Maxi, Fighting 4, Shooting 4, Agility 3, Speed 10cm. Hit Points 20, Weapons Laser Rifle two handed, Damage 2D8, Range40cm, Light Armour 1D8, cost 120 Points. 

Now the sharp eyed among you will have noticed that there is a big difference in the points total of the two warbands, its roughly 200pts in favour of the Glam Chic's warband which is as by the rules, but is something I'll be looking at moving forward, as I would think this would need to be based off the size of the warband you are going to use.

A little bit on how the rules work, for any action stat like fighting or shooting you would need to roll under the noted number, eg a shooting 4 would need a roll of 3 or less to be successful, each character has two actions per turn, and can use the same action twice, eg you could move & then shoot or you could shoot twice.

Agility apart from other things decide who goes when in a normal game but in solo it works differently, instead of each character activating on their agility stat, you roll a D10 at the start of each turn which will mean the AI warband will activate at a different time each round, also unlike in a two player game it means they will all activate at the same time. This is good for adding a bit of unpredictability to the game, as you never know who will be activating first.

I'll leave it at that & as its a long weekend hopefully I'll be able to write up the battle report & get it posted & will cover the rules a bit more in the report, so as always my thanks for dropping in & if you'd care to leave a comment it would be welcomed :)  

The unlikely Ganger

As many of you will know from Dave's wonderful Wargames sculptures blog, this month is Fembuary, now Dave those some great challenges like paint what you got. 

Now while I'm not a great one for taking part in challenges, as I'm very much a do what the mood takes me hobbiest. It just so happens that I was painting up an Easher gang for Necromunda & for those of you who didn't know the Easher's are an all female gang, so now you see the connection with Fembuary 🙂

Now as these models where made up about a year or more ago it nice to finally have them painted up, so I guess you could say that I done two challenges in one go 👍

It's an odd thing & something I find happens with me quite a lot, in that I can dread the thought of painting models, especially GW ones as they have so much detail on them. 

As it turned out, once I got going with these I managed to get through them fairly fast, at least but my standers that is 🙂 In the first picture above is the gang leader (on the right) & a champion, next is a specialist ganger, followed by 4 ganger, with the photo above been 3 juves. 

After I'd made up my Easher gang I'd a few parts left over & as I'd a few female models that I'd got from Mantic cheap a couple of years back, I thought why not try & make up a few extra gangers. These are the ones in the picture above & while the 2 on the left I think fit in kind of OK with the rest of the gang, the one on the right doesn't, but can be used as what are called hive scum.

Next we come to the star of the show 😂 while looking at the models on the Mantic frame I noticed a model that would be the most unlikely one for Necromunda and thought to myself why not.

I'm not sure that flipflops are still a thing in the 41st M but you go with what you have right? Anyway I want to give a big thanks to Dave as I am now on holidays and without his challenge I know I wouldn't have got all these models painted up before I left.

As always my thanks for dropping in and if you'd care to leave a comment it would be welcomed 🙂

Behind the scenery, Native Village

 Welcome to another behind the scenery, it's another shoebox set, that will be a native village.

Now before I go any further I want to point out that I've not done any art painting since I was in school and as you can see from the picture below it shows 😂

Back drops make a big difference & are something I'm going to have to up my game on, but back to what I'm trying to do here. 

The picture below looks a bit better but still a long way off what I want. 

By now I was getting a feel for what I was trying to do, with the picture below more like what I was looking for. As you can see below it's given the appearance that it a village in a clearance.

I now got rid of the sheet of paper I'd used in the above pictures for a backdrop & instead painted the back & part of the two sides of the box, as seen in the picture below.

Below is a picture of the box with the painting done, I'm not sure yet if I'll need to lighting it up a bit, as I think it is given more of a night time feel, anyway a little tip for you, fit your ground piece before painting.

I don't feel that the bottom of the box is strong enough to just use so I'm putting in some form to strengthen, but you could use other stuff. 

With the form dry fitted I used some no more nails to stick it with.

I also put some on the edges of the form to stick it to 3 of the sides of the box, hence why you should do this before painting, & as I was using 2 pieces I stuck some skewers to help make the joint stronger. I should add that in the pictures above I was just using a piece of grass covered paper just to get the feel for what I was doing.  For the huts I use Coconut shells that I picked up in a petshop a while back & added a few little details.

 

After given the form a dark brown paint I then textured it with different sands & gravel, using finer stuff for what will be the clearing & pathway leading off into the jungle. 

Next I done some flocking, these areas will be what I hope when I add the foliage will help blend the whole thing together. 

So with the foliage done how did it all turn out ? Well I'll let you guys be the judge of that.

A fun little build & cheap to do, so even if it was never used the value in hobby time to cost makes this well worth it. But hopefully you guys will be seen it in an up coming production 😊

That's it for this post, as always my thanks for dropping in & if you'd care to leave a comment, it would be welcomed.