Diceni 2022

Sunday 1st May was Diceni 2022, organised by the Norwich Aftermath gaming club.  What better way to start the day than with a Unicorn Crumpet?  Chocolate spread mane optional for small children. (I went with blackcurrant jam for mine.)

Unicorn Crumpets - a fine way to start the day.

I had not expected to see squirrels there - very cute!

Squirrel!

On to the games. Thare was a small Napoleonic clash in progress, I believe this was the New Buckenham Historical Wargamers.

Some Napoleonic action.

These were a finely painted colection of figures.  When we saw them, the game was obviously only just getting started.

The French Commander.

I must try making some rivers sometime, it's one of the few things I lack in my terrain.

The river.  And some reeds.

 Number 1 son was particularly impressed by the reeds and would like to try and make some.  Time to sacrifice one of my old house painting brushes.

Close-up of the reeds.

There was also a WWII game underway, just a small skirmish.

WWII game.

Panther and an SdKfz251

Zombies were involved in the game on the next table - I didn't get a chance to find out exactly what was going on here.

Some zombies.

Many of the usual suspects were there, Warlord Games and The Assault Group had a great selectino of models but I was particularly pleased to see Mark from Kore.  I have admired his 15mm models for some time and it was nice to see them in person.

Number 1 son really liked the FAB 1 styled pink RR!

 There was a fine display of various different scale vehicles, including lots of the new 15mm tanks and mecha he recently acquired from White Dragon.

Lots of 15mm goodies.

HAWG transport.

Centurion MBT.

There were some nice previews of new releases too.

There were also new shanties in the range unveiled.

15mm shanties, APCs and Mecha.

Ont the next table and Badgers Games had a great range of stuff.

Badgers Games.

Moving to the end of the row, Critit had some absolutely stunning dice and dice boxes.

Dice boxes.

Cthulhu fhtagn! Ia! Ia! Etc.

Lots of lovely dice!

There were also amazing journals and some very fine goblets.

More dice and some fantastic journals.

Cthulhu goblet.

Back to the games and the Cowards Wargames Club were playing Dragon Rampant.  So far the Saracens had won 3 games and the Crusaders none.

Dragon Rampant.

Crusaders.

Saracens.

There was a race in progress when we arrived but I had a chance to take a few photographs after lunch.

Time for a race?

Formula D.

Formula D character card.

New game Bounty Hunters was in attendance - this looks a fun little game.  

Bounty Hunters.

 Apparently there are discussions underway over distribution by a larger company which sounds encouraging.

Hosts Aftermath had a game of Marvel Crisis Protocol running.

There were the usual cosplay characters...

My friend Graham was assisting with some demo games by local company Themeborne.  I've played Escape the Dark Castle before which is great, they also have a new WWII game Strike HQ coming to Kickstarter this month which was being demonstrated.  Unfortunately I missed getting a photograph of this one.

What did we come away with? Well, I've founds that having a 7 year old in tow seems to help with freebies, such as couple of nice in badges from the Bounty Hunters game (left) and Kore (right).

A stop in The Works on the way from the car park provided some extra scenery paints and some mini pegs - more on the pegs in a future post!

Number 1 son was also given a free bag of dice by the kindly crew from Badgers Games.

Lovely blue gem dice.

I got a nice selection of bits from Kore, Mark made me up a grab bag for £10 which was extremely generous of him.  I got a couple of shanty buildings miscasts.  The one on the right is slightly warped, the one on the left has partly collapsed but both can be made usable with a bit of work.

This retro sci-fi limo would be ideal for a Genestealer cult or the local crime boss.

A HAWG pickup with a minor miscast on the back and no wheels.  I'm sure I can print some suitable wheels and an artfully draped tarpaulin should hide the miscast part.

This Goliath Landtrain has a few bubbles in the wheels but some Milliput will take care of that.

Not pictured are a couple of miscast cars that Mark gave Number 1 son, the miscasting is only very minor (small bubble on one and a slight chip on another), they were hidden away before I had a chance to get a photograph!
 In all it was a pleasant day out, special thanks must go to my wife who kept the 3-year old number 2 son occupied while number 1 son and I had a browse.  Fortunately the library was also open (the Forum where the event takes place was a Millennium project and includes the city library, regional BBC TV studio and offices, tourist information centre and more) which helped keep the little one interested.  As it was, my time was limited ("No, don't touch that - no, put that down - no, we can't buy one of those don't break it!" etc) and I didn't get to try any participation games but maybe next year.

If you're ever in Norwich on the first Sunday of May between 10am & 4pm, come and have a look at Diceni!

Some walls and a door.

I thought I'd try printing a few walls that are a bit more "sci-fi" in appearance than much of my other scenery.  These ones come from the Novus Landing collection by Ecaroth, the Dungeon Sticks Space Port.  They're designed to fit together with little pegs.  Because they're designed for 28-32mm figures, I reduced them to 56% original size for my 15mm games.  I considered just reducing on the Z axis to make them shorter but keep the length, but they didn't look quite right because the rivet/bolt holes were all oval.  I'm wondering now whether I should have made them slightly larger, maybe 70% original size so the wall would be just above head height for a normal figure.

A short section of wall and a nice door.

Some of the wall sections with "greebles" have different designs on each side to add some variety.  I also labelled the door on one side only.  The walls were all painted in craft acrylic taupe, washed with sepia ink, then drybrushed in the basic taupe again, with some highlights of taupe + white.  The door is an old pot of GW blue-grey from the Space Marine Paint set, washed with black, drybrushed with blue-grey and given a highlight of blue-grey + white mainly in the centre.  A few GW chainmail accents were added and dulled down with black ink, and the door control panel painted in green.  The number was printed in 48 point "Microstyle Bold Extended ATT" and carefully cut out with a razor blade.  I stecilled it on using a small scrap of sponge and some Citadel Base "Mephiston Red" to give a slightly rough outline.

The other side of the door.

The walls come in 1, 2 and 3 inch sections (obviously reduced to less than 1" with mine), plus door sections, wall ends and various connectors/junctions.  The little pegs didn't fit mine without a fair bit of sanding, mainly due to the "elephant's foot" but I might not bother with them anyway.  The walls stand up pretty well without any connectors.

Component parts.

I also added a few bits of the Imperial Dungeonsticks set by gtrby117, which features extendable wall sections.

Imperial Wall sections.

This set didn't really work re-scaled, I think the walls are a bit too thin and the fit of the extendable sections isn't ideal, though that's a limitation of my printer and abilities rather than the actual design.

Components and demonstration of extendable walls.

I have noticed that one of the extendable walls has warped since being painted.  I know that if I print something flat on the build plate, the base can curve up at the edges afterwards if it's very thin, but I've never had anything warp this way before.  It certainly makes the extendable wall virtually unusable!

Warped wall!

It was an interesting experiment, and it will have cost less than £1 in materials, so it hasn't been a waste.  I'll probably print a few more bits at some stage, just to add a few interesting accents to some of my foamcore buildings.  Adobe/mud brick walls with a wall and gateway from the dungeonsticks should have a nice Star-Warsy sci-fi feel.  As mentioned above, I might make them slightly larger to completely block LOS, although the door looks OK at 56% I don't think it would look too large at 70%.

Epic Walker Week - Epi(c)logue - Castraferrum Dreadnoughts

I realised that I forgot my last 3 Dreadnoughts, these 3 came in a grab bag of Epic blister packs that I got when 3rd edition Epic 40K was discontinued.

Castraferrum Dreadnoughts

I have 2 standard Tactical Dreadnoughts equipped with Assault Cannon, Power Fists and storm bolters, plus a Devastator Dreadnought with twin Las-cannon and a Missile Launcher.

Tactical , Devastator, Tactical.

To be honest, I've never been as keen on this Dreadnought model with its slab-like armour and stumpy arms and legs, but they'll no doubt come in useful in a game some time.