Infamy, Infamy! Test Game

Martin and I got together to give the Infamy, Infamy! rules a try on Sunday afternoon.

I have read through the rules twice and watched several YouTube videos on the game, but the rules are so complex and (dare I say) poorly-organised that I have difficulty keeping everything in my head. The index does help a lot though. Martin is totally unfamiliar with the rules, but with some quick intro was able to get the gist of it.

I chose the Patrol scenario as it seemed the most straightforward one, and rolled up the terrain based on the 5 x 3 grid area on my mat that corresponded to the playing area in our half-scale version of the game. The first set-up had all the terrain clustered on one side of the table, which would probably have made for a boring game, so I re-rolled the terrain, and ended up with something more interesting.

Martin started the game by sending his two units of Auxilia forward to probe towards my Ambush Points. In response I deployed two units of javelin-armed skirmishers to shoot at them, to little effect. As the second unit of Auxilia got too close to my second Ambush Point, I launched an ambush with two units of warriors, hoping to sweep them off the field before the heavy legionaries have even arrived. But the dice gods had it in for me, and the Auxilia actually managed to hold off my warriors, and indeed push them back - Martin rolled an ungoldy number of 5s and 6s.

Martin then sent his legionaries onboard and quick-marched them to the flashpoint, and saw my warriors off for good.

The legionaries then continued moving against one of my remaining Ambush Points in strength, and that was when I decided to throw in my remaining four warrior units in a bid to settled the issue by force... but the legion movement turned out to be a feint: Martin sent an Auxilia unit down the other flank, and with some good dice (rolling two 6s on movement) captured another Ambush Point, and won the game

I am pretty sure we missed out most of the rules - half the time we didn't know what to do with our in-play Signa cards, but I think we got the core of it, and the spirit of the rules.

The barbarians are very difficult to play, since the warriors are essentially a one-shot weapon. Without time pressure, the Romans can advance very methodically, making it hard for the Germans to wrong-foot them.

The game is intriguing enough that Martin has decided to give the rules a closer look; we thought that we can each study our own side more closely so we can play them optimally the next time. Hopefully my Germans will give a better account of themselves the next game.

Thaw of the Lich Lord Game 4

Game 4 in the campaign was another one where the treasures were to be had in the centre of the table. I set the table up as a graveyard, and ignored the set-up rule about leaving the central square foot of the table with no terrain - the result was the scramble in the photo above.

We all made for the central sqaure, with my skavens arriving first and grabbing two of the four treasure chests there, but they were attacked by the other warbands and had to abandon one of them.

I equipped two of my Treasure Hunters with magical items which I picked up in the earlier games, and both of them were "killed" during the game, forcing me to assign extra warband members to grab the items and try to make it off the table instead of staying and contesting the treasures, on the belief that a known magical item is better than the contents of a random treasure chest.

At the end of the game I am still at the bottom of the table, just 5 Experience Points short of level 11, but the surprising thing is that the other two wizards are within 35 points of my wizard.

My grab-and-run strategy has not put me too far behind the other two warbands, but I am definitely having difficulty coping with the area effect spells from FG's wizards: the Grenade spell which can take out several of my soldiers in one shot, and the Mud spell which negates to a degree my speed. I will need to change my strategy if I am to get a edge...

Forged in Battle 15mm Early Germans

This was an unplanned project, but Infamy, Infamy generated so much buzz when it was released earlier this year that I decided to look closer at it. Now Martin already has a large 15mm Early Republican Roman army painted many years ago, but we never really had a chance to take them out for a spin. It occurred to me that we could possibly play Infamy, Infamy in 15mm.

What we needed, aside from the rules and necessary counters, was an opposing army. It turned out that Martin had a couple of packs of Forged in Battle (aka West Wind) 15mm Early Germans and some Litko DBX bases lying around, so that made the decision for us on which barbarian army to raise. Had we started from zero, I would most likely have gone for a Gallic army and made a diorama of Asterix's village...

I painted the two packs of Germans, bought another two packs to make up the bare minimum to field a German army, and after a few weeks of work, had this ready:

I decided to use DBX basing as Martin's Romans are already in DBX basing, and because it's an old habit. The rules require warrior units to have the same frontage, while skirmisher units have a wider frontage, although I suspect that is less important as they should not be in melee if things are done correctly...

The round houses are actually pdf paper models of Celtic round houses - I cannot actually find photos of what pre-Roman German village dwellings look like, let alone models for them. The paper models have a nice texture (several options are included in the file), and they can be scaled to various miniature scales. I wanted to give some sturdiness to the houses, so in addition to giving each a PVC foam sheet base, I used cut sections of a plastic water bottle to form the wall of the house.

The photo above shows a Status III leader (with a 25mm base), three Status II leaders (with 20mm bases), and a musician and a The Sign of the Boar retinue figure. A Wailing Women base would have been great too but West Wind did not have a pack.

Here are the seven warrior units I pained. Now I dislike painting irregular/non-uniformed armies as the lack of a uniform colour scheme gives the units a messy appearance when viewed at wargaming distance. I used a number of "natural dyes" colours for the clothing, but to tie the whole force together, I used only red, black, and white for their shields (except for a few leather brown ones). I also decided to give almost all of the shields a unique pattern - as a result one of the figures actually hold a shield that looks like a pokeball.

Barbarian warrior units come in ten figures, but DBX has warbands in four figures on a 40mm x 15mm base - this meant that to make a warrior unit, I needed two bases of four figures, and one of two. For this 'third' base I decided to base two figures on a 40mm x 20mm base, and leave an unflocked square on one side of the base as a die-holder to track the Fervour of the unit.

Here are the three skirmisher units I painted. Unfortunately West Wind does not make German slingers, and their slingers from the other nations have too distinct a look to fit into the army. The menhir is the background is a resin piece painted by FG.

Getting the army painted is of course just the... second? step in the process: we still have to see how the game plays in half-scale with multi-basing - although a straight 1" to 1cm conversion makes the most sense in terms of frontage, I feel that at that scale the playing area will look too small.

I am also planning to use the 20cm grids I have on my mat for terrain placement, and use the neoprene area terrain FG bought; these cover about one grid each, which makes them perfect for my plan.

I have read the Infamy, Infamy rules twice, and I feel I have a basic understanding of how they work, so we will try to muddle through a game soon.

Thaw of the Lich Lord Game 3

Game 3 of the campaign featured a cultist cart at the centre of the table which our warbands had to rob, so the game saw a headlong rush for the centre and some conflict between my normally skittish skavens and FG's medievals. However, as random monsters began to appear on the exit sectors of Adrian and FG's warbands, they had to abandon the struggle in the middle and pull their forces back to ensure that they could get their treasures off the table.

My skavens suffered appalling casualties, chiefly from the Grenade spell from FG's wizard - I must learn to make them keep tactical distance between each other. Only five of the original eight soldiers made it off table, with one of my treasure hunters going down and nearly losing his Gloves of Strength to the other warbands (we played that any character with a magical item could be looted). On their way back they were attacked by a wraith, which was immune to non-magical weapons - another weakness in my line-up.

After the game we realised that random monsters should only have a 50% chance of appearing with every treasure token looted, instead of being automatic. This would change the complexion of the game - with fewer monsters to worry about, we can focus more on robbing each other instead.

Thaw of the Lich Lord Game 2

We played Game 2 of the campaign last week. The game once more saw a skirmish between FG and Adrian's warbands, with my skavens skulking on the sidelines until the NPC wizard was weakened by the barbarians before I moved in for the kill.

Unfortunately, I ended up with the least amount of experience points from my strategy, but I did have fun using my Control Construct scroll on the construct that FG's wizard created!

Also of note was the fact that both Adrian and I actually forgot about one treasure token which was hidden from our real-life lines of sight, and FG got an easy treasure!

We are planning to play Game 3 this week, and I think my skavens will have to take a more aggressive strategy if I am to not fall behind.

Frostgrave 2nd Edition - Thaw of the Lich Lord Game 1

Even though FG and I playtested for the first edition of Frostgrave, we did not actually play the game after it was released by Osprey. However, having tried a game of Mantic's Vanguard and finding it not quite what we wanted for a fantasy skirmish campaign, we decided to give the newly released second edition of Frostgrave a try instead.

At FG's suggestion, we decided to try and play through the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign. FG used his generic medieval warband made up of Perry plastic miniatures, Adrian fielded a barbarian warband using his Blood Rage miniatures (supplemented by a few of my Frostgrave barbarians), while I stuck to my Skavens.

The game was as fun as we remembered it, with a lot of tactical decisions to be made, as well as strategic ones due to the campaign nature of the game.

My skavens made it off the table virtually unscathed, while FG and Adrian's warbands clashed briefly before deciding to withdraw with the treasures they have each collected. The end result saw all three wizards gaining between 200 to 300 experience points, so the campaign is still on paper balanced at this point.

Mantic Vanguard Game

Adrian, FG, and I got together for a game of Vanguard yesterday. We were hoping to get some sort of a campaign going, and decided to give the rules a try since they are available for free from Mantic. We played a three-sided game: Adrian fielding his dwarves, FG his Brotherhood (with the water elemental you see in the photo above), and me fielding ratkin/skavens.

We got most of the rules correct, but we played rather conservatively and none of us actually pushed our figures to gain Fatigue, so a large part of the game was not "utilised".

By and large the rules felt rather generic, which isn't really a criticism since it also means it's easy to learn and play.

At the end of the session, we decided we will instead give the new, second edition of Frostgrave a try instead. FG and I enjoyed playtesting the first edition, but never actually played a game after the rules were officially published; this will be a good opportunity to get back into the game.

Hot Wheels 2 Jet Z for Gaslands

Here is the Hot Wheels Jet 2 Z I bought a while back. I decided that I like the bare metal look of the body, and didn't want to actually paint it.

My concept for this vehicle is to use it as a buggy that races in front of the other cars and drop caltrops before them, so I did not give it any weapon. I did want to add some bits on it though, so I dug through my bits box and found some Ork bits that went with the "spikes" theme to this buggy.

Pendraken 10mm FPW Bavarians

A couple months ago I finally bit the bullet and sent out orders for two 10mm Arab Revolt armies to be painted. Shortly after that, I realised that I should have ordered some German Asian Corps figures too, but by then the figures had been sent to the painter. I decided I want them bad enough to buy a pack of the figures and paint them myself (30 figures - how hard can it be?), and since I was paying postage, I decided to get a pack of the Bavarians to add to my FPW army - ironically, when I bit the bullet and had my FPW armies painted years ago, I left the Bavarians out too.

The Germans were a breeze to paint - I will show them once I have done their bases - and I was beginning to think that 10mm wasn't really that difficult to paint... then I started on the Bavarians.

Compared to the relatively sparse WW1 figures, FPW figures had a lot of details on them. A lot of *fine* details. I mean, the figures had facial hair, and there were cockades on the helmets, and straps on the canteens on the backpacks!

I painted 18 of the figures as line infantry, and the remaining 12 as jaegers - this gives me a battalion of each under the rules. Ideally I should have an entire division of them, but I don't think I can summon up the energy to paint all those figures myself.

More Mad Robot Miniatures figures

While I await the delivery of the Imperium Immortalis kickstarter, I worked on increasing the types of troops I can field with my Warzone Imperial figures under the Trench Hammer rules.

The Trench Hammer rules recommend six figures to a squad, but based on what I have, I decided that I will field five-figure squads. The photo above shows the dismounted version of the cavalry squad I put together. 

The second photos show three "specialist" figures. Now under Trench Hammer, infantry squads come in different flavours, such as MG squad, Assault squad, Rifle-grenade squad, and Flamer squad. Since Trench Hammer does not use figure removal to mark casualty, I realised I could indicate which type a squad is by having four "standard" figures, plus one "specialist" figure. The three figures will therefore mark a squad as either a Flamer squad, an Assault squad, or a Rifle-grenade squad.

Minairons Miniatures 20mm Spanish Civil War Militia

The Minairons figures that Martin ordered finally arrived after being stuck at Spanish customs for weeks, and I managed to paint up my half of the militia last week.

The figures above comprise of a box of the militiamen (more or less - there is a missing MG gunner and a duplicate figure), and half box of the militiawomen. The figures have an AB aesthetics, and the women are even slimmer. I really enjoyed painting them, especially the more "civilian" looking ones.

I've kept to a limited palette, but there is still a rag-tag appearance to the force; this is something we predicted, and so we have decided to let Martin do all the basing work so the figures can have a coherent look. Hopefully I can post photos of these guys with their bases done soon.

Mid-week Kings of War 3rd Edition Game

Adrian, FG, and I managed to get a weekday evening game of KOW 3 in.

We played a 1750-points game: Adrian's dwarves versus my night goblins.

My army consists of mainly spears and archers, and no monsters or warmachines, and so I had 14 units versus Adrian's 7 units and 3 cannons; the goblins battleline stretched from one end of the table to the other.

Despite their numerical advantage, the goblins were no match against the dwarves once in melee, and at the end of Turn 6 every single unit had been routed.

I had a lot of fun nonetheless. I understand the list is basically a dud list, but I think I will continue with it and improve my goblin-wave strategy until I can beat the dwarves one day. Someday.

Modiphius The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms Terrain

What's the next best thing to having an airbrush? Having a friend who has an airbrush.

Remember the dungeon tiles that I made earlier for my planned megadungeon campaign? Well, when I saw the photos of the Modiphius The Elder Scrolls resin terrain pieces, I thought they would be a perfect match for the tiles.

The pieces were beautiful, but giving them the paint job that they deserved was going to be difficult. Fortunately for me, FG had recently purchased a whole airbrush set-up, and kindly agreed to painting them for me. As you can see in these photos, he did a great job of matching the hue and the "lighting" of the pieces.

Here is a close-up of one of the wall tiles. There are actually wall niches for bodies, which are also a feature of the megadungeon I am planning to use! 

Here is another photo of the walls. I love the pre-historic-looking whirls pattern on the walls; in my fluff the megadungeon had its beginnings as an underground burial complex for successive cultures, from the neolithic age, through to the bronze age (yes, the bronze age is a thing for my setting - see the ancient magical bronze sword the fighter is holding in the photo), and into the early iron age.

There are four wall sections and six junction/end pieces in the set I bought - not enough to wall up every room that the PCs will go through, but my intention is more to use them for backdrops during combat.

Warzone Bauhaus Ducal Militia

I got the Warzone 2nd Edition box set more than three years ago, painted up the Imperial half of the figures, and then left the Bauhaus figures in the box. Then two months ago, I backed the Imperium Immortalis kickstarter, more or less purely on the fact that they were sci-fi figures in pickelhauben, and decided that it was time to get the Bauhaus figures painted.

Easier said than done though.

Two months ago we were still in lockdown, so even getting paints were an issue. When lockdown lifted, FG and I made a trip to the local art supplies store to get the paints I needed, and Martin helped me to get the Tamiya spray paint that I needed for the base coat.

As I did with the Imperials, I chose to stick to the original WW1 colour scheme, except that I did not use brown for the pickelhauben.

Once assembled and sprayed in their base coat, it took me three evenings to finish painting 40 figures, and then as many to apply the number decals to their shoulder pads.

The uniform looks pretty drab, even with the gold buttons I gave them. Fortunately, the Germans used red numerals for the regimental numbers, which gives a bit of a highlight to the figures. It was a chore cutting and applying 80 numerals to the shoulder pads - in addition, I applied several coats of Citadel Lamian Medium to dull the shine of the decals afterwards - but I think the result was worth it.

The Imperium Immortalis kickstarter is scheduled to deliver in December 2020, so it will be months before I receive them. As a precaution I have taken a photo of the paints I used for these figures to make sure that I can remember the exact colours I used.

In the meantime, I have ordered a few more figures from Mad Robot Miniatures to supplement the Imperial side, so look out for them in the coming weeks!

Gaslands Game 2

FG, Martin, and I met up for another game of Gaslands and to pass stuff to each other today.

Since our last meeting, Martin has put together a post-apocalyptic self-propelled gun, while I have bought three more Hot Wheels cars; the local mall was having a 3 for 2 sale, and after spending way too long at the rack at the store, I decided on the three following vehicles:

I picked the Warthog because I had an idea that I wanted to field a buggy for the game, but then I saw the Jet Z, which I thought looked the part. I got the El Camino to make up the numbers - fortunately Martin liked the way it looked, so it's with him now.

I still stripped the paint off the Jet Z, and primed some of the engine parts black, but I haven't quite decided how to paint it. I kind of like the bare metal look, but as it is now there is nothing particularly 'Gaslands' about it.

Anyway, for the game I set up a scenario where FG and I had to drive around the course and run over some objectives (boxes), while Martin tried to stop us, which he did.

It was a short game, but fun nonetheless. I think we are all still driving too carefully and not taking our chances with the Handling dice... perhaps having more vehicles on the table will encourage a more reckless attitude in the future.

Gaz Truck and barricades for Spanish Civil War

So a few weeks ago Martin decided to paint a T-26 model he had in his collection in Spanish Civil War Nationalist colours, and then one thing led to another, and before long the group had committed to doing the SCW in 20mm, using Osprey's A World Aflame.

Martin is doing the lion's share of the work, and for my part I am painting up thirty-plus Republican militia, a truck, and a few barricades.

Now one thing that struck me when I looked at photos and videos from the SCW is jst how many sandbags were used. Streets, walkways, and windows were all blocked by walls of sandbags. There were also many photos and footage of road barricades made from stone or concrete blocks.

We realised that to reproduce the battelfields of the SCW, we would need lots of sandbags and barricades.

I managed to find some 1/72 scale sandbags I had from a WW2 model kit, but I quickly found that stacking sandbags to even chest height required a large number of them. To maiximise the number of barricades I could produce, I decided to make some of the stone/concrete barricades by chopping up some plastic sprues I had and then stacking and gluing them together, before topping them with my remaining sandbags. The whole process takes too long to be efficient, so I will have to relook at my options.

Also as part of my contribution to the project, I wanted to paint up a truck. The A World Aflame rules have an interesting rule where your units may run out of ammunition and will need to replenish them from a cache. A truck would make a suitable representation of the cache, and can of course be used as transport, or just as scatter terrain or table dressing.

Minairons Miniatures, which we are getting our figures from, produce a couple of truck models, but these are made of resin and quite costly. I decided instead of get the cheapest Soviet Gaz truck I could find off ebay, and ended up with a Military Wheels model. Unfortunately, the quality of the kit was quite disappointing. The plastic was brittle, and there was a lot of flash on the parts. I assembled the bare minimum parts to get the basic shape of the vehicle up, leaving out much of the undercarriage.

I sprayed the finished model white, and then before the white paint dried completely, I sprayed on a thick coat of Tamiya Olive Drab. This gave an uneven finish and some pitting, and an interesting results where the colour on each panel faded towards the edge, and as the paint dried there was some sort of discolouration where some parts were more brown than green. This gave the model a sun-bleached appearance which I was quite pleased with.

I then gave the model a black and then brown wash, and brushed on some light brown as mud on the tyres and the lower parts of the chassis.

All in all it is not a model that will stand up to close scrutiny, but for gaming purposes it should suffice. 

Gaslands Game 1

Martin, FG and I got together for our first face-to-face game since... in nine months. The lockdown ended a couple of weeks ago, and there hasn't been a surge in cases, so I figured that it was OK to meet and catch up, pass each other stuff we have ordered for one another, and have a few beers together; in the interest of infection control, we used separate containers for our chips.

The game we have chosen for the session was Gaslands; it looked like a light, fun game, and the guys wouldn't have to bring a lot of figures on top of all the other stuff they were bringing to my place.

I have made some dashboards earlier, and the day before the game I made a few gates with some plastic sci-fi bits I had lying around and some hazard chevrons printed onto paper, laid out a race area, and we were ready to go.

We played the simple Death Race scenario, and it was a close race, with all of us crossing the finishing line in the same phase. We enjoyed it so much we decided to replay the race again. In the second race FG's vehicle got wrecked by Martin's vehicle and screeched to a halt just on the finishing line, allowing Martin to take the victory.

What surprised me about the game was how playable it was. I saw a few videos of the game on youtube and it seemed that most of the time the vehicles got wrecked by combat and collision before they even complete a full circuit. In our games we kept our eyes and the goal and did not deliberately manoeuvre our vehicles to attack - in fact, FG did not even get to use his mortars in either game.

The Performance Car seems to be a good choice for the game, since they received an extra activation every time they were collided into. My choice of a pick-up truck, however, seemed poor, as with its poor Handling I could not even manage to shift gears most turns.

The trick, it seems, is to have a team of at least two vehicles, and that was what we decided to do after the game: buy and build at least another vehicle each. I am keen to buy a buggy on my next trip to the mall, but FG is of the opinion that you don't pick a vehicle: you stand before the Matchbox rack and see which one calls out to you...

Kromlech Giant Mushrooms and GW Night Goblin Fanatics

I got a few packs of giant mushrooms from Kromlech a while back to decorate the bases of my Night Goblin army, but have not done anything with the larger mushrooms until now; Adrian had finished painting his Dwarven army during the lockdown period, and was keen to play a game of Kings of War 3rd edition, so I decided to make some objective markers.

I pinned the mushrooms onto some resin bases I have, slopped some paint on the mushroom caps, and dry-brushed the bases green - the end result looks like aquarium decoration. 

Next, I decided to refurbish a couple of Night Goblin Fanatics figures I bought on eBay. Night Goblin Fanatics are one of the things that made me fall in love with GW (the other thing was when I first found out that in Blood Bowl, you could make a Treeman throw a Halfling - that just blew my teenage mind), but the problem with the older, metal figures was that the chains had a tendency to snap - and that was what happened with these two figures.

The little fellow on the left started life being almost vertical, with his feet pointed straight up to the sky - this was of course an accident waiting to happen, and it did. I glued the chain back onto the ball, but I was certain that if I tried to restore the figure in its original configuration, it would break again. Looking at the shape of its hood, I decided to position it in a more horizontal position and make it look like the ball had pulled him forward in a headlong dive. To achieve a two-point contact, I inserted a pin onto the base, and attached the end of the chain to the pin, and then hid the pin with some tuft. I like how the goblin's right hand just hovers a few millimetres above the ground, giving it a dynamic look.

The need for a two-point contact meant that I had to use a base that was larger than the 25mm round base. (There are no rules for Fanatics in the KOW goblin list, but the goblins do have an "extra attacks on first melee attack of the game" mechanic in the form of Mawpups, which I thought could be proxied by the Fanatics.) A 40mm round base was just a tad too small for the figure, and a 50mm base would have had too big a footprint; a standard rectangular cavalry base would do the trick, but I felt that the right angles did not look right for a figure that was supposed to be in motion. Fortunately, I had a few oval bases from the Fireforge skeleton cavalry box, which was just the right size.

For the other figure, I had to replace the broken chain with a piece of plastic chain I had from my bits box. To secure the figure to the base, I trimmed the tab on its bottom, and cut a rectangular slot on the base to receive the tab. To achieve a two-point contact, I glued the ball to the base. The figure now looked like it was trying to launch the ball off from the ground. To add to that effect, I thinned the PVA in the area of the arc which I imagined the ball would trace before I added the basing material, and painted the area a darker brown to simulate the wet earth that was exposed by the movement of the ball. The oval shape of the base added to the look of the whole thing. In retrospect I should have actually scraped a groove into the base itself, adding more depth to the groove.

I had a lot of fun working on these two figures. Maybe I should look for more old Fanatic figures on eBay to restore...

Getting Ready for Kings of War

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my group is planning to play some Kings of War Third Edition.

There are a total of 12 different scenarios in Third Edition, and many of them require the use of special markers or tokens, namely Objective Markers, Loot Counters, and Bluff Counters.

I plan to use the Kromlech giant mushrooms pieces as the themed Objective Markers for my Night Goblin army, and for Loot Counters I will be using the reproduction ancient coins which we use in our other games; but the Bluff Counters are something which I needed to get my hands on.

Mantic does sell a tokens set, but it is a little pricey, and Litko surprisingly does not make a set. I therefore decided to make a set of my own, using the Renedra 25mm round bases, and some Dark Angels decals I had lying around.

I sprayed both sides of the bases with a dark green spray paint I had. Then I applied the decals onto the smooth side of the bases, and sealed them with a semi-gloss varnish; the rough side of the base was sealed with a matt varnish. Unfortunately, I did not have any decals for zero, so I left the 'zero' counters blank - since these are removed as soon as they are revealed, it was not a real issue.

I also made a few pieces of scatter terrain using the Renedra bases to help break up the flatness of the gaming surface. These are made by just gluing some sand and gravel and some bits of cork on them. The pieces are then sprayed brown and dry-brushed a lighter brown, while the cork pieces are painted black and then dry-brushed grey. The edges of the bases are then stippled with dark and light green paint to help them blend with my wargaming mat. Then bits of foam foliage are hot-glued onto the bases.

Finally, I also decided to texture and paint up the six Renedra movement trays I still have lying around. Again, these are painted to help the trays blend into the pattern on the mat.

Fireforge Necromancer and Crippled God Foundry Skeleton Warriors

Here are some more resin figures from the kickstarters that I backed: the necromancer from Fireforge Games, flanked by two skeleton warriors from Crippled God Foundry.

I painted the necromancer in yellow instead of the "traditional" purple on the advice from FG's , who suggested that I painted it after Zagor, the Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I am quite happy with the effect, and when it came time to paint the skeleton warriors, I thought I would make yellow my new undead colour.

All the three figures are resin, but a view of the rear of the figures reveals the poor resolution of the Fireforge casting compared to that of Crippled God Foundry; it's a shame, as I like the design of the necromancer figure.

For the skeleton swordsman's shield I wanted to give the effect of paint peeling off the wooden shield. I did this by dabbing white paint onto the surface, and then applying a yellow wash to it.

The large surface of the axehead on the skeleton axeman model allowed me to do some heavy weathering on it.

Hopefully these figures will see some action in one of my RPG campaigns in the future.