15mm Khurasan Miniatures

A few weeks ago I bought some Khurasan miniatures to add to my existing armies.

Here are some crossbowmen from their (older) Frankish/Norman range, based as Bow/formed instead of Psiloi/skirmisher, to use in my First Crusade games.

Here is a war drum from their Sung Chinese range. There are two drums and two drummers in a pack, so I am passing half of the pack to wahj. I painted mine to match my Warring States Zhao army, adding a spare pikeman I have as a standard bearer. Since the basic style of the Chinese war drum did not change for centuries, I think this will pass as a command or just a decorative base.

The main reason why I made the order in the first place was to get these Nikephorian Byzantine archers. I bought some Nikephorian Byzantine archers from Forged in Battle's War & Empire range to use as Armenian mercenary archers, and liked the way they look, and so I decided to add a couple more bases to allow me to field two units of them in my Conquerors and Kings games.

The Khurasan miniatures are a little thinner and have smaller heads than the War & Empire ones, but they mix together well enough. 

I am glad I managed to complete all of them this week, as I have a terrain project to complete for another multi-player demonstration game which Eugene is planning for August. Stay tuned.

TMWWBK: Battle of Isandlwana

When Eugene was playing the Indian Mutiny game I hosted in January, he felt frustrated ("in a good way") by how the mutineers were pinned down by fire and could not reach the British lines. It occurred to him then that the game mechanic could be used for a game of the Battle of Isandlwana, which he had the figures for, in 10mm.

We continued the discussion after the session, exchanged many messages over the following weeks, and soon we had a plan. I modified the cork hills I had in my collection to represent Mount Isandlwana, made a few paper bell tents and a flag base, while Eugene painted up more Zulus, and in March we ran a multi-player game for seven players at Elias Community Centre, which was documented by Eugene in the video below:

Do check his channel out for more videos, and subscribe for future videos.

Nolzor's Marvellous Miniatures: Xorns

Long-time readers will notice that I have stopped posting my RPG reports for quite a while now. My week-night RPG sessions have become few and irregular, but we are still playing - I have just decided that I cannot afford the time to write lengthy reports of every session.

We did, in fact, play a Dying Earth campaign using Forbidden Lands rules, and have just started a Dungeon Inc. campaign.

Dungeon Inc. is a new RPG from The Merry Mushmen, where players play monsters employed by the eponymous company to kill adventurers and take their stuff for the company. In between jobs they engage in office politics.

So far the player characters include: a genteel, refined dragonborn, a sneaky kobold who hates do-gooders, a territorial skeleton, a minotaur who is easy to miss, a cowardly sasquath, and a greedy xorn, whom we see in the photo above.

The figures are given to me by the character's player, and is from the Nolzor's Marvellous Miniatures range. You get two figures in the pack: one standing on the floor and the other bursting out of the ground, as xorns do. They come pre-primed, and rather interestingly have transparent blobes for eyes. I avoided painting over the eyes, and simply painted them over with yellow ink, and adding a black line for their irises.

So far Ron Ron has gone on his first mission, which he failed spectacularly by eating the MacGuffin. Hopefully he will do better on his next mission.

Archecore World Fortress Tank

I came across the Archecore World Fortress Tank at a toy store in Taiwan a few months ago. The toy line is in 1/35 scale, but the size and vibe of this model fit the 28mm WW1 sci-fi forces I own, so I decided to buy it and repaint it to suit.

The model is pre-assembled and could not be disassembled for easier painting, but fortunately the turret could be removed from the hull. I primed the model black, and sprayed on a base coat of Tamiya Field Grey. I then used a make-up sponge to apply a light shade of field grey - some of the recessed parts proved hard to reach, as you can see from the photos.

Once the base colour was applied, I applied some Black Templars decals I had lying around, and then worked on the weathering.

I decided to paint most of the tank in field grey, so the only parts that had to be painted another colour were the exhaust pipes and the tracks. Once all the colours were applied, I added by mud and dust with a large make-up brush.

I hope to use this model in an attack-defence scenario in a game of Blood and Valor soon.