Hobby Round-up of 2021 – An eclectic mix

On 30/12/202130/12/2021 By The OneIn 15mm, 2mm, 6mm, Charity Project, Doctor Who, Finnish Winter, Continuation and Lapland Wars, Games played, Great Northern War, Holstein 1700, Ice Hockey, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, podcast, Scanian War, Shows, Silver Bayonet Scania 1677, Stargrave, Sweden WW2, Terrain, WW25 Comments

A few days before Christmas I was invited to speak on Sean Clark’s podcast Gods Own Scale, where I covered some thoughts and reflections from the year that just passed (link below the picture, if you want to check it out).

https://godsownscale6mm.podbean.com/e/episode-40-the-one-with-per-broden-again/

It is always great to catch-up with Sean and it is well worth checking up his back catalogue if you are not already familiar with it.

Anyway as a kind of complement I will do a quick overview of some of the things I did on the hobby front this year (mainly an organised listing of links to blogposts). As always in doing the review I realise that I have been doing far more than expected.

The sections are

More 3D printing
Commissioning some 6mm miniatures
Sweden 1943 Project 15mm
6mm Projects
The Battle of Lund 1676 6mm and the 6mm Charity Project
Terrain Projects
Fantasy Ice Hockey 28mm
Other Projects
An Awarding Year – Caesar Award (Wargaming Blog 2021) and Best in Show at Salute (6mm Poltava 1709

More 3D printing

I continued some exploration of 3D printing and came to the conclusion after a lot of printing that I should stop just printing and just keep things back until I intended to paint stuff, avoiding creating yet another mountain – this time in resin instead of lead. On the whole I really enjoy using the printer and the result it produced – it has not really reduced the amount of stuff I buy but has given me some options for doing alternative stuff. Here are few of the stuff I did do.

I printed a few ships and Max and I had a blast playing a few naval engagement with them.

I also got a battle mat from Geek Villain for naval engagement (or wide rivers).

Some really nice details in these 1/2400 scale ships

I also printed up a company of “Sturmis”, the Stug used by the Finns in WW2

More details on this here

Got a 3D Printer – made some ships and tanks

Commissioning some 6mm miniatures

I also commissioned some 6mm miniatures to be used as commanders for my GNW 6mm stuff. I did 5 minutures in total, the one below shows Stenbeck at Helsingborg in 1710.

More about that here and the other miniatures that I commissioned.

Some Command Bases for my 6mm GNW stuff

Sweden 1943 Project 15mm

Further Progress was made on my Swedish 1943 Project and I added some more tanks and armoured cars (well trucks). I also did a high level army list for O Group, the new game from Too Fat Lardies.

More about this project here

Swedish Infantry Battalion for O Group (1943M Organisation) – Part 1

Davidsson and Goliath – Dalarna 1943

Progress on the Sweden 1943 Project and a new Wargames Podcast

6mm Projects

The only big 6mm project I did start in the year was the Forces in Holstein 1700 as part of the start of the Great Northern War. This offers two very colourful opposing armies and the potential for a very interesting wargaming experience – in reality there were no big field battles, but this project offers some exploration of this.

I also bought some already painted 6mm ancients that I rebased and quickly got my 6mm Ancient Punic War collection substantially increased. I also did a summary blog on a lot of the #6mmtips I have shared on twitter over the last few years. More on these projects below.

The International Force in Holstein 1700 – Part 3 More Danish Cavalry

The International Force in Holstein 1700 – Part 2 The Danes

The International Force in Holstein 1700, a new 6mm GNW project

Rebasing an 6mm Army and another Nightmarish model from Fenris Games

Some Random 6mm Advice – Part 1

The Battle of Lund 1676 6mm and the 6mm Charity Project

This year I took the Battle of Lund 1676 to the Virtual Joy of Six event, I ended up doing a video to present the game and also talked about the Charity Project that was completed last year. There are some links to two video that was produced to support these projects.

Joy of Six 2021 – Roll a One Links to Youtube

Lund 1676 and the Charity Project at Virtual Joy of Six 2021 on 4th July

Lund 1676 – Ordre de Bataille (OdB) and Ratings for Twilight of the Sun King (WIP) at Virtual Joy of Six 2021

Terrain Projects

I did a lot of terrain projects this year most notably I did a lot of clutter, or immersion markers as I prefer to call them, for the 1943 table, but there are some generic ideas you could use for other theatres and scales. I also did a fair few buildings and fields.

These projects has allowed me to create some really immersive battlefields, like this one. Here a little video that Des Darkin did showing off the table laid out using many of the terrain elements produced this year (thanks Des).

A bit of Swedish CoC this afternoon. @Roll_a_one inspirational table.#chainofcommand #spreadthelard #toofatlardies pic.twitter.com/Hfy5XCKwfo
— Des Darkin (@DarkinDes) December 4, 2021

Re-Clutter your Life (#Terraintober Immersion marker Project) Part 31 – Summary of it all.

More 15mm houses for the Swedish 1943 Project and some easy DIY tiling for your models – Part 1

£3 Door Mat or a Field for your Wargame

Further Explorations with the £3 Doormat -Yellow Fields

Fantasy Ice Hockey 28mm

I did some further work on my Fantasy Ice hockey project and we are developing some alternative rules to use. More on some conversions and some 3d printed models below.

Fantasy Ice hockey – The Lizards of the Coast

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Converting some Blood Bowl Miniatures to skaters

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Getting a Skeleton Crew

Other projects

Those were my main activities for the year, here some of the smaller projects that was done

The Silver Bayonet (or Spurs) in Scania 1677

Would you like a jelly baby? – Doctor Who Miniatures Game Plans

Gloranthan Trolls and Trollkin in 6mm (Saga age of Magic)

Planet Pot soldiers and 6mm Gloranthan Saga Magic Project Starting

Revolution on Planet Pot – first thoughts on a Stargrave / 5 parsecs Campaign

Judge Dredd Miniatures Stuff (Warlord Games) project – some pictures

The 6mm Charity Project and Spawn of Speed’s Tour Bus – The Slaying Hawk – Part 1

Some more Sci-fi and Mutant 1984 stuff

Our first outing of Stargrave

Neo Men for Mutant 1984, or an excuse to get some Ork (Cow)boys on the table

Virtual Grogmeet 2021 – Mission in Mos Mosel

An Awarding Year

I received two awards this year, the Caesar Award for the Blog of 2021 organised by Little Wars TV and also the Best Game in Show (Presidents Award) at Salute for the 6mm Poltava 1709 table.

Here a video made by Alex at Storm of Steel covering the show with an interview with Nick and I discussing the battle.

A Triumphant Salute – Battle of Poltava 1709

Caesar Awards 2021 – Rolled a Six

And of course the sad news about Mike Hobbs passing earlier in the year, miss you mate!

The Brilliant Mike Hobbs

Fantasy Ice hockey – The Lizards of the Coast

On 24/05/2021 By The OneIn Fantasy, Ice Hockey12 Comments

I felt I needed a sixth team for the Fantasy Icehockey project, having so far dwarves, rats, orcs, skeletons and humans. More about this the previous work here.

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Miniatures, rules and building the Ice Rink

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Getting a Skeleton Crew

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Converting some Blood Bowl Miniatures to skaters

As I have run out of available teams I, just as for the human team, had to find a fantasy football team to convert, adding sticks and skates. I found the team below on ebay – they are printed STL model and come on the typical 3D print resin with a consistency of a Brighton Rock (hard sugar candy) which makes conversions different than say plastic or metal. The team has two types of lizards and I kept the bigger ones on the sides as I might do another team with them later, or do a few star players for this team.

I cut off hands, modified and repostioned added some sticks and skates and filled or added detail with green stuff where needed. As you can see this is pretty brutal and lacks finesse (skill) but works out for getting them done and the idea that they are hockey players on ice and not football players. Not sure how good the Lizard are in a cold environment but I speculate that they have a big fire in their box where they sit and heat up when on the bench or something like that.

The sticks and the skates are made from coffee stirers

Not sure how comfortable those skates would be but since they do not have shoes I was thinking to add shoes to them but then thought about some kind of beach sandal type of skates – well it is Fantasy so why not. These guys are not very well protected but their game is based on skill and good skating, the tail allows additional tricks to be carried out – a stinging attack whilst still maintaining control of the puck as giving bonus to balance/skating checks.

I painted them in a bright green (Vallejo Game Colour – Livery Green 72.033) with a darker green wash, some deep red and bronze. I think it works well overall.

They are a fun addition to the overall set – six teams that is enough for a tournament!

/ Hope that was of some interest, have a good week.

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Converting some Blood Bowl Miniatures to skaters

On 19/05/202119/05/2021 By The OneIn Ice Hockey13 Comments

I wanted to add some flavour to my collection of Fantasy Ice Hockey teams, having recently got a Skeleton team I noticed the new Bloodbowl teams and the human team shown below – I thought would be possible to transform them into an ice hockey squad and a goalie.

After some adjustments of arms and adding some green stuff and some ice hockey sticks I bought from Impact Miniatures last year, they came out like this.

As for the skates I used coffee stirers and some skillful cuts.

Painting them was based on the old Canucks (Vancouver) Ice Hockey Jerseys.

I am really happy how they came out, hope you like them too.

And of course we had to see if they could skate too.

More on this project in these blog posts,

Building the ice risk and the basic teams

The Skeleton/Undead Team

/ Hope that was of some interest

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Getting a Skeleton Crew

On 09/04/2021 By The OneIn Fantasy, Games played, Ice Hockey13 Comments

An anonymous message through the blog recently told me that!

“The skeleton team is available!”

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-dread-hokey-163661

The link takes you to some STL files with a fantastic team of Fantasy Ice Hockey Skeletons. As you may be aware I did a little project last year (see link here), building an ice rink and painted up some amazing models (Orcs, Rats and Dwarfs) and with a resin 3D printer here on the hobby bench and $11 to spend I downloaded the files. Here are the teams I already have, Bromm’s Icers, Uruk-Hockey and Rats on thin ice (or something like that).

The Set comes with a bone goal, a Keeper, three types of winters/attack and 1 defender (I just mirror imaged this one and printed two, to give me the required 5 players and a goalie) and a referee.

Printing wise, I used base settings and let the CHITUBOX software add the light support and hoped for the best. With a total print cost of less than £1 it is not really worth overanalysing the supports. They printed well and in cleaning I broke one of the models but just superglued it back.

I gave them a quick paintjob and I am yet to finalise the basing, but I hope you agree these are great little models and good complements to the sets I already have.

Here are the models (apart from the Goal and the Referee)…

I hope more teams will be made available… really good value and fun to work with!

/Hope that was of some interest

Fantasy Ice Hockey – Miniatures, rules and building the Ice Rink

On 20/05/202024/05/2021 By The OneIn Fantasy, Games played, Ice Hockey31 Comments

Writing this about 2 months into the lock-down, it is surprising how long the days feel when you sit at a screen most of the day in a little room trying to keep things moving. As a consequence I have not really been tempted to sit down and do much blog updates but here is a go (I have a few more drafts I may be able to get out here and there). We have been lucky and all of us are well, but we have friends and family who has been affected badly by this Virus both directly and indirectly. The implication of this, I fear, will be more far reaching than we can yet imagine.

Anyway, I suppose that some kind of COVID-19 reflection is not what made you come and have a look. I have tried to reduce the lead mountain during this lock-down but inevitably I have done a few impulse purchases. One of these were the splendid sets of Fantasy ice hockey players produce by Brigade Games (link here).

They were a joy to paint and are really fine models, the only shame is that there are only 3 teams currently available. But I guess if you like these order some. Demand very often provokes supply.

There are some amazing detail in these models and I am not sure which one I like the most.

The next step was to decide what rules to use. I found two main contenders on the net:

Trick shot – the ice hockey board game (you can download it here – link worked 20/05/20). The PDF is sufficient to play the base game. It was a kickstarter and I do not think the game is officially out, the advanced game contains some additional cards that makes the game more varied. The game is a basic ice hockey game.
Dread Puck – a variant of the Fantasy Dreadball game (you can download it here – link worked 20/05/20. You would also need the Dreadball game to play.)

Having looked a both of these option I wanted to try out the trick shot rules and needed a board to play on – an ice hockey rink.

The game board for the game looks as follows.

I took a piece of blue foam I had in the garage and got to work.

Photo 10-05-2020, 13 25 18 — First I decided on how big squares to use and found that about 27.5mm squares worked well with the 25mm round bases I had beeen useing to base the miniatures.

Photo 10-05-2020, 14 10 54 — Then I used the non-sharp side of a pencil and just carefully followed the lines and quickly got a nice board, you could use this as a dungeon for another setting.

Photo 10-05-2020, 14 33 25 — Then the magic ingredient for the ice rink, some thick matches (I used the thicker hobby version) and coffee stirrers. This is best done in stages and I used PVA glue.

Photo 10-05-2020, 18 20 29 — I did the goals built into the game board, attach, glue and cut. This kind of thing works best with superglue.

Photo 10-05-2020, 19 01 11 — Build done!

Photo 10-05-2020, 19 02 12 — A little bit too blue!

Photo 10-05-2020, 22 46 21 — First paiting, trying to make it white but keeping the brown background shine through.

Photo 11-05-2020, 16 58 27 — I had some Mod Podge at home that I mixed some snow into, not too much of the snow as I wanted the squares to be seen through. I ahve used modge podge for some gloss effect on rivers on my big Great Northern War mats in the past.

Photo 10-05-2020, 22 58 12 — I applied a few coats until I was happy with the look

Photo 11-05-2020, 17 28 27 — Then I painted in the lines (yes I f**ked up the middle and ended up doing a cross instead!)

Photo 11-05-2020, 20 01 04 — I was going to put up some nets for the goals but decided instead that big flags were used by the teams that were places on top of the goals, “Put it in the flag, is a common term in fantasy ice hockey!”. I used to rice paper I have which is brilliant for doing this kind of things, then I soaked it with Matt Mod Podge and put it on top of the goals.

Photo 11-05-2020, 20 13 58 — Full of Mod Podge!

Once it all had dried we made some special dice for the game (as you can find in the rule book), they are just blank dice that I painted the symbols on. I guess you could use small round labels and print on as well and then stick them on the dice. I also made some would markers made from acrylic 1mm bases – I just mixed some black and red ink (idea stolen fromhere). They have no actual use in the game – yet!

Anyway, we have had a few games now I we really enjoy it. It is a nice little diversion and relative quick to make. Have ordered a human team from Impact Miniatures. I will get back to you with a part 2 later and perhaps talk a little bit more about the rules. Anyway what follows is a fair few pictures from some of games we have played and some Fantasy Hockey League Promo shots.