More 6mm Prussians

As those that are following the Towton Project will know, I have rather a lot of Wars of the Roses figures to paint. To keep myself fresh for painting Wars of the Roses figures I have also been working on some other side projects. One of these is the Prussian order of battle for Lobositz. This week I have painted four more infantry units and two cuirassier units for that project. I painted some artillery and half a dozen other infantry regiments some time back and you can see those HERE if you did not see them last time I posted.

I am using the order of battle in Frank Chadwick's Battles of the Seven Years War and plan to use his Volley and Bayonet rules for gaming this period. Conveniently, Lobositz provides a large enough force to use with the Road to Glory battle system in Volley and Bayonet too. I like it when things come together like that! The Road to Glory system is a battle generator designed to make even one-off battles slightly different by using a card-based deployment system. Players draw a card and deploy according to that card. This can mean that elements of the player's army are not present at the start of the battle and will only arrive as reinforcements. I am really looking forward to trying this out. I suppose I had better get painting if I am ever to do so!

Group shot of the new figures (click all pictures for larger images)


IR 30


IR 27


IR 21


Cuirassier Regiments 2 (back) and 10 (front)

The Prussians Are Coming

I should be painting 6mm Wars of the Roses figures. Naturally this led to me getting distracted and gave me a desire to paint some Seven Years War Prussians that have been lying around for ages. Upon looking through my collection of unpainted lead, I realised that I had enough figures to produce a small Prussian force for Volley and Bayonet: Road to Glory. This is the start of that force.

Prussian infantry with a converged grenadier battalion at the back.


Prussian field artillery.

The figures are all Baccus 6mm and I still need to paint a few more battalions of infantry and several brigades of cavalry for the force, but it is more than half way there now. I am back to painting Wars of the Roses figures for the time being, but will return to these later this year. I really want to try out the new Volley and Bayonet rules but have other projects on my plate at the moment too. Once the Prussians are done, I plan to do a Swedish force for the Seven Years War too. It will look very similar to my Great Northern War army, but I think there are enough noticeable differences even in 6mm for it to be worth my while doing a paint-job conversion on the figures.

Maelynn, an Elven Mage

My brother used to like Confrontation. I don't know if he still does, but he never talks about it now. While he was still enthusiastic, I picked up some Cynwall Elves, thinking that I could use them in skirmish gaming and also try Confrontation against him. That never happened, but I finally got around to painting one of them: Maelynn, an Elven mage with some kind of construct on her back. I am not completely convinced by my painting, but at least she is coloured in so I can use her. The only problem is that she towers over all my other ordinary elves that I plan to use for games of Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, so I may have to relegate her to ebay or to the display cupboard. The same problem applies to the other Cynwall Elves I have. Perhaps I need to rethink how I plan to use them. One thought that occurs is to use them on their own as a Song of Blades and Heroes warband. I have enough figures for that with a couple of extras for reinforcements.

Maelynn:

Chaos in Cairo - My Warbands

I have intended to play Chaos in Cairo since I picked up the first edition rules a few years ago, but never got around to it. The rules looked like fun but I was not entirely sure about the approach to the game taken in them. With the release of the second edition, I find all my reservations removed. As a result of this sudden burst of enthusiasm, I dug out my pulp figures to see what I could do. I had enough figures already painted to produce a full Servants of Set warband, with plenty left over for reinforcements.

Servants of Set warband:


I had some figures ready for the Archaeologists, but needed to paint a couple more (the chap in the fez and the Connell look-alike):


It also spurred me on to paint some of my Wargods Eater of the Dead figures as well as their human accomplice. Here is the Mummy warband:


I am now looking forward to playing Chaos in Cairo and will report on our games as and when we get around to playing. Steve is also very keen to do a BlackPowderPunk version of Chaos in Carpathia, so I am working on a warband for that too. More on that at a later date.

Demonworld Elves

For about three or four years now I have had a unit of Demonworld Elven Unicorn Riders sitting undercoated on my desk. I finally decided to get them painted and so here they are in all their Elven glory (click the pics for larger versions):

I can honestly say that I did not enjoy painting them. To some extent this is the fault of the figures; they are too nice. These castings are exquisite, beautifully detailed and beautifully proportioned. They have little details on them that set them off just right too. And this is the problem. I wanted to paint them quickly and clear them off the desk. The figures wanted to be painted with oodles of shading and highlighting. They demand a level of attention that most would lavish only on 28mm figures and I did not want to do that. I wanted figures that look good enough at arm's length and I wanted to clear them quickly off the desk to make space for the next phase of the Towton project. Poor Unicorn Riders!

Some time back I painted these Demonworld Elven Heroes, so I thought I would photograph them while I was at it since they have not been seen here before:

I did not have the same problems with these heroes. Instead, my real problem with the heroes was that I was out of practice painting detailed figures. At the time I painted these, I was in a groove speed-painting 15mm Peter Pig figures for AK47 Republic and PBI2. I was out of practice painting the additional detail that these figures have.

Still, overall I am happy enough with the final outcome on both sets of figures. They are not great but I would not be shamed in front of the wargaming community putting them on the table. That leads me to my next dilemma. For the sake of completeness I have based them up for Demonworld. I have Demonworld and Empires and have actually played and enjoyed Empires, which I originally intended to use as a campaign system for other games. I have not played Demonworld yet and really wonder if I ever shall. I have enough figures for a small Elven army of about 1000 points (5 units plus characters) but the specific figures for it are OOP at the moment so I cannot add more of the same to my army and I do not have an opposing army, although I do have Harpies and Goblin Spearbearers. I could expand the armies using other ranges for the most part. Some troop options (e.g. Goblin Bear Riders) are not readily available though but I could proxy other troop types instead if need be. The problem is whether there is any point to this. After all, how many people actually have the rules and how many would want to play? So, what do I do? Sell the armies? Finish painting them and just keep them for display? Rebase them for another system?

I could always rebase them for HotT, which I have and have enjoyed in the past. That would give me three or four Elven armies and most of a Goblin army. I could add additional troops to the Goblin army from other ranges to complete it. I am tempted to use the Harpies as 6mm minor demons and 28mm imps for our Warrior Heroes campaign. That could certainly work. Whatever I decide in the end, at least I have cleared a bit more of the lead pile.

Basic Impetus - Wars of the Roses Armies

As those of you that have read the Rather Large Towton Project blog will know, I have embarked on a rather daft venture to refight Towton as close to a 1:1 scale as possible. One part of keeping this project fresh is making sure that I can use the figures I am painting before I have painted the whole Towton order of battle.

So, bearing in mind that I have tried the Impetus rules and enjoyed them when Steve Kelly dropped by, I have downloaded the Basic Impetus rules and produced a couple of armies for them. Basic Impetus is the free 'light' version of Impetus and there are dozens of army lists available for the rules. Having tried Impetus, I think that BI can help me regain the joy of my early forays into DBA when it first came out. The armies comprise around 7-10 elements, so it is possible to collect large numbers of armies if you wish, or just enjoy the game cheaply, a must for a thrifty gamer!

I already had a few packets of Wars of the Roses figures before I began the Towton project. Ok, well, maybe I mean more than a few. Not all of these will be used in the Towton project because they represent troop types that were not present. I dug these out and added what I needed to the painting pile. As a result, in short order I had enough elements to field all of the options for Lancastrian and Yorkist armies. Each army consists of 8 elements, and each has 3 options that can be added in exchange for elements already in the army. The number of options in BI armies is not ridiculously large, like in the most recent DBA rules, but reflects the sensible nature of the first edition of DBA. Hooray for Dadi e Piombo, say I!

The armies below are arrayed with their core elements at the front. The three optional elements are arrayed separately to the rear. The figures are 6mm Baccus, based on 60mm x 30mm mdf bases from East Riding Miniatures using the Baccus Basing System.

The Yorkist Army (click the pictures for a larger version)

The Yorkist army consists of the retinues of Edward IV, Lord Hastings and Lord Berners.

The Lancastrian Army

The Lancastrian army consists of the retinues of Lord Grey of Codnor and Sir John Heron of the Ford. It also features the retinues of Viscount Bourchier and Lord Fitzwarin standing in as Lancastrians until I actually get some more Lancastrian running dog lackeys painted.

More Clearing The Decks - TYW Swedes

I recently rebased my Thirty Years War Swedes to make a couple of armies. OK, so technically it is not two completely separate armies. It is two armies with a core of models in common and additional elements to make up the rest. I played Impetus the other day and really enjoyed it, so I decided to quickly rebase my Thirty Years War Swedes for the Basic Impetus variant Basic Baroque. I am hoping that BI and BB return the same level of fun to ancients and renaissance gaming that DBA did in the early nineties. I have had this Swedish army for a goodly number of years but, like many other armies I own, it was never completed due to lack of opponents interested in the period. The army was originally put together for Renaissance Principles of War, which means I have quite a few spare bits for the BB armies now. I am thinking of reworking some of these to provide a Danish or Imperialist opponent for the Swedes. Given the small size of the armies, that should be feasible with minimum additional expenditure.

The figures are all 6mm by Irregular Miniatures on mdf bases from East Riding Miniatures.

The early Swedish army (Click the pics for larger images):

Later Swedish army:

The figures are all based on 60x30mm stands, because I had them to hand and am getting used to using them. I am not sure that this was the right choice but it is done now. I think I should have opted for 80mm frontage stands instead, which is another option that the game gives. This would have given the cavalry a bit more space for the commanded shot. Still, it gives me another army that is ready to use, and the point of wargaming for me is rolling dice and talking shite with my mates. This army is ready for another bout of that.

The Rather Large Towton Project - Update

I have just completed my first contingent for the Towton project we are doing. This consists of 294 figures in 6mm. You can see the results on the Towton Blog. Here's a shot of the whole contingent to tempt you to look there (click for a larger version):

My own contribution to the whole project will be about 8500 figures. I hope that the others can contribute half as much each. If they do then we shall have a truly epic game to play. The figures are all Baccus 6mm and they are awaiting the flags we are due to get from Freezywater/Lance and Longbow Society. Watch this space or, better yet, follow progress on the other blog.

The Danish Army at Helsingborg

I have previously posted pictures of my Swedish army for the Battle of Helsingborg. As part of my clearing the decks process, I have now finished rebasing my Danish army too. As usual, click the pictures for larger images. If you want to see more picture of this army and the individual units, you can find them in my Photobucket account.

The whole army for Helsingborg using Polemos order of battle:




The army is now based on 60mm x 30mm stands. Originally, when I first conceived of the Helsinborg project, I envisaged using Koenig Krieg to refight the battle. However, further experience of Koenig Krieg suggested to me that those rules might not suit my schedule and available gaming time. Therefore the project stalled with both armies painted and stuck to KK bases. Then along came Polemos. I decided to rebase to that standard. I figured that I could then use the armies with Volley and Bayonet too. I like Volley and Bayonet, although some find them a little simplistic. I also think that Volley and Bayonet may well suit my available gaming time better, although I intend to try both out.

As an example of how the units look, here is a picture of the Guard infantry:


And here is a picture of Bulow's Ungarske Dragoon Regiment.


Just to show how truly geeky I am, here are the casualty markers that I put together for the original Koenig Krieg project. There is a full set for every regiment in the army, painted in regimental uniforms.


Some figures that are not needed for Helsingborg, but which I rebased anyway:


Following the rebasing, I also find myself with a lot of extra figures left over. The Koenig Kreig battalions are larger than the Polemos / Volley and Bayonet ones so I have the equivalent of half a dozen regiments of infantry spare, as well as some additional commanders and dismounted dragoons. The infantry will have their facings changed and will become regiments that fought at Gadebusch in 1712. These spare figures will need command figures adding to them too, but I have plenty in the lead pile so that is not a problem. I shall be assuming that most regiments had not received their new red uniforms by then, but if I need to begin afresh with some units then I shall paint them in the red uniforms.

Clearing the Decks

With my first batch of figures for the Towton project staring reproachfully at me from the side of my painting desk, I need to make some space for them. I also need to minimise distractions from other projects. Therefore I have set out to clear up what I can. First up are some Viking Age shepherds and their trusty dog, Gnasher. I know he is not a gnaschund but I could not think of a better name and he really does look like he is up to no good:

These figures are Gripping Beast, I think. They were already painted by my brother as part of a 28mm Viking army for DBM or some similar system. I was not keen on the ink wash my brother had used. It was brown over the grey cloaks, so I repainted the main details on the figures and dipped them in a magic wash solution using dark grey paint as the pigment. Then I rebased them. It seems to have worked well enough. These figures are extras for our WHAA campaign so I did not really want to spend ages getting them perfect. As it is, they should not be too embarrassing to field.

The other mob that I have finished up is my Swedish Hussars for the Seven Years War. These are 6mm Baccus figures. Baccus does not produce a Swedish range for the Seven Years War, but it is perfectly feasible to use similarly accoutred figures from the Prussian and Austrian ranges. On the left we have the Yellow Hussars (Gul Husaren) and on the right the Blue Hussars (Bla Husaren).

The Blue Hussars were the original unit, formed in 1757. The Yellow Hussars were formed in 1761. They are the only hussar units in the whole Swedish army at this time so any Swedish army of this period will need to include them or do without light cavalry. Pengel and Hurt note that they cannot find any evidence for standards carried by the hussars. I have chosen to give them generic livfanor because I think that a hussar regiment really ought to have flags.

Until I paint the actual Swedish regiments of the Seven Years War, I plan to use my Great Northern War Swedes as stand-ins. The uniforms are close enough so it will not be glaringly obvious except to the most pernickety of people.

What's Going On Now? - July Update

I'm sitting waiting for Steve to turn up so that we can play Dirtside 2 at last. When did we paint our 6mm sci-fi stuff? It feels like yonks ago, as if we have been putting off playing the game for years.

In the meantime, July seems to have gone slowly as far as painting goes. I did manage to paint my 6mm Border Kingdoms army and posted about that on the Talomir Tales site. I have been slowly working on painting my Totanem for Wargods of Aegyptus and have just completed them today. I need to varnish them before I can photograph them though. Pray for a sunny start tomorrow to give me time to varnish them then lots of rain to water our new lawn!

I did paint 130 15mm figures for my brother. I guess that took up some time too. Boy did I curse those Carthaginian figures with their nasty little overhangs. Still, they got done and I am being paid in lead. Thrift at work, or something like that. I paint his figures, I get new toys and the balance is maintained.

The Wargods figures mentioned in one of my recent blog posts sold, creating another opportunity for spending without upsetting the thrift balance.

I have also spent a lot of time editing and revising the Warrior Heroes rules for Ed Teixeira at TwoHourWargames. This seems to have taken rather longer than I anticipated. It might well have been easier had I just ditched his text and re-written it instead of trying to make his text conform to my ideas of how it should be written. I shall have the battle rules sorted out by the end of August at the latest. I promise (barring personal crises, existential angst and global apocalypse). I think they will be considerably easier to refer to than the old set. I hope so anyway, after my comments on this forum about the original version of the rules. Time to put my money where my mouth is!

Speaking of money, one of the goals of this blog was to chronicle my progress at reducing my lead mountain. Hmm. I seem to have slipped off the wagon a bit. If you have seen my posts on various forums, you will know what I am talking about. If not, all is explained on the Rather Large Towton Project Blog. It is clearly not thrifty to start such a large project, and yet, in some senses it is. Am I spouting nonsense? I don't think so. I am committing to buy for this project around £350 worth of figures. That's rather a lot of dosh. I plan to sell stuff to pay for it, which will probably double my workload but will result in clearing out things I do not need, while helping to build the new project. The other advantage of this project is that I am actually very interested in this period of history (mid- to late-15th century). It's not as interesting as Vikings or Scandinavia, but it is pretty interesting for a modern period. More on this later. Time for a game.

Progress and the future!

I have not updated this blog for nearly two weeks now, so it is about time I did. The question you are all asking yourselves is, what has he been up to? You haven't? Oh well, maybe it was just me. Well, my figures sold on ebay. I even had a couple of bids on them, although they did not go for the insane prices I saw a single Anubi warrior go for; £15 is a ridiculous price to pay for one painted 28mm figure, yet I saw several going for that much! I now need to sort out my next batch of ebay goods, although I am tempted to try alternative forums for selling because of the 15% cut that ebay and Paypal take in total. I know that I would pay 10% at a normal auction so I can handle that, but hitting you with the Paypal stuff too when it is all the same business feels like gouging.

In painting terms, I have painted my 6mm objective, the Border Kingdoms army for our Warrior Heroes campaign. It is featured on my Talomir Tales blog. I have also spent too much time helping my brother out by painting 130 Carthaginian types for a Field of Glory army in a very short space of time. He entered a tournament without realising that his normal army would not be eligible. What a numpty! Always read the rules!! :-) This has affected my targets for this month, but I think I can still meet them, and he is paying me in lead. I have also started making progress on the Totanem that were scheduled for painting this month. I still hope to complete them by the end of the month.

And finally, I attended the Baccus open day last Saturday. It was really good fun. I learnt about the miniature production process from green to final casting, which was quite informative. I had not realised how much effort went into the process so early on. I also got to see the first greens of a forthcoming Viking range that the nice Baccus people are working on. There was the opportunity to spend money and I spent about half of my ill-gotten ebay earnings on Sassanian Persians (Mirish in our WH campaign) and Amazons (Hykar in our WH campaign). The rest will be spent on figure storage. I have my eye on some figure trays from Kaiser Rushforth, since Figures in Comfort is between owners as far as I know. It's a shame because FiC produce a series of trays that fits my Polemos figures perfectly, which is exactly what I need. I shall see what Kaiser Rushforth have and report back later.

Another result of the Baccus open day was a discussion over a pint of beer with Peter Berry about possible games. Someone (no names, no pack drill) had mentioned that Towton would be a good battle to refight and hinted that others might like to do that. No one picked up the gauntlet. Peter suggested that I might project manage such an event, so I mooted it on the Baccus forum and received positive responses from several people. We are now in serious discussions about producing a demo game for shows in 2011, the 550th anniversary of the bloodiest battle on English soil. With any luck we shall be in a position to show off a large game with around 10,000 figures per side by that date. If we really work at it, we could double that number of figures and still have a playable game. My ultimate goal would be to produce a totally epic 1:1 man:figure ratio for the game but I think we might need a bank loan to buy the figures, even in 6mm. Therefore a smaller game is more realistic. Watch this space. It's not thrifty but I shall probably have to fund it buy selling stuff and painting figures, so it may well still fit the definition. Anyone want to buy my lead mountain before I start?

Ja vi elsker dette landet ... (more about Forsvaret Skandinavias)

Following my rather abysmal attempt at a photo yesterday, I decided to take a few detail shots of Forsvaret Skandinavias. These have come out rather better than yesterday's attempt. So, without further ado, I present to you the troops that defend the Scandinavian nations and maintain their neutrality throughout the problems that afflict the 31st century. In the description of the following pictures, I have linked the names of each vehicle to the codes on the appropriate manufacturer's website. Remember to click on the pictures for larger images.

A tank section with a self-propelled anti-tank section behind it:

The typical tank section consists of 3 Thor MBTs, a medium hover battle tank. The chassis of the Thor MBT is used for many variants, such as the Thor Salvo Missile Tank section behind the MBTs. The Thor SMT provides effective close support and a devastating punch for taking out enemy armour.

Armour is good for blasting holes in the enemy battle lines, but only infantry can really hold the objectives. A typical FS platoon consists of one infantry command squad carried in a Lynx IFV (front right in the picture), four infantry squads carried in standard Lynx APCs, and a Lynx Mortar Carrier to provide additional fire support. The infantry all carry standard FS Assault Rifles and wear uniforms reinforced with Kevlar in vulnerable areas, heavy Kevlar jackets and a Kevlar helmet (infantry by Baccus).


The Recce Section is an essential part of any armed force. You can't fight the enemy without good intelligence and these guys get the info at the sharp end. This section consists of two squads of infantry carried in a Lynx APC and a Hyane Armoured Car with 20mm Autocannon. The recce infantry are armed in the same way as the ordinary infantry but their role is not really to fight. The armoured car and the APC have weapons primarily so that they can shoot and scoot once they have the intel that they need.


Supporting arms of the FS include artillery and the Luftvern (air force). Here we see two artillery batteries. All artillery in the FS is self-propelled. At the front of the picture is a battery of Sigurd SPGs, another variant on the Thor chassis, and beside them is a Forward Artillery Observer with his comms vehicle, a Thor Command Tank. Behind them is a battery of Lynx Salvo Rocket vehicles, with an FAO in his Lynx Command Vehicle. These chaps provide the occasional artillery stonk when it is needed to encourage the enemy to vacate positions that the FS does not want them in.


The Luftvern provides both air support, in the form of Wespe Light Attack Aircraft, and air defence such as these Lynx AA Gatlings. The Forward Air Controller is carried in a Lynx Command Vehicle, much like his artillery counterpart.


Finally, someone has to take charge, so you have the headquarters unit. Here we see the overall commander (centre) carrying out battlefield analysis and conceptual modelling of the situation in front of his Thor Command Vehicle. His ADC is helping him, while the comms teams relay urgent information from their Lynx and Thor Command vehicles as needed.

Forsvaret Skandinavias (June progress update)

In the 31st century, the world was rocked by natural disasters and economic collapse. Countries went bankrupt by the score and only those with oil survived comparatively unscathed. With their economies in ruins, Denmark and Sweden were left floating dead in the water until the Norwegian government threw them a lifeline. At an historic meeting, the three countries united in the New Kalmar Union. Each retained some devolved power, but ultimate power lay with the Norwegian government.

With the growing unrest in the world, Scandinavia needed to beef up its military power. It is only really possible to maintain neutrality, as they wished, by having a strong defence force, and so the armed forces of all three countries were united and rationalised. Thus was born Forsvaret Skandinavias.



Click the picture for a bigger version, although I admit it is rather a rubbish photo. I shall try to get better pictures when we play. I have only painted about a dozen vehicles for this force in June, but I thought it all looked better with the whole force present. By finishing this lot off, I have now painted all of the 6mm sci-fi figures I have.

At the front of the formation is a recce troop with three scout cars and the recce infantry. Behind them are several ranks of infantry platoons, each with APCs, an IFV for the commander and a mortar carrier to provide support. Behind that is a battalion of Thor MBTs, two AA vehicles and an SPAT section. The back rank consists of three SP artillery batteries (Two batteries of Sigurd SPGs and one of SP Salvo Missile Launchers). On the left of the photo is a flight of Wespe aircraft with their FAC.

We plan to play Dirtside 2 (freely downloadable) and FutureWarsCommander with these figures. We may also play Iron Cow when it is re-released, and it would not surprise me if Steve knows of other suitable 6mm sci-fi rules too.

The vehicles are all Brigade Models' ONESS Germans, while the infantry are from the Baccus Command Horizon range. I really like all of these figures. They were all pretty much flash free when they arrived and they have all painted up well.

The Russians are coming!

My newly enforced increased-leisure lifestyle has resulted in a number of changes around here. Thrift is no longer just a good idea; it is now the law. Therefore, my expenditure on anything has gone right down, but my productivity has increased commensurately. My latest oeuvre is a 15mm Russian force for the PBI rules from Peter Pig. I really like the Peter Pig figures because they paint up well and easily. I doubt that my efforts really do justice to Mr Goddard's figures, but here are some photos anyway. As usual, click on the pictures for larger versions.

The whole force

Company command

The PBI, backbone of the force

HMG team

Tanks ... you're welcome

76mm anti-tank guns with crew and tow


Extras - the army pack came with quite a few extra figures, partly because it is provided with whole packs of figures, rather than just those needed for the basic force, but also probably because I have not followed the layout as they thought I should. I shall never know because it does not tell you how to field the force, just what force they expect the pack to be able to field. These extras will permit some variation in force design anyway, which is good.

Talomir Tales - A New Blog

With a view to tracking our campaign progress, I have started a sibling blog to this one: Talomir Tales

Talomir Tales is for tracking the progress of our Warrior Heroes (WH) and Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures (WHAA) campaigns. My plan is to link the two so that WHAA adventures can be related to the wider political events of Talomir, the world created by Ed Texeira for his Warrior Heroes campaign. We are planning to make some adjustments to the setting to suit our available armies, and we also plan to start small with just four nations on the map, but we hope to expand the campaign map in the future. I have figures for some of the additional nations but need to paint them. I also hope to start including naval battles using THW's Warring Fleets rules but that may have to wait a while.

In preparation for the campaign, I have exported the WH and WHAA posts from this blog to Talomir Tales and edited them to suit their new home. They will still remain on this blog, because there is review material that is more appropriate here. Look for more background on Talomir in the near future as I photograph my armies and update the blog.

The goal for the campaign will be to play one or two WH or WHAA games per month and to continue for as long as we can be bothered. There is no real need for victory conditions in the campaign so it will remain open-ended, like an RPG game or like real life. Characters may die, nations may be annexed or absorbed into other nations, but life will continue regardless.

Mission: Ooh Shiny - March Update

Woohoo! All goblins painted!! That gives me an available force of:
6 stands of Black Moon Goblins
10 stands of Goblin Archers
12 stands of Goblin Warriors
6 stands of Goblin Light Wolf Riders
2 stands of Ogres

The whole army:


This force will be more than enough for the Warrior Heroes game that we are planning next month. It amounts to twice the number of compulsory stands, which will permit some variety in the way I field the army. It really needs some more Goblin Warriors but I shall wait to get those until I have some spare cash, which may be a while now. As usual, click the pictures for larger images.

Irregular Miniatures Ogre allies:


The units are all based on 40mm by 20mm stands, with as many figures on each stand as I feel like putting on there. I like the 40mm by 20mm stands. They are neat and look good. For some reason I prefer this style of basing to the more normal DBx bases sizes that many rules use. I think it is because the stands rank up neatly together. The character figures are based on 20mm x 20mm stands with one or two figures per stand.

Baccus Goblin Wizard:


The figures are predominantly Baccus 6mm with a few Irregular Miniatures figures to provide those elements that Pete Berry does not produce. I really like the characterful goblins that Pete produces and they paint up really easily, but I do wish he would expand his fantasy range a bit. Mind you, having been made redundant recently, my gaming budget has been drastically reduced, so it is probably just as well. Perhaps it can wait until I have a new job.

Baccus Goblin Heroes:


The Irregular Miniatures figures paint up nicely, but they tend to be a bit lumpish in the lead. These particular Irregular figures do not have the same character that the Baccus figures have. This is a shame really because Irregular Miniatures are one of the nicest companies I have ordered from and they are really helpful if you ring them up with queries. They also have the fastest mail order system I know of. I believe they must either have Mystic Meg working for them, predicting what they need to package up in advance, or they have a time machine so that they can get your goodies to you immediately! Anyway, apart from their WW2 vehicles, I would still recommend Irregular to anyone wanting cheap figures and good customer service.

Irregular Miniatures Goblin Archers in the foreground with Baccus Cavalry and Infantry behind:


Irregular Ogres and Baccus Cavalry:

The Goblins of Zog-Rot

We are nearly at the end of January and I have completed my goblins. I really did wonder if I could manage it, but I have done so. 2VPs to me. I have not managed to paint any of the Normans that were my secondary objective, because I have been distracted by our 6mm Great Northern War games instead. For next month I shall devise an alternative system for the secondary objective. Not sure what yet, but I shall come up with something (I hope).

The goblins of Zog-Rot are a mixed bunch. The majority are poorly clad, small and malnourished but with a huge appetite for carnage. The toughest of them ride the dreaded Ripper Beasts, large flightless birds with a terrible carnivorous appetite. It is fair to say that most goblins that try to tame one of these beasts wind up as its dinner instead. However, those few that succeed are well on their way to glory and fame among goblin-kind. Just taming a Ripper Beast is cause for a rise in social standing. Most goblins try to tame the less aggressive male ripper beasts, which are readily recognisable by the red stripes on their backs. Obviously, less aggressive in this case refers only to their aggressiveness when compared to the female of the species.

Some rare goblins are tough enough to tame the female Ripper Beasts, and a very few manage to tame two of them. The sight of a goblin standing proudly in his chariot pulled by two Ripper Beasts is a sure sign that you are confronting the chief of the tribe. This will be an unusually large and aggressive goblin.

Zog-Rotten society is warband-based. It relies on a regular income from raiding other groups. It is rare that a single war-leader can rise to the fore and unite the goblin hordes, although this has happened on occasion. That is one reason why Zog-Rot is ringed by Brethren fortresses. The Brethren maintain a constant watch for just such an occurrence and do their level best to prevent it reaching the point where goblin armies storm across the borders once more. Let us just hope that Steve has managed to outfit the Brethren in time for next week's goblin incursion!!