Vampifan's Views 78 - Monthly Musings 53

What a busy month April has been for me. I'll start, as usual, with my latest picture of the gorgeous Vampirella as painted by the supremely talented Joe Jusko. Vampire and Zombie in one picture - the perfect combination for my blog.

So what has Vampifan been up to this month? First and foremost was the launch of my new blog - All Things Dungeon Crawl, which is being run on a weekly basis collectively by myself and three very good friends, games designer Stephen Gilbert, his partner Hilary and our latest recruit, Tarot Hunt. Please do check it out. Here's a link to it - http://allthingsdungeoncrawl.blogspot.co.uk/
It has one of the liveliest comments sections of any blog I've read. Feel free to join in. This week's post features our first batrep for the Chibi World game and a link to download the complete Chibi World rules for free.

On the painting front, I'm getting lots done. As well as painting brand new 28mm scale Wild West figures from various sources, I'm also repainting and re-basing many of my old 28mm scale Wild West figures. I now have loads to show you, which is a nice situation to be in. Figures that have gone off the table are 15 Crossover Miniatures Ninjas, painted up as Foot Assassins to use as opponents for my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I also painted a stunningly beautiful Black Scorpion Birthday Girl as a St. Trinian's sixth former. She was such a pleasure to paint - drool! Currently on my painting table are 5 North Star Wild West gunfighters and 6 civilians, 6 Greebo Games not-TMNT allies and villains, 2 Ninja All Stars Ronin and a Super Dungeon Explore Mini-Boss. Quite a mix, I'm sure you'll agree.

Despite my efforts to cut down on spending more money on Kickstarter projects I failed spectacularly this month and backed two within a week or so of each other. First up was the new sci-fi/Western game by Soda Pop Games called Rail Raiders Infinite. This just ticked so many boxes for me - sci-fi, Wild West, Chibi miniatures and simple and fast game play. You can check out my preview of it here.
The other game I backed was Rum and Bones: Second Tide, which was another no-brainer for me, seeing as I loved the first Rum and Bones game so much. Please, no one remind me that I have yet to paint any figures for this game (yes, Simon, I am thinking of you!). I know and I will get round to them... sometime.

One thing that did please me immensely was that I managed to play 3 games a total of 8 times this month. WOOT! All of them were games that arrived this month. First up, I played two games of Thunderbirds by Modiphius Games. This parcel contained the three expansion sets I had ordered when I first backed this Kickstarter project. Expansion set 1 adds three new player characters to the mix - Brains, Parker and Tin-Tin. Expansion set 2 adds 10 new non-International Rescue vehicles to aid in rescues. Expansion set 3, which I haven't played and to be honest, am not too keen on, sees the villainous Hood take a much more active part in the game as a player character in his own right. The two games I played used the first two expansion sets, individually, not together.

The second game that I played was Airfix Battles, which is also produced by Modiphius Games. It is a simple World War 2 boardgame played at squad levels. You do have the option to replace the card counters with your Airfix toy soldiers and model tanks if you so desire. The game is fast, fun and easy to play. In fact, I enjoyed playing it so much I played it five times in three days. The game is designed to be played by 1 to 4 players. Despite the solo play rules, I played all of my games with the rules for a two player game. Funnily enough, all five of my games resulted in resounding victories for either the Allies or the Germans. There was never a closely fought game where the outcome was in doubt. The setting is Normandy in 1944, starting just after the D-Day landings. If there is interest in the game I'll do a full review later. This was not a Kickstarter project. I bought it purely for nostalgic reasons as I used to collect hundreds of Airfix figures and models as a youngster. It costs £24.99.

The third and final game that I played (just the once) was Project Z by Warlord Games. Yes, folks, what we have here is yet another zombie apocalypse game. This was designed primarily as a game for those who collect the former Wargames Factory plastic multi-part zombie and survivor figures. Warlord Games now produce these sets and have added two new sets to the range - bikers and special forces troopers. All of these figure sets are excellent and you can mix and match the parts between the sets giving you so much variety and choices. However, whilst the figures are top notch the game failed to impress me. I will do a full review of the game next time as it is very relevant to this blog but my advice to you would be buy the figures but don't buy the game.