Dr Who in Coventry

Yesterday I visited the Dr Who exhibition in Coventry with Julie and Dave which is full of prop and costumes from the series, plus interactive displays, videos from the series and animatronics.
It was very good but small, I think we saw everything within half an hour, but afterwards we went round the rest of transport museum which took a another three or four hours, with lunch, cake and a guided tour of the Cathedral area by Dave.

Julie and Dave in front of the Tardis


Scary clockwork robot thing, I remember enjoying this episode.


Rusty K9

Robot Santa's

Dave who was not part of the display.

Dr Who's No. 1 enemy

We also nipped by Coventry's Cathedral destroyed in the 2nd world war, and a very quiet contemplative place.

Coventry is like most cities a mix of old, new and the downright ugly, a lot of Coventry having been damage in WWII is quite ugly post war buildings, however pockets of well preserved buildings exist and Coventry seems to make good use of them.

This photo below is from a walkway above the original Coventry Cathedral (not the one destroyed in the war), Dave did a lot of work here so he is full of interesting information.

This is unfortunately my last photo since my camera battery died, taken from the same place as the photo above.

The Transport museums cakes are good also, even if a little filling just after big lunch, which in turn left me rather bloated by the time I got to eat the supper Dave had prepared us, that perhaps combined with the warm day left me with no appetite so when Dave brought out a big plate of food I was little overwhelmed.

A good day that left me smiling about the future.

Photo 22 of 52

A bit of Coventry.

Last weekend.

Great weekend of larping at Shinning cliff, the weather was just warm enough to make for a very pleasant couple of days.

The wood was it usual self, full of giant man eating ants, 3 foot deep mud pool after the rain, and dangerous rock faces all of which added to the atmosphere of what in my opinion turned out to be great event. The 1st day started with the players rushing through Julie's plot so fast I thought we would have to spend Saturday night writing new scenes, however by the afternoon the players realised their lethally efficient approach was making them miss things and they slowed down, that combined with adding a couple of extra bits finally meant we didn't need to steal from Sundays plot. Sunday it turned out opposite with two scenes taking up the full day leaving no room or need for extra padding or combats.
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On Saturday night I joined the players as they stayed in the cottage they had rented and listened in as they continued role playing out various background story's and Sam showed off her twisted foot which has since gone blue from toe to heal and the hospital say will take about six weeks to heal, all I can say is the pain killers she took must have been good since continued to fight her way through the plot on Sunday.

I also introduced several props which went down well, I think I will blog about them separately when I can get a few good photos.

Monday was table top battle day, we started early 9.30am so the players could get home early and I could get some food shopping done, well that didn't work out as planned since it was 6pm by the time I dropped AndyL off. The battle started with 2 of the players refusing to hand over the vital information so they could fight the battle and hour later some compromise was agreed even though I not sure they agreed anything, still the battle started and ended up being a great deal of fun, designed more as skirmish game each player played a role in the success. Although one players was determined to kill one of the good guys for some reason and nearly succeeded.


AndyL provided the centre piece of the battle in the form of Ork Stompa conversion.

That was last weekend, and its took until now for me to find time to write about.

Photo 21 of 52

Polo's make me sneeze, photo of a communications tower taken from a site I was visiting for work.



Its was dark, gloomy day.

Week 20 of 52

A Flower photo.

Battle at the Fort

This weekend the Ascendancy players took part in the Battle of Fort William.


SamK was general of one army attacking the Sauron Lizardman Mage RichardS, and watched over by AndyL who GM'd thier battle. Sam had a hard task, but had more points than her opposition and looking back the task was perhaps hard to achieve since she needed 3 out 3 things to go right to win, and 1 failed. RichS was also Mr lucky dice.


Sam



RichS


Lizardman Mage, protected by his personal body guard.




Chance with his patchy trousers. He ran away something I don't think the real fictional one would have done


ChrisA took on non Ascendancy player John who was attacking the fort with his Sauron Lizardmen force in the second much bigger battle.

ChrisA was assisted by seasoned player Alex who not only played War Hammer but had a lizard man army so knew his enemy, he also had Kate and AndyP along to remind him of things they missed. In the long run this battle of even points was extremely close, very, very close probably the closer Ascendancy wargame we had out the 11 played, it was probably lost by ChrisA because the opposition set his stall on achieving the points objectives while ChrisA and team were more interested in winning the battle, which given a few more turns they in my opinion would have achieved.

Alex, Chris and Amy



Amy, AndyP and Kate


The Main battle for the fort


Langstrom's Ogres




Black Lizzies Unit with some freshly painted figures


Amy also in the store for the battle watched on while AndyL described her charcter's slow death at the hands of the mage.

I must say as a neutral both were well fought battles and very entertaining.

This weekend I discovered this blog was being used by the players as a source of information on upcoming Ascendancy battles, by looking at what I'm painting they can see what they might face, while not giving anything away really I still think I will have to be careful.

On Sunday I visited friends AndyT and Linda for dinner, when I arrived it was very sunny and I'm looking slightly red today since I burn so easily, luckily I had the sense to move inside after 10 minutes and no sun block.

We watched Bel their cat pounce around the garden after flies, which fine until Bel brought a live mouse into the house to play with, he 1st catch I'm not sure she knew what to do with it, it was retrieved from Bel clutches by its tail and deposited back under the garden hedge and ran straight off so perhaps survived its ordeal.

Photo 19 of 52

Cat photo

Lizardman army completed

I have today finished my lizardman army, or stage one of it

It currently consists of 20 Saurus Warriors, 10 Temple Guard, 12 Skink Skirmishers, 12 Kroxigors, 1 Slann mage on Palanquin, 8 Saurus Cavalry on Cold ones, 1 Saurus mage, 4 Serpent lords, 30 skink warriors. Warhammer players will note it doesn't follow the rules and contains unique old models so it won't be in any competition games, purely for Ascendancy and friendly games with old players who don't care.

Slann Mage on Palanquin.

Saurus Cavalry.

I also started make some timber fort walls and gun platforms, but they are still drying so no photos, even if they are worth photographing.

Photo 18 of 52

Slim pickings for this weeks photo, this is choice 1 out of 1, taken during my flying visit to Saltash for work, didn't have chance to stop close to the bridge, so this was the work camera's poor telephoto, from the site I was visiting.