Iron Wind Metals Chaos Archer and Chaos Knight

When I started planning for another Lone Wolf RPG campaign I started looking for figures that I can use to represent the Drakkarim warriors, a race of evil humans aligned with the Darklords.

In the LW fluff the Drakkarim are famed for their archers, who are heavily armoured and used black bows and arrows. In the art in the Mongoose "period" the bows are depicted to have spiky bits. It can be hard to find archers in heavy armour holding spiky bows, and of course the original Mongoose figures are hard to find too. Fortunately, I came across the Iron Wind Metal line, which has to me the perfect archer model for the fluff.  They also have several melee-armed chaos warrior-types. I was planning to get a few of each of the two models you see above, but they came in bundles of a dozen each, so I bought a pack of each instead.

After I bought them I realised they can also be used as hurlocks in my Dragon Age RGP, and that with two dozens of them I have the core of a Dragon Rampant Chaos Warriors warband.

The models are crisply cast in what I think is pewter, with minimal flash and mould lines. As you can see they have integral bases, so I decided not to rebase them. I painted these two to try out the colour scheme, and hopefully the rest can be churned out in production-line fashion over this weekend and next.

I also ordered a Reaper chaos warrior type to use as the leader of the warband - Reaper has many figures fitting the description and it was quite a while before I decided on the one to get.

At the same time, I have been thinking about the Heavy Gear kickstarter my friends and I have backed. The models are in the test sprues stage, and I am expecting to receive 10 models while the other guys in the group are getting 15 models each. Our original plan was to use a modified version of the Mech Attack rules with the models, but I am concerned that the level of details in the modified rules we use will make the game too slow if we are to field 10 to 15 models per side.

Then just last week I read about the upcoming set of sci-fi rules from Osprey:

picture from Osprey

There aren't many reviews of the rules, but they do look interesting, so I pre-ordered a copy and also took advantage of an Easter sale on The Dice Shop to get some extra d12s required to play the game.
I already have a "desert" mat and have made some cork hills to go with the mat, but I do lack buildings for the project. I emailed Brigade Models to ask them if they plan to release their Desert Domes line in 10mm - hopefully they will reply in the affirmative.

Other than the Heavy Gear models we are getting, I reckon the Dropzone Commander Resistance models fg and I painted can form a faction of their own in the game too, so hopefully within a few weeks of the kickstarter being delivered I hope to play a test game and post a rules review.

Legio Heroica 15mm Late Imperial Romans

I apologise for not posting anything other than the Giveaways for the past two months, but as I mentioned in my New Year post, I have gotten back into RPGs and GMing, which really takes up a lot of time and focus. I realised that I don't multi-task too well when it comes to gaming too: when my mind is on RPG, my wargaming suffers.

Sadly, RPGs don't make interesting blog posts, unless you are into session reports or "actual plays".

The figures in the photos are Legio Heroica 15mm Late Romans. They don't look as good as the ones in the photos on the Legio Heroica website, and the fault is all mine. Thank godness for Little Big Men Studios decals.

The 4 units represent my share of the Roman-Sassanid Wars project the four of us in the group are working on. We are using the Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up rules, and we are planning to use the deep formation rule which allows the rear unit of archers to shoot counting from the front edge.

I had a rather hard time painting these figures, despite the relatively small figure count. There was quite a bit of flash of them, and the fiddly pattern on the tunics didn't make it any easier either.

Next on my painting list are 24 figures from Iron Wind Metals: a dozen chaos warriors and a dozen chaos archers - heavily armoured archers holding spiked bows are hard to find, but they exist. These were bought primarily for my RPGs to represent Hurlocks in my Dragon Age game as well as Drakkarim in my planned Lone Wolf game, but it will be an easy task to stat them for a fantasy skirmish game like Strandhogg or Dragon Rampant.

March Giveaway

This month, I am giving away my copy of Osprey's Of Gods and Mortals.

I bought the rules with high hopes for some inter-pantheon mayhem, but unfortunately they didn't quite hit the spot with me. Instead of just letting the booklet gather dust on my shelf, here is your chance to own it!

Let me know if you want the above by leaving a comment, and I will draw a winner on the 15th of the month. This is not a first-come, first-serve offer.

This offer is free; once I let you know you have been drawn, do let me have your email and mailing address, and I will mail it off to you. You don't even have to pay for postage. I am doing this not to get some money back, but to give these toys a good home. If you want to pay back somehow, I ask that you make a small donation to a local charity, or consider doing the same thing I am doing and give some gaming stuff that you no longer need/use a chance for a new lease of gaming life.

Thank you.