Saturday, December 30, 2017

You Are Without Doubt The Worst Pirate I've Ever Heard Of


I love pirates. Always have since I was little - from the old classic movies like The Sea Hawk, to my hardback copy of Treasure Island, to the amazing Playmobil pirate ship toy I had as a kid that I would customize and play with for hours on end. Anyway, even before Blood and Plunder came out I wanted to do a pirate game and was slowly collecting pirate figures over the years. This batch is a large part of that, though there is still a lot more from Old Glory that need painted.


There are 13 minion type figures in this 41 figure batch.


I'm not going to put photos up of each one as a lot are kind of similar in both pose and paint job, but these few here are some of my favorites of the bunch.


But here we get into the much more flavorful figures :)


All these figures are a mixture of Northstar's On the Seven Seas line, as well as some Old Glory pirates that I bought way back in the day when I had the OG Army Card getting you a crazy 40% off of all items from OG.


The scallywag in the middle has a monkey on his shoulder, how neat is that!


In the middle is an interpretation of Mr. Smee from Peter Pan. Much later in life with a bit more gray in the beard and grog belly falling both out and over his pants :)


Casualty figures are something I really want to have for every type of game I have. I really think they add a lot to a table, and look much better than a figure tipped over on its base.


These are from Foundry I believe, and I'd really like to get at least one more pack. 


And these last three are my absolute favorites, as they have so much character to them. They are so cool I've even given them a photo from the stern view :)


And this particular figure, with a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder is just brilliant! Fittingly he is listed as Long John Silver on the box, though definitely not your traditional Hollywood version.


Both of these figures come from the Captain Hood set from Northstar.


This figure is listed as the Righteous Edward Leake.


But this is where it's at with this particular group of cutthroats - Edward Teach himself, Blackbeard!


This figure is just on another level in terms of the cool factor! Again, from Northstar Miniatures, and the Blackbeard set. I am so completely blown away by this line that I have ordered the Calico Jack set (that will complete the line for me, as I've decided against picking up the Royal Navy Crew - just not enough variety like in all the other sets) and hope to have that soon :)


Incredibly I got Jakob up to the studio to play a game yesterday and I pulled out one we haven't played in probably six or so years - Wings of War, now named Wings of Glory.


I really wanted to try out the B-17 bomber I bought at Historicon several years ago, so I just threw some blue poster board we used to use for the old Wizkids Pirates of the Spanish game ironically to represent the game board.


Having not played the game in forever I quickly remember why I loved it so much - easy and fun rules and just super cool models.


I had three fighter escorts with my B-17 and Jakob had six German fighters trying to stop me from hitting a target on the other end of the table.


I'd forgotten how neat these models are, and how cool they look together on a table. I need to cut the propellers off and do clear plastic, as well as do the gimble mounts I did with all my WWI planes. It adds a lot to the look of the game for sure.


The B-17 was brutally slow and Jakob just swarmed it despite having 8 different guns to defend with.


He won the game by destroying my B-17, as well as two of the three escorts. I did manage to take out two of his fighters though. It was great just to play a game even though it probably wasn't a fair match up and my objective was so far away, but for throwing something together really on the whim it was great!


I finally managed to obtain my proxy Mary McFly figure (on the right) from someone selling used figures on the 7TV Facebook page. He is from the discontinued Doctor Who line from Crooked Dice, and I'd been desperate to get this figure for quite a while now. Despite being made for Doctor Who he is perfect proxy to use for good 'ol Marty from Back to the Future. Absolutely can't wait to get him!


And finally, hats off to the wife - she got me some really neat shirts from the official Liverpool store across the pond. As you can see from the card, I don't like Christmas at all lol! I don't want to be that way, but that all comes from being from a divorced family at a very young age - holidays, especially Christmas was always something that I didn't look forward to. So while I play the role of the Grinch, she plays the role of the true spirit of Christmas :)

I'm hoping to get one more post in before the New Year, just to show that figures are fully painted, they just need based - and there are a lot, well over 130 Germans for Bolt Action alone :)

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

18 comments:

  1. Corking post, Ivor, with lots to see and admire. I own a few pirates, but don't believe I've ever actually painted any, having lost the thrill of "Legends Of The High Seas" before I could put brush to mini. I look forward to seeing your "Bolt Action" stuff too :-)

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    1. Much appreciated! These pirates were boxed away much too long, hopefully now that this first group is complete I can get motivated to make some terrain for them to plunder upon :) A pretty big BA post is definitely in the near future.

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  2. Great bunch of pirates Ivor, like yourself I'm a big fan of them but sadly only have one, that is you I don't count the ork ones :)
    & believe it or not he's a she, here's a link to the site she from if you looking to add more.
    https://www.blackscorpionminiatures.com/index.php?cPath=27&osCsid=fud3gdr6faj3q3e77ljvl4uut1

    Plane game look class & seemed good fun, as for the Christmas gift, I've to many sad memories of grown up in there glory days with a brother who has a liking for that team :(

    Happy New Year to you Ivor :)

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    1. Thanks Frank! I'll be honest, I think Black Scorpion have some of the best looking figures out there but I just don't like resin figures at all :( I have several BS old west figures that I bought to represent Frank's gang from the movie Once Upon A Time In The West but didn't realize they were resin until arrival.
      It was fun to pull out an old game like that and be able to jump right in again even though I got blasted off the table.
      That's funny about your brother! I was a bit leery of posting a photo of a football team (but it was such a brilliant card from the wife!) as I know how divisive it can be - I could possibly even lose followers because of it lol!

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    2. Lol I don't think you need worry about losing followers over it Ivor as your blog is that good you'll never walk alone :)

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    3. Ha! Much appreciated Frank! And that was good, well played my friend, well played :) YNWA!

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  3. Great pirates! Have you played B&P? I’ve been tempted by that myself.

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    1. Much appreciated Kieron! I have not gotten to play B&P unfortunately, but I did sit at a table at Historicon for about an hour and half incredibly watching a sea battle which was great fun. Hopefully 2018 will have me find someone in the area to play with and give B&P a go :)

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  4. Excellent work on those pirates Ivor. :)

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    1. Thanks PC! Looking forward to building something they can run about on :)

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  5. Can never have too many casualties :-) lol ... go wife ... glad to see she is trying to change the grinches heart with the spirit of Christmas ... lol!! Do you actively go to your nieghbours and local stores to knock over xmas trees and tear down decorations? Next year wrap a couple of empty boxes and stick them under the tree. When the wife is in the room, go over a grab one and throw it in the fireplace ... lol! :-)

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    1. Tell me about it! Your ACW casualties for example, take your tables to a whole different level visually.
      I've been known to "accidently" knock over an X-mas tree or two in my time :) My grinchy faces, the way I growl and harrumph about during the entire X-mas holiday more than make up for me throwing presents in the fireplace lol!

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    2. Agree. I just got 55 dead Frenchies for my Napoleonic army :-) I need to add more ACW casualties ... they'll be done in the next couple of months.

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    3. Brilliant! Can't wait to see them. If you track down another manufacturer for more pirate casualties please let me know :)

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  6. That game looked like great fun and those pirates look excellent!

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    1. Thanks Mike! Super happy with the pirates for sure and I'd forgotten how fun WoW was, we actually played the WWI version as well a day later.

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  7. superb pirates Ivor, such a splendid array of eyecandy!

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    1. Much appreciated! Really pleased with the whole lot :) Hopefully the next batch will be just as good.

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