Crossbowmen

After a long break, I decided to start working on my Perry WOTR/Warhammer Empire figures, but met a problem with my primer.

The primer beaded on the figures, and I was forced to spray it on thick to cover the beading up; as a result, much of the details on the figures were obscured.

Fortunately, I have painted their pavises (which have no game effects) a while back, and hopefully they draw the eye away from the poor painting on the figures.

Coming up next will be the ten handgunners, half of whom wear the riveted jacks which are a pain to paint...

There are still a lot to paint before I can call this project "completed" - eight more archers, half a box of foot men-at-arms when Perry releases them, and replacing my current ECW pistoliers with the Perry light cavalry (armed as mounted crossbowmen). All that will take me past 1800 points in WHFB; beyond that I can probably top up to 2000 points with magical items, or there is always the option of bulking my halberdiers to 30 or 40 figures, either by painting more figures or using unit fillers.

Of 37 Gods, 45 Legends and 53 Mortals...

Finally! A bit of buzz about OGAM on TMP.

The Amazon blurb is somewhat out of date (and damned if I can get them to change it!). Of Gods and Mortals (OGAM) is based on the Song of Blades and Heroes system, but introduces new mechanics and rules to make it stand apart from that predecessor.

Warbands are smallish affairs, with a God leading the force, a few Legends, and a couple of units of 4–8 Mortals being the norm – e.g. Thor, Fenrir, a Dvergar Weaponsmith, two Valkyries, a unit of 8 berserkers and a unit of 4 skirmishers.

Changes since the Amazon blurb include the reworking of the faith system as mentioned above – there's no tracking of levels or faith points, but the interplay between Gods, Legends and Mortals remains, and each must rely on the other to work effectively.

The rulebook contains Celt, Greek, Norse and Egyptian lists (totalling 37 Gods, 45 Legends and 53 Mortal units). The 'missing four' (Chinese, Japanese, Aztec and Pre-Islamic Arab) haven't really been forgotten (I know for a fact at least two are fully developed, so keep an eye out closer to the October release date). As suggested above, this reduction was due to space constraints, but we did make sure that the book includes a full unit builder that allows you to stat up your own pantheons, adjust existing units you think should be represented differently, and create whatever new units you like.

Fomorians and Dvergar ARE already included in the book, so those two cracking armies shown above should be really easy to field.

There's some more detailed discussion, including an example of unit creation, and some photos of more sample warbands and the forthcoming North Star OGAM figures here: link

Cheers!

Phil Smith
Commissioning Editor
Osprey Wargames

That's splendid news to me.

Macedonian War Test Game 4

We were able to get another game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up rules today.

As usual we had a two Roman legions up against all the Macedonians we can muster, along with my Pergamenes as Greek allies and wahj's Gauls as Galatians.

Martin and I took the Macedonians and played to use our cavalry superiority to defeat the Roman cavalry on the wings and then take the legions in the flanks.

wahj and fg deployed with their legions offset from the centre.

An off-focus shot, but it shows the initial deployment of the two armies.

While we were able to successfully destroy the Roman cavalry, the Romans were able to redeploy their legions to face the flanks and see off our cavalry.

In the centre, the phalanx failed to move into contact on schedule.

The Gauls make their first appearance on our table, but attacking uphill, their impetus bonus was not sufficient for them to carry the position.

Eventually, the Romans managed to rout the thureophoroi guarding the flanks of the phalanxes, which sealed their fates.

The phalanxes surrounded.

More Victorian terrain bits

Finally managed to get my horse and cart painted and posed with the Celtic Cross monument I made earlier.

And to accompany the picture, a factoid about Victorian England from here:

One odd point was that men in charge of a horse drawn vehicle were prohibited from leaving it unattended, in case the horse bolted. They still needed to pee however so a law was passed to the effect that 'the driver of a vehicle requiring to relieve himself can do so against the front off-side wheel of the vehicle providing he shouts 'in pain' loudly three times before commencing'. This may sound pretty unhygienic but remember the horses were depositing their urine and manure all the time.

More Victorian Terrain Boards

Well, I managed to make the second canal section for our Victorian terrain set-up.

It wasn't easy.

When we got to the store, fg and I found that they ran out of the 1/4" plastic tube I used for the first section, so I settled on 1/4" wooden dowels. Then while getting the dowels out of the car, I snapped them against the roof.

But I managed.

We also bought some stuff to make additional 4" wide grey board sections, which I glued some wooden knobs painted black to look like iron bollards. Placed between the basic ground sections and the canal sections, it hints at a dock. I've ordered a goods crane to add to the appearance, and some crates will also help, I think

To squeeze even more mileage out of our work, we decided to use the canal sections as bases for our train tracks too. With some thin cork sheets reinforced with duct tape and some train tracks I bought years ago, we've got our railway platform too.

That's no canal - it's a track!

fg will build a station building, and we are now wondering if it's worth the investment to buy a train...

I hope to work on the Botanical Gardens next, which will mean a trip back to the art supplies store and the local florist...

A Clash of Pantheons, and Three Warbands for the price of One plus some

As promised, here are my two OGAM warbands.

Balor leads the Fomorians against Thor and the dwarves.

It looks like quite a lot of figures for a set of rules that has not even been released, but really I have only added the two god figures to arrive at this.

The dwarves I have had for the longest time, and only Thor needed to be added for them to be a full OGAM warband.

The Fomorians are mainly my beastmen force. Configured for Strandhogg they look like this:

One beastlord with two warbands, each with a Wargor leader, 3 Ungor skirmishers, and 5 Gor warriors.

By adding a Hordes Skorne Cyclops Shaman as Balor, a Hasselfree Ceril as Bres, a beastman female shaman as some sort of priestess, I have an OGAM warband.

Balor, Bres, a priestess, a couple of beastmen heroes, a melee unit, and a missile unit.

Finally, with the addition of a minotaur and a barbarian figure, I get a legal Hordes Circle Orboros themed warband:

Kromac in his human form with his beastman form behind, minotaur as Ghetorix proxy, Gamezone troll as a Gorax, two Tharn Ravager units of 4 figure each, one with a Chieftain and one with a Shaman, two beastmen heroes as Tharn Whitemanes, and the Ungors as a Tharn Blood Pack.

So there they are. Three warbands for two sets of rules I haven't even tried before.

Time to take a break from figure-painting and do some terrain work next.

Reaper Tharn Helmsunder, or a Dwarven Thor

I managed to get the Reaper Tharn Helmsunder figure painted today, completing my second warband for OGAM.

I don't think I did a good job on this figure; I had a lot of difficulty with the eyes in particular.

He is, as I mentioned in the previous post, painted after the colour scheme of Marvel's Thor, but that doesn't really come across because the red on the back of the fur-lined cape isn't visible when you look at him from the front.

Maybe I'll do some touch-up in daylight later this week. I also hope to get him posed together with the rest of the Dwarven warband for a group shot, and I'll do the Fomorians too when I do that.

Coming up...

Carried by the momentum, fg and I are planning to work on more VSF terrain stuff over the coming weeks.

While we have the basic boards and a canal and bridge more or less settled, we do need quite a bit of stuff to litter about the table to break line-of-sight and block movement. I've ordered another bridge kit by Wills along with other bits (one crossing point makes for a boring game), and we will be making some bollards.

One piece that I managed to make from stuff on hand is this monument:

Professor Fliners Petrie enthuses over the find; Abdul is not impressed.

It was a simple build: a Celtic cross on plinth from the Renedra gravestone set, glued to a Renedra 20mm square base, glued to a 25mm square base with a recessed top, glued to a Renedra 40mm square base, glued to a Renedra 60mm x 50mm base. I added a thin square of plasticard to the plinth as a bronze plaque. It's much smaller than a real monument should be, but it should add to the overall look of the table.

Also, my small order of Reaper figures arrived yesterday, which gives me my Thor figure for my Norse Dwarf warband for OGAM. This is the original figure:

Even though he is only man-sized, his proportions fit those of a LOTR dwarf. To make him more Thor-like, I simplified the hammer's head and shortened the shaft. I snipped him off his integral base, added some putty to repair the lost bulk from his shoes, and drilled the pin holes to fit him on a Fantascape resin base with runes on it.

Suddenly, it occurred to Dili that maybe this guy wasn't a god-sized dwarf, but a normal-sized human...

I am very tempted to paint him in the scheme of the Marvel Comic Thor: red cape, black top with white metal rivets, yellow metal on the belt, black skirt, blue pants, and yellow-brown legging and boots. The bracers will probably just be yellow metal instead of red though.

Mjolnir will be all white metal though, and I will make him a redhead as Thor was is.

Thor will be the priority project now, and once he is done it's a wrap for my OGAM warbands (which reminds me, I still owe you readers a group shot of the Fomorians...) and I will hopefully devote the long weekend next week to completing the VSF terrain.

Canal and Bridge

I know I promised a shot of my Fomorians, but I've been working on these terrain pieces these past couple of days and I just want to show them off.

"You shall not pass, Merneptah!"

fg and I pasted the paper onto the foam boards last week and I cut them to size last night. The six boards give us a playing area of 115cm x 123cm, which is close to the 4' x 4' stipulated in the rules.

I made a trip to the art shop to get some materials to make the canal sections, and since they were having a sale I bought those lovely lamp posts from Barcelona too.

The canal sections are just 1mm foam boards with lengths of square plastic tubing glued to the sides. I unfortunately miscalculated the number required and ended up with only enough for one section - hopefully I can replicate the colour when I make the next one; we will need two to span the width of the playing area. The raised bit to the left of the bridge are bits from a 1/4" square sheet which I used to strengthen the joint between two lengths of tubing.

I sprayed the whole section black, then painted the embankment grey-brown. I then painted the water surface with a brown in an uneven manner to give the impression of flowing water. Once the whole thing is dry I brushed watered-down white glue along the length. This gives the surface a glossy, reflective look - you can see a lamp post and Teddy reflected in the water.

The walking surface of the bridge is made from modelling materials from Wills, as are the sides of the bridge. The sides of the bridge come brick red and are "painted" by rubbing plaster into the gaps between the bricks. Of course from an engineering point of view the bridge isn't really viable, but it's an easy build and looks passable for a piece of wargaming terrain.

We still need a whole lot of buildings before we can have a proper game, but I think we've got a good base to build on.

Balor, King of the Fomorians

Remember when I said I had an idea of a figure for a Balor for my Fomorian warband?

Well, painted over three evenings, I present:

This is the Cyclops Shaman from the Skorne faction in Hordes. He is the only cyclops who looks like a cyclops, because the other cyclops figures wear full-faced helmets. Go figure.

Anyway, when I saw him I thought he was ideal for what I wanted. Most cyclops figures look either too Greek (for good reasons) or too barbaric. Skorne figures have a samurai look to them, but the only obviously samurai parts on this figure are the knots on his vambraces - the rest of his dress and weapon have that Celtos look. To add to that effect I used a 40mm resin base from Fantascape, which has Celtic knotwork on it. The designers of the game probably feel the same way as I do, because they actually gave this figure an 'Evil Eye' shooting attack in the game stats.

Adrian got the figure for me and made it a gift (thanks, bro!); Privateer Press figures are nice but expensive, but this one is a must-have. The cast was quite clean, but the shaft of the weapon was a bit irregular, and so I replaced it with a piece of 1/16th inch brass rod.

I used essentially the same palette as I did for the rest of the warband, but I did use a lighter flesh tone for him. I chose green for the colour of his eye, because he is, well, Irish, and because that was the colour I picked for the gems on my other figures; I guess the fluff is that because their king's eye is green, the Fomorians like green gemstones?

I hope to pose him and the rest of the warband together for a group shot over the weekend. In the meantime, here are a couple more shots:

Front view. I like what I did with the eye.

Rear view, showing the stains on the skirt and the patterned border.

X-Wing

Today was a 'light game' Sunday as fg and I planned to complete the terrain boards for our VSF campaign, and Adrian could only be around for a couple of hours, so I suggested we play the X-Wing game that fg had left at my place a long time ago. As I laid in bed last night I realised that I did not have a suitable game mat for space games, and so I decided I would go to my local market for breakfast and see if I could find something suitable.

As it turned out some guy was selling some cloth and he had a piece of black cloth measuring 5' x 9', which I bought for S$9. A quick pass through the washer and the dryer, and we have a new gaming mat.

Darth Vader battles Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles.

Now I know X-Wing is a highly-rated game, but one doesn't really get that from reading the rules, which are simple and clear. Once the game starts, however, it really comes alive.

A big part of it is the design of the game components. In a way X-Wing is really very much like Wings of War, which I used to own and play but gave away after a while, but the difference in the interface of the games makes X-Wing a much faster experience.

Instead of choosing and placing cards, the use of the movement dial makes things easier and quicker, and honestly there is just something geekily satisfying about fiddling with dials.

The use of thick cardboard movement gauges instead of cards to conduct the movement is also less cumbersome than placing thin cards ahead of the model bases.

And I guess the Death Star Attack scene playing on the TV in the background helped too.

fg and I played the introductory game of two TIE fighters against an X-Wing to get the basics of the games, and when Adrian arrived I managed to teach him the game in minutes, and we squared off with me taking Darth Vader and two TIE fighters against Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles.


Adrian, playing Wedge Antilles, managed to blow up all my fighters by the game's end, including a spectacular one-shot kill on Darth Vader's wing man on his opening shot on the second turn. I was able to shoot the shields off both X-Wings and damage Luke Skywalker's X-Wing, but like my historical counterpart I would come off worse in this encounter.

We all enjoyed the game, and of course we dream of bigger games with more players and ships on-table. The game is rather pricey though, and we reckon we may need another basic set if we are going to get into it heavily, which will in any case give us another set of templates and dice, both of which are helpful.

The other issue is also whether (or rather when and how?) I should decorate my blank black mat to create a star field look...

Dwarf Iron Guards

I acquired these figures the same time I got the other LOTR dwarves you see so often on my blog, but this is the first time you see a photo of them.

I bought the dwarves painted in a lot way back when. Unlike most of the other figures, these Iron Guard figures are metal, and already had many chips on them by the time we started playing Strandhogg regularly. Since I didn't really need them, I just kept them in a box.

A while back, I decided to refurbish them and painted over the chipped parts. Then disaster struck when I decided to protect my work with spray varnish. You can still see the frosting on the edges of the bases.

After that episode, they went back into exile in the box again.

Then yesterday, with nothing left to paint (the Reaper figures I ordered are a full month in the post by now), I took them out and re-painted them again, adding a yellow border on the hem of their surcoats.

I think they look passable now.

I've got 12 dwarven footmen from Red Box Games on order, which when painted will give me something like 80 dwarves. That should be enough to do a dwarven civil war scenario...

Warmachine/Hordes Explained

Random photo dump

Gaspez Minotaur complete

At Matt's urging, I decided I push on and complete the Gaspez minotaur.

I think the contrast in the skin tone is mostly due to the lighting - I learnt that it's really quite hard to paint something black under artificial light; I'll have to look at the model again tomorrow to see how it looks like under sunlight.

My favourite view of the model, showing its eye and the curve of its horns.

And here is is posing next to Kord, who will be the warlock for my Hordes Circle Orboros warband. Kord will proxy as Kromac, and the minotaur will be Ghetorix, a giant werewolf who wields an equally giant axe.

Gasthorix and Kormac?

I am now waiting for the arrival of the Reaper figure I plan to paint as Thor for my Norse dwarf faction, as well as a figure I plan to use as Balor...

WIP 4: Gaspez Minotaur AND Kord completed

No game today, which allowed me (and hopefully the rest of the gang too) to get some painting done.

I'm having some trouble getting the minotaur secured onto its base, but here's a teaser of his eye:

I quite like the look.

I did manage to complete Kord the barbarian, which together with my beastman warchief will proxy as the human and beastman forms of Kromac.

Incidentally, Kord was sculpted by Tre Manor, whose Red Box Games dwarves I love. I ordered a dozen dwarven footmen from his latest kickstarter

Finally, here's the hawk from a Reaper Animals pack which I got for the bear.

 I'm not sure why I decided to paint it. I guess it can be a scenery item or an objective marker.

WIP 3: Gaspez Minotaur

Happily, the resin bases I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to complete my project.

I whittled the putty on the axe shaft to the diameter of the original, and then smoothed it with a file. A couple of drill holes in the resin base, and this is the final product.

I hope to get the model primed and painted over the next two weeks, before my Dystopian Wars Ottoman fleet arrives.

WIP 2: Gaspez Minotaur and Kord the Destroyer

The Warhammer Minotaur arms and weapons bits that I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to do the next step in my conversion project.

The arms of the Gaspez minotaur are further apart than those on a Warhammer minotaur, so I had to extend the shaft of the axe. To ensure that I have a strong structure, I cut off the middle section of the piece, drilled holes in both ends, and then fitted a steel wire in between. I then applied epoxy to the wire, inserted it into the two pieces, then blu-tac'd the hands onto the main model itself. The telescoping nature of the construct allowed me to adjust the alignment of the two pieces while the epoxy set to ensure that the shaft ended up straight.

The end product was rather long, so I snipped a bit off the end of the shaft, which still gave an eventual length of 7cm, or more than twice the height of a man in scale!

Once the epoxy has set, I needed to build some "meat" around the wire skeleton to match the rest of the shaft with epoxy putty. Rather than sculpting the shaft while the putty is soft, I decided it might be easier to just form a sausage around the skeleton and then shave it down later when it has hardened. I'll let you know how that works out later...

The hands needed a bit of bulking up too.

Also in the package today was the Reaper mini Kord the Destroyer. I got it because I wanted to use my beastman warchief as Kromac in Hordes. Now Kromac is a warlock who has a human form and a beastman form, which meant I needed a human form of my warchief. Using Reaper's Figure Finder, I found and bought Kord, the original form which is shown below.

When the figure arrived, I found that the axe was comically smaller than the one held by my warchief. Well, it can't all be perfect.

I removed all the spikes on the figure, shaved the letter M off his buckle, and decided to take off the nicked dagger in his right hand. The axehead was bent almost 180 degrees onto the shaft when the figure arrived, so I snapped it off and drilled through it, his left hand, then replaced the shaft with a length of wire such that the eventual length of the whole weapon would be the same as the axe held by the warchief, then applied putty to it too.  I also bent the arm at the elbow a little and turned the axehead so it is orientated in a more natural angle so the axis of the blade is in line with the axis of his forearm, and anchored the end of the shaft onto his cloak for stability. It is only now when I am typing this that I realised that I could have placed the axe in Kord's RIGHT hand to better mirror the warchief figure; well, too much trouble to switch it now. Grr.

I epoxied the figure onto a 25mm square base (as the warchief), and then puttied over the integral base on the model and added a piece of cork for terraining.

So when Kromac transforms into his beast form, his axehead also miraculously enlarges, and he turns from being left-handed to being right-handed? Seems legit.

Now to wait for the putty to set overnight. Hopefully the base which I ordered for the minotaur arrives tomorrow and I can move on to the next and final step of the conversion project.

WIP: Gaspez Minotaur

I don't usually do WIP posts, but the latest model to arrive in my mail is such a neat model, I thought I just had to.

Now I've been looking for a minotaur figure to go with my beastmen force for a while now. It's proven to be quite difficult because it had to have the right head, the right 'clothes', right weapon, right size, and the right price.

When I decided recently to add a few figures to my beastmen to allow me to field them as a Fomorian warband and a Circle Orboros warband in the not-to-distant future, I decided I have to decide.

My choice is this Chaos Minotaur from Gaspez, made for Blood Bowl or other fantasy American football games, and shown here in its original 'green' form.

The head isn't really my "ideal" head for a minotaur - I refer one that is more like a real bull's head - but I really like the horns. The hands come loose, which means I can (and plan to) graft the hands and two-handed axe from a GW minotaur to it. The simple style of his 'dress' fits with the look of my beastmen, which is important for me. It also for some strange reason has Balor's eye on its belt, which sort of sealed the deal for me.

The figure is 6cm tall when assembled, and comes in 9 parts: a head, two horns, the torso, the shoulder plate, two hands, the lower half of the body, and a tail. There are two options for the horns, a pincer-claw and a tentacles option for the hands, and a rear loincloth flap option for the tail.

What is neat about this model is how the parts are "dovetailed" to give a snug fit so you can put it together without pinning. The horns have notches in them that fit to the top of the ears so they not only point in the correct attitude, but are also symmetrical. The tail fits into the butt in a squarish rather than round peg so it orientates the correct way. There is also a large peg on the right hoof of the model, which will help me secure it to a resin base. All in all it is a model designed to make it easy for you to assemble.

In assembling my model I nonetheless decided to make some changes to it.

First of all I decided I would discard the shoulder plate, which has too much of a Blood Bowl feel to it, and sculpt the strap so that it goes completely around the (now bare) shoulder - fortunately for me the sculptor did sculpt the shoulder under the plate. The shoulder plate will go into my bits box and perhaps one day "convert" a non-Blood Bowl figure to a Blood Bowl figure.

I also decided that the tail, while looking dynamic, is really just an accident waiting to happen for a wargames model. In addition, it makes the model hard to store in my newly-made sponge tray. So I clipped the connecting part and positioned it so it has a three-point contact to the model.

Finally, I extended the mane running down the back of the minotaur to its forehead - when I googled about the auroch and Spanish fighting bulls while thinking about a colour scheme I learnt that most bulls have a sort of a forelock.

This is how my model looks so far:

The assembled model, waiting for hands and weapon and a base.

View showing the sculpted forelock and strap.

Detailed view of the direction of the horns. Note also the good detail of the teeth.

Rear view showing how I glued the tail with a three points of contact for more stability.

I now have to wait for the arrival of the hands and weapon bits, as well as a 50mm round base before I can continue the project. Hopefully that will be some time within the next two weeks.