Geezers Shut it! Scenario: Means to an end

The idea from the previous post had some positive feedback on the Geezers, Shut it! Yahoo group, (Special thanks to John Daley for the name of the scenario!) so here's a rough idea for anyone looking to have a game based on the previous post. I am making use of  what I have available in my collection:



Terrain setup is relatively simple:

A 4x4 foot with a big two storey manor house in the middle, the manor house is surrounded by a garden, lots of trees for cover, big marble flowerbeds and pots for the troops to hide behind. A Roller or Jag parked in the driveway along with a truck for the troops and a gardener's shed. (Think the end game in the first Beverley Hills Cop).



The Baddies consist of:

Lord Mountbatten
Lord Mountbatten's Aide De Camp
FOUR MI5 rogue agents
THREE thugs/ muscle seen previously doing all the heavy lifting.

The MI5 agents and Lord Mountbatten must escape off the table. His ADC and any Mercs will stay behind to cover their escape. 

CI5 will have:

TWO Top Geezers:
Bodie
Doyle
Riding in their trusty Ford Capri.

FOUR CI5 agents:
Riding in a Land Rover.

All CI5 agents have radios and are wearing body armour.



Here are a few extra rules to make things interesting:

1. Lord Mountbatten is a member of the Royal family, he's a war hero and we're not entirely sure of his involvement in this sordid affair, under no circumstances is he to be fired upon! (Yes, even if he shoots at you!): No shooting at the Lord, if going into rough stuff, characters will only get bonuses from their stats (assumed to be Martial Arts training ), so no weapons allowed.
2. Possibly have FIVE MI5 agents and make one of them an Undercover CI5 man.
3. In the 'Word on the street' phase, don't deduct each others' troops. Instead, the baddies get a truckload of 'Private army mercs' armed with semi-automatic rifles. They arrive on D6+1 turns.
4. The good guys get the boys from Hereford flying in via. helicopter. Not too many of them, maximum FIVE, but they will be well armed and extremely dangerous. They arrive on D3+2 turns.

I will dig up some stats from **REDACTED** I received from the Guv'nor a while back, towards the end of the week (Probably Thursday/ Friday) when work calms down a bit.

A scenario idea: The Mountbatten Coup

Apologies for a long absence!

Here's a scenario idea inspired by a discussion between Craig Rowlings of Kiler B games and John Daley on the Geezers Shut it! Yahoo discussion group.

The discussion of the alleged Mountbatten plot came up and I thought it would be an easy translation into a 28mm game!  

Scene: A hill overlooking a country estate, two young men, one with short dark hair (Bodie) another with curly dark hair (Doyle). Doyle is sitting in the car, a Mk 3 Ford Capri, looking through a camera fitted with a giant telescopic lens. Bodie is standing outside the driver's side of the car with a pair of army issue binoculars, he is wearing a shoulder holster.

Bodie: This was supposed to be our day off.

Doyle: Yes, but I don't think he really cares about that.

Bodie: So what are we supposed to be looking for?

Doyle: Anything suspicious

Bodie: And what does that look like?

Doyle: I dunno... suspicious...

**Bodie rolls his eyes**

Bodie: You can tell you were a copper.

Doyle: Look, he didn't say much, just that all CI5 agents have their leave cancelled and that he is in an emergency meeting in Whitehall and we are to survey this estate and report back anything suspicious.

Bodie: You think one of the royals are being indiscreet? We could sell the photos and make millions, quit this lark.

**Doyle grins**

A truck pulls up outside the manor, two large, mean looking chaps jump out of the back and unload several large crates and boxes. 

Bodie: Well that looks suspicious

Doyle:  starts to take pictures. One of the workers slip and a crate crashes into the ground, several rocket launchers tumble out.

Bodie: What do you think Mr. Detective?

Doyle: Unless they're hunting a massive fox, that certainly looks suspicious.

Bodie grabs his radio

Bodie: This is Three-Seven, tell Mr. Cowley that we've just spotted something suspicious, very suspicious!

**Cue the music**

Geezers Royale: Seven minutes to midnight

Good evening, the man you are looking at is Jacque-Jean Nemard,
a millionaire industrialist and financier to the nefarious organization H.A.R.M. He has recently stolen from this country, a specimen of a new and lethal chemical weapon- Drago and kidnapped the world renowned Biochemist, Dr. Fleming.

He is holding London to ransom for £10 million pounds. Unless his demands are met, he plans to fire rockets containing the deadly toxin into London, Liverpool and Birmingham.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate Nemard's island base, stop the launch of the Drago missiles and rescue Dr. Fleming.

As always, should you or any member of your UNITY force be caught or killed, the Minister will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

===========================================================

Ever since I bought my copy of 'Geezers, Shut it!' and the release of the Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang range from Artizan Designs and Copplestone Castings, I've taken an interest in the advertisement promising the release of 'Geezers Royale', after bugging Craig from Killer B games for a year or so, he has very kindly sent me an advanced copy of the rules to run a playtest session with.

As it stands, I plan to run the game with 6 people at the HKSW AGM on the 19th May with a range of 28mm miniatures from Killer B games, Warm Acre, Artizan Designs, Copplestone Castings, Forlorn Hope, Eureka,  Urban Beat miniatures and The Assault Group.

The volcano base will be designed using the base design rules contained in Geezers Royale, the Nefarious organization H.A.R.M will be split into 3 groups:

1) The Evil mastermind, Jacque-Jean Nemard and his No. 2 commanding a private army of minions;
2) The Deadly Irish Assassins backed up by a former KGB Colonel and his team of Spetznaz mercenaries;
3) Femme fatales, Ivana Desire and Lotta Totti and their deadly fembots.

UNITY will also have 3 teams:

1) British MI-6 agent Sir Atherton Smythe;
2) CIA agent Verity Flexible both will be supported by a group of Royal Marine Commandos
3) SAS commander Major Price and his SAS detachment were captured in an earlier operation and are being held hostage, they will need to be rescued or will need to break out of their cell to participate. (In anticipation of any late-comers).

The famous mini-Gryocopter 'Little Nellie' will make a special appearance along with several other surprises [As long as I can get them painted up before the 19th!].

How to take decent pictures of your miniatures with your camera phone

For anyone who looks at my blog, I would say 99% of my photos on here are taken with my iPhone (How did I ever survive without this gadget?!), the quality is never as great as it could or should be, and there are more saved on my phone that are too blurry, grainy or fuzzy to publish, but until someone releases a decent reasonably priced camera with an application that allows you to upload photos with the touch of a button, I think like many other gamers and miniature painters, we will stick with photographing our little soldiers with our camera phones.

For those of you who are like me, here's a great little guide on how to take great pictures of miniatures with your camera phone here

Painting: And it was all yellow! A catalogue on a disaster that turned out fairly well in the end

A sneak peak of what I've been up to over Easter...

After a successful Pirates game on Easter Saturday, I was knocked down with a nasty cold/ flu bug that ensured I was bedridden/ homebound for Easter Sunday and Monday, leaving me with nothing to do except paint and rewatch Burn Notice and inspiring myself to getting some spies painted. [I also watched Sharpe's Waterloo while painting these while humming o'er the hills and far away (Great song!). NO! I refuse to sink time and money into 28mm Napoleonics!!!]

Anyway, I digress... Before being distracted by Pirates, I had ordered and prepped these lovely Henchmen by Artizan Designs from North Star Miniatures, I was picking up one of everything from the Urban Beat Miniatures range (you can see them in the background) just before they were purchased by another company and taken offline (Lucky Break!).

The colour scheme of the henchmen is mostly based on what is on the Artizan website, although it was pretty much what I had in my head to start with, as they will follow the colour scheme on the minion hierarchy in the absolutely fantastic videogame Evil Genius.

So there will be some tougher guards, complete with body armour painted in a red, orange and brown colour scheme.

The MI-6 agent in the foreground was the miniature I painted between layers of yellow (The story continues below the photo). 

Any GW player with an Imperial Fists army or anyone who has ever painted a 30 years war Swedish Infantry unit will feel the pain that was to come, which I hadn't realised I was entering as I undercoated the miniatures in Tamiya Grey Surface Primer between sniffles...

Having been spoilt witn Vallejo whites that would cover black undercoats in one layer, I had assumed that this would be a lazy and simple exercise, after seeing the streaky mess that stared back at me after my first attempt, I soon realised it would take a lot of time and many, many thin layers of GW Golden yellow I would need to apply.

[I checked the online forums after the initial disaster, a few painters who used GW paints pointed out that the best solution for painting yellow would be 1. A white undercoat 2. A basecoat of  Citadel's foundation paint: 'Iyanden Darksun' and then many thin layers.]

Being too sick (and too lazy) to take a 15min ride into WanChai to pick up the foundation paints, I decided to just lazily layer on the coats while watching TV and painting other miniatures. So I began working on the 'not-James Bond' miniature while watching TV and eventually they turned out quite well, once the other detailing and flesh was coloured in.

The lesson learned for me here is that while things might look terrible on the first coat, if you follow the techniques and advice from the many master painters on the web, and if things still look dreadful, paint in the details, the webbing, pistols and fleshy parts to allow your miniature to look more complete and things will begin to take shape! Oh and thin coats... really thin coats and patience make a lot of difference, something didn't quite realise at the age of 13, but now make more sense at 28.  

Painting: The new Citadel paints

We all make fun of GW being the big bad corporate monster of the wargaming world, but then a lot of us started with GW games when we were young, and they do occasionally make a product that I still want to play. (Space Hulk, Dreadfleet is definitely something I want to look at and I've been resisting the charms of Lord of the Rings for many years now!)

But now, they may finally have released something that will mean I pour more money into the GW machine!
Being in Hong Kong, we have a dearth of Local Gaming Stores, in fact, we have one... Which stocks Vallejo and GW paints, most of the time, I use Vallejo paints, but I've had issues with Vallejo paints sinking to the bottom and forming a congealed block I can't squeeze out.

And also, starting out with GW paints, I still have a preference of "painting off the lid". So I am very interested in the new Citadel paints.

I will post a review of the new paints as soon as they become available in my LGS.
But the review found on other parts of the web appear promising:

http://taleofpainters.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/review-sigurs-first-look-at-new-citadel.html

Painting: His Majesty's Marines

A short break from Moderns and the Falklands project. 

I recently purchased some 28mm Pirates, 3 ships and a Pirate fort from TMP, it's been a project I've wanted to do for a long time. It's silly, potentially outrageous and a great distraction from the usual fare down at the club. Also, it's the perfect excuse to paint up some Horse and Musket era figures, which I've always wanted to do.

With a game organised over the Easter holidays, and these great miniatures having arrived from Black Scorpion Miniatures during the week, complete with a lazy Sunday recovering from a Friday night that involved far too much alcohol, painting miniatures by the numbers was the perfect cure. (Also, I'm taking a break from Mass Effect 3 in-order to make it last longer, and also to ensure I'll have something to play over Easter. =P) 

The miniatures are from the new batch of figures from Black Scorpion, which means they're cast from resin rather than metal, the casts are fairly clean, only one figure had a noticeable bad mold line down his breaches, also, as you can see, one of the marine's swords is quite jagged.

I did the miniature cleaning and undercoating the night before, having never worked with resin miniatures before, and assuming they'd be like plastic miniatures, I made the mistake of filing down a subborn blob of resin from one of the marine bayonets, with promptly snapped!

Realising the difference in properties between resin and plastic, I put my files away and basically just snipped off any obvious bits  of flash and just left it at that. 

With the majority of colours on the miniatures being red and white, I decided on using a grey primer by Tamiya for my undercoat.

The basecoat for the jacket was 'Black Red' by Vallejo, Vallejo 'Camo Black Brown' was used on the swords, muskets, pistols, hands and faces as well as the boots and hats.

The tunic was given a coat of 'Buff' after I couldn't find my bleach bone, all the white was 'Ivory' by Vallejo.

On top of all that, I added, Dark Flesh on the skin, Blood Red was on the jackets.

Here's a photo of them 'near completion: 

And here's a photo of them completed: I painted the bases black at around 11pm, but that's them in their completed state.