Tail Feathers - part 3

Hi all

I sadly missed Zombtober this year due to, yes you guessed it, my real life work pressures plus a much needed two week break in the sun.  However this weekend I will be hosting a huge zombie participation game at Uncon 4.0, the Unconventional Convention - a weekend filled to the rafters with board games, war games, VR, RPGs and many more.  I'll post pics next week!

Onto my continued adoration of the game - Tail Feathers. So far I've shown you the flying units for this fantastic little game.  Now to move onto the ground troops. 

While not individually as powerful as their avian allies, ground troops are definitely game winners and get to perform "missions".  This mechanic of the game makes the "infantry" an integral part of your force.

Firstly for the Downwood Militia.  In the Tail Feathers box you get, for the "good guys", the Oakguard. This unit of mouse rangers are excellent archers and nimble as you like if a little fragile in melee.

I painted their armour in reds and yellows to match that of the rest of the militia and finished them with a fairly standard green cloak.

Next up is the Vermin Raiders.  From the core box set you get Snag's Commandos, a bunch of tough Rat Warriors armed with crossbows.  These crack troops were painted up in the green and grey/blues that I used in the flying troops to give a sense of cohesion.  I was tempted to go with blacks and greys but I think these look really nice.

You also get a Rat Hero - Staborah.  Staborah is the daughter of Snag, the Rat General and is very much an assassin/saboteur type model.  Heroes are more powerful archtypes and can operate on their own.  Staborah is in the obligatory dark colours to represent her shady abilities.

Another nice quality of Tail Feathers is that it is fully compatible with the RPG Mice & Mystics and the box comes with cards so that the miniatures from M&M can supplement Tail Feathers.  For the Downwood Militia it means being able to recruit Prince Colin and friends.

And for the Vemin Raiders, you can use the creatures such as the spider, centipede and other critters.

My only gripe about this game so far is the distinct lack of expansions!  I would love to see bats, sparrows, robins and other avian creatures as well as more types of ground troops.  Other factions would also be awesome!

Lastly the obligatory group shots

Prince Colin, Zure and the Downwood Militia

General Snag and the Vermin Raiders

next time I will review the game as I've now managed to get a couple of games.

hope you enjoy

dGG

Tail Feathers - part 2

Hi all

My apologies to those bloggers whose posts I normally comment on, I’ve been on holiday and decided to completely come away from most electronics preferring to read for the two weeks...

Last time I posted, a couple of weeks ago, I covered "the good guys" from the tabletop skirmish game - Tail Feathers.  this included three mice flying on the backs of a blue jay and some starlings.

This weeks post covers "the baddies", the low down rats and their sinister allies that oppose the mice and chums.

First of all we have a brown rat riding a crow, now in the game the designers called this a "hook beak  bird".  As i'm not entirely sure what this is - I can't find images on Google, I just went with a crow (mostly because their group name is a "murder of crows") Like the good guys, these chaps have a "named" profile and a more generic profile and can be mixed and matched with the other baddies.

Painting was fairly simple, although I deliberately painted up the rat's clothing in greens and blue/greys because of the plumage colour of the crow.

Next is the rook.  The rook is a carrion bird and part of the crow family, unlike the crow it has a lighter coloured beak and legs, so I painted this with yellows to again add colour to what would be a black miniature.  I added some purples to the plumage to break up the unrelieved black of the feathers.

The rat mounted on the back I painted white to draw the eye with bright pink eyes denoting his albinoism.  He appears to armed with a rudimentary pistol but I haven't dug into the game far enough to cover weapons, this will come following a game or two at which point I will review the game.

So this is all of the flying pieces of the game.

The game also comes with "foot soldiers" and I will be painting those and reviewing the game over the coming months.....I hope....

hope you enjoy
dGG

Tail Feathers part 1

Hi all

not in the least Zombtober related I'm afraid, but this post has been sitting in my drafts for about 4 weeks while we adventured with the Kitsune.  As to zombtober, good luck to the guys who are participating this year, after my monumental 100+ zombies painted last year I thought I was kinda zombie out.  I have bought Zombicide Black Plague to get sorted out, but have too many priorities sitting in the way including the subject of this blog post...

I was just looking through my back catalogue to find a post that was related to this one and for the life of me I couldn't find a post about the world of "Mice & Mystics"....  Then I stumbled on one simply called “A bit of filler” and there it was tucked away in a forgotten corner of da Grotto.

Anyway, a while ago I posted some pics of some miniatures I'd painted for a friend from the board game/RPG - Mice & Mystics.  I played the game a bunch of times and it's fun! solo or with a group the game is simple to play yet drags you into the world of Prince Colin and chums, a dark world of swords and spells, where mice battle rats, spiders and centipedes.

I reluctantly handed them back to their owners and moved on....

Months later I find out that they came out with a skirmish game based in the same universe, not only that but it's aerial combat!!  Hell yeah!  Mouse warriors mounted on Blue Jays and Starlings in aerial combat with rats on Rooks and Crows....oh jeez, I've died and gone to heaven.

Welcome Tail Feathers, welcome to da Grotto.


Villainous rats have allied with vicious hunting birds to pillage the humble mouse settlement across Meanderfield. But look! Brave mice, mounted on starlings and blue jays, swoop in to wage war against this evil alliance! The Downwood Militia soars into action against the Vermin Raiders!

So I've been painting away and I've finished the avian warriors and here they are...

First the good guys and we start with the Blue Jay (with out rider).  Now you can field the mounted warriors as either named characters or just standard and I'll go through these later on, when I've got a game in.  The unique flight stands that the birds are mounted on allow you to tilt the models on a ball and socket joint.  This is important to the game as it indicates taking off or banking, it also makes the models a little delicate and I'm waiting for a replacement stand due to a crack in the joint from transport.

Next we add his mouse rider, this one is my fave. Painted up as a white mouse (yes I know you don't find them in the wild!).

Next is a starling, I really enjoyed doing the plumage for this one.

and with his mouse warrior...

and finally for the "goodies" another starling.  This one has the busted flight stand so is very static, until Asmodee UK can get me a replacement. **Edit** Asmodee UK have sent me an entire replacement bird, not just the stand! I'm very happy with that :-)

and here is the final flight...

Next time I'll showcase the bad guys but this won't be for a couple of weeks as I'm off to sun my self in the Canaries.

hope you enjoy (I certainly will be next week....)
dGG

A bit of filler

Hi all

Firstly an apology, I know I'd promised the final part to my latest ATZ episode, but I just haven't managed to get the game written up.  No, I'm not trying to build up the suspense, I'm rather hoping the story itself will do that, but rather the more mundane excuse of real life. Yup, it's winter and with the merest caress of snow, our country falls to pieces as does it's population and the NHS is up against the wall, my part of it is under huge amounts of pressure and as a consequence I've been at work more than I've been at home....

Excuses out of the way. I've cobbled together this post which, I hope at least is a small salve to the lack of ATZ goodness.

Over the last six months or so I've been playing more and more modern boardgames, unlike the old family favourites(?) - monopoly and the like, modern boardgames owe more than a passing nod to tabletop wargames.  Filled with strategy, resource management and skill, modern boardgames have, i think, bridged a gap between the two.  

We have an amazing local BG club, All Around the Board hosted by the ever enthusiastic - Darius. Meeting every Monday, we play a huge variety of BGs and RPGs, mostly from Darius's incredible games library as well as some other member's collections. When I do manage to get a Monday night off, I head there with missus Gobbo and master Gobbo and we always have an excellent evening of gaming. 

Where am I going with this you may ask? Well a lot of the modern BGs have a miniature component and I have offered my painting services to the club on a commission basis.  One of my favourites is the RPG - Mice and Mystics.  This is straight from the Plaidhat Games website.

In Mice & Mystics players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king - but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Colin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice & Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice & Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice & Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come. Assuming they can all squeak by...

The miniatures are really great for a BG and I was more than happy to paint up these bad boys.

Rat guards

giant centipede

spider

As well as these micey miniature heroes

Prince Collin

Maginos - the court wizard

Filch, the thief

Nez, the tinkerer

Lily, the archer

Tilda, the healer

The game offers a really good solo option, which I'm playing here...

this was just before I lost the game!

I also did the miniatures from the 80s classic "The Labyrinth"

Hoggle

Sir Didymus and Ambrosius

Ludo

Sarah

The Goblin King played by the incredible David Bowie)

Lastly, I also started making commission dice towers for the group, specifically designed to order, here are three that I built recently, plus the one I originally built ages ago.

the original tower that I built

I built this for zombie games like "Dead of Winter" and "Zombies!!"

This was a commission for a local games designer for his latest game

made to resemble the Goblin King's castle from Labyrinth

Sorry for the filler post, it was written post night shift, normal service should resume shortly....

hope you enjoy

dGG