Shadespire Sepulchral Guard

Here are the Shadespire skeletons that I painted for my next RPG campaign. They are some of the best 28mm skeletons I have seen. Most skeleton warrior minis tend to have overly large heads which make them look cartoony, or faces with too much expression which make them look... wrong.

The Shadespire skeletons hit the sweet spot for me, as do indeed the current Vampire Counts range of skeleton warriors - I bought 20 of those off ebay, painted; I will post pics of those another time.

Even though they are a staple of fantasy wargaming and RPG, these are the first skeletons I own in 28mm aside from a few D&D prepainted. I am pretty happy with how they turned out, and have ordered a couple of skeleton warriors minis from Mierce Miniatures to add to my collection.

Vakeros Warrior-Mage

In the penultimate session of our Lone Wolf RPG campaign, the player of the dwarf PC was given a choice: to follow the rest of the party through a time-portal at the cost of the possible fall of his homeland, or to stay and take up another new character.

He looked at the options of playing a Vakeros Warrior-Mage for a while but eventually decided that his character would wait out the fifty years and meet the rest of the party in the future. Well, dwarves have that option.

While waiting for his decision, I started work on getting a suitable figure for the character.

The Vakeros are a human-like race who are the soldiers of the Magocracy of Dessi, They have dark skin, white hair, and amber eyes. They dress in crimson and yellow clothes, and wield a blue-steel sword.

This figure is made from the Frostgrave Soldiers box set, with the magic effect on the hand made from the flame of the torch piece. I am pretty pleased with the result.

While the figure did not see any use for the campaign, we have enjoyed playing in Magnamund, even if we find the Lone Wolf Adventure Game rules a little limited. We may yet visit the setting again (just as we will be revisiting our Space Opera setting), but when we do it will be with another set of rules.

Roman-Sassanid Game 1

View of the battlefield from the Roman side

Wahj, Martin, fg and I got together for a game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up on Sunday. This game features several 'firsts': it's the first use of my new Deep Cut Studios mat for a wargame, the first use of my new woods terrain pieces, the first use of the card Armenian church building, and the first match between our Late Roman armies against Martin's Sassanid Persians.

Wahj and I took the Romans, with him taking the bulk of the troops, while I took the Goth contingent on the Roman right.

Centre of the Roman line

Martin split his forces into two halves, commanding the bulk of the cavalry on his right, and giving fg command of some cavalry, the elephants, and the foot.

Sassanid battle line

Both sides were reluctant to move from their start positions at first, but eventually the Persians made a wide flanking move on the right and pushed forward their foot skirmishers on their left. I responded by sending my Goth cavalry in a headlong charge that saw my general surrounded by foot units and dying an ignoble death.

Cavalry clash. Note the use of replica Roman coins for Leadership Points

On the other flank the battle culminated in a massive cavalry clash that eventually ended with the Persian general being surrounded and killed.

As usual the game ended with talk of getting more units to make each army more effective.

I have earlier backed West Wind Productions' War & Empire III kickstarter, with the aim of painting up another 8 units of Roman foot to give wahj a helping hand, but as he is currently on a painting spree (and the kickstarter fulfillment won't be till the end of the year) I have decided to pass the bulk of the deal to Martin, who is planning to get some Palmyran units, while I plan to get some Arthurian foot to use as Goth infantry.

The other reason why I wanted to give up my stake in the kickstarter was because I have just bought some thirty 28mm figures and two chariots for my Trojan War project. These will allow me to field two warbands - one Trojan and one Lukka - for Tribal. If all goes according to plan we should be playing Tribal again in July.

D&D Arena Board 2

This is the second of the two D&D Arena boards I built for the charity event, this one being my suggestion - somehow the word 'lava' popped into my head and I just had to build a lava board. Unfortunately, it didn't see any use in the event as they ran short on time, but it ended up as a prize for one of the winners, so hopefully it will see some use still.

The design considerations were the same as with the previous board, so I ended up with a design that is geometrical and symmetrical. the paths linking the corner islands to the central island are set differently to break up the symmetry a little.

The lava texture was from an image I found on google image, and the "land" texture are once again from Heroic Maps, this time their Volcanic Fields set. The printed maps were glued onto 5mm cork sheets, which are then roughly trimmed, and the exposed edges then painted with a dark brown paint, followed by a dry-brush with a lighter shade of brown.

My original intention was to have the whole board being flat, but some error in the alignment resulted in the central island being too big to fit. I tackled the problem by stacking a smaller cork square under it, thus elevating it a little above the pathways - as it turned out I think this added character to the board.

To prevent characters from having lines-of-sight to each other at the start of the game, I made some rock pillars (from the same 5mm cork sheets) and set them such that when the characters from the same team are placed vertically opposite each other, the characters from opposing teams cannot see each other.

Building these boards had been a fun and educational experience. I had other ideas for arenas, but ultimately the end products had to be something that were visually appealing, yet unambiguous and easy to use, without undue bias to either a melee- or missile-based character.

D&D Arena Board 1

One of the gamemasters in our local RPG community organised a D&D Arena event for charity, and I volunteered to make a couple of terrain boards for it. After some discussion, we decided on the size and themes for the two boards, the first of which is featured in this post.

The event pit teams of two point-bought 5th level characters against each other. The board needed to be large enough so that characters couldn't get into melee range in just one round, but not so big that it disadvantages melee-based characters excessively. Based on this I recommended a 20 x 20 board, which is a common size used for commercial battle-maps.

For the first board the organiser asked for a ziggurat. Thanks to my experience in building the inverted ziggurat in White Plume Mountain, I knew it was easier to build than it sounded. A trip to the art supplies store got me all the materials I needed: cardboard, 3mm MDF boards, hot glue sticks, glue sticks, and 5mm thick cork boards (for the other board).

I was fortunate to be able to find 12" x 12" MDF boards, which meant that each arena would be based on a set of four boards, which can be taken down for easy storage and transport. It also meant that I could use one of these MDF boards as a base for the ziggurat itself, as cardboard would not be sturdy enough in this role.

As the primary aim of the arena board is for a competitive event, the layout had to be symmetrical to ensure it does not bias against one side or the other, lines of sight had to be unambiguous, and measurement of movement and range had to be easy. With these considerations, I chose to use printed grid maps for texture, such that all movement increments were in 1" (with the exception of the steps on the ziggurat).

The maps used were all from Heroic Maps, with their river set providing the field and the moat, and their Ancient Dungeon set providing the stone pattern for the ziggurat. Despite being designed for use as a 2D terrain map, the stone pattern worked well for a 3D structure, and allowed me to "wrap around" the corners of the ziggurat, giving it a more natural look.

I am not sure whether this set-up favours a melee-based character or a missile-based character, but I will be attending the event to see how the players deal with its challenge.

Tehnolog Orc painted as Magnamund Ogron

This is one of the four Tehnolog 54mm orcs that I got quite a while back. I reckoned they area good size for ogres next to 28mm scale figures, but I don't have an army that had ogres, so they remained unpainted. Then one of the adventures in my Lone Wolf campaign took my players to the Stornlands, where the Magnamund version of ogre - the ogron - commonly serve as mercenary troops.

The ogron is described as being around 9-foot tall, and have blue skin. The inspiration for the colour scheme comes from the ogron as depicted on the cover of the Magnamund Bestiary, and also an illustration of the same ogron inisde.

I tried a new technique on the shoulder plates to duplicate the appearance of worn metal shown in the illustration, and was quite happy with the result.

You can see all the four orc figures that came in the Tehnolog box in the picture below, and you can easily find a seller for them on ebay.

They can each fit onto a 40mm square base if you angle their front a little, but it will take some planning to make them rank up if you plan to put the bases side-by-side in a unit.

The final photo shows a size comparison against a Reaper 28mm figure.

Wargames Factory Woodland Indians with Mad Robot Miniatures conversion bits

Here are the three Wargames Factory Woodland Indians figures with weapon arms from Mad Robot Miniatures I painted last weekend.

As you can see, the arms are a little large for the torsos - and this is even after I have shaved them down considerably, but I think over all they still look ok for the tabletop.

They are based on the same Mirco Art Studios resin bases I used for the rest of the gang - this resulted in some odd poses, but as fg and I plan to use them for Necromunda, which features a lot of elevation, this may work out afetr all.

The final photo shows them alongside the rest of the gang. Their heads are noticeably smaller than those of the metal figures, but their futuristic-looking weapons help them blend into the look.

Mad Robot Miniatures Heavy Weapon Team Done

I managed to complete the Mad Robot Miniatures Heavy Weapon Team over the past few days. The miniatures are from Mad Robot Miniatures, and the mortar, sandbag, shovel, and the mortar bomb in the hands of the crewman are from GW 40K.

The figures were fun to paint - and there is simply something about heavy weapon teams that just says "Imperial Guards".

The final photo shows the mortar team alongside the Warzone trenchers. Nothing on the figures from the two ranges themselves is exactly identical, but I think the identical colour scheme ties them together.

I am now tempted to buy figures and bits to build a squad of Rough Riders modeled after WW1 British cavalry, but the cost is likely to run to US$100 for six mounted figures. Perhaps I will wait for a sale...

Mad Robot Miniatures Heavy Weapon Team

I've been looking for a mortar team for my Warzone Imperials force for a while, but I haven't been able to find something that will match the look without some expensive and laborious head swap.

Then while looking for arms (as in upper limbs) and weapons to go with the Wargames Factory Woodland Indians to convert them into post-apocalyptic gangers (more on that in another post), I found Mad Robot Miniatures, which had the arms I needed, and indeed a whole customisable sci-fi miniatures range. I decided to get a 3-man crew since I was paying all that postage anyway, and the result is what you see above.

They unfortunately do not have a mortar, so I had to find and buy a 40K Imperial Guard mortar from ebay (and since I was paying postage I bought some other bits too, including the sandbags you see on the base).

The uniforms are not an exact match to the Warzone trenchers, as you can see below, but maybe infantrymen had a different uniform from men from the support company. Maybe.

The final picture shows how well the mortar bomb from 40K fits into the hands of the Mad Robot crewman. Over all, I am quite happy with my buy.

War & Empire III Kickstarter

West Wind Productions has just started their kickstarter for their range of 15mm figures, and it funded in just 41 minutes.

I have bought a couple packs of their Successor infantry and cavalry, and liked them enough, so when I found that they will be releasing Late Romans this time round, I decided to back the project and give our Roman-Sassanid project another boost.

I am backing the King level together with Martin (who is looking to get a couple packs of Palmyrans), which will give me enough figures for three double-units of spears supported by archers, and two units of javelin-armed auxilia. That's 144 figurines to paint, not counting the free figures that will come with the stretch goals.

If you are looking for a new project for next year - the shipping date is given as December 2018 - then you may want to head over and have a look.

em4 Future Skirmish Savages and Micro Art Studio bases

Here are the seven em4 Miniatures Future Skirmish "Savages" figures I painted over the past couple of weeks. They were passed to me by fg (along with several other post-apocalyptic type figures) when I asked if he had any figures suitable for the short Gamma World RPG campaign I had planned. As usual, he had many. I went through his box of figures and picked out seven I liked, and as it turned out they all came from the same range. Despite their age, these sculpts are still some of the best I have seen.

I painted them as a gang with some sort of a Native American theme, dressed in ripped jeans or military surplus, and using red as a gang colour, either in the form of a red bandana tied somewhere on their persons, or as face paint.

Other than serving as the bad guys for my Gamma World campaign, they may also form the core of a Necromunda gang. Fg has bought the new Necromunda box set, so as soon as he has a gang painted and we have learned the rules, we should be ready to start a campaign.

Other than the figures themselves, one of the things that I was rather excited about were the Mirco Art Studios "corregidor" bases I bought for the figures. As you can see from the photo above, they are an interesting match for the Battle Systems Shanty Town buildings I bought. Sure, the hatching on the metal plates are different, but it would have been too much to ask for for them to be an exact match.

You can't really tell from the photo (I certainly couldn't when looking at the photos when shopping for them) the bases are more 3D than they look, as in there is a "drop" of around 2mm between the "floor" part of the base and the "grille" part of the base, which can present a bit of a problem when basing "slotta" figures, which have both feet at the same level.

Now seven figures may not be enough for a Necromunda gang, at least not if I expect it to expand, so if you know of any Native American-themed futuristic/post-apocalyptic figures, so let me know in the comments.

Thanks!

2017 in Review and Looking Ahead

2017 was a poor year for wargaming - we only met for a total of seven sessions. During the same year, I played in at least 28 sessions of RPG, which included a 10-session campaign, two two-session old school dungeon crawls, and GMing two convention games.

Things may yet pick up in 2018 though. Martin has hosted our first naval game at his place, and I certainly hope to redeem myself after our poor debut performance. Meanwhile, I hope to get a few Franco-Prussian War games played at my place.

But the value of the sessions lies not in gaming alone; I have known Martin, fg and wahj for more than a decade (I have been friends with wahj for more than two-thirds of my life, actually), and our gaming sessions are more about talking about old times, life, and everything under the sun than the games themselves, really.

By contrast I have known the players in my RPG group (excepting fg) for less than two years, and most of them I have met only since April last year; while a common hobby can kickstart friendships, it will still take time.

For most of the year we played through the Savage Worlds space opera campaign, which I enjoyed tremendously. So much so that I ran the first scenario from that campaign as convention game twice. I may in fact continue to use scenarios from that campaign for convention games this year.

The monthly mini-convention is likely to be a regular thing, but the venue is rather far from my home, and as I utilise a lot of terrain boards, figurines, and models for my games, traveling to and fro can be quite a strain. I still want to do that though, mainly as a way of giving back to the hobby and bringing newbies into the hobby, perhaps quarterly?

I did manage to start a Lone Wolf campaign as I planned. The campaign is scheduled to run until the end of March, after which a three-session Gamma World campaign is planned for April. From June I plan to run a new long campaign (around 12 sessions or so); I have not decided on the setting or the rules yet, but there are a few potential candidates lined up.

There is a synergy between wargaming and RPGs, of course, and one example of this may be the seven 'gangers' figures I hope to paint up over the next few weeks: these will serve as the main antagonists for my players in the Gamma World mini-campaign (where they will be the evil Pure Strain Humans who want to wipe out the player characters, who/which are all mutated humans, mutated animals, or mutated plants), and perhaps as the start of a Necromunda gang.

Experience has taught me not to put too much faith in my own predictions, but what's the hobby without ambitious plans?

Have a good year ahead.

Everything I painted this year

28mm Fantasy:

28mm Sci-fi:

Small Scale Woods Terrain Tutorial

As promised, here is a tutorial of how I made the woods terrain pieces for the FPW game. The idea is not original, of course, but I hope it will help gamers who are looking for a step-by-step tutorial.

There are three parts to the terrain piece: the trunks, the canopy, and the foliage.

For canopy I chose to go the easy way and got a pack of Woodland Scenics tree armatures, which are of course expensive but become more affordable if you buy the bulk pack that is not pre-assembled with foliage glued on. It has the advantage of being brown to begin with, and having ready-made bases.

I made the mistake of buying armatures that are too all for mt needs. When cut off at the height I wanted (about an inch) there are not many branches showing. I compensated by gluing the upper part of the armature to the base instead.

For the canopy I used black mounting board. It is important to use black (or at least a dark coloured) mounting board as the coverage with the foliage will not be complete, and any white or light colour, including those on the edge of the mounting board, will show through if not covered.

I cut our various roughly oval or round shapes.

Using hot glue, I then glued the trunks to the bottom of the canopy. I figured I need around eight trunks for a large-sized piece to look convincing. Note the black edge of the card.

Then comes the foliage. Again, I turned to Woodland Scenics. You want the Foliage Clusters and not the looser types of clump foliage. These are denser and can be applied in large pieces, making the next step much easier. I used two colours to give a more natural look.

Using hot glue, I glued patches of the foliage to the top of the canopy piece, making sure that I cover the edges of the piece too.

And here is the finished product, with a base of 10mm Prussian infantry posing next to it.

At this scale the terrain will work with 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, and at a stretch even 20mm.

I hope to post a tutorial on how I made islands for the WW2 Pacific theatre naval project Martin has started. Stay tuned!

WWII naval action off Guadalcanal

On Sunday I hosted a game for FG, Wahj and Arjun where we did a WWII naval scenario off Cape Esperance, Guadalcanal and I now have the pleasure of providing my first contribution to this blog. We used Victory at Sea rules with it's scenario with some slight amendments in the form of a slightly reduced US fleet size but which still outnumbered the Japanese. I had always been enthralled with GHQ's 1/2400 naval miniatures and had always wanted to field a game with them so this game was some time in planning. This was also a good opportunity to see how the rules played out.

This scenario is of both US and Japanese fleets consisting a mix of cruisers and destroyers  setting out to clear opposing forces off Cape Esperance at Guadalcanal with Wahj and FG commanding the Japanese forces and Arjun and myself, the US. The Japanese fleet started in the south easterly heading (bottom of picture) with the US heading in a westerly heading. 



The opposing fleet on a collision course with destiny (looking  east)

Lead elements of the Japanese fleet: Kagero class destroyer (front) and a Furutaka class cruiser (back) passing some rain squalls.  



Lead elements of the US fleet with a New Orleans class cruiser in the lead.

With the Japanese team winning the initiative, they opted to diverge their fleet into two separate flanks, turning port and starboard outwards, which was followed on by the US commanders in multi-turn moves between both forces. No one wanted to be caught at full beam between two enemy ships!

The opposing fleets diverge to the flanks (looking west).

 

The fleet maneuvers consisted of Arjun performing a dicey slice through maneuver, perhaps in an attempt to awe the Japanese with his brilliant seamanship. I attempted to bring up the rear elements by ordering full flank speed to narrow the distance and bring the guns into range. 

 


The "hard to achieve" slice through manoeuvre they don't teach you at the Naval Academy.

The Japanese however were not having any of it. With them gaining the initiative again, they opted to teach the American dogs a lesson with an opening salvo. 

The smoke screen

  

A lead Kagero class destroyer on the port (left) flank commanded by Wahj also created smoke as part of a special action to screen her accompanying vessel. The engagement ensued into a slugfest with both forces trading surface volleys that at best, created some token damage and at worst, caused a thorough drenching of a few chagrinned sailors sun tanning on deck.

 

 

The Japanese then turned the tide when FG and Wahj brought their superior torpedoes into play. With their high attack and damage dice numbers they soon made short work of two US cruisers which were sunk in quick succession only for the loss of one Japanese destroyer which honourably gave its life for providing screening protection.

With the lost of the two cruisers, the US commanders, after concluding that the loss of a third cruiser was unacceptable and that Cape Esperance was not sufficiently safe anymore, beat a hasty retreat to the South East. It was unanimously agreed that the Marines on the island's air strip had the right stuff to endure yet another day of Japanese naval bombardment (Marines! You Can Do It!). An after action report discussion yielded a couple of observations.

 

1. The US fleet was not using the destroyers effectively as a screening force.

 

2. The US fleet did not perform any evasive actions allowed under the movement phase to mitigate the torpedo risk.

 

3. The US destroyers could have used smoke to effectively screen the cruisers.

 

4. The US destroyers should have utilised its "agile" special trait to maneuver close enough for a torpedo shot. In hindsight since this was a one shot weapon, we were probably waiting for the right moment. 

 

5. The US fleet despite its slight numerical advantage were outgunned at close range.

 

6. I will probably end up making some appropriate torpedo markers 

 

Nevertheless this first run was enough to give me some familiarity of the gameplay and will add to my understanding when I go through the rules again.  With the conclusion of the tabletop hostilities, the opposing commanders adjourned to the sitting room to continue with our beer and to discuss various topics such as the World of Warships online game, our fitness and dietary regimes, Aamir Khan, Ryan Gosling as Young Hercules, "You messed with the wrong guy" genre movies and how to avoid corporate tax by declaring your company as a charitable organisation.