Gaming in our Pyjamas

For the whole of her little life, my daughter has had a daddy who plays with toy soldiers. She has known no different, but for most of her life not paid too much attention (she was taught at an early age not to touch my models without asking). However, the last year or so she has been paying more and more attention. She has joined me for some painting (which is just her slapping pink all over some one piece Skaven I got her), and she lost interest in that quite quickly. 

But recently, since her fifth birthday, she has been paying more and more attention to what I do. She is, by her very nauture, an inquisitive little soul, and this applies to toy soldiers just as much as anything else. I've been promising her a little game for a while. And since we were having a lazy pyjama day, it turned out today was the day. 

I decided not to do anything too drastic. I used what fantasy forces I had painted, and gave us each two units of ten troops and one unit of ten archers. The rules were simple:

4+ to move a unit

4+ to hit

5+ saving throw

Biggest unit strikes first (or, in the case of equal size, my daughters unit went first!)

Everyone moves 6", archers can fire 24"

I think it went quite well. She stuck with the game all the way through, and got the hang of the dice rolling quite early on. 

It was a straight forward way to introduce her to the very basic concepts of wargaming. She got the hang of moving stuff, rolling dice, and it's only going to help her counting. We already have another game arranged for next week and it gives me an excuse to buy and paint some more stuff, because what I really need is an excuse to do that! Who knows, she may become that rare thing - a female wargamer! Plus, she will provide a good test bed in how to get the boy into the hobby when he gets a lot older. 

Here are some photos of the highlights. As an aside, this is the first game EVER on my gaming table. Result!

The opposing forces. All my daughters stuff was on movement trays. 

My daughters archer unit takes first blood on the High Elves in the distance. 

Aerial shot of the closing armies. 

My daugher's forces closing on mine.

The first close combat. Victory to Evie's Skaven!

My High Elves take out the last of the opposing archers.

Evie shows no mercy to my last close combat unit.

And the end, victory to Evie!

The Hills are Alive!!

Not major news, but some hills have reached the front of the painting queue and been completed. They are the old Games Workshop ones that I thought were robust, hence why I bought them. This is the second lot of these I have painted.

Nothing spectacular but here they are:

I had neglected to write down how I painted the others, but I think they blend together ok:

As you can see, the gaming table is still a long way from being useable. However, it's getting there. I think next on the agenda needs to be some trees, which I shall look to get from Salute in a few weeks. After that I can start to move on to more scale specific terrain such as buildings etc. 

A Games Room Re-born

There's a bit of a story to my games room:

About 6 years ago I was idly musing about getting a games table in the garage. Being a garage, it was of course used to store everything bar a car. At the time it was a simple concrete floor, breeze block wall affair. I mentioned in passing to my dad (who is a DIY guru) if fastening some cheap chipboard to the walls would cut down on dust. I had memories of playing in my parents bare brick loft as a kid and everything was dusty as hell. 

Now my dad can be pretty damn cool, and he came through big time. Without asking he offered to plasterboard the garage, carpet it and make it water proof. All out of his pocket. Once it was done, all I had to do was paint it. It wasn't a full conversion, there is still a garage door and no heatin, but it's more than most. 

The gaming table was a simple £20 purchase off eBay with a sheet of MDF on top. I then textured it, and started making terrain. 

However, somehow, it got side tracked. I could never get a game in and didn't have enough stuff to game alone (a handy way of learning rules), so it languished unused. And being a garage it kept getting filled up with detritus from life. Several times I cleared it out and resolved to use it but never got around to it. 

But time is going to be different. I've cleared it again over the last week, and redone the layout to hopefully make it easier to use. This is where it stands now:

There's still stuff to do. There are a few bags need to go to the car boot, and a pile of stuff taking up room that needs to go to the shed, which itself needs a clear out when the back garden stops being a swamp. But I can now access the table. I need a load more terrain, but I think I am well on my way to using the room for a game, which will tick off one of my targets of 2016.

Long term, if I add some shelves to clear some floor space, and move over to collapsible tables, I will have an even more flexible games room. If I have measured up right the room could possibly take a 5' by 12' table, though it would be a little tight and I wouldn't be able to leave the tables up permanently but it could be doable for big games. All of this is long term though. For more at least, I have a 6' x 4' I can use, which is a big positive. 

Just need some recommendations for good terrain please?